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Flayon does not cry when it happens. He does not feel anything at all.
The summer sky is cold and dark, cold and dark and so vastly empty. He too is cold and dark, attached to machines that probe the recesses of his skin as he’s chained to a burnished steel bench. It’s a feeling he’s intimately familiar with, the chill so deep it burns. It means he’s fulfilling his duty.
As their precious test subject, they need to faithfully evaluate when his usefulness will expire, after all.
“I saw your fight against Gavis,” his handler says, voice low, so low it can barely be heard over the sound of metallic fingers pounding on metallic keys. “Next time, you should draw out the fight a little more. We don’t have enough data on Elysium’s mobile suits yet.”
Half of his fingers grow numb beside him, right along where his veins should be. The numbness stings a little, but not enough. So far, the data storms have left him relatively unscathed.
More importantly, so far, no one on the duelling committee has raised questions about the GUND format, so it seems like no one has noticed his tests in action over the last couple months. Discretion is key lest he dare suffer hundreds of deaths worth of pain as punishment for revealing their illegal activities.
“Okay,” he replies.
“And how is your progress with the Hero going? You know how important this is. If you cannot get him to duel you, then we will find someone who can in your place. There are always other candidates.”
“Okay,” he replies, eyes flicking towards the observation window beside them. The room is their own private coffin, graves on top of graves on top of graves.
“Do not fail us, 18434. House Gavis is one thing, but they matter very little at the end of the day. Do what you must, even if it costs you your life.”
The monitor finally beeps beside him, the world blurring a little at the edges. It’s an elegant patina, the telltale sign of data collection.
Flayon does not ask how much time he has left. It all will cost him his life regardless.
He was never meant to live that long in the first place.
-
Regis Altare is a tricky one.
Known broadly as the Hero to most, he refuses to duel most of the students at the Academy, even those that once had the privilege. None of his compatriots seemed particularly willing to involve him in their stakes either, probably an agreement of some sort. Bettel would probably fight him again if he raised the challenge, but it wouldn’t get him any closer to a duel with Altare.
Their obsession with Altare is a formality, probably, since he’s too high profile to be selected to replace him no matter how skilled he is at flying. A contingency plan, perhaps, in case he becomes the next President and they need to know how to get rid of him should his policies reign unfavourably.
Or an excuse perhaps, a purposefully impossible task used to weed him out for someone better and more capable to masquerade as the fearless flyer, Machina X Flayon. They've always enjoyed pushing the mortal boundaries of his endurance.
He has no qualms about the guy, likes him more than he really should given everything, but it is his role as the 18434th successor to do whatever needs to be done, regardless of how little he cares to do it. Besides, after all this hard work, he deserves a little bit of fighting to burn off the frustration of chasing after him. Despite his growing reputation, Altare continues to shrug off all of his challenges with a shrug as he ruffles his hair into steady disarray.
It is his desperation, and a bit of his recognition that this may be the only way to make progress, that sees Flayon changing tactics. His body can only hold out for so long. If gaining renown as a skilled pilot isn’t enough, then he’ll just have to approach him from a more personal angle, starting from the weakest link and working inwards.
He falters a bit, fork held aloft, as he turns the corner and crashes into him at the dining hall. The other boy turns to look at him with eyes like spools of satin.
“I’m so sorry!” Flayon shouts, rushing to pick up his scattered things. It comes out more like a squeak.
He knows the type well, easily fooled by a clumsy smile and a show of earnestness.
“Don’t worry about it,” the eager boy replies in turn, just like he expected. His fingers are warm when they brush against his own.
“You’re Hakka, right? I think we’re in the same mechanics class.” Of course he is. Flayon never misses his mark. That’s why they picked him as the next successor, after all. “I’m Flayon. It’s nice to meet you.”
Hakka hands over his entire tissue pack as he scrambles, tugging one out right away to dab at the sauce that’s splattered on the sleeve of Flayon’s uniform. Though he was aware of his personality from anecdotal evidence, Flayon was entirely unprepared for the way his entire face softened into something so warm and tender, as if Flayon was the exact person he was hoping to see. Too sweet for his own good.
“Well then, Mr. Red Monster Flayon,” he says through a growing grin, “Shall we eat lunch together? I’ll buy you another plate, seeing as I ruined this one.”
His hair burns gold at the edges in the artificial sunlight and Flayon’s eyes squeeze closed for a second to shield himself from the wonderfulness and terribleness of it all. He is the one that will ruin him, not the other way around. He opens them once more because he is nothing if not disciplined. It would have been easier if he could simply duel his way to Altare without leaving any loose threads to suffer at the hands of the next iteration of Machina X Flayon.
“You better,” he pouts, linking their arms together. His arms are warm too.
Hakka lets out a boisterous, challenging laugh in reply and if he still let himself trifle with such unnecessary feelings, he’d probably feel a little guilty for leading someone so full of life directly into the barren wasteland that inevitably surrounds him.
“Have you tried keeping hand warmers in your pockets? I heard the old thermite ones don’t interfere with Permet like the electronic ones do,” Hakka offers as if he really cares about his hands and their circulation problems, as if there's something real there to actually care about. They’re just a hazard from work, after all, nothing truly important.
Hakka is all mercurial sunshine and jagged edges. He’s a second year in the piloting course, like him. He prefers the sea to the mountains. Likes guitars but is partial to all sorts of music, got stomach sick when he first tried to run around the entire span of the school in a bet on their first day there, thinks birds are pretty damn cool as fellow flyers, likes gardening in his free time, and has a set of siblings he curses and loves with all of his heart. Each piece of information is a gossamer thread in the carefully woven picture that is Banzoin Hakka. It’s something to hold on to, steadfast, the kind of knowledge that can be forged into deadly weapons.
He offers him a sip from his still-warm drink as they continue to wait in line and it tastes a bit like the herbal growth supplements he used to chase down with stolen pieces of chocolate. He tells Hakka as much and he laughs like he’s delighted, like he doesn’t find Flayon frightening or embarrassing at all regardless of who he may seem to be.
It’s almost enough to make him falter for real this time.
He doesn’t know that his newfound friend is going to make a real ugly corpse some day.
-
Duel the heir of House Crimzon, they order him next, and so he does.
He makes sure it’s an especially long fight so he can still fulfil his purpose, no matter how much Hakka chides him for recklessly taking on anyone that challenges him. He is nothing if not their favourite monster, chained on a gilded leash.
When they ask if he’s made progress, he says that he has, because that is the truth.
-
All of Flayon and Hakka’s arguments have been mostly joking, barely even one-sidedly serious at their worst. They start a bit like this, with Flayon saying, “Ah, c’mon Hakka, hear me out on this one!” followed by a stream of the longest nonsense either of them can think of.
Last time it was about the plausibility of tagging fish like sending a message in a bottle and the kind of ink that could survive such a long journey. Then it’s about gills but for space. The logistics of going inside a whale’s heart. Whether they could still be friends if he had to cart him around in a fishbowl whenever they wanted to hang out.
This is not one of those times.
Hakka needed support to retake his exam and of course Flayon, with all his mortal stupidity, offered him to join their House to use their resources because it’s the easiest solution he has. It is not until he realises what he’s truly said that he fears his response for the first time. But of course Hakka, who stubbornly grabs life by the reins with his own clawed hands, refuses his help with a blazing fury. That sense of duty keeps him mercifully safe from the death sentence that is membership. The retake too, probably, hopefully, since his handlers would never think about finding candidates among the pool of supposed failures, even if he missed it for a good cause.
Especially so, he thinks, astounded by the cruelty sewn deep inside him. They have never accepted anything shy of perfection.
“Good. I hope you never join our House, Hakka,” he says, meaning every word. The prideful part of him hopes that his own rejection stings a little in revenge.
He’s an interesting person, the boy who blatantly refuses both the hand of himself and the Hero in equal measure. It’s a little frustrating too though, perhaps, since the only way he’s ever been taught to love is by way of transaction and Hakka has never been one to play along. He incessantly reminds him how different they are and how deeply he longs for the distance to never, ever close.
Before heading out, Flayon styles his hair so it artfully obscures part of his eyes. The less anyone notices, the better. He catches sight of Altare on the way, blue hair sparkling like soldered ice and the winter wind.
If he watches the retakes from the outskirts of the training field, that’s no one’s business but his own.
-
Something warns him, familiar shadow at the door, familiar shadow in the summer breeze, that expendable lives like theirs were always meant to burn like kindling in the eager maw of war. It lingers inside all of them, frayed flags barely hanging onto their fixtures. Its voice grows until he succumbs to sleep.
Sometimes war looks suspiciously like the silhouette of a man he should forget.
On nights like these, it reminds him that he is more expendable than most.
-
With another tally mark drawn swiftly in his head, Flayon reckons he must have over a thousand rules for himself by now. Proper code and conduct for Machina X Flayon, a pilot’s guide.
“I can’t accept this,” he says to the boy whose face he will never live to remember, expression deadpan. His mouth curls in displeasure, but he seems otherwise unshaken by his response as if he knew it was coming.
Rule number 37: Do not show any weakness.
Rule number 65: Any attachments are rife for exploitation.
Rule number 1421: Never accept their gifts, not even his.
“But you didn’t even look at it,” he begs, “Please. I’m not expecting a response I just–”
“No,” Flayon replies tersely, shaking his head. Kindness is weakness is poison. “It doesn’t matter. Thank you, but I can’t. I hope you can understand.”
The other boy has a strange mix of annoyance and disappointment etched on his face as the brown paper around the bouquet crunches softly in his tightening grip. It’s one of the better ones, all things considered. Perhaps his reputation precedes him, no longer sending hopeful pursuers into a wash of tears as they try in vain to convince him to give them a chance that will never come.
Some of those gifts were probably laced with poison anyway.
Flayon understood from the moment he was chosen and sent here that beautiful things like love and life were not things created for people like him to enjoy or to fear. A glorified lab rat deserves nothing of the sort. Their venn diagrams have no such overlap.
It is thoughts like this that follow him as he slumps into a chair, doodling pictures of flowers and forests in the margins of his piloting notes. They’re the ones that burned to ash when they first invaded his planet. He misses the spikes of grass poking into his feet, the all-consuming heat haze. It humbles him, the knowledge that he too is nothing but moulded ash that got lucky enough for a fleeting moment in the spotlight and a couple more years to fly.
Part of him protests that good lab rats would sit up straight and proper, even at times like this, but he’s started to relax his constraints if no one of importance could see.
He sits for a while, waiting for the inevitable descent of warmth down his back like the fresh heat of the sun. He doesn’t even have to look to see who it is, knowing instinctively the feeling of Hakka climbing into the space left behind in his seat so they can sit back to front, peering at the same thing with overlapping fingers. He fills the gap built from the decorum drilled into his bones with measured ease.
“Another confession?” Hakka asks, fingers tracing looping patterns along his dying veins.
Flayon shrugs. The fire from Hakka’s touch is infinitely preferable to the lingering rot.
“It was a bouquet, I think,” he hums. He didn't get a close enough look at it. Hakka steals his pencil to correct a mistake in his notes before placing it back in his waiting hand.
“So flowers, then? You usually like those.”
He does. He likes the way they look so soft and sacred when they’re cradled in Hakka’s too-large fingers, likes the way he looks when he’s teeming with life, likes the way he smiles as he packs them up and sends them back to his family back home.
He likes Hakka in general too, likes him far more than he logically should. Likes the way he holds him close instead of kissing him on the cheek. Likes the way he works within his limits. Likes the way he treats him with so much care.
“Yeah, I do.”
He can feel, rather than see, the way Hakka smiles softly into his neck. It makes his hair shift a little as it falls off his moving cheeks.
“Something’s still bothering you,” he observes with half of a laugh that quickly peters out into a sigh. “What did you tell him? Don’t tell me you actually like this one.”
“I told him I can’t accept anything,” he answered, chewing at his lip. It is not guilt, he reasons, but anchoring responsibility.
“Ah, but sometimes you want to?”
Flayon feels something ache in his chest a little, different from the lingering wounds and electricity that licks through his nerves every so often. It’s a strange cocktail of tenderness and pain that he’s gotten more and more used to dispelling like seeds in the wind.
“Maybe,” he says in reply, voice unintentionally and traitorously soft. “Maybe someday.”
Maybe from someone, he thinks, but doesn’t quite have the heart to say. Letting the thought breathe will only cause them both pain.
Hakka hums in understanding, tugging slightly at his uniform’s sleeve. His nails catch slightly in the fraying edges.
He doesn’t say anything more, but he doesn’t have to. That usually means that he wants to take him somewhere, so follow him he will. Gladly. And when Hakka takes him to his plot in the greenhouse, offering him a pot with worn down glove-covered hands and gentle words of it being a responsibility, not a gift, it’s almost enough to heal the fractures in his tempered glass facade.
On his birthday, he brings him a slice of cake and insists they share it between them, always forging a path forward along the edge of his mandated boundaries.
The pot of chrysanthemums takes much longer to die under his skeletal hands than he expects. It almost makes him happy, sitting through the long nights just imagining its successful struggle as it desperately clings to life.
-
Soon, he thinks, his arm may begin to stop working entirely. It takes him an hour, some mornings, to get it into a workable state.
Still, each week, without fail, Flayon pilots his way to victory in each of his duels and each time they report that his body is stable enough to last the next one. It’s code for being on the right edge of death.
Some day, the opposing army will be vast and blood will fly like teardrops. People will die. Things too, shattered things like him.
“We expect progress on the Hero soon,” they say, so he grits his teeth and draws out as many schemes and cunning machinations he can think of that don’t involve further trapping any innocent birds along the way. He’s already guilty enough by association.
-
Regis Altare, as it turns out, is a frustratingly good man.
It should be easy to set a timer for a relationship that isn’t even a real relationship, all cloaked in hidden agendas and truths about himself he can never give away. It should be easy to walk away, to turn his attention to his real goal, but he finds himself stubbornly, irrevocably drawn back into Hakka’s orbit time and time again.
Altare swallows and peers down at him softly, gentle facade betraying the bite in his words. It is only fitting that he is the subject of their first real conversation, the first real step towards their long-awaited duel. Flayon stands a few steps below him, arm clutched behind his back.
“I heard rumours that Hakka was meeting with your higher-ups last week,” he says by way of greeting. He does not accuse him because he is a better man than Flayon may ever hope to be.
A twisted part of him delights in the knowledge that he was right all along, even if that isn’t the top priority anymore.
“Did he now?” Flayon asks coyly, playing the part of the detached young master. He hopes for his own sake that it’s nothing but a lie. “And why should that concern me? I have no quarrel with you.”
“We both know why,” he says in response, shoe grinding softly into the linoleum floor. Altare’s hand brushes over the hilt of his blade. “And I know it’s not because you told him to.”
“What do you want with me, Hero?” Flayon spits out the name like it’s a curse, which in many ways it is. “Even if that were true, I don’t see what I could do about that.”
“He matters to you,” he hums, drumming his fingers against the edge. “Have you ever imagined what they’ll do to you? Ever thought about running away before they have their chance?”
“No,” he lies, cracking the slightest of smiles. “I’ve never even considered it. I don’t have time for useless fantasies.”
“Tell me why they sent you. They’re watching, aren’t they?” Altare is referring, obliquely, to his overseers, but he speaks loose enough that he can come off as blissfully ignorant. Tense as he may be, Altare never stoops so low as to actually draw his blade.
Flayon clenches the hand behind him. They usually wouldn’t care about his daily affairs, but they’ll probably make an exception to soak up any information about Altare.
“A duel,” Flayon offers, gesturing what little of his truths that he can, hands held aloft behind his head. At best, it’ll be enough to obscure it from his visual feed. His lips are probably blue by now, blood skipping his face on its journey to his overworking brain. “Then you’ll get your answers.”
Altare gives a swift nod and their hands meet, ice-cold and solid-rock, and he realises it is enough for him to absolve himself in Altare’s mind. His hand like a chain, Altare’s blue hair shines like the oasis it truly is. Its weight differs from Hakka’s, featherlight and fleeting, so he resolves himself to hold his later to cool the burn. Their promise weighs heavily on his stuttering heart.
There is only one way he’s going to walk out of this.
It should be easy to give Hakka up, but instead he chooses to prolong the charade to give him the best possible chance of escaping alive. He always finds himself making the foolish choice, and has since the calculated beginning of their unfortunate collision.
They are fundamentally different.
His ghost is nothing more than a feathering of shadows, just fragments of stars waiting to be returned to the heavens.
-
“What do you want with him?” Flayon demands, feeling the ache spread down to his shins.
“You’ve been doing well,” they reply, full of promises to give him his life back if he continues to cooperate.
What life is there to live divorced from the sun?
“What do you want with him?” He continues to plead, letting the question linger on the roof of his mouth. His throat is coated in enough acid to burn, enough to obscure what little speech he still has.
His handlers have never bothered to hear anything that wasn’t useful, so if they’ve heard him at all they’ve given no indication. They simply remind him that they will not hesitate to replace him if he continues his petty rebellion. No one cares for a dead man’s tales.
-
It is Hakka that corners him first, dragging him by the hand to a midnight picnic amidst the summer stars. He giggles a little nervously as they climb up through the classroom window, a favour from a well-meaning upperclassman.
“C’mon Flay,” he had beamed, telling him to bring his blanket with him. “I have a surprise for you.”
Hakka looked so soft in the moonlight, all lilac and wisteria with a dream dangling from the corner of his eye. He’s more lethal than any order. Foolishly, oh so foolishly, he can never turn him down.
“I’ve got you,” Flayon murmurs, holding him steady on the shingles.
He waits for the punishment that’ll inevitably follow such sweet promises that he’s not free to give.
“Did you really challenge Altare?” Hakka demands, locking the window behind them. His finger catches on the edge. “You told me you’ve been sicker lately and you know how he fights. What if something happens to you? Something you can't take back?”
“If you’re so close, why don't you ask him yourself.”
Flayon throws his blanket down with a little more force than necessary, revelling in the way it kicks up some dust along the way. He thought they were going to talk about more important things than his upcoming duel. He thought that Hakka of all people would understand him. Bettel laughed at him when he found out. His brother too, though he laughed a little more kindly.
“I don't care why!” Hakka shrieks. “I’m tired of nursing you back to health. How do you think I’m going to feel if– if…”
“Well,” he breathes, pushing his nails into his palm to distract himself. The pain keeps him grounded. “Sorry for being such a burden then.”
“We both know that's not what I meant.”
Flayon wipes the moisture from his eyes. “I know what I’m doing,” he barely rasps out.
Hakka is openly crying, safe in the comfort of their combined pool of blankets. A punnet of berries sits in the middle, blood-red and shining. His favourite. They remind him of brighter days on nicer planets.
“Look, Hakka. If I die in that duel, then–”
“Why is it always so easy for you to contemplate your own death?”
He has never stopped contemplating it.
“Why is it so easy for you to refuse my help?” Flayon demands in turn, stroking the goosebumps that trail down his wrist. He's obviously cold, but he wouldn't admit that weakness to save his life. Stubborn bastard.
“I don’t need your help,” Hakka replies, prying his hand off his wrist long enough to thread their fingers together. “I found– I know what we can do to fix this.”
The wind chills any bare swatches of flesh until it’s almost numb, so they huddle even closer for warmth as they look out from the edge of the roof. There are so many stars. Stars that probably don’t even exist. Stars created just for this school’s blasted artificial skies. Stars like the one in his hands.
Yes, if anyone asks, it's only because he selfishly refuses to be cold. He’s slowly become an expert at tumbling truths around until they resemble something infinitely more palatable.
“Do you really?” There are so few ways he can really be free. Fewer still that leave them both alive to tell the tale. He’d rather shut him down before he suggests something foolish like running away. The company would never let their golden goose spring free.
“Fight me first,” Hakka chokes out. “Before Altare, I mean.”
Helplessly he looks at his best friend, his only friend, his only weakness, at a face he can barely keep his eyes on because he refuses to falter any longer. What Hakka does not understand is that he can never be safe until he’s free from the reach of all possible versions of Machina X Flayon. What Hakka does not understand is that piloting against a gundam means certain death for the both of them eventually.
He is going to miss these days, going to miss the feeling of holding his hand as he calls his mom because it’s the easiest way to chase off the homesickness. Going to miss the way his smile crumbles when they catch sight of a stray cat. Going to miss the way he leaves the covers down while they sleep so there’s never a barrier between them, no matter how thin.
There are so many things he wishes he could live to say.
“Okay,” he foolishly promises, agreement in place of an apology.
“I’m going to protect us,” Hakka professes, grasping so tightly onto his gloved hands that it’s almost like he fears he may simply float away in the wind. His honeyed voice says so many things that all sound too much like a goodbye.
Though he does not answer, hands too caught up in fear, in the thought that maybe if they just stay on the rooftop then nothing will come to pass, there is one thing on his mind. The berry he so sweetly placed into his mouth moments before tastes like nothing but iron and ash.
I am going to save you, Flayon mouths out, forced to stare at his retreating back slipping back into the opened window. It is the least that he can give after dragging him into this mess with selfish reasons.
When they reach the duelling committee’s room, his mind is set on the perfect stakes. The company insists he fights against everyone who tries because they will gleefully replace him with the winner until their champion is the best they can find. There is only one way to keep him from falling into their hands.
“Banzoin Hakka,” they ask, “What is your stake in this duel?”
“If I win, Flayon will leave his House and his position as heir.”
It’s a clever enough plan perhaps, but not enough. They'd just find someone else to kill him so he can be buried with all of his secrets. Hakka grits his teeth as they continue to face each other.
Seriousness has always been a cute look for him.
“Machina X Flayon, what is your stake?”
“Banzoin Hakka will never duel me again,” he promises.
To everyone’s eyes, no matter what happens and how many iterations they cycle through, that will keep him safe. The company’s only direct lifeline is through the heir, so even if they want to punish him and his folly, they can not do it by taking it out on Hakka posthumously.
Hakka gives a minuscule nod at his words and he can almost hear his protests already. At least ask for something useful. When have we ever needed to duel to resolve things before?
The words land like missiles. Hakka’s teary smile is the flint and the fire.
“Alea iacta est. The duel is approved.”
-
The crowd bubbles around him, all sneaky words and neon grimaces. Someone calls his name as he goes and it’s a voice that sounds suspiciously like one Regis Altare. Flayon hums, making himself look straight-laced and smaller, moulding himself into something more appropriate.
His handler calls too and once again he can only find himself apologising as it goes through to voicemail. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into his skin. “I don’t think I’ll last long enough to fight against the Hero.”
The door shuts on his end with a reverberating click.
-
Hakka stands no chance against someone who’s trained all their life to be a good enough pilot to get the chance to masquerade as a better one. They both should have known that from the very beginning.
Hakka, with all his brightness and beauty, dusty but not dirty, belongs anywhere but the battlefield.
That should have been the first clue.
He approaches with the decorum of someone who’s never fought in a real war. He fights like a boy who’s never had to worry about which of his belongings are fireproof, a veritable comet with a scarlet ribbon in his violet hair. The artificial planet seems to shrink in the face of his sorrow.
How terribly considerate.
Flayon would have drawn it out just long enough to be believable, ready to increase his Permet score at the right time. He sends out bullets like flocks of aimless birds, flying with nowhere in particular to go. They move in looping arcs back and forth, chaser and chasee. He would have circled him for a while longer had he not watched Hakka’s mobile suit dodge a glancing blow that should have easily hit.
He sits in the cockpit greedily gulping up air. Even now, just like this, there’s barely enough space to breathe. To be certain, he tries again, aiming a little bit closer this time. Even a glancing blow should take out one of the joints.
Hakka scampers away yet again, barely dodging it but dodging it nonetheless, and a chill begins to settle in. His drive system is nowhere near sophisticated enough for that. That should have been the point where he slowly began to lose their duel.
The crackling sounds of his laboured breaths grow heavier and heavier in a suffocating smog. He could recognise that sound from anywhere, so intimately familiar with the lurching sound of dying men. To think Altare was–
“When did they get you?” Flayon yells, punching the wall with his soldier’s hands, punching the wall again and again until it’s just as bruised and bloody as the rest of him. No one is going to care if some upstart without a House dies against the likes of him, much less if it's while using illegal technology.
“You don’t want to know,” he hears, words echoing as he withdraws his sword and stabs again. Now that he's serious, Hakka can barely escape his blows.
Perhaps he should have known better. He’s never been so free to choose.
Rule number 1: Duels are never fought on even terms.
“It’s not enough,” Flayon laughed. Sadly, maybe. Desperately. Like a summer storm. “Permet score four.”
Hakka may have been the one to start it, but he will be the one to end it no matter the cost. He will not let Hakka boil alive in the data storms. He will not let Hakka become 18345. He will not let him owe them anything.
“Goodnight, sweet prince,” Flayon whispered, breathing in the breaking and the bleeding. “Goodnight from your beautiful monster, always feigning sleep by the gate.”
He is burning up, eviscerated from the inside out in little searing slashes, but through it all, safe through the cover of his helmet, Flayon lets out a growing smile. It's a smile nobody will get to see. No matter how this ends, Hakka will be free. He cannot see through all of the blood but he knows, his body knows, he will either win or die trying.
“And yet still,” he mutters amidst the rubble. “Still, despite everything, somehow I loved you.”
It is then that he realises it, realises that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. He is not cruel or cold. No, Flayon has always been nothing but a greedy soul, greedy for things he can never have.
Being alive is so hard when you only have so long to get the hang of it.