After the final battle, I realized that I had truly lost everything. It took nothing less than the death of my mentor, my second father, to put things into perspective. These people that I had grown to depend on were my family. The raucous, unruly type for sure, but loyal to the death they were all leaving me. Even my own brother, Logan, who I had spent the previous year getting to know again. He told me about his fears and nightmares brought on by the Darkness in the west that had set its eyes on me. My family. Logan, Sabine, Page, Kalin and Ben. Ben. Just when I thought that something good for just me alone might come from all this. Everyone but Jasper. Thank Avo for him. Everyone else was leaving. My family was leaving me behind when I needed them the most.
"Your Majesty! My Queen! Please wait!" Hobson. His voice broke her from her reverie. He was quite possibly the very last person that she wanted to see as it was, and was dutifully avoiding contact.
"Yes, Hobson?" Lena plastered on a smile to keep up the somewhat courteous façade that she had been playing him with for the past year. Her patience with this man was running dubiously thin as of late, no thanks to his unabashed obsession with the kingdom's finances.
"I've just finished in the treasury." No surprise there, she pondered. "I've been checking the ledger and it states that there is roughly ten million gold in the treasury."
"Yes, Hobson. I'm well aware of this matter, please keep me notified if anything changes." She smile once more to him and turned on her heel, leaving the map room. A sheet of paper on the table near the door caught her eye on the way out. A note from Reaver. Not what I need right now. She left the paper on the table and walked to the hallway, pulling the thin chain around her neck from under her shirt.
The familiar weight of the guild seal rested in her palm. She couldn't help but remember the day that she had retrieved it from her parent's tomb. It seemed a lifetime ago. She smiled slightly to herself at the memory of both Walter and Jasper's excitement at discovering that she was, too, indeed a hero. Just like her father. She closed her eyes and her palm around the seal and when she opened them, she was standing in the Sanctuary.
"Good morning, Jasper." She smiled. The first genuine one of the day.
"Ah, good morning, My Queen." Jasper bowed to her gracefully. "I've just finished reading a fairly interesting novel, it was about a rather unfortunate archaeologist—"
"That's lovely, Jasper." Lena smiled at him politely, interrupting him before he could go off on a tangent about his literary discovery. She was certain that she would never leave if Jasper got talking. That's what she loved about him. She also loved his infallible sense of others emotions. One that he would surely get the chance to exercise if she couldn't get moving quickly enough. As much as she adored his empathy, she couldn't even sort out her own feelings to herself, let alone burden someone else with them. What she needed was some time to think.
"Jasper, I'm thinking about taking a trip to Aurora. Do you think that you could handle things around the castle while I'm away? I'm feeling a bit claustrophobic as of late, and I've been meaning to check on the state of things." She kept her gaze on the map table in front of her, running her hands over the pseudo-rocky terrain of the Mistpeak Mountains.
"Oh, of course, My Queen! I could keep in contact with you via the guild seal and Sanctuary, and you could take some time for yourself, Avo knows it is well deserved." He patted her shoulder sympathetically with a small considerate frown on his face.
"That sounds perfect, Jasper." A smile cracked across her face. She was truly happy for the chance of this trip. Not just for her own selfish reasons, but for the well-being of the Aurorans as well.
"I'll just change into something more practical; I suppose I'll check in with Hobson and be off." Lena nodded her head and smiled kindly at Jasper. He held out his arm and looped hers through before setting off in the direction of her massive closet.
Thankfully, the majority of the clothes that she had intended to wear were already sorted out onto one of three dressing mannequins all she had to do was get out of her horribly constricting royal garb, and get on with things. She stripped her Dweller vest off of the dummy, relishing the feel of the soft fur collar and worn leather on her fingertips. She couldn't help but smile a bit in remembrance of the day she had acquired it. Walter had given her enough gold for not only an entirely new ensemble, but enough for all the lovely children of the Mistpeak Dweller camp to take home to their families. She only wished that she had had more to give them at the time. Gold could only get you so far.
The rough cotton and linen of her Dweller belt and "practical princess" skirt chafed lightly against her arms as she finished jamming her feet into her tattered mercenary –styled boots. Lena leaned back against the stair and brushed her hair off of her face. Looking at herself in the mirror, she couldn't help but notice the faintest of feathery swirl about her eyes and cheeks. She had acquired these markings when her true form had manifested itself in glowing will lines and lushly feathered, white wings. She hadn't the chance to see the image herself, but Ben was sure to remind her on several occasions. The memory rose in Lena's mind:
"You had great, bloody, spectral wings, for Avo's sake! Where is the fairness in that?" He slung back a few more gulps of his drink as he gestured wildly to all that would listen in the crowded inside of the Cock in the Crown. It was one of the very few times that she and a few of the other rebels had gotten together after Walter's funeral and before they all left to go their separate ways.
"Shut up, Ben." Lena hid her wild grin in the brim of her stein. She had never liked the taste of ale, but she humored her companions by ordering some regardless and pretending to drink when they went out together.
"Oh, tosh. He's just jealous of you, Lena, that's all. He knows he could never pull off a set of wings like that." Page grinned as she sat down next to Lena at the table.
Ben scoffed, "Of course I couldn't. It would clash with my uniform." He sat smugly as he gripped his blood-stained lapels, which sent both Lena and Page into a fit of laughter.
Such little things. They seemed so trivial at the time, but now, they were more meaningful than air. How she missed them. Him in particular. Everything was going so well. That night had been the first time that she had allowed Ben Finn to kiss her. She had thought about it countless times before, of course, and Ben wasn't at all subtle about his affections towards her, but she continually brushed them off as actions of a deprived man, or for the mere fact that Benjamin Finn was a confessed hopeless romantic. After their fun night in the pub, she left Page and Kidd to travel back to resistance headquarters on their own, and while she insisted that she could handle herself to walk back to the castle, Ben insisted that she would be "safer" if he traveled alongside her.
"You never know what you might run into on these streets! Could be a mass of hollow men! Maybe even a balverine! You know how terrible I'd feel if I let you wander on your own only to find you got yourself eaten." Ben sighed and shook his head melodramatically.
"Captain Finn! You know perfectly well that I am capable of handling myself," Lena haughtily suggested in a humorous air. "And besides, in your state of inebriation, I will surely find myself in the role of protectorate."
"Your Majesty! Are you insinuating that I need protecting? I most certainly do not! I am a man, and we men do not need protection. We are the protectors, not the protectees." Ben laughed at the incredulous look arranged on his queen's face. "And besides, I am not drunk." He smiled impishly at her.
"Ah, I see, Ben. Could you try this for me then?" Lena held both her arms out to her sides and touched her nose alternately with each pointer finger, suppressing a fit of laughter all the while.
"Oh, no, no, Lena." Ben reached out and took both of her hands in his. "I doubt I could do that when I'm completely sober," He said thoughtfully, "No matter, in all seriousness, Lena, I will be accompanying you on your journey home tonight. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
She stared at him for a good while, trying to decipher any meaning to his words. He stared right back at her with his penetrating gaze.
"You're eyes have changed. Did you know that?" He asked her, moving in a step closer, "You used to have this… stormy grey. Now they look even more blue. Like a tempest."
"Well aren't you the poet, Captain Finn." Lena said blushing, as she tried to gently tug her hands away. He held fast.
"You do have that effect on me, sometimes." Ben said in a whisper. Lena usually dismissed him with a joke or a funny crack by this time on any usual occasion, but this time, she just couldn't persuade herself to. Ben cleared his throat and brushed some of her hair away from her cheek, holding his palm there in its place. She leaned into him and closed her eyes.
Lena hopped up and strode over to the mirror, twisting pieces of her pale blonde hair into a bun as she did so, pinning her curls into place. No sense in dwelling in the past. It only makes this hurt worse, I suppose, She thought.
"I always did love that hairstyle on you, but it just seemed like so much work." Jasper came strolling through the door into the room. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her.
"What? Have I done something wrong?" Lena panicked and started looking wildly around.
"No, no, of course not, but that isn't what your planning on wearing to Aurora, is it? You do realize that it is a desert." He emphasized the word 'desert' with a slowness to stress his point.
"Oh, I suppose you're right then. Leather and fur isn't that practical, now is it?" She grinned in spite of herself, putting her hands on her hips. "I'll just have to buy some more appropriate clothes when I arrive." She smiled and put her arm around Jasper's back and led him out of the room.
"I do suppose that would be sufficient." He conceded.
"Ein. Wake up, boy," Lena scratched her border collie behind his floppy ears. "Goodness me, you lazy creature, here it is nearly two in the afternoon and here you are sleeping." Ein let out a huge yawn and then sneezed in her face as if to say, so what.
"We're going to go on a little trip," His ears perked at the word 'trip' and he struggled to disentangle himself from his own limbs. "That's my boy."
The collie was a constant source of amusement for Lena, ever since she was a young girl. Her father gave him to her as a gift, not long before he died. He promised her that a dog would be her most loyal companion, as he had had one himself growing up in the streets of Bowerstone and knew this to be true. Ein hadn't proved her wrong yet. He had stayed with her through her entire life, and she loved him dearly.
"Lets go boy!" She said as she took off running out of her old bedroom, down the stairs to the courtyard. She ran as fast as she could, laughing all the way with Ein at her heels.
"Hobson, may I speak with you for a moment?" Lena found Hobson in the treasury, like always; he was fiddling with the ledger and holding a stack of gold between his podgy fingers.
"Oh, oh, um... My Queen," He tossed the gold back into the pile behind him and cleared his throat. Lena fixed him with a stare as she arched one eyebrow at his not so subtle attempts to look nonchalant, "I was just… counting. What do you need?"
"I will be taking a leave for a short while, and I wanted to give you some notice. You will be reporting to Jasper until my return in the coming months, any messages you may have for me, he will be able to relay them. Jasper is more than capable of handling things in my absence, so with that, I shall be seeing you." She nodded to him and stepped away.
"Of course, Your Majesty." He graced her with a deep bow, which on him, made her feel decidedly less regal and more than slightly uncomfortable. She nodded to him one last time and turned on her heel, Ein following in tread.
Lena gripped her guild seal once more and arrived back in the Sanctuary promptly.
"Ah, everything settled then?" Jasper asked placing his hand on her shoulder.
"Yes. I just need to collect my things, and then I will be on my way." She looked her Jasper in the eye and fixed him with a worried look. "You will be able to handle everything, right? This isn't too much for you?"
"Oh, no. Of course not! Your father had me running the gambit in those days, always with new projects and ideas to contend with. I'm sure I can keep everything running smoothly whilst you're away." He patted her on the back reassuringly.
"Thank you so much, Jasper. This means a lot to me." Lena said meaningfully. She gripped him in a sudden hug that caused Jasper to gasp in surprise. He patted her back once more.
"My Queen, if you will," he said gesturing widely to the armory, "Aurora awaits."
Lena smiled and walked into the armory to collect her weapons. Her rifle "The Money Shot" which she had won in a range contest at the Mercenary Camp, and her sword "The Inquisitor".
As much as she truly despised Reaver, and all of his sensibilities, she did love this sword, it was quite beautiful.
"I'm ready," Lena stepped onto the platform and prepared to teleport, "Good luck, Jasper, I shall keep in touch." She said one last time fixing him with an earnest smile.
"Have fun, Lena, ah, but not too much fun." He said smiling, as he bowed.
Lena steeled herself for the rush that was teleportation, and in the next second she felt her feet on the dry sand. She opened her eyes to the golden sun-drenched land that was Aurora, in all its splendor. Yes, not too much fun. She thought smiling to herself. She knew very well that, if her memory served her right, Aurora wasn't exactly fun.