Story cover by NinthFeather!

Spoilers for all of season 1.

It is dark, and Saji is alone.

He does not react as he watches the coverage of Operation: Fallen Angels on television, only curling his lip in anger and disgust each time a Gundam defeats its enemy. He knows how it will end; this is the fourth time the news channel has shown the battle.

(Or is it fifth? Sixth? He lost count a long time ago.)

Despite this, he flinches every time a heroic pilot is defeated, every time one of them goes up in an explosion of fire and metal and human. Nothing—nobody—has the right to end human life like Gundams do. It is sickening how Celestial Being takes it upon itself to play God. He realized, only recently, that the Gundams must be controlled by people, not machines, which makes Celestial Being even more despicable. That people would voluntarily join it for the sole purpose of killing others—

He snaps to attention as he realizes what is coming next. It is his favorite part of the broadcast: the end of the battle. The Gundams are defeated, one by one, as they are overpowered by the combined world forces.

(They're all working together. How ironic it is that Celestial Being is destroyed by the thing it strived to create.)

(It had been a noble—if unrealistic—goal, but they had gone about it in the entirely wrong way.)

If there is one good thing to say about Celestial Being, he supposes, it's that it followed through on its word.

There is the days-old footage of the green Gundam—the sniper, Saji remembers—being destroyed by one of its "allies." Maybe one of the world powers hijacked it…but that isn't important. As the pilot is consumed by an explosion, all Saji can think is that the man deserved every bit of what he got.

Then there is the more recent footage of the orange one being taken out by two distinguished pilots from the HRL. He doesn't go down without a fight, that bastard; both Earth mobile suits are heavily damaged. The Gundam—without its power source, Saji notices—is taken by HRL forces, and the pilot is taken into custody. Saji can't help but smile maliciously; the figure is bloody and motionless. He knows that he has lost, that he will pay for everything he has done.

There is one with strange wires that look like hair; the newscaster quickly explains that it is the large one without its armor. It is taken out relatively quickly by AEU mobile suits and left to die.

Saji wonders why they don't capture that one. Surely, the advanced guns it possesses would be good for anyone on Earth to have...

And then, there is the blue one that seems to specialize in close-range combat; it single-handedly takes on the enormous mobile armor, Alvatore. Saji has to admit that, if nothing else, the pilot has guts. It eventually—somehow—destroys the monstrous unit, only to be confronted by who the newscaster says is the Union's ace pilot. Their fight is short; both mobile suits soon go up in an explosion of green and red particles.

Apparently, the Union pilot is being treated for his injuries and is expected to survive. The Gundam has disappeared.

The broadcast finishes with the explosion of Celestial Being's mother ship. Then there is a triumphant, joint speech from the heads of the Union, HRL, and AEU about how they are going to work together to prevent another tragedy like the rise of Celestial Being.

(Saji wonders if that was those bastards' goal all along: die to unite the world.)

(Well, it worked.)

The speeches are less emotionally draining than the battle footage, but they are also less exciting. Saji allows his mind to wander toward darker thoughts as the president of the Union lists his plans for world change.

A soft—barely audible—knock breaks him out of his thoughts. He pauses, not sure if he actually heard it or if he is hallucinating. Maybe it's just his dark, desperate desire for Kinue to come in from work and complain about the long day…he'd give anything to see her again…

He hears it again, just as the newscaster pauses for breath. He knows it's real, despite the late hour, so he grudgingly hauls himself to his feet. Who would need him at three in the morning…?

He is not at all ready for the sight that greets him: Setsuna F. Seiei, the neighbor he has not seen in weeks—months?—leaning heavily on the wall. He is wearing some sort of pilot suit—where has he seen it before?—and staring at Saji with unfocused eyes.

And then Saji notices the blood.

"Setsuna!" he cries in alarm as the boy topples forward; Saji reaches forward to stop his fall, but he is unexpectedly heavy. Both of them crash into the hall.

The impact of what is happening hasn't quite hit Saji yet; his neighbor, the anti-social boy from the Middle East, is a mobile suit pilot? And he quite obviously just barely made it out of Fallen Angels alive—

"Here, come lay on the couch and I'll call an ambulance," he says quickly, helping Setsuna up as gently as he can. He has no idea what to do; he is an engineer, not a doctor. His limited first-aid skills are unlikely to help here.

The two of them stumble toward the couch as Saji pulls out his phone. The shock is setting in now, and he is beginning to panic. Even on television, he has only rarely seen anyone so critically injured as Setsuna is now. His face looks badly burned, and he seems to be bleeding from a head wound. Combined with the blood coating his space suit…Saji wonders frantically how the boy is even alive as he tries to make him comfortable and call the emergency line.

Barely listening to the operator's introduction, he blurts out—"I need an ambulance, my neighbor's really hurt—"

"What happened to him?" The woman's calm voice puts Saji even more on edge.

"I don't know—he's in a pilot suit, he's burned and bleeding and—"

"Give me your address, and I'll send an ambulance. Stay on the line and I'll help you, all right? You need to stay calm, they'll be there very soon…"

He quickly rattles off his address, chancing a nervous glance at Setsuna. His chest is rising and falling irregularly, and his eyes are open, unseeing.

"Is he conscious?"

"Uh—Setsuna," he tries desperately. The boy does not move immediately, but after a moment he grunts a bit and tries to turn his head. "Yeah," he says into the receiver. Relief washes over him; that's a good thing, right? Surely, if he's awake and semi-responsive, he's not about to die…

"Good. Make sure he stays awake," the operator says encouragingly. "Can you tell me where he's bleeding from and how bad his burns are?"

"His burns look bad…but I don't know…and he's got a head wound…" Saji looks closely at the drenched pilot suit, trying very hard not to be sick. "I don't know about the rest of him, it's everywhere…"

"Take off his suit and put pressure on whatever you can," she says immediately. "Most of them zip up the front; see if you can find it."

"Uh…" He fumbles the phone for a moment before securing it between his ear and his shoulder, leaning closer to Setsuna, trying to find the zipper around all the blood. He swallows bile as he finally finds it, unzipping the top part of the suit quickly, pulling up the undershirt and assessing the damage.

There are several deep scrapes across his entire abdomen, some minor burns that the suit had not been able to prevent, and a couple of worryingly large wounds in his right side.

It isn't as bad as Saji has feared. But then, he had almost expected to see a giant hole of a wound right in the boy's stomach. He quickly puts his hands on what looks like the worst injury, flinching as his hands are stained red.

"No, Setsuna, you have to stay awake!" he says in terror as the boy's eyes slide closed. They flutter open again and seem to look around in confusion before alighting on Saji's face.

"Lock…on…?"

"What?" Setsuna's words were nearly indecipherable, and Saji doesn't recognize what he thought he heard.

"'S tha' you…Lock…o…?"

A tinge of hope almost finds its way into Setsuna's usually toneless voice, and Saji deduces quickly that Lockon is a person whom Setsuna greatly cares for. "Lockon will be here soon," he tries, though he has absolutely no idea who the man is. "Just stay awake, and he'll be here to help you, okay? Everything will be all right!" He puts his hands more insistently onto the bloody mess that is the right side of Setsuna's abdomen, hoping to God that the paramedics arrive soon. The smell of blood is starting to make him light-headed…

Despite the immense pain he has to be in, Setsuna's mouth twitches up into what is almost a smile. It is the happiest Saji has ever seen him—here, in the dead of night, bleeding out from terrible, near-fatal wounds, and smiling. Saji would laugh at the irony if the situation were not so dire.

"If he was in a mobile suit explosion, that would explain the burns," the operator says into his ear. Saji jumps; he has nearly forgotten that he is still on the phone. "Is there shrapnel in his wounds? That could be very dangerous…"

Saji chokes back bile again as he releases his hands from the largest wound, inspecting it as closely as he can without getting a mouthful of blood. "Yeah, there are metal pieces in one of them!" he says, panic returning in full force. "Should I try to pull them out, or—"

"No," she answers immediately. "The hospital has machines that do that. If you put your hand into his open wound, you could infect it, and if it's large enough or in the right place, he could bleed to death once it's out. Just try to stop the bleeding as much as you can in the other wounds, and keep him awake. Don't apply any more pressure to the one with shrapnel; you could make it worse. The ambulance should be there any minute."

With another shudder, Saji puts his hands back over the other—numerous—wounds. Setsuna grunts at the pain but says nothing.

He does indeed stay awake, ignoring Saji's encouragement that he will be fine and instead babbling apparent nonsense to himself. Some of the words appear to be names, but it is hard to tell when he lapses often into some foreign language—his native tongue, most likely.

The operator says to his worried questions that all Saji has to worry about is making sure he stays awake; trained professionals will look into the head trauma to see if he has any sort of concussion. The fact that he is speaking at all, she says, is a good sign.

At long last, several paramedics rush into Saji's apartment, and he quickly gets out of their way as they haul Setsuna onto a stretcher. "He looks too young to be a mobile suit pilot," one of them mutters as they inject something into the boy's arm to slow the bleeding.

The others nod their agreement, and Saji finds that he has to agree. He is, what, sixteen? What military would allow such a young boy to pilot in active combat?

"Gu—" Setsuna gasps as they begin moving him toward the door. "Gun—dam—!"

"You were in that battle?" one of the doctors asks, shock flashing across his face. "Did they do this to you?"

Setsuna does not appear to hear him; he only repeats the word—vulgar to Saji's ears—in some sort of mantra as they wheel him out the door. One of the paramedics stays long enough to tell Saji that they will call him if there is any change in Setsuna's condition, for better or for worse. Thanks to Saji's quick action, though, he should recover, he says. Saji thanks him, and he leaves as well, out to the ambulance carrying Saji's last friend in the whole world.

He collapses onto the couch, not even noticing the blood anymore, as exhaustion catches up with him. The adrenaline from when Setsuna first arrived has run out; even his fear for the boy's life is now irrational, as the doctors say he should be fine.

All he has left, now, is the dark, blood-soaked living room in which he lives alone—I shouldn't be alone, Kinue should be here—with no one to visit him—why did it have to be Louise, she did nothing to deserve that!—, and he must look so pathetic, but there's no one around to see him so it doesn't matter.

And now, he is even without a neighbor. Even if Setsuna is rarely around and hardly sociable, at least he was a pillar of constancy in Saji's life. He would always be Setsuna.

Now, even he is gone.

Saji wants very badly to punch something as despair catches up with him. He is lost; he can do absolutely nothing. He wants to confront Celestial Being; he wants to curse them to hell and back for everyone they have ruined; for the first time in his life, he wants to kill.

But he can't do any of those things, so he sits on the couch (full of memories of Kinue and Louise, and now soaked through with the blood of Setsuna) and sobs.

It is dark, and Saji is alone.

Uh...Setsuna making it through the atmosphere when there's a gaping hole in the Exia's cockpit? He just...does.