She has never seen anything more beautiful in her life. 

It is not the colors of this place, which are muted and unremarkable next to the glittering perfection of the galaxy she has passed through. It is not the kindness of this place, or even the fact that there are people here of some sort and signs of a wider civilization when all that she'd expected to see was barren rock and ancient ruins. 

It is the quiet. When she bends her ears toward Jupiter, she cannot hear anything over the hum and bustle of the Plousios no matter how hard she focuses on it. She can tell, less as a matter of instinct and more the simple singing of her heart, that even if she were to go outside and return the scripts to those beacons she would still hear little besides her own ship. All of this in spite of the motion and violence she can plainly see washing like the tides back and forth across the surface of the planet. The pointlessness of the violence is not something is equipped to understand, but the intimacy and silence of it is a message just for her. 

Bella fills her mind with flashes of darkness, merciless prowling owls, and mice scurrying about without the luxury of making a sound. She feels the touch of gentle hands tapping deep and connective messages against her wrist, and the reassuring squeeze of a subordinate she had never had the courage to call her friend. Jil's name is on her lips before she chokes it back with a wet sob.

It is the cold. How could she have gone so long and so far and not realized how hot it had been? Had she simply grown so used to sweating that she forgot it hadn't been normal? Even the extreme heat of XIII only felt so because of the general coolness of the realm of Hades. The difference between a fire and a star. But in this place there is Death. In this place there is shade. Which means that in this place there is a place for her and for her sisters, and for the goddess who could not love any of them the way they wanted her to. She feels it on her fur and it soothes her. She presses her palm against the window as she drifts past and it almost hurts to keep it there. When she laughs, when she gasps, when she shivers it all fogs the pane with the heat of her own breath and the contrast is more magical, more wondrous, more beautiful than the entire edifice of the Endless Azure Skies at the peak of its splendor.

Bella drifts into the sea of memories again: empty palace halls and the claustrophobic city streets that lay beyond them. [i]Cloudcuckooland[/i] playing in a (nearly) empty theater and the little snores of a sleepy friend who couldn't quite make it to the climax. A glass of wine filled to the brim with sweet majesties enjoyed from her perch on an old emperor's throne, watching the mad dance of machines that could not be told to stop their war. An empty kitchen, devoid of order yet filled to bursting with fields of the sweetest grains and seeds her imagination had yet learned to tantalize her with. And then, another film reel, clattering as it strikes the floor, rolling in smaller and smaller and smaller circles until someone--

Her tears sting as sweetly as crying is meant to. The soothing tones of remorse, felt fully at last, and the hiccups of breath that means she is alive and capable of love. She has never felt like this before, and so until this moment had no language or sense to be able to describe what it was that she was missing. But now the warm drips sting against cold cheeks. Now she presses her hand close against her mouth to hide the sounds of her wails from this sacred place, and she sees the truth of her emotions mist outwards from between her fingers. 

"I," she chokes, "I! I've..."

Silence. It presses against her body like a dagger in the night sky. A sight she loves. A sight she misses. And yet a sight she feels no call to return to now that they have forever passed beyond one another's reach.

"I've come so far. I've done so much. And I, I'm," her fingers tremble and tap staccato against her jaw with the fear of even saying it, "I'm still alive."

A miracle. It is a miracle. [i]She[/i] is a miracle. For the first time in this long journey, she understands the impossibility of herself from every angle and across every line of thought. For the first time she can see how impossibly [i]long[/i] the journey really was; these years and years of single-minded pursuit of a goal she did not quite understand. And yet, for all the miracles of first Imperial and then Azura engineering, for all the work that had been trivialized it had [b]still[/b] been a journey she could measure most of her life against. Every moment that had threatened to cut her path short. Every scrap of luck that had seen her slip just past it, instead. Every cry in her heart to give up and accept that she had failed which she had somehow in spite of all the weakness inside of her never once quite committed to. The blessing of every kiss she'd stolen from destiny's ugly jaws and the white hot lance of every betrayal and hurt she'd turned on all the people that she loved. 

And then, like lightning from Olympus, the full weight of the lesson strikes her.

What was it she'd said? That nobody could possibly need more than a planet? A planet?! What the fuck was she thinking? Mosaic had never had a planet! Beri was not Bitemark, and Bitemark was certainly not Beri! A village! The beach! And a mountain nearby which had belonged to an entirely different people! More beyond she'd never even taken the time to see! What was... how could she have been this blind? In crossing a galaxy, had she really not noticed just how stupendously gigantic everything she passed by really was? It was just like the heat and the cold. It was just like breathing, and pretending to. It was just like...

"Fuck." she concludes. 

No more trembling. No more tears. She wipes the signs of her struggles and revelations off her face with the back of her hand and vanishes from the room in an eye blink in search of something she can write this idea down on. It has to be perfect, so she can pass it on. The wish that Dyssia had danced around, but hadn't quite been able to express. Wasn't this the answer? How could Empire stand to be, how could knights stand to work at their ridiculous and opulent bullshit little [i]projects[/i] if they could only feel the weight of what Bella understood just now?

There was one other thing she'd said, once. That things could never be even between her and Redana. And she'd had that completely backwards, too. The stars! The [i]stars![/i] How in the fuck could Bella ever be worthy of a gift like that?! All at once she starts to laugh, and the sounds of her delighted cackling echo through the entire ship.