Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Noel is young she has a mother, and a father, and a little sister that she loves very much.

Their house is small but cozy. Fran will crawl into Noel’s bed most nights no matter how firmly mother and father tuck her into her own, and when father comes home late from work he’ll always bring them sweets as an apology. Mother will spend her days bustling around the house, keeping Noel and Fran under her watchful gaze on the days she doesn’t let them loose for Mass or Sunday School, and Noel is happy.

They all are.

When Noel is young she has a mother, a little sister that she loves very much, and a grief too heavy to bear.

-x-

When Noel graduates from the senior classes of Sunday School, she tells her mother she’s going to join the CGF.

“Like father,” she says, and tries not to fidget as her mother goes very, very still.

Father had been proud of his job in the CGF. Proud to protect Crossbell. When he’d died, and pressure from the government of the Republic of Calvard had put a swift end to any inquiries into the situation that had led to the ‘misfire’ that had killed him—mother had put on a brave face for Noel and Fran, and smiled, and told them that it was okay to cry, but that their father had been proud to do his duty. If nothing else, he had been proud.

And Noel, she—she wants to protect that pride. That legacy.

So she stands in front of her mother, in the kitchen that is undeniably her territory and hers alone, and lifts her chin to meet her mother’s eyes dead on.

There’s defeat in those eyes, and grief, and a soft, bittersweet melancholy—but there’s pride, too, and it almost makes Noel weep.

Her mother reaches out, and cups her cheek. “He’d be proud of you,” she whispers. “You’re so much like him, Noel.”

When Noel graduates from Sunday School, she joins the CGF.

-x-

When Noel is transferred to the Special Support Section for some extra training, she’s excited for it.

She likes the members of the SSS—Lloyd, Randy, Elie and Tio—and is excited for the chance to get to know them all a little better, even if it will be quite some time before they’re all together as a group once more; Randy going back to the CGF to help with the retraining of officers who fell victim to Gnosis during the D∴G Cult incident, Elie going to her grandfather’s side to help shoulder the burden of the political fallout from the incident, and Tio—

Well. Noel doesn’t actually know where Tio’s gone. She’s sure that wherever it is and whatever she’s doing, though, is important.

And Lloyd? Noel knows exactly where he is, considering she’s going on a mission with him before the SSS is officially reinstated following the completion of his training under Section One.

The drive is mostly silent, once the debrief is over—Noel is thankful for it, because it means her brooding once they’ve crossed over the border into Calvard goes unnoticed. When they reach their destination, though, she must seem tense, because Lloyd shoots her a concerned look and asks if she’s okay.

She forces a smile, and sends a meaningful glance at Arios and Detective Dudley, just a little ways ahead of them. “Nerves,” she explains, and while it isn’t the whole truth, it’s definitely not a lie.

Lloyd lets out a little disbelieving laugh that’s more an anxious exhale than anything, and from his own wide eyes it’s clear he agrees with her. That’s comforting, a bit, and helps her feel a little more settled. After all—Lloyd is, technically, the greenest of them here, in this team. Noel doesn’t have much more experience, and the Cult incident proved Lloyd was more than capable, but Arios and Dudley are leagues above the both of them, and Noel is a trained soldier. That’s an entirely different ballpark to a detective, with an entirely different skill set.

This mission involves loose threads left over from the D∴G Cult, and is thus technically Lloyd’s arrest to make—but there’s a reason they’ve brought such intense, literal manpower with them.

Noel tries to find it reassuring, instead of nerve wracking, but it’s hard. She feels like squeaking every time Arios’ gaze falls on her. One time, she actually does squeak, and Lloyd’s laughing at her before Dudley’s severe glare gets him to shut up.

A Republican soldier leads them to the Cult’s lodge—long since abandoned after the raids cleared out the majority of the members years ago, finally back in use. A last ditch, desperate plan? A naive attempt at shelter? Something far more sinister?

They don’t know, and that’s why they’re here. The soldier that guided them in wishes them luck, and tells them that once a certain amount of time has passed, the situation will fall into their jurisdiction, regardless of the connection to the crimes the D∴G Cult committed in Crossbell.

She grits her teeth, and says nothing.

The almost-cave system that awaits them inside is nothing like Noel had been expecting - granted, she isn’t sure what she had been expecting, exactly, but she can quietly admit to herself that the word ‘lodge’ had brought to mind images of a log cabin, out in the woods. She decides in that moment to never mention that out loud, because now that she’s thinking on it, it’s kind of silly.

It’s cold inside; Noel’s breath is visible as it hisses out between her clenched teeth. She tries to relax her jaw, and get her shaking hands under control as Arios and Dudley hand her and Lloyd Master Quartz to slot into their ENIGMA IIs. Arios takes point, Lloyd running forward just slightly behind him, and Noel and Dudley fall into the rear, guns at the ready—

—and it’s a good thing, that, because the lodge isn’t empty. No signs of Ernest or the Chairman, not yet, but monsters lurk around every pale stone corner. Noel’s gun is aimed immediately, but before she even has a chance to pull the trigger, Dudley and Arios have the passage in front of them wiped clean of any signs of life but their own.

Noel exchanges a look with Lloyd, who sends her a rueful grin. Feels kind of like we’re not needed here, huh?

They push forward.

And then everything goes wrong. For a moment Noel stands, alone, staring out at the gaping chasm in front of her as Dudley and Arios rush on ahead, and Lloyd moves to the side to take the longer, alternate path Arios had indicated to them.

“Noel?” He calls, pausing to look back over his shoulder, and Noel shakes herself back to reality.

“I’m coming,” she says, and jogs to catch up to him.

They push forward.

Without Arios and Dudley to guide them, the battles are far harder—“At least we’re not feeling unneeded,” Lloyd jokes at one point, trying to lighten the mood even around the tension as he stands guard over Noel, shaking as she tries to shake of the last remnants of petrification. Stone dusts her hands; it’s awful.

She forces herself to her feet, and picks up her gun. “Shame we didn’t think to take status blocking accessories,” she mumbles. She’s got range boosters equipped right now, and—well, she doesn’t know exactly what Lloyd has on his person, but from what she remembers about his usual fighting style, it’s probably boosting his speed and evasion.

He chuckles ruefully. “I didn’t even think of that,” he admits. “Normally, Tio and Elie have those equipped, so even if Randy or I get hit they can heal and cure us—and since the SSS went on break, most of my work with Section One has taken place inside the city, where status effects are a lot rarer. So…”

“Better excuse than mine,” Noel says as he trails off. “I was just too distracted by the mission to think about it.”

Lloyd shoots her look that’s partway curious, partway appraising. Noel rolls her shoulders and joints to show she’s regained full movement, and then they’re moving again as Lloyd speaks again. “Distracted? That doesn’t sound like you, Noel.”

She laughs, and it’s somewhat nervous. “This is a really big op,” she says, and doesn’t say since the moment I heard we were coming to Calvard it’s all I’ve been able to think about, “it’s an honour to be chosen for it. I guess I’m worried about underperforming.”

The grin Lloyd shoots her is wide and bright. “You were chosen for a reason,” he points out. “I’m sure Commander Sonya has complete faith in you and your skills.”

Noel blushes at that. She knows she does, and Lloyd laughing just proves it.

“Come on,” he says, “let’s see if we can beat Arios and Detective Dudley to the goal.”

It’s not a race—and even if it was, it’s one Noel’s pretty sure they have no real chance of winning, considering just who they’re up against, nevermind that she and Lloyd had been the ones forced to take the longer, less direct route to said ‘goal’—but it makes the atmosphere less heavy, just a bit, and running by all the monsters crowded in the narrow, curving tunnels with giggles catching in her breathless throat is one way to save ammo.

She’s still convinced that by the time they get to the altar, Arios and Dudley would have concluded the entire situation without their help, which is why she freezes when she and Lloyd finally break through, only to see that beside the former Chairman and Ernest, they’re the only ones there.

Only for a moment, though—she freezes for only just a moment, because there’s no time to panic as Noel sees firsthand for the first time what all the reports on Gnosis had called ‘Demonisation,’ as Ernest twists into something monstrous, and Lloyd rushes forward, grim determination in his eyes and the set of his jaw.

Noel’s moving forward too, before she lets her panic and fear get to her despite her best efforts. She doesn’t rush to the frontline like Lloyd does, though; stands back just at the farthest edge of her firing range, loads in a fresh clip, and presses down on the trigger—careful to aim for Ernest’s head, towering far above them in his demonic form, so she absolutely won’t hit Lloyd while he’s dodging Ernest’s fists like a damn acrobat—while she pulls out her ENIGMA II in her free hand and starts casting.

She’s out of bullets before Spark Dyne crashes down, but that’s fine - the summoned lightning leaves the demon dazed enough that it reels back and she has a chance to reload, and Lloyd has a chance to catch his breath—

—and that, of course, is when Arios and Dudley reach them.

There’s a part of Noel that’s a little disgruntled, because so far she and Lloyd have had this pretty much handled...but then Ernest summons up a giant sword, long enough to sweep practically the entire battlefield, and she quickly changes her mind and decides she’s never been happier to see their two seniors, actually. Their timing is great.

They regroup as Ernest recovers from the recoil of Arios’ spectacular block— how had he done that— and Noel eyes the two men carefully as Dudley does the same right back to her. They look far less exhausted than she and Lloyd do, but they’ve absolutely been affected by their own ordeals to reach this place; both are covered in a fine sheen of sweat, Dudley’s normally pristine suit is rumpled, his shirt untucked—and Arios’ hair is an absolute mess.

This is unfortunately not an appropriate time to be giggling over the states of her technical superiors, so Noel bites her lip and forces said giggles down.

It may just be the hardest fight she’s ever lived through. Definitely, somehow, not the hardest thing she’s ever done—that award goes to the night they’d taken down the cult; her heart beating fast and hard at the base of her throat as she tries her best to survive gunfire and clear a path for the SSS—

But they live through it. It’s fine.

Until it isn’t, because then Ernest is breaking down, and—Noel hadn’t been there for Joachim, but she’d read the reports. If this continues, Ernest is going to die.

There’s a tiny, angry part of Noel that doesn’t mind that—it’s not like they’ve killed him, it’s the Gnosis eating away at him—but it clearly, clearly bothers Lloyd, because he’s running forward with desperation in his voice as he yells for Ernest to pull himself together.

Noel shoots her friend a concerned look, and that’s when she sees it; a glaze to his eyes, as familiar as a mirror, ever since the cult incident. Lloyd isn’t with them in the here and now, not entirely. Noel knows what it looks like, because she’s seen it herself, in herself. Before that night, she’d never considered herself claustrophobic, but then she’d been enclosed in burning steel, knowing full well that she was genuinely risking her life—she’d more than been scared she was going to die, she was expecting it. Convinced of it.

She’d lived, of course, but that new found—or newly created, she supposed—fear hadn’t gone away. She was still finding it difficult to shower without panicking in the stall.

So—she hadn’t seen Joachim die, but Lloyd had, and it had clearly affected him more than anyone had realised...maybe even more than Lloyd himself had realised.

It really, sincerely looks like they’re just going to have to stand there and watch Ernest go through the exact same gruesome end, because it’s not like they have any idea on how to fix this, and Noel’s resigning herself to that; hyping herself up to find the right words to comfort Lloyd once it’s over, or finding her voice to convince him to step back and look away—

And that’s when Kevin Graham makes his grand entrance, and Noel has never been happier in her life to see a Father of the Septian Church.

Once all is said and done, they find themselves in Altair—Dudley and Arios drive off, heading back to Crossbell with Ernest and Hartmann in custody, which leaves Lloyd and Noel to take the train.

Noel doesn’t mind. Either way, she’s getting out of Calvard. It’s a relief that’s more than relief.

Lloyd chatters a bit with Father Kevin before they head into the station, and Noel would be lying if she said she was truly paying attention. She’s keeping just enough of an ear on the conversation to make sure she’s polite and says her farewells before she and Lloyd head off, and then they’re on the train and heading home, and Noel feels like she can properly breathe for the first time that day.

At the train station, they’re greeted by KeA and Fran—welcome not-surprises, honestly—and then a few actual surprises show themselves, in the forms of Chief Sergei, Elie, and Wazy Hemisphere.

Lloyd’s eyes light up when he sees Elie—she comes down the stairs at a run that said it would really, really be a sprint if Elie hadn’t been raised on a proper lady’s upbringing, and all but flings herself into Lloyd’s arms. Lloyd laughs, and hugs her, his grip around her middle tight before he places her down and moves back a little. “You didn’t tell me you were coming back!”

“It was very sudden,” Elie laughs. Their arms are still around each other’s waists. “Besides—even if I had had the time to tell you, I think I would have wanted to surprise you.”

Lloyd’s smile shifts into something softer, and Noel doesn’t really read anything into it until an elbow, sharp and bony, is thrust into her ribs.

There’s only one person in the entire world that can catch her off guard like that. “Ow - what was that for?” She hisses at Fran.

Her little sister, bless her bubbly, bright heart, leans in and speaks in what she clearly thinks is a whisper, “if you don’t make your move soon, you’re going to lose him!” Her eyes slide to Elie and Lloyd, who have finally separated, as Lloyd goes over to greet Wazy with a look of deep exasperation on his face, and Elie is speaking with KeA, clinging onto her legs. “Did you see how they were blushing? I don’t think Elie’s locked in just yet! You still have a chance! There’s time to raise your flags, Noel!”

Speaking of blushing—that’s what Noel is doing right now. “What are you even talking about, Fran?”

Fran giggles and shakes her head like Noel is the one being ridiculous, and Noel sighs and finds herself humouring her sister for the afternoon as they all go out for a ‘SSS Reestablishing Family Dinner,’ ignoring the entire time the deep, gnawing pit of dread that had sparked into her brain at Fran’s words.

It’s easy, because Noel’s had years of learning how to ignore things she doesn’t want to think about, doesn’t like to think about. It’s how she got through her father’s death without spending every day in a puddle of tears. It’s how she got through Calvard, earlier that day.

By the time she’s settled into her new room at the SSS building and drifted off to sleep, she’s all but forgotten what Fran had been talking about; exactly what she wanted, exactly how she liked it.

When Noel is temporarily transferred to the Special Support Section, she’s excited for it.

(She has no idea how the next few months are going to lead to the greatest regret of her life.)

-x-

“Ah—! Noel, you’re up early?”

Half-asleep, staring at the kettle with a zombie-like focus as she waits for it to boil, Noel is almost scared out of her skin by KeA’s voice coming from right behind her. She barely bites down the fuck that tries to escape—the last time she’d sworn in front of KeA (completely by accident) Lloyd had pouted about it all afternoon.

She blinks a few times. “Morning, KeA,” she says. “I’m used to early mornings—for me, it’s more like I’ve slept in. How about you, huh? Why are you awake? It’s…” She trails off, and looks around the kitchen for the clock she knows she’s seen in here—ah, there, on the wall by the door. “It’s barely five in the morning,” she says, unable to keep the note of surprise out of her voice. KeA gets up earlier than most kids her age Noel knows, because the rest of the SSS tends to be up between six and seven, so they can be out the door working on requests by eight, and KeA likes to get up with them, but this is unusual, even for her.

Noel forces herself to wake up, just a little more, and casts a big sister’s practiced eye over KeA. She looks normal, for the most part, but there’s a tension to the way she carries herself—an upset in how her hands fist in the skirt of her nightgown.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

KeA flinches, and then shakes her head frantically. “KeA just heard noises in the kitchen, and wanted to see who was up,” she explains, and while there’s nothing that rings untrue in her words, Noel would bet good money that the entire reason KeA had been lying in bed awake to hear Noel in the first place had been a nightmare.

But, well, nightmares are pretty normal for kids, on top of everything KeA’s been through, so if she doesn’t want to talk about it Noel won’t go digging.

“I’m heating up some water for coffee,” she says instead. “You want me to make you a hot chocolate while I’m at it?”

KeA’s eyes light up, and her hair bounces as she nods frantically. Damn, but she’s cute. “Go pick out a mug, and I’ll get the cocoa powder,” Noel says, and KeA hurries to obey, picking out a cute Mishy mug with Mishy’s ears sticking up as part of the rim, and Noel’s pretty sure it’s Tio’s.

Tio isn’t here, and even if she was—even with how possessive she is of most of her Mishy merch, it’s KeA; Noel doesn’t think she’d be mad. And, hey, if it makes KeA feel better after some bad dreams, she can keep the mug as far as Noel is concerned.

As if KeA could somehow hear the direction Noel’s thoughts had turned in, sitting on the bench and swinging her legs while Noel works on carefully pouring out boiling water, KeA speaks.

“Noel,” she says. “Do you know when Tio and Randy are coming back?”

Her voice is small when she says it, and Noel pauses in her pouring for just a moment to look at her. She’s not looking back at Noel, but down at her lap, so her hair has fallen forward and hidden her face, so Noel can’t be sure, but…

...she thinks KeA might be crying.

“I don’t, KeA,” she says, and places down the kettle to reach out and place a gentle hand on KeA’s shoulder. “But I’m sure they’ll be here as soon as they can—you saw how much Elie had missed you, right? I’m sure Randy and Tio are just the same. They’re doing very important work, so that’s why they can’t be here right now, but...I’m sure , the moment, the very moment they can, they’ll be hurrying back here.”

KeA sniffles, just a bit. “You’re sure, Noel?”

“I’m sure, KeA.”

KeA’s eyes are a little wet when she looks up, but her smile is bright—blinding, even. “Thanks, Noel,” she says, and Noel smiles and hands her her hot chocolate with a warning not to burn her tongue.

“You’re welcome, KeA,” she says.

-x-

Getting trapped in a mine was so not on the list of things Noel had planned for the day, but. Well. Whatever, she supposes. It’s what happened. She can’t change it.

Lloyd’s already moved forward to inspect the blockage, standing a careful distance away, holding an arm up over his nose and mouth to prevent himself from breathing in rockdust or gunpowder—Wazy’s hand in front of her face, and Noel blinks before she realises he’s holding it out to help her up, and takes it without a word.

She aches as he pulls her to her feet. Her ears are still ringing. From Elie’s grimace and the way she’s got her hands hovering over her ears, she’s suffering the same fate.

Ugh. Explosions. They’ve always been her least favourite part of CGF drills—even more so since the cult incident.

“Is everyone okay?” She asks, and Elie—still grimacing—nods.

“No one’s wounded,” Wazy clarifies, “but I’m not sure okay is a word I’d use to describe our current situation.” A meaningful glance from him, directed towards the rubble that blocks the entrance—and thus, their exit.

“We’re alive and uninjured,” Lloyd sighs. “That’s not nothing.”

Elie’s hum makes her agreement with Lloyd clear. “Worst case scenario, we sit in here for a few hours while we wait for a crew from Mainz to dig us out.” The slight pinch to her expression suggests she doesn’t like that idea at all, but is logical enough to go through with it.

Except...there’s something that plan doesn’t take into account, and from the looks Lloyd shoots her and Wazy, both of the boys have figured it out.

“Noel,” Lloyd says. “You reacted to that before any of us—you told us all to get back. That warning is probably the only reason we’re as uninjured as we are. How’d you know?”

“Gunpowder,” Noel answers immediately, biting back the sir that wants to jump out at Lloyd’s tone. Bad enough she’d all but snapped to attention, back straight, feet planted together. Thankfully she caught herself before she’d saluted; Goddess would that have been embarrassing. “I caught the scent of it before the cave in.”

Lloyd sighs, seeming to age before their eyes. “Definitely a deliberate cave in, then,” he murmurs, having come to the same conclusion as Noel.

“Not necessarily,” Wazy points out. “This is an abandoned mine, no? It’s possible some old charges that were left behind triggered.”

Elie looks hopeful at that idea—and Noel has to admit, while it doesn’t change the fact that they’re all stuck in a mine, the thought that it was just an accident, and not an act of deliberate malice, is a tempting one—but Noel shakes her head. “The powder was fresh, I’m pretty sure,” she explains.

A few more minutes of deliberation and conversation, and it’s decided that the best thing for them to do would be to move through the mine, if at least to complete the request they came here to solve in the first place while probable rescue works on getting them out.

After all, if someone trapped them in here, staying in the entrance they’d rigged up with bombs didn’t exactly sound like a smart idea.

As they walk deeper into the mines, they encounter an almost endless parade of monsters—but the tunnels are narrow; a natural chokepoint for them to take advantage of. Not much attention is needed to take out the monsters because of this, and so they talk as they walk.

Wazy posits that it’s possible that the people they’d encountered at the Rosenberg Studio had something to do with the explosives, and while they all agree they were...suspicious, Lloyd seems pretty firmly set on them not being involved at all.

They shelve the discussion as, overall, it’s a problem to worry about at a later time.

They reach the area of the mine that’d been marked on their map as the place the target for monster extermination was in, and before they walk into it, Lloyd has them checking all of their orbments and accessories. Quartz slotted in neat and snug, accessories equipped with tags in pockets and chains wrapped around wrists and throats. For Elie and Noel, an ammo check is also important—Noel grabs a fresh clip and she’s good to go.

At her ready signal, Lloyd gives the SSS a nod, and they rush in—

—only to pause.

“What,” says Wazy, for once—for the first time ever, Noel thinks—in a tone that doesn’t sound as if he’s permanently distantly amused by everything that’s going on around him, “is that?”

Noel’s throat is dry, but she forces it to work. “Dragon,” she squeaks out.

As if it takes offense to her voice, the dragon roars.

The cave shakes. They all flinch.

Wazy is the first one to shake the shock off. “Leader?” He says, and just like that, Lloyd’s got his head on straight again too.

“Elie, Wazy, get casting,” he barks out, “Noel—reserve your ammo. Wait and aim your shots where they count. Try for the eyes, maybe. Otherwise, I trust your judgment.” And, just like that, Lloyd runs forward to distract the attention of the dragon.

A dragon. What in the name of the Goddess.

Lloyd’s nimble, and the quartz and accessories he has equipped only make him more so, so Noel isn’t too worried about him taking point alone, here—until she sees an opportunity to pull out a battle scope, only to look through it and see just how little damage they’re doing - and how much they’ve got left to go.

It’s insane. What the fuck.

She must make a noise, because suddenly Wazy is beside her, cancelling his own art, to gesture at the scope. Wordlessly, she hands it to him.

He stills. “Fuck,” he says, softly, and—yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what Noel is feeling right now.

The dragon rears back, and while Noel has no particular sensitivity to the elements, especially not the higher ones, in that moment she swears she can feel the weight of the air press down on her like a physical force as some sort of energy seeps through it. Infects it.

“Get down!” Lloyd yells, and then there’s light like the rainbow spectrums a crystal prism can fracture across a wall in the sun, and then—

—darkness, followed by movement in a shifting rhythm, and a light that’s softer. Warmer.

Noel comes to being carried on Randolph Orlando’s back.

She yelps, and jerks back, and would have fallen to the floor if Randy’s reflexes weren’t honestly terrifying.

“Yo, sergeant,” he greets, and if his smile is genuine, his eyes are relieved under the worry she can read. “Enjoy your nap?”

“Noel!” Elie barrels into her, still on Randy’s back, and both Noel and Randy yelp as Elie’s weight threatens to take them all down. “Oh, thank the Goddess you’re awake, I was so worried—I healed you as best I could but you wouldn’t wake, and I’m no good with head injuries, I was so scared— ”

“Elle,” Randy cuts in, gentle. “Breathe.”

As if she literally hadn’t been remembering to do just that until Randy’s words had reminded her, Elie takes in a deep, gasping breath.

And then she bursts into tears, still clinging onto Noel—who is, again, still being carried on Randy’s back.

Randy sends Noel a look of pure panic. With Elie sobbing into her chest, Noel is sure she doesn’t look much better.

“Here—let me down, Randy,” Noel says, and that’s when Elie’s grip on her turns from ‘kind of uncomfortably tight’ to ‘vice-like.’

“You’re not walking,” she says, blunt and firm but still gentle, in that special Elie way. Randy had once laughed and told Noel all healers were like that, but Noel has heard Fran use that exact tone before, too, the day after the Cult Incident, when Fran had come bursting into Noel’s hospital room with teary eyes—she thinks it’s just what the people that love you sound like when you’ve scared them.

The thought that Elie loves her—or at least likes her enough to be scared over Noel getting hurt—is a bizarre mix of flattering and hard to think about, so Noel decides to take the smartest, easiest route open to her in that moment, and just... not think on it. It’s not like she doesn’t have more important things to be thinking about in that moment, anyway.

“Really,” she says, and pulls back a little from Elie’s arms—once Elie is seemingly content that Noel won’t be escaping from Randy’s grip anytime soon, she lets her go easily enough—“What happened?” She hesitates, and then another question bubbles up, one that she really should have asked pretty much immediately; “And what are you doing here, Randy?”

“Ah, it’s a long story,” Randy says, “but basically, Randy Orlando is back where he belongs and back in service.”

“The miners from Mainz were working to break through the collapsed entrance this entire time,” Wazy explains from up ahead—Noel jolts a little on Randy’s back before logic reasserts itself and she realises oh, of course Wazy and Lloyd are still with them; with Noel out of it, Randy handicapped with her dead weight draped across his back, and Elie playing the rearguard, their final two team members are taking point. “They got it open a little while back—Randy took the opportunity to rush ahead looking for us.” He shakes his head. “I’d say it was reckless, but he did kind of save us.”

“The attack that knocked you out...it was bad, Noel,” Elie murmurs, solemn and a million selge away as she shudders. “You got the worst of it—it threw you into the cave wall, all but cracked your head open—but it wasn’t something easy to weather for any of us. After you were injured, it was all I could do to heal you while trying to stand guard, and there was no way Wazy and Lloyd would have been able to take it down on their own...if Randy hadn’t shown up when he did…” She trails off, but she doesn’t need to finish her sentence for Noel to know how it would have ended.

Throat tight, Noel swallows painful reality down and reaches over to take Elie’s hand in her own and squeeze tight—comfort in her grip, contrary to the vice of pain that wraps around her skull in the form of a pounding headache.

By the time they get back to Mainz, Noel is well and truly ready to just pass out in the dining area of the inn, but then Lloyd is handing her a drink and Elie is shoving a plate of food in front of her, and they both have stern, pleading looks on their faces (mother hens, Wazy murmurs to her, and it takes more effort than Noel wants to admit to not choke on her drink when she automatically snorts at his words), and, well, she still has to drive them all back into town, so as much as she wishes otherwise, she kind of has to stay awake.

“We can catch the bus back to town and come pick up the car tomorrow,” Lloyd points out, and Noel can only stare at him like he’d just casually suggested mass murder.

“I’m feeling a lot better now that I’ve eaten,” she insists, “I’m fine to drive!”

“Well...if you’re sure,” Lloyd says, though he still looks doubtful.

“I’ll heal her one final time before we leave, just to be sure,” Elie says. “And I’ll keep an eye on you, Noel, on the trip back to the city—if, at any point, you start to feel worse, or dizzy, you will pull over immediately, and we will walk the rest of the way.” Wazy groans the moment the word ‘walk’ leaves Elie’s mouth, and she continues on as if she hadn’t heard a thing: “If it comes down to that, Wazy will carry you home.”

Wazy does that little knifelike smile of his. “I don’t remember volunteering for that, Elie,” he says.

Elie’s answering smile is just as sharp—sharper, even, maybe. “Yes, you did.”

Showing that he, miraculously, actually does have some sense of self-preservation, Wazy wisely keeps his mouth shut.

Luckily for him, they make it home without incident—Noel’s more exhausted than ever once she’s finally pulled into the SSS garage and stumbled into the SSS building, but Elie seems to think exhaustion is all that it is; Noel gratefully leaves the rest of the team to debrief the Chief, and clambers up the stairs to collapse into her bed. She’s ready for this day to be over.

She’s out like a light within seconds—

—but for just those few seconds between sleep and wake, she’s achingly, painfully aware of how useless she was today.

-x-

The week leading up to the Trade Conference is the most hectic thing Noel has ever lived through.

It’s hard to find a moment to herself, let alone a moment to think— there’s a part of her that thinks she should probably be grateful about that, because with everything going on, it’d probably be less ‘thinking,’ and more ‘worrying.’

Such is life.

Such is the hand life has dealt Crossbell, really.

Noel sighs, and sitting in the passenger seat beside her, Wazy lets out a low, intrigued hum.

“That’s sure a heavy sigh,” he says, leadingly, and Noel takes a moment to try and judge how serious he’s being; if it’s a genuine offer to talk about her problems, or if Wazy is baiting her. It’s hard to tell with him, sometimes, but Noel likes to think she’s got it down to an almost-art.

Well, that, or Wazy has finally given up his act of being eighty percent jerk. She’s not sure which is more likely.

“Crossbell is going through a lot,” Noel says, finally.

“Crossbell is always going through a lot,” Wazy says—not an argument, not really. More like he’s trying to make a point to her, but gently.

Noel sighs once more. “I know,” she says. “I know, but—with the Trade Conference looming, and all the preparations…” Only the fact that she’s driving, and thus requires both hands on the wheel, keeps her from tearing her hair out. “It’s getting to me,” she admits. “More than it usually does.”

For a long moment, there’s just silence in the car, as Wazy eyes her thoughtfully. “Have you tried talking to Lloyd or Elie about this?”

Noel jolts. “Lloyd and Elie? Why?”

“Because they’re the only other Crossbell natives in the SSS,” Wazy points out. “If anyone’s going to understand, it’s going to be them, isn’t it?”

After that, they go on about their day pretending that they’d never had that conversation—taking their time to complete the Support Requests that had been placed onto their shoulders when they’d had to split up into teams to accommodate the vast uptick of requests they’d faced as Crossbell swelled and panicked in readiness for the Trade Conference—

But Noel never really, truly forgets those words. She can’t, because they’re true, and in that truth, they’re comforting—

Until the day of the Trade Conference is no longer looming, but there, and the SSS is only supposed to be some extra security, but then Calvard’s President is calling them in for a private chat, and Noel spends that entire meeting forcing herself to stay silent, biting her tongue for more reasons than just one—

Until the day of the Trade Conference when Erebonia’s Blood and Iron Chancellor calls on the SSS for a private meeting, and that truth Noel had thought so comforting—

Well. It wasn’t a truth at all. And that isn’t comforting.

How long do you think Crossbell will be able to hold out? Chancellor Osborne asks, grinning like this is all just a joke to him, and—

If anyone’s going to understand, it’s going to be them, isn’t it?

Forever, Noel spits out, bitten through painful, gritted teeth. Crossbell will hold out for forever—

Eyes flick to Lloyd and Elie, for support.

Lloyd and Elie, who are silent.

If anyone’s going to understand, it’s going to be them, isn’t it?

When Lloyd speaks, it’s with a quiet, determined fire. Osborne’s vicious grin sharpens into something a little more indulgent— insulting— as the two of them become the whole conversation.

Lloyd speaks of the strength of will, and beside him, Elie’s back straightens, as if reassured and propped up by his words.

But to Noel, the damage is already done.

She sits amongst her friends, and is aware for the first time just how painfully, deeply alone she is.

-x-

Growing up in Crossbell, growing into an adult as a soldier, Noel had always been aware of one awful truth of her reality: Crossbell was always on the verge of a tipping point—political, economical, violent, pick your bloodstained poison, they all taste just the same in Crossbell State—caught between Zemuria’s two great powers, in every possible field.

It had sucked, and did suck, but her focus as a member of the CGF—as a citizen of Crossbell State itself—had always been on damage control. On bowing heads, to keep a certain level of appeasement cooling Erebonian and Calvardian pride.

She’d never, not once in her life, seriously, truly given thought to rising up. To fighting back.

To Crossbell’s Independence.

The fallout of Mayor Dieter Crois’s Trade Conference announcement is monumental; Noel gets up every morning to see Elie looking like she’s aged another ten years with each and every update the Crossbell Times puts out on the political climate—

—but the polls are clear. Crossbell’s citizenship is almost unanimously in favour of their independence.

It’s a heady thought, independence; hypnotic, almost.

Noel might not have ever given it any thought before, but now she can’t stop thinking about it.

It wouldn’t fix everything, but it sure as hell would fix a lot.

As long as it didn’t come to war, before all was said and done. And the way things are going, that looks like it’s where everything is headed.

It’s infuriating. What is wrong with Erebonia? With Calvard? Why can’t they just leave Crossbell alone? Don’t they have enough? Haven’t they taken enough?

Hasn’t Noel lost enough?

What should be a dream is almost becoming a nightmare in terms of how much stress it’s bringing to Noel, so it’s a relief when Mariabell Crois offers them a weekend away at Mishelam Resort, through Elie.

There’s a part of Noel that feels a little guilty to be escaping the overflowing workload that’s taken over the entire CPD, to say nothing of the overtime and doubletime the CGF must be putting in - but then there’s another part of her, that sees Tio’s sparkling eyes and KeA’s excitement and Randy and Wazy’s out of character melancholy; sees her own worries and fears in the mirror every day, and thinks a vacation, short or not, is something they all desperately need.

The boat ride out to Mishelam Resort takes the better part of an hour, and Noel’s never been gladder for a decently long travel time. Halfway there, when the resort is just coming into view, and nerves have well and truly faded for excitement. Anticipation.

It hadn’t started out that way—she and Elie had sat together, below deck, and their anxieties had bled into a feedback loop of stress, because that’s what the two of them were just like— but then Lloyd had come down from the deck ( doing his rounds, Elie had murmured to Noel, and both of them had burst into giggles when they’d spotted Lloyd heading over to Randy with a determined set to his posture instead of going back up to the deck) and without even realising it, Noel had let herself be soothed by his words and smile.

Well, she isn’t going to complain. She came on this vacation to relax, after all.

When they dock at Mishelam, it appears Lloyd’s worked his magic on the other members of the SSS, too—Randy looks more settled than he has since they walked in on gunfire and bloodshed and Randy’s nightmare of a cousin laughing in girlish delight as corpses cooled at her feet; her pout when her father had told her she couldn’t kill the last terrorist standing still haunts Noel’s dreams.

(When Shirley had shoved the man in their direction with a particularly vicious twist to her expression, Noel had been moving to stand guard over him before she’d made the conscious choice to do so. Terrorist or not, he hadn’t actually succeeded in hurting anyone, no matter what he’d intended—he’d rot in jail now; the appropriate punishment for such a crime.

She didn’t like him, wasn’t sure she pitied him, but...she’d never say it aloud, for fear of hurting Randy, but that man? That terrorist? In that moment, he’d been human, and Shirley just hadn’t. It had been as easy as breathing to step forward as a shield, gun held at the ready. Nevermind how badly she’d been shaking. Nevermind how terrified she’d been.)

And, similarly to how Randy seemed to have regained a bit of his regular cheer, Wazy’s permanent smile seems to be a little less painted on, now—it actually reaches his eyes, Noel thinks.

It gives her hope that this vacation will actually achieve for the SSS what they’d all hoped it would.

And then Fran tackles Noel in a running hug, the little sneak having kept her own invitation to this weekend celebration completely secret—Ilya, Rixia, Sully and Cecile have come, too, and after their now much larger group has booked into the hotel, they’re running down to Mishelam’s newly opened artificial beach—booked out just for them, by Mariabell; just how powerful is the Crois name?

“Bell’s just...like this,” Elie sighs, a mix of exasperated and unbearably fond when she speaks of her childhood friend. Her smile, when she talks about Bell, has a nostalgia to it that Noel doesn’t think she’s ever seen before when it comes to Elie, and she feels a stab of something that takes her a baffled moment to realise is jealousy.

“One hell of a lady, that Mariabell,” Randy agrees, and just like that, Noel’s reverie is broken.

Once Ilya and her stragglers arrive at the beach, the whole party is gathered—Wazy eyes them all critically from where he lounges, graceful, on one of the chairs the boys had set up, peering at them over the shades he’d pushed up onto his nose one-handed.

“So, Lloyd,” he begins, and smirks, “who has the best bathing suit?”

“Randy,” Lloyd says, completely deadpan and with a roll of his eyes, before Noel has a chance to even fully register what it is Wazy had asked and react to it—and then all the girls are treated to the sight of Randy Orlando turning bright red and sputtering incoherently. Wazy laughs, bright and clear, and even Lloyd cracks a grin, breaking through the stoic mask he’d slid on while he’d been speaking.

Randy blushes all the way down his chest, apparently. Noel hadn't known that - it’s not like she’d ever seen Randy shirtless before this, after all; in fact, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen Randy in anything but a turtleneck. Ilya calls out something about not realising he’d need sunscreen quite so badly, so soon, and it says something about how knocked off balance Randy is that he doesn’t even try to shoot back something witty about red hair and sensitive skin, and instead looks desperately like he wants to run into the water, dive under it, and never surface again.

There’s something familiar to Noel in that panic, so she decides to throw a dog a bone.

“Want to come help me set up a net for beach volleyball?” She asks, and as expected, Randy all but jumps at the out.

Wazy and Ilya immediately jump up to say they’ll be coming too. Randy doesn’t so much as twitch—Noel can only hope that within the next few minutes, Randy will have recovered enough to be able to hold his own against the relentless teasing that is sure to ensue from Wazy and Ilya teaming up to needle him.

The teasing honestly isn’t that bad—after they’d wandered off to find a place to set up the net, far enough away from the chairs that they wouldn’t risk spiking a ball right into Cecile and Elie’s faces, the rest of the group also disperses; Noel watches Fran and Tio start planning out an elaborate sandcastle with a smile on her face, and that smile only widens when she sees Lloyd laughing with Rixia, the two of them standing together in the shallow water as they teach KeA and Sully how to swim.

“Eyeing up your boytoy?” Low and sultry, Ilya’s voice comes from right beside Noel’s ear, and she flinches. She has no idea how Ilya managed to sneak up on her—or, well, Ilya is a dancer, she supposes. Light on her feet, and all that. “Or...is it perhaps my darling Rixia who’s caught your gaze?” Ilya’s eyes crinkle shut, her smile indulgent and a warning all at once. “She is beautiful, isn’t she, hmm?”

She leans her weight onto Noel, all but pressing right up against her back, and Noel feels herself going as red as Randy. She’d been trying not to think about it, but Ilya’s bathing suit is less a bathing suit and more two strips of fabric staying held up through Ilya Platiere’s sheer force of will, and right now, Noel is very, very aware that that warmth she can feel on her skin is Ilya’s skin.

“Leave poor Noel alone before you break her,” Wazy calls from one side of the net he and Randy have finally got set up, and when Ilya pulls back a little to turn to him, Noel takes her opportunity to escape.

She bolts to the side of the net Wazy stands on. “Randy, Ilya is on your team,” she says, and if her cheeks are red and she sounds a little breathless, that’s nobody's business but her own.

Randy blinks at her a few times, and then he grins, sharklike. Ilya’s smirk is just as vicious as they high-five. “If that’s how you want to play,” Randy says, like he’s allowing her an out.

Noel narrows her eyes at him, and sides a glance over to Wazy.

He shrugs; casual, unaffected. “We have them,” he says easily.

And just like that, it’s on.

Randy and Ilya separately are two very different types of dangerous, Noel comes to learn—but together, their skills combine to make them damn near lethal. Randy’s probably the most athletic member of the SSS, and Ilya is a professional dancer. In terms of sheer physical ability, they’re outmatched, there’s no doubt about it—

But Wazy fights dirty. And Noel wants to win. Her competitive nature has always been one of her greatest flaws, and while she generally reigns it in for work, because that’s serious, this is beach volleyball. And Wazy’s gleeful, cutting, real grin always brings out the worst in her.

(If she told Wazy that, he’d either laugh and tell her damn straight, or argue that he brought out the best in her.)

Noel loses herself in the game. Sandburn and bruises from hitting the beach in order to not let the ball hit the beach, round after round after round, and they’re managing to keep the scores about even. They’re all a bit more tired than they were when they started out, but none of them have seriously waned yet. Noel understands that for some of them; she and Randy are trained soldiers, and Ilya is a dancer— Wazy has her a bit more curious, since as far as she knows, prior to joining the SSS he was just a Downtown delinquent—

Though, he’s been pretty open, at this point, about how he isn’t from Crossbell, so it’s probably something to do with his past. Noel doesn’t know; might not ever know for certain. Wazy doesn’t like talking about himself in general. She’s never heard him say a single word about his life before Crossbell at all.

A brief break between rounds, to catch their breath and throw back a bottle of water; before they get back into it, Lloyd’s wandered over with a smile and a curious look in his eyes. “You guys having fun?”

Lounging back on the sand on a towel Randy had spread out for them, Ilya holds up her half-empty water bottle in a greeting to Lloyd. “Hey, lil’ bro,” she says with a wink. “You done with the kiddos, then?”

“Yeah, KeA’s got it down pretty well, I think,” Lloyd says. “Sully was feeling pretty confident too, so we left them to it.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, back down the beach. “Rixia went to sit with Cecile and Elie.”

Ilya perks up, making an intrigued noise—almost a purr, really. “You want to back Randy up for me for this round, Lloyd?” She asks, and pushes herself to her feet in one flowing, graceful movement. “I’m going to go see if Rixia needs help reapplying sunscreen. I’m sure the coat I helped her put on in the hotel would have washed off in the waves by now.”

“I, ah—” Lloyd blinks, once, twice. “Sure? I don’t mind a bit of beach volleyball.”

“Great! Good man.” Ilya claps him hard on the shoulder as she passes him—Noel winces along with Lloyd at the echoing sound of her hand slapping on his bare skin—and then she’s gone.

Lloyd’s gaze turns back to the three of them left gathered around the net. Well, collapsed around it, really, even if Wazy’s managed to look at least a little artful in his almost graceless sprawl. He looks amused. “You guys sure you’re up for more volleyball, though?” He asks with a laugh. “You know, it’s nearly lunch—we could just call an end to it here?”

“Ah, but you see, Lloyd,” Wazy says, and grins, bright smile welcoming but sharklike, “we haven’t reached a conclusive win yet.”

“It’s been a perpetual tie,” Noel complains with a groan, and Wazy’s attention transfers to her.

“Not for much longer,” he says. “Randy lost Ilya. He’s lost that advantage.”

“Lloyd isn’t exhausted like we are, though,” Noel points out. “He’s still at one hundred percent.”

Wazy’s smile widens. “Not for much longer,” he purrs.

On the other side of the net, Randy’s smile looks like it’s getting a little dangerous, too - kind of crazed, actually. “Oh, it’s on, pretty boy,” he says. “C’mon, Lloyd. We gotta kick some serious ass.”

Lloyd snorts, looking more amused than ever at how serious the three of them are getting over beach volleyball, of all things, but hey—it’s nice, for once, to be getting serious over something that isn’t inherently, intrinsically serious in and of itself. There’s no political fallout in winning or losing a round of volleyball—and hey! Even if Noel does lose, nobody she loves will die!

It’s soothing, actually (doesn’t stop her from playing to win).

And win, they do—Randy’s still a formidable opponent, but with Lloyd backing him up instead of Ilya, he’s having to split his attention to play offense as well as defense, because Lloyd’s spikes don’t quite have Ilya’s vicious speed to them. At the end of the final round, taking the win with a three point lead, Noel is breathing hard and soaked in an uncomfortable amount of sweat, her hair slicked to her skull, but she’s triumphant. Happy, even.

Wazy holds up both of his hands for a double high-five, and Noel slams her own palms into his with a giggle—turns to look at Randy and Lloyd standing on the other side of the net, Randy rubbing the back of his head ruefully, and sticks her tongue out at them before she can think about what she’s doing and how immature, unprofessional it is.

The moment it hits, she’s dropped her hands from Wazy’s and risen them up to cover her suddenly flaming face.

“Aidios,” she whines as she falls to her knees. She’s always been aware she’s somewhat of a sore loser...it’s a lot rarer that she shows that she’s got poor etiquette as a winner, too.

At least Lloyd and Randy are good natured about it—Randy pokes his own tongue out at her with a wink, and Lloyd just rolls his eyes at their antics before he walks off to collect the lunch orders of the rest of their group before he goes up to the kiosk to order.

“Race you to the water?” Randy asks, looking at Wazy, who shrugs.

“Sure,” he says, and takes off.

Randy yelps. “Cheater!” He snarls. Halfway down the shore, Wazy can apparently still hear him, because his laughter echoes back to them. Noel snorts as Randy takes off after him, swiftly gaining ground.

Left alone once more, she sighs. She doesn’t really want to join Elie, Rixia, Cecile and Ilya in sunbathing, and she’s not really in the mood to swim...she’s considering going up to Lloyd and asking if he’d mind a spare pair of hands to help him carry the food and drinks back from the kiosk, when her eyes fall on the group caught midway between dry sand and wet surf; Fran and Tio, digging a trench around the admittedly impressive sandcastle they’ve been working on.

While she’s still at least slightly immersed in the childish energy that had led to her sticking her tongue out at Randy, Noel grins, and runs forward to tackle Fran in a hug in a way she hasn’t since she was like, twelve.

“Sis!” Fran yelps, knowing who it is immediately, and then—“Ew! Ew! You’re sweaty, Noel, ew!”

Noel laughs and ducks down so her sweat-soaked hair is pressed against Fran’s cheek, and then nuzzles into her.

Fran screams like Noel is murdering her. Noel briefly wonders what it says about their friends that no one even really looks in their direction while Fran is doing an admirable job of sounding like she’s dying a slow, bloody and painful death—but then Fran licks a finger and is shoving it at Noel’s ear with the unerring aim of a desperate little sister, and there’s no time to be worrying about their social circle, because the only thing Noel can focus on is wrestling Fran into the sand until she begs for mercy.

In the end, it’s Lloyd who separates them with the siren song of lunch, and a large dose of exasperation.

Noel tries not to blush as he eyes the bruise quickly spreading along her thigh, where Fran’s elbow had gotten a lucky shot in when Noel had gotten close to pinning her at one point. “Oh, come on!” She protests at his judgy—if amused—look. “You’re the only other person here who wasn’t an only child—are you really telling me you and Guy never fought? Not even once?”

Lloyd flinches—just a little bit, it wouldn’t be noticeable if you didn’t know him, but at this point, Noel does, and she regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth.

“Ah—no, not really,” Lloyd admits, quiet and melancholy, with his gaze far away, speaking even as Noel opens her mouth to tell him you can ignore me, really, I’m so sorry, that was so far out of line, “the age gap between Guy and I was a bit more significant than the one between you and Fran, and, well...it always felt even larger than that, because of how quick Guy had to grow up, so he could take care of me. He...never really was just my big brother, you know? He was...he was my parent, too.”

Right, because Lloyd’s parents had died when he was young, too. Noel winces, feeling even worse.

Lloyd must sense that in some way, because he musters up a smile. “Hey,” he says, and nudges her in the side with an elbow (a lot more gently than Fran did). “You don’t need to look so down, Noel, honest. I don’t mind talking about Guy.”

“I still shouldn’t have asked,” Noel insists. “It’s none of my business.”

The smile Lloyd directs at her is unbelievably, almost unbearably gentle. “Maybe not,” he agrees. “But you’re my friend, Noel. It’s okay to want to know things about me. I mean, I want to know things about you, too.”

Noel doesn’t think there’s anything all that interesting to know about her, really—but Lloyd’s the detective here, not her, so it’s with a niggling curiosity that she asks “what things?”

For a long moment, they sit as if paused, with a silence drawing out between them. Noel’s just beginning to think Lloyd’s realising he didn’t actually have any questions to ask her because she’s just not that interesting when he finally takes in a shaky breath, and looks up to meet Noel’s eyes.

“Like your father,” he says, and Noel can’t help the full body flinch. “You never talk about him.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Noel says, and even to her, her voice sounds far away, and closed off, and very, very cold. “He was a soldier, and he died. That’s it. Okay?”

“...Okay,” Lloyd says. “Sorry if I brought up painful memories, Noel.”

“No, no, that’s what I’m sorry about,” Noel reminds him, and then sighs. “...How about we both be sorry, and forgive each other, and never bring up this conversation again?”

Lloyd hands her the drink she’d requested—the drink she hadn’t even realised he’d been holding onto this whole time—and holds up his own in a salute. “Sounds like a plan,” he says, and gets up, to go squeeze between Elie and Randy. Fran soon takes the space next to Noel, their squabble in the sand not forgotten, but immediately forgiven after the fact, because that’s just how the collective known as Noel and Fran have always been, and will always be. Nothing has ever separated them, and nothing ever will.

Noel lists right into Fran’s side, and leans her head down on her little sister’s shoulder.

“Sis?” Fran asks. “You okay? Did the sun get to you?”

“Nah,” Noel says, cutting off Fran’s fussing before it can dip into full blown worry. “I’m just...thinking about dad.”

Fran stills. “...Oh,” she says.

Noel barely resists the urge to snort. Yeah, oh.

“Do you think about dad a lot?” Fran asks conversationally. “I do. I don’t talk about it, though, because talking about dad makes you angry, and it makes mum cry.”

Fran’s brilliant smile and cheer never falters once the whole time she’s talking, and it kind of makes Noel want to cry, because is this what they’ve done to her little sister? She’s seventeen years old, the same age as Wazy—a few months younger than him, actually, she thinks, because (as Wazy likes to remind them incessantly) his eighteenth birthday is only a handful of weeks way—so she’s definitely not a child, yet there’s not doubting that Noel’s a little guilty of treating her like one, even though she’s only a year older than Fran herself.

Is this what they’ve done to Fran? Made her their emotional support, always cheerful, always smiling, while on the inside, she keeps all of her grief and memories to herself, because she doesn’t want to hurt them? Upset them? Has she been putting them all above herself, this entire time?

What a stupid question. Of course she has. It’s Fran.

Noel’s throat is suddenly unbearably tight, and with her one free arm she reaches up to tug Fran close to her, pulling her little sister into an awkwardly angled hug.

“Aww, sis,” Fran says, and hugs her back—with both arms, tight.

Your father would be proud of you, Mum had told her, once, eyes brimming with the unshed tears she wouldn’t let fall and ruin her smile. Ruin Noel’s special day.

Well, if dad’s proud of her, Noel knows—he’s got to be proud of Fran a thousand times over. She tightens her grip on her little sister, and tilts her head up, so her lips are right by Fran’s ear.

“You’re the best of us,” she whispers.

Fran jolts, and pulls back a little, her eyes shining with confusion. “Huh?”

Noel forces a smile. It feels a little less fake than she’s expecting. “Nothing,” she says. “Just glad you’re here on this vacation with me.”

Fran’s expression immediately clears, her cheer swiftly lighting her face back up, as her eyes crinkle shut as she smiles. “Aww, I’m happy I’m here with you too, Noey!” She says.

Wazy pops up behind Noel—from nowhere, she might add, manifests himself might be a better way to phrase it—unholy glee shining in his eyes as he looks right at Fran. “Noey?” He repeats, in the tone of someone who knows they heard what was said correctly, but wants to hear it again anyway, just because they can.

“No,” Noel says, sharp and fast. “No, no, no— only Fran gets to call me Noey.” Honestly, she’d prefer it if no one called her that, but if there’s one person who gets a free pass to embarrassing nicknames, it’s absolutely not Wazy Hemisphere.

“That’s fine,” Wazy says, agreeing with surprising ease. “So.” He leans in close to Fran. “Got any embarrassing childhood stories about our Noel here?”

That same unholy glee lights up in Fran’s eyes, and Noel takes back anything nice she’d ever said or thought about her sister. She wishes she could melt into the sand.

“Oh, do I ever,” Fran says with a giggle. It was absolutely, one hundred percent, a mistake, to think they could introduce her to Wazy and have it not end in disaster—for Noel’s reputation, if nothing else.

Still...sitting there, watching Wazy and her sister laugh with each other, bright and free, even if she’s the topic of ridicule…

You’re the best of us, she’d whispered, and it had been one hundred percent the truth.

Fran Seeker just makes the world a better place—it would be far, far darker without her light.

As long as she has her sister, Noel thinks, she’ll be okay, no matter what, because she’ll have that steadfast support to reach out to for guidance. Fran has never, not once, steered her wrong.

You’re the best of us.

(Fran deserves a free Crossbell.)

-x-

After lunch, they spend a while longer at the beach, but the sun isn’t all that much higher in the sky when they leave—“Bell only had it booked out for us for the morning,” Elie explains, which makes sense, because Mishelam still has to make money. It’d feel kind of selfish to complain, especially since it’s not like they’re being kicked off of the beach; it’s just that it’s no longer going to be their own private little getaway.

For some of them, though, apparently the idea of sharing space with strangers is unbearable. Wazy wrinkles his nose and declares that he’s heading back to the changing rooms to get dressed before they’re overcrowded, and Lloyd and Randy jump up to follow him.

Like that’s the signal for them to all start migrating off of the beach, Elie calls KeA and Sully up from where they’d run back down to the water, and Tio, who’d gone with them, all but drags them back up to the group.

“Ah—Noel?” Elie asks. “What are you doing?”

Noel, at that moment, is shoving things into bags and picking up stray rubbish. She shrugs. “The boys set everything up,” she explains. “Makes sense if we’re the ones who take it down.”

“Oh, I’ll help,” Cecile starts, moving to stand, only to be startled back into sitting down by the no everyone immediately shouts at her.

“Cecile, you already work far too much,” Elie says, sternly, and by her elbow Tio nods.

Cecile frowns. “Oh, it’s just a little packing, so—”

“So let the kids take care of it, yeah?” Ilya slings an arm over Cecile’s shoulders. “I’ve never known anyone who works as hard as you, Cecile, and coming from me that’s almost painfully hypocritical, so you should listen, and take the break.”

Cecile grumbles a little as she settles back into her seat, but she doesn’t protest as Elie, Noel, Rixia and Sully quietly finish packing up their little corner of the beach, even if her expression says she hates that she isn’t helping them.

By the time the boys make their way back to the beach, they’re all packed up and ready to go—they offer to take their bags up to their rooms while the girls all go get changed, and they make plans to meet up in the hotel complex before heading as one into Mishelam Wonderland.

Tio’s almost vibrating in place at just the mere thought of entering the theme park and meeting Mishy—she’s still doing better than Fran, though, who is outright jumping up and down in excitement. Once they’re back in the ground floor of the hotel complex that runs as a collective of stores, Noel’s pretty much expecting for Fran and Tio to run off together to get...whatever it is they need for their theme park expedition (she knows Elie and Cecile ran off to get snacks, bottled water, and first aid kits, because of course they did), but instead Tio’s being dragged off by Randy, and Noel finds herself being strongarmed into the jewelry store by her little sister.

“I really don’t feel like we’re meant to be in here,” Noel hisses, and Fran shrugs.

“The nice doorman said Miss Mariabell gave him that letter of introduction to him for us, right? So it’s fine, sis!”

Noel doesn’t know how to put into words that any store that requires a letter of introduction from an already existing member for them to be allowed just to enter is a store with price tags so far out of their league it’s practically a joke—even if Mariabell got them in through the door Noel highly doubts she told them to give them trinkets for free— but Fran looks excited at the idea of window shopping for shiny, expensive things, so Noel sighs and walks in willingly so Fran will stop shoving her; at least this way, there’s less of a chance of Fran shoving her into a display she’ll then have to pay for over the next, oh, ten or so years of her life, probably. Maybe more.

Dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a thin white tank she’s had for at least two years now, Noel feels so underdressed she feels almost like she’d fit in here better if she was naked; at least bare skin can be artistic—she just feels tatty.

If Fran’s aware of the stares they’re garnering from the employees and other patrons at all—and Noel’s pretty sure she is; Fran’s airheaded, not blind or stupid— she pays them no mind, bounding forward to the first display that catches her eye with a soft hum of interest. Just behind her, Noel peeks over her shoulder to see what she’s looking at.

“Wedding rings, huh?” She murmurs. “Something you want to tell me, Fran?”

Fran snorts, and rolls her eyes, and Noel gets the feeling that if Fran wasn’t just as aware as she was of all the glass and incredibly delicate pieces they’re surrounded by, she would have found an elbow being jabbed into her ribs.

“Do you think Dad got Mum a ring in a place like this?” Fran asks, voice far away and dreamy.

Noel shakes her head. “Dad was basically on the same salary I am now,” Noel reminds her. “Maybe adjust it a bit for inflation, but—yeah. He’d never be able to afford a ring from a place like this.”

The look Fran shoots her is mournful. “You have no sense of romance, sis,” she complains.

“Oh, yeah? Then how’s this for romance,” Noel says. “Did you know that when Dad proposed, he didn’t even have a ring?”

Fran blinks, looking confused. “What? No,” she says, “I’ve never heard this story before. How do you know it?”

“Dad told me, once,” Noel says. “I guess you were pretty young, when he...anyway, it makes sense that I remember it, even if you don’t.”

Fran looks, briefly, a mix of stricken and mutinous. “I’m only a year younger than you,” she mutters, and Noel can’t bite back the wince.

“When you’re that young, even just a year matters,” she says gently. “You wanna hear the story, or not?”

“...Yeah.”

“Well, from what I remember, they didn’t actually get rings until they’d been engaged for almost a month,” Noel whispers, and is rewarded with sweet relief and a smile when Fran’s slight melancholy is dropped for a shocked gasp and a whispered no way! from underneath sparkling eyes. “And, they only got rings when they did because Mum insisted that if he was serious about her, she thought she deserved a bit more than a length of kitchen twine, no matter how neat his knots were.”

“Kitchen twine!?”

“Yeah—Dad said he hadn’t been planning to propose at all, not yet, anyway, but one night he’d been helping Mum make dinner in the kitchen, and she’d just looked so beautiful he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d cut off a length of twine from the spool they were using for dinner and dropped to one knee and asked Mum to—get this—‘tie her life with his’ before his brain had caught up to the rest of his body.”

Fran looks on the verge of tears. “You mean his heart,” she says, and Noel gives her sister a minute to deal with her mild sniffles.

A small, warm hand finds its way into hers, and Noel squeezes it tight.

“Mum still has that twine, doesn’t she?” Fran asks, and Noel nods.

“It’s what she keeps Dad’s wedding band on, around her neck, I think,” she says.

“That’s so sweet,” Fran says. “Noel, do you think we’ll ever find something like that?”

Noel blinks. What? “Fran…” she begins, at a slight loss. “I’ve never really thought about it,” she admits. “But you’re probably the most loveable person on the entire continent, Fran. There’s someone out there for you.”

“What about you?” Fran fidgets. “You haven’t been as focused on Lloyd lately...did something happen between him and Elie? Noel, have you given up? Quick—it’s a good thing I brought you here, we can find him something you can give him to boost your affection points! It’s not a bad end for you yet, Noey, I promise! We can still get your flags up!”

Once Fran’s got an idea in her head, it’s almost impossible to get her to calm down and take a step back, so before she can really build up a plan to buy out the store for Lloyd, Noel sighs and waves her hands in a stop gesture.

“Lloyd isn’t really a jewelry guy,” she says, instead of trying to plead with her sister using actual logic. It rarely works, after all.

Fran looks briefly disappointed, edging crestfallen—but, being Fran, recovers swiftly.

“We just have to make sure the two of you have some time together, then!” She says, and starts tugging Noel back towards the store’s entrance, so they can exit. “In Mishelam Wonderland. Alone.” She winks back at Noel over her shoulder, and Noel can only sigh and resign herself to her fate.

It appears that they’ve somehow timed their exit of the store perfectly—barely an arge out from the entrance, and they nearly run straight into Randy.

“Yo,” he says, and takes a hasty step back, arms held up as if he’s trying to ward them off. Noel can’t quite blame him. Fran in a hurry is a scary thing to encounter without warning, even when she’s dressed in frilly pink and white and it’s broad daylight. “Was just coming to look for you two, actually.”

“Are we all about ready to head in, then?” Noel asks, and Randy shoots her a pair of fingerguns and a wink.

“You two are the last stragglers,” he confirms. “Everyone’s hanging at the MWL entrance plaza—I drew the short straw and had to come looking for you lovely ladies.”

He winks again. Noel rolls her eyes, and Fran giggles. “Lead on, Randy,” she says, and lets go of Noel’s hand once they’re walking up the stairs that lead to Mishelam Wonderland proper.

Noel shoots her a questioning look. Fran’s eyes are very wide, and she keeps very deliberately flicking her gaze from Noel to Lloyd and back again. Noel only just barely manages not to sigh, and frantically looks for a rescue while she screams internally—

—her eyes fall on Wazy, standing on the outskirts of the group, whereas the rest of them have at least partnered up to go through MWL’s attractions together, and if she makes an actual, literal dive for him, there’s at least no video proof.

Wazy’s genuinely startled look fading into a wide, knowing grin is embarrassment enough, anyway. It already feels like blackmail, and he hasn’t even said a word.

Noel can feel Fran’s disappointed eyes on her; hears her sister’s sigh as she makes her way over to Tio’s side with a shake of her head and a defeated slump to her shoulders. Sorry, Fran, Noel thinks, with shards of glass caught in her throat, choking bitter fear and blood down over the words she so desperately, desperately wants to tell her sister—

—except she’s not ready for them herself, yet; not ready for them to be true, for them to be real.

It bears repeating: sorry, Fran. She only wants what’s best for Noel, after all.

“You interested in any particular attraction?” Noel asks Wazy absentmindedly, and though that grin hasn’t left his face yet, he gives her question some serious thought as he offers her his arm.

“The Castle of Mirrors, maybe?” He suggests. “The architecture, just from the outside, is…” He trails off, and scrunches up his face. “...complex,” he settles on. “Especially for a theme park attraction.”

“Crois family quality, huh,” Noel muses, and something flickers in Wazy’s expression as he looks over at her.

“Something like that,” he says finally. “...Other than that, though, I’m only really interested in the so-called haunted attraction—and even then, only if I’m on it when Elie is.”

Noel snorts. “It’d take a full CGF squad to get Elie within a stone’s throw of that ride,” she says, and Wazy laughs.

“It’d take more than just the one squad,” he says, amused, “but, watch—Randy will have her walking into it by the end of the day, I guarantee it.” He jerks his chin over Noel’s head, and she tracks the movement and his gaze to where Lloyd, Elie and Randy have formed a little group of three to go around the theme park together; Randy’s grin is challenging and smug, and Elie’s bristling with affront while Lloyd looks on the verge of sighing and wandering off in search of the nearest stiff drink… Wazy’s totally, absolutely right.

“How do you do that?” She mutters, and Wazy shrugs.

“You get good at learning people, Downtown,” he says, and tugs on her arm a little bit—maneuvering through the crowd, they start to move towards the Castle of Mirrors. “And I don’t mean individuals. Not personally. I mean people. And it’s not like those three are particularly good at hiding their feelings, anyway. Open books, the lot of them. They’d be terrible at poker.”

“Randy’s great at poker,” Noel protests. Her wallet would know, to say nothing of the amount of people that lost out to him in the CGF back when he was a member - she’s pretty sure he’d gotten banned from a lot of game nights because of it.

“Randy’s great at poker when he wants to be,” Wazy explains. “He’s terrible when it comes to people he cares about. I’ve never seen someone as good at lying as he is fold as fast as he does when it comes to the SSS—especially Lloyd and Elie. It’s like he’s never had real friends before.”

Noel punches him in the arm before she can think the action through. “That’s rude,” she snaps.

Wazy winces. “I’m not wrong, though,” he says, and before Noel gets the chance to argue her point or at least make him apologise, they’ve reached the Castle of Mirrors, and Wazy’s tugging his arm out of Noel’s to hand the attendant two tickets. She frowns at him as they climb up the final stairs to the castle.

“You used one of your tickets on me,” she says. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

Wazy winks at her. “Guess that just means you owe me a trip to an attraction on one of your tickets, no?” He asks airily.

Noel rolls her eyes, and steps into the castle proper. Wazy steps in right behind her, and the sudden shift from the bright sun of the day to the soft glow-lit dark of the castle interior leaves Noel blind, blinking and waiting for her eyes to adjust.

When she’s stopped seeing spots, she turns to see Wazy frowning. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says, even though his expression says it’s sure something. He cranes his head back, squinting at the staircase that spirals upwards, appearing near endless. “You ready to ascend with me?”

“Don’t say it like that,” she says. “And get that smirk off of your face.”

“What smirk?” Wazy says, smirking, as they slowly make their way up the winding stairs. For as busy as MWL had seemed on the outside, the Castle of Mirrors is almost eerie in how empty and quiet it is—Wazy points out that it’s a more popular location for lovers than it is for the families running around the park, and Noel points out that they’re high up enough that if she pushes him down the stairs, it would more than hurt.

He just laughs at her, which is kind of infuriating, but typical for Wazy, so she doesn’t even bother to comment on it—just sighs and moves on, as they arrive at what must be final floor of the Castle of Mirrors—

—or, at least the final publicly available floor, Noel thinks, squinting, because while she may not have anything even approaching a mathematical mind, she could have sworn the place looked taller from the outside—

“There are probably maintenance floors further above,” Wazy offers with a shrug, “or it’s used as storage space, or the operating systems for all the light shows set up throughout this place. Or it just looks bigger on the outside.” He winks. “Or your eyesight is going bad.”

“...Probably,” Noel agrees after a moment of hesitation, choosing to ignore the last idea he’d offered to her. “So. What are we meant to do up here, again?”

Wazy steps into the room behind her, and hums thoughtfully as he takes it in. “I think we’re meant to ring the bell,” he says, gesturing at the twin ropes on either side of it, “and then make our wishes in front of the mirror up there.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, to indicate the mirror on the far wall, raised a little above them—two smaller staircases lead up to it.

“Cute,” Noel comments.

“Well, it is intended for lovers—”

“Shut up and grab your rope, Hemisphere.”

The bell’s peals are lower than she’s expecting, but she doesn’t spend too long turning that over in her mind—it’s not as if she has any idea what the average sound from a bell that size is, anyway. She takes the right staircase, and Wazy takes the left, and then together they’re both standing in front of the wall of mirrors.

This is stupid, Noel thinks.

Out loud, she opts for, “what are you going to wish for?”

Wazy side-eyes her, and then shrugs, an artful, careless movement that just telegraphs to Noel how careless it really isn’t. “Lloyd to stop stealing my alcohol, maybe?”

Noel snorts, and throws a punch at Wazy’s side—gently, of course. “Once in a lifetime chance to wish for whatever you want, Wazy,” she taunts, “and you’re going to waste it on that? You turn eighteen in a handful of weeks!”

“‘Once in a lifetime,’” he repeats, mocking, “as if I’m not just going to climb up here with Lloyd again later.”

Now it’s Noel’s turn to laugh, and she does. “Oh, Aidios,” she says. “What wish are you going to make him stand here and listen to you make?”

“A summer wedding, obviously.”

Their laughter rings out, almost as loud as the bell that’s still echoing. “Poor Lloyd,” Noel teases.

“Ouch,” Wazy says. “Really, though...hmm.” He tilts his head, expression considering. “Maybe I’ll just wish for your wish to come true—how does that sound?”

“That’s cheating,” Noel says bluntly, even as she can feel her cheeks heat up and something in her heart melt. A voice in the back of her head that sounds suspiciously like Fran goes d’aww! She does her best to ignore it. “If that’s what you want to waste your wish on, though, I won’t stop you.” Light, airy, like something so silly didn’t just almost reduce her to tears.

“Well, then? What’s your wish? Since I’m acting as patron for it, surely I have a right to hear just what it is I’m throwing the weight of my own wish behind—”

“Oh, for the love of the Goddess, please shut up,” Noel groans. “I’m thinking.”

Wazy gestures at the mirror as if to say go on. “Think away,” he says.

Noel stares into the mirror, and tries to see beyond her own face.

Fran stares back at her.

I wish, she thinks, suddenly tired beyond her years, that whatever trouble is coming to Crossbell next, Fran will never lose her smile.

She steps back, and turns to leave. Wazy is quick to follow. “Well?” He asks. “What did you wish for?”

“For you to learn how to wear a damn shirt,” she says bluntly, and gets to see the rare sight of Wazy Hemisphere sputtering incoherently for her efforts. She’s still riding the high from that minutes later—not even Wazy’s incessant needling about telling him her real wish has brought her mood down—when, halfway down the spiral staircase, they run into Lloyd and KeA, heading up.

“Oh!” KeA says when she spots them, letting go of Lloyd’s hand to run up to them. “Noel! Wazy! You’re here?” She tilts her head. “What did you wish for?”

“A better wardrobe for Wazy,” Noel tells KeA solemnly, just as Wazy murmurs a stiff drink. She throws one foot back in the direction she knows his legs are, and is rewarded with impact and a soft oof. “What are you gonna wish for, KeA?”

For just a second, Noel could swear something dark flickers across KeA’s expression—and then it’s gone, as quickly as it came, and she was probably just imagining things. KeA’s smile is as bright as usual, eyes crinkling shut from how wide she grins, and she laughs as she says “I don’t know!”

“KeA hasn’t made up her mind yet,” Lloyd explains.

“There’s so many things KeA wants to wish for!” KeA agrees.

“I’m sure she’ll decide by the time we reach the top of the tower.” Lloyd smiles down at KeA in a way Noel can only label indulgently, and reaches down to ruffle her hair before scooping up her hand again. “You two have fun with the rest of the attractions,” he says, as he and KeA move past them.

“Have fun!” KeA calls back, and Noel lifts up a hand to give her a little wave goodbye.

“So, where are you going next?” Noel asks Wazy as they continue their journey back down to the ground floor.

Wazy blinks at her. “Me?” He asks. “Why, Miss Seeker, I believe you owe me a ride.”

Noel rolls her eyes. “I owe you a ticket,” she corrects, and rummages through her pocket for one of hers. “Here—take it.”

Wazy frowns at her, but takes the ticket. “You’re no fun,” he complains.

“Sorry, not sorry,” Noel says. “I’ve hit my Wazy Hemisphere quota for the day.”

Wazy looks faintly amused. “There’s a quota?”

“Has been from the moment I met you,” Noel says bluntly, as they reach the exit, and step out into blinding light. Noel blinks tears from her eyes as they well up in response to the sudden, inescapable sun.

“Well, I’ll be off, then,” Wazy says once they’ve stepped out of the doorway and started making their way up the path that leads to Mishelam Wonderland’s central square. “You have fun with the rest of your tickets, hmm?”

“I’ll try,” Noel sighs, because the idea of going around the park alone seems depressing, but she also really has hit her Wazy quota. “You, too. Have fun loitering around the place until you find an opportunity to go bug Lloyd.”

And then, with a laugh and a two-fingered wave tossed over his shoulder, Wazy is gone.

Noel sighs, again, because there’s little else for her to do, and wanders in the direction of the food court—if nothing else, climbing those stairs was at least a mild workout, and she could eat.

She’s just sat down with her order—fries and a nice, icy cola—when Elie slides onto the bench in front of her with a tray of her own; loaded with a salad tossed through with something fried and a thick, strawberry topped pink milkshake. Her knees bump into Noel’s under the table.

“Hello, Noel.” Elie smiles at her, and it’s bright enough that it works completely to hide what a mess Elie’s hair is.

“Hey, Elie,” Noel greets. “Randy managed to get you on that haunted ride, then?”

Elie’s smile briefly flickers to a scowl. “Randolph is lucky I like him enough to not kill him,” she says, and stabs at her salad with a little more force than Noel thinks lettuce probably needs.

“Randolph, huh?”

“He doesn’t warrant a Randy,” Elie mumbles. “He’s lucky I haven’t demoted him to Orlando, actually.”

Noel snorts into her soda. “You should call him that, though, just once,” she says. “I bet you anything he’d look like a kicked puppy.”

“So, no different from how he usually looks, then?”

They laugh, and chatter over light, mindless things as they eat the rest of their lunch. Noel finishes first, but she doesn’t really have any plans or destinations in mind, and so she sits with Elie, happily waiting for her to finish. Together, they take their rubbish to the bin and stack their trays up on the counter.

“So, what other attractions have you visited, Noel?” Elie asks as they head out of the food court and back into the central square proper, an easy smile on her face.

“Just the Castle of Mirrors,” Noel says. “Went up with Wazy, and met Lloyd and KeA going up as we went down. You?”

“Just that terrible haunted ride,” Elie says, a little rueful. “I know I shouldn’t have let Randy goad me like that, but he is extraordinarily good at pushing my buttons.”

“He does seem to like winding you up,” Noel agrees. She forgets, sometimes, how much of a gremlin Randy can be, because unlike Wazy, he’s selective in his targets. He likes poking at specific people, and Noel generally isn’t one of them.

“He’s a troublemaker,” Elie sighs. “Well—do you have any other attractions in mind for your next location?”

Noel doesn’t even really have to give it so much as a moment’s thought. “No,” she says bluntly.

Elie claps her hands together. “That’s great!” She says. “Do you mind spending some time with me, then? I think it would be a little boring to go around by myself, and I don’t want to go and steal Lloyd away from KeA just yet if they’re having fun.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Noel says, warmed a bit by the idea of spending some time alone with Elie—she doesn’t quite know the other girl as well as she wants to, even after multiple weeks of living under the same roof, but she still considers her a close friend, and admires her greatly. “I—of course I don’t mind staying with you, Elie. What attractions did you have in mind for visiting?”

A thoughtful hum. “I do want to visit the Castle of Mirrors, but I won’t drag you all the way up to the top again—I’ll make Randy suffer through it as payback, or something. And I am interested in the ferris wheel, but, well,” a rueful sigh as she squints up at the clear blue sky, sun high overhead, “I think its atmosphere will be much nicer against a setting sun,” Elie says, and nods firmly. A mischievous smile, tossed over her shoulder towards Noel. “That just leaves the fortune teller,” she says. “Would you like to gaze into the future with me, Noel?”

Thump-thump-flip, and her heart does something odd in her chest—not quite a skipped beat, but something close.

“Sure,” Noel says, even though she’s not sure—the future is scary, and looming, after all, and she’s not sure if she wants to face what’s coming in it now— and steps forward to follow Elie across the square, throat and mouth dry.

The building that houses the fortune teller is lowlit and smells of potpourri. Noel wrinkles her nose up a bit at the cloying scent, just barely overpowering the—vanilla?—candles that drip wax from every corner of the room.

“Oh, hello there,” Ilya smirks at them from where she lounges across one of the benches lined up along the walls of this entrance room, and lifts a hand in greeting. “Fancy seeing you here, girls—you don’t seem like the type to care about this sort of thing, Noel, and you, Elie...aren’t you scared of the supernatural?”

Normally, a question like that would have Elie bristling—Noel’s seen that reaction enough times from Randy’s teasing to know that for sure—but it seems even she is cowed before Ilya’s...well, before Ilya. She simply chuckles, a nervous little sound, and scratches absently at one pink-stained cheek.

“Well...it’s not really supernatural, right?”

Ilya raises a brow. “She’s going to tell your future, sweetheart.”

“As long as there are no ghosts,” Elie says firmly, “I’ll be fine.” Uncertainty flickers across her face. “Is there—are there going to be ghosts, Ilya?”

Ilya shrugs. “Dunno,” she says. “I didn’t go in. The idea of having mine and Rixia’s compatibility read…” She trails off with a wicked grin and a wink that has Noel flushing brighter than Elie before continuing on, “well, it was intriguing. But I have no interest in having the future read out to me from the cards, even if it turns out she is the real deal. Ilya Platiere doesn’t believe in a pre-ordained future. She makes her own.” Her eyes flick to the thick curtain that covers the doorway leading further into the building. “I’m just waiting for Rixia to finish up.”

Noel eyes the curtain, too. “Has she been in there long?” The tension around Ilya’s eyes is obvious to see, now that she’s noticed it, and it runs far too deep in even the lines of her smile for Rixia to have been back there for only a handful of minutes.

“Oh, a while,” Ilya says, and something in her smile tightens before it falls entirely, and she sighs. “Never mind us, though—what are you two looking for, hmm?”

“A compatibility reading might be fun,” Elie muses, and Noel’s heart definitely skips a beat this time. “I think Noel and I work well together, but it’d be interesting to hear what a professional has to say about it...and, well, after hearing all that from you, Ilya, I’m not quite sure I want to know my future anymore, heh.”

Ilya’s smile flickers back to life, a little warmer, a little more genuine. “You’re sweet,” she coos. “But don’t feel like you have to live life in my example. I’m Ilya Platiere. You’re you. If you think knowing the future would help you, shoot for it!”

Noel turns those words over in her mind, muses on them while they sit in silence for several minutes, waiting for Rixia to exit—Elie’s humming some vaguely familiar tune under her breath, and that honestly just makes it easier to zone out as she thinks.

If you think knowing the future would help you, shoot for it.

She’s still thinking on it when Rixia finally steps out from behind the curtain, looking pale and drawn and tired, moody and distant - but still full of a gentle sort of light when she spots Ilya waiting for her, chewing on her delicately manicured nails.

“Don’t do that, Ilya,” she scolds, and brushes past Elie and Noel with a far less intimate smile than the one she shoots Ilya as she takes her hand in both of her own, and tugs it out of reach of her mouth. “You’ll make Avan cry.”

Ilya barks out a laugh, and says something back to Rixia, voice low and with a teasing lilt, but Noel doesn’t have a chance to even try to catch the words, because Elie’s shoving her through the curtain Rixia had just exited from, fingers light and fluttery on her back with Elie’s visible excitement.

“Had no idea you were so eager for this sort of thing,” Noel says as they walk through a hall to a stop before a final door, where a park worker takes a ticket out of Elie’s hand—doesn’t ask Noel for one, though, just waves them both through, so this must be a one-for-all kind of deal.

“Heh—I’m not, really,” Elie confesses. “It’s probably more the novelty than anything…” She trails off, and her expression melts into something a little more formal. “Hello, ma’am,” she greets the fortune teller, as the woman herself, draped in scarfs and shrouded in shadows, gestures for them to take a seat across from her.

“Hello, dear,” she says, and while Noel can’t get a read on her expression, obscured as it is by the scarves she wears, she sounds amused—by Elie’s polite formality? By the way they both sit, as if at attention? “How can my cards and I be of use to you two lovely ladies today?”

“Oh, I heard you offer compatibility readings?” Elie says. “Could I ask for one of those?”

“Easily,” the fortune teller says, before her dark eyes cut to Noel. “And you? Is that what you want, as well?”

“...I’m fine getting our compatibility read,” Noel says, and something in the fortune teller’s gaze sparks.

“But that’s not what reading you’d ask for,” she says, “if you’d walked into this room on your own ticket, now is it?”

Noel blinks. “I—what?” How did she know? There absolutely hadn’t been any time for the park worker waiting outside to tell her which of them had handed them the ticket, and the door had been closed.

The fortune teller simply raises a brow at her. “Well?” She prompts, and Noel can only fidget in her seat.

If you think knowing the future would help you, shoot for it.

“Maybe,” she hedges, and for a long, long moment, the fortune teller just stares at her. Just takes her in, gaze considering.

Then, she extends one elegant hand across the table, as if ready to accept an offering. “I don’t usually do this,” she says, and winks, “but just this once, I’ll make an exception. Give me one of your tickets, and I will tell you your fortune alongside reading your compatibility.”

Noel stares at the outstretched hand, considers turning her down—but then Elie nudges her in the side with an eager grin, and Ilya’s words echo in her mind, and she’s pulled out one of her tickets and handed it to the fortune teller before she can give voice to her instinctive refusal.

“She’s offering,” Elie murmurs, right into Noel’s ear, like she can sense how uncomfortable Noel is. “You’re not being a nuisance, Noel. We’re doing this for fun, remember?”

Noel swallows. “Right,” she says. “Right. I remember.”

The fortune teller smiles, bland, like she hasn’t been listening to their entire conversation. “So,” she says, “whose reading shall I do first?”

“Elie’s,” Noel says, at the same time that Elie says Noel’s.

They both pause, and stare at each other. The fortune teller laughs. “Compatibility first, it is,” she murmurs.

And then she reaches for her cards.

Noel doesn’t have a lot of experience with tarot—even when Fran and the other girls around their age at Sunday School had gone through that phase, Noel had already been too fixated on her future to worry about trying to see it; they’d spent their time trying out readings with methods they’d barely understood, and Noel had spent her time learning guns back to front. She’d known, then, that fortune telling wasn’t going to help her.

It’s funny, the things that change.

This Mishelam fortune teller is nothing like those teenage girls were with their cards, all giggles and shrieks and clumsy shuffling—no, she’s experienced, she’s professional.

To Noel’s eyes, she doesn’t so much shuffle her cards as simply direct their flow, elegant and graceful from one hand to another. She fans them out before her, and places out three in a spread, before turning them over. Her hum is thoughtful, as she peers down at the cards, before looking up to glance between the two of them.

“Interesting,” she says.

Elie perks up, and leans in closer, like seeing the pictures painted onto each card with more clarity will help her actually understand what meaning the spread is conveying to the fortune teller. “Interesting?” She asks. “How so?”

“These cards tell a very interesting tale,” the fortune teller says. “A very interesting tale indeed.”

Elie blinks. “And how do you interpret that?”

The fortune teller shrugs. “There are innumerable ways to read the cards,” she says, “telling a fortune is just as much about staring at your client and taking perspective into account as it is what the cards are saying.” She reaches out, and taps at the first two cards. “At some point, the two of you reached a ‘pause.’ A time where you stepped back, to ‘wait and see.’ And now, that you’re both in that state of pause...not moving forward, you’re trying to find escape in each other.” A pause. “Or, maybe you’re trying to find escape in any avenue...and to each other, you’re just conveniently available.”

Elie looks deeply uncomfortable, approaching stricken. “Is that really what you think of our relationship?” She asks.

The fortune teller hushes her. “I am simply interpreting what the cards say,” she says. “And I’m not done, besides.” She taps at the second card once more. “This is where you are now,” she says, and then moves to tap at the third card. “And this is where you are going.”

Noel squints at it, and tries not to think on the layer of ice that had formed in her stomach at the fortune teller’s earlier words.

“Where we’re going,” Elie murmurs.

“Yes...taking this card into account with the others...hmm. Right now, the two of you may exist in a state of ‘pause,’ but you are also healing. This break could be seen as a respite. This card...does not necessarily indicate emotional turmoil returning, however…” She hesitates. “This is a card that indicates unrealistic goals and daydreams,” she says. “An indication of that ‘escape’ I mentioned earlier...perhaps becoming something slightly more harmful. So long as you keep your mind firmly on reality and ground each other, however...well. I believe you will be strong enough to work through your hardships. Your relationship is interesting, in that it’s a new one, yet one so full of turmoil—and yet, you sit here before me, together. And you were smiling when you entered.” She gathers up her cards, and shuffles them back into one whole deck. “It may seem strange for me to say this, but know this: fate is never tied to the cards. They can guide you, and they can inform you, but never let them lead you. Because they will mislead you. Only you can choose how to live, and what kind of future that will lead you to.”

Some of the tension in Elie’s face fades, but not all of it. “I was hoping for something cute,” she mumbles. “That—it wasn’t a very nice fortune to have to hear, ma’am.”

The fortune teller’s dark eyes seem almost sympathetic. “You came here to ask for your compatibility,” she says, “and right now, the cards are clear: however well you work together, right now you are both in a state of such personal confusion and turmoil that unless you keep a firm grip on both yourself and reality, your potential together will never bloom into anything more than the closed up bud it is right now.”

Elie looks down at the ground, fingers curling in on each other in her lap. She seems small, like this, downtrodden, and—and Noel doesn’t like it.

“What about me?” She asks—challenges, really. She doesn’t really feel like getting her fortune told now, what with the lump of ice clogging up her insides and how sick the fortune teller’s words had already made her feel, but, well—she’d paid for a fortune. And, hopefully, this will distract Elie, at least a little, from whatever thoughts she’s thinking that are making her look like that. “Are you going to tell my fortune, now?”

“But of course,” the fortune teller says, and once more, arrays her cards out in a fan on the table, faces down. “Pick three,” she says to Noel, and after a moment’s hesitation, she reaches out across the table to pick out the first three cards her fingers fall on. She just wants to get this over with.

There’s a smirk in the fortune teller’s eyes that says I know what you’re thinking, but she doesn’t call Noel out on it—simply shakes her head, with an amused side falling from her lips as she separates the three cards Noel had indicated out from the rest of the deck.

She pauses as she turns them over, and stares at them hard.

“A long time ago, you lost someone you loved, hmm?” She asks, and Noel goes—impossibly—even colder than before as she taps at the first card in the spread, showing an image of a woman weeping in a bed, a wall of swords arrayed behind her. “In a battle? This wound—it did not strike you directly, like it did for your loved one, but it certainly left a scar. It haunts your every waking moment, doesn’t it? Your dreams, too—this event shaped the core of who you are.”

Noel flinches like she’s just been slapped. The fortune teller moves onto the second card, and Elie’s concerned stares bores into Noel’s side. Her fingers reach out to grasp Noel’s frozen ones. “Hey,” she whispers. “Are you okay? Noel?”

Noel makes her stiff lips move. “I’m fine,” she croaks out.

“Now, this,” the fortune teller says. “This is an interesting card, to follow that first one. A card representing you; a card of righteousness and truth, but also a card indicating transformation. You stand at a crossroads, and your ideals will choose which of those roads you’ll turn down. By firmly seeing reality for what it is, you can cut down the sorrows that block your way, and secure a path to the future. And what that future may be…” She turns to the third card. Noel peers at the art painted on it, and feels a shiver shoot down her spine. A woman robed in gold, smiling benevolently to the middle distance as she tosses coins into the crowd that kneels around her. There’s nothing inherently awful about the image, but still, it makes Noel feel...uneasy.

“Hmm.” There’s something both considering and amused in the fortune teller’s hum as she tap-tap-taps a finger over the final card. “Generosity is not always that which it seems,” she says finally. “And that which is right is not always right.” Sharp eyes lock onto Noel’s, piercing through her. “You’d do well to remember that, dear.”

The fortune teller looks away, and Noel can breathe again.

Elie looks between the two of them, looking somewhat at a loss. “Is that—is that it?” She asks. “It doesn’t really feel like you finished Noel’s fortune…”

“It’s fine, Elie,” Noel starts, just as the fortune teller laughs.

“A fortune is understood best by the one it belongs to,” she says firmly. “That is what that card has told me. If Noel does not understand it now, she will one day—you just must hope that day comes before it’s too late, my dear.” She winks at the two of them, playful. “I understand that the cards may have not shown you quite what you wished for today,” she says. “Still—thank you for your time. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time at Mishelam.”

And, just like that, they’re dismissed—Noel’s legs feel slightly shaky when she stands to get out of her seat, but she’s walking fast to get out of that room, Elie right on her heels. She doesn’t bother to pause in the entrance hall, simply marches forward to leave the building altogether—

Bright, blinding light. Squinting up at the sky, Noel can see that the sun’s position hasn’t changed all that much from where it was when they had first entered the building, which, somewhere deep in her soul, just doesn’t feel correct. Surely, surely, they’d spent an eternity in there. That’s what it felt like, at least.

A shaky laugh from behind her, as Elie summons up a weak smile. “That…” she starts, and trails off. Forces the smile wider, and tries again. “That was sure something, huh?”

“Something,” Noel parrots. “That’s...well, it’s one word for it, I suppose.”

Elie’s smile dips into something a little rueful—a little lighter, more genuine. “I think it’s the only word for it, really.” She rocks back on her heels a little, shifting her weight uneasily as she looks at Noel with uncertainty in her gaze. “Do you—what do you think? Of what she said?”

Noel takes a moment to think up the right words. “I think she was very good at her job,” she says finally, and Elie’s brows furrow.

“...Telling fortunes?”

“Selling her act,” Noel says bluntly. “She’s a theme park worker, remember?”

Elie blinks, and then laughs, brighter and higher than before, like Noel’s words shoved a weight off of her chest. “You’re right,” she says, and then chuckles, as if at herself. “You’re right, Noel. I’m being silly, feelings shaken like this.”

She steps forward, and points across the square. “I see Cecile,” she says. “Maybe we can just go sit with her for a little while? And worry about spending the rest of our tickets later.”

Cecile is a soothing presence all wrapped up in a warm, welcoming smile and understanding eyes. It’s the best damn idea Noel’s heard all day. “Sounds like a plan,” she says, suddenly exhausted.

Selling her act, Noel had said, and she believed it. You couldn’t tell the future.

And yet, and yet.

The fortune teller’s words won’t leave her mind.

And the cold, seeping dread won’t leave her heart.