"Reflections"
A dissertation on the events of December twenty-fourth in the year After Colony one hundred ninety-five, as seen through the eyes of one who lived them.
By RavenTears
"This is no time to be fighting! It's too dangerous to stay on this battleship."
She couldn't really want a fight, could she? The Libra was on a collision course with Earth - there was no time for her petty rivalry if she wanted to live through this. But then, his mind told him, the same way he had known to find her in this room, he knew that she wanted this battle. But the road goes both ways, he reminded himself; and she had known to draw her gun and await his appearance.
"Quatre Raberba Winner," she recited slowly. "I knew it was you. You are by far the most misguided one of all the Gundam pilots." The gun gleamed with the reflection of an unseen light. Quatre's tense body loosened slightly when she finally lowered the weapon.
"No, Dorothy. You are the misguided one. The Libra is going to crash! Evacuate with the others." At that, she smirked.
"Who said I ever had any intention of surviving this?" With a nonchalance that belied her actions, she tossed the gun into the low gravity, letting it hang queerly in the heavy, recycled air. But Quatre's eyes never left her face. Casually, she changed the subject. "Your every move has followed my conjectures to the letter. Really, Quatre, you're all so predictable. I had hoped you Gundam pilots would be enough of a wild card to throw my forecasts askant."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"You should be." The corners of her mouth tugged again into their familiar, confident smirk. From somewhere in the nebulous shadows of the poorly illuminated room, Dorothy extracted what appeared to be a MS control helmet and settled it snugly on her head.
As her face was engulfed by the metal veil, something happened.
Quatre had become accustomed to his own inability to feel anything from Dorothy other than an inexplicable sense of cold. Whereas most people radiated their emotions, Dorothy had simply existed; displaying neither abundance nor dearth of pathos. He could perceive nothing of her on the psychic plane and had long since concluded that she was simply empathically maladroit.
However, the moment she placed that helm on her crown, it was as if her apparent inefficacy became introverted. She turned into a darkness that swallowed all light of emotion or feeling around her. She was an extrasensory black hole. His vision seemed to dim, as what little light there was in the room was drawn into the swirling vortex. His perceptions dulling, her outline became blurred and he felt slightly dizzy. A heartbeat passed and Quatre blinked against the consuming gloom, but when his eyes reopened, his vision was clear again. Nothing had changed save for that monitors began springing to life like bubbles of blue light, popping one after another to release their phantasmal luminance.
Quatre looked about him as the eye-like monitors winked to life. "What is this?"
"The Mobile Doll control room."
"No," he said with certainty. "I'm positive this is the Zero System."
"You got it." His apprehension rising, he tried not to let it show in his face, but even behind the mask of the helmet, he felt like she could see right through him. "We connected the Mobile Doll controls to the Zero System." His anxiety proved well founded. No one knew better than he - and possibly Heero, though the other pilot spoke but rarely and not at all about his mecha - that the Zero System was a living being. . . . That she could be controlling it, and in turn the White Fang forces, was unfathomable. The operating system Duo had both gibingly and respectfully dubbed "The Soul-Sucker" could not be in her hands - she couldn't handle it.
Right?
It had taken all of his force of will to gain dominance over the system, how could she slide so easily into it's grasp and not be consumed? Why wasn't she fighting it? And then he realized; whereas he had dominated the system - overpowered it - she was cooperating with it. They were working together for the same ends.
"So," she paused for half a heartbeat. "Now you know. My desire to fight activates all Mobile Dolls." But he knew that she was only half right. The Zero System was using her for both a soul to feed off as well as for her knowledge of the Gundams and their pilots. It would destroy her when it had no more need of her, just like it had so many others. She couldn't see the forest for the trees - all she saw was the immediate payoff for her malignant alliance..
But what did the Zero System see in her that he couldn't? There had to be something just below her calm exterior . . . something that the System was using for fodder.
In one swift movement she drew from behind her a twin set of rapiers, throwing one of the pair at his feet. It sliced the air cleanly and embedded itself in the floor before him, waiting to be taken up.
He glared at the blade as it glittered in the cerulean light of the room, daring him to wield it. She was directly challenging his beliefs and his own ability to uphold them. She smiled and he looked up to turn his glare on her.
His heart told him now that his first impressions of her had dangerously off target; and that he would soon be paying for that mistake. He had grown too trusting of what his senses told him, never asking for more than what was shown. He had placed too much confidence in his empathy and now it could cost him dearly - maybe even his life. He had never thought that she could hide anything from him, and yet here he was trying to find the truth through her carefully constructed smoke-and-mirrors.
"What's the idea?"
"Quatre Winner, I challenge you to a duel." Despite the fact that he had been expecting this, he still felt incredulity at her words - knowing something intellectually and having it right in front of you were two different things. "I lost the battle when each of us used the Zero System. But I wonder what would happen this time." She readied her blade. "You've decided you can fight without the Zero System."
"I wouldn't fight if I could help it. But unless I keep fighting, you people won't surrender, and the war will never end," was his frustrated reply.
"That's absolutely right. Now, lets determine which is more advanced: the Zero System or the human conscience."
He inclined his head, his fortitude not to take part in this farce strengthening. "And if I refuse?" His only answer was her lunge, and after a startled moment, he leaped swiftly out of her range. Pushing off his right foot, he retreated from her second lunge, grasping the previously foresworn rapier with his left and yanking it out of the floor. In a blur, the blade was in his right, blocking her attack.
"Why are you so fond of war?!" he managed to grit out despite the exertion of holding back her blade. "Why must we do this?!"
"You're so gentle, Quatre. What reasons do you have to fight?"
"I fight for my family! I have to fight to ward off my family's sorrow!" Something caught Quatre's eye as he spoke - something glowing dimly beneath her breastbone. But the light was rapidly swallowed up by the shadow.
"My father did that. He fought so I wouldn't feel any sorrow. And he died! That's why I'm going to die fighting a beautiful battle!" She leapt back in the low gravity.
"Then you actually hate war too!" He tried desperately to reach out and find that spark again, but it had already been smothered. She kicked off the wall of computer screens behind her, lunging downward and meeting air as he evaded her advance. She spun to face him in the blink of an eye, and Quatre struggled to parry her powerful thrust.
"No!" she shouted back vehemently. "War isn't to blame for destruction and massacre! The enemies we must defeat are in our hearts." She kept advancing; feigning left then right, bouncing her weight from one foot to the other.
"I believe in peace because it surpasses war. I believe in the heart that hopes for peace!"
"Then I'll ask you this: you say that you've fought for everyone, but what has anyone ever done for you in return?" He knew she was backing him into a corner; literally and figuratively.
"I'm not fighting to receive any kind of compensation," he replied emphatically. As long as he rebuffed her the way Zero expected him to, he would soon feel her blade. Quatre knew he would have to do something unanticipated to stop her advance.
"That's why you'll always be an amateur!" She lunged again, but on a whim, he ducked below her blade, which left her abdomen wide open. He gave a powerful shove with his sword arm and sent her careening backwards until she slammed into the wall behind her. She cried out in pain as well as surprise.
Quatre shifted his weight off the balls of his feet, and with a little contempt, narrowed his eyes at her. "Please stop this, Dorothy." He cringed inwardly as she laughed; it was a hollow sound, laced with insanity.
"The Colonies betrayed the Gundams. The Colony citizens killed your father. And the armed Colonies declared independence from the Earth before truly understanding what was going on. Your battles so far have been a complete waste of time! Your sympathy toward others, too much sympathy for others . . . has resulted in this worst-case scenario!"
She landed on her toes lightly, and adjusted her grip on her sword's hilt.
"Why are you holding back? Or can't you go for it? Well you can bet I will!" She lunged, he parried. Her attack pattern was relentless, he barely had time to recover from one thrust before he parried another. The almost nonexistent gravity on the ship showed no signs of hindering her in the least She offered up no chance of attack to him again, nor did she appear to tire. Quatre, on the other hand, was losing feeling in his right arm as every time he blocked her a shock wave rippled up from his wrist to his shoulder.
"That purity!" Slash; block. "That weak heart!" Slash; block. "That kindness!" Slash; block. "No wonder you Gundam pilots get defeated!" His grip finally faltered and she deftly knocked away his sword with a single flicking motion, sending it flying into the nearest monitor. Quatre clutched his hand as the numbness quickly dissolved into a biting pain.
Tired and frustrated, he capitulated marginally. "Maybe you're right. This is the only way I know how fight!" His eyes narrowed at her. "But it's because we take on losing battles that we've kept the Colonies from the horrors of war!"
"You'll never change anything that way!"
"Then what should I have done?!" he asked in defeat. She smiled at his vexation and dropped her fighting stance to spread her arms wide.
"You should've become the Colonies' leader and staged a magnificent war yourself!" She raised her sword in salute. "Like Lord Milliardo!"
"Dorothy, you're mistaken- " Quatre was cut off by a searing pain in his abdomen. She continued, her voice dropping a note and losing that biting edge she wielded with even more natural skill than her rapier.
"And you should have staged this war before all mankind. A miserable war that they'll never want to see again!"
As blood began to seep through his spacesuit, he asked in a pain-filled voice, "Are you saying that's the significance of this war?"
"That's right." That strange spark lit again, but unlike the first time, it didn't go out. Instead, it continued to sparkle and glimmer - just out of reach. A fragile, flickering light that shone white, as yet unseparated into the colors of the many emotions. "You can't do away with wars simply by taking weapons away from the people!" she continued, unaware of the divided attention of her opponent. "You first have to change the hearts of mankind. If you don't do that, humanity will perish. Just like my father!" The faint shimmer stabilized into a dim glow. Mentally, Quatre reached out to hold onto that luminance and try to bring it to the surface.
He was brought back to reality briefly when the blue light of the computer screens caught on something on her face, and Quatre recognized it as a tear sliding down her cheek. Lapsing back into the recesses of his mind, he fortified his cognitive link with his mental feelers until he was close enough to see the colors within the small light. It was like an explosion in his mind; hues unimaginable and never seen with the physical eye shifted in and out of each other just under the achromatic surface. All impossible shades of red.
"You are a very kind person," he said; his own voice bringing him back to reality. He couldn't help but forgive her, even while her blade still bit him. "Kinder than me." All that pain buried deep inside her . . . he understood this whole fiasco now. Understood her reasoning and her motivation. All that pain . . . she had simply wanted to end the fighting in the only way she knew how.
"Is that supposed to make me happy?!" She wrenched her blade from his stomach, leaving him to double over in pain. "Kindness gets in your way when you're trying to survive! It's more appropriate for man to concentrate more on surviving." Quatre panted while she spoke, gaining air enough to talk.
"D-Dorothy. . . . You're just the same way I used to be. You despise your own kindness and hatred of war." He stared at her unmoving figure. "You should never try to fight your kindness." He paused, remembering his own deliverance. And who had shown it to him. "Trowa taught me that." Trowa had been the first real friend in his ungregarious fifteen years. He was able to trust him like he had never trusted others, they understood each other, they were friends and comrades in arms. . . . "You have to try and accept everything around you, because humanity needs that kindness. Without kindness mankind has no reason to exist." Clutching at his injury, he doubled over again, but eventually found the strength to straighten and ask her, "You agree, don't you? Humans that only think of their survival . . . are lower lifeforms than animals. They can't even feel for others."
He finally gave in to the overpowering darkness. It swiftly crept past the edges of his vision to consume his senses until he knew no more.