So, here's the next chapter. It explains a few things, but there are still some questions left...
I don't own anything you recognize from Gundam SEED or Gundam SEED Destiny.
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Chapter 3 – Dreams
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Cagalli grinned widely as she looked at Athrun. His emerald eyes held such intensity when they regarded her. "Cagalli," he said, "I…" "Yes?" she asked, waiting for him to continue though she knew what he would say. "I think…I think I lo—"
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Cagalli opened her eyes with a start and saw a white ceiling above her. She spent a moment wondering about her dream, which had been completely absurd. Athrun didn't think of her that way, and she didn't see him that way either.
Right? she asked herself. To her surprise and slight dismay, she had no answer.
Suddenly, she remembered that the ceiling of her bedroom was not white, but in fact a light gold color. So, where could she possibly be? She spent another moment thinking about that, though the rhythmic beeping in the room kept interrupting her thoughts.
Finally, her mind caught up with her, and she remembered what had happened recently. So, that meant she must have been in a hospital. The beeping was a heart monitor. She took a moment to look around and realized that she was probably in a TERMINAL building. That was good. Unless the would-be assassin himself was a member of TERMINAL, she was completely safe here.
She turned her head to the side when she heard somebody breathing deeply. She thought she would have seen Kira, and was surprised to see that it was Athrun instead. As if he could unconsciously sense her gaze, his emerald eyes opened and stared straight into her amber ones. It took a few moments before Athrun realized what he was seeing. Once he did, a huge smile appeared on his face.
"Cagalli!" he exclaimed. "You're awake!"
"Yeah," she tried to say. It came out as a hoarse whisper and she cringed as she felt a slight pain in her chest. With a frown, she asked, "Why can't I talk?"
"The bullet left two holes in your right lung," Athrun explained. "You're lucky it went all the way through your chest, because the doctors said they wouldn't have been able to remove it without killing you. Still, the surgery affected your vocal cords a bit, so you won't be able to talk normally for a few days at least. Still, it's a small price to pay for your life."
"Yeah," she muttered. "How long have I been out?"
"Er…three days," Athrun said hesitantly. He cringed, knowing what was coming.
"Three days?!" she tried to shout, though it came out as more of a croak. Athrun relaxed, realizing that she was physically unable to shout at him for the moment. She was scary when she was pissed off.
"Yes, and you'll probably be stuck in here for a while to recover."
"Seriously?!" Cagalli whispered. "I'll have to let everyone in Orb know I'm alright then. Damn, I'll have to give interviews with those stupid news anchors. I hate publicity…"
"Cagalli," Athrun interrupted her whispered rant, "you won't be able to do that, at least not for a while."
"Why?" she asked. "Aren't they wondering if I'm alright?"
"They think you're dead."
"WHAT?!" she exclaimed, managing somehow to shout despite her damaged lung. She grunted in pain and closed her eyes for a second until it faded back to a dull ache.
Athrun sighed and explained the situation to her, repeating everything that Kira had told him, as well as adding in a few things they had found out in the three days since then. Her pale face slowly took on a red hue as she listened to everything that had happened while she was unconscious. Then he mentioned something that left her even paler than before.
"LOGOS?" she asked, in shock. "But…they…"
"Yeah," Athrun said. "We think so."
"Another war is coming, isn't it?"
Athrun's moment of hesitation answered her question before he even said anything.
"Probably."
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The doctors said she would take around three weeks to recover after waking up from her temporary coma. As if she just wanted to prove them wrong, she was able to walk in just four days, and was nearly back to normal by the end of the week. Finally, she asked to leave, as she didn't need any more treatment, and the doctors reluctantly agreed.
"I've always recovered quickly from injuries," she explained every time anybody asked her how she was already up on her feet.
"Yeah," Kira replied when she gave him that answer as they left the hospital, "but never that quickly! You may not have recovered as fast as a Coordinator would, but you got better a hell of a lot faster than any Natural would!"
"We'll talk about that later," Cagalli said impatiently. "We have plans to discuss."
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"So, I'm dead," Cagalli said, "and you two are traitors."
Kira and Athrun both nodded.
"Lacus, what about you?" Cagalli asked the last occupant of the large meeting room. The four of them were sitting at one end of a table reminiscent of the one that the Representative had sat at every day at work before her supposed death. "How is your status within Orb?"
"I've simply disappeared," Lacus answered. "Everybody believes I am mourning you. Eventually, if I don't turn up, they'll find something to blame me for and I'll be in the same situation."
"So, do you think trying to stop the war before it happens is possible?" Cagalli asked the three of them.
"With things the way they are in Orb right now, the only one capable of making a difference at the moment would be Lacus," Kira answered, looking at his wife with a smile. He had proposed to her a few days after the end of the second war, and they had gotten married before they had left PLANT to live in Orb.
"Yeah," Athrun agreed. "Since the rest of us would be captured on the spot for being criminals or imposters, Lacus is the only one who can even appear in public."
Lacus nodded. "Well, I suppose I could make a few announcements, like I did at PLANT when I was replaced with…"
The other three occupants of the room saw Lacus fall silent as a single tear fell from her eye. Even though she had every right to hate the girl for attempting to take her place, Lacus just couldn't stop feeling sad about her death.
"Lacus, has the Archangel arrived yet?" Cagalli asked, effectively changing the subject.
"They will be here by tomorrow," Lacus replied. "They had to run silently and underwater to get here without detection, and they spent several days evading the Orb military. I believe they have all been declared traitors as well."
"Oh, by the way, I believe everybody from the Archangel is being transferred to another ship," Kira announced to the others. They all looked at him in surprise, so he continued, "Morgenroete recently finished a new Archangel-class ship that they've been working on for a while now. Apparently they upgraded the design."
"Ah, now I'm really curious," Cagalli said. "We should go see it later."
Athrun looked at his watch as he yawned. "Or maybe tomorrow," he said. "We've been in here for hours now."
The others nodded and they wrapped up their day-long meeting before going to the dormitory area of the TERMINAL complex.
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"Athrun!" Athrun Zala smiled before he even turned around to see who was speaking. He knew her voice well, and was unsurprised to see that he had guessed right. Meyrin Hawke stood behind him with a large smile on her face. The two of them had each bought small nearby apartments in the Orb capital city soon after the end of the war, though Meyrin slept in his more often than her own. "Morning, Meyrin," he greeted her from his spot on the balcony. "How are you?" "Great!" she exclaimed happily. "It's so nice outside too!" "Yeah, it's been exactly a year now…" Athrun muttered. "What?" "It's been a year since the end of the war," he explained. "It's been a year since I stopped fighting." "Ah, so that's what you were thinking about when I came out," she realized. "I called your name three times, you know." "Sorry, I just get lost in my thoughts sometimes." She smiled and gave him a quick kiss. "I know," she said with a smile. "Anyway, let's go! I need to go shopping, and I know for a fact that you just happen to be out of eggs again." He grinned and followed her out to the car. He opened the passenger door and let her get in, then went to his own side and started the car. "So, how are you doing at your new job?" "It's so boring," she lamented with a sigh. "All I do is type stuff into computers, look at stuff already on computers, and other little things like that. It kind of reminds me of my old job as a CIC on the Minerva, but much less useful. They also made me swear not to snoop around their computers, so I really have nothing to do once I'm done working." Athrun laughed. Meyrin had always loved computers, and she was an extremely skilled hacker. Her abilities had helped them escape a ZAFT base once, when Athrun's loyalties were questioned and the military police were going to arrest him. "Well, maybe…" He started to say as he glanced at her. He was about to look back in front of him, as they were driving through an intersection, when he saw a truck rapidly approaching on Meyrin's side of the car. He tried to swerve, but it was already too late. The truck hit the side of the car and the airbags deployed. Meyrin's window shattered. He watched helplessly, pinned under the airbag, as a shard from the window tore a hole in her neck. Her blood-spattered face turned towards him, and he saw her empty eyes. There was no longer a soul behind them. "MEYRIN!!!"
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"MEYRIN!!!" Athrun shouted as his eyes snapped open and he shot up into a sitting position. His erratic breathing slowly steadied as he looked around and realized that he was not at the scene of an accident or in a hospital.
"The dream," he muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I had the dream again."
He slammed his fist on the wall and shouted a few curses. Now that he'd dreamed about it again, the memory of the day she had been so violently ripped from his life wouldn't go away.
"Athrun, are you okay?" a voice asked from outside the door. He smiled when he realized that it was Cagalli. He stood up to open the door.
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Cagalli awoke with a start as she heard a loud thump on her wall.
"DAMN IT!" somebody shouted, starting a string of curses. She smiled sadly as she recognized Athrun's voice. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
He must have had the dream again, she thought.
She sighed and stood up, making her way to the bedroom next to hers, and knocked on the door.
"Athrun, are you okay?" she asked. A few moments passed, and the door opened to reveal a pitiful Athrun. His hair was messed up and his face was sweaty. His eyes were red, and he was smiling sadly at her.
Without really thinking about what she was doing, she walked inside and hugged him as the door closed behind her. He stiffened up for a moment, then relaxed and hugged her back. After a few minutes of just standing there hugging each other, they finally broke apart, though they still stood very close to each other.
"It'll be okay," she whispered to him. "Everything will be okay."
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Athrun woke up the next morning and opened his eyes to see that he was in his bed and Cagalli was gone. He spent a moment wondering when she had left, until he realized the truth.
"She was never here," he mumbled to himself. It was just a happy dream following his recurring nightmare.
He got dressed and wandered over to the computer on a nearby desk, one that he had asked TERMINAL to provide for him. He turned it on and started to check the news to see if anything else had come up.
Nothing.
He sighed and leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling without seeing it and remembering what had happened after the accident that he had seen in his nightmare.
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Well, that's it for chapter 3! Now we know the horrible event from Athrun's past that I've been hinting at. Anyway, please review and keep an eye out for chapter 4, coming some time within the next week or two, if I'm lucky!