Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She shoves Luna into the crew quarters, where Alice now resides. 

Clover wants to do something kinder for Alice. Her friend deserves something more befitting of her life. They took the time to lug that old woman’s corpse to the infirmary, and she’s just some unfortunate stranger. Shouldn’t they have the decency to let Alice rest somewhere softly? Shouldn’t she have had that much in recompense for her brutal death? 

“Hey!” She barks when she notices Luna’s gaze slip over her shoulder and land longingly at the door Clover’s just kicked shut. “Look at me! Don’t act all innocent!” She jabs her manicured nail into Luna’s chest, glancing off a pearlescent button. “You know exactly what I’m here for!” 

Luna shrinks into herself, hugging her arms close. She makes a worried noise that she hardly parts her lips for. 

Clover approaches her with a quickened step and Luna stumbles back, their movements so synchronised it’s as if they’re dancing. “I know you killed Alice! Tell me the truth and I’ll let you live! Just tell me! I’m only going to give you one chance. One! If you lie or try to play dumb or something, then  I’ll… I’ll kill you right in front of her! Do you understand me?” She questions sharply. She doesn’t have much experience in this. Interrogation was never her strong suit. Clover is chronically incapable of keeping a cool head in times of crisis. It happened a year ago, and it’s happened on basically every mission she’s ever been sent on, and it’s happening now. 

“Clover,” the other girl stammers, and it occurs to Clover that she has no idea how old Luna is. “I really didn’t kill Alice.” 

“Liar!” Clover snaps, propelled forward by a vicious momentum. She touches the injection gun stashed away in her pocket. This is as good a talisman as Clover will get now. There will be no more namesakes, no more allies, no more Alice. “You had to have killed her! Had to! You’re the only one who-- you killed the old woman as well, didn’t you!” 

Luna shakes her head so hard it starts unravelling her fancy little braid. “No! No, I didn’t do anything! I didn’t… do… anything,” she says, a mournful note to her voice. “I couldn’t. Alice wasn’t murdered,” she explains calmly. “She has been infected with Radical-6, just as Quark has been and she committed--” 

“Don’t finish that sentence!” Clover warns. “Don’t you dare tell me that she-- that she would-- Alice would never do that! She’d never do that to me! Never ever! Take it back! Take it back!” 

Luna casts a pitying glance at the floor, craning her neck so that she can see Alice. She turns back to Clover and gasps, “I’m really sorry, Clover, but it’s the truth. It’s so awful but it is what happened. I’m really, really sorry.” 

“Shut up! God, just shut up! You’re so fucking annoying! It’s always like this, everyone is always like this! You’re pissing me off! It was like this when my brother died! No one actually fucking cared! You can say you’re sorry all you like but you don’t actually give a shit, do you!” 

“Clover, I didn’t realise that your brother--” 

“Oh, he’s not dead. He’ll kill Zero Sr. if he finds out what happens, so long as I don’t get there first. Cos you’re probably Zero, aren’t you? That’s the only way you could have moved the rooms around, the only reason you’d kill the old woman, kill Alice! I won’t let you get away with it, I swear to God I have had it up to here with people who think they can just kill people and get away with it!” 

“She was infected with Radical-6,” Luna repeats. “And the virus caused her to kill herself. I promise I had nothing to do with it! I would never do something like that. I couldn’t!” 

The insistence nags at Clover, nagging at her insides. It creates an irresistible frisson throughout her body, one that implores her to act. Clover’s gut instinct is the first thing she trusts. She’s done the maths, she’s calculated the odds, and at the end of the long, bloody road, Luna stands there, knife in hand. Clover knows who Alice is and knows that she wouldn’t succumb to some measly virus! Clover’s never even seen the woman develop a cold, for crying out loud! 

Her final trump card: Clover produces the injection gun with gusto and waves it around cruelly. “Say that again!” She dares. “Tell me that she killed herself again, and you’ll be the next to join her!” She yells, spittle flying past her teeth. 

On reflex -- and it must be a reflex because Luna has been so good at taking what comes to her thus far -- Luna grabs at the gun and attempts to wrench it from Clover’s hands. She bleats like a distressed lamb as she does her best to keep the sharp needle away from her fair skin. Their fingers tangle across the barrel, the trigger, the vial. Their hands are all over each other and the gun’s body. Luna’s hands press against hers, warm and soft and wrong. It is nearly impossible to notice this wrongness, but Clover does. ABT is designed to be indistinguishable from real human flesh.  Hair, pores, scars, moles, the lot. Light’s prosthetic is lined with it. However, it isn't perfect, no matter how expensive it is. It has a slight plasticky feeling; a sensation like touching TV static.

Clover feels it now and leans into it, reminded of her brother. Luna tries to push away, but Clover snatches her other wrist, allowing the injection gun to clatter to the floor. The sensation is the same, and the conclusion is basic; both of Luna's arms are fake. 

“Clover, please let me go.” Luna pulls away, but Clover stays fast, amazed at this discovery. “I won't tell anyone. I know you're upset. I don't blame you.”

Clover ignores her, hand travelling upwards. She startles when she hits the juncture of Luna’s shoulder.  Uncaring and utterly possessed, she shoves the decorated cloth of Luna’s shirt aside. Clover's fingers tangle in the delicate golden chain of her necklace. 

“What are you doing?” Luna asks, voice pitched upwards and wavering. For the first time, Clover detects a hint of complaint in the woman’s voice. She’s so close to whining like a child. Clover wonders how much further she’d have to push to get her to lose that placid front. 

“What the hell are you?” Clover hisses, hand tensed against Luna’s collarbone. “How the hell do you have ABT here?” She thumps her fist against the artificial skin. She looks up at Luna, who suddenly has no complaints and very, very wide eyes. Her pupil is blown out, a void ringed by a thin cornflower blue. Clover is struck by how vivid it is. It’s unnaturally blue. 

…Everything about her is unnatural. 

The colour of her eyes, the colour of her hair, the porcelain skin that’s almost entirely ABT. Her kindness, her politeness, her placidity. It all adds up to one big suspicious question mark. 

“Answer me!” Clover barks. 

Luna squeaks. “How did you know?” 

“I’m clever,” she snaps, leering forward almost nose to nose with the woman. “And that isn’t an answer!” 

“I can’t-- I can’t tell you--” 

“Oh yeah?” Clover challenges. The injection gun is long gone, but Clover will always have her hands. She moves one to close around Luna’s throat. ABT is moulded to her here, too. Clover’s face twists in disgust. She jams two digits under Luna’s carotid. There’s no pulse; only a faint, ticking whirr. 

“Oh my god.” She recoils but doesn’t let go, for reasons beyond her own comprehension. You… You’re a robot?” 

“Clover--” 

“No. No! You can’t be a robot! You can’t be!” She hits her fist against Luna’s fake plastic skin again. Her hand fritzes; machinery and wiring only a thin layer beneath. “You killed Alice! You have to be human!” 

Clover can’t take this. No, no, Luna has to be-- There’s no one else! Alice’s death; the position of the knife; the old woman; the shuffled around AB rooms! No one else could have done it! Luna’s far from innocent! 

Yet, even as Clover lays the accusations at her feet, doubt comes in. It warps Clover’s perceptions. Doubt’s a weed. It needs no tending to. Now that it is planted, it will linger, and it will spread its rot and roots, unseen until it has strangled everything in its wake. Where is Clover Field now if she loses sight of the only killer she could fathom? 

Could Luna really be capable of all this? Luna? Sweet, kind, cowardly Luna, who flinches at conflict, hates to make a decision, and who blushed when Clover offered her a drink in the lounge? A killer? Cold-blooded? Clover knows what it means to be a robot, and she knows this isn’t some schlocky sci-fi movie. There’s very little that Clover knows definitively about Luna. At least, she thought she knew. Her favourite colour is green; she’s a nurse; she always allies. How much of her is a lie she’s been fed? 

“As a robot…” Luna begins tentatively, intent on digging her own grave. “Shouldn’t I be capable of operating without remorse?” 

“Oh, look at you!” Clover heaves a dry sob, helpless to the frantic emotion. She knows what this means, even if she’s yet to say it. “Talking like you aren’t capable of remorse; you ally at every opportunity! Because-- Because--” She convulses against Luna and her hands, still round her neck, spasming. “You can’t be a robot… You can’t be. You’re so… so warm. You’re so warm. I look at you, Luna, and I don’t believe it. I’ve seen you cry… and blush… and laugh…  What the hell did they make you for? Why’d they make you able to do all this shit? Just to lie to me?” 

“I’m a nurse.” 

“Should’ve saved her if you’re a nurse. You’re pointless. You’re… you’re just scrap metal. Just fake plastic…” She sniffs. “A virus that makes you kill yourself… that’s just too cruel. She wouldn’t kill herself. She wouldn’t do that. I know her.” Clover plays with the pressure around Luna’s throat. Can you even bruise this sort of ABT? Will blood rush to the place Clover touches? 

Clover can feel the bob of Luna’s throat as she swallows and speaks. “I know. It wasn’t her. It was the virus. It was the virus that did it.” 

“I wish you had killed her,” Clover whimpers. “She deserved better. A better death. A better life.” 

“Zero Sr. is a cruel person,” Luna tells her quietly, apologetically, “for doing this to you.” 

“He made you, didn’t he? You’re just his puppet. Even if you didn’t kill Alice, you’re still the enemy.” She hiccups. She tightens her grip around Luna’s pretty neck, pressing thin indents of the necklace’s chain to her fair skin. “I should still…” 

Luna struggles to respond, flinching against the lack of oxygen she has no real need for. 

“You don’t need to breathe,” Clover sneers, but drops her hands regardless. Now, they are no longer touching but still stand inexorably close. A phantom sensation tickles up and down Clover, a staticky buzz. 

“I do have some approximation of vocal cords which you were crushing,” Luna points out diplomatically. She touches her tender throat, rubbing the fresh red marks Clover dug in. 

Clover doesn’t apologise. She stares at Alice’s corpse for a long, difficult moment. She doesn’t dare blink, allowing painful tears to well up and slip down her face freely. 

“I hate you,” she hisses. “But I hate Zero more. Whoever he is, I’m going to kill him; I don’t care how noble the reason for putting me here is this time.” She whips her head towards Luna, eyes bloodshot and brimming with tears and fury. She shoves Luna’s shoulder. “Do you love him?” 

“Who? The doctor?” Luna stammers, backed up against the wall. 

“Zero Sr. The guy who made you. Do you love him?” 

“...Yes,” she admits guiltily. Clover was right earlier; Luna can’t hide her emotions for love nor money, and a robot has no use for either. Except, apparently, Luna has the capacity for the former. It disgusts Clover in no small part because she doesn’t think Luna would start lying now. 

“Then why should I give a damn about a single thing you say?” She explodes. “I mean, why the hell did he even make you! You say you’re a nurse, but what does a doctor like him need you for! What is the point of you! What is the fucking point in any of this! Alice is dead!” 

“I’m a nurse,” Luna answers again like a pre-recorded machine. 

“I don’t think he gives a shit about you. I don’t think he loves you one fucking bit. Why would he put you in this game if he gave a damn about you? No, I know what you are, Luna! I know what you were made for and let me tell you, you are deluding yourself if you think it’s to be someone’s nurse!” 

“I have… I have instructions I have to follow--” 

Clover doesn’t lend her an ear. “Do you think he would have intervened if I had hurt you? You think he would save you? You think he cares? You think anyone in this fucking place gives a shit about any of us?” She swoops down to snatch up the injection gun and shoves it close to Luna’s neck. The tubocaraine swims and sloshes around in its little vial, desperate to be unleashed into the bloodstream. “Where is he now, huh?” 

“You would effectively be killing me,” Luna explains in a high, wavering voice. “The moment you pulled the trigger, Zero Jr. would deactivate me and I would be as good as…” Luna sucks in a taut breath and leans away from the needle. “Please, Clover, don’t. I haven’t lied to you.” She squeaks like a mouse when Clover doesn’t relent. 

“The answer to the question was: he isn’t fucking here.” Clover flings the gun down, and the vial shatters in its hold, rendering the weapon useless. The chemical dribbles across the floor, releasing a pungent, bleach-like smell up into the small room. “No one is coming to save you. And as soon as you realise that you are completely and utterly fucking alone, the easier it’s gonna be.” Clover steps back from the robot and shakes out her limbs, scowling. “Do you understand me?” 

Luna nods mutely. Artificial tears well up in her eyes, and her lip trembles like a child’s, but she holds it in. She swallows harshly and looks down at the floor. “I’m… really sorry,” she says again, like that could solve anything. She sniffs. 

Clover regards her coldly. She kicks the mangled injection gun, metal and glass crunching under her foot. It spins itself over to Alice’s outstretched leg. Clover allows her eyes to flick up to her friend’s cold body, forcing herself to linger on the disturbing image, though it was seared into her eyes the moment she was discovered. 

Without another word, Clover turns on her heel and stomps off to somewhere other than here. She’d rather be anywhere else than the same room as Alice, slowly rotting, or Luna, unquestionably innocent. 

Shortly after, she runs into Dio. 

It doesn’t end well.

Chapter Text

“Junpei?” Clover asks, tugging at the handcuffs. “Your name is Junpei? I knew a Junpei.” 

Tenmyouji looks at her like she’s stupid, which is a look she’s been getting more often than not since she awoke in this god-forsaken warehouse. 

“Clover, kid… I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” 

“What?” She scoffs, inspecting where the pipe is melded to the wall. She rams her elbow into the plaster, hoping that there’s a busted support or termites or something! This is so fucking embarrassing, the two of them being overpowered by Dio. She’s supposed to be physically capable, for crying out loud. She’s trained for this! Tenmyouji’s some decrepit old man, she gets why he would lose the fight, but Clover…?

She scoffs at herself and drops the chain. It clanks unhelpfully against the pipe. 

“Clover, it’s me. It’s Junpei. From the Nonary Game.” 

“Fuck off,” she tells him blithely. 

He raises his hand, wrinkled and sagging with a prominent vein across the back of it. He rattles the chain too. “Gonna be pretty goddamn difficult with this thing on.” 

“You aren’t Junpei. Junpei’s, like, my age. And he has hair, mister! Brown hair! You…” she trails off. “You got a mole just like him, though.” She taps the corner of her eye. She remembers it well enough. It wasn’t that long ago she saw him, though he looked worse for wear. It’s a mole so close to his eye that Clover asked him once if it was a problem. Moles can get cancer, she knows; if it turned malignant, would it take his eye out along with it? Junpei had laughed and said something self-deprecating about how he’d be happier if he didn’t have to see half the shit he saw on the job. 

Tenmyouji gives one solid nod. As if she can read her mind, he says,  “Hasn’t turned cancerous yet. I still have both eyes. Unlike your brother.” 

“My brother has both his eyes,” Clover corrects instinctively. Then, she slaps a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god! What the hell! What the actual hell!” 

“I wanted to tell you,” he says morosely. He thunks his head back into the wall. “But how the hell was I supposed to go about that?” 

“Like this!” She shrieks. “Like this, except we aren’t chained to a sink and about to die, Junpei!” 

He chuckles. “Been a long time since anyone called me that. Can’t believe I never told you my family name. Would’ve saved us some time, right?” 

“There’s no way we’re gonna die here because of that blonde freak! Not after everything we’ve been through!” She screws her eyes up tight and screams for all she’s worth, even though she’s rubbed her vocal chords raw, and all that emerges from her damaged voice is a strangled, painful croak. She recoils from the ugly sound and hisses, “Just where the hell is everyone!“

Junpei Tenmyouji offers no answer, electing to flex his injured hand as pain surely flares up his elderly nerves. Clover checks her watch. There are five minutes left until the Chromatic Doors open. Even if by some miracle they escaped, they wouldn’t be able to make it downstairs in time. 

“This sucks!” She curses, a massive understatement. She lets out a scream of frustration and tries once more to pull free of the handcuffs, to no avail. 

Junpei exhales unsteadily through his nose. He sits up a little straighter. “Clover, kid, I think maybe this is it.” 

“Don’t say that! Don’t say that, okay! Weren’t you the one who told me we have to have hope, faith, love and luck? Don’t you remember?” She claws at the cold metal that traps her until her fingers are raw. “You can lay down and die, but I’m not giving him the satisfaction!” 

“We have less than five minutes--” 

“And then we have nine minutes before the muscle relaxant actually kicks in!” She argues, now trying to unscrew part of it with her nail. This is also not working. “That’s so much time!” She swallows, voice suddenly serious. “Junpei, I don’t wanna die.” She can confess that much to him, even if her pride won’t allow her to disclose it to anyone else. 

“...Neither do I,” he agrees, like it’s a revelation. 

The two of them work against the cuffs that bind them in silence, scratching, kicking, and pulling whatever might loosen. Clover knows in the back of her mind that it’s all useless; if by some miracle they escape the confines of the infirmary, the Soporil would cause them to pass out before they got through the doors. Clover pauses to wipe her eyes, wet with unwanted tears, 

A sharp pain pierces her wrist, and Clover knows with absolute certainty that they are out of time. The Soporil is in her bloodstream now and will make its way through her body until she is unable to fight off the call to unconsciousness. She remembers how quickly it took action against her when she was kidnapped, both times. She’s powerless to do anything about it. 

Her head feels like it’s been replaced with cotton wool. When she turns her head towards Junpei, she’s distantly horrified to see that he’s already passed out. 

With the last vestiges of her strength, she prods his bloody hand and tries to scrawl an indictment against Dio on her thigh. Then, at least, when their bodies are inevitably discovered, he’ll get his comeuppance. 

Her eyelids flutter shut, but she wills them open. Just as she’s losing this fight, she hears the telltale grinding of the infirmary doors opening, and an angel appears. It must be an angel; everyone else is either dead or through the Chromatic Doors by now. 

She rushes over to them, a flurry of white and lavender. Clover had expected the angel that ushered her into the afterlife to be… Well, she’s not sure. Not so worrisome, she supposes. A halo, perhaps, a dress of pure white light with matching wings. This one’s got ginger hair falling out of a complex braid and a necklace that bounces against her chest with every step. 

The beautiful woman kneels before them, fear etched on her pale face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she apologises over and over. “Don’t let it be too late,” she whispers and touches the cuffs. 

“Help him,” Clover slurs. “He’s got a baby. You gotta…” Her head lolls forward, the vision of the angel obscured by Clover’s hair and the sight of the tiled floor. The angel tilts Clover’s head up with two gentle fingers under her chin. Her touch makes Clover feel fuzzy. It’s a comforting sensation, and she can’t help but rest against it. 

“How awful of him,” she murmurs, producing something from her skirt and taking Junpei’s wrist. 

Clover hums in approval and stops fighting the Soporil. 

When Clover wakes up, she’s faintly surprised. She ought to be dead. She had failed to make it to the Chromatic Doors; the Soporil had been injected into her. It follows that the tubocaraine should’ve come next, and Clover should have gone into a dreamless sleep she never woke from. She lifts her wrist to check the time, only to find she’s unable to. 

The tell-tale pinpricks of where the bracelet’s needles sat poised are there, but no bracelet to accompany it. She frowns at the bare patch of skin. When had she taken this off? How had she taken it off? 

She rubs her eyes and sits up. It looks like she’s still in the infirmary, just on one of the beds. Across the room is her companion, the dead old lady. Clover wrinkles her nose at the sight of her. Clover’s seen corpses even before she joined SOIS (thank you very much, Akane Kurashiki!). For some reason, seeing a corpse so unremarkable disgusts her more than an atomised one. 

Then, she remembers that Alice numbers herself amongst unremarkable corpses, and she feels like she’s going to die all over again. She tucks her knees up close to her and buries her head away from the world like a small child. 

“Clover?” A soft woman’s voice cuts through her impending spiral. “Are you awake?” 

She jerks her head up and scowls at the sight. Peeking out from the partition is Luna, a robot, a nurse, and the second-to-last person she wants to see right now. (The honour of the person she wants to see least goes to Dio in a last-minute usurpation.) 

“What do you think?” She snaps. “What are you doing here, Luna? Better yet, how aren’t I dead?” She swings her legs over the side of the bed so she’s ready to take off running if the situation calls for it. 

“I’m glad you’re awake,” Luna says before answering her questions. “I removed yours and Tenmyouji’s bracelets before the tubocaraine could be injected. I… I couldn’t stand to think of him doing such a horrible thing and getting away with it.” 

“Shouldn’t you be in the third set of doors, though?” Clover asks. “With Sigma and Phi, right? You wouldn’t have had a problem getting through the door. I mean, the three of you are all alive. Unlike Alice and maybe… maybe Quark.” 

Luna shakes her head and takes a couple of steps into the sick bay. She perches herself on the bed opposite Clover, blocking the view of the dead woman. “Quark is okay. I , um, I put him in one of the treatment pods.” 

“Well where’s Tenmyouji?” Clover asks, bolting upright. “Shit, if Quark’s okay then he’s gotta know!” 

“He knows!” Luna amends quickly. “He woke up a bit before you and once I made sure there were no lingering effects of the Soporil, I let him go to the treatment centre. He’s fine. I promise, Quark is fine.” 

“Oh.” Clover lowers herself back onto the bed. She thinks about biting out something along the lines of Why should she trust Luna? But Clover’s not an idiot: Luna’s not the sort of person to lie about this. 

Luna allies at every turn and is a nurse. Luna’s a robot, and that means, if Clover remembers correctly, she’s not technically capable of hurting anyone. Certainly not a little kid like Quark. Besides, if Clover wanted further proof, all she’d have to do is look down at her unburdened wrists, red and raw though they are. 

“Why’d you do it?” Clover asks quietly, as though she’s ashamed of her own curiosity. 

“Pardon?” 

“Why’d you…” Clover waves her hand in a vague gesture. “I was a huge bitch to you. I wouldn’t have cared if I got killed if I were you. Tenmyouji, I get but… I dunno. I don’t get you, Luna.” 

“Your wrist look sore,” Luna says. “I think there’s a salve that might help in one of the cupboards.” She rises and slips out of the sick bay. 

Clover listens to the sound of cupboards opening and closing, small bottles and vials clinking together as Luna must sort through them. She hears a small, celebratory aha! and then Luna is back opposite a slightly bewildered Clover. 

“Actually,” Luna starts, halfway to twisting the lid off the tub, “would you mind if I sat by you?” 

Clover nods dumbly. She shuffles up the bed a little bit to make room for Luna. Luna fusses with her skirt, pushing the bundle of fabric aside so she’s almost shoulder to shoulder with Clover. Very gingerly, Luna takes Clover’s hand in her own. Clover feels as though she’s being held by a bird. 

“I’d prefer to be in the botanical garden for this,” Luna starts by dipping two fingers into the balm balanced in her lap. She rubs it into Clover’s sore wrists with a methodical care, not too firmly to induce pain but not so gently that it becomes annoying. “I think that’s a good place for a serious conversation.” 

“Are we having a serious conversation?” Clover asks, a little mesmerised by the way Luna’s fingers work across her skin. Clover’s always going to be aware of that sensation that only ABT produces, but it’s not as if she dislikes it. It tingles up her nerves. 

“I think so,” Luna encourages. “Considering the circumstances.” 

“The circumstance being that I know you aren’t a real person?” 

“Yes,” Luna agrees pleasantly. “That one.” 

Luna collects some more of the salve on her fingers and massages it into Clover’s sore flesh. For whatever reason, this instance sends a minor pain flaring up her arm, but it’s enough for Clover to flinch. She settles down easily, and Luna resumes her ministrations. 

Clover swallows down an odd noise. “You do this for Tenmyouji too?” 

“No,” Luna answers with a little more gravitas than Clover expects. 

“And you’d rather be here, doing this, than with Sigma and Phi?” Clover asks, terrified of the answer. 

At the mention of Sigma, Luna goes a little pink. Clover’s not sure why she’s capable of blushing. Whoever made her -- Zero Sr. -- must’ve wanted her to. Probably to make her come across as authentically human as possible, but there’s something else to it that irritates Clover that she can’t quite put her finger on. 

Eventually, Luna answers. Her hands are still cradling Clover’s wrist, but no longer soothing cream into them. Her nails tickle pleasantly against her skin, idly running up and down. “Yes. I suppose that’s what I chose.” She blinks her watery blue eyes. “I pretended to be dead in the crew quarters,” Luna admits. “I put aluminium foil under my bracelet and lay very still, like I was sleeping.” 

“What? Why?” 

“What you said to me in there broke my heart. About how no one was coming to save you and how we were alone.” She extracts her hand from Clover, and Clover tries not to feel anything about it. Luna fiddles with her necklace. “I was so, so lonely for a long time. I guess that’s why…” She squeezes the necklace as if it’ll imbue her with courage. “I saw what Dio did to you and Tenmyouji on the cameras.’ I didn’t want you to think you were alone. I couldn’t bear to pretend everything was okay and go through the Chromatic Doors knowing you and Tenmyouji were in trouble.” Luna sniffs. “So, I tried to bide my time. I should’ve come sooner, but I was worried someone would have spotted me!” 

Clover turns her head to face Luna, rather than having her exist in her peripheral vision. She’s misjudged how close they were, though, and bumps noses with the other woman. Luna lets out a surprised squeak, as she so often does. 

“You’re way too nice to be stuck with someone like me,” Clover says, breath brushing against Luna’s cheek. 

“I think you’re nice,” Luna says. “When you want to be,” she amends. “I heard you ask me to save Tenmyouji first. You didn’t have to say that. That was just plain nice,” Luna insists. 

“Luna…” She begins, feeling a little heady. It must be the lingering effects of the Soporil. “I…” 

“Yes?” 

“You’re a good nurse,” she says lamely. 

“I think you’re a good person,” Luna says, one-upping her on the compliment. “I think a lot of people would have been… horrible, if they found out the truth of what I am.” Luna’s eyes dip to look at something Clover has no hope of deducing this close up. 

“I was horrible,” Clover reminds her. 

Luna nods, and their noses bump against one another. “Before and after you knew. Which means how you acted didn’t change. Besides… you’re being nice to me now.” 

Is she? Clover hadn’t realised. She woke up still pissed off about Luna’s existence, but somewhere along the line of this interaction, she had fallen into placidity. Clover’s known for having incredible mood swings, but this… It feels like she ought to choose which side of the fence she lands on, once and for all. 

All the same, it seems sort of impossible to reconcile Luna, the nurse and Luna, Zero’s puppet. Which is it? It seems sort of impossible to think of Luna as some sort of villain right now, despite how easy it had been not even an hour ago. It’s hard to do that when she’s just confessed that she stayed behind solely to save Clover and Tenmyouji. 

“How long have they been behind the Chromatic Doors?” Clover asks. 

“Not long. It wasn’t a huge amount of Soporil. You weren’t asleep for any special length of time. Considering how long it tends to take us to go through the rooms, it should be about an hour before they return to play the AB Game,” Luna explains patiently. “Why do you ask?” 

Clover swallows. “Will you tell me more about… you know?” 

“If you like. Why is everyone’s return relevant?” 

“I guess I wanted you to show me? Alice,” she tries not to choke on the name, “said that there was some sort of engineering bay. I think she called it a GAULEM Bay? Is-- Is that the name for what you…?” 

“Show you?” Luna repeats faintly. 

“I have something I’m curious about,” Clover confesses, the thought beginning to gather more fully. It’s wrong. It’s inappropriate. She shouldn’t want to know the extent of Luna’s robot-isms. She should accept it for what it is and not try to figure out the intricacies of Luna’s personality, which isn’t really hers because Zero Sr. probably created her to be so trustworthy that people forget that they should be cautious. Clover knows that everything Luna does is done in the service of Zero Sr, done because that’s what he wants her to do. Clover wants to be proven right. 

“Okay,” Luna agrees, rising from the bed and folding her hands in front of herself. “As long as we’re back in time for the voting,” she says. “Although I suppose without the bracelets, it won’t make that much of a difference, will it?” 

“You always ally anyway,” Clover tells her, and wonders if she does so because she wants to or if she is made to by some internal program that forbids her from doing so. It’s not like betraying anyone is strictly dangerous, is it? It’s only harmful if it drops below zero. “I’m sure Sigma and Phi know that.” 

“You’re right.” Luna nods. “I think you must be right.” 

“Promise we’ll get you back in time,” she says, just to be nice.

Chapter Text

Rows and rows of dark metal skeletons with demonic red eyes line the walls, an impressive army. The eyes are illuminated at strange intervals, so Clover supposes that these ones are deactivated, or in some sort of low-power mode, at least for the time being. 

She looks to them and then to Luna, who’s picking up a wayward robot that’s slumped on the floor. She props him up on a nearby wall so that he’s sitting peacefully, eyes boring into his fellow GAULEMs on the other side of the room. His eyes, however, are dulled and lifeless. 

Luna dusts herself down and turns to Clover. She offers an explanation Clover wasn’t expecting or really interested in. “His name was G-OLM. He was here when we were looking for the cards for the AB Rooms. Zero… deactivated him.” 

G-OLM doesn’t look significant in any way compared to the other mechanical things around this room. She doesn’t know why he gets a name when she assumes none of the others do. She assumes them to be cannon fodder. Monkeys that go do their masters bidding and, like horses who fall down, get shot when they can’t do it anymore.

Clover converts the language into more human terms. “Which means ‘killed him.’” 

Luna nods. “Essentially. He… Oh, it seems so silly now that you know! He was going to tell Sigma and Alice that there was a GAULEM right in the middle of them. Me.” She fiddles with her necklace again, the same nervous tic. Clover’s got a bad habit of picking her nails, which is why she paints them. She thinks if she makes something pretty, she won’t want to ruin it. 

She looks down at her hands, still chafed from her escape attempts despite the salve. Her nails are chipped, some ragged, and raw at the bed. 

She looks at Luna. She looks at the GAULEM endoskeletons. 

“And… Zero didn’t want them to know,” Clover fills in the blanks. “But I know.” 

“I’ve disobeyed a direct order,” Luna says, a little more matter of fact than she tends to. “That’s grounds for termination. I’ve probably mucked it all up! The whole--” She buries her face in her hands. “I should have… I don’t know! I don’t know what I should’ve done.” She flounces onto the metal block of a table at the centre of the room. She wipes at her eyes and lowers her hand, folding them into her lap. She sniffs. “You were right,” she tells Clover. “I am alone. I am a bad person. I mean, I’m not even a person! I’m just a jumble of metal and plastic that they gave a voice to. You said so. You were right.”

“I’m… glad you disobeyed your orders,” Clover says, approaching Luna so that she’s standing just in front of her. “I mean, it means I’m alive. And I’m glad I’m alive,” she continues. “Even if it is in this crummy place and Alice is… What I mean is, I gotta live. I gotta get out of here.” 

“I won’t be able to leave,” Luna says. “Not far, anyway. My brain isn’t in my body like yours is. My processor is within a large central computer. There’s probably a range I need to stay within, even if it is a large range.” 

“I’m not asking you to leave with me,” Clover says. Not to mention Zero would probably kill her dead the second she left the facility like he did with this one. “Besides, neither of us have our bracelets. Did you pick mine up?” 

Luna shakes her head. “I left yours and Tenmyouji’s on the floor, alongside a bottle of luminol Tenmyouji had on hand. I didn’t think it would be very comfortable for him to lie down with it in his pocket,” she explains. “He didn’t seem to care about it when I told him about Quark. It’s probably all still there.” 

“Well, what about your bracelet?” Clover questions. 

“Sigma has it. He picked it up when I ‘died.’” She rubs her bare wrist as if suddenly aware she’s not in the game’s binds. “You and Tenmyouji have four BP. I have seven. Quark has nine.” 

“So, we could leave right now?” Clover confirms. 

“...Yes,” Luna answers in that way where someone’s answer is correct but they really don’t want it to be. Luna probably still thinks there’s a way for them all to get out of this by allying together, raise them all to nine BP and skip out of here arm in arm. 

Well, Clover’s a realist. Dio just tried to murder her. She seriously doubts that he’ll be willing to play ball any time soon. Though, the thought occurs to her that there’s no point. He’ll be playing against Alice and it’s not like she can defend herself anymore. After the next round, they’ll definitely be over the required threshold. As for Sigma and Phi, she’s not sure what their points are exactly, but she remembers them allying an awful lot; they can’t be far off the mark either. If their total is seven, like Luna’s, then they just have to ally and everyone’s home free. 

Clover and Tenmyouji will have to hitch a ride. There’s no way they’re clawing back five points before Dio rushes the door. 

“You want to wait for Sigma.” Clover says. It sounds like a question but it isn’t, because she’s not blind. Whatever is going on in Luna’s weird little robot brain has attached itself to that old man well and truly. He’s… fine, in Clover’s book. A bit of a weirdo, but not a total asshole like some people in this Nonary Game. Honestly, with a crowd like this she almost wishes she was playing with Santa and Seven again. 

Well, maybe not Santa. 

Luna nods. “I do. I should at least try to uphold my orders. Even after so obviously failing them…” she adds in a mutter. “I’ll see Sigma and Phi vote and by then someone will have nine BP. Someone awake. Then we can go out through the door. Is that okay?” 

It doesn’t slip by Clover that Luna’s pretty unconcerned with K and Dio. Not that Clover’s gonna blame her. She doesn’t give a damn about anyone left except Tenmyouji and by extension, Quark. 

“There’s nothing stopping me from going down to the treatment centre now, though, is there? I could tell Tenmyouji. I don’t think he’s waiting around for anything in particular. I could persuade him to leave.” 

Luna frowns. “No. If you really wanted to, you could. I wouldn’t stop you.” 

“Because you aren’t allowed to hurt me?” 

“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm,” Luna quotes. “That is the First Law.”

“Is that why you saved me?” 

“What?” 

“Did you only save me because you had to, because of your stupid laws?” Clover waves her hand around as if to relay her disdain. She doesn’t get what’s so important about the laws of robotics. Don’t hurt anyone; do as you’re told; try not to die. Clover knows plenty of humans that live that sort of goody-two-shoes existence.

It makes Clover’s skin prickle. They’re pretty much what you’d tell a kid on their first day of school to play nice. It doesn’t sound like a life a grown woman ought to strictly abide by.

Well what does that matter? Another voice in her head pipes up. Luna isn’t human. 

“A robot without the Laws is just plastic,” Luna argues, not answering the question. 

“You are plastic! I don’t if you keep forgetting that! You aren’t real!” She shoves Luna in the shoulder like she did in the crew quarters, albeit softer.

Luna doesn’t react beyond a forlorn, “I know.” 

Clover, who can’t understand people who aren’t reactive, shouts, “Oh my god! Argue! Stand up for yourself, please!” She gestures wildly with both hands and while she does not hit Luna again it is a near thing. “Just fight me on this, fight me about anything! I swear to god, if you saved my life just to be a good pet for Zero, I will go crazy! If you saved my life just to be a good servant to the fucker who put us here, I would rather have died!” This time she does lay her hands on Luna. She grips her hard by the shoulders, bunching the thin material of her shirt under her fingers. Clover ignores her wince. It's probably put on. She wants it to all be a big game of pretend. 

“You just said you were glad to be alive!” Luna protests, aghast at the implication that someone could prefer death to this hell they’re living in. 

“Oh my god! I don’t know! I really don’t, Luna!” She yells, shaking her a bit as if to put the message across. “My best friend is somehow like eighty years old, and I don’t want to think about what that means! I think, sometimes, I would rather be dead than play this game for a third goddamn time!” 

“A third time?” Luna splutters. 

Clover lets out a stark laugh, tipping her head up to the ugly ceiling. “Oh yeah! Now, a year ago, and when I was nine! I’m a bona-fide expert, Luna! They skip over that detail in whatever briefing you got? Did they not deem me important enough?” She scoffs. She parodies Zero, “Sure! Get that bitch from before! We won’t even need to explain the rules!” 

Luna lurches forward, incensed and like she might throw up if she were capable of it. “That’s horrible!” 

“That’s what the sort of person who devises a Nonary Game is.” Clover tells Luna, taking the robot’s delicate face between her hands. She guides her back upright, head tilted up so that she looks at Clover. “That’s the sort of person your maker is.” 

“It’s for a good reason,” Luna promises. “One that will eventually save six billion people.” 

Clover shakes her head because try as she might, Luna just doesn’t get it. “Your beloved doctor has ruined my life. I didn’t agree to any of this. You understand that, right? I don’t care about six billion strangers. I don’t care if I was gonna be one of them. I should have been asked. Someone should ask me what I want, just once.” 

There’s always been her brother, of course. He joined SOIS with her just so she wouldn’t have to do it alone. She knows that Light wasn’t sold on the idea, and would have rather stayed at home making a living writing books and playing lonely melodies on the harp. She knows that it would have kept them afloat too, because he’s always been good at what he does. 

Junpei, too, in his way. He never asks so much as instinctively knows what Clover's thinking. Just over a year on from their ill-gotten meeting, she’s yet to work out if that’s some sort of side-effect from accessing the morphogenetic field or if he just knows her that well. She assumes the former over the latter; Junpei hasn’t been around much as of late, and when he is he doesn’t look happy. 

But that’s about it. Alice was her superior; what Clover wanted didn’t matter. She did as she was ordered and, for the most part, was happy to.  Were they getting too close to something, she wonders? Are the Myrmidons behind this game? Is she being uniquely punished? 

Probably not. Clover gets the sinking feeling that for all they’ve ruined her life, she’s not even that important. Thinking that this Nonary Game was devised specifically to torture Clover because she’s too good at her job speaks to a grandiose sense of self importance Clover just doesn’t have anymore. 

Clover swallows down her pity. “Hey, Luna?” She begins, as if she could be addressing anyone else in this lab. “Has anyone ever asked what you want?”

She shakes her head mutely. 

“Do you want anything?” 

For the first time, Luna actually sounds like a robot. Not because her voice is suddenly modulated or glitchy, but because it’s so wooden. She may as well have read from a script with how wooden her response is, “For the success of the Nonary Game and subsequently, the AB Project.” 

“Liar,” Clover accuses softly. She starts guessing, because there must be something Luna wants for herself. She has enough of her own mind to develop feelings towards her other players. Maybe she only saved Clover to adhere to her laws. Maybe she wishes she had left her there. So, Clover guesses first; “Do you want to hurt me?”

Diplomatically, Luna says, “I’m not allowed to act on it, in case it leads to the harm of a human being.” 

“What if I gave you permission?” 

“To hurt you?” 

Clover shrugs. “Sure.” 

“Still would be in violation of the laws. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” 

“It was a yes or no question,” Clover reminds her. 

Luna shakes her head again, but Clover still hasn’t taken her hands away from her pale, cold face. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Don’t you hate me? For everything I said to you?” She pauses when Luna stays stoic. “Tell me that they allow you to feel hate.”

That, for some reason, makes Luna giggle. “I’m capable of negative emotions, including hate. I just… don’t feel it so often. I feel other emotions.”

“Like?” Clover prompts, whisking her thumb over Luna’s freckles. They would’ve been specially put there by her doctor. Luna’s probably never seen sunlight that isn’t artificial. 

“Sadness. Loneliness.” 

Clover feels a twinge of regret for what she snapped at Luna in the crew quarters. 

Clover drops one of her hands down to grasp at the bluebird cage. Her fingers graze the buttons of Luna’s shirt on the way down. She brings it up between the two of them. “This is important to you, isn’t it?”

Luna nods. “The doctor… he gave it to me. During a time where I was very sad and very lonely. He told me a story about a bluebird.” As she speaks, Luna reaches up and touches the delicate necklace too. As they had with the injection gun and the salve, their hands run over one another. More intimately acquainted with the piece of jewellery, Luna reaches up underneath and fiddles with the base. 

A tinkly, sorrowful melody churns out of the little necklace. Plinky little chords hum between the two of them and Clover, suddenly, wants to cry.

“Happiness is closer than you think,” Luna says over the unhappy song. “Or, maybe, the search for happiness is what will make you happy. That’s what it’s supposed to mean,” she explains. 

“I think my happiness is very far away,” Clover admits, their hands still tangled together with gilded chains. “I think it’s flown away and it’s never coming back.” 

“What do you want, Clover?” Luna asks. 

To die, she thinks suddenly, which isn’t true. To leave. To go home to Light. To never see a dead body again. To know what you’re thinking. To touch someone that isn't going to hurt me; that I’m not gonna hurt. To feel awake when my eyes are open. To be a normal girl. No more Nonary Games, she pleads a decade too late.

“Show me what you look like?” She dares. 

“The same as everything else in here. Ugly, grey metal.” She takes their entwined hands and presses them to her breast, where a heart should be. Certainly, there’s something warm and undulating there but it doesn’t have the steady rhythm of a human heart. “That’s all there is under the ABT. Some wiring, some internal mechanisms, but most of the important things are housed in a central computer. There’s really nothing pretty under this.” 

“But it’s you,” Clover insists. “Please.” 

“You only want this because I was designed to be pretty. My design is based on someone very important to my creator. I’m not supposed to know, but I do. I know that you were right, in the crew quarters. I wasn’t designed to be a nurse. I’m a nurse because she was a nurse.” Her face screws up. “I’m some crude… companion. A facsimile of comfort. A lonely man’s toy.” 

“Did he ever tell you to do stuff like that?” 

She shakes her head. “No. In the end, he didn’t think of me like that.” 

“I don’t know the woman you were based on,” Clover says. “So I have no previous feelings about you. Everything I know, I’ve learnt since I woke up.” Clover squeezes their hands. “And I know I was wrong. I know you didn’t hurt Alice. I know you don’t like this game any more than I do, and I am so, so, sorry for thinking that you did.” 

“I’m part of this place,” Luna argues gently. “I don’t think I get to choose if I like the orders I’m given.” She pauses and then, as if deciding she doesn’t want to entertain the possibility that she agrees with this, tacks on, “I haven’t liked any of the orders I’ve been given lately.” 

Clover grimaces “After Tenmyouji, you’re like the one person here that I like. And I don’t want you to be part of this thing any more than you’re forced to be. I want a nice person to be just that.” 

“You like me?” 

“Yeah?”

“You said you hated me.” 

“Can both be true? I mean, don’t you hate me a little bit?” 

“Not really. I don’t think I hate you at all.” 

“Even after all that shit in the crew quarters?” 

“Even after all that.” Luna disentangles their hands and her fingers hover over her top button. “Do you still want to see me?” 

“Yes. Please,” Clover replies, burning with curiosity. Part of her won’t believe that Luna is a GAULEM until she sees proof. There’s already the ABT and the whirring tick of her artificial pulse, but it’s still difficult to quantify Luna as a bona-fide robot while she looks as human as any of them.  “Yeah, I do.” 

Luna works on her buttons as the bluebird’s song dies out. Her vest comes undone and she shrugs it off her shoulders, allowing it to fall to the table. She’s still fully dressed, but she begins to hesitate. 

“I don’t know if we should,” she stammers. “What if someone comes back and sees? No one else can know. You weren’t supposed to know.”

“We don’t have to,” Clover placates, looking at the skin that’s been revealed by the first button of her blouse. “Maybe this was stupid, yeah. Sorry.” 

“But you want to,” Luna protests. 

“It really doesn’t matter,” Clover promises. 

Luna pauses, fiddles with her second button, looks around as if to ensure they’re alone before telling Clover, “If you ordered me to, I would.” 

“You can’t just say that Luna!” Clover hisses. She can feel her face go bright pink. “I’m not going to order you around!”  She commits to this moral, even as the promise of power makes her head swim a little bit. Clover has never had real authority.  She knows that any power she has to her name is because of her body and how to use it. She doesn’t want to feel that Luna has to bargain with hers and her barely there autonomy just because Clover said something mean. 

“I wouldn’t mind. I trust you.” She undoes the second button. 

Clover watches in a flurry of complicated, conflicting emotions as Luna quietly unbuttons her blouse. She hopes there’s a third layer. Clover might’ve overplayed her hand, here. She expected Luna to call her bluff. It was half a bluff. Clover really is curious but she hadn’t expected Luna to acquiesce so easily. That worries her, actually. 

Clover reaches out and stops Luna, who is almost at her sternum. “If I give you an order, would you have to follow it?” She swallows. “If I asked you to do something, maybe something you didn’t want to… would you anyway?”

“You haven’t ordered me, though. You asked. Nicely.” 

God, this girl and her preoccupation with niceness. 

“But if I did,” Clover entertains, worried that they’ve both gotten mixed up and something in Luna’s internal hardware has misfired and interpreted it as an order. “Would you be forced to obey?” 

“There’s really only two people I must obey,” Luna answers. “And I’ve already proved that I’m not physically bound to their orders, not really. If you ordered me to do something and I did it, it’d be because I wanted to.” She looks down at her unbuttoned blouse and Clover’s wavering hand. “Would you prefer to undress me?” 

Clover, who’s still pink-cheeked, goes full on red. She gives a silent, generous nod. 

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” Clover asks. “I thought you’d be more… shy,” she says and winces at her own trepidation. She’s not exactly convincing Luna that this isn’t a batshit stupid idea. 

“You’re wearing less than me and you’re very confident,” Luna points out. “Besides, it’s… easier, like this. You aren’t interested in what I look like on the outside, are you? You’re curious about GAULEMs. I suppose it’s easy to think of this like maintenance, almost. Though I think I might get shy when you, um, actually look.” 

Clover wouldn’t say she’s uninterested in what Luna looks like inside or out. She’s not stupid. Luna is undeniably beautiful, in a sort of slender, girlish, milkmaid way. If you’re into that sort of thing. Clover’s beginning to fret that she is. 

“Okay,” Clover says. “How does your maintenance happen? We can play pretend.” 

“I guess I’d be lying back on this table. I wouldn’t be online, either, but I think that might be scary for you. And also, I’m worried that if I go offline they won’t let me… come back online.” 

“Yeah,” Clover agrees. “I don’t want you to go offline.”

“Would you like me to lie down, Clover?” 

She shakes her head. “No, not right now. Let me… unbutton your shirt first, okay?” God, Clover can’t believe she’s doing this. What possessed her? This isn't the place or the time. Clover doubts there will ever be a good time or place to undress a robot to look at her internal workings. 

Clover focuses on the buttons, letting the cloth fall aside. She pulls it out from where it’s tucked into her skirt. In doing so, one of the ties of her skirt unravels itself across her lap. Clover, before she can lose her nerve, peels the lilac blouse from Luna’s shoulders. 

Clover’s almost surprised to see that she has a bra on. Surely being a robot, Luna’s excused from all the trifling details that concern such a garment. It’s a little white thing, a little see-through, a little lacy. It’s embroidered with a pattern that’s not dissimilar from the one on her skirt. 

Clover wets her mouth. 

This is wrong. This is so, so wrong.

“Can I ask you something?” Clover’s mouth moves on its own. “Your ABT, like, is it good enough that you can feel things?” 

“It simulates nerve endings, yes,” Luna answers oh-so professional, so unaware about what Clover’s thinking. She shouldn’t be thinking about it. Luna’s under the impression that Clover has no interest in her. Clover isn’t interested. Clover’s so interested. She’s smaller than Clover, at least in that department. 

“Everywhere?” 

“Yes. I think that certain areas are more sensitive, like my hands. Why?” 

“Curious. Just thinking out loud. Do you wanna take that off and lie down?” She asks, which is really an order, but she’s trying not to trigger any wayward protocols. If Luna does this, she’ll do it of her own volition; Clover promises herself that. She knows that Luna has said that if any order slipped past her mouth, she’d be happy to obey but that’s not the point. Clover thinks she lost the point somewhere between Dio jumping her and a cooling salve being applied by a woman who has every right to hate her. 

Luna reaches up behind herself. There are freckles all down her arms. Clover imagines Luna sunbathing. It tugs her mouth up into a frivolous smile. Luna unclips the bra and puts it neatly to the side. 

Clover knows she shouldn’t be surprised. Luna all but admitted that at one point or another, she was designed with companionship in mind, and that’s putting it delicately. All the same, she thinks maybe they ought to jump her creator, who obviously spent a lot of time perfecting her here. Who knows where else. 

Luna, for the moment, until she catches Clover staring, is un-self-conscious. She sits there peacefully, waiting for Clover’s next move. Weirdly, Clover can’t seem to get over the fact of Luna’s nipples. Mostly that she has them. Clover doesn’t know why she’s got them; all they do for Clover is chafe against seams uncomfortably. 

They’re a dusky pink, as pale as the rest of her. They’re kind of cute. The skin around it is blushed and neat. Clover can’t help but think of her own as kind of wonky in comparison. Not that she’s had any complaints. Not that there’s been many people who’ve seen them. Clover’s aware that this is a ridiculous thing to compare -- she’s still comparing them. 

Luna’s right. It’s not that Clover thinks Luna is plain, but in any other situation she would have expected a stirring of something in her gut at the sight of a topless woman. Her necklace hangs between them.

Luna lies back and folds her arms over her stomach. “Are you ready, Clover?” 

“As I’ll ever be,” she mutters and leans over the table. “So, how am I supposed to open you up?” 

“There ought to be a seam just under where my sternum would be. If you hook your fingers under it, it should come away.” She takes Clover’s hand and settles it where she’s instructed. “This may hurt me; I’m still active and so my nerves are still connected. Don’t worry. I trust you,” she reminds Clover. “You’re allowed to look.” 

Clover, as instructed, finds the seam along her nail. It feels like a crease in the skin, a tiny bump in the road. She follows it to its natural end, just under the breast bone. Clover trails her hand back to the middle of the seam. 

“Push in,” Luna encourages, though she stumbles over the word. “Be careful, please.” 

“Of course,” Clover promises and dips two fingers into the opening, hooking them to find a catch. 

The moment her fingers vanish under the veil of ABT, Luna thrashes and cries out. Her hands never come up to stop Clover, nor do her legs kick at her to stop. All she does is throw her head back against the thick metal table so that it echoes a mighty sound around the bay. She gasps a tight, sharp sound and screws her eyes shut. White fluid oozes out from under the seam, soaking Clover’s hand and dripping down to Luna’s tensed stomach.

Clover, who’s been stabbed before now, knows a knife hurts coming out just as it does going in, so she doesn’t do Luna the injustice of snatching her hand out. Instead, she endeavours with her probing. Each twitch of her hand must send spasms of pain across Luna like ecstatic lightning bolts -- she thrashes; sobs; clenches her fists together -- her necklace jumps against her skin. 

“I’ve got it!” She reassures her once she finds a fixture. “I’ve got it, I did it.” She shunts the panel open, essentially pushing Luna’s chest to the side as it swings open. Against the back of her ABT is a circular panel. In the exposed cavity is more of that white fluid, an impressive array of wires, a few blinking lights, and a metallic shroud around what passes for a heart but is probably some sort of processor. 

She ignores it for the moment to reach up and wipe Luna’s face with her clean hand. Her cheeks are wet with tears and she struggles to catch her breath. She tries to smile up at Clover. It looks like a grimace. 

“Hey, you okay?” 

“I see why I was shut off for this process.” She laughs weakly. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting it. I’ve never done it this way before.” She peers down herself best she can at this angle. “It doesn’t hurt so much now. That’s good.” She tips her head back. Clover dries the last of Luna’s tears. “I think my sensitivity should be diminished now that the core is exposed. You’re welcome to do whatever you like to me.” 

Clover scoffs a laugh. “Don’t be so naive,” she chastises. 

Luna doesn’t respond. 

Clover doesn’t dive right in, so to speak. She observes the cavity with no small amount of trepidation. tantamount to playing around with someone’s organs. If there was ever a reason to tread lightly, this is it. She can’t go in all guns blazing. 

She traces the metal lining of the hatch. It’s cold and unremarkable, except for the fact that it’s literally part of Luna. She really is a GAULEM… Clover hadn’t doubted it per se, but the proof is still exhilarating in itself. 

Clover lets out a low whistle, trying to diffuse some of the mounting tension between them. It doesn’t work in her favour. 

Luna covers her face. “You’re staring!” 

“You want me to stop?” 

“Not so blatantly!” Luna complains. “You should-- You should be more polite.” 

“Oh yeah.” Clover rolls her eyes. “Because of everyone in this game I’m the perverted one.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Luna asks worriedly, as if the question could ever be aimed at her. Maybe she knows that it’s a joke at Sigma’s expense and she takes umbrage at that. If that’s true, Clover really doesn’t get her. 

“Nothing. Bad joke, okay?” She tries to soften her face into something less grumpy. “You’re perfect. Don’t worry. Just… relax, okay?”  She flashes a smile, genuinely trying to soothe Luna. “Can I touch it?” 

“I think that would be okay. If you’re careful,” Luna tells her and lies back down. Clover feels the tension melt away from the woman. 

Clover takes a breath and slides her hand into the mass of wire, metal, and clicking gears. It’s warmer than she had expected. Clover always thinks of metal as this cold, imposing material. Metal is the stuff this warehouse she’s trapped in is made of. Metal is a lonely, towering structure, phone towers, and wind turbines, and the Chrysler Building. It shouldn’t be able to be that and… this. 

It’s also wetter than she thought. 

That white liquid pools at the base of the cavity. Clover wonders if it’s some sort of coolant? Without it, Luna might overclock and Clover would be dipping her hand into a blistering heat instead of a pleasant warmth. Clover, curious to a fault, can’t help but swish the tips of her fingers in the fluid. It’s more viscous than water. Clover’s never put her hand in actual coolant because she’s not an idiot (and hasn’t had access to it) so she’s not sure how accurate it is. Besides, this same fluid spilled from Luna when she was opened up, so it’s not like it’ll hurt her. 

Clover ends up smearing the mystery liquid up the base of some wires, jutting out from an unseen connection leading down her spine. It clings to the colourful wires -- orange, green and black -- that spiral throughout her chest. Clover chances touching them lightly. She applies no pressure, too worried about knocking something important askew. 

She looks at Luna, trying to gauge her reaction about whether or not this is too much to handle or if pain is still ebbing through her. She makes it difficult to tell: her face is buried in the crook of her arm and she lets out trembling breaths that might be performative considering Clover can’t see anything resembling lungs in here. 

“You okay?” Clover asks. “We can stop--” 

“No! No, it’s okay. I’m okay,” she reassures, peeking out from under her arm. “If it makes you happier to understand how GAULEMs work, then I’m happy to oblige,” she says, like it’s some duty she’s obligated to fulfil and not Clover being too invasive for her own good. Luna’s one of the first people to indulge her. 

Not many people seem to realise that Clover’s interested in basically everything that crosses her path. She likes to tell people things, she likes to listen to things, she absent-mindedly reads the back of every label that crosses her hands. For some reason, most people never realise this. She thinks, somehow, it’s because of her hair. Or because she’s short. Or because she’s pretty often standing next to someone more obviously interesting and smart. Probably that last one. She really does think people make their mind up about her because of her hair, though. 

She reaches deeper into Luna’s machinery, brushing up against her walls. It’s smooth, pockmarked with canals that lead away to unseen places. Clover brushes along them, curious about whether or not they’re rigid or not (they are). A little higher up, there’s a series of ports. Some of them have connectors, attached with the colourful spiralling wires; others are empty, waiting for an insertion. Clover prods it, curious about the anomaly. 

Luna speaks up, jolting Clover out of her reverie. “Clover-- Oh, Clover, you shouldn’t…” she sighs blissfully. 

“Does this feel good?” Clover runs her fingers over one of the seemingly empty ports, wishing it was just a bit bigger or her fingers were a little smaller. She thumbs over it instead, pushing against the entryway of an empty space. 

“I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know. Yes? I… I think so? You must be careful, Clover, my internal wiring-- oh!” 

Clover suffers a small electric shock and can’t help but grin. She presses harder against the socket or port or whatever it is until she feels it tattoo an indent against her skin. Clover can’t help it; she gasps a tiny moan as static fritzes over her hand as Luna squirms. 

“Do you like this?” Luna asks, almost begging. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Clover sighs, petting the largest bundle of wires. “You’re so, so cute,” she praises. “Look at you,” she marvels, gesturing at the open mechanisms. “It’s amazing.”

Luna goes white as a sheet and covers her face. Clover thinks all this white fluid is a type of synthetic blood — she’s actually blushing. “Thank you,” she stammers. “You really think so? You still like me, even though I look like this?”

Clover nods. “Mhm-hm. Do you like this?”

“Oh, yes.” Her eyes flutter shut. “I didn’t know it could feel so good.” She sighs a tiny moan, thready and a little desperate. It does something maddening to Clover. 

“Have you ever…?” Clover trails off. She shakes her head and returns to exploring the chest cavity, fingers glancing off the coil of wires and touching ports. 

Luna makes that intoxicating sound again. “Have I ever what, Clover?”

“Touched yourself,” Clover blurts out. 

“No.”

“Cause it doesn’t feel like anything?” Clover guesses. Just because she was originally created with that in mind doesn’t mean that Luna derives pleasure from it. Obviously she’s capable of pleasure but maybe it’s different playing around with her insides.

“No, I just never… It felt like a waste of time. I wouldn’t know how to. I had things to do. More important things.” 

“There’s nothing else to do now, though. We’re just killing time before they come back from the Chromatic doors. Nothing to do but waste time.”

Clover trails her hand down Luna’s body and pulls at the fastening of her skirt. 

“I think,” Clover begins, “what I want is to make you feel good.” 

“Oh!” Luna seems shocked that Clover could be focused on her, rather than herself. As if Clover isn’t still fully dressed and untouched where Luna is literally open for her. 

“So… if you want to do that. You can do that.” 

“If you ordered me to touch myself--” Luna stammers over the sexuality of the statement. Whoever made her like this is some real creep, Clover decides. Let’s all be honest, yeah? There’s no way whoever invented Luna wasn’t going to fuck her. Which means they like that she gets all shy and blushing over something as routine as masturbation. Clover’s no psychologist but that probably adds up to something a bit weird. 

“--I would,” Luna finishes. 

“I know,” Clover says. 

“No, I mean… I mean I’d enjoy it. Are you ordering me to touch myself?” She asks. 

Clover shakes her head, determined to hold fast to her morals. “You decide. You gotta choose.”

“It does feel good,” Luna finally decides. “The way you touch my wiring.” 

Apparently satisfied, Luna slides her hand down herself. Although she could peel back her skirt, she doesn’t. She pushes her hand under the fabric and squeaks, as if surprised by her own anatomy. 

“I’ve never—“ Luna stammers. “This is so unfamiliar. It’s a little… It's a little frightening.” She gasps as her hand flutters over herself. “I didn’t think it would feel so good.”

“Yeah?” Clover asks, too curious for her own good. “Generous guy, your doctor. He wanted you to feel good.” 

Luna nods, face screwed up like she’s about to burst into tears. The fabric shifts as her hand moves under her skirt, touching herself in earnest. So much for not knowing how, Clover thinks. 

Clover keeps trying to touch empty ports, still searching for a channel that she can push into. She strokes every wire she can, twirling them around her fingers but being careful not to pull anything loose. The processor is thrumming, working itself overtime and emitting a feverish warmth. 

Luna whines. “Oh—!” She arches up. “Clover,” she whimpers. “Clover, it’s too much. I’m so… I’m…” She whimpers again. “I think I should be worried about my circuits,” Luna attempts, voice breathy. “This can’t be right, I must be malfunctioning. I shouldn’t be able—“ But she never lets up from her ministrations, always touching herself like there’s nothing better. 

Clover curses. “Are you wet?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s the word.” 

“Oh my god.”

“It feels good. I didn’t think— I can’t think!” Luna tries to catch her breath. “Tell me what to do, Clover, please.” 

“No. No, I said I wasn’t gonna give you an order. If anything, you tell me what to do. What do you want, Luna?”

“Kiss me,” Luna pants. “Please.” 

Clover pecks Luna on the cheek, a little bit too proud when Luna whines and petty tears spring to her eyes. 

Clover asks, voice laden with faux-innocence, “Was that okay?” 

“N-no. No, I wanted you to—“ she squeaks, affronted. 

“What? You gotta make yourself clear. Computers are kind of dumb, you know? Like, they can only do what they’re told and if you miss one little keystroke they freak out or do the wrong thing. You gotta tell me what you want properly.” 

“Please,” she begs. “You’re being mean! Please, kiss me.” She starts stammering over the specifics. “On the mouth. Like you’re—“ she stalls, fortifies herself, and finishes her sentence. “Like you love me.”

That, Clover can do. She leans over and presses her mouth to Luna’s sweet one, determined to show her a good time. Some wild part of Clover is determined to prove to Luna that she’s not trying to use Luna for sex. They’ve ended up here, somehow, but that wasn’t-- Clover doesn’t want Luna to think that her confession about her original design somehow drove Clover to this. It isn’t. Clover fears that this would be happening if Luna was a human, minus the hand in the chest part. She tries to kiss her as nicely as she’s able. 

Another part of Clover kind of wants to climb on the table with her, but whatever. That part of her is falling hard and fast for the sheer fact there’s someone who likes her enough to want to kiss her. 

Luna’s mouth is surprisingly warm given the whole robot thing. She really does wonder at what point does it become a superficial detail? Where’s the line? How special is Luna to this doctor of hers that he made her so detailed and then abandoned her? 

Luna’s clumsy with how she kisses, but so enthusiastic that Clover can’t find it in herself to be annoyed. Clover adds a dash of tongue, just as a fun experiment, and giggles into Luna’s mouth when she makes that lovely breathless noise again. 

Clover pulls back and kisses along Luna’s jaw all the way down to the throat that she had pushed a poison needle against. She takes a moment to kiss the false carotid artery, trying to apologise for how her hands had crushed Luna there. 

Luna stammers over almost every word. “I can-- If you like, I can put the panel back and you can pretend--” 

Clover looks up at her from this low down angle. “Pretend what?” 

“That I’m human…?” Luna tries, confusion bleeding into the edges of her words, like this is obvious. 

“Do you want to pretend to be human?” Clover asks. 

“I like that you like this,” Luna hiccups. Clover feels tentative fingers thread through her hair, scratching pleasantly against her scalp. “I thought you’d be afraid.” 

Clover’s been afraid for a long, long time. It’s part of the package she’s been wrapped up and sold in; fear and epiphany. The ragged undercurrent of her adolescent life. Clover’s not afraid of Luna. Of everyone here, Luna is the only one she’s ever trusted not to betray her. And Clover was going to kill her. 

She thinks of an axe, cleaving forward. And she thinks of a much younger Tenmyouji in a situation neither of them have been in, but Clover has a picture-perfect memory of, regardless. Clover knows what she’s capable of, good and bad. Clover knows what she does when she’s scared. 

“Do you want to keep going?” Clover asks her. 

“To what end?”

“Orgasm,” Clover puts bluntly. Clover circles the rim of Luna’s chest again, like the way people play music on wine glasses. “Whether you want me to help or not is up to you. You’re in charge,” she reminds her. Clover’s not sure when this fact became immovable. “You can keep going or we can stop.”

“It hurts,” Luna whines, curling her head into the top of Clover’s. “I’ve never—“

“Never come or never made a decision for yourself?”

“Either,” she hiccups again. Her legs clench together under her skirt. 

“Really easy fix to that, Luna,” she tells her, watching her squirm. 

“I’d… I think I’d like to.” She hesitates. 

“But?” Clover anticipates. 

“Both Sigma and Phi, as well as Dio and K have found the AB Cards. They’ll be back soon, I think. One moment,” Luna excuses herself and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, it takes a moment for them to regain focus. “Phi is watching the security footage of our fight. I don’t think she’s found the cameras in the infirmary.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“I accessed the security footage.” 

“That… probably makes you look really suspicious.” 

“Yes,” Luna agrees softly. “I don’t know what they’ll think if they…” 

“Because I should be dead?” 

“They never saw you die, though. You can come up with an excuse. They’d be overjoyed to know you’re safe. I would be. But as for me…” she trails off again, idly stroking Clover’s hair. “They saw me die.” 

“But it’ll be fine! If you just explain that you’re a GAULEM -- that you saved my life! -- they’ll understand! They’ll be fine with it. They have to be fine with it, you saved Quark’s life too, didn’t you?” 

“Not everyone is as nice as you, Clover. Besides, I can’t. It was fine with you, because you figured it out independently. I can’t tell them. I just can’t.” Luna reaches down to her chest and pushes the opening shut. That decides that, then. Clover doesn’t feel any particular way about it. Clover probably shouldn’t want to continue, situation being what it is. 

Clover does touch Luna’s breast though, which might count as making a decision for Luna but come on! They’re basically perfect and after everything they’ve just done, this is a minor sin in comparison. It’s pillowy soft as Clover squeezes it experimentally. Luna sighs happily when Clover had expected to be told off. 

“Is it… Is it awful that I like the thought of being human, too?” Luna asks, propping herself up on her elbows. Her hair is mussed, enough that she should consider untying it and redoing it. It’s a complicated braid. Clover wonders if she could manage it. “That’s silly, isn’t it?” 

“No. It’s not. I mean, I dunno.” She rolls her thumb over Luna’s nipple and she drops her head back with a satisfied hum. Right, yeah, that’s why she has them. Good. Great. That’s not going to echo across Clover’s head forever. “I don’t mind that you’re a robot. It doesn’t really make a difference to me.” 

Clover does not say that the majority of the reason Luna is alive is because she’s a robot and thus immediately disqualified from murdering Alice, who was not murdered. A virus that makes you kill yourself. What a fucking joke.

Luna mouths something that Clover doesn’t catch. 

“You should get dressed,” Clover tells her, dropping her hand and trying to see where her shirt ended up and how obviously creased it is now. “If you aren’t going to do anything. About that.” 

Luna goes very pale again, which makes Clover go pink. 

Luna, as if coming to some great revelation, squeaks like a mouse and covers her breasts with one of her arms, still balanced on the other. Clover sits back on her haunches to give Luna some metaphorical breathing room. She sees Luna look down beside her, where her crumpled garments must be. 

Clover gets the hint more or less and stands up, spinning around. Then, she finally issues a long awaited order: “Get dressed, alright? I’m not looking. Tell me when you’re done.” 

Luna obeys. 

Chapter Text

A year ago, Clover might have been more forward. 

Though, in this hypothetical scenario, she’s not in another Nonary Game and there is no time crunch. So it’s useless to think about. Here is where they are; this is what they have. Use it or lose it. For the most part, Clover loses it. 

Walking through the compound, trailing after Luna, Clover thinks of her face, screwed up with pleasure and asking for a kiss like there’s never been anything she wanted more. Clover wishes that she hadn’t been so bound up in her own morals. She wishes she had given Luna an order -- though she’s got no idea what -- and she wishes that she had touched her down there, see for herself how detailed her maker made her. 

Clover doesn’t know if Luna has an off switch or what, because she seems well put together while Clover agonises over the ache between her legs. What the hell was she thinking, anyway? This was stupid. Clover’s stupid. She should break away from her now, rush down to the Treatment Centre to grab Tenmyouji and Quark and get the hell out of this nightmare and any more untoward decisions. 

“Where are we going?” Clover asks, just to get out of her own head. Her voice cracks on the first few words; she hasn’t used it since they were in the GAULEM Bay, and they’re in Warehouse B now. “Should we be, like, out in the open?” She asks. Maybe Phi and Sigma are still holed up looking at security footage, but Clover’s way more concerned about the possibility of a free range Dio. Sure, K will probably be with him but Clover doesn’t exactly trust him. How can she, having never seen his face, or even heard his voice without the distortion of the mask? Who’s to say he won’t take advantage of her too? He agreed to betray Alice that first round, after all. 

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Luna admits, stopping in her tracks. She glances at the white chromatic doors, fretting her lip. “I was just walking around. Until the AB Game is played, there’s nothing we can do.” 

“We could leave,” Clover suggests again. 

Luna shakes her head. “No. I should see Sigma and Phi play the AB Game,” she insists. “They can still get nine points and come with us.” 

“Right. Yeah.” Truth is, Clover doesn’t give a damn about that old man or that chick. What have they ever done for Clover? No, the only people here that Clover cares about are Tenmyouji, Alice and Quark. Alice is… Well, she knows what Alice is. If she waits around any longer, she risks the other two dying as well. Who knows what Dio would do if he found out Tenmyouji was alive? A muscle in her calf spasms, unconscious desire to take off running. 

Luna notes, “You’re upset.” 

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” Clover folds her arms over. She’s not sure which way the Treatment Centre is. It wasn’t one of the rooms any of them explored. Luna must have opened it up specially for Quark. She’d get lost in this maze and, knowing her luck, she’d run into Dio. 

“How can I help?” 

“Have you got a time machine?” Clover snaps. “Because right now, that’s kind of the only thing I want!” 

“You regret what just happened,” Luna says, voice wobbling. “I shouldn’t have asked--” 

“I didn’t say that!” Clover protests. “I mean this whole game! I don’t-- I mean, I liked it.” She admits. She rubs her cheek. “Your hair’s a mess,” she tells her, just to divert the subject. 

“I think that’s technically your fault," Luna points out, hair unravelling from its braid. She reaches upwards, but Clover beats her to it, pulling her hair loose so that it falls over her shoulders in kinks. Clover takes it one step further and brushes it through with her hand, untangling as she goes. She tries to be gentle. 

Her fingers catch against one particularly stubborn knot and Luna lets out a little moan of pain that sounds much too similar to the breathy noises she’d been whimpering earlier. Something in Clover’s gut spasms, having never been fulfilled. 

Clover snatches her hand away and mumbles something that could be construed as an apology. “So,” she begins awkwardly, “Where are we going?” She repeats again. “We can’t just hang out in the open.” She decides in the face of Luna’s dithering. “If Dio or K see us they’ll… I don’t know! It wouldn’t be good!” 

“I wouldn’t let him hurt you,” Luna tells her, which makes Clover laugh. 

“What could either of us do! You might be a robot but you don’t have superpowers! I mean, tell me now if you’ve got a gun hidden in your hand or something!” Clover gestures maniacally with her own flesh and blood hand. “I think we’ve established what your maker had in mind when he designed you and it wasn’t for combat!” 

Luna screws up her face and starts to walk away. She’s just aimlessly walking, leading herself into the middle of the warehouse floor. It’s an exposed position. No matter which way someone came into the room, Luna’s presence would be painfully obvious. Has the girl got a death wish or something? 

“Hey!” Clover shouts, momentarily undone by the panic that Luna is leaving her alone to remember she’s trying to be stealthy. “Where are you going?” 

Luna doesn’t reply, still just walking in a wavering line. If Clover had to guess, she’s headed to the secondary chromatic doors, but she’s a little off course for that too. 

Clover picks up the pace, following after Luna. She grabs her elbow and pulls her back, forcing Luna to look at her. Luna refuses to meet her eyes, Clover’s stare burning into her face. 

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Clover snaps, squeezing Luna’s arm just to force some sort of reaction. Maybe she wants to hear her whine again. She doesn’t know. “You can’t just leave me alone, okay? I already needed you to save me from Dio once before.” 

“You’re being horrible again,” Luna tells her in a cracking whisper, still not looking at Clover. “I wasn’t made to be… I’m not just for, um…” All versions of her protest die in her mouth, fumbling until she manages, “He didn’t use me like that, I already told you.” 

“You liked it just now though, didn’t you?” Clover absentmindedly strokes her thumb up and down Luna’s elbow where she still hasn’t let go. 

Pale as anything, Luna nods. 

Cute. She looks nice with her hair down. 

“I know you weren’t made for that,” Clover says, though she’s not sure it isn’t the case. Sure, the guy never ended up using Luna in that way. Part way through the process he changed his mind or something, but the fact remains that Luna is capable of feeling that way. She’s just as capable of feeling pleasure and being turned on and getting wet -- Clover really can’t get over that -- and they never quite figured out if she could orgasm but with everything else in mind, wouldn’t that be the next logical step? 

It doesn’t really matter to Clover if Luna was invented with that purpose at the forefront of her design. The purpose of a system is what it does. Luna is a nurse, then. No, that’s not quite right. Luna’s a person. Not a human, but a person nonetheless. 

Sure, they could stand here and argue til they were blue in the face. Maybe Luna’s doctor strived to make the most accurate replication of a human ever, something that would pass a Turing Test in every sense of the word. Maybe he was a perverted old man who created a robot in the likeness of some girl he never got over to fulfil some creepy fantasy he didn’t have the heart to follow through on. Without the man to confirm or deny, they’ll never know. 

Clover continues, wanting nothing more than for Luna to look at her again. “And I know he never had sex with you. Which, just between you and me, I don’t know why. Not because he might’ve made you that way, just because you’re, like, really cute. I would. I mean, I sort of have. Can you say something before I say anything mega embarrassing?” 

“You’re very confusing, Clover,” Luna tells her, but she’s turned to face Clover fully again and she doesn’t look upset anymore so Clover’s counting this as a win, oddball or not. “I can’t figure out if you like me or not.” 

“Said I did, didn’t I?” She scrapes her shoe along the concrete. “I’m not a liar,” she lies. She’s telling the truth about liking Luna, and that’s all that matters right now. “I don’t think you’re getting the best impression of me right now.” 

Her hand to drop down Luna’s arm, tracing her nails over her forearm and then her hand, allowing herself to linger there long enough as if she might take Luna’s hand in hers. Luna’s fingers flutter around hers, catching against her skin. In the end, Clover stretches out the moment and doesn’t give herself over so easily. 

Instead, she leans in ever so slightly into Luna’s personal space. “If we met outside of the Nonary Game,” Clover begins and she preempts Luna’s excuse that she’s a robot, a part of this place, and thus cannot go far. “Hypothetically.” 

“Hypothetically,” Luna echoes, getting the message. Luna rocks forward ever so. She’s a fair bit taller than Clover, even with the heels on. Not that it’s hard. Luna’s not an elegant, sophisticated sort of tall like a model is; she’s more willowy.

Clover hums, like she’s considering the endless possibilities, but in reality she’s just saying the first words that come to mind. “It’d be better. Maybe it’d be in the cafe I work at. And you’d tell me your order, maybe say you like my hair. What would you, hypothetically, be drinking?” Clover asks, feeling a little childishly giddy and not ashamed. 

“Oh, I’m not sure.” 

“Pick something. Doesn’t have to be true.” 

“Um.” Luna actually pauses to think about it. “A London Fog.” 

Clover skims through every type of coffee drink she knows and comes up short. The barista thing is just a cover. Before she got scouted for SOIS, she was a receptionist at a vet. “Is that a cocktail?” 

“No. It’s a drink with Earl Grey, steamed milk and vanilla syrup. I’ve never had one, but it sounds nice. Aren’t you a barista?” 

“You scum,” Clover laughs. “Making me work, even in this dumb make-believe.” She wets her mouth. “Give it to you for free, just because you were nice.” 

Clover can flirt better than this. She knows she can. She’s also kind of had sex with Luna, so what the hell is she stressed about? The ache hasn’t gone away, and this is sort of making it worse. Luna must possess an iron will to be able to have gotten up from the table, job half-finished.

“I really do like your hair, that’s not pretend,” Luna says. “I’m finding out that I like lots of things about you.” Luna keeps on walking, but Clover can tell she’s getting out of the danger zone that is the open air, smartly electing to stay close to the walls. She talks as she walks. “You aren’t what I thought you’d be.” 

“Told you all my dirty secrets, did they?” 

“Not really,” Luna answers genuinely, not rising to the bait. “They told me that you were an agent for SOIS, an esper with a talent for transmitting, and prone to…” 

“Being a bitch?” 

“Rashness,” Luna corrects. “But I think I like that part of you too,” she admits, bumping up against the wall. 

The warehouse seems quieter than it's ever been. For a moment, it’s almost peaceful. Luna mentioned there was a garden somewhere in this sprawl of grey. Clover wonders what it’s like, how it must be way nicer than the rest of this dump. 

“Think there’s a few things I like about you too,” Clover agrees. It’s not the time -- it’ll never be the time -- but Clover’s still reeling from everything that’s happened, not least the fact she had Luna under her less than an hour ago. Clover rests her hands over Luna’s hips and presses upwards, kissing her again. 

Luna sighs and throws her arms around Clover’s shoulders, but not doing anything more than that. She’s kind of gentlemanly like that. Half of Clover wishes that Luna would take the horse by the reins, but the other half of Clover feels quite smitten that all Luna thinks about is kissing. 

Still, Clover’s not quite so honourable. She slides her tongue against Luna’s, because Clover knows Luna liked it. Luna’s so reactive, squeezing Clover tighter in their half-embrace, gasping notes of pleasure when Clover does something slightly new. It sends a thrill up Clover’s spine.

It never goes beyond kissing, even if Clover’s getting all sorts of ideas. 

It can’t last. Luna breaks away, clapping a hand to her mouth. Clover knows Luna doesn’t regret it, because she was way too into it for that. Clover frowns at her. 

“Dio and K,” she says, by way of explanation. She drops her hand and her mouth is obscenely pink. “They… They’ve killed each other.” 

“They’ve what?!” Clover shrieks in her shock. The fact that Sigma and Phi don’t immediately converge on their location is almost as big a surprise as the random acts of violence. 

Inexplicably, this is the thing that makes her cry. 

Nothing else in her demeanour betrays her tears, but spring forth and fall they do, as Clover stands statue still, eyes boring into the mess of the men formally known as Dio and K. 

In an impressive show of strength, Dio is literally pinned to the wall by the punishing force of a spear. K, a few feet away from him, lies prone with a gargantuan axe buried in his head. 

She thinks of the detective, from a year ago, who does not have an axe in his head. She remembers, also, thinking of putting one there. The morphogenetic field is a confusing and perhaps dangerous entity. These days, Clover’s never sure what is a thought and what is a memory. You can have a memory of a thought, but not-- 

The point is, something about this seems really familiar to Clover. 

“I don’t think you need to be a nurse to know that…” she trails off. Her voice is steady though, much like the rest of her. “They’re definitely dead,” she picks back up. 

“Are you okay?” Luna asks gently, a kind hand on Clover’s shoulder. 

Clover wipes away the tears with the back of her hand. “Yeah. Fine. I don’t know why I’m… whatever. Weird. Why’d they do this to each other?” 

Luna shrugs. “Why did Dio try to chain you to a sink?” 

He didn’t try to chain me up, Clover mentally amends. He very much succeeded. 

“Fun. Who knows what goes on in that guy’s head? Well. Went on,” she corrects. Despite everything, she can’t find it in herself to take glee from the fact of the past tense. 

The two of them stand in silence, staring at the gory scene. Above them, the ceiling light buzzes and whines. Clover looks around them. The rec room, huh? Freaky looking rabbit ride, some darts, a pool table. Does Zero expect them to take a load off and shoot the shit with one another? 

“They probably have the key cards, right?” Clover asks, apropos of nothing. 

“They must. I would have thought they were heading straight for the AB Room. Dio has a bad habit of opening it without thinking of others. They must’ve taken a detour.” 

Clover can’t figure out why. What’s so important in this room that they went here instead of securing their precious nine points? 

She looks around the room again, but still comes up short handed. 

So, she continues her original line of thought. “If we took those key cards, we could open the AB Rooms up. We don’t have to vote but it would probably hurry Sigma and Phi along, right?  Maybe if we’re quick, they won’t find anything too suspicious on the security.” A hopeful note stains her last few words, but Luna doesn’t seem to share her optimism. 

Still, in some sort of silent agreement, Luna crouches down besides K and finds the appropriate keycard. There’s a beat before she rises where she pats K’s head gently, She whispers something. Knowing Luna, probably an apology for something she had nothing to do with. 

There’s blood on her hands. 

Clover’s about to say something else, but then there's the unmistakable sound of footsteps accompanied by the unsticking of the pneumatic doors they’re ruled by. Her eyes widen and she grabs Luna’s bloodied hand, the edge of the keycard biting into their linked palms. 

“Go, go, go!” She hisses, making her way over to the other door on double time. She shoves Luna through first, just in case Sigma or Phi get a glimpse of either of them. Clover thinks it's smarter that the person they think is dead stays that way for as long as possible. 

They don’t stop running until they’re all the way back to Warehouse A, standing before the AB Rooms. Luna goes ahead and opens one of them up. Neither of them can vote, of course. Clover has no reason, and Luna will hopelessly default to allying. 

It’s really only a matter of what button Sigma and Phi push now.

They wait it out in the crew quarters. Not the room Alice is in, of course, but the one beside it. Clover had suggested it as a place to be nearby the action, but safely out of the way. A year ago, being in a bedroom with a girl she’s kissed twice, Clover might expect something to happen. As it stands, they’ve just seen two dead bodies, Luna has blood all over her hands, and they’re both too fraught with anxiety to even think of trying to diffuse the tension. 

“There’s a sink in the infirmary, right?” Clover asks, inspecting Luna’s dirtied hand. “We could wash you off there.” Truthfully, it’s not that much blood. Clover’s gotten more on her in the line of duty.

“No,” Luna refuses softly. “It’s alright.” 

They lapse into silence, sitting on the bed. Clover rests her head on Luna’s shoulder. 

An announcement rings through the building that only ten minutes remain until the polling closes. They’ve been here longer than Clover kept count. 

“They know I’m a robot,” Luna announces. “They know what I am.” 

“A nurse,” Clover says into Luna’s collar. “A good person.” 

“I think you’re being generous.” 

“Mhm.” Luna’s shoulder is more comfortable than she gave credit for. She could fall asleep here. She probably shouldn’t. She thinks of that little scene she had invented in a coffee shop. She thinks about it more, developing her make believe world. 

Luna in her bedroom, not doing anything but inspecting the decoration on the walls: the fairy lights shaped like fuchsia, the stuffed frog on her shelf, the figurines she used to collect a few years back, her sparse collection of books -- almost all of them fluffy romances or autobiographies of actors. She imagines Luna knocking into her mannequin, half dressed with her current project, and apologising profusely for knocking it askew. 

She wishes she could take Luna to a real garden. Clover’s not a huge nature person, but after this she might have a new found appreciation for it. 

Nice thoughts, but all frighteningly domestic for someone she’s only really noticed in the last three or so hours. Clover doesn’t know if her work with SOIS allows for that sort of life. Clover doesn’t know if she wants to work for SOIS anymore. She wants a long sabbatical. Maybe she’ll see if the receptionist job misses her. 

“Clover?” Luna jolts her from her thoughts. 

“Here,” she responds, nudging her head into Luna’s shoulder like she’s trying to burrow into it. 

“I’m going to go keep an eye out for Sigma and Phi, okay?” She rises, taking great pains to not let Clover’s head slump uncomfortably. Clover corrects herself, sitting straight. “It'll be five minutes. Stay here, alright?” 

“Alright,” Clover nods, certain that she can survive in isolation for a few moments. 

But everything is not alright. Not at all. 

Luna is in floods of tears, like nothing Clover’s ever seen on another person. Her eyes are red, her cheeks are so wet that her hair is sticking, it’s a miracle she made it back to this room without walking into something -- how can she see through so many tears? 

Clover’s on her feet in an instant. “Oh my god, what happened?” She asks, but as the words leave her mouth, she becomes sure. There’s only one thing at this juncture that could reduce Luna into such pitiful hysterics. 

“He… He betrayed me.” Luna touches the space on her wrist where their bracelets were. “He betrayed me!” Her voice cracks as she sobs. 

“It was probably Phi,” Clover hastens to say, not having the first idea whether that’s true or not. She hasn’t spent enough time with either of them to say.  “She pressed the button, one hundred percent. He wouldn’t--”

“But he did! He didn’t have to! Neither of them had to, they would have gotten out if they allied!” She takes a deep breath, sniffing noisily. Another feature of Luna that is so, so realistic. Clover feels another pang of hatred for her creator. “They know what I am and they hate me.”

“Fuck them,” Clover snaps viciously, any affection for the pair drained away. “Oh my god, fuck these people, Luna.” 

Luna can’t seem to calm herself, though. “I’m not human! How could they trust something made of plastic and metal, something that’s part of this place? I know why they did it, I do, but it feels like--” She grasps at her chest, crushing the gilded cage under her palm. “I think it’s breaking my heart!” 

“I trust you!” Clover bursts out. “It’s nothing to do with you, Luna. It’s everything to do with them! They’re assholes and self-absorbed and scared! And none of that makes it okay to betray you when you are nothing but nice to them!” She cups Luna’s face, a little more brusque than she had in the GAULEM Bay. Her cheeks are slippery with tears. “If I can do it, so can they! And I’m awful! So!” 

“It hurts,” Luna moans, blinking out more errant tears. Clover swipes them away with her thumb, wondering if they’d taste salty too. Embarrassed by the thought, she drops her hands.“It feels like something is eating me from the inside.” 

“I know, I know.” Clover tells her, suddenly transported to the second Nonary Game. It’s never truly faded, the all-encompassing grief she felt for those long hours. Even as her brother was breathing in a box metres below her, she burned and turned inward, impossible to reach. Believing you’ve been abandoned… Clover can’t think of anything worse. She closes her hand over Luna’s, feeling the heat of her processors overclocking itself. “Happiness is closer than you think,” she tries. “Just think of that.” 

Luna shakes her head. “No. No, I don’t think so. Not anymore.” 

“Hope, faith, love and luck,” Clover mutters to herself, because she needs a pick-me-up. If the promise of those words got her through the last half of the second Nonary Game, they’ll help her survive this too. “Sigma and Phi? They’ve got none of that. But I do. We do.” 

Seized by emotion, Clover grabs Luna and hugs her tightly. 

“Clover?” She moans in pain against her shoulder. 

Reluctant to let go, but knowing she must if they’re to move on, Clover pulls back. “Yes?” Luna looks a tiny bit improved, but still terrible. 

Her pretty face hardens with resolve. “Let’s go get Tenmyouji.” 

Clover takes Luna’s hand, obedient. If this is Luna’s decision, who is Clover to argue? 

Luna leads Clover at a storming pace down to the Treatment Centre. She’s still crying, Clover can tell that much. Even as Luna doesn’t look back at her, and the noise of their footfalls mask the groaning of the warehouse, Clover can see the slight tremble in her shoulders. That, and Luna is holding onto Clover tighter than necessary and with more force than she thought Luna capable of. 

In the elevator down, Luna wipes her eyes with her sleeve. 

“Hey,” Clover beckons softly. Even in these little heels, she has to go on tiptoes to achieve what she wants to. Luna, naturally, turns her head to the sound. As she does so, Clover presses her lips to Luna’s in a chaste kiss. 

“You’re just trying to cheer me up,” Luna protests when Clover settles back onto the ground, but she’s smiling a little more than before. 

“Is it working?” Clover asks. 

“Oh, yes.” Luna readjusts her hand so that Clover’s fingers are more tightly entwined in hers. The door slides upwards and they are greeted with the second set of chromatic doors. Red, green and blue. Clover dithers between their options, though she knows she won’t be made to choose. 

Luna opens up the green door and goes through. Clover follows. She hopes that Tenmyouji has managed to avoid being caught out by Dio and K -- though they aren’t a threat any longer -- or by a wandering Sigma and Phi. They’ll find out soon enough but the vice in her chest tightens without her consent. 

Luna says nothing as they traverse the corridors and if Clover were a less confident person, she’d fear she had put her wrong foot forward. She doesn't know what she’s doing. She doesn’t know why she trusts Luna -- does she trust Luna, or did she just say she does? She has to suppose that whatever comes out of her mouth is the truth now. If she can’t trust her impulses, what can she trust? 

The Treatment Centre door slides open with an ominous hum, but there’s no need for alarm. The Treatment Centre is a pristine white room, decorated with fern plants and a pleasant aquarium with jellyfish in sunset hues. It’s a room that evokes calm, but not overly clinical like the infirmary is. Half of the room is boxed away with wide glass panels. 

Through this window, she can see Tenmyouji knelt beside one of three pods, rubbing his thumb back and forth a window. He looks no worse for wear. In fact, he looks better than when Clover last saw him. Not a difficult feat, given how they were chained up and unconscious and bleeding. There’s a bandage around his hand now. 

She ducks into the inner room, anxious to see Tenmyouji and Quark. Luna hangs back, taking a seat onto one of the squishy blue sofas. 

“Hey,” she whispers, almost afraid to make noise in this peaceful room. “You okay?” 

Tenmyouji jerks his head up, totally lost in another world. “Clover. Hi. Yes. Quark’s in here.” 

“Luna said so.” She leans over the pod, but the glimpse of the little boy is obscured by a fog. She trusts that he's in there. He’s about to come out and Clover will see him for herself. “Lucky she’s here, huh?” 

Tenmyouji says nothing for a minute, mulling over the fact of Luna’s existence. He doesn’t know that she’s a robot, Clover thinks. Hell, Clover would be surprised if anyone other than herself figured it out without being told straightforwardly. She guesses that’s what Luna means when she was rambling about how Sigma and Phi knew what she was. Somewhere, incriminating evidence was left about. 

“Crazy lady,” he decides to say. “Where’d she get off, playing the hero? Shouldn’t she have been with Sigma and Phi?” 

Sensing her opening, although rankled by his comment about Luna since she’s the only reason they’re here right now, Clover cuts in with: “Sigma and Phi just betrayed her.” 

“Shit,” Tenmyouji says succinctly. “Thought they were buddy-buddy, at least her and Sigma.” 

“Apparently not. Open the pod, make sure you’ve got Quark’s bracelet. We’re going,” Clover decides. Even though Luna hasn’t said as much outloud, Clover knows there’s only one reason they’d come down here. Clover thinks the only reason they’re speaking in a language of implication is because it would break Luna’s heart further to admit her plan out loud. 

“Suits me just fine,” Tenmyouji comments, rising to the occasion. He fiddles with something on the side of the pod and with the catch of hissing air, the pod opens itself up to reveal a sleeping little boy, somehow with his stupid hat clamped on his head. “Luna told me it was fine,” he tells Clover when she catches her peeking at the display. “But I figured keeping him in here til the last minute was for the best.” 

Tenmyouji bends over and Clover hears a creak. She isn’t sure if it’s his bones or a well timed groan of the warehouse. She doesn’t mention it to him because she values the integrity of her skull. Back pain or no, he gathers Quark up in his arms like he weighs nothing and carries him close to his chest with a huff of exertion. The kid nuzzles into his breast, like he knows he’s safe. 

“Thanks for not leaving without us,” Clover says. 

“You kiddin’?” Tenmyouji raises a brow at her. “Not leaving you for anything. You know that by now, kid.” 

“Guess so,” she admits, if this really is her Junpei, which she thinks he is. Same mole and everything. “Love you,” she whispers, testing the waters. 

He scoffs and readjusts Quark’s weight in his arms. “Love you too, you big idiot.” 

Definitely her Junpei, appearances be damned. She’ll think about what it might mean after she’s gotten out of this hell hole. She backs out of the room, knowing Junpei’s behind her. 

Luna rises from her seat. She’s been fiddling with the ends of her hair, that much Clover can tell because one strand is curlier than the rest. It’s cute. It makes Clover think more of those thoughts she shouldn’t, like tucking it behind her ear or telling her she looks pretty. 

A year ago, Clover might’ve been more forward. 

But a lot has happened since then, so she just tilts her head towards the door in the universal motion for ‘let’s go.’ Seems like she has that in the database, because she allows Tenmyouji to take the lead and she follows up the rear, head bowed, counting footsteps. 

By some miracle, they don’t run into the treacherous pair of Sigma and Phi. Luna doesn’t elaborate on why she’s sniffling and Tenmyouji never asks after her. More than likely, he shares Clover’s sentiment on the whole thing. Don’t get lost; don’t look back. One foot in front of the other, and get the people you care about out. Clover’s not fool enough to think that she measures up to Quark. Junpei knows that next to Light, he’s a pinprick next to a very bright sun. It’s nothing personal; just the bigger picture. Clover reckons it's the same here. 

It takes them to Warehouse A before Luna brings herself to pipe up, practically inches away from the lever and their unspoken agreement to pull it. 

She coughs. That feature is definitely put on. She fidgets with her skirt awkwardly, twisting the tie of it. The image of it undone and halfway down Luna’s hips flashbangs into her mind so vividly she has to look away. 

Her voice isn’t as tremulous as it was after the vote, but still shaky.  She addresses the floor. “I suppose this is… goodbye.”

“What are you talking about?” Clover asks, monotone. 

Luna keeps fidgeting, but mercifully starts agitating her necklace rather than her clothes. “I… um… I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to leave.” 

“And be stuck with a load of corpses and the people who betrayed you?” Clover snaps, irrationally irate. 

Tenmyouji grunts. “If she’s made her decision, Clover--” 

“No!” Clover explodes. “No, she isn’t making it! Luna, you don’t seriously want to be here forever, do you?” She gets up in Luna’s face, well aware that Tenmyouji’s hand is on the lever. “Tell me the truth,” she begs. “Don’t lie to me.” 

“Or you’ll use the injection gun?” 

“Yeah, or I’ll use the injection gun.” Clover’s voice catches. 

Luna shakes her head, explaining, “The moment this game concludes they are going to shut me off for disobeying orders and disrupting the game. It’s a miracle they haven’t already. I think they’re waiting until someone wins.” 

“Come with us anyway,” Clover says.

“Is that an order?” 

“Will you follow it?” 

“I don’t want you to see me die, Clover. That would be mean.” 

“Be mean,” Clover insists. “For god’s sake, be mean. Leave these assholes here and come with us. What would you have done if Tenmyouji and I had kicked it when we were chained to that sink! Thrown Quark through the door like a sack? Come with us,” Clover pleads. “Maybe you’re wrong, maybe they won’t shut you down. Don’t risk it on this side of the door, come on.” 

“With all this in mind,” Luna continues, as if she hadn’t heard Clover. “I think it’s best that I remain here.” 

Clover doesn’t shove Luna but she really, really wants to. The only thing that stops her is the thought that Luna has already suffered at the hands of people she trusted enough today. “There’s a lot of things to bear in mind, but my feelings aren’t one of them!” 

“Clover!” Tenmyouji snaps. “If she’s not coming, she’s not coming. I’m not going to force her.” 

She whirls around to him, fire alight in her eyes. “You weren’t going to leave Lotus behind a year ago, but you’ll leave Luna?” She snaps. 

Tenmyouji’s face falls. “That’s not the same,” he argues. “And it’s been a long time--” 

“I’m sure it has, Junpei!” Her fists are balled up at her side. This isn’t an argument she wants to have right now, or ever. She wants to bury her head in the sand for as long as she’s able. “But it hasn’t for me!” 

He makes a harsh noise at the back of his throat and shuts up, which is good enough for Clover. He can’t very well argue this moral quandary. If Lotus was worth risking being burnt alive for, why can’t they hold out a minute more for Luna to come to her senses? 

She turns back to Luna. “Please,” she asks. “Please, they don’t love you here, but I--” she stops short. “I could learn,” she says. “All of you. You know I don’t care. Don’t stay here with Sigma and Phi. Don’t punish yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong!” 

The moment seems to stretch into infinity. Luna touches her necklace before whispering. “You love me?” 

“No,” Clover answers truthfully. “But I could. I could love you better than your maker. If you give me time.” It’s truer than she knows. If she just got the chance, Clover could. Clover has love to give, if only someone would take it from her. What’s she supposed to do with all this love she has nowhere to put? 

Luna smiles wanly, but still protests. “I don’t have much.” 

“You don’t know that. I’m a fast learner.” 

“You tried to kill me.” 

“I’ve tried to kill Junpei! That’s just the sort of person I am. Not everyone you meet is going to be good, or kind, or nice, and I wish they were, but that’s not how the world works. No one’s perfect. No one expects it.” Clover tries to smile at her. “Blame it on me. Tell yourself I’m forcing you to come through the door. But, god, please, come with us.” 

“I don’t have to follow your orders,” Luna reminds her but steps forward, taking Clover’s hand and leading her towards the door.

Tenmyouji racks the lever down, and the announcement of their escape booms through the warehouse. Quark and Tenmyouji first, then Luna, then Clover. 

Stepping over the threshold, Luna doesn’t collapse like a marionette with her strings cut, so Clover counts it as a point in their favour. Clover won’t proclaim to know more about how they keep tabs on disobedient robots, but she’s hoping that no one’s looking at the screen right now. 

Awaiting them is a large platform elevator, enough to fit all nine of them if only they remained such a large group. Without a word, the three of them clamber aboard and Tenmyouji works out which buttons to press to get it to come alive. 

Luna sits down on the floor and shuts her eyes, letting out a relieved breath. Clover sinks down beside her, fishing for the woman’s hand. Luna helps her out, linking their fingers together. 

The elevator grinds and thunks before it rumbles upwards, the whole platform shaking with their ascent. Tenmyouji steadies himself against the guardrail, checking Quark’s still asleep. He is. 

“Closer than you think,” Clover promises her, leaning on her shoulder, whispering into her auburn hair.  Happiness, she wonders, or the exit? Truthfully, she means just about anything she can think of. They’re out of the Nonary Game. The rest of the world is closer than they think now. “Just hold on, okay?” 

Luna doesn’t respond and Clover doesn’t say anything further, happy to hang in stasis. 

Cat in the box; bird in a cage. 

Clover doesn’t want to open the lid.