To: @endless-nine

From: @pomegranate-belle

“When I saw your wishlist the prompts all combined into one story in my head, so I hope you like it! Merry Christmas!”

Time is swimming in her head. Maybe it has always been doing that, it is so hard to remember when…

She was small once, Akane is sure of it. With worries other than the way the world oscillates between life and death, the weight of shifting its course. Now each decision seems so minute, the people so tiny, toys in her hands and she’s forgotten, again, how to…

When she closes her eyes she is dancing between 2028 and 2018, simultaneously past and future, but her feet are planted on the steel floor of Rhizome 9, and the year is 2070.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” says a small voice, as if attempting to further ground her.

“Is it?” Akane asks, lightly, though she knows the GAULEM would never dare lie to her, would never even think to.

“I thought,” Luna continues, “perhaps…”

Akane opens her eyes, turns, and sees exactly what she knew she would. The redheaded android, fiddling with her fingers like an errant child. She’s sweet, and small, and demure. Akane does wonder, sometimes, if there’s something a bit macabre about Luna. About using a dead woman as a template for an android. She’s got no feeling on the matter, one way or another, and it stands to reason that Luna must exist – simply to keep time on its proper track. She has seen much worse things in the void of time and space, the dead eyes of a thousand worlds, the things children fear in the dark, so that the macabre is for her but a play. She’s watching, over all of it, the branching streams, and the veins of gore that run through them. In a way, then, nothing is shocking. To feel is to be small, and she is no longer small. But everyone, everything else has shrunk, that is—

“We could decorate,” Luna cuts in, reeling Akane back into the present-past-future place-she-is-now.

“Yes,” Akane says, and adjusts the lay of her sleeve, reorienting herself to the reality around her.

There are still four years. Everything has slowed, but they are almost prepared and that is fine. In their Rhizome with only Dr. Klim, herself, the GAULEMS, Lagomorph… And Kyle.

Kyle.

“I think Kyle would enjoy that,” Akane adds, folding her hands in front of herself demurely, which she has found herself doing a lot. “Call Dr. Klim up from his labs, would you? We could all use a Christmas break.”

Ten minutes later, they are all gathered together and planning as if celebrating Christmas is some big thing. And maybe it is. Life has to continue on, and perhaps celebrating, relaxing every once in a while, is as much a defiance towards Brother as anything else Akane does. She pulls herself back to the moment before thoughts of her nemesis send her reaching into timelines and gathering them into her arms like a greedy child, or a goddess.

“I’m sure there’s a synthetic tree in storage somewhere,” Dr. Klim mumbles, rubbing his chin. “Lagomorph?”

“Well,” says the CGI bunny with a wicked grin and a salute, “lettuce see!”

The projection screen showing him turns off with a pop. It’s an unnecessary maneuver, Akane knows – Lagomorph can scan the security cameras of the entire Rhizome and still keep the projection screen on. However, he seems to have picked up the behavior, a non-digital creature’s mental spatial singularity. An altogether ridiculous mannerism, considering that the AI was created by ESPers. Even she isn’t sure where Lagomorph acquired it.

Exactly a minute later, he flickers back into sight.

“Storage Room C!” Lagomorph proclaims with a little bow.

“Thank you, Lagomorph.”

It is an easy thing, between the four of them, to shuffle the artificial pine and the boxes of decorations that go with it into the Rhizome’s elevator and up to the main warehouse. Next, however, they have to set it all up. Akane wonders when the last time she decorated for anything was – and how she can possibly measure that time with any real accuracy relative to her situation.

“This sort of thing needs music,” Klim insists, with his hands on his hips like a much younger man.

“Ooh, ooh, pick me!” Lagomorph cries from the wall, hopping up and down and waving one paw in the air. “I am a wonderful singer! My talents are un-hare’d of!”

Kyle shakes his head.

“I don’t think so,” says the clone.

“Why Kyler, how rude! I carrot even imagine why you wouldn’t want me to sing!” Lagomorph insists airily.

“That much should be obvious,” Akane replies with a little smirk on her face.

With that she turns and begins unpacking a box. Inside are long, shedding strands of gold and silver tinsel that will surely get everywhere. The next box contains glass ball ornaments in every color of the rainbow. On the third try she finds the star. Meanwhile, Kyle and his father work in silent tandem to build the artificial tree, hooking branches into the pole-like base.

And, seeing himself thoroughly ignored, Lagomorph consents to playing recorded Christmas music and operating the warehouse crane to string up blinking Christmas lights across the warehouse.

“Tinsel!” Dr. Klim barks once the tree is finally set up in its entirety.

Akane rolls her eyes and tosses him the end of a gold one, intending to feed it towards him slowly and prevent tangles. Instead, he yanks on his end, sending her toppling forward into him in a comic display. Idiot. But he’s having fun, and actually so is she, even as the glitter of gold threatens to yank her mind to some past-future—

The revolver, yes, she remembers now. The revolver from Building Q, digging into her temple, and—

 She comes back to herself with Dr. Klim’s artificial hands clutching her shoulders, a little too tightly. His expression is even and says nothing, but the look in his eye is one that tells her he knows she has been feeling the tug of Time. He pulls away quickly, but swipes a palm over her forehead. To anyone else it might be just a brush, accidental, but Akane sees it for what it is. A check for fever.

She turns back to the boxes, but she also catches a glimpse of Kyle’s face as she does. He’s studying them, eyes narrowed, thoughtful. Assumptions are being made. But Akane is dizzy and washing through a million timelines as much as she’s standing in a warehouse on the moon, and instead she focuses everything on the here and now, as much as any of those things can have meaning.

“Would you like to put the star on?” she asks Kyle once she retrieves the tree topper.

She recalls, as though it’s the lore of an ancient civilization, that putting the star on is the most coveted part of decorating a tree. Kyle’s answering smile proves her right. With just a slight stretch onto his toes, the young clone slips the gilded star onto the topmost, upward-pointing branch. It’s a little crooked, but some aesthetic part of Akane is pleased about it. No one else seems to mind either.

It is only when she sees Luna move out of her peripheral that Akane realizes the GAULEM has been missing.

“I, I made some hot chocolate,” Luna offers, holding out a silver tray with three steaming mugs.

They’re decorated with frolicking cats, and Akane suggests to herself that she ought to have packed – should pack, once the Ambidex Nonary Game is over in four years’ time – the dishware herself. But she accepts a sickeningly cute mug anyway, blowing gently over the top and sending steam spiraling away from her. Luna has tucked a peppermint candy cane into each mug, the way one might a swizzle straw.

“Thank you, Luna,” Dr. Klim says kindly, offering the GAULEM a smile.

As Kyle takes his drink, Akane surmises he and Luna are still a bit awkward around one another. Given their past, it’s not that unexpected. Now is certainly not the time to ponder the Chinese Room Argument, in any case. The android is clutching her empty tray to her chest, watching Klim and Kyle drink their hot chocolate.

“It’s good,” Kyle comes out with at last, voice stilted but not dishonest.

“Mm, it is,” his father agrees, before letting out a loud yawn.

Luna’s cheeks pale in pleasure as ABT fluid flows to color, or rather de-color, them.

“You should sleep,” Akane finds herself telling Dr. Klim, with a wry smile. “You’re getting old, you need your rest.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he mutters mutinously, taking another sip of hot chocolate that leaves him with a foamy moustache.

Akane feels a bright laugh falling from her lips. It’s effortless, and Kyle is looking at her adoringly, in a way that might have made her cringe hundreds of years ago. Now, she’s old enough to accept it – to accept all things, however poorly suited they are to her disposition. She can’t remember if she had ever wanted children or not. Now humans seem too breakable, doll-like with limbs she could so easily splinter, that the thought doesn’t even come into her head.

Relationships are based on equality. She’s not sure if it’s something she’s heard or something she will, but her mind turns to Junpei and falters for the briefest of moments. He will be old now, as well. But he’s not alone. He’s found something precious by now, she thinks, and she’s – was, will be – miles away in the Nevada desert anyway. Has been all along.

Relationships, after all, are based on equality, and humanity is something Akane Kurashiki has left behind her with all the trappings of childhood.

They continue to sit and enjoy the decorating they’ve accomplished, Earth’s Christmas on the moon. Luna bustles about, adjusting tinsel here and there to her liking. After finishing the hot chocolate, Klim is struggling to keep his one good eye open. However, he refuses to sleep until they all sing a rousing chorus of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”. Akane joins in, loud and slightly off-key, once he’s linked his arm through hers and another through one of Luna’s. She offers her free arm to Kyle, and they form a ridiculous sort of chorus line. Lagomorph insists on conducting them with his furry white CGI paws.

Finally, they all manage to drag Dr. Klim into the Lounge using the very line formation he created, and settle him in on the couch. It’s likely he could have, with some trouble, made it all the way to his own room, but this is further from the labs and he’s been working much too frantically even in Akane’s eyes.

And she wants him close for whenever they have to take down all the decorations.

Luna tucks Dr. Klim in with such tenderness, it’s difficult not to watch. The GAULEM brushes a hand through her inventor’s gray hair and lets out a strange sigh. It would unnerve Akane, or it should, perhaps. But whatever is unnatural about Luna, whatever is or could be or might be—

Whether she’s human isn’t the question, was never in question. Simply, it doesn’t matter. She is an android, and she’ll play her part. Akane knows that with utmost certainty even in her shifting world with its infinite splitting paths, and whether the loyalty stems from programming or a higher spark is meaningless. Its existence is all that matters.

One of Dr. Klim’s hands comes up to skim Luna’s cheekbone. His words are quiet, intimate. But Akane is used to witnessing intimate scenes, witnessing the thoughts and feelings of others, and it doesn’t really stir her.

“Luna,” Klim says. “You know, people get presents on Christmas.”

The redhead fidgets.

“I didn’t, that is… I don’t really have anything to—”

Dr. Klim laughs, softly.

“I meant I’m giving you one,” he clarifies, reaching into the pocket of his coat, draped over the top of the couch.

Then, he pulls out a necklace. Its chain is golden and simplistic, with a large pendant in the shape of a birdcage with a little blue bird inside. The base of the cage is thick, but when Klim fiddles with it a moment and a tinkling little tune begins to play, Akane understands.

She’s seen the necklace before, though, of course. Fragments, bits and pieces down the river. She just hadn’t… Well, Luna is something of a constant, rather than a variable. Not of particular note. And then Dr. Klim begins to tell a story, about a little boy and a little girl, and something about it sends Akane’s thoughts spinning dizzily into the past – the sure, true past, sitting on a hill. A little boy with a mop of brown hair. A little boy with a blue-and-purpled face and a missing-toothed grin. A time when, perhaps, there might have been another option for her.

But the map of tributaries, the spread of treelike roots, that is a constant now. As much a part of Akane as she is of it. Regret, anger? Those are such small, childish things. Human things. Now she pushes pieces into place and that’s all. The people around her have needs, emotional needs, but she—

Then there is a hand, awkwardly large, tentative, curling around two of her fingers. Akane glances up, to her left.

“Midnight,” says Kyle.

They exit the Lounge together, back out to the warehouse and the lights and the tree. And shining under the base of the tree is a small box, wrapped in red. Kyle seems to notice it the same time she does, and he lurches forward, forgetting to release her hand. The stumble forward drags Akane back into the reality of her aging body – how strange it is to feel old, after living an eternity. Physicality is something a bit secondary, to her, when all that matters is minds and connecting them in an intricate web. Kyle lets go, gently, looks back at her with worry puckering his brow the way it had – would – the young Sigma Klim’s.

“I’m fine,” Akane insists, amusement curling her lips.

Kyle studies her eyes a moment longer before he races to the tree and lifts the flat, rectangular box.

“It’s got my name on it!” he tells her, pulling it closer to his chest.

“Well,” she replies, tilting her head to the side, feeling an odd tug in her chest, “I suppose you’d better open it then.”

Watching Kyle is exacerbating the strange discomfort around the area of her heart, so Akane moves her gaze just past his right shoulder. He doesn’t seem to notice. Which is… Good, she supposes. She doesn’t want him to think she’s being dismissive, because that’s not what she’s doing, it’s only that… Something about the situation, she can’t put a finger on quite what the detail is, something is…

When he rips away the paper around his gift, that is when Akane realizes. The shiny red wrapping, with little silver-white snowflakes, she’s seen it before, on a present, for her. One her own personal Santa had left her very long ago – a few hundred years? A decade? Yesterday? It all blurs together as usual, but…

“Why are you crying?” Kyle asks her, softly, and he has paused, leaving the unadorned cardboard box resting in the crook of his arm unopened.

She reaches her right hand up, slowly, brings her fingers to the corner of her eye. And there, right there, is…

Yes, wetness. A tear. How strange.

Is this, Akane wonders, what it means to feel again? She’d forgotten, how…

The colorful wrapping paper is familiar to her, but she doubts Dr. Klim knows that, though she saw him secretly pointing it out to Lagomorph in Storage Room C. In any case, it’s only a momentary lapse, a…

Or, rather unexpectedly, the feeling – if that’s what it is – stays.

“Merry Christmas, Kyle,” Akane says instead of answering him, and sits down on the metal floor with her legs folded up under her.

The boy – that’s all he really is, eighteen is so impossibly young – drops down next to her, fingers still fisted around crumpled red gift wrapping. He offers her an eager smile, as if this moment is one he has been waiting for his entire small, mortal life. The sentiment is one she recalls, hazily, from long ago.

“Merry Christmas, Ms. Kurashiki,” Kyle replies, and they sit in the middle of the warehouse with red and green and blue lights winking at them overhead, and the smell of cinnamon and peppermint in the air.

Kyle opens the box at last, and immediately clutches the blank research journal – a mirror image of the ones his father fills up endlessly – to his chest. For a single moment, clear and bright and smooth, Akane feels anchored in time. Tethered down, at last, to a timeline, a place, without the eddies and currents of the morphogenetic field splintering her into a million godlike fragments. She sits, quietly, with Kyle, in the stillness. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, aware of the GAULEM lingering in the doorway, of Dr. Klim asleep on the Lounge couch, of the hum of the Rhizome around her, the twinkling Christmas lights coloring the backs of her eyelids.

The word she’s looking for lingers on the tip of her tongue, because it’s one she hasn’t used in so very long. The word, it’s… Another deep breath, sparking her senses, filling her head with the white of snow, of candies, of Aoi Kurashiki’s hair.

Peace.

A soft smile spreads across Akane’s face, even as her death, deaths – four years in the future and yet feeling somehow already behind her – flash past her eyes like a dream. They flash like stars, like the lights strung across the room. Peace, she thinks again, the word, again, remaining, though she’d forgotten, before.

Ah, yes. Peace on Earth.

And, oh, she knows, someday, someway…

There will be.