Why We Broke Up
Chapter Three: Listen
by tyrantsandcreampuffs

"I'm going to have to say no."

I could see their expression change from hopeful to crestfallen in a second. But it wasn't like I was saying no to spite them; no, Lacus and Meyrin were two of the most wonderful people I knew and they deserved all the happiness in the world, as far as I knew. It also wasn't because I wanted Athrun to suffer—while he did deserve it to some extent, I wouldn't wish eternal suffering on anyone.

"But why?" Meyrin sputtered on her tea. "Why won't you do this for Athrun?"

"One," I began to list my reasons. "It would be extremely rude for me to interrupt what is supposed to be a sacred ceremony. Two, Athrun had already told me to bugger off about his terrible love life. And three, the same reason you guys aren't the ones directly involved—I don't have a place in his life anymore."

"Oh, Cagalli, you know that's not true," Lacus said in an attempt to comfort me. "Athrun didn't see you for years and yet you always had that special place in his heart. You were his first love, and as far as anyone with a good head on their shoulders can tell, you're still the one he loves."

Again, Meyrin nodded in agreement. I was tired of them blindly telling me that Athrun was completely in love with me. The two were stubborn; no matter how many times I would refute them, they'd still bring it up as an argument.

"Please stop saying he loves me," I asked as politely as I could. "It's making me uncomfortable."

"We're sorry, Cagalli, but we don't see any other way to stop Athrun from making the worst decision of his life!"

"He already decided when he asked Meer to marry him."

"Nothing's final until they sign a legal document saying they're married," Meyrin pointed out—and infuriatingly, at that. "You know that."

"That's just a technicality. When you ask a person to marry you, that means you want to spend the rest of your life with them."

"But there's always divorce—"

"So why don't you just wait for Athrun to decide to divorce Meer if you're so sure that he doesn't love her!" After my outburst, I couldn't hear anyone talking in the background. I noticed that my customers were, again, looking to our table, but I was too riled up to be embarrassed. And the two were being terribly out of line with their assumption of my relationship with Athrun. "I'm not going to involve myself in Athrun's affairs—especially with his decision on who he wants to be with. I didn't say or do anything when he was with Lacus or with you, so why would I do anything about Meer?"

I could see that Meyrin was flustered and was unsure what to say. There was a light blush on her cheeks and she was avoiding eye contact with me. Lacus, on the other hand, just looked sad. It was almost as though she pitied me, which was honestly the last thing I needed from Lacus Clyne.

"What happened, Cagalli?" Lacus spoke softly. "What happened between you and Athrun?"

The answer was short and simple—and heartbreaking: nothing.

"You didn't tell me that you were engaged to Lacus freaking Clyne!" I turned to him as soon as Lacus exited the quaint café with her many escorts. "I'm friends with the fiancé of the biggest celebrity on earth and in space!"

"You must be living under a rock, then," Athrun said with a chuckle. "Our engagement's been announced for a while now."

"College tends to make you forget about the outside world."

"Tell me about it," he laughed and I found it endearing. I remembered how he didn't laugh or smile in the last days we spent together as children; at least now he had reasons to be happy again. "What are you taking up, Cags?"

"One," I started, placing my cup of tea farther from my reach in case my gesticulations would cause me to hit the fragile ceramic. "No one calls me that anymore. I'm almost twenty; cut me some slack, Zala. Two, I'm taking up business administration—at Father's behest, of course."

"Of course," Athrun agreed. "Someone has to take over the ol' Athha business."

"Yeah, he wants me to be the president of the company one day." I found myself opening up to Athrun once more. He was practically a stranger now, but it was still so easy to talk to him about my personal matters. "Though, I'd rather start up my own small business. You know, something to call my baby."

"I've never known you to settle for less." Athrun's brows raised in surprise. "Cagalli Yula Athha not ruling the world? The thought's preposterous." He offered a small smile with the most genuine look on his face—it was attractive, really; and I almost forgot that he was engaged. "Though I'm sure that you'll succeed in whatever you do. That's what I've always admired about you, Cags—sorry, force of habit." He grinned and corrected himself. "Cagalli, you've always been strong, determined and brave; it's what makes you so amazing."

I was surprised by his sudden compliment and I was at a loss for words. To hear that there was someone who believed in me; well, it was heartwarming. And to hear it from an old friend, it was even more uplifting.

"Are you expecting me to go into a speech about how I've always admired you, Athrun?" I said, more to cover up how flustered I was than to tease him. "Don't get your hopes up."

"I wasn't expecting you to. Besides, I've always known that you adored me."

"Yeah, which made you think that it was okay to tell your fiancée that you had dated me."

"Sorry," he winced. "Are you uncomfortable with it? I could clear it up with Lacus now if you wanted me to."

"No, no; it's fine," I offered with a grimace. "There's no harm in it, right? I mean, it's not like there's anyone else who can prove that it didn't happen."

"Exactly, it's our little secret." Athrun winked at me from across the table. My eyes drifted to the now empty space which Lacus had occupied a while ago, and I still couldn't wrap my head around the fact that my old friend got together with the Lacus Clyne. I took a mental note to remind myself to ask him later how exactly that came to be.

"So," I coughed in a lame attempt to change the topic. "What are you taking up here in Heliopolis?"

"I'm under a double degree program—mechanical and computer engineering," he answered. "Couldn't really pick which one to go to, and the university offered to accommodate me because of my stellar scores."

"Wow," I whistled, impressed. "Care to tutor me some time?"

"Our subjects aren't the same."

"I have to take up accounting and I'm terrible with numbers," I complained to him. "If you won't tutor me, at least study with me—all the people in my course would rather party out."

"And it is exactly you to not conform to the stereotype, isn't it?" Athrun asked with an amused chortle. "But thank you, though, Cagalli, for agreeing to this."

When I met his eyes, there was something else I saw in them which made me uncertain and scared. Like I had just signed a deal with a devil and a hole would open up from the earth and suck me right into the depths of hell.

"Of course." I tore my gaze away and instead settled on looking at the now cold cup of tea Lacus had recommended for me. "That's what friends are for."

Athrun was practically my only friend during college. I got along well enough with the others in my course, but Athrun tended to monopolize most of my free time—which surprised me because he was supposed to be even busier than I was given he was taking up a double degree. Still, I didn't mind his company at all. The only thing that bothered me about the time we spent together was how Lacus could possibly take that her fiancé was with a girl all the time.

One day, I decided to point it out to him.

"It's not a big deal," Athrun scoffed, looking offended and at the same time upset. We were eating at the same café Lacus had brought us to before. Somehow, we made it an unsaid tradition to occupy the same booth and order the same round of cakes and coffee because the attendant would give us food before we even looked at the menu. "Really."

"Something tells me you're not being completely honest about your situation," I told him, suspicious and curious. "What's up with you and Lacus?"

"Nothing is up. We're perfectly fine."

"You haven't even told me how you two came together."

"I already told you, Cagalli." He looked at me pointedly. "We were in the same school when I moved to Aprilius."

"And you charmed her off her feet?" I laughed at the notion of Athrun attempting to charm a girl. "Please, Athrun. You're as awkward as a duck with girls—and don't say that I don't know that because I've seen you interact with girls who like you."

"I'm not awkward with you."

"Because you know I don't like you," I told him, scrunching my face. "Not in that way, anyway. I feel like you pressure yourself into accomplishing a certain expectation when it comes to girls. That's why I don't believe that you could've easily made Lacus Clyne fall in love with you."

He sighed and shook his head at me. I watched as he took his cup of coffee and looked elsewhere, as if he was thinking up a response.

"Fine," he said after a while. "You just have to know all my secrets, don't you?"

"I wouldn't be your friend if I didn't have anything on you."

Athrun took in a deep breath. "Lacus and I aren't engaged by choice." Just those seven words were already hard to take in. I had actually thought about how they seemed too young to be committed in a relationship like they were. "It was an agreement between our fathers, you see. Siegel Clyne isn't the healthiest man in the world, so he wanted to make sure that there'd be someone to take care of Lacus in the case that he wouldn't overcome his disease."

I nodded understandingly. "But you love her, don't you?" His gaze somehow became more intense after my question and I couldn't help but fumble as I continued to speak. "I mean, you're always affectionate when she visits and such."

"I do love her," he answered. "But only as a sister. She's very close to me and I just wish her to be happy. Sometimes, she reminds me of my mother."

"Now that I think about it, Lacus is a bit like Aunt Lenore."

"That aside, I don't think this arrangement will last forever. I know she's in love with someone else anyway."

"What? Who?"

"I don't think you'd want to know."

"Why not? You know my curiosity's insatiable! And this is kind of big news to me—and I'm surprised that you're just so nonchalant about the fact that your fiancée is in love with someone else!"

"I told you, it's not something we both really want; so of course I'm fine with it."

"Why aren't you telling me who?"

"Does it really matter, Cagalli?" he asked me, looking exasperated. "If I told you that I was in love with someone who wasn't Lacus, would you be asking me who?"

"You bet I would!"

"You're impossible." He groaned. "You have to tell me one of your secrets in exchange for all of this information, deal?"

"Deal," I agreed, just anxious for some gossip—not that I had anyone to tell anyway. "Go. Who is it?"

"Your brother, Kira."

I was shocked—more than surprised, really; it was like I had been blindsided. Kira Yamato wasn't my brother. Technically, he was my half-brother. Our mother was Via Hibiki, one of the leading doctors in the field of genetics. Kira's father was her research partner, while mine was a businessman. Via had Kira first and then an affair with my father led to me. It was all too complicated. Via and her partner perished when their laboratory caught fire, and I went to my biological father's custody while Kira was adopted by Via's sister, our biological aunt.

Athrun was waving a hand in front of me and I snapped out of my reverie. I just couldn't believe that Kira—my own half-brother—had one-upped Athrun and stolen his fiancée.

"That's something," I finally responded after wrapping my head around the thought. "Isn't Kira your best friend? You're not mad?"

"When you see the two of them for yourself, you'd find it hard to be mad," Athrun answered calmly. "They're obviously meant to be together, but they won't do anything about it because of me."

"I can't wait to see Kira again, actually. It's been a while since I last heard from him."

"You can ask him about Lacus and he'll start sputtering like some fool."

I laughed, imagining Kira blushing and denying his crush on Lacus. Then, I reached out for Athrun's hand across the booth and focused on him. "It's quite nice of you, Athrun, to be so understanding. The two of them are so lucky to have a friend like you."

"Yeah," he looked down at our hands and it almost looked like he was blushing—or maybe it was the fluorescent light casting colored shadows on his cheek. Either way, I thought he found my gesture awkward and so I pulled away. He coughed once and spoke again. "So, you owe me a secret."

I blinked, racking my head for something to tell him. I didn't have any secrets like he did—what he had just told me was something taken out of the gossip column of a magazine. My life was uninteresting, but maybe that was because I wasn't engaged to a pop star.

"Oh," I finally found something to say. "Someone asked me out today."

It was my last year in university. Athrun was a year ahead of me and so had already graduated and was working in some company in the Plants. I didn't hear from him as often because he was busy working to impress the higher ups. I was also busy figuring out how to tell my father that I wanted to work for myself and not for our family business.

It was a hectic last semester and I was surprised when Athrun came to visit me in Heliopolis. We were back in our booth at the café when he broke the news that Lacus's father had passed away. To keep up with appearances, he had to be there for Lacus and wanted to invite me to the funeral because he knew Lacus needed all the support she could get—that, and Lacus didn't really have a lot of personal friends to begin with, given her profession.

My heart broke for Lacus. She and I were similar such that we were raised by our fathers our entire lives, and I couldn't imagine my father leaving me behind as hers did. Also, Kira was now with some girl named Flay whom he had met while studying in Copernicus—and I knew that Lacus had been upset with that, too.

Over the weekend, I left for Aprilius with Athrun. We stood together behind Lacus as the pod with Siegel's body was ejected into space, where it would detonate after reaching a safe distance away from the colony. It was morbid compared to how people based on earth put away the dead, but it was also beautiful, somehow, to be one with the stars.

After the ceremony, Athrun went to talk with Kira, who had his redhead girlfriend beside him. I didn't know anyone else there and I didn't get along too well with Flay, so I decided to sit on a bench instead of interacting with strangers.

I was surprised when Lacus had approached me. Even in black, she was still a vision—and I saw how Flay defensively pulled Kira closer when Lacus passed by the couple.

"Hello, Cagalli," she greeted, smiling somberly. There was no hint of her mourning on her immaculate face. "I appreciate that you came all the way from Heliopolis just for me."

"Of course I'd be here, Lacus," I answered, moving to the side of the bench so that she'd sit beside me. "You're my friend."

"You are mine, too." She sat at the empty space and looked up at the blue sky, which terribly mismatched the nature of funerals. "I don't know if Athrun's already told you, but I think you should know that we're not engaged by choice. It was an agreement between our fathers before I was of legal age, and now that I am old enough to take care of myself, I'm going to call it off."

I nodded understandingly. I wasn't going to argue with her, especially not on the day of her father's funeral. I followed her gaze and saw that she was looking at Kira and Flay, and I definitely did not miss the frown that marred her lips at the sight of the couple. I was going to comment about it, but she spoke before I could say anything.

"Maybe, Cagalli, you should listen to your heart when it calls for someone. Else it'll be too late."

"My heart's not really calling for anyone right now, Lacus."

"It is. It always is." The pink-haired songstress stood and smiled at me one last time before she went away to thank her other guests. "You just have to listen."

Meyrin was off with another tirade of rants, but I wasn't paying her any attention anymore. She could say whatever she wanted, but I wasn't going to be convinced to do the dirty work of their plan. I wasn't to be used as some pawn just so Athrun would be happy. As far as I knew, he was happy as is with his choices. And he had chosen to take me out of his life.

"Cagalli?" Meyrin was now gesticulating wildly in front of my face. "Cagalli! Please, at least think it over—"

"No," I stated firmly, shaking my head. "I think we can all agree that we've taken up enough of each other's time. I would tell you that I'd think about it, but then I'd be lying."

"Just hear us out on this—"

"I've heard enough." I looked at the two women across the booth. "My answer is no."

Meyrin was like an open book; it was so easy to see her distress and desperation. But what bothered me was Lacus's expression. She was still unnervingly calm—and smiling.

"It's been so many years, Cagalli," she spoke with a certain clarity. "You're still not listening."

Note: I hope everything's still cohesive. If there's an inconsistency, please PM me about it so I can revise or something. Also, I just finished my other story, Darling So It Goes, so if you haven't read that yet, please do! Finally, please leave a review to let me know your thoughts on the story so far. I'm still deciding if I should continue this or finish Heavy Lies The Crown (which I've been putting off for a while now).