Karen

Perhaps because she had, in her earlier years, wanted for nothing that was not given her—or perhaps simply by nature—Karen never regarded the attainment of a goal, the accomplishment of a task, as something beyond her reach, even when, at times, it plainly was. She possessed a tenacity and patience beyond her years, and deep within her lay a quiet pride that would not easily concede defeat. And so, having once walked out of that grand house and away from her father's watchful governance, she never once considered returning to it; and when she came, almost at once, to realize that Shizuru was not the sort of match convention would call suitable, the flame already kindled in her heart refused, all the same, to be extinguished.

This flower, raised so long within a hothouse, proved unexpectedly resilient in the world beyond it. Though every instructor there had marked her as the one most likely to fall first, Karen endured to the very end of the training selection. Even those among her peers who had dismissed her, at first, as nothing more than a spoiled and pampered young lady came, in time, to acknowledge her extraordinary force of will. By her own effort alone, she won the recognition of everyone around her, and became, at last, a proper member of Team Ratel—a companion now standing shoulder to shoulder with Shizuru herself.

Wholehearted in all she did, Karen met with no small number of setbacks along the way, and yet she rose each time without hesitation and pressed onward still—a quality her comrades came to rely upon, one that let her serve, almost improbably, as an active and capable member of the BCRL forces. And yet, for all that, her feelings toward Shizuru have made little progress; Shizuru has never taken her words to heart, and so it remains, entirely and only, a love that Karen carries alone.

Though her duties lay in field medicine, Karen had, before her training, laid eyes on scarcely a single battlefield or wounded soldier in all her life. At home, even the smallest scrape she might earn tripping on a step would bring a small army of servants rushing to her side... and so, the first time she underwent first-aid training at the BCRL camp, the shock of it struck her hard.

The wounds simulated by the training equipment were rendered with unsettling realism, and many recruits unaccustomed to blood and violence found themselves fainting outright, or forced to retch before they could continue at all. The instructors were unforgiving on this point: "If you cannot bear even this much, you have no business calling yourself a medic." No small number gave up then and there, transferring to other divisions instead.

Karen, needless to say, was sick to her stomach and nearly fainted from sheer exhaustion. Even once she had grasped the theory of bandaging and emergency care, her trembling hands could scarcely carry out the proper procedure. And yet this girl, whom everyone had marked as the first to fall, cast aside, in that moment, the very pampered nature she had carried since childhood, and forced herself, through sheer clenched will, to endure the nausea and fear and practice again, and again, and again. After an entire afternoon of failure upon failure, she at last completed the bandaging procedure exactly as required. Her instructor came to her side, acknowledged what she had accomplished, and told her to go rest. But the moment Karen finally allowed herself to relax, she sat down on the ground and wept without restraint—until at last the instructor had no choice but to ask Shizuru, who happened to be passing by, to walk her back to the dormitory.

Now, after all manner of trials since, Karen can perform battlefield first aid with practiced skill—and yet she still remembers, quite clearly, what it felt like the first time her own two hands bandaged another's wound. Hands that had once been able to master nothing at all can now save the lives of the people around her... and Karen believes, in complete sincerity, that there is no finer work in all the world than this.

Before she left home, Karen believed love meant boundless, meticulous protection. Her father saw to it that she wanted for nothing, material or otherwise, forever asking after her comfort and well-being. Though his anxieties ran to excess—fretting over the smallest scratch as though it were some grave misfortune—Karen had believed this to be love in its truest form.

It was only when her father, heedless of her own feelings, arranged her marriage without so much as a word of consultation, that Karen came at last to a sudden understanding, caught between astonishment and fury: that forcing upon another what one believes to be good, without regard for how that person actually feels, is no love at all—not the kind that could bring happiness to someone truly dear to you.

Leaving home. Meeting Shizuru. Enrolling at the BCRL training camp. Becoming a field medic with Team Ratel. Through it all, Karen found herself searching again and again for an answer to a single question: what, in truth, was love, rightly understood? Though she resented her father's high-handedness, she found herself treating Shizuru in the very same manner he had once shown her—fine clothes, delicate ornaments, whatever caught her own fancy pressed upon Shizuru without a second thought. But Shizuru wanted none of it, and found herself only troubled by such gifts.

From gazing at Shizuru's back as she walked ahead, to walking now at her side, Karen came in time to notice something. Whenever Shizuru spoke of her childhood friend, a certain smile would rise unbidden to her face; and seeing it, Karen felt all at once that she understood something at last. Strangely, there was no bitterness in it, no sense of loss—only, at the sight of Shizuru's unguarded joy, a quiet and peaceful happiness that filled her heart entirely. When Shizuru was glad, Karen found that she too could not help but feel glad in turn.

Perhaps, by then, she had already found her answer.