Thanks dulcetbrevity and Chloe, for improving both my words and me :)

Dedication: to Takeshi Kusao, for nearly 20 years of Ky Kiske. May there be many more!


Justice's shadows fall before Dizzy as they would for no man. She hangs fearless in the storm, and even the darkness cannot take away the brightness of her favourite yellow ribbons.

Time stops for just a moment.

He falls in love with her all over again, for a thousandth time.

His blood is cold and sticky on him, and yet he barely seems to feel it at all. Dizzy is shining with the storm, spreading an imperious arm with the protective, serene fury of someone who knows right from wrong, all the shades in-between, and how to keep things and people from falling off the wrong end. He could only wish he has that kind of fire in his soul.

Some of his old Order colleagues have always joked that he must have been born in a thunderstorm, or that he has lightning running in his veins instead of blood. They only say that, because they do not know Dizzy.

He feels very ordinary looking up at her; very small, very warm and protected. The timeless vows a million people have made before him - 'I would die for her, I would live for him, I would kill for them, I would suffer a thousand lifetimes' - all fall true and yet trite before all that is Dizzy.

How could he ever have doubted them for this?

He loves her, honestly and whole-heartedly; her and their son before himself, always, gladly, willingly - Dizzy has single-handedly, effortlessly erased the limitations of his flawed human heart. If he has ever thought of himself a good person before meeting her - it is all a lie, and how can the truth and love they've since found together be sin?

God makes no mistakes; Dizzy might not think herself a child of God, but the truth lies in Dizzy herself, clear as dawn. Her soul shimmers for all to see, surely kinder, stronger and far more beautiful than that of this so-called paragon of Illyria - he has only ever doubted its existence because he has been ignorant, blind and arrogant, like a newborn yet to know that Sunday exists. Dizzy has once asked him to help her navigate the world; it is instead him who's had to relearn everything, left belatedly running after her realisations unclouded by human hubris.

And Sin - brave, kind, honest Sin - someone like that could not have come out of a redemptionless union. No, he and Dizzy were meant to be: born human and born Gear, protecting and teaching and loving each other; they are the first real gentleness and safety in each other's lives, working together for the better of all -

He and Dizzy are right, and anyone who can't accept her after this is wrong. He's had enough of the secrecy and the lies anyway. He has never lied to God, and God alone judges him. Dizzy has once said being Dizzy Kiske would be lovely; for everything else that he cannot give her, this alone he wants to make possible for her. He has been hers from the start, papers or not, human or not, King or not - just as he is a faithful child of God, no matter how long he spent on the battlefield trying to keep people alive instead of being at church.

Everything that she so deserves, he wants her to have and more - freedom, dignity, reverence, safety and happiness, and all the precious trivialities like a thousand more picnics in the sun, a wedding ring to do her justice, and -

His lips are still tingling from where he has pressed them into her hair. He physically aches for an instant, the phantom memory of holding her in his arms so strong, as if he has never let her go at all; and his back still feels warm from where she has held him tight -

ten thousand kisses in hopeful sunrises for her, and then twelve thousand more in shining summer rain. He'd keep her safe and happy until they are both ash, and reunite for eternity where the rain grows.

Only truth, and love, from now on.

A blinding flash of lightning; the world turns white. He leaves the skies in her hands; he has his own job to do. He whips away from the open window. The rain chases his back, and he runs to meet their future.

May this oncoming storm save them all - the heavens above, Dizzy in the sky, and what lightning he has left in his veins. Their son lying in wait, Sol still watching fearlessly from that tower, everyone else in this with them - God deliver them all.

Onward, forward, by grace, together with rising force - no more lies, no more hatred, no more despair. No more, no more...

He is soaked through and through with innocent blood, filthy lies and contaminated rain; and yet if all he has now within is truthful love that he finally can choose to no longer hide -

At this blessed stage, is there a need for any more fighting words? For them both, for them all - 'Ah. That might make a good wedding vow…'

- the last piece falls into perfect place, shining like stained glass.

He has never felt cleaner in his life, nor been more courageous.


Shout-out: the incomparable "Holy Orders (Be Just or Be Dead)" from the GG OSTs, and Helloween's "Where the Rain Grows", which influenced aforementioned track.