Gundam Wing is property of Sotsu Agency, Bandai Studios, and TV Asahi. Sainan no Kekka and all original characters and plot copyright 2000-2003 by Quicksilver and Gerald Tarrant. Please ask permission before reposting.


SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
ACT ZERO, PART IV

I believe your love
Furue nagara
Kuchidzuke ni kasaneta negai
Anata ga ite watashi ga iru
Wasurenaide itsumo

I believe your dream
Tsunoru omoi
Itoshisa o inori ni kaete
Kono kodou o tsutaetai yo
Atsuku hageshiku so far away
I believe your love
As we trembled
We repeated our wish in a kiss
You are here and so am I
Please don't ever forget

I believe your dream
Feelings that get stronger
Turning love into prayers
I want to let you hear my heart beating
Passionately, fiercely, so far away

--Gundam Wing, Last Impression
[Endless Waltz]



Scene XII: The Legend of Scorpio


"Who keeps an arrow in his bow,
And if you prod him, lets it go?
A fervent friend, a subtle foe - Scorpio."
--Anonymous


The things he remembered most about Treize Khushrenada weren't his commanding presence, or his brilliant speeches. Not his love for the arts and not even his amazing swordsmanship ability. Those things were things that everyone knew about Treize - the public Treize, the one who shone in front of the people and incited them to glory and victory for the good of mankind. That wasn't the Treize he knew.

He only dimly remembered the first time he had met Treize. The two of them had been young, mere boys, but he was the prince of a kingdom which no longer existed and Treize had been a Khushrenada, firmly on the side of the Federation, and one of the supporters of the Romefeller Foundation. He had wanted to go with his sister, when Darlian had taken her away. He'd known that terrible day what was coming. He'd seen it in his mother's eyes as she said goodbye, remembered Darlian standing there with that same knowledge in his face, and known full well that he would never see his mother and father again. He had thought that he and his sister would be together.

But Darlian had taken Relena, and he had never seen her again either.

He did not remember at all those first few terrible days out of Cinq. It was better that he didn't remember, because he didn't think that even now, a grown man who had been through so much, could deal with the childhood memories. There was something about memories made in childhood that made them much more vivid, much more blinding, than the ones collected over the years as an adult. He remembered running - a car, a train, darkness, tears. There were a lot of tears. Not his, but the ones of the woman who held him by the hand and hurried him along through the fatigue and the fear. There was fear too.

And then there was Treize.

Even as he had been introduced to the future heir of the Khushrenada estate, as he'd come forward numbly and shaken the hand of the boy who was scarcely taller than he was, he'd felt a chill. Of completion, maybe, or of destiny, as if everything that had happened in his life had only been leading up to this moment. He didn't much remember what Treize had looked like at the time - only noted the blue German eyes, the Slavik shape of his face, the grace with which the other carried himself, so poised and confident that he could have been the prince of the Cinq kingdom and Milliard Peacecraft merely the pretender.

The connections, the strings Treize had pulled for him, none of that mattered. What mattered was Treize the boy, and later Treize the man, who had shaped him, taught him everything he knew, given Zechs Merquise life.

The Khushrenadas were an odd family, with branches of the clan fervent Federation supporters and others on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Treize's father Reimond was neither - a fence-sitter, a politician of the very nature he remembered his own father Nathaniel had hated. But it was that fence-sitting that saved him in the end. It would have been very suspicious for Reimond to publicly announce that he'd somehow gained another child, but arrangements were made for his residence in one of the old private family mansions that dotted the countryside of Europe. This particular one was in France, and when he had arrived, hungry, tired, and so alone, Treize Khushrenada had been standing at the entrance waiting for him.

The first few weeks in that old house were hazy. He'd contracted some kind of virus that left him feverish and unable to swallow his food, and for several days lay in a kind of waking dream where he'd see again and again his mother's face as she turned away from him, his sister's crying, the smoke in the sky when he'd turned and looked back against the nursemaid's orders, even though she was holding him tightly, trying to prevent him from seeing his country, his home, go up in flames. Later, Treize told him that he'd been in to see him every day, and had sat at his bedside and read him mythology or classical literature. It came as a surprise that Treize, who even at eleven years old was busy with the kind of schooling and training that would befit the heir of one of the oldest noble houses in Europe, would have taken the time to come visit him, the landless prince of a fallen kingdom. Once he had asked Treize why he had done so.

The other man hadn't responded for a long time, and then had said in a calm voice, because you and I were meant for something. The first time I saw you, I knew that we were meant for something.

It was Treize who had awakened in him his love of the stars, because Treize had been a stargazer from the first day they'd met. Treize had been both an astronomer and an astrologer, though he claimed he believed in astrology only so much as he could weed out the truths from the half-baked lies and old-wives tales that littered the practice. Astrology, to him, was something of endless fascination though of little real value. That was Treize - always curious, always wondering, carefully calculating but willing to embrace everything and anything as long as, to him, there was something of value to be learned.

In Treize's chambers and in his study were hung star charts and astrological diagrams, maps of constellations and old navigational parchments. He would spend hours sometimes poring over horoscopes, trying to predict exactly how accurate they were. For some reason, it never occurred to him that he could be wrong, that the ones who wrote the horoscopes were people who knew more about the subject than he did. As long as it was out there, he believed, it was to be studied, disproved if it could, and then if it could not be disproved, it was something to take to heart. There was really no in between.

That was why Treize had changed his own birthday. He'd learned this about after a year of living there, when August 1 had come and gone and he had asked Treize why they hadn't done anything for his birthday. He'd been startled when the other had informed him that his birthday really wasn't August 1, but November 1, but the official date on all his records, even his birth certificate, was August 1. August was under the sign of the Leo, the lion, the leader that Treize wanted to be. Treize was the ascending star, the waxing sun while the other stars were waning, and the astrologer side of him had wanted to capture that in stone.

But in reality, he'd admitted, both a bit ruefully and a bit proudly, he was no Leo. Treize was a Scorpio, the earth-crawler, the powerful, magnetic presence of a natural-born schemer, ruled by Mars and Pluto - war and death. But then again Treize had never regarded either with the same stigma that they seemed to carry with the rest of humankind. War and death, in Treize's eyes, were part of the natural cycle of things, the way things had to be.

He was Treize's eagle. That's what Treize told him a week after he had recovered from his fever and they were taking their dinner together on the western veranda, looking out at the setting sun. The Scorpio mythos spoke of the scorpion and the eagle, the crawler and the flier, the patient yet deadly killer and the beautiful bird of prey, two halves of a whole. Treize was the scorpion and he, Milliard Peacecraft, was the eagle, the one destined to fly higher and higher until he found himself among the stars.

He scoffed at first. Treize fascinated him and frightened him at the same time - such a passionate, bright mind covered in a veil of steel. Treize was more than a human, less than a god, even as a boy he had people in the Federation bowing before him. Sometimes after a conversation with Treize he would feel like something had taken him on a spin around the galaxy, dragging him through the molten cores of burning stars and then left him singed and gasping on a cold, dark planet at the end.

He wanted to be like Treize.

In Treize's mind, everything was an opera, those grandiose events that he would leave the house to attend every Saturday and then come back and sit up until two in the morning recounting the flawless performance of this singer or the substandard performance of that one, the beautiful plotlines and the gorgeous musical numbers. The world was not only a stage in Treize's mind - it was an opera, with the fanfares and the melodramatic arias and the blinding explosions of pathos that he so loved.

The name was Treize's idea, the mask also. If he was going to be the eagle, he would have to play the part to perfection. He had to become the part.

And that, in the end, was why he went to Lake Victoria.

It did seem a little foolish now, that he would have let someone, no matter how good a friend, dictate his life through the ruse of a legend, but at the time, the legend had been very very real to both of them. It wasn't in Treize's nature to cheat someone, to lie about something like that. Yes, he was a smooth liar and a clever politician, but there was something about the realm of destinies and stargazing and legends that he regarded as sanctified.

Treize didn't believe in God, but he was constantly searching for proof of one. Even until the end, even when he had changed into a man that neither of them knew, he was still searching for God. Or maybe it wasn't that Treize had changed, but it was he, Zechs Merquise, Milliard Peacecraft, whoever he was in Treize's eyes, that wasn't worthy to be his eagle anymore.

And now Treize was dead.

His eagle had left him, and maybe that was why he had died.

He didn't let that trouble him too much. There were so many ifs and perhaps-es and he was tired of hypothesizing, tired of hindsight. It wasn't like he wept bitterly for Treize, because there was nothing worth weeping about. He knew what Treize had tried to do - tried and succeeded. It was just like the end of an opera - the pathos, the brilliant explosion, except the explosion had been up in space and the pathos had been nothing but one man giving up.

That was what it all came down to. Treize had been searching for God for so long that he'd begun to think he was that God. But he wasn't God. He was just Scorpio, the one crawling along the earth, gazing up at the hot sun where his eagle flew, hoping that someday he could have wings too.

But it didn't matter now, because they were both dead. Treize Khushrenada and Zechs Merquise, burned up together in the last battle, trial by fire that they had braved and hadn't been strong enough to pass through. But still, they were together.

He remembered the one last conversation they'd had before he'd gone off to Lake Victoria. That last night on the veranda, gazing up at the stars and hearing the whisper of the night wind in the branches of the trees in the garden.

"I want to thank you for everything you've done for me," he'd said at last, preparing to stand up and head inside for the night. "You've given me more than I could ever have asked for - far more - given your time and resources for someone you didn't know, someone you had no obligation to help."

Treize had raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, you didn't know me. I was some no-name prince from a no-name kingdom that had been destroyed by the organization you serve, and if you'd turned me into the Federation, you'd have gotten more recognition than you would have known what to do with."

He had smiled that slow smile of his that only hinted at the secrets behind those blue eyes, hidden in under the elegant façade that he showed to the world and that even I had never seen through. "I don't want power and glory, Zechs. You know that."

"What do you want then?" he'd countered. "I don't want riddles and guessing games. For once."

He'd looked away to the horizon for a long moment, then sighed, a long, deep sigh. "You don't believe in destiny now," he said. "But…someday, you might." His bright gaze caught and held. "I hope that someday, you will."

If he'd believed in destiny he would have come home after the war and made his peace with the world. Would have sat down at his desk, pen in hand, a blank pad of paper before him, and begun to sketch out the words to a work that would take him perhaps the rest of his life, but a work so important that it could not be left forgotten. It would be the true legend of Scorpio, the tale of a man that had lived so briefly but died leaving an entire world to celebrate him, curse him, mourn him - a friend, a son, a brother, a mentor.

He didn't believe in destiny. Not anymore. He didn't know if he ever had. But he didn't need to anymore, because the only thing that had ever been his destiny he had already found, had, and lost.




Scene XIII: Festival of the Harvest Moon


"A gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials."
-- Chinese Proverb


For a space colony, L5 was surprisingly traditional. The elders had brought with them all the ancient folklore, celebrations, and ethics that had been passed down from generation to generation through thousands of years of Chinese history, and transferring that to space was never a question. Instead, the question was how their children - the children of a truly new era, the era of space travel - would grow into proper Chinese adults without ever feeling the green earth of their motherland beneath their feet?

All this Wufei had learned from the history books, the thick scrolls and leather-bound volumes of vellum that lined the walls of the colony library. There were computers, of course, and all the information in those scrolls and books were safely stored electronically, in case something did ever happen. But reading the texts on a computer screen was about as tolerated as a child talking back to one of the elders - in other words, unheard of. There was something about the feel of paper on the skin, the smell of the old parchment, that brought history alive.

He'd been raised to be a scholar, inducted into the community on the Harvest Moon Festival the year of his ninth birthday, just like his father before him and his father before him. That was how it had been done in the mother country before they came to space, and that was how it would be done until the family line, the clan line, was extinguished.

He'd always loved the moon. Perhaps it was just because he had been raised Chinese and so thought of the moon as something mystical, magical, awe-inspiring, mysterious and feminine and beautiful all at once. The guardian of the night. His mother had a jade pendant that she wore on special occasions that she called her moon necklace, because when the moonlight struck the stone, it would glow a soft, pulsing white, a minature moon on her own breast.

When she died suddenly of surgical complications when he was ten, he'd taken that pendant and hung it by his window, so that the moonlight would find it every night. That way she would always be with him.

His father had left the colony when he had been only a baby, left the colony and tried to go back to earth, to China. His father had been born there in Shanghai before the clan had been exiled to space. According to the elders, Chang Anwei had always been a rash one, wanting what he could not have. He didn't have to guess very hard to figure out that what the elders meant by "what he could not have" was that his father missed the earth, missed China, and had braved the odds to go back.

The official records of the colony never mentioned Chang Anwei again, but when Wufei had been old enough, Elder Long pulled him aside and told him that a few days after his father's departure from the colony, a small shuttlecraft had been intercepted by Federation forces and been destroyed. He'd stood there, not sure how to react, and Elder Long's sharp eyes fixed on him.

"Do not grieve, for the cycle of life renews itself continually, even those whose ashes have been scattered in space."

"I can't grieve," Wufei said. "I didn't even know him. He deserved it…he killed himself for nothing."

"He is your blood," the elder said calmly, his aged voice creaking like trees in the wind, the artificial wind that blew across the colony sometimes, strong enough to simulate storms but not strong enough to cause any real damage. "Your blood, your ancestor. Honor him, respect his memory, but dwell not on his sacrifice."

The sun that shone down on the colony by day was an artificial sun, like the artificial wind, created by collecting rays of the real sun that was too far away to give as much light as the colony needed to survive. But the moon that shone through his window at night was the real moon - dim, faraway, but the real thing. He longed to see it up close, to watch the rabbit in its face jump nervously whenever the moon was full. That was the legend, at least, and he was a scholar, versed in the old legends.

There were things mentioned in the books that he had never seen. The ocean, wide, vast, and blue, that he could only imagine, because L5 was too small to provide little more than a small artificial lake from which the colonists pumped their fresh water. Mountains, tall snowcapped mountains. There were mountains on the colony, but Elder Long scoffed at them every chance he got, naming them little more than hills. "Where I came from," he would say, "the mountains were giants of stone, architecture of nature. You should see them, Wufei! You should see."

He wondered how old Elder Long was sometimes. He seemed as old as the mountains, as gray as the stone and just as unyielding. Those who he had journeyed with to the colony were long dead, but Wufei caught himself thinking more than a few times that Elder Long would never die - that he would only continue to exist, to grow older and older as the children grew up and had children of their own and died and those children grew up and still Elder Long would be.

On the Harvest Moon Festival every year, Elder Long would give a speech to the entire assembled colony. He'd reluctantly allowed the use of vidscreens to broadcast his speech into every home simply because the council hall was too small to fit every citizen, though Wufei knew that if the elder had had his way, every citizen would have been ordered to cram into the building which, though grand and spacious for seven council members and their clerks, would not even have fit a third of the colony population. The speech was always given from behind a podium that made Elder Long look even shorter and more shriveled than he appeared in real life, with red and gold decorations on the walls and images of dragons projected onto the tapestries behind him.

In Wufei's mind, the dragon had always been associated with the moon. He wasn't quite sure why. Both were Chinese legends, but had no real interconnection, no real correlation. But he would still stare at the moon outside his window at night, dreaming of dragons with gilded silver wings, coming to bear him away to the stars.

He was a dreamer, Elder Long told him with some affection, as much affection as the old man had ever shown to anyone. They were Chinese, after all, and affection was not given in verbal or physical terms, but through the act of discipline. Elder Long said that he, Chang Wufei, was the most scholarly of all scholar boys he'd ever seen. That had pleased him, because even as young as he was, he'd known that was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life - sit happily surrounded by books and scrolls and quills and ink and peer through his trusty reading glasses at fading brush strokes of ancient characters.

It was at his eleventh Harvest Moon Festival that something first happened to make him think again. After the Elder's annual speech, the festival would actually begin, with the moon cakes and dancing and music. He knew that Elder Long would go into the temple to seek counsel from the ancestors while the festivities were going on, and he was determined to speak with the Elder beforehand, to ask him his opinion on a rather hard passage of text that he had been trying to understand.

"It's a festival, Wufei," Elder Long said in response to his question, as he caught up to the old man on the temple steps. "Go be merry with your family."

He paused. "They're not my family."

"They're your clan and therefore your family."

"That is to say that pigeons and hawks are related and therefore family. Would you want a pigeon to consort with a hawk?"

Elder Long began to laugh, which is to say that he made a wheezing noise that lasted for approximately thirty seconds and then stopped. When he had finished, he said, "are you saying that you are a pigeon, young Wufei?"

"No sir. I'm saying that I'm a hawk and I don't consort with pigeons."

Elder Long wheezed for approximately another thirty seconds, then peered at him with watery eyes that were somehow still bright. "Come with me," he said abruptly, then hurried up the steps with a haste that seemed impossible for someone as ancient as he.

The inside chamber was bare except for a small altar and a kneeling cushion on the floor. The cradle of the altar held a single stick of barely smoking incense and there were bright flowers lining its edge. Elder Long motioned for Wufei to stand behind him as he lowered himself slowly on creaking knees to the cushion, let out a long sigh, then went still.

He tried to be patient, but his child's curiosity got the best of him, and at length he ventured, "what are you asking them, Elder?"

"I'm not asking anything," Elder Long snapped. "I'm waiting for you to ask me."

He blinked. "Ask what, sir?"

"Isn't that why you came?" The wizened face turned to look at him, and in the dim moonlight and the smoke of the incense, there was a faintly sinister look about it that made him shiver. "You wanted an answer."

"What is to become of me, Elder?" he whispered, and the aged eyes regarded him with a moment more of sharpened wisdom, and then turned away. The smoke of the incense wafted upwards to wards the darkened ceiling, towards the full moon, and he held his breath.

It seemed like ages before there was a rustle of cloth and Elder Long turned back to him with a look of almost curiosity in his eyes.

"Sir?" Wufei said.

"You're a strange one, Chang Wufei," the old man whispered, then made his peculiar wheezing laugh. "Do you believe…you might not be a scholar after all."

He frowned. "Why not?"

"Why not?" Elder Long crowed. "Why not? One does not question the ancestors, boy. One simply bows and takes what has been said and obeys!" This was accompanied by a thump on the ground to emphasize its importance, and Wufei jumped.

"I am sorry, Elder," he said, bowing and beginning to back out of the room, but a sudden swiping gesture by the ancient clawed hand held him.

"I'm not done," Elder Long barked, but the expression on his face was partly of puzzlement and partly of wonder. "You will fly, boy."

"Fly?"

"That's what they told me. Fly. Out of here, out of the colony…"

"But no one has ever left the colony…" he trailed off, remembering the story of Chang Anwei and how he loved his mother country so much he was willing to risk everything - his family, his life - to return. "No one has ever left the colony and survived."

"No one," Elder Long repeated. "Not yet."

"But my father-"

Elder Long's watery eyes fixed on him again and he let the question slide into silence, into the cloying perfume of the incense smoke and the sweet odor of the flowers around the altar.

"You are not your father, Chang Wufei."

The words of the ancestors were, after all, not to be questioned, only to be accepted, so the matter was never mentioned again. But it was like being Chinese, Wufei knew. It was not to be questioned, only to be accepted, to embrace the tradition and the bad as well as the good. To know that the story of your father leaving his family, his wife and his baby son, to pursue a fruitless dream was not just a story of folly, it was a story of loyalty. To know that the moon pendant that hung by his window to catch the light at night held within it the secret of a mother's love for her child.

That was how history was brought alive, after all. It wasn't just the tellings and retellings of tales, the brush of ink across paper, because ink and paper and words were empty without the storyteller or the scholar to give them wings. History, in the end, was only a collection of small things: a father's sacrifice, a mother's pendant, the sound of children's laughter, a young girl with flowers in her hair, the wind and the waves pounding against the mountains he might never see, a shooting star. All these things, taken and collected and treasured in glass boxes of words, kept there forever so that even death and war and destruction could not erase them.




Scene XIV: No More Than A Mortal Man


"Everyone must pay for their sins.
Even my death is not without meaning."
--Treize Khushrenada, Gundam Wing


It was Christmas Eve in Geneva. The city had been preparing for the holiday for a month, and every time Une left the base, she had been confronted with signs of the season with trees, holiday lights and crèches. She had forced her eyes to maintain a carefully blank expression, containing the urge to cringe back. Christmas was nothing for her to celebrate anymore.

Une stared out the window at the gentle snowfall that dusted the Preventers' compound, wondering if she should leave. It was ridiculous to be here, this time of night. The offices were closed and the Preventers were operating on a skeleton staff. Everyone else had gone home to be with their families, but she had no one. Her mother, the only family she had ever known, was dead, and since Treize had died on this night a year ago...

Had it really been only a year? One year ago, the battle to end all battles had waged in space... It seemed impossible to believe that so much had changed in that time. The months had been so packed with activity and it seemed like Treize had been dead for centuries sometimes.

Sometimes, though, she expected to turn around and feel his hand on her shoulder as he chided her for something, for acting too rashly. She always rushed, where he managed to get things done just as quickly but with more style. She still hadn't mastered the elegance he had wanted for her. All she had done was work to keep his dream, a peaceful future where soldiers weren't needed for wars, on the right track. Eventually the Preventers would only be glorified police officers; soldiers were fading; within her lifetime, there would be no need for the career path of "soldier."

Now there was only the softly falling snow, seeming to blanket the world in muffled tranquility. It seemed to show how far they had come. They had all worked hard to bring themselves, their world, to this point, and perhaps she had worked herself hardest, some would say. She had devoted herself to creating a world peacekeeping force answerable to the government, separate but loyal, and she hoped that he would approve. It probably wouldn't have been the way he would have done about it, but there was no one who could replace him. She was a paltry substitute; all she could do was make guesses at the right path.

The paperwork on her desk never seemed to end. No matter how hard she concentrated, the eighteen hour days she put in, there was always more. She would delegate, but finding the personnel for the Preventers was something that had been near impossible. Many had died in those final battles; many more didn't want to return to a life of military duty. Still others couldn't be trusted...

She smiled a bit, thinking of Zechs - no, Milliard's- recent return. Treize would have been glad to know his prodigy had come back, had survived. Of all of them, Treize's heart had been divided between her, Zechs, and the pilots... they and the common soldiers were the ones who were to carry on his legacy, though few people realized what that legacy really was.

It annoyed her. People had wondered why she had thrown herself so full-heartedly into this mission, but they didn't understand - but that was because they didn't understand Treize. She picked up a pen, tapping it against one of the numerous forms that bureaucracy seemed to create, wishing that she could convey that to someone, make them understand.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the door chime. "Enter!" she called. She had thought everyone had gone...

The inner door, an old-fashioned wooden one designed for elegance, was pushed opened. A sharp-featured Asian face peeked in, and Une blinked in surprise. "Li? I thought you had the night off?"

Major Li Chun Tian, her immediate aide, shrugged, coming into the room further. "I traded someone else- I'm not Christian, so this night really doesn't mean anything to me. Someone has to be around to screen calls. Just because it's the holidays doesn't mean the world stops... crime goes up, and some of the Treize cultists might try something, since.." she hesitated. "I guess I don't need to remind you."

Une set her pen down, her teeth clenching at the mention of the Treize cultists. They were a small, splinter group, mainly made of Treize factionalists who were beginning to preach that Treize had been a true messiah and were trying to create a religion around him. They were still disorganized, but she greatly feared one of their number managing to come together with an workable religious philosophy. Fanatics were hard to deal with, because the government would be accused of suppressing religious freedom if they acted against them.

"No, you don't. Those idiots are one of the banes of my existence," Une answered finally.

Li seemed to be a bit embarrassed about the whole mess, which didn't surprise Une. From what Une remembered of Li's profile, Li was an atheist. "Well, they are a bit cracked. No human is a god."

"No. Especially not Treize," Une said softly. "He was extraordinary, but in the end, he was only human. We seem to be forgetting that. I worry about it - in ten years, in a hundred, when no one remembers the man he was, what will history say? Will the Treize cultists succeed in creating a religion around him?"

Li remained silent for a long moment, apparently reluctant to speak. "Well... it's easier to follow a man not yet dead for a year than putting your faith in an older religion, sometimes. New faiths gather followers for reasons." There was a detachment in her expression.

"Yes, but... religion speaks to the divine." Une shivered as she rose, turning to stare at the snow, which was falling more heavily.

"I did say they were cracked," Li said. "I understand why they say he was a god. He did seem godlike..."

Une started to laugh at that. "He did... didn't he? But there was a man under it. He was handsome, brilliant, charismatic... but he had flaws, Li. He had quirks. He loved chocolate to the point of not being able to control himself when you gave him a box - he'd eat his way through the entire box in one sitting. He claimed it was a genetic trait as an excuse. When he'd get nervous, he'd pick at his right glove, wearing it out before the left glove. Treize liked gardening and stars, and he liked to doodle. His artwork was horrible, but he never gave up trying. And he always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but never found the time..."

"You knew him very well." Though Une couldn't see Li's face, she assumed her aide's face was just as neutral as usual. Li had been selected for the position partly for her ability to blend into the background as well as her sheer brilliance.

Une lifted her fingers to trace patterns in the pane of the window. When she had been younger, it had been a hobby. As a child, she had believed she could communicate with angels this way. Now she wrote silent messages to eyes that couldn't see any longer, a spirit that was out of her reach.

Her aide was waiting for some kind of reply. "I loved him. When you love someone, you watch them, try to know everything about them. Have you ever been in love?"

"No. I'm still heart-whole." Li seemed blithely unconcerned with the fact at how inexperienced in life that made her.

"I don't know whether to envy or pity you. Love is a wonderful experience; I wouldn't trade my years with Treize for anything. I paid for it - the hurt after he died..." Une lowered her eyes, shading her feelings. "It felt like he'd taken a part of me with him."

"He did," Li said softly, breaking out of her shell. "I've never been in love, but I've loved people. I was seven when my parents died, and it felt like a part of my spirit died as well. I think it's because when we love someone, we give them a part of our hearts. You've heard the saying, 'I'll give you my heart,' right?"

Une turned back to her aide, framed by the window. Li was ignoring the difference in their ranks, making an effort at offering comfort, awkward though it was. Une appreciated it. "Yes. I guess a heart is never something we can retrieve. But the pain grows less... I don't think of him as much as I did in those first days. I wonder why?"

"Because the heart heals, or so I've been told." Li shrugged. "I don't really know. You'd have to ask someone who's been in love."

Une shook her head. "I don't know why I'm rambling right now about Treize. I've made it a policy not to talk about him unless it's important. The news shows keep wanting to interview me for documentaries and tributes, but... they seem so petty. Tomorrow I won't want to talk. Maybe it's the night?"

"Anniversaries bring out weird things in all of us," Li said. "We start reflecting on what our lives are like, and what we could have done differently. That's why we mark them."

Une's lips tried to smile, but were unable to. "You're wise. I wish I could perceive things like that, sometimes..."

"It's because I'm outside the situation. We all screw up in our personal lives and need a different perspective, Though if you're worried about the Treize cultists, maybe the best thing to do is work on a documentary. We have a good PR unit here, and if you use it right, you can show the Treize you knew. The one who ate chocolate."

Une's eyes widened as she considered it. She had been rejecting the idea of talking about Treize for personal reasons, never considering the possible benefits. "That's not a bad idea. The media has unbelievable power, when it comes to controlling the public opinion."

"It's one of the first things I was taught as your aide, ma'am. Spin the news. So if you spin Treize's life, show the Treize you knew, rather than the demigod...."

Une shut her eyes, nodding. "We let him be built into a demigod immediately following the world to help stabilize the peace. Now it's time to shatter the illusion and let him be remembered as a man... a man people can strive to reach. Whose ideals we strive to obtain and uphold."

"I'll have the PR department get to work on the concept on the 26th," Li said. She went over to the office closet and keyed it open. "I think you should leave now, ma'am. There will be a midnight mass at the base's church."

Une blinked a bit at the sudden change of topic. "I-"

"You're Christian, right?" Li smiled a bit. "I think it would be a good idea for you to attend. You need to be doing something tonight, rather than sitting alone in your office. Church gives people a sense of community, and that's what you need." She pulled out Une's Preventers coat and came back over to her. "I'm already here, so you don't need to worry about the base. If something goes drastically wrong, I'll have you called. Just keep your pager on you."

Une opened her mouth to protest. "I hate Christmas." It was true; she had used to love it, but since Treize had died, she couldn't see any reason to celebrate. All it reminded her of was of his loss. She missed him so much this night; it wasn't right to expect her to be cheerful tonight, of all nights.

"I'm not surprised. But you need to pretend to like it. Years later, people will ask what you did on this anniversary... and what do you want the answer to be?"

Une stared into Li's face before reaching out to take the jacket. "I don't like you very much right now."

"Permission to speak freely?" Li asked. She brought her hands behind her back and drew herself into a parade rest stance, a carefully blank expression on her face.

Une quirked an eyebrow. Li tended to be retiring and strictly formal; this evening had been drastically out of character for her. Asking for permission to speak freely meant she was going to say something Une didn't want to hear, but it would be interesting. "Granted."

"We rarely like you, either. You're a hard taskmaster, and you have a nasty temper. But we respect you. You work hard for us, and we'll do the same for you."

Une looked at Li, knowing she should feel offended, but was somehow unable to. "I work hard for everyone. I work for the people… like Treize did. And… that was the key, that I wish people would understand."

"Oh?"

"Treize wasn't a politician or a leader. He was a person who cared about others, and he loved them deeply. And it's that legacy, more than anything, that we need to continue." She slid the jacket on, taking another glance out the window. "Treize was about living life; he celebrated every moment of it, and he mourned for those who fell. I'll go to church tonight, for him. Because he wouldn't want me sitting alone, mourning. He would want me to continue to live."


END SAINAN NO KEKKA ACT 0


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