And the Clock Struck Twelve: Perfect Version

Chapter One: You Get What You Give

That night in Tataroo Valley was a windy one. The flowers danced and bowed almost in time with the distant swell of the ocean beyond the cliffs and the brilliant moon even made an appearance, hanging high in the sky like the centerpiece jewel of a vast celestial crown. To the superstitious, the sudden appearance of the moon where recently only foreboding grey clouds had filled the sky might have seemed a sign that something important was about to occur. However, two years of constant disappointment had forced Natalia to lay aside her wishful thinking for a far more adult-like stoicism. She suspected that the others had also reached a similar conclusion just earlier than she. All except Tear at any rate.

Tear made the trip to the valley every night religiously. She walked the same path, perched on the same rock and watched the horizon with the same hopeful eyes for two years without fail.

In those first dreadful days after the fall of Eldrant when grief and hope warred equally within them, the others had joined her in her vigil as well, but as the rest of the world slowly crept back up on them, they each had to make a choice.

Jade was the first to leave. Being older and more experienced he held plenty of insight into the stages of grieving, and though he never would have admitted it, the lack of his usual sarcasm indicated quite clearly that something was amiss. He understood in a way that the rest of them only would later that the world did not stop for one person's grief and that he would eventually have to move forward with it.

Anise was next, not in so much as she followed Jade's example as that she had her own pressing matters to attend to. After the rebellion of the Oracle Knights and the death of the Fon Master, the Order of Lorelei lay in shambles. Anise knew that she wasn't Ion, and she knew that picking up the pieces of an organization shattered by lies and betrayal was a monumental task even for the best among them, but the Order was her home, the only one she had ever known, and she wasn't going to let it go without a fight. But to keep hold of it, she also knew she would have to let go elsewhere.

Natalia stayed as long as she could. Weeks turned into months, and it was nearly a year before she made her decision. Kimlasca had its own mess to deal with. Even without the chaos caused by the lowering of the land, the kingdom had been in a bad situation because of its war against Malkuth. The outbreak of the conflict had not just been sudden but poorly planned. For all the years that Kimlasca spent staring Malkuth down, they had done relatively little preparation for the inevitable war, instead relying on the Score to miraculously grant them victory. Now the majority of the population lay decimated with all but the sickest civilians having been drafted to serve their kingdom. As such, Kimlasca found itself in the utterly undesirable position of being nearly dependent on their former enemy for basic necessities such as food and medicine, and the situation was only being compounded by the waning of the Planet Storm.

Eventually, Natalia reached a point where she could no longer look away from the situation before her. She had spent a great deal of time on her own grief. As much as she had lost, she could not let her people suffer for that.

She had returned to Baticul with as much haste as possible, not wanting to give herself time to second guess her decision. She threw herself into the peace talks with Malkuth which had stalled as the foolish nobles who had been sent to the table had wrongly sought to extract concessions from Malkuth instead of making parley with them.

It was at this time that she ran into Jade again. Though more of a soldier than a negotiator, he was the Emperor's steadfast confidante and could be counted on to keep Malkuth nobles in check simply by his presence. As such, even with the shift in Kimlasca's position, negotiations were an uphill battle that lasted well into the next year. Before she knew it, she had lost touch with nearly all the others save the Colonel whom she saw on a near daily basis.