Rated: G Pair: just Zechs Warning: This takes place shortly after the end of the series, before EW. If the title rings a bell, there's also a brief ref from Heero's Ep Zero (but Heero does not make an appearance). Angst, sap, ghosts, supernatural, and weirdness.
Note: For the beat_of_destiny community on LJ, theme "always faithful" for the character Zechs Merquise.
Summary: Zechs has a peculiar conversation with a ghost.
He stood before a church, but he did not know how he got there. He had been drifting again. He'd been doing it ever since those mercenaries pulled him from the wreckage of Epyon--some days here, some days there, some days nowhere at all. It was how things came to pass when you were lost within your own mind. He couldn't even remember if he was in space or on Earth. It was hard to tell. The sky simulations in the space colonies were always getting better.
Maybe he was dreaming.
Drifting. If that is what he should call it. It felt more like dying extremely slowly. Like living, then. Living again, when he was supposed to be dead. He wanted to die. He should have died a very long time ago. Why did he always live?
He stared at the door of the church and waited. He didn't know what he was waiting for, but he knew that something was supposed to happen. Churches, temples, monasteries... weren't they supposed to be places of God? Gods? Goddesses? If there is such a thing, or many things, or even something, he wanted to ask it why. After all this time and all these years and every little hell that he'd gone through, he felt he deserved to know why. No one, not even Epyon or Zero, had ever explained it to him.
He had earned it. He did.
He looked up and stared at the sky. It felt very real. The breeze, the birds, and that endless blue poison, luring war torn men into space to fight for a cause they didn't even believe in simply because there was nothing better to do at the time. Fighting for the colonies. What a joke. He didn't know anything about the colonies. He was Earth-born, he'd never been to a colony a day in his life, except for less than a year ago... or is two, now? Three?
He was drifting. It was hard to keep track of time when you drifted.
He sat down on the steps before the church and rested his arms on his knees, his hair spilled over his shoulder like a river of milk as he hid his eyes, staring down at nothing. His clothes were worn, his body was tired, and his eyes--if you caught them--were terribly lost. People glanced and gave him sad smiles, and others stared, thinking they recognized him just before shaking their heads--for surely he was dead--and still others passed by without a care in the world, as if he didn't even exist, as if he did not waste his entire life protecting them and saving them and fighting for them so that they wouldn't have to worry and suffer what he had suffered for far too long. His bones ached. His soul felt delayed, like a bullet that misfired from its chamber.
He was losing things, sitting like this. There were things that he was forgetting. Important things. People. He put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. He was tired. He didn't care. They were things he'd rather forget.
And then a little voice came from his left. "I remember you," it said. It sounded like a little girl. He looked up and saw her standing there. About six. Maybe seven, but no more than that. She was plump, dimpled, blue-eyed, yellow-haired and extremely cute. Not that Zechs would take any time to notice that, but somewhere, an ancient part of him thought it was important.
He lifted an eyebrow and stared at her. "Excuse me?"
The little girl smiled and pointed at him. "I know you," she said again. But he'd never seen her before in his life. He noticed vaguely that she was wearing a nice white dress that brought out her pale eyes and complimented her hair in a way that seemed extremely church-going. She was wearing a large white bonnet. Maybe she was going to this church, for a service. But where was her mother? Her father?
She smiled then, and it made him feel warm for reasons he didn't understand. "Are you lost?" What a strange thing to ask.
"I've been lost for too many years." It was spoken without effort.
She smiled with sympathy. "That's very sad. I met another boy who was lost once. He was sad too. I gave him a flower. He's still sad, because... bad things happened... but he'll be better now. He finally understands." Her eyes twinkled as she looked around them, searching, and then bent suddenly when she spotted a single yellow flower growing between the cracks of sidewalk. Zechs blinked because he hadn't noticed it before, and she picked the stem gently and handed it out to him. "Here. It will make you happy again."
He stared at the flower warily. "It will?"
She tilted her head, regarding him curiously. "Eventually," she said, forcing the stem into his hand. He stared at it. "There will pain at first, but there always is. That is the way. You'll see." There was a pause. "I like you. And I like that boy, too. I like all of you, really, but you're all so sad and you deserve to be happy. She says she would like it if you were happy now, after everything."
"She?"
The little girl laughed lightly and pointed up at the sky. "You're mother, silly. She watches you. She really likes you."
"What?" He looked up at the sky and then quickly back down again, but then the girl was suddenly gone, as if she never existed. He looked up and down the street, behind the stairs, around the corner, but she had vanished. There was no one.
He sat back down on the stairs and studied the flower he was almost surprised to find himself still holding onto. It was just a simple, yellow flower. And yet... he smiled. It made him feel better.
He glanced up at the church and the steeple hanging so high overhead, and his smile grew to a small grin. The Earth, his father had told him once, is always faithful to those that appreciate her. He wondered if the same was true about the colonies.
Maybe he'd just met the heart of space? Zechs Merquise knew a ghost when he met one.
He stood up, and still holding the flower, he made his way back to the shuttleport. There were things he had to do.