Chapter 7: Duality

"Oh for fuck's sake," Orga muttered.

"Do we go after her?" Akihiro asked, barely keeping his own exasperation in check. He tossed the bag on a tuft of grass.

"She has to come up for air eventually," Mikazuki shrugged.

They waited dumbly on the bank, not speaking. Orga's mouth was dry and sweat was beading on his forehead, creeping down his neck. He clenched his fists. What felt like minutes went by even though logically he knew it could only have been one or two. He mumbled another curse and was about to step forward through the irises when Artima surfaced - a delicate rising of her head above the water, her hair slick over her ears, and wiping water from her face with both hands.

She took a moment to find them. "I found something," she called, and waited without elaboration.

The three of them looked at one another. Maybe it was the heat, but Orga was growing even more irritable. "I'll go," he grumbled and pulled off his boots, socks and shirt, leaving them on the grass.

He forged his way through the papery tongues of the irises and leathery scales of the lilies and into the lake, which very quickly lost its bottom - the lukewarmness of the upper water grew cooler around his ankles. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in such a large body of water and tried not to be squeamish about it. As though she could read his mind Artima reached out a hand to him; he would have made a snide comment if her arm hadn't been just below the surface and thus out of view to the other two. Her dark gaze through her wet eyelashes was, however, unpitying. It seemed odd to refuse so he took the offered hand and, following her example, took a deep breath and dipped under the water.

At first Orga didn't want to open his eyes and was grateful he had her strong grip to guide him. The weight of the water was so different to the gravity of entering an atmosphere, swimming through it so different to floating through air. It took him several long moments to force open his eyes and wrangle his limbs into the appropriate movement, and he was surprised when Artima swept in front, her back to him. Through the rush of the bubbles and the murk he saw her tap her shoulders. Understanding, he took hold of them, and begrudgingly let her do the swimming while he more or less floated parallel above her.

She led them down at a slant toward what he guessed was the bank where Mikazuki and Akihiro stood. It was impossible for him to see anything and Orga began to wonder how exactly she'd managed to. Once that thought was in his mind, however, it was equally impossible for him to let go of it.

What if there's nothing down here? he wondered.

Seven feet, eight feet, toward the darkness somehow deeper than space. All he could see was the arrow of white skin between his hands and the way it creased and smoothed as she swam.

Nine feet.

What if there's nothing down here? Why is it so dark?

Ten. Eleven.

He began to panic. His lungs were burning. There's nothing down here. It's a trick - she brought me down here to die. He let go of her. A burst of air escaped from his mouth and nose. There's nothing down here!

Artima turned to face him, frowning, shorn hair waving like a veil caught in a slow wind in front of her face. Unlike her composure he began to flounder, fight against the weight of the water and reach for what little light made it down here. More air escaped from him; his lungs squeezed harder. Water crept in his mouth. She watched him - Death was watching him. The panic intensified in a way he never thought it would when he was faced with death. He reached for her instead, mortality channeling itself into a rush of adrenaline-fueled anger.

I refuse!

But the water fought its way in. He spluttered. Spots began to dance in his vision, like the darkness was getting inside him along with the water. More came. More. However much he reached he couldn't seem to touch her.

He thought of Mikazuki, of Biscuit, of Tekkadan and the unveiling of its sigil on the Isaribi, its first flight - the first time he and his ambitions had felt weightless and thereby more in reach than ever before. What was all of that, now? Is that why fate had sent this woman? To show him how all of it was futile, how both a past and a future could be wrung from him as easily as air?

There's nothing down here… His hand stopped reaching - he began to black out.

Death reached for him, too. He felt it take his hand and pull.


Orga awoke with a great heaving cough that kept going. He vomited lakewater onto dusty concrete and his entire body shuddered in response. He was cold, and only by virtue of that did he feel the warm hand on his back. He jerked his head around to see Artima and fought through the dizziness that resulted - her face, as always it seemed, was blank and this made him remember how she had stared at him as he drowned. He lunged at her, hands locking around her throat, and knocked her on her back. He fought down another coughing fit and focused on squeezing as hard as he could - he'd wring the air from her like the water had done to him, he'd -

Her legs came up toward their chins, her left sweeping above his head. They pincered his neck and forced him back and down, loosening his grip enough for her to remove the rest with her hands. She pushed him off her onto his back and pinned his wrists to his chest, but did not otherwise move. Winded, he coughed more water onto himself and her bare, mud-streaked legs.

"Not a strong swimmer, are you?" Artima said. She shifted her weight and removed her legs and hands, crouching next to him in the way she must have been before. He sat up and her hand shot out to slow him. His head span again and he felt like he had the nosebleed of a lifetime. He coughed again and spat onto the ground, tried to clear his sinuses. Then he sat there for a good while, steadying his breathing and the rattling in his chest. He glanced around him. They were in some kind of underground chamber - certainly not large enough to hold a Gundam, he noted with disappointment - lit intermittently with hanging electric lights. It smelled of rot and mildew.

He looked at her askance. "You were going to let me drown."

She, however, didn't look at him. "I didn't."

"But you hesitated."

"You're right." She looked at a tear in the sheer fabric of her sleeve, blinked slowly. "You and Mikazuki...you'd die for one another, right?"

Orga's brow furrowed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Taki and I were like that," she said. "Watching you...it was like watching her die at someone else's hand." She paused. "I never saw it happen and I realized that was a small blessing, and that this would be poor repayment. Besides, you're just kids. That's not what I've been brought back to do." She looked at him at last. "I'm so used to killing - to not valuing human life, including my own. Taki tried to show me differently, like maybe she managed to do with Duo. Heero tried - no, ensured - I would live despite myself."

Orga frowned more deeply. "Despite yourself?"

Artima took a deep breath. "Around your age I was diagnosed with something called Ryker's Disease, given maybe fifteen years tops to live. One of Heero's hopes was that my stasis would keep me alive until there was a cure, or see me through it on its own. I've not felt any of my usual symptoms, so I guess it worked. It's hard to get out of a mental rut, though - I see it now, that knowing I was going to die anyway either in my suit or from Ryker's made me reckless." She folded her legs the other way. "It's strange to have a future stretching out ahead of you - my own and, out there in the water, yours. So I hesitated."

He knew how that felt. Until recent years he had thought his life had a much nearer expiration date. Now he had his own future stretching out ahead of him, had the futures of his crew in his hands. Artima's future had been in his hands too. Still was. "It doesn't change that you were going to let me die," he said to her but also to himself. He didn't much like the similarity between them.

"No, it doesn't," she agreed, and her tone and the way she held his gaze suggested both that she was being genuine but also that she somehow intuited his deeper thoughts of giving her back to Gjallarhorn.

The silence was loud. Artima stood and after a moment, Orga hauled himself to his feet too. He supposed there was little else to do than continue forward for the time being. He cleared his throat. "Where are we?"

"Under the dojo." She turned on a bare heel and pointed to a six-foot-high metal ledge behind them. There was a gap of maybe two or three feet between the ledge and the ceiling. "Acts like a dam. The lake water is a couple of feet lower. I'm not sure but this could have been for emergency cooling purposes, judging by the engines," she nodded to the far wall at large, rusted turbines and their housing.

Orga traced pipes along the wall between the pumps and the ledge, locating hinges. His eyes found a trail of mud in the dust leading from the wall to where they stood - where she'd dragged him. He chose not to focus on it, instead looking above them and commenting, "I'm surprised there's power."

"Motion-sensing. Anyway, let's go."

They walked toward the wall opposite the ledge, where the mouths of narrower pipes lined the bottom in fours, and climbed a ladder out of the pit of the antechamber. This put them at the end of a short tunnel accessed by an unlocked hatch. As they moved lights came on over them, and went out behind them.

"Next time, don't take in so much air," she said.

"Hm?"

"Too much makes you strain."

Orga wasn't sure how to respond. Their footsteps were loud in the claustrophobic yet empty space and he still didn't feel quite himself. He was ready to be back on the surface - back in space. Or was it, he reflected, that he was just ready to be away from her? Part of him wished he had never listened to Merribit back on Vingolf in the first place, and he wasn't normally one for regrets.

As they approached a second hatch, without thinking he asked, "If you could change one decision you made, what would it be?"

She hesitated with her hand on the wheel lock. "Why do you want to know?"

He didn't know. "Just making conversation."

Artima didn't answer. She opened the hatch and they stepped onto the gridding of a gallery, similar to that in the maintenance hangar of the Isaribi. The air was stale, but cool and comparably drier. Yet they were faced with yet another immense blackness beyond the rail that the light from the tunnel couldn't quite touch. Orga came to stand beside her and they stared at it for a moment without speaking. He could hear her breathing - rapid, and then slower, slower, until he thought she would stop altogether and without it, he'd be lost in this new abyss.

"The problem is not to decide at all," she said quietly, more to the space than to him. "Regret what you don't decide. But isn't that human nature - sometimes, to prefer not to decide at all because it's safer than reaching for what you want."

Orga thought back to reaching for her in the water, to her reaching for him right at the last moment when he thought it was better after all to let go. How unlike him that'd been. He looked at her as she continued:

"Like now - in this darkness, Kheree is both here and not here. When we turn on the light, it will be certain either way. History records me as dead, but I am alive - by the time you and I are done, the record will be set straight either way." The confusion must have shown on his face because she smiled wryly to herself, "I mean that the answer to your question is that I don't regret my decisions. It's pointless. I regret those times that I did not move. Few, but significant." She paused, then shrugged, "Then again, I've always been a bit of a duality like that - life and death, movement and stillness, choice and abstinence." She was moving away, "Or maybe Taki and I were the duality and now I don't know what to do with myself." She chuckled, "More likely."

Orga mulled over this strangely philosophical answer. It wasn't that it didn't make sense - and a large part of him didn't want it to make sense because that would bring him back to their similarity - it was why she was choosing to tell him. She'd never been as verbose as she was now.

She seemed to have found a light source, and began flicking on switches with loud clunks. One row, directly above them, illuminated. "Do you know what 'Kheree' means?"

"No."

Clunk. Another row, just past this edge of the gallery.

"It's Mongolian for 'raven'." She was smiling.

Clunk. Another row.

"While 'Khort Mogoi' means 'viper'. My Gundam is both prey and predator. The more you embody, the less they can hurt you."

Clunk. Another row.

"I too was 'Kheree' for a time, yet I was the one to use the Viper Construct. I am both predator and prey. We are two sides - and both sides - of the same coin." Artima was grinning, now. "That's how I knew she would be here. Because I am still here." She pushed up the last switch; the last row blinked on.

Orga turned to the huge hangar now ablaze with light. On its back on a steel bed at the far end was a somewhat small and light-looking mobile suit - black, tinged with violet like the viper at the gate or, indeed, a raven's wings. Artima returned to his side, smiling. She had tears in her eyes.