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Seafront was a peaceful town, most days.
Nier had made the quiet oceanside location his permanent home, more or less, in the wake of Yonah’s abduction - without her, he could no longer bear to be around Devola and Popola, their presences a constant reminder of that which he had lost, and could never recover. Being away from Popola was still painful, but it was a more tolerable pain, much preferable to the devastating pangs in his heart whenever he saw her roaming about the village, acting like he was just another resident there, nothing less, nothing more.
Plus, the views were nicer.
Nier often spent his mornings in Seafront on the beach, taking in the smell of the seafoam, the sounds of the waves crashing against modest cliffsides. It settled his heart and his mind when they threatened to run out of control, kept him grounded in the rare moments when he gave himself a break from the endless grind of Shade hunting, leaving no stone unturned in his search of clues towards Yonah’s whereabouts. The beach was the one place in which he could escape the crushing weight of reality bearing down upon him, at least for a little while.
Thus, the shipwreck that marred Seafront’s coastline caused Nier a fair amount of distress.
It had arrived while he was away from the town, out on a week-long excursion in the Junk Heap. He returned to a state of unease - none of the townsfolk had the courage to investigate the wreckage, fearful that it might be infested with Shades. Nier took it upon himself to do so, as he always did for the town - it was the least he could do after they’d allowed him to move there following Yonah’s disappearance.
Investigating the ship turned up little to indicate how it had run aground - the logbook indicated that it was a slave ship, but Nier found no evidence of any life on the ship, until he stumbled upon a young girl hiding out in one of the recreational rooms. Her clothes were tattered and torn, her expression fearful and hesitant when Nier first came across her, and she seemed too traumatized to speak, her voice making nothing but a faint croaking sound when Nier prompted her to talk to him.
“Give her some space, lad,” Weiss instructed. “The poor girl has, in all likelihood, experienced a hell that neither you nor I could imagine. Allow her to set the pace.”
The proposal didn’t sit right with Nier at first - his instinct was to scoop the girl up and bring her to Seafront proper, have a doctor look her over and ensure that she was as healthy on the inside as she seemed to be on the outside. The floating book, however, tended to be right about this sort of thing, so he retreated, returning only to drop off some food in the doorway. As he laid down to sleep that night, however, Nier found his head filled with visions of the timid little girl in the ship, staring at him, begging and pleading for help, morphing into Yonah as she faded away.
Waking up in a cold sweat, Nier spent the night on the beach instead, dutifully watching over the ship from a distance. This girl, whoever she was, was under his protection now, and he couldn’t fail her. He couldn’t.
Not again.
+
As it turned out, a mute little girl made for surprisingly good company. Nier had become reticent and short-tempered in the years since Yonah’s disappearance, often having little time for the people around him, even as he tried his best to remain a good citizen to the townsfolk of Seafront. He was acutely aware that, no matter how long he lived in the town, he would always be seen as an outsider, an interloper, his exile from his home village entirely self-imposed. It wasn’t like there was anything tying him to that empty cottage now, anyway. Devola and Popola certainly didn’t need him around.
With her, however, all of Nier’s little irritations, the dark cloud that hung over his head day in and day out, felt just a little less important, a little less present. It certainly wasn’t because of the girl’s conversational skills - in the two weeks since he first discovered her, the girl hadn’t successfully uttered a single word, still seemingly trapped inside her own head. Instead, there was something calming about her mere presence, and the way that she seemed to quickly acclimate to Nier’s visits - after just a couple of days, she stopped hiding from him, and after a week, she was willing to approach him. Now, the two of them sat in her room on the ship and simply enjoyed each other’s company, carving out a new space in which Nier could de-pressurize.
He’d begun to leave Weiss at home for his excursions to the shipwreck - the tome had nagged him one too many times about how he was taking care of the girl, resulting in a particularly thorny argument between the two a week earlier. What did he know, anyway? He was a book. There was no reason to believe he would know any better than Nier what to do about the strange little girl who refused, every time he offered, to leave the ship, or even leave the room she seemed to call home, at least in his presence. Nier had seen evidence that the girl was roaming the ship when he was away - books out of place, furniture rearranged, strange wet spots all over that couldn’t be explained by mere intrusion by the sea. For whatever reason, however, she simply refused to budge when he offered his home to her, even if it was only on a temporary basis.
Stubborn…
Even with this strange quirk, one of many the girl exhibited, Nier had grown quite fond of his new charge in the short time he’d spent with her. Those first two weeks, he’d even found himself foregoing his usual Shade hunts, focusing instead on ensuring the girl in the ship was properly nourished, wary of the townsfolks’ potential attempts to “help,” despite their previous unwillingness to even step onto the beach while the shipwreck was there. He’d kept the girl’s existence quiet from Emil, as well - Nier couldn’t really put his finger on why he didn’t mention her to his traveling companion, only that it didn’t…feel right. He was the one who had found her, after all. He was taking care of her. He was responsible for her.
Nier knew he couldn’t spend every spare moment he had with the girl - Yonah was still out there, still waiting for him to find her, rescue her, bring her home safe. He had to get back out there and resume the search. Two weeks had been a longer break than he’d ever taken, and as he mulled that over, he mentally kicked himself for the lapse. It didn’t matter that this sweet little shipwrecked girl was also in need of his care - it shouldn’t have mattered, anyway. He knew she was safe, for now - he had no idea if Yonah was safe, if she was even…
No. She’s out there. I’ll find her.
A week later, when he returned to the ship, the girl let out a wail upon seeing him, collapsing to her knees in front of him, her hands balling up great chunks of his shirt. The sight filled Nier’s heart with shame for leaving the girl on her own for so long, and a spark of something else, something that bubbled up from deep within Nier’s psyche, that he forcibly shoved back where it came from when he felt it.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nier said to the girl, kneeling down to stroke her hair, furrowing his brow at its oddly damp texture. Had she been outside while he was gone? So desperate in his absence that she’d temporarily overcome her apparent phobia…?
Whatever the reason, the look of despair on the girl’s face, followed by the relief as he reassured her, made Nier resolve to never leave her alone that long again. Even though it had only been a few weeks since he’d first met the girl, she had become utterly reliant on him, and Nier had a responsibility - a duty - to care for her, keep her company, as best he could. His schedule would simply have to adapt.
Yonah would understand.
+
“I have a present for you.”
The girl looked up at Nier expectantly, her amber eyes gleaming with excitement. Holding out her hands in anticipation, Nier reached into a small pouch tied to his waist and produced a deep blue ribbon, faded a little with time, but still vibrant. The girl delicately picked it up with her thumb and forefinger, staring at it with an expression of awe, her wordless voice warbling in her throat. Stepping back to create some distance between herself and Nier, she spun around in circles, twirling the ribbon all around her, and Nier smiled in satisfaction.
“Be careful with that, alright?” he instructed. “That’s not just any ribbon - it’s from someone very important to me. I’m entrusting it to you, so don’t lose it, and don’t let it get dirty or torn, okay?”
The girl nodded excitedly in assent, returning her attention to the ribbon, smiling to herself as she admired it. It hadn’t been easy for Nier to part with it; the ribbon was one of Yonah’s, and he’d had to trek back to the village to retrieve it, his first time showing his face there in over a year. He’d endured the usual gaggle of gawking villagers upon his arrival, accosted by questions of why he was always gone for so long, everyone simply assuming he was taking trips across the world rather than stubbornly avoiding the ghosts that haunted him in his home town. Naturally, the queen of said ghosts made sure to show her face in response to the commotion, the last one Nier wanted to see.
“Still claiming to be a Seafront man now, hm?” Popola had teased, as she accompanied Nier to his house. He gave her as little in return as he could manage, a mere grunt of assent, and Popola seemed satisfied by that, breaking off from Nier to return to the library once they reached the threshold of his house. He watched her for a while as she walked away, his chest tight, growing short of breath, as feelings Nier had tried so hard to keep buried threatened to tear their way out of him once more.
He couldn’t understand it. He’d moved out of the village to get away from Popola, and he’d made that as clear as he could without outright saying it to her when he did so, and yet every time he made the mistake of stepping foot in the village, he had to deal with her showing her face to him, “checking up” on him, as if she had any real interest in that. Their relationship had atrophied to nothing over the five years since Yonah’s disappearance, and yet Popola seemed determined to keep up appearances, if nothing else.
Nier hated that about her.
An inquisitive gurgling noise shook Nier out of the dark pit he’d been sinking into, and his eyes re-focused on the girl, eyebrows raising as he noticed the new addition to her form - Yonah’s ribbon, tied into a large bow on the side of her head. The sight made him smile, and he crossed his arms, pressing them against his chest to try and suppress the pain of the memories bubbling under the surface.
“That’s a pretty cute look. It suits you.”
The girl let out a gurgling squeal of joy at the compliment, squeezing her hands together and hopping up and down in place. As Nier watched her skip around the room, it dawned on him that even after weeks of visiting the girl, he hadn’t thought to give her a name. Well, a new name, anyway - it wasn’t as though she would be able to communicate any name she might have already had through either vocal or written form, as he’d attempted to get her to write shortly after meeting her, only to find that she was completely illiterate.
He brought a hand to his chin as he mulled it over, considering female names he was already familiar with at first, and Nier came very close to one in particular, though he quickly realized the folly in that. He’d already given the girl Yonah’s ribbon - giving her name as well would be a bridge too far.
Instead, as he watched her dance around, filled with seemingly boundless energy, a name pushed its way to the surface of his mind. He wasn’t sure where it came from, or why he’d thought of it, but the moment Nier landed on the name, he decided that it simply sounded right to him, for reasons he couldn’t place.
“Hey,” Nier called out, the girl stopping in her tracks upon being addressed, twisting on her heel to face her benefactor. He walked up to her, placing a hand on his hip as he peered down at the girl, confident that he’d landed on the perfect name.
“You need a name,” Nier declared. “If I’m going to keep taking care of you like this, I’d at least like to have some way to refer to you. So…how does ‘Louise’ sound?”
The girl’s eyes grew wide, and for a moment, Nier worried that he’d made the wrong move, that attempting to rename the girl had offended her in some way. After a few seconds, however, the girl’s eyes began to water, and her face broke out into a wide grin before she threw herself at Nier, wrapping her arms around his legs and holding him tightly.
+
An old favorite nightmare visited itself upon Nier that night, after returning to his modest Seafront cottage. It was one he’d been having ever since Yonah’s abduction, that somehow hadn’t lost even a fraction of its edge over such a long period, leaving him with the feeling of being stabbed through the chest every time he woke up from it.
The imagery was simple - Popola, on top of him, consummating their love, the way she’d done after his first Shade hunt, the last time the two of them ever connected. She spoke to him in a language he couldn’t understand, all hisses, gurgles, and snarls. Her face was distorted, almost as if she was cloaked in shadow, and no matter how hard Nier tried, he couldn’t push her off, couldn’t even move a muscle, condemned to reliving the experience of being inside her without any of the pleasure he’d felt in the moment. She would ride him for what felt like hours and hours, and then, just as Nier was about to climax, her form would suddenly shift into that of the Shadowlord, who would reach down and clasp its hands around Nier’s neck, strangling him right as he achieved climax. He always woke up at this point, right as he blacked out in the dream, often screaming, and always with a painfully prominent erection that left Nier ashamed, no matter how many times Weiss attempted to reassure him.
Normally, upon waking from the nightmare, Nier would take a few minutes to sit upright in bed and wait for his excitement to fade - this time, however, he slipped out of bed and began to pace around the room, gazing out every so often at the low-hanging sun, nearly touching the horizon line. He wasn’t sure what drove him to do it this time, but he felt compelled to pay Louise a visit, pulling on his boots and taking a small dagger with him, just in case any Shades attempted to intrude on his business.
Traversing the ship’s hallways, Nier could hear a vague crunching sound emanating roughly from the part of the ship where Louise’s room was, and it worried him, encouraging him to speed up, jogging through the claustrophobic tunnels, careful to avoid stepping on any rotting planks, lest he get stuck or fall through to a lower level of the deteriorating vessel (he’d already done that enough, anyway). The sounds grew louder as he closed in on Louise’s room, but as he reached the door, he heard a quiet gurgle, and the crunching stopped.
Dagger in hand, he swung the door open, to find…Louise, sitting in the center of the room, peering over her shoulder at Nier, looking perfectly safe and healthy. It looked as though Nier had intruded on Louise while she was in the middle of something, but he didn’t see any books or any other evidence of whatever it was she may have been doing, so he let the thought escape his mind as he sheathed his dagger, letting out a long sigh of relief. It was strange, how just seeing the girl calmed his nerves, washing away the darkness of his nightmare for a moment - seeing the radiant look on her face as she ran up to him, however, was explanation enough for him, and he pulled Louise into a tight embrace, dropping to one knee so that he was more on her level.
“Sorry to come by all of a sudden…” Nier said, his tone apologetic, as if it really mattered to the little refugee girl when he showed up - it wasn’t like she kept a schedule of her own, after all. As far as he knew, none of the other townsfolk had dared to venture near the ship, and if Louise was leaving the vessel at any point, Nier couldn’t be sure. He may as well have been her entire world by now, and that thought brought about a mixture of pride and possessiveness that turned his stomach a little.
Louise, for her part, seemed utterly unfazed by Nier’s internal capriciousness - she was clearly just happy to have him there, and when he broke off their embrace, she sat down next to him and began to hum, the sound coming out more like a buzz through her closed lips. Nier dropped down into a seated position as well, sticking his legs out in front of him and bracing himself from behind with his arms, peering at the small window to the outside world, tightly covered by thick curtains that Louise had to have salvaged from elsewhere in the ship.
“Not really big on sunlight, huh…” he mused. His eyes narrowed a little as he made idle associations in his head, but the conclusion that they were tentatively leading towards was one Nier had no interest in. Whatever Louise’s origins, for now, what mattered to Nier was that he kept her safe, kept her healthy.
Kept her to himself.
He was lost in his thoughts again, and it took a bit of prompting from Louise to bring him back - she tugged on Nier’s sleeve, peering up at him with those big, watery amber eyes. She always looked to Nier with such a pure expression, innately trusting of him. It was clear that, after just a few weeks of taking care of her, Louise felt utterly secure around Nier, and it was a sensation that he didn’t want to take lightly. It reminded him, of course, of Yonah, of his dear little sister, of her absolute reliance on him.
But he could see something else in Louise’s sweet little face, echoes of someone Nier was intimately familiar with, and those echoes gave him pause. He had been taking care of Louise on his own, and it wasn’t as though he’d explicitly prevented anyone else from coming to see her. Still, did that mean he’d caused her to become dependent on him…? And if so…
…was that really all that bad an outcome?
“My job is to protect you.”
Those words, from Nier’s own “guardian,” resonated in his head. Was that really all Louise wanted from him? Needed from him? When he’d been in her position…there had been nothing more painful to him than the sting of being treated like a dependent, like someone who needed to simply be taken care of. Was that all he needed to be for Louise? Or…
Louise rocked forward, and Nier thought for a moment that he had ignored her for too long, and that he’d upset her. Crouching in front of him, however, she turned and leaned in towards Nier’s face, her wide eyes staring expectantly at him. She was straddling his legs, her own spread about as wide as they could go in order to do so, and Nier pointedly avoided looking at the way her skirt was hitching up on top of him, forcing himself to focus on her face, hovering just inches from his.
“U - Uh…” Nier stuttered, sweat rolling down his forehead as he met Louise’s intense gaze. She put a hand on his chest, and Nier’s heart rate spiked. Rational thought was rapidly departing his mind, and he could see himself reflected in Louise’s glassy eyes, but the longer he looked, the more his mirror image shrank down, retreating backwards into his childhood, until the figure staring back at him wasn’t the Nier of today, but the Nier of a decade ago, regularly starving, for food and for attention, for love and for care.
Louise had no one else to turn to, no one to rely one, no one to love. It had only been a month, but Nier filled all of those voids at once. He was certain of it. Louise’s face told the entire story, and Nier didn’t need to hear another word.
He leaned forward, reaching up to cup Louise’s face in his hand, and closed the gap between them, his lips pressing gently against hers. They were wet, almost slimy - why was every part of this girl always damp? - but Nier couldn’t get enough of the taste of her, clutching her cheeks with both hands, holding her in place as he subsumed her lips entirely with his, his eyes fluttering shut as he kissed the little girl in the shipwreck, illuminated only by the residual rays of the sun that managed to break through the thick curtain cloaking the window.
Louise didn’t seem to know what to do with herself - her hands pressed against Nier’s chest, almost resistant at first, though she relaxed into the kiss after a couple of seconds, her lips struggling to match his intensity. Of course, she had no experience to speak of, but Nier didn’t mind that - all he wanted was to grant her wish, and to his eye, he’d done exactly that. When he pulled away from her, Louise’s face had flushed a deep red, and she was unable to look him in the eye, bringing her fingers to her lips, as if in disbelief. Nier pressed his forehead to Louise’s, running his fingers through her hair, his voice dropping into a husky, reassuring whisper.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, repeating it like a mantra - for himself or for Louise, he wasn’t certain, but the distinction didn’t matter. The two of them had crossed a line, one that Nier never thought he would ever dare even approach, and there was no turning back, now.
He owed this to Louise. He owed this to himself, the little boy still buried deep in his heart, forever left yearning by the only woman he’d ever come to love.
“You’re mine now,” Nier affirmed. “And me…I’m yours. Okay?”
Tears ran down Louise’s cheeks as she smiled and nodded.
“Huh - I guess you like that name, huh?” Nier said, a little taken aback by the sudden show of affection. Staring down at Louise, he put a tentative hand on her head, stroking her damp hair, reaching down to pat her back as she warbled in excitement. Her reaction warmed his heart, but as he held her close, he thought back to Popola, and the warmth in his chest began to curdle into something else. Setting his jaw, he shook his head a little to rid himself of the darkness, and held Louise closer, acutely aware of just how thin the layer of clothing was between his palm and the cold, pale skin of her back.
+
Townsfolk were disappearing every week.
A pall had descended on Seafront. The residents had become reluctant to leave their homes, while simultaneously growing paranoid over the health and safety of their loved ones, checking in on each other constantly to make sure that it wasn’t their mother next, their brother, their daughter, their best friend. Most assumed that it was Shades sneaking into the town and taking people at vulnerable moments, though no one seemed able to produce any proof of the theory. Others saw it as an escalation of the bad omens that they were convinced had begun with the shipwreck washing ashore on the beach, which remained unvisited by the general populace for a third month.
The disappearances troubled Nier. He’d looked into it when he had the chance, in between excursions looking for Yonah and his increasingly frequent visits with Louise, but neither he nor Weiss had been able to turn up any sort of theory or evidence leading in one direction or the other. Though, of course, Nier had to admit that he wasn’t exactly putting maximum effort into his investigation, occupied as he was by the two girls most important to him in his life. He would figure it out, in time, surely.
“Mmmmh…good girl, Louise…”
Nier held Louise close to his chest, one firm arm wrapped around her waist, as his other hand snuck between her legs, thick fingers teasing at her entrance, flicking lightly across her clit. Every touch elicited another gurgle of pleasure from the girl’s lips, her arms hanging stiffly at her sides as she endured the kind of play usually reserved for adults. Her face was flushed a reddish violet, eyebrows knitted together, her eyes unfocused and vaguely pointed down towards her crotch to witness Nier’s work on her, utterly enveloped by it.
Their relationship had escalated at a speed Nier hadn’t anticipated or expected - he’d returned home following their first kiss in a panic once the glow of it faded, leaving a gnawing, gaping void in his chest. She was a girl - not a woman, not a teenager, a little girl, no older than he had been when Popola first called him into her office for a “check-up.” It had happened so quickly, and felt so natural, that Nier didn’t give it a second thought in the moment, but now that he had time and distance to consider his actions, he wanted to throw up.
And yet.
Nier thought of Louise’s eyes - wide and bright, shimmering with excitement as she crawled between his legs, pressing her hand on his chest, leaning in. He remembered what it had been like for him, all the times he tried to get a little more out of Popola than she was willing to give, all the times he’d been left feeling used, unloved, inadequate. It made him wonder if, had Popola simply been willing to close the gap between them when he was younger, if things would have ended so poorly between them when he grew older.
He didn’t want to repeat Popola’s mistakes. But what were Popola’s mistakes? To Nier’s eye, in his heart and mind, as he laid in bed that night, staring up at the dark ceiling of his Seafront home, he came to a conclusion, and vowed to stick to it.
Louise wanted his love. Needed his love, the way he’d needed Popola’s. Therefore, it was his duty to give it to her, and give it to her he did.
He started slow, kissing Louise every time he visited her, making more and more physical contact every time - touching her arms, her shoulders, her face, sliding down to her sides, her waist, her legs. She was nervous at first, but responded enthusiastically to the feeling of Nier’s hands all over her, childishly reciprocating his touch, mirroring his movements as much as she could manage given the height difference between them. Kissing soon turned to other oral work, as Nier began venturing all across Louise’s body, sliding under her tattered sailor dress, quickly reaching a point where he would discard it entirely the moment they got started, to allow for easier access to her most sensitive spots.
Every step of the way, despite his conviction, Nier could hear that voice in the back of his mind, the one that he supposed was the vestige of his conscience, pushing him to reconsider - “she doesn’t know what you’re doing to her,” “this isn’t the kind of love she wants,” “you’re just passing down what Popola gave you.” On occasion, that voice even managed to get to him, made him falter, pushed him to wrap things up with Louise early, or forego their increasingly physical routine entirely on a given day, content to just spend time with her, help her develop her voice more, try and figure out a way to more effectively communicate with the stranded little mermaid of Seafront.
Recently, she’d even begun to sing - an atonal, dissonant, warbling melody that, admittedly, made Nier’s ears ring whenever she started. The delight in her eyes when he stayed and listened, however, was more than enough for him to justify enduring it. It was times like that, when Louise displayed such a childlike love and enthusiasm for her tiny little world, that most made Nier question the choices he’d made with her, if the line he’d crossed was permanent, if he’d ruined her by giving her what he thought she wanted.
And then she would approach him, with an altogether different look in her eye, and he would push it all down, and grant her wish.
Louise grew bolder as she seemed to get more comfortable with Nier in the weeks following their kiss, reciprocating his touch in a more deliberate way, excitedly attempting to learn about the differences in anatomy between the two of them. The first time she touched his penis, he nearly came on the spot from anticipation, and her dexterity and endurance grew in leaps and bounds from there, demonstrating an almost troubling amount of prowess and finesse. She was the first person to touch Nier in this way since his last contact with Popola, and the feeling of her dainty little hands on his manhood, stroking him, kissing him, sucking him, filled Nier with desire, of which he feared losing control.
He had to be careful with Louise. She had, in the span of just a couple of months, become his entire world, the star around which he rotated. Nier made sure to continue his pursuit of leads regarding Yonah’s whereabouts, but those were now scheduled more around his visits with Louise, rather than the other way around. Her touch, her voice, her smile…Nier could barely stand to go longer than a couple of days without seeing her, and the devotion he felt when he thought of her both scared and empowered him.
Louise fell back against Nier’s chest, her own chest heaving as he brought her to orgasm, his fingers growing damp as they flicked across her tiny clit, teasing just the tips of his fingers along her unsullied entrance. He sampled her taste afterwards, licking the fruit of his labor off his fingers, then nuzzled his face into the crook of Louise’s neck, sighing as he felt her hand brush against his cheek.
He had to protect her, by any means necessary. From the outside world, from the Shades, from the townsfolk.
From himself, lest he destroy her.
+
“You look an absolute mess, lad.”
Weiss floated in close to Nier, his stoic, unchanging face feeling particularly accusatory on this night. No longer content to stand by as Nier increasingly allowed Louise to monopolize his time, the tome cornered him upon his return from his latest rendezvous with the girl, sitting him down to, apparently, get to the bottom of that which Weiss had been deliberately excluded.
Naturally, his timing was absolutely horrendous, as Nier had plenty of guilt already weighing him down. Taking the virginity of a child had a tendency to do that to a man.
“I understand that you are the bleeding-heart type, but have you not considered that this little girl is not what she seems?” Weiss said, floating back a little. “It has been months, and still she refuses to leave the ship with you. Still she scarfs down food like she hasn’t eaten in years, depleting Seafront’s stores and leaving the townsfolk baffled, unable to understand why it’s all vanishing. And worst of all, need I remind you…still the residents of Seafront are disappearing at an alarmingly regular pace. What say you to all of that, boy, hm? Anything?”
The night had started like any other - Nier awoke from his nightmare and decamped for the ship. This time, Louise was already naked when he arrived, apparently having heard him coming and prepared herself. The sight of her in the pale night sun, just barely shining through the curtains, laid utterly bare for him, had been too much for his weakened rationality to bear, and he’d absolutely pounced on her, eating her up, groping and grabbing at her more aggressively than he’d ever had, his erection painful in his pants. Her hands wouldn’t be enough, her juvenile bust wouldn’t be enough, her mouth wouldn’t be enough - the only thing that would satiate him, in the heat of his desire, would be her innocence.
“It would be unfair to blame you for this, lad, but I must also point out, for the purposes of this discussion, that we are no closer to finding your sister than we were before that ship appeared on the beach. Of course, leads have been few and far between, and certainly nothing of substance has come up in the years we’ve been searching, but I cannot help but feel that this distraction has obliterated our pace in recent months. I fear, my boy, that you may have taken your eye off the ball.”
That was unfair. Nier still thought of Yonah every day. He saw her in everything - in the sad little breakfast he prepared for himself every morning, in the flowers Weiss insisted upon him maintaining all over the house, in the face and voice of every girl in Seafront. He even saw her in Louise, his eyes fixating on her ribbon and reminding him of what he’d lost, as Louise eagerly sucked his cock, squeezed his balls, left wet, slimy kisses all over his body.
He thought of Yonah as he pinned Louise down on the grimy floor of her room on the ship, seeing her in Louise’s wide amber eyes, taken aback by the sudden spike in aggression from her caretaker. Every day, he confronted the fear that his dear sister was lost forever, that no matter which stone they upturned, no matter how many nooks and crannies they investigated, no matter how many fucking Shades they killed, Yonah would never turn up. Some days, it felt as though the Shadowlord had simply vacated this plane of existence, leaving no trace. The thought filled Nier with despair, and spurred him to seek comfort anywhere he could find it. It drove him into Louise’s arms, and on that night, it had drove him between her legs, looming over her as he lined up his tip with her tiny, quivering entrance.
“I don’t mean to harp on you, about any of this,” Weiss continued. His tone softened, floating to Nier’s left, a thin beam of sunlight reflecting off the intricate metalwork adorning the front of the tome. “I simply want to ensure that you are fully focused on the mission, lad. She is your sister. You need to be the one driving our efforts. If you lose sight of what we’re fighting for, then…will Kainé’s sacrifice not simply have been in vain? Her life, wasted? And what of young Emil? All of them - all of us, lad - are fighting for the same thing. We must stay the course. We must keep a steady hand. Do you understand that?”
It hadn’t been anything like being inside Popola. Louise’s vagina was tight, almost uncomfortably so, and she struggled greatly to accommodate Nier’s girth. She teared up, bit her lip, whimpered and warbled underneath him, but not once did she push back against him as he slowly, agonizingly advanced himself inside her. If she had truly been suffering - if she truly could not bear the sensation - she would have stopped Nier, and that would have been that. Instead, she gave him the green light, and he raced ahead, all care and caution lost.
Still, it was over rather quickly - Nier remained rather woefully inexperienced when it came to proper sexual intercourse, and the sensation of being inside Louise pushed him to the edge in just a couple of minutes. He’d settled into a rhythm, but as his climax approached, Nier had been beset by a sudden panic, and right before his orgasm, he pulled out of Louise, firing his seed all over her chest and abdomen instead. The girl looked absolutely battered beneath him, eyes rolling back a little in her head, her extremities twitching, nearly unconscious from the overwhelming sensations she’d been put through. To his shame, Nier, gripped by the throes of post-orgasm clarity and regret, provided no aftercare, redressing and racing home in time to be confronted by Weiss for his extended mental absence.
He’d considered coming clean, as he sat on the edge of his bed, listening to Weiss drone on about Nier’s duty. He thought about telling the tome everything - that he’d been molesting the girl on the ship, that she’d reciprocated his advances, that he’d fucked her. And then, perhaps, he could throw himself off a cliff and end the cycle then and there.
Instead, Nier merely offered Weiss a strained smile and nod.
“Thanks for the concern, Weiss. But I’ve got it all under control. Don’t worry.”
Weiss seemed utterly unconvinced by this paper-thin assurance, but something about Nier’s tone and body language must have told him that it was the best he would get for the evening, as the floating book nodded, seeing fit to pivot to a new topic.
“Speaking of Emil, the boy wishes for you to accompany him to a laboratory that apparently exists underneath the mansion in which we discovered him. He suspects that he may be able to find a way to reverse Kainé’s petrification there.”
He paused.
“Can you spare the time to do that with him?”
Nier balled up the fabric around his knees in his hands.
“Of course.”
+
Louise was a Shade, and Nier didn’t care.
He hadn’t been sure, when he first met her - there were suspicious aspects of her that only seemed to fit the idea that she was no longer human, but they were easy enough to ignore that Nier cast them aside, instead choosing to believe the increasingly flimsy delusion that she was just a simple little girl, afraid of the sun, afraid of leaving the vessel by which she’d arrived.
She’d arrived without a crew, after all - without a single other passenger, as far as Nier could tell. The ship was a slave ship, and it had supposedly been loaded with crew, and…cargo. Some of them could have been lost at sea, certainly, but the only thing that made sense for the rest…
It should have sickened Nier. It should have made his face contort in rage. It should have caused him to bring his sword down on her head, cleave her in two and scatter the ashes to the winds. It should have freed him.
Instead, Nier disregarded it.
He hadn’t been able to see her for an uncomfortably long time - Emil’s hunch turned out to be accurate, and the trio of boy, man, and book reunited with their foul-mouthed cohort in short order. Soon afterwards, the group came across a curious sheet of parchment containing instructions for building some sort of sigil, one that Popola (as Nier gritted his teeth and bore visiting) seemed to think would lead them right to the Shadowlord’s stronghold, and thus, to Yonah. The promise of concrete progress invigorated Nier, and said invigoration allowed Weiss to back off of him. For a little while, Nier felt almost…normal. Closer to peace than he’d been in five years. The air was fresher, the grass greener, the sky brighter.
And then he returned to Seafront, desiring a brief break after finding two pieces of the “key,” and Louise wept in his arms for an hour, apparently convinced that he’d abandoned her.
Nier made it up to her by fucking her four times that day, each session more passionate than the last.
Like she’d done with everything else, Louise acclimated quickly to sex with Nier. It felt almost as though her body itself had transformed in order to accommodate his girth safely - she was still unbelievably tight, but after that first time, he no longer worried that he would tear her open if he thrusted too hard into her. Instead, Louise encouraged him to go harder, go faster, to go, go, go - her warbly, sing-songy voice was like a siren song in his ears, prodding him along to continue violating her, to dive headfirst into his possession of her.
It was what Louise wanted, after all. It always had been. Right?
If she was a Shade - and Nier was fairly certain that she was, it wasn’t really a debate in his mind by this point - then did the morals and ethics of human interaction even matter with her? Nier mowed down Shades left and right during his day-to-day existence - what was this, if not a different form of that? If Louise was a Shade, then what did he even need to be concerned about? Why had he expended so much effort mentally torturing himself in the early stages of their relationship?
He didn’t pull out, the last time.
Louise was bent over in front of him, her modest ass bouncing back against his pelvis as he aggressively fucked her, hunched over her small form, his fingers interlaced with hers on either side of her head. Nier had always been nervous about the prospect of accidentally ejaculating inside Louise, worried about the logistics and horrified by the implications if the worst case scenario played out afterwards. But if she was a Shade, could she even get pregnant? There was no reason to believe anything would come of it.
And she just felt so, so good in this position, her tiny pussy clinging desperately to his cock…
“Louise, fuck, Louise -”
The Shade warbled in her corrupted language underneath Nier, her fingers flexing against his, her one sultry amber eye visible at this angle staring up at him with that expectant look he knew so well. It was another invitation, another seduction, and Nier was running out of ways to resist Louise’s continual advances.
It doesn’t matter. She’s a Shade. None of this matters.
She’s a Shade, and I love her.
“Fuck - !!!”
Nier smashed his hips forward, and the dam broke. His arms shook as he unloaded inside Louise, firing an admittedly weak series of ropes into her womb, rutting against her ass with each twitch of his cock inside her. He was honestly rather surprised that he had anything left to shoot at all after the previous three rounds, but when he pulled back from her, his vision shaking, he could clearly see a thin trail of semen leaking out of her, dripping onto the rotting wood floor underneath them.
Louise let out a tired groan when Nier pulled out of her, going completely limp in the wake of his orgasm. She fell asleep with a smile on her face, and to Nier’s eyes, she looked like an angel - an angel with the core of a devil inside her. An angel wearing his sister’s ribbon, filled with his cum. An angel that, Nier feared, had more secrets to hide from him than simply being a Shade.
That, however, was a problem for the future. For now, Nier simply collapsed next to Louise, too worn out to exit the ship and return home. Weiss would understand.
So would Yonah.
+
Seafront’s charm withered away as its residents vanished. The numbers had grown to the point where nearly every single day, a new face went missing. The streets were consistently empty, townsfolk leaving their homes for the absolute bare minimum amount of time to buy food or resources, and all social activity had ceased. It was a situation that would sadden Nier and spur him to act, if he cared to take the time to notice.
Nier, however, remained occupied on two fronts. The search for pieces of the sigil that would lead to the Shadowlord had concluded - he had all the pieces of it in hand, and upon completion, it pointed back to the Lost Shrine, requiring the services of the ferryman, that well-meaning, if a little overbearing, Seafront man with the distinctive red bag. Naturally, by the time Nier’s party reassembled the key, the ferryman had left Seafront on what his wife described as a “quick trip” that would last, at most, a few days. With that downtime, Nier could indulge in his other preoccupation.
Louise had become an eager lover. She tended to pounce on Nier every time he visited her on the ship, having developed a rather frighteningly voracious libido that Nier sometimes struggled to keep up with. He wasn’t complaining, to be sure - even with Yonah feeling more and more within reach, the companionship Louise provided remained invaluable, and he was happy to indulge in her new favorite activity, even if, deep down, he knew the purpose it really served, shading his eyes from the increasing horrors of both the world around him and his heart and mind.
He was doing a worse and worse job of hiding his inattentiveness from the others - Kainé regularly berated him for zoning out and vanishing into Seafront for days at a time between their excursions, and Emil attempted to kindly (and clumsily) prod at Nier to get him to open up a little. Weiss, however, seemed content to say nothing in either direction, even enduring harassment from Kainé over his uncharacteristic neutrality. That Weiss saw fit to let things lie felt strange to Nier, but perhaps the way Weiss’s previous lecture had completely bounced off of him was enough for the tome to throw in the towel.
And so, in the absence of intervention or outside motivators, Nier continued to turn inwards, lavishing Louise with time and attention while he waited for the ferryman to be available to bring the party to the Lost Shrine. He had reached the point where he was even sleeping in the ship most nights, Louise curling up in his arms, holding him close, her quiet gurgling in her sleep becoming a soundtrack of comfort for Nier as he drifted to sleep, only to be waken up in the morning by the feeling of her mouth wrapped around his cock, her gleaming amber eyes looming up at him from his waist, little hands pressed against his abdomen as she extracted her favorite snack from him.
Days and days passed in the ship as Nier and Louise fell into a cycle of fucking each other senseless, sleeping, practicing writing or singing, and fucking each other senseless again. All misgivings, all sense of guilt, every last little hangup and regret Nier may have had about corrupting Louise in this manner had completely fallen by the wayside - he simply no longer cared about any of it. All he cared about was making Louise feel good, making himself feel good, and he accomplished that to great effect as he regularly bottomed out in her tight, eager pussy, filling her with his seed over and over, plastering her face with it, staining Yonah’s ribbon with his cum as it mixed in with Louise’s hair.
But Nier wanted more. He wanted everything Louise had to give, and the sweet little girl in the ship seemed more than willing to oblige. Three days into his residency waiting for the ferryman to return, he positioned himself behind Louise, putting the girl on hands and knees.
“This…is going to feel a lot different, Louise,” Nier warned, his eyes fixated on the her tight, slick anus, the head of his cock looming ominously behind it, twitching with anticipation. “So, if it starts to feel really bad, make sure I know, okay? Tap me on the leg, or - or just yell, I guess…”
He knew it was reckless to try this - Louise was almost certainly not human, but she still had the small body of a young girl, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her in some way. Louise, however, seemed content to let him try, and Nier had been increasingly unable to resist the urges driving him further and further into depravity with the girl, so he pressed forward.
Louise yelped a little when the tip of Nier’s cock made contact with her rear entrance, but she stayed strong, not shying away as Nier held on to her hip, slowly rocking his own hips forward and pressing against her tight ring. He watched, in awe, as it slowly gave way to the pressure, and though Louise’s moans grew more warbly as he pushed into her, she didn’t protest, and Nier slid himself inside her, managing to stuff a few inches of his shaft inside on the first stroke, gasping as he felt her constricting around his cock.
The sensation was like nothing Nier had ever felt before - even Louise’s pussy couldn’t compare to the sheer tightness, like a vise clamping down on his cock, threatening to crush it, tear it right off his pelvis. He managed to pull back with some difficulty, Louise’s innards clinging tightly to him, the little girl panting from the effort of taking him. As he reached the apex of his backstroke, Louise peered over her shoulder at him, her wide amber eyes begging him for more, and he obliged, thrusting back into her, threatening to split her in half with his girth. Still Louise endured, reaching back with one small hand to hold Nier’s, tugging on him a little, as if encouraging him to pick up the pace, and Nier obliged with gusto, soon throwing caution to the wind, hunching over for leverage so that he could fulfill her desire.
Their first time doing this went quickly - Louise’s warmth and grip was too much for Nier to bear, and he was still worried, in the back of his mind, that he would hurt her if they went on too long. The resulting orgasm was visceral and mind-numbing, Nier fucking Louise right into the floor of the ship underneath him, his hips smacking loudly against her modest ass as he filled her with his seed once more, leaving a trail of semen across her thigh when he pulled out of her. Thoroughly ravaged, Louise nonetheless managed to roll over, sticking her hand between her legs to scoop up a glob of Nier’s cum and bringing it to her lips, offering him a mischievous smile as she stuck her fingers in her mouth to taste the fruit of his labor.
She was more articulate than ever, her mannerisms and non-verbal communication growing in leaps and bounds whenever Nier was away from her - just about the only thing that hadn’t developed was her voice, which remained trapped in an inarticulate warble that still couldn’t communicate even basic thoughts. The pace of her development, combined with the increased disappearances in Seafront, created another logical train of thought that Nier had no desire to pursue.
Louise was a Shade - Nier knew that. Shades…killed people. Nier knew this, too. But, as long as he didn’t see Louise do it, there remained the possibility that it was something else steadily wiping out the population of Seafront. Anything else. Anything but her.
If it was a delusion, it was one Nier wanted to remain in as long as he could.
One week later, the ferryman still hadn’t returned, and when Nier went to speak with his wife about the trip, she remembered a crucial detail about his departure, one that sent a chill down Nier’s spine and left a pit of despair in his stomach.
“He said something about wanting to investigate that shipwreck you’re always going to, actually.”
+
Nier knew he had lost control of the situation when he spotted Kainé and Emil at the edge of the beach in Seafront, staring at the shipwreck from afar.
Kainé explained that she’d sensed the presence of a Shade in Seafront, her instincts leading her to the shipwreck. Weiss had informed them of the disappearances in the town, leading to a tense confrontation between Nier and Kainé over why, exactly, he hadn’t seen fit to lift a finger to figure out why it was happening. The end result was that the group split up in pairs, Emil following Kainé while Nier took Weiss with him, feigning exploration as he beelined to Louise’s room.
“You need to come clean with them, lad,” Weiss nagged as Nier navigated the increasingly-decrepit wreck, struggling to dodge rotten floorboards and holes all over the place. “This girl is a Shade, you know she is, and yet still you see fit to feign ignorance, to protect the blasted thing -”
“Shut the hell up, Weiss,” Nier snapped. “We need to get her out of here. This whole ship’s on the verge of collapse, and all of us stomping through it is just going to accelerate the process.”
“‘Get her out of here’?” Weiss repeated incredulously. “Have you vacated your senses? This creature has almost certainly eaten countless innocent people, your neighbors, might I add -”
“We don’t know that, Weiss!” Nier roared, whirling to face the obstinate tome floating in front of him. “That’s just - that’s an assumption! There’s no evidence that - shit, FUCK -”
In his agitation, Nier made a wrong step, and the floor beneath him saw fit to completely collapse, dumping Nier into the bowels of the ship. He landed hard, directly on his shoulder, and he was certain he heard something crack on impact, letting out a shout of pain as he tried to recover, rolling onto his back and clutching his arm.
“Can you hear me, lad!?” Weiss called out in a panic, left behind on the upper level of the ship. “I believe - I believe I see a lantern, give me a moment, I can drop it down to you!”
The lantern came inelegantly tumbling down into the abyss a minute later, and Nier just barely managed to catch it before it could shatter against the ground. He wanted to make a snide remark about it being useless without something to light it, but, to his surprise, it had its own fuel source, and he clicked it to life and gave the room a once-over. The sight before him, however, made him wish the lantern hadn’t turned on.
Bodies. A veritable pile of them, all covered in dried blood, dismembered to various degrees. Nier had to clutch his hand to his mouth to keep from vomiting at the gruesome discovery, moreso when he realized that the few intact faces in the pile were ones he recognized - every single one, a Seafront resident that had gone missing.
No. No, no, no, please…
Nier scanned over the victims, dread settling in his chest as he looked for one resident in particular, the one he least wanted to find. Sure enough, he was near the top of the pile - the ferryman, sans red bag, his stomach slashed open so viciously that he’d nearly been cut in half. The work was amateur, the wound jagged and uneven, almost looking as though it had been done with the perpetrator’s bare hands, somehow.
Hands, or something else…
Above and ahead of him, Nier heard sounds echoing down to him - someone shouting, met with a distinctive warbling noise that made his eyes widen in terror.
Louise.
He raced to the other end of the room, spotting a ladder to climb out that brought him to a hallway just a little ways down from Louise’s room. Back on the same level as that room, the voices were significantly clearer, and Nier doubled his pace as he approached, worst-case scenarios playing out in his head.
“…ait for Nier to get here! Kainé, come on, she’s just a little girl -”
“She’s a fucking Shade, Emil! You know better than that! She’s killed dozens of innocent people! We need to cut her fucking head off before she can retaliate!”
“Don’t!!”
Nier burst into the room, his chest heaving, doubling over and bracing himself against his knees to catch his breath. Ahead of him, Kainé and Emil had Louise cornered, the girl crouching and covering her head with her hands, letting out terrified warbles as she eyed the massive blade Kainé pointed at her.
Kainé gritted her teeth upon Nier’s arrival, whipping her head around to leer at him, already enraged.
“How nice of you to show up,” Kainé snarled. “Care to fucking explain yourself? This Shade here seems very familiar with you, almost like you’ve known about her for months.”
“I…” Nier sputtered, trailing off as he realized no explanation he could possibly give could justify his actions at this point. He could no longer deny it - Louise was a Shade, responsible for the deaths of dozens of residents of Seafront. All those times he’d heard her moving around the ship when he arrived, the crunching noises, the way he so frequently seemed to be interrupting her in the middle of something important…it all snapped into place.
Each time, she’d been feeding. On humans. Nier’s neighbors, his acquaintances, all under his nose.
All while he gave her everything she ever wanted.
Peeking through her fingers, Louise spotted Nier, and her eyes widened. Hunching forward, she managed to slip past Kainé’s blade and ran to Nier, hiding behind his leg, trembling uncontrollably.
“Holy shit.” Kainé shook her head in disbelief, her disgust clear on her face. Louise let out a particularly forceful gurgle in Kainé’s direction, and her face contorted in horror.
“D - Daddy?”
“What…?” Nier muttered, his brow furrowing. Louise continued “speaking,” and the more she “said,” the worse Kainé seemed to take it, her face turning deep red, shaking her head repeatedly, her hands beginning to shake.
“Nier…” Kainé growled, looking at him with a vitriol that Nier had never seen on her before. “Have you…Jesus Christ, Nier, have you been fucking this Shade?”
How the hell did she…?
Nier’s clear shock at Kainé’s deduction and his subsequent silence was all the confirmation Kainé seemed to need, and it was too much for her to bear. Her complexion shifted from red to green, and, hunching over, she vomited, her legs shaking so badly that she seemed barely able to keep herself upright. Emil floated to her side, attempting to help her stay standing, but she harshly batted his hand away, wiping her mouth as she glared up at Nier.
“We need to put that fucking thing in the ground, Nier,” Kainé snarled. “And maybe you’ll be next. Haven’t decided yet.”
“NO!”
The protest came not from Nier, but from Louise - it was the clearest word she’d ever spoken, and when she screamed it, the room exploded. Dozens of tentacles burst out of the little girl, engulfing the room and shattering the walls, grabbing Nier, Kainé, and Emil and harshly ejecting them from the ship, launching the trio straight through the window and onto the sandy beach outside. Weiss followed them out a few seconds later, apparently having been similarly ejected.
“Louise!” Nier cried, watching in horror as a massive, undulating shape emerged from the wreckage of the ship, twisted and grotesque, an enormous mouth where its head should be, two childlike faces emerging from the twin masses of tentacles on either side of it. Casting itself upwards towards the sky, the mouth opened, and out of it emerged the shape of Louise, now fully converted into her natural Shade form.
“What the fuck!?” Kainé shouted, looking upon the massive Shade in disbelief. “That thing…how did it get that large!?”
“Its diet, presumably,” Weiss declared, casting a pointed look at Nier as he made his explanation. “It’s time to act, lad. If we don’t stop her…Seafront will be no more. And that will be just the start. We cannot allow that to happen!”
Nier knew this. He understood it. Louise, provoked by Kainé and empowered by the victims she’d consumed, had spiraled out of his control, out of anyone’s control, and, left unchecked, she could bring about total ruin. He had facilitated this, allowed her to reach this point, and it fell on him to make things right.
Even so, as he launched into battle alongside Kainé, Emil, and Weiss, Nier could feel that his heart wasn’t in it. His swings were off the mark, his movements lethargic, focused on self-preservation rather than maximizing damage. His cohorts were too focused on the fight to notice, but he was putting them at an even larger disadvantage than they already were, fighting on the back foot, firmly in Louise’s territory. It was disgraceful, to choose a murderous Shade over his friends. But Louise wasn’t just a Shade - she’d become his companion, his partner.
When he looked upon her, peering out from the massive shell she now inhabited, all Nier could see in his mind was Yonah, his sword cleaving her in two, condemning her to the abyss. And when Louise regenerated the damage she’d endured, when she let out her sonorous scream, Nier knew they didn’t stand a chance. His sword dropped to his side as the sonic wave hit, and his vision went black to the melody of Louise’s bittersweet symphony.
+
Nier awoke to a rumbling noise, one that felt as though it was engulfing the entire world. He opened his eyes to the sight of sand, and of Louise just offshore, still screeching out her siren song, and briefly wished that she had simply killed him. To his right were Kainé and Emil, both completely laid out - from this distance, he couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead. Weiss was face-down in the sand next to him, the tome just as spent as the rest of them.
This was a catastrophic loss. The way Louise had spiraled out of control so quickly blindsided Nier, leaving him utterly unprepared for the fallout of her actions, of his actions, and those things all swirled around in his head as he struggled to his feet, using his sword for stability, staring up at the massive, undulating form of the sweet little girl he’d become so enamored with over the past several months.
She would destroy Seafront soon, if she wasn’t stopped.
She could destroy the entire world. A world that - Nier hoped - still contained things he cared about.
Still contained Yonah.
He nearly fell to his knees again, as the waves of realization washed over him. All of this - the deaths in Seafront, the shattering of his personal relationships with his teammates, Louise’s sudden berserk state - all of it was his fault. He could try to pass the buck upwards, shrug off his behavior on those who had done him wrong first, but in the end, Nier always had a choice to go back to the ship, a choice to engage Louise in a relationship no girl her (apparent) age should ever be in. It was his choice to ignore the warning signs, ignore Weiss, ignore his own fucking instincts.
And now, finally, he had to make it right.
Sword in one hand, Weiss’s still-unconscious form in the other, Nier stalked towards Louise, finding purchase on one of her many massive tentacles in order to begin the arduous climb towards her “true” body, still out in the open while she wailed out her ballad. It was more than a little troubling to Nier that he could make out the shapes of her words much clearer than before - as he ascended, he was treated to a tale of misery, of hope, of faith. All Louise ever wanted was to be human, and she saw fit to scream that out to the heavens, in hope that it would, one day, come true.
The little sailor girl wound down her song as Nier reached the summit, taking notice of his arrival. Weiss had woken back up, though he was clearly still severely fatigued from the fight against Louise, willingly subjecting himself to the embarrassment of being carried under Nier’s arm. From that vantage point, he offered Nier simple, quiet words of caution.
“Do not give in, lad…” Weiss croaked out. “She is…our enemy. You have to take her out.”
Even in this monstrous state, her main body nearly three times Nier’s size, Louise reacted the way she always did to seeing him, happily gurgling and clapping her hands together. The familiar sight was almost enough to break Nier’s resolve right then and there, his grip on his blade tightening to try and keep himself focused on the task at hand.
“Oh, Louise…”
Nier bit his lip, staring at the girl that he’d lost himself in.
She was a Shade.
She was a murderer.
She was a monster.
She wore Yonah’s ribbon and reminded Nier of her.
She wore the ferryman’s distinct red bag like a trophy.
Nier dropped his sword.
“Lad -”
“Shut up, Weiss.”
Nier walked up to Louise, taking her hand in his.
“I’m…I’m so sorry, Louise,” Nier choked out, tears beginning to leak out and roll down his cheeks. “Everything I’ve done to you…none of it was right. None of it was fair. You…”
Nier looked down, catching Weiss’s eye, and carefully allowed the tome to slip out of his grip, floating freely in position.
“You deserved so much better from this world,” Nier continued, shaking his head. “So much better…”
Leaning in, he wrapped his arms around Louise’s waist, and the Shade responded in kind, closing her eyes and hunching over to engulf the love of her life in her embrace. Nier wished that he’d had the chance to fully, properly communicate with her, just once, just to understand her a little bit more.
Perhaps, in the next life.
Louise let out a choked gurgle, and Nier pulled back, tears streaming down his face as he looked up at her, a red lance pierced through her forehead. Weiss dropped down to Nier’s feet, having exhausted the little stamina he’d managed to build up by firing the attack, and Nier scooped up the tome, stepping away from Louise as her form began to dissolve. She stared at him for a moment, then looked to her hands as they began to split apart, the particles making up her body vanishing into the wind.
“…is….w…ld…”
She was speaking again, though the words remained lost in her gurgling, undulating voice. Louise focused on Nier again, and even as her massive lower body began to collapse, even as she faded away, she offered the man who first discovered her a smile.
“F…l…of…beauty…”
In a flash, the rest of Louise imploded - her Shade form collapsed, and Nier and Weiss plummeted towards the ground, enduring a hard landing on the soft, sandy beach. Nier was certain, as he rolled onto his back in agony, that he’d broken several bones in the process, but the physical pain didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the knives stabbing at his heart.
Nearby, Kainé and Emil began to stir - they’d survived, after all. The thought was one that should have filled Nier with relief, and yet, as he stared at the cloudy sky overhead, he felt noting at all, an empty, gnawing void where his gratitude should have been.
Two objects slowly fluttered down from the sky, landing next to Nier, and he scooped them up gingerly, groaning in pain as his shoulder barked back at him, having taken a decent chunk of his landing. He quickly recognized Yonah’s ribbon, and he scrambled with his good hand to stick it into his chestplate, resolving to deliver it back to her once they rescued her. The other object was a damp piece of paper, folded in half, and Nier hesitated, recognizing what it was immediately. He realized, however, that he truly had no choice in the matter.
I owe her this.
Louise’s last words were a simple message, written more clearly than anything she’d ever managed before, and it shattered Nier’s heart all over again, leaving him to sob and wail as peace finally returned to Seafront, the little mermaid in the shipwreck vanquished for good.
“I LOVE YOU.”
+
“He’s not taking it well, you know.”
Devola took a long swig of the drink in her hand, holding the bottle by its neck. She peered through her unkempt bangs at her twin sister, busying herself with paperwork at her desk, as she always did. How the fuck was there this much busywork to be done in this village? Devola was certain it was just an excuse to keep from having to interact with people most of the day.
Whether she was faking it or was doing actual work of importance, Popola remained focused on the task she’d made for herself, ignoring Devola’s attempt at starting a conversation. The Seafront affair was a week in the rear view mirror, and Nier had taken the unexpected step of returning to the village, though in this case “returning” meant “shutting himself in his childhood home and refusing visitors.” Today, however, it seemed that Nier’s comrades had gotten through to him, and his home now stood vacant, as he and his cohorts departed to confront the Shadowlord.
“You know he had been fucking that little Shade girl, right? Wonder where he picked that up from.”
That got Popola to put down her pen, glaring at her twin.
“What point are you trying to make here?” Popola snapped. “Losing Louise was a setback for our contingency plans. Plus, the tragedy of it all…no matter how hard she tried, she was never going to be human the way she wanted. Just a Gestalt with no shell, floating on the water for eternity. What Nier was doing with her…he’s responsible for his own actions. That’s all there is to that.”
“Mhm. Surely there was no way for us to know he was capable of this.”
Popola’s expression darkened.
“Have another drink, Devola.”
Devola took the cheap shot in stride, taking another long swig from her bottle, crossing one leg over the other as she adjusted herself on the couch in Popola’s office.
“They’re going to reach the castle soon. We should be prepared.”
“I know exactly where they are, Devola,” Popola said. “We have time. Trust me, we will not be late.”
Glancing over her paperwork one more time, Popola set the small stack aside and leaned forward on her desk.
“I have an appointment. Are you staying or going?”
Right on cue, a knock came at the door, and Devola sighed, taking another sip as she made up her mind.
“I’ll stay this time.”
Popola smiled, adjusting herself in her seat before calling in the new arrival - a young boy, his face already flushing deep red as Popola beckoned him over.
“Time for your check-up.”