[Gundam SEED] The Good Soldier (wip)
Jun. 14th, 2006 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombat"Welcome back, Commander Lorrnoke," said the doctor.
Who?
"You had us very worried for a while there. Please don't try to move too much just yet. Your injuries are still healing."
Injuries... How had he gotten injured? He could feel the dull ache running over his face and along most of the length of his body, but--
Ignoring the doctor's advice and the sharper pain that came with moving, he brought up a hand to explore the bandages covering his face. "Ow." His voice came out gritty as though with disuse. "What... happened?"
"Ah," said the doctor, and paused a moment. "From what we were told, your mobile suit was seriously damaged at Jachin Due, after the ship you were defending exploded."
He frowned, and felt it pulling at the rawness that crossed his cheek and ran between his eyes. Mobile suit, yes, but... "That can't be right."
"It's a miracle you survived," the doctor said.
The ship you were defending exploded. That was wrong. He was sure of it, but when he tried to call to mind what had really happened, all that he got was a confused blank and a headache.
"The good news," the doctor went on, "is that you're on your way to a full recovery. You're a very resilient man, Commander Lorrnoke."
"That isn't my name."
"--pardon?"
"My name," he said. "It's--"
He stopped.
"Your name is Neo Lorrnoke," the doctor told him gently.
"--what kind of a name is that?"
"You're a Lieutenant Commander in the EAF," the other went on, as though he hadn't spoken. "We confirmed your identity based on OMNI's records."
My name is... Neo?
"You've been through a very traumatic experience," the doctor said. "It's not surprising that your memories would be.. confused, or blocked off. Don't push yourself. With time and plenty of rest, you should be able to remember more. That's what usually happens in cases like this."
He frowned up at the ceiling and tried to recall what had happened before the battle.
"I recommend that you try to rest. You still have a lot of healing to do."
The name of his ship.
"If you need something for the pain," said the doctor, "don't hesitate to call for a nurse."
The name of his commanding officer.
"I'll let you rest now."
Something.
After the doctor left, he lay staring up at the ceiling and tried to remember his name.
--
He got a few visitors over the next weeks - high-ranking officers in the EAF. None of them seemed familiar, but then, none of them claimed to have known him personally. They saluted him and called him Commander Lorrnoke, and after a while it stopped sounding like they were talking to someone else.
They all told him the same thing, in different words: We've lost a lot of manpower. We need you back on duty.
It was gratifying at first, but after several of those visits, their urgency started to bother him. The war was supposed to be over - wasn't it?
When he asked, they brought him a copy of his service record. Lacking anything else to do but lie in bed and ache, he studied it, searching between the plainly printed lines for anything that made sense.
Lieutenant Commander Neo Lorrnoke. Birthdate: November 29, C.E. 42. (Twenty-nine years a blank.) Blood type O. No next of kin.
This is me?
He read the list of stationing assignments and deployments, names of locations and bases and ships, but no door opened in his memory. They were just names on a page: 3rd Fleet. GAT-01 Strike Dagger. Served with distinction, Battle of Porta Panama.
Is this... all of me?
What else would there be?
He stared for a long time at the last assignment: Archangel-class battleship Dominion, destroyed during the battle of Jachin Due, September 27, C.E. 71. "Dominion" mean nothing to him, but "Archangel"...
He asked about it, and they told him that the Dominion was the only Archangel-class ship commissioned - a prototype carrier which had not, unfortunately, performed according to expectations.
It didn't sit well with him, but maybe that was guilt.
--
He slept often, an escape from the discomfort of his healing wounds and the sheer boredom of being stuck in a hospital bed with nothing to do and few visitors. And gradually, memories filtered back to him.
Sometimes he simply stumbled over them, like finding something he'd forgotten that he owned, while thinking of something else that suddenly brought an association to mind.
Sometimes he dreamed in feverish Technicolor, and woke up with the memories suddenly fresh and restored. He remembered the Dominion, in disjointed fragments, though the memories never entirely stopped feeling off somehow, like they'd been painted in the wrong colors. Jachin Due never resolved itself into anything clearer than a confusion of spangled space and explosions and blinding light, but when he dreamed of Panama the sight of the surrendering OMNI personnel who'd been gunned down by ZAFT pilots stayed with him in brutal clarity after he woke up in a cold and gasping sweat, and he didn't sleep again for a while.
Bit by bit, he pieced his identity together, fitting scraps of memory to the factual framework of his service record. But it did nothing to dispel the gnawing sense of something missing, and the dreams he most wanted to remember - the ones from which he woke sometimes hot with sourceless anger but more often warm with a feeling he didn't have a name for - no matter how still he lay upon waking, trying to recall any one clear detail to hold onto, those dreams always dissipated like vapor, and the contentment he felt on waking turned cold and hollow.
No one who knew him ever came to visit.
Who?
"You had us very worried for a while there. Please don't try to move too much just yet. Your injuries are still healing."
Injuries... How had he gotten injured? He could feel the dull ache running over his face and along most of the length of his body, but--
Ignoring the doctor's advice and the sharper pain that came with moving, he brought up a hand to explore the bandages covering his face. "Ow." His voice came out gritty as though with disuse. "What... happened?"
"Ah," said the doctor, and paused a moment. "From what we were told, your mobile suit was seriously damaged at Jachin Due, after the ship you were defending exploded."
He frowned, and felt it pulling at the rawness that crossed his cheek and ran between his eyes. Mobile suit, yes, but... "That can't be right."
"It's a miracle you survived," the doctor said.
The ship you were defending exploded. That was wrong. He was sure of it, but when he tried to call to mind what had really happened, all that he got was a confused blank and a headache.
"The good news," the doctor went on, "is that you're on your way to a full recovery. You're a very resilient man, Commander Lorrnoke."
"That isn't my name."
"--pardon?"
"My name," he said. "It's--"
He stopped.
"Your name is Neo Lorrnoke," the doctor told him gently.
"--what kind of a name is that?"
"You're a Lieutenant Commander in the EAF," the other went on, as though he hadn't spoken. "We confirmed your identity based on OMNI's records."
My name is... Neo?
"You've been through a very traumatic experience," the doctor said. "It's not surprising that your memories would be.. confused, or blocked off. Don't push yourself. With time and plenty of rest, you should be able to remember more. That's what usually happens in cases like this."
He frowned up at the ceiling and tried to recall what had happened before the battle.
"I recommend that you try to rest. You still have a lot of healing to do."
The name of his ship.
"If you need something for the pain," said the doctor, "don't hesitate to call for a nurse."
The name of his commanding officer.
"I'll let you rest now."
Something.
After the doctor left, he lay staring up at the ceiling and tried to remember his name.
--
He got a few visitors over the next weeks - high-ranking officers in the EAF. None of them seemed familiar, but then, none of them claimed to have known him personally. They saluted him and called him Commander Lorrnoke, and after a while it stopped sounding like they were talking to someone else.
They all told him the same thing, in different words: We've lost a lot of manpower. We need you back on duty.
It was gratifying at first, but after several of those visits, their urgency started to bother him. The war was supposed to be over - wasn't it?
When he asked, they brought him a copy of his service record. Lacking anything else to do but lie in bed and ache, he studied it, searching between the plainly printed lines for anything that made sense.
Lieutenant Commander Neo Lorrnoke. Birthdate: November 29, C.E. 42. (Twenty-nine years a blank.) Blood type O. No next of kin.
This is me?
He read the list of stationing assignments and deployments, names of locations and bases and ships, but no door opened in his memory. They were just names on a page: 3rd Fleet. GAT-01 Strike Dagger. Served with distinction, Battle of Porta Panama.
Is this... all of me?
What else would there be?
He stared for a long time at the last assignment: Archangel-class battleship Dominion, destroyed during the battle of Jachin Due, September 27, C.E. 71. "Dominion" mean nothing to him, but "Archangel"...
He asked about it, and they told him that the Dominion was the only Archangel-class ship commissioned - a prototype carrier which had not, unfortunately, performed according to expectations.
It didn't sit well with him, but maybe that was guilt.
--
He slept often, an escape from the discomfort of his healing wounds and the sheer boredom of being stuck in a hospital bed with nothing to do and few visitors. And gradually, memories filtered back to him.
Sometimes he simply stumbled over them, like finding something he'd forgotten that he owned, while thinking of something else that suddenly brought an association to mind.
Sometimes he dreamed in feverish Technicolor, and woke up with the memories suddenly fresh and restored. He remembered the Dominion, in disjointed fragments, though the memories never entirely stopped feeling off somehow, like they'd been painted in the wrong colors. Jachin Due never resolved itself into anything clearer than a confusion of spangled space and explosions and blinding light, but when he dreamed of Panama the sight of the surrendering OMNI personnel who'd been gunned down by ZAFT pilots stayed with him in brutal clarity after he woke up in a cold and gasping sweat, and he didn't sleep again for a while.
Bit by bit, he pieced his identity together, fitting scraps of memory to the factual framework of his service record. But it did nothing to dispel the gnawing sense of something missing, and the dreams he most wanted to remember - the ones from which he woke sometimes hot with sourceless anger but more often warm with a feeling he didn't have a name for - no matter how still he lay upon waking, trying to recall any one clear detail to hold onto, those dreams always dissipated like vapor, and the contentment he felt on waking turned cold and hollow.
No one who knew him ever came to visit.
