1-3

Red Memories - Blood Flow


"Do you think of the Academy often?" Garma asks Mai, she having pulled her legs up as she sat at the foot of the bed, he opposite of her on the head end. He sits himself up, back against the headboard with a pillow, her pillow, on his back, legs crossed awkwardly accounting for the fact he's missing a good chunk of one. Now he likes to keep a certain distance from her when warranted, but it's not something misunderstood from either of them.

She wants to know about how he became like this, because a deal was a deal and he had his reading, but instead he is the one discovering her. She humors him, however. It might've been leading somewhere.

"No. Not really." She's looking at her hands, as she says it, seeing her finger tips, long having hardened from the war she's waged. "I remember what I learned there, but honestly, with the way I've gone about this last year, it wasn't the best to follow it."

The organization of tactical elements, communications protocols, basic and standard ambushing and discipline tactics, they had been used a great deal by her: but the type of warfare that the Academy expected her to wage was incompatible with any effective outcome, and, most namely, survivability of her guerilla fighters. She was quite fine with dying in a battle, but that wasn't something she was to dictate to someone who was fighting with her.

"How about our fellow cadets? You must remember it wasn't all study and curriculum back then."

Faces, names, distant memories and recollections. She didn't have an incredible social sphere, not that she had particularly minded, but she had kept her friend group to those who had taken classes with her, who were her direct neighbors in the dorm, and the of course, her roommate. Belle Lor Braun, soft spoken, but honest and perfectly amiable. She had been a far more social butterfly, and more than once Mai had the room to herself as Belle, as did countless other cadets, spent the nights fraternizing quietly away from the watch officer's eye or hearing (assuming the watch officer hadn't also been in on it). Quietly sipping away at ale that was brewed by Lino Fernandez of the Texas Colony, all in exchange, of course, for female company. Lino had been very popular, invited to all the parties, and although he had been friendly himself, his supply of booze was always far more welcome.

She wonders if she could've shot Lino, if he had survived the Dawn Rebellion, and if he had come to Earth and Seattle.

"I do. Why?" She wonders why she asked immediately after she speaks. "Was it someone from our class that did this to you?"

The way she says it comes out too concerning, accusation dripping from her lips. She didn't care that someone wanted to do this to Garma because she too wanted it, and yet her case was totally specific. Who else wanted Garma Zabi dead?

Garma's face is considerate, looking down at his remaining foot, one Federation-issue sock that's been his for the last nearly two weeks now.

"What I said was true, when you first found me, and brought me here." It's not hard to look her in the eyes Garma has come to terms with. Mai's a captivating woman to him, even with the gritty filter. "I valued my time there greatly, but more so the people I was raised up with. Most of all those of you who fought with me during the raid."

She's no more honored the first time when he had told her this. It means nothing.

"I'm sure you had a wonderful graduation speech." She grounds against him. "Valedictorian, presumably?" She had imagined that there had been one more year of schooling in the Academy after the rebellion.

"Oh you know me so well." He said, only matching her very light hostility in her words. The graduation speech he gave a year after was very good. Gihren liked it at least, for what it was worth. He being valedictorian hadn't been absolutely incredible given that the one year of classes left after the Dawn Rebellion had been mostly a chaotic formality. A good portion of the cadets had been to war, so classes had been a non-concern. "But I do seriously ask. How much do you remember from back then?"

If she really had to recall, it was enough. It hadn't been that long, but the portion of her brain that had wanted to put that time behind her had been large and mostly winning in her conscious. The days, the weeks, even the names of the instructors slide out from her mind like a leak, but she remembers enough: conversations, random meal periods, flashes of emotion and inflection of idle thoughts.

A part of the whole, but it acts as more than the sum of its parts: Who she once was.

"Yeah." Her voice is soft. "Yeah I remember enough." Garma doesn't quite seem convinced, but she makes him know. "I went to one party once, you know. I believe one of the watch officers got sick one day, over in Dorm 3, and it was about a week before our quarterly leave."

"Miso Wirsa." Garma reminds her of the senior cadet who had been in charge of Dorm 3, Garma's own dorm after his ruck fall. "Such a shame he came down with pneumonia."

She didn't remember but was glad a Spacenoid officer got sick just by knee jerk reaction. "It was an opportunity for us though. I think it was the last real time we were, I don't know, kids, before the Dawn Rebellion."

There they were, eighteen-seventeen year olds, with booze, some drugs smuggled from their home colonies, and no oversight after a particularly rough exam season. Any idea that they had been cadets and not college or high school students, as most people their age had been, was a far-off thought as Dinah Hightower, electrical wizard as she was, had wired into the constantly on dorm lights on the fourth floor and dimmed them to a moody, club like ambiance. Flashlights and mesh turned into star lights, music players were hooked into cups and speakers, and people had cut loose in what was unofficially considered "The Class of UC 0078's Prom".

As heavy a consideration as it might've been, that night had been the start of Mai's own slow descent from her upbringing.

"I had my first drink that day." And it burnt like fire, she recounted fondly. "A lot of people were very curious about my hair because they'd never seen it, but well, you know." And here she was, hair down, as Garma remembers his time of that night.


He remembers that night as well. It was a night of private lusciousness, perhaps the only night where he indulged himself of the privilege of being a prince. He had, for years up until that point, tried to prove himself only on his merits alone, and by all fair and subjective accounts, that had been the case. One night, one that was private between him and his fellow cadets, where he could perhaps enjoy himself, for his entourage hadn't been present that day, was deserved by his decision.

He had spent a good portion of that night on his bottom bunk, five other female cadets sharing the bed as he sat against the wall of it, the room also filled to the brim, as his arms were draped over his "girlfriend" at the time and another perfectly wonderful cadet on either side, his hand holding a glass jar of Lino's booze. He spoke of the high highs of the Zabi opulence, his private privileges, about what certain foods tasted like, the feel of real paper, of plants from Earth, stories that humanized his family far more than any preplaced magazine piece about them could. Gihren was a cat person, he had whispered to the entire room, and chaos broke out, all while his girlfriend on one side murmured and peppered kisses into his neck while the girl on the other end was all too knowingly making his hand drift over the swell of her chest on the other end as she too also leaned in as the others looked on longingly, scandalously.

Garma hadn't been alone in the open affection that night, he suddenly remembered himself, and all the warmth and whimsy of that memory had been sucked out. He remembered looking across the room, as the story of Gihren's adoption of multiple cats throughout his life resounded, and saw the other inhabitant of the room, sitting on a chair as a ginger-red haired woman sat on his lap, enjoying herself. The man he shared his room with hadn't been concentrated on the woman on his lap however, basically pressing her own chest into his face. Instead Char Aznable's gaze, even through female distraction and sunglass shades, fell on him.


"Do you remember Char Aznable?" Garma asks in the present, and that same shiver he felt when Char looked into his eyes, a hint of his beautiful white teeth promising blood drawn bites, racks through his body, then in the memory, and now in the present.

Char Aznable of Texas Colony. Lino's roommate, originally, and then, finally, Garma Zabi's.

Taller than Garma, she remembered, at least at the time. She still looked down on the both of them at her somewhat unusual height of about 5'9, but the young man from Texas Colony always seemed larger and taller in her memory than she knew he actually was. Athletic, flowing blonde hair that was always threatening to become unruly at all times.

He was the wunderkind of the class. High marks both physical, mental, and academic, going back and forth with Garma for the top spot in class standing.

One conversation. Mai remembers one conversation with him. It was one she started anyway, an idle conversation as they both cooled down from an extracurricular, they both shared: Fencing.


"Texas?" Her Hijab hadn't exactly been the most comfortable thing to wear on top of the fencing gear, sitting next to the bench with Char Aznable. He didn't pant, despite the fact he had several bouts in a row. He breathed silently, as if he hadn't just fought off a small squad in regulation fencing. He didn't turn to her, only adjusting up his sunglasses for his eye condition.

Eventually, he does answer after taking a sip from his water bottle. "Yes."

Whether he's actually tired and can't spare the words, or cold shouldering her, Mai can't exactly tell as she has just finished her own bout, victorious, but not unscathed. The thrill of the fight is keeping her active and up, and, strangely, talkative.

Char Aznable does not move away from her, so she talks on.

"Sorry about that."

"About what?" He finally turns to her.

"The weather there. I hate it personally. It's so oppressively dry every few days."

"Oh? What would you have to do about that?"

"My family, they're weather techs for the Colony Corporation. I've been there at Texas, and just don't know how anyone can really live there… Maybe that's why you're so hard to take down. That kind of heat builds character, doesn't it?"

She was far more talkative back then, looking back, it embarrasses her so. It amuses Char Aznable though at the least. Her eyes were sharp even back then, the full breadth of her marksmanship ability about to be uncovered by their first classes with firearms, and she catches his eyes roaming up and down her body. It meant something that her figure was distinct through the thick gear. That was when she had cut the conversation, but hadn't gotten the last word. He knew she had caught him out, and all she heard was a chuckle as she turned away to watch the bout happening in front of them in silence.

This had been during their first year, and every once and a while she and Char would cross paths, but no more than she had with any other cadet.


She didn't particularly think of Char Aznable too poorly out of ogling her. If anything, back then she had taken a hint of pride, albeit annoyed, out of it, but she was no longer a woman now.

Not with what had happened to her. Not with what she had done.

That's what she felt anyway.

She nodded, "Yeah. I remember him." The thought that immediately follows however, it's such an odd thought that doesn't sit right in her. Outside, Seattle is grey, and from what she felt on her skin, due for rain this week. She just knew. "Did Char…?"

Garma looks at her. He really does, stripped down, nothing about his captivity, or his current situation, or his injuries. Because it's not about him or her now, not with this conversation. This is a conversation about Char Aznable.

"I don't know why. I don't know how. I don't even know what I did to him. But he set me up." She's never heard Garma like this. She's listened to him over the past year, not out of her own choice, but he had his fireside radio chats in the last year, speaking aloud to the Earth that their military invasion was actually good, trying to charm the populace into compliance. She knows what it's like when he is taking command, as per the Academy. She even knows what he sounds like when he's dying, begging for life. But now she knows what he sounds like when he's vulnerable. "He chased that white ship from space, forced it to ground here in North America, and we linked up to try and capture, or at least destroy it, together."

"Char Aznable betrayed you." She does not say it as a question, but as a fact. Garma waits, letting the words sink in, but eventually he nods. "Why?"

"I wish I knew." Sorrow. Sorrow itself is the sound of his voice. And then a question arises within Mai that even she would not press upon Garma, at least not right now. It was extremely personal at that, but she heard rumors, same as any other student with acute hearing or just whoever had seen Garma Zabi and Char Aznable together. "I have many regrets, and people I wish to see again, but perhaps one of my biggest as of current, is knowing what I did to him."

She's not sure what to do with the revelation as outlined to her, or what this could possibly mean for Zeon and the war at large. She's not even sure if she cares at all. But it's information within her keeping, much like the man on her bed now. If, in the long span of Universal History, the One Year War, and Garma Zabi's timeline is written, she would be in the spotlight now.

On that bed, she wants so much to simply lean, or even lay down, letting her head rest and wonder. But she doesn't.

Garma stirs as the silence drags on. "I'm very fortunate to have come to be held by a person who knows what I speak of." He considers for a moment. "Thank you."

"Don't." She growls. "We're still not friends. We're not doing that Helsinki Syndrome stuff."

"Stockholm."

"What?"

"It's Stockholm Syndrome. And no. I'm not beginning to like you anymore than I should, Mai Gul. Don't you mistake that. But you are due what you are, regardless. Even if you are going to kill me." He takes in a deep breath, and Mai can only watch his chest rise and fall once. "Me dying does not change who you are."

She looks away as if to avoid those words, but they hit her all the same. Her mouth is held by her mouth, looking out at those clouds swirling above in their grey mush. "It makes up what's been done to me." That's what she has to believe at this point.

Garma listens, and he thinks of it. She sees him in the reflections of the windows waiting for her to turn, but she doesn't, so her back is spoken to. "Would you believe a different opinion if it were from me?"

"I don't know if I can really spare to spend more than a few minutes talking to you." Her glowering did little to help.

"We were just fine yesterday." He had been offended, his voice lowering. Then again what was he to say about judging relationships one day to the next? Char Aznable betrayed Garma Zabi, the fact rolls in both of their heads. "I wonder if Char Aznable hates me as much as you do, in all honesty."

If Char could've understood what it was like to be a mother, maybe. But he had not been, and, moreover, neither had she in a literal sense. For life itself to go cold inside of her because of Iffish, because of the pain in the world it felt, seeing that tragedy unfold, she was not a mother now, and forever was denied it. Her motherhood was stolen from her, and more tragically, her child.

"I'm sure Char had his reasons." She contemplated. "I'm sure everyone who wants you dead has their reasons. All valid."

A Spacenoid tells him this thing, and it wounds him. How could this woman betray their race like this, Garma Zabi would perhaps never know, but right now all her words do is just hurt him, pick at him, in this tender state. She knows now that Char Aznable had stabbed him in the back, and all she does is agree.

He should've known better.

"I'm gonna go out again, to think." She avoids looking at him as she stands up off the bed again. She can't quite stand staying more in this room with him, with this topic.

"Leave me with this, if you may allow." He stops her short of leaving the bedroom and she turns.

"What? I already got you a damn book."

The book is in his hands already, his fingers glazing over leather binding. "Do you think we could've been friends, in another life?" He spoke. He already wished for an answer, but maybe she thought different, or, perhaps, thought the same.

She contemplated, head and eyes not knowing where to look as they went back out toward the door and then back to looking into their bedroom. She had waited to long, not ignoring the question at all, that an answer from her was at least brought up.

Slowly, but resolutely, she sits on the bed again, far closer than she's been before, and she holds both her arms to him, holding his shoulders, grabbing them, keeping him still as he sits waiting for whatever she is doing. It reminds him too much of a physicians check up for him not to go rigid and wait.

This is the closest that they've been unnecessarily. Her hands had been on him in pretty much every sacred place, and yet it had meant nothing as much as her being at his side at that very moment, both of her hands clamped on his shoulders. She looked at him, her green eyes the most color in that room, but before he could figure the specks of black in her irises amidst the verdant waves, he had been seeing red. Her right hand had snapped across the side of his face left relatively untouched by his burns, and the smack echoed in the room.

"See you for dinner, Garma." Her voice had been cheery as she left finally, sniper rifle and day kit in hand as soon as she's up and off.

He recoils across the bed, almost falling off, and by the time he rights himself she's opened the front door.

"That's not an answer!" He screams out, hoarsely, and yet again, no answer comes.


Small animals made for good meals. Rabbits, squirrels, the occasional seagull, all of them Mai had become accustomed to in the wilds of Seattle, mostly in the wire rectangle of the animal capture cages, taken from Seattle's animal control apparatuses. She once had a coworker who had espoused the benefits of having a passive income, that income being a rather risqué subscription service where she had uploaded pictures of a certain color for her subscribers on a semi-regular basis. Said coworker had always been very positive about said work, but, as attractive as the supplementary income was, Mai wasn't quite sure it would be a particular path she could go down.

These cages, a war later, are perhaps the closest she comes to the idea of a passive form of sustenance, and even now it wasn't a guarantee.

No dice, she disparages looking over one of the five traps she has set north of downtown. She resets and refreshes the lures and bait, and that's all she gives any mind to that day as she does her rounds. One day of complete rest is all that she gives Candy as far as her hand is concerned, and she is off and about again, leaving Garma scanning over lines of The Odyssey.

More and more the word "cohabitation" as opposed to "prisoner" comes to her mind with Garma sitting so comfortably in her apartment as he is, but this was the choice she had made, and now she had to live with it.

She has to live with Garma, and then forever more with the knowledge he gave to her. At first, it's Char Aznable. But what about tomorrow?

The question of how long she herself is going to live is a question that's more up in the air than she cares to properly elaborate on to her own machinations, but she's sure that it's probably going to be longer than Garma, at least. A lot of her metrics nowadays have to do about Garma.

For example: if there was a rabbit to be caught in her next trap, she'd have to catch two for it to be enough of a meal for both of them.

There's only one cage left to check, and it's in an alleyway in between a pretzel shop and a line of office buildings. There's bloody spots left on the concrete from firefights, holes along the wall from where, either her forces or Zeon had lined the other up on the wall and took them down. Not a street or alleyway in Seattle had been clean.

The city didn't become a battlefield overnight. In the immediate hours after the first of Garma's ground invasion force designated for the Cascadian region had touched down, a token force of Federation guardsmen had been on station to barely put up a defense with the compliant police forces or remaining national guard. The United States of America in its much constrained form had ceded most of its military to the Earth Federation during the advent of the Universal Century, and what national military remained had been Earth Fed standard anyway. It wasn't much of a fight, and about a week after they landed in March, Federation forces had retreated east or South, and Seattle's occupation had begun.

Resistance came slowly, rocks thrown at Zeonic APCs or the feet of mobile suits being tagged, non-lethal non-compliance as a military force settled into Seattle. In all reality, Seattle might not have minded if not for the fact that Zeon had begun use it. The comforts of modern living and convivence slowly drifting away. Island Iffish was only the start, and the nominal first world that Seattle existed in had finally been affected as food started disappearing off shelves and a new reality set in.

The average industrialized citizen was always a an empty fridge away from rioting, and when all of Seattle found itself starved, that's when the guerilla war started in earnest. When curfews were put in place, dead Zeon troops would be found stabbed or shot in low light streets or during protests. That's when dead Seattleites started turning up in revenge killings. The domino effect that had finally caught up to what Mai had been doing:

It might've taken another two months for the rest of Seattle to take up arms and become an urban warfare center, but, Mai, she had been there on night one, when concerned citizens who had initially scrambled to defend their loved ones in the Conclave dropped off arms, when the militia types who had been preparing for this war finally put their mettle to the test and put in place their contingencies, and, most of all, when people were given a choice on whether to accept Zeon rule or not.

It was on night one, with nothing but the sniper rifle she carried in her hand now still, that she had gone out in the dark of night, walked across a city panicking to pick up provisions and find loved ones, and shot the first Zeon she saw, and then disappeared into the crowd, only to do it again and again, until the next morning she returned, untouched, unknown, and ready to fight a war on her own.

Those two months before the insurgency had truly kicked off had been lonely, and she had never felt more criminal than she did in her life during that time: Back when the Seattle Police had still been relatively in order, jointly with the Zeons, the talk about a "terrorist" sniper haunting those streets and the innocent had been widely played over.

No one had anticipated the sniper to be a mother who miscarried to be the culprit until more and more, people joined her in her underground war until Seattle, at last, erupted in gun fire that lasted until the end of Summer.

Tucked behind some trash cans, her last cage trap had been set, right against the edge of a building. It had been sprung, however no animal had been inside: only a rock, and a note taped to it.

Mai pulled back the safety on her rifle, looking around, but nothing had been immediately apparent as she used the length of it to kick out the rock, prodding it in case it had been a grenade disguised. After a certain amount of prodding however, its nature as a rock was uncovered and confirmed, and with nothing else to do she had reached down, grabbed the note, and read it

A small note, pen strokes scribbled a single message: Look up.

She does, and what awaits her one story above the street, hanging out of a window is the bright smile of Win Nguyen: child soldier extraordinaire.

"Ghoulie!" He yells down from the window sill.

"Win?" She's surprised to see him, further surprised to see him rapidly approaching from on high.

He yells on the way down, "Catch!", and it is with reaction time honed by war that Mai is barely able to open her arms and "catch" Win. It's not as much as a catch as much as she is just a landing pad for him as they both end up on the ground in a crash.

They collide in a spectacular, muted fashion, Mai getting a face full of Win's midsection as he rolls off of her expertly, leaving her on her back, slightly daze as her body goes through the internal checks that-

"You could've broken something, boy." She groaned, looking up, head on concrete and seeing Win upside down, stretching, Zeon submachine gun held off his sling and his school jacket, blue and white, worn. It'd been a bit since he had dressed in the oversized camo gifted to all of them by Federation supply drops. His hair, whipped back into a pony tail, he smiled at her, thumbs up.

"Hi Mai." He said sweetly instead as if it was an apology, holding both of his hands out for her to grab and to drag herself up.

She did, the dust of the city off of her, but immediately pulled into a hug.

"I missed you~."

A groan leaves Mai's mouth, getting any pain out of her neck by a creak as Win gets off of her after their momentary embrace. "Yes, yes. What're you doing?"

"You missed our last two meet ups. Can't I be worried about my uh, big sis?"

"Big sis? Is that what you've decided I am to you?"

Win shrugged. "It works."

"Fine, sure." She wasn't quite happy that Win had found her, but there were worse ways to be ambushed. "Any reason for this?"

Win had nodded immediately, but not before his hand twisted into a beckon wave, and Mai had understood it. She followed him as they walked up and out, but not before she had reset her animal trap. "Yeah. Gear' wanted me to go track you down and bring you back to the Conclave. There's a meeting between all the Pavilion leaders that he called. First time it's been done since we kicked the Zeeks outta town." It was unsurprising to her that such a thing was happening given the events of the last few days.

"Didn't want to take the opportunity to try and find where I live?" Mai teased the teenager as they both, naturally, came up against the wall as they opened out to the street. They couldn't beat the particular way movement up and down the street had been in the war: up against the front of the building, shrinking their forms.

Win shook his head, taking point.

The teenager had gotten what he wished for when the guerrilla war kicked off: sneaking out of his dorm, going to ground, listening to rumors of the "Ghoul's" guerilla group before finding her and begging to fight.

He hadn't been that much younger than she had been during the Dawn Rebellion, and she had no time to argue. She gave him a gun, and for the rest of the war he had used his surprising street smarts to slip in and out of the Zeon line.

He was so effective at it became a problem when he started bringing back ears.

The boy was insane, but she loved him like family. It was subtle insanity if anyone could at all diagnose. To him, the war had been his freedom, and he had finally felt normal.


"I'm not the best student and my family hates me. I hang out with the wrong crowd, and I'm not the politest. But I know right from wrong and I know it's right to be killing those Spacenoid pigs."

He told her, once, a conversation had to distract them all from the bombardment above as they hid in the sewers.

He had been laughing through every rumble, as if each bomb explosion had been a punch line.

"This is the fucking best time of my life." He proclaimed, and for that reason, he had survived the war.


Win shook his head as they made their way down to the Conclave through those well traveled streets. "I know you're somewhere abouts Downtown in an apartment, but I ain't checking each room. You think I got that much free time?"

"Yeah." She answered frankly. "We all do."

"Hey I'm very busy doing, things, and stuff. You know? Also I don't know if I want to meet that Zeek you've got with you up there yet. Even if you want to keep him alive, I don't know what I'd do. Maybe I'll see red, go right at him, start sticking and picking at him and- OW!" Mai's pinch had been on his ear this time. Win had too also deserved the death of Garma Zabi, but as it stands she would still be very upset with him if she had returned one day to her apartment and found Garma missing ears, fingers, and perhaps even his scalp, as Win had been known to do in the deepest portions of the war.

"Do you remember when I used to scare you?" She dragged him closer almost that she was talking into said pinched ear. "We can go back to that real easy."

"Owowow- okay okay okay." He pacified, getting her hand off of his ear, run raw red. "And I doubt it. You can't be scary when you're very squishy, Mai."

Mai Gul only had one step head start on Win Nguyen as she began what had been essentially a foot chase the several blocks over to smack the shit out of him, but it was an unfinished prospect as they burned a path all the way to the Conclave, the front gates open to them as Win made it across the line just barely out of Mai's reach, and promptly disappeared into its sprawl. He had done his job for the day however, and before he disappeared, he had turned around, shouting out: "Conference room!"

"That kid ain't right." One of the guards on the defensive wall had spoken an obvious truth, looking down to Gul, panting, keeled over on her knees. "You good there, Captain?"

She hadn't responded save for her heavy breaths, waving the man off as she walked herself into the Conclave.


The Conclave's one remaining conference roomed nestled in its administrative section had been where the hospital administrator's once spoke of salaries and policy changes. Now the matters of the room had been far more martial, filled with people who killed rather than saved. These were the leaders of the Pavilions, and when Mai had come into the room, they had all perked up their heads in warm admission and recognition.

There had been eleven Pavilions now since the loss of 3 Pavilion, and just that many people had showed up. Eight men, three women, all as varied in pre-war occupation and background as there had been the number of wars to prepare game meat (a lot).

The Pavilions had been a Federation idea at first, if only because they had been patrol bases set up during the month long battle to eject Zeon from Seattle, mostly manned by the local guerilla forces. This had been entrusted to Mai's cell and her associated groups, while Murph and his Reapers had been more than willing to join the absolute frontline fighting that the Federation called upon them to do. When the Federation left, the organization remained, and the command structure shifted from Federation to the Conclave.

Each Pavilion leader had been Mai's officers and liaisons to regional groups, and thus out of all Seattle, knew her best, for better or worse.

"Long time no see captain." Bolton Dancer, former lawyer, present artillery man of 7 Pavilion, tipped his baseball cap to the woman who commanded him during the war. His Federation Colt rifle rested against his chair as the rest of the Pavilion leaders all made their greetings.

Tammy had gotten her bandana back as she Mai rounded the table to an open seat near her, the older woman thanking her. "Gear called for you too?"

She nodded to the room as she sat down, boonie hat off and hanging on the back of her neck. "Don't know why he bothered though."

"I figure," Bolton stretched out his back from the chair, rolling his neck around. He still wore neck ties, even as he wore a woodland camo jacket. Some people couldn't let go of their peculiarities in war, and in the fairness of having survived, Bolton did what he wanted. The man had looked like a coked out businessman and in some ways it had been his happy place, his brown hair waxed back, a bandana over his forehead with a pair of aviators. "anything that Gear thinks is important enough to call all of us down, it's something that you should be aware of Ghoul."

"Fair enough." Mai shrugged.

"How you been keeping on anyway? We don't hear too much from you." Bolton continued.

"Same old shit." Mai answered harshly, wiping some residual sweat from Win's chase off her brow. "I told you what I wanted the last time we were all here."

The answer to that was that she wanted to be left alone, for the most part. Half in that room had thought she was immediately going to blow her brains out, but she had resisted that temptation and instead just walked amongst Seattle's ruins just the same as anyone else, waiting for the world to turn over and to disappear into the annuls of history.

If only it were that easy.

"You sure kept well enough alone with that goat rodeo down by the Dock Market the other day." Tammy winged her softly with her elbow, Mai scoffing as she took the hit. The older woman had always been brute and frank with most she worked with, courtesy of a lifetime at sea managing fishing boats. For Mai, it was far preferable than the condescending talk of those that knew her tragedy, which everyone in that room had known. They'd gotten the message soon enough during the war that she wasn't a woman to be coddled or treated lightly.

They were having a conversation before she entered the room, worried in tones, and when she had come in initially it was if they had been caught red-handed.

"How're your new people anyway?" The leader of 2 Pavilion, a former manager at a homeless shelter, had continued on talking with Bolton, she sweeping her bangs behind her ears and one of the arms of her glasses, permanently kept inside of a pair of safety goggles for their own safety. The likelihood of her being able to get a new pair nil. "I haven't had this many people since the Feds gave me my provisional rank."

Technically, all of them there had rank in the Federation military, provisionally. Captain for Mai, the rest Sergeants.

Bolton had shrugged. "It's fine. Most of them are regulars anyway around my parts, so at least we're making it official."

2 Pavilion's leader had grimaced. "There's a big assumption among them that we're about to start doing militia stuff real quick. Hell, I've had to use your name to keep one of the more rambunctious ones down."

2 Pavilion looked over to Mai, and she rose her eyebrow, annoyance on her face. "Tell them I'd deal with them otherwise, Sarah?"

2 Pavilion shimmied her head back and forth, "Something to that effect."

Foreman Foreman, leader of 5 Pavilion and the constructor worker's union that survived in bond and strength through the war thus far had chortled. "When this is all done and over, Ghoul, remind me to give you our card. Seattle needs a manager like you for the reconstruction, and better from what I heard what your old job was."

Perhaps in another life she'd be extremely thankful to be offered a union job, but not this one, she shaking her head. It was all, to her understanding, just an extension of what that old job was: bossing people around who got to pushy and keeping people in line.

The door opened to the conference room again, and it had been Gearten and Candy, the Conclave's defacto leadership. It hadn't been the first time Gearten and Mai had left a conversation on the wrong foot, but that was par for the course. Candy, greeting her with a nod and a smile, had raised his left hand at her, shaking it a bit as she got the message, sliding her left glove off and showing the bandages still kept on her left, pleasing Candy enough for a subtle thumbs up as the two men got to the front of the room, right in front of the projector screen, both of them had come in with manilla folders, glowing shades of transparent film in both of them.

"How's your breathing Gear?" Foreman asked, unconsciously clearing his own throat, smoky and hazy as a man who had spent a lifetime chomping cigarettes.

"Ain't bad, ain't good." Gear had responded. That was the perpetual state of his lungs. "I lived a good thirty years of my life and suddenly my lungs wanted to call it quit early, even if they're perfectly good. Doc," he turned to Candy, "You think if I had a million bucks I could just buy new lungs?"

Candy had patted Gearten's back through his green flannel. The man only ever dressed in them. "If what I heard from Side 3's own organ transplant research was true, perhaps."

"Spacenoid lungs… Yeah that'll be the day." There was room control on the side of the conference room table that Candy and Gearten had been on, Gearten thumbing down both the lights of the room and then lowering the projectors from the ceiling. Outside, one of the backup generators running on a solar charge could be heard humming. "Alright, I'll keep this brief people. I know this is our first reunion in months, but first things first. Doctor Candy?" Gearten had motioned for Candy to take over the projector, his slides scanned by the console and thrown up to the projector, and then back on the wall.

"We've brought you here to discuss the Conclave's current timeline, and, more specifically, when we'll be leaving Seattle for the Midwest." With Candy's words, the Pavilion leaders had all sat more attentively, even Mai. "Now again, I know some of you have your doubts about this move, but it's just a simple matter of fact that we don't know, despite what communications we get from our radios, how long this war will last. The longer it goes on, the more likely incidents like two weeks ago with the bombing and the appearance of that Zeon force will become the norm."

Mai could only remember Garma's belief that the war was still long to be fought, and it was only a matter of time before tragedy struck again.

"For the vast majority of us, what lives we had here in Seattle, our livelihood, has been destroyed, and our only chance for us to move on is to go mid-continent, where, if our information is correct, the Federation has been able to maintain control of the breadbasket."

"Food, warmer weather, and further away from the frontline. What else can you ask for?" Gearten posed. "Now of course, I ain't coming with you all, my home up in Vancouver Island's doing alright, but I still care about you all enough that I'm gonna stay here and keep the things going."

"Right," Candy had been very thankful for Gearten's commitment to the Conclave. The man, strong back, weak breath, had still kept it going, used to the burden of being alone in the wilds. "What is generally keeping us here in Seattle then is our current patient load."

Any walk through those halls, in the wings of the Conclave that still remained a medical treatment center, and it had been very apparent why the Conclave had been a miracle, a blessing, and a necessity.

On the slide that Candy had thrown up, it had been the current population of the hospital: 148. Forty-three had been patients.

"We have a few patients that still require intensive care that either we can only provide with our facilities here, or any movement will be fatal to them." As the slides went on, notes for each of said patients: cancer, dementia, worsening infections, hospice care. One of them had been an eighteen-year-old boy who had been in the hospital since May, his bones degenerating in a condition that was difficult to treat in a fully industrialized society, not the stone age that Seattle had been sent back to. He was fading, kept on by an increasingly diminishing supply of his painkilling cocktail. Looking on by his side the entire time: his only family left, an aunt.

Up and down, the dying had filled those halls, and no one there would think it right to leave them alone in death, or to expedite it. That hadn't been fair. That wasn't right.

Candy went on, tapping his manilla folder as he explained, and looked on still at the faces of those on the screen. "Now, there are a few of our currently interred that are stable enough to go with us, and hopefully we'll be able to go find medical treatment elsewhere, but as it stands, it is our responsibility to remain and operate the Conclave until we've done everything we can."

"Any disagreements?" Gearten called out. None.

Candy continued. "With all this considered, we expect that all of our patients that require us to stay here will either be discharged or cleared for the move sometime in mid-January."

Tammy, she leans forward. "I presume the lady in maternity is the one that's gonna keep you all here last?

Candy confirmed with one nod. "Mrs. Kino should deliver in mid-January. As far as me and the medical staff can tell, no complications thus far."

"A boy, right?" Tammy followed up. She was understanding to that at least, hardened woman of work as she was and used to be. She too was a mother. Divorced now, her child was somewhere in Finland. She confided in Mai once, at the very beginning, about what it was like to lose a child in some way. The fisherwoman could never truly comprehend, and hopefully would never have to know, what it was like for their child to die, but she knew loss still. Tammy had told her that it had dragged her down, every day, and the only time she had ever felt normal was when she had been doing something.

That Mai could understand.

Candy nodded with a firm smile. "If I'm not mistaken, her baby would be the first delivered since," Candy had tried to hide a glance at Mai, "Since the colony drop."

The maternity ward at First Hill had been emptied immediately after the colony drop, the Federation government casting a huge order to all Pacific based hospitals that survivors from the South Pacific were to be flown in immediately. What followed had been a mass casualty event and triage that stretched over the entire world, hundreds of thousands of survivors deposited in hospitals in Asia, the American west coast, Europe, and even the Middle East as the injured flowed over international lines.

Mrs. Kino's pregnancy had always been a positive spot, if not oddly timed one. Mr. Kino had been one of Mai's own in her band of guerilla fighters that had, at its highest, been over or about a platoon strength. She hadn't particularly remembered him personally, but she knew that he had been a maintenance chief in the Kingdome, and that when the organic decision was made by Seattle's rebel residents to go to ground and start their guerilla war, he had been one of the first to join the movement, if not before he had what was presumably farewell sex with his wife.

That was six months ago, and both had survived the subsequent fighting, thankfully.

The very announcement that Mrs. Kino, who had put herself into the Conclave as a volunteer assistant, was pregnant had been a cause for celebration that lined up with the end of active hostilities with Zeon as they fled south, the Federation pulled out, and Seattle became as it was now: a ghost town, filled with ghosts.

Mai was happy for her. Truly.

And because of that she never talked to her.

"But, that asides. These are the people that we are taking care of right now. And we will continue to do so until we no longer have to. It is because of this there has to be a change of how the Conclave and you, our Pavilions, must maintain yourselves in light of…" Candy couldn't quite bring himself to fully acknowledge what was to happen, what could happen with a realm of possibility that called this meeting together.

Gearten had taken the reins from there. "Murph and his Reapers, from everything that we've seen and heard these last few days, they're gonna be coming up to Seattle to make this their turf. Why? Couldn't care less. But he doesn't like us, we don't like him, and we aren't going to be moving. If that's a problem for him, if he starts poking at any of our people in here, we have to be ready."

"Are we expecting a fight?" Bolton picked out.

Gearten shook his head. "I'd rather plan like we are, and besides, the captain knows otherwise." For the sake of playing along Mai did raise her left hand again.

"Coulda just shot him there, you know." Foreman grumbled, the revolver at his chest holster particularly heavy at that moment.

"It would've been a blood bath." Tammy had responded justly. "I see your point though."

Maps of Seattle from old bus maps had been put up on the screen, Gearten's notes and shading making them pertinent to the now:

"We're going to reorient the Pavilions so they create a southern, westerly line in a row, with a few exceptions. If you remember it's not too different from the final lines between the Feds and the Zeeks back then." The more things change the more they stay the same. To demonstrate Gearten had changed out the slide to a hand drawn one designating where all the Pavilions would now set up, almost tracing the I-90 freeway outright. The freeway had been the unspoken line between Zeon controlled territory and then northern Seattle where the guerillas and the then remaining civilian populace had been, and still it remained a great vein, cutting through their immediate world, cars that had been there since the invasion still sitting as if in gridlock traffic. "Tammy, you're our southernmost Pavilion now, so I'll be sending the most of our new "talent" over to you. Got room?"

"I was a ship captain, honey, I can make space on my bunks."

"Hold on, hold on." Bolton had spoken up. "Just like that? Mobilizing again? Don't we get a vote or something?"

"A vote on what?" Gearten twinged at Bolton. A backwoods boy versus a city lawyer had been a tale as old as time. "Do you not want to do this?"

"Hey don't put fucking words in my mouth Gear. What I'm saying is why are we immediately moving like we're going to war?" He had pointed up and out to Gearten. Candy had shrunk in the background, this was never his type of foray, and Mai had felt for him there. Despite how crass Bolton had spoken, he had been liable to agree with him, although not for the same reason. "I was a public defender, I probably spoke for half of Murph's lackeys these last few years, they're not unreasonable. Sure they're pieces of shit, most of them, but not unreasonable."

"Christ, remind me never to hire you as my counsel." 10 Pavilion's leader, an ice cream truck driver who had domain of Seattle's main truck depot spoke up.

"Just because I think my clients are pieces of work doesn't mean I don't do my best." Bolton offered back. "But seriously, Gearten, what the hell are we doing?"

"I'm sorry." Gearten had been sarcastic. Disbelieving. "I thought we were all here today because working together was the only way any of us got out of the last year alive." Gearten had wanted to go on, but the breath he had put into his words had been taken out of his lungs, and the long, painful cough returned to him as he turned away, plastic mask from his belt and machine brought to his face as he held a finger up: Just wait.

They didn't.

"Go down there and tell Murph to give us a few months to move out and he can take this damn city for all I care." Bolton offered to the table. "No blood loss. Nothing off our backs."

Gearten pulsed his finger again as he breathed in and out of the mask that kept him down, but alive.

Sarah from 2 Pavilion spoke up again. "Bolton you really think the man who skins Zeeks alive and nailed bodies on every billboard from here to Tacoma is reasonable?"

He shrugged. "Look if it wasn't so much effort I'd be doing that to every god damn Zeek. Don't tell me we all haven't wanted to do the same ever since Freecastle."

Hallowed name. Hallowed ground. The breaking point for the rest of Seattle that wanted to go to war with Zeon, honest and true. Freecastle was when there had been no moral choice to stay neutral in the war anymore. Anyone who hadn't wanted to fight had left Seattle, anyone who did, stayed. That's when the city became as it was now, and, for those that survived, who had taken their pound of flesh from Zeon, it was worth it.

Bolton had spoken true however. Mai had never felt the need to take the bodies of Zeeks and to crucify them, to display them, but she had felt the draw to bring such incredible malice and disrespect that it blinded her vision from time to time, only now newly refreshed with the fact Garma had been there.

There was a reason why one of the grislier rumors about her had been that she was a cannibal who craved Spacenoid flesh.

Gearten had finally restarted his lungs, and he had used the breath in them strongly. "The only thing that kept the Reapers off of our backs was the fact Zeon was here. Now they're not. Rather be strong than passive on it."

"I'm just warning you all. If we put up, they're gonna put up to. That's how these gangbangers work." Bolton leaned back in his chair. Gearten had taken a glance at Mai, and Mai had waited for it, the slightest of nods agreeing with the lawyer. It was not unconceivable.

"We never sent a goodwill messenger to the Zeeks." Tammy had spoke out instead. "I doubt these Reapers would listen, unless of course we send the Captain out."

"You don't want me out there." Mai spoke out in response. "You send me down there I kill everyone there and then come back up here to finish the job."

She would, and could. Threat alone reset the room cold, brimmed by a dollar store boonie hat that has paid out dividends.

"Look, I'll do what the Conclave says, but I'm telling you, the only thing that this leads to is an armed confrontation." Bolton had said his piece, crossing his arms, not happy, but compliant. The general unease of the rest of the Pavilion leaders had rang true in his wake however.

1 Pavilion's leader had been an outsider, almost as much as Mai. A simple man. Quiet, despite the loudness of the tattoos on his arms and body. Black ink defined him. "That doesn't sound so bad." He said. Only two people in the Conclave had military training. The only one who had been in any way close to an officer had been Mai, however there was another who had gone through a bootcamp all the same. He was the man in charge of the Evergreen Bridge's post, watching over the only safe way out of Seattle that hadn't been down towards Tacoma.

He was also a Federation deserter.

Mai never saw eye to eye with A.K Gully, lingering sentiments from the Dawn Rebellion still very much true to her, but he had been, to all accounts, the last of Seattle's Federation reserve. He survived by never reporting to post, and he had fought out of his own survival with the Conclave as the guerilla war came over.

"Kill Zeeks, kill gangsters, gotta do it while world ain't together still." Gully sighed, breathed as if bothered to be here at all. "Gearten, cut the crap, tell us what's happening, or I'm gonna just go off and start shooting anyone with those stupid as shit armbands."

The same people who had put down revolts in the colonies had been on Earth all the same, in the end. People like Gully with a predisposition to killing, had created Zeon. He was the Federation.

Gearten had a knack for explaining plans, keeping plans and people, together. And he had outlined moves, new locations of the Pavilions, needed scavenging parties by Candy's request and patrol patterns. The main rule: Secure the I-90. Keep up presence patrols. Keep the Conclave safe. It took an hour for the plans, revisions and all, suggestions made and requests given. Nothing out of place. Business as usual again after two months off.

"I mean it." Gully went on, before he had settled himself done for the day and made to leave. "Zeeks and gangsters. Same shit. Both of them doing their evil just because the world gave them a bad hand. I figure it's gonna feel the same putting one or the other in the ground."

"Only thing you should be feeling," Mai had stopped him before he left. "Is recoil."

Spacenoid and Earthnoid, facing off: the oldest tale even in the oddest places. She stared at him with her evil eye and he had known that the excuse of the war kept them allies. "Sure. Sure."

The Pavilion leaders had all gone to go at once: "Stick by for dinner, or don't. But that's the plan. We start reformation next week." Gearten said as a dismissal, but Bolton, once again, had kept them there: Looking to Mai.

"How about you, Ghoul? Gonna stick here on sweet old Earth? Or head back up? I mean, don't know why you'd want to do that but…" Bolton lead on, dropping. Everyone looked at her. "I never know what you're thinking."

Mai huffed, "That's on purpose, Bolton."

"If you're gonna be like this after this war is actually over I'll be impressed." He laughed off, and Mai couldn't help but indulge in some self-admonishment there with a shrewd smirk, hanging her head back.

"When this war is over." Gully spoke, unbelieving, before he left, door closing behind him. "As if."

Mai doesn't know if she's a good person anymore, at least as much as she thinks she might've been a good person before the war. What she does know however, the people in this room, colorful, burdened, life-takers as they might've been, she thinks most of them as good people (better than her at least). They stuck by the Conclave because they all, in their own way, owed something to it. Mai's reason for war had always been selfish, and wrong, but that was not what her soul had allowed her to address.

She needed Zeek blood, and aligning herself with the Conclave had been what was pertinent at the time.


Gearten had asked Mai to stay as all the Pavilion leaders left, the dark room between them was the privacy that was needed. Candy however, as he left to check up on his patients, reminded her of one, leaning in to whisper. "I'll be over in two days for your guest."

"Thank you, Doctor." Mai replied calmly.

There were other doctors that had cared for Mai, true, but many of them were gone now, answering the call of the Federation to be deployed elsewhere, or, at worst, dead in defense of the city. But Candy had always been special to Mai, and Gearten had respected that as he waited for him to leave.

Again, it's the old phrase: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Once again, Mai and Gearten have a room to themselves to talk of plans, she sitting there, taking any rest she can, as Gearten explains to her what works, and what doesn't.

"So. You like the plan?" He inquires, hands out and open. He had been good at planning. Living off grid required plans that worked without fail save for disastrous consequences. He'd always been good at them, but trapped in a damnable position of never being able to act them out himself, even if he could've. Not with how his lungs were. All that muscle and hair on him that had survived years in Canadian wetland forests alone and yet he was done in from the inside out. Very early on, every one of his plans proposed he would always end with "I would do it if I could."

No one doubted him, and that had never been an issue.

On Mai's part, she often went along with them.

She nodded. "Presence wise, yeah. It forms a tangible barrier between us and them… but if it goes hot…" She lingered before explaining, looking at the orbat. "The Pavilions aren't soldiers, the discipline needed to maintain a defense against a full offensive, even by the Reapers, I don't think it's the best thing to do."

"Thinking about discipline? Really"

"It was different when the enemy was Zeon. We were all chomping at the bit to take on Zeeks. But it's not the same now."

"Reapers are bastards just the same, aren't they Ghoul?"

It took a long time to get over the stigma of herself and what she was, but the arrival of a certain man into her life had perhaps something to do with how she was able to so easily speak this again:

"You wouldn't understand as an Earthnoid." And here she was, a year later, proclaiming what she was so long after she had wanted to disavow it. "I've spent the last year fighting my own kind, and you know what it took for me to do that… It's different."

Gearten stood there, revaluating her as if she hadn't been Mai at all.

"You don't really believe that whole Earthnoid Spacenoid crap, do you? You know that shit is the reason why this all started, and as far as I know we're all built the exact same." It was benefits of living in a hospital during wartime that had demystified the Human body to Gearten. The difference between the body of a Zeek and a Seattle resident have been nothing. Everyone in the Conclave had seen it with their own eyes. "Besides, if you were a Newtype, whatever the hell that is, I think we'd know by now."

Of course, it was a popular rumor as even Win had teased at earlier. Just because she was a Spacenoid, it means that she was a Newtype, by whatever definition Zeon Deikun had meant. How else could they explain the shots she's made, and the battles she's won? Twenty years old, a woman at war with nothing but a rifle, but her kills had been in the hundreds. A feat only by Newtypes that some had explained her away as, but she had felt disrespected by. She killed hundreds, and would take a thousand more, not because she was a Newtype, but because Zeon had taken her baby.

Even if it were true, she didn't think, she hadn't felt it. She was as Human as she thought she was, albeit even by that metric to herself, she had barely been.

"Gearten I'm not talking about that psycho physical stuff. I'm just talking about the conditions of our very existence." She started talking like Zeon, she never would forget how to. "What drives any of us to fight? What got us to fight against Zeon, is it going to be as strong as what's going to make us fight the Reapers?"

"I don't know. Each other, friendship, love, commitment, right and wrong. What do you want me to say Gul?" She didn't know what she wanted Gearten to say. She didn't know what she wanted at all, so no more words were spoken on it. An impasse made by people who wanted to know where they were going. "What would you do then, in my place?"

She gives a very Spacenoid answer immediately: "Strike first."

Gearten's not surprised at all that's her answer. "Of course."

"Only if I were you, Gearten. But you're not me." She reminds him.

"You gonna help us or what?" He asks her again, even after last time. "I'm not going to ask you to go black ops like you used to and go turn up bodies." The heat of adrenaline from Murph stabbing her had perhaps made it so she hadn't been in the best way to respond to Gearten rationally. Of course, she still wanted to help. She killed people who needed killing, but she could be normal otherwise. "Next week, we're going to be blowing some of the storm drains, flooding the underground and the subways on this side of I-90 to make sure Murph doesn't get his rats out on us. Do you mind coming out here next Monday so you can oversee it?"

She takes a long moment to think about it, but as far as sane moves go it's tactical prudent. "As long as they're cleared of squatters." She relents.

"Already sent out scouts. Win's one of them." He nodded quickly.

Harmless enough. "Alright. Sure." Mai relents, pausing, and then really looking at Gearten. "You know why am I the one called captain again when I usually followed your "suggestions"?"

As was how it usually went during the active war. Gearten, stuck back at base, overseeing how the battle went down, while she had been out there on the front.

He smiled to himself, nodding several times in self-admittance. "You were the one that said all those big tactical words when the Fed spook contacted us for the first time." Those words had been: Affirmative, AO, logistics, QRF, and so on and so forth. Basic stuff, but more than most would know.

They weren't friends, but they were unlikely CO and XO, and that was enough. Still the line between professional and personal were very thin. Gearten rose his eyebrow, crossing his arms, looking down on the younger woman. "You doing okay? You seem a bit touch and go. Even by your standards."

Was she off recently? She couldn't tell. Gearten would be the one to notice however. "Just don't like the cold. Is all." She shrugged herself, trying to level her voice into what she imagined was her typical disinterested annoyed.

"Aren't you used to it by now? You've lived two years here before this right?"

"Two years don't make up for someone like me."

"Yeah? Why is that?"

"I grew up spoiled on perfect air conditioning and heater settings."

He huffed once, unsurprised. "You know I always imagined those colonies were just air-conditioned naturally, all the time."

"They are. Technically." She was a walking encyclopedia on how a colony worked, courtesy of her parents. "Just the weather controls up on a colony are used less to comfort people and more to emulate things down here on Earth." There were colonies, mostly occupied by a certain class of people, who were at leisure to petition the Colony Corporation and the weather techs to keep the colony at a perpetual spring or autumn, backed up by generous donations, but only then. With the way the systems worked one setting could only be used so often before the filters got clogged up or needed burnout maintenance. The Magallanica, the Amerigoa, and the Balboa, the great colony building ships, they often had their preset weather settings for each new colony built loaded up when the colony was finished, but people always wanted the touch that her parents provided.

"Mai." Gearten says her name, and it's not often he does. He hasn't uttered it more than a dozen times. "I don't mean to send you off to go fight off like some super soldier of mine. But I hope you know it's what's right, what we're doing." He doesn't need to convince her, but he wants to try anyway, as if it'll make him feel good, better. "No hard feelings?"

She sighed, getting up, picking her rifle from its lean on a chair and then across her back, shaking her head all the while. "Gear, my whole life is people pointing me places for the sake of good. It's nothing. I'll see you next week."

When Mai leaves, she does so quietly, her boots barely making a sound as she exits out into the hall and seeing, of course, Bo Tale waiting. The scrubs hoodie she wears is not unlike Garma's, and from the hint of her shoulder, a chest wrapping bandage is on, courtesy of her being dragged across concrete by her back. Mai's not usually the one to talk first, but she does now, before Bo can close the distance and do as she usually does, careful hands placing upon both of Mai's.

"How're you doing Bo?" Mai asks softly.

Behind them, Gearten shuffles back and out to attend to his business for the rest of the day, trying his best to ignore Bo trying to make moves on a woman who just threatened to kill them all if they annoyed her.

Bo's no longer innocent. No one who works in a hospital ever stays that way, but she's been brighter, and more friendlier, than most of her compatriots could be. It's how she was. First of her family to go to college, to get a degree, and more than that, be in a job that paid six figures. She's smart, she's beautiful, she's reliable and trustworthy, and yet, war had thrown her life off track.

She was doing her best, and all she wanted was Mai in return.

"Ain't the first time someone's grabbed my ass like that." She tried to play off, but Mai had cut through it.

"You know that's not what I mean." Mai's voice had its qualities. The exotic sound of it to ears in the western world was often a sound and tone that hadn't been familiar or accounted for. Her voice was breathy, and yet husky. Masculine, and yet matronly. Harsh, and soft. She knows how to talk the talk when she needed it. Right now, concerned was it.

Bo should've known better than to slide by a sniper, for she doesn't, faltering from her smile, breaking down, just a little. "I'm fine. Trust me it's just a big scrape. Nothing to worry about."

"You could've died the other day, Bo. That would've been on me."

"I'm so-"

"It's not your fault. But uh, just know that when we want to keep people in these walls, it's for a good reason." Mai waits as the words sink into Bo before adding, "The world is still at war, and a… precious thing like you isn't meant for it."

Mai's not as flirtatious woman as when she was freer with herself after she came to Earth. She was as upfront as she had been back then though. Foreplay had been overrated, and there was little foreplay when it came to her nowadays. It is Mai's turn to try and not kid someone as Bo giggles, trying to hear Mai pacify her with sweet nothings.

"I could feel a lot better if you would say, stay over for a night. Massage my back a bit."

Maybe in another life. Mai has told Bo this, in word and in action, many times in the last year. But she still tries, bringing her in for a hug is the least she can do. Beneath Mai's hands however as she hugs, she can feel the rough surface of those bandages on her back through her shirt. "One day you're going to have to get over this stupid crush with me, you know that?" She whispers out to the walls.

"Maybe, maybe not." Bo groans, admits, but perhaps ignores as she pulls back. "But would you at least want to get lunch with me?"

For the trouble that Bo has been through, Mai decides she can at least do that.


Trudging her way back up those forty flights of stairs to her apartment has long since faded out when she returns home that day. She doesn't usually do the journey more than once, up and down, but this is her second time today and she knows it's not best to make it a habit. She's earlier that day too, back from the Conclave and a lunch with Bo, she, despite her "battle" scars, being chatty as always about Conclave gossip and community that had sounded so domestic despite everything else about the world. A nice reprieve, yes, but she saves her breath and words where she needs them most:

Garma Zabi.

She makes her way up to the fortieth, but she pauses at the top of her stairs, catching the flash of purple lavender that she knows true as her prisoner. He's at the opposite end of the inner balcony, across the building more or less, both of them pause, reflections of themselves as eventually, Garma, hand that isn't holding his crutch, holds up one hand in a motionless wave. She returns it by pointing a gun at him.

She aims at him, right through her scope, and the split-second she needs to focus on him he flinches and ducks down immediately behind the wall of the inner balcony, the yelp he makes echoes as she keeps in a laugh, dropping her bag off by the door, only to walk the rest of the distance to find him, sat against that low wall, sweating, not of fear, however.

The tilt of her head asks the question for her:

"I'm just pacing. Is all. You know. For blood circulation." He answers. "Not running."

"Right." She pauses, looking at that wide track he must go for this. "You do this every day?"

"No. Just started today." He admits, scratching at the lightest of fuzz that hazes over his cheek. It's quite odd, seeing Garma develop a very slight scruff of facial hair. "My body doesn't quite ache like it did originally, so I figure I fight through it, get the blood going."

"That so?" She wonders aloud, wondering if he really must consider getting used to walking like he was. There was no use for him to get used to anything, given how much time he had left and what type of life he was constrained to until then.

"Would you rather me do anything else?" What would she rather him do? She's not quite sure, so, perhaps, a little pacing, walking on this floor, would be okay. "It keeps my mind off certain things anyway."

No doubt he was thinking about earlier revelations, earlier questions. She wonders if she did leave a mark on that slap, but a cursory look reveals no bruise. Shame. Maybe she could leave this one as she sits by him, a several feet apart, her head leaned back against that ceramic wall.

"I don't think we could've been friends Garma." She settled finally, in the same breath as her shoulders relaxed from a day out.

The back of his head rubs against the tiles as he turns his head at her. "Oh? You've thought about it?"

She has, and honestly, she never needed to dwell. It's one of the oldest types of stories:

"You're a prince, and I was just any other person. I couldn't have been your friend if I tried. I'm not of your pedigree." She breaths in, and out. "Also, you're kind of a spoiled brat." Says the woman who had been keeping him alive and sheltered and fed. Those words however, they stay him. They stay him so long she has to look at him to see if he hadn't disappeared. He's there however, at first having looked at the profile of her face, but then right back into her eyes, studying her, eyes narrowed, even if only one works. "What?"

"Nothing." He dodges, turning away.

Beneath the shadow of her boonie's brim, her eyes fell in line with the dark, looking at him. "Hmph. My mom used to say whenever someone tells you nothing, it's something."

"Why? Because you often said such things?"

"Maybe." Yes. She had often responded to her mama asking her what was wrong with "nothing".

"Is your family alive?" Garma is so bold to ask. "Is this something I must answer for too?"

Has the almost two weeks now made him expect of her this routine? She shakes her head, tracing the silver line of a light fixture in the ceiling of the floor above them. "Quite the opposite. My parents are both alive. Aunts and uncles? Well, I don't know, but I wasn't really close to them. In any case, they're all on Zum, so I presume."

"I could say the same, you know." He says, self-satisfied with being clever. This is when she hates him most, personally. "Or, well, at least my father. Gihren is probably at A Baoa Qu, and Dozle is off with his fleet. As for Kycilia? Granada perhaps, but then I'd be saying too much."

"Spymaster, so I hear." Mai comments.

"Hear?" Garma voices partial concern.

She shrugged. "The Federation spook that mostly dealt with supplying us during the guerilla war spoke about her. He worried about Kycilia having agents placed on Earth before the invasion while not so subtly looking at me." How quaint and wonderful it'd be for Garma if this was all just one big subterfuge and Mai had been one of Kycilia's. He wouldn't be surprised; he firmly believes that Kycilia and her would get along quite well. They've both that killer's instinct that's far less vocal than Gihren's, and less brutal than Dozle.

"Kycilia has certain… operational eccentricities." He pauses, remorse and caution in his voice that came with tactical planning. "Difficult to work with."

"I can imagine." A thought doesn't leave her, one that nags. "Garma, who's your mother?"

The matriarchs of the Zabi clan were never seen, never spoken of. A woman's life, or at least a mother's, was at least for a family such as theirs behind the scenes. Mai had seen too much of them put up on propaganda images and any Zeon imagery to know that every Zabi worth bringing to the war effort was displayed proudly, and even in Garma's funeral, his siblings were there, Gihren had been there, but not a lick of their mothers.

Garma's silent pauses are not uncommon in their conversations. Every word of his is prepared and combed in his own mind before speaking. He was used to commanding the pace of a conversation and people very much waited for him, but this silence, it had been different. Different in the way his vision was lost in the floor before he began talking to it, words fragile.

"My mother. I never knew her, but my siblings sometimes told me about her." If there were any times where Gihren, Kycilia, Dozle, and even shrewd Sasro had been his siblings in a traditional sense, it had been those private moments, when he dared to ask about his mother, and they had given him nuggets of information at a time. Least of all he had wanted to ask his father about her. "She was a fair common woman, by all regards. A ghost writer in the publishing house that had originally handled Zeon Deikun's first works. She had a way with words, so I'm told." There's an odd bit of reflectiveness as he leans harder against the balcony's railing, looking up, beyond the building, beyond the Earth. "When my father," Degwin, Mai can never forget that fact, "when he wanted to dictate his own autobiography, she was assigned the role, and, well, I'm sure you can figure how it all came together next."

Mai's not sure if he wants to hurt him like this, speaking of his long gone mother, but what's done is done. "Sorry I asked."

"Hm." He grunts, non-committal. "Because of this however, I know, It is not the most unusual for people of our class to cross over, from time to time."

"Though is it true for you?" She tilts her head, her bangs drooping down toward the floor. Garma can't help but feel envious.

"Hm?"

"Do you have any friends, Garma?" She clarifies.

He had one, once. He tried to kill him.

Garma had coughed before answering. "I'm friendly with Zenna, very much so. If you remember her as well." She did, vaguely. A rather willful and determined female cadet, and now Dozle's wife. "But… Well. I do admit who I am, and what I am in charge of does not particularly allow me to entertain many friendships, if at all. And if anything, the one friendship I did cherish didn't pan out all that well for me."

"Char Aznable, huh?" It's half a tease, half a poke at him. He almost wants to lash out with the back of her hand to flick her, but for reasons between him being so close to the edge and her obvious temper against him, he restrains himself.

"Yes." He grits.

"If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't find any answer that's not stupidly simple."

"Entertain me with what would be that simple answer then."

"Well, he just tried to kill you because you're a Zabi." Mai waits a beat to let that sink in. It was too simple of an explanation, especially if it had been Char who did it. "I say that's reason enough, at least personally for me."

The huff out of Garma's breath is cold, tired. "If only the explanation was that easy."

He's not yet of mind to completely work out conspiracy theories that existed against his family, and tying them all in how this man who he had more or less grown up with in the Academy, who he had shared many nights, passion filled, wet and violent and exactly as filling as they both needed it to be, could've done it. They never had an official relationship. The thought that this was perhaps a revenge for a messy breakup is so funny it almost makes Garma laugh, then and there, but it's a reason that holds water for far longer than he liked thinking.

If it wasn't Char, then, there was-

"There is…." No. He stopped. He would rather keep Icelina to himself for now. It's one of the few things he can keep. "Nothing left to say, in that regard."

"If there's nothing left to say, let's head inside. Unless you still have to walk around a bit." She stops, pausing. "Like the dog you are." She finishes, self-satisfied with that answer. Cheap, but she doesn't want to keep having honest conversations with Garma. He doesn't think quite the same however, raising up, just as she does, leaning on the railing. He draws her attention as he usually does, with a held gaze, head tipped down as if angling a better look at her face.

He calls to her, and he says it as if he believed it. "I do maintain, in some other, miraculous moment, in some different time, that I'm sure me and you would've gotten along quite swimmingly, Mai Gul."

She knows what he'll look like if she pushed him over, then and there, over the side and down to the floor. His body would leave from beneath him, guts and bones pancaked however he landed. She doesn't push however, she pulls by his collar, making him walk in front of her.

"I don't want to hear you talk for the rest of the day." She scorns him.

And so Garma doesn't until he dreams.