A/N: The full title of this story is "With Your xxx, Believe in the Me Who Believes in Nothing!" For whatever reason, FFN wouldn't let me type a title that long into the box.

I remember you told me once that it's important to pay attention to people's intentions.

You're always spouting straightforward things like that. You voice such simple opinions that they're inconceivable. Nothing is that effortless for human beings, but I can think of many instances where you turned out to be right. That is perhaps the strangest part.

Do you remember when the Gurapals first came off the production line? It feels like ages ago because we've come so far, but in reality the time has hardly passed. We still have the original Ganmen, as if they'd never been destroyed and we were all back warring on the surface with our band of few. It's just like Reite to reassemble the pieces and keep the Ganmen even though the Gurapals were made, don't you think?

Ah, but I'm growing too conversational. I can't forget my purpose.

When the Gurapals first came out, Gimmy and Darry went to choose the ones they wanted to pilot. It seemed they had grown up so fast at that time, but it would be at least three years before they could actually fight. Gimmy ran too fast and in too much excitement; Darry was knocked down and injured. She just barely held back tears, accusing Gimmy of being careless. Gimmy, embarrassed and ashamed, didn't know how to apologize to a girl. You and I were already in the hangar, and you said to Darry, "Gimmy didn't mean to hurt you." She pointed at him and said, "It doesn't matter. He already did!"

You conceded that it was wrong of Gimmy to knock her down, but then you explained how it was an accident, how Gimmy cared about her and would never want to cause her pain. "Isn't that right, Gimmy," you said, and Gimmy nodded furiously. He said after a moment, "I'm sorry." When he did, Darry got back up, Gimmy took her hand, and they chose their Gurapals side by side.

Simon-san. I don't understand you at all.

"Rossiu," you said to me in the hangar, after I had stated that I didn't think Gimmy should be allowed to choose his Gurapal because of his actions, "If Aniki were here, he would tell you to lighten up, because your forehead looks too dark and serious." Then you threw your shoulders back and laughed, as if you thought simple compassion and not reasoning is what allows human beings to persevere while the world turns.

You often insist that it's not what people do that matters. Sometimes, you say, people do things wrong or foolishly and bad things happen, but as long as no one intended to cause harm, everything can be salvaged. You say that people make mistakes, and that when they do, they simply have to get back up and keep trying — as if that will somehow balance out the miscalculations, the messes made, the damage done. But what about the actions that can't be brushed aside? Can we really forget the role of consequences? Some acts cannot go unpunished. If people were to complicate or waylay fair punishment by citing always their intentions, by calling upon what they "meant" or "didn't mean" to do, how would we maintain justice? We as human beings wouldn't learn anything, or learn to value anything, if we didn't properly acknowledge and account for our mistakes and losses. There are times when an apology is not enough, times when there is no apology at all. In those times, how can you recover so quickly and say that you'll just move on, without an answer?

For years now, Simon-san, I have envied your ability to smile in the face of difficulty. You maintain your patience, your positivity, and your peace of mind whenever it seems I have already lost my hope or my temper. When I do manage calm, or the semblance of calm… when I am presented with a choice and I must make a decision that I intend to weigh carefully, you in turn catch fire, jarring me with awe as your unshakable confidence carries me quickly to levels I have not yet contemplated. Your fire burns a different color. My fire is blue, remote, icy and calculating like the fortress I build outside myself to keep myself steady and strong. But Simon-san, you are scarlet. Passionate and hot, alight with determination no matter what the obstacle, melting all with your heat the way candle flames melt wax — intermittently and without pattern, a testament to the impossibility it is to try to limit or define you through your actions alone. You step outside my expectations, catch me so often by surprise — but only in that you consistently lack logical reasoning behind what you do. You jump into situations without thinking, with nothing to guide you but what you and the others call Fighting Spirit.

When the result is some wildly unbelievable catastrophe, you merely clench your jaw and keep going.

That's why, I think, I never expected you to handle your trial quietly.

At first, you didn't. The evening I arrested you, directed all the population's hate and the responsibility of the falling moon onto you, told you coldly that I thought Kamina's death had served us well in the long run… you lashed out until the guards held you back. I felt your livid breath against my cheeks, my lips. Your eyes pierced mine as you accused me of resembling the Elder from my village. You were shaking with fury, Simon-san. When my hand jutted out to the exposed flesh at your collarbone, when I snapped the chain from around your neck and gazed at the small drill in my palm, I felt satisfied with my actions. I felt relief, even, that you were furious — though I paid less attention to such feelings than to the matters at hand. When you are angry, there is no stopping you, and I understand too late now that a part of me was burning even then for you to revolt, despite my loftier outward wishes.

Instead, without expression, I stripped from you your power and the instrument that had ushered in humanity's demise. I returned your drill to you only long enough to use you to defend the city, and after that, you were locked into prison. From there, you did not move.

Deep inside, I believe I always expected you to move. I was privately certain of it — I yearned for it — automatically from the very beginning. I expected you to do what you always do when you want something.

I expected you to fight. I assumed you would fight me, and something in me was ready to accept it and to face it. I thought for one instant, as I told Gimbley to gather pairs of animals for our journey, Let us see finally which of us can better lead and protect the human race. I desired your opposition with every hungry corner of my soul, but the longer you sat still behind bars, the more I realized that I did not desire this to prove myself a better leader than you, or to defeat you forever, or to truly take control of the people.

I wanted you to fight back so that I might better justify for myself my decisions regarding the surface evacuation, and even more than that, the punishment I'd chosen for you.

That, or I desperately wanted you to stop me.

But you didn't resist prison. And I announced your execution. In what seemed a frighteningly short span of time, I was experiencing the crushing weight of the responsibility I'd taken.

However, even now in retrospect, what I chose to do while the moon came down seems only right. I was objective, logical, fair to the extent of my abilities. I did not fear sacrifice. And yet, events never go as we perceive they will, do they? We experience emotions we never wanted to experience. I did not expect the impact of the moon to completely annihilate life on earth when it hit, but Leeron's calculations rarely lie. "You don't have to believe it if you don't want to," Leeron spoke softly to me, but I hung my head when I saw the simulation and responded, "How can I not? I have no choice but to believe it." There was more and more for me to rationally consider. I did not expect the Anti-Spirals to pinpoint and attack the Arc-Gurren while it was loading, to have to take off without all passengers aboard.

I did not foresee that my fortress would crack so easily upon my having to face so many unpleasant progressions.

I thought of you, clothed in prison stripes, dumped into a damp, dark cell. I thought of the execution I had ordered for you, and as the crisis progressed I realized your fate would instead be to die when the moon hit the surface. My throat would thicken when I failed to fend off these images, my body would convulse uncontrollably, my knees would buckle, my heart would stop. I could not imagine what would become of me if I never again heard your laugh, or saw the gleam of light in your hair, cobalt and shining. Would I have the strength to lead all these people in the Arc-Gurren if you disappeared? Kittan came and demanded your drill back — I'd been concealing it beneath my clothes — and when its cool metal was gone from around my neck, I felt as if you'd been ripped away. Kittan turned his back on even Kinon, and my faith in everything left me. I managed — the stars only know how — to regain control and steel myself, but I never expected that the thought of losing you would threaten to tear my heart into pieces.

But to go further than that now in my retelling, I refuse.

I am lofty and distant to the last, and cannot bear admitting here what I only recently unraveled for my own understanding; when I begin to groan or splinter with weakness, I note it and stiffen like a more ancient tree limb, so tough that you can no longer hope to snap me across your knee. Suffice it to say, as I sit here with wry detachment once again, that by the time the moon became like a ceiling, I couldn't bear the consequences of any of my actions, or of my potential future actions as I weighed my choices, and that nevertheless I still sought to carry them out, and did.

Which brings us to the question of intent.

I intended, Simon-san, to save as many as I could, to make what sacrifices were necessary that this saving might be done, because in the end it was better than trying to do the impossible. Who could conquer the moon? And I was the one who had to make sound decisions; I was the leader. Those who choose to fight can't be the leaders.

Yet it seems you're both, aren't you. When other people try to draw even with you, they fall short. Leaders and fighters both, they lack something inside of them. There seems to be no match for you, but somehow you still make me think you're a senseless idiot. Why didn't you try to stop me, Simon-san?

In some instances, you were like a man as broken in spirit as I was. Perhaps the change in Nia…?

If her fate is set now, it's a terrible one. I still can't bring myself to believe that she is and was perhaps always the Anti-Spiral's messenger. I can't bear it, and if I can't, I can't imagine what you must feel.

Do you remember, Simon-san, the day we had a meeting that ran overtime, and you let Nia cook us dinner? Everyone but you thought the food was terrible and that her cooking had not improved in the slightest; no one but you could finish eating. Jougan and Barinbou were choking, and the others had turned unflattering colors around the cheeks. Nia only smiled and said she was glad they all seemed to like the meal. I asked you, trying discreetly to spit a mouthful of something horrid into my napkin, what it was you found attractive in a woman as mindless as that.

You said, "She's always happy, Rossiu. It makes me happy too."

Ever since, I've been both skeptical and jealous of the courage you draw from the happiness of others. And sometimes, I hate myself for being unable to bring you the same kind of relief and elation. But I can only be so frivolous. There is no such thing as constant happiness. If there were, our other emotions would not exist. Therefore, I have to be realistic in my observation of human feeling. If there were a way to uphold constant happiness, I don't think human beings should choose it, because happiness is a goal. If you're already living in that goal, you're not fighting toward anything, and you're not living…. I think you must feel other things sometimes — because you of all people must realize this truth about happiness! — but it is beyond me to identify what those things are that you feel.

Was it worry and fear for Nia that made you uncertain and slow to act? Forgive me, but I don't believe that suggestion even as I make it. For someone like you, intense feelings for a person wouldn't cause you to slow down, to stumble. They would focus you and make you stronger. The people around you often seem to inspire you. I've seen the fire in you quicken, and too often it stirs something of a response even in me.

But me, to sit here and talk of feeling. How trite. In the end, I believe feeling is a secondary mode of decision-making. Reason and logic and the greater good must reign foremost in our minds.

I cannot help but think, however, that as confident as I am in my doctrine, I've been nothing but a burden. I must have made you weary, all those times you had to walk me loop-by-loop up the spiral of your conviction until I understood it enough to lend you my support. I have wished before that I possessed your same strength, your same conviction, that it might make me less of a hindrance. And I wonder.

Is it possible that you, with your extraordinary power, understood my intentions from the very beginning, and that is why you sat still in jail? Perhaps you knew what I was trying to accomplish by laying you responsible, and you ceded to me because you agreed that it was our only logical choice. But that doesn't make sense. Would you indeed have allowed your life to be sacrificed to save the others, in the way that I'd planned for you? And why?

Why, Simon-san?

I am certain there was something you wanted to teach us, when you showed up in space beside the Arc-Gurren at last, to restore our hope and to defy the falling moon. You illustrated to me, at least, that logic, that rational action… those things are too easily defeated. I became bitter. Why is it that your intentions and actions are always one in the same? "I intend to do this, therefore I will do exactly this right now or die trying," is what you think. You came to our rescue with an impossible intention. You intended to win, and you won.

If all it takes is blind and stubborn belief that something can happen to make it actually happen, if all it takes is simple wanting in order to obtain, why are human beings blessed with such complex cognitive ability? Why can we reason, why do we make compromises, why must we devise large systems of government to mete out justice and keep order? I cannot be like you. I cannot think like you.

I wonder if that is why I have failed.

I never intended to hurt a soul, but I took action, and subsequent action, fully aware of the consequences of each decision I made, until I realized that what I was doing was going to sacrifice hundreds upon hundreds of lives. Then still I did it, for the sake of a greater good. You could say, ironically I suppose, that when I gave the signal to launch the Arc-Gurren, my intentions and my actions were at last one in the same. I intended to launch and leave those people to die, and I did.

Would it matter now, if I said that I never meant to hurt anyone and I'm sorry?

The truth is, the act cannot be labeled a mistake. Even if it were a mistake, such a mistake is unforgivable. I, as the leader who made a string of murderous decisions, must be made to take full responsibility.

Ultimately all lives were spared, as odd and unpredictable fate would have it, but since it was you who saved them all, Simon-san, I am not absolved of my crime.

There is only one system I ultimately find sense in, for all other answers elude me. I understand the system where actions are more influential than intentions, where every action has its proper consequence, where actions that are bad are met with the appropriate punishment. I must be punished to serve as an example, for if humans are allowed again to do as I have done, one day there will be no Simons to make right what a Rossiu does wrong. I, Rossiu, must account for my sin with my own hands.

And yet… despite the monster that I have become, part of me would like to spare those I care about from the sight of me meeting my end.

I will return to Adai Village from whence I came. Simon-san, I beg of you, aloud and humbly as I pen these words — do not come after me. Please accept this correspondence as our last, and try to understand that I give up on myself for good reason. I am weary of fighting only to lose. We triumphed in our battle, of course; you won for us all and we helped you in what small ways we could. We now have the Cathedral Terra! It's fantastic, and I am in so many ways overjoyed. But something overshadows our successes and triumphs, and takes my will to continue as I am away from me. I'm tired of fighting what is inside me and losing. I do the best I can, but my best…. It never seems enough, does it? I cannot lead well enough, fight well enough, love hard enough, believe strongly enough. Gimbley has been loyal to me, Kinon has been supportive and strong in her quiet, unobtrusive fashion, and yet I can't find even in them the answers, or the will to go on.

I desire to believe in what you believe in, but that's another way of saying I desire the impossible. I think, perhaps, that I have reached my limit. Pursuing the Anti-Spirals from here on is a task for those who have no limits, who instead possess purity and determination beyond all possibility.

It is a task for you, Simon-san.

Please forgive me for not saying a proper goodbye.

Rossiu looked at the letter he had penned, scanning the handwriting that he'd gouged along the pages. He absorbed the product without expression, the words scratched onto paper in a fit of madness — his attempt to put logic to his final decision. But the longer Rossiu looked at his notes to Simon, the less confident he became that he'd written the letter in reason, written it to organize his actions and to explain his behavior. The longer he looked at it, the more it seemed he had scrawled nonsense, like the symbols in the scriptures from his childhood. He wondered if he ought to have written it at all.

If he left this letter for Simon, what would Simon do? There was absolutely no telling. In fact, Simon might end up spoiling Rossiu's plans. He might step in and get in Rossiu's way.

Rossiu knew this. He knew this, and yet he'd written Simon the letter.

Without warning, Rossiu leaned back in his chair and released a wry, hollow chuckle, bringing his hands to cover his face.

His letter to Simon was nothing but hypocrisy, nothing but selfishness. It proved that he grasped at something he knew he would never have, and yet was unwilling to give up. If Simon read the letter, surely he would do everything in his power to save Rossiu's life.

Rossiu removed his hands from his face and gripped the edge of his desk. He wanted to die, but he'd written a letter to Simon? It was like saying, "Although I claim to be steadfast in my decision, I really don't mean it, so…." What a cowardly letter this was, this plea for Simon's interference in disguise.

At once, Rossiu found himself despicable. He had revealed everything for Simon to see under the premise of being certain of himself, when in reality, he was not certain of himself at all. Rossiu believed in nothing, but wanted to believe in something. In Simon, maybe, or in the Simon who could believe in him. But such feelings were secondary. His sinful actions required judgment.

Rossiu looked again at the letter — ran his fingers over the smooth pages — and his features contorted with deep dissatisfaction. If he truly intended to atone for his wrongs, he had to act like he meant it. He seized the letter and crumpled it up.

He removed his gun from the drawer where it was kept, and set it beside him along with some bullets. He called up the surface reconstruction plan from the file on his computer — the one monument of good that he would leave behind — and scrolled past his intricate sketches and maps to the very last page. He lifted his fingers to type a message far more reasonable.

Dear Kinon….

Author Note: Dear readers, I have opened the floodgates to the Gurren Lagann fanfiction. There's more where that came from.

…I'm just hoping I properly pierced the heavens here, otherwise it might take longer before I post more. I'll have to better perfect the art of writing for TTGL first.