Disclaimer: I don't own Chrono Trigger, and this was not written with the intention of infringing on anyone's existing rights. I'm not making any money - this is just for fun.

Never quite prepared

x x x x x x x x x x x x

"And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places..."
Frost

x x x x x x x x x x x x

Whatever had happened in the main hall of the fortress, Lucca couldn't say. Once the last of the guards had been dispatched, she and the gurus moved quickly, looking for some trace of the self-named guru Lorraine and for Magus. Though much of the lay-out of the palace was almost identical to what she remembered from the kingdom of Zeal, this place was many times more vast, a labyrinth filled with ornate tapestries and beautifully worked sculptures, wide windows and gilded bookcases twice her height.

Gaspar walked along beside her, his youthful form barely touching the tiles of the floor as he glided softly through the corridors. For all his aura of confidence, she sensed a certain air of concern in him, and it worried her. If the guru of Time, with the power to turn back the days of his own life, was concerned, she felt she must be very definitely under-analyzing the situation.

The man's staidness was aggravating, though Lucca, on top of everything else, was stunned that she was even able to feel annoyance, after all that had taken place. "Gaspar, who was she?" She asked suddenly, forcing the question out in one breath. If she bothered to take the time to think everything through, she was certain she wouldn't learn half of what she sought.

"Precisely who she said she was." Gaspar's strides didn't shorten. "Lorraine was a great many things - selfish, cruel, relentless - but honesty is her favorite weapon, once she's twisted the truth to her liking."

"Then.. she really was your student?"

Gaspar's lips tightened into a white line, but otherwise his expression remained otherwise neutral. "Lorraine has never been anything other than a traitor. There are more ways to lie than simply with words, and Lorraine knows them well. Though she professed pure intentions once, it was not long before her ambitions became known, and she was cast out."

"How..." here Lucca paused, not certain how to ask what was on her mind. Or rather, she knew what she wanted to ask - she merely feared how it would be received. Taking a deep breath, she began again. "You know so much about time, Gaspar. From what I've been able to tell, you know what's going to happen."

"Only brief glimpses. Nothing more certain than that."

"You knew enough to make the Chrono Trigger."

Gaspar's face went utterly flat, though he didn't shift his glance to her. The purple hat he wore and the swinging locks of dawn golden hair kept his eyes from reaching hers. "That was another matter entirely, my dear." His tone broked no argument.

"But, if you had suspicions, even glimpses, why did you choose Lorraine to be your student? You must have known what would happen, or at least assume..." Lucca was aware that she was pushing too far, working against a man that she no longer had reason to be completely certain of. She didn't expect him to stop short, all at once freezing her with a look.

"You've come remarkably far in your understanding of time, child, but be careful how much you question. Sometimes, despite everything we might hope, there are choices that still have to be made. Let us leave it at that."

He didn't say anything more. Lucca, once again, hadn't been expecting anything so blunt. Maybe the transformation of age truly had changed the guru, leaving behind the long-winded, fogged man she'd known in the End of Time. Or maybe... maybe she hadn't known him all that well, after all. Falling a pace behind him, she allowed herself a sidelong gaze. The coldness in the corridor felt very piercing.

x x x x x x x x x x x x

Ascending their column of light from the frozen surface of the earth was nothing like using the old skyways and land bridges of Zeal. For a moment everything just hung in the air, as if the three of them had been somehow sealed in a column of ice. Marle's magic exerting the greatest influence, Crono thought wryly. Even the thought was fragmented and ugly, barely forming entirely before it was almost gone. Since her magical skill was the strongest of the three of them, it made sense that her power might overwhelm the other two, especially given the natural tendency of ice to influence water. It might have been wise to consider that, before they'd started the spell.

He had barely enough time to register that he was thinking at all when the entire world split open. Lines like the branches of a blazing tree streaked savagely around them, cracking angrily as they went. All at once agony screamed through his body and it took everything he had not to lash out with his mind, but as fast as the pain appeared, it was completely gone.

When his eyes could see again, all that was before them was a thick blanket of grey-black, and that wasn't right. They were clouds, he soon realized, which also felt wrong, since the island should have been above the clouds as Zeal was. Instead it was submerged into the valleys between them now, occasionally drifting into a crevasse where the sun shone, however briefly and impotently. The green grass below him was hard, touched already by heavy frost. Whatever happened, the world was growing colder once again, and he didn't know why.

"So what's the next step?" Marle croaked out, her hair disheveled and one strap of her white garment falling over her shoulder. Crono adjusted his own tunic self-consciously, cold for Marle. It made sense that the cold no longer troubled her, ever since Spekkio gave her power over ice, but it still sometimes bothered him when he thought about it.

His head still ached, but it came in bursts and most of them were easy to ignore. With a careless smile that was truly completely forced, he stood up, brushing grass from his trousers, and helped the other two to their feet as well. Of the three of them, Glenn was the worse for wear, standing very uneasily and shifting from foot to foot even as he did, one arm wrapped possessively around Crono's shoulders, claiming the younger man's equilibrium as his own.

"If I had to choose, I'd say they're probably over there..." he gestured toward the largest citadel, vaguely reminiscent of Zeal Palace in the time before the fall. The entire island, though it was similar, was so much more crowded than Zeal, with turrets and fortresses many times more grand, and some that were all too similar to the black omen. All jet-colored metal and jagged angles, some appeared to be made of nothing but night, visible only because of the many lights that glowed from within them, like some awful parody of a starry sky.

"True enough, lad. I canst help but wonder what we may find there, if we venture in..."

"Something horrible," Marle said flatly, "of course. We never go anywhere happy. It's gonna be something deadly and awful, probably made out of gold teeth like those stupid golem-things of Dalton's."

Crono couldn't help but laugh, even though it was true. The real terror in Zeal came from the ugly things, hidden carefully under layers of fantastic beauty.

"We better get going, one way or another." He was already freezing - colder now than he had been in the earthbound commons. The buildings, though foreboding, at least looked warm.

No one complained. Or if they did, Crono shut them out neatly enough, helping Glenn along behind him. Marle trailed at his elbow, checking the string of the Valkeyrie with agile fingers. He was glad of that. Marle, for the appearance she cut, could be about as fierce as Ayla when she put her mind to it, and now was clearly one of those times. part of her bottom lip was locked between her teeth, clenched so firmly the blood was gone, the skin a clear, clean white.

x x x x x x x x x x x x

"Stay together. I don't like this..." Of course, that was implied. The lines of his back were so tight they were almost jagged angles. Marle, oddly enough, felt no fear, for the first time since their arrival. It was a very premature sense of peace, of course, given how little they knew about where they were, but she kept it in her, a faint ray of light as brittle as a hooded lantern.

The path upward was barred by a thicket of birches, much like those on the earth below, except that they grew more densely together, full shields of white bark curling outward around those who passed through.

Crono pulled to the left, but something caught Marle's eye, and she froze in her tracks. No more than ten steps into the copse, she was already surrounded, in an area she might have sworn no one else could enter. The trees closed off behind her, sheltering her, and the way back was somehow lost in the tangle, completely obscured to her eyes. As she turned back, another figure stepped into the clearing, and Marle blew her breath out in relief, expecting Crono or Glenn.

Instead, it was the same woman, the odd one she'd met in the commons for only a moment, and who had disappeared without explanation - a woman who obviously couldn't have been completely mortal. Or one who was nearly identical, and Marle all but goggled at her, stumbling backward and nearly tripping over an upraised tree-root.

The woman laughed, the sound as whole and kind as she remembered. Though she didn't trust her, Marle had trouble truly believing this woman meant her harm, especially when thin, crystal-fragile fingers closed around her wrist, steadying her with a gesture that wasn't necessary - Marle had already regained her balance.

"I see we find our way to one another again, my dear. Goodness me, it's been awhile since I've met someone like you, someone who can draw me to them more than once. I suppose I shouldn't have come, really, but... but" here she leaned forward, her voice a loud whisper, "you won't tell anyone, will you?" Marle only stared, but the woman righted herself. "No, no, of course you won't."

"Who are you? What's going on here?"

"I might well ask you the same question, dear girl." At this the woman strode toward the nearest tree, caressing the trunk with the same careful hand as before. "I suppose, after that impressive display on the snow fields, you'll be well on your way to finding that out on your own. I've been so preoccupied that I've quite forgotten myself," she trilled another high laugh, suddenly reminding Marle very much of the young nun who had been one of her instructors in the castle back home. "I suppose it can't be helped now, but I'll keep a closer eye on other matters in the future."

"Do I know you?" Yes, she recognized her from the commons, recently and once more than two years ago, but the question held deeper implications, and the woman did not miss them.

"I held you in my hand for awhile, as I did for the other. Out of time, you were safe with me. The One who ordains the flow of time restored you, when He saw fit, just as he did for the hero of time, the young man you travel with." The woman was utterly unconcerned with the weapon Marle now halfheartedly aimed in her direction. None of the eeriness had abated, however. This woman couldn't have come by the skygate, since she was ahead of them, and seemed for all the world as if she'd never been outside of this clearing, as serene as the ocean.

"But I... I was... dead... wasn't I?" The swirling void, the almost-nothingness that pulled her in after Leene's disappearance had been like purgatory, from the cold moments of it that she could recall. Crono never mentioned a place like that, though he never really spoke of any of his memories, after his "death" in the Ocean Palace, if they were even reliable.

"Who are you?" she bit out, colder than she'd intended. One of the creator of this place's machinations, more likely than not. How else would she have learned of Crono's resurrection from Death Peak? None of the Earthbound knew for certain that Crono was the person Marle sought, after the fall of the Ocean palace. Crono had been tacit on the subject, and Marle and the others respected that. Magus most certainly wouldn't have told anyone. No matter how long he'd remained in the Dark Ages, the mage's opinion of the former Enlightened was very obviously unchanged.

"My dear, I would tell you if I could. It isn't solely my own will that keeps me from sharing it with you. There are simply... certain things... that your kind is not yet ready to understand." The woman tugged on one brightly patterned sleeve, her smile lop-sided and bright. "I will tell you this, though. Never fear that what you've experienced has been by chance. For every memory you hold, a purpose lives with it. This thing, called Life by your kind... it's a thing of infinite possibility."

"I don't think I know what you mean."

"You're a bright girl, whether you show it or not. It's a fair assumption that, someday, you will." With a flash and a brilliant laugh, she was gone. Marle trembled again, as she had the first time, and a creeping chill that she so rarely felt skittered away across her back.

"Marle? Did you even hear me...?" Crono's arrival was announced by snapping tree branches as he pushed his way into the clearing. His brow was imposingly low. "Did 'splitting up is a bad idea' sound unclear, for some reason?"

"No... no, I'm sorry. Come on." Ignoring his obvious surprise at her lack of both explanation and argument, she wrapped fingers around his wrist lightly, pulling him in her wake. Glenn stood not far from them, on guard on the path that led to the main citadel.

"'Tis time," was all the knight said at their approach, bounding off again across the quickly freezing stones of the path. Marle fell into step with Crono, watching his feet carefully to be certain she could match his stride. It was happy coincidence that it kept her almost completely from thinking about what had just taken place.

x x x x x x x x x x x x

"Where are Belthasar and Melchior?"

"Searching in their own way." Gaspar's reply was clipped and cold, and Lucca was glad he kept his eyes forward. She should have noticed that the other gurus were gone long before this, but her attention had been focused on the winding passages of the fortress as Gaspar led her farther and father upward.

"They have other matters to see to, as I can well understand."

Or rather, this was Gaspar's affair, and the other two saw that. Lucca drew herself up. Well, it was her affair too. Time, in any form, had become her ward since before the fall of Lavos, and she was she the others felt the same way.

"You're still responsible for her... in your own mind..." She said it very softly, acutely aware how thin the ice she stood on actually was. He didn't even slow, but she flinched anyway, expecting a deluge.

"Quite right. And in more than my own mind, my dear. I thought she'd gone on to Providence a very long time ago, and it's with no small regret that I find myself wrong. Lorraine was never a woman to be taken too lightly."

"Then... why...?" At this, the break finally did come, much more quickly than she would have judged. His eyes were flat, cold to their very core.

"Because all men make mistakes!" He moved on again. She didn't - frozen in the corridor, she only stared straight ahead, wondering what exactly she'd struck on. When she followed again, he was lingering in an alcove ahead, studiously not facing her. His young face now hung under a veil of spun gold, hiding everything but an arched face, pallid as alabaster. His age was heavier now than it had ever been before, when he wore the face of a kind, tired octogenarian.

"There is no time for this. We must move on, my dearYou can think of me what you like, but do it later."

And that was the core of the problem, what kept her in revolt even though she did as he bade her, meekly falling in step once more. She didn't know what to think, other than to be certain that there was a great deal more here that he wasn't telling her. Lorraine was a beautiful, tempting woman. Perhaps that...

She shook her head. Even if it were the case, it did no good to muse. If she was meant to figure it out, she would. If Gaspar wanted her to know, and he clearly didn't, he would have told her. All she could do was follow for now, and that was a reality she very much disliked admitting.

x x x x x x x x x x x x

There was neither night nor day outside the hall where Magus stood, chained twice about his waist and both wrists with thick iron links. He had awakened that way some hours ago, staring out into the stationary blackness of cloud, watching while veils of snow fell. He was chained to a pedestal many times taller than he, suspending a massive, shadowy creation that could only be one thing. Without seeing it, he could tell by the groaning, shrieking wail it made that it was indeed the Mammon machine, brought back from the dead but not entirely.

Lorraine stood some distance away, surveying him carefully as she'd done often since his awakening, but still remaining mostly silent. His attempts to goad her yielded nothing, so he was content to wait and ignore her. From the little memories he kept of her, patience was not among them. In time, she would make her move, and he would kill her and stop whatever madness she hoped to cause.

"I find it a great surprise that you resist me so."

"You shouldn't." He fought the urge to smirk, despite the renewed hammering in his head. All things came to those who waited...

"Didn't time take from you what you loved most?" Fitting. She would play her most powerful card first. Even so, Magus didn't waver.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You are very poor at masking what you feel, O prophet. For how many years have you now searched for your sister, finding less with each passing day?" Ever closer she came, and the throb spread into his teeth again, reminiscent of their first cursed meeting. He didn't turn to face her. "Surely Schala's lot was not greater than any other. Why, then, did Gaspar offer no Chrono Trigger to you? Are you not more worthy than he? Is not Schala worthy of that gift?"

She floated close, so very close, her breath whispering over the bare flesh of his shoulders. Involuntarily, he shuddered, and then swore he would show her nothing else, no other part of himself. "I would not keep from you what you seek. I could make a Trigger, if you wish, once the old man is dead and the flow of time rewoven.

"And what do you benefit from this? Altruism doesn't suit you, Lorraine."

Her haughty exterior slammed back into place, implacably wall-like. "I am not incapable of forcing you to do as I ask. You know of the magic born of necessity and desperation. Your own power is rash, as you are rash, exacting a toll with every cast. My own skill is more... restrained. Before disowning me, the old fool planted the seeds of magical working... the ability to manipulate the strings of magic, to tie and untie as I see fit.

Magus thought at once of the dark halls in Ozzie's fortress, which would later become his own castle. At first he had been a prisoner, an oddity collected as a way to ensure Ozzie's dominance over the mystics. A human who could use magic, something the rest of mankind had been denied.

He performed like a trained lion, lashing out with his power whenever Ozzie cracked the whip, mastering ever greater quantities of black magic until he surpassed the would-be mystic despot himself. Janus had not been able to master the magic of the elements, as could the other Enlightened. Magus the sorcerer was another matter, never mind that the magic he cast came at a high price. Each spell felt ripped from his body, a price paid in his own blood until his very form began to change, losing most semblance of humanity altogether.

An easy price to pay, the physical change. Much as he grew to hate life in the fist of the mystics, life among the humans of that time was even more absurd - to think that the Earthbound had fully outlasted the Enlightened, until magic was a parlor trick, something done with cards and bits of string and coins, not the great driving force it once was.

He stifled a mirthless chuckle, looking back on the folly of his youth. As if it mattered what one was raised as. Anyone with great force of will could overcome the past. Enlightened or Earthbound, people were people, and the foolish were ever content to remain that way. He had no loyalty to anyone - certainly not the kingdom of Zeal, the place that consumed his mother and led to the rise of Lavos. The place that attempted to corrupt and destroy his sister. The place that condemned him, for his own lack of magic...

Magus had given up straining against the bonds. Somehow his own power held him, fed back through whatever machination Lorraine had devised, so that the machine, as it amplified its own power, used any struggle to strengthen itself. He waited, hoping a passive exterior might keep Lorraine from noticing just how much of his magic still remained. It could be possible that, if he regained enough before she tried to force him to summon the black wind, his magic might overcome it completely. It might also be possible that the recoil would kill him, but he had faced death more than once in the past. It certainly had no power over him now.

Voices from outside the hall brought Lorraine's attention, and he turned his head toward the growing tumult as well. In the shade of the archway, Lorraine's two guards lunged forward. One froze in place, his body below the waist encased in solid ice, while the other stumbled back. Of his own sword there was only the shattered hilt, and the conspicuous girth of another blade that pierced all the way through his armor. Even without the now-screaming ache in his head, he would have known it as the Masamune.

Its wielder stepped through the arch, followed closely by Marle and Crono, flaming red hair dwarfing anything that might still have been happening in the corridor behind them. The once-amphibious knight looked down at the fallen guard, still struggling weakly despite the red pool he lay in. Watching Glenn closely, Magus felt the gentle flutter of a cure spell, sealing the bulk of the man's wound, just before the hilt of the great sword smote his helm, rendering him limp across the golden tiles.

"Rather a waste of your time, good sir knight," Lorraine crooned. "Once he rises again, he will kill you. A pity that you waste your skill on him for nothing."

"Chivalry never be without purpose, milady. But who art thou? What hast thou..." Glenn's voice broke when he noticed Magus, chained ceremonially at the base of the massive jet pillar. Looking upward, the knight's face darkened in ever greater horror. "What devilry is this...? Who art thou?"

"Stay away," Magus barked, bringing the focus of all four of them to him. "She isn't what she seems. This is the woman that -"

"I might well be given the opportunity to extend welcome of my own accord, for surely you would not do worthy guests proper service, my boy." Lorraine sounded stretched, which hardly upset him. She turned back to the others, missing his glare. If only she were a little closer...

x x x

At the sight of the revived Mammon machine, Marle stopped in horror. The device was meant to be powered from the great strength of Lavos, born from the energy of the very earth itself, and those who lived on it. Lucca could give a more correct description, she was sure, but it was enough to know that, without Lavos, the machine was no less dangerous. Whatever power it took came at a tremendous cost, and she could almost feel the pain that poured outward across the tiles, an oily cloud over a sea of gold.

"Crono, what do we -" Marle caught Crono's arm, the Valkeyrie held firmly in her other hand and not wavering by an inch from Lorraine's chest. The would-be queen's eyes widened, her body rising visibly, though she ignored the weapon entirely. Crono turned toward her, his blade not yet fully lowered, confusion on the features Marle knew so well.

"And so it is Crono, the hero favored by the fabric of time itself, who finds his way to me, and I wouldn't deny that I greatly desired this. Long have I waited to try my power against yours." At his look of surprise, she smiled almost sweetly. "Have you not yet guessed, child? You and I are so much alike... forced to accept roles we did not choose, to be used by time as it sees fit." Crueler curves returned to the smile. "Have you not wondered about your fate? If you perish here today, would time spare you again, or is your life of no further use? Did you wish to be little more than a tool?"

Crono didn't answer. His body tensed like a drawn bow, ready at any moment to break under the strain. Marle feared for him. These were the questions she knew he had asked of himself almost daily since the incident in the Ocean Palace, even if he never spoke openly about it. She couldn't blame him. Her own few moments of timelessness, after her presence in the past had altered history, would be forever imprinted in her memory. Coupled with the appearance of that strange woman in the forest...

"You won't live forever, dear child. Did they ever tell you? Mortality is still the curse of time, never to be given when you might wish it, but withheld, used against you like a sword." Crono stood still, but Marle didn't know how much he heard. If it were possible, she would deafen her to the woman completely. If Magus had so much reason to hate her, and if she were the one who rebuilt the horrible machine, then surely anything she said must be a lie.,

"You were free of it once, through the choice of another - not your own. You are chained, and time alone holds the key. Why do you bow to it? Why do you let it use you, nothing more than a puppet, never more than an object to be cast aside when its purposes are fulfilled?"

"I am myself..." he muttered, painfully absent. "I did what I did because... because I..."

"Were you expecting reward?" The softness of her inspired true hatred in Marle. "No, child. Youth will leave you, your body will betray you, until you are little more than dust, swept away by a cruel master and kept even from the memory of men, when enough years have gone by. Everything you love will be taken away by the thing you fought for. Eventually this world will end. Not even you can stop that."

Marle was an intruder, overhearing words not meant for her, which was obvious - she could see through this woman's ploy, whoever she might be. Some displaced Enlightened, stumbling over magic strong enough to really make a mess of time, if the warp had been any indication. There was something in her, something different, that kept her from being merely a woman. Something bigger, though Marle couldn't say what it was. It didn't matter. Big enemies fell harder and faster than small ones.

Behind her came a muffled shout, and she was nearly bowled over by a short, brown clad figure, hat skewing spectacles as she braced herself against Marle's back. Marle almost fired, nerves fraught already.

"Lucca?"

Lucca blinked several times, then moved her glasses so she could rub at her eyes.

"What...? How did you get here...?"

"Long story, believe me. Where are the gurus?"

The woman was still speaking in the distance, having drawn off toward where Magus was chained, some sort of terrible sacrifice to the beast of a machine that dominated the room's center. Marle couldn't put meaning into the words, instead focusing on the purple-clad figure that strode through the arch-way. Lucca half-turned.

"Gaspar's with me. I don't know where the other two are."

"Gaspar?" This man was young, full of face and eye, his hair a vibrant blond. Had Lucca lost her mind?

"Like you said, we've got a lot to talk about later. Now, where's Lorraine...?" She trailed off, replacing her glasses and noticing, from the look of absolute horror on her face, the goings-on in the room.

"What the hell...? She actually did it...?"

Lorraine's voice broke back through then, still speaking only to Crono. "Your lives are over! If I kill you, it will be forever. Nothing will save you. Isn't your dear lover worth more than that? The lives of the ones you treasure? Why defy time, when I could offer you so much more...?"

An old, dry memory scraped through Marle's mind. 'Why don't you do as Schala says, and run away yelping in terror? Isn't your life precious to you?'

"My God..." If a shot had been clear, if she hadn't been so close to Magus and the machine, Marle would have killed the woman herself, then and there.

"I fail to see what time found so special... so... necessary. A boy, nothing more. Not enough to threaten me."

"This 'boy' killed the last tyrant of Zeal. He's more of a threat than you could know..." Magus strained against the invisible bonds that held him, leering at the woman who stood below him. "Do you think he'll flinch away from doing so a second time?"

"Your mother..." Lorraine placed a considering finger alongside her lips. "Then you must share an equal hatred for him, if this is the one who cost your mother her life and your kingdom its glory."

At this, Magus threw back his head and laughed - a terrible, raw sound, and Marle sunk down, looking for a way to escape it. "My mother... was a puppet, and a fool. She destroyed Zeal, took Schala, ruined my life... and you, you're trying to become her, to take over where she failed, but turn your back on me, even for one second, Lorraine, and I'll break your neck with my own hands."

"I doubt that very much. I have no intention of turning my back on you." Lorraine's smile was smug, but her voice wavered ever so faintly. The first palpable crack in her composure that Marle had seen.

Above them, hanging high over Magus's head, a brilliant bolt of light burst, like a star in the throes of death. The light was only matched by the scream that tore from the dark mage's throat as he threw back his head, the air around him suddenly thick and wavering, flowing like heat across stone.

"What's going on...!" Marle grabbed for Crono's hand, barely catching it before the floor lurched. Under her fingers, though, there was no life. Crono didn't squeeze back - just stared dimly ahead. Nearby, Lucca stumbled and fell. Gaspar, spear upraised, advanced on Lorraine.

"What have you done? Have you taken leave of all of your senses!"

"Much as I enjoy our rapport, it seems my goals are closer to hand now. Forgive me, if I find it necessary to turn you out..."

"It's the Mammon Machine!" Lucca cried out, pointing at the steadily growing light above.

"You'll kill yourself, Lorraine! You'll destroy the world!"

Lorraine's cold smile was fixed once again. When she spoke, her voice was so low it barely carried, even though aside from Magus's pained gasping, the chamber was moribund and still. "'I desire to know the power and nature of time, by which we measure the motions of the bodies...'"

A golden haze, like fog, collected around them all at once. Marle opened her mouth to scream, expecting a wave of pain that never came.

x x x x x x x x x x x x

Blinking eyes that she hadn't closed, Marle lay on her back in a gray room, surrounded by hulking machines and metal panels, all bearing a very unsettling resemblance to the corridors and old halls of the blackbird.

Crono lay some distance away, his face hidden under his hair and his arms crossed over his chest, for all the world as if he were asleep.

"I swear, this is the worst day..." she grumbled, picking herself up slowly. Every muscle felt loose and overused, as if she'd been running for hours, or soaking in hot water far too long. Closing her eyes, she felt the pulse of white light flicker through her, spreading gently like an invocation through her limbs, and she felt better when it passed, if only a little.

Everything was still sharp and fresh in her mind, and she knew that, wherever they were still somewhere on the island, though probably far away from Lorraine and whatever she was planning. It wasn't a comforting thought, which was surprising. She was hoping it would be. Who would have thought, on top of everything else, she could be feeling sorry for Magus right now?

"Crono?" He shifted when she called her name, leaving the impression that he'd been conscious for some time now, just like she was, but the stab of worry didn't lessen. He made no mood to sit up, only lying there flatly, almost lost. "Crono..!" The second call was sharper. Still, he made no motion.

"Just leave me alone, Marle. I just... I just want some time to myself."

Something he'd never truly had, Marle thought wryly. But then, not something he had ever wanted. Crono knew what he was doing, at the Ocean Palace. He had known where that action would lead. At the time, how could he have fathomed that he might have been spared?

At that moment, she hated Lorraine more than anything. What right did she have to drag all of them into this? It was surreal. Zeal was gone. This was the past and it was dead, along with everything else that happened two years ago, and for God's sake, what right did she have to make them live it all over again? Especially Crono?

Glancing over at him lying there, she suppressed a sigh. Sometimes she wondered, when he was so wrapped up in his own strife, if he realized just what it took from the rest of them. Hope and despair had been her constant allies throughout the ordeal, always one or the other, and never any lesser, more neutral emotion.

"You don't know how long I've been waiting." He looked up, but she didn't meet his eyes. Right now she was composed, able to deliver what she'd been meaning to say for so long with a false sense of serenity, and it was important that it stay that way. "I know you must have felt something like that when I... well, when I... got lost, after the fair. I feel like it isn't really the same, because you knew what to do. Like you had some kind of direction even though it was all so weird. But..." she swallowed, but not hard. Her mouth was already too dry. "But you were dead. I actually watched you die, Crono."

"So what are you saying, Marle? That she's right?" When her resolve slipped, she knew it had been a mistake. His face spoke of nothing but pain, and there was no way she could blame him for it, because inside she was broken too. But she was learning. She was going to be a queen, after all, and the power of her own grace, as Leene once told her, was in her hands. "Are you saying that I'm not really here? That I'm just some kind of shadow...?"

The well inside of her gave way. His voice was small and sad and she felt so warm inside for him, her arms around him before she remembered moving. "No, she said, equally as quiet, "I'm saying that for two years, you've been pretending like nothing happened."

"I..." He didn't cry, but his body trembled when he pressed it against her - she didn't know what she'd do if he cried, and knowing how inevitable this moment was didn't fix the fact that it was here, and she still felt so lost for him. All she could do was hold tighter, her mind a white and holy prayer.

"It'll be alright," it was the easiest lie she ever told, and it was funny how wanting to believe something so badly really could make it feel true. There was some comfort - raw as it may be - in that. "You're nothing less, you know that? I know you feel like... you're afraid that you lost something. Like there are pieces that aren't coming back and I wish I knew how to find them for you..." because she felt the same way, the shadowy gap of timelessness no less real now than it had been at the time, when she'd re-materialized to find herself sobbing and bewildered by Crono's side.

With the emptiness came the overpowering fear, always assumed but never voiced, that at the end of her life, nothing else waited for her - no glorious rebirth or tranquil afterlife. Just the same cold, dark certainty that, at last, nothing would ever change, and there was no other thought that brought her less comfort. Every day for months she'd ventured into the Cathedral and sat for hours, finding some solace but never as much as she looked for.

If Crono searched at all, he did it quietly. She dreaded the things he must have pondered - that, if his soul had been given a chance at heaven and then brought back to earth, was that chance now lost? Would he ever actually feel alive again, when, as far as time was concerned, he hadn't really died? And what if, as Lorraine had so cruelly ask, time hadn't chosen him? Where would any of them be?
Would it be so gracious again, if Crono failed this time? Only one altruistic act would be forgiven - eventually everyone died.

"It's hard to hate her, you know that?"

Marle looked back at him, blinking. "Lorraine?"

"It shouldn't be, since she's crazy, but it... it just is. I can't help but wonder... what happened? What did she lose?"

"Her home," Marle replied without thinking, the answer as easy as breathing, "probably her family, the use of her magic..." They weren't as used to their abilities as the Enlightened must have been, but not being able to call on the silver vein of ice that flowed under her skin was one of her larger fears. It defined her now, as a heroine and one of the knights that defeated Lavos. She knew that even without it, she wouldn't stop being Nadia, and that no one would love her less, but she wondered if she could forgive herself the loss of that particular vanity, the thing that distinguished her from everyone else.

At the same time, her own bitterness was barely blunted. A true queen knew how to contain things like that. The pain of others was never acceptable, no matter who they were, when the whole world was like a growing child that ought to be sheltered and cared for, showed carefully and tenderly what suffering was, to be kept safe as long as it could. All Lorraine knew was vengeance and thirst, and Marle couldn't excuse that.

Crono had good aim, she thought with a sad smile, feeling him settle against her. He knew exactly how to make the greatest impact without trying - how to always hit her where it counted. It wasn't intentional, since that sort of thing never was. If he ever figured it out, it probably wouldn't work anymore. Now, though, he could blow her clear open with one word, sometimes.

"We've got to get out of here." It hurt to break their quiet, but it was the truth. Neither of them knew where they were, and her total lack of worry about it was almost alarming.

"What does it matter? The others should take care of it..."

"Okay, we're way out of time for self-pity, Crono." Annoyance. She hadn't felt that before, at least not toward him. 'Every right to be angry' meant when it was safe to be angry and withdrawn. Not now - not when everything was resting on him. She'd fought without Crono before, but she wasn't going to do it now, not when she didn't have to.

"Here. Get on your feet." She was surprised when he came up easily, not fighting. This was obviously something that wasn't done being an issue, but now was not the time for it. A sadly ironic thought.

Ollen70: For those of you who were worried that Lorraine was going to degenerate into the mustache-twirling, tying the damsel-in-distress-to-the-train-tracks type villain, rest easy. I don't believe in "evil" in a character anymore than I believe in absolute good. People are more complicated than that. The people I write about are, at least.

So, for the few who are still reading this, thanks so much for sticking with me. This has been a blast to write, even though it takes me forever to post things, but it's nearing the end. As always, I'd love to hear what you think; everybody knows reviews are a writer's bread and water.