By the time they've finished preening his feathers, Gabriel has cleansed them of viscera and fine golden dust. He then draws them deeper into the lake, until they're climbing up onto his torso as his legs swoop upwards from the surface below. V1 scrabbles higher up his chest, and they watch his wings splay in either direction. Balance found, they pump downward, just enough to bring them floating away from the shores. A cloudless sky warms their back, the waters below cools their side. Somewhere in the middle, where their steel presses against Gabrielβs scarred flesh, they feel just right. Lulled into a standby state, they slip into the annals of their short-term memory, letting the everything they had experienced in the past eight hours or so upload into their solid state drives. Compared to the first twenty years of their time at Gabriel's side, it has become a more frequently-needed action. Simply due to the fact that a single, but ultimately harmless, downside had come with their life-saving memory upgrade: Converting digital information into genetic format takes two-point-four seconds longer than it would copying it onto electronic-based banks. For small amounts of data, the time difference is virtually unnoticeable, but for larger chunks, such as a day's worth of video and photos, newly updated battle data, and whatever musical compositions they've hammered out or edited, the extra seconds can add up very quickly. The change in processing time was, at first, a drastic adjustment, one they had to cultivate much more patience for than they think they would have during their period of hard-ingrained survival. It culminated to a day's worth of sleep mode the first time Gabriel
brought them to the Primum Mobile, both worrying their lover and frustrating themselves at this time-consuming process. They were being forced to, as Gabriel so eloquently put it at some point or another this past century, "stop and smell the roses". Precious memories took longer to cement into their very foundations, books took longer to read, compositions several days more to bring to life. Data management to allow for optimal copying speed has been maximized; they can go no further than what their current settings allow for. But much like the prospect of this lifetime one day coming to an inevitable, bloody end, this does not bother V1 now as much as it had upon the initial realization. They had time to do all of this and then some. Time to experience this good, green Earth like they could have never imagined it. (And.. well, what was the harm in taking things just a few minutes, hours, days slower than before. It's hard to believe, one hundred years after the fact, they've yet to grow weary of these halcyon days of seemingly endless bliss.) It's only seven minutes to back-up the night's events, and another fifteen seconds to flush their short-term cache clean. They emerge from their inner workings to find that Gabriel has drifted towards the southern corner of the lake, primary feathers brushing along the aquatic plants that clustered upon it's sunny surface. One hand rests behind his helm in a picturesque pose of carefree contentment, and the other traces every ridge of their silicone spine with reverant touches. Lotus blossoms of every hue imaginable rise above the flat leaves, swaying merrily in the warm spring breeze.
From the shadowy underbelly of a forest of pondweed stems emerges the shape of a fish. They think it may be a bass, perhaps one they've caught and released before. V1 tracks its languid movements as it draws closer to the border between air and lake. Right above the stretch of rippling, sunlit water, a dragonfly ducks close to its surface, hovering with beating wings that are merely a faint scratch to their straining audials. The surface tension breaks with a brief, audible splash as the fish darts for its would-be prey, only to miss as it darts into the air and well out of reach. Having survived an encounter with a predator, the dragonfly vanishes from sight and sound somewhere amidst the sinking high rises now swathed in vibrant green. Its would-be devourer, meanwhile, lingers near the boundary between its home and the vast unknown, unbothered by the presence of archangel and machine in its never-ending quest for fuel. V1 turns their attention away from the ongoings of nature, and to their partner 's wings as they twitch into a different angle, lazily pushing them both farther out onto the lake. His soaked primaries brush along the lily pads just off the lakeside shore, dappled with delicate pink blossoms. Impulsively, they disengage their Knuckleblaster from where it's wrapped tight around his waist, and pluck one such flower from its sunken stem. It's a perfect specimen, not a petal out of place; virtually indistinguishable from the ones spotted in Heavenβs courtyard ponds. Or in a painting done by an ascended soul. They pull up their recent files, and find the high-quality snapshot taken during their brief venture into the open air gallery. Among the many portraits that had caught their interest, this one
sticks out in their memory the most. It had not just been the careful brushstrokes and deliberate color-pallette, nor a clear look at their lover's distant kin outside of what brief glimpses they've been allowed. Gabriel's long-winded explanation of preset symbolism, and how it tied in to the subject at hand, is what sticks out to them in particular. '"And while flowers can take on many different meanings for mortals, a lotus in many of their cultures symbolizes eternity, and the marital bliss they had been promised Sphere of Lovers."' Eternity: noun, indefinite unending time. Synonyms: perpetuity, the life to come, everlasting life. Isn't that what they had? Yes, one day they would die, but so would those Angels in the portrait. All this time at one another's side, how happy it made them, coinciding with the definition of the second word of interest in his explanationβ¦ β¦hmmm. The image is dismissed, V1 sets the blossom down upon the lakeβs surface, and watches it float away, carried in the wake of each little wave left by their carefree drifting. They mull over their question for a minute longer than they normally would, weighing different ways to approach the topic, before ultimately settling on their usual blase approach. V1 taps a single claw on his sturdy chest. Thereβs a soft hum in response to their touch as Gabrielβs hand pulls away from where it had been stroking their spine, coming up to cup their optic helm. βYes?β He asks, a drowsy lilt to his tone. V1 spells out their query in quick, practiced movements. βDO YOU WANNA GET MARRIED?β
One scene left to draft holy shit. I'm calling it a night for now but ough. The end is finally within my grasp.
This is gonna be the last snippet I share of the epilogue before it's done. Hope this'll tide y'all over until it's ready to go live! Thanks for all the support! βΊοΈ #GabV1el #ULTRAKILL
28.02.2026 03:05 β
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