I don't own Last Exile, I'm just a really sad Dio fan-girl who has to hold onto those rumors that he isn't dead. I'm determined, and I love him.
It was a wonderful day, Claus and Lavie had decided, and at night the little one was put to bed and they'd gathered around the table downstairs for coffee and an air of calm. The two Vanship pilots knew all too well how odd this was. They were barely teenagers and here they were, talking like they were war heroes.
Since the silencing of Exile the world had become a much better place. It would have been, they all mutually agreed, a much better place with a few certain people added in it, but that went unspoken for most of the day. Even though all would say it was a little hard to miss Alex, the captain had been, undoubtedly, the best captain he could be. He may have been broody, dark, non-conversational, antisocial and utterly impossible, but he was a good man, one of the best, and his loss didn't go unfelt. Luciola had given his life for the one he loved most, Dio, and Dio… Dio was a sorer subject with the party present.
"Remember that cake Al made? The look on his face when Godwin broke out that wine was priceless."
The minute Claus had made the statement and the light semblance of laughter died down, the room went silent. Dunya's eyes met with Mullin's for a moment, seeming to question it, and Mullin relaxed a little into a warm smile.
"Dio was a Guilder who took up residence on the Silvana for awhile. He was sort of… eccentric, but once we all got to know him he fit right in. Well, in a weird way, but he did."
"Yeah," Lavie sighed, and she was leaning on her elbow in that exact way she'd been taught repeatedly never to do as a child. Claus picked up on her far too easily. Lavie's tones were what always gave her away. The slightest bit of displeasure was there in her voice, and disappointment was the most obvious of all.
Claus always thought it strange when he dwelled on Alex, Dio, Luciola, everyone he'd lost. He found it weird that without them the world still turned, the wind still graced the azure skies, the Vanships still hummed with mechanical life when their riders started them up. And all of these things would happen just the same without him there, when he got older, when he died, when he was one with the earth and that sky he loved so much.
But it didn't feel right that Dio wasn't here to smile when you just shouldn't be smiling, or Alex to try to break an awkward silence he didn't know how to at dinner. It wasn't the same without Luciola being constantly berated by Dio, told that he should laugh when something was funny because it was just the way the world worked.
But life went on, as it wanted to. They all saw each other almost regularly, were in and out of one another's lives. Claus and Lavie visited Al almost every week or so, and despite Sophia's stance as Empress she'd chosen to remain aboard the Silvana as its new Captain, carrying Alex's age-old legacy and memories of him she found it hard to get rid of. They were typically seen hanging around with Mullin and Dunya, because it would be a lie to say they weren't still pretty broke and the two were always happy to have them.
Vincent was right, Claus agreed, coffee was very good.
Sometimes they purposefully took missions that set them in the Silvana's path, and Lavies' fancy meeting you here always struck a sorrowful chord in Claus' heart. Dio's last words to them both, and they'd just let him go. Fancy meeting you here.
Both would have nightmares about that moment, the crazed look in Dio's eye, the end-plummet so heavy and overflowing with guilt for Luciola that all the two young Vanship pilots could do was watch helplessly as he fell. And Claus remembered that he did, arms outstretched, entire body seeming almost weightless like a dove shot down. The Grand Stream swallowed up his Vanship like it had so many others, and with it, Dio. His rapid descent would scar Claus more than anyone else had, because he'd watched a comrade die right in front of his own eyes.
Dio Eraclea had been a brave boy—or man, they didn't really know. All they'd known was that he wanted to belong, and for a while he did.
"Who the hell is that? Nevermind, I'll get it." Mullin said, and in Claus' reverie he hadn't even heard the knock at the door from a few feet away. It was dark out there, effervescently so, but the only bit of warm light was a lantern hanging just above the door. When Mullin pulled it open none of them expected the dim embers to wash over pallid skin, to reflect in lavender-blue eyes wide with childish flair.
There he was, and it was an illusion, they were sure, an unreality brought out from all this longing collecting in the little farmhouse.
But he spoke and his voice was barely a voice at all, more a flutter on the wind, "Hello, everyone, Immelman."