Arawo sat staring at the picture. The two beings were lying on the ground. He could not tell if it was a video or a still image, whether the picture was frozen in their death or whether he was watching them die second by second. He pushed Translator's arm away and turned his head. He had no words. Translator looked at the image another moment.

"That's the last image we received from that ship. We do not have complete records of the battle – the Flagship-thing proved effective at keeping my people out of the sector – but we know enough to know that the captain followed her strategy through. Their ship rendered itself undetectable, picked up speed, and…" Translator moved her hands apart, suggesting something expanding quickly.

Arawo was tempted to ask what difference it made. Did the cruiser's last fateful charge destroy their vulnerable foe, or merely injure it? Was the grimy melee between the one-eyed captain and the attack drone enough to distract it, perhaps to save enough of the Federation's fleet that they had enough strength left over to reestablish themselves properly? Did the stalwarts of this Federation pulled off their great upset, or did the machine brain of the Flagship establish its kingdom? The angels fought to the last, coming together and giving their last measure of valor and strength, all for one opportunity to spend their lives to change the future, and Arawo wanted to ask if they won.

But win or lose, Federation and Flagship were ten thousand years gone. There was no neat resolution, no little package of meaning that would negate that fact.

Arawo felt tears stinging his eyes. War loomed, and here he was, having his time squandered by a drunk scavenger meandering her way through a grim story, the theme of which was that nothing mattered because all our successes and victories become the same kind of dust in the end. What purpose was there, even, in avoiding the coming slaughter, when all those billions were already earmarked for oblivion?

These questions rang in his mind, but there was something else in there, too. He tried to tease it out.

"Why do you show me this?" Arawo asked. "Out of all your countless years of study, all your infinite records, is this really the message you console me with?"

"No. I mean, we're really not a reassuring people, but it's not like that. Look - we've been around longer than some stars. We ought to have more answers by now, I get it, but societies keep dying and new ones keep coming and I think we stopped trying to fix it a long time ago. You can hate us for that. I hate us a little for it, too. But it seems to be a core truth, as immutable as gravity and thermodynamics, that people fight. It's the drive that lets you all outcompete the other organisms on your homeworlds, the drive that makes you overcome the ridiculous challenges of space travel as you run out of terrestrial ways to demonstrate power, and eventually the drive that fucks it all up."

"Your concept of comfort remains baffling."

"Sorry. But look, my point is that she knew all this." She pointed at the angel with the eye patch. "My dad told her everything I've told you. She knew that the cycle was wrapping up for her kind, and she knew that the war she fought in wouldn't change anything. It was hopeless whether they won or lost – but she had a chance to escape that reality." She pointed again, her silvery finger tapping repeatedly as if she could prod the significance out of the image as she searched for words. "And – and she chose this. The ascended being gave her that choice, and this was what she picked – not just consciously, but in her heart."

Arawo looked again. The angels had not moved. Their bodies lay close by each other, silent and still, amidst the gore and the ruin of their starship. He tried to imagine the conflict raging outside, the mythic War in Heaven, cascading down the years after that moment until all of their kind had died out, but he could only focus on the image in front of him.

"Why?" He asked it of himself as much as of Translator. He could feel an answer whizzing around his ears like a gnat, and he was trying to catch it.

"I've mulled that question over since before your people had speech," Translator said. "It haunted my sleep while I hibernated. I drink to escape it, but it doesn't go away. Why? Why choose struggle and pain over peace and plenty? Why did she choose it? Why does everyone choose it, again and again?" The scavenger was talking quickly now, building speed and volume into a full rant. "She struggled to secure a future for the things she valued. She surrounded herself with people willing to share that struggle. She knew the chances of success were small, that it would require every scrap of her and her comrade's capabilities even to attempt – but I wonder if the fullness of the commitment is its appeal. All of us are temporary, after all, and part of temporary systems. All our struggles are struggles in the face of oblivion. I don't know. All that I'm really sure of is this." Again she pointed at the picture, at the still, silent angels. "She chose that. And when I look at her here, I feel sure she didn't regret her choice."

They sat together for a while in silence, contemplating the image from the ancient battle.

"Sorry. I…" Translator reached over and took the image back, the viewer going dark and vanishing into the folds of her cloak. "I don't know what to say. I don't know what you're supposed to do with all this."

"The best I can," Arawo said.

Translator looked up at him quizzically.

"Thank you, Translator." He got up. Against all odds, he did feel comforted. Against all odds, he did feel some fleeting lesson coalescing here – something about carrying on the fight, no matter how futile it seemed, about how it is in the fight that we find meaning more than the outcome, about how the course of history has often been dictated by those willing to face a hopeless struggle with their last ounce of effort.

It was a small thing, that lesson, that hope. He could feel it guttering out in his mind like too little kindling, and he knew he could pick it apart, scrutinize it, and return fully to his despair in a matter of seconds.

"When you complete your accounting of our cycle, do not say of Arbiter Arawo that he spent the last hours before the coming war wallowing in self-pity," he said. "Say of him that he tried. He left no stratagem unexamined, no resource untapped, no counsel ignored in trying to avert it or contain it. Say that of me."

Translator smiled faintly. "I'll tell them."

They waved goodbye. She kept smiling as Arawo walked back out into the squalor of the city, his head a little higher. She didn't know if his cause was truly hopeless in the short term – always one for melodrama, the spiders. She pictured him going back to his office, with renewed inspiration, cooking up some mutually dissatisfying solution that would buy the galaxy a few more years of relative peace.

She stared up again at the frescoes – she liked this place, those picture, their nostalgic depiction of the age when she was born. To be able to share them with a friend for even a few more years…well, it would be a small victory.

She silently toasted the ancient, painted Lanius above her. Small victories, she thought, still with a silly, drunk smile. Aren't they all?