Zeta Gundam Fan Fiction ❯ Harbinger of Darkness ❯ Confrontation ( Chapter 9 )

Disclaimer: I make no pretense as to lay claim to any of the various and sundry Japanese Anime Programmes referenced to in the following work of fiction. Any similarities between extant characters or places is purely intentional. I do not own Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam, The 08th MS Team, BGCT2040, RahXephon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, or any of the other masterpieces referenced herein. Thank Ye!

 

Michelle Bannock twirled about over the spacious penthouse suite, feeling the plush carpets spring beneath her feet as she did so. She laughed giddily and flopped down on the mammoth king-sized bed.

`You like it, I see,' Henry Sterling said with a laugh of his own.

`Oh Henry,' she gushed, hopping off the bed and planting a kiss on his cheek. `It's marvellous!'

It had been a long time since she'd stayed anyplace quite as nice as this. Her parents, wealthy doctors both, had taken her with them several times to fancy hotels for meetings and retreats, but as she got older, they demanded that she spend more of her time studying and stopped bringing her along. Henry had revived a part of her childhood and reliving her memories of her childhood set her simpering like a schoolgirl.

Had he known about this part of her? With his Newtype abilities, had he seen the kind of joy that this would bring to one so mired in the despondency of adult life?

Regardless of the why, she allowed him to embrace her and kiss her in return (though he was forward enough to go for her lips). She owed so much to this man. Someone who had given her so much happiness after so many years of despair…but yet…

`Nightingale,' he said when they had at last parted, `why don't you go and freshen up a bit? It's been such a long trip, you must be exhausted.'

Michelle gave him a mischievous smile. `Trying to imply something there, Don Juan?'

His face coloured. `No, not at all.'

She laughed again, high and musical. In spite of the airs of authority and elegance with which he carried himself, he was still just a young man under it all. Something about that…human-ness made Michelle feel all the closer to him. Like he was an actual lover and not some child doting on a pet or doll.

Composure regained, Henry continued: `I simply thought that you might be interested in going down to the lounge for a little while. The wine they serve here is said to be something worth experiencing, and the jazz band that's playing tonight is purportedly one of the best in the colony.'

`You'll not come with me?' her features sagged slightly.

`No, I am afraid I'll have to miss tonight's performance. I've an important meeting with a member of the Republican Diet.'

`Henry…'

`There now! Stiff upper lip and all that. One evening on your own shouldn't kill you.'

`Very well,' she said, sullenly.

She kissed him (again on the cheek) and walked into the marble bathroom. As she showered, she heard him call out to her, `Nightingale! I've arranged for you to have two guards in tow for the evening. They'll stay out of sight unless they're needed, but I don't want you off all by yourself. This is a friendly colony, but there are still Feddie soldiers prowling about.'

`As you wish, Henry!' she shouted back over the fall of the water.

Moments later, when she finally stepped from the stall, she found that he was gone. She sighed, and walked out of the bathroom towards the closet where her bags had been stowed. An elegant evening of wine and music and all she had to wear was—

Michelle stopped and screamed as she passed the bed.

Lying there for her was a gorgeous black and red evening gown. She picked it up and held it out in front of her and screamed again. It was unquestionably the most beautiful article of clothing she had ever owned.

She was so excited she didn't even notice the note that had been left on it until the small scrap of hotel paper came fluttering down to her feet. `Enjoy the show' Henry had written.

`Oh Henry,' she cooed.

But…

Henry…Henry had done all of this for her. The room, the dress, everything. Did he do it all because he really loved her? How could she not love a man who was so good to her? So kind? So genuine?

Henry was the exact opposite of Alec in every way. So much better to her. He would never betray her feelings or make her suffer the way Alec's coldness had. He would never abandon her in some Godforsaken cellblock without even so much as a phone call or letter.

But…

`But' for all the kindness and tenderness Henry had shown her, Michelle just could not bring herself to love him. Not wholeheartedly. She looked at the dress and at the note and felt her eyes sting with tears (when had those got there?). He was trying so hard for her, but it was all for naught. The gifts were wonderful, but it just wasn't the same as if they had come from someone whom she truly loved.

Then came the onslaught of questions.

`Why do you still love Alec? Look at what he did to you!' `Why are you still with Henry if you don't love him? What kind of game are you playing with his heart?' `Was any of this really Alec's fault? What about that whore Rachel who was manipulating him all that time?' `Is Henry really that bad? Can't you just let go of the past and be happy for once?'

Michelle swayed as though she had been physically hit, and teetered on the point of collapse. Yet through sheer force of will, she managed to stay upright and force the hateful thoughts out of her mind. Her mind was as Pandora's Box, but for some reason, every time she opened it, the same demons spewed forth to try and overwhelm her.

And where was Hope?

Shaking her head, and feeling desperately in need of another shower, Michelle dressed slowly and headed down towards the lobby.

Where was hope?

 

`Good evening, everybody,' Rachel Kincaid spoke in her breathy musician's voice into the old fashioned silver stand-up microphone. `Glad to see so many people out in the audience tonight. Welcome to the Hyatt Regency, by the way. Everyone's enjoying their stay, I assume?'

Applause rippled through the crowd that had gathered in the hotel's lounge. Politicos from Earth and other colonies in the Republic mostly. The Diet's session was in full swing from what Rachel had gleaned from chatter at her morning job at the coffee shop, and representatives usually liked to stay someplace fancy when they had the opportunity. The rich ones left over from the Reichstag anyway; the freshmen usually rented apartments close to the capitol.

But this was neither here nor there. Just so long as they dropped a lot of cash at the hotel so that the hotel could pay Rachel and her band what they deserved.

`That's great,' Rachel said when the applause for the hotel died down a little. `You all probably know more about this place than I do, and I work here!'

That won a brief spate of laughter, and she mentally sighed with relief. She liked to throw out little one-liners from time to time as much to ease her own tension as to break the ice with the crowd.

`Well, anyway, I'm going to do my thing up here for the next couple of hours, and I hope you enjoy it as much as you do the cocktails. Heh, drink a lot of cocktails and you might enjoy it even more.'

More laughter.

`I'm going to start off with one of my favourites. It's old, but good songs die hard.' She nodded to her piano accompanist. `Break it off smooth, Charlie.'

 

My funny valentine

Sweet, comic valentine…

 

Michelle Bannock felt positively radiant in her new dress. It was a novel experience: she'd never been one to actually be conscious of the fact that she might actually cause heads to turn. Were she a more preening and narcissistic woman, she would have revelled in the looks she pretended not to notice from the men she passed on the way down towards the lounge.

Why would they possibly be interested in me? She thought, they must simply be admiring the dress.

And, indeed, what a dress it was. It stopped just below her knees and clung tightly in all the right places. Michelle had never been a busty girl, and had always been on the skinny side, but the few curves she did have—namely her pert posterior—were elegantly accented.

 

Your looks are laughable

Unphotographable

 

The make-up felt as foreign as the wolfish stares in many respects. Her face felt strangely clogged—not an altogether unpleasant feeling, just…different. Eyeshadow was a new experience too, though she'd worn lipstick several times before. Michelle had completed the elaborate game of dress-up by putting her hair up with styling pins.

Yes, she felt strange all right. Strange and…beautiful.

Zao and Cavotta, two of Henry's most trusted bodyguards, tailed her from a discrete distance. She appreciated the gesture on Henry's part—it was touching how he always worried about her safety—but tonight, she was just going down to the lobby for a daiquiri or two and to listen to the music. It was not as if she was likely to run into any trouble in a lounge of all places.

Michelle smiled humourlessly. Henry, it seemed, exaggerated his own self-importance. Whether it was out of paranoia or simply a deep concern for himself and those closest to him, she did not know. Regardless, in the preposterously unlikely event that she did need to defend herself, she always kept a small, silver revolver in her handbag.

Ah, the lounge at last. She'd heard the final bars of one of her favourite pieces fading as the songstress finished her final vibrato. The woman was undoubtedly talented, but something about the song felt different in some way that she could not quite place (Mocking? Haunting? Familiar.)

No matter, though.

The Hyatt's lounge was an underground extension of the main lobby and required that guests walk down several steps through a mauve archway. A neon sign to the right of the entrance proudly proclaimed `The Lounge' in curly, cursive strokes.

Much nicer than that tavern where I first met Henry, Michelle mused. She walked in, entourage following several paces behind.

 

Rachel laughed slightly. It was more a relieved exhalation than because she found anything particularly funny.

`You all really liked that?' she asked after the first wave of applause had died down. It was a foolish thing to ask for it simply triggered another thunderous ovation.

`Aw, thanks a lot.' Rachel gave one of her winning smiles. `I just love to sing. Lucky I happen to be good at it I suppose. It'll keep my daughter in clothes and fed I guess.'

Laughter.

`You wouldn't believe me, but my husband actually laughs at me when I sing in the shower. I suppose that's because, deep down inside, I really want to quit the jazz circuit and be a pop diva!' she struck a pose, throwing back her head and taking the mic in one hand while throwing the other in the air.

More laughter.

Rachel laughed a little too. `To hear you all,' she said, still fighting her giggles, `to hear you, you'd've thought I was a stand up comic. “A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Hyatt…”

`But seriously, you all came here to hear me sing, not to act a fool up on the stage. Kick back another of our house drinks and I'll croon another smooth one for ya. Charlie?'

 

Michelle entered the lounge and stopped abruptly feeling as though someone had suddenly doused her in ice water.

Rachel Sawyer.

She blinked in disbelief. It couldn't be her. A trick of the light, perhaps, or just someone who happened to look like her. There had to be some explanation that could logically explain away this phantom from her past.

Michelle knew she must have looked odd, standing there in the archway and obstructing the flow of people in and out of the lounge, but, for the moment, she was in her own world, thousands of miles away from anything or anyone else. It was just her and that stupid, simpering bitch on the stage.

Rachel Sawyer.

The architect of her descent, the cause of her anguish, the harbinger of darkness. No, fate would not—could not—be so cruel as to arrange this horrific juxtaposition of two women out of the eleven billion people in the entire Earth Sphere.

And yet there she was; Rachel mother-fucking Sawyer.

God, wherever He was must be laughing His ass off.

`Lady Michelle?' a voice brought her back to reality. Cavotta, the detached, sane, part of her mind informed her. `Is everything all right, milady?'

`I…of course. I'm fine. Please, you and Zao do go on and find a spot to enjoy the show. I'll be fine.'

Cavotta arched a brow. `If you say so, milady.'

The three of them walked to the bar, each finding an available seat (the two bodyguards sat close enough to be able to protect her but far enough away so as to seem unattached to her in any way). `Scotch whiskey,' Michelle snapped at the bartender, `straight up.'

`Easy there, lady!' he said, taken aback by her savage request for such a stiff drink. Nevertheless, he cringed under her withering glare. `Be right with it.'

A surge of rage coursed through her veins totally obscuring all rational thought. Rachel! And then suddenly, the rage was followed up by aftershocks of inadequacy.

Look at this wretched dress! It looks like a cheap rag next to that glamorous gown that slut has on. How dare Henry buy me such a disgraceful looking thing!

And then: I bet Alec bought her that dress! That whore! She doesn't deserve such treatment! Such pampering! That child…what would Henry know of dresses anyway? I should have her dress! I should have Alec!

But: The gun…

Yes, the gun. A six-shot, snub-nosed revolver. Right there in her handbag.

Rachel…

Here it was at last, her chance for retribution. The one person who had simultaneously stolen the man she loved, her one chance at happiness, and three years of her life.

She drained the shot at a gulp, and slammed the glass back to the table. Her nails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands into tight fists.

 

Another vibrato, another song completed. Rachel took a sip from her glass of water, but noticed a particularly unattractive pressure in the pit of her stomach.

Gotta Pee!

`Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time this evening. I really hope that you're enjoying the show and everything, but for right now, we're gonna take five, and let you savour your drinks.'

She bowed and walked over to her pianist, Charlie Nelson. `Charlie, I've got to use the little girl's room for a minute, would you mind keeping up a low harmony for these fat cats, til I get back? I hate to do this to you, but—'

`Hey, you're the boss, Mrs. K.,' Charlie cut her off, lighting up a cigarette as he did so. `Just don't take too long in there; I know it takes you dames a minute to “powder your nose,” but time is money out here, eh?'

`Thanks Charlie, you're a sweetheart.' Rachel hurried off the corner of the stage but almost took a tumble when her pumps missed a step.

There was a gasp among the lounge lizards closest to the stage who had seen her near mishap, and she grinned stupidly back at them with assurances that she was indeed okay. As she hurried into the bathroom she glanced back over her shoulder to see Charlie clap a hand over his forehead.

Bastard, she thought, glumly. Why in the hell am I so clumsy anyway?

 

`Ma'am?' Zao whispered, noticing Michelle's tension.

`You'll excuse me, Zao,' she said, standing from her barstool, `I have to use the restroom.' With that, she walked briskly off in the direction she had last seen Rachel heading.

 

Rachel Kincaid stood before the mirror in one of the Shangri-la's luxurious bathrooms, and reached into her purse to pull out her glasses.

“Damned things,” she muttered as she set them on the bridge of her nose. Instantly, the world jumped into sharper focus. Her reflection shifted from a blurry mass, to the shapely woman she knew herself to be. Still cursing the glasses she so badly needed, she applied her lipstick and made a last-minute application of her make-up.

“There,” she smiled, returning her cosmetics to her handbag, “that's more like it.”

“Isn't it though?”

Rachel whirled around to find that another woman, approximately her age and build (well, a little less robust in some areas, but approximately…) standing behind her, staring at her reflection.

The other woman smiled mirthlessly back at her. “Rachel Sawyer, I presume?” she asked.

“I went by that name once, but not anymore. Might I ask who you are?” she ran into fans at seemingly random intervals, but this was by far the strangest. Apparently this woman was a patron of her earlier work with ENN; many of those individuals had not known that she had been married.

“Me?” the other woman asked, “I'm just a nobody. My name's Michelle Bannock though, just in case you were wondering.”

Michelle Bannock? Why did that name sound so familiar?

“You don't remember me,” not a question, a statement of fact, “Not surprising. Like I said, I'm not anyone special.”

Rachel felt a vague sense of unease, but did her best to play it off. It was like a nagging sense of déjà-vu; almost as if she should remember this stranger from somewhere other than an autograph session. Well, it was of little consequence. She was on in about five minutes, so she would have to ditch her to get out to the stage. “It was very nice to meet you, Michelle,” Rachel said and smiled, “but if you'll excuse me, I need to be going. If you'd like, we could converse more after my show?”

“Oh, please forgive me, I won't take up any more of your time. I just have but one final question, if you'll indulge me?”

Rachel bit her lower lip and glanced surreptitiously at her watch. “Okay, I guess.”

“How deeply do you love your husband?”

“What?” Rachel asked. The question was so bold that she needed to be sure she had heard it correctly.

“Enough to die for him? Do you love Alec Kincaid that much? Do you love him enough to have spent a year and a half in a detention facility? To forsake all other opportunities for happiness? Do you love him enough to kill for him?”

“I'm…I'm sorry, but I think I'd better be going. They'll be waiting for me—“

Michelle produced a handgun from her bag and fired it into the plaster of the ceiling. “I asked you a question,” she shouted, her voice lost in the echo of the blast of the marble walls, “and you sure as fuck better answer me!”

“I—” Rachel stuttered. Then it hit her; the trial, the confrontation in the park…Michelle Bannock was the woman who had tried to have Alec and his squadmates killed during the final battle of the War! “Oh shit,” she breathed.

“`Oh shit' is right, you bloody Yank bitch.” Michelle smiled darkly. “You have no idea how long I've dreamed about this moment. I ought to kill you right where you stand.”

“Please! I have a daughter at home, she—”

The gun spoke again, sending a shower of plaster flakes drifting down about the two of them. “How dare you flaunt that before me! Do you want to die that badly? You stole everything from me and I…I deserve revenge. You owe it to me to take this bullet.”

Rachel whimpered, her back against the row of sinks.

“Oh yes, you owe me, and I intend to collect,” Michelle levelled the gun and began walking slowly towards her prey.

Oh shit, the two words cycled over and over again in Rachel's mind as her eyes shut tight, a twisted refrain on a broken record. She thought of Nichole back home sleeping peacefully. She thought Alec, out on patrol and just about to get word of his big reassignment. Was this the way he had felt in the cockpit of his Mobile Suit? Was this the adrenaline rush one felt just before leaping into the void? Heh, at least out there, you have several feet of armour surrounding you on all sides. This was up close and personal. Just you and me, babe. No beam rifles, no mega particle cannons, just a good ol' fashion nine-millimetre handgun.

Darling, that's so twentieth century.

Rachel winced when she felt the cold metal on touch the bridge of her nose (you got such a sexy nose, kid! Regal, Rach, just like a Roman Empress!). This was it. The end. Show's over, stand up, bow and get outta here.

“Just one last question, Rachel Sawyer,” Michelle said with malicious glee, “When they say, `Happily Ever After,' just how long is that `Ever After' part? Until they die, perhaps? An interesting corollary to that, `til death do us part,' line.”

“Why?” Rachel asked around tears.

“You mock me?” Michelle exploded, belting Rachel with the butt of the gun. “I told you that much already!”

“N-no,” Rachel stuttered nervously, “just…hear me out please.”

Michelle sneered, jamming the gun in the other woman's temple. “Why should I do you any favours, you whore?”

“Please.”

“You're stalling, but why not? You'll be dead in a few moments anyway. You'll be dead and this nightmare will finally be over!”

“Will it though?” Rachel asked, brushing aside a lock of her hair, matted with blood from the gash where she had been pistol-whipped. “By killing me, what will you have accomplished? Do you think my husband would ever love a murderess?”

“He loves you, doesn't he?” Michelle's voice teetered on the edge of a lunatic's glee. “You killed me five years ago, remember?

“And now, dearest Rachel, I feel as though you've said your say. Indeed, you've say far more than your say and have been saying it for far too long. Now the time for stalling and playing twenty questions has come to an end. The curtain has fallen for you, you bitch, and now—” her finger quivered on the trigger “—you have to die.”

“Milady!” two men in dark suits burst into the restroom.

Michelle screamed and fired off a round, but Rachel was already moving. The bullet grazed the side of her face, nicking her cheekbone and continuing on to shatter the mirror behind her. She hit the floor and began scrambling for the door, while Michelle continued firing as the two men struggled to restrain her feral struggles.

“Let me go!” she shrieked, “Let go of me! You don't understand, I have to kill her! I have to!”

Rachel rounded the corner of the bathroom, stood up, hit the door at full speed and ran out into the hotel lobby. Her dress ripped loudly spilling sequins on the marble floor, but she hardly noticed. She ran, and kept on running, not stopping until she reached the chain-link fence of the officers' cottage community.

“Holy shit!” Sami, the babysitter yelped when she saw her employer burst through the door, dress ripped and face bloodied. “Mrs. K! What the fuck happened?”

“Sami!” Rachel sobbed, throwing herself into the younger woman's arms. “Oh thank God, Sami. Is Nikki okay?”

“Yeah, I put her to bed an hour ago. What happened to you, Mrs. K?” she asked again.

“I…” Rachel started, but another wave of sobs cut her off.

“Here,” Sami said, guiding her to the couch. “You sit down. I'll call up your husband and we'll see what we can do about getting you to a hospital.”

“I just need to see Nikki,” Rachel managed between sobs. “Bring me my baby, please.”

“Sure thing,” Sami said.

 

“Leave us,” Henry said, an uncharacteristic chill in his voice.

“Sir,” the two guards bowed and stepped outside the office, leaving the two of them alone.

Michelle couldn't look him in the face, but she could feel his probing glare. “He—Henry, I'm sorry I—”

Blam!

It felt as though she had been hit by a bat. Either that, or something like a mortar round had exploded against her cheek. Her vision blurred and purple-and-green stars danced before her eyes and she staggered in the reduced gravity.

“What in God's name were you thinking, Michelle?” Henry said, glaring down on her as she struggled to her feet. “You fired a gun on a noted luminary in a public place? Je-sus Christ!”

“I said I was sorry, Henry,” her voice sounded strange even to her own ears; the calm it possessed seemed almost unnatural. She rubbed the side of her face where he had hit her, and continued, “I don't know what came over me.”

“And you're lying to me now too,” a smile began to creep up his face. “You know full and well why you did it: you wanted revenge.”

“I suppose so.”

Henry was grinning now. “My, my, how you've matured since coming to me, Nightingale. I never would have pegged you for such bloodlust.”

“I want only restitution,” Michelle said, taking a bold step forward towards her lover-cum-assailant. “Rachel Sawyer”—she would not use the woman's married name—“stole something from me that I can never get back. The least I can do is take my pound of flesh.”

“Or rather, your hundred and twenty pounds—she does seem rather gaunt.” Henry took a step towards her and lifted her chin with his index finger, “well, Nightingale, it seems you and I do think along similar lines. I too want restitution. Restitution against the corrupt Federation that stole our independence from us.”

He caressed her slightly swollen cheek and tore off the elastic band that held her russet locks in place causing them to spill down about her neck and shoulders. She removed her glasses, casting them carelessly to the floor before leaning into his embrace. They kissed roughly, and his hands had just begun to wander when suddenly she broke off. She shoved away from him and looked with conflicted eyes.

Was this right? It couldn't be; she still loved Alec. And yet here she had almost surrendered herself to the charms of another man! Henry loved her, and she thought she loved him too…but…How was it possible for her to love him and yet feel such burning longing for Alec as to be driven to the point of murder?

That bitch Rachel Sawyer! God, it was all her fault. If she hadn't stolen Alec in the first place, she never would have been driven to Henry. For her, Henry had represented a possibility; he was her ticket to exacting her retribution, and indeed, she loved him for that. But, it was not the same kind of love. She wanted him for what he could give, for what he represented, not for himself as a man. That love—that insatiable passion—was reserved solely for Alec Kincaid.

All of this passed through her mind in the split-second after she had backed away from Henry. He was looking at her with confused anger, but made no move to strike her again.

“It's him, isn't it,” he growled at last.

She nodded, straightening her clothes and walking over to where her glasses lay.

“Were you not so important, I could kill you for that.” Ice ran down her spine as he spoke. He continued with the cold assuredness of someone who had committed that sin before, “No one says no to me.”

“Henry,” she said, rising and looking at him with pained eyes. “I'm as confused about it as you are.”

“Liar!” he accused, and she felt her throat spastically tighten. “You still love him and you always have. Perhaps I should just try and follow your example for once—I could kill him and have you for myself.”

“You wouldn't!” Michelle gasped against her cinched windpipe.

“Wouldn't I? You grow bold, Nightingale, but a gilded cage is a cage nonetheless, and you still must sing on command.”

“H—Henry!”

He relaxed his hold on her, but his voice remained tight, “Get out of my sight. You will be confined to your quarters until I deem otherwise.”

“Milord.” She bowed and walked to the chamber doors.

As she closed the door, a chill of fear played up and down her back.