Disclaimer:  I don't own it.  If I did, do you think I would bother writing the story?  No…I would have it animated!  ^^;

Author's Note:  This particular piece wouldn't have existed had it not been for the encouragement and suggestion by Midii Une and Nightheart-chan.  So if you come across them (and you like it) thank them, won't you?

What I Never Got to Say

Companion Piece to "Regret"

I never meant to betray anyone. I wouldn't have even considered taking the job if I had known the price I would be forced to pay, for it was much more than simply soldiers' lives. I paid for my crimes with my own heart.

But I guess people with my past and caliber don't deserve to be happy. No matter the circumstances.

Father had been sick so long. I couldn't bear to hear his rattling cough from behind the bedroom door much longer. My brothers, Jean, Nichols and Hans, barely saw him at all. Father was too proud a man to allow his own family to gaze upon him in such a withered condition.

Those were the days when I…when I was happy. It's not that I didn't have responsibilities, merely that I could be a child. The war was happening far from home, and in my naïveté, I believed it couldn't touch my family.

A year passed, life continuing as normal as possible. I could tell that father's state was severely declining. The periods between his coughing fits had shortened considerably, and he rarely allowed me to enter his room, even if it was only to bring him breakfast.

Had father not been so sick I would never have volunteered. But I was still too young to receive a real job, and my brothers had continually lost weight in anything but healthy increments. Nichols had lost seventeen pounds within a three-week period, and he had been underweight to begin with.

The rapping on the door startled us all, Jean especially, who had been attempting to pour himself a glass of milk. The glass fell and shattered, milk seeping into the crevices of the floor. As Nichols and Hans rushed for the towels, I'd gone to open the door.

The war was still a few hundred miles away, and the last thing I had expected to see were two Alliance soldiers. As soon as I'd opened the door, they'd shoved into our family room with enough force to knock me against the wall.

From that point things happened so quickly, that I can barely remember. Even now, each detail before hand is so sharp in my memory, each image in focus. But in that half hour when my life began its downward spiral, it was as if someone had jerked the camera as they took their snapshots.

Father had staggered out of the bedroom, grabbing onto everything he could for support. There were screams and hollers. Jean had broken down crying, and I remember only because I had rocked him back and forth in an attempt to assuage the oncoming tears. The soldiers wanted me to come with them; father wanted me to stay home.

I wanted everything to return the way it used to be.

But when the uniformed men promised to move Father to an Alliance military hospital for treatment and to feed my brothers, I agreed.

The soldiers hauled me away like an animal; I was thrown in the back of a car, bars barricading the windows. The driver informed me of my objective, while the other told me the look in my eyes would be perfect for my first mission. I closed my eyes for the rest of the ride.

I'd fallen asleep, and when I woke up, it wasn't because of the clamor of the household. My alarm clock was the exploding of bombs and the smell of sulfur and gunpowder.

I wandered around the woods for hours, circling my own footsteps and listening to the rumble of hunger in my stomach.

I was so hungry, but not nearly to the same extent as I was scared. My entire body shook with each snap of a twig.

That's when I heard his voice for the first time. It was signaled at first by the cocking of a gun, followed by a brief, yet harsh demand.

"Show yourself."

He was young, my age at least, but already his hands were calloused from the work of war mechanics. He had no name, no family, and no obvious reason to cling to life.

Looking back now, I realize I should have died then. My mission was to play the poor, defenseless, lost little girl. I could easily weasel my way into the hearts of men who had left families back home in order to fight. But no one had counted on the appearance of a mere boy. It would have been so easy for him to pull the trigger then and end it before it even began.

Instead he allowed me to follow him back to the rebel camp.

As time passed we became closer than I'm sure either of us expected. We never really talked. There was no need for words, but with a simple glance we could decipher each others coded messaged buried deep within our eyes.

There were times when I would hum softly to myself, for before mother died she always sung to us. I'd see him close his eyes and retreat into the blackness behind his lids. I never understood what he saw in that world of darkness, but something must have brought him comfort, because I would often see a smile begin to carve it's way into his stoic visage.

He called us the same once. I never understood what he meant by this, but I never questioned the way he thought. I learned to trust his instincts, even if I couldn't find the path his thoughts traveled. But though my heart began to take pity on the boy whom had shown me mercy, my family always seemed to dominate the images drifting through my mind.

It was then that I gave him the cross. I told him it was to thank him for saving me, which in itself was partly true. The cross was a second transmitter meant only for me. But I didn't want anything to happen to him. As my time in the rebel encampment increased, so did my love for him.

My fingers ached each moment I was forced to relay the information I was able to scrabble from their strategic meetings. Men in the camp looked at me with pity in their eyes, and I knew they were all thinking of their own daughters back home.

But after awhile his glances seemed to change. The only person that truly understood me never looked at me the same as he did when he first found me wandering about the forest. He retreated behind his tearless mask more often than not, and continually shut down his heart. A few of the soldiers had betrayed the group and joined a sweeper team of the Alliance. When he'd killed them, there was no trace of remorse in his actions.

So when the final attack came, he had already discovered that I had been the cause of the troops extinction. It was the only time I had seen emotions flood across his face. Even when he had nightmares, and I'd gone to untangle the sheets twisting about his limbs, he'd never cried out or allowed his face to betray any hint of emotion.

That was when I was sure I would die. I still insist that my life from the start of the mission had been a gamble with death, but it seemed at that moment that my cards had finally run out. Imagine my surprise when he shot my transmitter as well as his cross. The boy never shot me. I've never understood why. He simply left.

That was eight years ago. Peace has finally settled down with humanity, and I no longer have to worry about betrayal in order to protect those that I care about. Not that it matters now. The Alliance military hospital my family had taken residence in was bombed shortly after my first mission.

But I guess people with my past and caliber don't deserve to be happy.

I've learned to accept what I've become, and I've learned to accept what I've done. Reminiscing in what was and what could have been will never bring back the childhood ripped from me.

But I can never forget the look in the boy's eyes as he left; the way they bore into me and ate away at my heart more than any acidic words that could have ever been spoken. When he left I lost my heart, because I sent it with him.

I loved that nameless boy.

I can regret my actions, beat myself up from the inside out and pray for death to close in on me from the darkest corners of my mind. But I only truly regret one thing. I wish I could find him one last time before I die, and tell him what I never had the courage that day.

"I'm sorry."