ArissaMay: Sorry for the huge wait, I wanted to get Elemental Affections finished (my Sheelos one-shots) and I had like seven chapters left to do. I just uploaded the last one though, so… Back to Choices. :D

Chapter Three

Thump.

The half-elf jolted awake, looking about her wildly. Though she'd not been in peril since the World Regeneration Journey had ended, she remained a light sleeper, and any strange noise could and would awaken her. This time, the source of her alarm was a massive leather-bound book sliding from the precariously tall pile on her table and landing splayed spine-up on the floor. With a snort of disapproval, she plucked the book from it's position and carefully righted all the creased pages with a tenderness that would surprise and confuse any who didn't know the Professor well. After the pages were correct once more, she shut the book, placing it on a much shorter pile.

All at once, Raine was acutely aware of a heavy, rhythmic breathing. Her gaze swept over to Kratos, and in that moment she recalled the events of the prior night. How he'd shown up in a storm, how he'd been injured, how she'd stayed up till dawn trying to get work done that would have taken ten minutes had she not been distracted by the mercenary by the fireplace.

She gazed at him a moment, and concluded that he was still completely unconscious. Silently padding over and crouching beside him, the woman glanced over him once more, checking to see how well the rest of his wounds were healing. A stain of crimson caught her attention, and she looked to the source. A nasty-looking gash adorned his left hand, and though the blood was dry, it looked as painful as it would if the wound were fresh. She carefully reached out to rest her fingers on the wound, calling forth her mana...

The next thing Raine knew, the wounded hand had locked in a deathgrip around her wrist, and the seraph was leaning over her, his dagger at her throat. His hazel eyes held the desperate ferocity of a trapped animal, and for a moment, the scholar was afraid he would kill her. But after a moment, his eyes widened in recognition, and he relaxed, collapsing back onto the floor. Though his eyes were closed beneath his auburn bangs, she knew he wasn't asleep. And after a moment, her knowledge was confirmed.

"You never would just let me die, would you?" He questioned rhetorically, his voice weak but at the same time overwhelmingly familiar.

"I seem to recall you returning the favor a few times, if my memory is correct," she replied, carefully concealing how ecstatic she was that he'd come. Like I said, she had long been starved of human contact. Even if Mithos himself had come to her with another horrible plot, it would have been hard for her to send away the company.

"Hmph." He turned his head to face the fireplace, attempting to dismiss her.

"You can't get rid of me that easily."

"Raine, I'm tired, weak, and wounded. What do you gain from continuing to pester me?"

The Professor snorted indignantly, her figurative feathers somewhat ruffled by his 'holier-than-thou' attitude. "I want answers. Truthful ones."

"Fine," he sighed in defeat. "Just don't interrupt, I'm only gonna say this once."

She nodded, and he opened his mouth to start.

"No, I'm sorry, wait a moment." With this, the half-elf scurried over to her desk, retrieving a notebook and a quill. "What?" She questioned in response to his incredulous look. "I am a scholar, I simply must record anything of any significance." She flipped to the next blank page, readied her quill, and gazed at him expectantly.

"If you must. So what answers are you looking for?" He prompted wearily, and her eyes lit up, her mouth opening and closing as if deciding which question to ask first.

"Why and how have you left Derris Kharlan? How did you find me? Didn't Derris-Kharlan detach itself from Symphonia years ago? What caused all your wounds?" The eager Professor would have spewed even more questions than her previous rapid succession of queries, had he not cleared his throat to distract her. "Yes, Kratos?"

"If you're done, I can begin my explanation." She nodded, so he continued. "I left Derris-Kharlan via the warp gate that remained even when the two planets were separated. I left because I had no choice. It was either escape, or face death."

Raine, who had been scribbling down notes in her notebook, looked up at him in surprise. "Death? And escape from what?"

"Apparently you weren't done..." He mumbled, before continuing in a normal voice. "I wasn't alone on Derris-Kharlan. I thought I was, sure, but somehow, a fragment of Martel's spirit lived on, on Derris-Kharlan no less. She kept the mana planet linked with Symphonia, for fear that if her soul were separated it may disappear altogether. Unfortunately, the fragment of Martel that was with me on Derris-Kharlan was her mortal side, her emotions and such. It was kind of like having the old Martel there with me, which was fine for a while... Until she got lonely."

"Fascinating! But why would she get lonely, if you were there?"

His brow furrowed in annoyance, but he didn't comment on her third interruption. "I liked to spend much of my time alone, clearing my head and pondering a variety of things. On Derris-Kharlan, there is no day or night, and since angelic beings do not sleep, we have no way to distinguish one day from the next, so I do not know exactly how long I'd been there before she changed everything, but not so long ago, she got too lonely to bear it. And from one of her feathers, she created another angel. Jeremiel by name. All was fine and well for a while, until he developed a cunning, and with that, a greed. He tricked Martel into making more seraphim, and he tricked her into drawing Derris-Kharlan back toward Symphonia. She cherished him, almost as much as she once cherished Yuan. And then she died, with no evidence as to how or why."

Raine's eyes widened. "Martel is... dead?"

"Yes and no. Martel, the girl from many, many years ago, the girl Mithos gave his life to resurrect... Yes, she is dead. But Mana, the guardian of the Yggdrasill Tree, lives on. I assume there was a day in this last year in which the world's mana dropped noticeably?"

"Yes, that's correct," Raine replied thoughtfully. "Was that the effect of Martel's death?"

"Indeed."

The half-elf brushed her silver hair out of her face, gazing absently at her notebook while her mind sorted through all this new information. After a moment, she lifted her eyes to Kratos's once more.

"That still doesn't explain what you're doing down here."

"Of course it doesn't, I haven't finished yet." This silenced the half-elf, her icy-blue eyes holding a look that could only be described as hungry. Hungry for knowledge, that is. The gaze of a true scholar, her past colleagues had called it, though Genis and his friends called it scary. But that's beside the point.

"Jeremiel wasn't fazed by Martel's death," Kratos continued, his eyes closed. "He named himself ruler, and nobody with the power to stop him was willing to try."

"Who could have stopped him?"

"I was the only one strong enough. I should have killed him the moment I first saw him, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, to hurt Martel like that. His powers grew at an incredible rate; by the time she died, even I would have had to fight my hardest to defeat him. The other angels gained power as well, but never to match mine, and never even close to matching Jeremiel's. I was forced to serve him, and I complied without struggle. After all, what else could I have done? I was outnumbered, a hundred to one. So I served him for quite a while, ruled over Welgaia, kept the peace. Then I found out something he'd never meant anyone to know. Jeremiel had murdered Martel."

This drew a gasp of dismay from the half-elf, and she shook her head in disbelief.

"That's impossible! Martel was a goddess, you can't just kill a goddess!" She protested, and he shook his head.

"If it was impossible, how could he have done it? No, the Martel on Derris-Kharlan was merely Martel. She was as mortal as I am. The more goddessly side of her was still in the two worlds-"

"Symphonia." Raine corrected matter-of-factly.

"-Symphonia, not on Derris-Kharlan. I couldn't serve him knowing he killed her, so I fled. I went through the warp gate, like I explained earlier, and I corrupted it behind me. It'll slow them up, but there are other ways off the planet."

Raine was silent. For the first time in her life, she was struck speechless. Glancing down at her notes, she realized she'd stopped taking them after she learned that Martel was dead, having been so wrapped up in the story. Cursing herself silently, she scribbled down the rest of the story, adding a few opinions and side-notes here and there.

When she glanced up, Kratos was struggling to push himself into a seated position. Her eyes widened slightly, and she placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down.

"No, don't get up yet. You're wounds aren't fully healed," she objected, but once more, she felt a hand around her wrist, forcefully removing her own hand from his shoulder.

"Raine, I'm a mercenary. If I don't get up soon, I'll go absolutely mental. For your safety and mine, let me the hell up." He demanded, his voice holding a slight growl. She sighed in defeat, shaking her head.

"Alright, alright. Just let me make you some Fandalia-petal tea. It'll help with the pain."

Grudgingly, the swordsman laid back down, and Raine scurried off into her kitchen. She put a pot of water on to boil, but when it came time to add the petals, her hand slid past them, grabbing hold of the tin of Saffron and the pouch of dried Amango. She diced a Saffron leaf and two pieces of Amango, letting them soak in the water until a pleasant aroma began to rise from the pot. Immediately the half-elf felt a bit dizzy, and she stepped back away from her tea-making, smiling in satisfaction. She felt bad lying to Kratos, but he needed his rest, and what better way to give it to him than to give him some relaxing tea?

When the steam turned pleasantly red-hued, she doused the fire in the stove, taking the pot off and pouring its contents carefully into a medium-sized cup. Spooning out the chunks of Saffron and Amango for reuse in some other cooking contraption, Raine returned to the seraph, steaming cup in hand. When she offered it to him, he accepted it with a nod of thanks.

She sat back and 'looked over her notes' as he drank the tea, all the while watching him through the corner of her eye.

'If this were a fairy tale, this sudden appearance of Kratos would begin a long journey that would take us through peril and end us conquering the forces of evil. But this is reality Kratos is a traitor and a fugitive, not a hero, and I... I'm a dirty half-elf, or so they say, not a heroine. And in reality, people can die.'

"So are you feeling better? The pain should be lessening by now," Raine questioned innocently, knowing full well that it was his awareness that she was hoping would lessen. But there came no reply. She glanced fully at the auburn-haired mercenary, and found him lying on his back, the mug on the floor beside him, his eyes closed peacefully. She crept over, lifting the cup off the carpet. "Kratos?"

Yet again, there was no answer. Her tea had worked.

'Irony of ironies, the recipe I followed was for energizing tea...'

Many hours of 'The Harnessing and Deflecting of Mana' later, when the sun was starting to set, she glanced at Kratos for what seemed like the fiftieth time. He was still sound asleep.

"Perhaps a lesser dose of tea would have done better?" She murmured contemplatively. "One Amango next time? And a smaller Saffron leaf, as well."

She knew it was necessary though, to sedate him as she had, else he'd never have gotten the rest he needed. His wounds still required time to heal. There was only so much Raine could do.

All of a sudden, there was a rough knocking at her door. Raine cocked her head in confusion; she never had visitors, and why would anyone be knocking at this hour anyways? Nonetheless, she rose fluidly to her feet, jogging over to the door and opening it just wide enough to poke her head out. A man in a green superfluously decorated uniform was standing on her doorstep, an aura of importance about him. Ice-cold fear raced through her veins, but she was careful not to let any of it show.

"Can I help you?"

"By the Grand Order of the Divine, I am granted access to your humble home and freedom of speech to deliver a message from your superiors without fear of being harmed." He commanded, and Raine's eyes widened. Something wasn't right. And, though she didn't know what he wanted quite yet, she knew he couldn't see Kratos.

The half-elf put on a worried look.

"Oh dear..." She put a hand up to her cheek, as if distressed slightly. "I wasn't expecting visitors, and my home is a frightful mess. I'd die of shame if you came in. Mind if I come out there instead?"

He eyed her suspiciously, before nodding curtly. Raine stepped outside and closed the door behind her. Immediately, the man pulled a scroll from one of the seams on his uniform, apparently a well-concealed pocket. Unrolling it, he turned he paper so Raine could see what it contained.

It was a very, very detailed sketch of Kratos.

She could barely contain her shock and dismay. They were already looking for him? How could they have found him so fast?

"This man is a traitor, a thief, and guilty of the highest of treasons. If he's seen, he needs to be turned over to the authorities immediately."

Terror seized her form, but she managed to choke up a few level-voiced words.

"Sir, isn't this that man that traveled with the Chosen One?" She asked with wide-eyed innocence. He sighed in annoyance, apparently hoping this would be the end of his search.

"I must depart. Remember, this man is a dangerous criminal and it is crucial that he is detained." With that, he turned and strode purposefully down the steps. Raine slipped back inside, closing the door firmly and leaning against it. Why had she been so scared? The half-elf had gone through much worse than that with a level head. Perhaps this time, she knew that if she slipped up, it could mean Kratos's life? That would be something that would haunt her conscience for the rest of her life, if she sent someone who trusted her to hide them to their death.

Glancing out the window at the distant form of the man, the Professor shuddered slightly. Hastily, she made her way into the living room once more.

The night fell and found her sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the seraph, watching over him as he slept. The angels wouldn't find him. She wouldn't let them.

ArissaMay: Okay, this one's a bit longer than the last, and I think the next one will be longer still. Not positive though. Sorry again that it took so long. I'm a bit disappointed by the review count, but... I suppose that's okay. My story isn't all that good anyways. :P