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Preservation of a dead bird, in CE 1979, would be made possible due in part to white arsenic powder. Arsenic has been referred to throughout human history as the “king of poisons” and the “poison of kings”. The powder itself served useful both in the direct preservation effort in the skin of the bird, as well as an indirectly successful pesticide. By UC 0079, what feels like an uncountable eternity away, there would be no need for something so toxic to preserve such a specimen. Desperate stubbornness is what truly keeps a collected bird, dead, in perpetuum.
The first step for a taxidermist is to remove all of the bird’s organs, and to try not to think about how it got to where it is now. Set aside the knowledge that they saw the gun, the crash, the fall. Think only now about the majesty of the living animal, and how best to recreate it from here. Don’t reflect on the painful memories. When memories do come, address them in waves.
Some days Char Aznable thinks of his sister Artesia, Sayla Mass now. When he saw her during the War, he remembered the fields in which he’d run with her as children. All the time they shared with their family, before everything. They were memories he guided himself through, and then pruned in his head, snipping irrelevant, sentimental branches off the tree of conscious thought. He had to push himself forward out of such memories. They simply belonged to a dead man in his head. But some remained deep inside, in the manicured lawn of memory, where hardier species persist past the unnatural landscape. He would provide Artesia with what he assumed that she would need in order to escape the opposition. To save herself, and more importantly, to finally rid herself of any thoughts of his life for good. Something he imagined would be good for her, and would provide him with a mostly guilt-free conscience to forget about her as well. It’d be better for the both of them that way, Char figured.
The War was a time in which a lot of things changed for him. It was when he destroyed the life of a man playing soldier—a man that he considered himself close to. He provided him with the experience of a real soldier boy, even if he was only going to fake the part up until the gory end. For his quest for revenge, for his role as an orphaned son and the glory of the good name of his father. There are some things more important than what can be trimmed or tucked away, like sentimentality. Though the War tested him in more ways than one. He experienced again the feeling of a deep, irrevocable, profound kind of loss. He missed Lalah now for who she could have been. To him, to the universe.
A memory, mythologized, dons the fatigues of Homeric Epic. A helmet of tusks, a sword with a gold-gleaming hilt. Seized thus by the fear of the son of Tem, thrice-as-swift Char struck him through the shoulder with the point of his blade as a hunter sunk his spear through the soft belly of a boar. Divine Amuro pushed his saber through Char’s helmet, piercing him shallow in the forehead.
When he met Amuro again, he felt it before he saw him. Perhaps it was a brief twitch towards the front of his face, where the scar was, that convinced him who stood before him. Amuro was in a bad state then, unable to settle his restless mind for seven years after the War. He was prevented from escaping into the barrel of a gun, the only place he ever found some comfort. That was certainly something Char could understand. When your young life revolves around the idea of killing the ones out to get you, it can lead to a dependency on arming yourself. And when you find yourself defenseless, the best tactic is avoidance. But for Amuro, there wasn’t much of either of those things which the Federation would allow. Char knew it had to have been agonizing.
Elsewhere, in the shaded artificial garden of a well-forested space colony, two trees grow beside each other. The white oak, Quercus alba, displays leaves with a rounded shape and blunted edges. Quintessentially recognizable. The red oak, Quercus rubra, with sharpened edges, is similarly iconic in its design. Also known as the champion oak, its leaves’ jagged sides resemble teeth on the jaw of a carnivore. The two grow side-by-side, never quite touching, as both branches reach ever higher towards the sun, avoiding the purging shade of the other. The red oak is a tree which reaches towards the sky with a fervor, a growth rate far quicker than that of the white oak. Their branches weave and twist and turn, stabbing towards each other from far away, without ever making contact.
Just as it was with Amuro, Char’s presence in Kamille’s life left the boy with a visible entry and exit wound. For Amuro it was literal, all the way through his right shoulder. For Kamille… he got two dead parents and a paralyzed soul. When Kamille’s spirit ruptured, Char turned tail and ran. He wished he could have continued to support Kamille, been a brother to him. But Char’s never been good at being a brother. A large portion of what happened to Kamille at the end of the Gryps Conflict was, admittedly, Char's own fault. He’d not been the one to strike the final blow which splintered his psyche, but he was the one who sharpened the blade of Kamille’s mind until it was ready to snap upon meeting strong resistance. All to make him a better soldier. Kamille could have helped him achieve his goals, to bring about a new age of humanity in the stars.
To care about someone, for Char Aznable, does not hinge upon a level of mutual connection. It is about the idea of them, who they are and what they can or should do. Besides, that’s what Kamille would have wanted, right? Becoming a soldier may have hurt him, it very well could have killed him, but it was all for the greater good. It was for the elevation of the youth. That’s something that Kamille cared about, and so he justified the pain Kamille experienced in the process as the natural growing pains accompanying Kamille in becoming a harbinger of such an ideal. The only real regret Char had was that it didn’t turn out the way he’d planned. He fled because there wasn’t anything to be done. He’d failed someone, yet again, and he left so that he wouldn’t be confronted any longer with the idea that he’d harmed Kamille deeper than he’d considered. He couldn’t take responsibility for any of those kids he claimed he would. He left for greener pastures and deeper, more sinister machinations. If the people of Earth had brought Char to lead Kamille to such a tragic fate, he would simply find another way to make them pay.
Months after Char left the Argama, another young soldier would join its ranks. He would have a sister he cared for dearly, who he lost contact with while fighting in his own War. She would be found safe and taken in, by a woman named Sayla Mass. Meanwhile the First Neo Zeon war would be won by the Earth Federation-allied AEUG, largely due to the intervention of the boy and his friends. Sayla and the boy’s sister would come to find him before he left the area around Earth, to see him off as he went down his own path. Sayla would look at the girl, who was holding herself at a safe distance; making sure that she could see her brother, but he couldn’t see her. She would encourage her to go see him. In her eyes would be a deep sympathy, a desire to see this girl and her brother reunite one final time, and an acknowledgment that she knows how much it hurts to have your brother disappear without ever saying goodbye. Char, busy orchestrating a new War, would never know this happened.
Some people hollow themselves out in order to make the memory or idea of someone else live at home inside them. Char Aznable has never done anything but attempt to carve out his own innards to make a cavity for the wandering souls of those he loved to nest inside. So why was no one there?
The Red Comet is a name Char has been called for what feels like eons now. Though one thing he’s never been is a psychic. It will forever remain one of the most bitter failures he considers in his entire existence; that he was never a strong enough Newtype, never able to grasp the future. But without needing to manipulate the sinewy strings of time, there is something that he knows: his name feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. He, the one who denies himself the ability to feel. Char will pull himself along without ever really moving forward, attacking the ghosts of his past that he may run in place forever. Always going somewhere, one plan to the next, always some kind of scheme up his sleeve. But all the while he will be looking backwards, silently goading on the one pursuing him. The one who truly wants to put an end to this, and all these kinds of charades. And it’s because of all of this that he knows, without any kind of prophecy, just how his story’s end is coming.
Char Aznable will burn one day.