There must have been some magic to lunar tears all along. A quiet kind that pooled in quiet places.
A full year had passed since Emil had first welcomed him to this place, but there was no sign of a fallen petal anywhere. Decay never sickened the sweetness of the air. It didn't make sense given the biological rules that governed other plant life, but it was what 9S had observed. In a world where everything was designed to end, their glow was as constant as the sun.
He remembered the frantic and looping surge of desperation to find 'home' that had brought him to this place for the first time after the tower fell. Another view of the night sky seemed so impossible at the time. Now that he was going back into orbit, he thought the silver grains of glittering light made for a better view than anything he'd seen out of the windows of the Bunker.
And with 2B there, it really did feel like home.
Watching her face, he remembered that the thing that had set off that frantic need to find home was Aster. Because she had thanked him. Because she was smiling so softly with the possibility that she and Gladiolus could be together until they broke down. She needed nothing else. Not humans, not any greater purpose—just that one person.
9S closed his eyes and imagined frayed wires and cracked exoskeletal plates. He pictured dust and lichens settled on metal remains, his inner components exposed and his black box dull and broken inside its compartment, right beside hers.
Decaying together was a kind of love for an android. There was nothing to suppose about it.
He sat up before he relaxed into the idea more than he should. It might be nice if their lives ended that way someday, but there was still so much more time he wanted to spend with the living 2B. So many promises he wanted to keep and missed opportunities to he wanted to revisit.
On the other side of her body, the parts and materials he had gathered for her repair were laid in neat, organized rows from the smallest to the largest atop his coat. He didn't need it where he was going. Placed in the center where it couldn't be missed was the package that contained all of 9S' hopes.
He didn't know how often Emil visited the flowers since regaining his memory, but the tire treads in the dirt by the elevator door suggested it was often enough. He was the only other person who had a key to the elevator and the only person who could come and go unchallenged to do what 9S asked:
If I don't come back in two years, please bring Pascal to 2B.
Could Pascal actually fix 2B? 9S didn't know. He could make android parts, but installation was probably a bit over his head. Yet 9S had every faith that Pascal would do it. When Pascal read that everything he needed was there and should be fine so long as the black box was installed last, he would figure out a way to piece her together. Even if it took him months. History proved that certain things were innate and didn't change no matter how many resets there were. Pascal would do it because he was asked and because if it came to that, it would be 9S' last request. He would do it because it's what the previous Pascal would have done—because his new iteration still had the willingness and desire to do good.
Theta was already abusing it for political gain. 9S merely hoped to rely on it to save one life.
It was still a little unbelievable to him that he was entrusting something as important as 2B's restoration to a machine, but there was no other being in the city ruins he could imagine leaving her to. And maybe 9S could hope that when Pascal read that Theta couldn't know, he might be a little less trusting of her.
"Man, things have only gotten stranger since the war ended..." It felt a little silly to talk to her when she couldn't hear him, but he brought his knees up to his chest and kept going. "The world is complicated, 2B. I've had a lot to think about since I decided to repair you, about all the patterns I've seen play out again and again."
"I've met a lot of people since you died. Learned more about people I already knew. The Commander, you, my operator; even the other scanners. We all had the same purpose and I think we were able to justify our existence that way. But I don't think it's what any of us were really living for. We all have our treasures, and I don't think we can change those treasures so easily. Whether I was climbing the tower to kill A2 or falling in a pit looking for data to get V home, the reason I did those things always traced back to you."
He frowned and scratched at his hair while replaying Theta's talk with 8E. Resilience and the determination to progress. The ability to develop one's own purpose and the ability to self-direct without falling into despair. Each one was a sort of complicated idea and he wasn't sure he had any of those things. Without a war to fight in or any obligation to be a soldier, all he knew he had for certain was the same thing he'd always had: the desire to be with 2B.
If he had anything special or had changed at all after meeting V, maybe he was a little more patient? His imagination had certainly improved now that he had 'You do not have to accept this' lodged in his thought routines.
"I wonder what might've happened if V had shown up sooner?" he murmured. "If he had told us both that we didn't have to accept things as the YoRHa plan designed them to be…"
Trying to path out that alternate series of events might have been interesting, but his train of thought switched tracks almost immediately to wondering what 2B and V would think of one another. It was easy to imagine the two of them sitting together on a rainy day. She'd always surprising him with the eloquent but grim thoughts that occasionally came out of her and knowing their shared history shed light on her unexpectedly well-rounded ideas about sin and war. She had heavy thoughts; maybe the heavy poems V liked would be to her tastes.
"I don't know if you'll ever meet V," he said with a crooked smile. "He's kinda cold to strangers and I think he'd rather die than admit he does anything for other people just to be nice… but I think you would enjoy each other's company if you got the chance to know one another. I'll be sure to tell you all about him someday."
He held up the black box from his spare body, feeling the weight of it and watching the gentle dormant strobe of the light inside. Sitting it gently atop her chest, he climbed back to his feet. With care, he gouged Virtuous Contract down into the soil, leaving a pure white marker above 2B's head. After a moment's consideration, he pushed Cruel Oath down beside it. If he should fail, at least in this regard he would remain at her side.
"Sleep a little longer, 2B. I'll be back before you know it."
The dream of the white flowers didn't come every time V slept. It was an intermittent thing, here and gone and here again. It never changed. Never progressed beyond blood spilling silently down to taint the field. But every time V had the dream, it faded a little more. Like the sound from a shore he was slowly but surely traveling away from. Whatever remained of Zero was passing through him, and soon enough it would pass away.
When he stirred, he did not have to ask if 9S had finished his business. Readiness radiated from him. In the muted whites and tans and browns of his resistance clothes and under hair gone the same black color as V's, he waited. What was reflected in his eyes was not boyish eagerness or silent melancholy, but the patient certainty that the object of his desire was accessible, and he only had to cross the distance. Reaching the place that was thousands of kilometers away, and then the one that was hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, were mere footsteps on his path.
V's road toward the remnants of the dragon was no different.
The quiet was natural. Comfortable. No questions needed asking. No last-minute forgotten things needed pursuit. There was only V shrugging on the breathable but thick cotton shirt emblazoned with the symbol of the resistance. The old one, with its burnt left sleeve, he tossed in the fireplace. A new glove covered his left arm neatly and comfortably. All he had to do was not burn through this one as well.
Outside, the sun was as high in the sky as ever, irreverent of the late hour. 9S stood at the pier's edge between the remains of balloons flapping at the edge of their strings in the high wind. He threw his YoRHa uniform into the churned brown seafoam, and V sent his coat the same way. They watched the heavy leather vanish into the rest of the trash and pulled their hoods up.
It really was no different than all the other times Vergil had become no one and vanished. Night wasn't necessary in order to walk in shadow.
They followed the coast headed west at an unhurried pace. Until the familiar structures of the city gave way and the coastal air began to sing. The piles of detritus at the tide line clanged and clanked for the waves washing over them the way chimes rang for the wind.
It was only there, deep into the no man's land where it was certain that they were alone that 9S paused. "We all clear, Pod?"
V carried the light supplies—his clothes and the water. From 9S' pack, a black antenna and a silver one poked out of the upper flap.
"AFFIRMATIVE," the pods answered in unison.
"NO MACHINE LIFEFORMS DETECTED."
"NO RESISTANCE SIGNALS DETECTED."
9S stretched his arms high up over his head and gave a loud sigh that he must've been holding. "Undercover operations aimed at evading androids sure are stiff."
"It was a good act," V admitted. Fooled him, at the very least. "But I hope you haven't worn yourself out that quickly."
He folded his hands behind his head and smiled. "No, I'm good. As long as I run a thought routine that keeps my mind occupied I can do that a long time. It's how I usually travel long distances without getting bored."
"REPORT: UNIT 9S OFTEN DEVIATES FROM IDEAL PATHING."
"Anyway." He glared over his shoulder at the black antennae already vanishing back into his pack. "It's nothing but travel from here on out. You ready?"
"I should hope."
9S spared a look back at the city. "I feel like I should do something here. Do you have anything for this?"
V raised a brow. "Anything such as?"
"I dunno; a poem? You must know a happy poem or something right? Or at least something for saying goodbye?"
He followed 9S' gaze. The city was just a huddle of blocky shapes in the distance. He couldn't say any single place there meant anything special—he was accustomed to moving around and attached to places even less readily than to other people. Perhaps that was why he still thought of the van when he thought of just what it was he was trying to return to. It was a place that went with him and met him where he needed it to. In that same way, everything he had grown comfortable and familiar with had left the ruins with him. There was nothing to miss or leave behind.
But that wasn't the case for 9S, was it?
His fingers drummed along his cane, mind wandering along what would be best, and eventually, he began to recite: "I bless thee, vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart; With earnest feeling I shall pray, for thee when I am far away."
"Thanks." A sincere smile warmed 9S' face. "That was actually pretty nice."
"Your tastes are not a challenge to guess."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
V smiled aside and wiggled his cane between them. "It means I look forward to the pleasure of returning home all the more to say that I kept company with a lovesick android."
9S pressed a hand to his collar, and if he'd had any pearls to clutch, V was sure would have. "Lovesick?!"
"We are all young once." He strolled off ahead, swinging his cane with growing appreciation that it was Heine of all poets that 8E had re-acquainted him with. "Never has she found you grieving, for her love with anxious prayer; all you asked was quiet living, quietly to breathe her air—"
9S shoved him, and V was nearly lifted from his feet. He tumbled down to the sand, just barely righting himself before the surf could wash over him and make the trip significantly less pleasant. 9S stood over him with a hand on one hip, high-headed and grinning victoriously.
"It's not a river," he said. "But it'll do."
V couldn't help but laugh. "I suppose that one is yours for free. The next, will cost you."
"Yeah, yeah~" He held out his hand. "Come on. Let's get going."
V was tempted to ignore the gesture on principle. But something gave him pause. The last time 9S struck, foolish as it was, he had all but fallen apart. V still remembered the way his hands trembled in his lap long after they'd moved on from the moment.
The hand that 9S held out to him was steady. Even when V took it just to be sure, it remained perfectly at ease in his own.
An old lighthouse still miraculously intact made a great vantage point to watch the cape from.
The remains of a road lined the edge of the cape right up to the place it became a pier. No skyscrapers to be seen. A few low buildings whose architecture was too small and simple for machines to replicate, so all that remained of them were Heritage Restoration's last efforts, long since overtaken by local flora and rising sea levels. A train had run through the area once. The tracks were long gone now, but one of the cars was half-submerged in the ruins of a station. Seaweed had rooted in the remains of the cushions and swayed with the gentle tide. Up this far the waters were clearer and cleaner and the flicker of real fish in the shallows was more frequent than the dull gleam of machine imitations.
The area wasn't untouched. Not a lot of places could be after six thousand years of war. A few machines that must've been a part of the network when the tower fell pockmarked the otherwise pretty nice view. A lot of green, otherwise. A lot of bright spring flowers. There was no tactical advantage to a tiny rural area like this one. The pier was too small for a shipping vessel and the island chain made it too much of a hassle to sail a large vessel this way anyway. Android presence was at zero for kilometers.
I did a thorough sweep, so I was sure of that much.
I'd spent the days since my arrival alone with the wind and the weather and the occasional chipmunk. And my memories, of course. Hard to get away from those. I thought of all the names I'd had and the places I'd been assigned to. I'd played twenty-two different roles during my three active years. The early ones had gone a lot faster. I didn't have a lot of names then. I would find my target and in about a month I'd have gotten whatever information command was looking for out of them. Kill them, move on, repeat. There was never any time for any of them to give me a name.
Taking stock only made me surer that I wanted to be called Fern. I wanted to die doing what Fern did. It felt like a sneaky way of admitting I wanted to live on as something other than an executioner, but even if that was true, it didn't change things. All the names I wore were me, and the past wasn't going to go away if I tried not looking at it.
No matter what, I owed those twenty-two targets. They were my friends, my allies, and my lovers and no human had conveniently come along to tell me I could choose not to kill them. Even if I cried, even if I erased myself over and over, I still killed them. My death was the least they were owed.
Dying hated and scorned was good enough for me. But if I could give my existence for a human? That had the kind of weight an android would appreciate. That at least made some sense of how senseless it had all been. If I died and he made it, I got to see them again and say I'd done one thing that was worth a damn.
V had mocked Fern for insisting he was human. I got the premise of why it irritated him. Fern had seen all the demon shit start happening up close and personal. It must have boggled his mind. How could she so staunchly consider him human?
It wasn't for the same reasons, but I knew her answer because mine was the same:
I needed him to be.
The faded knocking of the boat in the dock lulled me through those thoughts and through the days. Until finally the promised day came, and I heard the familiar click of a cane on concrete and a chatty scanner.
I waved and pointed down to the pier. There was only one boat out there—a sun-bleached thing patched in a dozen places, just the right size for three or four passengers. By the time they made it, I was waiting for them. Four days of travel hadn't worn 9S out at all. V looked a little tired, but then he always did.
"Nice wardrobe change," I said with a smile. "The both of you. Boat'll be ready in a minute, hop in."
V made a queasy face, and I knew instantly he didn't care for boats. But he got in without a fuss, and 9S followed right after him while I fiddled with a wire. The engine was in usable condition and I'd checked all the parts but getting around the key-based ignition was always a pain. It came to life with a loud stutter-pop before it evened out, and I sat up to the two of them sharing skeptical glances.
"Doesn't sound any worse than those shot-to-hell resistance camp trucks," I said defensively.
9S groaned. "I sure hope they handle better."
"Ocean's not quite as bad as the city's roads." I sat by the wheel and grinned like a snake as we pulled off. The engine coughed a little, but soon enough we were up to speed. "You ever decide on a name? Cause if you didn't, I'll spin around and point to something and whatever you get is what I'm gonna stick with."
He wrinkled his nose at me. For a moment, a cloud settled over him. He was worried, and it easy to guess what (or rather, who) he was thinking about. But just as quickly, his eyes softened, and he settled down into his seat to get comfortable for the journey.
"Forty-nine."
I looked aside at V, half because I wondered if he also thought it was a stupid name, and half curious to see if there was any explanation. All he did was meet my look with that secretive half-smile of his. There was something important about that number, and the kid's contented look told me plainly it probably had something to do with 2B.
Ah well. There'd been stupider names. I would know, I'd had some of them.
I turned northeast toward the mainland, and unconsciously, we all looked south. To the puttering of an old engine and the sound of ocean waves, the island where the 14th Machine War finally came to an end shrank to a blur on the hazy horizon and quietly disappeared.
A/N: Another arc down, one more to go.
I will be taking another hiatus and this one will be for the full length of summer. April and May are not available for me to give this arc any attention at all due to prior obligations, and real-world events and the related trickle-down effects are starting to take their toll on me. The last arc is a different beast and is going to take time, energy, focus, and research to construct properly. And right now I am tired, stressed, and considering ritually sacrificing my neighbors just for a change of pace.
I'm intending to write a very short (talking 20k words max) side story in the interim about our gang's road trip, but there won't be anything super plot-relevant in it when/if I get to it. Just a return to the fun interactions and exploration of dynamics because who knows, that might be therapeutic at this point.
Either way, I'll see you in late August/early September with the last arc, where 9S commits grand theft auto with high-cost military equipment, Fern organizes a smuggling operation and channels her inner DoomGuy, V realizes the drakenier universe is caught in the plot of Amityville: It's About Time, and deeply irresponsible uses of gestalt/replicant tech are discovered.
Stay healthy and stay the fuck inside.
