AN: Updated/revised12/26/07

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Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain

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Shader is never quite sure of how she manages to get both herself and two extremely entangled, barely living bodies onto the scout. She has a vague memory of someone telling her to hurry, that she didn't have a lot of time. She remembers putting both bodies in an emergency life support bag, and rolling it onto a float-pallet. She remembers deactivating the booby trap inside the scout, and she remembers flying the scout. She has no idea of how she managed to do all these things in the time between collision and explosion.

She tries very hard not to think about it.

She wakes up looking at the vast curve of the Earth through the scout's view screen. The sun is coming up over edge, turning the ring of debris into green-gold fire. Shader realizes that Pandaemonium is dead, but the world of perfect freedom is still out of reach. She wipes away her tears, and turns to the life support bag lying on the floor just in front of the hatch.

She drags the bag into the infirmary, and loads it onto an examination table. Aion is impaled on Chrono's lance, and Aion's spine-tail is wrapped around Chrono's neck and arm. There are other wounds, gaping raw, or blackened with fire. Seperating them takes methods better suited to butchery than surgery, but soon she frees Chrono from his entangled embrace, and move him to a second table.

In the end, she has to cut away most of his body. The tiny infirmary in the scout doesn't have the supplies she needs, and even if it did, there is no cure for geas-warped Legion. She curses Chrono during the hours long operation. She damns him to every hell in Dante's Inferno, then invents a few hells of her own as she cuts away at damaged flesh and bone.

She almost loses him twice, but she's brought the mostly-dead to almost-life, and this, she tells herself, is nothing. After the operation, when he's finally stabilized, and wrapped in a life-support coccoon she staggers to the scout's head and throws up the last meal Fiore cooked. When her stomach stops heaving, and the tears have dried up, she staggers back to the infirmary to work on Aion.

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Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;

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The call comes, and the hell of it is that his voice is just the way Joshua remembers it, and all he can do clutch the phone's handset. Shock, anger, joy, all at once, squeezing him painfully tight, like iron bands. His chest hurts, and for a moment, he can't see or hear, his mind gone utterly blank. "Joshua," the familiar voice says, impatient and concerned. "I hope you're in a private place?"

Joshua nods, even though he knows it is absurd to do so. "Yes. My office." Well, the cubby hole adjacent to the office of the head of this branch of the Order. He doesn't ask questions he knows won't be--can't be answered here.

"Good. Do me a favor and keep my brother from throwing himself on your sister's pyre."

For a moment, he doesn't understand. He can't understand. The words make no sense. When the words finally make sense, seconds later, he curses the voice and the brother both and takes off for the church as if--no, precisely because a devil is at his heels.

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That we—by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true—

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Chrono is aware of people and voices, but he doesn't move. He ignores the tentative questions and demands for his attention, and growls at the hands that reach for her, for him. He doesn't move when a familiar voice calls his name, he just holds on, clinging to Rosette. "Chrono, let them take her," the voice says, and rests a hand on his shoulder.

There is a wave of surprised recognition in the room. "But he's dead!" Chrono is inclined to agree. He's dead, his body just hasn't caught on yet.

The owner of the voice give orders that Chrono doesn't pay attention to. Rosette is taken from him, but now he doesn't protest. "Joshua," he whispers, apology and plea all at once.

"Not here," Joshua says, and pulls Chrono to his feet. Joshua's voice is choked and strained sounding. "Come on."

Joshua guides Chrono through the crowd of people. Joshua speaks to them, but Chrono doesn't pay attention, he feels as if he were walking through a thick fog. Nothing seems real anymore, the sunlight, the grounds of the church, Joshua's hand in his. There's a skip, as if he had time shifted without knowing it, and he's sitting in the back seat of a car. They're going down a country road, bumping over potholes. "He said she was dead," Chrono says finally. He knew she wasn't.

"I thought you both were," Joshua says. "I hoped you weren't."

Joshua pulls into the driveway of a small house, and tugs Chrono out of the car, and up to the front door of the house. He pounds on the door, shouting for Remington. When Remington appears, it's a shock. Remington's face and neck are veined with Legion, and his blue eyes have flecks of gold in them. Remington seems just as suprised to see Chrono as the reverse. "Chrono, my god. What happened to you? Come inside." The minister moves aside as Joshua nudges him into the interior of the house.

They both guide him to a small parlor, and make him sit down on a couch. He looks from one to the other. "What happened to you?" He asks Ewan.

Ewan smiled. "I'm letting nature...take its course."

"You're dying," Chrono whispers.

"I know," Ewan says, and gently reaches out to clasp Chrono's shoulder. "Are you going to be all right? Can I get you anything?"

Chrono shakes his head, and closes his eyes. "I don't know," he says.

They leave him, and he can hear them talking in the next room. "Aion called me," Joshua says.

"Aion's alive too?" Remington asks, shocked and sounding a little angry.

"Yes. Reading between the lines, it looks like Aion was taking care of Chrono, and deliberately kept from him the fact that Rosette was still alive."

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In spite of being broken,
Because of being broken,

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"Minister Christopher, please reconsider! You're a valuable member of the Order, and we don't want to lose you."

"With all due respect, you lost me before you ever had me."

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Twelve years ago, this Council ordered the execution of my sister's partner, Chrono."

"Yet you joined the Order."

"At the time, it was the best way I could make amends. Rosette and Chrono gave four years of their lives to this Order, I could do no less. Eight years for my sister, the man I consider to be my brother-in-law, and four more for myself, to atone for my own actions."

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May rise and build anew.
Stand up and build anew!

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AN: The poem quotes are from "The Hymn of Breaking Strain," by Rudyard Kipling. Don't blame me for this, blame "The Undertaker's Horse" an album of Kipling poems sung by Leslie Fish.

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