It was no secret that Zero was designed for combat. Everything, from his processing to the way he moved bespoke of being created with one thing in mind; to destroy. He excelled at it, and at one point he suspected he had even reveled in it. Combat had come easy to him, the urge to fight already inherently present, and in turn helped him single handedly turn the tables in a losing battle. In a way he was thankful, for without his memories he may as well have been a walking paperweight… and it gave him a purpose; a reason to be. Besides his skills in combat, he had nothing to offer the Resistance; no information or knowledge of anything but fighting was available to him, and wouldn't really blame them if they had tried to put him back to sleep. With this one thing to offer, at least, he had been able to help them.

With the conflict with Neo Arcadia raging for what felt like half a lifetime, the thought of what peacetime would be like had never had a chance to cross his mind. He was certain Ciel had thought about it, but all he had ever really thought about was the fighting; what he could do, through fighting of his own, to get it to end.

Now that the idea of peace was so close to becoming a reality, the question he found he had never wanted to ask demanded his attention.

When this was all over, what would he do?

Well, he knew the answer, more or less.

He would likely stay with Ciel he supposed, with the rest of the Resistance, save for perhaps Alouette, likely disbanding and going their seperate ways. They were a tightly knit group to be sure, but even then, they all had their own individual desires and needs, and they would finally be able to fulfill them.

Ciel herself would likely move on to other things as well. At times, he had forgotten she was human. No, rather, he had ignored it. Being human meant you would eventually, even with the help of the advanced technology at their disposal, would age, grow old, and pass on. Honestly, it wasn't something he liked to think about, at least with Ciel.

To him, looking after her would only be a couple of years, a few decades at most in his likely very long existence, but then what?

What would he do when she was gone? To be frank, he didn't know how he would handle it. Since the beginning, she had always been there, for him and for everyone in the Resistance. To lose her would be… hard, but deep down, he knew she couldn't live for ever. Even with that knowledge in mind, it did little to make the thought hurt any less.

Fulfilling whatever legacy she left behind would likely fall on Alouette, but would she still need him? If she didn't, what would he do then? If she did, what would he do when her core finally gave out? What would be left for him then? What would happen when his time was up? Was there even an after life for Reploids? The only indication he had ever seen of such a thing was cyber-elves, but even then, what were the chances of becoming one? He honestly had no idea, and it wasn't like he could really ask anyone about it, so in the end, Zero simply decided not think about it.

The thought of slowly but surely losing everyone(and everything) to time was a frightening one, but the red Reploid eventually decided to push it and the myriad of other questions aside; there were still battles to fight, and Weil to deal with.

He had the members of the Resistance resting all of their hopes on his sword, and he wasn't about to let them down.

A/N: Written between chapters of Arcadia, and has been something I've wanted to write down for a while. Zero doesn't really get a whole lot of voice in-game, so I always thought it would be interesting to see how he would try to size up and deal with whatever would happen in peacetime, given he actually got to see it. I LIKE TO MAKE MYSELF FEEL SAD ON ACCIDENT HHHEGH