Milliardo soon found out that the 'secret spot' Noin had referred to was a remote weather control station perched on top of a steep cliff, staring straight into the water pounding below. The style and wear of the building was such that, had he not known that he was on Mars, he would have for sure mistaken it for one of the many wind-and-saltwater-battered lighthouses that littered the coast of Ireland, Maine, or the Maritime provinces of Canada.
After all, he reasoned, it wasn't a mere coincidence that Mars ended up looking a lot like a Celtic landscape, since a large portion of the original Terraforming contingent had shipped out of Newfoundland and Ireland, especially counties Kerry and Galway. That also explained names such as Killarney Park, Grafton Street (as in Dublin's historical downtown core), Carrickfergus Mall and, last but not least, Skellig Point, which he was presently staring down at from the dome at the top of the lighthouse.
He sat beside Noin in complete silence, engrossed in the majestic view, and
savouring a massive turkey club sandwich, gooey cranberry sauce threatening to
squish out from either side.
"Pretty amazing, huh?" Noin commented softly, between two gulps of steaming
apple cider from her travel mug, "We come here all the time, and
yet...". He nodded, not taking his eyes off the
rugged, snow-covered coastline.
"It's like seeing it for the first time," he muttered in awe.
This was definitely not the Mars he remembered and had so passionately hated
during his Terraforming days!
Just as he sank his teeth into his sandwich, a glob of cranberry sauce fell
and landed straight onto his lap. He did not notice until he heard a light
chuckle from Noin.
"Zechs, you're making a mess..."
"Wha..? Aw, bugger," he cursed, with his mouth full. That sent
Noin into a full-fledged fit of laughter, which he stubbornly scowled at.
"Hard to believe I married a prince," she joked in between giggles at
his less-than-perfect sandwich-eating manners, then handed him a paper napkin,
which he proceeded to rub furiously against his pant leg. His scowl
grew only fiercer as he realized that he was actually making the stain worse.
"Here, let me see that," Noin intervened after observing him for a little while. With the smug, amused smile of someone who knows a few more tricks than he, she dipped the napkin into some water, to blot away at the stain on his upper thigh.
Unfortunately, and much to Milliardo's embarrassment, her touch only succeeded in making him twitch so suddenly that the cup was knocked right out of her hand. She yelped in surprise as a splash of icy-cold water landed all over the front of her white blouse.
"Sorry," he mumbled, feeling utterly mortified as she reached for
another wad of napkins to towel off the spill.
The 'twitchy
leg' thing hadn't happened to him since he had been a teenager. And even then,
he remembered, it was only when a certain raven-haired, indigo-eyed cadet
happened to brush against him in the tight confines of a cockpit. For
all he knew, he might as well have permanent damage to his knees, with all the
times he had whacked them in those very circumstances.
"Are you ok?" Noin inquired, scrunching up her brow with curiosity,
"You're awfully jumpy today..."
As she said that, she inched
even closer than she already was, so much that he could not help a peek at the
now very see-through blouse. He blushed hard at the sight of amber skin covered
in goose bumps, the lacy white bra conspiring against him into a repeat of the
night before. Which, for the record, he had enjoyed immensely, more so
than with any other woman he could remember having known since her, but
chemistry was
hardly the problem. The drawback had been waking up in the morning with the worst feelings of guilt
and worthlessness that he had experienced in...
well, just about since the whole Libra incident.
She was, after all, still married to someone other than him... Not that he wouldn't do it all over again, if she pressed him hard enough... He had long come to the realization that he had no willpower whatsoever when it came to shutting Noin out of his life. He could break up with her, make her think that he was the biggest jerk to ever walk the Earth, even move to a different planet and tell himself ad nauseam that she was better off without him, but he just could not get her out of his system. No more, at least, than he could stick his own elbow in his ear. Experience had proven time and again that she had the power to turn him from Lightning Count to Spineless Wimp in three seconds flat. Even her absence had affected his life more than he would ever care to admit...
He felt the urge to jump again as he registered an icy-cold hand settle on
the back of his neck and give a gentle, yet decisive squeeze at his tense
muscles.
"That is one serious knot you have," he heard Noin state
matter-of-factly, just as she stood up and slid herself behind the bench that
they had been sitting on, then started kneading away at his shoulders. For
a second, his back went even more rigid, if at all possible, until she gently pushed his
head down, so that his chin touched against his chest. She then began
working one vertebra at a time, starting from the base of his skull, and slowly
making her way down, until the painful tension subsided under her touch.
Within the first two minutes, Milliardo was no longer aware of any conscious thought, other than the tingling sensation travelling up and down his spine. He was soon sitting hunched over his legs, with his forehead resting on his knees, and his eyes closed, feeling nothing but utter relaxation. He did not immediately register the sighs of pleasure that escaped his lips as Noin applied pressure to his lower back. Nor did he feel her fidgeting behind him until she had swung her legs over the backrest, and slid herself behind him, her own torso relaxing against his back, and her arms encircling him. He knew nothing of right or wrong, faithful or adulterous, love or deception... Zechs or Milliardo. He only knew that her closeness felt comfortable, like coming home after a long, hellish business trip. No matter how much he ran from it, Lucrezia Noin always did, and always would feel like home to him.
"Zechs..." she called to him after an indefinite amount of
time. His only reply came in the form of a low humming sound as his hands
settled on hers, effectively preventing her from letting go of the
embrace. She shifted and fidgeted and wiggled some more, until her lips
were lightly grazing his ear lobe.
"Zechs..." she then repeated in a low, sultry tone, "Drop your pants."
"I beg your pardon?!" Milliardo managed to squeak, at least a
couple of octaves above his normal timbre, as he frantically shuffled off the
bench, nearly landing on his butt. Noin's eyes grew wide with surprise and
amusement at
his dismayed expression, and for a moment she fought to keep a straight face
before breaking down into a fit of laughter.
"The pants," she managed to gasp, "I can't
clean the stain unless you take them off..."
"Oh..." he muttered, all of a sudden feeling rather foolish, if only
slightly disappointed, "I thought for a second you were... ahem...Never
mind."
"Propositioning you?" she suggested, arching an eyebrow in
mock-disapproval after she regained her composure. He felt a heat wave
flush his cheeks.
"Just forget it, ok?" he snapped, and gave a cough as though wanting
to drop the subject entirely.
"What if I were?" Noin added matter-of-factly after a moment of
silence, "What if I am... right now?"
"You're a tease, you know that?" Milliardo groaned in exasperation,
plopping back on the bench.
"Oh, I'm a total smart-ass," she confirmed wholeheartedly, "But
my indecent proposal still stands. Want to take me up on it?"
She offered a peace-making smile, yet waited for his reaction before stepping
any closer.
"Now?" he repeated with a frown, the whole idea sounding totally
impractical, if only rather intriguing.
"No time like the present," she replied, "especially since we
have a full house again tonight, with my family back from their little tour of the
islands..."
"But... here? I know it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's still a
public place..."
"Zechs... we locked the door, and parked a big-ass Gundam prototype
outside. I'm thinking we'd get more privacy here than we do at home, with
two kids on a season-long sugar high, a cat, and a busload of visiting relatives
running around..."
"Good point, but... what about surveillance cameras? Call me a prude, but I
don't really want to end up all over the Internet... or worse, the Preventers'
Intranet..."
"All gone, remember? When we built the weather station on Inis-Meain,
and we were short a shipment, and we had to rip the equipment out of this one,
since it was going to be shut down anyway..." Noin recountered with a
mischievous grin as she stepped closer, "Hey, there is method to my
madness, after all..."
Seeing how all his perfectly sound, sensible arguments were being refuted one by
one, and how Noin seemed quite determined to have her way with him, Milliardo
resolved to make one last attempt at keeping an honourable conduct. If
this one fell on deaf ears too, then it would be ok to succumb...
"Luce... wait," he spoke low as he stopped her hands from sneaking
around his waist, "I keep trying to tell you, I'm not who you think I
am..."
She held his gaze without faltering, her quiet half-smile refusing to give
way to his seriousness.
"And I keep trying to tell you, Milliardo Peacecraft," she declared with a touch of impatience in her
voice, "that if it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks
like a duck, it's a duck!"
He cocked his brow at the unusual metaphor, yet understanding exactly what she
meant by her choice of name.
"Ok, I suppose Shakespeare put it a bit more elegantly when he said that a
rose by any other name would still smell as sweet," Noin shrugged, then
paused for a moment, looking for the right words.
"What I mean is, I love you for who you are, not which name you choose to go by, or which life choices you made..." she then added emphatically, "So quit playing the Now-I'm-Zechs-Now-I'm-Milliardo game with me, because it doesn't work. You already know I love you as both, anyway..."
He noticed how she didn't say, "I love them both", proof that, to her, they had always been one and the same. His head began spinning with all the bizarre, confusing events of the past two days. First, living his life convinced that he had killed his Zechs Merquise persona when he had chosen to go back to Sanq. Then, being tossed into this alternate universe of sorts, and finding out that Zechs Merquise was indeed alive and well, living on Mars with his high-school sweetheart and two wonderful kids. Then, adapting to living Zechs Merquise's life, and becoming acutely aware of how different it was from his own life in Sanq as Milliardo Peacecraft. And now, coming full-circle, and realizing that there is no such thing as a Zechs Merquise, or a Milliardo Peacecraft, at least not as separate entities. In this life he may go by a different name than he did back in Sanq, but none of the people who cared about him seemed to care either way. Not Noin, not his kids, not his sister and close friends.
"I'm sorry," he heard Noin apologize just as his brain finished
processing that very epiphany, "I didn't mean to get all bossy and
patronizing and such... But it's just so frustrating..."
This time, he made the first move, and a bold one at that. He placed his hands
around her and, without the slightest warning, proceeded to dip her as he would
in a passionate tango. Then, just as she yelped and started to laugh, he
stifled her giggles with an equally passionate kiss.
"No time like the present, you said," he spoke low and sensuously,
setting to work on the buttons on her still damp blouse.
"Oh, good... you're taking up my offer," Noin piped back, going
straight for his belt.
"Don't mind if I do... You're positive there are no surveillance
cameras, right?"
"Argggh... must I always repeat myself?"
"Just bugging you..."
**********************
Captain Merquise did not show his face around the office for the rest of the day. He did rush the Tallgeese back to Mars College, barely in time for his wife to make her board meeting without raising any suspicions as to her unusually long lunch break. He could not help a mischievous grin as she turned and dashed out of the hangar, the back of her business suit and blouse visibly rumpled. On the other hand, there hadn't been any time to do anything about his cranberry sauce stain, either, which made them even.
He took a walk around the college's long row of hangars, poking and prodding under the hatch of every single mobile suit he saw. He figured Mars College must have a skyrocketing budget to afford all those toys. Either that, or some of the best budding mobile suit engineers, who routinely put stuff like that together out of scrap metal as part of their term projects.
He noticed how most suits had been retrofitted with tools for use in Terraforming applications, such as shovel arms and crop-dusting siphons. He even saw a couple of gundanium suits that would have looked just about identical to the Heavyarms and the Sandrock, had they not sported a bulldozer head and a seed-launching mechanism instead of the heavy artillery and two swinging scimitars that characterized the original Gundams. He snickered for a moment, wondering how Maxwell or Chang, or his brother-in-law, for that matter, would have reacted if approached by one of Noin's graduating students who wanted to do a remake of their Gundams, and turn them into lean, mean field-fertilizing machines...
His jaw literally dropped as he came to the last hangar, and saw that it was
filled exclusively with vintage, original-design suits, just as OZ and the
colonies had used in the war. Leos, Aries's, a mint-condition Wing Zero,
and a couple of versions of the Tallgeese. Even Noin's "old
faithful", her beloved white Taurus, was there. He couldn't help but
noticing how each and every one of those suits bore the Preventers insignia
somewhere on its body. A smile of dawning understanding spread all over
his face.
"So that's where the Preventers budget ends up," he smirked, suddenly
not minding at all the IKEA furniture and less-than-state-of-the-art computer
equipment, "I should think as Captain, it would be my duty to periodically
test-drive the equipment..." And with that, he made a dash up the
metal stairs, headed straight for Wing Zero.
"That Yuy git never let me take it for a spin, even now that we're
family..."
********************
As the sun went down that day, he was sitting on the benches of the local ice arena, a steaming cup of apple cider in one hand, while the other rested on his wife's knee. The two proud parents, and their squirming one-year-old, watched in rapture as a swarm of eight-year-old sugarplum fairies twirled and practiced double-axles , the notes of the Nutcracker playing in the background.
As the practice session ended, his heart literally melted when Victoria
Merquise practically flew to him, skates and all, and flung her arms around his
neck.
"Daddy, you're back," she whispered excitedly in his ear, as though
sharing a huge secret.
"I am, pumpkin," he replied, returning the hug, "I'm home."
He never even noticed the bright orange tow-truck, nor the young African-American fellow behind the wheel, as they all huddled together and exited onto the parking lot...
(to be continued...)