Respect between Enemies – The BetanWerecat

Gundam Seed: "Descending Sword" and after. OCs with appearances by canon characters. The actions of Kira, Athrun, and the others have far reaching effects. Ah, interpersonal relationships! What joys they are. Rated T for language and off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)

I will stop grousing about reviews now and just let people do as they please. Thanks to everyone who did respond, individual replies have been sent, and to the three who put this on their favorites.

I will be out of town over New Years. Updates will therefore be delayed as the computer will be in one state while I'm in another. I will post a chunk of what's ready before I go.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.


"Elite Ito?"

Adrian turned. The speaker was one of his Grandfather's people, specifically one he knew watched Kayla Grayhawk. He wondered what was going on; they had never come to him before.

"How may I help you Specialist?"

"Lieutenant Grayhawk has asked to speak to you and possibly to Dr. Ito as well. She reports you were discussing some issue last night and a solution has occurred to her. She is currently in the Game Room, in the GINN Training Simulator." The Specialist shook her head in mild disgust. "She's a Natural. She's wasting her time and is eventually going to break her own spirit if she keeps that up long enough. But Dr. Ito does not think any intervention is needed yet."

Adrian felt his eyes widening. "Some idiot put a what in the game room?"

"A GINN Training Simulator, sir."

"A real one?" Please, don't let anyone have been that stupid!

"Yes sir, quite real. The instructors from the base come by and update it every few months."

"What imbecile authorized that!"

The woman suddenly looked affronted. "It was done on Dr. Ito's suggestion."

"Grandfather, it was Grandfather's idea?"

"Yes sir."

"And everyone went along with it?"

"Of course sir! No Natural can actually make any use of it!"

"You haven't faced them in combat." Adrian replied grimly. "There are some who most definitely could learn at least something from a real simulator. And the Tomahawk is one of them! You have to have seen what she could do with something as pathetic as a Moebius Zero to understand just how dangerously competent she really is."

The woman's eyes widened. "Beg your pardon sir, but isn't Lieutenant Grayhawk an administrative officer? All the others who have come here have been administrative personnel."

"No, Lieutenant Grayhawk is combat personnel. Damn fine combat personnel! I captured her at the disaster known as "Operation Spit Break", after she'd shot down three DINNs, one GINN, and managed to disable another GINN! All while flying a wretched Zero! Do not underestimate her. She is highly unlikely to attack anyone here as the situation does not favor her, but if you give her a chance, she will make a break for it. Don't forget that, ever."

"No sir!"

Adrian headed for the game room. A simulator, a real simulator. What the hell had been going through Grandfather's head when he ordered that set up where enemy officers could use it? Damn it! When would people ever learn to stop underrating the Naturals?

He found the simulator in the back of the room. It was closed with the 'test' light lit indicating someone was using it. So Kayla really was trying to learn how to operate a GINN. He shook his head helplessly, how could even Grandfather not have understood how dangerous it was to let her try this?

Adrian paused. There should be an instructor's screen on this. He could watch and find out just how much she was learning here. Maybe, maybe it wasn't as bad as he thought.

He located the instructor's station and slipped into the seat. The headset was one of the newer ones with everything going to the heads-up display. There was no view screen here and no readouts, just the seat and the headset. He put it on and plugged it in.

He was offered a selection of lessons to review. All of them were Kayla's. She'd been using this unit every day for the last eight days now. He picked the overview option to get a feel for what she'd been up to. In a matter of minutes he knew the situation was potentially worse than he'd imagined. She actually could operate a GINN.

Oh, she couldn't do it well, mind you. But she could get it to move with enough skill to be mistaken for an advanced cadet. As long as that was the only thing she had to do that is. It was clear she couldn't do two things at once yet, like walk and draw a weapon. But at the rate she was advancing, he wasn't sure she wouldn't be that good in another week. And, ye gods, she could get it off the ground!

She had a terrifying portion of her boards shut down though. The information she wasn't getting was critical. Why had she closed down so many screens?

The test ended. He watched her pull the simulator's gear off, clean it, and stow it. She looked exhausted. She was soaking wet from shoulders to hips wherever the half-suit had covered her. It was obvious these lessons took a lot out of her. But those emerald eyes were on fire and despite the fatigue; there was a very fierce joy in that striking face.

Adrian slid the headset off, unplugged it and leaned against the side of the simulator. Leaving it here would be a very bad idea. He knew it. Yet he was loath to take that joy away from her. He understood just what kind of challenge this was for her. He understood what kind of triumph she was achieving in mastering even the basics of operating a GINN this way. She called herself a ewe, but Kayla Grayhawk was no sheep. She was much more the raptor of her name. And to wing-clip such a flyer was a terrible cruelty. Pulled between duty and something he couldn't really name, Adrian turned and gently but steadily banged his head on the machine.

"You trying to knock some sense into yourself?"

He just leaned his forehead on the cool metal. "You are driving me insane woman."

"Really? Looked like you were doing a fine job all by yourself to me."

He sighed. "Yes, I suppose it would. You sent word that you wanted to see me? Something about a solution to our discussion from last night?"

"Right." She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. "Look, can we go back to my room? I can wrap up in a couple of large towels there and kick the heat up."

The image her words conjured up hit him solidly. He could feel his body responding very positively to that suggestion. Oh hell, not now. He really didn't need this right now. It was a very good thing the red uniform coat was cut generously in front.

"Yes, let's get out of here." He agreed hastily.

A short while later, he was sitting in the chair while she was indeed wrapped up in a couple large towels. Unfortunately for his imagination, she was still dressed underneath those self-same towels. So much for that lewd delusion. At least reality was encouraging his body to back down. He would do much better at following the conversation as it did so.

"Are you paying attention to a single thing I'm saying?"

"Apologies, no, mind took off on a sidetrack." Adrian forced his attention back where it belonged.

She just shook her head at him. "And you think I drive you nuts. All right, let me start again. Your ethics-challenged Grandfather has had his pet project come to a halt on him. He's still going through the motions but he's getting nowhere he wants to go. Am I right so far?"

"I reserve the right to take up the ethics-challenged issue later but the rest is pretty much spot on, yes."

"The bottleneck is brood ewes, correct?"

"That term bothers me but it is essentially correct so I have to grant it, yes."

She leaned forward, a rather evil glint in her eyes suddenly. "Lemme ask you a dead serious question. Is there some genetic reason the old goat wants Naturals for his brood flock?"

"Ah, not that I know of." Adrian admitted slowly. "The idea was that they were going to be the genetic mothers of the children. The idea of surrogates was never discussed, again that I know of."

"Didn't think so." Grayhawk sat back triumphantly. "Outside genetics, does the crazy old coot use that genius head to do much but grow hair?"

He gave her a very unamused glare. "You have a point here?"

Her face suddenly went as serious as his. "Every society has haves and have-nots. I know very little about how great the spread is between them here on the Plants but I'd be amazed if there wasn't a pretty obvious gap. You tell me, how unattractive is real poverty here?"

"Not as bad as it gets on Earth, that's for sure. But it is not pretty and it is not advertised. The real poor are swept out of sight as much as possible. Why do you need to know that?"

"So something to earn real income, to rise out of that level would be significantly eye-catching?"

"To most, yes. Where are you going please?"

"You aren't using your head to do much but grow abnormally colored hair either, are you? How many hints do I have to drop?"

"Assume I am a brick wall and about as bright. Now spell it out for me!"

She rolled her eyes at him. "You said the Project is fully funded. The Project needs brood ewes. Put carefully worded ads in places the most desperate of the poor will see them and hire yourself a flock! At least you won't have the problem of women objecting to having Coordinator kids since they'll be Coordinators themselves!"

His mouth fell open. How obvious! How simple. How very, very possible to do.

"Got another one for you too."

He looked at her warily. "What problem are you addressing?"

"Your need for new genetics won't end with the war. Assuming both sides don't blow each other to hell, you will still have the same problems you have right now but you won't have any source of supply, right?"

"Correct." He agreed cautiously.

"Contract with several of the larger fertility chains. Buy eggs that have been legally relinquished by the Natural parents before the medical industry gets their share. That way, while expensive, you get the best the fertility clinics can put on the market."

She gave a very thoughtful frown, then added; "You might want to go through a few layers of cover people or dummy companies doing that. It wouldn't be popular at home."

Not popular? Now that was a nicely understated way to put it! If word got out, it would set off planet wide howling rage. On the other hand, given Earth's population and their extensive use of its fertility clinics, if this worked they could have all the genetic variety they needed in a year or two at the most. He looked at her with serious respect.

"You do understand that your suggestions would be seen as outright treason in some quarters?"

She gave him a flat stare. "Yeah. But you see, I have nothing against your existence. I mean just the fact that you Coordinators do exist at all that is. So you guys can do a lot of stuff better than I ever will; lots of my own kind of people can say the same thing. Bet I can track a cougar better than you can. I can find water in the dry country of the Four Corners a lot faster than you will too unless you have a shipload of fancy equipment. And somehow, I doubt most of you can ride a horse, fix a fence, repair a windmill, or slap together a sheep shelter out of whatever is on hand better than I can either. All of those skills are important to keeping my family's sheep operation a going concern. So they matter to me. That you can fly a GINN better than I ever will was not an issue until this war broke out. You weren't in my way or a threat to my way of life. I had nothing to be jealous of. So I'm not. The very few Coordinators I knew growing up were pretty decent people. I always had a positive impression of your folks. Specific individuals aside, I mostly still do."

She grinned wickedly, "Besides, if I help you with this, you'll have less reason to need to bother any of my, ah, less accepting fellow Naturals. The less interactions there are that are controversial, the less chances for more big problems or new wars. So I see this as a means of promoting peace, a very long term means but a real one just the same."

"And you do want peace I take it?" Adrian said drily.

Suddenly all humor vanished. The vivid eyes were once again brilliantly hard gems staring coldly into his own. The change was shocking.

"Yes." She said quietly. "We were fourteen when this war broke out. Five girls, nine boys. We've lost four already. Paul died at the Grimaldi front, trying to be another Hawk of Endymion. Steve fell at Luna One. Mitch and Sandra were both lost when you people took Carpentaria. I have seven brothers and sisters on active duty. Yeah, Ito, I have a damn serious interest in peace. And a bigger interest in seeing that it lasts."

Four dead. Seven still on active duty. She was a prisoner of war. Her family was left with only two children not caught up in this war. He looked away. He understood her situation far too well. The Grayhawks at least had the hope that they would get their children that were still alive back some day. But that was all they had, hope. War respected no one's hopes.

"I, . . . . . . . . . , I understand." He finally said.

"Yes. I expect you do." She replied. "My losses are pain and nightmares to me. I have trouble imagining what someone like you deals with in the small hours of the bad nights. I still have a large extended family to go home to. To be as alone as you, that would be beyond terrible."

He just nodded. Her words had dragged memories from hell out of the closets he could normally keep them locked in. For a few moments he had been back on that shuttle, twenty minutes from docking at Junius Seven, staring happily toward home when the universe vanished in an overpoweringly brilliant light. He'd been blind for over a week; had been incredibly lucky not to have permanently damaged his vision.

Sometimes, he wished he'd never recovered. Blind, he would never have had to see what had happened to his home, his family. Blind, he could have remembered everyone as they were, could have let himself delude himself that they were still out there somewhere. But he had recovered. And he had seen. And he could never deny it now.

"Why did you do it?"

"I didn't." Kayla told him gently. "And I don't understand the kind of mind that did do it. But it definitely was Earth Alliance people. My side did start this war. I will not try to pretend we didn't."

"Why Junius Seven? It was an agricultural Plant! There wasn't anything even remotely like a military target on the entire thing!"

"Ah, now that I can explain." The woman leaned back, arms wrapped around her knees. "I had a commander once who was a political science professor in happier times. She understood why Junius Seven had been the target and wanted her squadron to understand as well. So we would know, I think, just who and what we were really fighting for."

She shrugged unhappily. "You can explain that forever but when someone is shooting at you, the fact that your side is mostly in the wrong somehow fades in importance against the drive to survive. You rationalize what ever you have to to keep going, keep fighting, keep living."

"What excuse did she give?" Adrian asked bitterly.

"The word excuse does not apply. The reason it was Junius Seven and not another Plant was because it was an agricultural Plant. With it in production, the Plants would have been almost completely self sufficient in food. You had achieved independence from Earth in a majority of trade matters. You were gaining a position where you could negotiate new deals and contracts from a position of near equality instead of dependency. If you no longer had to depend on Earth to eat, you would be independent in fact if not yet in name. That was not acceptable to the powers that be. They saw to it that your independence disappeared. The method chosen, the nuke, was intended to cow you into another generation of submission. They failed to understand just how far you people had come and how determined you were to gain the dignity of a really free people. The method backfired on them, and everyone on Earth and in the Plants is paying for that misjudgment."

"What?"

"Junius Seven was the final key to Coordinator independence as Blue Cosmos saw it. They destroyed it to break that key and your hopes of freedom." Kayla said simply. "They misjudged the situation almost totally. Instead of submission, they got war. Instead of victory, they've gotten us mass slaughter. And now, they've even turned to betrayal of our own troops just to kill some of you. Worse, because they are calling the shots for the EA, your people have decided to meet fanatics with fanatics and elected that Patrick Zala to Chair the Supreme Council. Between his blind hate and the exact same kind of blind hate from Blue Cosmos, we may damn well end up blowing ourselves to hell real soon now. And I resent that!"

"Yeah." Adrian agreed wearily.

So. Now he had an explanation. He wasn't sure what to do with it now that he had it though. Bits of unrelated thoughts tumbled through his mind. Odd mental pictures came and went. It was very like the way his mind had tried to process the destruction of his home when it happened, only not as intense. If he just gave it a little time, it would work itself out. So he sat and let his brain do what it seemed to need to.

He was vaguely aware of the passage of time. Kayla went away for a while, how long he couldn't say. She came back eventually. Then she was gone again. His mind played with rain images for a bit while a small part that was still rational realized that he was hearing the shower running. The light was failing when he finally became fully aware of his surroundings again.

Adrian knew he wasn't done working through the issues Kayla's information had left him with. However, he was done with the preliminary stage. He knew that because he was back in the real world again. What his mind had made of it all he didn't know yet. That was something he would learn over time as he integrated the new data with his existing worldview and saw how it changed it. What he did know was that he would not have waking nightmares from this or be unable to function as a soldier. He'd given his brain the time to do its processing; it would let him get on with daily living now.

As he surfaced, Adrian let himself take in what was around him quietly. He did not change his position or move his head but from where the chair sat, he could see most of the room anyway. Kayla was napping on the bed, fully dressed but barefoot. From the way her raven hair tumbled around her face, she'd washed it sometime since her bout in the simulator this morning. The vidplate 'windows' were rapidly darkening to real night, plunging the room into darkness as well. The hall door was open; most of the light in the room was coming from there. And someone had recently dropped off a dinner tray that clearly had enough on it to feed both of them. As that thought crossed his mind, his stomach growled at him, reminding him breakfast had been a long time ago and lunch never happened.

He stood and stretched carefully, not wanting to pull anything that had stiffened up by moving too fast now. The caution was justified. A fair old number of items went pop or creak as he limbered himself up a bit.

When he was satisfied that he could move again, he waived a hand over the table light until it was bright enough that they would be able to see what they were eating. The open door annoyed him for some reason so he shut it before going to the bed to wake Kayla. There he stopped for a bit.

He was reminded once again just how beautiful she was. Asleep tipped somewhat onto her right side, she had a wonderfully disheveled look. The skirt was hiked up to the middle of her left thigh and the top of the blouse slide has slipped to almost indecent levels. The resulting visuals were almost enough to make him forget about food altogether. Fortunately, his stomach hadn't and it growled at him again.

Adrian stepped away from the bed and the very distinct temptation it presented him to make some small noises with the food dishes. He'd gotten the impression before that she was a light sleeper, this should wake her. It would be a better way to do it than looming over her would be.

"Back with the world are you?" She sounded a bit sleepy.

"Fine one to talk. I look around to find dinner has arrived and you sound asleep."

"Yeah, well, I had to kill time doing something. You weren't much for conversation there for a while."

"Ah, I must grant you that."

"So, what's for dinner?" She had the table pulled over by the chair he'd been sitting in and the small dining chair brought up to sit across from him.

"A baked casserole of some sort, smells delicious, new peas, bread, and something that looks suspiciously like chocolate cheesecake."

"One thing I honestly do appreciate around here is the food! Here, they sent in a couple of large teas apiece."

It was a very good meal. They managed to find things to talk about that didn't seriously touch on the war and so didn't trample on each other's feelings. He learned that they liked many of the same authors and tri-dee productions. They shared a similar taste in art but weren't as close on music. He liked more avant-garde material, she favored the classics. While they were both keen pilots, by mutual consent they avoided that topic. Comparing Zero and GINN would definitely be war related after all.

As the evening wore on, they turned on the small entertainment unit in the room and found favorites to show each other. Some clicked and some earned the other one of those kinds of looks that questioned one's sanity. A lack of facilities saw them both sitting on the floor sharing the broad footrest of the plush chair as a backrest.

It happened by accident. Both drinks had ended up on her side of the chair. All he did was reach behind her for his. All she did was sit back before he was expecting her to.

Suddenly, he had his arm around her. She turned to look at him questioningly. Adrian found he was about three centimeters from her lips. He acted on the impulse before any actual thought entered his mind.

While it was a rather gentle kiss, the invitation it conveyed was unmistakable. So was the message that it would not stop with kissing if the invitation was accepted. He released her slowly but well before she showed any sign that she felt she had to free herself.

She sat blinking at him owlishly, then whispered, "What happened to that bit about it all being lab work?"

"Well," he replied just as quietly, "it seems that won't be happening. Besides, that was about children. Grandfather's made sure you aren't vulnerable to that right now."

"Oh, yeah, right." She nodded very slowly, never losing eye contact.

Time crawled by. He measured it only by the changes in her eyes. The pale green of uncertainty gave way very slowly to a much stronger color. That in its turn deepened into an intensity matched only by the moments of great rage he'd seen. But there was no rage here now. Desire and decision, those were the only things he could read clearly. Unfortunately, he didn't know what the decision was.

One slender, and very strong, hand suddenly locked on his uniform coat. "Understand me, Adrian Ito, if we do this, you are mine. My Coordinator. And I do not share. You got that? I do not share you and you will not share me. If you can't live with that, back out now."

Share? Hell no! Not now, not ever! She was his! He was up on his knees suddenly, arms around her pulling her hard against him. The second kiss was not gentle at all. He pushed his hips against hers, making very sure she could feel his reaction to this before he even tried to answer her.

"And are you willing to be my Natural? Because if those are your conditions then you need to understand in turn that I will not consider this a once-off. You will be mine! And you will accept the chance that Grandfather might not catch all the eggs in time next month. Because I will be coming here as often as I can. I will come for you, to make love to you! And I will not take no for an answer then if you say yes now. Because, Kayla Grayhawk, I want children with you! I've lost whatever mind I ever had; a Coordinator isn't supposed to want a Natural like this. But I don't care any more! I won't look anywhere else. There's no one else to look at."

She kissed him fiercely. "Damn straight you won't! You can move your gear in in the morning. You aren't the only one who wants kids! And if they're like their dad, well, that's good enough for me! Now get that uniform outta the way!"