Disclaimer: Suikoden is owned by Konami. Rating is for language and suggestive themes.

Good Morning

Good morning, Aila said to herself as she woke up. She lay in her bed, rolled over to a section of it that she hadn't been lying on all night, and appreciated the coolness that still clung to her sheets. At least Calerian nights were cool. Nightly it restored her faith in the spirits.

Aila's years of being a Karayan warrior (all three of them; Karayan warriors were inducted at age fourteen) prevented her from lounging very long. After all, maybe the inn's store had run out of food during the night and she would have to go out hunting. Anything was a possibility. She'd heard Ace say that several times over the years, and she'd seen him live it to, particularly after he had a few drinks in his system. Aila sat up, stretched and went to the window. The transition between sheer night and dawn was just staging. A few mercenaries were out jogging. A few were waking up in the streets. Vendors were undoing their awnings, lugging their barrels and boxes. She saw one woman hauling a carpet trip. The carpet rolled out of her hands and unfurled down the street, right to the feet of a small brown burro. It flicked its ears consideringly, then bent its head and began noshing.

Aila made a quick splash in her tin tub (filled with last night's freezing water), dressed, and then set to work conquering her hair. She grabbed as many sausage-like dreadlocks as she could in one fist and yanked them towards the back of her head. Then she grabbed a fistful on the other side and yanked it towards the first. Then, ever so carefully, she laced the fingers of her right hand around both clumps and reached down for the third. But then the clumps she'd captured made a break for it and she was left with two-inch wide dreadlocks sticking at all angles. She sighed. She had enough hair to make four good clumps, and this was her first try.

Half and hour later she clattered down into the inn's dining...chamber? Dining thing. Not even the barkeep was up. A few Calerians and mercenaries lay heaped in a corner, not about to wake any time soon. Aila made her away around the bar, reached down, began gathering ingredients for her breakfast shake (banana, pirsmimmon, peppermint, raspberry syrup...)

She heard a heavy tread walk into the bar. "Morning, Commander," she chirped. The cool air always put her in an upbeat mood.

"Mm," Queen said vaguely.

"Oh!" Aila looked up over the edge of the counter. "Sorry. You usually walk softer."

Aila watched as the older woman stepped to the bar, pulled a stool around with her foot, and slumped into it. She looked awake but her eyes were downcast, and the way she slouched and kept her arms around her middle made her look -small.

Aila frowned. "Are you all right?"

Queen straightened. "Yeah. Is there any Sangria back there?"

Aila handed her a bottle and a glass.

"Thanks."

Aila stood, arranged her condiments on the bar and began constructing her shake. "You're up early."

"Eh." Queen was slumping again. Even her "eh" was small. She hadn't opened the bottle.

"Didn't sleep?"

Queen sighed a night's worth of pent up breath. "Not really."

Aila cut up her banana and said casually, "You and the commander were up late talking."

"Mm." Queen opened the bottle of Sangria with a sharp, practiced pop! The drink gluggled into her cup.

Aila studied her friend guardedly. Queen was pale, and her body looked tense, even the bones under her skin. Her high cheekbones and jaw line stood out sharply. What Aila could see of her eyes was opaque.

"Are you all right?" Aila repeated in a soft and worried tone of voice.

Queen's face crumpled into a grimace, like a young child that's about to cry. She leaned forward over her Sangria and buried her face in her hands.

"Queen-!"

"No. No." She sat up again, her face relatively composed. But her eyes kept flashing around the room, unable to focus on any one thing, and her words responded similarly. "It's -I just- I'm trying to face it but-" Emotion weighed her voice. "I just...I can't..." She closed her eyes.

"Queen?"

"I can't believe it." Eyes still closed, she shook her head, grit her teeth and said, "I just still can't believe it."

"What did Ace do?"

"This isn't about Ace!" Queen burst out in a whisper. She glanced towards the mercenary heap, then behind them, up the stairs to where the bedrooms were.

After a long moment of Queen just looking hauntedly behind her, Aila quietly ventured, "Do you want to tell me?"

Queen looked back at her. Her eyes were hard and miserable. "I half don't want to," she admitted. "All night -" She grimaced, and corrected herself, "Half the night I've been telling myself I wouldn't tell anyone. That I'd just keep it inside myself. I still want to think I can keep it inside. But-" She drew a broken breath. "I can't live each day with -with..." Her voice trailed off wearily.

Aila's hands left their bananas and went to Queen's. Queen's fingers gripped hers hard for a moment, the way she gripped her sabre hilt before a difficult fight. "Geddoe-" She started, but was unable to complete.

"Tell me," Aila urged.

"Last night... he -I- he and I..."

Aila's hands went as cold as Queen's. "You mean -you mean-"

"YES, DAMMIT, WHAT ELSE WOULD I MEAN?" Queen shouted, accompanied by a ragged gasp and a few stray tears. She jerked her hands free of Aila's, pressed her fingers into her cheeks. After an immense silence, she lowered her hands. Confession had restored Queen's characteristic coolness, but it did not come unescorted. "Aila," she hissed. "I loathe myself."

"Loathe him-" Aila started.

Queen waved her to stop. "It wasn't his fault, you know that as well as I." She sighed heavily, as if that would release the weight of shame. "It wasn't...It was both of our faults." Her tone grew harder. "It was mostly my fault."

Aila reached for explanations, some way to restore the world's order. This sort of thing didn't happen, not between Geddoe and Queen. "Queen-" She tried to speak reasonably. "You and Geddoe have been under so much strain over the past few years-"

Queen shot her a knife-eyed glare. "That's not new."

"Yes, it is," Aila answered firmly. "Finding out Geddoe has a True Rune, rebelling against Harmonia, being obligated to Duke's unit-" She laughed uneasily, saw it hadn't worked, and plunged on, "It's enough to rip up anyone's values by the roots."

"I," Queen said, with the steadiness of an executioner's tread, "am not that sort of person."

"Well-"

"Are you implying I'm one?" Queen's teeth were clenched again. Tears glittered against her dark eyes. "Oh no," she suddenly whispered. "Oh no, I am, I am one of those people." Her eyes closed on her self contempt. "For so many years...it's been hard, but I've stayed so firm. Even two years ago when the world was about to end, I never dreamed that I'd -and because of Geddoe."

"He's got a lot to answer for," Aila said harshly.

Queen shook her head. "You can't judge him as you would me. He's made different promises to himself and-"

"But he should respect your promises!"

Queen's eyes were open and hard again. "He did! I told you, it was all my fault, I asked him to!"

"Oh, Queen." Aila was crying. Not only for Queen's shame, but for her own lost faith in her mentor.

Queen went on brokenly. "He didn't want to, but I asked!"

"Queen."

"I did! I asked him-" Queen swallowed and said in a fragile voice, "-to make me a hamburger too."

"Oh, Queen."

Queen dropped her forehead into her hand and remained so for a long moment, as though that hand was all that prevented her from sliding completely to the floor. She exhaled heavily.

Aila took her free hand and stroked it sadly.

Queen had to work it all out. "I never thought it would happen. I've sat with him on his late-night barbeques so often. We go out onto the roof, and he gets his hibachi, and we talk. I usually just have a salad. You get hungry at eleven-thirty at night."

Aila didn't speak, just let her friend know she was there.

"I didn't want a hamburger when we went up. It was so clear last night. The stars were so close they were like fruit you could just reach up and pick out of the sky. I made myself a salad. It even had avacados. My favorite."

"Queen, don't go on if it's too hard."

"It's too hard not to." She sniffed. "He started out with just a few burgers. No problem. I was working on making a vinaigrette when he pulled out the Iksay beef."

"Wow," Aila said in a tone of considerable awe.

"I used to eat meat, you know. I suddenly just remembered what a good, medium rare Iksay burger tasted like. I tried to ignore it. I'd been able to ignore it a hundred times before. He put two on the hibachi. It wasn't hard then, they were pretty raw. But..." Queen swallowed. "He added spices... and Muenster cheese. I kept remembering what it tasted like, having Iksay burgers at the harvest festivals."

"Yeah," Aila agreed, remembering last year's festival. Queen had been able to resist the burgers then. What had happened?

"I grabbed a tomato slice. I thought, well, it's almost the same shape as a patty. I bit down but it wasn't any good. All I could taste was water and seeds and pulp. I tried a cucumber, but that was even worse. The burgers were sizzling. I looked at Geddoe. He tried to talk me out of it. He wanted to know if I was entirely sure. Damn, I just wanted a burger! I didn't even think about how wrong it was, how I'd feel in the morning, he just gave me one and-"

"Was it- was it worth it?" Aila asked timorously.

Queen straightened. "At the time, absolutely. But now..." She looked away, eyes lost. "I'm trying to figure that out."

Aila took her hand.

"Five years I've been a vegetarian. Five years and -pfft! All in one night."

"Queen..."

"But I can't blame Geddoe."

"Queen..."

"I hope he doesn't blame himself."

"Well, he should." She looked doubtfully at her friend. "Are you going to be okay?"

Queen waved her off. "I'm better now. I just need some time to -recuperate." She stood and gave a half-hearted -but sincere- smile. "Thanks for being with me, Aila."

Aila needed a moment to collect herself. "You'll be all right, Queen. You will."

Queen nodded. "Someday." She turned and walked out of the inn, down the brightening street.

Aila watched her. After a deep sigh and a swipe at her eyes, she set to work making her banana shake again.

A few moments later, she heard a heavy tread down the stairs. She looked up. It was Geddoe, walking through the room. He stopped in front of the bar and gave her a deadpan, "Good morning."

"GOOD MORNING!" Aila flung the contents of her tumbler into Geddoe's face before whirling around on her left heel, charging around the counter, through the tavern, and slamming the inn door on her way out.