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A slender pale body finally rests in a real bed with real pillows for the first time in what seemed like eternity. Just a few hours ago, she had been stolen by a Golden Tyrant, brought to a distant star where the black decay of the Moon Automaton wouldn’t dream reaching her, and far, far away from the Earth she could not return to.
Just a few hours ago, she had wished for the Moon Automaton a pleasant sleep -to go back to its role as silent overseer- and a king pried her from its icy-cold fingers before the supercomputer could take her with it.
In exchange for the autonomy of the Moon Cell, Hakuno Kishinami would cease to exist. Just like seafoam, she would disappear in a blur, back into the nothingness she’d came from. She’d known this, that this was what was waiting for her at the end of the road, and came to begrudgingly accept it in exchange for her very humane wish of shutting down the Moon Cell.
This did not happen.
She’d been… saved, right?
However, her dreams are still not restful. Or were they dreams? She feels she’s not sure anymore. The dream never changes, and she’s having it again.
She sees the same ruined skyline she always sees when she closes her eyes, engulfed in flames and debris and dust. The sky above is dark, the sun is covered by the moon and glows an ominous red.
The smell of fire, blood and decay fills her nostrils, overpowering her senses.
It’s a dream so elaborate that she can’t almost tell whether it’s a dream or reality. Rather than being inside a dream, she feels like she is in reality. It’s a strange feeling. She’s not there and at the same time she’s all that’s there.
She’s nowhere and yet everywhere, all at once.
She can hear two distinct sets of voices speaking, but can’t tell who they are. One of the voices was that of a female, but it wasn’t her own.
However, where were the voices coming from? There is no one there. No one except herself and the burning skyline.
She doesn’t know where the voices are coming from, but she thinks they sound familiar, that she should recognize who they are, but she can’t put a face to the voices.
The voices strangely echo. They are hard to make out, hard to follow.
Still, she listens to them.
“It will be problematic if she dies before ________”
“…Is _____ going to die?”
“It’s hard to tell… circuits … damaged … at such advanced stages… currently the most promising method is surgery … even ______ is gone as well… -It’s over.”
“But…!”
“… … … That terrible tradition of disaster … but in order to overcome this illness-”
Do whatever it takes to keep both of them alive.
It’s all so distorted. The voices sounded muted, like in a vacuum.
“Hakuno.”
A dream. A scenery she saw in a dream. A conversation she heard in a dream. A world of decay where she stood alone, in a dream.
A dream.
I’ll do the only thing I can for you.
The voices sounded so familiar, didn’t they?
…Where was she, anyway?
“I tire of this, mongrel. Wake up.”
This time she can hear another set of voices. She faintly recognizes one as her own voice.
“You won’t have anything to do once I’m gone, will you?”
“Guess I won’t. Oh well, I really thought this would be the year for me… Guess I’ll have to wait a little longer. Ah, but you will come to visit on my next birthday, right?”
“You idiot, of course!”
The other voice was that of a male, but she can’t tell who it belonged to. Again, the strange familiarity of it and the faint feeling that she should know makes her heart sink.
“Master.”
If I have to die no matter what, I’ll die on my own terms.
A dream.
No.
It wasn’t.
That was-
Surely it had to be-!
“Hakuno!”
Hakuno is jerked awake by a loud noise, sweat sticking to her uncomfortably. What little clothes she was wearing felt wet and nasty. It took her some seconds to put herself partially together to realize that it wasn’t really a noise what woke her up, but rather someone else’s voice.
Little by little, after calming herself down, she started to regain consciousness as the remnants of her fever dream dissipated like fog.
It felt so real, though…
Hakuno took a deep breath once and tried to cautiously open her eyes.
One eye open, then the other; ah, no, wait, that hurts… …
Had her room always been that bright?
When she finally opened them after some failed attempts, and her blurry vision came into focus, she was greeted by shining white light and a place she couldn’t quite recognize right away. The morning sun -or whatever the equivalent of the sun was for that place- that shone down in a slant hurt her eyes. Everything hurt all over, and she had to wonder just what had happened that had damaged her so much.
She looked around through the blinding light, trying to figure out where she was through the haze of sleep and soreness. As she surveyed the room, her gaze stumbled upon a blob of red, white and gold just mere inches away from her.
Blink, blink.
…Oh.
Oh, wait, that was not a blob, that was-!
“Ah, at last. I had half a mind to throw a bucket of cold water your way should you have kept inconveniencing me so, but it might seem that was unnecessary in the end.”
A smooth voice -Gilgamesh’s, in fact, her disoriented mind supplied her- cut through her half-asleep confusion. Even though the words that were said had an edge to them, he sounded far too reassured at her awakening for them to feel like an actual threat. Then again, she wasn’t going to push her luck with that.
She’d barely been awake for more than a minute and she was already receiving veiled threats.
Hakuno cringed inwardly.
Truly, what a lovely sight to wake up to, he was.
As she kept regaining consciousness, she realized she was tucked inside a bed, in a room that was too bright, too golden and too gaudy to be a recreation made by the Moon Automaton, and it took her longer than she was ready to admit to remember how she got there in the first place. Like in a daze, her memories started to come back little by little, piece by piece, filling in the blanks but not quite enough.
Her near deletion, Gilgamesh, the golden city, everything… it had happened mere hours ago, right…?
…
Did she… forget?
Even if only for a mere instant…?
Should she be… worried?
She was sure the frown on her face, coupled with the beads of sweat that fell from her forehead, made her look strained and sick rather than simply tired. Not only she felt like she’d been beaten up to a pulp, but to that she had to add these few moments of panic that she’s thought she was having blank gaps in her memory.
Hakuno shivered, then tried to groan, but even such a simple act felt like it was too much effort and no sound came out from her half-parted lips. Her head hurt after she was forcefully brought back to the real world. At that moment, all that bright light was way too much and way too early. It felt like her eyeballs were being repeatedly lanceted with tiny, sharp needles. Hakuno rubbed her stinging eyes with the back of her hands to dispel the pain, and turned her head to where she thought her servant’s voice had come from.
Seated in his throne at her right, Gilgamesh stared at her with unblinking red eyes, impassive. A goblet was in his hand and a strange expression she wasn’t used to see on him was on his face. Hakuno’s glazy and unfocussed eyes met the King’s narrowed ones, which seemed to glow an ominous red as he watched her from his slightly elevated position, almost like a vulture. While he looked like he was going to chastise her for something that no doubt had offended him at some level, there was also another emotion swirling in his eyes that was hard to pinpoint, but she was too tired to even try give it a name.
“…Gil? Is that you?” She managed to croak out. Her mouth tasted like ash. Everything hurt allover. She tried to get herself in a sitting position but her legs wouldn’t cooperate, so she resigned herself and rolled over to lay sideways on the bed, resting against the pillows as she faced her servant.
He narrowed his eyes at her, sporting a frown of his own.
“Hmph. Who else would it be?”
Stupid question, her mind supplied again. Hakuno’s eyes fluttered open and then shut again, barely able to keep them focused on Gilgamesh as she wrestled helplessly against the fatigue. The golden blond in the room, clad in a white shirt and snake-print pants, was unmistakably Gilgamesh; him, her, and the remnants of a strange dream that was already disappearing like flower petals scattered by the wind, were the only things that existed in this room.
“…Why… why are you standing there looking at me like that? What’s… wrong? …Am I dying? Oh, I sure feel like I’m dying,” she groaned, her words coming out slightly slurred.
For a moment there she thought she saw something flash in his narrowed eyes, but the subtle details of his expression were mostly lost to whatever affliction had taken hold of her and all she could register was him looking at her in baffled indignation. If looks could kill, and if she didn’t die from whatever thing she had, then surely that look could have burned her to the bones. It was a good thing then that it didn’t look like his soiled mood was necessarily being directed at her.
Perhaps she was still in fever-dream land and she was imagining things still.
“You fool, of course not.” He hissed. “and I’m not looking at you in any particular manner. You have been passed out for the past day and a half and it just so happened that I was growing tired of your unceasing mumbling in your sleep, nothing more. It was simply inconvenient of you to sleep this much.”
Her head was spinning. He was talking too fast.
…One day and a half, huh. It actually felt longer than that.
“-Incidentally, it might seem I miscalculated the Moon Cell’s efforts when it tried to delete you. Fruitless as they had been, they still have managed to damage your circuits enough so that even myself would feel its repercussions. Hence your feelings of sickness.” He sniffed disdainfully, scowling as he looked into the red wine that had been poured in his goblet, his reflection staring back at him.
Today was truly a day of strange occurrences if her haughty servant was going to suggest he was nothing sort of perfect. Then again, ‘miscalculation’ and ‘mistake’ didn’t quite hold the same meaning.
Before she could question him further, Gilgamesh spoke again, a light frown still on his face.
“…This is unsightly, Hakuno. You have been bedridden for far too long, and for I to be reduced to the position of a common nursemaid… This is most unacceptable! A king must be above all and everyone else -illness is an unsuitable weakness. Do something about it.”
Again, he was speaking to her with that tone of voice that expected immediate results, but there was something new. She really had to be still dreaming, because just for a small moment she thought she heard him whining.
Hakuno couldn’t help the soft, defeated laugh that escaped her, quickly morphing to a muffled cough. She was sure she was going to die back there and next thing she knows is that Gilgamesh is ordering her to recover from her almost-deletion in a blink of an eye as if she could heal her circuits by sheer force of determination.
Ah, well, there could be a way to heal that through magic, right?
Right.
She wasn’t going to give that much thought right now, and even if she was, Gilgamesh made sure she didn’t when his left hand reached out and pinched her cheek. Hakuno gave out a pained groan, feeling the sting linger even as he removed his fingers from her flushed cheek.
“Master.” He warned, but he didn’t sound particularly angry. Rather, he seemed annoyed as if he was being denied something.
“Oh, I’m ever so sorry for inconveniencing you, Gil, but what do you expect me to do? Grow new circuits out of thin air? Perform a mana transfer on myself?” She asked dryly, using all of her remaining strength to put herself together and formulate a semi-coherent sentence.
His brows arched, but didn’t reply to that right away. Even though it could hardly be said she was really awake with how much she was struggling to keep her eyes opened, she was conscious enough to know he hadn’t fell silent because he’d been left with no words to speak. Gilgamesh staying quiet for too long was a bad omen.
They both stared at each other silently, unblinkingly, for what felt like a while; Hakuno’s bleary brown eyes locked into his as she tried to keep them opened through sheer determination, and Gilgamesh’s narrowed red eyes boring into hers as if he was trying to open a hole into her own soul.
No, it wasn’t quite that, but she couldn’t dwell on that further. Gilgamesh gave a small sardonic smirk and broke her concentration.
“…Feeling cheeky, aren’t you, mongrel? However, that won’t work. It’s interesting for a thought, perhaps even worth stashing for such another occasion, yet futile; self-gratification hardly constitutes a suitable means to transfer mana. Average mage or not, that much you should know. Unless you’re so disposed to cast-off yourself, in which case I shall raise no objections; might even consider forgiving you for making me wait at your awakening.”
“No thanks no.”
The answer that came faster than she could even register only made him laugh harder. Snotty servant even in the face of her own near deletion, she was home alright.
Hakuno tried to open her mouth again to retort -she was, in fact, in the midst of saying something-, but then she stopped. What could she say to that, anyway? Everything that came to mind was either a dry remark or a deadpan look.
She settled for the deadpan look instead.
Ugh...
The cotton-headed feeling was back again. She closed her eyes to block the pain, but that only managed to make her head spin even harder.
She heard him chuckle, but even that sounded distant.
“Don’t fall silent now, master. You’re hardly interesting without your ability to engage in speech.”
The word ‘master’ came out almost like a dangerous purr. The way he said it, with the small smile that was still gracing his lips, seemed to challenge her. Being considered ‘interesting’ when she felt like she was constantly at the verge of passing out would hardly be considered a compliment if you asked anyone else, but the brunette knew this was as far as compliments went for the King.
…Although, the way he seemed to call her master; did it always sound so predatory, too? If it always did, it was just recently that she was able to ascertain the strange feeling that came with the word.
“You were so animated just some moments ago; where is that Hakuno now?” He asked lowly. “Instead you’re making such a slack face again…”
His words were blending in together until she could barely register what he was saying.
It was getting harder not to simply remain there with her eyes closed and lose herself to the numbness and pain again, but Gilgamesh’s insistence at keeping a conversation was stopping her from simply falling unconscious once more. Her servant rarely ever did things without a purpose or that did not benefit him in some way or another, so she supposed that keeping her awake had been the intent.
Maybe if she kept focusing on the sound of his voice, grating as it was, she could keep herself anchored to reality for a little while longer. Then again, the thought of going back to sleep was so tempting…
Her eyes opened again, but the world around her was blurrier than before.
She felt like she was about to pass out again, but she fought against it. Faint wrinkles formed on her forehead as she pushed herself harder to stay awake.
Her eyes were closing against her will, though.
…Really, it would be so… easy… to just…
Gilgamesh clucks his tongue.
“Hakuno.”
The brunette opened her eyes again and watched her servant through half-lidded eyes.
“Gil, I'm not sure I know what’s wrong yet, but… Won’t you please give some mercy to your poor, sick master? I don’t… like feeling this useless, but I need to rest.”
“…”
He must have been somewhat convinced by her words because he became silent again, lips pursed in consideration; trying to read most of Gilgamesh’s moods was like trying to read tea leaves in a china cup and Hakuno didn’t particularly have all her wits with her at the moment.
Gilgamesh gave one last sip at his wine, eyes closed in thought, and then the empty goblet disappeared back into his gates. When he reopened his eyes, he spoke.
“Watching you snivel like this… it is most unbecoming.” He said, more to himself than to Hakuno. The moment of quiet consideration was short-lived, because next thing she knew, Gilgamesh was making boisterous proclamations again. “Very well, I shall allow your request and let you rest upon your King. Rejoice, Master, for no one has been bestowed such honor!”
…
Wait-
“What”
She heard some rustling of fabrics as he raised from his throne and then, the next time she blinked, she saw the blond sitting himself at the edge of the bed next to her, feeling his weight sinking into the mattress slightly. From this distance, Hakuno could smell a distinct mix of musk and spices that was unmistakably his. From this distance, she could also see more clearly the expression his garnet eyes held as he looked down upon her.
She rolled over her back so that she could lay face up. With her back against the mattress and her messy brown hair sprawled all over the pillows, Hakuno gave him a questioning look through her glazy eyes.
He made a commanding motion with his hand.
“Come here closer, my sluggish Master. I’m feeling indulgent today.”
Again, he said such things as if he was making her some sort of very special favor, when in reality he just wanted to be humored.
Hakuno gave him a look -she’s not sure what kind of look, considering that it was hard enough to maintain herself awake, but the attempt was definitely there-. She came in closer, nonetheless, in spite of the numbing feeling in her limbs. She pushed herself up on her hand, albeit shakily, and dragged herself to be mere inches away from the overbearing King.
She did this more quickly than she thought she was able to, considering the soreness in her body and the pain in her head.
“…I may have almost been deleted by a supercomputer and the toll of it is definitely getting to me, but I’m still a little self-aware; I’m incurring in some kind of debt again, am I?”
“Were you expecting not to?” He asked lowly, a barely-there smirk set on his lips as he inched closer to survey her.
“…Maybe, not really.” She said noncommittally.
He only laughed at her response, throwing his head back a little.
“Such conceit! Just this once, I won’t take this to heart. However, I won’t be pleased if you show me such an unpleasant sight again. I did not recognize you as my master only to see you crumble pathetically over sleep-induced hallucinations.”
Was he talking about when she’d been asleep? He did mention she’d been mumbling in her sleep, but… did she have a freak-out session back then? Ah, she couldn’t tell…
It was at that moment that Gilgamesh self-satisfied expression morphed into a somewhat pointed look, but this was fine, Hakuno though to herself. She, at least, recognized all too well the slightly pouting glare -almost but not yet quite bordering on anxiety- he was throwing her way. This, unlike that other strange expression he’d made just a few moments ago when he woke her up, she knew. After all, she can almost recite by heart the five-minute rant he gave her with that very same glare when she had the audacity to insinuate to him that, deep down, he loved humanity.
She takes it as Gilgamesh only way to show sincere concern -or at least something very close to it, and while it is somewhat endearing he would lose so much as one thought on a ghost girl like her, who was merely a collection of data made in the spitting image of a girl who might as well be dead already back on Earth, in a way it was just a little sad, too.
A part of her hated the sentimentality this fleeting thought washed over her. Maybe because I had that strange dream, I feel like I need to be closer to someone, she reasoned with herself. That sounded reasonable enough.
The blond must have felt her get upset from her overthinking because next thing she knew, he was staring down at her knowingly, the slight glare long gone from his eyes.
“Mongrel. You are spacing out.” He observed.
“Hm… I might have got sidetracked.” She mumbled tiredly.
“You are lucky I am as amused as I am by you.”
Another tired hum.
His hands went to brush back her sweaty bangs away from her face, a gesture that was gentler than she gave him credit for.
If not for him, she’d be alone. There’s no one else she can turn to. She couldn’t return to the Moon Cell, and she couldn’t return to Earth either, because she was just data with nowhere to return to.
Whether she wanted it or not, this most likely meant ‘Master and asshole servant until the end of time’. Or at least until he completely turns her insane, whichever came first.
Still, this was a chance Hakuno will have to take, though.
Did she have any other choice, really? This was her only choice.
But this… Maybe having this only choice is enough. Surely this ending is more than enough.
It takes only two people to create a universe. Maybe this is what Hakuno has always been searching for, as she flitted through labyrinth after labyrinth trying to give some sort of meaning to the senseless killing game she was thrown to, with nothing but death and oblivion waiting for her at the end of the road.
Her only choice of remaining with Gilgamesh was the wish she didn’t dare to make in fear it would be too selfish.
Caught up in that train of thought, she barely registered that she had moved her hands to rest upon his, carefully, tentatively, until she felt him flinching just barely.
In her stupor, Hakuno looks up at Gilgamesh and touches his face. “…I’m so glad you’re here,” she mumbles, completely out of control of her mind. She lets herself fall against him, her head burying into the crook of his neck, no longer able to keep herself conscious.
“!”
She couldn’t see what kind of face he was making, but she could feel him stiff slightly, as if suddenly he was sitting very straight. Some moments passed by before she felt the warmth of his hand against her nape while the other settled against her back to secure her in place in a gesture that more or less resembled a hug.
“Such sentiments,” she heard him murmur as his fingers worked on the slight knots that had formed on her long hair after much turning around in her sleep, the touch tentative. Hakuno wraps her arms round Gilgamesh’s body and buries her head against his chest, seeking comfort. In spite of always appearing scorning and dispassionate, or mocking at best, the man gave off heat like a damn furnace.
Even in the brink of passing out, the remnants of that strange dream keep trying to resurface and break free from the shackles that kept them tied to the deepest crevices of her mind, in hopes they would not come back.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
She doesn’t know, but she knows at the same time.
She knows, but she can’t remember.
Because that was just a dream.
And things that can’t be remembered are things that never happened.
Yes.
That was right.
She closed her eyes one last time, without really meaning to, and exhaustion took ahold of her once more.
The moment she’d closed her eyes and rested her face against his shoulders he knew she would fall asleep again. Having her pass out again from exhaustion was not only hardly satisfying, but also… problematic. It was far from what he wanted. On the one hand, her affliction seemed to be mana-related and there was so much hand holding can do. On the hand, having her slip in and out of consciousness as if she could barely keep herself whole was a sight he learned he didn’t quite enjoy partaking.
In any case, she’d been able to keep herself in a semi-aware state for a total of ten minutes. It was still most inappropriate -she shouldn’t have been bedridden in the first place, nor should he be reduced to play housemaid, his fondness of his mongrel changed nothing-, but still decided to allow her some more moments of rest mainly because… indulging such a request was also a means to indulge himself. She will praise him for his gratitude with due reverence later when she woke up properly.
Gilgamesh pulled the woman onto the bed with him, her hair falling all around her in a cascade of mahogany as he settled her down with him. There was some discomforted mumbling and some shifting as she was moved, but soon enough Hakuno snuggled closer to him and her breathing relaxed again.
The golden-haired servant shook his head lightly and stared down at her through half-lidded eyes.
“How truly daring. Are you truly so dependent of my touch?”
There was no vocal response to that. Instead, Hakuno simply clung tighter to his shirt and remained fast asleep. It was all the answer he needed, truly.
“Ah,” he breathed out, “dependent indeed.”
He was pleased to note that no matter how much the filth of deletion might have got to her as the Moon Cell had tried to break her apart, she still felt warm against him.
The feeling of her against him was the living testament of his victory over the Moon Automaton; that after breaking every single rule it tried to impose over him, she was definitely there and that somehow, Hakuno had managed to survive beyond her injuries, even though they would have killed a normal human being -then again, Hakuno could hardly be considered human.
Whilst her heart shuddered in her chest and her eyelids flickered closed as she sank to a bottomless ocean of oblivion and filth started to eat her from the inside -the useless contraption that was the Moon Cell starting to delete the glitch in the system that was Hakuno Kishinami- she hadn’t stopped feeling.
With every beat of her stubbornly unceasing heartbeat, Hakuno clung onto the edges of life with her bare hands, and as the last remnants of her consciousness refused to give in, he managed to reach for her hand before his foolish master could surrender herself completely to that useless piece of rock.
It would have been easier to die and give up as she fell and fell and fell with no seeming end visible.
However, she was stubborn even on her deathbed.
In the end…
Well.
He found her first, it was he who first picked her up when she had been nothing but a discarded life that fell into an endless pitch-black void while she struggled to keep herself whole, and the Moon Cell held no authority over him; by proxy, it held no ownership over what was his, including his soft-hearted fool of a master.
He absentmindedly took an unruly strand of her brown hair and twirled it around his fingers.
He would have much preferred to grind that rock under his feet for the disrespect it dared to show upon him instead of simply soaring away and let it be put back to sleep, but this ending, he decided, was also suitable. Later, he would look into whatever ailment was jeopardizing his Master's comfort.