"Noin, you’re not coming to the conference this morning?" Relena asked, confused, as Noin entered the living room wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

"No, that isn’t a problem, is it?" she asked, a little nervously.

"It’s fine, but…"

"I promised Lady Une I’d weed the roses on his Excellency’s grave. She can’t make it this week – something about Mariemaia being in a school play. And I wanted to go anyway, so I told her I wouldn’t mind taking care of it," she explained.

"Oh," Relena replied. There was an uncomfortable silence as the rest of the people in the room – the boys, Hildie, and Zechs – tried to figure out how they were supposed to respond to that.

"You wouldn’t by any chance happen to have any garden gloves or pruning shears around, would you?" Noin asked hopefully.

Relena blinked.

"Nevermind," Noin said prudently. "It shouldn’t take me long. I’ll meet everyone for lunch, all right?"

Zechs knew he should go with her. He wanted to. After all, Treize had been his commanding officer, and his best friend. No… not his best friend. A very good friend, but not the best. His best friend was digging through the jackets piled onto the rack by the door, and dreading having to sort through the jumble of shoes.

"Do you want some company?" he asked, pulling his own jacket off of the rack.

She looked up. "Um…sure, but…" Her eyes dropped.

"What?" he asked, pulling his jacket on.

"Milliardo…" Relena began, her voice tense. It disturbed him to have an entire roomful of people trying to avoid his eyes.

"It’s just freaky to visit your own grave," Duo commented (audibly) under his breath. Hildie jabbed an elbow into his ribs. "What was that for?" he demanded indignantly.

Hildie shrugged. "Reflex."

"Ow!" Noin abruptly let go of the handful of weeds she’d been tugging at. "Thistles! How long has it been since she’s done this, anyway?" Looking a little put out, Noin brushed the worst of the mud off of her pricked, grass stained fingers.

Zechs smiled for a moment, but it faded back to a bemused expression as he turned back to the cemetary plot that occupied his attention. He was standing quite straight, with his hands in his pockets, and the wind playing with his hair.

It was a slab of marble with his name on it. Milliardo Peacecraft.

Perhaps it ought to bother him. He wasn’t entirely sure that it didn’t. But at the moment, it didn’t seem to be sinking through his emotional shell. He turned back to Noin, who was still wrestling with the thistles.

"Do you need a hand?" he asked, taking a step closer.

"No…I’ve…got it," she said triumphantly as the tenacious roots gave and she fell backwards in a shower of loosened dirt. She shook some of the soil off of the clump, and patted it down around the pampered little rose bush.

"He would’ve approved," Zechs said unnecessarily. "Whose idea was it?"

"Lady Une’s," Noin replied. "She said seeing all the dead flowers depressed her, and I think our bill at the florist’s might’ve had something to do with it as well," she concluded with a wry smile.

"My dead flowers were somehow less depressing?" he teased.

Noin shrugged. "Relena and Dorothy brought some now and then, but the grounds crew usually took care of them before they came again. Lady Une was here pretty often for a while."

"You never…" he began, a little baffled.

"It would’ve been admitting you were gone," Noin explained quietly, seeming to read his thoughts. "So I never did." She seemed a little embarassed as she looked down at her hands, and past them. But when she lifted her face an instant later, she was smiling. "Do you realize how ludicrous this conversation is?" she wanted to know. "Who else could ever get jealous that their grave wasn’t as well decorated as someone else’s?"

Zechs pulled his eyes from Noin’s smiling face as something large and wet plopped onto his forehead.

Noin muttered something that was probably profanity as she grabbed her pile of weeds, thistles and all, and stood from his Excellency’s grave. She squinted at the sky, and blinked as another raindrop hit her eye.

"Shall we make a dash for the car?" he asked as a few more droplets sprinkled his shoulders.

"What do I do with these?’ Noin asked, referring to her weeds.

"I’m sure the groundskeeper will take care of them," Zechs assured her, getting progressively wetter.

"It doesn’t seem right, somehow," she objected, getting fairly damp herself.

"Here," he said, taking them from her and wincing as they pricked him as well. He deposited them rather unceremoniously beside the headstone marked "Milliardo Peacecraft."

"Zechs…" Noin admonished gently.

"Dandelions and thistles seem like an appropriate offering."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Looks like you brought me flowers after all," he teased, changing the subject.

"Lovely, aren’t they?" she retorted, making a face.

"I’d rather your thistles than Dorothy or Relena’s roses," he told her earnestly.

Noin blinked, then smiled. Both of them were, by then, very wet indeed.