DISCLAIMER

I own SEED Destiny...

Yeah, right. I wish. I don't own this, it's just a fanfic...I don't know who owns this. Whoever does, this is how certain events in SEED Destiny would have turned out if I did own it. But I really don't own this.

Phase 02: Berlin (Phase 32)

"NOOOOOOOO!" Shinn lashed out viciously at the Freedom, hacking its left forearm off, only to be violently thrown back as the enemy machine kicked the Impulse in the torso.

'The enemy...that's right.' Shinn corrected his position. The Freedom was too far to catch up to, now. Looking around, he couldn't find the purple machine either. Suddenly remembering, He cut all power, and the Impulse landed heavily on the ground next to the monstrous Mobile Fortress.
Leaving the cockpit, he clambered up the side of the thing, and tore the cockpit open, ripping his glove and cutting open the palm of his hand in the process.

There she was. He pulled her carefully out, and carried her out of the mobile suit, setting her down in its massive hand. She stirred. Her eyes opened.

-"Shinn..."
-"Stella! Stella!" She didn't stir. Shinn felt tears beginning to well up in his eyes. "Why?', he asked himself, "Why did it come to this?" He called her name again. At last, she stirred. She saw him, and she managed a weak smile, despite her pain.
-"Shinn...you...came to...see...me?" warm tears flowing down his face, Shinn barely managed to nod.
-"Shinn...protect...Stella?" She asked. Shinn nodded, called her name again, through his tears. She slowly raised her had. Her fingertips brushed against his cheek.
-"Shinn...I...love..you"
-"Stella! STELLA!" Her eyes closed, her arm dropped by her side. "NO!" Shinn screamed until his throat hurt.

ZAFT soldiers and civilians were closing in. He stood, carrying her in his arms, and looked around. Nobody moved, and so he headed towards his Mobile Suit. As the hatch closed and the machine stood, he pressed his index finger lightly to her neck, and felt a very faint, very slow pulse...and felt it fading. He immediately took off.

Leipzig. Dessau. Potsdam. Berlin. All destroyed, thousands, if not tens of thousands dead. The nearest intact hospital would be in Magdeburg.
Shinn flew below the radar, as fast as he dared. But by the time he arrived at last, her pulse had faded completely.

"What...the...hell?" Günter Klein, a young medical aid at Magdeburg Hospital, asked as he saw, of all things, a MOBILE SUIT touch down not two meters from the front of the hospital, kneel, and open its cockpit. A black-haired boy in a ZAFT-red flightsuit stepped out, holding a body - a girl, blonde, white and pink flight suit caked with blood from wounds on her shoulders, chest, forearms and left thigh.
"Who're..."
-"She needs help! NOW"
-"Whe"
-"Berlin. The Earth Forces almost destroyed the city. PLEASE! She's very badly injured." the fact that he himself was bleeding seemed moot.
-"D...Doktor Müller"
-"NOW! Please, she needs immediate attention"
-"I'll get a stretcher." He was back two minutes later. As Shinn carefully laid Stella on the stretcher, Günter noticed the patch on her shoulder.
-"Wait a minute...she's with the Federation! Why're...?" Though he'd meant to ask the boy why he was helping an enemy pilot, the question died in his throat, as the boy shot him a withering glare. 'Those eyes...' He shivered. "Her name is Stella. MY name is Shinn Asuka."
-"I'll...We'll do our best..." His eyes softened - it was hard to believe such despair could come in such hard, cold eyes, in such a stern face. He brushed her cheek with his fingertips, and he looked at her with...was it love?
-"Thank You." The boy said, and returned to his machine.

"Herr Doktor Müller, we have an urgent patient in need of immediate care"
-"Wass ist das? A flight suit?" the rotund doctor's face darkened. "Berlin, ja?"
-"Ja"
-"Nicht gut. Well, there'll no doubt be more. I'll take care of this one." As they got her into care, Günter Klein couldn't help but dwell on the enigmatic boy who'd brought to them an enemy soldier, and the way he had looked at her.

"Well? What do you have to say for yourself"
Shinn stood, still in his normal suit - though he'd bandaged his right hand, wounded God only knew how - as Talia Gladys tried to get an explanation out of her subordinate, who maintained the same stone silence.
-"Captain Gladys, I am sure there is a perfect explanation for Shinn's lack of communication." Rey Za Burrel intervened. Rey was as pale as Shinn was dark - pale-blonde hair, pale skin, and the most unsettling ice-blue eyes, so mature for his age. It seemed strange that such complete opposites could be friends - yet they were closer than kin. "Perhaps he himself was incapable of doing so"
-"Rey, he was completely out of contact, radio, radar or otherwise, for three hours! I nearly reported him MIA"
Turning back to Shinn, she asked again. No answer.

-"Very well. Ensign Asuka, you will be confined to your quarters until further notice. You are forbidden from exiting your room until then"
-"Yes, ma'am." First thing he said, and she'd been trying for nearly a half-hour.
-"Dismissed." He left without a word. The door slid shut, and Talia Gladys, Captain of the LHM-BB01 Minerva, slumped in her chair.

"So. Our tests confirmed it. This man IS Mu La Flaga." Murrue Ramius looked confused, and a little scared. She also looked to be on the verge of tears. Kira was shocked, and he looked at the man lying in the infirmary bed.
-"How...he was killed, though, wasn't he"
-"Apparently not. Of course, he could be a clone, or something of that nature, but as far as we know, that's Mu lying in that bed.
-"Who the...hell's...Mu?

The prisoner/patient had woken up. "My name...is...Neo." (A/N: Sorry, too perfect. Had to do that)
"I am Colonel Neo Roanoke, Atlantic Federation...Eighty-First Independent Mobile Battalion. And...that's all...I'll say." Looking around, he saw handcuffs on his wrists, and he recognized the patch on the white uniforms around him 'a bit pompous, these uniforms' He joked to himself. "So...I'm a prisoner of war, huh? This an Orb Ship?" Unable to hold her tears, Murrue leaves the infirmary.

Later, Kira and Chief Murdoch find her in the officers' mess. Miriallia is doing her best to console her, but not very successful. Kira shakes his head. "So, that's really Mu in there"
-"Think I liked it better when he was dead." Murdoch answers gruffly.
-"Why, though"
-"Think about it: If that's Mu, he doesn't know he is - he doesn't remember us, the last war, nothing! And most of all, he doesn't remember Murrue. For her, with how she felt about it, it's probably more painful, crueler a fate than when he was 'dead'." Murdoch stalked off, and Kira said softly

-"I don't really agree with that."

-"I brought you some food." Shinn sat in the dark, his knees brought up below his chin, his arms wrapped around his legs. He held a pink seashell, on a thin rope, tightly clutched in his bandaged right hand. When he looked up at Rey, the blonde saw that his friend's eyes were puffy and red.
-"Thanks." a hoarse whisper. He'd been crying, as evidenced by his eyes, and the still-damp trails down his face. Rey sat next to his friend.
-"You did your best."
-"I couldn't...I couldn't save her...I..."
-"I know. I know. But you did your best. It's up to the doctors now, and to fate."
-"He lied to me...that bastard lied...he...he told me..." Inside, Shinn was berating himself for having entertained the notion even for a moment that an enemy soldier, and one who, moreover, hid his face behind a mask, could possibly be trusted.
-"I know. It's okay"
Shinn eventually sat down properly and began to eat, albeit half-heartedly.
-"I need a favor."
-"What?"
-"I need anything we have on the Freedom. And I need your help."
-"Sure. But let me tell you one thing: The Freedom's weakness is in its pilot, not the machine."
-"What do you mean?"
-"He always aims for the limbs or head, never the cockpit. It's his Achilles' Heel, he never shoots to kill. We can use that against him"
-"To destroy him."
-"Should it ever come to that. I'll do what I can." The door slid shut.

-"It will."Shinn muttered darkly."I'll make sure of it."

Neo Roanoke. the man who'd put Stella in that cockpit, after promising not to.
And the Freedom's pilot, who'd nearly killed her - probably had killed her.

Before this War ended, Shinn vowed to himself, those two men would die by his hand.