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“—love,” Kira was saying, fire-eyed and resolute, staring Ingrid dead in the eye. “Lacus is always Lacus.”
Ingrid could barely hear him over the sound of her heart in her ears. In the chokehold of Ingrid’s arms Lacus was tense but unresisting, the swan curve of her neck bared to the blade of Ingrid’s knife. This was heresy. Her hands didn’t shake because her hands were not created to shake, but her thumb almost missed the safety when she went to flick it off. Staticky dizziness oscillating through her head. A sweet floral scent uncurled from Lacus’s hair despite the stale tinge to the recycled air. It could have been a summer evening back home in the palace gardens, surrounded by the night-blooming roses and honeysuckle. Ingrid took a breath and pushed the muzzle of her gun more firmly against Lacus’s temple, trying to rebalance herself.
When Ingrid had first lunged for her Lacus had gasped, but this close Ingrid could hear the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, slightly elevated and yet nothing like the erratic machine-gun hammer that was Ingrid’s own pulse. Knife to her throat and gun to her head and Lacus Clyne was not afraid.
Of course she was not afraid. Lacus’s heart had come to find her. Ingrid understood it now.
The weapons clattered to the ground. Lacus tore across the room like the bullet Ingrid had not loosed and fell into Kira’s arms at the precise moment he opened them for her. Ingrid’s hands were empty. An awful trembling horror was opening up inside her like a stab wound.
And Lacus paused in the doorway, Kira’s arm around her, and turned to look at Ingrid. Lacus’s eyes shimmered, but the tears couldn’t be for Ingrid, because tools were not mourned. Tools were used until they could no longer perform their function, and then they were discarded. There was no place in the world for a dull blade.
“I’m sorry,” Lacus whispered, as if she truly meant it. It was unbearable. For the first time she could remember Ingrid’s body failed her. Without permission her legs collapsed out from underneath her and she slumped to the floor. A violent upswell of tears smeared her vision into indistinct shapes of light and colour.
“Go,” Ingrid sobbed. She could do nothing. She was nothing. She buried her face in her arms so she did not have to see Lacus leaving them all behind.
“What are you all doing here?” Ingrid said. “We have training in fifteen minutes and none of you are in uniform.”
The balance of the Black Knights was clustered in Shura’s chambers, lounging on or around a velvet chaise in the sitting room. Daniel inclined his head in what might have either been a greeting or perhaps simply his head drooping in sheer ennui.
“Getting to know our future princess,” Griffin said, pointing at the television panel. “Super important recon work. Where have you guys been?”
“Strategy meeting with Her Majesty,” Ingrid said. She crossed her arms. “Shura’s just departed for Aprilius One. Orphee and I will brief you at training.”
Beneath Shura’s captaincy, there was no official hierarchy among the Black Knights but Ingrid was second-in-command in all but name. She was Secretary of State. She was a diligent and methodical soldier, a reliable tool. She stood at Orphee’s left hand. She was his copilot in the Cal-re.A. Shura was the better fighter—Ingrid was not too proud to admit that—but it was Ingrid who had the better compatibility with Orphee. Shura brought too much of himself into the cockpit; Ingrid was nothing except precisely what Orphee needed. She preempted him. She adapted to him. His will was hers; she was the weapon moulded to his hands. As long as Orphee needed her she was content.
“As if training wasn’t boring enough,” Redelard complained. “Strategy? What strategy? All we need to do is—”
“Kill them all,” Daniel drawled, and Redelard giggled.
“Orphee and I do have the political side to consider,” Ingrid said dryly. “We can’t solve all our problems by hitting them.”
Griffin raised his voice. “Everyone shut up, the concert’s starting.”
Onscreen, Lacus Clyne glowed in a halo of stage lights, her sea-green skirts flaring out as she moved. The room filled with the clear melodic sound of the voice that struck hearts so deeply PLANT had created a false idol to mimic her, to steal her gravity; Ingrid had seen recordings of the imitation and wondered at how anyone could have mistaken a mere girl for divinity.
“What do you think the Princess will be like?” Liu said. He was seated on the floor, head lolling against a plush armrest.
“Perfect, obviously,” Redelard sang, from where she was draped over the gilded back of the chaise. “Like something out of a fairytale.”
“It doesn’t matter what she’s like,” Ingrid said. “We’ll love her anyway.”
Of course she loved Lacus Clyne. It was built into her very genetic makeup, all the desperate inevitability of matter dragged into a black hole. Lacus was born to be loved by the world and Ingrid was born to love Lacus.
She was born to love Orphee, too, as were all of the Black Knights, though she’d always known that how she felt about Orphee was not the same way that Liu or Redelard or even Shura felt about Orphee. But it did not matter. Orphee and Lacus would lead humanity into the light and Ingrid would watch over them from the shadows. That was what she was created to do.
She was a tool to be wielded, so there was nothing for her to do but perform her function. A tool derived joy from its purpose. She could not want anything else because there was nothing more to want.
“Because she’s perfect,” Redelard sighed. She propped her chin against her palm. “A rose blooming in the mud.” Those were Orphee’s words. “Hey, do you think she’ll like us?”
“That doesn’t matter either,” Ingrid said. “What’s more important is that we are exactly what she needs to achieve her goals. So: training.”
“She’ll love us,” Griffin said. “She’s the Princess. She loves everyone.”
“She’ll love Orphee,” Ingrid said. “We are to remove the obstacles in their path.”
“But she’ll love us too, won’t she?” Redelard pressed, and Ingrid could never stay stern against her for long.
“Yes,” Ingrid said, allowing herself to smile. “Yes, I’m sure she will.”
Lacus Clyne was perfect. As she was created to be. Wise and beautiful and gracious and born to rule, and Ingrid loved her new princess deeply and desperately, as she was created to do. She watched Lacus and Orphee sweep across the ballroom floor under the golden and glittering chandeliers, shining complements, twin lodestars to guide humanity along the correct path. This was as it was fated to be. This was the future that must come to pass, the future they were all made to bring about.
Queen Aura, in her infinite wisdom, had imbued the Black Knights with individual areas of particular talent so that they would cohere to form a single invulnerable unit. Ingrid’s specialty was observation. She excelled at eidetic recall. Her test scores in memorisation games outstripped everyone except for Orphee, which was only natural. After all, Orphee had been created to be better than them all.
So Ingrid was the one who watched, not the one who was. She was nothing. Orphee and Lacus spun in the middle of the ballroom, all courtly grace, a united power that could reshape the universe. Orphee’s courteous hand on her waist, Orphee’s warm smile; Ingrid knew the exact sensation from the dance lessons they’d attended as part of their statecraft training. Golden and glittering afternoons in the smaller ballroom in proper evening attire, the dance master calling out the counts while Shura leant against a wall, eyes half-lidded and pretending to pay attention.
It’d been Ingrid in the circle of Orphee’s arms, then. Her hand in his. She had been only a placeholder for the princess who did not yet know she was theirs, but the sense memory stubbornly refused to subside. She’d felt the shape of Orphee’s fingers even through the corseted silk bodice of her dress and matched his every step.
Across the ballroom Lacus glanced up and met Ingrid’s eyes over Orphee’s shoulder. Clear and direct as a bullet. Startled, Ingrid forgot to drop her gaze as propriety dictated. The sense memory fractured and pinwheeled like light shone through crystal and it was Lacus’s hand on her waist, Lacus’s gentle smile directed at her, and she was luminous, celestial, a perfect being. Created to be better than them all, but she was looking at Ingrid as though she might be something Ingrid could reach.
And then Orphee spun Lacus out of sight again. Ingrid ducked behind a pillar. She shut her eyes until the afterimages faded to nothing.
When Ingrid entered Lacus’s onboard suite with a tray sent up from the kitchens, the princess was perched on a lounge looking at the ceiling-to-floor screen installed into one of the walls. It was set to some alpine Earth scene, blue skies and green grass separated by white-capped mountains. Even in stillness her presence commanded attention. That magnetic regality, marking her as exceptional, something above the rest of them.
“Your breakfast, Princess,” Ingrid said.
“Thank you, Ingrid,” Lacus said quietly. Ingrid started; she hadn’t thought Lacus would remember her name. “You can leave it on the table.”
Ingrid began setting out the plates of delicate pastries and glazed fruit, ethereal sugary concoctions befitting a princess. Lacus made no indication of moving to eat, though surely she was hungry after the day she’d spent in medically induced unconsciousness on Orphee’s order; he’d been so concerned for her health after the emotional and physical toll of the events precipitating their evacuation to space. A few days of convalescence in her suite while they moved all the pieces of the Destiny Plan into place so that by the time Lacus recovered everything would be perfectly positioned for her to execute.
“Is the food not to your liking?” Ingrid ventured. “Or perhaps your quarters? If there is anything I can bring you to make you more comfortable—”
“There is no fault in your hospitality,” Lacus said.
“But you aren’t happy,” Ingrid said.
Lacus looked at her calmly. Her eyes were so blue. Just a shade paler than the artificial sky. “No,” she said.
“Then what can we do to make you happy? We all wish to see you smile,” Ingrid said. She twisted her fingers into her tunic. “Orphee most of all.”
“How could I be happy in a place I did not choose to stay in?”
“But this is where you are meant to be,” Ingrid said. “Why would you want to be elsewhere?”
“My heart is elsewhere,” Lacus said. She stood up, the very image of royal grace. “I would request an audience with Queen Aura.”
Ingrid bit her lip and bowed. “I’ll relay your request to Her Majesty.”
“Thank you,” Lacus said again. She tilted her head. “But are you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you happy?”
There was a strange heat crawling up Ingrid’s neck. “I’m very happy, Princess,” she said. “You’re here with us. We are about to fulfil the purpose for which we were given life. How could I be unhappy?”
For a moment Lacus looked so profoundly sad Ingrid’s breath froze in her lungs. Lacus said, “Is there nothing else you want for yourself?”
“Not at all,” Ingrid said, slightly strangled, and then, “Please excuse me, Princess,” and she snatched the empty tray from the table and rushed out of the room. The doors slid shut behind her. She leant against them, spine pressed flat against the heavy wood, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. Then she straightened up. She had a purpose to fulfil.
Lacus’s will bore down on them like Requiem itself. She and Kira had snuffed out almost the entire Foundation fleet in a matter of seconds, merciless, unhesitating, a breathtakingly godlike scale of destruction, and Ingrid knew with paralysing certainty that she was about to die.
A clean hit from the modified Strike Freedom. That obsolete relic from a bygone era cleaving right through the Cal-re.A as if all its armour and shielding were nothing more than water and now the span of her life had been truncated to a handful of minutes. The Cal-re.A disintegrating around them, stabbed right through the core, catastrophic shriek of system failure on every screen and Orphee roaring something out in last-ditch frenzy but all Ingrid could hear was her own terrified heart in her ears, final desperate proof of life. And still every cell in her body sang out with the love that had been coded into them, so vehemently she might burst apart before the cockpit did.
She pushed her way out of her seat and put her arms around Orphee but it was Lacus she couldn’t help but think of as she stared down the vicious fatal light of the beam saber. How Lacus had turned to Ingrid one last time as she left with Kira, such immense grief for Ingrid in her eyes Ingrid felt it like a blow from Shura on the palace training grounds that would never come again, and was that how she was looking at Ingrid now, with her gentle unwavering hand on the executioner’s axe? Goddess of peace, goddess of a new world, goddess of justice, but there was no salvation for Orphee and Ingrid was nothing so there could be no salvation for Ingrid either. Only Lacus Clyne. Lacus who saw her and pitied her. Even as the world ruptured and Orphee finally leant his head against hers and the blade struck home, the last of Ingrid’s faith cried out. Love, Lacus was saying, in the voice that was created to bring the universe to its knees in awe, in fear, in supplication. A world in which Ingrid was beheld by Lacus Clyne was a world in which she was loved. The light engulfed everything. She was no longer afraid.