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"Alternative Directions: Options "Written By: Karina Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the lovely
boys and their girls in the series. Wish I did. Please don't sue me.
I haven't even got a brass razoo to give you. Rating: Deffinately PG in Australia, at the moment,
but probably safer to say R for later chapters. Not sure about international
ratings Warnings: It will be 6x2, even though it does
not start out that way. After all, Zechs and Duo never met in Gundam
Wing and only spoke briefly over a com line in Endless Waltz. I've
tried to keep them in character as I saw them in the series. A bit
of language creeping in under stressful conditions. Pairings: eventual 6x2, past 2xH, 2+H,6x9, 1+R
Summary: Directions is set post Endless Waltz
and roughly 2 years have passed. Zechs and Noin are on Mars and Duo,
after spending some time with Hilde in a relationship leaves L2 to
join Preventers. Hilde was not happy about his decision. I guess enough
said. Here t'is, and I hope you like it. This is also AU for the standard
setting, as well as the series and Endless Waltz. Spoilers: Gundam Wing Series and Endless Waltz Many thanks to Dulin for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options"
Mars Colony Base Dome 2nd March AC 198 Time: 01:50 [approx Sanc time 23:40] Zechs // Did I fail? I thought … Did I fail to keep him alive? I was sure I failed but … Is it possible to change at least that isolated outcome without sending everything spiraling into disaster? I know I was supposed to have control over everything that was happening but … I … I could not … be sure … It was all so much. Too much. I thought … I thought I failed. I think … Treize planned his death. I am sure he planned to die but … He was only too capable of lying to me … and … and Epyon … Epyon lied to me. It seemed that everyone lied … We were all deceiving each other. I was … the biggest deception of all.// Epyon. The machine that Treize had created with the ultimate intention of driving him insane. That cold calculating machine that talked to him in insidious whispers of how Treize intended he use it for Peace. Epyon, the demonic looking machine that housed within it something he had never experienced before. Something that was so different to the operating system of the Wing Zero, the only other system that he might even consider comparing it to. Too different to believe that they were ever intended for the same ends. There were similarities between the two systems he could not deny that but those similarities were few in the overall design. The greatest difference he had found between the two was that Zero was honest about what it was while Epyon … Epyon could lie. Epyon had lied. Epyon had an intent that was frightening. Heero had been right about the machine’s ability to lie. He had been right but he could not have known, he had no concept of the true depths of deceit to be found locked within the system. Heero had failed to understood the intelligence that lurked beneath the facade of the machine. And it was an intelligence, a vast awareness that he had sensed all too quickly on donning the helmet and that intelligence, that echo of Treize had drawn him in, called to him and taken him into hell. Epyon had many secrets and it was too like Treize. Manipulative. He understood what Heero meant when he said that he did not understand how Treize thought but he doubted that Epyon had been able to open up to Heero. From what he had seen of the one dubbed the Perfect Soldier he doubted that at that time Heero entertained his imagination in such a manner that would key in the hidden abilities of the operating system. He doubted that Heero had been born with the horror that had marked him, that ability to see events in advance. He could only wonder what the machine would have done had Winner and his space heart been exposed to it. Surely there were others out there, somewhere, who were capable of using the monster as he had? Not that he would wish it on them. //Enough speculation over what can not be changed.// Such events were past and rehashing the old pain and uncertainty could be of no assistance in this current situation. It was enough to know that he had survived against all the odds … and against his own planning. That bastard of a suit had lied to him about many things, not the least of which was the release he had sought and had been denied him. How many of the visions he had worked on, discussed with the machine and chosen pathways from had been affected by the lies the system was capable of telling? Or had they been lies? Could the machine evade? Had it deceived him, refusing to follow a course of possible action to its conclusion … and thus lied to him though at the time he would not recognize the deception ? He had not always followed the course the machine determined to be the most appropriate. He had balked on more than one occasion when using Epyon and something within him had been unable to follow the seemingly heartless demands. He had broken the connection between himself and Epyon on a number of occasions and not because of exhaustion or even temper. Disillusion … depression had been a problem. //Depression. Then no more than now.// So many options, so many ways for mankind to kill themselves, to fight their brothers, to rape their sisters, to murder and pillage … Something within him more than once had pulled him out of the sea of vision, unable to continue. That place within him recognized some limit be it with the vision itself or with his ability to cope with the consequences. He was uncertain which it was. Even when he had been in tune with the operating system there had been instances when he had balked, withdrawing from the link through some external stimulation. Such an instance had been in the moment when death had come to the man who had been more than a brother to him and who had meant life to him and a promise that peace would come. //Treize.// Treize had promised him that peace would come. That they would bring peace and after that … after that … Treize had died and he had protested that death, both when he had first noted the vision of it and later when he had mourned the instant of that distant and so very brief flare of light that made the conclusion inevitable. The flare of the explosion that had heralded his failure was a pain he would never live without. He had determined to see that man survive to witness the peace they had long talked about and he had watched that explosion with a sense of failure … of hopelessness. He had heard the softest whisper of that rich voice and even now he was uncertain if it had come over the radio or if he had heard it in the echoes of vision. //The other side?// He had failed to alter circumstances to ensure that Treize lived to see the peace they had planned and that had not been the first or the last of his failures. He had repeatedly failed to tweak circumstances to better conclusions as time had worn on and Epyon had faded to a nightmare and the visions had returned to haunt the darkness that should have been his death. His release. //Lucrezia.// It had not just been in altering the death of the man so many including himself had revered. It had not just been that occasion that he went against Epyon’s decision on which was the most advantageous route to take amid the sea of vision. Perhaps one of the most notable rebellions he had managed against the tyranny of the machines use of his ability was that instance when everything had been otherworldly. He had been submerged within working vision lost within a complex spiral of active vision and trying to find the clearest path even as he had fought within the battle and he had come face to face with Lucrezia Noin. He shuddered delicately at the very memory of it. At the demand of the intelligence that worked within the system that had confirmed the choicest path to result in the least destruction and death. He had been shocked out of vision by that demand. Epyon had demanded a price from him to complete the vision that he had been unable to pay. Something within him had protested, had refused, had reared from the ocean of possibilities and by that rebellion more had died but … He had not killed her. He had been unable to strike her as had been demanded of him. Lost within visions or not as they had battled for peace he had been unable to pay so high a price. //Is that why I could not love her as she willed? When I look at her … when she comes to me for loving I see always the faces of those who died because I was a coward and could not kill her.// Epyon had fallen quiet then, leaving him to flounder if only for a few minutes, to fly eventually back toward the Libra after the battle’s conclusion and cringe at the changes his rebellion would cast into the future he had sought to guide. Those faces that condemned him. Was this why everything now was going to hell in a hand basket? Despite the projected consequences Epyon had drawn from him he had been unable to kill the one woman who had been a friend to him. //Friend?// More than a friend. The word itself, friend, just did not describe everything that she had meant to him. Either then or now. Friend was so inadequate. He loved her. He loved her but not in the way she demanded he love her and with Lucrezia it had always been all or nothing. When she had stood in his path and he had known he would be unable to carry out the vision that he and Epyon combined had determined to be the best course to the peace, he had broken the link with the machine. Out of the sea of possibility he had determined four options that had near identical conclusions echoing throughout time and from which he could safely devise the one pathway to that Peace that would avoid the Generation Wars. Epyon had demanded he chose the path that began with her death. //I was a coward.// He had refused though he was still uncertain why. He simply had been unable to take that step. //You wanted her to die, you red bastard … but why? I could have brushed her aside, gotten around her, thrown her far enough out of the confrontation zone that she would not feature in the equation at all but … You demanded that she die. That I kill her. Why? I broke your control at that point … I broke the stream of possibility and probability and came very close to destroying the chance to avoid the wars to come. It was so close and it was because something within me demanded I go against your evaluation of those possibilities. I could so easily have cast us directly into the Generation Wars. I did not kill her, I could not and I could feel … such anger within you. Such raging fury but I think there was … resignation? Is that the right word for what I felt? I think I felt you resign yourself to my choice. I tried later to talk with you about it, to demand answers for why you chose her death as the better course but I never did manage to get out of you why you intended she die.// He would never know the why of it. Epyon was gone in the fires of Libra though sometimes it seemed that there was an echo of a deep voice that seemed to come from the very bowels of the Earth. So deep and so profound it would echo through his dreams. The bowels of the Earth? Or should that be from the heights of the Heavens? //Ah, no. God. I’m starting to think of it along the lines of a God. It had a big enough ego, I suppose but … I can’t do this. I just want it all to stop. There was supposed to be peace after the Libra. There was supposed to be peace across the Earth Sphere and no descent into the wars that would take generation after generation of fragile human life into oblivion. For me … For me there was supposed to be Peace too. The peace of an ending to it all. An end to the memories, an end of the visions and instead there is this. Epyon lied. There is no ending to this horror. How can there be an end while I see these things? Awake or asleep it makes no difference. The visions come. Why? I am so tired of trying to see my way clear of this mess.// Was his only escape death? He had asked for such to end it and Epyon had lied, giving him over to this hell that killed those around him. His death would have ensured that these people who had the misfortune to be on Mars with him would have continued with their lives, all unknowing of the hell that followed Milliardo Peacecraft around. Should he die now? He could not take that road. Such hope was the past and he must deal with living again. For better or worse. He must never forget that from the past and his failures there had also come hope. From the horror of the Libra had birthed a future that had resulted in the sweet scented warmth of two small, warm bodies and for them, his hope, he would do the unthinkable. Such fragile and helpless things babies were. Such innocence deserved a chance at life. He would go on and he would endure whatever was demanded of him and he would carve out a future for them that did not include the slavery he had glimpsed in vision. Not even slavery that surrounded them with gilded halls. Slavery in its many forms was still slavery. //I hate this. I hate this waiting for the right moment for things to fall into place. I don’t even know if I’m following the road to disaster or salvation. Just once I would love to dare to take a spontaneous decision, to do something without thinking it through to a conclusion that might follow hundreds of blood drenched years into the future. Just a few seconds of spontaneity would be heaven in which I could care only to scratch an itch and not have it rebound back on those around me.// If only. What if. They were words he had come to hate with a passion for they defined his existence as no other words could. Particularly the ‘What If’. //What if I do this? What if I permit him to do that? What if the five hundred and seventy fifth ant born today gets stepped on by the child of a diplomat who is allergic to the bite of its brethren and whose father misses a meeting where he would have voted to grant relief funds to starving orphans of L2 because he attended her sick bed and one of the orphans died who should have grown up to be a scientist who would discover the cure for … God … If there is a God up there, can you not take away this horror? Can you not give me release? I’m a selfish bastard. I could make it so much better for so many people and here I sit screaming at the unfairness of it all. Wailing like a deprived child. I’m such a coward.// His fingers curled into fists, clenched tight and then forced slowly open. No man should have the curse that haunted him. Was it any wonder that he was not sane? He knew he was mentally warped but he was what he was and there was nothing he could do to change the way of it. He knew. He had tried. // No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, people die. Do I sit on my ass and do nothing? I … can’t. No matter how hard I try to make it better, even just a little better, someone always pays a price. A price that at worst results in death for them or for their family. At best it seems to result in a disaster for someone who at the catalyst moment in time does not even know them … but will in some future time. Or know a descendent or … // Just thinking about it was too much. He sat there, watching that door, this man who seemed to be promising him some sort of hope. Some means of dealing with this horror he had to live with. Giles. Haydon Giles. Did he offer hope of salvation or continuing despair? Did he dare to hope that there was help for him? The only help he wanted was … "Can your Training Masters take away this thing … this Gift … that you consider so great a thing?" He heard Giles suck in a breath and cursed his wayward tongue. He had not meant to voice that query though now that it was spoken he desperately wanted an answer. In a moment of unthinking weakness he had voiced the question and even to his own hearing it sounded faintly suicidal. Desperate. Now the man would watch him like a hawk in fear of him deliberately doing something that would end the matter with his death. Suicide administered by his own hand or by throwing himself into a hopeless fight was still suicide. Giles could not know him well enough to know that that was not going to happen. His moment of seeking suicide had ended when he had survived the Libra. No blaze of glory for him. Ever. He had already decided that he must live. For his children he would endure the unendurable. For his children he would give everything that lay within him to secure a future and he would even front these mysterious men and women Giles spoke of with such reverence and gratitude. He simply could not see how these Training Masters could assist him to live with the horror of it all without resentment or humiliation on his part. He had sensed neither of these emotions in Giles when he had spoken of them prying into every facet of his life but Giles did not hide the secrets that he did. Giles had not lived the life he had lived. How could he expect anyone to understand what it was like? He would not wish it on anyone. No one could understand what it was to feel, to see the ripples of event echoing throughout time. How could he describe what it was like to witness the repercussions of seeming innocuous events rebounding off of each other repeatedly and with each touch having more and more of an effect the further ahead you looked. Touch rebounded off of touch which rebounded again and again and the patterns interlocked, changed, wove tighter and tighter weaves until everything was a seething mass of possibilities. Never ending, interlocking and in the long term, unavoidable. He hated the hopelessness of the visions and he wanted it to stop. No man or woman should know so much of the future that they feared to draw a breath for terror of disturbing the ripples in a pond that was event echoing through time. "They would not try to. That would be the last thing they would want to do, for any type of talent you might possibly conceive. Zechs, killing this vision of yours won’t cure it. Trying to kill something that is so much a part of you would succeed only in warping who you were meant to be." He had expected Giles to say something as meaningful as that. Meaningful? Did he not mean meaningless? Giles could not see how the interlocking ripples that frightened him and made him want to crawl into a dark safe place … which in itself would cast yet another series of ripple within the dark possibilities. Endless. The most intricate of Celtic Knots was childishly simple in comparison. "Meant to be? You speak of fate, Giles. Fate?" He could not keep the bitterness from dripping from the word. "If you had seen half of what I have seen you would not mention fate." That broad hand rested lightly on his shoulder fleetingly, as though he was well aware of how touch at this time was both craved and avoided. He wanted to be touched, comforted but this was not the time … and this man, friend that he was proving to be, was not the one to offer that comfort. He did not know who the one was who could make him forget, even for an instant, all of the horror. "Talk to them, Zechs. That is all that I can offer but it’s a genuine offer. You have to tell them everything. Everything." Gentle emphasis on that word. "Don’t hold anything back of what you saw, or heard and felt. What you suspected … Everything that you can think of, no matter how inconsequential it seems should be told to them. They will not ask for explanations, for why you did what you did. That is not what they will need to know to make a difference. To help you they need to know it all without edits or frills. No trying to avoid the issue, no embellishments, no evasions. Just the simple truth. All of it. I know its easy to say that and not so easy to tell … and I guess for you after what you have been through that it will be harder than I can possibly hope to imagine but … Zechs, if they are to help they need to know and even you can’t deny that you need help." "I don’t want to remember. I want to forget it all ever happened. I think I need to forget or I will go hopelessly insane." A whisper filled with the longing for the peace only lost innocence could bring. He could never again be innocent. "Will forgetting make it go away?" Why did he have to ask that question above all others? The one horrible question that damned him for an eternity of possibilities. That demanded he be an adult and face his mistakes, his terrors and his despair. Only children were innocents and he had not been a child since the day he had watched his parents killed and his country fall. It had been a very long time since he had been innocent. "No. Nothing but death will give me that kind of relief and I’m not ready to die." Giles would not believe that, of course. Giles would think him one small step from ending his torture not understanding that he understood such was not to be his release. It was too easy. He had too much to pay for to take the easy solution. No, he had to atone and in that atoning he must provide his children with the kind of freedom he had never known. They should not be bound in chains of blood. "You can be helped. It is possible to help you gain some control over the visions. You can be helped to understand what these visions are. With luck and no doubt a great deal of effort it may be possible to develop some understanding of how they work and above all how to deal with the visions when they come and even make them work for you." It would be so easy to descend into madly hysterical laughter but there was danger beyond that door that he really did not wish to attract before he had no other option. At least the fear of discovery could serve to keep him sane. A bout of hysteria might be the final nudge to total insanity. "They might teach me what I can do with it? I know what I can do with it, Giles. I know only too well. Look around you. This entire blood soaked mess is born of the Libra incident. This is what I can do with the visions but even with the best of intentions you can be damned for an eternity of hell. Especially with the best intentions." "Are you a religious man?" Zechs closed his eyes against the sight of the room, not daring to look at the man whose eyes he could feel on him. He dared not look, fearing what he might see in those eyes. This man knew more of him than those few people who could claim to have known him for years. Even Lucrezia did not know him as this man now did. He offered hope that there were others who would seek to understand. In their company he might not seem so alone even though he knew they could not truly learn to control the vagaries of future options. There was no force that could hold sway over that floodtide. He knew that from experience. "I was taught to believe but … That was so long ago, Giles. The world has changed. I have changed. I don’t know what I am or what I should be or what I could be, might have been or will be one day. I see things that I don’t know will happen but must be accounted in the design else they change it and if they do present change are those changes for the best or are they to be avoided at all costs. I have the seeing of these possibilities but I have no Epyon. I have the Sight but just enough to torment me with the knowledge that I might make a difference, never enough to know that if I effect change it is for the best and not for the worst possible event in the future that may see us gray haired or so much dust before it eventuates. I don’t see possibilities that affect the here and now very well, Giles. What I see now and have seen in the past are the possibilities that have effects not so much for this generation but for the future generations. It may reflect for the better or worst in one hundred, two hundred even a thousand years in the future. Provided I can evaluate information I can keep the chain of event working until I run out of links and the data to feed them. Epyon enabled me to run those links for hundreds of years and now I am … consigned to my own head. To what I alone can see. I hate that machine with a passion but I miss it. It was an extension of what is within me." He sighed, pressing a hand to his eyes before allowing it to fall back to the bed. "That does not even begin to describe what it is that I see." "Shit." A whisper, soft and infused with a kind of horrified awe. "That … is different to the clairvoyance I am accustomed to." "I can’t do that now. That projection of event spanning generations of mankind. I still have the dreams, see the possibilities but never in the numbers or with the clarity that the Epyon system provided. With Epyon’s …" He sought out the appropriate words but could not settle on how best to describe the bonding he had experienced with the machine. "I suppose it might be called a focus? With that link to the machine it was possible to keep a chain of events moving, growing, evolving. I don’t have Epyon anymore. I can’t see that far. Without it I … make mistakes." "We all make mistakes." A sigh and a light touch to clenched fingers. "Can you explain to me exactly what it was? What the Epyon was?" Blue eyes flashed with a pain that was at once deep and intensely private before closing against the sight of the world and against any accusation that might come. //I am such a coward.// "Can I tell you what Epyon was? I … I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It was … like nothing else I have encountered … No. No, that is not entirely true." His voice was low, steady and reassuring. There was no accusation there, no judgment. "Before I left Station One Raydon ensured that I was briefed on you. I wondered why but I learned before I arrived on Mars that every agent sent out into the Earth Sphere who is Gifted receives the same briefing. He did not tell me that you were Gifted though I should have suspected such was the case considering the pains he took to give me the briefing. I compared notes with my partner and between us we knew a reasonable amount of information about your career. Raydon saw to it that Chris was briefed on your past before he joined me. From what you have said I am guessing that you are referring to that other operating system that was used toward the end of the war. The Zero system. I presume it was something like Epyon?" He dared to raise his head and study the man for a long moment before he could stand it no longer. No accusation in that look, no damning glare for lives lost in the past or this present. He was not used to having people look at him without accusation in their eyes. He turned his gaze back to the door, back to safe neutrality. Back to waiting for that featureless panel to burst open and then he would be face to face with men who would be accusing him. Face to face with men too much like himself. Face to face with men who slaughtered his friends and thought nothing of destroying the only place he had had to call home for so long. Men who were indeed like him. Killers. "No. No, Epyon was not like Zero. Zero was a calculation device. Input data would be processed and determined valuations converted to options which would then be made available to the pilot. Zero was a tactical computation device geared to battle situations. One thing I am certain of is that Epyon was not that." He raised his hands to stare at them seeing the blood that no one else could see and let them return, lifeless to the bed. "No, not Zero. The nearest I think I could come to describing the Epyon system would be to say that it was Treize on a grander scale." Giles blinked, confused. "I beg your pardon?" He dared to look but he met only confusion, not accusation. "I told you, Giles. Treize was what you call Gifted. He was in many ways comparable to a computer. He was meticulous with details, no information was ever considered inappropriate to be included in his planning. The complexities of the computations, the plans he would devise would leave you breathless if you could hope to follow the convoluted turns. If you input sufficient data into him he would evaluate a solution to every problem presented to him. In some respects Epyon was like that. The interlocking possibilities were data stream probabilities and I was a part of the system. I was an important part of the system. When I used the Epyon system it was a merging of human consciousness … my own … with something that was not human, but was a …" He searched desperately for some word to describe what it was he knew in his bones and was far from surprised when he could not find the words he needed. He just did not have the vocabulary. Could these Training Masters teach him an entirely new language? "In some ways Epyon was a calculation device but that does not in any way begin to describe what it actually was. What it could do. When I was a part of the merge with the system I could see a stream of projected event that was similar to what I now see but it was so much more powerful, clearer and far more refined, more defined than I can hope to achieve now." "Where did this stream of projected event come from?" "From me." He hated to even voice this much. It felt threatening as though there were always ears to hear and then there would be accusing fingers and descent into insanity. "Somehow Epyon could reach deep within me and draw it all from that place inside of me. I would be pushed down. It felt that I was literally being pushed down into the … possibilities. The visions. I would be there, conscious of it all and after the first few occasions I could even manage to manipulate some of the streams of possibilities. Epyon would guide me. He … It was teaching me. I would see it all, the good and the bad, the happy and the … There was always death. We are born only to die." He shuddered and pulled himself back from the brink of threatening vision. He could feel it stirring within him once more, feel it creeping through his blood, thundering in his temples and he could not afford to permit it to overtake him. "I would know that I had to choose a path for everyone to walk. Everyone. If I chose to turned my back, if I walked away and refused to choose … The cost was too high." "Do you want to tell me about the Generation Wars? I believe that is what you called it." He shuddered. He could so easily trust that quiet voice. Tell him the horror. Describe the destruction, the devastation … the death. He had never wanted to tell anyone before but if he gave in to that urge to talk … There would be two haunted by the visions instead of one and he could not do that to a man he so desperately wanted to call friend. "I think … I think we are safe from that. I hope." "Because of Libra?" "Because of the events that surrounded the Libra. That was the focus point. The fortress itself. The birth of the future for mankind was the battle that surrounded Libra. From that point the futures exploded into so many possibilities. It could have birthed so many things I can not begin to describe to you and I still don’t know if what I saw, if what I chose, was the best solution." Giles sighed and shifted in his seat. "That is twice I have asked you about the Generation Wars and twice you have avoided answering me. Yes, you have answered but you answered me with an evasion. Zechs, you can’t keep doing that. It will prey on you, haunting you until you go down into a screaming heap. You are only human and humans have to share. We are not and have never been solitary creatures. You will have to talk about it eventually if only to give closure to the incident for you. I know I’m not the best person to talk to but you are going to have to let it out and I think you will talk better to one of the Gifted. If not to me … and I am offering my ear.. then maybe you could find what you need in Raydon. He has a good ear and he does not mind it being bent. Or perhaps one of the Training Masters would be even better. It does not matter who so long as it is someone. You have to share the load and lighten the burden on yourself. We who are Gifted don’t leave one of our brothers or sisters crawling in the dirt because there is a weight on their backs no one man is capable of carrying. We share the load." Did he know what it was he was offering? Could Giles ever understand the burden imposed on him by Epyon and his unending data streams? "I don’t know if I can share what I have seen. What I did and why I chose to do it. I’ve tried to bury it for years. I don’t know if I can … unearth it." a whisper. "The weight of it grows a little more with each passing year, doesn’t it? I know, Zechs. I’ve been there. The burden gets heavier and heavier and eventually you have to break. It’s inevitable. Sharing the load works." A slow, deep breath, a sigh that seemed to carry overtones that he was sure Giles would have no difficulty in reading. Fear, unease and maybe, just possibly if he was lucky the man might detect that hint of hope he could not quite squash. When was the last time he had found himself wanting to talk to anyone about the past? He had thought he had wanted to forget. Now he was not so sure. "I’m not sure I can find the words necessary to tell anyone what I have seen." "There are only so many words in the English language and many ways to use them. We’ll find the right words." Giles lightly touched the man’s bandaged wrist, careful of the pressure he applied to the burn. Enough to reassure, not enough to offer pain. "If necessary we will even invent new words until we have just the right words needed. You are not alone. I can’t stress that enough. When you are one of the Gifted you learn that you are not alone and that we will not leave you to face anything alone. We don’t abandon our brothers. We give them a hand up and we stand there and hold them up until they can stand on their own two feet and thumb their nose at those who pulled them down. When you hit bottom, Zechs, there is only one way left to go." t.b.c.
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