A/N – Wrote this a while ago but forgot to post it for some reason. It's just a short contrast between the kinds of soldiers Graham and Setsuna are, displayed in an invented POW scenario. PG13. No pair.
I kind of took free rein with Graham's past, as all we know is his shooting of the officer.
Envying Glory
By PikaCheeka
Setsuna wasn't surprised. He wasn't thrilled with his situation, but he wasn't surprised either. And he was even less shocked at the man now sitting by his cot, studying him intently. The American. The Flag Fighter with not an ounce of sense in his head, nothing but brutal fanaticism hovering on the brink of madness. He probably wasn't a bad man, was probably bright and decent in reality, just another one of those men who entered the military at the ripe old age of eighteen and expected to change the world, and when it didn't work after a couple of years his need to prove himself went to his head. And Setsuna had no interest in people like that. He tried to sit up.
The older man didn't stop him, which puzzled him at first. Until he realized how badly wounded he was and he would collapse after a step or two anyhow. He slipped back down into the pillows, wincing when his shoulder connected, and felt absently for the small knife he kept in his belt. Whoever this man was had evidently realized that under the flightsuit Setsuna was naked, and he had only stripped him to his waist. Whether out of decency or out of embarrassment hardly mattered.
It was strange how his mind wandered. He didn't particularly care for his situation one way or the other. He remembered Lockon howling with laughter when the older boy had learned of his nudity, remembered how he had answered, puzzled, with his usual "I am Gundam", and Tieria had flown into a fit of rage about how if he were doing anything-ungodly-in-Exia, he would be found out and removed from Celestial Being. And Lockon had laughed even harder, leaning on Allelujah for support, Allelujah who looked like he was torn between laughing and running from the room in horror, while Tieria had finally muttered something about filthy pigs and stormed out. Setsuna had never discovered what was so funny, never understood what Tieria was in such a fury about because he was Exia, after all, so what was the problem even if he was doing something in Exia? But Tieria was like that, just as Lockon was always laughing and caring about him and just as Allelujah was sometimes quiet and sad and sometimes raging and psychotic. That's just how it was. Where were they now? Would he ever see them again? He wondered if Lockon had realized yet what had happened, wondered what he was doing now. And he supposed that despite everything, even if he still had Exia, though he didn't know if he did, he would miss Lockon.
"It's on the table here." The older man suddenly said, and Setsuna looked at him again, dazed.
"Your knife? You were touching your waist. Are you all right?"
The boy looked away for a moment. He wasn't confused, no, but he was startled at the intensity he saw in the other man's eyes. Yes, this man was mad. Not shell-shocked and bitter-mad though, not like he himself was. This man was mad from lack of combat, mad from standing and waiting for years and years for the alarm to sound, mad from finally seeing a battlefield and reeling in terror, turning away, shooting blindly, because in all his fantasies he was the hero and the untouchable. Because in all his fantasies of war he was never just another body that may or may not contain a soul, waiting to be killed in that fantastic game that wasn't even run by God, but just run by nothingness, so it had no rhyme or reason, no greater pattern. It was all stupid, and so his dream of glory was shattered and with it his mind.
He was the sort of mad that Setsuna despised. The sort of mad that, somewhere in his mind, somewhere in a corner he had locked up long ago, he bitterly envied.