Chapter Seventy-One: Apologize

I had the worst feeling of dread when I boarded the Eternal.

Siegel Clyne had put his trust in me. The former chairman of the PLANTs put his trust in me. He had given the newest Mobile Suit, and arguably its most powerful, for me. And what had I done with it? I couldn't save Orb. I couldn't even save Lacus.

What good had I done so far? Would Siegel Clyne take the Freedom away from me? He definitely had just cause to do it, considering I had done nothing but failed with it, other than shooting down a whole bunch of Earth Alliance Mobile Suits. But even that didn't save Orb.

I wasn't going to be alone on the Eternal, of course. It was essentially a pow-wow between the crews of all three ships, with Ledonir Kisaka and Kira's fabled teacher, Erica Simmons, representing the Kusanagi. Badgiruel and La Flaga were representing the Archangel, and all of the Gundam pilots and Prince Kira were there too.

I couldn't shake the sense of discomfort, however, as I boarded the bridge and saw Siegel Clyne.

We stared at each other for a short while as everyone filed in. I wasn't sure what to say, or just look away in shame. I decided it was worse if I looked away.

"I'm sorry," I finally said.

"Where is she?" he asked.

That was about the last thing I had expected to hear, and I didn't understand what it meant. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Where is she? My daughter, where is she?" he asked.

After staring at his tormented eyes, I couldn't answer. I couldn't. I was so ashamed and afraid that I couldn't say a word, all I could even see in that moment was Lacus fading away as she bled out.

Badgiruel stepped in front of me. "Perhaps it is not my place to speak, but we have more important matters than Lacus Clyne, Chairman Clyne."

"I want to know where her body is," Siegel Clyne replied. "Once I know, we can discuss those matters."

Badgiruel nodded, and then I saw her violet eyes turn right towards me. "Well, Cagalli Yamato?"

Between the shame of facing Clyne and the fear of Natarle Badgiruel, I felt like I'd rather crawl under a rock and die. But, somehow, my mind and body came to the conclusion that the fear of Badgiruel was worse than the shame from Clyne. "I . . . I couldn't take her body to Earth. I passed by Junius Seven and I-I left her body there with a marker so . . . so I could find the body later to give her a permanent resting place."

I braced myself. I wasn't sure how Siegel Clyne would take hearing that, and I was afraid of the answer.

I heard his voice then. "I understand."

There was a pause, and his attention turned to Badgiruel. "I would like to retrieve her body then."

Suddenly, I realized how all of this could fall apart. There was no way Badgiruel or Kisaka would allow this. Not when the plan was to head to L4. Plus, Junius Seven was close to the other side of the world at this point. It'd be too far out of the way, and both Badgiruel and Kisaka had to know this.

And they did. "I'm sorry, Chairman Clyne, but we can't do that. Junius Seven is too far away, and, although you won't like to hear this, the Archangel was forced to take supplies from Junius Seven earlier in the war. We took most of what was still usable, Chairman, so we can't use that as a resupply zone even if Junius Seven was closer."

That was Badgiruel, and honestly, I think she was lying about taking most of the usable supplies. Junius Seven was enormous, and they only explored a small amount of the station. Surely there had to be more in there, but perhaps Badgiruel wanted to make it clear to Clyne that the chances of us heading there were zero.

Clyne's only response to that was to look away, staring into space. The woman in the captain's chair, Talia Gladys, took over the conversation. "Where were you planning to go then?"

"We decided the best place to go on our current course is L4," Badgiruel replied.

Gladys nodded. "I've heard some strange rumors about that place, rumors I'm sure Chairman Clyne can expand upon. However, L4 is largely still intact. As long as we are careful enough to not trigger whatever incident that forced the evacuation of L4, there should be plenty of water and non-perishable supplies to be found."

She turned over to Clyne. "I highly recommend we join them, sir. We don't have much time to decide. The Earth Alliance has conquered Victoria, I should emphasize. They're already beginning to rush reinforcements into space and they will arrive in our location if we wait for too long."

"The Earth Alliance retook Victoria?" Badgiruel asked, completely surprised.

"They must have retaken the Mass Driver there," Kisaka added.

"Yes," Talia Gladys replied. "ZAFT's military forces are a fraction of what they once were thanks to JOSH-A. The Earth Alliance used overwhelming force and ZAFT couldn't even get the explosives into place in time. The ease in which the Earth Alliance overran Victoria has caused demoralization to take hold in ZAFT and the PLANTs."

"Doesn't surprise me," La Flaga replied. "I've heard rumors that ZAFT lost ninety percent of its military in Alaska."

"It's the truth," I replied. "I heard about the casualty rate while I was still with ZAFT."

Talia Gladys looked down, as if ashamed. "They are calling up twelve and thirteen-year-olds, as well as reservists and retired military. Chairman Zala is willing to send prepubescent children and grandparents to their deaths, just to continue the war."

She bit her lip. "That's what pushed me here. I . . . I can't tolerate that."

I wondered if Talia Gladys was a mother herself, judging by the way she was acting.

"I can't imagine a lot of people do," La Flaga replied gravely.

"A lot of people in the PLANTs have turned against this war, but they can't do anything. Zala is using all surveillance technology available to make sure no one steps out of line. There's been enough executions for fear to rule in the PLANTs," Gladys replied.

I heard the door open behind me, and I turned to see Athrun leaving the bridge. It didn't take long for me to realize that the discussion about his father had gotten to him.

"Please excuse me," I said, and I floated past everyone and left the bridge as well.

I saw Athrun floating down the hall, his back turned to me. "Athrun."

He turned towards me. "Oh, Cagalli."

"You're not going to sneak out that easily. The door makes a 'whoosh' noise," I replied as I floated up to him.

He didn't respond at all to my lame attempt at humor. "I'm sorry, I just . . . I just couldn't listen anymore."

I knew why. "I know. It's because of your father."

"What has gotten into him?" he asked. I wasn't sure if he was asking me this, or asking himself, or asking some higher power.

"I don't know," I said, being the only person around who could possibly answer his question. "But it sounds like he's losing his mind."

I saw Athrun's hands clenched into fists. "I want to go to PLANT. I want to go there and find out what his intentions are."

I immediately had flashbacks of Tolle trying to become a Skygrasper pilot. I just had a notion that this would end badly. "You can't go."

"Why not?" Athrun asked.

I grabbed his hands. "Because I won't let you!"

He stared at me in shock. It took me a moment to realize what exactly I had just done.

It had been automatic. Reflex. Something had seized my heart and I reacted the only way I knew how. And now I was holding both of his hands in mine.

Oh my God, I thought as I stared into his deep blue eyes. Oh my God. It's really happening. It's really happening.

"I won't let you go," I managed, despite how much my voice was shaking. I wanted to melt, but my determination to get those stupid thoughts out of his head was far more important, it held me together. "I won't let you run off on a one-man crusade to talk your father out of this. I won't. I won't let you do it, Athrun."

"Cagalli, I . . ." He looked at a complete loss for words.

"I . . . I . . ." I knew the words were inside me, but it was like some final, invisible barrier was erected around them.

I looked at his chest, and then back up at his eyes, and made a rash judgment to smash the barrier. "I won't let you do it because I love you!"

It wasn't like just the barrier had been smashed then. It was like everything has come apart inside me. The words revealing all of my feelings felt like they were burning me from the inside, and I felt hot tears spill from my eyes and float between Athrun and I as we stared at each other.

I grabbed his shirt. Just my fingers brushing against his chest muscles made my heart erupt some more. I wanted this. All of this. "So . . . so there!"

I pulled him towards me and I kissed him.

Chalk one up for the heat of the moment.


While Athrun and I were having our moment, the crews made up their minds. Siegel Clyne was incredibly reluctant, and it took the threat of Talia Gladys to declare him invalid for leadership to make him sign on. But we set off to L4.

It turned out the Eternal was designed to carry the Freedom and the Justice. So Athrun and I were going to have to stay on the Eternal, at least until we made it to L4. This made things incredibly awkward, as Athrun had basically become lost in a daze post-kiss, and that meant I would be sharing the same ship as Siegel Clyne. I was going to have to patch things up between him and I, and I wasn't looking forward to the conversation.

Much to my surprise as I wandered the ship was that Kira was still onboard. I bumped into him at the mess hall.

"Oh, you're still here? I thought you would've been gone back to the Kusanagi," I said.

"Well . . . I figured it wouldn't hurt to stay, at least until Mendel," Kira replied. "I wanted to ask you a few things."

"Oh?" I sat down by him then. The Eternal had one thing going for it: fresher food than the Archangel. Then again, the Eternal probably was able to grab the best of ZAFT's supplies before blasting away, something that the Archangel and Kusanagi wouldn't have access to.

"Does it look like to you that it's going to come down to one final battle?" Kira asked.

I had no idea what he meant. "Could you explain that better?"

"What the captain, Gladys, said. That the Earth forces are sending ship after ship into space. Do you think they could be massing for a final attack on the PLANTs, especially since ZAFT's numbers are low and they are drafting the young and the elderly?"

I wanted to scoff. That sounded like something out of a bad war movie. However . . . "I wouldn't discount that. Blue Cosmos probably would want to launch an attack like that. It'd like something out of a war movie, one final battle to settle it all and just overwhelm the opponent. ZAFT may have technological superiority but if they have to draft kids and the elderly just to have enough bodies on the line, they will get run over. And that'll be it."

Kira nodded. "What I was thinking is that . . . if the Earth Alliance attempts this type of brazen attack, it'll be a Pyrrhic victory. ZAFT has the Boaz fortress to get through just to get at the PLANTs, and that will be tough to crack on its own. And I am sure that ZAFT has a trump card of some kind to use as a last resort."

It wouldn't surprise me if they did. ZAFT wouldn't let the Earth Alliance just walk all over them. They, at the very least, had another prototype Mobile Suit lying around. I remembered hearing the name 'Providence' thrown around while I was at ZAFT, but what 'Providence' was, I didn't know.

Even though this 'Providence' wasn't going to be strong enough to turn the tide of the war, it would cost a lot of Earth Alliance lives to destroy it, unless they sent Joan Memphis and those three drugged boys to smash it, maybe.

"Maybe. The way Berlin fell to the Russians in the Anno Domini era was a massive final assault that did not end until the entire city was occupied, and it ended in a lot of blood and tears." Judging by my reading of the event, it's a massive understatement, but I was trying to make things succinct to Kira. A history lesson wasn't something I wanted to do.

"I think that both sides will be out to kill each other. ZAFT is going to try to take as many Naturals with them as they can. The Earth Alliance is going to shoot for extermination. How can three ships stop them?"

"Well, one thing we have that they don't is nearly all of the GUNDAMs," I replied. "The Freedom, Justice, Strike, Aegis, Blitz, and Buster all belong to us. That will give us something, unless those four GUNDAMs I fought at Onogoro bother us again."

I had no doubt they would bother us again, if only to stop us from wiping out Blue Cosmos. It was inevitable.

I looked over at Kira. "Right now, what we need to do is worry about making it to L4. Let's worry about everything else once we get there. We don't have radio frequencies strong enough to reach anyone else anyway. It'd make more sense to try to do it once we have L4's transmitters."

Kira nodded, and looked away. "Yeah, you're probably right. Not much good we can do yelling at both sides to stop when they're already going at it."

I threw my arm around his shoulders. It felt natural to do this for some reason, now that we knew who we were. "You have a good idea. We just need to turn L4 back on once we get there. And who knows? Maybe people, ships, Mobile Suits and Armors, they'll come."

"Yeah." I saw that Kira was blushing then. "Um . . . perhaps this is something we can wait to do until we're in private? We're kinda still in public here, and this isn't the Archangel."

I looked around, and realized all of the ZAFT, or ex-ZAFT personnel really, were staring at us.

I immediately let go of Kira and folded my hands under the table. "R-Right."

I hoped that was the biggest incident we would have until we docked at L4.


It took a few days to make it to L4, specifically we docked at the Mendel section as planned. It didn't take long to find a ton of ammunition and battery packs to distribute to the ships, although some would require some engineering to actually be useful.

The advantage of the Freedom was that its power never ran out. It was nuclear-powered. I could patrol as long as it was necessary, there was never any concern for range. Well, other than my own stress and well-being. The great flaw of the Mobile Suit was that it was not automated; it still required a human pilot.

Then again, something as powerful as a Mobile Suit that could operate on its own probably would end the world right then and there.

I found Athrun in Mendel, sitting by himself. The area had been cleared of any biohazard possibility, so we were allowed to walk around exposed. "Hey, Athrun."

Athrun looked up at me, surprised. "Oh, Cagalli. I didn't know you were checking this area out too."

"Well, they secured the area, and as far as we know, there's no secret ZAFT cabal hiding around here, much less the rumors that there was some sort of zombie apocalypse." I almost laughed. "Zombies. Could you imagine?"

"Considering some of the crazy stuff I've seen, I'd really rather not."

I sat down by him. Mendel, and L4 in general, still had its artificial gravity in operation. It was in surprisingly good condition for a colony that had fallen into ruin. "Athrun, I have some advice: try to lighten up a little, okay?"

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and I felt Athrun stiffen as I did. "Well, at least you're still shaving. That's good."

"Hm." He seemed really lost, distant.

Trying to play the bright, cheery influence was clearly not going to work. "Still thinking about your father?"

"No. Actually, I'm not." He looked down. "I . . . I just feel guilty, if that makes sense. When you kissed me, a few days ago, and just now, it's like . . . it's like I got everything I ever wanted. But . . ."

"But what?" I asked.

"I killed your boyfriend on Earth," Athrun said. "In a way, I feel like I've done something terrible, unforgivable, to you. Why do I deserve you after doing that?"

I completely understood his line of thinking. After all . . . "Well, I screwed up and got Lacus killed. Siegel Clyne still won't look at me in the eye, I don't know if it's anger, or just because I'm a reminder of what happened to his daughter. Lacus and you were engaged to be married, Athrun, and I know you had feelings for her, don't lie and say you didn't."

"What are you trying to say?" Athrun asked, looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

I couldn't help it, I smiled at him. "What I'm saying is that we've both screwed up, we both failed each other. Let's not do that anymore."

I brushed my hand against his cheek, and he looked at me, stunned. "C-Cagalli, I . . ."

"I'm not letting you down anymore, Athrun. Or anyone else. Lacus said something to me in her final moments: power alone isn't enough, but neither is intelligence. You need both, and your soul. I have to stay true to myself in order to save everyone, and that's what I'm going to do."

I felt his chest with my other hand. My heart was pounding against my chest. I wanted this again. I wanted him. I wanted him to be safe and happy in my arms, lost in bliss. "Stay true to yourself, Athrun. We've been handed probably the hardest task anyone could be handed. We can do it. I know we can . . ."

I couldn't resist the temptation anymore and kissed him, and my hands quickly wrapped around him. A moment later, for the first time, I felt Athrun's arms wrap around my back and grip me tightly.

I felt odd, almost peaceful, as I kissed him repeatedly. Like I could be lost in him. That everything else, L4, the world, it was gone, that Athrun and I just had our own little bubble and nothing could penetrate it. It took me a moment to realize the oddity of the situation: after all of this time, with Athrun pursuing me, it was me who was being the aggressive one here, it was me who was pursuing him. I was the one making our relationship become more than just friendship.

Who saw that coming? I certainly hadn't.

I think we would've crossed the line into making out if the alarms hadn't started ringing shortly after we started.

I separated from him right away. "Athrun, I think we've got serious trouble."

"Did someone find us already?" Athrun asked, confused.

"Someone must have. But I wasn't aware Kira had his plan approved, much less started broadcasting," I replied.

"Huh?" I had forgotten, Athrun knew nothing about Kira's plan.

"I'll explain later! Let's go!"

I ran off then, heading towards the Eternal. I heard the echoing announcements: "Earth Alliance ship approaching L4. I repeat, we have an Earth Alliance ship approaching L4."

A lone ship had to mean a scout, and that meant only one thing:

We were going to have to recruit it, or destroy it.

At least, that's what I thought.