Work Text:
Time passes strangely when you’re dead. It overlaps and flattens, loops back over itself until past, present, future coalesce into one kaleidoscope of brilliant color.
Such was the reality that awaited Michael Darlian when his heart failed him, Relena’s cries ringing in his ears—
A harrier hovers over dueling mobile suits. Relena clings to the open door as she shouts over the open comms channel at the pilots—
“Where are your boots?” Mareen demands of the eight-year-old. “It’s freezing out there!”
“Dunno,” the girl replies, cheeks flushed and red, looking apprehensively up at him—
And her reflection looks mournfully back, crowned as queen of the world, the weight heavy on her narrow shoulders. A pawn in someone else’s game amidst the chaos of war. Her gaze turns dark and angry—
“It’s not fair!” the toddler screams, tears streaming down her face as she rages against the injustice of it all—
She throws a family picture across the room. Relena’s pain and grief is strewn about the room in torn curtains and broken glass. Michael reaches out to her and she shudders, seeming to find herself again. She moves away to kneel beside the damaged frame. Gently, so gently, she picks it up to look down at the picture of the three of them. A happier time—
Relena spins in her dress, reveling in the way it fans out about her legs. “Come on,” Michael urges even as he chuckles. “Let’s not keep the photographer waiting—”
The baby sobs in Pagan’s arms, as if she knows what has befallen her parents, her brother, her kingdom. Michael takes her without thinking, holding her close. He whispers only, “You’re safe, you’re safe. We have you—”
“I’m scared,” Relena admits, face buried in his chest at her boarding school dormitory—
Relena stares down the barrel of a gun, and she is terrified—
“I know,” Michael tells her as he rubs comforting circles against her back, ducking his head to kiss the crown of her head. “But I know you’re strong enough—”
“How am I supposed to carry on without you?” Relena asks his grave, clad in black, white lillies clutched in her pale fist—
Relena stares down the barrel of a gun, and she is eerily calm—
“Are you alright?” An unnecessary question from the officer at the door. Another woman, with dark hair and discerning eyes.
“No, I’m not,” Relena answers and then squares her shoulders, standing—
Relena stares down the barrel of a gun, and has to swallow down the dark laughter that threatens to burst from her lips—
Laughter engulfs the classroom. Pacificism, a joke. “It’ll never work,” says a girl a row over—
“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” Relena admits as she waits in the wings, a spotlight shining down on a podium—
“It doesn’t work,” contends an old man from the safety of an institution that has outlasted its usefulness—
“I’m so proud of you for standing up to them,” Michael tells the ten-year-old, curled against his chest. “You have to remember that you are strong enough—”
“It won’t work,” says her brother, a man in his own right now, eyes cold—
“I’ll be right there with you,” Michael says. “Even if I’m not here.” Relena brushes her hands down her school uniform and takes a deep breath before stepping out of the car—
“It could work,” says a boy with sad blue eyes and a gun—
“I miss you,” Relena whispers to the dark, his picture clutched to her chest. There will be an empty seat at her wedding—
Relena shoves a maroon-clad comms officer out of the way and opens a wide broadcast. “Peace is not something that is handed to you. You have to fight for it!” Unseen, Michael smiles—
A disguised Relena laughs and sings karaoke, drink in hand, with a gaggle of friends. All of them are slightly off-key but it only delights the patrons—
The toddler sings nonsense in a toy microphone. Michael and Mareen laugh, clapping in time—
The snow has stopped falling. It crunches under her bare feet as she walks out into the night. Moonlight glints in her hair, catching on the new streaks of gray. Her family sleeps in the nearby house, her own child home. She pushes in the middle of the yard, wrapping her arms tight around her ribs as she shivers. Michael moves close—
He wraps a scarf around the three-year-old and laughs as it swallows her face and neck—
“You left me here,” Relena murmurs, “and I’ve been so scared. But…”
I’m so proud of you, Michael says, thinks, feels and wonders if she feels it too. Time flattens further, condensed into a universal truth, a single refrain falling from Relena’s lips. “I think I’m strong enough to do this on my own.”