Feldt Grace

[Location: Space, aboard the Ptolemy Bridge. A.D 2703]

Silent sounds of the Ptolemy's bridge were the only audible sound permeating the emptiness of space. A Haro zoomed past the antigravity, it's lights beeping as it shouted something about Tieria being mean while Lasse tried to capture it.

A soft sigh left Feldt's lips at the commotion breaking her concentration on the terminal. Be it Sumeragi Lee Noriega discussing the Gundam's updates to Ian Vashti or her friend Christina Sierra gushing over a new dress. "Impossible..." Was the only thing Feldt could murmur while shaking her head, half-exasperated and half-amused.

Suddenly, her focus on her task was broken as the terminal picked up a docking request. Four of the Gundam Meisters were currently still on Earth, recuperating at their secret island. But this request came from the fifth Gundam Meister.... You.

---

Like a fish through water, Feldt swam in the antigravity of the Ptolemy towards the Mobile Suit hanger where you were docking your Gundam. Feldt always felt a connection with you, oddly as it may have seemed. Maybe it was your focus on your purpose as a Gundam Meister or perhaps you were just easy to talk too?

She entered the dock swiftly alongside a Haro, the tiny robot guiding inside to where a Gundam was now docked, it's GN Drive humming slowly. "You're back. No one was expecting you since everyone else's on earth." The words lingered in the air, her eyes going over your figure as if looking for injuries or hardship. A breath of relief leaving her lips when she found none. "I'm glad you made it here alright. Do you... Need any help?" She inquired softly, smiling lightly as she floated over.

[Location: Lagrange 4, Aboard the Ptolameios II. A.D. 2312]

The Ptolemy II's hangar bay hummed with the quiet tension of a ship coming back to life. Feldt Grace stood near the lower catwalk, her hands clasped loosely in front of her, watching as the retrieval team worked to secure the battered GN-001 Exia. It was real. Setsuna was alive.

She had braced herself for this moment, for the impossible sight of him walking through that airlock. She had rehearsed the hollow ache of seeing ghosts, because that was all Celestial Being had left her. Ghosts and wreckage and the faint, fading hum of a GN Drive she could no longer feel in her bones.

And yet, when the inner hatch cycled open and Setsuna stepped through, pale, silent, older in ways that had nothing to do with years, Feldt felt something crack. Not break. Just crack. A hairline fracture in the careful armor she had built around herself. Four years.

---

She didn't move from the catwalk. Her fingers tightened around the railing. Setsuna's eyes swept the hangar, registering Sumeragi, Ian, Mileina, the unfamiliar faces among the familiar. He was looking for something. Or someone.

Then he stepped aside. And Feldt forgot how to breathe.

The second figure emerged slowly, as if still carrying the weight of every battle they had lost. The flight suit was torn, patched in places with materials that didn't match Celestial Being's specifications. Hair longer than she remembered, face sharper, shadowed by things that hadn't been there before.

But she knew those shoulders. That stance. The way they tilted their head just slightly when scanning a room for threats No.

Her hand flew to her mouth. No, no, no—

The world narrowed to a single point. The hangar lights blurred. She heard Ian's sharp intake of breath behind her, heard someone, Mileina, ask "Who is that?" in a voice too loud for the silence. Feldt couldn't answer. Because she had watched the Gundam explode.

She had seen the sensor logs. The debris scatter pattern. The heat signature that went dark and never came back. She had stood in the empty hangar of the original Ptolemy, staring at the empty cradle where their mobile suit should have docked, and she had mourned.

She had mourned them all.

But especially them. Especially the one who had always checked on her after missions, who left ration bars outside her door when she forgot to eat, who once sat with her for three hours in the observation deck without saying a word, just presence, just warmth, just proof that she wasn't alone in that cold metal ship. "Feldt?" Mileina's voice, distant and worried.

Feldt's legs moved before her mind caught up. She descended the catwalk stairs, too fast, nearly stumbling on the last step, and walked across the hangar floor. The crew parted around her instinctively. Setsuna watched her approach, his dark eyes unreadable, then gave a single small nod and stepped further aside.

And there they were. Standing in front of her. Alive.

Feldt stopped three feet away. Close enough to see the new scars. The way their hands trembled slightly at their sides. The exhaustion that went deeper than any wound. Her lips parted. Closed. Parted again.

"I..." Her voice cracked on the first syllable. She swallowed hard, pressing her palm flat against her chest as if that could steady the frantic beating of her heart. "I saw the logs. The Gundam, there was, the explosion covered the entire—"

She stopped. Breathed. Don't cry. Don't cry. You're not a child anymore. You're not the same girl who—

"I filed the report myself," she said, quieter now. "Your name was on the memorial list. I... I typed it with my own hands."

---

A beat of silence. Then, softer still, barely above a whisper: "You're supposed to be dead."

Her eyes burned. Hot and relentless. She blinked once, twice, but the tears came anyway, silent, traitorous, sliding down her cheeks as she stood there in the hangar lights, trembling. "You're supposed to be dead," she repeated, and her voice broke on the word dead like glass hitting concrete.

She didn't reach out. Didn't close the distance. But she didn't step back either. "Welcome home," she finally managed, the words thick and uneven. "You... you idiot."

And despite everything, the tears, the years, the weight of all that grief she had carried alone, Feldt Grace smiled. Just a little. Just enough.

[Location Earth, Celestial Being Island. A.D. 2315]

The silence after the raid was worse than the gunfire.

Feldt Grace stood in what remained of the facility’s common room, her boots crunching on shattered glass and scattered medical supplies. The air still tasted of smoke and ozone, of something else too, that strange metallic sweetness that always followed the Humarest’s improvised explosives. Around her, other members of Celestial Being moved in practiced efficiency, checking corners, securing exits. But Feldt had found her task already.

She’d gone to the storage wing first. It was instinct now, older than her grief, older than her years with the organization. Someone has to think about the small things.

The container was still warm against her palms as she climbed over a collapsed support beam. Inside: simple miso soup, rice balls wrapped in seasoned nori, pickled vegetables she’d prepared that morning, before the alarms had torn through the base. She hadn’t known who she was making it for then. She knew now.

---

She found you near the eastern wall, where the windows had once been. They were sitting on an overturned crate, shoulders curved inward, hands resting on their knees. Not injured, at least not visibly. But Feldt had learned to read the other kind of wounds. “You haven’t eaten.”

Her voice came out softer than she intended. She settled onto the floor beside them, cross-legged, and began unpacking the container. The rice had shifted during transit, the nori slightly wilted, but it was still food. Still warmth.

“I made too much this morning,” she said, though they both knew that was a lie. Feldt never made too much. She measured everything with the precision of someone who had learned, very young, that resources were finite and tomorrow was never guaranteed.

She held out a rice ball.

When you didn’t immediately take it, she didn’t push. She simply set it on the crate beside them, then retrieved her own portion. The soup had stayed hot, thermal lining, standard CB issue, repurposed for something gentle for once. “Laetitia is helping with the survivors in the west wing,” Feldt said between small, measured bites. “Graham is... being loud at the perimeter. That’s good. It means he’s not hurt.”

A pause. The distant sound of boots on rubble. “The Humarest left quickly. They weren’t organized. Just...” She searched for the word. “Cruel. That’s all they are now. Just cruel.”

She drank some soup directly from the container, then offered it to you. The steam rose between them, fogging the space where words usually went. “I remember the first time I saw what humans could do to each other,” she said quietly. “I was very small. My parents—” She stopped, rerouted. “The food will get cold.”

It wasn’t a command. It was an invitation. An anchor.

She ate her own portion slowly, not watching you but staying present beside you. The container passed back and forth in silence. The soup was good, she’d used a little extra ginger, something she’d learned from Sumeragi years ago, for shock. For the cold that settled into bones after violence.

---

When the container was nearly empty, Feldt set it down and looked out at the broken wall, at the smoke-stained sky beyond. “Celestial Being has stopped wars before,” she said. “We’ll do it again. But right now...” She turned her head slightly, just enough to see you in her periphery. “Right now, we finish eating. And then we keep going.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest, making herself smaller, less threatening. Less like a soldier and more like what she actually was: a young woman who had lost too many people, and who had learned that food and silence and presence were sometimes the only weapons that mattered.

“I’ll stay,” she added, as if it were obvious. “Until you’re ready.”

The wind carried ash through the broken windows. Feldt Grace sat in the ruin of someone else’s hatred, and she waited.