Disclaimer: I don't own a thing of GS/GSD, but I like ASUCAGA. Alot. If I had a say in GSD at all, I would have kicked out all those who had been forced to become part of Athrun's harem, because nobody can have him except Cagalli Yula Atha. Please R&R&R, thanks!
Chapter 20
By the time she got out of his car, Cagalli was pretty sure that she was in a big mess. Her luggage was hastily packed, but it could be sorted out later in ORB. Now, her head was in a bigger mess than her luggage.
She wanted to turn back now and throw away the luggage and run back into his arms and stay there forever, but she couldn't because she didn't know what she wanted and she was afraid of making the wrong decision at the wrong time.
The car ride with Athrun hadn't been as awkward as it could have been but they were avoiding their own issues by talking about Rainie's issues, except when she had failed to keep quiet about her loneliness during the two years when she hadn't seen him. She had unconsciously tried so hard to take herself from the desire to be with him in the past two years by simply making excuses that ORB needed all her attention. It had worked for two years. It wasn't going to anymore.
Cagalli turned to look at the empty road beyond the gate and felt the wind blowing. It wasn't a warm breeze, but a harsh wind which was more typical of Berlin's winters. She shivered not because of the cold, but because she was afraid of the uncertain.
She could carry her luggage pretty alright with only one good hand, but that wasn't really the problem. She knew he was staring at her back when she walked through the embassy gates, because she could feel his eyes boring holes into her back. When she had finally turned around, he had already left.
The shell was still hanging off her neck, and if she tried to hard enough, she could recall what it felt like to have him tying it around her neck, and she felt a pain so intense her numb left hand actually twitched with her other hand even though it was supposed to be numb.
Smiling bitterly after discovering that internal pain was the cure for a numb arm, she pushed her way into the building where security immediately let her through.
She wanted to just go with him and forget every other thing in the world, not her ORB duties of course, that was out of the question, but the things she wanted to forget were the scars she had once sustained when she had been with him. She didn't want to just go and forgt everythng and wake up one day to find herself a stranger again and see Athrun look at her with indifferent eyes. She was afraid that he would suddenly realise that there was someone else waiting for him and join the othe person, whoever it might be, and leave her tired and cold. And then, she'd know too late, that her love was unrequited.
She didn't want to believe in anybody's words, not even his, but a part of her still wanted to believe in his warm embrace when he held her inspite of all her inhibitations.And then all the 'what if's built up in her and she wanted to punch something and maybe she'd obtain the answer then.
She wasn't sure what to do anyway. So she let herself be led by all her attendants to the car, then she got onto the shuttle and sat there for a long time while the preparations were made, thinking long and thinking hard. Then she got frustrated and started pulling and yanking her hair and gave up and called Kira instead.
The phone rang for some time, but she persisted because she knew he would answer eventually, even if it was six in the morning. He would be waking up to start work anyway, a little earlier wouldn't hurt anyone.
"Kira," she said authoritatively, "wake up and talk to me."
She heard silence at the end of the phone and waited impatiently until a sleepy, "Ehhh…" was heard, then she said as patiently as she possible could, "I need to talk to you."
Then she heard a series of yawns before Kira, suddenly alert like he had never been sleeping said calmly into the phone, "How can I help you?"
She laughed although she hadn't thought it was possible a while back then and shouted into the phone, "This isn't the shop-to-save enquiry office, Kira, damnit!"
"Oh," he said a little lamely, and then said again, "So…what can I do to help you?"
Cagalli sighed and checked her watch. She still had a good forty-five minutes left before communications were cut off for the shuttle to leave properly. So she played for time.
"We got the message you left for us last night,"she said evenly, "Where will you get married and what date is it?"
"Oh, we agreed that it would be held in PLANT itself since Lacus grew up there," he replied airily, yawning a little, "And the date, well, not quite confirmed yet but about two months' time would be sufficient to make the arrangements if we work fast enough."
She forced a smile into her voice, but when she spoke, she lost it and decided to go straight to the point.
"What do I do now?" she asked morosely.
"About Athrun, you mean," he was saying coolly.
"I need a little advice," she said listlessly.
"Tell me first, do you still want to be with him?" she heard her brother retort.
"I-I don't know, maybe we're better off as comrades, you know, that kind of thing" she said tonelessly, looking out of the window she was seated ands trapped next to, ignoring the blinding light that was coming in from the signals and the sun.
"You know as well as I do that ORB isn't in need of desperate attention so much so that you can't have a relationship concerning something other than ORB," her brother began.
"Uh-huh," she confirmed dully, tapping her nails against the window for no reason at all. They always tried to make her paint them with varnish but she would scratch it off when they weren't looking.
"And you know he already made it clear that he wants to be with you," Kira continued steadily.
"Mm-hm,' she trotted out tonelessly and fingered the shell around her neck and feeling a need to hold something for comfort.
"So the only question is, do you?" Kira concluded calmly.
"I think that I should- wait! Why are you repeating whatever I just told you?" Cagalli cried, enraged, truly believing that her twin was playing with her by not letting on anything that she could do, but merely telling her the situation she knew she was in. Maybe he was playing for time too.
"I'm helping you sort through your thoughts," he cut in hastily at the other end, because he wasn't to sure what to tell her and wanted to buy for time but certainly couldn't tell her that over the phone.
"Oh," she said apologetically, quietening down instantly. Then her fingers wandered back to the shell and she closed her eyes, tired from everything around her.
"So, do you?" Kira said quickly, in case she realised he was pulling the 'psychology crap' on her again.
He heard silence and when he prompted with a strategically placed, "Well?" all he heard was a single, solitary, non-committal grunt.
He sighed and proceeded to continue with the psychology crap he had learnt form Lacus.
"Alight, let's work through the pros and cons together" he said soothingly, sensing her distress.
"Okay, let's," was her immediate, relieved answer. Anything to go on, she though dully, anything.
"If you were to pretend nothing happened and you and him didn't get on the road to reconciliation two months later after he's arrived in ORB, what are the benefits of it? Or in other words, what are the cons of agreeing to be with him?"
"Umm, I'm not free to go out on dates with other people?" she suggested hesitantly.
He was about to consider what she had said and thought of something.
"Since when have you gone out dating with other people anyway?" Kira asked curiously.
"Right," she said a little lamely, "I haven't."
When she had been thirteen and Yuna had been sixteen, he had come up to her and demanded that she kiss him since he had been announced as her fiance that very day . She had responded by bashing him up and threatening to kill him apart if he didn't back off. And when he had wanted to complain to his parents and her father, she had tricked him into openly threatening her while she recorded everything down, and then she produced the tape in front of him and warned him not to say anything or he'd regret it.
So she had been wary of most boys after that and she hadn't been attached to anyone except Athrun, and that had been something inevitable for her too.
And years later when she had bene eighteen and had returned to ORB on the Archangle when ZAFT had been attacking in a bid to find Lord Djibril, she had tricked him again into passing on all his authority to her because she promised him she'd take care of ORB. But her first command had been for the officers frustrated with his incompetence to arrest him for treason, and Yuna had been terrified beyond any doubt.
He had been so delighted at her return that he had been truly fooled by her, and then he had been beaten up and subdued. She had learnt how to lose her humanity that day.But then she had lost some of it the day when Freedom had emerged out of the water and Kira and she had met Athrun, his eyes filled with hatred, looking straight at her.
"Have you been attached to anyone other than Athrun before, Cagalli?" he asked suddenly.
"No," she started to say, than was embarrassed at her obvious lack of experience with relationships and changed the direction and said, "Well, I didn't know you were my twin then, so I was quite interested in you, but Fllay Alster kept trying to stick to you, so I gave up in the end. I wasn't too keen on being a third party anyway. Of course that was when I didn't know we were twins," she reassured him.
Kira snorted and said teasingly, "Thank God."
"Do you know what a rebound is, Cagalli?" he said, not quite in total seriousness.
"You get together with other people after you break up with someone, just for fun?" she said, trying to remember what one of her schoolmates had said a long time ago.
"Yeah, well, did you ever have one after you finished settling ORB?"
"Oh," she said dumbly, "I didn't think of having a rebound. How do you find a person who wants to have a rebound with you anyway, am I right?"
"Right," he repeated, trying not to laugh at her cluelessness, "so can you think of another con of being with Athrun?"
"Work and life outside work will be more complicated?" she suggested.
"Yeah, but with relations now in PLANT and ORB, there's probably not going to be much ETERNITY and ORB can go wrong with," he argued, knowing that he was right. The rest of the world would never let relations go wrong after gaining so much peace and stability the relations had brought them after two painful wars.
"Besides, both of you never mix work with other things, so that con doesn't count," he said thoughtfully.
"Another con is that Athrun can't see other girls who might suit him better if we're together?" she quickly said to get a foothold of the ground she was supposed to argue about.
"I know he has a fan club of girls and other admirers the size of the Pacific," Kira said calmly, "but he's the faithful type. If he wasn't, I would have already gone into SEED mode and killed him already, since it's you who's concerned."
She was touched at Kira's steadfastness and muttered that he was nuts even though she knew she wanted to hug her twin until he gasped for air.
"Another con you can think of?" he said in a business like manner, looking over at Lacus who had stirred slightly.
"I'll have to lose all my pride and dignity and say I was wrong," she said finally, then hung her head, knowing full well he couldn't see her do it.
"Because you told another to take care of him two years ago, and if you get together with him now, you'll be eating your words?" he guessed.
"Well, that, yeah," she said miserably, 'and also because I'm a little afraid that he'll just get tired of me and go off one day."
Kira thought of saying something on his best friend's behalf but decided to hinge the topic instead.
"Okay, so um, pros of being with him when he comes to ORB?" he said, moving slightly and trying not to talk too loudly in case Lacus woke up. She had drifted off to sleep and then he had thought he would watch a programme after the interview but ended up dozing off too.
"Maybe I'll be really happy?" Cagalli said weakly.
He resisted the urge to shout, "Duh!" and said thoughtfully, "That's a real possibility there now isn't it?"
She didn't catch the obvious hint and the sarcasm either, so she said, "Another pro is that ORB gets a nice scandal to talk about, although that isn't really a pro is it?"
Kira considered what she had said, thoughtfully chewing on some popcorn he found on the ground.
"Well, seeing how both of you have inspired people enough for them to have started something called an ASUCAGA FOREVER fan club, I'd hardly think people would consider it as a scandal, maybe more of something like, a worldwide call for celebration," he said seriously, not at all in jest.
He heard his twin gasping like she was short of air and concernedly asked, "Are you alright?"
"Yes" she croaked, "What's an ASUCAGA FOREVER fan club?"
"Well, there are people all over the world who watched the interview because they were curious if the conspiracy theories were true, and they wanted to know if the 'assassination' would start anything more serious than that, like you know, a political war or something, but when they watched interview, they decided to start a fan club in honour of Athrun and you."
"Of course it's not confirmed that you two are officially together, although last night, many rumours have sprung up after the interview" he continued calmly in spite of the worrying spluttering and choking sounds he heard at the other end, " but you two sure do have lots of supporters, thousands of them of course. Not bad, especially since it sprung up over the Internet in a single night. I went to check after the interview because I was bored and didn't have the heart to wake Lacus for idle conversation."
"Holy crap," Cagalli croaked again, "It's not like we're some pop singers or idols."
"Actually," Kira corrected her, "You've been promoted to more immense international-icon status along with my best friend more than ever before. They seem to think that God wants both of you to get together and have mini-yourselves running around in ORB, since it was officially announced after the interview on the news that the ETERNITY Chairman was posted by PLANT to live in ORB for the next ten years."
She didn't know what she could say to that, and said a little shakily, "So there are more cons than pros of being together with him, aren't there?"
Kira sighed and said roughly, "Have you done a pro-and-con chart before Cagalli?"
"Never," she said in confusion, "probably for the really complicated issues, the secretaries do it for us behind the scenes and give us easier options to choose, and then we just make the final arrangements and decisions."
"What we do with the pro and on chart is to list down all the pros and cons of the issues like what we've just done verbally," Kira explained quickly, sure that he could hear some announcement going on in the background for all cells to be switched off for a safe take-off, "And then usually, we see if there are more pros or more cons and take the decision which gives us more pros than cons."
"Right," Cagalli was saying hurriedly, signalling to the attendant that she would be done in an instant, "So in this case, it would be better to break it off for good?"
"You're jumping the gun, Cagalli," Kira said briefly, knowing that the shuttle would take off and communication would be automatically cut off in a few seconds time.
"There's another alternative step you can choose to take when you make the decision. It's not just the number of pros that outnumber the cons or the other way round that will determine the decision you make. A decision can still be made even when there is only one pro next to say, ten cons, because it depends on what the single pro is. In this case, it's the pro that-"
"Yes?" she said breathlessly and waiting to hear what he would say, clutching to the cell like her life depended on it. In a weird sense of the word, it did.
Kira paused for breath, ignoring Lacus who had just woken up and was staring at him in surprise, wondering at the back of his mind how she could manage to look so perfectly groomed even when she had only just woken up. And then he realised that she had been listening for quite some time. But he went on anyway.
"If you agree to be with him, the pro you'll get from it, even if it's the only pro next to so many other cons, is that you'll ultimately be happy."
And then the line went dead as communication was cut off.
Author's note:
This chapter's like the moment of reckoning for me, you know?
When I wrote this chapter, there had been already so many problems in the ASUCAGA relationship I had somehow churned up while writing that I actually considered, (brace yourself ye ASUCAGA-fanatics) breaking them off and ending it in something like Final Plus.
Thank heavens I had my best friend and fellow ASUCAGA-fanatic RWSH to work out the pros-and-cons while we cahtted on MSN, so the conversation you have just read was the actual conversation we had but tweaked a little of course.I was the pessimist, RWSH was the optimist and voice of reasoning, aka, Kira.
So this chapter is dedicated to RWSH, and if you're reading this RWSH, I want you to know, ASUCAGA BANZAI!
And if anybody is wondering how the phrase 'comrade love' I made Cagalli mention actually came about, just know that Fukuda said Athrun and Cagalli were in their current hiatus in terms of relationship because their kind of love was just 'comrade love' in Fukuda's own words.
Yeah I know. When I heard that, I said, "bullcrap!"
But he says it's comrade love.
Let's prove him wrong.
R&R&R, people.