A/N – A Gundam 00 fic! WARNING! SPOILERS UP THROUGH EPISODE 21. Anyway, wrote this after I saw episode 21 and stopped bawling my eyes out. Ran home and typed it up and here it is. I don't know anything about future episodes, so anything here is based off of 21 episodes and my own conjectures.
Tieria's thoughts immediately following the events in episode 21 as he struggles to come to terms with the illogical actions of others. This is your last chance to not be spoilered.
Sacrifice
By PikaCheeka
The longer I think on it, the less it makes sense to me. There was no reason for it, as if it wasn't him it would have been me, and if it wasn't me it would have been him, and either way it should have been me anyhow, so were it not for luck we both would have been killed. I speak as if he is dead, though we do not know yet if he will awaken again, but regardless of that he is dead as one of us. He can never again descend into that cockpit, never again control Dynamos. His right eye is destroyed, the shards of glass from his cracked helmet having gone right through it. Whether he lives or dies, there is one less of us. Why he chose it to be him and not me I can not know. He knows who I am, what I am, and he should have known that human sacrifice is beyond my capacity to understand. There is error and failure, and that is all sacrifice amounts to for me.
And yet I cannot stop thinking about this. Not because the girls are crying. Not because Allellujah went away and his other self is reigning, as cruel and nasty and heartless as the one is sensitive, the stronger always protecting the weaker from pain, another bizarre sacrifice. Setsuna will not speak, but in not speaking he is displaying his emotions all too clearly. He was always selfish, but now he is tight-lipped and afraid. He despises me and I know why. He of all of us was closest to him, to Lockon, lying in his cot and not about to wake up anytime soon. But that was supposed to be me, supposed to be Tieria who was hit.
It would not have mattered if it were me, because I am not a human like the rest of them, Veda has forsaken me. Veda has forsaken me and because of that I can not work properly any longer, can not connect with Virtue because I was rejected. I failed. If I had been killed it would not have mattered, as I am useless now. Why did you do it, lockon? Are you really so stupid? Did you really think that by dying you will turn me into a human? You treat me as you treat the rest of them, and yet you know. You know the truth about me, though how you know I do not know. And it does not seem to matter to you. Am I precious because I am not the same as you, or would you have done that for anyone?
It is absurd, illogical, to sacrifice your life for one who no longer deserves to live. And now there are two. If you had not done that, there would still be three. Were you trying to show me what it means to be a human? Because if that was all it was, I reject it. I will not be a part of it, as it lets the unworthy live and the useful die in their stead. Damn you, Lockon. Damn you. I will not let you die, will not let you slip away without answering my questions.
Because I think about it endlessly and it will not let me go. I have been rejected by Veda, by the inhuman, and in that same moment the human opened up to me. But this is a realm wrought with illogical notions and pain. Pain is all I see in you, in Setsuna, in the Allelujahs, who had so much pain he made himself two to bear it. You said we need not discuss it, that we may leave it at the fact that you know, but what you know you did not say, though I know what it is you know. You did not feel the need to say it. Is it because it does not matter to you? Is that why humans fall, because they are unwilling to accept the truth? You do not see what I am as a problem, and you still saved me as if I were another human, as if I were not rejected by Veda and still had a use in life. And now you are dying.
No. No, you are dead now, Lockon Stratos. If you again live, you will be as Neil, though I do not know who Neil is. We were told that is who you are, but that is all. And the more I think about it, the more I want to know. I want to know who you are. Because I know that Lockon is gone forever, though that does not mean you must die as well. You are not really Lockon, but someone else as well, while I am only Tieria and that is all there is and ever was. Did you die in my place because you knew you could die and still live as your other side while I, Tieria the Gundam Meister, could only die once and then be gone? You can not know that Veda has rejected me and now Tieria is dead anyway, so even if you have another life, you lost one in vain.
Tieria is dead. Without Veda he is without Gundam and without that he is nothing. Because Tieria is not human.
Tieria is not human.
You did not kill Tieria but all the same he is dead. The Tieria who is that which you could not say is dead. I do not know who is in his stead, as he has been replaced not once but twice. In death and in life, life I still have because you were too damn stupid to see and do what was proper and logical. Who is Tieria now?
Tieria is not human but you could never say those words because it is the lie Tieria lives, and we all live lies we do not speak, and while I tell the lie of someone to them, you do not. You do not display the lies because you disprove them with your actions, and in these actions is a sacrifice that is not an error or a failure but a truth and a fact. You could not say it, what I was, because you did not care about it, as if you knew that as you lie here dying in my stead, there are tears in these eyes of Tieria's.