category: Gundam SEED
disclaimer: I don't own it.
THIRTY-THREE.
They told Mu he was a legend. "The Hawk of Endymion," Murrue explained to him a sunny afternoon by the shore. "You shot down five GINNs, and you were the only survivor of your mobile armor corps." She laughed, and the day seemed brighter for a second. "Imagine! Even the Desert Dawn had heard of you."
Mu turned away to stare at the blinding blueness of the ocean. Five GINNs, however impressive it must have been at the time, seemed spare change compared to what he'd done since. He found it hard to believe he was anything close to a legend.
x
"I want to recover my memories," he said to Murrue suddenly, six months after the end of the war. He remembered things in flashes, in teasing glimpses of days long past. It wasn't nearly enough. "I'm going to travel. I think if I see the places I'd been to before it'll jog something."
Murrue said nothing, only looked at him worriedly. "It's not necessary, Mu," she rubbed his arm gently. "You're happy without them, right?"
"I need to know," he pressed, and squeezed her hand in return. "I need to do this, Murrue."
She sighed and did not meet his eyes. "All right."
x
They spent many evenings preparing for his first departure. Mu unrolled a large map of the world and space across his desk, and they sat and circled locations they thought meant something. Where the burnt remains of his father's manor stood, the EAF military academy, the Grimaldi Crater. By the time they finished, there were over a hundred little circles dotting the map.
"I'll be all right," Mu said extravagantly as he tied his shoes the next morning. "You know I'm only leaving for two days this first time."
Murrue did not answer and received his goodbye kiss motionlessly.
x
Even though he was only out of the house for a maximum of three days at a time, Mu took at least two trips a week and always came back more distant than when he had left.
"Did you remember?" Murrue asked the first few times. She stopped after a month. He always did, and it always made him miserable and confused.
Eventually, Murrue reconciled herself to only seeing Mu two days a week. She insisted Andy move back in, and they kept each other company through the empty hours. Time felt more and more like the years between the two wars when they had been alone in that big house. Nothing had changed after all.
x
Mu thought remembering his father would have made him happy. It didn't. Al Da Flaga was callous and zealous and overbearing. He did not love his wife. He loved his son depending on the day of the week. His manor was large but hollow, well-kept but cold, a mockery of the fact that it was hardly lived in.
Mu recalled the flames that burnt the house to the ground. He'd cried for his mother for years afterward. But when one of the maids had screamed, "Master and his wife are still inside!" he hadn't felt sorry for his father at all.
x
He visited Crete and Berlin and Heaven's Base. He remembered three teenagers who had followed him blindly, a girl with mauve eyes who leaned on him and asked for him in her sleep and trusted him completely. He remembered sending all three of them to their deaths. Crete, Berlin, Heaven's Base. Children manipulated to become cold-blooded killers. Children in the seats of four-hundred-ton warpath machines. Children who weren't allowed to remember anything from yesterday because it would compromise their efficiency on the next battlefield. Not soldiers, but equipment.
Crete, Berlin, Heaven's Base. Mu wiped at his eyes with a handkerchief and stood very still for a long time. Then he folded his map up and returned home early that day.
x
In the middle of a shuttle ride to the moon, Mu was suddenly hit with the memory of a beaming Murrue. They were on the bridge of the Archangel, and someone had just told the stupidest joke, but it was funny because they'd been in a huge battle earlier and it felt good to still be alive. Natarle was hiding a wry smile behind her hand, and Murrue was laughing openly and Mu felt an ache somewhere inside him because in the present day he hadn't seen her laugh like that for months. Each time he returned home she and Andy would be drinking coffee on the back patio or discussing whales or watching the sunset with the tired resignation of old people. His presence was hardly acknowledged in the whir of her daily life because it was almost an anomaly. He was never actually home for longer than a day.
The shuttle landed and Mu stood up wearily. Her sorrow weighed on him, but he tried not to ponder great things.
x
He wondered one day, when he noticed that he'd already been to half the locations marked on his map, if it wasn't better to stop and just return home. Those were dark instances, when he doubted whether he was going to be truly whole ever again. Then the moment would pass and he would decide to continue nevertheless. He didn't think offering a broken version of himself would be worth it to anyone.
x
Murrue stopped waiting eventually. She'd heard they said that if a person never returned after being set free, he was never hers to begin with. She didn't need him, really, when she had the warm stability of a lifelong friendship alongside her. Andy was kind and intelligent and they made each other happy, enough to fill the gaps left by loved ones who'd left them.
Murrue stopped waiting. But she never stopped hoping.
x
"This is it," Mu tied his shoes the same way he had done for the past two years of globetrotting and stood up to pick up his bag. "The last location." But Murrue had disappeared into the kitchen, and he was speaking to an empty doorway. "Guess it doesn't matter much anyway," he mumbled, and stepped outside.
notes: I couldn't think of an ending that wasn't completely trite, and I didn't want to make it sappy because this wasn't that kind of piece, so I just didn't write an ending at all. I hope the last line brought a proper amount of closure. I figured it was about time I wrote something about Mu, because we're thirty-three chapters in and all he'd gotten so far was a few weak allusions, so I guess this fills in the gap. Hope everyone is well!
NEXT PHASE: Honestly, all he'd ever wanted was a girl.