"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways."
- Stephen Vincent Benet

AC 193
Outside Moscow

The bitter cold seeped into the hideout, making Noin shiver as she sat by the computer. The world outside, leeched of all color, matched her dark mood. She was sick of the snow, of the cold, and of this entire assignment. She and Zechs had been cloistered in the little shack for half a year now, and nothing of significance had happened. The village that supposedly was to hide guerilla fighters had shown no signs of suspicious activities ever since they had been assigned to this outpost, and Noin was tired. The whirling mass of snowflakes that beat against the window mocked her. In all this time, with nothing to do, she still couldn’t talk to Zechs. They talked, of course, but of statistics and strategies, of numbers and even of the weather. Dry bloodless topics, all of them, and each gave her no further insight to the man behind the mask, for a man he was. Although her hopes had revived that day when the man behind the mask first smiled at her, they were dying now, slowly extinguished by the intangible barrier around him. She was tired, not only in body, for living in the piercing cold for so long had taken its toll, but also in her soul. The chill that had settled over Zechs and her after the brief, promising renewal had ceased to eat at her heart, and the small piece of her that still shone and believed and hoped worried that the rest of her was being bleached as gray as the landscape, eroded by the casual distance and the unthinking coolness. She sighed silently, let her shoulders loosen as she turned away from him and toward the monitor.

The familiar tingling in the back of his neck told Zechs that she was watching him again. He knew, even without turning, that her blue eyes were dulled by confusion, but that they would soon reveal steel determination. It frightened him, and time after time, he had found that very gaze upon him. And now, even more so. Sooner or later, it would crash down upon him. But for now, he would sit and wait, like the coward he was, for he knew that his silence unnerved her and disturbed her, yet, of all people, he did not want to tell her how different he was from the Zechs of Lake Victoria. So he sat, and he waited, and he allowed her to fade away slowly as he hated himself for not speaking up, for letting the uncertainty drag on like the long nights. He was a coward, he thought.

“Zechs.” Her voice broke the silence, interrupted the spiral of despair that he had started on yet again.

He turned reluctantly, unwilling to confront her expectations. For now, though, her stance spoke only of business, and he sighed in relief.

She motioned at the computer screen and said, “There are some odd shipments coming in for a village of this size.”

He approached the computer, attempting not to recoil when the sleeve of his uniform brushed against hers as he leaned over the display. He couldn’t face it yet, couldn’t meet her unspoken demands.

But she merely took it upon herself to point out the path of each shipment, categorically noting everything of importance.

Noin mechanically pointed out everything she had pieced together while she had been brooding, letting each tidbit fill in the picture. “Look at the unexplained movement during night, all around certain houses. No one else has been going out at this time for the past few months, and now, even less are doing so, except for certain households. And note how rapidly some households are consuming supplies, much more than warranted. I think this is what we’ve been waiting for.”

“I see. Wait a little more for overt enemy movement before doing anything about it.”

She nodded, like a soldier should, smarting at his need to order her. It is the mask, not the man, she told herself. But even so, it hurt.

She waited and waited by the computer for several more weeks, but now, the air was brisk with a sense of anticipation. Zechs paced around the room endlessly as she tapped away at the keyboard, each wanting and needing a release. Talk grew terser still, with sometimes only a few words said a day, every one of them focusing upon the task at hand. Her nerves were strung tautly, and as each moment passed, they were drawn more tightly still. But she calmed herself, for the storm was looming over the horizon and would soon overtake them. Just a few more sightings, then they could make their reports and return to base. Only a couple more days with both of them on the edge, then someone would be forced to yield. Although she had shied away before, she was prepared now, willing to brave new ground, as long as he would stand beside her as they did so. Yet, even with the breaking point so near, she did not want to demand of him what he could easily give. It was a test, perhaps, to see if the man would go without the mask.

He knew she was waiting. He knew that something was about to happen, had to happen, that something would have to give. He just didn’t know what it would be, and it stayed with him, tainting everything he did. So he paced. He snapped out orders to the only other living being in the room for lack of anything else to say. He wanted her to break almost, wanted to break her, anything that would shatter the calm exterior she still clung to, even though he knew she was waiting. And perhaps, he thought later, perhaps because of this, he was careless (how could he have been so careless?), and he did not pay as much attention as he should have. But he could not dedicate himself to the task at hand, for she waited, and he waited, and they both waited for the other to lose self-restraint, to throw caution to the wind. But it would not be him, could not be him. She reminded him too much of the few happy times at Lake Victoria, reminded him too much of the boy he had been, of the unspoken promise he had made her to laugh, to hope, to live. He had broken that promise, not deliberately, but he had when he had decided on vengeance. She was the only one who could still make him laugh. So he tried not to let her. Out of shame, out of pride, out of something that he could not yet define, he made the decision not to let her know, for he could not bear it if he broke that final barrier, for he feared that there would be nothing left under the shell of rage he had gathered.

Days turned to weeks, and still the pieces held.

Then, as the snow began swirling thicker and faster, until they could see only a few feet from the windows, until they had shrouded themselves in impenetrable silence, they heard the unmistakable sounds of MS’s nearly drown out the high-pitched shriek of the wind.

It took Noin a while to notice the soft humming of the computer over the fury. But their new orders had arrived, and they were to supplement the troops that had just arrived. The Moscow base was targeted for an attack, but the Federation believed in striking before being cornered, and the surrender of the guerillas would serve an unspoken threat to other forces. The fact that an MS could wipe out the ground soldiers easily was simply another incentive, one that Noin didn’t care to consider.

“Zechs. We’ve been deployed.”

* * *

By the time they had arrived, the MS’s were already stationed around the majority of the village, serving, Noin hoped, merely as a means to intimidate. The soldiers were in the process of searching each house, overturning furniture and rampaging through possessions in the quest for evidence. She winced as she watched families gather on the streets, the blank look of fear and foreboding making them one and the same. Sick horror spread through her at the sight, as she finally realized war. This was not what she wanted to do with her life, not this. Not when she could have so easily been the teary child trying not to make a noise for fear of the soldiers currently rending apart stuffed animals in search for weapons. Not when the group of people in the street might have been her family, ruled by fear and besieged by uncertainty in a world where any stray word might warrant violence. This was different from combat. She had been pulled into the thick of the battle when she was twelve, commanded by Treize, and it had not the same impact; the soldiers there were as she, trained for the deadly game, accepting of its outcomes. But these people, here, standing, every line in their bodies speaking of mute terror and abject rage against the indignity done to them, they were not a part of this.

And then, a blur in the corner of her eye, comprised of a man, probably a captured guerilla, breaking free of OZ soldiers and running through flurries of snow at a desperate speed toward something to the left of her, perhaps a distant mirage of freedom . . .

Noin turned her head as a sobbing litany forced its way to her attention: “Please dear Lord God, let him live, let him live, I can’t go on without him, he didn’t mean it, please oh please, have mercy, my children, we have children, he didn’t mean it, dear God, just let him live, please please just let him live . . .”

Perhaps, rather, a loving wife and children . . .

The string of words stumbled on and on, overwhelmed from time to time by choking sounds of tears being swallowed, nearly too quiet to be heard. And Noin slowly began walking toward the man, toward the woman who was now kneeling on the ground and shielding her children’s faces, watching as the soldiers slowly, oh so slowly, pulled guns out of holsters and more slowly yet not slowly enough, aimed carefully in prescribed fashion, between the man’s shoulder blades, and suddenly, she had broken out into a run and her shoulder was in the man’s ribs and she was kicked back and the breath was knocked out of her. Then, suddenly, she was on the ground, and she was wet and cold, and a dull pulsing had settled into her shoulder, which was, for some reason, leaking a sticky red fluid. Someone next to her was sobbing and babbling; there were two small children around as well. She stood up, shakily placing her feet in positions that should have come naturally.

“Don’t touch him,” she told the soldiers coming her way, suddenly aware that her entire left sleeve was really quite icy and uncomfortable. And her shoulder hurt very very much.