Disclaimer: I don't own you-know-what, so don't ask me if I'm taking the you-know-whats as mine.Since I can tell you all that Truth is going to end VERY soon, please make this worthwhile and R&R&R!

Chapter 25

So the rest of the day was spent coaching the soldiers in teams and when Kisaka finally called for a reassembling and shouted that the work for the day was done, Athrun walked into the tent where he knew nobody would see him look as dishevelled as them, and promptly fell on his back in a heap, tired out. He wasn't arrogant enough to think that he didn't have to work as hard as them in their training, but he still refused to just collapse outside where they were. He had a streak of pride in him he alwaysfelt somewhere, and now he prayed it would disappear where she was concerned.He had no time for his dignity if he still wanted her.

A few seconds later, he saw her feet coming towards him, and Cagalli collapsed on the tent's floor too, a mess like him. Her hair was ruffled a little since it was a habit of hers to mess it up in a form of concentration, and her clothes were somewhat wrinkled. But her eyes were sparkling amber, and her cheeks were flushed like roses, and hehad to stop staring at her in case she realised he was.

They remained in comortable silence for a bit, hearing each other breathe and alternating their inhaling and exhaling motions without actually knowing they were.

Then she breathlessly asked, "Why did the pervert cross the road, Athrun?"

And he thought about how random she was at times, but went along with it anyway while he panted like a dog and answered helplessly, "I don't know, tell me why."

So she giggled, rolled over to her side and flopped towards him until they were facing each other and happily cried, "Because that's where all the chickens went!"

Then he was roaring in laughter as the ridiculous joke made sense to him and asked interestedly, "Who told you a joke like that?"

She grinned at him like a child and said mischievously, "The Supreme Commander of Tibet told it to me when he came over about three weeks ago, and he told it before asking for my hand in marriage. The ring he presented was pretty nice."

He sputtered and sat up straight while she remained on the bare ground looking would-be-nonchalant.

"You've met him before and you knew that he was asking for your hand in marriage?" he cried, horrified that Kira's information had been inaccurate.

Somewhere out there, Kira was talking to somebody and pausing to sneeze and excusing himself.

She nodded very nonchalantly and rolled over on her back again so he couldn't see her face from where he was sitting. If he had, he would have known she was smiling.

"Yeah, he did, and because I liked him, I promised that if he could make me laugh, then I would have to marry him." She said calmly, trying hard not to laugh when she said this.

Athrun tried to see her better, but she flipped over on her other side, showing her back to him, so he had to ask nervously, "Did you laugh at it?"

He wanted to see her expression, but he couldn' tjolly well flip her overon her back like an omelette, could he? That would have been risky and she would have been ruffled and annoyed again. As far as he could, Athrun would go out of his way to stay out of her bad books.He had to be in her good books for as long as possible.

She chuckled and said, "Well, it was funny, wasn't it? I mean, you laughed at it yourself, didn't you? And if Athrun Zala laughs at anything, it's got to be pretty good a joke."

When he remained frozen, staring in horror at her, she tossed herself upright and turned to him and stared at his dumbstruck face, feeling a little regretful she had told such a crass joke to someone as serious as him. Such jokes weren't meant to be told to people like him, she decided tentatively, it was more of word puns he'd appreciate, or witty things like that, not weird and cold jokes.

"It's a joke, Athrun!" she cried indignantly, and he mumbled, "I knew you were joshing me."

"Oh no, you didn't," she said bluntly, quite eager to pick a fight for the heck of it all, "And if you thought I was going to marry a guy I hadn't even seen before, then you were wrong. Kira told me all about it when I threatened to wreck his wedding while he was struggling into his suit that morning."

"Oh," he said a little dumbly, then recovered from the shock and muttered a curse under his breath.

"I'm hungry," he announced soon after as he lay there and she half-sat-half lay watching him with sleepy amber eyes.

"Dinner then?" she yawned, running a grimy hand through her hair, then she looked at it and grimaced a little.He thought she looked adorable, butof course he didn't say so.

After returning to the house he had been given and having a long and good bath, Athrun had changed out of the white and black commander outfit he was expected to show up in from then on, and he had exchanged it for a simple white shirt and dark pants then thrown on a coat and driven to Cagalli's residence.

Cagalli had offered to take him out for dinner in return for him doing that for her when they had been in EA Berlin. She had laughingly told him that she knew where they had a restaurant near a sea, and she wanted to go and pick shells for Rainie and Vino this time, so he had agreed to go with her. Of course he did, he was waiting to pounce on opportunities like these actually.

But when he turned up, she was ready, dressed in a breezy, comfortable slip and sandals with a huge basket she lugged into his car. Apparently, the restaurant she knew of never existed; she had pilfered food from the kitchens to bring for dinner at the beach. And if they asked where the food had gone in the morning,she'd say it was him.

Now, he stood and inspected the food she had placed on the table cloth she had sneaked too.

"Your table presentation gets zero," he said dryly, seeing the haphazard way she had dumped everything out.

"What were you expecting then, a candlelight dinner?' she cried very indignantly, then proceeded to pull him onto the table cloth and shoved a sandwich into his mouth before he could make a comeback.

He laughed at her quick temper and ate the hastily-made sandwich while she kicked off her sandals and lay back comfortably, enjoying the night breeze.

"Why did you bring us here?" he said curiously.

"No reason in particular actually, I just wanted to eat somewhere under an open sky." she answered briefly while she stuck her hands up into the air and traced a couple of random cloud outlines.

He closed his eyes and heard the breeze blowing in his ears, and then he slipped a hand into his pocket and felt the ring there. He would ask her tonight, and he was sure she would agree this time.

He could hear Cagallisitting up beside him and saying quietly, "I'm going to pick some shells, so you don't have to come. Don't get wet, I'll do it myself."

"Are you sure you will pick a shell eventually?" he teased her, knowing that she took a long time to decide which shell she wanted to take even in Berlin for Lacus and her twin.

She harrumphed in displeasure and said sharply, "I'll pick a shell if it's the last thing I do! So don't come after me!"

Athrun didn't. He wanted to get ready while she picked the shells. Hs eyes were still closed, and he could hear her trotting out, barefooted, making tiny padding noises on the soft sand and a splash of water and some cries of laughter as she splashed around and played in the water, looking for shells to take home.

Sighing lightly, he opened his eyes to look at the deep-blue sky and the black clouds that drifted lazily over the moon and thought that he would practise popping the question at a rock nearby he could pretend was Cagalli, but he thought the better of it and closed his eyes again, lying back with his hands folded neatly below his head.

Then he heard a strange, foreign sound that was registering in his brain as an unknown sound. His eyes flew open as his heart started beating faster, and everything was becoming stranger and stranger, her laughter from a distance was becoming softer and softer and more sinister, and the waves crashing on the shore were becoming louder and some animals in the night were making sounds that rapidly became warnings to him and he leapt up and stood in a protective stance, listening, listening, listening. Everthing was a mash around him, he didn't know what was what anymore, and his eyes were keen and sharp. If anyone had seen them, they would have said Athrun Zala's eyes were emerald knives at that point.

And then through the jumble and cacophony of sounds he was hearing very clearly, perhaps too clearly, he heard a very steady sound standing out beyond anything else and looked around in confusion, not knowing where it was coming from, and heard the sound echoing from somewhere nearby and pricked in his ears, and Athrun started ignoring Cagalli who was standing in the sea, her hands and legs and dress wet, asking concernedly, "Are you alright?"

Then the foreign sound was becoming closer and closer, then suddenly further and further, and he was thrown into a greater state of confusion and not knowing what was going on, he shouted urgently at her, not quite knowing even why his instincts were telling him that it wasn't safe, "Come back here! Quick!"

She looked at him and saw that he wasn't joking, so she tried to move quickly towards the shore, stumbling and tripping while on the sand in the sea, and he felt a little more relieved as he saw her making her way back to him. If only he could catch onto her, something solid and real,then maybe the noises around him would stop.He had flawed reasoning, but his acute senses were making it impossible for him to ignore the warning alarms going off everywhere, and he was like a beast in the wild now, knowing something was out there but going insane trying to identify it.

He was hearing a mix of strange, contradicting feelings, soma confusing blend of something like apprehension and some affection as he saw her running towards him from a distance, and then some fear that made his blood grow cold in his frozen veins, then a bit of warmth somewhere as he saw her laughing and running towards him and shouting that she knew he missed her after five minutes of being apart while on the same beach. It was insanity.

Something wasn't right; he thought furiously, there was something not correct about this place, something very wrong, something terribly off…

She was about to reach him now and was smiling as she held out her bare arms towards him, and he reached for her longingly too, because he wanted to reel her back in towards him, just in case his instincts were correct. Maybe he was being paranoid or going insane, but he really didn't care, he just wanted to take her and run and maybe something bad wouldn't happen or maybe it was just his stupid head giving them all some weird schizophrenic notion.

Then the sound he had thought he heard suddenly paused, then became instantly clear, and he recognised it as a 'tic' he had heard in the background, and then it became more insistent, and he watched in horror as she too, heard it coming from somewhere and got distracted and turned away from him to face the sea and then he watched in horror as the waves built up and crashed upon the shore and the rocks in between them exploded into a fiery mess and he heard her scream of terror.

The sound of the explosion was numbing his ears and pulling his hair and clothes backwards while a tiny light grew and grew and expanded insanely in front of him and Cagalli, right in the middle of the sea she was standing in, just the space between them. He thought he saw her cry out and avert instinctively to shield her eyes form the blinding light that came beyond the sea as debris, rocks and shrapnel flew everywhere in a hail of bullets at her.

And he thought he witnessed a nightmare when he thought he saw her collapse under the boulders the explosion had thrown at her and the look in her eyes that made him roar like an unbridled beast before the ground near him exploded too and everything went black as something came flying and knocking him unconscious.

But before darkness claimed his being, he choked and his last thought was that the ring was still in his pocket and what she had said a few minutes before.

"I'll pick a shell if it's the last thing I do!"

And then there was a roar of pain he felt in his head that crashed on the rest of his body and he promptly opened his eyes and screamed in madness as the pain shot through him, and he could feel himself falling into a lifeless heap somewhere on the ground.

Athrun truly thought he was in a nightmare after that, for as long as the darkness cleared and he regained his mind to a small extent.

He heard somebody's voice he couldn't recognise saying soothingly, "It's alright now," and he thought it was Nicol before he felt someone stab his side with a sword and then he fainted again, crying out for Cagalli before he lost his consciousness.

When he reawakened, his vision was blurry, and the memory of being run through side with something made him wince in pain although he couldn't quite feel anything, but then it cleared and he saw his father sitting in a corner looking at him and glaring at him with his customary scowl. He hated, no he loathed that look. It made him feel like he never did anything right, and then he realised he hadn't protected Cagalli so maybe he deserved it.

He struggled to sit up straight, but his father snapped furiously at him, "What were you doing lying on your back and daydreaming anyway? Wake up your idea right now, and go and see what you can do about it! What do youmean Redcoat? So what about it? You mean you tied with someone in the top of your class, that would mean to say you didn't win fair and square-,"

And then his father had disappeared from the chair he had been sitting on in a room with walls and pictures of boats he had never seen before and he was thinking that he would have to try and sit up to see better.

Then a jolt of pain seized him and before he passed out again, he realised that his father had said the same thing four years ago when he had come home to find out that Lacus, then his fiancée was lost while on the Silver Wind. Then it hit him that his father had been dead for four years too, and he screamed in more terror than pain and fell back into darkness.

He was seeing blood everywhere on his hands and he was screaming but then he started laughing for no reason at all and he smeared the blood on his face and felt the warmth and the rusty stench that put some pain into his heart, but then he suddenly felt like gagging and he thought it was a nightmare and tried veryhard to sit up and wake up.

But when he struggled up again as soon as he woke, someone pushed him down and he thought he saw his mother looking down and him and smiling and then taking something and injecting it into him, and he cried out for her again and again not to go to Junius Seven until he could hear no more and scream himself no more hoarse then he already was.

Then he awoke and saw Kira and Lacus sitting by the side staring at him but not saying anything, and he struggled to sit up for the millionth time, or so he thought. He wasn't even sure if they were real.

Lacus was rushing towards him and trying to make him lie back down, but Kira had stood up to, and said tonelessly, "It's alright Lacus, let him sit up and speak to us."

He felt a large pillow being pushed behind him, and a searing pain ripped through his head, and he put up a hand to massage his temples and saw a dozen wires connected to his wrist, and then he stared in horror while Kira shoved the chair closer and said coldly, "Tell us what happened that night Athrun."

He tried to speak but found his voice hoarse, but he still tired to go on anyway, but he found that he couldn't narrate what had happened at all.

His lips were dry but his mind could see nothing but flashes of her laughing and playing n the water and the sound of the waves covering and exposing the bomb's ticking as the waves rushed up and down the shore, how he had been too late in realising what it was and the blinding light that had covered Cagalli as she screamed in pain.

Stroking his hand gently, Lacus spoke up.

"Don't be so harsh with him, Kira," She said softly, "Athrun only just woke up, he can't possibly say everything that happened two nights ago."

Two nights ago?

"What do you mean?" he croaked hoarsely.

"I'll tell you," Kira said morosely, then he put his head in his hands, something he hadn't done after the first war, but he regained his composure and said evenly although his purple eyes were suddenly a stranger's, "Two nights ago, you were with Cagalli at a beach. There was an explosion there, and you were hit by the outer-wave of the explosion where you the shockwave threw you backwards and you slammed into the cliffs behind you and were covered by the boulders and debris that collapsed on top of you. Not that we're sure that really happened,if weassumeit was a normal bomb, then that would be the most obvious case, and then I would have to question why you brought Cagalli to a beach rigged up with a bomb like what the world is doing now."

"Cagalli?" he whispered painfully.

"She's just been removed from the CCU like you," Lacus said quietly, and he painfully realised that her eyes were very weary. "Her immediate condition wasn't as bad as yours because she was protected directly next to the explosion. Apparently, the bomb used had the worst impact according to the radius around it, not according to a person's proximity to its centre.

So she was hit by a lesser impact of the explosion, and she didn't get hurt by the immediate explosion in that sense although she was also showered with debris, whereas you, who were standing further, got injured more seriously. The bodyguards who were trailing you both without her permission nearby heard the explosion and got to both of you in time to be saved before you bled to death."

He knew about the bomb quite well, he had heard of it being used before. In ZAFT, they had nicknamed it the far-near bomb where a person could reach an enemy with an explosive by planting one under his won feet, making sure the enemy was standing in the loci a measured distance from the point he was standing on.

The person who set the bomb could be unscathed if he could was standing directly on the bomb he set up and closed his eyes properly when he activated the bomb, because the explosion would cause a brilliant light to blind the enemy. Soldiers on the ground used it to reach enemies at a distance so they wouldn't have to venture too close to the enemy. Athrun was quit well-informed and had heard of these bombs before, they had been used quite extensively in the war as a matter of fact. He had never used one of those though, he fought more in the mobile suits than anything else.

Then he suddenly thought of the way she had screamed in pain as the light came rushing straight into her eyes and cried, "The light!"

"That's right" Kira said grimly," The light the explosion created by the bomb buried in the sea was a direct hit-on for Cagalli because she didn't realise it was that certain type of bomb which effectively blinded people and thus wasn't able to avoid it fast enough. She's healing from the physical injuries with less difficulty than you, but-,"

"What?" Athrun whispered.

"She hasn't opened her eyes for the past three days, even though she can talk and hear and is recovering well from the injuries," Kira forced out and then he looked away, andvLacus looked away and remained silent, biting her lips until they became chalky-white.

He could scarcely believe what as happening and how quickly it had gone so wrong in a mere few seconds.

His eyes were swimming in tears as he felt a pain shred through him, although they weren't from his injuries. Fighting to regain stability, Athrun looked up at both his friends and asked shakily, "Is she awake now?"

"Yes," Lacus replied, suddenly morewan and weary than ever, "The drugs didn't have much effect on her after the first time she woke up during the operation to lose her wounds; she went through the rest of it without anaesthesia. From then on, she's been awake except when we force her to take short naps. She's been crying all the time, but she still can't open her eyes. The doctors tried to force it open after they realised using a machine could really blind her, and she made sure her hands were tied up so she wouldn't resist, but something in her doesn't trust them,and she can't open her eyes. It's almost like part of her is still in shock and in defensive-reaction to thelight. That's the doctors' theory anyway, we don't know for sure.Maybe she'll open her eyes soon, we don't know."

He sat up straight and ignored the pain gushing through his chest and body and said firmly, "I want to see her now."

She gazed at him and saw that his eyes were cold and determined even if he had an inscrutable expression on. Then Lacus looked at Kira who had nodded and moved to his friend to help him stand. The team of doctors had repeatedly used stronger and stronger doses of anaesthesia on Athrun during the operation because he kept waking up to scream Cagalli's name, and she knew that they had advised them not to let him stand as soon as he had woken up, but she knew Athrun had the willpower to resist any orders of that sort. He was still bleeding, she could see that even with the liberal amount of bandages they had used, but Athrun obviously didn't care.

So she joined Kira and helped him to get Athrun up and out of bed, trying not to notice how frail he was when he tried to stand and how he managed to walk only after a few tries.

By the time they got to Cagalli's ward, Athrun could walk almost normally without their help again. She noticed how he winced when he thought nobody noticed, but he never complained, only steadily made his way to where Cagalli was, and then Lacus silently prayed that something would happen to change them and mould their lives into something good again.

Kira spoke to the bodyguards outside the room and they left soon after although most of them looked at Athrun with hatred and suspicion in their eyes.

She reached out and clung onto Kira, preventing him from following Athrun into the room and he nodded and led her away, watching Athrun grip the door handle and turn it to make his way in very unsteadily, and her heart wept, and Kira gently placed her head on his shoulders without even needing to look at her face.