Chapter Text
“Oh my…” Elendira kicks away a loose brick. “I knew that the meeting would come with an argument, but this is worse than I expected.” She straightens her hair as she watches over the slowly receding dust cloud.
The leftovers of Jeneora city’s towers reach into the sky like blackened bones while the aftermath of the explosion on the fifth moon litters the sky with shooting stars. With the city in ruins, the night sky finally glows with the absence of humanity. Debris in the sky as well as on the ground. Falling stars are glowing up brightly for a second before becoming nothing, mirroring humanity’s slow fall under Master Knives‘ hateful hand. There is a beauty that only shows in the last moments of existence. Elendira straightens her jacket.
Behind her, the ship hums with excess energy. What happened between the twins, has left their sisters agitated. Those poor girls. Their brother will need to talk to them. As soon as he can, at least.
Knives is barely able to walk, but coherent enough to only let the doctor help him. With every second passing, the second wind he got after meeting Vash, after forcing a connection, he sinks down more into himself. The doctor’s fussing be damned. Elendira doesn’t understand medicine, not to the degree that is needed to help Master Knives, just enough to kill quickly or to draw it out. Legato is of no help either with his body twisted and crushed beyond sense and sensibility. He is still conscious, eyes fixated on the entrance Knives just went into.
The doctor will take care of Master Knives, of Legato, if not because he cares, then because he is so obviously riddled with guilt for something that only Master Knives, Legato and he himself know of. And Vash the Stampede, of course. But not her. Though, even left unillumined, it falls on her to keep everything and everyone together as the men around her chase something or someone much beyond their reach. After all, without a woman at the back even the great men of the past would be much lesser.
“Interesting, aren’t they?,” Zazie stands at her side as if they’ve never been somewhere else. What a creepy, little worm.
“Who? The Humans? The plants? The twins?”
“I’d say everyone,” Zazie shrugs. “Master Knives, his brother, his knives, the humans. Every last one of them. All different.”
Elendira tilts her head and listens. Shambles and rubble is left of Jeneora City. Few walls are left standing. Only the shockwave, an echo of the true destruction befell Jeneora. And still, walls that have been made from the leftovers of the fallen ships themselves, that defied years and years of the harsh planet’s elements, have toppled and fallen in its wake. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine what would have happened if Vash the Stampede didn’t change the trajectory of his own power.
A crater.
Emptiness.
The void of death.
Complete annihilation.
Beauty.
Her skin breaks into goosebumps. With most of the destruction and its aftermath finally coming to a still, suffering of the humans remaining reaches her ears. Most have fled. Men leaving behind their wives, their children, the wounded and the old. Some have been buried under the fallen buildings or a tumbling wall, either hurt or dead. And even less are already returning, trying to gather of their or other’s possessions what they can. And then there are the very few that dig for others, loved ones, even strangers. Pityfully clinging to life in the face of Master Knives. "All the same," Elendira disagrees. The bug blinks at her statement. "Your same may be a different one than mine, then." “What difference is important, when all of them are dead as soon anyway. I doubt anyone of them understands that the end has returned.”
“Hmm… But do you understand?,” Zazie muses.
Elendira throws Zazie a side glance. “If I couldn’t fathom the end, I would be elsewhere, bug.”