Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.
AN: Continued thanks to Ryosei Takahashi Hime, who proofread and edited this for me.
.2.
He fell in quite nicely with the others. Nicely enough, anyway.
One decided to give Six a nook of the throne room, to give him ink and paper and let him draw to his little heart's content. One said it was so he could keep an eye on him. Six knew better. One recognized what the visions were, what they could be used for, and he wasn't letting that sort of power out of his sight. Six didn't mind. At least they were doing somebody some good.
Eight didn't seem to be as happy about that. He glared at Six more often than he had any right to, and sometimes when One wasn't watching he stomped on the artist's projects, just to be mean. He used to be the only one who shared the throne room with One, and he didn't like to share. Most of the time Six swallowed his cry of protest—that just made it worse, he knew, he'd always known—but he couldn't help the feeling of frustration when his drawings were ruined before he had a chance to understand them.
That's where Two came in. He started to scold Eight for his vandalism, saying that he was collecting and studying the drawings in hopes of understanding them better. Six knew it was a lie—that Two wouldn't see any significance in them until he started to draw the Source, and even then not until he met Nine—but it was a lie Eight believed, and the bullying subsided when the guard had two pairs of eyes to watch out for.
Anyone Two liked was liked by Five—he was easy to understand that way. And even when Two was busy, his student would come and talk to Six sometimes (when he wasn't drawing—nobody talked to him when he was drawing, because that would be bad). He didn't seem to mind Six's tiny, stammering voice and tried, more than a few times, to cheer him into talking. Which was funny because Six wasn't sad. Not really. Not in front of Five, anyway. He tried not to think about the sad things when the others were nearby.
Three and Four were always wonderful to see—he was glad they'd live to see the new world. They were so bright and excited and eager to know everything. There wasn't a single one of his drawings they hadn't examined, not a thread of his hair or a tip of his finger. His hands especially interested them—Seven almost had to pry the twins off him so he could draw again.
And then there was Seven.
She didn't ask Six to talk or explain or anything like that. She brought him paper when she could find it in the Emptiness, and ink, and she'd talk to him and laugh with him and never try to make him answer her. He was happy just listening to her voice, and she was happy to be listened to. Nobody else did much listening—One didn't care, Two and Five were usually too busy to hear a word she said, the twins tried to glean every iota of understanding from her words, and Eight was hardly even interested in things he understood. But in Six she could confide. It was an honor and a privilege, and he loved it with every fiber of his being. He listened intently and drew as he listened and sometimes—just sometimes—he would interrupt her stories, for just a second.
"Can you… ah… Can you sit still for… just…" he mumbled, interrupting a narrative about her fight with a Beast. She stopped pacing and cocked her head to the side and looked at him with that pretty, quizzical look.
"Sure," she said, sitting down. "Why?"
"I… I…ah…" He shouldn't have said anything. He should have done the drawing from memory. But she looked curious, and he didn't want to lie to her. His eyes clamped shut as he mumbled a reply: "I wanted to draw you. To practice," he added lamely.
To his unbridled delight, she smiled. "All right. What would you like me to do?"
"Ah—ah—sit here," he said, pushing a large matchbox toward her, into a beam of light that leaked through the window. Graciously, she sat. "And… and put your hands here… and here…" he tapped the box lightly with his fingers, indicating the spots. "And your face—move your face to—ah—" Instinctively, he reached out to correct her pose, and one of his sharp fingers brushed her cheek. He pulled back like he'd been burned, horror rising up in him. If he'd cut her—if he'd hurt her—
"Sorry," he squeaked. She just stared at him for a moment, her gaze unfathomable.
"Which way am I supposed to look?" she asked calmly, taking his hand and returning it to her face before she replaced her hand on the box.
A thrill raced through him. He was touching her. She'd allowed him to—she'd wanted him to touch her. If the Machine killed him now, he would die happy.
"This way," he breathed, turning her head with the softest push. She didn't flinch, didn't cry out, and his fingers didn't cut or catch. She just sat there, mirroring the pose he'd imagined-- her hands stretched out behind her, lounging back in an expression of wistful hope. Of all the people his visions had shown him, he'd never seen anyone so brave. Or so kind.
"You can… you can keep talking if you'd like," he said as he retreated to his ink and paper. Again she smiled—that beautiful, beautiful smile—and slowly began another narrative. A different one this time, not about beasts and machines but of a sunset she had seen once, when she'd stood at the farthest reaches of the emptiness. She described the color, the play of light, the way the very air seemed to turn to gold around her. He copied her figure on the paper as carefully as he was able, tracing every line reverently, saving her face for last, and all the while images past and present swam through his head. His breath caught as a new vision took him—the one she narrated—letting him see the reds and golds and the rising kiss of indigo as night crept up to meet day, and in the center of it all was her.
He'd been wrong to call her an angel before.
She was a goddess.