Work Text:
It’d been almost a week since Quiet Zero. Almost a week of watching Benerit HQ’s medical wing run test after test, checkup after checkup on Suletta. Almost a week of being told the same exact thing three times a day: that she should be waking up by now, but wasn’t.
Almost a week of falling asleep in the chair by Suletta’s bedside, crying by her bedside, not wanting to miss the moment she came back.
“M… Miorine?” her bride groaned when the moment came, “you’re… you’re still here. Of course… you are…”
“I told you not to keep me waiting next time, idiot!” she cried, collapsing into the bed out of sheer relief. Without a second thought, she took Suletta into her arms, pulled her close.
“You… did. I’m… sorry.” Suletta’s arms went around her too. Miorine didn’t even try to stifle the sob that came out. “I missed you, too.”
“You were unconscious, dummy,” Miorine laughed, “you couldn’t miss me.”
“Well, I did.”
“I missed you more. I’ve been waiting here, the entire time, for you to wake up.”
“I know. I’m here. You don’t have to wait anymore,” Suletta murmured, stroking her hair. “How… how long was I out?”
“Six days.” She rose up to look her bride in the eyes. The expression on Suletta’s face could’ve been called shock, if she wasn’t still groggy, if she wasn’t still only half-awake. “You weren’t waking up, and- and nobody knew why and… I thought sometimes you wouldn’t, and then…” she leaned forward even more, gave a small kiss to the woman she loved. When she came away, Suletta looked distinctly more awake. “And then you did.”
“It’s okay, Miorine,” Suletta said. “I was just… tired. Needed rest.” She shifted under her sheets, wincing a little bit. “Maybe… a little more. Everything still hurts, a little bit.”
“No,” she whispered, “please don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t, I promise! I can get more sleep later,” Suletta reassured. “I’ve just spent six days without you, Miorine. Making up for that comes first, so… so come here, closer to me.” She patted the mattress in front of her.
“But… you said everything still hurts.” Suletta just smiled.
“Everything will hurt a little bit less if I have you in my arms. Nothing’s uncomfortable when I'm with you, remember?” She couldn’t argue with that, so Miorine got under the covers with her. Feeling Suletta’s arms around her was nothing short of euphoric. They’d done this only once before, when she’d opened the door herself. When they’d reunited. Miorine had hoped so dearly to feel it once again, afterwards, and having her wish come true made her happier than she thought she could ever be.
“I love you, Suletta Mercury,” she said, after a while. “I finally get to say it back.”
“Yeah, you do,” her bride giggled, pressing a kiss to the back of her head once she’d said it. “You always did, I knew that, but it’s nice to… hear it.” Another little kiss. “I love you too, Miorine Rembran.” Miorine sighed, wriggled back more snugly into Suletta’s chest.
“I’m never going to get tired of hearing that.”
“Well, that’s good, because I’m never going to get tired of saying it.” She said it again, Miorine squirmed in joy again, and they just let themselves enjoy the moment for a long time.
For what could’ve been an hour or maybe two, Miorine thought only of Suletta, felt only Suletta holding her tight, said only those three words. Suletta always said them back, and she always kissed her on the hand in return. Miorine had no idea it was even possible to feel this… at peace, but she loved it. She loved everything about it, from the gentle way Suletta’s fingers tangled with and brushed against her own, to the full feeling of her back against Suletta’s chest. She loved everything about her.
For what was certainly more than two hours, the only confirmation she got that Suletta hadn’t fallen back asleep were those three words, those sweetest of whispers. Eventually, though, she said something different.
“Miorine… um, where are we? The last thing I remember is, uh… being with you, in space. And now I’m here, a- also with you, which is nice, but… where, exactly?”
“Benerit HQ. It was the closest and best place that could treat you, after you passed out again.”
“Oh. I see. That makes sense.” A few moments of silence. “Does that mean I’ve been laying in bed for six whole days?”
“Yeah, basically. Either that or an operating table while the doctors tried to figure out why you weren’t waking up.”
“That… also makes sense.” Suletta started shifting behind her, sitting up. “I guess that means I should get up and get some exercise, huh?”
“Suletta…” She must not’ve been able to keep the sorrow out of her voice. Suletta froze. “They said the… the Permet, it did a lot of damage before it cooled down. You… might not be able to walk again.”
“Oh.” She said nothing else. After a few moments, Suletta laid down again, put her arms back around Miorine.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Miorine whispered. “I should’ve told you sooner.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s not your fault.” Internally she protested that, that it was her fault, but she knew that wasn’t true. “I knew the risks when I agreed to pilot Calibarn, and… and given that one of those risks was outright death, well… I should count myself lucky.” Suletta pointed over to the corner of the room, where an empty wheelchair sat. “And that's what that’s for, isn’t it? Because they knew I’d need it when I woke up.” It wasn’t a ‘when,’ Suletta. It was an ‘if.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it. The waiting was over. She didn’t have to think about that anymore, didn’t have to dread it.
“Yeah, it is,” Miorine said. “Do you… want to go out for a walk, then?”
“I think I should. I need some… fresh air.” Miorine laughed.
“As fresh as air can be on a space station with endlessly recirculated air and no trees.” Suletta laughed, too. Her heart almost skipped a beat at the sound.
“Miorine, I grew up on Mercury. Do you know how old, how overstressed the air recyclers there were?” She shook her head. “Older than you, older than me, maybe… maybe even older than your father. Mercury was the first place we mined Permet, and once we figured out how to get to it on the Moon, the series of stations on Mercury kinda… got abandoned. No, not quite abandoned, but… underfunded. Not profitable. All the equipment we had there was probably three decades out of date, the cheapest money could buy, or both.”
“I… feel like I should’ve known that. It makes sense, though.” Miorine sighed, bringing Suletta’s hands to her mouth for a kiss. “I’m sorry you had to grow up in a place like that.”
“Okay, this one definitely isn’t your fault. And it wasn’t really that bad, but… but there was a reason I was so excited to go to Asticassia. Multiple reasons.”
“You really liked it there, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. One of the first things I noticed was the air.” Suletta laughed again, adding on, “it was honestly kinda jarring, feeling air in my lungs that’d… actually passed through a tree. It took a couple days to get used to it.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say that the air here isn’t as good as it was there.”
“That’s okay. It’ll be wonderful, just because I’m with you.” Miorine giggled, murmured those three words, and Suletta murmured them back. “Can you… help me into the wheelchair now?”
“Of course.” She got up and out of Suletta’s arms, walked over to it, and wheeled it over. By the time she came back, Suletta was up too, legs dangling over the side of the bed, trying to move them a little. “How bad is it?”
“It’s…” Suletta shrugged. “I dunno, it could be worse, I think? I can’t move them as much as I should be able to, but they aren’t completely numb either. Maybe it’ll get better.”
“I hope so,” Miorine agreed, taking Suletta’s hands and helping her into the chair. “Where do you want to go? Do you want me to come with you?”
“I do, yes. I… I want you to push me around. I want to rely on you.” Miorine smiled at her, and took her out the door. “As for where, um… you’ve spent a lot more time here than I have. Show me your favorite spots.” As she tried to remember the way out of the medical wing, Miorine grimaced.
“I don’t have any favorite spots here. This place is the center of my fathers corporate empire. I hated every second I had to spend here.”
“Oh, well…” Suletta went silent for a bit. “Just show me around, then.”
“Of course.” She did as her bride asked, showing her the sights. Not that there was much to see, just offices and meeting rooms and endless vaulted halls far more ostentatious than Miorine thought any corporation deserved. But Suletta looked at it all with the same awe, the same admiration of somewhere new. Because it was somewhere new, to her.
“It was worth it, though,” Miorine said. Her bride made a questioning little noise, and she clarified, “being here, I mean. It was all to protect you.”
“I know. I’m glad you did that for me.” Suletta laughed to herself, tried to lift a leg up, and when she couldn’t, simply patted her lap. “Now I can really put those prosthetics we were working on to the test, can’t I?”
“Yes, I suppose you can.” Miorine took a hand away from the wheelchair’s handles to ruffle Suletta’s hair. Soft… “But you don’t need to be worrying about that, not for a long time. Work can come after you’ve recovered.”
“Yeah, of course. I just woke up, and all.”
Miorine took her around a little longer, to the docks, to the various observation platforms scattered around the outer surface. She liked spending time with Suletta in those, liked trying to beat her in games of ‘spot that planet.’ The only times she ever won that was when the goal was Earth.
Eventually, Suletta spoke up with a specific destination in mind.
“I want to go to… to the room where the witch hunts started. That’s here, on this station, right?” Miorine nodded. This place had once been the center of the Mobile Suit Development Council’s realm in the fronts. It’d been where her own father had laid down that fateful decree, even while the battle over Fólkvangr itself raged. The room was still there, too. She knew that, and had always steered very wide around it in her time here.
“It is. But… why?”
“I… don’t know, really. It’s hard to put into words.”
“That’s okay. Take your time.” As Miorine pushed them along towards that very room, Suletta thought.
“It’s… it’s because I was there,” she said after a few minutes, “when it all came to an end. Gundam, the ghost of Ochs Earth, the… the ultimate use of the GUND Format in Quiet Zero. I’m why it ended. So… so I want to be where it started, too. Not Vanadis itself -I know that place is long since dust- but… the place where your father made that press conference.”
“You want to… return to its roots. Tie the past twenty-two years up in a bow, and… and put it all to rest.”
“Yeah. That. I just… want to see it.”
“I know. We’re almost there.”
The door didn’t feel as heavy as Miorine thought it should’ve, but the moment she went back to wheel Suletta through, the air took on that effect instead. She knew it wasn’t literally heavier, but it felt like it. There was a gravity to the place, a gravitas. That was the word. Like the room’s walls were closer to her than they actually were, like they were closing in on her, yet at the same time further away. Claustrophobia and agoraphobia all wrapped up in one, just like space itself.
They had entered someplace important, and yet Miorine was sure that if she hadn’t ever seen that video of her father denouncing Ochs Earth and its Gundams, she wouldn’t feel this way. It was that knowledge that made this otherwise generic conference room feel… weighty. People sometimes talked about being ‘crushed by the weight of history’ like it was a physical thing that could hurt you. About how you could go to a place where important things had happened, and feel it. She’d always thought it was superstition, hallucinations.
Miorine understood now.
Even though it was all over, all gone, she still felt like the room would crush her, that the weight of everything her father had done, everything he had domino-effected into happening from here could kill her. Of everything she had done. Her hands were not unstained.
Maybe, if she’d ever come here earlier, with Aerial and Quiet Zero and Prospera still on the loose or being constructed or scheming revenge…
Maybe it would’ve killed her.
But if she forced herself to ignore the monument that was this room, that was the raised pedestal from which her father had made his speech, it was almost exactly as she remembered it. The orange-red walls styled to evoke a gemstone, four rows of audience and camera-crew seating, and eight seats, one for each member of the old Council. Behind that, a window to the stars. Those always looked the same. The place didn’t look used, but not disused either. Someone still dusted the windows, the desks. Someone still swept the floors. It helped her see the place as… mundane.
Even after the kings in their castles called a witch hunt on those who were just trying to help, to heal, someone had to come in and clean up after them.
“Gundam is gone,” Suletta spoke, breaking the silence. “You won, Delling.” Miorine started to object, started to say ‘you shouldn’t give him the credit for that,’ but without even looking, Suletta raised a hand, motioned her into silence. “But you lost, too. Some of the witches you tried so hard to kill lived. Me, my mother, Ericht, Belmeria. You got what you wanted, a world without Gundams, but we got what we wanted too. A world where the GUND Format is used not as a weapon, but to make people’s lives better. We get to fix the problems you were too close-minded to even see, and… and it’s over now. It’s over, and you lost, Delling.”
“It’s over,” Miorine echoed. It felt like the weight in the air lifted a little, so she said it again. “It’s over.” To her surprise, Suletta laughed. That only made the air lighter.
“I feel like I was possessed by the spirit of my grandmother,” she mused. Miorine hummed to herself, trying to remember who that was. Prospera had always been tight-lipped about her family until the very end, but she’d never mentioned… “You know, the old woman from the Vanadis video.” Oh, her. Cardo. “She’s not my actual grandmother, I think, but she… maybe she is still here, in a way. She was there too, in the datastorm.”
“She… was?” Suletta nodded.
“Everyone was. Her, Elan, Eri, my father…” Suletta sighed, reaching a hand back to one of Miorine’s. “They were proud of us.”
“I am too,” Miorine said. “Even… even after everything.” Another sigh, together this time, and she squeezed Suletta’s hand. “Even if it resulted in so much chaos along the way, so much death, I’m glad your mother managed to escape the witch hunts.” Suletta gasped, turning in her chair to face her.
“But you… does that mean you’ve…”
“Forgiven myself? Maybe a little. Not entirely, for sure, but… being here makes it a little better. I wasn’t expecting it to do that, but I’ll take it.” Miorine smiled, gave her bride another squeeze. “But, Suletta, what I really mean is… I’m glad she escaped, because if she didn’t, I never would’ve met you.”
“Ah! Um- um… M- Miorine, I…” For a moment she admired how cute her fiancé was when she blushed, and then the fear gripped her. The memories.
Calibarn’s piloting test, being forced to hear Suletta panting, screaming, knowing that if she managed to survive it she would only be thrown into something even more dangerous.
Drifting towards Quiet Zero in silence, constantly running that dreadful sound through her head, constantly keeping an eye on the bright, distant light of Calibarn as it fought the hundreds and hundreds of Ericht’s Gund-Bits. Imagining the pain Suletta was going through hurt her, but the knowledge that that light could stop moving at any time terrified her.
Finding her again after Quiet Zero dissolved into nothing, shaking her, begging her to be alive, to come back. Seeing Suletta open her eyes, hearing her breathe and say her name and live, but seeing also the horrible digital red marks on her cheeks. Seeing the damage that lingered, the damage that would linger. Forever.
It's not the link flaring up again, Miorine told herself. It doesn't work like that. Even if it did, Calibarn is gone. Quiet Zero is gone. The Gundams are gone. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine.
And yet her fear did not fade. Her breaths did not slow. The world got a little darker around the edges.
“Miorine, are you okay?” Suletta asked. She didn't answer. Instead, Miorine reached for her lover's cheek, prepared to feel the warmth of her skin burn, yet still dreading it. What if it did? What would she do then?
There was an old test log that'd somehow survived the destruction of Fólkvangr. She'd found it along with the old woman's video, the video that inspired her to bring GUND-Arm back to the roots of the technology. It consisted of a lot of techy jargon she hadn’t been able to fully make sense of, but Belmeria did that for her. It’d been a log of a standard out-of-cockpit Permet link test, the kind Belmeria hesitantly told her they did with Elan quite a bit. That wasn’t what Miorine was remembering now. At the bottom of the file, tucked away in a footnote, there’d been a note unrelated to what the test had actually been for. Still in jargon, yes, but of a kind she could decipher herself.
Permet burns hurt to touch, whether you were the pilot or not.
When her fingers brushed against Suletta’s cheek, first tentatively, then with her whole hand when she realized it didn’t hurt, that it was just the warmth she’d come to expect from holding the woman she loved, Miorine let out a ragged breath, halfway between a sigh and a sob.
Suletta’s hand joined hers, resting over her own. Suletta’s eyes met hers, flooded with concern.
“Miorine, what’s wrong?” At first she couldn’t speak at all, the fading panic still keeping its vice grip on her throat. Then it loosened just enough, and everything came out at once.
“Nothing nothing’s wrong I just thought I- I thought it was Calibarn again the Permet the link burning you hurting killing a- and I thought you were dying but it- it’s just… you’re fine. You’re fine. Everything’s okay.” Miorine muttered that to herself a few more times, the relief of admitting it, of accepting it making her legs buckle. She put more of her weight onto her arms, onto Suletta’s wheelchair, only halfway acknowledging that she might tip it over.
“Oh, I… Miorine, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. The Gundams are gone, and I’m here to stay.”
“I know that, I know that, I just… I was so worried that you were- were hurting again, and- and… it’s fine. It was just you blushing.” Somehow she found the will to smile at her bride. Suletta smiled back.
“That’s right, silly. I’m okay. I’m j- just blushing, I- I do that… all the time… around you.” Suletta’s cheeks reddened again, and that she didn’t have a panic attack over it this time really did make Miorine cry.
“I know. I thought it was… the other thing. But it isn’t. It’s just you being you.” Miorine cupped her chin, tilting her head up for a kiss. “I love you, Suletta. I love how adorable you are.” Watching her blush and smile made her heart pound out of love, not anxiety. Maybe a little anxiety. This particular thought, this particular worry, it might take some time to fully go away. “I won’t worry over you like this again, I promise.”
“W- well if you…” Suletta started, with that wonderful flustered little tremble to her voice, “if you didn’t want me to blush, th- then you shouldn’t be so c- cute!” Caught off guard, Miorine blushed too. Suletta leaned back in again, to kiss away one of her tears as it ran down her cheek, to kiss her on the lips. “I love you too, Miorine. I promised once, that I’d stay with you forever. Nothing is going to get in the way of that, not anymore. I promise.”