SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
ACT V, PART IV

 
 
Scene XIII: The Tangled Webs We Weave

 
Sally had arranged for a meeting with Brown as soon as her flight touched down. She was tired, having had less then four hours of sleep, but that was nothing new. Sleep deprivation and long periods of concentration were something one got used to in the military, but she would have given a month's salary for a solid eight hours. She couldn't remember the last time that had happened, and it seemed like something too illusive to even wish for.

The plane taxied down the runway, and she tapped her fingers on her armrest, waiting impatiently for the craft to come to a complete stop. They had been circling the airport for over an hour, and needless to say, even Sally was beginning to find the end of her considerable patience tested. She knew that she should expect delays; after all, since air travel had been invented, there had been problems. Delays and bad food being the prime ones.

Still, she didn't have to like it. She was a brigadier general, for God's sake. Surely her rank was enough to pull some strings, but it obviously wasn't the case. Ah, air travel, she thought. The great invention that made equals of all men alike.

Her aides scurried around her, in constant motion like bees. The five of them who were overseeing the current operations of the Preventers whispered into remote phones, carefully coordinating supply, personnel and other such trivials which technically were her responsibility. The only good thing about the crisis she'd been able to find was that she'd finally had an excuse to shrug all of the drudge work off onto her subordinates.

Finally the plane came to a complete stop, and she rose to her feet almost immediately without waiting for the lights to come on and the seatbelt sign to turn off. Pushing her way through the drones, she almost leapt off the plane, taking the ramp three steps at a time.

To her dismay, it was raining. The wind whipped at her, tugging on her neatly plaited hair. Cursing softly, she pulled the short skirt of her uniform down. The weather, when she had left Burlington, had been good in Geneva, but apparently an unexpected storm had come in. Vaguely she wondered how she could have missed the turbulence it must have caused the plane.

She hurried the rest of the way across the flightline to where her ride was waiting, and collapsed into the limo with a sigh of relief. At least her rank permitted her this luxury; rather then racing to the terminal with the rest of her staff, she would have a warm car waiting for her, ready to chauffeur her straight to Preventers HQ.

"Nippy out there, isn't it?" an amused voice asked her.

Sally was jolted out of her semi-daze. "General Brown?" she asked, surprised to see the intelligence agent in the car with her. Mentally she cursed her wearied reflexes as she realized that she had been completely unaware of his presence. Fatigue was no excuse for sloppiness. What if he's been an assassin? She shuddered to think of what disasters would strike if she was removed from the equation at this point in the game.

He chuckled low in his throat as he handed her a cup of steaming coffee with two sugars. He had a fantastic memory for detail, such as how she liked her coffee. "You look like you need this," he commented as she gratefully wrapped her chilled hands around it.

"It's just rain," she said.

"But it seems to fit everyone's mood," the General said easily. "Oh, by the way, I just received some interesting news from Lady-General Une." He gave her a pointed look, leaving his statement dangling teasingly.

"What?" she asked after sipping at the bitter liquid. He was quite capable of sitting there until the cows came home unless she played his game.

"We've received two surprise visitors at HQ."

"Oh? Relena finally show up?"

He blinked slowly. "You heard that, then?"

Sally laughed lightly. "No, but I know Relena. I was wondering how much longer she'd take. The Cinq Kingdom really isn't in the thick of things, and Relena can't stand not to be. She'd come to where ever the action was."

"Are you saying she's a thrill seeker? None of my profiles seemed to suggest..." Brown said thoughtfully as he twisted his mustache.

"No. She's just Relena. She had to feel like she's making a difference. Half the time, though, it'd be better if she stayed out of the way. And she's also dangerously infatuated with Heero Yuy. One of the worst crushes I've ever seen."

"She loves him?"

"She likes to think she does, but... I don't know if its possible to love Heero Yuy. How can you love someone who is incapable of loving you back? There's a reason why the hero in many Western movies rode out into the sunset... some people simply weren't meant to be touched."

"I see," Brown said, and she could almost see him mentally file that information away for later usage.

"So who's this other guest?" she asked curiously, tilting the cup back to finish the last of the coffee. It was quite a bit more bitter at the bottom than the rest of the cup had been, but coffee was coffee. At this point, she couldn't afford to be picky.

"Don't you want to guess?"

"I honestly haven't a clue," she confessed.

"Does the name Catherine Bloom ring a bell?"

Sally blinked once before her memory placed the name. "Trowa's sister! What's she doing here, of all places?"

"Trying to find Barton. Apparently he left the circus the day the story broke, leaving no fowarding address or any clue to his destination. Big sister is rather unhappy with him."

"I'll bet," Sally said, her voice at her driest. "But... what can she do?"

"We don't know. Maybe nothing. But if - when - people realize that she's the blood-sibling of a Gundam pilot -the only one living save the Winner sisters, who are all heavily guarded- she's going to be in danger."

"Most likely. Now, General, onto our next urgent matter. What can you tell me about Matsuura Shinobu? I have no cause to arrest him, and since he goes to Cliffside, that means he has some serious money backing him. As you know, serious money means serious lawyers, and the last thing we need at the moment is a suit about unlawful arrest."

"Ah, now that is rather interesting. At first I though he might be a former agent of one of the factions, maybe just trying to get a new life going. However, he matches none of the profiles of my unaccounted for sneaks, and no one matches his genetic code. I then took his genetic code and put it through to see what ethnic background I'd get. Amazingly enough, my results came back twice the same. He's most likely a Colonist from L1- they're the only ones that have a certain mutation to the fourteenth that he carries the recessive gene for."

"An L1 colonist at Cliffside?" Sally asked. "Could he have been planted there as a spy?"

"No reason. He was there before the war broke out- I checked. No, he appears to be a normal student trying to leave behind a different life... which means..."

"The Breaks," Sally said in disgust.

"Bingo. I was unable to trace any specific records there, but records in the Breaks are non-existent. But there's only a few people with the money to send a kid to Cliffside, and all those people are members of various cartels."

"Great. This is lovely. I wonder if Duo knew?"

"Unlikely. Usually strict secrecy is kept about membership or affiliation with a cartel of the Breaks. They have long arms- rumor has it that one of the cartels managed to buy a few of the World Nation's leaders."

"Wouldn't be a surprise," Sally said with an extremely soft sigh. She set down her now-empty cup as she stretched, feeling the joints in her shoulders pop. "Anything else?"

"Actually, yes." He sighed and looked extremely depressed. "You know I have agents in just about everything?"

"You're our intelligence officer- I would HOPE that'd be the case," she answered.

"Well, I've recently come across some new information. In the last three days, I've intercepted several communications from Earth to A007, the mining colony that Peacecraft is on?"

"Where Noin died, yes," Sally said, her eyes saddened as she remembered her friend.

"Don't bury her until you've seen the body. Anyway, the rebels were asking for more ammunition, food, and medical supplies."

Sally stared at General Brown. "What are you saying?" she demanded.

"A007 isn't just a random uprising, General Po. Someone is quite deliberately supplying the rebels and keeping them agitated, and they're doing it from Earth."

"But why would anyone do that? Any idiot could tell you that revolution on the mining colony has no permanent chance of success. People are simply sick and tired of war."

"Of course it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell," Brown said as he thoughtfully sat back. He took a sip of the coffee in front of him, his eyes bright with careful thought. "I think it's a distraction for something else, something to keep our attention away from the real problem."

"And what would that be?" She tilted the coffee cup towards her mouth again, remembered it was empty. Damn.

"That, my dear Sally, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question."

 
Go to Sally story Legacy

 
Scene XIV: The Golden Haze of Memory

 
He watched as Zero plummeted towards the Pacific as he hit the communications button for the hundredth time. Hilde was in there; his sweet, brave Hilde, and he had no clue what was going on with her. She was in the Zero system and had cut off all methods of contact, and there was nothing he could do but wait and see what she was like when they both landed and she finally emerged from the cockpit.

He hoped she'd still be sane.

This waiting thing was the hardest thing he'd ever dealt with. He wasn't cut out for it.

Duo remembered how he had yelled at her on the Peacemillion after she'd stolen the plans for the Libra. He had thought she was safely on L2, waiting like a good little woman for her man to return. He knew that was an incredibly chauvinistic attitude, but knowing Hilde was safe had been one great relief.

He altered his course to match her trajectory, dialing the familiar keys with the experience of long familiarity. It was odd, but for some reason, he finally felt whole again. As if a part of his soul that he hadn't been aware was missing had returned. Still... he would gladly give up Deathscythe if that meant Hilde would be all right.

He shut his eyes, leaning his head back against the seat. The worn padding was comfortable, yet something dug at the back of his neck. With a frown, he reached around and caught it in a pale hand, a hand that had lost most of its calluses due to a soft year of living.

His cross.

"How did that get there?" he wondered aloud, talking to himself. He always did that when he was alone with Deathscythe. The machine was almost an entity in its own right, and Duo respected it. "Did you have something to do with it?" he asked to the empty air, though he was really speaking to the ghost of a man who had long passed from the world.

He didn't believe in God, but he believed in death. He still talked to the dead - Solo, Sisten Helen, Father Maxwell, even Professsor G - when he was in trouble. At Cliffside, he'd learned that some cultures worshipped their ancestors, and sometimes he wondered if that wasn't the way to go.

Father, he thought, conjuring forth memories of a kindly old man who had taken in a streetrat with long wild hair. Watch out for her. I know I don't believe in your God, but if you save her... I will. I'll give anything to you, just as long as you save Hilde from the Zero System.... save her from herself.

Duo had only talked to Heero about the Zero system once. While Quatre was the one who had designed it, Heero was the only one who had mastered it. He had needed that talk.

It had been during those few, dizzying hours when the Peacemillion was preparing for the final battle. So much had happened during that limited span of time; people had risen and fallen in the confusing kaleidoscope of time, perceptions had changed. Heero had been fixing Zero for its final flight as the flag of the Gundams. The others were preparing their Gundams in the same hanger, but Duo had only wanted to speak to Heero.

He'd spent time alone with all the pilots before, but Heero was the one who had awakened feelings of kinship inside of him. Odd, that- it should have been Trowa, with his nameless background, or Quatre, with his loving personality, or even Wufei, with his fiery passion. Those were similar to him. But time and again he felt drawn back to the quietly charismatic Wing pilot, drawn to him like a moth to flame. It was as if somehow, in all the differences between them, Duo had found a part of him he had been missing.

Duo had tapped Heero on the shoulder as the other pilot carefully was removing the Zero system files for some unknown reason. He recognized the cards that Quatre had removed from Sandrock Kai; and he wondered what Heero was doing as he plugged them into his laptop. "Oi, Heero, whaccha doin'?" he asked, slurring his words together abominably. He knew it drove the other pilot positively bonkers to hear Duo abuse language like that, so Duo went out of his way to do it at least once a day. Getting a reaction out of Heero was his primary goal - well, that and kicking ass as Shinigami.

"Analyzing the data from Sandrock Zero," Heero said shortly. For some odd reason, Duo found the curt voice soothing to listen to. Heero was a constant in life, predictable and reliable as the next sunrise. Duo liked that, considering he'd never really had anything consistent before.

"Why are you doing that?" Duo asked, trying to keep his voice level. The very mention of the... the thing gave him the willies.

"Because I want to see the difference between Quatre's failure to use the system versus his success, and compare it to my own. I might figure out how to better master the system."

"Heero... exactly what IS the Zero system?"

Heero was quiet for a moment and for a second Duo thought that he had outlived the Wing Zero pilot's short temper, but then Heero shrugged. "As far as I can tell, it's a program designed to enhance pilot performance. A superior, experienced pilot in control of his emotions and abilities can use it for a more intense form of...mind control, I suppose you would call it. The Zero system works using the brainwaves of the pilot, and each pilot's experience is different according to brain patterns. It heightens brain activity."

"Is that why everything was that gold color? Is that why I saw myself kill Hilde?" he whispered, speaking for the first time of his visions during the traumatic time he had when forced to pilot the monster.

Heero had looked up at his with unreadable eyes, but there was a trace of sympathy showing in his normally impassive mouth. "The Zero system is specific to each pilot. Some people see the future- Zechs, Wufei, and myself are such examples. Other people see the past, like Trowa. Some people see the present- you and Quatre. It depends, and you have to remember that each experience is heightened by rather extreme brainwaves- nothing should be taken literally. It's dangerous, but if you can master the system, I believe it's worth the risk."

"Nothing human can master that..." Duo said.

"A human can't master himself? Don't you have faith in humanity, Duo?"

"Do you?"

Heero gave him the elusive half-smile he used all too rarely. "I wouldn't be a pilot if I wasn't able to believe in humanity." Sliding the cards out of his laptop, he began reinserting them into his Gundam, signalling the end of the conversation. "One day there won't be a need for people like you and me, Duo. I hope we both live to see that day."

And they thought they had, with the war over.

But it wasn't the truth. The truth was staring them straight in that face, but no one had been willing to acknowledge it. There would be no end to war- could be no end. War was something that no one understood but that fascinated everyone, an ends to wealth, or power, or prestige, or a noble line of duty in which many good people - soldiers - had died. It was a long, vicious cycle.

He was only seventeen years old - only a child, by Earth standards - yet he felt he had been fighting for longer than he could remember. He felt so old.

Can't someone else fight, Father? I'm so tired... don't Hilde and I - and the others - deserve our rest? Can't someone else take up where we left off? This simply isn't fair...

Duo gave himself a mental clout upside the head. He didn't have the right to complain- as long as he lived, he would fight. He would fight until he could be satisfied with the world he'd live in.

Deathscythe shuddered as the first wisps of Earth's atmosphere hit the metal hull. It reminded Duo of the first descent, during Operation Meteor. Earth had looked so beautiful to him then; he had wondered how the despots who cruelly ruled his much-loved colony could come from such a pretty place.

"Hilde!" he called into the comm channel, his voice hoarse, already knowing there would be no reply. He hit the thrusters, hoping to catch up with her and maybe force her to land...or steer her away from possible dangerous landing sites, or...something. Anything.

Hilde was as good a pilot as any, he noted with pride. She easily navigated the debris that littered space, and he almost smiled at the grace with which she moved the massive machine. Still, every time he looked at it, he was forced to remember that she was piloting Zero. And Zero was unpredictable, to say the least.

The roar of the heat of the atmosphere finally faded and Wing Zero leveled out to skim the shoreline of one of the small Japanese islands, like the bird it resembled. Hilde seemed to have chosen one that seemed to be uninhabited, and Duo felt his heart leap. She still seemed to be thinking, so perhaps she was ok... maybe the system hadn't even engaged... after all, she hadn't been fighting.

Together the two Gundams hit the ground in a rough landing, but he didn't even wait for Deathscythe to power down. His fingers were clumsy with eagerness as he fumbled with his safety harness. He hit the switch for the hatch and jumped out of the cockpit as the rays of sunlight streamed in. Mentally he thanked Deathscythe Hell for the ride, then he dashed over to Wing Zero.

The craft was still in the form of a plane, and he wondered why Hilde hadn't climbed out. Possibilities flashed through his mind, none of them pleasant, and he fought down his panic. Biting his lip, he punched in an emergency code and listened at the cabin hissed as it depressurized. Then the hatch swung open, and he could see Hilde.

She was still fastened securely, but her eyes were closed. He could see blood staining her right shoulder where she had apparently cut herself on the harness strap.

"Hilde?" he said, shaking her. "Hilde?"

Duo lowered his head to her chest, listening. She was breathing. With gentle hands he unhooked her, almost ready to scream as tears suddenly started running down her face. She looked up at him, large blue-gray eyes opening, and he kissed her forehead. Her eyes were confused, clouded. "Hilde, are you ok?"

Hilde blinked as Duo pulled her close to him, and then collapsed into tears, her long, wrenching sobs seeming to tear at her body.

 
Scene XV: Do You Remember Love?

 
He had disappointed her. He knew it as soon as she had stepped out of her mobile suit, knew it when she had refused to come into the tent, just stood there in the doorway with the setting sun streaming in behind her, her eyes accusing him. And she had every right. He hadn't given her what he had promised.

Dorothy Catalonia was a soldier, and all he had offered her, in the end, were empty dreams.

Milliard stepped out of the briefing tent, rubbing his eyes slightly, feeling the effects of three hours of sleep in two days wearing on his balance. His physical balance, anyway, if not his mental one. Behind him, several rebel commanders emerged from the tent, conferring in low voices. Gustavson was not among them. Doing more paperwork?

The sun was just disappearing behind the cliffs in the distance, and the faint smell of something burning filled his nostrils. He was used to it. It had been burning...burning all day and night, ever since they had arrived at this position, because just beyond those cliffs was a fully operational mobile suit production facility. Brand new, the recon team had reported to him. Machines working nonstop. There were several new Aries out on the flightline already, and trucks running back and forth along the highway along with the regular shipments of ore and metal parts. Trucks...for the mobile suits? That would make sense, if the A007 government hadn't had time to train new pilots yet.

That would be a great advantage.

Gustavson hadn't heard anything from his contacts in the capital, but most of them had been captured already, and the odds were not high that he would hear anything anytime soon.

So it was decided.

They would attack tonight.

Dorothy didn't like it, he knew, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He'd gone up to her the next day before they broke camp, offered her again the command of a mobile suit unit. She had refused.

He just didn't understand women.

If she thought he was comparing her to Noin, she was wrong. Noin was someone else entirely. Noin was not Dorothy, and Dorothy was not Noin. They were not interchangeable in his mind. Dorothy did not have the combat experience that Noin had: that was a fact. But at the same time, Dorothy was much more adept at adjusting the situation around her. She was charismatic in a way that Noin was not. Dorothy was...

Milliard's head hurt, and it wasn't just from lack of sleep.

"Colonel Peacecraft!"

That would be his executive officer, the snappish young captain who more often than not got on everyone's nerves but managed to get the job done on time, and done well. He had wanted to pilot, but Milliard hadn't let him. I need you here, he said. If anything happens to me, you know just as much about the situation as I do.

It was something that every soldier had to live with, this endless knowledge that every day might be his last, but death had never seemed as real to him as it did now. Perhaps it was because he was fighting for something he did not believe in on a planet that was not his home. Perhaps it was because his hopes for Noin's own survival had dimmed to practically none. Perhaps it was because for the first time, he was an outcast.

All his life he had dreamed of fighting for something noble. A dream, that was all it ever had been.

Lady Une sent you out here to die.

"Colonel Peacecraft, the mobile suit units are standing by for your orders. Lady Dorothy also is requesting to speak to you."

What did Dorothy want now?

"I'll be there in a minute," he said, pulling on his hat and striding towards the briefing tent. Gustavson emerged from the opening just as he neared it, and he waved the rebel commander over.

"How are your units looking?"

Gustavson saluted, his face serious. "Standing by, sir." He paused. "Colonel Peacecraft, I-"

"It's going to rain," Milliard said. The sky was midnight blue and pale rose as the last rays of the sun wavered on the horizon.

"Sir?"

He took a deep breath of the air, smelled the ozone that promised a thunderstorm and the burning that his nostrils had become accustomed to, let it out slowly. "Nothing. You were saying?"

"Nothing."

"Well," Milliard said. "This is it. Any final questions? Instructions? Advice? You know this territory better than I."

Gustavson laughed. "And you're a better soldier than I am. Fair trade."

"I wouldn't say that," he said, then stuck his hand out, on pure whim. "Commander. It has been an honor...fighting with you."

Gustavson looked at the proffered hand, took it slowly. "I expect you to come out of this alive, you know. You're too good a soldier to die."

Milliard smiled grimly, "It's time."

He turned his back without waiting for Gustavson's reply, any last words, any last rites. There was no need. For some reason, the night air felt heavy and suddenly he felt stifled, choked. Was this what death smelled like? The endless perfume of fire?

"Milliard, you look terrible."

He hadn't heard Dorothy come up behind him. She was dressed in combat fatigues without a hat, looking at him with a frown. Her hair looked almost white in the rising moonlight. "Are you sure you're ok? I think you should lie down."

"I'm fine," he said tersely, and he could feel the hurt rising off her, but he didn't care. His chest hurt. His head hurt.

"You haven't gotten any sleep, Milliard. I don't think you should-"

"Damn it, woman!" he roared, spinning on his heel, slapping her outstretched hand away from him. "My health is none of your concern!"

"Don't speak that way to me!" she shot back. "I'm your second in command, and it is my job to-"

"Who do you think you are? Noin?"

He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken, but it was too late to take them back. He could see the shock in her face and turned before he could make any more mistakes, and ran. Spots formed before his eyes and the rocks on the trail dug into the bottoms of his boots, pebbles skittering under the soles and making the trail slippery, but he kept running.

The thundering of his heartbeat filled the tiny cockpit of the mobile suit and he buckled himself in with shaking fingers, leaning his head against the back of the seat and taking deep breaths.

What's wrong with me tonight?

He hadn't gotten enough sleep, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that they - him - were fighting a futile operation. It was a hopeless exercise. It was like Dorothy had said. She was right, and he did not want to admit it, because he was too proud. His pride had always gotten the best of him.

He hated being used, and he had willingly come out here, because...

Because of...

"C Leader to Alpha Leader."

The voice from the comm crackled in his ear and he jumped before realizing that it was Gustavson. "This is Alpha Leader." Glanced down at the comm screen. It was a private channel. "Commander, are your units ready?"

"Standing by for your lead, sir."

He slapped the switch for unitwide communications. "All units, this is Alpha Leader. Prepare to move out on my lead. You have your orders. Good luck."

The nightscape was dark on his infrared, little fluorescent green pinpoints dancing to an occult rhythm on the scopes, and he tensed in his chair. It was a risky plan, and if the timing was off by even seconds, it would be a disaster. The facility was heavily guarded, and Gustavson had cautioned him against any unnecessary tactics.

Straightforward will get you faster than anything. They have more soldiers crawling around the compound than any other facility of theirs I've ever seen...and I've seen too many.

The lights of the factories were bright in his infrared scope, and he imagined he could still smell the burning, even though the hull of the mobile suit was atmospherically sealed.

Why am I here?

When the explosions started he didn't even flinch. It was the greenhorns, always the new ones that misheard instructions or panicked when the real thing was suddenly staring them in the face. He didn't blame them. He slapped the comm switch.

"Alpha Leader to all units. I thought my instructions were clear! Fire only when I give the signal!"

"Colonel, that's not us!"

Gustavson's face appeared on the screen, voice tense. "There seem to be several mobile suits on the other side of the base, attacking. I can't detect an identification signal!"

"Never mind that!" Milliard hit the infrared off switch. The familiar green of the HUD blinked onto his targeting screen. "All units, attack as ordered! Gustavson, get a reading on those ships as soon as you can!"

"Yes sir!"

The facility was protected by concrete walls, but that was no obstacle to a mobile suit. Round after round of rapid fire. The wall crumbled, broke. He could hear alarms ringing as he urged his unit forward. The enemy had been surprised. One goal accomplished. The automatic defense systems on the walls began firing as they roared into the yard, and he heard an explosion behind him as one of his own men went down.

"A3! Are you all right?"

"I'm hit in the right thruster control, sir, but I'll be fine."

"Alpha leader, this is C Leader."

"Report!" he snapped, jerking the control stick to the right. "Alpha Unit! The production facilities are to the right! Those are your primary targets!"

"Roger that."

"Colonel, the unknown mobile suits are-"

There was a crackle and all he saw were blue sparks as something hot singed his skin.

"Alpha Leader! Alpha Leader!"

"I'm...fine..." he managed, before the three Aries surrounding him began to fire and he jerked the stick to the right, but the emergency life support systems light was flashing and there were alarms all around him.

"Alpha unit! I'm hit! Go without me! Move!"

"Colonel, I-"

The comm buzzed. "Alpha Two! Didn't you hear what he said?" A woman's voice. "Can you not follow orders?"

"Who-" Milliard managed, before something in the control panel sparked. The cockpit was filling with smoke, but through the gray fog he could see a flash as another mobile suit moved in front of him, shielding him.

"Zechs! Get out of there now! Your mobile suit can't take the damage! ZECHS!"

He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming, or else his Aries had been destroyed in battle and he was already dead, because his name was Milliard now, and the voice on the comm sounded like-

"Noin!?"

"Zechs, you'll be killed! Move!"

"NOIN!" he yelled, lunging forward, bringing up his gun with one swift stroke of the Aries' arm, firing. The mobile suit creaked around him as he punched the controls in front of him, showing the CMD screen readout. Unidentified Aries fighter. No identification signal broadcasted.

"Noin!"

He saw the beam out of the corner of his eye and had his hand on the control just a split second too slow, as the laser beams hit. He watched, fascinated, the beautiful rays coming straight at him, felt the mobile suit shiver around him as the impact jolted him loose from his seat, throwing him against the cockpit window and he tasted blood.

"ZECHS!"

"Just...a little too...late," he managed to say, as something hit his mobile suit and it was airborne, flying, and he was in Epyon again staring at the wreckage of space around him, Noin's voice in his ears, begging him to listen, to understand.

And then the Aries hit the ground and there was the shattering of glass.

The part of his mind that was still conscious braced for the impact of landing, but felt something close around him instead, the rumbling of a machine and metal against his cheek. He tried to move his arm, but it wouldn't respond. Broken? The sounds of battle were fading in his ears and the world was growing dim and ragged at the edges of his vision.

Something soft. Dull pain shooting up his fingers, but at least he had stopped moving. His vision was brightening and darkening all at once and he couldn't seem to breathe right anymore.

"You idiot," someone said from far away. Something warm and wet dropped onto his cheek, and then...a hand? A face. Beautiful eyes. Crying? "You idiot. I go away for a while...and you can't take care of yourself. Zechs."

He tried to reach up, touch her, but all he could do was lay there and gaze into her eyes as she cried and held his hand between hers.

"I'll...be...all right..." he whispered, and in the distance, another Aries landing. The raid was over already?

"Colonel?"

Noin dropped his hand, and he coughed, tasting the blood. "He's injured! Radio base immediately...we need to get him back for medical attention!"

"I...don't..." he began.

"Don't talk, Zechs. You're in no condition to talk."

"Noin," he said. "I-"

"Don't you die on me, Zechs." Her eyes were angry. "I've fought...I've fought this hard to get back here, and you're not going to die. I won't let you!"

Her hand brushed his face again and he closed his eyes.

Noin. I didn't realize how much I missed you...until now...

He belonged here. With her. He knew that now. How was it suddenly so clear? Or perhaps he had been dreaming until this moment, and he had just awakened from a long, long sleep.

"I'm glad...you're here...with me."

And as the sweet nothingness took him, he knew that she, of all things he had seen tonight, was not a dream.

 
END SAINAN NO KEKKA ACT V

Act V Part III | Act VI Part I | Back to Sainan no Kekka