Disclaimer Don't own the crew of the Nadesico
Far Away
Prologue: Safe
Akito stared at the shrinking shape of the Nadesico. It was over and so was he. Yurika was safe now, and that was all that mattered. He wished things could be different, but he was a shell. He couldn't be with her. Lapis, he thought, it won't be long until you and I are safe, too.
Safe. Her thought echoed back to him. They were connected by thoughts. She was part of him. The part of him that could see and hear. The part of him that held some connection to the world he could no longer experience without her. Nergal had found a way to bring him into near existence using her. Using her indeed. He did it every moment of everyday, but even with her he could not know joy. He wondered if Ruri understood this. Probably not. He was glad of that, if he could really be glad of anything.
He had tried to feel. Tried to smile for her one last time. She had grown up. He had once thought of her as his younger sister, and she had come alive under his, and the rest of the crew's attentions. Little Ruri. He thought it was her when Lapis broke into his world of black, silent nothing. He had hoped that things could be more than this. The experiments had fried away his senses deep within his brain. His motor skills had been turned to nothing. Lapis made him something—not Akito Tenkowa, but something. Did Ruri see this? Would she be able to tell Yurika?
Yurika. Yurika was lost to him. He had no soul left to feel anything but her loss. He strained to remember her as she was. Why had he not given into his feelings sooner? If he had, they could have made love. One single kiss was not enough to show her his love. Alone in nothing he had dreamed of her. A life that he could have lived. Who would have thought being out of the nothing would have been worse for him. Yurika.
Yurika. Yurika. Yurika. Yurika. That's enough Lapis, he thought. We will go together. Far away.
Staring into the blackness of space, he could almost see the blue of her eyes. Her plaintive voice crying his name. He wished he had seen her awaken, even if it was Lapis who saw it for him. He wondered what horrible things she remembered. He hoped that all of those bastards suffered ten fold what they had done for her. Wishes, dreams, and hopes were all worthless. It was over. His soul was dead, and Lapis had never really had one. Death to their physical bodies was nothing.
Lapis was the one person he could feel sympathy for. Akito had lived, but she had not. She did everything for him, yet she could not do anything for herself because there was no self. She simply was a tool to be used and forgotten. He would not, could not forget her; however, that did not matter because soon he wouldn't remember anything at all. From a man to nothing, from nothing to a shell of a man, and now finally from a shell to nothing once more.
The Aestivalis was nearing the end of its range. No air, no power meant no life. Nergal would be sorry to lose Lapis, but he couldn't do it without her and leaving her behind would have been wrong. He knew that they all hoped he would return. They all wished they could make things better for him. They dreamed that things could be fixed. But it was all worthless. He must finish dying. The two year long process had drained him of every ounce of caring. The end was a release.
Lapis died before he did. He was once more in nothing, but he somehow was aware that he was still alive. And then he saw her. Yurika was sitting on a grassy hill. "Akito!" He felt the ground beneath him as he ran to her. He could smell the scent of her perfume and taste her lips as he kissed her. He was alive again. Laughing he twirled her in his arms.