Based on Treize's image song in Shinkidousenki Gundam Wing Operation 4 CD, this takes some liberties with official continuity.

Treize Kushrenade laughed, smoothing with one hand the front of his cadet's uniform. The black vest adorned with gold made him the center of attention. This party was for his benefit, his and his childhood friend's Seize, who had both passed the entrance exams for the Oz Specials Unit with high scores. This was his first step towards his becoming an officer.

No one with his titles of nobility could stay a cadet for long. Soon, he would take his place next to his father, following the time-honored tradition that all Kushrenade first born were blessed with a great and glorious career in the army.

The young peacocks talking to him annoyed him to no end. All they wanted was to stay close in hope that some of his brilliance would rub off on them. Or maybe they were just trying to get favours, present or future, by becoming his friend. As a servant passed, carrying his tray of Martinis high in the air, Treize reached for a glass, catching it by its long stem and taking this as a chance to lose his courtiers.

Retreating to a corner, he smiled as Seize came to him, a harried expression on his features.

"I thought they would never leave me alone..."

Treize smiled at his friend's comment, without acquiecing. He felt the same, but could not voice his thoughts. If even one person overhead, it couldbecome a scandal. He was a Kushrenade, after all.

Leaning against the wall, he gazed at the olive in his Martini with amusement. It looked like a little lopsided Earth, floating in the universe. With a twist of his wrist, he moved the glass and watched the Martini swirl, with the small Earth bobbing along helplessly. So much like an Earth without a leader, without a vision. Lost in thought, he did not notice the Martini licking the top of the glass increasingly higher, but stopping just short of spilling.

"Lord Treize?"

The Martini sloshed over the rim, and splashed on his white glove, drenching it. Treize hid a frown, instead ignoring his mishap and smiling at his interlocutor. General Onze was smiling kindly back at him, the brittle skin around his eyes creasing. He was an old dignified gentleman, and had been a great strategist, once, before he retired to live on his estate in seclusion.

"General"

"I would like you to meet my grand-daughter, Ann."

A young woman standing next to him curtsied deeply, then brought her hand up to his, as if anticipating a kiss, but slipped a handkerchief in his hand instead.

Her brown eyes fixed on him steadily. She was wearing a gown of a color that reminded him of ripe, sun-kissed apricots, with a delicate necklace of amber-stones around her neck. The warm colors of her attire brought out the rich tones of her chestnut hair. It was pulled up in an intricately braided bun, from which a few wisps escaped, falling softly on her slender neck.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Ann."

He caught her hand before it flickered away and kissed it, as a shy smile curved her delicate rosebud mouth.

"Likewise, Lord Treize."

She curtsied once more, never taking her eyes off his face, then followed her grand-father to be introduced to the other guests. Treize followed her with his eyes until his friend Seize returned, a crowd of young men in stiff colars and even stiffer suits on his tracks like ducklings after their mother.

Their inconsequential chatter covered the drifting notes of a minuet. Couples danced in the large drawing-room, a mesmerizing blend of silk and satin, of hues of blue and green, shimering under the large crystal chandeliers. That is when he saw her again. Her grand-father had gone to talk with other men of his age, and she was sitting alone, a lost, shy look on her beautiful features. The dance ended and another started. All Treize could do was stare at her, as she fingered a fan in her lap. No one asked her to dance, no one even looked in her direction.

Moving closer to one of the courtier who was laughing a little too loudly at Seize's jokes, he whispered:

"Why is it that no one is talking to Lady Ann?"
"Could it be you do not know?"

Treize raised an eyebrow in feigned startlement. Taking this as encourragement, the other continued:

"She is General Onze's grand-daughter. You must have heard he only had a daughter, and had to disown her for marrying a commoner", Treize grunted his assentiment, "Well, this is their daughter. Not only does she not hold an official title, because her father was a commoner, disowning her mother made her lose all claims to their holdings. When her parents died in a car accident, her grand-father took her in. But no matter what, she is still a penniless commoner. Nothing more. She has no place among us."

The first bars of a waltz floated through the room.

Treize felt some pity for the beautiful newcomer. He knew the advantages a title and a wealthy family could bring. And he knew how hard it was to succeed in life without the backing of a powerful ally. Nobles were a close-knit group. No one would talk to her. Tonight or any other night. He would remedy to that.

Smiling, he crossed the room. As she looked up with a startled expression on her pretty face, Treize bowed deeply at the waist, more so than if he were presented to the long-gone King of Cinq himself, and extended his hand.

"To thank you for your assistance, earlier, I would ask you to dance."

Ann smiled and caught his hand, getting up in a whisper of silk.

Treize slipped his arm around her waist and led her through the paces as he waltzed her around the lavish drawing-room.
All he had wanted to do was dance with her once. He had never thought he would fall in love.

Kotoba ni dasanai omoi
Kieteyuku hoshi dake ga hanasou ka
Jibun no shinjita michi wo
Tada hitori arukou

Feelings that I can not express
Are whispered only by the fading stars.
This road I believe in
I will walk on my own.

How everything was different now. This golden past he could only recall like an old and faded memory. Someone else's old and faded memory. The great chandeliers no longer burned. Laughter no longer echoed in the halls. Alone in his now run-down manor, Treize could only look at the scenes that played in his glass of wine as if they had happened to someoneelse, in another time, in another world so different from his own.

Plaster had fallen from the ceiling, and the ground shook with the footsteps of the Mobile Suits protecting his stronghold. He swept his arm over part of his desk, the heavy dust clinging to the blue fabric of his sleeve. This desk was a gorgeous antique, it had been kept throughout generations by the Kushrenade family, and needed four men to be moved. It had some kind of old-world elegance, hints of the luster it might have had once, before being scratched by the bits of plaster and coated in a thick layer of dust that nothing would ever truly remove.

There was nothing more he could do, now. He, who had thought he could change the flow of history, now found himself powerless. Powerless even to help the one he would wish to most. Last time, he had lost his pride by begging his friend, his friend whom he had previously sent to die, to save his life. In saving her. This time there would be no easy way out.
Milliard could not help him. She was alone on the moon base, alone with her destiny like he was alone with his.

He felt like a rat, hiding in the darkness of his manor, behind the wall of Mobile Suits.

And all Treize could do was wait, staring at his silent monitor.
No news...
Let there be news...
Any news would be better than this uncertainty...
Than the wait...
The seconds trickling one after the other, in the ticking of his old granfather clock.

Yume to yoberu hodo no
Amai koto ja nai
 

There is nothing
Sweeter than dreams.

He had once dreamed of something different. He had believed in his ideals, in the fact that everything would turn out as he wished it. At night, before going to sleep, he would forget who he was, forget the suave mask he offered for all to see, forget his resolutions, and only think of her.

In his mind, she was one with his cherished ideals, she was the one for whom he wanted to create this new, better existence, this new, better world. In those few instants, he felt at peace.

He could not hide in his dreams now.

He had looked reality in the eyes and found that it was not what he had envisionned it to be.

All his beautiful dreams did not mean anything anymore. His ideals were old-fashioned and worthless. Since he could no longer live by them, he would have to die by them. And in turning himself into a martyr, maybe he could make his vision spread its wings and take flight for a last time before being forgotten.

He knew he would be forgotten.

He already felt like a relic of an old age. The ideals which would rule the world were not his. Maybe they would be those of that girl Relena, Milliard's long-lost sister, the dove of Sank Kingdom. Or maybe the honourless warrior ways of the new Oz.

He despised Tsubarov and his Mobile Dolls. Robbing humans of their ultimate beauty. Of their right to die for what they believed in. He would show that stubborn engineer that no machine can take the place of a human soul.

He thought his machines were perfect, but their own strength was their weakness. There is nothing stronger than a fighter prepared to die. There is nothing stronger than the human heart.

Inochi wo nakushitemo
Kuyamu koto wa shinai

Even the loss of a life
Should not be mourned.

Treize caught his breath as the screen of his workstation came to life.
Transmission from the forces in Balgi.
The moon base had fallen in their hands, the Scientists and the Gundam Pilots had escaped, but not before Tsubarov sent the Mobile Dolls after them. Many casualties... Mobile Dolls contained... Tsubarov dead... His eyes glazed over the details, looking for a name, for her name.

There. He had found it. And his world crumbled like the broken plaster of the once grand ceiling of his study.

One sentense. One sentense that meant the end of all things. The end of his world.

"Lady Une missing, presumed dead."

Another one who believed in him had died, died for his dream. He had lost count of how many they were, had long ago lost hope of remembering all of their faces. Along that path lay madness.

Who was he to inspire such devotion, such willingness to die? Was it his title as a Kushrenade, his reputation as a peerless Oz officer, his easy charisma? Did he have to right to ask so much from them... unless he was ready to do the same?

When the time came, would he be ready to do the same?

Kaze no uta ha kokoro wo furuwaseru
Ima wa me wo tojite
Toki wo wasurete miru

The song of the wind touches my heart
Now I close my eyes
And try to forget time that passes.

The silence in his study was deafening.

If he closed his eyes, he could banish the present from his mind. The reality of the judgement he had loosed on the world through Epyon, the reality of his own lost battle, the reality of her death...

Treize listened to the sound of his heart beating. He knew he had the strength, within himself, to follow his men into battle, to follow them into death.
And maybe make the world think. Make people look upon the horrors of war, upon the futile suffering, the empty pride, the senseless destruction.
Make them embrace a new vision. Maybe not his. Maybe not even Releena's. But anything to steer the world away from what it had been. To steer it away from pain, anguish and hatred.

The Gundam pilots carried with them the pain of the colonies, and she had gone to help them. He even refrained from saying her name now. It held some sort of magic, as if as long as he did not say her name, he could go on believing that she was still alive. That the woman whose obituary he had read in a few glowing words on a workstation terminal was not the one he loved. The one he had shunned in trying to deny his affections. Shunned for so long.

Kurai sora wo honou ga someteyuku
Subete ga kitsukushite
Yasuragu ni kaesu

Raging fires taint the dark sky,
Everything will be destroyed
And be peaceful once again.

The ground shook and Treize instinctively gripped the edge of his desk. His glass shatterred, his bottle teetered precariously for instant then fell to the floor in a noise of broken glass. The red wine spread on the wooden floor like freshly spilt blood.

The battle had come to him. He did not even have to seek it out.

Namae mo shiranai hana ga
Tatakai no akai honou ni tsutsumareru

The nameless flower is
Enfolded in the red flames of WAR.

A rose on his desk. It had miraculously survived the bombing, this red rose like the one she had worn on her uniform what seemed so long ago. He had found it in his garden, alone on a scraggly and broken-down bush.

War destroyed nature he loved so much.

It destroyed lives.

She was sitting on a nearby carved wooden chair, her porcelain cup of tea and saucer in hand, smiling at him as if he was the only thing in her world. She was dressed in a simple blue dress that highlighted her eyes, her ankles properly crossed, her knees pressed together.

He was sprawled on another chair, his head tilted back and was staring at her, waiting for her to flinch under the weight of his gaze.

"Lord Treize. I have heard that you are part of the nominees for the position of Head of the Specials Unit. I wanted to give you my most heartfelt congratulations."

Her voice was sweet and pleasant, but he thought the words were a little too formal. Somehow he hoped for... more. But he was nominated as Head of the Specials now. One of the highest honours that could be offered an Officer. Nothing could happen between them. He would have to hide his attraction, and wait for his parents to select him a suitable bride of high breeding. Someone they deemed worthy of marrying into the Kushrenade family.

"I am very lucky that they would choose me. I am far from being the most qualified."

Pleasantries, back and forth. Instead of saying the one thing they wanted to. Instead of screaming what they felt. His training took over, the path his parents, his birth, had chosen for him. So he just continued to exchange inanities while his heart fluttered in his chest and his body cried out for her. There was never anyone but her. There would never be.

As he kissed her hand in farewell, all he could hope is that he would forget her. Anything to forget her.

Time had passed, and his memories of her had dulled somewhat. In trying to forget her he had courted many noble women, and was referred by many as a playboy. He enjoyed their attentions and revelled in his popularity.

But that had only managed to banish Ann to a dark corner of his thoughts where she reigned supreme, as the image of what love could be, of what women could be. Not as a real person, as the embodiement of the purity and ideal of a feeling he had yet to rediscover with another.

And that made it impossible for him to stay long with any of his conquests. So he just went from one to the next, feeling increasingly empty and alone.

He had been chosen as the Head of the Specials. In his darkest moments he wondered if it had been favoritism; he was quite young to head the Specials, but his father was also one of the biggest contributors to the Romfeller Foundation. He would have liked to have gotten the post on his own terms, for his merits. Like he would have wished all those women gravitating around him were attracted to him, not to his looks and power.

He increasingly found faults in the world, and began to create his own vision of an ideal Earth.

That is when she had walked into his life once more. Timidly standing at the door of his office, hands folded in her lap. He no longer felt the twinge in his chest he used to when he saw her across a crowded room at a party. Time had dulled his loss somewhat, and his ideals for a perfect world had taken the place of the world he used to long for, the world in which she was his.

"Colonel Treize, congratulations on your appointment as head of the Specials.You must be proud to have such a prestigious assignment, especially for one so young as your Grace."

Her formality irritated him. She seemed to have excised him from her heart much more thouroughly than he had. And it hurt. He wanted to hurt her back.

"Congratulations on your new Baronetcy, Lady Ann."

She had lost her grand-father earlier this year. Treize had ignored her at the time and only sent her a formal note of condoleances. In his will, the General restored her title and claimed her as his heir. She was now a wealthy woman. Her titles were still rather pitiful compared to the ones held by most people he knew, it was nothing more than country nobility, to them. But her newfound wealth must have been known beforehand, as he had heard that the General was trying to get her to marry. As he heard that she was taken by the man chosen to be her husband. To be to her what he should have been.

She winced as if he had slapped her in the face.

"I have no use for you", he replied, lashing out at her, "You are weak, Lady Ann. You are nothing but a weak girl."

This was unfair, and he knew it. She was beautiful and strong, and obviously not a girl. He had never known the girl, only the woman.

Her eyes filled with tears. She bit her lip and her tears split over her long lashes, falling down her cheeks and licking her bare neck.

"I... I..."

She could not get the words out. Instead she bowed briskly, let out a small choking sound and turned around, running down the hall. Treize fell in a chair let his head drop in his hands.

Itsudemo seiri wa hitotsu
Shourisha no te no naka

There is always one justice,
The one in the hand of the triumphant.

So she became what he needed her to be.

He did not hear from her for many months. And he did not even think of her for all that time.

"Colonel Treize?"

"General?"

"I have come to introduce you to your new assistant."

Treize started. Behind the General stood a very familiar woman. She was dressed in a burgundy Oz uniform, her nut-brown hair pulled back into tightly-braided buns at the nape of her neck, and was peering at him coldly from her wire-rimmed glasses. But Treize instantly recognized Ann in the stiff-backed woman standing at attention.

"She has been trained with skills that you would, I am sure, find very useful. Lady Une, I would like you to meet Colonel Treize."

Lady Une pushed her glasses back up her nose with her index finger.

"Pleased to meet you, your Grace. I have heard so much about you."

For once, Treize was speechless. The General glanced from him to his new assistant quizically.

"Do you two already know each other?"

Treize looked into her cold brown eyes. There was no sign of recognition in their depths, and yet he was sure that it was Ann standing in front of him, Ann stripped of her softness and her vulnerability. Then the General's words came back to him. "She has been trained with skills that you would, I am sure, find very useful." He had told her she was useless, the last time they had seen each other.

So she had changed. She had even changed her name. Lady Une. Une. One. Alone. She was as alone as he was. He wanted to ask her what had happened to her fairy-tale wedding, what had happened to her peaceful life on her estate, but he could not.

"No, no, we have not met. Pleased to meet you, Lady Une. I hope I will not be too hard to work with."

He reached out and shook her hand.

"There, there, Treize, false modesty does not suit you."

The General smiled. Treize did not remember much of what had happened after that. Time had gone by in a blur as he learned just how much she had changed, as he came to rely on her more and more, as he tried to sneak glances at her face when he knew that she was not looking, hoping to see some sort of recognition in her eyes.

Mirai wo sagasu youda
Kirei koto ja nai

To look for the future
Is not a beautiful thing.

He had forced himself not to think of the future. Especially when he finally caught her off-guard, when he saw in her eyes that she still felt the same for him as he felt for her.

He had taken her hand in his, and her eyes had locked with his, a starled, loving look sneaking past her defenses. Ann was staring back at him, not Lady Une of Oz. His Ann. Her look had softened as she looked away, as if embarassed to see the fire burning in his gaze. In this instant, he wanted to tell her how beautiful she was to him, how much he loved her, how long he had waited. But he could not. Now more than ever. She was a subbordinate, an assistant he could not afford to lose. The past seemed so empty without her by his side, without someone he could trust in this world gone mad.

And now she was gone. He finally could admit it to himself. Une, and Ann, he had loved them both, and had lost them both in one swift stroke. He would have no one to trust, no one to support him when the world was grim, no one to touch him with her soft looks when he pretended not to be looking. Many women used to fight for his attentions, but after his disgrace, only she stood by him. Throwing away her career, like she had tried so often to throw away her life for him. What had he done to deserve such devotion?

The only thing that stood before him now was a bleak future without her. A future alone and cold, a future that would end too soon, as he died for his ideals, as he died to spare his men more death and suffering.

The shadows in the room had lengthened, and the sun had long ago set. Sitting at his desk in the darkness, hunched over his terminal, time seemed to have lost its meaning. Tomorrow would be a good day to die.

Treize felt a presence in the study. Someone had entered, and a soft foostep echoed in the room. His first thought was of an assassin-he would gladly receive the gift of his own death... but he felt so at ease with that presence, as if it had always been there by his side.

Treize smiled.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, light and carressing, and closed his eyes.

"Ann..."

Dareka wo nakasetemo
Mayou koto wa shinai

Even if I make someone cry,
I will not change my way.

The light pressure moved on his shoulder soothingly.

"Why have you come back, Ann."

An instant of puzzled silence.

"For you, your Grace, I will always come back for you..."

"Ann, will you... remember me?"

He could not hear anything. But he knew she was crying.

Kaze no uta ga kokoro wo nagusameru
Itsuka hohoemi wo
Omoi dasereba ii

The song of the wind soothes my heart.
Sometimes, I don't mind
If I let myself remember your smile.

For once, Treize did not fight the urge to let go of this façade he had created for himself. At least someone would be left to mourn him, after he loses the fight with Wufei, the fight he had been meant to lose all along. The boy and his courage was what the world needed.

Treize pushed his chair back and got to his feet. Ann could only stare at him, her brown eyes wide. He could see concern etched on her face. He knew that she had never seen him so raw, so true to himself. Because he had always hidden behind his title, behind his suave attitute. His attempt to mold the world in his image had failed. He had, in his pride, not realized that such a goal was impossible. That it would cost him so much.

He brought a hand to her face, as he had so often done in dreams, smoothing her tears away with his thumb, and smiled at her, a warm, true, smile.

"Remember me..."

He watched her tears fall on her cheeks, feeling them run on his fingers, and felt redeemed.

Kurai sora ni kagayaku hoshikuzu wa
Itsuka kiete ita densetsu no senshi

In the dark sky, the star dust glitters
For the lengendary soldiers who are now gone.

His ideals came first, they always had. But as long as she remembered him, he would live on, better than he had ever been, as the man she saw when she looked at him, a man infinitely superior to anything he ever was or longed to be.

In defeat, he would live again.