The skies had opened up, and at the edge of the desert, the nights were cold; Locke had been leaning towards looking for a roof over their heads to begin with, but the storm decided it. The rain had drenched Terra's hair, dyeing it close enough to black to make no difference, something to be grateful for under the circumstances. "My wife, she's... not well," he told the innkeeper, turning the stumble into difficulty with the subject; he needed something to explain Terra's odd behavior, the spacy silences, the unfamiliarity with everyday objects. Vague illness might do it, enough to explain things to a busy man who couldn't remember every guest, and playing on his sympathy might buy them a spot in the stables if they had no room.

"You're in luck, then," the man said. "We've got one vacancy. It's one of the better rooms, with a private bath, though you'll have to heat the water on the stove in the hall. That's all we've got." Locke was too grateful to even haggle for the price; the man with the sick wife would be, too. He took the key, shouldered their shared bag again — she'd had no belongings she wasn't wearing until they stopped at a pawn shop to outfit her for the journey, and unload some of what she had been wearing — and guided her down the hall with a hand on the small of her back. She didn't raise any questions about the intimacy of the gesture, didn't even seem to recognize it as such, and Locke felt a flash of worry about how she'd deal with Edgar.

In the room, he dropped the damp pack on the floor by the bed, and helped her take off her cloak. Fortunately, neither of them was drenched beneath their outerwear, just damp, so he fetched a towel to dry her hair before worrying about dry clothes. "Sorry about that," he said to her bowed head, as he wrung out her ponytail with the towel. "It's just easier if they think we're married."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "Sorry about telling them we're married?"

"That, and the, uh..." Taking liberties was the term that came to mind, but it didn't seem quite right, either. "Touching you like that on the way down the hall? It's normally something you'd only do with a... significant other?" He was no good with words right then. "While we're pretending is fine, but if someone does stuff like that and you don't like it, you can say so."

"Okay," she said cheerfully. "But why shouldn't we pretend to be married? I mean, why apologize?"

"Because why would you want to be married to me? Let your hair down so we can dry it," he suggested. She undid a band that looked like leather. He'd like to buy her a ribbon, he thought. Something pretty, something to replace all that jewelry she'd sold that she didn't seem to want anywhere near her. He rubbed the towel over the top of her head vigorously, until she laughed.

"Let me," she said, and she was smiling as she emerged from the towel. "There are still things I know how to do. Or at least things I can figure out."

"Got it," he agreed. "I'm gonna go change into dry clothes." He didn't know what he'd have done if there was no private bath. Used the opportunity to make sure she understood not to take her clothes off in front of Edgar or anybody else, maybe. Or just spent the night shivering. The bed was nice and big; they'd both have plenty of room.

It had been a year since Kefka fell. A year since she scared them all half to death, flying through the debris until she fell and it was up to Setzer to catch her with the Falcon. A year since he'd seen any of them, including Terra. He'd been working at the site of the cultists' tower, which collapsed like Kefka's own when magic left the world. He'd hoped to join the scientific expedition to the ruined castle underground — midway between Figaro and Kohlingen, ancient and straight out of the stories, it was right up his alley — but he couldn't convince the academics of Figaro that he was more interested in the past than in the shiny things it produced. The cult tower wasn't that far in the past, but the fanatics had collected an array of ancient objects; mostly magical, but some survived even now.

So did some cultists, so this project was perfectly suited to his skills, and too dangerous for many others in the digging-up-the-past profession. It was lonely work, sometimes, but he'd worked alone for years before Terra's appearance in his life changed all that. He didn't mind the solitude, especially since he had to make trips back to Nikeah every now and then for supplies — it wasn't like he never saw another human face.

Still, he didn't usually see one that was especially happy to see him, and the sight of Terra, a dash of green and russet and the sunny yellow of her chocobo at a distance, lifted his spirits; when she was close enough that he could see the broad smile on her face he felt practically giddy. She reined in her chocobo a few feet from him, and they stood for a moment, just taking each other in. During his long isolation, all their familiar faces had settled into a sort of abstraction, and maybe the same was true for her, because she seemed to be studying, not just looking. Her face had filled out a bit, and her hair was longer; she looked to have it braided. She wore loose trousers, a long green travel tunic over, it seemed, the kind of lacy blouse women were wearing in Nikeah, and a scarf of dark wool that looked undyed. Maybe it was the dark, wintery colors, but she was as pale as ever, not like him; as she passed him the reins to her chocobo and dismounted, he saw her skin in proximity to his and realized how much sun he'd really taken on.

"Your hair changed," he said, finally realizing the difference. It was still the same mass of unruly curls, with flyaway bits that had escaped her braid spiraling every which way. Like any hair, it had never been a uniform green — there'd been strands of blonde and brown and shades of green ranging from pale jade to summer leaves to dark pine needles — but it was lighter now, more jade than leaf, and more blonde than jade, even. Did it look more green, or less, because of the green she wore? It was certainly light enough that a casual observer might not notice anything unusual about the color.

"I know," she said. "I think it's because the green came from magic?"

"Weird," he said, then immediately regretted his choice of phrase, as he did so often when talking to her. "Your Esper form didn't have any green at all," he added, hoping that salvaged it a little. There was nothing weird about her — she was just Terra — but she'd always been sensitive about that. He busied himself about tying her chocobo to the hitching post.

"I know, but what else could it be? No one else really has green hair."

"Gau."

"I always thought that was... moss, or algae, or something."

He laughed, and then she did, too, which was nice, because sometimes when he'd thought she was making jokes she was actually serious.

"But besides that," she said. He lifted up the flap to his tent, and she ducked under his arm and inside. "Just two people, and now that magic's gone the green starts to wash out. It makes sense, doesn't it?"

"It does," he agreed. "Are you relieved? I always thought it was a beautiful color, but I know it bothered you."

"I'm not sure," she said. "I think it's still green enough that I'll need to cover it, don't you think?"

"That's up to you." He had a few last things to throw into his pack; razor and shaving soap, hairbrush, a few spare bandannas, which made her laugh. "I don't think you need to," he said. "We don't have the Empire on our tails anymore. And we're going to Nikeah, not Narshe or Maranda."

"Of course I'd hide it there," she agreed, with a casualness that still broke his heart a little. There were parts of the world where she couldn't be recognized for fear of vengeance for things she'd never chosen to do, and she took it as just a part of her life.

The Serpent Trench had once been underwater, and the soil still fought off any living thing that might try to find purchase there, but with Mobliz at one end and Nikeah at the other, small towns had sprung up as traveler's waystations, selling food and shelter for humans and chocobos at exorbitant rates.

It was at one of those, a little town creatively named "Watering Hole," that they stopped for that first night. It was safer than it had once been to stay on the road past dark, but old habit and consideration of the fact Terra had been traveling longer than he had made him insist on stopping while it was still twilight. She went inside to ask about rooms and food while he negotiated with the stable master. Her negotiations had either taken longer or gone better than his; when he went inside she was laughing with the inn-keeper, an olive-skinned woman who looked like she came from Maranda. Maybe Terra wouldn't need that scarf after all, he thought, but then Terra said, "There's my husband."

His first impulse was to look around in comical exaggeration for someone else she might mean, but instinct — and that same old habit — kept the joke in check. Did she have some reason to pretend they were a couple? He couldn't think precisely why her safety might depend on a spouse, but that could be sorted out later. "We're just in time, dear!" she exclaimed. "Dinner's about to be served!"

"Wonderful!" he agreed, trying to sound enthusiastic rather than mystified. "What's on the menu?" he added.

The only option on the menu was the same kind of stew that was once served all up and down the Narshe Range and seemed to be migrating south along the Trench now; big chunks of beef, carrots, onions, some manner of tomato base. The food might have cost less if they could just accustom themselves to using fish instead, he thought, and he and Terra might have had to pay less for food and lodgings if they'd stuck to the coast, but little fishing villages weren't as hospitable as these places that specialized in it. The road had developed down the center of the trench, because, paradoxically, that was the highest point, the one least likely to be flooded by tsunami or by Kefka's fluctuating moods.

"He probably inverted it," Terra said matter-of-factly, when Locke mentioned that over the meal. "It's exactly the kind of thing he'd do." She seemed to realize others in the room could, potentially, overhear, though most were caught up with their own traveling companions. "Isn't it?"

"Seems that way to me," Locke agreed blandly.

After the dinner, they and several other guests had drinks — the innkeeper's husband brewed a fine cider — and Locke stayed uncharacteristically taciturn as Terra crafted their marital history before his eyes. They'd only been married two years, Terra said, and a gray-haired woman said, "I could tell you two were newlyweds." Terra beamed, and Locke couldn't help smiling as well, as much at her pride in the deception as at the old woman's missing of the mark.

Up in their room, though, he had to ask. "Why are we married?"

"If you have to ask that, doesn't it mean our relationship is in trouble?" she asked merrily. He frowned, and she relented. "It just seemed like... like a good idea at the time? Just for fun. Does it bother you?"

"No, it doesn't bother me... I was just surprised. Couldn't see a reason for it. Not that you need one. Do you want to say we're married for the rest of the trip?" He didn't remember ever hearing of Mobliz as the kind of place where people were terribly strait-laced about such things, but perhaps she'd picked up a conservative view of unmarried men and women traveling together elsewhere, or maybe someone in Mobliz came from a more moralistic background.

"Not if it bothers you," she said. "Like I said, it was just an impulse."

"It's fine," he said. "Let's be married. It's warmer sharing a bed anyway."

It was warmer, and it was kind of fun, putting one over on the other guests over drinks and the next morning at breakfast. And it was nice to be a couple in public, to have a hand to hold, a waist to put his arm around. It was nice to have a partner.

That was part of why they'd used the ruse in the past, even after she'd gotten over the initial disorientation of shedding the slave crown. They could kick questions to each other the way couples did — "the price of coal in South Figaro? I don't remember exactly, but my husband might" — and, if nothing else, stall for time. The ruse had demanded more attention from him than from her, at the time, because obviously hers wasn't just ordinary spotty memory, but she was turning the tables on him now. Their courtship, the details of their life in Narshe, the reason they were traveling the Serpent Road, those were all her creation; he was just along for the ride.

It was fun to watch, though, especially as she rolled out the act again at each little inn or campsite. She was enjoying herself, something he'd seen all too seldom in all the time he'd known her, and he had a bit of a mentor's pride in watching her pull off a con, especially since it was so harmless. She wasn't taking anyone's money or cheating anyone out of anything. No payoff, no springing of traps, just spinning out a story.

They'd met in Narshe, she said. Which was true, except in this version she'd been a simple shopgirl and he was a traveler who swept her off her feet. "I just walked in to buy a pair of gloves," he'd say at this point, and by the third night, they'd exchange an adoring glance afterwards. Their more engaged listeners would sigh or smile, and the sour ones would scoff or walk away, and either way, it sold the story and spared either of them thinking up all the details of a whirlwind courtship.

They'd met before the disaster, they agreed, so they did sometimes get questions — what was it like being in Narshe during the battle? — which was interesting, thinking how a civilian would have taken it all. But a lot of the travelers they met were from former Imperial cities. They knew what it was like to be in a town during a battle, and didn't need to ask.

Then the world broke, and they'd packed up and fled Narshe with only what they could carry, only to find shoreline where they hadn't expected shoreline. Finally they'd gotten on one of the explorer's boats that headed south. "Never been so happy to see Nikeah in my life," Locke would add, and Terra would say, "It was the first time I'd ever seen it."

So that, they'd explain, was why they treated Nikeah as their home base through all their travels. They were vague about what they did on their travels, which was actually entirely of a piece with the way Locke had described his occupation to new acquaintances for many years.

"Funny," he said, one night, lying on his back in the bed they shared.

"What is?" Terra was sitting on the edge of the bed, combing her hair. No matter what she did, ponytail or braid or covering it up entirely, it got windblown and tangled as they rode.

"When people ask what we do for a living? I've answered that way for years. Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Whatever puts food in my belly. Now I've got honest work that'd actually be interesting to talk about..."

"Sorry," she said, though she didn't sound terribly contrite. She got under the covers, facing him. "I just think if I'd never done any traveling, having the world end would make me want to at least see what was left. You know?"

"No, you're right." A familiar ache — so much of the world Rachel hadn't seen, so many things he'd wanted to show her and never would — but at least the real Terra, unlike the version in her story, had seen quite a bit of it while it was still in one piece. Not that they'd been sightseeing, but he still remembered her gasping in amazement at a view of the sunset from Mt. Koltz, remembered her asking him the names of every flower and tree they saw for a while (irritatingly, Edgar had been the one who knew more of the answers.) She'd been isolated for so long, and dragged through so much afterwards, that he treasured every memory of her enjoying their enforced travels. "You're doing a fine job with the background, Terra. I'm not complaining. And it's probably best I don't talk about my excavation. I don't want anyone horning in on it while I'm away. Leaving it to the cultists is bad enough."

"How bad are the cultists?"

"Honestly, most of 'em are more a nuisance than anything. One or two have actually attacked me, but mostly they just follow me around, yelling about how I'm defiling a sacred site." He was glossing over the worst of that. It was true, they mostly stuck to harassment and aggressive chanting; without magic, most of them weren't fighters. But a few were crazed, with no sense of self-preservation at all. He'd been attacked with rocks, fists, and cultists just flinging themselves at him bodily. One had come at him with a knife, and Locke had probably killed him; that one hadn't been back in two months. Every fight was life-or-death for him, because if they took him out of commission, broke a bone or knocked him unconscious, he'd be dead. His only clue as to how many were inclined to attack was the fact that he'd never had to take on more than three at once. He was starting to think he'd have to kill, not just take them out, because they weren't learning lessons from their defeats, just getting more bold and determined.

"You're sure," she said, skeptically. "These people worshiped Kefka, Locke. They're not exactly pacifists, and if they know who you are, they think you helped murder their god. Were you at the tower before...? I don't remember."

"For a while..." Edgar had led the way partway up, then they'd turned back. Locke had been part of the second try they'd made at it. Right up your alley, Edgar had said. So yes, they might know him as part of that party. He wasn't so sure they'd make the rest of the connection, but maybe she was right. It had been in the papers, posted about everywhere, and even cultists needed to go into town to buy food.

"And it's not like you have backup, or healing magic. Or any magic."

"It's fine," he said. "I'm hard to kill." He rolled over onto his side so he was facing her. "Maybe with me gone for a while, they'll be able to do whatever ceremonies they want to do, and finally move on."

"You don't think they'll just decide, hey, he left, we finally won?"

That was an uncomfortably valid point. "I'll, uh..."

Her grin was more a suggestion than something he could see; beneath her halo of hair, the shape of her face shifted, the shadowed shapes of her eyes crinkled up, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "Maybe I'll help you chase them out when we come back."

He was smiling, too, almost an automatic reaction to Terra's happiness or amusement. "Sounds like a plan to me."

They were at the outskirts of Nikeah, looking for an inn, when she said "I guess we should stop, huh?"

"Stop... being married?"

"Well... yes. Pretending. You know."

"All right," he said, agreeably. He'd been following her lead from the start of all this. He wasn't about to change his mind now, even if he did feel inordinately reluctant to give up her hand in his, her presence at his side in the bed, breathing and warm and alive.

It was just that he'd been lonely, he told himself. He'd been completely on his own for long enough that he was just wallowing, now, in human contact. It could have been anyone. Yes, what he was going to miss was the contact, the curve of her waist under his hand, more than the practiced fiction when they introduced themselves to another traveler; but it could have been anyone.

It could have. Possibly. It could have been Celes, except Celes wouldn't have suggested the idea and wouldn't have spun the tale; she might have played along if he'd started it, laughing at him and a little reluctant, letting herself be persuaded, but she wouldn't have blazed the trail, or taken so much pleasure in pulling it off. She wouldn't have held hands with him in a pub's common room just to sell a story; she wasn't demonstrative in the first place, let alone for show.

And there was nothing wrong with that, of course. But he'd enjoyed it. They'd enjoyed it together. And he was pleased, and proud, to see how much Terra had changed from the uncertain, lost little thing he'd met in Narshe. That was all it was.

"I bet you'll be happy to see Celes again," she said, that morning; they'd shared a double, two narrow beds separated by a prim, chaperone-like nightstand. Was Celes the reason she'd called it off, he wondered? Or maybe she'd just tired of the game.

"I'll be happy to see everyone again," he evaded, but then he immediately felt guilty about the dishonesty. "It's complicated," he said. "Celes and I... there's a reason she went to Narshe and I didn't, you know?"

"I don't know," she said. "That's why I'm prying."

"And so subtly," he said, to make her smile. "I'll try to think of how to explain. By dinner tonight, all right?"

She nodded, and slipped into the little curtained-off corner to dress. It wasn't really a reprieve. He'd need to find some way to make his own feelings make sense outside of his head by evening.

Rachel, when he called her back, had told him to give his love to the one in his heart now. If she'd known who that was, he wished she could have been a little more specific. Maybe he was just unlucky, but love didn't sit still in his heart like a gemstone, a magicite, solid and concrete and easy to identify. Love, for him, had always surged up and subsided like a flame or a tide; never going away, really, but easier to notice some times than others. When the Phoenix shattered before his eyes, he couldn't have identified anyone in his heart except Rachel; but the years had worn away at the image of her like rain and wind eroding a statue until he wasn't sure, anymore, how much the woman he'd kept in his heart resembled the woman he'd hoped to wake up.

And she'd told him to move on, to be happy, to love someone new, and not to feel guilty, as if it was as easy as that to change course when your rudder had just splintered. She'd said all that, and she was gone, and he'd gone upstairs to find Celes, trying to look like she hadn't been pacing even though he'd heard her steps. He'd been flooded with affection for her, then, her stubbornness and pride, and he thought right then that he could do it, as easy as Rachel had said, because he did feel love, and happiness, in with everything else. But she wanted to know what had happened. He could always throw language around, like knives or ropes or breadcrumbs for pigeons, but not when it came to the way he felt. Whatever was in his heart at that moment was billowing and huge, impossible to just pin down and wrap up in little words, even when he tried. He talked about weights and guilt and freedom, but that didn't even begin to encompass it, and he was sure she could tell something was missing. All he could do to make up for it was pour out treasure into her hands and tell her how he'd made his way through the cave.

On the airship it was even worse. He loved everybody he saw, and he felt like he might float away. He felt drunk with it. But at the same time, all he wanted was to find a cave and go down deep, so deep the sun couldn't reach him, until the flapping sails inside him calmed, and he could tie them down, get them under control. It wasn't an option; he had a room he'd be sharing with Edgar, and he was as far from underground as it was possible to get. Edgar, though, had always understood some things about him better than they ever acknowledged out loud. Edgar left their shared cabin to him as much as possible, and Edgar took him to the castle, and took the castle underground. A systems test, he'd said, but what they found was another castle, caves and ruins, and for Terra, a story about an Esper and a human who'd loved each other.

It was exactly what he'd needed; quiet and dark but not calm, not when every corner could reveal something angry and territorial that hadn't been seen aboveground in a thousand years. He'd taken point, peering around corners and tossing rocks down passageways, feeling the way up or down crumbling stairwells, to lead Terra and Strago and Relm through the ruins. He'd shielded the old man and the little girl in their fights, and felt for the first time since he'd seen the crack in the crystal like he wasn't entirely useless. The repaired Phoenix — maybe there was a bit of Rachel in it, he liked to think — taught him what it knew, in increments he barely recognized until a new spell formed itself in his mind. They built a campfire in a crumbling palace room still decorated with shreds of tapestry, and he kept seeing the shape of a bird in the flames, just like Terra stared at the petrified Esper, Odin, and then half-laughingly admitted she was trying to decide if he looked like her father.

The whole place was coated with a layer of magic as thick as the dust on the undisturbed shelves, so strong it almost had a smell. Magic and the past; the two things he'd been searching for all his life, and Terra had been seeking ever since she was freed, mingled here into one thing. It was good for him to have the reminder that there was more to the past than one old legend, that tragic unfairness paved the ground of history and his own outsized heartbreak was really about the same size as so many others. And it was good for her, he hoped, to see that she wasn't an anomaly, that humans and Espers had loved each other more than the one time.

They brought plenty of other things out of the ruins, but the part that mattered most to him was the calm. He felt like he had his feet on solid ground again after that, even on the airship, even if he felt a little guilty that he hadn't been able to feel right as soon as Rachel asked and as soon as Celes had probably hoped. There was still a hole in him, like a missing tooth, and like a missing tooth he tried not to worry at it, but he thought maybe he was starting to be okay; maybe this was how everyone felt about a loss.

And he didn't know how to explain to Terra, who hadn't even known what loving someone felt like for so long, who had enough confusion of her own without trying to make sense of his.

He and Terra spent the morning on the docks, comparing prices and checking the accommodations, and finally booked passage to South Figaro. For all that Locke was thinking of ships, again, he dreaded the voyage. The trip to Thamasa hadn't been a fluke; he couldn't spend ten minutes on the water without collapsing into a green-tinged misery. "Maybe we could have Setzer come to pick us up," she suggested, but he waved that off.

"I'll live. It's only a few days."

"If you say so."

He recognized that tone. This was a mother, leaving her son to learn the hard way about eating too many sweets or stubbornly refusing to eat a meal because it contained the dreaded mushroom. "I know what I'm in for," he said, amused. "I just don't think it's worth it to send word for Setzer and wait around for him. I won't come crying to you when I break my legs."

"See that you don't," she agreed, grinning.

He'd never quite been able to make Celes smile like that. And that wasn't anyone's fault. If Terra had ever had the kind of military training that shaped Celes, it was gone from her memory; she'd had a fresh start that he wouldn't wish on anyone. Celes's smiles were rare and precious, and he always felt like he'd accomplished something when he drew one out. But sometimes he wished they didn't take so much work, wished she could enjoy things without signing forms in triplicate first.

The one time he'd seen her smile easily, without effort or reservation, was on the deck of the airship after they'd defeated Kefka and saved Terra and survived. He'd wrapped his arms around Terra and kissed her — it landed somewhere just northeast of her lips and southeast of her nose — and when he finally let her go, Celes was beaming at him, and she wrapped her arms around both of them before Terra had stepped away and buried her face in Terra's hair. It had been easy, then, to kiss Celes, too, a kiss that nearly hit her ear. And that made it easier, when night fell and they were drifting over South Figaro, watching the fireworks over the edge of the deck, to kiss her again, carefully and a bit nervously, this time on the mouth, and then to have the kind of conversation they always had, elliptical and confusing: she was telling him about getting her magic, when she was three, and it took him some time to understand that she was really telling him about losing it.

But she was talking about how she felt, and for Celes, that was a lot. He knew it, and he tried to show her he understood the import of it, but he kept stumbling — not just that night, but over the next few days — and he felt like he was letting her down. She was eighteen years old, or really twenty, now, give or take a few months, but she was young; and he was the dashing, heroic rogue who'd been willing to lay down his life for her, yet couldn't seem just to sweep her off her feet now. She didn't entirely seem to want to be swept, even in the midst of the festival atmosphere of Figaro, and she was so young and he was so confused he didn't pursue it beyond those first kisses. He still didn't know what to make of the vastness of the joy and relief he'd felt when he saw Terra, green-haired again and human, hit the deck of the airship, the way he'd thought immediately of the Phoenix; if he was mourning Rachel or if he'd laid her to rest; if he loved Celes or just loved that he'd been able to save her, and if it was selfish or wise for him to want to sort it out before he kissed her a third time. If it was selfish or wise for him to commit to something that would keep them apart for a while, so he could figure it out.

He didn't know, but he did it anyway, and when he went to tell her, she made him wait until she told him about Narshe first. They laughed and promised to see each other in a year. They didn't promise to write. He did write, though. She didn't. He wasn't surprised. She was a lot busier than he was.

Terra didn't remind him of his promise at their meal that night, so he pretended he'd forgotten, because unlike so many of their friends, he'd never made any pretense of valuing honor or some other kind of code over what'd work best for him. Oh, he believed in freedom and justice and all that, but he believed in white lies and victimless crimes, too. After the meal was over, he stood and reached out a hand to her; she took it, looking mystified, and he pulled her from her chair and led her to a part of the restaurant's floor where the tables had been cleared away and a few couples were dancing. The music had the percussive, ornate guitars of Maranda in it, and he thought of the days when you could tell where you were by the clothes or the accents or the musician's tunes. The world had scattered, but not into discrete parts.

He watched the dancers for a time, getting the rhythm of their movements, but most of them weren't doing anything too fancy; a simple box step, just at the pace of the music, looked like it would do the trick. He stood, and held his hand out to Terra, and while she looked surprised, she took it and followed him. She let him arrange her arms and take her into his, one last dance before they faced the music in Figaro. How to explain to her that was how he thought of it, now, without any insult meant to any of the others? Or maybe she'd understand; of all of them, she was one of the closest to sympathy with his rogue's ways and his dislike of rules, roles, and organization. Sabin, oddly enough, was probably the other. And Shadow, wherever he was now.

"I thought we were done pretending?" she asked him, her voice low and her breath warm against his ear.

"One for the road," he said. "For the sea."

Her only acknowledgment was a distracted smile. He watched her as they danced, the absorbed look on her face as she got into the rhythm of the steps; she kept glancing down at their feet, though he knew she could dance on her own with all the grace she'd always brought to combat. Then she looked up, met his eyes, and said, "If you hate it that much, Edgar's not going to force you to take part."

And he'd thought he'd have trouble explaining. "I know. But we've come this far."

"I wasn't telling you to go back to your dig," she said, then broke off; he could almost see her counting steps. "I just meant you could sulk in your rooms."

"And I wonder what you'd think of that decision," he teased.

"Well, of course I want you there. Who else would put up with my dancing?"

"Anyone, if they saw you dancing on your own. But I'll give you lessons first." Like he was a champion dancer. What he knew, as with so many things, was how to fake it using what he little he did know. But he didn't especially love the idea of Edgar sweeping her around in his arms. Maybe they could both get some lessons. Together. "I wonder if I could dip you?" he added, noticing another couple doing just that; the woman was laughing as her partner pulled her back up.

"Oh no," Terra said, laughing as well. It was a moot point, though, because the song was ending. "Maybe during our lessons," she added, as they came to a stop. She let go of his hand to brush a lock of hair behind her ear, and Locke lifted his hand to the side of her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. Her skin was warm, though in the dim light he couldn't see if she was flushed, and she leaned into the touch, her eyes on his. Her hand covered his, and for a moment he might have forgotten to breathe; the sounds of the people around them, the musicians and crowd bantering about what they should play next, were distant and unimportant, and her eyelids flickered as she drew closer. Her lips were soft and tasted slightly of the sweet red wine they'd drunk, but when she pulled away, her smile looked almost regretful.

"Maybe we should have stopped pretending a little earlier," she said. She took his hand in both of hers, drawing it away from her face, and held it between them, looking down at it as if she could read an answer in his palm.

He reached with his other to lift her chin. "I wasn't pretending," he said. Her lips parted, as if to say something, but the musicians were playing again, and they were jostled off the dance floor by couples more certain of each other and their steps. She ducked her head and pushed her way through a knot of people ready to start dancing; Locke muttered excuses and followed her.

At the edge of the room, away from both tables and dancers, she lifted her head to face him again. "You never even explained to me about Celes."

He reached to run a hand through his hair, but they were in town, and he was wearing layers of bandannas; she giggled at the abortive gesture, and he thought that maybe the evening wasn't entirely lost. "I don't even know how," he said. "Terra, I—" But she was already shaking her head.

"I wasn't pretending either," she said. "But you should— I don't want to— You should see her first, Locke."

He remembered Celes kneeling by Terra on the airship's deck, and he knew she was right, much as he wished she wasn't. "I still want to dance with you in Figaro," he said, which was a kind of agreement. She just smiled.

"Damn right you do."