Chapter 85: The Shield and the Wanderer

Kalender and Jyn’s afternoon ended with a walk back to Freedom’s Peak. Jyn hadn’t pressed on the topic further, content with clinging to Kalender’s arm.

...Maybe not so content. Some of his last words bothered her greatly.

— “I want everyone I know to be happy and free, and not just because of me.”

She was entirely happy just being with Kalender...but only by being with Kalender. Try as she might, she couldn’t find a counterexample where she was happy for any other reason. Her mind was just filled with nothing on most days, her subconscious just busying itself with passively scanning for physical threats while her conscious mind busied itself with calculating her personal finances.

That besides... She really didn’t have anything that made her happy, did she? She wasn’t sad, either, but wasn’t that a result of her narrow emotional range? Not too happy, not too sad—wasn’t that just alright?

She and Kalender stopped in front of Freedom’s Peak at the squeak of a familiar voice.

“Frieeeends!”

“Oh, Page,” Kalender said, waving her way.

Jyn looked up. She hadn’t realized she’d been looking at the ground this whole time.

When she looked up, she saw Page in a...frankly expensive suit of armor. She wore a brigandine over a thick, olive green jacket, and then an armored skirt—small, metal plates sewn onto an overskirt—that reached until just below Page’s knees. Dirty steel shin guards protected everything else below the knee.

She didn’t normally come home looking like this.

Page didn’t even need to see her friends’ confused looks. She held up a hand their way, closing her eyes and looking away. “I know, I know,” she said. “They’ve been running me ragged out there, okay?! Kal, hug!”

“Is that blood?” Kalender muttered, and Jyn heard him. When she took a closer look at Page, there were splotches of green and blue blood on her armor.

As Page stepped closer, Kalender stepped back, and Jyn, respecting his right to run away from the blood-covered hug monster, let go of his arm—thus began a little game of chase in front of Freedom’s Peak.

The bystanders on the street stopped and stared, concerned for a second that the town guard was tussling with a thief, but seeing that neither Kalender nor Page had drawn their swords, and that they both had smiles on their faces, they mentally dismissed it as some roughhousing between sword-crossed lovers.

Jyn watched the two run around for a while.

She wanted that, too.

Page’s smile looked genuinely unconcerned for the gazes of bystanders, nor by the passage of time. Come to think of it, her movements were sharper than Kalender’s right now. She might be no martial expert, but if all she had to do was survive long enough for backup to reach her, she could probably last quite a while against the typical Lyrican swordsman—who, by the way, could swat bullets out of the air.

There was a pang of surprise as Jyn realized her gaze was lingering not on Kalender, but on Page. She looked at the girl like her own younger sibling.

My sisters... Jyn had her own frustrations about how she dealt with her siblings. Her little confrontation with Kyn was proof that she wasn’t exactly a family-oriented woman.

Wait, not family-oriented... Why did she even propose marriage in this kind of state? Wasn’t her future with Kalender in profound danger?

She needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t Kalender—and there was one right there.

“Kalender,” she called out. Page already had him in an arm lock. “Why don’t you check with Kyn? I’ll escort Page to the castle. It’s nearly dark, after all.”

“Geez, I can take care of myself...” Page muttered—but then she noticed Jyn’s colors. “Alright.”

She let Kalender get away, leaving the guy a little confused. With Interpersonal Bubble, he spotted a tiny, vibrating thread connecting Jyn and Page, but it was their silence that was his biggest clue.

Translation: “We have stuff to talk about. Privacy please.”

“I’ll see you later, then?” he said, throwing his arms out for Jyn.

She paused for a moment seeing this, but she went in for a parting hug, anyway.

They bid goodbye, and Page looked at Jyn with uneasy eyes.

Jyn and Page walked down narrow streets. There were a few people who passed them every now and then, hurrying home as the sky went from orange to violet.

“Are you okay?” Page asked.

“What are your thoughts about Kalender?”

The question sent Page’s heart racing, not because she was guilty—she wasn’t—but because Jyn’s emotions were colored green and blue.

Page was standing in the midst of an emotional minefield, and her next words felt like they would decide the fate of nations.

On top of that, unbeknownst to her, her magic control had slipped in that very moment, and Jyn got a taste of Page’s nervousness.

Jyn elected not to comment on it, however. It was just further proof that Page did feel something about Kalender, after all—or so was her completely misinformed interpretation.

“What do you mean?” Page asked. “He’s great to be around. Should I be thinking anything e-else?...”

She’d stuttered as a tinge of red colored Jyn’s emotions. Oh crap.

“I must be clear,” Jyn said. Her voice was level, but her colors were not, for all she sought was a straight answer, and Page wasn’t giving it. “Do you not have even a tinge of romantic affections for him whatsoever?”

“I don’t!” Page threw her hands up. She didn’t even pause to think about it—the question threw her for a loop! “Gosh, where’d that come from?”

“Which would you choose: to be with Kalender, or to be free?”

“Eh!” She’d stopped walking altogether. Nothing was making sense to her. Jyn’s colors implied envy, jealousy, a tinge of anger, and a profound sadness. Try as she might, Page just couldn’t connect those to whatever Jyn was saying!

Jyn stopped ahead of her, noticing her walking companion had stopped entirely. She might not have had Kalender’s natural sensitivity towards people, nor Page’s eyes, but she knew what confusion and fear looked like. People made all the same faces, after all, on or off the battlefield.

For a while, the two just stared at each other in a conversational stalemate. Jyn, however, was someone adept at breaking stalemates.

“What if I told you,” she explained, “that Kalender also sees you as a woman?”

A blush developed on Page’s cheeks, confirming Jyn’s suspicions—or so she thought. Page caught her off guard with her next words.

“I-I know,” she said. “I-I accidentally undressed in front of him, once...”

“Huh?!” Jealousy flared.

Page shrank back. “I just woke up that time, okay!”

Jealousy settled. Everyone knew how bad she was in her first ten minutes of consciousness. “Huh...”

“Look, we had a talk after that, and... I can tell you—or, well, this is just what I think.” She made sure to lock eyes with Jyn. “I don’t think he’s ignoring the fact that we’re women. I think...he really just has this vision in mind about who we are to him, and he sticks to it.”

“A vision, is it...” Jyn turned away for a moment, then turned back. “A while ago, we talked on that bench on the hill.”

“The one near the temple row?”

“That one.” Jyn nodded. “He said that...he didn’t want to take your freedom away from you. That you were a free spirit.”

“What does that”—then Page realized it. “Huh? So does he actually... like me?”

“I’m not sure, myself.” She wasn’t sure about a lot of things. “He also said that he just wants us to be happy and to be free, ‘not just because of him.’ ”

Page began to understand what it was that troubled Jyn. She stepped closer. “Let’s keep walking.”

Jyn nodded, and they started walking again—but slower.

“Jyn, can you tell me...why you feel jealous?”

It took a while before she answered. “He looks so happy with you.”

From the corner of Page’s eyes, she saw a blue haze. She didn’t want to look at Jyn. “I just do what I like, you know,” Page replied with a quiet voice. “I’m just living like the child I wanted to be. I didn’t get to be like this, after all. Always the prim and proper lady...or something like that. That’s what they wanted me to be.”

Jyn chuckled. “So you play chase with a grown man?”

“Let me comb your hair next time.” Page looked at her and smiled.

Jyn turned to look at her as well. Page’s smile was...too dazzling, somehow. How could someone like this even exist?

“You sure like to do whatever you like...” Jyn chuckled, but her color wasn’t bright, and when Page looked, neither was her face.

Page frowned. “I also want you to be happy, Jyn.”

Hearing those words come out of her mouth, Jyn couldn’t help but bear even more of a personal burden. Finding a happiness that was hers alone was her duty and no one else’s, wasn’t it?

Just when she had that thought, another hand slid into her own. She looked up—she didn’t even realize she was looking down—to find Page’s hand holding onto hers. She looked up at the girl’s bittersweet face.

— Why are you so concerned for me?

“We have to think about what we have right now, okay!” Page said, her voice tainted by poorly-hidden desperation, one which made Jyn hold her breath. “If you want to be a kid, be a kid! If you want to hold him that badly, then just do it! If you love him, show it!”

Page realized she was squeezing Jyn’s hand. She shook her head and let off some of the pressure, but not letting go. She looked around. She sighed. She breathed.

She looked right back at Jyn in the eyes, speaking in a quieter voice. “You know, maybe...I hope you’ll understand me on this”—Jyn’s breathing went shallow—“We can die tomorrow. I realized that, back when we first arrived, and Kal took me up to a roof to watch the sunset.

“I told myself right there, I’m not going to wait for tomorrow to be happy.”

Those same words had existed in Jyn’s mind for a long time. It was one thing to repeat them over and over in her own head, and it was another to have someone else say it to her. The echo of a voice that wasn’t her own possessed her. The words that were like water finally gained a solid form.

Yet, Page hadn’t stopped, unable to contain the passion rising from words she’d never thought to say aloud before. “I don’t care if he likes me! But I’m glad he cares! I just want to be there, and I’m glad he wants that, too! I’m glad he doesn’t feel like he’s settling for less, and I know that because of these eyes, Jyn—I can see he’s the happiest when we’re the happiest! I can see when he’s at ease, with me—and with you!”

To her surprise, Jyn pulled her in, and she found herself enveloped in a tight embrace. It took a moment for her brain to catch on, and she folded her own arms around her friend.

“I’m sorry,” Jyn said.

Page murmured in her chest, “For what?”

“I feel as if I’ve betrayed you a hundred times in my mind.”

There was a pause. “Dummy,” Page said.

There was a pause. “Huh.”

“Liar,” Page continued, stabbing her friend in heart-to-heart combat with words. “Coward, deserter”—sniffle—“you sore loser running away from the things that make you happy, hiding everything that hurts you...”

There was, at once, pain and confusion. Jyn did not know what to do with the crying girl cushied up against her, but the same girl was dealing profound amounts of damage to Jyn’s pride.

Even so...why did it feel so right, in this moment, to be accused of being so wrong?

They continued walking for a while, hand-in-hand, but not saying a word.

“Oh, wow, we’re at the castle already? That was fast,” Page said, being her first words since then.

When Jyn looked, they were certainly already at the plaza in front of the castle. She opted to escort Page inside, past the gates, then opted to respectfully loiter in one of the gardens while waiting for Page to finish her business.

The garden was kept warm by magic, keeping the flowers in bloom all-year-round. She couldn’t remember seeing any flowers being this colorful before, however. Weren’t these just common flowers, besides?

I’m the one unbound by the curse since the beginning, she thought to herself. Why do I feel as if today is my first day of freedom?

[Overprotection: 0]

[PERMA-LOCKING: SELF-SACRIFICE SKILL TREE.]