Was the coast clear?

Irene peeked up at the sky warily. Yes, the one-horned Awakened Being named Priscilla had gone on her merry way.

Slowly, with pain wracking her still-fresh wound, Irene rose from her charade. She couldn't play dead forever. She had managed to live so far; there had to be a reason that she wasn't dead.

What it was eluded her.

What was there for her to live for? The Organization had given her a job that nearly killed her, Teresa had been slain by that...that monster...There was nowhere for the former #2- or was it #3, for the briefest of times?- to go.

Flash Sword Irene had failed.

In the past she had always been second best. Now, with hardly anyone to be compared to, she had become trash. The Organization wouldn't take a one-armed warrior, no matter how efficient, and now that Teresa was dead...No one else would take her, either.

For a while, Irene just stared at the sky. It was a flaming, tangerine orange, tinged with fluffy, indigo-gray clouds and a golden setting sun to top it off. A high place like this, secluded almost entirely from the rest of the world, combined with that sunset...

It would have made the perfect setting for her to confess her feelings for Teresa.

Why did Teresa, of all warriors, have to rebel? Why did Irene have to be selected to kill her?! Why did Priscilla, that monster of a rookie, have to get between them?

It was all so, so unfair! She hadn't even gotten to tell Teresa how she felt! She wanted to yell to the heavens, she wanted to ask for Teresa back, she wanted to give her life so that she could be with Teresa again! The emotion was enough to make Irene, usually so stoic and serious, shed a tear on the dusty ground beneath her.

"Teresa...?" Irene gasped. She could still feel Teresa's aura, like the faintest scent on a breeze. Teresa was there for a second, but would likely disappear in a flash again.

"Live."

Irene could have sworn she heard the word on the wind. Had the pain of losing an entire limb made her delirious? No...She had felt that pain before...

...Teresa...