Thank you very much, everyone. I'm doing the best I can to keep the updates coming until the fic is over. I estimate I have less than ten chapters remaining before everyone is wrapped up. Just have to keep pushing until we're over the finish line.


Chapter Eighty-One: Fade Away

Feldt Grace walked along the lines of the stasis pods, opening them. This was the big test Natarle Badgiruel had in mind for Feldt, to see if she was as strong as she claimed to be. To Feldt's credit, she had insisted on the task once it was brought up. As she was the only one who remained, she wanted to be the ones to give the burial to her friends.

"Lockon Stratos," she said in a whisper after opening one pod, and then closing it back down. She moved onto the next one, and said the person's name in a similar hushed whisper. "Lasse Aeon."

The next pod. "Milena Vashti."

Then the fourth. "Marie Parfacy."

The fifth. "Allelujah Haptism."

This continued on for another five pods, before the last one. That was when she froze.

She had managed to keep from crying at the previous bodies, but she couldn't hold it together when she made it to the eleventh pod.

"Oh… Ms. Sumeragi."

She fell on her knees on the cold floor, her hands gripping the edge of the stasis pod with a death grip, tears flowing from her eyes. The moment I saw this, I ran over to her, both to help her up and, if necessary, keep her from relapsing.

"Are you all right?" I asked, warily.

"I-I'm fine. J-Just this last one, it's…"

She turned to Badgiruel, Gladys, Durandal, and the others then. "S-Sumeragi Lee… Noriega. My leader."

Natarle Badgiruel finished writing down the last name. "Understood. How would you like to send them off?"

"I… I would like to bury them myself," Feldt replied softly. "No one here knows them. It's just me. It really should fall to me to wish them goodbye. But, if you don't mind, I'd prefer to bury them on L4 than launch them into space."

"That can be arranged, there's more than enough space on L4," Badgiruel replied with a sigh.

"Thank you." Feldt said.

She slowly got back to her feet, swaying a bit, but ultimately managed to regain her strength. "I hope I can show you proof of what they did someday. Maybe some of the history can still be uncovered. Maybe there's still people out there who remember the days before the Reconstruction War."

"There's not many, and those who do were young children when it happened," Badgiruel replied.

Feldt nodded slowly, mournfully. "It doesn't surprise me."

She closed the final pod, and the click sound felt particularly final. "I am ready to go where you need me to go. I've given you a list of my qualifications and I will pass whatever tests you have for me."

Badgiruel was fighting the urge to not laugh sarcastically. I could tell she didn't have much faith in Feldt. "I will admit that I am looking for someone specifically to coordinate Zala's Gundam wing. Currently, that falls to Miriallia Haw, but I would like to move Aisha to an Astray where she'd be of more use and move Miriallia to co-pilot of the Archangel. She's been passing my tests as a co-helmsman."

"I understand," Feldt replied. "I will give you a demonstration of my abilities as soon as you desire."

"You will need to pass extensive psychological exams," Badgiruel replied, and I could tell she had no faith in Feldt to pass them.

"That will be no problem for me. I've gotten over the shock of waking up so many years later, and I am able to grasp the death of my friends," Feldt replied. "I will pass whatever tests you give me."

Badgiruel nodded, but she did not look convinced. "We will begin your tests tomorrow, and if you pass them, you will be put through a crash course in your desired job and that will lead up to a live-fire simulation with Zala's GUNDAM unit. If you can do what you say you can do, this should prove pretty easy, right?"

"It's a cakewalk," Feldt said softly.

Everyone else in the room looked every bit as skeptical as Badgiruel. And I didn't blame them. This was a woman who had gone through the ringer, and there was no guarantee she wasn't simply telling us what we wanted to hear. Who could say that a couple days down the line, Feldt wouldn't try to get herself thrown out an airlock?

Plus, I wasn't the only one who had noticed her resemblance to Lacus Clyne. I had overheard Badgiruel, Gladys, Misora, Durandal, and other figureheads discussing with my brother over the fact she was a bit of a Lacus lookalike. The agreement definitely was that she was to stay far away from Siegel Clyne, that he couldn't be allowed even a glimpse of Feldt Grace, at the risk of total disaster.

She looked towards the leaders then, and I got a good look on her face. The blue mark on her face had yet to go away, and at this point, it didn't look like it ever would. Dr. Grumman had guessed it was a side effect of being put under for so long, and what Feldt had was nowhere near as severe as the rest of her friends.

Despite waking up to an alien world from where she once was, she seemed resolute. But there was no guarantee she would stay that way. Especially as it would be impossible to prevent her wounds from being ripped open again and again. Every new revelation about Cosmic Era could be the one to bring her to her knees all over again.

"I will bury them later today and tomorrow I will be ready for any testing you wish to start me off with," Feldt said softly.

Badgiruel nodded, but I could tell from her eyes she was expecting a disaster. "Of course. You can go ahead and get started any time if you wish. Do you want assistance or company?"

"I'd rather bury them by myself," Feldt replied. "The only assistance I wish for is transporting them to the burial site."

"All right," Badgiruel replied with a sigh. "All right, let's break it up here. Let her mourn in peace."

As we departed, I caught one last glimpse of Feldt as she turned back towards the pods.

Her hands had become fists.

There was determination there. Who knew what she would do once the war was over, but at least she was strong enough to fight one more time.

Maybe she would surprise us after all.


I knew, with Feldt Grace being around and her constant, unconscious reminders of Lacus Clyne, that I could no longer delay the inevitable.

I had to see Siegel Clyne and finally offer him a meaningful apology for what happened to his daughter.

It took the better part of the afternoon to figure out his location. There was no surefire location, as no one knew where exactly he went, he just went beyond where we had penetrated the colony. I set off on one of the motorbikes scavenged from Mendel, heading towards a building a scout had thought he had spotted him in.

Despite the influx of people entering L4, it was nowhere near enough to populate the entire colony, and there were vast areas of open space with no one to be found. Even with all of the ships we had taken in, it was not enough to fill L4 with people. We had too much space and not enough people, but it was considered a certainty that when the war was over, there would be even more refugees flooding us. We had to fix and maintain as much of L4 as possible, especially the central Mendel colony where we were headquartered, just in case of even more people coming to live here.

It's eerie to ride completely alone, passing by decaying buildings gradually being reclaimed by wildlife that would have no future the moment the colony's facilities failed. Even on the outskirts of our penetration of the colony, there were still some people, so the condition of the colony felt more sad than creepy. At least there was a semblance of hope that the colony could not only be saved, but maintained and populated, so it could remain for decades to come.

Riding alone, with nary a soul around? It just felt creepy. And it made me wonder what other secrets the colony was hiding other than the Ultimate Coordinator project and Feldt Grace.

Maybe the old, gallows joke of zombies would come true after all, for all I knew.

Giant robots versus zombies. Someone needs to write a book about that someday.

I found the building, which looked like an old hotel in the center of a town that had yet to be repopulated. I checked my scanner, and I was at least 20 miles away from the nearest soul. When Siegel Clyne wanted to get lost, he wanted to.

I pulled up in front of the hotel and switched off my bike and removed my helmet.

Still no sign of activity.

"Siegel Clyne?!" I yelled.

No response.

I decided he was giving me the silent treatment. I yelled anyway. "It's me, Cagalli Yamato! I'm here to talk to you!"

Still nothing. Not even a 'go away'.

Was this the right location? It was just a rumor he went out this way, after all.

I was worried. Maybe he was just hoping I'd go away, or it was something worse.

The hotel door was locked. After some deliberation, and struggling with the electronic opener, I ultimately decided to kick it in.

If he didn't know I was there, he would know now.

Hurt my foot, though. The honest truth no one will tell you: kicking a door in is much more difficult, and much more painful, than any fictional character will make it seem on TV or in the movies.

I half-limped into the opening, and despite the silence that greeted me, I refused to be frightened enough to pull out my weapon. I was going to come as a friend to Siegel Clyne, not as his enemy.

"Siegel Clyne? It's me, Cagalli!" I yelled again.

Still nothing.

Now the worry was becoming a panic.

Thoughts of the worst came over me. I frantically ran around the hotel, ignoring the protests of my right foot, which couldn't be worse than a stubbed toe. I opened each door and checked each room, yelling his name.

I hoped he was just missing, or he was hiding. Maybe the scout was wrong. Maybe it was a different hotel somewhere else, or not even a hotel at all.

But on the fourth floor, room number 416… I saw him.

He had hung himself on the post of a bed using wire.

I stared for several long moments. It registered to me, in a way, it didn't even surprise me. But I still couldn't process it.

I had failed someone else yet again. And he had faded away long before I finally got off my ass to find him.

I was still crying when I got on the radio to report it in, and I didn't care in the slightest.

The Clyne family was irrevocably gone.


"He was dead for at least a week judging by the autopsy," Mu said to me afterwards, when I had returned to the outskirts of our fledging civilization. I hadn't even the strength to ride the bike back, it and me had to be transported back on a truck.

"Are you trying to say it's not my fault?" I asked.

"We all let him go," Mu reminded. "We thought that giving him some space to grieve would be the right thing to do."

"He just didn't strike me as the kind of man who'd do such a thing," I replied. "No matter how badly things became for him."

"I know. That's why they're searching for signs of foul play, but nothing's been found yet," Mu replied.

Foul play made more sense to me than a suicide. He was off on his own, far away from our contact. Quite easy for someone to slip away, murder him, and return to the colony without becoming a suspect.

My mind immediately came up with a suspect. The man that had been rising in influence in our faction, that had been flanking Captain Talia Gladys often. Gilbert Durandal, the pale, tall man with the long dark hair, rarely saying a word, always watching us.

He is the one that benefited the most from Siegel Clyne's death. He had been amassing a lot of influence despite being a doctor with little political experience. With Siegel Clyne out of the way, there went away perhaps his biggest political obstacle to leading the Coordinators in our faction, or even assuming ultimate control.

But had he really done it? If so, how could he have vanished and made it back without anyone noticing he was gone?

I saw him, standing by a lot of the other higher-up Coordinators as they were observing the body being transferred. He always had the same expression on his face regardless of the circumstances. Serious, but not dour. It was like nothing could faze him.

Maybe that was why people were gravitating to him, he projected a quiet strength, like a man who could never be broken no matter what happened. I couldn't exactly blame people for that, and I had no way of proving my suspicions unless foul play was confirmed in Siegel Clyne's death.

As I watched Durandal, however, I suddenly felt a wave of dizziness come over me that was unlike anything I ever felt. I felt an overwhelming urge to throw up that was different from the other times I had nausea.

"You all right, kid?" Mu asked, bringing me back to reality.

"I… I think… seeing Siegel Clyne…" I didn't dare to say anything more, mostly because I didn't think I could without throwing up for real.

"You've been through a lot. We should take you back," Mu said.

"Yeah," I replied.

The wave of nausea abated, but I feared what it could mean. This was not nausea over what happened to Lacus' father. This had another source, especially since it had come out of nowhere.

No. No. Please, no.

A panic had come over me, and I knew I needed to find out what exactly this nausea meant. It had been nearly a month since the incident with Athrun and I, and...

Maybe the battle wasn't about ending the war. Maybe the battle had now become trying to survive without everything becoming an even bigger mess.

At least for me.