He'd never been one for ceremony. Having been raised in secrecy, far from the back stabbing hypocrisy of the Queen's Court on Lar Metal, he and his brother had had little time for such things. And here at least he was in good company, although like Harlock, and Hannibal, he knew the niceties of the situation had to be observed.

Like them, he preferred to grieve in private, which was why he walked along the wide, sandy beach, always in sight of a watcher or two, because here privacy was a thing no-one could afford, although he knew that no-one would intentionally intrude. Not even Harlock, who loved him like a brother, or Hannibal, who'd been more of a father to him than his own - and that not a criticism, but more a statement of how things had worked out. Their parents had loved them enough to keep them safe, had made time for them whenever they could, but it was Hannibal who'd had the raising of them.

And it was Hannibal he was avoiding, really. The old man meant well, but one word or a sympathetic look and he'd probably start bawling, which would never do.

So he walked along the sands keeping just ahead of the incoming tide, away from the firelight and the feasting. Head down, focussed on where his boots were treading, his shadow faintly leading the way in the pale moonlight of Venimiglia's small moons. Which was why he didn't see the young woman standing staring out to sea until he almost walked straight into her.

'Sorry.' It came out muttered and sullen, and he winced inwardly, because he had been brought up with better manners than that. 'My apologies, I wasn't looking where I was going.' Which wasn't much better.

She had turned to look at him, brushing wind-whipped, sea-damp hair back from her face, and smiled sadly. 'Maybe I'm the one who should apologise, your highness, because with all this beach to stand on, I managed to pick the one spot that was in your way?'

'I…' he wasn't sure if she was yanking his chain or being sarcastic. If his cousin Emeraldas had said it, he'd definitely have erred towards the latter, but then, that was Em. And he wasn't normally flustered by pretty young women either, but this was one of Khalsa's adopted daughters, Hannibal's natural daughter, and one wrong move would bring both men down on him like the proverbial tonne of bricks.

'I'm joking.' She reached out and touched his bare arm gently. 'You looked as though you needed cheering up a little…'

'Sorry.' The sea breeze was picking up and whipping his own dark auburn hair into his eyes, forcing him to push it back off his face. 'And I seem to be saying that a lot. I didn't mean to intrude…'

'You're not.' She wasn't tall, considerably shorter than his six foot one, and she had to crane her neck a little and stand on tiptoe to look him in the eyes. 'Prince Karyu… no… "Blaze", isn't it? I'm so sorry about your mother. What she did was a very brave thing. It won't be forgotten. But it's no comfort, is it?'

'No titles. Just Blaze. You have your own losses,' he said quietly. 'David…'

Again that sorrowful smile, loss and love and memory. 'We were raised together, we had an understanding but no commitment. There was going to be so much time…'

'Until there wasn't.'

She had a way of tilting her head slightly on one side that reminded him of Kei, just a little. 'That sounds like the voice of experience, and not, I think, just your mother?' She linked her arm with his. 'There's a spot on the breakwater, we can sit and watch the tide come in. If you'd like the company, that is. I'll understand if not.'

The middle sister. Elena Okita's clone. 'Galene… I…' But she was already tugging him towards the wooden structure that ran from the cliff into the waterline, and it was easier to go along, and something of a relief to have the decision made for him. And she sat him down and sat next to him, close, but not intruding, in a way he'd thought only his mother could ever manage.

'There aren't many who can tell us apart that easily on so short an acquaintance,' she told him.

'I'm not sure why. I didn't have a problem after being introduced.' Too blunt, and again he would have taken it back. But she didn't seem offended.

'I'm told there were a couple of years between each of us - of our progenitors, that is. But we three - four if you count Ianthe - were decanted at the same time. We're the same physical age.'

'My brother and I were constantly confused for each other by strangers,' he said softly, welcoming the chance to touch on an older hurt, already scarred, no longer the open wound it had been a few years ago. 'There was a year between us; we could never see it, ourselves. If they didn't assume we were twins, they thought we were out of the clone-banks like the elites on our planet.'

'Is he…?'

He nodded. 'During the Mazone invasion. His ship was in the wrong damn place at the wrong time. Over a hundred and fifty people killed.' Not just the brother he'd rarely been apart from, but friends and colleagues they'd both gone through hell with over the years. Sheer dumb, bad, fucking luck…

'It doesn't get any easier, does it?' she asked, and he stared into her eyes - grey in the moonlight, and remembered that although she looked to be in her mid-twenties, in a very real sense she was only ten years in this world, albeit with a head full of memories that she'd not lived.

He wanted to lie. Couldn't. 'No. But I think if it did, we'd lose some of what makes us human. I've lost too many, over the years. My father… Marin... My mother…' He stared out to the rippling line of moonlight on the calm waters of the bay, remembering. Another woman with golden hair, and a ready smile, with a child in her arms…

'It hurts,' she said quietly, and there was a tear making its way down one cheek, to join the salt water soaked sands. Lost in the ocean. 'So much. I never knew anything could hurt so much, inside, as though something had grabbed hold of my heart and twisted it… And I just want it to st…'

'No.' He reached out and took her slim hand in his own. 'No. You really don't.' He took a deep breath. Let it out. He reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out a locket, which he flipped open to reveal a 3d hologram of a woman holding a baby. Golden haired, the woman, the baby's hair was closer to his dark auburn. 'During the plague, we lost so many. And even those who survived it… we struggled. It was a dark time. My mother… she lost both my father and my two youngest brothers. I think a part of her died too, that year.'

'You lost your wife as well?' Galene asked. 'I'm sorry, she was beautiful.'

He shook his head and snapped the locket closed. 'Our daughter. She was six months old. When I finally got home, my wife was gone as well. Oh - not physically, but she was broken, inside, and there was nothing I could do, no matter how I tried. I hadn't been there when she needed me. When they needed me. She wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't even look at me. Every day the loss took her further away, and she shut me out. But the day I truly lost her was the day she walked into one of the mechanisation centres and abandoned her body for a mechanical one.'

He'd arrived home that night, to find her waiting. Not for the wife of a prince of House Andromeda a mere machine-form body. But she'd chosen a form he'd see forever in his nightmares. Humanform, yes. Golden haired, willowy, slender. But where her face had been, nothing but a blank canvas. For how, she'd told him, so clinically, without emotion, could she forget her pain if she had a face that could show such sorrow to the world? She couldn't look in a mirror, into her own eyes anymore, couldn't face the pain she saw reflected there, so she'd chosen this… 'I am a shadow,' she'd told him. 'A shadow cannot feel pain. Or die. It's better this way...'

He'd walked straight out of the door before she'd finished speaking, and never looked back. Never told his brother, his mother, Hannibal - or Harlock - what had happened. Ashamed of his failure. 'There was nothing left. I thought she knew better - she'd seen first hand what they were, the mechanised men. Hollow shells, a collection of memories with no emotions. A parody of life, a mockery of humanity. Loss, and love… they hurt, but without them, what are we? And to deny those losses is to deny those we've lost. If they don't live on in our hearts, it's as though they never lived at all.' He shook his head. 'Emptiness is worse.'

'But when every breath after that is so hard…' she whispered. 'How do you keep taking them?'

'One after another,' or so Hannibal once told me when I asked him that same question,' Blaze told her. 'And I have a family who still need me to be strong. I'm dreading breaking the news to my baby sister and brother.' A deep breath. He ran his fingers through damp hair. 'Lar, I could really do with putting that off, but I can't run away from that one,' he sighed. 'But life goes on. And you have a new sister… niece…' he let out a harsh, self-mocking little laugh. 'And I thought my family tree was complicated…'

'Is it?'

He smiled wryly. 'I shouldn't even exist. The cloned queens were never supposed to have natural born children, and never, in over eight hundred years, a boy. Kairyu… Marin and I would have been hunted down and executed on the spot if the old queen had ever known we existed.'

'You still miss him?'

'As though someone tore a part of me away,' he said sadly. He gave her pale hand, laying on the warped, barnacle chewed wood between them, a gentle squeeze. 'It sounds trite and a little hard now, but we do learn to carry our dead with us without them becoming a burden.' He stared down the beach to where the fires still burned brightly. 'But not tonight. I don't think I'm ready for the well-meaning sympathy tonight.'

She shivered a little in the cool breeze, and he placed his arm around her to draw her in to what warmth he could offer. 'Me neither.' A beat. 'But I'm getting a little chilly. Can we walk back to the longhouse?'

Neither of them saw the two figures lurking in the shadows at the base of the cliff, watching them walk down the beach hand in hand. Khalsa folded his arms and leaned back against the cliff face, in a pose he'd absorbed from his old commander by osmosis. 'Do I need to have a little "talk" with that young man?' he asked.

Hannibal shook his head, a sad smile playing around his generous mouth. 'Not so young - he's Lar Metallian. No. He's a good man. One of the best I've ever trained.'

'Hmmph.' Khalsa didn't look convinced. 'I thought you said he was dating one of your distant great-grand-daughters?'

'More pursued by and too polite to disappoint a lady,' Hannibal replied. 'He's complicated, that one. More than many people - Emilia included - give him credit for. She's a nice girl but he needs someone with a bit more backbone and sass.' He smirked, an expression that Khalsa recognised all too well as marking the old man as just as much of an arse as his younger brother in some ways. 'Which isn't to say I won't make his life hell if he does make a move…' he murmured under his breath.

Khalsa elbowed him in the ribs. 'She's not Elena, Mamoru. This one's mine to toy with.'

'And we can't both enjoy the misery of him dealing with two protective papas?' Hannibal asked, with an arch of his eyebrow.

Khalsa smiled. 'Life goes on, eh, Admiral?' He took a deep breath of the sea air. 'So much loss… for so many. Do you ever wonder if your brother was right? If we could just turn back the clock, run the tape a second time?'

'Every day ' Hannibal told him, his voice bleak. 'But I'm not sure he ever thought about what would happen if it just made things worse.'

And to that, of course, there wasn't really an answer.

They walked, following the footsteps left by the younger generation. Behind them the sand filled with the sea and was swept clear, leaving no trace of their path.