Chapter Text
After the last transmission from Yzak, Dearka had been left sitting in a cocoon of dead, sparking monitors. He wasn’t even totally sure Buster was moving until it stopped with the characteristic dragging thump of an emergency landing.
Between Dearka and the ground crew, but mostly down to the ground crew they somehow got the hatch open without resorting to a blowtorch and then Yzak came tumbling in, no help at all and in everyone’s way.
“Dearka,” he yelled, muffled through his helmet, “Dearka.”
Dearka tried to say that he was okay but what came out was “ow.”
There was blood running into his eyes and everything was spinning a bit, and he was not entirely sure where he’d ended up. That was only partly down to the concussion and partly down to the fact that Yzak was more or less sitting on top of him, fumbling about the the straps of his safety harness, which was, like most parts of his mobile suit, comprehensively broken.
There was a specific way to extract someone from a damaged mobile suite without injuring them. They had drilled it a lot during training and now Yzak was aggressively not doing it, and the resulting process was very painful. But for the time it took for them to both land in a pile on the gangplank, their helmets are pressed together, giving them a private communication channel through which Dearka can hear Yzak gasping over and over, “I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you.”
So it was worth it.
They were onboard the Archangel.
He’d been staging out of the Archangel for a while now, and had been doing it on purpose for a most of that, so it shouldn’t be surprising. But seeing Yzak kneeling on the Archangel’s deck made it all seem unreal. Or maybe that was the concussion.
He yanked his helmet off and wiped the blood off his face and realized that everyone was looking at him. Then he saw how little was left of Buster.
“I’m alright,” he said.
He was pretty sure he was mostly not lying about that. He was definitely concussed, and he hurt everywhere, and his ankle was definitely not working right, but he was pretty sure he was just knocked around. Besides, he didn’t need two working ankles in space. He could float. So, mostly, was alright.
“Well that’s good,” said Officer Murdoch, with a nod towards Buster, “because he’s not.”
“Kinda got that impression,” Dearka agreed.
“We can get Duel back up and running in just a bit though,” Murdoch continued, as though that was just business as usual.
Dearka had spent enough time around the Archangel’s crew that he understood immediately how this worked, on their end. Whatever Yzak might have previously done, or what uniform he may be in, he had sent them the warning about GENESIS, saved both Dearka and Cagalli from Earth Forces Mobile Suits and had been there with the rest of them, shooting down nuclear missiles. In their generous way of counting things, he was now their friend.
But even through the faceplate, he could see the moment when it finally caught up to Yzak that he was standing in the Legged Ship’s hangar.
“Can we have a minute?” He asked Murdoch. There was a moment where the Archangel crew remembered or perhaps noticed that they’d just casually scooped up a ZAFT pilot, and then they went and found ways to busy. It wasn’t like there was a shortage of things to do.
Yzak pulled himself up very straight, like chilly dignity would somehow protect him for the first time ever.
“Thanks,” said Dearka.
“Yeah,” Yzak mumbled, “well…” He trailed off, and peered around like it would cover up how uncomfortable he obviously was. Shifted from foot to foot. Crossed his arms across his chest. Uncrossed them. Balled his hands into fists. Forced himself to relax them. Crossed his arms again.
“So,” said Dearka, because this was clearly one of those times Yzak needed to be rescued from himself, “is it how you pictured it?”
“I didn’t know,” Yzak gasped, “about GENESIS. They didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t — I never —“
“I know,” said Dearka.
And then he did the thing he should have done last time. He closed the distance between them and yanked Yzak into a hug, pinning his arms to his sides so he couldn’t escape, and whispered, “I’m sorry I left you alone.”
Because he had been alone. Nicol was dead, Dearka was missing and Athrun left and it was just Yzak right though Alaska and Panama and losing the Vesalius and Boaz and now all of this.
Yzak didn’t say anything back, just went limp and let himself be held for a full five seconds, which was as much answer as Dearka needed.
They moved apart.
Dearka thoughtlessly settled back onto the gangplank, and then folded up with a jolt of pain and a certain amount of surprise, as he forgot about his bad ankle. It was more embarrassing than painful but Yzak rushed over and caught him and got under his bad side to take his weight.
Since Dearka had already pushed off the gangplank to hang in zero-G already, this was just completely unhelpful. Dearka knew exactly where the sickbay was and was perfectly able to get there but instead had to work around Yzak who had no idea where he was going, and couldn’t seem to stop pulling him off balance, when everything was already spinning.
He had just barely managed to navigate to sickbay and convince Yzak to give him back his arm so he could sit down when Miriallia burst in. It was very surreal to see Yzak and Miriallia standing next to each other, a scene he had never quite figured out how to imagine. And yet, here they were, calling him an idiot in two part harmony.
The last time he had been in the Archangel’s infirmary it had been nearly silent. He had also been tied up but that wasn’t really relevant to the situation at hand. It was the opposite of silent now and he had clearly gotten off pretty easy in the scheme of things, so he just sat quietly and let himself be lectured.
The doctor came over, patched him up so blood wasn’t running down his face anymore and agreed with him that he was basically fine and then left them to it. It was nice, for a few minutes. Yzak and Mir seemed to have noticed each other but didn’t seem to know what to do about that, and the adrenaline has finally started to wear off and he had started to feel punch drunk and didn’t trust himself to make coherent sentences, so no one said much. But he was pleased to have them both there, at least until Mir was called back to the bridge and Yzak went back to Duel.
This also turned out to be a good thing, because it meant that when the adrenaline crash really hit him and he spent the next thirty minutes shaking and throwing up, he didn’t have to do it with an audience.
After what felt like a very long time he got himself back under control, washed his face, and headed to the bridge because then at least he would know what was going on.
He’d expected Duel — and Yzak — to be gone, back to Jachin Due, or the PLANTS or wherever, but he was still there in the same guard position had most recently been his, and before that, the Kira and the Strike’s.