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On clear nights, Lemrina misses Slaine the most. She sits on the deck of her lonely cottage on Earth and watches the stars pass by for hours on end. Dreaming of the life she had up there. Dreaming of the life she would never see again.
Sometimes, a streak of light will cross the sky, and she’ll think of the Tharsis painting azure lines across the planes of space. Sometimes, she’ll see Mars among the constellations and reminisce of the homeland she never knew. But sometimes, she stares up at the sky and finds the stars no longer aligned as they used to. Slaine would have attributed it to Earth’s tilting, but to her, it’s just another sign that things are no longer as they were. Time has passed before their eyes, and they have changed with it.
She is no longer the renowned Princess Asseylum of Vers. Slaine is no longer the admired Count Troyard. They are just wistful memories that can never be recreated, no matter how much she wishes otherwise.
With a sigh, she leans back in her rocking chair to get a better look at the sky. The stars are still bright. Still beautiful. Once, she had lived among them. Now, she has no choice but to live below them, always reaching out for their light but never able to grasp it.
If only her dear sister, now reigning from high as Empress, were here now. Lemrina would ask her, her every word laced with deep-rooted bitterness and regret, “Was your peace worth this?”
Then again, if her sister were here, she’d just tilt her head, doe eyes sparkling with earnest confusion, and answer with another question. “What do you mean, Lemrina?”
Maybe Lemrina would respond with a simple “everything.” Or maybe, she’d elaborate with a more invective comment- “tearing apart your people’s dreams to achieve your own desires.” Asseylum really wouldn’t like the latter, though. How dare Lemrina accuse the all-loving empress of harming others in her selfishness?
Perhaps she’s being a little harsh about her sister. Asseylum has done a commendable job since her rise in power, taking time to understand the problems plaguing lower class Versians and Terrans alike to shape her political agenda.
Of course, things are still far from perfect for her. Slaine and especially Harklight had been popular among third-class Versians for their rise through the ranks in such a rigid system, and many despise her for toppling them from power. Others from both sides scorn her past naivety and desperation for peace. It’s a tough job, ascending to the throne in such tumultuous times. But Asseylum ended a war, and that ought to earn her some commendation, if nothing else.
It’s hard to admit that Asseylum might not be horrible. When she does, it forces her to doubt her hatred towards her older sister. Lemrina hates her sister. She ought to, considering how her sister had been handed the world on a silver spoon while she never existed. But sometimes, anymore, it seems so pointless to hate Asseylum.
Lemrina’s 18 now. She’s seen a war and lost a war- lost everything she had, really. All she has left to lose is her relationship, strained as it is, with her sister. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing she can’t lose. Asseylum tries too hard to make amends, to make her feel as if she is wanted in this world. That won’t change no matter how horribly Lemrina treats her.
After all, she is the reason Lemrina was not tried and convicted in her darkest days. Instead, Asseylum introduced her to Dr. Yagarai so she could learn to walk on her own two feet and gave her the most peaceful life she could have imagined. But all the same, Asseylum’s gifts could not end all of Lemrina’s wanting.
Nothing can.
In her heart, she wants nothing more than to return to the past and change her fate, but even she knows that’s just a pipe dream. There’s no going back anymore. Those days have long gone and left behind a different woman.
Lemrina’s grown up. She can’t keep hating Asseylum. She can’t keep hating Count Saazbaum and Slaine and Harklight for leaving her behind, no matter how hard she tries otherwise. In two years, her whole world has changed, and with it, she has learned to understand what made them do what they did.
Asseylum had never known brutality and hatred until her visit to Earth. And though her ignorant views were shattered, they could not destroy the kind-hearted girl beneath. She still dreams of peace- the same peace Slaine envisioned as a child. But now that that their world changes for the better, she focuses that pacifist view on smaller things, like her relationship with Lemrina.
Count Saazbaum, on the other hand, turned his sympathetic soul on a path of destruction because he lost his love. To lose your love… Lemrina knows that first hand now. It changed her whole perspective on the world, and it surely did the same for Count Saazbaum. But unlike her, Count Saazbaum let out his regrets and pain in the form of calculating warfare. She just ponders what-could-have-beens and strives to make it through another day.
Every day she lives is another day to see Slaine’s impact on the world. Even in “death,” he makes his mark on the very systems that cast him out.
Slaine’s story of struggles has brought a lot of attention to problems in Vers that Asseylum now actively works to fix. Once, Lemrina would have sided with the masses and empathized with that story too. But now, she realizes that she never understood him. The brave, strong Slaine she thought she knew was a façade for the broken boy underneath, whose twisted worldview manifested in desperation to achieve the other princess’s dream no matter the means it took.
Look where that got him. Locked up in a cell for life (although she’s heard the accommodations have been significantly upgraded since his suicidal tendencies faded away) and completely disgraced.
Lemrina ought to go visit him. She knows she should, but she can never bring herself to do it. What could she say to him? They have both changed in the two years since their parting, she’s sure. Slaine lost even more than her; how could he not have changed?
Maybe that’s why Lemrina is so reluctant to see him; she doesn’t want to see him changed.
She’s already seen Harklight’s transformation from a hopeful servant to a defeated man. That shadow of the Harklight she used to know is her last image of him, tormenting her the nights her thoughts race too fast for sleep to come. She doesn’t want her last image of Slaine to be the same.
Her arguments ring hollow at the thought that Slaine, unlike Harklight, has all the time in the world now. Nothing will take him away from her for a long time.
She should go. She really ought to.
Her gaze turns to the stars above, shining down without a care for the worldly troubles below. Bright, beautiful, unreachable. Slaine was the same for her once, but he fell to Earth and fell from power. They stand at the same level now. Finally, she will be able to look him in the eye as Slaine Troyard instead of always gazing up at Count Troyard.
Lemrina sighs. She has no valid reason not to go and visit Slaine, no matter how hard she wracks her brain for excuses.
She gets up from her chair and returns inside for the night. Tomorrow, she will have to arrange a ride to visit Slaine. But for now, she settles in her bed, imagining the number of ways her visit could go until she finally falls asleep.
Her ride arrives just as she requests, and before she knows it, she’s stepping out in front of Slaine’s prison. Her hands tug at her white, pleated skirt. She doesn’t care that it may change the way her outfit hangs, even though she spent hours before trying on and taking off outfits in growing frustration until she finally settled on a black shirt and white skirt combination.
Slaine wouldn’t care how she looked; he never did. But for their first meeting in two years, she had wanted to look her best to show off how much she had grown. She showed off her leg braces too, even though it will only be a few weeks longer until she gets rid of them for good.
And now, she’s going and ruining all that hard work without a care.
Lemrina’s heart beats relentlessly fast as the guard leads her inside. Every step takes her closer to Slaine, closer to those conversations she’s envisioned but will never be reality, closer to the truth she didn’t want to face. The guard distracts her for brief moments with idle conversation, but it does little to soothe her.
Another step. Even less time until the fated moment.
She can do this. She chose to do this.
The guard leads her around one last corner, and she finds herself facing a huge glass cell. In the center of it sits a table and chairs and with that, a young man in blue garments resting his chained hands on the table. She takes a little gasp at the sight, unable to draw her gaze away from the familiar ashen hair and eyes like the ocean (both in depth and color).
Even after all this time, Slaine still looks the same as she remembered. His body language, though, tells of a different man. Slaine doesn’t even look up at the sound of footsteps. He stares aimlessly at his hands, fiddling with the chain as if bored.
She makes it all the way to the door before hesitating. She can’t do this. She can’t go ruin her idealized Slaine too.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” The guard rests his hand on the handle, watching her with unbridled concern. “No one would fault you if you left, princess.”
As Lemrina takes a second glance at the guard, she has the strangest feeling she’s met him before. But for now, she can’t focus on that. Slaine is what’s important. “I have to.”
“You’re a very kind soul to do this.” Then, as an afterthought, he adds, “I think Sir Escalus would be proud of you too.”
Lemrina’s heart almost stops at his words. She does know this guard. Although he’s aged since the last time they met, he has to be the same guard who helped her when she visited Harklight. He must have been transferred to Slaine’s prison after Harklight was executed.
Harklight.
It’s hard to breathe when she thinks of him. A year has passed already since they last met, and now she’s back at a prison, making the same mistake again. A good mistake and a very bad one in one.
“You think too highly of me, sir, but you have my thanks.” She then places her hand over his and opens the door. The guard shuts it behind her with a soft click.
Slaine still doesn’t look up. If anything, he looks further down at the table in a blatant show of disinterest. “It’s unlike you to be led down by guards, Kaizuka Inaho. Is your memory failing you?”
Kaizuka Inaho? Did they not tell Slaine who was coming to visit him?
“I ought to be asking you if your eyesight’s failing, Slaine,” she sighs, a slight smile coming to her lips. It’s a relief to know that even now, Slaine’s tongue is still sharp. “I thought you would at least be observant.”
Slaine’s head snaps up. “Lemrina?” It’s not so much an exclamation of her name as an exhale, soft and disbelieving. “Or…is that you, Asseylum?”
Somehow, the hopeful doubt hurts far more than she imagined this conversation would. She finally gathered the courage to come, yet Slaine still questions if she is a mirage to guise her sister. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not the empress.”
Slaine stares wide-eyed for a long moment before he composes himself enough to respond. “No… No, I’m not disappointed.”
“You are, though.” Already, she can feel that bitter, jealous girl from two years ago resurface inside her. She hates it. That part of her should have been left behind for good, but she had just suppressed it instead. “You wish it was Asseylum standing here in my image and not me. You have always wished that.”
He flinches, her words as incisive as she hoped. But when he speaks, his voice remains steady. “You’re not wrong.”
This hasn’t gone anywhere close to how Lemrina imagined it. She still stands by the door, and Slaine still hasn’t shown much enthusiasm to see her. In some ways, she almost wishes she was back visiting Harklight instead of visiting Slaine. At least Harklight genuinely cared for her company.
She misses Harklight. She misses him more than she ever thought she would.
“If you don’t want me here, Slaine, I can go.” And she wants to go. She wants to leave so badly and pretend like this never happened. She wants to go back to missing Slaine, missing Slaine and wondering what he would be like after all this time instead of knowing he is so different and still so similar to how he used to be. “I have things I can do instead.”
Like visit the grave she insisted Asseylum construct for Harklight by the sea. She’ll stop and pick up some dyed blue roses and lay them there and ask why he had to leave her to face Slaine on her own. And he won’t respond to her, she knows, but it will be better than this, better than dealing with the shambled relationship left between her and Slaine.
She’s about to call for the guard -Harklight’s guard- to open the door when Slaine whispers, “Don’t go, Lemrina.” Then, louder, “Please, sit down. Your legs are shaking.”
She glances down, finding Slaine’s words to be the truth.
Lemrina takes his offer after only a moment’s more hesitation. When she sits down, she’s forced to face Slaine’s unwavering stare. It’s not cold, but it’s not particularly warm either. If anything, it’s uncertain, as if he’s not sure what to think of her.
She feels the same way about him.
They sit a long time in silence, neither daring to speak and ruin the fragile calm between them. Neither knows what to say either. Lemrina won’t speak for fear of what horrible words she will say, and Slaine surely doesn’t know what to say to her after all this time.
In the end, all she says is, “Did you know there’s no such thing as a true blue rose, Slaine?”
And he gives a little frown, an expression she’s seen too many times on his delicate features, as he replies, “There isn’t?”
The unspoken question does not go unnoticed. But what of the blue roses I gave Asseylum?
“They’re dyed. Fake. Like you. Like me.”
“I’m sorry, Lemrina.” Slaine can’t meet her eyes anymore. He’s gone back to staring at his hands, twirling the chain back and forth in them. “I’m sorry for treating you as a replacement to your sister.”
The silence returns once more. What can Lemrina say? I forgive you? To speak those three words would be a lie and they both know it.
Then, with a sigh, she finds the strength within herself to smile. “Well, at least you now know who people are talking about when they say princess.”
Slaine almost smiles back.
“You look good in blue. Not as good as you did in crimson, though.”
This time, the corners of his lips turn up in one of the most genuine smiles she’s ever seen him wear. He’s not quite laughing, but it’s a start. Maybe they will be able to hold a conversation without self-destructing to apologies and blaming.
“You look as lovely as ever, Lemrina.”
Lemrina giggles for a short moment before reality drags her back down to solemnity. “You don’t need to flatter me anymore. There’s nothing to gain from it.”
“No, I mean it.” Slaine doesn’t hesitate a second before speaking, focused intently on her with an earnestness that could rival Asseylum. “If anything, you’ve gotten lovelier since I last saw you.”
“And why’s that?” Lemrina turns her head aside. She can’t bear to look at Slaine, not when he’s speaking so honestly to her. She’d rather return to the thinly veiled lies. At least then, it would mean Slaine hadn’t changed too much from how she remembered him.
But when he speaks, his words are as meticulously chosen as ever. “Your posture is different now. When I first saw you standing in the doorway, I thought you might be Asseylum because you stood tall in pride instead of slouching in shame. You appeared like a true princess.”
“A true princess and a disgraced count,” Lemrina muses, her voice so soft Slaine surely strains his ears to hear. “Isn’t it funny? After all this time, we still can’t stand on the same level.”
Slaine does not respond to that. She can hardly blame him; the accusation of unequal dynamics is nothing if not true. From the beginning, they’ve never seen eye-to-eye. She pretended, for a while, that they were on the same level, but she could never completely forget her subordinate status. Now, they’ve switched places, Slaine caught up in shame for who he is and Lemrina hiding her shame in guises of magnanimity and grace.
When it’s clear Slaine has nothing to say, Lemrina turns her head to look straight at him and continues on, all her thoughts and feelings pouring out in a mess of words even she can’t stop. “Sometimes, I wish you hadn’t given up on our dreams. I wish you would have fought on, even if meant I had to don a false identity for the rest of my life. But when I think about it, I realize that the world I have now is better than that. I’d rather spend my life musing about what-could-have-beens than finding out the unhappy reality that would have awaited me.”
She takes a deep breath, struggling to control herself. Already, her voice rises with emotion as she speaks each word bottled up within her. “I loved you. I loved you more than you’ll ever know. Even when I first stepped in here today, my heart raced at the sight of you. You were my world, Slaine, my everything. But I know now that to you, I was only ever going to be a replacement. You never would have looked at me as I wanted you to.”
“Lemrina,” Slaine starts, but Lemrina won’t let him speak. Not yet.
“And I know, Slaine, that you never meant to hurt me, but you did, and I can’t forgive that. Did you know, Slaine, that they told me you were dead for a year? I used to cry at night thinking you had left me alone. I thought I had no one left for me in this world. Everyone I held dear slipped away from me. Harklight was locked away awaiting trial, and you were dead. All I had left to look forward to was seeing Harklight one last time before he would be gone too.”
Slaine’s stricken look softens at the mention of Harklight. He stares back down at the table again, but it’s more to compose himself than to avoid her gaze. She understands. Already, tears well up in her eyes at the thought of who they’ve both lost.
“I kissed him, you know, the last time I ever saw him. It felt more right than it ever felt kissing you.”
Harklight didn’t love her romantically, and she didn’t love him that way either. But in that moment of Aldnoah activation, she almost felt at ease. He may have only been a friend, and she may have only been his night duties, but nothing ever clouded between them. She always knew how things stood between them, and it never changed, not much.
Not like her and Slaine’s relationship did.
“I miss him, more than I ever thought I would. Sometimes, I miss him more than I missed you.” Tears trickle down her face now, but she doesn’t bother to wipe them away. They won’t stop now, not now that she’s finally started spilling out her heart to Slaine. “Things just aren’t the same anymore. You’ve changed and I’ve grown up, and look! We still can’t even talk properly.”
She forces herself to take deep breaths before continuing. It doesn’t help calm her. It’s not as if Slaine cares if she’s calm; he watches her in genuine distraught, beautiful eyes glassy with tears too. “I wish it wasn’t like this. I wish we could still be together, you and me and Harklight, fighting for our dreams. I wish we never worried about comatose princesses or wearing masks. I wish you could love me back as I loved you, and I wish for so much more, but there’s no point in wishing for what will never come true. What’s happened has happened, and we can’t change that.”
Lemrina hesitates before her last words, torn between the desperate girl who still clings to the past and the world-weary princess who’s grown up to meet the future. If she speaks, there will be no going back. They cannot pretend to hold the same comradery they once held, playing roles they’ve long since left behind.
It tears a hole in her heart to speak, but she does without regrets. “So this is goodbye, Slaine. It would be best if we go our separate ways.”
Slaine doesn’t even show surprise at her words. His only reaction is to brush away some of the tears spilling down his cheeks, and even that’s half-hearted. “I figured.”
To her surprise, he gets out of his chair to stand by her side. When he reaches it, he kneels in the traditional Versian bow.
She cries harder at the sight.
When she last spoke with Harklight, he had done the same. She does not deserve the show of respect again, especially not after what she just said to Slaine.
“Princess Lemrina, I wish you the best of luck in the future.” Slaine lifts his head, watching her with more respect than she deserves.
She slides off her chair to his level, and he barely has a chance to give a confused “Lemrina?” before she’s hugging him, tighter than she ever thought she would hold him. After a brief moment, he leans into the touch.
“I won’t forget you, Slaine.”
He almost smiles at that. “I won’t forget you either.”
They stay like that for a long time, kneeling together in as close to a warm embrace as they can get. It’s only the guard’s gentle five-minute reminder that brings them back up to their feet, hands interlocked the whole while. They face each other one last time, both smiling amidst the tears drying on their cheeks, and Lemrina knows this is the end, that the 16-year-old girl in her has cut her final ties to the present to remain firmly rooted in the past while the 18-year-old woman lives on.
“I hope we can meet again in better times, Slaine.”
“In a better life,” Slaine agrees. “You and me and Harklight.”
Lemrina smiles a little brighter, her gaze turning upwards. “Do you think Harklight’s watching us right now?”
“I know he is. He promised he would.” Slaine mirrors her, perhaps with a bit more wistfulness in his tone. She does not fault his certainty in Harklight. After all, Harklight wrote Slaine letters during the months before his execution, or so Asseylum had told Lemrina. They were one of the few personal possessions Slaine kept with him in prison.
Harklight would be the type to make such promises in letters. She knows he would.
“Do you remember his last words?” Slaine asks, voice barely a whisper. She nods. How could she forget them when the memory of Harklight’s last moments remains etched her the forefront of her mind?
Without further prompting, they say them together. “Fly free.”
“We’re trying, Harklight,” Slaine mutters.
And Lemrina adds, “So wait for us, okay?”
Their gazes lower until they’re level, eyes like the sea meeting those of the sky. Two parallel planes, they were, so similar and yet never able to intersect completely. They only met at the horizon, and that horizon died with Harklight.
“I love you,” Lemrina whispers, and she means it as truth because even through the agony of being ignored and left behind, she never could stop loving Slaine.
Slaine, after a moment’s hesitation, says the same in turn. “I love you too, Lemrina, more than you’ll ever know.”
Their last goodbye is in the form of a kiss, a gentle touch of Slaine’s lips to Lemrina’s forehead. She longs to raise her head to make it a proper kiss, but she keeps her head level. There is no point pretending they can be anything more than this. That chance has long since passed them by, back when they were young and foolish and caught up in dreams that never could have been.
Slaine pulls away, smiling softly. “Take care, Lemrina.”
“You too.” She squeezes his hands one late time, and then she breaks away from him without a second look back.
There’s no point in dwelling on what never will be.
The guard leads her back up without a single word, as if to respect the magnitude of what surpassed between her and Slaine. The only time he speaks to her is right at the exit, and it’s only to ask, “Should I expect to see you again?”
She says “no” without hesitation.
Times have changed, and stars no longer align as they used to. Some days, she’ll still sit out on the deck, dreaming of pasts she never lived, and watch the unreachable stars pass by, but that will be all. She is no longer a 16-year-old girl and Slaine is no longer a prestigious count. There is no going back anymore.
And maybe she’ll miss Slaine too, watching the meteors draw paths across the sky. Maybe she’ll miss him when the birds soar over the ocean and the sky shines blue and the roses dye sapphire, but that will be okay.
She will never forget him. She knows she won’t.
But for now, Lemrina’s made her choice. This is goodbye so she can finally move forward.
Someday, maybe in this lifetime, maybe not, they will meet again. They will have changed into new people once more. She can see it now, shaking his hand and reintroducing herself and knowing in her heart that from then on, everything would be okay.
She smiles at the thought. Someday, maybe, they can finally be at peace.
But until that day comes, she will just have to live her life as best she can.