In a Sentimental Mood.
By: Licorice-Sama
Treize was lying in his bed, staring at the light that fell through the glass doors. Through them, a long balcony lined the façade of his family's retreat here in Verdun. His gaze did not move, and he lay with his head to his side, broad chest naked and exposed to the waist. The blankets were caught around his middle.
It was a warm night, and the perspiration lying warm and beaded on Treize's forehead and chest were evidence of that.
The silence in the room reminded him of the night he awoke to rain in a colony hospital. It was after his MS was hit by a kid with a beam cannon. He remembered the feel of the cotton bandages against his forehead, the thin, paper feeling of his hospital gown, and the nurse with soft, curling brown hair.
He had inquired about the rain to the nurse, just a girl really, and she had told him the situation.
What an incompetent, he had said of the leader of the colony, who had made it rain to extinguish a small fire.
I agree, she had replied. Her brown eyes watched him as he laid back against the white pillow that felt to be stuffed with only the thinnest layers of quilt batting. He much preferred the overstuffed feather pillows he lay against now.
All the bedding here was white, too. Well, it was that country white color they called cream that you always imagined to be in a chateau like this. Treize stared at the light on the rug before the balcony. One of the glass doors was open and he could smell the Russian Olives bordering the expanse of pastureland, and the honey lotus beneath the balcony.
He remembered the short flirtation he shared with Leia during his recuperation. Remembered the walks they would go on when he was able to leave the hospital bed. With such a simple political statement as that he had made when injured, the two began sharing kisses before she went home for the night. Their walks sometimes ended with his hands up her blouse and his mouth tracing the line of her neck, the lobe of her ear, or running his hands through her soft, thick brown curls.
I can't tell you I love you, she said one evening, when he walked her back to her room in Barton's mansion.
I wouldn't dream of it, he said with a slight curl of his lips, his eyes so very blue in the soft light of the hall. Leia smiled. She was wearing a navy blue dress with a white sailor's collar, and a barrette with a line of small, freshwater pearls pulled back the hair on the right side of her face. He felt a shiver ripple over her smooth, olive skin as he reached over to hold her hand.
I suppose it would only be polite to ask you in for a glass of wine? she said with a lift of exquisitely arched eyebrows. Treize heard Duke Ellington playing in the parlor downstairs. He didn't lose that smile. A few strands of gingery hair hung loosely over his brow.
I wouldn't want to impose, Miss Barton. He brought her hand up and kissed it.
Oh, never! Please, she had said in a whisper, I want you to stay. Treize reached over to the drawer of his black walnut nightstand. He opened it, pulled something out, and shut the drawer. He slid down to his previous position, looking at the ceiling, and held his prize in front of his face. It was a silver barrette lined with tiny pearls that shone almost opalescent in the moonlight coming to him with the scent of honey lotus and Russian Olive trees.
"Leia," he whispered. He closed his eyes and remembered the way he had held her that night as she slept. She clung to his side like a child; her long eyelashes resting on full cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. She was barely seventeen. He was barely seventeen, himself. He had fallen asleep that night with the lingering thought that he had corrupted something that he shouldn't have, but for the life of him he couldn't force himself to care.
He had begun to worry, however, when he returned to the front. Not that there was time to think when you were suppressing colonial rebellion with the business end of a beam cannon-wielding MS, but he worried anyway.
We used no protection, he thought once during an interminable meeting with the Romefeller Foundation, I may have impregnated the girl. And I was her first, too. I must find her, I must make sure she's not pregnant. I have a duty to her if she is.
But Treize never did call the girl. He thought about the way his hands had tangled in her soft brown hair, but he never put thought to paper and sent it to her.
The mail service is bugged anyway, he told himself, I don't want the tabloids finding this out. I'll never gain any rank if they do.
A week after his epiphany, the young soldier was called away to officer's training outside of Koblenz, and was consequently cut off from the outside world. As soon as training was complete, he received orders to purge a group of rebels on one of the outlying colonies of the Earth Sphere. He soon forgot about ever getting in touch with Leia. It seemed that every chance he got something kept pulling him away. With all the months of training, and fighting, and peacekeeping, and with hours of droning meetings, and vapid military balls, he soon lost the will to even attempt contact.
However, Leia's barrette he held now was carried always in the inside pocket of his uniform jacket, and every few months he would be awakened by a dream of the way Leia's hair had fallen around his face that night before he left. The way her lips felt against his before they drifted off to sleep. He wondered often, during meetings, if she had become pregnant. Had she terminated the pregnancy? Kept the child? Put it up for adoption?
Treize shook his head.
"Leia, I'm sorry."
He rolled over onto his side and slipped an arm under the feather pillow. He closed his eyes. Duke Ellington swept back to him, and he felt he was in the hallway again with Leia. He heard the sensual melody on clarinet, and felt her hand in his. Treize smiled.
In a sentimental mood,
I'm within a world so heavenly,
For I never dreamt that you'd
Be loving sentimental me.
.:FINIS:.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise. "In a Sentimental Mood" is by Duke Ellington. I'm not making any money off of this; I have non-fan fiction works for that, if I so desired, and this was only meant as a bit of fun. So don't sue me, cos I'm poor.
Author's Note: Aw, come on! Don't tell me Treize and Leia's scene in Episode ZERO didn't just reek of Hemingway! chants: It's not just in my head, it's not just in my head… Anyway, Did you like it? Hate it? Did it help to fill in the holes the first vignette left? Read & Review, please, so I can Rant & Revise. .
Luvs and Such, Licorice-Sama