Perrine had been miserable.
After Eila and Sanya had left she spent the better part of the daylight hours sobbing in her pillow, wallowing in self pity. The hole in her heart was truly bottomless, and she kept falling into that pit of despair.
He mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions: why did Sakamoto agree to Minna's proposal? What was wrong with Perrine herself? What did the major see in that Karslander bitch! She could still win the major's heart! Make her see reason! It was hopeless, she would die unloved and alone, muttering crazily to herself with her only friends: dozens of cats. She would be a laughingstock among her peers! Wasn't she pretty enough? Sexy enough? Was it her glasses? Maybe she had been to bitchy with Miyafuji and that had turned Sakamoto off? When did Mio ever show interest in Minna? When did they ever have time for a relationship? She thought the kiss the major planted on Minna's lips were from the copious wine she had drunken! Why had her beloved major rejected her...!
She was reduced to sobbing once again.
It was deep night when she had woken up. She didn't remember falling asleep, but wasn't surprised.
She remained in bed, beating herself up for missing the clues that led to the proposal. She picked apart every little detail, real and imagined, trying to figure out where she had gone astray, why the Major wasn't attracted to her.
Maybe she was too by-the-rules to fraternize with subbordinates, meaning only Minna was available. Maybe she wasn't attracted to blondes. To girls with glasses. To Galians! The bigot! No... that wasn't it - the major evaluated everyone on their merits, of that she was sure.
Maybe she wasn't a good enough soldier; she was a volunteer, after all, and her military training was superficial compared to the Karlslanders, and her experience half a decade less.
Despair exhausted her. Finally, she had to accept that, for whatever reason, she - Perrine - was not the one her beloved Major Mio Sakamoto loved.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. Everything she saw reminded her of her unrequited love. Her family rapier, hung proudly on the wall, crossing blades with the rapier she used to banish the golum, reminded her of Major Sakamoto's Fuso katana. The small shrine on her writing desk with its Fuso flag, picture of the major (cut out of a 501st Joint Fighter Wing group photo), and dried herbs taken from the witches treasure trove under the Romagnia base. Training equipment she used when receiving advanced training from the major. The dormitories, the halls, the bath, the kitchen, the common room, the hangar... There was nowhere on base where she could escape reminders of the major and her failed courtship.
The memories were like knives plunging into her heart, between the ribs. Over and over they stabbed her, mocking her, twisting this way and that to invent new ways of inflicting pain. The more she tried to suppress them, the more violently they gouged her.
The moon's faint glow shone off her alarm clock. It was 0300 hours. Outside somewhere, Sanya and Eila were patrolling the night skies along the River Rhine. She imagined them holding hands and stealing kisses as they kept the Belgica side of the Rhine safe from the mysterious, menacing aliens.
Her plunging stomach crossed the event horizon, to a place where time, space, and direction had no meaning. She hit the limit of her despair. With it came the realization that nothing she did, nothing she was, nothing she could be would change the fact that Sakamoto was in love with Minna, and barring any tragic mishap, the two would be married.
The understanding brought peace; it wasn't a clean peace - it was a peace that swept despair into tidy piles at the side of the soul, clearing the way for a numbing cascade of depression to wash over and envelope her. She got up and went over to her writing table. She stuffed the photo of Sakamoto, the Fuso flag, and other memorabilia into an envelope, which she then stuffed in her trunk. Perhaps she would put them in a scrapbook someday as a memory of her youth. For now, she couldn't bear to see them, but she couldn't bear to throw them away.
For the first time since she left the briefing hall she felt the call of nature. She made her way down the silent hall and to the bathroom. She could hear distant sounds of revelry. The memory knives slipped between her ribs, causing her to stumble on her way back to her room. Leaning against the wall she tried to muster the last of her dignity as a Lady of Galia, but her depression transformed her dignity into indifference. She heaved herself off the wall and staggered back to her room, where she again slipped under the sheets.
Her stamina finally spent, she slipped into a fitful sleep, uninterrupted until the morrow.