Disclaimer: All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

A/N: There aren't that many fics out there that feature Quint (the only ones I can think of are Nanya's "Day in the Life" and my short story "Stop"), but I find it a shame that a minor character who's had a big impact on her kids' lives (and still does so even in death) doesn't get much exposure like other supporting members. This fic is a way of me saying "hey lady, I haven't forgotten you." And Nove, she's my favorite out of the Numbers, so I have to wonder how she feels about the woman who's basically her mother through genetics but never got to know like Subaru and Ginga did.

to the top of the world and back again

"Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."
- Kevin Arnold

"There you are." Nove looks up, and to her surprise it's not Subaru or Ginga or her other sisters but Teana. She didn't expect to see such a pretty face; she didn't expect anyone to come looking for her. "Your fa…I mean, Mister Nakajima was starting to get worried."

Father. That's a word Nove is still trying to grapple with, can't get a solid hold on its steep mountain shoulders. Not enough niches to keep her from sliding to the bottom of the world.

"You okay?" Teana asks, a sympathetic will o' the wisp crossing the bank of petal pink lips. "I'm sorry. I'll just be on my way—"

"Wait." There it is, kid. Hang on, don't let go. Don't look down, either. You don't want to fall off again, do you? "Actually…could you" a drop like that can kill someone "stay with me…just for a little bit?" Reach out. Stretch that arm as far you can. Strain those muscles like there's one drop of hope left in the bucket.

Teana smiles, small and precious like a diamond in the rough, and Nove's heart crumbles earthward and descends from the mountaintop a mighty, unstoppable avalanche. "Sure."

It's time to start climbing.

They sit together on both sides of the stone. Grass bristle the valley of their palms. The shade of the magnolia tree wavers between one reality and the next, a botanical sort of Schrodinger's cat. The air is crispy cool for a midsummer afternoon, but it's the kind of air where you'd want to stick your head beneath the water that skips from rock to rock and welcome the high embracing you like a cloak stemming the lamplight-golden torrents of a rainy night.

It's not far, kiddo. You can do this.

"I brought some meat over for the cookout," Teana says, staring up into the sun making kaleidoscope patterns across the leaves. "Beef, pork, sausage, a small ham. I thought about buying some catfish, but then I saw Subaru and the girls trying to grill that big carp you caught at the river yesterday and figured I had enough food to offer."

"Yeah?" says Nove, tracing circles in the dirt with a finger.

"Yeah. Ginga wanted to pop in and help, but your sisters – well, Subaru really – said she'd only be in the way. Something about that if she did the cooking up front she'd take that fish and eat it raw, bones and all. Isn't that silly?"

"Yeah." Slowly, easy. Put one hand in front of the other. "That's Subaru for you. She says the darnedest things." That's another obstacle you've come upon, eh kid? There's hardly space to put your fingers in. Why did there have to be six slopes? Why do people keep saying you have six sisters? That you have a father to begin with?

"They were very busy when I left," says Teana. She holds a hand out, palm up, and catches a stray petal surfing through untold dimensions. "I bet they still are. Mister Nakajima has so many mouths to feed, including his own."

"You gonna dine with us?"

"I'm off today. I don't mind getting out of the barracks for awhile."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

Above them, a pair of thrushes wing by. Their little ditty echoes in their ears and seconds later they are gone, replaced by the stillness of nature.

"That's a lovely flower," says Teana. She's looking over her shoulder, fingers feather-light on its ruffled pink crown. "I think I've seen it somewhere before."

"It's a sacred lotus," says Nove. "They were on sale at the flower shop for ten credits."

"That's a bit much for a single flower, don't you think?"

"You only see these in the spring. Remember the Day of the Dead festival? Everyone made paper boats and put candles in them and sentthem afloat on the river. There was a whole bunch of them leftover. You get it now?"

"I do."

"Not like I wanted to buy a bouquet or pot, anyway. One flower is good enough."

"It is."

Come on, girl, get moving. You're never gonna reach the top if you keep putting your head in the clouds. Too much mountain air can be bad for a person, even a combat cyborg like you.

"Who sent you?" Nove asks. She picks her head up, stares at the sky. She's never seen it this vast and that blue before. "Was it Subaru?"

Teana nods. "Yeah. Everyone was wondering if you were alright. Subaru thought you ran into that person on the streets. You know, Ingvalt."

"I didn't meet Ingvalt," says Nove. "I didn't meet anyone but the cashier at the flower shop."

"Ah."

"I didn't mean to worry everyone." Breathe in, hold it – not too much – breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. "I just…I wanted to be alone. I wanted to get away from them. That's all."

"Did something happen?"

"No. Everything was fine. It's just…well…you ever get the feeling you're standing in the middle of a crowd but you're the only person who's isolated from everyone else? It's like that. That's how I feel. Felt, actually. You get what I'm saying?"

Teana smiles again, appraises the tiny blossom still nestled in the cradle of her flesh. "I know what you mean. I was the same way when I was little, when my mom and dad died. All I had was my brother, Peter. And when Peter died, that feeling made things worse."

Brother. That word makes her feel like she's staring into the abyss of a bottomless canyon. Like the abyss is staring back at her, faceless, meaningless. It makes her nervous.

"But…you knew them," Nove says. "I mean…you can remember things about them. Like…like what color their eyes were. How their hands felt when they held you in their arms. Those kinds of things. Maybe you still do…in your dreams, I guess. I dunno. Do you?"

No answer. It's so quiet. Hollow.

Where's that ledge?

"Teana?" Groping blindly, wildly. Oh Gods, where is that ledge?

"Sometimes," Teana says. Her fingers play with the magnolia petal, turns it round and around and around and so on. "Sometimes I relive those days. Sometimes I act out my fantasies. One time I dreamt the four of us would go to the park; we'd bring a basket full of juice and sandwiches and eat under the biggest tree we could find, play a game of hide and seek or go on the swings and see which one of us would go the highest before jumping off. Another time I dreamt that Peter was still alive and he helped Nanoha and Fate with Riot Force Six's training regimens. Then" her back sags "there are times where I'll dream about the morgue. Not the morgue for Bureau soldiers or the morgue for civilians. This morgue is the place all my friends and family are laid out, like some macabre display straight out of a cinematic thriller. Every person I've met in my life is there: people I've known since I was a child, people I've known during my tenure at Riot Force Six, people I met during my Enforcer apprenticeship and never saw again, even the people I had to fight in order to preserve planetary peace."

Nove flinches. The ledge that she's just about strained herself to catch crumbles to dusty sediments, and for a split second her grip falters.

"I don't like that dream," Teana continues. "With the exception of each new addition to the people I meet, it's always the same. The morgue is dark save for a single giant spotlight shining down on me, and the air is stale and reeks of blood and sickness and burned flesh. The tables are arranged in a circle and there are white sheets over the bodies. The first three bodies are of my parents and brother, and from there I go down the line. Cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, childhood friends, comrades, teachers, past crushes with a mélange of wounds or maladies or both. Then when I finally get to the end and pull the sheet back, the body on the table is me. I'm dressed in my uniform and have my hair worn down. My hands are folded over one another with Cross Mirage in between them. There are even medals and ribbons pinned to my chest.

"At that point I would wake up to the sight of my armoire. I'd see all the photos in their frames and the people gathered in them…and I'd cry. Not all the time do I have this dream, but more often than not I do. There were moments when I didn't how to react, didn't know what to make of it all. For awhile I was convinced that I was going to die. I didn't know how, because my dream body never bore any scars or felt cold to the touch. I didn't want to die. I don't want to, not while I'm still young and stupid and able to do all the things I have my heart set on. There's still so much ahead of me."

Nove draws her knees to her chest, wraps both arms round her ankles. The top is so distant, so vague. Like faces shifting in a dense, roiling fog. She hesitates, paws blindly at the dew-spotted rock. "You had – have – people to teach you. They're there to see you go through the good and the bad."

"What about your family? What about the Numbers? What about Vivio and Rio and Corona?"

"They're only my family and friends because of Jail," Nove says, more harshly than she intends for it to sound. "We wouldn't be speaking right now if it weren't for him. "

"But you care, don't you? You have friends you can confide in and protect. It's what separates you from a weapon, and last I checked weapons that fight without soul wouldn't take the time out of their day to help their family scale fish or teach little girls how to properly defend themselves with martial arts. Weapons like that aren't human."

"Then why I do feel like I don't deserve any of this?" Nove tears a lump of grass and brings her hand to her face, studies the healthy green blades with such intensity a gemologist would be impressed. "Why should I, when all I've done is cause pain and anger and destruction? Weapons who show no remorse aren't worth the trouble of rehabilitating." A perfunctory tilt and clippings shower the endless earth. "You were there. You know what I did."

"Second chances don't happen often. There are people out there that are worth redeeming."

"And there are people out there that think the redeemed aren't worth redeeming at all."

"If you say you don't deserve redemption, what do you want?"

Nove sighs. She straightens her posture, twists around and casts a sidelong glance at the stone with the pretty pink lotus. "I want to be punished. It's what mothers do when their children misbehave, right? They're the ones who bring them into this world. It's only fair for my" she swallows thickly "my mom to discipline a girl like me."

Climbing a mountain has never been so strenuous, so…gut-wrenchingly cathartic. It hurts. It hurts a lot. Why does it have to hurt?

"Lately, I've been asking myself…what she must think of me. What she might say if we had ever met. I've seen the pictures, took 'em off the mantle when no one was looking and put them on my nightstand. It was only for a short time, but it was enough for me to slide the pictures out from the frame and burn that face into my memory. I…I still find it hard to believe Subaru and Ginga are my sisters, my genetically related sisters. We may sound and look alike, but we're…so different." She sighs, scratches at one cheek. "Maybe it's because I never grew up in a normal family like they did – you know, in a house with a backyard and two-door garage – and lived in a laboratory for the majority of my life. Maybe it's because I'm still young and the answer just hasn't dawned on me yet. I'm not sure.

"I wish she was here. I wish she could tell me what it was like to be a parent to two girls she never gave birth to but raised them as her flesh and blood. Hell, I wish I had a normal childhood and not have to be metaphysically activated in an otherwise adult body that needs to undergo procedures to grow and age so I don't stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe if I'd been created and put on the same boat as Subaru and Ginga, I wouldn't be feeling this lost and confused and whatever describes a person who hasn't been brought into the world via conventional means like everyone else." She rests her head on her knees and looks away. "But…there's nothing I can do about that, is there? Not a thing wishes or magic can do to change the flow of time. Besides…that lady who ran those tests – Mari, I think her name is – she thinks my mom's DNA might have been stolen, perhaps on a suicide mission or an assignment of the sort. Do you think she would have accepted a bastard like me without her permission? Do you think she'd even consider me her child?"

Gods, since when did breathing become difficult? It feels like you're sucking through a straw, and even when you get enough air it's in short puffs that sting your lungs with unbearable mountain chill. There shouldn't be any mist, either, not on a clear day where weather conditions are spot-on and the sun sucks in any outlying precipitation like a black hole absorbing a planet toward the event horizon.

Why bother? Why climb a mountain that exists only in your imagination? There's no point conquering something you can never perfectly envision, not that that something – someone - was ever concerned with a living, breathing, thinking being when it was no longer capable of doing so. It's like dropping a pebble down a bottomless well and waiting to hear the tell-tale rattle that would never come.

Nove presses the heel of both hands to her eyes. She sniffs once, hard, swallows past the lump forming in her throat. She trembles upon releasing a burdensome breath. "I should never have been adopted. I don't deserve to be called Nakajima; not by the Numbers, not by Subaru or Ginga or Genya or anyone. I don't deserve to be a sister or daughter or any—"

"Nove." Her hands are removed from her face, and blinking past a shimmering veneer of tears there is Teana. Her grip is firm but gentle, just like the words that come out of her mouth. "If Genya had thought you weren't worth the extra mouth to feed or another head to put a roof over, do you think he would have welcomed you into his home? Do you think he would have accepted your sisters with that frame of mind?" She releases Nove and directs their gazes up at the tree which continues to sprinkles the area with its foliage. "Trees like these may lose their flowers, but given time they will grow back the way they were, perhaps more lively and beautiful than what they were before. Just like the people that plant them."

"But the things I've done in the past," Nove says wistfully. "The life I lived before…Genya and Subaru and Ginga may have forgiven me, but…I don't know if my mother would be inclined to do the same. I…I don't think I can myself."

"The past is the past," says Teana. "It's just as you said, there's nothing you can do to change that. But if you don't forgive yourself and accept the fact that you do have a family, friends, and a life that's worth more than the one you pursued when you were a weapon, you'll never be able to move on. You'll never find the peace you're searching for."

"Is it supposed to take this long?"

"I don't know; that's something only you can answer. It may take weeks, months, maybe years before you can truly let go." Teana pauses, thinking. "Subaru told me she and Ginga were taken in by your mother, even when she had been informed of the possible theft of her DNA. I heard that story from that girl so many times, but she brought it up again when she learned from Mari and Genya about your examination results. After she had finished, I asked her this question." Teana rolls her shoulders back, looks Nove straight in the eye. "If Quint was still alive and found out there was another combat cyborg with her genetics in a similar investigation, would she have done the exact same thing?"

"What did she say?" the younger girl asks.

"Mater semper certa est."

"What does that mean?"

"The mother is always certain."

That's when the fog starts to dissipate, slowly unravels like a piece of cloth wrung around too many times, and just as she's about to throw away all sense and sensibility to the fathomless bottom and let go, she sees what is in front of her, what she's been ascending toward for an eternity. The top of the mountain, the top of the world, flat as the ground beneath her and white as freshly fallen virgin snow. Solid earth expanding as far as the eye can see.

So she throws herself on Teana, almost plows them over when she buries her face in the crook of Teana's neck and lets it all out. Her cries are muffled and her body shakes, to which Teana adjusts to the weight on her and rubs a soothing hand up and down the other girl's back. "There there, Nove, it's alright. I'm sure Quint would have loved you just as much as Subaru and Ginga."

"But I dunno what it's like!" Nove sobs, holding with all her might to the edge of the mountain. "I…I dunno how a mother's touch's s'pposed to feel, dunno what she sounds like, dunno how warm she feels when she holds me to her body. I…I don't have any of that!"

"Yeah, you're right," Teana says not unkindly, "but you're not the only person out there who's without a mother or a father. Some don't even have parents to care for them. But you know, it's not like Quint's really gone. Look at this way: she may be dead, but you and Subaru and Ginga carry her in your blood, hence why you three resemble her. Think of it as sort of preserving her legacy in a way she would have wanted you to follow. Like having her by your side when you're on missions or with your friends." She pauses, breathes deeply, and draws Nove in closer "It's what I do when I feel lonely, so…don't feel bad. I'm here for you."

They stay like this for awhile; how long exactly they can't tell nor really care. There are many more mountains to climb, many more vantage points to view and roads to travel before there is a chance to rest. This is not a means to an end but the start of a journey that will span across the galaxy and within the deepest reaches of the soul.

One step at a time, Nove will think to herself later that evening. No need to rush. For now there is clean air, blue skies, and the world stretched far and away around her.

She breathes, and she feels a little bit more alive inside.

This story is dedicated in the memory of Brian Jacques, a fantasy author whose books have inspired me to write and pursue my dreams as a published author. I was in the process of writing this on February 11 when I found out he died on the fifth, so the news was like a wrecking ball to my gut. He was 86 years old.

So Mr. Jacques, thank you for all the wonderful adventures you have provided to fans around the world. Rest in peace; you will sorely be missed.