2019-07-06: Bear Witness

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  • Log: Bear Witness
  • Cast: Avril Vent Fleur, K.K.
  • Where: Luca - Residential District
  • Date: July 6, 2019
  • Summary: In the aftermath of The Dreadful Fight, Avril, wounded, seeks shelter in order to take a moment to rest and heal. She is, however, not alone.

<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    Power drained out from her as if from an open wound. But she keeps moving, even in spite of the toll it takes on her -- the alternative is too awful to even consider overlong. If she were to vanish here, fallen into the hands of the Guard without a trace... anyone who would do this to a city is not one she would rather remain in custody thereof.

    But no matter what the necessity may be, there are limits to what the body can perform. Her power is sinking from her and she can call upon it no more.

    Not without doing what the inner voice cajoles her to do, and she finds that even now, she hesitates.

    But it brings this all back that most pressing issue, once again. When her body gives out, where will they find her?

    In duress, she ducks into an alleyway between two still-intact houses, hoping against hope that she was not seen, that the Guard haven't given pursuit. Stumbling, she slips into the further dark.

    In the distance she can still hear the flames. The roar of artillery. Screams.

    She approaches that thing at the far end of the alley before she fully parses what it is. A rainbarrel, still topped off with water. She sinks one gloved hand into the water within, spashes herself with a measure of the contents. Then finally, Avril sinks down to the ground alongside it and continues to breathe hard.

    Just a little bit, and then...
    It's risky but she really can't...

    "I will not break my promise," she murmurs, her eyes nearly closed. "I... I will not."

    She's a fight. Her clothing scorched at the edges. A bloodied slash across her chest. Slowly, with shaking hands, she pulls out an octahedral disc. Her left hand rests atop it.

    "...Lucadia..."

    The disc glows.

    The change in the air is subtle, comes tinged with just a hint of the sea breeze. But it surrounds her, this power that is not fully her own, does not tap into her already nearly-drained reserves. It buoys her up.

    "Please... don't let them find me here," she asks of the Guardian, a further request that leaves behind the healing of her body.
    Can such a prayer be answered here, of all places?

    "I need only a little time..."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

A prayer is murmured into the wartorn skies.

It is not the first to be uttered today, nor is it the last. There are many things to pray for today, whether it be to Yevon, Althena, or some other more distant god. Perhaps not even to anything divine at all.

But the fires continue to rage. Soldiers continue to fight. And prayers continue to go unanswered. The sacking continues.

Against a might overwhelming in numbers and technological advantage, what left is there to do? If ever there was a time to point towards the dread potential of forbidden machina, now would be it, as those amongst the Guard's numbers help to bring low what was once a vibrant center of life and trade in Spira. Against such a force, what could possibly answer such prayers?

For many, the answer is simple if not grim. For Avril Vent Fleur...

I need only a little time...

"Time is a luxury ill-afforded to any of us."

... the answer she receives is considerably more oblique, as is its source.

What answers prayers in a place throttled by conflict and exhaustion and strife?

A ghost, dressed in white.

The crunch of metal heels against loosened stoneworked and debris fills the air on the heels of that singular proclamation. The voice is indistinct, warped -- tinny. But it cuts through clearly like a clarion call, as if it could brook no denial. Light streaming in from between clouds of belching smoke reflect off polished white armor as they advance through the haze of war, growing more and more clear the more they carve their path through the wreckage.

It is no Guardian that answers Avril today.

It is a knight, who once tried to cut down their heart.

By all accounts, the last seen of this creature was their fall into the very core of Filgaia. By many's reckoning, they were dead, or at the very least lost. But there is not so much as a dent to scar that white armor as they step forward. As that unseen gaze behind a faceless helm falls on Avril, and Avril alone. She has her prayer answered. The Guard does not find her.

"And one you cannot rely upon, lest it turn into your enemy."

It is the Trial Knight who does.

"You are lost."

<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    "Ah--"

    It could be said that Avril was not expecting a response.
    Drained from her earlier exertions, she would scarce be able to sense a Fiend creeping up on her now, let alone someone like K.K.
    She starts, jostling the rain barrel; a spray of water sloshes over the edge. In spite of herself -- in spite of the fact that she needs to rest at least for a few moments yet before making a run for the gates and flee for safer ground -- she pushes against the ground as if she were about to rise. Then, she slumps back, again leaning against the barrel.

    "The Trial Knight... I had heard that you had been lost," she says, her voice quiet and low. Were it not for K.K.'s presence close enough to her, even that sound might be swallowed up against the din from the city being claimed by right of conquest.

    In the back of her mind she can feel it. Like a knife wound, a rent in something more profound, that she can feel the outer edges of alone. The thing that separates herself from something other. It would be easy to take the cloth of that barrier in both hands and tear it in two, to fully sup of what lies beyond.
    But she doesn't dare. Maybe it's the warning that echoes in a few of her dreams. Maybe it's some base-level instinct. Maybe it's simply the worry of tampering with something that -- even now -- she feels like she is merely the rider for and not the steed.
    She thought she had learned control. Had she?

    But of the Knight before her -- the more pressing matter at hand, the thing that might yet force her, depending on their will, towards one end or another:
    She had not been present when it had happened. When the Knight and the Traitor Seraph had sought the world's heart, and only barely -- barely -- been thwarted. But the story had reached her ears in Spira. She is no shaman, merely a girl with a complicated past and a complicated connection to the world and the Guardians. But she has at the very least an instinctual understanding of what this would have meant for Filgaia. If Love had become so tainted...

    Her smile is a wan if polite one.

    "It seems that I, or others, perhaps, have been mistaken."

    Avril takes a breath, her hands shifting atop the metal disc, now glowing dimly, in her lap.

    "You are correct, Trial Knight. It seems there never is sufficient time."

    She pauses.

    "And I am lost, for now."

    It had been in Wehaca when she had last seen them, she thinks. As an enormous Hellion rose up -- as a Guardian statue lay threatened. At that time, they had been enemies. Her gaze lifts, as if to regard them properly, to seek after expression or hints thereof that the armor locks away.

    "What brings you here to this city, Trial Knight?" she asks, and were the circumstances different, it might almost be a pleasantry. "I afraid Luca has not much longer."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

I had heard that you had been lost.

Stone crunches beneath the advancing step of a heavy, metal boot.

"Gone, mayhap," hisses the warped voice behind that indistinct, horned helm.

"But there is naught in this world that could ever stray me from my path."

It might be a reinterpretation of the meaning behind Avril's words -- but K.K. proclaims it with nothing more than an absolute will behind their voice, stronger than steel -- stronger, apparently, than death. As if their purpose was so clear cut and pure in whatever amounts to their beating heart that not even dropping into the soul of the world could stop them.

And perhaps it is all too believable, given how they now stand before Avril.

It is a clarity of purpose that extends to their body language, making them as bald-faced as they are unreadable; it's easy to tell the determination in their step, the inflexible resolve in that stoic bearing. But nuances are hard to discern. It's not so dissimilar to a light shining too brightly; what once might have illuminated, now only serves to blind.

But at the very least, Avril can tell -- the Knight's stance is not inherently aggressive any more than their assertive nature gives way to. They have not come all the way to this battle-clogged city to fight, necessarily.

But the subtleties in the way they carry themself make it clear they are ready for it. At a moment's notice.

For now, though, K.K. simply makes their way forward with a calm and decisively methodical gait; for all their words on time, they move as if they have an abundance of it -- or perhaps, simply know how to wield it. Fingers twitch mildly at their side as they draw towards Avril and the disc she holds, a little spasm that could indicate everything or nothing. They are close enough they could strike at a moment's notice.

"You, however, have the bearing of one who knows not even the path upon which they tread."

And then they take another step past.

White skirts billowing behind in the war-heated winds of Luca, K.K. marches just past Avril as that unseen gaze turns towards the city surrounding them as if prompted. Why are they here? What purpose could it serve, in a place so close to the end?

"I have come here to see," they say, cryptically. "But it appears we do not share the same vision of what now lies before us."

A second passes. The Knight's hands clasp behind their back. Their own question comes, a sharper echo of Avril's own:

"Why are you here, girl, lingering in a city overrun?"

<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    "...I see. So you will attempt such again."

    A simple statement. She does not declare that she will stop them, or cry out defiance or anger at such a declaration of intent. She just acknowledges it for what it is.

    Her gaze dips, briefly, to the disc that pulses quietly with light still in her lap.

    "Is it animosity that drives you so? Or, perhaps, another urge?"

    If she had been present at that event, she would know what it was, without question.
    What drives one such as K.K. is something as raw as hate, something no less powerful than hate, but it is not hate.

    Her gaze returns to the Knight proper -- cannot remain anywhere but on them, now. Not this close to her. Not when their very being remains an enigma, veiling the possibility of animus.

    Nonaction, on her part, is no sign that she necessarily trusts the knight before her not to do harm.
    It is more a sign that she does not have the wherewithal to do much about it if they did. Her best option, if it came to it, would be to effectively ring a bell that could not be unrung, and after what has already transpired tonight...

    'What would remain', is the question she comes to again and again.

    If K.K. strikes at her. If. It is too, too difficult to read the intent of someone clad in armor.

    And yet, no blade or spear or bludgeon lie waiting in the Knight's hands. They are not at ease -- they are ready -- but she sees no overt signs of aggression.
    Which could yet remain hidden under the gleaming plate.

    Her fingers tighten around the edge of the Medium when K.K.'s hand does twitch that one time. Almost, perhaps, as if she were intending to shield it from them rather than put it to use.

    They speak, again.

    "That is correct," she answers, dipping her head in a very shallow nod. "I remember very little of my past, and I am afraid my future remains as shrouded with its absence," she says, as if it were a statement of a simple fact and not the thing that underlines her entire existence as it is now.

    She turns her head, craning back over her shoulder as they march on past her. Shouts, the song of metal on metal. A pitched battle is taking place blocks from here.

    They have come to see. To watch? To...

    "So you do not think it the end. Perhaps, if I were to take the side of Althena's Guard, this would mark a new beginning. Perhaps there are people who live here now who will come to see it so." She shifts, levering herself away from the barrel, towards the nearby wall, the better to keep K.K. in her relative line of sight. "But there are others who will not. There are those whose worlds have ended today."

    She is silent afterwards. "Accident, I am afraid, at first. Then, afterwards, the hope that perhaps I could save a few lives, to hold back the end for a few a little while longer." She glances down at herself. "I have paid the price."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Is it animosity that drives you so? Or, perhaps, another urge?

The Trial Knight pauses briefly in their advance past Avril. It is, indeed, a good question; to an outside observer, there could be no doubt that some form of unbridled hatred drove this thing's every waking step. What else could inspire so much pain? So much destruction? What else could put a whole world teetering upon a brink?

"..."

Clawed fingers spasm mildly with just the stray glinting of light to show for it.

"'Tis naught but my will."

What else, as powerful and raw as hatred, could cause all that?

"Beyond that is but a muddying of the waters."

For now, at least, the Knight's attention seems much more occupied with surveying the city beyond them than it is bringing violence to their temporary and impromptu companion. A noise, perhaps like something thoughtful or considerate, warps out from the tinny din of their helm as she speaks of her past and future. One of those impassive sounds that could mean so many different things. Thoughtful... or perhaps critical.

But their attention remains fixed ever-ahead, until Avril weighs in on the fate of the city and K.K.'s own interpretation of what is transpiring here, and what is to come. They look over their shoulder, horn reflecting stray shards of war-fueled light as they regard her from the corner of their unseen gaze. It lasts all of five, wordless seconds, before their attention drifts anew back to the city.

"Then you cannot see," they surmise, simply. "The past informs the present as well as it may shape the future if one allows it. Worlds end today. And so have they before." Their right hand sweeps out, as if to display everything in the city to Avril's consideration. "Theirs is a cycle of endings, engineered by a force far greater and loathsome than a handful of zealot's crude automatons. And they do little but to reset the cycle and await it anew. How many times have they witnessed such an event? How many worlds have ended before today?" They look back once more.

"And what, then, still stands?"

The weight of their attention falls from Avril herself, to the thing she holds with a tight grip. Their head cocks towards their right, almost curious.

"The Guardians' power?" they wonder, almost to themself. "Yet the vessel is not of the Baskar's work, is it? ... Hm."

They turn towards her anew. The motion is slow, deliberate, and it would be easy to assume in those moments that the very thing Avril has attempted to shield from them is the very thing that now draws them to her. They take a single step forward.

"I know you," they intone, voice that implacably neutral hiss of muffled metal. "From Wehaca. And the advance upon the Photosphere. With that boy at your side." Another step. "I have seen the power in you. But it is fractious. Schismatic. You war with yourself, girl. And you make yourself the lesser for it." They remember. They can see it. After all --

"'Tis the very roots of mankind's Malevolence."

Another step. Stone crunches beneath boots. There are no weapons still. Still. Not yet.

"And now you are here, alone, pushed to a precipice for the sake of strangers who will not know nor remember the fact that you but briefly extended their fall. Were you discovered now, 'twould be the end of you. Your blue-haired companion would be left with little but the memory of you. For what end?" Another step. Their hands remain empty.

"'Tis a fool's road you walk."

And in one movement, one brilliant flare of light, a spear finds itself in their grip, its beautifully gilded tip pointed towards Avril's throat. Motionless, but there, as a much more real threat.

"And so you are discovered. So I ask you again."

And they repeat that question.

"Why are you here?"

In a way that seems much broader than it did before.

<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    It is nothing but their will, the Knight states. "I see," murmurs the young woman, again clutching the Medium as if to draw further power from within it. None yet, it seems, is forthcoming, but...

    She can hear it now. The cruel necessity of a total war. Even without experiencing it much beyond what she has read and what little she has seen, she understands the concept. The goal is to finish a war as quickly as possible. No grappling with loose ends. No need to worry about supply chains, what must happen in the fifth or seventh year of fighting. It's over, it's done with, it's brutal in order to vanquish all thought of further fighting.

    And she hears another scream rising seemingly with the hot wind, and is forced again to tear her attention away from the abstract goal and into the reality.
    The scream dies.

    "No. I suppose I do not," she says, staring down at her lap as silence -- the silence of war, which means the roar of flame and falling buildings, of shouts and feet on paving stones -- overtakes where that one lingering scream had rest.

    What remains?

    "One might ask the same of all civilization," she comments quietly, hunched over the Medium. "Everything, in time, ends. One day, perhaps even Filgaia and Lunar will end. Ruin and creation, until one overtakes the other at long last..."

    The Medium she bears has drawn K.K.'s attention. "Yes," she answers simply. "...You do see it rightly. It is as if a cousin: similar but different." Bound with drawbacks and boons unique to it, it and the other artificial Mediums.

    The Knight turns towards her again, and she draws up, her attention leaving the thing in her lap. "You saw me, then, both times. And..." She trails out into silence at the declaration the Knight has to make next. Her lips part. "This division in myself... is the same as Malevolence?" the young woman asks, one hand loosening its grip on the Medium to lift to chest height. "It is true, I am afraid of what rests within me, and of what it may mean for who I may become." But, if it's the same root that bears the fruit of Malevolence, what ill could come from within her own heart?
    But, to accept what's within freely... what would remain if she did so?

    Your blue-haired companion would be left with little but the memory of you, speaks the Trial Knight, and unwillingly, a tear slips free, gliding down across her cheek to fall and vanish.

    It had just come out, she had said of another tear, once.
    He had said that tears don't just come out for no reason.

    Her body, she has often felt, knows and remembers more than her mind. Was this tear--

    This is a fool's road.

    The spear is at her throat in a flash. Not so close to scratch her flesh, no, but close enough that evading it is impossible. Close enough that it would be but one thrust to end it, for her. Even if she were to rend the barrier now, it might not be fast enough before she was run through. Her gaze lifts to regard the knight, her pulse a drumbeat, the rush of blood a roar in her ears.

    "I do not wish to die," she tells the Knight, the look in her eyes showing the lie that is her placid words. "But I could not stop you were that your wish." She is silent a moment, her chest rising and falling with each breath she takes.

    Why is she here?

    "...I could not turn my back and walk away," she answers. "It is neither wise nor prudent to behave as I did, but I do not think that what I did was wrong."

    It was foolish, the old thing in the dark murmurs. These are not your people. Spira is not your concern. The city is lost, as so many cities have been through the ages. The knight is correct, this only prolonges an end. What worth is such an action when it costs your life?

    Dean would have rushed in without thinking twice about it. Rebecca would have fretted but gone all the same, herself.

    "Is it enough to stand and bear witness to the end, Trial Knight? Must we hold back from even the smallest action if the whole will not be saved? Or might it be enough to save just one life even if the rest comes crashing down?"
    It is, without question, a statement antithetical to her nature. She can feel now the way it rails against such a statement.

    Is this because of Dean? And Rebecca?
    And Gwen, and Talia, and Riesenlied...

    Slowly, she lifts her hand, raising it so that it just hovers next to the shaft of the spear at her throat.

    "...She misses you," she says, and perhaps there can be no mistaking who the 'she' is.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

A scream rings through the air and ends just as quickly as it cut the silence. It is not the first.

Nor will it be the last.

It is the harshness of war in a land that has known nothing but harshness of a different stripe. The monster that visits this city has no singular form with which to rail against; there is no ritual with which to calm it. Its will is legion, driven by the same fervor that so drives them.

Faith.

And now, that most bitter of wars rings loudly as Avril Vent Fleur contends with another, different monster. K.K. stands like an immovable object over her as she muses on the nature of civilization. Everything ends. Everything dies.

"Perhaps this city will end. Whether 'tis this day or not, it is a certainty it shall. But Yevon will continue on. And perhaps Yevon will end; 'tis a certainty it shall. But Spira will continue on. And perhaps Spira will end... but Lunar shall continue on."

The Trial Knight's head tilts, towards their left.

"What, then, is an end?"

It is a question with no easy answer -- and perhaps no easily discernible intent. And one that the Knight scarcely so much as lingers on before they instead move on to something Avril speaks of candidly: the fear within her. Of what she may be. What she may become. She could make it through this with that power -- but would that mark the end of Avril Vent Fleur?

And what, then, is an end?

A tear falls unbidden, gliding down Avril's cheek in the seconds before that spear makes itself known. It is through the tip of it that Avril finds her first and, for the moment, only response to her fears that she nurses. Callous in the face of that lone tear, the spear does not so much as budge an inch. It is a grim reminder -- by sheer chance or fate, this moment could be the end of her own world. One way, or another.

... But I could not stop you were that your wish.

Her expression is a glint off the polished surface of that helm as it tilts to look down upon her. Fingers curl more securely around that weapon.

"No," they refute simply, absolutely, immediately. As if they could not abide that reality persisting for anything more than a second longer. "I will say this again but once: I have seen you. Were it within your will, you could bring swift end to this moment and to me in turn ere this spear so much as kisses your throat. To proclaim otherwise is to do naught but prolong a sad mummer's farce. You need not a Guardian's bauble to bring it about."

But she does not. So why, then, is she here, in this very uncertain predicament? Because...

The answer comes. And for a moment, there is nothing but silence to answer it. The Trial Knight's stance is as uncompromising as ever; that spear does not waver even for a second, as if prepared to find its home buried in Avril at any second. The way they present themself is monolithic, in a certain sense. But just how they take her answer is something considerably more unclear. Was it foolish?

Was it wrong, to save even just one life--?

A hand rises, next to the gold-wrapped shaft of that deadly weapon that has doubtlessly visited ends on many things before now.

... She misses you.

"..."

In the heat of that tense alleyway, the Trial Knight's fingers tremor around their weapon.

"... She need not."

A vague answer. One easily interpreted as uncaring. But the tip of that spear lowers, just a fraction of an inch, nonetheless.

"She has come into her own path. One I would not compromise for anything. But when next we meet in this way... it will be at cross purposes. It must be."

And with the crack of light, that spear slowly begins to dissolve the very moment the Trial Knight turns upon their heel.

"You fear an end," they utter, simply, their voice carrying with unerring clarity through the rancor of conflict beyond them. "'Tis not this one, but it will cost you everything nonetheless. The boy, and every companion you have made. All that is dear to you. Lack of understanding will not save you, nor shall the ignorance of your nature. They will but abet your end."

But what is an end--?

The knight begins to move, again. Unerring. Undeterred.

"I will see a decisive conclusion to the spiral of this land, girl. But if you cannot find your own in time, I shall deliver it to you as well. One way or another."

The motes of light that were once the possible herald of her last breath drift like a beautiful contrast to the violence they once promised -- and the violence that yet waits Avril beyond.

"Is it enough, to stand and bear witness to the end?"

<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.

    Avril contends with a different monster, indeed. No, there is a monster greater perhaps than even the Trial Knight that demands an answer, and unfortunately for Avril, there is no escaping such a beast.
    It has been said that the greatest monster lies within oneself. She has only begun to become aware of what past sins weight heavy on her shoulders, and there is so much yet unknown in her past waiting to be unveiled to the merciless light of day.

    She speaks of endings perhaps because they do concern her. Where does her past self end? Their voice rings out -- detached from all context -- even now. Where does 'she' begin?

    What is the difference between the woman she is now and the woman she was? What marks the point of destruction, and which the beginning?

    "That is, I suppose, the quandary, is it not. There is no firm and fast line, no point where we can say when something has ended. Does a kingdom end when the ruler dies? Or when all memory of it fades? All things do end, but that transition point from one thing to the next is difficult to discern."

    The history books mark out a cataclysm. What happens after that? People don't rise again from nothing.

    What does that mean for her? If she awakens in full that which sleeps in her, will she be consumed? Will she be able to control it? Or will something else arise, something that carries the memories of what was in a changed form?

    Because she, thinking now on the matter, considers that if what is required for death is the absence of all memory, then nothing ever dies. The way one thing affects another, and another, rippling off through time itself -- a memory may fade, but what of the memory of that memory? Someone will remember.

    If K.K. impales her now, what will happen to her own memory? How long will that last?
    What of its own echoes, rippling out into the universe?
    What is an end?

    "Perhaps," she considers, "I am partially incorrect." She gazes up at the knight. "All things end, and all things are eternal. One state of existence ceases, but others remain."

    This could be the end of her world, but perhaps something will continue on.

    Were it not for the fact that her very statement that she could do aught should K.K. desire her death be, in fact, a lie.
    If a lie that she does not -- in part -- recognize as one. She thinks she could not defend herself fast enough even if she were to let the proverbial genie out of the bottle.

    K.K. senses otherwise. Her hands tighten across the Medium as if it were ward, and for a moment, Avril's gaze is one of a woman staring at a point a thousand miles away.

    She realizes it, too. When she forces herself to fixate on that point she can feel it for what it is, that low pulse that throbs under the ice.
    Open me and you will have the power to make all you desire reality. And her grasp still hesitates.

    She holds back because it is fear that stays her. What lies within will change her irrevocably.

    Is it more foolish to try to save a bare handful of people, or is it the foolish course to uncork what she does not understand?

    She has already seen transformations wrought upon those she cares about. Once done, a thing cannot be undone.

    Riesenlied would know it best of all. Of change, of loss.
    Of conviction.

    And so, even in spite of her own circumstances, it is Riesenlied who her thoughts turn upon, and Riesenlied of whom she speaks.
    She has heard -- overheard -- the Hyadean's lament.

    It's but a fraction, but Avril's hand lowers. So too does her gaze. "So you will fight even her. I see. You have a conviction like iron, Trial Knight. And she does as well. ...I hope to not witness another tragedy."

    She is a blade. She will do what is necessary.
    She has a heart. It grows weary.

    "An end..." Something changes about her gaze. She does not flee the knight's prognosis but neither does she embrace it. "No one wants to lose what they already possess," she murmurs, her hand at last falling to her lap. "We are all greedy creatures. I..." Her gaze tilts downwards to her lap. In spite of herself, she closes her eyes, as if she could by so doing stem the tears. "If I could be as I am now forever, I would be happy." She can feel it, down to the core of her being, etched into her soul as if it were her truth. "But..."

    She has an important promise to fulfill, one that must not be broken.

    "One day," she whispers, "this will end."

    Even if she knows not the shape that ending will take.

    Her gaze lifts as the knight moves, makes ready to depart.
    Makes a promise.

    "If you make a promise, you must keep it," Avril says quietly, pulling the Medium close to her chest. "I will see you again, Trial Knight."

    Is it enough, to stand and bear witness to the end?

    "If all that can be done is to remember," she murmurs in reply.

    Only once the motes of light vanish does she reach up to wipe at her eyes. And only then, in a fallen city, does she finally pull herself to her feet. She must leave, even if her wounds still trouble her. With the energy she's regained, it should be enough to see her outside and into safe territory.
    But not before giving Luca, in flames, one final look. She can do no more, so she will bear witness, for just this moment.