"It doesn't look like the movies they've made back on Earth," Jason commented as they walked through the outlying neighborhoods, heading downward toward the sea. "But then, your mom doesn't look some of the actors who played her. Some of them were good, but you'd probably see a lot of mistakes in what they did."

"How would I see mistakes?" Kira asked, hearing her voice grow cold.

"Uh…your mom…" Jason fumbled.

"My mother has rarely told me anything about the battle here," Kira said, trying to relax. "Aunt Bev says…she can't."

"Oh, yeah," Jason said. "Post-traumatic stress."

"What?"

"PTS. It afflicts a lot of people who've endured serious stress, like fighting a battle like the one here."

"How can you know that's what she has?" Kira demanded, feeling guilty. Had she been resenting her mother for some sort of trauma her mother was still suffering from?

"I don't know for certain," Jason admitted. "But it sounds like it. It's another form of injury in combat. It doesn't show, but it's sort of a wound. Not to the body, but to the person inside."

She didn't answer, gazing ahead to where the bulk of a massive wall rose against the dark of the night. The last wall defending Dorcastle. The sight tore at her, since that wall had long represented everything that she resented about her mother, loved about her mother, and did not understand about her. Had she finally learned at least a little more? And her mother had reached out earlier, telling Kira more about her namesake Sergeant Kira. "Do you want to see it?"

Jason looked at Kira and around him. "See what?"

"Mother's statue. It's up on the wall. That one."

"That's the last wall they were defending? Are you okay with showing me that?"

"Yes, I am. And don't say okay." Kira walked to the stairs leading upward, trying once again to imagine the soldiers racing up these steps almost twenty years ago. Soldiers already exhausted from a long struggle, fighting without hope to hold the last barrier standing between victory for the Imperials and the Great Guilds.

Kira and Jason reached the broad walkway at the top of the wall, its dimensions matching the width of the wall itself, the stone parapet facing toward the water marred by numerous chips and other scars from the impact of projectiles.

Just a few steps down, someone seemed to be standing sentry, only the absolute lack of motion revealing that it was not a real person. "There it is," Kira said, pointing. "They put the statue where Mother was when she rallied the defenders to throw back the last Imperial assault."

Jason walked toward the statue, but almost tripped over a large, flat metal plate set into the stone. "Why is that there?"

Kira sighed. "It protects the area where my mother's blood stained the stones after she was shot."

He stared at her, then at the plate. "Not really."