Title: Underwater
Pairing(s): Athrun/Cagalli
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: K+
Spoilers: none
Summary: Being underwater brings a whole new perspective to life.
Author's Notes: School and real life have eaten me alive. That is my excuse. Really. Anyways, this was written for a community drabble contest and I just finally decided to post it here. The drabble itself is a little dark or at least considering what I usually write. Athrun's POV. Takes "place" during episode 24 of SEED. You'll see what I mean.
Disclaimer: The characters used in this fic aren't mine. They belong to Bandai and whatever other company has a say in their fate.

He'd asked one of his friends from the academy before she went away, once, what it was like to be deaf. She'd told him it was like being underwater.

He'd taken that at face value, gathering great lungfuls of air and diving beneath the waves to explore a new perspective.

But it's more than that, more like being underwater than he'd ever suspected. It's taking the edge off the world, making things softer. The noise of the gunfire in his training and his arguments from his dad and Kira's laughter and Lacus' gentle words had gone from a harsh racket to something muted and almost beautiful, like wind chimes, like a low wind through the trees.

Underwater, the world is hushed, reverent, quiet. Here in his new world, the volume knob goes steadily down, like the planet is letting him sleep, letting him go, letting him drift away.

It makes it easier to disconnect. When gunshots sound like water dripping, when screams sound like whispers, he'll have to leave for himself, and he's not fool enough to think the relationships he has here will last beyond that.

Her mother told him once she would with him forever and he'd foolishly believed her. And he remembered crying when he didn't cry and almost wished that he did remember. But he didn't want to remember. Her memory in his mind hurt more than existing.

He's almost looking forward to it. A world without pain, a world without people, a world where things are orderly and quiet and unsurprising, total control. Lonely, sure, but...he's good at lonely. Like many things, it has lost the power to bother him.

In a way it's almost like drowning: you forget everything around you and find yourself both dreading and looking forward to the inevitable conclusion. It makes things easier to understand that some things never change, that no matter how many times he wished for once someone would drag him out he would inevitably fall to the sounds of silence.

But when he eyes her from a distance, his knife to her gun, it felt like ripples running through him changing what was once so familiar an atmosphere for him. His once desolate environment is now surrounded by waves underwater as if someone is either swimming with him or under with him.

And as he looks her, he sees a reflection of himself, of responsibilities and knowledge and pain that he thought no one would understand. And he can see behind the tears and words the knowledge that she doesn't want to face him, doesn't want to face the choice of defending for her beliefs or fighting against his.

And right then he knows that if it came down to it…he couldn't do it.

He couldn't kill her.

…because you couldn't kill yourself.

He wouldn't let her drown herself.

Even if that meant going up for air.

end