Authors Notes / preface:

I'm not a gamer, this is new territory for me. FF9 stands out to me as a beautifully done plot. Freya Crescent is a beautiful character who deserved more attention and the tying up of loose ends. Same case for Fratley. This story is primarily a work to rectify the loose ends not tied up that do not sit right with me.

I've watched several playthroughs and I am writing this work to be as respectful to the canon of the game as is within my ability and any errors in continuity, character, or otherwise shall be mistakes, and I would appreciate if any were pointed out. All other criticism is equally welcome.

"To be forgotten is worse than death." Rings with irony as Freya as a character seems to have been forgotten midway through the game.

Disclaimers:

The usual; in that I do not own this world or any of the characters within it. Any original characters appearing within are my creation but shall be characterized and written in a way respectful to the established canonical world.

The writing style shall be at times flowery, but I feel this is necessary to respect the world in which this story unfolds.

Lastly: I have fully illustrated this story and I wish to share the illustrations with you all, but I am at a loss as to how to insert illustrations, or provide links to these illustrations within this story on . The cover picture is a cropped example of one such illustration. I will upload this work on "archiveofourown" with illustrations if possible, so keep a look out for this story there when it is finished.

I hope enjoy the following work. Updates may take time, but it shall be finished.

-LeninWerke

Here begins the story;


THE END –

"I just want to cherish our time together"

Since she had left, he had maintained a vigil. Rebuilding Burmecia was truly the last thing on his mind. Fratley sat at the wrecked fountain, worrying the petals off of a flower.

There had been something so grim, so final about that statement of hers, and with her gone all he had was all the time in the world to ponder any hidden meanings it might have.

Even with no memory of her, he felt things shift inside him when she was near him and he found her as fascinating as she was beautiful. And he was utterly terrified of losing her for a reason he could not rationally explain.


"We won't let that happen. She won't make a move as long as we have our airship fleet. Don't worry, everything will be fine" -Cid Fabool IX

Freya stood quietly in the shady solitude of a garden surrounded by polished black marble and nearly still water.

She had to admit; the new monument was imposing but a place of wholesome respite. It could not however quite be called a war monument because what had happened could not quite be called a war.

Her Majesty's Airship Red Rose sat silent and still atop a great plinth of polished black marble, built high with its sides slightly slanted.

Garnet had wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the vessel after all of the havoc Brahne had wrought upon the world with it, and had made it the center of the monument as a markedly un-subtle reminder of precisely this.

Most of the ship's machinery built of expensive metals including the main engine and shafts had been removed and either sold to Lindblum's industrial market for a healthy sum, or used physically to rebuild Alexandria, but those close to Garnet suspected it was more a personal mission to ensure the airship could never be flown again should anyone want to try.

Surrounding the airship and its tall plinth on all four sides was wide channel of calm water as smooth and as glassy as crystal, surrounded itself by a further gallery of black marble who's smooth top surface comprised a wall and walkway. Its perimeter was immense and took the better part of an hour to circle on foot. Beyond this outer gallery, gardens and ponderous trees that petered out into the natural flora and rock. It sat some distance outside the city, Only Alexandria Castle's sword and spires, and the finials on the screw masts of Prima Vista towered above the tree line to the East.

Freya had silently slipped away as soon as the beautiful, awful display of reunion between Garnet and Zidane had concluded. She could not bear to watch it or speak to any of them. Before the play had finished, Garnet had been the only one of the group present with any understanding of her misery due to her loved one being missing. They had been, in that way only, two of a kind.
Now, all for her had been mended and, as before, countless times, Freya was the only one left alone and miserable with no one present to even understand her anguish. After a quick gesture of respect to the new Queen, she had vanished into and against the tide of the throngs moving in toward the spectacle and run from the city.

A lonely long-bearded gardener placed and tended black roses. Something had been done by a quiet old potionmaker on the architectural commission to make the flowers here bloom black. For all Freya knew, this was that very person.

Large, shady and contemplative trees towered around the monument's outer boundary and almost completely tunneled in the staircase leading up from the ground to its perimeter, and at the top end of that staircase was a somber but beautiful courtyard surrounded by gardens with an asymmetric compass rose of only three points on its surface. Lindblum, Burmecia, Cleyra. At the center of the compass rose stood an imposing sundial.

All of this was made of the same mirror-polished black marble, so closely jointed that the entire monument appeared to have been carved from a single piece; and so smooth that one could roll a droplet of water across its surface. A marvel of masonry.

The quiet figures drifted slowly over the marble and under the trees, sat upon the slabs of benches or stood like statues, some together some solitary. Mostly clad in subdued tones, not one grain of pomp and circumstance, some quietly shedding tears, they were of every race and walk of life but amongst them she caught sight of many familiar long white ears and tails, all drooped.

Across the mantle of the black marble wall that ran along the water's edge were carefully placed tens of thousands of objects by each mourning visitor. Candles in jars or paper lamps, trinkets and baubles, handwritten notes, names on scraps of parchment, children's toys and small vases of flowers, small carved figures or spiritual symbols, jewelry and all manner of tiny stones from small finely cut crystals to simple pebbles, each bearing equal but secret significance to those who placed them, all this producing a narrow flood of color against the mirror black.

Freya's heart beat in melancholic, stagnant step with theirs.

She stood at the wall with her back to the sundial and directly in front of the prow of the former flagship. Here, between her and it, were chiseled artfully into the wall large engravings of the four wrecked kingdoms as they appeared just after each was ransacked, war torn or completely obliterated. Below each rendition was displayed the name in Old Gaian.

"ALEXANDRIA" - "BURMECIA" - "CLEYRA" - "LINDBLUM"

The rendition of Cleyra was particularly painful to look at. The great tree had been drawn as a faint outline, with only the burnt and decimated hollow stump of what remained rendered fully.

She remembered what she had said.

"I will protect Burmecia, you have my word. I will protect my home and my king at any cost"

She put her left forepaw upon the engraving of Burmecia, and let her palm fall flat.

"I met with utter failure when trying to defend Burmecia, I will not allow Brahne to exert her will upon us any longer!"

"I could not bring peace to Burmecia and thus fulfill Sir Fratley's wish, but now all I can do is protect this beautiful place. Doing so will help me"

She put her right forepaw upon the engraving of Cleyra.

Holding back a river of stinging tears, she willed Time to reverse.

With all she had seen walking the world and beyond it upon her disastrous travels, all of the great and mysterious and powerful things beyond her comprehension, she willed any great force that would heed her pain and silent plea to erase the damage that had fallen upon the world that had effected her life, to restore all she had lost, or to reverse Time so she might get one last chance do it herself.

Remaining in this position for what seemed an eternity, supporting herself with her forepaws upon the engravings, she eventually slowly turned with a deluded and dim hope to check the sundial.

The shadow had moved clockwise. Time had not reversed.

She let out an empty dry laugh. Why should it reverse, no fortune or chance or luck had ever heeded her prayers, or her resolve, or her silent pleading, or her desperate cries. No wish however fervent had ever helped her or come true, as they seemed to for so many others. Nothing she had ever done had been good enough or had truly made a difference for herself. Even when she had helped others, she had been powerless to help herself and reach or achieve what her own heart wept for. She only out of all the rest had been as a leaf, forever at the mercy of the winds of Time.

Her whole inside felt like broken glass.

The shadow on the sundial not only told her that Time had continued forward and continued laughing at her, but that it was also nearly time to depart. The theatre ship would leave in one hour, and it would take her nearly that long to return to Alexandria to board her.

Freya carefully laid the flowers she had brought underneath the engravings of Burmecia and Cleyra, drew her arm across her chest in the customary sign of respect, and turned to leave.


Prima Vista's bowsprit cut the peak of a cloudbank cleanly in half. Despite her heavy load of passengers and relief supplies, the airship seemed to laugh at mountain peaks and wide rivers and the towering clouds that obscured them. As she did so, that bowsprit pointed at Burmecia.

The sensation of Flight was as lost on Freya now as it had been the first time she had ever ridden aboard an airship. That first time had been after she had been numbed by the loss of Fratley. All the color in the world had faded for her, then. Part of her wished she could have experienced that sensation with the awe and wonder it seemed to bring everyone else, as she wished she could experience every other thing that seemed so special to everyone else. That had been taken from her with Fratley.

All she knew was being heartbroken, and it slowly, steadily became worse.

Here she stood upon a ship that could sail upon clouds, heartbroken.

Since she left Burmecia to attend the play, she had been pining to return there, and to Fratley, or the ghost of Fratley. Now she deeply regretted seeing everyone but her so happy. Chivalry be damned, bitterness was growing and she knew it dangerous, but it did grow regardless. She had barely any idea why she went to Alexandria in the first place save going through the motions of life like a clockwork doll, and her constant restlessness. Her feverish desire to solve the problems that plagued her regarding her kingdom and her lost but found but still lost loved one drove her over land and sea and now sky as they always had. All her life since he had vanished had been spent in transit to somewhere; driven by the imagined resolutions surely possible upon eventual arrival. Rest and peace for her were always over the Horizon. When she got to where she was going, surely she could make everything better. If not there, then at the next destination…

All she saw in front of her eyes now was overlaid constantly with images of the past.

As the ship plied the skies, she was no longer aboard Prima Vista but instead aboard Red Rose. Her body was weary from trying to protect the people of Cleyra, and in pain from the unnatural magic of teleportation. Her heart was full of anger and her body full of adrenaline from fighting and from being in grave danger of being discovered aboard that ship.

And far, far worse, her nostrils were full of smoke and her eyes were full of a nightmare as she gazed down upon the smoldering, blackened remains of Cleyra's tree and its people. Her people. She saw it as clearly in front of her in the clouds looking down from Prima Vista as she had in the mist before her looking down from Red Rose, which had brought Brahne so easily to Burmecia, and then to Cleyra to destroy it in the first place.

Damn these airships. There was nothing good or marvelous about them to her. Even their distant presence signaling the strength of Lindblum had pulled Fratley from her arms in concern for their King and Country before she had ever even seen one. These idiotic machines that were the playthings of the rich and powerful had made her lands, her people, her loved ones and her life a ruin.

She kicked the timber of the sheer strake, hard. It hurt her badly, and it did not hurt the ship. She stumbled to her small cabin.


Prima Vista effortlessly vaulted the outer and inner walls of Burmecia, and came to a stop above a stone courtyard that had been hurriedly constructed for airship landings as part of reconstruction. Alexandria and Lindblum had begun to regularly, feverishly send supplies for relief and rebuilding, and to aid all of Burmecia's people. With the supplies came a steady stream of returning refugees and victims.

The air was clear despite the rain, and through the gray cloud cover slipped slivers of pink mid-afternoon light. As the airship hung in the air over the courtyard, those below slipped blocks using prybars along greased wooden runners into position to bear the shape of Prima Vista's hull. She presented a challenge due to the amount of screws and shafting and machinery underneath her, as she was mostly meant to land on water.

Once the task had been completed to the satisfaction of the captain and crew, the enormous vessel carefully lowered herself down onto the blockwork and shed her weight from her airscrews. The pounding of the steam engines and the beating blades slowed to silence and was replaced with the creaking of a settling hull.

A primitive but gigantic wooden jib crane was slid into place and brought to bear over the ship's foredeck. The Burmecian people had cut down the largest trees and sawn the largest single logs in their Kingdom to build it, and since then it had greatly increased the speed at which supplies could be unloaded and the weight of those that could be brought. Men worked tirelessly at the great capstan at its base against the heavy loads, especially those of new quarried stone.

Freya disembarked underwhelmingly the same way every other able bodied person did, by an uncomfortable rope ladder. The crane was too taken up with tonnage of supplies to carry any people save the injured who could not brave the ladder. She hardly took notice of the towering and crude contrivance or anything else unfolding, she wished to be away from the airship and back amongst familiar streets and people. Leaving the airship and the courtyard was as a blur.

As the pale white speck of Freya Crescent disappeared into Burmecia, a small brown stowaway also made his way off the ship, hiding in a barrel stacked in a load of supplies being lowered by the crane. He surveyed his surroundings carefully through the partially open lid as it came down in the courtyard, and scampered off before anyone could come and offload or inspect the barrel.

He was pleased that the attempt had been too easy, but extremely frustrated that he had not been able to enjoy his first ride on an airship. The amount and attendance of the crew in the cargo hold had been so great that his time out of the barrel had been limited to stealing food and water and relieving himself and he had never once even had the chance to look out a window. He was still aching from the effects of a strong whiskey he had stolen from one of the passengers.

He was far more upset when he saw what had become of Burmecia. It was very different than simply being told about it. He did not count on just how it would affect him.

He had heard and been told many things, including that his father the King was dead, which he knew of course could not be true.

"Lord Puck!" Greeted the first Burmecian he tugged on in joyous surprise. She knelt.

"You need not kneel to me, I'm just looking for my old man, is he in the palace or would I find him somewhere else?"

She instantly looked miserable and shook her head at him.

"It's alright." He said reassuringly. "Nobody seems to know where he is, if you don't I'll just ask someone else!"

"Lord Puck…"


The city was a randomized patchwork quilt of dead and living. Some streets or districts still totally abandoned, others glowing with the sparks of everyday life trying to regain a foothold.

Freya would turn a corner into a dark square to find the stones uptorn, rows of houses abandoned or caved in, collapsed statues and dry fountains, the remains of markets or a smithies scattered out from smashed out doors picked clean of anything of value as if the inhabitants had been gone for decades.

Yet through an alleyway she would make out a candle lit window in the walls above, and around another corner she would find houses inhabited, fires glowing in fireplaces, buildings made whole again, groups of her people and others busily at work putting right collapsed walls, burst windows, smashed in doors, caved in roofs. Talking, trading, sometimes a child playing would splash in the color of the Kingdom she had left so long ago.

She made her way through one of the thoroughfares she knew all to well. Here was a lively scene of work despite the downpour. Her people mixed with foreigners, mostly Humans in point of fact. Journeyman carpenters, stonemasons and millwrights from parts far away had come with the supplies on the airships to work. She hardly noticed such a mixture in Lindblum or even Alexandria, but those were ports of trade and commerce, here it felt very strange to look at and left an oddly sour taste in her mouth which she was surprised at herself for. She pondered their presence and her gait slowed.

All these people trying to assist. Many under the flag of the powers who had caused the problem they were now assisting with in the first place, and or sat idly by and watched. How much of what she saw was earnest? She knew full well nobody was making a profit off of it since these arrangements were missions of mercy, but how many of these would be do-gooders from afar were here for truly selfless reasons? How many were here in a selfish attempt to quench guilt, to foremostly feel better about themselves?

She was in equal parts in awe of and exasperated by the intensity of the work here.

Pole-awnings had been set up and anyone who could fit under one was performing a job, especially the carpenters so the constant wetness would not jam their saws. A Burmecian kiln had been drug out of the wrecked clay works clear on the other side of the city and was firing brick. Fresh timber sat over its lid so as to dry out from the rain. There were barrels of paint and varnish and boiling creosote. Four able-bodied rats were furiously working a stone saw back and forth. The line of work spanned the facades of seven buildings, all but one of which were so covered in scaffolding they could barely be seen. Deadeyes, block and tackle to lift and lower had been set up and more of it was going up. Freya had to pass all of it to continue on her way as if beholding a street performance.

And here was something else she had never seen with her own eyes before. Upon a stout carriage with eight immense cannon wheels swung the machinery and great iron arm of a steam shovel from Lindblum. The contraption dug into the ruined road with its clamshell as its master worked the levers and wheels back and forth, and another man clinging to the back stoked the open orange maw of the boiler fire door with anything that would burn. More of her people jumped down into the trench as the machine dug it out, setting to work on the exposed water pipe of the once proud centuries-old system that brought the old nuisance of rain into the homes of the city to be used for washing and drinking.

So, other people's machinery had come to Burmecia.

She found herself detesting this. It did not belong. None of this belonged. She began to detest herself for that resentment, for here was all she had wished for, Burmecia being rebuilt and lifted back onto its feet. Nothing was as it had been nor as it seemed would it ever be again. She evidently did not belong, either.

The warm hued downy gray overcast began to darken as afternoon turned to evening. One of the familiar street lamps burned warm golden glow, the lamplighters had been busy. The solitary lantern upon its post amidst the detail-covering darkness brought to her warm familiarity and a brief wave comfort. She closed her eyes basked in it, and was left cold as it passed.

She came upon an equally familiar ancient tavern she had spent a great deal of time at in her brighter years and was surprised to see light streaming from the windows. She came to the window like a ghost.

She gazed in from the rain on a mix of good cheer and misery. Her breath fogged the glass, so she drew back and turned her head slightly. At the long bar made of a halved log that had storiedly been there for one thousand years sang and drank a group of faces, some familiar to her. Their raucous song and thumping of flagons rattled the panes of glass near her face. She was surprised at their resilience. She was surprised, and heartened by, and estranged by, the resilience of some of her own people. If only they had seen what she had seen.

And then there were the others. Her keen sight did not pick them out so quickly simply because of their lack of motion. Some sat at the ends of the bar, some in the aged chairs against the walls, at the tables or hidden away in the dark corners that once belonged to lovers, where she and Sir Fratley had once spent evenings…

Sir Fratley…

She swallowed the stabbing grief and continued to try and distract herself from the gaping open wound no one could see.

Those forlorn and weary sat in stillness over drinks or over nothing at all, each displaying the unique characteristic of misery in her people of a lowered nose, fallen ears and an utterly limp tail. She knew most of whom she gazed at had suffered at least one important loss besides the disheartenment of seeing their Kingdom brought to its knees. Yet she felt estranged from even these poor figures, for if only they, too, had seen what she had seen.

For none had walked Beyond the World, none had discovered the true and horrible nature of things, or how easily that nature could be tampered with, or had seen what became or could become of the very fabric of a friend or lover or family member once their body was too broken to hold that feeble shimmering force any longer.

Memories of her own people's suffering blended with memories of the awful distortions and unfriendly blue light of a different and dying world that birthed nightmares, the nightmare false tree that was not a tree, the airborne nightmare eye, and how these bad dreams come to life meant that at least for a time, there was no true rest even for the dead. All these things she had once thought, and those she gazed in on still thought, were only seen in bad dreams and could be escaped upon awakening. She found herself shivering in the wet night chill, more from the awfulness in her than the chill itself.

She was brought out of her dangerous thought by one of those miserable figures inside catching sight of her and looking at her, in every way as if she were a ghost. For only a moment she lingered and gazed back, withdrawing before the tears started again, and walking onward.

Her poorly wrapped feet hurt her. She felt old.


Freya no longer knew where she was going and wandered aimlessly in a fog of inner turmoil, trying to escape it and stabilize herself by motion.

As she went and passed through places familiar and not, she saw those she recognized from the tavern stumbling home. Those who had been singing were now silent or wailing piteously or running into walls. The drink that had been swallowed in was now being heaved out. One had sat down in a pile of rubble and was rubbing his eyes as a child would. Resilience no longer…

Her code of knighthood demanded she assist, but she couldn't. She didn't even know where these poor souls did dwell, even those she knew, and they were most assuredly not in a state to remember themselves. Morning would come with pain and headache, but they would go home. She felt as if she had no home to go to. She had to find her way to some sort of silence or she felt she would die this very night.

She had failed Burmecia, after she promised out loud that she wouldn't. She then failed to protect Cleyra, after she made another promise that she wouldn't. Her promises were irrelevant. She was irrelevant, and helpless. Whether it was from unkind chance or her own inadequacy she did not know, nor did she know which would have been worse. Perhaps her life of eternal disquietude and restlessness was fitting punishment for her broken promises and these ruined lives.

She had lost everything.

And now she passed the graveyard, a wide plot where the dwellings petered out that ran and disappeared in every direction. Bordered by a mysterious and ornate twisted wrought iron fence, it seemed to continue forever with only the shape of the palace in the rain impossibly far away at its other side indicating its extent. There was damage here, scars in the ground and tilted headstones, chips or dents in crypt doors. The Alexandrians had lacked even respect for the dead, such had been their attempt to demoralize her people.

She would never forgive them.

This place also showed subdued signs of repair. Tools lay about, a headstone here and there had been propped up with timber. Far away in the dark moved the orange specks of candle lanterns. At the same time, she saw many new stones had been added. Hundreds in fact, as she continued along the fence, and in the cold rain stood mourners.


Around the graveyard she went on, arriving at the palace in an inky black world.

Her people were rebuilding it, even at night, in this rain.

Here she instantly saw her Fratley buried in the effort, no longer truly hers, never truly hers.

"And I lost you, too. No matter how I tried not to." She said out loud, her voice being driven to the ground by the rain.

Her search for him had heightened her senses to the point where she could pick him out in any condition or quality of light, by his face, the shape of his ears, his movements, the weight of his stride. She picked him out over the great distance between her and the palace, and in the absence of any light save the dim flickering lanterns there.

She stepped towards him and found herself running. The sight of him drove her on, as the imagined unforgettable silhouette of him against the horizon had driven her to run over the Wide World. She was suddenly able to ignore her aching feet; she suddenly had a direction again.

Perhaps since she last saw him some kind gift had restored to him his memory. Perhaps fortune had finally favored them. Maybe she would reach him and find all that was lost to have been regained. All she had to do to find out was run faster and reach her beautiful missing Fratley.

She further quickened her step when she saw him catch sight of her with a chance turn of the head and abruptly stop his work. He scaled the scaffolding in one jump. Could it possibly be…?

Of course, it could not.

She slowed, paces from him. He was outwardly happy to see her, but there was no true recognition. She saw the emptiness behind his brown eyes and in his greeting before she reached him. It fell flat, as did her fast pace. She nearly tripped in her transition from sprinting to walking. She was suddenly aware again of the awful pain in her feet.

"I have missed you, Freya. Welcome home."

This stopped her and almost brought forth a laugh. It faded into a smile before it left her lips.

Fratley, even devoid of memory, had not changed.

He was developing old feelings.

She remembered him greeting her like that after long days or weeks apart in their summer days. The same expression, the same outstretched paws.

And yet she was at an utter loss. She was still young, but so many years had been stolen from her, from them both, and some of those stolen by him, she did not feel young anymore.

Fratley too was painfully aware of something, everything, being wrong. And he was too timid to assist her, paradoxically due to her concern for her. Timidity was absolutely new to him and he was frightened by it. It was an emotion and a characteristic he had never been familiar with.

Damn this gaping hole in his head. He was sure whatever he was missing was worth remembering, because love for her grew inside that emptiness. He wished to hold her, he wished to enwrap her in warmth and light the world around her with color and tranquility despite her being new to him, and he somehow now knew that he had felt this way long ago and not just because she had told him so. It felt integral to his very being.

He knew she was yearning for some kind of response because even now he knew her well, but due to his lack of memory of her he did not know which response would be the familiar and correct one she was seeking and was thusly silenced with inaction. It burned him.

He finally chose one that was loving but innocuous. "Let me take you home."

She remembered the last time he had said that to her, it felt as in another life. It had been after they had almost suffocated on eachother's kisses. His tongue had burned as he let out that request, as did his eyes, and his fingers on her, and hers on his.

He didn't remember any of this, but he knew in that moment he had upset her.


They arrived at her home. The aged and tiny dwelling carved into the stone itself under the lee of a natural rock formation was very different than the closely packed dwellings in the city squares and districts. It was where she had lived long before she left Burmecia, during her Novitiate, after she had been orphaned. Although somewhere not coveted by her neighbors and a place seen as befitting someone low in status, It had apparently been of so little importance to the Alexandrian Army that it had been left undisturbed, a small blessing. No one had since tried to lay claim to it. The rain had soaked her through to the bone, but she was slowly beginning to dry due to Fratley holding his lengthy cloak entirely over her as they walked.

"Your place of rest, my fair Lady." Fratley presented the dwelling before her with a genuine attempt at humor in his voice that she was immensely grateful for. She nuzzled his arm and took his forepaw in hers.

He repeated his customary farewell that he had given her since they rediscovered each other. "Please sleep deeply tonight."

She stared intently at him, probing him for any spark of familiarity. He stared back, equally intently, trying to bring one forth for her.

"I will." She finally replied. There was so much more she yearned to let out, but didn't.

He smiled down at her and stroked her hair.

She left the security of his draped cloak and braved the rain for a few more seconds to reach the stout oaken iron strapped door.

She briefly, awkwardly glanced at him as she fought with the old latch, for the door no longer sat correctly and was hard to open and close. Then with a shove, into the dark she went, and closed it behind her.

She was expecting total darkness, but there was a candle lit for her on the table. It had to have been he who set it there. Finally alone within the confines of her own world, finally beyond the sight and judgment of others, she let the stinging pain in her feet bring her to the floor, her arms and head fell and she began to bitterly, loudly weep.

There was no window in the door, and the small window that faced the front of the dwelling had a pair of eternally drawn curtains that she reliably kept closed.

Fratley did not leave. In fact Fratley never left whenever he bid her farewell at this door and she shut it behind her. Each night she had been in the house since her first return he had remained within the boundaries of its stone walls. He would protect this beautiful woman. He would stand sentinel over her with more resolution than he would even for his Kingdom. Damn this gaping hole in his head, and his newfound cowardice, and his lack of ability to ask her to come inside with her lest he violate the delicate new trust he was trying to form with her.

His finely tuned ears rose of their own accord at a new sound. It came from within the house; in fact it came from just behind the door.

He had never heard her cry before. But how could that be true, he had to have. He must have, with the sudden and intense and stinging feelings it flooded him with. Damn to hell this gaping hole in his head! He went to the door and placed his forepaw silently upon the latch, but did not lift it. He pressed his ear to the door and let that beautiful, awful sound come to him. It rattled him to his very center.

Fratley pondered in that instant relinquishing the duties of a Knight then and there, if it meant being even one step closer at hand to her.

Even with his only distant intact notion of being a Dragon Knight keeping him to a course, his entire directive had changed:

"I must not lose her again. I will not lose her again. Again?"

Was this reflexive thought from what she had told him of the life they had lead together, or the real echo of a memory? He could not even remember the extent of what she had told him of that life.

He could not remember. Indeed. This would have been hilarious to him if not for this awful state of affairs, and poor Freya's cries just beyond the door.

More importantly, he decided it did not matter which it was, so long as he helped her now.

He did remember that he had not told her that his home had been destroyed and had yet to be repaired, so she would have one less concern to selflessly fret over. He had also not told her that he had been doing all his washing and sleeping in the eave of the small shed over her cistern to protect her, and protect her home, and would continue to do so for the rest of his life.