NOTE; the plot in this probably won't correspond with what actually happens in GSDestiny, I haven't seen it yet so I won't go by it. Yeah, I took a bit of creative liberty with this but accuracy (as in corresponding exactly with GS and GSD) is not the point of this story. This was written overnight and will probably have a couple mistakes that I didn't pick up on, sorry in advance.

I've noticed I talk way too much at the beginning of these things…

Disclaimer; I own pretty much nothing.

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Immortality. As if the red of his coat, the praise of his teachers and his constant skill against his comrades proved that he was the best. Even when he lost he was not hurt.

Losing didn't mean dying and winning didn't mean killing.

Arrogance and bliss were what dictated his life then. He was a god. They were gods. He had never noticed until now how naive he was.

It took death to take that away from him - Yzak screaming in rage and attacking the walls themselves as if to beat the pain out of him, the blissfully happy sun at the funeral, the condemning arrogance that was so thick in the air.

He remembered that day painfully well, the group attending the funeral had been so small…

Rusty's family hadn't come at all. To this day he never quite knew why. He always liked to believe that it had been because they were too busy or couldn't make it in time or even hadn't wanted to come because it would be too painful. Inwardly he knew that couldn't be true, in all the years they had been friends he had never seen Rusty's parents - at the worst of times or at the best.

Miguel's had. His stoic mother, who looked so painfully old - her face devoid of tears but for her tell-tale eyes- and his younger brother, who could only be described as confused. It hurt him to this day to remember her, she had always been a nice woman but had been very possessive of both her boys. Especially Miguel when he started fighting. She had lost her husband to the war and now she had lost Miguel. It made sense why she clung so tightly to her youngest son who just stared at the coffins without understanding much but enjoying the attention.

There had been the formalities of course, people who were expected to show up and expected to show remorse, say polite words of sorrow and cry for the cameras if the need arose and they were gone as soon as they could be.

Last there was Miguel's pretty girlfriend, face devoid of makeup, hair damp and messed, bags under her eyes and she had dressed, strangely, in a garishly bright dress – complete with bright yellow flowers on pink. She was sobbing, quietly, and was digging her nails into her skin –drawing blood near the end. He had always wondered whether she cried for Miguel or for Rusty.

That was the first shattering of immortality. His first true loss. Now, fifty years later that loss was minute and hardly mattered anymore. But that it had been the first.

Soon after that, it seemed much too soon, had been Nicol. The wound there had been very deep. Often he wondered if that was what had really split them apart. Certainly it had isolated Athrun, who they had been decreasingly friendly with. In the end it had been what ended their close friendship.

There was a funeral for Nicol but he hadn't been able to go, none of them had. They were too busy chasing cattle and a killer.

When they found out that it had been Kira that had killed Nicol and that, worse, Athrun had known that it was Kira, it ruined Athrun in his eyes. He even began to hate him at times. Day after day the Zala boy would smile and hug and laugh with Kira, he had even gone so far to go, smiling, to the wedding between his betrothed, although loveless, and this… Kira. It meant nothing to him that Nicol had died. It meant nothing to him that his closest friend for all those years had been killed by the person he now treated as a brother.

Athrun acted as if Nicol had been nothing to him.

Of course, if he had ever spoken such words to Athrun the answer would be along the lines of; 'Kira didn't mean to, it was an accident, there was no way he could have prevented it, he is completely absolved from guilt because he didn't mean to do it. Do you expect me to be bitter towards him because he accidentally killed Nicol? Am I supposed to never move on?'

He imagined himself staring back into those eyes and bluntly answering with a 'yes'. It was irrational, it wasn't good and it certainly shouldn't have been encouraged. But by not doing exactly that- Athrun proved to him that he did not care for Nicol.

No man, coordinator or natural, was that good. To move on from such a loss and treat the killer like a brother with absolutely no resentment was simply not human.

Strangely, though he had grown this partial bitterness towards Athrun, he had never quite hated Kira. He had never quite liked him either, with a strange 'holier than thou' air about him, though he never said anything like that – preferring instead to cry and weep and moan by himself, hoping inwardly that some one would hear him and say 'oh that poor Kira, he has it so hard'.

Craving acceptance and pity from every corner then rising up out of the confines of his shadowy room with eyes freshly wiped from tears and appear with a torn heroic look on his face, racing out into space to go kill another mothers son.

It was an interesting mentality to take, and perhaps was solely one he had adapted out a need to avenge Nicol, but some small part of him had always thought of Kira that way.

Kira was treated like a god.

So, like a man playing god, he was shot down along with his pregnant wife and first born daughter by a coordinator woman who had only vengeance, hatred and blame in her eyes. He had been there, walking with them in the park and had been astounded to see the woman there. She looked even older now than he remembered her, and he did only barely remember.

She looked at him and a flare of recognition shot in her eyes "They're dead" she rasped, her voice affected by the addictive cigarettes she had taken on after her oldest sons death.

Her eyes gleamed with hatred "He stole my baby from me. He stole BOTH OF THEM!" she trembled "I- I- …" the gun dropped from numb fingers and she fell to her knees sobbing and clutching at her face, muttering incoherently.

It seemed he could only stare at her in mute wonder. People were screaming all around them, dialing frantically on their phones and running away from the murdered hero and his pop-star wife.

The police would ask him later why he had been there, what they had been talking about, what flavor ice cream had Kira bought for his daughter and, most stinging of all, why he hadn't saved them?

It seemed perfectly natural in their eyes that he, a lesser man, should have jumped in front of the bullet and died quietly, giving Kira the chance to rise up heroically and kill the unjustified evil old woman.

The broken, lost and lonely old woman who had lost her oldest and most precious child to this man and her younger child to a disease that she couldn't afford to cure by herself, with the loss of her oldest son she had lost the funds to keep going on. She lost her house after that and then her job and her last grip on youth.

To the media though he was certain that she would have been presented as an evil, deranged woman with an incurable wickedness that hated everything good.

It was irrational. It was unjustified. It was wrong. It was the only thing that kept them sane.

To be able to present a situation in a different light, to scream at the mirror that the man that killed your loved one was pure evil and deserved a painful death despite the fact that he himself fought to protect just that from happening to his family. It didn't matter, he didn't matter.

All that meant anything was that the one you loved was gone and there was no where to go, everything around you was crumbling completely and you had nothing. Eventually, in a fit of self righteousness you will begin to hate the killer, to put all of your pain on them and rebuild your world around the single goal of avenging the loved ones death.

Self righteous vengeance was the real reason this war was still going on. He had expected Kira and Lacus's funeral to be a grand event, with many teary eyed strangers, black decorations thrown about and the coffins to be made out of pure gold. It wasn't, in fact it was even smaller than Miguel and Rusty's had been.

Cagalli and Athrun had come, the latter making more of a scene than his sobbing and enraged wife, and a very few close friends, himself included though he had never really considered himself as such.

There was so much missing and it really made him reconsider how he had thought of Kira. Of course, ironically, it was only after some one died that you felt remorse, seeing them as undeserving of their fate. Standing there freezing in the rain he could only think of his guilt.

Kira would never be absolved of guilt in his eyes, he would forever be the man who killed Nicol, the man who played god. But he was a man, once over his self-pity, who loved entirely, was modest and kind and had never once taken advantage of some one. He was a spineless pacifist with a knack for killing.

It was only weeks later that Athrun broke down and killed himself. At least, that was what the media reported. The story seemed to go on forever about how -torn- the valiant Athrun Zala flung himself from his third story window to end the pain that he felt about the loss of his dear friend Kira.

That was the second funeral that he could not attend, once again because he was off on some unrelenting mission that only seemed to lead to controversy and futility. He remembered writing a lot of letters that week, to Cagalli mostly.

The loss of Athrun's death was very painful, a death justified a death – though he had never considered it that way- had seemed to purify Athrun. He hated that way of thinking and constantly looked down on people that had that mentality, but he couldn't help the way he felt about it and so eventually gave up and ignored it.

Often he wondered how Cagalli had taken Athrun's death. The man that told her she was the only one, that she was his entire world that he loved her more than a man could love, had just killed himself because Kira was dead. It said a lot of things, first and foremost that for all of this time he couldn't have been completely honest.

He wondered if she had ever come to the conclusion that perhaps Athrun felt something a little more than a brotherly love for Kira.

He had suffered two deaths in a matter of weeks, both of them full of self condemnation and guilt. You couldn't apologize to a corpse. Nothing between them would ever be right, he was sure that Kira had seen his resentment and over looked it, just as he knew that Athrun was well aware of the bitterness directed towards him.

They were two good men and they deserved more than what his inner thoughts gave them.

It was during the months following Athrun's death that he decided to get in contact with Yzak again. He wasn't sure why he did it, things had become very tense between them and, over the years, they had slowly drifted a part. Maybe it was his fault for becoming a traitor and walking away from his best friend, maybe it was Yzak's fault for becoming so hostile towards him and becoming more distant. Whatever the reason they had lost their friendship.

It was easier than he thought it would have been. They agreed, over a short and painfully formal phone call, to meet again in a month.

It was the longest month of his life and in the end Yzak never showed. Actually, in the end, he never saw Yzak again. To this day he didn't know what had happened to his friend, he didn't even know if Yzak was still alive.

After losing the best friend he had ever had, although admittedly the most abusive and least caring of the bunch, and failing so miserably at repairing the gap that had grown so vast between them over the years it seemed that he lost a part of himself.

For many years he simply worked, devoting his complete attention and efforts to his job to stave off his loneliness. He never dated, though he had many opportunities, and he never became close with anyone. It was simply work, all the time.

Those years were the bleakest of his life. Friendless, loveless, hopeless, he could only concentrate on pain and work. It was the first time that he considered killing himself but it wouldn't be the last. The only thing that had prevented him from pulling the trigger had been cowardice. He had hated life but was still afraid of death. It was during that time that he rediscovered love.

Strangely he couldn't remember the day they re-met in clear details, though he smiled every time he thought of it. She had been happy to see him, obscenely happy it seemed at the time, and had immediately insisted on spending the day with him. She spent hours explaining to him in detail how corrupt the media was and how she almost wanted to quit but wouldn't because she considered it giving up, being surrounded by heroes seemed to push her to do her part.

They avoided the touchy subject of Kira and Athrun's deaths, the uncomfortable funeral day when they had been standing side by side, though never spoke a word. He hadn't even noticed her there and wouldn't have been surprised to hear that she hadn't noticed him either.

They had left each other, finally, when she got a call from her boss half way through dinner. She paid for the bill, despite his protests, and left reluctantly only after he promised to call her the next day.

He remembered lying in bed with a huge smile on his face whispering her name to himself, as if by doing so he might conjure her then and there.

'Miriallia'

They started officially dating after a week of constant calling and friendly chatter whenever they could find a spare moment to sneak away to be together. Not much had changed except that now she would sit on his lap when they were alone and they would steal hungry kisses from each other at every opportunity.

There were still several topics which they whole heartedly avoided, neither one of them wanting to bring up the painful memories.

He had never really understood how Miriallia had been able to forgive him for killing her boyfriend, Tolle. She had told him once that there was no point in killing him, that wouldn't bring Tolle back. It was a perfectly rational thought and for that alone it did not make any sense to him at all.

War and loss were completely irrational, how then had she been able to rationalize the death of her love? Perhaps over the years as she moved on she might have, but so soon? Only days after he had killed Tolle she had forgiven him.

At night when she lay asleep in his arms he would consider this, but it never lead to anything. He would kiss her neck and whisper those hated words in her ears before falling asleep, waking to find her gone every morning.

After a year of dating he had proposed to her, it hadn't been as special as he had wanted it to be; they were in his apartment, drinking wine and chatting about the current political state of the war when he suddenly popped the question.

This was a moment that still haunted his dreams, something that at once terrified him and excited him.

She had given him a strange look, her eyes full of sorrow which worried him at first. She looked away and out the window as if battling with something inside of her. He was uncomfortably tense and couldn't stand the silence. He whispered her name imploringly.

"I love you." She said without looking at him.

There was something wrong. He took her hand and squeezed it "I'm sorry" he remembered saying, feeling angry at himself for saying something so lame "It's too soon…"

She looked down at him sadly and touched his cheek lovingly "I love you, foolish and easily duped though you are." She smirked mischievously and leaned down to capture a kiss before he could catch his wits.

The wedding day was the happiest day of his life. It didn't matter that he didn't have any friends or family there, it didn't matter that it was pouring rain outside, it didn't matter because he had true happiness; he had Miriallia.

She had worn a beautiful red dress and a darker red veil, her hair had been cut shorter and had been laced through with cheap black beads, but most memorable of all to him had been her black lace panties and bra.

There had been no honeymoon, they had both been tied up with work and neither really wanted to go away anyways, instead they amused themselves by going out for dinner every night and coming home to kissing and sweet, drunk love.

For over a decade he was allowed to enjoy a happy wedded life.

It all ended so suddenly and spontaneously, he had never quite been able to understand what had brought it about. He had been away from home for a month on business and was just walking through the door at three in the morning when he found her sitting on the floor of the kitchen with a gun in her hand.

She had been bleeding. It was all over her hands and had been smeared over her face and hair. She had looked up at him slowly, revealing the tracks of tears on her cheeks. "I love you." She murmured "I love him more. I can't stand living another day without him."

Before he had been able to say anything she had raised the gun to her head and had done the one thing that he had been unable to.

Of the countless deaths he had seen this one hurt the most.

He had spent hours sitting there on the floor with the still bleeding corpse of the woman he loved in his arms. Occasionally he would rock back and forth and whisper into her ear "Why, Mir, why?" but mostly he just sat there, feeling the warmth drain out of Miriallia's body.

He remembered kissing her cold lips, tasting her blood. He remembered looking into her eyes, terrified of the emptiness that he found there. He remembered the sound of sirens outside the door and the suddenness at which he found Miriallia taken away.

He hadn't organized her funeral, or done much at all in the months that followed, leaving it all up to Miriallia's heartbroken parents. He hadn't gone to her funeral either preferring instead to sit under the shower and stare at his hands that were, in his eyes, still covered in her blood. It never washed away.

Had she ever really loved him? For all these years had he really just been making her miserable? But then why?

Perhaps she had never forgiven him for killing Tolle.

Today was the second anniversary of Miriallia's death and was the first time that he finally felt that he understood.

Feeling the cold press of metal against the side of his head, the certainty of what he was doing, everything seemed to make sense. For the first time in his life he was completely confident and justified in what he was doing. Maybe, for the first time he was doing the right thing.

He pulled the trigger.

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('He' is Dearka if that wasn't obvious enough yet. For those that didn't read the comment above I'll repeat myself here;
No, the plot probably won't correspond with what happens in GSDestiny, I've never seen it so I won't go by it. Yeah, I also did take a bit of creative liberty with this, sorry if it really bugs you but accuracy (as in corresponding exactly with GS and GSD) is not the point of this story.
Thanks for reading)