It is the day before the end of Cora Ko's war.

Cora is connnected to her cockpit's stimuli cabling, death gripping the machine's controls. The machine shudders to life beneath and around her, ready to thrust itself out of cover. Mercenaries are moving on her, but Cora, deep in a stupor of pilot stimulants, hallucinates the same advantage she always has. Obedient to her instinct, she pulls the triggers towards her, and is rewarded by the eager sound of 400mm casings flying from what she imagines is her forearms. Her mechanical body grazes over the battlefield, maintaining fire as she jettisons into the forward position, the place where she belongs. It isn't yet ten minutes from sortie before her handler barks out an order. She needs to fall back - the entire unit.

Today, in a way unfamiliar to her, something has gone terribly wrong.

It's been three months since the end of the war.

Cora is out of the interrogation cells far too soon. They didn't know how to wind her dosages down - couldn't understand the drugs they'd been keeping her on, not like her handler would have - and she, now free as her teenage self, feels more dead than she ever had as a captive. The place they dumped her in is not snowy like her home had been, but she is cold, all the same. She hasn't stopped feeling cold since she left. She wonders if that will ever change.

It is five years before the end of the war.

Rebel hotshot Cora Ko failed her operation - one of her first chances to show her superiors she was more than a solider. Now, she doesn't know if she'll get that chance again. It happened so quick, the way enemy footsoldiers punctured her cockpit. It was cold and surgical, like a guilty routine. Now, in what feels like the next moment, she's handcuffed to a chair in a cell, holding her breath and watching her enemies patrol the hallway. She has no sense to scold herself for getting captured, only a mind trained to shut up and get out. How deep in their base is she? How far is an exit? *Hell*, how did they get her here in the first place?

It is four years and six months before the end of the war.

Cora tries to remember what the outside looked like. She tries to remember the faces of her parents, of the people who would fight beside her, of her loved ones she would write to before every offensive. Maybe it was drugs in her food that'd been taking her memories. Maybe it wasn't. She knew she'd been in this interrogation room just the week before, but she can't for the life of her remember what she had told them. Months ago, she would spit on their boots and lunge in her restraints when they'd ask her questions - she used to let herself sob, if it'd make her less useful to them. Now, all she can do is follow along. Her captors always remind her it's easier that way. She's started to agree.

It's been a year since the end of the war.

Cora's rehabilitative agent steps into an empty apartment, all its mirrors smashed. It takes him a few hours to find her again, slumped over at a nearby bar. She asks him to help her get rid of the mirrors. She calls them too familiar, too much like the torture she still remembers, too deeply introspective. He smiles, telling her he understands. He'll humor her.

It is three years and nine months before the end of the war.

Cora was assigned to a mech unit, irrespective of any effort towards promotion, as though they had wanted her here from the start. It feels like it was days ago that she had been biting their hands. Today, she's sat with her "handler", some high officer tasked with guiding Cora through systems familiarization. Cora nestles into a cockpit for the first time in a long time; its conventions are all the same as she knew in rebel machines, but the quality and technology they have in front of her is completely alien. Her handler, slow, intentional, and gentle, takes Cora's hand and guides her fingers over the firing triggers. Cora nods, following the handler's motions like an order, feeling the shape of the flight controls. She could get used to feelings like these.

It is three years before the end of the war.

Cora's mech launches slugs into the side of a rebel barn. The building cackles out a hideous sound, buckling and submitting to the gunfire, quickly settling into a pile of rust beneath an ashy cloud. Her handler sits, watching Cora's biometrics, scanning for hitches in her behavior, in her thought patterns, in her breath. Cora's eyes are glazed over in her cockpit, feeling nothing but the combat stimulants being shot through her spine. She thinks she hears her handler mumble praise over her comms system.

It's been two years since the end of the war.

Caked in drool and sweat, Cora wakes up to the sound of a fist grumpily pounding on glass. Her rehabilitative agent lifts open the unpowered cockpit to find a little nest - plush toys and a weighted blanket drape around a half-awake and hungover Cora, useless cables hanging down all around her. The agent reminds her to leave the scrap mechs alone before she gets in trouble *again*. Cora offers a look of guilt to him as he steps off of the battered chassis. He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration.

It is two years and five months before the end of the war.

A piece of shrapnel found its way into the back wall of her cockpit, splattering the right side of Cora's head against the wall with it. She is unfortunate enough to be alive and screaming as the mediborgs shove her out of the cockpit, dragged into a surgical room under her handler's supervision. The doctors say they can help bring her back to her usual health; the handler refuses. Cora could take punches, but this was pain beyond dissociating away. Her handler mumbles something about ablative surgery, giving a gentle, pitiful smile to Cora between moments of focus.

It is two years before the end of the war.

Cora is weary from last night's offensive, the cockpits' stimulants and sedatives depriving her of meaningful rest. Her combat boots stomp unpridefully through the walls of the barracks, making her presence known to a few giggling cadets. They call out words of affection at her, stars and hope in their eyes. She flutters a wave back, like a kid hiding behind their parents' legs. She's reminded of the hero she's become to them.

It's been two years and four months since the end of the war.

Cora is stopped by someone in a bar. Only a few years younger than her, they have stars and hope in their eyes, looking her up and down as they stammer. They pull up a picture of Cora on their phone. It's her; standing proud in uniform, looking out to a bright blue sky as flight mechs shoot off in formation behind her, hair blowing. Cora's breath hitches, and the taste of whiskey goes sour on her tongue. The poster is adorned with a name she recognizes in a proud, angular font, enlistment instructions and hexagons patterning over its corners. The stranger begins a question. Cora glasses them before they finish.

It is one year before the end of the war.

A stylist wipes dirt from the combat medals positioned on Cora's lapels. Something must have pricked her - another stylist apologizes for it - but she was numb to any pain there might have been. Her boots are polished, and her usual pilot suit has been set aside for formal attire. She's lead into a warm, tall room she's grown familiar with; a photographer lines up in front of her, big expensive light fixtures surrounding their camera. As the timer ticks down, she notices her handler sitting next to one of the monolights, her gaze illuminating Cora like everything else in the room. A blush covers Cora's face as the shutters start clicking.

It's been three years since the end of the war.

Cora is standing in line at an employment agency, grateful for the frigid air conditioning. A kind-eyed vox in a dark blue uniform chirps out to her from behind a desk as she steps up. Cora's informed of some of the things she should expect from work on a station. She's been planetside her whole life; she'd happily get used to the differences if it meant a do-over for her.

She's lead into a cold, stuffy room, another uniformed worker waving to her as she steps in. Cora sits shakily in front of a camera, relaying her name and information, staring at a back wall splattered with corporate Nanotrasen posters. Just as her focus shifts away, the worker asks if they can take a photo for Cora's records. With a beat, she asks if she's allowed to decline.