“So let me get this straight. I’m old enough to get beaten up by my commanding officers on the regular, but I’m not old enough to drink alcohol?”
Kamille was in a bad mood. A life spent living at moderate climates had left him unprepared for the bitter cold and high altitudes of the Tanzanian mountains. As a result of his unfamiliarity, he’d spent the last fifteen minutes chilled to the bone after falling into a snowbank while setting up camp.
Although Kamille had understood the concept of layering clothing beneath his jacket, he hadn’t considered the necessity of tucking the various layers into one another, and during his tumble the snow had wedged itself into the gaps between his jacket, his pants, and his shirt, leaving his lower back directly exposed to the elements. As a result, he had spent a quarter of the hour getting progressively more irritated as he awaited any reprieve the tent and its portable electric heater stove could provide.
“It just worked out that way. If we didn’t need one of us sober and on lookout, a single cup wouldn’t hurt anything.” Amuro’s words were apologetic, but there was the hint of a smirk bringing the corners of his mouth upwards. Although Kamille didn’t truly care all that much about the alcohol itself, the principle of the thing rankled him, and the whiff of mild condescension did nothing to improve his mood.
Before Kamille could respond, however, Char grabbed the bottle from Amuro’s hand. “Hmm… I mean, that’s true for wine and beer, but barrel-proof bourbon is a little strong for a teenager…”
Amuro tilted his head. “Is it?”
“You’re the one who brought it, so don’t look so innocent.” This time, it was Char whose face broke into something like a smirk. But, noticing Amuro wasn’t being sarcastic, he straightened a bit. “…Wait, did you really not know?”
Amuro shrugged. “It’s what was recommended to me by the clerk at the liquor store before we left North America. I asked for something that’d be good for a party…” Amuro had spent the last five years following a regimented diet, which didn’t allow for much alcohol. Although he’d had a few months of practice drinking aboard the Audhumla with Hayato and the rest of his team, this was the first time he had purchased alcohol on his own, and he hadn’t had any idea, in truth, what he ought to have bought.
“Well, he recommended a good bourbon, but… If you really didn’t know, I’ll just pour them a little lighter than I was planning.” Char carried the bourbon to one side of the foldaway table and shuffled towards the small heater stove to retrieve a tea kettle. “They’ll be warmer that way, too.”
The three had spent the last two hours setting up camp as the sun set behind the mountains. This was the first night of a four-day journey, which felt like a ridiculous amount of time to travel over such a small distance when two of the three men were piloting mobile suits for the climb. This leisurely pace was made necessary by the particulars of their current mission, in which Karaba’s remote supply station was offering the trio shelter and intelligence in exchange for supplies and scouting. After all parties regrouped and shared information, the plan was for Char and Kamille to infiltrate a nearby Titans headquarters while Amuro and a team of local operatives offered external assistance.
During the day’s journey, Amuro had spent an hour at a time moving ahead of the others in an all-terrain vehicle, checking for and reprogramming any Earth Federation monitoring devices he happened across, after which Char and Kamille followed along in their much more conspicuous mobile suits. The two of them would then break for another hour while Amuro once again moved ahead, returned with the all clear, and the three moved to the next checkpoint. This process repeated until they ran out of sunlight, at which point they’d grounded and camouflaged the Zeta and Hyaku Shiki and set up a makeshift situation room of a tent directly between them, with the large machines acting as windbreakers, keeping their tent from getting blown away or snowed-over.
Kamille set one of the chairs backwards, near to the electric stove, and turned his jacket inside-out to dry before maneuvering around Char to get to the stove’s other free side, where he sat on the floor with his back to the heat, facing upwards towards a small television monitor on a makeshift media rack. In this way, the only source of heat in the room was already cut off on all sides, forcing Amuro to sit backwards in an awkward balance on the chair-turned-laundry rack to warm his hands and face.
Char removed the kettle from the stove and started fiddling with a thermos and some tea bags. As he poured the water and checked his watch to note when he ought to stop steeping the tea, he turned over his shoulder to address the non-drinker in the room. “Kamille, do you want tea or cocoa?”
“Coffee, I guess, since one of us has to be both sober and awake…” Kamille thought he might be able to catch the lieutenant out by asking for something he hadn’t offered. He also thought that requesting coffee made him seem like a practical, mature person.
“Sure.” Char crossed behind the table and dug through his bags to pull out a small container of instant coffee, along with some snacks and a pack of playing cards. He had brought a bit of everything, anticipating that the three of them might get bored of the same food night after night, and all of the various sundries he’d set aside were still wrapped neatly in their packagings. Seeing them lined up together, snug in a row in the pocket of his duffel bag, made this feel like a camping trip, rather than a mission, which suited Char’s mood just fine.
Kamille wondered if bourbon and coffee would be any good, since apparently bourbon and tea was a popular enough concept that Char had immediately moved to brew some without asking Amuro about his preferences. “If it ‘just worked out’ that I can’t have any bourbon tonight, then let me try some tomorrow.”
Char smiled a little. “Are you in a rush to try new things?”
“Not really. But if it’s a good bourbon, that’s something I won’t run into that often, anyway.” Kamille looked off into the distance, past the walls of their tent, and felt that he might be able to say something a little philosophical. “Good alcohol requires a good occasion for drinking.”
“Spoken like someone who isn’t destined to become an alcoholic,” Char replied lightly.
Kamille deflated. “Is that sarcasm?”
“It’s praise.”
“Whatever.”
Char checked his watch, removed the tea bags from the thermos, and poured three mugs of warmth — one coffee and two teas of differing hardness — before passing them across the small table. Kamille stood to pick his up and checked the degree to which the back of his shirt and pants had dried. Amuro was still close enough to the table to reach over without standing up, although maneuvering while seated backwards in a folding chair was a bit awkward. Having decided that his clothes were dry enough, Kamille grabbed the remaining two folding chairs and offered one to Char before setting his own up such that he could see the television monitor while sitting sideways to the stove, his feet at an awkward angle, straining towards the heat.
Caught up in the comfort of the steam and aroma of his mostly-tea, Amuro tried once again engaging in conversation while he waited for his drink to cool. “How long have you been doing this, Kamille?”
Kamille thought to himself that Amuro was missing a proper noun in that sentence, and wondered if that was how he normally spoke. “What part?”
“…You know… Fighting.”
“Oh, that. It’s been a little less than a year, I guess?” Kamille honestly couldn’t remember. He was meticulous with numbers when they represented distance or quantity, but he’d never been good with time. When each day seemed similar to the one that came before it, it was easy to lose track of weeks, let alone months. In that sense, visiting Earth was a happy vacation from waiting around in space for another battle to break out.
Amuro tried to sip his tea, but recoiled from the heat immediately. “You’re doing great, then. We were all unraveling at the seams after only a few months…”
Kamille wondered if he’d actually get to hear anything about the One Year War this time, if he needled the two of them correctly. “…I guess the lieutenant has the most experience.” It took him a moment to realize that “lieutenant” was a rank belonging to both Amuro and Char, and he belatedly tried to correct himself. “Uh. Lieutenant…”
“Quattro, yeah.” Amuro finally managed to sip a bit of tea, and made a face as if it were more bitter than he’d anticipated. In reality, he just couldn’t stand the feeling of Char’s new pseudonym in his mouth.
Char, who knew how well he had managed to brew a decent blend of tea, felt his voice go a bit flat. “…You have a hard time calling me that.”
“Well, it isn’t your name…”
“…” There was nothing Char could say to refute that statement.
Kamille was the one to break the silence. “It’s easier for me to keep calling him that. I thought I’d change it, but…” There had even been a time when Kamille had declared that he’d refuse to call the lieutenant by anything other than his former name, but that had only lasted about a day before he subconsciously reverted to his normal way of speaking. “That’s just how I know him.”
“I know.” Amuro’s voice was kinder than Kamille expected. But that only lasted a moment. Amuro folded his arms over the chair-back in front of him and leaned the left side of his body into the heat while turning towards Char. “Anyway, stop looking all distressed over there. I know we’re basically just talking about you like you’re not here, but we can still see you mope.”
“Who’s moping? Should you be egging on the person who’s pouring your drinks like that?” True to his word, Char was already topping off his mug with a different ratio of bourbon to tea than Amuro remembered from the first round.
“What, are you planning on spiking them? I gave you the poison willingly.”
“Hm.” Char made a noncommittal noise and sipped his drink wordlessly. Amuro thought that Char’s lead must be due to the difference in the proportion of tea to bourbon, and vowed to pour his own at a similar ratio for his next round.
Kamille was still fixated on the idea of getting a few war stories out of the two of them. “You two don’t particularly dislike one another.”
Char laughed slightly. “Should we? To keep up appearances?”
“We find one another frustrating.” Amuro’s tone was light, but his face was a bit stiff.
“I suppose that’s true.” Char gave Amuro a free point.
The three settled into an awkward silence while Kamille turned away to fiddle with the television monitor in front of him, pretending to care about the assignment he’d been arbitrarily handed. There really wasn’t any need to pay attention to the readings on the screen until one of the audio alerts had been triggered, and even then, if there was something out there gaining on them in the darkness, the monitor would only give a vague idea of the direction of the intruder. But considering that Amuro had gone to the trouble to hack into and set the nearby sensors to operate on all those extra frequencies, he might as well pretend the job of watching over their output was important.
There was no skill whatsoever needed to watch the monitor displaying the output of the various sensors’ readings, but there was some amount of knowledge required to complete the tedious adjustments of input gain from time to time as the signal strength fluctuated. Kamille looked back and forth between the monitor and his hands while adjusting dip-switches on a series of strung-together black and navy boxes all wired in sequence and littered in front of the tiny screen. No one had bothered to pack a manual or explain anything about the collection of electronics, so Kamille was largely operating on guesswork.
In the monotony between this and that adjustment, Kamille’s mind wandered back towards their previous conversation, and how unlikely it was that the two most famous enemy pilots from the last war could be playfully bantering less than a decade after trying their best to kill each other. In a few years’ time, would he start running into people who’d fought him before? If they thought there was a chance Kamille had killed their squad mates, would they really be able to treat him like a normal person? Would it be okay, as long as they thought he was just “some soldier” rather than “the Gundam pilot”?
Once the signal strength and output resolution got to a usable state, Kamille turned back to the other two pilots to try putting a voice to his questions, only to find that the two lieutenants had, without saying a word to one another, begun playing some card game, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He walked over and, joining the silent festivities, tried to figure out what game they’d started, only to be somewhat bemused by the fact that two fully-grown war heroes had wordlessly agreed to a game of Old Maid.
“He can see your cards in the reflection in your glasses, you know.” Kamille’s voice was flat with exasperation.
“Ah. That’s why I’m losing.” Char didn’t sound particularly bothered by the revelation.
“No, it’s definitely my incredibly strong Newtype powers. Pay no attention to the kid, and just leave those shades right where they are.” Despite his words, Amuro leaned across the table and stole the visor from Char’s face. He put it on and set his cards down in a neat arc on the table. “Do I look like a world class poker player?”
Kamille took in the sight of a man in reflective sunglasses with every one of his cards laid face-up in front of him. “You look like someone completely unconcerned with winning anything at all.”
This time, Kamille retrieved the visor from Amuro’s face. He’d never thought too deeply about how dark the lenses were, but when he tried looking through them, he wondered exactly how delicate Char’s eyes must be.
As if unbothered by the these calculated acts of ocular thievery, Char took the opportunity to top off everyone’s drinks and pass around a package of jerky. When Kamille tired of inspecting his glasses, Char finally got a chance to retrieve his visual identity and returned to nursing his own beverage.
Kamille finally remembered he had meant to ask about postwar grudges. “After all of this ends, what happens?” He turned towards Char and clarified his question. “I think half of our crew is former-Zeon, right?”
“You mean, what happens to the people in Titans?” Char finished Kamille’s question in a way that wouldn’t leave Amuro out of the loop.
“Yeah. Do we all just work together again, like none of this happened?”
Char looked a bit thoughtful, despite trying to hide the care with which he chose his words behind his visor. “…The people in charge of these kinds of insurrections either get captured and punished or escape and find some new purpose. But those who feel at odds with society will often band together around anyone they think can offer them strength, so with every would-be revolutionary we allow to escape, the likelihood of future conflict increases. That said, I don’t think the common soldiers should have any trouble joining forces after the dust settles, as long as there’s enough resources for everyone.”
Amuro scoffed. “That’s so optimistic. Even if there are resources, people still want to hoard them. That’s a big part of why the last war started, too.”
Char narrowed his eyes, not that anyone could tell. “Well, there’s no way to force people to share what they have with others, aside from war. If we could figure out how to do that, we would be able to resolve all sorts of issues besides the ones directly in front of us.”
Pouring more bourbon into his mug, Char absentmindedly allowed his thoughts to wander the paths of his in-group’s logic and reasoning. As a result, his voice took on the quality of a man who was practicing a speech in the mirror.
“The A.E.U.G. is investing its resources in a combination of targeted attacks and information warfare, trying to gain goodwill amongst the common people, hoping that a grassroots movement can sustain permanent change. Until that’s achieved, we’re targeting those at the top as we track their movements — the people who are trying to consolidate power for themselves using Spacenoids as scapegoats.” He paused briefly, checking the temperature of his mug with the back of his hand. “But no matter what we do, the division of resources will still be a problem.”
Amuro buried half of his face in his folded arms and looked directly into the heater in front of him. “You don’t think it’ll work.”
“I didn’t say that.” Char had thought it, but he hadn’t said it. “It’s just that no matter how much goodwill you gain amongst the common people, you need to be able to manipulate things in the rooms where the elite gather, since they’re the ones with the ability to stamp out resistance on a scale that’s difficult for normal people to really conceptualize.”
Kamille started to say something, but Amuro barreled over him. “I can’t really imagine that anyone would have a hard time conceptualizing all of that after the colony drop, actually.”
Char stared into his mug. “You aren’t wrong, but people forget things easily. Even big things like that.”
Kamille finally got a word in. “During the last war, the Zabi family was wiped out, so there wasn’t anyone to capture and punish, but our goals this time are to bring people like Bask Ohm and Jamitov Hymem to justice, I guess?”
“Or just kill them. Really, that’s fine, too.” Amuro sounded oddly disinterested. “Your lieutenant over there is right when he says that there’ll still be all sorts of other problems to deal with, either way.”
Char sighed, “I don’t know that I like you being the bloodthirsty one between us.”
Amuro pressed more of his face into his arms, his boot knocking into the side of the tea-and-bourbon he’d set on the floor next to him. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gunning for anybody’s life on principle. I just think that if you start stringing people up in public courts, that’s not going to be much different from shooting them down on the battlefield. It’s all decided ahead of time by the same people at the top, right?”
“Well, you could always just become one of the people at the top, I suppose. Buy your way in.”
“As if they’d let me. Between the two of us, you’re better positioned to do that, and you know it.”
“True; I’m already to the point of parading around on television now.” Char walked around the table, grabbed hold of Amuro’s mug, and knocked the handle against his knuckles, encouraging him to drink the thing before he accidentally kicked it over. “Cheers to the nouveau riche from the landed gentry.”
Amuro accepted the mug and sipped silently, stretching his back as Char retreated to his table-fortress.
“So uh, we try to capture the higher-ups, or kill them, or whatever, but again, what happens to the rank-and-file soldiers?” Kamille thought that he’d better keep the conversation on track before it devolved into financial statistics.
Char shrugged. “As you say, half of our crew is former-Zeon, but we all get along fine.”
Amuro readjusted his weight after stretching and looked across the stove to where Kamille was seated. “Don’t forget that at this point, as known as you are, fighting in that flashy mobile suit, you aren’t considered a rank-and-file soldier from their perspective. Whether you lose or win, you ought to try escaping.”
“Escaping…” Kamille had no idea where he’d escape to or what he’d be qualified to do after these battles had ended. He could tell, at any rate, that Amuro was saying he shouldn’t seek a life as a career soldier afterword.
Char interjected, “If you don’t have any plans in mind, you have two wealthy friends who can help you out.”
“One of whom seems to be good at falsifying his identity, I guess,” Amuro downed the last of his mug and stood to pour himself some more tea-and-bourbon, using the thermos’ dwindling reserves as an excuse to add extra bourbon. Char dug some more tea bags out from his duffel, hoping to mitigate future damages by solving the problem of supply-and-demand.
Kamille realized that he’d never thought about the practical reality of his situation as someone who would certainly not be going back to high school and graduating with a diploma. “Come to think of it, even though I’m being paid a salary, Mr. Wong is still in charge of all that money for the time being, right? If he decides to stiff me at the end, is there anything I could even do about it?”
Char smiled as he set the tea bags in place and poured more water into the thermos. “That won’t happen. Although it’s true that you probably can’t have a bank account. But we’ll figure that out later.”
Kamille eyed the thermos. “If we get me a new identity, I could simply be old enough to drink.”
“Isn’t the drinking age set at 21 because of brain development? It’s higher in the colonies for that reason…” Amuro checked the state of Kamille’s jacket as he settled back into place. It belatedly occurred to him that he could set it, lining side out, on his knees while sitting forward in the chair and achieve the same effect as laying it against the chair-back while sitting backwards. Realizing this would be a far more comfortable arrangement for himself, Amuro began reorganizing his side of the heater stove so that he no longer had to sit with his knees splayed awkwardly around the chair’s frame.
“Oh, you’re worried I’ll ruin my very special brain with all its very special talents?” Kamille’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.
“…Fuck!” Amuro knocked one leg of the chair into his shin, lost his balance, and nearly dropped his drink. The jacket, miraculously, remained in place on the chair-back, and the bourbon similarly stayed in its mug, but Amuro looked like he was in significantly more pain than the situation warranted.
“Are you okay?” Char eyed the situation skeptically. This was only Amuro’s third drink of the night.
“Yeah. I don’t— I don’t know what just happened.” Amuro set the chair back in place, turned to face the correct direction, and set his mug down on the table. He felt like he’d just been struck with something, or like someone near him had just taken a hit on the battlefield, but nothing had happened. Nothing was happening outside the tent, that he could tell, either. Having no explanation, he settled into place, retrieving his mug and sipping silently as if trying to shake free of some shapeless emotion.
“…Are you secretly a lightweight?” Kamille watched the scene in front of him with the interest of someone who had never overindulged.
“Yeah, maybe.” Amuro’s tone was more irritated than it should have been, and Kamille decided that he obviously didn’t require any more concern, if that was how he was going to act.
“Well, whatever.” Kamille turned towards Char. “I could use some more coffee, too. I don’t actually feel like it’s doing anything for me.”
“You wouldn’t. I gave you decaf.”
“I’m not allowed alcohol or caffeine? How much are you planning on coddling me, exactly?” Kamille also sounded more annoyed than he had any right to be, and Char began wondering if he was in charge of an unruly group of boy scouts, rather than a trained tactical team.
“We have to be awake in the morning, so we’ll drink the regular coffee then. Do you want more decaf, or not?”
“Just give me the cocoa you offered me earlier, if that’s how it’s going to be…” Kamille was clearly sulking, but Char preferred that to open hostility, so he dropped the subject there and pulled the cocoa out of his bag.
Amuro set his mug back on the table, already empty.
“…You’re drinking too quickly.” Char didn’t even try to mask his criticism behind something more genteel. That had been too much bourbon to drink in the span of less than five minutes.
“I’ll deal with the consequences.”
“…” He decided to just pour Kamille’s drink and worry about whatever was about to happen with Amuro later. If he got sick, it wasn’t his fault.
“…You’re right, though,” Kamille said, a slight bitterness creeping into his voice. “The drinking age is 25 in most of the colonies. Really, if we were back in space, only Lt. Quattro would be of age.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Amuro said, distractedly. “He can have the light beer vending machine all to himself.”
“Oh, the White Base had one of those, too?” Kamille’s irritation was overcome by excitement to hear anything at all about the famous ship.
“Yeah… I think that’s the first time I had anything to drink outside of New Years’ champagne.” Amuro chuckled, one hand over his mouth. Char kept an eye on his body language, trying to make sure he wasn’t about to vomit suddenly. “It was awful.”
“It’s pretty bad!” Kamille smiled, then glanced at Char, who was paying no attention to the fact that his junior officer had just admitted to getting into the ship’s alcohol supply.
“Does Bright still live off of those bagged hamburgers?”
“…Is he the type to stress eat? Maybe he’s just not as stressed out on the Argama.” Kamille had no idea why he was feeling irritated again, and the fact that he couldn’t pinpoint the reason was more frustrating than the irritation itself.
“It would be a problem for everyone if he was more stressed out. I think we might have been tied neck-and-neck for most likely to have an aneurysm back then.” Amuro tried looking up from the heater stove and towards Kamille for the first time since he’d sat back down, but Kamille had turned his face towards the television monitor. He realized he was looking at the pilot of the Gundam, reading the a output of a monitoring system while talking about Bright Noa’s temper, and became momentarily unmoored from time. “Anyway, good. Good for him.”
“It definitely helps that the Argama had a stronger foundation of support from the beginning, compared to the White Base,” Char said, trying to impress the ship’s virtues on the former Gundam pilot. “The A.E.U.G. understands its value, and the value of its crew.”
“That is… a completely novel concept.” Amuro’s voice was flat. If the meaning of Char’s words was getting through, there was no way for him to tell from such a bland response.
Kamille, on the other hand, figured out half of what Char was attempting to convey. “Wait, are you trying to smooth things over between us?” He turned towards Char again, who finally returned eye contact.
Char sighed. “Not particularly. But you both seem to want to talk to one another as if your situations are exactly the same, so I thought I’d point out that they aren’t.”
Amuro’s response was directed at Char, but his eyes were lowered towards the heater stove in front of him. “There’s no need to smooth anything over. I know Kamille is a good pilot.”
“…Thank you.” Kamille had no idea what else to say to that.
“I just know it’s hard. Even if you don’t think it’s hard, and even if you’re trying to keep yourself from feeling like it’s hard while you still have to do it… You can’t completely not understand how hard it is.”
“…” Kamille wasn’t sure there was anything he could say to that.
Once again, Char covered for the silence. “It felt like it got easier for you fairly quickly, back then, considering how quickly you adapted to fighting.”
Amuro smiled bitterly. “That’s just because you made my life too difficult in the beginning.”
“You could say that I’m directly responsible for the creation of the ace pilot, Amuro Ray.” Char knew he was being obnoxious, but wanted to make sure Amuro wasn’t dwelling on anything in particular.
Amuro understood what Char was doing. “For better and worse. But don’t flatter yourself too much. I fought a lot of people who weren’t you.” Just when Kamille thought Amuro had once again lapsed into silence, he continued, “…I might have lost to them if I hadn’t fought you first, though…”
“Then am I responsible for your survival, as well?” Char smiled good-naturedly as he poured straight tea into Amuro’s mug.
Both Char and Kamille were taken aback when Amuro, who had seemed distracted for the last while, burst into full-bodied laughter. “Oh, I should… I should have recorded you saying that!” He put his hand through his hair as he laughed, smoothing part of his bangs back. “Everyone would get a kick out of it! Be sure to tell Bright exactly that, in exactly those words, when you guys go back to space.”
Kamille was amazed. He accidentally said the first thing that came to mind. “…Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t know you could smile until just now.”
“What?” Amuro was sure he smiled, occasionally.
Char agreed. “It was my first time seeing it, too.”
Amuro’s expression turned slightly awkward. “…Well… It’s true that I find all of this stressful…”
“Even when you’re with Beltorchika the most I see you do is look a little wistful,” Kamille continued, not paying attention to the atmosphere in the room.
“…Women like stoic men.” Amuro was privately mortified.
“Do they?” Not noticing Amuro’s discomfort, Kamille considered his statement a bit too seriously.
“All women are different.” Char tried to bring the subject to a close.
“Hmm…” Kamille continued considering the value of practiced nonchalance with the female half of the species.
Char abruptly decided that turnabout was fair play. “There’s no need for you to worry about all of that. You’ve already got someone like Fa who accepts everything about you.”
Kamille made a face. “I don’t know that I’d call that ‘acceptance.’ And things aren’t like that between us.”
“Oh?” Char feigned surprise.
“She’d say so, too.”
“That’s because you’re both young.”
Thankful for the escape route, Amuro decided to take an interest in the matter. “Kamille has a girlfriend?”
“I don’t!”
Char expertly managed not to laugh. “She even pilots alongside him.”
“Oh. A not-girlfriend pilot…” Amuro suddenly seemed to be caught up in a bout of nostalgia. This time it was Char’s turn to make a face.
“…You had better not be thinking about my sister.”
“Hahaha!” Amuro’s bright laughter made a resurgence.
Kamille once again found the sight amusing. “The only thing that makes Lt. Amuro laugh is being heckled, I guess.”
Amuro relaxed into his chair, letting go of a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “People usually only praise me or insult me. It’s nice to have somebody just see the truth.”
“‘See the truth,’ huh…?” Char’s voice was unreadable.
“Wait, so you know Lt. Quattro’s sister?” Kamille’s mind suddenly caught onto a fact that he’d missed up until just that moment. He pivoted between the two lieutenants, excited to put some of the pieces together. “…Come to think of it, if you’re actually Zeon Deikun’s son, then your sister is the missing Deikun princess.”
Before Char could say anything, Amuro, face notably flushed, responded. “Oh, ‘Princess Sayla’ sounds nice. It suits her.”
Kamille was surprised to hear an unexpected name. “The Core Fighter pilot!? That’s your sister!?”
Char simply looked down into his mug as he replied. “…Even I don’t know how that ended up happening. Why she was there, how she ended up fighting in the first place…”
Kamille realized that he’d been a little insensitive. “…I can see why you don’t talk about your past in the open, but…”
Char quickly decided that a moment of vulnerability was worth bringing the subject to a close. “My sister is living quietly without drawing attention to herself. Having a brother who can’t stop meddling in everything is sure to be difficult, so the least I can do is keep my mouth shut about her in front of other people.”
Amuro interjected. “She’d pretend she doesn’t want to hear from you, but she’d still like to…” Sayla had told Amuro, long after the fact, that she and Char had run into one another before the White Base had even left Side 7. She had told him how many separate occasions they had crossed paths on the battlefield, how Char had tried to bribe her to abandon the ship, and how much she had struggled with the decision to stay. It seemed too tidy, the way Char was tying all those loose ends into pretty, self-serving knots.
Char’s tolerance for vulnerability extended no farther than his previous sentiments, however. “The alcohol is clouding your judgement. Artesia is happier not hearing from me. She’s not pretending at all.”
It was true that Amuro was exceptionally intoxicated. Even though he realized that, he also knew he wasn’t wrong. Char felt his unsteady gaze work its way to the space directly between his temples, settling on his forehead for what felt like a much longer collection of seconds than had actually passed, before cryptically replying, “Maybe I really did poison the bourbon. Maybe I doomed both of us, and I just downed it quicker so I can be the one to go out first.” Despite the darkness of his words, Amuro’s tone was light, and almost self-satisfied. “What would you do, then?”
Char’s warm façade faltered for a moment as he realized where Amuro must be looking. “I suppose I’d die.”
“…Why are you two suddenly so morbid?”
Amuro broke what Kamille assumed to be eye contact with the Char and went back to his beverage. Whatever unspoken argument had passed between the two had come and gone in a flash, its contents unknown to anyone but the the parties involved. Amuro’s voice was full of nothing but warmth as he continued narrating some fictional betrayal. “Kamille, I’m sorry to traumatize you like this. To think, you’ll have to radio in all the gruesome details of our untimely demise…”
Still eyeing Char, who had turned to rummage through his bags again, Kamille tried to caution the drunkard, “I liked it better when you weren’t smiling so much.”
“Hahaha!” Laughing caused Amuro to feel vaguely ill, but he couldn’t help feeling that the amount of emotional discharge was worth the physical discomfort.
Popping his head back up from pretending to look for some undefined, nonexistent item amongst his belongings, Char tried forcing his voice to regain some of its good-natured warmth. “You’re the kind of person who gets friendly when you’re drinking.” His best attempt at joviality still left him sounding slightly manic to his own ears.
Amuro, feeling as though he’d won something, rounded his chair towards the table and placed his head in his hands, elbows perched on the tabletop. “It’s better than people who get violent, right?”
“Hm…” Char made an effort to appear thoughtful, voice still slightly on edge. “But if we can’t pilot like this, theoretically, the two of us will always be less capable of violence when we drink, regardless of personality.”
Amuro simply grinned impassively. “For the sake of world peace, all Newtypes must remain inebriated at all times.”
Kamille sighed, relieved that their spat had ended as soon as it had begun, but feeling as if he had suddenly become the oldest person in the room. “I don’t consent to that.”
“You can just… I don’t know, babysit us forever instead.” Amuro was clearly addressing Kamille, but had given up on the effort at looking his speaking partners in the eyes.
“I consent to that even less.”
Char moved to replace the water in the kettle while similarly avoiding the gaze of anyone in particular. “It’s fine; he’s the only one of us who’s actually inebriated.”
“I’m worse at it, but I’ll catch up.”
Char chuckled slightly, finally coming back down from his momentary spike of adrenaline. “You’ll catch up at alcohol tolerance?”
Amuro attempted to shrug, but the motion was awkward with his arms still supporting the weight of his head. “Why not?”
Char saw one last, slightly petty spot to needle his verbal opponent. “It also depends on biology. Try putting on some weight first.”
“…Right, come to think of it, how did you…” Amuro suddenly remembered that he should look at the person he was speaking to and pivoted his head in Char’s direction, overshooting slightly and correcting himself. Kamille thought he looked a little like a bobble-head doll. “You were living on the moon for years, so how did you get so buff?”
“…” It would have been less insulting if Amuro had questioned him out of malice, but Char could tell he had missed the veiled insult and had asked out of genuine curiosity.
“No, wait, that’s a good question.” Much to Char’s chagrin, Kamille picked up on the part Amuro wasn’t saying out loud and completed the thought. “Everyone who lives there for a long time has to take special supplements and do physical therapy to maintain basic muscle mass, right?”
Realizing that he had reached the end of his luck for the evening, Char decided it was too much trouble to lie. “…I just… did more of that than most people.”
It was impossible to tell, in the momentary silence that proceeded, whether Amuro was still paying active attention to the conversation. Kamille, however, eventually followed up this extremely half-hearted answer with a request for clarification.
“…You just… took more supplements? And worked out more?”
“Basically.”
“You were doping.” Despite the fact that his eyes were half-closed, Amuro managed to cut to the heart of the matter with precision.
Char’s eyebrows were the only thing that gave away his annoyance. “It’s a pretty meaningless distinction when you consider that everyone is doing it.”
Amuro continued on, undaunted. “In a monitored setting, at doses set by a doctor.”
“Oh my god.” Amuro’s eyes were all the way open again, even if they seemed to be having a hard time focusing. “You just paid someone to sign off on some bullshit that you decided on your own, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t as below-board as you seem to be thinking.” With practiced humility, Char excused his actions in the court of his peers. “I just wanted to feel like I was making some sort of progress.”
“…No, that makes sense.” Whether or not he had realized that Char was fishing for absolution, Kamille was quick to provide Char’s desired response. “You ended up looking more like you wanted to look, right? Everyone works to keep up their appearance.”
“Hm.” Char should have known that even Kamille’s apologia would still manage to call out his vanity.
Amuro had seemingly gotten bored with the topic. “Well, as long as you don’t mind whatever side-effects happen, it’s fine. I can’t judge. I don’t even know what the hell has been put in my body at this point.”
“What?” Kamille wasn’t sure he’d heard that right.
“No, it’s too depressing. Forget I said anything. Let’s all forget.” Amuro’s tone was still light as he finished off the last of his tea, grimaced slightly at the tannins that had settled to the bottom of the mug and, having apparently lost all sense of self-preservation, reached once again for the bourbon.
Char, who had been in the process of retrieving the tea kettle from the stove, grabbed the bourbon from the table before Amuro could even make contact with it, pressing the stopper into place with a definitive motion. “I’m cutting you off.”
Amuro was self-aware enough to realize that this was probably for the best. “You’re not drinking anymore, either?”
“Kamille needs to sleep at some point, so I’m sobering up.”
“No, no; I can keep going.” At this point, Kamille had given up on steering the conversation any given way. War stories or no, he was getting an interesting dinner show. “The two of you are fun to listen to.”
Amuro seemed pleased. “So you will babysit us forever, then.”
“For one night, maybe.”
Char turned to Kamille, who was certainly the only one to have any common sense left at the moment. “We have to be awake in the morning, all of us.”
“The Red Comet is a responsible guy!” Amuro’s face was flat, but his voice was still light.
It was impossible to tell if Amuro was being sarcastic, so Kamille decided to respond straightforwardly. “Lt. Quattro is very responsible.”
But Amuro simply answered with eyes closed and the cryptic hint of a smile, “Yeah. I know.”
“The two of you are going to make me blush.” After pouring out the last of what had once been tea from the thermos into Amuro’s mug and replacing it with water from the kettle, Char nudged a mug that was more hot water than tea into Amuro’s elbow, startling Amuro into a proper sitting position.
Once he’d regained his composure and grasped the mug by its handle, Amuro managed to do some basic math. “Wait, but does that mean you’re not sleeping at all?” He managed to make something like eye contact with Char. “You’ve been awake drinking with me this whole time.”
“I’ll sleep in the Hyaku Shiki’s cockpit while you two break camp in a few hours.”
“Ugh.” Amuro groaned through the final dregs of twice-brewed tea.
“You just wanted to avoid the hard work, after all.” Even Kamille refused to take this news charitably. He didn’t anticipate a hungover Amuro Ray to be much help in the morning.
“Unless it takes the two of you more than four hours to tear everything down and pack the trailer, you’re both coming out ahead of me on sleep.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and we’ll really slack off.” Kamille shuffled back over to the table and inspected the thermos, which at this point contained only hot water meant to be poured over instant coffee. Since the coffee itself must have ended up back in Char’s duffel at some point in the evening, Kamille gave up on the idea of having another drink and decided to finish off the jerky, instead.
Char took Kamille’s spot in front of the comically small television monitor. “Definitely don’t go slow for my sake. We’re expected to arrive at the meeting point after a certain number of days, and we don’t want anyone to go to the trouble of sending out a search team unnecessarily.”
“Yeah, sure.” Kamille pulled out Char’s chair and plopped down, jerky in hand.
“…This is about one step above plain hot water, don’t you think?” Amuro inspected the contents of his mug with a dissatisfied expression.
Char didn’t bother turning around to deliver his answer. “You didn’t even like the tea I brewed earlier when it was fresh.”
“No, the tea wasn’t the problem.”
“It was the company?” Although Char’s tone was mildly sarcastic, Kamille got the impression he was being more honest than usual.
“I didn’t say that. It’s just, you’re trying too hard.” Amuro had been smiling only a few minutes ago, but his voice suddenly sounded a bit strained.
Char decided to ignore whatever it was that Amuro was trying to imply. “Kamille, you start winding down. I’ll take over for you.”
Char’s offer was a little late in coming, since the two had already swapped positions. Still, Kamille chose not to point out the obvious, and instead left his chair to ask Char, as privately as low voices in enclosed spaces would allow, “Is Lt. Amuro going to be okay tomorrow morning?”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine.” Char responded at normal volume.
“I just gave myself a stomachache; don’t worry about it.” Amuro’s elbows had returned to the tabletop and he was pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, making it seem more like he had a headache than a stomachache.
Kamille was still skeptical. “I thought people didn’t get hangovers until the next day…”
“He’s not hungover.” Char exhaled sharply, something in-between a sigh and a scoff. “His mood just soured.”
“I’m fine.” Amuro’s voice was definitive, but he still seemed far from sober.
“…Then, tomorrow—”
Kamille didn’t get to finish his sentence before Char interrupted, voice halfway between amusement and exhaustion, “You’re not still trying to convince us to let you drink, are you?”
“No, I really don’t care that much.” Kamille had been trying all evening to find opportunities to talk around the subject, but wondered if asking directly might be more effective. He tried sounding less interested than he was as he moved back to the chair at the table, next to Amuro. “But tell me about the battles you two fought back then, tomorrow.”
Char’s face was unreadable behind his visor. It seemed to Kamille like he was debating how to respond, but before he could say anything, Amuro broke the silence first. “…Why? Those fights probably weren’t much different than the ones you’re involved in right now.”
“That can’t be true. You’re both…”
“Both what?” Amuro’s voice had gained an edge. Char turned away from the table where the two were sitting and watched their silhouettes in the reflection on the television monitor screen, trying to decide if there was anything he could say to defuse the conversation.
“I mean, you guys are a big deal, right?” Kamille thought the reason was obvious.
“…What did I do that you’re not doing right now?”
“It’s just, you’re the Gundam pilot.”
“No, I mean—”
“Amuro is trying to tell you to be proud of the work you’re doing.” Char tried to interpret the situation in the best possible light.
“No, that’s not it.” Amuro refused to take the easy way out. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“…Then, what? It’s not okay for me to be curious about it? Shouldn’t I be curious, since we’re both in similar positions?” Kamille didn’t understand what Amuro’s problem could possibly be. Amuro had been trying to give advice this whole time, in one way or another, without explaining his reasoning in the slightest. Why should Kamille listen to someone who had no problem telling him how he should feel, what he should think, but not why he’d arrived at such conclusions in the first place?
“That’s just it, though.” Amuro knew he was treading over testy ground, since he had walked the same path before. “Do you think that you’re a war hero? Because if you don’t think that’s already true about you, right now, then there’s no reason to think I have anything particularly insightful to say to you. I just shot at people a lot and happened to not get shot.”
Char turned away from the monitor and faced Amuro, whose head was still buried in his hands. “That’s the worst oversimplification I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“Then how would you describe it?” The edge in Amuro’s voice hardened. “What did you do that was so great back then? Did you tell him that you had some kind of good time out there or something?”
“So why should I have to try and glorify it?”
Char sighed. “He just wants to know—”
“You can ask Bright. He can tell you how great of a soldier I was.” Amuro’s answer was fast and quiet. If Char had been the type to keep talking over someone during an argument, it would have been nigh impossible to hear. “Bright’s the only one whose opinion you should trust on the matter, anyway, since he was the only actual soldier around back then.”
“…Captain Bright was the only soldier around…?” Kamille had no idea what Amuro was talking about anymore.
“Yeah, he… Captain Bright Noa of the Earth Federation… I really hated him back then for being a soldier. If he’d just been some kid, the same as the rest of us, we would have all died, but still… He couldn’t forgive the fact that I was actually just some kid, so we were always fighting one another…”
Char scowled. “The problem is that you still think like that. That you’re no one important.”
Amuro laughed mirthlessly, rubbing the corners of his temples with his thumbs. “Yeah, sure, I’m important. You want me to go back to fighting in space because I was so good at it once, and that makes me important. All that would happen is that Bright would have one more reason to kick my ass for hesitating to do all that a second time…” Amuro finally lowered his hands from his eyes and studied the table in front of him. “Jesus, he’d think I’m pathetic, and I’m finally getting it together while I’m here on Earth… Actually doing okay in Karaba… But if I fucked up in space again, it would be just another reason for Captain Bright Noa to never forgive me…”
Kamille couldn’t take any more of this. “Captain Bright isn’t like that. He’s… broadminded and… he considers everyone’s positions before making decisions. He’s a good captain.”
“‘Broadminded’? Yeah, I guess it’s been… half a decade. Anything is possible.” Amuro smirked, then returned to staring a hole into the tabletop. “…But yeah, he was always a good captain… He saved my life once.”
“…Did he ride out in a flight carrier and shoot someone down or something?” Despite trying his best, Kamille couldn’t imagine a likely scenario in which Captain Bright Noa rescued the Gundam pilot from certain death.
“Hah!” Apparently, Amuro couldn’t imagine such a scenario, either. “No, it was… He saved me from getting gored by a guy with a gun in a tight hallway.”
“From getting… gored…?”
“…The guy ran at me with a bayonet. I mean, I didn’t see it at first. The bayonet. I might have actually shot him first if I’d noticed that part.” Amuro glanced up to see Kamille’s expectant face looking back and quickly averted his eyes again. “But no, there were all these enemy soldiers… This was on Earth. We had to evacuate the civilians to Earth before getting sent back to space.” He paused to scoff. “‘The civilians,’ like we weren’t also civilians… No, Bright wasn’t one, but the rest of us, we were just too good at staying alive to be considered civilians… That was the only difference between us and them, I guess.”
“You were very good at staying alive.” Char’s attempts at sounding good-natured had reached their limit, and his words came out more like accusation than praise.
“No thanks to you.” Amuro returned the sentiment with sarcasm. “Or am I still supposed to believe you’re responsible for my survival?”
“It’s two sides of a coin, isn’t it?”
“What shitty currency would have such a shitty fucking coin as that?”
“…” Kamille had asked for this, he belatedly realized. He might as well hear the whole thing out. “…What happened with Captain Bright?”
“Oh, right. You wanted a war story. Sure. Fine.” Amuro also seemed to have resigned himself to satisfying Kamille’s curiosity. “We were on Earth, and somehow we had a bunch of enemy soldiers boarding while we were docked. I don’t remember how that ended up happening. We were followed back. No, it was… That was my fault. I… It doesn’t matter. Except I guess it really does, because a lot of people fucking died.”
Amuro looked for a moment like he was going to explain something, then shook his head and continued in a different direction. “But anyway, they’re coming in everywhere, and we’re not soldiers, so we don’t know what we should be doing. Everyone is firing at odd angles, and we’re literally learning from them as they fire on us that we shouldn’t be shooting in enclosed hallways like that, bullets just ricocheting all over the place…”
Amuro closed his eyes as if trying to remember something. The silence stretched a little too long for comfort, until even Char wasn’t sure he hadn’t fallen asleep like that.
“Amuro?”
But at the sound of his own name, Amuro simply continued the story as if nothing had happened, eyes still firmly shut.
“Right. It was bad… And they’re trained soldiers, so as soon as one of us was out of ammo, or if they could catch us around a corner, it was a point blank shot that couldn’t miss or ricochet, or… then there were the bayonets. Right.” He opened his eyes, but refused to look anywhere near the other two inhabitants of the makeshift room, eyes trained on this or that object on the table for a few seconds at a time.
“So this guy is just… I see him coming and I… I don’t move fast enough, because sure, I don’t want to die, but I also don’t just want to shoot him right there like that, either. And I know he’s out of bullets, because I counted his shots, so I know he can’t shoot me. And he’s running at me. I’m pretty sure he’s just going to bull rush me and escape after I’m knocked down, and I can live with that, but then I see the bayonet, and all I can do is dodge it and grab his gun to get it away from me.”
Amuro’s hands gripped the edge of the tabletop, as if he was bracing himself against it. “I drop my gun, I grab his gun. And I’m not, you know, a big person, especially then.” Amuro turned towards Char. “You remember.”
Char startled, not having anticipated Amuro’s sudden eye contact. “Yeah.”
Eyes returning to the table in front of him, Amuro continued. “So he’s obviously going to win this, if it’s a matter of strength or endurance. And I just think… That’s it. This is how it happens. All those stupid all-nighters maintaining the Gundam and I’m going to die because some real fucking soldier wants to spear me through before I even got the chance to aim at him.
“But then Bright comes in. And I don’t know it’s him at first — I don’t even know what just happened. But the guy is slumped over, and I feel something… like hot maple syrup or something just…” One of Amuro’s hands traveled halfway to his face before he stopped himself, realizing he was being slightly ridiculous.
“You have to understand that I know this guy is dead, but at the same time, all I can think is that we have to get him to the infirmary because he’s just been shot in the head, and he’ll die if we don’t hurry. Cause and effect were all jumbled up like that, and Bright is handing me my gun… I don’t even know when he picked it up, but this guy’s blood is all over him, too, because he’s lifting the guy off of me, and he’s saying something to me about staying alive…
“And I realize that Bright’s a real soldier. He’s always been one. I never knew him before he was a soldier, and he was just mad at me because he had to deal with me when I was just some kid.”
“Well, you’re not just some kid now.” Despite the atmosphere, this was one thing that Char couldn’t let go.
Amuro’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. “Right. I survived well enough that I’m no longer a civilian.”
“And you’ve been a soldier nearly as long as I have.”
“No, I really don’t think either of us qualify.”
Char’s voice became incredulous. “You’re including me in that statement?”
“Sure. You’re not a soldier. You’re a force of nature. You’re a natural disaster. The wrath of god.”
“…You’re on the same side now, though.” Kamille didn’t want to hear Char respond to that, no matter what his response might be.
“Yeah. I didn’t forget.” Amuro closed his eyes as he answered, as if to ask that Kamille just drop the conversation there.
Amuro’s voice had been hollow for some time, but it bothered Char that its tone hadn’t changed in the slightest throughout his story, up until now, even through what was surely meant to be a provocation. Char turned various responses over in his head, but nothing he came up with seemed appropriate to say in front of Kamille.
Finally, he came to a decision. “…Kamille, you need to sleep, but I have more to discuss with Amuro. I’m sorry to ask this, but I’d like to have you bunk down in the Zeta tonight.”
“…You understand that’s unreasonable, right?”
“If you engage the life-support systems, it’ll be warmer in the cockpit than it is inside this tent.”
Kamille bristled. “That’s not the problem—”
Char’s voice was impassive. “I’m prepared to make this an order, although I’d rather not have to do so.”
The discussion came to a standstill as Kamille strained to find some thread of reasoning that would allow him, with as little control over the situation as he had, to turn things back in his favor. The speed and urgency of his thoughts and the degree to which he pulled apart strands of logic were too similar to the way Char went about his own attempts to maneuver through social situations, to the point that Amuro quickly ran out of patience with the teenager’s stray emotions.
“I can just leave and he can sleep here.”
“No, I—” Char hadn’t anticipated this outcome. “I’m saying that you and I should have a discussion—”
“I don’t see what good that’ll do.” The two men simply stared at one another, wordlessly debating the merits of continuing this conversation aloud.
“…Whatever! I’ll go!” It seemed to Kamille that no matter what he said, Char had made up his mind. And maybe, he thought, it was the correct decision for the sole adult in the room to look after the man who was clearly broadcasting a cry for help. The rush of superiority this framing provided Kamille didn’t actually make him feel any better about the situation, but he was prepared to be the bigger person, even if he wasn’t able to do so without irritation showing clearly on his face.
Kamille rounded the table, grabbed his jacket from Amuro’s lap and began gearing up for the short walk back to his mobile suit. For his part, Amuro hadn’t realized that one of his hands was still gripping the tabletop, and Kamille’s brief intrusion into his personal space brought him back to the tent’s interior, his current age, the present year, and the ongoing situation.
“…Sorry.” Amuro had no idea who he was apologizing to, or for what, but he thought that he had ought to apologize nonetheless.
“It’s fine!” Kamille still didn’t seem to be able to embody the ideal of his own magnanimity, but he was determined to say the right words, at least. “I’m taking the thermos, though. And the decaf. It’ll take some time for the cockpit to warm up…”
“That’s fine.” Char sighed, slightly overwhelmed. “It’s in the left outside zipper pocket, towards the front.”
Kamille made his preparations and left without another word, while the adults sat in strained silence. After some time had passed, Amuro ended up being the first one to raise his voice.
“…It just seemed like that, back then.” Amuro’s eyes were trained on the monitor, just past Char’s head. “Like you were this oppressive force we had to overcome. That’s just how terrifying you were.”
Char had lost track of the flow of the conversation in the wake of Kamille’s departure. After a brief pause, he reoriented himself in the periphery of Amuro’s memories. “How long did that last? In no time at all, you were the terrifying one.”
“…I didn’t… mean to…” Amuro shook his head. This time, there wasn’t any need to apologize to anyone. “I kept us alive, that’s all.”
“You kept yourself alive, getting your hands just as bloody as mine.” Char had decided ahead of time that he wouldn’t bring this up. He forced his mouth to keep itself free of Lalah Sune’s name, but he knew that it was a meaningless effort. Both of them understood what lay at the center of the circles they kept talking around one another.
Amuro’s eyes wandered towards the space behind the heater stove. After a brief lull, he spoke against his better judgement. “…You’re dragging him into all of this. Maybe you don’t think you have an alternative, and maybe he’s fine with it on the surface, but—”
Char wondered if it was possible to get whiplash from a conversation. Surely this was just the substitution of one subject for another. “What awful habits you’ve picked up, blaming me for getting Kamille involved. He showed up on the battlefield without any provocation whatsoever. I didn’t drag him into anything.”
“Sure. Maybe. I don’t know. But he shouldn’t—”
“Kamille is doing more than you are, so don’t think you can criticize him, or tell him anything about how hard all of it is. If he’s handling it better than you, then that should tell you something about yourself, not him.”
Amuro sighed, trying to figure out how to express something that wasn’t his to know. “You’re not so dense that you wouldn’t have noticed. Can you really not tell that Kamille is having a hard time?”
Char scoffed. “You’re just talking about yourself.”
“I’m serious. I know there isn’t time for feeling like this when you’re about to go out and fight again, and that’s why I’m not— I can’t. That’s the reason; that’s why I’m here. You’re right about that. But he’s also going through something. Or maybe… there’s something going on with him. It was like that when we first met, too, but it’s different now, or else it changed, somehow, this time.” Amuro tried forcing himself to make eye contact. “…He needs you to notice that.”
Char shifted his gaze behind his visor. “And if I were to notice it, what would you have me do about it? Again, are you sure you’re really talking about him, here?”
A long silence ensued. Amuro might have held some theoretical answer to Char’s questions, but there was no way to express it in words. “…There’s nothing you can do, then.” This was the closest thing to the truth that Amuro could express.
Char, however, was capable of grasping one true thing. “…If you think you can understand him better than me, then just come back to the Argama with us.”
But to this, Amuro had no response whatsoever.
Char’s temper flared again, cool and piercing. “You can’t pretend that you’re allied with someone, that you’re concerned with their feelings, if you won’t lift a finger to help them when it’s important. What good does your concern do anybody if you won’t back it up with action?”
Amuro looked away, straining for words. “I just…”
Char was having none of this indecision. It wasn’t characteristic of Amuro Ray. He had ought to strike decisively, not dither around, neither attacking nor defending himself. It was unbecoming.
“You have eyes that can see the battlefield in its entirety, but you close them. You have hands that can control these machines better than either of us, but you won’t move them. Even if you simply appeared in the background during party functions and broadcasts, your presence would do as much for the A.E.U.G.’s reputation as mine, and all you’d have to do is keep your mouth shut and look slightly less miserable than you do right now.”
“…They tried that, you know. As propaganda. It didn’t go well. News interviews with the Federation’s Newtype pilot, ‘the next phase in human consciousness, who fights to protect humanity from its own darkness…’ Did you read any of them?”
“No,” Char lied. “They made it out to space, but I wasn’t interested in that sort of thing.”
“Well, you’re not alone. No one cares what I have to say, about how I feel or how it works or doesn’t work for me. The stuff they published ended up having one or two real sentences in them and the rest was just whatever framing they felt like using at the time.” Amuro grimaced, and the flat expression that had taken over his face gave way to a weary grin. “I’m supposed to give everyone hope for the future of humanity, but what does that even look like? I’ve been a failure as an asset to the government or anybody else, since the war ended.”
“They just don’t know how to make use of you.”
“Hah.” Amuro half-laughed, then turned to face Char again. “That’s right, you’d do a much better job of using me.”
“…That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what everyone means, Char.”
The honesty had grown too thick between them, and Char felt the need to once again steer things towards a conflict that could be settled. The tone of his voice found its firmness as he returned to the subject at hand. “…Well, at least you’re fighting here on Earth. At least you’re not just feeling sorry for yourself. When historians write about you—”
Amuro met Char, exactly where he was. “I don’t care at all what historians have to say about me; I just want to—”
“You want to get out of all of this; let it be someone else’s problem—”
“There’s nothing I’m uniquely qualified to do here, other than—”
“You’re not just a soldier; people look up to you—”
“Amuro Ray is only a hero when running on fear and adrenaline, but no one is ever satisfied with that answer. You get so close to understanding that, and then you just fucking, turn away from it because it’s inconvenient. How are you different from anybody else?”
Char had nothing to say to that. He thought that it would be better if he’d never heard such a thing; if Amuro had never said such a thing; if such a thing could be banished from reality by sheer force of will. Moving forward was about ignoring things like that until they were no longer true. What part of that was so difficult for Amuro to grasp?
“…It’s not like I was doing fine before you showed up again.” Amuro cataloged their history in his brain, all the low spots in his life where Char Aznable had happened to find him. “No, maybe it was like that the first time, too. But why did you have to come to Earth right when I’d finally decided to do something? If it hadn’t been for that—”
Char scoffed. “I’m not responsible for you becoming a coward.”
“No, but you’re always doing this to me; never there when it could mean something; only showing up when—” Amuro cut off suddenly, changing the direction of his gaze, his train of thought completely derailed by a sudden realization.
“What? Did you run out of things to blame me—”
“Kamille is outside.”
“Of course he’s outside; he left nearly half an hour ago now—”
“No. He’s directly outside. On the other side of that wall.” Amuro pointed to the space behind the portable stove, where the fan on the rear side of the unit vented through an insulated exhaust pipe to the outside of the tent.
“…If he is, he had better come inside before he freezes to death.” Char spoke in a loud, clear voice, facing the wall Amuro had indicated.
A long silence ensued. Char was about to ask if Amuro wasn’t just imagining things when Amuro stood up and, without bothering to even do up the front of his own jacket, left the tent. A moment later, a pair of muffled voices coming from behind the space heater, each speaking over the other, informed him of the accuracy of Amuro’s earlier statement.
“I’m fine; my legs just fell asleep, and I can’t stand up…”
“How long have you been out here? Are you sure it isn’t frostbite? Why didn’t you answer? What if I hadn’t noticed…?”
“No, I was just… embarrassed…”
Char stood up and undid the zipper to the tent, which Amuro had closed behind him, and was greeted in no time at all by a mortified-looking Kamille Bidan, whose weight was being supported by an insufficiently-insulated Amuro Ray. Both were covered in snow, although Kamille had at least thought to keep the hood of his jacket up and firmly closed around his face. His eyelashes were still coated in frost, for all the effort, however.
“Pull out two of the chairs in front of the table and face them towards each other. He can sit with his legs elevated, and once the feeling to one side returns, he can change positions.”
Char understood what Amuro was asking and set the chairs so that Kamille could sit directly in front of the heater with one side of his body facing the stove directly. While Amuro got Kamille situated, Char unzipped one of the sleeping bags.
“No, we shouldn’t bundle him up until we make sure it’s just that his legs fell asleep.”
“…I know they’re just asleep though. They’re tingling like that. Wouldn’t they be completely numb if it was frostbite?” Kamille spoke softly, trying to hide his unwarranted agitation. He knew that he had ought to be grateful, given the circumstances.
“No, that’s also— Didn’t you read the literature they gave us?” This time it was Char’s turn to be incredulous.
“I skimmed it.” Kamille was on the verge of becoming unintelligible with how quiet his voice had gotten, and even he realized that this might be more concerning to the other two. He cleared his throat and continued, speaking at a normal volume. “I can feel my toes and move them and everything; I was just crouched in a weird position to get more heat from the stove exhaust…”
“Fine, then. Char— take his boots off and he can prove it to us, and then we can all calm down.”
After everyone was satisfied that he was in no danger of losing a limb, Kamille was read the riot act by both of his companions at turns, during which time he answered “Yes” and “No” and “I understand” in all the correct places, right through to the end.
Finally remembering that he’d gotten drenched in the process of pulling Kamille out of a snow-pile, Amuro removed his jacket, changed shirts, and draped himself in the sleeping bag Char had unzipped earlier. While Amuro settled himself in place, sitting atop the table facing the tent’s entrance, Kamille flexed his legs back and forth, then changed from one chair to the other, exposing the opposite side of his body to the stove’s heat.
“…So, did you find out anything interesting, listening in like that? It was worth it, I hope.”
It was easy for Kamille to avoid looking at Amuro, facing nearly opposite to one another as they were. “I said I was sorry…”
“He won’t do it again, so let’s just drop it for now.” Char was tired. None of them had slept, and dawn was only a few hours away. “We have cots.” He belatedly realized they could have pulled out a cot for Kamille earlier, but that ship having already sailed, they might as well use them for their intended purpose now. “The two of you had ought to use them.”
“No, I’ll go sleep in the Zeta after I’ve warmed back up.”
“That’s a waste of time.” Char really didn’t want to argue over this. “You’re already here, and it’ll take time for the cockpit to reach a reasonable temperature.”
“I turned on the life support system before I came back to the tent. The Zeta’s cockpit should be plenty warm by now.”
“…You don’t have to leave just because… I’m upset…” As Amuro spoke, the extent to which his own emotions had led all three of them towards the current situation came into focus within his mind’s eye, and he started trying to puzzle out how many of those feelings had belonged solely to himself.
Kamille, whose apologies up to this point had been mostly for show, realized that Amuro wasn’t trying to be elusive with him on purpose. “So even adults have a hard time knowing what they’re feeling…” In response to this realization, he felt a wave of pity and second-hand embarrassment, mirroring his prior mortification at Amuro’s sudden intrusion into his failed attempt at subterfuge.
“…You were worried about me. Thanks for that.” Kamille wondered how much Amuro had managed to notice, earlier, when he’d felt Amuro’s attention on him. “It’s fine. I really was upset before, too, but things are better for me now.”
“As long as you’re not just saying that because you think it’s what other people want to hear…”
“Well, if I just sit around moping all day, it’ll be hard to—” Kamille realized, in the middle of speaking, that he was about to say something that would sound exceptionally rude, given the circumstances.
“…It’ll be hard to keep fighting, won’t it?” Amuro finished the sentence, with a somewhat pained expression.
Char watched this exchange silently. It was interesting to him, if slightly disturbing, to see anyone else meet Amuro so thoroughly on his own level. He wasn’t sure whether or not he cared for it.
“I’m an extreme case. I think you’ll be fine, even if you let yourself feel your own feelings. Before, you were trying so hard to figure everyone else out, and now you just seem like you’re a little removed from it all.” Amuro sighed, once again frustrated by the limits of his ability to express things in words. “Does what I’m saying make sense?”
Kamille turned his head towards the heater, as far from Amuro’s eyes as possible. “Yeah, I think I know what you mean. But… I mean, things just keep happening so fast. Whether I get to know them or don’t, people end up dying. And I know, it’s normal for people to die when there’s a war going on.” Kamille forced his voice to remain level, his tone matter-of-fact. “It’s not easy, but it’s not surprising, right?”
Char turned to face the monitoring equipment, his breath catching in his throat. He imagined that Kamille must be talking about Lieutenant Roberto Vega, whose death had marked the end of their previous expedition on Earth. And maybe Kamille was also thinking about that cyber-Newtype girl he had happened across, who had probably died in the process of helping him return to space.
There was no part of Kamille’s experiences that lay beyond the realm of Char’s sympathy. Both of them had lost their parents and homes, with nothing to show for it besides the abilities left to them by their families and lineage. No matter how broken and loveless their former home lives might have been, all that could be done was to carry those abilities alongside themselves into the future, along with the hope that their application might be of use to the world. But good intentions by themselves couldn’t save anyone, and they had both lost comrades while trying to move forward.
Still, as far as Char was concerned, for Kamille to seek understanding from Amuro Ray was laughable. What similarities, along these paths, did Amuro share with either of them? Perhaps he, too, had lost his family, but that had little to do with the war, itself. And while Amuro may have lost his home, his life up until the beginning of the war had been one of constant movement. Amuro had grown no lasting roots on the colony of Side 7.
Most importantly, almost everyone aboard the White Base had survived the war, whereas Amuro Ray had single-handedly decimated a great number of Char’s former troops. To Char, Amuro was the source of much of his own prior loss. It had seemed fine; the degree of it had been within acceptable limits, until the fight that had cost him Lalah’s life. What was Amuro capable of saying that could possibly be of help to anyone in this situation?
“Even if it’s normal, you’re allowed to feel bad about it.” Amuro decided to be as honest as possible, including the fact that he knew things he ought not to. “…Even if you had a bad relationship, you still wanted to fix it. The fact that everything ended before you had time to understand or forgive one another is painful. It’s fine to give yourself some room to grieve.”
Char had lost track of the conversation. He watched the reflection of Kamille’s silhouette in the glass screen of the television monitor, but this told him nothing. For his part, Kamille continued the conversation with full understanding of what Amuro was referencing.
“…How much did you figure out, exactly?” Kamille’s voice contained the smallest hint of resentment, but his face found itself on the verge of a weary smile. Ever since he had become unable to look at the Mk-II’s right hand without automatically imagining his mother’s last moments in space, his feelings had gone largely unacknowledged by anyone. It was equally reassuring and unnerving, being seen so clearly.
Amuro twisted his spine to look back at Kamille. “I don’t exactly get to choose what I pick up on, you know…”
Kamille’s smile won the fight against his resentment as he turned to glance back at Amuro. “You’re so bad at apologizing!” His voice carried an even mix of annoyance and forgiveness.
“You’re right; I’m sorry.” Amuro’s tone was tired, but genuine. “You can sleep wherever you want.”
“I’ll still go sleep in the Zeta.” Kamille flexed his legs, then set them down to sit up straight in his chair. “If you two start fighting again, you might end up stealing it from me and run off somewhere.”
Amuro couldn’t help but laugh. There was no way Kamille had gleaned enough information from that tiny moment of connection to have based that joke on actual understanding; it must have been a coincidence.
“That’s fine, right?” Kamille had turned back to Char, who had retreated so deeply from the conversation that it took him a moment to realize he had been asked a question.
“…If that’s what it takes to get both of you to bed, then I don’t have a problem with it. I also need to sleep, eventually.”
“Alright!” Kamille was in relatively high spirits for someone who had been suspected of permanent injuries less than an hour ago. “I still have the thermos back in the cockpit, but I’ll bring it with me when we start breaking camp.”
“That’s fine; I’ll just pour from the kettle directly until the end of my shift. That’s what I was planning on doing in the first place.”
Kamille once again geared up to leave the tent, wished his fellows a good night, and departed. Amuro payed attention to him as he left, although he knew Kamille was unlikely to go back on his word and try eavesdropping a second time.
“…You really should sleep, too. You’re doing the most work of any of us, during the day.”
Amuro bit his tongue before it could form the words, ”Oh, so you noticed,” and began obediently zipping up the sleeping bag he’d been using as a shawl, transforming it back into its cocoon state.
“…I suppose this means the two of you made up and are on good terms again?” Char wasn’t about to admit that he had no idea what Amuro and Kamille had been discussing. He just wanted to know if this meant things would move along smoothly for the rest of the trip.
Amuro grinned wearily. “It’s entirely possible for things to go well, even if you don’t get involved in them, personally, you know.”
“You’re trying to start a fight again?” Char sounded disinterested.
“No, I…” Amuro sighed. “I’m sorry; he really is right. I have no idea how to apologize or let things go…”
Char turned to study Amuro as he put the two chairs to the side and started folding out one of the cots. “What exists between us isn’t something we can let go of. I don’t blame you for being unable to move past that.”
“…Are you planning on hating me forever?” Amuro’s back was still turned towards Char, and his hands were still in motion, pulling the cot’s legs on axis with their stiff hinges.
Char narrowed his eyes at the nonchalance with which Amuro had asked what, to Char, was a weighty question. “If that’s what this is, then yes; I don’t plan on letting go of it. I’ll keep holding onto everything that’s important to me. I won’t lose even one single thing.”
Amuro rolled his eyes, his patience with Char’s grandiosity wearing thin. He finished putting the cot right-side up and sat down to unlace and pull off his boots. “…I don’t hate you. I’m just frustrated. You should know me, but you act like you don’t. Even back then, it felt like the things you understood about me were all superficial… similarities…” His left foot required some amount of coaxing to free itself from its boot.
Char watched the scene in front of him as if it were some comedy show playing in the background of the actual conversation. “We’re the same, that’s why. There’s no need to look for the differences.”
“No, Char. Everyone is different, fundamentally. That’s something you understand, too.”
“That’s only true of other people. That kind of thinking doesn’t apply to us.”
Amuro worked a knot out of his right shoelace and nursed the boot off of his other foot. “…Even if we were the same for a single moment, we keep living. We were different up until that point, and we’ll naturally grow to be different from one another as time goes on. We gained lots of moments after that one, brief glimpse into each other, and all those other moments define us, too.”
Char willed Amuro to look at him. Amuro ignored him. “Is that why you fell apart? One of those new moments caused you to go to pieces like this?”
“…I have a lot going on. You don’t need to know everything about me.” Amuro set his boots next to his bag and undid the belt holding up his snow-pants. He realized that he had left his damp shirt and jacket in a messy pile when he had changed tops earlier and, annoyed, set one of the chairs back out to hang his clothes near the heater to dry.
“You want me to understand you. You should tell me. Otherwise, you can’t expect me to bridge this gap by myself.” He watched Amuro lay his clothes out as Kamille had done earlier, and wondered if this serendipity didn’t prove his point, somehow. “Between the two of us, you’re the only person capable of understanding others spontaneously like that. It’s too one-sided.”
“…You know no one will ever be grateful for being understood this way. You aren’t. He isn’t. You’re both less uncomfortable with it than most people, but that’s because we’re all in the same boat.” Amuro tucked the sleeves of his jacket down against the chair-back and pulled the front open as far as possible, trying to get as much of the lining exposed to the heat as he could.
“That’s normal. You could just hide it better, and answer people in the way that makes the most sense, depending on what the other person wants from you.”
“That sounds like something you’d come up with.”
“It’s the most logical thing to do, isn’t it?” Char shifted his center of gravity and crossed one leg over the opposite knee. “But since I’m not capable of it, all I can do is ask you to communicate with me the old-fashioned way.”
“…I’m not going to space. We might never see each other again after this mission. I can’t just bare my soul to you like that because you think it might be a fun distraction for you.” Having finished setting his clothes out to dry, Amuro stripped down to his thermals and folded his snow-pants before setting them on top of his bags. “You need to change in reaction to your own surroundings, not mine.”
Char was insulted by the implication that any part of him had stagnated. “…I have changed. I’m taking responsibility for everyone who depends on me. I’m working with others—”
Amuro finished this sentence more honestly than whatever spiral of logic Char was twisting himself into this time might lead him to say. “—even though you don’t think their plans will work. Aren’t you just giving yourself an excuse in advance to avoid responsibility if you fail?”
“…Then you think everything will go well in Karaba? All of it? Every decision that’s handed down to you?”
Amuro smirked. “Bright doesn’t follow every order that’s handed down to him. He’s your captain; you should learn from him. We only do the things we’re capable of doing, too.” Amuro began slithering his way into the sleeping bag and doing the zipper up around himself.
“Yes, I suppose at the scale at which Karaba operates, that’s acceptable.” Char hardly had to compare the scope of the two organizations’ activities to impress his point. The battles that mattered, on a grand scale, both in war and politics, would be fought in space.
But Amuro was fully satisfied, despite knowing the difference. “The White Base was like that, too. It doesn’t matter what fancy words you attach to it after the fact; we were just decoys sent out to keep the Red Comet busy.” Amuro left the sleeping bag about halfway undone so that he could pivot back around and sit up while speaking. “Maybe that’s what I’m good at. That’s all I’m suited to.”
Char sighed, annoyed. “Maybe you’re the one who needs new surroundings, in order to change.”
Having gotten settled in place, Amuro finally made eye contact with Char. “…You can go ahead and call me an Oldtype or whatever you want. I’m where I need to be, right now.”
“If that was the problem, I could forgive you.” If it had simply been the case that Amuro had become incapable, Char would simply have no use for him, and it would be easy to shake free of the embarrassment of having lost to someone whose worth was beneath him. As things stood, rather than any change Amuro had undergone, it was what had stayed the same that bothered him.
Amuro was still incredibly capable, and he was still unwilling to lift a finger to further Char’s cause.
But surely, Char thought, he had changed. Just as Amuro had once gotten accustomed to piloting the Gundam, Char had grown in his ability to command and protect his own men. He was not the same as he had been during the previous war, and he was doing what he believed to be necessary in order to achieve a different outcome.
To Char’s mind, the man who had played such an active role in annihilating his troops in the past, who was currently too weak-willed to help protect them now, had no room to act like Char was the one who was incapable of change.
“…We won’t solve this tonight. You only have enough time to get a nap in, so let’s put an end to this conversation for the moment.”
“That’s fine by me.”
As Amuro laid down and finished zipping his sleeping bag up to his chin, Char walked over to the table and started the process of brewing some of the cocoa he’d given to Kamille earlier. After filling his mug with powder and hot water from the kettle, Char moved to place the container of cocoa back in his bag. As he disturbed the outer pocket, his motions sent a utility knife tumbling from the upper compartment, landing directly in front of his duffel bag.
Char wondered if it had been dislodged earlier, when he had been rummaging around in his bags as an excuse to calm down, after Amuro’s meaningless provocation. Or perhaps he’d been looking for the knife at that time, after all. Maybe he was nearing the point of no longer caring about Kamille’s presence, and was almost ready to set upon Amuro Ray, fangs and all.
He picked the knife up and examined it while sipping his cocoa. He knew he was being ridiculous. Kamille’s presence wasn’t the only thing stopping him from acting towards Amuro as if he were a common murderer. He detested the kind of violence that brought forth blood. That alone was enough to stay his hand.
It should have been, Char thought. ”It should be more than enough.” It hadn’t been, that once, in that singular moment when Amuro had also been prepared to cut him open — the moment he had started everything and Amuro had finished it. But that one time had ended, as Amuro had said, buried by many intervening moments.
“What are you thinking about?”
Char looked over at Amuro, lying prone, all four limbs packed tightly inside a military-issued sleeping bag. “…I found a knife, and thought I might kill you with it.” He was almost surprised to hear the words come from his own lips. “…What would you do if I tried?”
“If I thought you were serious, I’d fight you off. I don’t have a death-wish or anything.”
“Hm…” Char approved of the answer, but even so, was surprised to hear his own voice sound far more gentle than he had intended. Out of embarrassment, he quickly cleared his throat and then fell silent.
Still, the same curiosity crept over him, as to what he would have done if it was just himself, the fields of snow, and Amuro, alone in the darkness with no heat at all to protect them. And, as he thought this, Amuro’s presence seemed to stretch over him like a clear film, like a pane of glass suspended before a diorama, not quite touching the framed object resting within.
“…Even if it was just the two of us out here, you wouldn’t do it. You’d think it isn’t sportsmanlike.”
“That’s the reason I wouldn’t do it, even if I could get away with it?”
“Yeah. That’s how you are.”
Char sighed, savoring the irony of the situation. “So you can say whatever you want about me, but I can’t say anything about you.”
Amuro’s tone brooked no arguments. “That’s the way it is.” After all, the difference in their abilities left things between them, as Char had said, extremely one-sided. And then, “You only think you want the ability to know things like this. If we could trade places, I would.”
Char set the knife on the table, stared into the space heater and sipped his cocoa. ”That’s precisely what I’m asking you to do…”
“If you could do all of this, and kept pushing yourself the way you do already… you’d wear yourself out, completely.” Amuro’s voice was beginning to show signs of sleep.
“I’d find a way to keep going.”
“That’s the problem, though… Sometimes you do need to stop. Just for a while.” Amuro yawned, some words trailing into unintelligibility. “…pushing yourselves like that, you’ll run out of steam. …can’t even make good decisions anymore…”
“Amuro, just go to sleep.”
“…Newtypes, people in general… if we keep going on like this… we’ll always end up with all these things wrong with us…”
“…”
Char pretended to weigh the pros and cons, as if it were an intellectual exercise, and ultimately put the knife back into his bag. He didn’t hate Amuro Ray. Not really. Whatever it was that compelled him to keep trying to bring Amuro closer to him, it was nothing that could be solved with a utility knife.
Still, Amuro seemed determined to test his patience. If Kamille’s presence, his distaste for blood, his desire for a fair fight, and the fact that he didn’t actually hate Amuro were all blocks forming a tower of self-restraint, then there were countless other blocks already missing, and the tower itself was probably not, in truth, structurally sound.
His sister… Why had Amuro and his sister grown apart? Char had meant to entrust her to Amuro, so how had Char ended up as the one who had abandoned her, in Amuro’s mind? That was one missing block. Lalah’s existence was another. The strange synchronicity between the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict, the similarities between the Argama and the White Base, and the glaring absence of Amuro from what had ought to be a battlefield tailored to his strengths — that was the most prominent missing block of all.
Char didn’t know which of the remaining blocks, in what order, would have to be pulled before his restraint came tumbling down, but he knew there was some combination of events that could lead to such an outcome. Because he understood that, Amuro must also be aware of it, and if that was the case, Char didn’t see why Amuro would take such risks as to wantonly pick fights when cooperation was so much simpler.
“He was just drunk…”
Especially when it came to his insistence that Char had done some wrong by his sister, that he had somehow coerced Kamille into fighting, that he was not moving forward towards his own ideals, Amuro had simply lost track of what he should and should not say.
Everyone shows a little too much of themselves under certain circumstances, and everyone spends their energy restraining themselves from acting on base impulses. There is nothing wrong with having those instincts in the first place. The qualities that separate people into different classes of human being are the degree of restraint and the amount of insight each person is capable of displaying.
If Char didn’t believe that, he would have to acquiesce to Amuro’s assertion that something was wrong with both of them.