Disclaimer: Tales of Vesperia and its characters are copyright Namco Bandai Games Inc. This work is not for profit.

"Commandant, I don't think this is a good idea."

"Commandant, this isn't a good use of our resources."

"Commandant, we need to focus on the problems at hand."

"Commandant, we haven't found anything so far. We may not find anything now."

"Commandant, I know that Yuri Lowell was- is- your good friend, but you need to move on."

They were the words that ran through Sodia's head every time Flynn gave the command to send out the ships again. Sodia was the ideal soldier; she knew what things ought to be done, and she knew that sending out ship after ship time and time again to search for one man's body in the Central Ocean was not one of them.

But every time she opened her mouth to say one of those things, she would catch sight of the deadened, broken, grief-haunted look that lurked behind her Commandant's brave-faced facade, the guilt would clench her heart and the words would get caught on the sudden lump in her throat, and instead, she would say, "Yes sir," and she would go and make certain the order was carried out.

There were moments when Sodia didn't know what was the worst – living with having done exactly what he did, watching Commander Flynn grieve over a good-for-nothing, self-centered criminal he would've died for, or knowing just how much worse that grief would be if he knew the truth.

She deserved everything Yuri Lowell should have gotten and more. And yet here she was, second in command to the Commandant of the Imperial Knights. For all his lawbreaking and murdering, he, at least, hadn't been living a lie.

That she envied him even more now that she had murdered him was a secret she knew she would take to her grave.

When Witcher suggested they look for Yuri Lowell, of all people, to help Commander Flynn, Sodia knew they were going on a wild goose chase. He hadn't just fallen off Zaude; he'd been stabbed through the gut, and she'd done it. There was no way in anything he had survived.

And then when they found him, when they actually found him, she could only spare a half-second for shock before the complete and utter self-loathing she'd been shouldering for so long took over.

He could have told everything. He could have had her court-martialed, stripped of her rank, thrown into prison, possibly executed – he could have taken everything from her, and instead he goaded her for giving up. Didn't he understand? She hadn't given up; she just wasn't enough. Too weak, too impulsive, too much of a murderer. She couldn't protect him. Not on her own.

After he left, it killed her to think that man she had murdered not only actually cared about her Commandant but could also be the one to remind her of her resolve.

"It would have been easier if you'd blame me for this."

Sodia couldn't believe she'd actually said it out loud, and to him of all people. But when it came down to it, Yuri Lowell was the only one she could really talk to about it, because he was the only one who knew. She'd driven the guilt into herself for days that had turned into weeks that had turned into months, and he refused to be the one to acknowledge it. She had to go figure it out, he said, for herself.

"If you can't, go ask someone you can talk to about this. But, not me. As Flynn's friend, I'm grateful for the loyalty you've shown towards him."

It was hard enough to know she'd been wrong about him, criminal though he may be. It was even harder to know that he wouldn't let her off so easily. She was going to have to face this head on – herself.

Sodia was not the ideal soldier. She knew that now. If any one of them was the ideal soldier, the ideal Knight, it was Flynn. But, she thought as she reached up to knock on the Commandant's door, at least she was learning to do the things that ought to be done.

The things that were right.