Everything was fine. Just fine.

This Freya knew because that was how she answered Fratley's question every morning. Plain, routine, automatic. Fine.

Many months later, and she said everything was fine. That was how she started her days in the roughshod barracks outside Burmecia Palace. Fratley greeted her with a hot cup of tea (he was so thoughtful about her habits, bless him, even if he had to learn them all over again), asked how she was faring, and then left to prepare for the day's work.

Since the war's end, laborers and craftsmen trickled back into the kingdom of eternal rain, striving to rebuild their homes and lives. Some were contractors outsourced from Alexandria and Lindblum, signed on by their queen and regent, respectively, though most were Burmecian refugees who knew how to count more blessings than losses. If their forefathers could build a city in the rain, after all, it could be done again. Freya sometimes preferred a more involved post, something to keep her mind busy and her hands dirty, but as the fates would have it, her job was to oversee the scant supply of soldiers in the town and palace. Although she had to chase away a looter or two, it was hardly exciting work, and often she would patrol the streets on her own, observing the construction sites and accepting the admiring nods and cheerful waves of her compatriots.

She had become something of a legend in their eyes--an "exemplary dragon knight" according to the prime minister, who had assumed head of the monarchy in the king's death and Prince Puck's (very persistent) absence. Freya always dismissed such praise with a humble shake and then a disdainful snort later, behind a closed door. She knew herself better: a terrible role model, a soldier who had abandoned her kingdom to pursue a shadow when her country needed her most. Apparently her departure was handily forgiven, or simply forgotten. The fiction was easier to stomach: she was an adventurer, a crusader, a champion. They were silly, folksy labels, the stuff of rumors, but even if it didn't feel proper, Freya didn't have the heart to take away their hero. If that was her part in this grand play, so be it.

Sometimes nosy people or noisy children would stop her with outlandish questions, anything from, "What's it like on another continent?" to, "What's it like on another world?" Sometimes she was asked about the others. Fame had touched her seven friends similarly, and it was difficult not to meddle in the people's fiction with their truths. One time a little girl wondered if the Flaming Amarant could really breathe fire, and all Freya had the power to do was laugh and walk away.

Today was another fine day, and Freya wandered the city limits, toeing the crenels of the outer wall until they were consumed by a steep natural ramp. She kept treading the mossy foothills until she found an outcropping between the city, the plains and the mountains, too remote for the sounds of life to reach her. All the builders, supply caravans, officers and peddlers appeared as distant as small birds, their clamour drowned under the rain as everyone worked through a haze of churning grey-white-blue. She stood on a rocky peak, the black-green hard on her feet yet soft between her toes, and not a drop disturbed the peace. The air was clear, crisp and fresh like dew on a leaf.

Here she was, Freya realized with a sullen start. Here she was alone with her worst enemy: her own mind.

Most of the time Freya had nothing to do but think, which could be a dangerous hobby for a despondent soul. Lately, however, she had been training her sense of optimism. Although the ruins of her homeland--her past--were painful to behold, she knew there were many things left to be thankful for--things to look forward to.

For instance, Fratley was back, this time for good. As much as Freya wanted to say she had all she could hope for and could now live happily ever after, that simply wasn't true. It wasn't that easy. Freya could be practical; she didn't expect his memories to return all at once, if they ever did at all. She could be patient and wait for the past to catch up with him, if that's what it took. They had not yet made any vows towards their future (the times were too hectic to be considering one's personal affairs; the welfare of Burmecia had to come first), but they had the rest of their lives, didn't they? Besides, she had to learn that the present was the most important time of all.

Some things didn't change, regardless. His newfound forgetfulness aside, Fratley was as strong and faithful as ever, and all the qualities she ever admired about him were still there. He was noble, firm in manner, gentle in speech, honest and courteous. He was not too forthright with his feelings, but not too reticent, either. He could be as swift and precise as an arrow, or as steady and pensive as a rock on the shore. He was the perfect companion to a legendary hero, but even when Fratley said he loved her with as much kind sincerity as his absent mind could muster, that couldn't slake the festering unease in Freya's heart.

What was this ill feeling, then--this burning in her spirit that could not be quenched? She sometimes stayed on her watch longer than necessary to ponder it, fruitlessly. It didn't make sense. The Mist was gone. Kuja was vanquished. The war was over. She had been reunited with her long-lost love. Every day was building towards something better. What was stopping her from realizing her own happiness? Something must be in the way.

('For once in your life, why can't you be honest!?')

No... something was missing. Not wrong, not bad, just... incomplete.

It did not take long to figure out whom to blame. She wasn't ignorant of the song of her heart, as contradictory as the verses often could be. It had not been humming the same tune since he left, and that was many months ago. Freya wondered when their roles had switched--when she had started avoiding his name, even in her whispered thoughts. That used to be Fratley's place of reverence in her mind: the singular he. Since Fratley was by her side every day now, it became a pointless abstraction that she shortly abandoned. Suddenly he was not the him she had always been chasing in her dreams, and Freya didn't know what to make with what was left. She wanted to be grateful for Fratley's presence at all--for whatever fickle time life granted them together, but despite the similarities, it was difficult to bridge the gap between the man she knew then and the one she knew now...

...And in the months that followed, he filled Fratley-the-Lost's place.

She wanted to stop thinking about him, really she did. Freya had other, more important concerns ('...more important things to worry about, like Burmecia...') and it was ridiculous to spend so much time--just a little every day--dwelling on a man who wasn't even hers. Every time she tried to sort through her mundane, daily schedule (there were so many things left to do before Burmecia was even half the kingdom it used to be), she slipped into reminiscence, and that's when he flooded her mind, like a wild river from a broken dam.

She remembered everything about him--good, bad, shining and ugly--even the things she wished she could forget.

She remembered the way he spit and swore loudly in all company (even Amarant practiced some discretion about this); the way he would never sit still for five minutes; the way he wouldn't keep his hands to himself; the way he wouldn't keep his tail to himself; the way he kicked her in his sleep; the way he bragged about the most absurd and crass feats, up to and including bowel movements; the way he would scratch his ass in front of absolutely anyone if the urge so struck him, not exempting the next Queen of Alexandria and the Regent of Lindblum (and his wife); his incessantly prurient interest in women (and his misogynistic opinions on the same); his total lack of shame about his body, and the way he shunned clothing in the heat; the way he was constantly caked in some exotic dirt or grime; the way he could turn any harmless statement into innuendo; the way he kept her informed on the status of his genitals (she was blissfully unaware of the concept of "morning wood" before they met); the way he came back from his countless, unexplained excursions reeking of gysahl greens; the way he got carried away while telling stories around the campfire, until he ended up sharing three for the price of one; the way he smirked and stuck his chest out when he was about to make an embellishment on such a story; the way he chuckled and scratched his neck when she called him on those stupid embellishments; the way his tail curled high like a question mark when he laughed...

She remembered even strange, subtle nuances she shouldn't have noticed, much less magnified in her mind's eye now that he was gone--the way he waddled like a duck when he walked, yet swayed like a cat when prowling; or the way he sifted his hand through his hair each morning before tying it off with a ponytail; or the way he canted his hips while leaning against a wall so that his belt slid down his curiously feminine thighs--things that left her warm-blooded and addled some nights. Things that made her wonder what she was missing with a fervour Fratley rarely inspired.

The last thing she thought she would miss, which she would rather die than admit, was his scent. A Burmecian's sensitive nose put a lot of stock in fragrances, and perfume and flower shops happened to be popular staples of their culture. She never found anything alluring about his burnt-cookie, grass-stained, golden chocobo-musk, but now it was disorienting to start the day without it, as if she kept expecting to awaken in the earthen, boyish aroma of a cramped tent.

She remembered snips, snaps and little exchanges relevant to absolutely nothing, and these would crop up unprompted in the background of her mind while the front was carrying a present conversation.

"Freya, don't you--"
('--go running off, now.')
('Hey! Keep grabbing my tail, woman, and we're gonna have a throw-down.')
('Fine, I have yet to kick your butt for calling me rat-face.')
('It's a term of endearment?')
('I'm sure. Just be back before sunset or I'll take you up on your offer, and I promise you won't enjoy it.')
"Enjoy what? What are you talking about, Lady Freya?"
"Hmm? Oh, sorry..."

It was embarrassing. She wished she could stop. Sometimes she dared to remember the things he said that made her fur skitter and her nose itch.
('What in the world are you staring at?')
Sometimes she could hear him prodding her with that smug curiosity. ('Nothing! Just trying to see what color your eyes are under that stupid hat.')
At the time, she couldn't exactly answer for herself (when was the last time she'd scrutinized a looking glass so avidly?) but she could tell right away that his were blue, blue like leviathan's stone, blue that rippled with lazy, inviting mischief, like the coin-dappled bed of a coral reef, treasure buried just beneath.

Fratley didn't always understand, and she would never explain everything. Once he pointed to her tail and remarked, out of pure naiveté, "I didn't know you wore ribbons. Where did you get that?" and her heart plummeted like a stone down an old well. Of course, of course, of course she excused him, the same excuse--of course he didn't remember. "A friend gave it to me," she didn't tell a lie, though the half of truth was crumpled up and thrown down the well too.

Every day, against her sound judgment and sanity, she wished he never left.

('I still can't believe you're doing this. You've changed...')

It was too late to ask why he had gone on his fool's errand, and even if she had (and she could have sworn she did, or at least one of them did), she wouldn't have received a straight answer. Freya's only feeble consolation was that she did all she could to help. She had offered her lance just as Steiner had offered his sword, but he refused both. It was something he had to do on his own. So he said.

Why?

('…we all have to make big decisions in life sometimes.')

How could one choose certain death over a promising life? Sometimes she was jealous of Kuja, for taking the answer down with him. Wasn't that insane? Jealous of a dead madman. Sometimes furious, really. Or even worse, jealous of Iifa--a mindless tree.

('...might've done the same thing if I were in his shoes.')

Sometimes she wondered what those plays would look like, the ones that zealous writers in Lindblum threatened to forge over their adventures. Although a dragon knight's formal education was more focused on the art of combat than other schools, Freya did have a literature tutor once hammer the definition of a "tragic hero" into her skull.

'A tragic hero is one who discovers his fate by his own actions. His downfall is brought by a flaw in his character.'

Brought to his fate by his own nature.

('I can't just leave him. There's no way I could live with myself.')

Something in his nature made him go back to save Kuja. And he died trying. Thus, tragedy. How academic. How simple. Just fine.

If he was the tragic hero, what did that make her? Or the rest of them?

Sometimes she remembered the long flight home. Everyone stalled on the desk of the Hilda Garde 3 like zombies, oppressed by royal silence. Long after the first stars pricked the navy firmament and Cid ushered everyone below deck, Garnet was still leaning over the rail, crying goodbye with mute tears. Freya volunteered to fetch her out of the night's chill, however she stopped before her hand reached the girl's shoulder, struck down by the queen's crumbled visage.

Her cheeks were stained with salt, her Bahamut-cinder eyes were veiled in black shadows and her usually rosy, open lips were drawn into a flat line. Her hair fluttered aimlessly around her face like a thrashing raven. She was a dried-out statue, contemplating the lost horizon as if her heart were anchored to that departed shore by a tether stretching thinner by the second.

Just when Freya thought it might snap, Garnet spoke, her voice a tiny balloon cast out and swallowed by the sky. "He... will come back, right? He promised..."

So did Fratley, once upon a time. A bitter and terrible piece of Freya wanted to say, 'Now you know how it feels,' but Garnet didn't deserve that. She did nothing to deserve a piece of that sorrow. If Freya could have done anything to rescue her from the lonesome road that lied ahead, she would, but there was nothing to say. All her experience in loss meant nothing to the bereft young girl. All Freya could do was wrap an arm around her cold shoulders and watch the stars fall to the sea until neither could stand or weep any more.

At least he had the decency to look back, just once, before walking away.

('…Til we meet again.')

Thus the eight warriors' long, arduous, yet exciting journey had come to an end, and everyone went home, even if "home" was more difficult for some to settle than others. Freya's remaining connection with the group consisted of a handful of letters, most of them from Eiko. The little summoner could be just as effervescent in writing as she was in speech, and Freya was at first surprised that Cid and Hilda wanted to adopt such a rambunctious child. Then again, Eiko suited the eccentric pair well. It was nice to read about Lindblum's bolstered recovery, the new airships Cid was producing, and even the Tantalus troupe, who had resumed their usual tours around the Mist Continent.

The last Freya had seen of the band of actor-thieves was also the last she had seen of Vivi, when they parted ways at the Black Mage Village. Baku and his "boys" reportedly searched and toiled around the collapsed Iifa Tree for two weeks straight before retiring to Lindblum. Freya couldn't imagine their crushed spirits after finding nothing of their fallen brother.

Vivi wrote her once, "Just checking to see how things are going," and the impression from his quaint letter was that he was staying well occupied with the other Black Mages and Genomes. According to him, "They still have a lot to learn, but we're all getting along like a big family."

There was virtually no contact with the others, murmurs in the pubs and amongst her soldiers notwithstanding. Quina probably didn't know how to write a letter, and there was no way Amarant would have bothered--Freya knew him that well, at least. Everything she gathered about the infamous bounty hunter was through rumors and wanted posters; both meant that he was still alive and "at large," which was all the dragon knight needed to light a small, knowing grin.

The greatest surprise was the letter not from Garnet, but from Beatrix. Her relationship with Alexandria's general was strained yet understanding--it was not so easy to forgive everything, but they had enough respect for each other's backgrounds and interests to put the past aside. Besides, they had shared a few (secret) chuckles over Captain Steiner, whose antics with his Pluto Knights were endlessly entertaining.

Beatrix's letter appeared more out of courtesy than any presumed friendship, however, as it related to Freya the condition of Alexandria, its strengthening relationship with Burmecia, and most significantly the condition of its queen ("reserved and melancholy, yet determined to serve her people.") Freya supposed that if she asked Garnet in person, she would say that everything was fine.

Just fine. Many months later, and everything was fine. Never "great" or "marvelous" or "terrific" or simply "swell."

...Or easy, or clear, or bright or carefree again. Those were sunny words. Freya lived in the rain.

"I have a letter for Freya, kupo!"

Freya nearly jumped at the moogle popping up from under the nearest rock. She sighed, accepting the break in her reverie with a gracious nod as the Mognet carrier handed her an envelope. "You're a tough person to find, kupo! Have a nice day!" The sprite bustled away on its tiny wings, leaving Freya alone.

How convenient--another letter. From whom? Freya tore it open, noting the Alexandrian royal crest stamped at the top. This time, it was Garnet herself. It was hard to decipher the point of the correspondence through the delicate, erudite penmanship, until a single line reached out of the formalities and grabbed Freya by the throat.

Vivi stopped. I'm sorry.

No finesse, no gentle delivery, no flowery obituary, no tired euphemisms. Garnet didn't even write "my condolences," which would have been slightly more proper in this context, but not even a queen--especially not this queen--could distance herself from such an event with such shallow sympathy. The only kindness was the Black Mages' invention, "stopped," although whether that choice of word was out of fondness or reluctance Freya could not read. She couldn't read anything past that.

Stopped. Gone. How inevitable. How piquant. It was just fine, wasn't it? Freya could scream it across town and no one would care; there was no love for a black mage in her country. She would rather scream it to the plains, to the mountains, to the rain. Maybe the lizard men and ghosts would listen and spare a fraction of her grief, even though all the men, beasts and rats of Burmecia weren't altogether worth half of that nine-year-old boy with the firefly eyes, sage and sorrowful. When she opened her mouth to curse the clouds--the fates that deemed it fitting to take the bright and young away from this world and let the heavens weep--there were no words, after all. Beneath her rage and above her despair the only thing she could think was:

What would he say?

Freya did not know. She stood like a stump, dead and rooted to the ground, knotted fingers clenching that piece of paper until it bled ink. Here she was, one more link broken from the chains of her existence, and she hated that now--even now, especially now--trying to remember Vivi made her think of him.

('You've definitely taught me to take life more seriously.')

Sometimes she hated his name. Sometimes she wished she'd never met him. Sometimes she wished she knew the question her soul was trying so desperately to answer.

Here she was, torn in half--half a person living half a life, not wanting to go home and not wanting to leave it behind. Here she was, stuck on a hill between home and country--between a lover's chivalry and a boy's fuzzy, crude affection. Half of everything Fratley ever meant to her was gone, and half of everything the ribbon ever meant to her was gone as well, taken down to the depths of Gaia by the boy with the golden mane and rakish grin and coral eyes and chocobo musk. Both promised to come back, and neither ever did.

Freya felt like she lost both halves.

She sat down, took off her helmet and watched the rain.

A/N: Corrected. Thanks Robshi!