Wow. I have never gotten so many responses to a chapter before. Lesson: kill more characters. XD Haha, kidding, kidding! Maybe. :p
I would try to respond to all, but there's so many responses that it's not really feasible, and everyone's talking about the major thing that happened anyway: Murrue's demise. It was one of the hardest decisions for me to do. I've always liked Murrue a lot and never thought she got enough screentime in the original SEED, and killing her around the halfway point of this story gives her even less time. But it was something that had to be done. Why Murrue would risk herself so openly and thus be in the position to get killed just to save Cagalli will be elaborated upon eventually. Not in this chapter though.
Everything in this fic happens for a reason. And that includes death.
That being said, I hope everyone enjoys the direction of the story from this point forward. It's different, surprising . . . and I hope, rewarding.
Chapter Forty-Three: Time After Time
The world seemed to stop when I saw Murrue vanish into the water. I could not accept the reality. I could not accept that Murrue Ramius had just been killed in front of my eyes. I refused to believe it. That literally did not just happen. I must have been seeing things. I must have been imagining it.
But I knew. I knew.
I screamed her name at the top of my lungs, shredding my vocal cords in the process, tears suppressed by adrenaline all of a sudden pouring out of my eyes.
She was not just my captain. She was a friend. It had not been until she had come to save me, again, from this wretched, hellish place, that I had realized it completely. That she was my friend. That she considered me her friend. That she considered the ship worth risking in order to save me.
And I never had the chance to tell her how much that meant to me.
I hoped against hope that I would see Murrue swim to the surface somewhere. Because she could not be dead. She had not been shot in the head. She had been shot above her right breast, almost clipped in the shoulder. That should not have killed her. The Murrue Ramius I knew would survive that shot because she was just that strong.
But she never reappeared.
I was shutting down and I did not care. Nothing meant anything to me anymore. How was I worth the death of this woman, who commanded an entire ship full of people, the woman who had guided this motley crew of people from a zillion nations? There was no way that I was worth it, no matter what these mysterious people from nefarious shadow organizations loved to overtly hint about me. There was no way.
Why? Why couldn't that have been me instead? Why couldn't I have died instead?
I felt a hand grab me and all of a sudden I was pulled from the edge. I looked up and there was Joan. "Snap out of it!"
She slapped me across the face.
And then things returned to reality and normal speed.
I was still in war. I was still in danger. There were still bullets flying everywhere.
And a little voice in the back of my head was telling me that the only way that Murrue's death could be remotely justified was if I survived.
I had to survive.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Joan shouted. "We're out of time! You need to go!"
"I'm sorry . . ." I literally couldn't come up with anything better to say. My voice sounded like a shadow of its usual self, so worn out it was the vocal version of sandpaper.
Joan shook her head. "You don't have to say anything. She was your captain. I get it. But she's gone. Now if you want to live we're getting your ass over to the Strike."
"Okay." I still did not feel completely here. I felt like a piece of me had been ripped out and had fallen into the water after Murrue Ramius. I felt empty, only partially connected to this pane of existence. It reminded me of how I felt when I was plummeting through Earth's atmosphere, when I started watching myself fall, like I had become an observer of my own demise. I wasn't quite at that point yet, but I felt really close.
We retreated to the edge of the walkway. Joan peeked out and fired a few more rounds. "We need to gonow! They're realizing how few in numbers we really are!"
"Just run to the Strike right now?"
"We don't have much of a choice!" Joan took off at a run, running off the destroyed walkway and making a hard left, and I realized she was heading right for the Strike.
I knew immediately that I had to follow.
As I took off after her, I heard the dying grunt of the last soldier besides Joan and I as he was hit in the head. I couldn't turn around to look at him, not even pause. I knew the moment I stopped moving I would be dead.
Joan was incredibly fast, or I was just so exhausted physically and spiritually I was slower than usual.
Up another flight of stairs. I barely made it to the top as more bullets flew past me, I was just barely out of their range thanks to the height advantage. Joan was waiting for me, and she seemed to be setting up something.
"Get to the cockpit, I'm almost done with this!" It took me a moment to realize she was arranging a tripwire. That would definitely buy a few seconds to boot up the Strike and blast out of here.
So I kept running.
When I made it to the cockpit, entering it from the side with the most cover, the right, Joan caught up to me. "All right. That should be enough time."
"It's going to be a cramped fit," I said. "But it's workable. I've piloted the Strike with more than one person inside before."
"No, Cagalli. I'm here to give you some instructions. I'm staying."
"You're what?"
Just as I said that, the tripwire went off, and there was a lot of screaming and sounds of people falling off the stairs and crashing to the ground. If the blast didn't kill them, the fall would. Not all of the screams sounded like adults, which made me feel sick to my stomach.
"There's something I have to tell you. Sting, Auel, and Stellar are going to get incredibly sick. One of the things they use to control us, Cagalli, is to hook us on the drugs. We need them to survive."
"You must be joking!" I shouted. Immediately, all I could think of was that I had inadvertently killed those three kids. Stellar, Sting, and Auel. No wonder Sting had been so reluctant. He knew. He knew what was going to happen. And he went along with it anyway.
"I'm not joking, Cagalli! There's no way I'd survive if I came with you! But Sting, Stellar, and Auel? They have a chance! They're younger! Their bodies aren't as addicted as mine!"
"What are you talking about? This isn't making any sense!"
A gunshot ricocheted off of the Strike then, and Joan immediately leaned out and fired a couple more shots around the Strike, and I could hear the grunt of the bullets finding a target.
Joan then turned and shoved me into the cockpit. "Sting is self-sufficient! His willpower will be enough! But Auel, and Stellar? They're going to need someone to imprint on, Cagalli! Otherwise I don't think either one will be strong enough to survive withdrawal!"
"Imprinting? How is that supposed to work?"
"Someone needs to take my place in their minds, Cagalli! It can be you or someone else or two douchebags who guard crates all day, I don't care! But they each need somebody to live for!"
Joan leaned out again, and fired another burst, and then Joan shrieked and fell backwards in front of my vision, and I saw red spreading all over her right shoulder.
"Joan! C'mon, you can't-"
"Stop being stupid and get out of here! I can't hold them off for much longer!"
Just as she said that, I heard something roll on the walk, and Joan grunted as she kicked it away. The explosion told me all I needed to know; Joan had kicked a live grenade away.
"Why?" I asked. "Why did you do this, knowing that you'd die?"
Joan paused, and then she smiled. It bore an eerie resemblance to Murrue's smile just minutes before on the walkway. "Because I can't bet against my Extended. I'm just going to have to take my chances here, and try to kill everybody else, so no one else knows what happened here but me. Chances are slim to none that I'll survive, but it's better than no chance. I have too much self-preservation in me, Cagalli."
"You can't seriously believe a word you just said! You're crazy!"
Joan placed her hand on the cockpit door. In her other hand was that machine-gun she had on her. She looked like she was preparing for a last stand.
"Get out of here. Give my Extended unit the lives they want."
And then she slammed it shut.
I knew immediately that I didn't have any more time. When I imput my lock code on the Strike, the radar immediately displayed dozens upon dozens of people swarming around the GUNDAM. I didn't even have time to try to yank Joan from her position and pull her back in.
So I powered the Strike on.
The radar suggested total chaos outside. Now I knew why Joan figured she had a chance, even though it was just a slim one. The chaos of my takeoff around these people could give her an opportunity to either escape or wage a one-woman war on her fellow Extended, their guards, and the scientists.
I couldn't tell which human figure was Joan, and I guess it didn't matter. I was getting out of here, and it was too late to try to grab her and bring her into the cockpit by force. Not like she'd let me do it anyway.
So I marched the Strike out of its docking station, and turned on the Phase Shift. The Strike reverberated from multiple RPGs slamming into the giant machine, but they hardly did any damage. The GUNDAM wasn't quite immune to the handheld rockets, but it put up good resistance against that type of damage.
I took aim where most of the RPG fire was coming from and then let loose with the Igelstellungs. A few seconds of that spraying everywhere, and no one was shooting at me anymore.
That made me feel even more numb than I already did.
The Strike hadn't been recharged since I had ended up here. I had enough power to walk out of here and fly back to the Archangel, but that was it.
I opened communications as I walked right out of the docking station, entering the open air. "This is 2nd Lieutenant Cagalli Yamato. I have the Strike GUNDAM. Can someone fly me my launcher so I can take off and return to base?"
A pause. Then Miriallia. "You're still alive, Cagalli?"
"Yes, I am, whatever that's worth."
"I'll tell Flay to fly you the launcher! Just hang on! Get to a zone that isn't as hot!"
"Sounds good to me."
It didn't really matter. I was still breathing, but with Murrue dead, I couldn't bring myself to want to doanything. I was just on autopilot at this point, doing what my instincts said. I just could not bring myself to believe it. That Murrue was gone.
Not even the knowledge of Natarle Badgiruel's inevitable wrath meant anything to me even as it consciously hit me that she was going to kick my ass for this one.
I had never thought of Murrue Ramius as a friend, not until she had come to rescue me. And that had been a colossal mistake. She had been there for me the whole time and I had never realized it.
And now, my negligence, my failure as a pilot, had gotten her killed.
That was when I started to cry. When I finally told myself to stop denying the truth.
She was not going to be waiting for me on the Archangelor anywhere else. And she wasn't going to hear me say how much everything she had done, and all of the risks she had taken, ultimately meant to me.
The water inside the hangar might as well have been the barrier from Earth to heaven.
Murrue Ramius was dead.
The first thing I heard when I docked was that I was being summoned to the bridge. It was exactly what I had expected. Natarle was captain now, and she was going to give me what I deserved. Whether I was going to get busted down to Seaman, or be thrown in the brig, receive a tongue-lashing, or whatever else she had in mind for me, she was going to give it to me, right now, on the spot.
It hardly seemed to matter.
Everyone was staring at me as I walked out of the Strike. Flay stared at me as I changed into my regular uniform in the pilots' room. Various other people, some I knew, others I didn't, stared at me as I walked down the hallways towards the bridge.
Nobody said a word.
I don't think there was anything anyone could say to me.
Or maybe they were trying to talk to me and I was just ignoring them.
I was lost in my own little world.
When I finally made it to the bridge, it was only then that I felt an emotion besides this empty despair that had taken me over.
Fear.
I was not so completely gone that I wasn't afraid of Natarle Badgiruel.
Now the world truly did feel like it was about to end.
"Please. Come over here." Her voice was stern, no-nonsense, terse. She was clearly sitting in the captain's chair, Murrue Ramius' chair, and I could not see her from my angle.
"Yes, ma'am." I walked over gingerly, as if Natarle would suddenly leap from the chair at any second, slam me into the ground, and put a pistol at my head.
I felt tears coming to my eyes again, and I bit back the urge to grovel. I would not grovel. It did not matter how pathetic I felt, I was not going to grovel to her. I was not going to beg for forgiveness or sob that I was sorry, or plead to keep my rank and GUNDAM privileges. I was not going to be that weak. Not in front of Badgiruel.
She finally stood up and looked at me with those cold violet eyes, just for a moment. Then she sighed and removed her officer's cap, wiping her brow. "God damn it, you look like a kicked puppy. Do I really scare you that much?"
"No. It's not that. It's . . . it's everything."
Badgiruel nodded. She walked over to me, and seemed to size me up. "You're not the only one who feels responsibility over what happened to Captain Ramius. I did everything short of seizing command to force her to stay on this ship but she wanted to find you personally. Perhaps that is what I should have done."
"I'm the one who fell into the stupid ocean. Everything that happened is my fault," I replied. I sniffed, and wiped my eyes before any tears could come from them. I was not going to cry. Not in front of her.
She hadn't earned the right to see me cry.
Badgiruel sighed again and walked a few pieces away, staring outside the windows, looking out at the clear blue sky and the ocean. "Time after time, Murrue Ramius made decisions I disagreed with. She was far too loose, in my opinion. But, time after time, what she did seemed to work, in some odd way. I didn't realize it until I became captain why her methods worked."
Badgiruel's hands clenched into fists and then they opened and relaxed again. "It's the only way to command this ship. When we have a language barrier with many of the people who were from Artemis. When we have so many civilians onboard who have gotten good at pretending they're military but only that, pretending. When we rely on a child such as yourself to protect us all. This ship can't be commanded like a regular military vessel."
Another pause. "2nd Lieutenant, originally, I was going to scream at you. I was going to bust you down to Seaman and have you spend the night in the brig. But that wouldn't solve anything at all. You're still just a child and all I'd be doing is venting at you."
She walked back over to me. Despite her words, I didn't feel any relief at all, any loosening of the tension. I was just waiting for the ax to fall. I knew there had to be one. There was always one with her.
Badgiruel paused as she stood in front of me. "Are you going to keep standing there with that kicked-dog expression or are you going to say something?"
"I-I have nothing to say, ma'am," I replied.
Badgiruel just gave me a look. "God damn it, 2nd Lieutenant."
Then she walked up to me and embraced me.
The shock of such uncharacteristic behavior from Badgiruel was so much that the tears I had been trying to suppress spilled out in an instant. "I . . . wha?"
Badgiruel's words were in-character, at least, so it wasn't like I had dropped into a bizarro world. "Look, you need to cry. I get it. Let it out."
"B-But . . . uh . . ." My capability to talk was pretty much gone. I was still having trouble registering what had just happened.
"Look, you're a child, you need to cry, fine. Go ahead. Keeping it all in is just going to cause more problems later."
"I . . . I . . ." I finally couldn't keep it all in. I did.
What Badgiruel had given me was permission. Permission that I could falter for a few moments in her presence. I accepted it, and I cried into her shoulder for what seemed like forever.
After a while, Badgiruel started talking. "Now, 2nd Lieutenant, I need you to put yourself back together. We're not out of the woods yet."
I sniffed and rubbed my nose. "What do you mean?"
Badgiruel let go of me and looked at me right in the eye. "What Captain Ramius did was attack an Earth Alliance base. Right before you landed, I had already received a communication from the Earth Alliance demanding us to dock in the nearest port. You don't need to know the details, but essentially, we've committed treason. We're a rogue ship."
"What? Really? But what about everything that was going on there? Those experiments! Those kids! What they were going to do with me! They were going to brainwashme!"
"They don't care about any of that," Badgiruel said. "Essentially, we have five days to turn ourselves in to the nearest port, which is, incidentally, in Corregidor."
"Corregie-wha?"
"Corregidor. It's a small island in the Philippines, and a naval outpost for the Alliance that is the forefront of the Alliance's Pacific naval headquarters. Which, as you should know, is in the city of Manila, on the nearby, significantly larger, island of Luxon."
That information, useless and unknown to me, was dizzying by itself and I didn't want Badgiruel to continue. "Okay? What's your plan? Are we going there?"
Badgiruel sighed. "No. If I were to divert the ship away from Orb's direction, I'd face a mutiny. Also, committing treason in the Earth Alliance in wartime is considered worth the death penalty. We're not going there, I'm not stupid."
"The death penalty? I thought that the Earth Alliance outlawed the death penalty as part of its charter when it first formed. Everyone, the Atlantic Federation, East Asia, they had to sign it! That's part of the reason why Oceania never joined, because they refused to do away with the death penalty!"
"The death penalty can be reinstated in wartime if there is action considered treasonous, and Captain Ramius, because of her decision to open fire on the base in order to rescue you, committed a clearly treasonous action," Badgiruel replied. Her stern, serious, unwavering tone was getting on my nerves. I wanted Murrue's softer, more thoughtful inflection. Badgiruel always sounded like she was barking orders.
"This is stupid! She did that to save me!" I replied. "They're the ones committing the war crimes here! I don't see how-"
"They have the power," Badgiruel interrupted. "And that is what matters. Now you need to listen to me."
Great. More orders. Just what I wanted to hear. But I knew better than to show any sign of disobedience or questioning. Badgiruel was not Murrue. "Yes, ma'am?"
"We are going to pass through the Straight of Malacca in roughly two days," Badgiruel said. "We could come under assault not just from ZAFT forces from Carpentaria, but from the Alliance forces in the Philippines and what islands in the Indonesian islands that are still under Alliance control. I have terabytes of condemning, scandalous files in my possession and I know that Blue Cosmos or the Alliance under Blue Cosmos' orders will do everything possible to make sure the information is at the bottom of the ocean."
"What does this have to do with me, ma'am?" I asked.
"I need you to snap out of your doldrums, 2nd Lieutenant. You've had your cry, now you need to pull yourself together. You're the best hope we have of making it to the Orb Union. I know how strong you are, now show me some of that strength instead of your weakness. Got it?"
"I understand, ma'am." Part of it was knowing Badgiruel wouldn't accept "no" as an answer, and the other part was knowing she was right. In her cruel, upfront way, she was right.
"Good. You're dismissed. Get some rest. We'll hold a service for Captain Ramius tomorrow morning. After that, you'll be on full alert until we make it into Orb waters."
"All right. Thank you." I nearly turned to walk away, but then I remembered something Badgiruel had said earlier in the conversation.
"What about those files? What are you going to do with them?" I asked.
Badgiruel smiled, and it was the most devious smile I had ever seen in my life. "I'm going to leak them. Slowly but surely, in a deliberate attack pattern. The public is going to know what is seizing control of the Alliance, and they're not going to like it. Not one bit."
"And should I know anything about-"
"There is nothing in those files you should be concerned about, for your own good." Badgiruel had a good poker face and poker voice, but she sounded just a little defensive in her inflections. That pretty much confirmed that something involving me had been found in her files and she wasn't going to tell me what it could be.
Before I could reply, Badgiruel stopped me. "You're dismissed, 2nd Lieutenant. That's an order."
"All right, ma'am. See you later."
I walked out of the bridge, and into my new, Murrue Ramius-less reality.
My life more transformed and ever more mysterious than before.
