Authoress Notes: We were talking about this, and I STILL refuse to believe that he's dead. I'm sorry I made you guys cry when I was talking about his death scene! DDDDDDDDDDD:

Claim: The plots are...usually between us three.

Disclaim: If I had my way, it'd be Tieria who died and not Lockon. Yeah, 'cause he sucks balls, that Tieria does. Who knows if he's a girl or a boy, anyway?

Soundtrack: Shattered [Trading Yesterday] Somewhere Out There [Our Lady Peace] Never be the Same [Red]

Italics : Song lyrics

A Place in the Stars

She really couldn't remember much beyond the pain coursing through her body, throbbing with each dying throb of her heart. Yes...dying. She knew that she was, there was no earthly way — that she would be making it back and know that she'd be okay — it wasn't possible because...

Pain just didn't feel like this if you were going to survive it. Her vision was blurring, going in and out of focus like a faulty camera. Everything took an hour to do, each breath slowing down and becoming less and less frequent.

Heaviness weighed on her cheek and chin, and she knew that it was her own blood, dark red and sticky on her flesh. She could tell she was bleeding, she just didn't know from where, and she didn't care to find out.

All she knew was that it was agonizing. How had she ended up out here, in the first place? Wracking her throbbing brain for pieces of fading consciousness, she found scattered fragments floating to the top like pieces of driftwood.

A battle. The rocking of the ship. An explosion. And then...and then...

Hadn't they just finished trying to fix this? This entire movement had been about creating peace. It seemed sickly twisted that this was the way she was dying. Another casualty of someone who couldn't find the rationality to keep quiet, to agree with peace.

"Make sure you live on, okay?"

Like a heaven sent reminder, Lockon's voice echoed in her head like an empty cavern, bouncing off walls and reverberating until it drifted off into nothingness, just like she was. Space really wasn't that bad, she supposed.

But the sensation of falling, slowly, wasn't all that great. Shrapnel floated past her, and she reached out, only to find that her arm wouldn't obey her command. Confused and hazy from bloodloss, she found that the entirety of that section was coated in thick, glistening crimson with the overbearing scent of copper that made her stomach reel in revulsion.

Shifting her gaze back to the blood tinted inside of her helmet, she looked past the splotches of disgusting, sickening red that her body had produced to see the swirled sphere of blues, greens, browns and whites that made up earth.

The orbital elevator pierced it like an arrow, digging deep into the core and never to be removed. She found some kind of significance in that, but where it resided she couldn't find, seeing as she was having difficulty focusing on anything beyond her slow decent.

The oddly shaped sphere recaptured her dying attention span, and she found herself gazing at it pensively, an odd expression crossing over her face. It was funny. For years, Feldt had battled her insecurities over not being born on that chunk of rock.

She had dyed her hair pink. Withdrawn into herself as a comfort after her parents' death. And then he had came, bursting in with electric fanfare and shattering everything that she found comfort in. He had let her lean on him, confide in him and then he had gone and died, just like her parents.

It had been a hard thing to get through. She missed him terribly.

Yesterday I died; tomorrow's bleeding...

Her eyes stung at the edges, and salty liquid beaded and floated away in her helmet, splashing against the smooth glass. Heaving a soft sigh that pained her more than it did good, Feldt focused her attention back onto the earth.

"I wonder..." Her voice was soft, whispery. She could barely register it as her own. "if they're happy, down there..."

Her mind blanked, and she forgot what she had been talking about. Her voice died, the chords of her voice box refusing to do more. Her breathing was shallow now, lessening in intensity with each beat that seemed less and less energetic.

She wondered if anyone was looking for her. Her mind flashed, kickstarting to produce the images of Sumeragi, Setsuna, Allelujah, Lyle and everyone else on the ship that she knew. And then jumped to her old friends, Christina and Lichty and Neil.

They were gone. Faded.

And she was following in their footsteps.

Light was beginning enter her eyesight, and she couldn't tell if it was the glare of a ship or just...just...

For a momentary, fleeting moment, green eyes imagined that there was a very familiar gloved hand reaching out for her, and without a second thought, she slipped her hand into the grasp and allowed it to pull her into fuzzy warm light.

Fall into your sunlight...

—

"Damn it," sighed a voice she knew all to well, and with that voice came the memories of his face, of his eyes and the way he looked. "I didn't expect you to join me like this."

"I'm sorry," she replied without thought, finding her hand laced with his and she knew that he had been the being who had offered her that hand that had pulled her into the same realm as him. She chanced a cursory glance around in their surroundings.

Heaven.

It wasn't quite as picturesque as she had once imagined it to be. There were no fluffy white clouds. It was like a pearly, etheral version of Earth. There were buildings, and there were houses and such, and even a park where the warm, haunting laughter of children issued from.

"It's not your fault," he said, blue eye glittering in a way that they never did when he was amongst the living. They had an otherworldly ring of electric blue around them, and she wondered if hers had a ring of green around them.

"I tried to keep my promise," she said, looking down at her feet even as her grip tightened on his hand, and his gaze softened, the eyepatch still there as he held her hand in his own, fingers warm and comforting.

"I know," he said, and there was pride laced into his tone, making it seem more and more unreal. "And I'm proud of you for listening to me."

She still felt ashamed that she hadn't maintained that sworn promise, and that she had now joined him. But it still felt so...

A finger swept underneath her eye, and, startled, her head snapped back up, reading his face that told her that he was confused as he said, "You're crying. Why?"

Indeed, there were shiny tears falling down her face, tracing tracks and making skin wet. "Is this all..." she faltered and swallowed, regaining the vocal strength that she required, "is this all for real?"

He paused for a moment, and then Neil smiled and pulled her into his arms, folding her body against his.

"It is," he breathed, breath tickling her hair. He had missed her, and he had watched from his position to make sure that she kept her promise to him the best she could. But she couldn't have seen that part of the ship would explode, or that she would be caught in that resulting explosion.

Shaking those thoughts out of his head, he smiled at her and held Feldt against him a while longer before relinquishing his grasp until he was just holding her hand.

"There's a lot of things to see," he said, and he smiled mischeviously, eye twinkling. "And we've got a lot of time to explore it in. And I suppose you'd want to see your parents, but..." He lapsed in talking for a moment, and he tipped her chin up, capturing her lips with a soft, sweet kiss. "I get you to myself for a while."

[End]