Chapter Eighty-Eight: The Unforgiven III

I took a deep breath as I sized up Asta and the Turn X.

I wasn't going to come back from this. The sooner I accepted that, the harder I'd be able to fight. And maybe I could win this without everyone losing their lives. "Everyone" as in the entire planet as well as the PLANTs.

I didn't want to think about that, of course. And I knew Flay, who had literally just taken a shot meant for me, wouldn't like it either. But what did it matter if I lived just for everyone else to die?

I'd just die after they all did. Or maybe I would die first.

It didn't matter. I needed to accept my life no longer mattered if I was going to summon the courage to fight the Turn X and take it out.

I heard Murrue again, from the previous battle.

You have life inside you, Cagalli. You are responsible for more than just your own life now.

I knew that. I hadn't forgotten one bit. But if I didn't destroy the Turn X, my baby would have no future, because neither would I.

I would not bring a child into a world where there was no future for it.

Either I would live and there would be a future, or I would die and there would be a future. I was not going to go down without taking Asta with me.

"Flay," I said. "You can't do any more staying here. Get out of here. Get to the Kusanagi."

"I know. Please be careful."

"I'll do what I can to come back to Kira. Just make sure you do the same in case I can't." With that I let Flay go and stood my ground in front of the Turn X.

"Cagalli!" Flay yelled.

"Get out of here, Flay!" I ordered.

Asta chuckled. "You can protect your friend all you want, it won't matter because you'll all be dead."

Suddenly, the Turn X prepped itself to make a charge. "But I'll start with her first!"

I drew my sword and immediately got in her path. The Turn X slammed into the Freedom, shaking the cockpit with a vicious force that felt like the Freedom was having its own private earthquake.

Asta laughed. "I knew you'd do that! You can't help yourself!"

No sign of the Moonlight Butterfly yet. The moment she unleashed it, things were going to get infinitely more dangerous.

"I could kill you right now, Cagalli! I have enough energy left for another Moonlight Butterfly! It is so tempting!" Asta yelled, clearly still drunk on her power, as we continued to clash with our swords.

The next deadlock was so intense that the head of the Turn X came forward and headbutted the Freedom, which shook. "But I won't do that. That's too easy. Besides, after everything you've done to me, after all of the pain I've gone through… I want to hear you scream."

The amusement in her voice was gone by that final line. It was serious, chilled, filled with a hatred and venom that somehow I had earned in Asta's mind.

"I won't be happy until I hear you scream in agony, in despair, in fear. Nothing less will satisfy me, Cagalli. And you deserve nothing less."

She tried to break the deadlock and then slice me in half horizontally, but I was able to block it in time. We spun around once, before she separated from me.

I saw one of the Astrays start shooting at the Turn X. The shots fizzled out with no apparent damage. "Dammit, stay back! This is between me and Asta!" I shouted in desperation, knowing full well what the Turn X would do in a few moments.

I recognized the voice that spoke to me then. It was Mayura Labatt, Asagi's other wingmate. "I can't let her fight you alone! Maybe all of us together can-"

She never got to finish that sentence.

Asta lined up a shot with her rifle right away and fired a shot that went right through the Astray's chest area, cutting Mayura off mid-sentence. The Astray promptly exploded, annihilating any chance of Mayura miraculously surviving that shot.

I immediately got on the horn before anyone else got that bright idea. "Everyone, stay back! Do something about GENESIS! Leave Asta to me!"

"You can't fight her on your own, princess!" Mu yelled back.

"I have no choice. Everyone else is just going to get killed," I replied. "Please, get out of here. They're trying to send reinforcements to block us from getting through to GENESIS."

"Cagalli, wait!" Mu shouting my name instead of 'princess' should have resonated with me more than it did. It would have made me freeze up momentarily in most other cases, I think.

And I think it did affect me, as I did feel my eyes moisten just a bit as I rushed the Turn X and collided with it, driving it away from my remaining friends and allies.

"Please get out of here. This is my fight. No one else's."

I switched off the main channel before anyone else could respond. I wanted this just between me and Asta Joule. No more parties involved, and I didn't want to hear them try to convince me to change my mind.

I attacked the Turn X again, forcing it backwards, away from the other Mobile Suits.

"How brave of you, Cagalli!" Asta yelled with savage glee. "It is a senseless sacrifice, though! You can't possibly beat me!"

She coughed then, repeatedly. "Sounds like I can. You're probably on death's door, aren't you?"

"Shut up!" she screeched.

I could see more blood on her helmet visor, though. If she coughed a few more times; she probably wouldn't be able to see. Maybe that was all I needed in order to survive this, or at least beat her.

In every Mobile Suit I ever encountered, the cockpit was always in the chest area. In order to end this, I needed a clean shot at the chest and blow it wide open like Asta had just done to Mayura.

Asta counter-attacked, screaming bloody murder as slashed at me. She, if anything, had become even faster than she was before, so much that I couldn't think of trying to switch to a different weapon and sneak a shot point-blank at her.

"You're nothing but a stupid bitch who got all of the luck and all of the good genetics!" Asta screamed. "How come you were the one who got the perfect body? How come you were the one who wasn't born ill? How come you weren't born with a clock ticking down to the day you die?"

"I had no control over that and you know it, Asta!" I replied.

"What gives you the right to act so goddamned perfect?"

A random Mobile Armor tried to fly by us, and one of the Turn X's legs pivoted and shot it up without Asta so much as paying it a second thought.

"We are nothing but science experiments, Cagalli! Just science experiments grown in a lab! Created by people with delusions of grandeur who thought they could play God!"

"For someone who comes from a culture of atheists, you sure like to reference Him, don't you?"

"SHUT UP!" My provoking of Asta wasn't the best idea, considering she had the obliterating Moonlight Butterfly in her arsenal, but I couldn't help myself. I was so lost in the moment, in my combination of fear and adrenaline, that I was just rattling crap off the top of my brain.

Suddenly, Asta overreached, and I was able to do more than block her strikes. I was actually able to parry, and in turn expose one of Asta's legs.

I quickly took my sword and chucked it at the leg.

Asta screamed, more in surprise than pain, as the Turn X's right leg began sparking. I flew down then and grabbed the sword embedded in the leg and completed the slashing motion.

The chunk of the right leg came right off and floated away from us.

"Damn you!" Asta shouted as she rushed me again, this time aiming to use that glowing hand of hers to fry me.

I slashed at her hand and sent the Turn X backwards, the hand sparking uselessly. I had removed one of the ways she could try and kill me, but that still left about ten, twenty others.

A lot more work to do, but it was a small victory.

"Why?" Asta screamed. Much to my surprise, it wasn't just rage in her voice this time, but it sounded like she was choking up. Like she was about to cry. "Why do you keep fighting? Why don't you just give up and die?"

"Because I don't," I replied.

"That's not an answer! Why, Cagalli? You know you can't win this! You've seen what this machine can do! You think you can honestly beat me with a machine that isn't remotely close at the Turn X's level?"

"I'm doing a good job of it now, aren't I?"

"AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGH" Asta's scream of rage was punctuated by another coughing session and I seized the opportunity immediately.

I immediately took my rifle and shot at the Turn X while flying straight at her, my sword aiming right for her chest area where the cockpit should be, just like all other Mobile Suits.

Right before I struck, I saw the field give up and one of the shots actually hit the Turn X's left shoulder. I was finally causing damage to this ancient, powerful machine.

Asta spun the Turn X away from me and I had to re-adjust, bringing up the Freedom's physical shield to block her attempts to shoot me.

I saw Asta throw her helmet off in the next moment, her dark eyes glaring at me with not just hatred, but a melancholic bitterness that I had never seen from her before. "I've had enough of this! You've stalled out your death long enough, Cagalli![i]"

Suddenly, the Turn X split into several pieces again, only this time, what remained of the damaged right leg uselessly fell away. Clearly, when I had damaged it, I had removed its ability to operate autonomously, but that was a small comfort when I was looking at what I was up against, completely on my own.

It occurred to me right then and there that I was staring at my own death, and that this could have happened to me already, from the very start.

She could have done this right away and killed me immediately, and didn't do it because she wanted the most satisfying death possible. And since I wasn't giving it to her, she was taking it a step up. She was going to hit me with everything she had from eight different pieces, good luck to me on trying to stop all of that.

"Tell me, Cagalli, have you ever seen a seed shatter in front of your eyes?"

The question nearly jarred me out of my focus. "W-What?"

"You have, haven't you? The way you've been able to fly before… you have the same abilities I have, don't you? The ability to see the seed… and make it break."

The many surviving pieces of the Turn X sortied then, and I forced myself to block out the implications and just concentrate on surviving.

It made a certain, cruel amount of sense. Asta was my 'prototype', after all. Anything I could do, any weird ability I had, she most likely could do those too.

"No answer, huh?"

I flew away, trying to dodge the several pieces of Turn X all firing me all at once.

One of the shots clipped my legs and another burst destroyed my shield as I had to block them. I used the smoke as a cover to fly away, but quickly saw I was going to take Asta into the midst of a nearby mobile suit battle.

I didn't know what to do. If I flew into the battle surely Asta would kill everyone to try to get at me. But if I stayed out in the open, there was no way I was going to survive for much longer.

I aimed at Asta and fired at the Turn X's pieces wildly, and as if in response, they reformed back into the Turn X, sans the lower half of one leg. "You like to drag this out, don't you?"

She coughed some more. I wondered how much she was stressing her body out. She had to be pushing herself to the limit, and her body was not a strong one to begin with.

"All I want is to hear you scream when I kill you… so I can finally get some satisfaction… and you won't even give me that."

"What makes you think I should?" I asked. "What makes you feel so entitled that I should just give you what you want?"

"Because I have never gotten one nice thing at all in my life! All I ever get, all I ever have, it all gets taken away from me!" Asta screamed.

She was sobbing now. "All I wanted… all I wanted was to see my baby brother grow up… I was living for Yzak, I was forcing myself to stay alive just to see him become a man, and you robbed me of that. And now you've robbed me of everything else too!"

It was clear what had happened. She had internalized all of her hatred into a single hideous mass, and I was the boogeyman that represented all of her suffering. That's why it all centered on me. I, directly or indirectly, had involvement in everything that had happened in her life.

"So you blame me for it all, huh?" I asked.

"Yes!"

"Even though you were the one who decided to get in Turn X, decided to listen to Rau Le Creuset, decided to-"

"If you hadn't interfered in my and Rau's battle against Mu La Flaga I would have never gone inside that building and found out everything!" Asta shouted. "I didn't want to know any of this! I didn't want to know, and yet you forced me to by shooting me and Rau down and sending us running into that building like rats!"

So even getting the truth from Rau and deciding to follow Rau's ideology was somehow my fault.

"Well, then I don't know what to tell you, because you clearly decided feeling sorry for yourself was the most important thing in the world."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" The Turn X split itself apart again as Asta screamed, and I braced myself for another attack.

"Damn you, damn you, damn you, damnyoudamnyoudamnyouAAAAAAGH!"

Giving her the 'stop feeling sorry for yourself' treatment was clearly the worst decision I could have made, I think.

Despite her screaming and rage, Asta actually had a better plan than the last time. She was trying to surround the Freedom now, so she could hit me from all sides.

"Why won't you just die?" Asta screamed.

The pieces surrounded me despite my best efforts to fly away. There was no getting out of it this time.

I realized Asta actually would get her wish this time. The best I could do was aim at the chest piece and hope I could kill her as she took me out.

But that's when shots fired past me and around and started hitting the pieces.

Asta screamed again as two of the pieces blew up. She withdrew the remaining ones, and they grouped up in front of me. Her entire left arm was obliterated now.

I knew who had fired that before I even checked. "Dammit, Athrun!" I shouted.

"Cagalli!" Athrun replied. "Are you okay?"

The Justice, escorted by both the Blitz and Aegis, joined me then. I had wanted to fight alone, but having the three of them by me nearly made me cry. As much as I desired fighting alone, having any sort of companionship took a burden off of my shoulders I wasn't even aware of having.

I wanted them here.

"I'm still alive, aren't I?" I asked.

"ATHRUN!" Asta screamed. "How dare you interfere!"

"Shut up, brat," Hilda replied. "I am sick of people screaming at me today."

Aegis shot at the Turn X then, and the Turn X blasted away a short distance, both Aegis and Blitz chasing after it.

"Where's Dearka? And Flay?" Athrun asked me then.

"Dearka's gone, and Flay had to fall back, there was barely enough left of her machine." I saw the Blitz and Aegis continue to chase the Turn X in front of us. The element of surprise was allowing them to keep the Turn X on its heels, but it wouldn't last for long. "Do you have any idea of what you're up against?"

"I got in touch with Feldt while flying here. She gave us enough information to go on."

"What's the situation in Jachin Doe? And GENESIS?" I asked.

"My father… is secure. His forces aren't surrendering completely, though," Athrun replied. "GENESIS should fall any minute now from what I've heard."

From the sounds of it, it must have been really personal for Athrun. I made a mental note to talk to him about it later, I had a feeling he was going to need it.

Suddenly, the Blitz was knocked back by a counter-attack. "Athrun, we'll have to talk later. The Turn X is going to kill Nicol and Hilda if we don't do something."

"Right," Athrun replied softly.

We blasted towards the battle, and I aimed my rifle and joined Athrun in a barrage of shots that grazed the Turn X as it tried to dodge.

"You had to ruin this, Athrun? My chance at revenge?" Asta screamed.

"You are trying to kill the girl I love. I won't let you do it," Athrun replied. "I had to assist in the arrest of my own father! I have had enough pain for today, and so have you! The best thing you can do right now is surrender!"

That confirmed one of the things I had meant to ask Athrun. Arresting his own father… I couldn't imagine trying to arrest anyone I loved. It had to be such a weight on him, and why he had made a beeline to find me so quickly.

"I haven't gotten one thing I wanted. I'm not surrendering until I get it! Even if I can't punish humanity for making me, for making Cagalli, I am not dying until I kill Cagalli and hear her scream in agony for all of the pain she has caused me!"

"So small," Hilda replied quietly.

"What?" Asta asked.

"All of this over a petty, childish tantrum. All of this out of misplaced anger. Asta, just stop."

"You can die too, I don't care!" Asta shot wildly at Hilda, who tried to dodge. Hilda, however, was clipped pretty badly and spiraled out of control, crying out in pain.

"Yes, just like that! I want you all to die just like her!" Asta yelled as she gave chase to the smoking Aegis.

"Stop, Asta!" Nicol yelled.

"I'll make her stop," I said.

I chased after her, firing more shots at the chest area and made the Turn X smoke in turn as I damaged the thrusters. Asta screamed as the Turn X was knocked off-kilter, and she barely turned around in time for me to get in the kill shot.

Or, in this case, a stab.

I ditched the rifle, drew my sword, and plunged it right into the chest.

Asta screamed, and I waited for the end of her life as well as the Turn X's.

And it didn't happen.

There was just silence.

I paused. Something was wrong. It should have ended by now, but why wasn't Asta dead? Why wasn't the Turn X exploding? And why couldn't I extract my sword from the machine?

Then came the laughter. Wretched, horrible laughter of a despondent person who had finally given up on everything and just wanted to die already. "You really thought you were going to kill me with that, Cagalli?"

I gasped in surprise and horror. I was wrong. I had made an assumption, an assumption based on all of the Mobile Suits I had encountered, and…

"The Turn X's cockpit is in the head, you stupid bitch."

Suddenly, the Turn X's remaining arm wrapped around the Freedom and slammed it directly onto the Turn X, locking our machines together in an eternal death spiral.

Asta laughed morbidly as we spun. "You keep taking things away. I'm never going to hear you scream now. But at least I'm still going to take your life."

Suddenly, I saw the Turn X's golden wings explode from behind the Mobile Suit, signifying the ignition of the Moonlight Butterfly.

It didn't make sense to me when I saw it. The Moonlight Butterfly can't hit anything in front of the Turn X. It was a useless gesture, unless it was to keep Athrun and Nicol from rescuing me.

Then I saw it. And it made far too much sense then.

Through the gap where I had stabbed the Turn X, bright white tendrils were sneaking through the gap, eating the sword and turning it into sand.

The Turn X was cannibalizing itself, and it was going to devour me in one final Moonlight Butterfly in the process.

I tried to break away from the Turn X, but the bright white tendrils were beginning to grab the Freedom, and they had more force than anything I had ever felt. It was like trying to break free of quick-drying cement, those tendrils were locking me into the Turn X, ensuring my death as well as Asta's as the two Mobile Suits would be destroyed.

Nothing would break me free. I lost sight of the seed then, as despair gripped me. This was really it. After everything I had been through, after this whole war, after getting pregnant of all things…

I was going to die like this?

Killed by Asta over reasons so petty and pointless?

Asta must have seen the realization hit me because she laughed. Laughed cruelly, like a sadistic executioner at the guillotine must have sounded like before yet another beheading. "That's right, Cagalli. You may have saved this world from meeting the destiny it deserved, but you won't get to have the satisfaction of living in it. We can both die together, and humanity can live blissfully unaware of its monstrosities until they make the same damn mistakes all over again."

"That's not going to happen!" Athrun shouted.

I felt a vicious force pulling at me then, and I realized it was Athrun. "Athrun, what are you doing?" I yelled.

My heart cried out in panic and fear as the Justice pulled on me. "Athrun, don't try to save me! Please don't!" I begged.

"I am not letting you die here! You're going to live, Cagalli! You have to!"

I froze then. Judging by the way he was speaking… did he know? Had he found out somehow that I was…

There was a vicious cracking sound that made me think the Freedom had been pulled in two, but it had merely broken free of the tendrils, other than the right leg, which had snapped off and was promptly becoming engulfed. The Justice had me, but as the tendrils tried to grab ahold of me again the Justice threw me away, behind it, out of the tendrils' reach.

The only thing the tendrils could still grab was the Justice.

And they did, wrapping themselves around the Justice and pulling it into the gyrating, pulsing Moonlight Butterfly.

After all of this talk about me taking everything from Asta, she was taking something away from me.

Athrun.

She was going to take Athrun away from me.

"No!" Asta screamed, as of not realizing that she had finally succeeded in causing me certain pain. "This wasn't how I wanted it, not like-"

Asta vanished then, as presumably the cockpit was absorbed into the Moonlight Butterfly, killing her in the process. I still wonder sometimes if she ever did realize the reality of what she had done, and if had gotten any of her precious satisfaction from it.

"Athrun!" I screamed, and I immediately felt something grab me from behind, preventing me from getting closer to the Justice and the enormous glowing thing that the Moonlight Butterfly had become.

"Don't go," Nicol said softly, his voice borderline ethereal as the Blitz held onto me. "We can't save him, not without being pulled in ourselves."

"No!" I yelled. "We have to try to get him out of there! We have to! Let go of me! Let go!"

The Freedom was more powerful than the Blitz, but the Blitz was plenty strong enough to slow the Freedom to a crawl. I wasn't making enough progress towards the Justice to even have a shot at reaching Athrun.

"Athrun!" I begged. "Athrun, don't leave me! Please!"

I heard Athrun then, his voice grave. "Cagalli, please don't talk like that."

"Athrun, I love you! I love you more than anything, please!"

"I love you too, Cagalli," Athrun said softly. "Just take care of yourself. I want you to live a long life, okay? I don't want you dying until you're an old lady, understand? You've got too much relying on you."

"Athrun, just let me reach you! I can pull you out just like you did me! We can grow old together, just please, Athrun!"

"All I want for you is… to live your life in peace, okay? Nicol, please take care of Cagalli for me. That's all I want…"

The communication went out then, and it didn't feel like enough. It felt far too short, and too pointless. It felt like a useless attempt to compact a lifetime into a few short sentences, as he vanished from me.

The Justice was absorbed into the Moonlight Butterfly, and Nicol and I could only stare at it as just stayed there, like some implacable monolith, daring us to get closer.

And I wanted to. I so desperately wanted to, like I could somehow get in there and pull him out.

But I knew I couldn't. I knew, deep in my heart, that Athrun was gone.

And I didn't even have a body.

In the end, Asta had gotten her wish, even though she had never realized it. She had gotten even with me, because the one thing I did do to her, kill her brother, she had gotten revenge for.

She had killed the young man I loved by making him sacrifice himself to save me.

This had happened because neither of us could forgive each other for what we had done, to both each other and to the world. But now… as the only survivor…

I knew something else then, something that would be for me for the rest of my life.

I would never forgive myself too.

Athrun's death, as well as Asta's death, and all of the other deaths in this battle from her rampage…

That was all on me.

I took off my helmet then and just let myself cry.

The war was over, and I still alive, but…

It felt, in a way, that I had still lost my life in the process.

He had become such a deep, intertwined part of my life that there would just be this emptiness now, and it would never go away.

And I would never forgive myself for that either.

Because if I had just attacked Asta differently in that final moment…

Athrun wouldn't have had to die so I could have lived.


I'm sorry this took me so long. Writing this exhausted me completely. I hope it was worth the wait.

Two chapters and maybe an epilogue remain.