Luna’s sky was still lying to them, still blue and gentle and false, and the tree did not care. It stood where it had always stood, roots coiled tight in borrowed soil, leaves whispering softly as the dome’s environmental systems breathed for it. The grave beneath it was fresh, the earth darker where it had been turned, the marker already set because the Lombardhys had never believed in postponing reality. Kaito Lombardhy was home, finally, returned to the one place he had chosen for himself long before war had finished with him.
They did not arrive together. Lombardhys never did. Endou first, as always, because he carried the weight better when it was fresh. Ethan next, slower, uncertain, like he wasn’t sure the ground would hold him. Keisha last, hand brushing the bark of the tree the way she had when she was a child, when her brother had laughed and told her it would outlive them both. She did not correct him then. She did not correct him now.
A fourth presence waited for them.
Frederick “Pines” Lombardhy stood a short distance from the grave, coat unbuttoned, hands bare despite the chill that crept through the dome’s climate controls. Age had not only made sharper, but also calmer. His posture still straight in a way that had nothing to do with pride and everything to do with refusal. He looked at the grave for a long moment before anyone spoke, eyes narrowed not in grief, but in assessment, like he was memorizing a position on a map he would never be able to revisit.
When he finally stepped forward, the others did not stop him. They never would have.
“So,” Pines said quietly, voice worn but steady, carrying that old Lombardhy cadence that sounded like patience sharpened into a weapon. “This is where you decided to rest, lad.”
He crouched with a grunt, one knee touching the soil, fingers brushing the edge of the marker as if confirming it was real. His thumb lingered on Kaito’s name, tracing it once, slow and deliberate.
“You always did choose inconvenient places,” he went on, a faint huff of breath escaping him that might have been a laugh, if the moment had allowed it. “Moon’s too close to Earth to be honest, too far to be forgiving. Suppose that suits you.”
Silence stretched, thick but not empty. Pines straightened, turning then, not to the grave, but to the living.
“There aren’t many of us left,” Endou said, plainly, his gaze then settled on Pines. “We were never meant to be numerous.”
Pines turned back to the grave, shoulders squaring, and for the first time there was steel in his voice.
“The Corps will forget you,” he said to the earth. “The Company will file you. The universe will move on because it always does.” He exhaled slowly. “But that was never our measure, was it?”
He reached into his coat and produced a small, worn object, an old insignia, unpolished, edges softened by time. He set it at the base of the tree, not on the grave, but beside it.
“We endure,” Pines said. “Not because we’re strong. Not because we’re righteous. But because when it’s time to stand, we do. And when it’s time to remember, we don’t outsource it.”
The leaves above them rustled, soft and persistent.
Pines stepped back at last, giving the space back to the younger blood. His work, for this moment, was done. The saga did not end with Kaito Lombardhy beneath a tree on Luna. It passed quietly, stubbornly, into the hands of those still breathing, still standing, still refusing to let the name become just another line in someone else’s ledger.