Sunset ^beta

There is no reason this should work. Fa does not know anything about hypnosis. She knows the basics of how to play yo-yo, an entirely pointless skill she shares with the average small child. She tries anyway, because if she doesn't do something, Rosammy is going to kill her.

Fa spins the yo-yo down and catches it as it winds back up. Getting the right force on the first throw in unfamiliar gravity is a little bit lucky, and Fa can only hope there's more luck where that came from as she says the first thing that comes to mind in her best attempt at a calmly authoritative voice.

"I feel sorry for you. A cyber-newtype taught only how to fight in wars. What good does it do you?"

Rosammy's eyes follow the yo-yo as it bounces into and out of Fa's hand, and her mouth hangs slightly open in a pensive frown. There is no reason this should work. It might be working anyway.

"It's the same with all newtypes," Fa continues. "The whole concept is nonsense, yet this war began because of it."

No one has ever called Fa a newtype. She has no special talent for piloting, she can't understand other people without words, and she can hardly ever make anyone listen to her even with words. She has felt colonies burning and suffocating, heard far-away screams that should have been smothered into silence by the void, but she's never said so, because what good does any of that do?

Everyone believes Kamille is a newtype, but from where Fa is standing, he doesn't seem like a very new type at all. Kamille is empathetic, and he keeps crossing paths with beautiful girls suffering badly enough that Fa's feelings no longer register. Kamille is kind, and when he sees women making choices that could get them hurt (as though any choice Fa could make wouldn't risk getting her hurt, in a time when the sky can fall) he wants to control them into stopping. Kamille knows the world for what it is, all the ghosts in the dark and all the blood in the gears, but any attempt he makes to change it just gets him beaten down, and he vents his frustration at Fa and the younger kids.

To top it all off, he's becoming more like his mentor every day. Everyone seems to think that's a good thing. Everyone seems to think Lt. Quattro is some great visionary who should be leading them into a future of newtypes. No one seems to care anymore that he got Reccoa shot and then didn't even apologize, and now Reccoa is gone, and maybe for everyone else that makes it easier to forget, but Fa still misses her. She can hope that at least Reccoa is happier where she is now, like she claimed to be, but Fa has difficulty believing it.

Rosammy remains silent and mesmerized, so Fa keeps talking. She's pretty sure her voice isn't calm or authoritative at all, just wounded and pitiful. But apparently that's good enough, because what does she know?

"The people who lived here all went out to fight in the war." Axis has been converted into a weapon, just like Green Noa. Life will never go back to the way it was before. And maybe it shouldn't, because the way it was before was bad, what with Kamille's parents, and with the teachers and classmates who hounded him just for being himself and half the time got on her case for sticking by him. But at least back then no one was dying. At least not anyone Fa knew.

At least back then, Kamille's ideas about proving he's a man didn't include understanding his duty. People's homes aren't the most precious things that have been converted into weapons.

Rosammy doesn't respond. It isn't as though Fa should want her to respond. The whole idea here was to put her into a daze, and, against all odds, she seems dazed. Fa has no good reason to feel angry about how stupid and vacant Rosammy looks just standing there staring, her painted-pink lips still parted around her teeth, and she certainly has no good reason to say, "You probably wouldn't understand, since you've never lived with a family."

Rosammy's slack expression tightens in an instant. Her brow furrows, her frown deepens, and her eyes regain focus as they stop bobbing up and down and lock onto Fa's own. "I did have a family! I had a father, a mother, and an older brother!"

Can't she leave Kamille out of this? No, of course she can't. Fa still wishes she would. "Those memories are false!"

"They aren't! I still have my older brother!"

Fa knows she's being childish again. She knows everyone is right about how she lets her emotions get the better of her. Right now she's angry, and she wants to make Rosammy angry too so that she won't be alone in her anger, but Rosammy is like a child with a gun. Making her angry will get someone killed. To be fair, though, that someone will almost certainly be Fa, so who has any right to complain?

Kamille would complain. Kamille wouldn't care one bit whether or not he has any right, wouldn't stop for a moment to consider that he's part of the reason Fa feels this way. But in spite of everything, Fa doesn't want to hurt him, and she doesn't really want to die either, so she tries her best to focus, to gather her rapidly unspooling thoughts and make them wind back into place like the toy in her hand.

What does Fa know for sure about what was done to Rosammy's memories? Or about her family? It makes her queasy to consider it, but... "A father, a mother, and an older brother? Is that what you said?"

"That's right."

"What about your younger brother?"

"Younger brother?" The furrows in Rosammy's brow realign themselves, shifting from anger to confusion.

"You showed me a photo of him," Fa reminds her. "He looked two or three years younger than you, with brown hair and... buck teeth, I think?" It's hard to remember much about the little boy in the photo, because he wasn't at all the part that concerned her at the time. "You were holding one of his hands." That Fa remembers, because she remembers noticing how uncannily the gesture was mirrored by the fake Kamille holding his other one.

"Pasle," Rosammy says. Her eyes fall and bounce back up with the yo-yo one more time.

"Was that your younger brother's name? Pasle?"

"Yes? But there were four of us. We were a family of four." Rosammy counts off the fingers of her free hand and, to Fa's great anxiety, taps each of them as she goes with the barrel of her gun. "Father, Mother, Big Brother... and Pasle." She smiles with relief. "That's right: four."

"You forgot to count yourself."

Rosammy flinches, then uncurls her thumb and stares at her fully open hand in silent dismay.

"So you remember your younger brother's name," Fa presses her. "What was your older brother called?"

"Big Brother. What kind of question is that?"

"That isn't a name, Rosammy. Real people have names."

Out of absolutely nowhere, Rosammy screams and slams her palm against the side of her own head.

"Rosammy?" Fa moves toward her without thinking.

Before she's gotten more than two steps, Rosammy raises the gun. "Don't! Stay back! Why do you want him to disappear? You're the enemy, aren't you? The sky fell, and everyone disappeared! That's what you do! It's just what you do!"

Fa is going to die. Rosammy is working herself up to kill her, and even if she doesn't pull the trigger on purpose she's twitchy enough that she's likely to do it by accident. All Fa has is a stupid toy, and there's probably a type of person somewhere who could accomplish something with that, something ridiculous like flinging it at Rosammy to tangle the gun in the string and grapple it away from her, but Fa is not that type, so what she does instead is panic and blurt out, "Rosammy, would you like to try playing yo-yo for yourself?"

Rosammy stares at Fa like Fa is the crazy one here.

"Don't look at me that way! I've seen you act like a little kid about toys. Remember how excited you got playing with Haro?" At first Fa just fails to shut up because she's even more indignant than she is afraid, but as she listens to herself, a strange, hollow ache splits her chest. She really does wish Rosammy would remember. "You raced Shinta and Qum to get to him first, and then dove on him to keep him away from them. They miss you, you know. Shinta and Qum, I mean. And maybe Haro too. I don't really believe Haro can miss anyone, but he makes you wonder sometimes, doesn't he?"

"Haro? Shinta and Qum?" Fa can't tell if that's recognition or just confusion in Rosammy's voice, but either way, the gun wavers.

Fa extends the hand with the yo-yo in offering. Rosammy flinches at her movement, and Fa tenses and wonders what it feels like to be shot, because she's heard somewhere that a bullet can tear through a body faster than the pain can keep pace, that a person might not feel anything right away—but nothing has happened, no bang, no impact, so she makes herself keep going. "I know it's not as cool as Haro, but it's round and it bounces."

Rosammy darts forward across the last meter of distance separating them. The gun slips from her hand and falls at Fa's feet with a sound so loud that for a moment Fa thinks it's gone off, but it's only the clang of struck metal. Then Rosammy's fingers brush the heel of Fa's palm, and she snatches up the toy so quickly and insistently that Fa can't help but wonder if she was only ever holding the gun for lack of anything else to hold.

Taking a step back, Rosammy tosses the yo-yo downward like Fa did earlier. Unlike what Fa did earlier, it hits the end of its string and dangles there, swaying uselessly. "Oh no, I broke it!" Rosammy exclaims. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" She sounds like she's about to cry.

"It's not broken." Fa tries not to let her irritation at the other girl's helplessness seep out with her voice. "That happens sometimes. Just wind it up and try again."

"Oh! Understood! I'll do that!"

As Rosammy sets to work respooling the string, Fa's attention shifts to the gun on the floor. If she needs to make a move, she can quickly trap it under her boot, then maybe kick it off somewhere or scoop it up for herself. And she does need to make a move soon, to get out before the laser hits. (She can only hope that the others have done their job and the laser will hit. She might as well assume that it will. If it doesn't, then she even more urgently needs not to be here for what happens next.)

Should she try to take Rosammy with her? Leaving her here could get her killed, and if it doesn't, then she'll go right on being a danger to everyone else. But the Argama's record for keeping prisoners contained is dismal, and bringing her closer to Kamille could put him in even more danger. And would it really be safe for Rosammy herself? From what Fa has managed to piece together, it sounds like Lt. Quattro wanted to kill her from the moment he knew for sure what she was. Then he turned around and started saying that maybe someone should make more people like her, which is possibly even scarier.

Rosammy finishes winding up the yo-yo and tosses it down once more, and once more it hits the end of the string and doesn't return. She bites her lip in frustration, and Fa braces herself for another outburst, but Rosammy just goes doggedly back to rewinding.

Fa does have another option here. She can't afford not to consider it. No matter what, things aren't likely to end well for Rosammy. Kamille would be better off not knowing how they end. If she falls right now in an abandoned asteroid base with no one watching, he would never have to know—unlike if he has to kill her himself, or to watch Lt. Quattro kill her, or if Lt. Quattro only doesn't kill her because he has some worse plan to use her as a guinea pig, or if she goes free and eventually kills one of their friends.

Maybe it would make up for Fa's failure with Reccoa. That was a failure, she knows, even if Emma was nice to her about it, much nicer than she'd been to Kamille for the exact same mistake, because the standards for Fa are lower. Or maybe not lower, exactly, but different. Always be kind, Fa. Take care of the children, Fa. Be ready to give your life as a last resort, but don't think you can ever get good enough to protect everyone and survive.

"Don't become a woman like me, Fa." "I'm not really sure what you mean." "You'll understand soon enough."

Soon enough has come and gone, and Fa still doesn't understand. She knows Reccoa wasn't planning to defect at that point, and anyway Reccoa believes that defecting was the right thing to do, so that can't have been what she meant. What, then?

Don't kill yourself? If that were all, she could have taken her own advice .

Don't suffer so much that you lose the will to live? Fa doesn't get a choice in that. Reccoa should know, since she didn't get a choice either. Or does Reccoa think it was her own fault for making bad choices?

Give up piloting, love someone who will protect you, and leave war to men? That's what everyone's always saying, no matter how cryptically they try to phrase it. But Reccoa claims she's content now, and she's certainly still at war. If anyone is living like a woman, wouldn't it be the colonists choking on poison in their own homes? How could Reccoa give such advice just to turn around and do something like that?

Rosammy groans as she fails again. Then she silences herself with a huff of breath and again winds the string. How many times has she done that, while Fa's mind was off elsewhere?

Why does Fa keep thinking of Reccoa when Rosammy is right in front of her and a much more pressing problem? Maybe it's the pink lipstick that reminds her, though Rosammy's is a pastel, cotton-candy pink, where Reccoa's was bright coral. Or maybe it's the way Rosammy holds herself when she goes all cold and professional, like she did a few minutes ago—but that's the opposite of how she is right now.

It doesn't really matter, in the end, how anyone chooses to hold herself. Safety was never a real option, but the same could be said of dignity. Fa used to admire Reccoa, but Reccoa never saw herself as admirable. She only ever felt like she had something to prove, the same way Fa feels all the time.

And there it is, the connection: Fa once clung to Reccoa because she saw herself in her, and now she sees Reccoa in Rosammy because she also sees herself. Standing before her is the pathetic, terrified, utterly hopeless Fa from just a few minutes ago, playing yo-yo in the middle of a war, as though play could possibly save her.

Something tugs at that memory. The floor beneath her feet spins like it's rewinding. She held the toy in her hand like this, tossed it down like that, pulled it up and caught it all just so.

The shop vanishes, and she's in a cavern of dark rock. Then the cavern vanishes, and she's tumbling between stars with the moon far below. She would panic, but there's something in her grip, not the controls of a mobile suit but still something she can control. That's always reassuring, to hold control. She tosses it down, pulls it up, and catches it just like before—except not just like before, because the glove she catches it in is black now, that isn't Fa's glove, that isn't Fa's hand, how much of any of this is even Fa's thoughts?

"It works now!" Rosammy exclaims, and suddenly they're back in the toy shop, or the toy shop is back around them, and she's playing with the yo-yo like everything is just wonderful.

"'It works now'?" Fa repeats. Her vision swims and her knees feel weak. For a moment she has to struggle to stay on her feet. "You'll start sobbing in terror over doctors, or Kamille leaving the room, or Emma Sheen existing, but that didn't scare you at all?" She doesn't know whether she ought to be creeped out or impressed, and in the end she can't help feeling a bit of both.

"It was scary," Rosammy admits. The yo-yo drops down. The yo-yo springs up. She catches it. "But we're playing, aren't we?" Down, up, catch. "You're the one who said it's just a toy, and that there's no reason to be scared." Down, up, catch.

"That's not the issue!" If Rosammy can pull things out of Fa's mind, then couldn't she also put things in? Fa could go insane, like Kamille is slowly going insane.

Then again, what value is staying grounded in reality when reality is a parade of misery? If Kamille goes insane, Fa loses him. If Fa goes insane, what does she lose? Dignity? Control? Her sense of self? How much of any of that did she ever have to begin with?

But knowing the constant ache of not having much is what makes her fear losing what she has.

There was never any chance that she would kill Rosammy, no matter how badly she fears letting her live. She can consider it all she likes, can try to make herself feel strong and rational while really just making herself feel sick, but it won't happen. She understands too keenly the cruelty of taking everything from someone who has so little.

"Fa? You're the one who's scared by it, aren't you?" Down, up, catch. There's something soothing about the repeated motion, and something almost mesmerizing in the way that Rosammy's gloved hand curls snugly around the toy at the end of each toss.

Is Fa being hypnotized? She doesn't think so. Maybe her improvised hypnosis plan never worked at all. Maybe she really has just been playing with Rosammy this whole time. Maybe, impossibly, that was enough.

"Fa, are you all right? If you're scared, can't I do anything to help?" Rosammy is insistent, and also heart-wrechingly kind. The last thing she would want to hear is that she should worry about herself instead of trying to help anyone else, that she's too weak, too erratic, too childishly emotional.

"I'm fine, just a bit overwhelmed is all," Fa says, trying very hard to mean it. "If you finally believe that I'm Fa, that makes me feel a lot better." She does not have to try to mean that.

"Of course you're Fa!" It's such an odd thing to say so emphatically that Fa almost smiles at it. Rosammy sounds like she thinks Fa might need to be reassured of her own identity. "I'm sorry I got confused, but you surprised me. You said that you would protect me, so..."

"I'm sorry. I thought I could." Or, anyway, she wanted to think she could, with Rosammy nestled up against her all slender and trembling and seemingly in need of protection. "I didn't mean to lie." But of course it was a lie, because since when has Fa ever been able to protect anyone? She saved Apolly's life once, only for him to crumple it up and throw it back to her. Even Shinta and Qum would probably be safer if she stopped hiding them from port authorities.

Honestly, she's no better than the men.

"I told you I didn't need protecting! I wanted to protect you!" That was not what she said at the time. "But why are you on the other side now? Is it a mistake?"

"Yes, your mistake! You're the one who switched sides, Rosammy."

"That can't be!" Rosammy's hand squeezes tightly around the yo-yo. She doesn't toss it again. "The only thing I've ever fought for is to protect people! The AEUG will make the sky fall with the Zeta Gundam!"

"The Titans lied to you about that! So much of what you've said to me is just complete nonsense they've put in your head." Because Fa is for some reason thinking now about that time on the horse-drawn cart when Rosammy took her hand and pulled her closer—the gentle insistence of the other girl's grip; the movement of the wheels beneath Fa's feet making her stumble; the fall and the landing and the brief, beautiful moment of her confusion giving way to the sense that, for all the strangeness of the situation, she had somehow ended up right where she belonged—the first example that comes to mind is: "I don't believe that in your childhood you imagined the perfect girlfriend for your older brother. Who does that?"

"I did that!" Rosammy insists. "I really, really did! My wonderful big brother, and his just-as-wonderful girlfriend! I thought about you all the time, I promise!" She sounds so sincere, feels so sincere all the way down, and so desperate to have her sincerity believed. A part of Fa still thinks she shouldn't fall for that, because what does it matter how Rosammy feels when she's been so thoroughly brainwashed?

"You can't program people," Kamille once said. When he put it like that, Fa found it difficult to disagree. But the Titans clearly did something to Rosammy, so if it wasn't programming, then what? How does someone take a normal girl and turn her into this? It doesn't make sense. Nothing in this horrible, shattered world makes sense anymore.

Unless Rosammy was never an entirely normal girl to begin with.

Realization hits like a laser transmission. Fa gets it. She gets it, she gets it, she gets it, she gets it! That shouldn't excite her so much, but it does, the same kind of excitement she felt from Rosammy when she figured out the yo-yo.

As strange as it seems to have to force her realization into the shape of words and explain it to the person she received it from, Fa tries to do so. "Rosammy, when you think about your big brother, are you imagining a man who will never hurt you or let you down?"

"That's right. Because he's my big brother."

"Is that really the only reason? Or is it also because you made him up to be just that?"

Rosammy screams again. Fa was half expecting that. She wasn't expecting Rosammy to crumple forward and smother her scream in the cushion of Fa's breasts, but she reacts quickly even so, throwing her arms around her to catch her and hold her steady.

"My head hurts so much," Rosammy whimpers when she's finished screaming.

"I know," Fa tells her, and gently strokes her temple. "I wish I could take it away somehow."

"You feel better than anything else," Rosammy says, nuzzling into her. "You're soft and cool, and your heartbeat is soothing."

"Thank you?" Fa's heartbeat doesn't feel particularly soothing to her just at the moment. Also she is very, very warm, but her normal suit is insulated, so that part at least makes sense.

"Don't you disappear on me too! I'll die, I just know I will! My head and my heart will burst, and I'll die!"

"Of course I'm not going to disappear. I'm a real person, and so is Kamille. You just got us confused with some old daydreams, that's all."

"Really?"

"Really!"

"But real people can disappear too, can't they? My mother and father... my little brother... I didn't make them up, did I?"

"I don't know anything about them, but I suppose they could have been real. Everyone's lost people to war. Earthnoids or Spacenoids, it doesn't make any difference. Kamille and I are fighting for the same reasons you are. All Kamille has anymore is the AEUG, because the Titans killed his parents."

"And his sister? I think he mentioned losing a sister."

"He did? Well, I never heard anything about that." What in the world has Kamille been telling this girl? When Fa gets back to the Argama, she is going to have to sort him out.

"What about your family, Fa?"

When was the last time anyone asked that?

When was the last time Fa even let herself think about it?

For a moment, her voice vanishes on her. She knows what she wants to say, but there's a disconnect somewhere in her body, like the muscle memory she relies on to form words has turned off. It's strange. Kamille has mentioned things like this happening to him sometimes, but Fa was never entirely sure she believed him. She's always had much more difficulty making herself shut up.

"You don't know where they are," Rosammy guesses. Or is it really just a guess?

With an ugly little sob, the catch in Fa's throat comes undone. "I don't even know if they're alive or dead! All I'm sure of is that the home we all used to live in together is gone. Even if they're alive, even if the fighting ends, I don't know how I'm supposed to find them. If I ever do see them again, it will be a miracle. I'd have to run into them on accident, two random people out of all the billions of humans in all the space in the solar system."

Fa can imagine it. The swish of her mother's favorite style of earrings catching the corner of her eye. Her heart speeding as she turns to search the crowd, not quite daring to believe it. And then seeing them for real and forgetting all her doubt and just running, not caring who she bowls into along the way, glancing off each collision without stopping until her father takes her into his arms and hugs her so hard it hurts, and her mother claps her hands around her cheeks and kisses her forehead a hundred times.

Rosammy gasps, and suddenly Fa is imagining—or remembering—something else: Kamille standing up from his seat on the tram, the fluttering in her chest, the short sting of disbelief followed by giddy surrender to the impossible reality of it.

"It wasn't reality, though," Fa says.

Rosammy knows that now. But in the moment, it was real to her.

Fa understands. How could she hold anything against this girl, now that she understands? How could she want anything more than to be tender for her, to embrace her fully, to unfold around her and pull her into the center of her heart?

Someone else could. Someone else did. Other people who understood the power of Rosammy's feelings took that power into their own hands and used it to control her.

Rosammy can never go back to the Titans. Fa won't allow people like that to have her.

"Four?" Someone other than Rosammy is saying something. The voice sounds muffled, like it's calling from the outside of a dream. "Rosammy? And Fa! Fa, Torres told me to find you. He was able to contact the Radish. Everyone has to leave Axis right now."

Kamille stands just beyond the doorway to the toy shop. They are in a toy shop, and it has a doorway, and more people exist who could stand there than just Fa and Rosammy.

Fa hadn't even noticed this time when the world faded out around them.

"Kamille? What are you doing here?" He's supposed to be resting back on the Argama. God knows he needs rest.

"I should be the one asking you that," he says, which is untrue and unfair and makes Fa's chest tighten in anticipation of an argument.

"Kamille?" Rosammy echoes after Fa. She stares at him, her brow furrowed to the point of making her squint.

"Rosammy, you remember me, don't you? I'm your–"

"Kamille, don't lie to her!" Fa manages to say just in time. "What's the point of people being able to understand each other if we lie to each other anyway?"

Kamille shoots her a strange look, but then looks back at Rosammy and says, "Whatever I am, I'm not your enemy. We rode on a boat together, remember?"

"A boat?" Rosammy asks. "I thought it was a horse-drawn cart."

Kamille's serious, soldierly expression breaks into an adorably bright grin. "It was both! Uh, not at the same time, obviously. First we rode the cart to a lake, and then we rode a boat on that lake."

"Oh! That's right! I think I do remember!" She's so happy about it, and for once Kamille seems happy too.

Fa's heart fills with warmth. She wonders whether part of what Rosammy remembers about the cart ride is the moment when their hands touched.

"It is!" Rosammy tells her. "You felt so strongly about that just a little while ago."

The temperature in the room seems to drop. It belatedly occurs to Fa that the two of them clinging to each other so tightly with Kamille standing right there is more than a bit awkward. When she looks to him, his kind smile has vanished, and he is gaping at her in open horror.

He knows.

"Fa, what did you do?" he demands with the sort of anger that always flares up in him when he's concerned for someone. "Don't you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"Some idea, yes!" Fa snaps back defiantly. "And where do you think I got it from? Don't be a hypocrite!"

"How is it hypocritical to learn from your own mistakes?"

"The only thing you've learned is fear! First I'm not supposed to do anything that could get me hurt, and now you think I shouldn't even feel anything that might hurt me? I can't live like that! It's like you don't want me to be alive so you won't have to worry about me dying!"

"What are you talking about? I want you to live! You're the one who can get to live!"

"That! That, right there, is exactly what I am talking about!"

"Are you fighting because of me?" Rosammy asks. Before Fa can reassure her, she realizes, "Oh. You've been fighting because of me for a while. Oh no."

"Please don't feel bad," Fa says. "We're always fighting because of something."

"We really should knock that off, huh?" Kamille adds sheepishly. "For Rosammy's sake as well as our own." He makes it sound as though she's their daughter, or maybe a younger sister to both of them, which Fa does not appreciate at all.

He does have a point about needing to work together, though. "If you want to do something for Rosammy's sake, let's get her back to the Argama. You can deal with Lt. Quattro. He never listens to me, but he'll listen to you."

"What does the lieutenant have to do with this?"

"Kamille, you've heard how he talks about cyber-newtypes."

"Cyber-newtypes?" Rosammy cuts in. "Isn't that what you called me earlier? Is it a bad thing?"

"Whatever anyone calls you, there's no reason to be scared of Lt. Quattro," Kamille tells her. "He's a good person."

"Obviously I'm not scared of him," Fa says, "but he worries me all the same. It's the way he talks about himself like he's got one foot in the grave. His despair makes him reckless."

"That's just what it means to be a pilot. And anyway, I'm the one who's been reckless. If anything, I've gotten better since I met him."

"That's a lie! I hate what he and his friends have done to you. At least the reckless Kamille I used to know wouldn't have threatened Katz like that. And! Lt. Quattro says that you're the future, so why is he always trying to make you more like himself? Are you supposed to die before you get to be much older than he is? Is the future only going to last ten years?"

Before Kamille can answer, someone screams. At first Fa thinks that it's Rosammy again, but although it's coming from her, it isn't just her voice. It isn't just one voice at all.

Fa feels suddenly aware of how rapidly the three of them are spinning. Then the rotating floor that contains her as she spins disappears, and her awareness slingshots across space. She looks up at herself, unable to see herself for how small she is, but knowing that she is there and that she is falling with Axis, pressing the sky down beneath her.

"Why are we just standing here falling?!" Rosammy demands, bringing Fa rocketing back up to the toy shop. "I have to do something!" She tears away from Fa, leaving her arms startlingly empty, and rushes out the door.

Fa runs after her. Without her being able to remember the moment she chose to move, her boots repeatedly slam against the pavement, and her arms pump back and forth at her sides, and her breath rises and falls rapidly enough to dry out her throat in moments, and the abandoned shops and homes crawl past her and fall beyond her sight. Rosammy's back and her streaming banner of hair stay centered, pulling Fa forward.

"Four, wait!" Kamille calls out from behind her.

Let go, Kamille, Fa thinks, too breathless to say it aloud, refusing to halt and be distracted by another argument. There's no keeping Rosammy from getting in the Psycho Gundam. It's too late for that. She can see it: pressure and movement, intent flowing around her like wind or water, the future churning and rippling like a great lake where rivers meet. And it's much, much too late for Four, so you can stop calling her name already. If no one tries anything different this time, Rosammy will die too.

Can Kamille sense the thoughts she directs at him? Does he know what Fa intends? It might be kinder if he doesn't. He'll find out soon enough.

Rosammy doesn't slow down even as she dons her helmet before exiting the gravity block, and Fa does her best to keep pace. She forces her way through the airlock without cycling, and as Fa comes up on her from behind and grabs her shoulder, they're both blown out into the tunnels, wheeling around each other like leaves in a dust whirl. This time, Fa is the one who screams and buries her face in the curve of Rosammy's neck.

When she finally dares to lift her head and see where they're floating to, she finds herself staring up into the gleaming, narrow eyes of a metal monster. At their approach, its snake-like lower jaw falls open. Rosammy kicks off of something behind them and sends them flying straight into its gaping mouth.

It's a strange and foreboding place to put a cockpit, but of course a cockpit is where Fa finds herself after passing between the giant fangs.

As Rosammy pulls herself into the pilot seat, Fa lets go of her and tries to get out of her way. Only once she's strapped in, with Fa floating awkwardly right in front of her, does she finally seem to register that she isn't alone.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Before Fa can answer, Rosammy reaches for the holster on her leg—

—and pulls out the yo-yo from the toy shop. She must have absentmindedly stashed it there while she ran. Now she glares at it in frustrated bafflement through the pink-tinted glass of her visor.

Fa's pulse falls back into something resembling a normal rhythm. "Rosammy, it's me, Fa! Listen, the Gryps laser is going to fire on Axis, and I don't know where it will hit or how much damage it will do, so we have to get clear! The Argama should be–"

"I have no time for this! The sky is falling and I have to stop it!" She tosses the toy away and gets her hands on the controls. The cockpit entrance closes with a bang so loud that it slams against Fa's back like a solid thing and knocks her into Rosammy's lap.

In that same moment, the Psycho Gundam awakens.

Fa's brain bursts into agony the way a flower might burst into bloom. The pain isn't inside her head, it's a corolla around it, like a halo, or like the phantom aches she's heard amputees get but in an impossible, alien limb she's never had.

it's not that bad, you get used to it, it's worth it to be able to do something, everything always hurts anyway, at least this hurt makes sense

Rosammy's thoughts come tumbling out over each other as she steadies herself. Steadies herself? Steadiness is relative. A person can have her feet on the ground, but where is the ground?

Where is her head?

Her head is in pain. Her head is in pain.

Lift the arm and shoot off the leg and pain pain pain.

Fa clings to Rosammy and clunks the dome of her own helmet against the chin of the other girl's. When she makes herself breathe deeply, she can feel the edges of their bodies repelling each other. It helps her focus, just a little. Just enough.

What happened was: Rosammy lifted the Psycho Gundam's arm and shot off the Psycho Gundam's leg, along with the shutter it had been trapped under. And Fa is in pain. Rosammy is also in pain. The Psycho Gundam is not in pain, because it isn't alive, or at least the only part of it that's alive is Rosammy and now also Fa.

Rosammy launches from the tunnel and zigzags across Axis's flank, strafing it with beam fire from more cannons than Fa can count. The Psycho Gundam flies erratically, off-balance with only one leg and jerked around by the intensity and frequency of the multi-directional recoil. Whatever stops this thing is supposed to have, Rosammy has pulled them all out.

"Rosammy, don't! You won't accomplish anything like this!" The flashing lights are hard to look at even with the dimming effect of the monitors. They sear through Fa's eyes and carve burning trails into her already aching head. Still, it's obvious that they've barely scratched Axis's rocky skin. Compared to its full bulk, the debris slagged off by each impact might as well be grains of sand.

"I have to! The sky is falling and the children are scared!" Rosammy's voice sounds rough with brimming tears.

"Children?"

"Shinta! Pasle!"

Shinta is safe on the Argama, and Pasle is probably many years dead. But, Fa realizes, even if she could get Rosammy to understand that, it wouldn't help. The children calling out to her now feel the same. That's enough of a reason all on its own.

"The children on the moon will be fine," she argues instead. "I told you, my friends are going to push the asteroid away with a giant laser. It's much, much bigger than the Psycho Gundam, so we shouldn't get in its way."

"Who are your friends? How can I trust them?" Before Fa can answer, Rosammy shrieks, "No, I can't risk it!"

The pain in Fa's head spikes. She hopes it's just the loud noise causing that, but as the Psycho Gundam's cockpit jostles around her, she has an awful suspicion to the contrary.

While she's already overwhelmed, something crashes into them from behind.

"Rosammy! Fa!" Kamille's voice comes crackling in through the comms. "Please, Fa, not you too. You're the most normal girl I know. Don't you realize how many people wish they could be normal? Go back to how you were!"

I'm sorry, Kamille. If you keep running ahead, I might not always be able to stay where you left me.

Fa doesn't say it out loud, because she has no capacity to spare right now for arguing with him.

"Kamille? Kamille..."

The barrage of beam fire slows as Rosammy turns the name around on her tongue and in her mind. She's pulled two ways to the point of tearing, her headache surging into the divide between daydreams and nightmares and growing as the chasm grows. But then she sees what's latched onto their back, and it's exactly the monster from her nightmares.

"Kamille Bidan!" Rosammy growls like a monster herself. Be bigger, be scarier, have sharper teeth. Become an adult. Save yourself and the other children the way no one saved you. "Zeta Gundam!"

The Psycho Gundam's arms contort into something entirely unlike arms, but Rosammy moves them like a part of herself anyway, attacking the enemy on their back (Kamille!) at angles Fa can't comprehend. Fa tries to stop her, to suppress the waking nightmare by thinking of the horse-drawn cart and the boat on the lake and Shinta and Qum playing on the Argama, but those thoughts sizzle out against the heat piercing her head like the beam sabers move to pierce the Zeta Gundam.

It's no use. This whole plan of hers was no use. Rosammy's will overwhelms her. She's like a child; her feelings are so big.

"Rosammy! Fa!" The Zeta Gundam draws its own beam saber and cleaves partway through one attacking arm while dodging the other. "You have to stop! Go back to normal!"

"You stop!" Fa manages to say. Then, with that momentum built up behind her voice: "Get out of here! The laser!"

"But you–"

"You're making it worse! You have to go! Either we'll calm down or we'll chase you, but we're stuck until you go!"

Before Kamille can argue, a silent chorus interrupts.

It's scary doing something like this blind. Please, everyone, stay clear.

Fa didn't make it back. Where's Kamille? I shouldn't have let us get separated. Should I have gone out after all? Be safe, be safe, you have to come home safe.

"Everyone on the Radish and Argama," Fa hears herself say, while Kamille gasps, "Miss Emma! Lt. Quattro!" and Rosammy asks, "What is this? Why can I hear it?"

There's no time left.

The Zeta transforms—I'm sorry, I can't become another regret for them, please Fa please Rosammy please don't you leave me regretting please please please—and jets away so rapidly that Fa loses sight of it.

"Follow him, Rosammy!" Fa shouts, but by the time the words have left her mouth, she's realized that the Psycho Gundam is already moving. It just isn't fast enough. It's too damaged to transform, and it used up most of its energy firing on Axis.

The light will shine at any moment. Fa will be in its path, and so will Rosammy. They'll burn like all the distant, dying shadows Fa heard screaming when the Titans first activated Gryps.

It will be over quickly. At least there's that. It will hurt like Hell for just a second, but then there will be no more pain, no more frustration, no more grief, no more fear.

No more hope. No more growth or change or surprises. No more holding hands without gloves in the way. No anything ever again, for either of them. After everything they've been through, nothing.

The cockpit fills with light and heat.

Fa, it's all right. You don't have to be scared. I'll save us.

It's gentle. A hazy pink glow with a warmth like a human embrace. The white light of destruction hasn't reached them yet. They aren't burning yet.

Behind them, though, the Psycho Gundam's body starts to burn. The pink light devours its remaining leg in a single, propulsive burst, then ignites its skirt and fingertips and climbs its waist and arms. They accelerate, the release of energy pressing them forward as they shed more and more of the mass holding them back, and Fa feels the air being crushed from her lungs. An invisible force holds her so tightly against Rosammy's chest that she loses all sense of where her body ends and the other girl's begins.

Just as the Psycho Gundam's shoulders dissolve into the glow, its head detaches from the last lingering scraps of its chest, emergency thrusters igniting for one final push.

In the next instant, the space behind them becomes an inferno.

Fa can't breathe. The edges of her vision burn away, screaming white then dying to black, collapsing inward on the center of her awareness.

"Fa? Wake up, Fa!"

Fa blinks. Rosammy's breath and Rosammy's hair and Rosammy's glove all brush against her face. Both of their helmets have been removed. They're still in the cockpit, but nothing is attached to it. The pressure the Psycho Gundam exerted on her mind has dissipated, along with the pressure of acceleration on her body. Rosammy is held in her seat by the safety belt, and Fa is held in Rosammy's lap by Rosammy's arms, but though they are anchored, they're floating.

Fa has never felt so light.

"That was..." Terrifying. Unbelievable. Magical. But for some reason, what Fa most wants to say is simply: "Cool. So cool. You're actually incredibly cool, Rosammy."

"I told you I could do it!" Rosammy grins and giggles. Fa can feel her laughter. "By the way, my name is Rosamia Badam. Only my family used to call me Rosammy."

"I'm sorry, I was just going by how you introduced yourself. Rosamia, is it?"

"Oh, no, you can still call me Rosammy! I want you to! It's just that I was really confused for a while, and I finally figured out why."

"All right. Rosammy."

"Speaking of confusing things..." Rosammy's face darkens, setting an unexpected weight on Fa's buoyant heart. "That laser really did stop the sky... I mean, it stopped the asteroid from falling. Those were your allies? I heard them calling out to you and to the Zeta Gundam."

"That's right. I told you they would do it."

"But why? The AEUG are supposed to be the enemy. Is it because this is the moon instead of the Earth? Are they some kind of moon people?"

If anyone else said something that utterly ridiculous, Fa would be more angry than she'd know what to do with. Coming from Rosammy, though, it just makes her feel sad. "Why would it matter if they were? You heard the voices of the humans living on the moon. The voices of the children living there. You were desperate to save them, weren't you?"

"Oh." Rosammy's eyes widen. "I did. I was."

"Rosammy, the AEUG aren't the people who dropped the colony and killed your family. All we have in common with those people is that we're Spacenoids. We're not your enemy."

"I understand. Of course you aren't my enemy. You're Fa."

After all the heartache and terror, it's that easy. Fa kind of wants to cry and kind of wants to kiss Rosammy and let her sobs get lost in the other girl's mouth.

Before she can do either, the cockpit jolts like they've landed somewhere or been grabbed. "Fa! Rosammy! Are you all right?" It's Kamille's voice. After just a brief flash of annoyance, Fa is glad to hear it.

"Hello, Kamille!" Rosammy calls cheerfully. "We are! Fa passed out for a minute, but she's awake now."

"Both of us are alive and uninjured," Fa confirms before Kamille can start being overbearing.

"Thank goodness." The staticky sound that follows might be a sigh or a relieved laugh. "What a creepy way to design an escape pod."

"Because it's just a head?" Fa suddenly finds herself picturing what that must look like from the outside, especially with the Zeta Gundam holding it. "Well, but, is that really so different from Haro, for example?" she reminds herself as well as Kamille.

"Don't be mean. Haro has a much friendlier-looking face."

"I remember Haro!" Rosammy interjects in delight. "I want to play with Shinta and Qum again! Can I, now? I'm sorry, I probably worried them, didn't I?"

"Don't feel too bad about it. I'm sure they'll be happy to have you back," Fa tells her.

"I'm sure they will," Kamille agrees, but he sounds awfully worried himself. He's probably thinking ahead to how Rosammy will be received on the Argama, and having all the same doubts about it that Fa had earlier.

It doesn't scare Fa the way it did then. She's beyond doubt now. She would mutiny before she let anyone hurt Rosammy.

As they're carried home, Fa wraps her arms tightly around Rosammy to keep herself from floating out of the chair, and Rosammy rests her chin on Fa's shoulder. Hovering above them, the yo-yo clinks between their discarded helmets.