"...two of you?"
Aim's heart was not beating. It was hammering — a frantic, stumbling, overrun thing slamming against the inside of his ribs as though it meant to break out and run the rest of the way without him. After days — days — of a body that moved in dreadful slow eternities, everything had snapped back into real time all at once, and his nerves had not caught up. They fired out of order. They fired late, then all together, then not at all.
His muscles seized and jumped under his skin, twitching in spasms he could not command, the memory of a speed his flesh had outrun for a subjective week now collapsing inward with nowhere to go. A thread of blood-warm spit struck his lip — he had bitten the inside of his cheek and not felt it until now.
Isolde thrashed in his arms. She did not speak. Not one word — only a low animal writhing, her head rolling, saliva flecking from her open mouth, her eyes wide and seeing nothing.
Aim fought to compose himself and lost. His chest heaved. His heart was going to come loose. He pressed his back to the cold stone and held her and breathed in ragged hitches and tried, uselessly, to look like a man in control of himself.
"Oh, dear..."
The voice came soft and sweet, sorrowful as a lullaby, from the young woman haloed in the doorway like hope given a body.
Aim stared at her without blinking, breath coming too fast, his arms locked around Isolde.
"The two of you have been through something terrible, haven't you."
The woman in black stepped closer.
"Y—yes," he managed. His mouth twitched and trembled even after the word was out, refusing to be still.
His arms tightened around Isolde.
The green-haired girl remained as she was — eyes open, and behind them, nothing.
"With your permission...?"
She crouched before them, and made some small gesture toward a thing no human eye was built to see — and then she performed her miracle.
Wh— what is that— Beneath his lens the light-thread bloomed, and it was wrong, not the shape of an attack, but a glyph, a string of characters that st u tt ered and skipped like script that would not load—
His heart, his lungs, the misfiring meat of him — it all began, slowly, to settle back into rhythm.
The woman drew back.
"T-thank... you...?"
"Anytime."
"H-how long...?"
"How long what, dear?"
"...has it been?"
"I'm afraid I don't know th exact." Her voice stayed sweet enough to choke on. "I heard screaming, just a few minutes ago. So I came to see."
No one had screamed. Not aloud. Not in any time a person could have heard.
"R-really...? Was it me who screamed? Or my friend...?"
"Both of you."
It was days. It was days, wasn't it..?
"You both look very unwell." Her gaze slid to the girl cradled in his arms. "That Lady especially. She doesn't look well at all." She extended a hand.
Aim slapped it away.
"N—no. I— ah— sorry—"
"Then." The hand withdrew without offense. "Shall I help you?"
"All I ask is that you trust me."
The words landed like a spell.
Why— why does the light-thread shape itself into a hand when she says that— why— The glyph crawled. itch. His head split. My head—
"Th-thank you," he got out. "But it's all right."
The woman gave a small accepting nod — and took the rebuff gracefully.
"...Is there any water?"
She drew water out of thin air, and a vessel out of nothing to hold it.
No catalyst..? The threads in the air just... gathered at her hand, into glass and water—? just like—
"Here. Some for your beloved as well." The graceful woman held the glass out to Aim, and set a second down beside Isolde.
Aim drank it down in one frantic pull, then upended the rest over his own head.
"Hah—!"
"Thank you. Thank you so much—" he said it loudly, bowing his head again and again. "—but she isn't my beloved."
"Is that so. I only assumed." She tilted her head. "You're keeping a pink camellia and a white one tucked in your shirt pocket. I thought perhaps they were for her."
"...What of it? Miss..?"
She paused. Blinked once.
"Moriarty," she said. "Miss Moriarty."
"What of it, Miss Moriarty?"
"It's the language of flowers, dear. Not very romantic of you at all."
"...Is that so. I'm Aim, by the way."
"Mm. Let's be going."
She reached toward Isolde. "I can carry her, if you like. You look very tired."
"No. Thank you."
"...As you wish." The sweet, soft, bottomlessly patient smile stayed plastered to her face — as though that smile had been plastered there always.
"Let me escort you out."
Inside, the Sanctuary was as grey and joyless as before.
Only the light of Miss Moriarty's halo led them now.
The silence had ruled all three of them for some while.
My head's gone thick. I can't think—
"Mn..." A faint murmur from the girl on Aim's back.
"Sol...?"
"...Aim."
"Still not awake..? Even with your eyes open.."
"..."
He clenched his fist. He ground his teeth.
He reached up and tucked the two flowers into her hair.
"We'll go and eat at the Rusty Gear," She said, low. "Then the beach at Thalassia."
"Then we'll find work in general affairs somewhere overseas.."
"Together. Rent a place side by side..."
"Best friends till we're old and grey..."
She went quiet, and let her eyes fall shut against his back.
"...Hurry up and wake then, Sol."
Tsk.
"That one of yours," came the sweet voice ahead, "really isn't doing well at all."
"Her perception—"
A pause. "Ahem.."
"Her whole body was running ten of thousands times faster than it ought to, when I found you two.. while you are at few thousands.."
"Just time. A few minutes becomes a week for the workings of a body. What's strange is that there was no abnormal loss of energy at all. None."
"While your is around three thousands.. it's almost miracle how you two still alive.."
Aim's face went numb. The world narrowed to a point.
"...Then how do I help her, Miss Moriarty?"
The young woman's smile pulled at the corner of her mouth — uncomfortable to look at — and from that one expression came a pressure, vast and crushing, that did not belong to a smile at all.
"Chance are almost zero, but— "
"But..?"
"Let's make a promise," she said. "If you and this girl each grant me a single request, I'll cure her. I'll make it whole again. In the name of Veranthos."
"Fair?"
Beneath Aim's lens, the light-thread shaped itself into a hand — and the hand reached, for his chest, for Isolde's, for the woman's own.
The young man answered without a moment's pause and a second thought despite those undercurrent. "Yes—!"
Her grin spread wider from the corner of her lips.
The thread passed clean through the chests of all three, and dissolved into the air.
"...But we never asked her consent, Miss Moriarty," he said.
"When the bond is close enough, a Veranthos contract may declare two people to belong to one another — to decide on each other's behalf." Sweetly. "So this time—"
"—hand her to me."
"Eh? But—"
A roar of wind. A shockwave. Brick and stone blew apart together and the corridor came down in a single crash. Dust bloomed thick and blind.
The only thing Aim saw, after, was a barrier of light standing before Miss Moriarty — a crack running through it — and the thread under his lens that seemed to strain, frantic, to stitch the damage closed.
"Hand her to me. Now." The voice cooled — not gone stiff, only colder.
"But—" Something closed around his heart. A soft hand, squeezing — gently, almost tenderly — and it hurt past all bearing. His face twisted. He could not breathe through it.
Miss Moriarty pulled Isolde out of the arms of a man who could barely rise from the floor.
The dust drifted clear, revealing a tall figure on the far side, and—
"Mivelle...!"
"Oh, my. Vine~" said the woman standing before Aim.