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Chapter One (Prelude): To the Unknown Knock, knock.
“Come in.” The dull voice was low and hard to hear, but Nicol, listening intently, took it as the invitation it really wasn’t, and opened the door.
Athrun was curled up on his bed, back to Nicol, so the younger boy couldn’t see his friend’s face…not that he needed to. It had been difficult enough reverting back to their old ZAFT personas, and it didn’t help that Kira was gone. The lack of him being there was an almost tangible thing- a quite empty space beside Athrun that had been filled just a short while ago. Nicol found himself missing the violet-eyed Coordinator as well- he had been a good person, for the limited time he had known the other, and Nicol hadn’t realized the full impact he’d had on their group until he was gone.
They were still on the sub, but would be arriving at Carpentaria within the next day or two. From there, it was a trip through space to the PLANTs, and then…
“Is there something I need to do now? Meet with the captain or something?” Athrun’s voice was brittle and rough. Nicol winced upon hearing it, and, crossing the room quickly, sat down on the edge of the bed, giving the other boy some space.
“No. I…we’re all just…worried.”
“I’ll be fine…”
“I know you will be eventually, but what about now? None of us want to see you walking around with dark eyes and drooping shoulders, Athrun.” Nicol paused. “We cannot take the place of Kira. But we can help, or at least provide some companionship.”
A faint smile fluttered on the edges of Athrun’s lips, and Nicol dared to hope. “I know. I know…and…thanks.” He sat up slowly, joints creaking as he stretched. “How’s Rynae?”
Nicol’s face was shadowed. “She’s…all right. They put her in one of the cells down below. She’s not chained or anything, just behind bars, which is…good.”
“And how are you taking that?”
“I ought to be worried about you, not the other way around,” the younger pilot grumbled. “I’m…okay. It’s not wonderful, seeing her locked up, but…I can still go talk to her. They don’t have video surveillance or anything.”
“How do they treat her?”
“They don’t. I take her meals, and no one else goes down there. The whole crew look like they got called on short notice and just want to complete their job.”
“Doesn’t everybody.” Athrun sighed. “Yzak and Dearka?”
“Playing games, visiting Ryn…we’re all just trying to stave off boredom.”
“It’ll get exciting soon, don’t worry,” Athrun said dryly.
“So what do we do when we get to the PLANTs?”
“No doubt Ryn will be separated from us. We’ll set a limit- any number of days. By that time, all plans need to be ready and we need to be leaving. I’ll give her Lacus’s address- she can find her way there at the given time. I hope. And then…back to Earth.”
“I see.” Nicol didn’t look happy at all.
“I know, she’ll be on her own. But the chance that we get to know where she is will be slim, if any at all. We have to tell her as much as we can and then…let her go.”
“I…know. I know that.”
Athrun laid a hand on Nicol’s shoulder as the other boy slumped, staring at the floor. “We have to hope. She’s smart and strong- she’s done this before and can do it again. Believe in her.”
“I am,” Nicol whispered. “I do. I just...don’t want to leave it all to fate. She had nothing to lose back then, no real idea of anything but herself. Now she…is different…and…”
Athrun just squeezed his shoulder.
Gods, this is going to be hard…
“So.” Nicol took a deep breath, composing himself. “While…Ryn’s…doing that…what we will be doing?”
“We have to deal with interrogations, obviously. If they’re suspicious that she told us anything confidential, we’ll be asked some tough questions. Playing the part of a dumbly obedient soldier may be the best way to avoid any trouble. I don’t think that’ll take more than a day or two, and then we’ll be released. No doubt they will watch us then, but as long as we can get to Lacus, there shouldn’t be any problems. If she is planning to leave the PLANTs, and nothing has been done about it yet, then she’s got some privacy in which to do all that. On the last day before whatever time we’ve set to leave, we…say good-bye, and then get to Lacus’s house. It’s not that great of a plan, but until we meet Lacus that’s all we have.”
“I’d better go repeat that to Yzak and Dearka.” Nicol yawned and stood up. “Wanna come?”
Athrun was about to say no, about to stay in his comfy little hiding corner of pain, but he remembered Nicol’s words- “…We cannot take the place of Kira. But we can at least…provide some companionship.”
Kira wouldn’t want me just lying here, wrapping myself in dark thoughts…
“Sure.”
A bright smile spread on Nicol’s face, and he tugged Athrun out of the room, chattering as though a switch had been flicked. “Come on, the sun’s out and it’s a beautiful day today. I think we can convince Yzak and Dearka to go out on deck- the captain had the sub surface earlier- and I saw a dolphin just awhile ago-”
Athrun let him babble on, a warm feeling spreading through him.
It’s good…to be back…
Rynae sighed in annoyance. Gray walls, gray floors, gray ceiling…even her view of the outside hallway was gray. Gah. Couldn’t they come up with a more exciting color? Not that she would have wanted hot pink- gods no- but still…
“Lunch,” came a cheerful voice, and Ryn turned to grin at Nicol.
“And what’s on the menu today?” she asked.
“Meatloaf, bread, corn, water.” Nicol handed her the tray. “Good news- I got Athrun out and about.”
“Really!” Ryn looked up, a bite halfway to her mouth. “How?”
“I just went in and talked to him a little. He was surprisingly good about it all. All of us went topside and lounged in the sun for awhile. Athrun looked much better when we went back in, and I left him arguing with Yzak.”
“Eh…Is that a good idea…?”
“They’re getting along much better now. Something happened before we left…but at any rate, they won’t kill each other. I think.”
Ryn snickered. “What’re they doing?”
“Playing games. That’s about all we have to do.”
“I see.”
“Oh, and Athrun told me the plan.” Nicol outlined the details, finishing with, “I think we can pull it off.”
“We’d better.” Rynae ate silently.
“You’ll…be okay?”
She glanced up, surprised. Nicol looked at the floor, awkward and fidgeting. She smiled.
“I’ll be fine, silly. What, you think I can’t deal with a bunch of bighead stupid morons?”
That earned her a laugh. “I suddenly feel sorry for them.”
“Don’t. I’d have to actually go easy on them then.”
Laughter rang through the cells.
“Dammit, you can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Because…rrrgh! I thought guns beat swords!”
“My agility’s higher. See?”
“The hell? That’s impossible!”
“I just did it. Obviously it’s not.”
“But- but- what-”
“Beat you.”
“ARRRRRRRGH!”
Athrun laughed. Yzak swelled up, looking about ready to punch something. Chortling, Dearka intervened.
“Come on, come on, break it up. Nicol said something about flying fish. Let’s go up on deck.”
Yzak grumbled an expletive under his breath, and, pushing past them, stormed through the door. Shaking with suppressed mirth, Dearka followed. Athrun paused, looking around for Nicol.
“Guys? Where’s Nicol?”
“He went down,” Dearka called back. He went down. Whenever one of them ‘went down’, it meant they had gone to see Rynae. Athrun frowned in thought, but dismissed his worries with a shake of his head, and sprinted after the two.
There were indeed flying fish in the water. Yzak and Dearka vainly attempted to catch some of them, yelling curses at the animals, until Athrun finally joined them and managed to accidentally whack one in Yzak’s direction…
…which resulted in an all-out fish war.
By the time the three struggled back to their quarters, they reeked of fish and salt water, and were soaked. Nicol was waiting for them, and he burst out laughing at the sight of them, dripping seawater and stinking. It took him a good five minutes to shut up under death threats from Yzak.
“I ought to take pictures and blackmail you guys,” Nicol chuckled.
“Don’t you dare,” Athrun warned, and then sneezed. “I claim shower first.”
“No you don’t! You hit me with the fish first, so I get in first.” Yzak shut the bathroom door behind him before Athrun could protest. The two sighed, defeated, and looked for a place to sit.
“Not in here!” Nicol called. “You’ll ruin the whole place!”
“Then where, pray tell?”
“Stand in a corner or something.”
“Whaaaat? I’m freezing my ass off! Come on, Nicol!”
“You get wet, you pay the consequences. Quit complaining, Dearka.”
“Please?”
“No puppy eyes, Athrun! They won’t work.”
“Damn.”
“YZAK, HURRY UP!”
“YOU WISH, IDIOT!”
Athrun opened up for the rest of the day, even as they approached Carpentaria and their fate. Yzak, after taking his sweet time in the shower, came out at last only to be pelted with soggy clothes and yells of complaints. Athrun ran into the bathroom and Dearka, swearing violently, was left to shower last.
Nicol, of course, was rolling around on the floor the whole time, ‘laughing his ass off’, as Dearka put it.
Card games, chess games, any and every type of games were played. They all paid a visit to Ryn, and she beat Dearka and Yzak both- to their chagrin. Athrun saw the fleeting look of wistfulness on Nicol’s face when they had to leave. Rynae would spend the night alone with little heat, on a cold bed with a single thin blanket. There wasn’t much they could do about that, since any help would be noticed.
“Hey, Athrun?”
“Yeah?” Athrun paused, turning back, while Yzak and Dearka continued on to their rooms. They’d arrive at Carpentaria tomorrow, early in the morning, so the captain had suggested they get some sleep.
“Could you come here for a second?” Nicol was sitting on his bed, flipping through what looked to be a sheaf of papers. Athrun entered the room and sat down beside Nicol.
“Sure. What are those?”
“Oh…These are some of my music.” Nicol showed the pages to Athrun. The older boy frowned quizzically at the notes.
“I can’t read music, Nicol.”
“Oh. Oh yeah. I forgot.” Sheepishly Nicol began to file away the papers.
“What are they for?”
“My first concert. I’m planning to have it…when there’s a time of peace. I was going over the pieces with Rynae. She says they’re great.”
“So you two are planning this all out?”
“Yeah.” Nicol’s eyes momentarily saddened. “I…know there won’t be peace any time soon…but…”
“So Ryn’s going to oversee your concert?” Athrun prodded, wanting to get Nicol back in spirits.
“Yep. I even got her to promise to play a duet with me on stage! She’s incredibly shy of playing in public.”
“She’s a musician?”
“Uh-huh. She plays the viola.”
“The…viola? Is that a type of violin?”
Nicol stifled a laugh. “Don’t say that to Ryn. She’d blow your head off.”
“What? Why?”
“Because violins are much more popular than violas, and often people don’t remember the violas and just focus on the violins. Ryn gets so worked up about that…She insists that the viola’s better than any other stringed instrument.”
“Uh….huh. What is the difference, anyway?”
“Well…she’d say it’s because the violin squeaks, but really it’s the strings. See, from high to low, there’s an A string, a D string, and a G string. Those are the three the viola and violin have in common. But there’s four strings on each. For the violin, it has a string higher in pitch than the A- an E string. The viola has the opposite- a string lower than the G- a C string. So although they’re similar in size- the viola’s bigger since it has a lower tone- they’re quite different.”
“O…kay…” Athrun blinked.
“You weren’t listening, were you?” Nicol asked, chuckling.
“I lost you as soon as you started talking about strings.”
“You know, the things that go across the bridge?”
“Bridge?”
“The things the musicians play on with their bows to make sound.”
“Oh…those?”
“Yes. Those. If you’re thinking the right thing.”
“I’m not a musician, okay?”
“Obviously.” Nicol laughed. “Go and get some sleep. I probably made your head hurt with that talk.”
“Um…would it be mean to say yes?”
“Just go.” Nicol shook his head, shaking with mirth.
As the sun fell, Athrun stood at the window in his room, staring out across the waves.
He felt…cold. It was approaching night, but there was no welcome body beside his, no comforting presence at his shoulder. Without Kira’s warmth, Athrun’s body seemed unable to function properly, and he was shivering as he curled up on his bed. He missed…his lover’s scent, the way Kira would snuggle against him at night, the way the violet-eyed boy tended to murmur incoherent words of sweetness just before he fell asleep.
He had only had a couple days with Kira, and yet…already…already he depended on the other.
Even with the blankets, Athrun did not sleep well that night, and dreamed restlessly of warm embraces and loving kisses.
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