86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 11: Dies Passionis

“Lena,”
Shin told her through the Para-RAID, his tone audibly upset.
“There are no Legion nearby, but this is still dangerous. Please move into the cockpit.”

“Move to the head of the group, please. I’ll go into the cockpit then. Don’t worry, they’re not brave enough to throw rocks while I’m riding a Reginleif.”

Shin ignored her and seemingly gave Raiden orders. Wehrwolf and Cyclops moved diagonally behind Undertaker, standing between it and the refugees. With this formation, even if the civilians were to see Lena and try to throw stones at her, those two units would shield her. With all of Spearhead’s units spread out to move and the Brísingamen squadron deployed to guard Lena, Undertaker slowly started walking. The refugees were stunned by the sight of a Republic soldier—when the military had all but abandoned the civilians and run off long ago—riding the Eighty-Six’s Reginleif without so much as sparing them a glance.

They were dumbfounded. Before long, their exhausted expressions filled with rage. Like Lena predicted, none of them had the nerve to throw anything at her, but slurs and scornful curses began bubbling up from the crowd.

Traitor. Coward. Like a tyrant. Little girl who curried favor with the Eighty-Six. Like a prostitute.

Maybe they thought those words wouldn’t reach her ears. Or maybe they hoped she’d hear them.

When she reached the head of the group, she decided she’d shown herself off long enough and, as promised, moved into Undertaker’s cockpit. News of what happened would naturally spread to the other refugee groups.

News of the despicable silver witch, waited upon by the Eighty-Six, who “oppressed” them.

Shin opened the canopy, and she hopped inside, settling into his arms as he lowered her into the cockpit. The canopy soon closed and locked. The three optical screens, which went dark when the Reginleif went into standby mode, lit up, and as they illuminated the cockpit, she was greeted by Shin’s clearly displeased frown.

“I understand that they wanted someone to hold them at gunpoint so they could feel like oppressed victims. But you didn’t have to actually give them what they wanted. And besides, Lena, you’re—”

“It was necessary. Them being this provoked and angry will give them the strength they need to keep walking a little longer. Major General Altner entrusted me with the task of returning to the Federacy with them alive. I had to do that to ensure that happens.”

Shin glanced at his optical screen. The woman who’d stopped earlier was standing still, but a woman roughly the same as her was hurrying over to help her walk. A young man called out to a mother carrying her two children, effectively snatching one of the children out of her arms and going ahead. An elderly man took a weeping infant who’d gotten split up from their parents by the hand, gritting his teeth as he pushed his aching legs forward.

A young man, dragging what looked to be an injured leg, was being supported by a woman who appeared to be his lover.

All of them glared at Undertaker, who led the group, and they walked like they were chasing it—their exhausted bodies driven by anger and hatred for the one within it.

“…That might be true, but you didn’t have to do it, Lena. That just made you look like the villain here. You didn’t have to—”

“Right,” Lena cut into his words. “With this, they won’t look up at me as the second coming of Saint Magnolia anymore.”

Shin stared at Lena, who regarded him with a smile.

It’s like you said once.

“I won’t act like a saint with a tragic face. I don’t want to play that role…but I did stick to my duties as a Republic soldier. So I don’t care if they come to me for help or complaints later.”

“…”

Shin wordlessly removed one hand from the control stick and used it to lift Lena’s military cap off her head.

“So you put it on because of your position as a soldier. Out of duty and to intimidate,” he said.

Lena stared at him with blank amazement for a moment.

“Well, that was part of it, but I also figured it could hide my face.”

This time, Shin looked taken aback.

“Hmm, that’s why I hung it over my eyes,” Lena continued. “The sun’s rising in the east right now, and the light shone directly at my face. So with the hat’s brim covering my face, I figured even if I made myself out to be the villain…or, well, since I’d be doing that, I thought it might hide my face. After all, I haven’t given up on the fireworks in the Revolution Festival yet.”

Not coming back here wasn’t something she was willing to accept.

“…Pfft.” Shin couldn’t stop himself and started chuckling. “I see… Well, you’re certainly not putting on a tragic face anymore.”

“Right?” Lena fidgeted inside the cramped cockpit, nestling her face into the chest of her beloved, the boy she promised to watch the fireworks with. “Let’s go home.”

“Yes.”

As if forced to walk by it, the civilians followed Undertaker’s lead. Their expressions and demeanors were a complete polar opposite to the tired way they’d acted just minutes ago. Seeing this, Shin, still cradling Lena in his arms, sighed.

Anger and hate did have the power to support people during times of hardship and despair, temporarily granting them the strength to keep going. It was like that back in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, too. At the time, they weren’t aware of it, but hatred did keep them going.

To fight on to the very end, never giving up or wandering off that path. They would never be like
them
, like the despicable Republic, and debase themselves by veering off the rightful path of humanity. Yes.

They refused to stoop to their level.

That anger did burn within them, for sure, like a flame. If their pride was what kept them going, then that anger was the other side of that coin. It gave them the power to fight.

But Shin didn’t want to believe that this was the true, fundamental nature of humanity. His fellow Eighty-Six had cursed him, too. He had Eighty-Six hate him, call him a child of the Empire, a traitor, a god of
pestilence, a haunted Reaper. But he didn’t want to believe that all the insults and rocks they’d thrown at him—that the hatred with which his brother strangled him when he was small—was humankind’s true nature.

And so… And yet…

…some part of him could relate to how the Shepherds felt.

He whispered to himself, without putting it to words. To those comrades of his, consumed by anger and tarnished by hatred to become Legion.

We’ll never change. Neither you nor us.

Their choices were different—and yet the same. Back in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, they were all like prisoners tied to the stake, waiting for their death sentence. But they all held in their hands the switch to a bomb that could blow apart the Republic, which tried to put them to the flame.

A method of revenge every Eighty-Six knew. All they had to do was stop resisting. And they didn’t even have to do that. Eventually, the metallic calamity that was the Legion would come to put the Republic to the flame instead.

They could die either way. The only difference was in their choice: either keep fighting and die while holding on to your pride, or stop resisting and die consumed by hatred. The only difference was in what satisfied them in the moment of their death.

So Shin couldn’t fault the Shepherds. Had things gone differently, if he’d have missed even one of the things he had now…

Like, for example, if he hadn’t met this Queen of silver, who despite being an Alba, stuck by the Eighty-Six and told him she would never forget them…

…he might have been one of the Shepherds out there right about now.

Meanwhile, the civilians walked on, spurred by the fanned flames of their hatred. Their hatred for that Queen, the pretender saint. For the Eighty-Six who wouldn’t even hate them back.

And hatred for this beautiful world, so blissfully indifferent to their suffering.

They were so hurt, so tortured, so full of self-pity; someone must have been at fault. Someone must have been inflicting all this pain, torture, and self-pity on them.

After all—if they let the thought that them being so hurt, tortured, and full of self-pity was something self-inflicted, that they brought this on themselves, then all this pain, torture, and self-pity would become too much to bear.

Let us hate you. Someone. Anyone.

If only the birds wouldn’t chirp. If only the flowers didn’t bloom so beautifully, if only the sunshine wasn’t so fair, if only this lovely blue sky didn’t hang over them.

If only it would rain. If only a storm would break out. If only thunder and mud and darkness would wash over the world, if only all the ways the world could display its contempt of them would come to bear and stand in their way.

The refugees even resented the tall blue sky spanning over them, hated the beauty of this world, which would not draw pause in the face of their anguish.

And even that thought occurred to them.

If only everything fell to ruin with us.

By the time they crossed the sixty-kilometer point from the Federacy, phase line Aquarius, the refugees didn’t utter a single hateful word. They advanced silently along the trackless path, which seemed to stretch to infinity, breathing roughly like animals as the morning sun mercilessly bore down on them.

Some of the Reginleifs going ahead suddenly turned their optical screens over the horizon. Clouds of dust brewed in the distance, moving gradually closer. Before long, their squarish contours came into view, forming the silhouettes of large, clumsy trucks.

The Federacy’s transport unit.

As soon as they regrouped with the transport unit, Shin sensed it.

“Tch… Lena, get back into Grimalkin.”

“Huh?” Lena turned around to look at him.

Shin shook his head gravely. Major General Altner’s rearguard unit…

“The rear guard’s starting to fall apart… Depending on the situation, we could be entering combat soon. Return to Grimalkin.”

Having guarded the refugees’ route until their limit, their defensive line was beginning to fall apart.

“We’ve boarded all the refugees onto the transport trucks, Major General. We’re beginning to retreat now,” said Grethe.

Receiving a report from the transport unit’s captain, Grethe gave the Strike Package orders to set out. Following that, she switched on the Para-RAID, resonating with Richard, who was leading the rear guard.

With them having bought enough time for the refugees to link up with the transport unit, the rear guard had accomplished its mission. But at this point, there was no means for them to return.

The Strike Package traveled sluggishly along the retreat path, while the rear guard’s metallic steeds had galloped through the battlefield at top speed to intercept the enemy. The distance between them was by now far too great, and their lines were crumbling in the face of the Legion’s merciless assault. Regrouping and retreating at this point would be impossible.

This comrade of hers would never return, and so she wanted to at least relay this much.

“You’ve done your duty, Major General… You have my deepest respect, Major General Richard Altner.”

“Cut it out, Spider-Woman,”
Richard said, a hint of a sarcastic smile in his tone.
“This doesn’t suit you.”

Grethe couldn’t feel his driver’s presence from the Operator’s seat.
Did they die…or was the Vánagandr completely demolished? The sound of gunshots and cannon fire alone remained incessant. Of two machine guns rattling out in tandem. The roar of a 120 mm smoothbore gun.

“It seems I’ve lost our bet. Again. Those children who presented themselves as bloody blades tempered on the battlefield had finally returned to being normal children in our Federacy’s embrace.”

And that was what mattered most.

“Richard…”

“Don’t let them be taken away from you again. The Black Widow’s rampage shouldn’t ever happen again. Try putting yourself in my shoes. Having to look as you and Willem, you two bloodied war demons, went mad on the battlefield. Once was enough… Right, and make sure to tell Willem that he doesn’t need to think about taking vengeance tenfold this time. It was one thing when he was a major in the armored infantry corps, but a commodore and chief of staff shouldn’t be swinging around hatchets at those Legion scraps.”

After saying this, Richard cracked a smile despite—or perhaps in spite—of the situation.

“It might be years too late to say this, but if he’s so occupied with cutting up those scrap monsters, maybe calling him the Dismantling Mantis would be more appropriate than Killer Mantis… I guess we ended up using the wrong nickname for him all those years.”

“…”

“So don’t do anything to make him change that name of his, Grethe. He’s a special kind of idiot who’s too stupid to even realize how compassionate he can be at the weirdest of times… Surely, you can see that, given you were the same, but at least you were conscious about it.”

“—Yes.”

Ehrenfried the Killer Hatchet, hunter of the scrap monsters. The Black Widow, killer of Legion.

Back in the early stages of the Legion War, when the battlefield was still chaotic and established tactics for facing the Legion hadn’t been discovered yet, countless died. Bit by bit, they lost all that they held dear.
Their contemporaries from the officer academy, comrades who trudged through the muck of the battlefield with them, their subordinates, who were their elders.

Those two young officers set foot on the battlefield during their teens, maturing into their twenties. In an attempt to compensate for all the things they had been denied, they became driven to take savage revenge on the mechanical army that’d taken everything away from them.

One young man swore, despite cutting down lightweight Legion in melee combat—a feat deemed to be the height of insanity—that he would kill ten Legion for every comrade he lost. He became a demon, single-handedly challenging not just Ameise but even Grauwolf types.

One young woman swore, as she piloted her fiancée’s Vánagandr as a gunner and shot down heavyweight Legion, that she would never let anyone else sit in his gunner’s seat. She became a witch, single-handedly overwhelming Legion armored units.

Grethe still remembered the way she was back then. Her comrade, who became known as the Killer Hatchet. Their sheer madness.

“…That’s why I hate him.”

He was like a mirror held up before her, showing rage that bubbled up like molten iron in her heart—a severe, intense part of her she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“He loved that earnest, severe part of you. Even when he knew that you would never turn your affections to him.”

“I know. That’s why I hate him.”

She could feel Richard’s silent, wry smile on the other side as she continued:

“That’s why I never want to have to visit his grave.”

I don’t want him to die before I do. Just like how you’re worried about him.

“Please make sure he doesn’t.”
Richard’s smile deepened.

“But”—feeling his attention turn to her, she regarded him with the strongest smile she could muster—“whenever I come to you to share a drink, I’ll have him come along. As always.”

No help would reach him in time. There was no escape for Richard anymore. Richard and Grethe would never get another chance to share a drink.

But whenever I think of you, I’ll act as if you’re there with us.

As if to say the trio who survived the terrible war ten years ago were all still there.

“…I see.”

The transport trucks set off. They were by no means comfortable to sit in and were all overloaded with people to an unsafe degree. Any refugees and military police who couldn’t fit onto the vehicles had to occupy emptied Scavenger-towed containers.

Civilians wrapped their arms around one another, holding on for stability as the trucks and Scavengers set out, kicking up the wind as they left, protected by the Reginleifs.

With pained silence, Frederica closed her eyes. Her words did not reach the ones they were directed to. There was nothing she could do to help them from there. And yet still…

“You have fought well, Major General Richard Altner. And his brave, valiant soldiers.”

In one corner of the file of Reginleifs, Grethe bit her lip. The roaring of Richard’s Vánagandr’s cannon had died down a short while ago. In its place, all she could hear was the rattling of machine-gun fire and the footsteps approaching in spite of them, as silent as the rubbing of bones.

And then she heard the whistling of something sharp cutting through the air, followed by the light thumping of a metallic object crushing something soft and skeletal.

A few pained wheezes. The faint sound of a pistol’s slide being loaded.
The Federacy’s standard-issue 9 mm striker-fired automatic pistol—the suicide weapon provided to Feldreß pilots.

Grethe bit down on her lip hard. A whisper calling out to someone, like one’s final words. It was the name of his wife; Grethe had met her a few times. And then the name of his infant daughter, who had just recently learned to speak. And then—

—a gunshot.

With his ability, Shin could tell the rear guard had been wiped out. With no one left in their way, the Legion began pursuing the Strike Package and the refugees at top speed.

But it was too late.

Major General Altner and his men had done their job well. Protected by the Valkyries, his transports unit passed the thirty-kilometer point from the Federacy’s domain, phase line Pisces. They then traveled through the thick defensive line taken over and maintained by the Federacy military’s armored units and finally reached Point Zodiacs—the Federacy’s territory.

Following that, the entirety of the strike package crossed phase line Pisces and reached Point Zodiacs as well. Once all the units returning from the Republic were taken in, the Federacy military shut off the retreat route. The artillery corps set behind the Federacy’s defensive line fired an offensive bombardment, mercilessly destroying the Legion that were still persistent enough to give chase.

Having returned to Federacy soil, the Strike Package and transport trucks reached the high-speed railway’s terminus, the Berledephadel City terminal. They were greeted by the beautiful urban view of the glass-and-metal roadside trees. The pavement strewn with countless, eternal fallen leaves made of quartz, their rich, magnificent beauty lit up in the golden sunlight refracted by the glass leaves.

Seeing this honey-colored sight, Shin breathed out in relief within Undertaker. They’d been moving for over half a day, since late last night. They were worn out, but more than anything, seeing they’d reached safety brought relief—which made the feeling of wasted effort, built up during that time, finally bubble to the surface.

Yes, wasted effort. They failed to evacuate all the Republic refugees, lost Richard and his unit, and couldn’t stop Aldrecht and the other Eighty-Six’s ghosts.

The transport trucks pulled up in the plaza in front of the terminal, and the civilians spilled out of them and squatted on the ground, exhausted. The trucks were meant for ferrying people to the refugee sectors and only temporarily relegated to helping the retreat, meaning many refugees had been left behind in the plaza in their absence. Those refugees noticed their countrymen’s plight and the presence of the Reginleifs and began to murmur anxiously.

Why are the Eighty-Six back already? When is the next refugee train coming? What about all their countrymen who were meant to come later?

“Good work, everyone,” Grethe said, like she was trying to blot out the refugees’ murmuring. “Leave the refugees to the people in charge here and go back home.”

“Come on, everyone, just a little longer, and we’ll get to have warm showers and sleep in beds,” Lena encouraged them brightly.

The Strike Package’s lodgings were farther into the city. At Lena’s words, the Brísingamen squadron set off first as the rest of the 1st Armored Division began moving. Some people had been up for a full day, and even after taking medicine, they were beginning to feel bad. In order to make sure they came back as soon as possible and got to rest, the Spearhead squadron relinquished the path and remained parked in the glass-tree lane’s footpath.

Shin stepped out of his cockpit to stretch his limbs and get some fresh air. The other squad members followed suit, stretching or pouring water over their heads. He let out a long, tired breath.

But then he heard a sharp voice reach his ears. Shin instinctively
stopped Undertaker and the refugees, so as to shield his comrades, and he happened to be closest. That was the only reason.

“You’re a man-eating murderer! That’s why your eyes are red, you Eighty-Six! You’re all filthy colored stains, useless and incompetent!”

Kurena’s brow jumped, and Anju got to her feet. Raiden turned to look at the refugees, his eyes squinting dangerously. All the remaining Reginleifs and Processors, Dustin and the Vargus included, turned to look with cold eyes. Even Grethe, who’d intended to remain in her unit until every one of her subordinates returned, turned her head.

The one who’d shouted was a young Alba man who had cut through the crowd of his countrymen to shout at them. Military police hurried over at once, holding the man down before he could leave the plaza, to say nothing of approach Shin. With his arms grabbed from both sides, he leaned in forward uncomfortably.

He thrust out a hand forcibly, showing off a burnt scrap of cloth gripped in his fingers.

“This is all your fault! You didn’t want to protect us, so you cut corners! And now she’s dead because of you! Why…why didn’t you save my sister?!”

Deep in the plaza, crouched on the tracks behind the civilian crowd like it was trying to hide from sight, were the burned, tattered remains of a train. The refugee train that’d gotten hit by the incendiary bombs and caught fire.

Did none of its passengers survive, or did the owner of this cloth just happen to be unlucky enough to be counted among the dead? Shin had no way of knowing. But she’d probably died there in that burning train.

In that locomotive, put to the flame by the Shepherds’ malice. In the hellfire created by the Eighty-Six’s spiteful ghosts.

Shin suddenly felt a lump of rage swell up in his heart. Unable to withstand it, he clenched his teeth and shouted back at the man.

“If that’s how you feel…!

“If that’s how you feel, why didn’t any of you fight?!”

“What did you just—?” The young man’s expression filled up with anger.

“Why didn’t you even try to fight? You spent nine years, surrounded and boxed in by the Legion. For nine years, you didn’t win, so why did you never think to fight? Why did you discard the will and means to fight and just sit there, satisfied with yourselves? On what basis did you think, did you honestly believe…that someone would always protect you and fight your battles for you?!”

All you ever say is for others to fight in your place. You keep calling out for someone else to protect you. Why did that idea never scare you? Can’t you see how pathetic it is to never protect yourself? Are you really blind to how terrifying it is to leave your lives in someone else’s hands?

And in this decade-long Legion War of all times and places. Even after you saw that your fortress wall couldn’t protect the Republic and its people, after the large-scale offensive exposed how despairingly powerless you all are.

How can you stay so…weak?!

“Why do you never try to protect yourselves? You had years to do it, and after everything that happened! Why—why won’t you try to protect yourselves for once?!”

If they would at least each try to protect themselves, Shin and the Eighty-Six wouldn’t have had to see the gruesome way so many Republic people had to die. They wouldn’t have to live with failing to save them, to leave them in such a terrible, unbelievable way to die. This all could have been avoided.

“How can you live your lives, look yourself in the mirror every day knowing you’re incapable of protecting your own sorry hides…?!”

His tone wasn’t accusatory, but pained, like he was coughing up those words along with his very blood. The voice of a man who had seen death, agonizing death, and suffered for it. The death of those who did not deserve to die.

The young man fell silent, overwhelmed. Unable to stay there, Shin looked away and hurried off.

As he walked through the streets lit up by the prismatic refractions cast by those glass leaves that would never fall, he heard someone come after him. Turning to look who it was, he found it was Marcel. He’d been onboard Grethe’s Reginleif and had apparently disembarked and gone after him.

He stood stock-still behind Shin, too busy trying to catch his breath to be able to say anything. Feeling all the tension drain from his body, Shin spoke up first. Seeing Marcel made regret wash over him.

“…Sorry.”

“What for?” Marcel furrowed his brow.

“I didn’t mean that being weak is wrong or it means you deserve to die.”

Eugene’s memory came to mind. The way he died on the western front. Shin didn’t believe he died for being weak. He wasn’t a coldhearted enough of a man to say that being weak was wrong.

“I know.” Marcel cut him off with a nod. “I know that… He fought, but he still couldn’t make it and died. But…”

But that’s exactly why.

“…that’s what makes dying without even putting up a fight feel so unbearable…”

“—Yeah.”

“How can they be whole with themselves like that? It’s not my fault or yours, but it just hurts… Even those people…”

Marcel cast down his slanted, catlike eyes morosely. He’d spent a year on the battlefield, too, watching many of his comrades die. His voice spoke to that grief.

“We’d have been better off if they didn’t have to die, either…”

The military police pushed the young man and the refugees back into the station’s interior and told them not to start fights with their soldiers, but
the cold silence that settled over the glass-tree lane lingered. Even with Shin having said his piece and leaving, Raiden, Anju, Kurena, Tohru, and Claude didn’t go after him.

None of them were in the state of mind to go after him.

The Legion War they thought was almost over, that they hoped they could end, whose conclusion seemed to be on the horizon, had been overturned in the space of a single night. Its end no longer seemed so certain.

All the battles they had fought and achievements they’d made over the last six months had been reduced to nothing. All their battles across the last half of a year may well have been meaningless.

Everything, every single thing they did might have been for naught.

The sense of empty futility and exhaustion had burned in their hearts since the day stars of flame rained down on all of humankind’s battlefields. The sense of powerlessness, wasted effort, and this emptiness that they had by now grown used to.

Some part of their minds kept on whispering to them that the emptiness had been etched onto them in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, that humankind was utterly unnecessary for this world, and that there was nowhere they belonged.

But at least before this operation, they could keep their minds detached from that resignation and suppress their emotions. But the ones they’d gone to such lengths to save…

“Why did we have to save those people…?” Tohru whispered to himself.

“…Yeah.”

Even though the relief expedition did try to rescue the Republic’s people, they failed to save them all. Even though their operation failed. Even though the major general and his men risked their lives to stay behind as a rear guard, eventually sacrificing themselves.

Even though their past brethren were already dead and had been reduced to Shepherds. Even though the comrades they’d fought alongside with in the Eighty-Sixth Sector died. And even though over the last few months, they’d lost comrades who survived the large-scale offensive, too…

Claude clenched his teeth, feeling rage rise up within him. Even though Republic civilians died. Like his brother, who’d tried to fight as a Handler and probably died…

Why were these pathetic people the ones they ended up saving—and not all those who died? They never repented, couldn’t show a hint of gratitude. All they did was grumble and complain and get nowhere.

Why did they get to survive? Why was it that the only thing the Eighty-Six really ended up achieving was saving these people?

An inexplicable feeling of wasted effort hung over him, crushing his entire body. What did they fight for? What did they achieve in all this time?

“What could I have done to save my brother…?”

The words left Tohru’s lips without him even realizing it. Could he have done anything differently to save his brother? To change this operation? To save the major general and his troops—or the countless many of his comrades who died?

And even those pathetic Republic civilians. Up until now, he didn’t care one way or the other if they ended up perishing. But still, he didn’t think they deserved to die such gruesome deaths, screaming in pain and agony. Could he have changed that?

“Could I have avoided their deaths…?”

Would he have been able to spare himself from seeing their cruel, terrible deaths…?

The Strike Package’s return to their home base was a transport mission involving thousands of Feldreß and personnel. Even just unloading all the equipment would take more than a day. Despite everything having been moved up by a day, the transport team was ready and waiting for them, and the soldiers retired to their lodgings in the temporary base for a slightly early rest.

Some of them were completely exhausted and went straight to bed. Those who didn’t instead decided to hit the showers or had a light meal. The Scavengers, who knew no fatigue, ran around according to the
transport team’s instructions, helping unload ammunition and energy packs. In the meanwhile, the base’s personnel went around with large trays loaded with coffee in paper cups.

But of course, the commanders couldn’t immediately get to rest. Lena included.

“Roger that. I think that’s enough for today. Good work, Shin.”

Once he finished relaying the necessary reports, Lena informed Shin he’d concluded his duties. They were in her small personal office, which had been allotted to her as a commanding officer.

“Yes, you too, Lena… It’s a bit late, but do you want to get something to eat? If you’re tired, I could bring it over.”

“No, it’s fine. I’d rather see everyone’s faces.”

Everyone had likely already finished eating, though, but they’d surely stick around for coffee.

“But before that… Just for a bit?”

“…Yeah.” Shin realized what she meant and nodded.

Lena had probably been keeping everything bottled up for the duration of the operation. She could take it then, but she was at her limit now. She got to her feet and embraced the man before her. She snaked her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to say, still hanging her head. “I know you’re in pain, too, and I’m still so…”

The Shepherds that chose revenge. The countless Republic civilians who died. Someone as kind as you must be…

“Yeah… But I got to vent a little earlier, so I’m fine.”

At that, Lena’s eyebrows shot up. Shin realized he’d just put his foot in his mouth, but it was too late already. Lena raised her fair brow, pouted, and frowned, her mood taking a clear and rapid nosedive.

“You got to vent? To who? Raiden? Or was it Fido?” she asked, her silver chime of a voice more pointed and pricklier than usual. And while Shin did feel like he was wrong to blurt out that he’d confided in someone else, he didn’t see why she should be jealous of Raiden, to say nothing of Fido.

“…To Marcel.”

“Is that right? Well, I suppose I’m going to have to thoroughly cross-examine Marcel later.”

“Taking matters into your own hands?”

Shin said this, recalling what he’d said on the supercarrier, which made Lena remember they’d had this exchange once. She lowered her raised brow and giggled.

“Yes, I think I will.”

“Marcel is your subordinate, Lena. You shouldn’t torment him too much.”

“Yes… Not like you’re one to talk.”

They chuckled briefly. But then the tears finally spilled from Lena’s eyes.

“…We had to leave behind so many.”

“—Yes.”

“We failed to save them. They all…died. And Major General Altner died, too, for our sake.”

We let them die. We failed to save them. We let the Republic fall to ruin. The homeland where I was born and raised has finally been ruined. All of them, they all…died.

“I couldn’t save them. I didn’t want to abandon them, to let them die. I wanted to save them, but…I couldn’t do it. I…I…!”

“It’s not your fault, Lena. But…”

She felt his arms wrap around her back. Hard, muscular hands. And through his thick panzer jacket, she could feel his body heat, slightly higher than her own.