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"Do you love her?"
Keith bristles, shoulders high and tensed, before forcing himself to relax.
"… This is ridiculous," Keith says.
This has been happening recently, pretty often, but he hadn't expected it to happen here, now, walking through the city with Lily. Koku is at work, Yuna is wherever Yuna goes when Koku is at work and Lily isn't home. Lily is walking a couple of yards ahead of Keith, letting him pull up the rear while she stops to look in every store window like her arms aren't already weighed down with shopping bags and her wallet isn't empty, just far enough ahead that she can't hear him talking quietly.
"You love her."
Keith shakes his head. "I'm not doing this."
Lily turns around and gives him a quizzical look– one that's too similar to what Erika's used to look like. That slightly furrowed brow, softly pouted lips. Just like when Erika used to ask Keith for help with math homework. Just like when she used to find Keith and Gilbert with their hair mussed and ties askew in between classes or after lunch.
Shame and guilt play tug-of-war with his oversensitive heart.
"Nothing," he calls to her, "Just a math equation." Laughable.
She smiles, rolls her eyes, and turns back around to look at a jeweler's display window.
"Hm. Love is just a math equation to you, isn't it?" The voice that speaks is not Lily's. "The entire human experience is a math equation to you." A pause. "I'm just a math equation to you."
"Well, I'm right," Keith responds– quieter this time so Erika– no, Lily– won't hear him. "A simple math equation and a little faulty brain chemistry. You should know that well enough, Doctor."
"And by that– simple math and brain chemistry– are you referring to me pre- or post-mortem?" Gilbert's ghost asks him.
Keith doesn't answer that– doesn't have an answer for that. He stops at a corner while Lily chats with a shop owner. Leaning a hip against the rough brick of one of the old downtown buildings, he sighs and closes his eyes for a moment.
"I'm going to get anti-psychotics," Keith says. Maybe that answers Gilbert's question well enough, though.
Gilbert hums thoughtfully.
"Even I'm not sure whether I'm real or not," he says, casually. "I still can't say whether Erika was, either." Keith cracks his eyes and catches Gilbert tapping his chin the way he always does– did. "Perhaps every figment of our imagination believes itself as real as we do."
"Don't compare our situations." Keith wants to sound mean but he just sounds tired. "We're not the same."
"It seems similar to me."
"I've gone insane."
"Then it is similar."
Lily is on the move again. Keith follows at a careful distance. Not too far to get lost, not too close to be heard. Gilbert easily keeps pace with Keith, never taking his eyes off him. It's easy to walk without looking when every pedestrian passes right through you. Keith studies their faces for any sign that they've noticed something off. There is none. Keith doesn't know which is worse anyway.
Gilbert's lips quirk up in a small, private smile. His pale eyes dance. "What if I'm real?"
"You're not," Keith tells himself.
"Humor me." A flash of straight, white teeth. "Humor yourself."
"If you're actually a ghost," Keith says, forcing his voice not to waver, "And not a figment of my fractured mind, then you're here to haunt me for…" Killing you, his heavy heart whispers. "… Your death."
Gilbert shakes his head. His perfect silver hair sways with the motion.
"There's more to it than that, Genie," he pokes.
"Oh, yeah?" Keith grits his teeth. "So why do you think Erika hung around you?"
"If she was real?" He asks, smiling like he knows something Keith doesn't and speaking quietly as if he's also at risk of being overheard. Both concepts are ridiculous. "Hm. I suppose I thought she liked me. Now I believe she was trying to lead you to me– our conversations are what did it, after all."
"So you're going to, what? Try and get me locked away?" Keith won't admit that he thinks about it, about deserving something like that sometimes when it's late and his bed is cold and lonely. That maybe he ought to be laying awake in a prison bunk instead of his new twin bed. He switched to the twin only a month or two ago– his full-size felt empty for the first time in years, despite the fact that he hadn't ever had anyone in it. His heart feels sore and achy, like a flu.
Gilbert's smile deepens, turns soft at the edges. Soft like an early morning or a worn quilt. Soft like a bowl of warm soul food. Soft like Gilbert always was under Keith's rough palms.
Keith tears his eyes away. Focuses on moving his feet down the street.
"I'm not Erika, am I, Keith?"
"What do you want from me, Gil?"
"If I'm real?" Gilbert asks with a sharp grin. Keith feels the same old familiar prickle of frustration that he usually feels when he's around Gilbert. That he usually felt.
Gilbert sighs softly. "Maybe this is my version of Heaven."
Of course it was Gilbert's Heaven. Keith had been dragged down to Gilbert's level, had murdered him. Gilbert could torment Keith for the next eternity about it. Keith would never again have a restful night's sleep.
"If this is your Heaven, it's my Hell."
Gilbert goes strangely stiff. He recovers quickly but his voice still sounds oddly flat when he speaks again.
"Well. That's just how it goes, isn't it?" He runs a causal fingertip over Keith's shoulder. There isn't a hint if sensation but Keith flinches anyway. Gilbert looks away. "Conversely, your Heaven would be my Hell."
Like yin and yang.
"In my Heaven, you haven't killed anyone."
Gilbert barks a laugh.
"Then I wouldn't be me."
"Who was the Gilbert I used to know?"
"A façade." Gilbert looks Keith in the eye. "You've always been friends with a dirty murderer, whether you could figure that out or not, genius."
Keith suppresses a shiver.
"Then my Heaven is one where you hadn't died," he says quietly.
"And what? I would have kept killing? You would have continued to stay ignorant? And would you have chosen not to know or would you just be stupid enough to not get it?" Gilbert scoffs. "This was always the way it had to be."
"There were other options."
"Exactly," Gilbert says. "Exactly my point. There were other options and yet you chose this. I didn't force you to kill me, I forced you to see the truth and make a decision."
"I know," Keith whispers.
In truth, Keith had wondered if there could have been a way for them to… To be normal friends. Or otherwise. None of the manipulation, none of the sadistic impulses, none of the cat and mouse.
But he knows there couldn't have been. One of them would have to surrender their entire personality, their core values, their personal code for that to happen.
"My Heaven is the stretch of time that I knew you and you lived, from our first meeting to our last."
Keith looks up. Gilbert is gone and Keith has gotten separated from Lily. He's lonelier than ever in the middle of a crowded street.