Tsubasa wins her last fight, like a star suffering death, the dazzling lights of the rainbow inside her Gatcha suit streaking and spurting like sparklers being doused in water. And Gelsadra catches her with a cry, his form covered by the dove-like spread of his cloak as it coats the sky. When it settles, his form is broader, leaner, supporting her with an adult's build, one strong enough to swallow down the weight of a coffin and keep it raised.

'Uwah!' she spits out. 'That was a tough one!'

And it had been. Katze has finally, finally found a form big enough to contain the swell of his anger, a creature that towered over the blue ferns that trembled as it rose. With granite for fists and diamonds for knuckles, it had run dents into the sides of Tsubasa's suit, forcing her back into a crouch, even as her whips flicked over its back with all the futile sting of a nettle leaf. And what was worse, Gel's giant tornados could hardly make it move, the force simply pressing the muddy twelve-tonne feet further back into the dirt with a slide.

It's enough to make her giggle now, to cough up the kind of red that will forever run darker than her suit. The kind that from within the dimension inside, stains her skin with a texture meant only for the interior of her veins. And she spares a moment to wonder if Hajime was the same, forced into a painting of loose dripping red against the dying sparkles of rainbows that flashed in front of her eyes.

'Sorry Katze,' she mutters. 'You'll have to find someone else to play with.'

'No Tsubasa-chan!' says Gelsadra, his voice a demand against her throat. 'No, no, no! I don't want this!' He glances up, tears rolling free of his eyes. 'Hajime said once that it was okay to say what I wanted. Not just what everyone else did. Only me. And I don't want this.'

Tsubasa floats free, she drifts, cased in winds strong enough to send her spinning.

'Shitty, shitty princess, come play with me, dear old Katze,' crones the voice, on the wrong side of the glass.

She murmurs, stuck halfway between Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. She is nestled, safe, warm, in white. Like a dove with a head tucked under its wing. But-

'No, Tsubasa,' Gelsadra says, hands touching her, the bones inside so much older than the ones she has kept coiled within her fists at night, back when he shook next to her with the nightmares she could so plainly hear. 'Stay here. We're safe here.'

Fingers run down her face, basking in the cool slide of her cheeks. And she shifts, turns, eyes half-open and directed towards the sky. But only his cloak finds her, the diamond-hewn holes filled in with buttons and beeps from inside the spaceship.

'Gel-chan, we should fight.'

'Rest Tsubasa. You deserve it.'

Katze watches this scene, this tableau of emotion and laughs. And laughs. And still laughs, even when the black hole swallows him down, twisting his atoms, and all the jittering gleaming sparks within them into tunnels that twist and spike, much like the winds Gelsadra calls through. The mocking trace of it dies out in seconds, frizzing out like a disrupted telephone cord, long before he is crushed and gone.

Gelsadra watches. Then turns.

'You were right, Tsubasa, he followed you. You never really saw him, but he followed you. He's scary, scary because he's like me.'

He sighs, knowing only seconds remain until the black hole drags them down. Then he flicks open the communication channel.

'Rui-kun, please come and get us.'

Tsubasa...tranport!

Gelsadra...transport!

Tsubasa stirs. She dreams. She breathes like she is alive, her breath falling and fading away to be renewed, restored, by the coursing tide of movement in her lungs. She is sallow and pale, like a person who cannot eat, wrapped in hospital sheets that weight her down, far more lightly than artificial gravity. They smell of fabric softener, the cheap, lavender scented sort.

Utsutsu pauses at the doorway, a flower wreath in her hands.

'I wished you had died instead of her,' she says, her voice strong and sure, not a hint of a quaver to impede its speed. 'That probably makes me a wicked person. But even so, right now, I want you to get better.' She stalks forward, her hand reaching for the other girl's arm. 'Hang in there,' she murmurs, light passing between them like a bead of gold running down a chain. 'There's nothing to forgive, not when I can't forgive myself. So come back. Hang in there, and come back.'

Tsubasa takes, what for her, feels like her first breath in a really long time. But she does not do it alone. This time, Gelsadra watches her, almost hungrily, his hand stretching across the sheets between them as he reaches for the heartbeat in her wrist.

'Tsubasa-chan,' he breathes, 'Hajime told me it was alright to want this. So you have to wake up. I don't understand the kind of person I will be, without you. I don't, no, I won't get it at all.'

So she breathes again, awake, alive, nothing in her feeling like a star or a firework. She is simply...

'Maybe you should stop now,' Hajime had told her, against the backdrop of the rain, far, far too long ago. She had been kind then, the light of her yellow umbrella, filling in for the sun on that dark, drab day. More importantly, she had been alive.

Even in the cool of her memory, Tsubasa can remember her breathing.

Tsubasa wheezes. She is simply alive. And that is more than Hajime ever got.

'Sorry for worrying you,' she croaks.

She'll try to get it right, this time. She'll fight more, for Gel-chan to stay, for him to smile, for them to be...to be...

'Gel-chan, have you ever been to Disney world?'

At his quizzical look, she laughs. She can do this. She can breathe. And maybe, if she's lucky, this time no one will leave.