Chapter Text
"I have the police! My father's—the governor!" Romani barreled in with his phone thrust overhead, thumb on the call button, and shoving Kotomine aside—Merlin snatched Romani's shoelace.
"What's going on?" Romani demanded.
"You came," Merlin said. A deep furrow appeared between Romani's brows and he didn't release the call button, but he wordlessly helped him up. Kotomine glanced at Gilgamesh.
"How long have you been messing with me? By this point, I should be able to tell when you're being serious," Romani said brusquely.
On the other side, for once, Gilgamesh was caught by surprise. "You didn't believe in me, after all," he said.
His tone was dangerously gentle, and, leaning on his friend, Merlin could only smile helplessly. "I was afraid you didn't believe in me. I'd prefer to trust you wholeheartedly, but we don't really know each other."
Possibly a good omen: Gilgamesh picked up his tea and took a sip.
At that, Romani couldn't hold back. "What were you doing?"
"Stand aside, I'm not going to stab him," Gilgamesh said, getting up.
"You didn't seem all that concerned when he was attacking him."
"And why is that? You'll see as soon as you let me through."
"Romani, let him," said Merlin. "He won't do anything to me himself."
"No! You've been out of it since morning. You knew he was… you asked me if I thought he could possibly…." Romani rounded on Gilgamesh. "I don't know what you have over him, but I can have you both arrested." He looked at Kotomine, and a tremor zipped through him. "Please put down that knife."
As disconcertingly serene as his charge, Kotomine laid it on the ground.
"Thank you," Merlin said, to Romani. Then he winced again and it dawned on Romani that he was really hurt.
"I have to call an ambulance."
"Right, thanks—ow—"
"There's no need," Gilgamesh said. His tone was casual, but the fact that it was him speaking so nonchalantly made dissent feel incredibly foolish. "And don't bother calling, you'll only be wasting time."
A thought occurred to Merlin.
"Not until you explain yourself," said Romani.
Such reasonable demands were lost on the president, and Gilgamesh merely looked past Romani as if he was no more than air, extending a hand.
Merlin's eyes locked on his fingertips. After a moment, he reached around Romani and grasped his hand.
Face-to-face, jumpy as he was, Merlin just managed not to shy away when he suddenly came very close. And luckily, because he only brushed a bit of dust from Merlin's hair before lowering his fingertips to Merlin's ribs. He touched his chest, and a warmth washed through Merlin, so comfortable it distracted him from the crack when his ribs set back into proper form.
"Mongrel. I could've fixed it."
Gilgamesh's pert little smile was unbearable. As if that wasn't enough, Merlin couldn't find it in himself to thank him, so he lowered his eyes as if to examine his miraculously healed body and said, "That's unsurprising."
"You lied," said the priest.
"He's mine to judge, as it's been from the start. You should've known that, and no one, least of all you or God, may make the choice for me."
“'Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.'"
Gilgamesh narrowed his eyes. "You, of all people, should not misunderstand me."
For a moment Merlin thought they were going to fight, but the priest just sighed. "Very well. You are acting out of selfishness, as always."
In the silence that followed, a tremulous voice: "Who are you?"
Gilgamesh huffed. "And there's why you shouldn't involve civilians. On top of getting in the way in his ignorance, he's just had his world destroyed. How good to your friends you are."
Patting Romani's shoulder reassuringly, Merlin replied, "Romani's adaptable. Can we have a proper discussion now? You say you've made a decision. Are you on my side now because I managed to not die? Or did I prove my worth in some other way? Or did you really choose me from the start? Or, did you just figure that while Kotomine would definitely murder me eventually—I figure that because he barely hesitated just then—I mind the law and probably wouldn't do the same to him, so you'd better protect me, so we can continue to act out whatever piece of theater you seem to be looking for between us?"
Gilgamesh said, "You should choose one theory, and keep to it."
"Is that how you're evaluating me?"
"No," he said. "I always know the truth."
"Ah? Is that how it is?"
"It is," Gilgamesh crossed his arms, seemingly annoyed he had to reiterate a fact. "I don't make mistakes. Whenever I decide on something, it's correct, even if it's not immediately clear how."
He actually sounded a little surprised with himself, like he'd never described this particular phenomenon aloud before. Merlin didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Is that a symptom of youthful inexperience, or being really good at justifying yourself? he thought. Hell, is that what I sound like? I fortify myself with a "probably," when I say stuff like that, right? "So you don't actually care how everyone else sees you."
"Whether the world knows me as a blessing or a murderer, doesn't matter to me."
"Then what Kotomine said was true?"
As a response, Gilgamesh reached behind him, where the air began to ripple in gold. His hand dipped into a pool of light, and he drew out a sword, so clean and pure that it glowed silver, like a moonlit pond. He balanced the blade perfectly on his palm. "This was given to me the first time. I was told to purge one of my mother's business partners."
The steel flashed as the lamps overhead flickered.
"You… you really killed a person?"
On the orders of God, using a gift sent for that purpose, Gilgamesh, surely just a child, had, really, killed someone?
"I did." He didn't even bother to elaborate, just twirled the hilt with a well-practiced flourish.
"Why?" A dozen explanations were already flitting through Merlin's mind, all of them reasonable, none of them clearing his unease.
What kind of God tells a kid to commit murder? —But it's only been modern society that's coddled children. What kind of teenager kills someone just because God tells him to? —It's God.
But none of those seemed right.
Merlin said, "You decided that man should die." He hadn't followed divine orders. He'd agreed with their judgment.
Gilgamesh drove the steel point into the floorboards. "Are you afraid, Merlin?"
He understood now. Gilgamesh existed on a different plane.
"I'm terrified," Merlin said. "Of your confidence in yourself."
Light skimmed across the blade as Gilgamesh let it swing just past Merlin's chest before sheathing it into another swirling gate. "You don't have to do anything to stay in my good graces. Your continued existence is enough for me to make my point."
Merlin stared at him, after this declaration that could almost be called a reassurance. "...That you have an opinion of your own? As long as I'm alive, you're winning?"
"Yes."
"I don't think that's it," Merlin said. Scarlet eyes flashed dangerously. "You could've made that point with anyone else you were told to get rid of. Honestly, if that's really all, just ignoring Heaven like you usually do is enough. Sure, God's opinion of me is especially harsh, but I don't think you're so mindlessly rebellious that you'd insist on treating me nicely just because God really doesn't want to. Somehow, you've judged I don't deserve to die."
Gilgamesh arched an eyebrow. "Rather late to notice, mongrel."
"Then why didn't you just say so earlier? You said it didn't involve me. You said you weren't protecting me for my sake."
"You're not important. Of course, due to the circumstances, my world currently revolves round you, but unlike Heaven, and unlike Kirei, I don't think you matter much in the grand scheme of things. Why should I waste my breath telling you things you don't need to know? There's nothing you need to do differently. But if you're going to make an even bigger fuss about it, very well—nothing you've done suggests you're a danger to the human race. Especially since Kirei over there's still sane. Killing you's not worth it."
But are you such an all-loving hero that you'd let a whole city go on without a future for one person?
You like me, Merlin thought, certain now. He would almost dare say he was president-translating-machine. You like me the way I am, you even like having me around more than you want your regular life back, because you helped me from the start, before you knew anything about me. You're not one to mull over things, you trust yourself so much you're inclined to follow your first impressions.
And you won't ever admit liking me's the reason you keep helping me, so you run off whenever that pesky idea rears its head. That's okay. I like you the way you are, too. So I won't push. Very much.
Merlin smiled. "Ah, I see. That makes sense."
"Of course it does, mongrel."
Romani glanced between them, then at Kotomine, grimacing to see he'd begun cleaning his dagger.
"Now that's settled, we know one more thing," Gilgamesh said.
"We do?"
He pointed up. "There's nothing you can do or prove that'll make Heaven spare you. When betrayed and attacked, you didn't lash out, you called your friend for a relatively peaceful resolution, at your own risk. All evidence up to now shows you're more or less harmless. Not any worse than the average viper, and certainly not most humans who're still walking around freely. God did make a food chain, so it'd be hypocritical for him to be too picky. Yet the twittering wasps are still making the same noises as before. You're doomed, he just hates you."
Merlin's mouth went dry. "That's awful." He looked at Kotomine. "So that's why you set him on me. So… I…. You said you had a plan."
"Though there's nothing you can do, there should be something I can do. I've tried to ask for your purification, but unfortunately this isn't anything like demonic possession. And you'll never be a genuine servant of God, so we can eliminate any pandering in that direction. Besides, baptism can't erase your tendency to evil, which seems to be what they're worried about anyway. I'm not sure I'd be able to put you back together into a way they'd like if I killed you—"
"No!" Merlin and Romani both yelled.
"—I know! So I haven't and I won't, the next thing I want to try is escaping the city altogether. It's void, but maybe we can find a way across between us."
"Void?" asked Romani.
"As in, there's nothing there," said Gilgamesh. "Besides a feeling that you absolutely shouldn't go in."
"Then maybe we shouldn't go in?" Merlin ventured.
"Half the time, feelings like that are just sent by heaven. Admittedly, I don't know how the void works. It's not the kind of thing they'd tell me. But I feel like it's absence entirely, like even God isn't present there. At least it's acting as a buffer between this city and the rest of the world."
"Can you go in there? If you're a tool of God, and all."
"I haven't tried, I got to the edge and got that feeling. But I thought about it afterwards and realized it was probably a heavenly warning. Plus, heaven won't mess with you when you're touching me, so maybe it works the other way, and they won't be able to stop me."
"Oh my."
"Is the plan to just, walk through the void? Is that how it works?" Romani asked.
"Magi☆Mari's Room crosses the void somehow," Gilgamesh said.
"But maybe that's, magic. Internet."
Gilgamesh gestured at Merlin. "Well, he's magic, and the Internet works through cables and other infrastructure."
"That's a reasonable statement. Yes. Right."
"The sun's near setting. That's about when everyone who'd normally leave the city decides they'd rather get a hotel for the night, so we can try the bridge without too much traffic. Shall we?"
"I'm going with you," said Romani.
"Of course you are," Merlin said, the same time Gilgamesh said, "Why."
"So you don't try to kill him—"
"I won't, idiot—"
"I don't trust you! I don't even know you!"
"That's not true," Gilgamesh said, miffed. "I'm—ah, it doesn't matter. Where's Kirei gone?"
"He just left," said Merlin.
"Sneak." Without another word, he ran down the stairs.
"Are you really alright?" Romani asked.
Needing a moment's refuge, Merlin laughed. "No. I'm not. But I think I'm getting used to it."
"I can't believe you were telling the truth."
"I'm so hurt, everyone thinks I lie more than I actually do. But thank god, I thought you wouldn't take me seriously, or worse, you wouldn't forgive me, but you did, best friend, blessed, dear heart, so good, so kind—"
"I DON'T FORGIVE YOU! I won't ever forgive you!"
"—So friendly, so good, so generous, so understanding, so tolerant, so gracious, so wonderful—"
"Eat shit and die."
"—So spectacular! So magnanimous, so praiseworthy, so nice, so sheep, so love—"
"...So patient, so altruistic, so helpful."
"Sp patient!! So altruistic!! So helpful!! By the way, I want you to know you can still consult Mari-chan, I'll always put on a brilliant show for you—"
"Bye."
"No wait, don't abandon me! That's not allowed, that's called bullying, and your mental health'll take a hit, too. In your heart of hearts, you like having me around. In your darkest times, I will bring you joy. I am your bastion against depression. I am inevitable."
"You owe me one."
"I owe you one!! So charitable! So compassionate!"
Romani flushed. "Should we follow him?"
"That's probably what he means, yeah. I can't imagine he'd come and get us."
➷
The sky simmered orange.
Kirei was in the parking lot behind the café, and he stepped out of his car when he saw Gilgamesh. He asked plainly, "What would you have done if I had killed him?"
"Tried unsuccessfully to resurrect him, probably. But he wouldn't have, because you understood the instructions—well done."
It was clear he was in a puffed-up mood, and Kirei figured it would be easier to let him talk himself out of steam. Gilgamesh mistook his silence as an objection. "He might be an ordinary mongrel who'd never think a priest might be trained as a bodyguard, but I'm not. You shouldn't forget I know you better than you know yourself."
"Do you remember what I told you after Claudia died?"
Gilgamesh cocked his head.
When his wife had killed herself, Kirei had realized that what was given would not be taken away, and what was missing would not be given. Gilgamesh had grown deaf to reason, but he still hadn't lost his ability to perform miracles. Kirei prayed, and still couldn't find the warmth he thought would be happiness, not even when his wife gave herself up for him.
Gilgamesh had asked, then, "Why do you abuse yourself pointlessly? You were born as a miracle for your father."
Kirei had wanted to snap his neck. "Because I was a gift, you think I am designed, as you are. It follows then, in your mind, that I should be as sure of myself as you are. But I am not, and never will be, because you are deluded. You are a mistake." A mistake, what you are doing to me, what you are trying to make me become—"You are not a savior, but a snake," he'd said.
"I remember you equated me with the animal I hate the most," Gilgamesh said. "Are you bringing this up because I incited you to murder? I don't think God would've found sin in shedding his blood."
Kirei still believed what he'd said, though he knew he'd been irrationally angry then, blaming Gilgamesh. Could he really have been so immature as to expect a child to be an example for himself? Yet now that child was grown and didn't seem to have changed his agenda for Kirei. The idea of putting his faith into Gilgamesh again was disturbing. "Are you still trying to heal me, by insinuating I should allow myself to become a monster?"
"Did I go too far? But you seemed amused by the idea of provoking the demon in earlier loops."
What did I say in other loops?
"I was too annoyed to think of this, back then," Gilgamesh said. "But being called a snake wasn't necessarily an insult. There's a reason humanity blames Adam and Eve for falling, more than the serpent. The serpent is temptation. It's not human, so humans don't take it as an example, or a warning. It doesn't have a fate. It's a mechanic, that comes in and out of the story to prompt humans to learn of good and evil, to keep them mortal. A trick and a trickster, but it still leaves the choice up to humans, which is better than God's way." A chill ran over Kirei's nape. "So, not inaccurate. I'll accept it," Gilgamesh said. "In turn, you may remember that it means you have a choice."
"So you admit that cambion was a 'fruit?'"
"Well, that was partly why I thought of you instead of hiring a hitman, but it was mostly because you already set him on edge. Any progress you make will get reversed unless we manage to stop the cycles. All the same," Gilgamesh said. "Did you enjoy it?"
Kirei looked to the back exit of the café, where the demon and his friend were poking their heads out. Gilgamesh noticed, too. "Anyway. Lend me your car."
➷
"You're speeding," Merlin noted solicitously.
"Indeed," said Gilgamesh.
They swerved so harrowingly close to the curb that Merlin was able to make eye contact with one of the astounded pedestrians.
"That was dangerous."
"Stop nagging. It makes me want to have you strangled."
"Sorry."
The car zipped into the left lane with a racer's precision, making Romani gasp and Merlin seize his armrest.
That sent Gilgamesh cackling. "You're more of a coward than I thought."
"I've always been a coward—you're speeding again. By a lot. Ah! You just ran a red light!"
"Yes I did!"
"Don't say it, don't say it,'' Romani was mumbling like a prayer in the back, "Don't say it, please don't say it."
"I am the rules!" Gilgamesh crushed the accelerator and Merlin's teeth clacked together to stop his guts from surging out when the car sprung forward like a pebble blasted by dynamite.
"Oh god." Merlin's jaws unclenched. "Please tell me your magic healing powers work even if you're incapacitated!" he screamed against the whipping air.
"I'm not using them on you, stupid philistine!"
"You're going forty above the speed limit!"
"Yeah? Do you want to drive? Here, take it if you've got the skills to back up your incessant—"
The car swerved into the right lane as Merlin recoiled from the offer, throwing him against the window. "No—get back on the wheel, I can't drive!"
"Oh, that's right," Gilgamesh abruptly righted the vehicle. "You can't ever get in a car by yourself, can you?"
"No!"
"Hahaha! Then what right have you to criticize me?"
"The right to live—No, wait, no no nono—oh, you could've killed that old lady!" Merlin gave up all pretences and clung to the door, ready to spring out of this death box at any moment.
"We're in a time loop, idiot, that's why I can do this, hahahaha!"
"That doesn't mean you can just murder people! What if I do die today and God doesn't reset anymore?"
"Stupid, why are you being so rebellious today? Didn't I say I'd win?"
"What if you crash the car before you get to—the red light, another red light!—give the finger to God?!"
"It's Kirei's shitty—"
"That's really not the point!"
"Tch. I don't see you so scared of sinkholes and lightning."
"I can dodge those! I'm stuck in a car!"
"You can jump out."
"Yeah, but we're going so fast I can't even read the road names?! Oh god—" Gilgamesh had executed a stunning split-second pass of a tanker truck. Okay, that'd been kind of impressive. Objectively speaking, traffic laws aside, the president was an incredible driver, but when one ventured to contemplate the number of heart attacks he must've caused to get to this level—
"Holy shit,” said Romani, "That was good, but how many cars have you destroyed!?"
"Who knows, ask Mari-chan." Another traffic light appeared and disappeared like a sparkle in a roaring river.
"Just one, but he'd only had it for one day and nearly killed him and Enkidu, so I think he's not allowed anywhere near the wheel anymore!"
"It was Enkidu's fault!"
"You must love driving," Romani moaned.
"How did you know?" Gilgamesh hit the accelerator yet again and they sped towards the bridge.
"It takes devotion—AH the truck's back?!"
"Is he challenging me?!"
"No, he's not, don't race him—wait, is he U-turning?"
A skillful jerk of the wheel and they dodged the tanker.
"See," said Gilgamesh. "They all turn back before the boundary." As soon as the words left his mouth, a wave of pure rejection surged over Merlin, as if every fiber of his being was hollering this was a bad idea.
"We'll observe it first," Gilgamesh assured them.
"Throw some pebbles in, yeah, haha," said Romani.
The car showed no signs of slowing on the empty road.
"About now?" Merlin suggested. But when he looked to Gilgamesh, he found the president head-down, kicking at the brakes. "Is something wrong?"
"They're not working."
"What?"
"Use the parking brake." Romani grabbed onto the driver's headrest. "The parking brake!"
"I know!"
Another wave of giddy horror hit him like a thunderbolt, like the adrenaline rush that came from a gunshot near one's face, and he realized they'd sped onto the bridge.
"Are you sure that feeling is a bluff?" Merlin cried. "Actually, can you use a miracle to slow us down? God's been messing with time, that should work, right?"
Gilgamesh gritted his teeth. "So often, lately—"
"I can't be the only one who's drowning in existential horror right now!"
"I am too," Romani said.
"Fuck," said Gilgamesh. A trace of alarm showed on his face. "Romani, get out."
"What?"
"I don't know, I think I heard—anyway get out! Wait, demon, what are you doing?"
"The fact that you've lost control of the circumstances means it's a real problem, I'll see if it'll help if I get out." Merlin threw open his door and jumped out. The world cracked in lightning and went black.
➷
Merlin could smell flowers, and see a blue sky above him.
But his head spun. A nightmarish dizziness—nausea was definitely the worst of feelings—he breathed deeply to suppress that dizziness and tried to focus on listening to the rustle of leaves. When he felt slightly better, he clambered to his feet. The meadow was a familiar setting, but whether he was seeing it in a dream or something else remained to be seen. Unfortunately, he certainly felt like death. His body barely felt like his own; every command he gave it took a moment to register. When he let his eyelids drop to fight off the nausea, keeping them that way seemed infinitely preferable to moving, but he had the same vicious bad feeling about doing so that he'd had about crossing the bridge, so he forced his eyes open to take in the land. Hell? Purgatory? What were the odds the afterlife looked like his default dreamscape?
Yet, not entirely. The edges of the field were starting to fragment, powdering out into a matte black nothingness. Merlin tried to make the flowers come back, but for the first time, found resistance. It wasn't that he wasn't able to, but that there seemed to be something fighting against him, overwhelming his will over the setting. The more he pushed, the stiffer that resistance became, and then it snapped—the land broke into a hundred fragments scattered over open sky that was rapidly dissolving into the void. The sky itself started to warp and boil, churning like thick paint into heavy storm clouds.
Ah. Death, then, and on the way to the cauldrons of hell.
In the corner of his eye, a shimmer of gold that didn't belong.
There was no way Gilgamesh would end up in the same place he did.
Standing on a slowly disintegrating fragment of field, Dream-Gilgamesh tipped his head slightly, alert.
I'm ruined, thought Merlin. I'm dead and I'm thinking about him, who I met the equivalent of a couple weeks ago, instead of Mother or my actual friends.
There was something challenging in the set of Gilgamesh's lips. The sight of him only reminded Merlin of how badly he wanted to live. In all likelihood, Gilgamesh would get out of his own reckless mistake just fine. Romani, too. Maybe they were sitting out in the real world right now, with angels whispering that the mission was complete and the pest annihilated. Merlin would be gone, probably when the broken meadow finished dissolving.
Dream-Gilgamesh surveyed the disintegration.
Well, thought Merlin. If I'm going to hell soon.
With that, he hopped on a passing chunk of stone and soared over to the apparition of Gilgamesh–who turned at the last moment, eyes indignantly astonished–and caught his upperclassman by the shoulders, his momentum throwing them both into the air, which cushioned them into a gentle drift like pebbles sinking into a pond, and—kissed him.
"Goodbye, I'll blame you for this ending."
The view evaporated. Merlin came to, sitting on an unfamiliar cliff. He sucked in a breath. The landscape was whole, the sea an unbroken sheet of silver. He tried to tell it to change, but none of his dream tricks were working. Yet this didn't feel like reality, either.
Realizing he'd been leaning on something warm, so he glanced over, and found Gilgamesh staring at him.
He looked bewildered. No—that wasn't it, there must be a better way to describe the look on his face, and it looked terribly familiar, like seconds ago—
Gilgamesh, somewhere between indignance and surprise, touched a finger to his own lips.
"What was—" he broke off. "What were you trying to do, idiot?!"
What?
What?
"What?" Merlin gaped at him. "Are you real? Am I dead? Was that a dream? Is this a dream? Did you, did you have the same dream?"
"Not dead and you don't have dreams, fool!"
"What in the world is that supposed to mean?"
"What! Ha!" Gilgamesh laughed. It wasn't a kind laugh, but it also sounded a little hysterical, which made Merlin feel slightly less alone in shock. "Can this be true? You don't know? You're even stupider than I thought, I can't believe it!"
"Don't know what? That I don't have dreams?" Merlin asked incredulously.
"That you're half incubus!" Gilgamesh said.
"I'm half incubus?"
"And I thought you were just ignorant of the extent of your abilities. I shouldn't have expected much from you. If God didn't lie to me, yes. Not that I believe everything I'm told by God, but from my investigations, your conception and abilities line up with some of what I know of incubi, so—"
"Goodness," said Merlin. "I'm literal demon spawn. I should never doubt my craziest ideas ever, ever again."
Gilgamesh clicked his tongue. "So—"
"But how would you know about my conception?"
"Because you don't have a father on record, idiot."
"Then can't I be Jesus?"
Gilgamesh folded his arms. "I can get nails and a hammer. Would you like a crown of thorns, too? You can even have a cup of saltwater."
"Do you promise to venerate me after I die?"
"Of course not. Well, hurry up, do you want to strip or should I do it for you?"
"Then what's the point in dying if I'm not venerated?—Oh, that sounds fun, but I don't think all those tools are necessary."
"You're not going to die—if I remember correctly, the man gets resurrected."
"No, dying would hurt. Let's skip that, and go back to the stripping bit. I will if you will, why don't you do it too?"
"...You're taking this very calmly," Gilgamesh said, with an edge of grudging approval.
That was the flick that reminded the fragile house of cards of Merlin's mental state that it wasn't meant to stand. "No, I'm losing my mind, this makes too much sense and I can barely accept that I believe you. So that's why you disappear at night." His voice strained into a whine, "My mother definitely knows—she's been avoiding the subject forever, how could she do that to me? And that's why I always dream about other people—no wait, you say I don't have dreams of my own—but how do you know?"
"On the first day," Gilgamesh said, "After the first lightning strike, I received a vision."
A low wail strung out of Merlin's throat. "Why couldn't I have gotten a vision?"
"God doesn't like you."
"Right."
Gilgamesh studied him. "You have pointed ears in dreams, did you know?"
"I noticed, but I never thought about it much. I've dreamed I was—oh, well, now we have to say, other people have dreamed stranger things, so that wasn't the weirdest costume. Okay. But, how does that even work? Nightmares doing—?" Merlin made a loop with his thumb and pointer finger and performed a rather crude gesture.
"Belief shapes form," Gilgamesh said. "Who knows what your father looked like before, but your mother believed it was a man, so it became one for the night."
"That's an uncomfortable thought."
"Well, it was a demon."
"Right." He gathered himself, observed the sea for its supposed calming effects. "So you're real, and we're not dead."
"Yes, yes, and neither of us is dead. I think? Probably, I'm going to kill Kirei, and you." He reflexively touched his lips again.
"Sorry about that."
"And why did you jump out of the car? You nearly got hit, you're lucky Romani got hold of you out of his door."
"Ah. I thought we might have better chances split up. It wasn't my best moment. So is this the void? Where is Romani?"
"Dissipated."
"What's that mean?"
Gilgamesh reddened. "Exactly that, he's scattered into the void. It turns out primordial nothingness isn't good for normal humans. I'm pretty sure we're still inside it, or, well, outside. Of God's creation. We're only still whole because you're part-dream creature and I've enough mental fortitude to keep myself together."