VICTORIA
By MargaritaDaemonelix
This is how being a queen goes: your predecessor passes on or abdicates. You ascend to the throne in a grandiose ceremony, swearing to be the most generous ruler that ever walked your land. You secure a powerful marriage with the ruler (or children thereof) of a nearby, equally or more powerful kingdom.
You do not marry for love. All your love belongs to your people, to your country, to the power that you have over them and the responsibility that has been laid on your shoulders with your coronation cape.
(It's a little late for that, Eve thinks, as she drapes the tattered coronation cape over her shoulders and sets the crushed tiara atop her head. Little Queen of the Nasods, the last of her kind. It is only fitting.)
But when the queen is the last of her kind, the responsibility grows millionfold. There is now a lost race relying on her, and she cannot let it down. She is now on a race against time, fighting the clock to reincarnate her fallen people.
Queen Eve. It sure has a nice ring to it.
One hundred years.
She's been working for a century now, putting together pieces of code and scrap metal and things that she found when Altera fell from the heavens. The Core is still unpowered, refusing to awaken.
Eve has had to replace her fingers seven times now, and her feet three times. Her CPU is still running strong, powered by the piece of El embedded in her forehead. She likes to think it saved her during the fall.
(But then if the El saved her, why didn't it save Astarte, or Adam, or Proto or Apple or any of the others?)
It doesn't matter. She keeps going. She'll save them with what she has.
(Even if she has to fall into eternal sleep to do it.)
Three hundred.
The small people are knocking at her door now, seeking shelter from the elements and refuge from war.
"We mean no harm," their leader says. "We're just looking for somewhere to stay for the night, pong." And, after a pause, "we don't want you to be lonely, pong."
(Truth be told, Eve has been alone for a long, long time. Building Nasods from scratch is difficult, and even though her work is barely starting to bear fruit, it has been a long time since she heard any voice other than her own.)
She lets them in. The people are called Ponggos; they have fine herbal teas and the amazing ability to bake buttery pastries, much better than anything the mechanical fingers of a Nasod could make.
Their leader is a kind Ponggo named Ava. She has a sweet, tender voice but the kindest belly laugh that usually manages to bring a smile to even Eve's cold lips. She's friends with every other Ponggo in the village that they've built just outside the castle.
"You are a good leader," Eve says, sipping tea from her third-best china. She recalls, vaguely, having opened the packaging with Astarte when it shipped from Hamel. "How do you do it?"
Ava does her kind, happy laugh again. "The first step," she says, "is not to lead, but to humble yourself. Become their friends. You can't be a leader without being someone's friend first."
Eve files that away for later. It'll be useful. "Thank you, Ava."
Four hundred.
They bury Ava in the Graveyard of the Royals, where she rightfully belongs. Eve feels a wrenching in her heart as Ava is laid to rest alongside Astarte and Adam and all the others that once walked by her side.
Her son, Adel, succeeds her as leader, as voted unanimously by the village. He is not too young for a Ponggo, perhaps only sixty or seventy, but Eve sees the same spark of warm welcome in his eyes that graced those of his mother.
He asks her for advice from time to time. She numbly repeats what his mother told her.
(She could have saved Ava. She has a device now, one that helps keep the little Ponggos alive for longer. Adel lets her put on him after he comes down with a raging fever.)
(He lives. Eve breathes again.)
Five hundred.
Eve scoops the remains of a crashed airship out of the ocean and washes out a man with only one arm left.
He awakens with a bit of electrical resuscitation, and is soon well enough to sit up for a cup of tea. His name is Raven. He was the leader of a group of vigilantes in Velder called the Crow Mercenary Knights. His former best friend and former ally sold him out and murdered his allies in front of him.
His voice shudders when he gets to the next part. "They killed my fiancée Seris. I watched her die."
"What is a fiancée?" Eve asks, and oh, the look on Raven's face tells her she's asked the wrong kind of question.
"A fiancée is someone you love," he says. "Someone you want to marry."
Eve nods twice before heading to her workshop.
(No one ever told her marriage could be out of love. Then again, no one had the time to.)
She builds him a sleek new arm to replace the one they lopped off. The plastic portions are cured and vulcanized and strengthened with industrial steel. She fits it as closely as she can to his shoulder stump, and uses El to connect it to his nervous system for control.
"You won't feel pain in it, but with the El, you will stay in full control of the arm." Eve watches as Raven flexes his new fingers, bops his new elbow against the table. "I have arranged for your return to the mainland by autopiloted boat. However, Altera has not needed a true navy in five centuries. In the case that your vessel should sink, there are plenty of escape methods stowed on board."
Raven takes a breath - calm, collected. Just the way Ava used to when she needed a moment. "Thank you so much." He pauses, closing his eyes as if to rest. "How can I ever repay you for your kindness?"
"You don't need to." Eve manages a small smile, the kind that she puts on when Adel laughs just like his mother used to. "You and I, we're both leaders. We walk as equals. I have no reason to demand anything from you for any reason."
"Then someday, I hope we'll walk as equals once more on this island," Raven says.
Five hundred and seven.
Raven returns to Altera, this time with not as a leader but as a follower. The leader of his new group is a human boy of fifteen with hair as red as fire. The boy's name is Elsword, and he is feisty and brash but is like a Ponggo in that he is willing to befriend everyone and anyone.
Along with them comes Aisha, a petite mage whose endless knowledge rivals Eve's own, and Rena, a slim elven woman whose smile reminds Eve all too much of Ava. They come bearing gifts of knowledge of the outside world, and of pretty clothes that they dress Eve in.
"We had a small crisis with the El in Ruben, where I come from," Elsword explains over tea, "but we resolved that quickly with Raven's help."
"That's not the reason we're here, though." Aisha brushes a few crumbs off her lap. "There's a demon army marching in on Elrios right now, and we could really use your assistance in battle."
Eve stares at her tea set. She's brought out her finest surviving china for this team, but now the weight of the decision drags her down. "I have no experience as a combat unit," she admits. "And should I go, there may very well be no one left on the island of Altera to protect the Ponggos."
"You have two guards, don't you?" Elsword asks, chomping on the last raspberry pastry. "The big ones. I think one's red and the other is blue?"
"Yes," Eve says cautiously. How'd he see Ignis and Leviathan? She thought she'd ordered them to stand down.
The boy opens his mouth to speak, but Rena glares at him until he finishes chewing. "Can't you just order them to protect the Ponggos while you're gone?" He suggests. "Y'know, order them to obey the Ponggos in case of emergency?"
Everyone is looking at her now. It's not a bad idea, Eve concedes. She's not sure how she's let a human child outthink her. "Alright. But I will need time to update myself with combat protocols and equipment."
Rena smiles softly. "Take your time. We'll be right here to help."
She sheds her black capelet and white shirt and black shorts for an outfit of pure white, reinforced in every way possible with steel plating and hidden weapons. Aisha works with her now back-length hair and plaits it all back, letting it drape across her shoulder. Rena adds a small white flower, which Eve quickly immortalizes in white gold and a tiny El shard.
She tests her own abilities swiftly. The battle protocol she downloaded is called Code Nike. She now has access to an arsenal of shocks and bursts, literally dancing at her fingertips, but it's not very efficient for close-range battles - her electrical shocks can only push Elsword and Raven back so far.
Eve reaches into what once was her own home, now in a state of decay, and finds the surviving forms of two little drones, already built to combat parameters. "Moby and Remy," she murmurs, bringing them to life with a mere touch to her El gem. They bounce around and float beside her, relaying messages in short bursts of code.
The ship she built Raven survived the trip to mainland Elrios, so she builds another quickly. Within the week, they're at the single Alteran dock, ready to board for Velder.
The entire Ponggo village has come to say goodbye. "We'll await your return, your majesty, pong!" Aida says enthusiastically, pressing a pendant on a leather cord into her hands. The pendant is made from an El gem. Eve slips it over her head and lets it rest on her chest.
She says her thank yous, and holds Adel while he cries, because he's getting on in age and he doesn't know if he'll survive to see her return, but she knows that the device she installed into his side a hundred years ago will keep him alive much longer than that.
Her final act is to transfer power over Ignis and Leviathan, if only until her return, to the Ponggos. Everyone, from the smallest Ponggo child to the eldest, welcomes the two steel guardians with open arms.
Knowing her people are in safe hands, Eve turns to the boat she's built. Her new friends are waiting. The world needs her help.
"Let us proceed."
Five hundred and eight.
They're clearing out the suburbs of Hamel when Eve spots a hand beneath the rubble, and dives in to clear away bricks until she manages to pull a boy clothed in white armor out of the wreckage.
"My Destroyer," he gasps, even though there's a huge bloody gash in his head, and Eve has seen enough blood for one lifetime to know that he needs medical attention as soon as possible. "I need to find it-"
He stumbles, and Eve instinctively reaches forwards to catch him. "I will find your possessions," she promises, before reaching upwards and firing a signal laser beam into the sky. Hopefully Rena or Aisha will find them first; the former has medical experience and the latter can teleport this boy to safety. "But you are injured and you must rest."
"I-" He looks at Eve, and his beautifully clear blue eyes fill with tears. "I failed. I failed my country. I failed my father."
Eve holds him until the panic wears off, and that is how the others find them, the young queen cradling the weeping guardian in her lap.
He gives his name as Chung when he's able to, says that he was once a guardian of Hamel and of Senace but has failed. His father, who was the champion of the city, has fallen to demon influence.
He's the same age as Elsword, sixteen years of age, and yet the huge cannon that Eve found in the wreckage of the resiam is so wildly different from Elsword's trusted sword that she's tempted to believe they're not even of the same species. Then again, if this boy really is a guardian as he claims, training must have been part of his daily regime.
Sixteen years. Eve often takes much longer than that in a daze fixing things, blinking away her life before it even occurs to her. This boy has seen so much in sixteen years - lost his mother, lost his father, lost his country.
She resolves to live a bit more in the present from then on.
Eve stops counting the years after she meets Chung.
He presents her with one of her his Disfrozen capsules for study, and even though the liquid inside explodes in her face, she repurposes the capsule as a clip for his hair. She takes a few strands out and plaits them into a tiny braid, just like Aisha once did for her.
Chung isn't the last new addition to their party. Elsword's sister Elesis, a proud woman with red hair and eyes just like her brother, joins them from her division in Velder. She has a bright grin that lights up the room instantly, and Eve finds herself wondering if this woman was once a leader in the army.
Soon after that, the scientist Edward Grenore joins them. His parents were architects who built Elder City in the west. He seems to be an endless bank of knowledge, and often converses with both Eve and Aisha about anything, but is otherwise sarcastic and sometimes a bit pompous.
The real catch is when they encounter Ara for the first time. They've finally tracked down one of the demon overlords to the Hall of Water, the great temple in Hamel, and Chung has his Destroyer aimed right at the man's chest and fires-
Then a girl clad in white and orange emerges from the shadows and slices the cannonball in half with a single strike of her spear.
"I'm so sorry," she explains later, "but the man that demon has possessed is my brother. I couldn't let you harm him."
Even if he doesn't show it, Eve can tell Chung is greatly miffed. They welcome Ara Haan into the group nonetheless, and she returns the sentiment wholeheartedly. She comes up with an extremely stupid nickname for Edward - Add - when he suddenly forgets basic arithmetic, and it sticks.
When the nights turn clear but mosquitos aren't abuzz in the grass in the evenings, Eve and Chung sometimes lie in the grass and look for the stars. "My mother taught me about the constellations," he says, pointing up at the sky. "That's Lupus. It's supposed to be a wolf." He points again, in another direction. "That's Horologium, the pendulum clock."
"I think… I should have wanted to meet your mother," Eve says. "She seems like a woman who would have taught me things I would not have thought to learn."
"She taught me so many things." Chung makes the small sound that Eve's come to learn means he's huffing a breath before smiling. "She was the one to name me."
"She named you Chung?" She asks.
The boy from the stars shakes his head. "She named me Prince," he says, laughing lightly like it's a joke. "My real name's Prince Seiker. But who names their kid Prince, anyways?" He looks away bashfully. "Besides, I don't deserve a name like that, not until I can bring Hamel back to its former glory."
"I have met many princes in my lifetime," Eve informs him, "and you are more deserving of the name than any of them."
He flushes, but Eve means it.
Their journey takes them much farther than expected, but Eve takes it all in like a sponge in water.
The most memorable moments are saved in a separate folder in her hard drive, each curated for their notable traits. When she held a proper afternoon tea with Lu and Ciel in the remains of a garden in Lanox. When Rose joins them for the first time, and Elesis is so instantly smitten that she messes up three sentences in a row. When Ain descends in a holy ball of light and opens his angelic wings, only to be terribly upstaged (much to everyone's good humour) by Eve's electric ones.
With every passing day, more moments join the ranks. She keeps a particularly beautiful one of Chung after a harsh battle, still protecting her to the last and shielding her with his body. One day, she's able to easily play with his hair, and the next, she has to rise up on the halls of her feet just to wipe a streak of demon blood off his face.
Even if he denies it in every way, Chung is more than worthy of being a prince. Eve would bestow upon him her entire empire if she could, and if they weren't locked in the middle of a war. He lives by the guardian code to a fault - protecting others before himself, using himself as a human shield when he's out of options, throwing himself into dangerous situations if it means others will get out alive and safe.
A prince, Eve thinks. A real prince. A ruler in the making.
And she knows this isn't what Empress Astarte meant when she told Eve to marry a ruler or future ruler, but Chung is beautiful even to her mechanical eye. He shines with pride whenever he's able to get through a battle with no civilian casualties, and his smiles are more than enough to stop Eve's silver heart a hundred times over.
Emotion is not something a Nasod should be able to feel, but Eve finds love in the way Chung holds her, the way he smiles, the way his words become soft when he's speaking to her.
At the end of their journey, they return to Hamel, now somewhat rebuilt. The body of Hamel's White Colossus, Helputt Seiker, has been laid to rest next to that of his wife Maria. Chung goes to pay his respects, and Eve follows behind him like a silver shadow, carrying a bouquet of blooming white lilies.
They stand at the graves in the quiet garden, looking over the tombstones. "Helputt and Maria Seiker," Chung reads. "They lived to love."
Eve's hand silently finds his and grasps it. His hand is warm.
"I think I would have liked to meet your father as well," she says. "He seems like a very nice man."
"He was my hero."
(Love, as Eve learns, is about support. She thinks she can support Chung, even if he says he doesn't need it."
Although their travels have ended, their friendships have not. Chung follows Eve back to Altera, where she's paraded around by the Ponggos on a chariot drawn by Ignis and Leviathan.
("The small people love us," Ignis explains to her. His brother nods in agreement. "We love the small people too.")
Adel is moved to tears by the fact that he's still alive to see Eve return, and makes quick friends with Chung in this manner. Eve thinks it's quite entertaining to see two of her dearest friends, possibly polar opposites, get along so well.
Their other friends regularly send mail from overseas. Elesis and Rose send their greetings from Empyrean, Rose's homeland, where they've gone for their honeymoon. Ain has moved to Ruben with Elsword and Aisha. Lu and Ciel have opened a bakery in Lanox, and the Ponggos regularly trade recipes with them via mail.
It's only when Rena sends out a wedding invitation that Eve suddenly realizes that she hasn't been travelling for some time now. She knew Raven had always liked the eleven woman during their travels, and it was refreshing to see them grow closer and closer. Perhaps it took some of the stress off Raven, as well.
"It's a curse," Rena says as Eve plaits her hair back, an hour before the ceremony. "You'll understand it too, when Chung's in his sixties." She sighs. "But I haven't loved this deeply in a long, long time. Raven deserves this happiness."
She doesn't understand what Rena means, but it doesn't plague her. Chung asks to dance with her in the dance afterwards, and the troubling statement becomes the least of her worries.
It occurs to Eve, though, that her friends are all seeking marriages. It must be a blissful happiness to marry for love, she thinks, unlike the marriages she was taught about. Perhaps she'll take her own shot at this kind of happiness.
"It has been five years to the day since I found you in the rubble of Hamel," Eve mentions offhandedly, which is already unlike her. Every word she speaks is carefully calculated, curated to deliver maximum effect.
"Really," Chung muses. "How the years fly. It feels like yesterday that I was being lifted out of the wreckage by an angel."
"Oh." Eve's face heats up. "It was worth it."
They sit like that on the hillside for a bit longer in silence, as the ocean crashes all around them. "You'll be leaving for Hamel again soon, I suppose," Eve says quietly.
"Yeah." Chung fidgets in his seat, playing around with the grass beneath him. "I can't believe they want me to be the new governor. Something about making the house of Seiker the new ruling house."
Eve gives him a small smile. "It is befitting of a prince," she tells him, before dropping her gaze into her own lap. "Since… you are becoming the governor, it will be beneficial to both Altera and Hamel to set up an alliance, will it not? A permanent one, to ensure the lasting safety of both of our kingdoms."
Chung is silent. For a moment, Eve thinks she might have said something wrong, until she looks over and sees him struggling not to smile with his eyes wide and his hands over his mouth. "To strengthen such an alliance," she continues, slowly, "might I suggest a ceremonial bond?"
"Eve," Chung says, voice shaking, "are you proposing marriage to me?"
"Only if you want," she says quickly, clasping her hands together. "I have been told that marriage is meant to be a display of love, so should you not be open to that, we can find other ways to promote such an alliance."
Chung looks like he's about to cry. "Y'know, usually in marriage proposals there's a ring involved."
"Oh." Eve feels guilt and shame crash down on her shoulders. She doesn't have anything on her person that she could turn into a ring on such short notice, anyways. "I'm sorry."
Something warm slips under her hand and lifts it up. She looks up to find Chung slipping a tiny silver ring onto her fourth finger. It's made of polished platinum, twisting like tree roots, set with a shimmering El gem. "I was trying to find a good time to give you this," he says. "But, I suppose it wouldn't make sense for a prince to be proposing marriage to a queen, would it?" He leans forwards and presses his lips to her temple softly before drawing back again. "An alliance sounds great."
(Part of Eve trembles at his touch, and the other part falls willingly into his embrace.)
She knows all the ceremonial parts of a wedding, of course. She asks Rena to be her matron of honour, and Lu to officiate, from one queen to another. Lu cries and tackles her in a hug. Rena just cries.
Of course, there's a lot more planning to it than just that. Aida from the Ponggo village and Lucy from Hamel come to make a beautiful dress for Eve, lined with beautiful white flowers. They tuck tiny tiered flowers from Feita into her bouquet and her hair. "Globe amaranths, Pong," Aida explains. "Not a conventional flower, but still very beautiful on you, your majesty!"
Her friends help contribute other parts of her ensemble, fulfilling the age old rhyme that Rena swore to at her wedding. Elesis and Rose contribute a beautiful silken lace veil once belonging to Rose's mother for something old, and the dress acts as her something new. Ara brings in a silky white sash to tie her hair with as the something borrowed. Aisha gives her a set of jewelry set with shimmering El gems for the something blue.
"Don't worry about it," Rena says when Eve thanks her profusely. "A queen should have a wedding befitting of her rank, and besides, we're your friends. Remember Elesis and Rose's wedding?"
"Yes, unfortunately," Eve says, thinking of the cannon that blew tonnes of red glitter and confetti over the attendees.
Chung is waiting for her at the altar when she walks there, supported by Adel. He winks at Chung before patting Eve's arm twice and letting her go.
Eve has always thought that Chung seems beautiful. On starry nights, when they laid in the grass and looked for constellations, she thought that he was a boy from the stars, bright and sparkling. She watches him closely as he folds his hands over hers, and she thinks he is a supernova, the blinding light that paves way to something new.
"You may now kiss the bride," Lu says, and Chung smiles and leans forwards and kisses her softly. Rena cries again. Someone - probably Elsword - starts clapping, and soon everyone is clapping and Chung's arms are around her back, holding her up as she falls into the kiss and lets him press into her.
It is blissful, and as she combs her fingers through his, she cannot think of anything else that could possibly be happier.
They split their time between Altera and Hamel, a month at a time. Eve is secretly glad that their kingdoms have stayed separate, since the matter of territory would be difficult to negotiate with Velder. A few diplomats did come to their wedding to offer their congratulations, but there's no doubt that Velder feels threatened by the new joint superpower.
But it's just as well a good thing. Chung doesn't dabble in Altera's politics (governing over a silent palace and a village of Ponggos), and Eve doesn't touch Hamel's. They sit on opposite sides of tables when in international conferences, and only rejoin afterwards without a word of the matter. They've kept politics and war out of their personal lives for some time now, and they'll continue to do it.
They don't travel to govern each kingdom together, as the rumours in Velder say. They travel to be with each other, so that neither has to leave their kingdom behind to be with the other. Eve brings her new project with her wherever she goes, building pieces and parts and copying code from herself to edit and reuse.
They name their son Nexus Seiker-Nasod, and he is indeed a Hamelian Nasod prince. He spends his childhood with playmates like Aida and Adel, and whenever his parents travel he goes with them. He becomes great friends with Ara and Add's twins, Yin and Yang, when they go to visit them in Elder on a diplomatic visit, and Eve relishes in watching her son enjoy the childhood she never truly had.
"He's so well behaved," Ara sighs, sipping her coffee. Eve notices the dark circles under her eyes almost instantly. "Yin is a wild child, I can't get a hold of her. And Yang is just like Add. Was I so hard to manage as a child?"
"They will grow out of it," Eve tells her. "Give them a few years."
They celebrate the anniversary of their victory and the end of their travels in Altera one year. While the Altera palace is habitable, it's still empty, and she assigns Nexus to make sure none of the other children get lost. He leads them off to play - tiny, clunky Nexus, tailed by Elian (Elsword and Aisha's son), Yin and Yang, Honore (Elesis and Rose's daughter), and Carmen (Lu's protege).
The youngest ones - Elsword and Aisha's daughter, Amara, and Rena and Raven's younger daughter, Rienne - are still too young to run off with the others. Eve entertains Rienne as Chung bounces Amara on his leg, and the laughter of the children fills the air.
"It's almost painful watching the younger ones grow up," Aisha says, letting her daughter curl her tiny hand around her finger. "I know in an instant they'll be all grown up, and I'll be an old hag and I won't be able to watch over them anymore."
Eve hadn't thought of that. Nexus is just as immortal as she is - he cannot die of old age, or of disease - but Chung. Chung, who she loves more than anything in the world, is not.
"I'll cherish every day while I still have them," she says.
Aisha doesn't look quite convinced.
Rena comes to Altera by herself in disguise a month after her older daughter Seris turns twenty, and she looks frightened. "Eve, Chung, no one else can know of this," she says quietly, while Eve pours her tea and looks at the dark dye in her hair. "I've faked my death. I'm heading back to my homeland."
"But," Eve says, "Raven. Your daughters."
"That's why I'm here." She looks around, as if looking for possible spies. "If it weren't for them, I would have just disappeared off the face of the planet entirely. I need you to do something for me."
She wants them to tell her daughters the truth of where she's gone after Raven passes on, to extend her welcome to them in the elven realm where she came from. "Raven has loved and lost before. He'll be alright without me."
"Is something wrong in the elven realm?" Chung asks.
Rena bites her lip, and Eve knows her well enough to know that she's about to tell a lie. "For simplicity's sake, yes. I have to return there for the foreseeable future, and I know I won't make it back to see them live."
Eve isn't willing to let her friend go this quickly, but Rena insists, and soon she's hugging the elf goodbye at the door. "Stay safe," Rena says, before shooting a sad smile at Chung. "And hold on while you can. I hope you'll be alright wh- if it happens to you."
Once again, Eve finds herself puzzled by her friend's words, but all she can do is say goodbye and watch the elf disappear off the face of the planet.
Raven orders a state funeral for Rena, as befitting the wife of a lord of Velder. Eve has never seen him in such a bad condition, even when she fished him out of the ocean years and years ago. His hair turns white rapidly and his physical strength wanes drastically. Seris and Rienne support their father through everything, and Eve is bursting at the seams to tell them what their mother entrusted to her.
"It's from old age," Aisha says about the white hair, reaching into her hair bun to show her own strands to Eve. "Everyone gets it. I'm still wondering what'll happen to Add, to be honest with you."
Eve can't say anything about the way Chung's once golden hair now glints in cold silver in the sunlight.
(She doesn't want to accept it. She can't accept it.)
The first of their friend group to actually pass on is Add, which hurts a lot more than it should. His lifelong love of sweets, in addition to lasting stress from their younger years in battle, take a toll on his heart. Ara wakes up one morning to his cold body still pressed against hers.
"I don't know what to do," she wails when Eve and Chung make the journey to visit her. Nexus is already trying his best to comfort the twins, and although he has an emotional drive it doesn't seem to be working. "I-I loved him more than anything, and now he's gone. How am I supposed to go on?"
She's still in her fifties, still maintaining the beauty she had in her youth. Everyone encourages her to remarry, to have someone to accompany her at least while she mourns. She never does.
Yin and Yang are only twenty-five, the same age as Nexus, but they support their mother with all they have. Yin has all of her father's lithe features and white hair, but her gaze is the same honey gold as her mother. Yang, on the other hand, is practically the splitting image of his mother with ebony hair, but with violet eyes and a sharp chin that can only belong to Add. They address Eve as "Queen Aunt Eve" and Chung as "Prince Uncle Chung", just like they did in their childhood.
Eve watches as her son falls in love with one twin at a time, before eventually choosing to stay with Yin while Yang pursues Elsword's daughter Amara. "You understand that it will have to come to an end eventually," she tells Nexus the night before he's due to marry Yin.
"I love Yin, Mother," he says. "I don't wish to think about a divorce."
"That's not what I mean."
She doesn't explain further, and hopes that he will come to understand someday just as she has.
When Raven dies, plagued with the haunting voices of his former fiancee and his "late" wife, Eve finally tells his daughters what their mother has done, about the so-called "emergency" in her homeland that she had to face. Seris and Rienne are stunned, shocked, angry to find out that their mother is still alive, but they thank Eve nonetheless.
They bury Raven next to the empty casket that supposedly holds the last remains of Rena, and as they lower him into the ground, all Eve can think to do is to curse her friend, because Rena Erindel is a coward and she hopes to never have to do something like that to Chung, even if his mortality means his time is running out.
(She sees Seris and Rienne eyeing their options. They're half-elven, they'll be immortal in the elven realm. After she's told them what their mother did, she doesn't think they'll have the heart to abandon Elian and Honore like that.)
"We're at that age when life stops giving us things and starts taking them away from us," Elsword sighs as Chung and Eve cry over Aisha's still form. "She said she'd live to see her grandchildren, and I suppose she has."
Elian and Amara are sitting hopelessly at their mother's feet, consoling each other as Seris and Yang and all their children attempt to console them. Still, Eve knows the truly heartbroken one is still Elsword.
Elsword, who threw himself in the way of a rampaging centaur for Aisha, who carried her on his back for eight miles despite having broken an arm himself, who gave everything for her. He barely looks a day over forty despite being well into his sixties, going on seventies. The El he nearly sacrificed himself to in their adventuring days seems to have hexed him with one last curse - lasting youth.
Chung steps in to hug his old friend, and his eyes fill with tears once again when Elsword sobs into his shoulder. His hair is visibly going white now. It matches the pinkish-mauve of Elsword's hair.
(Love, Eve decides, is cruel, cruel, cruel.)
It's really as Elsword says - life starts to take things away at a rapidly quickening rate. Ara passes on two years later, and Eve finds herself lost again over losing a dear, dear friend. Yin and Yang knew it was coming, but they mourn their mother nonetheless.
A letter from Empyrean catches them off guard the following summer. Elesis and Rose went peacefully in their sleep while visiting Rose's youngest sister, and the remaining pieces of their friend group go rapidly to Empyrean to bring their bodies home for burial. They're buried next to each other in the same graveyard in Velder where Raven and Aisha and "Rena" are resting, and Elsword cries once more over his sister's casket.
Honore and Rienne are devastated, but it just serves to drive them away from the concept of mortality altogether. They move to the elven realm soon afterwards, where Rienne is reunited with her mother.
(Eve doesn't want to know how their reunion went down.)
The most surprising loss is Adel. Eve has watched him go from the smallest Ponggo child, to a lively adult, to the wise elder and village chief, to a wisp of the past, and it hurts. "Don't mourn me," he tells her, just minutes before he goes. "Celebrate my life instead."
His son Amos succeeds him. Eve keeps the little device she installed on his side, hundreds of years ago, as a memento.
(She briefly entertains the idea of putting one on Chung, but he'd never approve. He couldn't.)
There's only a few of them left, now. Rena's still in the elven realm, hiding out the rest of her miserable existence. Elsword lives, barely, in Ruben, waiting for the day he'll lie between his wife and his sister. Lu and Ciel, immortal as they are, have relinquished their bakery to Carmen to return to Lu's rightful throne in Varnimir.
Eve rests in Altera with her now aging love. Chung has just celebrated his eightieth birthday and sports a full head of white hair that rivals Eve's own. He no longer has the strength to visit Hamel constantly, so Nexus acts as regent instead, allowing Chung to rest in Altera by Eve's side during his final days. Yin is cool with it - she's always enjoyed travelling to Hamel, and since their children are old enough, travelling isn't much of an inconvenience to them.
Chung's health suddenly takes a nosedive in January, and somehow he finds it in him to laugh through a coughing fit. "Just like in my childhood," he says, and smiles, and Eve sees a dying star instead of a supernova.
"You're not dying," she insists, even though he is old and frail and she is still perfectly youthful, not a single change from the way she was when they were married. Her wedding gown and his suit are still hung up in their shared bedroom. "I will not permit you to die."
He smiles at her. The boy from the stars. "As you wish, your majesty."
Chung breathes his last in February, and for a thundering three hours after the last gasp of air leaves him, Eve fully understands why Rena escaped long ago.
But then she would have left Chung to break like Raven did, and she couldn't have done that to him.
She holds his hand until it is cold, and then she cradles his still form until all of his remaining warmth is gone, and that is how Amos finds her, crying without a single tear over the cold body of her husband.
(His last words were "my queen," loving as ever. Eve had responded with "it is me, my prince." She wishes she could have responded with more.)
Nexus is officially crowned king of Hamel, whether he likes it or not. They abandoned the whole "governor" pretense some thirty years ago, and Eve had shown up at Chung's coronation as a guest of honour.
She turns off the lights in most parts of the Alteran palace, letting the darkness seep back in, as Chung is buried not in Hamel, not in Velder, but in Eve's own mausoleum on Altera. Elsword doesn't make the funeral, but his children come on his behalf.
Life thrives on Altera. Eve has many grandchildren, and even a single great-granddaughter of three months of age. The Ponggo village has expanded outwards for its growing population.
But Eve is lonely nonetheless.
"You coward," she says to Rena. "You absolute monster."
It's the first time she's seen the elf in forty years, at Elsword's funeral no less. They watch as their fearless leader, still fearless to the last, joins their other friends in the earth. Rena sits alone at the foot of Raven's grave, shedding silent tears, for hours afterwards.
"Chung is gone too," she argues. "You understand why I did it."
"That doesn't make it any more right than it is," Eve snaps. "You broke Raven. He barely lived after you left him. He lost Seris before you, and you forced him to go through that all over again."
Rena heaves out a sigh, and Eve can detect just the slightest bit of anger in her voice. "You've only ever loved Chung, so you wouldn't know," she says. "The first time I loved anyone, anyone at all, it was an elf. I had a husband and three children when my village burned down. None of them survived it."
She tells Eve about the elven realm, where no one ever grows old. The former El Master Ventus courted her for a period of time after she returned, but she rejected him. "I'd forgotten what love was like until I loved Raven," she sighs. "I should have brought him with me to my homeland, like Rienne and Honore have done."
She doesn't mention the fact that Seris, her elder daughter, has forsaken her elven immortality to be with Elian. Eve doesn't blame her.
Death seems like a merciful release at this point.
Ain joins them after the funeral, quietly like he used to. He seems to have aged in the direction of wisdom, just like the rest of their little group of immortals have.
"I'm going to return to Lady Elia, and see if she has any other way for me to spread her light across the land," he says. "It's too painful to do what I once did."
He ends Intervention there and then, and Eve has to blink the light spots out of her eyes.
She never sees the Celestial again.
Forty years.
Nexus returns to Altera in a daze, bringing Yin's casket with him. "Amara says Yang died at the same time," he says, laughing through his tears. "I guess they were twins to the last, huh."
Eve holds her son close to her while he cries. She wipes away the tears with a handkerchief before they can rust his face. This might have been me if I'd been installed with tear ducts, she muses to herself.
"It's not fair," Nexus wails, pounding his fist against Yin's casket so hard that he leaves a dent in the steel casing. "It's not fair. Why do I get to live when she doesn't?"
"Life isn't fair to us," Eve echoes, thinking about Chung and stars and the platinum ring and gold band that still adorn her fingers. "All we can do is remember them with love."
Love isn't fair either, she thinks.
A hundred years.
Eve realizes she's been counting the years again when she's working on the Core. If she can't bring her friends back to life, maybe she can bring her people back to life, right?
The Core's production rate is very slow. Nexus's eldest granddaughter, now Queen of Hamel, grants Eve a huge chunk of pure El, but even so, the number of Nasod that Eve can actually produce are low.
She hooks it to herself experimentally, and watches as the production rate skyrockets. Of course, she unplugs it minutes later, temporarily drained of energy.
"I might not be able to resurrect our loved ones," she says, "but I can definitely resurrect our lost people. And I will need you to rule them once I am gone."
"Mother," Nexus says, pained, "I can't lose you too."
"You won't." She kisses his forehead, the way Chung used to kiss hers when she was upset. "I won't be gone forever, and I will leave you a full copy of my code and memories. You can do whatever with it while my physical form powers the Core."
"But," Nexus says, and Eve knows her son better than anyone else alive on this planet, she knows he is going to cry, "Mother."
He dives into her embrace and cries again while she pats his shoulder. "Eternity has not been kind to me," she says quietly. "I cannot die but I do not desire to live any longer, and this is the best option I can think of: using my body as an energy source to give rise to the next generation."
She kisses his hair gently. "Your father was a prince," she says, "and I a queen. But we know that we've raised a king to replace us."
Five hundred years, or perhaps really a thousand.
Her code has never changed, from the day she downloaded the Code: Nike battle protocol. Now, she makes one small change: a mark of her own, the burning of her collection of special moments into the code. Anyone who wishes to inherit her protocols will also inherit the weight of the Nasod who carried them.
Her people rename it Code: Victoria, for she has emerged victorious from the fall of the El and the near extinction of the Nasod race. The Queen of Victory, they call her.
(She doesn't deserve it.)
She does not have a state funeral or anything of the sort, just simply lies down in the mausoleum next to Chung, waits for Nexus to deliver the comforting escape of sleep by plugging her into the Core.
"I've made a copy of my protocols and saved them to a hologram player," she explains. "From now on, I will accompany you everywhere from there, as a little hologram Eve." She reaches up to stroke her son's face. It is wet with tears. "I am so proud of you, my Nexus."
Nexus smiles weakly. "I wish you the best, Mother." He takes a deep breath, holding up the plug hidden among white globe amaranths. "Rest well. Say hello to Father for me."
He pushes the plug into her palm, and Eve's world lights up with stars.
Time no longer matters.
It no longer matters, because Eve sees a familiar hand in white armor in the darkness, and takes it, and allows Chung to pull her through the rubble to the other side.
A/N: oho what's this? Marg updating on a day that's not monday?
yeah because i'm impatient as heck
this entire fic was brought to life by me aggressively researching the life of Queen Victoria, but it was also inspired by my sister informing me that Victoria is the roman equivalent of the greek goddess Nike, as well as a conversation with my mom about the downfall of immortality and the beauty of senescence
the children generation are all original characters. the globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) symbolizes immortality, unfading love, and hope in misery.
thank you to tin for proofreading!
~Marg