Faded
by Ponderosa
There were times when it felt to Zechs like the collective people of Earth perched like a restless hawk on the parapets of change, and others when they remained mired in the burden of their own lamentable history. Most frequently he saw them as caught in an ebb and flow, a shifting of endless tides with clashing currents.
Somewhere, a mechanism lay in wait for the proper key. The hot blood of the planet itself was ready to spew forth, boil the seas, resculpt the land and begin anew.
And yet Earth would always be at mankind's mercy.
He gazed through the bridge's viewport into vast nothingness, dredging up memories of philosophical debate that masqueraded as pillow talk. There had been countless arguments delivered between winding kisses, and when the exchange turned, as it always did, to questioning how a man might know his worth-his purpose- there was rarely time for more talk as physical needs inevitably grew more urgent than idle dialogue.
Skin prickling with ghosts of sensations long since past, Zechs recalled a moment when, after the height of passion had faded into pleasant lassitude, Treize had admitted to envying him that he carried in his breast so clear a goal.
With the planet now united beneath a single banner and a new destiny guiding Zechs's hand, did the envy remain?
Outside Libra, the scattered stars were cold, silent things.
There were times when it felt....
Zechs killed a smile before it could give birth to either fondness or melancholy.
Somewhere, an army amassed, ready to burst glittering into the void, ready to die there. He could spare no thought for the cost of victory. He had moved too far beyond the reach of whatever salvation was offered by abandoning this course. The universe held no place for him, nor for the man who had been his lover.
Strange, how the past seemed to stretch so much farther than the future. Perhaps not so strange, he acknowledged silently. As ever, most things were easier to see from a distance.
There had been so many times...
Neither he nor Treize carried Earth's precious vitality. Their humours were dulled, warmth stubbornly forced through the veins of the walking dead. Their blood might have seethed once with raw potential, but they had burned too fast, too hot, and their fates were now steeped in ash.
Somewhere....
Zechs's pale reflection hovered, mirrored the emptiness of space, an unforgiving reminder that he had cooled to black glass with razor edges.
Increasingly, there were times when he felt nothing.
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