Life was good, Raven decided. The smell of clouds, the creak of the Fierta, Judith's midriff... so many things to live for. Closing his eyes and breathing in deeply, he leaned his elbows on the railings of the ship as it glided through the sky. Ba'ul rumbled above the rigging, the vibrations humming up the archer's arms.

"Couldn'a said it better myself," Raven agreed. Beside him, slouched lazily on a stack of crates, Yuri stretched and yawned. Repede was sleeping near his left foot.

"How much further to Capua Torim?" the swordsman asked. Brave Vesperia was running another of its many, many delivery jobs for the empire's reconstructions efforts, but was hard to see the landmarks from this high. Ba'ul rumbled again.

"About fifteen minutes," Judith called in translation from her perch up the past. Opening his eyes and tilting his head back, Raven caught a glimpse of the underside of her thighs. Yes, life was very good. She caught him ogling and winked. He grinned back, and then lowered his gaze to the horizon again. Judith had a way of making a wink look like an invitation and a death threat all at once. And Raven wasn't quite brave enough to find out which she actually meant.

"At least Kaufman's not going to be there," Yuri said, his blatant relief rather poorly hidden beneath an affected drawl. Boy wasn't too good at handling nervousness and his coping techniques definitely needed work. There were better ways to go about it than imitating a certain old man. The old man knew.

"Think the genius mage even remembers we're comin'?" Raven asked, popping his spine as he straightened off the railing.

"Estelle sent a letter a few days ago," Yuri said with a shrug, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. Rita was part of the delivery to Zaphias; she'd finally been lured away from the dark confines of her laboratory - seriously, who stayed inside when they were at Capua Torim? - by the promise of the attention of the empire's greatest engineers for the next few months. But... that agreement had been reached with her waist-deep in mana conversion research, so the odds of her actually recalling anything outside of spirits and the complete reordering of life systems were pretty slim.

"It is possible that she could have forgotten," Judith said, flipping gently down from the rigging and coming to stand beside Raven. "Don't startle her when you go get her."

"Me?" Raven wasn't proud of the way his voice cracked on the word. Repede lifted his head up from his paws and huffed disapprovingly. "Why do I gotta be the one to go get her? She's still gunnin' for blood after that whole bath fiasco."

Yuri smirked. Of course, he'd been glum for weeks and suddenly decides to find joy in Raven's pain.

It wasn't fair. It had been an accident. Really, truly, honestly. A really bad case of the stupids and a missed sign nearly leading to having his everything blown off. Barely three weeks ago. She'd likely planned a dozen different demises for him by now, all in slow, excruciating detail.

And just when he'd decided life was worth living. Damn it.

"Why can't you be the one ta get her?" Raven turned to Judith, trying to keep from whining. And failing.

"I need to be here to translate for Ba'ul," the Krytian woman said, smiling prettily, as if the idea of his imminent demise were funny. Tokunaga laughed out loud. Come on, it wasn't like he was doing anything else when Ba'ul went flying around.

Yuri didn't even wait for Raven to try to appeal to him. He raised a halting hand without even opening his eyes.

"I'm going to be busy loading up the equipment for the capital," he said. "Wouldn't want you to throw your back out, old man."

"It will also give you a chance to apologize," Judith chimed in, her hands tucked serenely behind her back.

Seriously, she had to be trying to get him killed. Maybe she wasn't really as okay with his flirting as she made it seem. Maybe she was trying to off him or something. Really? He could take a hint. She could just ask, instead of murdering him through neglect.

It had been an accident! He hadn't seen anything. He had been the one being wronged anyway. Why was everyone ganging up on him?

"Besides, we really wouldn't want you to hurt yourself with heavy lifting." Her smile was practically devious. Suckered in by a pretty face again. He should become something other than a chest-man. Go for something less obvious. Like ears. Or hair.

He eyed Yuri and his waves of black.

Raven shuddered.

Maybe not. Eyes. Yeah, eyes were good. Had to get close to see them, which put other things in the line of sight too.

Oh yeah, impending death. It wasn't even like he could try to sneak off when they landed. They'd leave him. They'd definitely leave him, and he didn't want to walk all the way to Zaphias on his own. He got lonesome every once in a while now. And for the first time in his life, it was okay to admit that to himself.

But still... death by fireball. He sighed heavily and cupped his chin in his hands. Might as well enjoy his last few minutes. Too bad Judith was out of his line of sight when he leaned forward like this. At least the sky was pretty today.

Ba'ul let out a trill, like laughter. Great, even the entelexia wanted him dead.

The landing was uneventful and the stream of workers carrying crates orderly. No chance to sneak away in any kind of confusion. Besides, Judith met his eye and wagged a finger at him.

"Keep an eye on him, Repede," she said, before turning and letting out a bark of unnervingly sharp orders down the gangplank. Repede turned a skeptical look on Raven.

Well, it wasn't as if he'd never died before. Raven hunched his shoulders and slunk across the network of decks, Repede trotting alongside him.

"We won't be long," Judith called after him, as if she were reassuring him. "Ten minutes. Go get Rita and we'll meet you back here, okay?" She gave him her sunniest smile, the one that made even Karol go weak at the knees.

Well, she didn't seem to think he was going to die all that immediately. So it was to be slow and painful?

The walk down the row to the Mordio lair was long and bustling with people who didn't care one way or the other if he was going to be mashed into tiny pieces, no matter how friendly their smiles. The door was locked and no one answered as he knocked; first timidly, then progressing all the way up to loud banging. Nothing.

Judith wouldn't accept that nobody was home. And Rita was known for her heavy sleeping. Casting a glance behind himself, Raven slipped his lockpick set out of an inner pocket. Repede looked unimpressed, but turned and sat down to stand guard as Raven set to work on the keyhole. The locks were better this time. She'd learned a lesson about home security, but it had been a long time since Raven had met a lock he couldn't conquer.

She was going to kill him.

The door squealed as it swung open and he flinched, half-expecting Rita to be standing just inside in all her fiery glory.

Nothing.

"Rita, darlin'?" he called cautiously, poking his head into the dark house. Seriously, the girl had shuttered every window. "It's just ol' Raven."

Nothing. Repede huffed and lay down on the warm bricks of the stairs outside, leaving Raven to enter the dragon's lair alone.

There was a light up in the loft. He set a hand on one of the bottom ladder rungs.

"Rita?"

Nothing still. He climbed up slowly. And froze at the top.

She was there, hunched over a contraption hooked to a multitude of clamps and sparking ominously. He could just see the twisted wires over her shoulder, past her knees that were drawn up nearly to her ears, with her feet propped up on the desk.

"That's no way for a lady ta be sittin'," Raven called out, most of his body still safely below the floor of the loft and his muscles tensed for any quick ducking.

"Since when have I cared about that?" she snorted, but that was it. She didn't turn to face him, just bent a mass of wire together deftly. No declarations of vengeance or ominous chanting. Raven ventured up to his chest.

"Took you long enough. I was beginning to get annoyed with your yelling. What're you doing here, old man?" she asked, still not looking back. She had her goggles down, he could see now, and she leaned forward on her stool. The back of her hair was sticking up, like she hadn't brushed it in a while.

"We're here ta pick ya up for Zaphias. C'mon, Rita, did ya even get Estelle's letter?"

"Of course I got it." That got her to turn around, her eyes huge behind the goggles. She always was affronted when her friendship with Estelle was called into question. "I just forgot it was today, all right?"

"Well, Judy's got Ba'ul outside now and she gave me ten minutes to come and get ya, but it's less than that now because it took me so long on your locks."

He waited for her to rise to the bait. She shrugged, then immediately snatched the delicate mass of wires from the clamps and crammed it into a leather bag laying haphazardly under her stool.

"Here, help me with this," she snapped, not unkindly, as she continued to pack the bag with one hand and shoved a toolbox at him with the other. Raven tilted at the weight, unexpectedly heavy.

"What have ya got in here, bricks?" How had she picked this up? Genius mage or no, she was a skinny little girl.

Why wasn't he dead?

"It's my wrench kit. The ones in the castle are never the right sizes." Rita was halfway under the table, shoving boxes out with her elbows and feet.

Still nothing about the baths. Or her door for that matter.

He was going to regret this. But this was going to kill him if she wasn't.

"Hey, Rita?" He staggered a little as she shoved a bag nearly as heavy as the toolbox into his hands. "I, uh, I just wanted ta let ya know that I was sorry."

She scoffed.

"Whatever, old man. I've gotten used to you guys breaking into my house by now." She shoved her goggles back and slung a strap over her shoulder.

Raven blinked.

"Wait, what? No!" He fumbled to catch another box thrust in his direction. Hadn't this girl packed at all? "That wasn't... You shouldn't be okay with people breakin' into your house. Cute girl living alone?"

"I can take care of myself," she said, incredibly bossy even as she rummaged through what looked like a sock drawer. "And like I said, between you and Karol, I'm used to it."

"That's weird, Rita girl. And really unsafe. Ya could be, I dunno, changing or somethin'."

"Think about it next time you break in then, you dirty pervert."

They'd been talking for over a minute and she hadn't hit him yet. Raven was pretty sure he was going to faint. His heart could only take so much stress.

"Come on," she said, suddenly bashing into his elbow with a second pack she had slung over her shoulder as she passed by him. "I really don't want to walk all the way to Zaphias if they leave us behind."

"Yes ma'am." This, they could agree on. "But that wasn't what I was sayin' sorry about." She was down the ladder already and he had to call after her. She barely looked up at him, instead picking an amazingly sure way around the stacks of books on the ground floor.

"What else did you do?" Finally, a hint of suspicion. It was reassuring even as it sent cold sweat down Raven's neck. Judy and Yuri would come looking for his body if he didn't come back, right?

"Uh, remember a few weeks ago when we were all at the baths?"

Her forehead wrinkled for a moment in recollection as she turned back to him.

"Yeah?"

It had been Nan's fourteenth birthday, Karol's idea to take her to the baths as a present, and Raven's idea to follow along and watch for a good laugh. Rita had just tagged along to make sure nobody got hurt. Or so she claimed. She'd sit in that water all day if no one dragged her out.

"I, uh, I'm sorry, y'know, about that... incident." Come on, old man, pull it together. You took out Alexei, you can handle one skinny teenage girl.

"Incident?"

Gah, the girl could out-freeze the Blade Drifts. He was shocked it was taking her this long to remember; she'd certainly chewed him out loud enough when he'd shown up wearing absolutely nothing in the girl's bath because the place was a damn maze. Really, if he'd done it on purpose, there would have been more than a beanpole of a sixteen year-old in the water. As it was, there wasn't time to explain before fire flew and Raven had decided that he'd wish Nan a happy birthday some other time. It had been lonely travelling back that time too.

"I didn't mean to, y'know, traumatize you or nothin'."

Her forehead cleared as realization dawned. Raven flinched. But Rita just scoffed and turned away.

"Please. It's not like you're the first man I'd ever seen naked. It'd take a bit more than your wrinkled old bits to scar me."

And just like that, she was rummaging through a trunk, leaving him stranded at the top of the ladder with his burdens. Raven tried to remember how one went about not choking on one's own throat.

"Wh-whoa, wait, what? Rita girl, I'm appalled. Utterly scandalized. I had no idea you were that kinda girl."

"What kind of girl?" She looked back at him, all irritated innocence.

"Far be it from me ta judge, but really-"

"S-shut up," she barked, understanding finally dawning and bringing with it a positively luminescent blush. "I dissected a few bodies during research on the effects of aer exposure, okay?"

Memories of scalpels, ice and hard, hard tables skittered through Raven's brain. He shoved them aside along with several stacks of books as he tried to make his way down the ladder with all the stuff hanging off him.

"Whatever you say," he said, going for condescending acquiescence in lieu of mindless panic.

She threw a book at him. Gently. Her arm was somewhat encumbered. But that made everything okay.

"Really," she huffed. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

He realized that he wasn't going to die.

"They let you cut up naked dead men?" he sputtered. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen. Three days after my birthday, actually." She smiled, fondly, as if it had been the greatest birthday gift she'd ever been given. "Normally, you have to wait two years for the approval of the grants, but I got it in one."

"You waited a year to cut up naked dead men?" Raven wasn't sure which was worse; his moral outrage or the flitting memories of bones sticking out of places they shouldn't.

"How else was I supposed to learn?" She slung yet another bag across her shoulders - she had at least three now, and it looked as though they collectively weighed more than she did - and straightened distractedly. "It was important research. You can't substitute the real thing."

So cheerfully oblivious. It bothered him.

She turned stern eyes on him then, snapping him out of any foggy thoughts.

"Well, are you just going to stay up there? I'm not going to wait for you." He was still stuck at the top of the ladder, not able to climb down with any of the boxes he had clutched to his hips.

"Forgive an old man his frailty, Rita darlin'."

She growled, but shucked off her bags and stalked to the bottom of the ladder.

"C'mon, before Judy leaves us behind." She lifted her arms and caught the first box of many that he lowered down.

Fifteen minutes to the dot from when Raven had left the boat, they were shambling back aboard. Rita had packed light in her whirlwind of activity... at least when it came to clothes and whatnot. Raven was pretty sure that she'd brought the equivalent of a small tool shed with her otherwise. And it was heavy. Really heavy. He was getting more of a workout lugging her kit than he would have loading the Fierta with the generator parts they were hauling. He would be sure to let Judy know. Heartless girl. Yuri was probably going to think it was funny too.

"Where's the squirt?" Rita asked, rotating her shoulders after she dumped her burden in an untidy pile on the ship deck. Raven was a bit more careful in setting his load down, afraid of her retaliation otherwise. Repede sniffed at the pile with cursory interest, then wandered back to Yuri's side, satisfied with his level of involvement.

"Cap'n's in Dahngrest with Flynn, being all 'tour guide'," Yuri told her as he yanked the last strap tight on a stack of crates. A small halo of relocated mages hovered nervously around him, wringing their hands pointedly at the "fragile" painted along the sides. Rita had already wandered over, bossy hands on hips.

"You're sure that's everything?" she demanded of the head workman. "Because I don't want to find out when I get to Zaphias that some idiot forgot the reduction coils."

"N-no. I mean, yes. Yes, that's everything." The poor man stammered. Raven felt his pain.

"All right then!" he called, drawing Rita's attention away for the brief second it took the other man to scurry down the gangplank. "All aboard!"

Rita barely seemed to notice her sudden lack of target. She shrugged and went to sort through the pile of boxes and duffels she'd brought with her.

"Wow, Rita. Planning on supplying the entire city reconstruction?" Yuri teased, going to crouch beside her and gingerly extracting a delicate hammer from where it had spilled from a box.

"Shut up. Last time I went to Zaphias, I had to make do with the stuff the blacksmith had in the back of his shop. It was barbaric!"

Raven let the bickering continue behind him as he leaned on the railing again, watching the ground drop smoothly away as Ba'ul lifted up.

"Did you apologize?" Judy asked, coming up beside him.

"Yeah."

"And you still seem to be in one piece."

"No thanks ta you, Judy dear."

"She's grown up a little in the past few months."

"Not too disappointed by the lack of violence, I hope?"

She smiled at him, serenely, betraying nothing. What he wouldn't give for a poker face like that.

At least he wasn't dead.

o-o-o

The two month anniversary of the fall of the Adephagos was coming up. Yuri apparently wasn't allowed to forget that.

"So are you all ready for the big party?" Tokunaga asked, lounging against the helm. Rita, of course, was taken aback.

"What party?"

"The empire's making up a new holiday," Yuri told her, eyes closed and arms tucked behind his head. "'Spirit Day' or 'Mana Day'. Something like that. They're making us heroes or something. Honestly, Rita, do you even read the stuff Estelle sends you?"

The old man chuckled as Rita sputtered something about being busy and demanded to know why no one had told her about this. At least they sort of found it funny. It just irritated Yuri. Zaphias itself was still cleaning up two months later, and while reconstruction was going well, this wasn't a time to just be throwing parties. They hadn't even found out about Rita's birthday until it was past. There were still people in need out there, she had said when Estelle had demanded they celebrate.

"Are you going, Yuri?" Judy asked while in the background there was the familiar sound of Raven's pain after he had said something stupid and Rita had hit him. Yuri shrugged.

"Estelle asked if you were," the Krytian continued. Yuri opened his eyes and saw her staring meaningfully at him. He sighed and closed his eyes again.

"The Lower Quarter is throwin' a bash too, if it makes ya feel any better," Raven interjected, his voice coming nearer, presumably to escape from Rita. "Hank was tellin' me about it last time I was in town. Think about it this way, kid, it's a good morale boost fer everyone."

"It's stupid, that's what it is," Rita said somewhere across the deck. Old man was lucky she hadn't chased him, even if he was still in range. Yuri opened his eyes to judge whether he was in line of any future fire. "It's not like we did anything special."

"Nothing special?" Raven's voice cracked in indignation and his accent slipped for a second. "Excuse me, genius mage, but what I did was damn incredible!" And then he was right back to posing dramatically, in what he probably thought was a heroic stance. He looked sort of like a thoughtful duck.

"It was either do all that or everyone died," Yuri growled. "No one else was doing anything."

"Which is why we're the ones becoming heroes," Raven articulated, as if Yuri was an idiot. "I dunno about you, but ol' Raven's going to enjoy himself for one night. I can't even hitch a ride without having to do work."

"Mmm, indeed," Judy said, humming to herself a little. "I'd like to have a night of rest and relaxation." Being the fastest mode of transportation for hire was beginning to wear a little with how often they were making trips.

"There won't be anything for you to kill there," Yuri told her, finally letting one side of his mouth quirk up. She smiled at him, more in response to his own smile than any sort of bad joke he might have been making.

"I don't know about that," she sing-songed gently. Yuri thought of a few particular nobles he'd had to meet with recently and who Estelle, who never said anything bad about anyone, had horror stories about. His smile grew wider.

"There ya go," Raven said, smiling softly himself. "Everyone will be back on the job with their hangovers the next day, ready to keep working. Ya just gotta accept your medal and figure out a way to get out of it next year."

"Plus, it'll make Estelle happy," Rita added, in a voice that made it clear what she would do if Estelle were ever made anything but happy.

"Okay, okay, I'll go to this party," Yuri surrendered, letting his eyes close again. "But only if they make sure to give Ba'ul a medal too."

Judy chuckled and Ba'ul hummed overhead.


A/N: And thus begins my first attempt at a legit multi-chaptered fanfic, rather than some sort of one-shot or collection. I've done multi-chap original, but fanfic... This is scary for some reason.

No promises on update frequency right now, seeing as how a) school is in session and thus butt is being kicked and b) NaNo is coming up and I'll likely drop off the radar for that entire month. But here you go. This is happening. Revel in some slow-burn Rita/Raven goodness!

EDIT: 10/13/11 - Just doing a quick edit because the lovely Lupanari pointed out my stupid mistake of forgetting Aspio was totally destroyed in-game. So yeah, that's been fixed. There might be some of this sort of thing.