The moment we all know is coming has come. This is why it's being posted early.
Chapter Sixty-Four: Anthem of the Angels
I forced air through my aching lungs, my screaming heart, but there was no stopping my blurring vision as tears effortlessly appeared from my eyes.
"L-Lacus . . . you were . . ."
"I-It's all . . ." Lacus coughed again, and more blood floated from her mouth.
No. It was not 'okay', or 'all right', or whatever she was trying to tell me. Being shot in the stomach, clearly bleeding out, already coughing up blood . . . none of that was okay! None of it! No amount of reassurance would ever make me accept something like that!
"Lacus!" I reached out and grabbed her, bringing her on my grasp, holding her on my lap so she could look up at my eyes.
"Lacus, I-I have a m-medical kit! M-Maybe there's something that can . . ."
"Don't . . . don't worry about me . . ." Lacus said softly. One of her hands left her stomach and reached out towards me, and I found myself reaching out and taking her hand in mine.
"Don't be stupid!" I cried. "I can't just let you die! Oh God, Lacus . . . I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
She was still smiling. How could she just lay here in my arms, knowing she was dying, and somehow still keep smiling? I just didn't understand how a person could face death so bravely, so peacefully! How could Lacus just act like nothing was wrong as she was gradually fading away, little by little, as she bled out?
"Cagalli . . . it's not your fault. No one's to blame . . . for this . . ."
"B-But I . . ." I kept thinking back to my decision to grab Lacus and pretend she was a hostage. She wound up being used as a human shield instead when that soldier opened fire. That's what happened. She got hit when we were falling backwards inside the Freedom. That was the only way. It could have been right before I closed the door too, but I think I would've been the one hit if a bullet had hit its mark there.
No, Lacus took a bullet while we were falling backwards, and somehow it didn't pass through her and hit me too.
"Don't blame yourself." Tears were floating from Lacus eyes, floating towards mine as they fell from my eyes and floated through the zero-G. "If . . . if you hadn't done that . . . we'd both have been dead."
She was right. I knew, in the back of my mind, that she was right. If she and I had just tried to rush into the cockpit all of those soldiers would've opened fire and there would've been no way for us to not get hit. Lacus, being caught more in the open than I was, would've been guaranteed to die.
But I didn't want to accept that was right, or accept her forgiveness. How could I, when she was dying in front of me?
"Lacus . . ." I couldn't come up with any words to say. There was so much I wanted to say and yet none of it was coming out. I couldn't talk. I literally could not talk to this girl, this brave girl who I had so grossly miscalculated, who was so much more than she initially seemed.
Her hand gripped mine tighter. "Please . . . please listen to me, Cagalli . . ."
I knew I had to listen. No matter how I felt, or what thoughts were rushing through my head, I had to block them out, ignore them. I had to concentrate. "I'm listening, Lacus. I'm listening. I'm right here."
Lacus' eyes turned from me, looking outside at the screen, at the planet Earth. "It's so beautiful . . . the Earth. I . . . I always wanted to visit there . . . visit that amazing world . . ."
Her eyes turned back to mine. "Don't . . . don't let them destroy it. Zala . . . or Blue Cosmos. Don't let them destroy this beautiful world and its people, Cagalli."
"I won't," I replied. "I won't. I swear I won't."
"Please, tell Athrun . . . tell Athrun that . . . I want him to be happy," Lacus said. "And tell . . . tell my father that . . . I loved him . . . he gave me . . ."
Lacus coughed violently and my remaining hand, wrapped around her back, held onto her shirt even tighter. She was threatening to float from my grasp and I forced her to stay.
Lacus moaned and cried from the pain as she straightened, she had been forced to sit up or whatever passes for that in zero gravity. The adrenaline was leaving her, and now her body was recognizing the great pain she was in.
She looked back at me, her eyes still alert in spite of the tears continuing to float from them and the blood continuing to float from her mouth. "Cagalli . . . I'm scared. I'm so scared . . ."
"I'm right here." Such a stupid, cheesy thing to say, but I could find no other words. "I'm here, Lacus. You're not alone."
"There . . . there was so . . . so much more I wanted to do . . ." Lacus managed through her pain and tears. "So much I wanted to see. You . . . you live on such a beautiful world . . . why we keep trying to destroy it . . . it never made sense to me . . ."
"It doesn't make sense to me either," I said. I knew from her struggling breaths, the sweat all over her forehead and hair, that it was coming. She didn't have much longer. She was a fighter, her body was strong, and her body was going to keep fighting the inevitable as long as it could, before there simply was not enough left to fight with.
I had only inconsistent contact with Lacus Clyne. I shouldn't have felt this close to her. But right now, in the cockpit of the Freedom, watching her slowly fade away, I felt like I was losing my best friend. Somehow, in spite of our inconsistent meetings, and my belligerence the very first time I had seen her, she had turned herself into a close friend. Someone I could trust without any reservations, an ally I knew would always be there for me.
And she was dying in front of me and there was nothing I could do.
I wanted to reach for that medical kit. I wanted to do whatever I could, no matter how much I wasted of it or how inadequate it was, to save this girl. But nothing would stop a wound like this. I could make the tightest tourniquet in the world and it wouldn't be enough. Her skin was turning pale, and her eyes were beginning to look sunken. The end was coming.
"Don't . . . don't lose your way . . . yourself . . . or what you believe in," Lacus said softly. Her other arm reached up and grabbed my shoulder. "Don't lose it. The moment you lose that . . . what makes you, you . . . you will just become like Blue Cosmos . . . and Patrick Zala . . . and all that will happen is more hatred . . . more anger . . . more innocent people dying . . ."
"I won't," I promised. "I won't become a monster, Lacus. I promise you I won't."
"Power alone is not enough, Cagalli . . ." Lacus whispered. "Neither is . . . intelligence. You . . . you need both . . . and your soul."
She had said that before I had gotten into the Freedom, before she had gotten shot, and she reminded me of that. She was telling me I needed to be whole to be the difference I wanted to make in this world. To be what would stop the hatred, the anger, the pain.
"I know," I said. "I know, Lacus . . ."
That smile still would not fade. Even though she admitted she was scared of her death, even though her words were filled with worry, she was still managing to smile so gently. What was in this girl that she could just fade without that smile even wavering?
"I'll . . . I'll take care of everything . . . Athrun will be happy . . . your father will be okay . . . the world will make it through this . . . I promise, Lacus. I promise . . ." I forced through my tears and choked voice.
She did not answer. The smile remained, but her head was beginning to go slack, as were her hands.
"Lacus?" I asked.
Still no answer.
Then her hands fell limp.
A soft choked gasp; and then no further breaths escaped her mouth.
Her eyes stared lifelessly at my right shoulder, and that was when I knew there was nothing left.
"Lacus!" I was about to scream and plead for her, plead for her to take one last breath, beg her to find some hidden wherewithal that she would wake up to speak to me.
That's when I heard Aisha's voice, her words from the cockpit of the LaGOWE, next to her fallen love Andrew Waltfeld.
"T-The last thing that goes away . . . is people's hearing."
The last thing Lacus would want to hear from me was begging for her to wake up, when she had no strength left.
So instead of screaming at her to wake up, I screamed my promise.
"I'll save everyone, Lacus! I'll save PLANT! I'll save the Earth! I'll save my friends, your friends, it doesn't matter! I'll save everybody! No matter what it takes! I'll save them all!"
I nearly choked on my own tears and throat. I couldn't form words anymore. What else could I possibly say?
I looked at Lacus' eyes, which registered nothing. I knew there was nothing left of her. She was gone, but the smile still remained. It was if she had somehow found peace in her death, she believed in me that much, that even though she was dying, dying so young, she knew everything would be okay because I was still here.
What had I done to deserve such confidence? What had I done to deserve her trust? All I had done was allow her to die in my arms, die in my cockpit, die and let her blood to float all around me.
I took my trembling hand and put my fingers on Lacus' eyelids. My voice was a strangled whisper as I closed her eyes. "Goodbye . . . Lacus."
That was it. I could no longer form words. I could no longer function. I could not even muster the ability to set the Freedom to go anywhere than somewhere on the planet Earth.
All I could do was bury my face in my hands and cry.
Cry over my lost friend.
Somehow, in the hours after her death, I regained my ability to function. I felt numbed, deadened, like I was a ghost inhabiting the cockpit. But I remembered Lacus' words. What made me function, and keep going, was what Lacus said to me, and my promises to her. The more time I wasted crying, the more likely Orb would be destroyed before I got there. Lacus would not want me to cry for her if it meant that people would suffer and die because of that.
She had passed on a responsibility to me, a responsibility that put the weight of the world on my shoulders, and the only way the responsibility would not crush me was if I found people to bear the weight with me.
But I could not take Lacus to Earth. Especially if I had to go to battle right away. Fighting with a dead body beside me thrashing and falling around would be insulting to her memory. No matter what Lacus herself would think, I could not disrespect the dead.
I flew through the debris belt, wondering what to do. I had put my helmet on, drawing on the oxygen in my space suit, saving the reserves inside the Freedom for when I escaped the belt. Then I would switch back to the suit's oxygen for descending back to Earth, and then turn on the oxygen filters to refill the tanks. That would mean wearing no helmet if I had to fight right away at Orb, but I didn't know how else to conserve my air. I was not thinking entirely straight.
That's when I saw it to my right. Junius Seven, still lingering, somehow.
I remembered my attitude when the Archangel had been forced to dock with it. We needed the supplies, we needed the water, but we had stolen from the dead, which I didn't want to do.
A thought occurred to me. The dead in Junius Seven were all killed off suddenly, violently, without rhyme or reason, and if their spirits still lingered, they were without peace.
I docked with a random destroyed port in Junius Seven, and opened my cockpit. Lacus' blood froze right away, and I took all of the frozen blood and brushed it out of the cockpit. I then took Lacus' body, like she was a glass statue so I would not break her, and floated her through the facility until I found a room.
It looked like a kindergarten classroom, with the bodies of a female teacher and dozens of young children. Probably were killed instantly or nearly so, perhaps if the oxygen was sucked out of the room due to the life support taking a critical hit.
I decided this was the best place to put Lacus' body, and I marked the location so I would come back and get her body at another time. I would have to come back to space eventually, I realized, if I were to end this war. I'd have to fight ZAFT too, not just the Earth Alliance.
But until then . . . until then . . .
If there is such a thing like spirits and ghosts, or purgatory and souls, Lacus would be a calm presence. The crying children, not understanding their circumstances or their pain, would need someone to comfort them, to sing for them, to make them accept what had happened so they could find peace and move on.
Lacus would be the angel that would help the spirits and souls of Junius Seven and its senseless tragedy finally find some solace after their cruel, horrific deaths.
Maybe she was already doing that already. Maybe I didn't have to leave her body here for it to be accomplished. But that was how I had met Lacus in the first place; she had intended to leave a memorial for Junius Seven, only for it to be interrupted and for her to be the only survivor.
It just seemed . . . symbolic, for her to be laid to rest with the people she so deeply cared for and had wished to find peace in their own rights.
I was not a religious person and still am not. But I did pray to whatever God could exist as I left Lacus in the room. I prayed for her to be comforted, to be embraced, to be loved. I prayed that if she was indeed helping the dead who could not accept their demises, that they would appreciate her, and that she would find happiness from the deed.
With that, I manually closed the door, and marked the location in my tablet. I was not going to leave Lacus' body here, not permanently. Her permanent burial would be on Earth, or in the PLANTs, so her father, Athrun, or whoever would want to appreciate her could easily access it. As Earthly as things like flowers, wreaths, crosses, or whatever else would be left at her grave, it was closer to what she deserved.
I left Junius Seven then, and shot off towards Earth, marking the target location as Onogoro Island in Orb.
I wiped the tears from my eyes, and forced myself to focus.
I could not save Lacus, but I would save my friends, and my country.
I would make Lacus' death worth it somehow, in the end.
I would do it in a way that would make Lacus happy in whatever afterlife she was in.
I was not going to fail her.
Not again, I promised.
Not again.
The Freedom was a much more comfortable cockpit for re-entry than the Strike was. 'Comfortable' was a relative term, as it was still unbearably hot and I felt like I was going to melt, but it didn't feel like I was going to die from the experience like what had happened in the Strike.
I had a couple of days to think over what I needed to do, and how I had to respect Lacus' memory and wishes. I could not let myself get driven by vengeance and hatred, no matter how much an Earth Alliance attack on Orb would piss me off. If I despised the Earth Alliance, if I fell so far as to hate the average soldier, who was just following orders and was caught up in the hateful propaganda and vile environment, I would just become like Patrick Zala. And if I allowed myself to be enraged at ZAFT, at Patrick Zala, at the Coordinators who were so clearly viewing this war as some sort of game or turkey shoot, I would be no better than Blue Cosmos.
I had to accept that the ordinary soldiers on both sides were the victims in this escalating war. There would be times where I would not be able to avoid killing them. There would be times where I would not be able to save everyone. But I had to try, try to be a better person, try to keep my moral compass. I needed to show that there was a better way than the ways of the extremists hijacking both sides.
And I needed to see my family. I needed to apologize to them. All of them. I had betrayed them all; I had run away in pursuit of something that I never was going to have, to a place where I didn't belong, a cause I didn't believe in. What I wanted was to see them again, to be in my parents arms, to have Elle and Stellar accept me again, and just accept who I was and that was no excuse to stab everyone in the back. Blue Cosmos or no Blue Cosmos, I couldn't keep running away, and running to ZAFT wasn't going to solve those issues.
Plus there was Kira. The Prime Minister himself had basically admitted that Kira was my brother. My twin. He was the one who stayed in my birth mother's womb, while I was left to become . . . whoever I was. I needed to see him. I didn't care about security or protocol or any of that. I needed to see him, I needed to tell him the truth, I needed to tell him that the entire time he was on the Archangel he was helping his big sister.
And yes, I'm sticking to that assumption. There's no way in hell Kira came first. I had to have beaten him by a few minutes.
Basically, I had a lot of business that I needed to take care of, and I had a very short time to get it done in. I knew that I wasn't going to beat the Earth Alliance fleet by much, and there was a good chance that the attack would have already begun by the time I made it to Orb.
The moment the turbulence of re-entry ended I set a course for Onogoro and blasted through the sky at top speed. The Freedom felt surprisingly maneuverable and powerful for a GUNDAM machine in the atmosphere. Even more than the Justice did. I was really impressed with the machine now.
It truly did feel like my machine.
I turned on the radio. The moment I entered Orb airspace I was probably going to get contacted. I was flying a ZAFT Gundam, after all, and an explanation would likely be demanded from me. I needed to get on the line the moment they began talking to me. That way they wouldn't try to blow me out of the sky. There was no way I'd shoot back so it was important I prevented a confrontation from happening at all.
But as I entered Orb waters, I was surprised by what I was hearing. There was no one acknowledging my presence at all. What I heard was talk of evacuation, of emergency situations, of panic, of people screaming for help or shelter.
The attack was likely coming any moment then.
Then I managed to pick out a voice.
"Assault coming from the left flank. All forces-"
The voice faded out into the cacophony of people panicking and calling for help. But I knew what I had heard, and I knew what that meant.
Orb was already under assault. I hadn't even made it in time to make it to the front line before the attack.
The Earth Alliance wasn't going to give Orb any quarter then. They were just going to come and take everything away to get that Mass Driver, to hell with the consequences.
They had no right to come in here and attack my country and kill my friends, my people.
I immediately realized what Lacus was trying to tell me. This was the trap. Hatred. Rage. Loathing.
If I indiscriminately killed everyone in my way, what would make me better than my attackers? How would I help anyone if I did that? How would that make anyone in the Earth Alliance see my point of view?
It wouldn't.
What I needed to do was to clear the beachhead and make it very clear that no one was allowed to pass. I wasn't going to chase the Earth Alliance back into the ocean and blow up the entire fleet, even though the Freedom felt powerful enough to do just that. Terrorizing the Earth Alliance would just accomplish the same thing ZAFT did at Panama. All I'd do is make the rest of the Alliance more hateful, and they'd fight even harder.
No. I was going to show the lines that could not be crossed. They'd learn their lines, and I would show them mine. And I was going to protect my country and my friends and my family in the process.
As I neared Onogoro, the brown seed appeared across my vision once more, the first time I had seen it since my battles on the Archangel.
I hadn't even a glimpse of it during my time with ZAFT.
I had an epiphany as I saw the seed. I did not believe in ZAFT or PLANT or what they were fighting for. I had no passion for their cause. But here, fighting for my country, my friends, my family, for what I truly believed in, the seed was appearing in front of my eyes.
It was triggering because of what I truly believed in.
For the first time, I decided I wasn't going to fight the seed as it cracked and shattered.
No, I was going to embrace it.
I was going to accept what was happening to me and let it guide me to doing what I needed to do.
So I did. I opened myself up as the seed shattered, and I saw the path through the battlefield with a clarity I did not previously have.
I knew the weakest spot in their attacking line on sheer instinct.
I aimed my auto-targeting systems and opened fire with my weaponry as I swooped across their battlefield.
The HiMAT's weapon systems were so powerful they would blast right through the Strike Daggers in my path and continue onwards, colliding with more of the Daggers that happened to get in the way.
I landed on the beach and drew my twin sabers, and slashed through the remnants of the opposing force. I didn't scream, yell, or do any of the things I did when I previously saw the seed, when I resisted it.
I just knew what I had to do and how to do it.
With the beachhead cleared and the Earth Alliance scattered, I put the twin sabers away and re-engaged the HiMAT, and I turned on the public channel, making sure both the Orb Union and the Earth Alliance would hear me.
"This is Cagalli Yamato on the behalf of the Orb Union. I am piloting the GUNDAM Freedom, the most advanced Mobile Suit known. Any Earth Alliance Mobile Suit or Mobile Armor that dares to tread through my airspace will not pass. I repeat; none will pass."
And then I waited.
I made the promise to myself to quicken the pacing. At the same time I hope I gave Lacus the best send-off I could have given her.
