category: Gundam SEED
disclaimer: I don't own it.
THIRTY-ONE.
A woman's voice drifted over the line. "Sorry to keep you on hold, sir. These are the Martial Archives of the United Emirates of Orb. What can I do for you today?"
Shinn hurried to pick up his phone from where it was resting next to him on the desk. "Hi. I was wondering if I could…check up on the status of someone."
"Certainly." There was the sound of taps from the other end. "Whom should I search for?"
"Er," Shinn paused. "Lieutenant Hideki Todaka, but I'm sure he's been promoted since then."
"And might I ask who is speaking?" The woman continued pleasantly. "Although you've only asked for basic information, I'm afraid it's released on a need-to-know basis." At Shinn's silence, she suggested brightly, "Is this a family member of his?"
"Yes."
"And may I have your name, sir?"
Shinn ran his hand through his hair, aggravated. "All right, all right, I'm not related to him. I just really have to know where he is now." The woman said nothing. "Please! This is Shinn Asuka, captain of the mobile space defense team of ZAFT."
"I'll just enter it now," she said tightly.
"Thank you," Shinn answered resentfully and glared at a spot on the wall facing him.
"Captain Hideki Todaka of the Second Defense Fleet," she began. "Previous captain of the Aegis-class flagship Takemikazuchi." She inhaled suddenly. "Current status: KIA."
Shinn's phone fell from his hands and hit the floor with a clatter. He leaned down and picked it back up numbly. "What?"
"In CE 73," the woman offered apologetically. "At the Battle of Crete."
Shinn flashed through his memory quickly. Armory One, the Junius Seven Colony Drop, Orb, the Indian Ocean, Gulnahan, Diocuia, Lodonia, Crete, Berlin…
Crete. He remembered suddenly. That was the day Athha and the Freedom had interrupted again, when he destroyed the Abyss and Lunamaria had been severely injured. With an unexpected bout of nausea, Shinn recalled that the Earth Alliance and Orb had fought together that day, and the only opponent to them had been ZAFT – the Minerva.
"Do you have any more details?" he asked, a horrible dread creeping up his spine. There were more clicks and taps from the opposite end.
"Yes. If it matters, the Takemikazuchi was sunk by the ZGMF-X56S Impulse."
Shinn exhaled loudly, suspicions confirmed in an unforgiving punch to the stomach, and immediately hung up before throwing the phone at the opposite wall. It broke to pieces with a satisfying shatter.
He shouldn't really be feeling sorry, Shinn tried to tell himself. Orb was an enemy then, and he had only followed orders. If he hadn't, the Minerva would surely have been defeated, and none of it would have mattered anyway.
But still. A constant pricking in the back of his mind tore at him. He could have disabled the ship instead, he could have only targeted its armaments, he could have spared it entirely. He could have done something, had he only known that commanding that fleet was the one man who had saved him when everyone else had run off to save themselves.
But he hadn't known, because no one ever knows the things that are worth knowing. So Shinn rested his head between his knees and tried very hard to fight back the stinging behind his eyes.
Winning wasn't a victory march, he realized later that day as he robotically went through target practice and missed every bulls-eye by six inches. He thought he'd known before, but he never had. Winning wasn't victory at all: it was being helpless as friends died, it was pulling the trigger yourself, it was forgetting the losses and trying to remember only the small happinesses, it was losing family and friends and comrades and enemies, it was losing.
Perhaps it would have been better for Todaka that fateful day at Onogoro to not have reached out to the devastated boy with the wild red eyes at all. If he hadn't taken him aboard a safe ship, if he hadn't handed him a handkerchief and been so unfailingly kind, if he hadn't instilled within the boy the will to continue and leave for the PLANTs, Shinn Asuka the pilot would have never been born and he would still be alive.
Three days after he made the phone call to the Orb archives, Shinn finally lost it and cried in the middle of a meeting with the rest of his crew. Winning meant losing and he had killed Todaka with his own hands and how was he ever supposed to forgive himself after that?
The next time he attended a Sunday dinner, Shinn slipped away early and visited the national cemetery for officers killed in the war. It took him half an hour to locate the grave he was looking for in the dimness of dusk, and even as he stood in front of the marker and traced the words with his fingers he knew the effort was meaningless because there was no body buried beneath his feet.
"I'm sorry," he choked out, and hoped that the tears that fell on Todaka's name reached him wherever he was. "I'm so sorry!"
Lunamaria's arms that wrapped around him from behind were warm and comforting and Shinn stood up at last. "It's all right," she murmured softly to him.
"We'll come back, right, Luna? We won't forget?"
"Sure," she replied soothingly because she understood how much this man meant to Shinn, and they walked away through the endless lines of white grave markers together. "And never."
notes: Golly, I hadn't expected it to be quite so long! Nonetheless, I really enjoyed writing this. There are times when I have to force myself to write certain chapters because the inspiration that first struck me with the idea was fleeting, but this was not one of those times. It was quite fun.
Hope you all are well. Leave me a review telling me what you think about the progression of SPTW so far!
NEXT PHASE: Athrun realizes one day how mellow Cagalli has become. "I liked the old Cagalli better," he tells her. She only passes him a sad smile and says nothing.