Return

Darwin Delantri

"I hate to play the skeptic, but life isn’t all tea and romance." The early morning light drove itself through the liquid windows once being invited by the open curtains. It streaked cleanly through the air and made each and every one of the dozens of white surfaces in the little kitchen take on a pearly sheen as a testiment to the morning. There was no airborne dust for the light to dirty itself in, but it went placidly misty as it found the drifting steam that rose out of neglected china cups.

Noin’s eyes were still locked on him, with a hot and watery look in them that he couldn’t quite place. "That’s your philosophy? All you have to say is ‘shit happens’? Zechs, how—" She struggled momentarily to gather the right words as her mouth opened and shut helplessly as she tried to force them into shape. "How can you live with yourself?"

He was unperturbed, and he made another effort to drink his seasoned tea. He brought the rim of the cup to his worn lips, chaffed by the Martian wind even after it had been filtered and processed to no end. "It isn’t easy. It’s a situation I’ve tried to rectify all too often—"

"You bastard! You resentful, heartless, conceited bastard!" She jumped to her feet with enough sudden force to topple her chair to the floor behind her. "Even after all this, you still can’t come down from your high horse! How can you sit there so smugly and muse about yourself?"

Zechs set his cup down quickly and rose with grandeur that Noin’s leap to attention lacked. After all, he didn’t want to wreck the chair that they purchased at some outrageous price only because it went with the plans for the colour scheme. It would do no good to damage them in anger. "Hold on a moment, here! I wanted to come here to leave of that behind. I gave everything I had and I failed, what else could I do but retreat from it all? I only wanted a new life!"

"A brand new life? How preposterous could possibly you be? You had it all; influence, riches, talent, looks, everything any man or woman living would have done anything for. And now—" She raised her arms to gesture at the room around them, at the blank white walls and the cabinets almost devoid of dishes. Details like those had yeilded to the bigger picture, like the furniture. "There isn’t a speck of luxury. You’ve got nothing but a job you don’t enjoy and a friend that serves to hold you back. Yet, you still throw away all your gifts back. How could you be so selfish?"

Her words were leading him on, and he was a little bewildered. Only ire read into his features. "Selfish?" He echoed softly.

"You’re hopeless! You don’t have a clue! You could have every good thing in life in you opened your eyes, but you persist to deny it!" She stepped up to him, staring straight into his eyes, and beyond that, from the way she looked. " How do you think that makes me feel? I have no home, and here I see a man with a beautiful one that he simply passes on with a whim. I can’t stand by myself, yet here I see a man that sheds his independence without a second thought."

"No…!" Zechs tried to interject, but Noin didn’t allow it.

"Maybe you don’t deserve it at all. You should have been the one shivering in the alleys! You should have been the one that went to sleep without knowing whether or not they would eat at all tomorrow, or even if you would ever wake up!"

"Noin!" Zechs shouted, determined to take his part in the argument. "I deserted it all for a reason, and I haven’t regreted it for a second. I love it here, even if life is less forgiving now than ever. I never asked for all the responibilities that my birth forced on me. I never requested a little sister, and I never asked to be an heir."

He went to the window and watched where the sun broke over the rusty horizon. "You only say those things because you don’t know. You simply don’t understand."

The rage had left her voice but it had been replaced with a dishonest edge. "I think you’re just scared of it. Terrified of your crimes against humanity. You reduced a city to statistics! Are you proud of it?" He winced, and she allowed a silence for the argument to settle in. "You betrayed everyone that trusted you."

"And you betrayed me!"

She snarled once under her breath. "Why? Why did I ever think to come here with you?"

He spun around on the slick tiles, hiding the heat in his voice. "If you don’t wish to be here, then you’re always welcome to return to that sickly planet! You can still be accepted back there. You still haven’t ruined all of your chances. You haven’t burned all of your bridges!" Zechs pushed by her and through the open doors in their sparcely furnished living room. The game of chess they had started last night sat half-finished on the floor in front of the black sofa, filling the gap where a coffee table should have gone.

"You think I’m selfish." He continued, looming over the board. "You think I’m selfish because I don’t accept what others may desire. And now you taunt me because you still have options." A silence, then, "Hypocrite."

"How— how dare you!" Noin stammered, but stayed quiet as she stormed to the front door and threw it open, then hastily put on her shoes on the doorstep. "Perhaps you’re right, but that just means I have to work harder to prove you otherwise!" She slammed the door shut, and that crash was the last sound worth notice for awhile. A ceiling fan creaked loosly somewhere, and the television persisted to layer on details on how only the grace of God could have been what saved Queen Relena from an assassination. There were showing a panel of political commentators, who were all bickering back and forth, quietly due to the deplored volume. Zechs ignored them as their tempers rose.

He stood motionless for a dozen seconds, and then lost track of his half-minded count. "Perhaps I am still spineless. God must have taken the bone from my back and layered it onto my skull. That’s what she would say…" He remained where he stood, brooding over the game. Either one of them could reach checkmate in two moves.

What a failure! He couldn’t accomplish anything, he couldn’t even satisfy his demise. He always lacked control over his own life, he was always under someone else’s scrutiny. He simply could not be Millardo Peacecraft, and he was failing again to be Zechs Merquise.

The arrays of soldiers, all carved and uniformed and glossed and set on their finite paths, inspired something stale. He couldn’t tell what, exactly. It was no memory, no idea, no simple and plain, cut and dried emotion. Watching from above, it looked just like a game to be played without wager or consequence. Should his sanctions be lowered, it would be another battlefield. Why wouldn’t his starry roost look any different to those inanimate regiments than any of his manipulators look to him?

There was no reason in mind. And so, Zechs chose action instead and kicked the board in a constructed, false rage. The pieces slid and clattered across the hardwood floors in a short and loud rush, caught in the rapids his foot caused only for an instant. After the short turmoil had settled, ebony and ivory units mingled in stationary disorder, and each seemed to looking up at him with invisible eyes. Crushed pawns were fated to judge the man that stole their grids and field of battle.

"I should just let her go-" He let his knees liquify and dropped onto the chesterfield, letting his arms drift across the cushions. "She needs better than a wretch like me. She needs more than a walking corpse." But still, his throat would parch itself to keep him from picturing it

+++++++

The engine purred softly, spreading minute tremors through the car, across the floor and up their legs, and into her elbows to run up through her hands and her forehead that they cradled. Her eyes were clinched shut, but her breathing maintaining rhythmic and unwavering. Noin didn’t want to cry, or retain the anger from the recent past short hours ago. If Zechs were the one driving, she would find nothing to shout, or nothing to plead, or apoligize.

It was no gracious thing to already look upon that exodus as the past. Since then she’d called a friend for a lift, checked a flight. She was really going through with this, wasn’t she? Deep down, she had hoped that Sharon would be busy, or that there were no flights leaving for Earth or the colonies today. That would a reason to go back, but fate wasn’t going to allow it. The cruel mentor, Fate had made the path open.

Still, it was open both ways, Earth on one end, and Zechs on the other. There was still turning back, but who would be proven right if she did?

It was so futile and naïve to consider this a clash of ideals. There weren’t any sides here, there was only decision! Make the choice one way or another, and follow through. It didn’t matter whether it was right or wrong, she had learned long ago never to let her sense of morals prevent her from doing what was right. It was no question of loyalty or devotion, it was simply a convultion and a revolution of desires. Did she really want to be right over being together? She sincerely didn’t know anymore.

Sharon, her blonde hair in a half-fluff after Noin’s sudden call interrupted her schemes of sleeping in on a day off the Terraformer project, took another agitated turn around an unfamiliar corner. She was plainly uncomfortable by Noin’s abrupt request and recursive rapture, and checked each street sign with fervid anticipation. The passenger port was in a part of the town she didn’t frequent, and she had been hoping Noin would ensure they wouldn’t get lost. As long as she was so tranquil, they might go off track. Noin might admit to guilt at bringing her into this dispute at all. Zechs might get on her about it later, while still deciding whether or not to go after her. All in all, this would end up as a very expensive and avoidable squabble.

Or maybe he was the one that was right after all. What if she was deserting him and refusing to think twice about this treachery of hers? It would hardly matter; she had already granded that this was no simple collision of personallities.

Sharon parellel parked the quiant car on a street not far from the port. "Noin? Are you sure about this?"

Innocence. Ignorance. All the same. "I hardly think I have a choice." She raised her head out of her palms and flipped the door locks on her side.

"So ends our second interlude, eh? It’s been nice seeing you again, Noin." Her eyes had a hopeful glimmer. "Keep in touch, alright?"

"Sure thing. Thanks for everything." Noin flung the door open and stepped out into the abrasive sidewalk, flooded with the carbon stench of artificial air. She stood sudden on the curb as she watched Sharon pull away and down the street apprehensively, she made up her resolve to finish the journey. She walked in silence, fondling those ideas of returning to either side and to take one path or another, to be out of this uncertain wasteland in between camps and to have made that irrepressible conclusion.

The port was quaint and small, built only to serve the traffic that was foreseen years ago during the first initiative of the project. It had the metalic gleem that was the prerogative of all the building raised in the past years, but had degraded once the truths about the ebb and flow of people on Mars was evident. The people that arrived arrived in a shining new structure that went up just recently, and accepted all the people of the Earth Sphere that had nowhere else to go. This little port was one of the few places that travelers still embarked from, at a small outlet of the main port just beyond. It was only for foolish civilians that had only came to visit, and for the ones that came under false pretenses.

Upon her entry, Noin was relived to see that the hall was quiet and dry of people. Only a scant spattering of travelers awaited the boarding call, a family here and there that found Mars less than satisfactory, a solitary man or woman that didn’t seem like the type to be uncomfortable even in this slightly aged building. Noin brisquly introduced herself to the clerk and bought her ticket. Non-refundable, one way. That was the extent of her resolve. She didn’t want to seem out of place in this selective, silent group, so she took a seat in the same manner as all the others, three down from a large woman reading a tabloid and three down from an elderly couple that slept lightly, with her back to the doors.

It wasn’t long at all, much less time then she’d expected, in fact. The doors opened and shut again about five minutes before boarding time, and she knew it was going to be him. She had expected him to charge in as she was just getting on the shuttle, and they would see each just before the point of no return. That was his way, he was an unconscious dramatist, although he surely would deny it. She couldn’t see the door, but there was no way to hide from him. What could she do now?

Noin rose from her seat and went out from the queues of plastic chairs. It would an anti-climatic second battlefield, enclosed by vending machines and desks and witnessed by these somewhat unsavory characters, but sure enough, there he was. He had been more frantic than usual and it showed, but that was forgivably her fault. "Zechs." She refused any courtesy, and simply accknowled him. "Have you come to see me off?"

"Lucrezia, come off it, please. Don’t do this—"

"I can’t stop now, Zechs. I owe it to myself, don’t you think?" Her voice was lucid and aloof. She wanted to taunt him. She wanted him to remember this moment for the rest of his miserable life on this worthless red sphere.

"Why? That’s all I want to know, if I can’t stop you. Why?"

She shook her head. Truthfully, she hadn’t actually given that point the thought it deserved. No matter, start talking and the words will come naturally. "Because you haven’t changed, Zechs. After all the breeds of hell and purgatory you’ve seen, you’re still the same chagrined person you were when we met. That’s not natural at all. You have to learn! You have to change! You owe it to yourself.

"Death and loss seem to be the only thing you can ever focus on, so I’m going to impletment it one last time. Perhaps one more loss can turn you into a human being. It’s not out of gratitude, or out of devotion. I’m doing this just as one human to another." She quelled her voice back to an elementary nuance. "You have to understand your own path and conclusions, and that’s more important than us. I’m sorry, but good bye, Zechs."

He was flabbergasted and silent as she finished her short remarks, but regaining his footing as she allowed him the reprieve to gather himself. This was cruel, she deserved to be reprimanded for this.

"You really are—" He cut himself off. "A very wise person once told me something, that ideals and ideas aren’t always synonymous. Haven’t you stopped and considered what you’re running into? You’re actively choosing to go against all that just to go against me, for the flimsy ideal of leaving an impression by vacating that impression? It’s hypocritical. You can’t take it upon yourself, and you can’t rectify anything but forcing yourself to action again. You aren’t even betraying me, you’re betraying yourself."

He went on rapidly, drawn forward by his own speech. "I won’t degrade you for it. I know it can’t be done, I know you better. I know you well enough that you wouldn’t try to remove yourself just to fulfill an ideal. You’re far too persistant, and I think you that too."

Noin swallowed heavily, but was determined to hold her poise intact. "So you run down here just to convince me not to attack myself?" That was unsatisfying, and he must realise it. "What about you?"

"Me—I—I can’t bear to let it happen. All my life I’ve thought everything would remain pragmatic if I left them the way they were, and I have yet to be right once. I’ve ended up here, on this planet, because I was willing to die, and now I’m standing here because I’m not going to let the world go by. We were both wrong. I’m here because I’m not going to let it go on anymore." He departed from the dissertation, taking a deeper breath of the sticky air. He was suddenly aware of the unfamiliar eyes that rested on the two of them, but he could not let that get in the way now. Timing was everything. "You already are changing me for the better. Please, dont leave now—" He looked into her eyes with all the loose purpose he could muster, hoping to find a hint of softening there. "Don’t leave ever."

She closed the gap between them by a step. There was insurmountable, absolute quiet, if only for a moment. Zechs felt as though he could hear his own heartbeat, and the pulse of everyone else in the station. Noin smiled, and that somehow broke the silence around them. "Zechs Merquise. You never were good with words, we you?"

He snorted. "You’re one to talk."

Moving on one mutual impulse, they met and folded their arms around each other. "You’re such a bad liar." She said without a hint of humour.

"And you look like death on toast in the morning."

"You’re helpless."

"And you’re a hypocrite."

"You’re the most stuck-up, blind jerk in the world."

"I love you so much." Zechs breathed, without even noticing what he’d said.

"I love you too, Zechs."

"Come on, Lucrezia." Zechs kissed her forehead. "Let’s go home."

"Home… I can hardly wait." They went, arm in arm, to buy another one-way shuttle ticket home for Zechs.