Disclaimer: Gundam Seed and all affiliated characters do not belong to me. This story does.
Author natterings: Time frame is very soon after Seed ends. Most likely set in the Star Valley, or wherever that OVA was. (Also, English dub names are used because I'm a hussy.)
Although I wrote with Dearka in mind, I realized that the guy could be either Dearka or Athrun depending on your preference. And any conclusions you want to come to on your own about the relationship Dearka(/Athrun) had with Nicol are your own. I've just written a story here, and you can roam with your imagination. Sometimes the most powerful things are things unsaid, no?
With that said, I hope you enjoy. Comments and criticisms are welcome.
Hammers and Strings
It was peaceful here.
The sun had not yet risen, though dawn was close. Feeble light lent the sky that rare shade of bleached eggshell blue, which bled into the feathers of a blue jay, which became the colour of dark. The wind whistled the note of B flat, and he thought of Nicol.
He leaned back onto his hands, feeling the weathered wood dig into his pilot's palms.
Nicol. The youngest of them all, and the first to die a needless death. With him was extinguished an endless sea of music. Posideon, summoning water to flow from his fingertips and rush over the black and white of keys, granting them blues and greens, if only for awhile. That was Nicol.
Nicol, Miguel, Commander Le Creuset. The war's dead.
Out of those remembered, one bothered him the most. The ghost tugged at his conscience quietly from the back of his mind. He resolved to quiet it.
Just as dawn broke he turned to look at her. The distant light from the sun lit her from head to toe; the auburn of her hair boasted beauty and her skin showed no flaws. Looking longer though, he could see other things. The way the light highlighted small dark circles beneath her eyes. Her tired slouch into the porch railing.
One look was all it took to know she was thinking of her ghost.
When he turned back to the horizon, the trees swayed as if welcoming him back.
Silence between them began to fall short. The mountains yawned age-old and the sea shuffled sand.
"What was he like?" The question was so quiet he thought she might not have heard. But the breeze delivered it to her ears without a care.
She stole the breeze into her lungs, inhaled deeply. Her heart felt sucked dry and drowning. But she answered. "Sincere."
He could say the same for her. "What else?"
"Thoughtless," she smiled it, bittersweet.
A bird calling for a mate urged him on. He fixed his gaze on the horizon, burning pinks and purples. "I never knew his name."
Her throat constricted and she tried to swallow it away. The bridge of her right foot began to go numb, but she dared not move. "Tolle," she told the rising sun. "His name was Tolle Koenig." And the sun went on shining, and she wanted to put it out.
He sensed her sadness. It was the kind you were tired of having hang around, but kept because it was a connection. It was a stone in the bottomless bottom of your heart, weighing you down and holding you back. Reminding you you're not supposed to be happy. He didn't like it that someone like her could be affected that way.
The weight in him suddenly felt heavier, and he bent forward, over his knees and the steps of the falling down house. "I'm sorry," his best effort at sincerity, at being like her and her Tolle.
She seemed to sense this, thankful for the sentiment. "I'm sorry too."
"Hm?" He twisted his torso to look at her, so young and old in the same glance. He fell halfway out of his dream-like stupor.
"You lost loved ones too, didn't you?" She wasn't looking back at him. "Everyone did," she added, her voice tight and rough and bursting with sadness. There was one quality noticeably missing from her tone though, and he knew it was missing from the rest of her as well - regret.
Nocturnes played through his mind then, layered over with sonatas layered over with waltzes. A beautiful cacophony of the product of a person's love and passion.
Miguel's stupid jokes. Water falling, pooling in between the hammers and strings.
"Yeah," he said.
When he went to her, he couldn't recall. All he knew was his front to her shaking back, her human warmth a sharp contrast to the cold wind. She let him press the side of his face to the crown of her head, the hollow of his cheek against her hair, gone coarse from lack of proper maintenance. Not to say either cared.
Silence spoke then, telling them stories of their dead. The befores and afters. The what-ifs. The should've, would've, could've. And the truths.
She wept and he tried not to and the sun revealed itself bit by bit. The house creaked beneath them and flowers bent and whispered to each other.
He mimicked them once she had calmed. He passed on his truth. "They're dead. But we're alive."
A tear left her eye to land in his palm. "And maybe that's all we can ask for."
The sun climbed higher as they stood in an embrace that was maybe just enough.
Ghosts would linger, breezes would blow, and always, music would play on.