Chapter Text
A/N: I'm so incredibly jealous that the characters get to enjoy mid-autumn weather while I am melting into my keyboard.
In a future
once
written...
The Maxwell Estate is a beautiful display of architecture: looping gardens sprawled across the grounds, swaths of color painted across the landscape that whispered a certain sense of foreboding. The estate manor itself is tall, with sharp roofs and arches clawing up towards the sky, topped with various baubles and decorated with complex yet beautiful stained-glass windows. Vines clutch at the walls like grasping hands, seemingly grounding the entire home to the land it stood on.
Relena stands among the throngs of the garden party. It is mid-autumn now, a full week after the end of the Capital Hunt and nearly half a year since the royal wedding. Her marriage to Heero has solidified her hold on the throne, though that is in large part due to the influence of the family whose garden she’s currently strolling through.
She doesn’t know how she feels about how practiced it all is now: her smiles, pleasant but distant; her words, polite but aloof; her eyes, kind but assessing. Her title had been rightly won after the blood, sweat, and tears she’d poured into turning the hearts of the noble court, but there are days when it becomes hard to tell who were friends and who were enemies.
She wonders if her brother had felt the same, back when he’d still been Crown Prince. He had been happy to relinquish his title and fully take over authority of the royal guards, his marriage to Duke Lucrezia Noin a step down from his imperial title - but Milliardo all the happier for it. He had never worn the title of Crown well.
“Are you enjoying the party, Your Majesty?”
Relena half-turns, a welcome smile already on her lips. “It’s lovely, Duke Maxwell.”
Solus Maxwell wears a smile more natural than her own, but there’s something that whispers in the back of her mind that asserts it’s just as feigned. Even still, he’s a handsome older man; to this day, over two decades a widower, the court gentlefolk can’t help but flutter after him like butterflies drawn to sweet nectar. The ladies are more fervent than ever nowadays, after hearing about the decline of the one and only heir to the Maxwell family.
Relena’s eyes briefly scan the party, but sure enough - Solo Maxwell is not in attendance. It’s been several months since she’d last seen the young lord; he’d made an appearance at her wedding, sharp smile pulled over his face to mask his waning complexion and tired eyes. He grew more ill with every passing week, until his appearance at the castle dwindled and his father had to resume more and more of his previous jobs.
Milliardo and Lucrezia had seemed happier with the change; Relena didn’t know why they didn’t get along with the Maxwell Heir, and for the duration of Relena’s climb to the top of the courts, they had been contentious allies. Heero hadn’t been able to explain the strange and seemingly unearned animosity, but Heero tended to avoid talking to either her brother or the Maxwells if he could help it.
Relena now knew that he had history with the Maxwell family; the accidental death of the previous Duchess Yuy was not talked about by either the Maxwells or Heero and his people - but perhaps because it remained unsaid, it seemed to be so loud. What little Relena knew about the late Duchess had not painted a flattering picture, but the scars left in his passing were deeper than she’d initially believed.
“How is Young Master Solo?” Relena finally asks, moreso out of curiosity than concern. She appreciated that Solo had supported her claim to the throne, but she would hardly call them friends; still, concern for him was borne out of duty to both his family as allies and himself as a citizen of the kingdom she now ruled.
Duke Maxwell’s polite smile falls away, replaced with an expression that resembles concern but doesn’t quite hit the mark. It is another fact of the Maxwell family - Relena can’t really read them. She thinks this may be the reason her brother dislikes them so much.
“He’s as well as can be expected,” the man replies, and the smile returns. It’s less polite, less kind; it resembles Solo Maxwell the most. Relena wonders if Heero’s late spouse had the same smile.
Duke Maxwell’s special gift is that he can converse at length and give absolutely nothing away. He eventually leaves her; as the host, he must maintain the veneer of delicate sensibility, and see to it that every guest is enjoying themselves.
Relena is stopped by other guests every time she dares to move, and she slowly makes her way across the gardens until she finds an emptier area. It’s a small sitting area at the top of a hill, giving a breathtaking view of the Maxwell gardens and its mingling guests below. The reason for the lack of people wandering by is made clear to her soon enough: this is where Heero has chosen to lurk.
Her husband is a handsome man: dark brown hair, dark blue eyes, and a powerful physique that verified his status as one of Sanc’s strongest men. For all of his beauty, however, he has never really been understood by the nobles of the court - his mixed blood, his scandalous birth, and his aloof attitude all mixed together to keep others away.
Heero is not the warmest of people; even now, he still keeps her at arms-length at times. He shares his opinion if prompted, he escorts her to every social function, he helps her both politically and socially as expected - but romance is a foreign thing to him. Compliments and sweet endearments are rare to leave his lips, and even though they’d shared the same bedroom on their First Night, he’d only slept beside her.
Relena is fine with that. Heero is a stranger to affection; whatever had happened during his last marriage had understandably affected him, so she would never push him for more. Once he is ready to open his heart further, she will be there - that will surely be enough.
“Smart of you to hide up here,” Relena remarks teasingly.
Heero’s gaze drifts away from the bottom of the hill and over to her, expression unchanged. “They’re noisy,” he replies. He says it without heat, indifferent in tone but there’s a certainty there that Relena knows he means every word. “I’m convinced they just like to hear the sound of their own voices.”
Now you’re starting to sound like Master Chang, Relena muses. For a moment, it feels unkind; Master Chang Wufei is still grappling with his grief over the loss of his wife, after all. His tendency to insult every person in his vicinity and the acerbic words he spits are just another symptom of that grief. Relena knows she shouldn’t take his unkind words to heart, but she can't deny there are times she wishes she could knock him down a peg or three.
“I spoke with Duke Maxwell briefly,” Relena says. Heero’s attention always sharpens when any mention is made of the Maxwell family, even though he can no longer consider them in-laws. “Young Master Solo still seems to be in poor health. It’s been a long time since anyone’s seen him in person.”
If Relena allows herself to dwell on that fact, she can’t help the faint sense of unease that lurks in her heart. There’s something about Solo Maxwell that has always been unsettling, but that feeling grows exponentially once he’s no longer within her sights. She’d been made aware of the Maxwell family’s true occupation once she’d fully come into her own as the Crown Princess, and though she’d forbid the Maxwell family from indulging in rooting out her political rivals within the court, she still thinks they found a way around her orders to pull out some of the rotten roots.
“They have access to the best doctors, should they request it,” Heero states dismissively. “Solo Maxwell will choose for himself whether he needs them.”
Solo Maxwell’s illness is a mystery. The Maxwell ducal family conducted itself with utmost privacy; their family doctor is said to live by the Maxwell heir’s bedside nowadays, and no other prominent doctor from the capital or even the other provinces has been called. There are rumors circulating that this is the result of some sort of failed Harvester ritual, and that Peacemillion has finally cast aside the Maxwell lineage and poisoned its last seed.
The Harvester religion is another mystery to Relena. Heero doesn't talk about it, even though his former spouse had - according to the Yuy estate servants - been a follower of the Harvester. Her idle questions to either of the Maxwell family members had been gently rebuffed or redirected, often with smiles that felt like daggers held to her neck, and other Harvester followers she met in passing only gave her the most cursory of information.
Ghosts that walked the path of their life until they reached the cycle of reincarnation. Altars crafted and destroyed, sometimes on the same day. Life is ephemeral, death is inevitable; like grain in the field, all souls will be reaped. Honor the soul, do what you will with the bones.
Relena’s gaze turns to the fields of flowers below her. “The gardens are beautiful,” she remarks; it needs to be said, to be acknowledged. It is somehow the centerpiece of the party, even if she's not sure why. The fields have already begun to wilt in the mid-autumn chill, but there’s a delicate beauty to the flowers colored with decay. It’s what first grabbed her attention once she’d entered the Maxwell grounds, the estate covered in sprawling flowerbeds.
Heero turns away from the gardens, but he doesn’t look at her when he responds. “Duke Maxwell used to say they’d plant a flower on their estate grounds for every life taken by a member of their bloodline." His tone is deep with reminiscence, attention far away. He can never look at her when he talks about the Maxwell family. “It’s their way of honoring the dead.”
If that were true, then that would mean the Maxwell family had been responsible for the deaths of thousands. Even in their line of work, it didn’t seem feasible; Relena attributed the tale to the sorts of stories noble families cooked up to further establish themselves in their histories. It does bring to her mind the greenhouse back in the Yuy provincial estate, though - built for a Maxwell spouse, only to then serve as his eternal resting place.
She was forbidden to enter the greenhouse, even after marriage; Master Winner had remarked it was hallowed ground. He’d laughed as he’d said it, and it had set her on edge because it was so at odds with the man she thought she knew - but wasn’t that just the case with all nobles? The kind man she’d been introduced to when she’d only been the illegitimate daughter of Duke Darlian was likely just an act, and now that she’d ascended to Crown Princess, then Queen - it wasn’t any wonder that Master Winner’s attitude had changed.
He looked more tired these days - but that was true of everyone. Between herself and Heero, Master Winner and Commander Barton, the ever-irate Master Chang, Hilde… Relena could not think of anyone who didn’t have that drowning look in their eyes. She had thought - or maybe the more accurate term is hoped - that after she married Heero, things would just fall into place.
As the days passed, it instead felt more like things were just falling apart.
Relena knew it was strange that her husband wouldn’t sleep with her, that his fleeting touches of affection were just that - fleeting, so quick and so light that it was as if he didn’t want to touch her at all. She knew it was strange that the people she’d come to know and love like friends had changed so much within the two years they’d been together that she is pressed to recognize them now. She doesn’t want to, but she’s beginning to doubt everything and everyone around her - her husband, her friends, her brother, her allies.
Why had the crown been so easy to attain?
What can kill a man whose very family name is synonymous with death?
Who was the greenhouse built for?
Heero’s gaze slowly returns to her, but his attention has yet to catch up. He makes no move to hold her hand, even though it would be perfectly cordial; his fingers are instead occupied with a sprig of purple forget-me-nots. He doesn’t bother to pull off his cloak and wrap it around her shoulders, even though the air has grown more chilly; he takes a small step away, closer to the manor walls than his wife’s side.
Heero’s eyes meet her own.
Relena wonders, not for the first time - when Heero looks at her, what is it that he sees?
A/N: I feel like we don’t give Novel!Heero enough credit - at least he was a consistent shit husband. 😌 Imagine being so awful a husband that both your spouses don't trust you. Amazing.
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