category: Gundam SEED
disclaimer: I don't own it.
THIRTY-EIGHT.
Commander Le Creuset had always had his coffee black. "If you're going to drink," he'd told his pilots one day around the briefing table before a particular recon mission, "there's no point in thinning it down with milk and sugar. Drink your coffee plain, lower your reaction time, increase your mental and physical capacities, stop feeling tired." He raised his cup. "Be proper soldiers."
They'd looked into their own cups at the dark, bitter liquid. It wasn't anything like the academy's brew, with canisters of cream and sugar stationed reassuringly next to the coffee heater. "Bottoms up," Dearka had said, and then they all drank anyway.
x
Six years after the end of the second war, Athrun continued to wake up at five-thirty sharp every morning. He still had a range of strange habits that made him feel paranoid and obsessive but that he maintained all the same. When he entered a room he marked the locations of all windows and doors. If anyone around him moved suddenly, his hand instinctively went inside his uniform to his gun. He took a different route to work every week to throw off anyone who might have been trailing behind.
Athrun wanted to ask Cagalli once, when they were in a restaurant, if she'd memorized the license plate numbers of the five cars parked outside like he had; if she had already plotted the quickest route to the nearest exit; if she had realized that the best place to find a gun if she didn't have one would be off the man at the table by the counter who had the telltale clips of an inside-the-waistband holster on his belt. But he didn't say anything, because he knew she hadn't.
Part of being a trained soldier, Athrun tried to justify, but he hated himself for it. It ate away at him constantly until one sunny afternoon, following the first day of a joint military conference in the Republic of East Asia, when he went out to eat with Yzak and Dearka.
"Do you do that thing," he asked them unexpectedly as they were seated, "where you absently notice all the people in the room and map the fastest escape route outside?"
"Yes," Dearka answered instantly. "Through the back where the kitchen is. It leads into an alley behind the bank next door."
Yzak drew his brows together and leaned in slightly. "And I can tell you that the well-built man at the right corner table is left-handed, around 185 centimeters and 90 kilograms, has been watching the employee at the till, and obviously knows how to carry himself."
Athrun sat back in relief. "I thought I was going crazy."
Yzak shrugged. "That's what happens when you get good at your job, Zala."
The waitress approached them with her small yellow pad and twirled her pen. "May I get your coffee orders?"
"Black," said Dearka and Yzak at the same time.
Athrun passed them a smile and all three of them met each other's eyes for a brief second. "Black," he confirmed.
notes: I imagine being a soldier never leaves you. Er, and that's all I have to say about that. But I do have a request for you all – ideas! I've got most of the rest of SPTW planned out, but there are about four gaps I need to fill. If any of you have some characters you would like to see elaborated on, or a loose end you want tied up, please do let me know. (Minus Athrun and Cagalli – they already get five of the next twelve chapters to themselves.) When I first started writing two months ago, I was marathoning SEED and so I had plenty of ideas myself. Now that I've finished I'm sort of at a loss. I would really, really appreciate your help.
NEXT PHASE: Martin DaCosta looks at the girl sitting across from him. This is what it sounds like when doves cry.