Mighty Eagle, Calm Nest

by xT-Zealot

With Enterprise suffering from a crisis of identity brought on by her battles with the Crimson Axis and visions of a dark reality, Belfast has chosen to take some liberties to bring Eagle Union's ace to London to try and restore her humanity that had been smothered by duty. Meanwhile, the overseers of this timeline consider its continued worth and what they can extract from it.

18. Chapter 18

Author's Note: The longest and most significant chapter here, having come shy of 40k words total.

---

Enterprise stared out towards the stretch of ocean that led towards the empty horizon before checking to the west to see the same sight. To the east, empty horizon. To the south, still an empty horizon. Her radar pinged once and then twice, trying to detect anything that could expose the clear, peaceful waters of the Atlantic or the skies above as anything but.

There was nothing.

"Grid D14 is clear," she said aloud. Her eyes went unfocused, her sight going miles away where the wing pairs of Wildcats and Dauntlesses she had sent on recon had gone farther into the distance where she could no longer see or hear them. "Recon flights at E14, E15, and D15 show no signs of suspicious activity." Meaning that there was absolutely nothing there at those grids either.

Her contributions to her patrol groups had become readily appreciated by those who she had become assigned with, especially when it came to reconnoitering the vast Atlantic west of the Royal Isles where the nature of the wide open ocean left little for the chance of anything of interest to occur, even when divided in their searchable sectors in the grid-like layout. It was perfect for carriers with their planes able to conduct wide, far-reaching search patterns that could sweep the entire sector clear in relatively short order, further simplifying the task.

But that was all part of the arrangement that Enterprise had agreed to with George and what the Eagle ace had to follow through on. This included the finer print where – given her current status of not officially being here in Royal Navy waters - the actual reporting and status updates over official channels had to be very limited on her end to assist in maintaining the charade of her not actually being here.

Someone else was supposed to do it, and when she didn't hear them, Enterprise glanced over. "Did you get that?"

The small destroyer nearby became startled. "Y-yes!" she cried. "Grid D14 clear as well as C14, C15, and D15."

"E," Enterprise corrected. "E14, E15, and D15. No sign of activity."

"R-right! E14 and E15! I'll radio it in…"

Enterprise tilted her head curiously, watching as the small Royal destroyer transmitted the update to their flagship. This wasn't the first time that her escort had exhibited remissness since they started on their patrol together.

The pairing wasn't just for Enterprise's benefit. As predicted, the Royal Navy was testing measures that they may implement on a wider scale going forward, such as patrol groups being separated into smaller pairs to maintain just enough distance where they could link up immediately when a threat presents itself but far enough where, if some manner of a Mirror Sea was to take effect, the elements of the group that weren't caught up in it could alert nearby outposts and bases of suspicious activity if a pair failed to check in, avoiding a repeat of what had happened to Devonport when their patrols and the base had been caught up in it without any kind of SOS managing to get out until it was too late.

There were a few potential concerns that needed to be ironed out – such as what it meant for the ships that would be the ones to become trapped if it was to happen – but, again, these initial measures were being put in tentative practice with improvements to follow up later pending evaluations.

Not that they had run into any scenarios where they could really test their effectiveness. The Sirens still haven't made any kind of actions, offensive or otherwise, and though Enterprise's assigned searches had been focused on the general vicinity of the Atlantic where the force that had been launched at Devonport had warped in along with their fog cover, there had only been clear skies and seas.

To be honest, it was making Enterprise a bit bored, but one consequence of it was that she was a bit more attentive to what may be going on to break up this boredom, such as what may be bothering her destroyer companion.

"Grid E14, E15, and D15 all clear, Exeter," the shipgirl was reporting. "Uh…we'll be moving further along from D14 to E16 and expanding aerial search into the appropriate F grids."

"Good work!" their flagship returned, a York-class heavy cruiser. "Keep it up, for the honor of the Royalty!"

"Roger," the destroyer returned before ending communications and standing in place.

"Echo?" Enterprise queried.

The destroyer's gaze leapt to her. "Y-yes?" she asked.

"Grid E16?"

Echo stared uncertainly at her until she started in sudden realization. "R-right!" She looked around, making sure she had her bearings, and then accelerated to their next search area.

Enterprise followed, her concern focused on Echo's back before she sped up enough to come alongside her. "Is there something bothering you, Echo?"

"Huh!?" Echo jerked again, looking back at the carrier. "Bothering me? Nothing's bothering me!" She let out a laugh that was painfully forced right before she thrust her fist forward. "E16, let's go!"

She coaxed a bit more speed out of her rig, probably close to her maximum at that rate, getting ahead of Enterprise in the process. The carrier chose to maintain a nominal distance behind her.

Well, I guess nothing's wrong, then, Enterprise thought with an amateur's handling of sarcasm as she kept her eyes on Echo.

Enterprise didn't know how to describe it, but there were a lot of moments like these when she knew she was doing something that wasn't how she used to act. Much like her combat instincts where years and years of experience had enshrined reactions or a general attitude that had become second nature to her, the same could be said for her usual approach to regular things. When she ended up doing things that weren't so impressed upon her, it was like her thoughts and body were running counter to them.

In the beginning it was like she was just a solid rod of steel that refused to bend with a brittleness that dissuaded her from trying at the risk of breaking something if she did. Considering how much of her old habits revolved around survival, it was a difficult position to alter from. Now, however, Enterprise had the flexibility of a tree branch, keeping its general shape but able to bend and adapt to the winds of change, working with the problem rather than having it break against her and leaving it forgotten behind her without a care.

Flakes of metal still encrusted that limber wood, and from them Enterprise knew that, before, she wouldn't have thought Echo's troubles to be any concern of hers. Not enough to distract her from the mission, anyway. Her logic then would've been that Echo could figure things out for herself, just as Enterprise had done for herself, and the only thing the carrier had to do was make sure she would survive anything that may come to interrupt that.

Of course, the inflexible Enterprise would assume that Echo would just turn out like her and that would somehow be the best thing for her; a warship that only needed to worry about fulfilling her duty. Fight long enough, survive long enough, and eventually she would understand that was all a shipgirl was about. It was the only natural thing for them.

What was natural for Enterprise now though, as the trouble flowed with the breeze and the waves that she passed through in Echo's wake, was for her to try and find a way to bend and work along it.

But what's the natural way to do that? Enterprise wondered. She had asked Echo directly, it didn't seem to work, so should she try something else instead?

She saw an opportunity in the fuel gauges of her planes. Low, could probably still last for another grid each, but she chose to recall them.

"Let's reduce speed," Enterprise said. "I'm going to rotate my planes out. They're getting low on fuel."

"Roger," Echo replied, slowing.

It actually wasn't necessary, Enterprise being able to land and launch entire flights in the worst of conditions, but it was a good excuse to get Echo to slow down and put them in a better position to talk. Enterprise didn't rush though, waiting until she heard the incoming sounds of her first recon pair before she raised her deck, both to launch the replacement planes and to catch the returning ones.

It hadn't taken long for Echo to lapse into her despondent silence from before, their current speed and lack of threats popping up in the middle of the ocean leaving her free to wallow in it.

Enterprise waited for her second recon pair to return and slot into the spaces of the planes that just replaced them before deciding to intrude on it. "You were at Devonport during the attack?" Enterprise asked.

Echo was startled again. "H-huh? Oh, yeah… I was there…"

"I remember your name," Enterprise explained in what she thought was the casual friendliness that she wanted to believe she could emulate passably at this point. "You were the one who managed to get out in time and alert the rest of the Royal Navy about the attack."

"Y-yeah, that was me…"

She didn't sound particularly proud of that. "I wanted to thank you," Enterprise said. "Reinforcements were able to get there in time to help out, and a lot of people were saved because of it."

"A lot of others got really hurt, though," Echo replied miserably. "Sussex, Hood, Belfast... They all stayed or went in there while I just…ran…"

Enterprise already knew well of Belfast and Hood's conditions, and as for Sussex she recalled a cruiser with that name having been one of the shipgirls who had been transferred out for repairs. "Do you regret it?" she asked while her third recon pair started closing in.

It brought Echo to a full stop to project the vehemence of her denial. "No, of course not!"

Enterprise also halted and waited for her final recon pair to land while the replacements launched from her deck, leaving her to watch the shrinking tails of her away planes. "Is that so?"

Despite the completion of her plane rotation, neither she nor Echo were making any move to continue their patrol. Enterprise didn't point it out, hoping instead that she was projecting the 'supportive ear from a stranger' opportunity that she wanted to give Echo to convince her to air her concerns correctly. She was still new to this, her efforts reduced to what parroting she could from the likes of those who had done the same for her.

Fortunately, she had a lot of reference material, and she found some gains when Echo morosely mentioned, "I don't regret getting help. I just wish I could've done something more…"

"Like fighting?"

"Well, yes…"

"Fighting isn't always the best way to help."

"Easy for you to say," Echo complained. Not with malice, her tone instead in line with her child-like form and depressive pout. "You're the one who can do all the fighting way better than I can."

"Mm…I suppose I am," Enterprise responded, giving her that, and in a previous time she would've probably dropped it there, thinking it being hypocritical of her to dissuade fighting being the answer, especially as fighting was always her answer. It was another strange feeling she had where, instead, she felt like she had the experience of speaking the contrary. "But you know, being so good at fighting lets me know a few things that you may not. Such as how it's not always the best answer to everything, and that you can make many more mistakes if you rely on it too much."

"But you were the one who beat Purifier!" Echo said. "And sent the whole fleet in retreat! Everyone knows about it!"

"But I wouldn't have known about Purifier if it weren't for you," Enterprise pointed out. "If I had not, I would've been caught up in the fighting at Thames without any idea about the more important battle going on at Devonport."

Echo's pout deepened. "But if I had your strength and been able to fight…"

You just need to become better.

That was what was stenciled on that flaking metal, from an Enterprise who would've advised Echo to just become better at fighting on the chance that the carrier would not be there next time. But the current Enterprise brushed at it, freeing it the rest of the way so that it could fall away from her.

"Was it fighting that Sussex had been worried about?" Enterprise asked instead. "Would she have been happy had you returned to her in that situation?"

She could see the glaze that came over Echo, the destroyer imagining it, and the drooping of her form said enough as to what she thought Sussex's reaction would've been had she done that.

"Fighting wasn't what was needed then," Enterprise went on. "Sometimes, fighting may actually be the worst thing to do."

"I can see it in that specific situation," Echo admitted. "But we're warships, aren't we? Fighting is what we do. If I was better…"

So, Echo was going down that line all on her own, leaving Enterprise to intervene and cut her off from it. "If you start focusing too much on how you can fight, you may end up forgetting why you're doing it. We fight to protect."

"I know that!"

Enterprise passed her a thin smile, "I did, too, and I still thought so. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but I've been in a lot of battles and destroyed many, many things. They had all been Sirens so destroying them wasn't a question, and I did so in the interests of protecting others. I became very good at it but, overtime, after destroying so much, I came to see destruction and protection as the same thing."

"…Isn't it, though?" Echo hesitantly asked.

"That's what I thought when I went into the Pacific with your comrades against the Sakura Empire. When I came face-to-face with the shipgirls of the Sakura Empire, I saw them the same way as I did the Sirens: something that needed to be fought and destroyed."

Even with her inexperience, Echo managed to find something wrong with that. "I've been in skirmishes with Iron Blood shipgirls before. I know that they're our enemies but even with how they can look as scary as the Sirens, I never saw them as the same."

"Well, I did with the Sakura Empire, and I had nearly destroyed some of them without a second's thought." It got the reaction Enterprise wanted: Echo staring up at her in shock. "Fighting became all that I knew how to do, and for me fighting meant destroying. When I had two shipgirls at my mercy, I did not think to spare them."

"…What happened to them?" Echo asked, afraid of the answer.

Enterprise smiled in reassurance. "Others who were not as strong as I am saved them and, in the process, saved me from making a mistake that I would've never been able to come back from. Those Sakura girls who were saved are now important representatives to establishing peace between our factions, just as we're now doing the same with Iron Blood." She crouched down, coming to Echo's height. "You see, Echo, I'm very strong and very good at fighting, but I lost sight of what's important and nearly lost myself to it. It had been others who were not as strong, who are able to better see what good they could do without fighting, that ended up saving someone like me."

Echo's silence was part of how much she was considering the lesson, leaving Enterprise to believe that she had achieved her victory. She reached over and placed her hand on top of the destroyer's head.

"There was one person in particular who saved me and reminded me about what was important," Enterprise added when Echo looked up at her. "She became a very dear person to me, and because of how you escaped and told us all about what was going on at Devonport, I was able to get there in time and save her. That's what I really wanted to thank you for, Echo."

A blush overtook Echo's cheeks, the destroyer dropping her head in embarrassment, but Enterprise caught the proud smile before it escaped. Suppressing a chuckle, the carrier patted her head.

After a couple of pats, Echo looked back up, her smile shifting with an unexpected glint in her eye. "Was it Belfast?""

Enterprise immediately froze. "Er…"

Echo laughed, slipping out from beneath her hand. "You're always visiting her every day! We all know that!"

"Yeah, I guess it was easy to tell," Enterprise conceded, her small attempt to obscure the identity of her 'dear person' sounding silly now. "And I'll be visiting her again, all thanks to you." She stood up and motioned to their east. "After we finish up our patrol."

"Right, let's go then!" Motivated, Echo turned in the direction of the next section and took off with Enterprise needing to hurry to catch up with how fast she was moving.

Not bad for a first attempt, if I may say so, she decided.

---

The rest of the patrol wrapped up without any incident and Echo's mood had improved to the point that when Enterprise had asked for a suggestion about where she could complete an errand, the destroyer had been more than happy to oblige when they navigated into the bay. Instead of turning in the direction of Devonport with the rest of them, Enterprise broke off shortly after they crossed through the inlet, parting with a wave and a comment of another job well done before heading instead to Plymouth.

Streaking along the edges of Breakwater soon after they separated, Enterprise turned on her heel upon passing a docked production cruiser, sailing in reverse to inspect the construction work going on at the barracks and admiring the lighthouse that had somehow managed to survive the siege, none the worse for wear. Then, after turning the rest of the way so that she was facing forward again, she accelerated, clearing away from the rocky shores as she continued onwards. Enterprise began humming to herself, what started to be a straight and narrow path soon becoming broken with random zigzags that she performed for no reason other than how she wanted her cruising to reflect a bit more of the freedom that she felt with her work done for the day.

With her attention as free to wander, she was able to enjoy the way that her hair waved in the wind, her sudden turns and jukes altering its motions in a way that she found as pleasant as the breeze that would be able to grace a new direction along her sun-heated skin. It was cool and, as she breathed it in, clean, the heavier scent of the sea dwindling the deeper she went. As she distanced herself further away from her work and those vestiges of military protection, Enterprise could immerse herself with the life that went on behind it: the shores and docks of Plymouth that rose to the rolling hills, the greens and browns of healthy nature having as much room as the modest urbanity of the Royal Navy city architecture.

Days ago, this city had been threatened with total annihilation if the Sirens had managed to break through. But life went on unimpeded, and it was a life that Enterprise had been able to pursue since then, experiencing enjoyments such as this where she could sail like this because she wanted to, in pursuit of her own personal, unremarkable errand to be made for her own satisfaction and the expected happiness that she hoped to gain upon its completion from who was currently on her mind.

Turning to avoid another vessel – this time an ordinary, unarmed yacht -, Enterprise scanned along the docks and the line of civilian ships that were berthed, looking for and finding a break that was one of the occasional spaces that had been set aside exclusively for shipgirls who had business or were making quick ventures into the city. Judging the space suitable for even her carrier body – and, better yet, close to where Echo had told her about -, Enterprise leapt up onto the dock, her rig vanishing and reconfiguring into the immense carrier body that dwarfed the other civilian ships.

Yet despite its size and its complement of aircraft built exclusively for war, there it was in its spot amidst the peaceful life of those shielded by it, and from there Enterprise was able to seamlessly integrate herself further in, her business that she had past these docks aligning perfectly with the blissful livings of those who spent their days here.

The errand didn't take long, looking for and finding what she needed taking the majority of the time than it did for her to acquire it and return to her ship. Redonning her gear a half hour later, Enterprise resumed her sailings, this time with the pair of styrofoam containers that she held delicately in her arms. With her cargo in mind, Enterprise took a bit more care with her sailings that included a wide turn towards Devonport.

It was such a small detour, but Enterprise felt the divide between who she had been and who she was now, the breadth of which so vast in this instance that it didn't even spur any kind of contemplation over the difference. If it did, all Enterprise would have to think was that she had something she wanted to do in contrast to how she hadn't had wanted for anything in the past.

The normal greeting of Devonport couldn't dampen that: that being the ongoing repairs of the damaged warships that still populated the docks. Even that sight had, overtime, become less of a sign of how close and how brutal humanity's struggle could still be with the Sirens and more of how – no matter what nefarious ploys their enemy could still resort to - humanity could still survive and persevere through, with even this part of life still able to go on because of it. Another warship that was able to leave the docks with the passing of the days invigorated that better side of their conflict.

Enterprise had never been able to see that better side, or how it was able to bridge over to the peace and prosperity that was alongside it and what she had just returned from. But because she could now, even with her crossover back over to this side, what she had done and the knowledge of what she could do anytime she wanted simply for the pursuit of her own whims gave her the momentum to carry herself with an added spring to her step and her spirit when she made her return to her berth.

"Oh!" came Beagle, the destroyer noticing Enterprise's return when the carrier hopped upon the docks as well as the fragile containers that she sniffed at. "Is one of those for me?"

Enterprise smirked as she passed her. "Sorry, but no."

"Aw, drat."

"Same place as always?" Fiji asked with an expression that said that she expected the upcoming answer as to where Enterprise was going.

"Same place," Enterprise confirmed without hesitation.

"Back to working on a ship that isn't here," came a dockworker who had been regularly maintaining Enterprise's carrier body.

Enterprise bowed her head respectfully to him. "Thank you for your hard work."

Though the days of feeling like a stranger in a friendly port were not long past, they felt that way to Enterprise with how far she had come as she made her way across, exchanging a couple more pleasant passes as she went to her usual destination.

She was no stranger to those at the front desk of medical, she exchanging friendly, familiar nods with the nurses there before following her memorized path through the halls and coming upon the room at the end. Carefully balancing both containers with one arm, Enterprise used her freed hand to open and pass through the door in time to catch a conversation.

"…pain?" someone inside asked.

"A little discomfort," Belfast answered.

Both looked up upon Enterprise's entrance, Belfast sitting at the edge of her bed, her feet on the floor with her gingerly applying weight to one specifically while Artifex was crouched next to it. Seeing who it was, Artifex went back to her examinations, but Belfast stayed on Enterprise, the cruiser smiling at her appearance which, in turn, got Enterprise to smile back, happy that Belfast was happy with all thoughts being on how she hoped to make her happier once her checkup was done.

Artifex put a gentle hold on Belfast's shin while another trailed along her calf. Stopping at a particular point, the repair ship applied a bit of pressure there and Enterprise – happening to glance over right then – saw the responsive twitch and the way Belfast's toes stretched out in reaction.

"The muscle is still a bit tender," Artifex noted. "That should pass soon. The bone structure has been completely restored. Give it another day and you can begin walking around on it and performing light activity which I recommend to stimulate the new muscles and tendons. Anything heavier should be avoided during that period. Absolutely no combat actions."

"Well, I don't have a ship at the moment," Belfast remarked. "Or for the immediate future."

"That solves that then."

Belfast raised her right hand, still in its cast. "And this?"

"Give it another two before the cast comes off," Artifex advised while standing up. "Honestly, it could probably come off tomorrow but worry about exercising your leg first. We may heal fast, but your hand was practically pulverized. With the smaller joints and ligaments involved, extra care is a given to make sure they recover properly."

A short sigh escaped Belfast, one she then tried to play off. "What's another day or two?"

Enterprise turned her back to hide her smirk at the note of frustration she detected while she laid out the containers on a short table, soon followed by her naval cap. Soon after the relief of Belfast waking up had worn off, it quickly became apparent to the carrier as to how the Royal Navy's head maid – always busy, always planning, always controlling, always having something needing to do – had quickly become frustrated at having to spend several days doing absolutely nothing, no matter how well she tried to hide it.

"Glad to see the correct attitude for this," Artifex commented, either missing or purposely making fun of Belfast's true feelings. To Enterprise, she said, "Make sure to help her along with it."

Ah, so maybe she does know. "Will do," Enterprise promised. "She won't be going anywhere."

Behind Artifex, Enterprise saw it when Belfast narrowed her eyes at the carrier. When Artifex turned away, Enterprise answered with a wink.

"That'll be all for now," Artifex wrapped up. "After seeing how well you can move tomorrow, you'll likely be discharged." She shrugged. "Although given the state of your ship, you won't really be able to go much of anywhere and I recommend sticking close to it to continue benefiting from the repairs. You can go to the city for a change of scenery if you really want but nowhere further."

Tomorrow. Enterprise did the math in her head and figured that she had plenty of time. She may've used up a couple of her days already, but the course that Hornet and the rest of the Eagle Union fleet were following to return home would take a better part of the week. She still had a few days left before New York HQ would start calling the Royal Navy to inquire about why it was Hornet and not Enterprise who had returned.

Tomorrow will be a good time.

"Thank you for all your advisory, Artifex," Belfast thanked.

"Yeah, thanks again," Enterprise added. "Really."

For a repair ship, Artifex was oddly vulnerable to such thanks over her services, she pushing her glasses up to the bridge of her nose to hide how her gaze strayed away from them in embarrassment before turning sharply towards the room's exit. "You're welcome. Just make sure to follow my instructions."

Once they assured her that they would and she left after that, Enterprise waited until the door was closed and for when Artifex had traveled at enough of a distance before saying, "I think I'm starting to understand how Vestal feels."

"In what way?" Belfast asked, legs still hanging over the side of her bed.

"In how she tries to give medical advice to those who she knows will either hate it or ignore it."

"Just so you know, I fully intend to follow Artifex's instructions to the letter," Belfast swore, sounding offended that Enterprise would assume that she wouldn't. "She is the expert, after all."

Enterprise watched her expectantly. "But…" she prompted.

"…But I would've liked to ask her if it's really necessary for me to remain here," Belfast reluctantly revealed. "If I'm feeling this much better, surely I can be let out by now or even before. Dorsetshire was allowed to act as a secretary long before her leg was out of its cast."

"Dorsetshire only had a couple torpedo hits to recover from," Enterprise pointed out. "Not a magazine explosion." There had been keen focus on making sure that Belfast was recovering normally from such a rare and deadly disaster, both her body and her Wisdom Cube. "Besides, all the other shipgirls who are currently without their ships have taken what clerical work was available around the base and then some once they were able to. What would being let out early let you really do other than fidget and pout in a dorm room?"

"I haven't done either of those things," Belfast protested, and, for just a moment, Enterprise saw her lips turning downwards in what she thought to be a very pouty way right before the cruiser killed it.

Nonetheless, it was enough to induce a painfully excited throb of Enterprise's heart that she had to work through. "But you still hate it."

"Hate is such a strong word that I'd rather not use."

"That's not a 'no' though."

This period of inactivity really wasn't sitting well with Belfast, the second's delay on the maid's part – and the way irritation wrinkled her usual, strictly-regulated countenance – standing out so obviously to Enterprise before it smoothed over.

"Regardless, I will follow her instructions," Belfast reiterated, Enterprise noting her continued avoidance to how much she may dislike it. "I suspect Vestal wished she could get at least that much from you, given what I've come to know of your usual responses to her medical advice."

Enterprise grimaced, able to look at her years of disregard to Vestal's treatments in the shameful light that they deserved. "She's another that I owe an apology to."

The chink in Belfast's armor gave another peek for Enterprise of how the cruiser believed she won the bout, the spark of victory at her face highlighting the smug curve of a miniscule grin – one that she then smothered once she realized it was out of line.

Ah, that's cute, Enterprise thought. Not endearing. Cute. Not as adorable as that pout she witnessed, but she still felt that skipping of her heartbeat.

"So, what stop did you happen to make?" Belfast asked, the question directed at the styrofoam containers.

Enterprise did not believe that it wasn't unwarranted to suspect that the change of subject was for Belfast to get away with her little victory, but she would let her have it in favor of wanting to reveal the little gift she got her. Trying to stop any of her excitement from showing itself, Enterprise picked up one of the containers.

"I was thinking that you probably haven't been able to get anything good to eat," she began to say, her excitement making a sudden, miraculous transformation into nervousness that was turning her explanation into – to her - an excuse to hide some ulterior motive as she then said, "not that I remember if hospital food was any good or if I was a good judge of it back then." The small chuckle she made was way more for her own benefit than it was for her poor joke, but when she saw Belfast's smile of encouragement Enterprise chose to just hand over the container to her. "So I asked and was told of a place that I thought might be good and picked something up after my patrol. This one's, uh, for you."

The cruiser's amusement shifted to delight when she took it and set it upon her lap, a happy smile blooming once she opened the container and saw what was inside.

"I remember when you took me to that one place you really liked," Enterprise felt inclined to explain further, the strange mix of excitement and nervousness rolling around together. "We hadn't gone back, and it's been a while so I thought you would like it. It's obviously not the same place but I thought it would still be good. It looked good so-"

"It does," Belfast interceded, saving Enterprise. She looked up from the dish of crispy battered fish and the side of fries, her smile radiating appreciation. "And it's exactly what I've been in the mood for. Thank you very much, Enterprise."

"You're welcome," Enterprise returned, feeling the tight knots that had been forming over her body relaxing all at once. She took the box that was meant for her and plopped down in the chair near Belfast, her usual spot. After pulling off her gloves – a task that was done with a tiny trembling of her fingers -, she opened it to reveal her own order of fish and chips.

She felt like she had gotten away with something, and she decided it wasn't an unjust description. She did have a motive behind the little gift - something that she wanted to gain more for her own benefit than Belfast's -, and she got it.

That thanks. That smile. That happiness that she had been the cause of. That had all been for her to receive.

"You didn't happen to get another set of those?" Belfast suddenly inquired.

Enterprise paused, looking at the plastic knife and fork that she had taken out and remembering that she did have a second set in her coat pocket. She was about to make a move to get it but upon looking at her fork and the piece of fish that she had already speared onto it, an idea came to her, and she held both out towards Belfast. "Here."

She extended them to a point where they were not only closer to Belfast's mouth but were encouraging to be received in that way, with Enterprise smiling in silent expectation. She noted the extended moment that Belfast took to look at them before glancing at Enterprise, then back to them, and the Eagle ace thought she saw Belfast about to lean over and take them.

But then there came an odd flicker of movement along her features, what Enterprise thought to be the beginning of that lean cut short, and Belfast instead took the fork out of Enterprise's hand with her good one.

"Thank you." With the fork now in her possession, Belfast bit off the piece of fish, her chewing soon pausing as she made a noise of appreciation, passing Enterprise another grateful smile. "This was just what I needed."

Enterprise felt a nudge of disappointment but one that she lived with, what with Belfast enjoying the food. After handing over the knife with Enterprise asking if Belfast would be fine with one hand – with the cruiser insisting that she would -, she retrieved the second set of plastic utensils and began digging into her meal.

I guess that was a little too greedy of me.

Not that she thought what she had done was anything out of the ordinary and, in fact, had been counting on it to get away with it without any kind of suspicion from Belfast.

Is that bad? Enterprise asked herself. I'm not doing anything wrong, right?

Enterprise wondered if there was a problem with how she saw anything new as having a chance of her doing something wrong. While she did not believe her actions to be wrong in any way, though, the motives behind them she knew had changed and she wasn't sure if what they had become were wrong.

Ever since Belfast had woken up, ever since she had returned to her life, all that Enterprise could think of was Belfast. Every chance she could get, even when she was out on patrols, there was just Belfast. All she had on her mind was Belfast.

Even now, with Belfast right here next to her, Enterprise was still thinking about her.

What she should do next. What she should say next. What she could do now and at some point later that would get Belfast to smile at her or give her those looks that were only for her. The ones that made her heart flutter, warm her so pleasantly, with her wishing they could last forever.

What she had done today was one of those many fantasies that had come to occupy her thoughts of how she could just be with Belfast. Have her all to herself like this.

That's too much, Enterprise judged, a little disturbed by how…greedy she sounded over an individual. Over Belfast.

But I can't help it, because I'm in love with her…

…I think…

Enterprise wanted to say that things had changed because of this possibility of love – that the unveiling of the concept's existence had some kind of profound effect on everything, making it all into something…else. Something that should not have been or, rather, something that wouldn't have been had she not come to know about it through Hornet.

But it was the discussion with her sister that proved it wrong before Enterprise could make any serious considerations about it. Nothing had changed when she had come to know about love and how it may be what she was feeling for Belfast. As had been pointed out, Enterprise had always had these feelings – she just hadn't known what the right meaning for them was. The only thing that ended up changing was the degree of those feelings.

And even if those feelings had changed in such a way where Enterprise could be worried about how intense they had become…they did not feel wrong.

If anything, they had become more legitimized during the short time that had passed since Belfast woke up. Not only with how it felt every day, knowing that Belfast was here for her to see after she was done with her work, but how they had spent those days.

"How's the arm?" she had asked at an earlier time, referring to Belfast's arm that had taken the brunt of the explosion and shrapnel of her detonated magazine.

"Better than before," the cruiser replied, her leg still elevated and keeping her lying on her back. She lifted the arm in question, slowly stretching it and her fingers. "There is still some stiffness to it. I've been doing what I can, but it's been a little difficult."

Being unable to get out of bed, and her other hand still disabled, Enterprise could guess how hard it's been to exercise it. Watching the slender limb as it made its stretches, she suddenly leaned over in her chair. "If you'd allow me…?"

Eager to help, she was already touching it before Belfast could reply, gently taking her wrist to bring it closer for her to better examine it, and Enterprise found herself once again amazed as to how thin it was in her hands when she grasped her forearm.

The tissue, completely restored, was a natural testament to the healing capabilities of shipgirls, but how healthy the peach-colored skin looked, how smooth it was to her touch, Enterprise had no explanation as to the cause of that, or this urge that wanted to have her hand to continue running across it, experiencing more of that unnaturally smooth feeling when it was on display in front of her like this.

She tempered the urge with the reminder of her original intention and how this flawless skin had been sliced and punctured by hot shrapnel. Recalling some of the most gruesome pieces, Enterprise searched and found the first of the hardened knots of renewed muscle fibers that had yet to get their proper workout. She carefully kneaded it, fingertips pressing and coaxing the knot to loosen and give beneath the ministrations.

There came a sigh from Belfast and Enterprise paused and glanced up from her work. "Is it helping?"

"Unexpectedly," Belfast replied although Enterprise wondered why the cruiser was looking away from her. "You can keep going."

Mentally shrugging, Enterprise moved on, fingers tracing down her arm and locating the next knot. As she did her work, she would occasionally glance at Belfast, spotting the cruiser's eyes flutter from partially to fully closed lids as her body seemed to sink into her bed as Enterprise massaged the stiffened points in her arm.

There had been a reddening hue beginning to line her cheeks when Enterprise started on another point after that and that was when Belfast would comment, "I did not expect such a delicate handling."

The hints of Belfast's reception to her treatment – and her attempt to distract both of them from it - got Enterprise to grin a little in satisfaction and another, odder feeling that she couldn't describe. "If it's one thing I know, its aches and pains. I didn't grit my teeth and bear with everything, you know."

"No, you saved that for the serious injuries," Belfast chided.

"Wasn't anything I could do about them until after the fight was over."

"And then the next one would draw you away."

"I'm going to do better with that," Enterprise defended. She felt a subtle shiver from Belfast when she touched another point of stiffness, this one right above the inside of the cruiser's wrist. It didn't feel as stiff as the others, but Enterprise pressed there.

"So yo- ah."

Enterprise's gaze leapt up towards Belfast at the sound; not quite a cry, but the way Belfast had managed to smother it so it wouldn't be was a rather surprising noise all the same. "Was that too hard?"

"No," Belfast assured, glancing briefly at Enterprise. "I wasn't expecting it."

Concerned that she had been too hard, Enterprise applied a little more care, gently massaging the point with her thumb while her nails traced along the rest of the area around Belfast's wrist. While the knot gave against her ministrations, the carrier still felt an occasional, tiny shake go through Belfast.

It's not because of the knot though, Enterprise thought. It's almost like…

The nail of her one finger circled around a spot and she felt another shake.

Belfast started to pull her arm back. "Thank you, Enterprise, I feel much better."

But Enterprise didn't let go, getting suspicious. "Hold on," she murmured as her nail started weaving figure eights.

She felt another tremor go through Belfast's arm and the cruiser's pull grew stronger. "Enterprise-"

"Hold on," Enterprise repeated, her tone matching her grin as her nail was joined by another.

Belfast's tugs grew more desperate, and the cruiser started to shake in her bed. "E-Enterprise!"

Enterprise looked up, finding the cruiser still turned away but she could still see how she was biting down on her lip that had been curving upwards, stubbornly keeping her mouth sealed as she tremored on the bed.

"Is this why you wear armor here?" Enterprise asked jokingly, pausing for a moment.

"Arms are our most exposed and most used, alongside our hands," Belfast explained, needing a long moment to still herself but also still refusing to look at Enterprise. "It's sensible to have extra protection-" She suddenly choked when Enterprise's fingers all started dancing along her wrist.

"You're starting to sound like me," Enterprise noted as she initiated her attack.

"E-Enter-p-prise!" Belfast hissed between tightly gritted teeth, trembling. "S-stop!"

Enterprise wanted to continue, the discovery of a weakness that could break down the cruiser into the fit that she was barely controlling a dangerous temptation. But as delightful as that was, she did stop, worried about what such a giggling fit may do to a recovering patient. "I'll stop." She was still grinning big though. "I didn't expect to find somewhere where you'd be ticklish."

Belfast breathed out in relief, her face red, but not solely from her struggle as she couldn't meet Enterprise's eye. "That is highly confidential information," she said.

Enterprise loosened her grip on her arm, letting her know she could have it back. "I won't breathe a word to anyone else." Although her promise was not made with pure intentions, there being a devious spin to Enterprise's thoughts of how she would be the only one to know about this – and to use it at a more opportune time.

Belfast slid her arm out from Enterprise's grip but not fully, the carrier finding her one hand being taken by the cruiser who slipped her fingers through hers.

Belfast locked gazes with Enterprise, her cheeks still flushed, her smile small and…shy. "If it's only you," she said, hushed, softly squeezing Enterprise's hand, "then that's fine."

By that statement alone, Belfast had cut Enterprise down from the position that the Eagle ace thought she had over the unbeatable maid. With fire lining her own cheeks, Enterprise bowed out, looking away, but her hand remained within Belfast's with her returning the squeeze, and the carrier was unable to remember if they had ever let go before she had to leave later that day.

Another moment that had only been for Enterprise was when Belfast was given some minor freedom when her leg was lowered. Though it remained wrapped, it had healed up enough for the cruiser to sit up and move around a little when Artifex performed one of her checkups. Enterprise had taken a seat on the edge of Belfast's bed right next to her, moral support and her own wish to be beside her compelling her to do so.

When Artifex was done – with another embarrassed pushing of her glasses upon being thanked – and left them, Enterprise had asked, "Do you want to lie back down?"

Belfast gave her a look, the first signs of her frustrations at being cooped up being revealed to Enterprise then. "I've lied down quite enough, thank you." She swung her one leg idly, her wrapped one remaining still. "Being able to do this much is a vast improvement to me."

Yorktown she is not, Enterprise made a note of, Belfast's small taste of a return to freedom making that much clear. "According to Artifex, it shouldn't be much longer."

"I can only hope her expertise remains true in that regard."

"She seems to be doing fine to me, although she does get embarrassed rather easily."

"She focuses on the job rather than the patient," Belfast enlightened her. "It had been a coping mechanism of hers when she was launched, back when she had some self-esteem issues of being able to perform as a repair ship. She has since gained confidence in her abilities but is still working on being able to accept compliments for them. It gets harder depending on the person such as you."

"Like me?" Enterprise asked, confused.

Belfast tossed her a grin. "You didn't notice? She only gets embarrassed when you compliment her. She knows you're Eagle Union's greatest aircraft carrier so it's difficult for her to keep what little composure she has made for herself since then."

Enterprise went through the moments – when Artifex had saved Belfast, and all the appointments and checkups afterwards as her primary treating repair ship – and saw the proof in the claim. "I suppose she does."

"She does mention you when it's just the two of us when you're on patrol. I think she's more worried about your opinion of her work than her actual patient's."

Enterprise saw that Belfast had turned to look down at her legs and it was out of her mouth before she knew it. "Jealous?"

And just as fast, Belfast replied, "Of course not."

An answer that sounded so automatic, so reflexive, became a needle that pricked at Enterprise's heart, but the minor salve came from how the cruiser suddenly stiffened, the swing of her leg halting, which created the impression of how Belfast was surprised by it as well.

"So how did your patrol go?" the cruiser then asked, all her skill in subterfuge amounting to nothing with how obvious it was to want to change the subject.

Enterprise felt it best to go along, feeling like she made a mistake and hoping that it could just be forgotten about as she told Belfast about her day. Not long into her recounting, though, did she break off when she felt a weight against her shoulder.

"I'm feeling a little fatigued, but I don't want to lie down yet," Belfast said. "If it's alright with you, could I rest here?"

The delicate management that Enterprise thought she heard leading to Belfast's request added to her doubts of whether the cruiser really was as tired as she was letting on and was just making an excuse to use her shoulder as a replacement pillow. She even went as far as to wonder if this was Belfast trying to apologize in some way.

But she couldn't see past the white of Belfast's hair – undone and plain, but still beautiful to Enterprise – and the carrier didn't care anyway. "Fine by me," Enterprise quietly replied, afraid of the chance of ruining this moment that had been granted to her if she spoke too loudly.

That fear never came to fruition, as Belfast remained against her as she went through the rest of her day with her. At some point, feeling a bit tired herself, Enterprise laid her head on top of Belfast's, still talking, and that was how they stayed even after she finished.

Back in the present, Enterprise stuck another piece of fish in her mouth, crunching softly as she stared into the pile of fried chips, intact for now.

Being around Belfast like this where it was now she who was the patient and Enterprise the caretaker, the Eagle girl had been able to see more of the little weaknesses and vulnerabilities that Belfast had been letting slip. One of her biggest obstacles when it came to her feelings to Belfast was how the cruiser was always so much…more to Enterprise. Sure, Enterprise was the better fighter, but when it came to everything else that wasn't that, Belfast exceeded her at lengths that put her far out there, particularly when it came to these affections that Enterprise had for her.

She was so much cleverer, so much more composed, so much more knowledgeable – just an amazing person to the point of being flawless in Enterprise's eyes, and that went for her beauty, too, of course. Someone who she could never be worthy to stand alongside of and that had been such a barrier in the beginning in her dilemma about loving Belfast.

But that had been breaking down with more of these revelations and moments that had been passing between them and only them. Belfast was indeed human – such a description that Enterprise was still trying to comprehend at her being able to use so naturally now – and although it had been dawning on the carrier throughout the time they've spent together before, it was no longer a question of Enterprise being able to be a worthy comrade or friend but some other...particular word that was much too embarrassing for Enterprise to even think of.

Once she had come to understand that, that was when these feelings had come to this point where her heart would race by the slightest of attractive looks and smiles from this beautiful person who she believed she was now in a more equal standing with.

But is it love?

It aligned so well with these feelings, as sweetly and right as they were to Belfast despite Enterprise's reservations. Even so…

"Who did you ask about this?" Belfast suddenly questioned.

Oh, crap! Enterprise mentally exclaimed, not paying attention to her very-special-friend-who-she-thinks-she's-in-love-with causing her to go through a small panic at not being able to answer to her immediately, nearly causing her to choke on her fish in the process. She used the chance placement of the pitcher of water on the table as a delaying tactic, filling an empty cup for herself as she got her wits about her.

"I-it was Echo," she answered after a light cough, tilting her head to hide the flare at her cheeks as she sipped at some water. "I happened to pair up with her on patrol and asked her about any good places." She held up her glass. "Want some?"

"Yes, thank you," Belfast replied. While Enterprise filled her a cup, she asked, "How is Echo? I have been worried about her, but it's been difficult to get any news with everything that has gone on since."

Enterprise handed Belfast her water. "She's better now, I think. She was feeling pretty down about not having been able to fight during the attack here."

"That's what I was concerned about." Belfast sipped her water absently, obviously thinking back. "We met up with her and Hood had told her it was okay to run. She did, but even with all that she had been able to do by reporting the attack, I assumed that she would hold regrets about it." She looked down at her immobilized hand. "Especially if she came to hear about what happened to Hood and I."

"Yeah, she did, and she was," Enterprise said. She quirked a smile. "She wished that she had my strength so that she would've been able to fight."

Belfast turned to stare at her with intrigue. "Did she?" She adopted a similar smile. "What advice did you bestow upon her, then?"

Oh, don't do that. Enterprise both liked and hated how these small things could affect her so easily now: that smile, so soft and pretty, and with it the confidence of how Belfast knew that Enterprise had done the right thing without her needing to say it. The trust that Enterprise could detect from the person who knew her so well now, and how Enterprise trusted that her answer would make her obviously proud in return.

"That the ability to fight isn't always the most important thing."

Belfast's eyes widened in mock shock, but her lips curved knowingly. "Imagine that."

Stop, Enterprise pleaded, knowing the futility of it when everything that Belfast did was so attractive now. "I told her that fighting hadn't been what was needed then, and that even I had moments where fighting wasn't the best option." Her smile thinned. "I also told her that, if you rely too much on how well you can fight, it may become the only thing that you think you're able to do, even when fighting can destroy what you're trying to protect." She met Belfast eye-to-eye. "In that case, what a person like that would really need is someone who recognizes the danger of it and save them from it."

She was aware of the changes: how her voice had become what she could only think of as fragile with her face mimicking the same. But her eyes remained on Belfast's, not ashamed of her weakness, and instead feeling…assured of how she could bare this kind of thing to Belfast and only Belfast. That was how much the cruiser meant to her and how much she had come to trust her.

How much she…she thinks…she has come to love her.

She hadn't intended for this to happen, but she suddenly thought that maybe she would be able to see or pick up something that would be able to tell her what she wanted most right now: a sign that with what she felt, what she was exposing, Belfast would give a hint if she felt the same as she did. That there was a measure of reciprocation in some way - much like the other moments they've shared - that could also give Enterprise some assurance that if she came clean and told her what she was feeling…

Belfast maintained that contact, Enterprise able to admire her pretty features, her mesmerizing eyes…right before both flickered and Belfast broke the contact by putting her cup between them when she took another sip.

"Exceptional advice," Belfast complimented when she lowered her cup, staring into it rather than back at Enterprise. "I cannot see it being anything other than convincing, with all that experience behind it."

Enterprise felt the muddy sense of dismay stick to the wings of her heart, weighing down its ascending flight of hope, but it wasn't shot down outright, and she dared to think that maybe she shouldn't dwell too much on that when Belfast did look back to her again with a smile of knowing, albeit fainter than the previous one.

"It seemed to be for Echo," Enterprise confirmed. Guiltily, she added, "I may've also given her the impression that I could get you to pass on a word to Edinburgh for her."

"That's awfully presumptuous of you," Belfast accused playfully.

Enterprise shrugged helplessly. "I feel like flexing my connections to see how far I can take them."

"Oh? Is that what I am to you, now?"

Enterprise started. "N-O!" Her voice rose dramatically when her container of food slipped from her lap, she managing to shoot out an arm and save it before it ended up spilling her lunch all over the room's floor.

Belfast had watched, surprised, but when the carrier resituated her food back on her lap, with the only damage done being embarrassment over her near disaster, the maid giggled, which did not help Enterprise at all.

"It's your doing," Enterprise defended both herself and her slip-up by blaming Belfast. "I've been seeing some of the perks that come with our respectable positions and figured I try them out for myself if it'll help someone."

"I suppose that is true," Belfast admitted with a furtive grin. "I had taken quite a few liberties when it came to you."

"I'm glad you did. They've really helped in making me who I am now."

There came another subtle change in Belfast's expression, her grin dwindling a fraction. It didn't weaken, not really, but to Enterprise there was a wistful quality that came to it that was close and it imposed on the rest of her features – creating a look of reminiscence but to Enterprise it wasn't quite right.

"I pray that you do not overindulge and be sure to exhibit some restraint," the cruiser said.

She probably wanted to frame it lightheartedly to keep to what they had going with the mood, but again Enterprise felt like there was something not quite right. Belfast had to be thinking back to all she had done, but rather than a pleasant recollection what Enterprise felt was more towards the opposite. Almost like Belfast may instead be feeling bad about some of it.

She had before, Enterprise remembered, such as when Belfast had regretted some of what she had done to convince Enterprise to go with her plan which included resorting to using her Grey Ghost name back when she would have such bad reactions to it. Is that what she's thinking about now?

It was the only obvious instance that Enterprise could think of due to Belfast outright saying she felt terrible about using it, but now she wondered if there had been other moments that Belfast, looking back as she was now, was regretting. Enterprise couldn't think of any others, but maybe there had been and she couldn't pick them out because, with everything said and done, she couldn't think of Belfast's guidance having been anything but perfect, particularly when Enterprise had been in danger of a relapse. With her condition having gone to the extremes that it did and she being able to overcome them, how could she not be anything but grateful for every single piece of guidance that Belfast had given her to get her here?

Well, she was a little more than grateful to Belfast…

"I will," Enterprise chose to say to try and placate Belfast, smiling at her. "I had an exceptional teacher, and a better friend."

Friend. That word felt so wrong to her now when using it on Belfast.

Then again, it had never really felt quite right to begin with, had it?

Belfast returned the smile but Enterprise again felt something not matching to what she knew her special friend was trying to do; her efforts not measuring up to what she was presenting.

"I'll see what I can do about getting in touch with Edinburgh," Belfast promised. She was ready to return to her food but her one hand being occupied with holding her cup made her pause and look around, seeing where she could place it.

Enterprise held out a hand and Belfast gave it to her so that she could set it down on the small table. Able to resume, Belfast retrieved her fork and picked at her fish, she having already thought ahead to precut the filets into the bite-sized pieces with her knife. Enterprise had still gotten much farther ahead in her meal, the only thing left being her fries that she ate while stealing looks at Belfast.

Despite such an overwhelming attack by the Sirens with life-or-death situations and the crossing over of the time and space of another world that broke the reality of this one, things really hadn't changed. The feelings that Enterprise possessed remained the enigma that they were, even if she could put a name to them, and then there was Belfast.

Enterprise had picked up on there being something that was bothering Belfast before the Siren assault and her own near-death experience had apparently not done anything for that either. That phenomenon of human nature where people were able to just continue where they left off after the passing of such an immense threat was markedly surreal here, with Enterprise feeling they were right back in that limo where she wrestled with a desire to talk to Belfast and ask what was wrong.

Should I ask about it now?

She wanted to. She could considering their previous topic had been effectively closed but Enterprise was reluctant for the same reason as to why she hadn't brought it up back then.

She wanted a better time and a better place to bring it up because of how closely aligned these two problems were: her feelings for Belfast and what was troubling the cruiser. What she wanted – what she thought she wanted – was for her to be able to express her love for Belfast and that, maybe, by being able to help Belfast sort out whatever was bothering her would also lead to her loving her in return if Enterprise could prove worthy of it. A final test of sorts, where a pass meant being qualified to love and be loved.

Enterprise toyed with the thought that she might be getting a small picture of how Belfast saw things; whatever she wanted done to be well within her control, where she could establish the time and place and the process of what she wanted to achieve without the chance of interruption or any kind of deviation.

For Enterprise, that place wasn't here, and the time wasn't now.

"I can't help but notice something," Belfast said.

Learning from her mistake, Enterprise was prepared as she quickly asked, "What's that?"

"You haven't spoken about any of your comrades from Eagle Union."

A jolt went through Enterprise, but she believed that she did not miss even a beat when she asked, "I haven't?"

Belfast was looking over at her, fork stabbed deep but not drawing out anything. "You'd mention the girls that you would be on patrol with, or you happened to encounter around the base, and they've always been Royal Navy ships. Have you not seen any of them?"

No, because all the Eagle Union ships who had traveled with them to the Royal Isles were currently making a trip halfway around the planet. Enterprise knew of the great folly that would come with mentioning that. Once she did, the next logical question would be why Enterprise had been left behind and then it would only be a matter of time before Enterprise would be forced to tell Belfast that not only had she disobeyed a recall order but had done so by yelling in the face of the Royal Navy's second-in-command.

That would not go well at all and was a great way to ruin what she was planning, so all Enterprise committed to was to say, "No, I haven't."

Belfast gazed at her questionably. "Have none been assigned here?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Enterprise replied, flirting with that line of falsehood as she teetered at the very edges of the truth. "None of them had been assigned far from Gateway when we arrived there anyway and me being here was just due to having been able to be spared to come over and reinforce Devonport when we realized something was wrong."

"But that was before," Belfast noted. "I figured the Royal Navy would make more use of them, especially with what's happening with Iron Blood."

She knew about that at least although peace talks with their main adversary had spread like fire on an oil spill and would make any other kind of news irrelevant in comparison. Nearly all the discussion and gossip that was being floated around Devonport and even during her visits to Plymouth were restricted solely around the possibility of their civil war coming to an end. Allied fleet movements – military intelligence which is guarded by its own amount of secrecy to begin with, at least to the general public - would be the least of anyone's concerns in the face of such national relationship changes.

"I think I heard about them wanting to keep Eagle Union ships consolidated for whatever they may decide to deploy them next," Enterprise pretended to consider. "Or even send them back to the joint base if they're not considered as needed anymore."

Even by her novice standards, Enterprise thought she was really stretching. With the investigation committee, she had been omitting the truth. Here, she was doing all kinds of twisting and bending of it that she was sure she would break it well outside the limits of conceivability.

But she wasn't lying; she had heard from George that the Royal Navy had kept Eagle Union forces consolidated for the chance that they'd be recalled by their leaders. What she wasn't saying was how the recall had already happened and that instead of the joint base they had been sent all the way back to their home nation.

By this mad reasoning that Enterprise was using, speaking the 'truth' in this distorted way but keeping away from being an outright lie would make it easier for her to say while also convincing Belfast of it without arousing the suspicion that could out her.

"Have you heard anything about a recall?" Belfast then asked.

Damn.

So how was she supposed to keep the act up here? While she furiously scrambled for such a combination of the truth, Enterprise chewed in what she wanted to be a convincingly thoughtful way with her head tilted casually.

She couldn't think of anything. Nothing that was coming fast enough for her to try to use. So, what should she say?

Should she lie?

The very suggestion was revolting. Enterprise had never lied to anyone before, and she absolutely did not want to make Belfast the first. But if she told the truth then that would expose everything that may as well have been a lie and when Enterprise thought of trying to talk to Belfast with all that…

Enterprise shook her head, keeping her gaze away from Belfast. "Not that I've heard of."

It felt like her entire being was suddenly rebelling against her; every fiber damning her and, worse yet, convinced that this crime had been done for nothing because Belfast would know instantly that she had just lied. She was too smart and knew her so well. How could Enterprise not only lie but expect to get away with it?

"Oh," came the soft reply, followed by a long, agonizing pause. "I'm glad."

Enterprise couldn't help but bring Belfast back into view and found that her features had come to borrow the same quality as her words had even though she was staring into her food, a small, equally soft smile directed down.

"…You're glad?" Enterprise asked, the question not fully of her own volition. That expression on Belfast's face…and the subject that was involved…

Belfast's gaze did not shoot up to her, but Enterprise felt there was a quickness to how her head and her eyes rose to look at the carrier that was not to her usual. In addition, the way the latter flicked left and right was very subtle, but Enterprise felt a similarity between that and when she had panicked about not being able to answer Belfast's inquiry right away.

"Of course I am," Belfast replied. "I would hate for you to be leaving so soon, when the last few days have been with me like this and you spending all your time here."

Other than the last two weeks having been about Enterprise and her recovery which would make it more than fair, the carrier instead had a mind to say that these last few days have been as good as any of those other days. Whether it had been all they had done before or Enterprise just being able to come back from an assignment knowing that Belfast was here waiting for her, they all felt special as long as Belfast was involved.

Rather than say anything like that, what she did instead was ask, "And because you'd miss me?"

Enterprise picked up another subtle action that was uncharacteristic: the way that Belfast's brows quickly rose, their eye-to-eye contact leaving her surprise bare right before there came a flicker that shuttered it, but her 'friend's' voice was hushed in a way that Enterprise had only heard in very limited instances when she finally said, "Of course I would."

Enterprise could identify the awkward air that filled the room – it was, after all, one that had used to descend often, with her being the most vulnerable to its effects to become the odd one out. This time though, Enterprise sensed that it was not her who was the victim of it, not when it was Belfast who was breaking away from her, refocusing instead on her meal and resuming eating it with all the poise that Enterprise had come to memorize which was why she felt like the cruiser was making an effort to not even glance her way.

It was the opposite for Enterprise, completely forgetting her food and seeing nothing but Belfast. With only her in her sights, Enterprise felt her battle-honed instincts and their adaptions to her social life resonating, telling her with the surety of an acquired target that now was the time to make her run and that she should act before she would lose the opportunity and be forced to break and try for another pass that may not come next time, when that approach suddenly became inaccessible.

"Hey, Bel…"

Her clarity at being able to detect the subtleties in Belfast's reactions included the ones to her shortened name. Belfast had asked early on as to why Enterprise had started calling her with it to which she had replied that she had just decided to and asked if she minded. Belfast said she didn't, but Enterprise had to question if it was really true whenever she would notice those fractional pauses that would come over Belfast each time she said it, such as now, before she then looked up at Enterprise. "Yes?"

Enterprise had never known what the word 'abort' meant, even when confronted with the most intense of hostile fire, but now she suddenly did, and it didn't seem so bad of a strategy here. She tried not to give in. "Tomorrow…"

"Tomorrow…?" Belfast repeated when Enterprise failed to continue in a timely manner.

How Enterprise wished that Belfast was supplying a bit more of her previous encouragement whenever the carrier was trying to proceed with an action or question that was new for her to make, typically with her patient smiles to assist her along. It wasn't here though, only honest puzzlement that had taken its place which told Enterprise how she really had to be the one to muster the courage to do this on her own.

"Tomorrow I have another patrol," Enterprise continued, committing herself to the dive. "But after I'm finished and if you're cleared to leave, I was thinking that we could go into the city." That was as good as dropping her payload right there, but Enterprise was urged to keep going, as if anything afterwards would somehow change the course of her falling bombs to ensure that they would hit. "It would be like how we used to, and you'll be able to exercise your leg like you're supposed to. I haven't seen much of this city yet, but you probably have, so we could go visit any place you want, and I could see a bit more in the process and…"

She was rambling again. For having used to be one of so few words, Enterprise couldn't conceive how her mouth was now prone to go off on its own, with her continuing to supply it with more munitions instead of hitting the brakes.

But this was just another thing that was due to Belfast, wasn't it? A comrade, a friend, and now someone who was the center of such affections that she needed to navigate around the familiarity they've developed for her to try to set up the perfect opportunity to tell her such without giving anything away before then. And for some reason, the best way seemed to be to keep throwing words out in a carpet-bombing campaign.

Thankfully, it was also Belfast who was able to remain wholly collected and maybe even humored by the show when she said, "Just being able to get out of here would be plenty enough reason."

Finally did Enterprise's lips still and then they twisted into a sheepish grin. "Yeah, I guess it would be." Yet she still had some more ammo that she needed to get rid of to be certain when she asked, "So…tomorrow?"

Belfast smiled and nodded. "Tomorrow."

Although she had serious misgivings about her performance, Enterprise deemed the mission to have been successful when she settled back into her seat. Tomorrow, she reaffirmed to herself.

Tomorrow where, at some point in that timeframe, she would have to make the great reveal to Belfast. That got the mission planner that was her brain to cut off its victory celebration when it realized that they had only gotten through the opening stages of the operation with the real battle coming later. Plans had to be drawn up, contingencies put in place, risk assessments to be undertaken – none of which Enterprise had any practical experience to put into use for this situation and, even if she could, what good would they be?

She would either tell Belfast or she wouldn't, one of those 'do or die' moments that sounded more literal than she wanted to admit when it came to this dilemma.

But…she wanted to tell her. If there was nothing else that she had become certain of, it was that she wanted to remain connected to Belfast, even if they were to eventually become miles apart, and what had spurred her to make the commitment right then was her sense of how Belfast wanted the same.

In the same way as me? Enterprise asked herself. In the way that she thought of how she loved her?

She had feared the thought of it not being so, had been tempted instead to leave things as they were rather than risk that, but over time it was that that she was now more afraid of. Viewing these days with Belfast with this new perspective, what Enterprise was dreading instead was a missed opportunity that could leave their bond in doubt. If she were to leave with things unsaid and invite questions into what their relationship really was with her unable to turn and ask Belfast about it when they became unbearable, she didn't know how she would be able to handle it.

Other than perhaps losing herself to battle again, if it meant she could forget about it?

No, she didn't want to leave anything to doubt, especially not this. Even if it may not be love, if they could at least establish there was something special…maybe Enterprise could live with that.

And if it was love like she thought it could be? A love that could be requited, if she really dared to believe?

…I'd like it to be, Enterprise could at least admit.

And maybe she'd like it if the other little daydreams she would have would come true, when thinking of how to make Belfast happy and how she could make her happy towards Enterprise would result in more than just her smiles and thanks. In these guiltier, embarrassing fantasies, Enterprise would imagine to be able to hold Belfast to her with the cruiser more than willing to do the same, the two content to stare at each other with what Enterprise believed was love and then…maybe…as their faces drew closer…

For the sake of these visions coming to pass, where such longing had tipped the scales to where hope had outweighed fear, she wanted to tell Belfast, right now. Whether she was really starting to be convinced or not that this was love, Enterprise knew that the most crucial thing standing in her way was that no matter how much she may think she loves Belfast, was it still love if it was not returned? If it wasn't, what was it then?

When assessing the risks there, Enterprise concluded that it would be better for her to find out, for good or ill, even if her judgment was skewed with how likely – or how much she wanted it that it seemed likely – that Belfast would return them.

Not yet. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be better. She got Belfast's agreement, and all she had to do was wait until tomorrow when the environment and the circumstances could be so much better than this small recovery room in the middle of the base's recovery efforts.

"Belfast," she suddenly said, not looking in the cruiser's direction.

"Yes?"

She wanted a little more, even if it went against her previous judgment of how she didn't want to expose what she really wanted to use their date for. Something to hold her over better.

"I was hoping we could also use tomorrow to talk, too, while we're out," she said. "There are…things I want to talk about, such as for when I do have to leave in case the day comes."

Belfast didn't respond right away but Enterprise didn't bring her into view, enduring it instead until she got her response.

"Yes, there probably are things we should talk about concerning that, considering how we don't know how things will go now," Belfast quietly replied. "Tomorrow's visit would be a suitable time to have such discussions."

Enterprise was silently thanking her for her impeccable understanding and decided that this was the right thing to do after all. Even better, in case something was to happen during the time until then – such as Belfast finding out about the Eagle Union recall -, then Enterprise could count on the cruiser being inclined to hold onto any of her questions and save them for their important talk.

Tomorrow.

It was a definite thing now and Enterprise expected to spend the entire time until then going over what she would say. Fortunately, she also expected that to be all that she would have to worry about until the designated time.

It wasn't like Belfast was going to disappear on her again, right?

---

While some have found the recent days mundane when it came to the post-battle recovery efforts, the members of the Royal Family were not one of them, particularly King George.

On her metaphorical plate, there had been the casualty reports, proposals for the new security measures that she had to sign off on, fleet and supply movements she had to redirect or cancel outright, the daily – sometimes hourly - updates of the investigation committee's analysis of the Siren assault that she had to keep up with, and the progress of the repairs of their forces and defense installations.

She had been using the pen much more often than the sword lately, and while her position as Knight Commander had found her to be behind a desk rather than on a battlefield ever since the establishment of the Atlantic lanes years ago - Siren war vessels replaced with redundant paperwork as her main foe -, George believed that she ran the very real risk of forgetting the feel of a solid hilt in her palm with the permanent pinch of a pen between her fingers.

This wasn't even getting into the conferences with the Admiralty or her meetings with Queen Elizabeth to get her up to speed on current events and developments – the most pressing of all being the negotiations that have opened up with Iron Blood, with George having already exchanged communications with a few emissaries to make some arrangements around the opening discussions that were scheduled to begin today and assigning Curlew specific instructions concerning that.

Woefully, her 'meals' during these pressing times had mostly been the snacking that she had the time for between – and during – the meetings and paperwork. At some point when the worst of this was behind her, she'll indulge in some personal time to try her hand at Eagle Union barbecue recipes that she's been having a mind to try. Actually, maybe if she could acquire some meat and get it soaking in a marinade, by the time she was done with this then…

Ah, no; duty first, savory barbecue later.

For now, what little time she could get between the meetings was set aside for inspections and visits that she was obligated to make, and for today she managed to make some time to revisit Devonport.

She had a couple interests there. One was Belfast, although for this visit it was because their head maid had specifically requested that George would see her if her schedule allowed rather than George herself satisfying her curiosity on how things were going between her and Enterprise. As timely as ever, the request just happened to coincide with George's planned visit to the naval base.

She cannot seem to rest, even when she's all but confined to a bed, George had humorously remarked to herself with Belfast having managed to not only get her request out but up through the command chain to have it sent directly to George.

She hadn't gone into specifics of what she wanted to speak about, and if one looked solely at the lettering of the request it may not appear all that pressing and could even be discarded if George really was unable to make time. But the details – such as the timing of the request and the way it was sent – betrayed the spirit of urgency behind it.

I just hope those two have made some progress.

George suspected she was going to find out either way when she arrived and passed through the door of Belfast's recovery room.

The cruiser had the head of her bed raised high, letting her sit presentably straight to better address George properly when she walked in, something that the battleship expected but what she was grateful to see. The last time that she had seen Belfast, the cruiser had still been unconscious, and she had been relieved of the news of her awakening – as she was with the improvements of their other critically wounded. George wished to convey it in the deep bow she made to Belfast. "I'm so relieved to see you doing so well, Belfast."

Unable to bow as deeply to the graciousness of a member of the Royal Family, Belfast had to settle with how low she could bring her head down in response. "George. I'm grateful that you were able to make time for me when it's a commodity that you must be short on."

"Sorely so," George replied honestly but paired it with the smile that she brandished. "But I would gladly give what little of it I do have for you. I happened to plan on making a visit here anyway – which I suspect that you may've already known through your network of subordinates. Sirius is making out well, I take it?"

"She is," Belfast answered while also confirming George's suspicions, not that the list of suspects had been a long one and George was also guessing that message delivery hadn't been the only thing that Belfast had elicited from Sirius.

The battleship made a show of tutting at her. "You know, you are in a bed right now. Maybe follow Enterprise's example this time and be the one to take a legitimate break."

Despite being in said bed, how Belfast held herself was little different than her usual subservience with an expression that matched it, like she was ready to bow and follow whatever chore that George would give her if the Knight Commander deemed to do so, never mind how severe her injuries had been days prior.

But upon speaking Enterprise's name, George witnessed the miniscule break made in that disciplined demeanor.

Oh, George noted. Trouble in paradise, as they say?

Or was there even a paradise, and not just trouble?

"I was recently cleared to be discharged," Belfast told her, the crack sealing. "I'm just waiting for some personal effects to be delivered so I thought to try to be more informed about what has occurred in my absence."

"No need to rush," George said easily. "I may even have to insist on it, as my good conscious would object to putting you back on duty so soon, as would Her Majesty's, I suspect, if she was to learn of it."

A very polite, sophisticated way to frame the order for Belfast to stay away from work, with the implied threat of Queen Elizabeth getting involved if George decided it was necessary. She could only imagine how insufferable it must be for Belfast to be taking time off and, no, she did not consider the time she had spent with Enterprise to count as such, given how much George knew Belfast had orchestrated for that.

But Belfast proved to be more indifferent to it. "I've been given such instructions for my aftercare, and I assure you that I intend to follow it. However, there is something that currently troubles me that I would like to have sorted out in the interests of a peace of mind during my continued absence."

"If that is all you desire, I would be more than happy to oblige however I can."

"Will you?"

George's brows made a short leap, and she was even more surprised to see Belfast performing the same thing, the cruiser just as shocked at her own question and the tone she used.

"Forgive me," Belfast suddenly requested, recovering, but there was nothing that could erase what George had witnessed right then. "That wasn't what I meant to say. Please forget that."

George doubted she could with what she had seen with that lapse and slip of the tongue, but she decided to try to appease her anyway. "I can only imagine how frustrating it has been for you these past few days. You may start again if you'd like."

"Yes," Belfast sighed. "I would. Thank you."

What Belfast had probably been afraid of was how she may've expressed doubt that George would do what she promised, but although it was closely related it wasn't what the battleship had read instead. It was more like Belfast wanted the assurance that George would be able to solve whatever it was that was bothering her.

Oh, dear, George thought while giving Belfast her time. It seems there may be quite a bit of trouble involved.

She was glad she came, her hunch that Belfast had wanted her here more than she had been letting on having been proven right. However, there had been no way for her to guess just how bad it was to the point where Belfast would make such a departure from her role, and so abruptly, in the presence of George no less.

And George suspected that it was far more than a few days of confinement that was responsible for it.

"What I meant to say," Belfast said, trying again, "is that I wanted some clarification over some conflicting information I received. I expect it to be something that can be solved promptly so that you may resume your duties."

"And I remain committed to clearing up any misunderstandings thereof," George again assured her.

Belfast stared up at her. "Is it true that Eagle Union forces that had been stationed at the Royal Isles had been recalled?"

Although it was the battlefield where George enjoyed employing her tactical prowess to read and respond to intense situations, she can exert the same principles here. However, she didn't need anywhere near as much of her intuition to establish what could be a potential debacle that had just revealed itself.

Enterprise didn't tell her.

Or Enterprise had only said enough to create this 'conflict of information' that must've come into play when Belfast had learned of the recall, most likely from Sirius. And the reason why Belfast wanted George to visit her was obvious: who better to answer the questions that George expected to come after this one, when she herself had been directly involved as Belfast may've come to suspect?

"It's true," George answered. "By the time you woke up, their fleet had already left for the Atlantic to make their journey back to Eagle Union waters."

Belfast's gaze dropped, briefly staring at the sheets over her legs with the dismay of someone having what they hadn't wanted to believe but had known was coming proven to be true. She looked back up at George, resolute in going further down the path she'd rather have avoided. "But Enterprise is still here."

"Unofficially."

George felt the intensity increase in Belfast's stare. "Could you explain that to me, please?"

The Knight Commander internally sighed. She wasn't going to lie to her, especially with how futile it'd be here, but this was something that she had thought would've been settled earlier, on more appropriate terms between Belfast and Enterprise so that she wouldn't be the one doing this. "Originally, Enterprise was part of the recall order with specific instructions to return to New York Harbor. She had some disagreements."

"…She refused, you mean?" Belfast quietly asked.

"Quite strongly, I would say."

Belfast's eyes widened in disbelief. "To her commanders?"

"Well…" George made a slight tilt of her head and a guilty grin. "To me, actually, although she certainly didn't have any qualms about expressing some of that passion to New York HQ if she had been permitted to communicate with them." At Belfast's palpable distress, George said, "But we came up with an alternative: her sister took her place."

"Hornet was here? I hadn't heard…"

"Very few knew in the first place. She had rushed out with Queen Elizabeth and our ships from the joint base when she heard about the attack, unintentionally obscuring her movements both then and when she separated from them and came to Devonport on her own. She was the one who thought to use that when she suggested that she go in Enterprise's place."

Belfast sat there, going over what she was told and making out the finer details along with what she was able to glean from them. "Eagle Union doesn't know that Hornet took her place."

"And will remain unknowing for a couple days yet if they're still following the course that had been selected for their return voyage."

Belfast lapsed into another stretch of silence, bowing her head and keeping George from getting any idea as to what their maid may be thinking about. She did make out when Belfast looked to the chair next to her bed, the one that George remembered Enterprise having sat in during the time Belfast had been unconscious and what George could assume the Eagle ace had been occupying for the days since.

Still have room for improvement, Enterprise, George lightly admonished, believing it was warranted given what was happening here despite the days that had been afforded to her.

"This all happened right here in this room?"

George nodded even though Belfast still wasn't looking at her. "Yes. Enterprise had remained at your side the entire time whenever she was able to, and it was from there that she had declared that she wouldn't return until you woke up."

"Which was when Hornet suggested to take her place?"

George experienced a fleeting sense of worry. "She did, and I agreed to go along after considering the merits, something that I hope you won't begrudge me for."

"I suppose I'm in no position to do so, given how I started all this with Wales." Belfast looked up towards George. "Thank you, George, for telling me. I don't think there's any misunderstandings now."

A quiet alarm rang within George when she saw no discernable expression on Belfast's features, what was there instead a sheet of armor that was barren of anything remotely resembling one. There was the thin etching of a smile that may've been meant to express gratefulness, but on the cold, blank surface that it was made on, it was more of the halfhearted replica that George knew it to be.

"I'm glad to have helped," George nonetheless replied. "I believe I still have some time to spare so if there are any other questions that you need answered or additional context concerning what happened-"

"That won't be necessary," Belfast smoothly interrupted, that flimsy smile still in place, but it and her face still so empty. "You said yourself that time is short on your end, and I don't want to take up any more of it with this trivial matter. I'm sorry to have disturbed you from far more important issues."

Though not in league with those other issues, George nonetheless found some importance behind the one that was currently in front of her and what she was sure was far from 'trivial' to Belfast. But as much as she would like to stay and help, the line of duties that she had to address was still long and pressing and she couldn't think of any excuse to delay herself from them.

This was another personal interest she had to set aside in the name of her station.

Regardless, she thought to part with some words of advice anyway and she did let it get a little personal. "Bel, whatever you may be thinking about with what happened, I think its best that you speak directly to Enterprise."

There was an odd flicker that passed over Belfast, something that George couldn't remember ever seeing before in the long time she had known Belfast, as well as a few other things that she's been witnessing from the head of the Maid Corps recently. "Thank you, George," she instead repeated. "And you're right; it really should just be about me and Enterprise now."

A polite but not-as-sophisticated way to say that George's input was no longer needed – or welcomed.

Still unable to figure out a way to extend this a little longer, George had to concede with a parting bow and a wish to see Belfast get well soon, and not just in the physical sense. Then she turned and began to leave the room, but not before using a small mirror's position on a short table to get a last second glimpse of Belfast.

What she saw was the cruiser setting her right hand upon her lap, her left soon following and laying itself upon the cast. Any hints of what Belfast intended to do next George couldn't see because she was stepping outside the room a moment later.

She lingered there, out in the hall, thinking how this was the second time in recent memory that she sensed that there was a terrible mistake in the making by someone who rarely ever made them.

The first had been on the eve of the Siren assault when she had asked Belfast for counsel on who from the Maid Corps would be best suited for the investigation of Devonport, something that Belfast fulfilled by also selecting herself as part of the squadron which George hadn't expected. With Belfast's previous dedication in mind when it came to watching over her charges, even during an attack like that, and noting Belfast's unusual interest in Enterprise, George had not expected the separation that the cruiser was willingly creating. She had given her reasons for it which George could've believed if it wasn't for how much she felt that all the convincing efforts hadn't been for her benefit and had instead been for Belfast's.

Also, Belfast's 'convincing' had instead been more like her trying to soothe a great pain that she was inflicting upon herself.

And yet that blank, emotionless mask that George just beheld managed to be worse. If Belfast had been enduring a silent pain of her own making before, the battleship was greatly concerned about what part of her was being disposed of in order to put up a front like that.

To want to give someone who had nothing something, only to deprive herself of something in return. It was the worst of ironies that George had ever had the misfortune of coming to know. Truly two peas in a pod, those two.

As much as she wanted to, George wouldn't be able to intervene. Other than her current business that was to secure the betterment of the Royal Navy's interests, as well as that of Azur Lane's, it just wasn't her place to try any such direct intervention in their business.

But like with Enterprise, maybe there was a way she could assist in pushing things along…

Remembering the other reason as to why she was here, George went down the hall.

It was a short trip, only a few rooms over, and the Knight Commander would wager that the location may turn out to be very fortuitous by this day's end.

It was another who she was greatly relieved to see having awoken and someone who she knew had more than passing interest in what was developing between the two troublesome shipgirls. After saying as much about her relief and exchanging other pleasantries, she got down to business.

"I fear that a certain friend of ours is about to do something drastic."

---

Enterprise had never wanted her day's duties to end as badly as she did today.

It was actually she who needed assistance in keeping her mind on her patrol and on one occasion she had nearly lost track of the fuel gauges of a flight of her recon planes. Fortunately, she had managed to notice their dwindling reserves and had been able to recall them just as they had been on the point of no return, avoiding what would've been a very embarrassing disaster. The close call helped in keeping enough of her concentration on the remainder of her patrol. Given her dubious status, she wasn't sure what kind of complications she'd cause with such an operational failure, or what procedure she would have to go through to keep things off the books.

Any such inconveniences that she would cause and potential damage to her reputation actually weren't what she was most worried about. Instead, it was how it might get in the way of her very important engagement.

"What, you got a date or something?" Matchless had asked when the group was traveling back, Enterprise notably ahead of them.

Enterprise had been grateful that they hadn't been able to see the very stupid grin on her face that she had absolutely no control over.

A date. Yes, she had a date, with a very important person. Technically they've had plenty of dates, she and Belfast, but this was the first time where Enterprise could appreciate the gravity of the word when it was she who made the plans and she who would be in control of the situation that Belfast had agreed to.

She would be heading right to medical as she always did, but this time she would be able to take that special person out and away from there. Then she could feel like everything about that frightful battle and its aftermath could be put behind them when they could then just spend the time happy being alive with each other again without restraint.

And how would they do that? The ideas had been endless, but despite how they had nearly doomed a few warplanes to the sea, they never became anything precise; just broad strokes of what they could do. She had thought about where she had visited or caught sight of in Plymouth, but then she would find them to be so limiting when there was still so much else that could be found in the city. She didn't want to be confined to only what she had seen when there was such a wider range of the unexplored that she could discover in the company of someone else.

As long as it was with Belfast, anything that would catch either of their fancies would be wonderful for Enterprise. Then when they got hungry or Belfast wanted to sit down and rest, they could find a place to eat. After that…

Well, it was more of the somewhere/anywhere plan but at some point in the latter half of the day Enterprise intended to make time for when she could tell Belfast about how she felt.

That part would get her to slow down, apprehension stunting her excitement, but it did not keep for very long when Enterprise would go back over to what she would be doing with Belfast and become emboldened again. Such powerful enthusiasm it came to inspire, too, as when Enterprise made her leap upon the docks of Devonport, she wanted to make another jump immediately after just because of how there was now nothing between her and her very undetailed plans, what kind of attention she may get from the senseless action a concern she was almost all too willing to ignore.

She again thought of her ultimate goal, and though it still scared her a little she also felt a bit more confident because all these feelings that put her in such ascending spirits made her a bit surer of how she felt about Belfast and that momentum may prove to be useful in getting her to express them to her.

For now though, she just wanted to see Belfast.

How Enterprise didn't end up running through the halls of medical was another mystery given how much closer she was now to fulfilling the dream she had been having all day, starting with how she would be the one to act as Belfast's rescuer from these unbearable days of uneventfulness. With such a heroic-sounding spin, Enterprise rounded through the door of Belfast's room, fully expecting her to be there and eagerly awaiting to be swept out by Enterprise albeit in that polite way of hers.

It took a very long time for her to realize that what was in front of her instead was an empty room.

The meeting of expectation and reality, done in such a collision of opposites, resulted in Enterprise temporarily feeling like she was outside of the latter; like the bed without an occupant was something she couldn't fathom as being real and that there was instead some mistake that had been made in the cosmic order of things with her waiting for the correction when Belfast would just appear the next time she chose to blink.

But Belfast didn't and Enterprise was as sluggish to register how the rest of the room had been cleaned and emptied out, erasing all signs of how not only this room should be occupied but how it had been for her past visits.

…Did she end up in the wrong room?

She didn't know how that could've happened but that had to be far more feasible than what she was seeing. Taking a step out of the room – with that one step nearly becoming a stumble -, Enterprise took a quick look around before sighting the room number to make sure it was the right one.

It was Belfast's room number, but there was no Belfast.

That doesn't make sense, Enterprise thought.

Where was Belfast?

The question added to the already significant weight that was attached to her plummeting spirits, hastening their fall that broke through the grounds of logical explanations and dropped into the subterranean levels that nearly had Enterprise breaking into a panic of what could've happened based on the last time when she hadn't known where Belfast was. She managed to avoid it when she climbed back through to the surface and was able to search for reasonable explanations.

Today was always meant to be when Belfast was going to be discharged and Enterprise had assumed that she would be able to arrive for it and escort Belfast out herself. It could've happened earlier enough where Belfast wouldn't have seen any reason to stay during the time it would've taken for Enterprise to get off from her patrol. Though Enterprise would've liked it had she did, she knew that it was this sense of being cheated out of her grand 'knight-in-shining-armor' rescue of her plans that was making her think so.

But she could've at least waited for me at the docks, Enterprise considered instead, the disappointment as poignant there when she thought of the missed opportunity of a surprise for the carrier if she had seen Belfast waiting at her berth when she was sailing in.

Feeling like she was unfairly blaming the absent Belfast, Enterprise thought of other possibilities. Belfast could've already been exercising her leg or trying to find something to do around the base to help pass the time and merely lost track of it. Enterprise didn't think Belfast capable of that, being as exact as she always was when it came to scheduling, but something could've happened anyway.

I'll just check up front, Enterprise started strategizing with the possibility that the staff would know something, or Belfast had left a message for her. Failing that, she could conduct a quick search around the base and ask a couple people if they saw her. She was still disappointed in the delay that would be involved, but she expected that she would put all this behind her once they started on their date. Maybe even use this to tease Belfast later.

She still experienced a slight wobble in her step when she turned her back to the empty room, needing to make another before it passed. The scare and the mood whiplash that the discovery caused had gotten to her a little.

"Is that you, Enterprise?"

The carrier stopped, attention immediately being drawn back to an open door to one of the other recovery rooms she had just passed where the voice had come from. She chose to reverse her course and step inside, seeing who lay inside. "Hood?"

The Admiral-class battlecruiser's smile was burdened with fatigue as she welcomed Enterprise. "At least you were able to hear me."

Like Belfast, Hood had been stuck in bed but, unlike Belfast, it didn't appear that she was expected to get out of it today. The fatigue and the paler shading of her skin, with her plait of hair lying limply at the one side of her chest, gave her a frailty that would otherwise not be found on a shipgirl, accentuating the age of the pride of the Royal Navy's long, arduous service to her nation.

The cause of it Enterprise could see: the dressing that her hospital gown couldn't conceal totally, such as how thickly it had been applied and bound to the other side of her chest where she had taken the grievous shot from Purifier.

Despite having been towed from the battle with all her magazines intact, Hood's gear had taken about as much damage as Belfast's had when going by percentages, what with one being a battlecruiser and the other a light cruiser. Other than the complete loss of one of her turrets and the disabling of some of her other primary and secondary armaments, her hull had been holed in multiple places against the energy salvo and if the members of the Maid Corps hadn't been on hand to tend to her immediately, the flooding that would've poured through her compromised decks would've been as swift and total as Belfast's had nearly been.

What had really been the cause for alarm, however, was the internal damage that Hood's human body had suffered from the beam that had impaled her. Other than the hole that had been made, there was the organ damage – most of her lung had been vaporized, for example - and the total destruction of the tissue around the cauterized circumference of the wound. Shipgirls did not have to worry about infections, but the layer of burnt tissue could inhibit even their outstanding healing capabilities in the initial stages. Then there was the secondary thermal damage expected of superheated energy that expanded the damage even further from around the site.

Wounds created by beam weaponry were never as 'clean' as they may appear to be as they possessed their own gruesome properties, and it had been feared that Hood's heart and even her core may've been irreparably affected by the trauma.

Curacoa and the rest of the Royal Maids had to break through the Siren blockade while carrying her along and get her to the emergency repair and medical facilities of Devonport while they had still been in the middle of a siege. Even with their speedy and miraculous delivery and the personnel who had worked to remove her gear and tend to her once received, it had been a near thing for Hood.

Enterprise actually hadn't known that she had woken up. She knew that she had stabilized but her sleep had proven to be longer than Belfast's. It must've been recent, but Enterprise felt bad about it anyway.

"Sorry?" Enterprise asked, choosing to give Hood her time and attention as she stepped to her bedside. Catching a glint of light, Enterprise glanced down, seeing that the pendant she recognized with its aquamarine had been set aside on another short table next to Hood. Someone with knowledge of its apparent value had been considerate enough to keep it close to its owner.

"Belfast didn't appear to hear me when I tried to call for her," Hood mentioned with a wry smile.

Enterprise stiffened. "You-?" She suddenly broke off, thinking that going to her own interests was rude given the shape Hood was in. "No, never mind. How are you, Hood?"

Hood's expression made an extra quirk at Enterprise's consideration. "Not at my most presentable, so I apologize for that."

Enterprise immediately shook her head, appalled at the idea that anything about Hood's situation was something she had to apologize for. "No, don't say that. You were wounded, by Purifier no less, and-"

"A jest," Hood quietly interrupted. "A jest, Enterprise." There were the beginnings of what could've been a light laugh or one of her polite giggles but the way it stopped right before it began gave away the care that Hood had become wise to resort to with her body. The silent humor that restored some color of liveliness to her paled features had to do as a substitute.

"Ah, right…" Enterprise said sheepishly. "Sorry."

"I had been thinking that you had become a bit more fancied to them now."

"Not really for these kinds of occasions." Given how Hood was, Enterprise found it a little hard to believe that she'd be joking about it. Then again, she second guessed, I guess this can be a time for it. She was getting better at being able to see such celebrations after battles but jokes about mortal injuries were not there yet.

The spark of life sputtered out for Hood even as her smile remained unchanged. "My sincere apologies, then. Perhaps I'm the one who has become a bit crass in my age."

The carrier didn't know if Hood was making another attempt at a joke and trying to look for hints of it being the case instead left her with a reinforced impression of how much…older Hood really did look. Though the observation was still accounting for her injuries, Enterprise perceived how there was something else coming from Hood that she was trying to pinpoint as being the cause.

"But you do look better compared to how I saw you last," Hood added. "Happier, I'd say. You looked ready to skip down the hall moments ago."

Enterprise felt the temperature tick up a degree at her cheeks, a little embarrassed. "You saw that, huh?"

Hood's smile grew, her complexion brightening again. "I did, and how good it was to see how life not only continues on but to see how you've come to find joy in it now."

Enterprise had an idea of what to say to that but wasn't going to as it involved revealing how the source of her joy was Belfast. "I have," was all she was willing to say.

"Unfortunately, as you discovered, Belfast isn't here."

"Yeah." Enterprise felt the echoing of disappointment and loneliness, inciting a yearning for her to go and look for the cruiser but she stayed where she was. "I was going to go up front and see if she left a message for me. If not, I was going to ask around the base."

"What if I were to tell you that I don't think you'll be able to find her?"

Enterprise became confused. "Around the base? I don't see how. The base isn't that big and I'm sure someone has seen her and could point me in her direction if I ask."

Hood made a tiny shake of her head. "I mean to say that you won't be able to find her because she's not here at the base anymore."

Enterprise stared at Hood like she was making some kind of mistake. Nothing that she said made sense to the carrier. She didn't want to say that to her directly though. "I don't see how that's possible. Her ship is going to be under repair for a while and she was told that she should stick close even after she was discharged. We were going to go into the city together."

"Even so, I don't believe you'll find her on the premises."

Enterprise stood silently there, still looking at Hood as if the battlecruiser may as well have been speaking in another language. Like when she came upon Belfast's empty room, Enterprise couldn't see how what Hood told her had any kind of place in reality. She grasped at the molecular thread that had some semblance of a connection to it. "You mentioned seeing Belfast earlier."

"When she left," Hood confirmed. "I called out to her just as I did with you, but she didn't hear me, and I assume it's because she didn't want to hear me."

"She may not have heard you," Enterprise suggested. "She would've come in and visited if she did. She had been worried about you."

"And yet she didn't," Hood noted with a small, rueful curve of her mouth.

"That doesn't seem like her…" Enterprise said with a frown, about to say that that should prove the explanation of how Belfast hadn't heard her. But she didn't even come to check up on Hood, whether she heard her or not as she was leaving?

"Belfast doesn't appear to be acting like either of us know her to."

The logical, explainable route became increasingly out of order for Enterprise. Hesitantly, she started venturing down the other that Hood was signaling her to. "If I was to believe that she's no longer here at the base, would you happen to have any idea why?"

"I may have an idea that I happened to hear about: something about how all Eagle Union ships had been sent back home while a certain carrier had managed to find a way to stay behind."

Enterprise stiffened with a gasp. "She knows about that?" As did Hood, apparently.

"She does," Hood replied.

Enterprise's knee-jerk reaction was to ask how they knew but considered it irrelevant. She had already gone over how the recall hadn't been that much of a secret and Enterprise's 'here-but-not-here' position had even become a teasing joke among the general personnel who were close to her – such as certain members of her patrol group and even some of the dockworkers maintaining her ship. The Iron Blood peace was just a smokescreen to keep everyone from talking about it and Enterprise had hoped that it would be enough to keep it from traveling to Belfast for long enough.

But it reached her, right at the last minute, and Enterprise felt the painful jab of how the cruiser had to then know that she had lied to her about it before Enterprise could come clean.

"But why would she leave from that?" Enterprise asked, almost to herself, but ended up verbalizing it when it came. She had been aware of it potentially happening, but she couldn't see why that would cause Belfast to leave the base rather than confront her about it.

"Because of how she's grown so fond of you."

Enterprise was pulled back to Hood with a start. "Huh?"

The battlecruiser almost seemed grandmotherly with how she was looking at her with her tired, sympathetic smile. "Belfast has become very fond of you, Enterprise. She cares about you so much that one thing she wants you to be able to do above all else is to be capable of living without her."

Enterprise experienced that wobble in her legs again in response to the weakness that nearly took them, Hood's words a direct shot that could put a matching hole in her chest.

Live without Belfast?

"I don't understand," Enterprise managed to say, barely getting the sentence out, almost being overcome by the wave of depressing emotions that suddenly surged, escalating the lonely disorientation of Belfast's disappearance to the heights that were reaching towards when she had nearly lost her to the seas.

Hood expressed profound relatability. "Belfast's become so proud and happy of what you've become. Never have I seen her look and speak the way she does about you. Yet despite that, what lies beneath is a concern that she may end up getting in the way of your happiness."

"Getting in my…?" Enterprise repeated in a hushed tone, her stare vacant, until there suddenly came a shake of her head. "No, never."

Belfast getting in her way? It was because of Belfast that she was able to be happy again. As for these recent days…it was Belfast who had been the center of her happiness. The happiest she could ever recall being was only a few short minutes ago, when she had been expecting the time she could spend with Belfast, which then disappeared along with the cruiser.

With that experience so fresh in her mind and continuing to plague her, Enterprise did not consider it a stretch in the least if she was to say that Belfast was her happiness.

"Nonetheless, that is what she believes," Hood explained. "Hearing that you disobeyed the recall order so that you could remain here until she woke up only confirmed it for her. So she's choosing to place herself completely out of your way so that you can move on without her."

"By leaving, you mean," Enterprise translated. At her side, her hand closed into a fist. "Without so much as a word to me?"

That disorientating weakness was evaporating in the face of the heat and the energy that Enterprise was beginning to feel instead at Belfast's duplicity. After putting the cruiser so much into her confidence, after all they had shared together as a result, what they experienced and worked through together, all the way to the extremes of life and death that they got through together, here Belfast suddenly was just abandoning her like this? Over troubles that she wanted to keep selfishly to herself rather than burden Enterprise with them?

That's not fair, Bel!

The unfairness of it was expanded by how Enterprise was as involved in them and how she had been the one to want to confront them with Belfast. And now it was Belfast who was running away from it?

"That's not fair," Enterprise repeated, this time out loud. "If it's so much about me, then it's me that she should've come to, or at least waited for me." She hit her fist against her thigh in anger. "She can't do this! She…" Her fist shook at her side, ready to hammer into her thigh or something else again, but it collapsed into her slackening fingers. "She can't…"

"I agree," Hood intoned. "I personally find it highly improper for her to react in this way and can't possibly lie here and let it stand."

"Do you know where she went?" Enterprise asked, hopeful that Hood may know something.

What the battlecruiser did instead was make a fraction's tilt of her head. "Do you?"

"I can't think of anything."

There was a slant of encouragement from Hood. "Try." When she got a dumbfounded look from Enterprise, she guided, "There aren't many places that she could've gone in such a short amount of time, or so suddenly."

Enterprise didn't see how that could amount to much for her when she didn't know the Royal Isles anywhere near as well, especially not around this area. Her patrols and brief visits to the city couldn't possibly give her anywhere near enough insight to predict where Belfast would've gone.

If she's even still around here, Enterprise mentally added. For all I know, she could've gone all the way back to the Royal Palace.

But Enterprise immediately went against that possibility. Belfast was told to stay near her ship, and even if she was to ignore that to get to the Royal Palace, she would need to acquire a different means of transportation. Another ship, but would she impose for such a ride, given the security measures and duties that everyone was still pressed to fulfill for her own personal matter?

No, she wouldn't, Enterprise thought. If it was only a short while ago, she'd be very limited.

Before she knew it, Enterprise started to seriously think about where Belfast could've gone.

If Belfast was not at the base, then the city was the only place where she could've gone to. Before Enterprise gave in to despair at the innumerable possibilities, she tried to round them down to a more manageable number of possibilities. Parks, museums – anything that could relate to what Enterprise had come to know about Belfast's interests.

It still felt like a futile effort, but Enterprise began to question this avenue anyway.

Would Belfast just be hiding in a park at a time like this? Enterprise knew how insufferable it had been for her to spend all this time cooped up in a hospital room. No, Belfast would want to be productive. To do her duty. At least that much was something Enterprise was confident about, it being something they shared. Could she be using the running of some sort of errand as a cover to hide in the city? No, Enterprise didn't think so; any such errands would already be taken by the other incapacitated shipgirls as she already knew. Could she have gone to Breakwater Fort? Also unlikely.

A location that Belfast could make easy travel arrangements to and, when she got there, she could blend in and be useful without her ship at least until a time where she may find a workaround to hide or travel somewhere else.

But Enterprise couldn't think of such a place that wasn't Breakwater or Devonport. She desperately wracked her brain, trying to think of anything that she had seen or whatever Belfast herself may've said, even all the way back when they first arrived at the Royal Isles, when they were passing this area with Belfast mentioning some of the locations and history such as-

"Fuck," Enterprise exclaimed before immediately slapping a hand over her mouth and looking up at Hood, horrified, to see that the noble lady of a shipgirl had her eyes appropriately widened at her.

Why was it that getting more in touch with her human side included a use of foul language?

Hood's shocked look melted and this time she did giggle, something that became a broken mishmash of humor and pain – laughter with intermittent coughs – that went on with Enterprise helplessly flailing, unable to think of how to help or get her to stop.

"I-I guess," Hood croaked after a final gasping cough, beginning to finally still. "I guess you know where she is."

"I might," Enterprise awkwardly replied. "Or at least the best idea I could come up with."

Revealing it awarded her some praise from Hood. "Very good. That was going to be my first suggestion. A word of warning though: remember who you're dealing with."

"That's what I've been doing," Enterprise assured with a grin, the likelihood of it and her sudden camaraderie with Hood doing much for her mood. "Cloak and dagger."

"Quite right. If she's there, I would take care about masking your arrival."

"She's there." To Enterprise, Belfast couldn't not be there. She thought of it, so she had to be. That was all there was to it.

"Go on, then."

Enterprise had swung completely around, about to rush out the door, but stopped right at the line of the portal. She looked back at Hood, apologetic. "Sorry about you getting caught up in this. This must've been a real bother to wake up to."

Their cooperation had also been improving Hood's vitality, she having been looking upon Enterprise's departure with some of her former noble radiance. At the shift of attention to her, though, Hood's response to it appeared to be to sink back into her bed. "Do not worry about me, Enterprise."

Enterprise detected the change in the air, and with its manipulations she couldn't help but think that Hood really would rather not be worried about. That did make Enterprise worry, as well as make her wonder if Belfast not visiting her was a possible cause. "I'll come by again once everything's done, and I'll make sure Belfast does too."

"That's very kind of you." That was what Hood said, but the way her gaze dropped spoke of something else. "But I am happy enough to have been of use to a pair of friends, and to hopefully keep them from making mistakes and the regrets that would come from them."

Enterprise sensed the personal weight, and it reminded her of the mistakes of Hood's past and the regrets that the carrier had missed at the joint base but believed she could perceive here. It got her to rotate back to Hood, wishing to do something for her in return for the help she had given her. "Back at the joint base, Belfast mentioned what happened at Mers el to me before and-"

At her lap, Hood's hand raised enough to signal Enterprise to stop. "Please, don't. Do not take this for rudeness, but whatever you want to say has probably been said to me a thousand times already, if not more."

Enterprise obeyed, sealing her lips, but she remained at the door.

"I really am glad to see you as you are," Hood mentioned. "You've had a long and hard life, Enterprise, to go along with that mantle of yours, and it nearly led you to making terrible mistakes in the Pacific. But you've kept your mantle clean and, better yet, you've discovered that no matter how hard or long your fight had been and how it may continue to be, there is still more that you can do with your life. A new beginning for yourself, and I pray that you use it to the fullest to live as you please. As for someone like me…"

Hood's gaze trailed over to her chest and the thickly wrapped dressing. "I have fought for longer and made mistakes that will forever remain a stain upon my name. There is no new beginning for me. There is but the next fight and the baring of my stigma so that others will live wiser and happier. That has become my purpose and that is how it will be until there comes that last fight and my black mark can be expunged."

With how she was looking at her injury, Enterprise got a distressing sense that the battlecruiser may be wishing that the fight she got it from really had been her last. She sounded so bleak and appeared nothing like how Enterprise had seen her during their joint actions. She had been the shining example of Royal Navy pride and etiquette, as much of a jewel as the one affixed to her pendant, and even with the discovery of her tragic acts Enterprise had never been able to pick out any kind of weakness or imperfection in how she presented herself in battle and in peace.

It wasn't just a frailty of body that Enterprise saw now, but of spirit, too. Out of all the Royals – out of all the shipgirls – that Enterprise had come to know, it was Hood who she couldn't discern any kind of happiness or peace from to help counteract what was eating away at her.

There had only been one other who bore a resemblance to what she was seeing, but that other had been alone in such a dark and dead world, and too far gone. Hood hadn't descended to such a depth yet and had so much more around her. There had to be something that could still be done for her.

"Someone once told me," Enterprise found herself saying, "that as long as you're alive, it's never too late."

Hood looked up, their eyes meeting, and though she said nothing Enterprise saw it: how what she said was something that Hood really had heard many times before but had never found a reason to believe it. With that, Enterprise realized that no matter how many had to have reached out to Hood, no matter how much support that must've been there for her, no matter just how much more she had around her, that spiritual affliction remained uncured and may very well be incurable.

Hood nodded, twitched up a smile, and then motioned out. "Go."

It was upsetting. To Enterprise, walking out of that room was like leaving a battle that had not only been lost but was never meant to be won.

But what could she do? She had seen how ineffectual she was, and she couldn't think of any means of how to help that hadn't obviously been tried by countless others before her and probably far more gracefully.

And, right now, she had her own pressing battle that was meant solely for her.

It was only seconds after she began making her way down the hall that she heard multiple pairs of feet coming from the turn that she needed to make, with a voice soon speaking up.

"She's right around here."

Enterprise looked up, recognizing the speaker as Curlew, and she had only been able to get a glance at the maid to confirm it when she appeared right before Enterprise had to stop and back away when she had been about to bump into someone who was following her.

She felt her presence before even getting an eye on her, and Enterprise wondered if this was what it was like to behold a modern iteration of a dreadnought: a name that had once been associated to vessels that had ascended and revolutionized the pinnacle of firepower. They shared about the same height, but even when Enterprise did meet her gaze she got an impression of how she was still looking 'up' at her and she 'down' at the carrier due to the sheer magnitude of her presence that had to be mightier than any battleship she had met before in terms of raw strength and fierce will.

She had long wheat blonde hair and steel blue eyes. She was also clothed quite plainly for a shipgirl; a black dress shirt whose buttons were bulging outwards to form the exceptional bustline of her chest, and black pants, over which was a long tan coat. But that overwhelming presence was enough to shape her form in distinct ways: the steel of her eyes sharper with their flawless purity, her face harder with the bones of her cheeks and her jaw more solid despite its smooth, angular shape, the lines of her waist curvy but also sturdy, her thighs and legs shapely but distinguishingly firm. She was attractively feminine, but her power turned her womanly beauty into something that Enterprise could only alike to the most heavily armored of hulls and deadliest of cannons.

Such destructive capabilities, however, were wrapped in a great, commanding aura that kept it tightly reined but, as a side effect, also sought to raise her above any who she would come across with that strength of hers justifying her ascension. While her mortal body kept her grounded, how she looked at Enterprise gave off that same vibe: that she was the superior one and the carrier should fall in line to her order, as what should be natural.

What Enterprise was inspired to do instead was take up a more steadfast stance against that imperious presence. Though she did not quite feel hostile to this shipgirl, what she nonetheless felt was a deep-seated opposition that made her open show of challenge against her as natural when she held her gaze, refusing to back down.

How this ended up happening after a mere meeting of the eyes Enterprise didn't know, but here she was: having a stare down with this mysterious shipgirl who did not make any reaction other than to maintain her equally unfaltering stare against the Eagle champion. After an amount of time that had to be lost to either of them, it was the battleship who moved. Not in any sign of relent, as her steely eyes remained unwavering against Enterprise's, but there did come a minute angling of her head that was not to concede but to recognize the carrier's defiance.

Recognize and acknowledge it.

"Ahem!"

Surprised at the interruption, Enterprise looked down where it had come from and was even more surprised at who she found there.

This other one was much smaller – both in size and presence that had made her invisible to Enterprise until now. But what caught her off guard was her attire: a buttoned-up trench coat of the same tan coloring but was quite large and served to completely cover the shipgirl from her shoulders all the way down to her feet. A just-as-big cap hid her head, and her face was excessively covered with a white cloth mask that was over her nose and mouth with thick sunglasses hiding her eyes. Save for what glimpses of her skin that Enterprise could spot under the heavy covering, there were also stray locks of short blue hair.

"You're in our way!" the small shipgirl exclaimed with hands on her hips, Enterprise pretty sure that she was being glared at behind those shades.

The battleship tapped the smaller girl's arm. "Peace, Parcival."

'Parcival' immediately snapped to attention, looking up at the battleship. "Yes, Lord Bissssssss-eeeaaaaaaahhhhh!"

Enterprise watched in startlement as the smaller shipgirl gestured wildly and continued with her unintelligible exclamation, apparently having been about to make a mistake and trying to correct it in the most obnoxious way possible.

"Biscuit!" she suddenly shouted, proud of her quick thinking. "Yes, Lord Biscuit!"

There came a sigh from 'Biscuit', the battleship's superior stance deflating and her features dipping into exasperation. She glanced over at Curlew. "Shall we proceed?"

The Royal cruiser, who had been patiently standing aside the whole time, bowed in her direction before pointing down. "She's right down there, four doors from us, starboard side."

Curious, Enterprise followed Curlew's finger and directions, looking to see where they led.

It was Hood's room.

"Dan- my thanks." The battleship corrected herself in a much smoother manner than her companion before she bowed her head to the maid, switched to Enterprise, and gave the carrier another nod before stepping past her. "Come, Parcival."

The other did so, stepping around Enterprise, but not without giving her a look that Enterprise couldn't see but assumed wasn't a good one. She watched the two travel down the line of doors until Biscuit gave a signal for Parcival to wait just as they were about to reach Hood's.

She didn't enter it. The battleship reached out and touched the edge of the doorframe, but she did not pass through the door itself, remaining what would be just out of sight as she stood there instead. She appeared to be about to enter when she leaned forward only to then stop, stuck with the frame now holding some of her weight as she stayed in place. Behind her, her shorter companion stared up at her back, what had to be in confusion.

"Is someone there?" Enterprise heard Hood call out from inside.

The battleship, having been so indomitable a moment ago, suddenly leaned away, coming just shy of being driven back by Hood's weak voice alone. Whether she was actually going to retreat in full or not it would never be known since Parcival chose that moment to give her a light push against her back. When the battleship glanced down at her – and in the process giving Enterprise a glimpse at how her uncompromising features had indeed been compromised with uncertainty –, the smaller girl pointed at Hood's door in an instruction to enter.

After a few moments of indecisiveness, the battleship clenched her jaw, closed her eyes, nodded, and refaced Hood's door with renewed resolve before walking through it which was followed by her sealing the door behind her.

Alone now, Parcival looked around, saw that Enterprise and Curlew were still in the hall watching, and immediately jumped in front of the closed door, putting her back against it while her arms and legs stretched to the very edges so that she may act as an obstacle to prevent either of them from even thinking about going in and interrupting what was going on, with Enterprise sensing another glare being directed at her.

"A little arrangement that had been made for our early negotiations to establish some good faith," Curlew explained when Enterprise faced her. "As we are still officially at war, I would ask that you keep what you saw here a secret."

Enterprise looked back at the door where Parcival remained as a human obstacle, returned to Curlew, and then shrugged. "Officially, I'm not here, so there's nothing for me to see."

It was her first time seeing the stoic Curlew crack a smile.

What ended up being said in that room was only for the two who had been in it, what was discussed never to be known to anyone else. The only record there would be was of Curlew's arrival and later departure from Devonport, after which she would then rendezvous and accompany the Royal Navy representatives to an established neutral zone in the North Sea. There, they would meet with Iron Blood counterparts to resume their opening peace talks after having declared a recess earlier in the day. They would proceed and end without incident, both parties returning to their nation's waters.

Later, medical personnel who had been monitoring Hood would note improvements in her mood and recovery. Members of the Royal Family and other close acquaintances who would set aside time to visit her would then privately share with each other as to how they could see that a measure of peace had returned to their esteemed lady that they haven't seen in so long.

So grateful were they for this turn of events that no one thought to ask where her treasured pendant had vanished off to.

---

It was just south of Plymouth, the small island that did not even reach seven acres and yet had been used as an important fortification for hundreds of years – first against the French and Spanish and, later, the Sirens. However, the overwhelming might of the Sirens and the growing importance of Plymouth with its shipping and military bases had required mightier fortifications, leading to the expansion and arming of what was currently Breakwater Fort, the military wisdom of which having been recently proven sound.

In light of that, the island lost its purpose for defense but was not fated for irrelevancy. Instead, the old facilities had been torn down and replaced with one that was suited for a different kind of need that was brought about by the Siren War: a place of education for humanity's newest weapons. So became the purpose of Drake's Island, it and the Drake Academy that was homed upon it named after the famous figure of history.

Due to the Siren attack, traffic and classes had halted in the immediate aftermath but there was a tentative resumption of them, with a couple small warships docked near the rocky shores of the island, so another Royal Navy destroyer cruising towards it wasn't out of the ordinary. Making berth at one of the dock facilities that branched out from the island, the warship came to a full stop, dropped anchor, and a boarding ramp made landing upon the dock.

The shipgirl who commanded the warship didn't descend down it just yet, instead taking a look around at the immediate surroundings. When she saw nothing worth worrying about, she turned back deeper into her deck, at the shadow that was cast by her bridge.

"Coast looks clear," Echo reported.

Enterprise stepped into full view, slightly hunched and scanning around, as if stepping into the light would cause some sort of alarm to sound, but when none did, she relaxed, trusting the small destroyer's reconnaissance. "Thanks again for doing this, Echo," she said.

"No problem!" Echo chirped, happy to be of help as she went down the ramp. "You said this was for you and Belfast, so no way was I not going to help!"

The destroyer's mood had obviously improved since their patrol with how she practically skipped down the boarding ramp. Enterprise, meanwhile, followed her down with nerves on edge and her head on a swivel despite how she soon saw how vacant the docks were. Transitioning towards the island itself, Enterprise followed the rocky edges until it elevated further up into what vegetation had been able to grow, and past some scant trees she could see the Academy crowned on top with its commanding view that made Enterprise nervous.

Had she come here with her carrier body, she would've been spotted instantly, and the element of surprise would've been lost. Knowing that, she had enlisted the aid of Echo, having been lucky that the destroyer had been lazing around in her quarters in Devonport, thinking of a message to send to Sussex, rather than having gone off somewhere else to spend her downtime. Not only had Echo been more than willing to help when Enterprise asked, but she seemed to get excited by the assignment when Enterprise limited the briefing to how important it would be for her and Belfast, the lack of details encouraging the destroyer to accept rather than dissuading her.

Better yet, Echo had revealed that she had been taking classes previously and was scheduled to return soon with other shipgirls who had been pulled from various bases to Devonport and would continue their education here, their lessons set to be supplemented with reviews of the battle that was becoming known as the Breakwater Defense.

"Coming here for an early visit won't be suspicious at all!" she had brightly assured Enterprise, exhibiting absolutely no suspicions of her own as to why Enterprise's arrival needed to be hidden. Once more, the need for stealth seemed to make it fun for Echo.

Despite that, Enterprise crossed through the docks at a swift pace, wanting to get beneath the face of the risen sections of the island to block her off from whatever view one may have of the docks from the Academy.

Namely, whatever view Belfast may have.

The more Enterprise thought about it, the surer she was that Belfast had come here. Really, the carrier was ashamed of herself for not thinking of Drake's Island and the Drake Academy as one of the prime locations that Belfast would've disappeared to. However, despite even occasionally passing the island during her time here, its suspension of its usual activities had caused it to drift out almost entirely from Enterprise's mind. It was only because of Hood that Enterprise remembered it.

Then again, if it wasn't for Hood then Enterprise would probably still be at Devonport, looking fruitlessly around for Belfast who was long gone, and even with the amount of time that would've passed Enterprise wouldn't be thinking that Belfast was actively trying to hide from her.

This, Enterprise suspected, would've been what Belfast wanted and given her enough time to plan her next move to continue evading her until Enterprise would have to return to Eagle Union.

You have a lot to answer for, Bel, Enterprise thought, intending to extract an explanation as to why Belfast had done this as soon as she found her.

As angry as she was though, what she really wanted was to see her again first.

With the help of stairs and set paths, she and Echo were able to travel up towards the Academy with little difficulty, although they did take a longer way around to the eastern end of its courtyard. This was the result of additional planning that Enterprise made ahead of time, having asked Echo as to where the most likely place a head maid would be.

"Uh…" Echo had started thoughtfully with a finger to her chin. "There's a small conference room used for new candidates of the Maid Corps and the Royal Knights to meet up. There's a private quarter attached to it for representatives of either branch who come to inspect and test those who want to join. That's somewhere on the second floor."

That sounded like the best place. "What direction does it face?" Enterprise asked.

The destroyer took longer to answer, deep in thought. "West."

Which led to Enterprise to advise taking an eastern approach, something that Echo just accepted without question, both then and now as they traversed through the courtyard, the carrier looking up at the windows of the two-story Academy, alert for any white-and-blue color combos that could reveal a very inconvenient timing for Belfast to be to blow this stealth mission.

It was small, much smaller than the one at the joint base or the Royal Academy, but Enterprise judged it was enough of an establishment to hold classrooms for dozens of shipgirls. If the Drake Academy was getting ready to resume classes, this would be a very good place for Belfast to blend in, what assistance she could give to help around here for the reopening a good cover that would prevent any questions or suspicions of why she was here while also providing her with a way to fulfill her duties.

She better be here.

"Oh, Jamaica!"

"Echo!" Enterprise hissed when Echo suddenly bolted from her side soon after they left the courtyard and entered the main lobby.

"Hold on!" Echo replied over her shoulder as she rushed over to one side. "Hey, Jamaica!"

Enterprise rapidly looked around, afraid that Echo's loud calls had exposed them and was tempted to bail and continue without her. But when she saw no one else around and remembered that she still needed Echo's help, Enterprise was forced to join her.

The one who caught Echo's attention was a shipgirl with hair that was shockingly red like fire, exceeded only by the golden strands that created a stripe down through her bangs. Turning to the destroyer, the girl suddenly lifted her left arm that was wrapped in a chain, the hand coming over her eye, with her tanned features wincing as if she was in pain.

"Oh, it's you Echo," the shipgirl – Jamaica – greeted. There came another grimace. "It was hard to see you at first."

Echo stopped and smiled brightly up at the taller girl. "Is it your Eye again?"

"Yes." The fingers of her bound hand traced around the circumference of her left eye, her palm keeping it obscured. "The touch of Evil has left such a taint of Darkness that I'm struggling to cope with."

"Well yeah we did have a big battle with the Sirens not too long ago," Echo responded, going along with it. "Question! We're looking for someone and were wondering if you happened to see her!"

Understanding what Echo was doing, Enterprise stopped just behind her, anxious to hear the answer.

"I will answer the best I can," Jamaica replied, seeming to grow in increasing pain as her hand was now pressing against her eye, her lips stuck in a permanent grimace. "The Darkness has been difficult to bear."

"Do you need to stop by medical?" Enterprise asked, worried about how much pain she was exhibiting.

Jamaica looked to the carrier with her other eye. "Nay, this affliction of mine cannot be cured by mortal means. The only salve is Light and Justice, Justice which has been delivered and Light which is making its slow return. What is required now is time."

Enterprise stared, wondering how it was that she could hear the capitalized lettering of certain words that normally wouldn't be. "…Okay."

"However…" The pained grimace lessened, and alongside it Jamaica's hand began to draw away from her left eye. "Your presence…such a font of Light. It repels the Darkness, and the throbbing of my Eye recedes. Ask what you will now that I am better able but make haste."

"Okay!" Echo brightly exclaimed, not bothered at all by the plight of her comrade. "We're just wondering if you've – oh, right – if your Eye happened to spot Belfast! You know, the head maid. Maybe the only maid that's around here."

"Belfast…" Jamaica murmured and then nodded. "Yes, I know of her, and in fact have seen her around here."

Enterprise was trying hard not to pile questions onto the shipgirl as soon as she heard that, partly because of how she didn't want to aggravate whatever injury she had. "You're certain?" she restricted herself to say instead.

Jamaica's hand drew further away and what Enterprise saw was…an eye. The same as the right one, in fact; both with golden irises and barren of any hint of what could be causing either one pain. "I happened to arrive shortly before she did. She was dropped off by another cruiser – one of her subordinates, I believe – and has been here since." The brow of her very normal left eye became furrowed. "I could only get a glimpse, but there has been miasma exuding from her that has come to hang from the walls of this estate."

"That's just what we wanted to know!" Echo spoke. "Thanks, Jamaica, you were a real help!"

"I am relieved," Jamaica said to her first before switching back to Enterprise. "But to you, some parting words. Your Light is the most I've ever seen from one person, but the brighter the light, the longer the shadow. Listen well and remain true to your Heart of Justice, or the Darkness that lies beyond may find its way to engulf it."

Enterprise was still relatively sure that it was a regular eye that Jamaica was using with such emphasis to peer at her through the spaces of her parted fingers, but the carrier couldn't help but feel a shudder travel down her spine, it and the words that were conveyed hauntingly prophetic sounding.

"Come on," Echo said, tugging on the sleeve of Enterprise's coat. "We know she's here now, so let's go find her! Oh!" She held a finger to her lips, directing it at Jamaica. "If you see her, Jamaica, don't say anything about us! This is supposed to be a surprise!"

"I will not be the one to ruin it, then," Jamaica promised and walked off.

Enterprise's gaze stayed on the shipgirl's back until another tug from Echo had her turning and traveling the opposite direction of Jamaica with Echo.

"Is she…okay?" Enterprise asked.

"Jamaica? Oh, she's fine!"

"But her eye seemed to be really hurting her."

"Oh, don't worry about that! Her eye's fine!"

Enterprise looked down at her curiously. "Then what was she doing?"

Echo shrugged, still walking. "That's just how Jamaica likes to act. She's a real chuuni."

"A what?"

"Uuuuh…I forget how to pronounce the rest of it. It's from the Sakura Empire. I think it basically means a weirdo or something like that. They talk about weird things like darkness and seals and eyes, and they like to wear eye patches and wrap their arms in bandages and stuff like that."

"Oh," Enterprise replied, thinking of the chain around Jamaica's arm. "That's…weird."

"We get one or two new ones every year. Jamaica has it bad, but York is another one."

"Exeter's sister?" Having been the flagship of their patrols, what Enterprise had seen of Exeter – while more theatric – didn't seem all that strange compared to the rest of the Royal Navy girls and their typical reverence to their Royal stations and customs so she couldn't imagine something similar from Jamaica with her sister. "I met her before."

"Yeah, but she's been on a separate schedule than us, so you don't know how she gets about 'the Force'." The destroyer signed the appropriate quotations with her fingers. "If you really want to see a demonstration, ask her about her Magic Gun the next time you see her."

"No, that's okay," Enterprise replied, making a note to not do that. On that same subject though, she thought she could remember Hermes spouting just as strange things concerning cards, traps, and duels in the middle of their half of the Siren assault. So is this chuuni-thing just an even more absurd form of pretend? With all that she had seen already – including the self-proclaimed idols of her own side – Enterprise found something that could be even weirder...troubling.

"Believe it or not, but a bunch of us who served with Iron Blood say they had a lot more girls like that," Echo added. "I wonder what's going to happen there if we really become friends again…"

That was a concern that was cast away when the two shipgirls went up a flight of stairs, bringing them to the second floor and closer to where their best guess as to where Belfast was. Not too long after, Echo broke from Enterprise's side again, moving ahead, but only so that she could sooner reach and single out a particular door to Enterprise.

"In here," the destroyer confirmed before opening it.

The door swinging open was in time with the rise of emotion that Enterprise felt with the possibility of Belfast being right beyond it and, oddly, anger or some other confrontational emotion was not so dominate despite it being why Enterprise was here. Instead, it was that need for Belfast to be there and Enterprise to see her and that got her to quickly pass through.

It was a conference room, although a conference room in Eagle Union would usually consist of a large and long plain table, a standard projector tending to be the only thing that would make up a fraction of the large surface right in the middle with the rest meant for documents or notes that attending officers would bring and use with them for meetings. This being the Royal Navy, there was a table, not as immense, but it was brightly polished and smooth wood of some craftsmanship that was used for the chairs. There was a projector, but one of an antiquated design rather than the latest holographic ones, and next to that the mandatory tea set and other dishware. The décor of the room was of the standard Royal Navy fair as well: furnished carpets, hanging wall banners, and pictures representing the examples of both the Royal Knights and the Maid Corps.

But there was no Belfast, Enterprise enduring that sinking disappointment for the time it took for her to spot and lock onto the door to what had to be the private quarters. Leaving Echo to close the door behind them, Enterprise made the quick trip across the room, the destroyer rejoining her by the time Enterprise lifted her fist and knocked.

"Enter," came a voice from within.

Enterprise tensed upon hearing it, her fist remaining raised when she stiffly turned to Echo.

Echo was swapping rapidly between the door and Enterprise, her eyes having widened in recognition of what she also heard, and her voice dropped into a whisper as she leaned towards the carrier, a hand cupping the side of her mouth. "Are you going to need me to stick around or…?"

Enterprise shook her head, her own voice lowering. "No. Thank you, Echo. This is another I owe you for."

Smiling widely, Echo gave her a thumbs-up and a cheerful whisper of "Good luck!" before beating a hasty retreat out of the conference room.

Enterprise was still trying to sort out as to how she should prepare herself for the engagement waiting behind the door by the time Echo made her exit. She wanted to go in strong but was unable to muster up the energy for the toughened front she thought was the right way to confront her quarry with.

She instead decided on her usual approach to these kinds of intense actions: go directly into the combat zone, survey the environment firsthand, and improvise on the best way to deal with it once she was in the middle of it. The strategy leaving little room for doubt, it got Enterprise to thrust herself headlong into it.

The long pause had been drawing Belfast over to investigate whoever had knocked, the cruiser halting in mid-step when Enterprise entered, and then she was reeling it back and taking a retreating step when she saw who it was, her eyes wide and mouth falling open.

"Enterprise…!" she gasped out.

The Eagle ace didn't answer, prioritizing that quick survey of the environment first. They were Royal Navy-styled quarters, as plain as one could expect at this point. Small, confined, and overall suitable for what was to come.

After that did Enterprise look to Belfast and her heart soared in her chest, nearly knocking the wind right out of her when she did see her.

No one would think that Belfast had been so critically injured a short time ago, looking at her now. Having finally been able to shed her casts and other dressings and turn in her medical gown, Belfast was back in her uniform with its blue and white skirt and bodice, the apron and frills, and her little band perched at the top of her head with her braid winding around the side. Other than it being an indisputable sign of how Belfast was really back to normal – a sight Enterprise had wanted to see since the cruiser had been hospitalized - Enterprise decided that there would always be something special in seeing her in her maid uniform.

The first time she had ever laid eyes on Belfast was when she was in this uniform, and looking upon her now had the memories that had taken place after Belfast first protected her from Zuikaku's blade pass through in an instant and with them her own feelings that Enterprise couldn't fathom at having developed since then.

It was staggering and it almost made her forget that she was supposed to be angry right now.

"Belfast," Enterprise returned, the stern tightening of her tone and look coming much easier now.

The cruiser looked about to retreat some more, Enterprise wishing that she could take some measure of accomplishment in how she had caught her so off guard. In such a taken aback state, Belfast let slip her want for an escape route with quick glances around the room. Save for a nearby window providing a view of the courtyard - and Enterprise did congratulate herself for her precaution there -, there was no feasible means of escape, Enterprise sealing the only way out behind her with a hard and audible thud of the door with her firm stance expressing how she was to make it impassable.

Belfast had no choice but to face these circumstances, something that she was actually failing to do, features still gripped in quiet shock. "How…?" she began but was unable to finish.

"Hood was disappointed that you hadn't come to visit her," Enterprise admonished.

Even when caught by surprise, Belfast could still carry out such thorough mental work in laying out and dissecting the answer piece-by-piece. "Hood? But how would she…?" Her brows knitted together, finding something inconsistent with her results and searching for the reason for it which she reached with a note of irritation. "George."

Enterprise took a step, both to get closer and to keep Belfast on the important issue that was right here and not whoever or whatever that she would try to use to obstruct it. "Belfast," she emphasized with that stern edge, getting a taste of the power that came with using a person's full name like this to convey how much trouble they were in.

The cruiser's shoulders shot up along with her glance, legitimately startled, before it was then cast down, being directed instead at the hands that she clasped in front of her. "Yes," she said, quiet. "I guess that was a mistake."

"Which part?" Enterprise asked. "Leaving the base or not making sure Hood wouldn't tell me?"

"Hood, yes," Belfast admitted. "That much is plain. As for leaving…I'm not sure yet…"

Shock and anger were bound and sent rolling together, Belfast's submissive stance leaving them with free reign over Enterprise to push with, "You're 'not sure'? Leaving the base, coming here, not telling me or giving a clue to anyone else where you went. Enlighten me, Bel, where in that entire plan of yours do you think it was not a mistake?"

Enterprise had been drawing closer, her questioning coming through from tightening lips, her hands turning into fists, and the cruiser became smaller in her eyes while she became larger. The righteous temptation was still going, trying to push her threatening approach into something more to show Belfast as to how wrong this decision of hers had been.

But Enterprise didn't, Belfast's own weak position and the carrier's vehemence being what ended up getting her to stop with what space that was left between them, she suddenly being repulsed at the last second by how she was being seduced by them and what they were suggesting she should do.

That wasn't why she was here. That wasn't what she wanted to do. These were a set of emotions, while new to her in terms of potency, she suddenly recognized as being something that she didn't want to be influenced by, as they had once tried to do before in recent memory.

That didn't mean Belfast was off the hook, Enterprise wanting her to know just how she felt about what happened but in a less explosive fashion. "Do you have any idea what I felt when I came to your room and saw that you weren't there?" Enterprise asked, her anger left to simmer, the hurt that had nearly been buried by it the better resource.

Through a less distorted lens, Enterprise could see a rigidness that had come over Belfast, the cruiser looking to have been anticipating and preparing to endure a verbal lashing that Enterprise had been tempted to give her. Maybe she would've been able to handle that, but what Enterprise chose instead went completely around her prepared defenses and struck truer, getting her to flinch.

"…I do apologize for that," Belfast replied once she recovered from it, although her eyes were still down, her voice still quiet. "The thought did occur to me, and I'm sorry for that being a consequence of my action."

But she wasn't apologizing for the action itself. "Then why?" Enterprise pressed.

The silence hung there and during it Belfast began to loosen from her coiled posture, how her hands played with her skirt an activity to help unwind the tension in her shoulders, but not all the way. "Why did you lie to me about being recalled?" she then asked.

Enterprise had to have known it was coming but her singular focus on Belfast and what she did revealed not only how she had almost forgotten about it but also how she hadn't figured out how to explain herself. "I was going to tell you. After we were supposed to meet up, I was going to tell you about it. I didn't want to tell you and trouble you when you were recovering."

"Tell me what?" Though the positions were reversing, Belfast was not expressing any anger or blame that mirrored Enterprise's. Her tone was calmer. Flatter. "That you had not only been willing to disobey an order from your superiors, but openly defy them?"

George… Enterprise silently blamed the battleship despite having been ridiculing Belfast for doing the same. "That…"

"And then," Belfast pursued, "You had gone as far to deceive them by having your sister take your place, thinking that you're the one returning?"

"Is that not what you were trying to teach me?" Enterprise blurted out in the interest of regaining the higher ground that was being taken from her. "That I shouldn't let my entire life be controlled by my duty?"

"You've misunderstood." Though there was what could've been a flex of offense in Belfast's response, it proved to be a miniscule bump in an otherwise flattened rebuttal. "Our endeavor here was so that you could recognize a life that you could make for yourself to go alongside your duty. To create your own identity outside of battle was not solely so you could obtain an elegant living, but so that you could find a purpose for your duty that wasn't to fight battles for the sake of battles. It is true that I did not want your life to be dictated by your duty, but that did not mean I wanted you to begin neglecting or defying it."

"And you and the Royal Navy did not deceive anyone to bring me here?" Enterprise retorted in a bid to try to score a hit on this specific point.

"That was not deception but a persuasion of meeting mutually benefiting goals that your superiors had agreed to. Those arrangements established room for us to pursue additional goals but only within the limits that were agreed upon by all parties – including you."

Enterprise cursed to herself, feeling like it's been forever since she was an opponent to Belfast's complex thinking and how soundly she could be outmaneuvered by it. Just as she was thinking of how best she could reply to that though, she stopped herself.

This isn't what I came here for.

Enterprise felt she was already going astray from what she really wanted to address and the one responsible for that was more herself and not so much Belfast. Getting caught up in mincing words like this in a vain attempt to gain shallow victories was a distraction and she could get a sense of how messy it would be if she kept at this pointless pursuit while her main objective was being left behind and may go untouched.

Having thought that she had gotten better control of herself by not attacking the easy target that Belfast had presented for her anger, Enterprise instead realized that she still had to keep watch over herself.

Don't divert from the primary target. The very first lesson that she hadn't learned but knew when she came into being. Here she had to learn that the rule could be applied elsewhere, and this was it.

"…I'm sorry," Enterprise said instead. "I did lie. I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to explain how I came to stay here, knowing how you'd react. I had every intention of telling you later but that doesn't change how I lied and I'm sorry for that."

Belfast was still avoiding looking at her, but Enterprise got that same impression from before: that the cruiser had been prepared for exactly what Enterprise had chosen to cease and go a different direction from, once again catching her unawares.

Enterprise didn't gloat over that victory, using it instead to make progress towards what she really wanted. "So I want to know why you left. You didn't tell me anything. We agreed we would talk, I came for you, and you were gone." She gave Belfast a second and only a second. "Don't tell me that you left because I lied to you."

"No." That hastened an answer, which Belfast had to correct on. "It wasn't only because of that."

There was a nervous tremor at the pit of her stomach, but Enterprise at least felt like they were back on track. "Then what else was it?"

She didn't rush Belfast here, giving her more time, and it was quite telling to Enterprise when she saw Belfast perform another short fiddling of her skirt. It dawned on her that this – all of this – had very well placed the maid in a position of such vulnerability, bereft of any kind of control that she would always have for every situation. Her leaving, her reason for leaving, and whatever it was that ultimately led to this, had forced her to relinquish it and Enterprise pondered if the actions she had nearly taken but didn't and what Belfast had been bracing herself for had been delaying attempts to gain whatever grasp she could of manipulation to obtain over the current situation.

It made her soft reply a confirmation of her forfeiting of control as much as it was a revelation of what had caused her to do it. "I did make a mistake."

Enterprise shook her head. "You didn't. Aside from leaving, you couldn't have."

"I did. I made a mistake with you, Enterprise, and it may have proven to threaten all that we've done."

"Then you definitely didn't," Enterprise replied, already set on making such a claim as implausible as possible. "If it's about me, there's no way you made one. You did what you said you'd do, Bel. I can see the world like I never had before, I can see the elegance in it, where we are and what we can be in it, the meaning of why we fight and why I fight. For what feels like in so long I can finally see what can be at the end of these battles and that is more than enough for me to continue with them, no matter how much longer they may be. Even if they end up outlasting me, I won't regret it because it's worth it. I'm happy now, Bel, and the only person who I have to thank for that is you."

She thought she made enough of an effort that it came to physically affect Belfast, the way her shoulders bunched minutely that mirrored that of her skirt with her fingers. "And I," she began, her voice weightier, "am happy for that, Enterprise. I am so happy for you and never have I been so proud in all my service than to receive such heartfelt regard."

Enterprise wanted to say that she had earned more than her regard, but she could sense the contamination in the air of more that Belfast had yet to voice.

"But that may be what has become so threatening."

How Belfast could say such a thing right after left Enterprise in disbelief.

"Why did you refuse to return to Eagle Union?" Belfast then asked and did so after trimming the emotional fat. "What made you go through such lengths to disobey and deceive when you never had before?"

This was not how Enterprise had planned this. Really, she hadn't had any plans at all, having been putting her hopes on the original environment that she had envisioned to give her the motivational tools necessary to say what Belfast was asking for. What were her chances of being able to do that now, with things having become as they currently were?

There aren't going to be any other chances after this, she realized. It's not about whether I can or not right now, it's that I have to.

Nonetheless, Enterprise struggled, trying to raise what had been resting deep within her, proving to be just short of an impossibility as soon as she tried. Unable to think of how to say it or how she wanted to say it kept it caged and weighed down, the nervous trembling of her stomach escalating to a painful clenching of her middle. In front of her, Belfast remained with her head bowed. As the seconds stretched, the cruiser made a subtle shift of her feet. That, for some reason, gave Enterprise a sense of how little time she had left before Belfast took control and, with it, the chance she had.

"What I…" Enterprise started and was left grasping for the rest because of this sense to stop what could've been a figment of her imagination. But she did start and that was enough to make a snail's progress. "Why I didn't want to go back to Eagle Union was because I…I wanted to be there for you…when you woke up. I wanted to…talk to you."

There was a long pause from Belfast that was absolutely nerve-wracking for Enterprise. Then, in her repressed tone, she said, "You did not have to remain for that. You could've gone and would've been able to contact me later."

"I…I know." It was taking such herculean effort for Enterprise to drag a shred of what she wanted to the surface. "I was told I could but…I couldn't do that. I…" She needed a break, a breather, then, "I needed to be there in person. With you."

"…Why did you feel a need for that?"

"I…" She couldn't stop. Couldn't go back. She had to get it out and say it. "I…care about you, Bel." Getting that much out, it was microscopically easier for her to reel in more of the rest. "I care about you a lot. It's hard for me to explain because I'm not sure of it myself but when I was told that I had to return to Eagle Union, I couldn't. Not until I was able to see you and talk with you again to understand these feelings and how I'm supposed to go on with them."

With you, she wanted to add again but didn't.

"…I see," was all that Belfast said in response, the next pause ready to drive Enterprise mad. "Then the reason you disobeyed was because of these feelings."

Enterprise's stomach felt like it was cramping, as if her labor was as physical as it felt like it was, with her muscles tight and shaking with tension. "Yes."

"And your plan for us to talk was so that it would help you understand those feelings like you wanted."

"Yes," Enterprise sighed out, praying this was enough. She tried to will her strung abdomen to relax with the reliance that Belfast was getting what she was saying, that she was understanding, and that – within the carrier's heart of heart – she would be able to guide her to fulfilling her own desires, just like always. Just as she had set out to do and hadn't failed yet.

"This may confirm what I have feared, then."

Those stomach muscles gave out, the strength and very air that held them leaving Enterprise in a rush, the maid's monotonous timbre behind her verbal delivery having been enough to get them to collapse.

Belfast looked up and Enterprise experienced a new source of energy race through her and replace what had been sapped, her nerves spiking with a sudden alertness at being confronted with the blank, emotionless scape that was Belfast's face.

The carrier could only describe it as a rallying of her opponent, a change in their composition against her, with Belfast having managed to finally regain control over herself and what she would press with going forward. A danger that could threaten to turn the battle fully against Enterprise if she did not adapt and respond accordingly, putting her at such alertness, but she didn't know how she would until Belfast initiated it.

And even when she did, Enterprise wasn't sure she would be ready.

"Enterprise…" Belfast said, steady and even, as she did just that. "How much do you think you care about me?"

The opener was as disorienting and motivationally damaging as could be formulated, Enterprise being hit hard by it.

Think she did? As much as Enterprise had become more entrenched around her feelings, fortifying the standing with her building belief of them, there remained that weakness: that they were feelings that she thought they were but not what she had been able to embrace as true. Such a confirmation had been meant to result once she spoke with Belfast about it, but here Belfast was focusing directly on that weakness that could topple the entire structure.

Against it, all Enterprise could do was stand her ground and push back against it. "I care about you a lot," she answered, the familiar, combative mindset making the confession easier the second time around. "I don't know how much but I know that you've become very important to me."

Belfast didn't expose any sign of faltering to that. "More than your comrades? The friends you say you've found?"

"Yes," Enterprise replied, putting more force behind it to get Belfast to show some sign of giving. "When you called us friends, and when I called others as friends, there had always been something different in how I regarded you and them. I hadn't been able to understand why at first but eventually I was able to see that it was because I thought of you as more than just a friend. You became someone I cherished more."

Belfast did not show any visible hints of backing down. "More than your own sisters?"

Hornet had posed the same question and one that Enterprise had been more hesitant to respond to honestly. Although the repeat of it recreated that previous sense of hesitancy, Enterprise had become surer of it since then. "As much as them and more."

Hornet and Yorktown were still her sisters, still family, and she did love them, but in this specific way as to how she felt about this cruiser-maid who was not of her family, not even of her faction, but who she had come to feel for regardless was what made Enterprise sure that she was so precious to her.

The confidence of that revelation extended to this argument, with how Belfast needed time to consider her next line of questioning and phase of her assault. "And how often do you think of me in that way?"

Enterprise needed to make some considerations of her own. "I had started to think about you more often when we came here together, especially after the banquet. Now, I think of you all the time, every single moment, in the way I said I do."

The blank makeup of Belfast's lines remained unbroken as she stared at Enterprise. "Every moment?"

"Yes." Insistent now, Enterprise advanced with, "What we are, what we could be. I can't think of anything except you, Bel, and when I thought I lost you not once but twice I realized just how lost I was without you. I need you to be in my life, not just as a friend, but something more than that, and I need you to help me find out what that is. Nothing else mattered to me except you."

Having been driven back once, she was making another attempt, but this time committing everything she had kept in reserve. She had already laid bare her feelings, so all that she could see as a legitimate action was to expose just what the depths of them were to secure this important victory that she needed to make.

A quick pass of an emotion crossed over the barrenness of Belfast's face, the cruiser smothering it with a slow close of her eyes that successfully extinguished it when she opened them again. "Enterprise…that is wrong."

The rebuttal, given so impassively despite what Enterprise just exposed, gave the carrier an alarming impression of how she had overextended. Having been lured so far out, committed so much, she could suddenly see how devastating of an outcome she had unintentionally set up.

"Do you not see that?" Belfast asked, her intentions indisputable about what she was going to do with it. "To devote so much to one person that would have you ignore everything else like that? To be led to opposing your duty in the manner you did?"

Enterprise had been afraid of it being wrong, but through Hornet, George, and the guidance of others, she had had been led to believe that it wasn't. With the others who knew more than she did, who she had been following and mimicking the advice of, and the gains she made with herself and those she interacted with while making strides to confront Belfast about it, she had been convinced.

But how were they supposed to contend with the very person who Enterprise had also been convinced to raise so high above them?

"What you're feeling…is not what you think it is." Belfast's expression had morphed into regret, but it was of an irregular resemblance: present, but being balanced with great care to show what was needed but keeping much else repressed.

But Enterprise couldn't read into it, not when her heart had been struck down so soundly, collapsing upon itself where it had plummeted.

"It's the result of the great risk that I always take care to avoid for those I watch over," Belfast explained, like she was reading from some sort of script. "Given the emotional duress of those I tend to assist, there is the chance that they may create dependence over whoever may tend to them. The more critical they are, the greater the chance."

Enterprise felt her heart roll around in dismay where it lay, the referral of a 'dependence' another thing that she had feared to have developed, thought it avoided, but now the person she trusted so much was trying to convince her it was exactly the case.

Belfast dropped her gaze, acting like the reveal of this truth was difficult for her to give when it was much harder for Enterprise to accept it. It was because of that that Belfast got herself to reestablish eye contact with the shocked carrier. "You were in an unhappy lifestyle that I interjected in, and I did so again when you were brought to such emotional straits after Orochi. I had remained exclusively at your side during your recovery and was present when you had your breakthrough. You…understand what those circumstances can cause, yes?"

With all of her currently crushed heart she didn't, but Enterprise could. To be there at every step, from her lowest point to her highest, Enterprise could see what Belfast was getting at. Enterprise had convinced herself to trust Belfast, rely on her, when she had nothing else, and when she had gotten what she wanted she had been so thankful for her.

To have these feelings during and after that…

"The fault isn't yours, Enterprise," Belfast insisted. "It's mine. I thought I would've been able to exert the right amount of care. I thought that I could put myself in a position to remove myself and let you fly on your own but…it was also unexpected circumstances that foiled it."

That being the Siren attack, with Enterprise remembering how it felt to be separated from Belfast when they had different assignments and when Belfast had nearly sank.

When she felt for herself how dependent she had become at having the Royal cruiser at her side.

"Then does that mean everything from before…?" She couldn't go on.

Belfast suddenly became crestfallen, and her one hand looked ready to lift from her skirt and towards Enterprise, but it halted just as it was about to release the fabric it held bunched. "No, Enterprise," she said, her voice rising momentarily. "Everything we've shared…that was all real. I enjoyed the time we spent together, and I meant it when I said we were friends."

But only friends. It hadn't felt right to her then, became wrong later, and now…

Now it hurt.

Enterprise felt she had been cut down and left on her knees in the middle of the dismantled vestiges of her efforts. Unwilling to collapse and give in yet, she asked, "Could you…be wrong?"

Belfast became stuck with indecision, torn about – to Enterprise – giving the carrier the mercy blow that she was almost wishing for but not ready to surrender entirely, holding out for one final chance even in this hopeless situation.

"There…" Belfast started, stopped, and was making a laborious effort of her own to give her answer. "There's a chance it could be, and a way to be sure."

"How?" Enterprise asked, eager to seize that glimmer of hope.

"We must part." Just as Enterprise felt deceived, she extrapolated, "Give it a couple months before we can contact each other again. If the feelings you have remain after that…we can talk again. That is the best way to be sure."

The 'best' way still felt like the worst way to Enterprise, but she didn't have the reason – or strength – to argue. With the thorough deconstruction that Belfast had accomplished yet again, convincing Enterprise to her way of thinking, the carrier may consider herself lucky that her friend had given her even this much.

So she just stood there, unwilling to communicate it but still accepting the defeat she was handily given.

"…I should go," Belfast suggested.

The I sounded a lot more like a we but Enterprise could only make a limp movement of her head that might've been a nod.

Belfast went around Enterprise with a cautious air, afraid of breaking the fragile understanding that had been established. Enterprise still didn't move or say anything, listening to Belfast's quiet footsteps as she went to the door, turned the knob, began opening it with a slow creak…and then stopped.

Enterprise waited, wondering what Belfast could possibly have anything else to say at this point.

"…Is there something else you need, Enterprise?"

Enterprise blinked, confused by the question. She turned her head around, saw Belfast's back and the parted door…and then she looked down.

Her one hand was locked around Belfast's wrist, keeping her from leaving.

The carrier looked blankly at it, unable to figure out how this happened. She didn't remember doing it. Hadn't even been conscious of it.

I…need to let go, she dully thought.

She didn't.

"Enterprise," Belfast said her name again, taking the same delicate care with it. "If there's nothing else, then I'd like you to let go."

Enterprise's beaten resolve acknowledged the direction but when she tried to loosen her grip from around Belfast's wrist, it didn't budge.

Let go.

Still she didn't, and Enterprise trying to impose her will on her rebellious appendage with the reasoning that she would be making things worse if she didn't was thwarted by a sense of how she would be making the worst mistake of her life if she did.

If Belfast walked through that door, it was over.

Because Belfast had no intention of seeing her again.

Trying to deduce how she came to such a conclusion opened Enterprise instead to how her instincts were shouting at her that she had made some kind of tactical oversight. She had missed something – or had originally noticed it but then forgot about it, even though it could've changed this outcome had she employed it.

It still could. She just had to remember what it was. What had she missed? What had she meant to do but hadn't? And how could it compare to what Belfast had done, when she had convinced Enterprise that her own feelings had been made by misconceptions?

Wait...! Enterprise tightened her grip, making sure that she had ample securement over the cruiser just as Belfast began to pull against it in response.

"Enterprise-"

"I remember," Enterprise said, interrupting her.

Belfast stopped, her back still facing the Eagle ace. "Remember what?"

What Enterprise remembered reinvigorated the fight in her, with her able to make out one last move she could perform. She had given up all thought early on of outmaneuvering Belfast, had tried for a direct assault, had thought herself surrounded and beaten by the encirclement that the cruiser had lured her into with no hope of a breakout, but even before this battle even started she had possessed unique intelligence that had exposed a flaw in Belfast's formations that she had lost sight of in the heat of the moment.

But she had regained it and it was still a very viable option if she could aim this last-ditch strike that she was preparing appropriately.

"I remember when you stopped calling me 'Miss'," Enterprise revealed. When Belfast didn't deign a response, she continued, "After Orochi was destroyed, when you found me in the wreckage as I was about to give up. You had been calling for me, had raced over when you saw me, and cried for me while saying how happy you were that I was alive."

"…I remember," Belfast replied, what Enterprise thought to be guardedly.

"At that time, I hadn't been able to understand why someone would do that for me – not someone who I barely knew, and not when I had been ready to give up on myself. Like so many things about that day I forgot about it, but when I was able to remember…it was when you were about to sink. I had been so desperate to keep you from sinking, was calling and crying your name when it looked like I was going to lose you, and when you were saved and you woke up…I was so happy to see you and that was when I was able to get it."

"So you said."

"Well, I did," Enterprise insisted. "I was able to figure out why someone would do that, even for someone as hopeless as me. I had already come to trust you, Bel, depend on you, and, yes, I had been afraid that it was the same way that you think it is and was reminding myself that we would have to part eventually and I had to be careful. Even after my feelings for you began to change later, I wanted to be sure about what they really were. When you nearly sank…I was afraid they were leading me astray without you just as they did with Yorktown and even with the assurances of others I still wanted to consult you about them."

She paused for effect and to give Belfast an opportunity for some input, but when she remained quiet with her back presented, Enterprise chose to keep going forward against it. "It was never just about my feelings. I want to know what you feel, because remembering that day and spending these recent ones with you, I had started to believe that I could understand them because of how related they are to mine. That's why I wanted to talk to you and that's why I can't let you go. I need to hear from you now, not a couple of months. We each nearly died in that timeframe so I can't wait."

Everything prior had been about Enterprise. Belfast had taken every chance to turn it around on the carrier rather than herself, and did so successfully enough for her to have been so sensible and Enterprise so mistaken.

But it was Belfast who ran, Belfast who fled from Enterprise, from Hood, and from anyone who would get in the way of her retreat to this island, and it was Belfast who was trying to flee again without saying anything that could explain why she was acting with such bizarre clumsiness.

And if Enterprise let her, Belfast would just keep running from it rather than confront it.

Belfast still wasn't facing her when she said, "You're right. I'm sorry. I said I made a mistake, but I hadn't explained well enough, did I?"

"No," Enterprise returned. "Does that have anything to do with how you feel?"

"How I feel is what caused me to make it."

"I'm listening, then."

Enterprise felt Belfast's arm relax in her grip, signaling how she would remain to explain, but Enterprise didn't let go, wary of the thought that Belfast would still bolt if given the chance, with the door remaining parted and the cruiser's other hand at the knob.

"I admired you," Belfast confessed. "You had caught my interest, but you gained my admiration. I criticized your lifestyle for how flawed it was but could respect the lengths that you had gone to for the sake of being what everyone needed you to be whether they were those closest to you or those who you may never come to meet. Only a soul of such brilliance could be such a worldly beacon, but it had been severely diminished with how much it had been given to the task, without rest."

"My human soul," Enterprise recited.

"What I wanted to witness in all its beautiful glory, thus I swore myself to you in order to do that. So when I thought that you died…"

Enterprise glanced down, registering movement, and saw Belfast's fingers curling together, a motion that, in this instance, did not have fabric or anything else to grip in security. Only air.

"I thought it to be such a measureless tragedy," the cruiser continued. "Even when you survived and were brought back, you had become so lost, the final tethers to what had linked you so intimately to everything you had fought for on the verge of decay. I could not allow that to happen, not to someone like you, and there's very little else I can say that you don't already know about how far I went to bring you someplace where you could restore your faith in humanity and yourself and where I could assist you the entire time. What I can say now is that during our time here there had been several moments where I may have been…overly assertive into keeping you on this path."

"Like my name?"

"That is one but…not what I was referring to."

Leading Enterprise to think of what Belfast was really referring to, with that demurring dip of her voice: how, she could rightly admit, when she had been wandering, unable to affix herself to the unfamiliar streets or resonate with the crowds, feeling like she would remain adrift until she would be lost to them, only for a warm touch to seize her, to keep her there, as did the equally warm, coy smile that was at the other end.

Even when she was so sure she did not belong, just being able to witness that was enough to rouse the tiny prospect that such a foreign but pleasant thing that could be directed to someone like her meant that there was a modicum of hope that she could belong.

And when she decided that she could, those looks and many others had been something she had come to adore and relish in their exclusivity to her.

"Oh," was all Enterprise said.

"Yes," Belfast confirmed in a similar manner; that neither needed to say anything else, so she moved on. "They were necessary but not wholly professional. There was my admiration…and my guilt."

"Guilt?"

"For having failed you once already."

Orochi, Enterprise deduced, hating how that abominable ship had become such a bane despite its short existence. "I don't blame you for that and you shouldn't blame yourself either. Your efforts were what saved me from that in the end."

"I appreciate that," Belfast thanked, meaning it. "I really do, but we both know that there's guilt that can't be avoided and it was present in my actions, however small. The seriousness of your affliction and our means to tend and alleviate it made keeping tabs on it and other influences difficult."

Enterprise could differentiate it better now: how Belfast would swap between emotional openness and professional camouflage. The transition between them made them so interchangeable, but she was starting to better track the conversions in her vocabulary and what every inflection that she allowed to slip or purposely injected when appropriate.

"And when we succeeded…it was magnificent," Belfast recounted with deliberate leverage to emphasize the moment's significance. "To finally witness what I had wanted to see."

But Enterprise knew that she was holding a lot more back, because even when her eyes had been full of tears, her vision so blurry, she had seen how Belfast had been peering so deeply at her, how she had stared and how she had traced her fingers along her cheeks like she had wanted to take in and immortalize everything that she was looking at so that she would never forget it. 'Magnificent' belonged to an entirely different weight class than when Belfast had called her beautiful.

Such control, such self-suppression, was what made the switch back to professionalism so easy.

"I was distracted by it," Belfast, firm, fitted for 'distracted' rather than something else, like 'blinded', as she continued to criticize herself, keeping her in her place, dedicating more sentences to that. "I knew I had to step back, but when I wanted to confirm your change, I indulged. That was when I knew I was making a mistake, and I had to make efforts to correct it."

The things that Belfast had wanted to say but didn't. Words and actions that she had wanted to express but what she would cut herself off from, even when she had been right in the middle of them. Recalling them and how she hadn't been able to understand them, they had now become the key for Enterprise to map out the labyrinth that was Belfast's thought processes, marking the turns that were meant to mislead and sticking to the ones that would bring her to the heart of what was being kept so guarded.

"Then the Sirens attacked, and I had to act sooner than I wanted."

"You assigned yourself to the cruiser squadron." Enterprise had already been assuming afterwards but was still off in the reasoning. It hadn't been about performing what they were best at, but for Belfast to separate herself from Enterprise.

"It was a test that you needed to confront on your own," Belfast explained. "I couldn't be there to distract you anymore than I already had. When I told you I was leaving, you didn't even hesitate to disregard your current order and come with me."

Bringing back what she believed they've already established when it came to choosing her over duty, thinking that having convinced Enterprise of it previously would work in her favor here.

"It was the right choice," she thus pushed, the carrier assenting to it important. "You agree, don't you?"

Enterprise didn't refute it. "I agree."

"But then there was Purifier…"

There, Enterprise identified where her chance was in Belfast's hesitancy and the way she shifted, albeit subtly, that Enterprise would've missed if she wasn't holding onto her. It told her how much the other woman wished to be without this imperfection that was a distraction to her contemplations and that let her know how Belfast remained so unsecure here.

"I am not infallible," Belfast then said, a line that did not sound like what she perfected at all but something she may be borrowing and improvising from there. "I had nearly been killed and before that I saw Purifier with that cube. Waking up in that room with it fresh in my mind, I had been terrified about the how I may've failed again, that you had been taken, so when I saw you at my side…"

She was shaking. When Enterprise glanced down, sight proved to come up short in making it out, but she could feel the tiny tremors that were traveling down Belfast's limb.

"I was overjoyed," Belfast described in the most honest, most open way that Enterprise had heard yet from her today, and that trembling may not be confined to her body. "You hadn't needed to say anything, just you being there at my side and to welcome me back…"

She collected herself, Enterprise feeling the tremors subsiding.

"I became thoughtless," Belfast suddenly turned around to enact heavy-handed and sloppy suppression. "I used the situation to monopolize you without thinking of what it may cause or what it already may've done until I heard about the recall. Once I learned about it, I knew we were both compromised. This retreat of ours was no longer benefiting but imperiling what we've accomplished. To prevent it from getting worse, I had to separate us."

"So you left," Enterprise said judgmentally.

"I regret that it came to that," Belfast admitted. "But the fault is mine, Enterprise, not yours, for it coming to that point but it was the best way."

"Right," she replied. "Sure it was. For you."

A small shock traveled down Belfast's arm. "What?"

"I don't believe it, Bel."

She had been using the same strategy: buying time, framing the narrative that she wanted by using what she had already prepared and settled on earlier, leading Enterprise on, getting her to follow her, and when Belfast came to this moment, right here, then she would at that point find a way to work around it with her total control.

But Enterprise wouldn't fall for it here, now that she could see what ploy that Belfast had come up with.

Blame me, let me go, and leave me.

All so that she could spare herself the confrontation that she'd been trying to avoid.

"You hadn't monopolized me," Enterprise declared, and knew that her most effective weapon to use to prove it was the period of time that Belfast had no sort of management over. "Bel, when I had been mourning you, it wasn't just because of you getting hurt. It was because I felt an important part of my life had become lost but only a part. If I had really become so dependent on you, then it would've been like Yorktown all over again. When I lost her, I felt like I had nothing. But if she had remained, I would've still had nothing."

Even if Yorktown had been able to remain at her side, Enterprise would still not have had anything beyond her. The world would've remained the violent, conflict-filled place that it was, and Yorktown was just someone who she could use to keep looking away from it. Not only had she never been able to find any meaning in it because of that, but she had never been able to understand the very sister who she looked up to.

"Hornet helped me understand that when I was finally able to talk to her again, and that's why I know it was different with you. When you were injured, I could still recognize the world that you helped me see."

"If you could, then you should've been able to return to Eagle Union," Belfast cut in.

"No, I couldn't, because of how important you were to me."

"You're not making sense."

It was a break in Belfast's composure, and Enterprise felt her try and pull away, giving away how much she hadn't and didn't want to do this. "Bel, if you really want to act for my sake then, please, listen!"

The plea worked, the fight giving out instantly in the cruiser with how she suddenly stopped.

"You were right when you said that you needed to step away so that I can really see what I've come to find in this world again," Enterprise said, hoping that would placate her further. "You were right, and it was because you did that that I was able to do exactly that. I felt pride in my duty and even joy to fight alongside those I went to battle with, the worth in them and myself just like I already said, but what made me able to that was because I had something for myself, too."

Belfast didn't ask what that was, and Enterprise suspected that she was afraid to, because of how she knew what it was.

Enterprise wasn't going to disappoint her. "It was you, Bel. The world had become bright to me, but you made it brighter. What I can do now, I can do better knowing that you're in it, even when we're apart. That never became clearer to me than when you were nearly taken from it, when I had thought that if you weren't going to be around then I didn't want to be, either." She felt her stiffen, could predict that Belfast would use this to interrupt, so she immediately went on with, "It didn't invalidate everything, but it made it darker, and the reason why I hadn't been able to move on afterwards was because of how I wanted to be sure of just how much you meant to me.

"Others guided me to that – Hornet, George, Hood, and everyone else I had the pleasure to meet thanks to you – and you waking up proved it to me. Once you did, I was able to step away, do what I had to, because you were there for me to return to. I knew I would still have to return to Eagle Union, and I was prepared to, but not before I could be sure about one last thing. As for what that was...I wanted to know if you feel the same."

Enterprise stared hard at the back of Belfast's head, at the center of the bow that was affixed there, as she waited for her answer.

It came tentatively faint. "Enterprise…" Belfast's very breath proved to be louder, the rise and fall of her shoulders telling. "I'm sorry but…you're mistaken… What you think you feel…what you think I may feel…" The hand that Enterprise had trapped squeezed into a shaking fist. "…They're feelings that are…confused… For both our sakes…please…let me go…"

This woman… Enterprise mentally sighed, her grip loosening around her wrist.

She can really be so infuriating.

"Okay," Enterprise said. "Alright, I will."

"Thank you…" Belfast breathed out, drained by the absolute relief that carried them.

But Enterprise didn't let go. "I want you to do something in return."

"…What would that be?"

"I want you to turn around, look at me, and say that again."

The cruiser tensed, Enterprise wondering if she would choose to run instead, but that wasn't what she did. Instead, the carrier felt her arm slacken and when she finally let go of it, it dropped back to Belfast's side before slowly coming to her front as she straightened, releasing the door so that the other could join it by the time she did turn around to face Enterprise.

She worked fast, as expected of her when Enterprise saw her clean features, all tidied up and expressionless, with her eyes staring blankly at her.

Enterprise waited.

"I-it…"

It was a tiny hitch – a sudden hike of the first letter of the word Belfast was trying to make that rippled across her polished face. She broke off abruptly, purging the imperfections, and she tried again.

"It…" Her lip trembled, her teeth biting down on it to steady it, and Belfast tried to keep going. "It's…" A spot at her one cheek twitched, and a glistening sheen started to come over her eyes. "It's n-not…"

Then she gasped when tears, just two, broke through and slipped down her cheeks.

Both stood there, and it was Enterprise who moved first, stepping close, and Belfast stepped back, quickly reaching behind her, but instead of the knob her searching hand hit the door itself, accidentally closing it. She immediately dropped and seized her original target, turning it-

Enterprise's palm quickly came and placed itself upon surface of the door next to Belfast's head, keeping it closed.

The cruiser's face jumped up towards Enterprise's, the trailing tears being flung from her cheeks by the action, but Enterprise could see that there were more that were taking the chance to break free and travel down the paths they made. She leaned down towards Belfast, as if to inspect them closer, and the maid's back became pressed against the door, unable to go further.

Enterprise could see how huge Belfast's eyes had become and the panic searching that they were making to try and find the way out of this but then she made the slight tilt of her head in so that her nose would miss Belfast's, breaking away from them, so that she could come a bit closer.

With her lips a touch away from Belfast's, Enterprise whispered, "I love you."

There was no thinking about it, no question about it, not anymore, and so she kissed her.

It wasn't much, just her lips pressing against Belfast's, but Enterprise felt her knees go instantly weak at how warm and sweet they were, something detonating in her head to clear all thought and leave only sensation such as how they meshed together, amazed at the feeling of how they were always meant to.

She thought she had to do more, but Enterprise didn't know what. This wasn't something she had done before. This was a kiss, her first kiss.

She also had to consider that she may need to brace herself when, at any second, she would suddenly be thrown across the room once Belfast recovered.

But Belfast didn't seem inclined to do anything other than stand there, immobile, and what got Enterprise to break the kiss and pull away was when she tasted too many salty droplets at her lips.

Belfast's eyes remained wide and were fixed upon Enterprise. The surprise was still there, but the various, chaotic emotions that had been darting around randomly were muted. Her lips were slightly pursed, stuck, and tears were passing by the corners.

She suddenly sniffed, blinking her eyes before bringing a hand to wipe them, and she exhaled shakily, almost like a sob, with Enterprise afraid she was going to suddenly break down. But the cruiser was already stepping over to Enterprise before removing her hand from glassy eyes, fixing them back onto Enterprise's while the shaking fingers of her one hand and, slowly, the other, came up to touch Enterprise's face.

Then she was guiding Enterprise back and meeting her halfway to kiss her

Their lips came together again and Belfast leaned further against Enterprise, bringing their bodies together, and Enterprise was illuminated to another step she could do when Belfast's hands came away from her cheeks so that she could snake her arms around her neck, the carrier guiding hers beneath the cruiser's shoulders, going around her back, so that she could do her part to keep them tightly wound together.

They broke apart after several seconds, Belfast drifting away, with Enterprise remaining stuck, her inexperience leaving it to Belfast to keep her face in a hover centimeters from Enterprise's, the Eagle girl witnessing a different shine in Belfast's blue eyes, a slight curve of her lip.

Then the cruiser came back, their lips meeting a third time, and she deepened this kiss.

A different kind of detonation occurred within Enterprise, sending lightning racing up and down between her brain and somewhere lower that sparked an intense warmth that began to spread through her. She had made an involuntary noise, muffled as it was, making her both embarrassed and afraid that Belfast would misinterpret it as something she didn't want, and to make up for it her one arm dropped lower, giving her a hold around the cruiser's waist as well as her back, the added securement meant to convince Belfast that she wanted her to remain.

Although what they were doing was something she was becoming uncertain about, rational thought was becoming a much harder thing for Enterprise to keep. Strands of Belfast's hair were caressing her face, her body rubbing against hers, and the taste, scent, and breath of Belfast stole thought and triggered instinct, and Enterprise wanted to hope that that was enough to guide her inexperienced efforts to answer Belfast's.

When they broke apart again, Enterprise was left panting, her face flushed and smoldering, but wanting for more.

Breathe, a not-rational thought occurred to try and fix this annoying problem of oxygen retention that was getting in the way. Breathe through your nose.

Enterprise regained sight of Belfast and saw that she didn't seem to be fairing any better, but the carrier experienced additional bolts of thrill running through her, striking randomly, inciting what was starting to be a full-on blaze within her when she saw the Royal Navy's head maid in such a breathless state, with such a colorful face, a wet shine over her lips, and it all being Enterprise who was the culprit.

Enterprise thought she could make a spark of an epiphany from Belfast, the timing making her think that maybe Belfast had come to the same brilliant idea to fix the breathing problem, and them meeting in the middle was for them to try it out when they kissed again.

The instinctual takeover that was occurring emboldened Enterprise to take whatever action she could to get more of Belfast. Her one hand slid from her back to glide along the curve of her waist, irresistibly tantalizing, while she also brushed her other through Belfast's hair, toying with her bow, and even tugging on the tightly bound strands of hair that made up her braid. She could feel Belfast's performing her own tour through her lengths, with mirrored tugs inciting more of these hot, thrilling jolts that egged her on.

Her gloves and how they kept her from feeling everything caused her to blindly tug and pull them off, dropping them somewhere that she didn't care. At her head, Belfast knocked aside her cap.

They were interrupted when Enterprise felt the back of her legs bumping into something, her weakened knees leading her to drop back onto whatever it was, and it turned out to be the room's bed when her back impacted the mattress, earning a grunt not so much from landing on it but when Belfast landed on her immediately after, the cruiser having been dragged down with her.

Seeking to regain her bearings, Enterprise had to contend with how the room spun, her hazy mind making it extremely difficult to try and bring it to a halt, as if she were drunk. Such efforts proved to be futile, she abandoning it so that she could instead focus on how Belfast was lying on top of her, the cruiser's arms still loosely around her neck, her head at her shoulder, with Enterprise unable to see but hear and feel the hot breaths that were coming from her – fixed points for Enterprise's attention while the rest of the room and the world it belonged in went into obscurity.

At this point, she was on fire, every inch of her scorching with this overwhelming heat that seemed to weaken her enough to be glad of the support of the mattress while at the same time urging her on to do…more to satisfy it. Her heart was beating in her chest, like it was about to burst, contributing further to her breathlessness, but as she gasped, her lips and tongue were broadcasting a great…thirst that demanded to be satiated.

The source of these afflictions – and their relief – was from the weight that lay on her, how Belfast's skirt and legs were entwined with her own, her chest against hers, and Enterprise's own touch around her doing something to her that she could not understand and was growing increasingly concerned with. She was hot, but also itchy, the heavy fabric of her coat irritating her, her tie oppressively tight, with her wanting them gone, but somehow she knew that removing them was not going to be enough.

As inebriated as she was becoming, uncertainty began to worm its way through Enterprise's heart, trying to convey caution that she should slow down, stop, before something happened.

But then Belfast lifted her head, coming to raise above her, and Enterprise could see how her hair and ornaments were askew, the skin of her face possessed of a redness that encroached upon her chest that shrunk and expanded with her heavy breathing, her palms at either side of Enterprise to keep her steady.

Through her muddled senses Enterprise could see the tears brimming in her eyes that were above a smile that was soft, warm, and…loving, for that was what it had to be.

In case that wasn't enough, Belfast then tearfully whispered, "I love you, too, Enterprise."

Still on her back, Enterprise reached up, her one hand cupping Belfast's smooth, hot cheek, unable to think of anything else after that except for one thing.

Yes, she really did love her.

Belfast weakened her arms, lowering down, and Enterprise used her hand on her cheek to tilt her head with her own so that they could meet in yet another perfect kiss.

She loved her so much.

---

It had nothing to do with fighting, but it was just as instinctive, just as natural to them.

To kiss, to touch, to love.

Not guided by their weapons, nor their duty, it was their human hearts and the passion that overflowed their mortal forms that guided them to promised euphoria that could only be achieved by such an ultimate exchange of giving and taking in equal, total measure.

The exchanging of breaths that caused their skin to blaze, leading them to shed the final barriers that were between them and toss them aside so that they may trace and leave their marks upon each other, alleviating them albeit temporarily. Looks were passed, silent questions asked, with permission instantly given by the mutual adoration that was their shared answer, turning it into a formality that they got through just as quickly, the last of their inhibitions incinerated.

All that was left was these desires in their hearts, neglected since the very onset of their births to fulfill the mission that had been their meaning, but while others had gone to find their own fulfillment, they had remained dedicated to their assistance of those others in what ways they could. It was a miracle that their paths had crossed, that events would align to bring them together, but it was that selflessness of theirs that had kept them at a distance, their kindred spirits a source of wariness rather than comfort, until they had each nearly lost the other not once but twice.

To have held and been divided even still by their indecisiveness, finally setting it aside left them entirely under the control of their want to be so selfish for once in their long, hazardous lives. What they were now exposed to and what they had nearly lost without ever experiencing purged any conscious thought that wasn't dedicated to this moment.

The recognition of how this moment would have to pass eventually wasn't excluded, but it drove them to lose themselves further into each other, to delay that inevitably with each touch and kiss, to forget about it entirely and replace it with the intimate knowledge that they sought to memorize about the other, the burning passion that threatened to melt their thoughts and bodies and what they now wanted to reach to its climax for the chance of it melding them together.

All for the chance that parts of them could be joined together and never be separated.

They didn't notice when it happened. For Enterprise, she was engrossed in the arch made in Belfast's back, feeling for herself how the cruiser's sensual writhing began to seize, as if she was on the verge of breaking, and what the carrier wanted to make happen as she pulled her tight while her fingers pressed, finally bringing Belfast over the edge but her keening that Enterprise silenced with her mouth seeking hers, wanting not just to undo her but suffocate her with her absolute love for her, the shakes and twitching of her collapsing body done in silence, her euphoric cries what Enterprise swallowed into silence.

As Enterprise closed her eyes to engross herself in this instinctive domination, blue light flared beneath her lids, coming in time with another surge of the pleasurable wave that left Belfast senseless and missing it. It would pass by the time Enterprise would open them again, it being normal lavenders that would admire the aftermath of what she had done and what would be met by the exhausted but contented blues of her lover.

Neither would know what had just occurred and that was going to be how it would remain for some time, as they once again resumed the pursuits of wishes that had been unknowingly granted.

---

How fascinating.

As the witness to every single one of this world's events, Observer had not missed this one. Though it was an occurrence that was but fleeting in this simulation's real time, the fluctuations that Observer had detected in that singular stream of data warranted her attention and investigation.

Before her was the transforming directory of another subject's nexus, she already making the proper recordings of the edits and reformations of the coded lines that consisted of the makeup of Belfast. While the evolutionary shift of yet another subject warranted the proper data keeping, that was standard protocol. What was of interest to Observer was what she was able to focus on once she had gotten that out of the way.

"And that would be…" Observer lifted a finger and pointed. "…Right here."

The display magnified at the tiny surface where she had singled out one particular data segment within the lines of coding that made up several layers of the subject's nexus. Although at first appearing exactly like every single other line, when the magnification increased it revealed the abnormality that Observer had detected. The Siren wove her fingers together and placed her chin atop the back of them, deciding that this pose was the one that she should adopt to examine the tiny packet of coding that was exposed.

Although Belfast's data clusters had taken it into their sequence, displaying almost perfect integration, it had not developed from her. Its compatibility was without question, but it was foreign code, and while it did look like it could soon integrate entirely into the host's directory, that wasn't what it was doing. Instead, the insignificant cluster had bound itself in such a way that put it just off from the sequence. And yet, as the host's coding streamed right along, a tiny portion was redirected, feeding directly into the foreign code.

It was leeching data from the host and although it was much too early to tell, Observer was already calculating hypothesizes of what this could end up resulting.

While that was interesting in itself, what Observer really wanted to know was the source of this foreign data.

She magnified the visual again so as best to interpret what she could of the foreign code's makeup, trying to establish a match at what little she could acquire and…

Observer's eyes actually widened, however slightly. Oh.

She ran the appropriate checks in mere microseconds to cover the potential for error, and though she was able to comprehend the modification that was made to it, there was no mistake about it.

Observer's brows lowered but her lips began to stretch instead. "What are the odds of that?"

None that had been within her expectations.

She shook, a giggle emitting from her, a giggle that became a laugh, but her chin remained steady on her fingers even as her tentacles made the necessary convulsions to transmit how delightful this development was.

"So, Project Orochi may still have met some success after all," Observer declared once she finished, she herself concurring that hilarity really was appropriate to describe what would've been but what had now been proven to not be an inconceivable notion. "But what should we call this? This…" She tilted her head, observing the foreign cluster, and then grinned. "Why not call it what it is? This little Anomaly."

She leaned back in her throne, the motion in time with her perception widening to encompass the simulation in its entirety. Keeping her palms together, her fingers made slow, quiet clapping as a visible sign of the deliberation she was performing.

"I suppose this world can last for a while longer," she decided.

Between the evolution of the Key and the existence of this Anomaly, she couldn't let these rare opportunities go without further observations now, could she? She did need to begin setting a new stage but that wasn't going to be difficult.

Observer ceased her clapping, palms and fingers sealed together in front of her. Then she slowly pulled them apart.

From between her separating palms, one, two, three, four cubes came into existence. Black and pulsing with violet energies, Observer shifted and turned her palms up, as if she was getting ready to juggle the black cubes that came to form a hovering arch in front of her.

Conflict was very easily created, and she had four opportunities right here. Looking at the cube hovering to her right, she wondered if this current Bismarck iteration could really resist the self-sacrificing tendencies that had claimed so many of her previous iterations.

"Given how that one is evolving though," Observer mused, going one higher, "maybe I should start with Algérie. Her zealotry and that of her followers may prove to be far more reliable than Iron Blood, given the current conditions." Peace was never for all, only for some, and Observer was predicting that those remnants of Vichya Dominion, so wrought with betrayal from Royal Navy and Iris Libre, may find Iron Blood's actions to be laced with the same.

"Or…" Observer started going to the left, to the third cube. "Sovetskya Soyuz and the Northern Parliament. Bereft of the answers that their iterations of the primary timelines believe they've found, perhaps they would be willing to accept a substitute so as to remain cleverer than everyone else."

But those options would take time to not only develop but for her to calculate the methods to develop them properly. While Observer did have time, she did want a plan that she could execute in a more immediate fashion.

"Ah, but of course…" Observer made a flicking motion with her right hand, sending three of the cubes to float away and disappear somewhere to the side, leaving behind the fourth that was hovering over her left hand. "The tried and true."

Her right joining her left so that she could hold and admire her selection, Observer noted something go out of turn within her construction; an irregular tempo of some part of her inner workings. It was there and gone before she thought to run a query and when she did anyway, she found nothing out of the ordinary. Everything remained optimal.

However, as she returned to the cube and thought of how she was going to proceed, an irregular thought came to her.

This might turn out to be fun.

Observer contemplated that, thinking of not only what had gone beyond her expectations during her observations of this simulation, but how she now had to establish entirely new scenarios based on predictions that would not be so absolute. Project Orochi had outcomes that were only in theories, but the experiment to reach them had been preordained with what was thought to be at the highest percentile.

But their experiment to test their hypothesis had gone completely outside the prediction models, and rather than stop here, discard it, and start again, she was choosing to continue with these uncertainties and anomalies.

She decided that fun was an acceptable way to designate it.

"And it's what we strive for after all," she said. "For the future of humanity."

Who knows – and Observer didn't know -, maybe it really would be one of these expendable simulations that would uncover the future that they were trying to find.

"But we're getting optimistic," Observer chided, not that the entire goal of the Sirens wasn't optimistic to begin with – and, logically, can be considered to not even be that with how long it's been and how many simulations they had gone through with not a one succeeding.

She had a lot of work to do, and at some point she probably should get around to uploading Purifier into another unit.

…Well, that part could wait. She wasn't required at the moment.

Light suddenly illuminated a space behind Observer, her throne rotating around to face towards it, with her soon looking up.

"And would this be intuition?" she next considered, eyeing the pair of tubes and the individuals floating within them.

Another illogical question she purposely aired. Intuition had nothing to do with this decision to preserve these particular tools. They were useful, and leaving them to perish would've been such a waste when there had been the odds – however slight - that they would serve a future purpose in this simulation.

"Rejoice, Akagi," Observer spoke to one of the tubes as she held out the black cube towards it, smiling cruelly. "This is perfectly suitable for you and that false sister of yours."