Characters: Mu la Flaga
Pairings: None
Time frame: post GS ep 30, pre 35
Senpai
"Kira, you are fine, right?"
"...Yes."
Damn, but he should have listened to his instincts. The kid hadn't been fine. Of course the kid hadn't been.
...He hadn't been fine for a long time, but since the last battle...
"I don't want to be praised for murder!"
It had become worse. It had become worse faster and heavier than ever before. Had the last battle been one push too much? Or had it just been the final drop that had made it impossible for Kira to hide how horrible he felt anymore? There had been signs, Mu gathered.
"If I go see them, maybe I will ask why they made me a Coordinator."
"What is a berserker?"
When has it even begun? Mu wasn't sure, he couldn't say. Not even vaguely. Damn, and here he thought he had been becoming a better senpai.
It had been happening little by little for over such a long time and Mu had only ever started really looking after the kid once they had come to Earth.
But even before then, things had been taken away from the kid. One after another, some big, some little. That shuttle...
And he was just a civilian child...
What it came down to was: the kid had been unraveling at the seams, Mu had known it, and he had done nothing. Or he had not tired enough.
It was clear, in hindsight.
"It's shoot or be shot. You, me, everyone!"
"I know that!"
"Then stop hesitating!"
Just what had he been thinking, saying that?
Kira must have debated the pros and cons of pulling the trigger again and again so often -and it had always come out favorable for the Archangel- that the last time... or that battle, had tipped the balance. Maybe.
How often had Kira hesitated only to eventually fight anyway? How often had the thought of not doing it crossed his mind? And what lay at the end of that road, Kira must have known.
They had put too much pressure on the kid. He had gotten all wrong in the head, broken, once already.
The thought of suicide on the battlefield was something soldiers were actively trained out of, but Kira was -had been- no soldier, despite the uniform.
"I don't want to fight! This is your war!"
What it came down to in the end was: would the kid?
Yes, Mu thought, he certainly would. It wouldn't have been a conscious decision, what with how much of himself Kira had put into keeping the Archangel alive, but with all the guilt he carried around with him...with the other kid gone first...
To his shame, Mu, reflecting now, didn't put it past Kira to get killed in battle. By accident, by half accident or perhaps even on purpose. He didn't know the kid as well has he should have, he hadn't looked after him as much as he ought to have, but he knew that one critical thing. Kira was too kind.
Pointing out that hesitating would get him killed had been the absolutely wrong thing to say. The enemy was his own kind on top of it, too...
Damn it, Mu should have talked to him. About what it was that had crushed the kid alive and should have helped him move past it. To get his priorities in order and to focus on them. That's what all soldiers did.
The kid had had his own friends, but as bridge crew they didn't understand the intensity of one-on-one combat. They weren't trained soldiers either. And anyway, hadn't the kid spend most his time away from them, in the Strike or with the Princess anyway?
The Princess had been good for him, but she had not been here after the last battle.
Oh yes, in the end, Mu could see it. The kid being unable to focus hundred percent, unable to convince himself to pull the trigger for just a split second. And that had been it.
What had Mu been thinking?
Oh, he knew what he had been thinking.
He had thought what everyone had been thinking. That at this point there was no way he would get hurt. That he had become far too good for it. With one enemy less in the hunting party, that he would be fine. And the kid's state of mind had never shown in battle anyway.
Mu had thought it had all been fine and even if it hadn't there would always be 'after the battle'.
Hell, but in truth with the kid's fragile state, he shouldn't have been even near a combat machine.
But they all had needed the Strike to survive and for the sake of the ship and all the people on board, Kira had had to fight. Even with broken bones, spitting blood or sick, he would have had to, because they had no one else, because the adults were so weak that they had to push all the weight on one civilian child.
And damn, because he had not listened to his instincts, the kid was dead.