Aurora Borealis
This Familiar Unfamiliarity
Twenty solid hours of sleep later, Athrun is finally back to normal. Having spent what feels like ages waiting on him in tense and bored monotony broken only by Miriallia's exceedingly brief visit to leave a tray of food, Kira is extremely grateful for this. Sweet distraction that watching and touching Athrun's face is, he likes it much better when the other is awake to appreciate and reciprocate.
"Hello," he mumbles now and moves to nimbly straddle the newly-woken blunette. "Sleepyhead." Athrun doesn't have a chance to reply vocally before Kira's mouth is pressed hotly against his. The (former?) Strike pilot lies rather heavily over the ZAFT solider, fingers occupied threading through blue hair and mapping the other's features and throat, and Athrun's hands rise to fit themselves around his shoulders; unfortunately mostly to hold him still.
Smiling apologetically after lifting his face for a last brief peck, the blunette asks, "The situation…?"
Seeing the sense in said line of thought even as he blushes a little, Kira reluctantly backs off and the other follows until the brunette's sitting in his lap, facing him with his arms around his neck. "Mostly the same as when you fell asleep. Miriallia came by but couldn't stay long."
"Kira? I have some food for you. Look, I'm sorry, there's no time. See you later, all right?"
Her hesitant and skittish demeanor left him wondering what she thought about the With Us or Against Us issue; she's always been kind and sensible, but Tolle's all but dying and Kira has enough self-distance to admit that if that had happened to Athrun he probably wouldn't have cared to be rational. "I doubt anything's occurred, and any speculation about decisions they might have made would be pure hypothesis. Assumably some of them will turn up during the day. We do have some foodstuffs, if you're hungry."
"I see now why the breakfast on our ship impressed you," Athrun remarks after a bite of what seems to be very old bread. "Now, about the controls…"
Green gaze focused on their owner's musings, the blunette slips off the bed, pads over to the panel located beside the door and starts tapping the small buttons. Kira never had reason to pay the systems much attention; he lacks Athrun's interest in mechanical things, and he had no incentive to hack anything. Aside from distracting himself by switching passwords and the like he rarely touched anything outside of Strike. Nudging the not-so-appetizing remnants on the tray aside, he reclines on the bed for just a few moments, watching his lover at work. It isn't long until Torii swoops down to perch on the blunette's shoulder, earning itself a grin and an absent pat. Sick and tired of lazing aimlessly, Kira follows the toy to Athrun, wrapping his arms snugly around the other's torso and nuzzling his back.
The blunette laughs and turns from the key pad to return the embrace. "Miss me much while I was out?"
Increasingly restless and claustrophobic, Kira barely nods before pushing Athrun backwards into the wall, muffling any sounds the impact might have prompted by fastening his mouth over his lover's. He wants so much that it's embarrassing, not sex so much as closeness. Fortunately Athrun understands and reciprocates – leaving the pathetically simple door-mechanism to its lonesomeness they return to the previously abandoned bed, sit there for what feels like a pleasant eternity simple tracing each other's features, which should still be obscured by a touch of baby-fat but aren't, smiling, being together.
That's how they still are when the device Athrun examined earlier gives a low little beep, following which the door swishes open to admit Miriallia and Mu La Flaga.
"Hey," the girl says uncertainly. "Kira. A… Athrun-san."
"Miriallia-san," the blunette replies in a civil, even likeable, tone. Kira isn't sure how to act towards them and so refrains. "Lieutenant La Flaga."
The blond natural nods in return with a strained smile and a, "boys," before easing his weight off the crutches and slumping down on the untouched bed opposite the one Kira and Athrun are occupying. Miriallia remains standing, curious blue eyes regarding the Coordinator couple. Another likewise colored gaze flicks to the still-swollen redness marking one half of the ZAFT soldier's face, a stark contrast to the thin pallor of the other cheek. "Hitting you was out of line," La Flaga eventually says.
Athrun shrugs lightly. "So was my hysterical self-pity."
Judging by his calm and the touch of apology in his tone, it sounds almost as though that is the blunette's sincere opinion on the subject rather than just a politely appeasing remark. Which is ridiculous, and has Kira leaning half-consciously closer to him; quite a feat, that, given that they were already no more than inches apart.
"Tolle's better," Miriallia says out of the blue and into a silence that suddenly goes from tense to relived. "I'd like to direct my gratitude to you, Athrun-san; I can understand how you came to hurt him, and following that you took a risk to save him. Thank you." She gives a slight, measured bow, which Athrun mirrors with less awkwardness than his sitting should allow for.
"Please," he insists politely. "I didn't do it for you." That's so Athrun; nice and respectful to the last, yet refusing to accept undeserved credit. Which is not actually, in this case, undeserved. The probably-subconscious brush of the blunette's fingers against Kira's hand reaffirm quite firmly for whom he did what he did.
"With that matter temporarily concluded," the lieutenant says, "it would be profitable to discuss the exact terms of our agreement. Captain Ramius is currently occupied tending to the wounded but has approved of our reasoning through the matter."
"If you feel that that's necessary," Kira says. It might clear the air, too, however saddening and aggravating it is to be forced to negotiate with people he used to consider his friends. The thought startles him, washes blinding shock over his mind – people I used to consider my friends? What the hell am I thinking?
Still, he has made the choices he has made, and they have made the choices they have made. Though closer to that than to enemies, they are not friends anymore. Maybe they never were.
"So then," La Flaga continues, "given your standing in ZAFT, I must assume that you are quite an accomplished solider, Zala-kun. Would it be possible for you to contact your forces from here?"
Athrun gives a very light shrug. "It should be manageable, but it would take quite a lot of configuration and remodeling of the systems, given the distance and the disturbance from the Debris Belt."
"You will not do that," La Flaga says.
"So long as you don't contact the EA – fair enough."
"If we were able to we would have already done that," the blond replies. "However, I take it you would be able to? Then why not arrange a mutually profitable trade – you can return to ZAFT, we to the EA. I should think that that's a nicely equivalent exchange."
It is, actually, depressing as it may be that the only thing they can agree on is that they want away from each other, back to opposite sides in what seems like a never-ending war; except that obviously it isn't, given what Athrun disclosed yesterday. And if PLANT has been holding back until now, while pretty much kicking the living crap out of the in money and men so blatantly superior EA, then what are they truly capable off? Is there any limit? In either case Kira files the subject away to investigate in private later, when this draining conversation is over.
"A nice plan," the blunette agrees, "save for the little detail that my father won't permit losing the legged ship and the last G-unit for no grander gain than I."
"I see," La Flaga says, keeping a searching gaze fixed on Athrun's cold-calm face. "He wouldn't give us up for just one young elite. Well, I'm touched to be ranked even with his son."
"Stop it," Kira demands. Athrun does not need to hear this kind of thing.
"My father wants revenge," the blunette says, even and composed. "This ship and its Gundam are more likely to grant it to him than I am. My mother's dead, you know."
"In other words," La Flaga states at length, "we might all be here for a long time. Given that, I suppose you are both willing to help maintain the ship?"
"Certainly," Kira says, and Athrun nods agreement. "So long as we're living here too it's only fair."
"Good. Strike still carries heavy damage from the last fight and we lack the ability to fix most of it. It would be a considerable help to get it working, considering that our resources need to be restocked every now and then, and what our only source of them is."
Oh, Kira realizes. Junius Seven. Of course it's still Junius Seven. And of course he's waiting for me to assure that he's safe before disclosing that to Athrun. He can't blame the blonde and wonders when he got so cynical, then wraps his arms rather tightly around his lover. Probably it won't be needed, hopefully it won't be, as he currently still lacks the ability to physically restrain Athrun if worst comes to worst. It's not as though he minds the clinging, anyway. Raising a startled eyebrow, the blunette easily plays along and returns the embrace.
"When we got stranded here the last time," Kira says, looking into green eyes, "we didn't have much in the way of food and water, and when we looked around in the Debris Belt we found Junius Seven."
Hands tightening just a little around Kira's arms, Athrun's face remains ghostly expressionless.
Remembering both his own outrage at the original proposal of the grave-robbing and the hateful, despaired look in Athrun's eyes at the occasional mention of his murdered mother, Kira presses one hand gently to the blunette's neck; his lover lets Kira tuck said lover's head on his shoulder without resistance, a deep sigh working its way through him.
Surprisingly, the one brave or stupid enough to break the new silence is Miriallia, "It wasn't a nice thing to do. But we would have died otherwise."
A grim, shaky smile on his mouth, Athrun replies, "Well, the inhabitants certainly don't need their belongings anymore."
"No," Kira agrees, pressing a kiss to the blunette's hair before minutely redirecting his attention to the naturals. "Would you leave us alone?"
Nodding, La Flaga and Miriallia file out, leaving the brunette on the bed to mentally fret over the other boy whose back he strokes. They remain like that for a long time.
Afterwards, settling in on the Archangel is a surprisingly easy process. He and Athrun keep the room they were first assigned though soon locked only on the inside; they repair and upgrade Strike in the tense anticipation of taking it out to help restock (read: Athrun delights himself tinkering with the pleasantly advanced systems while Kira watches him in indulgence and occasionally lends a hand).
The relationships with the naturals are mostly polite and distant, neither friend nor foe. The recovering Tolle obviously still considers Kira his pal, which warms the brunette Coordinator almost as much as his old schoolmate's regained health does though Tolle still doesn't understand much of anything and is exceedingly skittish around Athrun. Pity, that, but understandable in spite of how careful the blunette has been ever since the original incident to behave calmly and kindly. In the end it means that however friendly their views of each other might be, Tolle and Kira spend very little time together because Tolle doesn't want to be around Athrun and Kira almost always is. He likes to spend time with Tolle, but he needs to be with Athrun. The brunette natural doesn't understands; but he accepts; but he doesn't like.
Fllay stays carefully out of their way, and what little Kira hears about her in the others' conversations imply that she spends the majority of her time locked up in her room, which Sai still visits rather frequently but which Miriallia has given up on. Kira wouldn't mind her being around, but seeing him or Athrun would probably not exactly cheer her up, and he's certainly not about to make the effort of seeking her out when for one she doesn't want to see him and two she said what she did to Athrun.
Sai is colder than he used to be, by far; rather much like he acted back in Heliopolis, before certain events on the Archangel brought him and Kira temporarily closer. However, he isn't as passive aggressive as he started out, and in his own way rather reluctantly intrigued by how the likewise mechanically inclined Athrun handles all kinds of technical equipment. The natural is a diligent, dedicated worker, Kira remembers from their shared time in school, who took the effort to manage several of the programs that Kira alone mastered without problems. Most of it, which he now realizes was used in the G-series, went far above Sai's head, but the natural is gifted and if he'd been a Coordinator or an inhabitant in a world that didn't have any Coordinators he'd have been a genius. He rarely if ever asked Kira, his underclassman at the time, for help, but Athrun's graduation and current employment seem to allow concerns such as not asking younger students for explanations or instructions to be thrown out the window.
The blunette, who is a Coordinator and the best of the best, once said, didn't you tell me he was your upperclassman in Orb? What kind of simplified classes did you take? Nicol used to get nagged about being slow at programming and yet he does stuff ten times as advanced ten times as fast, but is never rude to Sai himself and allows him to occasionally hang over his shoulder with no worse repercussions than an annoyed glance every once in a while. The envious admiration gained by his admitting to having made Torii even teased an amused smile over his mouth.
Miriallia never was all that close to Kira, and she's really neither more nor less distant than she used to be. She's kind and sensible as always, but also sensible enough to keep a hint of a barrier up – Kira wouldn't chose her and she wouldn't chose him and they both now and accept that. Tolle, energetic as always and fighting tooth and nail to be allowed out of his sickbed, takes up quite a lot of her time, but every now and then she stops by to visit the Coordinators. At these occasions she usually gives them these knowing little looks, and Kira is faintly surprised that gossip isn't all over the ship already, because there isn't much to do here and it's a very nice way to kill time, so let's be frank, he and Athrun do have a lot of sex, and even despite the miracle that nobody's caught them in the act yet they aren't precisely inconspicuous.
Chief Mechanic Murdoch does not care about people's genes, but he does care about Athrun killing some of his associates and so is rather unfriendly at first. After a while, when curiosity apparently gets the better of him, he approaches and they get along fairly well – until Murdoch admits to not knowing a certain thing and Athrun mistakes the utterance for a joke and laughs heartily at the idea that someone calling himself a mechanic could not be fully familiar with the subject of their discussion. Even Kira's most dedicated efforts haven't been enough to remedy that particular fiasco.
Captain Ramius too is accepting and probably aware, through the never-lifting haze of worried weariness on her features. In the long run it is, of course, an impossible situation, and as far as Kira knows nobody has any real idea of how to get out of it. Athrun probably has some conjectures, and Kira can't claim innocence when it comes to contemplating flight either, but he's still not completely rid off the nasty potion Le Klueze fed him and until further notice nothing of the kind is spoken of. In a way it's a relief to simply recline here, without responsibilities and so far from the war that it can be ignored. Athrun's here, after all, and mostly everywhere is fine so long as that condition holds true, and there's no fighting – Kira isn't complaining.
Mu La Flaga isn't the ready mentor figure that he used to be, perhaps mostly because the role wouldn't fit anymore. He's still nice and there and easy-going in just the right way, and despite their bad start he and Athrun seem to be warming up to each other, the natural officer discovering a hurt young boy and the Coordinator elite finding a warm and capable man below their respective layers of enemy solider.
The rest of the crew is sensible, forming practical if not emotional bonds over repairing computer systems and the like. The passengers, the poor people Kira picked up long ago who're still here and might never leave, are even now keep away from the EA officials to a large degree, but a few homesick children have delightedly nagged for the mechanical toys a bored Athrun makes. Some of them were apparently told to return them when their parents found out where they'd gotten them, but the blunette merely shrugs and takes them apart to built new ones, and the dense atmosphere on the stranded ship is lessened by a choir of different chirps and squeaks and mewlings.
It's not good, it isn't, but it's far less bad than anything's been since long before the war came to Heliopolis.
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