At the bottom of an escalator mostly reclaimed by dust and stubborn vines, V tugged his glove as high on his arm as it would go and flexed his fingers. The scaled arm hidden beneath was still warm. Allowing maso to do its work on him was far from the explosive, transformative matter it began as, but even with such a tightly controlled reaction, producing salt to make his point had not been ideal. Another rip in the space between hell and this world may have opened somewhere in the city. It would be small, just like the last, but that could not be underestimated in a place with so many waiting vessels.
He eyed 'Humility', buried point down in the dirt off to his side. Blue-violet energy swirled in the elaborate patterns. If there were demons, they would likely come to him as long as he had it.
Griffon was nestled atop its hilt and lethargically stretched his jaws. "Whaddya think boy-bot's up to?"
"We'll see," V said distractedly.
9S had gone down to ravine alone at his own insistence. Shadow sat on the cliff's edge, vigilant for any sign of further demonic activity in the depths below. As long as she was still, there was no cause for concern or at least no more than V already harbored in the persistent tap of his index finger against his cane. 9S had not spared the breath to explain himself at all, and V was left to wonder what had him behaving with such urgency absent of his usual tendency toward chatter.
When Shadow did stir, it was to trot back to V's side and melt back against his body. Outside the crumbling mall, 9S' footsteps thumped against the bridge, slower and far heavier than usual. V could just make out the creak of the ropes. A faint pattering reached him, which he briefly mistook for the beginnings of rain before it became clear the source was 9S.
He was drenched and so was the limp body he carried in his arms.
Months under a flowing current had bloated and warped her clothing, but her face was untouched and doll-perfect. Even in the dull, gray light that suffused from the low clouds, her color outmatched V's own pallid skin. He had to remind himself that life-like flush meant nothing compared to the single clean cut in the midsection of her dress. She had been dead for nearly a year.
9S' arms shivered, not with cold but with the effort of carrying her across the cracked and uneven stones. She must have weighed more than him, but he made no indication he wanted help. Contented insolation surrounded him, so like V's own that he didn't bother to offer Shadow's assistance. 9S would not have accepted. Even when he climbed the stairs to the elevator half-swallowed by the growth of a massive oak tree, he chose to kneel and lay her against his raised knee rather than relinquish her.
Red light shifted to blue. 9S stepped into the threshold of opened doors and turned to face V. His silence was a clear invitation, but the uneasy frown tugging at the corners of his mouth betrayed any illusion of confidence. He was a child hoping to not have to go alone into the dark, and now V grasped why he'd responded so harshly when asked where those doors went. At the bottom of that elevator shaft must be a place that was sacred to him, but terrifying in equal measure.
V gestured for Griffon to stay where he was. The familiar snorted, yawned, and settled more comfortably on his perch while V ascended the stairs. The doors closed and the absence of any functional bulbs rendered the dark impenetrable, sparing him a closer look at 9S or the corpse as they descended. When they came to rest, his eyes were drawn to the light that seeped through the gaps in the ancient metal.
The doors parted and the moonlight glow of an entire field of lunar tears welcomed them into a cave whose dark, glittering heights were the closest thing to a night sky he had seen in months. The remnants of what he had absorbed from Emil reached out like ghosts grasping for a long-ago life. Blurred faces and unclear names lapped at the shores of his mind.
9S moved through the flowers with slow, careful steps. Pollen swirled in his wake like trailing ripples in a river of stars. He didn't stop until he'd reached a wooden post rising from one of few bald patches in the field. The marker was old, and the visor tied to it was coated in enough pollen for it to gleam faintly in the dark.
He had made an attempt to mourn here sometime in the past—perhaps he felt it could be done properly this time.
The vestiges of some kind of lean-to stood to one side. Despite knowing that it was not actually as familiar to him as it felt, V was drawn to it. It was the only thing he'd seen in a long time that looked like a human being had lived there. Dust and pollen coughed from the ancient cot as he sank onto it. The whole structure creaked, but miraculously it didn't fall apart.
9S paid the sound no mind at all. He had his back turned to him and his focus remained firmly on the task of wicking moisture from her hair and straightening her clothes and giving her whatever dignity he felt she was owed in death. Every motion he took with her bore an intimate deliberation that raised goosebumps on V's arms. He should not have been there. Even if 9S had asked for it, his presence seemed an almost voyeuristic intrusion.
"She was an E type too."
V looked up, too dazed by the combination of discomfort and the remains of maso fatigue to offer the perfunctory 'what' that fizzled through his mind.
"2B was a cover designation. She was an executioner. Mine. Every time I found out something I shouldn't, she'd receive orders. Carry them out. Erase me. I'd wake up brand new, vowing to do my best to serve mankind. Get assigned to 2B again. Repeat it all. They left bits and pieces sometimes—like my sword. But mostly they took things away. Important… things."
9S' difficult moods usually took the form of reticence as he retreated into his own mind or explosive emotional spirals, but this was neither. He was all barely conjoined thoughts, haphazardly spilled in whatever order they came. Or didn't come. V could hear him rubbing at his coat in the abrupt silence and every few seconds a halting inhalation that never quite made it as far as words.
"How many times?" he offered.
"Dunno yet. A lot, probably. January 30, 11942… Well, I guess I technically had a second rollout sometime around August. They only paired me with 2B after that. So that's three and a half years. You'd asked how old I was? Nevermind, that was a long time ago. Anyway, it never takes me long to figure it out. Only 2 months this last cycle. This iteration of me is only from March 10th of last year."
V rubbed at his eyes and tried not to laugh. He'd let resemblance make him unexpectedly paternal with an android who was only six months old when they met and still he'd ended up in hell during the boy's birthday.
The foulness of this world's sense of humor was immeasurable and he would not miss it at all.
"Is March when she killed you last?"
"No. We died together that time. By choice. To complete a mission, I mean. It happened every now and again. I think… I know it made 2B happy."
9S trailed his gloveless fingers through the stalks of the lunar tears. Even if his thoughts were as unconnected as his words, V recognized the act as purposeful. How often had he combed in search of only the most ideal gift for his mother in the same manner? Whether he bled or cried, it was background noise in the effort of ensuring she was given only what was worthy of her. In the same way, 9S inspected the shapes at the center of each pale glow until he found the one he thought was perfect. He plucked the leaves and bent the stem and wove it into her hair as gently as if he were trying not to wake her.
"E models were public knowledge. They had an official purpose. But for me, the first time I met 8E was the first time 'I' had heard of them. I already suspected something was up with 2B, but that was when I really started to get it."
"You're a scanner," V said, echoing words whose weight he had not understood when 9S first spoke them. "You always pick up on things."
"Yeah…" He folded her hands over the bloodless gash in her midsection. "Curiosity killed the cat and all."
"Curiosity didn't kill you. 2E killed you."
"Don't call her that." 9S turned from her body with a strangely composed frown. A sort that said he already knew V didn't understand and maybe that he didn't expect him to, but made it clear there was a line there and he expected V to keep a respectable distance from it. "2B had her orders. And if you really heard her message, you know she didn't enjoy it. …I don't think any executioner did."
"She had a choice."
"No, she didn't. Neither of us did."
8E had made a similar indication. Her defensiveness had made it sound like denial, but the impression V got from 9S was very different. In his mouth, it was an observation. A fact, like being YoRHa. Sterile and objective as the sharp edge of a sword.
"I know you're not her," 9S went on, fussing with some small detail of her dress. "But I do see her in you, V. I can't help it. The ways I feel about you both are… similar."
A suspicious prickle ran down V's back and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "In what regard, exactly?"
9S looked between them and rubbed at the back of his neck, his mouth a thin, twisted line. "I guess I sort of hate you."
V didn't know what he'd been bracing himself for, but that particular string of words was well beyond his wildest expectation. Everything about the last twenty minutes, from the conversation to all of 9S' uncomfortably tender treatment of 2B's body, pointed in the opposite direction.
"It's complicated," 9S added quickly. "My time with her was the only thing that ever… it was the only thing that had any meaning to me. So she's special to me. But she was also the one who took that away from me. I can't…not be angry at that. It's not as simple as feeling only good things or only bad things about her. And it's the same with you."
"My only treasure," said V, his voice low enough to mask the bitterness of his recitation. "My divine hate."
"You guys have poems for everything, huh?" 9S stood and joined him under the ragged canopy. He seemed skeptical of the cot, and instead settled cross-legged atop a pile of stones. Even there, his gaze drifted to black-clad corpse resting peacefully among the flowers. "How did 8E act with you before she remembered?"
"As if I was absolute. She never asked anything of me, and the lengths she'd go to in order to secure my protection and praise were likely without limit."
"That's by design." He touched a hand to his chest. "To compensate for having the heart of a machine, YoRHa have a stronger longing for humans than normal androids. It's a core feature of our programming."
V drummed his fingers thoughtfully along the top of his cane. "Is that why the two of you found it necessary to fight like beasts every time I wasn't there to interfere?"
"There were more reasons than that…" 9S muttered defensively. "But I can't say that wasn't a big part of the problem."
"I presume then that your hate lies in the fact that you are aware of the effect my humanity has on you?" A hint of wry amusement crept into his voice. "And you disagree with that effect?"
"I do. It's like I have thoughts that are mine and then thoughts that are pretending to be mine and sometimes I can tell one from the other, and other times I can't and I hate it. For a long time, you were never really a reason to go on living as much as you were a barrier preventing me from dying. I resented you a lot for it at the start. I didn't want to be in a world that didn't have 2B in it. That time we first went underground I… may have secretly been hoping you would get hurt. But you were strong. So I told myself your existence gave hers meaning and resolved to protect you for my own reasons." He laughed powerlessly at himself. "That may be how I justified it while I let myself be pulled along by my protocols, though."
Pulled along by protocol. Now there was a notion he'd have liked to take back in time, considering the blind focus on demonic natures that led to his own birth. 9S' situation was similar and so was 8E's now that V better understood. But the thing he wished to carve out was much more understandable than the totality of his humanity and he treasured even the memories of his own death at the hands of someone he clearly loved. For all the other ways in which he was too harsh or too naïve with himself, 9S had a much more centered grip on what was important than Vergil had ever had.
"Do not discredit yourself," he said appreciatively. "Folly and cruelty may be the hammer and nail that constructed you, but the only match to your curiosity is your irreverence."
"Thanks… I think." He straightened his legs and folded his fingers together between his knees. "I did have fun with you, V. But it's frustrating to not know how much of any of this was me or my programming."
V smirked. "How angry have you been, exactly? Enough to kill me?"
9S flinched, and V realized too late that 9S wasn't the right match for such a joke, much less at this moment. "I didn't want to do that much... Maybe just push you in the river."
He hummed, wondering if 9S realized just how dangerous that might prove to be. Likely not—he was alternating between fidgeting with his hands and glancing at 2B, clearly trying to wrestle the rest of his thoughts into order. The effort took him long enough for the conversation to lull and V's mind to wander. He knew on some level that androids must be beholden to humans, but not to the extent 9S was suggesting. If V died, it was possible 9S might have ended up no different than the red-haired twins—guilty in unending fashion through no will of their own. Given all the other pointless curses heaped onto YoRHa's name, it would hardly be surprising.
"I found a bunch of 2B's memories on her sword," 9S said carefully. "I'm... I think I'll try and repair her."
V glanced toward the elevator, gauging whether it would end in more of a mess to leave or to stay. "You didn't speak to Anthurium," he said in carefully even tones.
"Does that matter? He told me it was serious and I should get that data from a friend."
"Is that what you consider me?"
"I dunno… Maybe more like…family?"
The lilt at the end that requested either permission or confirmation, the ludicrousness of the very idea—V laughed. First in a single harsh snicker and then in rolling waves. He might have begrudgingly let 'friend' happen even though it was just as outlandish to him, but not family. Never family. Misplaced paternal affect or not, that wasn't something V was looking to replace or recreate.
'Family' was only a thing he should have taken better care not to lose in the first place—perhaps then he might regard the term as something other than a synonym for 'opponent'.
"That word means far less to me than you think it does."
"What about Nero?" 9S asked, baffled and searching V's face.
"What about him?"
"He's your family right? Didn't you love him?"
A single white crack formed in the solid black well that occupied most of V's heart.
How could he have? What time was there? What point was there? The past was gone and the future was up to Vergil, and while his humanity may have been recovered and his temperament made more reflective by absorbing V's experiences, Vergil was still fundamentally more of a demon than V could ever be. The bridge between him and Nero might remain burned forever.
Love was far too much to ask between descendants of Sparda, and family didn't mean anything positive to V. But Nero did.
"I did not meet Nero until he was a boy more grown than not, and I did not know he was my son until more than a month after I had walked into his home, taken from him no different from the demons that took my mother's life, and left him for dead. That's what family is." He dropped his chin down to one hand. In the light of the rising pollen, 9S was still and wide-eyed beside him. "Nero was something better than that. Someone deserving of my gratitude."
'And so are you' hung from the end of his words like a battered flag of surrender, and V could not be bothered trying to dissipate its incriminating presence. He was unsure what had prompted him to make such a confession, considering 'he' hadn't done any of those things. But he had certainly treated Nero as family in other regards—goading him, using him to suit his own cause, never giving him the full story even when he was dying. The only thing V hadn't done before rejoining with Urizen was fight him.
Something slapped him between his shoulders, heavy and solid as an iron pipe.
His vision rattled and the wind left him in a single cough that seemed to have physical weight to it. Pain burned a tight ring beneath his ribs, and as he doubled over, he blinked incredulously at the only source it could have come from.
9S tucked his open palm away behind his back. "Too hard? I tried to hold back and avoid aiming for anything vital. It seemed like you needed it." He averted his eyes with a crooked, guilty half-smile. "And I wanted to know if I even could with the programming and everything." He laughed, even as he rubbed restlessly at his coat and began to scuff his heels against the stones. "'You hurt a human! You hurt a human!' is what's going through my head. The guilt is reeaally strong."
V managed to pull himself back into an upright position, but he couldn't help coughing on the way up. It didn't hurt him nearly as much as it winded him, but the indignity was going to linger for as long as his shoulders stung. "A just punishment for taking the kind of measure I would normally only expect from Griffon."
"No belief without experiment, right?"
V stared at him. First, he struck out of nowhere then tried to justify it with a butchered quote. Incredible. Utterly incredible.
"Are you uh…okay?" 9S asked timidly.
"No."
9S peered at him and decided correctly on his own that V was lying in order to exacerbate his guilt. "That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to throw you in the river."
Jokes. A physical distraction and jokes. At tangible expense to him, 9S was attempting to reset the conversation and put them back in familiar territory. Or perhaps he didn't know how else to react. V couldn't say and was quietly pleased with the out. The alternative was to sit in silence while everything he'd said settled on them like grave dirt.
"To the sound of your weeping as I am swept away, I'm sure."
9S smiled, but his hands continued to tremble when he lowered them into his lap. The punishment for lashing out at the being he was supposed to treat as god would not abate so easily. "It's been 6,468 hours since 2B died. Humans forget things over time, but I still remember every moment I was with her in perfect detail. I also remember everything I did after she died. The kind of…person I turned into." He looked up at the pollinated air. "Even if you screwed up that bad, you don't sound particularly proud of it now. I know what that's like."
V gave a short, quiet 'hmph'. For having a life as filled with nightmares as V's own, 9S was… senselessly kind. Enough to care for someone who took the only thing he loved away on no less than a dozen repeated occasions, and enough to care for someone as difficult as V as well.
The last thing V wanted him to be was 'like family'.
"V." The sincerity of that single syllable demanded nearly as much of him as his mother's voice. "I never expect you to tell me everything about you. But whatever secret you've been keeping about me isn't your responsibility."
"…The final protocol of the YoRHa plan isn't complete."
Gratitude warmed 9S' even as the reality of those words visibly bore down on his shoulders. "There's something that comes after the destruction of the Bunker and the loss of YoRHa's data?"
"It's not meant to be lost. It's meant to be completely destroyed." He paused, deciding his next words with extreme care. After this much, he didn't want to leave the explanation in the hands of the pods. "The Pod Network contains a final program that entails the destruction of any surviving YoRHa units and the complete purge of all related data. In order to defer the activation of this program after the Tower appeared, a specific trigger was proposed by Pod 042 and Pod 153."
9S remained eerily still. "It's me, isn't it?"
"So it is." He leaned back, rolling the last of 9S' heavy-handed strike from his shoulders. "Repairing 2B is up to you. But if you die, she will die with you. So will the other scanners. Pod 042 requested my assistance with this matter, but given my condition and the appearance of demons, it seemed the safest to leave you in the camp until I was…stable."
9S cocked his head at the silver shape floating in the dark over V's shoulder. "Pod 042…you asked for help to circumvent your programming?"
"AFFIRMATIVE. I HAVE DECIDED THAT THE EXECUTION OF FINAL PROTOCOL IS NO LONGER AN ACCEPTABLE OUTCOME." Pod 042's antennae whirred, and he sank a little behind V's head, as though he was hiding. "SS LEVEL CONFIDENTIALITY DOES NOT DENOTE AN ARMY OF HUMANITY ANDROID. IT IS RESERVED FOR COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE FIRST POD SYSTEM TO THOSE OF US IN ACTIVE ROLES IN THE FIELD. POD UNITS ARE THE ADMINISTRATORS OF PROJECT YORHA. I WISHED…TO MAKE UP FOR THIS."
"Pod 153," 9S said quietly. "Can the program be destroyed?"
"IN THEORY, YES. HOWEVER, IT WOULD REQUIRE ATTACKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE POD REGIONAL NETWORK. THIS ACTION HAS AN UNACCEPTABLY LOW PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL."
"…I understand." In an uncharacteristic show of restraint, he did not erupt with either questions or anger. Instead, he looked at V for a few moments, at the end of which he spared a cheerful smile as though they'd never fought at all. "Thank you."
V shrugged. "It is only what was owed."
"Yeah, yeah, if that's what you need to say..." 9S seemed more like himself as he slid down from his seat and paced the flowers with crossed his arms, no doubt already formulating a dozen plans to deal with his problem.
V stood and made for the elevator. After all this, he thought he might welcome a crass joke from Griffon.
To his surprise, 9S darted right after him. He'd expected 9S to stay at the grave a little longer but made no comment. He was out of things to say. 9S, most likely, was not. And sure enough, they were about half-way back to the surface when 9S interrupted the silence one more time with the drawn-out 'So…' that always heralded at least five more questions.
"Is there anything else...?"
That was one. "I imagine you know the answer to that."
"Hm… When?"
That was…two? V's brows scrunched. "When what?"
"When are you leaving?"
The doors opened, but V didn't move to get out and neither did 9S. At the bottom of the stairs, Griffon eyeballed them and stretched his neck out curiously. V jammed his arm against the the button to close the doors and take them back down and turned. In the dark, 9S was invisible save the twin points of his optic lights. "Where did you hear I was leaving?"
"8E. When she told me where 2B's body was... she asked me to make sure I said goodbye to you for both of us."
V's mind blanked and for the first time since his birth, he felt his ears burn. No wonder 9S chose now to confess 2B's nature and the details of his programming. Wanting his answer, confessing how he thought of V both at the start and now, taking the opportunity to strike V just to see what would happen—these were all things done because 9S believed there might not be another chance. He'd even spoken in past-tense at a handful of points and while V noticed, he had simply not pieced it together.
Fern would never have dared, but for all 8E's seeming obedience, when she said she had plans of her own, apparently she meant that she intended to meddle.
"It's only a possibility," V sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose.
The twin lights disappeared. In the dark, 9S' voice was only a whisper. "Were you going to tell me at all?"
That was three. "I cannot recall that last time I bothered to say goodbye. I am… unpracticed."
"No shit…" The elevator settled and 9S made a hasty sniffling noise as the doors opened. He took the opportunity to look out across the flowers and gave a heavy sigh. "Should I come with you? Do you need help?"
The doors closed around the end of that fourth question. "No. I don't know if this is going to work, and if it does there is a possibility I may end up in hell." Hopefully, if he did, it would be the right one this time. "I'm no strange to navigating hell and finding demons, you less so. And you—"
"Have stuff of my own to do," 9S completed. "Right. I'll be okay. I'll be at the camp, so if it doesn't work you can find me—And if it does and you don't come back I'll just… I'll assume you made it." He sounded like he must have been making a brave face, even though V could hear him gripping his coat tight enough that the wrinkles might never come out. "Make sure you make up with Nero, okay?"
V gave an amused hum. "I'll make an effort."
The elevator stopped and the doors opened once more. This time, they both stepped off. "What exactly are you gonna do, anyway?"
And there was the fifth question, easiest of them all. V flipped his cane up over his shoulder and smirked. "Destroy the church. And the gods with it."
9S whirled and jabbed a triumphant finger at Pod 153. "I knew it!"
