She wanted him more than he knew. Far more than he could see. Especially then. At the end of the war. She didn't want him to go to PLANT. He should have known. He could have stayed. But she let him go.
She had dreams of him slipping into the home that she was supposed to share with Yuna, banging on the door during a cold, rainy night. In those dreams he always begged her to love him, and she would play indifferent, but the Athrun in the dream always prevailed. When the moment came and she was ready to embrace him, she would find herself jarred awake by the piercing noise of her alarm. Another day. Another Orb problem to return to.
No. To solve.
The fear and anguish of the unfinished relationship made her better as Orb's leader. The pain of not being able to love Athrun made her more sensitive to the pain of others. Cagalli knew it. So she allowed the resurgence of those nightmares, and forced down her constant fear of another war. She drew life from the smiles of newborns. Babies born after the war knew how to smile; those born during the war, did not. But she loved them all and wished she could tell everyone a thousand times how lucky they were to be here. She didn't say it, for fear of the guilt it stirred.
But it would get better in time. Things always got better in time. Even if it wasn't in her lifetime. In the next lifetime, things would get better. They would.
The war had changed her. They didn't tell the stories.
Cagalli knew that the ideals of her father were bigger than anything she could achieve. She would never be able to embody it all. And if she wanted to try, she had to sacrifice herself. She sacrificed Athrun, too.
But most of the time, Cagalli felt more human than she could handle. She was raw with the struggle of being a goddess and a human at the same time. Perhaps she was living an illusion. No human could play goddess. But she did.
If Alex Dino was behind her, softly shadowing her life, everything would be much easier. But that was of the past! It wasn't possible anymore.
She didn't discuss it with him because she didn't want Athrun to give her a reason to change her mind. She simply stopped wearing the ring. Cagalli couldn't forget the look in Athrun's eyes as they moved from surprise, to wonder, to pain.
She wanted him to believe that she had simply chosen to forget about him, because that version of things made her feel strong. The truth was that, through every moment of their parting, and every second that transpired after the second war, Cagalli wanted more and more to melt into him, and become his wife, and eventually recede into a quiet home where she, too, could watch her newborn learn to smile. A newborn with green eyes and gold hair.
The old Cagalli and Alex Dino partnership was dead. Over the length of the war, it had been overcome by a new yearning, one in which Cagalli could no longer be an Athha.
"But it'll get better in time," Cagalli murmured.
It would get better in time.
Seeing Athrun occasionally caused the discomfort of her grief to ebb in and out.
These were the times that Cagalli felt truly superhuman. She felt faith in everything that she was doing, in striving for something bigger. A new hope for the world. The only way to escape from the present was to believe in the coming future.
Despite the tears, Cagalli believed.