Aurora Borealis
The Infamous Butter Scene
Hoping to delay the point at which their tediousness becomes unbearable, Athrun has temporarily fled his miniscule technical projects, the little animals and the main systems and Strike. Thank all the gods that they at last let him at the mobile armor so he had something a least a little different and challenging to work with. It's done by now, unfortunately, and the Gundam will probably not get any better without more efficient and sophisticated materials available for the upgrading.
Having decided to leave what little there is left to do for sometime when he's really bored (and boredom achieves an entirely new meaning when trapped on a ship that contains absolutely nothing to occupy oneself with) he went looking for Kira, but the brunette was talking to Miriallia-san and given that the two of them seemed comfortable with each other for the first time, Athrun decided it best that he not intrude and ruin the encounter. Not that it's good, logically, that his lover grows too attached to the naturals again, considering that the only sound course of action would be to rest and recuperate here until Kira is fully recovered, then take the Strike and leave for PLANT, but if it can give the brunette some well-deserved and much-overdue relief to reconnect to some degree, then that is a good thing.
Unfortunately it leaves Athrun aimlessly wandering the corridors; he's just made up his mind to return to their room and set about fixing the mechanical kitten one of the civilian girls (civilians on a ship like this? The idea is almost unbelievable, something only Kira could be behind) requested when he catches onto a conversation taking place beyond a not-entirely-closed door. He's about to move on when Tolle's voice tentatively rings out, "Lieutenant La Flaga? Um, can I ask you something? I mean, those PLANT people have some really strange customs, don't they?"
"How so?" the Hawk of Endymion inquires, and Athrun is too in love with the hope of being entertained to mind the rudeness of his eavesdropping.
"Well…" the brunette natural begins hesitantly. "They eat weird stuff in weird places."
"Could you be a little more specific?" La Flaga asks when Tolle doesn't spontaneously elaborate, thus posing a very valid question.
"You see, I was taking some food to them," Tolle explains. He did, Athrun remembers, a while back when the naturals still had not completely given up on the idea of him and Kira being prisoners. "Just the usual breakfast stuff, water and bread and one of those small tubes of butter. I was a little late, but anyway, I got there and knocked. Nobody answered, so I called out to them but they still didn't reply so I opened." While going along with the pretension that they were locked up, it had seemed rude to install anything that would keep the naturals out, tempting as that option had been.
"Nobody was in," Tolle continues, "but I heard that the shower was on so I supposed they were in the bathroom. I didn't want to go in there, so I called out again, and a few minutes later Athrun-san came out, wrapped in some bathrobe and all wet and flushed so I assumed he'd been showering." Athrun resists the impulse to smack his own forehead; what a brilliant leap of logic. Now, if Tolle thinks that little conjecture worthy of explanation, then that certainly provides a reason as though why everything else he ought to have understood isn't out yet.
"Yes?" La Flaga says.
"Yeah, anyway, Kira wasn't anywhere to be seen so I guess he was still in the bathroom. I sorta offered Blue Hair the tray, he just gave it this hasty glance over, then grabbed the butter tube, said thanks and disappeared again."
"Oh," says La Flaga.
"At this point I wasn't sure what to do," Tolle elaborates, "so I just kinda stood around for a while before setting the breakfast down on the bed. Funny things is, before I left I heard some… strange… sounds from the bathroom."
"Oh," says La Flaga.
Evidently not catching on to what the older man appears to have realized, Tolle continues, "So apparently Coordinators eat butter in their showers while making odd noises. I guess they really are a weird different sort after all. I mean, butter? In the shower?"
Much as he tries to keep it in or at the very least at a low decibel, Athrun's helpless fit of laughter is heard clearly over La Flaga's harkle and, "Err, well, that might –"
As the door glides fully open Athrun makes an effort to contain himself, which fails miserably as he catches sight of Tolle's still-unenlightened face. "My apologies," he manages. "I couldn't help overhearing."
"Um," the natural boy says. "Sorry? I didn't mean to be rude, it's just, you gotta admit it's freakish to eat butter in the bathroom! So, eh, why do you? Everyone do that on PLANT?"
"Not exactly," Athrun replies between peels of wild giggles, his finally attained self-control shattered by the disgusting/hilarious image of his Coordinator superiors sitting around in shower rooms eating plain butter. "It's an… acquired taste, I suppose."
"It is?" Tolle says, still confused. "A lot of people do that on PLANT?"
"Yes," Athrun can't rest claiming, straightening up and putting on an expression of grim seriousness. "There does not seem to by much use attempting to hide it anymore – ingesting the substance in question is a part of the process of becoming a Coordinator. Doing it in the shower is mere custom. Now, if you'll excuse me."
Stumbling, fighting down fits of hysterical laughter that is surely brought about by claustrophobic stress to a large degree, he makes his belated way to their room and collapses on the closest bed, laughing till he can't breathe.
When Kira at length turns up he's still sprawled and red in the face from his outburst. It doesn't exactly get easier to be calm when the first thing his lover says is, "I just passed Tolle in the kitchen, where he sat staring at a package of butter as though at the box of Pandora with a spoon in one hand, and when I asked him what he was doing he mumbled something about you disclosing information and becoming a Coordinator – what the heck did you tell him?"
He tries to answer, he really does, but it's impossible since he's once again laughing so hard he's crying, clutching his stomach and chipping for air. Considering that Kira does not seem amused by his antics, perhaps it's fortunate that there's a knock on the door before he can reply.
"Yes?" Kira calls, "It's open."
Enter Captain Ramius and Lieutenant La Flaga, both of whom flick Athrun glances under raised eyebrows as he struggles to behave. That is suddenly a whole lot easier when the brunette woman says, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's time we restock. Now that Strike is workable again we would all benefit considerably from its assistance, so I thought that one of you might pilot it."
"I'll do it," Athrun says. Someone has to, much as he has tried to avoid thinking about this particular subject, and if anyone does it should be him, both by duty and right. Plus he'd prefer to wait just a little longer before letting Kira out in a mobile suit; it'd probably be fine, and if it had been anybody else he wouldn't have worried, but better safe than sorry.
"No offense," La Flaga says, "but I'm sure you realize we're a little apprehensive about letting you out in the weapon your military has been after."
"Understandable," Athrun replies, cold now, far from the laughter. "However, do you honestly believe that I would leave Kira?"
"No," Ramius says mildly, smiling a little as color rises in her blond subordinate's cheeks. "Then Kira-kun will remain on the ship and help handle the dockings while Athrun-san takes the Gundam."
He barely remembers to nod, too immersed in what he will have to do, so soon.
"I'd prefer to actively help out," Kira protests, "by a considerable margin."
"You'll come in very handy at the controls," La Flaga argues with faux cheerfulness. "Even with the potion they gave you, you're still better than most naturals, and by now you're all but back to normal, right?"
"Am I a hostage?" Kira demands.
"Well," Ramius says, calm and kind and with that ever-present hint of unashamed melancholy. "Sort of, yes."
"This ship has something of a bad history with hostages, huh? Oh, don't look at me like that, I'll go do what you wanted. All right, Athrun?"
"Yes," he says mechanically. "Okay."
"They're cute, aren't they?" he hears the captain say as he climbs into the Gundam's cockpit.
"More like codependent," La Flaga replies with less humor and more concern that could perhaps have been expected.
Being inside the robot is so comfortably familiar that it disturbs him when at length it occurs to him that it is not quite healthy to feel even a bit at home inside a weapon of war. The sight of space is one to which he does not have an uncomplicated relationship – it's beautiful, and cold, and usually he sees it like this when fighting and killing and watching people die. Now he just needs to hover over the manned, bright yellow pods transporting materials to the Archangel and occasionally lend a hand. Mostly that simply consists of giving the smaller vehicles a push along and stop certain structures from collapsing over them; he knows he should feel more, both additional emotions and stronger, but he doesn't.
Suddenly, when they are almost done, Mu La Flaga's face appears on one of the little screens. "Problem," he says very hurriedly and more serious than Athrun has yet seen him. There's no need to elaborate, and apparently the natural understands as much – whipping around, cursing his narrow focus on Junius Seven, Athrun catches sight of a small amount of military vehicles on the far side of the Archangel, not close but not far from it either.
A ship clumsy both from design and damage, surrounded by a fair number of mobile armors – the Earth Alliance.
A handful mobile suits sporting sabers and guns – the Zodiac Alliance for Freedom Treaty forces.
It's fairly even, but ZAFT will win – if nothing else because that is still where Athrun belongs and he's here and much as he appreciates the relative acceptance on the Archangel, thank god that they are finally saved.
"Zala," La Flaga says then, and the little screen doesn't only picture the blond anymore, no Kira's there too, with several naturals holding him and a gun pressed against his head. "You know what to do."
His mother's nuked grave below him and a fairly meaningless battle in front of him, the world freezes and shatters and comes crashing down around him. Indeed; he knows exactly what to do. Tempting are the options to either turn on the Archangel itself or contact the ZAFT vehicles, but the risk to Kira's life is too high. Nauseated or not he'd freely slay anyone to save a certain brunette, and considering how desperate the natural crew seems to be there's no choice.
He will have to attack ZAFT, and that means he will have to destroy every last one of their units to avoid any rumors of this reaching PLANT.
It's easy, too. His arrival is unexpected, and both he and Strike are vastly superior to the other pilots and vehicles. Of course it also helps that Athrun has been part of ZAFT long enough to know their techniques by heart.
For his mother and his right to exist he has fought and killed before. Now he cannot allow himself to harm any of those responsible for her murder and the threat to his and his kinds' lives. Most of the EA forces are down but the damaged ship is presently anchoring to the Archangel, and Athrun crushes the ZAFT suits opposing this, not because the barrel pushing into Kira's cheek constitutes a deeper impression than the rest of the war but because he can't fight for what has been lost when he can fight for there's still hope for, what still has and gives life.
He reenters the Archangel not five minutes later, climbs out of the cockpit and drops down, almost stumbles because his legs are suddenly shaky. Apprehensive people close in on him, both mechanics from the Archangel and two EA soldiers he reckons arrived with the smaller vehicle he so recently and reluctantly defended; the thought has him swallowing dryly, gulping back the retches crowding the back of his mouth. Fisting his hands would be too obvious a sign of frustrated weakness, so with effort he keeps them relaxed, asserting through a glance that their trembling and perspiration are known only to him.
The people evidently sent to escort him to whatever big-shots might have come with the smaller ship are wary of touching him but close in so tightly that they might as well have been holding onto him; he can smell them, drying sweat and dirt, feel their body heat wash over him. They're afraid of him, the Coordinator who saved them, and certainly he'd lash out at them if he dared. Unfortunately he's afraid too, both at the likely prospect that Kira' still under threat and – no, don't think about that now, can't afford to be distracted, get sick later.
When they reach the bridge Captain Ramius is sitting in her chair, a man of middle age and middle height standing in front of her, facing the doorway Athrun and his guards enter through. La Flaga, no longer restraining in any obvious manner but still hovering over Kira, has his back against the wall, one of many in the rows of Archangel personnel. The vast majority of the space is commandeered by the new arrivals, which assumably are of fairly high rank considering this development. The soldiers aren't many, Athrun defeated more people when he first disembarked, but these ones have their guns out and ready and Kira is still too close to the Hawk's of Endymion pistol for the blunette not to at least try the peaceful approach.
"Well," the leader says at long length when his underlings have marched Athrun towards him and then stopped a meter or so away and the Archangel mechanics have backed away. "This is the Coordinator? I heard these ridiculous stories about a teenage monster piloting our Gundam on Artemis, but… Nevermind. You are this… Kira Yamato?"
"Yes, I am," Athrun replies tonelessly. They know there's one Coordinator and they need one Coordinator – two means one to kill and one to use, and the manipulated state of his own genes is already known. The stranger EA commander's choice of words has also made it very clear where his sympathies lie, and since they do care for Kira Athrun's rather certain the Archangel crew will allow him the lie.
The man nods to one of the minions lining the Aegis pilot, and Athrun isn't surprised when the underling buries his fist in his stomach. He topples over without resistance; let them play at intimidating him as they like, the faster he pretends to crumble the faster they will probably stop, let them have their fun and underestimate him enough to grant him the opportunity to grab Kira and get them both the hell away from here.
The hit isn't especially hard, the one who dealt it is easily three times his own weight but ludicrously weaker, but he acts as though nursing the soreness, keeping his body slumped and his head down as the commander draws his gun and lazily rests the barrel against Athrun's forehead.
"Sir!" Ramius cries, the clearest sound in the sea of rustles, hissing and uncomfortable, murmured protests.
"What, Captain?" the commander asks in irritation. "We're at war here, normal humans against monstrosities like this one. You can't have missed that part of the education, can you – about taking care of the freaks whenever one has the opportunity?"
Athrun doesn't react; pompous and hateful or not, the man can't be dumber than to realize that he needs a Coordinator to move the Strike and get them out of here, not even the EA can possibly have promoted anyone too stupid to grasp that. He won't shoot.
Next second the sound of a gun being fired echoes through the room.
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