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i
Ravus comes back for her, as she knew he would. He always will, she knows; nothing but death could keep her brother from her.
“They found Scientia?” she asks. “He’s alive?”
“Somehow,” Ravus says grimly. He doesn’t offer much more than fragments—that the Crystal is found, that Scientia is lingering on, that Noctis has asked for her.
“I’ll go,” she says. “Of course I’ll go.”
“Of course,” Ravus echoes after her. His voice is disapproving, but he lifts her gently from the bed; she wraps her arms around him, rests her head on his shoulder, and lets him carry her.
ii
Returning to Tenebrae is like stepping into the past. The room where Noctis had stayed as a child is being used again, but this time it is Scientia who is lying quiet and broken, and it is Noctis who is sitting beside the bed.
There is a bittersweetness in seeing how many things have changed, and how many things have stayed the same. She never thought that she would see Noctis in Tenebrae again—but she hadn’t thought she would see Tenebrae again, either.
“Luna—” Noctis rises from his chair, and Lunafreya reaches out to grasp his hand.
“I’ve missed you.”
iii
Scientia has nightmares, terrible things that send him gasping and retching, clawing at bedsheets. He has waking terrors, too. Those are worse; those are much worse.
There’s the sickly, oil-smear of darkness in his body, and it winds through his blood, curls in his bone. It spreads across his skin like soot, and cracks like dried mud when he scratches furiously at his skin.
“Is he….” Noctis’s voice fades, leaving the question unanswered. His hand is cold and clammy in Lunafreya’s, and she chafes it, trying to share a bit of warmth.
“We’re here,” she tells Noctis. “We’ll help him.”
iv
To sit in a room with Noctis is to feel dazed and lost in time. He is very much as she remembered and as she imagined, but he is also so much a stranger. He’s a man now, worlds away from the little boy that she had known years ago.
She wonders if he feels as puzzled as she—if he feels the same sweet, pensive joy when he looks at her and sees someone he almost but not quite recognizes.
Does he feel the same contentment? The same completion? Will he be as happy as she, she wonders.
v
“Good morning, Ignis,” Lunafreya says with forced cheer. Scientia turns his head toward her, but he looks past her, toward the door. “Did you sleep well?”
Scientia’s eyes move jerkily to meet hers, then back to gaze at the door. His voice, when he speaks, breaks. “Well enough, thank you.”
It’s the most that he’s said to her since she arrived, and the cheer in her voice is less forced when she says, “I’m glad to hear it.”
She rests her hand on the bed, beside his hip. Today, unlike all the days before, he reaches out to hold it.
vi
She heals. It is slow, and it is painful, but it is real. She grows stronger, week by week, and by the end of the month, she can make her own slow, painstaking way through the halls.
“You should take better care,” Ravus complains when she leans on him. She loves him for it, for his unhappy acceptance of Noctis and his entourage’s semi-permanence, of Lunafreya’s place by Scientia’s bed.
“We’re healing,” she tells him, squeezing his arm. “All of us.”
His smile looks like a grimace, but he gives a jerky nod, and she loves him for that, too.
vii
The darkness leaves Scientia’s body, burnt out beneath Lunafreya’s hands. The cracks in his body and spirit, from the Starscourge and the Ring, begin to join together like a mended cup. He will never be what he was—none of them will—but he will be whole, and perhaps he’ll be better for it.
She feels better for it, like she is burning away her own hurts when she sits beside Scientia and lays her hands on his cracked skin. Their hurts aren’t so different; maybe, in helping rebuild him, she is rebuilding herself, becoming a broken and mended thing.
viii
Ignis has begun to leave his bed, though he only goes to the balcony, to sit in the sunshine. Noctis is usually with him, or the others, but today Ignis is alone, looking tired and wan in the morning light.
When she joins him, she asks, “Did you sleep well?”
He looks at her consideringly, then says, in a confessional manner, “I have nightmares still. Of Gralea, and Ardyn. The Crystal.”
She sits down, leaving little space between them. “I have those nightmares, too,” she admits. “I think I might always.”
“We shan’t tell Noct.”
“No,” she agrees, “we shan’t.”
ix
The summer grows hotter, and the air is heavy and still. The coming end of the season feels like anticipation, like the world has taken in a breath and is holding it, waiting for—for what? What will change when autumn comes? Shorter days? Darker nights?
There will be a winter, but then spring will come. The days will grow longer again—maybe not this spring, or the next, but there will be a season where they will grow longer again. There will be sunlight, and the snow of Niflheim will melt, and flowers will bloom. It is a beautiful, beautiful dream.
x
“It’ll get better,” Noctis says fiercely. “All of it. Everything.”
There is something sweet and captivating in the stubbornness of his words, in his certainty. Lunafreya feels like she’s being tugged along, a child carried downriver by a fast-flowing current.
Ignis must feel the same—he is staring at Noctis, his face flushed and his eyes bright, more alive than she’s ever seen him before.
And they are alive, aren’t they? They’re alive, and they’re together, and Lunafreya is sure that Noctis is right. As long as they’re alive and they’re together, they can—they will—make everything right again.