"You are [i]going[/i]," Redana sniffles, "to be okay." And the way she says it is like there is no world, no universe, where Bella is not going to be okay. But there will also be no world where she is the way that she was.

This ship's medical chamber is a mish-mash of medicine from the underworld and cures from the land of the living, side by side. Flesh molds and blessed knives, bonesetters and suture wands. In the center is an Asclepian garden, and in the center of the garden is a fountain, and in the center of the fountain is a light shaped like a sun. The sound of running water is impossible to escape in this room. And here is Redana, silhouetted against the sun, interlacing her fingers with the stiff talons of her wife and failing to keep the tears at bay.

She has done her very best. The ship's proper doctors are mysteriously absent. She did not have time to search for a Hermetic, not when her Bella was like this, was like [i]this[/i]. She has taken to surgery with a panicked frenzy, and she has done the very, very best that she can, murmuring hymns to Apollo under her breath the whole way. And it must have worked, Apollo must have smiled on her with that beatific smile, because here is her Bella, here is her ray of moonlight, here is her bride, every bit of her that Redana could save.

(She is not completely alone, mind you. Gemini is present here, sitting in a little chair, flipping through a book with an air of aloofness, trying to hide the exertion of telling her sister over and over again that it was still time to live. But the whole host of Tellus could be in the room right now and Redana would only have eyes for her Bella, tears of relief and hope running down her cheeks.)

"We're going to make it," she says, and squeezes. "You and me. All the way to Gaia. I [i]promise.[/i]" And unspoken is the promise: we will make it even if your legs don't take to the reconstruction. We will make it if I have to carry you in my arms. We will make it if you can never fight again, if you have shattered yourself in order to save your family. We will make it because I promised you that there would be a universe in which we could freely choose to be together.

We will make it because I believe that you will not let yourself die.

But that's the next step. The difficult one. Choosing not to die. Living right now is an effort, is a marathon, is a choice. Just like it was on the Yakanov. Just like it was when Nero made you choose between life and death.

Redana knows her Bella well enough to know that it's no choice at all, though.

All of her sisters are on this side of life. And they need their sister who saved them.

The tools that Redana had to hand were not sufficient for the task of making it as though you never broke, Bella. The materials she could work with were not equal to the body that you were gifted for your holy terror. But there is a rightness in putting something back together so that the scars can be seen, and a beauty in refusing to give up after disaster. You will stand again, Bella; you will walk again; you will hold your princess and be held in turn. And all of you-- [i]all[/i] of you-- will see Gaia.

Together.