Part Four: Realize
Chapter Sixty-Eight: Find the Way
I was growing massively impatient waiting to be cleared for launch, and what I had witnessed with Mayu and her brother Shinn Asuka had not eased myself at all. It just made me want to defend my country even more, and I worried even more about my family, who I had still not been able to contact. At this point, I could only hope that they had already left Onogoro, and weren't anywhere in this staging area or any others.
There was talk all over the place of another attack brewing, and even in this enclosed building I could hear distant gunfire and explosions. The battle was miles away, sure, but hearing the sound of war just made me want to rush to the Freedom and get out there regardless of whether I had permission or not.
Something older and wiser inside me prevailed, though, and told me to go to Athrun and the others first. See what they were doing. If they were going to try to head out there too, or if there were other plans in store for them. Unlike me, Athrun's group had not said that they were planning on defecting to Orb or not. Their circumstances had to be different. Still, Freedom was parked right next to their GUNDAM machines, so perhaps it was best to go to them first.
I was feeling bad for what I had said to Athrun anyway. He was my friend, and he had come out all this way for me. Like he always did. How come whenever he tried to do something nice for me I just bit his head off? He clearly thought I was worth putting his life, his career, his everything, on the line to help me. I was his friend, his childhood best friend, and . . .
I was feeling something more for him. It had been tiny, almost insignificant, at first, but it had begun the moment he had saved me while I was falling through Earth's atmosphere. And it had been growing, despite my best efforts to resist it, especially after I had defected to ZAFT. I didn't want to think it was some kind of epiphany about how my feelings for him were changing, but I knew, deep down, that it was. And I just didn't want to admit it.
But I wanted to fight alongside him. Together, he and I were much stronger than we were apart. And I wanted to live up to Lacus' memory, and I was sure Athrun wanted to do the same thing.
But as I wandered through the remaining refugees to get to my machine, I saw a familiar face in the crowd, one that destroyed all of my reconciliatory thoughts.
His face was plain, as was his dark hair. The invisible boy on the Archangel, the guy who was on the fringe looking in the entire time we were onboard together.
Kuzzey Buskirk.
I spotted him before he spotted me. And I yelled his name. "Kuzzey! Kuzzey, is that you?"
He heard my voice and his tiny eyes shot wide open. He spun towards me, and his body completely froze.
That's when I noticed he was in civilian clothing.
I ran up to him, and he backed away a step, shaking. "Kuzzey? What are you doing out here? I thought you were on the Archangel!"
Kuzzey backed away another step. His eyes were wide, and he was visibly trembling. It started to hit me why he was so afraid of me right before he began to talk, and why he was out here in civilian clothes instead of being on the Archangel.
The implications were already starting to piss me off even before he began talking.
"C-Cagalli . . . I-I didn't know you were . . . you had come back! I . . ."
"Why are you here?" I asked again. "I thought you were on the Archangel, Kuzzey."
I knew why he wasn't there. I knew it, and I was getting angrier. My voice had already lowered, and the friendly pretense had vanished. Now I just wanted him to say it. If he didn't, his ass was going down. He would be the worst kind of coward if he didn't say it.
"L-Look, Cagalli . . . I . . . I couldn't fight anymore, okay!" Kuzzey managed, his entire body shaking.
It had occurred to me that I had seen most of the Archangel's crew while I had been on that beach. Even the ones who had been civilians before Heliopolis. Even if they had left the ship, they had chosen to return to the ship. Former Artemis personnel, the surviving special forces picked up in the African desert, virtually all of the Orb civilians other than Elle . . .
But I had not seen Kuzzey. Clearly, everyone on that ship, soldier or civilian, found a sense of loyalty and comradery that made them re-enlist and return to service. We had been through hell together, we were bound to that ship and to each other, like one large extended family.
But Kuzzey wasn't there. Granted, I wasn't there either, but I was trying my damndest to get to that ship! I had already fought in one of the battles to defend Orb, a battle the Archangel had gladly participated in! I had not abandoned my friends and my country! So why was Kuzzey?
"You really think I care about that right now?"
I stomped forward and grabbed him by the collar of his hoodie. "Damn it Kuzzey! Why the hell aren't you there? Those are your friends onboard that ship! You were on the bridge, dammit! You played a pivotal role, and you're asking them to do it without you!"
"A-Aisha's doing my role. S-She's actually military, s-she'll d-do a better job than me," Kuzzey whimpered softly.
Bringing up Aisha's name only made me pause for a moment before I shook it off and stared right into his eyes. "You expect me to take that for an answer for why you abandoned our friends and all of the people we fought with?"
Kuzzey held up his hands. "P-Please, Cagalli . . . my nerves . . . they're just shot, and . . ."
Hearing that excuse just made me want to punch him in the face and I could barely keep myself from doing just that. "Your nerves are shot? Don't make me laugh! How many times have I piloted a Mobile Suit and exposed myself to the enemy to keep you and the ship safe, huh? My nerves were shot long ago, but I kept fighting because I was going to protect all of my friends and every single person on that ship! No matter how broken or tired I felt I kept fighting because someone had to!"
By that point, I had driven Kuzzey to his knees, while I was still standing up. I was towering over him as he shook violently, clearly expecting me to attack him.
"So don't give me that crap about your nerves being shot! Don't your friends mean enough to you that no matter how beaten up, no matter how sad you feel, no matter how scared you are, that you can push through it to try to help them? Isn't that what everyone else is doing right now? I saw the entire crew of theArchangel earlier today! People who should have gone back to their civilian lives are all there! They came back, Kuzzey! They all came back except you!"
Kuzzey was crying at that point. "C-Cagalli . . . I'm j-just not you, okay?"
The softness in his voice somehow cut through all of my anger and made me stop, for just a moment.
"I-I'm not you. I . . . I don't know how you can take it day after day . . . I just don't have it in me, Cagalli. The t-thought of . . . of being on that ship again, wondering if s-someone's going to blow me up, blow everyone else up . . . I can't take it."
The anger left me as I stared down at him, and realized that he was scared. Genuinely scared. It was a mental block afflicting him, one he just did not have what it took to knock it aside. And he wanted to be out there, I could see it, but he was too scared to return to the ship. He hated himself for it, hated that he was being a coward, hated that all of his friends were fighting except for him. But, faced with just me, he was already limp. He was emotionally, psychologically, done.
And all I was doing was driving him further into self-loathing, more into despair. I was tearing him apart piece by piece, bringing his worst fears to life, that his decision meant he had no friends anymore.
I knelt down and hugged him. "I'm sorry. I . . . I shouldn't have said those things."
"I suck," Kuzzey moaned into my shoulder, but he returned the embrace anyway.
"It's all right. We're all different. This is what you need to do," I said.
I held him for a little while then, listening to the encroaching, muffled sounds of war in the distance, and the increasing panic and chaos here in the staging area.
It was time I let Kuzzey go. It was time I figured out what the hell I was going to do. I still had fight left in me. Plenty of it.
If Kuzzey wanted to be behind me instead of beside me in defending everyone, that was his choice. But I had made my own.
That meant he and I would go our separate ways.
And possibly that would also mean we wouldn't see each other ever again.
I finally found Athrun and the others after letting Kuzzey go so he could evacuate. The Earth forces sounded like they were getting even closer, but they weren't right on top of us yet. Athrun and his team, other than the icy-calm Hilda, looked like they were getting as antsy as I felt.
"They haven't allowed you guys to go out there?" I asked.
Dearka shook his head. "Technically we're still ZAFT. Having us help them means there could be a violation of their neutrality."
The Orb government still cared about the neutral pretense at this point? Really?
"Why don't you guys just defect already and get it over with?"
Dearka pointed his finger right at me. "Haven't you defected too, Cagalli? Why aren't you out there?"
"Because they haven't given me permission yet either! If those explosions get any closer I'm not gonna care, I'm going out there anyway!" I said.
Dearka just chuckled and looked at Athrun. "Sometimes I like her attitude, Athrun."
Athrun looked down. "Yeah."
He was still sore about me dressing him down a couple hours or so prior. I felt a sense of guilt wash over me, and I approached him. "Athrun . . . I'm sorry."
"No, it's all right," Athrun said.
"No, it's not. I criticized you when I shouldn't have. We all have to make tough choices here, Athrun. I just saw an example of that myself," I said.
Well, more than one example, really. Mayu and Kuzzey.
"Is this something we gotta know about?" Dearka asked.
"No," Athrun and I both said at the same time. We looked at each other, and I felt something hot rush to my face which made me look away.
And he looked away too.
Great. We had left the impression of schoolchildren's crushes on everyone.
"Uh huh." Dearka didn't sound convinced.
Hilda put up her hand. "Look, Athrun, we all know you don't want to fight your father. But at the same time, you've made your choice."
"I know," Athrun said. "I made it the moment I agreed to help you, Hilda."
I looked at Athrun then. Just like with Kuzzey, I hadn't fully considered what was going through Athrun's head. Just I could never fathom fighting my own parents, why would Athrun so quickly come around to the idea of fighting his father?
The only hateful words I've ever said to my parents were when I found out I was a living science experiment. And I so desperately wanted to take them back. They had hid the truth from me because they knew I would react the way I did, and because they loved me. It wasn't their fault my birth father had made me the way he did. Why had I treated them like it had been their fault?
I guess that makes me a bit of a jerk, huh?
"Athrun, whatever answers you want to find, I'll find them with you, okay?" I asked.
Athrun turned towards me, looking surprised.
"I know you want to know why we're fighting, why you had to decide to turn on your father. I want to help you find your answers. I've already found mine by fighting with ZAFT as long as I did. I realized they weren't any better than the Blue Cosmos organization I've vowed to destroy."
Hilda bit her lip. "Blue Cosmos, huh? I didn't know you had taken on such a vow."
I didn't want to explain all of the intricate details over why I had decided to destroy Blue Cosmos, especially considering Tolle. "They tried to kill me and my family, and they got my boyfriend killed. They tried to kill me on an island base even though I was fighting for the Earth Alliance at the time. All because of their hatred for Coordinators. Blue Cosmos made this fight with me personal and I'm going to destroy them."
Hilda didn't look convinced or moved. "Blue Cosmos is expanding its influence all over the Earth Alliance. Their machinations control what the Republic of East Asia and the Atlantic Federation do now. The tragedy at JOSH-A also wiped out the majority of the Eurasian forces, who weren't under Blue Cosmos' sway. You really think you can destroy an organization like this, an organization that is close to effectively ruling two whole international bodies?"
Hilda's way of putting it made it sound impossible. But I wasn't going to just surrender, even if Hilda's words made what I wanted seem like a pipe dream.
"At the rate things are going, ZAFT and the Earth Alliance will kill each other off," I said. "So yeah, if the radicals in Blue Cosmos can be stopped before we escalate to that point, that'd be preferable!"
Hilda sighed. "I might as well give you the name. Muruta Azrael."
"Who's he?" I asked.
"He's the leader of Blue Cosmos," Hilda said. "Very young for a man of his station and influence, from what I understand. Tends to get personally involved in his projects. It wouldn't surprise me if he's out there in the Earth Alliance fleet attacking Orb right now, micro-managing the operation as he sees fit."
Hearing that just made me want to go out there even more than I already did. But I heard a deep voice behind me then, one that made me freeze.
"And I assume you would want to go out there in a frontal assault to destroy him?"
I recognized the voice from my house months ago, right when this whole ZAFT debacle began with me. I turned and I saw Uzumi Nara Athha himself, looking right at me.
"P-Prime Minister Athha!" Even Hilda was fazed by his appearance.
Except Dearka. "Who?"
"Now's not a good time, Dearka," Nicol hissed.
Uzumi looked at all of us. "Instructions for all of you will be sent shortly. However, I wish to speak to young Yamato in private, if that is all right with you."
The prime minister, asking permission to talk to me? I wasn't sure whether this was real life anymore. Judging by the looks on everyone's faces (sans Dearka, who still looked confused), they tended to agree with me.
"No . . . I'm sure it's all right with everybody. Including me," I said softly.
There was something about being in the presence of this man that made any effort to boast seem pointless. It truly did feel like we were in the presence of a lion. He was the Lion of Orb, after all.
So of course, I followed him, not knowing what he had in store for me.
"You did not make a good first impression on me when you screamed at your parents and ran away to join ZAFT."
Somehow, it did not surprise me to hear that coming from Uzumi Nara Athha's mouth. "I-I'm sorry. I panicked, and then . . . circumstances happened, and I felt it was the only way to protect my family and destroy Blue Cosmos."
"And?" Athha asked.
I felt really embarrassed in front of the man now that I was left to think about my decisions. "It didn't work out. ZAFT is just as bad as the Earth Alliance, if not even worse. And . . . trying to gain vengeance, fighting to kill an entire enemy, that didn't work either. All I saw was a lot of innocent Earth Alliance soldiers, who had nothing to do with Blue Cosmos, die."
I saw the Earth Alliance girl's face flash in front of me again, along with her body and face being ripped apart by GINN armaments before her remains were obliterated in fire and underneath the GINN's foot.
Athha nodded. There seemed to be a bit of warmth coming from him now. "Kira has told me much about you and the journey you and he shared on the Archangel. You are a rash, impulsive girl. However, you always try to do the right thing, even if it winds up being foolishly implemented. I haven't met or heard of many other people in this day and age that share your sense of justice."
"Thanks?" I think?
He became completely serious, business-like again. I had a feeling this was the reason why he had wanted to speak to me in private. "I know you want to head out there to defend Orb and your friends and family. But this is the truth. We're running out of forces. Onogoro will fall within hours. Thankfully, most of the civilians will have evacuated by then but the fall of Onogoro will also destroy most of our military and its resources. The Earth Alliance will be able to occupy the remainder of the country at will when that happens."
If he was trying to dissuade me from getting out there and fighting, he was doing a poor job of it. I was just barely able to hold my tongue after what he said, as I sensed he wasn't anywhere near finished yet, and he was going to explain why I wasn't heading out there in the Freedom.
"The Archangel is being pulled off of the front lines to be rushed to the Mass Driver. An experimental new ship, the Kusanagi, will launch right after the Archangel. Orb's spirit will have to live on in those two ships, and I need you to do two things for me, Cagalli, when this plan goes into action."
"What?" I asked.
"First off, I want you and Athrun Zala to cover the Archangel and Kusanagi during their takeoffs, and when you have an opportunity link up with the Kusanagi mid-takeoff. Second . . ."
Uzumi sighed, and he surprised me by pulling out a picture of two newborns in their mother's arms. He showed it to me, just for a moment, before flipping it around, where I saw two names.
Kira. Cagalli.
It was a picture of us with Via Hibiki, our birth mother.
Looking at her, she was a beautiful woman, and we were . . . we were babies, I guess. Our eyes were closed like we were sleeping, and we were warmly wrapped in blankets.
"I need you to take care of your brother."
"D-Does he already know?" I asked.
"I will be telling him the truth before he departs on the Kusanagi. You both were there for each other during the Archangel's first journey, now I need the two of you to do that for the remainder of your lives."
He was going to know. Kira was finally going to find out he had a sister. But at what cost? By the way Uzumi Nara Athha was acting, it didn't seem like he was going to be coming with us. In fact, he seemed like he was going to stay behind and fight to the end, which frightened me. Surely there had to be a better way for him than to die here.
He smiled at me then. "Kira thinks highly of you. He's usually been a good judge of character his whole life, one or two bad judgments along the way."
For some reason I remembered Kira's story about putting a virus in government computers as a young child. For obvious reasons, I decided not to bring that up. "Thank you, L-Lord Uzumi."
"He may not be my biological son, but I am proud to have been his father," Athha said softly. "And I am proud of him."
He turned around then. "You need to deploy as soon as you possibly can. As many Astrays as possible are being loaded into the Kusanagi and Archangel. There is only a rearguard left and it will be broken through. Orb's last hope lies with you, Kira, and everyone else undertaking this journey, Cagalli. Don't let our hope, our ideals, die in space."
He left then along with his bodyguards, who had watched the whole conversation in solemn silence. It occurred to me after he vanished that I was never going to see him again. That I would never truly get to know the man who had been Kira's father for virtually all of Kira's life.
If this was the only plan left, I needed to make sure I got up into space. And make sure Kira made it too. We were both going to be separated from our adopted families now, our adopted families who were our realfamilies. All we were going to have was each other, until the war was over and we could return home . . . wherever home was now.
Wherever home would be from now on.
Part Four has begun. Anyone who's ever seen the original SEED knows this is when everything hits the fan. Expect a lot of twists, turns, and unexpectedness, along with general quick pacing . I hope people like it.
Also, please shoot me if I reference a Bon Jovi song in any of the chapter titles. It means I have gone certifiably insane.
