30 Ways to Conquer Mars

#005 「あのさ」
A.C. 197, December 24:「Breaking Dawn」

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.

...

They did not look so completely out of place in the L-4 colony Spaceport as they had feared, among the masses of other friends making last fond farewells to each other as they sent each other back to their families for the holidays.

There were any number of reasons as to why they were here now, a year from when she brought him back to life, two from when he let her witness his death. They chose the most mundane, the excuse of the Christmas break, to avoid picking one of the more difficult ones.

The turnover rate on a civilised Interplanetary space mission was fairly high. Even at only a little more than a week from the nearest Colony, the stresses of being isolated in space, far away from the Earth Sphere, took its toll. Although he had expected his security officers, particularly Lucrezia Noin, to be hardier than that, the Chief of Security authorised the release of her contract with alacrity. She tried not to notice.

They walked easily together, as though this wasn't good-bye, as though it wasn't rejection. She wouldn't let him help her with her things, just as she wouldn't let him help her pack. In the end, she managed to fit her entire life up to this point in a single three-quarter full duffel bag. He had to wonder what she had taken with her and what she had left behind.

Some part of him almost stayed away, arguing hopefully that she might reconsider in his absence. He rest of him was unconvinced. After all, it was, to his best guess, the distance that had sprung up between them in his selfish absence a year ago that drove her away. No point adding more nails to that coffin.

It wasn't Mars that drove her away, or the botch-ups and deaths. It was him, reminding her by his mere existence of everything she could have been and everything she had lost. Donn hadn't known the half of it when he'd implied in a maddened state that Zechs had taken everything from her. He'd thought he was talking about a stellar career with the paramilitary Organization of the Zodiac and a home on Earth. The truth was much worse than that. Zechs hadn't even left her her name.

"Here is fine," Noin broke their tranquility in front of the ticketed zone. She pulled herself upright, her belongings perfectly deposited at her feet, the habit of military standards.

Zechs briefly contemplated snatching it up and making a break for it, and abandoned the thought out of the need to respect her decision. They weren't children anymore. Twenty-One year-old Noin had made that abundantly clear.

"I'm glad," she said, her eyes soft. "It is hard to remember that we are standing in a new world when we are fighting always, however secretly, for it to be born. I look forward to seeing this world that you and Treize and Relena have invented."

Zechs was silent as he struggled with the lump in his throat.

"Take care of yourself, Zechs."

He grimaced.

"It'll be tough without you around,"

She smiled. "Don't turn me into a bad habit."

"Too late," he said softly, reaching out delicately for her hand.

Painfully, Noin shook her head. No, it can't end like this, too much has been broken to be mended with a simple unspokoen "stay with me". Why couldn't he have said something when they were fifteen, eighteen, or in those weeks after he came back? Before… before she had realised the mistake they would be making; before Mars. Was there even a 'them' left worth saving? Did she still want there to be?

It was the war and everything that had led up to it. It was wondering when he would excuse himself from her life again, just when she'd rebuilt it. It was waking up mornings not knowing what to do with herself, and standing in doorways wondering how to address him and how to be addressed. It was remembering all the worst possible things they had done and said to each other and not enough of the good ones. It was sharing a space with him and not knowing what to say, as if they have exhausted all possible conversation.

She wanted to see him in a romantic light, there were even phases in their lives when she had. But ultimately, they were Zechs-and-Noin, and after everything they've been through together, every secret, every wounding word, every mistake, every death; after all that, there simply wasn't any room left for romance between them anymore.

"It is too late, Peacecraft, I can't think of a way for us to go back to how we used to be, and I don't think we should."

Silence again, and his features stilled as he drew back into the grim façade of a stony Prince. He could say nothing, because she was right. Noin held his eyes resolutely. This may be the last time she will ever see herself in them. Say something, Zechs, something in her begged, refusing to believe in the truth that she had spoken and that they both knew. Trailing behind him forever was an escape, not a calling.

She leaned in and kissed him good-bye, a chaste press of her mouth to his cold lips. Like a statue, as always, he would only mutely accept.

Noin smiled and broke away. That was the real problem between them. No matter how seamlessly they were able to compliment each other in life and war, they have never quite been able to keep up with each other in the waltz of emotions. She will always love him, as a brother, as her master, as a friend, and as her Prince from the Stars; and he, he may learn to make new friends, marry Princesses and find other women to love, but he will never forget her. That seemed to be the extent of their romantic capabilities.

She picked up her bag and disappeared into the turnstiles. She will regret it in a few hours when the realisation sets in, they both will. She will spend the next indeterminate number of months beating herself up, unable to decide if she hated herself more for kissing him or leaving him, and one morning she will wake up fine.

On that morning, she will be able to think about him and feel all the warmth and love that had existed unspoken between them with none of their old guilts and resentments and longing Could-Have-Beens. That is the morning she will sigh in relief, knowing she had successfully avoided a future in which she would look back in fifty years and regret never having let herself become anything more than his plot device.

...