Eventually, bits and pieces trickle in from the people Aire has watching the Inquisitorium. And only from the people she has watching the Inquisitorium. 

Someone from the Dragoons comes by to collect Alard.

At nearly the same moment, the Lord-Commander is seen entering the Inquisitorium.

This is very nearly the worst news she could have received.

And then new information comes in a bare few minutes later, carried by someone who ran rather than walked.

The Lord-Commander has already left the Inquisitorium. He was there for a shockingly short period of time, all told. A short enough period of time that he could not reasonably have tortured information out of Christa, unless she broke more quickly than Aire would have expected. There is still the possibility that Christa was tortured before the Lord-Commander visited, or that there was a telepath involved and so torture was not necessary. But Aire thinks those options less likely.

Either way, now they now know exactly where they need to look. And with that, and Rele's appearance, summoned by their signal, it is now time to act swiftly. It takes Rele very little time to pinpoint Christa's exact location in the Inquisitorium. There's even a small window into the room where she's being kept. 

Can Aire manage to get one end of a [Warp] through that window? Or is it protected, somehow?

She can get it right up to the window, but the point of punctured space refuses to actually enter the building.

The alley onto which the tiny window looks is not deserted, but neither is it particularly trafficked. There is a guard at one end, not looking toward Christa's cell, instead watching the street. There is about six inches of space between the bars in the cell window. All of this can be seen by Aire if she [Bore]s the portal open wide enough to peak through.

She does.

And, well, there's an obvious thing to do, here, now that she can see. A human couldn't fit through, but Aire isn't human. She can fit through an opening that small easily. It's a risk. Less of one than not knowing what's going on at all would be.

First she needs to know whether the room is empty. If she closes her [Bore[ and reopens it, pressed up as close as she can get it to the window and just small enough she can see through it, can she tell whether it is? This alone is a risk, but one she'll have to take. Some people can hide from telepathic detection, after all.

Christa is currently alone in the interrogation room, in plain view through the bars on the window.

Aire opens the bore wider and attempts to slip between the bars into the room.

Once she's through, she'll close the [Bore], leaving only the [Warp] behind. Far less likely to be noticed that way.

Before all that though, can she make it through? Or is the building warded against physical entities as well as spatial ones?

Whatever is keeping the portal out has no apparent effect on Aire herself.

She can slip between the bars and into the room with Christa without issue.

And then she's in, and slipping over Christa's form before Christa can even realize anything strange is going on. 

What has Christa been up to, these past few hours?

Rather a lot, it turns out!

Fortunately, she doesn't fight Aire at all, summoning up her memories of what's gone on since she left.

See, everything turned out fine!

No! It didn't! Now the Inquisitors and most likely also the Lord-Commander know about the existence of the people who saved Christa. That's enough on its own, you're never safer than when people don't know you exist. Christa may have saved Alard and Yui, but its entirely possible that the price of this will be the death of everyone who helped her, Aire included. 

The Lord-Commander would very likely have gotten his son cleared in the next few days on his own. He's clever, and wouldn't throw away a dragon without good reason. And Alard and Yui were innocent, enough telepathic investigation of Yui would likely have turned that up eventually, if the Lord-Commander had pushed the matter. Or, if she were that insistent upon doing something, she could have talked to Aire about it before running off on her own! They could have thought something up that didn't put them all at such risk! Aire isn't even sure how she's going to get Christa out of this place!

And does Christa really think that this will be the end of it? No, the Lord-Commander will scry her while she's engaged in some tryst with a Tentacled out in the Pink and have a fresh crime to charge her with and another request for her when she returns. And that's assuming he even does bother to get the charges dismissed, rather than keeping them, waiting to be filed, and avoiding the entire need for new charges in the first place. She has not, in fact, solved all of her problems. She hasn't even delayed them coming home to roost.

Oh.

Somehow she just. Didn't think about that.

And. Somehow, that makes her think, more, instead of flinching away from things.

About some things she's been flinching away from for a long, long time.

The thing that Sylar said to her as she left. It wasn't the kind of thing you say, if you're a good person, who's wrong about what's going on. The way he was feeling isn't the way you feel, if you're a good person, and there's some confused innocent in front of you protecting the guilty because she thinks they're good people.

And that law. It doesn't matter that its silly. Everyone still would have enforced it. She still would have been banished, her life destroyed. And as far as any of the people doing it were concerned, it wouldn't have been because she was hiding important information from the Inquisitors. It would have been because she fucked a dragon. When she actually thinks about it, when she thinks back to the minds of the guards she's read and stops making excuses, stops coming up with reasons why it doesn't count, or doesn't matter, how many of them would, say, turn the other way and let her into the city? And how many would feel that keeping the corrupting influence of someone like Christa out of their city was a good idea?

If there was a law that said you had to kill everyone who was left handed, and people had grown up thinking that was right and good, most of them wouldn't stop twice to think, before killing some poor person they saw who wrote with their left had, would they? 

Aire would be killed just for being what she is, and nobody would bat an eye. Most would cheer. That's really not so different to the thing with left handed people, is it? It feels different, because it's a new idea, rather than something she grew up with. But it's not, really. And most people would just go along with it, and never even really notice that it didn't make sense.

That really isn't the kind of thing that can be true about a person at the same time that they're good, is it? Not if being good means anything at all.

And. And. All those times she saw people walk down the street, quietly thinking to themselves that feeding the poor was the highest calling, and weren't they such good people for thinking that, only to ignore the beggar they passed by. Those people weren't somehow confused. They just didn't actually care about the bit where poor people got food, only the bit where they got to feel the joy of thinking themselves a good person.

How could she tell if someone did care, if they were actually good?

They'd do something. Something besides talk, something that took effort. Not necessarily sacrifice. You can buy looking good with sacrifice. They'd do good things even when that didn't buy something for them.

If they grew up in a place with laws about killing the left-handed, they'd notice that was wrong. 

How many people does Christa know that are like that?

Annabelle helped her, when she was new to Arcadia and the Collegiate. She didn't get much for that, and even made some enemies among the kind of people who hated Christa just because she was a telepath. She noticed that hating Christa for that was wrong. Someone saved her and Aire from that spy. And Christa guesses her doing what she did today probably counts, even if it did turn out to be a bad idea. Aire's been nice, but not really good, by the metric she's just thought up.

She gets to see people's thoughts. She's seen a bunch that did go and give money to beggars, and even seen the idea in the thoughts of a few that never seemed to feel the need to mention it.

There are good people. She knows that.

Just. A lot fewer than she thought there were, when she woke up this morning.

Aire feels conflicted, watching those thoughts dance through Christa's mind. It's good that she's learning a bit more about what people are like. She's not quite sure how she managed to be so wrong about that, despite her telepathy. 

On the other hand, Christa's sadness is viscerally unpleasant to feel, even secondhand.

She feels something strange, some odd pain when Christa thinks of her as not necessarily good, but nice, at least. Not at being thought of as not good, but at being thought of as nice. There's something about Christa's mental image of Aire, maybe not the kind of person to give money to beggars but certainly not the kind to hurt people, that causes an ache in her chest.

She decides right then and there to make sure Christa never realizes exactly what kind of person Aire is. She doesn't want to have to watch Christa's mind as she comes to that particular realization.

She'll find some way to make this okay. Aire isn't sure exactly how, but she'll find a way.

There might not be many good people, but Christa does know a few of them, and maybe in the Pink they can find some more. There is that whole thing with the Red Queen being relatively nearby, maybe they'll even meet some genuine heroes out there.

Yeah, they might!

Wait, they?

Yes, they. The last time Aire left Christa unsupervised she turned herself into the Inquisitors. Clearly, she is in dire need of Aire's supervision.

That said, Aire's going to have to follow after, and managing the portals might be a bit of a hassle. Sticking around when they have access to telepaths and people with truesight is a terrible idea.

Oh. She guesses that makes sense. Being without Aire's company is unfortunate, but they really can't risk her getting found, can they?

Aire will find her in the Pink as quickly as she can.

And then she's gone, and Christa is alone.

Again.

She waits for nightfall.

A man wearing the insignia of the Dragoons shows up at sunset.

It would appear that the charges against Christa have indeed been dropped, and he's there to escort her to the Temple of Light in an hour. During that hour she may visit home or elsewhere to collect any things she wants to bring with her, and say her goodbyes-

Oh, it seems that both Alard and Annabelle have been waiting outside the Inquisitorium! They're seated a decorous distance from each other on a bench across the street. Annabelle leaps to her feet, Alard rising more reservedly, when Christa emerges.

They're here! She so happy she almost cries. She runs to Annabelle only to stop nervously just short of throwing her arms around her. And then she decides that's silly, and gets on with the hug.

"I'm so sorry you thought I was dead Annabelle, I'm sorry they ended up thinking you were responsible for my disappearance Alard! I managed to let everyone know as soon as I realized properly what was going on and escaped and there are secret things involving a sort-of-kidnapping that I can't talk about but I'm still so sorry I didn't escape faster!"

Alard smiles and pats Christa's shoulder.

     "They didn't even tell me they thought you were dead!" Annabelle exclaims, squeezing tight. "I had to hear that from Alard! At least by then we knew you weren't."

"I'm so sorry about this whole day, Christa."

Alard can also be hugged! She has two arms! Why has she never realized the things this convenient fact allows her before? Alard will have to be pretty close to Annabelle for this to occur, but she suspects he will not actually mind this, once he has the excuse of Christa bullying him into it to hide behind!

"This isn't even sort of your fault. Due to the secret thing, I know that for a fact!"

"Still."

But he smiles and hugs her back.

(Annabelle squeaks and blushes; without Aire's influence, Annabelle is mostly back to being straight, and Alard is very much crush material.)

The Dragoon allows this for a short while, before clearing his throat.

They should probably actually grab some stuff from her flat for the journey. She's probably going to want to have at least a few changes of clothes with her, and right now she just has one of her uniforms. And then there's all of the other stuff you probably want to have with you doing something like what she's going to be doing, like a hairbrush.

Wait, does Christa get to tell Alard and Annabelle what she's heading off to do?

Yes, it's not a secret.

Christa is allowed to tell people where she's going and why.