She had just been walking past the room, intending only to check on Serenade and how she was doing. The Princess had been terribly out of it lately even though Elke and Grayson were alive, and Eve still worried and wished she wouldn't act this way.

The door was unlocked and when she pushed it open, she saw an aggravated Zue on the windowsill, curtains blowing at the side, but other than that there was no one else in the room. "Serenade, listen to me, you... oh god, Flora," his head swiveled around to regard her, looking slightly relieved. "Help me here, will you?"

"It's Eve." She corrected, and before closing the door behind her, she made sure no one was out in the corridor. "And keep it down. They'll find it weird if they hear a guy's voice from one of the rooms."

He dismissed her sentence with a wave of his bushy tail. "Come over here." He said, or rather hissed, and Eve was pleased that he had, at least, taken her advice.

The feeling didn't last for long; it died away into panic and fear when she saw Serenade out there, sitting on a tree branch outside her window, gazing absently into the horizon. "Serenade, get back in!" She called, poking her head out of the window.

"Won't work." Zue grumbled. "I tried that; she doesn't seem to hear, or at least, doesn't want to hear."

Eve sighed, pursing her lips. "I'm going out there."

Minutes later, she was teetering on the branch and finally settled down to sit besides Serenade, mouthing to Zue that she would talk to her so there was no need to worry. The guardian cat still remained looking sour and worried, settling his chin on his paws to watch them.

"Have you ever wondered," Serenade spoke before Eve could even say anything, before Eve could even wrap her arms around her Princess petite figure, "what it's like to die?"

Zue's ears perked and he shot straight up and Eve shook her head at him. I'll handle this, she mouthed and then forcing herself to keep her voice stable, said in reply, "Sometimes. Just sometimes." Sometimes, she had closed her eyes before she was actually asleep and wondered what it would be like if she died then and there. And then, she had promptly gotten terrified of slipping into the darkness and never waking up again.

"What if," the green-haired girl continued, "we die and we wake up in another plane of existence, where everyone we lost is waiting for us?"

"You mean like an afterlife?"

Serenade hesitated, and pondered for a moment before speaking again. "No, I mean, like kind of a reincarnation. But not really."

"Explain?" Eve asked, as Serenade swung her legs back and forth, and a slipper from her foot loosened and fell onto the grass below. Zue looked even more agitated and she put a finger to her lips.

"Like, our next life, our reincarnation, has already been born into the other plane of existence. It's still young, it doesn't understand. It doesn't understand what it means when it has dreams, dreams of its past life, playing out the whole lifespan of it all. When we sleep, that life wakes up. When we're awake, that life is asleep. When we die, that life begins to mature, begins to forget what it dreamed before. That it was its life before."

"It sounds terribly like Inception." Eve said, eyes fixated at that lone slipper on the grass, realizing why she had a deja vu sort of feeling when she had watched it fall from the other girl's foot.

"Like what?" Serenade queried.

"Never mind." Eve murmured. "You're not wanting to kill yourself to wake up in your next life, are you? What if it's not real? You still remember our past lives together, don't you?"

"What if theories about heaven and hell are not real? What if we don't go to those places that separate the good from bad? What if it's just one crazy cycle, with us hopping from one plane to another, not even remembering our experience on the previous one? What if all those past lives were on a nearer plane making it more coherent to us to remember?"

"You're thinking an awful lot." Eve said.

Serenade was silent, shutting her eyes and Eve almost jerked forward, to make sure she didn't fall. Serenade still sat there, motionless, and then spoke, when Eve placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'm wondering if Ally is there."

"It's hard to let go of those you loved." Eve told her. Love bound you to that one person, and it was always hard to actually renounce that bond, because you would always remember the lingering remnants of it. You could never actually forget. Both pain and happiness lingered there, but mostly, it was the pain. There was so much pain, and she had seen people around suffer from that heartbreak, so much that she had grown scared. Withdrawn from this battle of hearts.

"I loved him for a lifetime." Serenade said dimly.

And even though Eve had qualms about true love being advocated in stories of fiction, she couldn't bring herself to disbelieve Serenade and Alistair's love even though she had never actually seen them together in this life. It was strange to meet a real life example and to be startled into realizing what you thought would never happen, could be true after all. It was still rare though and only ever happened to people like Serenade, not her.

"No one's asking you to forget him." Eve began carefully. "We just want you to be happy. I think he would want you to be happy." Then she wrapped her arms around Serenade and gave her a squeeze. "You don't need to be in love to be happy. You don't need a relationship to be happy. You're more than two halves of a whole, Serenade."

"I'll try." Her Princess said softly and took her hand, allowing herself to be led back into her room, where Zue breathed a sigh of relief.

When she closed the door behind her, there was a small part of Eve that nagged at her. So, the whisper said, who were you actually saying that to? Her, or yourself? Do you still need that assurance?

You don't need to be in love to be happy. You don't need a relationship to be happy. It had always been what she had always believed, but sometimes, just sometimes, that belief would waver enough to let insecurities seep in and plague her to no end.

That night, she had nightmares.