Happy Easter, everyone!
Chapter Seventy-Eight: Sweet Disposition
If L4 was going to be the place where we made our stand, the damn colony needed to stop falling into ruin, and also be defendable. Tall order, especially since there wasn't just one colony. L4 stood for a whole cluster of them, Mendel, the colony where that laboratory was discovered, was just the tip of the iceberg.
Kira had rigged L4 to do more broadcasts, both to infer messages of peace, but also to warn the populaces on both sides about the extremes of their own governments. He got a few out until he was informed by a few latecomers that both PLANT and the Earth Alliance were successfully blocking L4's transmissions, and there wasn't much good we could do about it then, though it didn't stop Kira from trying, and we got defectors anyway.
A lot of them, as predicted, were civilians. Mendel, sadly, was the most intact of L4, so they had to be settled there primarily while repairs of the other colonies began. I kept scanning the arrival reports, looking for my mom, dad, Stellar, and Elle, but none of them showed up.
They all had various skills. Doctors, teachers, construction workers (useful for getting the colonies put back together), etc. It was kind of amazing so many people, Coordinator and Natural, were looking just for a way out of the war and in a place where they would be safe. Talk began of forming some sort of basic government and economy. It was heady stuff.
As for me? I lived with Athrun on Mendel, as close to the port as we could, in the event we had to scramble. Well, Athrun had to scramble. There was no spare Mobile Suit for me considered to be worth risking my life in. I was clearly being saved for the Freedom when it was rebuilt.
It had been about two weeks since it was decided we would stay at L4 when it happened.
It was an ordinary day up until that point. I was denied access to the port where they were repairing Freedom by some new guards from one of the military vessels who came to us. "Hold on, you don't have clearance!"
"I do have clearance, I'm the pilot of the Freedom!" I reached for it while the guards were laughing.
"Sure thing, boy," the other guard added.
No matter where I went, or what I did, or how much time passed, some things never changed.
"I'm a girl, dumbass!"
I pulled out my identification. "Cagalli Yamato! Surely you've heard of the name?"
"Oh yeah!" one of the guards said. Then he put on a confused tone of voice. "Though I thought you were the pilot of the Strike."
"That's Mu La Flaga! I've switched machines!"
"Why would you have switched machines? Ain't Freedom a ZAFT machine?"
I was literally burying my face in my palm by that point. "Long story."
Really long story, though I am sure we're all aware of that by this point.
Athrun, who had been watching the whole spectacle with a bemused smirk, finally intervened. "She is the pilot of the Freedom, I can confirm this, as I'm the pilot of the Justice."
"The who?" one guard asked.
"The what?" the other asked.
"You have no idea what the Justice is?" Athrun asked, his face crestfallen.
"No idea. Who are you again?" the guard asked.
Athrun hung his head.
This is the problem with integrating a military out of mismatched personnel and ships from two different sides. The intentions are good, of course, but there are language barriers, communication problems, and not everyone is going to know the same information. It would take weeks, if not months, to get everyone on the same page. And we hadn't even decided who was ultimately in charge, though poor Kira seemed to have been promoted to public figurehead if nothing else.
After doing my daily routine of assisting in the Freedom's repairs however I could, I went back home and started scanning the newly arrived list for the names I so desperately wanted to see.
Only one military vessel had defected that day, it was from the Earth Alliance. The military vessels were becoming fewer and farther between; the traitors were rapidly being found in their ranks and getting purged before they could make a break for it. Odds are, it was going to end.
More surprising were the civilian vessels. I was amazed as many of them were coming as they were. Was there some secret Mass Driver being used I didn't know about, or were they being shot up into space via a more old-fashioned method? If so, how long would it last? The majority of the civilians arriving were Coordinators from the PLANTs, which was unsurprising as they were the ones who could make a break for it easier, as they were already in space and so weren't reliant on Mass Drivers. But how were the Earth civilians getting here? No one seemed to be willing to talk about it openly.
I was getting sick of spending hours scanning over the list every day, looking for the names. Caridad Yamato. Haruma Yamato. Stellar . . . what surname would she have? Presumably Yamato? Would that be true of Elle too, or would she still have the last name of Eliarez?
As always, my thoughts turned from such trivial ones to more existential ones?
Did they make it out of Orb? Were they living under Earth Alliance occupation? What had happened to Stellar if they didn't make it out? Were they all dead? Was Stellar enslaved like she had once been?
I was slowly being driven insane by the idea that maybe I had lost them all. Without Kira, I'd have no family at all.
I wanted, more than anything, for them to be okay. It hurt more to not know.
After another fruitless scan, I threw the scanner across the room, where it bounced off the wall, off of Athrun's bed, and onto the floor. The noise of it striking the wall brought Athrun into a room like a tennis ball summons a dog.
"Cagalli?" Athrun asked.
"I'm fine," I said, as I stared at the scanner on the floor. Amazingly, it was still functioning, although beeping weirdly, so I likely had damaged it in some way.
Athrun looked over at the scanner. "You're not fine if you're throwing stuff across the room."
"Bite me," I growled, but instead of giving me space, Athrun took it as a cue he needed to get closer and sit down beside me on the bed.
I loved and hated him for it.
"I . . . I keep looking for them, and they're not coming," I said.
"They'll turn up," Athrun replied.
"Alive or dead?" I asked.
"Alive. The Prime Minister had issued a full-scale evacuation of Onogoro. I'm sure they got out. I don't know if they can get into space, but they escaped Onogoro," Athrun said, with what seemed like absolute sincerity.
"How do you know this?" I asked as I looked into his green eyes.
"Because I do," Athrun said.
"That's not good enough, Athrun!" I said. "It's been over two weeks since we left Onogoro and there's no sign of them, on the arrival list or anywhere else!"
"Cagalli," Athrun said softly. "You can't give up hope. They're not confirmed dead, right?"
"No," I said after a moment to think it over.
"Then you can't give up hope. They could show up tomorrow, or they can't leave at all and you'll have to track them down on Earth after the war's over. Or somewhere in-between. You have to think about it that way, or you'll go insane," Athrun said.
He was right. I knew he was right, that the only rational thing was to not give up hope and not let my worrying consume me. But there just wasn't enough to do, ironically. We were in the oft-forgotten part of war where it is incessant boredom, before the bursts of terror that are far more infamous. I couldn't keep myself occupied enough to not think about it.
"Please don't die on me too," I managed.
"I'm not," Athrun said. "And they haven't died on you either."
I looked into his green eyes again, and I felt something hot and longing rising in me, something that I can't quite explain, but couldn't muster the strength to resist.
"Cagalli, what's wrong?" Athrun asked, his eyes lit with concern.
I grabbed him by the shirt collar and brought him towards me, and I kissed him.
I placed my other hand onto his smooth, hard chest and fumbled for his buttons.
This was different from the other times we made out. I knew it was, right from the outset. It was like I was in total sensory overload, a passenger for the ride. I had a faint idea of what was happening, but it didn't seem quite real to me, like it was through a haze. The feelings consuming me felt like lava and there was nothing more I wanted than Athrun, closer and closer to me . . . until . . .
We both rested on the bed next to each other, both staring up at the ceiling, into space.
"What did we just do?" Athrun asked.
"I don't know," I replied.
This is what they mean by 'the heat of the moment'. Where you lose your rationality, and ride a wave of warm feelings until you wind up somewhere much different when you come to your senses. And it slowly dawns on you what you did. And then your heart races all over again because when it hits you, a different type of feeling consumes you.
Fear.
"Oh God," I finally said. "What did we do, Athrun?"
"I . . ." I knew Athrun was looking away from me, he was wondering about the consequences too.
I looked over at him, and he was indeed looking away, staring at the wall.
I wanted to hit him, shake him, and scream at him. We should have stopped. Why didn't we stop? But before I could yell anything at him, a horrible truth occurred to me. I was the one who kissed him and dragged him into this situation to begin with! Yeah, he didn't stop, but I was the one who started it and I didn't tell him to stop either!
The anger faded, and instead tears came to my eyes. I reached my right hand over and stroked his sweating blue hair, which was yet another uncomfortable indication of what we did.
"I'm sorry. It's my fault," I said softly. "My fault, Athrun."
He didn't say a word, but one of his hands reached up and gripped it softly.
"Cagalli, what if . . ." He couldn't bring himself to say it. And I could barely bring myself to contemplate it.
"We'll worry about it in a couple of weeks. Just . . . we can't let this happen, ever again," I said.
"Yeah. We can't," Athrun said softly.
At least he wasn't going to walk away. He wasn't going to be a coward and walk away. That meant more than anything else at that moment.
I just hoped that meant he wouldn't do something just as stupid:
Die for my sake.
The next couple of weeks were predictably awkward. Neither of us could look at each other in the eye. I think we were both regretting sharing the same slightly worn-down building, because of what happened. We just jumped from first base all the way to . . . I'm still not comfortable going over the details, even as I write this down.
I had started writing more stuff down since settling in during the lull, trying to remember as much as I could. It didn't help my anxiety, but it did keep me from becoming obsessive over what Athrun and I had done, and also over the fate of my family. I would spend hours writing everything I could remember, and I wasn't sure who I was writing for. Was I writing in the hopes of turning it into a book? Was I writing for others? Was I writing simply for myself? I wasn't sure.
Maybe it was just because, after everything that happened to me, I needed to write it all down to put it into perspective. I had seen both sides of the war, and the injustices that were happening on all levels. And yet, despite it all, I had managed to make it this far, and so had Athrun, and so had most of my friends.
Yet, I could not escape the dread in the back in my mind that was festering. I had no doubt that not everyone was going to get it through the final battle, whenever it was waged. Whether it was Flay and her odd determination to protect me that got her killed, or someone finally got in a kill shot against the Archangel . . . people were going to die, and I knew it. My past vows to protect everyone felt foolish, naïve, childish.
In a way, I was glad that Stellar's abilities had only lingered in me for a few days. I could not imagine how I would've taken everything I had seen and experienced while still having the extrasensory perception Stellar did. Perhaps that would have finally driven me insane, I don't know.
I'll probably never know.
The arrival list was getting smaller and smaller each passing day, and every few hours I found myself reflexively grabbing my stomach, as if checking for any signs, as impossible as they would be this early, that there was something in there. It was a stressful, terrifying existence with a lot of disappointment and crying.
Athrun would hug me and tell me everything's okay, but after what we had done before, I didn't want to let him in too close, before I would lose control to my desires again. I couldn't take another risk.
But then one day . . .
The arrival list was frighteningly small by that point, only a couple hundred names. Just two ships, both civilian. But then I saw the first name on the list.
Caridad Yamato.
My heart skipped multiple beats as I stared at the name for a good few minutes. Then my eyes finally looked down as my vision blurred and cleared as I blinked tears out of my eyes.
Haruma Yamato.
Stellar Yamato.
Elle Yamato.
I clutched my chest as my heart slammed into it. Every emotion imaginable, and probably some beyond the scope of human thought, surged through me in that moment.
I covered my mouth to keep any sobbing sounds escaping my mouth, even though no one was around to hear it. I looked up and down through those four names time and time again, as if just seeing them was a figment of my imagination. But the names stayed, proving I wasn't suddenly falling prey to delusions.
After a few minutes of staring and crying, it occurred to me to run to them.
And that's what I did.
It didn't occur to me to try to drive there, or ride a bike. I just ran.
It's one of those things that suddenly you turn into a marathon sprinter over. Everything, including your own human endurance and limitations, suddenly don't mean a whole lot. You just forget about them, because the drive to get there is so strong.
It was only when I finally made it to the spaceport that it suddenly hit me I had sprinted from my lodgings all the way to the port without stopping or even having a glass of water.
You've probably seen pictures or video of marathon runners collapsing at the end out of sheer exhaustion. Yeah, that's what I did. Fell right on my hands and knees, leaning against the wall, gasping for air, and suddenly feeling like I had no water left in my body, I had sweated all of it out.
And a dehydration headache on top of that.
I forced myself to stand back up, even though I was dizzy and my knees were trembling like all of the strength in them had vanished.
It didn't matter how exhausted I was. It really didn't, not at that point. I had to make it to them, no matter what.
So despite sweating enough that I felt I was going to melt externally and dry up internally, I pushed on into the port, hoping I would see them.
That's when I saw them.
I saw Mom first in the crowd of refugees. That was all I needed to see.
"Mom!" I shouted, even though shouting that seemed to rob me of any energy I had left.
Mom spun towards me the moment she heard my voice. "Cagalli?"
The moment I saw Mom's green eyes peer into my own, I suddenly felt all of the struggling, all of the suffering I had dealt with since leaving Orb, it had all been worth it.
The sad thing was that I was not able to see them at our Onogoro home. But even so . . .
"Mom!" I charged forward through the crowd and with the last bit of strength I had, thrust myself into her arms.
"Mom! Mom!" I sobbed into her chest as my legs finally gave out, forcing Mom to kneel in order to keep supporting me. I felt her arms wrap around me tightly, but with just enough trembling to show that the moment was starting to affect Mom as well.
"Oh God, Cagalli," Mom managed as she held me. Her hand reached up from my back and brushed the tips of my hair.
"I'm sorry," I blubbered. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Mom!"
"It's okay. It's okay." I felt her lips kiss me on the top of my head, and all of a sudden, it felt like a gigantic weight had been taken off of my shoulders.
What is it about parents that make everything feel like it's somehow going to work out?
I looked up from Mom's chest to see Dad standing nearby as well, as well as Stellar and Elle, both staring at me like they had seen a ghost.
Despite my tears, despite my exhaustion, I could feel the wide, joyful smile on my face. They were okay. They were all okay. All of them.
"Hi, everyone," I said.
The group embrace that followed was probably something out of cheesy family dramas, but I didn't care.
Just knowing they were all here, that they had all made it . . .
It finally gave me a bit of hope, that maybe, just maybe . . .
We were just going to make it.
