A/N: I have no excuse. The angstfest you are about to read pretty much wrote itself, in defiance of every single ongoing fic I was trying to update. My friends and I have been referring to it as the Plot Bunny of Doom, or PBOD for short, because I quite literally did not want to keep writing it, but the idea would not leave me alone. I've had a stressful last couple of weeks, I blame it on that. Thus, I can make no promises about its quality or lack thereof, let the reader beware, as the saying goes…
Setting-wise, this is AU, it takes place in a world not unlike our own modern one, without Gundam and the like. However, it is not our world. The terrorists and terrorist incidents mentioned herein are not meant to bear any relationship to actual incidents of terrorism or actual terrorists. The year of the prologue is the year Gundam Seed first ran; the date of October 26th has no significance in real life-I chose it because of October's association with death and the fact that 26 is twice 13, but it doesn't mean anything more than that. Various people will be OOC based on their backstories in the fic as opposed to their canon backstories. References may be made to any number of events in GS and GSD, so know that spoilers might occur. Also, in anticipation of flames, any death or survival of any characters is based on plot and not on my liking them or hating them. If that was how I was going about things, I would have written a Gundam Wing oneshot just to kill Relena already. Oh, yeah, and Gundam Seed Destiny is not mine. At all. If it had been, I'd like to think that Shinn wouldn't have been allowed in a Gundam until he worked out a couple of his issues.
October 26th
Chapter 1: Bokutachi no Yukue
October 26th, 2002
It was all over the news. The terrorists had been promising retaliation for the attacks on their homeland for months. Someone should have seen this coming.
The footage was always the same, shot on a handheld camera that shook enough to give those watching vertigo. Not that the images they were filming weren't enough for that.
Smoke rose from the wreck that had been Onoguro Harbor in thick, dirty-looking plumes. The ground was covered in rubble and blood. Some of the newscasts edited out the bodies, while others left them in.
The static-filled audio of the tape was suddenly interrupted by a soft whimpering, and some scuffling sounds, as a black-haired boy in a winter hat with earflaps struggled to his feet only yards away from the camera, his clothing covered in soot. A pink cell phone was clasped in his hand. The boy dusted off his jeans and looked around with wide, ruby-red eyes that widened as he surveyed the wreckage.
He walked, slowly and unsteadily, over to one of the bodies, then another, his eyes widening even more. Finally, he approached a third, that of a little girl with similarly dark hair pulled into pigtails. His eyes filled up with tears as he opened the cell phone with trembling hands.
A recording broke through the static. "Hi, this is Mayu, please leave a message!"
The boy fell to his knees and squeezed his eyes shut as tears cleaned the soot off of his face. He shut the cell phone and clutched it to his chest, then started to scream.
The video cuts off there.
No one knows the boy's name. He disappeared into one of the ambulances before most of the press arrived, and the authorities refused to release his name. That didn't stop the papers from running a cover story the next day, featuring a freeze-frame shot of his tears. The conservatives blew up the picture and used him as a war standard, while the liberals carried his image with them in peace protests.
The war continued, life went on, and new stories flitted in and out of the spotlight. Soon, the boy was all but forgotten.
Two Years Later
The bouquet trembled in my hand as I walked toward the building. Archangel General Hospital. I'd been here once before. I gritted my teeth and tried not to remember the last time.
The bouquet was white roses and lilac blossoms. It was really pretty, actually, though it was way too expensive for a bunch of multicolored plants that were going to die within days anyway. And I'd been fired from my job at McDonalds, this time for getting into a fistfight with the fry cook. KFC had ended with me cursing out my supervisor, and Walmart was over the moment I kicked that display. I have got to get a handle on my temper. Anyhow, I didn't really have the extra money for the bouquet. But I bought it anyway, because it was for her.
I remember about a year ago, when I first found out. Flay was hogging the TV as usual, watching some fashion show, when it was interrupted by breaking news. She started swearing at the TV. I laughed. But I stopped laughing when they put the picture up, with the words "Lead Found in Kidnap Case."
The picture was one I recognized. I'd been in the original, but they'd cropped it so all you could see was her face. Stella Loussier. We'd met as children, when I was still living in the city, and we'd become really good friends. Looking back, I think I had a bit of a crush on her.
So when the announcer started talking about how she'd been missing for six months, my stomach dropped. Flay tried to change the channel, but I grabbed the remote from her. Of course, she started yelling for Ms. Gladys. I barely heard her.
Eventually, I gave Flay the remote back, but from that point on, I watched the news every day. Not even Flay tried to stop me. Everyone in the foster home knows about my temper, and they knew I was dead serious about this.
Over the past few weeks, they'd slowly been leaking information about the case, until finally, last Monday, they admitted she'd been found. They gave the name of the hospital she was in and said she'd be ready for visitors today. So here I was.
The girl at the front desk, a girl with cherry-red hair wearing a tailored green jacket with a tag that read "Meyrin" attached to its lapel, smiled at me, her blue eyes warm.
I felt an uncomfortable blush spreading across my cheeks. Why did the secretary have to be pretty? This was hard enough by itself.
"Um, I'm h-here to see Stella," I stuttered.
"You mean Stella Loussier?" she asked. "Are you a member of the family?"
"N-no, I'm a friend. I knew her when we were kids," I said, trying to pull myself together.
"I'm not sure if I can let you go back…" Meyrin said hesitantly.
A brown-haired woman walked into the waiting room, her high heels clicking against the linoleum floor. I recognized her immediately and began swearing to myself.
She noticed me not a second later. I have no luck whatsoever.
"Ah, Shinn, did you finally decide to come in?" Miss Murrue asked, her voice sharp. "Are those flowers an apology for skipping out on your last six appointments?"
I turned an even brighter shade of red, and glanced at Meyrin, who was staring openly. Some of the people in the waiting room were watching, too, with varying degrees of subtlety. Did she seriously have to do this in front of everyone? Especially Meyrin?
"H- no!" I snapped. "These aren't for you!"
I already said I need to work on my temper.
"Did you get a girlfriend?" Miss Murrue asked, eyes shining. I guess she thought that if I had a girlfriend, I was probably not insane.
"No, they're…um…they're for Stella…" I stammered again, wincing at how stupid I sounded.
"Stella?" Murrue asked, genuinely surprised. "You know her?"
"We…um…when we were kids…" I tried to say.
Murrue stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. She turned to Meyrin. "He's fine. I'll take him back."
I stared at her. What the…was Miss Murrue actually helping me?
"Are you going to stand there staring forever, or are you going to come with me?" she asked, tapping a red high heel against the linoleum in impatience.
I followed her as quickly as I could.
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Murrue put a hand on my shoulder as I reached out to open the door of Stella's room.
"Shinn, before you go in there…" she started.
I turned my head to glare at her. "I don't want to talk about that," I snapped.
"It's not about you," Murrue said carefully. "It's about Stella…Shinn, she really isn't doing well."
"They said on the news that she was malnourished," I said. "They can take care of that, though, can't they?"
"There's an ongoing investigation that's preventing them from releasing details about her condition," Miss Murrue explained. "The people that kidnapped her…"
"They didn't hurt her-!" I started, feeling anger boiling in the pit of my stomach. They couldn't! I'd find every single one of them and…
"Not physically, no," Murrue said, quietly. "But Shinn, the authorities think she was taken by a terrorist cell. We think they probably tried to use some sort of programming on her."
"Programming?" I asked. "You mean like mind control?"
Murrue laughed, but there was no happiness in it. "No. Programming as in using psychological techniques to change a person's behavior. Sometimes, they use drugs, too, and that seems likely in this case."
I stared at her. What did you say when you found out something like this had happened to someone you cared about?
"You can't say the word 'death' or 'die' around her," Murrue said. "We don't know why, but that seems to be a word they trained her to respond to. If she hears it, she gets extremely upset."
My hand shook on the door handle. Was I ready for this? To see Stella, so changed?
"Are you going in?" Murrue asked.
I took a deep breath. "Of course," I said, with a confidence I didn't feel. "She's still Stella, no matter what."
I opened the door.
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Beep…beep…beep…
The sound of medical equipment has always creeped me out. It's…eerie. Then again, that might just be my own prejudices.
Stella was lying in a bed in the middle of the room. I hadn't seen her since…well, since before I lived in the foster home. She looked about the same, but sicker.
The sheets were sea-green, and her skin was so pale against them that she looked like a ghost. There were charcoal circles around her half-open eyes, and their normal deep purple hue was dull and lifeless. Her golden hair fell around her face limply. But despite all of this, she was still absolutely beautiful.
"Hey, Stella, it's Shinn. Do you remember me?" I said gently.
"…Shinn," Stella said slowly, her eyes blank. I couldn't even be sure she understood what I was saying. For once, Murrue had been straight with me. Stella wasn't doing well.
"I brought you flowers," I said, holding them up.
That got a response. Her eyes lit up, bright as amethyst, and she tried to lift her hand to accept them. In the end, though, she didn't even have that much strength. There was a part of me that wanted to start crying, right there. But that wouldn't do Stella any good.
"I'm going to put them on the table, here, see?" I said, placing the bouquet on the table near her bed. "You can look at them any time you want. I brought your favorites, lilacs and white roses. Do you like them?"
"…Like…them…" Stella said. I couldn't be sure if that was an answer or just parroting, but I would take what I could get.
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A/N: Just to make it clear, I DON'T LIKE FLAY ALLSTER! Or Meer, really, but especially not Flay. She just happened to be useful, so I let her live. Also, if you're at all fond of this, I did write one other GSD fic, a one-shot called "Not Again" which is Athrun-centric and an odd mix of angst and humor. Thanks for reading!