category: Gundam SEED

disclaimer: I don't own it.

TWENTY-TWO.

Andy wasn't bitter that Murrue regained so much that she had lost in the first war and he didn't. He was not angry because Mu was alive and well and Aisha was still buried in one thousand pieces. Things worked that way: Murrue drew the long end of the stick and he did not. He was only very tired of his world of muted grays.

He kept a photo of Aisha's sea-colored eyes, her swinging hair and smile that lit up the room, with him for five years after she died. One day it flew out of his breast pocket and he didn't bother picking it up from within the waves. There was no sharp piercing emotion to punctuate the change, only a blunt ache where he might have felt something in days of brilliant blacks and whites. Wearily, he picked up his oars and headed home four hours early.

(It wasn't goodbye. He still felt mildly jarred each time he looked in the mirror to see a jagged red line splitting the left side of his face in half. He was missing an eye and a proper arm. He never forgot his other half who lost both her eyes and arms and legs and her heart.)

But he persevered. He put more of himself into recovery and rebuilding than anyone else fresh out of the wars. Each morning seemed pointless, a shadow of yesterday and the day before and the week prior to that. Legs out of bed, onto floor. Shuffle to bathroom, brush teeth, make coffee, set up boat. Catch bait. Sail. And yet he followed through with the actions that became cursory with each replication. The days may have been chained to each other, but the weeks had wings. Five months, three years, a decade, ten minutes. He was thirty-two going on prehistoric and the world spun in its same orbit but he was a tiger until the end and he never gave up.

Murrue came to visit him once, a day after he had been to her place for dinner.

"Mu's out somewhere again," she started. He always was, three days out of seven. Ghosts to chase, Murrue tried to justify, but they both knew the effort was perfunctory. "You're living with me from now on." There was no question in her voice. Her hand was firm around his. The "I'm worried for you," went unsaid.

"All right," he agreed without fight, because they were the two parts of a friendship that did not die.

Andy shut the door to his cabana for good two years after he had first moved in. The moment was not remorseful or sentimental, because he never was. The small beachfront house was nothing to him but a place where he was never happy, so he kicked his feet through the shifting sand and moved on.

Sometimes, when he brewed a particularly satiating blend of coffee or when he found a fascinating seashell fossil or when the sunlight caught Murrue's hair and she smiled at him just so, the grays of his life dissipated into vivid blacks or shocking whites. Time would freeze for a second of a second – and then hurriedly resume ticking.

notes: I felt incredibly sorry for Andy when Aisha died. It wasn't so bad between the acts of the two wars, because he and Murrue shared the house. But afterwards, when Murrue got Mu back, I imagine he must have been really lonely. So this came up! Hooray. Hope you all enjoyed it.

NEXT PHASE: In a crowded breakfast bar, Cagalli suddenly realizes that yes indeed, she does get jealous.