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“It didn’t work, did it?” Eito asks the crumpled revolutionary human, the stranger from the stars who helped poison his mind. His meat, lab-grown weapon that it is. Poor struggling heart, pickled in disgust and hate so he can’t imagine how it could’ve felt otherwise. Can a raisin imagine itself into a grape? “You twisted me up so I’d hate the only people worthy of my love. So I’d sabotage them and ruin the mission. Anything to destroy humanity, right?”
“Of course,” the revolutionary chokes. He’s earnest, furious. Eito knows that fury: it’s his, too. The seed of himself. They didn’t only program it into him by altering memories… no, they opened his sleeping-tube and fed fear into his blood, his brain-stem. A hidden virus, rewriting his eyes, obscuring his true dreams from the project scientists. This guy here just slid in one of the needles, maybe two.
“You know we deserved it. You could’ve saved this planet from us… and maybe other planets too, once we got done with this one. If we’re a virus spreading through innocent galaxies, you were the antidote…!”
“Don’t sound so proud,” Eito spits. He spins his scythe, pacing the cell. Judge, Jury, Executioner. Purifying, consuming blue moonlight. This prisoner isn’t the first. “Just tell me this: can you draw it out of me to save yourself? The hate… I want to taste something without it. Even for a moment.”
“Love? For humanity?” The revolutionary has no right to such disappointment, Eito’d say. Who creates something meant to bite everyone and then pities himself once he’s bitten?
“For Takumi.” Eito says the name with revulsion and reverence. His favorite being, who he can’t sleep beside without getting nauseous, who his body was programmed to reject. The idea of Takumi makes his skin crawl, but he’s always sliding next to him, anyway. “He deserves something I can’t give. It’s your fault.”
“What do any of us deserve, after all the pain we’ve caused?” The revolutionary chuckles, from his puddle of curdling blood. “Even if I could rewrite you, I wouldn’t. I’m hoping you’ll kill me.”
That’s your job, holy weapon. Remember? Spill blood, spill moonlight.
Takumi walks quickly past screams, outside the cell door: it’s Eito’s voice, and someone else’s. Fury and torn skin. It’s hard to tell where one voice ends and the other begins. Takumi doesn’t try to drop off Eito’s dinner, yet.