"Cass...Cass you hear me?" Tak's voice drifts through the haze of memory that Cass is lost in. The beautiful, temperate forest she and Tak had both called home once is unchanged, from the gentle breeze to the singing of native bird life. No scars from the Battle of Stronghold are visible in this place. She could swear the tree that she's looking at is the very same one she once used for target practice. She is glad of the constance here.

"You ok?" Tak asks. Cass's eyes are still rimmed red. She had tried to go in to Stronghold's ruins with Tak. She swears she tried. But it was like hitting an ethereal wall. Every cell in her body, every strand of crystal that housed her DHF held back. Her heart had roared in her ears, her stomach clenched painfully. Beads of sweat stung her forehead, sunburnt from an earlier hike. She remembers the fires in the distance, the rain of ash. She remembers running.

Running. Falling. Dying.

"I can't...I can't go in there. I can't...see what they did."

"Come on, Cass" Tak hadn't noticed yet. Then he did "Cass..."

"I...no." Cass said tightly. She turns away and runs back behind the ship. She just about had the wherewithal to bend forward before throwing up. She looked back to see Tak watching her. He hesitated at the doorway, concern on his face, then he disappeared inside, leaving Cass to collect herself in private. She had spent the next couple of hours searching for the wreckage of Quell's ship to occupy her mind. The few fragments she had uncovered were now in the hold of the ship she has named 'Homestead'.

"Do you remember the first time I fired a gun?" She asks.

"Yep. You nearly made Tio piss himself."

Cass laughed. Tio, the musclebound, scarred tough guy had screamed like the most strident little soprano when his lunch had been rudely interrupted by a stray plasma shot burning a seven inch hole in the tree next to him.

"Quell had such a fit."

"Yep. One of the few times I heard her shout." Tak remembers.

"To be fair, she didn't have to usually." Quell's stare had been enough to impress her meaning upon any interlocutor she had. "She had a gift. Well has once we find her."

A few weeks before that day, Tak had found Cass digging in a picturesque miniature canyon, picking up crystalline fragments from the dirt and examining them through a spanner sized tool. She pocketed some and discarded more with a disgruntled huff.

"Do I want to know what you're up to?" Tak had asked.

"Hey, Takeshi!" She had replied brightly "patrol's changed already?"

"Yeah. Quell's looking for you." Tak said pointedly. All the other kids managed to be inside the base by their curfew but to be fair, young Cassandra was a bit of a nutcase.

"Oh shit! I just need a couple more to run tests on."

"Couple more what?" Tak had ignored the cussing.

"These crystals. The carbon structure amplifies light as it bends it. Your plasma guns work by refracting light, right? I got a theory that I should be able to increase the efficiency of the charge packs by about twenty five per cent using these. Thirty at a push. I just need some more..."

"Curfew's there for a reason, Kid. Come back with me while we still have the light." The sun had sunk low in the sky without Cass noticing. Once she was safely ensconced in the compound, she had begun working on modifying a few weapons. Her idea had worked but on balance she was probably not the best person to test it, having never aimed a firearm in her life. Quell had had a weird hang up about her training with weapons. Whenever Cass had asked about it, she had been told it was on the wishes of her parents. Rei had pointed out the folly of such sentiment.

"You're wasting a resource. What difference does it make if she learns to fight now instead of three years from now? What does it serve?"

"The cause of protecting her innocence for a while longer. There is value in that. I would have thought you would understand it."

Rei's jaw had tightened "She saw her dad's head blown to bits. I think that ship's sailed."

"I made a promise to a very old, very dear friend Reileen. I won't break it."

Once Quell was out of earshot, Rei had noticed Cass listening to their conversation intently. "Don't worry, Kid. You'll have your chance to get your own back one day. Take it."

"We take what is offered." Cass had replied with a smile.

"That's not always enough. Take what you can get." As a thirteen year old beginning her first tentative steps towards womanhood, Cass had idolised Rei. Her sheer attitude, her frightening skill, her pretty face tattooed with vines. So she had nodded just to get her approval without really knowing what she was agreeing with. "That's the spirit Kid." Rei had favoured Cass with a knowing smile before shouldering a massive pack with ease.

Cass sinks on to a half rotten log, staring at the sunset glittering on the lake she swam in once upon a time. She scuffs her boots against the grey pebbles. "Tak, what happened here? I don't understand how we fell...you were all always so careful."

"It was an inside job." Tak doesn't meet her eyes.

"No! No! None of us would. We all loved Quell. What she was trying do do. Who would turn on her?"

Tak looks acutely uncomfortable "can you really think of no one?"

Tak's face. Cass has never seen it so haunted. 'Except when...when I ask about her.' She thinks.

"Rei?" She breathes "Rei?!"

Tak's lack of response is enough "wh...why? What did she have to gain?"

"Me. Or she thought so. She thought we'd lost our way." Tak tells her the rest. About the backups. About the Head in the Clouds that fell to Earth. About having to shoot Rei through the stack. Looking back on it, Cass realises it all makes an awful sort of sense. This doesn't make it less horrific. She briefly wonders if Rei had been lying at the end. What if there was no hope for Quell? She puts that half formed suggestion behind a wall and tops it with metaphorical barbed wire for good measure.

"Why didn't you want to tell me?" Cass asks quietly, sympathy choking her voice.

"I...wanted to keep a part of her untainted and uncorrupted for as long as I could, I suppose. A part of the sister I loved. And entirely failed to protect." He sits next to her on the log, sagging slightly.

"Oh, Tak. I...don't know what to say." How can any words she can come up with measure up to that kind of pain?

Half of Tak's lips turn up in a sad smile. "That's a first.".

Cass gives him a very gentle shove. She turns her face back to the late sunset, her head coming to rest on Tak's broad shoulders. A faint 'hushhhh' sound heralds an evening breeze. The warmth has been leeched out of the day by the coming night and Cass feels herself shudder reflexively. Tak's arm enfolds her wordlessly. Neither of them move, thinking of their lost and the one they hope to find again as they stare at the gentle lapping of the water and the colours that bleed like ink across the sky.