Chapter 9: Come Away With Me
He had just figured out which numbers to punch in on the buzzer when a couple of young urbanites appeared behind him, cappuccinos in hand, giggling and huddling from the cold the way that new lovers often do on a chilly winter's day, and let themselves in. They were kind enough to hold the door for him, and yet, the first thought that came to his mind as they shared the elevator ride was more along the lines of whether the two always let complete strangers into the building.
"I could be a serial killer, for all they know..."
He chalked it up to a case of "Once a Preventer, Always a Preventer"-type paranoia versus the Yuletide Fuzzies as the elevator stopped at his floor, and the young couple wished him a merry Christmas before continuing on to their own.
"This is it," he braced himself before ringing the doorbell. Had there been a mirror in the elevator, he would have been sure to check that his hair didn't look like a complete wind-blown mess, but that was, alas, wishful thinking.
Imagine the surprise on Milliardo Peacecraft's face as he was greeted at the door not by the lovely black-haired woman that he so longed and dreaded to see at once, but by a wrinkly, far-too-tanned Howard, wearing a garish red and green shirt with reindeers and Santas.
"Holy crap... Zechs?!" the older man exclaimed jovially as he proceeded to land him a bear hug, then promptly corrected himself, "oh... sorry, buddy... guess you go by Milliardo now, eh? How've you been?"
The disappointment must have been evident on his face, because as soon as Howard released him, he gave the younger man a lopsided grin of complicity, then jerked his thumb towards a door off to the side.
"Guess you're here to see Noin, huh? She's in there..."
He then proceeded to holler, loud enough for her to hear over the Celtic Christmas carols playing in the background,
"Hey, sugar... I'm gonna go over to my sister to see if she needs any help with the turkey an' stuff... I'll see you later, 'kay?" and with that, he promptly made his escape before she even had the chance to protest or, for that matter, ask who was at the door.
"At least help me get this box down," Milliardo heard her plead from the other room, just as the door slammed shut, "Howard? Aw, man... You suck!"
Like clockwork, his Damsel-in-Distress radar kicked in, and he figured that, while he couldn't very well spend the rest of Christmas day lurking around in Noin's foyer, he could go lend a helping hand and, maybe, make enough of a positive impression with his gesture, that he may once again stand a chance with her.
He walked into the adjacent room, and saw her standing on top of a tall ladder, facing away from him. He noticed right away that she was wearing a very flattering pair of jeans and a Mars College hoodie, and could have easily passed for one of her own students. Her hair, just about as long as he had pictured it in his glimpse, was tied up in a messy ponytail, wisps of it escaping the elastic every time her head moved. He was willing to bet that she wasn't expecting company, yet she had never looked lovelier to him. He still couldn't quite figure out how Howard fit in the picture, or why, for that matter, he had called her "sugar" and gotten away with it without any broken limbs, but he wasn't going to fret too much about that for the time being.
She was trying, from the looks of it, to pull down a large cardboard box from the top shelf of a wall-to-wall closet. She had managed, that is, to slide the box out of its tight corner, and now had it balanced precariously on the ladder's front rail, wondering how in the heck she was going to get it to the floor without dropping it in the process.
Without a word, he stepped beside the ladder, and reached up to grab the sides of the box, while she went back to explore the recesses of the closet for more old junk to take out of storage.
"Thanks for coming back," she said without looking down, once she felt the box no longer propped up against her upper body, "This one's a heavy one, so careful with your back, ok, Howard?"
He couldn't help smiling at her absent-mindedness as he prepared to give her the shock of her life.
"No problem," he replied in his unmistakably un-Howard-ish husky tone, and made a point to look directly at her as she turned around startled, then yelped, jumped, and lost her balance.
He was quick to catch her before she could actually fall off the ladder's platform, but could not salvage the box. He cringed as his innocent prank backfired, and the contents of the box, which he could now recognize as Noin's old Academy books and class notes, were ejected and scattered into a thousand directions.
"Sorry," he muttered sheepishly and looked away as he released his hold on her waist. He had tried to play it cool and sneak up on her like he used to do back in the Academy, but had only succeeded in looking like a complete immature prat instead. That, and almost giving her a heart attack...
"Zechs," she gasped, still trying to catch her breath, "Oh... sorry... It's Milliardo now, right? I keep forgetting..."
When he finally looked at her face, he saw that she was smiling. Not smirking, or giving him one of those "You stupid twit" sneers that Dorothy was so very skilled at, but actually smiling, like she was genuinely happy to see him, for whatever reason.
"I didn't expect you to come over," she fumbled as she began to swat dust from her clothes, now looking quite embarrassed herself. He began to think that showing up unannounced and uninvited had been entirely rude of him.
"I mean... I'm a mess... the place is a mess..."
And yet, next thing he knew, she had stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Now, that, he had not expected! That she would be guarded, or uncomfortable around him, that she would tread with caution and treat him with polite detachment, even that she would still be royally peeved at him and slam the door in his face and tell him to go to hell... now that, he was fully prepared for. Lucrezia Noin walking up to him and hugging him and wishing him a merry Christmas, on the other hand, was completely and utterly bizarre, and he was not quite sure how to react to that.
"It's good to see you," she finally greeted as she released him and casually started collecting the mess of books on the floor, leaving him even more mystified,
"It's been far too long... Hey, these are exactly the notes I was looking for! Cool..."
They made quick work of the room, both picking and shuffling and stacking the loose sheets of paper in silence. There was one thing about Noin's class notes, he remembered as he sorted each by date: once you learned how to decipher her chicken scratch, they were the most thorough and organized study resource that money could buy...
"I was just about to make some tea..." she offered, "Unless you have to be somewhere else, that is..."
He was quick to accept, quite adamant that he didn't need to be at Relena's until just before dinnertime. He saw her head straight for the kitchen, where she put on a funky hen-shaped kettle and pointed to a plate heaping with gingerbread cookies.
"Help yourself," she invited as she grabbed a star-shaped cookie for herself and began munching on it.
"Don't worry, I didn't bake them," she pointed out as she saw him hesitate, "I'm sorry to say that I still can't bake worth squat. Abby made them... that's Howard's sister, who he just deserted me for..."
He thanked her and picked a gingerbread man, then scrutinized it for a while. His dilemma wasn't quite whether he should be biting off an arm or the head first, but rather, what to make of the odd feeling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of her being so close to Howard's family relations. He knew for a fact that the dirty old man had made no secret of finding Noin-sensei quite the captivating young lady, back when she first left Victoria Lake to fight alongside him. And he also knew that she had great professional respect for Howard's technical skills, and had wanted to recruit him for Terraformer on several occasions. But anything beyond that was simply... wrong.
"Now, I know peppermint's your favourite, but what do you think of this?" she interrupted his flow of thought, then held out a tin container for him to sniff.
"Victorian Christmas blend," she explained.
It smelled like something from his childhood. Cranberries, mulling spices and orange peel, quite liberal with the cinnamon and cloves. And something else that he couldn't quite place.
"I love the rose petals, they're such a unique touch," she added as she reached for two mugs and pulled the kettle from the stove as soon as it started whistling.
Roses, that was it. His mother had been very fond of a tea that smelled just like that. He remembered how she would make it for him every time he caught a cold, and how they would sit by the fire and she would read to him. Even his father sometimes joined in, and the two royal parents would alternate reciting the lines for the little prince, making funny voices to match with the story's dialogue. That simple remedy, administered with such tender loving care, always managed to make him feel so much better...
"That'll be fine," he agreed, surprised at how distant his voice had come out sounding. He found it hard to rationalize, and yet, a part of him was alarmed by Noin's perfectly warm and friendly demeanor. It was as if, in a way, he had wanted her to still be mad at him, to openly resent him and make him work hard to regain her friendship and respect, rather than having her treat him as if they were still old school buddies, and nothing of real consequence had ever happened between them to jeopardize that.
He resolved to ask her just that, as they sat down in the living room to have their tea and catch up on the past.
"What made you call me, after all these years?" he cut to the chase, aware of exactly how his directness must have sounded rude and obnoxious to anyone else who didn't know him nearly as well as she did. She seemed slightly taken aback for a split second, before her enigmatic smile clicked into place once again.
"I missed being friends with you," she replied candidly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, "I mean, we got so caught up in our busy lives and day-to-day stuff that we got completely disconnected and ended up losing touch for the past... what? Ten years?"
"Ten years and twenty-four days, actually..." he corrected, unable to ignore the sting of knowing that she was no longer keeping count of their time apart.
It had been their ritual ever since the Academy. Soon after he had turned thirteen, he had told her about his identity, and how he detested spending his summer vacations at the Khushrenadas', who had been his legal guardians at the time. She had been the one to come up with the idea, and had even given Treize's parents the code name of "the Dursleys", so that they could poke fun at them in their correspondence without risk of detection. Admittedly, Mrs. Khushrenada had never had the slightest clue, considering herself well above all that Harry Potter low-brow junk that cadet Noin had introduced him to, but he had a feeling that Treize had known all along and had a few laughs himself.
Every June, on their last day of school, they would calculate exactly how many days there were to go before the start of the new school year. They would say goodbye and then, every September, they would meet again, giddy with excitement, and know exactly how much time had elapsed. That secret ritual had seen them through many a dangerous mission, long after their graduation.
He had to know how much of it she had forgotten.
"Is this your version of the story?" he inquired, "that we just... grew apart and were too lazy to keep in touch?"
"Partly, yes," she replied, then corrected herself right away, "I'm not sure it had anything to do with laziness per se. I think it had more to do with wanting to give each other space, and being too proud and too stubborn to call, and what have you... The fact remains that it's been far too long since we've talked or seen each other, and that just plain sucks. Why... what is your side of the story?" she then prompted.
"My side of the story?" he began, "Well... let's see... I ran off to Sanq to try my hand at politics, and left you to deal with all the crap of Terraformer. Which, might I add, you had only joined to keep my ass out of trouble, as I recall I was pretty messed up in the head at the time. What else? Oh, right, I chickened out at the thought of a long-distance relationship, was too proud to ask you to move to Sanq with me, and broke up with you right before Valentine's day, over the phone like a complete coward, and never even offered a decent explanation as to why. Overall, not one of my best moments."
Her expression went from curiosity to worry and disappointment. Even her body language shut him out for a second as she drew back and collected her thoughts. He could have sworn right there and then, that she had debated over how appropriate it would be to reach for his hand, and decided against it.
"Zechs, I'm not going to sit here and lie to you," she finally announced, leaning forward and closing both hands around the warmth of her tea mug,
"You broke my heart. You did, and I'm not going to try and tell you otherwise just to make you feel better. And yeah, for a while, life was the pits. It sucks when you lose the one person that you fancied yourself growing old with, and you don't even know why. But eventually I got over it. Life goes on, and if it didn't work out between us, well, then maybe it wasn't really meant to be..."
"Or maybe it just wasn't the right time," he pointed out, refusing to allow that it may indeed be too late.
"Quite possibly," she conceded, still not losing her train of thought, "Who knows what might have happened if we had taken it slower? We both needed to recover from a lot of stuff from the war... But the thing is, we got so caught up in blaming ourselves and each other for why things didn't work out, that we ended up forgetting the things that did work, and letting our friendship go down the drain as well... It's like... throwing away the baby along with the poopy diaper!"
He watched her cheeks flush as she realized what she had just blurted out. "Right... bathroom humour in the middle of having proper English tea with royalty... And I buggered up your name, to boot... yeah... anyway..." she cringed.
"Whichever name you're most comfortable with," he countered, then debated over how to continue on, "It's still me..."
He just about called her Luce, like he had used to all those years ago, but in the end decided against it for the time being. Right now, he hadn't earned that right yet.
"Quite effective analogy, though," he commented, now having experienced babies and diapers himself, courtesy of his recent glimpse. He wondered for a second whether he should tell her of what he had learned...
"Look, Ze... Milliardo, I know hindsight is 20/20," she continued, her voice betraying the fact that she was still feeling pretty self-conscious about her gaffe,
"But nothing was worth losing my best friend... I was hoping we could, at the very least, stop feeling like we have to avoid each other..."
"I was hoping for more than that," he countered, and watched her look away uncomfortably for a moment, "I was hoping you could forgive me for being such a prat, and we could get to know each other all over again. I don't expect it to be just like it was; it would be pretty unrealistic... But maybe, in due time, we could learn to be friends again."
"That sounds like a fair deal," she accepted, and he felt a sizable weight being lifted from his chest. Their two goofy grins mirrored each other, and slowly the tension began to melt. This was exactly what he had hoped for... it was once again starting to feel natural to be in each other's presence. Maybe, just maybe it wouldn't be too inappropriate if he were to casually ask her to come by Relena's Christmas party later that evening...
CRASH!!! MEOWWWW! CLANG!!!
They both turned around startled at the sudden commotion, only to see a collapsed Christmas tree in the adjacent reading room, and a big, fat tuxedo cat tangled in a mess of lights and ornaments, squirming to break free. Milliardo fought to keep a straight face, even as his perfect moment had just been spoiled. Noin just grimaced and shook her head in exasperation.
"Looks like I picked the pretty one in the litter," she grumbled as she strode over to the disaster scene, then began to untangle the cat, all the while dodging claws.
"Ow... son of a... Hey, Zechs... How would you like to adopt a cat? Bet you my mom won't even miss him..."
He set aside all thoughts of the party for the time being, and helped her dispose of any broken ornaments. Together, they did their best to straighten up the Christmas tree, which, by that point, had lost a good portion of its needles all over the rug and chaise lounge.
"Sorry..." she apologized sheepishly, "He's got a thing for Christmas trees. Last year, he tore down mine, too..."
"Wow... Quite the traveler, for a house cat..." Milliardo couldn't help but comment, "All the way to Mars?"
"Mars?" Noin cocked her head in confusion, then clued in right away, "Oh... Right... No, actually... I haven't been there in ages..."
Now it was Milliardo's turn to be puzzled.
"Oh... I just thought..." and pointed to the Mars College logo on her sweater, "I mean... I heard that ... Didn't you start the College?"
"Yeah, a bunch of us from Terraformer did," she confirmed, "But I got out of it pretty early on after it was all settled... The pay wasn't all that great," she explained, "and besides, I wasn't ready to put down roots..."
"So when did you come back to Earth?" Milliardo inquired, now quite curious.
"About four years ago," she pondered casually, "I got offered a job designing similar programs for other military academies... You know, with the whole industry being down, recruitments at an all-time low... All those prestigious schools had to reinvent themselves to survive and figured that, if Mars had started a successful program teaching peaceful applications of mobile suit technology, they darn well should too."
"Very cool," he congratulated her, "Relena attended a conference about that not too long ago... She was so impressed that she started talking about setting up grants right away. So where have you been stationed?"
"Oh, you know... Just about everywhere. Aussie lured me away at first... then Vicki Lake started paying attention and jumped on the bandwagon, then Corsica... That was fun, being able to take day trips into Italy. Then they asked me to help set up a new training base in Newfoundland... Genius that I am, I agreed to go there in January... Needless to say, never again! And last but not least, I've been stationed in London for about a year and a half now...."
London was good, he thought. Very good, in fact. He had spent the past few hours wondering about the logistics of rebuilding their relationship, if they each lived and worked in two different parts of the Solar System. But London was less than an hour away by air... He could easily pop by for the weekend, and from the sounds of it, she also liked to visit Sanq quite regularly. That almost made them neighbours, as far as he was concerned!
They spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on each other's lives, rediscovering how right it felt to just be together, reminiscing and sharing a few laughs. He had soon found out that she was still very much single, courtesy of her refusal to settle in any one place for too long, be that physically or emotionally.
She was in Sanq for the holidays to present a textbook that she and Howard had just finished collaborating on. It was to be the first of its kind to deal with Gundam technology, and she could foresee it raising quite a few eyebrows at first. After all, Gundams were still regarded as terrifying war machines by a large portion of Earth's population, much more so than other run-of-the-mill mobile suits like those that OZ had employed. But her experience had also proven that Gundam-derived suits, extremely modular by design, were the ones that could most easily be retrofitted and employed successfully for terraforming and other peaceful applications.
The sun had long set over the city's skyline, even brighter with the addition of Christmastime decorations, when Noin brought up the other reason why she had made that phone call to his office the day before.
"I was going through some of my old stuff, and I came across something that belongs to you," she said, then quickly disappeared up the stairs to the loft where the master bedroom must have been.
She came back down a moment later carrying a gift-wrapped box the size of a large book, and he felt like a bit of an inconsiderate twit, having shown up empty-handed instead.
"You must have left it behind when you left Mars," she explained, then prompted him to go ahead and open it up.
Inside was a leather-bound photo album, which he recognized right away as the very same one that his mother had started when he was born. It contained all his baby pictures, and some of Relena's as well, right up until the summer before the fall of Sanq. The rest of the pictures in there had been taken by Noin herself during their academy days. He used to poke fun of her habit of always carrying a digital camera in her school bag, "just in case", but had to admit that the school's yearbook was always a hoot, courtesy of her candid-camera shots of the students and faculty.
"Holy cow, look at that hair," he chuckled a bit melancholically at a picture of himself as a five-year-old, perched on top of a pony. Poofy shocks of Scandinavian-blonde hair poked out of his riding helmet at both sides, but the little boy didn't seem to care at all, engrossed as he was in the excitement of having just received his very own pony for his birthday.
"I was going to drop it off at Relena's," Noin commented softly, not wanting to intrude in his reminiscing, yet feeling like she owed an explanation, "But she gave me your work number instead..."
"Crap... Relena," Milliardo suddenly remembered. He checked the time, and was quite alarmed to find out that he was conspicuously late for his sister's dinner party. So late, in fact, that he was sure he had entirely missed the whole "dinner" aspect of it.
Noin panicked as well at her own lateness to the Webbers' Christmas party, and immediately got on the phone and began apologizing a mile a minute to the hostess. Milliardo could tell from the gist of the conversation that Abby had somewhat expected her to be delayed by "other things", and was not offended in the least, but Noin was in quite a frazzle over it nonetheless. Even Howard, at one point, had to get on the phone to reassure her that no harm was done.
Milliardo watched with amusement as Noin's face turned crimson-red, as though Howard had just made a very saucy remark.
"Oh, gimme a break! That is so not what's going on, you potty-head!" she defended herself, blushing even more, and he knew right away by the way she hushed the receiver that, whatever the joke was, it definitely had something to do with him and clothing, or a lack thereof.
He had a feeling that Relena would not be so easy-peasy. One of his resolutions since waking up from his glimpse had been to start spending more time getting closer to his circle of family and friends, and somehow, missing Christmas dinner by a mile was not quite his idea of accomplishing that. Especially since he had already neglected to show up at the previous night's Christmas Eve get-together...
He dialed his sister's private number, and systematically ran through and dismissed all the standard excuses that he had used in the past as he waited for her to pick up.
"Hey, stranger," she greeted him cheerfully instead. He speculated that she must have already had at least a couple of glasses of wine... either that, or she was up to something. Not wanting to take any chances, he began to apologize profusely for his lateness, which she promptly cut off.
"You don't have to explain anything," she insisted, sounding rather giggly, "Howard called Duo when a certain Miss Noin didn't show up to Christmas dinner with his family, and asked whether she was here with you instead... I think it's so great that you guys have reconnected! Don't feel like you have to come by on my account, I know how these things go... Take all the privacy that you two need!"
Oh, great, he thought. His sister, Mrs. Matchmaker Extraordinaire, had already been tipped off and, if he knew her well enough, was already scheming... This could be interesting, alright...
"Look, Relena, this is not what you think," he warned, only to be summarily dismissed.
"Nonsense!" the young minister replied, "I'm sending over Pagan with some dinner and a nice bottle of wine for you guys... you must be ravenous! Light up the Christmas tree... you guys have one, right? 'Cause I can send one over..."
"Yes, Lena, we do, but you really don't have to..."
"Miles... shut up and listen for once. Light up that Christmas tree, put on some music, and enjoy a nice intimate dinner with her, ok?"
"Lena, it's not... we're not... aw, man..."
"Nuh-uh... talk to the hand! May I recommend Norah Jones? Did the trick for Heero and me... Anything else you guys need, just give me a call and I'll send it over! We'll talk tomorrow, ok? Bye!"
He stared in disbelief at his cell phone, looking quite peeved. His sister had just hung up on him! How he was going to break the whole "romantic dinner" idea to Noin, he hadn't the slightest clue. Last time he checked, they had only agreed to rekindle their friendship...
She looked at him, an expression of complete befuddlement and helplessness on her face as she ended her own phone conversation with Howard.
"Zechs... I think we're being conspired against," she announced with a frustrated sigh, "Abby's sending over dessert. Apparently, we're both banned from her and your sister's homes for the rest of the evening... Whatever this whole thing is about, they're in on it together and, quite frankly, that scares the hell out of me..."
He pondered for a second the thought of Relena and Howard ganging up on them, and shuddered. One was known for her mad-dog determination, the other for his ingenuity and deviousness. One was an incurable romantic, the other a complete whack-job. Overall, that did indeed paint a rather frightening picture... Frightening, yet strangely welcome nonetheless.
"I think we'd better roll with it," he suggested with a resigned smile, "for the sake of our own sanity..."
"Mmm... yep," Noin agreed in mock-defeat after a moment of silence, "We could probably take them separately, but together... those two are a force to be reckoned with."
*************************
As Christmas Day, 208 A.C. drew to a close, a ginger-haired shadow of a man walked down a snow-covered sidewalk in Sanq's capital, yet strangely left no footprints. He spared a glance up to a trendy condo of artsy loft-studios, and smiled in utter satisfaction for a job masterfully done.
In front of one unit's floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbour and the city, a couple slow-danced rather bashfully in the dim light of candles and a Christmas tree. If he strained his now heightened sense of hearing, he could even make out the melody playing softly in the background.
"I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows
knee-high
So won't you try to come?
Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me and I'll never stop
Loving you..."
The beginning!
Author's Note: Than you so very much to all of you who poked, prodded, and otherwise motivated me to finish this project! I know I can be a real slowpoke, and I've often thought of dropping this fic entirely, despite being very fond of it myself, in favour of other things that took priority in my life. Thank you for bearing with me and my wishy-washiness, and for not letting me give up on a good thing.
Hope your Christmas was just as magical as theirs...
He had just figured out which numbers to punch in on the buzzer when a couple of young urbanites appeared behind him, cappuccinos in hand, giggling and huddling from the cold the way that new lovers often do on a chilly winter's day, and let themselves in. They were kind enough to hold the door for him, and yet, the first thought that came to his mind as they shared the elevator ride was more along the lines of whether the two always let complete strangers into the building.
"I could be a serial killer, for all they know..."
He chalked it up to a case of "Once a Preventer, Always a Preventer"-type paranoia versus the Yuletide Fuzzies as the elevator stopped at his floor, and the young couple wished him a merry Christmas before continuing on to their own.
"This is it," he braced himself before ringing the doorbell. Had there been a mirror in the elevator, he would have been sure to check that his hair didn't look like a complete wind-blown mess, but that was, alas, wishful thinking.
Imagine the surprise on Milliardo Peacecraft's face as he was greeted at the door not by the lovely black-haired woman that he so longed and dreaded to see at once, but by a wrinkly, far-too-tanned Howard, wearing a garish red and green shirt with reindeers and Santas.
"Holy crap... Zechs?!" the older man exclaimed jovially as he proceeded to land him a bear hug, then promptly corrected himself, "oh... sorry, buddy... guess you go by Milliardo now, eh? How've you been?"
The disappointment must have been evident on his face, because as soon as Howard released him, he gave the younger man a lopsided grin of complicity, then jerked his thumb towards a door off to the side.
"Guess you're here to see Noin, huh? She's in there..."
He then proceeded to holler, loud enough for her to hear over the Celtic Christmas carols playing in the background,
"Hey, sugar... I'm gonna go over to my sister to see if she needs any help with the turkey an' stuff... I'll see you later, 'kay?" and with that, he promptly made his escape before she even had the chance to protest or, for that matter, ask who was at the door.
"At least help me get this box down," Milliardo heard her plead from the other room, just as the door slammed shut, "Howard? Aw, man... You suck!"
Like clockwork, his Damsel-in-Distress radar kicked in, and he figured that, while he couldn't very well spend the rest of Christmas day lurking around in Noin's foyer, he could go lend a helping hand and, maybe, make enough of a positive impression with his gesture, that he may once again stand a chance with her.
He walked into the adjacent room, and saw her standing on top of a tall ladder, facing away from him. He noticed right away that she was wearing a very flattering pair of jeans and a Mars College hoodie, and could have easily passed for one of her own students. Her hair, just about as long as he had pictured it in his glimpse, was tied up in a messy ponytail, wisps of it escaping the elastic every time her head moved. He was willing to bet that she wasn't expecting company, yet she had never looked lovelier to him. He still couldn't quite figure out how Howard fit in the picture, or why, for that matter, he had called her "sugar" and gotten away with it without any broken limbs, but he wasn't going to fret too much about that for the time being.
She was trying, from the looks of it, to pull down a large cardboard box from the top shelf of a wall-to-wall closet. She had managed, that is, to slide the box out of its tight corner, and now had it balanced precariously on the ladder's front rail, wondering how in the heck she was going to get it to the floor without dropping it in the process.
Without a word, he stepped beside the ladder, and reached up to grab the sides of the box, while she went back to explore the recesses of the closet for more old junk to take out of storage.
"Thanks for coming back," she said without looking down, once she felt the box no longer propped up against her upper body, "This one's a heavy one, so careful with your back, ok, Howard?"
He couldn't help smiling at her absent-mindedness as he prepared to give her the shock of her life.
"No problem," he replied in his unmistakably un-Howard-ish husky tone, and made a point to look directly at her as she turned around startled, then yelped, jumped, and lost her balance.
He was quick to catch her before she could actually fall off the ladder's platform, but could not salvage the box. He cringed as his innocent prank backfired, and the contents of the box, which he could now recognize as Noin's old Academy books and class notes, were ejected and scattered into a thousand directions.
"Sorry," he muttered sheepishly and looked away as he released his hold on her waist. He had tried to play it cool and sneak up on her like he used to do back in the Academy, but had only succeeded in looking like a complete immature prat instead. That, and almost giving her a heart attack...
"Zechs," she gasped, still trying to catch her breath, "Oh... sorry... It's Milliardo now, right? I keep forgetting..."
When he finally looked at her face, he saw that she was smiling. Not smirking, or giving him one of those "You stupid twit" sneers that Dorothy was so very skilled at, but actually smiling, like she was genuinely happy to see him, for whatever reason.
"I didn't expect you to come over," she fumbled as she began to swat dust from her clothes, now looking quite embarrassed herself. He began to think that showing up unannounced and uninvited had been entirely rude of him.
"I mean... I'm a mess... the place is a mess..."
And yet, next thing he knew, she had stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Now, that, he had not expected! That she would be guarded, or uncomfortable around him, that she would tread with caution and treat him with polite detachment, even that she would still be royally peeved at him and slam the door in his face and tell him to go to hell... now that, he was fully prepared for. Lucrezia Noin walking up to him and hugging him and wishing him a merry Christmas, on the other hand, was completely and utterly bizarre, and he was not quite sure how to react to that.
"It's good to see you," she finally greeted as she released him and casually started collecting the mess of books on the floor, leaving him even more mystified,
"It's been far too long... Hey, these are exactly the notes I was looking for! Cool..."
They made quick work of the room, both picking and shuffling and stacking the loose sheets of paper in silence. There was one thing about Noin's class notes, he remembered as he sorted each by date: once you learned how to decipher her chicken scratch, they were the most thorough and organized study resource that money could buy...
"I was just about to make some tea..." she offered, "Unless you have to be somewhere else, that is..."
He was quick to accept, quite adamant that he didn't need to be at Relena's until just before dinnertime. He saw her head straight for the kitchen, where she put on a funky hen-shaped kettle and pointed to a plate heaping with gingerbread cookies.
"Help yourself," she invited as she grabbed a star-shaped cookie for herself and began munching on it.
"Don't worry, I didn't bake them," she pointed out as she saw him hesitate, "I'm sorry to say that I still can't bake worth squat. Abby made them... that's Howard's sister, who he just deserted me for..."
He thanked her and picked a gingerbread man, then scrutinized it for a while. His dilemma wasn't quite whether he should be biting off an arm or the head first, but rather, what to make of the odd feeling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of her being so close to Howard's family relations. He knew for a fact that the dirty old man had made no secret of finding Noin-sensei quite the captivating young lady, back when she first left Victoria Lake to fight alongside him. And he also knew that she had great professional respect for Howard's technical skills, and had wanted to recruit him for Terraformer on several occasions. But anything beyond that was simply... wrong.
"Now, I know peppermint's your favourite, but what do you think of this?" she interrupted his flow of thought, then held out a tin container for him to sniff.
"Victorian Christmas blend," she explained.
It smelled like something from his childhood. Cranberries, mulling spices and orange peel, quite liberal with the cinnamon and cloves. And something else that he couldn't quite place.
"I love the rose petals, they're such a unique touch," she added as she reached for two mugs and pulled the kettle from the stove as soon as it started whistling.
Roses, that was it. His mother had been very fond of a tea that smelled just like that. He remembered how she would make it for him every time he caught a cold, and how they would sit by the fire and she would read to him. Even his father sometimes joined in, and the two royal parents would alternate reciting the lines for the little prince, making funny voices to match with the story's dialogue. That simple remedy, administered with such tender loving care, always managed to make him feel so much better...
"That'll be fine," he agreed, surprised at how distant his voice had come out sounding. He found it hard to rationalize, and yet, a part of him was alarmed by Noin's perfectly warm and friendly demeanor. It was as if, in a way, he had wanted her to still be mad at him, to openly resent him and make him work hard to regain her friendship and respect, rather than having her treat him as if they were still old school buddies, and nothing of real consequence had ever happened between them to jeopardize that.
He resolved to ask her just that, as they sat down in the living room to have their tea and catch up on the past.
"What made you call me, after all these years?" he cut to the chase, aware of exactly how his directness must have sounded rude and obnoxious to anyone else who didn't know him nearly as well as she did. She seemed slightly taken aback for a split second, before her enigmatic smile clicked into place once again.
"I missed being friends with you," she replied candidly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, "I mean, we got so caught up in our busy lives and day-to-day stuff that we got completely disconnected and ended up losing touch for the past... what? Ten years?"
"Ten years and twenty-four days, actually..." he corrected, unable to ignore the sting of knowing that she was no longer keeping count of their time apart.
It had been their ritual ever since the Academy. Soon after he had turned thirteen, he had told her about his identity, and how he detested spending his summer vacations at the Khushrenadas', who had been his legal guardians at the time. She had been the one to come up with the idea, and had even given Treize's parents the code name of "the Dursleys", so that they could poke fun at them in their correspondence without risk of detection. Admittedly, Mrs. Khushrenada had never had the slightest clue, considering herself well above all that Harry Potter low-brow junk that cadet Noin had introduced him to, but he had a feeling that Treize had known all along and had a few laughs himself.
Every June, on their last day of school, they would calculate exactly how many days there were to go before the start of the new school year. They would say goodbye and then, every September, they would meet again, giddy with excitement, and know exactly how much time had elapsed. That secret ritual had seen them through many a dangerous mission, long after their graduation.
He had to know how much of it she had forgotten.
"Is this your version of the story?" he inquired, "that we just... grew apart and were too lazy to keep in touch?"
"Partly, yes," she replied, then corrected herself right away, "I'm not sure it had anything to do with laziness per se. I think it had more to do with wanting to give each other space, and being too proud and too stubborn to call, and what have you... The fact remains that it's been far too long since we've talked or seen each other, and that just plain sucks. Why... what is your side of the story?" she then prompted.
"My side of the story?" he began, "Well... let's see... I ran off to Sanq to try my hand at politics, and left you to deal with all the crap of Terraformer. Which, might I add, you had only joined to keep my ass out of trouble, as I recall I was pretty messed up in the head at the time. What else? Oh, right, I chickened out at the thought of a long-distance relationship, was too proud to ask you to move to Sanq with me, and broke up with you right before Valentine's day, over the phone like a complete coward, and never even offered a decent explanation as to why. Overall, not one of my best moments."
Her expression went from curiosity to worry and disappointment. Even her body language shut him out for a second as she drew back and collected her thoughts. He could have sworn right there and then, that she had debated over how appropriate it would be to reach for his hand, and decided against it.
"Zechs, I'm not going to sit here and lie to you," she finally announced, leaning forward and closing both hands around the warmth of her tea mug,
"You broke my heart. You did, and I'm not going to try and tell you otherwise just to make you feel better. And yeah, for a while, life was the pits. It sucks when you lose the one person that you fancied yourself growing old with, and you don't even know why. But eventually I got over it. Life goes on, and if it didn't work out between us, well, then maybe it wasn't really meant to be..."
"Or maybe it just wasn't the right time," he pointed out, refusing to allow that it may indeed be too late.
"Quite possibly," she conceded, still not losing her train of thought, "Who knows what might have happened if we had taken it slower? We both needed to recover from a lot of stuff from the war... But the thing is, we got so caught up in blaming ourselves and each other for why things didn't work out, that we ended up forgetting the things that did work, and letting our friendship go down the drain as well... It's like... throwing away the baby along with the poopy diaper!"
He watched her cheeks flush as she realized what she had just blurted out. "Right... bathroom humour in the middle of having proper English tea with royalty... And I buggered up your name, to boot... yeah... anyway..." she cringed.
"Whichever name you're most comfortable with," he countered, then debated over how to continue on, "It's still me..."
He just about called her Luce, like he had used to all those years ago, but in the end decided against it for the time being. Right now, he hadn't earned that right yet.
"Quite effective analogy, though," he commented, now having experienced babies and diapers himself, courtesy of his recent glimpse. He wondered for a second whether he should tell her of what he had learned...
"Look, Ze... Milliardo, I know hindsight is 20/20," she continued, her voice betraying the fact that she was still feeling pretty self-conscious about her gaffe,
"But nothing was worth losing my best friend... I was hoping we could, at the very least, stop feeling like we have to avoid each other..."
"I was hoping for more than that," he countered, and watched her look away uncomfortably for a moment, "I was hoping you could forgive me for being such a prat, and we could get to know each other all over again. I don't expect it to be just like it was; it would be pretty unrealistic... But maybe, in due time, we could learn to be friends again."
"That sounds like a fair deal," she accepted, and he felt a sizable weight being lifted from his chest. Their two goofy grins mirrored each other, and slowly the tension began to melt. This was exactly what he had hoped for... it was once again starting to feel natural to be in each other's presence. Maybe, just maybe it wouldn't be too inappropriate if he were to casually ask her to come by Relena's Christmas party later that evening...
CRASH!!! MEOWWWW! CLANG!!!
They both turned around startled at the sudden commotion, only to see a collapsed Christmas tree in the adjacent reading room, and a big, fat tuxedo cat tangled in a mess of lights and ornaments, squirming to break free. Milliardo fought to keep a straight face, even as his perfect moment had just been spoiled. Noin just grimaced and shook her head in exasperation.
"Looks like I picked the pretty one in the litter," she grumbled as she strode over to the disaster scene, then began to untangle the cat, all the while dodging claws.
"Ow... son of a... Hey, Zechs... How would you like to adopt a cat? Bet you my mom won't even miss him..."
He set aside all thoughts of the party for the time being, and helped her dispose of any broken ornaments. Together, they did their best to straighten up the Christmas tree, which, by that point, had lost a good portion of its needles all over the rug and chaise lounge.
"Sorry..." she apologized sheepishly, "He's got a thing for Christmas trees. Last year, he tore down mine, too..."
"Wow... Quite the traveler, for a house cat..." Milliardo couldn't help but comment, "All the way to Mars?"
"Mars?" Noin cocked her head in confusion, then clued in right away, "Oh... Right... No, actually... I haven't been there in ages..."
Now it was Milliardo's turn to be puzzled.
"Oh... I just thought..." and pointed to the Mars College logo on her sweater, "I mean... I heard that ... Didn't you start the College?"
"Yeah, a bunch of us from Terraformer did," she confirmed, "But I got out of it pretty early on after it was all settled... The pay wasn't all that great," she explained, "and besides, I wasn't ready to put down roots..."
"So when did you come back to Earth?" Milliardo inquired, now quite curious.
"About four years ago," she pondered casually, "I got offered a job designing similar programs for other military academies... You know, with the whole industry being down, recruitments at an all-time low... All those prestigious schools had to reinvent themselves to survive and figured that, if Mars had started a successful program teaching peaceful applications of mobile suit technology, they darn well should too."
"Very cool," he congratulated her, "Relena attended a conference about that not too long ago... She was so impressed that she started talking about setting up grants right away. So where have you been stationed?"
"Oh, you know... Just about everywhere. Aussie lured me away at first... then Vicki Lake started paying attention and jumped on the bandwagon, then Corsica... That was fun, being able to take day trips into Italy. Then they asked me to help set up a new training base in Newfoundland... Genius that I am, I agreed to go there in January... Needless to say, never again! And last but not least, I've been stationed in London for about a year and a half now...."
London was good, he thought. Very good, in fact. He had spent the past few hours wondering about the logistics of rebuilding their relationship, if they each lived and worked in two different parts of the Solar System. But London was less than an hour away by air... He could easily pop by for the weekend, and from the sounds of it, she also liked to visit Sanq quite regularly. That almost made them neighbours, as far as he was concerned!
They spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on each other's lives, rediscovering how right it felt to just be together, reminiscing and sharing a few laughs. He had soon found out that she was still very much single, courtesy of her refusal to settle in any one place for too long, be that physically or emotionally.
She was in Sanq for the holidays to present a textbook that she and Howard had just finished collaborating on. It was to be the first of its kind to deal with Gundam technology, and she could foresee it raising quite a few eyebrows at first. After all, Gundams were still regarded as terrifying war machines by a large portion of Earth's population, much more so than other run-of-the-mill mobile suits like those that OZ had employed. But her experience had also proven that Gundam-derived suits, extremely modular by design, were the ones that could most easily be retrofitted and employed successfully for terraforming and other peaceful applications.
The sun had long set over the city's skyline, even brighter with the addition of Christmastime decorations, when Noin brought up the other reason why she had made that phone call to his office the day before.
"I was going through some of my old stuff, and I came across something that belongs to you," she said, then quickly disappeared up the stairs to the loft where the master bedroom must have been.
She came back down a moment later carrying a gift-wrapped box the size of a large book, and he felt like a bit of an inconsiderate twit, having shown up empty-handed instead.
"You must have left it behind when you left Mars," she explained, then prompted him to go ahead and open it up.
Inside was a leather-bound photo album, which he recognized right away as the very same one that his mother had started when he was born. It contained all his baby pictures, and some of Relena's as well, right up until the summer before the fall of Sanq. The rest of the pictures in there had been taken by Noin herself during their academy days. He used to poke fun of her habit of always carrying a digital camera in her school bag, "just in case", but had to admit that the school's yearbook was always a hoot, courtesy of her candid-camera shots of the students and faculty.
"Holy cow, look at that hair," he chuckled a bit melancholically at a picture of himself as a five-year-old, perched on top of a pony. Poofy shocks of Scandinavian-blonde hair poked out of his riding helmet at both sides, but the little boy didn't seem to care at all, engrossed as he was in the excitement of having just received his very own pony for his birthday.
"I was going to drop it off at Relena's," Noin commented softly, not wanting to intrude in his reminiscing, yet feeling like she owed an explanation, "But she gave me your work number instead..."
"Crap... Relena," Milliardo suddenly remembered. He checked the time, and was quite alarmed to find out that he was conspicuously late for his sister's dinner party. So late, in fact, that he was sure he had entirely missed the whole "dinner" aspect of it.
Noin panicked as well at her own lateness to the Webbers' Christmas party, and immediately got on the phone and began apologizing a mile a minute to the hostess. Milliardo could tell from the gist of the conversation that Abby had somewhat expected her to be delayed by "other things", and was not offended in the least, but Noin was in quite a frazzle over it nonetheless. Even Howard, at one point, had to get on the phone to reassure her that no harm was done.
Milliardo watched with amusement as Noin's face turned crimson-red, as though Howard had just made a very saucy remark.
"Oh, gimme a break! That is so not what's going on, you potty-head!" she defended herself, blushing even more, and he knew right away by the way she hushed the receiver that, whatever the joke was, it definitely had something to do with him and clothing, or a lack thereof.
He had a feeling that Relena would not be so easy-peasy. One of his resolutions since waking up from his glimpse had been to start spending more time getting closer to his circle of family and friends, and somehow, missing Christmas dinner by a mile was not quite his idea of accomplishing that. Especially since he had already neglected to show up at the previous night's Christmas Eve get-together...
He dialed his sister's private number, and systematically ran through and dismissed all the standard excuses that he had used in the past as he waited for her to pick up.
"Hey, stranger," she greeted him cheerfully instead. He speculated that she must have already had at least a couple of glasses of wine... either that, or she was up to something. Not wanting to take any chances, he began to apologize profusely for his lateness, which she promptly cut off.
"You don't have to explain anything," she insisted, sounding rather giggly, "Howard called Duo when a certain Miss Noin didn't show up to Christmas dinner with his family, and asked whether she was here with you instead... I think it's so great that you guys have reconnected! Don't feel like you have to come by on my account, I know how these things go... Take all the privacy that you two need!"
Oh, great, he thought. His sister, Mrs. Matchmaker Extraordinaire, had already been tipped off and, if he knew her well enough, was already scheming... This could be interesting, alright...
"Look, Relena, this is not what you think," he warned, only to be summarily dismissed.
"Nonsense!" the young minister replied, "I'm sending over Pagan with some dinner and a nice bottle of wine for you guys... you must be ravenous! Light up the Christmas tree... you guys have one, right? 'Cause I can send one over..."
"Yes, Lena, we do, but you really don't have to..."
"Miles... shut up and listen for once. Light up that Christmas tree, put on some music, and enjoy a nice intimate dinner with her, ok?"
"Lena, it's not... we're not... aw, man..."
"Nuh-uh... talk to the hand! May I recommend Norah Jones? Did the trick for Heero and me... Anything else you guys need, just give me a call and I'll send it over! We'll talk tomorrow, ok? Bye!"
He stared in disbelief at his cell phone, looking quite peeved. His sister had just hung up on him! How he was going to break the whole "romantic dinner" idea to Noin, he hadn't the slightest clue. Last time he checked, they had only agreed to rekindle their friendship...
She looked at him, an expression of complete befuddlement and helplessness on her face as she ended her own phone conversation with Howard.
"Zechs... I think we're being conspired against," she announced with a frustrated sigh, "Abby's sending over dessert. Apparently, we're both banned from her and your sister's homes for the rest of the evening... Whatever this whole thing is about, they're in on it together and, quite frankly, that scares the hell out of me..."
He pondered for a second the thought of Relena and Howard ganging up on them, and shuddered. One was known for her mad-dog determination, the other for his ingenuity and deviousness. One was an incurable romantic, the other a complete whack-job. Overall, that did indeed paint a rather frightening picture... Frightening, yet strangely welcome nonetheless.
"I think we'd better roll with it," he suggested with a resigned smile, "for the sake of our own sanity..."
"Mmm... yep," Noin agreed in mock-defeat after a moment of silence, "We could probably take them separately, but together... those two are a force to be reckoned with."
*************************
As Christmas Day, 208 A.C. drew to a close, a ginger-haired shadow of a man walked down a snow-covered sidewalk in Sanq's capital, yet strangely left no footprints. He spared a glance up to a trendy condo of artsy loft-studios, and smiled in utter satisfaction for a job masterfully done.
In front of one unit's floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbour and the city, a couple slow-danced rather bashfully in the dim light of candles and a Christmas tree. If he strained his now heightened sense of hearing, he could even make out the melody playing softly in the background.
"I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows
knee-high
So won't you try to come?
Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me and I'll never stop
Loving you..."
The beginning!
Author's Note: Than you so very much to all of you who poked, prodded, and otherwise motivated me to finish this project! I know I can be a real slowpoke, and I've often thought of dropping this fic entirely, despite being very fond of it myself, in favour of other things that took priority in my life. Thank you for bearing with me and my wishy-washiness, and for not letting me give up on a good thing.
Hope your Christmas was just as magical as theirs...