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Chapter Text

“Will you ever return to space?” Lalah asked him, one morning as they strolled through their garden. She was wearing an apron a neighbor had sewn out of old rice bags, and tucked in her pocket were a pair of garden shears. She crouched and examined the lavender plants like they were more important to her than what she’d asked him. 

“I don’t know,” Char mused. He had a basket looped over one arm for Lalah to place her trimmings in. “Maybe not.” 

She hummed at him, and pulled the shears out of her apron to clip off more of the blooms. Their rich purple was beautiful against her fingertips. 

That was that, for a while. They didn’t talk about it. There were better things for the two of them to discuss: Lalah’s budding business as a florist, and Char’s work helping the townspeople with minor car repairs; Lalah’s attempts to contact her former coworkers, and Char’s quarterly visits to his former protege. They were mundane things, enough to make anyone decently happy and satisfied with their life, but Char heard the echo of Lalah’s question bounce endlessly through his head. 

Char knew he should return to space. He knew where he belonged, and he didn’t belong here, tied by the inexorable pull of Earth, living this peaceful life under its gravity. But there was something about the vast expanse beyond its reach that filled him with dread. 

When he’d been in the military academy, there was a rumor going around about a haunted restroom by the dorms. People had died there, some said. People had been killed there, told others. The room would make you its sacrifice, another rumor foretold. None of the boys wanted to go in there at night, even on a dare. They could put on airs and pretend they didn’t mind only so long as the lights were on and the sun was peeking through the frosted glass of the windows. When the lights were off and Char was holed up in his dorm room for the night, he never failed to notice that the footsteps that passed his room during the night would turn towards the further restroom down the hallway to the left of his door, rather than the haunted one further down on the right. 

There was no warm, smiling light in space to chase away the darkness. The sun’s rays held no mercy. He, a man of thirty years old, had become one of those boys afraid of the dark and what could be lurking in it. 

Not going to space didn’t seem to help the problem, though.  

Lalah frowned at him night after night when he woke her up with his violent thrashing. He never seemed to know how to explain his nightmares, so he didn't try to. Shamefully clutching to her wrist to keep himself from drowning in the ocean of his own mind, he would instead drift at its surface in his half-asleep state.

Night after night it went. Inevitably, the battered dinghy of his consciousness would capsize, night after night, into stormy waters.

And there, he would drown again. The ocean swallowed him up and kept him crushed under its weight. Alone in the ink-dark water, he would be found by the one he ran from.

Hands in a white normal suit reaching for his throat and making contact. The fabric of the gloves was so rough that it burned his skin. 

Brown, curly hair falling into his eyes as he looked out at a version of himself that cycled through a variety of unfamiliar outfits and looked like a dead man walking. But it was not himself, so he could freely loathe the sight before him, scratching and biting at edges that are and are not belonging to his own soul until they bear the blunt marks of his nails and teeth.  

A mother’s voice shouting beratements at him after he’d saved himself from certain death. His heart wrenched with love, and hate, and shame, and pride, and split itself into every minute point that laid between those four directions on a compass rose. 

Tens of thousands of swords being driven towards his eyes, and only one glancing off his forehead, leaving a deep wound that healed instantly into a scar. Even still, it would bleed into his eyes, blinding him, turning the whole world red. 

Down-turned, dark eyes looking at him with a depth of disappointment that rivaled the vastness of the greater galaxy. Char wanted to eat those eyes whole, and the impulse made no sense. 

Char could do nothing in his dreams but give in to these visions and watch, night after night, as he was tormented by them. It was his penance, somehow. But when he did give in, those eyes grew sad. 

“What do you want?” He would shout into the void of space. He was always in his own normal suit from the One-Year War, though he disliked wearing it, and he always held a sword, though he had never used one in any part of that conflict. Sometimes his sword broke as soon as he realized it was there, and the shards of it drifted off into the darkness. Those shards belonged to someone else. So did that part of him. 

Char should know what his dream wanted of him. It tormented him night after night.

This wasn’t his dream, though. Of course he couldn’t know. That tormented him, too. If things were as they should have been, he would know everything, because he would live underneath the skin of someone else, sharing everything. Every moment, every breath, every thought, they would all be his. Greed and envy consumed him in equal measure. 

“Even now, I disappoint you? Haven’t I done enough?” He would try, from time to time, when he felt that feeling. The sentence made no sense to him, but for in these dreams. 

The stars themselves seemed to find him repugnant, their light balefully burning against his skin as they stared at him. It wasn’t the soft, sad feeling those cow eyes he saw through the darkness gave him; it was something white-hot and furious, and when he felt it, he felt like he was about to be killed. Good, for his hubris, for his faults, let him be struck down. He had made the ultimate mistake. 

Or, had he? 

But if he hadn’t, how could he be so full of fault? He was trying to be better. Challia had lit a path for him, and Lalah’s hand guided him along it when he felt his feet turning to stray from it. 

Was that enough? Had it been enough, or had his hands already been stained by a fresh sea of blood?

Why would Lalah ask him if was going to go to space? Without her by his side, who was he to be? If he went back, would he fall down the wrong path again? If he did, would Challia make well on his promise? If he did, would Char blame him, or would he revere him for it? 

He couldn’t go to space. Space was where the other half of his soul waited in the dark, and he feared nothing more than to meet it. Him. 

“You were calling out in your sleep again,” Lalah commented one morning over breakfast. Char usually cooked for them. He’d overslept; the nightmares had kept him up until the predawn light started to peek through the curtains when he'd finally crashed, disgusted by his fearful avoidance of his own subconscious. Lalah’s attempts at cooking were haphazard at best; she’d chosen the underripe bananas, and the oatmeal was made with too little water, and the eggs had shells in them. But Char loved it when she tried, so he enjoyed the plate, despite that it was on the whole too firm. 

Chewing gave him an excuse. He hummed without saying anything. That counted as a response.

“Captain,” she called, after a few quiet minutes spent eating. She always called him that when she was serious. Char had stopped asking about it. He didn’t like it when she cried, and interrogating her about those memories of him that were-and-were-not hers led that way more often than not. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Just fine.” Knee jerk response. Lalah frowned at him. The disappointed purse of her lips was so different from that mouth in his dreams, which was wide and had chapped lips that would twist into a disgusted scoff when he spoke. They both hated what a liar he was. “I’m going to Samon’s this morning to pick up some parts for Rion’s old beater. What are your plans for the day?”

Lalah took a careful sip of her morning tea - Earl Grey, Char knew, because caffeine made her anxious and anxiety made her memories worse and worse. “Captain,” she said eventually, calling for him in that careful and measured way of hers, rolling the syllables around in her mouth like she savored the very chance to taste them, and yet expected that she would always be able to. “I want you to be happy.” Her words fell from her mouth like marbles onto the table of Char’s mind, striking with a firm and bright sound. They rattled around inside the empty husk of him. If they were right for each other, he could imagine they alone could fill up the entirety of him, even down to his smallest corners.

“I know.” 

“Then, shouldn’t you do something?” 

Char smiled, indulgent. Of course, he was always indulgent, enough to make her think that he would do anything she wanted. Maybe he would. 

Lalah was satisfied to see that look on his face. He wasn’t sure how it appeared. He had stopped caring about how he looked around her soon after they’d met, a moment when his soul had sighed out in long-awaited relief. When she smiled back, he knew that was fine.

Chapter Text

It’s no longer the season for lavender. Now, Lalah reaches up on her tip-toes, arms stretched as far as they can go, to cut through the strong necks of sunflowers whose faces bow down to kiss the crown of her head. White dandelion fluff catches in her hair when the wind blows it their way, stars dotting the dark sea.

Char is a faithful assistant, so he stands by to catch Lalah around the waist whenever she stretches too far and loses her balance. She laughs coyly when he suggests that he could get the taller flowers, and doesn't let him. Instead, she passes him the wicker basket she uses to hold the sunflower heads, and lets him diligently collect them as they are lopped off.

He still isn’t happy. The way that the light shines through the sunflowers’ petals makes Lalah’s cheeks glow butter-yellow. That’s enough to carry him through the days. Nights bring a different yellow glow: the moon, peeking through the pollution-soaked atmosphere, yearning to caress the earth with its light.

Dim and dusty, his dreams offer no solace, either. Again and again, he feels the glancing blow of a saber through his shoulder, a crack of another helmet against his own, a blow as he's pushed back onto the grass and made to take it as he's punched again, and again. The grass smells like home, though, and the sight of blood makes his heart race. It's too red, and not red enough, because it's not placed against the white kevlar he wants to see it paint. It falls between his own fingers, pooling in his mouth and covering his teeth with iron and fuel.

When he sleeps, he is radioactive and he is inert. Snow falls across his eyelids, and a kind set of blunt, calloused fingers comes up to wipe it away, caressing him like it means something.

While he sleeps, he is alive and he is dead. Strapped into an unfamiliar cockpit, he's slammed against a force larger than himself, over and over, like he's inside a rock being bashed against someone's skull.

He wakes in the middle of the night often, after these dreams reach their abrupt ends and send him careening into consciousness, to a sliver of moonlight shining through the window onto an empty wall. The remains of some ancient wallpaper, once bright and green and covered in vibrant creeping vines, is dull and peeling, providing only a hint of a life that once existed. There is never anyone standing there in front of the wallpaper. Char always feels eyes on him anyways; eyes dark as night which would gleam like stars themselves if the moon would only kiss their surface. Beside him, Lalah sleeps.

Some scenes strike him with a vivid sense of realism: no one would imagine that the street of Londenion would smell like trash and sweat, and no one could imagine how loud the silent clash of hand-to-hand combat in space would sound, unless they experienced it firsthand. It jars him to feel the hand of gravity clutched tight around him when he awakens, sometimes.

Time passes, and his dreams disorient its passage. The sunflowers bow low to the ground now, honoring Lalah's procession as a retinue of guards would a noble queen's when she walks between them.

“What will you do,” Lalah asks as they walk along the dirt perimeter of her field, in between cutting down another sun from the sky, letting it crash to the earth, and allowing Char to scavenge its wreckage, “about the letter you received?” 

Char had known this question was coming. That letter, which he’d pretended to toss carelessly into the compost bin that morning, ate at the corners of his mind. It was stamped with the insignia of the Republic of Zeon Military, corners battered from the long trip down to the surface from Lagrange 2, and was addressed: Care of Char Aznable, Lieutenant Colonel, 47th Division, Republic of Zeon Armed Forces, Armored Assault Force. 

He hasn’t told Lalah of the contents of the letter. He'd read them and tried to ignore the way that they made his brain burn with foreign disgust. He did not care for Zeon either way, anymore, having laid it to rest with his once-haughty visions. He did not know from where this feeling had come. Did it matter anymore? The feelings came, and he let the heady flood of them rush through the tired arroyos of his brain. Red rivers of well-rehearsed anger were accompanied by a foreign memory of blonde hair and admiration, but he did not find those so foreign after all, so he could nearly mistake them for his own recollections at first.

“I think I will have to arrange a ticket to Zum City,” he muses, returning to Lalah's side from his thoughtful retreat into his own mind, “because unfortunately, my sister is no longer someone I can avoid.”

“You have a sister?! Captain, you never said!” 

Lalah sounds downright delighted. This makes for a good distraction, though Char wonders how through all of the lives Lalah has lived with other versions of him, Artesia has never come up in any of them. Guilt niggles at the corner of his mind at the concept that she was never so present in her life as to even be worth mentioning to Lalah. Char spends the rest of their walk fielding questions about a woman he hasn’t seen since the One-Year War and hasn’t truly known for many years before that. Woven between his own recollections are others, but he shares them as if they are his own, and feels the quiet joy of another when he gives them new voice.

The trip is thoroughly unremarkable. 

He fears leaving earth, that much is true. Ghosts lurk around every star when he looks up at the night sky. Returning to space should have been the culmination of his dread - somehow, he surely would drop dead as soon as his body stopped being tied down by gravity. Around him, the passengers of the commercial spaceflight clamor with excitement, crowding around the windows to watch the atmosphere fall away beneath them. Char is not entertained: he has seen it often enough, so he simply closes his eyes, and feels the sensation of another person sitting in the empty seat adjacent to his own.

In his dreams he has started to fight back. When that hand rises to cup his cheek, then falls to grip his throat, he curls his fingers around the wrist. He finds himself in a mobile suit and he pretends he's in the One-Year War, fighting to the death. He doesn't lose, the dreams always end before that, but he knows it's close every time. It made his ghost - who he really was starting to think of as 'his ghost,' something truly haunting him - more active. Char awoke at night to a dark shadow hanging above him, saw green shimmers at the corner of his eye when he went out in the sun, felt hands curling around his own when he picked up his toolbox and left at the beginning of a day to help the townspeople.

The morning of his trip, he'd had a beautiful dream. He flew over a large lake, sheltered by the curve of great mountains. The sunset curled luxurious over the water, casting everything in orange, and he'd felt free. A giant metal hand cupped him, but he was safe. He stared up with anticipation as a great gold mobile suit swooped down towards him. The mobile suit cracked open and he saw himself step out - Char Aznable - free as a bird, with great sunglasses and overgrown blond hair flowing in the wind, skin glowing molten in the gold sunset. This was how someone else was seeing him. He awoke with a smile, and pressed it into Lalah's cheek as he picked up his shoulder bag and left.

Maybe his fighting back has had a real consequence. Maybe it's why, when he exits the atmosphere, a weight that's more than just gravity lifts from his shoulders. Space is still here, and he can still find his place within it. His place is beside another. Someone waits here for him, and though it initially worried him, he's not sure it does anymore. Perhaps it is fine to be waited for, though animosity and fondness battles in the way their mind grinds sandpaper-rough against his own. Yes, it's fine; he can hold his own against the onslaught. 

His destination finds him standing at attention, heels clicked together and hand placed in a textbook salute for a period just long enough to make him sweat. There is no ghost waiting for him here besides one of his past; he is alone in the room except for the presence swirling tight around his own mind. His elbow is starting to shake before Challia Bull breaks his silence and tells him, “At ease, Lieutenant Colonel.” 

His hand is lowered to his side, but Char doesn’t speak. It’s somehow offensive to be made to submit like this now, but if it’s to Challia Bull, he doesn’t mind overly much. After all, while Char had been messing around with side projects and arranging the dominos to fall just right, Challia has been playing his own game. If there is one person in Zeon that Char can respect, it is his M.A.V.

“As you are aware, some demerits are in order here,” Challia states. Those cold eyes stare at him with all the serenity of one of the carved jade statues he’d seen down on Earth’s surface, crowding the stairs and alcoves of temples. “Shirouzu Nakaura’s participation in the sabotage of the Yomagn'tho site would have been enough for him to receive a dishonorable discharge and have his Zeon citizenship stripped. His scheme was uncovered and found to be vast enough to poison the entire project.”

Char inclines his head slightly. “If I may-”

“Shirouzu Nakaura died in the Yomagn'tho Incident, Lieutenant Colonel. Officially, he’s been marked killed in action, though he wasn’t an active duty soldier. I reference him only to illustrate the severity of what happened that day,” Challia cuts him off and continues, tone light. “However, Char Aznable has been cleared of any wrongdoing. Her Majesty Deikun saw fit to allow it.” 

“Where is she?” The letter had expressly ordered him to appear at an audience before Artesia, which Casval had dreaded. Instead, he’d come to find his M.A.V. alone in this boardroom, his fingers steepled under his proud chin. Too proud. He’d asked security to leave them alone when Char entered in his typical red and black. 

“As you can imagine, she’s busy running her nation,” Challia says, wry, but Char can see the way his mouth turns up at the corner. “She asked that I apologize on her behalf for her being unable to catch up. She had planned on it, after all -- cleared her schedule citing family reasons and everything, but you understand. You can plan a picnic, and all that.” 

Strange turn of phrase for a Spacenoid, Char thinks, who has only ever experienced the planned weather patterns of the Colonies. 

Papers are slid at him across the table. Char moves to lean forward and grab them, but Challia stops him with a raised hand. He recites his next words like he’s practiced them in front of a mirror tens of times: wooden, with the staggering faux-confident familiarity of a young piano student playing their first recital. “Lieutenant Colonel Char Aznable, you are being honorably discharged from the Republic of Zeon Armed Forces, effective today. You were still assigned to Kycilia Zabi during your long absence, but after her untimely death, I’ve been promoted to her position. As your direct superior officer, therefore, it’s my responsibility to inform you. You’ll get the papers in the mail.” 

“I… see.” 

“Whatever you do next is up to you,” Challia cautions, more genuine now that he’s moved past the formalities, “but now that you are no longer under my command, I would like to share with you a job opportunity. In that folder, you’ll see the details, which you can review later at your leisure. To put it simply: we need someone experienced in the field but uninvolved with the military. We need the work to stay off-record.” 

“How underhanded of you,” Char responds, pleased. “And what am I to be doing?”

“Just stay on Earth, as you have been. We’ll contact you when you’re needed. It’s all reconnaissance, or so we expect for now.” 

“Is the ‘we’ you mention just yourself, Challia?”

Challia’s eyes turn harder than jade. He continues as if he was not interrupted. “Recon will be on the Federation’s movements. This business with the Solar Ray could still escalate tensions with them if we’re not careful. We need a man who can keep his finger on their pulse. So if you can, start making your way into Federation circles. No need to formally enlist under them, though. Just get close enough to… well, you’re experienced enough, I’m sure you can figure it out. But. Before that, I’d like you to check on my pet project.”

Char hums. He misses the strange physical sensations that his ghost would have pushed at him during such a moment. He isn't sure why it's not the same within this room. “You must have many of those.” 

That gets a laugh out of his M.A.V. “Less than you’d think. You’re the one who keeps too many irons in the fire, not me. Do you remember that red-haired pilot from that day at Yomagn'tho?”

“Somewhat.” She’d been as starstruck by him as someone who had never piloted, but he knows that somehow, she brought about the achievement of his own goals. It had been soon after that day when he'd begun to feel strange things, when he'd begun to be haunted.

“Yes, well, unfortunately, she’s still got our flagship Gundam,” Challia sighs, “and as I told her, if she leaves with it, she’ll essentially have stolen it. Her Majesty is being lenient on me, for now… But I need to make sure that she either brings it to me or, alternatively, confirms that she’ll only use it for Zeon’s purposes. If not, I’ll need to have her brought in and court-maritaled, and I’d rather not do that to the girl.”

“I take it she’s on Earth with it?”

“Yes, so before you get involved in what I’d really like you to work on, go check on her. She never returns my calls, but maybe she’ll make time for the illustrious Red Comet.”

“Hm, I don’t know,” Char teases, “the Grey Ghost is much more popular these days.”

Challia laughs again. This time, it sounds honest. “I’m off at seven. Let’s grab a drink.”

“As your old war buddy, I hope, and not as your new employee.”

“Oho, so you’ve accepted the job. I’ll meet you at the Revelation tonight. You’ll find it. Dismissed, and thank you for your service, Lieutenant Colonel.”

Char salutes the man who used to be his inferior officer and exits, the sheaf of papers Challia had given him tucked under his arm. No ghost accompanies him out of the room. 

The drinks make him feel weird. Or maybe it’s space making him feel weird. Or maybe it’s just the sensation of being near his M.A.V., that one person with whom his mind connects like two interlocking gears on a more complex machine. To continue that comparison, he feels rather like someone has spilled oil on the gears to make them gum up and stop; as soon as he'd left his M.A.V.'s presence, the sensations he's grown familiar with rush back in and leave him drowning. He struggles to walk underneath the ocean of it, and stumbles as he walks up the hallway to his hotel room.

Emotions swim by him.

Annoyance. Frustration. All presumably at him. Well, sue him -he'd wanted a whiskey, and a nostalgic glass of wine to chase it, and then a margarita for the hell of it. Could a man not have fun anymore? His ghost would argue that no, a man could not have fun anymore, he guesses.

Nostalgia. Char's not sure what that's all about.

Fondness. Char's really not sure what that's all about.

He focuses on the overwhelming aggravation directed his way. It's enough to almost trip him as he unlocks his room, leaning heavily against the door. Then he really does trip, and stumbles as he walks into his room.

“Don't know what has you so mad. It's your fault I need to loosen up,” he slurs, to nothing and no one. “Everything’s… your fault." But to say he's speaking to no one is not really true; he’s speaking to someone, and he’s flinging allegations that would be better directed at himself. That ghost of his is sitting on his bed besides him, weightless and colorless, but Char can almost taste the shape of him on his tongue. He is there. Char knows it.

“I don’t understand,” he sighs, after he unzips his pants and lays back on the mattress, “what I ever did to you. Why should I have to be… haunted by you.” 

That inspires the mental equivalent of a nail running along a chalkboard. Char feels like that same nail is being scratched across his forehead until he bleeds. He palms his face, rubs his hand up beneath his sunglasses, and covers the spot until the sensation goes away. 

“Don’t be so furious at me, I’m not responsible for your life and your problems… I don’t even know you,” Char continues, even though he knows they both know it is all his fault, somehow. Isn't everything always just his fault? What a regretful idea, but he can't deny its truth. His mouth is dry and stuffed with cotton, and he really wishes he’d gotten some water before laying down. His palm is sweaty against the bridge of his nose, and the air he’s breathing in is too hot and close, but he doesn’t move.

That needling feeling against the center of his eyebrows which has bothered him since he returned to the hotel room turns into a glancing stroke. Thumb rubbing back and forth against his skin in an apology. Pitying. He doesn't want pity.

“You motherfucker,” he sighs. “Stop that. I’m not even…" He's so tired. He can barely string together an intelligent sentence. "It's my fault? Is it all my fault? Really... self-centered… like I'm a martyr, or a, a human sacrifice… or an effigy… or a… well, I'm not…” 

His ghost prods at him and asks what he could possibly be, if he's none of the above. Something seems wry about it. Maybe it would be a joke if they knew each other.

Difficult question; who is he? Simple answer. He’s Char Aznable. “I’m Char Aznable…” Well, is it that simple? He doesn’t have to be Char Aznable anymore - in fact, for quite some time, he was Shirouzu Nakaura, but that can't hold anymore. Challia had stripped him of that. In any case, his ghost is dissatisfied with his answer. The pitying caress turns into a hand resting against his throat.  

He tries, “Casval rem Deikun,” but that doesn’t feel right either. It’s been too long since he tossed that hat, and now he doesn’t need to dig it back out of the trash and don it in the future. Artesia has taken up the mantle of the Deikun heir, and he wishes she'd had time enough for him, so that he could thank her. If he'd had the courage to, anyways. 

“I’m Mr. Sune…” It's what the townspeople call him. Lalah wants him to go by Ray, too, as a first name. She told him it 'had a nice ring to it,' but Char found the idea of being called Ray annoying; the name just didn't suit him. The alcohol has made him so tired. His eyelids are made of concrete. “Ray, Sune… Hm, no,” he curls to one side, face cupped in his own hand. Another traces around it but does not stick.

He's sick of talking about himself. Who is his ghost? He wishes he could ask the ghost that’s clung to him, but he doesn’t say it.

In his dream, he sees the Kikeroga loom above him. It's twice as large as he remembers, a bloated pale corpse filling the cockpit visor before him. Challia must be inside, because he feels the clicking gears of the man's thoughts reconnect to his own, ticking carefully to their own time. Before he can do more than register what he is seeing, the Kikeroga falls. Char watches out of the cockpit of his Gundam as a white-painted beam sabre cuts through its core. That interlocking mechanism in his brain is ripped out while it still runs, the gears shredding his fingers with their teeth as he pulls out its cauterized heart with hands wrapped in surgical white. From behind, he can distinctly feel the sensation of himself, far away, watching without any particular interest at all.