Fllay always writes her name in gel pen. The rest of its contents would be written in pencil or black ink, but one can always count on her name being a flourish of color at the very top. She rotates between pink and purple, unable to stick with one for very long, and Fllay smiles to herself, thinking the way the color stands out against the dull sheet of paper is just right.
This befuddled her teachers – they think it's a girlish habit she should have long since grown out of, discarded with the same ease as the bras that don't fit her anymore. But Fllay doesn't care. It's the one peculiarity she allows herself and so she relishes in the bubbling of the ink, pride bubbling up similarly inside her.
She is Fllay Allster, daughter of George Allster, and that makes her someone very special indeed.
X
"Sai?" she repeats, dumbly. Her father nods, smiling just a little. It does wonders for his face; helps soften the lines on his forehead and around his mouth, the ones that Fllay frets over so often. She is happy to have eased the tension from his face, if just a little. Even if she is confused by this sudden line of questioning.
"Yes. What do you think of him?"
I think he's Sai is what she wants to say, but Fllay knows that's not an acceptable answer. Her gaze drops from her father's face to her hands in her lap. She mulls over the question with the weight it deserves, Sai's face easily coming to her mind.
"I like him," Fllay says, because it's true. He had been one of her first playmates, distinctive in how well he handled her little girl bossiness. Fllay always had to do things her way and Sai never lost his temper with her, never called her silly or pulled her hair or do anything awful little boys do. Kind, patient, easy to talk to and get along with: that's Sai, has been for as long as she can remember.
She tells her father as much. He looks pleased, and when he tells her about the engagement Fllay accepts it like she accepts everything her father tells her: absolutely and without question.
X
These are the facts of Fllay Allster's life:
She is Daddy's little girl; the apple of his eye, the whole of his world after Fllay's mother dies and leaves them with only each other. Fllay has only ever wanted to make her father happy and if marrying Sai will do that, well, it's not some great sacrifice.
She does like him, after all.
X
"Why orange?" Fllay asks. She scrunches her face at the sudden blurriness of her vision. She had slipped his glasses onto her nose, surprised that the action hadn't turned the whole world orange. But then, Sai is nothing if not practical and orange-tinted vision wouldn't be much use to anyone. Especially with the way he tinkers with computers day in and day out.
There is more irritation than fondness in the thought. Fllay suppresses it, smiles cutely in what she thinks is his direction.
She hears Sai laugh, somewhere to the right of her. She can't make out much of anything now, not even her hands in front of her face, and she decides his vision has probably denigrated to this point because of those same computers.
She's opening her mouth to suggest just that when she abruptly registers the warmth of him leaning into her. Fllay goes stock still. Her breath catches in her throat. Sai never comes this close. Even when they sat down together on the grass and Fllay scooted close enough for their sides to be pressing Sai immediately leaned back on his elbows, craning his head towards the artificial sky.
The glasses are removed from her face. Sai comes into focus, glasses back where they belong. He doesn't settle back and Fllay wonders if today is the day he'll kiss her. Wonders if that'll be something she likes or something she will learn to tolerate.
She doesn't get the chance to find out. Sai retreats all too soon, his warmth so fleeting that Fllay can't tell if she imagined it or not.
"I guess I needed a change. Besides, they suit me, don't you think?"
He tilts his head, crooks a smile at her. The orange frames glint in the afternoon light and Fllay is struck with the thought that he doesn't look like Sai anymore. The planes of his face are transformed, have suddenly become that much more inviting. Handsome, she thinks, and the polite distance he has been careful to maintain is now more unbearable than it is a relief.
Fllay smiles through the strange feelings clenching her stomach and says, "They'd look ridiculous on anyone else."
Sai laughs. It should be enough but somehow isn't.
She lets their elbows graze and her cheeks flush pink when Sai doesn't move away.
X
He sends her a letter before that fateful day in Heliopolis. His handwriting is normally illegible, something Fllay has always given him hell for in the past, but this time she is able to make out every word. That alone is enough to convince her of how much care he put into this.
She folds and unfolds it; reading it so many times that she could recite its contents without looking. It's not a love confession but its close, as close as he's ever gotten to articulating a deeper level of caring for her, beyond a friend or because it's expected for him as her fiancé.
Fllay goes to bed that night with a ridiculous smile. When she wakes up it's still plastered to her face and she drifts through most of the day in a happy daze, something that her friends tease her relentlessly for.
X
The attack on Heliopolis happens. The letter burns along with the rest of the colony and Fllay is left stumbling, grasping, shaken in a way she's never been before. She wanders the Archangel and feels lost in this hulking piece of metal and death, this bringer of a war she never wanted any part of. One hand trailing the wall, the other fisted tightly over her heart - it pulses loudly in her ears, beating out a rhythm of alivealivei'mstillalive. Fllay doesn't find the reassurance she hoped in the sound. She only feels numb.
I was a student the day before, she thinks, but it already feels like a lifetime ago. That was before war arrived at her doorstep and ripped up all her pretty illusions of peace and safety, leaving Fllay aching for her pretty, perfect life. For normalcy.
She feels as if she's been set hopelessly adrift, like her feet will never find solid ground, and that's when Sai finds her. Or maybe she finds him. But that doesn't matter; all that matters is the weight of his palm on her back, how it anchors her, gently guides her to where they need to be. And she remembers with sudden, aching clarity the day she put on his glasses; how she searched his features and found possibility there for the first time, a quiet maybe she nurtured deep in her heart.
She didn't love him then but she does now, fiercely, desperately, because Sai is the only piece of normal she has left.
X
Then her father is killed in front of her.
Sai is still there but Fllay's heart is empty.
(The heart was a fickle thing, Fllay's most of all, and no one ever talks about what to do should your heart die with your father.)
X
She finds the answer she's looking for in the guilty planes of Kira Yamato's face and seizes it with trembling hands.
X
The first lies are the hardest because Fllay hates him, hates him, hates him. She wants to rake her nails down the side of his face and make it as red as the creases in his palms, to reach into his chest cavity and tear out that treacherous, filthy Coordinator heart, daring to still beat when he's failed, when her father's never will again.
Her father is dead and none of this is fair, absolutely none of it, all she wants to do is scream and sob and make Kira Yamato bleed. Instead she schools her face in a mask of contriteness and chokes out the sweet lies he's so desperate to hear: I'm sorry. I know you did your best. You're fighting harder than anyone out there.
Her father's killer smiles, accepts her forgiveness, feigns ignorance even now.
When she swallows, she can almost taste her father's ashes in his throat.
X
"I'll protect you," she tells him, sealing her words with a kiss.
It's a promise but not the kind Kira thinks. He is oblivious to the poison on her lips; the fangs hidden in her smile. Her claws bite into his back but that's easy enough to dismiss as the hallmarks of passion and oh, it's almost laughable how easy it is. A Coordinator he may be but Kira Yamato is a boy all the same. She felt the evidence of that against her thigh when she kissed him and then later inside her, making tears burn at her eyes, tears she valiantly ignores.
She tells herself it's worth it, to be the one pulling his strings, then tries very hard not to think anything.
X
Kira leaves her tangled in his sheets, determination in his eyes and the set of his mouth. Goes to fight, to end the war or die trying. It's what she wanted but there's no triumph even as she laughs-cries. Not when the ship is quaking and the sounds of battle are filtering in through the hall; when she is naked and sticky and sore and can't block out the reality that is her life no matter how hard she digs her arm into her eyes.
I will never get used to this, she thinks, and doesn't know if she means the war or having sex with Kira.
X
She remembers a time when her father's shoulders encompassed her world. Remembers being hoisted on them, her fingers tangling in his hair when he broke into a sprint and how their laughter was carried away by the breeze, his ringing clearer and brighter than any bell. Remembers how it felt for her head to lull against them as he combed his fingers through her hair. Sleep, Fllay, he'd tell her, whisper soft, and she would because he was bigger, broader, better than anyone and everything and she loved him so, so much.
He had always been her favorite pillow and she never liked how his shoulders looked when he walked away but she'd watch him walk away from her a million times if it meant he was alive.
X
Kira kisses her like the salvation he seeks can be found in her lips, like he's drowning and she's the only one who can save him. For someone whose genes are so supposedly superior, she thinks, he can be remarkably stupid. There is nothing gentle in Fllay, not anymore, and it's hard for her to kiss Kira like she's trying to do anything but devour his soul. But she does, she must, she keeps her mouth soft and sweet against his own when Fllay wants nothing more than to be hard and punishing, to feel the scrape of teeth and bite down on his tongue and see the life drain from those unnatural violet eyes when she wraps her arms around his neck.
Heat coils low in her belly, at the thought of him bruised and bloodied, and she realizes a moment too late that she's bitten down when she drags his bottom lip into her mouth.
Kira draws back to touch his lip. The pads of his fingers come away red. She's finally made him bleed and more than primal satisfaction there is fear, because surely she's been found out, surely he can taste the blood lust she's been trying to conceal in the copper on his tongue.
Fllay looks at him with wide eyes, stammering out apologies, and Kira fucking smiles.
"It's okay," he says, shushing her gently. His hands smooth back her hair like she's the one hurt, not him, that stupid, benevolent smile still on his face. "Fllay, it's okay."
Despite how close she's come to ruining everything that heat only coils tighter.
Fllay licks away the blood from Kira's teeth and comes for the first time when he curls his fingers inside her.
X
She's never met a boy who cries as much as Kira. She soothes him, whispers meaningless platitudes into his skin when words like pathetic and useless crybaby are all but vibrating behind her teeth. Traces patterns into his back, fake I-love-you's written in her every touch, and the ghosts in his eyes recede. They never lift completely.
His face is deceptively innocent when it's lax in sleep. He looks nothing like the murderer she knows him to be. She traces her fingers along the curve of his jaw and thinks about how easy it'd be to smother him with her pillow.
She falls asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, steady and strong.
She doesn't dream.
X
No matter her efforts to the contrary there's this elusive something that keeps pulling Kira into Cagalli's orbit. She doesn't get it.
She's nothing special, she thinks, sniffing disdainfully. She's just some tomboy. And yet that tomboy somehow manages to pose a threat to her hold on Kira. Fllay's eyes narrow and she thinks that just won't do.
She always drags Kira off when she finds them together, makes sure to remind him with her words or touch just what he'll be missing. It's not jealousy. She needs to be number one in his heart for the sake of her plans but that doesn't explain her reaction when she sees him smile at Cagalli. His smiles have been getting thinner and thinner but right now they're as wide as she's ever seen them.
Something in her chest twists.
She's not jealous. She's not.
X
"What are you thinking about?" Kira asks.
She can't see his eyes but she knows they're lined with sleepless black. She's wearing him down into nothing but he's still wrapped around her, his bare toes pressed against her calves. They're freezing. You would think a Coordinator would have a higher body temperature but it's like he can't ever get warm enough.
"You," she says, and it's the one true thing she's ever told him.
X
There are a lot of things no one ever told Fllay Allster. That you didn't have to blindly accept every word from your father's mouth, adopting his prejudices as your own in fear of living with his disappointment. That when he's gone and you feel like nothing's left there are other options than to blacken what remains of your heart with vengeance. That you're not as alone as you think, that there are people who care about you if you're brave enough to let them in. Most importantly no one ever told her that love's opposite is in fact indifference; that the line between love and hate has always been much too thin.
By the time she realizes that last one it's already too late.
Kira dies and she thinks: this is what I wanted.
Isn't it?
X
If she can't live for her father she can live for vengeance.
It's the same thing in the end.