don't mind me just crying about the epic of Gilgamesh again. they/them pronouns for enkidu and guda, talk of death

Maybe he was wrong.

He'd been wrong before-maybe it wouldn't end like this. Maybe if he just appeased Ishtar, maybe if he gave in to the gods...

Enkidu would never forgive him.

The stars were bright above them, lying together in the plains surrounding Uruk. Enkidu slept peacefully, knowing not of their fate.

...Gilgamesh knew he was right.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

Yes, that had to be it. Three timelines, created by minuscule discrepancies? Preposterous.

Nothing was quite wrong enough to cause any problems with the timeline, anyway. A dead child here, a survivor there. Three wars, three ways to die.

Gilgamesh never told Kirei why he stopped caring. It became clear what timeline they were in the moment the war began.

He did lose his mind.

Yet Gilgamesh was hale and whole when he saw the timeline diverge.

"You can see the future?"

Ozymandias sounded dubious.

"Yes."

"Then you know how this ends?"

Gilgamesh hesitated.

It was blurry, uncertain.

He knew things he probably shouldn't-he knew with certainty what Archaman was hiding. He knew, too, of what would happen after the Grand Order was completed. He knew of bitter ice, of prophesied ends. Of conquerors and epochs, of lost civilizations, another corrupt version of the Knights of the Round and of a great forest at the edge of everything.

Beyond it all, the story continued. Stretching on and on, a life too short and a life extended. A martyr and their knight.

"...I see something."

He saw himself, too, at the end of the world. A final guardian of Humanity.

With any luck, he would never have to go to such extremes.

"Did you see this horror, Gilgamesh?"

Ozymandias was always the first to question him. Always the first to challenge his abilities.

Gilgamesh knelt before the inferno.

"I saw it," he said, softly, in disbelief. "I didn't think it would come to this."

A warm hand clasped his shoulder, and he closed his eyes.

"Look upon my works, Ye Mighty."

Mash lay unconscious behind them, her bleeding master in her arms.

"...I speak of the beginning."

Ea, destroyed, shattered into a thousand pieces, had already rent the earth in two.

"And kneel before me."

They were the last line of defense. Humanity's last resort.

"Die and be silent-."

Two kings, martyrs in the face of a cataclysm.

"Ramesseum Tentyris!"

"Enuma Elish."

In all his years, through the trials he suffered, Gilgamesh never thought it would come to this. Dying to save the last two humans-dying to save the billions who died cursing the gods that abandoned them. He never thought his cruelest premonition would come true.

At the end of all things, the earth solidified beneath him. The sun beat down from above, soft grass grew beneath his feet, and for the first time in this second life, he saw beyond this cataclysm.

The sky stretched over Antarctica, blue and clear, for the first time in years.