"Where do you think you're going?"

"Where I should have been all along. I'm going to go to Rosette."

"How? You can barely walk!"

"Then I'll crawl. You had no right to keep this from me, Aion. You had no right to keep me from her."

"I and Shader didn't nurse you back to health so you could throw your life away. Weren't you under a death sentence?"

"I made a promise, and I'm going to keep that promise, no matter what."

"I have come to collect my brother," Aion says. The human glares at him. His anger is very close to the surface, as are the webs of Legion running beneath his skin like varicose veins. The human doesn't have much longer to live. Less than a decade, Aion thinks. He wonders why the human is choosing such a slow death.

"I don't know that I should let you take him," the human says.

"I really doubt that you could stop me, Mr. Remington." He hears movement from inside the house, and the priest is joined at the door by Joshua. Even though logically he knows that Joshua would have grown in the years between, it's still a shock. The boy is a boy no longer, but a handsome young man, his eyes clear, alert, and determined.

"We wouldn't be able to stop you," Joshua says. "But Chrono would never forgive you."

"He already doesn't forgive me," Aion says flippantly. "What is one more unforgivable sin between us?" Joshua's eyes harden, and Remington almost growls. It's only for Joshua that he says in a softer, placating tone, "please, let me see him."

Joshua and the priest exchange a look, and quietly stand aside, allowing him to enter.

It's as bad as he thought it would be. Chrono is curled up on the couch in the tiny living room, eyes open but not really seeing anything. Aion kneels beside the couch and takes one of Chrono's hands in both of his. Chrono's hand is cold, and there is no sign that Chrono is even aware of his presence. This is worse somehow than during the first few nightmare days when he had feared that Chrono would never wake up, that his mind had been destroyed. "How long has he been like this?" Aion asks.

"Since we got here, more or less," Joshua says. "He talked at first, responded to questions, but it's gotten a lot worse. Is there anything you can do for him?"

"Aside from keeping him from throwing himself on Miss Christopher's coffin and begging to be let inside, not a great deal." Aion hopes for a flicker from Chrono, but there's nothing. There's a snarl from the priest however, and a quiet, placating comment from Joshua.

"Do you remember the state of the exterior of Mary's tomb, Joshua?" Aion asks without turning. "How the outer chambers were half full of water, and the seal was so badly damaged you couldn't read the writing? You'd think the Order would have kept a better watch over it, since they are so afraid of him."

"I remember," Joshua says. And because Joshua has always been such a perceptive boy, he says, "you couldn't break the seal."

"I won't let him bury himself again," Aion says quietly. "I won't let them bury him."

Joshua stares at the device, and tries to wrap his mind around the thing Aion is asking him to do. The purpose of the device is to gather tissue samples. He knows how to use it, and he's had it used on him. Why Aion wants him to use it on his sister is almost as unbelievable as the request itself.

"It's not as if I'm asking for her hair and fingernails so I can cast a curse on her or something," Aion says irritably.

"I'd hope not," Joshua says, looking up at Aion. "You were never that petty. At least, I never thought you were." The words until now are left unspoken.

"You think I was being petty?" Aion asks. "What sort of welcome would he have had? He was under a sentence of death, was he not?"

"You kept them from each other," Joshua says lowly. "You had no right to do that. As to the other, we would have figured something out." The Council owed Chrono, owed Rosette too much to demand Chrono's death a second time. If necessary, Joshua would remind them of his own crimes, and Ewan's confession, prior to his retirement as a member of the Order. He would remind them of Rosette's statements prior to being dismissed from the Order. "We did what we had to do. We did what we set out to do four years ago, and we succeeded. We atoned for the sins of our family, in the only way that we could. There is nothing you can say or do that will take that away from us."

"I did not lie to him," Aion says. "I have never lied to him, or anyone. I may have omitted the truth, but I did not lie."

"Do you think that matters to him?" Joshua asks.

"No, I know it doesn't," Aion says. He picks up the device, and holds it out to Joshua. "I won't apologize, I think you know why I can't."

Joshua nods, not trusting himself to speak. It's not that Aion won't apologize out of pride, and it's not from a belief that Aion has done nothing wrong. It's only that Aion does not allow himself to regret. Any apology Aion might make would be a lie, and that was one thing that Aion never did.

"This is for Chrono. Something he would never think to ask for," Aion says.

"It won't bring her back."

"You should know by now that doing so would never be my intention. This is for Chrono," Aion repeats. He smiles, his expression both wry and fond. "This is for family, which you are a part of." A pause. "A family which you were both a part of, despite everything."

"What will you do now, Ms. Harvenheit?" The young man asks once they return to the Hendric Foundation building.

"I'm not sure," Satella confesses. "See how the world has changed, I suppose." Despite a stock market crash, and a second world war, Satella is still a very well-off woman thanks to the Foundation. Stock in the company had been purchased in her name, and there is also a trust fund.

"Will you consider our offer?" He smiles hopefully. "No pressure, of course."

"No pressure," Satella says, amused. The position offered is a training position for the Foundation's investigative unit. She's protested that all of her knowledge and experience is sixty years out of date, but the young man doesn't seem in the least bit fazed by this. "I will think about it, Mr. Christopher. But I make no promises."

AN: The results of the thing in the third scene that Aion is talking about can be found in "Expecting" in my one shot series Chronology. The last scene just popped in there, because I haven't done a Satella bit yet.

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