Day 47:

Progress was made. Though it was, in practice, difficult to sew by lamplight, they finished off the night in that fashion and, rather than returning to Insomnia, found space in the caravan and remained in Hammerhead overnight. The airship was far from functional, even by the following morning, but that day was punctuated by the sputtering sound of the engine as Cid started it up and shut it off again. The first few times he didn't need to turn it off at all: it died on its own a few seconds after being turned on.

The balloon was only marginally better. Entire sections had been removed for the patching process, only to find that the fabric was too frayed along the edges to hold a seam any longer. Rather than risk downsizing the balloon by trimming the ancient and fraying fabric, Ignis declared they should replace those sections altogether.

And so passed the second day in an effort to make the vessel sky-worthy. Had it been only Reina, she would have begun to despair that they would ever finish. Bahamut was out there, biding his time. He could, at any moment, begin what could only become catastrophe for them, and they would have no way to reach him. To stop him.

But she was not alone. She felt closer to her friends than she could ever remember doing—even during that one golden year of her Dream when they had been as close to each other as Noctis' retinue had been.

"Just think how beautiful Lucis will look from up there," Iris said that afternoon, as she pushed her needle through the unyielding canvas with bandaged fingertips.

"It's not a joyride we're going on," Cor said.

She threw her pincushion at him. "I know that! Sheesh. Shoot me down for thinking about something nice. No wonder I'm in this group. You all need someone to lighten the mood. Sourpusses."

Cor threw the pincushion back and Iris caught it.

"I expect we will see a great deal more of Eos than ever before," Ignis said mildly, though his eyes drifted to Reina. "Sparing you, of course."

Reina didn't respond at once. She worked her needle through two layers of canvas and considered. Iris saw everything with bright, fresh eyes, but everything Reina laid eyes on was tainted by memories and nightmares. An airship, though—a Lucian airship—that was new. She had flown before, but never like that.

"I think I should like to see it," she said. "All in the light and untarnished by dirty glass."

"As usual, I have been excluded from your reckoning, Toasty," Ardyn lamented. "I'm beginning to think no one in this retinue cares about my feelings."

Iris threw her pincushion at him.

For lunch they had a set of elaborate and surprisingly beautiful salads, courtesy of Cindy. Cid, whom Reina expected to be the sort of man who called salad 'bunny food' or some such derisive moniker, accepted without comment and seemed, in fact, to enjoy his lunch very much. Then again, Cid had never been able to turn down anything his granddaughter made.

Cor, on the other hand, was only restrained by good manners—of which he, admittedly, had very few.

He prodded at his salad, grumbling whenever Cindy's back was turned. This turned out to be frequently, as Cid drew her away to pour over diagrams while they worked.

"Can't fuel work on lettuce," Cor muttered under his breath.

"That is not all lettuce." Ignis pointed his fork at Cor's pot of salad.

"It isn't meat, either."

"This salad is considerably more nutritionally dense than Takka's steaks—albeit in a different direction—and yet I did not hear you complain about the fuel content last night," Ignis said.

"Steak fills you up," Cor said. "And it's got all of this inside anyway."

"I beg to differ," Ignis said.

"If a cow eats vegetables and I eat the cow—"

"Firstly, that was decidedly not a cow—"

"Whatever it was, then."

"And secondly, that is not how nutrition works. You are as bad as Noctis."

"Be careful, Lion. Play with fire and you'll get burned." Ardyn picked delicately through his salad without comment on the meal.

Cor glared at Ignis, so shocked that anyone would think to compare him to Noct that he failed entirely to come up with a response.

Following lunch—which even Cor finished, despite his protests—they rewrapped their fingers and returned to work. Ignis was the only one among them who seemed to be able to make a thymbol work. The rest of them had resorted to a few layers of tape—some laid on top of bandages.

Progress was had, though at an unsatisfactory rate and it hardly seemed like any at all. Reina watched the sun sink toward the horizon and wondered what Bahamut was doing now. Preparing, likely, even as they idled.

"We'll make it," Iris said, whenever she caught Reina's eyes wandering.

Outland-made cars passed by on the road frequently enough that another vehicle attracted very little notice—at least for any whose attention was focused elsewhere. But Cindy's ears were more well-attuned to the specific purr of a Crown City car.

"She sure is a beauty," Cindy said, without apparent cause.

Reina looked up from her work. Through the perpetual cloud of dust, which seemed to hang over the road, she could just make out the Regalia pulling in to Hammerhead. Behind the wheel was Clarus and in the front seat, Father. The Regalia halted, doors opened, and not just Clarus and Father, but Noctis, Gladio, and Prompto all poured out.

"Your Majesty." Ignis struggled to his feet so he could bow. Iris hastened to do the same, and Reina and Cor both rose more leisurely. Ardyn stretched out, crossed his legs, and leaned back on his hands.

"Well I'll be—if it ain't ol' Reggie." Cid emerged from behind a precarious pile of miscellaneous metal parts, rubbing his greasy hands on an equally greasy cloth.

"Cid, I must request that you refrain from such undignified nicknames in public."

"Got a stick up your ass these days too, eh Reggie?"

Father sighed. "Oh, very well, Mr Hammerproof Thickskull."

Cid leveled a glare at him. His neutral face looked so much like a glare, Reina had initially thought he was simply displeased all the time. Instead it turned out that was just what his face looked like. This was a glare. And yet Father stood, unmoved by the expression.

"Yer Majesty," Cid said, as if flinging an insult.

"Mr Sophiar," King Regis retorted.

Again Cid paused. His expression hardly changed from that suspiciously scrutinizing look.

"Regis," Cid said.

Father smiled. "My old friend."

"And here I was, believing one of you would have grown up in the last thirty years." Clarus came to stand beside Father. Noct and the others migrated in the direction of Reina and her retinue, exchanging rough greetings with the last member of their team.

"You old men gonna stand there all night or lend a hand? If you don't mind getting your manicured paws dirty," Cid said.

"We may indeed," Father said. "Or else this contraption shall never leave the ground."

"Contraption," Cid scoffed. "That there is fine craftsmanship, boy, and don't you forget it!"

Noct looked from Cid to Father to Reina, looking uncertain whether to laugh or not. When was the last time someone had called the King of Lucis 'boy'?

"Honestly I feel a little better about how he treats me," Noct said, pulling off his coat and handing it to Gladio, who refused to accept it and instead allowed it to fall in the dirt. Ignis picked it up and dusted it off, glaring at Gladio.

"Enough yammering!" Cid said. "Y'all want this thing to fly or not?"

They did. And so, in short order, groups were rearranged, new tasks were doled out, and work began with fresh energy. Anywhere in Insomnia, the garage would have attracted a crowd of hundreds within a minute. Here in the Outlands, people walked by and thought of nothing more out of the ordinary than a few men working in a garage with suits on. From the inside it seemed even more peculiar. Noctis, Gladio, and Prompto looked out of place only so far as they were wearing formalwear at all—a fact that refused to become commonplace in Reina's mind—but Father and Clarus had never, in Reina's memory, engaged in physical labor. And messy labor at that. Father's shirt started off the afternoon white. If Mr Scientia had been present he would have cried for the grease stains that were smeared across it by sunset.

But for the first time since they had arrived in Hammerhead, Reina was beginning to feel as if they could truly do what they had set out to. They could finish the airship in time to stop Bahamut.

As the sun began to set, Ignis pulled her away from the darkening skies to the warmly lit interior of the caravan.

"It may well have been presumptuous of me—and, in hindsight, I expect your fingers are much too tired to make any good use of it, even if you wished to—but I did bring along something for you." He reached underneath one of the bunks and pulled out a sleek black violin case. How he had managed to get it both into the car and under the bunk without her any the wiser, she would never know.

Reina stared. She had owned that case—and the violin within—for eighteen years in this lifetime. But it had been her companion in her Dream as well, once Ardyn had found it in the Citadel. Before that it had been in Father's care and before that someone else's entirely—an extraordinary man, he had once told her, who had killed himself rather than live without his wife. She had thought she understood that before. Now she felt all the closer to him and his violin.

Her violin.

She took it from Ignis' hands and laid it out on the bottom bunk, unlatching the case with stiff fingers and opening it up to lay bare the instrument inside.

"I thought you might like something of your own," he said. "You might cook with me under coercion, but I sense you yearn for something else."

"I do," she said, though whether music was that something, she couldn't say. Her hands had not been idle for those ten long years. More than once she had stood on a Citadel balcony and played a lament for the ruin of Insomnia. Of Lucis.

Perhaps now she would play an ode. For there was joy in her chest, however it refused to be felt. Or else she refused to accept it for what it was.

"I know you were reticent when I asked you before…" Ignis ran his hands over his shirt.

"Thank you, Ignis," she murmured, running her fingers down the neck. It would need to be restrung. Tuned.

"Noctis says you have not played in several years," said Ignis.

"Not in this lifetime," she said. Though perhaps her fingers still knew where to rest.

"Won't you pick it up, at least?" He asked.

Though her hand rested on the neck, the task seemed more monumental the longer she considered. For much of her life, it had been a constant companion. When she was angry and upset that her father had once again missed her birthday. When she was lonely without Noctis sharing her room any longer. When she mourned the loss of everything she loved and took to the darkness.

And now. When she had it all back.

She lifted the violin from the case. The strings, when plucked, produced discordant notes—flat and uninteresting. Before she was fully aware of what she was doing, she had lowered onto the bunk and was tuning the violin. Her fingers knew the task, only barely taking advice from her ears, just as she knew it needed to be restrung but wouldn't be tonight.

That violin was always the deepest part of her heart. Every emotion she couldn't feel or had no words to describe, it brought to life. It should have been dusty, yet there was not even a speck on the glossy finish.

"Will you play for us?" Ignis was leaning against the wall. She had all but forgotten he was present until he spoke.

"For everyone?" She asked.

He appeared to give this question due consideration. "If it is too difficult, we would all understand. And yet, I know for certain that everyone gathered in Cid's garage would appreciate the reprieve. And the king, for one, would like a second chance."

A second chance.

She stared at the violin resting in her lap for a whole minute without moving. This was a second chance, but it didn't belong solely to her. Everyone she loved—everyone she had spoken to about her Dream and what she had learned about herself and about them—had regrets of their own. They may not have experienced their own downfall, as she had, but they had a second chance all the same. To not turn away. To disbelieve her when she lied. To stand beside her, even if it could hurt them. And just like her, they meant to take it.

"I'll play," she said.

She took her violin in hand and went unflinching into the night. The others were gathered outside Cid's garage, where a bonfire had been lit to cast off whatever shadows the floodlights did not reach. They stood, an odd bunch but encompassing most everything Reina loved all at once. Father and Clarus looking out of place beside Cid, even with coats and capes removed and sleeves rolled up. Noctis with Gladio and Prompto, all of them dressed much like the older generation and looking more wise for the change. Iris, Cor, and Ardyn, perhaps the oddest of the bunch, belonging each somewhere else and yet standing together all the same.

Conversation quieted when Reina approached with her violin in hand and Ignis at her heel. She did not miss the look Father gave him—one of gratitude and respect—or the nod that passed between them. Ignis broke away from her and joined Noctis and the others.

With no words spoken on her part, the others drifted to find seating—whether in chairs or on the pavement near the fire—and conversation fell silent in favor of Reina.

She said nothing. Merely lifted her bow, tucked her violin beneath her chin, and began to play.

The result, at first, was not music so much as meandering while her stiff fingers loosened and remembered where to find notes, and her clumsy arm struggled to place the bow. It took a moment. The resulting sound was cacophonic and unstructured. Bumbling.

Reina paused, flexed her sore fingers and shook out her arm, and began again.

This time she dropped into a place inside her that she had all but forgotten these past months. The place where she forgot what notes were and remembered only sensation and pattern. The place where the bow ceased to be a tool to be held and became an extension of her arm. And from that place music flowed free, beginning slow and uncertain, growing confused and jumbled at a frantic pitch, and reaching a crescendo and a crash before the fall. The meandering exposition before ceased to be an exploratory moment of recollection and practice and instead became the preface of something much larger. Something which fell as sharply as it had increased, and dropped instead into mourning twisted up with joy until both were indistinct—inseparable from each other.

It may not have been an ode—for that was not in her heart—but it was the truth laid bare.

And when at last it concluded—a twinkling brightness carrying on into the night—and Reina stood before them, raw and uncovered, there was silence for a minute. Two minutes. It took that long, at least, for Reina to lift her head and look around. She half-expected to find there was no one in Hammerhead at all, for how quiet they were. But the crowd was just as she had left them: gathered in various states of sitting and lounging or standing, and transfixed.

A tear ran down her father's face. Had she ever seen him cry before? Not in living memory.

Clarus sat beside him, smiling and misty. Noctis looked dumbfounded. Gladio and Prompto were both awed. Iris sat beside Cor, her knees tucked up to her chest, rubbing tears from her cheeks until Cor produced a tissue for her. Even he was not unmoved. Stoic Cor, catching her gaze and holding it long past what would have been comfortable with most anyone else, until at last he gave her a single nod. Ardyn wore a tiny smile on his lips. Perhaps he, too, recalled a time she had played from her heart on request. A much different time. A much different song.

And there was Ignis, rising to his feet, his own eyes rimmed with red as he produced her violin case and—once her instrument was tucked away—gathered her up in his arms and kissed her hair.

"I understand," he murmured.

And for the first time since waking, she believed he did.

They all did.