The funeral of Shiho Hahnenfuss was a very modest affair.

She had no family to speak of, and her only friends were in the military. In the end, the only people who attended the funeral were the core members of the Joule team and a few of her old friends from R&D. It was a very intimate, short service, just the way she would have liked it. Shiho was never one for formalities anyway.

Yzak remembers every single detail from the funeral, from the parting words by the priest to the color of the flowers placed on her casket. Somebody tried to comfort him, saying that at least he had a body to bury; he could not comprehend how the concept of burying her deep underground, all alone in the darkness, was in any way comforting. That was the last thing she wanted: to be alone.

Her face was peaceful, beautiful. Nobody would have guessed that inside her casket, her body was a mangled mess of what resembled charcoal more than a human body.

He exchanged brief words with the guests after the service. They were all very sympathetic, with their tears and their words, but all he could wish was for them to leave. The entire process caused him nothing but unbearable pain. Some members of the team who had known the both of them lingered for a little, out of sincere concern –they knew what the death of Shiho Hahnenfuss meant to their commander- but they left once Yzak made it very clear there was nothing they could do to help.

There was nothing anybody could have done to help ease the pain of having his soul ripped apart.

Yzak stood, alone, in front of the gravestone –just one of the countless new additions to the graveyard installed after the conclusion of the war. He could not think. His brain simply refused to address the fact that she was dead, underground, gone, forever.

All he wanted was to hold her in his arms and to tell her that the long war was over. That they had fought long and hard, and they had lost many things on the way, but it had all been worth it in the end. While nothing would ever be able to replace their comrades or family, they at least had a bright future in front of them. They had finally found comfort in a world that had been nothing but cruel. After devoting so many years to service, to their country, they were now free to live to make themselves happy. All they wanted was an ordinary, plain, peaceful life. A nice home, maybe a few children, a dog?

At the end of it all, they weren't even allowed that.

Yzak swore loudly and fell to the ground. He pressed his palms against the fresh dirt, as if doing that would bring him closer to Shiho.

What did Shiho get out of life, anyway? She was robbed of innocence by a war that never should have been started. She had devoted her life and passion to the military, trying to do what she thought was right. Then she fell, just like countless other unnamed heroes that the world so easily used then discarded. She meant nothing to the world that she died for.

But, goddamn it, she meant the entire world to him.

Tears started to form behind his lids, despite the fact that he had been sure every last drop had been wrung out of him. He had no idea if they were caused by anger, or bitterness, or simply by how completely unfair fate had been to Shiho Hahnenfuss.

xoxox

Yzak spent the following month either drunk out of his mind or hunched over throwing up his guts from the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed. There was no other escape from the terrible sense of loss that haunted him wherever he went. The splitting headaches and terrible hangovers were still so much more bearable compared to the emotional pain.

He was a complete mess, and he knew, but he could not bring himself to care. He had lost all will to carry on.

Yzak Joule had become a living corpse.

Surprisingly, it was the usually flaky Dearka who stuck with him through the darkest hours of the night. The blonde visited his apartment regularly to make sure he had not died over the course of the night, and dutifully relayed messages from the rest of the team. He even took out the recycling a few times; Yzak probably would have drowned in glass bottles if it had not been for Dearka.

"Yzak, man, you need to get your shit together."

Dearka said as he opened the door on one such evening. The phrase had become a kind of greeting between them. Yzak glared at Dearka before stumbling onto the couch and took a swig out of the glass he was holding. He could not even remember what the brown liquid in his glass was. Dearka sighed and sat down across from Yzak.

"No, I'm serious. I know you're going through hell right now, and I'm not even going to pretend that I know what it's like. I don't. But this is fucking ridiculous."

"Get the fuck out of my face."

"Dude. Really."

"Fuck off."

The exchange summarized every single conversation they had since the end of the war. Yzak had refused to listen every single time, choosing instead to mourn in the most destructive way possible. The blonde sighed again with a little more frustration than usual.

"What would Shiho say if she saw you like this? Do you honestly think she wanted you to drink yourself to death?"

The mention of her name sent a sharp wave of pain through him. He slammed the glass down on the table and growled.

"What the fuck do you know about Shiho? You don't know jack shit about her, or her life, or what she meant to me."

Usually the conversation would have ended right there with another sad sigh on Dearka's part. But this time, the blonde shot him a cold glare and threw down a disk onto his lap.

"I know less than you, and I can still tell you that she would never have laid a finger on a hopelessly drunk, useless idiot, which is exactly what you are right now."

"What's with the fucking disk?"

"It's data that some tech dudes retrieved from her MS."

Yzak raised his eyebrow. His memory or logic was not particularly reliable at that moment, but as far as he could remember there was no way to save any data on the mobile suits. He stared at the disk, unable to understand what Dearka was trying to say.

"What do you mean, data?"

"She hacked into the operating system and did some magic. I don't fucking know, I don't do technology. But that's what she was doing while she was bleeding to death in that cockpit. That's what she left you."

A sudden wave of sobriety washed over him, accompanied by unbearable nausea and a drumming heartbeat. What did Dearka just say? There was another remaining piece of her left in the world. His hands started to shake. He stared at Dearka, unable to form any more coherent thoughts. Dearka stood up, and added with a heavy tone.

"I think you owe it to her to at least take a look at it when you're sober."

Yzak could only stare at Dearka's back as he slammed the front door behind him.

xoxox

Yzak didn't need much time to sober up. As soon as he heard Dearka say her name, he was thrown back into the cold, hard reality. He stood up and poured himself a glass of water; he wanted to laugh at his shaking, unreliable hands that could not even turn the tap on at the first try. Whatever had happened to that perfect soldier he once was. The mere fact that he was alive was miraculous, considering the number of times he had been broken, torn apart, thrown down to the ground.

He shouldn't have been alive. Not when Shiho was dead.

He took the disk and crawled to his laptop that was buried under a million sheets of paper. He looked around his apartment; it was absolutely filthy. Shiho would have gotten a kick out of the empty bottles and cans, dirty laundry, food wrappers and paper that littered his apartment.

He inserted the disk into his laptop with unsteady hands, and waited for whatever data that was in there to show up.

He thought his heart would stop when a video started playing on his screen.

It was Shiho. The image was noisy from all the damage and static interference the MS was experiencing, but there was no way he could ever forget her face or her voice. Shiho, the beautiful, beloved, wonderful Shiho, who had been his entire life and existence.

"…zak…Yzak…"

She winced and let out a series of bloody coughs. The scenes from that day flooded his mind: holding her in the hangar of the Voltaire as the fire slowly left her body, only being able to watch as she died a slow and painful death, the crew having to pry him away from her cold, mangled, beautiful corpse. His first instinct was to shut the damned thing off and to return to the drunken stupor that at least numbed the pain.

But he watched on.

"I hope this is working, and I hope this eventually gets to you. I don't actually know what I'm doing right now, so I guess you'll just have to see."

She paused, and smiled a wistful smile.

"I am not going to make it. I'm not a big fan of pessimism, but there's a hole in the middle of the body. So I won't be coming home. I am sorry."

Yzak could not comprehend what in the world she was apologizing for. She was the one who died. He had decided to defend the Eternal and to turn against ZAFT. If he had been an obedient soldier and stayed with the Voltaire, if he had not rebelled against ZAFT, if he had not insisted on following his "morals" just so he could have a clear conscience – Shiho would not have died.

He was the one who should apologize.

"If I mean a fraction of what you mean to me, Yzak, I'm going to guess that you are probably a dysfunctional mess right now. And because I know you and your ridiculous tendency to take responsibility for everything that happens around you, I'm also going to guess that you might even blame yourself for my death."

She chuckled a little, or as much as her quickly-failing body would allow her to.

"Don't give yourself that much credit, Yzak. You don't have that much control over things. This happened because I was not paying attention. And I didn't come here with you just to be with you. Ultimately, I decided to do this based on my principles, and I am proud to have done the right thing."

Her familiar sarcasm was oddly comforting, and Yzak felt his expression soften for the first time in a very long time.

"The only thing I regret is that I couldn't come home to you."

The half-smirk on Shiho's face disappeared, and was replaced by an absolute and complete heartbreak. A clear streak appeared on her bloodstained cheeks.

He had never seen Shiho look so vulnerable before.

"You saved me when I needed it the most. I wouldn't even have made it through the First War without you. After the hell we lived through, Yzak, you were my salvation. You gave me a reason to carry on, to want to survive the war, to maybe even hope for a future beyond it.

Thank you for giving me a place to return to."

Yzak felt his throat tighten.

"I love you. I think we were both too wary to say it out loud. We've lived in this fucked up world too long, and neither of us wanted to acknowledge the world could take another thing away from us. But there's not much else that can break me at this point, so I'm just going to say it. I love you, Yzak, with all of my heart.

And because I do, I need you to keep living. You deserve better than this. You deserve to accomplish something, to find happiness. Live a full life. For me. Do everything that I couldn't. Promise me, Yzak, that you won't just give up on the world."

Shiho grimaced in the screen, then broke into another coughing fit. The image seemed to shake as violently as her cough; her MS was giving out, just like her body.

She laughed softly.

"I love you."

Her voice was so soft that it almost was disappeared against the static in the background. Then the image cut off. Shiho's face disappeared from the screen as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had appeared.

Yzak could only stare at the blank screen, unable to decide whether the video had eased his pain or made it worse. Recalling that day was torture in itself, and seeing her again, to be told again that she was now part of an irreversible past, was nothing short of heartbreaking. But did he dare believe that there was any salvation for her? That he had been able to make her life something remotely worth living?

Only one thing was for sure: she could read him like a book even in death.

Man, I officially suck at updating things. This is officially the second to last chapter, though. I officially just have the epilogue more to go.

And, if any of you are interested in a Dearka/Miriallia spinoff that is set between this chapter and the epilogue, make sure to check out my other fic, Loose Ends.

Thank you for your time and support. I always appreciate reviews, and I hope this chapter has been worth it!