Glad there's people excited to see this back. Here's a long-ish chapter for you all. Major revelations here.
Chapter Eighty: The Quiet Things that No One Ever Knows
It was the next day that they contacted me.
"Cagalli, we need you on the Archangel," said Arnold Neumann that morning on the communique.
"You can't be serious," I said. "What do you guys need me for? Emergency meeting? Earth Alliance or ZAFT starting up something?"
"It's not an emergency. It more involves the person that they woke up from cyro. She's demanding to see you before she talks."
If this wasn't Arnold Neumann talking, I would have laughed. This was rich. Why would Semi-Crazy Cyro Woman want to speak to me? What had I done to deserve that? Plus…
"How do you know she wants me? She never got my name."
"She described you pretty well, and it was vouched by the men who brought her back into the cell. Like it or not you're a bit of a celebrity among everyone here at L4, Cagalli."
He was right about that. It probably didn't help that I had fought for both sides in the war; it had made me a propaganda symbol for both sides without me knowing. I had only just gotten to watch some of the sickening commercials, and see some of the posters, both sides had made about me, positive and negative. My reaction to them are largely unprintable in a standard news outlet, and I'm not going to waste time describing them in detail, beyond a furious bile forming in the back of my throat.
"All right, I'll head on over," I said. "This better not be a trap."
"She's too weak for it to be a trap, Cagalli, and we're not letting her have any sharp instruments, not even plastic utensils. She's on suicide watch, so I suggest you get here as soon as possible."
Another bit of lovely information. I was already starting to regret agreeing to head to the Archangel. Didn't they have anyone else who could play therapist? Why me? I had to be just as screwed up as everyone else, right?
"Gotcha. I'll be there as soon as I can." I killed the communication, before Neumann could add anything more that would make me regret my decision even more.
Always had to be me. I had to talk Hilda down from shooting Elle. I had to talk Flay down more times than I can count. I've had to comfort Elle and Stellar on multiple occasions. I have had to be everyone's confidant, their friend, their companion.
When was it going to finally be my turn?
It hit me as I prepared to leave, that I did have someone who I could have confided to, and she was dead.
Figured.
The room was cold, and sterile, and I saw the pink-haired woman sitting alone in a room with no amenities. Not even her bed had blankets. I felt disgusted at this atrocious treatment of her, but then I remembered Neumann's warning about her being on a suicide watch. She had probably tried everything possible to kill herself, including strangling or smothering herself with the blankets.
They were not going to let her have her wish. And I wasn't going to let her have it either. She was not going to wake up after centuries of sleep only to kill herself on us now. It would not only be a a colossal waste, but she deserved the chance to find better, and to help us.
Thinking this, I at least had the confidence to know how I wanted to play this.
I approached her and sat down in front of her without saying a word. She looked up at me, her green eyes peeking through her bangs. "Hello again."
I was reminded of Flay suffering in that prison cell, on the verge of going insane. Except this was different. Flay was on the verge of losing her mind from her pain. This woman was suffering in an entirely different way. Her eyes were filled with this tremendous despair that pierced you in such a way that it felt contagious, that if you let your guard down you'd be pulled down with her into the abyss.
"Hi. I don't think I got to introduce myself yesterday," I said. "My name's Cagalli Yamato."
"You must be wondering why I asked for you," the woman replied softly.
Her voice was stronger, cleaner, compared to yesterday. Like her vocal cords had warmed up and their strength had partially returned.
"That is part of it, yes," I replied.
"I saw you protecting that child," the woman replied. "When I saw you do that, I knew that you weren't an ordinary soldier or killer. You have principles, you protect the innocent. You're not just a killer out for the spoils of war."
I remembered shielding Elle on sheer instinct from the woman. That was all it took for the woman to decideI was the right person to talk to?
"I have been taking care of that girl since her mother died," I replied. "Her name's Elle. I consider her a shared responsibility with my mother and myself."
"I see." Her face was red, puffy, outside of the blue mark on her right cheek. She had been crying a lot, especially recently. Her voice had a throaty weight to it that hinted further at how she felt.
"What is your name?" I asked.
The woman smiled for the first time. "What does it matter to you? No one here knows me. I might as well not exist, right?"
"It matters to me because I want to talk to you as an equal, not just as a 'woman'," I replied.
"Finally, someone gives me a good answer." The smile trembled, and I thought she was going to cry again. "My name is Feldt Grace."
My first thought was 'Finally'. My second was 'What kind of name is Feldt Grace?'.
Then I made myself refocus. I didn't exactly have the most 'normal' name either. I remembered being mocked for my Asian last name when my Asian ancestry doesn't really show itself. Mocking Feldt for having a silly name wouldn't get us anywhere, and it wasn't appropriate anyway.
"All right, Feldt," I said, saying the name aloud so it'd feel more natural rolling off my tongue, "I guess I have some questions to ask you."
"Answer mine first," Feldt replied. "Where am I? What is L4? Where is Setsuna's flower?"
I wanted to strangle her. "Answer my questions first, and then I'll answer yours!" I begged.
"Where is it?" Feldt demanded, the tears beginning to leak from her eyes. "What happened to it?"
"I don't even know what you mean," I replied. "Who is 'Setsuna'? And what flower? I highly doubt any flower could survive cyro."
"It's not that kind of flower… God, what am I saying?" Feldt reached up with one her hands and grabbed her forehead, as if she had suddenly developed a splitting headache. "How could none of you know? It was enormous, golden and beautiful, right in space, past the moon."
I really thought at that moment Feldt Grace was as crazy as her name. "I really have no clue what you're talking about."
"How can you not know?" Feldt stared at me imploringly.
"Because I don't?" I was about ready to give up. Space flowers, give me a break. "Look, Feldt, there is no record of any 'space flower' anywhere in human history. Or a 'Setsuna' having anything to do with it. All I know is where we are, we're in L4, an abandoned colony that we're trying to get functioning again, hiding in the debris belt because there's-"
Her eyes widened then in absolute horror, and she interrupted me. "What did you say?"
"The debris belt?" I immediately realized I should have played dumb, because Feldt suddenly started shaking as if this invisible cold water had splashed all over her.
"There… there was no debris belt… never when I lived… even when they woke us up fifty, one hundred, two hundred years later… no debris belt…"
A shaky breath that sounded almost like a gasp. "Oh my God. You really did it. You blew it up."
It was as if she had gained superhuman reflexes and strength in that moment. She reached out with her arms and seized me by the collar of my shirt, dragging me close to her so I had no choice but to stare into her green eyes, lit with fury as hot tears poured out of them.
"Damn you! God damn you all to hell! Why did you do it? Why?"
I knew that if I did not calm Feldt down this conversation would be over with and there'd be no way they'd let me talk to her again. And then Feldt really would find a way to kill herself.
"I don't know!" I pleaded as I put my hands on her wrists. Her strength was already giving out, I could feel it. Her body still wasn't functioning right, she was losing her strength at key moments.
"Why not?" she screamed.
"Because none of us know about it!" I shouted back. "As far as we know, it never existed!"
"Oh my God…" The rage seemed to break in her eyes, and all I could see was her despair. It was like any will to fight, or even function, had vanished from her in an instant. Her strength gave out and she collapsed into a ball right in front of me, her eyes staring out into space.
"Ms. Sumeragi… Christina… Lockon… Allelujah… Meilina…"
Names that had no meaning to me passed through her lips and vanished into the air a second later, replaced by another name that as far as I knew belonged to a dog.
Her right hand reached out to me, as her eyes lit faintly with the sign of life again. "Please tell me I'm not alone. Please tell me there's someone else. Please."
Hearing those words finally brought tears to my own eyes, and an ache in my chest. Those words were from an emotion I understood all too well. It was an emotion I had felt in Tassil, in my own homeland, in space, watching this woman's near-doppleganger die in my arms…
"I'm sorry," I replied. "No one else made it. They were under too long."
The way her mouth opened, a soft, wordless gasp that sounded like an attempt to scream that was cut short, made me regret saying those words.
There were no more words then. Just tears, and the sobs of the woman as she finally broke completely, her right hand clutching my left like it was for dear life, like she would drown in the sea if I let her go.
I realized then, in that moment, that I couldn't let go. To let her go would symbolize her full abandonment, and grant her permission to leave the living behind forever.
What she had said was complete nonsense, but I knew there was something else going on here. She knewthings. All of a sudden, the pieces that never added up about Cosmic Era were right here. Feldt Grace must have had some idea of what happened in the latter days of Anno Domini, the gaps in those years that had never been uncovered, like a lost history.
She needed to know she was not some relic from Anno Domini unearthed, but a woman whose now lived in Cosmic Era, and needed to feel she belonged.
So I brought her closer to me, and hugged her, and let her cry and wail and scream for her friends, for the loss of her time, the loss of her hope.
The least I could do was show her she was not alone.
"What's the deal with her?" I asked Dr. Jacqueline Grumman afterwards, leaving Feldt in her cell.
"As far as I can tell, she was under cyro for much too long," Dr. Grumman replied. "This is not a science I am proficient in, I'm amazed I was able to revive her at all. But I think being in cyro-sleep for so long has been a detriment to her both mentally and physically."
"In other words, she could be crazy," I replied.
"I wouldn't say that, at least not completely, but there's a good possibility her thoughts and memories are a jumble right now. So she's seeing a giant space flower when she's probably thinking of home, or perhaps a flower she gave her boyfriend or received from him. That's my best guess."
I looked back out into the video of Feldt's cell, where she was sitting alone again. "I don't know. When I mentioned the debris belt, she seemed to think that the space flower formed the debris belt. She accused us of blowing it up."
"I heard the whole thing, as did Captain Badgiruel and the other leaders," Dr. Grumman replied. "Maybe she's mixing it up with a space station of some kind that existed in the Reconstruction War."
The doctor eyed me curiously. "You don't seriously believe a space flower would actually exist, do you?"
"I don't know. After everything I've seen and experienced, I wouldn't discount it. Especially after Stellar and her friends."
Dr. Grumman bit her lip. Auel Neider was still bonded to her, and she knew it. "Right. Good point. I still think it's a jumble of her memories mixing together, however."
Logically, that would make the most sense, but she seemed to truly believe in those memories. But wouldn't everyone, if that was all they knew?
I looked at her, still sitting alone in the barren room. Her resemblance to Lacus was still grating at me, it was like my friend was suffering in that room alone. "You're really not letting her have anything."
"She's tried to kill herself multiple times. If she can get ahold of herself, we can try to let her have some amenities," the doctor replied gravely.
"She's not going to get better sitting in the closest thing we have to a padded room," I replied.
I remembered thinking that if we could ever get Siegel Clyne to come out of seclusion, he could never meet, see, or even hear of Feldt Grace. Her resemblance to Lacus was not something I could shake and I am sure it was influencing what I was saying.
And that was just me. I figured Athrun could handle it, at least about as well as I was, but there was no way Siegel Clyne would be able to accept Feldt being around. She wasn't a perfect doppelganger but the resemblance was uncanny.
"If we could assimilate her into the crew, any crew, we'd be able to treat her like a normal person," Dr. Grumman replied.
Her obstinacy was getting on my nerves. "Fine. Then I'm going back in there."
"You don't have to," Dr. Grumman said.
"And what are we going to do? Just have her sit alone? You're going to send someone else in there?"
"We've tried sending others in there, she won't speak to them," Dr. Grumman replied.
"Then I guess it has to be me because I'm the only one she'll talk to," I said, and prepared to leave when Dr. Grumman spoke again.
"You're the one who showed her this world isn't hopeless," Dr. Grumman replied. "I heard what she said, that when you thought there was danger you put yourself between her and the little girl."
"I know that, but I also know…" Suddenly, it hit me.
The words Feldt had said when I aimed the gun at her. "Please. Don't shoot me."
For a suicidal woman, she had a rather strong unwillingness to die when I pointed my gun at her.
I had it. I knew how to get through to her.
"I'm going back in there right now," I said. "I have an idea of how to make her snap out of it."
"Don't do anything stupid," the doctor replied as I made it to the door.
"You know me," I said as the doors slid open.
The doors didn't close fast enough for me to not hear the doctor's response. "Yes. That's what I'm afraid of."
She had a point there.
They reopened the cell for me and I walked inside. I wasn't sure how I was going to make my brilliant plan work, but I needed to get an opening to make the point to Feldt.
How I was going to get it was something I didn't know yet. The nice approach, or be intentionally antagonistic?
I decided on the former. Less chances for things to go wrong.
"Hey, Feldt," I said as they closed the door behind me.
"Hello." Feldt looked up at me again. It was a mirror image of our first meeting, with her bangs partially obscuring her eyes. This was something that had to change.
"You feel any better?" I made a show of scanning the room. "They still haven't given you anything, huh?"
"It's all right. I haven't given them any reason to think I can be trusted," Feldt replied softly.
"Why?"
My opening was slowly appearing itself before me. I just had to keep pushing, and then I'd find it and then I could kick her ass back into shape.
"Because… I know he's not out there. None of them are. Setsuna, my friends, everyone I know… and that not even the society I was supposed to guard is still here. It's all gone. I might as well not even exist. No one knows who I am, or what I did."
"So that's why you kept trying to kill yourself? Even though when I aimed that gun at you, you didn't want me to shoot?"
Feldt looked up at me then, so her bangs were no longer in the front of her eyes. She was nonplussed, like she hadn't considered this. "What do you mean?"
"I don't think you want to die. You just want to know you're not alone, that someone will stop you before you do it."
Feldt's eyes shimmered a bit, but she said nothing.
"You're in the type of despair where you think you want to die, you think you want to do it. But then, when you actually get your wish, you'll realize, right when it's too late, that you actually don't want to die. You'll regret it in your final moments, you'll wish you hadn't done this, and instead of wanting to die, you'll want to be saved, but it's too late."
"How do you think you know how I feel?" Feldt asked softly, tears beginning to form in her eyes.
"Because I was there too," I replied. "I found out something about myself I wish I had not known, and I cursed out my parents, ran away, and cried myself next to a river in some godforsaken forest. And I wanted to die, I truly did, until someone actually did show up to kill me. I thought I would just accept my fate until someone else showed up to save me at the last second. When I was saved, I realized, on some deeper level, that I didn't actually want to get shot and killed. I only thought I did."
I looked right at her, and pointed right at her eyes for emphasis. "That's you right now. It's the exact same thing. There's enough fight in you that you're not ready to die yet, and when I aimed that gun at you, that part of you, the part that is still refusing to break, that part you don't think you have, showed itself."
Feldt didn't say anything, she just continued to stare at me, with the tears still trickling down her face, her mouth trembling like she wanted to say something, but the words just weren't there.
"You are still alive, Feldt. Yeah, we may not be your society. From the best I can tell, your society killed itself. But now, we're on the verge of making the exact same mistake. If you know anything at all about what could've ended the Anno Domini calendar, what mistakes could have possibly occurred, we need to know. Especially if this is a history repeats itself type of thing. And I think it might be because you recognized the Freedom as a GUNDAM."
Feldt smiled shakily, and then she looked down. I wasn't sure if she was still in my world, or if back in hers. "I don't know how you've managed to re-create the GUNDAM machines, but they're not being used correctly. They're built to end wars, not win them."
One thing I've learned about history is that trying to build weapons that will end war inevitably causes them to be used to win them. Eventually, all weapons become acceptable. The GUNDAMs, nuclear weapons, whatever, they all become just another part of your arsenal. The escalation already happened with Freedom and Justice being superior models to the Aegis, Strike, Blitz, Buster, and Duel. How long before Freedom and Justice were outclassed?
"I don't think any of us got the memo on that one," I replied.
"That's what is going to end Cosmic Era, as much as anything else," Feldt said. "None of you know when to stop, and there is no Celestial Being to make you stop."
It took me a moment to process that. Then it hit me. Feldt had inadvertently given me information about the past. "Excuse me, 'Celestial Being'?"
"Celestial Being is the organization that invented the GUNDAM machines," Feldt replied. "They were dedicated to ending war. I was a part of that organization, and our efforts united the world, first against us, and next against the corrupt forces that would create more conflict. It was all the brainchild of a man named Aeolia Schenberg, but I assume he is a name erased from history as well, yes?"
I had no idea who the man was, and I wasn't going to lie to her. "I don't know him, but if he had anything to do with GUNDAMs I am sure I would have found out about it by now. Same with Celestial Being."
Feldt nodded, a sardonic, lop-sided smile appearing on her face. It was almost bitter, resigned. "So I assume names like Sumeragi, Setsuna, Lockon, Tieria, Veda, they all don't mean anything to you either."
"I've never heard of them, I'm sorry." I felt like I was losing control of the conversation, that I was going to allow Feldt to slip back into her despair and return to the point where she couldn't be trusted even with plastic utensils or a blanket.
"Now you know how I feel. If they're so thoroughly erased from history, did anything they do ever happen at all? What did Celestial Being fight for if their efforts are consciously erased? And it is a conscious erasure, otherwise things would not be if they never existed at all."
The lopsided smile trembled. "What good have I done, Cagalli, if everything I've worked for has vanished and everything I say gets me looks like I'm a crazy person? Can you tell me that?"
That was a hard question to answer, and I knew I really couldn't, not with the way she boxed me in. The only way out was to dodge it until I could. "Maybe I can, if we can link Cosmic Era and Anno Domini together. Maybe we can find out what happened."
"And how would you do that?" Feldt asked.
"First," I replied. "You tell me why you went into cryo-sleep and when. Also tell me if they ever woke you up for any reason before we woke you up."
"All right." She let out a short chuckle then. "Though we never called it 'cyro-sleep'. We simply called it 'stasis'."
"Whatever. Just tell me," I replied, resisting the urge to roll my eyes, and I'm still not sure if I succeeded to this day.
"In the year 2314, the world was unified. We succeeded in our mission, but soon afterward, the problem came up, how could we ensure that world peace could be maintained, so mankind could keep expanding throughout the solar system and the galaxy at large?"
"Wait, we were traveling out of the solar system?" I asked. We were struggling just to maintain a presence on Mars. Leaving the solar system entirely? That sounded insane.
"We were. It was important to Earth to maintain continuity, so if our old differences tore us apart again, that Celestial Being would rise once more and put a stop to it. So members of Celestial Being were offered the opportunity to go into stasis. We were to be given periodic wake-ups to be updated on technology, current events, and so on. That way, we wouldn't stay under for too long and changes in Earth and in technology wouldn't shock us. If anyone had enough of being put under, they were given the option of maintaining Celestial Being and someone else would take their place in stasis."
Feldt looked down. "The last wakeup was in the year 2660. That was when we had a feeling things might be worsening. We knew when we were going to be put under again it may not last all that long."
"What was the situation?" I asked.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. None of you would," Feldt said softly.
I had a feeling my confusion over 'Setsuna's flower' was playing a role in her reluctance to tell me anything.
"Try me," I replied.
"In the year 2314, we had extraterrestrial contact with a race we called the ELS."
"The 'else'?" I asked.
"E. L. S.," Feldt said, sounding out each letter like she was spitting it at me, almost like a drill sergeant. "They came from Jupiter, and we had a war, before… before one of our pilots, Setsuna F. Seiei, was able to achieve understanding with them and ended the war, at the cost of being able to be among humanity again."
The pieces were forming in my head then. Jupiter. Setsuna and who he might have been. Waltfeld's conspiracy theories. The fossil found by George Glenn in Jupiter's orbit.
"We sent a pilot out to Jupiter early in Cosmic Era," I said. "He brought home a fossil from Jupiter, but no one could make sense of it."
"Memories are short if there is a conscious erasure," Feldt replied softly. "What he found may have been a remnant of the ELS. I would need to see it."
I could see where Feldt was leading up to with her story here. "You're saying that Earth at some point had enough of the ELS and wiped them out, at heavy cost to ourselves."
"Possibly. The ELS could have also struck, and Earth hit back with xenocidal force. I won't discount that possibility," Feldt replied. "But in 2660, it was looking more like humanity would be the aggressor against the ELS than the other way around. Earth had begun manufacturing a frightening mass-production GUNDAM whose capabilities were far greater than anything any of us had witnessed. They were going to start making a prototype for Celestial Being to counteract it, but…"
The melancholy, lopsided smile re-emerged on her face. "Well, now here we are."
"I gotcha." I tried to process everything, how the pieces could fit with Waltfeld's conspiracy theories and the large gap in history that dated to 2307 A.D. Feldt's narrative fit squarely into that gap, except the gap wasn't quite clear when Anno Domini ended and Cosmic Era began.
"We are undoubtedly discussing something extremely dangerous, probably covered up by a conspiracy, or multiple conspiracies," Feldt replied. "Whoever decided to erase Celestial Being, the ELS, they will undoubtedly try to erase you, I, and anyone who could have listened to us."
"That ain't nothing new. I've had Blue Cosmos try to erase me a hundred times by now, I swear. What's one more group coming after me? Hell, Blue Cosmos could be behind this cover-up in the first place."
"Who's 'Blue Cosmos'?" Feldt asked.
"Nasty secret organization, hates genetically modified people, they've taken control of the Earth Alliance and has turned the current war into a campaign of extermination," I said, giving Feldt the most succinct explanation I could come up with.
"There was something similar to Blue Cosmos in 2660," Feldt replied. "The organization Celestial Being was watching was called LOGOS."
I had never heard of that organization before, but what Feldt was saying made sense. Perhaps LOGOS had transformed itself into Blue Cosmos following whatever happened that turned Anno Domini into Cosmic Era. But there was one final piece of the puzzle that didn't fit into Feldt's story, and it was a big one.
"I guess I have one final question to ask you," I said. "How come we found you on Mendel colony? If you are who you say you are, why didn't they just kill you? Why leave you in statis?"
"You think I can honestly answer that question?" Feldt asked in turn. "Perhaps they thought I dated from the Reconstruction Wars, not from earlier in Anno Domini, so maybe I wouldn't know everything. I don't know. They didn't wake me up or any of my friends, so I guess they decided to just study stasis chambers and see how much longer we'd last until we expired."
"All right," I sighed. There wasn't much point in continuation the conversation at this point, at least not in this current direction. We weren't going to get anywhere going this route.
"Then I guess I should tell you about Cosmic Era, and how we got here. You're ready to hear it all?"
"Yes," Feldt said. "Please, tell me."
So I did.
After I was finished reciting what I knew of Cosmic Era and the Bloody Valentine War, Feldt, for the first time, stood up. She walked over to the edge of her cell, and looked outside into the hallway, seemingly to stare into space.
"I see. I think I can piece everything together from here," Feldt replied.
"You can?" I asked.
"The Type S influenza you spoke of that ravaged the Earth during the Reconstruction War. It must have been what killed off the Innovators, which were the advanced humans of my time, pre-dating the Coordinators. When Earth destroyed the ELS, that must have been the ELS' revenge. But Earth always finds a way to continue to progress, and the Coordinator was created in place of the Innovator."
"I was told an 'innovative society' did exist at one time," I replied, again thinking of Waltfeld.
"Yes. And when Earth destroyed the ELS, reducing them to fossilized remains, the ELS punished the Earth in turn. Everything crumbled, Earth's incredible empire dissolved to form the debris belt, and Earth had to pick up the pieces. Along the way, perhaps to prevent the terrible weapons from being used again, or just to control the populace, the entire period from Celestial Being's first appearance was excised from the history books. Perhaps, in time, the goal was to make it seem like Cosmic Era started around 2307 A.D., so the three hundred plus years never happened at all."
Feldt turned towards me then, with determination in her eyes for the first time. It looked like she was finally done crying, and that made her resemblance to Lacus even stronger. It was like watching Lacus drop her pop star airs to reveal the astute woman underneath. "But the past always finds a way to haunt the future. The GUNDAMs have been rebuilt. And your side has nearly all of them, correct?"
"Yes, we do, with a couple of exceptions," I replied.
"Then I know what I can do to help." Feldt walked up to me. "I have experience with coordinating significant numbers of GUNDAM Mobile Suits at once. Have me do this for your faction."
I almost laughed. While it was nice to see Feldt show such a strong side of herself, it didn't seem she understood where I was in the grand scheme of things. "I do not have that power. You would have to talk to one of my leaders."
"Then bring one of them down here. I'm better now. I can either be a helmsman, co-helmsman, or a GUNDAM coordinator. If necessary, I can even pilot, though I would prefer not to do that," Feldt replied.
"So you think you're ready to help us," I replied.
Feldt smiled. "I am. I may be all what's left of the past, but the least I can do is help you secure your future."
She certainly didn't look like someone who had made repeated suicide attempts in the last couple of days. It seemed, in that moment, she had finally found her backbone and had returned to the person she had been before being in cyrosleep for who knows how long.
I wanted to believe her.
I stuck out my hand to her, then, just to see what she'd do. "I'll do my best, but there's no guarantee. And undoubtedly they're going to test you."
"I have passed every test that's been given to me, even when I was a girl," Feldt replied, taking my hand and holding it as hard as she could. "I will pass this too."
Seeing her smile like that, like someone with a fresh leash on life, was infectious. I couldn't help it, I smiled too. "All right then. I'll let them know, and we'll work things out from there."
"Sounds good." We separated then, and Feldt sighed. "But have them bring me my table and blanket back. I would like to eat like a normal human being, and it's pretty cold in here."
"I'll let them know that too." And then, in the next moment, we shared a laugh together.
She had come from hundreds of years ago, but in that moment, I realized I had managed to make a friend.
A friend who had showed up just in time, despite being out of time, to help us win the final battle.
The cat is officially out of the bag now. No more hints as to what Gundam 00 means in this universe.
It's been something I've been holding close to the chest and could only let myself drop a couple of hints about. For years.
It feels good to let that out now, the true butterfly that created the Gundam SEED Bloodlines universe, the fact that Gundam 00 is this universe's predecessor.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the fic, and find it both a good SEED alt-fic and a distant finale to the 00-verse.
