The Perfect Soldier
Chapter 15: The White
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She could hear George in the room across the way. He was trying to dissuade Quatre from charging to Wufei's rescue. Apparently, after hearing Duo's relation of the evening's violent events, Quatre was determined to assist the somewhat less-than-sterling fellow.
In the privacy of her private studio, Zero-one allowed herself a smile. If George's persuasion failed, she had no doubt that Quatre would be bound and gagged and locked away for his own safety. She knew that the moment Taki saw Quatre, she would look from him to Wufei and think "Contrasting nudes!" And then neither male would be seen or heard from for weeks. She could leave Wufei to that fate, but Quatre was an innocent bystander.
Zero-one fingered the bass guitar in her hands, her calloused fingers tapping woodenly against the strings. The amp was off, but the weak notes seemed to resonate in the silence of Quatre's deliberation.
And then she heard George again, making an effort to distract the other musician. Would Quatre care to try this music? George had just written it the night before. Perhaps Quatre could give him an objective opinion? Could Duo shut the door? Heero was practicing across the hall. The door clicked shut, saving Quatre from the hell of modeling to feed Taki's insatiable creativity.
Zero-one ticked off the notes in a distraction. She'd been composing this piece for weeks. Usually, she finished a work in a handful of days, but her life was rather hectic of late. Although she didn't have to write the tune down in order to repeat her original performance accurately, each note was recorded for Loque, Prometheus's regular bassist. Loque was talented and driven, seeking to better Zero-one at every turn. In the spirit of friendly competition, they each composed a challenging composition with the aim of forcing the other to sight-read it in a contest that distinguished the bassist with the best eyes, hands, and skill.
Zero-one had yet to lose.
However, their last challenge had been nearly a month ago and her tardiness was driving Loque to distraction.
He called her Dragonetti, after Beethoven's good friend and bassist—a bassist of unparalleled skill and fluency.
Her fingers retraced a bar as she considered the name Loque had given her. As often as she'd been called Dragonetti, Zero-one had never accepted the name. She supposed it was because it had belonged to another. Just as the name "Heero Yuy" belonged to another. And then she thought of the name Trowa had given her. Where the others she had left to come or go as they would, "Yokaze" she was tempted to claim.
She ignored the hair that fell across her eyes and shook her thoughts aside. Zero-one reached over and flipped the amp's power switch. She adjusted the volume and started at the beginning.
Her fingers were well into unrecorded territory when he arrived. She knew he was there, leaning against the open door frame behind her; his silence was unmistakable.
Like a true musician and soldier, he waited until she'd finished, waited until she'd printed the notes across the quintuple, horizontal lines, waited until she'd played it a second time to check the accuracy of the harsh marks that dived across the page. He waited while she considered her writing in silence, reading each slash of ink, seeing each as a moment of her life, frozen.
As the flashes of memory came to her, her hands moved as if seeking comfort from the instrument. Music was so much more beautiful when it wasn't trapped on paper.
She closed the notebook and tapped a new theme. It was a promising lick. Later, if she had time, she'd develop it.
Zero-one killed the amp and restored the guitar to its rest.
And still, he waited.
She almost smiled as she remembered a time when she had been incapable of his patience. But then she'd been introduced to the Zero System and only her patience had been able to save her from madness. At the time, she'd been a child, unable and unwilling to anticipate the pain and horror ahead of her. She had to forcibly suppress a shiver as the White came over her.
"You know, you're gonna make one mean mom, someday."
"You think so?"
"Abso-damn-lutely. Your kids won't have a chance."
"That is certainly true."
Her eyelids flinched as she recalled the conversation. How close to the truth Bisho had been. And how freely she'd spoken her mind as she'd stared at the white sheet in her hands.
How many white sheets had she slept under, endured surgery under, awoken—changed, having lost another part of herself—under? Dozens? Hundreds? Or had it always been the same square of pristine linen?
Your kids won't have a chance.
Zero-one's hand reached out for the guitar, a clean rag in her calloused fingers. As she polished the oil from her hands away from the lacquered surface, she replied once again in silence.
My children never had a chance.
Where was the white sheet she'd laid under when the scientists and doctors had taken that from her? Where was the bit of linen fabric that had commemorated her final transition into soldierhood? At last, Zero-one had joined the brotherhood of Death. Never to give life, only to take it. The Perfect Soldier.
Her hands were gentle, but the wall she wore was more elastic now than ever before, pushed and pulled with the frigid, silent rage at the organization, at its selfishness. Those men of war had taken her past, her name, her dreams, her emotions, her choice, her face, her immortality. They had taken everything they could, everything they'd had no right to. Years later, she still hated—oh yes, that emotion had survived, although she could never show it on her face, with her body, in her voice. It was a hate that had never burned hot and bright. It remained as it had begun, a chill, an icy, deliberate calculation. It was the optimum state of mind for the perfect soldier.
Slowly, she turned from the killing frost of her thoughts and said, "It's been a week."
Her gaze alighted on his familiar figure as he nodded. "Aa."
Zero-one could sense his immediate tension. He was apprehensive. She'd anticipated that but could not combat it. She looked away and told him, "The Zero System was a brilliantly engineered accomplishment. Have you ever piloted it?"
Her gaze was trained elsewhere, so she missed his non-verbal reply. Which was just as well; she already knew his answer.
"To master it," she continued, "one must master oneself. I piloted it for years, until I learned its secrets. Until it learned mine. Until nothing was hidden between myself and the system. Until we became one and the same. And yet..." The corner of her mouth twitched. "And still, my discipline is nothing if I cannot stop myself from caring if a stranger finds his true home." She turned her head slightly, directing her voice, but her eyes were fixed elsewhere. "Here is your answer, Mr. Barton: I found your past because I could not do otherwise."
Finally, with her last word, the cobalt gaze lifted, collided, slid into his. Something passed between them in the air born of her resignation and his disbelief. She turned away from it, let it pelt uselessly at the walls. Zero-one told him, "That wasn't what you expected to hear."
He moved then. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. The click of the bolt resounded in the silence.
"And Taki? Why her?"
Zero-one let his low, mellow voice spill into her ears. "Taki has become a friend. I owe such a service to anyone unfortunate and tenacious enough to willingly call me 'friend.'"
She listened to him consider this in silence. She followed his mind through the transitions as he evaluated, analyzed, and finally categorized Wufei's revelation as a necessary portion of Taki's.
"Duo?"
She could hear the rising emotion in his voice. Any other ear would have heard nothing, but she'd spent a lifetime listening to her own voice, a voice that was never permitted to carry emotion of any kind. Only her eyes were allowed that luxury.
"A timely accident," she admitted. "I couldn't ignore the opportunity." Her eyes went to him once more, eloquently communicating the utility of every mission with one exception.
And he was that single exception.
The implication slipped loose from between the lines.
Zero-one felt his emotion build until it surged through the molecules between them.
He was angry.
She felt his anger, the useless rage. And she knew the exact moment when he realized the futility of the emotion. Like a vacuum, he turned everything inward with long-practiced ease.
The molecules settled.
The door opened and then closed, this time with soft finality.
Zero-one surveyed the empty room, her gaze seeing, once again, the white sheet.
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~End of Chapter 15~