30 Ways to Conquer Mars
#006 夢と現の間
A.C. 197, March 「Umbria」or「Nazo no Hako」
Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB
This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.
...
I knew it! Relena squealed inwardly, emerging triumphant from the small captain's chest Lady Une had brought over containing Milliardo Peacecraft's personal effects from his years with the Khushrenada clan.
The Preventers should have been over it with a fine-toothed comb before anyone else touched them, but being his royal sister and the ex-Queen-of-the-World accorded some privileges. From where Relena was standing, if having a chance to pry into her brother's life, however distant from the man he has become, meant jumping from the tallest building in the world without a rope, she would have done so without a second thought. In comparison, the Preventers' request that she only touch the box in the presence of two or more agents was perfectly reasonable. The only surprise was that Lady Une had not been one of them.
There had been the usual assortment of little boys' treasures: worn pebbles, broken toys, some bottle caps and feathers on bits of string, and a lilac handkerchief, still smelling faintly of lavender water and wood smoke, embroidered with the initial 'K'.
No personal letters or photographs were evident for her to imagine the child her Captain Noin had known, although there had been papers, reams of it, occupying most of the box. The bulk of it collected as an eight year-old's unfinished novel, complete with crayon illustrations. In a leather folder, she found report cards, academic and military certifications, and letters of commendations and reproof from the Lake Victoria Academy, several referencing 'bouts of savagery' with other cadets.
"…If, as guardians, you would allow cadet Merquise to continue in these bouts of regrettable savagery, then I must insist that measures be taken to ensure that he at least considers his chances of a graceful victory before engaging an opponent. I speak, in particular, of cadet Noin, with whom cadet Merquise appears to have an unhealthy rivalry…"
This letter was dated May 1st, A.C 186. Relena could not help grinning gleefully at the image of ten year-old Noin trouncing her brother around campus, even if the context confused her. It helped immensely to think that Milliardo, like her, had not been alone and unloved in their years of exile, and with that hope, she had always presumed he and Noin to have been intimate, if not the best of, friends since childhood. He certainly did not seem to have any others, and the idea that he might have being at ease with the likes of Trieze Khushrenada and Dorothy Catalonia was… disturbing, to say the least.
It was part of the reason she could not bring herself to ask him about his life, despite Noin's best efforts to reintroduce the siblings to each other. Suppose things had happened to him in a way she cannot begin to relate to, how would she respond then? She had made her excuses after the second awkward brunch, telling herself and Noin with apologetic kisses that there will be time.
There hadn't.
Noin was refreshingly easy to know, if equally enigmatic. Her resume to the position of Captain of the Guard had included a short list of her preferences in food, entertainment and people, on top of the usual histories and credentials. She answered every question as plainly and concisely as she herself was, and, Relena frowned with that realisation, she never lets you notice when she wasn't.
It had been a discussion about Milliardo's alias, one rare, lazy, evening containing wine and cheese crackers. It had been easier to ask questions about him when she thought he was dead.
"Why did he call himself Zechs Merquise?"
"He never said. My guess, he thought he was being clever," Noin chuckled, shifting the girl's head to a more comfortable position in her lap. "Before Sanq went pacifist, it kept a knighthood instead of a military, pretty much the same thing though, with fancier ranks. And all the best knights were made marquess."
"So, Six Marquess? What does that mean?"
"I don't know, princess, although I'm surprised nobody questioned it at enrolment. It's a terrible moniker."
"Then they should pull up on names like Noin, too," Relena pointed out with an instinctual jump to her brother's defence. "It sounds like nine in German, which would seem a fairly odd thing to be named, too."
"I suppose it is," the older woman smiled and poured her more wine. "It's a good thing you weren't a Specials enrolment officer in 185."
She hadn't given the comment much thought then, but if Milliardo Peacecraft could go through his entire high-profile military career under an assumed name, why couldn't anyone else?
And now, she may be holding a very important clue as to who the woman she had privately thought of as her sister-in-law was.
It was a parchment a foot by two in size; a marriage contract witnessed by six seals, the bedraggled survivor, from the look of things, of war, fire and water. All the gold leaf and most of the wax had run and rubbed away and someone had fed the greater part of upper right hand corner inexpertly to a candle before they were stopped, or had changed their mind. The resulting damage left an incomplete name, but it was a start.
"Hey, Sally?" She called out to one of the Preventers Une had left behind. "Did you know my brother was married?"
...
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Glossary:
Nazo no Hako - Japanese "Box of Mystery"