Aurora Borealis

At the Other End of the Rabbit Hole

Athrun doesn't remember ever being this weak in his entire life. His insides are coiling in sickly tension, so pumped with adrenaline that he could move as fast and suddenly as ever if need be; unfortunately he's so exhausted that the endorphins make him lightheaded-verging-on-faint and cause a mild wave of nausea to wash through him. Scattered thought-fragments drift aimlessly in his mind despite his desperate efforts to organize them; there was warmth and comfort, rest, but now he's sitting up and where's the gun? and he has no idea where he is because fatigue has turned his vision into a single spectrum of white light spiraling in front of him and making his dizziness worse.

"Good morning," comes Kira's blessed voice, and he attempts to turn towards the sound though he still can't see but the movement is too much for him, the bright whiteness takes over completely. Not registering that he's fallen until it has abided, he finally manages to focus his gaze.

Yes, lying down is much, much easier – though with effort, he can breath without choking and he can see again, can see Kira bending worriedly over him. "Right," he mumbles as the sight brings memory with it; shuttle Archangel battle killed natural blood now what the hell is gonna happen. But thinking is a heavy process, far too heavy for him in this weakened state. "Morning," he forces out as the white light returns, obliterating everything. Panting and trying frantically to either close his eyes or use them, he can only lie there as Kira talks to the other people obviously in there with them. The brief glance-over he managed originally, before the brightness first invaded his vision, revealed another bed containing the natural boy whose veins the blood Athrun lacks pumps through, a girl he vaguely recalls from the previous evening and the guy who made that pathetic attempt at a body search.

Severely uncomfortable and more than a tad reluctantly frightened, he forces himself to focus on Kira's presence and just relax, have to rest, need to rest to regain my energy, just calm down.

According to the fractured dialogue slipping past his fatigue, the natural with the gun, the one he thinks was called Tolle or something very similar to that, will probably be fine – well, good. Kira would be so upset otherwise, and so would he, considering what he's presently going through because of his contribution to the efforts to save the other boy.

Next thing he knows his lover is slipping an arm around his shoulder to steady him into a sitting position and pressing a glass to his lips. "Some kind of vitamin concentrate, by the taste of it." Soft fingers save his head from lolling off Kira's shoulder. "Here, you should have some." Thankfully he's able to swallow without gagging as the brunette tips the glass and liquid spills down his throat. Even better is the fact that though it sits uneasily on his stomach, the whatever-it-was does rejuvenate him quite a bit. Not enough for him to muster much attention for the ...girl, judging by the sound of her voice, and quite an upset girl… that enters, but enough for him to flick Kira a questioning glance as some of what she says registers, primarily a high-pitched, "You murdered my father!"

Her name rings a bell, though Allister more so than Fllay. No, wait… and Fllay Allister, she's kinda hot and Tolle and them thought… Her father remains the more familiar figure, however; he'd memorized most of the Atlantic Federation and EA executives long before he joined ZAFT.

"Why won't you say something? You killed him, didn't you? Didn't you!" the girl's saying now, and he probably shouldn't let it but something snaps.

"Yes," he agrees, staring into wide doe-blue eyes tainted red at the edges. Yes, I helped kill him and though it makes me want to peel off my own skin to get the stain away I won't ever say I regret it, not him or anyone like him. "Given that he was one of the people behind the murder of my mother, I figure we're even."

"It's not the same thing at all! My father was a real human! Your mother was just a mistake that had to be remedied! Bitch deserved it, got what she had coming!"

He's moving before he's even fully realized that she actually had the nerve to say what she did; while his mind's still reeling with detached, rage-tinted shock his body makes ready to attack. Trashing against the arms holding him (Kira let me go, how can you try to stop me) and simultaneously fighting off impending boots of violent nausea and exhaustion he almost fails to notice the escape of Allister's daughter and that other guy, but when he does the last strength abandons him, leaving him slumped and panting, half-lying in Kira's arms. It hurts, no, hurts doesn't begin to cover it, his head feels like it's splitting in half and, yes, his mother's dead, and he's let her down, betrayed her. Horrible, indefinable noises escape him, and he gladly lets them, too damn sick to care to even attempt to stop the words that follow them, "I can't believe I let myself think co-existence could be beneficial. Good lord, that's what naturals are like, they're EA and Blue Cosmos and they destroyed Junius Seven and I should never have allowed myself to forget that for even a second, but I disregarded it and saved one of their damned lives! Some son I am, huh?"

The punch takes him by surprise – there's a bleak and startled sensation of hurt, then dislocation as he falls, and finally just a new view of blinding whiteness. Upset sounds bombard his ears but he can't make sense of them, doesn't recognize them clearly enough to decide whether they're even speech. However, his recovery is faster than he had any right to expect, taking in consideration his generally lousy condition and the fact that it wasn't exactly a light hit; it can't have been more than a minute or so before he's able to distinguish a hurt, heated, "You're on his side?"

So he's the issue here. Well, no surprise there and he can't honestly say he blames them. Then his heart swells in a way that's painful in a completely different manner than the hit and the exhaustion, with a warm ache brought about by Kira's simple, "Yes." Distracted by this, he fades out again until the brunette takes hold of him, easing him upward. Saving his reserves, he pays only moderate attention to the conversation taking place now, which mostly consists of Kira exploring the thorough stupidity of the naturals – he'd always assumed that a majority of the usual Coordinator prejudice against them were lies, but that seems less and less likely for every second he actually spends with them. What catches his attention and breath is the captain's hesitantly worded question regarding his lover's loyalties; the "I respect and care for all of you. However, I will never let you hurt Athrun" is an elixir, enabling him to actually focus on the situation at hand when at length the natural officers start waving around his identification papers. Those are bad enough in their own right, and of course it was too much to hope for that they'd neglect to connect his name to his father.

"Lost someone on Junius Seven?" the blond man who hit him asks. The Hawk of Endymion, even with a few nasty bruises, most of which courtesy of Athrun's left foot, of his own decorating his face, manages to look fairly amiable.

The newly reawakened pain is still fresh, though. Athrun suspects it won't ever grow stale. "There isn't a person on PLANT who didn't," he states, his voice so cold that it sounds unfamiliar to his own ears. Before he can stop to think about it the story of his mother and her family and that terrible Valentine when he'd have gone with her to visit them, had it not been for a couple of exams and a pair of broken ribs, spills out.

"My condolences," the brunette woman says with what seems to be genuine regret; it's hard to tell because his sight is blurry, whether because of fatigue or unshed tears he isn't certain. Neither is he able to tell if the sound ripping free from his mouth when she starts talking about his being "so young" is a laugh or a sob. He isn't young; he hasn't been for a very long time. He isn't old, either, certainly not, but he's seen young people and they're different from him. Same's the case with the very smallest recruits, whom he really shouldn't be blabbering about; they have the age and bodies of youth but they aren't young. They can act as though they were, but they aren't really, not like the girl serving at the café yesterday or the friends she giggled with at the cashier or the little boys ogling Nicol.

Emotional and physical exhaustion isn't sufficient excuse for the way he's speaking now, giving away lots and lots of arrogance and information, thus evidently they were at least smart enough to take advantage of the situation, naturals or not. " What the hell did you spike that vitamin concentrate with?" he asks, hoping to identify the drugs so as to be able to make a likely guess at when they'll stop affecting him.

Given that they openly admit both the spiking in itself and the fact that it would normally have been a wasted effort indicate that it isn't very strong stuff, so he should be fine fairly soon; though it annoys him he isn't in a position to complain, and somewhat ironically the drugging is obviously worse on Kira.

"Easy," Athrun says. It's all right, I'm fine, they aren't worth it; I understand they betrayed your trust but they didn't deserve it in the first place, don't burden yourself on account of them any longer, it'll be fine, please let it be all right.

Besides, we did inject a much worse potion in you, which I ought never to have allowed, like you shouldn't allow yourself to get hurt like this. Ne, Kira, is this how you felt when you woke up on our ship? All confused and helpless because you suddenly understood how the other side thinks?

When the captain directs another question at him he's forced to snap back to attention. Now, how he handles the inevitable casualties? Or is she talking about the not-inevitable ones?

Before he's made any conscious decision his mouth goes off on him again, repeating the thesis that is so obvious and accepted that it's never needed to be made into any sort of official slogan; the one responsible for the war is the EA, thus the one responsible for every death is the EA. That kind of simplified logic ought to be clear even to a natural.

Faintness is creeping up on him again, hanging heavily on his eyelids, as someone – he thinks it's the woman but he can't be sure – asks the familiar question: "Do you hate naturals?"

Struggling to keep his eyes open and his mind semi-alert he pretty much slurs, "I don't. PLANT as a whole doesn't. Even ZAFT as an organization doesn't have any official policy against naturals as a group. Most of the people I know have never even met one. I know there are good ones, kind ones – then again those aren't part of the EA."

He's too tired to reflect on how stupid an utterance that is to make; they don't seem hostile enough to actually hurt him, and the EA nuked Junius Seven and that is more or less the definition of unforgivable.

Now… Now what's…? His eyes are useless again, and static noise is invading his ears as limp heaviness steals upon his limbs. "Kira…?" he mumbles, fingers refusing to do more than twitch, defying his order for them to reach.

"Yes," his lover says, and he doesn't need to reach because Kira encloses his hand in his own. "Yes, Athrun, I'm here. You need to relax so you can get some more proper sleep."

It doesn't register on him that his eyes fall shut, but they must have because when they open again he's someplace else – still tucked into bed, but in a different room, a smaller and less painfully bright one. Ironically, though it's still unfamiliar it feels a little like their dorm room, what withthe two standardized beds, the sparse, cheaply fabricated furniture. Drearier and more impersonal than both their old room in school, which they lived in long enough for it to become home, and the one he more recently shared with Rusty. At least he had a few dozen books there, and the mandatory plants provided some color. Plus his roommate, though nowhere near as sloppy as Dearka, wasn't exactly the tidiest person around.

Actually, the first few weeks in ZAFT were one great, literal mess for all of them, as they are all from rich families and hence used to spot-less surroundings without doing any cleaning themselves. In school there were still employees who took care of those issues, but there aren't cleaners on battle ships and Athrun remembers being exceedingly grateful to have spent sufficient time at Kira's to gain a rudimentary idea of the mysterious inner workings of cleaning. He also vividly remembers Yzak cursing his failed attempts to manufacture a vacuum cleaner. Rusty used to occasionally attempt to tease Athrun about being a neat freak, but he's not even in the same liege as Yzak; it surprises him, come to think of it, that mega-slob Dearka has survived this long.

A mechanical chirping brings him out of his musings, grounds him in the here and now, and he flicks his gaze around to find Torii perched on the other bed. The toy is exactly the same as when he last saw it; still a bright jade, still a dumbly sentimental symbol of an emotion that wasn't supposed to be. But it was and it still is and he's all the gladder for it and trying to visually locate Kira without having to move his head; he's better, considerably better, but not enough so that he wants to risk any unnecessary movements. A field of brown found in his peripheral vision catches his attention; it would seem his lover is lying down as well, head tucked underneath Athrun's chin.

"Kira," he calls quietly, gratified to find his voice only momentarily slurring on the first syllable.

The brunette pushes himself up on one elbow to lean down over him, the movement abrupt enough for the sudden dipping of the mattress to remind him that, though fading, the nausea is still with him. Momentarily closing his eyes, he takes the time to convince himself that he is not going to puke, no matter what say his stomach thinks it has in the matter.

"Athrun?" Kira asks, one hand brushing against his uninjured cheek. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," he croaks in response, "but then again I've been worse too. Where…?"

"We're in my old room." Kira gives a bitter little smile. "Given that my siding with you is out in the open they decided it was best to confine us both until further notice. Even Haro could pick the locks around here so I'm not sure why the bother, but apparently it makes them feel safer to place us somewhere and pretend we can't leave."

"I'm sorry," Athrun says. I'm sorry you lost your friends "Thank you." because you chose me.

His lover shrugs a little. "You know, when I woke up on the ZAFT ship I knew I should be terrified and scared and angry. But I was just so happy."

That makes two of us. Kira's hand finds his and he squeezes back as best he can.

"I know it's rather strained for now," the brunette continues, "but it'll work itself out. I… told them about my potion, so they know you're the only one who can operate Strike and help handle the systems and all that. They're… most of them are good people. Will you try and get along with them while we're here?"

He manages a miniscule nod. "Of course." Not like he has a choice, and not like they seem that bad. He still resents the incompetent who shot Kira, but perhaps that was truly not the natural's fault, the captain has been kind, and whereas the boy with the ridiculous glasses isn't on his list of favorite people he doesn't have anything against him, the Hawk of Endymion has done nothing worse than his father has, and with no less good reason, and even that little idiot red-haired bitch… Anger still gripes in the back of his mind, but calmer and with some distance between them he can drown it out with pity and understanding, even a brief touch of sympathy. After all, he knows very well what it feels like to lose a family to war.

"Of course," Kira echoes, looking a tad embarrassed and all the more adorable for it. "It's just that you were so furious about… about Fllay. Could you really have killed her just like that?"

Apparently whatever inhibition-reducing serums they fed him haven't completely worn off yet, for he finds himself saying, "I've enough blood on my hands that a little more or less doesn't make much of a difference."

"It does to me."

Lost and found and caught in endless amethyst eyes, there is really only one thing he can say to that.

"Thank you."

Kira bends down the few millimeters needed to brush their lips together before lying back down, pointy nose cold against Athrun's neck. "They won't hurt us as long as we don't hurt them. They want us to stay in here for now and I agreed, but I expect that's merely a temporary measure." He shuffles minutely, inching closer yet. "Go to sleep," he says, and once again Athrun lacks both the inclination and the ability to refuse his lover's wishes.

xxxxx