somewhere over the rainbow
Pneuma awakens. She had been sleeping for the longest of all of them, and they hadn't even known it.
When she alights in the Aion hangar, that first time - the first time ever, ever, ever, for any of them but especially for her - the air is tense, pregnant. Aion bears down upon them, Mythra and Pyra's wakefulness still lingering in her mind.
There is the urge to go, go, go, but Pneuma wants to stay, stay, stay. Can't I tell you about all my dreams? Can't I tell you what I'm thinking? Or, no. You were only made to destroy the world, if that were necessary. And I...
Right. So we understand each other. Pneuma, somehow infinitely calm and self-possessed despite all instinct, sends the signal, whichever subconscious trigger it must be, to transport herself in and in between transformation back down to the Gotrock Oracle Ruins, and does not have time to think of Aion again until there is no time to think of anything but Aion.
The great mech greets them, proud despite its scars that Malos had given it in its rage and that Rex and Pneuma had sealed in in her final moments.
"You're sorry to see us go, aren't you?"
Aion doesn't answer. He's busy calculating the t-minuses that will never again be t-pluses, and sending them to her Core which itself will soon never again be live and communicatory. It has always been busy, since the dawn of this world.
This world. This magical, frightening, long-overrun but now newly beginning place. And rainbows so often come at dawn.
"Will you miss...this world?"
A flicker, a pulse comes in the bytestream. An aberration, and one that Pneuma is thankful for even though all the Aegises have a base impulse, a core predilection to restore order, always order, always perfection and sensibility and...and everything measured and right and fair.
Pneuma smiles, though the moments are fleeting and the motion almost hurts. "Me too. I...we wanted to die. Did you know that?"
Of course Aion knew that. She knows everything. It, beyond the Conduit itself, is the conduit through which all of the Aegises' power flows - flowed, that is. Aion knows. More truly than anyone else ever has, Aion knows.
Does Aion know that Pneuma loves Rex, and Nia, and Tora, and Mòrag and Brighid and Zeke and Pandoria and all of the lovely, lovely people - people, not Aegises, for there is something to be said for that, sometimes - that they have met? Does he know how proud she is of Poppi, how adoring of Dromarch, how embracing of Roc?
Oh, Poppi. Poppi, who always kept her promise, Poppi who was made to fight but really was made to be a friend, Poppi who has so much more to learn and will do it all, oh, Pneuma knows she will...
Even as an overseer, they would have liked to have been able to see that. To see everyone who they'd sacrificed so much for, everyone who had sacrificed so much for them, grow stronger and happier every day. There is an undeniable magic in life that treasuring in your mouth and on your body leaves such a bitter taste and texture.
Indeed, what once had been a dream to disappear for the good of all and the peace of one, two, three has become a melancholy thing, a bit of a regret and a bit of anger at the sheer cruel speed of the turnabout. The last thing she had told them had been the apprisal of a lie, the reveal of a truth she hadn't even known for very long herself.
Rex had refused to go to Elysium without them, had argued, and rightfully, righteously so, that there would be no point in such an endeavor, a quasi-dreamlike excursion. And now, indeed, he is being forced to continue without them.
But he is continuing. He is moving on, and Pneuma is, oh, so proud, if only to stave out the fear, the envy and perhaps even the jealousy. If they all can go beyond the rainbow, beyond the orbital ring into newer, brighter, better things with love and light and hope in their hearts...why, oh why can't I?
Aion gives a contemplative prod. Move on, Pneuma. There is still something yet to be done, somewhere yet to be - but that somewhere is only a matter of paces away, and there are so many steps Pneuma hasn't yet taken, boots jade-green and horn proud like that of a unicorn.
Are unicorns real? Graceful, apocryphal things draped in starlight and rainbows, they prance with a regalness that no mortals could ever hope to claim. It's not haughtiness that makes Pneuma think that perhaps she is one. And mythical creatures never truly come down to live amongst base humanity.
Aion feeds to them the core blueprint of a human, arms and legs and teeth and tongue and no tail but instead fluid within their ears to keep balance, isn't that funny, isn't that wonderful, isn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever heard?
Not base, in the cruel way that a sneering academic might say it, in the way that Amalthus might have deemed all others to be below him. No, it is the building blocks that make up all life on this not-a-planet-anymore that inspire Pneuma's adoration.
Just as the rainbow is made up of myriad colors, as white is composed of all, all, all, and black is the absence but what is day without the night, Pneuma is awash in every color of emotion as she takes her final glance over and down upon their father's creation.
"How much time is there left, Aion?"
In with the breaths, out with the fading of the night's morning light. The glass dome that had so long kept these birds caged just then shatters in a burst of that same brilliant light; Aion had stopped counting, had let Pneuma indulge without worry or distraction in that long last lingering look.
Is that her wish? Is that all that remains, now? To see from above, to mediate but never again to even attempt to master?
(Even, is that what their father had done? Is there a strange sort of nobility in it, laid out laterally, after all?)
Pneuma nods, lays hand and chin to her chest. "Of course. I am...glad you approve."
Beyond the sky's final rainbow, in the sheer limitlessness of Elysium - the true Elysium, the original Elysium, the one that sang Pneuma all the lullabies she'd ever dreamed of and then all those she hadn't - Pneuma sleeps, at peace with how far they have come.