Know No Evil
"There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot about something and not really understand it." - Charles Franklin Kettering
-
For the next new days, Noin knew she was a walking timebomb. Some part of her that she had been ignoring for too long was waiting, waiting for the provocation that would give it the moment it needed to explode.
Everyone else noticed how on edge she was. When Xack made a casual side comment about it being "that time of the month" she nearly brained him. He was lucky he ducked so her clipboard missed his head and hit the wall instead.
She was working up the fierceness to confront her partner. It had taken her eight years to decide to do it, and it was going to take her a couple of days not to back down. She was too used to being patient with him.
One part of her was not pleased with the decision: You must be insane. This is NOT the way to go about this, Lucrezia. Do you really want to take the chance that you might destroy whatever it is you two have left?
The more forceful part of her, the part of her that kept her fighting, snapped: Shut up. If this goes too far, you'll never get your chance. If he needs time, that's too bad. You've given him years to get a clue. Time's up.
As she didn't do often enough, Noin went with her soldier's side.
So one sluggish Saturday afternoon, she steeled herself and went to Zechs's quarters.
He opened the door, and she asked point-blank, "Can we talk?"
-
"Can we talk?"
At first, Zechs was caught off-guard. What could Noin want to talk about? However, he knew better than to attempt to put her off, because though her expression was level, he could see sparks of fire in her slightly narrowed eyes. She was serious.
"If you like." He stepped back to allow her in, and the door slid closed after her.
Arms crossed, she took one long look at his quarters and he knew what she was thinking: There was hardly the slightest signature of the person in residence there. No pictures, no keepsakes, no personal items whatsoever besides clothing, and even that was neatly folded out of sight. It was a very militaristic room.
He never put down roots in any place. Limiting personal connections allowed him to move about as he chose, as quickly and unexpectedly as needed.
But Noin didn't say anything about it. She just turned to look at him with a perfectly even gaze. A determined gaze.
"So what are your plans?" she asked.
Of all questions, that was one he hadn't been expecting. "What?"
"What are you going to do when this project's over? And it will be over in less than four months. The toughest work is going to be finished and in the winter of AC 199, Mars will be open to the wealthy public. What then?"
What then? Zechs absently combed his fingers through his hair, something he only did when he found himself in an inconvienient situation. Did he want to tell her that although he had a half-formed plan of returning to the Preventers, he hoped to deal only in solitary, undercover assignments? To keep himself as seperate from the Agency itself as possible?
No, he decided. "I'm not certain," he said. That was the truth, at least.
Noin had seen his gesture and knew this wasn't a conversation he wanted to have. Which meant she was on the right track.
"Will you be staying with the Preventers?" It was a general question, shielding the more personal one she really wanted to ask.
"Perhaps." He sounded uncommitted and cool, even to his own ears, and he didn't like it.
Something in his tone goaded her to inquire something she hadn't meant to: "Will you be staying with me?" she asked too softly. The words were out before she could even think about stopping them, and she quickly amended with, "As my partner?"
Zechs glanced at her quickly. Something about the way she had said that . . . "I don't know. I haven't thought about it in detail. Have you?"
She smirked slightly, a humorless, self-mocking expression. "Oh, it's sketchy at best. Return to the Preventers. Get a nice apartment. Carry out both basic and exceptional missions. Gain a few ranks. Build on a hobby. Talk with friends. Pass the years creatively. Grow old. Collect a few cats. Retire, and then die."
Sarcasm dripped from every word, prompting Zechs to be very careful how he responded. "That sounds fine, if it's what you want," he said warily, watching for the trap to spring.
"No, it isn't," Noin countered flatly. "Do you want to know why? Because somehow, someway, for some unthinkable reason, I feel like you won't be there."
He didn't really know what to say to that. So he replied as indifferently as possible, "Perhaps I won't."
Indifference wasn't the form of tact to be used in this conversation.
Her eyes narrowed. "Why wouldn't you be? Where would you go? What would you do? What the hell is out there that keeps pulling you away from the people who care about you?"
It made him uneasy, to hear her say so plainly "I care about you." Connections made it harder to be a loner and to live his life as cruelly as he pleased. He so hated to bring friends down with him.
Could he say as much? Yes, it seemed so.
"It would be better if I were alone," Zechs replied quietly, and almost immediately, the fires in the eyes of the woman in front of him flashed, then began to smolder like new coals. An infinitely more dangerous shift.
"Really," she said tonelessly. "Alone. That's what you would prefer."
Suddenly, she couldn't look at him.
The silence that followed was a seething one.
Noin turned away, long fingers resting on the back of her neck. Zechs couldn't help but notice the tension in her hand, the way it twitched as if it needed to be balled into a fist and slammed into something.
He had never seen her so angry, so distant.
Finally, she sighed, a long, slow exhalation.
"Do you realize," Noin began quietly, still not looking at him, "how much I would like to humor you? To leave you alone? To walk away and just let whatever happen, happen? To watch you kill yourself and not care?"
What was she saying? His brow furrowed slightly, and he wanted to speak, but no worthy words came to him.
"But I won't," she went on. "You are - or at the very least, used to be - a very good friend of mine. A friend who used to laugh and had some brightness to him. A friend I decided was my comrade, my partner. For that friend, I won't let you be alone."
Another long silence. Zechs suddenly felt something uncalled for building up in him, and he felt a bolt of shock when he realized what it was: Anger. Anger bordering on rage. A cold rage, and an old sadness, at her words.
His eyes narrowed. He now knew what she wanted.
And it pierced him to the core.
"I can't be that person anymore." His voice was beyond angry. It was downright chilling, and it made Noin snap to attention and look at him. "I'll never be that person you knew. Stop demanding him from me. He died long ago."
"What?" Of all reactions, of all things to say, this was something she hadn't expected.
"I know you cared about who I used to be, but it's over now. I've long shed that skin."
His anger made her angry. He had no right to speak to her as if he had the right to be furious. He was the one brooding and cold, an unrecognizable creature that seemed prepared to scream and prepared to kill all at once, one who ignored how she felt and drifted in his own black visions.
"And what have you been all these years?" Noin demanded forcefully. "What are you now? It would be nice if you would tell me!"
"I don't have all the answers, Noin!" Zechs's eyes flashed a deeper glacial shade. "But I can tell you this: Stop searching for a man who no longer exists."
It was at that time that her self-control broke.
"No longer exists?" she snapped, her voice rising, her pulse speeding up. "Was it the mask that killed him? Or first blood? I don't know when he died, and I don't care! I was still there through all of that, and no matter how you say you changed, or broke, rose or fell, I still care about you! Through all of those deaths, I still love you!"
She froze, and her entire body went cold.
Zechs stared at her, expression slowly losing its infuriated flame as he processed what she had just said. All of his fiery emotions were inexplicably replaced with surprise . . . and a bizarre indignation.
Love? She . . . loved him? He'd known she cared deeply, but . . . love?
Noin slowly closed her eyes as she felt the last of her will slip away.
Instead of feeling shock and dismay at having Zechs find out about her emotions this way, instead of feeling awkward and unsure, like a young girl having her crush finally notice her, instead of feeling she had to explain, that she needed to dignify herself to him, she just sighed.
She felt so tired of it all.
"You don't know what you love."
Zechs's voice was darker and more piercing than any blade could be, sliding into her and forcing a coldness into her interior. It wasn't a false blanket of ice, she knew. It was genuine. The darkness in him he wouldn't allow her to understand brought out a cold in her she tried to avoid.
He wanted her to stop her love. And for the moment she would comply.
Slowly, Noin locked her gaze with his, and felt equal arctic emotions within him.
"You're right. I don't know what I love." A blizzard had swallowed her words whole. "I don't even know what the hell you are, and I don't want to know."
With that, she walked around him and out the door.
-
"I know what I am," Zechs said emotionlessly after the door had closed behind him and she was gone. His right fist clenched until his knuckles cracked and he thought the bones in his hand would break, and he wouldn't care.
A black-souled creature, that's what he was. Something that didn't, and never would, deserve the love she offered him. She didn't understand that opaque abyss within him that came so naturally. And since she never could, in whatever feelings she had for him, he had to remain alone.
Even that much was better than accepting a love meant for a man dead long ago.
-
The library was empty. A few sections were dark, the overhead lights turned off. He was the only person still there. Even the librarian had taken off, telling the sole student to close the doors when he was done.
And gods above, it seemed he would never be done.
"Algebra. I hate algebra," Zechs muttered to himself, clicking through the figures on the laptop screen on the table in front of him. The numbers were making his head hurt and he would rather have had a root canal with blunt instruments than study all night, but he had semester finals tomorrow. "I really, really despise algebra."
"Then why do you make perfect scores on every test?"
The voice came from somewhere over his head, and he looked up to have his eyes meet a pair of darker ones.
He blinked. It was that girl, Lucrezia Noin. A fellow ace-student he'd been oddly aware of for the pass two weeks. Aware of mostly because she kept trying
to start conversations with him, even though everytime he cut them short.
She'd heard him grumbling, obviously, but why should she care?
The uncertain moment passed, and his defenses renewed themselves.
"It's rude to eavesdrop," he replied, allowing his gaze to fall to the screen again.
"Eavesdropping is one way to get useful information that you can't recieve directly," replied Noin, sitting down across from him. "First rule of reconaissance."
Zechs snorted softly. "I didn't know you were on a mission." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. At the time, he didn't have the energy to be brusque with her. Maybe if he indulged her, she'd go away on her own, and this time, stay away.
Noin shrugged. "Back to my original question: If you hate the subject, why do you work so hard on it?"
Why the hell do you want to know? he wanted to say, which would effectively destroy the coolly polite facade he had with other cadets. Instead of saying what he thought, though, as usual he merely gave a neutral answer. "It doesn't matter what I like or dislike. This is an academy, and I'm going to make good of my time here."
His ice-colored eyes narrowed slightly, and some of his truer attitude revealed itself. "Besides, why are you so curious? Isn't it a bit late for you to be posing questions on my study habits?"
"Close to midnight." She didn't check her watch; she just knew. "Not late by an overachiever's standards."
"Late enough." Zechs was getting annoyed by this pointless conversation, despite his minor interest in the person he was having it with. He pointedly looked back to his laptop. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have studying to do."
Suddenly, her hand descended on the laptop and closed it firmly. Caught by surprise, he noted irrelevantly how strong her slender hand looked, well-worked by MS control simulations. Like his own hands.
He looked at her, and found himself also noting that her eyes were less blue and more a deep violet, what he could see of them through her bangs.
His own eyes narrowed again, but he didn't want to get angry just yet. "Is there something you want?" he asked icily.
Noin inclined her head. "Why do you try so hard?"
"What?" This was unexpected.
"I mean, why do you do so much to be the best?"
This line of questioning was too personal, too close, so Zechs quickly went on the defensive. "I could ask the same thing of you."
She was quiet for a moment, considering him with those violet eyes. Then she smiled, a wry and self-mocking expression. "I've got nothing more creative to do. I'm not exactly the most popular cadet around here."
"The instructors love you," Zechs pointed out.
"Yeah." Noin shook her head. "They love you, too. And I'll bet you're still as unhappy as I am."
It was true, and he was half-shocked to admit that to himself. Despite his habit of trying to ignore others as best as he could, he had noticed that the other cadets treated her pretty much the same way they treated him: With thinly veiled contempt, envy, and general dislike.
Mostly, he supposed it was because of their ongoing near-perfection as students within the Academy. But maybe it also had to do with what he had to admit was his aloof and almost cold reaction to whatever friendship they may had offered him.
Ironically enough, he didn't know how to tell them that he had no clue how to be a friend. There were too many things in his head, bad memories, bad blood. To have friends who didn't share an understanding of such memories would be similar to decieving himself. Fooling himself into thinking he was like them, when he wasn't. He had a mission, cruel and bloody that it was. They had dreams, idealistic and flighty.
Truth was, it would be more proper for HIM to be jealous of THEM.
This all ran through his mind quickly, and while it did, Noin's eyes never left his. It seemed she was waiting for something, waiting for him to say something.
And he realized what it was. She wanted him to ask her: "Why are you unhappy?"
Asking that question, those four words, would be the first step in a direction he felt he wasn't prepared to take. Because it would lead him into the mind, into the heart, perhaps, of a person at the same end of the spectrum as he. Someone who could comprehend the pain of loss, the fire of helpless anger, and the hard iron of forced resolve to succeed despite the world.
But could she comprehend the cold of revenge and hatred?
Did he even want to know someone who thirsted for vengeance like he did?
He felt so unsure, and looking in her eyes, felt that uncertainty grow. If he launched into that frightening thing called friendship so quickly, without warning of what lay ahead, he might lose his resolve to be a soldier.
Zechs couldn't do it. He couldn't break his resolution just for a warm heart and a warmer touch. And after a moment of indecision, he sighed - regretfully, yes - hardened his heart, and opened his mouth to tell Noin to go away, and stay away, for the final time.
"Noin - "
But she interrupted him by rising from her chair and moving around the table to sit beside him. She reopened the laptop and looked at the figures on the screen.
Then she smiled at him, a dazzling sight that made him feel strangely uplifted.
"I'll help you study," she said brightly, her violet eyes gleaming. "After all, algebra's one of my easiest subjects. You just promise to help me with world history, and we might have a good partnership here."
He blinked, at first not understanding.
Then he realized: She wasn't rushing him. She was giving him time, as much as he needed, and she wasn't going to judge. After all, he supposed, friendship took time.
They would take their time.
-
It seems I've run out of time, Zechs thought now. Perhaps I ran out quite awhile ago.
"I've waited all this time . . . and I simply can't wait any longer."
He understood her words so much better now. To the point where it was unbearable.
Zechs took a deep, deep breath, slowling his heartbeat and rare unsettled thoughts to normalcy. He had to remain in control of his emotions at all times if he was going to be able to deal with these complications. He wasn't sure if Noin would take as wise a path.
Was it wise? He had been leashing his emotions for a lifetime. Even his sense of morals had been brutally distorted in the past few years, but then, that happened to all soldiers.
Well, soldier, some part of him mocked, where's the war? You're one rebel without a cause, and you know it.
His deep breaths escaped with a sigh, and his eyes went to the clock on his desk that also showed the date.
Only four months to go. It felt like a thousand years already.
-
There was no one in the halls at that moment, and she couldn't wait to reach her quarters. She slumped against the wall and closed her eyes, letting the previous events wash over her.
Lucrezia pressed her back to the icy, unfeeling metal of the wall, wishing it could absorb the tumult of emotion inside of her. She felt as if her body, strong as it might be, couldn't contain such violent feelings and not have them explode out of her in a flurry of screams and tears.
In fact, tears did threaten, building in her eyes and tightening her throat. But with sheer force of will she swallowed them, like poison, and let them contaminate her heart and leave her cold inside.
I told you, a tiny, vulnerable voice whispered in the back of her mind. You shouldn't have told him. You should have waited.
Forget that, her soldier's side interrupted icily. You did what you had to do. This may hurt like hell, but it's progress. We're going somewhere, yes, somewhere dark, and even that much is better than staying trapped in one place forever.
How long had they been in this place? Since Lake Victoria Academy, or later?
Just for how long had she been waiting . . .
-
"How long has it been?" Noin asked, and was disappointed when he didn't jump and whirl around in surprise. His stealth listening skills had improved, it seemed.
Instead, Zechs simply turned to look at her, and she stared at the barrier of his mask with bemusement. She could still see his eyes, blue as a winter sky, but now they were filtered through that mask, and she somehow felt far from him.
He inclined his head at her slightly. "Two years, give or take a few months. It felt longer," he added dryly.
Noin smiled. That sounded like her old friend, although he didn't look much like it. Adolescence had been good to him; he was almost six feet, and his shoulders had broadened, giving him a less aristocratic and more intimidating aura than before. He still hadn't cut his hair, which she supposed was his due; he was such an excellent soldier that the military standard of shoulder-length hair was waived just for him.
She didn't know if the same thing would be said for her; she didn't want to be judged by looking too feminine, so she kept her hair as short as necessary.
Taking herself from these thoughts, Noin took a few steps towards him as the door to his quarters automatically closed behind her. "So," she began, "any explanation for the new head gear?"
It was like the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. She could almost literally feel it when he went cold.
"I have my reasons," he said curtly, and it was like he was talking to some nosy private, instead of his best friend and almost equal ranking officer. The sudden change puzzled Noin even more.
"Okay," she murmured, trying to think up a new approach.
Silence followed, not yet awkward but close to it.
Her eyes wandered his quarters, looking for some object, some clue of what was so different about him. The room was spartan, bare, but for the gun on the desk, near the computer.
It was a semi-automatic similar to her own, one that was registered to every private upon entering the field for the first time. Noin narrowed her eyes at it, not knowing she was doing so. In the entire two years she had been doing field missions, she'd only had to use her gun six times, and only four times had the shot been fatal. Up close and personal was the worse, but then there were the mobile suits . . . she didn't know how many she'd killed in her Aries. She didn't want to think about it.
The experience of killing had been somewhat numbing and disturbing, like a shot of Novicaine to the brain. But for Zechs, with his background? What would killing for the first time have done to him?
She looked back at him to realize that his gaze had followed hers to the gun, and that he was still looking at it, chillingly expressionless. Although she couldn't really tell what his expression was with that mask on.
"Zechs." His attention snapped back to her at the sound of his name, and his eyes seemed distant. Noin swallowed and decided to take a leap into the unknown. "How have you been?" she asked, trying not to sound intrusive.
For a moment, he didn't answer. Then he said, "Successful."
"Apparently." Her natural sarcasm was kicking in, her only defense against this coldness in him. "I hear you made captain in record-breaking time." And he was only sixteen, too.
He nodded. "I did," was as detailed as he got.
Noin didn't volunteer information on her own achievements; she was still first-lieutenant, but suspected that she would recieve advancement soon, and then they would be equal. But saying so seemed to be restating a query they had never answered after that last day at Lake Victoria: Were they equals, or was one more or less than the other?
Such a delicate question.
A new silence had begun, and it was making her decidedly uncomfortable, something she had never felt with him before. What was going on? Why was he so - different?
It was so frustrating, not seeing his face. That white, frozen mask effectively made him impenetrable, unidentifiable. He was a stranger to her, now.
The words came before she could stop them. "Seriously, Zechs. Why the mask?"
He looked at her, and one gloved hand moved to the edge of the mask, touching it as if he wondered himself. Then he shook his head. "I have my - "
"Yeah, you said that, you have your reasons," Noin interrupted. "Now, I'm asking you, not as an officer, but as a friend: Why?"
Zechs sighed. "There are only two people in this world who know my true identity. I wish to keep it that way. You see," and as he said this his voice grew wintry, "I look exactly as my father did, when he was my age."
Oh. Noin half-wished she could take back the question that seemed to have hurt her friend so much, but the other half of her was busy wondering: Who is the other person? However, it seemed the wrong time to ask.
Instead she said, "I suppose I can guess when you first put it on," and her eyes fell once again to the gun on his desk. She knew how he felt about being the first Peacecraft ever to go against pacifism.
"I suppose so." Zechs went over to the desk and picked up the gun, handling it like a pro. "Many things have changed in the past few years, Noin," he said quietly, slipping the gun into the drawer and closing it.
This time, he looked very surprised when he turned back around to see that she was standing only a foot away from him, Noin noted with some vague satisfaction.
"Noin . . . " he started, but couldn't seem to find the words to continue.
Their eyes were locked, now, and she saw a flicker of apprehension in his gaze that goaded her on. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she reached up, placed her hands on either side of the mask, and lifted it up and away.
His fine white-blonde fell neatly around his features, framing clear eyes that were now naked to her, still icy but readable, and suddenly, he was human again, not just some soldiering imitation of her former friend.
"You're right," she said softly, so as not to break this new air between them, this odd, intense intimacy she'd never before felt with him. "A lot of things are different now, things that will never be the same again." It hurt her to say those words and know what they meant, but she said them and kept going. "But we're still here. We'll never be what we were, but we always have the chance to be something new."
They were so close, she found it hard to breathe. His eyes were so blue, she felt as if she could be lost in them, in a new way that went beyond childhood friendship and somewhere - new. Unknown. Frightening.
He calmly took the helmet from her hands, but he didn't move away. He just kept his eyes on hers, wondering, questioning. "And what are we now?" he asked.
She looked down at the mask in his hands, considered what it represented, the barrier it put between them. And she replied, almost in a whisper, "I don't know. But maybe we'll find out. Someday."
With that, Noin ran her gloved fingers through her dark hair, turned and walked away, out of his quarters, and just for then, out of his life.
Zechs looked after her, his grip on the mask tightening, trying to understand what had just transpired between them, and finally deciding that it wasn't yet time for him to know. Instead, he merely murmured, "Yes. Someday."
-
Someday. It seemed that day had finally come, and it had come with a fight.
That was the truth, but so was the fact that it hurt.
Noin closed her eyes and sighed. She didn't know what she had expected he would do when she finally admitted how she felt. It was supposed to be under better circumstances than this. And she had never actually intended to say it out loud, and so abruptly. She had hoped they'd find some kind of common ground where they could redefine their relationship.
But that wasn't happening. So it looked like they were taking the hard road into hell.
Four months left. What had seemed like not enough time only a day before now seemed like forever.