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His back flat against the wall, his hand outstretched, his eyes fixed avidly on the familiar figure in front of him: that was how Kira’s dream started.
Athrun was standing in a dank back hall, the stairs leading down and down into some black hole of a basement, seemingly unaware that someone was observing him with an intense concentration. He slumped against the wall, passing his left hand over his face.
He was dressed in the work clothes that Kira had often seen him in, a white shirt that was still unwrinkled even after a day at the lab, the top button pulled open, the dark navy pants and jacket of a suit. Now that he was within a mere few inches of Athrun, Kira’s heart seemed to be thumping so loudly that he could hear it. He watched as Athrun jerked suddenly and turned, his eyes intense and deep. Kira felt a shot of arousal clutch his waist.
“Who is there?”
“It’s me, Athrun.”
Athrun’s surprise was evident, for it took a moment to register. “Harle.” He straightened at once, his face impassive again, the trail of tears almost invisible in the dim light. “I thought you would be asleep by now.”
The man named Harle slipped past Kira, not even acknowledging his presence. “I couldn’t,” he replied, his voice deep and scratchy. “Athrun, I need to talk to you.”
“Of course.”
“I mean, I…” The man stared at him in the faint light of the back stairs, reached out, touched the sleeve of Athrun’s jacket. “No one else is here, is there?”
Athrun froze as he gazed down on the gloved hand on his arm, and clearly he sensed the older man’s desperate tone, his shifting eyes, and even his pain. There was a glint of panic too. Kira had seen all of that.
Harle continued, saying, “There’s something I have to tell you. Something about me.”
Athrun remained silent, waiting, his discomfort obvious. Kira squinted, trying to get a better view of Harle, but all he could make out was his tall frame outlined by the light behind him.
“Will you come closer?” Harle took a deep breath, struggling to add, “Will you hold me?”
They hesitated, both of the men in that hallway, and then, Athrun reached forward, wrapped his arms around the other, and took him slowly, warmly in his arms. Kira could get used to not eating, to having toothache or a pain in his stomach, he could even get used to the absence of a beloved person; but he could never get used to jealousy. His jealousy was not the same sort as he had known previously when his imagination would set off some agonising erotic fantasy; this was just as painful yet more destructive: if the Athrun he had known was but an illusion, then so was the whole of Kira’s life.
In the end, his love prevailed over his jealousy and his doubts. The two men had, intentionally or not, moved further from the stairs. Athrun stepped back, felt the wall at his back, realised he was cornered. He pulled away gently from the embrace. “You want a cup of coffee? There’s a midnight café just down the street. You can just start talking. I have no judgements, trust me.”
“No.” Desperately, the man clutched Athrun by the arm, held him right there in that back hall. “I want… want you.”
Athrun could not hide his surprise, and his green eyes opened wide. “Wait, just think about it. I don’t think we really – ”
“You don’t understand.”
And to make things absolutely clear, Harle reached into his pocket and quickly pulled out an object. It was a knife, an altogether sharp tool that could carve meat. “Just take off your clothes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Athrun said, a nervous laughter bursting from his mouth as he stared incredulously at the glinting weapon. And then he tried to push Harle away, blurting angrily, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Harle grabbed him and pressed the knife much too hard against Athrun’s abdomen, ordering, “First the jacket, then the shirt.”
Shit, Kira thought, his heart pounding, his throat tightening. The air was almost throbbing with malevolence. His mind was so much occupied with the unspoken turmoil of thoughts that it was all his body could do to breathe. Unable to move any limb, the last thing he saw through leaden eyelids was that Athrun had collapsed to the ground, held down by the full weight of the other man, struggling in vain in a growing pool of blood.
Laird Biomedical Research Facility, Orb Union, C.E. 73 6.05, 0700 hours
Kira had never known what death would be like until it happened. Long afterwards, he thought that it must have been like what happens to a mind that goes instantly and totally mad. And worse, for here the world went mad. The appearances of things ran wild, black seemed white, green seemed red, all flickering and throbbing as if the sun had swallowed the solar system. The endless dull roar of thunder filled his ears and mind; he felt sick and ill, cold and hot at once, his eyes closing to slits, a constriction growing in his throat.
The dream woke him. He thought perhaps he was alone, he heard nothing: only an irritating buzz in his ears. Still in the grip of the dream of which he had absolutely no recollection, he felt an urgent need to see a familiar face. He rose stiffly and made for the half-open door of the room. There he stopped, his passage blocked by a crumpled cloak draped across the doorway. Kira stooped, peered closer, and saw with a shock that the dark heap was not a cloak, but a man. The figure lay face upward, twisted at a terrible angle.
It occurred to Kira, looking at the small still face, that he knew the person. Dr. Kavne: a coordinator respected in the field for his work. He was brilliant, yes – but a man nonetheless, and mortal. The white face flickered, and the eyes opened. Pain came into them, and the shadow of a different, remembered pain.
“They betrayed us,” Dr. Kavne whispered bitterly.
Kira stared at him, horrified, unable to say or do anything for the moment.
“Yes,” he continued. “I should have known it would happen.” The researcher gasped with pain as he tried to move his head; then dreadful, desolate hopelessness came into the youthful face. “Only my head… I feel my head, because of the pain. But my arms, my legs, they are… not there… I can’t breathe…”
“Who did this? Are there any other survivors?”
A spasm of pain flashed across his face and was gone. But the eyes that looked up at Kira were bright, lively. “Use the gift well, Kira.”
“Dr. Kavne?”
But the light had gone out behind the bright eyes, and there was no longer anyone there. Kira knelt for a while, head bowed in grief, still clasping the dead hand. It was quite some time before he could gather his thoughts and consider what to do next.
Laird Biomedical Research Facility, Orb Union, C.E. 73 6.05, 0930 hours
Lacus paced irritably. Where is Dr. Kavne? For that matter, where is everyone else? The research facility was deserted, utterly devoid of life. There was more than a mood invading her mind; a strangeness she could not define, had known vaguely in the past. A restlessness, a half-fearful anticipation of something part of her seemed to understand and part not… Lacus sighed.
When her father told her about her engagement to Athrun Zala, she was thirteen. When she decided to move in with Kira, she must have been sixteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, she no longer remembered what she had said to Athrun three years before. It was too bad really. The memory might have alerted her. It might have helped her see that her choices were wholly theoretical, made without the slightest self-knowledge.
Thus she clung to Kira for two years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if her inner self should keep as silent as it had before? Solitude, freedom, her pleasant and rewarding work as a performer, and, by way of a change, the new anxiety about maintaining the fragile equilibrium of peace – such, all of a sudden, was her lot. But with it went a savage defiance, a compassion for the milieu where she had lived, and a stupid fear of intimacy. Very quickly, too, there came to her that odd sensation that only on the stage was she really alone and safe from the world, protected by the barrier of light.
The others’ voices receded as she wandered deeper into the facility on her own, through the endless corridors, until suddenly the air was cold on her face and she found herself at the entrance to the cryogenics lab. From behind, she heard a call and turned: Da Costa. He motioned for her to get behind him; she promptly obeyed and they entered the lab cautiously.
The sight that permeated her vision was so horrible that for a moment, panic engulfed her like ice-cold water. She tried to scream, and brought out only a strangled croak. Her arms and legs would not move.
The muffled discussion in the corridor had broken off. A voice – one of her personal guards – flung through the air in a hoarse urgent shout. “Miss Clyne!” The echo followed it “… Clyne!… Clyne!… ” like a whispered warning. In quick instinct, Lacus swung round towards the lab entrance, and found that in the short while she had spent in the lab, a whole squadron of soldiers, clothed in uniforms bearing the insignia of the Orb Union, had somehow crept behind them and marked them from all angles. The safety on Da Costa’s revolver was off, but they were hopelessly outnumbered.
Onogoro Island, Orb Union, C.E. 73 6.05, 0955 hours
A decade or a few hours later, on her way to a meeting in Orb, Cagalli very nearly fell into a wartime shelter.
Sometime during the morning, a distant explosion of unknown origin had provided the last little bit of weight and vibration that could be withstood by a street paved over the hastily constructed shelter and the whole crazy hollow thing collapsed. The road maintenance crew had not gotten around to putting up barriers around the hole and the chauffeur, hurrying as usual, almost drove right into it. Only a nagging presentiment warned him that something was not right and he slowed down, stopping just short of a historically interesting automobile accident. This was the kind of thing that kept her constantly on edge in Orb: her entire experience in the haphazardly re-built state sounded better than it lived.
Cagalli had planned to see Kira that very morning, but the impeccable timing of Orb’s administrative consortium had decided to call an urgent meeting, the details of which were yet to be revealed. She hoped Lacus would be able to catch him fresh after the long rest and to talk some sense into him. Somebody needed to let Kira know exactly which rock and what kind of hard place he was between.
If Athrun had been unwilling to talk about what transpired on the satellite, the crew that had serviced the Hegira on his return, against all odds, had suffered from no such reticence. The media had played the drama for all it was worth, releasing it in tiny episodes, milking the interest and the money even after statements were released to clear Athrun of all charges.
Eventually, they got to the part of the story where the truth of Junius 7 was revealed, and the shit hit the proverbial fan. The nuclear destruction of the agricultural colony was transformed from a tragic incident into an ugly scandal: violence, murder and conspiracy, doled out in teasing, skin-crawling doses. The private lives of the Zala family, Kira Yamato and Rau Le Kleuze were dragged into the light and piously tittered over by the commentators whose own behaviour went unexamined. Only Athrun had survived to be reviled and so he became the focus for the outrage, despite the fact that people who had known him before the “Satellite incident” generally remembered with fondness or respect.
It would not have mattered if Athrun had played a decisive role in bringing about the end of the last war, Cagalli thought. In the PLANTs, the contempt he was regarded with was compounded by the fact that he was the son of Patrick Zala. Maybe he thought he could keep a low profile and the interest would die. Cagalli doubted it; the media would hunt him down and eat him alive.
She stepped out of the car and started towards the Coliseum. A bird swooped overhead, and its piping cry faded into the wind, a long laugh ending in a husky croak. It sounded vaguely familiar. Cagalli stopped. Torii?
Hardly daring to hope, she began to run, away from the building. The clouds flew over her head faster than she, rushing eastwards; yet into her face the rising wind blew, stronger and stronger, picking up particles as it rose.
Voices called her name; she saw her aides rushing towards her from the building. But something drove her to ignore them, to run on. And then she stumbled as ahead of her a figure took shape against the brilliant sun, like an apparition in a golden mist. The bars of cloud overtook the sun and the blazing light died, all colour dropping away, and before her stood her brother.
Cagalli’s yell was pure triumphant delight. “Kira!”
“Hey!” Kira returned, beaming, and yelped as his sister barrelled into him.
And in a great blaze of yellow-white light, the sun re-emerged from behind the thick clouds and shone down on the close bodies of the reunited siblings.
… …End of Bridging Chapter… …
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