Chapter Fourteen

I

A week passed, another. Rhyn remained at the palace at the advisory of Odin Lowe, who had merely raised an eyebrow at the news that the Brit had not only survived imprisonment in Germany but had escaped, which Zechs took as a great emotional reaction. His exuberance had not decreased in the slightest since coming to the palace; he had begun to flirt not only with Zechs and Lucrezia but the servants as well; Lanka was almost always seen blushing because of his scandalous remarks and recently he had begun to badger Pagan.

Between the events preceding the battle that grew more truly inevitable with each passing day and dealing with the rantings of the self-proclaimed 'Brit charmer,' Zechs had not a moment to himself.

The one person Rhyn in whom seemed to take no interest was Relena. He spoke not a word to her whenever they saw each other to Zechs's knowledge save for a formal 'Good morning, Your Highness' at breakfast and a 'Good evening, Your Highness' at dinner. The expressions exchanged between them at these too-quiet too-solemn meals were hard and often bitter, and for this neither Zechs nor Lucrezia could elicit an explanation.

Within another week the effects of Lucrezia's pregnancy were becoming more blatant: though her abdomen remained unstretched and flat, she tired easily, and her mornings were plagued by sickness. Pagan was the only person other than Zechs who knew of this, but he doubted that the fact of the pregnancy of the Prince's mistress would remain concealed for much longer.

The events within the palace were the least of their concerns.

The investigation into the Austrian incident continued to yield no results until the Supreme Council received reports of a new model mobile suit being sighted in Germany. The reports were publicly released both on Earth and in space, and the governments of each nation went both respectively and collaboratively into defense planning. The Sanq Kingdom was no exception to this.

The situation escalated only days later when the leaders of the Council received a handwritten letter from the leader of the force responsible for the production of these new suits, promising to "rid first the Earth and then colonies of every great warmonger whose crimes in the past have gone overlooked and forgiven, the blemishing pustules of humanity." The letter named the Supreme Earthsphere Council of Luxembourg as a tyrannical force in the making and guaranteed its elimination; it went on the threaten the Sanq Kingdom, accusing the country of acting as a "hypocritical martyr, waiting to attain a final glory through self-sacrifice in another battle." The governments of each nation were given this information, and within the following days it was released to the people.

The identity of the letter's author had yet to be discovered. It seemed now that to defend their own cause, the members of the counteroffensive would have to in turn protect Treize Kushrenada.

The messages that came to Zechs from Treize had all but ceased completely, and the few that did were even less informative than usual. Odin had, for the past weeks, seemed troubled by something that Zechs could not discern, and once after Rhyn had tried several times in one evening to contact him and received no response, the insistent Brit had smiled bemusedly and said, "He's probably off somewhere brooding again, he is. Odin could make a career out of brooding."

Indeed, all of them, even Rhyn, seemed lost within their own respective thoughts lately. Whether this was an omen of good or ill he did not know, and sometimes he believed that he had ceased to care.

However, he doubted any of them would have time to engage in such trivialities much longer. The first stage of the Earth's next war would most likely begin within the month.

II

Zechs approached the entrance of the estate of Thessaloníki without notice and without escort, vaguely pondering his own motive for coming here. Undoubtedly there was a security system providing a unit of guards with an image of him and perhaps there was even one watching him more personally with a gun trained on his vulnerable head, but this did little to deter him.

He had not told Lucrezia where he was going before he had left the palace, nor had he told the insatiable Rhyn when he had asked, eagerly as a puppy, if he could go, too. Relena had disappeared without a word from the palace hours earlier. He had not even notified Treize of his departure for the central base, and without such notification he could well be looked upon as an intruder. He failed to realize that this, like so many other things, no longer mattered to him.

Despite all this, the door to the right of the great main entrance gave him entry and he found not a single guard waiting inside. Still he saw no one as he continued into the elegant base, as though every guard had abandoned his post and every soldier had fled, perhaps in fear of battle not yet begun. All computers were dead and dark; all lights were subtle and dimmed. He found the silence as unnerving as a cemetery at midnight.

He proceeded on through the base, through the cold, empty corridors that reeked of wealth, of elegance, of, if war could indeed possess such a thing, the elegance of war, through halls of royal grandeur, until he reached the great staircase with the red carpet that even now did not fail to remind him of blood trickling down a woman's throat.

He ascended this quickly and proceeded without pause to Treize's grand office.

The room was dark and empty, cold as though it had not been used for several hours. For one moment Zechs was about to leave to search the rest of the estate, then he caught a glimpse of something in his peripheral vision, some quick, graceful movement. It was only then that he realized that the crystalline door to the balcony was slightly ajar.

He walked quietly, passively, to the door. It made not a sound as he pushed it open; in fact there was no sound at all for that one moment, although he was suddenly aware that faintly from out on the balcony he could hear two voices and when the speakers came into the moonlit view he could hear nothing but the furious pounding of his own heart and his own blood rushing within him, only a pregnant silence—

Treize Kushrenada backed away from his companion, whose lips he had momentarily been tasting when Zechs had stepped onto the balcony, and raised an amused eyebrow.

"Milliardo," he said conversationally, as though Zechs had not seen the woman at his side, "why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

He barely heard Treize's voice. An image — one that had inexplicably tormented him for weeks — rose in his mind, one of entering Relena's chambers one evening and finding her gone but something else there, a brief glimpse of a letter lying on her desk, that familiar handwriting—

Relena stood at Treize's side, trembling and suddenly white as a specter. Fresh tears cascaded down her pale face, falling unabated down her throat. Her lips were parted in a silent gasp; her hands were pressed to her neck as though in defense.

"Oh God, Milliardo," came a muffled cry from her quivering mouth, and she stepped back once, twice, as Treize's cynical smile broadened.

"Is something wrong, Zechs?" Treize asked, and when Zechs was unable to answer, Treize approached him.

"Milliardo, don't," Relena breathed, and fell to sobbing.

Zechs came out of his stupor enough to be aware that he was bestowing upon her an expression of outrage.

Treize slipped an arm over his shoulders and began to guide him back inside. "I believe we have something to discuss," he said, too casually, too amusedly. Zechs allowed himself to be led into the room, allowed the door to be shut behind them.

"Did you have some pressing matter bringing you here?" Treize asked.

Zechs looked at him incredulously.

Treize smiled. "Did you really not know about your sister? Come now, Zechs, did you really never even suspect it? This has been going on for quite some time now, though I must admit, the Queen and I have not had much contact in light of recent events."

"You–" he began, mumbling futilely, and stopped as the image played over in his mind; the letter, such elegant words, Relena's inexplicable knowledge of something happening in Thessaloníki, only moments ago, the two intertwined shadows as Treize stepped in to press his lips to hers.

"You didn't know at all, then," Treize continued. "Would you like to know how it began? I came to her shortly after her coronation as Queen. She didn't know about any of this" — he gestured at the room, the estate — "until quite recently, however. I do believe it may very well have changed her opinion of me." He gave a soft laugh.

Zechs tried to speak, could not. He fell back against the wall, helplessly, unable to move.

"Would you like to know more? Would you like to know the taste of her lips? How the lovely, virginal Queen of Sanq is in her royal bedroom? Would you like to know how it hurt her at first when I took her, how she begged me to go on?"

Their eyes met again and Zechs's paralysis fell away. With a great cry like that of some inhuman beast he lunged at Treize's smiling shadowed figure, barely aware that he was screaming, that behind them Relena was shouting at him to stop, unaware that Treize was overpowering him, pinning him to the floor—

So fast, all of it. So fast, so wrong…

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," Treize growled as he held him fast to the marble floor. "I know you're with him, that you always have been. Do you really think me that foolish?"

Zechs tried to pull himself out from underneath Treize and found himself suddenly all too aware of what had just happened, what had just been said, but without strength.

Treize favored him with another angered smile and rose. The only sound that followed for a moment was his fleeting footsteps as he left the room.

Relena sobbing. Moaning as though in pain. Had he caused this pain, too? Of course he had. Didn't he always, in some way or another? Just the two of them now, she crying, his head swimming. Relena. Beautiful liar. Why always this pain between them?

Relena, face streaked read by tears, knelt beside him, placed her hand on the side of his face.

He pulled away from her.

"Milliardo, please," she sobbed desperately. "Please don't turn your back on me. Please don't, Milliardo."

She tried to embrace him. Without realizing what he was doing, he shoved her away and fled.

III

Tear-studded eyes. Sweat dripping down his face. Trembling hands fumbling for something, another pair of steady hands holding the glass to his lips. Something warm passing into his throat, warm and awakening, another voice —

"Calm down, Marquise."

Her face behind his eyes. Beautiful, beloved, beautiful liar. Grasping blindly for the hands that steadied him upon the chair on which he lay.

"She was with him," he mumbled, perhaps futilely as perhaps his voice failed him. "She was…there…with him."

Odin took a seat across from him. Zechs could not remember how he had gotten to the base in Vólos, whether he had found his way there himself or with Odin's assistance, or whether something else entirely had happened.

"Don't speak until you're calm enough to do it properly," Odin advised, watching him contemplatively, serenely.

Zechs's dazed eyes traveled from Odin to the desk beside him. He noticed with something like a dumb wonder that atop it lay another picture of the same woman whose photograph he had first seen in this room, the Japanese woman whom Rhyn had once, in a weary stupor, claimed that Odin loved.

She held a child in her arms in this picture, which was in full color but still appeared to have been cut from something, and her head was tilted slightly over that of the boy, who was old enough to seem vaguely familiar to Zechs but almost young enough still to be considered a baby. Her eyes were calm and deep, almond-shaped pools of an exotic black oil, and while her full lips were still curled slightly in that natural smile he had seen in the previous picture, her expression was one of quiet solemnity. Her hair, which had been down and loose before, was swept up into a tight glossy bun at the back of her head, leaving only a few strands down around her face.

The eyes of the boy, he noticed inexplicably, were not dark as those of most Asian children, but rather were a deep Prussian blue.

The picture sobered him as nothing else had been able to do.

Odin's eyes had followed his to the photograph, yet when they faced each other again there was no anger or shock in his face.

"In all the time Rhyn has been with you in Sanq," he said calmly, "have you yet learned who she is?"

"He said she was a great enemy of the Alliance."

Odin nodded. "The Cosmos Arm specifically considered her a threat."

"That was before my time."

"But Dekim Barton was not."

He merely grunted.

"Do you know who the child is?"

Again Zechs glanced at the picture, at the boy. "No," he said after a moment of consideration. "No, I do not."

"Then it is best that you don't."

He met Odin's eyes. "Rhyn says you were once in love with her."

Odin only smiled. "Rhyn says too much sometimes." Leaning forward in a quick change of the subject that Zechs would not realize until much later, he asked, "Now that you appear to be calmed, Prince, would you care to explain yourself?"

He was silent for a long while. Finally he shook his head. "The matter is irrelevant now." He remembered the strange glances between Rhyn and Relena, and wondered if Rhyn had somehow known all this time.

"It didn't seem so irrelevant earlier," Odin remarked.

"I have since reconsidered it."

Odin raised an eyebrow. "Have you? Then shall I make an arrangement for you to be taken back to Sanq?"

"I can't return tonight," he said, too quickly.

"I suppose this matter would be irrelevant as well."

Zechs dumbly nodded.

Odin smiled. "Irrelevant enough to keep you away from your royal home."

He said nothing.

"Then I shall have to ask you to do something for me."

Zechs waited, with an inquisitive expression upon his face.

"In light of recent events," Odin went on, "the movement of mobile suits from the production base in Spain to here has already begun. However, there are still a few matters that have yet to be addressed. This will require you traveling to Spain, Marquise. Will this mission be longer than you needed?"

He thought of how he had left Relena, of pushing her away, hearing her crying out after him. She would undoubtedly be back at the palace now.

"No," he said. "I would be grateful for it."

"Then I will send you." His eyes went, strangely, to the picture of the woman and the small boy she held. "I believe now that you, Prince, are the only one suited for what it is you have to do."

Zechs glanced at the photograph as Odin had.

"You will be meeting with my highest subordinate, by the way."

He gave a faint smile as he thought he began to recognize the blue-eyed child, and listened numbly as Odin explained his mission.

I am so sorry, Relena.

Author's Notes: A very short chapter, but a very important one. I've received quite a bit of feedback regarding the situation with Relena and Treize and their respective actions therein; some of it has been good, some dissenting, and some rather scathing. I will defend it now in the same way I did when the scene was first written, long before it was posted on this website: there is a reason for Treize's uncharacteristic actions. I am aware that Treize is far too much of a gentleman to behave and speak so vulgarly, but I will assure you that he acts as he does for a certain reason, that will be explained in detail later in this story. If, however, anyone is curious as to how I first formulated this idea, it was after seeing the GW episode in which Treize relieves Relena of her duties as Queen of the Earthsphere. I can't remember the name or number of the episode, but the scene in which she first becomes aware that Treize is behind her in the room somehow inexplicably inspired the relationship between them in Ballad.