Out of Lullabies
by Starrify
Notes: I've been itching to write this, so I decided to add another piece similar to Where Love Can Save Us. So between writing Heavy Lies The Crown and planning out the next chapters of Darling So It Goes, here is Part 2 of The Spectrum Series a.k.a. things I write wherein I depress myself.
Disclaimer: The title and featured passages are lines from Richard Siken's poem Little Beast.
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my hands no longer an afterthought.
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Stick with the mission objective. This is war. Every death is justified.
He's unsure of how many he's taken down just to get this far into the Morgenroete compound. He thinks—maybe ten? Maybe more. Does it really matter? (Every death is justified; this is war.)
Bang bang—and another body falls from the artificial gravity of Heliopolis.
The sound of running from the bridge at his seven o'clock makes him turn around. It was too early for reinforcements to arrive—
Bang bang.
The shots aren't his.
"No!"
He hears a voice scream out; it is all too familiar. Memories of a young brown-haired boy surge in his mind and he looks up—while still maintaining some sort of cover, of course—and indeed sees his childhood friend.
Kira?
"Civilians?" he hears another voice—the older lady trying to protect the mobile suit he was tasked to retrieve.
Stick with the mission operative.
He throws a grenade at the direction of the woman and hopes it is enough to kill her. That should make twelve.
His eyes wander up again and he briefly sees Kira dragging another body to another corridor. He can make out short golden hair, blood red floating in the sterilized air—until another bullet whizzes by just inches beside his arm. He's not even afforded a moment to spare, to think of what just happened with Kira and the other boy.
Bang bang.
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the way his muscles worked,
the way we look like animals,
his skin barely keeping him inside.
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He knows he is not alone on this island. There was a crashed vessel on the other side of the beach, but he hasn't seen any signs of human life yet. There is something inauspicious with the sand, the trees; the ocean—or perhaps war has made him too paranoid.
The airwaves are jammed and there was no sign of his transmitter working any time soon. He lets out a sigh, wondering if Yzak and the others were finally able to bring down the legged ship—
Bang bang. (He allows a second to congratulate himself for not being paranoid because he was actually right; he is not alone on this island.)
It catches him off guard, and his adrenaline kicked in with his military training makes him run; the wound on his arm barely registering even if the pain is screaming to be noticed. He drops his gun and hears the deep but obviously young voice.
"Freeze!"
If he was with the Le Cresuet team right now, he was sure Yzak would be laughing all of his white hair off. (He can just picture the Joule heir telling him off: You're the best in our class but you're being bested by this natural soldier? Pathetic, Zala!)
He doesn't even give it a thought. (Survive—every death is justified.) There is a primal instinct which overtakes his actions, though every move is still controlled and calculated. The soldier's gun is aimed at him, finger on the trigger—but the millisecond of hesitation in the soldier's eyes is enough for him to overpower the other.
The soldier's screams are but an echo in his head now, but the blood on his knife and his hands is real.
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so we're helpless in sleep—
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A girl…?
He lets her live. And he's entertained by her, really; he's never met anyone else quite like her: passionate, feisty—full of life and optimism despite the war. And yet. She remains guarded—and so does he. Despite their little fun on this island, the fact remains that they are enemies, even when she tries to convince him that she's not a soldier.
"Shouldn't you be tying me up?"
The fire crackles under the dim moonlight.
"If I waited till your guard was down and took your pistol, our positions would quickly be reversed. If that happens, you'd look like a fool—"
"You just won't give it up, will you?" His laugh echoes in the small cave they've found shelter in. (He thinks to himself, when was the last time I laughed like this?) But then, his voice drops, solemnly reminder her, "If you went for my gun, I'd have no choice but to kill you. So don't even think about it."
He can see her resignation afterwards, as though she was the fool for even suggesting the notion of her threatening him.
"You survived Heliopolis and this island, so don't push your luck."
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He is exhausted (even coordinators have their limits); and that small moment of weakness is what will kill him—that is, if he doesn't kill her first.
(The fire crackles under the dim moonlight.)
"I have no intention of shooting you," she cries out, loading his gun in her hands. "But that mobile suit will end up killing many people on Earth, won't it?"
"Then shoot me," he challenges back, his knife ready in his hands. "If you insist on using that gun, I will kill you."
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What a pity, he thinks, his head already full of remorse. He was beginning to like her.
(This is war.)
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his wounds healed, the skin a little bit thicker than before,
scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.
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His eyes slowly flicker open, the yellow light registering too quickly for him to adjust. He smells metal—and beyond that, the salt of the ocean. Without looking down, he can tell from the pain that he's broken something—a bone or two, perhaps. Still, he struggles to sit up—
"I see you're awake."
He knows that voice. (What was her name again? Cagalli. How could he forget?)
"Why did you kill Kira?" her voice easily gave away her anger, her desperation; and briefly he remembers how she'd been like that on the island as well—so naïve and so open.
What did he want her to say?
(Wasn't every death justified—?)
"He was an enemy!" He wasn't even sure if he believed himself. (Kira, an enemy? Kira, the crybaby? Kira, the boy who was his dearest friend?) "I didn't have a choice but to kill him, did I?"
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At this point, they're both crying.
"Kill me. Please."
He hears himself, but it is as though it's a different voice entirely. He's not asking for death, but for absolution. And maybe it's not justice, but he has to atone somehow because Kira—
And her gun is pointed at him—he could almost feel it, the small metal impacting his body, running through skin, muscle, bones; a gunshot wound through his heart or head should do.
"No," her voice is soft; and the breath he releases, he does not know if it's of relief or of extreme anxiety. "Kira wouldn't—"
She sits on the opposite side of the room, and through their tears, he sees the turmoil; he knows she wants to kill him, but her conviction stands strong. (One kills because another is killed, then gets killed because he kills—how the hell is that supposed to bring us peace?)
He wants to tell her that it's okay.
(Every death is justified, after all.)
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but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless—
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He looks to his father's body. Doing this isn't going to bring anything back, he wants to shake some sense into him, but there's no convincing the dead. There is nothing for the dead at all. When Jachin Due self-destructs, Genesis will be fired; and there will be more of his father, more corpses floating endlessly in space.
(But then, his father, too, believed that every death was justified—that being rid of the naturals would mean a better world for them. But that is not how it works, is it?)
"What do you plan to do?"
"I'll make the Justice self-destruct and create a nuclear explosion."
"But if you do that, you'll—"
"It's our only option!" The bells of absolution toll just beyond the horizon. Except, there is no horizon in space, and he's left wondering if anyone in this world will forgive him for all his crimes—other than Cagalli, who continuously strives to see the best in him. "You go back!"
"Athrun!" she berates him, but he has no time for her speech with optimism—her visions of peace would be for naught if there was no Earth for her to go home to. She knows this, she has to understand. He disengages his sub-flight lifter to block her way. "Don't follow me!"
There should be a minute left in the countdown. He is aware of every second, of how crucial time is because it's all he has left in the world. With shaking fingers, he punches in the code to self-destruct his mobile suit. (The last time he did so, he wasn't trembling like this.)
He is ready to die for the world, for his sins; and maybe there will finally be justice in his death.
"Athrun!" she calls again, and it is as though his life is already taken away from him because no, not you, Cagalli—
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She opens her cockpit and reaches out for him.
Every second matters, but—
His motions are slow, not the usual precise actions he'd done in war. (Because it is over, isn't it? With the destruction of Genesis, the war will be over?)
(She is his saving grace.)
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3—
He towers over her small frame.
2—
With trembling hands, she pulls him toward her.
(Gravity.)
1—
There is a reason, he knows; destiny dictates every death is justified.
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There are many names in history,
but none of them are ours.
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End.