Darkfic Gift: Simulacra (for terravayne)
Title: Simulacra
Written by: omnicat for terravayne
Rating: R
Warnings: incest, nonconsensual sex, death
Gift #5: A Relena and Zechs incestfic. It doesn't have to be consummated; it could just be feelings, requited or otherwise.
What have I done? What have I done, Epyon? Why did you make me do this?
Made you?
What should I do? This wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t know what to do, Epyon.
Isn’t it obvious? There’s only one thing you can do.
Her life now seems little different from her life back then.
Her home has all the luxuries a girl could ask for; spacious rooms of multicoloured marble and solid oak, sheer white curtains blowing in an eternally pleasant breeze, silk sheets on her bed, gardens as far as the eye can see. There is food and drink aplenty, the healthiest and tastiest money can buy, and anything that’s not already in stock can be arranged for her. She goes to class to learn meaningless things, to the library to read of dreams long dead and gone, turns on television and radio for music and mindless entertainment.
Relena’s family makes sure that she is safe, comfortable, and sheltered from all the rest of the world. Just as they always have.
Only now, her mother and father are no longer there, and the person she still accidentally calls Pagan sometimes is a woman in a uniform, voice clipped and eyes cold. Her classmates are ghosts; holograms, hollow approximations of personalities born from watered-down military technology. They are there to make sure Relena won’t get too lonely, to call on her and include her, to never leave her more than five minutes of peace - she’s counted. But when she tries to touch them they shimmer around her empty hands, and when they speak to her she sees not friends but a non-entity with glowing yellow eyes she should not recognize but does, a cold, unstoppable perfection that terrifies and repulses her as much as it calls to her with its promise of - of what?
Sometimes she doesn’t know whether to laugh with them or cover her ears and cry. Sometimes she does either. Sometimes both at once. But always, when her forced hours in the classroom are done, she comes out feeling less human, less substantial, and it seems to take a little longer each time for the light-headed, meaningless hyper-clarity to lift.
Sometimes she wonders whether she is still even real, or just the simulacra of a girl that never existed even then, a figment of Milliardo’s imagination, just like everything else in her prison paradise.
When she first found herself in her little enclave of nothingness, dazed and disoriented with sedatives, Dorothy was there. Eyes wide and wild, she was reluctant to say anything, but did not refuse when Relena pressed on.
The White Fang had won the war. Milliardo had declared himself King of the Earth and all of space. The war was over because the Milliardo willed it so, because Milliardo no longer allowed disagreement, but there was no peace. Nowhere in the world was there peace. Only here, in the alternate reality Milliardo had built for his sister, could an absense of strife ever possibly exist.
Dorothy wanted to stay.
Milliardo did not let her. He sent her out to lead the mobile dolls by day and she would be allowed to keep Relena company at night. The change in her chilled Relena to the bone, but she held the girl as she flinched and shivered and refused to sleep alone, and saved her questions and escape plans for when Dorothy had calmed down.
But Dorothy wanted to stay, said that it was better here, and whenever Relena pressed for details about what was going on outside she would revert to a mess of nonsensical words and unhinged laughter. Then one day Dorothy simply failed to come back, leaving Relena locked up, guarded by strangers who wouldn’t talk to her, not knowing how and when she’d gotten there or what had happened to the other girl.
Milliardo didn’t come to see her until almost two weeks later. He hugged her against her will, proclaimed Dorothy missing in action, and left almost as soon as he had arrived when a device on his belt started buzzing. Relena couldn’t get Dorothy off her mind but knew that it was no use worrying over her while she was stuck in here herself, so when her brother came back three days later she asked only the sensible questions - the selfish questions.
“What’s going on here? Why are you keeping me here? What is this place?”
“This place is safe. The rest of the world - the rest of mankind - is beyond saving. I know you want to be out there trying anyway, but this is the only way I can keep you from being dragged down with it.”
His eyes were wild like Dorothy’s had been, and when they landed on her Relena felt something inside of her die.
“Milliardo, tell me what happened.” she said, part of her already screaming at the horror of his answer. “What’s going on?”
The answer was already in his eyes. But she could not, would not believe it, not until he said the words out loud - how could she just assume that her own brother would really be capable of forcing his will that way? How could she honestly expect the world to be willing to change for the better if even she, the one pushing for improvements, accepted the truth of its atrocities so easily?
“Brother!” she pleaded, hysteria creeping into her own voice as his horrible silence stretched and his eyes, those eyes, stared and stared and stared.
“It’s hopeless. The world is beyond saving.” he repeated, for a moment seeming almost sane for the grief lining his face. “You’ll be safe here. I’m going to make sure the world won’t ever touch you again, and you don’t go out looking for it. This is for your own good. I’ll keep you safe.”
And he wrapped her in his arms and held on so tight it hurt. She would have pushed him away, but the desperate force with which he held on to her said that not even he could believe it.
He wouldn’t have had to say anything more to let her know what had happened. But she could not make herself believe it. Memories of happiness, of her mother, of her classmates, of the fire that was the very start of her life - they clung to her like drowning men and how could anyone be strong enough to bear this? The weight was too much, she would sink, they would slip and dissolve into nothing if she could not hold on - no, she couldn’t, not like this, if she went under now she might never be able to resurface, she won’t, no no no no no no -
He came by every day after that, sometimes for just an hour to eat with her, sometimes staying until deep in the night. He wanted to get to know her, he said, and asked endless amounts of questions - about her life, her tastes, her passions, her opinions, about things she’d never even given any thought. She answered them all because anything was better than leaving her thoughts to wander on their own.
He told her all about himself, too. But the one question she had was never answered.
The hours in her beautiful cage were long and empty, fueling her desire to escape with every tick of the clock. It took frightfully little time to explore her confines; she did it trice more in rapid succession of the first attempt, unable to believe there was really no way out but the solid steel door Dorothy, Milliardo and the guards used.
In the end, he never did tell her that the Earth had died a horrible death, that everything war had not already taken from her had gone up in flames, was swallowed by natural disaster, had reverted to dust while she led a good life sheltered from all the world’s problems, just like before. The only only thing that kept her afloat in the sea of darkness that now made up her existence was to keep fighting the tide. To hold on to hope and faith and shake off horror and despair, to keep swimming and not get dragged down.
Just keep swimming. Keep running, pushing, struggling. Doesn’t matter where to, doesn’t matter if you never get there. Doesn’t matter if there’s nowhere left to run to, nothing left to fight for.
Just don’t stop, and don’t look back.
There are no stars in the nighttime, only a velvety greenish shadow filled with the wrinkles of the ceiling’s structure. When she looks up through the branches or leans out the window at night, it’s like being in a cave below the water; during the day, the sky resembles an opaque, mountain-sized bell glass that lets in light but obscures everything outside it from view. She doesn’t even have a way to tell time, now. There are no clocks or calendars. The artificial colony sun can move through the sky as the daytime passes, or hang in place for hours on end and jump at random intervals. Sometimes the shadows move faster than she can walk. She does not know why this is, and does not bother asking. She used to, but there is no point in knowing, so she feels no more need to.
Because what use is it to grasp onto a reality that doesn’t exist in the first place?
There are no more news bulletins; there is no more news. Nothing is going on in the world anymore, because the world outside, ugly and flawed and filthy as it is, has reached the closest thing to perfection it can achieve. As the King, he must maintain its current state, lest it falls back to the way it was before and destroys even this sanctuary where perfection is possible. There is no more need to know about outside; there is no more need to remember anything but here ever existed at all. Everything else is a lie.
Her need to go back to the world she’s been fighting for all this time is a lie.
There is never anything that was not already there, and nothing disappears that she does not destroy with her own hands. This void is varied, almost like real life, but stationary and unchanging. Her little world of cool marble and shadowy green is an endless cycle of day and night, of meals and empty classrooms filled with warm breeze and noisy colours, of old books and empty entertainment - and of him, of his painful hugs and the fingers clenching around her chin to forcefully turn her face back to him and receive a kiss she does not want.
But behind the scenes, outside the borders of her little pocket dimension, the wheels of the world are churning as they always have. When Milliardo returns to her from a war meeting or a throne room display, having heard and seen people act and made decisions to react, she knows. She can tell by the stance of his jaw and shoulders, the way he angles his head, the quick, jerky movements as he sheds gloves and coat and dismisses the guards, the lines on his face and the look in his eyes. She can tell by the way he breathes.
Knowing that the world is still in motion - that he has not destroyed everything she fought for, everything he took from her - is the only thing that still gives her hope.
“Are they dead yet?” is invariably the first thing she asks when he arrives. “Did you kill him?”
The answer is always no.
“But soon, my love.” he promises, pulling her close and stroking her hair. “I know how much it would please you.”
She does not see how he arrived at that conclusion. She does not care to correct him. Knowing that the gundam pilots are still alive is enough. Every time he answers “No.”, Relena knows the fight is still on. She knows her brother hasn’t won.
She knows that Heero hasn’t forgotten his promise to protect, and that he will come for her one day. She knows that until that day, it’s up to her.
So she fights.
It bothers him that she won’t resign to her fate. She has everything she could ever need here - food, shelter, entertainment, loving family - so why wouldn’t she?
“I don’t care what I have here, I don’t want to be here!”
“Relena, listen to yourself. You sound like a child in a tantrum.”
“I don’t care how I sound, you’re keeping me here against my will. You’re keeping me prisoner!”
“Don’t think like that. This is for your own good, I’m just making sure you’re -”
“You don’t get to decide what is for my own good, brother. You lost that right long ago.”
Her rejection hurts him, and hurting him hurts her. But what else is there left to her when nothing else can make him see reason?
Milliardo is beside himself when the day arrives that she finally attacks him. Relena’s no match for him, of course, but she is desperate, she is furious, and long before he manages to subdue her she is pinned to the floor beneath his weight, bleeding and crying in a hoarse, feeble voice that does not reach beyond the two of them. She’s given him plenty of bruises in return; too many apologies pour from his lips for them to be all about that day’s wounds.
He tries to make it up to her like he doesn’t know exactly what it is she wants. His trinkets she hurls at the walls, his clothes she tears, his books she burns. When he brings her a kitten, curious and fluffy and affectionate and adorable, she can’t stop crying until he takes it away again.
Outside, she was Queen of the World; in her heart she has never really lain down the responsibilities of the position. In here, she cannot even bear the thought of having to take care of a pet. She cannot stop herself from loving and craving the creature, but neither can she bear the thought of something so innocent and helpless suffering the fate her brother has already dealt out to her.
It reminds her too much of everyone she killed by not being able to prevent the end, everyone she has let down by still being here, everyone she has abandoned by not fighting hard enough.
The ghosts in the classroom are next. They lull her, for a while. Like dreams released from the confines of her mind, the glow, reaching from their eyes into every corner of her prison, make everything seem less solid, less severe and immediate. When the guard finally unlocks the classroom door she is living in a painting, on a movie screen, a rendition of her life she gets to behold from the sidelines, her feelings stirring in the pleasant way of fiction, something to pass the time with, engaging but of no consequence. It makes Milliardo happy, because he does not like to see her hurt, and it makes her happy too, in a sense. She is not someone who wants to endure pain just for the sake of it, pain to no effect. With all reason to bear it gone, why not take away the suffering as well?
But she is not herself anymore. When she next lashes out at her brother, she is not herself. Peace tricks her and then war tricks her - what is it she wants? Her brother is not out to hurt her, she makes him, but he doesn’t want to hurt her. The sallow lights swimming behind her eyelids don’t know what they want, alternating between telling her that this is to her advantage because it will make escape easier, and that her brother has her best interests at heart and his unwillingness to hurt her is a sign that she should stay.
It’s hard to see and listen, harder still to think. She is fighting, using her nails and her teeth, the length of her limbs and the jutting of her joints, she is fighting with all she has because she has no other options left, but she doesn’t know why. What is she fighting against? What is she trying to achieve?
“What do I have to do to make you happy?”
Let me go let me go let me go!
“I can’t set you free. I can’t lose you. Why can’t you see that? You’re the only beautiful thing left, if the rest of the world got its hands on you they would swallow you whole, they would tear you apart. I love you, Relena.”
If you loved me you’d let me go let me go let me go!
“How can I make you see that?! I love you Relena, stop - fighting - me - little sister please, I love you.”
But she doesn’t stop fighting him - she wouldn’t know how, because he is an enemy that needs to be defeated and if he loves her he doesn’t if he did he’d let me go that only makes it worse.
Pain does not scare her, does not stop her - he holds her down, clenches her wrists together in his hand until she can feel bones grind together, wrenches at her knees with his fingers piercing deep into her flesh, the seams of her clothing digging into her skin until they give way and rip aside, tearing pain between her legs like her insides are split apart by an iron file. She thrashes and screams and exhausts herself until she can barely recoil anymore from the way he stabs into her.
Frenzy dying down into weak throws of panic and pain, Milliardo presses his mouth to hers as his hand cups a breast, thumb fondling the nipple. Her eyes focus because she can no longer toss her head, and when their gazes meet she can finally see all the love in his eyes - the yellow light of madness.
Afterwards there is no fight left within her. Exhaustion and shock have emptied her mind (like he has left her body empty, like her stomach wants to empty itself over the side of the bed), and only the faintest thread of conscious thought remains.
“When you did those awful things to Heero, and when Libra...” Repulsion and fatigue collide to make her tremble as Milliardo rubs her side and nuzzles her hair. Relena swallows thickly and squeezes her eyes shut. “I thought you were trying to teach me something... about war... about the world.”
Had he ever cared if his actions hurt her, or if her pain was relieved in a way she did not wanted it to? Whenever she saw him he always wanted something out of her, always wanted her to be this way or see things like that. Had he ever cared for her as his sister, instead of - Had that moment on Libra been a lie?
“Don’t think about that. I was wrong.”
He was always forcing things onto her, be it knowing nothing but peace with the Darlians, knowing war through Zechs Merquise, or a pliable world that would meld to her ideals like she had been moulded to be nothing but the side of him he had purged himself of. The world had always been more important to him than either of them.
“What are you trying to teach me now?”
“That I love you.” he says with a kiss to her shoulder, and his arm on her waist draws her closer to him.
Maybe you were more right then than you are now.
Milliardo is aghast when he finds his fingers in deep, dark bruises around her wrists the next day. So the next time he comes he brings silk.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
Did she win?
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
He made her beg for mercy.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
Did she win?
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
He made her beg for more.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
He won.
The yellow lights came for her. Did she fight them?
Did she win?
Milliardo came for her. Did she fight him?
He made her beg for mercy.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
Did she win?
It was hopeless.
She fought.
She lost.
She fought.
She lost.
She lost and she lost and she lost.
Did she still even fight?
“Are they dead yet? Did you kill him?”
“Not yet.”
What was she fighting for?
What was she fighting against?
Every so often there are nightmares that stain her bed with sweat. Other times, there are hallucinations that sweep the consciousness from beneath her feet, that split her skull with pain and leave her thrashing on the floor or lashing out at everything that gets in the way of her stumbling feet, driving her with an overwhelming, all-consuming need to do something.
And sometimes, the visions and agony pass her by entirely, and her mind becomes as clear as if her whole life before it had been nothing but a haze. When that happens plans lay themselves out before her mind’’s eye, immaculate assessments and predictions that adapt effortlessly to any change in the variables, expanding as she advances and learns. It is a feverish, one-track state of mind that leaves no room for anything but action and the pursuit of the next piece of the puzzle. She is trapped in ignorance in this marble house in the woods, and that doesn’t sit right with the golden vision.
The first time she gives in to the rousing voice she kills her guards with one of their own guns, using the memories of shooting at roses a lifetime ago, and gets as far as finding the location of the docking bay before they can take her down and drag her back.
She can’t keep food down for a week.
The second time, she knows the hallways and the doors. The way to take is as clear to her as it was when she first found it - how long ago? The voices learn not only about the world outside, but from inside of her as well, and the sick feeling that comes over her whenever she steadies her stolen gun to kill teaches them quickly. A man with no kneecaps is just as harmless as one dead.
Milliardo has let the voices learn dangerous things.
When even the guiding hand of her spectre of victory cannot bring her to pull the trigger on her brother, it occurs to Relena that Milliardo has taught her things that are just as dangerous.
“Are they dead yet?” she asked, wondering who she meant. “Did you kill him?”
Her brother’s tongue tried little trails across her skin, along her collar bones, exploring the crevice between jaw and ear, upward from the underside of her breast. “No, but soon. I know how much it would please you.”
She supposed it would.
He’s brought her a gift today. She can tell from the way he smiles.
“It’s your birthday today. Happy birthday, Relena.”
“It is? How old am I now?”
“You’re eighteen now.”
April 7.
“I’ve brought you something.”
Operation Meteor.
He’s brought her a crown in a picnic basket. Sunset has frozen all around them, warmth lingering but light faded. The trees and their branches seem to have retreated into a stark contrast of two-dimensionality, like they’re sitting in a photograph, like none of this is real.
Sunset on the beach.
“This is a day I’ve been waiting for.” he says, bringing the circlet to her head while shadows play along his form. His eyes are empty smudges - she can imagine anything she wants to be in there. “You’re a woman by law now. Do you know what that means, Relena?”
She hardly knows who the two of them are, anymore. Are they even real?
Sunset on the beach. And on the beach...
“It means you’ll be Queen again. Queen of a new world, a better world - this world. My Queen.” he says, his words against her lips in the breath before they kiss.
On the beach, a boy who ran.
They kiss, and of course she knows what is real. It’s this. It’s her, his Relena, his beloved, his Queen, his everything. It’s him above her, his arms on either side of her head as his body covers her and his lips speak against hers without words. It’s unbuttoning his shirt while he strokes her cheek, tracing the lines of his physique with her mouth, reaching through touch, not sight, into the shadows, to the scars he was born with, the marks he’s had since before the world existed.
On the beach, a boy who ran and a girl.
Marks he’s had since before he created this world. Was there anything before? Not for her; this world is all she knows, all she’s ever seen, all she’ll ever need. Was she ever a Queen before today? She cannot fathom it. There is no reason for her to have wanted it if it were not to please him.
It’s this, the center of her being, the meaning of her life, unbuttoning her white sundress, undoing the last barrier between them. It’s -
A boy who ran from a girl...
Bare skin to bare skin, sliding, enticing and cherishing. Lips suckling her breast and a hand trailing down her side. A curtain of silver hair, falling in a trickle of tickles as he tosses his head from side to side. The languid trail of his hand between her legs, spread with only a hint of that reluctance she’s never understood about herself.
A girl named...
What’s real is him. He is her brother, her lover, her King. He is inside her. He fills her. He is all she’ll ever need, in this world he built for her. Outside, without him, she is nothing. It’s -
My name is Relena Darlian. What’s yours?
She can smell the machine on him, can feel it on herself, like a slime in the palms of her hands, on her skin, between her legs.
Heero.
Milliardo’s buzzer zooms an alarm.
Heero!
His eyes leave her face right before they can take in the horror breaking out on it. He stills and pulls out of her and doesn’t feel her violent shudder. Moving off of her, an outstretched hand tugs his coat toward them, rummages through the pile of clothes he’s thrown haphazardly onto it. He leans back on his knees with the device in hand. Click.
Relena can see the madness emerge in his eyes. And then that same light immerses her and disconnects her from the inside, and she knows what she must do.
She snatches the buzzer from his hands and throws it as far as she can. Murmuring to him - “Don’t go, you don’t need that thing, all you need is this, this right here, all you need is me.” - she eases him onto his back and straddles him, never breaking eye contact. Letting him see the light of the machine his ghosts have planted in her mind. She takes hold of his erection and guides it back into her.
“My brother. My love. My king.” She rides him and speaks in hushed, panting sighs. “My everything.”
And Milliardo does not doubt or object, but takes her with hungry, emotive eyes. Madness unravels into heartbreaking, childish happiness and gratitude as she brings him closer to completion - this is all he’s ever wanted, she knows - and somewhere amidst the tears she finds a smile.
Somewhere amidst his clothes she finds his gun.
One last time he calls out her name - his back arches off of the blanket. A single bullet. He never notices a thing as the barrel is placed to his heart and Relena’s sobs reach their peak.
Long live the King.
While the shot rings in her ears, Relena is alone for the first time in what could have been forever. For a little while, she is deaf to the whispering voices, blind to the yellow haze, numb to his hot life splattered all over her and inside her.
But eventually the world comes back. It always comes back. Does she want to go back?
When will it end?
It’s only just beginning.
And so she stands and goes into the house to greet her intruder, naked, with her brother’s blood decorating her arms and breasts and face and his seed trickling between her thighs, his gun in her hand. The sickly lights in her head chant to her, a song of lament and victory and madness to guide her faltering, unsteady march.
Did you do this to me... to us? Epyon?
Maybe.
The King is dead. Long live... the Queen?
I’m glad you came.
I’m glad I found you.
Did you come to kill me, Heero?
“Please kill me, Heero.”
“No.”
It’s only just beginning.
Written by: omnicat for terravayne
Rating: R
Warnings: incest, nonconsensual sex, death
Gift #5: A Relena and Zechs incestfic. It doesn't have to be consummated; it could just be feelings, requited or otherwise.
What have I done? What have I done, Epyon? Why did you make me do this?
Made you?
What should I do? This wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t know what to do, Epyon.
Isn’t it obvious? There’s only one thing you can do.
Her life now seems little different from her life back then.
Her home has all the luxuries a girl could ask for; spacious rooms of multicoloured marble and solid oak, sheer white curtains blowing in an eternally pleasant breeze, silk sheets on her bed, gardens as far as the eye can see. There is food and drink aplenty, the healthiest and tastiest money can buy, and anything that’s not already in stock can be arranged for her. She goes to class to learn meaningless things, to the library to read of dreams long dead and gone, turns on television and radio for music and mindless entertainment.
Relena’s family makes sure that she is safe, comfortable, and sheltered from all the rest of the world. Just as they always have.
Only now, her mother and father are no longer there, and the person she still accidentally calls Pagan sometimes is a woman in a uniform, voice clipped and eyes cold. Her classmates are ghosts; holograms, hollow approximations of personalities born from watered-down military technology. They are there to make sure Relena won’t get too lonely, to call on her and include her, to never leave her more than five minutes of peace - she’s counted. But when she tries to touch them they shimmer around her empty hands, and when they speak to her she sees not friends but a non-entity with glowing yellow eyes she should not recognize but does, a cold, unstoppable perfection that terrifies and repulses her as much as it calls to her with its promise of - of what?
Sometimes she doesn’t know whether to laugh with them or cover her ears and cry. Sometimes she does either. Sometimes both at once. But always, when her forced hours in the classroom are done, she comes out feeling less human, less substantial, and it seems to take a little longer each time for the light-headed, meaningless hyper-clarity to lift.
Sometimes she wonders whether she is still even real, or just the simulacra of a girl that never existed even then, a figment of Milliardo’s imagination, just like everything else in her prison paradise.
When she first found herself in her little enclave of nothingness, dazed and disoriented with sedatives, Dorothy was there. Eyes wide and wild, she was reluctant to say anything, but did not refuse when Relena pressed on.
The White Fang had won the war. Milliardo had declared himself King of the Earth and all of space. The war was over because the Milliardo willed it so, because Milliardo no longer allowed disagreement, but there was no peace. Nowhere in the world was there peace. Only here, in the alternate reality Milliardo had built for his sister, could an absense of strife ever possibly exist.
Dorothy wanted to stay.
Milliardo did not let her. He sent her out to lead the mobile dolls by day and she would be allowed to keep Relena company at night. The change in her chilled Relena to the bone, but she held the girl as she flinched and shivered and refused to sleep alone, and saved her questions and escape plans for when Dorothy had calmed down.
But Dorothy wanted to stay, said that it was better here, and whenever Relena pressed for details about what was going on outside she would revert to a mess of nonsensical words and unhinged laughter. Then one day Dorothy simply failed to come back, leaving Relena locked up, guarded by strangers who wouldn’t talk to her, not knowing how and when she’d gotten there or what had happened to the other girl.
Milliardo didn’t come to see her until almost two weeks later. He hugged her against her will, proclaimed Dorothy missing in action, and left almost as soon as he had arrived when a device on his belt started buzzing. Relena couldn’t get Dorothy off her mind but knew that it was no use worrying over her while she was stuck in here herself, so when her brother came back three days later she asked only the sensible questions - the selfish questions.
“What’s going on here? Why are you keeping me here? What is this place?”
“This place is safe. The rest of the world - the rest of mankind - is beyond saving. I know you want to be out there trying anyway, but this is the only way I can keep you from being dragged down with it.”
His eyes were wild like Dorothy’s had been, and when they landed on her Relena felt something inside of her die.
“Milliardo, tell me what happened.” she said, part of her already screaming at the horror of his answer. “What’s going on?”
The answer was already in his eyes. But she could not, would not believe it, not until he said the words out loud - how could she just assume that her own brother would really be capable of forcing his will that way? How could she honestly expect the world to be willing to change for the better if even she, the one pushing for improvements, accepted the truth of its atrocities so easily?
“Brother!” she pleaded, hysteria creeping into her own voice as his horrible silence stretched and his eyes, those eyes, stared and stared and stared.
“It’s hopeless. The world is beyond saving.” he repeated, for a moment seeming almost sane for the grief lining his face. “You’ll be safe here. I’m going to make sure the world won’t ever touch you again, and you don’t go out looking for it. This is for your own good. I’ll keep you safe.”
And he wrapped her in his arms and held on so tight it hurt. She would have pushed him away, but the desperate force with which he held on to her said that not even he could believe it.
He wouldn’t have had to say anything more to let her know what had happened. But she could not make herself believe it. Memories of happiness, of her mother, of her classmates, of the fire that was the very start of her life - they clung to her like drowning men and how could anyone be strong enough to bear this? The weight was too much, she would sink, they would slip and dissolve into nothing if she could not hold on - no, she couldn’t, not like this, if she went under now she might never be able to resurface, she won’t, no no no no no no -
He came by every day after that, sometimes for just an hour to eat with her, sometimes staying until deep in the night. He wanted to get to know her, he said, and asked endless amounts of questions - about her life, her tastes, her passions, her opinions, about things she’d never even given any thought. She answered them all because anything was better than leaving her thoughts to wander on their own.
He told her all about himself, too. But the one question she had was never answered.
The hours in her beautiful cage were long and empty, fueling her desire to escape with every tick of the clock. It took frightfully little time to explore her confines; she did it trice more in rapid succession of the first attempt, unable to believe there was really no way out but the solid steel door Dorothy, Milliardo and the guards used.
In the end, he never did tell her that the Earth had died a horrible death, that everything war had not already taken from her had gone up in flames, was swallowed by natural disaster, had reverted to dust while she led a good life sheltered from all the world’s problems, just like before. The only only thing that kept her afloat in the sea of darkness that now made up her existence was to keep fighting the tide. To hold on to hope and faith and shake off horror and despair, to keep swimming and not get dragged down.
Just keep swimming. Keep running, pushing, struggling. Doesn’t matter where to, doesn’t matter if you never get there. Doesn’t matter if there’s nowhere left to run to, nothing left to fight for.
Just don’t stop, and don’t look back.
There are no stars in the nighttime, only a velvety greenish shadow filled with the wrinkles of the ceiling’s structure. When she looks up through the branches or leans out the window at night, it’s like being in a cave below the water; during the day, the sky resembles an opaque, mountain-sized bell glass that lets in light but obscures everything outside it from view. She doesn’t even have a way to tell time, now. There are no clocks or calendars. The artificial colony sun can move through the sky as the daytime passes, or hang in place for hours on end and jump at random intervals. Sometimes the shadows move faster than she can walk. She does not know why this is, and does not bother asking. She used to, but there is no point in knowing, so she feels no more need to.
Because what use is it to grasp onto a reality that doesn’t exist in the first place?
There are no more news bulletins; there is no more news. Nothing is going on in the world anymore, because the world outside, ugly and flawed and filthy as it is, has reached the closest thing to perfection it can achieve. As the King, he must maintain its current state, lest it falls back to the way it was before and destroys even this sanctuary where perfection is possible. There is no more need to know about outside; there is no more need to remember anything but here ever existed at all. Everything else is a lie.
Her need to go back to the world she’s been fighting for all this time is a lie.
There is never anything that was not already there, and nothing disappears that she does not destroy with her own hands. This void is varied, almost like real life, but stationary and unchanging. Her little world of cool marble and shadowy green is an endless cycle of day and night, of meals and empty classrooms filled with warm breeze and noisy colours, of old books and empty entertainment - and of him, of his painful hugs and the fingers clenching around her chin to forcefully turn her face back to him and receive a kiss she does not want.
But behind the scenes, outside the borders of her little pocket dimension, the wheels of the world are churning as they always have. When Milliardo returns to her from a war meeting or a throne room display, having heard and seen people act and made decisions to react, she knows. She can tell by the stance of his jaw and shoulders, the way he angles his head, the quick, jerky movements as he sheds gloves and coat and dismisses the guards, the lines on his face and the look in his eyes. She can tell by the way he breathes.
Knowing that the world is still in motion - that he has not destroyed everything she fought for, everything he took from her - is the only thing that still gives her hope.
“Are they dead yet?” is invariably the first thing she asks when he arrives. “Did you kill him?”
The answer is always no.
“But soon, my love.” he promises, pulling her close and stroking her hair. “I know how much it would please you.”
She does not see how he arrived at that conclusion. She does not care to correct him. Knowing that the gundam pilots are still alive is enough. Every time he answers “No.”, Relena knows the fight is still on. She knows her brother hasn’t won.
She knows that Heero hasn’t forgotten his promise to protect, and that he will come for her one day. She knows that until that day, it’s up to her.
So she fights.
It bothers him that she won’t resign to her fate. She has everything she could ever need here - food, shelter, entertainment, loving family - so why wouldn’t she?
“I don’t care what I have here, I don’t want to be here!”
“Relena, listen to yourself. You sound like a child in a tantrum.”
“I don’t care how I sound, you’re keeping me here against my will. You’re keeping me prisoner!”
“Don’t think like that. This is for your own good, I’m just making sure you’re -”
“You don’t get to decide what is for my own good, brother. You lost that right long ago.”
Her rejection hurts him, and hurting him hurts her. But what else is there left to her when nothing else can make him see reason?
Milliardo is beside himself when the day arrives that she finally attacks him. Relena’s no match for him, of course, but she is desperate, she is furious, and long before he manages to subdue her she is pinned to the floor beneath his weight, bleeding and crying in a hoarse, feeble voice that does not reach beyond the two of them. She’s given him plenty of bruises in return; too many apologies pour from his lips for them to be all about that day’s wounds.
He tries to make it up to her like he doesn’t know exactly what it is she wants. His trinkets she hurls at the walls, his clothes she tears, his books she burns. When he brings her a kitten, curious and fluffy and affectionate and adorable, she can’t stop crying until he takes it away again.
Outside, she was Queen of the World; in her heart she has never really lain down the responsibilities of the position. In here, she cannot even bear the thought of having to take care of a pet. She cannot stop herself from loving and craving the creature, but neither can she bear the thought of something so innocent and helpless suffering the fate her brother has already dealt out to her.
It reminds her too much of everyone she killed by not being able to prevent the end, everyone she has let down by still being here, everyone she has abandoned by not fighting hard enough.
The ghosts in the classroom are next. They lull her, for a while. Like dreams released from the confines of her mind, the glow, reaching from their eyes into every corner of her prison, make everything seem less solid, less severe and immediate. When the guard finally unlocks the classroom door she is living in a painting, on a movie screen, a rendition of her life she gets to behold from the sidelines, her feelings stirring in the pleasant way of fiction, something to pass the time with, engaging but of no consequence. It makes Milliardo happy, because he does not like to see her hurt, and it makes her happy too, in a sense. She is not someone who wants to endure pain just for the sake of it, pain to no effect. With all reason to bear it gone, why not take away the suffering as well?
But she is not herself anymore. When she next lashes out at her brother, she is not herself. Peace tricks her and then war tricks her - what is it she wants? Her brother is not out to hurt her, she makes him, but he doesn’t want to hurt her. The sallow lights swimming behind her eyelids don’t know what they want, alternating between telling her that this is to her advantage because it will make escape easier, and that her brother has her best interests at heart and his unwillingness to hurt her is a sign that she should stay.
It’s hard to see and listen, harder still to think. She is fighting, using her nails and her teeth, the length of her limbs and the jutting of her joints, she is fighting with all she has because she has no other options left, but she doesn’t know why. What is she fighting against? What is she trying to achieve?
“What do I have to do to make you happy?”
Let me go let me go let me go!
“I can’t set you free. I can’t lose you. Why can’t you see that? You’re the only beautiful thing left, if the rest of the world got its hands on you they would swallow you whole, they would tear you apart. I love you, Relena.”
If you loved me you’d let me go let me go let me go!
“How can I make you see that?! I love you Relena, stop - fighting - me - little sister please, I love you.”
But she doesn’t stop fighting him - she wouldn’t know how, because he is an enemy that needs to be defeated and if he loves her he doesn’t if he did he’d let me go that only makes it worse.
Pain does not scare her, does not stop her - he holds her down, clenches her wrists together in his hand until she can feel bones grind together, wrenches at her knees with his fingers piercing deep into her flesh, the seams of her clothing digging into her skin until they give way and rip aside, tearing pain between her legs like her insides are split apart by an iron file. She thrashes and screams and exhausts herself until she can barely recoil anymore from the way he stabs into her.
Frenzy dying down into weak throws of panic and pain, Milliardo presses his mouth to hers as his hand cups a breast, thumb fondling the nipple. Her eyes focus because she can no longer toss her head, and when their gazes meet she can finally see all the love in his eyes - the yellow light of madness.
Afterwards there is no fight left within her. Exhaustion and shock have emptied her mind (like he has left her body empty, like her stomach wants to empty itself over the side of the bed), and only the faintest thread of conscious thought remains.
“When you did those awful things to Heero, and when Libra...” Repulsion and fatigue collide to make her tremble as Milliardo rubs her side and nuzzles her hair. Relena swallows thickly and squeezes her eyes shut. “I thought you were trying to teach me something... about war... about the world.”
Had he ever cared if his actions hurt her, or if her pain was relieved in a way she did not wanted it to? Whenever she saw him he always wanted something out of her, always wanted her to be this way or see things like that. Had he ever cared for her as his sister, instead of - Had that moment on Libra been a lie?
“Don’t think about that. I was wrong.”
He was always forcing things onto her, be it knowing nothing but peace with the Darlians, knowing war through Zechs Merquise, or a pliable world that would meld to her ideals like she had been moulded to be nothing but the side of him he had purged himself of. The world had always been more important to him than either of them.
“What are you trying to teach me now?”
“That I love you.” he says with a kiss to her shoulder, and his arm on her waist draws her closer to him.
Maybe you were more right then than you are now.
Milliardo is aghast when he finds his fingers in deep, dark bruises around her wrists the next day. So the next time he comes he brings silk.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
Did she win?
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
He made her beg for mercy.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
She lost.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
Did she win?
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
He made her beg for more.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
She won.
Milliardo came for her. She fought him.
He won.
The yellow lights came for her. Did she fight them?
Did she win?
Milliardo came for her. Did she fight him?
He made her beg for mercy.
The yellow lights came for her. She fought them.
Did she win?
It was hopeless.
She fought.
She lost.
She fought.
She lost.
She lost and she lost and she lost.
Did she still even fight?
“Are they dead yet? Did you kill him?”
“Not yet.”
What was she fighting for?
What was she fighting against?
Every so often there are nightmares that stain her bed with sweat. Other times, there are hallucinations that sweep the consciousness from beneath her feet, that split her skull with pain and leave her thrashing on the floor or lashing out at everything that gets in the way of her stumbling feet, driving her with an overwhelming, all-consuming need to do something.
And sometimes, the visions and agony pass her by entirely, and her mind becomes as clear as if her whole life before it had been nothing but a haze. When that happens plans lay themselves out before her mind’’s eye, immaculate assessments and predictions that adapt effortlessly to any change in the variables, expanding as she advances and learns. It is a feverish, one-track state of mind that leaves no room for anything but action and the pursuit of the next piece of the puzzle. She is trapped in ignorance in this marble house in the woods, and that doesn’t sit right with the golden vision.
The first time she gives in to the rousing voice she kills her guards with one of their own guns, using the memories of shooting at roses a lifetime ago, and gets as far as finding the location of the docking bay before they can take her down and drag her back.
She can’t keep food down for a week.
The second time, she knows the hallways and the doors. The way to take is as clear to her as it was when she first found it - how long ago? The voices learn not only about the world outside, but from inside of her as well, and the sick feeling that comes over her whenever she steadies her stolen gun to kill teaches them quickly. A man with no kneecaps is just as harmless as one dead.
Milliardo has let the voices learn dangerous things.
When even the guiding hand of her spectre of victory cannot bring her to pull the trigger on her brother, it occurs to Relena that Milliardo has taught her things that are just as dangerous.
“Are they dead yet?” she asked, wondering who she meant. “Did you kill him?”
Her brother’s tongue tried little trails across her skin, along her collar bones, exploring the crevice between jaw and ear, upward from the underside of her breast. “No, but soon. I know how much it would please you.”
She supposed it would.
He’s brought her a gift today. She can tell from the way he smiles.
“It’s your birthday today. Happy birthday, Relena.”
“It is? How old am I now?”
“You’re eighteen now.”
April 7.
“I’ve brought you something.”
Operation Meteor.
He’s brought her a crown in a picnic basket. Sunset has frozen all around them, warmth lingering but light faded. The trees and their branches seem to have retreated into a stark contrast of two-dimensionality, like they’re sitting in a photograph, like none of this is real.
Sunset on the beach.
“This is a day I’ve been waiting for.” he says, bringing the circlet to her head while shadows play along his form. His eyes are empty smudges - she can imagine anything she wants to be in there. “You’re a woman by law now. Do you know what that means, Relena?”
She hardly knows who the two of them are, anymore. Are they even real?
Sunset on the beach. And on the beach...
“It means you’ll be Queen again. Queen of a new world, a better world - this world. My Queen.” he says, his words against her lips in the breath before they kiss.
On the beach, a boy who ran.
They kiss, and of course she knows what is real. It’s this. It’s her, his Relena, his beloved, his Queen, his everything. It’s him above her, his arms on either side of her head as his body covers her and his lips speak against hers without words. It’s unbuttoning his shirt while he strokes her cheek, tracing the lines of his physique with her mouth, reaching through touch, not sight, into the shadows, to the scars he was born with, the marks he’s had since before the world existed.
On the beach, a boy who ran and a girl.
Marks he’s had since before he created this world. Was there anything before? Not for her; this world is all she knows, all she’s ever seen, all she’ll ever need. Was she ever a Queen before today? She cannot fathom it. There is no reason for her to have wanted it if it were not to please him.
It’s this, the center of her being, the meaning of her life, unbuttoning her white sundress, undoing the last barrier between them. It’s -
A boy who ran from a girl...
Bare skin to bare skin, sliding, enticing and cherishing. Lips suckling her breast and a hand trailing down her side. A curtain of silver hair, falling in a trickle of tickles as he tosses his head from side to side. The languid trail of his hand between her legs, spread with only a hint of that reluctance she’s never understood about herself.
A girl named...
What’s real is him. He is her brother, her lover, her King. He is inside her. He fills her. He is all she’ll ever need, in this world he built for her. Outside, without him, she is nothing. It’s -
My name is Relena Darlian. What’s yours?
She can smell the machine on him, can feel it on herself, like a slime in the palms of her hands, on her skin, between her legs.
Heero.
Milliardo’s buzzer zooms an alarm.
Heero!
His eyes leave her face right before they can take in the horror breaking out on it. He stills and pulls out of her and doesn’t feel her violent shudder. Moving off of her, an outstretched hand tugs his coat toward them, rummages through the pile of clothes he’s thrown haphazardly onto it. He leans back on his knees with the device in hand. Click.
Relena can see the madness emerge in his eyes. And then that same light immerses her and disconnects her from the inside, and she knows what she must do.
She snatches the buzzer from his hands and throws it as far as she can. Murmuring to him - “Don’t go, you don’t need that thing, all you need is this, this right here, all you need is me.” - she eases him onto his back and straddles him, never breaking eye contact. Letting him see the light of the machine his ghosts have planted in her mind. She takes hold of his erection and guides it back into her.
“My brother. My love. My king.” She rides him and speaks in hushed, panting sighs. “My everything.”
And Milliardo does not doubt or object, but takes her with hungry, emotive eyes. Madness unravels into heartbreaking, childish happiness and gratitude as she brings him closer to completion - this is all he’s ever wanted, she knows - and somewhere amidst the tears she finds a smile.
Somewhere amidst his clothes she finds his gun.
One last time he calls out her name - his back arches off of the blanket. A single bullet. He never notices a thing as the barrel is placed to his heart and Relena’s sobs reach their peak.
Long live the King.
While the shot rings in her ears, Relena is alone for the first time in what could have been forever. For a little while, she is deaf to the whispering voices, blind to the yellow haze, numb to his hot life splattered all over her and inside her.
But eventually the world comes back. It always comes back. Does she want to go back?
When will it end?
It’s only just beginning.
And so she stands and goes into the house to greet her intruder, naked, with her brother’s blood decorating her arms and breasts and face and his seed trickling between her thighs, his gun in her hand. The sickly lights in her head chant to her, a song of lament and victory and madness to guide her faltering, unsteady march.
Did you do this to me... to us? Epyon?
Maybe.
The King is dead. Long live... the Queen?
I’m glad you came.
I’m glad I found you.
Did you come to kill me, Heero?
“Please kill me, Heero.”
“No.”
It’s only just beginning.