30 Ways to Conquer Mars
#025 フェンス
A.C. 197, June 10, 2:12「But You」
Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB
This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.
...
Even though it would have been easier to pick her up in his arms like an invalid or throw her over his shoulder like a sack, Zechs could not do that to her. Instead, he supported her, one arm braced cross her back and one of hers slung across his shoulders, and half-carried, half-dragged, her from the Hopper into the Medical Bay's Intensive Care Unit, under the unnaturally silent gaze of everyone else en route.
There wasn't a large crowd, mainly because those who do care about what had been going on with the gravity booster outside were currently milling anxiously around Hanger A. Once the news spreads, they will quickly migrate here to sector C. Zechs could care less. They wouldn't be coming because of him.
Noin woke up in a room that was at once strange and familiar. The plain wooden bowl on the nightstand told her where she was, and she threw up over the side of the bed.
A white-robed pixie of a woman stepped in around the time she was done, and observed her with a critical, piercing-green eye. "How are you feeling?"
"What am I doing in Zechs' room?"
Doctor Teryl Rothery regarded the ashen, bruised, woman with a perfectly arched eyebrow. She had just come back from the dead and that was the first thing she asks, 'what am I doing in his room'?
"You had too much to drink last night and came home with my boyfriend," she replied wryly, "you screwed like bunnies and then you passed out and he went to work and I came over, so now, here we are."
She noted the expressions of shock and concentration fly across the young woman's face, paying close attention to her eye movements as the brunette glanced about the room, and the twitches of the muscles in her throat as she licked her lips and tried to swallow.
"I… that's not how I remember it…" Noin scowled, struggling to remember. The mirage standing at the foot of the bed wore a nametag she could not quite make out, her head was spinning so much. She hadn't known Zechs had found a girlfriend, but he was so intensely private that that would not have been a big surprise. He would kill her if she ruined things for him with this gorgeous redhead… Noin forced herself to focus. She was sure she has seen her around the ship before… …
"No," she winced finally under the assault of painful memories. "No… there was an accident… gravity booster in grid C-F5… Doctor… Ross?"
Her and Zechs? It was not possible. They had gotten drunk together plenty of times before and nothing had happened, whether she'd wanted it to or not. For a moment, the angel with the fiery hair seemed unconvinced and Noin began to wonder if she was the one who was mistaken.
"Rothery. Alright, nothing wrong with your memory, then." The Doctor made more notes on her clipboard. Noin felt strangely disappointed.
She stepped up around the opposite side of where Noin had been sick and shone a penlight into her eyes, noting the dilation. "Do you remember your name?"
"Ah… Lucrezia… Lucrezia Noin." She had almost used her real name.
"Well, Lucrezia, for the first woman in history to survive space-vacuum in a non-experimental conditions, you're doing pretty well, in case you're wondering."
Noin tried to blink, and had to stop. Even her eyelids were bruised.
"As for 'here', Mr. Merquise thought you would like some privacy to recover in, so he moved you from Med Bay once you were no longer critical. Said you hate being around sick people."
Noin's ears burned in a fierce blush. Hearing those words from a Doctor made her feel ashamed. "I… I never know what to do around them…"
"It's okay," Doctor Rothery smiled. "You feel helpless around them, so you avoid them. I understand that feeling. It's why I became a doctor."
Noin shrugged lightly. "I know what to do with the injured, and I'm fine with blood and guts, it's just the diseases. I never know how to help."
"Mr. Merquise is something else," the Doctor changed the topic conversationally, preparing an IV-bag. "Even at the risk of your life, he seemed more concerned about your pride than anything else. Had to carry you in on your feet himself. He really is a good…"
"Zechs' isn't my boyfriend." Noin interrupted, blaming the stinging in her eyes on the prick of the IV-needle.
Rothery gave her another calculating look. "I was going to say 'partner'," she said lightly. "Lovers come and go, but a partner who truly knows all about what you want and respects that, no matter the consequence, that's something to treasure."
She smiled at Noin's stunned silence. "An old soldier told me this when I was working clean-up after the Eve Wars."
A partner who truly knows what you want, huh? Hot tears fell unbidden into her lap. Can she attest to that? She thought she did, once upon a time, but ever since the Eve War… maybe she shouldn't have saved him from the Libra explosion. Not because he did not deserve it, nor because he has suffered for it, but because he did not wish for it. He had been willing to risk her life for the sake of her pride. Could she say the same? You wouldn't even let him die on his own terms…
She didn't know what he thought. They hadn't spoken about it.
Just as they hadn't spoken about the kiss days ago in this room, or his incomprehensible self-explanation the other night when she found a withered gardenia in the jacket she had stolen from him years ago. They hadn't spoken nearly enough since he threw her out of his hospital room on Christmas Day, A.C. 195.
Should I have gone looking for you, Zechs? It seemed hardly fair, he had been the one at fault. She had given him his life back, for Christmas, and he had told her to Go Away… he had said… what did he say?
"Sanq is fallen and will never rise again. Relena and I have accepted this, so must you. You have done more than enough. There is no obligation left between us, Lucrezia. Go live your life the way God intended."
So she went back to Earth with the only people she knew, in the world after the War, and started doing the only thing she knew to do with her life. It wasn't so different from what she did for Zechs, for Milliardo Peacecraft. She protected his people and fought for his dream, the dream of Universal Peace that King Leopold Peacecraft the Fourth had started almost twenty-five years ago. Was it even Zechs' own, true, wish?
Then he came back.
"Go tow that man back, Noin." Lady Une's voice ordered wearily over the phone. "He says he won't trust anyone to do it but you."
What else could she have done? Without the Sanq Kingdom, without the obligation of Master and Servant between them, there was no Zechs-and-Noin. They were an invention of Milliardo Peacecraft and Alessandra diLuculo's, for the sole purpose of recapturing the visions of their childhoods.
"Zechs. It's been a year and two days since we've last met." She said, negating Christmas Day, reversing Christmas Eve. These two missing days clung and fluttered indistinctly in the air between them, like a membrane, alternatively suffocating and obfuscating.
Doctor Rothery left in search of house-keeping. When the door beeped and slid open again, Noin expected one of the janitors with a bucket and mop, not the usual resident of the room she had taken up.
The gulf between them was sowed with questions unasked and answers unsaid, land mines scattered across its distance.
He didn't seem to notice.
"It worked, we pulled it off! Rescue Manoeuvre Four… we made it work!" The first thing she saw was the big, wide grin carved into his face. She hadn't seen such a grin since they were children. It was good to see it again. The second thing she took in was the discoloured swell around the corner of it.
"Zechs, you got in a fight?"
"Ah…" he chuckled sheepishly, "I deserved it. You were in ICU and I couldn't stop grinning. Don't tell Donn Q-4 was your idea, he's sworn to kill the idiot who came up with it."
She could see the fear in his eyes, tucked behind his enthusiastic welcome. She could feel it. The near-hysterical excitement, the casual laugh, it was all a disguise for the little boy underneath, about the burst into tears any minute. And it was her fault. Noin dropped her eyes to where her hands were picking nervously at his sheets.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, for everything she has done, not knowing what else to say.
He shifted his weight and sobered, becoming the grown-up Zechs, though he does not move from his spot. "Noin, I don't know if I ought to kiss you or shoot you."
She managed a little smile for him.
"I don't care, I'm just glad to see you. But do it quick, because the state I'm in, either's going to hurt like hell."
...
.
A/N:
The BGM for this kiss is "Call and Answer" by the Bare-Naked Ladies.
Two missing days – This comes from my overly paranoid and suspicious mind. In EW, Noin tells Zechs that they haven't met up in a year and two days… but afterwards, in Brussels, our always concise Noin turns around and says the infamous line:
いいえ 一年前に私は言った筈です。「彼方のそばから離れない」。
Iie, ichinen mae ni watashi wa itte hasu desu. Anata no soba kara hanarenai
No, I should have said this a year ago. 'I won't walk away from you'. (lit. 'not leave from near you'.)
A year ago? What happened to the 2 extra days? Hm.