02: missive and misgivings.
Treize, even in his most rumpled and harried state, could not bring himself to properly hunch over his ornate mahogany desk and the composition thereupon. No, Treize sat with dignified posture as he filled yet another page with his elegant penmanship; the last and most important letter he would address tonight. A day of mediation between his involuntary pawns and unsuspecting peers, and paperwork, so much dreary paperwork to confirm or deny his plans that were brilliant in their initiation, now tiresome in their activation, left the proud General thirsting for honest companionship and perhaps a glass of aged brandy. And a massage.
Oh, how Zechs could give massages.
Milliard cannot and never will be dead so long as Zechs lives. I have taken both the horrid mask that, it seems, protects you from me, and you for granted and I sincerely and deeply apologise for my numerous egregious offences to your heart, for no matter how many faces you wear, there is but one beating within the chest of the man I so cherish.
Your personality is no more split than mine; Zechs would not exist without Milliard; Zechs is merely a name for your degree of control over yourself, something which I have certainly been lacking in our engagements. You are the only man who tempts me to lose control, and I have abused your allowance of this luxury almost unforgivably.
I say almost because I hope that you will return to me tonight, without the mask, and I will lay my badges and decorations at the door.
Treize set his gold-emblazoned pen in its inkwell, then picked it up again, deciding impulsively that his star pilot and incensed lover would require more of him emotionally than such a simple, logical entreaty if he were to regain the blonde's sorely-lost affections.
Please, Milliard. Please come. I miss you until my very skin is aching for yours. These diplomatic hours and hours of debate and forced revelry with sycophant aristocrats who know nothing of battle and battalion leaders who know nothing of decorum... These people who should have no influence in our grand cause and who, in fact, do not deserve influence in the lives of any of the innocents they unwittingly command into squalor and mutilation... It all wears so heavily on me, but they must not see it. Only you can I trust with the full gravity of this burden. Only you are able to find me in this loneliest place reserved for those who have seen every snarling and simpering face of war, who have tasted of blue-blood and found its flavour running red through the discarded flesh of the human machine of carnage. Many know why full dress uniform includes gloves, but only you know why the Chairmen and the Presidents and the Advisors and the Ambassadors hide their hands from each other. We are not simply stained, we are tattooed with thousands of haunted faces that all answer to one name; murderer. Leader; bargainer of lives.
Only you can love me, Milliard. Please come to me tonight.
I will be in the Darwight suite.
- Yours, General of Thorns.
Surprised at himself for the deluge of confession and, in his heart of strategic hearts, pleased with the impassioned result, Treize sealed the missive with his personal crest, wondering as he trod to the exterior door and his personal deliveryman waiting beyond it if Zechs was not accurate when he declared Treize a coercionist and abuser of power, even if that power were only his wicked tongue and the various incarnations of cunning manipulation for which he employed it.
He keyed in the unlock code on the main door's control panel and passed the simple envelope into his trusted officer's hands with only a quiet murmur of the name of its recipient, and the soldier saluted and was dispatched. Treize, not bothering with bedclothes or the still-lit lamp at his desk, shrugged out of his military coat and tall boots and left them crumpled on the suite loveseat before he soaked bonelessly into the couch, luxuriating in the plush fabric against his bare shoulders and the knotted sinew beneath. Clad only in the tight white breeches of his uniform, he draped a forearm across his brow to shut out the dim lamplight, and waited.
The letter found Zechs stretched across his regulation mattress, deep into revisions of a mobile-suit piloting manual authored by some Romefellar imbecile who, it seemed, had spent less time in a cockpit than Zechs had spent in an elegant four-poster bed with thick, faux-fur blankets that smelled of roseoil... a different sort of cock-pit about which Zechs would not think. Narrowing his eyes, the sleek adonis re-read the current paragraph for the fourth time, and was finally about to make his corrections when a sharp knock at his door startled him from his thought process. Deciding the manual update was doomed to be released a day later than planned, Zechs set it and his reference pages aside and ambled his way to answer the door, rubbing the taut muscles in his lower back on the way. "Yes?" Zechs enquired of the caller, one hand poised over the silver helmet set atop the simple entryway table should anyone seek his audience.
"Letter for you, sir."
Zechs glowered at the voice of Treize's personal assistant. What could the stubborn, insensitive man have to say to him now that required the use of this particular officer? With a furious jerk, Zechs slapped the door-open console, snatched the letter out of the surprised soldier's hands and had the door swishing shut again before the young man had a chance to glimpse Zechs' secret face, veiled even at that moment by the mass of platinum locks. Zechs stood in a silence for which he unthinkingly held his breath, clutching the letter so tightly in his hands that it began to crinkle, waiting for the sharp taps of the soldier's boots leading him away. Finally the boy was gone and Zechs exhaled, slid a rather sharp fingernail beneath the seal of the envelope and let the ripped wrapping fall in favour of the document he now tore into with his gaze.
"Yours, General of Thorns." So the thorns belonged to Zechs, did they? And what of the brilliant buds that gave the General his influence and authority, that made the man a figure to be recognised and reckoned with? Zechs supposed, not with a little bitterness, that they would blossom only for the world Treize so longed to control, and a mere subordinate such as Zechs would be left to linger beneath the shadow of those extravagant petals, clinging only to the roping vines that lacerate and shred him for his effort. Maybe it was the blood of the men like Zechs in Treize's life that coloured his roses so red.
"Oh, for god's sake, get ahold of yourself," Zechs chided aloud. He bent to retrieve the envelope, only just noticing the small, pressed rosebud that had slipped out of it and now lay discarded on the carpet. A tiny, keening sigh escaped Zechs' lips as he cupped this precious parcel into his palm and carried it to his bedside table, laying it carefully atop the letter before turning to dress himself. Tonight, he would return to the General. Perhaps that enigmatic man with the aristocratic hands and the talented sword at his hip would offer Zechs a few petals after all.
When a few knocks received no response and no hint of motion, Zechs nearly marched right back to his rooms, fearing another of Treize's cruel games. Reasoning with himself that not even the manipulative General who relished in his battle tactics could be so cavalier with his prized pilot's emotional state, Zechs opted to try the key-code to Treize's door, half-expecting it to have been changed to exclude him from his previous full access.
It hadn't been.
Zechs' eyes adjusted quickly to the subdued lighting as the door swished shut behind him, and obedient to Treize's requests as ever, he removed his helmet and set it on the floor in the entryway. After leaving his boots beside the unforgiving metal, Zechs meandered cautiously into the main room of the suite and was taken aback by the sight of the General of OZ draped languidly over his couch, half-nude and fully in the throws of well-deserved sleep, given the trials of the attacks staged that day. One of Treize's arms was slung over the back of the couch, the other dangling ever-gracefully, even in slumber, down to brush the carpet; his white-clad legs were crossed at the ankle, and he was altogether glowing with hushed power and tenderness.
Unable to bring himself to wake the peaceful man, Zechs simply collapsed into the loveseat adjacent to him, noticing too late that his firm rump crushed the highly-decorated military coat Treize had carelessly discarded. Thoughts churning with too many implications as he watched Treize's chest rise and fall, metaphors and insiduous truths in the missive, feverous contemplation of the feeling of that hard chest against his cheek and under his palms as he rode the General until both were gasping, Zechs slumped into a fitful sleep where he sat.