A droplet of blood stained her cheek as dust kicked into her eyes. Rounds fired off and orders rang back and forth but it seemed in vein, they had no escape. Their shuttle had blown and the pilot along with it.
She pulled out her drone and sent it off to cause some chaos before she drew her SMG and loosed a volley of rounds at nothing in particular. One landed and ripped through the poorly equipped ministry levy, the scarlet spray staining the soldier stood at his shoulder.
She ducked behind a mound of rubble as Lara fired round after round overhead. It was an opportunity.
Her quickened breath fluttered as she stumbled away from the frontline. Three, four, five rounds fired and skimmed around her, one even leaving a hole in her loose white jacket. She vaulted over a final hurdle but caught her ankle on a jutting metal pole, her balance dragged behind her as she tumbled over and landed with a thick thud.
"Iris!" Ade shouted as she reached a hand out. She took it and the young girl helped drag her from the line of fire.
She collapsed heavily behind some firm cover before pulling a tangle of long blonde hair from her face and forming it into an impromptu bun with the help of a long metal stick scavenged from the rubble.
"Are you okay?" She asked. Her eyes fell not to the girl but to Garrison who still had yet to awaken from his sedatives.
"I'm fine." Ade answered as she spat away the blood that pooled behind her lip. Serah leant over the girl and slightly adjusted her eyepatch before moving onto more serious matters.
"Reese?" She called out into her comm. He answered quickly though the sounds of gunfire didn't let up.
"Are we ready?" He shouted between pained grunts. She found him across the battlefield, he fought a melee against four men as he talked.
"Yeah. It's spooling up!" She answered after taking a couple of potshots at the men he struggled against. She managed to wing one but was little use beyond that.
"How long?" Lara called out over her own comm.
"Maybe a couple of minutes?"
She threw out a small metal canister and a thick cloud of smoke erupted from within, covering the area around the generator in an opaque cover.
The fighting grew thicker as she crawled forth, ducking bullets and explosions. It seemed an endless stream of men flooded in along the fresh dawnlight. The fuller the day grew; the thicker the bastards swarmed.
Men posed little problem; giants, on the other hand?
A hulking metal beast, probably fifty meters tall and half as broad, ripped the roof from the hangar and readied a volley of missiles; seemingly unbothered by the presence of its own troops.
She had never seen anything like it. Bipedal, but not made in the image of man - more akin to a Cthulhu with its mass of spiraling mechanical tentacles and appendages. Two main arms held the hangar ceiling aloft while twenty or thirty smaller limbs descended into the ground around them. One landed close enough to threaten Serah with a new haircut, but she managed to duck away before any harm could come.
It structured itself in the floor and turned rigid before twisting around to reveal a door, and the man stood within.
He wasted no time on her confusion and blared out his first volley of bullets, two of which struck her and one which only glanced. It hurt, as a bullet is wont to do but she pulled her own rifle and returned his fire in kind. Had he been wearing an SBA like her he may have even survived the half dozen rounds that found and tore through his flesh. One fractured on his vest and another nearly bounded back to Serah after clinging off of his helmet but it was all sufficient to drop him.
Desperate breaths and sputtering coughs erupted as she fell back to her knees. She checked herself over and found two holes in her clothes, one just below her collarbone and a more jagged tear across her calf. The bullets didn't penetrate but bruising spread like spilt ink on paper.
She collected herself and crawled onwards into the smoking veil around the Oblivion generator.
"Eighty-three percent!" She breathlessly reported upon reaching her tablet. She turned to her wrist device and tumbled through settings until her drone reappeared behind her, covered in scorch marks and bullet residue. It dropped low behind her and four metal arms pronged out into a large "x". A sheet of metal tumbled out and filled the shape, creating a temporary wall to her back as she fiddled with Oblivion.
She heard rapid footfalls to her back and whirled around, rifle in hand, to meet them. It was Lara, come to give her cover. She dragged Garrison along behind her as she used her side arm wildly against the dozen soldiers marching on her. Ade followed close behind with her head held low.
"Give me a gun!" Ade begged as she collapsed behind Serah's temporary wall. Her request was met with apprehensive looks between the two other women but Serah quickly made up her mind. She beckoned for Lara to hand over her side arm which she did quickly before peaking over the wall and loosing a couple of heavy rounds.
"Defence only." Serah ordered as she pressed the pistol into Ade's hands. "A last resort." She continued before pushing Ade lower to the ground.
"Sash?" Lara called, her voice thick with panic. She didn't need to ask what had the sergeant so worried, she simply needed to look up.
The colossal titan class mech leered down at them through an eyeless gaze as it prepared its final volley. Enough missiles lifted from what could be its chest to blanket a small city. At least fifty spooled and ignited, pointing directly at the remnants of Raptor squad. The giant tore what remained of the hangar away as the roof crumbled down on them.
"Serah!" Lara shouted, drawing back her wrapped attention from the beast. Her glowing golden eyes pierced deep into Serah's own.
"What do we do?" The young woman asked.
Serah didn't know. What was there that could be done against such a demonic creation? They might have used explosives against it but they had all gone up in smoke along with Daphi. Oblivion would disable it, but it wasn't ready.
"Ninety-three percent." She mumbled to herself as her eyes drifted for purchase, clinging to nothing. She realised that her adrenaline was wearing off, her chest began to burn where the bullet had landed and she felt a warm droplet of blood run down her calf where the bullet had managed to cut away at the surface of her flesh.
'Oblivion isn't ready. It won't self sustain until it reaches full power.' She thought to herself. 'It won't self sustain if its blown up either.' A little voice reminded her.
"Get low and disable your eyes." Serah ordered. She scrambled to the device and began the detonation sequence as golden eyes turned blue.
"Reese!" Lara signalled. "Get here, we're detonating."
An explosion rang and a dozen men touched the sky as her husband limped back to her. Another explosion ran him forth with a greater speed than he had intended, or expected, and he crashed hard and gracelessly beside Serah.
"Are you okay?" He asked as he scrambled to one knee.
"Im okay, get low." Serah answered. She shuffled over to Ade and crawled atop of her in hopes of shielding her from what was to come. Reese did the same for her and Lara huddled over Garrison to their side, braced for an explosion.
The titan closed in. It drowned out the fledgling dawn and cast a deep shadow across the exposed hangar. A torrent of destruction readied to blanket the Earth, or what little of the Earth mattered at this moment. Soldiers ran from the field and hid away within the steel tendrils with the hope their abominable protection would shield them from the oncoming little apocalypse.
Oblivion wasn't ready, but it was enough. There was no explosion, no great bubble of lightning. The EMP detonated and coursed like a disease through the veins of Styx. It was seconds before the first burst rang out. Like nails on a whiteboard, it screeched invisibly though the air around them. It crackled the air and balls of invisible static formed and dragged dust into themselves as they flew out like arrows towards the nearest electronics.
A dozen, or a maybe million orbs of dust slaughtered the steel titan.
They were too slow. A flurry of explosives slid from their casings and fell limply to the ground, a final strike for the now dead beast. Flame coated the battlefield as the air filled with energy and chaos. The slim metal sheet Serah had used for protection proved some use, though not nearly enough. It parted the worst of the flames, though the shockwave knocked it over atop of them. Reese held it to his back as he remained hunched over her. The slope allowed some more of the relentless inferno to pass over them but it was clear by the smell of seared flesh and burnt cloth that he hadn't come away unscathed.
Her ears rang, even through the protectors she wore. The worst of it wasn't the heat or the fear, it was the shockwave. It rattled her skull and she bit down so hard she cracked a tooth. The roar faded and the men died until all that remained was the ringing and breathing. Ade mumbled something, but Serah couldn't hear. She wasn't quite dazed, more in disbelief; she was alive and in all important ways, unharmed.
She ran a hand behind her and felt Reese breathing heavily atop of her. She stroked his arm almost without realising until he moved from her and stood tall. She turned to join him as he reached an arm out to help her up. She took it but didn't dare put too much weight onto him.
"Are you okay?" She asked as she looked him over. He didn't reply, instead smiling and pulling his rifle back.
'That's not a good sign' Serah knew. Reese never lied to her, he would have said so if he was okay, but he said nothing. He must have been worse than he could let her see.
"Reese?" She questioned. He just nodded behind her, signaling to Ade and Lara who still hadn't rose.
She ran over to them and checked Lara over first. Her arm was scorched and a mess of her hair had burnt off but she was otherwise unharmed. Serah wiped away a layer of black that caked the right side of her face before applying a burn salve to her arm.
"I'm okay, Sash." Lara dreamily said. The girl sat up and shook the daze from her head. She rubbed the side of her face but flinched away upon feeling a burn mark.
"I've got bad news, Sparks." Serah smiled as she pulled the scorched hair from the girls face. "It's time for a new haircut."
Lara felt the right side of her head, where a snow white mane had been there was now simply skin. A few clumps remained but not nearly enough to salvage.
"Fuck." Lara groaned as she rested her head against the metal cover they had huddled behind.
"OW!" She yelped as she burned her head, yet again, on the near molten metal. She violently rubbed her head and snached away Serah burn balm.
"It's not that bad." Ade consoled.
"Yeah, shave the rest and get back with the marines." Reese teased, to which a small rock thunked against his chest. Serah laughed before returning her eyes to Lara. She took her head in her hands and angled her around like she was inspecting a vase for cracks. When she found no trace of an additional wound, she released her with a gentle kiss on the forehead.
"Don't worry, I'll figure out something to do with it." Serah laughed.
Ade's inspection was quick, she burst the stitch below her missing eye but no damage had been sustained otherwise.
"It was supposed to be safer with us." Serah bemoaned. "I'm so sorry, Ade."
"Don't worry." Ade simply replied in a nearly emotionless tone. "If I had stayed behind, she might have come directly for me. This was still the right call. Besides, we completed the mission; right?"
"I don't know that we have." Serah admitted.
"What?" Reese questioned. He had been scanning the battlefield for survivors but his attention quickly fell to Serah after that.
"It wasn't fully charged." Serah explained. "We had to detonate early."
"What does that mean?" He asked.
He didn't get an answer before the great hulking Titan class collapsed down, crushing the scorched remains of the battlefield. It did no more harm than kicking up dust and crushing corpses but the thunderous crash pushed Raptor into fight or flight, believing for a moment that the eldritch machine yet lived.
It didn't, and they all came to lower their weapons as Reese repeated the question.
"A car has an alternator, it charges the battery as it drives but it needs a kickstart if it goes completely flat." Serah began. "Oblivion uses its own power to kickstart the generators below the walls, at which point the process continues for three days before running out of power. It takes ninety-percent charge to detonate and ten-percent to kickstart the generators. We detonated at ninety-three-percent. It may start one or two generators but not nearly enough to self-sustain."
"So how long did we buy?" Lara cautiously asked.
"Maybe... Eight hours?"
"Are you kidding me?" Lara exploded. "Arch fucking died for eight hours!"
"Archi died because he had orders." Reese coldly interjected. "Soldiers die, Lara. It's not Serah's fault, don't take it out on her." He stepped in between the two women as he spoke with cold command with steel in his eyes that he hoped would hide how he really felt.
She grumbled and grunted before throwing an arm in the air and walking away from them in a huff.
"Where are you going?" Serah called out with a shaky voice.
"To signal a fucking pick up!" Lara angrily shouted back as she pulled a flare from her pack and held it out through the cracked wall facing the central tower.
Serah's eyes fell to Reese, who stood in front of her facing Lara. She saw what he had been hiding. The back of his shirt had been torn off revealing his well muscled, though heavily burnt back. A line traced from his broad shoulders all the way down to the low end of his spine where he had blocked the inferno from gripping her.
"Fucks sake, Reese!" She called as she ran over to him.
"What? I didn't say anything wrong!" He defensively replied. He began to spin as to meet her face to face but she held his shoulder forward, stopping him from looking at her.
"Why hide this?" She angrily questioned as she started to painful clean out the burns.
"I didn't want you to worry, it looks worse than it is." He groaned as he flinched away from the burning disinfectant spray.
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"You can't see it!" She pointed out, she imagined for a split second the massive - and thoroughly inflexible - man going through the contortionism required to glimpse his own back.
She span him around with a forceful pull and looked angrily into his eyes.
"I am your medic." She seethed. "Not your wife, not somebody to be protected from worry. You get hurt, I patch it up. Simple. You do not fucking hide third degree burns! What if you got an infection? What if it was worse than you thought?" She demanded as she unleashed a flurry of light blows against his belly.
"Okay." He whispered, grabbing her hands in one of his and holding them still. "I'm sorry."
"Fuck off." She groaned, noticing him puff out his chest and stand closer over her. She stepped back from him and looked him up and down. "Anything else you're hiding? Ya' get stabbed sixteen times in the fight, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?" She made no attempt to hide her genuine anger and she had no interest in him deflecting her concern with flirtation. He sighed and pointed to his right arm as it dangled limply down.
"Oh, shit of course!" Serah realised. "Ade! Pass me my bag, please darling."
Adeladia walked over with a hollow face and an empty eye. She handed the bag over and disappeared off to find Lara.
"She's worrying me." Serah admitted after the girl left earshot.
"She lost an eye, and a friend." Reese pointed out. "Let Lara talk to her, she tends to be good with that kinda thing."
Serah didn't reply, she didn't even look at him. She made a show of how annoyed she was at him as she roughly pulled Reese's limp arm up and anchored it within her own arm. She pulled down the black leather glove from his elbow and rolled it down to her chest, revealing the metallic struts and pipes that made up his prosthetic. She adjusted the outer layer with her first tool and held her other tool in her mouth.
"Want me to hold that?" Reese offered as he raised his other hand to pluck the tool from her lips. She smacked him away, shot him a dirty glance and continued her work with a furrowed brow and scrunched nose. The more she worked and the deeper into the mechanism she got, the more aware she became that he was stood inches from her. It didn't seem to bother him, he just glanced around the room passively searching for threats. It pissed her off even more and she got even rougher with her repairs.
'I'm close enough to smell, and he doesn't even notice.' She silently seethed.
The top plate finally fell away, exposing the inner mechanism that made up his bicep. She moved aside some of the main systems and exposed the innermost section, the power core. A small glowing green ball nestled behind wires and pumps. It had cracked during the EMP and needed replacing.
"The power core's fucked." She grumbled.
"If that's gone, then surely the wrist motor seized too." Reese questioned.
"One thing at a time."
She pulled a fresh core from her pack, it glowed a much deeper more vibrant green than the broken one within his arm. She silently stored it on Reese's carrier like he was just some shelf. He looked at her with a confused smile but she didn't return the gesture. She twisted her tool around his bicep as she attempted to extract the broken core. She failed repeatedly until she grew so frustrated, she span around and pulled his arm straight under her armpit as she nestled her back against his chest.
"You okay there?" Reese awkwardly questioned.
"I can't get at it." She answered, her tone still angered. In truth, she probably could have had she tried; but she wouldn't admit it. She pressed herself against him and pretended not to notice she was doing so as she grumbled and grunted the core from its slot.
Serah raised her tool hand from his arm.
"Pass me the core." She demanded. He did, plucking it from his chest plate and placing it in her hand though she noticed he did so in a much slower motion than was needed. He seemed to wrap his arm around her entirely before handing it over and she noticed him almost imperceptibly trace his middle finger over her figure as he returned his arm to his side. She didn't mention it and simply turned to his wrist; he was right, it had seized. She tooled away as she bent forward slightly to reach it. She released the tension in the joint and, just as it seemed Reese was starting to lean into her, she stood straight and walked away.
"There." She said. There was a smugness in her smile that she hid behind her hair as her voice carried the same anger it had earlier.
Reese span his hand and stretched it out. He splayed the fingers and adjusted his arm before letting off a couple of practice punches.
"Good as new. Thanks Sash." He innocently said with a toothy smile. It pissed her off even more, she was sure he noticed her, but now it seemed he had no idea.
"Fuck off." She grumbled, though with much less venom.
The shuttle arrived shortly and the remainders of the squad piled in. They didn't bring the body, or what little remained of a body. It was a short, but tense flight. Serah looked out the window and saw hundreds of ministry aircraft collapsing from the sky and an army of Titans keeled over in the dirt. She saw men scurry away like rats and mech infantry freeze in place. The dials and digits within the craft were completely down but she could see with her own eyes the hundreds of shuttles that fled east. A thick cloud of shuttles, like a plague of locusts fleeing the land they have just ravaged. They blacked out the morning sky as they scuttled away to their next home. How long would this one last before the ministry took it too?
Something pressed into her chest from beneath her carrier. She patted it down and felt the corner of an envelope cutting into the fresh bruise from her gunshot wound. She unbuttoned her outer jacket to get at the annoyance and produced from beneath, Akemi's letter.
Reese saw her holding it and caught her eyes, she hadn't meant to pull it out in front of him but his reaction disarmed her worry. He simply nodded to her before stretching his face back with his hands and yawning.
Raptor poured through their bunks with a feverous haste. They grabbed only the essentials as Reese reported all to the Arbiter. Serah had thrown Garrison to the medics and moved on to her bunk. She gathered in a duffle bag a collection of treasures. From her own room, she grabbed her wedding ring and a photobook. From Reese's, she grabbed little man and a fine red jacket she had left there some time ago and simply never asked for. Lara came to her with some wooden carving from Archi's room and a photo from her own room. They scrambled to Garrison's room together and decided to grab a medal inscribed to 'Blake Garrison.'
"Serah!" Ade shouted in a frenzy. She raved and cawed and cried about serums and killers and something else after she slipped back into speaking Russian.
"Calm down, sweetheart!" Serah called. She took the young girl by the shoulders and held her still, placing herself down into Ade's sightline. The girl gathered herself for a moment and looked back at Serah.
"What's wrong?" Serah asked warmly, masking her worry.
"The prototype. It's gone!" She panicked.
"What?" Lara shouted before running off to Serah's office.
"How?" Serah asked as she dragged Ade along to the office.
"I don't know." Ade admitted.
"When did you last see it?"
Ade considered for a while then the colour drained from what remained of her young face.
"I was showing Archi." She whispered. "I took it out and explained what it was. She must have been watching me... She must have followed me back to you! That's how she found us, that's how she killed him." She realised as tears welled in her eyes. For a fleeting moment, Serah was glad to see Ade cry. She had been too stoic, too calm in the face of all this; but then dread overcame her and she pulled the child in for a tight hug.
"It's not your fault." She whispered and stroked the back of her head.
They arrived at the office and there was no sign of sabotage in the safe. The assassin must have seen them open it and figured out how to open it from there.
"What does this mean?" Lara questioned.
"Nothing..." Serah whispered. She scrambled around the room and realised none of her papers were missing.
"She only took the prototype. They can't reverse engineer it or copy it without our equipment. In all likelihood, they won't even know what it is." Serah explained with a relieved sigh.
"But what if she uses it?" Lara continued. Serah honestly had no idea, the answer could be anything from immediate death to actual superpowers. She looked to Ade for her thoughts.
"I- I think it will work." She whispered.
"What?" Dread oozed from Lara at the prospect of that assassin gaining the powers of Apotheosis.
"The prototype was flawed, and unstable but it should work. There will be side effects, terrible ones... Things that we have already solved. She will likely suffer hallucinations and severe physical illness and debilitation for some time while her body adjusts to the serum." Ade explained with some shake in her voice but mostly in her typical scientific voice; cool and confident.
"Then we will wish her luck." A raspy old voice boomed from the doorway.
Garrison stood, or more so hobbled, against the doorframe. He had traded his old tan uniform for a wrap of bandages and plaster. Lara ran over to him and helped support some small amount of him as he lumbered over to Serah's cushioned chair. He thanked Lara as he sank into the plush seat.
"All due respect sir..." Lara not unkindly began. "But fuck that bitch." She slumped atop a desk in the corner of the room. "Reese shoulda killed her when he had the chance." She whispered.
"Would you expect him to kill you?" Garrison questioned.
"That's different."
"Different? How so?"
"I'm his sister."
"As is she, sergeant." The old man shone her a warm smile. He understood her anger and didn't bemoan her such.
"That's different!" She protested. "We lived together, he basically raised me! I've been by his side for half our life times. She's the daughter of the woman who abused and abandoned him. The first time they met, she nearly killed me and tried to do the same to him... Then, ontop of all that, She fucking murdered Arch!" Lara nearly exploded again, but kept herself restrained out of respect for the old man.
"Lara..." Serah tried to say before being cut off.
"No! I don't need you defending him too. You know how bad Akemi was to him. Yua is an enemy, and deserves to be treated as such. Next time I see her, she dies." Lara swore before storming out of the room.
An awkward moment passed in stale silence. So much of Serah agreed with Lara, and yet she couldn't support her. She knew it would be pointless trying to turn Reese against Yua and she didn't need anything more dividing the two of them, not when she felt so close to finally getting somewhere with him.
"Sir." A mousy little voice eked from the corner of the room.
"Dr. Tempish." Garrison warmly regarded her. His worry over Lara melted quickly into a kind smile beneath kinder eyes. His sunkissed old skin held a wrinkle for every year he had lived, and two more for every battle he had ever fought. His soft brown eyes seemed in most lights to be pools of unimaginable depth but here and now simply seemed gray. The wisps of hair that had once been a proud brown mane had been eroded and battered by the kind of endless loss and grief only knowable by old men in professions of the young. Serah wondered how many he had known in his long life, and how many of those remained. He wasn't like Reese, the old man covered his scars. He seemed almost ashamed of them, each a failure and each a defeat at the hand of quicker; stronger men.
"We are leaving, aren't we sir?" Ade nervously asked. The confidence and temperament of her scientific discussion gone now in its entirety.
The girl always seemed to Serah like she had just survived some great battle, admittedly this time she had but most other times she looked no less war wearied. Serah had offered time and time again to buy her some clothes, but time and time again the girl had declined. She seemed to make do exclusively with parts of the alliance scientific uniform matched with borrowed clothes, and some clothes Serah had stolen for her. She sat there in the oversized hoodie Lara had gifted her the day they had met; the black synthetic pants with blue seam trims that marked a research officer and a pair of slightly too large canvas shoes. The ensemble made the girl look five years younger than her already scarily young face. She wondered if Serah had looked so young at sixteen. She had been in the palace for four years by that age, after her little adventure in the undercity. She and Reese had recently met again after five years apart. Life for her had never been easier than when she was sixteen, yet a war raged now and denied this girl the same pleasure. Not just any war... Her war. She had started all of this with her silly little 'rebellion'. How many had died since? She always told herself it wasn't for her own gain, it was to stop her father's dictatorship... but could that be true?
It was the Queen's Rebellion after all. Not the people's rebellion, or the undercities rebellion. People fought, and died, for the queen. Not even her father was arrogant enough to claim the title of king, and yet here she was... The Rebel Queen in the flesh.
She came to her senses from her rambling thoughts halfway through the conversation after realising that both remaining inhabitants of the room were looking at her.
"I- I'm sorry. I was a million miles away." She said with a light blush.
"Do not worry." The old man laughed. "Adeladia tells me you have taken to your old alias." He quietly explained, mispronouncing 'alias' as he did. Serah smiled.
"Things are changing, Bernie. It's been so long since i've just been me." She whispered.
"Things are changing..." He agreed. His kind old eyes fell from her to her hand and the rings within it. Thought took him as it had her but he quickly steeled his glance.
"Allow me a personal question... Serah." The old man requested with a bow at her name. She laughed, that was the first time he had referred to her as anything but doctor since they had met all those years ago.
"Of course, if you'll allow me one afterwards." She winked.
"A deal it is." He smiled but it quickly dropped. "Dr. Tempish. I apologise if it seems improper but might I ask that you go speak with Segant Black for a short while?" He politely asked.
"Of course sir." She answered, already halfway out of the door. It seemed she had intended to do so from the start but didn't wish to be rude. It brought the old man a fleeting chuckle yet again before he turned to her. He nodded at the ring in her hand.
"Is he... Ready?" He slowly asked.
She hesitated for a moment, twisting his ring in her fingers before responding. "Are we ever?"
"I apologise if I overstep, but the two of you are... More, than you have been, yes?" He asked as delicately as he could.
"It's... Difficult. We're like teenagers again." She admitted. "He'll catch me looking somewhere I shouldn't be, and I'll blush and look away but he won't mention it; or we will get an inch from kissing before he has to dash off on some heinous quest that sets him back to barely looking at me."
The old man bristled his beard and looked off into some vast invisible field.
"I assume you have spoken to him about this?" He finally said.
"What would be the point? I know why he is the way he is." She admitted.
"And why is that?" The old man questioned.
"Akemi..." The name made the old man shift awkwardly. "She raised him to earn love through service. He only expects to be lovable if he is of use and he feels like his use is to protect me. I mean I can hardly blame him... He was sixteen, or seventeen when he was assigned as my personal bodyguard thanks to Akemi. I've even told him that I love how safe he makes me feel, so he took it into his thick head that I can only love him if he protects me. He's not a complicated man, he can't hide any of it. He looks at me and doesn't see me. He sees the stupid nineteen year old holding our daughter's corpse. He blames himself and can't imagine how he could possibly be loved, how he could deserve love even after I tell him countless times that I love the stupid bastard." Tears flowed freely despite her choking them back with forced laughs. Her voice shook and broke. He handed her a tissue as he leaned in closer to her.
"And you, Serah? Do you feel undeserving?" He asked.
"I did." She answered honestly. "For the longest time, I really did. I carried our child; and I lost our child. It killed me. I knew, consciously, that it wasn't my fault but something deeper within told me that I failed as a mother to protect my baby. I felt like a monster, but then he was there and he was everything. He was my rock, he held me every night till I fell asleep; he supported me every day in everything I needed. He doted on me hand and foot to make sure that I knew none of it was my fault and that he didn't blame me at all... I never realised at the time that he didn't blame me because he blamed himself. He never mentioned anything but how strong and kind I am. He loved me completely and I hate him for it."
It took her a second to gather any thoughts beyond that.
"I'm retiring." Garrison admitted. The words sounded so unlike him, so unreasonable. Her tear filled eyes darted up to him and saw that was looking deeply into her own.
"He is next in line, is he ready?" He repeated the question with a new focus and force. She didn't answer for a moment, but pulled the letter out from beneath her jacket.
"He will be."