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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING.txt
-- Desc: SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING.txt
SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING
SAINAN NO KEKKA
Waking: Noin
"Everything is clearer now.
Life is just a dream, you know-
It's neverending."
--Cowboy Bebop, Blue
It was snowing when we stepped outside into
the dawning morning, flakes of white clinging to
my eyelashes and my cheeks and settling
themselves on the small ledge between the
bottom of my nose and upper lip. I stuck out my
tongue, licked the collected snow from its resting
place. Heard his footsteps from up ahead.
"Hurry�"
The snow swirled up for a moment in front of me
and I shielded my face as the wind shrieked,
sending a howling gusting of white into my eyes.
They stung, as if burned with acid, and I blinked
rapidly. Another gust of wind. I saw his eyes,
blue against the white, and then he was gone
again.
"Hurry�hurry!"
I struggled up the slope that had suddenly
appeared on front of me, the landscape ahead a
pure, virgin white, and the clouds were white
also so that I could not tell where the snow
ended and the sky began. The wind had slowed,
and all I could feel was snow falling into my eyes
and my hair and seeping in through the thick
scarves I had bundled around my neck.
I had read somewhere that falling snow was not
truly silent, but if it made sound now, I could not
hear it.
I reached out my hand as I took the last
laborious step to the top of the hill and gripped
the outstretched fingers offered to me, out of the
fog. The hand was warm. Alive. Through the soft
white glove I could feel his pulse, beating. Even,
steady. One, two.
And then another gust of howling wind and our
fingers were slipping apart, and even as I
scrabbled for a hold his hand melted out of my
grasp, like an illusion, and only his voice
remained.
"Hurry�"
"Where are you?" I shouted. My words bounced
back at me, echoing off unseen walls.
It was sunrise, but I could not see the sun.
"Where are you?" I shouted again, louder, but
only the echo. My nose and ears were numb, as
were my fingertips. I sank to my knees. The
snow fell.
He wasn't coming�he wasn't coming back.
There were birdcalls in my ears and I looked up
again to see the branches of the familiar tree
spreading over me. The snow was gone, the
sunlight warm on my cheeks and I was wearing
my cadet uniform. The ranks on my shoulders
were those of wing commander.
I got to my feet slowly. I was on a hill - our hill -
at the base of the tall tree that I used to nap
under in the heat of the afternoon, between
classes.
"I'd forgotten about this place," I said, and I felt,
rather than heard, his response.
I've never forgotten.
"I wouldn't expect you to," I returned, tearing my
gaze away from the tree and slowly turning in a
circle, gazing at the landscape around the hill,
towards Lake Victoria to my left. The academy
was there, as I remembered it, white buildings in
neat lines creeping towards the hillside. The
airfield to my right. The grass rippled in the
breeze and the bell in the belltower tolled once,
twice, signaling the start of afternoon classes.
As if there had never been a war.
What happened here?
His voice was shocked, and I frowned. "What do
you mean?"
I smelled something burning�but there was
nothing cooking in the firepit near the tree where
we used to sneak away and make our dinners in
the evening, and�
What happened here?
When I whirled to face the stretch of land below
once more, the white buildings were no longer
standing. Smoke filled the air, char-burnt ashes
of stench, and the smell of burning flesh. The
waters of the lake roiled and foamed, reflecting
the fires that were all that remained of the place
that had been home for almost as long as I
could remember.
I clenched my hands in silent agonized memory,
and as my nails dug into my palms, I cried.
What happened here?
"The academy�is dead," I said. "I�failed. You
were there."
Lightning flashed in the sky and it began to rain,
but I didn't move, didn't run from where I stood.
There was a presence next to me. I didn't turn
around, merely wrapped my arms around myself
and looked up at the sky. The rain stung my
eyes but I did not blink.
"You were there," I said again. "I failed. I couldn't
win the war."
No. No one won the war.
I could have argued that point in a hundred
different ways by point and counterpoint, but it
had been argued already, by the military and the
government and the newscasters and the
reporters, the former soldiers and the parents
who had lost their children, by veterans and
mourners praying over the graves of loved ones.
For two years, and I was sick of war.
"I'm sorry I couldn't�I was weak. I�"
You're not weak. You're the strongest person I
know.
I tried to smile, but I didn't have the heart,
merely shrugging wet shoulders. Thunder
cracked in the sky overhead.
"It's a shame, you know. So much�for nothing.
We were going to change the world, remember?
You and I�"
We did change the world, I think. But not in the
way we planned.
"No," I echoed. "Not that way."
I felt him laugh, if illusions could laugh, if it was
an illusion standing by my side looking with me
into the mist and smoke that rose from the
ruined academy into the clouds. "Tell me
something."
What's that?
I unwound my arms from around my chest,
feeling the collected water run down the soaked
fabric and drip down my sides as it continued to
rain, drops streaking down my face and my
neck, between my breasts and around my hips,
trickling drop by drop down the insides of my
thighs like the touch of some unseen lover. The
rain was warm.
"In the end�was what we did�did it mean
anything?"
He was silent, and the thunder roared again,
softer now, and in the darkening sky the
lightning flashed, and I could see his eyes. I
reached out my hand, felt him take it in his large,
callused one, wrapped my fingers through his. I
closed my eyes.
"You don't have to tell me that it didn't," I said
quietly, "because I guess I already know. I
guess�I've always known�"
As long as it meant something to you, he said.
To us. To all of us, then it is enough.
And as the rain gushed down in rivulets and
streams and rivers running endlessly into the
great lake and the oceans beyond, and as the
thunder cried and the mountains shook beneath
our feet and the world crumbled around us and
the great tree trunk split in two, he drew me
closer to him and we fell together into the
chasm.
The lightning shimmered in a beam of brilliance
around us and I heard the angels singing.
And then it was dark.
"Tell me something else," I whispered into the
silence, and I heard his sigh in response.
Anything.
I gently freed myself from his embrace, my eyes
still closed, my fingers grazing his cheek one
last time, finding his lips as I touched them,
slowly, before I let him go.
"Why did you come here?"
Though I could not see him still, even had I
opened my eyes, I felt his smile as brilliant as if
the clouds and the darkness had melted away
and the sun was shining out of the blue sky and
we were under our tree once again. And
perhaps if I opened my eyes we would be, as if
nothing wrong had ever happened between us
and never would, that the war had never been
fought and no one had ever died.
For the first time in my life, he said, I wanted to
do something right.
But that was only illusion.
As was he.
"No," I said softly. "No�not the first time."
He was drifting away from me and suddenly I felt
a flash of fear, reaching out my hand, but he
was too far away. I could sense him trying to
reach me, the distance between us growing. Too
fast. It was too fast.
"Don't�!"
I could feel the blood running down my body
from the gaping hole in my stomach where the
pain twisted and writhed like some unholy living
creature. It dripped in hollow, obscene droplets
with thick, murmured gurgles to some unseen
space below and I felt it coating my skin, my
hands and smearing my face. My blood.
I wanted to cry out but I was afraid that no one
would hear. I wanted to open my eyes but I
knew if I did so, everything would vanish,
everything in the illusion I had created for
myself. I was afraid. I had always been afraid, of
losing, of being lost, of death. Of losing him most
of all.
"Don't go!" I cried. "Don't leave�"
And I was falling.
And I was screaming.
And I knew I was dying.
And then I felt something warm surround me
and the blood, the pain, was gone. I took a deep
ragged breath, breathed in the air cool and
sweet, felt myself floating, no longer falling. A
dusting of pure wind across my face and the
warmth increased, and there was light. And I
knew that even if I opened my eyes, nothing
could ever harm me again, because the dream
was destined to come to this and I did not need
to be afraid. Because life was just the continuing
dream of sleep and dying was just a gateway to
a beginning.
So this was death.
Strangely, there was no fear. There was no
regret, no sorrow, nothing left undone. For the
first time in my life, I felt at peace.
Because it was time for the dream to end.
"I love you," I said.
And then I woke up.
END WAKING
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