The rough wind had stopped blowing outside. Heavy rain was pouring over the city. Annie could smell the earthly aroma of wet dirt from the soaking pavement and wood of the temple walls and floors. The only sound disrupting the empty calm silence was the monotonic rumble of the rain, drowning everything else under it. The day also got darker. If she hadn't known better, Annie could have thought that it was late evening already. Her yellow glowing eye glared through the rain, but she couldn't even see the other side of the temple courtyard, not to mention a figure that would resemble her runaway friend.

As she fixed the jacket on herself, Annie looked all around to catch a trace of Gabrielle. The downpour made her effort useless however, and she didn't know where to begin her search. This rain would have soaked Gabrielle completely already, and she didn't even have her coat on. Annie didn't think that she would have been so desperate to get away from here, that she'd run out in random. But then again, she was in a state of mind, where her actions could have had become quite unpredictable. Where ever she had gone, Annie hoped that she wouldn't need to get wet herself.

Standing still in front of the doorway, hands deep in her coat pockets, she watched how the rain water gathered and flowed like a river to under the temple, that was raised about half a meter up from the ground. Stairs of three wooden steps came up to the porch, and seeing how the rain beat their surfaces with force, walking them down didn't feel like a tempting thought for her right now. She wanted more information before running aimlessly into the open.

"Viki," Annie called.

"Yes, ma'am?" A computer generated, soft and delicate female voice responded inside her ear.

"Track Gabe for me, please."

"She seems to be inside the building, with you."

"She's not. I saw her coming out."

"Then, she must be in the vicinity of the building."

"Show me, on a map."

A holographic map, that only Annie could see in her cybernetic eye, appeared in front of her. Zooming in fast, it became a map of the immediate area around them, drawn out in lines of the same color of yellow that her eye emitted. Closing in to their location, it turned into a three dimensional rendering of the temple and its courtyard, with all the surrounding trees and cars in the parking lot. A lot of vehicles were parked in the lot, and few more around the courtyard it showed. Two red icons blinked steadily inside the model of the temple.

"Accuracy in a dense city area is one block radius." VIKI specified for Annie.

"Right," she said, a bit frustrated with the fact that modern technology couldn't aid her more than that. "That'll do."

"At your service, ma'am."

She looked around for more clues about Gabrielle's whereabouts. Next to the doors stood two monks, guarding the ceremony taking place inside. Under their wide straw hats — that looked like umbrellas, coincidentally, considering the weather — they stood still, motionless. As they had been there for that whole time, Annie thought that they sure saw where Gabrielle had ran. She didn't know any Japanese, but if she was lucky, these monks would understand enough english, that she could ask them about her missing friend.

"Did you see a young woman running out, just a moment ago?" She asked them, having to raise her voice because the rain in the background was so loud. She did her best to explain Gabrielle's appearance to them with simple english words and animating her message with hand gestures as she talked. "About my height, a lot younger and with white straight hair. Probably crying her eyes out while she went."

One of the monks politely pointed behind a corner of the temple, at Annie's right, and said something that her Focus translated for her.

"Ah. The young white lady. She went that a way."

Annie slightly bowed to the monk, thanked him, and walked away towards the corner with Gabrielle's jacket hanging on her arm. The heavy rain had splattered all over the wooden porch, and under her boots she felt it starting to get a bit slippery. She walked on with careful steps, and disappeared behind the corner that monk pointed at, after Gabrielle's runaway tracks.

There was nothing behind the corner. Not a sign of anyone there. The porch narrowed down on this side, and next to it down on the ground ran a small driveway, that looked like a back entrance to the courtyard. Up above, it was covered by those massive trees of the neighboring forest, that bent over almost to the top of the temple, weighted by the rain, darkening this narrow path to a point that it began to feel a bit eerie. At the same time, the sound of the rain seemed to ease up for a bit, but Annie wasn't sure that was it due to these trees blocking most of it, or was it really beginning to settle already.

On the other end she saw the walkway widening up again, forming a back porch for the temple perhaps. Behind the second corner, there was Gabrielle. She was leaning with her forearms against a wooden railing, that circled the temple alongside the porch. Eaves of the temple's roof, that extended far over the porches, covered her from the rain. Still some stray droplets splashed on her face ever so often. She looked down towards the soaking ground, trying to focus herself on following how the grass was drowning right below her. It was a futile attempt to try and distract herself from all those bad thoughts, that had occupied her mind. She wished, that all that excruciating sorrow could have been dropped into that muddy rainwater, letting it sink in it or be washed away somewhere far from her. But then again, she thought, it would have been way too easy and just for it all to vanish like that. It was like her fate – a curse – to suffer as much as humanly possible.

Again and again, she found out that it wasn't so easy to get her mind distracted from the matter at hand. Quite the contrary. When she wasn't thinking about Toshiro and all that had happened prior to this present moment, there seemed to be nothing else than an empty void inside her. A sensation of miserable, pressuring anxiety that stemmed from somewhere dark within her. A feeling, that pushed her right back into those memories, as they were the safest thing she knew at the moment. A trap of mind that she didn't know how to escape anymore, not that she even cared to. In a way, she embraced it, to be with him for a few seconds longer.

But at least she had managed to get herself to stop crying out loud. She comforted herself with the thought. Her face was still messed with dripping black eyeliner, that she had smudged across her cheeks while trying to wipe out her tears. It didn't make any difference to her anyway. There was absolutely no one seeing her back here, just like she had intended.

Like uncontrollable flashbacks, memories of her and Toshiro ran across her mind, as she struggled to stay in the present moment for too long, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate.

She knew that going through the last hours before Toshiro's death wouldn't change anything, but while doing so, she kind of wished, that she would understand why things happened as they did. So she repeated all those key moments over and over...

...they were sailing aboard a battleship, CCS Global Defender, just about to return to its main station from their previous service command. As they made their approach, it had come to their attention, that countries part of World Economic Union, ones that they referred as "the superpowers", were commencing a military attack on their destination, the Citadel of New Mombasa within next few hours. It was an aftermath of a crooked setup that gave forged evidence against the Citadel administration, and thus granting those superpowers a permission from the World Counsel to move up on New Mombasa...

...before their departure, Gabrielle caught Toshiro on their team's landing pad on Global Defender's deck, and made him promise that they would both make it out of this sudden mission unharmed, reminding him how he promised to take her out to Japan as they were supposed to go on a leave after they landed. A thing she had been waiting for so much...

...how the battle of New Mombasa went horribly wrong on their behalf. They were supposed to defend the Citadel until the evacuation of personnel was completed, but their defenses broke well before even the most of those people got out. Despite that the Sentinels were superior war machines when compared, their enemies attacked in such a force, that their entire unit got decimated into the skies above New Mombasa in mere minutes, and their ground teams took fatal beating on the shores of the Citadel, if they ever even made it that far...

...but what happened to Toshiro, Gabrielle believed with a certainty, was her own fault. In a desperate battle against the opposing forces, Gabrielle, inside her own Sentinel, dueled with enemy war helicopters in the air, blasting them down one by one, as they weren't a match against her finesse and agility while airborne. Too busy to listen to their radio chatter, she wasn't aware that Toshiro's team was pinned down on a beach side right below her. She had no idea how the final chopper that she dropped, would have disastrous consequences...

...how he passed to his injuries, caused by an explosion and shrapnels that it blasted across the beach. It was back on the Global Defender, where Gabrielle and Annie took Toshiro for emergency medical care shortly after. In her arms he bled out, onto the deck of the ship, and her lap, watching into her eyes as life faded away from his own. It wasn't love, but fear, that she saw in him in that short last moment...

It was an image, that she could never erase from her mind. Enforced by the feeling of her own soul shattering as she watched Toshiro's life slipping through her fingers, unable to do anything to stop it from happening.

Ever since that moment, Gabrielle had been blaming herself for his death. If she wouldn't had shot down that chopper... if instead, she would had done it all better, hit it harder so it would had burned in to the air instead of dropping down to the ground... maybe, if she would had crashed herself into it... the Sentinel may had protected her from the explosion — or maybe not. She could had died if done so, but at least Toshiro, the only person that mattered to her, would had survived —

She startled badly, almost jumping up into the air, as a jacket suddenly lowered onto her shoulders and arms. In an instant, it made her come back to the reality, away from her memories. All those thoughts, all that misery she felt, had made her forget and ignore, that she was actually freezing before that coat — her own one — wrapped around her body.

"Gabe." called a voice, that she recognized immediately.

To confirm her thoughts, she quickly turned to look at the person standing right next to her. Yes, it was Annie.

She leaned her back against the damp wooden railing, that Gabrielle was standing at, and took a look at her, not saying anything. Gabrielle stared back at her, trying to decide what was happening. As her senses started to come more active, drawing back to the present felt like the world being rebuilt around them, first as a porch and the temple, its roof that extended over them, then as a rain — that had calmed significantly in these past few minutes — and the drumming and splashing it made as it hit the ground and everything else around them.

"It's okay." Annie said, to console Gabrielle, knowing that she was in a personal distress and agony. She was sure though, that it had very little effect on her.

Not wanting Annie to see her in a state like this, Gabrielle slowly turned her head away from her, wishing that she could vanish from the face of the earth. Broken down, as a mess like this, she felt embarrassed to let anyone see it happen, or that it even happened as a matter of fact. Everyone expected her to stand tall through these troubled times, showing example of strength. Instead, here she was.

She didn't know what to do, what to say for Annie — who was there presumably to get an explanation for her unstable behavior. But she didn't have anything to say to her. She wanted to walk away, but surely Annie would just follow her, so instead she stood there silent, staring at the large field of tombstones that reached from the temple's back driveway to the far ends of the forest, that was now visible from the rain. She found it strange that she hadn't noticed the cemetery before right now —

"Gabe," Annie tried to get her attention, noticing how she was clearly trying to escape the situation by ghosting her. "Just —"

"Go away." Gabrielle interfered her, before she got to say what she thought she would. Her voice was lost and shaking.

"— listen." Annie executed the rest of her sentence, regardless of Gabrielle's attempt to make her leave. "I —"

Annie crossed her arms, and went silent. She stared at the back wall of the temple. She didn't have a plan for her speech, so for a brief moment, she took her time to think through what she should say to her. Then she turned back to look at Gabrielle, who was still staring out to the graveyard, acting that neither of them were there.

"I— I didn't know him very well. Hiro, I mean. Unlike you did. We only worked together a few times, and I occasionally saw him around the base or ship. Never really talked with him..."

"No surprise there." Gabrielle thought spontaneously. She knew it was disrespectful towards Annie, but couldn't help herself. What little did she know about her, was that she'd be the last person to go have a small talk with anyone. It just wasn't her thing; communicating. Even now, talking with her there on the porch, it felt somehow unconventional, that she was there trying to get her around. Especially, as she had had a notion that Annie didn't even like her very much.

"...but, for what I could make of him, he seemed like a really good man. One, that I think, you really deserved to be with." Annie paused for another brief moment, to shape her thoughts and feelings into words.

Meanwhile, Gabrielle teared up again. Hearing something like that about herself from another person, was heartbreaking. She did her best to keep herself intact, because she didn't want anyone else to see her cry. Annie, to be the last of all people.

"I, uh... We both know that there's nothing to be said, that could change this situation into any better." Annie continued after a moment. "I was there with you then, and I know what you're going through right now —"

"DO YOU?!" Gabrielle suddenly snapped at Annie, fiercely turning towards her, with a mad glance in her eyes. She was certain, that no one could ever understand what she had felt all this time.

"Yes, I do. Better than you'd think." Annie responded, with a rather surprised tone in her voice. Not because her thoughts were questioned, but because Gabrielle threw it back at her with such a harsh way. It caught her a little bit off guard. Her brows were raised, eyes wide open, as she stared her for a second, before going on. "Look... what I wanted to say was, that give yourself some mercy. What you're going through right now as itself is not a little thing to handle, and then... "

Annie's words were agitating Gabrielle's nerves. With all she got, she tried not to attack her again, or break up into tears in all of her helplessness. She squeezed the railing, her hands shaking from a flush of adrenaline that was caused by Annie, with an unexplainable feeling of fear, and a hint of an upcoming panic attack, that she tried to keep under control all at the same time.

"Please... just go away. Leave me alone, I'll be fine. I don't want to talk with you." Gabrielle said to Annie, with a calm, quiet voice, that resonated with all those emotions, that Annie's words caused her to surface.

Without hesitation, Annie stood back straight, dropping her crossed arms back down to her sides.

"As you wish." She said, before taking steps away from her.

But then she stopped, just as Gabrielle hoped to have got rid of her.

"Just one more thing, if I may." Annie said quietly, so that Gabrielle wouldn't feel herself attacked. "No matter how you feel, you're not alone. We're here for you. Always."

Ever since Toshiro's death, Gabrielle had felt left alone. Abandoned. What Annie just said, warmed her heart and brought her a lot of comfort. But in a way, she wanted to be left alone. A feeling that she couldn't explain to herself. Tears dripped down her face, and her lower lip shivered wildly. She hoped that Annie would leave the porch, with haste. And she did. Gabrielle heard footsteps going away from her, and with every step, she felt more and more stranded. For some reason, as much as she wanted Annie to go away, but she also wanted her to stay and give comfort. It didn't make any sense to her.

"Take your time. When you're ready, you know where to find us." Annie said to Gabrielle from the corner of the building, before vanishing behind it.

...

A while later Gabrielle returned inside. She had cleaned up her face, wiping away pretty much all of her leftover makeup. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying after Annie left her alone. She still had her jacket on, that she was now wearing appropriately, instead of having it hanging over her shoulders. She noticed, that the ceremony was already over, and guests were leaving the temple as she came back inside. Last ones of them were still giving their farewells to their beloved relative.

Annie was sitting in the front row with the man, right where they were when Gabrielle rushed outside. As other guests were dressing up and collecting their belongings, Gabrielle stood in front of the front door, staring at her companions, who hadn't yet noticed her coming in. They were facing the funeral shrine, backs at the doorway. Most of the storm of emotions she was dwelling in had calmed, but not completely. Right now, she felt how a massive amount of shame towards herself was weighing her down, for rushing out from the ceremony like a little child. She thought, that the others must had thought of her, that she was a pathetic brat, who couldn't control herself even for a little moment. That's what she thought of herself at least.

Carefully, Gabrielle sneaked next to her friends, arms crossed tightly, like she was trying to hug herself. As her companions noticed her, they interrupted their conversation and both stood up. Gabrielle looked at them like she'd done something wrong, expecting them to let her hear it. She tried to hide her shame under a thin layer of fake smile, that didn't fool anybody.

"Sir?" She began first, greeting the man, who was their superior. He was Thomas Pine, the Head Director of Citadel OPS. Significantly older, standing a head taller than her, in his black suit and his black hair neatly combed backwards, completed with a thin, groomed beard, that covered the lower part of his jaw, ending into a shape of a rounded cone right below. Aside with his title and position, his appearance was flawless and eminent, and how he carried himself, daunted Gabrielle.

Even though he was representing Citadel administration here today, and wasn't in charge of Annie and Gabe directly, he knew them very well, being a close friend of Annie — and late parents of Gabrielle.

"Gabe." He said, coming next to her. "Are you alright?"