Between Three Rogues

by Erico

There were Valuans, Black Pirates, and Blue Rogues, and that was enough for Vyse and Aika to wrap their heads around. Then a girl crashed into their lives, and the world became a whole lot bigger. And somewhere during a globe-spanning epic adventure that changed everything, a man, his best friend, and the girl that went sailing off the map with them figured themselves out.

51. Bleeding Silver

BETWEEN THREE ROGUES

By Eric 'Erico' Lawson

---

Fifty-One: Bleeding Silver

Frontier Lands, Enroute to Daccat's Isle

Delphinus, Infirmary

362 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Mid-Afternoon

Marco did his best to block out the screams. If he listened too closely and dwelled on it, the sounds of shrieking would paralyze him, and that was the last thing that could happen right now. Lives depended on him keeping a cool head. One life in particular.

A life that hung in the balance as Dr. Ilchymis swore and wrapped a cool towel around the neck of the woman that they'd had to strap down because of convulsions.

"Damnit! Marco, more water, as cold as you can get it! Get some ice from the kitchens if you have to, she's burning up!" Ilchymis was tense, but far from frantic. His hands glowed silver from a Curia spell as he used it to evaluate her condition. "No cause. No illness. She wasn't hit by any of the shelling." He muttered, cutting off when the patient bucked hard against the leather straps holding her down and screamed again.

Noise, most of the time. But sometimes she would say words. He hadn't understood them at first, and even now that he knew what she was saying, it still didn't make sense.

Mistress Kalifa had been mysterious before she'd collapsed in the dining hall one hour after they departed Crescent Island. She'd been all half smiles and knowing looks as she played bookie for the longest running bet on the ship and told fortunes to the curious. Now, she thrashed and writhed and sweated as whatever was affecting her kept her somewhere between dreaming and waking, and wholly out of reach. With her glasses broken and discarded, a loss early in her collapse and seizure, there was no mistaking the wildness in her eyes, the blood that leaked from her nose and even around her eyes and stained the whole sclera.

Ilchymis spun around and snapped at him. "Marco! NOW!" Marco flinched and ran for the kitchens as fast as he could, and the hatch to the infirmary stayed open, with Kalifa's feverish screams chasing him the entire time.

"Your heart must bleed silver! Your heart must bleed silver! YOUR HEART MUST BLEED SILVER!"

---

Great Silver Shrine

Sanctum

People talked about hell all the time. They screamed at others and told them to go to it. They talked about it being under the deepest clouds. They said it was where the wicked were sent when they died.

Aika had been to the bottom of the world. She'd sweated and suffered in stifling heat perhaps thirty degrees short of boiling water. That wasn't hell, she knew now. Hell was the utter absence of hope, seeing everything you ever dreamed and wished for come crashing down and shattered in tiny pieces around you too small to be put back together.

Ramirez slammed the full length of his blade through Fina's back and out through her heart, spilling her blood and revealing a gleaming singularity of light. Her shard of the Silver Moon Crystal, stuck to the tip of his sword in the shredded remains of her heart. Aika screamed her name, heard Vyse scream her name, and then Ramirez was whispering something in Fina's ear before his hand closed around the shard her Princess had unknowingly kept safe in her heart for all of her life. The light from that shard disappeared in his fingers, Ramirez jerked his sword free of her and vanished in the same flash of light that had brought him into the Sanctum to begin with.

Aika watched the light in Fina's eyes go out completely, watched her lifeless body collapse to the floor, and knew. This was hell.

Ramirez left, he'd gotten what he'd come for. Aika ran and stumbled, falling forward and skinning her forearms as she kept her head from hitting the metal plating, or from landing on Fina's -

No.

"Fina?" Aika rolled her over, pulled Fina's head onto her knees. She tore off the veil and headdress and brushed Fina's hair back, trying not to react as Cupil rolled off of his mistress's limp and cooling arm. She stared down at the bloody mess of Fina's chest and the shredded threads of…

Moons, she barely kept her stomach down, but she did, because there was no way she was going to vomit over Fina's -

NO.

"Babe?" Aika had been tired to begin with, but for this, she found the energy. The fight with Ramirez hadn't lasted long and the walk after encountering the Shrine's metal defenders had given her time to restore some of it. Green magic, powerful green magic of a Sacrulen spell gleamed in her hand as she placed it over Fina's heart. "Fina? Fi? Princess?" It could heal any wound and bring a person to the fullness of their vitality no matter how exhausted they were.

The spell sank into Fina's skin. It did nothing. Blood that had flowed so freely before just coagulated now, there was nothing left to pump it. What remained of her heart had stop -

NO.

"Her life signs have been terminated." Elder Prime said, two seconds later. Vyse made a noise like a wounded Dabu and grabbed for Fina's hands, looking up at Aika like his entire world was ending. She understood the feeling.

"No." Aika ground the word out. "No. It's not going to go like this." This was why Fina had always made sure that Aika kept a Riselem Crystal tucked away in her satchel. This was why they'd checked on the flight up here. Fina hadn't known just how much treachery they'd encounter up here (could never have known, had never suspected just how deep the lies ran that she'd been fed all her life) but she'd been prepared. "Vyse, hold her! I need to get to my bag!"

Vyse let out a muffled sob, a gasp and a tremble that he swallowed back as he pulled their Silvite lover into his arms. He cradled Fina's torso and her head against his chest, her bare head nestled under his chin. He was getting her heartsblood all over his coat and his shirt and didn't care. Aika hadn't either, her knees and the skirt flaps of her yellow suit were stained also, she just wasn't going to have her Princess lying on the cold ground any longer than she had to. "Aika, please, you have to…"

"I know! I am!" Moons, she was trying to hold herself together, but this was agony. Knowing that it was something that they'd been preparing for for months now didn't make it any easier. Aika had died once, almost a full year ago at Piastol's hands. The feeling of dying had...it had not been pleasant. Vyse had died, just two days ago, and Fina had pulled him back from the dead while Aika had still been throwing up and helpless.

Her fingers wrapped around the Riselem crystal in her satchel and Aika had half a second to reflect on the sudden realization that now they'd all died once. Aika had never wanted to talk about it. Things had been too much of a whirlwind for Vyse to bring his own recent demise up. She doubted that Fina would want to compare notes either, but if she asked, then Aika supposed they could talk about it.

Once they had time to maybe talk about it. They would have the chance to, thanks to Fina's preparations. She'd been ready for it since at least Yafutoma, and her words rang in Aika's mind.

"If I die? You use that. You bring me back. I'll run back to your arms."

"Come back to us, baby." Aika whispered, and smashed the Riselem crystal between her hands. The spell's energy burst out and she gathered it into her palm, pressing it into the bloody ruin of skin and flesh and split sternum visible in the diamond cutout of the Silvite's dress. She breathed easier as the resurrection spell swirled into the still warm flesh and nestled there, because any second Fina's heart would be repaired, everything would be put back where it belonged, and she'd come to gasping for air none the worse for wear aside from the bloodstains.

The spell's light faded, and Fina's body was still broken and lifeless. Aika's stomach turned.

"No. No, it's...it was supposed to work. Why didn't it work?" She gasped, reaching for Fina's hand and squeezing it. Her hand was so cold, it wasn't supposed to be that cold! "Fina? FINA! Wake up!"

Elder Prime crawled over to them, wheezing and straining without his strange metallic suit to float him wherever he needed to go. There was sweat on his face and his breathing was uneven, where before Aika had barely seen his chest move. As ancient as he was (how many thousands of years old) every movement strained him. "It won't work, child." He whispered. She heard how much quieter his voice was without his machine to augment and project his voice. He almost seemed human then. But he wasn't, not when he and the other Elders had done what they'd done, planned what they'd planned, had schemed to destroy the world and use Fina to do it.

Aika screamed in his face. "Why?! Why won't it work? It's a Riselem crystal! She made it! She made it just for this!"

"Because she is not a Low Human, as you two are." The old bald Elder answered, still hovering in that weird sort-of-mirror that all the other Elders refused to leave. "She is Silvite, and she was Made. Not born. The shard of the Silver Moon Crystal inside of her acted both as a stabilizing agent and focus. Without it, she is just an empty vessel."

"Then do something, damnit!" Aika yelled up at the mirrors. "Before we lose her completely!" Her mind raced, everything that Fina had ever tried to teach her and drill into her head about silver magic racing by. How many minutes did they have? Less than ten. Five? Maybe six? There was a point that even silver magic became useless, where the body became unfit for the spirit to return.

"We cannot." The woman Elder refused, shaking her head. "We have no shards of the Silver Moon Crystal left." Aika stared, knew she was beginning to cry from the burning in her eyes. Vyse let out a sob as he held Fina's bod…

No!

"We do." Elder Prime rasped, pulling Aika's gaze away from the Elders in their precious mirrors. "We have seven on board this station." The old man looked miserable, in agony if she was being honest, and his breathing had only gotten more labored. He slumped onto his side, but he never stopped looking at Fina's corp…

NO!

"You can't be serious." Another one of the Elders said, in that same flat voice that they all had. "We are the Enlightened, we must survive if we are to…"

"To what?" Prime snapped back at the man. "The genetic library. Status?"

"...A near total loss." The female Elder answered reluctantly. "Fire control drones arrived too late. Roughly 90 percent of the samples are compromised, and all of the Silvite embryos are nonviable. From the damage pattern, Ramirez started the fire there."

"We failed." Elder Prime concluded, and his limited strength gave out on him. He rolled onto his back and pressed a hand to his chest as it rose and fell. "Thousands of years - planning - for nothing. Ramirez betrayed us. Fina is...is all we have left." His head lolled to the side, he looked directly at Aika. "Take my shard. Put it in her. Only way. Save her." The Elder made a motion with his hand and Cupil burbled, taking on the form of a dagger and hovering over in front of Aika. She took the Cupil shortblade in a shaky hand and looked at the man.

"Why?"

"Because you love her." Prime said, trying for a smile that never quite reached his eyes. "We cannot love. We can't feel. Forgot how. World is doomed unless...unless." He blinked, and seemed to be drifting in and out.

"We are dispatching another preservation suit, Elder Prime. Cease this...this pointless self-sacrifice."

"Not pointless." The man countered, and willed the shard in his heart to begin glowing again, giving Aika a target. "We...are pointless." His eyes looked up at Aika. Pleading. "Save her. Give her...love we couldn't." He was grimacing now.

Aika lowered the blade and cut the fabric of his robe away from his chest. "You care about her."

Elder Prime's head shook ever so slightly, even as the point of the Cupil dagger pressed into his flesh and made a small bead of blood well up from it. "I cannot love."

Aika sniffed and wiped her eyes clean on the back of her free arm, smiling down at him. "Liar." Maybe he didn't remember how to feel love, or understand the emotion. But he had been the one person on this whole stupid Shrine who'd bothered to do things with Fina.

And he was going to die, so she could live.

Aika stabbed the blade down into his chest and carved his heart out. Elder Prime let out a little gasp at first, and then a groan that faded into a whimper. She dug her fingers down and came up with the tiny glowing light of the Crystal shard, a hard sliver in the bleeding mess of still beating muscle. She felt sick from doing it, but pushed it down.

Fina. Save Fina. Fall apart later.

"I...I feel…" Prime whispered, smiling again as his eyes fluttered, "...cold."

He stopped breathing, and his crystal shard dimmed for a moment before leveling out again.

"Whiskey." She snapped at Vyse, who fumbled for a bit as he maneuvered Fina's body around enough so he could reach for the flask he kept tucked away. She grabbed it from him with a bloody hand and poured the whole thing over her palm and the precious jewel fragment in it. It washed the blood away and would hopefully sanitize it.

She didn't have time to be more careful, to be as delicate and sanitary as Fina and Ilchymis preferred to be for surgeries. As soon as she couldn't see any more blood on it, she shoved the shard into the hole in Fina's chest and looked up to the Elders.

"Now, bring her back."

The female Elder shook her head. "We cannot."

"YOU FUCKERS!" Aika threw her head back and roared, feeling her aura blaze blinding red around her. She was angry. She was panicking. She was desperate, and these fucking world-ending old people… "Don't give me that shit, just do it! Elder Prime gave up his life for her, so don't tell me that you can't do it! Cast fucking Riselem already, we're almost out of time!"

"We cannot." The woman repeated, as rage-inducingly calm as ever. Aika was beginning to raise her hand to burn the mirror with her in it to dust when the woman, Lennis maybe, spoke up again. "We cannot use magic."

Aika's hand stilled. "What?" Vyse uttered lowly, dangerously. Desperately. "The fuck do you mean, you can't use magic?"

"We lost the ability to conjure spells when we gained our immortality." The old, fatter Elder explained. "It was one or the other. Magic, or a limitless existence. We could not teach her how to use silver magic, Fina learned it on her own."

Oh, Moons. Aika's heart pounded even harder in her chest.

"Just use another prepared Riselem crystal." Another Elder pointed out.

Moons.

"We only had one." Aika got out, as her throat started to close up on her. No. Not like this. If only they'd told her about Fina needing the crystal shard to live. But then, why would the Elders tell her that? They didn't care. Only Elder Prime had, and even then, too late for it to…

Not like this.

"Aika, you've been training. She's been teaching you." Vyse said, and he reached a hand over to touch her elbow. She hadn't realized how dizzy and unfocused she'd felt until his fingers grounded her and brought her back. Vyse looked at her with the same desperation that she felt, but none of the doubts. "You can do this."

She tried to swallow down the lump. It didn't go away. "I couldn't do it." She got out hoarsely. "She...she tried, I tried, but…" But it had never quite taken. Green magic, she understood. Silver took an entirely different kind of focus and mindset that Aika had never completely figured out. Moons, she'd tried. She'd concentrated, she'd done the breathing exercises, she'd tried to feel for the spark of life in all those stupid potted plants Fina used for their training. It had never taken. It wasn't like red magic or her own fire abilities, where adding more power let you shape the flashburst explosion and make it bigger, wider. It wasn't like green magic, where the strength of the healing could be similarly changed or spread over multiple targets. Silver magic just...it just was. Or wasn't.

Vyse squeezed her elbow. "You're all we've got." He told her. Gilder knelt down beside the two of them, with Fina lying between them all still cradled against Vyse's chest. "You can do this, Aika. Blue Rogues never give up. Save her. Save our wife."

Aika couldn't help the sob that his words evoked. He was asking her to perform a miracle. After everything that had happened, with Enrique gone and Crescent Island sacked and the Moon Crystals taken, she wasn't sure that they had any miracles left. But he was right. They were surrounded by ancients who had lived since the Old World, their technology leaps and bounds beyond anything available on Arcadia, and none of it was any help for this.

She only had herself, and the scraps of Fina's lessons.

"Please." She whispered, and put her hands on Fina's barely warm body. "Please work." For once, please work, Aika prayed silently.

She stretched out with her senses and reached for her silver magic.

Curia was easier, but it was also a stepping stone. Curia allowed for diagnosis. For removal of illnesses, poisoning, debilitating conditions.

Before you can bring life and death, you must first feel for what is wrong. What is supposed to be.

There was plenty wrong, but it was harder than staring at a plant that was short on water and starving for better nutrients. It was harder than the few times that Fina had insisted on dragging Aika into the infirmary to gauge an injured crewmember before they were healed or patched up. It was Fina, her friend. Her lover. Her Princess. My wife.

They'd never really said it before. They'd talked about it, as nebulous hopes for after, but Vyse had always treated it as a foregone conclusion. Grass was green, the sky was blue, and he was going to marry the both of them. Fina had cried through a happy smile one morning when she told Aika about it, gripping her hands tight.

He thought I was asleep, that I wasn't listening. He's going to marry us. Oh, Aika, my heart could burst.

It had, courtesy of Ramirez and his sword. At least there was a Silver Moon Crystal shard in it again. It pulsed with a life of its own, and under the gaze of Curia, Aika could see how it reached out to everything around it. How it was there and wasn't there simultaneously. Just like silver magic.

Life and death are not as far apart as we think. There is always a spark of one in an abundance of the other.

Aika felt death in Fina's...in Fina's body. It was a looming emptiness that overwhelmed everything. There was life in the shard Elder Prime had sacrificed himself to give for transplant, and that strength reached out, struggling against it. It just needed a push. It was begging for Riselem. Risan wouldn't be enough, Aika hadn't successfully cast either version of silver's resurrection but she knew just by the feel of the damage that it was Riselem or nothing.

"Please. Come back." She croaked, and tried to switch gears. She held onto the thread of Curia's diagnostics and reached for that brilliant silver light. It could burn cold if one channeled the Eternal series of death spells, but for this…

You know what life is supposed to feel like. You can feel it in how a plant grows, how a heart beats, how a huskra sticks its tongue out of its mouth and breathes. Life is warmth. Death is cold.

Aika felt for the warmth of her living, beating heart, used it as template and example.

"Come on. You can do this." She whispered. To herself, or to Fina? It didn't matter.

She felt for the slashed ribbons of Fina's heart, and in her mind's eye, compared it to her own.

Live, she commanded, and felt warmth flow from her hand. It carried into the most powerful muscle meant to beat for a lifetime, pulling threads together, lining up the chambers and the delicate blood vessels. What was lost or too damaged to be put back together was regrown.

It felt longer than it actually took, and once she started it, Fina's body seemed to know where all the pieces went. It had just needed a jump start, and the Crystal shard Aika had transplanted into Fina's body disappeared as regenerated tissue formed around it, glowing until it was completely covered. Regenerated blood poured back into her veins and arteries. The bones settled back into place and fused. The skin above and between Fina's breasts grew back over the repaired mortal injury, and Aika felt one last pulse of warm, reviving light leave her fingertips before she slumped, dizzy and tired. Aika lost her focus on the baseline monitoring spell also, but it wasn't needed. She'd done it. After all this time, she'd finally cast Riselem on her own.

"Aika?" Vyse said, his voice trembling. "Did you…"

"It's done." She said, smiling and opening her eyes. "I did it, Vyse."

Vyse hadn't let go of Fina during the entire process, and he didn't now. But he wasn't smiling, and he didn't look relieved. He kept looking between Fina and Aika, and he brought his hand up to rest his fingers over their Silvite's heart.

Aika's smile froze when Vyse shuddered and breathed in hard. "Aika, I can't feel her heartbeat."

"...what?" Aika croaked out, and lunged forward, shoving Vyse's fingers out of the way to feel for herself.

She felt nothing. Not the barest hint of a pulse. "Aika, she's not breathing!" Vyse gasped out.

"Fina is still deceased." One of the Elders declared.

Aika wasn't breathing either then.

---

She froze, and she knew that she didn't have the time to freeze up. She hadn't been counting the minutes, but she knew just how little time she had to pull Fina back. If she could.

It should have worked, and if she'd had more time, she might have screamed that fact for Vyse and Gilder and the Elders to hear. But she didn't.

"Lay her down." She barked at Vyse, and grabbed for the Gigas dagger Fina carried with her. "Now, Vyse!" Her lover did so, and Aika slashed Fina's dress open. It hadn't worked. Maybe the clothes had interfered. With the upper part of her dress now sliced apart and thrown back, Aika threw the dagger off to the side and pressed the palms of her hands over the Silvite's heart, trying not to panic at the feel of her fingers going cold when they fell against Fina's lifeless breasts.

"Come on, baby. Come on!" Aika hissed, calling up her magic again. She ran compressions, trying with brute force what her magic wasn't going. If she could pump the heart, pump the blood through her, it might buy them some time. It might buy Fina's body some time for Aika's magic to give it another shot. "Vyse! Like we practiced! NOW!"

Up at her head, Vyse tipped Fina's head back, opened her mouth, and breathed air down her throat. The forceful exhale filled Fina's lungs and lifted her chest up into Aika's hands.

Compressions were easy. Her hands knew what to do, and she let them work while she focused on Riselem.

She knew this. She could do this.

All things live, and all things die, and to ask life to be returned, or to ask life to wither and fade challenges that balance. Reality fights back against it. You must know both, or the magic will never answer you properly.

Aika knew death. She knew how to injure, how to maim, and how to kill. She knew close to fifty ways to kill someone. But life? If only it had been healing alone that Fina needed! What did Aika know about making something live? She thought of all the plants that Fina had withered so she could reverse the damage, rows and rows of tiny flower seedlings grown in the space of a week just for that one purpose. Seedlings that had all died because Aika had never figured out the trick of it.

"You will not be able to revive her." One of the male Elders, still floating in their mirrors declared. "You lack a Crystal shard of your own. Only the most powerful Sages and Priestesses had ever managed Riselem unassisted, and they were shard bearers."

"Too much time has passed. We are past the critical window for optimal resurrection conditions." A second said. Aika snarled and kept doing compressions. Kept pushing. Damnit, she knew she had the magical power to pull this off. Please, please, PLEASE.

She could feel it. She felt those precious pulses of enervating life well up in her hands and her fingers and slide down into Fina and the Crystal shard embedded in her heart. She knew that the power of her magic was getting there, but she didn't feel Fina's heart start up. She didn't feel the flickers of thought, the hint of a gentle smile like when they linked their spirits together to fuel the heart of the Delphinus.

It wasn't working.

"It isn't working." A third Elder said, twisting the dagger in. "Her body likely rejected Elder Prime's transplanted Crystal shard."

"Shut up!" Aika screamed up at them. "Just shut up if you're going to be USELESS!"

Useless. Moons, she hated that word now. These fucking Elders had called Fina that. Ramirez had called Fina that. She had called Fina that once, a lifetime ago, and Fina had blown up on her for it. Because all those years, all her life she'd been called that.

You're not not Useless. You're not some silly little girl. You are wanted. You are Needed. Please. Please, please, PLEASE…

"Aika…" Vyse croaked out. He was crying now, had pulled up his telescopic goggle because he'd been unable to see through it.

"Breathe!" She snapped at him, shaking her head. She didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to think it. No. NO. Vyse bit his lip, bent over Fina again as Aika pulled her hands back, breathed warm air into her lungs again.

"I've seen this before." The female Elder said, and unlike the others, she had actually left her mirror. The woman, Lennis, had floated down beside Elder Prime's mutilated body and was cradling it in her mechanical arms while her real ones gently stroked back the wisps of white hair on the man's body. Her eyes were looking at Fina and Aika, though, and they almost looked sad. Lost. "It...decades before the Rains fell. There was a Sage, Vellus, whose wife had died before him, too far away to be resurrected in time. When he was killed in an accident, the Priestess on-call tried to revive him, but she was unable to. She said later, very shaken, that she'd been unable to reach him. That he had 'lost the will to live', according to the records."

Aika's throat closed up at that possibility. "No." She said, shaking her head violently and starting compressions again. Her arms were tired, her heart was tired. It didn't matter. She kept going. "She hasn't. Fina has too much to live for. She has Vyse. She has me. She wouldn't...wouldn't give up!"

She wouldn't. She couldn't! Not now, not after everything, not when…

But what if she had? What if learning the truth had broken her?

"Please." Aika choked out, shoving more power into Fina than was safe. She was burning through her sizable reserves of magic so fast now, and it didn't matter. It wasn't enough. "Please, baby. Please. Fi, come back, you've gotta come back!"

"Six minutes post-mortem." An Elder intoned from the mirrors around and above them. "No Riselem spell has ever succeeded past five minutes."

Aika heard them, she didn't care.

"She's gone, Aika." Vyse's voice cracked, "Aika, she's gone." She ignored him too.

"Breathe." She ordered him, stopping compressions. She looked up to see him shaking her head. The last shred of sanity left in her snapped. "FUCKING BREATHE FOR HER, VYSE!" He choked out a sob and shook his head, and she pushed him out of the way to do it herself, tipping Fina's head back to open up her windpipe. Aika slammed her mouth against Fina's and blew air into her lover's lungs until her own burned and she was dizzy from it. She stopped, pulled back long enough to gulp down air, and dove back in again, trembling all the while.

It wasn't until she felt Vyse's hand come to rest on her neck that Aika finally stopped - stopped and rolled onto her side, crying silently, trembling harder than ever.

"No pulse." Gilder said, a sad presence hovering over the three of them as their guard. "She's gone, Aika. You tried. By the Moons, you tried. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Lying on her side next to Fina's body, Aika traced the side of her Princess's face with the back of her fingers, and stared at Fina's frozen face and her glassy blue eyes. She blinked her tears away to see clearly.

"It's not your fault." Vyse whispered, stroking the hair that wasn't tied up in her braids along the back of her neck. "You have to believe that, Aika." He was grieving and as lost as she was, and he was trying to hold it in for her sake. It made Aika cry even harder and kiss Fina's cold cheek.

Either the shard transplant hadn't worked, Fina had lost the will to live and no spell could save her, or it was her fault. Gilder said it wasn't. Vyse said it wasn't.

But Fina could have done it. Fina could have cast Riselem and brought anyone back with no trouble at all. Fina wasn't the Useless one.

Aika was.

"I love you." Aika said, as she had hundreds of times before. Fina had always said it back to her before, but now she couldn't. Fina's body just lay there, repaired but lifeless. Aika stroked her face and stared into Fina's dead eyes.

How did you do it? Aika had asked Fina one of the later times her beloved had patiently walked her through the Riselem exercises and Aika had come up wanting. What am I missing? What's the secret?

I don't think there is a secret, Fina had replied. One day, something just...clicked. Maybe I wanted it to work badly enough that time. You'll lick this, Aika. If there's anyone who can unlock silver magic like I did, it's you.

When? Aika'd pressed, and all Fina had done was smile and change the subject. Aika had let it pass, they'd moved on. And now Fina was dead, and Aika had tried and wanted it to work so badly, and it still hadn't been good enough. She hadn't been good enough. The only thing she could do was lie there next to Fina and whimper as all of the dreams they'd hoped to share in came crashing down. Like they'd come crashing down only two days ago when Fina gave up the Moon Crystals to save Vyse, because she didn't want to live in a world without him.

"You were right." Aika whispered. She traced Fina's delicate features as her heart broke all over again. "You were right."

Gilder's hand came down over Fina's face, and his gloved fingers closed her eyelids. Aika had thought she had nothing left, but the second she couldn't see Fina's blue eyes…

She didn't snap. She'd already done that. She didn't break, because Fina dying after learning the truth of the Elders and the Silver Shrine had broken Aika already. It was something else, something full of pain and desperation that didn't care about fatigue or limitations or obstacles.

I have lost too much already! Not you! NOT US!

Aika's strained voice bellowed out of her in defiance as she pushed Gilder and Vyse away from Fina and restarting chest compressions, her hands rougher and fierce in a way they hadn't been before. "She wants to live! She has a strong heart! Come on, Fina!" The silver glow around her hands burned brighter as the warmth of life that Aika channeled outwards increased. She threw everything she had into it, not just her own magic, but a part of her as well.

You told me, I had half of your heart. That you'd given the other half to Vyse. So take it back. TAKE IT BACK!

"Come on, wake up already! Breathe already!" She urged the dead Silvite, looking down at those closed eyes. Open your eyes, wake up! We need you! We want you! "Vyse, breathe!"

Her desperate energy pulled Vyse back into gear. The Blue Rogue got back into place over Fina's head, breathing warm air into her lungs again.

"Breathe. Damn you, breathe." Aika hissed, shoving even more power into her hands. The glow from them rose up the whole length of her arms, and maybe it covered her entire body, but Aika didn't notice. She didn't even pay attention to a growing thickness in her nose or the wet that dripped down from it over her face, not until she tasted blood on her lips. "Damn you, you bitch!" Aika shrieked, pulling her hands back and rearing one back behind her head. "You've never backed down from anything in your life, so fight!" She slapped Fina full across the face, and the Silvite's head rolled to the side from the impact. "Fight!" Aika screamed again, and another slap in the opposite direction. Vyse cried her name, but Aika ignored it. All of her fire and focus was on Fina, and she grabbed the woman by the shoulders and shook her violently and kept shouting the same word, over and over.

An order. A prayer. Fight. Aika screamed the word until her voice gave out on her and all that came out was a wheeze like the wind. Her power, fluctuating between too little and too much and never quite settling on that gentle warmth like Fina's mastery had, boiled over. The last dregs of her magic and what little of her own spark she could spare flowed out of her in one final wave, and it burned.

This time, Aika felt something inside of Fina give. And then…A heartbeat. Aika shuddered and drew in a breath, not moving from her spot as she looked down. Fina's eyelids fluttered for a moment, then shot open, and her mouth followed half a second later in an instinctive gasp followed by choking.

And crying. She pulled her Princess into her arms and Vyse crashed in behind Fina, trapping the blond-haired woman between them as he wept in joy and relief.

"You did it, Aika." Gilder huffed, keeping his own composure by a thread. "You did it."

Fina tried to push herself out of Aika's arms but didn't get very far before Aika tried to pull her back. It was enough of a reprieve for Fina to blink and stare. "You're bleeding."

The redhead reached to her nose and touched it, and her fingertips came away smeared with blood that still gleamed from the aftereffect of all of the magic she'd used. It almost made the red disappear and look wholly metallic. Silvery. "I'll live." She whispered, wincing at how even that much hurt to say. Fina's face crumpled and she started weeping fresh tears, hiding herself in Aika's embrace.

"Impossible." An Elder declared, sounding distinctly unsettled. "Absolutely impossible. You are no Silvite, you're a Low Human. You should have failed."

Aika didn't have enough of a voice left to shout at them.

Vyse did. "You can all go to hell." He snarled. "We're leaving. Fina is coming with us. You never loved her, you never could."

"Wait." Elder Lennis said, still floating next to them. Aika looked over, wondering what insult or vague threat the woman would give them to match the cadre of old men. She paused when she saw that Lennis was still holding Elder Prime's body, that she was looking between Aika and Fina with minute twitches of her eyes. That wasn't what surprised her.

It was that Lennis was crying.

"I don't understand." Lennis said, her voice as mechanical as ever. How much of her reactions were the machines that kept her alive? "I...I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" Vyse demanded.

"Anyone else would have given up." Lennis pressed. "Why didn't you?"

"I love her." Aika whispered, and Fina sobbed into her chest again, her dress still torn open and the Silvite too delirious to care. "Wouldn't you do anything to save someone you loved?"

Lennis shook her head, but her tears didn't stop coming. "I don't know. I - I don't remember."

Aika lifted up a hand and pointed to Lennis, then stroked beneath her own eye. Lennis mirrored the motion and startled, looking at her wet fingers.

"I think you do." Vyse said. He picked up Fina and cradled her in his arms. Aika tried to stand as well. Tried, and stumbled, and Gilder grabbed her, giving her his arm and shoulder to lean on. "We're leaving. There's nothing for us here now. Nothing."

"What will you do now?" One of the other Elders asked.

Gilder snorted. "What? You aren't going to try and stop us?"

"To what end?" The bald Elder asked from his mirror, shaking his head. "Ramirez has all the Moon Crystals. He has a path to Soltis. He's burned the genetic repository. Our Plan is scrapped, Elder Prime is dead. There is nothing we can do now."

"There's nothing you want to do." Vyse accused them. "There's plenty you could do, if you felt like trying. If you felt guilty for what you were trying to do, for what you've already done. If you felt anything at all. You're not the wise ones that you led Fina to believe. You're not even human anymore. You've lost everything that ever made you human to begin with. You're just corpses locked away in floating coffins. So fine. Keep your blasted immortality. Keep your silver tomb. We'll do this ourselves."

Leaning on Gilder and trailing behind Vyse and Fina, Aika spared one last glance to the Elders inside of the Sanctum as they left, following Cupil back onto the Path that would lead them to Fina's skyship.

The old men, to a one, wore emotionless masks and hovered in their mirrors, angry in a way that their lack of emotions kept them from showing.

Elder Lennis, weeping without knowing how to process the emotion, watched them go with something else shining in her eyes. Longing, maybe. Or regret.

The door closed behind them, and they left the Elders behind to rot.

---

1.5 Hours Later

Fina needed to eat something, and Aika had pulled every trick and made every plea to get her to drink some chilled tea and nibble on a quarter of a sandwich from the picnic lunch that the crew had sent along with them. Her Princess had emptied her stomach on the floor of the Sanctum before Ramirez had shown up, and Aika knew from experience that the shock of dying and being resurrected left one feeling hollowed out and hungry to begin with. But Fina only ate anything when Aika begged her to, and she hadn't said a word since she told Aika about the nosebleed.

The only thing that gave Aika any hope that she was still Fina and not some empty shell was that Fina hadn't left her side for a moment since Vyse had put her inside of the skyship they'd fought so hard to recover from the Deep Sky and wrapped his blue longcoat around her to make up for her ruined dress. As soon as Aika had sat down beside her and scooted up close, Fina had grabbed her hand and hadn't let go. She stared off into the distance, she didn't look into Aika's eyes and whenever Aika tried to turn her face to look at her, Fina's blue eyes either closed or slid off to the side, but she didn't let go.

"It's gonna be okay." Aika repeated hoarsely. Water and rest had helped, but she really had strained her voice and she didn't feel like wasting a Sacri crystal to undo the damage. "We're getting out of here, Fina. As soon as the boys get back, we're leaving." They would have left already, if not for the packages that Fina had set up to be delivered from the Shrine's storage to her room. Packages containing stored books, knowledge, the means to share it. The Elders were cruel and useless, but their knowledge was worth saving. A few packages had already been brought over and loaded up onto the skyship with the picnic basket removed. There wouldn't be room for it on the trip back. The skyship would be packed full.

Aika saw Vyse and Gilder coming down the Shrine gangplank, each dragging a heavy metal box with latches behind them. "This is the last of it." Gilder grunted. "The last of the supplies Fina set for delivery."

"Time to leave." Vyse stated, making the hop from the gangplank to the inverted skyship. From his new position on board the craft, he was pulling the first box down while Gilder was lifting it up. They managed easily enough and Aika guided Fina to a new spot as they were laid up on top of the other boxes. Fina wordlessly reached over to the console and hit a few buttons, and the boxes of knowledge and supplies seemed to hum before setting into place, held in stasis. "Fina, will that keep them from sliding all over?" The blond-haired woman didn't speak, she just pulled his coat around her shoulders a little tighter and gripped the front closed with her free hand as she nodded.

Vyse and Gilder climbed into the skyship, and Vyse took a moment to reach for a bulge he'd hidden underneath his outer tunic during the move. He pulled out the old doll that had been sitting on Fina's desk in her room and held it out to her. Fina hiccuped and stared at it.

"I grabbed that book of yours, too, but we packed that in with everything else." He offered quietly. "I thought you might want this."

Fina didn't move to grab it. She squeezed down on Aika's hand even tighter and Vyse sighed.

"Elder Prime gave you this. In the end, he even died so Aika could cut out his Crystal shard and put it into you so she could save your life. I think the Elders aren't human. I think living forever made them forget how to live. But I think that Prime cared about you, as much as any of them could. He didn't have to make a doll for you. He could've been as heartless as the rest of them are. If there's anything else worth taking from this place...it's that." Fina blinked away tears and nodded mutely, and this time when Vyse offered her the doll, she took it from him and crushed it into her chest.

Vyse went to the helm, and Aika spoke up. "You think you can fly us out of here, Vyse?"

"I watched Fina very carefully, and she explained the controls on the way here." Vyse said. He punched in another button that brought up the power diagnostic and nodded. "Ship's batteries were recharged here at dock. We're back up to 96 percent. More than enough."

"Where are we going, Vyse?" Gilder wondered aloud. "If Ramirez and Galcian have everything they need, then are we going to rally with the crew and try to assault Dangral Island again?"

Vyse shook his head as the skyship separated from the station's beam of light that kept it locked in place, and then engaged the bubble shield above the crew compartment to protect them from the emptiness of space. "That'd be a suicide run. We've been to Dangral once already, they'll have their spotters looking in every direction for the Delphinus. We won't be able to sneak past the patrols again on board our warship."

"So we let Ramirez get away with it?" Aika blurted out heatedly.

Vyse eased the ship down in elevation away from the Silver Shrine and then spun it around to face towards the planet beneath them. "No. We aren't doing that either. What we are going to do is go someplace close to Dangral to rest up before we try to sneak in with a smaller ship." He looked over his shoulder, mouth fixed and eyes narrowed. "This ship. But right now, I'm running on fumes and I know you two are. So we rest up first."

Aika thought over what he'd said, and the answer clicked into place. "Windmill Island." She said out loud, wincing when Fina turned into her side and hid her face into her chest. "You're taking us home?"

Vyse nodded and went back to the task of flying the skyship back down through the upper atmosphere. He aimed for a still invisible dot of land next to the sky rift on the south side of the Silver Sea. Aika agreed after reflection that it was a good plan, because there were so few decent options left. And she wanted to see Relena again.

Vyse's mother had never failed to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and a plate of warm food when she needed it. She'd always been there to console her and tell her that tomorrow would be better. That her troubles would pass, that the best days were yet to come. She made Aika believe it, even when it wasn't true.

Aika needed that now more than ever.

---

Windmill Island (Pirate Isle)

362 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Early Evening

Vyse's father wasn't on the island, nor was most of the crew. The Albatross II was back at Alpha Base undergoing minor repairs after a scuffle with a small Valuan patrol, an unfortunate side effect of Valua's buildup in the wake of their first assault on Dangral Island. Vice Captain Briggs had rigged up a radio in the underground base, and Vyse had sent Gilder ahead to radio their allies - Not to tell them the brutal and horribly private details of what had happened aboard the Silver Shrine, but to give them a summary. That they found no help on the Silver Shrine. That Ramirez followed them there. That Ramirez - and Galcian - now had all six of the Moon Crystals. That they were planning on using them to resurrect a lost continent and the monster inside of it that was the source of the Rains of Destruction.

And that Fina had been lied to all her life about it all.

Relena had taken one look at them all, sent Vyse on to Briggs' house to get the spare room Enrique had once used ready for Gilder, and pulled Fina and Aika into her home. She didn't pester them with endless questions or ask them how they were doing, she just put a kettle on the woodstove and brewed a pot of tea to go with some day old toasted bread and a jar of her Nasrian apricot jam - a recipe that she'd learned from Aika's father, Relena had told her once. It was one of her standby comfort foods, being easy to put together, easy to consume, and gentle on the stomach. Relena poured out the cups while Aika finished slathering generous helpings of jam onto the slices she'd browned over the embers in the fireplace. Fina sat at the table, sunk into herself and hiding in the confines of Vyse's blue longcoat which she kept wrapped around herself like a suit of armor. She whispered a quiet thanks when the food and drink was put in front of her, but didn't offer anything more than that. Most worrying to Aika was that she didn't look at either of them. Fina couldn't meet their eyes.

"So." Relena said, trying for casual after the food was put out. "I'm familiar with the Mid-Ocean tradition of couples trading off pieces of clothing or wearable tokens, Fina. Was Vyse staking a more obvious claim on you or…" Fina hunched in even more, and Aika shook her head.

"No, mom. It...Ramirez jumped us in the Silver Shrine. He followed us up there, wrecked everything." Her throat tightened up as she tried to tell Vyse's mother that Fina had died and almost been lost to them for good. She couldn't get the words out. "...Fina's dress is pretty torn up. And bloody."

Relena straightened in her chair. "Oh, dear. Well. I imagine you could use a nice warm bath. I'll draw up the water into the washtub and you girls just relax for a bit. If Vyse gets back before I finish up, go ahead and tell him to peel those potatoes in the hanging basket." She reached over to Fina's hand and squeezed it gently before she stood up. "Whatever else has happened, Fina, you're safe here."

Fina still didn't speak, but she nodded her head and Relena left to draw up a bath. Aika pushed over the plate with jam-covered toast at Fina and gave her a look.

"Fi?" Aika said. "Please. Eat one of these. I promise you, it's good. Mom makes the best jam, I've only gotten close when I made it myself." The Silvite reached for one of the slices and took it mechanically, and Aika grabbed up the other. It tasted as good as Aika remembered, but the events of the day soured it a little. She watched Fina eat her own, and wondered if her beloved tasted anything at all.

"Please. Talk to me." Aika pleaded with her.

Fina put the toast down, exactly 3 bites eaten out of it, and picked up her teacup. "What's there to talk about?" She countered wearily, still refusing to meet Aika's eyes. "My people are monsters. Ramirez and Galcian have all the Moon Crystals. Soltis will rise, the Rains will fall, the world will end." She sipped at her tea, swallowed, and shook her head. "No matter who got them, that was going to happen. It was just a matter of picking which monster was going to rule over a pile of ashes."

"It's not over yet. It's not done yet." Aika reminded Fina. "Blue Rogues never give up, remember?"

"They never give up without a fight, Aika." Fina corrected her softly. "You fought. You lost."

"Fina, you were there too. Shouldn't you say we fought?"

Fina closed her eyes. "I'm not a Blue Rogue, remember?"

"Then what are you?" Aika asked, only realizing the trap after she'd said it. She suddenly dreaded the answer.

Fina rolled her shoulders. "You know what I am. You just don't want to say it."

"You are not like the Elders. You're not like Ramirez!" Aika hissed. "You're my best friend, my lover, the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with!" She reached over, and maybe Fina expected her to take her hand. She grabbed at Fina's chin and turned it up so that the woman could look back at her. "That hasn't changed. That's never going to change. Whatever else you think you are, you're still my Princess, just like Vyse is my Pirate." The hardness in her voice left her. "Okay? You get that now, Fina?" Trapped in Aika's hand and unable to look away, Fina stared back, blinking every so often. Aika searched the depths of those blue eyes for acceptance and understanding.

She only saw pain and hurt, and she let go of Fina's chin with a shiver. Fina's eyes dropped away in the blink of an eye.

"I love you." Aika confessed, terrified that Fina was slipping away from her. "Please, baby. Please tell me you know that."

Fina breathed in slowly, and reached for her teacup. She cradled it in her hands. "I know." She whispered back. "I know you do." Fina opened her mouth to say something else, but stopped herself and shook her head.

Relena popped her head back in from the side room where the washtub and laundry boards were kept and smiled at them. "Fina? I've got your bath ready."

Fina stood up and walked around the table to head for Relena and the washroom. She pulled off Vyse's blue longcoat as she passed by, and Aika saw Relena take in a deep breath as her eyes went wide from the shock of seeing what Fina's beautiful silver dress looked like now, cut up and covered in blood. Fina handed Vyse's coat to her and passed through the doorway. Aika bit her lip as Fina closed the door, and Relena came over to sit at the table.

"How bad was it?" Vyse's mother asked, laying her son's coat over the back of an empty chair before sitting down herself.

"Bad." Aika admitted, taking another bite of her toast. She was glad when the front door of the house opened and Vyse came inside, looking exhausted. "Hey, Vyse."

He grunted in reply and took note of his coat's placement. "Fina getting cleaned up?" The Blue Rogue asked, pulling the chair back and flopping onto it unceremoniously.

"Yes. I left her enough soap that she'll be able to clean that dress of hers, too." Relena nodded.

"Good." Vyse reached for the half-eaten toast on Fina's plate and crunched into it with a sigh. "Maybe it'll help her get past this if she doesn't have to…" His face crumpled. "The spare bedroom's set up for Gilder. Any word from him?"

"I think he's still down in the underground base talking to people." Aika offered. "He hasn't come by here, anyways."

"Just as well." Relena mused, sliding another cup of tea over to her boy. "I think the three of you need a little more time to put yourselves back together."

"Time." Vyse snorted, drawing a hand over his face. "Time's the one thing we don't have a lot of, mom. This is a stopover, and we're taking off tomorrow morning."

"You're in no condition to be going anywhere, Vyse." Relena told him, working her 'I'm your mother' tone to its fullest. "You look horrible, the both of you, and Fina looked worse. What happened up there? I wasn't about to ask Fina, she looked like she was one stiff breeze from being knocked over. But I'm asking you."

Vyse's hand trembled around his teacup, and he set it down on the table before he spilled everything out of it. Relena's face turned a shade whiter. Vyse looked over to Aika, maybe for strength and maybe for confirmation - no, it wasn't that. He was asking for her permission.

Aika swallowed and nodded. No, she needed to do more than that. "Crescent Island was sacked, you know that. We sent the rest of our crew somewhere safe since the island was compromised, and headed for the Silver Shrine."

Relena nodded. "Where Ramirez ambushed you all."

Vyse cracked a weak laugh. "That was just the tail end of that fuckup."

"Vyse!" Relena gasped. "I didn't raise you to use that kind of language!"

"Mom." Aika said wearily, sinking over her own cup of tea. "Let him finish."

Vyse huffed, tilting his head up towards the ceiling. "It was all a setup. The Elders? What was left of Fina's people? Turns out they caused the Rains of Destruction the first time around with a Gigas of their own. Their quest to have Fina gather the Moon Crystals was because they wanted to finish what they'd started. Wipe everyone living off the face of Arcadia and restart with Fina as…" Aika swallowed hard when Vyse's hands clenched into fists and he went silent. He couldn't finish the sentence.

"They grew her." Aika said dully, because that was easier to admit than the horrible plans. "They stuck a piece of the Silver Moon Crystal in her, just like they did with Ramirez, so they would live. They raised her believing that the Silvites were...were innocent of all the crimes everyone else in the Old World committed. Finding out they lied about everything?" Aika shut her eyes. "They...they broke her."

"And then Ramirez killed her." Vyse continued, shaken. He tipped himself forward and leaned on his arms. "The Elders showed us. After the Rains of Destruction, the Silver Civilization...fractured. The only thing they could agree on was that Soltis and their Gigas needed to be put away. So they did, and they locked it out, making all six Crystals the key to unlocking it again. That's why Ramirez killed Fina, to take her shard." He was crying by then, and shut his eyes tight to clear them. "We almost…" His throat closed on him, and Aika didn't have the energy to keep on.

Relena didn't have a bit of color left in her cheeks by then. "She died?" Vyse nodded his head. "And you got her back?" Vyse pointed to Aika, and Relena followed his finger before doing a full body shiver. "Moons. Fine. I understand why you're swearing. But you're all a wreck right now, Vyse. You...I can see how much the three of you are hurting. You need to rest."

"I know. I know, but…" Vyse ground his teeth a little. "Mom, if we don't move by tomorrow morning, then the entire world will be in jeopardy."

She'd been shaken by the news, but Vyse's insistent nudging made something in his mother's spine straighten up a little. "Let me tell you a secret about your father and me, Vyse." Relena said. "There must have been close to a hundred times that I felt like I was losing my mind worrying if he'd ever come home from his next mission to hold back the tide of Valua's ambitions. But when he was home? He was home. Even before you and Aika left to join him on missions, he still made time to be more than a captain. He found the time to be your father, to be my husband...to rest. He struggled with it, but we made it work. You and Aika and Fina, you need to make time for that too. Right now, that wonderful girl is hurting. You say the world's in trouble? Vyse, the world's been in trouble since before you were born. Fina needs you more. The both of you. Moons, I can't even fathom what she's going through. She can't face it alone. Right now, you need to help her."

"How?" Vyse asked brokenly, pausing when they heard a wet slap from the washroom. "Mom, how? I've tried to think up a plan. I come up with some doozies when I'm in an airship, when lives are on the line, when I have people counting on me. But I look at Fina, who can't even look at us, much less say anything, and…" He lifted his hands off of the table and stared at them, looking more lost than Aika had ever seen him look before. "I don't know. I know I have to do something, but I don't know what to do. I'm just so tired." His face crumbled, and he looked over to Aika, guilt written plainly on his face. "I'm not good enough. I...I don't know how to fix this."

If one of them was hurting the other two could support them until the third was strong enough to stand back up again. That was something they'd lived by ever since the Grand Fortress, when Fina and Vyse had helped Aika put herself back together. In any other circumstance, it would be Vyse and Aika who would help keep Fina afloat while she steadied herself. But now? Now, when Aika had exhausted herself spiritually and emotionally to keep Fina alive, and Vyse was at his wit's end?

There came another wet slap from the washroom, and Aika looked to the closed door for a bit until she placed the sound as being Fina's dress wetly smacking against a surface - one of the scrubbing racks, probably.

Relena folded her hands together and looked at the two of them. "I don't think that there's an easy answer for you." She told him gently. "Fina's your girlfriend - well, both of yours - and you know her better than anyone else. She's just had her entire world pulled out from under her. Just like I had to be a shoulder for Dyne to lean on, you both need to be there for her. There's just one thing I can tell you that might help." She leaned forward slightly, making sure they were paying attention to her, which wasn't easy, given how the slapping of wet fabric from the washroom was picking up in tempo. "It's okay...not to be okay."

The smacking sounds grew louder and there was something underneath them almost like a whimper. Or sniffling. Aika was on her feet and five steps towards the door when the screaming started. Then she was running with Vyse bolting up behind her, his chair flung backwards from his lunge and rattling across the floor.

She kicked the door open and had a moment where her lungs seized up on her. Inside, a naked and dripping wet Fina was smashing her torn and still stained dress against the wall and screaming her lungs out. Aika had thought Fina had hit her low point.

Moons curse it, she'd been wrong. She lunged for Fina and tackled her in a hug, pinning the Silvites' arms to her sides and making her drop the dress, which plopped into a wet heap. Fina thrashed in Aika's arms and made her lose her balance, and they fell towards the floor, caught by Vyse only just barely in the nick of time. Fina gave up fighting back after Vyse pulled the two of them into a strong-armed hug that showed no sign of letting up, and went limp, howling openly.

"Let me go! Please, just let me go." Fina begged them.

"Never." Vyse vowed wetly. "We're here, Fina. We're right here. We're not going anywhere."

"Useless…" Fina added with a whimper, and degraded into illegible noises after. Aika hugged her for all she had, not caring that her clothes were getting soaked through. Nothing else mattered except this.

She looked up at the sound of a creaking floorboard and saw Vyse's mother in the washroom doorway. The older woman was crying as well with a hand over her mouth, and she nodded at Aika before closing the battered door and walking away.

It's okay not to be okay.

They weren't okay.

---

Windmill Island (Pirate Isle)

Aika's House

Evening

After Fina had fallen apart during her bath, Relena had taken the ruined Silvite dress away and put it out of sight. Fina had spent the rest of the night wearing one of Aika's older shirts and one of Relena's homely skirts for the sake of modesty, and Aika and Vyse had made sure that no matter what else needed to be seen to, she wasn't left alone again. It had taken her minutes to fall apart, to beg them to push her away. As the sky darkened and went from pale blue to pink and dark navy blue dotted with stars and the silver moon, they didn't dare risk finding out what she would do to herself in the dead of night.

Dinner was a muted affair held out in the village square for every civilian and child who Dyne's Blue Rogues called friend and family to come and see for themselves that two of their own were hale and hearty. Lyndsi asked how Marco was doing with the kind of prying that wasn't quite as surreptitious as it could have been with a few more years of seasoning, and Aika caught Fina trying to hide a smile while she laughed and told the little girl in pigtails that little Marco was alive and well, and well on his way to becoming a fine young man. The derisive snort from Vyse only added fuel to that fire, and there were a few minutes of good-natured teasing about Lyndsi's little crush that had the girl turning beet red and hiding her face while she squeaked. Gilder thankfully stepped in to pull the attention off of her by singing the praises of his Dear Clara, and the conversation turned to the other Blue Rogue captains spread out around the world.

They didn't speak of the war. There was no keeping the secret of the raid on Crescent Island, or that they'd lost people, but every time someone brought it up, Gilder or Vyse or Relena quickly shut it down and changed the subject. The wounds were still too new, too fresh to go over. It was all too personal, and Gilder knew that. What happened aboard the Silver Shrine would stay aboard the Silver Shrine, it wasn't for him to reveal. He took them aside after the village dinner broke apart and passed on the news he'd gathered. The Delphinus was still en route to the northern Frontier Lands. Dyne and the crew of the Albatross II were at Alpha Base and had offered it up if the Delphinus needed a more built up layover spot for repairs and rearmament. Clara had taken the Primrose and the Claudia under her command and was running reconnaissance in the vicinity of Nasrad while Admiral Komullah and the Nasrian Remnant Fleet tried to make good on Vyse's demand to run interference.

Night came, and Relena gave the three of them another hug and a kiss on the cheek before sending them towards Aika's house. Fina was still silent, and Vyse hesitated outside Aika's old home. Fina walked inside to get changed, and Aika didn't want to leave her alone for long. She plucked his black tricorn hat from his head to get his attention, and offered it back to him. "Vyse?"

"Sorry." He apologized, taking his hat back. "I'm just...I know I need to say something to her, but what if I say the wrong thing?"

"You won't." Aika told him. "Just remember what your mom told us. All we have to do is be there for her. Don't overthink it, Vyse." She arched up off of her heels the two inches she needed to get level with his lips and kissed him gently, pulling back and resting her forehead against his. "Your mind's full of ideas, but you've always led with your heart. She needs that more than anything, and mine." Aika had a thought flash in her head and she huffed. "She lost hers, after all."

He swallowed and nodded. "I'll be there in a minute." Aika let him be and headed inside.

Fina was already changed for bed in a set of soft Nasrian cotton pajamas. She lingered in the kitchen, one arm half-raised towards the kettle on the stove.

"Trying to decide if you want some tea before bed?" Aika asked her. Fina blinked and looked over, and Aika mustered a small smile. "I know you prefer coffee, but we're going to want to sleep tonight. I think I've still got some of that sleepy herbal tea Relena got me for my 17th birthday squirreled away in a cupboard somewhere…"

Fina's face soured and she shook her head. "Tea won't help."

Aika took her hand and tugged her out of the kitchen. "Come to bed, Princess. It's been a very long day." Fina let her lead and didn't protest when Aika pushed the covers back and moved her to sit on the edge of the bed. Aika shimmied out of her armored yellow leathers and her boots first. After a moment's consideration, she pulled off her shorts, shirt, and shift as well to go bare-chested, and Fina looked up for a moment before the light drained out of her again. "Fina…" Aika started, stopping when her lover shook her head.

Vyse coming in was a welcome interruption. He looked across the expanse of the house to the open bedroom and smiled at the two of them, eyeing Aika's body appreciatively before he reached for the buttons on his coat.

"It was good seeing everyone again." He started out, taking off his swords first and hanging their belt over the back of a chair before plopping his hat on top of it. "I think I needed a reminder for what we're fighting for." His boots came next, and a moment later, his mail shirt and his pants. When he was down to his undershirt and his delicates, Vyse doused the light on the candles set up in the kitchen and made his way to their bed in the near dark. With Vyse helping, Aika got under the covers and pulled Fina between them with Vyse taking the outside edge.

They were in bed, but none of them were resting. In the near total darkness of her old house, Aika's doubts seemed so much larger than they had been when she'd been standing outside. Almost completely naked, she held Fina in the same gentle embrace that had become their norm with Vyse's warmth and touch right there as well, and yet there was a distance that had never been there before. She touched Fina and didn't get a response. She held Fina and the beautiful woman didn't even stir. There was nothing but the muffled chirping of insects from outside, and the slow, steady breathing from the three of them, blending into noise.

Please, please don't fade away on us.

She knew Vyse was going to say something before he drew a breath. The way he tensed up made the bed go still and the delicate hairs on her arm stand on end. The way Fina tensed up between them meant she was expecting the other shoe to drop as well.

"You told me once, Fina, that I always knew exactly what to say." In the dark of Aika's house with the three of them cuddled together, his quiet voice filled the room. "But right now...I'm still grasping at straws. What you've gone through, what they did to you, I just - What could I say that wouldn't sound hollow and empty?" Aika felt him shift a little, and his hand brushed up against hers as they both touched Fina's hip, anchored themselves to her. "Just this. I love you. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day for the rest of my life." Another rustle of movement on the sheets came as Vyse moved Fina's hair to the side and kissed the back of her neck, and Aika was in the right position to see the Silvite's eyes glimmer with fresh tears. "Nothing has changed that. Nothing will."

"You shouldn't." Fina's words fell like the beats of a Flutterfly's wings, soft and felt more than heard. "You shouldn't love a monster."

"You are not a monster." Aika hissed quietly, cupping the side of her face. Fina's eyes had never been so dark, so haunted as they were in the light of a moonbeam that traced in from the shuttered window.

"I'm a Silvite." Fina said woodenly. "All Silvites are monsters."

"Not you." Vyse pressed her. "Never you." Fina shook her head against Aika's cupped hand, not believing them.

Any other sleepless night, their hands would inevitably travel to more intimate places and they would tumble into each other, coming out sweaty and sated afterwards. Tonight, Vyse was so very careful where he put his hands, and so was Aika. He didn't reach to cup Fina's breasts, Aika didn't curl her fingers down to the cleft between Fina's legs. She was afraid of hurting Fina just as he was, and Fina trembled from hurt instead of anticipation.

"I saw the same things you did up there, Fina." Vyse continued gently. "Do you know what I saw, in those broken memories? The Elders left Arcadia behind, yes, but the others? The ones who helped Ixa'taka, who sealed Yeligar and helped to put the world back together after the Rains? The Elders were the monsters. You're like the ones who stayed."

Fina didn't stir, and Aika's hand drifted down from her face to stroke at her belly unconsciously. She'd done it countless nights, a loving touch that Fina had always been receptive to. Fina had been starved for touch in ways that Aika could only now fathom after seeing how empty, how lonely her life was before she met them. She only realized how that touch might now be interpreted when Fina stiffened beneath her, when Aika saw where her hand was resting. Slightly beneath Fina's navel, over her womb.

"They…" Fina's voice cracked, and the tears came fresh and hard. "They were born, Vyse. I was made. The Elders made me for one reason."

To repopulate the world after the Elders destroyed it. To birth child after child, until she was no longer able or she died from the effort.

Ever since they were all together, it had been something that they'd agreed on, that they wanted children. Aika wanted one. Fina wanted more. Vyse got a stupid, goofy look on his face whenever they brought it up, so Aika and Fina had learned to talk about it privately. Always, always there had been the promise between them. It would be what they looked forward to after Valua was defeated and the Moon Crystals were safely out of Valua's reach. Gentle touches and soft smiles, and a promise between them, we will be mothers together, we will raise our children together, our sons and daughters will call us both Mama. But now? Now, after finding that out, could Aika blame Fina from recoiling from their touch after finding out the thing she wanted most in the world was - was - Moons, she couldn't. She started to slowly pull her hand back away from Fina's soft belly.

Vyse swallowed hard on Fina's other side, and his hand grabbed Aika's, bringing it back to Fina's stomach and pressing it down there with his on top of it.

"After everything..." He started, paused, swallowed, started again. "If you don't want to have children, you don't have to. It's a choice, Fina. Not an obligation, never. We love you for you. Babies or no, it doesn't matter. If you decide you want to adopt children like Centime and Carol, or if you don't want to have anything to do with children, it doesn't matter." His hand tightened over them, pressing Aika's hand into the fabric of Fina's nightshirt. "You get to decide who you are, what you want. Just promise me that whatever you decide, you'll leave room for me and Aika. I - we - can't lose you." His voice broke again, and he buried his face into Fina's neck and shoulder. "Don't leave us, Fina. Please."

Every sentence he uttered made Fina break down a little more, and at that last please, she was sobbing, gasping for air and not fighting a bit when Aika curled into her. They held each other as a shaking mess of three broken people that didn't say anything, waiting in the dark with the tension dialed too high to stand for something to give.

Fina gave.

"I still want it." She confessed, crying into Aika's breasts. "I still want to have a baby. How fucked up am I?" At last, the wound had been lanced and the pain and self-loathing poured out of her. Aika cried herself and held Fina tighter still. "They made me to be their perfect little baby factory, and they made me want it so badly that even when I know, I still…"

"Why?" Vyse asked, as gently as he could manage. "Why, Fina? Why do you still want to have a child?"

The heartsick Silvite sucked in a breath, pulled away from Aika's chest and shook her head. "...Because it would be ours." She confessed, and Aika stroked her hair as she slipped into silence again.

Vyse kissed the back of Fina's neck again, and the way he relaxed had Aika alert and watchful. "What the Elders wanted, and what you want are two different things." He pointed out. "And I think they were lying about that. Maybe they made you, but they couldn't tell you what to think. They couldn't tell you how to feel. That's here." He reached up and touched Fina's forehead, then lowered his hand over her heart. Her repaired, shard-transplanted, still beating heart. "And here. And those have always been yours."

Fina took his hand in hers, brought it up to her trembling lips, and kissed it. When she settled down again, the release of tension was different. She was settled in a way she hadn't been before. "Can I stay with you?" She begged them.

"Forever." Aika quickly told her. "Forever, Princess."

"Even though I'm a Silvite?" Fina prodded, and Vyse laughed softly, wiping at his eyes.

"Are you really? I don't think you could be a Silvite like those stone-hearted Elders are. I think you're something else now, you've been something else for a long time."

"What, then?" Fina wondered.

"A friend. A lover. The second half of our hearts. Our future wife. A Blue Rogue." Vyse summed it all up.

"I haven't taken the Oath." She pointed out.

Aika leaned in and kissed her, softly, deeply, and Fina surrendered with a happy whimper. The fire of belonging and want grew in Aika's heart again and she gave into it gratefully. When they pulled apart, Fina's blue eyes were clear and bright again, and their Princess bit her lip and smiled.

"Then take it now." Aika whispered.

Fina shut her eyes, smiled as the last of her tears were shed, and whispered the words. All of them were perfect, memorized, and burning with meaning. The Old Code and what Vyse had written of the New. It had always been solemn and full of weight.

It had never been so beautiful or sacred as it was there with Fina lying between them and casting off the shackles of her old life to dare for something more.

---

363 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Morning, 1 Hour After Sunrise

Vyse had been the first to wake up that morning before the sun came up. He had left after a night full of forgiveness and cuddling that didn't go beyond soft kisses full of promise and belonging. Vyse and Gilder would finalize their messages and pack up the skyship for the comparatively short flight to Dangral, where they would brave the Valuan pickets to try and cut off Ramirez and Galcian from resurrecting Soltis. Aika and Fina had one last important task to attend to before they could set sail.

Fina could no longer bring herself to wear her Silvite dress and veil. As wondrously crafted as it was, the memories were too soured and too choking to escape. It was a garment that had been manufactured by a heartless people, and Fina was not heartless. Had never been. She had renounced her status as a Silvite, Ramirez had been right in that at least. They had lied to Fina her entire life, and the only one who even remotely came close to caring was dead now. She owed the rest of them nothing.

Today would be the first time she would step out not as a Silvite, or as an ally, but as a full-blooded Blue Rogue. She would be making a statement, and Aika would be damned if she let the woman she loved go out dressed in rags.

The fidgeting and indecision Fina had on display got more than a little irritating though, especially since she'd never been hesitant about clothing at any other time in their lives together.

"Princess." Aika ground out. "You look fine. Trust me, he's going to love it no matter what. You could be wearing a potato sack and he'd still want to drag you into his cabin and screw you until you couldn't see straight."

"Aika!" Fina blushed, but she still smiled as she looked away and kicked the toe of her new boots against the floorboards. "Do you really think I look good?"

Aika took a step back and evaluated her again. Fina had looked good to her ever since Ixa'taka, if she was being honest with herself. The new outfit was a mix of the old and the new, with some of Aika's own style mixed in for good measure.

"Well," Aika said casually as she took in the sight of Fina's bare midriff, tight blue top and the white vest laced over it, "You aren't dressing for a fight."

Fina grinned. "Have I ever dressed for that?" She asked. The hesitation was there still, though. "And my skirt?" White again, done in a sailor's cut to leave room for the legs to run and with a sturdy leather belt holding it in place.

Aika snorted. "Babe, it's longer than mine." But far shorter than the hem of her dress had been, coming to just above Fina's knees. Very attractive, Aika had to admit.

"Will...Are you sure Vyse will like it?"

Aika snorted. Yes. Fina was pretty much every Blue Rogue's wet dream, objectively. She definitely liked it, just standing here in her house looking at Fina in the new getup was definitely doing things for her. But that wasn't the question Fina really wanted answered, Aika realized. This was her self-image at stake, and that was so very, very shaky still.

Aika sauntered over and pulled Fina into her arms, marveling at how she was just a hair taller than the other woman. "Fina, do you like it?"

Fina nibbled at her lip and considered the question before she mutely nodded her head. Aika smiled and tipped Fina's chin up for another soft, wet kiss that left stars in her eyes. "If you like it, then Vyse will like it."

Fina's smile was so much more genuine then. "I love you." She said, and pulled back, tugging on Aika's arm. "Come on. We need to go."

"Are you ready for this?" Aika asked, letting Fina pull her along. Fina slowed up before she reached the door and shook her head.

"No. Ready to keep going yes, but I...I can't face Ramirez. Not yet." She looked back at Aika.

"Then you won't have to." Aika said. "We'll figure something out. And it might help us, if Ramirez thinks that you're…"

"Still dead?" Fina finished wryly.

"Moons, that sounds awkward, doesn't it?" Aika winced. Fina sighed and rolled her shoulders, then pushed the front door open and stepped out.

The whole village seemed to be gathered and waiting for them, and most of the wives blinked in surprise at the new outfit. Vyse, who had been standing and talking with his mother, did a double take and promptly swallowed his tongue while his eyes went wide.

"Wow, Miss Fina, you're really pretty!" Lyndsi gushed, giggling while her skirts swung around her ankles like a bell. Aika moved off to the side and waited as Fina took in the sight of a stupefied Vyse and fixed a cat's knowing smile on him.

"Well, Vyse? How do I look?"

"Hot." Vyse blurted out, then blinked and blushed as all the women in the village started tittering at his surprisingly honest admission.

"Well." Fina looked over to Aika, letting her smile change just long enough to let Aika know the look was meant for her alone, "I owe Aika my thanks, then. Don't you think so?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Shouldn't you tell her that?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Say, thank you Aika." Fina went on, milking Vyse's stammering fit for all it was worth.

"Thank y -" Vyse started, stopped, and scowled as the titters turned into full out laughs, with Aika laughing the loudest of all. It was cathartic, after the hell of yesterday. It felt so good to realize that they could all still laugh, that they were still together.

Tested. Strained. Broken. Repaired.

But not beaten. Not yet.

Gilder whistled from the small landing platform erected halfway up to the ladder that attached to the lookout island, and they all turned to look at him. "Hey! Hate to break up the party, but we're burning daylight here and that clown Ramirez already has a headstart on us!"

"He's right." Vyse admitted, turning to the others. "Mom, you know what to do, right?"

"Your father's coming to pick us all up. As soon as you leave, we'll be packing up the island to evacuate." Relena promised him. "If Valua comes, they won't find us."

"Good." Vyse said, relieved that there was one less thing to worry about. "And all the supplies we brought back from the Silver Shrine?"

Relena put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his forehead. "They'll be waiting for you at your father's secret base, whenever you decide you're ready for them." That had been something that Aika and Fina had both agreed with Vyse on at the very start of the morning. The collected knowledge of the Old World's science and engineering and medicine and art kept up on the Silver Shrine needed to be protected, preserved. Passed on, but only when it was safe.

Windmill Island was no longer safe.

"Then I think we're ready." Vyse said, giving Aika and Fina another smile. "Coming?"

"Go ahead, Vyse. We'll catch up." Aika reassured him. Vyse resettled his black captain's hat on top of his head again, gave them both a wink, and started up. Relena was quick to pull Aika and Fina into a three-way hug, warm and welcoming in a way that Aika realized was a perfect model for motherhood.

"You are both my daughters now." Relena said to them softly, so no one else could hear them. "I love you, and no matter what happens, know you have my blessing. Take care of each other, and look after my son. I'd always hoped he'd find a good woman to keep him settled." She wiped a happy tear from his eye. "I think I'm finally okay with him having two."

"He needed two, mom." Aika pointed out. "He gets into twice as much trouble."

Relena's brown eyes sparkled, and she clasped their hands. "I suppose he does. Try and fix that, would you?"

Fina's answering hug was much tighter. "We will...mother." She got out shyly.

They waved to the others who shouted out words of farewell and encouragement and moved up the wooden walkways to the skyship. Gilder was already perched in the cockpit, but Vyse lingered on the shore's edge.

"Ready to go?" He asked lightly.

Aika nodded. "Yeah. I think so." He nodded back and turned over to Fina, fresh concern on his face.

"Fina? I know that you're not fine, but are you doing better?"

The former Silvite breathed in and out and offered a thin, but honest expression of openness. Not a bright smile, but one that told of slow healing. "I'm getting there. As long as I have you and Aika...I'll get there."

"I'm not going anywhere now." Vyse promised her. "I think I've had my fill of dying. And I know how he fights now. Both him and Galcian, actually." His eyes turned thunderous. "They won't be so lucky next time."

Fina took her spot at the helm of the Silvite skyship. It responded to her commands effortlessly, and with the bubble shield erected around the cockpit, they were soon screaming away from Windmill Island faster than any Arcadian airship could fly.

Dangral Island, and the elevator to Soltis, beckoned. The darker clouds north of Shrine Island loomed on the horizon, and Aika found herself on edge.

It seemed like all of Arcadia was holding its breath.