She was doing it again.

Kratos stood back and watched as the Professor gushed about the history and structure of the ruin. "...look at the way it curves, depicting the flight of the spirit of wind."

Her questions flustered Lloyd all too easily, and the boy dropped out of the conversation as quickly as he could. Shooting a despairing glance at his teacher, the boy jumped around the edge of the platform and gestured for Genis to join him.

The elf ignored him, listening with half an ear to the lecture that his sister was sharing with a wide eyed Collette. The Chosen listened attentively, nodding at the appropriate points. Raine seemed to appreciate that, although she never stopped the voluble flow of words.

"Is she really this enthusiastic over a bunch of ruins? Or perhaps something happened to her in her childhood..." The mercenary spoke softly to himself, turning away from the scene behind him to at least give himself the small illusion of a private conversation. 'But what? And more importantly, where?'

He now realized that he knew very little of his companions' lives. Caught up in this struggle together, the only one who seemed content to pour out emotions was Lloyd. Collette seemed so as well to an untrained eye, but the mercenary could tell that she was holding things away from them.

Raine though...

Her eyes reflected a grief, deeply hidden beneath the calm face of the teacher, and the excited, almost maniacal expression of the researcher. What she hid there was anyone's guess; even Genis didn't know - and wasn't aware that he was missing the information. The wounds that she bore were those of family, they bit the deepest and remained the longest. He should know.

'Perhaps a death in a ruin?'

Puzzled, he turned it over in his mind, trying to fit the pieces together in such a way as to glimpse the fuller picture that was Raine Sage. That she was a mystery to him was easily admissable; he'd known that from the time that she had been assigned as the second of Collette's keepers on the journey of regeneration. His own path had been fairly open, if one didn't harp on the fact that he held the past in reserve. For her however...

Aside from her obsession with ancient things, be they buildings or books, she said nothing. The angel could not read what was written in her life's story.

And so he wondered.

'What happened to you Raine?'

He waited, hidden from sight as she approached the place on her Rheaird. The craft set down lightly in the Professors touch, her fears apparently not including flying. Booted feet dropped to the ground, swishing through the longish grass that grew around the deserted portal. Silver hair glinted in the moonlight.

As she came within touching distance of the stone columns she stopped and simply stared. Not wide eyed in amazement, but with the blank gaze of one who has finally connected the last piece of a puzzle and found confusion instead of the beautiful picture that they had expected.

"All that time..."

"I searched all over the world looking for this place. And here it was, on the other world that I never really knew. Here you threw us away. You deserted us. Why? What more could we have done? Mama I want to know. Why did you abandon us, send us away from you?"

Pain stabbed at his heart from the words, words that sounded like the accusations that he cast upon himself for abandoning his son. Even if he had thought that the boy was dead.

'Raine.'

"I wanted so much to please you. To find you again so that we could be together. So we could be a family. I searched all the world to find you. Why?"

The soft whine of a Rheaird's engine broke the silence that followed. Several of the machines coasted down to the ground, the company having missed the presence of their healer. "Raine!"

She didn't turn around. Merely replied in a quiet tone to the questions that rained around her. The others berated her for her carelessness, but she ignored them, still focusing on the ruins that held so much of her life bound up in them. The party gathered around to listen to her explaination, though only Genis seemed to half grasp the significance of what his sister was trying to put into words. Kratos ached to leave his place of concealment, to go to her and carry her far away from the troubles and the pain.

Still, he could not. He would only bring her more pain.

Out of the darkness, a shape materialised. A ninja stepped forward and issued a challenge to Sheena. She hung her head and listened, seeming to aquiese to whatever charge had been laid against her. Tethe'alla's Chosen grabbed her by the arm and pushed her backwards into the circle of stones, now filling with the moonlight. The gate flashed as they disappeared, quickly followed by all the others. The ninja raged for a minute as the gate shut down too quickly for pursuit. Then he faded away with his own arts, leaving the area abandoned again.

Except for a lone angel.

Kratos' gaze remained fixed on the place where he had last seen her. 'Raine. So this is the ruins of your life. May you have a happier end than mine is destined to be.'

A single teardrop hit the ground as a cluster of feathers floated down from the sky.

AN: Not as good in my opinion as Fever Dreams, but satisfactory enough to upload. So little interaction between the characters. :sigh:

Well. Read. Review. Or. Something.

Trevor X1