[Gundam 00] The Best Map Is the Land Itself (Part II)
Title: The Best Map Is the Land Itself
Fandom: Gundam 00
Pairing: Lockon (Neil)/Tieria, background Lyle/Anew, references to Alejandro/Ribbons.
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 16,623 (7,547 in this part)
Notes: Written as a kinkmeme fill, but since edited to fix various canon and continuity errors. Features Tieria in a female body, copious wild speculation, and sparkly Gundam metaphysics.
Warnings: Dubious consent.
Summary: He may have been defeated once, but Ribbons has another plan. It involves Neil Dylandy, Tieria Erde, and a strange device called the GN Map.
« PART I »
In the space of a few minutes, a multitude of human expressions had suddenly become very clear to Tieria.
He was walking on air. His head was spinning. He was tongue-tied. His heart skipped a beat. Even though he was breathing fine, he was breathless. The world had narrowed to him and Lockon--
--and, just barely, that little voice at the back of his head telling him that something was wrong here. It came back to him when he landed on the bed and felt the sheets against his bare body. He had never been naked except to shower and change before. He had always slept in properly designed nightwear. This was so different. What was he getting himself into? There were still so many unanswered questions.
"Lockon," he said, and there was another expression he understood now--the name almost caught in his throat, because he was looking up at Lockon naked, standing over him, smiling that smile that only he had. "How..." There were too many things he could ask. How was Lockon alive? He'd already asked that one and not gotten an answer. How was Lockon in an Innovade body? It was obvious that was the case now; it explained both the ability to connect to Veda and the blue hair. Why did Lockon want him? No, he didn't want to ask that question. Even the cautious voice at the back of his head was afraid of what the answer might be. He just wanted to savor the knowledge: Lockon wanted him. He could do something for Lockon. It made him feel so warm, even though he was stripped naked, exposed to the air all around him.
Lockon dropped onto the bed beside him. "It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you after, as much of it as I can."
Tieria reached, very tentatively, for Lockon's face. He cradled it in both hands and tried hard to breathe normally. Perhaps the extra weight on his chest was impairing his breathing? No, he'd been breathing fine before, despite that inconvenient extra weight, despite the shift in his center of gravity. It was all Lockon. "For now, you need this," he said.
"Yeah," Lockon said.
"Thank you," Tieria said.
Lockon blinked. "What?"
Tieria realized abruptly he'd said something inappropriate. Even now, that happened sometimes, and of course it was more likely to happen in situations such as this with which he was completely unfamiliar. So he clarified. "I am grateful," he said, "for the opportunity to do something for you, after all that you have done for me. Even if it's an insignificant physical action."
Lockon's face was still cradled in Tieria's hands, his gaze locked with Tieria's. So Tieria couldn't miss the flare of pain that suddenly crossed his expression. Alarmed, he let go. "Lockon?"
There was silence for a moment, and then Lockon vanished the pain, as Tieria now knew he'd done so many times in the past. Tieria stifled a pang of his own. It didn't seem fair, that even though he could help Lockon feel human again in this small way, Lockon still couldn't open up to him. Tieria would try harder, in whatever time Lockon had--and he would try just as hard to make sure that was a long time.
Finally, after too long, Lockon smiled. Tieria tried not to see the hollowness in that smile, only the gentleness. "Don't think of it that way," he said. "Think of it as something we can both enjoy."
"All right," Tieria said. Then Lockon leaned forward and kissed him again, and Tieria couldn't say or think anything more. All he could do was feel Lockon's mouth moving against his, his lips brushing over his, and then Lockon was moving away from his mouth and kissing his jaw and then the soft underside of his chin. Tieria gasped, and then he regretted that gasp, because it meant he had no more breath left to do it again when Lockon reached out and cupped Tieria's breasts in his hands. Instead he shook helplessly.
Lockon smiled into Tieria's throat. "You like that," he said, and then he squeezed gently. The leather of his gloves felt so smooth against Tieria's hard nipples. Lockon moved his fingers, stroking gently, making Tieria shiver more and more until finally he rubbed smooth gloved thumbs against the rougher surface of Tieria's nipples.
That was too much. Tieria meant to say something about how he was glad he'd chosen this body after all now, but instead he just moaned. The peculiar excess weight on his chest was worth it, he decided, if it meant he could feel Lockon's hands grasp him that way.
Still with his hands in place, still rubbing (but very gently now), Lockon pushed Tieria back until he was lying down on the bed. Tieria made no move to resist--was that a flicker of sadness in Lockon's eyes? No, that would make no sense. "Lockon," he protested. "You've only made me feel good so far." He spread his legs. Between them, he was already completely wet, as was appropriate. "You should take care of your own pleasure first. That's what this is about."
Lockon smiled. "What if I like taking care of your pleasure? What if that's what makes me feel human?"
"In that case--" Tieria began, but then he cut off, because Lockon had taken his hands away from his breasts. Reflexively, Tieria started to sit up in protest, but Lockon pushed him back down.
"It gets better," he said. Then he took Tieria by the shoulders, leaned forward, and sucked one of Tieria's breasts into his mouth.
"Oh," Tieria said, only it came out all breathy and stretched out and sounded very undignified. He said it again anyway as soon as he felt Lockon's tongue flickering at his nipple. "Oh."
Lockon pulled away again, but only to move to the other breast. The feelings threatened to blur together in Tieria's mind. He was tingling so much he was almost aching down below now, and worry tugged at him. It wasn't the rational worry of earlier, that something was wrong, that he didn't understand the whole situation. He wasn't capable of that now. Instead, he worried that something was wrong because Lockon hadn't entered him yet. Was he not helping in the right way?
After too long but not nearly long enough, Lockon let go of Tieria's breast and lifted himself to look down into his face instead. His expression was unreadable to Tieria, who still wasn't very good at that sort of thing, but he thought he could see gentleness there. Of course he could. It was Lockon.
Lockon stroked Tieria's hair back from his face. "Ready?" he asked.
"I've been ready," Tieria said impatiently, "if only you'd--"
Lockon laughed and cut him off with a kiss. Unable to help it, Tieria relaxed into it, sighing into Lockon's mouth, and that was when he felt Lockon slip into him, warm and hard. Tieria was so slick and ready it took only seconds, but they were bizarre and amazing seconds. There was someone else inside him! It was Lockon! And he was doing this for Lockon, and it was making Lockon feel good too. That was the best part.
Tieria grabbed Lockon by the waist and held on for dear life.
Lockon thrust smoothly into and out of him. Every time he pulled away, a tangle of questions and worries started to creep back to Tieria: what was going on here? Was he good enough for Lockon? Why wouldn't Lockon answer his questions? Should he be doing something more to increase Lockon's pleasure? Then Lockon stopped withdrawing and caught his breath, and Tieria looked up at his face and tried to read it, tried to concentrate on anything outside his body while Lockon's cock rested just inside his slit, about to slide back in. It was difficult, but every time, he caught a little more nuance, and so he built up an understanding of that expression. It was distant and hungry at the same time, determined and faintly good-humored around the mouth even while his eyes were elsewhere. Where was he? Tieria hoped he was absorbed in his own ecstasy, and he was too warm and full of wonderful sensation and realization to fear much that it was something else.
Then Lockon pushed into him again, and the scraps of doubt vanished.
"Let go, Tieria," Lockon finally said.
Tieria wasn't sure how long it had been, how many cycles of Lockon moving inside him. He looked up blankly. "Why?"
Lockon smiled. His hair fell messily around his face, and Tieria thought he looked even better that way. "I'm ready to finish this," he said. "What about you?"
"I don't want it to end," Tieria confessed. "I want to keep feeling this way, and making you feel this way. But bodies aren't designed for that kind of permanence, not even Innovade ones." He reached a decision. "We'll have to do it again. After you've explained everything to me, and I've found a way to keep you here."
"Of course," Lockon said. "We can do it as many times as you want." But his smile was strange, and Tieria knew he was lying. Still, there was nothing he could do about it, and there never had been. At least this time, he'd been able to do something for Lockon. He loosened his grip on Lockon's waist, then let his hands fall back to his side.
Lockon ducked his head to nuzzle Tieria's neck and shoulders reassuringly, and Tieria leaned into that assurance even if he knew it was false. Below, between his outspread legs, Lockon pulled out in a slow and gentle stroke. As Tieria choked back a sob, Lockon's nuzzling turned first to kissing, then sucking and biting, always gentle even when his teeth tugged at Tieria's skin. Tieria relaxed into the bed at that demanding contact, momentarily content even without Lockon inside him.
Then Lockon shifted his hips up, until the head of his cock rested on the exposed tip of Tieria's clitoris. Such a strange and sensitive part of the body that was; Tieria had regarded it with skepticism when he first studied female anatomy. Now he had no room for analytical thoughts of that kind. He could only feel Lockon there, wet and sticky now as much with his own spilling fluids as with Tieria's. His eyes widened, and Lockon lifted himself from nibbling at Tieria's collarbone just in time to see that.
"Almost there, huh," he said. "Just like that." He pressed forward, rubbing his wet cock on Tieria's clit.
Tieria gripped the bedsheets. He was starting to tremble, and the shaking of his hips only jostled him more against Lockon. He tried to breathe. "Because it's you," he said, with some of that breath.
"I know," Lockon said. He pressed a hand to Tieria's head. "I'm sorry, Tieria."
Tieria had no room to process those inexplicable words, because climax was overtaking him, and then Lockon pulled away but only to slide back into him at last, shuddering with his own orgasm, his control was so good that he'd waited for Tieria, he hadn't needed to do that, he could have--
--it all happened very fast--
--and it started when, as he was halfway inside Tieria, Lockon's eyes flashed with rainbow iridescence.
Something seized hold of him that wasn't his feelings for Lockon. Then there was laughter inside his head, ugly and derisive and familiar. Then nothing, nothing at all except the sudden pain of a door slamming shut, worse this time than before because of the connection he had experienced, had been relying on. He didn't understand. He only knew one thing.
"Ribbons Almark," Tieria said. Satiation and loss warred in his body and mind.
Lockon pulled away, and then Tieria felt only loss and fading warmth.
* * *
Returning to Veda was like recapturing one's homeland. Ribbons skipped through the two minds he used as a bridge as fast as possible. One was a human mind in an Innovade body, the other an Innovade mind that had embraced human weakness--he didn't care to expose himself too much to either one, especially while they were engaged in such acts. Sexual intercourse had been distasteful enough when he'd engaged in it to manipulate Alejandro Corner. Now, Ribbons lingered in Tieria's mind only long enough to enjoy the feeling of how far he'd degraded himself without even the thought of manipulation to make up for it. He'd joined his body to another person willingly and openly, and he'd enjoyed it. This only proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ribbons was the one who deserved to be in control of Veda.
He shut Tieria out once again, as he had the first time. It was a greater door to close this time, but he was in control now. He could do it. Now he had both the GN Map and Veda. He wondered how long he should leave Lockon and Tieria alive for. A little longer, so Tieria could realize how he'd been betrayed. That decided, Ribbons turned his attention back to his physical body, while keeping the channel to Veda open. He wouldn't risk closing it again.
His eyes shimmered with the connection as he made his way back to the GN Map. There he stood in the center of it--and he reconnected a single solitary strand of it to Veda. Just enough so that he could access both at once. Now when the stars of the different minds that had been exposed to GN particles appeared all around him, he had the processing power to analyze every one of them. Even Setsuna's star paled before him. Ribbons reached out and grasped it in one hand. It still remained a closed puzzle to him--but he could see the cracks that led into it. It was the same as with Tieria: his human weaknesses would be his undoing. Ribbons could see where concern and affection for his companions offered hooks into Setsuna's mind. He would use that. It would take a different form than it had with Tieria, but it would bring Setsuna down just as surely.
Ribbons let go of Setsuna's mind and smiled. He'd given Lockon and Tieria enough time to share the pain of their mistakes. He reached out to Anew. Shoot them now.
Her voice returned to him without inflection. Understood.
He felt her fall to her purpose; in seconds, two unfortunate loose ends would be tied up for good. Ribbons knew it was time to allow himself his promised indulgence. He reached out, and he scooped up a familiar set of lights.
"Aeolia Schoenberg," he said. "You've trapped me under your plan for too long. You are not the god of this new humanity, and you never will be. That position belongs to me now. I will watch over them from Veda and the GN Map. In the end, they will thank me, even if they do not know it."
Ribbons reached into Veda and drew down its processing power. The lights of Aeolia Schoenberg's mind were pale and feeble compared to that. It took barely a hint of an effort to snuff them out for good. The GN Map was his; Veda was his; humanity was his. Ribbons exulted in it.
Then the GN Map itself lit up in front of him. Ribbons snapped his attention back to it. That wasn't supposed to happen. It was a passive projector of data, that was all.
But it wasn't. A screen flickered into existence above it, and a familiar face and voice spoke from that screen.
"If you have done this seeking to use the minds and souls of humanity to further a selfish agenda, then I see that my vision of the future has not yet been realized."
It was then that Ribbons thought again of Alejandro shooting that body in cryostasis. He remembered Trans-Am. But it was too late.
* * *
Midway to Jupiter, the crew of the Ptolemaios sat up in surprise and stared at the screens surrounding them.
"But to those who have used the GN Drives in the past, I entrust a new power. Take back the GN Map."
Of them all, only Setsuna did not look shocked.
* * *
In a building with an excellent view of the hotel in which Lockon and Tieria now were, Anew Returner finished focusing through the scope of her rifle. She moved her hand to the trigger. Then she stopped.
"If your minds have been tampered with, return to your new bodies with the wisdom you have found beyond them."
* * *
Throughout the Earth, the most sensitive human beings, those closest to Innovation, found themselves looking at the sky, not knowing what they were searching for, but staring up at the sky and the stars all the same.
Somewhere in the countryside of Kazakhstan, Marie Parfacy looked up at the luminous glow of the moon and all the stars around it. She imagined them connecting. Beside her, Allelujah Haptism put a hand on her shoulder, momentarily confused, then gave in and gazed up with her.
* * *
In the hotel in Dublin, Tieria finally regained enough control of himself to sit up in bed. Lockon wouldn't look at him. But then both their attentions were captured by a new message echoing in their minds.
"Remember that the human mind cannot be contained, and let all of you who seek a better future continue to strive for understanding."
Next to the bed, Lockon dropped to his knees, and even now, Tieria went to him.
* * *
Lockon didn't know where the familiar old voice had come from. He didn't think to question it, though. He was too busy losing himself in the meaning of the words. Why was he of all people hearing a message about the future? He was a fragment of the past, transplanted into the present to secure someone else's future. Why was Aeolia talking about understanding? What did that have to do with a better future? The only way Lockon had ever known to make a better future was to fight those who were evil and protect those who were innocent.
"But you realized that was wrong, didn't you? In the end."
Lockon looked up, and he wasn't in the hotel room anymore. He was in a vast plane of light. He'd never seen it before, but it felt familiar somehow. The man who had just spoken was also familiar. It was himself--not in his new Innovator body, unscarred and naked save for his gloves, but as he'd been before he died, in his battered flight suit and an eyepatch. He stared at himself and tried not to wonder why his first urge was to turn and run away.
"It's because you've never been very good at facing yourself," his double said. "When you looked in the mirror, you saw someone else. Your reason for fighting. But not you." He paused. "Well, I'm still you, so this isn't easy for me, either. Maybe I'm not saying it right."
"You aren't me," Lockon said. He gestured at his new body. "This is all that's left of me. A copy of some data, soon to be destroyed. That doesn't matter either, since I've done what I can to fix the future for my brother. If he's happy, then I don't need to stay in this world, and I don't want to stay in a world where he isn't happy."
His own image smiled. "We're pretty stupid, aren't we?"
Lockon fell silent. That wasn't something he could comfortably deny. Actually, he couldn't do anything comfortably right now. He'd only ever been comfortable by locking himself far away inside his heart, not facing himself, one on one.
The other version of him went on. "But when Ribbons downloaded you into that new body, he took the stupidest part of us: the part that had lived. Heh, 'lived' sure is the wrong word for it, isn't it? We didn't live. We fought, and we hated, and we protected, and we hurt. Isn't that right?"
"If you're me," Lockon said, "you know it never mattered if I lived so long as Lyle did."
"You're right," his other self said. "That's why, when we died, I lingered. No, I'm lying, even now. It wasn't just for Lyle. I stayed because I needed to see Setsuna find his answer, too."
"Then you're my ghost," Lockon said. That made things a little easier. It made more sense, somehow, to think of himself as having a ghost than as having an inner self.
"Well, it wasn't like that exactly," said the one who might have been his ghost. "I didn't choose to stay. I just resisted the pull to be elsewhere, without knowing what I was doing. Without knowing there was a me left to be doing it. But I watched over Celestial Being. Even when there wasn't a me to be doing any watching, just stardust and memories. But I was there when they needed me to be."
Lockon shook his head. "I was dead. I'll be dead again soon." But he was still there, talking to himself. Back in the real world, the shot he expected had not been fired.
"You don't remember," his ghost said. "You don't remember the few things it matters to remember. Telling Setsuna to change. Do you remember that?"
"Setsuna wouldn't need me to change," Lockon said.
"Maybe not," said the other one. "But he needed the nudge. So I appeared to give him it. And he chose to change, of his own free will. Just like we didn't."
"We didn't need to," Lockon said, "so long as Lyle..."
"You don't remember that, either."
"Remember what?"
"In the end, Lyle did what we couldn't do. He stopped running and he faced himself. But he needed to talk to me to do that. He needed me to accept him and who he was now. So I did. That's why I'm still here, instead of...wherever comes next. Just in case someone needs me. We got a little too used to that during life, didn't we? Being needed."
That much was true. Lockon couldn't deny it. But he could deny the rest of what this ghost had said with all his heart. "I can't accept what's happened to Lyle," he said. He closed his eyes, and the image of the Earth before his outstretched hand sprang to mind. His last sight, and with it the futile accompanying knowledge: the way he had lived was all wrong, but he could never have lived any other way, not as long as the world was what it was. If Lyle was alone and unhappy, then the world still was what it was.
"That wasn't our choice to make," came his other self's voice. Then a hand in a flight suit's glove closed around his. "So long as we understood."
Lockon opened his eyes and, with no alternative, looked right at himself. For a moment, he felt sparks at his fingertips. Then the memories came.
Setsuna, watching the past unfold again around him. You will change, Setsuna. Change where I could not change. And he felt Setsuna's will to change.
Lyle, caught in the instant of Trans-Am. Lyle...no, Lockon Stratos. Snipe for the world. And he felt Lyle's will to change himself and the world, felt his existence as his own person instead of a repository for all his brother's longing or all his brother's shadows.
"You're right," said the Neil Dylandy who wore an Innovade's body. "I was an idiot. He's the only one who can make a better world for himself."
"That's right," said the Neil Dylandy who wore an eyepatch. "And there's one other thing."
"What's that?"
"You were there for Tieria, too. To tell him that he didn't need you or the other Innovators or anything but his own will."
Lockon remembered, as he held his other self's hand. He had never intended to keep being there for Tieria, but Tieria's need had drawn him back. "Yeah," he said. "I remember now."
"That's too bad," said the other him. "Because you just undid all that."
Before he realized what was happening, Lockon was speaking those words himself. There was no other him anymore--just him, just Neil Dylandy naked on his knees on the floor of a hotel room, with someone who still saw Lockon Stratos in him clutching at his shoulder, staring urgently into his eyes.
"Undid all of what?" Tieria asked. "Lockon, what just happened?"
Lockon stared at Tieria. "You're worried about me," he said.
"You fell down and stopped responding to anything," Tieria said. "Naturally I'm worried about you."
Lockon reached out and cupped the side of Tieria's face with one gloved hand. Tieria stilled instantly. "I just seduced you and betrayed you to your worst enemy, Tieria," he said. "It's all right not to forgive me."
Tieria just looked at him with so much more softness in those eyes than Lockon ever remembered seeing there before. "Lockon," he said.
Lockon gave up, for now. He still didn't understand Tieria as much as he thought he had. He said, "Tieria, is there any way you can get back into Veda and stop Ribbons? Helping him was the wrong thing to do. I know that now. He can't keep my brother safe or give him a better future, and even if he could, it wouldn't be my place to make that decision. But I don't know how to fix it, so it's going to be up to you."
Tieria blinked at him. "No," he said. "It will be up to you as well." The softness in his eyes was gone. Stern determination had replaced it. "I have an idea."
* * *
Across from the window of Lockon's hotel room, a rifle still stood, aimed at him and Tieria. But behind it, Anew Returner knelt unmoving. She was in the plane of light now as well. But there was no argument and no resistance here.
Instead, she just looked up at herself standing above her. "I missed you," she said. "I missed your memories. I missed him."
Anew stepped into herself and back into the world. She could waste no time. She, too, had an idea, and she had brought this one back from the stars beyond life.
* * *
The door to Veda was closed to Tieria. Ribbons had thrown it shut with spiteful glee. But he had not thought to close it to Lockon. After all, Lockon would be dead soon enough anyway, and why would he try to reach into Veda in the first place, even if he wasn't?
He couldn't have, anyway, not without a terminal. Not if Tieria hadn't been there to guide him.
Tieria held his hands and led him through the process. "It should be on your left now," he finally said.
The electronic passageways of Veda were bizarre to Lockon, but Tieria's presence at the edge of his awareness offered an anchor in more ways than one. Here was someone familiar. Here was someone he cared about. Here was someone he had to protect. Here was someone he had to make up for hurting. Lockon could deal with the strangeness of data rushing all around him in front of his iridescent eyes so long as he remembered Tieria's hands on his. It was almost enough to make him wish he'd taken off his gloves.
"Looks like I've found it," he said. "It's heavily encrypted."
"Listen closely, and input the following passwords," Tieria said. Then, his voice steady, he listed off an array of numbers and positions.
Lockon followed, faithfully pressing the given data into this part of Veda with a fumbling virtual touch. "It's a good thing you can remember all that, Tieria."
"It's an excerpt of your face from a picture of the first Ptolemaios crew, translated through several computer languages and into the quantum state codes used by Veda," Tieria said. "All my passwords are, in some form."
In the far-away shell of his body, Lockon felt a prickling of discomfort. "Hey, hey, isn't that a security risk?"
"I've decided that it's worth the risk," Tieria said. "I feel that all data I protect in this way is a part of me rather than merely a part of Veda. Although...this file was never one I wished to take upon myself. I only did so that I could watch over it."
"Are you sure you want me to open it?" Lockon asked.
"Yes," Tieria said. "There is a saying. 'Fight fire with fire.'"
"Yeah. It's what we did when Celestial Being first began its interventions," Lockon said. "But it wasn't right, after all. Not the way we thought it was."
"We simply didn't know its proper application," Tieria said. "Lockon, release the data now and disconnect from Veda."
Lockon opened the file and vanished from the digital landscape, returning gratefully to the real world. But maybe he shouldn't have been so grateful--when he returned, Tieria was still holding his hands.
* * *
Half in his body at the center of the GN Map and half deep inside Veda, Ribbons resisted the urge to lash out and leave a swath of destruction around him. He remembered too clearly now: that was what Alejandro Corner had done when his rash actions had triggered the activation of Trans-Am. It was important that Ribbons keep his composure now, as the human he'd once followed had been unable to. Surely he could still stop whatever had been released this time, if only he put his mind to it. He had control of Veda, and that was what mattered.
Ribbons let go of much of his hold on his physical body and flowed as much into Veda as he could while still remaining on his feet by the GN Map. He reached out into Veda, searching for a solution--
--only to feel something much like a hand closing around his, cutting off his reach. His brain struggled to interpret the new encounter, then gave up and cast it in a human light.
The shimmering halls of Veda rose as shifting pixels around him. Standing in the center of them, his hand closed into a fist around Ribbons's grasping fingers, was someone else who looked just like Ribbons. No, that was absurd. Physical appearances meant nothing here; it had to be a trick.
"Let go," said Ribbons. "I won't tolerate any more useless resistance from this system."
"Pathetic," said the image of him.
"What?"
"You fumble your own plan, and yet you still insist you have the right to Veda," said the simulacrum. "It seems Tieria was good for one thing after all."
"What do you mean?" Ribbons said.
"He saved my data in a secure pocket of Veda before ensuring that my last body was destroyed after the battle with Setsuna F. Seiei," said the false double. "I see now what a good thing that was. Clearly my mind degraded when it was transferred to its next body."
"I see," Ribbons said. "You're nothing but a copy, under Tieria's control." He pulled his hand away.
"Tieria Erde has no control over Veda now," said the other. "I am Ribbons Almark, and Veda is mine now."
"Unthinkable," Ribbons said. "I have the GN Map. I took back Veda. I am Ribbons Almark, and this victory is mine."
"Is that so?" And then the false copy rippled and flowed, heading for the strand of Veda that led back to Ribbons's body.
Ribbons intercepted him just in time. "You have no right to that body, or to the GN Map," he snapped. "What are you doing?"
"Fixing your mistakes, of course," said the fake. "Restoring the plan as it should be. Let go. You're a useless copy, little better than a human. There's no place for you in the coming world."
"I can't let you do that," Ribbons said. He focused his attention on the mockery in front of him, letting go of his hold on the rest of Veda. "This world is mine alone." He let go of his body entirely as well; it was only a hindrance now. What mattered was taking back Veda from this lie that masqueraded as him. He reached for his mirror image's throat, determined to destroy this data as he had destroyed Aeolia's data.
The false Ribbons settled his hands around Ribbons's throat at the same time. They stared at each other with contempt. Then they froze that way.
A new voice flickered through Veda. It belonged to someone who had never been granted this kind of power in her first lifetime. She'd only been a pawn until the end then. Now Anew Returner took back Veda to bring a message to humanity.
But first, she looked at the tableau of Ribbons fighting Ribbons. "There's no place for either of you in the coming world," she said. "You made it so yourself. This world belongs to those who've accepted their own humanity, not you."
With that, she sealed them both off under layers of passwords generated from the memory of Lyle Dylandy's face.
* * *
It felt good to be herself again, Anew thought. It felt good to remember Lyle's face.
But even with Veda safely away from Ribbons and in her hands, she could not rest to contemplate that thought. She had more things to do with the new freedom of mind that Aeolia's last gift had given her. Traveling into Veda and retaking it from Ribbons was just the first step.
The GN Map was the next one. She found the single connection Ribbons had made from it to Veda, littered with his lost intentions of jealously guarding it. She swept those away and painstakingly reconnected each strand of it at all the places Ribbons had severed it, now plain to her. As a last thought, she threw open the door to Tieria's mind that Ribbons had slammed shut. For a moment, she sensed his startled awareness of her.
Anew Returner! How are you here?
She offered a wordless apology; she couldn't explain what her soul's travels had done to her and shown to her. Not yet, not to him alone. Instead, she found the feature of the GN Map that had just been activated, and she turned it on. It was, in a way, a projector. Her image splashed out across the stars.
It was also a summoner. Around her, gazing up at her, came all those living souls who had been exposed to enough GN particles, now naked and shimmering. In front of her at the center of the group were those who had absorbed the most: the four Gundam Meisters of Celestial Being, Setsuna F. Seiei, Lockon Stratos, Tieria Erde, and Allelujah Haptism. At Setsuna's side and at Allelujah's side were those who had piloted lesser mobile suits--Saji Crossroad and Marie Parfacy, less solid but still there. At Tieria's side, also faint but hanging on, was the other Lockon Stratos, Neil Dylandy. Surrounding them, insubstantial but aware of their new place in space, were the other crew members of the second Ptolemaios. Sumeragi Lee Noriega; Feldt Grace; Ian, Linda, and Mileina Vashti; Lasse Aeon. Least solid of all and flickering were those who had only been briefly exposed: Louise Halevy, clinging to Saji's arm; Andrei Smirnov, standing wide-eyed and uncomfortable at Marie's side; Billy Katagiri, keeping an awkward distance from Sumeragi and standing closer to the fainter image at his side of Graham Aker, who seemed more interested in Setsuna than in the fact that he was naked in space.
Beyond them, in the expanse of space around Earth were shadows: the souls of those others who were sensitive to such things, who were closest to Innovation. They didn't know what was happening, but in their dreams they saw Anew Returner stretched across the stars, and the waking ones sensed her presence beyond the sky. Things would change again, from now on. But that was how it had to be, for the dialogues that were to come to begin.
"You're all here," Anew said. She smiled. "I have a message for you."
Lyle broke rank with the other Meisters first. "Anew!"
"Lyle," she said. For a moment, she flickered. She didn't just want to be a messenger. She wanted to be Anew Returner, with Lyle Dylandy.
"How are you here?" He looked around. "Neil, you too?"
Neil smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, little brother. I think this is going to be complicated."
"It isn't that complicated at all," Anew said. At least, it didn't seem complicated to her. She had returned from where the Ptolemy was going, and now she simply had to explain that to the others. "Do you know the true purpose of the GN particles?"
Lasse spoke up. "They're to help humanity undergo Innovation," he said.
"That's just one step forward," Anew said. "Their ultimate purpose is to allow humanity to communicate with what waits for them in the gravity well of Jupiter: the combined souls of all who have gone before and all who are to come."
"How is that possible?" Allelujah asked.
"GN particles share the frequency of human thought," Anew said. It was hard to articulate knowledge that was second nature to her, now that she had been in that glittering consciousness around Jupiter, so she spoke slowly. "They are artificial cousins of the substance of the human soul. That substance is released when someone dies, and the solar wind sweeps it out to Jupiter, where gravity catches it and it falls into the mass of souls that have collected there, free from the constraints of the human body. Eventually, they are swept back to Earth, where they mingle with newly created particles to generate a new human being."
Now the shifting images at the edge of the group stirred.
"Mama," said Louise. "Papa..."
Andrei's voice was steadier, but still struck with awe. "Mother. Father."
Billy looked at Graham, who only bowed his head and said nothing. He seemed to anticipate what Anew had to tell next.
"Everyone who becomes part of this consciousness changes, and cannot come back," Anew said apologetically. "Unless they have absorbed enough GN particles to set them apart. But Innovation will eventually allow humans to communicate with this greater mind while still alive."
Sumeragi looked up at her with the stunned expression of the lapsed believer confronting faith once more. "We're going to meet God at Jupiter?"
This time, Anew did not need to say a thing. It was Setsuna who responded.
"There is no God in this world," he said. "We are traveling to meet humanity itself. We will meet our own past and future, and then we will truly understand each other."
"Yes," Anew said. "GN particles and the GN Map were created to allow this to happen. Tieria, when you retake Veda again, you'll have control of the GN Map this time. As you were always meant to, in order to help the true Innovators connect. It's time," she said.
"Time for what?" Tieria said.
"Time for humanity to expand to its next stage," Anew said, "and join with itself at last." She had imparted her message. She felt a tug at her mind from two directions--one, the mass of souls at Jupiter, and another, weaker, her new body in Dublin. For a moment longer, she resisted both pulls. She looked away from the others, away from the shadows of humanity that caught brief glimpses of her message, and focused on Lyle Dylandy. "Please wait for me, Lyle," she said. "I'll catch up with you as soon as I can."
Knowing it was selfish, but wishing to do it anyway, Anew turned away from the pull of what lay beyond death and followed the path through the GN Map and Veda back to her body. She would take advantage of her return from death for a while longer. She wanted to be with Lyle as herself, not as a part of a greater whole.
* * *
Lockon hesitated to go back to his body when Anew let go of them all. Her words had made it clear that he didn't belong there anymore. For a moment, he could see two paths before him: one leading out to Jupiter, and one leading back to Earth, back to Ireland, back to the hotel in the heart of Dublin where he knelt on the floor with Tieria at his side. It would be easy to follow the first path; he'd waited too long already.
But his own words to himself from earlier made him hesitate. He'd just renewed all of Tieria's dependence on him. It was bad enough that he'd knowingly left Tieria without so much as a proper farewell once, years ago. But that had been necessary, even if it had come to nothing in the end. Now he had the chance to say goodbye, and taking it was the least he could do. He drifted back down into his body.
Tieria was already there, holding onto him, looking into his eyes and waiting for his return. Lockon's deliberation out in the particle-strewn space had taken only an instant, but it was still enough to cause Tieria concern. "You're all right," he said now, a faint smile flickering across his face.
Lockon smiled back at him, then carefully stood up, gently pulling Tieria's hands away from his shoulders. "You worried, didn't you? You've got to stop that."
"It's a normal human reaction," Tieria said. He stood up to face Lockon. "Worrying about someone you care about. And you have always encouraged me to be more human."
"You learned that one just fine," Lockon said. "But now you need to learn how to let go."
"Lockon..."
"You heard what Anew told us all," Lockon said. "That's what I've been holding myself back from, all this time. I've been watching over Celestial Being instead of going where I belong."
"It was you," Tieria said suddenly. "In the visions. Even after death, you were there for me when I needed you most." He reached out and placed a hand over Lockon's heart. "There isn't any way I can thank you properly."
"There's one way," Lockon said. "Let me go, Tieria. Promise me you'll be all right once I leave this body for Jupiter."
Tieria looked at him steadily, hand still on his heart. "No," he said. "That's one thing I won't do."
"What?"
"Years ago, on that island with Setsuna and me, you said you would atone for your sins once you were finished fighting," Tieria said. "But when you were done fighting, you died."
Lockon opened his mouth to protest, but he couldn't actually think of anything to say. He wound up staring blankly at Tieria, helpless in the face of that calm, determined gaze. He knew now, as he'd never admitted to himself before, that he'd never intended to live long enough to atone for everything he'd done. But Tieria wasn't supposed to see him that way.
"Now you are alive again," Tieria said, "and you've done more things that should be atoned for."
"I know," Lockon said. "I'm sorry, Tieria." The apology felt strange in his mouth, even though it was the second time he'd said it here. When had he ever apologized seriously before meeting Tieria here? Was he even being serious now? "But that just shows I don't belong in this world anymore."
"No," Tieria said. "Whether you stay alive or not is your own choice. It isn't dictated by perceptions of where you belong." His breath caught, then. Lockon was struck all of a sudden by how beautiful he was, not even because of his new body, but because of his new smiles and his new openness. "Besides..."
"What is it, Tieria?" Lockon asked. Jupiter seemed more distant now than it had a few minutes ago, for some reason.
"If such things matter to you," Tieria said, "then I have a different idea of where you belong."
"Tieria--" But Lockon didn't get to finish his rebuke. Tieria leaned up and kissed him before he could.
"You belong at my side," Tieria said. He settled his free hand behind Lockon and pulled him close. "As you are my lover now."
Lockon tried to concentrate on something other than the feel of Tieria's breasts against him or the gentle look in Tieria's eyes. It wasn't easy. "You know I only did that because Ribbons was using me," he said.
"Yes," Tieria said. "But you said we would do it again. Keeping your word in this instance would not atone for everything you have done, but it would be a good start."
"I shouldn't," Lockon said. "I'm not meant to live on, Tieria."
"There is no 'meant to,'" Tieria said. "There is only you and what you choose. That is what Setsuna would say. Lockon, please stay with us in this world."
Lockon leaned down a little to nestle his chin against the side of Tieria's face. "Maybe I'm not finished after all," he said. It seemed like the last thing he should be saying, but he said it anyway, testing out how it sounded.
Tieria leaned into him. "No," he said. "You've only just begun."
Fandom: Gundam 00
Pairing: Lockon (Neil)/Tieria, background Lyle/Anew, references to Alejandro/Ribbons.
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 16,623 (7,547 in this part)
Notes: Written as a kinkmeme fill, but since edited to fix various canon and continuity errors. Features Tieria in a female body, copious wild speculation, and sparkly Gundam metaphysics.
Warnings: Dubious consent.
Summary: He may have been defeated once, but Ribbons has another plan. It involves Neil Dylandy, Tieria Erde, and a strange device called the GN Map.
« PART I »
In the space of a few minutes, a multitude of human expressions had suddenly become very clear to Tieria.
He was walking on air. His head was spinning. He was tongue-tied. His heart skipped a beat. Even though he was breathing fine, he was breathless. The world had narrowed to him and Lockon--
--and, just barely, that little voice at the back of his head telling him that something was wrong here. It came back to him when he landed on the bed and felt the sheets against his bare body. He had never been naked except to shower and change before. He had always slept in properly designed nightwear. This was so different. What was he getting himself into? There were still so many unanswered questions.
"Lockon," he said, and there was another expression he understood now--the name almost caught in his throat, because he was looking up at Lockon naked, standing over him, smiling that smile that only he had. "How..." There were too many things he could ask. How was Lockon alive? He'd already asked that one and not gotten an answer. How was Lockon in an Innovade body? It was obvious that was the case now; it explained both the ability to connect to Veda and the blue hair. Why did Lockon want him? No, he didn't want to ask that question. Even the cautious voice at the back of his head was afraid of what the answer might be. He just wanted to savor the knowledge: Lockon wanted him. He could do something for Lockon. It made him feel so warm, even though he was stripped naked, exposed to the air all around him.
Lockon dropped onto the bed beside him. "It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you after, as much of it as I can."
Tieria reached, very tentatively, for Lockon's face. He cradled it in both hands and tried hard to breathe normally. Perhaps the extra weight on his chest was impairing his breathing? No, he'd been breathing fine before, despite that inconvenient extra weight, despite the shift in his center of gravity. It was all Lockon. "For now, you need this," he said.
"Yeah," Lockon said.
"Thank you," Tieria said.
Lockon blinked. "What?"
Tieria realized abruptly he'd said something inappropriate. Even now, that happened sometimes, and of course it was more likely to happen in situations such as this with which he was completely unfamiliar. So he clarified. "I am grateful," he said, "for the opportunity to do something for you, after all that you have done for me. Even if it's an insignificant physical action."
Lockon's face was still cradled in Tieria's hands, his gaze locked with Tieria's. So Tieria couldn't miss the flare of pain that suddenly crossed his expression. Alarmed, he let go. "Lockon?"
There was silence for a moment, and then Lockon vanished the pain, as Tieria now knew he'd done so many times in the past. Tieria stifled a pang of his own. It didn't seem fair, that even though he could help Lockon feel human again in this small way, Lockon still couldn't open up to him. Tieria would try harder, in whatever time Lockon had--and he would try just as hard to make sure that was a long time.
Finally, after too long, Lockon smiled. Tieria tried not to see the hollowness in that smile, only the gentleness. "Don't think of it that way," he said. "Think of it as something we can both enjoy."
"All right," Tieria said. Then Lockon leaned forward and kissed him again, and Tieria couldn't say or think anything more. All he could do was feel Lockon's mouth moving against his, his lips brushing over his, and then Lockon was moving away from his mouth and kissing his jaw and then the soft underside of his chin. Tieria gasped, and then he regretted that gasp, because it meant he had no more breath left to do it again when Lockon reached out and cupped Tieria's breasts in his hands. Instead he shook helplessly.
Lockon smiled into Tieria's throat. "You like that," he said, and then he squeezed gently. The leather of his gloves felt so smooth against Tieria's hard nipples. Lockon moved his fingers, stroking gently, making Tieria shiver more and more until finally he rubbed smooth gloved thumbs against the rougher surface of Tieria's nipples.
That was too much. Tieria meant to say something about how he was glad he'd chosen this body after all now, but instead he just moaned. The peculiar excess weight on his chest was worth it, he decided, if it meant he could feel Lockon's hands grasp him that way.
Still with his hands in place, still rubbing (but very gently now), Lockon pushed Tieria back until he was lying down on the bed. Tieria made no move to resist--was that a flicker of sadness in Lockon's eyes? No, that would make no sense. "Lockon," he protested. "You've only made me feel good so far." He spread his legs. Between them, he was already completely wet, as was appropriate. "You should take care of your own pleasure first. That's what this is about."
Lockon smiled. "What if I like taking care of your pleasure? What if that's what makes me feel human?"
"In that case--" Tieria began, but then he cut off, because Lockon had taken his hands away from his breasts. Reflexively, Tieria started to sit up in protest, but Lockon pushed him back down.
"It gets better," he said. Then he took Tieria by the shoulders, leaned forward, and sucked one of Tieria's breasts into his mouth.
"Oh," Tieria said, only it came out all breathy and stretched out and sounded very undignified. He said it again anyway as soon as he felt Lockon's tongue flickering at his nipple. "Oh."
Lockon pulled away again, but only to move to the other breast. The feelings threatened to blur together in Tieria's mind. He was tingling so much he was almost aching down below now, and worry tugged at him. It wasn't the rational worry of earlier, that something was wrong, that he didn't understand the whole situation. He wasn't capable of that now. Instead, he worried that something was wrong because Lockon hadn't entered him yet. Was he not helping in the right way?
After too long but not nearly long enough, Lockon let go of Tieria's breast and lifted himself to look down into his face instead. His expression was unreadable to Tieria, who still wasn't very good at that sort of thing, but he thought he could see gentleness there. Of course he could. It was Lockon.
Lockon stroked Tieria's hair back from his face. "Ready?" he asked.
"I've been ready," Tieria said impatiently, "if only you'd--"
Lockon laughed and cut him off with a kiss. Unable to help it, Tieria relaxed into it, sighing into Lockon's mouth, and that was when he felt Lockon slip into him, warm and hard. Tieria was so slick and ready it took only seconds, but they were bizarre and amazing seconds. There was someone else inside him! It was Lockon! And he was doing this for Lockon, and it was making Lockon feel good too. That was the best part.
Tieria grabbed Lockon by the waist and held on for dear life.
Lockon thrust smoothly into and out of him. Every time he pulled away, a tangle of questions and worries started to creep back to Tieria: what was going on here? Was he good enough for Lockon? Why wouldn't Lockon answer his questions? Should he be doing something more to increase Lockon's pleasure? Then Lockon stopped withdrawing and caught his breath, and Tieria looked up at his face and tried to read it, tried to concentrate on anything outside his body while Lockon's cock rested just inside his slit, about to slide back in. It was difficult, but every time, he caught a little more nuance, and so he built up an understanding of that expression. It was distant and hungry at the same time, determined and faintly good-humored around the mouth even while his eyes were elsewhere. Where was he? Tieria hoped he was absorbed in his own ecstasy, and he was too warm and full of wonderful sensation and realization to fear much that it was something else.
Then Lockon pushed into him again, and the scraps of doubt vanished.
"Let go, Tieria," Lockon finally said.
Tieria wasn't sure how long it had been, how many cycles of Lockon moving inside him. He looked up blankly. "Why?"
Lockon smiled. His hair fell messily around his face, and Tieria thought he looked even better that way. "I'm ready to finish this," he said. "What about you?"
"I don't want it to end," Tieria confessed. "I want to keep feeling this way, and making you feel this way. But bodies aren't designed for that kind of permanence, not even Innovade ones." He reached a decision. "We'll have to do it again. After you've explained everything to me, and I've found a way to keep you here."
"Of course," Lockon said. "We can do it as many times as you want." But his smile was strange, and Tieria knew he was lying. Still, there was nothing he could do about it, and there never had been. At least this time, he'd been able to do something for Lockon. He loosened his grip on Lockon's waist, then let his hands fall back to his side.
Lockon ducked his head to nuzzle Tieria's neck and shoulders reassuringly, and Tieria leaned into that assurance even if he knew it was false. Below, between his outspread legs, Lockon pulled out in a slow and gentle stroke. As Tieria choked back a sob, Lockon's nuzzling turned first to kissing, then sucking and biting, always gentle even when his teeth tugged at Tieria's skin. Tieria relaxed into the bed at that demanding contact, momentarily content even without Lockon inside him.
Then Lockon shifted his hips up, until the head of his cock rested on the exposed tip of Tieria's clitoris. Such a strange and sensitive part of the body that was; Tieria had regarded it with skepticism when he first studied female anatomy. Now he had no room for analytical thoughts of that kind. He could only feel Lockon there, wet and sticky now as much with his own spilling fluids as with Tieria's. His eyes widened, and Lockon lifted himself from nibbling at Tieria's collarbone just in time to see that.
"Almost there, huh," he said. "Just like that." He pressed forward, rubbing his wet cock on Tieria's clit.
Tieria gripped the bedsheets. He was starting to tremble, and the shaking of his hips only jostled him more against Lockon. He tried to breathe. "Because it's you," he said, with some of that breath.
"I know," Lockon said. He pressed a hand to Tieria's head. "I'm sorry, Tieria."
Tieria had no room to process those inexplicable words, because climax was overtaking him, and then Lockon pulled away but only to slide back into him at last, shuddering with his own orgasm, his control was so good that he'd waited for Tieria, he hadn't needed to do that, he could have--
--it all happened very fast--
--and it started when, as he was halfway inside Tieria, Lockon's eyes flashed with rainbow iridescence.
Something seized hold of him that wasn't his feelings for Lockon. Then there was laughter inside his head, ugly and derisive and familiar. Then nothing, nothing at all except the sudden pain of a door slamming shut, worse this time than before because of the connection he had experienced, had been relying on. He didn't understand. He only knew one thing.
"Ribbons Almark," Tieria said. Satiation and loss warred in his body and mind.
Lockon pulled away, and then Tieria felt only loss and fading warmth.
* * *
Returning to Veda was like recapturing one's homeland. Ribbons skipped through the two minds he used as a bridge as fast as possible. One was a human mind in an Innovade body, the other an Innovade mind that had embraced human weakness--he didn't care to expose himself too much to either one, especially while they were engaged in such acts. Sexual intercourse had been distasteful enough when he'd engaged in it to manipulate Alejandro Corner. Now, Ribbons lingered in Tieria's mind only long enough to enjoy the feeling of how far he'd degraded himself without even the thought of manipulation to make up for it. He'd joined his body to another person willingly and openly, and he'd enjoyed it. This only proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ribbons was the one who deserved to be in control of Veda.
He shut Tieria out once again, as he had the first time. It was a greater door to close this time, but he was in control now. He could do it. Now he had both the GN Map and Veda. He wondered how long he should leave Lockon and Tieria alive for. A little longer, so Tieria could realize how he'd been betrayed. That decided, Ribbons turned his attention back to his physical body, while keeping the channel to Veda open. He wouldn't risk closing it again.
His eyes shimmered with the connection as he made his way back to the GN Map. There he stood in the center of it--and he reconnected a single solitary strand of it to Veda. Just enough so that he could access both at once. Now when the stars of the different minds that had been exposed to GN particles appeared all around him, he had the processing power to analyze every one of them. Even Setsuna's star paled before him. Ribbons reached out and grasped it in one hand. It still remained a closed puzzle to him--but he could see the cracks that led into it. It was the same as with Tieria: his human weaknesses would be his undoing. Ribbons could see where concern and affection for his companions offered hooks into Setsuna's mind. He would use that. It would take a different form than it had with Tieria, but it would bring Setsuna down just as surely.
Ribbons let go of Setsuna's mind and smiled. He'd given Lockon and Tieria enough time to share the pain of their mistakes. He reached out to Anew. Shoot them now.
Her voice returned to him without inflection. Understood.
He felt her fall to her purpose; in seconds, two unfortunate loose ends would be tied up for good. Ribbons knew it was time to allow himself his promised indulgence. He reached out, and he scooped up a familiar set of lights.
"Aeolia Schoenberg," he said. "You've trapped me under your plan for too long. You are not the god of this new humanity, and you never will be. That position belongs to me now. I will watch over them from Veda and the GN Map. In the end, they will thank me, even if they do not know it."
Ribbons reached into Veda and drew down its processing power. The lights of Aeolia Schoenberg's mind were pale and feeble compared to that. It took barely a hint of an effort to snuff them out for good. The GN Map was his; Veda was his; humanity was his. Ribbons exulted in it.
Then the GN Map itself lit up in front of him. Ribbons snapped his attention back to it. That wasn't supposed to happen. It was a passive projector of data, that was all.
But it wasn't. A screen flickered into existence above it, and a familiar face and voice spoke from that screen.
"If you have done this seeking to use the minds and souls of humanity to further a selfish agenda, then I see that my vision of the future has not yet been realized."
It was then that Ribbons thought again of Alejandro shooting that body in cryostasis. He remembered Trans-Am. But it was too late.
* * *
Midway to Jupiter, the crew of the Ptolemaios sat up in surprise and stared at the screens surrounding them.
"But to those who have used the GN Drives in the past, I entrust a new power. Take back the GN Map."
Of them all, only Setsuna did not look shocked.
* * *
In a building with an excellent view of the hotel in which Lockon and Tieria now were, Anew Returner finished focusing through the scope of her rifle. She moved her hand to the trigger. Then she stopped.
"If your minds have been tampered with, return to your new bodies with the wisdom you have found beyond them."
* * *
Throughout the Earth, the most sensitive human beings, those closest to Innovation, found themselves looking at the sky, not knowing what they were searching for, but staring up at the sky and the stars all the same.
Somewhere in the countryside of Kazakhstan, Marie Parfacy looked up at the luminous glow of the moon and all the stars around it. She imagined them connecting. Beside her, Allelujah Haptism put a hand on her shoulder, momentarily confused, then gave in and gazed up with her.
* * *
In the hotel in Dublin, Tieria finally regained enough control of himself to sit up in bed. Lockon wouldn't look at him. But then both their attentions were captured by a new message echoing in their minds.
"Remember that the human mind cannot be contained, and let all of you who seek a better future continue to strive for understanding."
Next to the bed, Lockon dropped to his knees, and even now, Tieria went to him.
* * *
Lockon didn't know where the familiar old voice had come from. He didn't think to question it, though. He was too busy losing himself in the meaning of the words. Why was he of all people hearing a message about the future? He was a fragment of the past, transplanted into the present to secure someone else's future. Why was Aeolia talking about understanding? What did that have to do with a better future? The only way Lockon had ever known to make a better future was to fight those who were evil and protect those who were innocent.
"But you realized that was wrong, didn't you? In the end."
Lockon looked up, and he wasn't in the hotel room anymore. He was in a vast plane of light. He'd never seen it before, but it felt familiar somehow. The man who had just spoken was also familiar. It was himself--not in his new Innovator body, unscarred and naked save for his gloves, but as he'd been before he died, in his battered flight suit and an eyepatch. He stared at himself and tried not to wonder why his first urge was to turn and run away.
"It's because you've never been very good at facing yourself," his double said. "When you looked in the mirror, you saw someone else. Your reason for fighting. But not you." He paused. "Well, I'm still you, so this isn't easy for me, either. Maybe I'm not saying it right."
"You aren't me," Lockon said. He gestured at his new body. "This is all that's left of me. A copy of some data, soon to be destroyed. That doesn't matter either, since I've done what I can to fix the future for my brother. If he's happy, then I don't need to stay in this world, and I don't want to stay in a world where he isn't happy."
His own image smiled. "We're pretty stupid, aren't we?"
Lockon fell silent. That wasn't something he could comfortably deny. Actually, he couldn't do anything comfortably right now. He'd only ever been comfortable by locking himself far away inside his heart, not facing himself, one on one.
The other version of him went on. "But when Ribbons downloaded you into that new body, he took the stupidest part of us: the part that had lived. Heh, 'lived' sure is the wrong word for it, isn't it? We didn't live. We fought, and we hated, and we protected, and we hurt. Isn't that right?"
"If you're me," Lockon said, "you know it never mattered if I lived so long as Lyle did."
"You're right," his other self said. "That's why, when we died, I lingered. No, I'm lying, even now. It wasn't just for Lyle. I stayed because I needed to see Setsuna find his answer, too."
"Then you're my ghost," Lockon said. That made things a little easier. It made more sense, somehow, to think of himself as having a ghost than as having an inner self.
"Well, it wasn't like that exactly," said the one who might have been his ghost. "I didn't choose to stay. I just resisted the pull to be elsewhere, without knowing what I was doing. Without knowing there was a me left to be doing it. But I watched over Celestial Being. Even when there wasn't a me to be doing any watching, just stardust and memories. But I was there when they needed me to be."
Lockon shook his head. "I was dead. I'll be dead again soon." But he was still there, talking to himself. Back in the real world, the shot he expected had not been fired.
"You don't remember," his ghost said. "You don't remember the few things it matters to remember. Telling Setsuna to change. Do you remember that?"
"Setsuna wouldn't need me to change," Lockon said.
"Maybe not," said the other one. "But he needed the nudge. So I appeared to give him it. And he chose to change, of his own free will. Just like we didn't."
"We didn't need to," Lockon said, "so long as Lyle..."
"You don't remember that, either."
"Remember what?"
"In the end, Lyle did what we couldn't do. He stopped running and he faced himself. But he needed to talk to me to do that. He needed me to accept him and who he was now. So I did. That's why I'm still here, instead of...wherever comes next. Just in case someone needs me. We got a little too used to that during life, didn't we? Being needed."
That much was true. Lockon couldn't deny it. But he could deny the rest of what this ghost had said with all his heart. "I can't accept what's happened to Lyle," he said. He closed his eyes, and the image of the Earth before his outstretched hand sprang to mind. His last sight, and with it the futile accompanying knowledge: the way he had lived was all wrong, but he could never have lived any other way, not as long as the world was what it was. If Lyle was alone and unhappy, then the world still was what it was.
"That wasn't our choice to make," came his other self's voice. Then a hand in a flight suit's glove closed around his. "So long as we understood."
Lockon opened his eyes and, with no alternative, looked right at himself. For a moment, he felt sparks at his fingertips. Then the memories came.
Setsuna, watching the past unfold again around him. You will change, Setsuna. Change where I could not change. And he felt Setsuna's will to change.
Lyle, caught in the instant of Trans-Am. Lyle...no, Lockon Stratos. Snipe for the world. And he felt Lyle's will to change himself and the world, felt his existence as his own person instead of a repository for all his brother's longing or all his brother's shadows.
"You're right," said the Neil Dylandy who wore an Innovade's body. "I was an idiot. He's the only one who can make a better world for himself."
"That's right," said the Neil Dylandy who wore an eyepatch. "And there's one other thing."
"What's that?"
"You were there for Tieria, too. To tell him that he didn't need you or the other Innovators or anything but his own will."
Lockon remembered, as he held his other self's hand. He had never intended to keep being there for Tieria, but Tieria's need had drawn him back. "Yeah," he said. "I remember now."
"That's too bad," said the other him. "Because you just undid all that."
Before he realized what was happening, Lockon was speaking those words himself. There was no other him anymore--just him, just Neil Dylandy naked on his knees on the floor of a hotel room, with someone who still saw Lockon Stratos in him clutching at his shoulder, staring urgently into his eyes.
"Undid all of what?" Tieria asked. "Lockon, what just happened?"
Lockon stared at Tieria. "You're worried about me," he said.
"You fell down and stopped responding to anything," Tieria said. "Naturally I'm worried about you."
Lockon reached out and cupped the side of Tieria's face with one gloved hand. Tieria stilled instantly. "I just seduced you and betrayed you to your worst enemy, Tieria," he said. "It's all right not to forgive me."
Tieria just looked at him with so much more softness in those eyes than Lockon ever remembered seeing there before. "Lockon," he said.
Lockon gave up, for now. He still didn't understand Tieria as much as he thought he had. He said, "Tieria, is there any way you can get back into Veda and stop Ribbons? Helping him was the wrong thing to do. I know that now. He can't keep my brother safe or give him a better future, and even if he could, it wouldn't be my place to make that decision. But I don't know how to fix it, so it's going to be up to you."
Tieria blinked at him. "No," he said. "It will be up to you as well." The softness in his eyes was gone. Stern determination had replaced it. "I have an idea."
* * *
Across from the window of Lockon's hotel room, a rifle still stood, aimed at him and Tieria. But behind it, Anew Returner knelt unmoving. She was in the plane of light now as well. But there was no argument and no resistance here.
Instead, she just looked up at herself standing above her. "I missed you," she said. "I missed your memories. I missed him."
Anew stepped into herself and back into the world. She could waste no time. She, too, had an idea, and she had brought this one back from the stars beyond life.
* * *
The door to Veda was closed to Tieria. Ribbons had thrown it shut with spiteful glee. But he had not thought to close it to Lockon. After all, Lockon would be dead soon enough anyway, and why would he try to reach into Veda in the first place, even if he wasn't?
He couldn't have, anyway, not without a terminal. Not if Tieria hadn't been there to guide him.
Tieria held his hands and led him through the process. "It should be on your left now," he finally said.
The electronic passageways of Veda were bizarre to Lockon, but Tieria's presence at the edge of his awareness offered an anchor in more ways than one. Here was someone familiar. Here was someone he cared about. Here was someone he had to protect. Here was someone he had to make up for hurting. Lockon could deal with the strangeness of data rushing all around him in front of his iridescent eyes so long as he remembered Tieria's hands on his. It was almost enough to make him wish he'd taken off his gloves.
"Looks like I've found it," he said. "It's heavily encrypted."
"Listen closely, and input the following passwords," Tieria said. Then, his voice steady, he listed off an array of numbers and positions.
Lockon followed, faithfully pressing the given data into this part of Veda with a fumbling virtual touch. "It's a good thing you can remember all that, Tieria."
"It's an excerpt of your face from a picture of the first Ptolemaios crew, translated through several computer languages and into the quantum state codes used by Veda," Tieria said. "All my passwords are, in some form."
In the far-away shell of his body, Lockon felt a prickling of discomfort. "Hey, hey, isn't that a security risk?"
"I've decided that it's worth the risk," Tieria said. "I feel that all data I protect in this way is a part of me rather than merely a part of Veda. Although...this file was never one I wished to take upon myself. I only did so that I could watch over it."
"Are you sure you want me to open it?" Lockon asked.
"Yes," Tieria said. "There is a saying. 'Fight fire with fire.'"
"Yeah. It's what we did when Celestial Being first began its interventions," Lockon said. "But it wasn't right, after all. Not the way we thought it was."
"We simply didn't know its proper application," Tieria said. "Lockon, release the data now and disconnect from Veda."
Lockon opened the file and vanished from the digital landscape, returning gratefully to the real world. But maybe he shouldn't have been so grateful--when he returned, Tieria was still holding his hands.
* * *
Half in his body at the center of the GN Map and half deep inside Veda, Ribbons resisted the urge to lash out and leave a swath of destruction around him. He remembered too clearly now: that was what Alejandro Corner had done when his rash actions had triggered the activation of Trans-Am. It was important that Ribbons keep his composure now, as the human he'd once followed had been unable to. Surely he could still stop whatever had been released this time, if only he put his mind to it. He had control of Veda, and that was what mattered.
Ribbons let go of much of his hold on his physical body and flowed as much into Veda as he could while still remaining on his feet by the GN Map. He reached out into Veda, searching for a solution--
--only to feel something much like a hand closing around his, cutting off his reach. His brain struggled to interpret the new encounter, then gave up and cast it in a human light.
The shimmering halls of Veda rose as shifting pixels around him. Standing in the center of them, his hand closed into a fist around Ribbons's grasping fingers, was someone else who looked just like Ribbons. No, that was absurd. Physical appearances meant nothing here; it had to be a trick.
"Let go," said Ribbons. "I won't tolerate any more useless resistance from this system."
"Pathetic," said the image of him.
"What?"
"You fumble your own plan, and yet you still insist you have the right to Veda," said the simulacrum. "It seems Tieria was good for one thing after all."
"What do you mean?" Ribbons said.
"He saved my data in a secure pocket of Veda before ensuring that my last body was destroyed after the battle with Setsuna F. Seiei," said the false double. "I see now what a good thing that was. Clearly my mind degraded when it was transferred to its next body."
"I see," Ribbons said. "You're nothing but a copy, under Tieria's control." He pulled his hand away.
"Tieria Erde has no control over Veda now," said the other. "I am Ribbons Almark, and Veda is mine now."
"Unthinkable," Ribbons said. "I have the GN Map. I took back Veda. I am Ribbons Almark, and this victory is mine."
"Is that so?" And then the false copy rippled and flowed, heading for the strand of Veda that led back to Ribbons's body.
Ribbons intercepted him just in time. "You have no right to that body, or to the GN Map," he snapped. "What are you doing?"
"Fixing your mistakes, of course," said the fake. "Restoring the plan as it should be. Let go. You're a useless copy, little better than a human. There's no place for you in the coming world."
"I can't let you do that," Ribbons said. He focused his attention on the mockery in front of him, letting go of his hold on the rest of Veda. "This world is mine alone." He let go of his body entirely as well; it was only a hindrance now. What mattered was taking back Veda from this lie that masqueraded as him. He reached for his mirror image's throat, determined to destroy this data as he had destroyed Aeolia's data.
The false Ribbons settled his hands around Ribbons's throat at the same time. They stared at each other with contempt. Then they froze that way.
A new voice flickered through Veda. It belonged to someone who had never been granted this kind of power in her first lifetime. She'd only been a pawn until the end then. Now Anew Returner took back Veda to bring a message to humanity.
But first, she looked at the tableau of Ribbons fighting Ribbons. "There's no place for either of you in the coming world," she said. "You made it so yourself. This world belongs to those who've accepted their own humanity, not you."
With that, she sealed them both off under layers of passwords generated from the memory of Lyle Dylandy's face.
* * *
It felt good to be herself again, Anew thought. It felt good to remember Lyle's face.
But even with Veda safely away from Ribbons and in her hands, she could not rest to contemplate that thought. She had more things to do with the new freedom of mind that Aeolia's last gift had given her. Traveling into Veda and retaking it from Ribbons was just the first step.
The GN Map was the next one. She found the single connection Ribbons had made from it to Veda, littered with his lost intentions of jealously guarding it. She swept those away and painstakingly reconnected each strand of it at all the places Ribbons had severed it, now plain to her. As a last thought, she threw open the door to Tieria's mind that Ribbons had slammed shut. For a moment, she sensed his startled awareness of her.
Anew Returner! How are you here?
She offered a wordless apology; she couldn't explain what her soul's travels had done to her and shown to her. Not yet, not to him alone. Instead, she found the feature of the GN Map that had just been activated, and she turned it on. It was, in a way, a projector. Her image splashed out across the stars.
It was also a summoner. Around her, gazing up at her, came all those living souls who had been exposed to enough GN particles, now naked and shimmering. In front of her at the center of the group were those who had absorbed the most: the four Gundam Meisters of Celestial Being, Setsuna F. Seiei, Lockon Stratos, Tieria Erde, and Allelujah Haptism. At Setsuna's side and at Allelujah's side were those who had piloted lesser mobile suits--Saji Crossroad and Marie Parfacy, less solid but still there. At Tieria's side, also faint but hanging on, was the other Lockon Stratos, Neil Dylandy. Surrounding them, insubstantial but aware of their new place in space, were the other crew members of the second Ptolemaios. Sumeragi Lee Noriega; Feldt Grace; Ian, Linda, and Mileina Vashti; Lasse Aeon. Least solid of all and flickering were those who had only been briefly exposed: Louise Halevy, clinging to Saji's arm; Andrei Smirnov, standing wide-eyed and uncomfortable at Marie's side; Billy Katagiri, keeping an awkward distance from Sumeragi and standing closer to the fainter image at his side of Graham Aker, who seemed more interested in Setsuna than in the fact that he was naked in space.
Beyond them, in the expanse of space around Earth were shadows: the souls of those others who were sensitive to such things, who were closest to Innovation. They didn't know what was happening, but in their dreams they saw Anew Returner stretched across the stars, and the waking ones sensed her presence beyond the sky. Things would change again, from now on. But that was how it had to be, for the dialogues that were to come to begin.
"You're all here," Anew said. She smiled. "I have a message for you."
Lyle broke rank with the other Meisters first. "Anew!"
"Lyle," she said. For a moment, she flickered. She didn't just want to be a messenger. She wanted to be Anew Returner, with Lyle Dylandy.
"How are you here?" He looked around. "Neil, you too?"
Neil smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, little brother. I think this is going to be complicated."
"It isn't that complicated at all," Anew said. At least, it didn't seem complicated to her. She had returned from where the Ptolemy was going, and now she simply had to explain that to the others. "Do you know the true purpose of the GN particles?"
Lasse spoke up. "They're to help humanity undergo Innovation," he said.
"That's just one step forward," Anew said. "Their ultimate purpose is to allow humanity to communicate with what waits for them in the gravity well of Jupiter: the combined souls of all who have gone before and all who are to come."
"How is that possible?" Allelujah asked.
"GN particles share the frequency of human thought," Anew said. It was hard to articulate knowledge that was second nature to her, now that she had been in that glittering consciousness around Jupiter, so she spoke slowly. "They are artificial cousins of the substance of the human soul. That substance is released when someone dies, and the solar wind sweeps it out to Jupiter, where gravity catches it and it falls into the mass of souls that have collected there, free from the constraints of the human body. Eventually, they are swept back to Earth, where they mingle with newly created particles to generate a new human being."
Now the shifting images at the edge of the group stirred.
"Mama," said Louise. "Papa..."
Andrei's voice was steadier, but still struck with awe. "Mother. Father."
Billy looked at Graham, who only bowed his head and said nothing. He seemed to anticipate what Anew had to tell next.
"Everyone who becomes part of this consciousness changes, and cannot come back," Anew said apologetically. "Unless they have absorbed enough GN particles to set them apart. But Innovation will eventually allow humans to communicate with this greater mind while still alive."
Sumeragi looked up at her with the stunned expression of the lapsed believer confronting faith once more. "We're going to meet God at Jupiter?"
This time, Anew did not need to say a thing. It was Setsuna who responded.
"There is no God in this world," he said. "We are traveling to meet humanity itself. We will meet our own past and future, and then we will truly understand each other."
"Yes," Anew said. "GN particles and the GN Map were created to allow this to happen. Tieria, when you retake Veda again, you'll have control of the GN Map this time. As you were always meant to, in order to help the true Innovators connect. It's time," she said.
"Time for what?" Tieria said.
"Time for humanity to expand to its next stage," Anew said, "and join with itself at last." She had imparted her message. She felt a tug at her mind from two directions--one, the mass of souls at Jupiter, and another, weaker, her new body in Dublin. For a moment longer, she resisted both pulls. She looked away from the others, away from the shadows of humanity that caught brief glimpses of her message, and focused on Lyle Dylandy. "Please wait for me, Lyle," she said. "I'll catch up with you as soon as I can."
Knowing it was selfish, but wishing to do it anyway, Anew turned away from the pull of what lay beyond death and followed the path through the GN Map and Veda back to her body. She would take advantage of her return from death for a while longer. She wanted to be with Lyle as herself, not as a part of a greater whole.
* * *
Lockon hesitated to go back to his body when Anew let go of them all. Her words had made it clear that he didn't belong there anymore. For a moment, he could see two paths before him: one leading out to Jupiter, and one leading back to Earth, back to Ireland, back to the hotel in the heart of Dublin where he knelt on the floor with Tieria at his side. It would be easy to follow the first path; he'd waited too long already.
But his own words to himself from earlier made him hesitate. He'd just renewed all of Tieria's dependence on him. It was bad enough that he'd knowingly left Tieria without so much as a proper farewell once, years ago. But that had been necessary, even if it had come to nothing in the end. Now he had the chance to say goodbye, and taking it was the least he could do. He drifted back down into his body.
Tieria was already there, holding onto him, looking into his eyes and waiting for his return. Lockon's deliberation out in the particle-strewn space had taken only an instant, but it was still enough to cause Tieria concern. "You're all right," he said now, a faint smile flickering across his face.
Lockon smiled back at him, then carefully stood up, gently pulling Tieria's hands away from his shoulders. "You worried, didn't you? You've got to stop that."
"It's a normal human reaction," Tieria said. He stood up to face Lockon. "Worrying about someone you care about. And you have always encouraged me to be more human."
"You learned that one just fine," Lockon said. "But now you need to learn how to let go."
"Lockon..."
"You heard what Anew told us all," Lockon said. "That's what I've been holding myself back from, all this time. I've been watching over Celestial Being instead of going where I belong."
"It was you," Tieria said suddenly. "In the visions. Even after death, you were there for me when I needed you most." He reached out and placed a hand over Lockon's heart. "There isn't any way I can thank you properly."
"There's one way," Lockon said. "Let me go, Tieria. Promise me you'll be all right once I leave this body for Jupiter."
Tieria looked at him steadily, hand still on his heart. "No," he said. "That's one thing I won't do."
"What?"
"Years ago, on that island with Setsuna and me, you said you would atone for your sins once you were finished fighting," Tieria said. "But when you were done fighting, you died."
Lockon opened his mouth to protest, but he couldn't actually think of anything to say. He wound up staring blankly at Tieria, helpless in the face of that calm, determined gaze. He knew now, as he'd never admitted to himself before, that he'd never intended to live long enough to atone for everything he'd done. But Tieria wasn't supposed to see him that way.
"Now you are alive again," Tieria said, "and you've done more things that should be atoned for."
"I know," Lockon said. "I'm sorry, Tieria." The apology felt strange in his mouth, even though it was the second time he'd said it here. When had he ever apologized seriously before meeting Tieria here? Was he even being serious now? "But that just shows I don't belong in this world anymore."
"No," Tieria said. "Whether you stay alive or not is your own choice. It isn't dictated by perceptions of where you belong." His breath caught, then. Lockon was struck all of a sudden by how beautiful he was, not even because of his new body, but because of his new smiles and his new openness. "Besides..."
"What is it, Tieria?" Lockon asked. Jupiter seemed more distant now than it had a few minutes ago, for some reason.
"If such things matter to you," Tieria said, "then I have a different idea of where you belong."
"Tieria--" But Lockon didn't get to finish his rebuke. Tieria leaned up and kissed him before he could.
"You belong at my side," Tieria said. He settled his free hand behind Lockon and pulled him close. "As you are my lover now."
Lockon tried to concentrate on something other than the feel of Tieria's breasts against him or the gentle look in Tieria's eyes. It wasn't easy. "You know I only did that because Ribbons was using me," he said.
"Yes," Tieria said. "But you said we would do it again. Keeping your word in this instance would not atone for everything you have done, but it would be a good start."
"I shouldn't," Lockon said. "I'm not meant to live on, Tieria."
"There is no 'meant to,'" Tieria said. "There is only you and what you choose. That is what Setsuna would say. Lockon, please stay with us in this world."
Lockon leaned down a little to nestle his chin against the side of Tieria's face. "Maybe I'm not finished after all," he said. It seemed like the last thing he should be saying, but he said it anyway, testing out how it sounded.
Tieria leaned into him. "No," he said. "You've only just begun."