By popular demand (and a decision I had pretty much made from the start), here is chapter two. This isn't all that long by my standards, but it is supposed to be that way. For one, this fic is to be solely from Kira's perspective and as such the content is limited to what he sees. Further, the actual content in each chapter is not to be extensive in terms of development regardless, and much of it centers around Kira's experiences and his reactions to things rather than the events themselves. Characters aside from Kira will get their own due focus, not to worry, but their development will be related to Kira in most, if not all, instances. Simply put, you can call the format in which this is written the Six Degrees of Kira Yamato, if you feel so inclined. It has a nice ring to it, I think.

"What do you mean, 'We have to go?!'"

Kira winced somewhat dramatically as he was pushed against the wall by an absolutely furious, and in that aspect nearly as frightening as Cagalli, Miriallia. In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have dismissed Lacus' death with a wave of the hand and an arguably harsh lack of care for the issue as a whole, but it was a little late for that thought. His back screamed in protest as the contact with the metallic wall sent shockwaves of pain up his back, augmented by the indents and protrusions in the wall that made the experience especially painful. It was painful enough that he, if only for a brief moment, forgot they had twenty-some-odd spectators, all looking either amused, shocked or equally furious. The latter was a sentiment held by more than Kira felt comfortable with.

Which, again, he had technically brought upon himself. And really, he hadn't even meant to. But when your sister comes to see you in the morning and make sure you're still breathing and that the previous day's festivities, and fighting, hadn't brought upon more pain than necessary and your response is to wave her off and then dismiss her efforts to help, people tend to get angry about it. How had he been supposed to know? It was no secret that the two siblings were hardly siblings at all; their affection for one another was more a friendly affection that had been forcefully turned into one of siblings rather than an affection that had been born of familial love to begin with. Which made their brother-sister relationship a crash course, at best.

And of course, being in the slight daze he was, this wasn't enough for Kira. Oh no, he thought darkly as he recalled it. Miriallia had brought him breakfast not an hour after the last rounds of angry visitors ended, asking him if he would be okay. His next mistake had been made here, he decided, as he recalled having had to ask why he wouldn't have been okay. But in his defense, the grief had been written all over him. Lacus' death had meant something to him, contrary to what seemed to now be popular belief. Which made Kira the number one enemy of a massive misunderstanding plus several coincidentally poorly worded incidents... Okay, that was his fault. But again, coincidences should have been just that – coincidences. This hadn't seemed to occur to any of his new enemies.

But did his back now have to suffer for it?

"I mean just that," Kira stressed, trying to keep his voice low and failing, strained as it was from resisting the urge to cry out in pain as his back burned anew. "Those ZAFT mobile suits didn't have a ship nearby."

Skepticism was written all over Miriallia's face while she tightened her grip on the collar of his presently very tight civilian's clothing, clinging to him in every place they possibly could to make themselves as uncomfortable as possible. "What does that have to do with anything?" she cried, her eyes narrowing menacingly. Kira was surprised to find that he, despite his better wishes, was perfectly capable of keeping his cool under such a gaze. Had it been Cagalli, and God knows it could have just as easily been her holding his ever fragile life in her hands like this in a heartbeat, he feared he would have been a sweating, nervous mess. Cagalli's anger had that effect on people. Or perhaps just him.

"Even rebel groups usually have a ship lying around somewhere. Which means," Kira tore an arm free from Miriallia's grasp and pushed her back slightly, kicking off from the wall and turning to face her mid-flight, "that ZAFT wants us to think they were rebels. Someone in ZAFT didn't want the war to die down."

"Die down?" Sai asked suddenly, looking up from his terminal clear across the other side of the bridge. Kira was tempted to take the time to wonder why he'd worded it that way himself but he decided against it, realizing dismally that it was likely the most apt way to describe it, given the fact that the war had never truly ended. "I thought the war was going to end..." Sai went on thoughtfully, though the mournful tone of his voice was not missed.

"So did we all," Miriallia responded bitterly, before whirling about to glare at Kira again. "Why isn't it over? Why can't we go back to our normal lives?!"

"For one," Kira said, an eerie calm about him that silenced Miriallia immediately, "we've been stuck like this from the moment we decided to stay with the Archangel. We are soldiers now." He looked away then, sighing heavily. "But I don't have an answer for you. Taking out the heads should have put an end to it. We knew that there would still be hatred, but that would have healed in time... That hatred is too strong, I suppose."

"And Lacus had to die because people can't stop hating," Miriallia sighed, turning on Kira all over again. "Without her, we don't have a chance of stopping the war anyway!"

"So we should roll over and die?" Kira fired back. A small part of his mind noted he was sounding increasingly like his sister in his present state of distress. Which was an interesting notion worth future pondering, should time allow. Perhaps the frightening Attha temper was a Hibiki gene? Or perhaps it was simply prolonged exposure to all things Cagalli that had brought out a very potent anger in him. God knows her stubborn attitude could do that to a person.

"R-roll over and die? No!" Miriallia threw her arms into the air, as though realizing the futility of her argument. Kira decided against acknowledging the fact that her argument had actual merit. "But there isn't anything we can do now! Can't we just stop?!"

That comment was enough to send Kira reeling for a moment. Stop fighting? That wasn't something Miriallia should have been saying... No, Miriallia was as dedicated to their ideals as he was! Surely she, if not everyone, should have been by his side in saying they needed to keep fighting the war. But the question of how was worth noting...

As appealing as the notion of not fighting anymore was, Kira shook his head. There was much he needed to do before he could happily leave the fighting behind, after all. "I don't know how we can stop the war," he admitted, however reluctantly, though he took great care in keeping his voice even all the while. "But we can't stop trying. Or," his carefully guarded tone rose slightly, taking on a more accusatory and forceful sound, "would you let Lacus' death be in vain? She would never forgive us if we stopped fighting because of her."

"He's right." Kira's ever declining hope for a small backing of allies was renewed as Athrun spoke up, despite sounding completely indifferent in doing so. He was seated across the other side of the bridge, propped against the side of one of the unoccupied chairs casually. A casual gesture he never would have gotten away with had the ship actually been in any form of military order at the moment, Kira added. "We should do what we can, even if it is very little."

Those words stuck with Kira late into the day, as he completed his rounds throughout the ship. The remains of the Freedom, he had seen, were laying sideways where it had previously stood imposingly in the Archangel's hangar, deprived of just about every body part. Murdock had said that repairing it would be impossible with the supplies they had, much to the dismay of Kira. Though he doubted it would have been of much use anyway; as it stood, the repairs the Freedom would require would have taken simply too long. By the time it would have been ready, it would be far too late.

Despite all of this, he remained optimistic. As he sat on the neatly made bed in his own quarters, thinking, he reminded himself of those words repeatedly. They could not do much yet, it was true. But they could start somewhere. Such as, who would want to start the war again? That would be far too vague, given the fact that there were many extremists in both the EA and ZAFT who certainly wouldn't mind the war's continuation. Rather, there were many that would benefit from that. Least of all the greed-driven weapons manufacturers who found themselves considerably more wealthy for their efforts when the world was in need of the weapons, primarily mobile suits, they designed. After all, a peaceful world hardly made mobile suits a necessity. Kira dared say they were a burden on that idealistic, peaceful world that had formed from Kira's wants and dreams and pleasantly taken up residence in the small part of his brain labeled 'Storage for Insanity-Induced Junk'.

Kira never ceased to depress himself with his inability to dispute that self-created label.

But really, could he blame himself? All sunshines and rainbows, him walking merrily through a park that seemed to be the embodiment of all that was peaceful and serene, with Lacus hanging on his arm and him whispering sweet nothings into her ear... Okay, that last part was technically impossible, recent events considered. And the whole bit of sweet nothings probably was too; he just couldn't see himself being capable of such endearment now that his heart had been greedily consumed, however temporarily, by such amounts of hatred as what he had felt for the likes of Rau Le Creuset, Murata Azrael, and even at one point Athrun. But the fact remained still; didn't all guys dream of such an ideal world? ... Probably not. But Kira had never dared to believe he was like other guys, and he knew from his days on Copernicus that his dreams of sunshines and rainbows and merrily taken walks with a beautiful woman hanging both on his arm and on his every word were his and his alone.

Maybe they were girls' dreams as well, but that was hardly a comforting thought. Or so said his masculinity, wherever it was.

All of it came together to give him a rather disturbing sickness in his stomach. Damn the wayward remnants of his innocence.

"... Kira?" Cagalli asked quietly through his closed, locked, door. Though it was heavily muffled by the thick door that separated them, her voice could never be mistaken. Nor could the rare timidity of her tone. He immediately swung himself off his bed and toward the terminal beside the door, pressing at a few buttons with startling swiftness and unlocking the door, turning just as it slid open for his sister.

She didn't say anything as she floated toward him slowly, without any real desire to hasten the movement. When she finally came within arm's reach she threw her arms around him, muffling a quiet, "I'm sorry," into his chest. Which confused him more than it surprised him, really. His surprise that she was apologizing to begin with came second to the fact that she was doing so at all.

"What are you sorry for?" he then asked dumbly, wishing fervently that he were capable of getting out more than that. But that little must-be-timid act his stomach still liked to occasionally pull in the presence of women, Cagalli unfortunately being no exception, reared it's ugly head and struck, turning him into the near sputtering mess he had once always been toward women. But sleeping around with your close friend's fianceé and eventually learning she was manipulating you into being an emotionless killing machine had the tendency to change someone, if not as much as he would have liked.

"Lacus, of course," Cagalli replied relatively simply, albeit emotionally, as though that alone told him exactly what was going through her mind. "I was being insensitive," she went on mindlessly, wetting Kira's clothed chest with her tears. "You're grieving too, right?"

He wasn't, really; not on the outside anyway. He was thankful then that Cagalli clearly understood at least that much. She seemed to just know that he wouldn't be showing any grief in the open, even if she didn't quite get why. "... Yeah," he said quietly, reluctantly, but Cagalli didn't appear bothered by his reluctance. "What about Athrun, though? He is grieving too."

"You're my brother, though."

"And he's your..." Kira paused then, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. "... Whatever you two are."

Cagalli still remained indifferent to the subject of the grief her of friend, lover... whatever Athrun was in her life. "You need me more," she replied stubbornly, pulling back enough to gaze up at Kira with a look of such concern, such endearment, that Kira was actually spellbound for the briefest of seconds.

"But ---"

Cagalli, apparently, was having nothing to do with this suggestion called 'Listening to Kira's Opinion'. She buried herself into his chest once again, content to remain like that. As soon as Kira's mouth opened even the slightest bit, Cagalli suddenly said, "Shut up. Hug."

Whoever said Twin Telepathy doesn't exist was going to be getting a few choice words from Kira.

The days that followed were surprisingly uneventful; much like the days spent in peaceful repetivity between individual battles back before the war saw it's initial conclusion at Yachin Due. There were constant requests for Kira to come to the bridge in place of Murrue, who seemed to have turned her quarters into a permanent lodging of late and had been delegating her duties to Kira, and listen to various reports of where conflict had been breaking out between the Earth Alliance and ZAFT's forces. And as much as it stung him every time he admitted it, all he could do was listen. They didn't have the strength to move to stop the fighting, even with what remained of Orb's forces backing them. They would need to bolster their forces somehow before taking on the daunting task of interventional mediators once again.

"The Earth Alliance have been gathering their forces at the Arzachel Lunar Base," Miriallia said, her voice unusually even and uncaring. She was giving him the cold shoulder, talking simply out of necessity. The friendly fondness that had existed between them had faded in but an instant, and the pain of that had been as great as the pain of everything else that continued to build, pile up, and inevitably overwhelm him with an ache so strong it was hardly bearable.

"They have a base at the Arzachel crater?" Kira asked curiously, more for the benefit of their wilting friendship than out of any real curiosity. The depths of the situation hardly mattered to the one who's simple job was to go out and destroy, after all.

But Miriallia didn't seem very willing to take the cue, shooting him a hardened glare over her shoulder before tonelessly continuing, "The Fourth Fleet was decimated in the recent climactic battle near the remains of Artemis, where the Eurasian Federation's mobile suits overwhelmed and forced ZAFT away from the Earth on that front. Their losses in this battle led the alliance to abandon the area as a whole, and they gathered the First, Fifth and Ninth fleets at the Arzachel Lunar Base to prepare for an all out assault on the Plants, sans nuclear weapons. So says Terminal."

"What about information on mobile suits?" Kira asked, repeating to himself mentally not to forget the necessity to break through the unnecessarily thick barrier Miriallia was putting between them. The last thing he needed, with everything else piling up as they were, was for Miriallia to suddenly add herself to his growing list of guilt-inducing subjects. Like killing, and having wanted to kill Athrun... and being unsuccessful in the conversion process of turning his romantic feelings for Cagalli into familial feelings. That last one left a particularly sour feeling in his gut, and he was dismayed by his inability to tell if it was the feelings themselves or the concept of losing them that bothered him.

"There have been several mobile armors in their forces, but it's mostly Daggers. Just about everything is, now," Miriallia's voice changed ever so slightly, so slightly in fact that Kira was sure only he, and possible Sai, had noticed it. Her voice had taken a slightly bitter edge to it, as though telling off his very attempt to make amends for... whatever she couldn't seem to look beyond. Surely he hadn't done anything that terrible, had he?

"The Daggers are stronger than anything ZAFT has," Sai went on right where Miriallia left off, with a startling fluency that scared Kira more than he would have liked to admit. Where was he in this synchronized friendship he thought he had been a part of, again?

Ah yes. He was the cruelly gifted mobile suit pilot that unintentionally drew everyone else into the war behind him, dragging along the ground from the end of his all too high-and-mighty cape. He was the guy that went out and actually did everything, making sure his friends were safe. Not that he was bitter or anything. But when one was to try to keep a steady friendship while trying to keep everything from crumbling around you, well... Kira suspected the latter was typically the more likely outcome.

"Which means ZAFT will be losing their advantage soon," Kira concluded, nodding in understanding as he processed the new information as it came. "And ZAFT is sorely outnumbered as it is; they won't be able to survive the following battles, will they?"

"We will be finding out soon," Miriallia answered blandly. "ZAFT forces are attacking the undermanned Victoria Base again. If it falls, their ground forces can move into space and hit the Earth Alliance fleets from behind; both sides would be practically destroyed."

"And then it's Rau who wins," Kira groused, more bitterly than he had meant it to sound. Rightfully so all the same, he added defensively.

That comment, though, was met with surprising silence. Nobody was quite sure how to respond to it, or so Kira assumed by way of observing the troubled expressions everyone wore. It was no surprise that any and everything pertaining to Rau was a touchy subject to Kira, least of all being Rau heartlessly killing Flay, and there was no real enthusiasm toward the idea of following up on the comment. That was just fine though, for Kira feared any forthcoming comment would indeed upset him in one way or another. It always did.

Kira swung around the back of the captain's chair and sunk into the soft seat, relishing with the utmost of delight at how comfortable it was – and was it odd that he felt more powerful simply sitting in it? "How many troops do we have left?" he asked to nobody in particular, knowing that somebody had the answer he sought. It wasn't technically his job to know who, really.

"On the Archangel we have the Strike Rouge, Duel and Buster, and only one of them can be accounted for as a surefire ally," Sai replied much to Kira's satisfaction, for he had been dreading more monotonous talk from Miriallia. "Between the Kusanagi and Re-HOME, we have a squadron or so Astrays."

Kira nodded halfheartedly, registering the information without really thinking about it. A squadron of Astrays hardly made a difference on the battlefield anyway; at least, they hardly did on their own. At best they may have been able to fend off a small ZAFT army, but beyond that... They would need more if they wanted to make a difference. Particularly so in the absence of the Freedom and the Justice.

"Does Terminal have anything to offer?" he then asked, almost pleadingly by his own ears. Was he really that desparate?

"Terminal is hardly holding itself up with the loss of the Clyne Faction," Miriallia replied in that God awful monotone voice she'd been giving him all day. "Beyond their information and spy networks, they have next to nothing."

"And the Junk Guild are mercenaries at best," Sai added with a clipped tone, eyes looking particularly devoid of warmth as they regarded Kira. "We can't expect any help from them beyond what has already been given."

In considerably fewer and easier to process words, Kira thought, it all meant that their forces could be expanded no further than the rogue forces at their disposal and what remained of Orb's forces. Why oh why had Yachin Due been such a brutal battle? Life would have been so much easier had that savage battle not cost them so terribly.

"We should retreat to Orb airspace for now," Kira said suddenly, resting his head back against the ever so comfortable captain's seat. "We need to gather some firepower, and doing so while reliving the early days of this war is hardly a good idea."

"The area around Heliopolis has been under constant patrol by ZAFT forces since it's collapse," Arnold, as though he hadn't in fact been listening in strict silence to the entire exchange, said with a mild huff of what Kira could only guess to be annoyance. Whether the annoyance was intended as emphasis upon what he had said or if it was in response to the obvious hostilities between Kira and Miriallia was anybody's guess. "The only safe area would be the Pillar of Heaven, but that..."

"The danger doesn't matter," Kira cut him off as soon as he'd become aware of Arnold's intent. "We have to get there. If we don't, we won't live much longer anyway. With luck, Orb may still have some troops posted around it."

"Orb's space forces were almost entirely retreated to Onogoro when Heliopolis was destroyed," Arnold protested in knowing vain.

"We will head there regardless," Kira said with definitive authority. "If nothing else, we can get proper shelter."

Late that night, long after everyone had retired and Sai and Miriallia had been replaced by their night shifts, Kira made his way to Murrue's room. Upon entering, he was unsurprised to see her awake, curled up into a small ball at the end of her bed, watching some sort of news report on the terminal by her door. Her eyes were lazy and it almost seemed as though she weren't paying the least bit of attention to everything around her, but she managed to muster a brief glance in Kira's direction when the door hissed as it closed behind him. "What are you doing?" she mumbled halfheartedly, shaming Kira with the fact that seeing his ever confident and wise Captain in such a despairing state was mildly amusing, even if it was simply on account of the comical expressions her face made in an attempt to portray that despair.

"Reporting to my Captain, what else?" Kira laughed, saluting mockingly. When Murrue furrowed her brows and looked away from him, Kira frowned. "We need you on the bridge, Captain Ramius. I can't be a Captain! Half the bridge hates me – which is my fault, I will admit – and the half that doesn't thinks I'm insane for not giving up!"

"So do I," Murrue said pointedly.

"Why?!" Kira cried, throwing his arms into the air. He was dimly aware that the sudden motion forced his body to the side slightly, brushing up against the wall in order to stop himself from drifting. "Did we not agree that we would stop this war from ending in genocide?! And we were so close! If we can stop them from hating eachother, we ---"

"--- How would we go about that, Kira?" Murrue snapped, glaring at him with one eye, the other returning it's attention to her terminal. "If we try to force that sort of thing on everyone, are we any better than Rau?!"

"Rau wanted to kill everyone!"

"And you are suggesting we deny everyone their will!" Murrue shot back, turning in place to glare heatedly at Kira. "Tell me, how is that better?"

"I don't mean to suggest... that," Kira said softly, hanging his head. "But how can we do nothing?! I don't know what we can do, but we will get nowhere by giving up!"

Murrue sighed deeply, shaking her head before settling back on the terminal again. "You are Captain, Kira, if only in name. I... I can't help a cause I don't believe in."

And chapter two closes off on a rather despairing note, which is fitting in the general theme Seed (and by extension this story) follows. Several people were OOC to some degree, but that was intentional, for the simple reason that the events of this story renders OOC a moot point really. I mean, staying within the scope of the character the series gives you is all well and fine, but what good is that if it prevents you from giving them any unique twists and turns in their character development? Murrue is a fine example of this; Miriallia to a very small degree could I suppose, but her reactions were largely justified (in my eyes) by her behaviour toward Dearka in the series. If you feel like disagreeing, go for it.