Gundam Wing is property of Sotsu Agency, Bandai Studios, and TV Asahi. Sainan no Kekka and all original characters and plot copyright 2000-2002 by Quicksilver and Gerald Tarrant. Please ask permission before reposting.


SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
ACT X, PART I

Donna kotoba demo oboete iru
Kono mune ni zenbu shimatte oku no
Chiisana omoide sae mo kobosazu ni
Jou o kakete kyou kara takaramono

Soba ni irareru jiyuu kuchi ni daseba
Kowaresou de kowakute

 No matter what, I remember your all words
They are all shut in my heart
Without even neglecting the smallest memory
I put them over me, making them treasures

If I said I just wanted to stay with you
I'd seem broken and frightened

--Gundam Wing, Zutto Himitsu
[Always a Secret, Relena Peacecraft image song]



Scene I: The Daughter of China


"The death of the heart is the saddest thing that can happen to you."
--Chinese Proverb


It wasn't where she wanted to be, but somehow she had expected it.

Sally Po had known what things would most likely come to when she had started down this path. Still, that didn't mean she had to like it.

That was one thing her mother had always told her, "You can dream many dreams on a long night, Sally," she had whispered, quoting a famous proverb. Sally had thought of that often, whenever times got tough. She had never been particularly close to her parents, but that was one thing she had been grateful to them for - perhaps the only thing.

When she was little, she hadn't been quite sure what the proverb meant. Her parents had been fond of throwing them out, and on the surface, it was simple. Most Chinese proverbs were; they were a bit of common wisdom that was always true. Look beneath them, though, and the true depth of their meaning became apparent. She had spent many late nights awake, dreaming of things that were possible, and now was facing the true long night of her life.

She was Chinese, and her parents had at least given her the chance to be Chinese. She pitied those who didn't know their cultures.

It disgusted her, nowadays. People had no idea who or what they were, and the way things were going, that trend would continue until the world had assimilated everyone into one Unitarian society where everyone walked, talked, and thought alike. She hated the very thought of it. Identity was important to her. She believed in individuality, and after being a member of the Federation, she had seen how people had conformed to the standards the mainstream culture had placed on them.

The knowledge that, as a soldier in the Federation army, she was one of the oppressors, had revolted her. When the Gundams had come and destroyed her government, she had eagerly joined the Chinese rebellion, hoping that something better could be formed.

Something that allowed her to be Chinese… but in the end, there was a return to the status quo. Une had meant well, and Sally liked how she was earnest, but Une held no real power. Une was a ghost, a woman who wasn't truly alive. Without Treize, Une was nothing. Sally thought things might have been different if the pilots hadn't vanished. They understood national pride… and Wufei understood China.

With a sigh, Sally leaned back in the shuttle seat, stealing a glance at the man who sat in her co-pilots' chair, Pierre Gils-Reve. He had left Bern and immediately raced to Geneva before Sally had even gotten out of the city to be beside her. According to Li, his cover was still sound, but he had insisted on coming with her when he had learned that her safety was on the verge of being compromised. He was fiercely loyal to her and her cause from the very beginning. She thought he had a little bit of a crush on her, and regretted that. Hormones had no place where they were going.

"How much longer to the rendezvous point?" she asked, even though she knew. The oppressive silence was beginning to get to her.

"Thirteen minutes, General," Gils-Reve said, his voice steady, even though his hands had shaken as they had initiated the launch two days prior. Since then, they had been moving around quite a bit to avoid capture, and Sally had been silently weaving her net closed, stealing what supplies she could. She only had subverted less that a sixth of the Preventers, but those she had turned, she had placed well. Her strike forces had already launched a few raids on a few of the more remote military targets, and she knew that within two days, she would be ready to launch an all-out assault. She had to move quickly, for Brown would be moving to block her and change everything. Li still hadn't been discovered, but it was only a matter of time.

Still, she had a prize that would tip the scales a little more in her favor. She looked out the window, wondering how much longer it would be before she would see it. "Has radio silence been maintained?" she asked.

"Yes," Gils-Reve answered. "There's been two fly-overs by Preventer operatives, but they haven't spotted us. It's your home ground, so I'm not surprised."

"Neither am I." Sally glanced at her watch. Two more minutes.

Those minutes normally would have dragged on, but since there was no flight crew aside from herself and Gils-Reve and he had been trained to fly combat suits instead of shuttles, she was the one who started the landing procedures. Even though she was no longer part of an official military order, she followed the steps to the letter. Discipline was important, and skipping steps was a bad idea. When order broke down, chaos reigned; and when chaos reigned, entire countries fell apart.

That would be one of her key strategies in attacking the World Nation- not the only one, but one of the keys.

By the time the plane landed with a slight jolt, she knew enough time had passed that if there were no problems, the people she should be meeting were there. "Are they here?" she asked as she shut down all the power systems to the shuttle. It would take time to restart them, but the Preventer agents would be looking for unexpected energy signals. She was the most wanted traitor on the planet, and they were expecting her to come to China. She had understood that, but China was home.

Gils-Reve nodded. "Before you shut down my proximity scanners, I detected them." His eyes glowed.

She nodded. "We'll have to manually lower the hatch."

The two rebels went to the door and hit the cranks, pushing the door down. Sally hit it with her shoulder when it got stuck, and almost fell through when it suddenly gave. It was only Gils-Reve's quick hands catching her waist that preventing her from taking a header onto the ground eight feet below.

His hands were warm, and she nodded her thanks. "Good reflexes," she said, and waited for him to release her.

He seemed dazed, and was wearing a slight blush, and she upgraded her prior opinion of his crush to puppy love with an internal groan. He finally let her go after a few moments too long, and she moved out of his range as quietly as socially acceptable. Looking down, she judged the distance safe enough to jump. She was too impatience to wait to push the stairs down.

When Sally landed, it jarred her teeth. She looked up to where Gils-Reve was still standing. "Coming, Gils-Reve?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am!" he said, grabbing the edge and swinging down. He landed gracefully besides her, and she wondered how he made it look so effortless.

"It's not ma'am anymore. Call me Po or General." Her eyes flashed, and she looked down at her clothes, once again camouflage gear. The first thing she had done when she had found a spare moment was to discard the hated uniform. Clothes made the person and shaped the way people acted.

As did names.

She could see the realization of what she meant flicker in Gils-Reve's green eyes, reflecting a variety of emotions too quietly for her to follow before he clenched his jaw with determination. "Yes, General."

Together they ducked under the belly of the craft, coming out from under the other side. She heard Gils-Reve take in a sudden breath of appreciation and couldn't keep from smiling. "This the first time you ever seen a Gundam?" she asked with amusement, even though the marvelous machine still took her breath away.

Before them stood the brilliantly colored Gundam Heavyarms.

She smiled up at one of her friends who had swiped it from right under Brown's nose. "Hey, Riley! How's the machine check out?" she demanded, shading her eyes from the late day sunlight's reflection of the glistening machine. She made a mental note to get it hidden as soon as possible, but for a moment, they could savor their small victory.

"It's as good as when the day it was built!" Riley shot back, perched proudly on the machine's shoulder. The old man reminded her of Howard, and she wished she knew how to contact the Sweeper. He'd be a useful contact, provided he saw things her way. It was strange that he had such morals- most scavengers didn't; but those were what made him Howard, and she really wouldn't change him. She was fighting to give people the choice to be the way they wanted to.

"And the shelter?" she asked, her voice losing its joking tone.

Riley was quiet for a moment before scampering down the silent giant, managing to find impossible handholds. The wiry man came to stand in front of her, taking his time dusting his hands off on his gray coveralls. "We lost one man, and were forced to kill all four people there who weren't with us. After that, I set some explosives, and walked this baby out to the shuttle and took off. We've been jumping all over, and I've swapped shuttles twice. Complete diagnostics were performed on the way, and it's in working order."

Sally walked closer so she could admire the trim. These machines held an elegant beauty, and promised soldiers a chance to dance with death. She had taken care of Heavyarms before, but this time, it was hers… and she would be flying it. The thought thrilled her, secretly. She was a very good pilot and she looked forward to matching her skills against it. It would be like riding a tiger, and not daring to let go.

Gils-Reve stared at Heavyarms in disbelief, seemingly unable to comprehend that their band of nationalists had in their possession one of the five Gundams that had shaped the world. "How- why do we have it?" he asked.

Her smile was mysterious as she touched the metal of the Gundam's leg. "It's about the pilots and who they are… you need to know them. Each Gundam is a part of the pilot, and when the war was over, there was no one to tell those teenagers what to do with them; they had to make their own choices. Heero and Duo hid theirs, and I assume Wufei did the same as well. Quatre had his melted down and used to build an irrigation system," she said, pausing as people winced at the thought of that desecration. "But Trowa…Trowa wasn't a warrior; Trowa was a soldier.

"When the war was over, he did what any good soldier would do and surrendered his weapon to the victor." Her smiled was mocking. "Lady Une had it hidden in a small supply base, manned by ten men, and kept under guard. It was classified Level One, and that was supposed to be the end of it… but it wasn't.

"I knew about it… and I just happened to assign as many of my people as possible there. As soon as it became apparent that I had to leave, I knew I had to tell Riley to let the others know that I needed my… severance bonus." Her eyes traced the machine reverently. "It should come in handy."

Her eyes looked up at the cockpit, and she knew that it was time to do something she'd been waiting to do. "I have to make a call…" she said. "Riley, you and Gils-Reve show the others how to go about setting up a cold camp- we move at before dawn tomorrow."

Riley nodded, and she could see that Gils-Reve barely checked a salute. He was having a hard time deciding which bits of military custom to keep and which to discard. He would learn, Sally knew, but it would take time. She turned her attention back to Heavyarms, and signed. There were no hoists currently attached, and since it was standing, that meant she would just have to climb straight up. She lacked Riley's knack for finding grips, so going up would be a challenge.

It was lucky that she had made a point of putting in an hour of hard training at the gym every day, or else she never would have made it up. The climb was tricky, and once she almost lost her hold. Still, she made it up, and that was what mattered. She took a second to catch her breath before activating the hatch, which slid open smoothly.

The indicator lights flashed as she shut the cockpit door, amazed as always how much it was like stepping into a different world. She ignored the custom harnesses and newswire feed and checked the lights, pleased that all of them were green. Leaning back into the well-padded seat, she took a breath of the filtered air. What had it been like, to sit here during a pivotal battle? What would it be like to know that people spoke of you as though you were the devil incarnate?

Sally would know that feeling very soon, and she wasn't sure if it frightened her or not. Still, she had no time for musing. She needed to contact someone, and had to do it soon, if her time zone calculations were correct. With a slight smile she hit the communications button and hacked into the Preventers' system, glad that Li had kept her password active, despite standard procedures. "Connect me to Chang Wufei's room," she demanded. "Audio and visual feed, and scramble the frequency."

The link surged into being with a speed that made her smile slightly with pleasure. Wufei was a creature of habit, and if she was right, she most likely would be interrupting him during his late evening exercises. He always ran a few forms before going to sleep, and she was hoping it would put him in a thoughtful mood.

And she was right. She saw him poised on one foot, holding the sword parallel to his angled leg, wearing only the white pants of mourning that she had grown accustomed to seeing him in. It was a beautiful thing, to watch his toned body, and even holding the pose, it became apparent that he was truly a master of the art.

Sally was silent for a moment, but that moment was all it took for him to be aware that he was being watched. His dark eyes narrowed and he whirled; his sword swinging up and his elbow bending as his left hand straightened and his feet became ready to launch. His breathing remained calm and balanced, but she saw the slight shock on his face when he noticed her image on the viewer.

"You!" he declared, his voice sounding as though he had just stepped into a pile of something particularly vile.

"Ni hao, Wufei," she replied calmly in Mandarin. "I see you've heard about my… allegiances…" she continued, sticking to the language.

"I heard about your betrayal," he said coldly, replying in the same language, though his colonial accent was slightly more clipped. Wufei sheathed his sword on his hip before moving closer. She could see in his expression what he planned; subtlety was the one thing he had never learned.

"Wufei… you can't trace this," she said lightly. "And rerouting my call will do you no good. Don't you think you should at least here me out?"

"I don't listen to traitors," he said, moving to turn it off.

She had been expecting this. "The death of the heart is the saddest thing that can happen to you," Sally whispered, wondering if her final ploy would work.

"What?" he asked.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, and her smile grew minutely. "For the friendship we share, and for China, will you listen to me?" she asked.

Sally saw the hesitation written in the tension of his body, but she knew that she had him hooked. She had seen this before many times. "I… I will listen to you, woman. And then I'm reporting every word you say directly to Une," he said, as though the qualifier would absolve his sin.

"Do that. I'm sure Une's very upset, and would like to know why her second in command has been plotting against her," Sally agreed. She pressed the tips of her fingers together and rested her elbows on her knees.

"And she's going to be even more upset when she find out you somehow or other managed to run off with Heavyarms," he pointed out.

She smiled. "I thought I needed a special severance bonus, since the Preventers weren't going to give me one."

"How did you get it?" Wufei demanded.

"That you would have to ask Trowa…" Sally said. "If you decide I'm right, you can bring Shenlong… and since Sandrock has been destroyed, that will mean each side has two. Quite a balance of power." She twisted one of her braids. "I'm not after power, Wufei, but I do understand how the game works."

"So your after me because I have the only unclaimed Gundam?" he asked, sounding slightly disgusted, and maybe a little disappointed in her. "Sorry, Nataku is long gone."

"Liar," Sally accused.

He froze, and glared at her, raising a hand and smacking the screen. "Ta ma de! Nataku is gone!" he insisted.

"But you can bring her back. You're not like Trowa… who handed his back to the military when the war was done. You're not like Quatre, who destroyed his Gundam for a better era. e to go, and the world would be perfect.

Through the crushed velvet draperies, the sun was setting softly in the west amidst a cloudbank of brilliant gold and blue and purple, and for a moment she considered putting on a t-shirt and old jeans and asking the gardeners down below, who were pruning the roses, if she could go join them. When she had been around five or six, one of the Darlian house gardeners had taken her outside and showed her how to plant seeds. She wasn't sure why she still remembered that, but the feel of the moist, crumbly soil and the hard nub of the seed in her child's palm were still vivid memories.

She could hardly remember her father now. Her family. Her real family, the Darlians, the ones who had raised her and cared for her, the ones who had molded her into who she was now. No matter how hard she tried to envision them, to her the Peacecrafts were still and always would be just portraits on a wall, a legend, dim vision of glory and days gone by.

And then there was her brother.

A knock on the antechamber door scattered her thoughts, and Relena jumped, realizing that she'd been dozing and that she'd promised to meet Sylvia and Catherine for a light supper out in the garden. No rose pruning for the Queen of Cinq this evening.

"Sylvia?" she called, reluctantly standing and moving towards the bath suite for a quick scrub and to change out of her uncomfortable state dress.

Thected us. And other countries agree. Look at those who follow me, Wufei… Gils-Reve is French, and he went six months without speaking his native language because of the World Nation. Riley is Irish, but the Federation made him drop the "O" from his name because the computers couldn't process the apostrophe sometimes, and he can easily picture the World Nation doing the same. It's a small thing, but if they can make you change your name, what else can they do?"

Wufei watched her speak passionately about her cause. "Sally… I'm a colonist."

"And that means it doesn't affect you?" she nearly spat. "If anything, it affects you more! You're from a colony that prided itself on its Chinese heritage. They practically told me I couldn't be Chinese anymore- what will they do to you, or other colonies that don't have so-called established customs? You and I both know that's a lie… and it's only a matter of time before the World Nation absorbs the colonies!"

She saw in his eyes that he was listening… and Sally knew that he was on the verge of agreeing. She forced herself to stay calm. If she kept reeling, she could very shortly have one of the biggest fish in her net. "In a generation, maybe two, we won't have a culture anymore! That's where this era of absolute pacifism is getting us! We need war to sustain our identities, and us! War brings revolution and changes in thought, yet unites a people together! War is not glorious, but it is necessary! Without it, we stagnate and lose ourselves!

"I am Chinese! I am not going to live in a world where there are no national boundaries, for that means I have no pride! I love my language, yet it will die out- soon people will only speak Japanese and English, and then just English! I love my sense of family, yet soon the Western world will take that away!" she paused to take a breath.

Wufei listened closely, his hand going limp and falling away from the computer screen. "Meilan.... those flowers..." he whispered.

"Yes, Wufei! You understand what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"I... remember..."

"Yes! You were the one who told me that people were stupid to think the war was over! War is never over! Fight for what you believe in!" she said, pushing the final button.

And then something flickered across his face, and she knew that she had said the wrong thing. "I believe in people," he said slowly. "I believe that we have given them the right to choose their own futures. I believe that war is an awful thing- it may never be over, but if we don't at least try to seek peace, we're never going to find happiness. I believe that happiness is something that you strive for…" He paused, and then he gave her a soft smile, one that she hadn't thought him capable of. Something inside of him had changed, and she suddenly realized that she didn't know the real Chang Wufei anymore.

"I believe in my friends. I believe in the other pilots. I believe in the Preventers, and I am sorry that you never gave them a chance. I believe… I am not here to cause chaos anymore… I believe I am here to help the world." He looked at her directly, and the intensity in his face made her feel like she was drowning.

She shook herself out of it, and felt her heart harden towards him. She had believed that he would see the justice in her cause, but he, too, had been taken in. "Good-bye, Wufei. I hope you like the path you've chosen." She shut the connection down, unable to stand looking in his clear eyes.

Then she leaned back in the seat, hating how the battle lines had been drawn. But she was China's daughter, and she had made her choices. She would do anything for China, even turn against those who had once been friends.


Ni hao: Chinese, "Hello"
Ta ma de: Chinese, "Goddamn you"



Scene II: The Girl in the Mirror


"Everyday I fight a war against the mirror
I can't take the person staring back at me...
I'm my own worst enemy."
--Pink, Don't Let Me Get Me


If she'd been asked a year ago, when she'd been up to her neck in foreign affairs, country rebuilding, and establishment of a new national government, Relena Darlian Peacecraft would have readily admitted that she hated politics. But she could never have dreamed that she could hate it with such a passion as she did now, a week into Quatre Raberba Winner's trial, with no end in sight, endless infighting among the seats of the World Nation, and Fatima bint Narish smirking around the corner at every turn.

There were times in which she had just wanted to stand up, throw her papers on the ground, and storm out. She wasn't even sure what she was doing in the trial - as the head of the Cinq Kingdom, she had the duty to be there, but from the way the trial was going, it was Fatima versus Carrington versus Keets, and few people had managed to get a word in either way. She'd worked hard to prepare a list of statements, but it didn't look like she would ever be able to make them.

Once again, she had the power to change the world, and once again, it meant nothing. If not for Sylvia Noventa and Dorothy Catalonia, she wouldn't have even made it this far.

The manor was quiet as she let herself into the small back entry hall, slipped off her shoes, and took the narrow back stairs up to her suite. It was the house servants' day off, and Relena was sure that they were happily at home resting, wanting nothing to do with the current state of world events. She didn't blame them.

"Dorothy?" she called as she stepped onto the landing. No answer. The slanting sunlight through the large, glass-paned ceiling windows bathed the hallway in a comfortable late afternoon glow, and the grandfather clock in the hall read 5:43. Dorothy had promised that she and Sylvia would be back by 5:30. She sighed and made her way down the hall, passing Catherine's closed door and Dorothy's half-open one. From a glance inside the other girl's room at the unmade bed and the clothes strewn carelessly in heaps over the chairs and on the floor, it was good that the servants only had one off day every week.

Relena closed the door of her room behind her, kicked off her shoes in the antechamber, and shambled into the bedroom. Flopping onto her bed, she stared at the ceiling, so simple and white compared to the ornate, painted ones of the Cinq palace back home. Dorothy's Geneva manor was small but elegant, just what she would have expected an inherited home to be, and Relena's own rooms here were a charming suite, decorated in what seemed to be a 17th century Victorian meets 21st century Modernist cross-breed design. Since she and Catherine had moved in, they hadn't seen hide nor hair of Duchess Noventa, which was probably for the best, though Relena admitted privately that she had rather a morbid curiosity as to what the duchess would say to her, if they ever met. A few side comments from the servants led her to believe that Emily had gone back to France and would probably be staying there.

That was one thorn out of their side. Just a million mor áλԛ¤¿ßf\

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