"5th District, Solis Novem," Western Theater

June 15th, Stellar Year 2146

Another moonlit night.

Shin stood again on the roof of Aegis Hall, one hand on his Para-RAID, the other on the railing at the roof's edge, looking out over the expanse of Solis Novem. It was beautiful at night. During the day there was too much that spoiled the campus' solemnity. Drunk, belligerent students milled around the white-marble forums, scattering trash and empty bottles across the grass were, and that was just the least of it. But at night, when the students retired to their dorms for their parties, and after the custodians - always Colorata - had finished cleaning, the academy made for a truly dignified sight.

".:I'm pulling you out, Shin:." Grethe told him in a shrill, almost panicking voice, completely unlike her normally unfazed exterior. ".:This isn't your mission. Your job isn't to fight for the Republic, and definitely not in one of those deathtraps they call a Feldress. We'll find another way, or get you a different job, a different identity. You still haven't even found Rei yet, and you're not going to if they send you to the battlefield:."

Shin waited patiently for her to finish speaking. It went on for awhile. She talked about the mission, and how it would be compromised if he was sent back to the 86th District, about how there were important roles for him to fill than as just another Operator on the field. But Shin could tell the mission was a secondary concern her. She was scared for his sake, and of what might happen to him if he went onto the battlefield. He was touched by her concern, and wished he wasn't. He knew such things were not for him.

He wondered what he should say. The words didn't come for a long moment, but he knew what he wanted. He wanted to fight. That was the truth.

".:I don't want to leave them:." he told her, and she fell silent.

The sincerity in that six-word sentence was like certain steel.

It had been a little over a month since he'd joined Spearhead. A short time by some standards, but not to him. Every day had seen something new. That 'something' was often bewildering and chaotic… but it was always fun. Warm. Already, every person he'd met in this Squadron had well-begun the long process of becoming irreplaceable to him. He was terrified by that. He almost resented them for taking places in his heart. In fact he did resent them, in some quiet, malignant corner of his mind, because he knew it would hurt him (-when you kill them-) when they died. That part had been hurt enough, it decided. It could take no more.

But they were there in his heart regardless, and Shin could not make them leave.

After every hard training session, Raiden would clap his hand on Shin's shoulder, and he would grin his easy grin and tell him he'd done a great job. They would go to the cafeteria for lunch, and there would be jokes flung back and forth, laughter in great volumes. Kujo would coax words out of Shin with a friendly persistence, like it was some fun game for him to drag every hesitant story he could out of Spearhead's silent new recruit. Anju would scold him for being pushy, and Kujo would apologize, then do it again the next day.

He'd had another nightmare last week, in his barracks as five other people slept in beds inches from his own. It had been a noisy one, tossing and turning and muttering frantically. He would have expected to be thrown out of the room. Shut up or gagged, maybe. But instead Haruto had quietly shaken him awake, taken him to the common room, slapped a movie into the projector and watched it with him. A comedy. Haruto had laughed and laughed, and didn't mind at all that Shin just sat and watched in attentive silence. And when the movie ended, they went back to the barracks to sleep, and Shin slept deeply for the first time in years, and he did not dream again that night.

Their kindness confused him. It worried him too, and it made him feel guilty, and eventually he had been unable to help himself from asking, on a quiet evening when it was just him and Anju on the training field, cleaning up after the day's activities, "why are you all so kind to me?"

She had looked at him for awhile, deeply speculative. In the back of Shin's mind, he had added to the end of that question, -when I've done so much wrong? He had wondered what she thought in her own mind as she regarded him. He had wondered what she would say. Maybe some platitude. Just because you're Alba doesn't mean you don't deserve kindness, or, because it's the right thing to do. Something like that.

In the end she had simply said, "because we have nightmares too."

They were, all of them, incredibly warm. And Shin had been cold for a very long time. He couldn't bring himself to let them go.

He was a liar. They were sharing their warmth with a boy who didn't exist, and he hated himself for that. He felt selfish. But every time he tried to pull away, they would draw him closer again with redoubled strength, like quicksand that only deepened the more you struggled against it. And at this point, he couldn't but feel like his pulls had become half-hearted.

He felt selfish for letting them care. For letting himself care. So selfish it sickened him, almost physically. But he couldn't bring himself to leave.

".:What about Rei?:." Grethe asked finally, after an extended quiet.

Shin thought about it for a long time. Wasn't there a hole in his heart where his brother used to be? And a hole in his memory too, for that matter? He still didn't know why those memories had been cut out of him, and the absence still hurt. But ever since he came here, it had begun to hurt less, and the hole had begun to feel less vacuous.

".:I don't think I need to find him anymore:." He said, and it too was the truth.

Grethe could have said a lot of things in that moment. She was still his commanding officer. If she ordered him to pull out and cut ties, re-plant cover in a different sector of the Republic with a new identity, he would obey. Shin knew he was in the wrong. The purpose for this mission was muddled in some ways. There were unspoken political factors involved. But the only official objective this mission ever had was to find Rei, and Shin had no place in saying that he didn't feel the need to see that through. Part of him might have even wanted Grethe to put her foot down.

But she didn't.

".:Alright:." she said at the tail end of a long sigh. ".:Okay. If that's what you think. You must really care about them, huh?:."

Shin couldn't admit that. The thought of saying it out loud both terrified and anguished him. But he couldn't help but feel, somewhere deep inside, that it might be true. And if it wasn't, then it was becoming true.

—

June 19th

The new Handler, Private Milize, connected to their Para-RAIDs often. Every night so far, and sometimes earlier in the day too. She had made her announcement on that first night just as everyone was stacking their trays for the nightly washing, and that was to be expected. Alba Handlers occasionally did make such announcements to Squadrons, often before commandeering them for training exercises.

What was not expected, however, was her sticking around afterward.

Milize had asked them what they'd had for dinner. But for a long moment no one said anything. Shin figured it was because they hadn't expected an Alba, especially not an Alba of the Scepter branch, to ask them something so mundane. A boring little question like that implied that the Handler thought Sword students were people, rather than the amorphously labeled, dubiously classifiable '86,' 'Colorata,' and 'pigs.' And that just wasn't Scepter's MO. Everyone had frozen up like it was a situation none of them had ever dealt with before. For all Shin knew, it probably was.

So nobody answered her, and through the Para-RAID Shin had felt her nervousness swell uncomfortably, face flushing hot with embarrassment and self-deprecation. He felt bad for her.

".:Stir-fried meat and vegetables over rice, ma'am. All synthetic, of course:." he had answered, and she was so clearly relieved - relief practically singing through her Para-RAID - that it instantly became impossible to associate her with the haughty, cruel, self-superior sorts that typically populated Sovereign Hall.

Maybe that was the moment Spearhead started to accept her.

Well, 'accept' was a strong word. But there was something. Over the next few days she asked more mundane sorts of questions, the kind of standard questions a preppy, sheltered girl would ask on her first date to get to know her prospective partner. 'What are your hobbies?' and 'what kind of music do you listen to?', that sort of thing. But of course she directed them at the entire Squadron, and she asked them with so much genuine, if professional enthusiasm that it was hard not to find it at least a little endearing.

She avoided any questions about family, and skirted around their views on the war and the Republic with delicate verbal footwork.

Milize was a good person, most of the Squadron decided. She seemed to take Shin's advice too - she didn't try to intrude into their world. There was a wall between her and the 86, a profound gap in their experiences, separating them into two different spheres. Even if they were all soldiers in the same military, that divide was more or less uncrossable for her. So she didn't pretend to share in their camaraderie, though there were times when Shin felt like she might be jealous of it.

".:Do you think Rikka-san dislikes me, William? He always seems so blunt when I try to talk to him, and he keeps calling himself a pig whenever I'm connected to the Squadron. Does he call himself that when he's alone?:."

For some reason Milize often connected to Shin's Para-RAID alone after she had finished speaking with the whole Squadron. She never gave a reason for it and Shin never asked, but he didn't mind talking to her. It seemed to help put her mind at ease. She was often slightly anxious after each day, worrying if she might have made a fool of herself or accidentally offended someone with her naivety, and seemed to rely on him for reassurance.

".:No, he doesn't. He might dislike you, but I don't think it's personal. He was suspicious of me too when I first transferred in. I think he just distrusts Alba by nature:."

".:I suppose that makes sense. Many 86 would, after everything we did to them:." She stopped talking for a second, seeming to come to a realization. ".:Wait, does that mean you're an Alba too?:."

".:Yes. You didn't know?:."

".:No! Not at all. None of the records kept on the Sword students are very complete. But you're actually an Alba?:."

She seemed utterly disbelieving, which on first blush Shin found slightly odd. There were other Alba in Sword, even if they were few and far between. The Captain of Glaive Squadron was an Alban noble named Lucius - weird guy, liked knives a little too much in Shin's opinion - and his second-in-command was also an Alba, a quiet fellow named Cedric. Then again, those two and Shin were the only three Alba in all of Sword as far as he knew. And Shin wasn't even a real Alba to begin with. So maybe there was some basis in her surprise.

".:Yes. Although I am what you would call a Half. There are red flecks in my eyes:."

".:Red flecks…:." She murmured. With sudden interest, she asked, ".:Rikka-san wouldn't happen to be a short, blond, green-eyed boy, would he?:."

Shin was slightly wary of where this line of questioning could go. Again, he thought about the incident that had led him to this place to begin with, with the foot-ball player and the rock Theo had thrown at him. The risk of expulsion was still present if that was ever found out… but almost a month and a half had passed at this point. The risk was probably minimal by now. Still, he was wary, although he kept a conversational tone. Just as his masters had trained him.

".:He is. How did you know?:."

".:Well, I didn't, but I thought his voice was familiar. Yours too, for that matter! I thought I recognized it ever since we first talked five days ago, but I didn't understand why. It was very confusing. I think I've found out just now, however.

".:There's an incident I remember, oh… maybe two months ago? Where an Alba student with red-flecked eyes stood up against a bully for a Sword student… who had blond hair and green eyes. And the Alba student got taken away by the campus policemen because of it, and when I went to ask about him in Sagacity Hall - the Alba student wore the maroon uniform of the Scroll branch, you see - nobody said they had seen an Alba with red-flecked eyes in some time:."

In the span of one conversation, Shin realized two things.

The first was that apparently the risk to Theo was not minimal in the slightest. This was because of the second thing, which was that Vladilena Milize was frighteningly intelligent. After all that time, using only her memories of a couple briefly-glimpsed faces and some snatches of conversation, she had made a mental connection between his description and her memory of an event that should have faded from most people's minds after a week, let alone a month.

".:That Alba student wouldn't happen to be named William Lowell-san, would he? And I don't suppose he got transferred into Sword as a result of what he did, hmm?:." she asked, triumph in her voice.

Shin was very, very silent all of a sudden. His mind raced and his heart, usually placid, began to accelerate just slightly, as if he were in combat.

She knows. Damn it, she knows, was his first thought. What do I tell her? I can't lie. It's not like there are tons of other Alba with red eyes out there on this campus. Hell, I doubt there's another one in the whole Republic. Goddamn this disguise. Couldn't they have found me some better contact lenses? was his second thought. What do I tell her? was his third, and that was about all he had time for.

".:Yes, that's correct:." he said amiably.

".:Aha! Why, I've solved the case! It's elementary, my dear Watson!:." she exclaimed. Then Shin felt a distant spike of dull pain on his head as she thumped her own. ".:God, I sounded like the biggest dork just then, didn't I?:."

".:No big deal. You always do:."

".:You're mean, William:." she pouted.

She won't report him to the police, his thoughts counseled. She's a good person.

Maybe she was, but could he really count on that? Maybe he could if it was only his life at stake. But it wasn't. It was Theo who would get thrown outside the wall, without his unit and without support, if she told anyone else. Trusting her was a bet, and if Shin took that bet and lost, there'd be yet another death on his hands. Did he even have a choice?

".:So, anyway, if William Lowell was the red-eyed Alba who stood up to Nero, then it must have been Theoto Rikka he was standing up for. That's correct too, right?:."

There was an opportunity to lie here, he realized. Maybe there was only one Alba behind the walls with red-flecked silver eyes, but there could have been a number of short, blond, green-eyed Sword students. Probably not a huge number, but at least bigger than one. Milize might even believe him too. She seemed like the naive sort, and probably trusted him.

His masters had trained Shin how to lie. Start with a truth, a small truth but a whole truth, and then weave the rest of the lie in strands around it. Give it out conversationally, casually, the way you might feed a dog a pill wrapped inside a morsel. It would have been easy.

Trust her, his instincts said, in a voice running so deep it didn't seem to come at all from his mind, but his heart instead. His cold, frozen heart that usually never said a thing. Unthinkingly, he followed it.

".:You won't report him to the campus police, will you?:." he asked gravely.

She was stunned. ".:What? Huh?:." she stammered. ".:I- huh?:." she said again.

".:If the authorities find out that a Colorata student struck an Alba and got away with it, especially for as long as two months, they wouldn't just punish him. They would make an example out of him. They might just expel Theo and banish him outside the walls. Or they might do even worse things to him. So I ask again. You won't report him, right?:."

".:No, of course not!:." she shouted - shouted - through the Para-RAID. And then she flushed, cheeks burning so hot Shin could feel it like a bonfire through the sensory link. ".:I mean… do you really think I would do such a thing?:."

".:No:." he said honestly. ".:But I wanted to get your word. It isn't my life on the line, after all:."

She didn't say anything for a long time after that.

Shin looked around. He had made the mistake of not anticipating that she would try to connect to his Para-RAID after the regular group-session, despite the fact that she'd done it very regularly so far. As a result he was currently sitting in the common room; a decidedly un-private space.

There were a few other members of Spearhead lounging around, all trying very hard not to look like they were eavesdropping. Lecca, a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl, and Hariz, broad-shoulders, lantern-jaw. There was a pair of Topaz-yellow eyes that occasionally peaked in from around the threshold of the doorway. And worst of all there was Theo himself, sitting on the couch, a book open on his lap. A book whose pages he had not turned in five minutes.

".:You have my word that I will not tell a single person, William. Not my closest friends, not my family, and of course, never the authorities:." she told him solemnly. ".:I… had not realized how much risk Rikka-san was in, for what he did. I always knew the Colorata students were punished more harshly than the Alba, but I didn't think it would be so cruel as that. I suppose that's why you stood up for him:."

She added, with no emphasis whatsoever and every bit of her casual, unornamented sincerity, ".:You're a very kind person, aren't you?:."

Shin didn't know what to say to that. So many people had said that to him lately, and every time he heard it, it killed the breath in his lungs. For a brief moment he hated Vladilena Milize, almost violently. The way he always hated anyone after they said something like that to him. Didn't she know about the 189 metal chips stowed in his Reginleif? Didn't she know he had killed his best friend as she sat helpless on her useless legs?

Of course she doesn't know, he thought bitterly. You're lying to her, after all. Lying to them all.

With a silent gulp he swallowed down nothing at all. He replied with a perfunctory thank you.

The conversation continued after that, but Shin's mind had gone somewhere distant. He would not remember the contents of what they talked about even an hour later. His mouth had turned dry, and any enjoyment he might have gotten out of talking with her had lost its flavor. Eventually they turned their Para-RAIDs off and Shin sat back in his chair, still in the common room, those few eavesdropping members of Spearhead still sitting in the same places they had been.

"You okay, Will?" asked the broad one, with shoulder-length brown hair and warm brown eyes. Hariz. "You look like someone killed your dog."

Shin plastered a mask of a smile on his face. Hariz did not look convinced.

"What did she say to you?" He wasn't even going to pretend he hadn't been listening.

"Nothing," Shin said. He stood up to leave, but Hariz put a hand on his forearm and stopped him.

"C'mon man, aren't we friends?"

Shin shook him off without a word. He stepped past him deftly, before he could try to grab at him again, and was halfway to the door in three bounding steps before Theo piped up from his place on the couch.

"Am I in danger, Will?" he asked.

That stopped him.

"No. She promised not to tell anyone."

"Okay," he said. "Thanks. Have a good night."

Shin felt a shock of indescribable gratitude to Theo for not pressing him. He continued on his way, walking so fast he nearly ran out the door, breezing by Kurena who had been lurking in the hallway. He didn't even spare her a glance. Barely even realized she was there at all as he retreated, not to his barracks but to one of the private study rooms where he hoped he wouldn't be disturbed. He'd sleep in one of the armchairs tonight, he decided.

It would be uncomfortable. He wouldn't sleep well. But he rarely did either way, and he needed to be alone right now.

—

June 26th

".:A girl, huh?:."

This was Shiden's only reply after Shin finished telling her about his Squadron's new Handler, about whom he had forgotten to inform her when that development first occurred a couple weeks ago. Then he forgot that he forgot, and after he mentioned something offhandedly about some conversation or another that involved Milize, Shiden asked for clarification. So he provided it. And when it came up that the new Handler was, in fact, female, that was her response.

Shin rolled his eyes.

".:If you go all catty schoolgirl on me, Shiden, I am going to cut the call right now:."

Shiden rolled her eyes right back. ".:Oh get over yourself Shin. I don't give a fuck who you talk to. Besides, it's not like you'll ever meet anyone better than me, so I got no reason to be insecure:."

".:Shiden Iida - a being composed of 100% unfounded confidence. An anomaly to scientists everywhere:." Shin said dryly.

".:Oh, I'm plenty founded. I got so much foundation your hands can't even hold it all. Wink:."

".:You know you don't have to say the wink out loud. I'll sense it over the Para-RAID:."

".:Yeah, but it's funnier if I do:."

".:Do you hear me laughing?:."

".:No. But you're smiling:."

That caught Shin off guard. He put a hand on his mouth, and found that he was.

".:Sounds like she's a good fit for your Squadron:." she said amiably.

".:It could have been a lot worse. Anju's been around the Scepter students before, and she says Milize and her friends are basically the only good ones there. The others only drink and fuck all day:."

".:A princess ain't exactly an ideal commander, but better a princess than a drunk:." Shiden agreed.

".:She's smart. She's got integrity and drive, and knows what she stands for. If we live long enough for her to gain some experience, we might stand a chance:."

Shin was on the roof again. It seemed to be his favorite spot lately, a reliable place to find privacy after dark. He'd been having a lot of late-night conversations these past few weeks. Reports to Grethe. Talks with Shiden and Milize, even Kiriya a few times. The mother-hen could never go very long without clucking at his chicks. It was like he had a physical dependence on the act. These days Shin wasn't even irritated by it, he just accepted it as a matter of course.

He seemed a lot less angry in general, lately. He wasn't really sure why.

".:Grethe said you refused to get moved to someplace else:." Shiden said, in a voice that was suddenly, subtly two sizes smaller. ".:Even though you're gonna get dropped into combat in less than two weeks. In a fuckin' Juggernaut too. I know you're good in that Reginleif of your Shin, but a Jugg just ain't the same:."

The unspoken words were clear enough. He would be going to his death.

".:I can't leave them behind, Shiden:." Shin said.

".:Yeah, I guess not. Ain't like I don't understand. I wouldn't leave mine behind either. Must mean you care about them:."

Shin didn't answer.

Silence fell between them.

Just then, in that moment, it became apparent to the both of them that there was a gulf between them. A vast distance that could not be measured in miles. Not in kilometers and not in years or months. It could not be measured in anything that adhered to time and space. It was a distance of the heart.

And it was clear to them that, as they were, it was a distance that could not be crossed. Shin would never admit out loud that he cared about anyone. He would not even admit it to himself. And Shiden, who knew keenly what it meant to love and lose, and who sensed that same grief in Shin, would never cross that divide unless he gave consent to it first. All her teasing, flirtation, and cavalier bravado was just a veneer, and she would never show anything deeper unless Shin himself made an effort to venture there. And Shin never would. Not as hurt and broken as he was.

The conversation carried on. Eventually it ended.

".:Talk to you tomorrow, Shiden:." he told her, but it was a lie.

Because unbeknownst to them, tomorrow Shiden would go to battle. And Shin would never talk to her again on that moonlit roof.

And so we have come to the end of the second act.

The next act will be the last, and this rollercoaster will finally, blissfully, come to an end. Oh don't get me wrong, I've had a great time writing this. It's taken me on a journey to all corners of the emotional spectrum, and I'm very proud of how it's turned out so far. It's just that... writing long fiction is kind of like starting a marathon, except you don't know how long the marathon lasts, it just goes until either you drop, or the distance does. It takes a lot of stamina and dedication, and the temptation to quit is always there.

So I'm glad to see the ending, though it's going to be quite a bit more work yet before I reach it. Sorry for the cliffhanger. But I mean, act one ended on a cliffhanger, so I have to keep the tradition rolling, right?

See you soon.

- Verbosity