[ Back dated to Nov 2, just after Archideus explodes ]
The night that Lyndin betrayed Order and left them to rot to Metallia, Bifrost was nowhere to be found.
The last time Caedus had shown up, she’d been newly minted as a knight, the transcendence marks barely settled on her skin. She’d gone into the Rift, side by side her fellow Chronos knights, and fought their way to the fallen Academy to free a piece of the Code long since trapped. They’d dealt a blow to the Negaverse, but at the same time giving rise to a new Queen, and barely escaped with their lives. It had been another stalemate that Bifrost had grown used to since she awoke as a page on the glittering rainbow road in the sky.
Since that mission, Bifrost had tried her best to do what it was she was tasked with. Being hope eternal. Except, hope only works if you put intent towards it. You can hope for rain but unless you find a way to create it, there’s no guarantee. She only had herself to blame, and blame herself she did.
A year she’d hidden herself away, keeping silent vigil among the stars, until Midgard and Celsus found her there. A year she’d run from the thing that had hurt her so much: herself. But those two had brought her back from the brink, brought her the closure she needed. So she’d returned to Destiny City, only returning to the Bifrost regularly as her transcendence demanded. She tried to return to normal life, take up a degree, and a job. Do her patrols. Find new knights who needed mentorship.
The world kept turning, and she found herself alone again.
Bifrost grew used to the loneliness, to the fact that her court seemed lost to time. She found less and less reasons to power up, to go on patrol, to be a part of the war. Again, she fell back into herself, unable to shake the feeling that not even the Surrounding needed her anymore. Her court surely didn’t. The Zodiacs were gone, the knights scattered. No one went to the Surrounding anymore. She was the remnant of a dying idea, a dying past that the universe had no use for anymore.
Given that the Surrounding clearly didn’t keep Caedus out… or Lyndin and his army.
In some ways, it should have been freeing that no one had any more expectations for her and hers any longer. In reality it just felt… sad.
Bifrost had listened, had watched quietly as Caedus starred starry eyed at Lyndin, how the larger man had boasted of destroying Metallia once and for all. Had eyed the concept of an army, had listened to the objections and the squabbling.
She’d found them wanting.
So she did not interfere with the Velencians, she did not help them. She would hold the line if they betrayed them, but she could not interfere. There wasn’t much of a line to hold, in the end. She’d seen that much. There was a bigger issue on her plate, one she tried to look into.
Why the Surrounding couldn’t be healed, couldn’t be fixed.
Was it the deaths of two of the Zodiacs, so long ago? Was it the damage the great youma dragon had done? Or was it a lack of belief, as senshi and knights vanished into their own lives and forgot the tasks they were given so many years ago? Had it been the Surrounding breathing life to it’s knights? Bifrost didn’t know. Nothing gave her the answers she searched for, much less a direction to go.
The night Archideus exploded, when all hope seemed lost for so many, Bifrost felt the surge of energy. Tied so to her wonder, her transcendence markings flared and she found herself gasping for breath. She’d just gone to her wonder not two days before, there was no reason she should have been this overloaded with energy already. As Cosmos pulled Order from the grasp of defeat, again, Bifrost appeared before her wonder in a desperate need to not burn herself out.
She stared.
The marble rippled with color, almost a pulse under her boots. Motes of star light danced around her, as if welcoming her home. A moth - a moth fluttered on the lamp outside her safe house, wings shifting colors like the Surrounding behind her. A few little bugs were… chewing unsuccessfully on a railing.
There was life.
There was life on her wonder, on the Surrounding.
The energy humming in her veins swelled and flowed out of her as Bifrost fell to her knees, sobbing with joy and excitement. Her entire body vibrated with the hope that resonated through it and she laughed, she laughed harder than she had in so many years.
There was hope yet. If life could return to even a broken place as the Surrounding, if joy could return even to her broken soul, there was hope yet.
For the first time since she’d returned Prena to the cauldron, Bifrost felt like herself again. She felt the same level of wonderment and drive to protect and hopefulness she’d felt when she’d stood in front of Raven to protect her from the dragon.
A moth landed on her hand, little fuzzy antenna wiggling happily at her.
“Little one, thank you, thank you so much.” Bifrost nuzzled the moth gently, petting between the antenna. It fluttered it’s wings at her. “I don’t know how… but you have brought hope back to this very tired and very lost knight. Thank you, thank you, thank you…”
The little moth used her tears to drink and bathe then fluttered away back to the lantern. She watched it for a few minutes, as her heart calmed and her emotions settled. Bifrost smiled and stood, dusting off her knees.
She could do this. If her wonder could support life, there was hope for the Surrounding and the future of Chronos and her knights yet.
With renewed hope and light in her heart, Bifrost bid goodbye to her wonder and it's little creatures for now, and returned to Destiny City to hold the line until the world ended.
[WC: 1022]
