Author's Note: Quick explanation for the confused - the 'Vive Marianne' AU was created by another author, Aoife of Archive of Our Own, which rests on the idea that the star nations of the Honorverse exist in physical form - 'Marianne' in this case being the name of the star nation of Haven. (Marianne appeared, briefly, as the ghostly voice in my "Who In Triumph Advances", as well.) I am merely frolicking in the playground Aoife created, and am very grateful she allows me do so. Incidentally, the fic title comes from "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday.

"You love me, don't you, Eloise?"

"Yes. Sometimes I wished I knew how to stop."

Marianne gazed at her, eyes long-lashed and serious. "But you never did. You should have. Everyone should have. Some people fled, others left only grudgingly, but everyone should have left in the end."

"And if we hadn't stayed," Eloise said flatly, her voice dulled by grief and pain, "you would have died."

"Shouldn't I have?"

"Perhaps."

"You don't believe that," Marianne said confidently.

"Don't I?"

"No. If you had, if you really had, I wouldn't be here."

"Yes, you would. There was always Tom."

"Tom's the heart, that's true. But you're the head, Eloise. If you'd left, not even Tom could have saved me."

Eloise flung herself backward on the bed, her eyes shut tight against the glow that pervaded her vision even still. The woman beside her was battered, scarred. Her skin hung in folds where excess weight had once been, only to be starved brutally away after twenty years in Saint-Just's torture chamber. The bruises had yet to fade from her body completely, and the whites of her eyes were still faintly jaundiced.

But the bruises were fading. The bones were beginning to fill again, no longer rail-thin and skeletal, and the jaundice receded, day by day.

"If you'd asked me, twenty years ago," said Eloise at last, her voice muffled by the pillow, "whether any scrap of the Haven I loved could be saved, I would have said no."

"That's a lie, too."

Eloise opened her eyes to glare. "And how the fuck would you know that?"

"You're here with me now. You always saw it, Ellie -"

The crack! of the slap resounded through the room. "Don't you dare call me that," Eloise snarled. "Nobody calls me that. Not any more. And especially not you."

"Ellie." Marianne's voice was implacable, and Eloise didn't have a scrap of fight left. "It was Ellie who cried over Estelle. It was Ellie who joined the Aprilists, instead of any of the dozens of other branches of the CRU. It was Ellie who fell in love with her Admiral. And it was Ellie who stood at the call and said, 'I stand with the Republic.' Don't you hide from me, Ellie Pritchart. I see your soul as you see mine. You may have hated what I had become. You did hate what was done to me later. But you never hated me. Rage at me, scream at me if you must, but look me in the eyes and tell me you hated me and I'll know you for a liar."

"I wanted to hate you." The tears soaked her pillow, her voice muffled against the fabric. "I wanted to forget."

"But that's not who you are." Gentle lips brushed her brow. "And I do love you. Ellie and Eloise. My head, my queen, my fire. And I can be what you love, too."

Eloise shook her head. "That's not how it works."

"Perhaps not. But you loved me, Ellie, whatever scrap of me was left that deserved loving. You, and Tom. Lester and Javier and Denis too, but you and Tom most of all. To love a nation that loves you back, that is one thing. To love one who can't - that is something else entirely. Those who do are the makers and breakers of history, Ellie. And the two of you were the makers of mine."

Level topaz eyes burned. "You shouldn't have survived. You shouldn't have been worth saving. Some small part of me still wishes you weren't."

Marianne didn't flinch. "I know."

Shaking, Eloise hugged her pillow. "Tell me this means something. Tell me all the pain, all the heartbreak, all the loss and cruelty means something."

For the first time, Marianne's unaffected facade cracked. One still-thin hand took Eloise's, brought it to her still too-prominent collarbone and splayed it over her racing heart. "It means we survived," said Marianne, raggedly. "It means we can find a reason why. It means we can rebuild from the ashes. And that means everything." One tear, then another, traced down too-thin cheeks.

"And that's supposed to make the pain go away, is it?" Eloise almost regretted the bite in her tone. "The fear? The blood? The bodies of the dead?"

"I deserved that," Marianne said, quietly, and Eloise broke.

"Tell me you're the Haven I lived for."

"I am. If only because you and Tom asked me to be, Ellie, I am. You asked, and so I am."

Gently, her lips salt-slick from tears, Eloise kissed her. "We only asked you to be what we saw in the first place."

"Eloise - "

"Not to you."

"Ellie. I do love you."

"I know."

And she meant it.