Sleeping Princess Awakens

Charlotte lines up her embroidery against the silhouette in her room and finds it traces the man's outline exactly. A gust parts her bed curtains and she meets Griffith face to face, restored to his former self. When she last saw him he was flayed, wasted, shorn and masked in an iron torture device; now he stands whole. He apologizes for the intrusion, and she can barely believe he is real, half dismissing it as a childish fantasy. Weeping, she begs him not to leave her again as he did three years earlier during his imprisonment.

Griffith sits beside her and takes her hand, her fingertip bloodied from the embroidery needle. He tells the tale of a princess who pricked her finger and fell into a long sleep, then draws the blood from her finger and says she has only now awoken. Overjoyed, Charlotte throws her arms around him. A Kushan guard soon rouses Anna, telling her the princess is calling. Charlotte meets her at the door, hands her a cloak and bids her wait on the bed, explaining that Griffith left instructions to stay put while he carries out a plan. Anna nearly writes it off as post-dream confusion when the ceiling bursts apart.

Locus orders the apostles to break off. Borkoff takes point, ramming through walls to clear a straight escape route out of Wyndham. Baffled that his enemies flee despite their proven charging power, Ganishka grows wary and drifts toward the Tower of Rebirth, where he finds the roof of Charlotte's chamber torn away and the princess gone; the assault, he realizes, was only a distraction. Charlotte and Anna still sit on the bed, now soaring high in the air, Anna burrowing under the covers in a desperate bid to wake from what she takes for a dream. Charlotte feels the cool breeze and notes that the finger Griffith kissed remains warm. The bed is borne aloft by a transformed Zodd, with Griffith perched on his shoulder.

Griffith reunites with Charlotte after their years-long separation, restored to his prime. He revives her spirit with a sleeping-princess allegory and a kiss to her pricked finger. Locus orders the apostles to withdraw, using the assault as cover. Ganishka realizes too late that the attack was a diversion to extract Charlotte. Griffith and a transformed Zodd carry Charlotte and Anna out of Wyndham on her airborne bed.

This twenty-two-page Millennium Falcon Arc chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 4 on February 13, 2004. It stages the emotional reunion of Griffith and Charlotte and reveals the apostle raid as an elaborate rescue.