Everyone Needs an Eden
Darwin Delantri
I will wait for you
Like I promised I you do
Although it brings me pain
Preserving an alias was always to tough thing to do. In fact,
it was a secret that was almost impossible to keep exclusively to
yourself. To pull off a farce like a completely new identity,
somebody needed friends, confidants that you could trust in. Noin was
always the kind of person you could trust in.
Normally, it was a trait she was proud of. She was let in on
all the interesting mysteries and news because she could keep a
secret to herself. What Zechs had told her was entirely different
than
anything she could have thought of. His was a secret that absolutely
had to be kept, it was one that his very life depended on. Some days,
the bombshell he dropped on her burned the back of her mind like a
hot coal.
Just think, the long-dead Peacecraft prince wasn't buried in a
pile of regal rubble in the Sanc kingdom, he was in Lake Victoria,
hidden as he built up the strength to fight against the forces that
ruined his birthright. However, even nurturing the thought of telling
somebody else was blasphemy, so Noin held up her vow and bore the
burden along with Zechs.
And you always knew
What to say to lead me to
Believe it's not in vain
The day that he finally shed the mask and showed the world his
true colours wasn't what it should have been. She should have felt
relieved that she would no longer be tormented by the dark secret any
longer. She was free from the bondage of what lay beneath his shroud,
and she had proved that his trust in her was well-placed; that she
was a true friend.
Yet, in order to remove that mask, he lost the persona that
had protected him for all those years in the academy, and the new
Millardo was something entirely different from the Zechs that she
knew and loved. Her Zechs would never hold the Earth hostage.
"Would he?" Noin whispered into her fingertips, her old habit
of rubbing her lips as she pondered acting up again.
The Peacemillion's bridge was loud with floating orders and
soft, artificial bleeps and noises, and only Sally, seated next to
her, heard her question. "Would who?" She asked innocently, turned
away from the very tired ensign that was trying to convince her to
sign some document.
Noin almost jumped to her feet out of surprise. She composed
herself, pushing her bangs back into place, and responded, "No,
Sally. Nothing, just," She caught herself before she accidentally
revealed what she had been daydreaming about. "Nothing."
Sally waved away the ensign, who took a few steps back, still
looking impatient about whatever orders his clipboard carried.
"You're tired, Noin, and you can't pull eighteen-hour shifts every
day." She urged, trying to nag in a friendly manner. "Please, go and
get some sleep."
Noin wiped her eyes, proving her suggestion by chance. "You're
right. I'll just," She noticed that the ensign was staring at her,
and she lost in train of thought once their eyes met fleetingly.
"Sneak out."
"Don't worry about us. We'll manage without you." She
continued as Noin rose from her seat. Sally snatched the clipboard
away from the young ensign, and couldn't help but notice that his
hungry eyes never left Noin as she left the bridge. "Seriously..."
I was safe and secure
While you were with me
But it could only last
'Til the day that she
Took you back again
"Shouldn't I have seen it coming, Zechs?" Noin asked the still
air of the elevator, her fingers choosing a floor on their own. "We
had our duties, both our paths were already laid out for us, thanks
in no small part to Relena. How could I have been so stupid as to
ignore your second life, and to write those valentines?" The thought
that the elevator just might have a surveillance microphone passed
over her mind like a cloudy shadow, but she shrugged it off. Between
all the anxiety and self-pity, she'd find time for modesty later.
"I was always so immature about my feelings. Still, Zechs,"
She paused as swallowed nervously, although her throat felt bone dry.
No one was here, was why she on edge? "You were always so distant. It
wasn't like you never acknowledged me, it felt like you didn't want
to, like you refused to see." To someone that thought out loud as
often as she did, soliloquies always seemed like good ways to refine
her feelings.
She trailed off as the elevator doors slid open as quietly as
raindrops slide off the leaves. She'd ended up on the bottom deck of
the entire ship, outside the mobile suit bay of the Peacemillion. The
five young pilots, having just returned from a frenzied practice
maneuver, were all unwinding here, still in their space suits.
So I get by
On wishful thinking
That when you get home
You'll want to stay
Noin hoped to leave her unpleasant memories in the lift as she
pushed past the assembled pilots without a word of greeting, her face
blank in a distant guise.
Quatre looked up from the bet he was concluding with Duo,
"Miss Noin, is something the matter?"
She turned back to him and tried to force her face to produce
a pleasant smile. "Don't worry about me, I'm just going for a little
walk."
"To the suit bay? There must be a hundred better places to
hang around…" He went on, but she paid him no mind as she pressed
on.
Duo set aside his deck of glossy cards to take a drink of
soda. "I haven't seen her like that before. Looked sort of troubled.
What was our deal again?"
"If I won, which I did grandly," Quatre replied, gleaming
proudly. "I get your Draconian Construct." After liberating the
colourful card from his ally, he resumed, "I'm sure she'll be fine.
She's a strong person." Wufei snorted quietly, but was happily
ignored by everyone else.
Give me your hand
Save me from sinking
Another day
Of wishful thinking
Down the hall and around the corner from the cheery scuffle,
Noin leaned up against he chilly steel wall, softly cursing the
designers for using such an unfriendly military décor.
Sure, it was bad enough to be in her situation. Every fibre of
her being, her soul, her heart, her body coaxed her to leave
Peacemillion and fly to the awe-inspiring battleship. To remain by
Zechs' side.
In fact, the only thing that was keeping her bound to the
ivory vessel was the knowledge that she was fighting the good fight
here. If she left, she'd be letting everyone down, and proving just
how weak she really was. She could just picture Quatre's scowl of
self-blame and rejection, Sally's disappointed lip-bite, and Wufei's
semi-satisfied sneer as they watched her Taurus shrink away on the
main screen. Would Zechs even allow her to play the traitor, or would
he simply blow her suit to ions out in the starfield? With the new
Millardo, she didn't know exactly what to expect, whether to think
that he might kill her for an ideal, or slay his old academy friend
just to prove a point.
"Old academy friend?" Noin questioned herself, "That what you
wanted him to remember you as?" She pushed herself upright and off
the wall, and reached into her back pocket. She yanked out a folded,
aged piece of simple paper.
Sometimes it's lonely
And faith don't come easy
And dreams begin to fade
Noin turned the little slip of paper over and over in her
hands, recalling the tree in Victoria she sat underneath as she
penned in out, and the spot she'd kissed the paper when she'd
finished
it.
She ran back to the barracks that day with the little paper
concealed, planning to slip it under his door at the perfect time,
right when Zechs would beat his nosy roommate Trent back to their
room. However, he'd gotten out of class early that day, and met her
outside the building.
She had greeted him warmly, just making innocent conversation
as she plot another way to get it to him. Then, out of the blue, he
said that he had something he wanted to show her up in his room. The
strangest chill ran down her spine as she followed him.
What Zechs had to tell her about was his little secret
admirer, who'd already left three notes of adoration at his door. He
read her one out loud, as she half-hoped that he'd be impressed,
touched, anything good. She didn't listen to him as he recited the
poem, having already memorized them as he had been composing under
the boughs of the water-fat tree. His words had cut her deeper than
any pain she ever would experience in her rigorous life.
"Can you imagine the twit that must have wrote these, Noin?
It's true that the writing is par, but there isn't any emotion, any
feeling in these words. It's just a pile of fluff work, and I
couldn't care less if a little fool believes she's head-over-heels
for
me." They joked about it for a while, entertaining guesses as to you
Zechs' shadowy friend was. Somehow, she found the strength of will to
deny her sorrow.
That night, though, she drowned herself in her pillow. She had
put her true heart into those poems, and Zechs, without a clue as to
what he was doing, fed them into the buzzing maw of a paper shredder.
She swore off writing poetry, and took up painting instead, in an
effort to forget the little letter than could never reach it's
addressee.
Then you reassure me
How good it's gonna be
When you come back someday
As she started down the hall again, she couldn't help staring
at the letter in her hands scornfully. She knew exactly what it had
to day; why did she feel this need to open in again?
If she did, she couldn't take the risk of anyone seeing her.
Matters like this deserved more privacy than the hallway outside of
the Peacemillion's underbelly, the cavernous mobile suit bay.
On a sudden, fleeting impulse, she ducked through the massive
doors, built wide enough for scrambling pilots, and cautiously shut
them again. The maintenance crews tended to follow lucrative hours,
and even as Gundam pilots stayed up celebrating, the mechanics that
got them to the battlefield had long since yielded to them bedtimes.
Even the suits themselves seemed to be sleeping, great
bronze-coated giants lining the enormous wall, standing ready to
their masters' bidding. Her own white Taurus, the weak sister to
these
titans, was modestly waiting next to 04, dwarfed by the glories that
is was compared to.
It's strange how readily metaphors will form if you let them.
The gravity was forcibly relaxed here to make work easier for
those crews and make it safer for any greenhorn that fell off a suit
of a railing. It also meant that one could move high and lazily. It
was all the simpler for Noin, once the best high jumper in Victoria
academy. With a step and a hap she soared off the cold decking, and
pulled herself gracefully onto the observation railing that pierced
the room. Noin scrambled onto the railway facing the suits and seated
herself on it, swinging her legs in space between her and the
towering Gundams.
This place would be fine to read in peace, even if the suits
might be watching her. Noin opened the ancient page although it
crackled in aged protest. Her handwriting on it looked almost like
outlines on a photograph, the nuances of her own voice were the
colours of that spring at Victoria.
You'd said that you'd be back
After you said goodbye
I have to believe
That it wasn't a lie
And you'll be here again
Zechs Marquise, it began, it is my dream to one day find the
heart to stand eye to eye with you and pour out my soul. I want to
draw back the curtain between us, but things are not that way in this
world.
We're both captives of circumstance, and it seems to be our
doom to be close and removed at the same moment. However, should
dreams begin to die from one's life, life is no longer worth
continuing, as one without dreams is like a garden without flowers.
Until we can change the world, I'll have to be content with
the fantasies I feed, that your hair should replace the clouds of
heaven's foundations and that your wrath could put purgatory to
flight.
Until we can change the world, promise me, the one that
shrouds herself in shadows, that you'll always remember that no
matter how fate and the universe conspire against you, and despite
all
that our world can throw at us, there will forever be someone that
loves you.
Dreaming of you eternally,
Maybe, just maybe, Zechs had been right after all. This was
just fluff work, devoid of truth, empty of serious emotion. Back then
she was still a child. Just like a child, true feelings had to be
nurtured, to be sheltered at let to blossom, to be grown until it
could reach all the clouds and become a part of you.
At the time she wrote this, she only thought what she had felt
was forever true. No longer.
So I get by
On wishful thinking
That when you get home
You'll want to stay
Whether she felt it now or not, the letter was useless. He
couldn't read it, she couldn't send it. To commit to either would be
to commit to treason, both to their separate causes and to each other.
Noin pushed herself off the railing, floating with miserable
indecision as the pitiful gravity clawed at her. She refolded the
note and tucked the tangible memory back into her pocket. Even if she
did see him again, it would only mean another impossible choice; him
or life?
A warm trickle ran down her cheek, and her gloved hand jumped
to snatch it away before she was fully aware of it. The salty tear
refused to soak away into her glove, instead clinging to itself it a
crystal bead at the end of her fingertip. She held the captured
droplet in front of her eyes, gazing just as mournfully at it's
internal mirrors as if it were a drop of her lifeblood. "This is it,
Zechs. This is the last tear I'll shed for that day." She was through
felling sorry for herself. She gently twitched his finger, trying to
dislodge the drop from her.
"The wax that seals that chapter of my life." She breathed,
her violet-blue eyes resolute, already fighting to uphold her
promise. With that, the tear finally deserted hope and released her,
forming a perfect sphere in the airy void.
The feeble artificial pull below began to gain control over
the vagrant drop. It started a slow funeral procession to the floor,
a final voyage back to the cold decking.
Give me your hand
Save me from sinking
Another day
Of wishful thinking
As she pulled herself back over the railing, setting her magnetized
boots firmly enough to the walkway to gain the illusion of security,
Noin took the time to really scrutinize the bay. She needed answers,
ones that weren't locked away within the lines of the letter like
bars of a cell, or imprisoned in the silver walls of the teardrop,
still spinning dramatically.
Her eyes came to rest upon the open hatch in Zero's abdomen.
The terrifying entity within, the monster that preyed upon minds it
could control, was still hungry. The monster's bait? A promise of a
vision into your own psyche, a tease that it would light the tunnel
for you.
Zechs had handed his mind over to that creature and emerged
from Zero's cockpit intact. Heero had done so too, as had Quatre,
more or less by definition. Could she ever hope to exhibit that
strength of will, that power to resist the beast that lurked in the
Gundam's shell?
Only one way to find out.
I was safe and secure
While you were with me
But it could only last
'Til the day that she
Took you back again
Setting her hands back on the railing, Noin clicked her heel
once on the ground, releasing the magnet's covetous grasp on the
metal below. Swinging into the sky again, she propelled herself at
the gaping cockpit like a swimmer in a lake. Still, as gravity protested,
a tiny voice spoke up from the recesses of her mind.
"What am I doing?" Noin whispered to the anonymous air halfway
across her trip. Zero still beckoned to her, drawing her in slowly,
like a fish on a line.
There was so much hidden away in that computer. Zechs was in
that shadowy pit, calling her forward, begging her to come and see
him. Her promise both to him and herself flashed across her mind
again, another reason to continue giving birth to itself.
Alex, Mueller, and the murdered cadets were in that suit. They
all wanted to her to return to them, to show those upstart Gundam
pilots how to fly a mobile suit.
If Zero could affect her like this before she'd set foot
inside, what could this monstrosity actually do to her? It was
wearing out her mind even now, making her easier to devour. How could
a well-meaning human produce a device like Zero?
Sally was within the cockpit too. All she wanted was the same
as Noin, the truth. But, why did she want Noin's truth? Noin blinked
the question back. No sense asking things when all the answers were
so near at hand.
Relena and Quatre were in that ghostly party? Both were
silently shouting for her to turn back, and to stop this madness, but
were drowned out be the overwhelming urge to do the opposite. They
wanted her to forget about the Zero system.
She tried to halt in midair, but merely froze in limbo, her
momentum still carrying her towards the suit's empty place. Why did
that suit suddenly start looking like a mausoleum? She reached the
wall of gundamium, if only because there was no where else to drift
to, so she grabbed at it as if it the were last bastion in the
universe, all practiced grace lost.
So I get by
On wishful thinking
That when you come home
You'll want to stay
Getting into that suit would the gravest mistake one could
make, and she only knew it know because Zero was already reaching out
to her. If the prospect of piloting the system could give you
visions, ideas, hallucinations, it seemed impossible that anyone
could keep their mind out of it's control.
Those pilots that could withstand it's attack were truly
marvels.
A frigid knife of words sliced across the hold, it's edge
dulled by it's own echoes. "Is something wrong, Noin?" She shot
across, almost loosing her grip on the suit's shell. Heero was
standing tranquilly underneath the catwalk, looking up at the
transgressor with those disdainful eyes.
She took a deep breath, and pushed away from the suit she clung to
with added vigour. "No, Heero. Everything's fine." Refusing to engage
her magnets once she hit the floor, she met his icy stare fleetingly
as she could as she bounced past him, dancing in the limbo between
gravity and space.
Heero, now alone in the hold, looked up at his suit's dimmed
eyes. Zero had nearly lured her in as well. The last thing that that
system should have would be a person like her in it's claws, to fed
off and ravage.
He turned away to head back out to his room when a little
sparkle floated down in front of him. The tiny, stray globe still
fought to reach the floor, but he instead placed his hand underneath
it, and caught it in his palm.
He looked at the slick remains of the droplet on his skin,
letting the cold water settle, before flinging and wiping it off with
his free hand. It was no concern of his.
Give me your hand
Save me from sinking
Another day
Of wishful thinking
Another day
Of wishful thinking
Give me your hand
Save me from sinking
Let's get a few things straight, shall we?
All the characters belong to Sunrise, Sutso, and Bandai. The song
Wishful Thinking is property of Amanda Marshall. The fic itself,
however, is mine. Don't touch.
