Chapter Text
It’s...
... lonely.
Lonely...?
The word flits through his brain and scatters in iridescent specks that fall upon every hidden crevice, every gnarled protrusion, every surface and every depth — it takes root and it twines and it twists and it burns, and still…
It falls short.
It’s insufficient.
The pain he feels is deeper than the twist of a dagger in wounded flesh or a suffocating weight bearing down on his windpipe and lungs. In fact, he fears it has surpassed corporality altogether. Is there a body to speak of anyway?
It is an apathetic ladle that scoops up the remains of his hope and emerges empty. Yet it goes back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths, and it never stops, taunting him with a fate much worse than the transient loss of a loved one.
After more than a millennium, ‘transience' loses its meaning.
It morphs into something that is no less damning than eternity.
An eternity of suffering, cold and pitch-black and bitter.
And it jades him. It jades him to an extent where asking for help makes him want to scream until his throat is raw and hoarse.
There is no help incoming. No one will help. No one has ever helped. All they ever did was stretch out the mesh of his pain, hoping that one day it would snap at the seams and the threads would erode, eaten away by the moths of time.
But time does nothing but starve him. And a starved man is dangerous. He’s desperate and blind; his hands, grubby and impatient.
And he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t care anymore.
Humanity be damned, he doesn’t care if he demolishes everything he helped build; if the scientists’ efforts are all in vain; if the countless lives that latch onto him for dear sanity are lost.
He doesn’t care if mankind exhales its last breath at the chance of Yonah inhaling just one more breath.
For her to smile just once more, he would have the world wink out of existence, and he wouldn’t waste a second to hesitate.
He prepares a living space for her. The loveliest room in the castle, where sunlight sifts through the chiffon curtains and its warmth is gentle rather than harmful.
Harm won’t know her anymore. Her body will protect her soul, and her soul will heal her body.
She will be happy.
He will be happy.
He puts flowers in vases and keeps them fresh day in and day out.
The bed that will be hers has a plush mattress and feathery pillows. His hands bleed darkness on the white of a pillow when he fluffs it, so he abandons it softly.
A robin perches on the windowsill. Unlike the colorful robins he's used to seeing, its feathers are black. He spends idle minutes wondering what it might mean, and why he thinks it means anything at all.
This Yonah’s brother — his replicant — screams his lungs out and kicks at the air when he takes her body away.
Somehow his replicant’s suffering doesn’t stir him. It’s no more than a pale reflection of his own. It’s an extension of his own. One day, their parts will merge into a whole, and the suffering will be no more.
Be patient, he tells his replicant. You won’t have to wait nearly as long as I have waited.
The body in his arms is feeble. It’s so light he questions its reality.
As he takes her home — her home with him — he glances at her once and once again. The place where his heart should be swells. Bar the clothes, she is how he remembers his sister to be. Soft and sweet. Sickly pale but alive. The rattle in her chest tells of a suffocating cough, and it brings back many painful memories that he knows he will never forget.
She shivers in distress, pained by the poison coursing through her veins and gnawing at her bones.
As tentatively as he can, he places her on her bed, and he can’t help but to brush a silken strand of hair out of her forehead.
At his grotesque, shadowy touch, she calms.
If he could cry, he would.
Yonah, he croaks out, the word garbled on the tongue of his beastly form.
His Yonah slumbers on in a much less comfortable bed. She’s hibernating. Waiting out the frigidness of her stagnant existence.
He can’t be too hasty.
The fusion of a gestalt and a replicant is a delicate process. If done too hastily, he loses his sister’s spirit and her body in a single harrowing event.
Be patient, he tells himself. He has been patient all his life.
Yonah’s replicant wakes up to a steaming broth held in the hands of a grim and ghastly form that only vaguely resembles her brother. Her wide eyes widen even more, her lips falling agape.
He takes a hesitant step forward, utterly voiceless — even if he could speak in a language she can understand, he would be wordless still — and he lowers the bowl for her to see the small edible flowers giving color to the otherwise unappetizing meal, and she screams.
She screams and scurries to the far end of the bed, taking shelter behind a pillow, clenching her eyes shut.
It’s not his sister.
It’s not his sister, yet the sight of her fear agonizes him.
She’s scared of him.
In all of Yonah’s likeness… her delicate face and cornflower eyes and pouty lips… she is scared of him.
He falters, the bowl almost slipping out of his hold. He places it shakily on a nearby table and takes a tiny step forward, which makes her flinch.
Yonah, he lets out, but the word is incomprehensible to her. She only hears the horrible grunt of a monster.
“Get away from me!” she screams.
Yonah, please…
“My brother will come for me! He will… he will kill you! You’ll be sorry you did this! You…!”
Reaching out for her, his hand twitches, and then it falls. His arms are listless at his sides.
She shivers terribly, at once sick and scared. It makes him feel awful. But there is nothing he can do.
Almost sheepishly, he pushes the bowl in her direction, this time not attempting to say anything at all. He can’t bear to have Yonah’s face grimace as though slapped whenever she hears his voice.
Though her disposition softens a fraction, and her clutch on the pillow becomes lax, she still doesn’t trust him.
“Please,” she pleads. “I just want to go home. My brother… he must be worried sick about me…”
He places the bowl in her lap, making sure to take a step back the moment it’s secure in her hold.
She only shakes her head sorrowfully.
“I don’t want to eat,” she says in a small voice. “I want my brother…” Then she chokes out, “Nier…”
It seems that the memory of her brother has become too pressing, too vivid. Her eyes flood and her lips tremble, and soon, she’s sobbing in silence.
And he can’t even hug her.
He hovers like an ungainly specter by her side, his hand twitching to touch her, only to retreat at the slightest contact with her hat.
Instead he grabs the spoon and scoops up some of the broth. He used to feed Yonah all the time. The action is instinctive, even after hundreds upon hundreds of years of not touching her.
But this Yonah slaps his hand away. In a fit of turmoil, she grabs the bowl and throws it to the ground. It shatters in large, jagged pieces, the flower petals pale and wilted atop the blandly colored puddle.
Shocked, he stares at the broken bowl, then at her.
The implications of her little rebellion catch up with her, igniting panic in her small heart.
She’s scared he might hurt her.
When has he ever hurt her?
Crestfallen, he sighs and turns his back to her, his shoulders sunken and his head hanging low.
Who knew the sight of Yonah would be more painful than the lack of it?
He leaves her be, letting the door click softly behind him.
With her eyes stinging and her nose stuffed, she stares at the space he occupied, and she wonders why she feels the same pang in her chest that she gets when she worries her brother might hate her.
On the windowsill, the black-plumed robin continues to sing his song.