Aria had never treated her like a servant, not once, but she hadn’t gone out of her way to bridge the gap either.
She was a quiet, friendly presence in the hallways, sometimes jealous when Alexandra got too close to Kaiden, sometimes very yandere about the whole situation, yes, but never outright hostile. Never cruel. Just... Aria, being Aria.
And now she was standing here telling Alexandra she wanted to see her happy, and the blonde’s composure cracked before she could stop it.
"T-thank you, Aria," she managed, blinking fast, and her voice wobbled on the name in a way that made the Moon Valkyrie’s silver eyes soften.
Alexandra’s hands dropped to her sides. She glanced between Aria and Kaiden, and while the blush on her face had not faded, the set of her mouth had changed.
"B-but, you know," she muttered quietly, "while you were all out fighting... I wasn’t just cleaning and cooking. Not in the past few days."
The room went still.
"I started watching your combat streams recently." She swallowed hard, and her fingers twisted together in front of her apron. "At first I could barely last thirty seconds before I had to turn it off because my knees wouldn’t stop shaking and my chest felt like it was caving in."
She looked at Kaiden, and the glance was so openly vulnerable that multiple people nearly died of a heart attack in that moment.
"But I kept going back." Her voice was small, fragile, yet harboring a distinct pride. "Every day, a little more. I watched your fights. Replayed the dungeon raids. The swarm clears. I watched Aria face things that should have killed her, and Luna get hurt so badly I cried, and Calypso laugh while bleeding from wounds I couldn’t even look at." Her fingers stopped twisting. "And the more I watched... the less I shook."
She took a breath.
"Even against your level 100 enemies... Terrible monsters who are born to terrorize... I was okay." A timid laugh escaped her, disbelieving and proud and terrified all at once. "I know that’s not the same as actually being there. I know watching a screen is nothing compared to what you do. But... I’ve realized something."
Her blue eyes found Kaiden’s one more time, and this time she didn’t look away.
"Compared to Maximilian Vice, even the Kaiju outside is nothing but a cute puppy in my eyes."
The words landed in the silence like a stone in still water.
The girl who flinched when men raised their voices, who couldn’t be in a room with a stranger without her hands going numb, stood in front of the most amazing people she’d ever known and told them that the worst monster she would ever face was already behind her.
And she was smiling.
Small, shaky, devastatingly cute, the kind of pretty that five S-tier women in various states of undress couldn’t overshadow, with her cheeks still burning and her blue eyes glistening and her whole body radiating the stubborn warmth of someone who had decided to stop being afraid.
Arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her tightly.
"I’m really proud of you, Alex~"


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