A/N: Originally written for the FF Valentine's Day Kiss Battle in 2010.
"I knew you'd come for me."
He said it with such conviction, such earnest faith. He must have been clinging to that hope all those days in the tower.
Her blade was wet with the blood of the she-devil Barbariccia, and it hissed and boiled as it slid down the golden blade, vaporizing into foul air. She sheathed it with a sound like clear bells, and caught him as he stumbled.
The fight had taken its toll on him, and he had clearly been in poor shape to begin with. She pulled him close, and his body felt frail against her breastplate. A hot meal and a warm bed as soon as we get home, she thought immediately.
There was a clanking noise, metal against metal. Rosa looked up only reluctantly, and found that Kain had his mailed fist clenched tight around the shaft of his spear.
"Kain...?" she said, cautiously. It was not so long ago that he had stood against her in battle and taken away the one thing in this world she could not bear to lose.
"I'm sorry, Rosa," he said, in a voice thick and heavy with shame. "I wanted so badly to hurt him. To kill him. If I hadn't known Golbez intended to lure you here with promises of Cecil's life, I might have..."
"Spells. Dark magic," Rosa said. "You're free, now. All can be forgiven."
"No," Kain said, and turned away. Cecil's eyes were closed and his expression unreadable; whether or not he had even heard, Rosa could not guess.
The floor started to shake, and the she-devil's not-quite-human laughter began to echo all around them like a roaring wind. "Call them here, everyone" Cecil murmured, finding his voice, and began a low chant in the incomprehensible tongue of magic.
The floor cracked, and everything went white, and for an instant Rosa was not sure whether they were saved or dying. Then, as suddenly as a heartbeat, they were all standing on the floor of her chambers in Baron, and her arms were still wrapped gently around Cecil's thin shoulders.
Fortunately, it turned out that Cecil did not require the attentions of a white wizard - only, as Rosa had predicted, a good rest and some good food. He slept for the better part of two days, and was sitting up in his bed looking out the window when Rosa arrived on the morning of the second day.
"You've changed," he said, with a wan smile. Rosa sat on the edge of his bed and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead, gently.
"Hopefully not too much," she replied.
"For the better," he said. He looked at here with a kind of wonder in his eyes. "That sword you wield now...there are stories, legends the wizards know -"
"It's still a sword," she said. "A blade, made for killing. I would rather I not have to take it up, legend or no."
"Still," he said, smiling. "I know of no one more deserving of the title, Paladin Rosa."
In that moment, she could have explained to him how she scaled the harsh rocks of Mount Ordeals and faced down monsters who did not fear her sword. She could have expressed exactly what it was like to stand alone in a hall of mirrors and feel her own blade pierce her heart, with her own strength behind the blow. She could even have told him how, when that black blade had howled with unholy joy as it rent her flesh and spilled her blood on the glassy ground, she had closed her eyes to the agony and thought of him, and found she could endure until her reflection showed her whole again, crowned in light and glory.
Instead, she kissed him - a long, tender kiss without hesitation or fear - and that was enough of a tale for now.