Pirate Radio

Epilogue(Only the Good Die Young - Billy Joel)

A couple of years later and Nina was working as a bartender in what had once been the cultural capital of the basque country. She liked it there, it was cold and wet and nothing like the south of France which helped her repress the memories of what had been the best time of her life.

The city was located at the sea which was almost reason enough for Nina to find some place else but she eventually learned not to flinch every time she saw the water, she even started to take comfort in it, taking daily walks along the beach looking out, watching the sunset. The way the sky lit up in oranges and reds reminded her of the fire that had burned off the coast of France after she'd set the two boats, her friends had lived on, aflame. It was all she could think to do before grabbing the cat and swimming to shore.

She could have stayed, burned with them, or let herself serum to fatigue and drowned on her way to safety but she was stronger then that. She wasn't going to let the people, who had killed her friends, win, not completely. And the thought of Calvin begging for her life was enough to make sure she lived it.

Some nights, when she'd had a particularly bad nightmare and feared what might happen if she went back to sleep, Nina wondered if what she had done had been fair. She couldn't possibly know all of her friends preferences were their remains where concerned and worried that she might have disrespected some of them by letting them burn. Not to mention that the whole thing felt wrong, unfair. Didn't her friends deserve funerals worthy of heroes? Weren't they worth more then having their remains swallowed by the sea, lost and forgotten? But there was little else she could have done, and letting their corpses rot in the sun was undoubtably a worse fate.

Considering the circumstances she thought her friends would have been okay with what she had to do. In the end her only regret was not being able to give Dante the same Viking funeral she'd given the others.

At the pub in which she worked Nina met a girl. Sophia. Together they served tapas and the few non alcoholic beverages that didn't count as an offence. They became fast friends and then roommates who shared nearly everything, including the care and responsibility of the cat and Nina's infant boy, Arthur.

Although Nina had scorned her pregnancy and hated her unborn child for being a constant reminder of what she had lost, she couldn't bear to give the baby away once he was born. He had been so little and helpless and 50% Heth, how could she do anything but fall in love with the child? 'The child' whom she called as such for months before settling on a name. Nothing felt quite right. She couldn't call him Heth out of respect for Calvin and she couldn't call him Calvin out of respect for Heth. All the rest of the Knights names where considered but to honour only a single one of them seamed unfair and honouring all of them at once would have been unfair to the child who would have surely been bullied if he were to have 8 names. In the end she decided to name him Arthur after she'd stumbled across an old, tattered copy of 'the King Arthur Trilogy' in a secret book shop that was hidden away some dodgy ally.

It felt like the perfect way to acknowledge and respect their little rebellion with out ever putting her kid in danger. He would be the history that she feared would otherwise be forgotten.

Nina must have been difficult to live with, keeping secrets, waking up in the middle of the night screaming, regularly suffering panic attacks and sometimes locking herself away for multiple days at a time but Sophia stuck with her though it all. She even held Nina's hand while she got the word 'Camelot' tattooed around the scar left by the one bullet that hadn't missed her.

It was almost the three year anniversary of the tragedy when John and Madelyn found her.

Madelyn had changed much since Nina had last seen her. There was no more trace of pink in her hair, and the tattered jeans she wore looked not even slightly out of place. There was a time when anything but a dress on Madeline would have been reason to believe she was an evil clone.

Her once soft beauty had been replaced with a strong and fierce one that almost made Nina tremble. It was clear then that Nina had not been the only one to suffer the loss of her friends. Even John was changed, no longer awkward and trailing behind Madeline like a puppy in love but standing along side her, shoulders tense, jaw firmly locked, like a man on a mission. A mission to make someone pay.

"You've made a nice little life here for yourself." Madelyn said, sitting on Nina and Sophia's couch. "I almost feel bad about what we're hear to ask you."

"Mate, just tell me." It wasn't like Madelyn could possibly say anything to her that would be worse then what she'd already experience. Her and John where alive and well. Everyone else she cared about was dead or trapped across the sea. What news could possibly be so bad?

Madelyn explained that her and John had spent the last three years recruiting their former listeners, using the death of their friends as inspiration.

"Recruiting for what?"

"A revolution. We've come to find you because we need a leader."

"We had a leader." Nina reminded them. "He's dead."

"Nina, we've got over 1000 people waiting to follow you."

It took some convincing but eventually Nina agreed to join them back to Paris where Anika would be waiting alongside all the people that where willing to stand up and fight.

"This might end in our deaths."

"A fact we've know since the day we stepped onto those boats."