Disclaimer: I own nothing of Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny, which can be a blessing, because if you did, then you'd have legions of ASUCAGA fans waiting to kill you if you didn't get ASUCAGA sorted out.
Chapter4
Athrun felt his mind go into a state it hadn't gone into for years-blankness.
His fists were clenched. He had the urge to pull out a knife.
At the same time, his pulse was quickening and little beads of sweat had gathered near his bangs, not that anyone would see. But that did not mask their existence, not when he felt them sliding slightly as he breathed- breathed.
His bangs had always served as a good concealer for the line of worry he chose to hide when he was working late with important deadlines to meet.
Blankness was like a state of vertigo to him, although it hadn't always been that way.
He was staring straight at Cagalli, Chairman of ORB and the Princess of ORB.
And Athrun was remembering things he had pushed himself to forget for the longest time, and then he knew instantly that he had always retained the truth, coupled with the vague knowledge that he would never succeed in forgetting it.
How did one forget a wound when he still carried it on him?
She was walking past him without even looking at him, although in the blurred sea of black and dark-coloured formal suits, he wasn't quite sure he was noticeable anyway. He felt his arm springing into motion to reach out for her hand but stopped himself in the nick of time and just stared at Cagalli Yula Atha.
Once, someone had told him that fate and irony were the best of friends. He truly believed that now.
The first time he had killed a man, he had stabbed him in the eye and watched the gleaming silver blade sinking right through the brain, and then watched the Earth Alliance soldier scream himself to death in pain and madness. Long after the soldier had died, the screams of pain were still echoing everywhere, and then he had realised the screams of agony were all his own.
All this at fourteen.
They had been about fifteen or close to sixteen when he had met Cagalli. He hadn't known it at the time when they had parted from the island their mobile suits had crashed on, but he had already fallen in love with one he had tried to kill a mere few hours ago.
Athrun watched the same one move past him and thought of the time when he had killed his first man. When he killed a man after that, his mind would be blank, but his hands would be fast and trained in using the gun or knife. His fingers would be quick to squeeze the crucial trigger, and his legs would spring into impossible leaps across wide expanses of space. He had successfully demonstrated it in the coliseum in Coppernicus when they had tried to save Mia Campbell from Dullindal's far-reaching influence and her greatest enemy-herself.
He wondered now, although the thoughts were like moths finding the fatal flames, their paths indirect as they swooned for the light. They were all moths in this hall- all dawn to the light, helpless, waiting to be consumed by the fire, leave, hollowed and laughing; smiling at people they'd never known in their lives, leaving without even knowing their names.
He closed his eyes.
She'd moved past him already.
Had Cagalli known much about Mia Campbell?
Athrun wondered whether Cagalli was aware that Mia Campbell had thrown herself at him at every opportunity to flirt and cling onto him. He had tried to ignore her, but it was difficult pretending to be blind. A bit like a person pretending to be asleep while his enemy watched him sleep and said, curiously, "I wonder if he is asleep."
She had clung on to him, insistent, somehow desperate and broken, she had tired him terribly, all the while saying it was only right since she was to be Lacus Clyne, Athrun Zala's former fiancée. Her voice, cheerful and interested in everything he said, was always a bit empty, they could both hear it.
And Athrun briefly questioned himself there and then, how Cagalli might have reacted to Mia Campbell if she knew of what had gone on in the territory of the Coordinators.
But Mia had died saving Lacus, something Lacus had wept about for days, and he had intensely regretted his decision to accept her as Lacus when he had been in ZAFT. She had been flirtatious and coy with him, something he knew stemmed from her need to play her role as Lacus, but it had become something that had gone far out of the region labelled as duty. He hadn't taken much notice of her, he had been far too preoccupied then, but her openness and care had touched him when Dullindal had tried to string him along like a puppet.
He found it difficult to look at Mia the way he looked at Lacus, she was her own stranger in the mirror, no doubt she had lost a bit of sanity with everything that had once defined Mia Campbell.
She had tried so hard to be Lacus, and like Rusty, had died trying to do something they weren't destined to finish in the first place.
Athrun had tried to save her too, but she didn't want to be saved even then. How could he, when she didn't want to?
And he hadn't even thought of Cagalli while he fought desperately to save himself from Dullindal and took Meyrin with him. Cagalli had already been someone else's by then,or so he had thought. At that time, there was only one chance to fight for his life and maybe save Meyrin and he couldn't afford to think of her any longer.
He had been forced to take the sixteen year-old Meyrin along with him although he hadn't wanted to at all, but that was the only way she'd be safe. If she had stayed behind on the Minerva, Rey would have killed her under Dullindal's orders in an instant. Athrun hadn't thought of Cagalli not because he didn't want to, but because he had forced himself to after finding out she had became Yuna Roma Seiran's bride instead of his.
Meyrin had stuck with him for a certain period of time, but she had just suddenly left one day with very little notice. He hadn't chased after her. He didn't see the need to, and besides, by the time he got hold of her resignation letter and the engagement ring which he had given Cagalli, the girl had disappeared without a trace or much of a goodbye.
When he had met up with Lacus, Kira, Shinn and Lunamaria, Meyrin had accompanied him. Although nothing had been voiced, Athrun knew Kira was a little suspicious of her even if he didn't say it or show it, but that was alright after a while because Cagalli didn't say anything either.
Athrun was sure that when he went into a killing mode, his mind was blank, but his body, lithe and with youth's favours surging in his veins along with the red, young blood, and his mind, trained from precise steps of simulations and mechanical murders in a practice zone, would be near the level of a super human's. Hadn't he done the same with Cagalli? She or he, since he had thought her a man, was only holding the weapon in curiosity, wondering where the gun had come from especially on such a remote island, but his mind had snapped, yes, snapped into a state of blankness.
He was practiced, an experienced killer, and he wanted to kill the enemy to save his own skin. The second and subsequent did not matter, he was over and done with killing the first, and when he was fourteen, he had known then that the second and subsequent man he killed would not matter.
Except when he had tried to kill a blonde boy and realised the soldier was a girl when the 'boy' had screamed in terror. She had been so irritated to know later that Athrun thought she was a he, and her passionate face, filled with anger and fury had bewitched him after that.
On a normal day, he would have been downright irritated that he was caught in something he couldn't understand, but when he had finally realised that all he wanted was her to be with him, he had been happy enough to just be confused and tangled in emotions impossible to analyse.
What could he have done anyway? All there was at that time as revenge, and even with his carefully manipulated genes, he had sweated his guts out to attain the Red Coat status. He was an elite soldier who could kill without breaking much of a sweat with little mercy for those who were in his way. Now, he had morphed into Chairman Zala of ETERNITY, an organisation the PLANT's high council had set up as a sub-government of peace, and his mind had scorned the irony of it all for a mere second.
He worked for peace but he never had any of his own.
Sleepless nights of never-ending work, reading documents even while his overworked eyes teared and issuing instructions with burning coffee keeping his mind alert had been something he adhered to for almost two years. It wasn't difficult- Athrun enjoyed having something to do, something he could dedicate his life to doing, knowing that he was doing something worthwhile, fighting his own war.
All this, with a tiny hope buried deep somewhere that he would see her again. That hope was a dangerous little spark, a little scratch of wild chance and the lone red flower, tiny yes, but a singular red, amongst the normal, placid fields of green. That dot of hope. He could live, he would live, even while his back and abdomen had scars, feral and sepia with the dulled pain his body had endured, but he wanted more. Athrun wanted peace within him.
He watched quietly.
Cagalli was extending her hand to a minister, and he kissed it reverently. She was smiling and saying something that was lost in the roar of the crowd's murmurs and the ocean of sounds.
And the answer presented itself. She was his peace, even with her unpredictability and feisty temper, her naïve child-like ways and that strange, inherent wisdom that could present itself. Her face was hauntingly beautiful- how many times had it looked at him in his dreams and how many times had she smiled?
The truth was becoming suffocating now, pressing down, a pilgrim's burden, and he wanted cold water to splash on his face, tell himself he was merely hallucinating in this hall, teeming with decadence and steaming with humanity.
He stared at her, not seeing anymore.
He had been lying for so long.
But it had been difficult to admit it to himself when he had stepped down from the shuttle when they had arrived, but he had known that the truth would be unraveled and it would find him sooner or later. And it would prick him everywhere, from the edges of his fingertips to the borders of every memory he had re-obtained in that terrible, blinding moment as he looked at her. He needed her still.
He still saw Cagalli Yula Atha, or as the world knew her, the Chairman Atha of Orb. She had became one of the most-photographed people along with Lacus, international icons in their own rights, and Athrun knew that it was a fact that Cagalli appeared on television in hundreds of press conferences.
But he hadn't dared to take too much notice. Now, the sting of the truth, revealed and bare, not harmless but heavy and sensuous in the whispered suggestions of what he would do from then on, would wait to punish him.
He knew too, that the peace was making so much progress due to her efforts that it was almost unbelievable that the Coordinators and Naturals had been at each others' throats for the last century. Cagalli would appear to speak to her people regularly, according to Kira, and as a brother his voice would reveal that hint of pride that Lacus similarly shared for Cagalli's determination and strong will.
But Athrun had not seen it, of course. He had very little time to watch the news, and everything came in newspapers. As soon as the newspapers came to his office and his eyes viewed golden hair and amber eyes splayed out on the papers, his mind would automatically transfer him into his killing mode-blankness, and the hands, so used to mechanically squeezing the trigger, would automatically flip to the next page without him reading anything or seeing anything about her.
His heart would pound like a rock with life breathed into it, in the left of his chest. And he imagined, for a minute now, that it was doing so at this moment.
The truth was that his heart ached every single time he flipped a page and turned his head away from any picture or image of her. The mere mention of her name could effectively put him in a bad mood for several hours, even his careless, unconcerned secretary smelt a fish.
Now she was in front of him, flanked by several bodyguards she had once been so uncomfortable about. He was quite sure she would have felt more comfortable having a gun hidden somewhere about in her clothes and guarding someone else than being the one guarded, and he had to stifle a dry laugh.
The bodyguards were like black wolves around her. He fought back a sneer- wasn't she always insisting that she was competent to protect herself?
Most of the delegates either were either trained fighters or had their own bodyguards; hence Cagalli having six of them wasn't quite overboard. Even the most minor delegates had at least two, so the Supreme Commander of ORB couldn't have just herself, could she?
One of her bodyguards, obviously a trained killer like most of them were, guided Cagalli into the main hall where she would make a speech in honour of the night of cooperation between EA, ORB and PLANT. Earth Alliance had agreed to send their ambassadors to be under ORB's control for five years in a bid to widen the network and ensure peace on an international stage. PLANT, of course, was another issue.
It was internationally known that ORB and EA had always been on better terms than PLANT and ORB or EA and PLANT, and hence a selected group of Naturals from ORB were to be sent to PLANT to try integration with Coordinators. It was an instrumental project to determine if the time was right to announce the world was reformed for good. Of course it was hell for all the embassies, Athrun thought. There were thousands of arrangements to make in the integration, and some details would surely crop up even in the light dinner conversation that night.
Unbeknownst to most of the public, ETERNITY wasn't all about diplomacy. Under its calm exterior of peaceful talks and negotiations to settle differences in areas around the world with the Naturals and Coordinators, ETERNITY actually possessed a secret military force that was part of ZAFT.
If necessary, ETERNITY would activate the peacekeeping troops to the different areas in the world to prevent violence and aggression from taking place against either group. Economic sanctions weren't the only fight for peace, since some areas like Berlin and the Eastern European region had more than enough of an independent economy to rely on if they were to declare themselves anti-coordinator. This was all top-secret of course, and very few other than himself, the ETERNITY council he headed, and the Supreme Council of PLANT knew this.
As far as he could see, Cagalli had risen to the occasion and taken to the important meeting swathed in an expensive-looking black satin gown heavily studded with jet and rhinestones. She had probably pierced her ears some time in the two years that he hadn't seen her and had looped sparkling silver drops into the ear holes, drawing attention to her face upwards.
He gave the attention almost unwittingly, although by the time he realised that he was oggling at her, most of the men already were. His eyes were glued onto her, almost forcefully and somehow, the blankness and random mix of memories cleared from his mind akin to the way a wind would blow a thick fog away.
The ambassadors and various literati of ORB, PLANT and EA were applauding as she entered with a regal air that surprised only him. He hadn't seen it in her before, but the others, well-practised with her appearances on television and newspapers, had. Athrun could not believe how much she had transformed in a space of a little more than a year, and felt a pang of misery hit him as Kira took her gloved hand and led her, amidst loud applause to the platform where she would make her speech.
Her hair was still a little shorter than what most girls would have preferred, although it was considerably longer than when she had been sixteen and mistaken for a boy very often. Looking at the way she was tonight, Athrun was sure nobody would ever mistake her for a boy again. The women in the room were staring in awe as Lacus joined her on stage to stand by her side for a good public image. Clearly, nobody there could outshine either of them.
Ever since Lacus had appeared by Cagalli's side while Cagalli gave a speech that was interrupted by Mia Campbell, the public had loved to see the two together. They had been nicknamed the 'Princesses of Peace' ever since then.
Kira had snickered once and told Athrun that the nickname should have been 'Prince and Princess of Peace'. Athrun didn't bother giving him a warning, knowing Kira was unmanageable when he went wild, but if Cagalli had heard about the go her twin had taken at her, she would have killed him instantly.
Her blonde hair was almost reaching her shoulders and pinned beautifully with matching hair gems on either side of her head that made him want to rub his eyes and check if he was dreaming. By that time, he was already openly oggling her and then he scanned the room and gave up trying to count how many others were doing similar things. There were just to many to count, but the realisation of that actually fuelled his rather irrational irritation.
She had renounced the title of Princess in a public statement that had been blasted and triumphed on news and papers for weeks. Cagalli Yula Atha was a leader of real people, not just mere royalty by virtue of birth given to a princess that would never see suffering or injustice thrown at people below her. In the aftermath of the second war, her strength had touched the ORB citizens and made her appeal to them more than any other leader had, even her father.
And once the election results in ORB had been announced, it had made it terribly clear that she was very much preferred to be chosen as ORB's leader than the existing Seirans. Yuna Roma Seiran hadn't lived long enough to see his would-be bride step up to overcome every obstacle head-on the way a man would and ought to.
So she had become the Chairman of ORB soon after, although many still thought of as a princess and it was well known that Cagalli Yula Atha had a man's courage and grit and very little of what the average person might deem as 'pincessy'. Tonight though, her attire proved otherwise. She looked fit to ride in a carriage drawn by horses like a fragile, glass-blown princess with a tiara carefully placed atop her head, as ridiculous as it sounded.
Athrun glanced at her hair and recalled the time when she had screeched bloody murder for the world to hear as the trusty Mana tried to weave ribbons into her golden hair, and he desperately fought down the urge to chortle with glee. No wonder she was late and they hadn't thought she was going to turn up after all. Mana must have had gotten down on her knees and begged for an hour for her hair to become as impeccably coiffed as it was now.
There was once when he had caught her trying to untangle some strange kinks in her hair when she had woken in the morning and he had laughed at her just to pick a fight for his own entertainment. Cagalli had actually snarled and had thrown a hairbrush at him in a rage and they had ended up wrestling on the carpet. He would have won if Yuna Roma Seiran hadn't caught them, not that Athrun actually bothered explaining anything, but then Athrun had left for ZAFT soon after.
He searched her face, re-memorising the lines and features that he had feared to see again, unwillingly allowing himself to see her properly for the first time in more than a year. The concealer was not quite hiding her dark eye bags although it was good enough for the press's cameras that were clicking non-stop. Her lips were stained an attractive cherry red that Mana must have wept for her to put on for her own sake, lest she look washed out in photos in the stark light the rooms were lit in. Startled, he realised that her face looked almost the same as it did when she had unwillingly given her hand to Yuna Roma Seiran.
Athrun remembered the manner in which he had seen those pictures of her looking pure and vulnerable in a wedding gown. The pictures of her smiling and waving in a car splashed all over the news on the Minerva's online news network had made him made with grief for some time, admittedly only after Lunamaria had initially shocked him when she had told him of the news.
He remembered how dazed he had been at Cagalli's betrayal, and how the photos of her with another had made his blood boil. Nobody had seen him in the pathetic state of rage and grief in his room. Lunamaria had been the closest to seeing him lose his sanity with rage, but what she had seen had only been Athrun dropping his briefcase and dashing out of the elevator the very instant when the elevator doors had sprung open. That was all.
He had thrown a chair with all his might and smashed it into the wall in his own room, but only after leaving the lift and a very bewildered Lunamaria behind in it, and it had taken some time for him to calm down and be as subdued as he ought to have been as an elite soldier.
Cagalli, clad in midnight black, was saying something about cooperation and something or the other and he couldn't quite comprehend what that was especially when she was dressed like that. But then, he swiftly glanced around and saw that most of the men in the room couldn't either, and he felt a little annoyed.
When Yuna Roma Seiran had rushed to her like an excited puppy and embraced her, Athrun hadn't said anything and looked in another direction even though his fists were already clenched. He could see as clearly as day, how terribly slanted and mocking Yuna Roma Seiran's eyes were and even when he saw the pained, beseeching gaze in Cagalli's eyes as she tried to entangle herself, he didn't stop her from being led away. Bodyguards didn't say anything, so Alex Dino didn't. He had cursed himself countless of times after that.
A period later, he had received a message from Mirallia Haww and sneaked off in Saviour to meet Kira and Cagalli, but he had yelled at both of them, and harsh words had been directed to Cagalli, criticizing her actions thoroughly and breaking every shred of confidence that was left in her.
Kira had been mostly silent, speaking up only after his tirade, but he knew Kira had been a little hurt too, but Athrun was even more aware that Cagalli had been shattered. He knew that of course. He wanted to hurt her for hurting him, although he hadn't admitted it to himself until the next time he had seen her face to face on the Archangel, and that had been after a few months at a stretch.
At that time, his head had throbbed so badly it brought him out of his semi-conscious state and refocused his eyes on her amber ones and the surroundings of the Archangel. Meyrin had been concerned that he was too badly injured to sit up, but she had eventually left both Cagalli and him alone. He had apologised to her, and so had she, but the wounds were still there. They'd be there for eternity.
He had prided himself on always being inscrutable with nary an expression that an enemy would sue to his advantage, and he couldn't fathom why meeting Cagalli now at this time should have been anything that deviated from his stoic nature. Kira had once commented that he took things too seriously and was incapable of lightening up even when he, Kira, Meyrin and Lacus had gone shopping in Copernicus. He knew it himself, he really didn't need anyone pointing out the obvious.
Not that he had cared of course, he didn't see a need to change because Cagalli had never complained about anything, and besides, she wasn't there to complain anymore, simply because she wasn't there at all.
A strange feeling pierced his chest, and he vaguely recalled that it was about the same kind of emotion that he had felt when he watched Junius Seven forced from its orbit, blasted into smithereens along with his mother. Thirteen had been a rather young age to see his mother die in front of his own eyes and it was on national television, adding more than a mere insult to his injury.
Athrun looked at Cagalli once more and thought that even if she looked the same as she did on her wedding day when she had been taken by Kira and the Freedom, she wouldn't be exactly the same. She wasn't struggling with any inner conflicts to put ORB as her first priority as far as he could tell, but then she wasn't confident in her self-assured, natural way any longer. Instead, she was confident and articulate in the polished manner politicians often were taught how to be. So she had mastered the science of it too.
Nobody knew it better than him. The men and women in the room saw a girl the world had come to recognise and respect, but the Cagalli in front of him and the hundreds in the room wasn't the same Cagalli as the free-spirited sixteen-year old he had met before. The sixteen year old had captured his heart. Her piercing eyes had made him see her as the warrior who fought every day but was vulnerable to so many things. Perhaps that had reeled him in to her at the end. That had been the truth then. That was the truth even now.
Her dress rustled lovingly and secretively against her body, and she rearranged a fold to step over the train. The raven shades gave her a enigmatic pallor, and he wondered how the moon would look above her.
But she wouldn't be wearing white any longer either, Cagalli Yula Atha would be clad in the deepest black the material could ever be dyed from then on.