Chapter V: Confession

By some miracle, they made it back to Bay One without trying Shinrei's incredible patience beyond all its limits.

The meal that followed was the most extraordinary and strange of Lena's life. She spread a blanket on the deck and sat down to eat a stale packaged ration, almost as if it was some kind of picnic—surrounded on all sides by machines that were built to kill humans like her, yet now harbored the souls of the people most precious to her. A swift silent count proved that besides Shinrei himself, every one of the thirty-seven other surviving Shepherds he spoke of was in attendance. She was intensely aware that they were all watching her, which should have felt uncomfortable… but for some reason she couldn't explain, it was the farthest thing from that.

She could feel the presence of the human spirits within the metal monsters that encircled her. She was absolutely certain of that—and even more. Instead of anger towards a member of the race that helped condemn so many of them to this fate, or even mere jealousy that she was flesh and blood when they no longer were, what she sensed in their demeanor was…

Curiosity. Kindness. And most remarkably of all, a delicate thread of optimism that she feared to call hope.

As bound to him as they all were, had Shinrei's regard for Lena influenced their view of her, even despite his resolve never to impose his will on them? And if these immensely powerful beings really were looking to her, mortal and fragile and flawed as she was, to help fulfill their goal of saving the lives of the Eighty-Six…

It was all too much to think about now. For the moment, Lena simply focused on choking down her bland textureless food—and on far more voraciously learning every last nuance she could about the Shepherds. Although grief for their past suffering and present state was still lodged deep in her heart, she was forced to admit that her sorrow conflicted with a growing fascination. She wondered not only at what they could do and how they perceived the world in their new form, but at who they had been and still were as human beings: at the rare strength that enabled their souls to endure such an unimaginably changed existence, when so many others could not.

Shinrei introduced all of the older Shepherds to her, providing their names as both human and machine. With no faces to study, she took care to burn each identifying unit mark into her memory. At least there was some reassurance in the fact that Laughing Fox had designed the emblems—a task creative and meaningful enough to distract him from his despair for a while. Even now, he did seem grudgingly proud when Lena commented on his work.

The majority of the Shepherds had been male in their human lives. Including Snow Witch and Gunslinger, only nine out of the full number of thirty-seven were female. Among those who were assimilated before Spearhead Squadron, and like Rei had suffered under Legion control for years or months, most were also Eighty-Six. One was Mjolnir's countryman from the Alliance of Wald, and there were a few single representatives from other nations, but the second largest contingent originated from the Giad Federacy. Lena gathered that theirs was the most courageous and innovative volunteer army to have faced the Legion, fighting for their own families and homes in the way her people were too cowardly to do.

The last Shepherd to be named to her was one such former soldier.

"…And this is White Knight," Shinrei declared, identifying the fourth and final Dinosauria that displayed an eponymous ivory chess piece as its unit mark—and for some reason seemed to be trying to lurk behind the other gathered machines. "Known in life as Second Lieutenant Eugene Rantz."

"I remember, you mentioned him earlier," Lena recalled with a nod. She turned to look kindly at the Shepherd who exuded such apparent nervousness. "You were from the Giad Federacy, right?"

"…Yes." Although his reluctance was clear, White Knight edged closer to where Lena sat, as other Shepherds moved aside to make room for him. "My family were minor nobles in the Empire who lost their status after the revolution. We were left poor… and then my little sister and I lost our parents and village in the war with the Legion. We stayed with our aunt in the capital, and when I was old enough, I enlisted in the Special Officer Academy to help pay for Nina's education. Protecting her and giving her a better life was all that mattered to me. …That and my Celena coloring were why the other recruits began to call me 'White Knight'. I earned high marks in training, and was considered a very good Vánagandr pilot… but nothing could have prepared me for actually facing the Legion." He uttered a thin, bleak quiver of a laugh. "I learned soon enough just how weak I was. I didn't make it through my first five minutes of real combat before a damn Ameise cut me in two below the stomach… and after that…"

There was something unsettlingly heavy in Shinrei's tone when he interjected quietly, "I'd appreciate it if you would tell Captain Milizé the rest of the story."

"Must I?" White Knight said in a low tone, exhibiting a very definite physical flinch.

"Of course I won't force you to. You know that. But still, I'd like her to know… and I'd rather she heard it from you."

Increasingly disturbed by the grave tone of the exchange, Lena looked back and forth between the two machines. "What happened?"

Releasing the sound of a deep sigh, White Knight obliged her with the answer.

"After the Legion took me, I don't remember much for what felt like a long time. My internal chronometer tells me it was only a few days—but time passes differently when we're on standby. All I really seem to recall from that time is brief flashes of consciousness in the dark, and… and the screams." With a steel-scraping twitch, he appeared to quickly rush past that memory, and continued. "When I was finally brought online, I was assigned to lead a patrol unit, and almost immediately I faced my second first battle—from the other side." An even greater heaviness filled his voice. "On my first day in service as a Shepherd, I encountered a single Juggernaut from your country that had managed to penetrate deep into Legion territory."

As Lena realized exactly what and who he was describing, her heart leaped into her throat, and she couldn't hold back the whisper of dread that escaped her.

"Oh, please no…"

"As a Shepherd, I was commanding from the rear. I was only supposed to guide my subordinate units—but the pilot of that Juggernaut was unbelievably skilled. He destroyed many of them before he was finally disabled." White Knight's voice grew detached and distant, even as it quivered with an almost manic edge of suppressed anguish. "With most of my remaining units preoccupied by his comrades that had appeared on foot, I found myself the closest to him… and that's when the order came directly to me."

The unappetizing food in Lena's stomach turned over, and she pressed a hand tightly over her mouth.

She knew. She knew what was coming, and she didn't want to hear it; but she couldn't find the voice to stop him, to reject the horror of envisioning what he had been asked to recount to her. She could only sit staring up at him, tears escaping to spill down across fingers that desperately stifled a cry.

In her mind, all she could see was a broken tomb of wreckage buried in the snow.

"I remember the way he looked up at me, after I'd torn off the canopy of the Juggernaut." Somehow the quiet strain of White Knight's words made them sound terrifyingly soft and dreamlike. "I remember how he almost seemed to smile… and his eyes, just before he closed them for the last time. Their color was so red. …A red just like his blood, when I—"

A choked sob escaped Lena at last, but it was impossible to say whether that or his own self-loathing horror caused White Knight to cut himself off abruptly. Either way, the story was mercifully permitted to end. His entire steel frame sagged as if the retelling had been just as brutal for him, because it truly was… but for a moment, even Lena with her awareness of the Shepherds' suffering could not grapple with that truth.

For a moment, all she could think and feel was that the Legion unit that killed Shin was standing before her.

White Knight had looked upon Shin's face in his final moments as a human being. He had struck the blow that ended Shin's life. He had carried Shin's head from the battlefield like a trophy, to deliver it to the machines that would cut open his brain and consume it—intending to make him one of them.

That wasn't how it happened in the end, thanks to Rei's intervention. And it wasn't White Knight's own will that drove his actions, but the controlling force of the Legion that Shin and Rei together had subsequently conquered and possessed. Even so, Lena still felt a savage hurt when she thought that the last terrifying vision in Shin's eyes was this steel predator poised to behead him.

…And yet.

The soul of the clearly caring young man bound within the Dinosauria had to live with that memory too. He had to exist now as a part of the being whose mortal life he had taken, feeling Shin's presence inside him at every moment. Surely no sentence for willful murder could be more cruel than his punishment for a deed he would never have chosen to commit.

Fleetingly Lena wondered how he of all the Shepherds could be among the very few who found the will to go on… but her understanding was just as swift.

It was White Knight himself, in a quiet trembling voice, who confirmed the realization.

"Soon after, the thing inside my mind that compelled everything I'd done as Legion was replaced with him… but instead of burying me beneath his will like the other had, he reached in and pulled me out. He let me remember who I was, and feel again, and understand my actions. Once I did, I just wanted it all to end… but he wanted me to stay. When I feel his thoughts of me, they're filled with forgiveness and sympathy. Sometimes I think that only makes it worse… but I can't deny him. Not after what I took from him. If I can do anything to help him, the way he wants me to—then that's what I have to do. It's the least I owe him for what I made him become."

So much of this all made perfect sense now, Lena thought distantly. When the Shepherds called Shinrei the Legion's will, she had believed it was because he held a terrible power to control them if he chose to. However, only now did she realize how much greater and more precious the meaning of his new role truly was—to beings that were not just programmed machines, but individuals with living emotions.

Knowing who Shin had been in life and what he meant to Spearhead Squadron, perhaps she should have understood that all along.

As she wiped her eyes, she glanced covertly towards Shinrei. The mechanical beast that was his body had no real face, no expression to read, and continued to stand without speaking; but this was strangely not so different from the way she had always known Shin across their distance in miles and lives. It wasn't only through his carefully chosen words, but what lay between them… and even now, she could still feel his calm kindness that had always lingered in the silences of their conversations.

Of course he forgave White Knight for his death and transformation, and he would want her to do the same.

Maybe that was the very reason he had wanted her to know. Maybe he was testing her, challenging her to prove that she truly could forgive the Shepherds herself: even one who had been used as the instrument of a loss that felt so personal to her.

When that loss was him, it was harder than she ever would have imagined… but because it was him, she had to, and she could.

"…It's alright." Slowly she looked up at White Knight, with an aching shadow of a smile. "It wasn't you. It was the Legion. I understand that just as much as he does."

"You can't know what it was like." Steel shuddered with the sheer intensity of his emotions. "To have something else's will forced into your mind, so overwhelming that you can only feel its want as your own… even when it's the last thing the person you were could ever have wanted…"

"Do you blame Urs or Rito or any of the others for the lives the Legion made them take?"

The blunt perspective flip caused White Knight to give a visible start. "No—of course not, but I—"

"Then it's not fair to blame yourself either. …It isn't any different just because the life the Legion used you to take was his." Lena was not quite sure if that assertion was more for White Knight or for herself, but it didn't really matter. With clenched fists, she forged on, her voice growing stronger. "In fact, in the end… the truth is that you became the tool by which the Legion created its own downfall. It's because of what it made you do that the thing that enslaved you is dead, and all of you Shepherds are free now—so let that fact be revenge enough against the monster that was really to blame."

The silence that followed her words was a little unnerving. The expressionless hulls of the Shepherds betrayed no sign of their reactions… but at last, White Knight's posture bodily slumped, as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from him.

In the background Mjolnir let out a low whistle, and Snow Witch chuckled with a kind of grim satisfaction.

Shinrei stepped forward, extending a powerful limb to give White Knight the same kind of gentle tap he had previously offered to Milan. Even though their bodies were incapable of physical sensation, he allowed the contact to linger for a long moment that spoke more than any words could. Watching the being who was partly Shin give comfort to the very Shepherd who ended his human life, Lena could only feel her heart break again—for both of them. For all of them.

Lena had always cared for the precious, fragile lives of Spearhead Squadron in deeper ways than she could properly express, her heart claiming them as somehow hers even when it made each loss more devastating. Now, surrounded by the tragic yet extraordinary creatures they and their new comrades had become, her compassion and awe had solidified into something she could give a name to. The very realization of it filled her with emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.

She loved every one of these ironclad souls—so much that it hurt.

"Thank you, Lena."

Those three quiet words made her eyes widen and her breath shudder in her chest. When Shinrei said them that morning, the intent came solely from the part of him that was Rei, but this time the Nouzen brothers' voices were evenly balanced. This time Shin equally shared in the expression of gratitude—and in calling her by her given name.

Once again her tears welled up, although she was certain now that Shinrei had been testing her after all. She had met the challenge by giving White Knight, and by extension all of the Shepherds, a mercy and acceptance more heartfelt than even she expected of herself. In return, Shinrei granted her the acceptance she had more than once asked of him, and of Shin in the past. Perhaps her insistent wish to hear him address her as a person instead of a Republic officer was selfish and undeserved, but it meant more to her than anything else he could have given her now as he was.

Swallowing hard, she struggled to find adequate words to respond…

"Oh, geeze, Lena. You're gonna make us rust if you keep crying like that," Gunslinger quipped into the solemn silence—only to receive a prompt thunk of a swat from Snow Witch.

That absurd interjection was exactly what was needed to lighten the heaviness of the moment. Lena's mouth fell open in an astonished gape; and then she couldn't help herself. She began to laugh, brightly and sincerely, as the ache deep within her relaxed its grip.

Her heart only soared further when several of the Shepherds laughed with her.