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“You hated me so much back then,” Shiden remembers, one snowy night in the United Kingdom. The snowflakes drift gently to the ground, no different than the day; Shiden glances out the window up to the sky, wondering if she’s hallucinating that the number of Legion seem to have grown since the day they arrived. The snow makes her reminisce. “Was I not good enough for you?”
“No, you’re just a stubborn bitch,” Shana responds without hesitation. “A bull-headed idiot, too.”
“And you’re not?” Shiden snorts. “Takes one to know one, you ever heard of that?”
“Applies very well to you,” Shana nods. Shiden strides over to the bed where Shana sits on the edge, picks up a pillow, and shoves it into Shana’s face. Or tries, because Shana grasps her wrist and twists, forcing her to drop it. “See? Impulsive. No one’s more impulsive than you.”
“I’d argue otherwise when the Lil Reaper is giving Her Highness more heart attacks than he’s worth,” Shiden counters. She yanks her wrist free and drops heavily onto the bed beside Shana, collapsing backward onto it. Turning onto her side, she continues, “you remember the last time.”
“You need to stop constantly setting yourself up with Shin,” Shana says. “You rivalry is pretty stupid, you know.”
Shiden shrugs, grinning. “Don’t you enjoy watching me get one over him?”
Shana sighs. “I suppose,” she allows, returning Shiden’s frankly—yes, she admits it—idiotic grin with a small one of her own. Shana’s smiles are as rare as the sunshine in the United Kingdom, as rare as an Alba who cares; something that knocks you off-guard, makes you watch warily and observe until it inevitably sinks into your bones in acceptance. “Cocky idiot.”
Lucky that Shiden’s grown used to it. The her of four years ago would have been horrified to hear her admit, albeit begrudgingly, that Shana Aya is her best friend, her closest confidante, the person she turns to when nothing else is working out. Shana keeps her in check and Shiden spurs her onto become even more vicious—no one is more fit to be Shiden’s deputy.
The Shiden of a decade ago would have longed for a friend like Shana. Beaten-down, weary, alienated by those who should’ve had her back. No one else—except maybe Anju, maybe Shin—understands the experience of having your humanity stripped away from you before you’re even old enough to understand what that means, and then your fellow inhuman pigs branding you as something even less.
Gazing up at the sky, lying on her back in the room she was given in the concentration camp, a little Shiden would never have dared to dream, not back then, not when she was sitting numbly in a Juggernaut, processing the death of the first teammate she lost, while a Handler laughed and laughed at their misery, their lives, worth less than even livestock.
She should’ve come around to Shana sooner, really, and thinking about it makes her want to—be honest in a way she refuses to give a voice to. “How’s your platoon settling into this miserable place?” she asks instead.
“Well enough. Freaked out by the Sirins.”
“Everyone is. Those things are unsettling. Their creator’s worse.”
“Watch your mouth, that’s a prince,” Shana warns, but it’s half-hearted. The way she looks at Shiden, annoyed but not really, amused and affectionate, even, is enough to get her to back down. “Anyway, we’ll need the Sirins if we’re to accomplish anything once on the battlefield. Might as well get used to it.”
“Sure, sure,” Shiden closes her eyes, settling back down on the mattress. “I’ll sleep here tonight. That okay with you?”
“You’re hijacking my bed,” Shana says.
“And?”
“Fine,” she sighs. “At least make space for me.”
—
So cold.
The words reverberate on and on in her head.
They hadn’t even been able to retrieve Melusine from the sea, much less Shana’s body.
—
There’s no satisfaction in being the one to put down the Shepherd that had assimilated Shana. She grits her teeth and presses onward, her every movement vicious and aimed to destroy. Cyclops’s frame creaks and shudders with repetitive assault from all sides, but Shiden—
She has to be the one to put Shana down. She has to.
And it is a resounding victory, because Shiden Iida doesn’t lose the battles she commits herself to. As the leader of the Brísingamen Squadron, as the one who commands the Queen’s Knights, Shiden Iida doesn’t take defeats and losses lying down.
It’s only that, staring at the wreckage that had once been Shana, it doesn’t feel like a victory at all.