~I've heard there was a secret chord,
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music, do you?~
Duo took one long last look at Earth, all spread out beneath him, before he donned his flight helmet and climbed into his Gundam. So now he was finally going to get to see Earth. Hm. Earth was the birthplace of humanity, the place from which all humans came, and he'd been told by some of the mechanics that visiting it always felt, to some degree, like coming home. He'd see for himself soon enough.
~It goes like this, the forth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift,
The baffled king composing hallelujah.~
The people were right, in a way. Earth did seem like home, but only in the way the planet embraced him. Humans had grown here, they belonged here, but he was a child of the colonies. They would always be home to him, and every night that he wasn't busy blowing things up, he took some time to take a good long look at the colonies, when he could see the moonlight reflecting off of them.
~Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.~
~Your faith was strong but you needed proof,
You saw her bathing on the roof,
Her beauty, and the moonlight, overthrew you.~
More of them. More Gundam pilots. Ha. And he'd only managed to shoot one of them so far. But it was reassuring in a creepy sort of way, to know that there was someone else out there that felt as strongly as he did, that thought this was worth dying for. He wondered where they were from, which colonies, what type of lives... Why were they also here?
The colonies were especially bright tonight. Duo shook his head and went back to checking his explosives. He had to stop thinking so much, it was a very dangerous habit.
~She tied you to a kitchen chair,
She broke your throne, she cut your hair,
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah.~
Mission complete. Except the mission was screwed, somehow. Duo watched in shock as the boy with the black hair told them how thoroughly they'd managed to screw things up. Duo could only imagine how the Wing pilot was feeling. They'd all participated in the mission, but he was the one who had fired the fatal shot. How had their information been that bad? Was it a traitor, a plant, or were their communications links really secure? They had to figure it out.
All of the Alliance doves, dead with one mistake.
The best hope for peace in the colonies, dead.
~Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.~
~Maybe I've been here before,
I know this room, I've walked this floor,
I used to live alone before I knew you.~
Duo gazed at the screen. The woman was speaking again, threatening the colonies if the Gundam pilots did not turn themselves over to Oz immediately. And hand over the Gundams. Unacceptable, in either case, and against their orders. But the colonies...
They were what he was fighting to protect, for the people of his own colony who he'd lost, and the others in similar situations that had to be out there. The orphans, the street rats, the priests... all dead because of the Alliance, because of Oz. That had to end.
The colonies were their greatest strength, but also their greatest weakness, because any of them would do anything to protect the colonies. There was no way that they could fight now.
His blue-purple eyes widened as the pilot of Wing Gundam - Heero Yuy - stepped out of his Gundam, a detonator held in his hand...
~I've seen your flag on the marble large,
Love is not a victory march,
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.~
"And we of the colony wish to publicly state that we do not in any way support the Gundams."
There was silence in the room after the message played across a large television screen. Duo sneaked a glance at Quatre, who seemed unusually pale.
"Well," Quatre said after a moment. "That simplifies things, doesn't it? Oz can't use the colonies against us anymore, not without showing their hand." He swallowed, then continued, "But we have to get back to space, that's where things will happen now."
Duo nodded. "Yeah, this was probably for the best anyway, right?" Quatre gave him a ghost of a smile. "They'll come around, someday. Let's get moving." He gave Quatre his biggest grin, but there was one word at the top of his mind, Betrayal.
~Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.~
~There was a time, you let me know,
What's real and going on below,
But now you never show it to me, do you?~
They cheered.
Even as he lay aching on the floor, it was the memory of their cheering that really hurt. Oz had kept him isolated, chained in the back of a van with a bag over his head, but even in those conditions he could hear, and he'd heard.
They cheered.
Oz had his Gundam, they had him, and they wanted answers. He wouldn't give them anything, but did it really matter? The people of the colonies believed that Oz was their savior, that the Gundam pilots were the enemy. Why couldn't they see the truth?
They cheered.
While Oz announced their plans to destroy the Gundam and execute the pilot, the same pilot who had sworn to die for the people of the colonies, the same pilot who had fought and bled and killed for them...
They cheered.
~And remember when I moved in you,
The holy dark was moving too,
And every breath we drew was hallelujah.~
"I came here to kill you."
Duo wasn't surprised. That was the best way of silencing him, although probably not his preferred method. He was kinda surprised, actually. From the things he'd been hearing from the guards, he would have thought that the other pilots had either given up or been captured, as well. The more fool he for listening to the enemy, about anything.
The fact that Heero was here meant that someone else saw what he did, that he wasn't crazy. The colonies really were being fooled by Oz, and this new peace was no more real than the one that he preceded it. And that meant that he had to keep fighting.
"Can you hold a gun?"
~Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.~
~Maybe there's a god above,
And all I ever learned from love,
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.~
Duo couldn't believe that Trowa was gone. Well, he was still alive, but Trowa was gone. Those empty eyes... He shuddered. In some ways, it was worse than being dead. Quatre was going to take this hard.
Duo was still having a hard time understanding that Quatre actually had blown away a colony. That system was evil, plain and simple.
There was no other way that Quatre could have forgotten himself like that, could have lost it enough to turn against those they were supposed to protect. He was back to normal now, but...
One of them had fallen, and the colonies were more convinced than ever before that the Gundams were the enemy. And they'd started arming themselves...
~And it's not a cry you can hear at night,
It's not somebody who's seen the light,
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.~
Trowa was back, just in time for the final battle, it seemed. And once again they were fighting for the colonies. Irony was popular today, because they were also fighting for Earth at the same time, against a madman who wanted to destroy both with the ship the Alliance had created. Oh yes, irony was popular today.
So they had one more battle to fight for the colonies. The last one, probably, what they were about to attempt was insane. But failure was not an option, because it spelled death for every man, woman, and child, in both the colonies and Earth.
Funny how they'd all finally decided to get their heads screwed on straight and start getting along right when it might end.
~Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.~
~Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.~