Broken Wings
N.W. 978
The Passing of the Professor

Raine looked like she was smiling. One of the very few open-casket ceremonies Lloyd had attended over the centuries, and his Professor—and never mind that he was five years short of the one thousand mark, she would always be the Professor in his mind—looked like she was smiling.

Maybe she'd already found Genis and Kiernan. That would explain so much.

Colette stood at his side, tears slowly soaking the shoulder of his coat, but Lloyd wouldn't complain. He was fighting off his own tears, even though they'd all been expecting this for ages.

At the ripe old age of one thousand and one, Raine Sage-Alderash was being buried just east of the Balacruf Mausoleum, next to where they'd laid her husband to rest nearly a century ago.

Most of Raine's children were already buried as well, Raine's elven blood granting her a longer life than her husband and children, who had more human blood than elven.

Red drew Lloyd's eyes, and Zelos stepped up on Colette's other side, an arm reaching out to wrap around her, though the redhead's hand found Lloyd's other shoulder.

It was just the three of them, until Lloyd could bring Kratos back to Aselia. Certainly, Lloyd believed there would be more friends to be made, and more than likely another few thousand women for Zelos to break the hearts of, but everyone they'd traveled with in the years spent saving the world was now gone.

It was only when the ceremony was over and the casket lowered into the ground that they moved away from the edges. Stepping forward together, Colette carried a bundle of flowers that were laid upon the loose earth that now hid Raine's casket, while Zelos and Lloyd each laid a single flower upon the earth.

This grave marker wasn't his handiwork. Raine hadn't asked it of him, and though he'd offered, by the time he'd done so, she'd already had the marker on order with another stonemason.

That hadn't stopped him from carefully adding her name to the memorial that now stood within what had once been the Martel Temple.

They did not leave the funeral by air, instead walking away from the proceedings toward the mausoleum. It still stood tall, the stones protected from the worst of the erosion by the trio of spirits who each held within themselves a portion of the power that belonged, as a whole, to an entity known as 'Sylph.'

Zelos sighed as they wandered through the mausoleum, the monsters leaving them be as Lloyd wrapped mana around them, creating the effect of a holy bottle with the ease of years of practice. It was a trick Tenebrae had taught him, which Colette still struggled with.

"You know... I know you two have more memories of this place than I do... But coming here always reminds me of Sheena."

Lloyd grimaced. "I wish the first memory to come to mind of this place was of Sheena. Even her ambushing us on our way out."

Colette's giggle was an unexpected, but welcome sound, and as Lloyd looked down at her, her smile grew wider. "So... Out of curiosity, was the coffee hot or cold?"

He snorted, then busted up laughing, unable to help himself. He would never live that down, he had a feeling. And, well...

"It wasn't really either since I'd made it and then it sat around long enough to cool... and it was tea, not coffee."

Colette's giggles redoubled. "So the Great Coffee Deception becomes even more complicated!"

It was the look on Zelos' face that did Lloyd in, and he collapsed against the wall laughing harder than he had in centuries, soon finding himself with a lap full of his wife when she, too, noticed Zelos' utter befuddlement.

"What the hell are you two talking about?" the redhead finally managed as Lloyd slowly got his laughter under control.

Colette grinned up at him. "You know how Lloyd's super perceptive, but you don't notice until he knocks you over the head with it?"

"Hey now..."

"Well, you do."

Zelos snorted. "Oh yeah... I've been there. So...?" he prompted.

"Well, it was just after I opened the seal here. We'd made camp to let me ride out the worst of the symptoms of what Raine called 'Angel Toxicosis'. I'd mostly recovered and was a little ways off from camp because my senses had gotten sharper and... well... Honestly, my eyes, ears, and nose were starting to hurt a little from over-stimulation," Colette admitted. "And Lloyd came out after a while with this mug. He gave it to me and told me it was hot coffee... then promptly turned around and said he'd had Genis cool it so it was actually iced coffee... and then said he'd lied and it was hot."

Lloyd chuckled. "Colette did a really bad job of trying to pretend she could actually feel the supposed heat or cold, and I called her out on it."

Zelos shook his head. "And now I understand why it Colette called it the Great Coffee Deception. And it was seriously tea the whole time?"

"Now that I think about it, I was thinking it smelled weird to be coffee... Not that Lloyd gave me long to wonder about if it was actually coffee, what with the whole temperature thing," Colette said, shifting a bit. Seemed she was in the mood to snuggle, and Lloyd wasn't going to complain. She'd spent most of the last decade in the Asgard area as Raine had faded, while he'd been in the forge and orchards of the Eruden house.

"So... I think of Sheena, and Colette thinks of the Great Coffee Deception... What about you, Lloyd?"

He sighed and shook his head. "As funny as the coffee thing is in hindsight, it really wasn't funny at the time. That's actually where my mind jumped to. Always is when we come through here... I hate remembering how I felt when I realized just what Colette was going through on her Journey."

Colette hummed. "I actually don't remember the mausoleum much. My memories tend to jump to helping Emil and Marta with the monsters that were attacking Asgard a couple years after that." Her eyes shadowed a bit. "I don't really like those memories, either. At the time, I didn't realize you were protected from the Cores' influences by the Yggdrasill's mana. After the way Marta just about blew up at me for grabbing Ventus' Core..."

Lloyd ran a hand through Colette's hair, tightening his grip on her. "I'm sorry. I did a lot of things that year that I'm not proud of."

"You and me both..." his wife murmured. "I'm sorry..."

He sighed, amusement catching the edges of the sound. "A thousand years later, and you're still apologizing every time I turn around..."

Zelos chuckled, even as Colette let out a little giggle. "I guess so..."

Lloyd smiled at her, but the darkness behind her blue eyes wasn't gone, and that... That worried him.

Something in Colette was dying, or had already died... And until Lloyd knew what, he couldn't do anything to fix it.

But he would try, because he couldn't lose Colette. It would break him.

And a broken angel was a dangerous thing to let loose on the world he'd vowed to protect. Mithos had proven that, and Lloyd had no wish to follow in the blonde half-elf's footsteps any further than he already had in becoming the Eternal Swordsman.

He would not destroy the world he'd worked so hard to protect and rebuild.