Disclaimer: I don't own GS/GSD, but that means I get to play around with the characters, no? Please R&R!

Chapter 7

Athrun flipped a pile of papers and sighed, shuffling thing here and there and trying to neaten up his desk a bit. He was careless, and the papers he shifted knocked over his cup, which incidentally held the third dose of it he had had that day. He cursed under his breath and stood up quickly, too quickly, he bumped his toe at the corner and hissed in pain and felt the jolts shoot through his leg and die off only about the time time reached his hairline. He glanced over, mobile once again from the momentary freeze, and saw that the pile of brown liquid had cunningly seeped through his documents, and he cursed agian, but this time, very, very loudly.

"Can I help you with anything sir?" his secretary said sweetly, popping her head in, and he noticed that she had dyed her brown hair a shocking red quite reminiscent of the youngest Hawke. And Athrun saw, with some humour of course, the irony of all the secretaries he had ever having uncanny links to all his previous girlfriends' hair colours, or rather, current wife and would-be-girlfriend if he had been interested Meyrin Hawke. Whichsuddenly diverted his attention back to the coffee spill.

Shaking his head slightly, he waved for her to go and fetched a wad of tissues, spreading them liberally everywhere and sighing a bit. Then he picked up the ruined documents and moved back to his printer and reprinted them once more. Page after page of codes and words were sliding out and issusing all over, and the last of them was a mug-shot that would have left a strange impression on anyone who had even heard of Jun Thornier. He looked almost normal there, he had a sort of half-smile on his face, and his eyes were quite calm, no rage or frenzied panic in them, none whatsoever. His hair was the only thing that gave him away, it was matted and fell into hie eyes partially, and it cast a slight shadow over his face.

No wonder they always wanted the soldier's fringes out of their eyes, it always made them look a bit shifty in polaroids, hence the general rule that the bangs and fringes had to be swept to the side. 'Tell that to ZAFT soldiers,' Athrun thought wryly, 'And they'll send call for the fashion police.'

It was true however, ZAFT, being a volunteer army, had slacker rules when it came to dressing. A good example of that was Lunamaria Hawke, or more specifically, her mini-skirt. Her pink mini skirt, if you wanted to be pin-point precise. But perhaps the reason for the rather slack uniform checks was the fact that the soldiers were all Coordinators, and that meant extraordinary hair colours in the first place. Of course they could have insisted that the females tied their hair up and the males kept no bangs.

But Yzak Joule could do whatever he wanted while sporting those bangs, so that included the whole world where ZAFT regulations were concerned, as far as his friend with a terrible temper was concerned, if he could get away with murder, then the rest of the world was entitled to it too. And still, Yzak was fair and just, the kind of man everyone wanted to be associated with, and he spared nobody favours on account that he held a secret affection for them. He had threatened to kill Dearka in the first war, aiming a pistol at him when he had seen how Dearka had betrayed ZAFT, but then their friendship hadn't suffered after that. Dearka still used the little incident to remind Yzak to not pile him with extra work, but it was altogether, unsuccessful, although Athrun could see, quite clearly too, that the mention of that incident would cause Yzak to become a deep shade of lobster. And both of them weren't too keen on following regulations either, the wars had shown that quite clearly too.

The only one who had followed the regulations was Meyrin Hawke, he thought with a smile, busily mopping up the mess on his table. Not even Shiho, the number-one stickler for rules, followed them, but of course, to cut Shiho Hahenfuss some slack, that was her image on the surface, she was quite rebellious although not obviously and overtly like her fiance. Athrun had caught them kissing in the weapon armory once where entry was prohibited and failure to comply was a breach of regulations. Obviously, neither of his friends had cared, in fact, they abused the security of that room to an extent that Athrun wouldn't have like to contemplate and elaborate on at all.

But Meyrin Hawke, no. She religiously tied her hair up, albeit it looking like some school-girl's train of thought, and she never modified her uniform to suit her, unlike Lunamaria. Speaking of which, he had never taken notice of her until she had forcefully collided into him, not by choice probably, some over-eager soldiers had knocked her down during Mia Campbell's live performance. She had been very shy and meek, clumsy even, and he hadn't been exactly drawn to that aspect of her. But he had been impressed, to say the least, when she had saved his life so simply and daringly in a singular effort. And he had allowed himself to become close to her, not that he had much choice anyway, still, the shyness and courage that were so artfully intertwined made him think of Cagalli. Of course, one could have argued that Cagalli was anything but shy, but Athrun knew better, he saw facets of Cagalli nobody saw, save for himself.

He never admitted this to himself, but he had seen more Cagalli in Meyrin than he would have ever liked to say aloud, her courage and almost foolhardy ways were quite similar to Cagalli's and the shy nature and fragility of her smile had made him think of Cagalli as time went by. Of course, one could further argue that absence warped memories and he was just desperate to hold onto anything that felt dinstinctively like Cagalli. But she hadn't been Cagalli, no she hadn't, Meyrin probably didn't know that she resembled Cagalli in more ways than one. For a while, Athrun had considered being with Meyrin in his loneliness and despair, but he had sensed that Meyrin wasn't aiming for a short-term relationship. He wasn't either, but the only problem was that he only wanted the long-term relationship with someone else, and he tried very hard to keep a distance from Meyrin Hawke. It would have been selfish to them if he had fooled himself into thiking that Meyrin Hawke was Cagalli's equivalent. She wasn't. She just wasn't.

And he held up the fresh pieces of papaer and sighed again, staring hard at the man who stared unblinkingly back.

"I won't let you hurt her, Thornier," he said fiercely, "Don't try it."

Cagalli, on the other hand, was in strange daze. She barely knew what she was doing at times, but she somehow managed to do what she had always been doing- running her country. Lunch she didn't forgo, she certainly did no slave through alll twenty-four hours of the day because she knew her mind would go in no time if she chose that option. But when she needed a break at mid-day, she would take a sandwich or two and sit in an open field next to the Parliament House. Nobody really went there, maybe Rainie and recently Vino, she had spotted them once or twice, but other than those two, nobody went there except her. Her bodyguards were in the vicinity, that she was sure of, but they always maintained a distance because they knew that time and that place was solely for her to have, a sort of sanctuary other than her home.

Today, she sat there, playing witht he empty plastic wrapper that had previously contained her lunch, gazing at the golden wheat and honey-cloured grasses in the distance, and feeling the slightly warm breese move through her hair and brush her face with its invisible fingertips. And she wondered what Lacus was doing at that instant, in PLANT, it would be about evening, so perhaps she was preparing dinner. Or rather, waiting for Kira to finish preparing it, especially when Kira refused to let her do any chores at all.

But she heard a noise and was startled, brought back from her reverie, and she looked up, just in time to see something slip behind the trees. Laughing to herself, she made a note to tell Rainie to brush up on her stealth and tracking skills, it was far too conspicuous. Getting up woodenly and brushing some pollen off her cothes, she made her way back to her office where her concentration proved to be better for next few hours until she finally picked everything up and stood up, ready to go home.

"Rainie," she called loudly, waiting for the girl to appear, "I'm going home!"

A scuffling of feet was heard, and she thought it was strange, it sounded like a whole army of people were outside her door when it was usually either a pair of them and not the whole group, they took shifts, didn't they?

Shrugging slightly, she waited and saw the petite girl bopp in, her long hair only recently cut short, making her look spunkier than ever. Her tie-and-suit uniform, customary of all bodyguards was a bit rumpled, clearly, the girl wasn't keen on appearances.

"You called?" she offered cheerfully, but Cagalli noticed something like worry lurking under her brown eyes. And she immediately suspected something and frowned slightly, and she thought of a way to test her sneaking suspicions, wondering if Rainie would fall for it. But she went for it anyway, anything would do at this stage.

"I did," Cagalli confirmed easily, "I'm going to make a move, you do the same, maybe you can get whoever who's still around to go home too."

Quite forgetting what Athrun Zala had told her to be careful of, the bodyguard spun on her heel, opened the door, and yelled, her hands level to her mouth, "You all can go now!"

And the same scuffling of feet was heard and Cagalli instantly strode over to the door that was held partially open. And she witnessed the whole group of bodyguards shuffling tiredly down the stairs, and she glared at Rainie and asked pointedly, "I thought there are only two guarding each time at pivotal shifts? Why's the whole cohort hiding around here?"

The girl stared back at her, her eyes growing wide in dismay, and she immediately scuttled off, hurrying the rest down as quickly as she could, but then she tripped and fell on top of the burliest one of them who proceeded to cause the domino effect on the rest, and Cagalli, positioned atop the staircase and still frowning, saw an entaglement of limbs and various pained 'owws'. And she sighed and closed the door.

But she was seething inside, and when she got home, she cleared all the locks with a vengeance and forcefulness that surprised even her. His coat was hanging neatly by the door, his shoes nicely placed at the side, but she ignored all this and threw every thing in a heap, not bothering to clear up, and she stormed up the stairs and headed through the three corridors until she reached their room. And she flung it open, half-expecting him to be dozing away, but she found it empty, and spotted his briefcase at the desk.

She stood foolishly in the doorway, and then she thought of someting and hurried down another set of long, stretched corridors and tunred a corner int he extensive house, and then she paused at the drawing room and placed her ear next to it. A second later, she shrieked as it was opened and Athrun stood there gazing down at her.

Catching her breath, she hurriedly took a step back, but he looked at her calmly and said blithely, "Why don't you come on in? There's no point standing outside the door and trying to catch me working by hearing some sounds of my fingers typing on the keybord." He would infuriate her if he could, only Athrun Zala knew the exact way to lance the boil.

"Y-you," she began in a helpless rage, but he ventured forward and pulled her in, shutting the door, and she was int he cool, airy drawing room, it's curtians drawn by the impending night aparrent in its very air.

"Yes?" he asked listlessly, unfazed by the helplessness that washed over her face, mroe disturved by the next expression that returned as some sort of anger mixed with disbelief and worst still- mistrust.She stalked right in, leaving him to close the door and she turned sharply on her heel to face him. He towered over her still, she wasn't as diminutive as Lacus, but next to him, she might as well have been.

Breathing sharply, she stood her ground and burst out angrily, "Why did you go against my wishes?"

He stared at her for a minute or two, watched her breathing heavily, her chest rising in rage, and he answered, as cool as a cucumber, damn Athrun,"To protect you."

"I don't need protection, I have plenty, besides, I'm not a weak, helpless damsel-in-distress or any of those bloody things!" she stormed, her gestures becoming more violent and obviously angry.

Athrun sighed a bit and took her by the shoulders, then he looked directly at her and said seriously, "I never once thought that you were incapable of protecting yourself. It's just that-"

"That what?" she countered, mollified only by the weariness that drifted like a cloud over his face, making his handsome features slightly melancholic. And Cagalli wondered if she was she too difficult to love, if she was taking this too far, and if he would tire of her if she chose to stand her ground and not compromise in the slightest.

The next thing she knew, he had pulled her to him, and she was locked in an unwilling embrace, not knowing that the more she thrashed and grinded against him, the more she hurt him. But he held on tightly, ignoring her spluttering, so reminiscent of the first time he had held her when they had been on the Archangel, and he whispered, painfully soft, "You've made me become a very selfish person."

And she suddenly understood why he was doing all this, even at the expense of her trust and the expense of the knowledge that she was more than capable of protecting herself. Athrun wanted to eliminate all possiblities of her defeators at all costs, because he needed her. And that meant sacrificing many things to go against her wishes and protect her for the sake of keeping her by him. It was selfish, yes, to him and the rest, but to her, it was suddenly immensely flattering, and she pulled away, noting the crestfallen look in his eyes.

Then she pulled away, but only to pull him down to her to kiss him, and then she said embarrassedly and quite awkwardly, "Thank you."

He managed to smile then, and she ventured to say, "But I don't want to trouble anyone just to make sure Thornier doesn't come after me. Chances of him having forgotten all about his intentions are quite high, especially since they regularly pour drugs down his throat to keep him stable and inevitably, a sort of bunny-lover."

"Right," he laughed, amused at her stereotype of all calm, good natured people, she based too much on Lacus' standards alright, but then he sobered almost immediately and said morosely, "But I still think you should be a bit more careful. He'll be released tomorrow, I don't want anything to happen while we're apart."

"Nothing will," she assured him impatiently, brushing away his concerns as if they were a fly with a quick swish of her hand, "The security isn't exactly lax at the Parliament House, not when I'm officially working there at least."

Then she granted him a grin that rendered him speechless because of its radiance, and Athrun remembered something and asked mildly, "How'd you find out that I planned extra security measures with Kisaka and Amagi anyway?"

Cagalli glanced at him and burst out laughing, and then she chortled so much that she had to sit down and rest against the sofa's legs, but that wasn't enough either, she proceeded to roll arund until she was lying on her back and panting helplessly while staring at the ceiling. He sta down too, more evenly than her, obviosuly, and he watched her breathing and sinking into the soft fur of the carpet, closing her eyes in luxurious pleasure.

"Stupid, really," Cagalli muttured, still staring at the ceiling, "I kept hearing scuttling sounds outside the room, so I figured there were more than two guards outside. Then I tried checking, but somehow, I saw only two by the time I opened the door, but there was a slip and I saw that one of them was different from the one I had seen about five minutes ago. So I smelt a rat. Then when I left for work, I told Rainie to tell them all to go, and the girl was terribly absent-minded, she went and opened the door, stuck her head out, and yelled for all of them to go home. And I saw the entire crew of them troop off from various points around the office itself when there should have been only two or three at most. Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what you had planned, did it?"

"Bloody hell," Athrun responded bitterly, "We tried it out for a day and you found out in a day. It's a terrible record. I ought to give them personal training. Who,on earth goes sneaking around by trampling on the stairs for the whole of East Eurasia to hear?"

"Oh it's not that bad, honey," she mocked, sitting up and crouching nearer to him, chuckling at his sightly glum expression, "They just aren't very good at sneaking around, unlike you."

Athrun frowned, thinking about what she had said, and then he suddenly coloured a little when he realised the extent of her words, and then he asked awkwardly, "Since when do you call me honey?"

"I don't," she retorted cheerfully, "Couldn't you tell it was sarcasm?"

"Oh," he said dumbly, "Alright."

Sensing a shift in the mood, Cagalli decided to take advantage of it and collapsed on him, and she pressed her ear harmlessly against his chest and heard him chuckle, the sound rumbling pleasantly against her cheek. He let her hug him like a child, hanging onto him almost like a koala bear, since it was quite novel for her to show so much open affection, in fact, he quite enjoyed it. She was like him in that sense, they abstained from any overt affection, but it was obvious that Athrun couldn't get on without her, and hopefully, he thought, she was in the same position as him. He fiddled with her hand, holding it in his much larger one and he ran his fingers over the smooth wrist, regretting how roughly he had held her days ago. But she had forgiven him, and that made it slightly more difficult to swallow than before.

"Promise me that you won't go carvorting around and attempting to do anything stupid," he ordered her, propping her up on his chest where she had tried to doze off and was beginning to slide down. She opened her eyes with a start and uplifted her face to him, directly and with very little to cover her real emotions.

And she might have told Athrun that she wasn't going to do anything foolish or allow anything to jeopardise their happiness. And she could have told him that she wasn't a three year old who didn't know any better. So she trusted herself to do as he said, do as she deemed fit but lay off the borders where her actions would be considered stupid by him.

But she rested, basking in his warmth, and let him caress her cheeks, and she smiled comfortingly at him.

She could have told him that she had already made plans to speak to Thornier, with guards and all of course, she wasn't going to do 'anything stupid'.

But she didn't.