Every inch of her body ached as if it'd been turned to some kind of gel and thrown alongside a brick in a washing machine. She'd barely been able to pull the reserve chute, she'd barely known what she'd been doing; everything that Rosa Cossette D'Elise had been doing before these past few months had been fed to her on a script and now, meaning that even with all of the exhaustion that tugged on every muscle that strained to keep herself upright as she trudged through the tunnel. The ringing in her head was deafening, and she barely remembered when her feet had touched solid ground again, and every step she took seemed to take her closer to the surface again, even if she wasn't sure how she'd ended up down here in the first place. She could just lay down. They'd find her. She knew they would. For as much shame as she had brought the throne temporarily, she was still the princess now.

Depending on how the laws looked down on her, she was technically too the king now, despite how public that her becoming the princess had been. She hated that feeling of all eyes on her, yet she knew she couldn't escape it. If she did, it'd leave Erusea in a further state of chaos now that the war was coming to a close, now that the Arsenal Birds were shot down, now that –

She realized that the radio, clipped to her chest, was blaring with noise. Had that been the source of why her head was ringing this entire time? It felt like a brick in her hands as she barely managed to unclip it from the pressurized suit she had to wear at those altitudes, barely put it up to her ear, barely heard what were practically screams as her ears started to clue back into the echoing above. She'd gotten too used to it, the roars of jets, the clatter of cannon fire, the deafening thump of an explosion. Looking up, she saw one of the jets seemingly fall apart – yet it was moving towards her now.

Could she even still call it a jet? It hadn't looked like any jet that she'd seen, but she felt her jaw drop as words escaped her mouth. "It's shed it's wings, but it's still flying!"

Her hand was tight around the radio, and when she went to press down further to speak into it, she found that she'd already been pressing it down. Acting as if that was intentional, she quickly added, "Can anyone here me? That aircraft needs to be taken care of!"

Rosa realized it was genuinely flying right at her. She wasn't sure the exact actions she took to get there, but she found herself pressed against the side of the tunnel and on the ground almost at once as she stared at the sleek craft jetting down the tunnel, and once more, she was barely able to hear the radio as she struggled to take in any breath at all, never mind as she tried to regain control of it. She'd made it so far, and come face to face with bullets and death so many times, but now, at the end of it all, when she thought she was safe and she just wasn't still.

Part of her mind wanted to try to find some comfort in the fact that there were two planes following it in. Yet the Osean emblem that they bore provided none of it. It just reminded her of what she had lost in Farbanti. She'd done her best to pay it no mind, she had only to survive, but now that she realized that she had, that the craft had passed her buy, that it wouldn't come back around, that all of the buzz on the radio was about whatever it was and that she would be safe, it all started to seep back in.

Why was she racing towards the space elevator now, after those two Osean Eagles? Something in the back of her mind told her to question it, but it wasn't something she allowed much thought. She couldn't, she just knew that wherever those planes were, she had to be there; she had to see this through to the end; this was all her fault, and for her to miss the finale of it would be unbecoming of her. She had to.

It overpowered the exhaustion that ached through every inch of her skin to a degree. She didn't know why, and part of her still wanted to scream about it, but she knew too that maybe, just maybe, she would finally find herself able to be something but someone else's pawn with a prepared speech already memorized, giving pointless justifications to a war that she had been lied into believing would have been a good thing for her nation, for Usea, for all of the world; when she could finally rest, finally have time to herself again, she knew that every part of her would only be thinking then of how much of a fool she had been all along.

The hasty evacuation efforts of the Lighthouse, for what it was worth, had mostly cleared cars from the subterranean connection between the bay and the space elevator itself. Normally, she would have been surprised at their efficiency; now she found herself cursing out the fact that she would have to run the entire four miles by herself. She could barely see through the sweat and blood that was pooling now around her eyes – she'd been able to keep the latter cleared, she thought it had scabbed, had the vibration of the roaring jets shaken her enough she hit her head again?

Rosa almost ran right into the side of the truck. "Get in, you dumbass!" she heard a familiar voice call. Had she missed it drive right besides her? She got in without any reservations. "We all thought you died, and yet here you are running towards the bullets yet again!"

Words seemed unable to escape her chest. "Thank you, Avril," she barely squeaked. She rubbed the ruined remains of the pressure suit across her head, trying to just be able to see once more; she knew her hair was ruined. It would grow back. It had to. The idea of not having it there, one of the few things that affirmed herself, one of the few things she had control over, almost made her regret living through this all. She only wanted to be proud of the woman in the mirror, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to anymore. All of this out of a simple desperate attempt to live up to all of the expectations of her when she was the heir to the throne, to live up to the pressure put on her by virtue of now being a "princess", to do her people right, to be a good person.

It all felt like it was all a bunch of lies. Had she unraveled herself all this time for a pointless cause? She could barely think over the scream of the engine. "There's a medical kit in the glovebox. You look like shit, princess."

"…I know." Dutifully, she opened up both to get to a gauze bandage, and she began to wrap it around her head. Her breathing was shaky again. She thought she'd gotten used to the violence on Tyler Island, but how many men now lay dead in the seas around them, the final costs of the war she started? How many of them her own country men, fighting as a house divided? How many of them Oseans, perhaps not the most noble of men, but there were idealists among them she knew that wanted nothing more than to create the society that their now-dead former president had wanted.

She'd heard rumors that it was her drones that had killed the man who'd brought peace to so much of the world in the years before. She knew they weren't all her responsibility, that every death killed by her "clean" implements of war not a weight on her shoulders.

It felt like it should be.

All of the gates that they were driving through were slowly reopening, she'd realized as she'd looked back up. Were those the thuds she'd been hearing, a thud she'd assumed to have just been the tinnitus or the blood raging in her ears?

Had she always felt this useless?

All of the sudden, the tunnel opened up. She saw one of the two Osean Eagles pulling up through the center spire of the tower, seemingly spent of all of it's munitions and fuel by now to the point where this was the only way out. She murmured a silent prayer – but she saw the other one scratching down to the ground. "Avril!"

"I see it!" Her callout had only seemed to emphasize the need for her driver to focus, to a point where Rosa almost regretted even saying a thing. Her father had always said, ever since she was a child, that she was better when she was silent. He'd said that a lot lately, even with all of the love he tried to give at the same time.

It hurt for her to think about him.

The truck skidded to a stop, and Rosa didn't even wait for it to fully settle before she was already out. She could see the flames starting to rise around the craft, and in the same moment she realized that, between her and Avril, the pressure suit that she was wearing was far more equipped to deal with them than Avril's tank top. There was no hesitation. Maybe it was foolish. She was always foolish. She could see the cockpit open, but she saw the pilot seemingly unconscious in its seat. Rosa had to do something – maybe she was the only one here who could. The pilot's wingman seemed to have no reservations about leaving him behind.

Part of her brain, the same part that doubted her even making her way back towards the space elevator, was bemoaning even the idea of helping an Osean out. It was wrong of her to do. It was a gut instinct she had to suppress. She'd come too far to let her father's fanaticism get to her too. Her people's fanaticism. They needed a leader. Someone who could bring the world together. Maybe it wasn't her. She had to try, right? She had to try.

Was it adrenaline that made the pilot so weightless? She'd not even realized he was already unbuckled, she'd just yanked him out and made it a good few steps back before she toppled over with him, managing to land, at the very least, atop him. His oxygen mask was dangling, his beard was a scruff, he was cute –

Rosa, she chastised herself. She was delirious from bloodloss. She could hear sirens. Now felt like a good time to sleep. Had she done good?

She hoped so.