Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing © Sotsu, ANB, Bandai, and Sunrise.  This fic is mine.

AN: This is set just after the Endless Waltz.  6x9 of course…

Rose-Scented Candle

Trinity Valentine

Noin sighed and breathed in his scent again, wallowing in her joy that she was finally allowed to express.  She listened to the strong, steady heartbeat beneath her ear and felt the soft noise of his deep sleep breaths.  She smiled and nuzzled into him closer, feeling the heat of his body through his clothes.  His warm, living body and his strong, beating heart.

Zechs stirred slightly beneath her, scratching his nose with one hand and pulling her closer with the other.  He had been exhausted after the final battle with the Serpents and Noin had suggested that he come to her place to rest up.  She had built a fire in the nearly unused fireplace while he had barely ditched his heavy boots and Preventers jacket before collapsing on the floor in front of the laughing flames.  Noin had been covering him with a quilt when he had suddenly reached for her.  He had simply sat there, a gentle hand wrapped lightly around her wrist with exhausted yet questioning eyes asking her if it was okay.  She had smiled and silently lay next to him.  He seemed relieved and fell back to sleep almost instantly with an arm draped over her.  Noin was happy to keep him warm.  A general sense of calm, quiet contentedness filled her heart that felt so perfectly right with her next to him.

It had been so long since she had heard his voice, felt his touch, caught a whiff of him if she stood too close…so long since she could look him in his eyes and utter his name without a disapproving look from Sally or Une.  He was finally home.

It was two and a half house before Zechs stirred again, eyelids fluttering open to see Noin smiling dreamily at him.  He blinked for a minute, disoriented and surprised momentarily by Noin and the unusual surroundings before settling down once again.  He was still awake, lazily gazing at Noin who just as lazily gazed back.

“Hey,” Noin smiled, warm and cozy between Zechs and the simmering fire.

“You seem comfortable,” Zechs observed as he too basked in the fire’s radiating heat.  He partially closed eyes closed again, sleepy yet alert, refreshed from the nap.

“I am,” Noin murmured in return as Zechs smiled.  His blue eyes slowly reopened as he watched Noin as she gazed contentedly into the flames.

“I missed you,” he said suddenly, his face changing from sleepy to serious.

Noin turned to face him, the same look set on her features, “I missed you, too, Zechs.  I’m so glad that you’re alive and well.”  Her voice dropped to a whisper as she finished, looking away from Zechs and back to the flames once again.

“I’m sorry.  I know I should have said something sooner but…I thought it was too late by the time I could.”  Zechs’ voice had an uncharacteristic note in it.  He didn’t usually voice his regrets, and when he did, he used the same cold, detached tone associated with Heero Yuy.  Noin looked at him curiously.

“What do you mean?” she questioned, her amethyst gaze falling into his topaz one before he looked away from her once again.

“When Libra exploded, I thought I was pretty much done for.  Epyon was a chunk of shrapnel when I finally saw its remains.  I ended up crashing down on Earth, in Russia of all places…” he paused, sorrow and regret creeping into his voice as well as cold indifference.  Noin listened on.

“They told me I was lucky to be alive but I didn’t believe them.  I had wanted to go down with that bloodthirsty battleship and yet I had somehow survived…if you call recovering from six broken ribs, third degree burns, and a concussion ‘surviving’…”

Noin gave him a strange look.  It was somewhere between a disapproving glower at him for giving up so easily with wanting to die along with Libra, but her look also held admiration that he did indeed keep going on and sympathy that she wasn’t there for him in his times of need.

“But the worst part,” he continued,” was my hands.  An explosion evidently jerked me forward through some of the controls…”  Zechs brought his left up and indicated the long scar between his forefinger and thumb through the soft part.  His right hand had the white scars from his knuckles to his wrist, the skin torn from glass screens as well as other instruments.

Noin, still silent, gingerly took his left hand into her own, tracing the jagged scar that appeared on the back just as much as his palm with her own forefinger.  Zechs watcher her silently with a child-like innocence as Noin kissed the long mark on his hand before releasing it.  Zechs acknowledged her in gratitude, closing his eyes and leaning his head toward her briefly.

“It took me a long time to recover and it seemed even longer in a strange country with a different people and a different language.  I tried to contact you, but I didn’t know where you were.  I tried Lake Victoria, but there was nothing there.  I contacted the Cinq Kingdom, but you had moved on again…I didn’t even have a lead on where anyone was until I saw the presentation about the Preventers.  That must have been about September.  I came here as soon as I could.”  Zechs fell to silence as he finished his tale.  Noin contemplated his words, the fire still simmering merrily next to them.  She tried to think of something to say and came to a loss.  After what seemed like forever, words finally formed.

“Why did you come back, Zechs?  Why did you try so hard to find me again?”

Zechs glanced to her once more, “For reasons like this,” he gestured to how they were laying together.  “Because I knew I could count on you.  Because I heard you cry out when Libra went down…” his sentence faded as Zechs looked into Noin’s eyes, filled with a year’s worth of pain and hoping and waiting.  He just seemed to realize how close they were.  He could feel Noin’s breath and heart beat quicken as he watched the firelight dance across her skin and flit through her eyes like so many flaming phoenix birds.

“And,” Zechs whispered, “Because of this…” his lips pressed to hers, gentle and unsure.  Noin’s eyes widened before sealing passionately behind her long, dark eyelashes, drowning in Zechs’ deepening kiss.  They both poured a year’s worth of pain, hope, despair, and unrequited love into one passionate and longing kiss.  Neither one of them ever wanted that pinpointed light of heavenly bliss to end.

Finally they broke apart when the need for oxygen overrode the need for catharsis.  Noin smiled at him, electricity still lingering on her lips.

“Sometimes, Mr. Zechs Merquise, I’m glad you think with reason.”

“And sometimes, Miss Lucrezia Noin, I’m glad you don’t,” Zechs broke eye contact with her, staring into the fire blandly with a bitter, sorrowful guilt eating away at his insides. 

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered, shaking his head, his bangs swaying a little before his eyes.

Noin lay her head back down on Zechs’ chest again and sighed frustratedly.  “Zechs, this is one of those times when I don’t like that you think with what you call reason.  Why wouldn’t I love you?”  Her voice was a gentle sigh, filled with something unidentifiable.

Zechs’ head snapped around to look at Noin.  She was simply looking at him expectantly, waiting for his response.

“What is there to love?” he asked while a demon of his own clawed through his mind and heart.  There was nothing in his heart worth loving at all.

“Do you really want me to get started listing?  We may be here for a while,” Noin smiled sadly, wanting to break down Zechs’ walls and come into his heart at least for a while.  She wanted to be a flame in the night for him.

Zechs glanced at her, doubt and disbelief in his eyes could be seen in his eyes before he looked away.

“I once knew a kind-hearted boy prince,” Noin began, boring into the flames before her.  Zechs’ face turned pensive as she continued.

“But people grow and change, and when he did, I realized that I would always be by his side.  He was kind, intelligent, gentle, understanding…he still is and always will be.”  Zechs glanced at her from the corner of his eye, his expression unreadable but the wheels in his lightning quick mind were turning.

“Like all humans, he can be cruel and ruthless, so can I.  His tarnished golden heart is the greatest treasure of all.”

They fell into a deep silence, Noin’s confession still echoing off the silent walls and in the limitless fathoms of both minds.  Zechs appeared deep in thought, eyes unfocused and distant.  He supposed he had always known Noin loved him, but some part of him still refused to believe that love was a possibility.  It was melodramatic and it felt like he was simply fighting another miserable losing battle, the victor unsure.  He knew to love her would change everything…but in reality, everything needed changing.  Everything.  If he was ever to move on with his wretched existence he had to start somewhere and Noin was waving a green flag for him.  Yet another way she had managed to help him out:  guide him when he was so lost he couldn’t find his own hands or face.

Zechs closed his eyes, continuing his deep contemplation, wondering over what Noin had just revealed to him.  If he accepted her confession and loved her in return, the he could move on and start someplace new.  But if he pushed her away, everything would just be worse than before.  Everything good in him decidedly came from her.  She kept him patient and kind when his first instinct was to fight back.  It was her who had made him want to destroy Libra.  It was her that brought light in darkness, his candle in the night.  It was her that brought him back from the grave and into the lands of the living once more and be damned if he were to ever toss and turn in that tomb again.

“I don’t know what to say,” he murmured as he stroked the back of Noin’s head.  Her violet blue eyes closed and reveled in his touch.

“You don’t have to say anything, Zechs.  I just had to tell you I love you…you’ve been gone too long.”  She smiled and snuggled against him, still listening to his beating heart and rejoicing in his life.

“Yes, I have,” he agreed after a moment.

Noin cracked open her eyes just enough to see Zechs scowling into the fire.  He looked angry, but she knew he was only concentrating.

“I’ve been gone long enough to realize that I can only be dead without you around to bring me life.  Change is inevitable, so I’m going to change,” his voice was a low murmur, like thunder rising over a spring hill in the distance signifying the coming of a life-bringing rain.

“And for everything I regret and for everything that could have been different, I choose to stay here.  Heaven knows how long it will take, but Noin, I’ll learn to love you in return someday.”

The dark-haired woman looked to her pale-haired companion.  “I’ll teach you.  We’ll learn together.”  She smiled, satisfied and heart floating on the warmth Zechs brought her.

Zechs stared back at the warm face that was nuzzled into his chest.  “Thank you, Noin.  Thank you for everything.”  Noin smiled wider in acknowledgement.

She had such a flame, a deep fire burning within her that was just hot enough to melt the ice that clung to his heart; a fire bright enough to be seen day and night for a whole year, dimming the sun in its pathetic radiance; a fire small enough to burn and simmer low and loving and large enough to consume whole heart.  She was the candle’s flame in the eternal darkness of space.  The rose-scented candle that led him home finally.  Home…where he belonged.

~*~*~

Thanks for reading this little one-hitter.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!  Feedback appreciated! (R/R peeps…please?) 6x9 forever!