Told you I'd get back into writing once I had homework to procrastinate on

Told you I'd get back into writing once I had homework to procrastinate on. *grin* Sorry for the long delay in getting any of my fics updated...we all need time off..! Anyways, enjoy!

Ash

Toy Soldiers

by Ashura Nagisa

disclaimer: I don't own GW. Surprise, surprise.

pairings: subject to change, but so far: 13x5, 11+13, 2x11, 3x4

warnings/notes: AU, because playing fast and loose with the timeline and actual events. Yaoi, het, drama, angst, violence, sap--um, how about just "everything"?

****************

Book II: The Star Moves Not But In His Sphere

****************

Chapter Four:

"Following them in death and life, the people will not betray them."

--Sun Tzu (The Art of War)

**A.C. 193**

"How is she?" Nathan looked tired, Treize noted, as the young doctor turned to answer his query.

"Treize." His voice was thin with exhaustion as well, and the darkness under his eyes was caused by more than the dim, yellow hospital lights. "I hardly know what to tell you. Physically she'll be all right; the Valkyrie's cockpit is indestructible. But her mind...." He faltered, unsure how to proceed, sinking onto the bench that lined the cold hallway. "It's hard to explain. She's feeling guilty, that's part of it."

"She has no reason to." Treize sat down next to him, retrieving a sheaf of folded papers from his sleeve and passing them over. "Readouts from the Valkyrie...that cockpit system was unbelievable. It's not Nic's fault she lost control of it. Look—it's designed to heighten the physiological responses of the pilot far past what any of us are used to. I don't know how Leia did it, but it takes commands from the subconscious, rather than the conscious brain, because it's faster. There's not a pilot in the Alliance who could have handled it."

Nathan didn't even glance at the papers, just pressed them back into Treize' hand. "That fits with what she managed to tell me. She said it was pulling its commands from 'under her mind.' That's why she feels so guilt-ridden, Treize...we all overestimated her strength, and underestimated her love."

"Love?" Treize' stomach churned—with his young wife so recently dead, it was not a word he wanted to hear. Still, he had to ask, had to understand. "I don't quite—"

"Nicole's in love with you." If Nathan was irritated at having to spell it out so clearly, he kept it to himself. "Surely you knew that, Treize, you've been her one and only since we were kids."

Treize rubbed rough fingertips against his aching temples. "I knew she felt that way once, of course. I'm not blind—but even you just said, that was when we were children. I had no idea she felt the same way now...."

"You're a fool." Nathan's words held no malice, only a sad, weary resignation, and Treize found himself nodding silent agreement. "It's when we're children that our love is fiercest...most irrational. God, Treize, think about it! Remember how we all were? She never wanted to be a soldier til you filled her head with how glorious battle was. Then you told her you were going to be a general, and she could be your best pilot. Everything she's done in her life since has been because of you—how could you not see it?"

Treize' head was throbbing, and his heart didn't feel much better. "Yes, I remember—but she was nine and I was twelve! People grow up, and change, we've all changed—"

"Not as much as you think," the young doctor interrupted. "Look closely at all of us, Treize...match it with your memories...see how much of all of us was shaped by each other." He slumped back against the bench, his eyes closed in exhaustion, his head tilted back. "But not right now. You're hurting too, I know that. Listen...maybe this isn't a good time for you to be here. Wait til you've had more time...."

"I told you," Treize said coldly, "I /do not/ blame Nicole. I've just lost my wife, Nathan—and whatever else is going on here, Nic's still my oldest friend. I need to see her."

"And then?" Nathan returned, his eyes snapping open before he wilted again. "Lord. I'm sorry, I am. I just don't want to have you go in there and undo everything I've been working so hard for since she woke up...the wrong word and you'll ruin all her chances for ever being right again."

"Then tell me what to say." Treize leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as if he could barely manage to hold up his own body. "I don't want to do anything that will hurt her, I swear...I just need to see with my own eyes that she's alive, don't you understand that at least?"

Nathan nodded once, slowly, sadly. "Just remember that she really does think it's all her fault. I know you're sad as hell, but you have to hide that from her or she'll blame herself for it."

Treize nodded. "There is another thing. When she's able, I want her to come to the Specials with me."

Nathan's brown eyes flashed. "What if she's not cut out for soldiering anymore? You know she'll go anyway, just to be with you, and then what will you accomplish?"

"I'll be able to keep her with me, and watch out for her!" Treize snapped, weariness and sorrow and anger coalescing into The Khushrenada Presence without his even willing it.

Nathan's lips tightened into a thin, hard line. "Go see her first, before you make that decision. And if she goes, I'm coming too."

"But you're not finished yet," Treize said, startled. "If Nicole's not meant to be a soldier, Nathan, you're even less so."

"You're right." He knew better than to let the words of agreement fool him; Nathan Blythe could be as stubborn as he could, and just as agreeable about it. "So I won't be going into research anytime soon, I'll take a demotion to field surgeon. I'm good enough for /that/ now." The smaller man's face turned up til dark brown eyes met blue. "I'm not leaving her alone, Treize. I've known Nic as long as you have; she's like a sister to me. And like any good brother, I won't let anyone—not even you, sir—injure her."

Treize sighed. "So be it," he agreed. "Now let me see her."

****

He was not prepared, as he eased open her hospital room door. Nathan's stilted explanations had left him with little real idea of what to expect, but he had imagined her wounded, on death's doorstep perhaps, faded and small in the crisp hospital sheets.

But she was seated instead in the bedside chair, having made the instrument cart into a makeshift dressing-table. Her back was straight, her posture proud, and her eyes so uncomfortably hard.

She turned to greet him as he entered. "Your Excellency," she said calmly.

Treize stopped in near-shock, his fingers clenching around his bouquet of get-well roses until the thorns pierced his hands. Nicole Une never called him Excellency, unless it was a formal occasion with lots of people watching, and sometimes not even then. She called him Treize. He'd been about to call out her name as well, but intuition made him temporise. "My lady."

She inclined her head, reaching one long, graceful arm toward him. Abruptly he felt, instead of an officer and diplomat and all the things he was, like an awkward, undergrown boy prancing inexpertly through the ceremonial details of some ridiculous pageant. He bowed a little, passing the roses into her hand, and she smiled over the tops of them as she cradled them to her chest.

"Thank you for coming to see me," she said—still so stilted and formal and unfamiliar. "I know you have worries enough of your own without sharing in mine."

"It was no trouble, Lady." Finding his stride at last, Treize found the words fell from his tongue as easily as ever. "A poor friend I would be if I did not."

"Oh, but a poor friend I was, to have caused you such pain." He thought he saw a flicker of the old Nicole in her eyes, for only a moment, despite the hard formality, and he grasped for it.

"Nic—"

"Don't call me that." Her eyes shuttered again, her faint smile fading, and Treize winced. "I am not Nicole. I am Lady Une."

"I'm afraid I shall miss Nicole," Treize said softly. "She was my friend, you know."

"She was a weak little fool!" the Lady snapped, throwing the roses onto the cart. "Put your trust in me instead, Your Excellency. /I/ will never fail you."

Treize felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach, and his insides churn with the digestion of it. //Am I to lose wife and friend at once, then? But this—dear God, is this what I have made her?// Guilt as overwhelming as his old friend's insanity burrowed into the depth of his soul and made its home there, wrenching his gut as he made his invitation. "Well then, Lady, when you have recovered, I would like you to come command the Specials with me."

He kissed her hand and made his escape—he could not bear to watch her anymore.

****

**A.C. 195 **

It was glorious—the new Gundam, apparently patterned after Wing only moreso, blazing out of the embattled colony like the meteor they had all once been named for.

"Come on Quatre," Trowa whispered, his mind barely registering that the words had been said aloud. "Show me what that Gundam can do." He aimed the Vayeate's beam cannon at his one-time lover and silently rejoiced when its target dove out of the way. Quatre's Gundam raised both arms to form a single rifle, and the spectacular catastrophe of its ___ wiped out the last of the Oz soldiers under Trowa's command.

"There's nothing to worry about, Heero!" he called joyfully. "That Gundam's unparalleled—we've got nothing to worry about. Quatre!" Eagerly, desperately he hailed their new ally. "Can you hear me, Quatre? It's me, it's Trowa!"

But stony silence greeted him, broken at last by hard, ragged breath. He was about to call his lover's name again when he heard is own, barely more than a whisper across his speaker.

"I can hear you, Trowa." His skin tingled with the sound of that soft voice—it was Quatre's voice, and yet it was not; it had nothing of the softness or idealism of the boy he'd pledged his life to, tinged instead with a hysteria that set his danger-senses prickling along his spine.

"Don't come any closer, Trowa," Quatre continued—softly, whispering, deadly calm. Desperate to uncover the cause of this strange behaviour, he ignored the warning, sending the Vayeate diving toward the unnamed Gundam. Trusting, too trusting—Quatre's scream cut across his fraying nerves:

"What did I just say? Don't get any closer to me!"

Space went white and orange again as Quatre fired, hitting the Vayeate dead centre and blasting the mobile suit backward with the force of the blow. A cry burst from Trowa's throat but he ignored it, wrenching the controls, pulling back and away. Too much damage to assess—not just to the Vayeate but to Quatre—what had happened to Quatre?

He hovered, adjusting his helmet and oxygen, pushing himself from the melted remains of his cockpit as he set to repairing what he could of the controls. "Quatre...what's the matter? What's going on here?"

"Trowa." That terrifying, broken voice again, ragged with tears that spoke more of madness than sorrow. "Outer space has gone crazy. So I'm going to destroy all of it. I have no choice, Trowa. The colonies are becoming armed. They want war. They don't know how awful it is! But I won't let them—I won't—"

"Stop it!" Trowa interrupted, pain thicker in his voice than he'd ever dared show anyone before. "This isn't like the Quatre I know..." And softer yet, so soft he was never sure if he had spoken the words aloud: "This isn't like the Quatre I love."

"Tell the others for me," Quatre commanded sadly from the Gundam's cockpit. "Tell them to stay away from me—otherwise I'll kill them, too."

//Is this what Colonel Une meant?// Trowa found her words echoing a little too uncomfortably in his skull, racked now with the desperate sorrow of his love's betrayal. //What happened to do this to you, Quatre? Why? What's happened to us?//

His thoughts interrupted, he saw Heero dive toward Quatre through the corner of his eye, aiming the Mercurius straight into the new Gundam's path. //Don't—Heero, Quatre--// But Trowa never voiced the warning; he had no time, Quatre screamed again and fired.

"Don't get any closer! Stay away from me!"

"Is that all you've got to say?" Heero demanded. The Mercurius' armour spared it from the worst of the blow and he dove expertly out of the way, readying his beam sabre. "If everything has gone crazy, there's only one thing to do—I'll believe in myself, and keep fighting." The two suits spun, danced, two incredible pilots in two advanced mobile suits.

"Quatre," Trowa heard Heero whisper, "I'll stop you...even if I have to kill you."

Fire. Spin. Around. Again. Neither was gaining on the other—Quatre had more firepower, but Heero had the Mercurius' shield. As pilots they were evenly matched; Heero might have had slightly better reflexes, but Quatre had the strategic mind of an evil genius, and always seemed to know where those reflexes would take him. Fire. Dive. Tumbled. Attack. A macabre dance played against the velvet backdrop of outer space.

And the Mercurius was weakening.

"The shield won't hold much longer." He said it so calmly, as if it didn't matter, simply another statistic to add to the mix, a notation for Trowa's report later.

Quatre knew it was happening, too. "Heero...why are we fighting each other?" His voice was plaintive, sad. "The colonies have teamed up with Oz...they're my enemies now. They're your enemies now, too."

"Outer space has lost all reason," he pleaded. "That's why I have to destroy everything. We can start all over again. That's natural, isn't it?"

Heero grunted in answer and dove toward him again. Quatre fired to the side, missing him on purpose, but swinging the beam around to keep him from moving closer. "You'll die, Heero!" His voice had taken on a note of desperation, for all it never raised above a whisper. "I don't want to kill my friends—please, Heero, get away from here—take Trowa, both of you get away—"

He seemed genuinely upset when Heero stood firm. "Quatre, I'm not leaving," zero-one said, in a voice that reminded his former ally he should have expected nothing else.

A long, sad sigh. "All right." The burst from Quatre's rifle slammed the Mercurius all the way back into the side of the colony, fusing the mobile suit to the metal ring. Heero tugged off his helmet; blood was streaming down his cheek where his head had hit the control panel.

"Heero, I can't leave this colony here any longer," Quatre said, miserable. "I'd ask you to get out of your mobile suit, but I know you won't. So I have to kill you. I'm sorry, then."

"If you're going to do it," Heero growled, "then get it over with! I'm not going to sit here and chat with you about it!"

"That's it, then." It was hard to reconcile Quatre's words with the genuine regret in his voice. "Goodbye, Heero."

He fired. Like the long arm of hell, the Gundam's beam arced toward the colony. Trowa wrenched control of the crippled Vayeate into his hands at last and did the only thing his heart told him he /could/ do—threw himself in front of it.

"Quatre! Why don't you realise what a big mistake you're making? Quatre! This battle is unnecessary!" He screamed into his comm as the fires around him died out, as the shadow that was the Mercurius relieved Quatre of his rifle.

"Trowa, the Vayeate's about to explode, get out now!" Heero's urgent directive cracked through his speaker.

It was strange, and calm, this acceptance of his own death. "You're right," he said softly. "This is the end of the line for me." How peaceful it was. The chaos before him played to the mind-music of crying gulls, and the whisper of oxygen in his lungs was only the memory of laughing kisses.

//"I wish you didn't have to fight tomorrow."//

//"I wish neither of us had to fight again, ever."/

//A kiss, a smile. "That's why you're you."//

//"Would you...would you stay with me forever, if you could, and if I asked you to?"//

Quatre's voice. "No! Heero, save Trowa!" More spinning, the whirl of colours before his eyes, the dizzying hum of his engines on their way to overload. He didn't want to be saved, without Quatre...if only one of them was going to make it out of this, Trowa realised his loyalties had shifted. The colonies had lost out in favour of an idealistic, sorrowful blonde boy.

And he wanted that idealism back.

Heero tackled Quatre and knocked him back out of the way. Quatre was calling his name—a bit of pain, then, but hope as well, that perhaps there would be salvation after all.

"It doesn't matter how it happened," he said, remembering Une's words from earlier—how long ago it seemed now! "But the colonies have teamed up with Oz...and we have to keep in mind that it does mark the end of a war. At the same time it means that our missions have come to an end."

//"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"//

//"Of course! Are you?"//

//"More sure than I've ever been of anything. I don't know how the words go, though."//

//"That's all right...we'll figure them out as we go."//

The sorrow was almost too much to bear—he would welcome the end, when it came. "From our point of view...as disappointing as it is that the colonies we've been fighting for have change their perspective, that's what happens in war. We've got no choice but to accept it. The only question left is, what happens to the remaining soldiers? What happens within our hearts?"

What had happened within his /own/ heart?

//"I, Quatre Raberba Winner, take you, Trowa Barton..."//

//"I, Trowa Barton, take you, Quatre Raberba Winner..."//

"With us Gundam pilots, we were completely trained to be soldiers before we even realised it. When you put everything into a battle, you start to think that you can change the times all by yourself, don't you? Trust me...you're not the only one who feels that way. We all do."

//"in good times and in bad times..."//

//"In peace and in war... (that's not how it goes!) I know, but it makes more sense this way..."//

Without Quatre he would never have felt at all.

"The kinder you are, the bigger a toll it takes on you. We have to fight with ourselves, with our hearts, and we have to do it harshly, in order to come to the right conclusion...even if it means our battles today are meaningless. We have to acknowledge the facts. The five of us have become nothing more than redundant soldiers, Quatre."

The harsh truth—but relief, as well, because he was tired. He had tasted another possibility, even if it was no more than the fleeting glimpse of a dream as it faded into morning. He had grasped it, reached for it—it should not have surprised him that it would never truly come to be.

//"...for better, for worse...I love you, you know..."//

//"I love you, too.."//

"So now, let's accept this." He was all but begging, now. "Turn back into the Quatre I knew. I just hope that something triggers your mind and calms you down...."

The Vayeate's shaking made his hands slip on the controls. The seat, the metal—it was all hot, testament to the meltdown that was about to take out his engines.

"Something..." he repeated, knowing full well it wasn't what he wanted to say—what he meant was

//"forever and ever...til death do us part."//

And all around him, space turned white.

****