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toggle1-mrfipp · 6 years ago

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End of All Meaning Chapter XIII: the memory [C]radle

Previous chapter

Fipp: I would have gotten this out last week, but I had to finish up Kingdom Hearts III.

Holy hell that game!

End of All Meaning

Chapter XIII: the memory [C]radle

Pod 153: The rules are protected by low-level systems. Salvaging data poses an unacceptable level of risk.

Pod 153: Knowing that, do you still wish for them to survive?

Pod 042: Yes.

000

LOADING -Booting System…

Commencing System Check

Memory Unit: Green

Initializing Tactics Log

Loading Geographic Data

Vitals: Green

Remaining MP: 100%

Black Box Temperature: Normal

Activating IFF

Activating FCS

Initializing Pod Connection

Launching DBU Setup

Activating Inertia Control System

Activating Environmental Sensors

Equipment Authentication: Complete

Equipment Status: Green

All Systems Green

Combat Preparations Complete_

000

At first, it was hard to move any limbs, they were too stiff, too sore, to move properly, which resulted in further ache along the joints, but the desire to relocate was stronger than the need to rest, to submit to the darkness that was all-surrounding. It was difficult, as though the body had forgotten how to respond to stimuli from the brain, but eventually fingers began to twitch in response, and the reward was the sensation of hard, solid ground being scrapped against arms and legs, gloved fingers and the back of boots digging into the stonework.

“Good morning, 9S.”

9S groaned as he opened his eyes beneath his visor, squinting at the brightness that flooded his eyes from the sunlight above, filtered through the clothed screen. Slowly, trying to not too badly agitate the dull aches in his body, 9S managed to push himself into a sitting position to feel moderately comfortable.

“Pod 153?” he asked, trying to take in his surroundings, as well as the pod that floated several feet above him. In his head, he tried to recall the past events that had happened to him, how he ended up here, wherever 'here' was.

There was the assault. The logic virus. The Bunker, it was gone. Everyone in YoRHa was dead. The crash in the Flooded City-

His own infection. Trying to get rid of it. Failing at that…

A2. Bridge.

9S painfully gasped as he grasped at his abdomen, at the location where A2 had used his own sword to run him through. Because he asked her too. Because it was the only thing that could be done, other wise the only other person who could do it was-

“2B!” In a panic, 9S' head turned around, trying to find her, he had to find her. Where was she? Where was he even? He's somewhere up high, he can see from his perspective, clearly on top of a sky scrapper overlooking a city, but was this even the same city? There was so much strange white rubble covering it, ranging in size from mountainous slabs to large boulders, having crushed so many buildings and structures, that if this was the same city, it was impossible to tell.

In any other circumstance, he would have wanted to know what he was looking at, what had happened during his… absence, but right now that didn't matter.

He needed to find 2B.

She wasn't far, she was only laying right beside him, with Pod 042 floating just above her, and he ended up feeling a bit foolish with how worked up he had become, but the moment he laid eyes upon her sleeping form, he was instantly overcome with the strong desire to touch her, to be near her, and as he laid his hand down on her shoulder the fears and anxieties that had been building up inside of him ever since the assault began all began to melt away. There was something about this, just being near her, that felt right, that made him feel at peace and there was nothing else wrong with the world. There were no human left alive, the very thing that all androids were built to protect and serve no longer existed, all these thousands of years of warn and conflict against the machines didn't mean anything, and all the battles they fought were for nothing, but he didn't care. As long as he could be by 2B's side he could be happy, even if that meant fighting a never-ending war.

Happy, even though he knew who she was.

Was there something wrong with that? Was it some kind of cosmic joke by a nonexistent god for him to feel happy and content in the presence of his own murderer?

He didn't care.

But still, there were still things he needed to know.

“Pod,” he asked, not taking his eyes off 2B's powered-down form. “What happened after I met up with A2? Why is 2B shut down like this?”

“Report: Unit 9S was killed 1718 hours ago, following your contact with unit A2 upon the bridge to the commercial facility. Following that, us tactical supports units reconstructed your parts.”

“So, I've been out for just about two months…” A lot could have happened in two months. Too much. With a light turn of his head, 9S looked away from 2B and to his pod. “And the logic virus?”

“Report: The logic virus previously inside you remains in suspension after its deactivation following The Tower's collapse.”

“So it's just in suspension,” 9S muttered to himself. “It's not a problem right now but-Wait! Tower? What Tower? No, forget about that for now, what about 2B? What happened to her?”

“Unit 2B ceased activity approximately 740 hours ago.”

“Was she infected too?”

“Negative.”

“Then why isn't she wake up?”

“Correction: Unit 2B can be activated in low-power mode, but any attempt to activate her beyond the most basic functions result result in a complete system shut-down. This unit has already attempted 345 boot-up combinations 34,500, and all have ended in failure. 2B's current status suggests that there is a possibility that her personal data is corrupt.”

“Her personal data?” He looked back to her, the comfort quickly faded away as he took the sight of her in, just thinking about the very idea that she could just be gone was sickening to him. His grip on her shoulder loosened as his hand moved further up, until he was gently cupping his palm against her cheek, and the soft weight of her skin against his glove was enough to ease those feelings. At least for the moment. “Then I got some work to do, huh?”

“Statement: This unit recommends against any attempts to hack into unit 2B, the unknown cause of her inability to load her personal data could possibly lay deeper than your usual permitted maintenance routes.”

That gave him moment to pause. He had been placed in charge of 2B's maintenance, meaning he knew well how her systems were, but only the ones he had been allowed to work with, and as his personally assigned Executioner, 2B would have likely had a subsystem built into her created with him in mind, designed to very possibly lock-down, or maybe even erase, his own personal data if he ever decided to launch an attack against her. Hopefully in her current state he would be able to either bypass or just completely ignore those traps.

He had to try no matter what.

With his mind already mad up, 9S readjusted how he sat, folding his legs over, and taking 2B's hand into his own, giving it a firm squeeze, and a very large part of him wanted to believe that she squeezed back.

“I'll be fine, trust me,” he said as he booted up 2B, and like the Pods had said, she did not go beyond the minimally required system boot-up procedures before the start-up simply stopped. It wasn't much, but it was more than enough to give him access.

With a simple thought, 9S sent separated his consciousness from him body and uploaded it to 2B's body.

000

When entering hacking space, 9S was always presented with infinite beige-colored space, the landscape shaped by cubes, and straight and narrow corridors that could only take sharp turns, it was something he knew well, having dived into countless time by accessing machines, androids and general-use terminals alike. Due to 2B's condition, he expected the darkness that surrounded him, leaving him with limited vision of the digital landscape, but there was something that put him at unease, something that left him with the feeling that there was something about this hack that was different than the other ones he had performed. For one, instead of being projected as his cursor avatar, he is instead presented in one that is one of his physical body,

“Odd,” he wondered aloud, looking over his arms. “Pod, I need you to-Pod?”

He looked around when he noticed the absence next to him,that there was no, simplistic polygonal display to represent Pod 153, floating anywhere near him.

“Pod 153, can you answer me?” he called out, expecting at the next least to receive a display with a text message on it, but there was nothing. Pod 153's data should have made the transfer with him, but for whatever reason, he could not detect its presence anywhere near him, meaning it was still stuck somewhere outside on the outside, unable to aid him. Something must have been very wrong with 2B to prevent that from happening. That was why he was here in the first place, so he started his trek down the darkened path, heading to the varying nodes that controlled 2B's more basic systems, and from there he could start and hopefully figure out what was wrong with her.

He came to a stop however, unable to proceed any further as a large section of the pathway was gone, as though something large had come along and simply swiped away, reducing it to jagged ledges, and leaving the nodes inaccessible to him. Damage like this was never a good sign, but there was something else here he had never seen before. Growing around the edges of where the path had been destroyed, there appeared to be what looked like thick, black vines growing out of the ground and wrapping around the ground. Dark and jagged thorns out of them, sharp like daggers, that dug into the floor and eating away at the foundation beneath his feet.

“What is this?” He knelt down next to the cluster of vines, each one thick as his arms, their own blackness somehow standing out against the darkness around them. This thing, it was not the corruption brought on by a logic virus, nor was it anything else he had ever heard or researched on, whatever it was, it was something either new, or unique to 2B herself.

Carefully, 9S reached out to the vine, and with a moment's hesitation, 9S placed his hand against the vine.

He instantly reeled back, crying out in pain and stumbled backwards, unable to control his body as the images uploaded into his mind and agony ripped through his form. In this state 9S had no ability to take in where he was, and was unable to stop himself from tripping backwards and falling over the edge and into the abyss below.

000

Pod 153: Connection failed: This has been the seventy-fifth attempt to contact unit 9S.

Pod 042: Query: There have been no changes in his status at all?

Pod 153: Response: None. While this unit is still able to monitor his vitals, direct connection with unit 9S has so far proven impossible, and is likely being caused by whatever error that is preventing unit 2B from properly reactivating.

Pod 042: Query: Unit 9S' vitals so for do suggest that at the present moment that he is in danger?

Pod 153: Negative: All of 9S' vital statuses are currently stable.

…

Pod 153: What do we do now? We spent so much time repairing them and now…

Pod 042: I suggest we wait. Whatever is wrong with 2B, hopefully 9S can fix it.

Pod 153: Do you honestly think that?

Pod 042: I hope so.

000

When 9S returned to the world, he was surrounded on all sides by darkness, an inky abyss with no features, and a part of him wondered if he was still in hacking space. Maybe he was dead. Again.

No, wait, there was something in the dark all around him, something he could see if he put enough focus on it, something he paid more attention to as he pushed himself to his feet.

“More thorns,” he said, “But this is looking so much worse than what I saw up above.”

On the higher levels, what he saw a single cluster of vines, causing the damage to a pathway, but here, even deeper in the darkness, the vines surrounded him, thick as trees and the thorns were longer than he saw tall. He could see their silhouettes in the darkness, several mountains against the void of black, and he could see them slowly move and writhe in the far distance.

“Just what is this stuff?” Carefully, 9S walked forward, stepping over the smaller vines that curled along the ground, trying to bury themselves into the foundation, and careful to avoid touching any of them. At the moment, there was no way of knowing what these things were, or what they could do to him if he exposed himself to them for longer periods of them what what he had so far, so until he had a better grasp on the situation he needed to try avoid contact. The only thing he could do right now was go over what he did know, which he could admit was honestly nothing. There was the image he had received when he first touched the fine, just a single image was all he got, but the physical reaction on his part had been so extreme, as though his whole body had erupted into a blinding, heated pain, that forced him backwards. The image had been himself, laying on the ground. There was a large and bloodied gap in his chest, with blood pouring out of it and soaking into his chest and into the ground beneath him.

He had an idea what it was, but before he could say anything for certain, he needed to see more.

Waving his hand, 9S pulled up the schematics for 2B's systems, and thankfully he had at least that still going for him, and while he doubted if the map could provide an actuate depiction of what these systems looked like anymore, he hoped that at least it would be right in telling him where he was. If the map was right, he hoped it was right, then the place he wanted to be was not too far from where he saw.

With his next destination in mind, 9S dismissed the screen and continued on his way.

000

dark

too dark

is someone there?

please leave

000

The further he went into the system, the more the vines grew, becoming larger and more wild, and soon 9S found himself walking though a forest of giant, tree-like vines, sprouting from the ground and vanishing into the sky above. He had to stay in the middle of the path as he possibly could, as simply being near them left a heavy feeling of unease inside his chest, as though his black box was replaced with a block of lead that was too big to fit in his chest cavity. His head would also ache from the proximity of being close to them, a static that would fill his mind for a moment, and another image would appear as well, but it was hard to tell what he was looking a. Mostly is was just a cluster a pixels forming a still image, enough to give him an idea what he was looking at, but not enough to give him a full picture.

The further he went into a thicket, the more frequent the images became, and harder to block out, even when he tried to keep his distance from the more frequently abundant vines. He had to ignore them however, he couldn't let them get the best of him, not until he at least found 2B, and if the map he had was right, then he should be closer to where he wanted to go. When he found it, he wasn't too certain what he was going to expect, but what he encountered was a massive tree, formed of gnarled and twisted roots, easily larger than anything that he had seen on Earth. Inside, hopefully he would-

-Mud. Mixed with red. Laying there-

find what he came for.

-sword deep in chest-

9S groaned as he placed a hand against the side of his head. He didn't have to even touch the vines to receive the images anymore, they were just as easily downloaded into his head, a full image as opposed to a the partially pixelated messes he had been having shoved into his skull. His pace quickened, walking into the narrow opening between the vines, until he came to a small hollow inside the deepest reaches of the tree, and it was here he found what he needed. There was an altar in the center of the small room, white and crumbling with vines digging into it, eroding the material down to nothing, but what had caught his attention was what was lying on the top of it.

It was 2B, or at least the projection of her data, and judging from its appearance alone, it was not too hard for 9S to see the damage that had been done to her; vines were growing out of her body, pushing themselves through her clothes and skin, wrapping around her before trailing off her body and burying themselves into the ground, and possibly acting as the source of all the vines he had encountered thus far. The thorns dug themselves into her skin, drawing blood, and he was worried that if got too near her, the thorns would shred his own skin off.

“2B…” Slowly, 9S walked up to the projection before him and carefully attempted to touch his hand to her skin, but the interference from the body, the threat the overwhelm him with too many fragmented memories, was enough for him to take caution, to hover his hand over her body.

This was a memory leak, he was nearly certain of it. Something had caused such a heavy blow to 2B's memory region, that the damage had manifested in such an extreme way, enough to prevent her to from waking up at all. If this was the problem, then he would need to fix it.

He raised his hand to prepare to prepare another hack, when his head felt as though it was being ripped apart at the seam.

000

go away

please

not

you

who

leave me

alone

000

9S screamed in the darkness, the data that had suddenly flowed into his being too great, too painful, for him to properly process. Every moment felt like an the data was ripping at his circuits from the inside out. It was just too much to take in at once, even with his specs.

But through that pain, he had come to understand what was the root of the problem.

He knew who 2B was. YoRHa No. 2 Type-E, an Executioner model designed and manufactured to kill him when he discovered the truth about humans, something he began to piece together when they had met that Type-E in the City Ruin. From that encounter he learned how much their duty could cause them to suffer, and he remember wondering how many androids 2B had killed, and how much 2B suffered because of it. It wasn't until the pit, after Eve's death, that he came to learn the extent of the pain she had to endure for the sake of her duty, and just how much of it was because of him. It always ends like she, she had cried as she cradled his corpse, and he realized that the androids she had killed had been him, over and over again, and he knew exactly why too. It was because he had accessed information in The Bunker's servers, learning about mankind's extinction, diving deeper into the systems despite Pod 153's warnings.

How many times had he forced her hand because he couldn't take a moment to consider the ramifications of his actions? How many times did he have to make her to restart their relationship from scratch? Everything that she had gone through had been because of him, and the state of what he was seeing before him, and it was his responsibility to fix this. He needed to weed out the corrupted memories and try and restore them back to their original format, but the prospect of this did not sit too well with him, since it seemed that he would need to go through the memories frame by frame, considering how fragmented they had been. There was also the act of needing to go through 2B's memories himself, and going through her memories like that felt like a violation on his part, prying into some of her most private moments, the parts of herself that she never allowed anyone to know. It felt wrong of him to simply storm though them like that, but this seemed like the only thing he could do for her now.

He was also hesitant to dig into the memories because he knew what those memories would consist of.

Accessing too much data at a time clearly had a negative affect on him, meaning he would have to do this very slowly, so he readied himself as he dived in.

000

why are you doing this

000

She found them eventually, though she might have never thought to look up this far if one of them hadn't come out looking for her, telling her about this place. There was no reason for her to care, not anymore, she did her part, did it with everything she had to offer, so that should have been more than enough to excuse her from this mess for the rest of her life. Even so, she was not demanded to be here not even asked, bur rather the knowledge was imparted to her by the deliverer, and the choice of what to do with that was left entirely to her.

Still, the Pods apparently brought her back to life, so A2 figured she owed them this much at least.

“They still out?” she asked as she stepped over the forms of 2B and 9S, her laying on her back while he sat by her side, her hand held gently in his own.

“Affirmative: It has been roughly fifty hours since unit 9S' initial hacking of unit 2B in an attempt to restore her to fully function order,” Pod 153 said, hovering over 9S' unmoving shoulders. “His vitals remain mostly stable, with short intervals where they will either drop or spike. The current cause of these changes is currently unknown.”

With a heavy sigh, A2 walked over to the two, and sat down by them, so she could better take in their features, to take them in. They certainly looked better than the last time she had seen either of them, almost peaceful, entirely absent of the fear, grief and rage she had previously seen between the two of them, and a part of her had to resist the urge to reach out to them and carefully, almost lovingly, stroke their faces. There would not have been a point in do so, so why even bother?

“You think they'll be okay?” she asked.

“Unknown: Without further information, we are unable to come to any conclusions as to what may be the cause of their afflictions,” Pod 042 answered.

“Ah…” A2.

“Because of this,” Pod 042 continued. “Pod 153 and myself are… worried, and we want them to be okay, after everything that has happened to them.”

“Yeah, me too.” A2 gave a deep sigh, her eyes briefly glancing between the two pods, and then back to the two androids. “Life's shitty. It beats you down for whatever reason, and more often than not it'll screw you right up the asshole.” A2 leaned back, supporting herself on her arms as turned her attention to the sky above them, where the remains of YoRHA floated in orbit, and somewhere out there, deep in space, was the machine arc. Down below her the city was in ruins, the mountains worth of rubble having changed the landscape beyond recognition, but androids and machines were still around, with the fighting between them having been drastically cut down. The machine network was gone, machines no longer attacked on sight, and most of Anemone's resistance was still kicking, trying to make sense of this new world.

Somehow things turned out well. How? She didn't have a clue, but it did.

“Still,” A2 said as she pushed herself to her feet, patting away from of the dirt that had build-up on her skin. “I think they'll be okay.”

“Query: Do you really think so?” Pod 153 asked.

“Maybe,” A2 answered with a shrug. “When they do, let me know, okay?”

“Query: You are not staying?” Pod 042 asked as A2 pushed herself to her feet.

“Nah,” was A2's answer as she she made her way to the crumbling exit she had originally come through. “For one, if they wake up, I don't want to risk 2B being in a stabby kind of mood, let her sort things out between 9S and herself before they do anything else. But,” A2 looked back to 2B and 9S, eyes lingering on them longer than she would want to admit. “If they do wake up, and it looks like everything is cool with them, send me a message or something. Maybe we could all do with a fresh start?”

With nothing left here for her, beyond some vague hope for a less terrible future, A2 parted ways from them, and hoped for the best.

000

9S cried out in pain as he felt as though it was a physical force that pushed him away from 2B's data, something heavy and hard that almost made him think he had collided with a sidewalk after jumping off a fifty-story building. He tried to move, to support himself up with his arms, but the uncontrollable shaking in his limbs merely sent him back crashing down to the ground in a motionless heap. He did know how long he had been doing this, trying to piece together 2B's data, frame by frame, exposing himself to her own thoughts and feelings, all of which left this terrible weight on him, and it seemed like the further he went on, the more potent the inevitable recoil came whenever he delved in these memories too long, and it took him longer to recover each time.

He saw his deaths, so many of them. She had stabbed him through the back and through the chest, sliced open his throat and cut off his head. He had been strangled, drowned, his flight unit blown up with him, and shot through the head. So many ways to die… It's partially why this was taking so long, the need to process his numerous deaths, the images of his deaths, of his following disposals, almost too much for him to take at once. If he was in his physical body, and he had eaten anything in the last couple of weeks, he might had emptied the contents of his stomach. Then there were the other memories, the good memories of their time together, numerous small and pleasant moments between them, how their relationship built itself up from those early days when she didn't know who he was and didn't care. But time passed, they spent days together, of the small, intimate moments that only they knew about, that meant so much to them. She had been more than happy to listen to him go on about whatever bits of data he had discovered, her headband being the only instance she allowed herself to accept a gift from him. Days spent of them just being together, where the war seemed so far off.

She was the one who came up with Nines.

Though all of this he experienced the emotions she felt; the joys and delights of those small happy moments, and her grief and pain and his deaths, to having to meet him again, some times even the same day, with the dread that they could never escape this cycle. How she held in everything in fear it would overwhelm her, and on top of that there were his own emotions that he could barely handle at the moment.

His own fear and anger at watching himself get cut down, anger and fear he found himself directing towards 2B, which only grew in intensity when he came across those fleeting good memories. His past was important, his memories of 2B the most valuable possessions to the point where he would happily suffer a permanent death than than to have a single one of those memories wiped out. So to see the sheer volume of memories, close to three years of memories, all lost forever, and a deep, dark seed of resentment began to grow deep inside him. How could so many of these memories be stolen away from him? Why would she do this? Why would she-

He needed to spend a lot of time between dives and reconstruction, to calm himself down, to put himself back into the right state of mind, and push those thoughts down.

It would be easy to kill her. Just erase all the data. It wouldn't take too much effort on his part.

He won't though, he knows he won't, because he if did that he might as well erase his own data as well.

After he finally managed to find the strength to get back up, 9S dived back it.

He did not know this, but eight days passed on the outside world, and even if he had he couldn't stop.

000

its dark

i know theres something here

i dont know what it is though

[?]

hello?

[!]

what are you

[--- --- ---- --------]

what i dont understand you what are you saying

[--- ---- --- - –? --- --- --- ---------- –?]

sorry i cant hear you please go away

just so tired

[---- o- I- ------ ----t----]

just leave

[C-n yo- unde-stan- me now?]

better but i still dont know who you are

[Oh, you don't? Are you certain?]

yeah I dont know much do you know something that can tell me anything

[Okay, so not much to work with right now, so we'll start with the basics. First of all, my name is 9S.]

[Yeah, that's who I am, and you're 2B.]

2b is that who I am

[It is. Does any of this sound familiar to you?]

maybe I cant help but feel as though

…

[2B? Can you still hear me?]

yes im still here its just why dont i remember anything

[You were hurt recently, badly too, it was enough to force you into a shut down state, and almost all your data was corrupted. It took a while, but I was finally able to put everything back to where it was before. You should be up and running, but… ]

but what why do i not have any memories if you fixed me i should know you right

[That's pretty difficult to explain, I'm not actually sure how I should even begin to explain it, but even so I think I can still finish the repairs but you'll have to patient.]

…

can i ask you something

[What is it?]

whatever is wrong with me can you not fix it

[I don't understand.]

if its okay with you can you just leave me here im sorry you wasted your time here

[I'm sorry 2B, but I can't do that.]

why not i dont remember much but i think that this is how its supposed to be im not supposed to come back dont wanna come back

[Don't say that, 2B, if anyone can come back it's you.]

and if i dont want to

[And why wouldn't you want to come back?]

i dont know, but for some reason I think I deserve that I know i deserve this to fade away into the abyss

[No, you don't deserve this, you deserve more than this, 2B, you've already been through too much just to…]

who are you

[What? I already told you, I'm 9S, and I-]

no i mean you are you to me you know me thats clear but just who were we to one another

[You were… you are someone very important to me, and I want nothing more than to get you out of here.]

…

[2B? Please tell me you're still there.]

…

[I just really miss you.]

i did something, didnt i something terrible

[No, you haven't, you just-]

please be honest with me i know youre lying to me but i need to know please

[…]

[Yes. You did some terrible things, but they were mistakes that you wish you didn't do, that you wish you could take back more than anything else.]

what did i do

[…]

[You killed other androids, that was your designation. We were a part of an organization called YoRHa, and your class of androids were built to kill other androids, either because they were infected with a logic virus, captured by machines, or to prevent information leaks.]

i killed others

[You hated it, however, and you wanted to stop more than anything else.]

then why did i not stop if i hated it so much then why would i continue to do it

[That's a lot harder to explain, but I'll put it like this, you made a promise to someone, that you would always be there for them, and they knew his even knowing that you would kill them. They would then be reset, with no memories at all, and things would repeat like that.]

why would someone put themselves thought that why would they make me promise to keep ending their life

[Because despite everything that had happened, they didn't want to spend a life without you.]

this person

[Yeah?]

is it you

[It is.]

then you have to leave me here 9s

[What? What are you say saying, I can't just-]

things are starting to come back to me bits and pieces small memories all coming together to fit back into the places they belonged the more we talk the more i remember

i hurt you so many times but no matter what no matter how much i despaired i never did anything to save you i gave up hope

then i learned why i had to keep doing this

so much suffering all for nothing

its my fault

[No, it's not, it's mine. I should have known when to stop looking, when to stop looking for information when I knew I should not have, if I had known what I had put your through, than I never would have even looked at the server.]

always thinking about me even when im the one causing you pain but no

just leave me

please

i deserve to fade

just please live happily for me

[I'm not leaving you 2B, I just can't, and if you won't let me help you then I'll simply do the next best thing.]

[I can't live happily if it's a life without you, so if you won't come back with me, then I'll just stay here with you, you don't even need to talk to me ever again. Just as long as I'm near you, that's enough for me, so just take as much time you feel like you need, and I'll still be here for you.]

…

[…]

000

Time passed. I don't know how much, but I doubt that was the point really. We waited, neither one willing to break the silence, both hoping the other would yield to the others' wishes. How long I wonder, will we wait here?

Eventually, one of us spoke.

000

why bother

knowing who i am

what i have done to you

you would be in your right to leave me to die

even kill me yourself

you would not meet any resistance

so why

[To be honest, I don't know how to really explain how I feel about you. I once looked up old human records, hoping that I could find some kind of reference to help me understand this emotion, but I do know is that being around you, it makes me happy. I know you don't feel like you deserve a second chance, not after everything that has happened to you, but I think you do, more than anyone else deserves a second chance. So please, 2B, come back with me…]

000

Eventually, a decision is reached.

000

i'll go

000

Light filled the dark.

000

The field beneath the shopping district, a small meadow hidden in this cave, with delicate flowers that gave off a soft, ethereally light from the white petals. Legends say that they had the power to grant wishes, so maybe one of those hundreds of flowers, these Lunar Tears, heard her desperate plea and decided to take pity on her. To think, she once had decided to taint this place with his blood, after she had decided to turn it into his next grave, but she is happy such a thing did not happen, that she did not stain this place with her sins.

She hoped Emil found his peace, reunited with the friends he lost so very long ago.

It was in this field that 2B found herself with 9S, the two of them laying down in the field and taking in the peace and serenity this field had to offer as they idly discussed what they were going to do with their future. It's something she never allowed herself to consider, a future without YoRHa, where she did not have to fight, where she was not expected to regularly kill the people she was close too. It was something that scared her, this uncertainty, the prospect that their futures were theirs for their own choosing. 9S had expressed similar fears to her, which alleviated her own anxieties.

They talked about it, her and 9S, what they were going to do with their lives now. They could stay in the city and continue helping the Resistance; According to Anemone, when The Tower fell it took the machine network with it, and since then the remaining machine forces were no longer actively hostile. They passively roamed around the city and the surrounding areas, posing no harm to an androids unless directly provoked, with some even beginning to develop their own sense of self. The war was over, and Anemone had suggested redirecting their war effort to rebuilding the city, to try and make things better, and she had offered the two of them a place with them if they chose so. That was one option they could take, other ideas had come up from time to time. They could simply pick a random direction and walk that way, seeing where their travels could take them, Anemone had even offered them passage on the next supply ship to come in, if they wanted to take their lives overseas.

A2 was also still alive, according to their Pods, somewhere out there, simply waiting to reconnect, and 2B isn't sure what to do with that. Maybe she'll talk to A2 one day, maybe she won't, but right now she doesn't think she's ready for that.

All of that however is left for the future, and right now 2B wanted to focus on the present; Her and 9S down here with no one else around, in their own little world.

She did not know what would come next for them, but for the first time in her life, she was not afraid to hope.

the en[D]

000

ple[A][S]e [B]e well,

Mrfipp

#nier #automata #2b #9s #a2 #pod 042 #pod 153 #end of all meaning #fanfic

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