6 June 2000
Hello, all. I'm kumiko and after being off the list for awhile, I'm back. I missed the fellowship of others who like OZies as much as I do. ^_^
Here is a gift for all of you, to make myself worthy again - it's the beginning of a series I'll be writing occasionally about Zechs and Heero. Most of the stories will be set after EW, but I wanted to try to capture the strange dynamic they had at their first real meeting at the south pole.
C&C welcomed with open arms (sorry all you from gw-fan! ^_^;;)
Based on the poem by Wilfred Owen (1917)
DISCLAIMER: All Gundam Wing characters are property of Sunrise, Bandai
Visuals, Sotsu Agency, and Asahi TV. This work is not written for profit,
but for entertainment purposes only.
Pairing: 6+1/1+6
Warnings: Shonen-ai, angst
Author's Notes: This fic describes an encounter between Heero and Zechs the night before their battle at Antarctica Base. It occurs after Heero talks with Trowa in the MS hangar. This is the first in a 6x1/1x6 timeline I'll be working on whenever my other series allow me to. ^_^
We stood, face to face at last, and I thought my heart would break for his youth, his soulless look - his seeming frailty that I knew was a lie. He was a terrible and beautiful thing to behold in the chill of that hangar, with his compatriot looking at me, eyes full of hate.
"Aren't you going to thank Colonel Zechs?" Noin's voice broke into the frozen gaze he and I shared. Without moving, a grim young voice was hesitantly pulled from him. "I will thank him - in my own way. I will kill Zechs."
I wanted to smile. Such a honorable opponent, and he'd come so far for me...
>>It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had ground... <<
The wait - sat on me like heavy beast, making breathing difficult and sleep impossible. Later that morning, when the antarctic sun made a full appearance, I would battle Heero Yuy in the name of honor and mastery. But for the moment, I sat in that dark hangar, staring up at the machine I built for him that he would not use. How could he? To take such a thing from an enemy and then fight him would be an indignity beyond what he could bear. No charity would cause my death. He would kill me on his own terms.
Or perhaps I would kill him. But if I did, a part of me would die as well. I wanted to fight him for honor, to the death because I knew he would have it no other way. But is that really the fate I sought for him? Did my mind race with thoughts of him, grim and unyielding, as he destroyed himself for the cause, so that I could snuff out that small, fierce light? Or did I search for him to warm myself, in some strange way, in it's glowing coldness?
But wait - someone's come. I look up to find him, looking smaller then he is, framed by the great open doorway of the hangar. My enemy has come to call.
>>Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell. <<
I was on my feet and standing in the unmerciful glare from his eyes. "I couldn't sleep," I said, not knowing why I explained because I doubted he cared. "Being in here always makes me feel calm."
He looked around for a bit, his gaze dragging, almost reluctantly, back to me. "Me, too," he uttered quietly and to my great surprise, sat down next to the spot from which I'd stood.
Lowering myself to sit beside him, I followed his eyes upward, to where Wing stood, a proud and fearsome warrior again. He scowled for a moment, then, "You and your mechanics did a very good job. It's better than it was." He looked over at me suddenly, narrowing his eyes in the gloom of the hangar. "I'd have known it was you, in Siberia. It was the way you fought. No one else fights that way. I knew it had to be you."
I had a small smile for him then. "You may not have meant it as one, but I will take that as a compliment." He shrugged and slowly turned his gaze back to Wing.
"What soldiers feel about each other doesn't matter when they face off on a battlefield," he said quietly. "It doesn't change the fact that I'm going to kill you this morning."
"No," I said softly. "It shouldn't."
There was a long pause and then, very slowly, he turned my way again, eyes large and passionate. A few heartbeats went by before I heard him whisper, "It should..."
>>With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.<<
It was silent as the grave between us. Then I spoke because I had to, had to know before our macabre dance began. "What does that soldier feel about this one?" I said, voice low and hoarse with restrained feeling. "What should make a difference?"
There was a long silence, and I thought perhaps I'd turned his mind away from me, but at last he looked over at me again. "I don't know. And maybe that's the problem."
I waited, knowing there was more.
"You don't fit. I know my mission. I know how to accomplish it..." Head down now, eyes gazing into forever. "I thought I knew my enemy. But in here..." he let his head lean back against the cold concrete wall behind us, "there are no battles, no missions..." Luminous blue staring me down. "And the enemy is mysterious... and perfect.
I couldn't take my eyes off of him. So small, with his fierce, fragile beauty that hadn't let me sleep since I saw him take that fateful step outside of Wing; that had hounded me to give back the machine OZ had stolen from him; that made me call to him across the world, only to drag him down here for a burial in ice and snow. "Not perfect, Heero," I whispered. "Far from it. Maybe that's why I wanted you here. Maybe you can show me perfection."
I couldn't stop myself. I lifted a hand to his pale cheek. Cold! Oh, the skin was so cold, and softer than any woman's would ever be - the skin of a child on the body of a warrior.
I thought that he would pull back, run, strike out - anything but what he did so. A tentative hand came up and trembling fingertips ran lightly down my hair.
"Why should I kill you, Zechs?" he said, his voice almost dreamy. "I need you to remind me..."
>>'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.<<
"I don't understand you," he continued, still stroking softly. "Why do you fight? Do you really care about making sure OZ wins? Is that what makes you go out and kill?" His eyes were searching mine, demanding an answer, but I didn't want to give it. "I fight because I'm told to," he said, finally. "I fight because that's what a soldier does. And I'm a soldier."
"What about the colonies?" I said slowly, letting my fingers drift to the dark silk of his hair, my thumb smoothing tense brows. "Surely you fight to free people from oppression."
"I told you why I fight. That's all there is behind it. I'm nothing more than a machine... Are you a machine, Zechs?" He drew his fingers over the cold metal of my mask and repeated, "Are you a machine?"
>>For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled<<
"Perhaps I have been," I told him, my other hand coming up now to cup his cheek. "And maybe I want to change that... by being with you, in the only way I can." My thumb brushed across his lips, strangely warm in our cold cave, and I heard him breathe once, harshly. "I try to be real with my men, and sometimes it comes very close. I make them laugh or I make them proud, or I make them think about what the hell we're doing this for. But it's so brief and then -" I feel him tugging at my mask and I realize I can't deny him anything at the moment.
Reluctantly I took my hands from his face, and lifted the mask off of my mine, willing myself to hold his gaze, waiting for his judgment. We seem to lean forward at the same slow-motion pace, and then our mouths met, open and hungry for the other. He deepened the kiss and I felt myself tumbling, reaching for him and pulling him close. The soft, aching need I'd felt since meeting him earlier was briefly, and blissfully, relieved as we kissed and kissed and kiseds, only coming up for air when we'd had our fill.
Then, slowly, almost reverently, he took the mask from my hands and placed it gently back over my face.
>>Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.<<
"Maybe there isn't anything inside here Zechs," he said, gesturing to himself. "I just fight until someone tells me to stop. That's nothing for you to respect."
"You're wrong, Heero." Safely behind my mask, my eyes traced the lips I drank from, the skin I caressed. "You have so much inside you're full to bursting. You just don't see it yet. But you will."
"Fighting is the only thing I know," he replied, staring at me with as much hunger as I leveled at him. "And I won't give up the fight. Not until I'm dead, and then it won't matter." He looked almost as if he were going to kiss me again, but I prayed he wouldn't. I didn't have the resolve to last another kiss. "What about you? What will you if you're the one who walks away from this alive?"
I looked up at the mobile suits above us. "I will go on believing that I did the right thing, even though my superiors told me not to. I will do what I can to stop the world from being dragged back any further into the darkness." Turning back to him, I added, "That's the only thing I *can* do - Heero."
>>Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot- wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.<<
"Everyone in OZ looks up to you." He stood up slowly, wrapping thin arms around himself, staring up at his weapon, now recovered. "How can you walk away from that?"
I stood as well and murmured, "Because my purpose for being in OZ has been fulfilled. Because the leaders who give me orders no longer fight for good; perhaps they never did and I was just too blinded by my *own* mission to see it. No one wants to think that the agency which lets him conquer his demons might be a demon itself." I walked behind him and slid my arms around narrow shoulders, pulling him against my chest in a softly possessive embrace. "I've done what I can for them, but they have betrayed their own code of honor. My journey will lie along a very different path..."
>>I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were<<
"I don't know anything about honor," he said and brought his hands up to cover mine. "But I know that people can look fine and still be mortally wounded. Where's the honor in that?"
He seemed to want a response, but all I could say was, "We live in dishonorable times, Heero. But don't let the times make you any less than what you are. The wound may be deep, but as of yet it's not mortal."
"But it may be later today." His voice was so low I had to strain to hear it.
"Yes," I sighed. "It may well be."
>>'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.<<
"His grip on my hands grew tighter. "I... I *am* going to kill you Zechs," he said in a broken voice, almost as if trying to convince himself. "I *am*..."
I tightened my grasp around him one last time, then released him, and let him walk to the hangar door. "I know, Heero." My voice was quiet, my back to him. "And I... I won't let you. I'll turn the hand that holds the sword back on it's owner. I will kill you instead."
"Yes..." his whisper in the dark.
"But I won't mean it." My whisper went out to find him.
"No, neither will I, Zechs."
"Go back to bed if you can. We've got three hours."
>>Let us sleep now . . .'<<
owari
(:./kumiko/strange)
