Memories In Monochrome
"So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
-
Five months. Five months on the Red Planet.
Noin didn't know whether it should have felt like five weeks or five years. All she knew was that the Terra-Forming Project was going well. They were spreading the dome further along the landscape, and there had been no serious halts in construction.
Everyone with the project was more than occupied with importing building materials, expanding the base below and above ground, and making it safe for a few brave homesteaders hoping to make a living and a home on the crimson world.
Busy times, they were. Noin hadn't been able to get a transmission out to her friends back home for almost six weeks, thanks to a downed communications satellite still awaiting repairs. She was feeling rather homesick.
Whether or not Zechs felt the same was a mystery to her. He'd returned to his naturally brooding attitude, and rarely said a friendly word to her. They'd lost the casuality of friendship. And they seemed to have lost the confusing intimacy of their one honest silence.
She made no advances towards him. To be truthful, she was feeling very much like brooding herself. It was a lonely few weeks.
Of course, the others at the project were friendly, but Xack and Elle were occupied with make-out sessions and pretending everyone else didn't know, Ashida was knee-deep in research, and Grant was busy to begin with, but was also trying to keep the entire base under control.
When her specialty areas hit a lull, Noin was left to do as she wished. Sometimes she just wandered the base, which was quite a few miles of wandering, if you counted the underground tunnels that spanned even beyond the edges of the dome. Other times she'd go to the observatory and look at the stars.
But most times, she retreated to the privacy of her quarters.
When she'd first arrived, the quarters had been cramped, worse than a studio apartment. But as the dome progressed, the living quarters grew larger. She now had a tiny seperate bedroom, and a lounging space with a low table in front of the sofa.
Lucrezia collapsed on the sofa and shut her eyes. The bright ceiling lights were off, but a soft bluish glow emanated from the wall lamps.
She couldn't sleep. So her mind drifted, as it did often and settled on the distant past . . .
-
The death of her parents had been the last straw. With nowhere else to go, nothing to call her own, nine-year-old Lucrezia Noin did the only thing that many others who had little left had done before: She hacked off her hair and registered at a military academy, using the not-unconsiderable money her parents had had to pay for tuition.
In the Lake Victoria Academy, she'd been more physical than even the young men around her. She spent hours at a time in the gym, exercising to keep in perfect condition. Mobile suit training was stressful on the body, and so she needed to stay fit to stay at the top.
Normally, that went for everyone. But Noin had had to work even harder at staying in good strength. This went especially as she grew older and her body matured. She kept her feminine curves under ruthless control by learning several martial art forms and rarely taking time to relax.
It wasn't only physical abilities that made the soldier. Intelligence, discipline, obedience and intitiative also kept you alive on the battlefield. Every test she had, every essay she wrote, Noin made the highest marks. In fencing, she was almost unrivaled. Her behavior was quiet and observational, just what her superiors adored.
Her motto was that it didn't matter whether a soldier was male or female; all that mattered was how fast he or she took out enemies. In order to bring truth to that motto, Noin became even better than her male counterparts.
Needless to say, those counterparts weren't too pleased at being defeated by a girl. She was outcast among them, and even among the few other woman at the Academy, simply because she was better.
It was something she had no choice but to take in stride. But it wasn't easy to be so perfect, and so perfectly alone.
They didn't understand what it was like to have absolutely nothing to return to, nothing to own. To have lost everything to war. All she had was her personal achievement. She HAD to be the best, or she was nothing.
She didn't have time for their happy conversations, or their cheerful laughter. They didn't understand why she tried so hard. And so they remained seperate.
Only one ever even began to combat her level of achievement: Zechs Merquise. He spent as long in the gym, made marks just as high, fenced just as elegantly, fought just as ruthlessly.
At one point, they were rivals, against each other, trying to see who was superior. They never actually found out.
Over time, that rivalry became a wary alliance. Noin realized that maybe, just maybe, this mysterious and ever-stoic young man with the glacier blue eyes could understand her loneliness, and her intense desire to succeed.
It was a time before the mask, before he managed to cut himself off from the world completely, even from her. He was alone because of his superiority, but also because of an indefinable coldness that he wore like a cloak. As if he were locked up in a seperate realm, a place darker than any of the cadets around him could comprehend.
Noin was almost angry at him, then, for seeming to think he had seen worse than she, suffered more than she, lost more than she.
Equals or rivals or neither, she had to know.
It took a long time to get him to so much as speak to her without the curt, impersonal attitude he showed to all. It began with little things: Coming to ties at fencing matches and mobile suit battle simulations - trying to see who could fight the longest or run the fastest - being side-by-side on academic score charts and sharing secret glances and slight smiles to combat the jealous or insulting whispers of the other students - spending quiet study sessions together at the library, during which not a sound was made but volumes were spoken.
And slowly, they began to respect each other, trust each other. It amazed her, the long, long periods of time they could be together in absolute, comfortable silence. They understood each other so well . . .
Then came the question of Why. Why were they at the Academy? Why did they try so hard to be the best? Why were they so perfectly matched? Why did they so silently, so perfectly understand?
It came together in hesitant, resentful memories and recollections of blood and explosions, of abandonment and scenes of death and destruction. She told him of her lost family. He told her of his. He told her the reason why he fought so hard. She told him hers.
And suddenly, they were more than just companions. They were best friends.
The rumor around the Academy was that they were sweet on each other. The young women resented Noin ever more for "catching" one of the most attractive, aloof boys in the class; the young men resented Zechs ever more for "taming" the most indomitable, impressive girl in the class.
They didn't care. They had one another.
But it wasn't meant to last.
As alike as they were, they were different in their certainties and their missions. Zechs was bitter, always split between his need for revenge and his pacifist background. When facts came to facts, he would kill to reclaim what he had lost, and that road would never bring his life back.
Noin could never relieve that bitterness. She had reached her objective relatively easily: Space. Freedom. Training soldiers to honor and respect the innocent on the field so that another tragedy like the one that took her family wouldn't repeat itself. She had made peace with herself and her past.
But it seemed her friend never would. He couldn't even figure out what it was he really wanted, or how to achieve that goal correctly.
That was why she slowly began to allow him to score just a little higher, move just slightly further up, be a tiny bit better. She only wanted to help him.
It was a mistake on her part. All Zechs had ever wanted from her was a companion, a friend who understood him as no one else ever could, who accepted, even valued him. He couldn't do that for himself without a sword in his hand. By actually letting him move to the top, she was pushing him away, leaving him alone, telling him: "Your mission is more important than I am - than we are."
Yes, a mistake. The biggest mistake of her life.
The moment their final scores were in - the highest pair of scores in the Academy's entire history - was the moment they were split forever.
He was above her on the score chart - she was merely a line below, but that line opened a chasm between them. Suddenly, Zechs believed that his worth wasn't in his friend, Noin, but in his soldiering, his ability to fight and kill.
They were no longer equals, or rivals, or friends. They were just . . .
When their years at the Academy were over, they, too, had met an end.
It seemed they didn't understand each other so well after all.
-
Lucrezia opened her eyes and left the dark paths of memory.
That was years ago, so many years ago that they had met with that deep, forbidding seperation. Since then, Noin had tried to bring it to Zechs' attention that she had always understood, that she had always been his equal. But he never did get it.
And maybe she wasn't his equal. Perhaps the chasm had been a message: You're too different from each other. You can never, ever truly understand each other.
But their comraderie told her different. Could they have such an intense connection, but never be really close? Was it all just false dependance instead of voiceless intimacy?
Before, she might have been sure. But after she'd seen that mask for the first time, the forbidding white shield against the world, she didn't know anymore.
And now, here they were.
-
Zechs didn't like the way his mind wouldn't allow him to relax. He had the night shift in six hours and he needed to rest up. But his thoughts continually careened towards the past that he tried to avoid, and those kind of recollections never allowed for sleep.
He shifted in bed, stared at the ceiling. And thought of his partner.
-
Different paths had pulled them apart. Different perspectives, different ideas of how it was best to fight a war. Both had hated war. Both had lost everything there was to lose to the ravages of war, excepting their lives, health and sanity. Both had every intention of being superior enough to make a change in that war, for the better.
She wanted to go back to the source, train the best possible soldiers she could to act with honor, bravery, and skill upon the battlefield. He, however, felt the source was on the battlefield itself. He would kill his way to victory.
Perhaps she was the right one all along. She never looked for revenge. Only a solution. He, however, could only see the blood he would spill.
Was it only different destinies that had pulled them so ruthlessly apart? Or was it his own bloodlust?
It was thoughts like these that made Zechs know that Noin's reasons for guiding Relena had little to do with their friendship. Noin had always had her own beliefs, her own agenda in the world. Peace had been her motivator. She had instinctively known that Relena would lead the world to a greater peace than could be bought with a gun.
Her instincts were always infallible. The one time they had been wrong had been about him.
Zechs hadn't thought twice about being anything other than a mobile suit pilot. It seemed he had to get out into the heart of the violence and the death and prove himself the only way he had left: As a soldier. As a leader. As a killer. These were all things he could do. The raging emptiness in him would let him do nothing else.
After all, what remained for the prince who had lost his kingdom? His heart was to no one. His skills were unrivaled. That was, of course, the most dangerous soldier of all.
He was supposed to be fighting for his father, for his fallen country and murdered family. But somewhere along the way, he forgot exactly how he was supposed to do that.
He knew his sister was still alive. Through his connections at OZ, it was simple to discover her among the Darlians, living a privaleged life oblivious to her history. And he had realized that he no longer had to be both the soldier and the heir. She could take his place at the throne.
That hadn't worked out as he had hoped, either. Once again, the Cinq Kingdom fell to explosions and destruction. History had repeated itself.
It was the last straw. The last shred of whatever it was that prevented Zechs Merquise from toppling over the edge was gone. And when Quinze Barton came to him with an offer of leading the revolutionary faction White Fang, Zechs didn't refuse.
Quinze was a fool, Zechs thought. He had no idea what he was getting into, allowing me, of all people, to accept the power to kill millions.
Zechs had aimed at giving the world a war it would never, ever forget, nor ever want to repeat. Whether he thought he would succeed or not, well, that was even a mystery to him. He had intended to destroy. Perhaps, somewhere, in the back of his turmoiled mind, he had known he would be stopped by a wiser, stronger force than he, and he was: The Gundam pilots.
The end of After Colony 195 contained so much chaos for him. Noin was almost like an anchor, attempting to keep a rocking ship at bay on the riotous sea.
She never did question his motives for what seemed to others to be pure insanity, because she knew why almost from the beginning. She even remained by his side, leaving her own comrades. Even to the end, however, it wasn't her beliefs she abandoned for the sake of being beside him. Others who didn't know her might have assumed that, but Zechs knew better.
The confrontation on the battlefield between his Epyon and her Taurus . . . it had given her a glimpse into his weakness. His bloodless cowardice, as he percieved it to be. And she saw what she needed to see in order to understand why he needed her there.
They hadn't found the Silence, though, even in those moments in space. No, that was lost to them forever.
-
He sighed. That was it. He was never going to sleep, not even on the shift. His awakeness was going to be a permanent thing.
It amazed Zechs, how Noin still seemed to understand him, if only partially. It seemed to him that though his partner knew the dessimated part of him still cowering from the ruthlessness of a soldier, she didn't know the soldier itself, the soldier that ruled his existance.
Perhaps that was what split them. He was a warrior heart and soul. And if she couldn't see that, then no matter what they were, had been, or would become, they would never truly understand each other.
And like he had said to her, previous to that curious lack of sound or thought, had they really ever understood at all?
Whether they had or hadn't, here they were.