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They had made the agreement, as the transformations began from the Gaetia Key, that if either of them began to transform, her into a Wels, him into a Seraph... that they would die by the other's swords. Not by the others in battle, not impersonally to one ensconced in a Gear... but the one who had not transformed, yet, would take the other's life as an act of mercy, before the transformation completed, to die human in the other's arms.
To hear those words from her had hurt him. Yui was, honestly, the only pure Good he had ever known, someone he never had deserved, the first person who had finally broken through to show him just what the truth of Solaris had been - this thing that they had faced in battle, and the end of the world as anyone had known it that they now struggled to survive, had been the goal, all along... if only he had listened earlier...
In a way, that she had died in an accident, in the crash of Shevat to the planet below, rather via transformation, felt almost a relief - that he had not had to even consider killing someone who was as innocent, as blameless as his beloved wife.
Yet the guilt was there - the guilt that he had not told her of the wings that had began to form in his back, had not let her kill him so they could be together in death - even if, somehow, it had halted in time, even if he remained human just by... something. Sheer luck? That they had dealt the final blow to Deus in time? That his body and mind had been capable of resisting the transformation?
He felt them twitch under his rain-soaked shirt and kimono, as he placed her sword and kimono sashes, all that had been left of her personal effects, in the newly built shrine in the living room, in the tradition of distant ancestors to which he only had the most vague of connection, a tradition that had not held on through either the Ethos or the Nisan Sect, but simply by... just being there.
"Please... come to visit someday, if you can."
