Disclaimer: Nope, still not claiming I own Gundam Seed.

a/n: Well, what do you know? I guess this story was just too interesting for me to leave alone, despite the fact I'd decided not to write any fanfiction for a while. Anyway, I'm betting everyone's forgotten this story by now. But it's worth a shot, isn't it?

Chapter 3 The Revelation (Part Two)

The early morning sunlight filtered through the gaps of the log house, revealing the floating dust that seemed to dance gently around the large room.

A single ray of light fell upon the face of a small boy with dirty-blonde hair, the kind that could never seem to be anything other than completely messy. The boy, feeling the heat on his closed eyelids, stirred from his slumber, but not before hearing muffled cries from the far side of the room.

"Father, Father… I want to go back…"

The boy sat up on his bed and scanned his surroundings, brown eyes darting this and that direction, searching for the source of the voice. His gaze fell on a mass of dark hair that was as messy as his own and as brown as his eyes.

"I don't want to do this anymore, Father…" the other boy whispered in a voice that could barely be heard. "I want to go back-"

"Go back where?"

He turned around to face the little boy sitting on his bed. Amethyst-colored eyes were met with hazel-colored ones. His vision blurred with tears, he said simply, "Home."

The boy had been looking out the window for quite some time before rain started pelting at it. His gaze had been so intense; some people would have believed he had the power to conjure up rainstorms.

"Kira? Are you okay?"

Kira only muttered, "Yes, I'm fine, Cagalli," with a voice that told his twin sister otherwise.

Although he didn't see, he could sense a pout on the girl's lips when she said, "You're starting to sound an awful lot like Father, you know."

Kira could not help but smile guiltily at the remark. "Sorry." Just as suddenly as it had come, the grin disappeared, to be replaced by a frown that seemed plastered on his face the whole night. "I'm just worried about Mother."

Cagalli gave out a sigh. "I know. When she fell over in my room this morning, I didn't know what to do."

"I wish she didn't have to be sick."

"Me, too."

A heavy silence surrounded the siblings as they contemplated on their mother's condition, of which neither knew the name, since it was too complicated for a five year-old to even pronounce correctly.

"You know, Cagalli," Kira began, looking away from the window and into his sister's amber-like eyes, "If Mother ever does go to that happy place she tells us about so much, maybe it would be better for her, so she doesn't have to be in a sickbed all the time."

"Yeah…"

Noting the obvious lack of conviction in Cagalli's voice, Kira continued. "Father says she's gonna be fine, though, and he had that strange look on him when he said that, so it's true. I know it is. And with our help, Mother will be better again. "

"Yeah," Cagalli repeated, which much more enthusiasm. She gave her brother a wide grin. "She's gonna be okay, as long as we get her to eat more, right?"

"Right-"

The conversation came to a stop when the large oak doors leading out of the mansion were flung open. A grim-looking Uzumi Nara Attha entered, eyes fixed on Kira.

"Kira, a moment, if you please," he said, in a gentle voice that contrasted to his cool aura.

The boy nodded and stood from the sofa he had been sitting on, but not before embracing his twin with all the love he could muster. He then followed his father, who had gone ahead to his study.

Cagalli merely stared, confused at the sudden act Kira had done. She had no idea – at that moment, at least – why she had a certain thought on her mind: that her brother hugging her meant he was saying goodbye…

Kira heaved a heavy-hearted sigh as he opened the door to the Representative's study. "Father? It's… It's time, isn't it?"

Uzumi looked up from his desk and nodded. "I know I've told you this many times before, but what I'm going to put you through is something I never would have wanted to do."

"But I know you have to do it. And… it's okay."

"I won't blame you at all if you're mad at me, Kira." The Representative's voice seemed to crack at that point.

"I'm not mad, Father," Kira answered, forcing a smile that came out as a pained expression instead. "I'll just miss everyone, that's all."

"I'll tell Cagalli to write to you often."

Before the boy could respond, two men in formal suits entered the room. "Everything's prepared, sir."

Uzumi exhaled heavily and stood from his seat. "Off we go, then," he said, in an attempt to sound cheerful as he blinked his tears away.

He did not see his son doing the same thing.

"Home, huh?" the other boy said, penetrating Kira's thoughts. "Well, at least you know you have one. Me, I've been in this orphanage since I was two. Reverend Malchio told me my mom and dad died in the war, and I don't have anything to remember them by but my name."

"What is your name?"

"Michal. 'Bout you?"

"I'm Kira Yula Attha," Kira replied.

Michal snorted. "Attha, that's the royal family, isn't it? Why would someone from Orb be in an orphanage?"

Kira bit on his lower lip and sniffed. "You won't get it if I told you."

The blonde, thinking that the boy he was talking to had gone through enough already, said, "Sorry. So, uh… You want me to show you around after breakfast? There's a nice beach outside, and we play there all the time."

"Alright."

"Um… Kira, right? If it's okay to ask, how is it, living in Orb?"

The question made the brown-haired boy's mind flash various events that he could remember up to that point in time: running around the vast garden with his sister, walking in the park with his mother on a warm sunny day, purchasing a picture book with his father on a Sunday…

And despite his situation, a small smile made its way to his lips as he said, "It's great."

A good number of months had passed, but Cagalli still refused to come to terms with her Father for what he had done to her brother, even after Uzumi had given her the orphanage's address for when she would write letters to him.

Of course, since she was five and did not want to send anything with her messy handwriting to Kira, she had not written to him even once. Instead, she had been busy practicing her writing incessantly at school (and at home), not resting until she could write an entire letter with a penmanship that even adults would praise.

Along with that objective, she had made a vow to herself that she would steer her best friend Athrun away from trouble at all costs. After she had seen the bruise on his wrist, she felt that what Athrun had suffered was her fault, and no matter how she tried to look at it, she was still the one to blame.

Little did she know that her frilly dress was also partly at fault for the unusual events that were to happen after.

Unusual event number one happened about a year later, a few days after Athrun celebrated his sixth birthday. Cagalli had walked a few blocks to get to the raven-haired boy's residence to wake him, an act she was used to doing, as she had always been the early bird of the two. Opening the door to Athrun's room, she tiptoed to the bed where a sleeping form lay; while doing so, she caught a familiar sight in the corner of her eye on a side table.

A golden clip.

Her golden clip. An item she had lost during Athrun's birthday party, and something she did not bother searching for, seeing as she was not known for giving value to her accessories.

Cagalli had dismissed this as unimportant, however, thinking that Athrun had probably found it and would give it back to her when he'd remember to.

But she never got the clip back.

Unusual event number two, which happened a few years later, was all the more strange. And this was how it happened.

"Athrun, how do you do this?" nine year-old Cagalli whined, looking at her mathematics homework exasperatedly. "I didn't get a word the teacher said."

The boy raised an eyebrow at her. "Really? I think it was pretty easy."

"Well, I'm sorry I'm not as much of a genius as you are, Zala."

Athrun let out a small laugh, not enough to anger his best friend even more. "Come on, I was just kidding. Here," he said, taking Cagalli's notebook and flipping it to the last page. He scrawled a pair of fractions. "First you have to skip count and fine a same number between these two at the bottom. In this case, it's twelve. Then you divide twelve with three and multiply it by the number at the top, which is one. So now you have a new fraction, four-twelfths. Do the same thing to the second fraction and you have five-twelfths. Add four by five and copy the bottom."

Cagalli stared. "That's it?"

"That's it," Athrun said with a shrug.

"But Mr. Waltfeld was going on and on about least common denominators and stuff," the girl complained. "You make it seem so easy."

"Well, you were busy writing 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog' during class, anyhow."

"Only because I want to write Kira a nice, neat letter."

"Yeah, I know how important that is to you," Athrun said with a grin. "Don't worry, your writing is actually pretty good already, better than mine will ever be."

"Well, I'm not gonna rest till it's perfect," Cagalli said firmly. She stood up.

"Hey, I thought you weren't gonna rest till your writing's perfect."

"Well, I can't write if I feel like peeing," she answered, heading towards the nearest bathroom, which was in the kitchen area of the house.

Athrun, meanwhile, continued his own homework in basic algebra, a subject that only he among his classmates took up.

He did not notice the cockroach that had flown from the bathroom to Cagalli's notebook until the blonde ran towards him, slipper in hand. Only then did he see the bronze little monstrosity.

"Aaaaahhhhhhh!" he screamed, running and hiding behind Cagalli for cover.

"And since when did you become scared of roaches?" the girl questioned, glaring at the small insect. "You used to kill them for me all the time when we were five."

"I don't know, I had a traumatic experience of a roach flying towards my face once. Just kill it, already. It might fly towards your face this time," Athrun said hastily.

"You wish," Cagalli retorted, slamming the slipper hard on the roach. "Well, that's that."

Athrun exhaled in relief. "Finally."

Cagalli could not shake off her best friends "freak-o moment" (as she was to call it later on) with the cockroach. She had known him four years, but he had never showed signs of fearing insects like those. Until then, that is.

"Athrun?" she asked after a few minutes, as they were finishing their last few assignments.

"Yeah?"

"Is there… um… something you're not telling me?" she said carefully.

For a moment, Athrun looked like he did have a confession to make, but whatever it was, he did not reveal it to the girl.

"Nope, nothing. Why?" he asked guardedly.

"No, forget it," was all Cagalli answered.

Unusual event numbers three, four and five were all telltale signs that no one except Cagalli would have noticed – as the blonde had taken it upon herself to watch her best friend more closely since unusual event number two.

The said unusual events consisted of Athrun writing a guy's name on the back of his notebook (with little hearts on the page) during fifth grade, talking on and on (quite fondly) about a particular soccer player during seventh grade, and keeping photographs of good-looking guys in his locker during eighth grade.

Cagalli wanted to believe that the unusual events were nothing but coincidences, or just harmless tendencies, perhaps. But she was aware that she would find it hard to sleep well at night if she kept on guessing. Like it or not, she would have to ask Athrun herself.

And on one morning in January, as both were walking down an empty hallway to their next class, she finally did.

"Athrun, can I ask you something?"

Thirteen year-old Athrun shrugged, unaware of Cagalli's suspicions. "Sure."

It is said, scientifically, that most women are likely to beat around the bush before actually getting to the point.

But Cagalli had never been in to science, and she was not most women, either.

"Areyougay?" she blurted out quickly, too quickly. Getting to the point was not easy, though she was quite used to doing so.

"I was wondering when you'd get around to asking me that," Athrun said, smiling sadly.

"So… you are…?"

He hesitated, but finally gave a small nod in response.

A silence that had not once occurred between them since they were five ensued, the tension almost ready to make either crack at any moment.

Athrun sighed. "Well, you'll probably want to leave and never come near me again. I won't blame you."

"And why would I do that?" Cagalli asked.

"Because… Well… Normally that's what people do when they find out, right?"

"Athrun, even if you told me you were a humanoid alien from another galaxy, I'd still want you as my best friend. I'd still want you as my substitute brother," she told him.

"Really? So, it's fine with you?" Athrun said, with a surprised-but-happy look on his face.

"Sure it is!" Cagalli said, a smile gracing her lips.

"Thanks," Athrun said, almost in a whisper, wrapping himself around his best friend in a tight hug.

The blonde hugged back, shoving all negative thoughts at the back of her mind. She would just have to accept Athrun for who he was; nothing more, nothing less.

I can do that, she thought. I can definitely do that.

a/n: Well, this was quite a long one according to my standards, at least. I can't promise I'll be posting more chapters soon, since I have to go back home (I'm in my dad's place, which is islands away from my house) in two days. But I will try, definitely. Big words, coming from a lazy girl like me. LOL.

P.S.: Haven't edited this yet, since I pretty much typed this up in one sitting. Sorry for any typos. D