A/N: Apologies folks, I totally neglected to crosspost this from AO3.
IV
At the start of his third year at the Academy, Zechs lands himself back in the infirmary. It's all so stupid.
He says something scathing to one of the instructors about the leadership of the Alliance, something about bootlickers and lapdogs, and lands himself a work detail with maintenance as punishment. They don't want him, one of the hotshot fancy-ass Specials cadets slowing the rest of them down, but he gamely trails behind as they spend the tail end of the afternoon making repairs to the perimeter fence out past the south hangar. Hyenas have been at it again.
"Hey kid, grab a couple of those rocks there and bring 'em over, would you?" requests one of the men he is with.
Zechs isn't sure of the point of this exercise but does as he's told, squatting down and worming his fingers into place to heave the first into his arms. That's when it stings him - a fat brown scorpion.
He screams - a fact which embarrasses him now, now that the pain has lessened.
His scream set off alarms amongst the men. They swarmed him. He remembers one spotting the offending creature and handily snatching it up, ripping the tail from its body and lobbing the rest over the fence. That image sticks with him. The rest is disjointed, but they obviously get him to the infirmary somehow because here he is, punishment forgotten.
The doctor is insisting on keeping him overnight, even though he's fine now. You can't even see where he was stung. He'd expected it would swell up, or ooze pus or something, but there's nothing.
He's bored and he's irritable, so of course that's when Noin chooses to pay him a visit.
"You weren't at dinner," she says. "I heard you got hurt."
She looks at him with a concerned crease down her brow. She has these gentle eyes - not like a soldier's at all. (How long will that last? he wonders. How long before this place, before the things they'll have to do will turn her hard? And why does that thought bother him so much?)
She's nothing to him, he reminds himself. But that's not exactly true.
It's dangerous to get too close, though. Isn't it?
Just who would she be getting close to, anyway? What is he but a liar?
"I'm fine," he tells her. "It's not anything serious."
He's not running a temperature but nonetheless finds he feels oddly warm under her gaze.
It's like tonguing a loose tooth: he can't seem to stop looking at her, in little glances that he hopes she doesn't notice.
He hates it and he likes it. The fact that he has her attention. That she noticed when he wasn't there. He would notice her absence, too. He doesn't want that to be true but there it is.
"A scorpion?" He nods. "Marielle found one in her shoe once. It didn't sting her, though. We threw it out the window. Can I see?"
He raises his sore hand for her examination, although there is, as he has pointed out, nothing much there. The doctor administered a dose of antivenom as soon as he was brought in (he remembers the maintenance crewman brandishing the creature's severed tail in the poor man's face) and he has since been given a mild analgesic, too. Still, it hurts like fire when she brushes the skin near the wound site; he winces and pulls away.
"Sorry. Is the pain still very bad?"
"Only when you touch it."
"Sorry," she says again. There's a little silence as she drops her hands back to her lap. And then, "I brought you some things."
She hands him his assignments from the day and then brings out a small floral-decorated tin. "My grandmother sent me these. Want one?" She removes the lid and holds out the open tin, which contains a layer of small almond cookies. "They're called paste di mandorla."
Her grandmother. Noin doesn't just have a family, she has a family that consists of generations. Because of course she does. He feels an ugly twist of envy. Even when Zechs was Milliardo, he had no grandparents still living.
"No," he says to the cookies. "They're yours. I don't want any."
"They're really good," Noin tells him and shakes the tin enticingly. "Nonna made them herself."
"She made them for you."
"Well you don't know how many I've already eaten," she says reasonably. "Anyway, she'll send more in time for Christmas. She always sends enough to share."
Can't she see he doesn't want to?
She looks so hopeful in the corner of his eye that his hand reaches out almost without his willing it and takes one. It's sweet and lemony when he puts it in his mouth.
"It's good, right?"
"Mmm."
"She's promised to teach me how to make them with her one day," she says a little wistfully. "Want another?"
He takes one. "Do you miss her? Your grandmother?"
"Of course. I miss everyone back home. Don't you?"
He swallows the (suddenly dry) lump of cookie. "Tell me about them. Your family."
"Alright. If you like." For the next ten minutes she tells him stories and Zechs lives greedily, vicariously through them. The grandmother in question is her father's mother. She lives with them in the ancestral home, a large farmhouse outside of Palermo. He gets the impression that unlike, say, the Khushrenadas whose estate continues to exist in a state of near ruin despite their having the means to stop it, Noin's family's fortunes have been in genuine decline in recent decades. Her father is a petty baron in Romefeller, one of dozens who make up their lesser ranks. A gentleman farmer, he's little more than a magistrate these days who resolves local disuptes and works the land around his home himself in the expectation that one day his two children will do the same.
She has a brother…a twin.
(Relena, he thinks with a familiar wrench.)
"Why isn't he here?" Zechs asks about Noin's brother and she laughs.
"He's at school near Geneva. He would be a terrible soldier - and an even worse officer. He's so prissy…he would faint if he ever saw anyone get injured. No, it's better like this. And he knows it, too. I think he flunked the aptitude exams on purpose."
The night matron interrupts to remind them that it will be lights out soon.
"Oh, there's one more thing I brought," Noin says before she goes, fishing in her bag. Out comes a familiar looking book - he groans at the sight of the garish cover and she smirks back at him. "I thought I'd better return the favor."
"You can keep it."
"No, no, I insist. I wouldn't want you getting bored in here."
She isn't one to take no for an answer, so he accepts it off her. He can leave it behind where he first found it in the morning.
"I look forward to hearing your thoughts, Cadet Zechs," she tells him cheerily as she stands to leave. "Goodnight; get well soon."
He calls out after her with a word of thanks.
For some reason it feels important.
Zechs works, he sleeps, he eats. Rinse and repeat.
Noin gets sent on a rotation with one of the ground teams. There's usually at least one crew down on Mars's surface, for there is much they still don't know about the planet. The short-term scientific research missions that preceded them could naturally only answer so much; and while satellites have mapped Mars's topography, they are no replacement for ground surveying teams in determining the best locations for potential hab construction. The latest expeditions have been dispatched to the planet's upper latitudes with drilling equipment in search of possible underground aquifers.
Having only just returned from the asteroid belt, it's unusual she should be sent on another remote deployment so soon - but the skills he and Noin have brought with them are in high demand.
Her absence wears on him…but part of him appreciates the distance. The frustration he feels when she's around is with himself, but it's so closely associated with her that sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
"Ah, Zechs - good to see you, do come in. Have a seat."
Once a month, the Project mandates that all its workers check in with their resident Psych Officer. When he is feeling cynical (usually on the days he has to report in) Zechs wonders what is behind this particular protocol: is it purely concern for maintaining the isolated Project crew's mental health, or is it a covert way for the Project brass - or ESUN - to keep tabs on them? Zechs has resolved to keep his mouth closed as much as possible.
Frances Merryweather is a woman with steely grey hair cut in a tidy chin-length bob and ramrod posture, who greets him with cheery familiarity each time they see each other, as though his visits are a pleasant but unexpected social call and not regular appointments in her calendar.
"How are you?" she asks with a smile as they make themselves comfortable on the two small sofas in her office. "You've just been on rotation with the mining crew, haven't you? How was that?"
"It was fine."
She looks at him a moment longer so he might elaborate, but he does not.
Merryweather takes no notes during their sessions, which combines with her personable demeanor to set him on edge. He hates not knowing what she's thinking.
"You were a soldier, weren't you?" she asks now, startling him. Not that it isn't common knowledge - the Project Director had fawned over meeting OZ's Lightning Count as soon as he and Noin were off the shuttle. "I hear the mining equipment is quite similar in some respects to piloting a mobile suit, do you find that?"
Mobile suits have been decommissioned as weapons of war in the Earth Sphere, but stripped-down variants of the design remain in use in the vacuum construction and mining industries. A great deal of old MS shells have found their way out here to Mars from Earth.
He shrugs and allows, "It's not so different."
"I find it quite fascinating, I must admit. Quite wonderful, that all these decommissioned weapons can find new uses in other fields."
Zechs makes a sound of neutral agreement.
"Well, and where have they got you working now?"
"Hydroponics."
"Oh, wonderful! That must have earned you some envious looks, I daresay. Quite a change from mining. How are you finding it so far? Have you done a rotation there before?"
Work rotations change every month, except for certain specialist roles (such as Frances Merryweather's), department heads, and upper Project administration. Zechs's current posting in hydroponics is indeed a coveted one, for there aren't many green spaces in the Martian space station. But to him it feels…lacking.
Oh, the work is challenging, interesting in its way; and when it isn't exhausting enough, the Martian space station has a fitness center where he can make up the difference. But compared to the hours when white fire lit his vision and he felt the electric charge of his breath inflating his lungs all the more keenly for the chance of its imminent cease, his days are monochrome.
It's a problem he's had since they arrived.
"It's fine," he says again. And adds, because he can sense that's not enough to cut it with Frances this time, "It's my first rotation working with Dominic Cathcart. I understand he used to be a logistics officer with the Alliance. He certainly runs a tight operation."
"Mmm, we have quite a few former soldiers out here," Merryweather agrees. "In fact, that's part of the reason I joined up, you know… Oh, I'm not a soldier myself, of course - far from it! - but I used to work at the Fourth Alliance Military Hospital in the EUR Zone 2. I got used to all that military bustle. Found I wasn't quite ready to give it up for a more sedate private practice after all."
The twinkle of humor in her eyes and the way she angles her head as if imparting a confidence to him is all very charming, but he sees the effort to build rapport for what it is.
Another minute passes in silence, and Merryweather tilts her head thoughtfully to muse, "It's a big decision for anyone, of course, coming all the way out here. There's a certain amount of inherent sacrifice required… You came out with Preventer Noin, if I'm not mistaken?"
"That's right."
He's tensed in readiness, but she doesn't ask what brought them to Mars. Nor about his relationship with Noin. Instead, catching him unprepared, it's, "May I ask, do you have family remaining back in the Earth Sphere?"
"No," he starts to say, instinctively, and then corrects himself. "A sister."
"Ah. You must miss her."
No, he thinks again, but that's not true either. Out loud, he says, "It's complicated."
"Ahh," she says with sympathy. "Family so often is. Maybe you can tell me about it sometime."
He's ready to kick himself.
Zechs has known Frances Merryweather a grand total of seven hours, one for each time they've met. Their sessions are mostly filled with small talk just like this. Harmless, until he goes and reveals something stupid. He wonders if his posting to the hydroponics section is anything thanks to her; if he has, inadvertently, given something else away that he should not have, which has deemed him unfit for other roles.
He takes a deep breath through his nose and releases the fists he's inadvertently made in his lap.
He chose this exile, he reminds himself - but exile is what it is: he signed a piece of paper under Une's watchful gaze at the explicit request of the ESUN President, vouchsafing his intent never to return to the Earth Sphere.
He offered up this punishment, but it feels more like escape.
And it has left him with the dull feeling that, while nothing is exactly wrong…neither is anything right.
"It was nice speaking with you," Frances Merryweather says when he leaves at the end of the hour, as she does at the end of every meeting they have. She wears her plastic smile that makes him want to wipe it from her face. "If you have any concerns at all, you know where to find me."
Zechs enjoys reading. He's kept with him a slim green volume of modern poems that he found tucked away in the library of the Khushrenadas' Luxembourg estate. A bit like himself, it seemed out of place amongst the volumes of Goethe and Homer, Shakespeare and Balzac; and so he kept it. To his knowledge, no one has missed it since. He takes it out from time to time to peruse its pages. The poems it contains are brief. Simple, but evocative. He isn't sure how so few words can carry so much weight, as if the space between them is as significant as the text itself. But nothing else he has read has moved him in quite the same way; and so he returns again and again.
Regretfully, the volume of poetry is not among the effects Noin brought him. The novel she did leave him with stands in stark contrast.
He didn't expect to bother with it, but among the infirmary's other occupants tonight is a man currently engaged in a loud and protracted bout of vomiting. The curtains drawn around the beds offer a modicum of privacy, but nothing in the way of soundproofing.
Since he isn't sleeping, he might as well distract himself.
It's either read, or torture himself with unanswerable questions about his baby sister. He's never found any more information than he did that day in the computer lab. Did she die with their parents? The only person he could ask is Treize, and he won't.
Whoever came up with that expression about not judging a book by its cover clearly never read this one. It is just as bad as the cover suggests.
The protagonist, as he surmised when he first picked it up, is a jaded secret service operative longing to leave 'the lifestyle,' but in too deep for that to be an option. He's been given a job to do, one so dangerous he suspects it has been designed by his superiors to get him killed. The only person he trusts is his handler, who joined the service and climbed the ranks around the same time he did. The details are vague, the tone so melodramatic as to be laughable.
How did this thing even get published?
Someone, to his amusement, has underlined the three typographical errors that can be found in the first chapter.
The marginalia increase in chapters two and three, marking the previous reader's (Noin's, he assumes) increasing irritation. She's circled the handler's name and written in pencil 'villain? bet anything in commissary.'
He smirks - a double-cross would be the obvious, cliche outcome, and yet he thinks the author lacks the sense of narrative structure that would lead him to that conclusion. He rummages amongst his things for a pencil of his own.
When Zechs slips into his usual spot beside Noin at drills the next morning (they stand alphabetically by surname: Cadet Maitland stands to his other side) he's bleary-eyed from being up half the night. He says to her while Voegel is carrying out his usual inspection, "You owe me."
"What do you mean?" she demands back, just this side of indignant.
He throws her a sideways glance. "The traitor. It wasn't Slim."
She bursts into a surprised but delighted laugh that lands her an immediate dressing down from Voegel. It does little to spoil her good mood; after she steps back into line and Voegel's back is turned she gifts him with an irrepressible smile and hisses playfully across, "I can't believe you actually read it."
"Couldn't put it down," Zechs deadpans.
Frances Merryweather, damn her, has gotten into his head. Well, not just her. Noin, too, with her occasional gentle questions about whether he's contacted Relena recently.
He should, he knows he should. He isn't even sure what's been stopping him all these months except, well, everything.
With Noin planetside, once he's finished his shift in hydroponics there's little else to occupy him. He could head for one of the rec rooms to strike up a friendly conversation with one of the other Project crew, have a drink, or find a card game to join or something, but…
God, the idea fills him with dread.
Pretty ironic, that a man who nearly conquered Earth and Space should be afraid of a little light conversation. He's let Noin be his buffer for far too long.
Of course, the idea of contacting his sister also fills him with dread, but he owes it to her. He boots up his email program and finds the draft he started the last time he got this far.
Dear Relena,A line break and the cursor flashes up at him.
That's as far as he got. It's as far as he ever seems to get.
His hands hover over the keyboard for a time, but as usual words fail him.
Sighing, he shuts the program down.
Also in their third year, a new subject is added to the cadets' curriculum: dance lessons. The boys in Zechs's dorm send up a collective groan - and as one dourly points out, there aren't enough girls for them all to partner with, even if they brought in all the women across the entire base. What, then, is the plan? Are they to pair off with each other, swapping about so they learn the women's steps as well as their own?
The solution, it turns out when they arrive in the gymnasium studio which has been reserved for their use, is that girls from the nearest village seven kilometers down the road are being bused in to even out the numbers. (Cultural exchange, of a sort - or it would be, if the exchange ever went in more than one direction. The LVA administration clearly envisions it as a one-way system.)
A murmur springs up amongst the cadets. The Lake Victoria base generally stands apart from the neighboring communities. Oh there's trade aplenty, and a limited shuttle service so that soldiers on their leisure days can visit the nearest town where there is a cinema and some nightlife. But this feels…different.
Most of Zechs's classmates appear excited at the prospect. He's not sure why he isn't, except… He's held himself at a distance from others for so long it has become habit. The sheer novelty of spending time with someone who isn't a part of the Alliance's military industrial complex should appeal, and yet overlying that is a weight of other expectations that he no longer knows how to fulfill.
While the room is buzzing in anticipation of the new arrivals, he finds his head turning instead in search of the familiar.
Noin stands clustered with the few other girls of their class - there are only four of them in total - their heads bent together in conversation. He walks over with intent and the conversation breaks off as all four look at him in curious expectation.
"Partner with me?" he asks of Noin. He purposefully pitches his voice low, for all the good it does; there's no escaping their audience when they're only six inches away.
"Oh-" There's surprise on her face. And then hesitation. She isn't agreeing. She doesn't want to have to pair with him, this was a mistake. "Well…I'm willing, but…"
"But?"
She shrugs and smiles, a little sheepish. Apologetic, almost, as she admits, "I'm not very good."
That's hard to believe. But even if true - "That doesn't matter."
She snorts inelegantly. "Sure, you say that now." But it's agreed.
Behind her, Marielle Arceneaux is nudging Claire de Fonseca and watching their exchange, not very surreptitiously. He lets Marielle see that he's seen, flicking a cold-eyed glance in her direction, which provokes a blush but not much else. As soon as his head is turned, there is a flurry of whispering, which he studiously ignores.
The new arrivals file in shortly after. There is a moment in which they and the cadets eye each other up over an unspoken boundary down the middle of the room. One or two of the visiting girls look genuinely excited to be there. One has brought a pair of low-heeled character shoes, which she appears to be lording over her friends. (Another, Zechs notices, is barefoot, peering around at the boys with curiosity while scuffing her toes against the polished wooden floor.) A few look nervous; a few more, bored or indifferent or scornful.
They're dressed in a riot of colors and styles, and it makes him realize how very homogeneous the cadets - indeed, all of LVA are. Their identical uniforms; their ordered lines and rows and careful order… Even their lineages, all descended from the same few European families. After adjusting to life on the base he's never given much thought to his own foreignness here in the heart of the African continent, but he feels it now.
The instructor claps their hands - it's not Voegel but someone they've never had before, a Lieutenant whose name Zechs will promptly forget, who has brought along his whey-faced young wife to assist him. She wears a gauzy, fluttering gown that looks entirely out of place in the drab gymnasium.
They don't waste time on introductions - an odd choice, Zechs thinks, since the purpose of these dances is ostensibly a social one, hand in hand with navigating the intricate rigmarole of aristocratic Romefeller etiquette and politesse. They line up, boys in one row, girls in another. Zechs stands across from Noin, and the instructor leads them through the steps of their first dance.
It's a waltz, naturally; a basic box step. Zechs, like, he suspects, many of the other cadets, has had these steps drilled into him before. He doesn't need to think about it. A good thing, because the heavy oom-pah-pah of the trombone is making his palms itch. It's another good thing, he thinks, that he's wearing gloves.
Although Noin is, for once, unlikely to notice sweaty palms or anything else that might be wrong with him.
True to her word, she's…not very good. Staring intently at their feet, she frowns in concentration, counting the musical beats under her breath. It's amusing at first: he's finally found one thing at which he is categorically better at than she is. But eventually, he takes pity. Well. Sort of.
"Stop trying to lead."
"I'm not."
"Yes you- you're doing it right now!"
She stubbornly sets her lip and grumbles "Sorry" (plainly not sorry at all).
"Do you want to get this right?" The look she shoots him is pure venom; he just barely keeps from laughing. "Think of it like fencing…you manage that footwork alright."
She snorts. "Not as well as you."
…So she's been paying attention. He files that knowledge away, vaguely pleased but unsure what to do with it.
"I thought your father was a baron; didn't you get lessons as a child?"
"Yes," she hisses. "Obviously. That's how I know I'm not any good!"
"You have the skill to do this," he insists at the same time their instructor's wife passes behind Noin to correct her posture.
"Take your eyes off your feet, dear. Elbows up, like this."
Not used to needing correction, Noin only becomes more flustered and bad-tempered. As soon as the instructors move their attention elsewhere, Zechs forces them to a halt. "Close your eyes," he instructs her.
"Are you kidding me? I can't even keep this straight with my eyes open and you want me to close them?"
"You keep trying to lead when you can't even get the steps," he points out. She bites her lip and he realizes there are nerves underlying her protests. "Trust me," he says more gently. "I won't let you fail."
After another suspicious look, she grudgingly shuts her eyes. Zechs adjusts his grip at her waist, lightly squeezes her right hand in his, and sets off into the first steps of the dance.
…She follows.
After a few early stumbles, their steps smooth and it becomes…easy. They rise and fall in time with the music. Like clockwork. Like perfectly crafted figurines of dancers in a music box. Except they're not lifeless mechanical dolls whose steps are preordained.
It's more like being in the flight sim, when everything clicks and every move he makes is the right one. His mind has opened and his awareness flows like a pure mountain stream. His breathing eases. A tension he didn't realize he was carrying slips away. He feels infallible. Except, whereas the flight simulator is just him, alone, this is him and another person.
Noin's eyes are still closed but he can't look away from her face. He can feel it when she breathes, connected to her breath through the hand on her back. Even their breaths are in sync.
He feels like he knows her.
That's absurd. He doesn't know her.
He feels like he knows her.
Across the room, two couples collide and everything comes to a halt as everyone else turns to look and comment and the instructors fruitlessly try to enforce discipline. Noin's eyes open and for a minute she stares up at him, blinking as if she's just woken from a dream.
They've stopped moving, but for some reason he's still holding her. His hands feel suddenly too warm, so he drops them and moves back a step. "You see? It's just like fencing."
"Uh-huh," she breathes; and then she smiles and everything is back to normal. "I can't believe that worked," she teases - and laughs, elated.
He's heard her laugh before, of course he has…but suddenly it strikes him as the prettiest sound he's ever heard.
Thanks to the shared lessons, Noin and the other three LVA girls start to strike up friendships with their visitors. As the weeks go by, they start getting return invitations. Looking out to the base's gates of an evening, you might see a couple of bicycles propped against the fence or a beat up old pickup truck waiting outside.
It's always been a common pastime for the cadets to hitch a lift into town with the older soldiers in their downtime; but this - cadets with friendships of their own, independent of the rest of the base's hierarchy, locals hanging around outside the gates to collect someone (or a group of someones) - this is new. And before long, they start bringing the boys with them, too.
After that, the lessons stop.
Or rather, the lessons continue; it's only that the partnership with the village school ceases. The boys are divided into small groups and rotated, whereas the girls of their class attend every session to ensure no one goes without a partner.
Nothing is expressly forbidden, but the fragile new friendships unravel quickly nonetheless.
Zechs still dances with Noin from time to time, but he can no longer claim any great degree of skill over her. She and the other girls get a great deal more practice now.