Title: Crossfire

Author: Jusrecht

See Disclaimer and Warnings in chapter one.

A/N: Twelve chapters to get back to him, I know I'm talking things really slow... I love and hate this character, so it was difficult for me to write about him because those two emotions keep canceling each other out. I love him because he's Athrun. I hate him because the directors of this series (Destiny especially) couldn't seem to make up their mind what to do with him. Anyway, this chapter is dedicated to everyone who wants to know what happened to him. Not everything is revealed here though, but I hope you'll still enjoy it. Thanks a lot to everyone who has reviewed!

By the way, the timeline here is in parallel with the previous chapters, so I hope no one gets confused.

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Chapter Fourteen: Athrun – Shackled and Burned

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Athrun Zala was not unfamiliar with severe injuries. Injuries were the constant companion to a fighter, a badge of courage some said. There were times in his life when he had almost crossed that dangerous threshold and gone to the other side, and sometimes, for a soldier who had taken so many lives with his own hands, death was terrifying. The memory, the sensation stayed with him until now, locked in the darkest nook of his mind, unseen but not unfelt.

It was why that when he finally regained consciousness, Athrun knew that something was not right.

At first, there were only voices, faint and indistinguishable, and then slowly, when the haze of painkillers sleep and rest had spread in his body began to weaken, the pain was excruciating. He struggled to open his eyes and found nothing more than a string of blurry images before the pain sent him adrift once more.

But he was stronger than that.

The next time he managed to fight off the unconsciousness, the pain was still there but not as intense. Voices also still colored the realm between his awareness and beyond, one of them sounding vaguely familiar to him, and curiosity made him finally open his eyes. He encountered a different string of images than the last and put more effort to focus his gaze, all the way repeatedly deflecting the upcoming of a terrible headache.

His surrounding was foreign, Athrun concluded after a brief inspection. It was a small, yellow-walled room with low ceiling and a little hole which he realized a moment later as a window. Sunlight poured in from the open gap, brightening the grey, uncovered floor and it was then when he started to wonder where he was. His body was numb and when he tried to move, all of his joints seemed to simultaneously scream in pain. He settled back to the hard bedding and tried to control his erratic breathing, black spots darkening his vision momentarily. For some reasons, the pain throbbing in his muscles felt unpleasantly familiar.

It took him another little while to realize that the voices had stopped and there was someone moving about just outside the room. The fact that he had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on filled him with trepidation as he waited, staring at the solitary wooden door, head heavier than he ever remembered.

When it was pushed open from the other side, Athrun almost succeeded to agitate his muscles once more by trying to inch away from the door. Fortunately, he lacked the sufficient supply of energy to perform the action.

"Hey, you're awake."

A familiar face framed with golden hair appeared on the doorway and Athrun breathed out in relief. It was Cagalli. He would be alright. But doubt began to spawn again at the next second when he got a better look at the owner of the face and realized that something was not right. The young woman approaching him looked very much like Cagalli but somehow, there was something different about her and he noticed a moment later that it was the clothes she was wearing. He had to raise his eyebrows at this. Never in his life had he imagined the Lioness of ORB wearing anything like that, loose brown skirts and a faded flower-patterned shirt which strangely reminded him to a peasant girl.

Suddenly everything looked even more wrong than before.

"Cagalli?" he tried to pronounce her name and only succeeded to produce an incoherent mumbling sound.

"Wait, don't move," the Cagalli-look-alike moved quickly to his side and held his body down with her hand while the other flew to his forehead. She let out a relieved sigh and smiled down at him. "Thank God your fever has gone down. I almost thought you couldn't make it, but you seem okay now. There is no doctor here so I only rely on medical herbs."

Even the voice sounded exactly like Cagalli's despite its occasional high pitch. Athrun started to think that probably he was still dreaming and hadn't woken up yet.

"You–"

"Ah yes, sorry for not introducing myself," she smiled again and somehow it convinced him that this young woman was not the one he had known and befriended for years. "I'm Rakis and you're in my house. My uncle's house actually."

That confirmed it. Athrun stared at her, his bewilderment hadn't completely ebbed yet. She wasn't Cagalli but the definite resemblance was uncanny. Perhaps her hair was a little paler and the colour of a pair of eyes which were looking at him with keen interest was more of light brown than gold and her bearing was too free and cheerful compared to that of his friend, but everything else, from stature to voice, was an astonishing mirror of the ORB Representative.

"You're not Cagalli?"

"Just who or what is Cagalli?"

Deciding not to make an idiot out of himself more than he already had, Athrun stopped his questioning. Although rare, it was probable that there existed two people who looked alike despite not sharing the same DNA blueprint. "Never mind," he mumbled, looking down to his hands. Or maybe this was really a dream. His head still felt as heavy as lead, as if he had been drugged for days.

And then he remembered.

His intake of breath was sharp and his hands were shaking slightly, recollections coming back in torrents. He remembered the shuttle, the GINN, the endless floating in vast, never-ending space because the navigation module and booster were down. And the shot directed at his mobile suit from out of nowhere.

He should have been dead already. That shot should have destroyed his cockpit and he hadn't even worn a pilot suit.

Meyrin.

"Don't move around yet!" The young woman – Rakis – warned him when he tried to get out of the bed. "You have broken ribs!"

That explained the familiar pain, Athrun thought as once again his body succumbed to the throbbing in his chest. It wasn't the first time his ribs took an abuse up to that level and this was decidedly worse because didn't she say there was no doctor here? He groaned, closing his eyes when an excruciating wave rocked his body, and settled back to the bed.

"I have to return," he tried to say firmly but his voice coming out faint and hoarse from lack of use – and shock. Meyrin. Gods. What if she died in the accident?

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it can wait," Rakis stated and came back with a glass of water. "I don't want a stranger dying in my house. Here, drink this."

Athrun shook his head and winced when a headache decided to assault along with the movement. "You don't understand," he said weakly. "I really must return."

"Drink it first," she insisted.

He heaved a long sigh but accepted her help to sit up and the glass. It wasn't water, he realized when the warm, sweet liquid moistened his lips and tongue and then his parched throat, its strange but calming scent erasing his nausea. Almost with relish, Athrun gulped everything down, suddenly conscious at how thirsty he had been. It must have been days since he had lost consciousness if the sluggishness in his muscles was anything to go by. To his relief, the warmth stayed in his stomach and cleared his head a little, although the pain did not completely ebb.

Rakis was looking at him curiously when he handed her the glass back. "Where are you from?" she asked bluntly.

Athrun shot a cursory glance at the girl and decided to put safety first. Two years of being the chairman of the Supreme Council taught him a lot about circumspection and discretion.

"ORB."

"Oh, that country," she huffed, a slightly disgusted look flitting across her face. The unexpected reaction made him frown, but she didn't seem to notice. "So you want to go back there?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Can you tell me what I should do to return to ORB?"

She put the glass on the table and dragged a chair to sit on next to his bed, on her face obvious concern that reminded him to his own friends. "Not to exaggerate or anything, but you're almost dead when I found you – when my uncle found you."

"I'm feeling better now," he said, not exactly lying because he was feeling better – just not the kind of 'better' that would allow him walking around and making a journey back to ORB, wherever he was now. But details were not important. Not in this situation.

She raised her eyebrows, disbelief glaring back at him. "Yeah, right. Like I would believe that coming from someone who was unconscious for two days."

It made his jaw drop. "Two days?"

She looked at him oddly. "What do you expect? Two weeks?"

Athrun closed his mouth, unable to think of any respond. Maybe his sense of time was screwed, but it did feel more like two weeks than two days. And that still didn't explain how he could end up here when the last thing he remembered was the GINN's cockpit.

"About you going back to ORB," she spoke again, a careful note in her voice this time, "I'm sorry to disappoint, but the closest thing to transportation here is a horse cart."

The news made him feel like he had been doused with a shower of icy water. "A horse cart?" Athrun echoed, his insides growing cold.

"Yeah," she confirmed with a nod. "Sometimes there are people passing through this area with trucks or cars, but not at this season of the year. I'm afraid you have to wait. By the way, your name is?"

"Alex," he answered numbly, not yet done processing the information he had just received.

"Well then, Alex, do you want something to eat now?"

He shook his head, trying to chase away his desperation. "Where is this place actually?"

"A village. The closest town to here is Bellshill, and if you don't know where it is, let's just say somewhere in Western Eurasia. You crashed down near my uncle's field but he is away at the moment. He'll be back later tonight."

"I crashed down?" he repeated, his nausea returning.

"Yeah, in that big thing," she walked over to the window and pushed it open. Athrun sat up a little straighter, trying to see what was outside, and noticed a familiar wrecked bulk, a strange sight against the peaceful green backdrop. It was the GINN. So he had really crashed down in it. And survived.

"I saw it once in an old magazine," she said again, hostility nothing but evident in her voice. "Called mobile armor or something."

"Mobile suit," he corrected automatically.

She snorted. "Whatever. So you're a soldier?"

He sighed and leant back to the wooden headboard. "You can say that."

Rakis didn't say anything for a long time, her expression cold and unfriendly. Athrun suddenly felt tired and a new wave of headache was threatening at the edge of his consciousness. He could feel it coming and there was still nothing he could do about his head feeling like a big lump of lead.

He had been drugged, he was sure of it. It was even worse than that one time when he had come out of a big surgery, almost overdosed on anesthetic.

"Anyway, you can't go anywhere right now," she finally said, cutting his train of thought. "Even if you borrow my uncle's horse, you still have to recover first to ride him to the nearest town. Bellshill is three or four days of ride from here. Maybe you can find a car or something there."

"Is there really no other way?" Athrun knew he sounded desperate and didn't really care right now. There would be other times to hold up his chairman-ly poise.

"Maybe you think this is a backward, out-of-nowhere village," she snapped, sounding very angry so suddenly that it took him aback. "Well, it is. So what if we don't have cars or TVs. We don't want to get involved with the outer world and we are perfectly happy to be left alone. You came and brought that thing, all right. But don't you dare getting us caught up in your war."

He was left speechless for a few moments after the outburst, his mind seeing a girl whose angry face so similar to the one looking back at him right now. And Shinn. He used to blame Cagalli for what had happened to his family and it was the same hate outlining Rakis's face now. Disappointment. Vengeance.

"The war has ended," he heard himself saying weakly.

"Really?" she sneered, her eyes alight with cold fire. "Why haven't my parents returned then? They had been employed by the Eurasian Military before I could even remember their face and suddenly their letters stopped coming five years ago. What do you think the hell happened?"

They were dead. "But the war has truly ended," he tried to argue, even with the painful knowledge that it was a pathetic line.

"ZAFT destroyed Artemis," Rakis practically spat the world as she stood up. "My parents were there, but I only found out a year later. Tell me how to forgive them. Tell me how to forgive those damn killers!"

He remained silent and she seemed to interpret it as a cue to continue her rampage. "Your country is no better either, I heard. Attacked by their own ally and still make the same mistake twice. Honestly, their representatives must be stupid."

The last sentence stirred something dormant within him, which he recognized as rage a second later. ORB suffered so much, and it hadn't even been their – Cagalli's – fault that they had chosen to align with OMNI Alliance during the second war. It had been the work of that idiot who belonged to the Seiran house. She had no right to accuse Cagalli when she didn't know anything.

But Rakis was hurt, and like Shinn had been once, it was her grief speaking. Perhaps she just didn't know that so much had changed. Perhaps it was convenient for her to remain oblivious because that way, she didn't have to forgive.

"ORB is doing its best to protect the peace," he finally said, his voice flat and neutral.

"Protect the peace?" she repeated, her whole body shaking with anger, and her voice escalated to a full shout. "My brother died trying to protect that country! He adored its ideal and look where it has gotten him! That Athha bastard!"

A pregnant silence followed with Athrun silently staring at the angry young woman and her glaring back at him. He wanted to disagree but noticed a framed picture on the table, a photo of a young man dressed in ORB Military uniform. This must be her brother's room and he had died, taken from her so suddenly and to her, unfairly. Athrun understood that pain. His mother. Nicol. And then his father. It was easier to keep hating. He understood that better than anyone else.

"It's Cagalli Yula Athha you were talking about," suddenly she stated, her voice just a little above a contemptuous whisper. "Isn't it?"

"Yes," he admitted heavily, not knowing what else to do. "You look like her."

For a second, Rakis looked like she was about to strangle him before storming out of the room, the door slammed loudly behind her. Left alone, Athrun closed his eyes, feeling worse than he had been ten minutes ago. His ribs were not protesting as much but an entirely different pain had taken the place. It was all lies, peace and everything they had been fighting for. What peace, if one's heart still could be ravaged by that great of hate.

Kira. Cagalli. Lacus.

What are we doing?

End Chapter Fourteen

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Notes: So, not everything is well for dear Athrun and it's also distressing to me, but I have to announce that there are still eons of chapters before I reunite him back with his Kira. Thank you for reading. Please leave a review.