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00 S2 Drabble 10
Nightmare
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You will never know true
happiness until you have truly loved, and you will never understand
what pain really is until you have lost it.
-Anonymous
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Kati Mannequin stares at the scene before her, and sees the past. Once again she is in a dirty white hospital tent, the kind that the wounded are brought to before they are either shipped to a real hospital to be repaired or put into the plentiful black body bags that line the floor.
The lone remaining GN-XIII, woefully obsolescent months ago, endures beam after beam. Its weak GN-barrier shield begins to falter as yet another shot hammers into it. But the enemy pilot, in a hurry to end the battle before reinforcements arrives, charges forward to administer a final blow and destroy the command vessel.
There is the strategic planner, bent over the broken and fading soldier, her back hiding him from view. That he is still alive was a miracle in itself, but a fading one. Even without seeing the face she can see the struggle to keep his lungs breathing, his heart beating.
The last guardian refuses to make way for the charging titan. Bringing its lance to bear, it parries the first, and then the second blow. But the difference between their qualities is too great as cracks appear, and the third blow shatters the entire arm.
There were the quiet words of trust and loyalty exchanged, loyalty freely given but not in the least deserved. A loyalty that traded one tragedy for another.
Not faltering, not giving a meter, he draws his beam saber, warning the Gundam against pressing the attack. With a single slash, it rewards him for his folly even as the crew of the bridge watch the battle on the other side of the battle-quality glass.
Kati knows what is going on through the analyst's mind even as ever other bit of attention is focused on the dying man. "Where did I go wrong?" the strategic planner is asking herself. "Why did I not see it?" Kati herself has never faced such self-questioning, but she knows of it.
"Patrick!" Kati yells as the GN-XIII's head is cleaved from its shoulders in a mighty blow. "Fifteen more seconds!" yells the combat controller, counting the time before the first mobile suit returns to fight off the Gundam's surprise attack.
The setting is surreal, and Kati realizes that it is a dream because she hasn't laid eyes on Kujo in years and yet the other woman still looks the same as on that day, recognizable even from behind.
"I'll give you twenty, Commander!" the European ace boasts over the open link, as if his main cameras haven't been torn off. With dexterity reminiscent of his days as a glorified exhibition pilot, he twists his suit and kicks one of the two gun-blades out of the Gundam's hands.
"Is this why you joined them?" she asks, with curiously little venom to the woman who swore to end conflicts but now only prolongs them. "Because of one lost soldier?"
The leg is promptly lost as the other blade comes crashing down, and his beam saber is smashed out of his grip and into the depths of space. Undeterred, Patrick only turns that force into his own, landing a staggering roundhouse against the Gundam.
Kujo answers, but without any hint of the tears that Kati remembers from that day. "You know how I thought. That if I ended battles quickly enough, few would die. I invested into that belief, lived by it. Killed by it."
It takes only a few seconds for the two-drived behemoth to regain its balance, but that is all the time Patrick needs to charge, tackling into the enemy and driving him away from the cruiser's command bridge.
"And when you lost one man, you thought you would join Celestial Being and end all wars? Don't make me laugh. You weren't that naïve in college, Kujo."
One tau-drive is no match for those two drives combined, though, and soon Patrick is pushed back even closer to the bridge than where he had started. A shrug of the Gundam's arms frees it from the grapple, and once again Patrick is the only thing standing between it and the bridge, only this time he has no weapons left.
"Maybe I was, and you just didn't realize," she countered, and for a moment she was as strong and sure as she had ever been. "But Emilio…"
"Patrick!" Kati calls again, and no one on the bridge begrudges her as they watch the man take blow after blow. The Gundam is swinging, trying to land a final blow, but Patrick is too evasive. To say he dodges would be wrong. Patrick only avoids each fatal strike.
"Emilio believed in me, far more than I did myself. You respected me, our commanders praised me, but he believed I could do anything. He didn't fight for the country, or for the mission. He fought for me. Do you have any idea what that meant to me? For me?"
"I!" he begins as the first slash takes what's left of his lance arm. "Will!" The second rips a tear in the outer cockpit door, ripping it and the front cockpit screens into space. Patrick is fighting without cameras now, only from pure machine memory and his own view into space. "Protect!" The third takes his last leg. "The Commander!" he cries over the open channel, and Kati knows that she couldn't order him to run away and live if she tried.
"When Emilio died, I wanted nothing more than to prove him right, but didn't know how. I hated war, hated those meaningless battles in the name of national pride and self-interest. And so I left, and was offered a chance to honor his faith beyond anyone's wildest dreams."
The first beam blazes by as the reinforcements return. The Gundam pauses, its main camera turning towards the approaching A-LAWS in a passable imitation of surprise. Rallying to the reinforcements, Patrick lunges forward and lands a punch against the Gundam's head with his one remaining arm. The GN-coated claws of the GN-XIII leave deep scratches against the Gundam's face mask.
Kati narrows her eyes at Kujo's back and walks forward towards her still un-turned back. "War has always been with us, and always will. Even after you unified the world against you, we're still fighting and killing each other. Nothing changes just because you lose a member of your command, no matter how important he or she is to you."
Kati and the bridge crew watch in a mix of horror and dread as the Gundam cuts off Patrick's last arm. In a show of brute strength and brutality reminiscent of the worst battles of years ago, the Gundam slams its weaponless hand into the cockpit section of the GN-XIII and moves the ruined suit to act as a shield against the ever more accurate shots from the reinforcements. Letting go even as the first shot hits Patrick's suit, spinning it around with each impact, the Gundam turns towards the bridge only meters away and draws back its sword in preparation for a lethal thrust.
"Do you really think that?" asks the woman in front of her as she steps ever closer. "Do you have any beliefs you would live, die, and kill for? Anyone you would fight against the world for? Do you have no regrets? Or have you never had anything to regret?"
How he managed to act with his body broken and his leg crushed is never reasonably explained. The pitiless claim that a friendly beam thrust him in the way, that he had no control, but Kati knows that it was no accident. What is clear is the final effect: Patrick intercepts the thrust with his own body uses his own rotation as torque to wrench the sword through the GN-XIII's own ruined body and out of the Gundam's hand, where it is promptly destroyed by a stray beam. With no weapons at hand and no time to draw any more before the reinforcements swarm it, the twin drive Gundam turns and flees.
"That's enough excuses, Kujo!" Kati shouts, hand on the shoulder to turn the other woman...
"Patrick!" Kati cries for the third time in thirty seconds, the thirty seconds he bought for them all. More than one of the soldiers has already bowed his head in solemn respect, and even Colonel Lindt has no biting comment when Kati turns her head with tears already on the inside of her visor
and as the woman turns to face her it isn't Kujo kneeling over a soldier, but Kati herself, and she realizes that it isn't Emilio lying dead and dying on that cot because that hair is too red and Patrick, still in his piloting suit and bloody and he's looking at her because he's about to ask her why she let him die but
there is a gasp, and she looks and wishes she hadn't because it's only half of Patrick floating in front of the bride and she knows he isn't dead yet because he's looking at her and calling her name and he's worried and she can tell because his voice is wavering and his face is concerned and still so clear because
it is hovering right in front of her own as he shakes the same shoulder she had put her hand on Kujo, close enough that when she startles awake she automatically lashes out and hits him in the face. He stumbles back, but doesn't pay it any mind as she gets her breathing under control.
"Are you alright, Colonel?" he asks again, concern evident even though her blow is already leaving a red mark on his cheek.
Kati breathes and shivers at the cold sweat she can feel under her A-LAW uniform. "A dream," she explains. "Just give me a moment."
Patrick is many things, good and bad, but patient isn't one of them. "Do you want me to go get the doctor? Do you want anything from the cafeteria? Do you want to talk about it?" he frets, making a convincing impression of a mother hen.
"I'm fine!" Kati snaps, and feels a pang of guilt at Patrick's wounded expression. He's only worried for her, and even if she can't remember her dream it's still no reason to snap at him. "I'm fine," she says again, softer and more gently. "It was just a bad dream."
He looks as convinced as she sounds. "Patrick, would you please bring me some stew from the mess hall?" she tries again, straightening her glasses on her face to regain her poise. "Perhaps I need something warm to eat."
He immediately straightens at the chance to be helpful, and Kati almost smiles when he nearly runs into the door in his haste to get to the mess hall.
"Patrick?" she calls just he's halfway out the door, quieter than her normal command voice that she's so used to. She wouldn't have blamed him if he hadn't recognized or heard it. But Patrick hears her just the same and stops on a dime, leaning backwards into the room to look at her.
"When you get back, we can talk about transferring you to a better mobile suit."