There was pain. There was a sense of binding. There was a terrible ripping and searing of flesh. There was a scream beyond the cosmos that came to his mind. Wondering if he was hearing his soul be torn apart, he would try to awaken… but instead, see only a terribly pale light that blinded him.

Then, darkness. Darkness forever. Darkness, and silence, and in that silence, a humming. A single voice in the infinite black, waiting for the end of all time as his consciousness faded.

Forever.

An eternity later, a beeping could be heard. A voice, creating a million words a minute, turning strings of numbers into a song that failed to match one he understood. In annoyance he ignored it, but the beeping continued, not being able to replicate the song of the universe.

Then, as the pale light returned, a vision was given.

Of undead creatures, supporting their rotting flesh with metal. Machines, trapping souls, staring out of a lightless lens. With green and red eyes, skulls would be made visible – barbarian aliens that reveled in their bodily death and willingly trapped their souls in metal.

Freaks.

Abominations.

Not worthy of his time.

Then, as new noise came – of primitive energy weapons discharging against these undead monstrosities. Creatures of flesh, clad in fabrics and leathers. Finally, the melting of these abominations, as superheated plasma tore each other apart.

It was laughable, and he sang, he relived the battle in his mind, over, and over again. Only when the outcome was assured, the moments recorded of flesh versus metal, with the living bodies of aliens overcoming the false-machines, did he return to darkness.

Briefly awoken by sounds of noise, he would be disturbed. Staring at lights, feeling the heat of engines, he was probed… and lashed out in return.

Seeing another battle, this one being even more pathetic, did he blink away, to be forgotten by time, or rediscovered by his kin later.

Yet, as he awoke, it would be to a face of wonder. A face of flesh, untainted by the universe's woes or worries. It was a face of confusion, and fear, but also of joy… and as the flesh spoke to him, and he it, the alien creature would tilt its head… making sense of his old tongue, despite never having heard of it before.

It was then, when it would offer its tiny hand… and, out of boredom, he decided to take it.

A strange alien world he had seen. Unsure why this species so easily turned on one another, he had cut those who wished to harm his borrowed flesh down. Questioned by the small alien, questioned so many times, he would blink, and the creature would still be with him. Connected to him, the flesh could travel and allow him to perceive the world of aliens… but when asked how, deciphering the creature's words in nanoseconds, his own words would remain gestures. Unable to be properly understood, he would answer in the best manner he thought, but ultimately, know that this partnership of theirs would end as all relations had with those of other species.

No matter if they had the power of gods, or were incapable of changing their own mortal forms, if intelligent life interacted with that of a different species, it would end in disaster. Jealousy, of things that they were not would fester into hatred. Despite all life being that of the cosmos, nothing would ever unite them – save for a bigger, more terrible threat.

The C'tan had shown them that. By uniting his people in metal bodies, burning their flesh and welding their souls to metal, his species had united all others. Warring against them for millions of years, he had recorded the galaxy ablaze as they fought over the stars. Then, as his king freed parts of their minds, with the promise to be returned to mended flesh, they were united against the alien C'tan. Trapped in bodies that his enslaved people had created, the C'tan were dismantled and bound, in their alien, near-divine, power.

The enslaved became the slavers, and although their war continued, their king would tell them to rest. To wait, until the galaxy was better suited for reclamation from their powerful enemies. With them gone, the alliance of different species would turn on each other as the C'tan had turned on them.

The moment that this young alien, its little soul trapped in flesh would betray him was certain… but for now, getting information about their society, and the threats they had was good enough. Able to kill the alien at any time, and having been intimidated into silence of him, the creature showed him its war-torn world… and then, their strange, bug-like society they built out of metal. Seeing the strange threats of a new alien foe that was seemingly entirely without intelligence, yet still showed such a hostile will, he had been… surprised, when he saw the greatest of these creatures have a synaptic will.

And that will he had sensed, similar to his own language, was a beautiful, horrifying song of consumption. A consumptive will to kill all aliens, feast upon their flesh, and turn it into more of their own. Hearing that will conveyed with every bestial scream, in a unified voice within the absence of individuality, he had looked to the alien 'humans' that fought with such primitive weapons, fueled by self-hatred and ruled by fear, stand against these mindless creatures with an undeserved heroism.

A heroism had reminded him of his own, when he still had flesh and fought against the careless gods. A heroism that reminded him of his actions prior to his body having been burned, and his soul welded to a metal shard. Although his past actions were ultimately pointless, as he was now alone in this galaxy, the heroism these young, terrified aliens displayed could not be ignored in view of such horrors he witnessed…

The alien that acted as his legs had chosen to stay to fight this hungering will. Not out of loyalty to those around it, who it had just met. Not out of fear, or desperation, because it could have just left back to the more comfortable time he had observed. Not even requesting his interference, as it had done when it had been at risk of being shot by the primitive energy weapons, the creature stayed. It stayed, using the same weapons that had once threatened it to fight the barely intelligent creatures who were but… meat puppets, of the greater, distant, singing entity that orchestrated this choir of consumption.

It had stayed out of its own volition, and did as it was told by its elders… wanting to simply help. It had stayed, when it could have left… and although weak of body, completely defenseless in comparison to the creatures that were biologically crafted to kill, it had screamed in a rage against those harming its species. Showing such a powerful ideal of unity, one that resonated within the fragment of his soul – the same soul that he had used to fight against superior god-like beings to free his people of their cancered flesh and then their metal bodies…

He could not say that he was unmoved by the showing of pride, and of duty from the clear adolescent alien. From a being so weak, and so young, yet unified by the ideal of kinship, of survival, and of resistance against a clearly superior, overwhelming, existence-destroying threat… how could he not be moved? How could he not feel what the creature felt? How could he not sympathize, and then empathize with the alien that carried him into battles it could have avoided?

Having already helped it once, and hating the essence of the consuming ones, their song being just as horrifying as the C'tan, he had helped the child alien once more. He had used what little power he had, to help slay what he could, having no ability to move beyond the three meters his liquid body could reshape himself within. Used by the human just as he had used it, he would communicate with the fearful creature that had wanted to flee… but ultimately, had chosen not to.

For he wanted to help after being convinced. Although he was but one entity, one creature, he wished to help the pathetic aliens that would rot, wither, and naturally become his foe in time. For now, in this moment where they shared a poetic oath to ignore their differences, against the greater enemy before them all, he had felt… a unifying compulsion that allowed him to sing in unison with the flesh-voice of the child… whose will, seeped into his own.

Even as it died.

Even as 'she' died.

Mable, the child human, had not wept for herself. It had wept for him, and made promises she could not keep… trying to comfort him, as though he were in any danger at all from the barbaric aliens that shared her species. It was pathetic, and were he able to express joy, he would have laughed, and laughed at the absurd humor the child gave him as it died pathetically.

Instead, the child died with sincerity… its weak organs failing to maintain itself from blows she had suffered in their union of heroism.

It would have moved him to tears, with how funny it had been… were he still of flesh. Wondering how many millions of years it had been since he had wanted to cry, having only done so in fear when his body had been burned away for his soul to be fixed to a frame of metal, he now felt the bodily urge to show grief to the one who could never truly understand him.

How pathetic, that, having been a soldier for nearly three millennia before his sixty-million-year-sleep, that the only time he had ever felt something beyond soulless apathy was when he watched the alien die in front of him.

Perhaps the fact he had watched the story play out was why, even when the flesh-mender stopped using his body as a blade and laid him to rest, he had continued to cut out different alien bone from the girl's body. Perhaps, feeling a fragment of his old existence – when his soul inhabited his born flesh, rather than that of thoughtless object – he had continued spread himself, using his living metal to alter the biology of the child. Singing all the while as he was spectated by the dumb aliens who would one day rot in their flesh, humming his song so that the child's fading consciousness would hear him, and be assured that he would not allow her to have such a pathetic ending to her life's tale, he would continue to work… and mend what was broken with the precious metal he was made from.

After all, even if his form was separated, his soul would remain whole. This was no great sacrifice he was making, save for a small fraction of his time.

And if there was nothing he had learned from the C'tan he trapped, time was but a resource, to be used at will, and freely kept.

He had been a poet once, he now remembered as he fixed his essence to the human child's heart.

He had been such a bad poet, that his people had thought his soul better used to seal away the god that ate time, he humorously thought as his consciousness faded… never to be whole again, until after this child's true death.

He wondered, if by chance, his song of unity would be properly heard for once by another living creature.

Even if it was an alien, who, if time had been let to flow naturally, would come to hate, revile, and war against him.

Perhaps this was a better ending then. To part now, when their relationship could never deteriorate… and, were her mind to return as it once was, the confusion alone of an alien giving its time away for her continued life would be quite humorous indeed.

He wondered, if they might laugh together when their shared performance ended.

He felt it would make a good poem, as two aliens destined to die at each other's hands, instead found a peaceful union.