Love. There comes a time, when despite everything, despite all the kisses, the embraces, all the fervent protestations of the past, you simply know. It can�t be enough. Not any more.
My sister believes in fairy tales, still. Monsters, and dragons, and handsome princes riding up on white chargers to rescue the beautiful princess and marry her� Everyone lives happily ever after.
Well, the real world doesn�t work like that. It doesn�t now, and I doubt it ever will. Monsters and evil men direct conquering armies of mobile suits. The Princess is rescued by the Wicked Witch and the White Knight runs off with the Nimble Thief. The handsomest prince of all is slain by the dragon, and there�s no magic that can bring him back.
Life is beautiful, they tell me. Be glad you�re alive, even if he�s dead. It took me a long time to be able to truly feel alive, even now it seems so cold. But I know I can�t be alone forever, not when people need me.
I always thought she was the one who needed me most of all. Oh, we played the games, we still do, but I knew it was a sheath over her fragility. For all her independence, she clung to me with a terrible desperation. Perhaps she knew, understood that her only true rival was Treize himself. Not for my body, but part of my soul belonged to him, still does. He loved me too, I think, but we both knew what had to be done, and once we knew the true scale of our machinations it was too late. Neither of us could stop what was coming.
Perhaps it was in lieu of Treize�s love that I first permitted this, but eventually I came to like the act, desire this stimulation in a way no heterosexual man should admit to. I lie here, passive, bound, as she takes me, her body moving above me as the slick silicone of the prosthetic moves within me. I watch her body, sleek and streamlined, small breasts crowned with dusky brown nipples shaking only a little, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat as her hips move between my thighs. She always was slender, boyish.
I watch her eyes.
Yes, Mistress. I�m yours. I speak � pant � the required phrases, and she gives me release, but even in that shaking storm, as my whole body clenches tight around her, I know.
Lucrezia. She was always beautiful; I remember watching her, even as a child, fostered among the European aristocracy with their balls and their hunting and shooting and automatic assumptions of superiority. I had been brought up to that standard, too. She was the only one who could ever make me work for what I had always assumed was mine by rights. I loved her.
Even during the descent into nightmare, I loved her. We spoke to each other through vid-screens and mobile suit comms, the sound of explosions a constant staccato in the background. We loved each other, we missed each other, that was my comfort and solace through what I had to do. And in the end, when he was dead and I had lost and it was all too much for me to even think about going on, I knew it. She would be there, she would wait for me, just as she always had.
She rolls off me, shifting in the studded harness, loosing buckles and staring up at the ceiling with a sigh. I turn my head, watching her still.
You know, don�t you, Zechs.
Yes. I do.
I wonder what insights are granted to her. I have given up wishing to change the world; it has never been fair.
I waited. I really did, she tells me quietly, threads of tears infusing her voice. But I couldn�t� she was there. She was there. I had given up on you, either you were dead or you weren�t coming back.
Except of course, I did. I returned, to take my part in guiding Treize�s daughter to her true destiny, in rescuing my sister, and maybe it was that which cut Lucrezia the deepest. Nothing I had ever done had been for her.
I had returned, yes, and so had Chang, and she and her partner had both returned to their respective lovers, given up the desperate, clutching liaison that had been borne of grief and uncertainty, nurtured through shared spaces and mutual comfort. Chang had taken Lucrezia�s place at Sally�s side and she had returned to me, ever at my call. For a while, it was almost as it had been; we were together and she seemed happy.
It grew upon me slowly, this realisation, as the distance began to grow in her eyes. Where there had been words, I found silences taking root. I would watch, uneasy, as she looked away from me, out of the observation window towards the retreating blue bauble of the Earth. Where I had been looking forward, Lucrezia was looking back; we faced away from each other, and I had no idea what to do about it.
Always, she had been the one to succour me, to offer comfort, to bend herself to my needs and abide by my wishes. Now, as I watch the unshed tears in her eyes, I know that the patterns we have trodden have turned upon us, bearing us far from the destination we had hoped for. Our old wishes return to haunt us, our happily-ever-afters stick in our throats.
It was a difficult realisation, that the love in her eyes as she woke from dreaming was never for me. I went through my own silent phases, but that time is over now. Our time is over, if it was ever more than a few shared moments scratched from the eternal tumult of war. In peace, I know less than nothing of her, and her thoughts revolve around another.
Do you want to go back? I ask, detached. We have the fuel.
Silence, then�
No. I don�t think I could stand it, to see her happy with him, when I�
When she is dying inside. I know it, as surely as I know Treize�s face, seen in my dreams every night. At least his daughter will have no memories of him to taint her growth to womanhood; perhaps my sister will even instil in her some of that fairytale optimism and hope she seems to exude from her very pores. Relena�s disillusionment will not be long coming, though, if I have read Yuy and Maxwell right. She will learn, as I have.
The world is not fair. Dreams don�t come true. There�s a darkness in all of us, and if we�re not careful it can swallow our souls a little piece at a time. It�s too easy to hate, too easy to fear what we can�t change. No, dreams don�t come true, not for us. Love isn�t a miracle, it�s an aching sickness that withers us until only the empty winds of space are left.
Love is a terrible thing, I think now. All the things we do for it, all the things it does to us� No, happily ever after is the biggest illusion of all. I have known love, and I have known the pain it brings. I have watched it�s fading, watched her weeping dry-eyed for everything she has left behind her. Yes, I see it in her eyes. She never asked for this, I cannot blame her, but we are bound together now by a fate of our own making.
I wonder sometimes if it will be this way forever, if the drifting will continue until we are nothing but strangers to each other, acting our way through the motions of living. There�s no fire there when we touch, not any more; sometimes I can�t recall that there ever was. And every day the red planet grows larger in the shuttle�s observation window, and every day I watch her eyes as more of the life drains from them. We are trapped in this, but I cannot call it a hell. It�s merely� a slow death, as everything we ever thought we had fades slowly away. Even the warmth of memory is cooling now.
What are we going to do? I ask wearily; there is so much sorrow in my voice. Sorrow that I do not know what to do. Sorrow that I am losing her, and that it is no one�s fault but my own. Sorrow that the world we made holds nothing for either of us.
I don�t know.
I don�t know either. I don�t know anything any more. Nothing but love, that has made of us what it will.
Love�