Chapter Twenty: Ex Luna, Scientia

Hot running water. Thick bubbles of soap. Shampoo that smelled of lemon and rose oil. These creature comforts were a relief and yet somehow foreign to Eirika now. For days she'd been scrubbing out the dust that'd worked into the quick of her nails and the irritated patches the electrodes had left on her skin were only now beginning to fade. Proper meals and fresh spring water came as an even greater relief to Eirika being after so many days of space food and the over-aerated water on-board their craft.

They'd landed on the steppes with the usual jolt and had been whisked from the Falcon straight to a mobile quarantine unit, from the mobile unit to their current location, known merely as the Receiving Area. None of the masked technicians in hazard suits said a word about the fourth passenger they'd found on Peace.

Neither did the guests who came to speak to them— doctors and engineers, scientists and fellow pilots, generals and commissioners. Eirika, communicating to them through a panel of glass, felt a little as though she were speaking to people trapped inside the television— Chief Engineer Innes, peppering her with technical questions about the performance of his Falcon III. Professor Saleh, smiling at her through the glass, asking if she was ready to speak to all the world on behalf of its moon. General Selena, asking the same bland questions she always had. Only Ephraim, his eyes bruised and distant, asked in lowered tones as to what she'd seen up there. Asked what she'd really seen, what she'd really brought back from the moon.

She wondered now how much the backup commander for Peace had known of the true goals of the mission. He'd known enough that Ephraim couldn't sleep the entire time she was in space, from the looks of things.

Eirika shared Roy's fear that they'd all be eliminated, or at least she initially did. It would have been simple, after all, for the Programme to announce that the rats exposed to lunar samples had died in agony, and to then break the news to the Peace crew that a similar fate no doubt awaited them, to offer them the merciful option of a standard-issue pistol or a packet of pills. But the amount of interest the outside world showed in the immediate future of Major Sieglinde suggested that future contained no poison pills.

"Herr!"

"That's right, Luna. Hair."

She turned around to see Roy patting his new pupil on her own head of thick ashen hair.

"Good, Luna."

Roy was making strides in teaching the girl Terran speech; he proved a patient teacher and a kind one, and Eirika supposed that it helped that Roy himself looked so childlike. He seemed more a fellow-friend than an authority figure, at any rate. Though it was Marth that Luna loved most, or so it seemed to Eirika. Luna glanced in Marth's direction whenever Roy or Eirika gave her praise or affection, and the slightest bit of attention from Marth himself sent the little girl into peals of happy noise. Eirika had heard the stories of ducklings and cygnets and even young hawks who hatched in the presence of humans and consequently thought themselves to be humans, and on seeing Luna now the old stories stayed in her mind.

Were they to raise this child as a human, an Earthling?

Perhaps. There in quarantine, the crew of the Peace mission finally began to meld into one family. Eirika imagined at night that perhaps the "peace" their mission was to bring was truly a matter of stitching together the torn fragments of the world— not a new age, but a resurrection of that earlier era that Roy and Marth now spoke of freely within their isolation. The golden age of peace, in which beasts and men lived among one another, when the "immortals" founded colonies on all the continents of Terra, spreading their knowledge and culture to mortal men.

Until the betrayal- Roy said it was the beasts that betrayed humans, Marth claimed it was the humans who wronged the dragons and laguz- followed by swift and appalling retaliation. Eirika wondered now if both might be true.

Marth had fallen asleep on their communal couch— he and Eirika both had trouble fighting off the desire to sleep for twelve hours or more a day, and in the Receiving Area there was little need to fend off that desire. So Marth slept as he did now, one arm trailing toward the carpet. No longer weightless. Eirika wondered if Marth were glad, after all, for a stay in the enforced quiet of the Receiving Area. When the doors opened to let them out into the world, he'd return to being... what was the phrase she'd heard tossed around the pilots' dormitory during incautious moments? A living museum display.

If the doors opened. But in the meantime, Marth slept, Eirika worked on a stack of reports, and Roy tried to teach Luna more Terran words. Until, that is, they heard Marth yawn and stretch, whereupon Luna squealed and hurled herself toward the couch, where she latched onto Marth's arm.

"Life will never be the same for any of us," Pilot 001 said as he accepted Luna's affections.

Marth repeated this over dinner. He and Eirika dined alone, as Roy had gone to his own room to sleep and Luna sat underneath the table, at Marth's feet, chattering to herself.

"I suppose not," Eirika agreed.

"You have your brother for support," Marth said, his blue gaze as striking as ever under the sterile fluorescent lights.

"After this?" Eirika remembered the haunted look in her twin's eyes. "I think... I think the shadow of the moon might have come between us."

"He'll go up two missions from this," Marth said to her, as though it were a peace offering. "Three full days on Luna in the beautiful highlands."

"Will they actually send anyone else now that the goals of Fire Emblem have been achieved?"

"Of course. We have the technology, we have trained crews... we have mountains to climb and lost cities to explore. Not that anyone will be able to boast in public about what they've seen."

"Any more than we can."

"Most assuredly not. If anyone asks you what you saw up there, say you stood in the presence of the gods and leave it at that."

She had questions for him in her heart, about G's goals and Sephiran's goals, but instead she offered up her own little truth.

"You'll never fly again." There was no question about it; the Programme could not afford to lose him in some banal accident with a trainer jet. It couldn't before, and it definitely couldn't now.

"No."

"Does it bother you?"

"Flying used to be a part of the job." He smiled for a moment- that other smile, the one he only showed far from the cameras. "Now, not flying is part of the job. I can't complain."

"Do you mind being..." A museum display was on her lips, but instead she said, "Do you mind being Pilot 001?"

"Somebody had to be. The Programme decided I was the one. G decided I was the one."

"Why was that?"

"I don't know. I've heard the same things as the rest of you- that they liked my background..."

Why G and the rest of them would recruit a child instead of an experienced pilot to serve their purposes, why the Programme was staffed with so many youths who'd spent all their lives surrounded by its mysteries.

What Project Fire Emblem required was someone scrubbed free of any natural impulse to say "I want," someone- something- that could be a pilot first and a human second. Someone to be a surrogate for those dragons who remained on earth... someone to be a mirror image of Luna herself.

"Your life will never be your own."

"It hasn't been. It's not as though I know anything different." He sounded almost merry then, but that little frown surfaced a moment later. "Don't feel sorry for me, Eirika. Don't worry about the burdens of being First. It'll be difficult enough on you being Second."

"I'm a younger twin. I'm used to it."

"Are you?" Eirika didn't know what to make of that question, especially not when Marth followed it with, "You have some reports to finish."

"Yes, sir."

Below them Luna still babbled away.

-x-

Well before she finished her reports, with Roy still asleep and Luna gone quiet for a time, Eirika decided to confront her commander about the thing both of them had to discuss and neither of them much wanted to.

"Have the generals talked to you about it?"

She did not explain the nature of It. There was no need.

"Only twice," he said, without looking at her. "Mycen once and the premier himself the next time."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." He looked at her then, peering up through the strands of his untrimmed hair, and she felt the difference in their ages then. Four years might be nothing in a decade's time, but right now, the gap between twenty-four and twenty…

"If not you, it would've been Micaiah. If not me, then Ike, perhaps..."

"They're set on it," Eirika said, as much to reassure herself as to confirm it to him. "We have to decide on a date... they're already planning the celebrations."

"Do you want to tell the generals immediately that you've accepted my proposal of marriage, or would you rather wait until we're out of quarantine?"

"It can wait a few more days," she replied. "Besides, you'll want to ask my brother's blessing."

"I didn't mean to come between you, Eirika. Truly, I didn't. I know how much it hurts…"

And Eirika's heart ached them for him, because he was too young and didn't deserve this either and being First was all he really had.

"It wasn't you. Like I said... I think it's the shadow of the moon that fell between us." She reached for his arm— not like Luna, not in a passion— and slipped her fingers down to enclose his wrist. "We will face the world together."

Marth flashed that strange quick smile at her and the lights flickered. A second later the blast struck, a rolling wave that knocked the pictures off the walls and sent both Marth and Eirika running toward the safety of a doorway. Luna awoke and began to howl and Eirika could hear Roy shouting from his room in the confusion. She could only think it'd been a direct missile strike on Star City, the detonation of a nuclear warhead as great as any Wyvern rocket's payload.

Roy had different ideas when he emerged into his own doorway.

"There was an Ashera rocket fully fueled on the pad awaiting the next mission."

"Two rockets," said Marth, who now had Luna attached to his legs. "They moved another out yesterday for backup."

Eirika looked at Roy, and Roy looked at Marth, and Marth just shook his head. The second explosion, as violent as the first, didn't surprise them at all when it struck; only Luna was caught off-guard by the tumult.

"Sabotage?" Eirika asked when she could speak.

"You might say that."

Three— no, four— heads turned toward the main doorway of the Receiving Area, no longer a sterile portal to a contained zone. The newcomer, dressed in white with a green tail of hair dangling down past his shoulder, was regarding them with a smile born of some preternatural calm.

"I have friends among the Chief Engineers," he said. "A little explosion or two was nothing much to arrange."

Eirika heard the sound coming from deep within Marth's throat. She felt her own instincts telling her to attack this man, but she had nothing— no pistol, no blade, nothing dangerous to throw. Still, it was three against one…

"Simmer down, Marth," said the man in white.

"Who in hell are you?" Marth managed to spit at him.

"Merric never did mention me? Good lad." The man in white smiled again, a more genuine smile— perhaps. "I have many names. One of them is Chief Designer L."

"Is another name of yours 'Minister of Truth?" The words came out of Eirika effortlessly, bypassing any process of rational thought.

He offered a little fluttering bow in her direction.

"Clever girl. I think you may be able to piece this together by the time we're to safety."

"Safety?" It came from Roy.

"That's the plan." L made the gesture of a man jingling automotive keys. "Come on, kids. I'm getting the four of you out of here tonight."

"What about my brother?" asked Eirika. She trusted this man. She shouldn't, yet she did. She had to.

"Already taken care of. Come on, kids."

But Eirika and Roy, good pilots in a crisis, were waiting on Marth. He was breathing evenly now, but the fierce gaze he aimed at L wasn't exactly trusting. Wary, and alert, and more than a little angry, but no trust yet.

Luna, though, tugged on Marth's hands, clearly urging him to go to L. Pilot 001 smiled.

"Let's go!"

Five to a car, tires screaming on the pavement in the black night as twin infernos raged on the horizon. As they passed through a familiar world turned alien in one eye-blink, Eirika saw more lights in the sky forming a reassuring pattern. It was, it must be, a squadron of TR-27s leaving Star City one last time.

Eirika thought she saw plane at the front of the formation dip its wings as it passed overhead. Maybe it was a trick of the light through the car window. It didn't matter. She knew it was Ephraim leading them.

The End

And that's it for the longest fanfic I've ever written and likely will write. Yes, it ends with a Lewyn Ex Machina. Thanks to everyone still paying attention to this whacked out space saga after all this time. It was really, truly fun.