Disclaimer: "Shinzo Ningen Casshern" and its characters belong to Tatsunoko Productions.
A/N: This is not based on "Casshern: SINS" (which I haven't seen yet), the "Casshern" movie (which I have no interest in seeing), or "Casshan: Robot Hunter" (which I wish I hadn't seen, since it had the same exact combination of vapid storytelling and hideous artwork as the Gatchaman OAV that came out around the same time); instead it's based on the original 1973 TV series "Shinzo Ningen Casshern."
Pairing: Luna/Casshern
Someone Beyond Reach
by BloodRaevynn
Casshern stood not five feet away from where Luna sat at the table, quietly eating her soup. The rain drummed against the window pane and he looked out into it like a statue; expressionless, not moving, not breathing, his eyes fixed on the ever-advancing android army beyond his range of sight, through the storm that kept him from stopping them. Luna watched his motionless back, rigid in restlessness, and withheld a sigh. He was conserving energy, she knew; the sky had been mostly cloudy for several days before the storm, and his reserves were surely very low.
Friender got up from where he lay at the hearth, paced a circle around the cabin floor, and then lay back down in the exact place and position he'd started from. Luna wondered if the robot dog had calculated it down to the last millimeter.
The cabin was cozy, for having been abandoned since the beginning of the war. The couch had been somewhat gnawed on by some kind of rodent, but the rest of the furniture looked only lightly worn. The bed in the next room had ample blankets and seemed particularly inviting after so many days on the road, though Luna wasn't sleepy yet. For the time being, she ate.
Her eyes continued to study the white figure before her, trying to see traces of her childhood friend; but Tetsuya had been carefree, and the burden Casshern carried was that of Atlas; his mind, once delighting at the creation of robots, now thought only of ways to destroy them. His eyes, even now, searched for the next crucial battle.
Yet, sometimes, somehow, that was better. Better than when they turned to Luna, and in place of affection, adoration, and, yes, occasionally annoyance, she saw regret, guilt, and the longing for something beyond his reach. That longing was the worst; there was nothing she could do to assuage it.
And Tetsuya was fading from her memories, even though it had only been half a year since he'd abandoned his humanity and become Casshern. In many ways, it was as if she was now living her life at the side of someone new. As if Tetsuya had truly died.
Casshern's corpse-like stillness was beginning to make her uncomfortable and she wracked her brain something they could do to occupy themselves, so that she could call him away from the window and the ongoing war outside of it, and maybe get him to relax and smile. Luna tried to remember what kind of things she and Tetsuya had done to pass the time on rainy days.
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears when she realized she couldn't remember.
She swallowed the sob that wanted to come, washing it down with a spoonful of soup, and slowly, quietly, raised her other hand to wipe away the drops of water hanging tenuously from her jaw before they could fall and hit the tabletop. She kept eating—at a regular pace, but not mechanically—so that Casshern wouldn't realize something was wrong and turn from the window.
Right now…right now Luna wouldn't be able to bear the raw guilt he would be feeling, or the touch of his cold hands as he tried to comfort her. Instead she kept silent to hide her tears, her grief, from the companion standing not five feet away, so that his eyes would remain fixed on that ever-advancing army.