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Love.
What is love?
Love is selfishness. Love is foolishness. Love is an illusion that Leon’s mother chased after when she abandoned her own child for someone who was most likely dead.
Love is nothing good. It only brings pain. This is what Leon believes anyway.
Until Violet.
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“That person’s existence is my world.”
Under the pale starlight her porcelain features transform from their usual cool, robotic poise into a bright, glowing tenderness that Leon has never seen in Violet. The words “that person” seem to linger over her lips like feathers. Leon watches, entranced. At that moment Leon knows that whoever “this person” is, wherever they are, whether it be oceans away or galaxies away, Violet would follow him.
Is this… love?
Is this what took his mother away?
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Days later the contract ends and along with the other dolls, Violet leaves. But unlike Leon’s mother, she isn’t leaving Leon behind, she’s leading Leon forward.
Leon has finally forgiven his mother. He can finally say to her, wherever you are, Mother, I hope you’re with Father. I’m alright.
“Violet Evergarden!” Leon shouts, as Violet waves one last time, and Leon wonders why he ever thought her face robotic. There is more gentleness in her blue eyes than in anyone else's whole being.
-
He hears of her on his travels sometimes. He hears many stories. They’re from all over, people of all corners of the world whose lives she has touched with her bionic hands.
Leon’s is one of them, but he keeps quiet when these stories come up. Time has passed and the memory of that night under the stars is dimmer now, almost surreal. But he only has to close his eyes and whisper “Violet Evergarden” for it to return in all its brightness, and at once all the fatigue, hunger, and cold of the present moment fade away, replaced by a burning strength in his chest.
Violet is his comet. He will chase after the light she has left behind, for as long as his breath allows. When they next meet, he will ask her if she has figured out the meaning of love, because Leon has. And he owes it to her.