A Ballad of War

by Phoenix Serapha

Hopeless and lost in their own lives, Zechs and Heero are drawn into a new conflict two years after the Eve Wars. Loosely inspired by John Davidson's A Ballad of Hell. Contains strong references to the Episode Zero manga. COMPLETE

17. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

I

He sat alone in the darkened bunker, a tall, brooding figure, the black of his clothes meshing so perfectly with the upholstery of the great chair in which he sat that he appeared not as a man but rather a dismembered head and pair of hands. He held a cigarette in one strong, steady hand while the other absently stroked his dark mustache. There was a bottle of Wild Turkey on the table in front of him. He appeared to be reading the report displayed on the computer before him, and every few minutes he would indeed skim over a section of it, but in all truth he couldn't have cared less about it. He already knew the information there.

His thoughts, rather, were on the great Prince of Sanq.

Odin still did not fully trust Zechs, and he supposed he never would. He knew Marquise was not going to turn his back on the operation at some crucial point as he had done while with the OZ organization two years prior (as he was still doing now, it seemed, as closely as Treize's new force resembled OZ and considering that, in either case, Zechs was betraying the same person), but, as Odin knew, Zechs's loyalty still did not lay with him. There was only one thing to which Zechs, or rather Milliardo Peacecraft, had remained loyal over the years and that was his precious Sanq Kingdom; two things if Lucrezia Noin were taken into consideration. Zechs had listed several motives for why he had chosen to stand with this clandestine organization, but only Odin knew the true reason. Zechs did not need to have told him — it was written in his piercing eyes, eyes that would, had Odin not forsaken his old principles based on emotion, have inspired a note of pity within him as well as admiration.

It truly had been Zechs Marquise, the Lightning Count himself, who had accepted Odin's proposition. Milliardo Peacecraft was dead, had died in the explosion of the Epyon. Zechs Marquise hadn't had any real spiritual beliefs, only a strict code of morality, but Odin suspected that Milliardo Peacecraft had. He based this suspicion on something Zechs had said shortly after agreeing to join the counteroffensive, as the two of them stood on a landing dock beyond the base that overlooking the ocean, where Odin had often brought up the most serious matters of discussion not because he thought the fresh air would be good for his secluded subordinate, but rather because he believed Zechs would be more honest and clear-thinking if he were able to look upon his native land. Marquise had looked up at the sun, which was beginning to set at this time, at the blue sky beyond that blocked the colonies from view and the wispy clouds that floated on the horizon, and after a minute or so his eyes had taken on a shine that didn't come from watching the setting sun. Odin had thought he intended to maintain his silence for quite a while and he began to walk off, then Zechs stopped him by speaking, his voice rough and deep but with a strange tremor to it as well.

"Some of the things I've done," he said, "I'm not sure how Lucrezia could have forgiven me for them. I cannot forgive myself for them. The people of Earth — they won't forgive me. Relena has only started to, but I don't think she ever will. I don't know if even God will." He paused briefly. "I can't make up for what I've done. I can't even begin to. Even doing this, I will never be able to atone for those sins." He raised his head higher, above the flaming orb in the west. "But I can at least try, can't I?" he asked the air, and the pained expression on his face was one of longing, as though he were trying to peer through space at the Divine Being of whom he had just spoken, begging Him to understand what he was trying to say.

Odin watched him for a moment more, but the man said nothing else.

Such words could have been spoken out of vanity but Odin suspected these had not been. Whatever belief Milliardo Peacecraft had possessed had been passed onto Zechs at some point, whether before he had spent one year dead or after. That same belief — those same words — was what had moved Zechs to join the counteroffensive.

Atonement. He was seeking some kind of atonement for what he had done as Milliardo Peacecraft, atonement through the prevention of a war, and if war could not be avoided, through the resistance and hopefully the defeat of the enemy. Atonement. Odin strangely hoped Marquise would find it, perhaps for the same reason that he hoped Heero would turn back to the life into which Odin had tried to guide him.

He didn't know what had caused the change in Zechs, and he found himself curious as to what he had been like before the metamorphosis.

Odin took another swig of the whiskey.

Zechs Marquise.

Milliardo Peacecraft.

What would he have been like if Odin had taken him in as a ward as he had the boy known as Heero Yuy? Would he have been as good a pupil as Heero? A better one, perhaps? He too had been a survivor of a political assassination, and he too had seen his parents murdered — he had been hurt early on enough in life to be taught how to properly use that pain and how to view the world for what it was really was beyond the battles that plagued it. If Odin had known of the Peacecraft assassination before it transpired, would he have been able to take the boy into his custody and if so, would he have been able to train him as he had Heero?

Questions that constantly troubled his mind, questions to which he was only now getting partial answers.

Odin was not trying, through their contact in the counteroffensive, to train Zechs, although such manipulation had crossed his mind. Marquise was too old now, too full of his own ideas and conceptions of life, and if Odin tried to change those now, God only knew what the fallen prince of the Sanq Kingdom would do. The imbecilic Quinze had attempted this, and in doing so had lost his own life as well as those of thousands of soldiers.

Zechs was a good soldier, an even better operative, but at the same time he was a lost cause. However, Heero was not.

Odin leaned back in the chair, a tight, half-cynical smile spreading across his face.

He found it amusing that the boy, trained to be an assassin of a caliber Odin himself would never be able to achieve, had been given the name of the pacifist leader. He found it even more amusing how quickly the boy had discarded the name once all the warfare and bloodshed was over, returning to the one he had been given at birth by a woman he barely remembered whom he had seen killed right in front of his young eyes when he was still young enough to believe they could not be separated by anything. He had not done this to maintain anonymity, though. Odin could see that through the boy's weak, half-hearted explanations. Just as Milliardo Peacecraft was seeking atonement for what he had done, Heero was doing some kind of penance by adopting his given name. He was forcing himself to remember who he really was and where he had come from, and more importantly how he had betrayed those beginnings. He was much like the Peacecraft prince in that regard, and, Odin supposed, this was at the root of the two pilots' respect for each other, whether they truly liked each other or not. But in the end, maybe it would be Heero who was proven the strongest of the two; after all he, unlike Zechs, had never felt the need for disguises and it was he who was brave enough to rectify whatever mistakes he thought he had made under his true name.

Maybe Zechs will learn something from you, Takeru, Odin though, but he doubted it. He doubted anything could be learned by these ruined soldiers in this era of tyranny and bloodshed.

Odin sighed, almost wearily. It had been years since he had experienced true weariness, but at times the counteroffensive brought him close to that feeling again.

He left the underground base shortly after midnight. There was still much work to be done before the counteroffensive could be launched in its entirety, and even at that hour close to a hundred people were still on base, some of them working to hack into the main computers of their enemy's headquarters, some finishing the inspection of another mobile suit, and some simply dozing over their file-cluttered desks. Every one of the men Odin passed on his way to the stairwell looked at him when he walked by, not speaking, and a few of them even saluted. Odin nodded at this but he did not particularly enjoy it. He was not the leader of any army and had done nothing to earn the respect of one. He had organized this counteroffensive half for the people of the Earth and the colonies and half for his own personal reasons known to none other than himself, but when the time came for battle he would step down and hand the title of a leader to Zechs Marquise, or perhaps, he supposed, to Heero, to whom he would always refer in his mind as Takeru.

The night was cool and moist, clouded by the mist rolling from the sea. He could smell the salt of the ocean from the abandoned landing platform where he stood, and he crossed the runway to the edge of the hillside, leaning against the rail where he could see the foam-crested waves crash against he shore. He withdrew a pack of cigarettes from one pocket of his long coat, and from the other pocket he took a box of matches. He never had liked lighters very well.

Heero would be coming to the Sanq Kingdom soon. Odin had not spoken with Zechs since he had asked him to give his request to Heero, but he knew the boy would come. He would have to notify the guards at the entrance to the base to watch for a covered transport truck carrying an especially heavy load.

Yes, he would be coming here soon.

Heero.

Takeru.

Young Takeru, of the Hanasaki family who had led one of the first major rebellions against OZ and its sister organization, the Cosmos Arm.

Odin took another drag off the cigarette, flicked it into the placid ocean. He reached inside his jacket and from the interior pocket he withdrew a small, carefully folded newspaper clipping. He unfolded it, and as it always did, even all these years later, his breath still caught for just one moment when his eyes looked into hers.

This was one of several pictures he had preserved of her. Many had been taken that year, some with her husband, some by herself, and even one in which she held her infant child, wrapped in a ripped square of white sheet and safe against his mother's breasts. In all of them, however, except for those in which she appeared alone, she was surrounded by legions of supporters. They had come from all over the world, those people, leaving behind both impoverished tenements and country mansions to join the nameless, unofficial rebel force she and her husband had formed.

In this picture, the woman was being led away by Alliance soldiers. Her husband was behind her, a number of supporters who had gathered with them in a public park that day all around her, and each was flanked by a pair of soldiers. Her hands were bound behind her back, and though this was not visible in the picture, one of the soldiers was pressing a gun into the small of her back. Her head was up and her shoulders were back and there was only the slightest of expressions on her face, and of all the possible expressions in the world it was a smile that touched at the corners of her mouth. She looked as though she were not being led to a small holding cell in an Alliance-held prison where she would be detained for twenty-four hours but instead slowly attaining some kind of salvation through such ordeals. The camera had been closest to her when the shot was taken and almost every detail of her face was visible, from the gleam of the sun on her hair to the smooth almond shape of her eyes to the fullness of her lips.

So beautiful, she had been. Always so beautiful.

The woman in the photograph was the mother of the boy who would one day become known as the Gundam pilot Heero Yuy. Her name was Hanasaki Sakura, her husband's name Nobuyoshi. The caption below the picture read simply PROTESTERS but they had been so much more than that, although now their names were rarely mentioned and there had not been a news headline featuring their picture in close to fifteen years.

Little was known to the general public in regard to where the couple had come from before their emergence as a strong revolutionary force, but Odin had not been general public to them, and he was one of the few people who could, in all rights, properly tell their story.

With the establishment of colonies in space and the Earthsphere Alliance as a major international, intercolonial governing force, many of the Earth's nations had experienced severe governmental as well as economic changes, many of them not for the better. Because of such changes, several nations were forced into returning to some kind of hierarchical system, and a number of countries that previously enjoyed democratic or representative democratic governments found themselves having to turn to monarchy. The Alliance allowed this but only because this would, in the end, do nothing more than suit their purposes.

Japan had not suffered so badly that it required the establishment of a monarch as the governing force but while it maintained the Prime Minister, more power had been shifted to that position, so that absolute power was the only thing that prevented the Prime Minister from receiving the title of emperor.

The same was true of most other nations who maintained a President or Minister of some kind.

The Alliance had promised unto the people, in the beginning, that the Earth was simply suffering changes caused by lack of adjustment to the funding of the space colonies and the need for a supreme organization to assist in all governmental affairs, that supreme organization being the Alliance itself. For a while each country's government remained relatively untouched by the Alliance and even those who had for centuries lived under democratic rule began to enjoy the monarchy — or representative monarchy, in cases of Ministers and Presidents, for that was what they were in reality — and the kind of life that came with it. It was during this time, however, that the Alliance was making its plans to gain total control of both the separated governments of the Earth's countries and those of the colonies.

There had amid all this, however, been places that remained untouched by these political affairs, maintaining an existential existence that drew little or no attention to themselves. One of these such places had been in the mountains of Japan, established long before any records of it had surfaced.

After the assassination of Heero Yuy, his final mission under the employment of the Cosmos Arm, he had wandered the Earth aimlessly, a mere shell of a person. Finally, however, for some inexplicable reason, it had been to these mountains he was called, and it was what had happened there that had saved him, from the Alliance, from the Cosmos Arm, or perhaps only from himself.

He had been accepted into the mountain temple without hesitation, as were most of those who came there, seeking refuge. Within his first year there — which truthfully needed no great description — he had become a scholar of the arts and wisdom practiced there.

His training within the temple had taken less than a year. He supposed that his psychological training his youth in the Scandinavian provinces had played some role in the speed with which he had absorbed everything that the temple masters offered to teach him. He had soon excelled even those who had been born in the sanctity of the temple, and all the while he had never even tried.

Within a year of his acceptance into the temple, he was asked to fight one of the other students.

He never asked about this ritual of the temple, nor had any explanation ever been offered, and despite all his searching he had never found any documentation of it. However, this had done little to prevent him from fulfilling the masters' request.

Only a few of the other students had been present in the central pagoda the evening he was given the black robes that would become his signature within the temple and asked to engage in this form of combat. Most of those surrounding him he had seen before, some of them he had not. The student he was placed against he had known almost since he had come to Japan.

He realized enough that evening to come to a basic understanding of the unnamed ritual. It was not so much a test of concentration on one's abilities as he had at first believed but rather was a test of whether one could become completely oblivious to his surroundings and all the expressionless eyes watching him and focus his mind on his opponent. All of those who were considered masters of the temple had first had to complete these tests to earn their positions, and already they had chosen to test him.

It had hardly been a test for him, though. He had defeated the other student easily and quickly despite the distractions and his own uncertainty, and within the following week he was brought before his next opponent.

It became a cycle, this ritual, one that spanned the course of another season. Each time he was brought before a different student — some of them he knew well and some he knew not at all — and each time he defeated them. After he had gone through this ten times he became aware that he was being ranked among the others who participated in the ritual, who numbered exactly thirty. Of that number, he was told, he had been placed at twenty. From twenty he ascended to fifteen, and from there to ten. He earned something of a reputation among the others for his abilities and this reputation was only increased as time went on.

By the time he had earned the position of the temple's fifth highest student he began to hear rumors of the one who held the first position. Reputed to be young and completely silent when fighting, the only thing known for certain about him was that he could not be defeated. He had completed his training in the temple in youth but continued to fight because another had yet to beat him, it was said, but no one was able to pinpoint when his youth had transpired. His name even was disputed over, as was why, if he were such a remarkable and renowned fighter, he was never recognized. The only one who seemed to know anything outside of the rumors about him was one of the more devoted students Odin had gradually come to know since he had begun his training at the temple, Hanasaki Nobuyoshi.

"He was born into the temple," Nobuyoshi said once after overhearing two other students' disillusioned conversation. "He was given the name Takeru."

"And his family's name?"

Again Nobuyoshi displayed his knowing, secretive smile. "None that I am aware of," he replied. "Or if he has one, it is unknown."

"Have you fought him?" Odin had asked, not out of intrigue with the enigmatic one known as Takeru but rather simple curiosity.

"Yes." No hesitation. "And I have lost to him too. Several times. You will be fighting him soon, at the pace you are going."

And Odin had fought him soon after that discussion, but first he had at last been paired against Nobuyoshi, who had been ranked third amongst them. The fight had been longer than most and more demanding of them both, but eventually Odin had beaten him as well. Strangely enough, it had been this defeat that had forged their friendship and perhaps sealed Nobuyoshi's fate as a martyr.

Odin gained the position of second easily, and three weeks following his fight against Nobuyoshi, he was placed against the infamous Takeru.

There was an entirely new element in the air of the pagoda that evening, some indefinite silence, an air of curious apprehension that was almost enough to unnerve him. A few more candles were lit than usual, a few fewer voices were heard, and all throughout the rooms of the pagoda could be heard the whispered prayers of both the temple masters and the students alike; prayers to God, to ancestors, to the spirits that lived now in the forests and in the mountains; prayers to the great Buddha, to Vishnu and to Krishna and to Brahma and Shiva, prayers to the Holy Christ and to the Blessed Virgin; for every faith that had ever been present within the hearts of those who lived within the temple some prayer was said. And upon seeing these things, Odin had realized something: this great scholar, whomever he really was, was regarded as something close to a living holy relic.

His opponent had surprised him at first sight, and no doubt his surprise had been evident to all around them. The scholar was brought before him rather than the usual opposite, escorted by two masters into the room. As Odin himself was, his opponent was robed in black but in a tighter, smaller outfit, more that of a stealth assassin than one who had dedicated his life to the temple. His head, too, was shrouded in black, leaving only his eyes, two almond-shaped pools of ebony, exposed.

The greatest shock, however, had been in his physical form. This scholar who had gained such a reputation even before Odin had come to the temple, this enigmatic silent fighter who could not be defeated, was only a boy. A mere child, robed in black and shrouded to protect the knowledge of his age. He was not particularly young, it seemed, for he was too tall and too lithely slender to be too adolescent, but nonetheless he had to still be in youth, for his stature and size were too small to be that of full-grown man.

The boy walked toward him, unafraid, without hesitation. His eyes, Odin saw, were of some unearthly ethereal beauty, large and gracefully almond-shaped, carvings of ivory set around two pools of glistening oil, dancing with the shadows cast by the candlelight.

"Takeru," Odin said quietly as they bowed to each other.

The boy whispered in return, "Hai."

Odin paused for a moment, briefly stunned by the word. Was this boy still so young that his voice had yet to fully change?

A strange hush fell over the robed spectators as the fight began. Odin was himself at first too astounded to even move effectively, and within the first few minutes he had twice almost lost his concentration at some greatly crucial point.

The rumors did, in the end, prove to be well-founded. The boy was utterly silent as he moved and made still not a sound as he fended Odin off, though most of this time was spent with Odin on the defensive. He attacked with all the ferocity of the enraged beast yet all the while maintained grace like that of some feline creature, moving like an inhuman spirit, disturbing nothing as he came forward in offense.

In the end, as foretold, Odin lost to the boy. The fight was long and fierce enough to be considered brutal, but ultimately he had not even truly had a chance against the boy.

Thus he was placed second among all the students of the temple who had been selected for this nameless ritual, both those who had only recently completed their prerequisite spiritual training and those who had done so years earlier. His defeat was treated with no alarm whatsoever — there had never been any real question as to who would win.

It would not be the last time he faced the boy, nor would it be the last time he lost to him.

The second time he saw the boy was not during another ritual, but rather in the heart of the temple, in another sacred room of the pagoda that could never be used for such combat.

He often went to this room late in the evening, after the last student had departed and the last candle extinguished, when he could be sure that not even one of the masters would be there; when the sole light was that of the moon pouring through windows with all the stealth and grace of an expert thief, or, as Odin thought, an assassin. Sometimes he prayed there and sometimes he meditated, and sometimes he did nothing at all.

This night, however, the ability to do even nothing eluded him. He assumed his usual place on the floor of the temple, kneeling not as he was taught to do in the west but in the manner of a temple priest, and tried to pray, only to find that he could not think of the proper words. He then tried to meditate and could not, and within the first few minutes of this attempt he realized it was futile to do anything.

So he remained there, head lowered, eyes closed, unmoving on the floor of a temple that had privately been consecrated as so many things that its name no longer seemed truly befitting of it, or perhaps was quite fitting indeed. At last he became aware that he was not alone. He could not hear the movement of another but he knew it nonetheless, could sense it in a way that anyone trained as either an assassin or a practitioner of the Eastern arts could do. He made no move as he waited for the other to do something, giving no sign that he was aware of them slowly approaching him from behind, and strangely he could sense that they knew he was aware of it all along.

The boy emerged from the shadows finally, standing before him like an executioner about to take his life. It was the same boy he had fought and lost to only a week ago, wearing the same slender black robes as he had in the temple the evening they had fought. His face again was covered, revealing only his ethereal eyes, eyes which glistened with an almost holy light under the pale silver glow of the moon that poured in through the open windows.

"Takeru-san," Odin said, looking up at the boy with raised brow. The name would have to suffice as a greeting.

Silently, the boy knelt before him. Odin almost inquired of him why he had come to this most sacred room — but that would have defiled the moment, wouldn't it? — but before he could, the boy raised his arms and began to unwind the black cloth that covered his face. Odin watched raptly, struck by the epiphany of the moment before the cloth began to expose the boy's smooth skin beneath it, as the face became not that of an older adolescent but a woman.

She was beautiful, he saw immediately, so beautiful that he, a man who would in the years to follow become known for his stoicism, was almost blinded by the sight of her. She was younger than he, her face retaining the innocence of a child still, but she could not be mistaken for a child under any circumstances. Her skin was the color of the finest ivory under the celestial light, glowing as though from some inner illumination; her lips, though unchanged, as was her face, by the use of any cosmetics, were of some pale red color, full and slightly curved into a small natural smile. Her cheekbones were high and so evenly perfect they seemed truly to have been sculpted by a god, and though she wore the black clothes of a nameless, faceless scholar, kneeling before him on the floor in a humbled pose, she appeared nothing less than an empress.

Again she reached up and removed two nondescript pins from her hair. Loosened, it fell from its tight bun over her shoulders in shimmering waves of black, the dark mantle of a forgotten saint.

He was so astounded by the sight of her that he could not speak.

She did not seem fazed by his silent reaction. "Watashi wa Sakura desu," she said formally, then translated, as though he did not know Japanese, "My name is Sakura."

At last he found his voice. "They say you have only one name. Is this true?"

She graced him with a knowing smile. "Did Hanasaki Nobuyoshi tell you this?"

"He confirmed it, yes."

"He does seem to enjoy adding to the rumors about me," she said, her heavy Japanese accent lending her words an almost musical lilt. "However, I do have another name."

He waited; she smiled.

"Hanasaki," she said after a moment. "My name is Hanasaki Sakura. I am Nobuyoshi's wife."

He was not in the least surprised by this revelation.

"You are friends with my husband, are you not?"

He nodded.

"He speaks of you often. So do the masters of the temple."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you actually one of them?"

Her smile faltered slightly. "No. I cannot be. My gender prevents it." She paused for a brief moment, then continued, her voice calm, quiet, calculated as Odin's own often was. "I have not come here to discuss that with you."

"Then why have you come?"

"I was searching for someone," she replied. "And it is known that he sometimes comes here at night when no one else is…do I disturb you?"

No. Your face alone enlightens me. "No, you do not," he answered.

She wasted no time in getting to what she had come for. He would later realize that she never wasted time in anything. "You are the one that killed Heero Yuy, are you not?"

All the time he had spent in training, all the hours he had spent in contemplation of the Eastern wisdom and the techniques of controlling one's emotions, could not have prepared him for this. His eyes bulged in their sockets — such a strange feeling such a shocked expression was upon his calm face — and had he not immediately caught himself his jaw would have become unhinged.

She held one slender, ivory-in-the-moonlight hand up to cease his protest and graced him with a serene smile. "You do not have to deny it. I know. I mean to ask you something about his death."

His mind raged in light of her impenetrable calmness. "How–"

"Because of your movement," she replied. Her smile made her seem less a saint and more an Asian goddess, one whose worship had been preserved only in these mountains. "Your movement and your eyes. That must suffice as an explanation, for it is the only one I may give. You were an assassin before you came here, were you not?"

He surrendered any hope of protesting. "Yes."

"And for whom did you kill?"

"I worked for anyone willing to give a good price at first."

"Trained from youth, I suppose."

He gave a solemn nod. He had never spoken a word of this to anyone — not even to the boy, not yet born at that time, who would later become this woman's son and a few years after that Odin's own ward — yet (and perhaps it was because he was still too stunned to think clearly) he told her without reservation. "Off the coast of Greece, yes, and for a few years in Scandinavia. Then I was employed by the Alliance."

"Which branch of the Alliance?"

"The Cosmos Arm." It was only now that he was able to look into her eyes again, and in them he saw something like a spark of interest.

"Have you killed since Heero Yuy?"

He shook his head. "No. For all the Alliance knows I was killed trying to flee."

"Is that the way you would have them believe it?"

"Yes."

She leaned closer to him. Rustle of silk in the moonlight. Did her husband know she was here?

"You have a gun in your chambers. Tell me, assassin, do you intend on using it here?"

He did not hesitate. "Never."

"Then why have you kept it?"

He thought, tried to answer, could not. He himself did not know why the gun had remained with him when he had come to the temple.

She reached out, touched his hand in a surprising gesture of assurance and offered him a slight smile. "I have not come to accuse you of anything, merely to ask."

He swallowed slowly, unable to tear his eyes away from hers. "And what is it that you wish to ask?"

She released him. "When you killed him, when you watched him die, did you feel anything? Did you sense, perhaps, something like a great, glorious fire going out?"

Under the scrutiny of her gaze and the shock of her words, he could barely think back to that day, yet he remembered this clearly. "No," he replied finally. "I felt nothing, other than the sudden realization of what I had done."

Her eyes narrowed in brief consideration. After some immeasurable amount of time, she nodded and said, "It is just as well that you did not. In the span of a few years, a life such as that of Heero Yuy is a miraculous flame, but in the span of history it is nothing but a few brief seconds of light. The world did not cry out with his death if you felt nothing. Only men did." She rose quickly, gracefully, and started toward the open doorway. "Thank your for your answer," she said before she would have left the room. "I will be watching you, assassin."

"Sakura-san," he called after her, surprised at how easily the name slipped from his tongue, although he had only tonight learned it.

She stopped, waited. Her dark eyes turned back to look at him.

"I did not wait to watch him die," he said. "I ran the second after I fired the bullet."

"Hn." This was her only response for some time. When at last she spoke again, she retreated a few steps back into the room. "You have given your name as Odin Lowe. Is that your real name?"

He nodded. "Strangely enough, I have never found a reason to use another one."

Another step toward him. "I would not have taken you for such a coward, Odin," she said. "One as strong as yourself should have had the courage to remain until he had died. Only a coward does not finish what he begins. I would hope that if my life were to be taken in such a manner, my assassin would have the strength to stand over me while I die."

With that horrible precursor she left the room, leaving him in the empty silence. He remained there until dawn, too stunned to do anything else, and when at last he was no longer disoriented by all that had just been revealed, he had a slight premonition of how much, ultimately, this woman would change his life.

II

Life continued as usual the following day at the temple, unaffected by his encounter with the woman the previous night. Odin was consciously amazed by how well he functioned all throughout the morning, even though the only thing his mind could focus on was the woman.

Nobuyoshi found him later in the evening and stopped him, smiling his signature beautifully mischievous smile. "Sakura tells me that she spoke with you last night."

Odin nodded, maintaining his composure as he had scarcely been able to do while confronted with this man's wife. "She did."

"She is quite interesting, no? Believe it or not, her name suits her."

"I never doubted that it did."

"Are you disappointed that you lost to her?"

"Absolutely not," Odin replied, and it was true. Just as he had never been disappointed at being defeated by what he had believed to be a young boy, nor was he now that he knew the boy was in actuality a woman. In fact he had hardly given thought to the discovery at all; what plagued his mind was not what the woman had done but what she had said. I would not have taken you for such a coward, Odin.

He became aware that Nobuyoshi was speaking to him, and Nobuyoshi laughed upon realizing Odin wasn't listening. "She would not tell me what she wanted to speak to you about. Was it so interesting?"

Odin thought for a moment. Interesting, yes, of course. Interesting and astounding, to say the very least. Finally he gave a slight nod, as though the previous evening had affected him not at all.

Nobuyoshi continued, as was so habitual for him to do when he did not hold the listener's full attention. Odin answered his questions unconsciously.

He glimpsed the woman again several times the following day, and seeing her so regularly in a usual setting made him realize how often he had seen her before in the past and had simply failed to notice her, though how that was possible he did not know.

He saw her first as the dawn commenced, outside the temple with a group of monks who gathered each morning by a stream that ran down the side of the mountain, where Odin often walked as the sun rose. She sat apart from the monks, farther upstream and askew from their row, dressed perhaps ceremoniously as they were in full, simple robes of white, an aesthetic contrast to their robes of orange. He had almost passed by them when he realized that he had seen this exact same tableau before.

The woman's head was bowed, as were the monks', her hands folded neatly over her knees, and somehow she seemed to praying rather than meditating.

And what is it that you pray for, Sakura, my dear? he thought before he could stop himself, then banished it from his mind when she opened one large eye and looked up at him.

He saw her again in the middle of the day, following several yards behind a line of quietly chattering women, silent, uninvolved. He wondered if she were really ever a part of anything.

She was alone the next time he saw her, once more outside the temple, practicing without an opponent the proper maneuvering of a Chinese sword. She barely took notice of him as he watched her, but he was certain she was aware of his presence.

There passed hardly an hour that day that he did not glimpse her somewhere.

He was approached again that evening by Nobuyoshi, who came to him smiling mischievously as always. "Tomorrow evening," he said, fidgeting excitedly as a child might, "you are to fight her again. Sakura herself has requested it." He started to say something else, paused, then added, "She seems to have taken interest in something about you." In that first year before they would all be linked permanently together, this was the most Nobuyoshi had ever said about his wife. Odin could easily understand this. Somehow it seemed disrespectful to speak of her without her being present.

He did as asked and went to the pagoda the following day after the sun had set over the side of the mountain. The masters of the temple were already there, joined this time by Nobuyoshi, and it seemed that most of the former tensions that had been present in the air the first time he had been placed against Sakura had dissipated.

As before, Sakura arrived after him, alone, unveiled, unmasked. Her black eyes glistened in the soft lantern-light.

If she had looked like an empress in her black fighting attire, she truly was a goddess tonight. Her black outfit had been cast off for layers of white, billowing robes, enclosing her small figure like the six wings of a seraph. Her black hair was let down, framing her stunning face as no veil could ever so beautifully do.

A goddess, yes, not the succulent Aphrodite but Artemis, a pillar of strength that needed nothing upon which to lean or to fall.

Her husband went immediately to her, kissed her briefly on her perfectly sculpted cheek. She spoke quietly to him, as calm in speaking to her husband as she was in speaking to Odin, as calm as she was in fighting. He wondered if anything could elicit some emotion from her.

She took note of him then, raised her head in questioning. He nodded.

A hush fell over the room when she walked toward him. They met in the center of the room, bowed to each other.

"Did I not tell you I would be watching you?" she whispered. Her eyes met his. "I wish to speak to you after."

"Hai."

The fight lasted longer than their first, perhaps because of the woman's apparent distrust of him, perhaps because of his own knowledge of who she really was. Ultimately, however, it was she who won. Odin was pleased to see that her expression did not change as she defeated him.

She offered her hand to him as if he needed assistance in rising. He took it, sensing her motive, and as he stood she whispered, "Before midnight, where the monks gather in the morning. Will you come?"

He gave a brief, discreet nod.

She whirled around and left him as if there had been no exchange between them.

The small crowd that had gathered in the pagoda dispensed as quickly and thoroughly as surely they had come, leaving Odin as the only one who remained in the room where so many of these ritualistic competitions had taken place for God-only-knew how many years. Indeed, he did linger for some time, feeling as though he were on the verge of some strangely pivotal epiphany but unable to fully grasp it. When at last he left, he found someone waiting for him in the corridor.

The hand, slender and light and aged even then, clasped his shoulder as he stepped out of the doorway. Odin spun to face whomever had touched him, expecting the woman and finding someone different entirely.

"She has taken an interest in you," the man said, speaking in perfect English with only a moderate Chinese accent. Odin recognized him immediately as Xing Yuan-Chen, one of the masters of the temple who, it seemed to Odin, had been there since the temple had come into existence.

Odin merely waited.

"She has taken an interest in you," Yuan-Chen repeated, "and her interest disturbs her. I trust that you are aware of this."

He nodded. "Or something of the like."

"She distrusts you–"

"I have gathered that."

"—and she has distrusted you since you came here. To answer the question you are about to ask, yes, she has been watching you almost since that time."

"She has told you this?"

Yuan-Chen gave a slight nod. It was rare to see him perform a more exaggerated gesture. "She has. Sakura considers me as an advisor to her, of sorts. She has voiced her concerns to me and I have told her to do as her conscience dictates. You would be wise to let down your defenses around her."

Odin started to ask him another question but before he could, Yuan-Chen turned and walked down the same corridor the other masters had gone down earlier, moving as silently as a specter. Odin considered following after him and thought better of it. He would get nothing else from the elder man. Yuan-Chen had said all he needed to.

Odin returned to his own chambers on the other side of the temple. There he remained until an hour before midnight; somehow he knew she was already waiting for him.

He waited a few minutes, then decided it would be better if he did not make her do the same.

The night was cold and clear, he saw when he left the temple, without moonlight and on this face of the mountain, without the lights of the cities below. A few stars were visible where the lanterns that lit the outer walls of the temple could not shine, and looking up into the sky seemed, on this night, to be more like looking through some tear in the fabric of what was accepted as real into the great abyss of eternity.

He started toward the place where he was to meet her. The lights did not seem to fade as he went farther from the temple, for every time the light of one lantern began to darken he came upon the path of another. Even when the temple itself appeared at slumber in the night, there were many who left it and all its many shrines and altars to come pray or meditate alone on the mountainside.

As he neared the place where the stream cut through the woods of the mountain, a voice, soft and calm, broke the silence of the night. He paused and peered beyond the glow of a lantern to see a man, younger than himself, kneeling before a small silver statue, his head bowed and his eyes closed, whispering a Hindi prayer. He seemed oblivious of Odin's observant presence, bathed in the firelight that gave to his dark skin a dancing bronze tone, and though Odin could not discern a word of the prayer he spoke, somehow it seemed to make the very ground beneath him and the faint stars overhead sacred.

"It is all very beautiful, is it not?" a voice said behind him. He turned and saw her standing by a tall weeping tree, watching the scene as he had only a second ago. She had changed clothes since their fight — gone were the billowing white robes of earlier, replaced now by a slender white silken kimono. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a tight bun above the nape of her neck, held into place by two ivory sticks.

"Are you Sakura or Takeru now?" Odin asked, his voice more sardonic than he had intended. Let down your defenses around her.

She seemed to take no notice; rather, she offered him a vaguely warm smile. "Sakura," she said. "The name Takeru I use only when circumstances do not seem befitting of a woman."

He nodded in agreement. "Is there anything special about that name to you?"

"I am merely fond of it," she replied. She stepped away from the tree. "Shall we leave here? If we do not, we may interrupt something that is best uninterrupted."

He nodded and followed after her as she proceeded further into the woods.

"Nobuyoshi enjoys your company," she said after they had walked for a few minutes. "He is beginning to suspect what you are but he is not yet certain. I have told him nothing."

Something occurred to him as she said this, and the words left his mouth before he could prevent them. "Why do you feel the need to protect him?"

"Because I am stronger than he, and therefore it is my duty."

"Do you honestly believe that I am a threat to him?"

She stopped and turned to look at him. Her eyes met his unabashedly, searching his very soul. "You have a gun, do you not?"

Let down your defenses. "Yes."

"And you have used it in the past."

No hostility, only a bare honesty.

"Yes."

"Would you use it again?"

"No. Never."

"Not even against those who orchestrated Heero Yuy's death?"

Hesitation. Let down your defenses around her.

"Which is it, assassin? Yes or no?"

"I am afraid I would not know unless I were placed in that situation," he replied, and it was the best answer he could give.

Sakura stared into his eyes a moment longer, unblinking, then turned and walked onward, pushing aside the tree limbs that obstructed their path with a graceful gesture of one silk-covered arm. "We are all safe here," she said, her voice softening. "The rest of the world goes on all around us, but we are untouched by it. No one here knows anything of the Earthsphere Alliance or the affairs of the colonies in space."

"I didn't come here to threaten that."

"I know that is not your intention, but you could indirectly do it nonetheless. Could they find you here? The ones who wished for Heero Yuy's death?"

"No."

"Are you certain of it, Odin?"

"Yes."

"Hn." This was all she said for some time. It was a response Odin would become accustomed to years later, as it would be her son's most frequently used word.

They came finally to the small clearing, to the stream that gleamed like molten silver under the light of the stars. Sakura sat on the ground beside the stream, drawing her legs underneath her, and motioned for Odin to do the same.

"You have impressed the temple masters," she said when he was seated, watching him serenely as she spoke. "They have spoken of admitting you into their ranks. They say you are a truly enlightened individual."

"I have heard the same of yourself."

"From Nobuyoshi?"

"Yes, and from others who know you."

Her gaze faltered briefly, as though in shame. "They are all mistaken. I wish it to be true. I have studied in this temple since childhood and I have been trained even more extensively than most monks, but I have yet to achieve enlightenment. I fear I cannot. My mind, unlike yours, Odin, is chaos."

"What do you mean?"

"I have chosen not the life of a proper lady, nor that of a proper wife. I am a scholar, and with that comes an awareness that will not allow me to earn the mental calm that you have."

Let down your defenses. "There is something else too, isn't there, Sakura?"

A stifled sigh, a brief sign of reaction. "I was born here in this temple, as were many of the others here. Most of the others have very little conception of life beyond this mountain. Unfortunately, I do. Nobuyoshi and I were in the same situation as children."

"How so?"

"We were both orphaned. His mother died in childbirth, and his father left the temple soon after, while Nobuyoshi was still in infancy."

"And your own parents?"

"Killed by Alliance soldiers while making a visit to a friend in Osaka. The friend — I never knew his name — was suspected of being a terrorist against the Alliance. My parents were trying to persuade him to come to the temple with them when they returned. The Alliance raided Osaka while they were there, arresting twenty-seven people they believed to be their opponents and killing fifteen others. My parents were among the latter. Do you yet understand why I have watched you?"

He nodded.

"We are not all of us oblivious to what is happening all around this mountain. There are many within the walls of the temple who each day must disguise the fear that the Alliance will soon tire of its games with the colonies and turn their sights on places like this. You can bring them here, Odin. Do you realize that? If the Alliance even suspected you had come here, they would not hesitate to attack."

He nodded again, both in agreement and consideration.

"You said you were hired specifically by the Cosmos Arm, did you not?"

"Yes."

"And what were the names of the men who put out the contract on Heero Yuy?"

He thought for a moment. He had hoped to never have to think of those bastards again. "High General Septum, Dekim Barton–"

"Him," she said suddenly, and she spat upon the ground. "Dekim Barton. He is as old as these mountains are ancient and as evil as the black blood of a demon of Hell."

Odin blinked, silently stunned by her reaction. "Who is he to you?"

"It was under his command that Osaka was raided. Giving the order was not enough for him, though. He personally led the attack, and he personally killed both of my parents. Did you have much contact with him in your contact with the organization?"

"No. I saw him only twice in the organization, both times while going over the contract for the assassination. He couldn't let it become known that he was one of those arranging Yuy's death. He was, if you recall, supposedly a friend to him. But as for knowing him personally, I did."

She raised a questioning eyebrow.

He continued at her silent prompting. "The Alliance faced opposition from the day of its creation. Often such opposition came from nameless groups, unknown vigilantes who bombed a base during the night or sabotaged the organization's plans. Sometimes, however, as you are aware, a name would become known to them. The Cosmos Arm was created, originally, to handle such situations. The creators of the Arm had no desire to gain a bloody notoriety and in the cases of individual rebels, a hired assassin was more prudent then full military force."

She urged him on with a slight nod. Her eyes had taken on a cynical shadow, and he knew that this moment would somehow work to define her opinion of him beyond the one she seemed to have already formed.

"I had already gained a discreetly notable reputation among the circles to whom this would matter as a well-trained assassin. Dekim Barton stumbled across this information and hired men to follow me for several months, each with a different contract to offer, and when they failed he approached me personally."

"Hn. Then perhaps you would like to differ with my opinion of him."

"Not at all. On the contrary, I agree with you whole-heartedly."

She looked away from him; her eyes went to the sparkling, laughing stream beside them. She stretched forth one pale hand and let the water run over it as though cleansing some inner stain. "He is the devil's advocate, though even the devil would be repulsed by one so lowly as he. My children shall spit upon his grave."

"Have you any children, Sakura?" he asked, knowing that if the subject were not changed the woman's hostility toward him would only increase.

She returned her gaze to him. "No, I have not. It will one day be expected of me, though. Nobuyoshi would be pleased by a child. Sometimes he is still rather like one himself."

Later Odin would realize how much insight into the relationship between this woman and her husband this remark offered, an insight that would one day seal his fate with her. He thought of Nobuyoshi's mischievous nature, of his laughing, good-hearted childishness, then of the woman's calm solemnity. The suspicions he formed in that moment would later by confirmed by Yuan-Chen.

The two of them sat there in silence for a while, Odin's eyes trained on her as her own were closed in placid, almost pious contemplation. Several times he almost spoke and each time he decided against it. Once, as though in response to something only she could hear, she gave another low, muttered "Hn."

When at last she opened her eyes, the darkness had begun to slink back from the east and the silence was pierced by the beginning of the bird songs that daily filled the mountain forest. Sakura surveyed the woods, the sky, for a moment and a gracious smile illuminated her ethereal face.

Much later, Odin would come to believe it was at that moment he began to love her.

"Tell me, Odin" she said turning her back to him. "What is the sunrise like over the colonies?"

"In appearance it is the same," he replied. "But it is colder, and once inside the colony the lights becomes artificial. A manmade sunrise, even when made using the light of the sun as it comes into view, is not worth the effort required to produce it."

She considered this for a minute. "Still," she said finally, "I would like to see it." She rose to her feet and started back in the direction of the temple. Odin followed after her.

"Do you understand why I watch you now?" she asked him as they walked through the brush and ducked under the low tree limbs.

"Yes," he answered, and now he truly did.

"We live in peace here. No one seeks to cause harm to another. Children are untouched by the conflicts that occur all around these mountains. All are free to live as they choose, to believe as they choose. Former soldiers and naïve pacifists born under this roof may sit together without hostility toward one another. Practitioners of every faith that has ever advocated peace pray together. We are untouched by war. You could change all of that. As the hired murderer of Heero Yuy, you are of extreme value to the Alliance. If they were even to suspect that you had come here, all that we have worked so hard to preserve would be lost in an instant. I ask you to keep this in mind."

He nodded silently.

They reached the spot where Odin had found the Hindi man praying that night. The lantern was gone but the man was still there, gathering up all that he had brought into the night with him.

"Ohayo," Sakura called out to him, her voice echoing in the morning quiet.

The man looked up at her and smiled warmly. He spoke to her briefly in his native tongue, which she seemed to have no trouble in understanding.

"That man," she said to Odin after they had passed him, "is a known Indian mystic. He once told me years ago that I was a soldier in a former life. He told me that I am still a soldier in this life but in a different way. He says that one day the perfect soldier will be within me. Would you agree, Odin?"

"I would like to," he replied, and thus ended their conversation. His interaction with the woman, however, was about to increase.

Sakura's prediction proved true in the following weeks. Odin was initiated as a master of the temple and was released from the limits of students, giving him the right to come and go throughout the temple as he chose. His life was no less full in the absence of routine, however, for he soon found himself constantly in the woman's company. Nobuyoshi was the cause of this, for once Odin reached his high status Nobuyoshi was incessantly suggesting this or that document in the temple's library or spending the day at some other place on the mountainside, away from all the signs of life of the temple, and wherever Nobuyoshi went now, it seemed, his wife accompanied him. Odin thought that it had most likely been this way before, when his duties as a student had not allowed him to leave on whim.

He would, in the years to follow, look back on that year after his initiation as a master as the most fulfilling of his life. During that time he learned fully what it was that was kept so well-preserved in the mountains, the true extent of that peace Sakura had once been so terrified of him bringing to an end. There were days in that year in which he simply could not remember anything of the past, his first paid murder, his agreement to work with the Alliance. There were days when the name Heero Yuy meant nothing to him. It would seem ironic years later that he would rely on remembrance so much while in the days he remembered, the past had not existed to him.

Sakura's distrust of him eventually dissolved, and she told him such. This she followed with another warning to remain unseen by the world at the foot of the mountain. She herself would be the one to draw the Alliance's attention to them within the closing of the year.

His intrigue with Sakura did become whatever amount of affection a stoic could possess, and that eventually evolved into the realization that he did indeed love her, that he had loved her since that night spent away from the confines from the temple.

Sakura, he was sure, suspected it the entire time, not through any fault of his but simply because she always seemed to know whatever entered his mind. Nobuyoshi, however, was unaware that the man he had befriended the previous year had developed such feelings for his wife. Odin did and said nothing to encourage such a suspicion and even if he had, Nobuyoshi was not intuitive enough to realize it. Or perhaps he simply chose not to.

The three of them were often together even after Odin could no longer deny within his mind his betrayal of his friend. He and Sakura went from being conversational adversaries to a pair of likely companions, and within months the three of them had become something of a strange type of family, a trio of orphans who really knew only each other. From time to time Sakura asked him another question regarding his past, and always he tried to provide the best answer. Nobuyoshi, on the contrary, seemed uninterested in the matter, and perhaps this was for the best.

He did not know when precisely it was that Sakura realized his inexplicable and sudden feelings for her. She acted no differently toward him, nor did she make any attempt to avoid him. He would later wonder if things would have happened differently if she had.

In the summer of that year, only five months prior to the Alliance's attack, Odin was again stopped by Yuan-Chen, with whom he had by this time become better acquainted. Even so, Yuan-Chen (as he did with Sakura) spoke to him only when spoken to first, or when he believed his guidance was necessary.

"Your friendship with her has become not quite so innocent," Yuan-Chen said to him one evening after silently beckoning him aside, a blunt statement that left no room for questioning.

Odin merely waited, confirming or denying nothing.

"She has not spoken to me of the matter, but she is well aware of it all the same."

"I was under that assumption as well."

Yuan-Chen continued. "Neither has she told me that she requites you."

Odin blinked. "She is faithful to her husband."

Yuan-Chen gave a characteristic slight smile. "In body and mind she is faithful to him. In her heart she is faithful to you. She does not need to tell me this. Once one knows Sakura well, it is quite obvious."

He suppressed a questioning expression.

"There is no need for concern," Yuan-Chen said. "The only ones of us who know of this other than myself are those to whom it will not matter. It is something we have seen before and will see again long after you are gone."

After you are gone. It would not strike Odin until long after the incident with the Alliance that with these words Yuan-Chen had implied he would see Odin leave the temple, either by death or choice, and he would wonder if likewise the old man had foreseen Sakura's fate as well.

"She has never belonged to him in heart or soul." Yuan-Chen went on. "She did not in youth gradually develop love for him in the sense of what you feel for her, nor did she suddenly realize she felt such things as you did. Sakura and Nobuyoshi were companions in childhood, yes, and companions they would have remained had Nobuyoshi not desired her in a way she did not desire him."

Yuan-Chen paused in time for Odin to make another realization. "It was an arranged marriage," he said, and Yuan-Chen nodded.

"As are many marriages within this temple. Some are not but as tradition half of all are, and that of Sakura and Nobuyoshi was one of his latter half. They had both completed their training here, and though Sakura was by far the better student, Nobuyoshi was considered one of excellence as well. Often in the case of marital arrangements, if one was born within these walls or was ever a student here, they are placed with another of their rank. Nobuyoshi made it clear, not directly, however, that he did indeed desire to marry one of his rank and that one was Sakura. She was not forced into the marriage, however. There are many here who choose not to marry. I myself am one. It was brought to her attention that, if she were to choose it, a husband had been found for her. She was not at all surprised to learn that it was her friend. She asked for time to consider it and time was granted. Only days after she came to us with her decision. There are several reasons she accepted it, I believe. One was her caring for Nobuyoshi, whom she had looked after when they were children. He was a younger brother to her, her child at times. Sometimes he still is. Sakura has always been stronger than he, and she believes her superior strength obligates her to act as a guardian to him."

"She has said similar to me," Odin agreed.

"The most dominant of her reasons was her feelings of obligation to the temple. Tradition will not allow her to become a true master, though you are aware that she is regarded as one. At that time she was not the legend she has become in recent years, and becoming the wife of a man of high rank and the mother of children who would be raised in the temple and would go on to achieve what she could not would have been the most honorable thing for her to do. It was not her own honor that led her to her decision, however, but the honor of the temple, and its continuance. She would take a husband and give herself to him, and by doing so she would provide the temple with another child, or perhaps children, who would in turn produce more. That was once of great importance to her and still is, though deep within her heart Sakura is afraid to bear children, which is why she has not yet conceived and perhaps never will. She has told me that sometimes she finds it hard to believe in Takaamagahara, in Heaven, a paradise, nirvana, a Valhalla, and sometimes she believes that those places may very well be here. She is terrified of this place dying. You must understand this, Odin. Sakura knows nothing but the life of this temple. Nothing. Tell me, Odin, have you seen the Parthenon?"

Odin nodded. "Yes, of course."

"And the Great Wall in China?"

"Yes, as you yourself have."

"And the great Imperial Palace of the Sanq Kingdom of Greece?"

"Yes, why?"

"To you and I these things are real, are concrete. We have looked upon them, we have stood in awe of them in their presence. We know that they are real. To Sakura, however, these things are mere legend. She knows that they exist and yet she has not seen them to fully realize it. This is all that she knows, all that she has touched. To her there is no existence outside of this mountain. But she realizes at the same time how fragile the illusion is. And she would do anything to preserve it, even surrender the independent isolation she has lived upon all these years. Marriage grounded her to the temple and provided her with a way of giving something back to the temple, and what better to give than her very life and a child born of the highest-ranking woman to ever live under the temple's roof?

"In other words," Yuan-Chen continued. "She thought of it as her mission and despite any illusions she might hold, Sakura will never fail to complete what she believes is her mission. She will never fail to accomplish what is expected of her."

"And what is expected of her now?" Odin asked, and what was it that he had felt as he listened to Yuan-Chen's account of her marriage, of how she had been bound to this man whom it was clear that she loved but not in the way that was required? What was it that pierced his already-faltering stoicism, but a rising satisfaction, a stab of assurance, a damnable inner smirk at the knowledge that the woman did not truly belong to another? Could his betrayal have been so great that he should feel inwardly glad of all this?

"Nothing," Yuan-Chen replied. "Sakura had surpassed all the previous expectations. She will do as she feels. We have no say in the matter and neither do you, Odin. As I understand it, this is the first occasion in which this subject has been breached, is it not? It does not matter whether or not you directly make any of this known to Sakura. She will act as her conscience dictates, or perhaps she will not act at all. It is her decision, Odin. Leave it as such." He paused, studying Odin's face. "Does hearing this please you? You are human, Odin. You are human now as you were the eve of your birth, as you were the day you were taken from your ruined home by those who would teach you to hold no value for human life. You are as human now as you were when they tried to beat all of that out of you. You are as human now as you were the day you killed Heero Yuy. And you are indeed human now, just as Sakura is. You have unwillingly given to her something that you hold very dear. That is the nature of humanity. Each of us must give so much of ourselves to something, and we can only receive so much in return. Sometimes we receive nothing at all. I have given all of my life, which has indeed been long, to this mountain. What have I received in return for that life? Nothing, save for solitude. This mountain does not care whether I live or die. If I were to disappear from its sheltering face, it would not take notice. You are still yet learning this Odin. You have been a stoic for the largest duration of your life, and now you have begun to feel for a woman who is not free to openly requite you. This is not a punishment, nor is it a torture. It is merely life."

Eventually Odin nodded. It was the only thing he could do.

"Given the circumstances, however, it is almost a pity that Sakura could not foresee that she would surpass what was required of her to be a wife and a mother."

Odin looked at him. "How so?"

"There has been discussion of you perhaps being a more suitable husband for her than Nobuyoshi."

He blinked. "Discussion among the masters, you mean?"

Yuan-Chen nodded.

"I have not heard it."

"That is because we were discussing the matter before your initiation into the order." Another pause, to give Odin time to grasp this. "Do not mistake me," he continued after a few minutes. "They are both dearly loved among all who live in this temple, and they were and are great friends. But as I have said and as Sakura herself has confessed, it seems, Nobuyoshi will forever be something of a sibling to her, someone to take care of in place of a more suitable guardian. He unconsciously relies on her to be the strong one. He depends upon her, in other words, and when he needs to, he falls on her, bleeds on her. But even so, Sakura is no great pillar of strength, although she tries to be. She from time to time requires something to fall upon as well. Her husband cannot fulfill that role. She has chosen you, Odin. Be glad of that and let the rest of this vital foolishness go." Yuan-Chen hesitated not even a moment after he spoke these words. He turned and left Odin standing alone in the corridor, having said his peace and requiring no reply. Odin watched after him, then eventually departed for his own chambers. He spent the rest of the evening contemplating what the old man had said.

III

Days, much like those that preceded Odin's conversation with Yuan-Chen, passed, and the days became weeks, and the weeks became months. Only a few weeks remained until the illusion of peace and prosperity of the mountain temple, the illusion of which Sakura had spoken, would be shattered at last by the Alliance. It was within these weeks that his platonic relationship with the woman ended.

Sakura had grown considerably darker of mood over the past few weeks, so much, in fact, that the often aloof Nobuyoshi took concerned note of it. He spoke to Odin of the change in her whenever she was not present, and for the first time in the course of their friendship he spoke of Sakura as though she were his wife rather than his sister.

"She does nothing," he said once, halfway through a stuttered explanation of Sakura's strange behavior.

"What do you mean?"

"She does nothing," Nobuyoshi repeated. "She does not speak, she does not read, she does not meditate…she does nothing that she used to. This morning an acquaintance of mine, one of the Buddhist monks, asked if she were ill because she has not accompanied them for their meditation at dawn for several days. She does not eat regularly and when she does it is not much." He looked up at Odin as he had not been able to do in some time, met his eyes clearly. What followed was the first non-platonic reference to Sakura Odin had ever heard him make. "She and I are no longer sleeping together. I do not mean this in the sexual context, or maybe I should say not only in that context. She will no longer sleep in the same bed as I, and whenever she does, she waits until I am asleep and then leaves."

"Do you know where she goes?" Odin interjected.

"No. Perhaps it would not worry me so if I did. She does have to sleep at some point, however, and this is all but killing me to see."

Odin gave him a questioning glance.

"Sakura has always been graceful, proper. She would be too proud to make such a showing of herself as she does now. She is weary always, and when the weariness becomes too much for her, I find her all but unconscious in the most precarious of places, sometimes huddled, in the corner of the one of the rooms of the pagoda like a child. The other night she simply fainted dead away in my arms." He stopped, unable to speak. It was another few minutes before he was able to go on. "She does nothing, Odin, nothing except sit silently apart from those around her, brooding over something she refuses to speak about. I am afraid she will inadvertently kill herself at this rate."

The discussion continued, much in the same manner. Nobuyoshi was nothing less than a pitiful shell of a man when at last he left.

"Indeed there is much concern for her," Yuan-Chen agreed when Odin mentioned the effect Sakura was having on her husband to him. "She has cut herself off from most of us, leaving only myself as one with whom she maintains communication. She refuses even to fight, and some are beginning to suspect that she is indeed the infamous Takeru. You have not left her thoughts completely, however. She has asked me to make the proper apologies to you for avoiding you and keeping secret her motives."

"Which are?"

Yuan-Chen smiled. It was strange to see such an expression upon his serene countenance. "You have fallen under the same spell that Sakura is fighting within herself to preserve. You have truly become a part of this place and all that it offers. The isolation, the escape from all the ever-flowing blood that the world and outer space have become bathed in. You have separated yourself from completely from all that lies beyond this mountain. But nothing has ceased to exist simply because it is rarely given notice here. The Alliance is growing bored with the colonies. They are turning their attentions to Earth, and they will find much with which to amuse themselves here. Revolts have grown while the Alliance was busy in its attempts to gain complete control over the colonies. The people are growing fiercer in their opposition to the organization. Civilians are being arrested by the hundreds beyond these walls. Opposition is not being tolerated in the least. Are you understanding me, Odin? They will set their sights on us soon. With each passing day they draw closer. It is now only a matter of time."

"And Sakura knows of this." It was not a question but a statement.

"Yes. She has been following the movements of the Alliance for some time." He paused as though considering something, then nodded to himself and gestured for Odin to follow him as he began walking down a darkened corridor that was forbidden to all who had not gained specific clearance. It seemed at first that this order was enforced simply by honor, as they had yet to encounter a locked barrier. This was disproved, however, when the first sign of technology within this temple came into view: a small computerized box displaying three rows of coded digits mounted upon the wall.

"This is a precaution," Yuan-Chen explained as he effortlessly punched in the entrance code. "We would prefer to keep it that way."

Something on the other side of the room buzzed and with a quiet hiss the door slid open. Yuan-Chen ushered him into the darkness beyond and shut the door immediately behind them.

No lights were on in the room — it was more of a bunker, really — nor were there any windows to alleviate the darkness. It was utterly empty save for a single long marble table, which was cluttered by a dense forest of computers. There was nothing like this anywhere within the temple, yet somehow he was not surprised at all.

Yuan-Chen directed him toward a chair by the table. He sat willingly, waiting for an explanation he really did not require. He listened carefully as Yuan-Chen delivered it, explaining the purposes of the computers, of all the other technological devices that lay scattered across the table. His only response was an occasional nod.

Certain residents of the temple, namely the other masters and Sakura, were beginning to monitor the movements of the Alliance and the Cosmos Arm, not only through whatever word-of-mouth reached the confines of the mountain but also through attempts of infiltrating the organization's main computers. They tracked the organization as its sights shifted closer and closer to them, and possible defense was being taken into consideration.

All the while Odin listened to this as though it were nothing astonishing; as though somewhere in the depths of his mind, he had known this would happen.

Odin left the room after Yuan-Chen had finished rather than lingering, and rather than returning to his own chambers, he slipped outside the temple, walking toward God-only-knew where under the pale glow of the moon and the jeweled eyes of the stars. Whether it was mere chance that led him on through the forests or something more he did not know, nor did he know whether what happened that evening was ultimately right or wrong. Somehow it seemed to matter little in the scheme of things.

He saw the woman before she saw him, sitting by the edge of the stream at which they had met several times in the past.

"Sakura," he said quietly, and she jumped slightly at the sound of another's voice.

She looked over her shoulder at him. Her face was pale and sickly, her dark eyes encircled by sunken rings of black. "Hai?" she said weakly, thinly, as though some immeasurable weight were pressing down upon her, crushing her. He would soon realize how correct that assumption was.

She rose from her slumped crouch and took one faltering step toward him. For the first time he beheld her wearing something other than her semi-ceremonial white robes or her black kimono; she instead was dressed in a pair of tight-fitting black pants and a high-collared crimson shirt that left all but a few inches of her slender arms exposed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized again how truly beautiful she was, this slender goddess of a woman who contained within herself all the strength of the ancient mountains.

"Have I disturbed you?" he asked, knowing that he had not.

She shook her head. "I knew you would be coming here sooner or later." She looked off to the north and sighed. "I am so tired, Odin," she said. "So tired and yet I cannot find any rest."

"Waiting for the Alliance to discover this place won't help anything, Sakura."

She returned her gaze to him, raised one questioning brow. "Will it not? They come one city nearer each day. Are you aware that there has been speculation within the Alliance that a group of rebels is hiding somewhere in the mountains? It will be because of this that they will take notice of us. Are you aware of this?"

He nodded, and indeed he was aware of it. Yuan-Chen had informed him of it only minutes earlier.

"It was only a matter of time before this happened," she went on, and she sounded as if she were trying to convince herself of it. "I have known this for years, but I did not have to allow admittance of it until now. We have always heard of what the Alliance was doing, of what colony they were facing opposition from among the people, of what kingdom was falling to its oppression, of what city was raided because of rumors that it harbored rebel groups. These things have always been known to us. But somehow it never really mattered so much, because it was not us they were seeking to harm. We were so ignorant, Odin, so arrogant and ignorant." In the darkness he saw her dark eyes redden and her chin quiver. "This is the same ignorance that bred the great wars of the past, the same kind that enabled the Alliance to gain hold of so many nations. We are just as guilty of it." A single tear, glistening in the moonlight, spilled down from her eye. She looked at him fearfully as though realizing what she had done and to cry was a sin. "Gomen," she whispered. "Gomennasai." She repeated it once, then again, then again until it became a frantic chant, a frenzied prayer, a terrified offering. She started to step forward and her knees buckled underneath her. He ran forward and caught her as she fell and she willingly allowed him to do so, and too late he realized his initially innocent support of her had become an embrace.

Sakura, however, did not seem to notice, or if she did, she did not seem to care.

"They are pathetic fools, all of them," she hissed suddenly, her voice as venomous as a serpent's bite. "They will die in their ignorance." Then, perhaps realizing what she had said, she moaned and fell against him, sobbing. He would never learn fully what it was that wrought the tears from her eyes, if it were indeed more than one thing, which it undoubtedly was. Nor would he ever ask. It was ultimately of little consequence.

Her crying gradually subsided. The tears ceased to pour from her weary eyes. After a moment or so he became aware that she was returning his embrace, her bare arms wrapped tightly about him, her hands clasped behind his back. His first thought was to pull away from her before it was too late, but he did not. Nor did he pull away when she moved her head slightly so that her lips were pressing against his neck.

"Assassin," she said finally. The breath of her words against his skin chilled his spine. "Were you named for the god?"

"Yes," he responded quietly. "Why?"

"According to the myth, the god Odin was in possession of two ravens, one called Thought and the other Memory, and he was incessantly concerned with what they could teach him. What have thought and memory taught you?"

"Too much and yet at the same time, nothing at all," he replied softly.

"Then what have you learned of emotion?" Her voice was now so thin and whispered that she seemed not to be speaking to him but rather to something she saw in a dream.

He could not answer her question for some time. One stoic inquiring of another about emotion was the verbal equivalent of the blind leading the blind. Finally he said, "They are often insignificant."

She sighed. For a single brief moment her arms tightened around him. "Hai, insignificant, but when all else has failed, they are our guiding force. When one's last defense has been broken down, he must inevitably rely on the heart. I believe I have come to the conclusion that the only way to live is by one's own emotions. I had given up on such an idealistic belief long years ago, and what has it rendered unto me, save a life that is not life beyond the shelter of the mountains? It is through denial of emotions that such heartless cowards as Dekim Barton come into power. Personal desire and freedom are surrendered under oppression, and then the purgatorial Earth births men such as they. It was through embracing emotion, however, that Heero Yuy rose against the conflict fueled by the Alliance and its hell-spawn military factions, and also through acceptance that the people rose and stood with him. In turn, it was through denial of emotion that you fired the bullet that killed him. Am I so wrong in believing this?" She tilted her head back to look into his eyes.

"No," he said. "It is perhaps the wisest thing you have ever said."

"Hn." She glanced away for a moment, then back at him. "And if you were to live by your own emotions, what would they guide you to do now?"

Had she been leading up to this the entire time? Perhaps not, but still it came as no astonishment to him, as nothing about her did.

To live guided by one's emotions then?

He lowered his head to kiss her. Again her embrace tightened and her dark almond eyes fell closed. It all seemed to happen too slowly, as though they were both awaiting some kind of interruption, then Odin realized that there would be none. They were alone here, as alone as they had been on the night she had unveiled her face and her true name to him. There was no other sound save for the soft wordless babbling of the stream as it careened smoothly down until it vanished from sight in the thick woods; there was no other person to be found on this ethereal night this far from the temple, and only now did it occur to Odin that for perhaps the first time, he had not encountered so much as a single person on the mountainside. It all seemed too terribly calculated to him then, as though his betrayal were about to be made complete or to be discovered, and somehow the former seemed more likely.

To live guided by one's own emotions.

His lips brushed chastely against hers. She trembled briefly in his arms, then in an instant her trembling subsided. She pressed herself against him, not as a companion in need of support as she had earlier but rather as something else, perhaps something she had never really even been with her husband, not a friend but a lover who had long been denied what now seemed given to her. He kissed her again in the same manner but with less restraint, and when it seemed to him that too deep a kiss would be disrespectful, unholy even, he merely pressed his lips to her forehead. She relaxed fully against him, so much that he was again holding her on her feet, but now it was only his support that kept her standing; so much that if he were to loosen his hold on her, she would surely fall; so much that if he were to lower her to the ground as though it were their own shared bed—

Was this what she wanted, that he take her there on the forest floor? He could not. Already he had tasted too much of her, and the temptation had waxed too great, but if they were to commit this act together with such complete abandon—

It would either matter or it would not.

But—

"We cannot do this," he told her, and as if to contradict himself — damn his weakness! — he kissed her again.

"I know," she whispered in return, "but can this not last a while longer?"

He nodded and held her against him. She laid her head again on his shoulder. He wondered silently if they were going to spend the remainder of the night like this.

And they did, though with none of the former temptation that had existed so briefly between them. At some point she mumbled wearily in Japanese that she needed to sit down and he released her, only to have her pull him down with her. She slept at last, perhaps for the first time in days, in his arms, lulled to sleep finally by the hypnotic song of the moonlit stream, and perhaps by the relief of her surrender, however short-lived and unrewarded it may have been.

That night should have been some kind of pinnacle in their relationship, but strangely it was not. What happened simply happened, there was no denying or changing of it, and neither did it change either of their lives, though in the days that followed Sakura's disposition showed enough improvement to dissuade some of the concern that followed her. They never spoke of what had happened between them again.

In a way, it was a pinnacle of a different sort, as Odin would realize in the months that were to come. On some level that evening and all occurred therein was their farewell to each other.

IV

The life of the temple was a melange of routines, as ordered as that of monks living in cloister, but there was one morning in which all routine halted, a morning in which the inhabitants of the mountain temple were awakened by the sounds of explosions in the valley below. Sakura's fears that the Alliance would attack the temple in specific were not fully justified as the attack did not move to the mountain, but the devastation it wrought was evident within the confines of the temple.

Sakura disappeared the morning following the attack and did not return for three days. Those days, she later told him, she had spent below the mountain, leaving it for the first time in her life, to wander emptily through the destruction the Alliance had left in its wake.

Protests in the valley had begun immediately following the assault, a slap in the face of the Alliance, a proclamation by the survivors that they would not merely lie down before the organization and wait to die. Sakura had found herself amid the crowd at one of these protests, and it was this experience that had initiated her metamorphous from being a dutiful eternal scholar into the leader of a great rebel force.

She continued her residency at the temple as she would for her entire career as an enemy of the Alliance, but frequently she left to join these protests, and at some point in time she began speaking at them.

These things were both of high and little relevance. This was what the public knew about her; this was what she was. What Odin Lowe would come to remember years later was instead who she was, the woman she was beyond the public figure.

She drew crowds as few others in these protests could do, appealing to all who witnessed her in a different way, inspiring the very same emotions in these people as Heero Yuy had before her. She was joined by her husband and several others from the temple, yet she remained the focal point of it all, the lily amongst the trampled grasses.

Perhaps this, not her life in the temple, had been her true calling.

In the years she spent as the leader of these protests, she drew in people from all across the globe and from the colonies. She, along with many of her followers, were arrested by local officials on an almost regular basis, held for twenty-four hours, and then released, yet none of this deterred her.

It was in the height of her career as a rebel against the Alliance that Sakura began to weaken. The protests continued and the intensity of the governmental opposition grew at such a rate that all knew it would not be much longer until the Alliance took greater action against them. People from every country and every colony continued to flock to her, and for them she continued to wear the mask of undeterred strength, to laugh in the face of the Alliance as though assured of her own immortality. Another inconsequential arrest occurred, another, and still the officials were forced to release her. Only those close to her were able to see the profound changes in her.

She tired easily and slept often, and her sleep was more nights than not troubled. She ceased fighting entirely and disappeared from her serene life within the temple. Within a month of this she had become as quiet and withdrawn as she had been when first she had begun to realize the threat of the Alliance to their ageless mountain sanctuary.

Meditation was the only way he could attempt to forget what was happening to her. When the temple and its candles offered no solace he left it for the solitude of the forests beyond its walls; once he had even considered leaving altogether. It was on an evening near the spot where he usually meditated that he found her waiting for him.

"There is something I need to tell you," she said immediately when he saw her. "Nobuyoshi does not even know yet. I hope you will understand."

He watched inquisitively as she approached him, half-astounded to see her when they had barely spoken since the beginning of her chronic illness.

She did not speak again for several minutes. Her eyes never left his, as though she were waiting to test his reaction to whatever matter had led her to break her self-imposed isolation to find him.

"I am pregnant, Odin," she said finally. Her eyes closed in a silent expression of contemplation. "I am going to have Nobuyoshi's child."

He nodded, nothing more, but nothing less than this small gesture of understanding. Somehow hearing these words that were supposedly never to issue from her lips did not surprise him. The strange feeling that caused his pulse to quicken and his entire body to feel weighed down by some outer force was instead a cessation of his espoused stoicism. She remained rigid as she watched him, a living statue sculpted out of pliant flesh, yet in another moment she had moved so close to him that their lips were only an inch from touching.

"I do not know how to be a mother," she said. "I am a scholar and a fighter, I have been these things all my life. I am considered a wife by Nobuyoshi. I have within this time become an opponent of tyrannical force desiring both the blood of the Earth and of the colonies. But I am not a mother. I cannot be."

He forced a slight smile. "I have yet to find something you cannot do."

She looked at him, offered a tight smile and made an attempt to nod. "Thank you." She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. After a moment he embraced her, held her closer to him, and whatever pain he felt and denied was made obsolete.

V

The child was born healthy and without incident, despite its mother's fears of possible complications due to her previous inability to conceive, a son whom Sakura chose to call Takeru. Nobuyoshi had waited through the labor with all the exuberance of a pre-adolescent child about to receive a new toy, pacing the corridors of the entire temple with a nervous smile upon his face in contrast to the solemnity surrounding him. Odin, as one of the temple masters, sat outside of the room, and on the other side of the door, to his knowledge, Sakura made not a sound, determined to appear a stoic pillar of strength even through the pain that had wracked her body since dawn that morning.

Three women attended her throughout the labor. The only man allowed in the room, at Sakura's request, was Yuan-Chen.

The doors were not opened again until nightfall, when one of the midwives announced that a boy had been born and called the group of the temple's highest scholars into the room while simultaneously sending one of them to find Nobuyoshi.

Sakura glanced up only once as they filed into the room, searching him out in the small crowd and smiling when she saw him. A blanket was pulled up to her shoulders as though the heated pain of bearing the child had taken all the warmth from her body. She held in her slender arms the infant boy, freshly cleaned and wrapped in a linen sheet. The child was nothing less than beautiful.

Nobuyoshi burst into the room as though he had been alerted to a fire. He tried to speak and could only stutter, and whenever stuttering failed him, he ran to his wife and embraced her, gesturing excitedly at his son.

Not the vaguest trace of a smile was displayed upon Odin's face as he watched this.

Another man's wife. Why had he never until this moment thought of her as such?

He was called to her bedside by Yuan-Chen after Nobuyoshi had left to further the news of his son's birth and the others had, having said their piece over the child, departed. He was bold enough to briefly kiss her forehead as he studied the boy, with barely a glance to Yuan-Chen. Did he know of how deeply their feelings toward each other were now? Of course he did. There was no need to question that. He knew without being told, without having to observe, and whether he approved or not was irrelevant even to himself.

The boy opened his eyes as his mother stroked his plump face, and Odin was surprised to see that they were blue.

"Is he all right?" he asked before he could stop himself. Sakura seemed oblivious to the question.

Yuan-Chen gave slight nod. "He is in perfect condition. He will be as strong as his mother as time progresses. His eyes convey that."

Sakura gave a gentle kiss to the infant's cheek.

Yuan-Chen's eyes fell from Odin's to hers. "Are you now satisfied?"

From the corner of his eye Odin saw her cast a glance at him.

"Hai," she replied finally, clutching the child against her. "Yes. I am."

Again Yuan-Chen nodded and returned to his own silent contemplation, strangely seeming as though he knew something they did not.

VI

The boy grew and remained as healthy as it had been born; and in time he became something to Sakura that nothing else could, not her husband, not the vast crowds of people who all but worshiped her, not even Odin. The temple, even, to which she had willingly given her life and her soul, could not provide her with what the child did.

"The boy is hers," Yuan-Chen inexplicably said to him once, while from afar Odin watched the two of them, the infant boy and his mother. "He is the only thing that has ever truly belonged to her."

"And what is he to her husband, then?"

"Nobuyoshi is still but a child himself, hardly more than an older sibling to him. It is she who is both mother and father to them both."

And this was proven true as time went on, but to Sakura it seemed not to matter. Odin realized during this time that Takeru was the only thing that had ever made her truly happy.

Her leadership of the protests did not end after the child was born; when her health was returned fully, she again began leaving the mountain for her devotees, and the boy accompanied her.

And suddenly there seemed a certain rightness to it all, as though some great circle had at long last closed upon itself. The child was accepted by his mother's followers, and he became almost as much of a symbol as she before him. Nobuyoshi returned to his former ignorantly happy state, content in being the husband of the very embodiment of a muse of peace. Sakura herself resumed the constant duties of all that she was, of a mother, a scholar, of the proclaimed next Heero Yuy. To Odin, of a goddess.

Suddenly everything returned to what it once had been.

"Are you at last fulfilled, Sakura?" he asked her once after they had privately, without reason or motive, engaged in another fight, which she, as always, won.

Her head, resting on his shoulder, moved so that every word she spoke was punctuated by a soft, chaste kiss. "No. Satisfied, yes, but not fulfilled. I will never be fulfilled." With that she delivered a quick, unexpected kiss to his lips and rose, leaving him alone to ponder what she had said.

Further away from the seclusion of the mountain, the Cosmos Arm was beginning to truly turn its attentions to the rebel known as Hanasaki Sakura. Their officers began appearing alongside the locals at the protests, and more and more of her followers were arrested, some later released and some not. Sakura herself was arrested on several occasions and each time released within a week. Once she had, while holding the young Takeru, spit in the face of one of the Arm's officers and had been apprehended immediately; her son had endured an arrest by the time he was three years of age.

In the final year of her life she went through another ritual arrest at the closing of a demonstration and did not reappear for another two weeks. She returned to the temple immediately following her release and endured a warm, proud greeting from all there, acting as she needed to, and Odin seemed the only one who took note of the haunted expression that plagued her serene eyes.

She met him later outside the temple, at the place they usually inhabited by the stream. She said nothing for several minutes, but when Odin sat beside her she placed her hand over his and asked him quietly to wait. Patiently, he did.

"He is on Earth now," she said finally.

"Who?"

"Dekim Barton. I met him."

He raised a stunned eyebrow.

"He presided over each of my interrogations."

"Did he do anything else?"

"He had me blindfolded and ordered me to fight him. He said that he had heard I was strong enough to do it. His right arm is now broken. He is nothing more than a fucking coward."

Odin blinked. In all their time together, after each of her arrests, he had never seen her lose her almost Zen composure enough to swear.

She looked at him and after a moment she gave a soft laugh.

He kissed her then. She sighed and enfolded her slender arms about him. It had been several weeks since something like this had happened between them and yet they gave no resistance to it, as though indeed it were meant to happen. Perhaps it truly was.

She moved and lay back against the cool ground, holding him tightly over him. She gave a low, murmured "Hai" and he kissed her more deeply, pushing away all insistent thoughts of what they were doing, she a married woman and he a master of the temple, forgetting them all, both of them forgetting themselves in this act—

"Tenshi!"

She was out from underneath him in less than a moment, brushing the light dusting of dirt from her clothes and jumping to her feet as Takeru, face dirtied from playing outside with one of the other children, ran into the small clearing. "Tenshi," he said again, holding his arms up to beckon his mother to lift him. Rare was the occasion in which he called Sakura his mother, preferring instead, inexplicably, to call her 'angel,'

Sakura lifted him up into her arms, laughing as he smeared the dirt that marred his face upon her own.

"I want to go down," he said, meaning that he wanted to go into the city below the mountain.

"We will go in the morning tomorrow," she said, kissing his forehead.

"But I want to go NOW!"

"Tomorrow."

Takeru glanced back at Odin. "He can go with us."

"He can go tomorrow."

Their eyes met as the boy continued to plead and Sakura gave a slight nod, an invitation, a request that he join her as she continued to proclaim in the face of the Alliance that she was not afraid of them. The following day he accepted. That day began the final month of Sakura's life.

VII

The sun set in a glorious fire play of crimson and blue, of violet and orange, painting the sky in such a way that not even the most skillful artist could render. The light and that cast by the flames of the nearby candles played across her face so beautifully that for a while at least, he was no longer able to see the haunted expression of her eyes.

He had not been aware of it when she had entered his chambers. He had come out of a rather long state of meditation to find her sitting before him, by the window where the colors of the descending sun reflected on her tranquil face.

That evening would be their last alone together.

"Nobuyoshi has taken Takeru down into the city," she said finally, and though they had been sitting there together for over an hour, these were the first words spoken between them.

"When will they be returning?" This was not an innuendo, nor was it taken as one. What happened between them that evening was, though inevitable, completely unintended.

"Not until tomorrow morning."

"Why did you not accompany them?"

"I was not asked to," she said, "and I have much left to do here."

"Does it not matter to you, Sakura, that the Alliance has targeted you? Do you not care at all?" Despite the urgency of his words, he felt a smile light upon his face, one that conveyed the endearment he felt only for her.

"Hai, it does matter, but not so much as you would like. I am cautious even more so now, but I will not go into hiding, not even for you, Odin." She favored him with a smile of her own. So beautiful, her divine face, her ethereal eyes that glistened like two pools of oil in the fading light. So beautiful, her full lips that he had tasted so many times now yet still they remained innocent to each other, so beautiful her slender throat where it was covered by the neck of her black shirt, the same shirt — the same outfit — she had worn when they had first met, he as a student and she as an experienced maven in the guise of a boy. So very beautiful.

She moved closer to him, calmly and without explanation, and stared inquisitively into his eyes. "Why do you look at me so?"

"What do you mean?"

Her tight smile broadened. "You look at me as though I am something you desire above all other things but are afraid to convey it. The legendary Odin gave one of his eyes to attain wisdom. You look at me as though you would give your soul to me."

"Perhaps I would."

She moved closer to him still. Was she meaning to tempt him so, to make him desire an end to their resistance?

"And perhaps I would give mine to attain you," she said, and he realized that her lips had become perilously close and that the breath of her words was a gentle breeze against the side of his face. To give in once more, would it be that much more of a sin?

His hand, as though sharing this thought, moved up to curl around the back of her head, guiding her lips closer to his. "No. Yours was not meant to belong to anyone."

She sighed and there ended the struggle to fight what seemed inevitable between them. Their lips touched and hers parted at his guidance, so deep, so desperate a kiss was truly rare with them, and perhaps it was in that moment that they both realized what was about to happen.

A deepening kiss. The first slight touch of her tongue. The taste of her, the very essence of her inner tranquility. The kiss of a goddess.

Without being sufficiently aware of his actions to cease them, he pulled her up off the floor and lifted her, and she yielded to him without protest. There was no longer any well-meaning husband or curious child to interrupt their act. He carried her, as her lips pulled gently — almost playfully — at his neck, to the bed on the other side of the room. It was not large or luxurious, this bed, nothing worthy of her, she deserved royal suites and feather pillows and white silken sheets, not this modest one, but it would accommodate their intentions.

He lowered her onto the bed and she pulled him down with her, pausing not for hesitant regret or moral indecision. Damn their regret and cast their morals into Hell. They were no longer needed, not this time, not until the morning stole in with its shadow-banishing light and brought with it a husband and a child and the duties of one who bore the title of a master of the arts practiced within the temple. Let regret and morals burn in the great fires of hell as the proprietors of these wars were certain to do. Perhaps salvation truly was found not in denial but in submission.

"I will not deny you," she whispered breathlessly, as though he had spoken this last thought. Her hands sought his blindly underneath the linen sheets. "Do not allow me to deny you this time." She silenced him before he could respond with another kiss. He sampled her lips a moment longer then his kiss trailed down onto her neck as his fingers, still curled around her slender hand, worked at the button of her high collar.

After some immeasurable time she, suddenly and without explanation, pulled out from underneath him. Looking at her, watching her calm almond eyes, he realized that in the minutes since their conversation had been ended by a kiss, the sun had faded below the horizon of the mountain, and the light that reflected in the Asian darkness of her eyes was merely that of the candles.

"What is it?" he asked, drawing as far away from her as she had from him.

She remained silent for several moments, then she edged closer again and said, without meeting his eyes, "With Nobuyoshi, in what we are doing, I feel nothing." He had not realized she was trembling until he heard her faltering English. "I have never felt anything. Not pain and not joy. Nothing." She paused and then said quietly, "I want to feel something with you."

"Hai, Sakura."

Again, down onto the bed, into the sheets that muted the candlelight upon her flesh. Another kiss, another embrace. A feeling of some certain rightness, a sense that even if it were not necessarily right, it was inevitable that this should at last happen.

She moaned softly as he moved to undo the buttons of her black shirt, exposing her flesh inch by ethereal inch and watching the firelight play across her bared shoulders as though through some ancient ritual he would be able to discern his future from the dancing shadows.

He removed the shirt to reveal underneath the tight corset she wore to bind down her breasts when she fought, to give herself the form and figure of younger boy. Her eyes met his with an expression of something like uncertainty and something like fear, and yet at the same time there was a certain degree of desire present, and he knew in that instant she had never known this with her husband.

She sat up and turned so that her back faced him, modestly clasping her hands over her restrained, covered breasts and sighing shakily when his fingertips brushed against her back as he untied the corset's laces. Her shoulders shook violently as each knotted tie was undone and once he almost stopped, then after a small nod from her he proceeded, until at last the final tie had been loosened and the corset was cast onto the floor.

Her trembling intensified as the rest of her body was bared to him. The candlelight caressed her exposed back as though lightly kissing her. He soon found himself doing the same.

She calmed under his touch and turned back to face him, though her hands still covered what her clothes no longer did.

"There can only be this one night," she said quietly. "Only this one night…with us…like this…only this one night."

"I know."

She nodded and sighed. This sigh seemed, ultimately, to be the end of her resistance.

She lay down upon the bed, guiding him down with her.

VIII

He had expected her to be gone when he awoke that morning, yet when he opened his eyes he found her sleeping at his side, her exposed back facing him, breathing slowly and appearing as she slept as nothing more than an innocent child. She awoke shortly after he did, and without saying a word she rolled over and lay her head on his chest.

The previous night was indeed the only one they would ever have together, as Sakura was killed personally by Dekim Barton two days later.

IX

Hanasaki Nobuyoshi died the day after his friend's betrayal with his wife. During a protest, one of the most intense of Sakura's career as a political adversary, an Alliance soldier, either by order or his own desire to end what was happening, pulled a gun and fired a single bullet into Nobuyoshi's brain.

His body was carried back to the temple by Odin and Yuan-Chen, and pronounced dead there immediately. Sakura watched all this with a false calmness, with emotionless eyes brimming with tears, and as his body was carried away to be cremated, she retreated to the chambers she had shared with him as Yuan-Chen saw to Takeru.

She called Odin into her rooms after the sun had set that evening, and although she now sat calmly before a table, her face dry and as serene as that of a Buddhist monk, he could see clearly that she had spent those isolated hours crying. "Nobuyoshi was both a child and a husband to me," she said monotonously. "My life is half-ended without him."

Nothing more was said between them that night. He left her when at last her body slumped forward in the chair and her head rested in slumber against it.

If he had stayed that night, he would often wonder years later, when she was dead and he was still wretchedly living, would anything have been different? Would Sakura have been persuaded to stay in the temple the next day instead of going down into the valley where she would face her death? Perhaps, perhaps not.

He later learned that Sakura had awakened sometime that night and had gone, panicked and half out of her mind, searching for him and unable to find him, for he had left the temple shortly after leaving her.

Damn him for leaving her like that, damn him for making her go through that. Damn him for failing to save her.

When he returned the following morning, he was told that she had gone into the city where the protestors awaited her, taking Takeru with her. He considered going after her, then finally decided not to.

Early in the afternoon, word reached the temple that the Alliance had attacked the city, in hopes of at long last eliminating the rebels and their leader.

His flight from the temple was, as he feared, not quick enough. The site of the protest demonstration was in chaos when he reached it, a very literal hell on earth that required, in his mind, no further description. The Armament had done its work; the soldiers that had been called to prepare for this attack only the night before would be rewarded well for their efficiency. A barren wasteland lay before him, with flames shooting upward from the deeply etches holes that had been cut into the ground by God-only-knew how many explosives. A barren wasteland littered with the felled bodies of the dead and the dying, rivers of blood that was still warm from former vitality.

He had known on every level as his widened eyes had surveyed the burning ruins that he had failed her.

There were many who still, by some miracle, stood upon their feet, but whether or not they saw him, this lone man dressed in black who pushed his way through them as though all the hosts of Hell were behind him, could not be said. They stumbled about like the incarcerated mindless, or perhaps bleeding wraiths from a distant nightmare, unaware of where they were or what they were doing; dull wanderers at the gates of Hades itself. One dark-haired woman cried quietly to herself as she carried her child. Upon a momentary closer inspection, he realized that the child she held in her battered arms was dead.

He searched each of their faces and could not find one belonging to her.

Had he been able to fully utilize his mind as he stumbled through the crying-bleeding-dazed masses, he would have undoubtedly realized the possibility that she had been taken by the Arm rather than assassinated. She was of greater concern to the Arm than these nameless rebels; indeed, she was considered as the moment to be one of the greatest threats to the Arm and the Alliance as a whole, such a threat that it would have been simply a waste of the organization's efforts to merely kill her. Indeed, had he been in full possession of his senses he would have thought of this, and perhaps with this thought as the most probable event in his mind, he might have turned back.

However, had he turned back at that precise moment, he would undoubtedly have never seen her body lying upon the ground, internally drowning in its own blood but living still.

He found her body alone, several yards away from any other, as though she had been forced away from them all so that her destruction might be carried out more personally. A pool of her own blood stained the ground around her, stained every inch of her skin that could be seen and tightened her black clothes about her, and he saw immediately the cause of it, the five seeping gunshot wounds that perforated her body from chest to abdomen.

He fell beside her, fearing she was already dead.

Her eyes opened and she looked blindly up at him. After several moments there flickered a dull light of recognition and she whispered through bleeding lips his name.

He stumbled over the words to tell her to conserve her strength, to which she laughed and gave a quiet 'no.'

"It is ironic, is it…not…that…that Dekim Barton should…that he should…be the one to…to give me what I want?"

A dawning realizing, an outraged epiphany. Dekim had done this to her, the coward, the fucking coward, the fucking bastard.

He surveyed the destruction around them, saw no one watching. Dekim had left her. He had exacted his vengeance upon her and left her here to die, too weak to watch what he had done … he found himself remembering their first conversation, of her saying with perfect conviction that she hoped, if she were to die in the same fashion as Heero Yuy, her assassin would have the strength to stand over her and watch her die, and he knew that he could not leave her to seek help. Perhaps it was his punishment for what he had done to Yuy, that he should be the one to watch her.

She sighed shakily and her eyes fell closed.

"Sakura?"

Her eyes fluttered open, her lips parted in a trembling exhalation. "It does not…I cannot feel it anymore." Her hand went limp in his. "I do not have to be this anymore, do I?"

He bent and kissed her bloodstained forehead. "I don't understand, Sakura."

She seemed not to hear him. Her weak futile hand grasped at the air once more, brushing against the side of his face. "Please…Takeru…find him…" Her voice trailed off into an almost palpable silence. The fingers of her hand slid across his face once more, then her hand fell away in time with her life.

And thus passed this woman from the world, without a dramatic speech or parting words of love or wisdom but rather with a mindless fragmented rambling.

Something warm rolled down his face.

He whispered her name, kissed the spot between her sightless eyes as he closed them.

For a while he could only hold her, the empty, bloody shell of the only one he had ever truly in his stoicism loved, too much in a state of shock to realize that he had just lost her.

A hand, thin and withered with age, lighted upon his shoulder.

"Take the boy," Yuan-Chen said behind him, his serene voice too grave, too solemn. Odin turned and saw that the elder man's eyes were glistening, and at his side he held Sakura's pale, catatonically shocked son. "I will see to the body."

He nodded and shakily rose to his feet, relinquishing her corpse only at Yuan-Chen's request.

Yuan-Chen knelt by her and motioned for Odin to leave him.

"The Arm–"

"Has done its work," Yuan-Chen said, closing his ancient eyes. "Take the boy. The Alliance is searching for you. They have discovered that you were seen with her. Take the boy and leave."

Takeru looked up at him, his strange blue eyes vague and emotionless. That look would remain in them always. "Tenshi," he said quietly, one large tear spilling down his cheek. "She…"

He fell silent then, and Odin took the child into his arms.

Thus had begun the three years they had spent together, a pathetic war-scarred semblance of a father and son. The boy had never cried again after that day, had in fact spent those three years held between true catatonia and a stoic existence.

Odin had tried to do for him all that Sakura would have wanted, given the circumstances. The Arm, he knew, continued the search for them for two of those three years before giving up, leaving them finally for dead.

The matter of the elimination of the Cosmos Arm had long since become irrelevant to him. His survival, as well as that of Septum and Dekim Barton was inexplicable, and no amount of remembrance could change any of that, just as no amount of remembrance would resurrect Hanasaki Sakura from the grave.

Takeru's actions during the Arm's downfall had both impressed and strangely saddened him.

He lit another cigarette, unaware of how many he had already smoked. It was a habit he had picked up somewhere in the vast amount of time between his supposed death in AC 188 and the time in which he had decided that his death truly was overdue.

Up until that point he had lived much as he had after the assassination of Heero Yuy, wandering and belonging to nothing and desiring nothing. At some unconscious time he realized that he did, however, desire to die.

By this time Yuan-Chen had resurfaced in Asia, not in the temple in the mountains of Japan but rather in his native Manchuria, where the rest of his family had remained after his departure for the temple, God-only-knew how many years before. Odin had gone to him then, to the house of his brother's many children, and it had seemed almost as though Yuan-Chen had been expecting him.

"I had heard of your death on the colony," he said hours later, after his nephews had gone respectively off in pursuit of their own endeavors before their expected return at dawn. He was exactly the same as he had been all those years ago in the temple, serene, ancient, unshakable. Perhaps he had seemed even more so when mirrored against Odin's own strange instability.

"What should have been my death," he said. To anyone else his voice would have maintained its signature calmness; to Yuan-Chen, however, it had seemed bitter.

"Your mission was successful," Yuan-Chen went on.

"The ones who were supposed to die did not."

Yuan-Chen sat back in his chair. "Then perhaps you have done your penance for the death of Heero Yuy."

"Dekim Barton's survival does not make up for Yuy's death."

"You do not know such for certain until he has performed a role in future events. We do not know what he may yet cause."

The conversation had continued in this way for a while. It was interrupted only once, when a boy, around the age of Yuan-Chen's nephews but obviously not one of them, stumbled sleepily into the room and asked Yuan-Chen if he had slept through dinner as though he still were not truly awake.

"Go back to bed, Rhyn," Yuan-Chen said, waving the boy off, and the British boy went without argument. After Yuan-Chen explained to Odin whom the boy was, he continued, "You have developed a bitterness for life, Odin. Your soul has become much like Sakura's."

"She was not so bitter." It was the first time he had spoken of her since her death.

"She did not let you see it. Sakura went through much pain in her life, pain that she spoke of to none. Her pain is ended, Odin. You should allow your own to do the same."

He left Yuan-Chen a few days later. By this time a great war had begun in space, and the destruction of the Earth was threatened by a man calling himself Milliardo Peacecraft. Odin had needed to see the man only once to know that he truly was the lost Prince of the Sanq Kingdom.

On the day of the assassination of the military leader Treize Kushrenada, Odin again traveled to space, in hopes of dying there. His death had been prevented by a globally-broadcast view of the great battle that was then ensuing, a fierce war between only two Gundams, one of them piloted by Milliardo Peacecraft. A brief image was shown of the other pilot, and though Odin had not seen the boy in years, he recognized him immediately as Takeru, Sakura's lost, scarred, stoic son.

His thoughts of romancing death, of pursuing that final redemption, had been put on hold as he watched, and when later the craft Yuan-Chen had arranged for him to take into space had gone into the vicinity of the wreckage of the crimson Gundam and its barely-living pilot, it had seemed to him that he was not yet entirely obsolete.

And thus Marquise had stolen his redemption, as Takeru had interrupted it before.

He had become aware of a possible purpose for Marquise only a month later, when it became known to him and certain others that Kushrenada had survived and what he was already even then planning.

He wondered now if it truly was her memory that had led him to start the counteroffensive. The question was irrelevant; of course he had done it in her memory. Almost everything he did was, in some inexplicable way that he no longer desired to understand, for her.

He had a feeling that she would have done the same thing in his position.

My dear Sakura, your pain truly has ended.

And so had his own, though he could not now remember when or how this had happened, just as he could barely remember his reaction when he had, days after her death, allowed it to strike him that Hanasaki Sakura truly was dead.

He wondered if Takeru would ever allow his own to end.

He remained on the platform until the night began to wane, lost in his own thoughts, brooding as he had often been accused of doing, absently enjoying the chill as it gradually seeped into him. When the sky in the east at last yielded to the bright orange of dawn, his dark figure stole away into the forest whence it had come, and if there had been anyone else there to see, he would have appeared nothing more than a shadow falling away at the coming of the light.

Author's Notes: Where to start . . . I really don't like this chapter. Well, I don't necessarily dislike it, but I do hate reading it ... it's so damnably long! Originally this chapter was not going to be an actual part of Ballad, but rather was intended as a character study for Odin Lowe to be read by only a few people. However, it seemed to suit the story, and as Odin began to emerge as such a major character, it became quite apparent that some back story for him was needed. For those of you who have not read the Episode Zero manga but are sticking with this story for whatever ungodly reason suits you (cheers, there, by the way), almost everything in this chapter is original. All that is ever revealed in the manga about Odin is that he killed the original Heero Yuy, he acted as guardian for the soon-to-be Gundam pilot Heero Yuy, and he died leading an assault on the Cosmos Arm (which then included Dekim Barton, General Septum, and I think I saw Quinze somewhere in there as well, but it's been so long since I read it that I don't really remember). Everything else I just made up. It was the best logical idea that I had for his character.

In regard to the temple, I meant for it almost to be a contradiction to itself. It is a mixture of the religious shrines of Japan and a sense of cultural/spiritual unity that I think would have to exist amongst some of the isolationist groups of the ultramodern AC era. The ceremonies therein are also of that odd mixture. Odin's period of training, as well as that of many of the students, takes relatively short time due to the era as well, as I think that by that time, what once required decades would have to be done in much shorter time to appeal to more people. Despite having the opportunity to do so in this chapter, I chose to emphasize Odin's relationship with Sakura rather than his embrace of Taoism there, and sometimes I wish I had done the opposite, but then again, I am rather attached to Sakura's character.

Regarding how Sakura actually knew Odin's identity in their first conversation, all I can say is that there was once going to be some kind of subplot that would have made her enigmatic response (that she recognized his movement) make more sense, but I completely abandoned that idea when I developed a better sense of her character, and just decided to leave that response there without further explanation. She's quite like Yuan-Chen when it comes to vague responses anyway.

At certain points in this chapter, the usual Japanese suffixes are dropped from the names. This, as well as little Takeru's use of the word 'tenshi,' is mostly just to reflect fictional changes that have occurred in their language system by this era.

Finally, I think that sex scene was the shortest and most undetailed sex scene I have ever written. I almost feel like writing a vignette with Odin and Sakura that doesn't skip on the details, but that probably couldn't be posted on this website.