Chapter Text
All at once there was an avalanche. Then nothingness, and a distant calling on the edge of her senses.
“Ms. Petra!”
That voice…that Mercurian girl?
It took a truly extraordinary effort for Petra to open her eyes — one of them at least. Something warm and sticky seemingly fused her other eye shut. She stared blearily down at the pile of rubble beneath her, hands feebly twitching, unsure if she was looking at concrete or a lightless void.
What happened…why is it so dark?
The voice came back, somewhere in front of her. “Petra! Talk to me!”
“What — why…“ She tried to answer, for all the good it did, barely in control of her own tongue. Her vision remained blurry, but eventually settled on the sight of Suletta Mercury crouching in front of her, somewhat disheveled but mostly unscathed.
“You’re awake! Oh thank goodness!” Suletta exclaimed in relief. “Hold on, let me see — oh. Oh, no.”
“Why can’t… move?” Petra tried to string words together in a sentence, only to end it in a coughing fit as she expelled the blood welling up in her throat. Some rational part of her mind told her that she should have felt something by now, but the pain was but a dull echo somewhere in the background. If anything, she felt rather drowsy and increasingly cold.
“You’re trapped under the rubble.” Suletta’s voice shifted all at once, now uncharacteristically low and grave. “It has you pinned down by the legs. Can you feel them?”
“Can’t feel a thing,” Petra groaned. It was an alien sensation — she could certainly move her head and arms, but she could barely feel herself doing so. The lack of sensory feedback made her head spin even more.
“That’s normal. Adrenaline. Fight-or-flight response distracts you from the pain. Right. Right. Right,” Suletta chanted rapidly, steadying herself into a working mood and clasping her hands around the slab of rubble nearest to her. “Wasn’t knocked out, more time to work, ten minutes at least. I’ll try to remove it.”
Petra blinked, uncomprehending, as her world continued to swim. She would remove several hundred kilos worth of debris all by herself? “W-wait…you — you can’t just-“
“Better that way,” Suletta interjected sternly, an interruption that shut down any argument. She looked at her directly, eyes like lead weights. “You’re bleeding. Can’t get to the source. Don’t remove the weight, crush syndrome sets in. Can’t wait for help then, you’ll bleed out. Whatever you do, stay awake. Keep talking.”
Even with her stunted senses, Petra could hear an enormous weight being shifted nearby, concrete grinding against concrete. The ground shook as Suletta dropped the offending object off to her side.
“What happened to…to the others?” Petra asked. “The girls we were carrying?”
No answer. Only the quiet grunts of exertion and the faint sound of joints popping as Suletta kept working, pushing her body to seemingly inhuman limits.
“Mercu — Suletta?”
“...They’re dead,” Suletta said, barely a whisper. “Under the rubble. No pulse.”
Dryness mixed with the blood remaining in Petra’s throat, and she coughed, sharp and rough. “How can you…” Petra tried to focus her scrambled thoughts, to make sense of what she was witnessing. “How can you remain so calm at this?”
Mechanically, Suletta continued, reducing the mountain of debris piece by piece, eyes fixed ahead. “Six years of rescue work on Mercury. Old machines. Old people. Nasty planet. Never a day without trouble. Crashes, cave-ins, fires, radiation, solar storms. Accidents were…common.”
The dryness intensified, and she could scarcely believe what she was hearing - who she was seeing. Gone was any trace of that incessantly bubbly nuisance from the sticks, She was used to this, Petra realised with muted horror. The country bumpkin they routinely ridiculed used to live in the closest thing to hell — and she felt right at home in the hell they were in now.
Something else caught Petra’s attention — or rather, the lack of it — and she gladly seized the chance to push these thoughts away. “The gunfire has stopped.”
“Mobile suits still on the move,” Suletta said as she cast a quick look around. “Looks like Front management. And…someone else? I think I fought these three months ago. Grassley. The purple ones. Different markings though.”
“Y-You mean…Beguir-Pentes?” Petra attempted a guess. “If it’s not Grassley House…gotta be Dominicus.”
“Is that good or bad?” Suletta asked, a faint echo of her usual confused ignorance of the world coming to surface.
“Probably good. They’re witch hunters and the- well, they must have come after that other Gundam.”
“Ms. Norea,” Suletta whispered as she all but tossed away the last slab pinning Petra down. “I see.”
A pause, and fear churned anew in Petra’s gut. “H-how bad is it?”
“Bad enough,” Suletta admitted with her trademark blunt honesty before crouching down. In the next moment, Petra heard the sound of cloth being ripped. “Sorry, that’s your uniform”, Suletta explained sheepishly. “I need some cloth to stem the bleeding with, you’ve already lost too much. Please don’t move. I have to keep the pressure applied like this until help arrives.”
“I feel kinda dizzy,” Petra complained, feeling her vision darken around the edges, her grip on the world gradually slip.
“Petra.”
“Hey…Suletta?”
“Petra, I need you to focus. I know what you’re feeling, but-“
“I’m… I’m not going to make it, am I? I’m gonna…” A sudden onset of pain in her throat set in, as a prickling hotness welled up at the edges of her eyes. “I’m gonna die here, aren’t I? I don’t…I don’t wanna…Lauda, Guel…Felsi…I want you to tell them I’m-“
“Don’t you dare!” Suletta said firmly, voice raised. “You tell them yourself. You will tell them yourself. Listen”, she continued, working to fashion the tattered cloth into a makeshift bandage, “like I said, just keep talking. Doesn’t matter what about, I need you to stay with me, okay? You do that, you will get through this. It’s not the end. Don’t ever say it’s the end — and Mr. Lauda still owes you that date. Several, in fact. This isn’t—“
Suletta looked skyward, and in the chaos that surrounded her, there was a new sound on the wind.
“Wait. What is that?”
An almighty roar cut through the air, the deafening peal of thrusters firing at full power. Even in her state, Petra would recognize the sound of these engines anywhere, and her heart skipped a beat. Soon enough, the noise ended with a crash somewhere behind her, close enough to make the ground shake again.
“That’s…a Dilanza,” she exclaimed, as loudly as she could to catch Suletta’s attention. “Whose is it?”
“Uh… teal, straight horn. Stay awake, I’m trying to wave it over!”
Petra croaked, a fist tightening around her heart, and felt tears well up in her eyes.
“Felsi…!”
Maybe there was still time for a few last words.
Even though Felsi could not have possibly heard her, by some mysterious coincidence a panicked, loudspeaker-amplified “Petra!” deafened them both in response.
By the time Petra regained a semblance of hearing, Felsi had already climbed out of the cockpit, dashing frantically across the ruins.
“Hey, Pompom Head! Survivors at my position, it’s Petra and Suletta! I — I don’t know, they’re both covered in blood! Just send the medics over! W-what do you mean, ‘where’?! Our suits are still linked through IFF, dumbass, just send them to where I parked mine!”
“See?” Suletta said as she tried to use her free hand to brush Petra’s hair out of the latter’s eyes. “Everything will be fine!”
It was but a mere glance, but the sight of bruised and bleeding skin did not escape Petra’s attention. “Suletta… your hand…”
“Just need to bandage it later. Never mind me. Most of this blood isn’t mine.”
“Petra!” Felsi’s voice sounded much closer this time, followed by a stifled choke, the clattering of a hastily removed helmet, and a rather undignified sound of retching and vomiting. “Oh — oh my god, no—“
Suletta remained unfazed as she motioned Felsi to come closer. “Ms. Felsi, there is no time for that. Come over here.”
Felsi turned to her, wide-eyed, looking at her, then Petra, then the pile of debris around and away from her, giving the Mercurian girl a stare both uncomprehending and desperate. Dazed, she approached Petra’s shattered body and sank to her knees next to Suletta. Finally, she spoke, her voice like ash on the wind. “Save…save her. Please. Please.”
Felsi looked Suletta squarely in the eyes — eyes that understood, but were unyielding, and so very far from what she knew. Felsi’s words died in her throat, and she simply stared.
“Ms. Felsi…believe me, I know how this feels. I need you to try and keep calm, and I need you to help me. Can you do that?”
Felsi only blinked, not even sure how to process who the person in front of her was — and she nodded, mutely.
Suletta released her grip, and looked down at the box in Felsi’s hand. “Good. You’ve brought a first aid kit.”
Felsi nodded again.
“Does it have a tourniquet?”
“Y-yeah,” Felsi replied, her voice frail. “Here. Are you sure you know how to-“
“Let her work, Felsi.” Petra spoke up. “She’s had…a lot of practice.”
Felsi moved over, settling down in front of Petra. “Oh. O-okay.”
All at once the weight of the past few hours crashed down upon Felsi, and as she took Petra’s hands in her own a ragged sob shot through her, tears pooling at the corner of her eyes no matter how fiercely she blinked. “Oh, P-Pet…Petra…Petra! I was s-so - so scared for you, and, and there was a shootout in space too and Kamil said — said that Lauda went there to bring Guel his Darilbalde and…and…!”
What?
“Guel…Lauda…? They were in danger too?” Petra gasped, as if she knew it were her last breath, despite the pain. “Are they…”
All at once her vision darkened as her mind drowned in worry, a deluge of thoughts flooding her head, sweeping aside the feeble barrier that kept her consciousness in the waking world-
“Oh, no — no, no, no-no-no! Ms. Petra, you have focus! Stay with us!” She heard Suletta’s voice, strangely faint and distant.
Too late.
Her sight, her hearing, what little she had left of her sense of touch and smell — everything vanished into oblivion, leaving Petra tumbling into the cold void with but a few panicked, jumbled thoughts for company.
In another moment, they were gone as well.
“…never thought I’d live to see the day a student didn’t botch first aid…”
“…not stable enough to transfer her to HQ...”
“…willing to pay anything to keep her alive…”
“…mincemeat with shards of bone, just lose ‘em…”
“…you try telling her to leave with those big eyes she makes…”