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At the end of the world, on the ruined streets of Towa City, where macadam intermingles with blood and the bodies pile up as unseeing sentries, all that holds the beasts at bay are two high-school aged girls.
Fukawa Toko and Naegi Komaru.
Komaru's picked things up quick. Toko had an advantage, what with her background, but Komaru took that hacking gun and forced the monsters low. She stopped only to mourn, to cry, to preserve her humanity. Then she soldiered on again.
At the end of the world, they are all that remained.
Toko had thought her journey solitary. She would rescue Byakuya, and she would return home. But every time she looks over her shoulder, Komaru's close enough to touch.
She is no god: gilded, distant. She is within reach, and she responds when Toko holds out her hands.
Toko thought what she had for Master Byakuya was love. How it blinded her thoughts, made her crave his presence, his ire. But she's starting to wonder whether love is a quiet thing, something that sneaks up on you in the night and snatches you close. Holds on, in the cold, in the rain, in the dark. Her obsession with Byakuya doesn't reach back out, doesn't know how to find her.
But Komaru is made of thr same stardust. She's the one covered in blood at Toko's side when the day ends. She's the one who washes Toko's body and binds her wounds. The one who asks her how she's doing in the hush of darkness. The one who cries into her chest and holds her tight, not because Toko needs it but because so, too, does Komaru.
Toko had said, We are the same, and she means it. Every day, she shows Komaru just how much.