Notes1: So I've had this oneshot sitting in my USB drive since August 3rd, 2015. Obviously, this takes place after Shiva and well, well before Vishnu.
Notes2: That, and I've been meaning to put this up for a while. Like, maybe a week or so back. I don't remember. Life stuff and all that jazz.
The sky is a deep blue spiral that stretches away into forever, crowned by a sun perched almost directly on the peak of the obelisk. It almost appears as if it's gazing down at her, studying the bowl-shaped crater and the cracked hardpan.
Vivio looks away from it and drops the hand shielding her eyes. They climb down the length of the monument and level on the plaque mounted on its base. A cool breeze sweeps in and out, stirring the sweet scent of purple and white sea-lavenders within their bouquet. Magical dust is blown clean piled against a corner of the platform, dust reportedly formed from the fallout of the dozen Starlight Breakers Mother had summoned in her battle.
Her last battle….
The paper crinkles under Vivio's fingers. Her eyes narrow; from the dust, she tells herself. It's the dust and the wind. There's been a lot of dust lately. A lot of magic in the air, more so than usual. It stings, too, but magic isn't supposed to sting. It's not supposed to hurt—
Vivio blinks furiously, bites the inside of her cheek. She approaches the base of the obelisk and stops. Stares at the plaque. The inscription is written in Mid runes, English ("the language of the universe", Hayate once said), and her Mother's native Japanese. It is familiar, like an old friend who has walked through all the rain and sleet and snow and heat the world had to throw at her. It is cold and dusty, with the occasional water mark blemishing its bronzed surface.
She squats down on her haunches, the material of her jeans creaking in the silence. Her fingers clench and unclench against the bouquet; her nails poke minute holes and tears in the wrapping. The wind blows again, throwing her hair in her face, to which she ignores. There are little mounds of dust all over the platform, coating it in strokes of impressionistic rainbows. They glow under the sunlight, bringing to mind St. Hilde's stained glass windows: colorful and pristine, before blood desecrated them and the aftershocks from the bombs blew them to beautiful, million-small showers.
She shivers, wishing for that hand to touch her shoulder, her arm, take her own hand, and squeeze. Firmly. Fittingly.
She clutches the bouquet one more time and then sets it slowly, reverently, beneath the epitaph. A splotch of color to add to the chalky, psychedelic rainbow among the backwash of browns and reds. It's very pretty. Eye popping. Eye catching.
She cranes her head back, toward the top of the obelisk. From this angle the sun isn't hitting her directly, and that is good. It feels warm on her neck, wards off the chill settling in her bones.
She takes off a glove and places the flat of her palm against the stone next to the epitaph. It's warm. Comforting. Alive. Vivio puts the glove back on, turns a one-eighty and rests against the obelisk. Draws her knees up to her chest and hugs them.
For a while she sits, remembers, basks in the quiet. The wind has dropped, the birds are muted. She wonders if anyone has come here since its completion. Since the funeral. Maybe they have. Maybe they haven't. If they have, it's been enough time for the dust to accumulate—regular dust, shed from the skin of the earth and expelled in puffs of breath.
Vivio glances at the epitaph from her periphery, sighs, and looks away. "Can't believe it's been two years," she says. Her voice is hoarse from the lack of speech throughout the day. "Two years. I didn't think time could go by that fast. But…it has." A small smile lifts the corners of her lips. "You'd be…thirty-five now? Yeah. Thirty-five. You used to complain about getting old, when you thought no one was listening, but I heard you plenty of times. I always said that if an older person ever heard you say that, they'd laugh and tell you you're still young. Very young, and too young to worry about it. And I would say you'd look good for being twenty-five, thirty, thirty-three…."
She pauses. Sniffs. "Look at me, I'm twenty-two. I don't feel like it. I still feel like the old me. You know, when we were all together. That's the time when we feel our youngest. The most…alive, where you can take on the world with your bare hands and nothing can dare stand in your way. You had an idea of what you were doing, and even when things went wrong you could find another way to accomplish your goal. That was life. It didn't matter if it was loud and fast or slow and quiet. That…That was living."
She uncrosses her arms and drapes one over a knee, the other leg stretching out flat. With her other arm she lifts it and opens her hand, spreads out her fingers as wide as she can. Light filters through them. So, too, does the sky. Strikingly, achingly blue, with wisps of white cloud. There's the curve of what appears to be a halo up there, so high up it made the planet look like it was capped by a domed ceiling.
"That wouldn't stop you, would it?" says Vivio. "Nothing can stop an angel from flying past it." Past space, past the stars, past countless worlds and dimensions regulated by and independent of the Bureau. And beyond all of that was….
Was….
She blinks.
"She's gone, Vivio," Hayate had said, when Vivio demanded the mages to search through the crater and the surrounding area one more time. They were alone, on the lip of the crater.
"No she's not! Somewhere down there she's waiting for us—"
"Wake up, Vivio!" Hayate said again, and she took her by the shoulders and looked her square in the eye. "Look around you! There's nothing—nothing—left of this place! The War is over. The Pretender is dead, and so is Nanoha!"
"She isn't!" Vivio shouted.
"SHE IS!" Hayate shouted back, and shook the girl's shoulders. The ferocity in her face cracked, one by one by one, crumbled, and each piece that fell revealed the exhaustion, the anguish, the pity underneath. "She is," she repeated, hoarsely, quietly. "I…I'm sorry, Vivio."
"Liar," Vivio said; she had intended to throw the word at her, scream it raw and make her quail with the force of it. Instead it came forth as a tremulous, whisper-thin croak. "You're lying." She shook her head.
"Vivio…."
"This is my mother you're talking about. My hero. She…doesn't go down that easily." She laughed, hiccuped. "H-Heroes don't die. They can't. She said so…."
"Of course she did," Hayate sighed, and pulled Vivio into a crushing hug. She rocked her back and forth, carrying the motion on the balls of her feet. "Heroes are immortal."
"S-So she can't be…can't be…." Her voice broke. Words failed her. She buried her face in the crook of the older woman's neck and cried.
She flexes her hand once. Twice. Again and again, trying to pluck the halo from the sky. It remains where it is, forever hanging out of reach. "You always loved being up there," she says, "and I don't blame you. At least you're happy. Free." She frowns, clenching her other hand on the ground into a fist. "Not like here."
She twists around and looks at the plaque. Familiarizes herself once again with the words inscribed therein:
NOT ALL DEVILS ARE EVIL
NOT ALL MEN KINGS OF PROSPER
They ring of importance. Respect. They also sound very…what was the word? Biblical? Yes, Biblical. She wonders if Hayate had a stroke of inspiration upon drafting the epitaph, or simply conjured them on her own. Does it even matter now? No. No, it doesn't, but they are there, ingrained and immortal until time and the dusts of wild magic scrape them into illegible obscurity.
She runs her hand slowly across it, banishing dust and grime. Her throat tightens around a forming lump.
The funeral had long since come and gone, the mourners departed, but she and Hayate stood together on the platform. The obelisk filled their vision, the valley of the crater reaching far and up and away. The epitaph was a splotch of color on the otherwise pristine surface, catching the pinpoints of the first few stars of the rapidly encroaching nightfall. The floor was coated in a thin veneer of dust.
Hayate rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and heaved a great, shaky breath. It comes out as a wisp of spiraling white smoke. "We shouldn't be doing this," she said. "This kind of thing…we're all supposed to be together. We're supposed to go through life together. We're not supposed to be…."
She stopped, stared at the plaque—read what was on there, what she put there. She ran a hand through her hair. "Why? Why did it have to be this way? It's too soon…."
Vivio looked away, looked down at the ground between her feet, which she constantly shifted the weight between one and the other. She had plenty to say about that, of time and deadlines and interruptions beyond mortal control, but Hayate knew. Hayate knew very well, and such a discussion at this moment would prove inappropriate.
"Fate," Hayate breathed, craning her neck toward the deepening bruises in the sky. "Oh Fate, wherever you are…guide her safely. Ease her pain. If anyone can do it, it'd be you. It'd make Nanoha very…very happy."
Her hand drops limply to the ground and drags it back to her, leaving behind a messy imprint. She stares forlornly at the epitaph for a while longer, wondering where the time has gone, why she's still alive, what kind of effect the fallout will have on the world….
Where will the sky be then?
"I wish you were here," Vivio says to the far, far sky. "You and Fate-mama both. If only for a little while." She curls up on herself again and rests her forehead against the shelf made from her pressed knees. "At least then you can tell me if I'm doing a good job leading what's left of the Bureau."
She blinks, blinks again, and again, and again, and doesn't bother to dry her face.