[KQ] Bigger A(spire)ations

RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving "Hey, hey..." His friends were before him with wet cheeks and aching hearts, and for once Ronin couldn't laugh it all off and tell them it would be fine. "I don't think I have a choice about this... I..." Swallowing hard, he glanced to Roana first, throwing her a lazy salute and a cheeky wink. "For what it's worth, I think I'd have trounced you in that race for General. But here... I think we'll all need a little light after this." Absently, he slipped a ring from his finger and pressed it into his fellow ex-captain's hand. "Get them out of this place." Next he glanced to Ashetta, a crooked and bloody smirk on his lips. "Madam spy," he murmured. "Always so much to do. Always so little time. Please, take care of yourself. I mean it. Live. If you don't ever listen to a word I say, just listen to that one. Okay?" He was unstrapping his bracers now, tossing them at her feet before reaching out to wrap her in a bonecrushing hug that would leave her smeared in his blood. "Give them hell." Remi was the hardest to make eye contact with, and Ronin only realised it when he was wiping his own tears away. "You'll look after her, won't you?" he asked softly, fumbling within his shredded shirt to withdraw the pendant in the shape of an eye, which had sat against his chest for so long. "And you'll tell her, about Vanya... about me?" Shaking his head and knowing he didn't have time, he reached out to embrace his friend one last time, holding him close and tucking the pendant into his pocket. "You're a good man, Remi. Don't waste a second more of your time second guessing, or being unhappy. You hear?" With a kiss to his cheek and a gentle nudge, Ronin finally stepped back with Safrin, into the warm embrace of eternity. "I think I'd like to see her, now," he whispered.