Chapter Seven
I
The private shuttle touched down on Mars an eternity after he had boarded it. He felt a brief dizziness as he entered the atmosphere, so much different from that of the Earth, but once his senses readjusted to the Martian pressure the dull ache in his head came not from the new compression but from his fear. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before, different even from the terror he had experienced the night his parents died, and for the first time he found himself regretting he had ever become involved with the counteroffensive. His involvement was necessary, it seemed, but perhaps if he had never met Odin Lowe and agreed to work on this project this (whatever it was; he still had not been informed on that matter) would not have happened to Lucrezia.
Of course it wouldn't have happened, he told himself. If it were not for Odin Lowe and the counteroffensive and the man who called himself Alsirae Trecais but was once known to the world as Treize Kushrenada and his rising imperialism, he would never have left Lucrezia and she would be perfectly fine right now. And he really hadn't had to take on this mission — Odin and his growing army would either conquer or defeat Treize with or without him and if they fell and Treize took over, he and Lucrezia could have disappeared again, slipped away into the night and never returned. It was possible. They had done it immediately following the Mariemaia incident, and though at first it had been on Relena's orders, there had been a time when even Relena had not known their whereabouts, or Midii Une for that matter. There had been only the two of them for a while and they could easily return to that life. He was sure Lucrezia would even want to.
He sat back in the seat at the front of the shuttle's cab, which was empty save for himself, thinking back on those days. They had been tainted, yes, for even then Zechs had known about the new war that would arise, but he had been able to put all that in the back of his mind. Indeed, there had been entire days when he gave it not so much as a single thought. Not much had been on his mind then, nothing from his past or the future that awaited him. All that had mattered to him then was the present, and, of course, Lucrezia. Just as she always had, though (and as he realized this, the thought shamed him) he could only remember letting her know that twice. She was the real reason behind almost everything he had done after breaking away from OZ — everything he had not done for the sake of revenge for the deaths of his parents, he had done with Lucrezia in mind. When first approached by the late Quinze, Zechs had had no intention whatsoever of joining the White Fang, but then an image of her face had floated up behind his eyes and he had heard her words about all wars being meaningless, and he had known what he had to do. He had misled Quinze and the rest of the rebel citizens of the colonies, as well as the people of Earth and space, and he had threatened the complete destruction of the Earth, but not just to attain the world for which his father had died striving . The philosophy of the Peacecrafts had been a part of the reason, but behind it all had been Lucrezia and her hatred of warfare, and the memory of the night (so many years ago now) he had told her he would do anything to let her see a world without war and incessant bloodshed, and the even stronger the memory of how very much he had meant those words. He had staged the war for the sake of peace, but also for her and her desire to see an end to warfare. He had battled each of the Gundam pilots and if necessary he would have killed one of them to show both the colonies and the Earth even further how horrible war was, but he refrained from that one last murder because it would have hurt her too deeply. He had offered his life in place of all those who would be killed in battles to come for her happiness. And in the end, as the Epyon was ripped apart by its own force all around him, his last thoughts had been with her. Always with her.
When Relena had come to him when he led the White Fang, he had considered telling her the truth about what he was doing. He could have sent Quinze and Dorothy away long enough to explain to her what his true intentions were and how it was the only way to put an end to the fighting. If he thought it would help her to comprehend what he meant to do, he could have told her about his feelings for Lucrezia and how she affected his decisions. Relena, because of what she felt for Heero, would have understood then. She hadn't been able to see what he was doing when it was explained to her in the terms of destruction and violence, but when matters of the heart were brought into it, her eyes were suddenly opened. Zechs supposed it was her love of romance that would be both her inspiration and her downfall, though he could not explain why he thought this.
But he did not think it would have been right to bring how he felt about Lucrezia into that long-ago confrontation with his sister, and now he doubted he really could have explained that to Relena. Not when even Lucrezia had been left in the dark as to why he had joined White Fang, left alone in her pain and her damnable longing for him.
At first when they had left Earth that last time after the fall of Mariemaia, not a word had been spoken about that war or where Zechs had been for the year he was supposedly dead, but eventually he had, in his perpetual weakness, broken and told her everything. He left out all that had happened to him following the self-destruction of the Epyon up to his reemergence as a preventer, of course, but everything before those events he made known to her. He told her why he accepted Quinze's proposition, why he signed for the demolition of the Earth even when he wasn't going to let it come to such an extreme. He even told her how he had overestimated himself and had not been strong enough to control the Epyon's system during his battle with Heero (whom, he told her, had known of his intentions almost from the beginning). And after all that was said, he explained to her why he had done these things. She listened silently throughout his grim narrative, nodding occasionally but holding her tongue. He was only able to meet her eyes once he had finished and he found no expression there, and for a moment he thought she was going to strike him.
Her eyes had brightened then, and her lower lip trembled slightly. "Zechs, I'm sorry," she said, and before he could ask her what she could possibly be sorry for she had leaned against him and pressed her lips to his.
That had begun their relationship, distant as it was now. Nothing more needed to have been spoken regarding how they felt about each other; they fell into this new kind of relationship just as quickly and easily as they had sometimes fallen into a kiss all those years ago at Lake Victoria — though it had never progressed past a kiss in those days; that was something new — and for a while, at least, their lives had been almost perfect. The role in the terra-forming project was not underway yet and they still had some time before they had to report for duty; if there had been any other notifications regarding the project they had not received them, as even Relena had had trouble locating them. There had been one message from Une — something about a potential mission — but they had ignored it.
Lucrezia had asked him once what he had done for the one year he was supposed to be in the grave, to which he had replied, "I was dead, Luca."
She had considered this for a few minutes. When she spoke again she had dropped the subject of his death, and she never asked him about it again. "You don't have to call me that anymore."
He had smiled — how strange a true smile felt upon his face — and had known that she was telling him she would never fight as a soldier again. Only he knew why, for their final years at Victoria, her first name had been registered as Lucrezia but her instructors and fellow cadets alike had called her either by her last name or Luca.
Sitting alone in the shuttle, he smiled again at these memories, then immediately berated himself for doing so when right at that very moment, Lucrezia was lying in a hospital with injuries everyone refused to tell him about.
The door at the head of the cab opened and a man in a white lab-coat poked his head through the portal. "Mr. Marquise?"
Zechs nodded.
"Please come with me, sir," the man, perhaps a physician, said, then exited the shuttle by way of the cockpit. Zechs followed, eager to get to the hospital yet dreading every step at the same time.
"I'm Dr. Weisen," the man said after they had crossed half the hangar, confirming Zechs's suspicion. They were practically running but to Zechs it seemed they were going too slowly. "I'm one of Miss Noin's physicians."
Zechs didn't bother with the introductions or formalities. "What's happened to her?"
"Here is hardly the place for me to explain it," the doctor said, and he began to ramble — more to himself than to Zechs — about something that made absolutely no sense to him. After a minute or so Zechs realized that Weisen must have recognized him as Milliardo Peacecraft and, knowing who his sister was, he was talking about some problem in the direction of funds to medical facilities in space.
Zechs thought he could shoot the man. He didn't care about funding for hospitals on the colonies or new construction there or whatever Weisen was babbling over. The only thing he cared about was getting to Lucrezia. What kept him from pulling the gun from its holster beneath his overcoat was the disdainful knowledge that if he shot him, it would take him even longer to find her.
The hospital was near the port where the shuttle had landed and it took them only a few minutes to reach it, but for Zechs every one of those minutes seemed more like an hour. They thankfully were not halted at either the main entrance or the one on the fourth floor. He expected to be led directly to Lucrezia's room but instead, once the had reached the second corridor of the fourth floor, Dr. Weisen ushered him into a small white room across from the nurses' station. The room was not meant for patients, Zechs saw as he stepped inside. It was furnished with an elegant oak desk at its head, in front of a window providing a placid view of the Earth. There was a row of gray padded chairs against the eastern wall — about ten of them in all — and without speaking Weisen gestured for him to pull one up to the desk.
The heavy door fell shut behind him and when he heard the solid metallic click of its lock mechanism automatically engaging, Zechs understood what was going on. They had not sent a mere escort to bring him to the hospital — they had sent one of the doctors who had seen Lucrezia, and that alone should have told him something. The doctor had refused to answer Zechs's question about Lucrezia and tried to steer him onto another subject. And now, rather than being taken to her, he had been brought here, to this room with its quaint little row of chairs and its quaint little desk and its quaint window and the Earth beyond. This was a counseling room, he realized, where families of patients were brought to be told their loved one had died. And if he was here and Lucrezia was nowhere in sight . . .
"Mr. Marquise, would you please sit down?" Weisen said for the second time, bringing Zechs out of his grim revelation. He sounded too cheery for the news he was about to deliver, and unconsciously Zechs's hand found the butt of the gun.
"Tell me what happened to her," he growled thickly. Weisen, whom he already knew remembered him under the Peacecraft name, now seemed to also remember his final battle as Milliardo and what he was prone to do when he lost his mind (Zechs thought the Epyon's system might come in handy right about now), for, although he was surely used to angry reactions, he jumped back in his chair.
"Sir, if you'll please just sit down, I'll be happy to explain."
I'm sure you will, Zechs thought, reaching to pull up a chair. After doing this for so many years you probably get off on it.
"Miss Noin was brought to us," Weisen began when Zechs was seated, "by two young men calling themselves Triton Bloom and Chang Wufei and a woman by the name of Sally Po. These three individuals are part of the Prevention Organization, are they not?"
Not Trowa, Zechs thought, but he nodded anyway.
"They were returning to Mars from a mission on the L3 colony when, according to them, Miss Noin began to complain of severe pain in the lower abdominal area."
Zechs shifted uneasily in the chair, wishing the doctor would hurry up and tell him and get it over with.
Weisen regarded him thoughtfully. "Are you all right, Mr. Marquise?"
"No," Zechs replied bitterly. "Go on."
Weisen did. "One of them — Miss Po, I think it was — realized that Miss Noin was bleeding but by this time she —Miss Noin, I mean— had become unresponsive."
Zechs's breath caught and he felt his heart sink to his knees. Behind the desk Dr. Weisen continued the recount of events as explained to him by Sally Po, but Zechs didn't hear a word of it. Lower abdominal pain, followed by bleeding, often then followed by a lapse of consciousness . . . they were symptoms he had seen and heard of too many times while living on this crimson planet, symptoms of a thing no one had bargained for when they had come to the Martian colony. Ever since the first livable space colony had been established many of the inhabitants had suffered some kind of physical effect or another. The biggest problem for those colonies, however, those man-made colonies with their controlled environments, had been a decline of fertility in women, and for those who did manage to get pregnant those first few years, the major concern had been birth defects in their children. The Mars colony, despite attempts at developing a manageable environment, was still unstable, and its women had something more to worry about aside from infertility and harsh pregnancies.
There had been an unnerving increase in the risk of cancer among both sexes during the first month of the development of the colony, back when it was still referred to as the 'terra-forming project.' Lung cancer seemed to be the most occurring form in men, and Zechs and Lucrezia had gone through a brief scare when Zechs had begun coughing persistently. That had turned out to be nothing more than a more advanced form of the common cold, but many others had not been so lucky.
Cancer of the lung had afflicted members of both genders, but in females the most prominent form had been uterine cancer. It began quickly and spread faster than the Earth strain, and all too often cases that were not discovered within the first five to six months turned fatal. He had been afraid for Lucrezia then, but he had failed to realize just how horrible the consequences of her move to the planet with him could be until the incident at the base. One of the other members of the Prevention Organization — a girl not very much younger than Lucrezia — had begun to feel sick after spending most of the day manning the computers and had been allowed to rest in one of the lounges scattered throughout the building. Lucrezia had stayed with her; she almost always looked after them when they became ill at the base, and if she had not felt called to become a soldier, Zechs thought she would have been excellent in a medical profession. About an hour after the girl had been temporarily relieved from duty there had been a call for assistance in the area of the base where he was, and when Zechs reported he found Lucrezia trying to calm the girl, who was crying hysterically and clutching at her stomach. She had been bleeding too, he had seen: blood had been gushing down her legs, soaking through the pants of her uniform in thin scarlet streams. They had all known immediately what was wrong with her. She had lost consciousness while more assistance was being summoned and Lucrezia, along with another member of the organization, had had to carry her out to the transport vehicle that had been called, and when she passed Zechs their eyes had met and he had been overcome by a sick realization. She was not immune to this disease, his Lucrezia — she was just as at risk as all those other women who had been diagnosed with it. Just because he knew her, just because she was more than a name on a piece of paper and a statistic to him, just because he loved her, did not make her immune. The girl had lived, though her uterus had been surgically removed. For a while afterward Zechs had tried to convince Lucrezia to let him take her back to Earth, but she refused.
That had happened months ago now, and within those months the number of colonists diagnosed with cancer had been greatly reduced. The human body was unmatched in its ability to adapt, Zechs believed, both to new situations and new environments. He had been convinced of this when he awoke to find himself alive and intact after the self-detonation of the Epyon. The people on Mars, just as the people of the colonies before them, had adapted to the still rather unstable environment, and within the past months there had been only five cases of cancer in any form.
Six now, Zechs thought, and he wished not for the relieving disguise of his mask but to feel the comforting weight of the detonation switch of his Gundam, the detonation switch of anything, even a match and a plastic explosive would work. He had never felt a greater desire for destruction than he did now.
"Mr. Marquise, are you listening?"
Zechs shook his head quickly, clearing the thoughts that threatened to invade his mind if it became idle: Lucrezia diagnosed…Lucrezia dead…
"How bad off is she?" he asked, swallowing the lump that had formed in the back of his throat.
Weisen held up a hand. "I'm getting to that. As I was saying, Miss Noin passed out while they were entering the atmosphere. She was brought here immediately and at first we thought . . .I assume you're aware of some of the reproductive complications in women on this colony?"
Here it comes, he thought. He nodded gravely.
"At first we suspected an advanced case of uterine cancer. We were ready to make the official diagnosis but we were waiting on her chemical tests to finish in the lab. We didn't think we were going to find anything new on them but we had to be sure. She–"
"Wait," Zechs broke in, feeling the stirring of some foolish hope. "Are you saying she doesn't have cancer?"
"It's not cancer," Weisen confirmed, with a smile that for once Zechs found justified. "Quite the contrary. Miss Noin regained consciousness shortly before we received the results. She was coherent, surprisingly, scared to death but intelligible at least, and she asked us to send for you."
"Thank God," he whispered under his breath, and waited for the doctor to continue.
"The test results confirmed our second theory. It was almost a spontaneous natural abortion but we got her and she was stabilized in time . . .there's still a chance of complications further on, but for now everything appears to be fine." Zechs looked at the doctor, letting this sink in and at the same time disbelieving it. He was not aware that his mouth was open and his usually narrowed eyes were wide in shock.
"We're still unsure what caused the . . .the near-miscarriage, if you will, but we think it was brought on by frequent exposure to conflicting environments. She really–"
"'Near-miscarriage?' You mean she's…" His words trailed off, giving way to his stunned silence.
"Yes, Miss Noin is pregnant."
He sprang to his feet, sending the chair toppling to the floor, and slammed his hands into the desk. "Take me to her."
Weisen, still smiling, rose from the desk and stepped into the hall, motioning unnecessarily for Zechs to follow. "This way, sir," he said, and he led him past the nurses' station to a more dimly lit corridor that ended with the entrance to the hospital's eastern wing.
"Would I be right in assuming that you're the father?" Weisen asked once they had reached the wing.
"Yes." There could be no question about that. "How far along is she?"
"Not quite two months. There are a few things I should probably mention to you before you see her."
"What?"
"I'm not going to ask details of any of the prevention missions — that's not any of my business. But this one she's currently on, is there any way she could be replaced?"
"You would have to consult the head of the organization on that. Why?"
"She really shouldn't be traveling from colony to colony in her condition. The conception, the carrying, and the delivery of a child on this planet would be difficult enough with its environment, but constantly changing environments isn't exactly a wise decision, either. She almost lost the child by doing that. If there is any way she can be given a less strenuous job in the organization, something that would not require an extreme amount of effort or travel, it must be considered."
"So you're saying she has to have the child on Mars."
Weisen shook his head. "It doesn't matter where she has the baby, at least not primarily, it's that she stay in one place until she has it. If she keeps up with this constant jumping from colony to colony, I can't promise you that the next time she goes from a stable environment to one like this, she won't lose the baby."
"And how good are the child's chances of surviving here?"
Weisen sighed. "Miss Noin has lived most of her life on Earth, and even the time she has spent in space hasn't fully prepared her body for living here. She's still adjusting to Mars physically. So are all the others here. While almost the entire population of this colony is either part of the Prevention Organization or one affiliated with it, a few of the women who came here were pregnant, were they not?"
Zechs nodded.
"This colony has only been in existence for eight months. All of those who came here while with child have given birth now except for three. Mr. Marquise, do you know how many of those babies lived?"
He shook his head. This was not a statistic he had ever been in a situation that required him to know, and — though he had not fully realized it until now — ever since his relationship with Lucrezia had branched into the physical sense, he had avoided knowledge of it.
"Two," Dr. Weisen replied, the merry sparkle gone from his eyes and the smile gone from his face. "There was only one case of stillbirth, but the others — all except for those two — died within days of being born. This isn't to say that it will always be like this. This is how it was when the other colonies were first constructed, and the people there eventually did adjust to their environment and now their pregnancies are just as normal as those on Earth. With Mars's atmosphere, even the so-called 'controlled' one of this colony, it may take a bit longer for those natural physical adjustments to be made, but it will happen." He paused. "Miss Noin is an exceptionally strong woman, Mr. Marquise, both physically and emotionally. I had the fortunate opportunity to talk to her when she regained consciousness and the very least I can say is that she can withstand almost anything life throws at her. There's a good chance — a very good chance, Mr. Marquise — that she'll be perfectly fine and when the baby comes, that it will be perfectly fine, too."
"But you can't make any promises," Zechs said, knowing what the doctor was getting at.
"I wish I could, but you're right on that."
Zechs considered this for a minute as they reached the end of the first corridor of the east wing, then he knew what he had to do. "Doctor," he said, "if she had the baby on Earth what would its chances be then?"
"Unless some complication arises further on in the pregnancy, I see no reason why the child shouldn't be perfectly all right. The other colonies are stable now, but the Earth is still the best place for a baby to be born in, and a lot of women still go there when their due date is near."
"But what about the change in atmosphere? You said she could lose the baby the next time she was exposed to another atmosphere."
"No, Mr. Marquise, I said the next time she goes from a stable atmosphere to an unstable one. And the Earth still has the most stable atmosphere, because, I think, it's the only natural one. Humans can only come so close to what God created." He paused again. "I think taking Miss Noin to Earth is a wise idea, Mr. Marquise. Will the shuttle you arrived on still be waiting or was it to be sent back after delivering you?"
"It's here as long as I say it is. When can she leave?"
"We need to keep her for observation a while longer but if all remains the same, she can go tomorrow evening."
Zechs grunted an acknowledgement.
Both the doctor and the former soldier were silent as they came to the end of the hall. There was only one room the last ten yards of the corridor, and when Weisen did not turn toward the elevator Zechs knew this room was Lucrezia's. Weisen eased the door open, poked his head through in the same manner as he had the door on the shuttle. "Miss Noin?" he called into the room, apparently seeing if she was still awake.
"Yes?" The reply was too thin, too weak, to be hers, but Zechs recognized her voice and shuddered at the broken sound of it.
"You have a visitor," Weisen said, and he motioned for Zechs to go into the room.
"Zechs?"
"It's me, Lucrezia." He stepped through the doorway. He could not see her across the rather large, mostly empty room, could only identify her as a spot of dark violet hair against the white sheets.
He started toward her as Weisen watched them, slowly, calmly at first, don't alarm her, don't let her know how worried you were, don't let either of them know—
Oh, fuck that, he thought, and he went to her.
"Zechs," she said again when she saw him, and when he leaned down to her she wrapped her arms — how weak they were — about his broad shoulders. She let out a single gasping sob when he kissed her forehead, and when he pulled away from her he saw that she was crying.
"What is it, Lucrezia?" he asked, settling into the chair at her bedside without taking his eyes from her and moving it closer to her bed. "What's wrong?"
She offered him a shaky smile and wiped at the tears with the back of her hand. "Forgive me, Zechs," she said, and sobbed again.
He blinked, astounded. "For what?"
"I was half-convinced you wouldn't come. Forgive me."
He shook his head, more disgusted with himself than he had ever been for doing this to her, and took her slender hand in his. "I'm the one who should be asking for forgiveness, not you, Lucrezia. I went to Earth and left you here even after you begged me not to, I…" He swallowed. He had never been good at this kind of thing, and how Lucrezia could tolerate his inexperience in these matters was beyond him. "I hurt you, Lucrezia," he said finally. "I'm sorry."
She placed her free hand on the side of his face, guiding it to hers, and when their eyes were only inches apart she kissed him. "I love you," she said when the kiss ended, and his response was another kiss, longer and deeper this time, intense enough to make him wish it were not a hospital bed on which she was lying. She put a hand to his chest, stopping him before the kiss could become something more.
"Did Dr. Weisen tell you?" she asked, placing a hand over her abdomen, which was still flat now but in a few months would be round and swollen with his child.
Zechs nodded solemnly.
"I asked him to," she admitted, not quite meeting his eyes any longer. "I thought it might be best if you heard it from him first."
He opened his mouth to ask why, then stopped himself. Did he really need to ask? No, of course not. She had asked the doctor to inform him of her pregnancy because she had not wanted to see his reaction.
My God, he thought, momentarily tightening his grip on her hand, what have I done to her?
"I'm so sorry about this, Zechs," she continued. "I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to burden you like this. I'm s–"
He silenced her with another kiss. It was the only thing he could do. He was still too stunned by what he had just found out and too shamed by her fear of him to speak.
Her crying eventually subsided. She gave a disgusted scowl as she wiped the last tears from her face. She had always hated to cry, but even more than that she hated for him to see her do it.
"It's all right, Luca," he tried to assure her, silently damning his inability to say anything of importance to her.
She cast him a hard glance. "Is it really?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not even sure myself." She paused, looked away for a moment. "I got your message," she said finally. "I didn't read it. Sally found it and I asked her to delete it." Another pause, another decision of brutal honesty. "I was so angry with you then."
"As you had every right to be." He watched the slight, surprised flinch of her eyes. "And now?"
She looked away from him again, and this was sufficient for an answer. When she returned her eyes to his, her gaze was steady, measured, calculated as though it required some amount of effort for her to maintain it.
It probably did.
"I still am," she said quietly. "Not as much as before, but…"
"I'm sorry, Luca."
"So am I." Her face softened. "How have you been, Zechs?"
"I must admit I've been in better circumstances." He offered her a slight smile and kissed the back of her hand. A peace offering. "I think the more important question is how you've been, Luca. How do you feel?"
Another smile graced her own lips, and her beautiful face took on an expression that was almost one of gratitude. "I'm still a bit beat up but I'll manage. They said if there are no further complications I can leave tomorrow."
He nodded. Her hand pulled free from his and went to the side of his face, to where his mask had not been in two years. She was the only person he had ever been comfortable around without his mask and she seemed to know this.
"Are you going to stay here?" she asked, her eyes anxious, dreadful of his answer.
He shook his head. "No, Luca, I can't."
From her lips escaped a sound like a small whimper. He realized what he had said — damn him for saying such things when she was so weak! — and immediately sought to rectify it.
"I want you to come to Earth with me."
She looked at him as though she didn't believe him. He had asked her this several times in the past and always she had refused. There would be no refusal this time, it seemed, and there was not.
"Zechs," she said after some time had passed with neither of them speaking. "I want to keep the baby."
He bent down, kissed her forehead. "Of course, Luca." He waited, deliberating. Finally: "I truly am sorry, Lucrezia. For everything. I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I should never have left you here in the first place, but at the time I had no other choice."
She looked at him. "And now?"
He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. "It seems I once again have no choice."
She smiled up at him. She was so beautiful, his Lucrezia, his dark-eyed angel lying atop this crude white bed, so very beautiful that it all but made his eyes hurt to look at her. She had often called him her angel in the past but really she was his, though he would never be able to find the words to tell her this, nor to muster the courage required. She had stood by him in everything he had ever done regardless of whether it was right or wrong, holding his hand even when she could not agree with him, and had waited for him without question or complaint until he returned to her, and had in her own way protected him as he had always tried to do for her. She was the strong one, not he, and it was from her that he had drawn so much of his strength as a soldier.
God in Heaven, but he loved her. Even if he didn't know how to say it, he loved her.
And now she was pregnant. With his child nonetheless, for he suspected this, not the joys of motherhood, was the major reason that news of pregnancy did not disturb her.
The slight trace of a smile he'd felt upon his lips faded. "Do you still wonder why I left, Lucrezia?" It would be nothing less than wrong to withhold this from her now, and he had to tell her sometime, preferably before they went to Earth.
She raised an eyebrow and waited.
He stared at her for a few minutes, unsure of how to go on now that he had started. He thought of how Odin Lowe had broken the news to him and decided he should simply get to the point.
He cleared his throat, started, stopped. She waited patiently as he collected his thoughts and at some point he became aware that he was no longer holding her hand but rather, she was holding his.
His Lucrezia, his pillar of strength.
"Treize Kushrenada didn't die in the Eve Wars," he began finally, and this seemed to be the proper beginning, for with these words out of the way the rest of the tale came easily. Lucrezia listened to him raptly, her eyes widening again every few seconds or so in disbelief. One of her lovely Florentine hands pressed protectively into her abdomen, above the child that was even now slowly developing there. The expression on her face was one of appall, of anguish, and underlying it all, of fear.
"Why?" she asked when he came at last to the end. It was a desperate question, one with no answer. They both knew that well enough.
He embraced her. She sobbed dryly as she yielded to him. It was not an embrace of love necessarily, but an offering. An offering to what, neither of them knew; perhaps to the Earth, perhaps to the people of both the planet and the colonies, perhaps even to God, perhaps only to each other. Perhaps to their unborn child.
"Why?" she asked again, her lips moving against his neck. "Why does this have to happen again? Can you explain that to me, Zechs? Why?"
"I don't know, Luca."
She pulled away from him, looked into his eyes with a soldier's intensity. "I want to fight with you, Zechs."
"What?"
"You have to let me fight with you. You're not the only one with a personal stake in this."
"Lucrezia, you're–" He gestured toward her abdomen.
She scoffed. "I'm perfectly aware of what I am and if you remember the way our last mission ended, you'll be perfectly aware that you were quite enthusiastic about helping me get this way. But you can't expect me to sit idly by while everyone else goes off to fight. If you'd wanted a woman like that, you should have chosen one more like your sister."
"Luca–"
Her voice lost its acidic tone. "I'm pregnant, Zechs. I love you and you must feel something for me, because in another seven months I'm going to have your child. I'm pregnant, but I'm not dead, and I'm not broken either. The only difference in a combat situation would be that I would have to try to take more hits on the side and I'd have to loosen the pilot's harness after a while. You have to let me fight with you." There was a new note in her voice near the end, a note that told him she knew she could not fight in her condition. She may have been born the beautiful daughter of an Italian baron but ultimately she was a soldier, a soldier in pacifism but a soldier nonetheless, and the knowledge that she could no longer fulfill that purpose did nothing to soften the blow of everything he had just told her.
She gave no further protest, nor did she further question why all this was happening again. He silently held her against him, and neither of them spoke for a long while. They didn't need to.
After so long, another one of the doctors came into the room. He started to inform Zechs of the policy on visiting hours, then quickly departed when Zechs turned to glare at him. Another immeasurable amount of time later, Dr. Weison, accompanied by two nurses, made a routine check on Lucrezia, replacing the glucose IV and asking her a slew of questions cheerfully despite how late the hour must be. They all worked around Zechs as though he were not there. He remained with her all night. At some point he lay his head on the bed next to her. He was just barely aware, as he began to drift into sleep, of her running her fingers through his hair and whispering something in a tongue that seemed to him one spoken only by the highest angels of Heaven.
II
All went well throughout the evening, and Lucrezia was released from the hospital the following afternoon. She had gotten much of her strength back, he soon realized, and then he ashamedly thought that this was probably only because he was with her again.
They returned to their apartment. Lucrezia gathered some of her clothes and tossed them helter-skelter into a bag, then, after only a moment of consideration and a glance back at him, gathered the rest of them as well. When she lifted from a drawer a picture of him taken in their days at Lake Victoria and tucked it into a bag, he knew for certain what she was doing.
He gathered his own things. This would be his only opportunity to; they would not be returning here.
She stopped once by the doorway of their bedroom, a strange look of realization on her face.
"What is it, Luca?"
"That's what she meant," she mumbled.
He raised an eyebrow.
"We weren't supposed to return to Mars this soon, not without enough evidence of what we were supposed to find in L3."
It occurred to him that neither of them had ever thought to mention the mission she had been sent on.
She continued. "We never found anything, and for once Trowa seemed just as aloof as the rest of us. Then Une got a call from somewhere on Earth, something about mobile suits being sighted in Spain, and she left. She wouldn't say anything else about it, but that's what she meant, isn't it?"
"Does Trowa know where she went?"
"She asked me to keep it confidential until she knew something. Why?"
He found he could not repress a knowing smile. "Trowa has been employed by Odin Lowe. When he received word of the mission, he had the suits sent to the counteroffensive's Spanish base. I heard it caused quite a hectic situation."
She looked at him incredulously. "Trowa?"
"Yes."
"And when we were forced to dock outside the colony--"
He nodded. This, too, he had heard from Odin. "The so-called peacekeeping force was merely a group of members of the counteroffensive, answering a call from their superior. Trowa needed those hours to get the suits away from the colony."
She stared at him a moment longer, shook her head. "Do you think Une will find out about Treize?"
He touched her shoulder gently, understanding the root of her concern. "That is inevitable, I suppose. I pity her when she does. But she won't find anything regarding either his organization or the counteroffensive. That information is too carefully guarded."
She considered this. They left silently, giving not even one glance back to the small, cramped place where so much had happened between the two of them.
Zechs was right in believing they would never see it again.
III
They did not have to wait long for the shuttle's crew to prepare the craft for takeoff. Many of the crew members had served in the Guard in Sanq when Lucrezia had held the position of its captain and they greeted her warmly, with an enthusiasm they had not even come close to with Zechs. They seemed to warm up to him a bit more with her around, though. He wondered if he should take this as some sort of character judgement.
They sat at the head of the passenger compartment, at first in the same rigid positions to which they had become accustomed as soldiers. Only a few minutes into the flight she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder, and a few minutes after that he slid his arm about her waist. It was not a deliberate action; rather he did it without being aware of it, and he was not fully aware until he felt the comforting warmth of her against him.
Neither of them spoke until they reached the Earth. Eventually Zechs became aware that she had fallen asleep. She needed it, certainly more than he did, for God-only-knew how little sleep she had gotten the night before; when he awoke that morning, she had still been watching him, smiling softly and tangling her fingers in the strands of his long platinum hair.
His thoughts turned from her to the child the two of them had made together. He had never, in all his life, given thought to becoming a father. Even now the possibility seemed unreal to him. How was he supposed to be a father to his child when he had barely even known his own father? He knew nothing of domestic life, and neither did Lucrezia for that matter — what kind of parents would they be if all they knew was warfare and sacrifice?
These were not the thoughts that disturbed him, however. They would manage with the child somehow (hadn't they always managed in the past?), and if it inherited more of its mother's traits, it would be well even despite Zechs's lack of experience. His concern was that he would not be able to save the child from the fate he himself had suffered. He had tried to save Mariemaia from becoming the next Milliardo Peacecraft while simultaneously trying to save the people from her intentions. Wouldn't it be ironic if he saved his enemy's daughter but failed his own child?
He couldn't think about this anymore. There would come a day when he was forced to think about it, but he could not do it now.
Lucrezia sighed in her sleep. Her violet eyes opened briefly, then again fell closed. Gently, afraid to wake her, he brushed her bangs aside and kissed her forehead.
She did not awaken until the shuttle touched down on Earth. One of the crew members put in a call to the palace in Newport to inform Queen Relena that her brother, accompanied by Miss Noin, had reached the Earth safely and would be returning to the palace in only a few minutes.
"Don't mention any of the things I told you to her," he said to Lucrezia as they got into the car that would take them to the palace.
She raised an eyebrow. "All this is happening right under her nose and she doesn't know about it?"
He thought of her last words to him before he had left the palace. "She's beginning to suspect something, but other than that, no, she does not."
Lucrezia sighed. She watched him from the corner of her eye, then after a moment of consideration, she settled back against him. He wondered if she would ever be able to trust him enough to do this without hesitation.
They reached the palace shortly after nightfall. The air was noticeably colder than it had previously been, chilled by the light wind that blew in from the seas. Lucrezia shivered and gathered her coat tighter about her, and when the car pulled away from the open gates Zechs tilted her face upward and brought his lips to hers. When the kiss ended she smiled and gave him a quizzical look, to which he could only shrug.
"Has she changed as much as they say she has?" Lucrezia asked as they started up the walkway that led to the palace entrance.
"More than that."
"How so?"
"I don't know how to explain it, Luca. She simply has. Perhaps you'll understand it once you've seen her."
Relena had been waiting for them by the door since she received word of their arrival on the planet. She greeted Lucrezia warmly, with none of the sorrow with which she had Zechs the night he had returned to Sanq, and once he caught Lucrezia looking at him as if to ask what had changed about her. And at first Relena did seem that same girl she had been when Lucrezia had first met her, the very embodiment of innocence, so much that Zechs had to wonder if it were only himself around whom she was so morose.
Relena led them to a great sitting room while the servants carried all that they had brought with them to their quarters. The trio sat in front or the sculpted marble fireplace, Relena on one sofa, they on the one opposite hers, and it was only then that his sister could no longer maintain her act. She did not cry frequently as she did with Zechs (perhaps because she did not want to appear weak in front of Lucrezia) but rather delivered her narrative of the past months since she had seen Lucrezia in a flat yet somehow desperate monotone. After only a short while of listening to her Lucrezia pleaded weariness and excused herself and Zechs followed her, telling Relena he had to show her to their room.
"Of course, Milliardo," she said, looking almost chagrined. "I should have realized how tired the two of you must be."
She stepped toward him gingerly, embraced him. "Goodnight, brother."
He returned her embrace and went after Lucrezia.
He found her in the dark corridor leading to the staircase. She stood with her back against the wall, her head bowed and her eyes wide, and one hand pressed over her stomach.
"What's happened to her?" she asked when she saw him. "Zechs, did you hear her?"
"I've been hearing her for days, Luca. She refuses to tell me what troubles her so."
Lucrezia allowed him to lead her up the stairs to their room. The two leather bags containing their clothes had been set at the center of the parlor; they ignored them and went directly to the bedroom. Lucrezia went into the adjacent bath and splashed cold water from the sink onto her face to calm herself. When it finally began to take effect, she sat on the edge of the bed with him. They tried to speak of Relena and couldn't, tried to speak of the baby and couldn't do that, either. In the end they simply dimmed the lamp and climbed into bed still fully dressed, where he held her until dawn.
Author's Notes: This chapter is probably my least favorite. It was necessary to reintroduce Lucrezia into the story, although she will only be a background character from here on out. The only enjoyable part of this chapter was writing Zechs's annoyance at the overly friendly doctor. I did, however, feel that there should be a scene that contrasts Zechs's behavior in the first chapters, as I believe that he does feel quite strongly for Lucrezia. It isn't that I dislike her character; it's merely that I have no feel for her.