nightburst | it tolls for thee

TITLE: rock dove
FANDOM: Gundam 00
CHARACTERS: Graham Aker
WARNINGS: Discussion of suicide, survivor's guilt
WORD COUNT: 1,505
CHAPTERS: 1/1
SUMMARY: After his duel with Setsuna, Graham does some soul-searching.

A man called Graham Aker had plummeted towards the earth; a bird in flight with bloodstained feathers, arrows piercing its wings.

If that grounded bird could fly no more, if its glory and worth could be found only in a sky it could no longer reach, then to die was only right.

But there was a young man who soared so high on vibrant wings, speaking of impossible things like the future, and looked upon that wretched bird and said I will not put you down.

“Live,” the young man had said.

“Live,” said the young man who had surpassed Graham in every way, who saw that they were the same and believed that they could be more.

“I’m going to live, and so should you,” said the young man without an ounce of doubt in his heart, his words echoing over and over through Graham’s head.

Now they fill the silence of the empty hospital room, where Graham has of course no sword with which to bring himself some semblance of a dignified end.

He had his chance to die and he didn’t take it.

That’s mostly true. If he wanted to, he could figure it out. Improvisation is one of his skills.

Whether or not he wants to: that’s the million dollar question.

He’s not on suicide watch. He didn’t admit in the first place that he ever planned to kill himself. He doesn’t want to be monitored or have any of his personal affects taken from him.

He’s going to be here some time yet; G-force isn’t kind to the body and according to the doctors it's 'alarming' to vomit up blood.

There had been a time when he’d felt dread at the sight of blood on his hand as he shakily drew it away from his mouth.

That had stopped.

When had that stopped?

When he had grown so desperate to defeat the Gundams that he was willing to tear his body apart to achieve it.

When you became twisted, he pictures the young man saying.

He threw his pride away.

Lying back in a hospital bed, picking out faces in the patterns on the ceiling, he lets the thought sink in like the chill of snow.

The pride of a Flag Fighter. The pride of a decent man who’d have balked at associating with the likes of the A-LAWS.

Dancing to the whims of the Innovators if it means he gets to fight the young man one more time, and if he wins it means his continued existence on this planet can have some semblance of justification.

He can’t cast all of the blame onto the Gundams.

He got tunnel vision. He couldn’t see a future.

Only the red of bloodshed and the pitch-dark hue of death.

Why are you alive? The Graham Aker of four years ago asked himself, lying in a hospital bed much like this one.

Why did you get to live?

What have you accomplished with this life?

Who have you managed to protect?

-- I don’t know.

But if I can surpass the Gundams -- that Gundam -- I’ll have had a reason to survive.

In the here and now he thinks that if he’d won, it’d all have ended the same way.

Staring down a sword in the void of space.

Yet here he was, as always.

Still alive.

What will you accomplish if you die? asks the voice that isn’t his own.

The dead will stay dead.

You can’t go back and undo it.

But you --

You can still change.

“Fight to live,” Graham mutters. “It’s a fight indeed, young man.”

And he surely he knows. The young man doesn’t preach from a place of ignorance.

If anyone had any right to speak those words, it must have been that boy.

“When did you learn to do more than fight, I wonder?”

What did he experience? Who did he meet?

From where did that stolid mercy come? The strength to leave an enemy alive and implore him to stay that way?

Placing his faith in a foolish man who’d only ever been an obstacle to him.

Graham can’t help it.

He yearns to reward that faith.

The gist of what the doctors tell him after his latest exam is ‘we’d like to continue to monitor your condition for a few more days, but it should be safe to release you soon provided you stick to the treatment plan and take your medication as prescribed.’

In other words, he’s not going to die.

The fact is that he’d been so wrapped up in the dilemma of suicide that he’d almost forgotten why he was actually in the hospital.

His body had sustained serious damage, and if left untreated, he was on his way to an early grave.

He's been running at death in a full sprint, never catching up.

It's not fair that he's alive when his friends and comrades aren't.

Nor would it be fair to be spared and die anyway.

What would he say to all who fell under his command when he met them on the other side?

'I was given what was stolen from you and I threw it away'?

"You'd never forgive me," he says to himself, and laughs wryly.

Graham keeps his eyes on the news.

New crimes orchestrated by the A-LAWS upper echelon come to light daily. Homer Katagiri has been dead for the better part of a month, choosing to gut himself instead of face up to his crimes.

Is that what you call an honorable death? Graham thinks, an unpleasant taste on his tongue.

Graham can recall with clarity the ugly display of automatons gunning down Katharon soldiers.

As a license-holder, he had the privilege to do as he pleased -- he kept out of operations where the young man’s Gundam wasn’t likely to be deployed.

It isn’t incorrect to say that he had little to directly do with the worst of what was perpetrated.

But neither is it correct to say that it absolves him.

‘The world’s affairs don’t concern me’, he had believed.

How arrogant, he now thinks.

Who can say they are not a part of the world in which they live? ‘It’s not my problem’ is a selfish refrain.

Laughable. Pathetic.

The young man had tried to tell him, long ago.

He refused to listen.

He is listening now.

He can't undo who he's been, what's done and been a part of. Making up for it all may not be possible. Forgiveness may never be his.

That's okay.

Forgiveness isn't what he wants. What a lark it'd be to think he deserves it.

He wants to stop being the poison and start being the remedy.

The dead must carry their regrets and all they've left unfinished into eternity.

To be a wandering wraith may suit Mister Bushido, but it does not suit Graham Aker.

Mister Bushido.

He hated that name.

He holds his mask in hand contemplatively; it’s the only part of his A-LAWS uniform he still has. The civilian clothes he’s got with him at the hospital don’t cover his scars as completely as the uniform did.

It was hardest to reckon with at the start; there he was at his lowest and any stranger passing him by could see the proofs of failure etched into his body.

He is tired of despising his reflection.

In that strange space where consciousnesses meet, that room for dialogue the young man’s Gundam created, Graham’s scars had been laid as bare as the rest of him and -- he hadn’t cared. It didn’t matter.

A consequence of the curious circumstances, he supposed, but in retrospect, a terrible burden had been lifted from his shoulders for but a moment in time.

So long as he keeps wearing this mask, he’ll never feel that way again.

He grits his teeth, disgust roiling within him.

For how much longer do I intend to hide?

This mask is the face of the one they called Mister Bushido. It exemplifies him: the warrior who answers defeat with death in accordance with his creed.

And here he is, alive. Rejecting that creed with each successive breath he takes.

Choosing, minute by minute, to continue existing.

Mending his warped heart.

His hand trembles.

If he puts his mask back on, it won’t be Graham Aker they’ll see, but a wretch who refuses to renounce his foolishness with any conviction.

Is what these scars signify truly so much uglier than what this mask represents?

No. He wants to be a better man than he has been.

His life was not spared so he might sit here and stagnate like some indecisive coward. That isn’t how he’s supposed to be.

Graham Aker is a man with conviction.

He declares to himself that he will not wear this mask again.

And he doesn't.

A young man has a dream like a premonition.

A bird with metal wings is staring skyward; there is a goal it can see beyond the horizon.

Nothing can stop it from taking flight again.