Archangel


In the never-ending course of the seasons,
wouldn't it be nice if we could freeze time at that one moment?
The two of us, while still wandering,
are searching for love in the far corners of the darkness.

Moment, Vivian or Kazuma


PART II


IV. Mu

The heat of the sun mellowed as the afternoon wore on in their third day on the island. Mu was thankful for that, since Murrue insisted in rationing the water they had (which were quite sufficient for a few more days at least, in Mu's opinion), she being a rather cautious person when it came down to it. Mu watched her back as she waded into the water, her blue Luftwaffe coat fluttering on her shoulders loosely and making her look as though she actually had wings.

An archangel… huh?

"Miss Murrue?" he called out, deeming the silence unbearable at long last. She turned back, her lips parted in an expression of puzzlement, and he grinned sheepishly at her. "Care to keep me company again? My leg can't really allow me to wander off and enjoy myself like what you're doing."

"Sorry," she said meekly, beaming and turning back to approach him. Mu noticed how she absently touched a silver pendant that hung from a chain around her neck. "It's just… the sky is so pretty."

"You don't seem worried, from what I see," Mu said curiously, seeing Murrue sit across him and hum contentedly. "Most people would have been freaking out by now."

"Not really. I've been through worse. At least we have no shortage of food and drinking water." Murrue laughed. "This might sound funny, but it feels as though I'm on vacation. This island is certainly peaceful, as though cut off from the rest of the world. As though the war is so far away." She glanced at Mu questioningly. "By the way, there's something I had been meaning to ask you."

"Ask away." Mu held his hands up in a gesture of submission. "I did ask you earlier, so it's just fair. What I was doing before the war, number of girlfriends—"

"Number of—?" Murrue coughed awkwardly, and Mu hid a smile. "Anyway, no, nothing as personal as that." She gestured to the white plane on the beach, its paint reflecting back the soft sunlight and making it almost blinding. "Why… Why 'Archangel', if you will?"

"Dunno. Some guy from my squad just came up with the name after seeing the color, and it kind of stuck," Mu said slowly, tapping his chin as he thought. "But then an archangel is supposed to oversee nations, right? And I've noticed that you become a rallying point for your comrades whenever our sides come into battle. Your plane becomes a symbol." Mu's voice tapered off, leaving Murrue frowning thoughtfully at what he had just said.

"I see." Murrue's breath came out in a rush, as though she had been holding it in. "I didn't know Allied soldiers could be so poetic," she added, mischievously.

"Wouldn't be scoring with the girls if I wasn't, ma'am," he returned her serve, his eyes as full of mischief as hers, and making her blush again. "And doesn't 'Archangel' sound better than 'Messerschmitt'? I mean…"

Murrue conceded defeat with a girlish giggle that made Mu break out in a smile.

"All right, you win." Murrue got up on her feet and rolled up her sleeves, as they were in danger of unraveling again. "But I guess… Archangel does sound like a beautiful name for a plane. Makes you think about what it could look like, and how fast and far it can fly. It makes you think of something that can come to the aid of others."

"Which you did for me," Mu said in a quiet voice, and wondered if Murrue didn't hear or just pretended she didn't.

They fell in friendly silence after that, just watching the sky as the sun made its slow descent to the horizon and bathe everything in a golden-red light. Mu eyed the Archangel, its hull and wings painted red in the sunset, and thought about the strength of will that it might have taken someone to fly a plane like that. A plane that was supposed to carry the dreams of every person it supported in battle and the cries of revenge of every life it took. A plane that was as white as it was black.

Mu turned his gaze upon this walking contradiction of a woman who called herself Murrue Ramius, and wondered how a spine of steel could possibly lie underneath those soft eyes.

The night arrived like a shadow descending over the water, and soon they again sat across each other with a fire crackling between them. Murrue looked as though she was a whole new person from the sullen soldier that she had been only yesterday night, as though in unburdening herself to the Allied pilot that she had considered an enemy, she had also shed the labels that defined who was friend and who was foe.

"Say… Lieutenant…"

Mu looked up from the fish he was nibbling disinterestedly, and saw Murrue staring at him with those wonderful amber eyes. "Why're you staring at me like that? Fall in love with me?" he joked, and had his reward when Murrue flushed, the healthy color in her cheeks accentuated by the glow of the firelight.

"I… I was just curious about your story, as well," Murrue quickly said, as though to brush off his flirtatious remark, and Mu found it interesting how she did not try to deny it like how someone usually would. "What made you decide to become a… well, a pilot?"

"Hmm. That's easy—it was my childhood dream, after all. To become a pilot." Mu smiled wistfully, and Murrue was captivated by how earnest his expression became as he was lost in the tide of memories. "Didn't you think when you were a kid about how free someone can be with wings? I used to dream about it all the time, flying through the sky, without a single care in the world. And I decided that being a pilot was the next best thing to having wings." He looked down at his hands, and clenched them into fists. "My father was a rich man, didn't want me to go and die for the country because I was all he had for an heir, but I wanted to cut loose, to be my own man." He met Murrue's eyes, noticing that they were somehow downcast. "Oi, oi, don't look like that. I'm happy. I really am."

Murrue laughed quietly. "Yes," she replied, honestly. "I suppose you are."

Mu put his hands behind his head and sat back against the tree. "Y'know, this is kinda surreal…"—Murrue shot him a questioning look—"I mean, two days ago, I wouldn't have imagined sitting down to talk with the pilot of the Archangel about this stuff. All of the guys back at our base hated how good you were. I would've given a lot to see their faces if they knew you were piloting the thing."

"I wouldn't have imagined sitting down to talk with any Allied soldier, for that matter," Murrue remarked, and shivered as the breeze got stronger. "But yes, this is quite curious. It was like… it was like someone somehow decided that we should both get stranded on this island together after fighting one another. And miraculously get along, after all that."

"Perhaps because we found that we're actually similar?" Mu cocked an eyebrow and grinned.

"Similar?"

Mu stared into the fire. "Yeah. I mean, didn't both of us become soldiers because we were trying to escape from something?"

Murrue watched him silently a long time after that, before deciding to say, very quietly, "Yes, I suppose we are."


V. Moment

Later, as they lay side-by-side, with only the blue Luftwaffe coat separating them from each other, Murrue contemplated about why she felt as though she was so familiar with this man beside her—this man she formerly branded as an unnamed enemy just a day ago. Now she knew his name, his rank, even his reasons for fighting in this war. It unsettled her. Murrue had never been this unsure before. Had never been this free to question something.

She lay silently on her place, her eyes faraway as she seemed to think deeply about something. The sand felt scratchy to her bare legs. "Lieutenant," she said finally, "will there be someone to wait for you to come back?"

Mu's lips dropped into a half-smile. "I ran away from home and am living on my own ever since, so… I don't think so. Unless you count the remaining guys at base, but then we're always looking out for each other because every day is an uncertainty."

"Mm." Murrue seemed too restless to sleep. Mu looked sideways and noticed how she kept holding the same silver pendant she'd been holding that morning in the past minute, and decided to draw attention to what was so obviously distracting her.

"Say, that necklace…"

"A remembrance." She had looked surprised at finding her fingers reflexively caressing the metal, and tried to speak dismissively. "My father gave this to me before I left for the army. It reminds me to always do my best to come back home and give this back to him." Another sigh, this time one that seemed to shake her very being. "Though, I wonder if I had done the right thing in pleasing him. Now that I look at you, I realize that there were also living, breathing people in the planes that I shot down. And is it wrong of me to be thinking such things? Am I…" She took a deep breath. "Am I already betraying my side?"

Mu exhaled sharply. "I don't know anything much about these kinds of things, but… Isn't it because you are alive that you can worry about those things? Isn't it because you are human? Don't condemn yourself for being human."

Murrue seemed to think this over. At last, she managed to lift the corners of her mouth in a weak smile.

"I should be thankful for that, shouldn't I?"

Mu smiled at Murrue's reassured tone, and fell silent, listening to the waves breaking on the beach. A long minute passed, and Murrue was beginning to think that Mu was already asleep when he suddenly spoke.

"You still awake?"—gruffly.

Murrue decided to ask to draw his attention away from the depth of her thoughts, having had gleaned how perceptive he had been in their past conversations. "Can I ask you one more thing, Lieutenant?"

"Fire away," was Mu's muffled answer.

Murrue wondered if he was finally half-asleep. "How many girlfriends have you had?"—half-jokingly.

"Before, or after?" Mu instantly sat up with a grunt, and looked down upon Murrue as she reacted by getting up as well, startled at his sudden movement. His blue eyes were twinkling.

"Before or after what?" Murrue asked tentatively, and let out a squeak as Mu suddenly moved in and touched his lips lightly to hers. Her hands reflexively shot to his shoulders, but did not push him away.

Mu drew away, grinning at Murrue's expression, which was still frozen in shock. "Before or after that."

"I—" Murrue tried to look deeply offended, but the bright blush in her cheeks was apparent. "I'm not too fond of Allied soldiers!"

"Oh?" Mu just chuckled, and leaned so that his forehead was touching Murrue's. She merely met his eyes with an almost awestruck gaze, seemingly unable to react from this sudden turn of events. "Then I guess I'll just have to do something about that."

He sealed his statement with another kiss.


VI. Home

The next morning dawned upon Mu waking up to find Murrue gone from his side, the crashing of the waves assuaging his sense of hearing. When he heard splashing somewhere behind him in the distance, he immediately knew that Murrue had been attempting to contact nearby ships again, and wondered if it had been a success this time.

Murrue told him her news immediately, which served to answer his query.

"I've made contact," Murrue exclaimed when she came back, her skirt drenched again with water and hanging limply just below her knees. "It's a ship. An Allied one, so I gave them your name. Is that fine?"

"Yeah," Mu shrugged. "I mean, anything to get us out of this mess."

"Well, that was what has me thinking." Murrue laughed a little. "You know, it would be better if only you would board that ship." Seeing Mu look suddenly at her, she frantically shook her head. "I'm in a Luftwaffe uniform. It's safer for you to go alone. Safer for us both. You could be served treason for fraternizing with an enemy soldier."

"I don't care about that treason crap," he said harshly, but Murrue frowned.

"You would be saving me as well," she reasoned out, in the harsh tone that so clashed with her usually meek features. "And you need immediate medical attention. Your leg is not doing so well. I want you to live, Lieutenant."

Mu watched a lone tear drop down her face, and looked away with a bitter expression, knowing that with his condition, Murrue could still carry out her intention to have him leave first without much difficulty. "Okay, then," he surrendered, making her face light up. "You better live as well, understand?"

"Of course," she said, and hesitated before reaching into her shirt. Mu raised his eyebrows when he saw her fingers draw out the silver chain, with a very familiar hexagonal pendant at the end of the loop. She unclasped it from around her neck and fastened the chain around his, the pendant with its rose sliding to rest at his chest.

"This…" Mu withdrew his hand and wrapped his fingers around the metal, still warm from Murrue's body heat, and looked up to meet Murrue's amber eyes. "But isn't this important to you? Weren't you saving this for when you come back home?"

Murrue shook her head. "You still don't understand, Lieutenant?" She placed her hand over his hand where the pendant rested, directly above his heart. "I am home." She gave his hand a quick squeeze, before darting a look at the horizon. "I gave them some coordinates. They might be there any time now. They were pretty close from here." She proffered her shoulder. "Lean on me. We have to get there before them."

Mu and Murrue stood up with some effort, Mu transferring his weight on to Murrue and surprised at how she seemed to support his weight without flinching, as though she was used to this kind of chore already. Making their way around to the northern tip of the island, they saw a vague gray shape in the distance and knew that the time of parting was at hand.

Murrue exhaled, and nodded before setting Mu down on the sand and kneeling before him. "Take care, Lieutenant La Flaga."

"You as well, Lieutenant Ramius." Mu raised his hand in a salute, and Murrue returned it, coupled with a small smile. Then, Murrue dropped the smile with her hand, her expression conflicted.

"We'll meet again, Mu."

"That we will… Murrue." Mu suddenly found himself catching his breath.

Murrue just smiled and left him on the beach, and Mu watched her back until she disappeared in the distance. By the time she had vanished from his line of sight, the sound of the ship's horns sounding behind him made him turn to where rescue waited, to where his allies waved at him.

"You got lucky!" one of the volunteers exclaimed when they hauled him from the raft to the ship. "Must've been watched over by your stars, must've."

"Really?" Mu smiled wistfully, and watched the island grow smaller behind them. His hand was absently grasping the pendant, which seemed very heavy now on his chest. "I think it's an angel."

A really beautiful one.


VII. 1947

"It's still not running," Mu La Flaga called out after giving the key in the ignition a sharp turn and eliciting no response from the engine. Frowning, he stuck his head out sideways and gave the mechanic a puzzled look. "You sure the cylinders were the problem?"

Kojiro Murdoch scratched his head, his eyebrows drawn together in a scowl. "If the problem wasn't the cylinders…"

It was 1947, and Mu found himself staring out in the depressing summer rain, wearing casual clothing for a day out in the streets. He could have enumerated all of the reasons why he thought that the heavens seemed intent on putting a damper on his plans, and one was the unresponsive dark blue car behind him. He had managed to get Murdoch, one of his oldest mechanic friends, on the case, but it wasn't going too well.

Mu sighed, and got out of the car to give it a disappointed glance. "What is it with this car? She was running fine yesterday, and now she's acting up all of a sudden…" He put his hands in his pockets, his gaze momentarily distracted by a Jeep that wheeled into the garage. "Murdoch, what should—"

"Oh, it's Maria!" Murdoch exclaimed, and shrugged at Mu. He jerked a thumb at the slight figure that climbed out of the Jeep. "I think you better let her handle it. Pretty handy for something like this. Usually gets everything running in no time."

Mu watched as the woman turned slightly to look at Murdoch as the man approached her, clothed in an unassuming yellow T-shirt and loose, dark green pants, her matching cap turned low and effectively shielding her eyes from view. It was not until the two mechanics turned simultaneously to look at his direction did he realize that he knew her.

Knew her from almost two years ago, in fact.

"Mur—?" he was about to gasp, when the woman stretched out an open hand and smiled warmly.

"Maria Bernes," she interrupted him pointedly, and Mu took her hand with a surprised look. As Murdoch turned away and told her all about the car and what he had already tried to do to fix it, Mu could swear that she gave him a tiny wink.

"So, think you can fix it?" Murdoch said, and Murrue—Maria?—nodded cheerfully.

"Could be a bit tricky, but let me handle this for a bit." As Maria started her work, her short-sleeved shirt exposing her considerably thin arms, Mu put an arm around Murdoch's shoulders and steered him out of her earshot.

"Where did you find someone like her?" Mu asked in urgent tones, and Murdoch laughed.

"Oh, taken a liking to her, eh?" Murdoch grinned at Maria's direction. "Well, she is good-looking, I'll admit. Half my boys are lining up to ask her out, and the other half had already done so, but all she's given them were negatives for an answer. 'Spect she's one of those waiting for their boys to come back home. Good worker, smart mechanic for someone her age. Mebbe worked in them plane hangars during the war, seeing how she's so handy with a wrench." Seeing Mu steal another uncertain glance at Maria, he shrugged. "Just showed up here at the shop one day looking for work. I could've turned her down, but then I figured most of the women lost their jobs after this derned war. Took pity on her."

"I see." Mu was silent for a while, but then Maria called out and waved a dirty gloved hand, her lips turned in a grin that made his heart miss a beat.

"Oh, good work," Murdoch exclaimed when Mu turned the key and the blue car started without a hitch. "I knew you could do it."

Maria was then telling them what she had done to make the car work, but Mu wasn't listening particularly hard to her words—only to her voice, which sounded foreign to him after the long, long period of not hearing it.

Has her voice been this sad before? This… kind, even?

"Well, Mu?" Murdoch called, effectively dragging him back to reality. "How's that?"

"It's great," he replied, and paid the fee. When Murdoch was going to the office to make out the receipt and retrieve the change, he glanced back at Maria, and saw that she was giving him a quiet smile.

"So, you're Maria now," he said, awkwardly.

"For the past two years." Maria shrugged dismissively. "I went home after the war. By then, the Soviets had already reclaimed the town, and some of my father's followers begged me to go out of the country. They were burning all the German flags in the streets… and I had been a soldier under them once. I would have been tried and executed for my crimes against the Allies. So I did the wise thing and heeded their advice. I secured a fake passport and papers by their help. Went here and became a mechanic." She smiled sadly. "I guess being actively involved in my plane's repairs had been handy."

"You know, I went searching for you the moment they declared the end," Mu said haltingly. "I even had a friend at the higher offices look for you in the pilot listings of the Luftwaffe. Tracked your town in Lithuania. But…"

"…You wouldn't have found me," she finished his sentence for him. "Murrue Ramius would not have existed anymore."

"Yeah. So that's why." Mu hesitated, and put his hand inside his shirt to grasp a silver chain, with the pendant on the end. "I had meant to return this to you, but since you had disappeared…"

Maria—no, she most certainly was his Murrue now, with those soft, soft eyes—looked upon the pendant, her mouth half-open in surprise. "You still have it…"

"Well, who was the one who originally treasured it in the first place anyway?" Mu grinned. "Here," and he unclasped the chain to put around her neck, the gesture reminding him irresistibly of how she had given it to him in the first place. "I'm home."

Murrue smiled through her tears, and grabbed him into an embrace. Mu could feel the tears soaking his shirt. "Thank you," he heard her murmur thickly.

Mu kissed her tearstained face when she looked up, and made her blush pink. Laughing, Mu slid his arms around her, remembering how adorable Murrue could be when flustered.

"I-I did say that I'm not too fond of Allied soldiers," Murrue mumbled shyly, and Mu smiled softly, and tightened her grip around her waist.

"Oh, good thing I'm not one right now."

And he leaned down to give her another kiss.


END