Trowa no longer had any clue what the hell was going on. Midii had warned him that the suit she piloted was dangerous, she didn't say exactly how t was dangerous or what it did, so he'd assumed that it was like the Wing Zero; dangerous only in the hands of an inexperienced or unstable pilot, capable of great destruction but only if misused.
He got on the battlefield and hadn't observed anything out of the ordinary about it aside of the fact that the enemy couldn't see them coming because of the light shield. Then, after a few passes against the enemy and some token potshots (Trowa was certain he should have been the one piloting the suit so that he could join his comrades instead of fighting alone in the middle of Sacred Omega's strongest point) the suit suddenly busts out with this... he didn't know what it was. The first blast off the weapon had decimated an entire unit of fifty suits which was the approximate strength of the self-destruct button on a Gundam. Then there was this blindingly dazzling flash of pure white light so strong that Trowa had had to shield his eyes for a moment. Once the light finally faded there was nothing around him but carnage. Whatever it was had just taken out a third of Sacred Omega's forces in an exact circle around them. SIx units were gone and several more facing heavy casualties.
Heero, Duo, Quatre and Wufei plus the fighting suits that Trowa recognized belonging to the Maguanacs and the Preventors pressed the advantage and Sacred Omega was soon on the roust. Trowa blinked; a miracle? The suit quickly flew over to a cleared area in front of the city gates and landed, going to one knee.
"Midii," he called over the suits com. No reply.
"Midii," he tried again. Again, only silence.
"AI, what's the status of the pilot?"
"Pilot not responding, life signs at critical levels and falling. Pilot remains unresponsive to attempts to resuscitate."
Trowa hurriedly unstrapped himself from the seat and pushed his way out of the secondary cockpit then scrambled up to the entrance of the primary cockpit. The door was sealed shut, frantically he looked for any sort of manual opening, there was a digital keypad but no other form of manual override. He curled his fist and banged on the opening.
"AI! Open the cockpit!" he ordered.
"Unable to comply," was the mechanized response.
"Why not?" he snapped, scrabbling at it trying to get inside.
"You are not cleared for access to the primary cockpit."
"Let me in there damn you!" he picked up a nearby piece of debris and swung at the door, aiming for the crack and succeeding in jamming it in there a little ways. He pushed on the side of the scrap he was using as a pry bar and the small crack widened enough for him to get a hand in. Trowa heaved and the door eventually gave up. Midii lay down in the bottom of the cock pit, an unusual one because instead of opening outward with the seat in the back it opened topward with the cockpit itself in a little hollow in the bottom.
She's not breathing, he realized. Hurriedly he lowered himself down into the opening headfirst and grabbed her up by the shoulders dragging her out into the light of day. He worked on loosening her pilot suit while he ordered AI to make communications with the Preventors frequencies.
"Com channel open," he was informed a scant second later.
"Mediic!" he called. "Medic! Oh god, hang in there Midii..."
Trowa began pummeling her chest, trying to get her to breathe.
"Trowa?" Quatre's voice said over the com. "Is that you?"
"Yes. She's not breathing," Trowa said.
"Sally's on her way," Quatre assured him.
"Don't worry about the rest of these suits," Duo's voice said over the com. "We'll take care of 'em."
Trowa had ceased to be aware of or even care about the battle going on around him. It was unusual how fast his world could switch focus; at any time before this it would have been the exact opposite and he would have ignored the civilian in favor of finishing out the battle. He continued pushing on her chest trying to get her to breath and get her heart to beat but she remained unresponsive. Sally and a small medical team arrived shortly thereafter, pushing him out of the way and beginning the serious work of reviving her.
The chest piece on her pilots-suit gave her a shock suddenly and she gasped.
"We have a heartbeat!" an assistant that Trowa couldn't recall his name said triumphantly. "We're stabilizing now."
Trowa had no idea that he could actually be flooded with relief but that was precisely what it felt like, a wave crashing out from his heart that spread out throughout his entire body. Midii was quickly packed onto a stretcher and hauled out of the battlefeild. He saw Lady Une over at one point giving orders for the wounded to be attended to, and for this or that group to complete this or that task so that matters could be wrapped up efficiently. He hopped down from the Excalibur and looked up at the suit; no wonder she'd been so cautious about revealing this thing to anybody, it really was dangerous. He looked out at the battlefeild where his comrades were chasing off the last of the stragglers and saw an enormous crater where the white light had gone off.
Just what is the Rowan Driver? he wondered. It had nearly cost the pilot, Midii, her life. Trowa made for the medical tent unsurprised to find his sister Catherine already there. She looked on worriedly as the medics worked quickly to stabilize her condition. She squeezed his hand reassuringly.
"She'll be fine, I'm sure of it," Cathy said with a small tight smile. Trowa nodded distantly, his entire attention concentrated on her grey-pale face. She looked dead. He couldn't stay in this place.
He turned on her heel and strode from the tent, seeking a place where he could be alone with his thoughts. As usual he wound up by the lion cages. He sat down with a sigh the others would probably come seeking him wanting to know what the heck that suit was and where it came from, Quatre would probably want to know what had upset him. These were his friends; an unusual bunch of ex-soldiers but they worked.
"So you're saying that she's had a suit like that for all these years and she's almost never used it?" Duo said, a little incredulously. It was morning of the next day and they had all gathered inside the vacated cicus tent. Trowa nodded. They had indeed sought him out for a reunion and some form of gossip, or what passed for it among Gundam Pilots.
"I think she's right to be so cautious," QUatre volunteered. "We all remember what the zero system made a person capable of. Something that turns will into reality as she says may be capable of a lot more than merely the obvious."
The five of them looked at the new suit with differing amounts of speculation, likely foremost on all of their minds was the idea of taking it out and seeing what it was really capable of in the hands of an experienced pilot. It was probable that the only thing stopping them was the mention of a security system that would lock them inside the cockpit and start up the self-destruct sequence. It would be a rather ignominious way to die.
"So how did she get hurt?" Duo asked at last. "The last I saw there wasn't anything that could touch the suit through it's weird planet defender sheild thing when it was even visable for an enemy to lock onto."
"She told me that the system had a history of killing its pilots," Trowa said. "She said she'd mastered it, but also that it was still dangerous for even her to use. I don't know anything more than that. Just that after that last attack she made the suit said that her lifesigns were at critical and she was getting worse."
"Trowa?" Catherine's voice called. "Trowa, she's awake. She's been asking to see you."
Trowa abruptly left the group without so much as a backward glance.
"Well," Duo felt obliged to say. "It looks lke another of us had fallen. Good for him, I was beginning to feel like the odd man out."
Lady Une was already inside the medical tent conversing with the prone and weak-looking Midii Une.
"...They say that they won't accept anyone else but you," she was saying to Midii.
"I just want to go home," Midii said in a subdued voice. "But I know that even if I didn't accept their proposal I still wouldn't be able to. it seems a good solution, let me think on it for a while."
"And that suit?" Lady Une asked. "Surely you intend to destroy it. Now that the world knows that such a powerful weapon exists they will not suffer it to remain. It would be a danger to peace, not only yours and your countries but possibly the worlds, if it fell into the wrong hands..."
"I know that," Midii said tiredly. "But see it from my point of view. The Excalibur is the only legacy my father left with me, even though I personally don't actually like the suit I'm still very attached to it for that reason. Furthermore, a lot of the developments he made for the suit were originally made for peaceful and good purposes... I would like to see them reverse engineered and put to their original intents."
"That would take more resources than you currently have, and I don't know if keeping such a weapon around until you have those resources is a good idea," Une said dubiously.
"This suit is mostly its own security device, but I have hopes for the future. I will settle upon how it shall be disposed of at a later date."
Trowa cleared his throat and Midii and Lady Une both looked over at him. Midii sent the Lady a significant glance and the Lady said
"Well, it is technically yours to dispose of until I say otherwise. We can discuss this later."
"Thank-you for understanding," Midii said. Lady Une left the two of them alone together.
Trowa went over and sat down in the chair next to her cot. Then he leaned over her and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her close to his heart and pressing his head into the side of her neck.
"Don't ever do that again," he said.
"So. Even you get worried sometimes," she said softly, as she weakly tried to return his embrace.
"Not funny," he replied, holding her tighter. He'd always thought emotions were more trouble than they wer worth, they clouded the senses and took control, making people act in ways that countered sense and self-preservation. Now he discovered that despite that, they were worth it. After a long moment in which he just held her she at last said
"They want to make me their queen."
He broke the embrace to look at her in surprise. Midii nodded.
"The Havens met and settled on it while I was away. They won't accept the Provisional Government; they want someone who will care about them, someone who will put their welfare above her own. They want me. I don't know if this is what I want to do, Homeguard is a big enough challenge as it is. Maybe I'm just being selfish. I love you and I want to remain beside you always, but I know these people need me and I can't turn away. What do I do Trowa? If you tell me you want me with you I'll stay beside you always, no matter what."
Trowa paused. She'd just placed her life and her future in his hands. Leaned over one last time and kissed her deeply, as deeply as a man would drink from an oasis after a day in the desert and he held her face in his hands to imprint her on his memory.
"Do as your heart tells you to do," he said. "It may not always be easy, but you must do what you think is right."
Midii sighed and leaned forward to cling to him like a drowning victim holding onto a floating spar. They both knew that this would be thier last chance to be together for quite some time. They would accept it because at least they had this much.
"I love you," she whispered. Trowa tightened his grip. She knew he wasn't very big on words and he also knew she would accept his simple acknowledgement in place of them for now. Someday woul come the time when he would say them back to her, but not right then.
"Help me to my feet?" she asked of him. He knew what it cost her to have to admit to that much weakness, even despite the fact she'd hovered on the brink of death a few scant hours ago. Apparently, if you managed to live through the effects of the Rowan Driver System the aftermath did not linger. He picked her up in his arms and set her down gently. It was time.
She walked out from the medical tent, supported on one side by him. The gate of the makeshift citadel opened wide before her and she walked down the central street directly to the magnificent structure of the Capitol building. Her people lined up along either side as though it was some kind of parrade and when she walked slowly up the steps the front lawn was flooded with spectators. From out of the building emerged the seven ministers of the Provisional Government and Lady Une with nine Preventors, and in addition There was the young Relena woman she'd saved from drowning before, but she was wearing the suit of a high ranking government official. Go figure it.
She was asked to recite seveal oaths that outlined her duty to her country and people, as well as an oath of non-agression and cooperation with the Earth Sphere Unified Nation, she recited the oaths without a qualm; it was no less than she had been doing up until this point. There was the added benefit of being able to look at the ministers significantly on some parts of the oaths involving the duties owed to her people and they did have the grace to look uncomfortable.
She was crowned before a wildly cheering public who afterwards proceeded to haul out their fiddles, accordians, pipes and flutes and launch into reels and jigs favored by the common and unsophisticated folk of Belterre and a massive celebration commenced. Traditional dances, drinking songs, moonshine and a lot of unusual revelry followed a battle that no one on the Belterre side had seriously held out hope of winning. There was a new hope for the future in the form of their young queen, thier peole had gathered in this one place... now of all time was the time for a massive party!
Midii had been unable to hold back her smile at the sight of Trowa joining one of the impromptu bands spinning out a reel called "The Gneevguillia Reel" along with a strange Preventor boy with blonde hair and blue eyes who played the fiddle part. They played the difficult peice masterfully, Trowa had no troubles at all keeping breath with the long passes full of notes striking one after another in rapid sucession and the blonde kept pace excellently with his fiddle even though the song was incredibly fast paced. Midii, even though she was newly crowned and the celebration was nominally for her, couldn't resist showing off her skill on the fife jumping in with Trowa on the third movement of the peice. After they'd finished with their peice she jumped in for a fife-reel called "The Boys of the Lough" a fast peice that, if played correctly, sounded like the flautist never took a breath but kept the song up in one long swift series of patterned notes. Then she accompanied one of the drinkers on an old favorite called "Let Mister McGuire Sit Down."
The party would continue long into the night possibly until morning for it hadn't been often at all that the poor people had this much to celebrate, but Midii knew that the next day would bring the real work of trying to get this country back on her feet. Well, it was wise to enjoy the moment at times like these and let the future attend to itself. There would be more than enough time to worry about it in the time to come.
When they found a moment of privacy alone together Trowa made certain she knew that he was indeed going to miss her.