I wake up early as usual. Years of early morning meetings mean that I still find it difficult to sleep in, even when on holiday. Dorothy isn't in bed; she often rises early to watch the sunrise or finish a book she simply had to finish. I get dressed quickly, slipping on a pair of ratty shorts and a loose shirt that ties across my belly. When I get the chance to wear something other than an expensive suit, I tend to go a little overboard, wearing anything that would be considered a little scandalous if I wore it everyday.
Breakfast has already been laid out when I go downstairs, the little table on the veranda covered with a snowy white tablecloth and baskets of bread and fruit. I lean over to grab a pitcher of cranberry juice and pour myself a glass, moving so I can lean on the railing. A smile curls my lips when I see her, bent over next to the rose bush she planted yesterday. I watch, fascinated as she digs the hole; scooping out the soil with her fingers before setting it aside. Then, with infinite gentleness-- something that seems so alien to her fiery temperament-- she sets the seed into the hole, pushing the earth back onto it and patting it down, splashing it with water from the bucket at her side. She does this several more times as I watch until the little mounds of dirt completely encircle the rose bush.
Finished, she stands, brushing her hands together to remove the soil from them. She turns, smiling as she catches sight of me hovering on the patio. She walks towards me leaving footprints across the turf, knowing that the gardener will not hide his disapproval when he comes to mow the lawn.
"Relena," she says when she reaches me, pressing a swift kiss to my lips. She walks around me to the table and sits down as though the heavy iron seat is a throne, ever graceful. She pulls a grape from the bunch and pops it into her mouth, chewing with relish, her smile widening as she selects another. She tries a little of everything on the table, sipping at her tea in-between bites. If there is one thing that I have noticed about her, it is that she approaches everything with an air of utter enjoyment and enthusiasm; food, sport, dancing... war and most definitely love.
We eat breakfast in companionable silence until she is finished and turns to watch the play of sunlight on the fountain. I sip at my drink thoughtfully, before asking a question that has puzzled me for a long while. "Why do you plant them? The flowers? You have them in Sank as well." Gardening was one of the few things she seemed to have little interest in at other times.
Her eyes hold a strange, thoughtful expression that I rarely see. "I saw them when digging my father's grave, did you know that?" I sip at my drink, knowing that an answer isn't necessary. "He had wanted to buried in the garden at our house, next to my mother. Grandmother shut up the house for the day. All the windows were covered with black drapes. But I looked out and I saw. I was too young to truly understand what was happening, even at his funeral. All I knew was that they were burying a box."
She turns to me and her smile is gone. "They did the same for my Grandfather and Treize after the first war. I saw them buried with earth. I have never feared death. Even on the Libra, I knew I might die, but I accepted it as I accepted everything else. But I feared that." She gestured across the lawns to the newly tuned soil.
I move my seat closer to her, close enough that she can rest her head on my shoulder. She rarely allows her vulnerability to show-- it would damage her image, she always tells me-- but when she does, she seems much younger, as though the child that was stifled by the formality of her life has risen to the surface.
"The rose bush is for Treize. He was always good to me. I like to know that there is more left of him than a stone grave marker. The rest... I killed people without thought and they lay in their graves beneath the earth now. I forced them to go somewhere that I fear to tread."
She turns and looks me straight in the eyes. "I bury the seeds, put them into graves, but I know that something good will grow from it... that these graves mean life. It means I can hope that the people I killed did not die needlessly and that their deaths meant that others could flourish." She flashes me a watery grin. "Kind of stupid isn't it?"
In answer, I pull her towards me and kiss her while the sun shines on the graves of the seeds she planted.
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