Gundam SEED Fan Fiction ❯ The Price of Equality ❯ The Price of Equality ( Chapter 1 )

The war had been over for a month now, and things were beginning to come back together. The dead were being buried, though segregated up until this day. Today was the day that the barriers would break. A Natural and Coordinator were to be "buried side by side in the same cemetery.

Friends and loved ones stood around both coffins, though at the moment that crowd too was segregated. The Coordinators that were there to see Nicol Amarfi to heaven sat on one side of the chapel and the Naturals on the other. They didn't look at each other. They didn't say anything.

They were still too caught up in their petty differences to notice the fact that they were there to commend the two young men that should have been in those coffins for their efforts to bring about this new era of peace. They couldn't, for a single moment, understand why a natural and a coordinator had to be together in death when they were already "cursed" to be together in life.

But as the funeral went on and it came time for someone to speak about each of the boys, the first to stand up was Kira, speaking of course for Tolle. And as he spoke, he said so many things that made people just want to cry. Things about their friendship, their childhood, and even the little things that they enjoyed doing. He spoke of how Tolle would make the best out of everything and stay on the bright side, and how he cared for people more than he cared about anything else. And that was it. Tolle had been spoken for.

When it came time for Nicol to be spoken for, Athrun stood and made a similar speech. He spoke of Nicol's love for the piano and pretty things, how Nicol had always talked about what they would do after the war. He spoke out about how, like Tolle, Nicol had loved people, and that the reason he had even joined the military was to protect people. He said that, even though he had to fight against them, Nicol had even seen Naturals as people. But once again, that was all.

All of what Kira and Athrun had just said seemed to go unnoticed. And when they headed to the cemetery for their final good-byes and prepared for the two emptied caskets to be placed together into the side-by-side graves, two more people stepped up and did the unexpected.

Both Miriallia Haww and Dearka Elthman had a bouquet of flowers in their arms. Naturally one would have thought that Dearka would go to Nicol's side and Milly to Tolle's, but they didn't.

Milly was the one to walk over to the casket that Nicol's body should have been in, laying the bouquet of lilies on top of it. She smiled softly, pulling a note from her jacket and setting it there along with the flowers. People stared, even Milly's parents watched, wondering what their daughter was doing.

Like-wise people turned their eyes to Dearka who laid his bouquet of sunflowers on Tolle's casket, along with a letter. Todd Elthman was in shock to say the least, but stayed quiet seeing all this was premeditated by the two and he wanted to see what was going on.

Once the flowers had been placed, the two met in the middle and both smiled before they spoke, one after the other as if they had been practicing for months.

Dearka was the first to speak of the two, then Milly, "I never Tolle."

"I never knew Nicol."

"I only knew what Miriallia had said about him. And from what she told me, I was given the image that he was the kind of guy that could make anyone smile or blush. The kind of guy whose smile could light up a room. That's why I chose sunflowers."

"I only knew what Dearka had told me about Nicol. And a picture was painted in my head of a young man who loved to play the piano. A young man that was gentle and kind, and had a heart of gold. And was as pure as an angel. Thus the lilies."

Dearka smiled back at Miriallia as he spoke again, "I realized, as we were talking earlier…that we're not so different. We both need oxygen to breathe, we both need water to drink, we both need food to eat. And it took me a while before I realized I had one other thing in common with Tolle. We both met the same girl…and that girl changed both of our lives. We both met Kira, who opened our eyes. And we both faced the hardships that this war had brought on us due to the hatred of both Naturals and Coordinators."

Milly couldn't help but blush as she looked down, she hadn't known he was going to say anything about her. But now it was her turn. "Just as Dearka said…Nicol and I had things in common. We both liked music. We both liked being with those we cared about. And we both knew the same young man. A blonde boy who was torn between following orders and his own heart. And…we both knew Athrun, the one who set an example for us all, along with Kira, to go against the boundaries of this war and do all we did for ourselves."

Dearka smiled, "We realized too late what Nicol and Tolle already knew. We're all humans. We all have the common goal to want to survive."

"We all suffered to try and be equal in each others' eyes. But these two paid the ultimate price for that equality. They gave up their lives for what we have now."

That would have ended it, but the most unlikely of people stood with a cocky grin, but as simply as one could put it, Yzak Jule said bluntly, the meaning of all of what was said, "And we won't let anyone dare take that equality from us."

One by one both Natural and Coordinator stood with a nod, agreeing with what had been stated. Starting with Kira and Athrun, then moving to Lacus and Cagalli, and so on and so forth until they all stood and watched the empty caskets lowered into the earth.

And when the reception came, Milly and Dearka could only sit back and watch with smiles as both sorts spoke together as if they had been long time friends. They spoke of their children and their family, and the things that made this peace worth all the pain that had gone into attaining it. Dearka smiled and Milly grinned before they clasped hands.

"We did it."