It was one thing to be aware of Emil as off-key singing in the distance and the occasional unidentified wheeled object cartwheeling over a beat-up school bus. It was another thing entirely to his passenger.
Eight androids and a human came to a literal one-ton load, but Emil's ability to accelerate was beyond the petty concerns of natural gravity. We left the crater at a soar and landed like a minecart full of rocks being skipped across uneven pavement. My fingers crushed into the metal siding of his cargo bed while the laws of physics tried and failed to subdue us. If he had cheerily told me that he'd skimmed across the surface of the ocean from the flooded coast of the city all the way to the Night Kingdom, I would have believed him.
We shot northwest away from Roswell leaving a trail of kicked-up flurries in our wake. Briar Rose's one gargled note faded into the brittle rumble of a truck driving over packed snow and allowed me a desperately needed opportunity to process. 2B being among our passengers came with an infinite string of implications. I'd have liked a confirmation on literally any of them, but 9S had vanished into her and she'd done the same to him, and I didn't particularly want to talk to the other scanner who'd shown up. I let them have their moment. Mostly because I needed one of my own. I had only been back from hell for a matter of hours and every single one had been more chaotic than the last.
The toll on V seemed especially heavy. He stared out behind us the whole time with a look I had never seen before.
Emil's eventual stop came two hours later in the center of a medium convoy safely parked in the cover of a mesa. A natural one, stretching off in a shape more like a tadpole than Briar's circular nodes. The horizon was normal in every direction. A ring of thirty or so red pods hovered above the center of the group, providing just enough light to see by with clouds beginning to take back the sky. I recognized a few regular androids by the clothes they wore and the general build of their models—Anemone's people. They made up maybe twenty-five of a squadron that I approximated to be two hundred and fifty strong. The remainder were dressed in a mix of fancily woven black wool that didn't suit the climate and practical beige cotton that did.
9S had really done it. Right before our eyes was all that remained of YoRHa.
And right before their eyes was us.
The moment we deboarded, recognition rippled through the crowd. Heads lifted and turned. Backs straightened, feet were climbed to, fingers wrung and tangled in new clothes over new bodies that hadn't seen a drop of oil or been soiled with the smell of blood. Awe spread like an infection. They held back on restless legs, watchful as a herd sharing a pond with a predator.
The first crunch of an approaching step in the snow and V tensed. The man who would casually shove his cane into a stranger's space in order to preserve his own was as absent as his tattoos. His eyes were too wide, too focused, and unblinking in a way I hadn't seen since I had the unfortunate task of stripping him while he was delirious with hypothermia. Automatically I put myself between them and him. None of them meant V any harm, but the reverse wasn't necessarily true. He would do a lot more than bite the first one who got too close to him while he was like this.
"Back off. He's injured." I didn't intend to sound as hostile as I did, but it wasn't technically a lie.
"Hold your positions," Theta said in a barely raised voice that nonetheless snapped the crowd back into place. "Who's in charge here?"
A green hood emerged from the crowd. My mouth dried even though she paid me no mind—I hadn't expected to ever see Anemone again. "Good to see you alive, Commander Theta."
"Good to see a friendly face at all. We have several wounded. Are there repair-capable units available?"
"There are. You caught us on the move so there's no designated area, but we can set one up. Statice, take them to Pine, would you?"
"Thank you." Supporting Scheherazade with her shoulder, she gathered the rest of our entourage up to go get inspected. She gave me a quick once-over but gave no signal she expected me to follow. "If there are any YoRHa models with a numerical value of '1' present, I will expect them for a debrief when called. All other units are to remain on standby. Do not attempt to approach the human until his condition has been assessed. As you were."
Just like that, the crowd was brought to heel. Nobody would bother V, and they weren't gonna try 9S either with Theta and 2B hanging around. That did leave an unfortunate number of eyes on me. Surrounding me with the silent demand for either a chance to approach or assurance that V was alright since Theta leaving with everyone else heavily implied that I was the one who was going to be doing the assessing.
What did they want me to say? There wasn't anything to assess—V looked fucking awful.
He hobbled toward the first available truck that wasn't Emil, and there was so much held breath at every limp that even the wind seemed to stop with the prospect of him collapsing. He didn't notice. I doubted he even realized what he was surrounded by. He sank down on the lowered edge of the bed and slumped against the siding. A settled scowl half-obscured by his hair refused to betray anything, and yet couldn't hide the emotion that seeped out elsewhere.
In the shake in his fingertips, not quite hidden by gripping his cane too tight. In the deep lines beneath his eyes, far worse than any poor sleep had ever left behind. The sweat beading on his forehead erased cold as the source of a shiver he kept trying and failing to shake off. He reminded me of the oil field. Pitch black and faintly bubbling. Rage or terror or artifacts of a war between both that rising to the surface while he disappeared into himself.
I didn't ask him if he was alright. The prospect that he would not have a smarmy answer for such a redundant question was too much for me to shoulder. There was nothing for me to say to him at all. We'd escaped by a stroke of luck, but it cost us. We were worse off than before we'd tried the festival, and the same question as then loomed over us.
What now?
The book had gone as quiet as V, which said to me that it hadn't gotten all the Verses before we left. That was the only lead we had on the dragon's remains, and if we wanted it, we were going to have to go back and confront an entity that had casually and indiscriminately wiped out thousands. So, what did we do now?
All the useful things I'd normally put my energy toward in a situation like this seemed pointless or counterproductive. Running off to find something for V to eat meant leaving him while Briar was still out there and so was legion. There could be as many of those salt monsters as there were corpses available and it made my jaw ache to think how many of those there could be out here, frozen and preserved in this dark place where alien motherships still pocked the landscape.
Water wouldn't be a problem with a crowd of androids hanging around. Trucks were as good as it was going to get for shelter. But I couldn't do nothing. I had to make some kind of progress. I needed information. Situational context. I needed to know where the hell we even were.
I didn't know where I should start to say so to V, so I shoved my hands in my pockets and started with Pod 042. "I'm surprised you're not with 2B."
"THIS POD IS PRESENTLY ASSIGNED TO V," Pod said patiently, as if that should be a given. "WHILE I AM NOT FAMILIAR WITH POD UNIT 006, I HAVE NO DOUBT THEY ARE A CAPABLE SUPPORT UNIT FOR THE PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES."
I eyed the red pods hovering over the shoulders of every YoRHa as far as I could see. "That your way of saying you're gonna stay with V until you get re-assigned?"
"AFFIRMATIVE. I WILL CONTINUE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT UNTIL SUCH TIME AS I AM NO LONGER REQUIRED."
I unwound by a fraction. The grimoire was still with V and while it was supposedly the dragon, I didn't have the kind of trust in it that I had for Pod 042. "Good. I'm going to figure out what we're working with." I said it slowly. Offering every opportunity for V to give me some input. He didn't so much as blink. "I won't be far."
The last time I'd seen so many YoRHa in one place had been right before I wiped myself out and woke up as Fern. I recognized groups more than individuals but recognizing anything at all after the junkpile of alien experiences that made up my time in the night kingdom was its own blessing.
The red Pod 006 units chattered around me in disjointed yet contiguous conversation. They seemed to be individual enough to hold dozens of different conversations with no mix-up, but they were all more or less discussing the same thing: The status of Roswell.
"They're interesting aren't they."
My back tensed, and I stood a little straighter. Anemone leaned against the side of a truck with the same humble presence as ever. The distant, subtle frown on her face was no different than it had ever been, but there was nothing distant about her gaze. I had taken people from her and left her with questions I could only give unsatisfying answers to. She might be too old to need any of this to make sense, but that didn't mean she forgave it.
"They are."
"You knew he was human," she said measuredly. "That was the real reason you killed Lobelia and Rho."
Nothing was messier than being an E-type and returning to the scene of a kill, even if the scene was just another person who knew you did it. "I like to think I would've come up with a different solution if I wasn't an executioner."
She let the pod chatter fill the tense silence between us. Somewhere out there, Briar was still converging on itself. All 1.2 million square kilometers of it, flowing as unnaturally as a river leaving the sea and destroying any machine, android, dragon weapon, or demon that had the misfortune of being in its path. There was no news of it moving or of the angel emerging from inside the mass at Roswell, but it didn't need to. Briar had legion for that. They didn't sound much tougher than the demons, but the survivors who had managed to escape with us no longer had any infrastructure or order to help them fight. All they had was their weapons and their ability to retreat while Pod 006 offering suppressive fire. And every few minutes, the Pod reported its own casualties. There were a lot of Pod 006 units, but they weren't infinite. Eventually, there would be none left.
"No apology?" It was almost a statement. She wasn't looking for one.
"I don't think you actually want that from me. It won't bring anyone back."
"You'd be right on both counts. But even when you say it bluntly, you always look guilty anyway."
"Just because it's pointless to apologize doesn't mean I don't regret it." She didn't hurry to add anything to that, and I relaxed as it became clear she wasn't there to confront me. Not physically anyway. "Anybody left back in camp?"
"A small team and Enforcer Gamma." I shot her a quizzical look and she shrugged. "Roswell wasn't an anti-machine operation. The treaty still needs enforcing."
It was a load off my mind, to be honest. I wasn't sure I could have dealt with Gamma's personality after all this. The sickly sort of joy I took in needling her seemed like a stranger's emotion. A footprint in the dust left by boots that weren't mine anymore.
"How many of my people did you kill?" Anemone asked in a tight whisper. She must have been working up to it. Her arms were crossed tight and she was every bit as braced as I had been moments before.
"Four." My core temperature crept up a degree. I could have only answered the question she asked or pretended to be the kind of person who could say it easily, but I found more to say in me. So I took a breath and tried to be brave. "I didn't have that many in your camp really. Only three of my missions were even in your zone, maybe nine in your entire sector. But I came back to the city a few times just to try deserting. From YoRHa, I mean. I wiped my memory hoping I'd get to live as a Resistance member."
"Why?"
"Because I liked having you for a commander."
Her eyebrows shot up. Unexpectedly for us both, I caught her off guard and she floundered. "I... I'm not even designed for command."
"No offense, but it shows." There was an audacity to saying this now and I knew it, but I wasn't trying to be bold or anything. I'd never had a chance to talk to Anemone as myself before. As Fern. The situation being so uncertain, maybe it was my messy way of taking 9S' advice and saying what I wanted to say. "You being just some android who stepped up to the job of leading is probably why I liked the camp so much more than the Bunker. An actual command unit wouldn't have come all the way out here on a favor."
"9S did me one first." She smiled, but it wasn't for me in the slightest. "Not every day I get to see someone I buried come back to life."
The trucks shook like beetles against a sudden gust. A pair of radio-tower red glows sailed by. Anemone and I exchanged glances. We hadn't been so deep in that we'd have missed a transmission from the pods if something dangerous was approaching. So what were dragons doing here? I ran after them, leaving her behind. They landed north of our position, close to the rock face and out of the rising wind. I skidded to a stop well before I could see who had arrived.
"—manipulating the atomic structure of whatever it touches. Reprogramming too. Even on the organic parts."
"—capable of that before?"
"Hell no. The maso density necessary is way beyond anything that was left in this world."
Jorinde and Jorindel stood opposite of Theta, while Scheherazade lay between them. She was practically in pieces and would require a long laundry list of physical repairs before she could so much as move again. Most of her clothes had been stripped. Swaths of her plating were exposed where her skin had warped, split, cracked, or been burned away. I remembered what it felt like to be on the wrong side of V's claws when he was channeling Griffon. He had only gotten stronger since then. Scheherazade wasn't a YoRHa model, but the specialization required to hunt gods was clearly geared to ensure she didn't die easily. I'd hazard it had nothing to do with programming or physical body reinforcement and everything to do with the untranslatable words carved into every visible inch of her plating.
Whatever they were talking about, I didn't want to get involved. It sounded too much like they were approaching the problem of Briar Rose as if it was some goliath class machine that could be taken down with the right plan. That wasn't going to help me or V right now. If they came up with something, I'd hear it then.
Blending in with the androids around me, I withdrew. There was at least one kind of model that would be able to get me the kind of information I wanted, and I stopped the first android I passed.
"Where are all the scanners?"
"They're still on the coast working on something with that weird information officer. Jack… Jackass, I think is her name?" Made sense. Knowing Jackass, it probably pissed her off that the entire continent was under a scrambler and she'd commandeered the scanners to help her with a workaround. "Some of them did come along though, just in case. The tall one is right over that way."
'The tall one' was standing just out of sight of where 9S was being repaired, but he was not a scanner. I'd mistaken him for one too in the heat of the moment, but now that I wasn't trying to process half a dozen extremely distressing events happening practically on top of one another, I knew better.
E-types couldn't be programmed with an especially strong desire to kill. That came with a dangerous risk we'd do more than we were supposed to, so mostly we were created based on data that came in from B and D-types exposed to extreme situations. If the personality associated with a certain number showed a high enough capacity to complete a mission under unreasonable circumstances, an E-type in that number was soon to follow. In other words, we only came from personalities that showed the kind of loyalty that got the job done despite or without major psychological deterioration. Only the best and blindest in YoRHa became executioners. As a group, we tended to be business-like and kept other people at a distance by whatever means came naturally to us—repulsive mannerisms, coldness, avoidance—but it wasn't a programming quirk the way curiosity was for scanners or aggression was for battlers.
But we weren't like that because we were E-types; we were like that because we knew we were E-types.
One thing our models did have in common was a calibration process that was leagues more intense than models that were intended primarily for combat against machines. As a result, we all had a certain intensity of poise that was as familiar to me as my own shadow. A poise that this supposed scanner had. Looking at him was like looking down the barrel of a loaded rifle.
I'd never seen a male executioner before. That had to make him part of the previous generation, surprising as it was to think any of their data had survived intact enough to be transmitted to the ark. A fond but somewhat forlorn smile warmed his features as he watched 2B and 9S. The latter was inert, undergoing a data overhaul while 2B hovered patiently nearby. I doubted either of them would be separating from each other before it was necessary. V had managed to pull both me and 9S out of different kinds of hells, but hell had a way of following you around. The kid deserved any restoration of trust in reality 2B gave him.
Just as 2B deserved the chance to process that 9S could actually be safe with her from now on.
"You a friend of 9S?" I asked, falling in beside the male E-type.
"No. 2, Type D." A neat, curt dodge to my actual question. "And you're No. 8, Type...?"
"Fern."
He nodded slowly as if letting that sink in. "Do you need something, Fern?"
"I'm trying to figure out what happened after 9S split with me and V. And I don't think I'm gonna get it out of either of those two unless I want to wait a few hours."
He almost laughed. Bit more sense of humor than 2B then. "I'm just an obsolete model tagging along… But I'll tell you what I know."
The way 2D told it to me, 9S was already back with the ark by October. While V and I were still on our way to meeting Briar Rose, he had already reached the moon, identified the YoRHa manufacture site, recovered Unit 801S, destroyed the final protocol, and started extracting unit data back into bodies. It was easy to imagine the same person who had wrecked the tower within a month of it surfacing getting all of that accomplished in about the same time frame. A year relaxing in the city with V hadn't dulled him in the slightest.
Right at the start of November, 9S disappeared. Nobody really understood why at the time. One day he was there, and the next he was gone, and all anybody had to go one was word from 801S and Pod 006 that he was doing something important and that he'd be back. By then, the extraction process didn't need 9S. The other scanners and the healers were extracted and functional and they continued as planned to get every YoRHa in the ark into a fully functional body. Word about Roswell and the 247th Descent reached the city at the end of December. Extractions had been completed by then, and YoRHa was mostly occupied with acclimation and identifying a suitable base of operations. The message kicked up a lot of fuss with the Army; Gamma in particular since it mentioned a human and Commander Theta was the one requesting back up. But for the most part, YoRHa didn't jump to get involved.
"Wait," I blurted, raising a hand to interrupt. "YoRHa heard about a descent mission involving a human and you're telling me they didn't immediately get involved?"
"As a part of our new build, 801S apparently removed certain aspects of our base protocol that would cause unnecessary emotions." My horrified stare earned a tilt of his head as he belatedly realized how heinous that sounded. "By which I mean he removed the abnormally strong feelings we hold toward humanity."
That was a lot for me to process in and of itself. I looked around again, at all the bodies clad half in black and half in beige, and suddenly felt out of place. "What are you all doing here if you're not here for V?"
"We each have our reasons," he said, nodding toward 2B.
2D wasn't certain on the details, but 801S showed up with 2B within hours of the news spreading through YoRHa even though she wasn't present on the ark. She didn't really pay the rest of them any mind. All she cared about was getting to Roswell as fast as possible. Somehow that evolved into Anemone calling in a favor, and once the opportunity to leave for the night kingdom opened up, there wasn't one android among YoRHa who wasn't eager to board. Some came out of gratitude to 9S. Some had intentions of putting bodies made for war to use. Some, 2D was sure, came so that they could disappear. And yes, some had even come for V in spite of lacking any pre-programmed feelings of loyalty.
Naval carrier transport got the present group from that busted-up coastal area to Pearl Harbor in one straight shot. Anemone seemed to know someone there that arranged transport the rest of the way to the west coast of the Americas. And here they were.
"Talk about fashionably late. The breach was closed about a month ago."
He gave that little laugh again. "Reaching the night kingdom wasn't all that slow. But we'd been having some trouble navigating. The outposts we found were all empty and there's that scrambler signal. This was our position when that beam of light appeared."
"And you and 2B charged ahead," I observed, working hard to keep the knowing smile out of my voice. There was a story there, but I didn't have to know it to know it. He was a No.2 and 9S, whose possessive streak I was well-acquainted with, hadn't batted an eye seeing Cruel Oath in his hand. What could further context tell me that wasn't already obvious? "How'd you guys rope Emil into all this?"
"It sounded like he knew V and 9S and wanted to come along to help them," said 2D, with a hint of puzzlement. "But he also said something about going where his customers were."
I sighed. "Sounds about right…"
He lets his head hang, obscuring his eyes and rubbing at a bandage on his hand. "I'd like to ask a question of you now."
"Sure, I owe you that much."
"…What's she like?"
I looked over at 2B, and away just as quickly. The relieved curve of a smile on her face was the least guarded expression I'd ever seen from her and it was none of my business. "I, uh... think you probably know that better than I do."
Snow began to fall. and I didn't care about details finer than those. Not more than I cared about getting back to V, anyway. As I left, I couldn't help thinking that 2D reminded me a little of V. The weird slouch maybe…?
2D was an interesting guy, but in talking to him, I'd made the mistake of opening myself up to being approached. I wasn't swarmed exactly, but I did find myself suddenly surrounded by a dozen androids hop-skipping to keep up with me and firing off questions so rapidly I could barely make out one from the other.
I was grateful I'd avoided any actual scanners, but the sheer number of Operators didn't leave me in a much better position.
Running infiltration, a pod wasn't viable to have at my side all the time. A confidential transmission being overheard could jeopardize the entire operation so I usually didn't report in until the moment I completed the kill. Not like command was worried about me deserting through traditional means—protocol for that had been in place long before pods were standard issue. Combine that with how little time I spent on the Bunker, and I was rarely ever in contact with Operators.
I'd never been any good with them and I still wasn't. They always seemed more upbeat than I thought they should be. The busiest bees in the hive despite being the most aware of most of YoRHa's internal workings. Facilitators for all the little white lies made up to keep YoRHa running smoothly. It had never failed to piss me off how they were so fascinated by Earth yet often stupidly out of touch about the realities of it. Preoccupied with concepts like glory and domination when we could barely manage victories that weren't pyrrhic.
Comparatively, the other types were simple. Battlers were energetic and often overconfident. Being designed to fight, even the ones with more timid or scatterbrained personalities were quick to solve their problems with aggression. Defenders had always been a bit of a mystery. Stout bodies and reinforced systems had not given them a strong common personality trait the way it did with the scanners and battlers. They were head-down, get-the-job-done types. I don't think I'd ever heard one complain about a bad situation until it was already over.
Being freed from the weight of the base protocol had only left them in the same position as normal models. Ageless children in mismatched soldiers' clothes and eager to know all they could about a parent who had never even been alive to abandon them in the first place. Things made in humanity's image, for humanity's sake. And I should have been more forgiving with that but the snow was coming faster and there was far too much '8E' in my ears answering questions would not help me or help V and they were getting on my nerves and in my way.
"How does V treat 9S?"
I paused. The sizzle of a break in temper seeped out, and I found myself drawn to the protectiveness that laced the question. The genuine air of inquiry underneath. And the fact that it wasn't about V as much as it was about 9S
My eyes traveled the asker from bottom to top. "...I didn't think 9S was close with any B-types except 2B."
"I doubt he is," she said with a polite sort of bluntness. "Prior to the last descent, I was 21O. 9S' Operator."
That'd do it... I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. "Well… 9S supposedly looks a lot like V's son, so it's probably fair to say he treats him sort of like a son." That was putting a lot of work on 'sort of' but V didn't do a lot of quantifying his relationships. I'd never heard him use any word harder than 'companion', but that was only accurate in the same way as me saying 'Yeah, I know 9S' was accurate.
The other YoRHa took this information as if I'd just explained some amazing, previously unknown core function. Half of them broke away to immediately discuss the subject among themselves, while the rest stayed to hear 21B's next question.
"Does 9S treat V like a father?"
My processors all stopped at once. I couldn't even appreciate her vaguely scandalized tone. When I finally remembered how to open my mouth, I laughed. I laughed so hard that loose crumbs of blood still stuck in my ventilation system shot across the snow.
"No," I wheezed. "Not a chance, V and 9S are complete brats, especially about each other. If 9S ever let himself act like the son in that relationship, he grew out of that a long time ago. They're family, I think. Just not like that."
"And you?" 21B leaned in with unexpected intensity. I'd have called her flustered if she wasn't glaring at me like I was about to get written up. "Are you family too?"
Defender was comfortable enough for me. But YoRHa already had D-types and I was the exact opposite kind of model. It would come off like a job description instead of anything related to the question being asked.
"It's…complicated."
I belonged with them. That was what I knew, and that was what I felt, but I couldn't really contextualize that to someone else. If she'd asked 9S, I had no doubt he would have said yes. And I would've rolled my eyes and gone along with it even though I didn't know if I was ready to be anything like family with him. Human books were full of beleaguered older sisters with annoying little brothers but trying to fit us into those paradigms felt as much like a farce as a fairy tale.
V was still a much bigger entity to me than family could contain. The rest of the YoRHa might be free of our base protocol, but I was still crutching along on it, so I couldn't have been family with him even if I wanted to. And I found that honestly... I really didn't care for it the way I used to. The old Fern's shadow puppets and the dollhouse dreams she played out in her little shack were smaller and shallower than any one moment I'd had with V and 9S since leaving the city.
If anything I was more like…
I was…
Oh, shit.
"8E?"
I didn't bother with a correction. I was already turning on my heel to go back to where I understood I needed to be.
V had never been more himself than when were all alone on the road. Sleeping peacefully, relaxing even when 9S and I argued, sometimes even playing if Shadow could be enough of a bother. I'd always thought it was a little strange that he was so physical with them in a way he couldn't seem to manage even when he was at his most willing to surrender to the necessity of being close. He lounged on Shadow, and she lounged on him. All of his bickering with Griffon invariably took tactile turns, given as much as received. I'd always chalked it up to the nature of the often-lauded relationship between humans and their pets, but there was more to it than that. Something imminently and unapologetically at home that I saw without understanding. They relied on each other even though V was objectively the weakest of them. And for his part, when they were in their rare helpless states, V always made them his priority. Even if it meant making himself more vulnerable.
I was his defender, yes, but I was something else too. Something tangled up in the space between being wanted and being needed the way brackish water was neither fresh nor salty. Whether I was family or not—whether I was ready to be family or not—I was his familiar.
V didn't lack power. Griffon himself had admitted the dragon was magnitudes stronger than he or Shadow. But that wasn't the point. Something a lot more than being separated from his familiars had happened when he entangled with Briar, and he was alone with whatever it was. Getting him to talk about it might be a moot effort, but that wasn't the only thing I could do.
Be near me. That was the beginning and the end. The only thing I'd ever heard him ask any god for.
He was right where I left him, sitting with snow piling gently atop his equally white hair. I hopped in the truck to assess what I had to work with. Couple of boxes; none of them munitions. Camp-making material if anything. Tarps, poles, things like that. I pulled out a shoddily folded bundle of dingy fabric. The night was colder without Briar's forests. No wonder if that much machinery had been running the whole time. We weren't going to get fire out here seeing as there was nothing but gas to burn, but we were out of the wind and the extra fabric would be fine as a makeshift blanket.
He watched me but didn't ask what I was doing, and I continued to not ask how he was doing. He wasn't exactly a happy type, but I'd never seen him look so hunted. He'd called his brother's name with the same desperate, last-ditch emotion I felt when I saw the demon pretending to be Cornflower in hell. And he hadn't said a single word since.
"When's the last time you slept, V." He managed a drained yet skeptical knit of his brows. "It was before the gate opened wasn't it? You know that means you've technically been awake for like a month."
"…Time doesn't—"
"Work like that in hell," I finished. "I know. It was a joke."
His head dropped and he pinched at his eyes. "I'm fine."
"You're full of shit," I said cheerfully.
I tapped his shins until he pulled his legs up into the truck. It was like all the rest on this side of the world, and I closed up the lip and let one of the cover flaps close. Ignoring his irritated frown, sat down next to him, and threw the tarp around both our shoulders.
"Be near me when my light is low, be near me when my faith is dry, be near me when I fade away; the twilight of eternal day." I sank down next to him. "That's how the prayer goes, right?"
"It's not a prayer."
"You said it like one." I watched the gray sky go white and grainy with the thickening snow and felt my core temperature tick up until steam rose from my skin. "Get some sleep."
He managed the shadow of a laugh. "You think it's that simple."
"You never seemed to have any trouble drifting off in the boat."
"…We're far from those idyllic circumstances."
"I know. But not sleeping isn't going to fix that."
A little bit of life gathered in his eyes—at least enough for him halfway roll them. "Sleeping won't fix it either."
"Aren't you the same guy who says there's no point worrying about something until it's time to worry about it?"
"Is this not the time?"
"No, it's not. Tomorrow might be the time, but right now… Right now we're smack in the middle of all 9S' hard work. Every YoRha that could be saved is here, Briar and legion are about three hundred kilometers away, and if you had an interface I bet my bracers there'd be a big, red low power warning in it right now. If you want to fight, I'll help. If you want to run, I'll go with you. But you're a step away from burnout, so the best thing I can do for you right now is to make sure you sleep well." I pulled his hood down over his head as casually as I could. "You don't have to worry. Nothing will happen to you as long as I'm here."
His grip on his cane tightened. I expected him to say something smart-mouthed, but he didn't. Without saying anything, he gave up, and stared into the dark.
'...Thank you.'
It was so quiet I thought I might have imagined it. But I would never have thought him capable of sounding so fragile to begin with.
An hour later, a familiar voice parted the heavy curtain of snow. It was hard to make out fine details in the whiteout, but 9S and 2B made for a pretty unique pair of silhouettes.
I raised a finger to my lips as 9S drew close. He nodded and, without letting go of 2B's hand, peeked inside. V glanced at him but didn't volunteer any words one way or the other, and 9S came out with a thoughtful frown. He looked at me, but I had already done what I thought was best, and slowly shook my head.
9S stayed at it, rubbing his chin, tapping his foot, pinching at the fabric of his uniform until inspiration lent brightness to his optic lights. He crunched out of sight and the truck boomed with the sound of him hopping up on top of it.
"Hey!" I snarled.
"Sorry, sorry!"
Beside me, V closed his eyes and laughed faintly through his nose.
There was a soft shuffle as 9S sat, and the gentle murmur of 2B's voice lilting with inquisition. He didn't give her an answer. Not a vocal one.
Music began to waft out from above us.
It was a slow, serene sound. Rhythmic like the sway of a boat. It rose above the low hum of the wind, and soon the murmur of conversation dulled. Gentle steps replaced them in a clumsy counter-rhythm as androids tip-toed closer, drawn naturally toward the sound. Some squatted. Some sat fully in the snow. When they had packed the ground around the truck, they climbed and sat on other vehicles and any errant bit of debris they could. A crowd of silent starlings huddling around a single strange nest.
The notes picked up in energy, strange and joyous and unplaceable in a way that made me think of June. Of warm rain falling on the empty but flowering world on the other side of a windshield. I thought of winter oranges I had never dared to taste, and whether it was true that a summer strawberry picked in the middle of nowhere was sweet. For at least that moment, hell and Briar Rose and the remains of the red dragon and even the felt absence of V's familiars were on the outside, mere dreams that could not hurt any of us.
Weight fell against the top of my head as V slumped over. The sound of blood rushing close to my ear melded into the shape of the song dancing across my audio graph. At the center of a hundred YoRHa clustered like a wintering flock in the shadow of a derelict mothership, wrapped in a song that seemed to promise spring with every note, I listened to V's pulse slow and his breath deepen as he let himself believe that we were safe.
I looked at all the optic lights twinkling like a sea of paired stars, and for the first time since leaving Wisteria, I knew that we were.