Chapter Text
Athrun boarded the plane with nothing more than a suitcase and a heart full of courage. He wore a monochromatic ensemble with black pants, a gray turtleneck, and a black chesterfield coat. The only hint of color amongst all the darkness was that of the Haumea pendant that rested against his chest. The weather agreed with Athrun’s choice of clothing today, for the artificially engineered skies of PLANT was cloudy and gloomy.
It would be the last day he gets to wear civilian clothing for a while. Not that it mattered. His black suitcase contained very few personal items anyway. Inside are his orders, some dress shirts, a couple spare of trousers, precisely two of his favorite books, and a handful of special photos he hopes to pin on the wall of whatever room he would be given. Apart from the measly number of items he carried with him today, he had given everything else away. And this gave Athrun’s heart room to hope and grow. He would be issued all the necessary items to survive upon his arrival—all that he needed to start a new life would be in Orb.
It was not like he would be forbidden to return to PLANT. But for some reason, Athrun felt wistful while looking outside the window as the rest of the plane prepared for takeoff. It was, in his mind, a proper farewell. For the next time he comes back, he promised he would be a changed man.
Well, good riddance, he thought. This place, what it stood for, had long infringed on his very being. Silenced underneath the politics and history of this very colony was his long-lost sense of self. Ironically, even his very name robbed him of any identity. The moment he was born, he would be a coordinator, Patrick Zala’s son, the perfect soldier, and the fiancé of Lacus Clyne. All that people knew Athrun by were things that someone else had determined for him. But from here on out, the man looking back at him through the windowpane of the aircraft would be someone else come hell or high water.
“This is the captain speaking. Flight number three-zero-eight alpha, bound for Yalafath Island, Orb, on track for early arrival. Weather upon landing is expected to be sunny with a high of twenty-five degrees Celsius, and a low of nineteen degrees Celsius in the later hours of the evening.” The pilot announced.
Athrun had zoned out but managed to catch some of the routine speech captains were expected to deliver. The plane was now wheeling its way to the runway. Flight attendants were abuzz, reminding passengers to put on their seatbelt, or to keep their carry-on bags stowed away properly, or to make sure their phones are put on airplane mode.
“Where’s the tablet? I want to play!” a young voice from the row behind Athrun eagerly demanded.
“Oh, dear please wait a while. I promise you’ll get to play. Buckle up now, come on. Make sure it’s tight,” a feminine voice replied, presumably the child’s mother.
Amidst the hubbub of a plane preparing to takeoff, Athrun found himself feeling an odd ominous emptiness swirling in his stomach. He had been reminded of his mother and the way she was always gentle towards him as a child. But even the tiny moments of happiness remain tainted now.
Athrun had perhaps boarded almost a thousand planes throughout his twenty-five years of life. Being the son of a senior politician meant that his father’s obligations bled onto him. Seldom were decisions made out of his own volition.
But he was a child then. And if that was something he could peacefully accept before, the same could not be said of him now. The shadow of his father extended beyond his childhood. It crept on even after Patrick Zala’s death. And it was the fact that his father still had a hold on Athrun even as a grown man that truly haunted him. A dead man, a ghost, had chipped away at his confidence. He felt like a boy pretending to be a man, and he was ashamed of himself. The first war came and went. The brief moment of peace did nothing to keep the second one from coming. And yet after all these years, it was still about his father. It was still his voice that commanded his every action no matter how much he hated it.
But the war is finally over now and Athrun is still Athrun.
Well, not if he could help it.
Athrun felt the force of the plane taking off push him back against his seat. Tucked inside the inner pocket of his coat sat his application papers. He inserted his right hand into his coat, fishing for the document, not to take it out, but to simply touch it. Athrun had done this several times in between leaving his house to this present moment. It was to reassure himself this was not a dream. After all that he had been through, he was desperate for the chance to hope again. The twenty-two-page application was right there, clipped together and folded in his coat’s inner pocket. It will all work out, Athrun repeated in his head. Things will fall into place. He reminded himself of these encouragements. And along with the plane climbing up the sky to pass the clouds and then PLANT’s gravity, Athrun felt the weight of his future slide down his throat.
The filled and signed application would initiate the five-year process of becoming a citizen of Orb. And this would be the first of many things that he will claim for himself, selfishly, unapologetically, if only to escape the curse of his past.
Everything he did up until that point was to untangle himself from the mess he made in the second war; to tie loose ends once and for all.
First, Athrun went back to PLANT to ensure that Meyrin would be reunited and returned to her family. The young lady had given her life for him, and it had been the catalyst for growth. After some months of having been stuck in Archangel with him and other Naturals, the red-haired girl had blossomed into a young woman. Shedding all of her childish fantasies, Meyrin had begun to look in earnest for a purpose in life. She returned to PLANT with a career within a philanthropic agency, putting her organizational and multi-tasking talents to work. He had never gotten quite as close to her apart from being her sole friend in an enemy ship. But Athrun felt inspired to see someone break out of their shell. He promised himself that he would do the same.
Second, and most importantly, he went back to PLANT to dissolve most of his family’s estate. It never really did sink in that he had effectively become an orphan and the head of the family all at once. Not until he pulled up to one of their old family homes that he realized the magnitude of his loneliness.
Athrun spent months negotiating the sale of his parent’s properties. He did not aim to keep a lot of the money. He only really needed a small portion of it to ensure that he would be able to start his life again. He kept one of their summer houses—his mother’s personal favorite—to hold all of the many heirloom paintings and valuables his mother liked collecting. He also wanted to keep employed the handful of servants who stayed loyal to his family as a way of saying thank you. There was enough pain going around, and the last thing he wanted was to bring the bad news of unemployment to these people. The bulk went to various investment plans. He wanted to ensure that profit would be earned and there would be a constant flow of donations to charitable causes, particularly those that funded orphanages and reconstruction projects throughout Earth. Using his father’s money to rebuild what he set out to destroy would be Athrun’s way of atoning for his father’s crimes. Nothing could ever bring back the lives lost. But this would at least pave the way for new ones.
Somewhere in his suitcase sat the keycard to the attic of the one mansion Athrun chose to keep. In that attic is where all of Athrun’s parents’ remaining tangible possessions would collect dust. The primary caretaker of the mansion, a man three times Athrun’s age who has served his father’s family long before he was born, gave him a set of keycards. Some opened the many rooms of the mansion. While the smallest few microchips opened certain safes and boxes. He was told that his father had something in store for him in one specific safe. But he had opted not to go anywhere near it for now.
What mattered most to him at this point is his journey back to her. Every mile that the plane traversed through space was a mile away from his old life and his old self, and a mile closer to the Athrun who would rule his life with his own will. The past could stay locked away; out of sight, out of mind.
xxx xxx xxx
“To live is the greater fight!” A voice echoed in his head. The images were blurry, like a photo not yet fully downloaded. Blocks of color. Smoke. Then there were faint sounds of a faraway battle like droplets of water echoing in an empty bathroom. Where was he, he wondered. He was floating, watching himself outside his body.“Stop running!”
A screen flashes bright on his face. It’s a monitor—something that was all too familiar. And then he was sweating in his cockpit, keying in the code to self-destruct. His mind was in a frenzy. Images, memories pulsating.
Junius Seven exploding.
Kira, Kira, Kira.
The island. That island.
Her.
Blonde hair, amber eyes.
The pendant.
Red.
I will protect you.
His father aiming a gun at him. His anger.
Blood.
The Genesis.
More blood.
Tears.
A darkness, a malice was brewing inside him. It felt like losing his breath though he hadn’t moved an inch. He was dying, he thought. He would die in an instant. Just a few more codes to input and he would soon lose his life. He hadn’t even considered all that he would lose, all that he would no longer see. He hadn’t given death a thought. Would it be pain? Or would it be nothingness?
Nicol, Rusty, his mother. His father too.
His fingers breeze through the many layers of security prompts but he was caught in a loop. The same scene replayed. The same letters. The same message on the screen. Pinging. Ringing.
“To live is the greater fight!” The voice cried again. Who? Where? He thought. The voice felt like home. It echoed and echoed, feedback blaring in his ears. But he couldn’t remember who it was or where he’d heard it before.
Smoke fills his surroundings. And he blacks out. Time didn’t exist. Ten minutes or maybe a year—he couldn’t tell. It was just darkness. And then there was the sun.
Summertime.
Orb and the sand.
Hands reach out from the haze to fix his collar. He was now in an Orb uniform.
The hands straightened his jacket. He tried to reach out to touch the mysterious figure, but he couldn’t move. The woman’s face is obscured, and he couldn’t see who it was. But he felt that he knew this person after all. The taste of her lips, the feeling of her in his arms. There was a dull ache that bore a hole in his gut.
“Alex Dino,” a voice said with a little laugh. “Are you sure you’d rather have an alias, Athrun? You know I’d find a way to let you stay here despite what the others might think.”
Her body.
“Athrun, come into the water! It feels great!”
The ring.
Her tears.
“So, you’re not coming back to Archangel? To Orb?”
The ceiling of the infirmary.
The ring still on her finger.
The ring suddenly gone.
“Stop running!”
There was so much anguish; so much loss. To what purpose? Why had he left at all? What was the point? Was it worth the price he paid? He was forgetting.
“Cagalli,” he cried.
Yes, that’s her name. Cagalli. He tried to grab onto her—her shoulders, her arms, anything at all. But his arms were immaterial. Just when her face began to appear with clarity, he was turning into a ghost.
Her back turned against him now.
She was walking away. Her shadow stretched and he called her again and again.
xxx xxx xxx
Around him was commotion. The sudden imposition of reality was jarring. A baby was wailing a few rows ahead of him, people were rushing to grab their belongings from the overhead storage, the clicking of seatbelts unbuckling—it was all too loud. From a floating dream to the rumblings of a disembarking plane was disorienting.
A dream. It was just a dream, Athrun thought. He woke up feeling a glaze of sweat around his neck. He sat still for a few moments and then decided altogether that he would get up once everyone else had disembarked. He’d let the sea of people move around him first. He was unsure if his feet would be able to carry him even if he attempted to get up anyway. He couldn’t explain what it was he felt.
His phone informed him of the time. It seems that Athrun had landed in Orb early just as the captain of the plane had announced. He was expecting two officers to pick him up from the airport. But due to his early arrival, he would have an hour to spare. Deciding to arrive at the military base early anyway, Athrun makes a quick phone call to inform his presiding officers of his plan. Perhaps it was apprehension. He was eager to get back to her even more so now.
Being granted permission to drive to the base by himself, Athrun tried to look at the brighter side of the situation. The vehicle storage where he had left his old car was right beside Orb’s airport, conveniently. While this had not been planned, Athrun was pleased to be reunited with his car. There would be a lot of good things to look forward to now, he convinced himself. The day was already turning out better than he expected—an attempt at optimism.
He had a lot of memories with the vehicle. He had stowed it away at the storage facility with all intentions of coming back for it. He had not even thought that he would be dropping the car off to be away from it for as long as he had been. He was so full of conviction that day; that he would help end the war quickly. He had believed the dream Durandal sold him so cleverly. Athrun had allowed the man to get into his head and remind him of the weight of his father’s ideology. But the living is far scarier than the dead. And in the end, it was the living and breathing Durandal that had tainted him, rather than his dead, decaying father.
Reunited with his car, Athrun took a moment to collect his thoughts before stepping on the pedal. There was no use getting riled up over the past. He’d thought about it all way too many times. He knows the corners where his mind would push him against, and the many dead ends of logic that would make him wish he had died instead. He knew each and every single reason for his mistakes. He also knew they were but stupid excuses. At the end of all the time wasted on rumination, one fact remained constant: it is that the past had been written, and there was no way to rewrite it. This is life after all, Athrun thought. Life is messy, and never packaged in neat folds and boxes. Feelings contradict actions, and decisions betray intentions. Pain exists, as well as happiness—sometimes even at the same time. It has been such a long time since Athrun last dared to hope. But he also understood that his future remains unwritten. And if there is any chance of living a life he could be proud of, there would be no better time than to do it now.
But the dream he had was still singing in his head. A dissonant symphony of voices he hadn’t heard in a while.
It was the ominous kind.