An Innovade fan account

The dying pulse of warning lights and drifting glow of distant stars were the only illumination left inside the cockpit.

Setsuna could hear his own breathing echo inside the helmet, too loud, too uneven. Each inhale scraped his chest raw. Each exhale carried the heavy taste of iron. Somewhere along his right arm, pain bloomed hot and dull at once, the reminder that flesh broke far easier than steel.

Exia drifted.

No thrust nor destination, only momentum and silence.

Fragments of the battlefield floated around them. Twisted metals, shattered armor, remains of machines built for destruction. Now all the roaring of combat got reduced to debris, turning lazily in the endless night, glinting like scattered dust against the veil of the stars.

He should have felt terrified. 

He didn't.

Only exhaustion weighed on his body. And beneath it, his mind carried something quieter, almost peaceful.

"... Exia," he murmured through the taste of blood.

A soft crackle of static answered him, a gentle hum of systems barely clinging to life.

Damaged, bleeding power. Mutual pain.

His hand gloved by his pilot suit trembled as he lifted it, fingers brushing what remained of the control column. Even through the suit, the metal felt familiar beneath his palm.

You fought well. Setsuna thought at the back of his mind.

Against the blade of that loud Union soldier selfishly seeking revenge. Against overwhelming numbers. Against fate itself. Exia had moved when she should no longer have been able to. Left arm and head torn away, armor shredded, systems screaming. Yet she had still shielded him. The cockpit damage, in comparison, wasn't all that bad.

He felt grateful. Exia had saved him.

Perhaps it was a foolish thing to say to steel and circuits under his own hands, but the feeling remained. 

Since the beginning, when he first sat within her frame, something had clicked into place. As if the scattered fragments of his life had found a shape that fit. 

--Gundam.

If all of his life choices guided him to Exia, then maybe all of his mistakes, all the shortcuts he took, they had to mean something.

Through the broken hatch, Earth turned slowly beneath them, blue, white, and impossibly distant.

They were falling. Very slowly, but falling all the same. Inevitably.

Contact with Ptolemaios and Celestial Being was gone. Acceptance settled quietly in his chest. Mission failed. Plans collapsed. War continued regardless.

But right now, for this moment, there was only this drifting space, a battered cockpit, and the fragile warmth where life still clung stubbornly on.

His vision blurred. Pain or fatigue, he couldn't tell.

The warning light flickered weakly once more before dying completely, as if Exia herself invited him to rest. He let his head fall back against the seat. The cushioning was minimal, built only for efficiency, not comfort. Yet, after battle, even this felt soft. Safe. Wrapped in machinery and silence.

Outside, stars shimmered endlessly.

Inside, lingering heat from combat still seeped through the cold of outer space, the afterglow of shared survival.

Memories intruded of deserts burning under mobile suit fire. Villages erased. Children too helpless to even look up the machines that decided life or death.

He fought for it all to end. Although he was merely a terrorist that knew nothing but destruction. He knew his place well.

However, to the world, Gundams were monsters. 

And now one cradled him, wounded but unyielding, carrying him away from death once again.

Pain receded into something distant. Adrenaline drained away, leaving only bone-deep weariness. Blood loss made the stars seem brighter, softer, like scattered snow.

Falling together.

Earth slowly grew larger, like invisible hands guiding their descent home.

... Home?

What a strange word.

His brow tightened faintly beneath the blood-stained helmet, the small movement sending a dull reminder of pain through his skull.

Did such a place ever exist for him?

Krugis had vanished before he even understood what a homeland meant. Wiped away so thoroughly that even maps refused its memory. No borders, no markers. 

A country erased as if it had never deserved to exist.

So where does someone like him return to now?

Had he not belonged more to space? To missions, to Exia, to the stars beyond the orbital elevators, than to Earth itself?

The planet continued turning, vast and indifferent. Somewhere below, cities glowed. People slept, argued, laughed, dreamed. Somewhere below, conflict dragged on. People bled, cried, endured, and also dreamed.

If home is where someone waits for you, if home is where you can dream...

Then maybe he didn't have to search for such a thing.

Maybe someday, when the fighting ended, when Gundams were no longer needed...

He would find a place where silence wasn't merely the pause between battles. 

Yet even then, he still saw himself in a cockpit, beyond it flowers stubbornly blooming across fields once torn apart by war.

For now, Exia carried him through the burning sky, toward a world that has never quite made room for him.

But even if the world forgot places like Krugis. Even if Exia's armor was torn away piece by piece.

As long as his Gundam lived within him, he would never be without a place to belong.

Alongside Exia.