Falling Snowflakes
by: frost2light
I do not own Gundam Seed.
Italics are thoughts and the story is written in different perspectives and different ages.
Summary: In the alternate universe where I created for this ficcie, there is only two categories which are the "black" and the "white". Athrun Zala is from the "white" consisting of policemen and people who work honestly while the "black" zone consists people who usually prefer violent methods to settle their needs. Kira Yamato and his sister are from the "black"zone. This fanfiction has Cagalli and Athrun as a pairing and Kira as the protector of this small blossoming love.
"Papa…have I ever made you proud?" A young boy with brown haired asked the man who stood with his back facing the young child.
"Papa…why do I have to kill?" An elder version asked the man who was still not facing the boy.
"Papa…why did you have to kill me?" The man was finally facing the boy and the only answer that came out from him was the sound of the releasing bullet.
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Kira Yamato's POV twenty years old
"Stop it! Stop it! Damn it! Both of you are best friends! What in the world are the both of you doing?!" Cagalli Yula Athha ran back and forth between the both of us, her golden amber eyes were both accusing and desperate. She did not understand what could have happened for this day to come. She did not need to understand, she could not have understood, because neither did I. I did not understand why years of friendship had to end up like this. Was fate really that harsh? That cruel?
Why was I pointing this gun at his head? Why am I trying to kill the one person I trusted and knew would guard my back in any circumstances? I did not know the answers to those questions but all I knew that I had to protect Cagalli. She was acting her part well and Cagalli need not understand the emotions that I am feeling right now. All she had to do was to do what I had told her to do, because there was no way I could have found the words to explain to her either.
"Give it up Kira Yamato!" Athrun Zala shouted, his voice calm, his emerald green eyes ruthless, all emotion gone from his usually expressive face. He was serious. He would shoot me. I did not know whether to feel disappointed that our friendship meant that little to him, or proud that people like him still existed. They would go to their ends to protect what was important to them. I smiled inwardly, happy that Cagalli had chosen a man that was honourable.
"Kira! Listen to him! Athrun! Put down the damn gun!" Cagalli continued like an annoying fly buzzing about, a headless one at that. She was really into her role, playing the confused poor girl, but maybe, maybe it was not all acting either. Those tears that came were real, she was terrified, terrified that something would go wrong. Her eyes kept flicking towards me, checking, and her tears were already starting to slide down her pale, harassed face, and she brushed at them impatiently.
"It's come to this hasn't it Athrun…It has really torn us both apart. I did tell you this day would come didn't I?"
"Aa…yes you did warn me about this. But, if you think that just because we are friends and I won't let you go, you are wrong. I won't betray my badge."
"And I won't betray my family."
"So be it, Kira Yamato."
"So be it Athrun Zala."
"Sayanora." Both of us said at the same time and the time slowed, slowed for us to remember everything that will and shall happen. Both of us heard the cocking of our guns, both of us heard that last desperate wail that Cagalli gave and both of us released what our hearts would never do but what our brain controlled. Our fingers depressed the trigger and watched the bullets fly out of the muzzle, the scent of gunpowder, the recoil.
It was done as the first of the snowflakes fell on a bright sunny day.
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Athrun's POV, 10 years old
A small yelp could be heard not far from where I was standing, it sounded surprised and ended on a note of pain. My eyebrows raised a little as I excused myself from my friends and tried to investigate where the sound had come from. My parents had taught me to be polite, to always keep my manners because I was the heir to the Zala fortune and therefore no matter how young I was, I needed to be better than others. My emerald green eyes, the pride of the family, searched the area and finally found the source of sound.
A boy.
A brown haired boy who looked the same age as me.
And a boy who had just recently scraped his knee. He sniffled as he scrutinized the wound, his violet eyes looking up when I knelt beside him and provided him with a small white handkerchief. The one thing I hated the most had finally came in use.
"There, it'll be all right."
Kira's POV, sixteen years old
We met in the funniest of ways. I fell and you were there. It had become a tradition for some weird twisted way. Every time I fell you were there.
"Ne…Athrun…what would you do after high school?" I asked him. We were sitting in the field where all we could see were cows and green, green grass. I stared up at the clouds moving with the wind, and the sky that was so blue, it seemed unreal.
Athrun kept his silence as he pondered that question before his calm clear voice came out and answered without hesitation, "I guess I want to try out at the academy."
"We would become enemies you know." I said half jokingly. I was from the black while Athrun will never stray from the white. In our society there were only two ways to live, in the black or the white. The "blacks" happens to be the triads, the mobsters, the gangsters, everything the "whites" are against. My fate is to stay in the black, there is no way out once you are in it.
"You could always join me. All of us have a choice." Athrun flopped over onto his side, facing me, and said seriously. " You do not need to follow in your father's footsteps. There are more ways than one to be out of there. It depends all on you."
I smiled at Athrun's naïve thinking, he never did understand the rules of being a "black". There was no way out when you are in and especially after…I shook my head to clear away those thoughts. It was final, my fate was final.
"You still don't understand do you Athrun? There is no discussion about my future, mine is expendable, people like me are not needed in the society, you have often said so yourself."
"I was saying the blacks in general, not you specifically."
I smiled gently before turning away and looking into the distance, taking in the freedom that space created before saying softly, " There is no generals…a black is a black until the end of time. There is no you, and no me in this generalization."
"Don't be stupid. Join me for the selections." Athrun was adamant and stubborn.
"We shall see Athrun…we shall see."
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Kira's POV eighteen years old
"Is that your sister?" Athrun asked, his green eyes glowing with interest as he peered around me to Cagalli who was talking with somebody she seemed to know. Noticing our attention, Cagalli waved gaily, smiling at us, before continuing her conversation with the girl in front of her.
"You look good." I said in way of congratulating my best friend. It was his graduation day and he had invited me to his coronation. He was no longer Athrun Zala the young friend I know from before, he was now officially another member of the "white", his red and white uniform looking extremely good on him. It was the beginning of the end of our friendship and I knew it deep down inside of me.
"Thank you. You never told me you had a sister?" He said, his eyes still straying in the direction of my blonde twin. I chuckled as I noticed his almost adoring expression.
"She's beautiful isn't she?" I teased, enjoying the faint flush that arose and covered his cheeks. "She just came back from America, this is her second week in Japan. I'm busy this whole week and I have no time to accompany her sightseeing, I was wondering where I could find a tour guide."
"I'm free." Athrun blurted out immediately, the faint flush deepening with every growing second. Grinning, both of us looked at each other before bursting out in free laughter, it was the first time he had lost his composure and looked like an idiot in front of me. My sister was indeed a very lucky woman indeed.
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Athrun Zala's POV Nineteen years old
"Where's Kira?" I asked Cagalli puzzled when she arrived, my eyes searching for that familiar figure that usually joined us on our "dates". Kira had specifically promised that he would come today. Today was an important day for both Cagalli and I. We were supposed to choose the rings we would like to wear for the rest of our lives.
"He's out on a job." Cagalli tried to say it breezily but her amber eyes grew hooded and she looked away, there was no mistaking the worry and sadness that rewrote the smile on her face when she first saw me.
"A job?" I asked, equally breezily, playing along and she nodded, her fingers playing with her shirt, eyes covered by her bangs, not allowing me to see into her private world. I kept my silence, instinctively knowing that there was more that she wanted to say.
The silence that ensued was uncomfortable but needed as I wondered what I could say to comfort her. Knowing Cagalli, she did not want my sympathy, she was too strong for that. What she wanted I could not give, not when Kira still refused to give up what he was doing and joined me. I understood the pull between loyalty for her family and the way she had been brought up where right was right and what her family had been doing was wrong. Cagalli was fortunate to be separated from Kira during birth, and therefore spared the fate of being classified. However, since her arrival back in Japan, she had been consistently been harassed to choose.
"It's dangerous, today's job. He'd die if he's not careful."
"I see."
"He's afraid too, but there is nothing he can do. He's always telling me not to worry, he tries to be so brave, but I know what he's feeling inside. I know. He's had to take my place….he's had to do what he doesn't want to do."
"He could always go away." I said, that familiar pang in my chest arising whenever Cagalli brings up her twin brother, the familiar helplessness when she begins to tell me whenever he gets sent on a job.
"Athrun….you still don't understand do you, its not that easy. It will never be easy for Kira."
"Everybody deserves a chance to choose."
"Kira is not anybody."
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Kira's POV Nineteen years old
"Father this is not possible, you cannot expect Cagalli to lead. She has yet to learn!"
"Are you jealous I'm picking her instead of you? There is no picking, Kira." My father said primly, as if I did not know his technique of goading me into doing something stupid. He had always been the puppeteer and I the willing puppet.
"Cagalli is the eldest child, and since she has been shirking her duties for so long, it is time for her to continue what she should have been doing." He said observing my oncoming protests. He enjoyed futile protests and fruitless objections very much, especially from me. It made him powerful. It made him God because he knew he had the power to control.
"It is not her fault she was not here. Am I not good enough?!" I suppressed my anger towards my father, he was so selfish and I would not doubt that in his mind, this conversation was merely another game for him.
"You are jealous aren't you Kira. You just do not have the will to kill, not like your sister does. She is fiery and determined, you are soft and like a woman. You should have been the girl and she the son." My father laughed, his eyes piercing and watching like a hawk, waiting for my reaction. He knows the real reason why I do not want my sister to become the head of the family, he knows. My father has always been right and right now, he is more accurate than he would ever know. I will not let my sister be tainted with the darkness that has consumed my father and starting to degrade me. She deserves much more.
"What do I have to do to prove to you that I'm capable?" I asked, my violet eyes dead, it has finally come to the ultimatum. I had hoped that there would be more time, and once again, this proves that there is no God and hopes and wished were for the stupid and weak.
Grinning slyly as my father's eyes narrowed with amusement, he answered by turning the notebook he had on his table and the face on the lighted screen was somebody I knew very well. It had come to this. It had finally come to this. Resignation filled me, there was no turning back now.
"Kill him and I let your sister go."
Kira's POV twenty years old
Blood was raining from the sky. It dripped onto my face, slid down and formed splatters of red on my white shirt. I watched in amusement at the red patterns and I wondered why I felt no pain. Instead, I could feel the freedom that would come when everything is over. The ground felt solid behind me, and the sky was so blue, the clouds moving freely with the wind but there were that small white flakes…it was snowing on a bright sunny day…a miracle perhaps?
I lifted my lips up in an ironic smile in that last thought. My father was right, I was too soft, Cagalli should have been born a man, she would have better judgement than a peace loving brother like me. The plan we had conceived involved my life and hers, but she was willing to make it work. I had deceived her in reality. I promised her that I would be wearing a bullet proof vest, but I had no time to do so. Father had been even more observant and I had no chance or any reason to take any precautions. Her wide eyed horror when the bullet hit my body, I sincerely did not want that for her. But, I know that she will get over it. She had that ruthlessness in her that I do not have. But, maybe, she understood me better than I understood myself too….
"Cagalli! Cagalli!" I heard somebody shout. It sounded so familiar, but it was distorted and filled with pain and horror. Why? Cagalli was alive was she not? I had made sure of my mark and she had planned the timing perfectly. Today's price was supposed to be like that. I was to kill Athrun Zala and Cagalli was to be set free. And if everything went to plan, father's best assassin, me, will be dead and by the time he realises it, Cagalli and Athrun would have escaped to the routes that we had planned before. Both of them will be long gone from my father's clutches.
"Kira! What the hell have you done?!"
What have I done? I have saved my sister, my beautiful innocent sister.
"Athrun…please…please…help Kira!" Cagalli tried to splutter out, but the pain in her arm kept choking her. Coughing she grabbed tightly onto Athrun's shirt and tried with her remaining strength tell him the real truth.
Cagalli Yula Athha twenty years old
"Athrun…please…help Kira!"
"Shut up! I have to stop the blood!"
"Listen to me! He's innocent. He's innocent! He promised to kill you but he did not. Both of us staged this fight so that you could live, he was supposed to be wearing a bullet proof vest! There was not supposed to be any blood! Please…don't quarrel with me anymore and help my brother. Please!" Cagalli shouted desperately as she struggled against Athrun in her goal to reach her injured brother.
"What do you mean?! What the hell are you saying?!"
"Athrun…our family is the most important underground family, Kira is my father's son and he has to do what he says. I was supposed to be the head of the family but Kira volunteered to take my place. He bargained with our father for my safety and freedom as long as he killed you, the only remaining link of his link to what is right. My father understood the price that his son was willing to pay, to kill your own best friend, you needed to be heartless, cruel and that was what he wanted Kira to be."
"What are you saying?!"
"What she is saying is true." A cold voice rang out and footsteps could be heard coming up the metal stairways that led to where we were. Athrun whipped up his gun and trained it onto the open door but before anybody could react, the sound of gun shot could be heard once again.
"Athrun!" I shouted as I watched Athrun bite back the groan that welled up in his throat as he grabbed his shoulder in reflex with his uninjured arm, the gun skittering across the ground, well away from me when he dropped it from both surprise and pain.
"You failed me son." Kira's father said in lieu of a greeting to his wounded unconscious son when he came into view, his eyes looking scathingly at his failed prodigy before sweeping towards us. I fought the urge to cringe as the mad man's eyes focused on us like hunter and its prey. They were violet like Kira's but while Kira's was always filled with warmth and gentleness, his was a cold and hard with a madness that was unnatural. It was the windows to an evil soul.
"Now…for your punishment, daughter…for trying to lead my son awry and falling in love with a "white"." He spat that last word with such loathing and hatred that stunned me for that few precious seconds and the price I had to pay for that carelessness was more pain.
Athrun's POV
"Cagalli!" I shouted as more blood poured from the girl in my arms. "Cagalli! Damn it!" I cursed out loud as I tried to staunch the blood from the wound in her chest. "Stay with me Cagalli!"
"Save….my…brother…save…him…"She said, her eyes pleading with me before she lost consciousness and her hand that was holding onto my jacket went limp.
"What have you done?! She was your daughter you bastard!" I shouted towards the newcomer, the man who Kira had tried to disobey and the man who had orchestrated the deaths of so many other innocent beings with his steady flow of drugs, illegal weaponry and prostitution.
"You cared for her? All the better then."
"God damn you! God damn you!" I cried out, eyes blurring the scene in front of me, not wanting to watch her blood pooling around her broken body, not wanting to see it dye the ground red. The snow flakes kept falling and all it became was red.
"Get up." Kira's father sang out, his voice cheerful, "I have always wanted to go against the finest of the academy. Why did you not follow in your father's footsteps in inheriting the family fortune? You are a Zala aren't you?"
"It's none of your business." I snapped back as my eyes swept from Cagalli to the fallen gun. Right now, I know that getting to that gun was the only thing that would save both Kira and Cagalli. This is my responsibility. After what they have done for me, this is what I have to do to repay them, they were willing to sacrifice their lives for me, I was not about to waste it.
"Oh but it is. If you inherited your father's fortune, maybe everything would not have turned out this way."
"But it has and the reason for it was that my father gave me choices and I made them. There is no turning back!" With that I lunged towards the black matted steel lying so innocently on the ground, while Kira's father fired randomly at me. I rolled once on the ground before getting back up on my feet and running for the nearest cover, all the while, the bullets shot at the ground where I once was.
"You are not bad, kid. Maybe you could come and work for me. Kira's no use right now, you could take up his place."
"Never."
"Do you know what he did for me?"
I looked over the metal crate that was my temporary protector and was immediately shot at. Kira's father was not letting me off easily. I had not intended to answer because I did not want to know nor was it any of my business what Kira did. He had never told me any details because he knew that it would upset me. It was a balance between us, he came to me whenever he needed to relax, he'd remember who he really was and I welcomed his presence because he reminded me who I was to protect with my badge.
But evidently Kira's father wanted to break that balance when he opened his mouth "He was my price assassin."
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Kira's POV
Why was there so many gunshots? There wasn't supposed to be anymore gunshots…I was supposed to shoot Cagalli in the arm and there was nothing else to worry about. Athrun and she would escape to where my father cannot find them and start their lives anew, they would live and I would be the sacrifice that would be presented to my father. So what went wrong?
I tried to open my heavy eyelids, fighting back the darkness that clung like tar and refused to let go, my sanctuary becoming a hindrance to me finding out what was happening, my curiosity and that warning bells preventing me from finally finding the peace that I had wanted. When the light seared into my eyeballs, I found myself facing the one nightmare I never thought I would face….
….Cagalli lying unmoving on the ground, lifeless, a broken blonde haired doll.
….my father with a maniacal grin on his face standing beside my sister's fallen body.
….a raven haired teen trying to dodge bullets that were meant to kill.
I had wanted to rub my eyes, to clear away those disconcerting images, it had to be a dream, a nightmare, and I was so tired that sleep seemed like a welcoming and good idea, but the grunts and recurring gun shots reattracted my attention and as my violet eyes tried to focus from the haze of pain that emanated from my stomach, I found to my dismay that everything was not born of my imagination.
Groaning as I pushed myself up from the ground and clutching my fallen gun, I saw my father hunting. Athrun was losing ground and more importantly cover, my father was enjoying this hunt, his eyes gleaming brightly, feverish with the coming kill. "No…" I whispered. There was no way I was going to let what my father wanted happen, not when I was so close for the plan to succeed.
"Dad." I tried to shout, but what came out was a small croak. I cursed inwardly, and I tried to focus my gun but found to my annoyance, the wavering of my arms. I was too weak with the blood loss, but there was nothing else I could do except this, I had to stop this madness once and for all.
Everybody has a choice and this is mine Athrun.
"Dad!" I screamed, attracting my father's attention and firing at the same time. I noticed with satisfaction my father's widening eyes but felt at the same time the bullet impact on him and in me. My father's reaction was still as sharp as ever and horrendously accurate. Blood spurted out uncontrollable from my mouth, the rustic taste something I was never fond of but found frequently in my mouth. My father smiled his crooked smile and fell, his eyes never leaving me but the feverish light died out and I was certain not from the bleeding hole in his forehead, but the absence of the evil entity that had occupied my father's body for the past 49 years.
The mad man was finally gone.
"Kira…Kira!" Athrun shouted as I fell, the last thing I remembered him doing was vaulting over the metal crates punctured full with bullet holes and I smiled. I wanted to wave and tell him that everything was fine and point to Cagalli, to ask him to take care of her first but there was no more strength in me. I staggered before losing my balance, falling backwards like the snowflakes from the sky above on to the hard ground, my blood dying what was below me a final bright red. It was over. There were miracles after all.
I was free.
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Athrun's POV 21 years old
"I'm sorry." I whispered, the orchestra of beeping machines accompanying my words in an unwanted song.
"Do not be."
"He was your brother. My best friend. I should have trusted him."
"You did not know."
"I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!"
"There was no way to know."
"He's dead."
"I know."
"But I'm alive and that was enough for him. Is it enough for you?"
No! No! It's not enough for me.
"I'm sorry…I'm so so sorry…" I wanted to shout to her that it was not enough but all I could do was whisper brokenly to the woman that my best friend had died to protect. Cagalli had lain in a coma for about a year after the shooting. She was incredibly lucky the bullet had not pierced anything vital but the same could not be said for Kira. He had died on the spot with that smile on his face.
"Kira told me something when I was sleeping." Cagalli said dreamily as her eyes floated towards the window, unfocused. I wanted the shake her, wanted her to look at him. The way she was acting right now scared me. I was afraid that she would follow my best friend.
Please don't leave me alone. Please don't leave.
"What…?" I forced out that one word out of my constricted throat. I waited for the axe to fall with baited breath, for Cagalli to tell me that Kira blamed me, that he hated me because he was forced to take my place.
"He told me that he was happy he met you."
My eyes widened and guilt, the only one emotion I felt for the past one year when I handled Kira's funeral and took over caring for Cagalli once again reared its ugly head. I gritted my teeth and snarled, "I caused his death…I killed him."
"No…you did not." Cagalli's response surprised me. I had thought she blamed me also.
"Did you know that he was the assassin for your family?"
"No, but I suspected. Father always gave him jobs that killed him. He always smiled whenever I asked him if he was all right, but I could see the light in his eyes dying every time."
"He should have said no."
"He couldn't, not with me there. It was either him or me. He chose himself to spare me."
"Kuso."
"He's at peace now."
"I should have been able to do something, anything…."
"You have done everything you could. You kept him sane. You kept him alive when he did not know whether to choose suicide or to be killed by the unknown people he had to kill."
"I could have done more."
"There is no one to blame…Kira had no choice when he was alive, at the very least…"Cagalli choked as tears welled up and started trickling down her face, "At the very least…he chose his way to die…"
By his best friend's hands, how honourable I was. I was a killer no more no less.
I blinked back my own tears as I pulled her into my embrace, letting her break down and cry. I had to be strong for this woman, there had been enough time in the past year for all my tears to dry up. However, her grief of losing her brother tore at the still raw wound in my heart.
"I miss him Athrun. I want to see him. I want him to tell me its all right. I want to see him, I want him here. Athrun, why is he dead? Why?" The last question was howled out, a wounded sound that prompted people to look at us curiously, my wall broke as her words cut through the scar tissue that protected the raw wound. Her lost and mine was equal, we both bore the pain of losing someone precious to us. Her sobs wet my shirt as she pounded hard on my chest, venting her frustration, her sadness and most of all her anger at what she had lost. I watched her through blurred eyes, letting her do what she wanted, I needed the pain as I too wanted to know why he was taken away from the both of us, why he had to go when he could finally start his life all over again with his father gone.
I missed him. I missed his laughter, his warm violet eyes. I missed his humour, I missed his presence.
I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. Please forgive me.
How do you heal from something like this? Would time help the both of us?
I had no idea how long we both stayed that way, but when I looked up, I saw the snowflakes that fell that day was falling today too. It reminded me of a past that I did not want to remember but the snowflakes were innocent….they were like Kira. Pure white and innocent but banished from the skies. Looking out into the dark sky and the falling white, I prayed, I prayed for the first time since one year ago to the God who had not saved my friend….
There are no words to describe the pain we are feeling, I would like to curse you, I would love to hate you, but that would not bring Kira back, there is nothing that would bring him back. But please, please I pray right now, let all of us meet one day, someday. Let us be able to tell my best friend, her brother, what he had given up when he saved our lives, let us all live our life to the fullest and be able to tell him tales that would make him proud.
Amen.
Author's note: I hope that you have enjoyed this fic, it was quite challenging for me to cramp everything into one standalone chapter, take it as an hour long movie than compared to a series. However, if you think that you would like this fic fleshed out and have does have the potential to become more than one movie, tell me, and I'll see what I can do. It all depends on you.