The air was cold that high up. It always was on the deck of the Fiertia, but Rita didn't normally have Raven sitting next to her with their backs against the railing, so close that she could feel the warmth from his jacket before the wind snatched it away. It made it even colder in comparison and so she sidled closer to him until her shoulder nudged against his arm. She would have been content then, even though one half of her body felt as though it were freezing. But Raven took a hint – that he was probably imagining because there was no way that's what she meant because absolutely not but she wouldn't object because the idea was actually nice and that was why she was content – and his arm lifted to lay across her shoulders and pull her closer. It was more like the irritating drape he would do across Karol when he was being dramatic, but his coat drew her into itself and his thumb gently rubbed at the hard point of where her collarbone met her shoulder.

"Where did she go?" she asked, as Estelle ran cool fingers from Rita's braid - curled loosely against her scalp and fuzzy with all the hair too short to be contained - to drift up and down her arm, slowly fading the green-brown of the bruises lingering across Rita's chest and legs.

"Celcius went after them." Estelle paused for a long moment between thoughts. "And they followed."

"They all just followed?"

"Well..."

o-o-o

The spirits had all stared and blinked. Which really just meant a long period of no movement, their attention to human niceties gone.

The chamber slowly cooled and the mist that had started to dissipate just curled into the corners and spread a layer of frost across the nicks and cracks of the once-perfect stone.

"Wha-" Karol just sounded more and more distraught with every passing moment. Judith joined Repede as they stepped protectively around the kid, their gazes darting towards every corner in quick, coordinated succession. A pipe clacking echoed through the hallways.

Yuri couldn't pull off quite the move on his own, so he just settled for carefully moving around Estelle, his sword now in hand, loose and dipping gently with his movement, ready for whenever it might be needed. She didn't notice, her feet planted in a careful stance that he knew meant her knees were bent for a dart to one side or another. Her weapons still weren't out, but that was what he was for. He was her weapon. He knew she didn't need her. In two seconds, she would be right alongside Judith, fingers carefully slack on the hilt of her sword and shield cupped across her forearm.

His sword tapped against his knee again, secure in its sheath.

The ice spirit hovered at eye level to Maxwell, her arms crossed and stance wide as she glared at the other spirit. But she wasn't talking to Maxwell.

=What do you think you can do?= Sylph's voice was a bitter hiss.

=I lived alongside him for years, hearing his plans and believing them. The doctor – Volt...=

Yuri heard the hesitation. So did Judith. He heard the faint, distant howl of Ba'ul as the entelexia agreed with their pause. Repede just growled and wrapped himself around Karol's leg, his hackles raised and his pipe moving from side to side with the frenetic movement of his tongue.

=Volt,= the spirit said more assuredly, her hair bristling as icicles formed about her scalp, =fancies himself above his station. He is just what we are, nothing more. Not Maxwell as he believes himself.=

=He fancies himself at my level?= Maxwell interjected, almost at the point of interrupting the other spirit, its tone moving into an outright laugh.

=Prove him wrong.= Undine's voice was just as venomous as Sylph's, a rush of riptide and waterfall.

More questions?= Maxwell's tone was tight.

The fading mist blossomed, dying curls blowing up to a thick smog that choked and smothered, blurring Estelle's features even though she stood two feet from Yuri. He slid closer, sword finally clicking free into his hand.

=You seem threatened,= Efreet said, the mist fizzling into steam around him and making him the only truly visible figure in the entire chasm, an orange-white figure of flame. It became clearer than ever why he and Rita got along so well.

They both crossed their arms the same way.

=What makes you better than us?=

o-o-o

So all of them. All of them had followed. There had been protest, there had been conversation, but they had all decided to follow.

The feeling had tightened the bottom of her lungs and made it hard to breath.

She knew the spirits could handle it. Just three of them could make it happen. So if any of the rest of them decided to help. they could make it happen. And if they couldn't, there was always going to be Brave Vesperia behind them.

The pain in her chest was because she wasn't helping.

But the gentle burn on her forehead where he had kissed it was almost enough for her to ignore that and start to decide what it was that she actually could do, let alone would actually do.

There was a reason she was on an flying ship back to the tropical port town that vacation dreams were made of.

"Rita, are you sure?" Estelle's protest was half-hearted if it was a protest at all. She knew the answer as well as Flynn had.

"I'm just tired," Rita said, knowing it was enough of an answer for the question. "And I won't be alone, so you don't have to worry."

That was what made Estelle look like she had more to say, but also like she was trying to decide what.

"Rita..." she finally began.

Estelle was good at that, saying someone's name a thousand times, each one holding a different nuance. This time, it was soft, probing.

"How do you feel about Raven?"

Rita stared at the quilt in her lap.

"I don't know," she said after a moment and they both knew it was a lie. Rita realized that she knew what Estelle had asked Raven outside the door and the thought of what his answer might have been scared her.

"Rita," Estelle said, for the third time, "I just want to make sure you're going to be okay all right."

"I'll be fine." And she met the princess's gaze then, hoping that Estelle understood all the things Rita didn't.

The other girl just smiled, bright and sunny. She did. Rita just barely smiled at her back, but it was enough. Estelle was the person who actually exactly understood anything Rita might have to say but wasn't, including knowing that Rita would absolutely and emphatically deny everything that was an absolute 'no'.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

The smile only got brighter, without ever losing the understanding if that ever was not the case, Estelle would not hesitate to step in for her. They both knew. Estelle had told her in low terms, some explicit and some not, through all the time they had known each other. Rita could have out-powered anyone in Brave Vesperia unless the spirits themselves turned against her, but even she knew – however reluctant and actively viciously – she had no idea how to do anything. It made her wonder sometimes how good of a judge Estelle herself was, since she was just as un-experienced as herself at people. She'd given herself up to Alexei.

The vicious question again of who had been the one to take Estellise to Alexei was too painful. Had it been Raven or Schwann?

She asked Estelle in that moment. And even though she knew it was crossing a line that even she, who had spent weeks sleeping in the same vast room with Raven – and wasn't that a realization she wasn't comfortable dealing with at the time – didn't really want to question in terms of who was who because that was way more info than she felt she really had the right to know, she still wanted to know what the other girl would say.

Estelle dodged the question harder than Rita ever did about any question of whether she might actually have any kind of feeling about the old man. Her only response? Going back to her original question.

"I'm glad."

She turned then and looked towards the door. Following suit, Rita saw Yuri duck almost guiltily back into the hallway, trying to pretend that he hadn't just been leaning into the frame. Raven made no such attempt, just sort of watching both women with a sort of hooded gaze, his arms crossed in an careless indulgence.

"We'll keep looking," Estelle promised, speaking to Rita even as she met the old man's gaze. "You just get some rest."

"Thanks, Estelle."

Rita shifted, moving deeper into the folds of the jacket. Raven's arm moved accommodatingly, his elbow snug between her shoulder blades. He didn't look down and she didn't look up, just tilted her chin enough to rest her head against his shoulder.

o-o-o

Raven looked across the loose wisps of Rita's hair to where she was watching the family of the sky. Judy was leaning back on her hands atop the captain quarters' roof, her knees up and one leg hooked jauntily over the other. It put Raven very much in mind of the last time he'd been on the ship with Judy, what felt like six years ago instead of just months at the most generous. Then, she had glittered her teeth at him. Now she threw her head back to laugh at something Tokunaga and Ba'ul had said. Then, he had been terrified to set foot near Rita, the Genius Mage of Aspio's, home for fear of her turning his skin inside out. Now Rita's shoulder was sharp and warm against his ribs and the slight weight of her head was against his shoulder. Then, he had been gormlessly wandering around in the aftermath of the Adephagos, with any real purpose or motivation. Now... well, it wasn't much different. He was still just drifting around. But now he had something to do, something to guide him. Once they were there, once they were settled... maybe he would start taking some responsibility. He had a sheaf of dusty papers and memos tucked into his jacket pocket. It was small and flat and didn't weigh much of anything, but it felt like a lead weight.

The commandant caught him leaving the guild offices in the middle of the night, Raven's step light and his eyes darting about like he was stealing something rather than just touching the mountain of paperwork that folks had given up on adding to. Flynn was in his casual uniform, with none of the armor pieces. He looked more comfortable this way, more confident, with an easy set to his shoulders.

"Do you have a minute?" he asked, as Raven guiltily tucked the papers into his pocket.

"Sure. What can I do fer ya?" Raven had stopped when he saw Flynn, drawing closer for polite conversation, but Flynn kept the momentum going and they were walking down the hall, their voices hushed in the late night hours.

"I'm sorry for asking what I did of you."

"Not me who needs th'apology, but I appreciate the thought. And it's not like I ever made any reports or anythin'."

Flynn smiled at that, a wry, almost sad smile. He wore it like his uniform and it made him look older. Wiser.

"True. You were a terrible spy. I wouldn't have trusted you with my interests for any length of time."

The way he said it, it was the greatest compliment he could have ever given Raven.

"Take care of her, Raven. I don't trust her to do it herself."

Raven smiled then, but for both it was a cautious smile, one that acknowledged there was indeed some very real dangers for the mage and she would just as likely not charge right into them. On purpose.

They came to the jagged edges of the hallway, where the explosions had torn out haphazard chunks of priceless portraits and gilded wallpaper to expose the stone and night air beyond. Flynn walked to stand on the edge of the precipice, looking down through the damage of shattered ceilings and gaping walls. The wind was starting to get chilly and for a fraction of a second, Raven had the urge to pull the commandant away from the edge. It had him leaning forward, his knee ready to drag his foot into a step.

But Flynn looked up and across the landscape, his face turned up to the sky, and the moment passed. The tarps that were beginning to be stretched across the holes fluttered, and Raven's hair whipped across his face as his heel settled back into place.

There wasn't very much mass to Rita, but she was warm and prickly against his ribs, her goggles not doing a very good job of containing her hair as the wind grabbed it and twisted it in spirals. It was getting longer. He wondered if she would let him braid it again, if nothing else but to keep it out of her face. It might keep her from haphazardly hacking it off and giving Estelle a heart attack. He had done it before for dress occasions and the rare combat situation when he had time for more than a simple ponytail and Rita's hair was definitely longer than his had ever been before he was dead. He hadn't done it for anyone other than himself before, but he was pretty sure Estelle hadn't either – he wasn't sure she, being a princess, had ever actually done it for anyone, including herself, and if she could make a delicate braid that curled along Rita's forehead and back over her left ear, he was pretty sure he could. It had been weird to see her hair so contained as she hucked her duffel over her shoulder, a weight that he knew her doctors would absolutely object to if they were allowed to see her without the world's best healer hovering by her side.

"What?" Her tone wasn't really defensive, just a question. He realized that he was staring. If the sight of her oil-stained stomach had been enough to make him look away a week ago, the look of her hair in a wasn't goggle-less braid was enough of a reason to stare. He had stared at her at the ball and then it had also been a braid thing without goggles, but also then he had been trying to figure out why she looked weird – which means the reason he had pretended to pick his ear in the middle of the decade's most fashionable event was due to a lack of understanding about hairstyles. Now, it was just unusual to see her ears, let alone her neck, beneath the nest of hair she had developed again.

"It looks nice," he said, flipping at the tail end where it frayed a little from all the dead ends she was perfectly content to cultivate. He hoped it wouldn't convince her to not do it again. She didn't look self-conscious, just annoyed.

"I like it," she huffed.

"It looks nice," he said again, grinning at her and flipping the end once more, more obnoxiously now. She just scowled, hoisting her bag higher and brushed past him on her way down the hallway, Estelle hovering by her side to ward off all the doctors who would accost her.

He was still pretty sure that it had just been laziness and not any kind of reluctance that had reduced her hair to its current windswept tangles. She had done a lot of bossing around in the meantime and while her hair was longer, it still wasn't long enough to be secure in a tight braid for long with all heat securing the curls. He was pretty sure because there were still remnants of braid roaming through the tips of her hair that were twisting themselves into vicious tiny knots, because no one had thought to take them out, versus her having already finger-combed them out.

He'd probably be able to convince her.

o-o-o

There was a small crowd gathered around the edges of the harbor. It happened almost any time they landed anywhere. People usually could see Ba'ul coming for at least a little while before he arrived, and lines would form to find out where and when they were going next. A formal ticketing method or scheduled route hadn't been developed, but people were always willing to chip in and often just being in the general area of the intended destination was good enough. It wasn't a very big ship, the Fiertia, but it was a ship. At this point, transportation fees probably were accounting for most of the guild funds.

It reminded Rita that she had a few investors she needed to shake up for her research funds.

Past the age of eleven or so, she had never had to worry about money. If it wasn't a grant, it was a noble who wanted an elaborately timed light and fountain system, a hospital that needed new illustrations for their anatomy students, or just a family with an heirloom blastia that needed appraisal. It had always gone towards the stacks of books on every flat surface, or bookcases to try and contain those books, or more flat surfaces when the bookcases inevitably failed.

Now the money was mostly being given away, whether pushed into Yuri's hands to distribute food to the small forgotten villages, channeled into reconstruction projects, or mostly-absent tips of far too much for the errand girl who brought her the mail and her groceries.

Now there was Maxwell research needed.

The crowd had arranged itself in tidy clumps as the Fiertia nestled itself in-between the docks, and Tokunaga was quick to leap into the fray in one of his newest jobs – a travel agent. He was good at it, figuring out who needed to go where the most urgently so he could prioritize their next series of stops.

Rita hesitated at the top of the gangplank. She wanted to go home, but there was a sea of strangers' faces facing her, even if none of them were looking at her. Right now, it was just... a lot.

She felt Raven come up behind her, his chest bumping one of her shoulders as she stopped abruptly in front of him.

"Okay, Rita darlin'?" He bent slightly, hunching over her with his hands in his pockets, to bring his face closer to her ear, making himself heard under the murmur of the crowd and Tokunaga's exuberant instructions.

"Yeah," she said, the noise mostly just an exhale and she felt him grin against her cheek, a damn scritching across her cheek from his stubble, then his breath was gone and he bumped her shoulder again as he straightened. She glared up at him - the underside of his jaw really was getting shaggy, the beard starting to creep down his neck instead of the artfully roguish lines she knew he shaved into his stubble, because again with the realization about weeks of sharing a bathroom – straightened her shoulders, and huffed down the ramp.

Once they were through the throng, they were invisible again, no one caring about two travelers in a port town, especially not when there was an entelexia in town. The door looked the same as it had, sun-bleached and warm, but the dark inside of the house smelled like dust, the memory of sulfur, and a faint mildew. That was a little concerning. The sulfur she could trace back to the day before she actually left, and the mildew could just have been some of the older books, but she better not find a stack of moldy paperwork anywhere. Raven dropped his bag with a thump and stretched loudly, each vertebrae pop followed with a satisfied 'aaaaahhhh'.

"Well now, isn't this cozy?" He brought his arms down and peered around the room.

"You've been here before," Rita said distractedly, having put her own bag down and moved to the wall near the door, finding the switch to reattach the generator. She'd still have to actually start the generator up again, since shutting that and the water down had been the last things she had done on her way out the door all that time ago, not sure when she would be back.

"Yeah, but ya usually threw things at me. Not much time for sightseein'."

"I don't throw things at people who don't deserve it," she said around her tongue between her teeth. She had been overzealous in tightening the water shutoff and now it was getting her back. The grip dug into her thumb pad.

"I never said I was undeservin'," he replied and she knew he was making some stupid pose, probably some exaggerated contrition.

She was thrown off balance as all of her weight made the shutoff finally relent and she heard the pipes start to rattle. The heel of her hand felt the missing skin acutely.

"It'll be a little while before the water heater kicks in, old man. So probably wait unless you like cold showers."

She turned back to him and the sight of his stupid face, his stupid hair, and his stupid jacket there in the middle of the room, looking enthralled at the ceiling as the electric lights flickered to life, sent a deep jolt right to the backs of her knees.

He was right there. Where she had left him, just two steps into the door, but there. And she was home.

"What?" He had noticed her looking at him. "Did I get something on my face?"

He touched said face, squishing his cheek between his hands. It was stupid, a doofy expression that she knew was supposed to make her smile.

"Hey Rita?"

The runt's voice was the last one she had been expecting. She raised her head up from where she had been buried in the pile of her dirty socks, trying to find the specific non-pair that was her favorite. She still wasn't convinced they hadn't buried the rest of her clothes whenever they'd gotten hold of them and it was making her paranoid now. She had demanded they bring her back everything they had or could find and so they were in a pile in the middle of Raven's stained carpet.

The kid was braver than Yuri, she had to give him credit. The great hero of Terca Lumieres had barely poked his silky black head into the doorframe long enough to call for Estelle and utter some apology or something and then he was gone.

Karol had Repede leading him – the dog coming in to curl on top of Raven's bed sheets and huff his approval at their comfort – but he still made his way over to Rita under his own power.

Rita watched him approach, crossing her legs and her arms.

"Hey," he said again, and he was standing in front of her. With her sitting on the floor, he towered above her but he flinched like she was looming over him, closing his eyes.

"You know Raven likes you, right?" The words were an awkward bleat, so fast that the words almost ran together.

She could only think about how hard Nan would have punched someone in the face if they had waltzed up and said that to her about Karol.

"Yeah, so?"

The kid's nose wrinkled even as his ears burned so hot that she could practically feel them from here.

"Does he know that you know?"

Her answer took a little longer this time. Just because she knew the answer didn't mean she knew what the question was driving at.

"Yeah?"

Karol's arms sort of spasmed from the elbow down, his fingers dancing around and his wrists bouncing against his hips, doing a little dance that she was pretty sure was to psych himself up.

She was impressed he hadn't left yet.

"Rita..." She hadn't heard someone sound so exasperated at her in... well, a long time.

"Rita," he tried again, "I haven't been around too much lately because I've been buried up to my elbows in work – and I know you have too," he interrupted himself so quickly that Rita didn't even have the time to process everything, let alone get affronted, "but even I can tell that everyone is worried about you too."

She didn't answer. His eyes were still squeezed shut and that made it easier for her to wait for what he was going to say next, since it meant she didn't have to glare him into it.

"Raven... Raven cares about you. I just... need to know that you care about him back. Because I don't ever want to think that no one cares about him ever again."

The pit of her stomach dropped out. Karol kept talking, getting faster and faster.

"It's f-fine if you don't, but you have to tell him because if you don't and if – if you hurt him... You can't hurt him."

All she could think about was the noise Raven had made after she had shifted his shoulder. After she had broken his nose.

She knew that wasn't what Karol was talking about.

But it was easier to think about than the glassy red edges around Raven's eyes as he began to cry.

"No, really," the old man said, his tone light but still beginning to sound slightly concerned. He was pushing against his cheeks still but it was a kind of desperate touch.

"Looks just like your face to me," she said, and picked her way out of the room to find the generator fuel.

A/N: Flashback – The Chapter, Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

In which Rita actually is a tsundere for the first time in this story (question mark?), Raven gets cared for once in his life, Yuri goes once again without a viewpoint chapter, Estelle looks out for her friends, Karol stands up to his worst fear after bugs, Judith is a paragon of tact and poise, and Repede cannot figure out why he deals with all this shit. Growth for everyone!

Reminder that Karol and Raven were the ones that share a pre-finale cutscene and Karol's lament in Schwann's fight is how he thought about Raven as a dad – the kid's got some feelings is all.