PART 14 - Beyond Self
Barely out of her teens, already a mother, already at the end of her existence.
For the past four days the illness had drained her to the point where she could no longer speak. Yet now, with the very last grains of sand trickling through the waist of the hourglass, she was lucid, calling for those she held dearest to her heart.
"Treize... Mariemaia..."
Her father and brother stood at the foot of the bed like impassive stone guardians, as though she were already lying cold in the crypt. She wanted to sit up, but her head lifted only millimetres from the pillow before sinking back again. No-one assisted her. Such was the price of putting love before family duty. And these were the days before Dekim became aware of his granddaughter's immense potential.
"Where is Mariemaia? Please may I see her?"
Her brother's eyes strayed surreptitiously to the closed door. Behind it stood the nurse, two-year-old Mariemaia cradled in her arms. She had been instructed against entering, but the vain longing in Leia Barton's muffled voice was heartrending. There was insufficient courage in her to disobey the order, but the child had a right to hear her mother's last words.
She leant close and put her ear to the door, gently urging the toddler to do the same. "Listen, little one," she whispered.
"If he cannot come, he will send someone for us... but no. My soldier WILL return. He will come back... he gave his word. He gave - "
In the bunker, the Dictator watched the giant screen, lilac eyes round with clinical fascination as Wing Zero suffered yet another barrage of fire. The Serpents danced round it, their attacks inevitably breaking the rebel suit down. Wing Zero had held against Yonoi's Serpent in a one-to-one duel, but this was a ceaseless bludgeoning. And her bodyguard and advisers watched her in turn, the drilled obedience obvious in their neat, silent rows.
Relena was not part of the chessboard-like standing formation. She stood facing the impenetrable gundanium doors, palms flat against them.
"Dorothy. Dorothy Catalonia." She stared through as if the metal were glass, as if she could see her one-time companion weeping uncontrollably on the other side.
Mariemaia shifted in her seat, but did not fully turn her head to gaze at Adviser Darlian. "I suppose in a way I could call her cousin." Her voice was vaguely amused. "Mrs Wescott has a history of not valuing her blood relations overmuch. She shot at me five times and missed. It must not be in her fate to kill me."
There had been such explicit pain on Dorothy's face as the doors shut. Relena had seen it. But it was not this alone which pierced her soul; suddenly she could see all too clearly the meaning in her brother's cryptic letter, the entreaty to escape. Wing Zero's end was imminent, but the rebellion had already ended with Dorothy's failure.
I wish I were stronger...
At first, Wing Zero's appearance was as if out from the mists of a dream - she had thought it was Heero. Yonoi's short exchange with Quatre Winner before their duel soon revealed otherwise. Yet it did not matter which pilot it was slowly losing his sanity in its cockpit; Mariemaia could not have asked for a better demonstration of the cost of revolt. The wreckage left in the Gundam's wake was staggering. Even now, as it whirled its battered shield round, the stems of an entire row of streetlights were wrenched over and broken like mere straws.
The next moment in the bunker was pure confusion. Relena darted forward, her movement unanticipated by the bodyguards, and latched her arm round the Dictator's slim torso. Her right hand pulled the long hairpin from her dark blonde coif, and even as the long loosed tresses slid down her back, she put the pin to the girl's temple.
"Don't make me do it... The madness must stop now, Mariemaia..." The tears made it difficult for Relena to speak. "Call them off. Call them all off... We are leaving here."
The breath hissed from Mariemaia. Was it fear, like the fear on the others' faces? No, she was laughing. She leaned back into Relena, her head inclined on the young woman's breast. "You can't kill me, Relena. You can't kill me. Or else you should have done it immediately."
"I said - don't make me do it. I stood by and believed that your regime was bringing peace to the people, bitter as that peace was. But there is no happiness in your peace. It is not worth having."
"So you choose to be Relena Peacecraft again, Miss Darlian?" Resting against the blonde woman, Mariemaia's voice sent strange vibrations through Relena's body. "Even if you killed me, Relena Peacecraft, you would have nothing. My order would survive me, as it was meant to. Colonel Chang will return."
"Chang Wufei..." Relena tightened her grip on the hairpin, sweat lubricating the smooth wood against her fingers. It was a game of dares now. "You would bequeathe your rule to him? And what if he does not return?"
My soldier WILL return. He will come back... he gave his word. He gave -
The knife-hand struck Relena with brutal force, and she slid away from the Dictator as if all the bones in her body had turned to water. During their exchange one of Mariemaia's guards had exploited her blind spot, creeping up with trained expertise. Relena endeavoured to blink away the purple spots of light that were fast being replaced with grey clouds.
"What is your command, Excellency?"
"She seems miserable, does she not?" Mariemaia pouted slightly. "Put her out of her misery."
The guard drew his gun, accompanied by whimpers from the assorted government officials. They were unused to witnessing bloodshed firsthand.
And then the screen went blank, the lights went out. The bunker was plunged into complete darkness.
Eyes open, they saw not the interior of the vault, but faraway expanse of land separated from the endless sky by the horizon. Between the two minds was no horizon, no boundary. No awareness of where Heero Yuy ended and Trowa Barton began. For they had awakened to the ZERO system and the mobile dolls, to the twilight past-present. Melding their minds together was the inexorable pull of the capital city, Brussels.
They caught up with the Amman mobile suits easily, the Virgos being better adapted to flight and less heavily armed. Horrifying to behold; some were veteran Virgo IIs collected from remnant White Fang hangars, some were new unfinished constructions, their skeletal frames new and gleaming. They picked apart the Amman Serpents with a ruthless strategy, grouping in packs that would rip up an individual suit, then disperse, reagglutinate in different groups, and target the next suit.
This was no battle. It was predation. The cohesion of many mobile dolls by two linked minds was beyond the ability of individual human pilots to calculate, and they had not the benefit of ANATEXIS, as the 1st MSD had. Not one was spared by the ferocity of the aerial sharks.
Onward. Onward. Brussels was a sparkling emerald objective to the ZERO system. It grew larger and larger as they approached, till every curve and block and spire grew to full size, till the multitude of Serpents turned from harrying Wing Zero and began to direct their attention to the new menace.
The battle raged, ANATEXIS against ZERO once more. The numbers were comparable this time. However, the Virgos held no mortal element within them. Indeed, these mobile suits were designed without cockpits, and thus had a speed and agility that would generate G-forces far beyond the 9 Gs that a human could survive. Point-blank shots could not stop them; they continued to function through shocks that would have shattered a human pilot's spine. At the same time, these advantages were counterbalanced by their less efective weaponry and armour. No single factor controlled victory and defeat, the parameters were incalculable.
Back and forth the scales tipped, gundanium raining down upon the city, killing countless innocents. It was the old nightmare recreated.
Quatre Raberba Winner watched dispassionately, now and then shoving forward the levers that controlled the beam sabre. The torturous crashing and the teeming images flowed through him without respite. The cut above his brow continued to bleed into his eye, staining the world red - it did not matter if the beam sabre cut through mobile doll or Serpent...
Because we all deserve to...
" - die?" How silent it suddenly was. Quatre could see three mobile dolls trudging towards him, their metal bodies like decayed corpses. So the Virgos had won out. And now they would ghoulishly dismantle a Wing Zero too damaged to put up any resistance. Perhaps now was the time to self-destruct; Quatre would relish the end, that surcease of suffering.
The suffering that had begun when he saw Heavyarms dash in front of his Sandrock, intercepting the blow, and then receiving countless more blows before it collapsed, wreathed in flame. The suffering that had amplified with Iria's death, and the deaths of all his men, and the deaths that he was causing, even though the ZERO system had made it seem so distant.
His hand swung to the self-destruct button, but somehow landed on the controls once more. Wing Zero's massive hand rose to meet the fist which punched down from the first Virgo. They slammed together with the whirr and crunch of battered mechanical gears, the incredible pressure of a combined sixteen tonnes of metal.
This is wrong...
Quatre's eyes widened. Where had the voice come from? It was a boy's voice, wasn't it? Sounding so young, so unpolluted. He could picture him, a boy with tousled blond hair and blue-green eyes, lifting the goggles from his face, walking out through the open hatch to see... to see another boy, hands up in the air, his handsome visage serene.
We shouldn't be fighting each other...
Through the haze of memory, Quatre flipped the switch of the communicator; knowing it was against all logic, for surely there was no-one to hear him.
"I am... I am Quatre Raberba Winner. I am Quatre Raberba Winner..."
The marine blue he had seen in his dreams flooded him. On the other side of the world in Port Moresby, Trowa Barton convulsed in the suspension tank, his hands rising up through the nutrient gel only to encounter the hard glass. The link with Heero's mind broke, everything fell away except for the shock of hearing that deeper masculine voice, no longer a child's, saying those words. Saying that name.
Time had stood still for Heero Yuy and Trowa Barton, but not in the real world, the world outside the perpetual stasis of the tanks. Trowa could not reach out with his hand, but his mind did so across time and space, extending virtual fingers towards Quatre's. So close, and so very far away! Whether through some miracle, or whether through the interference of two ZERO systems, there was contact. As if the moon were moving out from before the sun's disc after an eclipse, Quatre felt the awareness course through his veins; a sight beyond perception, a consciousness beyond sensation. The screen of blue haze lifted; he saw the tanks and knew where the mobile dolls had come from.
Trowa -
The pressure dispersed, the mobile doll's strings cut in that moment of recognition.
"Trowa!" In the cockpit, Quatre cried out with a voice now hoarse with emotion, and a new pain invaded his heart, one that was infinitely sweet. The dead soldiers had returned, their forgotten names reinvoked.
"Why did you shout my name?"
"Because it seemed right. Because of happiness."
Mariemaia heard the sounds of panic in the darkness; the frightened exclamation of one of the government officials, heavy breathing. She herself was thinking rapidly. Had power been cut? Impossible; auxiliary power would have kicked in, the generator was beneath them and untouchable. A computer malfunction? It seemed unlikely , given the checks it performed every few minutes, and the self-diagnostic capabilities -
Now there was a sound which blanked Mariemaia's mind, a terrible sound.
The heavy gundanium door was sliding open and there came the tramping of boots through it. She heard her guards warily shuffling in the dark to investigate, but already tendrils of anxiety were winding their way into the Dictator's soul. Blind, she groped for a guide, any form of reassurance, but there was nothing. The bunker was impregnable! There was no way to activate the doors except from the inside, and only she had the keys to the main computer! How? How -
Nothing, until the lights abruptly snapped back on, and she saw Lady Une taking off the infra-red headset that had allowed her to see in the darkness. Her men did likewise, having already subdued and secured all the occupants of the bunker with steel cords. Mariemaia was the only one left unbound, but it was an empty courtesy - there was nowhere to run.
Dorothy stood to one side, eyes aflame. Yet far more threatening was the fact that Lady Une's eyes were not visible behind the sheen of her glasses. Mariemaia involuntarily took a step backward.
Lady Une, who had been imprisoned in Stonebridge. Stonebridge, which was home to unsurpassedly dangerous criminals, some with incomparable hacking skills. Stonebridge's computers were on the closed government networks which ran from the main computer. The main computer which controlled everything, and was housed in this bunker beneath the Dictatorial Palace. To Mariemaia, Lady Une had been the woman who had come to replace Leia Barton in her father's life, and it was unforgivable. So it had been all too easy to send her to a prison such as Stonebridge. How ironic that in this action she had engineered her own undoing.
No, no, it is not yet over!
Mariemaia edged over to the control panel of the computer, watched by all eyes in the room. No-one made a move to stop her, not even when she punched the buttons savagely, desperately. They thought her helpless, unsuspecting of the one thing she could do - find the Preterid, and with it, her knight.
"Colonel Chang... Wufei, answer me!" There was neither frustration nor anger left, Mariemaia was pleading now. The entreaty echoed around the room, with no acknowledgement from either the unfeeling machines, or the unforgiving faces.
"He will not come," said Relena, tiredly.
"He will," insisted Mariemaia, her breaths harsh as gasps.
"Then let him come," said Dorothy, her voice low.
Lady Une had been silent. Now she began walking toward the girl, her step purposeful. Mariemaia nearly could not rein in her terror, shaking visibly with the woman's advance. As the Dictator was cornered it made a stark tableau: Une's face hidden as she raised her hand, the fourteen-year-old flinching away. Both Relena and Dorothy felt a shadow pass over them.
Mariemaia anticipated the blow, but it never came. Lady Une had taken off her glasses, and her eyes were doe-brown, soft, as she reached out. "Mariemaia - ?"
"NO!" screamed the child. For in the end, Mariemaia was but a child. "Don't touch me!" Stripped of her power, she was painfully vulnerable.
"Mariemaia, your father could not come for you, but he sent me. Your father sent me."
The girl's face blanched, and her lower lip trembled. Une carried on repeating those last four words, and they assailed the girl's heart till the walls of bitterness and loneliness crumbled. They washed away with the first tear that streaked down the unblemished cheek, and more tears followed.
Une held her close.
With Trowa's mind detaching from his, Heero was thrown back into the memories of his last moments battling Altron high up in the atmosphere.
"I cannot accept Relena Peacecraft's ideals. It's a fool who believes that peace is achieved by laying aside the weapons and locking away the soldiers."
"Is peace achievable through Mariemaia's dictatorship?"
"Her armies will be the anchor for warrior souls!"
"Perhaps for today. Perhaps tomorrow. But ultimately all Mariemaia can do is repeat history! A history of sorrow and despair! We must stop this now, or soldiers will be recalled to battle again. And the tragic cycle will go on forever."
Heero was so tired, exhausted by physical and mental battle. Surely it was time to stop... But Wufei was laughing, the sound grating through the communicator like ground glass. Heero froze in the cockpit, the alien sounds chilling him.
"You have changed, Heero. I too have changed. And yet, intrinsically, humans do not change..."
"What are you saying, Wufei?"
"I've enjoyed this duel, Heero. It's a fight I shall remember."
"I won't fight a madman. Wake up, Wufei!"
"No, Heero. You wake up - "
"I said I won't fight a madman." With little more warning, Wing Zero shut down, luminous eyes dulling to a soulless green. In the next moment Heero was falling, welcoming the abandon of it. But in that same second Altron's arm shot out by reflex, the dragon fangs shooting out to recapture the lost quarry, to catch it before it fell beyond reach. Instead, the fangs plunged through a weakness in the armour, and when Altron pulled back, Wing Zero slid off the end of the weapon, the teeth ripping off a shred of alloy.
Strange how the clouds seemed so solid, yet offered no resistance to his fall. Much more substantial was the sea, the shock jarring through Heero's skull. And then there was coldness...
Until that outpouring of light from Quatre's consciousness drowned him in warmth. Suddenly he was travelling along avenues of silver, seeing everything at once, detail nestled in the giant image. Was this the heart of the universe?
On the edge of it was a tiny four-pointed star. No, it was a gold cross, instantly recognisble as the one he had sent Duo long ago. Looking at it he could almost feel the infinitesimal signal issuing from it. It sparked an evanescent picture of Duo limping towards a moonlit lake, and Heero at once felt impelled to seek him out. Only a mobile suit could reach him, and there were no remaining Virgos in the Port Moresby hangars. But there was one mobile suit in the base which might make the journey. The wire bundles at the base of the suspension tank rippled like muscles.
The mobile suit was not designed to be controlled like a mobile doll. But its electronic relays could still be manipulated. Heero bent his will toward Altron Gundam.
Colonel Chang... Wufei, answer me!
It seemed to be carried on the wind, echoing over the lake. He had been about to enter the Preterid, but now Wufei raised his head sharply, and moved away from the Gundam. About ten metres from him, Sally sat on the ground, head bowed. If she had heard the call of the phantoms, she was gave no sign of it. His brow wrinkled.
Wake up, Wufei...
At this he looked skyward, lips parted in a question. He thought he could see a star, brighter than the rest, that did not belong in the ordered constellations he knew so well. Perhaps it was a wayward planet, a manmade satellite, but it seemed to shower him with doubt. Even the certainty of the heavens was slipping away... Grasping his resolve, once more he turned toward the Preterid.
A rustle behind him - decidedly real - and Wufei tensed in midstep. However, he did not move to face the newcomer, not even when he was caustically greeted with, "Pleased to meet you, Colonel." Only at the click of a gun being cocked did he turn, his arms hanging straight down at his sides. In this attitude there was neither obvious threat nor submission. If there was astonishment at the sight of the haggard face he did not show it.
"Duo Maxwell."
The American pilot attempted to smile, a lopsided baring of teeth, but his violet eyes were bloodshot and fast filling with saltwater. "We'll always be pals, eh?"
Wufei did not respond. Behind him, Sally shifted onto her haunches, her face ashen with anxiety.
"I came for Heero, but instead I've found you. Always... you."
Was it AC 196 once more, the Gundam's shadow blacking out the sun? It was not Wing Zero. Not Heero Yuy.
Duo held the gun with both hands, sighting down the line of his arms. "You. Because you killed him. I should never have hoped. He's dead." He exhaled, a rasping sound, yet the gun remained miraculously steady.
Suddenly Wufei's black eyes seemed to cloud over; he was seeing the strobing image of Heero's inert body in the suspension tank. Not dead. Alive..! In a millisecond a thousand futures sped through his mind. Destiny. Purpose. Meaning. Whatever the path, it all ended here, at the point of Duo's gun. He made his choice.
"Yes," said Wufei. His eyes cleared, the knowledge of what was imminent glinting in them. "He is dead."
Duo pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, the shots drawing out into slow motion in Sally's ears. Hysterical laughter bubbled between the pauses.
"...Are you okay, Miss Sally?..."
Chang Wufei slumped to the ground, lifeblood gushing out to the pulse of his torn heart. The world was fading, but he could still see the wayward star, growing and growing till it became a Gundam; till Altron landed on the grassy bank and stooped to pick him up in its metal hand.
"Nataku - " whispered Wufei, and smiled.