Namco owns the rights to the Tales of Xillia character.
I'm merely using this as an expressive way to 'correct' pairings, heehee.

Jude leaned back in his chair, stretched himself as hard as he could and relaxed with a huge sigh. Finally, it was finished. Spyrite technology was complete, technically. The theory all worked out and he had also gotten practical results. Now all that remained, was to do some tests and see if his personal experience would get the same results with other people and then get the highest of higher ups to give the okay to let things happen.
Finally. It had taken so long...
Ten years. Ten long years of sitting over his notes, in the same hard chair and often through the night in his lab. So many headaches and migraines, so many frustrated tears spilled when he had the momentary, insane bouts of wanting to give up. All of that was behind him. Well, maybe. Hopefully, things were going to go smoothly from now on.
"Dr Mathis?" a voice called in surprise and he turned, seeing Mary come into the lab. "...are you early or still here?"
"Early?" he asked in return and grabbed his GHS, checking the time. "Oh. I spent the night."
"Really now..." she sighed and cocked her head to the side in exasperation.
"It was worth it. I got it. Finally."
"Really?!" Mary gasped and Jude nodded.
She rushed towards him and then hesitated for a moment, clearly wondering if what she considered was appropriate, then proceeded to give him an energetic hug from the side before letting go again just as fast. She said something about rushing off to tell Balan and get coffee, slamming the door behind her as she left.
Jude couldn't help but smile. Over and over, it had looked like their attempts were going to fail, repeated stalemates having cropped up and then that whole fiasco with their prototype actually enslaving spirits, rather than allowing them to help through their own means. And even after that was resolved, the one breakthrough he had gotten shortly after he stopped research on their prototype was not as great as he had thought or hoped it to be. It worked... once. Further attempts at recreating the spectacle, even under similar circumstances, just didn't work out.
He sighed again, his head on his hand.
"There we go." Mary said when she re-entered a few minutes later, with Balan in tow, and a tray holding several mugs of coffee on it in her hands. The two approached Jude's desk and stopped. He was slumped sideways over his desk, his head cradled against his lower arms, fast asleep. They could see relief etched in every line of his face, so they decided to let him sleep. He had earned it.

When he was home later, laying on the couch after a shower and changing into other clothes, Jude decided to just relax for now. His head was thumping slightly from the all-nighter and the nap he had at his desk, that lasted an hour, wasn't enough to balance him out. Balan had looked at his notes and complimented him on them.
He had sent a text to everyone and even the others were congratulating him.
Of course, he wasn't capable of sending a text to Milla, even if he wanted to tell her the most. But perhaps she already knew, if she was able to see what was going on in Elympios and Rieze Maxia from the spirit realm. That thought comforted him, but he couldn't help but also feel disappointed. He always wanted to tell her personally that it finally worked: a technology that could allow Elympions to not give up their ways of life, that they had gotten so used to, without the drawback of it killing off spirits. If things worked out and spyrite technology would get wide-spread over both worlds, Elympios' dry areas would flood again, forests would flourish and the soil would become more fertile again. And then, they could... live together...
Jude sat up suddenly, frowning heavily. Live together? What was he saying? His reason for working on spyrite technology was never to get him and Milla together...! It was always to help Elympios, after he had seen how gray and heavy the atmosphere there felt, even more so when he learned that the same could happen to Rieze Maxia, too, if things didn't change. Certainly, there was a part of him that had hoped it would work, that spyrite technology would also mean that spirits and humans could easily go between realms and mingle easily, but...

"Creating a physical form for myself in this world requires a large amount of Mana..."

He had completely forgotten. Milla had told him that, it wasn't just a simple matter of switching from one realm to another, like Muzét, who could do that easily. And even if spyrite technology became the norm, the world's mana was still finite and it did not change anything about that. It wasn't a spring of mana, it was merely preventing the current situation from getting worse...!
Suddenly, his work seemed pointless on some level. Perhaps the part in him, that had hoped he and Milla could 'live together' after his research brought results, was bigger than he first liked to admit. A subsconsious desire that only hit him now, when he realized how futile it had been to hold onto it.
Then his mind went even further.
Say that things did work that way. Spyrite technology was used all over, a spirit taking on corporeal form in the human realm did not eat up mana and it wasn't limited in how long it held. Even if it all worked out, even if he and Milla lived together happily... she was still a spirit. And he was still a human. Eventually, he would die and Milla would still live. And she'd keep on living. And even centuries after his death, Milla would still be alive and-
His phone made him jump, ripping him out of his darker, twisting thoughts.
"M-Mathis." he answered, his heart hammering hard.
"Jude, 's up?" Alvin's cheery voice came across, the background being noisy by itself. "Congrats on finishing that thing again; I want to invite you for drinks or does your brain still hurt too much from thinking?"
"Ah," Jude held his head, still trying to get it straight again. "no, I'm fine. Yeah, sure, I'll take you up on that."
It was probably a good idea. He had the feeling that, if he stayed alone for the rest of the evening, his thoughts would get worse.

Film Noir was filled with its typical noise, though Jude was able to find Alvin easily enough and slipped opposite him into the booth. Alvin hadn't changed too much over the last decade. He still kept himself dressed in impeccably well-kept clothes that were probably more expensive than they looked, though he held his slightly long hair back into a low ponytail now and a small blue feather stuck into it. Yurgen had an identical feather in his hair, which he had worn for years, but it had become the symbol of their partner business.
"Yo, Jude." he greeted him with a grin, raising his drink.
"Hey." he said back. "Thanks for inviting me, I really needed something to distract me."
"Head still filled with science-babble?"
"...not really." Jude admitted and the waiter came to the table, notepad in hand. "Ah, I'll have a beer."
"Oooh, the big professor will be actually drinking alcohol?" Alvin teased when the waiter left.
"Hey, I've drunk before." the younger replied almost defiantly.
Neither of them said much while Jude's order was prepared. His beer arrived and they did their cheers, but there was still not much said. The conversations going on around them filled the bar more. Their drinks depleted, Jude absently running his finger along the condensation on the mug's side and Alvin kept watching him.
"You don't seem overjoyed at your success."
"What?" Jude looked up, ripped out of his thoughts. "No... no, it's not that. It's just... you know how hard I've been working on this. Ten years. But when I thought about it, I realized that... not everything is going to work out."
"What do you mean?"
"...Milla won't return because of this."
"Well, yeah." Alvin replied. "You never got that before?"
Jude shook his head.
"...you know, there's something I've wanted to ask you for years." Alvin said and leaned forward, forcing the other to lock eyes with him. "Are you in love with Milla?"
Jude started forward and wanted to retort 'Of course I do' immediately, but something stopped him. It just didn't want to slip off his tongue so easily. Maybe because nobody had ever openly, blatantly confronted him about it. Nothing was ever discussed, it was never brought up. It was treated as a known fact, but...
But? Now that he was asked, he felt uneasy.
He admired Milla. He certainly did. The human incarnation of Maxwell, the Lord of Spirits. Even when she wasn't the real Maxwell, she encompassed his duty, his desire of protecting the people of Rieze Maxia much better than he ever did himself. Jude admired how strong Milla was, how independent she acted, even when it was at the worst of times and only served to backfire on her and leave her injured. Even her flaws were admireable.
And when she learned of Elympios, she quickly decided to protect the people from that world, too. And when she decided to forego the option of being reborn as a human and live out her life in peace, instead becoming the new Maxwell, because she knew 'Maxwell' was still needed for both the spirit and human realm, it had been a sacrifice that was the best for both worlds.
Jude held his head.
Now that he had succeded in completing his technology, was the rest of his intentions going to fall apart? He had been so sure of everything for so long, but now he was getting the rug ripped from beneath his feet over and over.
He sighed deeply.
"I..." he started. "I don't know."

If you think my writing that Milla's flaws are admireable is going over the line of shilling her to high heavens, you obviously haven't played Xillia. I think I was pretty subtle, compared to the fart-smelling most of the characters (and Namco) did to her for majority of the game. On both routes.