Four months after the war, Lacus comes to him when he is standing at the water's edge, waves lapping gently at his feet. The breeze coming off the ocean sends strands of hair flying into her face but Lacus doesn't move her hands from where they are clasped behind her back. She's smiling at him like she's got a secret, looking so mysterious and lovely in the light of the setting sun that he can't help but tuck those wayward strands behind her ears.
Lacus catches his hand before it can return to his side. She doesn't lace their fingers together like he expects but rather presses something into his palm. Kira's fingers unfurl to reveal a small packet of seeds.
"I've always loved flowers," Lacus says softly, when he looks up at her, "the ones in my home most of all. The weather in ORB isn't moderate enough for them to grow here but that's alright. There are beautiful flowers here too; ones I've never even seen before."
A seagull calls; another answers. The sight of them wheeling across the sky is as familiar to him by now as Lacus' smiles, as the emotions that flicker across her face. She's still smiling but there's something vulnerable touching her eyes now.
She closes his fingers around the packet once more. Her hand is cold.
"Would you lend me your hands, Kira? I don't have much experience with gardening but I'd like to try, all the same."
Kira hears everything she isn't saying, louder than the sound of waves breaking against the shore: Won't you help me make this house a home?
He had settled with her in this house by the sea. Had tried to get on with the business of living the best way he knew how but sometimes Kira isn't sure this is a battle he can win: when he still wakes up in the middle of the night, a red-haired ghost melting through his fingertips like a dream he wishes he'd never wake up from; when a tremor goes through his hands at unexpected moments, while clutching a glass or washing a plate; when the roar of the ocean isn't enough to drown out the pounding in his ears, the racing of his heart.
The real battle is living, his sister said to Athrun once, and so Kira tries to take it moment by moment, day by day. Lacus is there through it all; her hair adorably tousled when she comes down for breakfast in the morning; her voice low and melodious as she reads stories to the children, as she sings songs she's just made up on the spot.
It's not home, not yet. But it could be. He wants it to be, more than anything he's wanted in a long time, because each day holds new promise, a promise he sees reflected in Lacus' eyes.
Kira smiles. It's a smile from before, one that doesn't pull uncomfortably at the muscles in his face.
"Let's plant them together," he says, and his hands don't tremble at all when they pat the soil around the seeds into place.