How was it that the weeks of joy he had experienced was so easily washed away in a single moment? He thought they were making headway. What were those nights spent at his flat? The dinners shared, the laughs, the stolen kisses in hallways—were they a lie after all?
He stomped his way to Cagalli's office. What Shinn said drove him into a frenzy. This cannot be happening again, he thought.
"Cagalli," Athrun charged into the room. The way he her name came out of his mouth just then felt wrong, even to him. It came out angrier than he intended. "Is it true?" He demanded.
"What is?" she asked looking up from her laptop. She was too tired for this kind of conversation. She instantly knew what he referred to. Athrun never got angry unless he had no other choice but to be.
"Shinn told me—the meeting," he replied, disgusted by having to utter Shinn's name. He left his explanation at that because he didn't want to bring up the details.
"Ah." She crossed her arms.
"That's it? That's all you have to say?" Athrun asked searching for an answer in Cagalli's eyes. When she looked away, he felt his heart sink. "Don't tell me you're going to let that happen again."
"I have responsibilities."
"Yes. That explains everything, doesn't it?" Athrun was never the type to be sarcastic. But how else could he possibly respond to the situation. He found out that nothing has changed after all that he had been through to make it back to Cagalli. Worse was the fact that he heard it from someone else.
"You've changed. You were never like this," he accused her, taking a step back, haunted by the reoccurring nightmare of losing the person he loved most. "I never knew you to be a coward—"
"And you haven't changed at all," Cagalli yelled back. "You still don't understand a thing."
"What else is there to understand other than you clearly don't care about me? All you think about is yourself," he said in the heat of the moment and immediately regretted it. Cagalli was far from selfish, he knew that well. But to be constantly passed over for another love—a country no less—was a hurt he just could not overcome. How could he win against an entire population? How does one compete with a rival like that?
"Is that what you think this is about?" Cagalli raised her voice, unable to hold back any longer.
"God Cagalli! Is it too much for me to ask that you at least try—try to acknowledge me, try to at least fight for me? I've practically been groveling on my knees since I came back, can't you see? I don't want to lose you!" He grabbed her shoulders, looking deeply into her eyes. They've turned opaque again. The sight cut his heart to pieces.
She pushed him back, unable to stand his touch when it was so forceful and livid. She couldn't stand to see him angry, yet she returned fire just as indignantly.
"Do you have any idea how long I held on to hope of us getting back together even after you abandoned me? Do you know how I longed for your return, only for you to come back to Archangel barely alive and with another girl? And you of all people are asking me to try? No," She shook her head in anger. "I refuse to be the one you're leaving behind when you change your mind again."
The memory of realizing how Athrun must have protected Meyrin, the intrigue that grew in her heart whenever she wondered just how much Meyrin must have liked Athrun to sacrifice so much for him—she thought she had done a better job at keeping those thoughts at bay. She didn't want to admit it but perhaps she was in fact envious of that devotion she could not afford to give Athrun.
He looked at her, furious, feeling betrayed to find out that Cagalli doubted his relationship with Meyrin after all.
"Stop that, Cagalli," Athrun shook his head in disbelief. "You know that's nonsense."
"I made the choice to marry Yuna for my people before. I made that choice out of duty and I refuse to regret it."
That was enough to keep Athrun quiet for a while, his head bowed down in mourning as time heaved between their aching and yelling. What was there left to do, he asked himself repeatedly. What could he do to convince her to keep holding on? It seems he always found himself at the same dead end. The clock ticked away as if saying: nothing, nothing, nothing.
"I won't show my face anymore then," Athrun said, dejected and scorned. "Clearly I'm not wanted here."
Cagalli watched Athrun turn his back on her. He was leaving her all alone again. Even though she knew she was being unfair to him, she felt like she was porcelain and his abandonment pushed her over the edge of a cliff. Frame by frame she watched as he made his way to the door. She knew she wouldn't survive the fall.
She did the only thing she could do to survive. She put on her mask—the one she had learned to put on during her separation from Athrun. She cursed herself wondering why she ever took it off. It was always going to end in disaster. A future with him was beyond her reach. Why had she ever taken a chance, she grieved. It was safer behind that facade.
"I told you, didn't I? This wasn't going to work," her voice was ice cold. She felt herself retreat back in the shadows. This way it wouldn't hurt.
He left her with one last condemnation: "But did you have to give in so easily?"
xxx xxx xxx
Athrun rushed out of Cagalli's living quarters and out of the palace with the urgency of a wounded animal—his own guilt the predator.
He didn't mean it.
He didn't mean it.
He didn't mean it.
He still said it.
In that moment, as he was gnashing his teeth, seemingly to the point of cracking them, he knew he had just dealt another blow to an already fragile situation.
He said he would leave her. He turned his back.
But of course, he didn't mean it.
Not one bit.
How could he have said such a thing? There he was again, foot in his mouth. For all his empiricism, he could never get over his feelings when it truly mattered. Things weren't supposed to get out of hand.
He said so much in such a short moment. Blood rushed up to his head. If he tried to recall what happened, he wouldn't be able to. All he could remember was the anger.
What a pity to be driven to such extremes over something so lacking in substance.
"Fuck," Athrun cursed under his breath but he didn't stop walking, his strides getting wider, faster.
He wished he could take it all back, make his words unheard, unvoiced. He could hear his heart pound as if reprimanding him for betraying how he truly felt. He fucked up. He said too much. The anger spoke in place of worry, desperate to make it known that he would sooner lose everything than lose her. He stumbled forward headfirst. What a mess he created.
Beads of sweat formed on his back, soaking through his undershirt. He was outside now, the sounds of the night hushed by his own panting. There was a hissing sound in his ear. Turn back, don't leave things this way, it told him.
He swallowed as he gathered his thoughts. The initial chaos was dying down to give way to a full view of the wreckage.
He meant to redeem himself, to show he deserved to stand beside the woman he loved. That was the whole point in coming back here. What of the lessons learned? Had he been playing pretend after all? Talking big with nothing to show?
God, he was despicable, he thought.
His pace now slowing down, the adrenaline crashing down to a wash of shame. Each step felt stifling, oppressive.
How hard was it to simply ask her to hear him, to explain his hurt so it doesn't turn into a weapon? They were partners weren't they? Why did he treat her like an enemy?
Standing outside now with a view to Cagalli's window, Athrun pulled his phone out. He tried to still his breathing. There was no chance she would pick up now, he thought, but he wanted to try. It was all he could do.
Her phone rang for thirty seconds. Then the voicemail recording played.
He tried again.
Same thing.
Athrun sat on the hood of his car, feeling the chill of the metal sting through his trousers. The cold crept up his shoulders and he shivered as he tried for a third time.
The light in her room remained lit. He knew she was still in there.
He tried for a fourth time, and again for a fifth time. And then he tried again for a sixth time just because he had nothing to lose.
He scratched the back of his ear in annoyance knowing the ringing would soon give way to the robotic female voice asking him to speak after the beep yet again.
But then she picks up, her voice breaking through the static.
"Hello," her voice was sterile. It wasn't a greeting.
"Cagalli!" Athrun jolted up. "Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't—"
He caught Cagalli's silhouette on her window and he flinches. He couldn't quite figure out what to say. Was she crying? Was she seething in anger? Anything but indifference, he thought. Anything but that, he pleaded.
"I'm right outside," he started. "I'm still here. I didn't mean what I said. I was angry. And I just—"
His voice trailed away as he paused. He hoped the silence would carry all that he could not put into words. Weren't they better than this? He could tell if she was hungry and when she needed coffee instead of tea. He could tell which coat she prefers to wear on any given day. But right now, as he ached to do something, to make a change, to use his hands, to say anything at all, he was coming up empty.
"I'm sorry," she offered. It was quiet and gentle, the manner in which the words fell out of her mouth.
"I'm going back up there, wait for me," he replied, not once averting his gaze from her visage. He wanted to make it up to her somehow.
"No. I don't think you should," she said quickly, and then continued, this time more carefully: "I don't think it would be good."
"What can I do?" he pleaded.
"Take my apologies and go home, Athrun." Her words laced with silent tears, he could tell. "I told you this would end badly."
"Why?"
The most useless question in the world, Athrun once thought. Yet it was all he could ask these days. Why did they crumble this way?
Cagalli didn't speak for a while, but Athrun knew she was figuring out what to say. He waited patiently for his fate.
"Nothing has been set in stone, you see. Only that they've become impatient with me," she explained. She sounded calm but he could hear her voice straining to sound normal, trying not to break out into a cry.
"You know I wouldn't do it willingly," she added, ever so quietly as if speaking it out loud would break her. "I wouldn't do that to you if I could help it. But you should know by now that you and I—"
Athrun bowed his head as he prepared to receive the inevitable blow. "The country comes first. I know," he acknowledged bitterly, face crumpled in agony.
"I wish it didn't have to be," she responded, her voice low. "God, you don't think I enjoy this, do you?"
He heard her sigh.
"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I overreacted."
"I understand, Athrun. It's unfair, I know."
It struck him then that he had always thought it unfair to him. That if Cagalli married another man, it would be a death sentence to him. Yet she would be signing away her life too. She would be living it in a gilded cage without a means to walk away.
It was unfair to them both. Yet all he could see was himself.
"I have to go," she said.
"I love you," he blurted out not knowing what else he could say.
He saw her from her window. Her hand pressed against the windowpane. She hung up the phone without saying it back.
xxx xxx xxx
Perhaps the letter came as a blessing.
Ever since their last confrontation, time flowed like a lazy river for Athrun. He thought of her like he always did but he never tried to see her. He didn't have the right to, he thought. Going through the motions, he found the days continued with a languid pace, suffering under the weight of a lack.
Maybe it wasn't that he was broken by the wars that he fought. Perhaps he had never been the right way all along. It wouldn't be hard to believe, he thought. His father was cold and his mother, though kind and warm, had been focused on her career.
He let out sigh and rolled his eyes. Is this self-pity, he wondered. He promised he wouldn't fall into the same tricks his mind plays on him. And yet he felt inclined to give in to the justification. It wouldn't be self-pity if it were the truth. Perhaps he was just not equipped to love another. Perhaps he was not built for the business of nurturing someone else. There was so much to fight against—history, the genes that dictated the cells in his body. This was his nature inherited from none other than his father.
The heavy weather seemed to conspire against him. The days that followed was devoid of sunshine and everything else was muted by his own brooding. Not talking much to anyone, not making any plans at all—days passed in the same repetitive rhythm beating against his back like a baseball bat. When he found the letter waiting for him in his mail box it was a welcome distraction.
Sealed in a thick envelope, the letter detailed an inventory of the last remaining family possessions and the corresponding instructions on where they would be going to per his parents' last will. The long and short of it was that Athrun was needed back in PLANT to verify and authorize these final transactions. His lawyer explicitly required Athrun to be there in person.
He laid the letter on the table while he put together a quick salad for dinner. He ate it in silence. His thoughts were loud enough. He pulled out his phone out and dialed Cagalli. It was not surprising she didn't pick up. He could text her instead, he thought for a moment before quickly shaking his head and deciding against it. He put his phone back in his pocket, resigned to the thought that it was all futile. He couldn't just talk to her about these things. They weren't like most couples who could willfully lean on each other and discuss their problems. They weren't together in that way.
He stared at the letter a while longer. He already signed off his parents' belongings, what remained of it, to be sold off and disposed of before he moved to Orb. This was an added inconvenience, under normal circumstances. But given the state of things with Cagalli, Athrun was tempted to feel relieved by the summons.
He tapped his index finger. He looked at his phone on the table again, screen dark without a call back.
He opened his laptop and booked his flight.