Of Course I Could Have Dreamed [Abalia, Gamu]

Abalia had, she supposed, returned to speak with Gamu far sooner than she had anticipated. But ultimately, she knew in the deepest part of her heart that this was simply something she had to do. This woman was one of the few with whom she still had unfinished business, and at the same time, was someone that she cared more about than most. Perhaps it was simply motherly pity.

"I take it you have answers for me, Gamu?"

She spoke in the same confident tone as always, certainly not allowing her exhaustion as of late to creep into her voice. After all, that was her concern, not Gamu's. She still had no fear of this woman, even knowing what a monster she was, but ultimately, that was simply because she still considered the two of them to be kindred spirits.

Gamu turned around in her office, the tall woman's green eyes looking over lazily at Abalia's entry. There was a faint playfulness to them that told Abalia what to expect. Wasn't it always like this? Games to be played between the two like a passionate dance of love.

"First, what is it that you believe defines you from others? What distinguishes you from both other people, and from other living creatures as a whole? Second, how do you intend to pursue your own goal in life? Third, what do you believe your life will look like when that goal is achieved? And finally, the fourth question, what would you do if I ordered you to perish?"

She parroted to Abalia as if to reaffirm that she still had the entire thing in her mind as if it was just yesterday. Verbatim no less. Every word of her Abby was engraved in her mind since the time she was put in her place.

"Firstly, that's a silly question. I'm powerful, I'm unique in birth. One of a kind! No shinigami can know what it's like to be me, to be woven together like a patchwork of hollows~"

Fingers rising for ever individual question that she answered. One down and three to go. Wasn't she just the best? She was taking this remarkably carefree, wasn't she?

"Secondly, my goal is to be an apex predator! I will achieve the greatest power I can and when I have done that I will eat, I will consume everything. I'll eat until I am full and when that goal is finished and everything is gone I'll know. I'll know if my gnawing hunger is gone and I am truly satisfied as a monster or I'll be the only thing left in this universe and realise in this empty place that there was no meaning to my existence. That I can devour endlessly and know that I am truly hollow inside."

Two fingers raised, she answered two of the four in that one. Did she not?

"And you know what happens for the fourth. So tell me, knowing that I'm nothing but a calamity, a ticking timebomb to your own ideals... Will you try to kill me, A-bby~?"

Gamu sang the last bit, her eyes narrowed as she awaited to hear what Abalia said to her. Knowing now what Gamu's goals were, the very reason that she pursued the goal as an apex predator only to destroy everything she could to answer an meaningless question that only mattered to her. There was no good, no evil, no morality in this desire but a primal urge to know like the scientist that she was.

So that was what it had all come down to. Abalia knew a good deal of what Gamu was, of course, but to hear it so plainly laid out, her aims and existence affirmed in plain words, was a far different thing. She thought to maybe sit down, to hold this conversation casually. But, no. She walked across the office, and staring up into Gamu's eyes, she reached up to put a hand on her head. A gesture of simultaneous compassion and affirmation of her position.

"I will not, no. If I did, I would kill myself immediately after, for failing in the goal I set out for myself so long ago. To help those who cannot help themselves. To free others from suffering and agony. Tell me, Gamu. What a life might you have if your hunger was fulfilled and life still continued? Do not answer me in clinical, scientific terms. Imagine it."

She simply couldn't give up on this creature, this woman. For all the fundamentally vile aspects of her being, Abalia could not help but only pity her, feel an attachment to her far deeper than she would have liked.

Gamu looked a little confused, she supposed that she shouldn't be surprised given Abalia's temperment but there was clearly some discomfort like she was expecting or wanting a conflict between them. It was always peaceful though, always so peaceful.

"...Imagine it?"

That was so difficult, it was like telling someone born and who had lived with chronic pain all their life and they were asked to imagine a life without that pain. How could you ask someone to imagine something that was alien to them? Gamu might've told her that was stupid if it wasn't asked so earnestly by Abalia herself.

"The question you poised to me is no different than if I asked you what it's like to feel guilty before I patched your soul together. Could you answer that to me earnestly beforehand if I asked that? What would I do if I was suddenly no longer had a fundamental part of my own existence fulfilled?"

Gamu leaned down from her position, the green eyes staring directly into Abalia's own eyes from inches away like she waited expectantly.

"Precisely. I could not answer it. Nor, Gamu, can you. So the question becomes, how do we create that situation where you can know it? You lack the ability to even envision a world where you are simply able to be fulfilled. I have no doubt that the means of accomplishing such a thing are overwhelmingly difficult. But if you have repaired my soul, then it is only right that I do everything I might to return the favor to you."

The difficulty of it was not lost on her, nor was the expectant gaze from Gamu. But she simply met that gaze with one of absolute conviction, of belief. Not in any abstract ideal, not in a vision of saving the world or all mankind from the greatest possible evil. It was simply the conviction to save a single person, in whatever way that she could.

"I will complete you, as you completed me."

"You will fix me, huh?"

She sneered out like she hadn't entertained the thoughts herself and came to the conclusion that nothing less than a hogyoku or something equivalent could achieve anything of the sort and that was still debatable. For the hypothetical nature of the hogyoku and her understanding of it needing to rely on manifesting the desire - Gamu would need to desire to not feel this hunger even more than her own outstanding desire of becoming an even greater monster.

"With what? By what means? Tell me more than empty plans that convey nothing besides your commitment to me. Your completely platonic commitment."

Gamu teased, nuzzling her nose against Abalia's for a moment before she pulled away and resumed her previous position of standing over the shorter girl.

"Let us not pretend that the means do not exist, if we simply but find them. I am no fool, and I know that countless methods of breaking even the fabric of reality itself exist in this world, if they are simply but found."

Abalia realized that there was a great deal of this that perhaps went against her typical principles. That it went against all she had held herself to for as long as she could remember. But that was inconsequential. Had she not done so much to assure that she was capable of want? Simply to do something for the simple fact that she wished to do it? And she wished to help Gamu.

"Perhaps we will search for a hogyoku. If one is impossible, we will find something similar, or create it. I will not accept anything else."

It almost made her laugh, no it made her snicker and then giggle at the irony that Abalia would put forth the very same thought that she just had. Gamu just leaned back and gave her a coy grin.

"And when my desire to be an apex predator is greater than my desire to change this path I've had for so many years, what then? Maybe my desire to see you break out of that cocoon and become the monstrous butterfly I've always wanted to see would happen?"

It was rhetorical for it said everything that she needed it to say, it was an untrustworthy thing with its own set of drawbacks. Were they to go to the Yuudeshi and simply ask? Oh please Chifuyu or Zin Yuudeshi, please give us your hogyoku for but a second? We'll give it back, pinky promises~

Gamu just thought it was too funny and yet despite the jests and comedy that Gamu saw in it, no the way that she poked fun at Abalia's attempts this woman was neither frustrated or deterred.

"Ah Abby, I truly do love you and all the things that make you so peculiar."

"I love you as well, Gamu."

Not romantically, of course, but the way Abalia said it made that much abundantly clear. But it was quite profoundly true. She saw in Gamu something more than a simple opportunity to correct her own mistakes, for such pathetic self-indulgence was not something Abalia would ever engage in. No, all that she wanted was to prevent someone else from suffering the same fate.

"You would desire to trample me in your quest, Gamu? How complacent of you. It is as you said, that you could not imagine a life without that need any more than I could imagine a life with my soul completed. Yet I still sought it out. I sought to be something more. Do you think a true apex predator views the world so plainly, Gamu? Do you think that my standing atop all others has been lessened, simply because I now understand them? On the contrary, it is because of this that I have lost the one thing which shackled that ambition. I seek to fulfill my own wishes, not simply those of others."

While she could have expressed the full scope of her will, she did not do so. After all, it would have been pointless. The words alone were enough.

"I wonder what you would be like, Gamu, if you were capable of much the same."

"I view the world so plainly, upset you as it may. It's inevitable that I would be quite upset without you but a sacrifice on that path you would be. This world is a mess and the people irritate me, I do not like nor care about them like you. All besides you are no different than either food to be had or food that is had as far as I care to think of them."

Gamu doubled down on her stance, she was never one to linger on the philosophy of an apex predator. It is only by her whims when she came to that conclusion that she solidified the simple nature of it and boiled away all the superficial traits to look for the core and the singularity of it under all of that was plain; it was power over others, the power do as you pleased with them. Empathy was something she never had, she could only take guesses comparable to throwing darts at a board in the dark and hope that she got it right.

"Change me if you can but until that day, you'll have to accept me as this kind of creature. Your whimsical pet underneath your thumb to play with as you see fit. My perception of myself is clear and based on what I can see of myself, your's is based on what you want to see. You don't know what I look like inside, were it that you could... I don't think you'd be as idealistic as you are."