Title: Where We Met and Meet (Always Here)
Fandom: Gundam (Universal Century)
Rating: G
Length: ~1200
Content notes: referred to cannonical character death
Author notes: set before Char's Counterattack
Summary: Before he goes to Londo Bell, Amuro has to do something on Side 6 in hopes to find a sort of peace of mind despite being back in space.




Amuro drives the car down the road right after the scheduled rain shower and nearly winces when he drives through muddy puddles on the road splashing dirt everywhere, asking himself why this colony leaves the road here like this. He supposes that this part up here with the lake and the small cottages is meant to mirror a natural environment so mud just is what someone thinks as natural.


As someone who spent the past couple of years with his feet firmly planted on Mother Earth, he thinks there are more important things for colonies to provide and offer new solutions to than this simulation of nature. Humanity will evolve — hast to maybe. And he thinks there is so much more to it then what people mean when they whisper the word "Newtype" behind his back.


He stops the car, more dirty water splashing up around it.


It makes him press his eyes shut and take a deep breath.


But the memory is already there at the forefront of his mind — Char with his stupid mask, Lalah all brightness and smiles and his buggy stuck in the mud — and he can't do much but grasp the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turn white. He feels like he's suffocating, his chest constricting, his head swimming — and there's a part of him that wants to cry while another wants to scream at the unfairness of it all.


He takes a deep breath, then another, steels himself. There's nothing here to fear.


Char isn't here.


Amuro knows he's out there somewhere, just like he knew from the start that the damn, brilliant bastard hadn't died like he made everyone believe. He knows. He knows because he would know. There's no way that Char's death wouldn't have been felt by him even if they were on different ends of the universe.


He knows.


Char's out there. Alive.


And part of Amuro wants him to be here. Part of him hopes they'll never meet again, because he fears it won't end well. And for a while there he had hoped… Still hopes maybe. But fears.


He grabs the flowers from the front seat with a quick and sudden motion, telling himself he came here for a reason and he might as well get it over with. His eyes stray to the lake and the cottage beyond and he very much tries not to look at the flowers, arranged into a bouquet. Lilies. White and yellow. And one red rose.


It annoys him.


He knows why he chose it and what the flower stands for — in his mind, not in any language of flowers. And he hates that he chose it.


But it's for her.


And she would want it that way.


He steps out and walks towards the lake, determined.


You're back, you're back, you're back, she sings in his mind, the same way she talks and whispers in his dreams every night since he launched himself into space again — exactly like he always feared she would when he came to the sea of stars that is her grave.


I didn't want to come, he thinks at her memory.


But you belong here! With me! With us! You should be with me. We should be here together.


He swallows against the knot in his throat. Sadness fills him. He's alive and she's dead because of him, because of them. You should be here with us. It should never have been that way.


He reaches the corner of the lake. Reed is blocking the view of the shoreline still but he readies the flowers. He wants to throw them in the lake, because this is where they met and…


A sudden sound, splashing, beating of wings and a swan shoots up into the sky, startled — or startling him, and Amuro freezes, his heart beating faster.


He can only stare at the huge white bird.


His mind is filled with her laughter — not maliciously directed at him, but happy, carefree, melodious. Beauty, she says, and he remembers the dying swan they’d seen when they met for the very first time. Life is beautiful.


Mouth dry, he can only stare at the swan that rises up into the fake colony sky and for a moment all of it crashes in on him — the feeling of the colony moving around its own axis here in space, he can feel the simulated weather, the gravity in this little husk protecting precious life that was brought out here, like the people, himself, the swan. Then let me be, Lalah, he thinks. I'll always love you, but you can't have me yet.


Can he? she asks and laughter fills his mind and he wonders if the bell-like sound is her, or time or the music of the spheres. He can feel it, taste it, knows awareness is there somewhere beyond his human senses — and then he shuts it down and does what he came to do. He throws the flowers up and watches them fly out in a precise bow and land in the water with a splash, scattering. White and yellow and a smudge of red.


Beautiful, she laughs.


"Goodbye," he says out loud. "I hope one day you can forgive me."


You need to forgive yourself. Where I am now, where you will be — none of it matters. But you should both be here.


Nothing matters. And yet, this ghost can't let go.


Somewhere out there Char can't either. Amuro doesn't know how he knows, but he does. Sayla warns him every time they meet that she believes the same of her brother, that Char is the type to never let go.


"Goodbye, Lalah," he says and steps away from the water, gives himself a moment to study the porch where she'd been sitting all those years ago when Amuro had been a teenager, so radiant and alive. Her laughter is still on his mind when he walks back to the car, trying to leave the memory with the flowers floating on the water's surface.


He has that sudden sinking feeling he's being watched and looks back briefly, thinks the feeling, the pressure of it, it's so familiar and frightening and warm. It drowns out even the laughter from beyond the grave.


It feels like Char. Like Quatro — the Char he got to know a little.


But there's no one there. No one he can see.


He's alone.


Without them.


He nods to the shore, to the porch and then gets back in the car.


Soon now, he thinks. Things will start moving. I should too.


* * *


When he's on Londo Bell he feels better. Maybe coming to space won't be a disaster. Maybe he can come to terms with what happened in the past. He expects she will still visit his dreams. Hiding on Earth had been a temporary solution, as he always knew she was waiting for him out here in the darkness of space where she had lost her life. And somewhere out here Char is waiting, too.


Amuro wants to be ready.


He hopes he won't ever forward to the end but stay at a new beginning.


"Amuro?" Bright is watching him from the command seat. "Something wrong?"


He doesn't ask: Are you sensing something?


He married Mirai after all and knows how sensitive the topic can be for any of them.


Amuro smiles and shakes his head. "Just lost in thought. Nothing to worry about."