Author's Note: The story is set after the events of Gundam SEED. I'm proud to report that I've had a serious idea for once, so let's see how this one turns out! A lot of it is still hatching, so please review and let me know what you think... Most importantly, though, please ENJOY!

Disclaimer: Gundam Seed and all its characters belong to their respective owners.

Echoes of Mamre

Chapter 01: The Binding

Athrun bundled the last of the boxes onto the backseat, strained to push the door closed and took a step back to admire his work. His car was crammed to bursting with micro unit supplies he had special-ordered over the past month. Had he known everything would be shipped together, he would have held back on some of those orders, or he would have hired a truck.

To be honest, I guess I did get a little carried away… he thought, staring at the mountain of goods stuffed into his car. He so often did when it came to building cute little robotic critters. To be realistic, he did not need all of it right away, but whenever the micro unit fever took him, his usual practical manner took a snooze.

Since the end of the war, everyone seemed to be pulling their lives back together. Lacus had taken charge of the orphanage with Kira, Cagalli was starting her career in politics… So Athrun had decided that he needed something to occupy his mind too.

Maybe it would only be a small business at first. Selling Hallo’s to complete strangers seemed a bit immoral to him, somehow… But, he assured himself, it was a bit like breeding with animals – you had to love them in order to produce the best results. After all, he did not have to sell them right away. He could start out playing around with different designs first, and then, when he was ready, he could advertise them online.

With his head full of colourful ideas for future micro unit designs, Athrun hopped into the car and sped homewards. At the moment, what he called home was a lonely little apartment on the quiet side of town. It was only a temporary arrangement until Cagalli could find a way for him to stay close to her without revealing his true identity. Kira and Lacus had offered that he could stay on at the orphanage with them until that happened, but he did not want to intrude on them like that. He appreciated how his friends always supported him, but he could not depend on others for the rest of his life.

As he took the next turn, a small silhouette on the side of the road caught his eye. He slowed the car to get a closer look, and was shocked to realize that the bedraggled figure was that of a child. Stopping, he scanned the roadside for anyone who looked like they might be the parents, but the sidewalk was empty except for her. She stood with her tiny arms wrapped tightly around her shivering body as her eyes darted this way and that. She was scared. All alone. Abandoned.

Discarded…

Athrun felt a painful sensation surface from a certain locked compartment in his heart as the image of the child with no parents echoed with the orphaned boy that was imprisoned within his soul.

Before he knew what he was doing, he was out of the car and walking up to her. She reminded him of a frightened rabbit, ready to dart at the slightest movement. But as he came closer, she only turned her round eyes up at him and watched silently, acceptingly. For a moment, he just stood there. He was clueless around children, but he could not just leave the poor girl here by herself – she had to be no more than six years old! He wished for Cagalli or Lacus, or even Kira to pop up out of the blue and take over.

“Erm… hi there,” he managed lamely. The little girl blinked up at him, almost expectantly. What to say…

“Are you a Coordinator?” she asked.

“What? I mean, um… sort of,” he replied without thinking.What kind of an answer is that? he berated himself. But he had been taken aback by hearing a question like that come from an infant’s mouth so casually. “I mean… yes, I am.”

A slight change came over the child’s features. Athrun was not sure exactly what had changed, but it was a loosening of sorts. A giggle fluttered from her baby pink lips. When Athrun regarded her with an indignant frown, she clarified simply: “You’re silly!”

“What about you?” he asked, hoping to steer the subject away from how silly she apparently thought he was. Since his childhood days, Athrun had always been a solemn person who liked to be taken seriously. He could handle a joke, certainly, but getting laughed at by a kid sort of irked him just a little bit. “What are you doing all by yourself? Won’t your parents get worried?”

“No…” she replied, the twinkle suddenly gone from her eyes again. “I don’t have any parents.”

Athrun felt a twinge of regret at the cruel reality of the situation before him. A great tragedy had befallen this little girl. Most likely she had been orphaned during the war, and whoever had been taking care of her could or would no longer do so, and left her here. To Athrun, there was only one logical solution to a sensitive case like this, and her name was Lacus Clyne.

“I know!” he said. “Come on, I’ll take you to a place where there are lots of kids like you.”

“Lots… like me…?” she repeated incredulously, but, thankfully, she followed him to his car and got in without argument. “You sure have a lot of stuff, mister.”

“Ahah… I guess I do,” he muttered, clasping the steering wheel firmly in both hands. ‘Mister’…?

The short drive to the orphanage was only a few minutes, but it seemed to take hours instead. The fresh, salty air against his cheeks and the wind in his hair failed to give him the usual pleasant thrill of driving along Orb’s coastline. Athrun had more important matters to think about than enjoying the breeze. Every now and then, he thought of something useful to say, but eventually discarded it as ‘potentially silly’ before he got around to saying it. The sooner he got this kid to Lacus, the better. Finally, he thought of something he should have said a long time ago, and mentally kicked himself for forgetting.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked.

She eyed him sideways, her large, blue pupils moving up and down his face fitfully. Was she afraid that she could not trust him. A little late for that, what with having clambered into his car without a second glance and all. Just when he thought that she was probably not going to answer him, she drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them with not a care for the dark smears her dirty little feet were leaving on the car seats.

“Promise you won’t laugh?” she said into her knees.

“I won’t,” Athrun replied.

“It’s Zehina,” she mumbled in a rush.

Athrun felt his eyebrows climb. It was indeed a strange name, but he did not want to upset the child, especially not when they were still so far away from Lacus’s orphanage. In an effort to hide his surprise, he diverted his eyes to the rear-view mirror. The traffic in the slow lane was lumbering along without much haste. There were few vehicles on the road – a red sports car that was almost matching Athrun’s speed, a white van with tinted windows, and a brown little bug that reminded him a bit of a taxi for all the passengers it was carrying. Catching his own reflection in the mirror, he quickly smoothed his features into what he hoped was a neutral expression.

“Well, that definitely is an interesting name…” he managed.

“You can say it,” she muttered, still not looking up, “It’s definitely a weird name.”

An awkward silence floated up between them like an impenetrable bubble.

“We’re almost there,” he offered at last, hoping the change of subject would lighten the mood, but she just glared at him and he found himself wishing that what he had said was closer to the truth than it actually was. What did I do wrong now? He really had no talent when it came to children.

“So what’s your name?” she demanded crossly. Ah, sothat was it.

“I’m Athrun,” he said.

And she burst out laughing! Now it was his turn to frown. Just what was wrong with his name, anyway? It was startlingly difficult to keep his expression from growing sullen. After all, he was not a sulky brat, he thought heatedly. The indignity of it all! Abruptly, the girl went quiet. His sudden scowl had probably scared her, for fat tears were collecting in the corners of her eyes. Suppressing a sigh, he sped the car up another notch. He had to get to that orphanage, and fast. Lacus knew everything about children. She would know what to do.

He raised his emerald green eyes to check the rear-view mirror again, and noticed that the white van was approaching him at an alarming speed. You’ll get a speeding ticket… Athrun thought, shaking his head as he prepared to let the fool pass. But instead, the van closed the gap between their two vehicles and rode almost bumper to bumper with Athrun’s car. Is this guy out of his mind!? Athrun stole a glance at Zehina. Good, she was wearing her seatbelt. He switched gears and rose to the challenge. If it was a race the van wanted…

Just then, the window on the passenger’s side of the van rolled down and the barrel of a gun poked out! They were going to shoot at him!? His mind raced as his eyes roved the area for possible escape routes. His handgun was always in its holster inside his jacket, but at the speed he was driving, there was no way to keep the car on the road and shoot at the same time. Damn! I can’t do anything like this! he thought, desperately speeding up once more.

The first shot rang, and missed. The second and third ricocheted off the car’s heavy, external plating. Athrun swerved the vehicle left and right trying to dodge bullets, but the mirror was a poor source to judge their angle by. A loud bang, followed by an ominous hiss, sent the car spinning out of control as the next shot hit the hind wheel, busting the tyre. Athrun grit his teeth as the edge of the road approached at high speed.

In slow-motion, it seemed, the car smashed through the railing on the side of the road, before the ground came rushing up to meet him. The only sound he could hear was his own scream…

---

Cagalli found herself staring at her new surroundings in awe once again. Though it was probably supposed to be obvious that she would one day succeed her father in his leadership over Orb, she never in her wildest dreams imagined that she would have to go through grooming hell just to get up in the morning! Things had been bad enough while she was just ‘the wayward princess’. Now that she was Orb’s respectable matriarch, she was constantly attacked by servants who wanted to comb, brush and polish everything until she thought she thought she would scream. They seemed to think she was an entirely different person now that she had assumed leadership. Well, at least the bowing and scraping had stopped after her declaration the day before. She refused to call it an outburst. She was a grownup now, and grownups did not have outbursts.

The morning’s drama aside, she was in a great mood today and she would let no amount of fussing spoil it. She had finally found a way for Athrun to be close to her. The problem had been that, as a Coordinator, he would stick out like a sore thumb wherever he went, especially a famous one like Athrun Zala. The people of the new council seemed to still have some reservations about Coordinators. Eventually, she would fix that too. But until then, she had the perfect place for Athrun.

Her personal bodyguard… What a dreamy thought.

She was rudely jostled out of her sweet reverie when the phone rang. Grumbling, she reached for the receiver and pressed it to her ear. The moment Lacus’s soft voice started talking on the other end, her legs turned to water. She could not remember falling to her knees. She pushed herself up and replaced the receiver numbly.

“Oh, Athrun…” she breathed.

---

The monitor showed the impossible image of a young man climbing from the wreckage of a badly ruined car. The figure’s eyes were a sort of ice blue as he looked up, straight in the trembling cameraman’s direction. The figure fought like a berserker, not letting anyone near the small bundle sitting calmly at his feet. The figure leaped at the screen, the camera angle swung askew and the recording ended in static.

The man who called himself Stark stared at the replaying video in front of him. He sat his revolving chair like a throne as he eyed his subordinates with a laziness he did not feel. The dull light from the monitors lit up their fearful faces as they glanced at one another, wondering what their fate would be. They had a right to be afraid. They had disappointed him. And he did not like being disappointed.

“W-We almost had her, sir,” the boldest fool managed to speak up. “But then she—”

“I am well aware of what has happened, Borace,” the man who called himself Stark replied slowly, savouring the look of cold dread that took hold of his useless subordinate. He turned his attention back to the monitors to study the recording of their failure once more. “At least you’ve done something right…”

“S-Sir?”

The man who called himself Stark paused to rethink his statement. He did not need to console them in any way. They had failed. Utterly. Rubbing his chin, he replayed the video once more. The girl should not even have been allowed to make it as far as the city, much less get the chance to find a Source. But to think that she would Bind with a human… A Coordinator, at that. If the situation had not been so dire, the results might have been intriguing. But as long as he called himself Stark, he could not think like that. So he suppressed his inner curiosity and, instead, zoomed in on a freeze-frame of the blue-haired youth’s face. A steady stream of blood was trickling down the side of his head. That had not seemed to stop him from fighting off several armed men effortlessly.

“I want all the information you can find on this boy,” he said finally, tapping the image on the screen with his index finger. “Then find out if he’s still alive.”

Those haunting blue eyes looked teasingly familiar, yet infinitely strange in this young man’s face. They were not his.

---

Athrun woke in a pool of his own blood. Gingerly, he touched the source of his pounding headache, a rough gash down the side of his head. For a moment, his mind was blank. Until he saw the flaming wreckage of his car lying upside down and crumpled up against the trunk of a tree. He frowned. How did I get so far from the wreck? And if the car was in such bad shape, how in the world could he have survived? His breath caught in his throat as memories of the moments before the crash returned.

The girl!

Was she still in there? He had to save her, even if it meant going back into that inferno and digging her out!

“You’ll die if you go back in there,” a little voice said beside him.

That voice! He gasped and spun in the direction of the child’s voice. She was standing over him, unscathed, and her blue eyes had a strange glow to them. It reminded him of the way a cat’s eyes glinted in the dark. His frown deepened.

“How did you…?” he began, but the rest of his sentence fell apart.

He was so tired. He had trouble focusing on her face. Those eyes, like blue fireflies, drew blurry lines across his vision as he tried to keep her face in view. The last of his strength left him, and he dropped face down onto the ground.

“I’m sorry… I’ve used up a lot,” he heard the small voice tell him from somewhere in the darkness. “Rest now, get your strength back…”

To be continued...