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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 Date: 1st March AC 198 Time: 13:53 MST [Mars Standard Time] Zechs Ice blue eyes watched from the cover of deep shadows as the engineer moved through the mobile suit bay. In any emergency that arose it was Jeremy Carver's job to ensure all equipment was safely stowed and secured. The inspection of the bay equipment was almost done and then Jeremy would report that the bays were secured. Zechs was patient. So far no unexpected random elements had entered into the equation he must work from. It was still very possible that he could work this so that few people, friends or enemies, died. He could still keep the children safe. He still had a chance to keep Lucrezia alive. Stubborn, foolish woman. He had so tried to make her see. He had tried to help her to understand that he had plans that could keep people alive and unhurt. She had refused to listen to what he had told her. He could not blame her, though, it was so far fetched and so... odd. Yet, because he could not explain adequately or purely from her stubborn refusal to listen, already disaster had struck. Jenny. Jenny was the first to pay in the long term. No. No, he could not say that and be honest. It was not Jenny who was the first to pay the price for this battle that must now be waged on Mars. In truth the first to pay would be the, as yet, unknowing wife and son of the first man Lu had killed. Without having seen the body or contacted anyone he knew that the man had died from a broken neck. He would need to check, to be certain it was as he had seen, but the up shot was simply that he was dead. His family would get a pension from the ESUN, after this was all settled, but that meant nothing. Nothing. The child would grow up without a father to guide and love him and because of that the child's life would be very different to how it could have been. Should have been. In a few years, depending on the outcome of certain circumstances, that child's mother would become attracted to a man who would, in time, become a wife and child abuser. On a certain day, in a certain place, in front of her son, she would be beaten to death. The boy... Zechs shuddered, forcing control. No. He could not afford the distraction. Not now. He could not afford to pursue the fate of the child or the mother. If he did it all would be worse. There would be other wives and children who must pay a price for what happened here in the next few hours. He would do what he could for that mans family when he had dealt with the safety of his own children and brought matters under control. The heaviness of vision still hung over him and it would be too easy to descend into possibilities of events that might or might not happen. He had to clear his mind, not allow himself to become enmeshed in the web of distraction and possible events. Now he had to concentrate on the safest path he had found in the multi visions he had already experienced and pray that he did not become confused and lose the tracks of the best of the possible options he had gleaned. It was so hard without the filter and generator that Epyon had been. It was so hard to keep his focus. Hard to stop the distractions that off shoot visions caused. The hardest of all to do, though, was to choose that one course that led to the best options for everyone who played a major roll in this event. If he chose wrong, then he chanced countless deaths and the chance that the cycle of war would be sparked again. The engineering bay was deserted, sometime in his musings Jeremy had completed his inspection and moved on to his next duty. He waited, just that little bit longer, to be certain that the feel of the vision matched the reality around him and then he slipped into the air vent. They were up there, he knew. In the air vents. Waiting. Hunting. It would not go the way they intended. He was determined to change the course they were spiraling into. To successfully alter the course toward war he had to become the hunter and those who thought themselves to be the hunters would become the hunted. He had raided the stash in this bay where he kept some of the equipment that he felt he would need for this time, all the while acknowledging that he had to get to the other cache's where he had secreted items over the last months. He had the basics, for now, that should see his freedom preserved and he just needed to gain access to the other caches when the time was right. While he prepared himself he had to hope that Lucrezia Noin would hold her actions. She had to control her anger or else all his carefully laid plans would crumble into ruin and there was no hope of saving anyone from the long term repercussions. It all hinged on Noin. He did not doubt that she was the focus for this horror they now experienced. Mars had been free of the blood that stained the hands of man as a race. Until now. Free of blood shed in anger until Lucrezia had killed. The first war had come to Mars. A small war, yes, that was true. Personal, but it was still war. Nor would it likely be the last conflict to bloody Martian soil. If he failed to make something of this fiasco then they would come again and again until they finally achieved what they wanted. The outcome of this he could not decide alone. To his despair he was not the focus, just the instrument, the comb if you would, to comb out the knots of entanglement. By carefully examining each of the visions he could remember over the months, and adding in the vague unease he would wake with before he could remember the dreams, he had managed to determine that it was not him but Lucrezia, that stubborn, foolish, wonderful woman who was the focus. The key. It was her decisions, not his, that drove this situation to a conclusion. He could only work around the decisions she made, hoping to control some of the damage. Safe, she had said. She wanted her children to be safe. That was her directive. The safety of the children. So, then, why would she not allow him to work to ensure their safety? What did she call safe? What was her view on safe for their babies? She had not listened. It seemed to him that she had not even tried to understand what he had told her. To his despair he feared she would understand only when it was too late. Must it always be that way? For the human race understanding always seemed to come only when the death toll mounted. Why should it be that at the moment of death it always seemed clear, as though divine wisdom was bestowed in that last instant of life. //I have found that there are thirty seven ways for you to die today, Lu. Please don't entertain any of them. Please.// He paused to take his bearings in the shaft. The whisper of the exhaust fans was fading, replaced by the soft humming of the generators. Good. He was on the right path. He had had plenty of opportunities to explore the ventilation systems in the time he had been on Mars. A left turn up ahead and then out of the duct system to allow the hunters ahead of him and coming towards him to pass. Yes, this felt right. This path avoided unnecessary deaths. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maintenance Room 14:25 Zechs Crux point approaching. He could feel it. Just like before. Just like on the Libra. He was not likely to forget in a hurry what that crawling, painful sensation felt like. An event change of importance. He had made the choice then, on the Libra. He had decided that it would be he who destroyed the Libra and paid the ultimate price with their life. It had been he who decided that Heero Yuy had more right to life than he had. He had been only too willing to give himself over to the total blackness of death. Death, he had presumed, was to be his release from the horrors his life had been filled with since he turned six years of age. Death, but no. In the end it had not been death, that black void he had seen so many times in the possible outcomes of the destruction of the Libra. Not that. Instead, it had been a blankness. Blank. Yes, the visions had ended at the crux point, the destruction of Libra. At that point, if Yuy had been the one to destroyed Libra by blowing the core, the remnants would have fallen over the earth and still caused the devastation and winter that would have made the planet unlivable for centuries. If he blew the core, then he sensed life beyond, for the people of the Earth. Life and the promise of generations of lasting peace. In the end, that was what it had all been for. He had planned with Epyon the means by which to bring about the right conditions for that crux point to exist. Yuy had had to make his choice to self detonate and then he had had to take Yuy's place, leaving Yuy to take out the remnants of Libra. The blank nothingness he had seen for himself had not been the welcome release of death, as he had assumed. Death, he had thought. His very welcome escape from a life that had been intolerable pain and sorrow for so long, it had even begun to hurt to breathe. A clean slate. In his passing the people would go on. Mankind would move on and the peace the visions had promised would become reality. The wars of his visions only the faded past possibilities he had chanced all to end. No one need know the heartache and pain of the decisions he had to make. The world would look forward to peace and prosperity and the chance to grow out of the mentality that had for so long produced war. It had been worth the hurt and the sorrow. It had been worth blackening the Peacecraft name to ensure that all the wars; the millions of people who would die in the next three hundred year span of continuing war, would end. No great wars for them to send their children to fight. He had been resigned to it, knowing in his heart that Relena would be able to redeem the Peacecraft name. It had been worth it. So much war. So much devastation. So many lives broken. It had been worth the price since so few had died. Oh, they said so many had died, but none of them saw what he had seen. None of them saw the unending dance of death and destruction that would be mankind's legacy to future generations. No one saw that the price they had paid during the One Year War was paid back to them, in the generations who lived without war taking their children. No one but him. He did not understand why he saw it, but he had learned it was not delusional fantasy. No, it was horrifyingly, hideously real. He had, in the end, determined to carry the responsibility of seeing that the Generation Wars did not happen. No one would understand. He had understood that his name would be anathema. He had known it. He had seen it in the visions. In the end, since no one had loved him or understood him, what did it matter? Not if the wars were stopped. Any price to himself was worth that. Yuy had had to live. He had sensed that at the moment Wing Zero had tried to blow the core and had had no ammunition left to do it. He had understood that Yuy was needed for the future. How, exactly, he had not known then, and even now he was still uncertain. He had not seen why it was so important. The Sight had not been made clear then, or even now, but Yuy now started to feature more and more in the episodes of vision. He had been faced with the blankness as his own future and he had presumed it to be the void of death, but he had been wrong. So wrong. He had survived. His survival led to this. He could not make the crux decisions this time. That was not his place. He just had to carry through as best he could, and keep the peace in effect. He had paid too high a price in the lives of others for the wars to be permitted to return. Peace had to be maintained. To keep the peace he had to have clear direction, and to get that Lucrezia Noin had to make the decisions. //Lucrezia. Tell me what you really want. I can't do anything until you do, accept clean up the mess you make. Decide. Tell me.// He needed the key event to happen, so that he could take the final actions and push for the future that would best be of benefit. Lucrezia had to decide what must happen here on Mars. Yuy was alive and active on Earth. That much had worked out from his miss reading of the end of Epyon. Yuy was safe and would play his part at need in whatever was to come. The blankness had not worked out as his death, but a year and more of no visions, while his body and some part of his mind had healed. During that time he had heard rumors of what was now being termed the Barton Incursion. He had not seen that in his visions, nor had he seen any hint of his savior. He knew that he was not infallible. He knew that he could be wrong. There had been no Sight of that brief, bitter war. No visions at all since the Libra's end. Yet during the gestation of his children the visions had made a gradual return, first as disturbing feelings, half remembered from dreams he could not recall. Feelings of foreboding and moments of wrongness leading to this point in time. There was still that suggestion of the wars. Still the chance that the price he already had paid might not be enough. He might still have to pay a further price to keep the peace. //I am so tired of paying the price. I am sure I was meant to die. What else could that darkness, that blank in the Sight have been? What did I miss that has led to this? What possibility; what option did I miss that saw me survive? I do so want to return to Earth. To walk along the shore at Sanc, on that little beach where mama used to take me. Never again. Only in my memories can I ever do that. You're a fading memory, mother. Fading more and more. I haven't been able to remember the sound of your voice for years. I suppose my memories are only a shadow vision of better times. It would not be the same any way, to go back and walk along the shore without you there. Still, it would have been nice to take my children for a walk along that beach. To tell them about you and father. I've never seen it in a vision. I've never seen myself return to Earth, so I know that it never will happen. None of the visions showed a return to Earth. Mama. I'm sorry for being a disappointment to you. But I gave them Relena. Forgive me.// He had not seen himself walk upon Earth feature in his visions since the dreams had returned. He had witnessed possibilities that would occur on Earth if the circumstances were right. He had even chosen to act and interfere in some of those events, too. Something was coming. He could feel it. Something he did not understand. Something that he felt the visions were reacting to, but not revealing to him. It left him feeling alone and adrift. How was he supposed to deal with whatever it was that was threatening if he had no idea what nature it would take? Good? Bad? He had no idea. It was hovering there, somewhere beyond his sight; somewhere beyond his ability to reach. It told him clearly enough that circumstances must not be right to bring it forward into the sphere of his limited abilities. //Epyon, I miss you. I hate you, but I miss you. What you woke in me... Treize, did you know what that beast would wake in me? What it would do to me? I have had no life since that beast changed my perceptions of reality. Not that I had a life beyond war and revenge even then. There's another blank coming. I can't read what it is. It's a darkness that feels similar to what I saw before and assumed was my death. I don't know enough. I don't know of anyone I could see to help me control this. Not true. There is maybe someone who could help me... but... No. I will not. I see a merging in the future. I think it is a merge. It feels similar to the merging of possibilities that Epyon sorted for me. I have no focus. Epyon was like a lens, funneling and clarifying the visions. It offered me a clarity I lack now. Epyon offered me a strength to survive the horrors I saw. I don't have his strength to lean on any more. You were alive, in a strange way, Epyon. The Gundam pilots alone might understand that. Ah, God. I don't want to see war anymore. I have had my fill of seeing mutilation. Of battle fields and massacres and solitary deaths where people die and know that they are alone; no one caring for the lives lived and lost. Why must it be war? Why must it always be war that I see? Why can't I see life for a change? Hell, it would be a novelty to see a flower in a field, without seeing that field torn apart by conflict, bodies watering the few surviving seeds with blood. Could I not just see a pretty flower wave in a breeze?// Zechs shook his head, resting against the wall of the maintenance room. He had to stop that. He had to stop looking back at what was, and what might have been if he had chosen a different course. He had to stick to the path he had gleaned through the web work of possibility. It would all come to a head soon. There were more than thirty ways for Noin to die today. So many ways for her to die, and three possible outcomes. Only three. Managing how events were to progressed to one of those three was the trick. He wanted one event to come about. He wanted Noin alive, and peace restored at the dome. He had to do what he could to see the better result. If it was at all possible. Blue eyes flicked to the door. The maintenance room was in the medical center, a storage room for cleaning tools, blankets, bandages and other items safe to store here. He had only to walk out of that door and go five doors down and he would find Noin. He knew where she was, but too go to her now was a mistake. First he had to wait. He flicked a glance up at the vent hatch on the wall to his left. Soon the two who prowled there, once just a little way ahead of him when he had crawled through the vent, would come back this way. If he did not deal with them now, then one of them would kill Noin. It was not going to be allowed to happen. Gathering his thoughts before they could wander and chance plunging him into depression or worse, another round of visions, he glanced around, noting the positioning of the shelves and the placement of cartons by the back wall. A little judicious movement of the local furnishings to cover up his retrieval of goods from the cache he had had here, and he would also have his hiding place from which to strike at them. The hunters would be along soon and he had to be ready to greet them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time: 14:53 Zechs He drew a deep, steadying breath, checking that his equipment was in place. The short metal pipes he had chosen so carefully rested on the stacked cartons, in the small nook he had fashioned. A slit allowed him clear sight of the space directly under the vent hatch and to the door opposite it. He probed quickly in a pocket and crouched, ready, one hand curled around each pipe. He tilted his head slightly, frowning at the sounds issuing from the vent. He could hear them if he concentrated hard enough. Small sounds that would normally be lost under the constant noise of the air conditioning fans. In only a few more feet they would reach the hatch. Did they think people were deaf? They seemed to be making an incredible amount of noise in these last few seconds. Still, he admitted, sound did resonate more in the maintenance room, and he was so keyed that a pin dropped would sound like a thunderclap to him. The hatch popped, was caught before it could slam into the wall beside the vent and the first of the men dropped feet first through the hatch, weapon raised at the ready before his feet even hit the ground. A harsh glare and he peered around in the dim glow of the stand by lights. "Clear." The second agent dropped through the hatch, pausing to peer into the dim recesses of the small room. Zechs slowly picked up the first of the pipes, the second following the first up to hold near his mouth as the man grunted softly and relaxed. He aimed carefully, a puff a quick, sharp breath into the pipe and the second of the ESUN agents slapped reflexively at the back of his neck. "What the..." "Sam?" the first to enter the room spun at the startled gasp in time to receive the sharp sting himself, a pin prick at the base of his neck. "Hey. What was that?" Sam peered blearily at his companion and shook his head, his legs failing him and sliding quickly down a shelf unit at his side. "God. I don't... feel... so..." "Damn." The first staggered, a whisper as vision blurred and his arms slapped useless against his side. His mind fogged as his legs gave way and he never even saw the blonde leave his safe nook and approach. "Good night, gentlemen. May you have pleasant dreams." //Twenty six ways to die, Lucrezian. That's progress.// ~ * ~
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