Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note:

This chapter has been one of the most difficult to write. I must have restarted it like six different times, trying to find a proper tone and way to capture it. Oddly enough, my breakthrough came in with cablecars. I was coming up with all these different types of public transportation for a more mechanical city and the idea of cablecars was on the list. It was like BOOM, there it is. This is a level of technological advancement, a way to measure innovation and industry without being super futuristic yet.

"In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love."
- Frank O'Hara

Kratos slept worse in relative peace than he had ever slept on battlefields. His body didn't know what to do with calm streets and a domestic routine. His mind couldn't handle the constant noise of people going about their business, knowing that they were in enemy territory. Despite the capital being, technically, at war, the citizens showed few signs of it beyond the refugee camps clinging to its outer walls. Refugee camps that they'd been in, not too long ago.

A job with the militia before being accepted into the city guard had given them a steady source of income until Martel began working as a doctor in the outer rings of the city. Between the two of them, they brought in most of the money that had gotten them out of the refugee camps and into a one room apartment for the four of them by the river. Yuan had worked odd jobs around the city—everything from cleaning to painting to hard labor—before he was accepted as a civilian apprentice mechanic. The pay was a bit too low to be decent, but it was consistent, which was more important sometimes. Mithos was too young to properly work—"I'm almost fourteen and there are human soldiers my age out there in the fields," he fumed. "Hypocrites!"—so he'd found an apprenticeship with a printmaker. He was paid in pennies, but Mithos said it would at least allow him an early look at the newspapers, so they would have some kind of warning if they needed to get out of the city.

Despite the fact that they were in, logically, the best place they'd been in since entering human territory, Kratos couldn't quite relax. Undercover, and literally the deepest behind enemy lines they could be. How long could they keep all of this up?

There were no signs of Maxwell that any of them had managed to find. Origin had told them that he could be found in the ruins of the old city, but the oldest parts of the city were to the northwest and were rather extensive in the damage they'd received in the last bombing. The rebuilding efforts had been going on for the better part of a decade now, but every time any of them went exploring there in their off time, they could find no trace of a Temple of any sort. Keeping all of that under wraps would also be difficult. There were people living among the ruins, thin and stubborn, but otherwise, no one really ventured out there and none of them could afford to have too many questions asked.

Kratos' nightmares were vivid with the consequences of being discovered. Their bodies slung over the city walls, traitor's brands gleaming on their chests. Beheaded at the executioner's block for the entertainment of nobles. Left to rot in the prisons below the city. Sold into slavery.

Kratos sat awake many nights, looking at his friends'—his family's—sleeping bodies bundled into their bedrolls. He couldn't allow any of that to happen to them. Whatever it cost him, whatever their captors would demand he do—turn himself in, fight in their armies, be a slave himself—Kratos would do it to spare them the horrors that would no doubt be rained upon them.

Being in the city guard left Kratos off-kilter. He often had to deal with merchants and lower nobility and he found himself struggling to remember his countless etiquette lessons. How low to bow, and to whom. Which forms of address to use. All of which had changed now due to the fact that, as a soldier, he didn't have an official station.

"You should see what these guys have cooking up," Yuan said as they met up to pick up Mithos on the walk home. "Flying machines. They're getting stuck on actually maintaining altitude…"

Kratos smiled faintly. Yuan was good for this sort of work, and it made something in Kratos' chest warm a bit when he saw how well Yuan was doing, how much he enjoyed doing work like this. Finding creative solutions, working with his hands, experimenting—it suited Yuan's quick-fire, dreamer mentality so well. "I'm sure they'll find a solution very quickly with you working with them now."

"I am humbled by your faith in me," Yuan said dramatically, pressing the back of one hand to his forehead like a bad theatre actor.

He laughed when Kratos shoved him playfully. The sound released some tension Kratos hadn't known he was holding. Savoring the small moments. It was what he'd told himself needed to happen. It was the only way to survive all of this. The only way to come out sane on the other side.

(And there is another side. There has to be. The War is not all there is, even if Kratos doesn't know what true peace looks like)

They sat and waited outside the print shop for Mithos. Yuan half-muttered, half-talked through any ideas he had, as though he could see their blueprints forming in front of him. Kratos nodded and commented occasionally on the little he could understand.

They took turns dozing on each other's shoulders, having the earliest shifts. Martel was down at the refugee camps today, volunteering her skills despite it being her day off. They'd tried exactly once to talk her into taking it easy on her very few days off, but one furious look had silenced them.

Yuan yawned, pressing his forehead stubbornly into the meat of Kratos' shoulder before sitting up, stretching. He looked around at the tall buildings, and the walls beyond them. Despite the fact that he'd grown up in the mountains, he hated how much of the sky was blotted out by the city.

"How can these people stand to live so confined?" Yuan asked lowly. "I understand desperation, but a gilded cage is still a cage."

"The central human lands are all flatlands," Kratos said. "We were a people of farmers and herders in the beginning."

Yuan looked sideways at him. It had been a long time since Kratos had talked like this, on academic things like history. He'd been quieter in general lately, but he'd spoken very little since entering the capital. "What do you think changed? Farmers don't become conquerors overnight."

"Invasions, I would imagine. From all sides. Enough invasions and you'd want to fight back."

"And then they became corrupted and started selling their war prisoners as slave labor," Yuan said bitterly.

"Are you okay?" Kratos asked quietly. Being in the city was putting strain on them all, but Kratos knew that Yuan was under a different kind of stress, learning under humans again, helping them build their war machines.

Yuan exhaled slowly, looking up at the smoky sky. Factories both making and running on magitchnology were common here. He didn't usually work in the factory for the machines themselves, but all of the warehouses were close enough to the factories to feel the effects. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just—I hear what the humans say, I know what they're taught and I'm in a position where I could try to change things, where I could maybe start having some kind of influence over them, but it would make all of us too vulnerable."

"No one blames you for choosing us over them," Kratos told him. "We've all done it at some point."

"But isn't that the problem? People choosing their own families over what's better for the world? We're rebels. We shouldn't have a problem dying for the cause."

Grabbing Yuan's wrist firmly to get his attention, Kratos said, "First of all, we've risked our lives for peace dozens of times over. Our courage isn't in question. Secondly, all of this is only temporary. Stepping stones on our path to peace, remember? We need to get into that library to find the information. We need Maxwell, and we need to gain the humans' trust if there's even a lick of chance of them hearing us out. None of this is permanent."

"Does it matter if it is? Can we really stand on any high ground if the principles we try to change the world with change with the situation?"

"We're not perfect. No one is, not even the Spirits. I wish there was an easy way to do the right thing, but…we do what we have to do."

"For the greater good, huh?" Yuan leaned back as Kratos' grip on his wrist loosened, tilting his head back. He was so tired these days. And being in a city full of magitechnology didn't help. Mithos and Martel still had bouts of nausea from it, but the only effect Yuan had managed to notice for himself was just a complete lack of energy all the time. "No news on that Ciridian Library of Alstan's?"

Kratos shook his head. "I've been trying to ask about it without being very obvious. I—I don't know if it would be a normal question or not."

Yuan snorted. "Yeah, our definitions of 'normal' are probably quite skewed. I'll see what I can dig up on my end. I mean, there have to be some kind of resources the mechanics use."

A cable car rumbled down the street, people casually swinging themselves on and off of it. Some children were seated on the back, kicking their legs and laughing. Kratos had never even heard of cable cars, and they were apparently a fairly new invention, having come around only in the last few decades. They were still impractical in most towns, but the idea had apparently sprung up in cities that were more mountainous, similar to how dwarven minecarts operated in areas where elevators couldn't be made. The capital had most of their city connected by cable car, though Kratos hadn't ridden one yet. Mithos and Yuan had leapt at the chance as soon as they could afford a ticket, instantly fascinated by the technology. Kratos and Martel had heard all about the fact that magitechnology created electricity that ran giant wheels in a wheelhouse that turned the cables, which were centered on the tracks which the car sat on.

"Things like that are what magitechnology should be used for," Mithos had said, eyes bright with discovery and passion. (It's a look that gets rarer and rarer these days, and Kratos had been so grateful to see it) "I mean, look at how useful this is! A public transportation that is, relatively, inexpensive and time-saving, but can get you across town if needs be. And powering a printing press with magitechnology is smart too!"

"They use up too much mana though," Martel had reminded him. "It doesn't do us any good to have those things if the world is dying because of them."

"They can be improved, can't they?" Martel forgot sometimes, how clever her little brother was. Perhaps he would invent a way out of the decline their world was in. "They can be made more efficient, and—this is just a theory since I haven't seen the blueprints—but I think the magitechnology weapons cause most of the issues. They use up big bursts of mana all at once, so it leaves like—like a vacuum, I guess. But these machines, they might use up the same amount, but it's not all at once. Like, it's lower quantities spread out over time. I think the world can adjust to that more easily than the weapons."

"Your theory's pretty much on target, kid."

None of them jumped anymore when Ratatosk decided to show up. He seemed to get bored rather often, and enjoyed checking in on them.

Mithos had whirled to look at him, and Kratos could almost see his mental cogs firing up. "I am?"

"Yeah. The machines aren't real efficient, but they don't present the main problem. Those weapons are…draining." Ratatosk's lip curled and was it Kratos' imagination or did he look a bit paler today? Less…solid, for lack of a better term.

Martel's lips had pressed into a thin line. "It's getting worse, isn't it? The mana?"

"That cannon of theirs is a doozy."

"They've fired it again?!"

"They must have."

"So why are you expending energy to be here? Go back to…wherever you Spirits go, and rest." Ratatosk laughed softly at Martel's shooing motion, but did as she said.

The war wasn't in their face anymore. They weren't on the front lines, or fighting for their lives daily. But the war was still happening outside of the bubble of the capital city. The refugee camps along the city walls were a solid enough reminder. There was no time to waste.

Ciridian Tower was obvious enough to be seen from more or less anywhere in the city. It was one of two great spires, the other belonging to the royal castle. Ciridian Tower housed the library for the most prestigious university in the capital—it boggled all four of their minds that there were enough students, teachers and books for there to be multiple universities in one city—and was therefore, rather difficult to get into.

"…Is there any way you could use your connections to get in there?" Kratos asked finally, eyes on the Tower. They were trying to avoid breaking in, as they wanted to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

Yuan shook his head. "Not so far. And neither of us could even attempt to apply for a job there, but I was thinking. Could we apply as students? Any of us should be able to pass their entrance exams."

A flash of yellow caught their eye as Mithos exited the building across the street. They waved him down. The lie was that Yuan and Martel were Mithos' parents, and that Kratos was Yuan's brother, that they'd fled their cities when the half-elves came. It was a lie that had worked thus far, and kept people from asking too many questions.

Mithos always left work with his hands and face stained with ink and grease, but he insisted that it wasn't such a bad job, so the rest of them had learned to kind of let it be, regardless of how droopy his eyes got after work. Working so closely with magitechnology was draining and exhausting, so Yuan and Kratos tried to keep him awake and somewhat alert on the way home. They told him about the vague plan about actually applying to the university.

Mithos lit up with interest and excitement, but Kratos caught the moment disappointment overtook it all. "Guess I'm too young to apply, huh."

"To keep our cover, yeah." Yuan puts a hand on Mithos' head, knowing how badly Mithos would want to go. "Sorry, kid. You could kick that test's ass so easily."

By the next block, Mithos had shelved his disappointment and was back into planning mode. "But universities are expensive, aren't they? We can't afford it."

"There used to be things like scholarships to help with university costs," Kratos mused. "I'm not very sure how you go about getting them, though, assuming they're still a thing."

"It would need to be entities with money." Yuan hopped up to walk on a low wall. "And they would need a reason to be invested in a student's future."

Mithos froze mid-step. "What about the military?"

Kratos made a thoughtful sound. "You might be onto something."

"The military would benefit from more educated officers," Yuan mused, hopping back down to sit. "They might be willing to spring for a scholarship, but…the entrance exam scores would have to be off the charts for them to consider it."

"Ask your superiors, and I'll ask mine," Kratos told him. "They should have more information. If we both sit the entrance exams, that doubles our odds of getting in."

"Martel might be able to apply as well," Mithos suggested. "Even without her…'supplies'," It was too public a place to mention magic, even if they tried to play it off as exaggeration or a joke. "The military always needs good medics. If she says she's studying to be a proper doctor…"

"We can discuss is more at home. And when we have more information."

"It would be interesting to learn human medicine," Martel said that night as she folded clothes. They had more than a few shirts each now, particularly with work uniforms for Yuan and Kratos. "I'm getting by with adapting my herbal knowledge, but humans take their medicine to a chemical level."

"It would limit your time severely," Yuan pointed out. "I know how much you care about helping at the refugee camps."

"I'm well aware of that," Martel said archly, searching for the other pair of a sock. "The whole point is moot without the entrance exams though."

"I think we'd all do pretty well, honestly." Yuan tossed her the sock, fishing out another pair of underwear from the basket. "I mean, we're all more than averagely intelligent. And we know the practical side of like, strategy and things."

"I agree with Yuan," Kratos said from their little stove where he was trying his best with a chicken and carrots for dinner. "We have some gaps in our knowledge, but overall, we should do fine."

"That's assuming we just need to be good enough to pass. I think, of the three of us, you two have the better chances. Not," Martel overrode their immediate protests. "Because of intelligence, but both of you have had human schooling. I've never learned anything beyond basic mathematics, or—or the way humans study science or understand history. I don't think those tests actually measure intelligence, just…points of knowledge. And I don't have those. I think you two should take the exam."

"But we could teach them to you!"

"With what time, Kratos? We barely see each other as it is because we're all so busy with our work." Martel set her stack of folded shirts aside to walk over to him. She had that patient motherly look on her face—usually reserved for Mithos. "I appreciate the fact that you—both of you—would be willing to teach me. But it's not practical right now."

Kratos wavered on the edge of arguing further; she could see him weighing his options in his mind, saw the spreadsheets pulled out to try and find a balance in their schedules, and then saw him resign himself to the fact that she was right. "…Okay. I'll talk to Lieutenant Colonel Gunderson tomorrow."

Kratos knocked on the doorframe to his superior officer's little used office. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gunderson was a grizzled man in his mid-forties. He wasn't a man known for enjoying a desk job; more often than not, he could be found doing patrols and investigations of his own. From what Kratos had heard from the others in his squad, Gunderson had been fighting in the militia since he'd lied on his forms that said a thirteen year old was sixteen.

Gunderson glanced up. "Aegis. Enter."

"Good morning, sir." Kratos—or rather, Marcus Aegis, as all of his official documents said—saluted before standing at attention in front of the desk.

"At ease, Aegis. Good morning."

"I had some questions for you, sir, if you have some time."

Gunderson set down his pen and folded his scarred hands together. "Is everything alright?"

"Yessir. I just wanted to know about…furthering my education."

"Wanting to become an officer?"

"Yessir."

"Why?"

"All that is left of my family is my brother, his wife, and their son. The city guard is safer than being on the front lines, but my family would feel better if I were in a more secure position." Gunderson nodded, but said nothing, so Kratos continued. "I also feel that I may serve our country better as a strategic analyst, sir."

"You're a good fighter, Aegis. Don't sell yourself short."

"I'm not, sir," Kratos assured him hurriedly. "But every day, the half-elves have more chances to overcome us. We came to this city to be safe from the war, sir. I don't need the half-elves on our doorstep."

Gunderson nodded again, which set Kratos' insides squirming with anxiety. He sat back in his chair and pulled a file from one of his drawers. Setting a pair of reading glasses on his nose, he read silently for long minutes before he set a file aside.

"Your scores for the aptitude tests were remarkable. Given this, and from what I know of you personally, I agree that you are warrant officer material. It's very soon to promote you, as you haven't been part of the guard here for even a year yet. I understand you were in the military back home?"

"Yessir, I was. I was just a grunt though."

"How many years were you enlisted?"

Kratos did the math. The best lies were closest to the truth. He'd been in the half-elven military for… "Close to ten years, sir."

Gunderson hummed. "If your superiors didn't see fit to promote you back there, they must have been quite blind in order to miss your potential. Unless it was a personal decision?"

"I was promoted to a specialist, but never beyond that." Conveniently enough for Kratos, Marcus Aegis' military records were destroyed in the bombings. And with information being so hard to keep steady these days, the odds of his backstory being called into question weren't very high.

"It will be a difficult road to be sure, given your situation, but if you wish to go to university for training in a certain position, I would be happy to write you a recommendation."

Some of the anxiety loosened. "Thank you, sir. But I also had a question regarding scholarships, of a sort? University is—rather expensive. I'm not sure if the military still offers assistance with that?"

Gunderson regarded him over his glasses. "The military budget is…not great, as I'm sure you're aware. The scholarships that are given out are very few, only for those applicants who have shown their merit to be very much above and beyond the norm, and still for the good of the military."

Kratos leaned forward almost imperceptibly, his eyes flinty. "I have what it takes, sir."

"Judging by your scores, Aegis, I'd say you do. I just wanted to warn you." Gunderson pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and quickly wrote a message in a smooth, bold hand. As he folded it neatly into thirds, he said, "You can ask the main military office at the castle for a scholarship application. You will have to sit the entrance exam, and then the review board makes their judgment based on scores. When you submit your application," Gunderson placed the paper in an envelope and sealed it with wax. "Give them this also. We could do with more officers like you, Aegis. Too many are power-seekers, arrogant in their positions. They've no respect for the war."

Kratos took the offered letter, but his brow furrowed in confusion. "In what way, sir?"

"War demands sacrifices. So does peace. You haven't forgotten the price of either. It's important to have people in positions of authority that haven't forgotten what the people underneath them risk every day."

"…Is that why you do what you do, sir?" Kratos ventured quietly.

"Excuse me?'

"You've served your time several times over, sir. You could have retired. Or even be promoted to more luxurious positions. But you haven't."

Gunderon's lip curled in the ghost of a smile. "Good luck on your application, Aegis. You're dismissed."

Kratos saluted. "Sir. Thank you for the advice and the opportunity, sir."

"Look at you, getting an actual recommendation." Yuan grinned at Kratos when he came home from his shift. It was one of Yuan's rare days off and he'd gone on a cleaning spree of the apartment. Everything smelled of lemon and sage, the floors gleaming as much as they could, the laundry hanging from the clothesline out the window. His hair was braided messily up into one of Martel's floral bandanas, and his knees were still a bit red from kneeling to scrub the floors.

"Martel is lucky to have you for a wife," Kratos teased as he changed out of his uniform.

"Ha ha. But seriously, Kratos, it's really good that Gunderson's willing to recommend you. He's good people. You should hear the stories going around about him." Yuan sat cross-legged on their mattress. They rotated whose turn it was to sleep on it until they could save up enough money to buy another one. Tonight was Kratos' turn.

"It didn't go so well with your superiors?"

Yuan shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes. "I can try. But I'm just a mechanic's apprentice. A civilian. Some kind of internal military politics. The enlisted don't like civilians. I'll still try. I won't let them stop me from trying. But the odds of me getting it are low."

Outrage crossed Kratos' face; he didn't even have to say anything, but Yuan could hear his arguments, could hear how much he wanted to go bang down the door of the higher-ups and shout them down from their mountain.

Yuan's lips curved in a fond, lopsided smile. "Y'know, if you were in charge of things, it would be for the better." He tilted his head back, giving a big sigh. "I'm still gonna go for it. There's no reason I shouldn't If I'm still eligible for those same scholarships."

"You'd better. You can out-think circles around every one of those applicants."

"Including you?"

"Well…"

Yuan laughed, the sound echoing off the brick walls and clean floors, and it sounded like home.

Kratos wasn't often placed on guard duty at the gate. Mostly, he was sent out with his squad to deal with minor skirmishes a day or two's journey outside the city walls. But it was Leon's anniversary, so when he'd asked Kratos to please cover his shift, Kratos agreed.

It was generally mind-numbing work, especially at the north gate where there wasn't much traffic. Kratos had checked a few history books out from the public library—public. Libraries. Mithos and Martel had been so excited to see them. Heimdall was a small enough village that there was only everyone's private libraries, and you had to have the owner's permission to borrow books. The Storyteller had his histories, but those were the only ones available to the public. They had no idea how it went in other elven cities, larger ones, but Mithos loved the idea of a public library. He'd gone every day he could to borrow books, reading ravenously whenever he got a chance.

The work was slow enough on guard duty, particularly at this gate, that Kratos took the time he could to study. Mathematics didn't change, so he simply had to brush up on some of the more advanced skills. Yuan had to help him with those; he'd always been better at math. History, though. Kratos couldn't remember how humans taught their history. He'd been so angry with his people, as he'd learned the horrors they were capable of. He'd known that what they'd taught them was wrong, was censored and changed to make half-elves look like monsters. So he'd forgotten as much of it as he could, filling his mind with histories painted on Undine's temple walls, with inventions and creators carved into moonstone, stories passed from generation to generation in the only thing the humans hadn't been able to take: their voices. Kratos was bad with dates in the first place, but trying to remember the dates of coronations and conflicts that the humans considered important? That was the hardest part.

At nearly four in the afternoon, a family approached the gate. Two women and a man. All were filthy and road-weary.

"Good afternoon," Kratos greeted, placing his bookmark between the pages before standing. The women shuffled nervously. "May I see your travel papers?"

"Of course!" the man said, a little too loudly. He practically shoved them at Kratos, one of the papers slipping away.

When the man bent to retrieve the paper, his long hair shifted away from his ears, revealing the triangular tips. The women stiffened and one of them reached forward to try and cover it, but it was too late. The man began backing away, keeping the women behind him.

"It's okay!" Kratos called, holding up his empty hands as he came out of the guardhouse. "You're safe with me."

"No human is safe," the man spat.

Kratos glanced around before kneeling, arms still up. "I am. Listen to me—I know a safe place in the city you can go. In the refugee camps, there's a clinic on the east side. One of the doctors that volunteers there—her name is Martel. She can help you get set up with a life here."

"Why should you care?"

"I'm trying to end the war, okay? We all are. I was part of the half-elven army. Martel is one of my best friends. Please. I won't stop you from leaving, but the odds of you making it out of human territory aren't good and you know it." The fact that they'd made it to the capital in one piece was something of a miracle.

"How do we know this isn't a trick?"

"Because I don't need to trick you," Kratos said calmly. "If I wanted to kill or enslave you, it would be easy. But you can live in hiding here. We can help you."

The women didn't quite seem convinced, but the man looked at them. Kratos waited on his knees while they had their silent conversation, fervently praying that no other guards came around. Finally, the man said, "Okay. How do we get there?"

"This is a dangerous thing to start, Kratos." Martel leaned back on the door she had just come through, scrubbing her hands over her face. "The more people who know we aren't who we say we are, the better a chance that this was all for nothing. And giving me no warning like that?"

"I'm sorry, but what did you want me to do? Let them try their luck getting to half-elf territory?" Kratos poked tentatively at the pot of rice. Looked like it still needed to cook more.

"You could have just let them into the city. They could have figured out the rest."

"They would have gotten caught within a month, Martel. You saw them."

"You're right, but—" Martel let out a frustrated growl. "It puts us in danger."

"I know!" Kratos threw the spoon down. "I know it does, and it was probably a stupid move, but—" Kratos bit his lip. "I just. Couldn't look at them without thinking of us. All of us. Before the military. Even afterwards, but especially before. It was—we got lucky sometimes, because complete strangers put their lives or freedom on the line for us. How could I not be that stranger for other people?"

Martel's face softened, the tension leaving her shoulders as she walked towards him. "It's—it shouldn't be a stupid thing to help people. It's the right thing, the kind thing."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm sensing a 'but'."

"But we can't keep doing it. It puts us all at risk."

"I thought you of all people would agree with me."

"In principle, I do. But we are in deep cover in enemy territory, Kratos. If we're discovered, we will be killed or enslaved." Her eyes went hard, jaw set. "I won't let it happen to us. Not again. I have to prioritize this family."

Kratos stormed past her, grabbing his cloak. "I need to go for a walk."

By the time Kratos had walked off his frustration, the sun was nearly set, dusk's deep shadows overtaking the city. Yuan was waiting for him on the front steps of their apartment building.

"You here to agree with her?"

"She's not wrong." Yuan stood, dusting off the seat of his pants.

"I know! That's the part that upsets me the most, I think." Kratos kicked the front step in idle anger.

"We're not saying throw them to the wolves," Yuan said quietly. "We're saying let them in and let them be. We can't hold their hands through this. I wish we had the resources to get them on their feet, I really do. To give them a roof over their head, food, people who have their backs, the whole shebang. Because it's what I would want done for us. But we have to think big picture here, Kratos." Yuan came closer, voice low, gripping Kratos' upper arms. "If we're caught, any chance for a peaceful resolution to the war ends with us. I—I really hate to say it, but are a family or two of strangers worth it?"

Kratos wavered. The proper answer was 'no'. You couldn't put a price on people's lives. But comparing lives to lives, Yuan was right. What were three people, or ten, or fifty in comparison to the thousands fighting the war right now? Compared to the countless others who would keep dying? Kratos had even resolved himself to it when they came to this city. Nothing and no one was worth more than his family. He and Martel were of the same mind in that regard. They would do anything to keep themselves safe.

Kratos leaned his forehead on Yuan's shoulder. "You're right."

"Weren't you the one talking sense into me a few weeks ago?" Yuan's grip loosened, arms coming around to hug him. "What changed?"

"It's just—" Kratos hadn't looked in the faces of the people that would suffer in order to achieve that goal. "A reality check, I guess. Wasn't ready to practice what I was preaching."

He was just so tired. Of all of it. It would be so nice to just find a safe place to go. A safe place to hide away, forget about the war and just breathe. But no such place existed.

"C'mon." Yuan scratched lightly at Kratos' nape. "Let's go eat."

Martel didn't apologize when he and Yuan traipsed back in, but there was a relief in her eyes when she saw him. Had she been expecting Kratos to walk out on them? He couldn't even entertain the thought.

Mithos was already knocked out on the mattress. Martel served them both a portion of rice and lentils before sitting down cross-legged beside Kratos. They ate in silence, but the warm line of her touching him helped. Kratos kissed the top of Martel's head, letting his lips linger. Family. This family. His family. Protecting them at any cost, Kratos reminded himself, eyes tracing the now-familiar numbers on Yuan's arm. Even if that cost was other people, it would be worth it.