Characters: Athrun Zala

Parings: Implied AthrunxCagalli

Time frame: post GSD

Difference

Athrun's heart had never been on the Minerva.

Never.

He had never even been there for them.

His heart, sight and soul were invested on another ship, similar as it might be. Flying in a green bird of his making and a tied to a silver band on a blistered finger.

He had fought for the red and black ship, but he had yearned for it to change to a brighter color.

Never truthfully had he attempted to make friends on the Minerva. He had cared for them, yes, he had tried to keep them alive, yes, he had advised, yes, he had respected them, yes, and he worried, but he had never even once thought about knitting bonds with them. In the first place, his reasons for being on the Minerva were not what they had thought.

In the end, they had quite simply been the ship and the crew he had been assigned to while he worked on his real purpose: ending the war before it spread to reach Orb (Cagalli, Kira and Lacus). He could have been ordered anywhere else and it would have been the same.

It hadn't been like he had consciously avoided getting to know them or that he has known he'd shoot at them one day or that he didn't like them. More simply, when his thoughts weren't directed to his work, dedicated towards peace and little death or when he wasn't busy preventing Shinn from going from doing the right thing wrongly to doing the wrong thing, they had automatically wandered far, far away to another ship, blue uniforms, brown hair, bright eyes, too many annoying pets.

In short, as much as the Minerva had been a pleasant military station, the ship, his very enlistment had been a means to an end.

In hindsight Athrun knew he could have never truly belonged to the Minerva. It simply wasn't… There wasn't anything bad about it, but Athrun had belonged to another ship first, to other people. And that other was what he sought out, what he worried about, and what he cared about with all his heart.

The Minerva in comparison… it wasn't like it wasn't important…but it just didn't compare…it simply wasn't the Archangel. Kira was not one of the pilots, Cagalli was not stalking through the interior, Lacus wasn't just one communication away, the Captain had blond hair, and he could go on...

In hindsight Athurn wondered if it was his fault. If it was a bad thing that he was so limited in his thinking. Or maybe if it was a good thing. Because Athrun did belong to the Archangel. It was his home. What else could he possibly want?

Still, Athrun was a good soldier. He was very good at it. Still is.

So he wondered if his time on the Minerva was ever what it could have been or if his soldier mask kept it all at bay.

The mask he had a long time ago perfected so much that it held even through fighting his best friend to death.

Athrun didn't like to think that he always only wore a mask on that ship. He didn't want to believe he was that closed off. But anyhow, he also knew it hadn't all been his decision.

He had been Athrun Zala to them. The one who had been as famous as infamous, well known, respected, semi-legendary and put into not entirely accurate historic phrases. And that had built distance. Something between the crew and him that had been born from his seniority. He had been a veteran to them, while they had been all rookies. That he hadn't been just any veteran had been the final stone in creating a very different foundation.

Maybe if that distance hadn't been there, if he had been as unknown as Kira, then the Minerva and the Archangel could have been equally important to him.

Or maybe it didn't matter.

Because it certainly hadn't been like he haad always been stoic, always calm, always collected on the Minerva. It had been just… that people didn't see past the façade he had put up. And it they had, then they hadn't poked at it, hadn't questioned what Athrun had projected, hadn't payed him any company. There had been too much distance between them. Distance that had only widened by the rank he held.

In the end he never showed the Minerva any mercy and dealt the final blow himself.

And he cannot bring himself to feel much guilt about it.