V stood beneath a barren tree where Shadow stretched and Griffon perched and his heart hung from the lowest bough. The garden was empty of lunar tears, adorned instead by bright red poppies and the modest lavender dots of wild rosemary in bloom.
A specter with flowing red hair and dark horns stood apart from him under the pale sky. Their chest was bare, and every bit as bony and angular as V's own. Black wings folded against their hips, above a draping of shadow that pooled around their feet. They towered no less than two heads over V, and half another more over a wavering vision of a plain man in dark armor. There was an aura of violence around him that refused to cool despite the gentleness with which he touched the red-haired specter's neck. The other half of the pact's power remained a murderous force of nature. Only momentarily did it remember that it had shared something other than hate with another being once. And then it was gone. It dissipated into a haze and melted against the specter's skin, leaving only a long, black blade with a keen silver edge behind.
The dragon turned, the mask of Rubrum still sealing its true face, and joined V under the qliphoth fruit.
"Is that what you truly look like?"
"Not in the life I once had," they answered. "But in another, I think. There too, I may have known Caim."
He hummed.
Somewhere else, a king had been dethroned and a flower deposed. But victory seemed far away and unimportant. So did the power that allowed him to do it. The scent of rosemary curled around V and he wondered with the wistful ache of a decades-old wound how he had ever forgotten it.
Black wings folded around V. Though this being made whole at last was a stranger to him, he felt at ease. "…Do you disagree with my conclusion?"
V looked into the mask and into the golden eyes showing beneath. He'd seen into them when he bestowed his power on them and let them take away all the echoes he'd picked up in this world. He'd perceived as they perceived, all the disparate parts joined together with a singular desire at their core.
To see him home, and pay the toll that such a gate required.
"Should my agreement or disagreement matter?" he asked brusquely. "It benefits me either way. Do as you will. Or have you not existed at the whims of others for long enough?"
Their laugh was low and sibilant and knowing as they looked up at the qliphoth fruit. "Come then, let the pact be broken."
The palm of V's left hand prickled as the mark dissolved and the scales fell away. Uncomfortable warmth prickled along his back as he retched a small collection of bone shards over his tongue and into their waiting hand. "I don't think," he coughed, wiping his mouth with distaste. "That I will miss all this vomiting."
"Serves you right for eating weird shit," Griffon grouched from above.
"That it does." They curled their fingers around the bones as though they were treasures, and smiled. "But your overzealous appetite has my thanks. Go. I must speak with the white one awhile, and your family calls you."
With his true family and all it entailed close at hand, the words rang differently. As it had with Eva, it meant something different in this world than it did in his own. Something he didn't wish to put on them. "They're not—"
"Hush. Call it what you wish, but they are yours, little man. And you are theirs."
The moon had set, but the stars welcomed V back to a sky where he was the only thing that remained.
Far below, the blue-green basin of a lake stretched from the edges of the city far to the northwest, glistening from end to end with lunar tears. Androids milled in a dark mass along the shore, their voices a bright murmur in the wind. The blurred darkness of a path or some manner of bridge that must have once been there stretched between them and the church. He landed atop it, far enough to avoid causing a commotion. He didn't want to become entangled with so many of them. Not all at once and not at this point.
A commotion kicked up anyway. Most of them were skittish and mistrustful of the water despite its shallow depth, but that was not enough to deter the ones he was hoping for.
9S broke through first. Scuffed and windblown as though he'd been hard at play, but perfectly whole. Fern shuffled out second, seemingly sound of body, but still. Both of them splashed toward him. 9S with his high, exuberant steps and Fern with eagerness tempered by the certainty that V wouldn't leave her behind. Shadow darted and bowled into 9S, sending him yelping to his back in the water. Griffon settled for hanging from Fern's shoulders.
"Lookie what the cat dragged in," he hooted. "You look like you took a real beating, ladybot!"
She pushed V's cane against his beaks to keep them out of her face. "Better beaten than eaten, poultry."
"It's not my fault! V wanted to be all big and bad and I was the one who got kidnapped!"
"We noticed." She gave a conspiratorial grin but murmured loud enough for V to hear. "His majesty was absolutely miserable without you."
He puffed up with pride and brayed laughter. "Of course, of course~ I'm V's knight in shiny feathers!"
"2B," 9S called out to the reserved figure that had tentatively trailed out after them. "Come and meet Shadow!"
"A cat…?"
"A cat!" Another YoRHa burst from the crowd, crowned in flowers with dozens more in her arms. "I want to meet it! Ohh, I've always wanted to pet a cat!"
"6O," a more severe-looking YoRHa said patiently "Your arms are full. How are you going to pet anything?"
Fern was the only one who came to V's side without getting distracted by the offer of petting a very willing Shadow. She smiled sympathetically as she handed over his cane. "Noisy, huh."
V nodded with good humor. Noisiness had been a part of his life from the beginning. He didn't hate it. He never had. These indolent annoyances were themselves a kind of luxury, now that he looked on them again in the wake of so much actual chaos.
Glancing aside, he noted the flower nestled behind Fern's ear. Most of the androids were wearing them. "Seems I kept you waiting long enough to grow bored."
"Nah, that's that Operator's idea. She started going off about how these flowers were supposed to grant wishes and we should all take one as lucky charms since they kept us safe. She's kind of hard to say no to."
"She's certainly… animated."
They watched Shadow get spoiled like a lazy housecat by a growing number of curious hands in their own bubble of quiet before she asked. "So... What do we do now?"
Blue embers rose around him as his wings lost their shape. For the first time since coming to the night kingdom, he could feel his body growing cold. He had his own well of power, but he'd given more than he thought in the last battle, and ending the pact had taken away a great deal more. He turned, feeling his weight truly sink upon his cane in a way it hadn't in a long while, and began down the path to the church.
"This way."
They followed without question. Fern beside him and 9S trailing behind with 2B in hand and Shadow weaving around him. A number of curious stragglers whose names and faces he didn't know trailed after them, only to hesitate when they arrived at the church. Unsurprising, given Theta's presence in the courtyard alongside that of a few healers working on Scheherazade and the twin models.
The presence of both dragons may have also been a significant deterrent.
Seen through eyes unclouded by the echoes of Zero, Mikhail left no particular impression on V. He was obvious as the original design that the weapons had been based on. A far more articulate and significantly larger specimen, with a regal black and white form and golden horns that sat like a deer king's antlers. And yet he had a decidedly not regal bearing. His eyes might be a dragon's eyes and he might be thousands of years old, but there was an earnestness about him that V could not describe as anything but innocent. If Emil had been a dragon, he might have been like Mikhail.
The red dragon was another matter. She was smaller than Mikhail, and the same shade of red that had haunted him all his life—his mother's red and later Dante's. Her face was gnarled with scales thick and textured like a crocodile's over soft jaw and eye tissue in vivid purple. Her horns seemed a mix of brass and bone, and unlike most things V had encountered in this world, she looked every bit as old as he knew her to be. Parts of her were patched in seething black with shining gold ripples where V knew she still could not remember herself.
There were parts of her in this world that would never be hers again, but she had made her peace with that.
"Have you finished your talk with Mikhail?"
"I have. Have you said your goodbyes?" Fern's arms uncrossed and 9S' head swiveled between the dragon and V. "Ah. I should've known you would say nothing until the last minute."
"Don't make it sound like I'm dying, dragon." V ran cold fingers through his hair. "It's time for me to go home."
The joy of reuniting as companions under circumstances far better than Rosewell dwindled out of them at the sudden knowledge that it was finally time for the journey to end.
9S withdrew into the refuge of questions, stepping forward to face the red dragon. "But you're... Rubrum, aren't you? We never found the rest of the bones...!"
"The miracle of all Verses gathered as one must come from a source. A dragon is a proud creature, 9S, assembled so finely as to challenge the gods if we so wished it. I remember enough of what I once was to make use of those powers as they were originally intended. "
"As they were originally intended...?"
"The power to cause uncertainty in the flow of the Great Time," she said, with eyes clouded by a past so distant it only existed in another world. "It was the fabric of reality in the world of our birth. Here, it a mere web woven over this world's natural order after the gods entered. A cocoon from which new calamity might have been born. It did not exist in this world before us. There is no being, dragon or otherwise, who has the power to undo that. The seeds and the flower do not stem from the Great Time, they merely exert control over it to wreak their havoc. But it can be controlled for other purposes as well. And that is what I will do."
"And you can target my world?" asked V. "Unlike the celebrants?"
"I will not make that claim, but I would not promise you that which I could not provide. A guidepost will ensure the path leads where you wish it."
"A what?"
"Something which has the same essence as the place you are trying to go." She dipped her head. "That should do."
'That' was his cane. Something of the human world, with a little of hell mixed in. The only thing in his possession that could act as a key to the exact world he wished to go to. His fingers tightened around it. In a way, it was the emblem of his weakened body. Of his existence as V. It was his in a way he couldn't describe. Even the Yamato was something given to him. The cane was like the familiars. Something he'd chosen.
It was more than a fair trade to return with his mother's bracelet instead, but that didn't make it easy to relinquish. "How exactly will this work? Another festival?"
"No. I will wish it so."
Laughter ruptured out of Fern, pitchy and frantic with strained nerves. She tried to stifle it, but it was too much for her.
"Stop that!" Mikhail cried, his red eyes flaring with both insult and loneliness. "A dragon only gets one wish in their lifetime. She could be reborn but instead, for you she—"
"Quiet, Mikhail. To breathe even so much as this is more than should have been expected, Mikhail. What I am has lingered in this world longer than I ever wished."
9S had begun to wring at his coat, twisting and stretching it so badly V thought it would rip. "...You're going to die."
"I do not live. I am only a collection of odds and ends that will soon split apart. If we may have a wish of our own, it is to know in peace. This power, the grimoires, and Zero—have our years not been long enough? Let us be used up at last and disappear beyond this world's reach." She rose laboriously to her feet. "The grimoire's power wanes. The Verse of Form is all that holds me now. While I can still remember the words, you must say your goodbyes."
They'd said them so many times before, yet the silence around him weighed heavy as a stormcloud and still as the deep sea. Goodbyes were simpler when they were open-ended. When there was some other goal that demanded they part and promised something other than the absence to focus on. But there was no such thing here. All enemies were vanquished. All needs were met. They were each where they belonged, safe within in each other's company with nothing to threaten or disturb them.
Except for the fact that V had finally found his door and the knowledge that once he passed beyond it, there was no possibility of return.
Fern was the first to move this time. Her dog tags jingled and chimed as she undid her chain and let them fall loose into her palm. With an expectant flick of her palm, she demanded V's as well and began rearranging them.
"You too, 9S." He jolted but didn't quite snap out of his daze. His fingers were slow and blundering, and he ended up dropping all but one. Shadow slithered along the ice and Fern held out her hand for them. "Easy, kid."
"Sorry," he said reflexively.
How long had it been since V saw him retreat into himself that way?
A chain dropped into his palm, missing two of his tags and replaced with two others. One for '49' and one for Fern, who looped her own chain, glanced at 9S, and dropped the other set in V's hand. "So long I guess."
He eyed her, but she couldn't so much as look his way. They had never said any goodbyes to one another at all, and given how she'd behaved at Roswell and that terrible excuse for a farewell, it seemed she was even worse at them than he was. "...You asked me for a name once. Do you still want one?"
"…Nah." She rubbed at her hair and her mouth tugged in the shape of a smile without any of the emotion of it. "Fern's alright with me. Besides, you don't name things."
"I would consider it a gesture of gratitude."
"Okay, let me rephrase: You're terrible at naming things. You'll probably look around this courtyard and pick something awful like 'gable'. Thanks but no thanks, V. I made peace with all my names, including this one. And this one is-" Her breath caught. She managed a half-sail of a smile little better than the one previous, and V suspected that was the best the circumstances would yield. She hoped to live, but she would actually have to do so from now on and it left her with a permeating aura that she was already coming untethered and drifting out into a lonesome sea. but she recovered quickly. "Fern is who you know me as. I don't want another name."
It was a good answer. One he understood and one that vexed him. He wasn't sure what else to offer her. She gave him devotion and favored solitude and those were not easily returned with a mere gesture. A troublesome thought. If it was this difficult to think of a way to express himself with her, talking to Vergil (an inevitability that he dreaded) would be a nightmare.
Well. Perhaps for now, honesty was fine enough. "Even for beings like us… it's probably not a sin to live."
She snorted, but the laugh that followed was genuine. "Only probably, huh? I guess that's the best you can do as a guy who wouldn't care even it was a sin. But thanks, V. I'll… I'll be alright. I'll be brave."
That would have to be good enough. "Pod 042, I believe this is the moment when your support is no longer required. Take care of 2B."
"UNDERSTOOD." Pod 042 floated back to 2B's side, its antennae spinning with what was certainly satisfaction. "UNTIL THE DAY THIS POD CEASES TO FUNCTION, I WILL DO EVERYTHING I CAN TO PROVIDE SUPPORT TO UNIT 2B."
Would that goodbyes could all be so easy.
9S remained pinned where he was, staring at his shoes as he unsuccessfully searched for that place in his mind where he could hide behind a smile. He'd been very good at it once; going cold or fleeing behind a happy guise when he was hurt. Choosing to be numb in the face of emotions he had no reference for how to digest. V had taught him once how to grieve those who were dead. But 9S would have nothing of the sort for parting ways with this sort of finality. The other goodbyes had been couched in the safety of ambiguity. Maybe they would meet again and if they didn't, 9S would be forced to assume the best or the worst without ever needing to experience the moment when V ceased to exist in this world.
He'd grown so far beyond the boy he was when they met, yet he still returned to old habits like a fox to its burrow when he was faced with something he didn't know how to bear. And what else was he meant to do? He'd never dealt with something like this before. V had never taught him how because he'd never learned either.
He tested what remained of the magic in his body, and slid his hands beneath 9S' arms. It wasn't easy. Even with magic at his disposal, his body seemed to have a default state that wasn't particularly strong, and that's dragon's power had nearly seeped away in its entirety. But he put in the needed effort to lift 9S.
"W-wha…" He squirmed and tried to retreat into his coat. "Put me down! Put me down, V, I'm not a child!"
V smirked and didn't indignify that with the obvious retort. 9S traded in a kind of affection that wasn't to V's taste, but beyond that, he was definitely the easier of the two to comfort. He held the scanner closed in an embrace that was awkward and stiff, but not uneasy. Slowly, V relaxed. He allowed his rigidly kept boundaries to blur as they had so many times over a long summer spent in a cramped truck. He let all that he was envelop 9S and felt what the scanner must have on the few rare occasions when V let himself yield. The rewarding moment when guardedness and resistance melted and acceptance was left behind.
9S wilted against his shoulder and coiled around him with a shudder that took two tried before it became a sob.
He wasn't a child. But the process of grief was a hard lesson to learn. Even V realized for the first time at that moment what a relief it could be to share one's grief with another who understood what was being lost. What a difference there could be between mourning alone and in compassionate company.
"…don't want you to go…"
"All those bright-eyed well wishes," V said with taunting amusement. "And that's what you say for your final goodbye?"
"I know you can't. I know it's where you belong…" 9S held him closer. He seemed to have grown so much, but he was still just as small as ever. "I know. But still…"
V wished there was time to learn how to reciprocate being loved so unabashedly. But that was an eternity that would not be found in this hour. The dragon was growing restless and his strength was failing. So he lowered 9S, and looped his dogtags around his neck, and ushered him into the care of the one who loved him most and was most beloved by him in all this world.
"Take care, 9S."
V turned and joined the red dragon where she awaited him. "I'm ready."
"I have no name to give you," she said with unexpected formality. "For the one that I once was, I am no longer. Your heart is sullied and black. But… it bears a kindly shape. ." She spread her wings and drew herself up to her full height. "It is worthy of my final Words."
He offered his cane up, and she raised her voice to the sky.
"I summon thee, that which resides in the void of nothingness. I offer up all that I am, that the way might be opened. This is my supplication. This…is my Final Wish."
A brilliant aurora descended, casting the church and the pale glow of lunar tears in unearthly green light. V shuddered out of his hand, answering in umbral shades of violet that spread and funneled down to a single point between V and the dragon. On the other side of it, her body deteriorated and broke apart. It seemed painless. With her eyes clouding over, she gave herself up with a sigh as soft as the last leaf of autumn falling to the earth.
"At last… It's… o…ver…"
All that remained of her in the end was Rubrum's cover, dissolving and spreading into a thin rectangle of neon red. The aurora concentrated within its bounds, and when all had settled, it spilled what could only be sunlight over them.
V's last look at that strange and lonely world was to a scanner who looked like he had when he was a young man, wiping his eyes and holding tight to the hand of the one he'd lost and regained. And to an Executioner who had only just begun the daunting task of living as something other than a monster, clutching her dog tags. Both of them watched him with eyes full of conflicting desires.
That he would go and be at home. That he would stay and be with them.
"I left, you stood with downcast eyes; in tears, you saw me riding off."
He left without lingering. To do otherwise would have meant acknowledging all over again how much of his own hopes the two of them reflected
Yet, to be loved, what happiness.
What happiness, ye gods, to love.