The walk through the corridors of Rook & Pegasus HQ has a rhythm—a brisk, unyielding tempo set by Alessia, who leads the trio with the self-assured pace of a woman determined not to let the world catch her off guard again. Isabella, ever the observer, falls into step with Marigold, her stride matching his but her gaze flitting between the golden knight's reflection in the glass and the faint tension in Alessia's shoulders.
For several paces, nothing is said. The hum of ventilation and the gentle click of ceramic soles are their only company. At the next junction, Alessia halts so abruptly that Isabella nearly collides with her.
"Since Cecill tasked us with your 'grand tour,'" Alessia says, voice even but with the softest quiver of mock formality, "I'm supposed to ask if you want a brief history lesson on the place. Or would you rather skip straight to the important bits—namely, where the food and weapons are kept?"
The question hangs for a second, as if daring Marigold to treat it as a joke. But the helmet stays still, only a subtle tilt betraying any confusion.
"I know a little about this place," Marigold says, his words quieter than expected, as though he's wary of filling too much space with his own presence. "-But not much; We don't usually… stay in one place. We rotate from one battlefront to another, so HQ is more of a… waypoint than a home. This is the first time I've seen the main hub in person."
Alessia's lips press into a straight line. "So it's just another stop to you, then." There is no question mark. "Why bother with the tour, if all you'll do is forget us the next time you're reassigned?"
Isabella turns, about to interject, but Marigold's voice interrupts her—a bit stronger this time, or maybe just more determined to be heard. "Hideyoshi assigned me to this place for a reason thus, I don't think I will leave anytime soon."
"Ah, but that's the thing, isn't it?" Alessia's eyes flash. "Why so sudden? None of the knight care about any HQs before, then suddenly this HQ got ourselves a knight, strange isn't?".
Alessia slowly turn her gaze to Marigold but this time, it is much more darker than usual, "Maybe you are shit at your job so bad, Hideyoshi put you on guard duty, heh. Then again not that I care, this place is doing well even without any knight's help."
Marigold is silent.
She holds his gaze a second longer, then turns with a scoff and resumes her forward momentum, doubling her pace. For a moment, only the whir of the air exchangers and the soft rhythm of three pairs of footsteps fill the void.
Isabella waits until Alessia is well ahead, then edges closer to Marigold, close enough that her words won't carry beyond their private bubble. In a whisper so low it might be a trick of airflow, she says, "Sorry about her," she whispers, her tone equal parts apology and confession. "She's… not usually so prickly. Unless she hasn't slept, or she's on edge, or—well, I guess maybe she is usually this prickly. Still, sorry."
Marigold blinks, the gesture audible through the slight whir of his helmet. "You don't need to apologize," he says. "Though, I confess, this interaction is rather a surprise" He hesitates, voice softer. "Is she always like this when around any knights?"
Isabella nods, drawing a deep breath. "Well that's Alessia to you, Its about her past most people said." Isabella's eyes widen. For a second she seems about to say something more, then stops, biting off the thought, "Anyway, you should not take it to heart. "
He shrugs. "None taken."
Even after the conversation within his heart he knows something off with Alessia because she was not like this when they met for the first time. He remembers the laugh she let out and the realization phase when she realize what she had done. One word remain in his heart and mind.
"What happens? - and why she like this?"
Marigold only conclude that maybe is because she have status that needs to be protected. "I should not hovering about this, just maybe its her status that she need to protect, maybe..."
A beat pass. Then Isabella glances down and suddenly seems to realize that, for the last twenty meters, she's been walking step for step beside Marigold. Not trailing, not shadowing, but matching his pace, as if they're equals.
The realization hits her like a surge of voltage. She stares at the gold of his suit, then at her own hands—unadorned, trembling slightly—and back at the helmet.
"A knight… Right by my side…," Isabella is slowly realizing something inside of her head, "A KNIGHT RIGHT BY MY SIDE, AHH…." She jumps, just a fraction to the left, as if her body's magnetic field has been abruptly reversed. The movement is sharp enough that she nearly collides with a cleaning bot.
Marigold, caught off guard, stops as well. "Are you okay?"
"Yes! Totally. Fine." Isabella attempts a casual laugh, but it comes out as a strangled gasp. "Just, uh, I saw a cockroach. Out of the corner of my eye. Yea, definitely a cockroach!" She waves her hand vaguely, as if to banish the imagined insect.
Marigold tilts his head, the gesture slow and skeptical. "A cockroach...?"
She nods, avoiding his gaze. "Yes. I— They're everywhere. The bots can't keep up."
A pause. Marigold keeps staring at her, and she can tell that stare have a huge sign telling 'I don't believe you' hovering over Marigold.
Isabella tries to salvage the moment. "I mean, maybe it was just a shadow. Or a—uh, a gear rolling on the floor." Her cheeks begin to flush, the red blooming up from her collarbones to her ears. She can feel it, a living heat.
Marigold says nothing and doesn't press the issue, but she can feel the weight of his disbelief. She cannot look at him, and for a moment, she is saved by Alessia, who is now a full length ahead, but has stopped and is staring back at them with an expression that is hard to read.
It is, in fact, not hard to read. Alessia's face is a perfect mask of loathing. Not for Marigold, but for the prospect of cockroaches. She is frozen, and for a second, Marigold thinks he can hear the faintest intake of breath—the sharp, involuntary gasp of someone who has just remembered a private horror.
Isabella, now red to the roots of her hair, remembers all at once: Alessia's only real phobia,
The memory comes back with brutal clarity: The day she first met Alessia—her, the new logistics intern, Alessia the freshly minted squad lead. The two had been assigned to a minor quarantine sweep, inventorying bunk beds for insect infestation. When a cockroach the size of a thumb galloped out from under the mattress, Alessia had let out a shriek of such crystalline terror that even the noise alarms in the corridor tripped. She'd smashed the bug with a mop, then spent ten minutes hyperventilating behind a supply cart while Isabella coaxed her back to composure.
Alessia made her swear, then and there, never to speak of it again. And especially never, ever, in the presence of anyone with authority.
"Cockroaches".
"Oh god", Izzy thinks. "You absolute moron."
She hustles forward, nearly jogging the last few steps, and tries to catch Alessia's eye. "Actually, uh, not a cockroach," she says, voice pitched for the back row. "I meant—spider. Just a little one. Nothing to worry about!"
Alessia twitches, not just in surprise but in visceral disgust, as if the word itself crawled across her skin. She rounds on Isabella, eyes wide, lips pressed so tight they blanch white, and now Marigold observes the strangest thing: the iron-willed captain, the Iron Maiden of the Alpha team, visibly recoiling. He can almost see the waves of disgust ripple through her, a full-body shudder held barely in check by the force of her will.
Isabella realizes too late that she has only made it worse. Alessia is, if anything, more repelled by spiders than by cockroaches. She tries to salvage the moment: "I mean—not a spider, I mean—uh, maybe just a shadow? Or some lint? Nothing, really!"
The two women stare at each other, each waging a private war not to betray their embarrassment. At the periphery of their standoff stands Marigold, who for all his composure cannot help himself. He lets out a sound—a chuckle, slight but audible, the barest tickle of laughter behind the gold helmet.
The effect is instantaneous: both women turn to him, shocked, as if they have just witnessed a god blinking.
Marigold, caught in his own amusement, makes no effort to disguise it. "Forgive me," he says, voice warmer than it has ever been, "but I did not expect the two of you to be so… animated."
For a second, no one speaks. Then Alessia, regaining herself, spins on her heel and resumes her march, red-faced but rigid. Isabella, more mortified than before but relieved that Marigold is not angry, falls in beside him, eyes locked on the floor.
And in the shadow of the corridor, a lone maintenance bot scans the floor, searching for the phantom bug that started it all.
They walk like this, a little family of dysfunction, until Alessia recovers enough to turn the moment into a teachable one.
She does so with a voice of pure, cold lecture: "This HQ has been here for almost a year. Before that, there was nothing but a floating platform and a prayer. The Emergence had just started, and the old world was already dead. Some people—crazy ones, mostly—decided that waiting for rescue was suicide, so they pooled what they had and built this place. Rook & Pegasus, they called it. Rook for research. Pegasus for the fight."
She glances back, making sure Marigold is listening. "Right about now this the only safe heaven in Atlantic domain; Of course we do have other what we called as partners and some....ahhh are 'Associate'."
Isabella, still recovering, nods. "It's true. The original Rook division had five scientists and a dozen engineers. The rest were refugees, tech scavengers, anyone who could survive long enough to get here. Pegasus came later. The fighting wing."
Marigold absorbs all of this, his helmet angled so that it catches the blue light of the corridor. "And the Knights?" he asks.
Alessia shrugs. "If the records serve us well, the knight appear after Rook and Division. Before that, it was just us. The weirdos and the strays."
The silence that follows is heavier now, but not uncomfortable. It is the silence of people who have all, in their own way, lost everything.
Alessia brings them to a stop in front of a wide bulkhead, the sign above it stamped INFIRMARY in blocky letters.
She faces Marigold, her voice quieter but carrying more weight. "There. Now you know. At least one Knight can say they know what we do here."
Marigold inclines his head. "Thank you," he says, and there is a sincerity to it that seems to catch Alessia off-guard. "It is… reassuring. To know that someone else stands with us. And those people that sacrifice their life for this place will be remembered."
Alessia's eyes flicker, and for a moment, her face softens. Then she looks away, mumbling, "And what makes you so sure any of this will be remembered?"
He hears it, the words barely more than a whisper. But before he can reply, Isabella jumps in, buoying the moment with a forced cheer: "So, Marigold, let's see the infirmary! It's the second biggest department after R&D."
They move through the doors and into a new environment, this one alive with a different kind of tension: not the tension of defense, but of triage and healing. Isabella gives the running commentary, nerves now channelled into a recitation of trivia: "We started with only a handful of medical supplies. Most of it was scavenged from old hospitals, pharma caches. We got lucky with some of the early scout teams; they were the bravest people I've ever met."
Marigold is attentive. "The scouts teams?"
Alessia, at his side, answers with a dry smile. "Predecessor to the modern Pegasus Combat Division. The old teams didn't have armor or fancy weapons—just guts and a death wish." She nods to Isabella, whose eyes light up with pride.
Marigold continuer with another question, "Then what happened to them?"
Alessia, already halfway down the aisle, calls over her shoulder. "Most of them got folded into the Pegasus division. Some didn't make it. The job was… not kind to people."
Isabella sighs. "But the work they did made the difference. Now, with all the advances—bioprinters, proper triage, even real antibiotics—we can handle almost anything. Second to the Sky City, our infirmary is the best in the world. At least, that's what they tell me."
Marigold glances at her, and though the visor hides his eyes, Isabella feels the attention like a weight. "You know a lot," he says, and the compliment lands with the force of a benediction.
She stumbles, then beams. "It's my job to know," she says, but the words are flustered, the confidence more an afterthought than a shield.
He continues, "Many know things. Few seem to… adore them."
The words are simple, but for Isabella, they are the rarest of praise. She blushes again, then grins in spite of herself. "Thank you," she whispers, not quite trusting herself to say it aloud.
The three of them walk together, the friction between them lessened, a strange kind of peace settling in.
It is, for a moment, easy to forget that the world outside is ending.
🏵️🪻🌹
The infirmary is an ecosystem all its own: air sharp with antiseptic, every surface reflecting the cool white of the LED panels above, the undertone of human weariness blending with the sporadic alarms and the ever-present undertow of hurt. As soon as Marigold, Alessia, and Isabella pass the sliding doors, the world becomes a warren of movement—nurses in blue and green, assistants darting with trays of instruments, and the slow, stately drift of gurneys between curtained alcoves.
Isabella, in her element, pivots smartly to the right and gestures for Marigold to follow. They barely round the first corner before a young nurse bursts from a side corridor, arms overloaded with files and a portable diagnostics case. She collides with Isabella, momentum spinning both women into a clumsy embrace.
Marigold reacts instantly, a hand bracing Isabella's shoulder before the momentum can carry her down. The nurse's equipment explodes onto the floor—clipboards, paper, a glass ampule that shatters into a flurry of glittering shards. Isabella, for a split-second, finds herself clinging to the gold alloy of Marigold's forearm, her own arm trapped awkwardly against his chestplate.
There is a microsecond of silence—a tableau—before reality restarts.
"You—are you okay?" Marigold's voice is soft, concerned.
Isabella, stunned, feels the heat climbing her neck, flooding her cheeks. For a moment, she is lost: the gold of the armor, the way her palm fits the groove between elbow and bicep, the ghost of a heartbeat beneath the alloy. Her thoughts spiral, for the first time since the Emergence, into a space not ruled by fear or necessity, but by the abrupt and uncontrollable sensation of being seen.
She lets go at once, untangling herself, stammering, "Yes—yes, I'm fine. Sorry, I just— I wasn't—" She cannot finish, and hates herself for it.
Marigold, unperturbed, bends to steady the nurse, who is so mortified she cannot meet anyone's eyes. "I am very sorry," the nurse mumbles, eyes locked on the floor, "I didn't see—"
"You didn't see because you were in too much of a hurry," snaps Alessia, who has crossed the few meters with alarming speed. Her tone is sharp enough to cut glass. "Be aware at all times. You could have seriously hurt someone."
The nurse bows her head further, mumbling apologies with the automatic cadence of someone who has done this a thousand times. Marigold, meanwhile, gathers up the scattered forms, his movements so precise and gentle that even Isabella, still unsteady from the moment before, is drawn to watch.
He hands the nurse her clipboard, a few sheafs of paper, and then, carefully, the diagnostic case. "Please, be careful," he says, not as a reprimand but as an encouragement. "There is no shame in slowing down. Even in a place like this. I know you in a hurry and I fully understand it."
The nurse looks up, just for a moment, and in that instant their eyes meet. She sees, through the helmet, the faint glimmer of what lies beneath: a pair of eyes, not blue as the legends always claimed, but a deep, strange red, as if the last light of dusk had bled into them. The effect is so arresting that for a second, she forgets to breathe.
"Thank you," she manages, voice so faint it barely registers.
"Layla!" A new voice, deeper, from behind the swinging door: a man in his early forties, hair trimmed to military neatness, lab coat worn like a badge. He approaches at a jog, kneels by the nurse, inspects her for injury. "Did you fall? Are you hurt?"
The nurse, emboldened, shakes her head. "No, Dr. Timothy. I'm fine. Really." She glances again at Marigold, then gathers her things and disappears, not without a final, whispered "thank you" to the knight.
Dr. Timothy watches her go with mild surprise on his face. "Never thought I'd see her smile. She's new here, still finding her feet." He shakes his head, and turns his attention to the trio.
"Ah, Isabella! And Captain Gwinn. Fancy seeing you two here." He takes in Marigold with a clinical, almost reverent curiosity. "And you must be the Golden Knight. An honor, truly." He bows, not deep, but with enough sincerity to be unmistakable.
Marigold inclines his head. "The honor is mine, Doctor. You tend to the wounded; I only cause more work for you."
Timothy laughs, a short bark. "Not at all. You do the impossible, and the rest of us play catch-up. It's a noble arrangement." He extends a hand, and Marigold—after only a moment's hesitation—accepts, the gesture solid and mutual.
Alessia, now less annoyed, shakes her head. "I'd have thought you'd be in surgery this early."
"I was," Timothy says, waving a hand at a distant operating theater. "Six hours ago. Now I'm on rounds, then back to paperwork." He flexes his fingers, revealing a lattice of old scars crisscrossing the knuckles. "It's less messy than the field, but it wears you down."
Isabella, finally herself again, grins. "Timothy here is the closest thing we have to a miracle worker. Most of the kids in the orphan wing owe their lives to him."
Marigold studies the man. "That is… admirable."
Timothy's smile turns rueful. "Not compared to you, sir. The things I've heard—what you Knights do in the field—sometimes I wonder if my work means anything at all. Compared to that."
A hush falls, the words striking Isabella and Alessia both. For a moment, even the rhythm of the infirmary seems to hesitate.
Marigold breaks the silence. "You are wrong," he says, quietly but with the resonance of authority. "Galahad told me once: 'To always look at everyone as the same level as you. Never look at them from the up, this way you will understand their sacrifice and struggle', that's what he says to me."
The words ripple through the corridor; heads turn, conversations pause, even the hum of the monitors seems to soften in their wake.
Timothy, surprised, lets out a slow breath. "I see. Well, thank you, Knight Marigold." He gestures at the open ward. "Would you like the full tour? We don't get many legends around here."
Marigold nods. "I would be honored."
The next few minutes are a blur of glass doors and plastic sheeting, recovery bays and high-tech diagnostic beds, the low thrum of a medical 3D printer working overtime in a corner. Timothy narrates with pride, pointing out innovations and the names of nurses or techs responsible for particular breakthroughs. All the while, Marigold listens, sometimes asking questions, always giving the staff his full, undivided attention.
Isabella floats at his side, occasionally chiming in with administrative trivia or a wry aside, but mostly content to observe. She notes, with growing respect, the way Marigold adapts to the environment—not as a superior, but as a guest, careful not to intrude, never dominating the space.
Alessia lags, her mind working in the background, replaying the exchange with Timothy and the echo of Marigold's words. She feels something shift, a tectonic slide in the architecture of her grudge. The logic of resentment gives way, for a moment, to something softer, and it unsettles her.
The tour concludes at the main lobby, a wide expanse of old-world marble patched with newer materials, where the natural light of morning breaks through the reinforced ceiling. Timothy stops there, hands in his pockets. "Thank you for indulging me," he says. "Most of our guests are in too much of a hurry to notice the details."
Marigold bows. "The details are the heart. Thank you."
Isabella bows slightly. "It really was a great tour. Even for us 'veterans.'"
Timothy chuckles, but as they turn to go, he lifts a hand, stopping Marigold in his tracks.
"Wait," he says, his tone changed. "Before you go—I wanted to ask. How is he doing?"
Marigold tilts his head, uncertain. "He?"
Timothy looks down at his hands, fingers flexing as if bracing against something. "Galahad. I know he's out there somewhere, just never hear much anymore."
There is a beat—a subtle shift in air pressure, as if the world holds its breath.
Marigold processes this. He hadn't considered that the bonds forged in disaster stretched so far, or that their echoes lingered in every quiet corner. "He's doing the best he can," Marigold says, careful. "Tired, like the rest of us. But still fighting. Still trying to save everyone."
Timothy nods, a faint, melancholy smile on his lips. "Yeah. That sounds like him."
He doesn't elaborate, but the way he turns the words over makes it clear: there is a history here, long and tangled, written in scars that never quite fade.
As they turn to go, Timothy catches Alessia's arm. "And Captain. Don't forget, this is your chance. Change is not weakness. It's adaptation."
Alessia gives him a glare sharp enough to draw blood, but does not pull away.
Timothy smiles, releasing her. "Just a thought. For the road."
The trio leaves the infirmary behind, Isabella in the lead, Marigold at her shoulder, Alessia trailing by a step. They walk in silence, but for the first time, it is not the silence of walls, but the silence of a world that has let in a little bit of hope.
Back at the threshold, Timothy stands for a while, watching the spot where the knight had stood. He rubs his scarred hands together, thinking of old friends.
Under his breath, he says, "I cannot believe I be hearing those words again but this time it's the different person who tell me that. I hope you are doing well, Luke"