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Later, in his few interviews before he disappears from the public eye at the whims of the Earth Federation government, Amuro Ray will talk about being a Newtype. He'll speak of the potential for human understanding and connection that transcends boundaries of nationality and background, Spacenoid and Earthnoid. He'll try his best to explain just how it feels to experience the mind and heart of another, to feel humanity's essence all around him. He will do his best to deflect all the questions about the potential for Newtypes to serve as the soldiers of the future, his frustration increasingly evident under his tired but practiced smile. Don't they understand how that isn't the point? Aren't they listening?
He will sound more like Zeon Deikun than he realizes, despite never having read Deikun's writings. His interviews will make it to the air as snippets, giving him an air of mystery and silencing him all the same. It's just like how he's forced into the peaceful life he's longed for, at the point of rifles.
But there are things he will never tell anyone. Not the press, not his White Base friends, not even his lovers. (If anything, he tells them the least. There's too much that's ugly and incoherent, so he keeps it inside his chest where no one can judge it.)
Among his secrets is the fact that the stars sing to him.
Not always. Space is a silence so oppressive that mobile suits explode without sound. Thousands upon thousands die without hearing more than the rushing suction of a broken airlock. Humanity swims in little seas of air and atmosphere, carving out little bubbles for themselves so they can spread through the universe. So much of war is spent waiting, hearing only the sounds of clicking controls and humming engines.
But when the battle does ignite, when Amuro rides his experimental mobile suit into combat, that's when he hears the music.
It's so faint, at first he thinks he is hallucinating it out of stress. Maybe he is. He's started hearing it under the sound of his own voice, underpinning the commands from White Base and communications from his fellow pilots. Sometimes it sounds like a whistle or a drum snare. Once or twice, out in space, he's heard the ghost of a trumpeter playing a tuneless melody he cannot memorize or follow. It starts and stops, starts and stops in a maddening staccato.
He can never recall it later. He tries to tap it out with his fingers, hum it in his room, but nothing sounds right. The melody is different every time, and each time it is nonsense. Yet he strives to hear it, because he must. His mind, unfolding itself and turning itself inside out as it changes and evolves, can only seek out more to hear and feel.
It is the loudest when he kills, though it's never truly loud. More audible, perhaps. It swells almost to the surface as the Gundam's beam saber pierces through a Zaku. When he sends an enemy pilot crashing into an asteroid, he can actually hear it in his ears, not just his mind. Only for a second, a flash, like the little bursts of precognition that make Amuro a deadlier soldier and the waves of empathy that make being a soldier even more painful.
None of the rumors circulating about Newtypes mention hearing music in battle. The Federation tests Amuro's reflexes and ask him questions about his battle experiences, but don't bring up any kind of celestial music. Maybe his mind is just doing that.
He could chalk it up to auditory hallucinations, save for two incidents.
First, when he faces off against Dozle Zabi in his Big Zam, the song practically blares into his ears. It dances around them, and fragments, two different, discordant songs playing on top of one another as the Zabi prince dies in a burst of glory and Amuro sees a glimpse of a monstrous aura. One song goes silent before the other.
Then there is Lalah. Lalah, who sees through him as he sees through her and the two are forcibly bonded in a state where they will know the other's hearts forever. Lalah, who asks why he fights when he has no one to fight for, who knows how hollow he is and still loves him in the same, indescribable way he immediately and permanently loves her. Lalah, who knows he hears the melody, and he knows she knows, and simply says, "It's a shame. Your heart is too kind for Its song."
Its. It what? But she never tells him, because everything goes wrong and she dies protecting Char.
(Years later, when the whiskey is hitting, Amuro will consider asking ‘Quattro’ if he's ever heard the song. But he never does.)
There is no time to think on such things in the last days of the One Year War. After, when Amuro is drowning in luxury, sitting at the side of a pool too big for how few visitors he ever has and watching the housekeepers record his conversations, he will realize something he could never notice in the din of battle.
He was not hearing the song in his mind. He was hearing it as it played for others, Zeon soldiers, whenever the White Mobile Suit appeared. The melody did not punctuate his nightmares, but theirs.
And that's one reason he's so afraid to return to battle. Because he wants to hear it again.