trans_9 | Cognitive Dissonance [OPEN]

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Cognitive Dissonance [OPEN]

He should still be in the medbay.

He wasn't of course, but he still should be in the medbay. But after he managed to free himself from his restraints, he decided to discharge himself, and the doctors didn't have sufficient cause to hold him any longer. His injuries weren't fully healed, but had improved to the point where he could move around under his own power. More importantly, while his hallucinations hadn't stopped, they were more like intense daydreams now. He would still lose focus and look dazed at times, but kept one foot planted in reality. He seemed to watch, rather than participate in them, meaning his previously infrequent outbursts hadn't happened over the last few days.

He was in the Hangar right now, standing on one of the catwalks and looking down at the what was left of the 00 Raiser. He had a thoughtful look on his face as he examined the damage, getting an unease feeling. Something about this bothered him, and it wasn't the fact that his Gundam was so badly damaged.

"Something's wrong," he muttered to himself, but hell if he knew what was wrong. Of course, he had been feeling that way about a lot of things lately, particularly when it came to his comrades. Something was just... off, either in him or with them, but nothing he could pin down.

He continued staring at the remains, as if it would answer all of his questions if he just stared at it long enough.

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There was a bit of movement in the hangar, something that would catch the eye of anyone in the quietness. The movement was that of a red Haro. The size meant that it belonged to Celestial Being. It was used to being in hangars and around Gundams. Why it was down on the ground and not up on the catwalk with Setsuna was a bit of a mystery.

That is, unless you looked around the Celestial Being suits and noticed a pink haired girl sitting at the foot of one of the units, Kyrios, to be exact. She appeared to be resting after a long time working. She wasn't in her Celestial Being uniform, rather just the plantsuit that she had been given when she woke up here and there were grease spots all over it along with her hands. There was even a few smudges on her face.

If you got closer, it became easier to tell that the girl was fast asleep, sitting on the foot of the Gundam that she had been working on. Do you dare wake her up?

Setsuna didn't, at first. He had noticed her there, and figured she was resting, so he left her alone for a little bit. It was when he finally noticed that she was still there that he went over to check on her.

When he realized she was asleep, he was of two minds as what to do. On the one hand, she clearly needed the rest, and he didn't want to disturb her. On the other, this wasn't the best or most comfortable place for her to sleep.

He knelt down next to her, and ended up giving her the same perturbed look that he had been giving his Gundam moments ago. Something was different about her... or maybe he was just seeing her in a different light. She was the same as he remembered, but something had changed...

His eyes were drawn to her hair, and without thinking about it, he reached out and brushed some of her hair away from her face. It was a simple and kind gesture... and so unlike him that the moment he realized what he was doing, he briefly froze, then snatched his hand away. He started at it momentarily, as if that limb had somehow betrayed him.

He opened and closed that hand a few times, as if testing to make sure he did have control over it, then lightly shook Feldt on the shoulder, to try to wake her up.

Her head shifted a bit when he gently moved her hair out of her face. She didn't know how long she had been working, just that she had been working. She took short breaks to get something to eat and sleep just for a little while.

She had been so worried about Setsuna that working on the Gundams was the only thing that kept her from being by his bedside for the entire time. She hadn't gotten that much done, but she was making some progress on Kyrios.

She jumped a little bit when she was shook, her eyes snapping open. She looked rather confused for a few minutes before she realized just who was there.

"Setsuna?

"Feldt Grace." His hand remained on her shoulder while he checked her over.

"You should head back to your quarters if you need to rest."

"You should still be in medical," she replied, looking up at him. She knew that he should still be resting and healing from the fight with the Ohm, but she also knew that he was right. She shouldn't be asleep in the hangar like this.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep here. I was working on Kyrios."

"I don't need to be there," he responded, standing up. That didn't mean he was healed, not by a long shot, but whatever was wrong with him, he figured it was beyond Medical's abilities to treat.

He held out his hand, silently offering to help her to her feet.

"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" she asked as she took the offered hand and helped herself up. She was s till worried about him, but she tried not to let it show too much.

"I haven't started work on the 00 yet."

He looked over at the 00 Raiser again, and stared quietly at it. He wanted to be able to tell Feldt that he'd be all right, but he honestly had no idea what was going on with him.

"Don't... don't fix that Gundam." He didn't know why he told her that, as that made absolutely no sense on any kind of level, even to him. But he went with it anyway. "Focus on the others for now."

"I was going to work on Kyrios, then Seravee, then Dynames. The 00 will take the longest," she said. It took her a minute to realize just what he said. "Why?"

She didn't understand why he didn't want her to work on the 00. It was more powerful than Exia and would work better, but if he had something else planned, then she would do what he wanted.

He didn't respond at first. He kept searching his head for an answer, but it was always just beyond his reach.

He ended up frowning slightly, and looked back at Feldt.

"...I don't know," he quietly admitted. "I just..." He couldn't finish that thought.

"I don't know..."

Now that concerned her. She looked up at him. He never acted like this before and he never admitted that he didn't know something. She reached out to him. "What happened with the Ohm?" she asked. Maybe something had happened during that time during the battle.

He didn't pull away, which was odd in and of itself. But he didn't know what happened. He remembered it, but explaining and understanding it and its after effects were another story.

"...nothing I can put into words."

She just nodded. There wasn't anything that she could do to pull more answers from him. Instead she just kept close to him so that he could lean against her if he needed to.

Setsuna never leaned on anyone. He did study her carefully for a moment, trying to figure out what had changed. What was he seeing now that he didn't see before?

Coming up with nothing, he stepped back, before more like his usual, cold self. "You should go get some rest."

Allenby hadn't been specifically looking for anyone when she'd come down to the Hangar. She'd been intending to do some work on Nobel Gundam--while trying not to talk to her, an urge that had been growing lately. But when she spotted the man on the catwalks up there, she immediately jumped up onto the nearest mobile suit and onto the railing, toolkit still in her hand.

Yep, Setsuna. Last Allenby knew he'd still been in Medbay, but it looked like that had changed. Well, that was fine. She was pretty sure he wouldn't be interested in talking to her, but whatever. She had stuff she wanted to say.

"Hey, you okay?" she asked, hopping down onto the catwalk itself. "Haven't seen ya around here lately."

He didn't answer he question, mostly because, even if he were in a chatty mood, he wouldn't know how to answer that question. But he never was in a chatty mood.

He passed her a sideways glance, then went back to staring at his Gundam.

"Is there something you want?"

"Well, yeah there is actually." Allenby wasn't sure what was trickier about this: having to swallow her pride enough to apologize, or having the very strong feeling that Setsuna really wouldn't care about either apologies or insults.

Oh well. She was going to say it, dammit, whether he paid attention or not. "Sorry about when we got into that argument. You and your Gundam ain't trash."

Well... its current state notwithstanding. But it'd be okay after some maintenance.

Setsuna didn't care about apologies or insults, both were wasted on him. His only response was a slight throaty noise, which basically meant that he heard what she said.

That said, he glanced at her machine, then back at his. No, her suit was still not a Gundam, and she was a far cry from what a meister should be.

"Don't bother repairing your machine. Neither you nor it belong in a real war." Which, in its own way, was a compliment coming from him.

He'd reacted like she'd thought, but it still felt better to have said it. Allenby's eyes narrowed when he spoke, though. "Don't tell me what to do," she snapped. "Fightin' a real war isn't what I want, but it's what I have to do in order to save Earth. Not just mine, but yours and all the other different worlds that got destroyed."

And then after that, if she survived all of this, she could go back to how things were. Fighting because she wanted to and being satisfied with the outcome regardless of her nation's goals, and befriending people from other nations as she fought. Without killing anyone.

"You'll change," and not necessarily for the better. There was a huge difference between punching someone the face, and putting a bullet a through their skull. Once you do the latter... "You won't be able to go back."

No more games.

If this had been before the battle, Allenby would have argued with him on that. But now...

She still didn't know whether or not the Ohm she'd killed were drones. Even if they were, that wouldn't really make it right. She remembered pretty clearly how awful she'd felt after the Quarter had returned to Stacy. If she kept fighting, was that how she'd feel all the time?

"...I'm still me," she said. "I won't just stay here when I know I can help. It's not like you can do that, right?"

"My goals are different from everyone else's." And, in some ways, possibly at odds with everyone else at well.

"As long as the situation remains as it is, no one has a future."

"Well, what about restoring Earth? And protectin' that planet the Ohm wanted to destroy? If those were your goals, then at least some of them are the same." Philosophy about it or what he wanted to do afterward, that wasn't relevant to Allenby. It was the fight in front of them now that was important.

She wasn't going to argue the second thing he said. Allenby sure didn't want the rest of everyone's life to be on this awful ship, while the Ohm hunted down worlds and wiped them out like pests.

"They aren't." Protecting people only treated the symptoms, not the disease. Battles would simply occur over and over again until one side wins out in a war of attrition. That was not going to be his life.

Restoring the past didn't appeal to him either. What's gone was gone, and he could accept that.

No, he was all about forging a new future, and to do that, he was going to have to change the current dynamic.

"How can you not want to restore Earth?" Maybe the battles on his were nothing like the one on her own, where the Devil Gundam had tried to wipe out the human species, life on the planet itself--it just angered Allenby all the more that their battle had been for nothing. But surely there had still been billions of people living on his Earth too, none of whom deserved the fate they'd been granted by the Ohm. "You can't just--not care about what happened!"

She was getting mad again, but she just couldn't believe what he was saying. If his organization claimed that they wanted to end war, how could they do that without people in mind? But she pushed down the urge to hit him or start just yelling her opinions at him. She hadn't come over to get into another argument like last time. "If protectin' that planet wasn't your goal, then what was your motivation? Because from what I saw out there, you definitely were fighting for something."

He didn't say anything right then, as he was simply looking down at his Gundam. His mind was a million miles away, though. Exactly where, he wasn't sure. Unlike his previous hallucinations, he couldn't see anything, but he could hear a voice... Lockon's voice.

"Setsuna... the only thing about the past that changes is how you feel about things the present. But nothing else changes. Not others feelings... and certainly not their lives."

The sound of a gunshot caused him to start slightly, bringing him back to reality. And Allenby was still right there. He closed his eyes and let out a breath.

"I have my reasons. You wouldn't understand."

Edited 2011-05-23 23:30 (UTC)

For a moment, Allenby thought that he was just shutting down again like he had last time. She put a hand on her hip, deciding that she wouldn't let him stonewall her out this time, until--was it her, or did he jump just then? But it wasn't like anything in the Hangar had made a noise.

And then he just gave her the same answer he had last time. "Your reasons sure did a number on your Gundam," she muttered, glancing down at it. "Look, I want to understand. You say that you guys are out to end war, but we're in one bigger than any humans could make. And you fought with everything you had. So why was that?"

She wasn't sure why Setsuna's attitude bothered her so much. But so far he was the only Gundam pilot she'd talked to that she hadn't gotten along with. It got under her skin.

"To end war." Obviously.

Its a perfectly logical explanation. Somewhere.

"...Ya know, you'll need to learn how to talk to people better if you really want to do that," Allenby said. She could probably get more conversation out of a Gundam.

She grabbed the railing and pushed herself up, swinging her feet a little in thought. "So to end war, are you going to keep fighting alongside the rest of us?"

"That depends on how you proceed." What they choose to do with the information that he and the Princess gained during the fight. "But if you continue down the path you're on, the answer is no."

"Then you mean this war too, against the Ohm." Allenby dropped back onto the catwalk. That seemed pretty extreme to her. The Ohm had been the ones to attack first, hadn't they? So Stacy said, at least, and most of the crew seemed to believe it.

Allenby didn't trust the ship very much, not since she'd woken them all up by pretending to be their moms. But the Ohm had seemed pretty damn intent. "Then why did you fight so hard? You almost got killed out there for something you don't believe in, if that's the case."

Celestial Being never did anything halfway. They went for it all, and never settled anything less.

"Like I said, you wouldn't understand."

Allenby frowned at him. "Just 'cause you don't communicate with your fists doesn't mean you can't use words."

She drummed her fingers on the railing. "You're right, y'know. About me and Nobel Gundam not bein' for war. I don't want to fight to kill, but is there a way to stop the Ohm without doin' that? They didn't seem interested in talking to us."

He communicates via glitterbombs, giant space flowers, or stabbing you in the face. Fists are for pussies. And only sane people use words.

"They don't communicate with words or fists either." How they communicated wasn't something he was sure on either.

Well, we certainly can't have sane and/or rational behavior in our Gundam protagonists! That would be antithetical to the series. ~~Unless it's Turn A and that has its own weirdness.~~

She looked at Setsuna sidelong. "I heard that we did make some kinda contact with 'em in that battle," she said. She remembered that blonde gal talking about it in the Council meeting, and Zouichi seemed to think Setsuna knew something about it. "There's something to that, right?"

There was a slight 'hmph' noise from him, but not much else. It wasn't his place to share anything on that. But interesting that said knowledge hadn't gotten around yet.

It was hard to say if the knowledge hadn't gotten around or if Allenby just hadn't been paying attention to the right things. "You're not talkin' again," she said flatly. "Do ya know something or not?"

There was another 'hmph' noise from him, and she could take that however she wanted. Whatever he did or didn't know, he was going to keep to himself.

"If you're just grunting instead of givin' me a flat no, that makes me think the answer is yes," Allenby said, hopping up onto the railing again and balancing, not looking at him.

He didn't even bother to grunt, shift, or even glance at her. Instead, he remained silent, staring at his Gundam as if he hadn't heard a thing she said. Apparently he had used up his allotment of words for the day.

Nope, not even a twitch. Allenby put her hands on her hips and leaned down, watching him with the same kind of fascination that an ornithologist might watch some strange species of bird. (Admittedly, it'd be a pretty aggravated ornithologist.)

"You want help puttin' your Gundam back together, just lemme know!" she said with a sudden smile and a cheerful voice. She doubted he would, but she meant it anyway. Then she jumped onto the shoulder of a nearby Zaku so she could hop along to Nobel Gundam.

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Cognitive Dissonance [OPEN]

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