Kaguya became conscious to the sound of air rushing into a small white room. Depressurisation, she thought, surprising herself with that knowledge. Where am I ? White walls, blinding white light. She thought of the lunar capital, then quickly rejected that thought like it disgusted her. Not there. The air was rushing in through the opening doorway, splitting open like an elevator arriving at its destination, a shell being painfully prised open, forcing her back into the world. She felt groggy, tired, despite having no memory of what she'd been doing over the past… how long ? She shook the thought away. Time had no real meaning for her anyway. A gap in her memory was no real loss. It was that much time less that she actually had to remember living through, time that she didn't have to carry the memories of with her like baggage. It was most likely a good thing.

The sliding doors came to a halt with a clank; the white light now less blinding (or was it her eyes getting used to it ?), she could see the corridor before her. A white-grey metal tube extending outwards, dividing itself, interrupted only by the occasional pulsing diode. Dead silence. She stepped out of the room (her room ?), relinquishing the safety she somehow felt it offered her. Her ballerina shoes (old fashioned, noble-looking; alien against the cold steel floor) made a soft tapping sound with every step she took. They echoed horribly far. Alone…?

Aimless, she wandered down the corridors, turning left or right at random as they seemed to wind on forever. Images of her being digested by a giant mechanical beast surfaced in her mind. A soft, bitter laugh escaped her lips at the thought. In a way, it wouldn't be much different, if I was eaten alive. The whole time, I'd also be confused, conscious, until I was shat out, intact, at the other end. Indigestible. Nothing in this universe can stomach me. During the minutes of quasi-silence later, she wondered where the "other end" was, where the anus of these entrails would be. She didn't want to wander these corridors for much longer. Maybe, go back to the white room ? Then what ?

She was lost, despite her lack of destination. She felt like she could remember something, but there was still a screen of fog in her brain preventing her; deep down, she knew why she was here, the corridors even felt familiar somehow, (was it a good kind of familiar ? She was unsure) but she couldn't quite access the memories. Frustrating. She had often wished she could do away with memories, but now, it was a loss of control that she resented.

And then, she wandered into a room with a massive window on one wall : in a glance, the fog around her memories was blown away.

Sprawled out in front of her was an infinite darkness, tarnished only by tiny specks of light covering it like a rash. It was a sight she was very familiar with. Her first thought was home; the view reminded her of her time on the moon. But "home" repulsed her, it had rejected her. Found her indigestible. She felt no homesickness, she wouldn't have returned there if she could. She hated herself for still having thoughts of it as home, even after all these years (how many was it, now ? That was a different life, back then. A different person.). She had no home. Nowhere to consider home.

Her second thought was of the night sky from Gensokyo, the place where she had lived (stayed, existed) for so long. This wasn't it. This was much more vivid, more present, closer. She had spent millennia looking up at the night sky, burning every pinprick of light into her retinas. Knowing she'd end up drifting amongst them, one day. Her short-lived companions. These were not her stars, she knew that for sure. That meant she had travelled. Far. And so she remembered, now. She was aboard the mining ship, the Red Dwarf.

She had lived for too long on Earth : that's what she had told herself, at least. She had convinced herself that a possible cure for her all-consuming feelings of existential dread, her fear of eternity, was tied to moving forwards; she had tried isolation, reducing her stimuli as much as possible until the days sped by in a indeterminate blur that she didn't have to think about, but that was worse, so instead of trying to live less, she wanted to try living more. To travel. See the universe. Both she and it were infinite, after all : one in time, one in space. A perfect match, was it not ? She could explore it forever, constantly moving forwards, never having to tie herself down to one place, never letting her existence become stale. Never having to look back to her past, never being able to look at anything that reminded her of the expanse of time behind her that was only getting longer, would always be getting longer, yet not getting any more full of any kind of meaning. A bullet moving through time, she didn't want to think about the air vacuum she left in her wake. By travelling, remaining constantly in motion, she might be able to trick herself into feeling like she was living a succession of fulfilling, decent-lengthed lives, rather than a single live stretched out infinitely, painfully, yet that refused to ever snap. That's what she hoped.

And so she had bought herself a position on Red Dwarf. Not to work, but to travel : a tourist, a tolerated stowaway. She remembered the time she had spent here quite fondly. The people had mostly been friendly, interacted with her. It was nice. But more importantly, she had a destination, something to look forwards to, something that would help break up eternity. But where had they all gone ? She felt a sting in her heart (panic ?) as the silence around her closed in further, pressing hard against her ear drums. Were they all elsewhere ? The Red Dwarf was the size of a city, she told herself, grasping at a possible comfort she didn't really believe. She didn't believe it because she had also remembered the purpose of the white room : it was the stasis chamber.

Before she could quite process what that meant, a screen on the wall opposite to the window flickered on. Hovering over a black background was a face very familiar to her.

"Eirin ?" She asked. Talking to a screen had become normal to her during her time aboard the ship; talking to this element of her past, not so much.

"Hello, Princess," it replied. Not completely alone, she thought with a rush that was probably relief."How are you feeling ? Still confused, I should expect. That would be a normal side effect of being in the stasis chamber for so long." So it was confirmed, she had skipped time. But how long was "so long" ? By whose standards ? For an immortal, what could even be considered a long time ? Time had no meaning for either of them. None at all. They both knew that. So, why did it bother her…?

"What are you doing here, Eirin ?" Kaguya asked. It wasn't her most pressing question, not by a long shot. It wasn't even the first thing she would have asked about Eirin, but she asked it anyway. Her other questions were too worrying, too real. Right now, Eirin didn't feel real. That made it safer.

"I'm here, yet I'm also not quite here, Princess. You see, I couldn't stand to let you leave on your own, forever. It was much too dangerous." Bullshit, I'm immortal. Nothing is dangerous. She often wished she could experience real danger. She had heard the saying that danger was the spice of life. She couldn't taste that spice so long as she had the knowledge that all danger would have no lasting consequences, ever. Eternity was too overwhelmingly bland for anything to be able to affect its taste. "That's why, after having visited the Red Dwarf together, before it took off, I managed to make some adjustments to the ship's main AI. Just a little failsafe, in case something went wrong. In simple terms, I inserted an AI version of myself designed to protect you, which would take over if need ever be." This was just like her, Kaguya thought, glared. Motivated by her endless guilt over letting Kaguya make the biggest mistake of her life, she had devoted herself to making eternity tolerable, or at least less excruciating. Not that it had worked, could work. Nothing could make eternity anything less that torture. And Kaguya suspected that Eirin also knew that. The sage's guilt was stifling, it clung to her every action, tainting them. Living in Eientei, Kaguya had tried to see her actions in a positive light, to ignore the ugly motivation behind Eirin's kindness, but millennia had eroded away at her ability to believe that the lunar sage truly still considered her a friend, instead of a simple burden. She's only with me out of guilt. She'd be better off if I left. That idea had taken root and grown into a healthy, robust weed wrapping around her brain over the millennia. Near the end of her time on Earth, Kaguya had felt physically sick whenever she had had to interact with Eirin. The guilt had infected her, too. Guilt over inflicting guilt. A vicious cycle. It had been one of her motivating factors for leaving, for escaping, Earth. And yet, here Eirin was once again, albeit an artificial version of herself. Dump all her guilt into an AI and blast it off into space. At least her real self is free of me.

Curiosity grew in Kaguya's mind when she remembered Eirin mentioned only activating in an emergency. The stasis. Why ? "What happened, then ?" she demanded. No need for any particular politeness. Eirin wasn't real. "Why was I in stasis ?" A map opened up of the screen, next to Eirin's face : it was a map of the Red Dwarf, cross-sectioned to one of the upper floors. One of the walls was flashing red.

"Do you see this part of the ship, Princess ? It has been damaged. A massive radiation leak flooded through the ship, fatal to all those exposed to it. Of course, I was here for this sort of situation : I reacted instantly, getting the service bots to shove you in the stasis chamber before the radiation could get to you. Before anyone knew what was going on, in fact." Was that pride in her voice ? Eirin had always enjoyed displaying her own competence. Hypercompetence. Of course, she was a genius. But it was that competence that had gotten Kaguya stuck in eternity (that, and her own curiosity, but she refused to acknowledge this). She ended up resenting that competence more than anything. "Sadly, the Red Dwarf wasn't equipped with anything to handle a radiation leak properly, so the only way to make the ship safe again was to wait for the radiation levels to decrease naturally." Kaguya felt her stomach drop. She had read books, she had educated herself. She knew that Eirin had just casually mentioned putting her in stasis for over three million years. Time had no meaning to her, and yet… By comparison, the timespan she had just skipped considerably dwarfed all of her conscious existence, even though she already felt like she had lived far too long. Yet both with or without having lived those extra millions of years, everything she had been through would still be nothing but an infinitesimally small fraction of what she still had to live. It was still absolutely nothing, nothing at all. She was no closer to death. A single loud sob burst its way out of her, twisting her features in despair, before disappearing just as fast. An outburst of pain from the depths of herself still able to feel that kind of emotion. This was why she didn't let herself think about what eternity truly meant. Block it out. Block it all out.

"Sadly, there was only room for one of you in the stasis chamber. Quite a design flaw, if you ask me." Kaguya hadn't asked, but nodded slowly anyway. Maybe it was for the best, she considered. Any surviving human would just go and die, she'd outlive them all. She'd inevitably have ended up alone anyway, and a human lifespan was nothing by her scale of time. What had she expected ? The colony on the Red Dwarf would have been able to sustain itself, to reproduce. She may have been able to sit at its centre, the colony's immortal queen, for quite some time, but something would have gone wrong eventually. She always knew she'd end up alone. This was just a lot sooner than she had hoped.

"It's just you and me then, Eirin. Just like old times…" Right now, she felt no fondness for the times she evoked. She thought back to her time in Eientei, when she had frozen the entire mansion in time, in a permanently unchanging state, just to hide from the lunarians. Back then, she was thankful for Eirin's companionship. She hadn't grown to resent her yet. Times have changed.

"Well, not quite…" Eirin hesitated for a second. Unusual, Kaguya noted. Then, the map on the screen was replaced with the feed from a video camera. Sitting with its back against the wall of a corridor, motionless, was a human figure, dressed in red and white, half obscured from the camera by her ankle-length silvery hair. Despite being unable to see their face, Kaguya let out a gasp. She'd have recognised that person anywhere. "Mokou…?" She half asked, half exclaimed in a forced whisper. Eirin nodded. In her mind, Kaguya retracted her thoughts about nothing being able to make eternity more tolerable. If anything could, it was Mokou. Mokou !

"But, how come she's…?"

"I told her about you plan to leave Earth behind. It got her so angry that she went and bargained her way into a position on the ship. She was working as the lowest ranking member of the ship down on the lower decks. Which, of course, explains why you two hadn't crossed paths yet. It seems like she wasn't ready to let go of you, Princess." In truth, was I ? Kaguya was amazed. Despite the slight irritation over Eirin's meddlesome nature, she mostly felt overwhelming gratitude towards her. She knew she was never enough by herself, so she had found the one thing that could actually help with the princess's journey through eternity : someone in the same situation as her, someone who understood. Someone who she cared for. Love mixed with shared pain, love from their shared pain. Pain shared, pain mutually inflicted, their suffering was what brought them together. That was far too simple an explanation of the immortal's relationship, but it's how Kaguya would have started. Over the millennia spent on Earth, they had parted ways many times, only to end up together again. Together, eternity almost had meaning. Instead of being purely restrained by immortality, they played with its boundaries, they played with death. Death…

"Wait, so if there was a radiation leak, but only one stasis chamber, does that mean she…?" Again, Eirin nodded.

"Luckily for you, she's immortal. No matter how many times the radiation killed her, she would always come back to life. In fact, it was quite a useful way of knowing when it would be safe to let you out again. She hasn't died in quite a long time, by now. Not of radiation, at least." Cold, so cold. Had the real Eirin been like this ? Kaguya didn't think so. Maybe the AI truly was focused solely on preserving her, even at the cost of others. She hated that idea. After all, shouldn't Eirin feel just as guilty for Mokou's immortality ? Kaguya thought so. Maybe she'd tell her that. Maybe she'd tell her all the things she never dared to tell the real Eirin. Let the anger out. But not now.

Kaguya stared at Mokou's motionless body. No, not quite motionless : some strands of hair moved in time with a very slow breathing cycle. Kaguya had seen the true motionlessness of death of Mokou's body enough times to be able to tell. Death. Mokou had spent millions of years; dying again and again, unable to escape it ? That was Kaguya's greatest fear, despite knowing it was inevitable for both of them. She imagined the suffering it must have been for Mokou. Intense, yet so, so boring. Can something both be torturous and boring ? Boredom was a form of torture, she knew that, really. Physical pain wasn't the problem here. She knew Mokou had suffered, and so she tried to feel compassion for her, or at least some form of remorse, but she had to face the facts : she was smiling. In a way, she was glad it had happened to Mokou. After all, Mokou was not her, despite what they might have felt during certain periods of quasi-fusion. Mokou was not her, and so it wasn't her who had had to live through that suffering. It could have been, but wasn't. That was a positive. But what had really made that cruel smile creep onto her face was the fact that Mokou had been alone and suffering for so, so long, and now she would be able to come and deliver her from all the loneliness and pain, act as a saviour, put Mokou in her debt. It shifted the power balance oh so far in her favour, and she loved it. She was remembering how much she loved the power struggles, the games in their relationship. Possibly leaving Mokou behind on Earth was her second biggest mistake, she decided. Mokou brought out the best in Kaguya, but also the worst. She accentuated her, multiplied her. Made the faint sketch of her personality into a fully coloured drawing. Although… Thoughts began to creep into the princess's mind, doubts wiping the smile away. Will she even remember me ? Will she…

"Eirin ? Is Mokou still…? There's no way, after all this time, that she's still… sane ?" The word didn't feel quite right in her mouth, but it was the best she could think of at the time. She knew full well that she had shared with Mokou many moments that, to anyone not cursed with eternity, wouldn't be considered as "sane". Killing each other for fun was just one example. No, what she really wanted to ask, what she was really worried about, was whether or not Mokou was still present. Whether or not she was still looking at the person she once knew, or if eternity had washed away all her insides, leaving a husk in the shape of the only person who could still make her feel anything. Had their memories together gone ? Sharing them with Mokou was what still made her feel even slightly real. If Mokou wasn't around to remember their shared suffering, did it even mean anything ? Had it happened, was it real ? She didn't trust herself to be able to tell, and it's not like the AI counted as a witness. Losing Mokou would be like losing her senses : things would be happening around her, to her, but she'd have nothing to filter them through, to confirm them, to make them real. They were part of each other, they were essential to one another. Mokou's mind was an important function of hers, she couldn't lose it without losing most of herself.

"Don't worry, Princess. She's still the Mokou that you know. After all, the Hourai Elixir preserves not only your body, but your mind, too. More or less. At the very least, her memories are intact, and she's fully aware of her surroundings." Kaguya felt relief. It was quickly embittered by panic : she had realised the implications of Eirin's words. Even when completely alone, dying in a perpetual loop of suffering, the Elixir would keep her mind functional. This was terrible. One of the few solaces from her inevitable fate that she clung to was that she always thought she had the possibility of eventually escaping into a state of unconsciousness, or at least unthinkingness; a state as close to death as she was allowed. This was her "way out", her exit, and it had just been slammed shut in her face. Everything she had just been thinking about preserving memories soured in her thoughts : there would be no escape. Mokou would remember those millions of years of suffering. She would have been conscious throughout all of them, as would Kaguya, one day. She repressed the thought. She had already had one outburst today, after all. Save some emotion for the millennia to come. Spread them thin over the years.

"Would you like to go pay her a visit, Princess ?" Kaguya nodded. The two were drawn together again. As it should be.

When the door to Mokou's corridor slid open, Kaguya stayed in the entrance in silence. She observed. To her, it had been maybe a few centuries since they had last met. Not long enough to miss her, not properly. But to Mokou ? The white-haired immortal twitched, then turned her neck, very slowly. Her eyes set upon Kaguya, glazed over at first, unseeing. Then, they focused. Mokou screamed. It was a scream that tried to express too many emotions at once, and ended up expressing nothing but raw emotion itself. She scrambled on all fours towards Kaguya like a panicked spider, grasping at the princess's dress and hands, touching them, feeling them all over as if to test if they were real. Looking up from the ground at Kaguya, Mokou's eyes were filled with such hope, such confusion, maybe also hatred, and all she could manage was a faint "K… Kaguya…?"

Kaguya felt powerful. She had become Mokou's deliverance, her ray of light, and she hadn't even had to suffer for it. In fact, it was her fault that Mokou had suffered so much. She was in control, right now. She could do anything. She thought about kicking her, she thought about fucking her. It wasn't like either of those actions would have consequences, not in the long term. And everything became the long term. That's how eternity worked. Everything was eventually erased, forgiven. Wasn't that the basis of their relationship ? Possibly, but still not quite. Nothing was actually erased, it just lost importance with time. They had no choice but to forgive each other, because they had nobody else to turn to, anyway. After a while, they started skipping any resentment, any consideration for consequences; it was all meaningless. They didn't have the emotional capacity to care about such things. They just wanted to feel alive, and the only way to do that was with each other. They couldn't forgive, because their resentment held no meaning.

The best part of this situation, Kaguya thought, the mean smile returning, was that it was just the two of them now. Mokou needed her more than ever, and she was more in control than ever. She had the power to make or break Mokou. And so, she took the option that would solidify her position above her.

"I missed you," she lied, helping Mokou to her feet.