Ah, I'm getting more and more hooked on this show with every episode. Based on the ending half of episode 8. I'm not trying to ship 9/12, but you can take it that way if you want.

I just sat down and wrote this with minimal editing, so if there's a ton of errors, please forgive me.

*I do not own Zankyou no Terror*

Review! :D

Nine was quiescent, sitting on a wobbly stool and turning over options in his mind. Five's attacked us directly. She found where we lived and destroyed it, and like roaches, we crawl to the next safe area. His fists closed, white-knuckled with strain, on nothing. She makes us look like fools. With her, we're outclassed.

Twelve's words came back to him. "Hey, Nine...I was thinking, maybe we should stop doing this."

And that was something he had never expected to hear out of his friend's mouth. They'd been together, closer than brothers, for more years than he cared to remember. Not all of that time was pleasant. Certainly not the beginning. This was something he had to avenge. They couldn't just...quit and run away.

He knew his friend wasn't plagued with nightmarish flashbacks, as he was. Twelve wasn't the one that awoke, terrified and vulnerable, inches away from screaming, in the night. His friend had done his best to comfort him and assuage those fears, a fence bending and breaking outwards to the sound of ridiculous, screaming fire. But there was only so far he could go for understanding. Nothing could be the equal of the inferno in his mind.

"Stop?" he'd replied, tone tinged with incredulity, but Twelve had cut him off before he could respond.

"Sure. If we keep doing this, we'll probably..."

"Are you scared?" Nine cut in. "Is it Lisa?"

Twelve moved, a little, enough for that to be his answer, and Nine focused his intense gaze on him. "You remember that place."

They were both silent for a moment, as memories, faded with age, flashed before their eyes. The wheel, stark against the gray sky. The unsmiling wardens, the lines of children. A long hallway (are you ready?). The tests, and what had come after.

"This is something we have to do, unless you're intending to forget."

"She's gone."

Twelve's voice broke his reverie, and Nine jerked up straight, almost knocking himself out of the stool. His friend was strapping on a backpack.

"Twelve."

The boy slumped. Without turning around, he replied, "I'm going to look for Lisa."

The first thing Nine felt was shock. Betrayal, perhaps, and of course, the jealousy that had been present from the start. So...this girl, she's more important than our plan? What we're going to do? We're running out of time, and he wishes to enter the house of our enemy and pull her out by the hair.

(This girl, she's more important than me...)

"She could've run to the police." The words were uncontrolled, almost poisonous in their bitterness. I have to get him on my side again. She is irrelevant. What matters is completing our mission.

(Was it ever our mission? Or did I force it on him?)

"She wouldn't." Twelve's response was almost as immediate as his own instinctive retort.

"Isn't that just what you want to believe?"

And now his old friend turned around, his face sadder than he'd seen for a while. The smile that he always wore was absent. The two boys shared a long look, broken only by the vibration of a phone. Even before Twelve fumbled it out, Nine knew what it would be, and knew the outcome of this situation.

"It's Lisa!" Two pictures. Glass, ringed and breaking, and the girl that'd ruined his life.

"I'm going to get her." And Twelve's resolve was like steel. Nine knew that stubbornness; he'd lived with it most of his life, and once he was committed, there was no backing out. Still, he tried to deceive himself, telling himself that the quickening of his heartbeat wasn't from anxiety, but from the adrenaline of encountering his ages-old enemy again.

"It's definitely Five." Another chance to face her - another chance to be brought to our knees. As if in sympathy, the camouflage pattern of scabs and scars on his back twinged.

At those words, Twelve turned and ran, padding quickly into the darkness down the hall.

"Twelve, wait!" Nine's voice was as smooth as ever, and his features belied nothing. It was both a blessing and a curse, to have this anonymity of his emotions. You're an android, Twelve had teased...was it a year ago already? How time flies.

To be honest with himself, the sight of his friend's departing back scared him. More than when they'd been near-murderers. More than when the train car evaporated around him, walls disintegrating under the strain of smoke and fire. More than when he'd received that text from the girl who'd made his life hell. Don't leave me, Twelve. You're all I've got in this world.

To his relief, Twelve stopped, jerking to a halt as if something in Nine's voice was a leash, pulling him back.

"This is a trap," he warned coldly.

"I know," came the whispered reply.

"Then why?" Nine's voice lifted suddenly, a bark of what sounded like anger. Why are you valuing her life over mine? We've known her roughly a week, and already this girl, with her clumsy manner - she gave us away at our old hideout - why is she the one who you'd race to save? Before the silence stretched too long, he snapped,"We're running out of time. It's not going to work again."

"I know. But I think it's because I have no time that I'm going." The steel in those warm brown eyes was stronger than even Nine had expected. If he kept up with this argument, he'd fracture their bond even more; the bond that he'd previously thought impermeable, impervious. Nine and Twelve. Twelve and Nine. The two of us against this hostile world.

"Twelve..." (Not anymore.) "Please don't go."

There it was, the miracle of his pleading. A voice softer, gentler, one that couldn't belong to him. Nine didn't beg. He did not bow under any circumstances. He was the anchor, Twelve the capricious current. And now this current had moved on, in an inexplicable occurrence, and he found that the loneliness he'd imagined was not what he'd wished for.

(You do now.) Reduced to begging, to keep his friend with him. This once insoluble bond was already breaking apart, shedding its pieces, and Nine had a feeling that if - no, when - Twelve came back, it would be completely dissolved. He'd be a third wheel to the new friendship, and to be excluded once again was something he thought he could not bear.

Please don't go.

Twelve's entire face drew up at that word: please. Something like disbelief, and then regret, softened the iron will in his stance. He was unable to look Nine straight in the face, eyes sliding sideways, focusing intently on a stain climbing up the wall. "I'm sorry, Nine."

And he turned and ran, footsteps fading faster than Nine would've ever believed possible. In moments all traces of him were gone.

Nine simply stood and watched, unable to believe it. He's gone.

Gone.

The word echoed hollowly in his mind.

He heard the faintest traces of a motorcycle engine revving, then speeding away.

He put his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking.

From who? he asked himself harshly. There's nobody left. You're alone again.

For a moment, his entire facade wobbled like so many illusions, and then his resolve firmed.

Fine, then. This bond is dissolved.

His face was set into its typical stony look.

I will finish on my own.