Title: Silver
Author: JC Sun
Rating: PG-13

Summary Zechs after the death of Sanq and before flight school. The trials and tribulations of being a secret orphan.

*

He learned of the end of everything on a news report.

He'd been sitting in the hall lounge, half-heartedly trying to study but was far more interested in the little exchange going on between a few of the boys. One had accused the other of cheating on the last set of math problems, a moot point, really, when you considered that most everybody copied from the same set of worked-out answers. Others were egging on the two of them, and things were getting pretty noisy and interesting. Then, there was a rather uncomfortable silence when one of the boys said the other was low-born and common, and in the little pause before things broke into an all-out fistfight, Zechs' attention wandered.

There was a TV set affixed in a little frame from the ceiling, and it was always on the since nobody ever bothered to turn it off. It was also perpetually stuck to the same news channel since they'd lost the remote control months ago, and nobody paid enough attention to the TV to look for it or fetch a chair and change the channel manually.

It was presently showing a live video-shot of a palace in flames with mobile suits flying over. It was live; you could tell. The little "LIVE LIVE LIVE" banner scrolling down at the bottom.

Zechs couldn't hear what the anchor was saying about the picture, but it really didn't matter. He'd recognize those purple-blue mountains backing the palace, not to mention the beautiful fountain in front of the palace that was all on fire. It was an enormous thing showing the dynastic ancestor astride two spouting dolphins and being adored by a bevy of nymphs and magical creatures, and it was made out of good, solid marble, but maybe a mobile suit had exploded in the air over the fountain and coated it with fuel. Now the stone was burning just as nicely as the rest of the castle.

Zechs had stared for a moment, slack mouthed with shock and a slow, horrible grief that was just starting to burn up from his stomach. Then he remembered himself and clamped down ruthlessly on that feeling as he glanced around him to make sure that nobody else had seen his reaction to the report, and he quite deliberately and carefully yawned and went back to his homework.

*

not quite the end. i'm working on it, i'm working on it.

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