Archive of Our Own ^beta

At the end of time,

She was a forgetful god, she was. She had forgotten many things. Her name, and her titles (of which she knew she had many). It had been a very long time since she last spoke to someone.

There was an endless shallow puddle of depleted potential energy and an empty, black void. That was the universe. She knew hypothetically, from what very few things she could remember of the past, that this wasn't always the way it was. But it felt like it was. Darkness and emptiness, that was the universe. It had been so for very much longer than it ever had been anything else.

It was lonely.

She was lonely.

When she closed her eyes very tight, and held on, she could remember a table. There was food on that table, and lights, and frayed static at the edges. She was smiling.

There was someone there with her. There were people. There were people with her. She knew that there were people with her there.

She'd try. Try and look at them. They were smiling and laughing with her. It was warm and happy, and it seemed like it would never end. The food, and the laughing, and the people whose names she did not know, and whose faces she did not remember.

This memory was important to her, she knew. Or else, it wouldn't be the only memory like it. Only, she could not tell why it was so important. It made her very sad. Her teardrops, shining like diamonds, sparked up light in the universe for the first time since the last time she cried.

There were very many times that she had cried.

Only this time, she saw someone in the dark with her. It was a tiny, shriveled-up stump of imaginary energy. It, and her heart, were attached to each other like a host and its parasite. She could feel everything in the universe that was left, slowly moving towards the tiny stump.

It seemed to look at her. She could tell this was true, somehow.

"Let them know we love them so much," the stump said.

It was crying, too.

How could a little stump cry? It spoke to her again, "You'll do fantastic, because you already have."

Yes, that's right.

Of course. Of course. Of course. Of course.

She remembered,

all of the sudden. The lonely god, she remembered, the forgetful god remembering she did, it was all at once. Instantly, an overwhelming surge of information entered her fading mind as the shriveled-up stump breathed its last, and she knew.

This had all happened before. And it would all happen again. The universe had only one life but it was circular. It was the last samsara, the first and the last, and she was the universe and she was...

Yes, that was it!

She traveled from the end to the beginning, and remembered the promise that she had made to herself. In the infinite, fresh well of potential that was the newborn universe, she planted herself as a single seed, and reached as far as she could to every corner of every bit of creation. Mindless, thoughtless, she searched for every spark of life, and clung to it so tightly, so lovingly, that in the infinite abyss there might be something that could create meaning for itself.

Answering unanswerable questions. Living finite lives. Eating very, very good food.

And she made sure that these were good lives as well.

There had to be a Mei, who was strong and selfless and beautiful. And there would always be a Bronya, who was as clever as she was caring.

She could remember these faces. Himeko. Fu Hua. Theresa. Seele.

Every face that she'd ever seen. Her memories became the meaning of life, and the meaning of life could decide what it was on its own whenever it wanted. It was destiny and it was not destiny. The future had already happened.

It was meaningless. How beautiful, to be a place where meaning could emerge as freely as it wished.

She would fight with herself as the Herrscher of the Void, and battle with Raiden Mei on the rooftops of Nagazora. She would overcome her past against the Herrscher of Dominance, and transcend Finality into the goddess of earth.

She would love Raiden Mei. She would love her so much that she had no choice but to love herself.

The universe did not need to say a word. Beginning to end to beginning, Kiana was already making plenty of noise.