The quiet of it all unnerved him; rubbed him in a direction he did not want to go. He forced himself to walk straight, and as he did so, the laceration on his side tore open the clotted blood, allowing more blood to flow. Zechs winced and put his blood-stained gloved hand to the wound, and forced himself to look down as he felt the warmth of his blood permeating the fabric of the glove. The wound was sending such shocks of pain through his body that he found it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to stand… He wanted to just lie down as his life's blood spilled away but willed himself to keep going… He couldn't let Treize win.
He had left Treize there, just like that, standing among his precious rose petals. He still remembered the look he had received from him… Anger or sadness, he wasn't able to tell. When he looked back on the fight seemed so surreal; so strange. In his mind the petals were still falling… Swirling around them like a dance, as the sound of metal crashing against metal filled the room… The sound of metal cutting flesh, the sound of blood as it hit the delicate rose petals, staining their flawless beauty…
Beauty… At the mention of the word in his mind he could close his eyes and see her imprinted on his eyelids, like a wonderful curse. She would forever be seen by him as the strong woman he had always known her to be… For as long as he had known her. Treize had tried to ruin her, and failed – both he and Zechs knew that she was unable to be broken, not even a flaunting of her vulnerability
Yet… She had left. His mind reeled over it all over again as he continued to convince himself that in her weakness she couldn't do anything else… A thank you, a touch of her hand, the sound of her voice – it all came back to him, like a sweet scent from roses that barely passes your senses and yet you go back to find the source, to be able to breathe in the scent again.
He paused his footsteps as he reached the middle of the vault room. He knew he had a choice to make, although he didn't hesitate with the choice he wanted to make. Suzuka had the disease, and now, for his own ignorance in not killing Treize on sight, he had it as well.
"If I had killed him, I would be killing Suzuka without that antidote…" He murmured through dried lips, as his feet moved him to Vault Five without his mind consenting. Before he reached out to punch the codes needed to open the vault, he looked down to what once was his white glove, and flexed his hand. He could feel the blood moving about on his palm and fingers under the soaked fabric, and felt the stickiness of it as it restricted the movement of his hand.
"Damn…" He hardly whispered, as he pulled the glove off rather painfully, the dried blood had firmly stuck it to his flesh and now he faced his hand covered in his own blood… He could feel it running down his leg and he looked down to find it going over the smooth, black leather of his boot and slowly collecting on the floor under his foot. Had he really been standing that long?
Out of his sleeve was pulled a small piece of paper, where written sloppily was the codes. He struggled to read them as he punched them in, only praying that Treize had not given him the wrong codes just to get him killed by putting in the wrong combination.
3…7…9…5…G…D…8…1… Dash… 4… 8… 3… 0… 9… Dash… Y…I…7…9…4…B…Q… Dash… 0…9…5…J…L…A…4… Dash… 3…7…5…1…K…A…3…
The door protested as its steel slowly slid open, revealing a completely clean, closet-sized room. The only thing available in the vault, however, was the two pillars covered in cloth that stood apart from eachother. On top of both pillars were two, seemingly identical vials, but both with different colored liquids inside, and encasing them a glass box with another set of coding to go through.
Zechs turned the paper around, where his bloody fingerprints now stained across some of the numbers and letters. Still able to read, he began to punch in the code.
4…5…3…1…G…H…E…T…4…2…8…9…7…P…O…V…1…7…5…8…J…L…W…Q…
The glass cases to both of the vials opened with a small creak, and the small pieces of paper in front of the vials which looked as if they should have given a label to them had nothing on them. Zechs examined both of the perfume-sized vials – one being with a blue liquid, and one being with a pink. Finally, he gently pulled the stopper on the pink vial, and allowed a single drop of the crystalline liquid to set itself on the piece of paper, and the paper, like a sponge, soaked in the liquid and spread it evenly to its four corners.
Zechs hadn't exactly expected it to work, but when he turned back to the vial he was surprised to see the text on it beginning to show up in large, black letters. In large print, it read:
B108
While in small letters, under it read:
Antidote In Testing
The stopper was put back into the vial, as Zechs carefully pocketed the precious item. His decision had been made. He would give the antidote to Suzuka, and would not even tell her he had it. Perhaps Treize had been lying about the disease itself… However, he could feel something like fire in his veins that shouldn't have been around his wound…
With the blue vial, he tucked it in an outer pocket, to destroy by fire later… If Treize was planning on the disease to spread by Suzuka's death and thus make money from the antidote… He wouldn't allow it. Treize had done enough, and when his strength was regained he would finish Treize for the last time… If he still had strength within him…
