Standard disclaimers apply: i.e. I do not own anything to do with SEED/Destiny or its characters.
#1 – Cagalli (No.1)
It was a week since Cagalli and the Orb forces had returned from the failed rescue mission to recover Kira. The disappointment was still acute, and while the rest of the country – including her father – remained occupied with the war Orb was now irrefutably entangled in, Cagalli was left unsure of her role in it.
On this grey afternoon, she found herself alone in the Attha manor, listlessly moving from one room to the next, until she finally drifted into her father's private study – her thoughts full of Kira, and another boy with midnight hair.
She sat at her father's desk. She felt diminutive and child-like sitting behind it – as though the size and might of the deep mahogany desk was a manifestation of the heavy weight of all the responsibilities her father had to carry. Responsibilities she was only just beginning to fully comprehend. It made her mind flit back to the whipping sands of the desert, the cerulean blue of the Red Sea, the tropical palms of that small island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and for all the dangers she had encountered on this journey, how free she had been.
In prize position on the desk was a framed photograph of her when she was a toddler, looking up in awe at her father. Her hair was an ungainly mess of blonde tufts, her skin much fairer back then – she was not born to bask in Orb's searing sunshine. Uzumi's head faced away from the camera, but she could remember perfectly the sincere look of love he was giving his adopted daughter.
A glint of pink in the photograph caught Cagalli's eye. Even then, as a toddler, she wore the Haumea stone. A gift her father had bestowed upon her from the beginning, signifying that, despite their different bloodlines, she was a daughter of Orb and protected by the Gods.
They used to loop the leather chain around her neck twice to fix it on her tiny frame.
She absently reached for the familiar place where the stone normally sat in the breast of her collarbone, but of course it was no longer there. It was now around the neck of another.
It occurred to her then that gifting Athrun the Haumea stone was a rather impetuous thing to do.
A day had not gone by since she was an infant without the pendant around her neck. What would she tell her father when he finally, inevitably, noticed she no longer had the stone!?
Turning the chair to look out at the rainy Orb skies, she wondered where the stone – where Athrun – was now. Was he still on Earth with the ZAFT forces, or had he returned to the stars? Would it provide him protection as she had promised?
She briefly mused over whether Athrun had even kept it – she hadn't explained the history of the stone to him, and he could well have cast it aside thinking it was a gimmick. He probably had pretty girls giving him pretty things all the time. Cagalli darkened a little at that thought. But when she cast her mind back to her last meeting with the Coordinator, and the understanding on which they parted – which for all its bleakness, felt raw, honest, genuine – she was certain he still had it.
Yes, her father would be disappointed with her so willingly giving up the Haumea stone.
But she didn't regret it.