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 Five
"Those who long ago were known as sophisticated at battle could make adversaries in conflict."
--Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
****
There was always so much extravagance at these events, Treize thought sourly. Part of him felt like a world-class hypocrite for thinking it—after all, he had never been one to resist temptation and decadence either. But still—at least he /realised/ there were other people out there in the world who were fighting and dying and generally being miserable, many of them in his name, and he honoured them in his thoughts. The greying old man standing at the podium, and most of his coterie, all seemed to believe it was all just some inherent /right/ that they were allotted.
"The system for mass production of mobile dolls," Duke Dermail was announcing, "is almost in place. As the ruling class to be, we will place mobile dolls in dispute-ridden regions—thus, gentlemen, we will show the world how powerful we are, and bring order to the earth. Is it not time to return to a world of tradition and honour, that we might govern this world properly?"
The applause was considerably more than polite, and it grated on Treize's fraying nerves. He noticed the strange looks shot his way when he did not even make a movement to raise his hands and join them. Instead he straightened his shoulders and strode forward, never allowing to the distaste he felt.
His short cape draped over one shoulder, swishing gracefully around him. His boots, polished to a high shine, thumped purposefully with each step even on the carpet rolled through the aisle where he walked. He stopped before Dermail, a challenge glinting in his eyes.
The Duke did not seem to grasp his intent at first. "Treize Khushrenada," he said warmly. "I am depending on your leadership of Oz!"
//You would like that, wouldn't you?// Treize thought resentfully. //You would never have come as far as you have without me, and you were certainly useful for a while. But it's time for us to part ways, old man. And you'll understand, I'm sure, if it's only within my nature to make my exit grand?//
"Duke Dermail," he announced calmly, "I'm sorry...but I cannot support the Romafeller Foundation in the path it's taking."
"What?!" Aha, so he had taken the old man by surprise. Good. The better to make him listen, then.
"Tradition is a history," he began, his clear voice ringing through the great hall. "It's the history of caring, built by the pure, true feelings of people. And I do think that fighting can at times be beautiful."
//She never wanted to be a soldier til you filled her head with how glorious battle was...everything she's done in her life since has been because of you....//
He let the shame, the bitter sorrow, fill his voice as he spoke the next words. "At the same time, I would like to express my regret over the lost souls, by appealing to you to remember how truly precious man's life is."
//I shall miss Nicole, she was a good friend...Put your trust in me instead, Your Excellency.../I/ shall never fail you....//
"I believe that what mankind needs is not absolute victory, but a certain
demeanour in fighting—an attitude toward fighting."
//And that Wufei has shown me...my perfect warrior, perfect tradition, perfect pure soul. I wonder if he has any comprehension of how he has affected me....//
He continued to speak—he had rehearsed and memorised the words, but he knew that no matter how well he spoke them, his audience would never completely understand. They did not share his memories, his guilt. When they closed their eyes, they didn't see Leia falling under the sword of a mobile suit he'd built in secret, they didn't hear Une screaming as she tried desperately not to lose control. They didn't feel the shock, the secret shame, the absolute ecstatic /joy/ of touching swords or bare skin with Wufei.
They didn't share any of it. They did not share his dreams, his nightmares, or his goals. And he was tired of them.
"The winners of any war," he concluded, "will eventually decline in power and become losers. That is the cycle of things." Vaguely he remembered telling that once to his daughter, before she was taken away. "Then those losers cultivate a new leader, and it happens over again."
"Treize," Dermail said warningly, "what are you getting at?"
He sighed. He was so tired of this. "I'm saying," he said coldly, "that I want to be a loser."
He barely heard the rest. He knew what Romafeller would require of him. He lay his pistol on the podium—it was an elabourate antique; beautiful yes, but a symbol and nothing more.
//Wufei...Nicole..Leia...// It was to them he directed his prayers for forgiveness as he strode from the hall, his skin burning with the gaze of a hundreds eyes. //I have done you so much wrong, and this is all I can do to make it up to you. Yet even while I do, I fear what I plan to do will be worse yet. Forgive me. Please, if you love me—if you ever once loved me—forgive me.//
****
Lieutenant Nichol glared at the vidscreen as it fizzled into grey. "Colonel, we've lost all communications with the Vayeate and the Leo mother ship. For all we know, they've all been wiped out."
She could hear what he did not give voice to. For all we know, he meant, the Gundam pilots have turned and we've just given them our best weapons, he meant. Une ignored it. She knew better.
"And the colony?" she asked frostily. He paused, his expression questioning.
"What about it?"
"Is the colony still there?" she repeated, irritable. "It hasn't been destroyed?"
He shook his head. "No ma'am."
"Then the battle is still going on." He didn't seem convinced, but she refused to let that bother her. "Defending the colony is what Gundam pilots would do, Lieutenant, no matter what side they're fighting for. I, for one, hope they'll be able to stop this new Gundam—don't you?"
"Yes ma'am," he stammered, sheepishly, and changed the subject as quick as he could. "Before we lost contact, we /did/ get these images from the Leo mother ship." A flick of his fingers on the keys brought the images onto the screen. It /was/ a Gundam, and Une noticed with a good deal of relief that it was built to resemble the old zero-one, and not her long-extinct Valkyrie.
"Good," she said softly as he clicked through several different views. "Send these to the engineers at the lunar base, get some input from them."
Nichol looked surprised. "But Colonel, we can't raise communications with the lunar base. They're not answering."
"WHAT?" Une demanded sharply, and Nichol recoiled from her fierce glare. "Get Tsuberov on and tell him to restore comm, and that's a direct order!"
"Lady," a warm voice said, deceptively mild, at her shoulder—that was Nathan, though she didn't know when he'd arrived. "A message for you from His Excellency...he asked me to tell you that he and the Romafeller Foundation are parting ways at last."
Her hazel eyes narrowed. "I see." He met her gaze—understanding flashed between them, mixed with pain and sorrow and steel determination. "Nathan—"
"I'm going with you," he said.
She shook her head. "No. Let me do this. Besides, you'll be needed to pick up the pieces." He started to protest. "Doctor, that's an order."
He subsided, but unwillingly. "I'm bugging you," he said flatly, as he reached under the collar of her jacket to fasten something small and metal to the underside of her shirt. He'd had it with him? He had known already, then. "Somebody's got to keep tabs on you."
Une put up with it for about two minutes, then straightened her shoulders and turned to her crew. "Move Fortress Barge within range of the lunar base," she ordered. "And get the beam cannon ready."
She was going to get a response out of Tsuberov if it took an entire space fortress and a beam cannon to do it. It was liberating, in a way—she hated him, and she knew Treize hated him as well, but they had been forced by circumstance to work together. Now, if Treize was no longer a member of Romafeller, well neither was she.
And while he might have nothing more at hand than an antique gun, /she/ had a good deal of firepower still at her disposal.
"Colonel!" Nichol called to her. "There's a squad of Taurus dolls headed this way, and Tsuberov's just called us back."
"Hello, Lady Une." The acid voice, though it was what she'd wanted, still grated on her nerves. "Transporting the Barge wasn't in today's plans, I didn't think."
She returned his dark smile with a sinister one of her own. Let him beware.
"The mobile dolls are ready to attack you at any time," he warned her.
Her lips curved up in a menacing smile. "A merciless weapon," she acknowledged.
Tsuberov did not know her well enough, it seemed, to be frightened by the gleam in her eyes. "Precisely," he answered. "We've completed our mass production, and created superb soldiers that will allow the Romafeller Foundation to bring order to the earth."
Une let out a sigh. "I didn't understand at first," she confessed, "why Mr. Treize hates the mobile dolls so much."
Tsuberov looked confused. "Pardon?"
"He fell in love with people," she explained with a sigh." //People, and one Gundam pilot,// her mind supplied, but she kept that to herself. "And with the deaths of people—the way it intensifies emotion, and drives the stakes so high. High emotions lead to extreme choices. People don't /live/ unless they are aware of the possibility of death."
The old scientist snorted derisively. "That's how the weak would think," he growled. "My mobile dolls are immortal soldiers, and the new age of battle that we will usher in will disregard death!"
"But they are not soldiers," Une replied, patiently, as if explaining to a child. "They only replace those who are afraid to die, and cheapen the deaths of those who are not. It doesn't matter if you win or lose—history has shown us that. Emotions are honed by /fighting/, but continuing to fight."
"I fail to understand what you're getting at." Tsuberov's voice was tight, veiled politeness over poison.
Une let the dark smile spread over her face. "And that," she said calmly, "is why we will be enemies."
****
The air was getting thinner, and the world had begun to swim before Duo's eyes. Stubbornly he forced himself to focus on the projected images of Deathscythe on the wall. Maybe if he didn't think about breathing, he wouldn't need to anymore.
"Never guessed I'd die like this," he noted calmly to Wufei. They had no more secrets, now. It had wasted oxygen, to be sure, but what difference did it make if these were going to be their last moments anyway? Their conversation had left him with a heightened admiration for Wufei—it was hard enough for him to reconcile his awkward relationship with Lady Une, and he wasn't really in love with her. How difficult must it be for Wufei, who had found his soulmate in the one single person in all the universe he should /not/ be in love with?
He was sweating, and his hair was damp, his bangs sticking uncomfortably to his forehead. He would have blown them out of his face, but he was afraid of wasting what little air remained. "Hey Wufei...my Deathscythe's pretty cool, dontcha think? I'll take care of Oz in no time at all...."
There was no answer, and despair assailed him. //Please don't be dead. Be ignoring me or something, whatever, just don't be dead yet, I don't think I could handle seeing that.// "What's wrong," he ventured tentatively, "you dead already? Don't be deserting me now, Wufei...you've got to stick with me all the way to the end...."
His words were obviously having no response, and he turned, terrified of what he might see. Wufei didn't /look/ dead. He looked like he was meditating, or asleep. Duo crawled over to him, praying to a God he hadn't spoken to in years for some sign of life.
Not breathing...at least it didn't look like he was...a hand held above his mouth didn't even get a warm puff. His heart thundering in his chest, Duo felt the other pilot's wrist for a pulse. //Please be there please be there God please oh please don't be dead--//
A sigh of relief. Slow as it was, it was there, the faint flutter of a heartbeat. Duo sank back on his heels, relief washing over him. "He's in a stupid trance. Just a trance. Stupid Wufei." He had to say the words aloud, it made him feel better, even if he didn't believe the part about Wufei being stupid. A wave of dizziness hit and he let himself fall backward. "Wish he coulda taught me how to do that...he might just make it out of here after all."
Click. Click. Click. Images of Deathscythe, projected on the ceiling.
****
Seldom in her career had Une felt real, genuine pride at the actions of her troops. She did now, her heart welled with it, watching the arc of fire that always led to a mobile doll's destruction. They had been attacked, of course—Tsuberov had a brain in his head, he'd be an idiot not to be afraid of the massive damage Barge's beam cannon would do to the base if it fired.
But since he didn't understand her, he could not fully anticipate her. The space fortress was a decoy, a big impressive show that would give her and her smaller unit a chance to get into the base itself. "Make it through this, Barge," she whispered toward the ship that had become /hers/. "I will not be too long."
"Take over the production factory of the mobile dolls!" she ordered as they landed and she pulled her helmet on over her glasses. They—her favourites, her chosen—knew that had been the intended plan, and they rushed off at once.
Her steps rang on the smooth metal floor as she pelted down the corridor. When had she come to this decision? Or was this simply an action she was destined to take?
Nichol was the one who had found the readout, that the oxygen had been cut off to the detention levels. He was all in favour of it, that she knew—but he had learned from his last mistake. He let her make her own decisions now, and followed her orders. Once that had been established, she had no more reason to question his loyalty to her.
To /her/...not to Treize, or to Romafeller, but to /her/.
What a waste. She no longer even existed, save as an extension of Treize Khushrenada's will.
Was that why she was doing this now? Her motivations confused her. It was so grandly ironic—Duo Maxwell and Chang Wufei, pilots 02 and 05, silently suffocating to death in the depths of an Oz base.
One Treize' lover, and one her own.
Part of her wanted to let them die. It would be easier. Duo confused her; she had been completely unable to reconcile their brief relationship in her mind, so she had finally just given up thinking about it. She didn't hold it against him that he had left—he was right, it was what she would have done as well. The opportunity was there.
And zero-five...one more obstacle between her and Treize. It would be easy, so easy, to say she had simply been too late. To be the one to comfort him.
But that was it, wasn't it? There was too much between them already. She had cost Treize one love, and the pain of it had decimated her—she could not bear another such loss any more than he could.
//So it's you that I'm doing this for, Treize,// she told him silently, willing her thoughts to find him, wherever he was. //I will save your lover for you, and maybe we can begin to put things right between us. Maybe someday you will be able to forgive me. But I am so, so tired.//
She reached the control room, skidding across the floor, anchoring herself on the lever that controlled oxygen flow. The metre, which had been dark, lit up again, and she let out a long breath. "I hope I'm not too late already...."
The click of a cocking gun. "Even if you aren't, we'll be executing them anyway," Tsuberov's crisp, calm voice informed her.
She didn't turn around. "Then I'll ask that you include me as well." One death or another, it made no difference, and her words distracted him from her actions. She hit the release mechanism that would open the doors on the levels below. //Duo, Chang—go now! Get to the Gundams and go!// "In the past, failure meant certain death." She knew. She had administered it herself.
"As you wish." He was waiting. Why was he waiting? She turned to face him at last, staring him down with cold hazel eyes. "Go on," she commanded. "Shoot me, Tsuberov. Confirm what you believe is right."
"Ah, Lady Une," he said. "You were far too lenient."
She was so tired. She welcomed the shot when it came. It meant freedom, from ever having to think again, freedom from caring and hurting and wanting. It meant release from hiding from herself. It meant she would no longer have to hear her name, or have it echo in her mind as a reminder of everything she could never ever be.
It was such a relief to let go of her body as it fell to the ground.
So...tired....
****
Nathan took the stairs three at a time and almost tripped as he landed, skidding around one corner and into the mobile suit bay. Idiot, he was chanting to himself. Idiot, idiot, idiot. He didn't really know if he meant himself, or Une, or both.
"Lieutenant Nichol!" He raised his voice over the din of mechanics and pilots and banging metal. The officer in question did not like to be addressed, did not like Nathan, did not like a lot of things. It didn't matter. What the young doctor needed was someone he could trust to get him to Une, and the hell with the rest.
"Get me to down to the base," he demanded, panting for breath between words.
The officer regarded him sourly. "There's a battle going on," he pointed out. "And my orders from the Colonel are to stay here and fire the beam cannon on her command."
"She's not going to give you the command," Nathan snapped. "She's just been shot, and if you want her to live through the end of this battle, somebody has to get me to her right /now/!"
Amasing, really, how that was all it took. Nichol opened the hatch of his own suit and motioned to Nathan.
"Get in."
****
Oxygen flooded into Duo's burning lungs, and with it came joy. He was still alive. It was only compounded when the door to the cell whirred open, though he couldn't enjoy that too quickly—for a moment he did nothing but breathe, drawing air into his desperate, needy lungs, letting his body adjust to the sudden difference in pressure.
Wufei had noticed too, trance or not, and a wide smile broke across his face as he met Duo's eyes.
//Is that what he looks like for Treize?// he wondered suddenly, unexpectedly. //He looks completely different when he smiles...//
And even more unbidden--//Nicole's beautiful when she smiles, too.//
But there was not so much time he could contemplate that for long. Wufei had rolled to his feet and extended a hand to help him up.
"Well? You're the one who was so excited about them...shall we go see how our new friends are coming along?"
Duo laughed. "You bet!"
They hurried down the corridor. It was deserted, which shouldn't have come as a surprise—presumably all the guards had left when they'd turned off the air, though Oz didn't seem to have too many moral issues with killing off its own soldiers. Duo led the way, dragging Wufei by the hand, toward the workshop where he'd found the engineers and his beloved Deathscythe.
"So," he shot over his shoulder as they ran, "guess somebody decided they didn't want us dead after all, huh?"
Wufei returned with a glare that said 'now is /really/ not the time,' but his eyes were shining anyway.
The Gundams, unfinished though they were, stood against the workshop wall, covered with tarpaulin and shadows in one corner.
"It's only 70% complete," Duo said, swinging himself up into the cockpit and firing it up. "But that'll do for now."
"Beggars can't be choosers," Wufei answered sagely, his voice crackling over the comm link as he settled in his own newly designed Gundam. "We're lucky to be alive as it is."
Duo grinned at him, though visuals weren't functional yet and he knew he couldn't be seen. "Shall we escape?"
A little more acid, this time, in Wufei's voice. "After we pay them back."
That, as far as Duo was concerned, was his cue to blow out the wall. He heard Wufei snicker, barely audible from the depths of his speaker.
"You like to make a grand entrance, don't you?"
Duo laughed. "What, like you don't? C'mon, let's cause some trouble!"
There was already a battle going on, they only had to join it. Duo didn't bother distinguishing—everybody was from Oz, it looked like, and if this was an internal insurrection, then so much the better for them. He was just here to blow things up.
Below him, he caught sight of a group of uniformed men, fleeing the main wing of the base for the mobile doll production facilities.
"I don't think so—" He swooped down, keeping cloaked, til he could get a better look. Even if he wasn't picking a side, it wouldn't do him much good to get rid of them if they were on their way to take out the factory.
Then a glimmer of silver caught his eye, and his entire perspective changed. One of the soldiers was entirely too familiar to Duo, and he didn't care /what/ his mission was.
"You!" he snarled, barely aware that there was no way the diminutive figure running along the ground would be able to hear him. "I've got welts on my back that will never go away because of you! I spent a fucking week in bed! And that's not even saying anything about the nightmares you've given me!"
"Duo?" Wufei's voice over the comm, sounding concerned.
"Nothin' to worry about, Wufei!" Duo forced himself to sing out as if he weren't about to exact some very personal revenge. "I just ran into a familiar face, that's all, and Shinigami wants a chance for payback!"
It sounded a bit like Wufei sighed. "All right. Yell if you need me."
//And that from the one that always fights alone?// Duo wondered—but that was all the thought he spared for his companion's uncharacteristic behaviour.
With a scream, he uncloaked the Deathscythe and dove toward Tobita and the group of fleeing men.
****
tbc.
