June 27th, 835
Valravn Citadel
Intensive Care Unit
The cool evening grass kissed Bellamy's skin as they sank into the meadow, watching the Guadalajaran sunset. A fresh breeze carried the scent of near-autumn, and a faint hint of salt from the ocean. Bellamy closed their eyes and bathed in the tranquility of it all. There was no smog here, no war here—what war?—no fears nor obligations. They swore in the distance that they could hear Aunt Lorna calling them for dinner.
"Just a bit longer..." Bellamy spoke quietly, and almost thought they could feel the grass grow just a little further around them.
Roland Freud frowned, watching the steady rise and fall of their friend's bandaged chest. "So they should be awake by now?"
"Aye, docs said the fever broke last night with the Elgamycin." Kelly frowned, unable to so much as see the face of the young Legionnaire she'd come to think of as her protégé from her wheelchair.
"So why aren't they?" Freud asked, a little more forcefully than intended.
"Don't know." The wounded Exarch grunted, clutching the bed's side rails and forcing herself to her feet to see Bellamy's face. She studied them for a long moment, jaw tight. "They're... they're some place they have to find their own way back from. But I need my Legionnaire, and I'll be gods damned if some bloody microbe is gonna take 'em from us."
Kelly leaned over them as best she could manage, her voice dropping to a rasp. "So, Legionnaire Crowe—you'd best RTB. I didn't give yer ass permission to die yet."
Upon the green ground, as the cool breeze kissed the world with all the affection of a mother to her child, soft footsteps pressed into the meadow. Bare, pale feet strode through and folded each blade of grass gently as the weight of their owner shifted along with each step. The crunch of leaves and grass softly gave away the individual's approach, a disturbance that somehow still felt in harmony with the union of nature that surrounded. A small, exasperated breath announced her passage into this world as she came to stand behind Bellamy.
"So. This is where you've been," the woman intoned, her voice young and tired.
Within the East Avlemore, a great leviathan stirred. It was not the first time, nor the last, that it awakened and shifted. But it would signal a Dreamer sidestepping her own world into another's.
Bellamy heard the familiar voice and more pointedly its tone—a distant, far-off thing, many degrees separated from their inner world. Yet it was still potent enough to rouse the young Legionnaire, if only for the reason that unlike the cool grass and evening birdsong, it did not belong.
Bellamy sat up slowly, noticing the eerie stillness that had overtaken the world around them. The breeze had stopped. The birdsong had ceased. Even the distant sound of Aunt Lorna's voice had faded to nothing. They did not recognize the figure stood to their left, but her song was unmistakable—something ancient and otherworldly humming just beneath the surface of perception.
"I know your voice," Bellamy said softly, rotating while still sat in the wet ground to fully face her. Both palms dug into the earth, ready to spring backwards at any moment. Their eyes were wide with both fear and curiosity as they came to terms with just who had confronted them. "How?"
There was nothing terribly alien about the woman who stood there. Deep blue dyed hair framed a soft face, one eye covered with a butterfly wing eyepatch, the other hazel and relaxed. Her freckled face smiled softly. The slightly pudgy girl wore a faded purple sundress that billowed in the summer wind as she came to sit cross-legged in front of Bellamy, her hands playing with the grass.
"Well, this sort of place is where we live. These dreams and stuff. It's the place we're most comfortable. And when you're stuck for so long in one, well..." She smiled, a touch impish. "I got a little curious~"
For some eldritch being, the entity acted more like a dreamy college student or one of Bellamy's peers.
The Legionnaire laughed nervously, clenching the grass with one small hand and outstretching their other in alarm, flexing their digits. "But that means..."
Bellamy tilted their head to the east, watching the faint glitter of Firelance and Collapser batteries winking between the stars like distant fireflies. A reactor went critical somewhere in high orbit, flaring in its death throes before bursting into god-light in the night sky. The battle was beautiful and terrible all at once.
They shook their head, steeling themself to look her in the eyes. "You won't take my home from me again!" Bellamy screamed, their young voice impetulant and full of doubt.
The girl frowned, sighing. Her one visible eye glinted in the fires climbing in the sky. She looked at Bellamy with a degree of pity.
"Your heart remains here, doesn't it? Like a cord, pulled taut."
Bellamy glared at her before shutting their eyes. To Psyche's bemusement, a breeze once again swept over the landscape—gentler this time, but undeniably present. Bellamy steadied themselves, slow, disciplined breathing clear through the methodical rise and fall of their chest.
The battle in the sky blinked out ship by ship, not in the great flashes of reactor failures or magazine detonations, but out of existence entirely. The chirping of insects and low rumbles of frogs returned to the forest around the meadow, and even a small herd of deer passed by, stopping at a safe distance to observe the intruder curiously.
Bellamy opened their eyes, meeting Psyche's gaze with firmness and resolve. "I already told you. This is my home."
The girl looked at the natural setting return, nodding in appreciation and respect. A certain lucidity within the dream, then. It made things more interesting. "Then... what's waiting for you outside? Is that not home?"
"Outside..?" Bellamy shook their head, confused. They rubbed their temples, struggling to reconcile their inner world with the woman's conflicting words. "We're already outside..."
"Mm. Fragile, indeed," she mused, before glancing to Bellamy with a smile. "I'm Kimiko. Kimiko Hawkins. I don't think we've met like this."
Finally, curiosity won out over both fear and confusion, and Bellamy relaxed themselves just enough to listen. "Kimiko. You were a person, once? I mean, human."
"Was. Am. Depends on how you think of it. I mean, kind of depends on what you consider a human to be, and when they stop being one. I like to think I'm at least still a person but..." She shrugged, bringing her legs up to her chest and hugging them. "Many disagree."
"It's a very long story. But I know a lot more about... what being human is like than you might think."
"I'm sorry." Bellamy sat there a moment, shaking their head again, as though struggling to stay awake. "Sorry, I don't know why I said that." They said flatly, lost for words. "I don't see why you wouldn't be a person."
"I can think of a few reasons, you know. Seeing only humans as persons, wondering if there are individual persons in an alien hivemind, wondering if I might just be a friendly mask or construct made by some alien to seem approachable... or maybe just the underlying assumption that all Nomads exist for the sole purpose of destroying humanity! That's a fun one," she theorized, counting on her fingers each item on the list.
Her tone remained light and airy, as if unconcerned by these fears. "I don't expect you to act perfectly with all that, B. It's not easy coping with... everything, right?"
"What's there to cope with?" They asked, puzzled. "Aunt Lorna makes me study, but the flying lessons are fun. I guess there's the blackouts... the power grids aren't as resilient here as up in Hykarsis." They rubbed their chin, trying very hard to think.
"Is this a trick question?"
"B... where do you know me from?"
Their eyes widened, and they reached for something to hold on to again, this time digging their fingers tightly into their own thigh. "You're from... you're..." The Legionnaire didn't know, and panic began to set in as they became aware of the gap in their memory. "I don't, I..."
"Deep breaths, now. Let's keep it together, okay?" Kimiko suggested gently. "There's a lot behind that door. A lot more outside this... place."
"I have some... ideas. But, I want to hear it from you. What do you know that I don't?" Bellamy's voice began to tremble as they spoke. "W-what were those lights in the sky?" They sobbed through their next words. "They can't... they can't find this p-place. I won't let that happen!"
Quietly, before speaking, Kimiko offered her hand to hold, with a soft reassuring smile.
"Bellamy, dear... this is your heart. This is a world of your creation. A conjuring of the mind. A dream. Those ships were here years ago. This place, changed forever. But life kept going. And it..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "It seems to have left this part of you behind."
"Oh." They said emptily, turning their eyes back to the sky where the battle had resumed—ships carving each other apart in silent fury. Ignoring her hand, Bellamy stood up and began to walk east, their shoulders sagging. "I've finally gone insane."
Somehow, Kimiko was already walking beside Bellamy, as if there was no transition between her sitting and moving. She quizzically tilted her head at them.
"What do you mean?"
Shaking their head softly from left to right, Bellamy simply continued walking. The coast, which would've still been miles away, came into view after passing through a small swath of trees. The pair stood above a small cliff, with a settlement visible below—lights twinkling in windows, smoke rising from chimneys, the gentle hum of life continuing despite the carnage overhead.
Sitting down, they laid back and rested their head in their palms, watching the warships carve each other apart in orbit.
"I'll make you a deal," Bellamy said, the lightshow not leaving their sight as they spoke.
Kimiko watched the contrast of calm and chaos play out. A blue morpho butterfly landed upon her shoulder, resting there. She righted her head and looked at the display in low orbit.
"What sort of deal?"
"This place, this world. They bomb it, don't they? Every last settlement." They spoke, their gaze momentarily shifting to the town below.
"If this is a dream, I'll wake up and you'll get what you want, right? And if it isn't," Bellamy paused a moment, their eyes returning to the battle. "Then I'll die here the way I should have, five years ago."
Her eye closed as she thought about that. The little morpho fluttered in front of the two of them, circling around.
"Is that what you believe, then? Well, continue."
"It is." They said, as the debris of the engagement began to fall upon the landscape of the Legionnaire's mind. The ground itself began to crack, their inner world's surface fracturing into islands, drifting apart with void between.
"Sorry, Aunt Lorna," Bellamy spoke softly, as the first warheads began to fall. A few sputtering, pathetic exoatmospheric intercepts punctuated a rain of falling stars, detonating magnificently on the horizon over larger towns and cities in the distance. A single tear ran down Bellamy's cheek as half a dozen warheads plummeted towards the settlement below.
And yet, oblivion would not come. It was as if something was keeping them safe, despite the explosions. The wind of fire passed over them, flames and debris and heat passing by uneventfully. Only Kimiko's eyepatch flew away, revealing a stark sight: The socket was empty, and in its place, was a void twinkling with distant stars. Surrounding the socket were crystal veins that grew like taproots around the voideye. Glowing mists of purple and blue flowed from it, as Kimiko's other eye now glowed purple.
"No. This is running. Escape from pain. You will come back here, again and again. And this hell cannot come to pass."
As their little island stood untouched among the holocaust of warheads and debris, Bellamy turned to see Kimiko's true face. Shaking in both rage and awe, they looked once more to the conflagration around them—at the burning remnants of everything they'd lost.
"And what's wrong with running? What's wrong with choosing your own destiny!? This is where I should've died, here, with my friends and family. Why? Why!?" They screamed, slamming their small fists against Kimiko's chest.
Kimiko stood still, the hits impacting her chest with little to no force on her end. She looked beyond to the void. "Nothing in this world is written in stone. Nothing fated to be. Deserving and fairness are concepts invented by humans to bring order to chaos."
She waved her hand. Images of Bellamy's comrades in Prometheus flickered into existence—their accomplishments, faces known after Guadalajara's fall, fading in from the black like ghosts given form. "But yet, here you stand. And you have lived, despite the pain. And now others look to you as you once looked to others."
"Look to me?" Bellamy laughed sardonically. "I'm just some fucking kid who wanted to play hero, because of, because of..." They outstretched their arms, doing a little twirl as the world burned around them.
"This path I've chosen, there's no way out but this one."
Even as they spoke, Bellamy saw the imagery that Kimiko had somehow conjured. Exarchs West and With, Commander Freud, Lieutenants Struikas, Hideyoshi, Florence. Even some outside the ranks of Prometheus—the Maquisard Garou, and Heather, Saoirse Keane's daughter—all drifted before them, distant and yet close enough to touch all at once.
"...a part of you knows that isn't true. The part that loves. That laughs. That still feels joy in this life. The part that has found new family."
Kimiko sighed softly, getting closer to Bellamy. She smelled of lavender.
"Don't forsake what you've gained by fixating on what you've lost, B. Your old family, if they truly loved you, would want you to still find happiness. They'd be happy you're still here. And there are people waiting for you to come home."
"They all have each other. They're going to be fine without me, you know?" Bellamy paused for a moment, gazing up at a large chunk of debris hurtling past—the twisted remains of what might have once been a cruiser. "I'm so tired, Psyche, Kimiko. I'm tired of the sorties, tired of watching people die. I thought I could do this but I... I can't. So please, just let me rest already."
They curled up on what little was left of the ground below, making themselves small.
The starboard hangar of an Arbiter blazed towards them, white hot and full of fury. The impact engulfed the island in a flash.
As Kimiko's senses returned, a small, brutalist concrete enclosure surrounded them. Tucked tightly under blankets in a cramped sleeping spot inset in the wall was Bellamy, their face buried in a pillow. A dull yellow-orange light cast the room in a perpetual atmosphere of both warmth and oppression. A large pot could be heard bubbling through a thin metal door which presumably led to a common area, and the comforting scent of a simple stew circulated through the dismal abode.
As the scenery changed, Kimiko still kept her focus upon Bellamy, a sympathetic look painting her face. Her hair began to lengthen, falling to her waist as her skin grew paler, now more porcelain in appearance than flesh. She sat down next to the sleeping corner, gently placing a hand on the blankets.
"Oh... you poor little thing. I think I can feel it, too," she mused, her voice a soft motherly hum. "Of course you're still here, dear."
Bellamy simply groaned, clutching their pillow tighter. In the distance, klaxons blared across the ecumenopolis. Kimiko did not need a window to look out of to know where, and when, they were.
"Matilda, we have to go now!" a voice snapped sharply from the other room. The urgency in the woman's words was palpable.
Another woman responded, her voice sad and unsteady. "O-oh, but the stew isn't ready yet! Isabelle loves her stew..."
"Matilda, stay here and die. I am not letting you sentence them to death."
"But Isabelle can't go outside, Lorna! Her asthm—"
A loud bang on the door. Lorna, apparently, had had enough.
Kimiko was quiet now. She remained, doing her best to be a comfort. A passive observer. She knew this place well, from her father's stories. Sometimes, when she passed the mass grave of a planet, she wondered if he was buried among the glass.
She looked to the door, then back to Bellamy. Then, to the window.
"Bel! Bel, we have to go!" Aunt Lorna shouted at the door. The klaxons grew nearer and the ground began to shake.
"There's—look, there's a freighter and we can get out of here and we can go be somewhere safe right now! Somewhere you can breathe the air, somewhere you'll have a future, Bel!"
"Please, go away..." Bellamy spoke muffled into their pillow.
"Listen, Bel! Please, please listen. This little cube your mother has kept you in, it's not all that there is. You're going to meet so many new and exciting people. You're going to walk through the woods, see the ocean, have your first kiss, fall in love. All of those things, they're yours, they're everyone's birthright. This place you've called a home? It isn't any more natural than the ships the Royalists have in orbit. Remember when we watched the Oubli fall together, remember how good that felt, Bel!?"
"You're not supposed to be here!" Bellamy screamed back. "You need to leave, go without me!"
"She won't."
"You are the reason she'd go through all this effort, dear," Kimiko softly whispered, though her voice thundered in the air. "You don't belong here."
Bellamy sat up in bed, wide-eyed, staring desperately at the door. "Then make her! You can make her, just like you stopped the bombs over Guadalajara!"
"I didn't stop them. Everything still happened. All I did was give us a moment to talk," she explained. "You're stuck here, with regret. With pain. Did you... ever get a chance to let yourself feel it? To let yourself hurt?"
"I... what? Why would you ask that now? I've tried, a little bit? How is this going to save her? She's supposed to live! She could have fought for the Commonwealth if she didn't have me dragging her down!"
"You were her reason to fight in the first place, B. Why do you think she's here?"
"And she's dead because of me! And I have to watch her die again because of YOU!"
Collapsing to the floor, Bellamy bloodied their fists against the rough concrete as they screamed and sobbed. The shaking grew stronger and some of the distant sirens abruptly stopped, replaced by screams as the beams drew towards the Kirkstall residential block.
Kimiko pursed her lips, weighing her next words carefully. Some part of her, some distant part, offered a missive of vital information. Enough to place a seed, even as the fires drew nearer.
"...is she?"
Bellamy's fist stopped mid-air. "W-what?" they choked, staring up at Kimiko, eyes sunken and bloodshot.
"You never actually found out, did you? You seem to assume she is dead," she mused, her limbs growing ever so slightly longer, and her body growing in size imperceptibly.
Forcing themselves to their feet, Bellamy glared at Kimiko. "S-stop the beams. Tell me what you know."
"What I do know, Bellamy, is that a great many of the Commonwealth's children lived. Far more than died. When I walked the ground with human feet, I helped in escorting many refugee convoys out. And still more who fought and bled knew the wisdom of continuing to fight in another time, another place," she mused.
"My perceptions have their limits. But that thread of yours? It is not yet slack. Something may still tug at the other end."
In the distance, the beams continued their onslaught, but once again, a bubble formed about them. Sounds muted and the air grew still. Just like before.
Straightening their shoulders and wiping the tears from their eyes, Bellamy took a deep breath. "Okay," Bellamy said, swallowing the knot in their throat. "Okay, I'll... I'll try. But... you're right. I never had the chance to grieve Guadalajara properly, and this?"
They gestured to their surroundings, the smell of their mother's cooking still faintly lingering in the air.
"I never even knew I needed to grieve this. I... fuck, I was always kind of glad she stayed behind. I resented her that much, didn't I?"
Bellamy looked away in shame, and then at the details of the room around them. Some drawings their mother had been proud of and decided to frame, a pot they'd made with clay their father had brought from Cambridge, now shattered on the floor, and their ratty old zoo animal blanket that mom had always been too poor to replace.
"It's fair. I hated my father, too. He was a terrible person. A terrible, broken man who took it out on his wife and his daughter. A daughter he saw as a son. But..."
For once, Kimiko trailed off, as if the words were physically difficult to get out. She cleared her throat, even in this dreamscape.
"...he was still my dad. And I needed him to be someone he couldn't be."
"Regardless of what she was, she... nobody deserves this." They spoke, watching as the concrete began to crack in spite of Kimiko's protection. This was Bellamy's own doing. Placing their hand on the wall and trailing the tips of their fingers around the room, they touched each cherished object one last time. They looked to the door.
"Mom, I... I promise to come visit once in awhile, okay? And... Aunt Lorna, I don't know where you really are, but I'm sorry for giving up so easily."
Bellamy suddenly gasped. "Freud! He was on a mission, it was his first command... is he... did he...?"
Before Kimiko could answer them the klaxons started blaring again, somehow different this time, closer in a more tangible way. Pale white light began to pour through the cracks in the walls, and Bellamy noticed for the first time their hospital gown. They were sitting now, their sleeping spot with the tattered old blanket replaced by cold steel.
Legionnaire Crowe looked to Kimiko and smiled gratefully. "Thank you, for everything."
As the dream collapsed, Kimiko smiled softly and nodded. Her porcelain skin cracked, black-and-blue ichor oozing out and pooling into eyes that gazed upon the world. Her dress transformed into a long white robe floating in the air, draped cloth moving as if suspended in water. Grand, deep blue morpho wings sprung out of her back, ethereal and misty. Her hair floated much the same as her robe, trailing behind and around her head.
That smiling face soon stilled, a serene porcelain funerary mask with those selfsame cracks that marked the entity's body, both eyes now those swirling galaxies from before. Hundreds upon hundreds of glowing blue morphos flew out from behind her, caressing her skin as they flew into the distance and faded into nothingness. A halo, wreathed in their wings, floated about the now-angelic being's back, glowing and potent and covered in glyphs of a long-dead language.
She was born from a sea beyond this dream, composed of countless, infinite souls that formed her, each a drop of gossamer morphoscale, each an eye within her cracks.
Somehow, this was still Kimiko. Or perhaps, Kimiko was part of her. But whoever she was, she was a goddess, a divinity that had hidden her nature as she visited Bellamy's dreams. Within those celestial eyes lay a great many emotions, yet chief among them directed at Bellamy was a profound and nearly-abyssal depth of compassion and love. A mother, a patron to those she looked over.
Her voice came as a whisper, tickling the ears of the formerly-dormant pilot, yet vibrating in their chest like distant rolling thunder, a chorus unending with Kimiko's song chief among them.
"Cherish thy Light, little one. Squander not thy joys."
The song faded, and Psyche's body transformed into a flock of blue morphos once more, flying into the aether and fading, save for one. It flew into Bellamy's chest, phasing inside and leaving a pleasing, delightful warmth. Intuitively, it was apparent that there was no harm nor ill intent. Merely the parting kiss of divinity.
Legionnaire Crowe touched their chest where the morpho had kissed them, then clenched their fist. With grim determination and clarity of purpose, they smiled, yanking the IVs and EKG leads from their arms and chest.
"Just hold on a little longer, Freud. I'm coming," Bellamy thought, racing down Valravn's strangely empty corridors to the flight deck, ripping off their gown and suiting up. Struggling with the zipper along the back of their flightsuit, they spotted a young Hispanian pilot about their age.
"Legionnaire, help me get this!" They ordered, quickly sealing their helmet once she zipped them up.
The pair rushed to their ships, and Bellamy's cockpit pressurized with a hiss. No time for a preflight check. Even without a brief, Bellamy somehow knew they had a friend to save.
"I won't let you down," they whispered, white-knuckling the throttle. "Valravn Control, this is Wind Rose, taking off!"
Before the hangar door was even fully open, Bellamy kicked the burners on the Falchion. As they braced themselves against the G's, they swore they could feel a single, otherworldly hand light on their shoulder.
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