Disclaimer: Does not own Ergo, or anything associated with Ergo Proxy. I'm . . . not even entirely sure I understand what's going on at the end.

Being stranded in the middle of nowhere with someone of the opposite gender was not a recipe for romance. It wasn't. Re-L didn't care what everyone else thought: she could be alone on a landship forever, with only one immigrant for company, and Romdo's rules of decorum would never be breached.

Any immigrant but Vincent.

The problem was, she was gratingly, glaringly aware of the fact that he was here, of the fact that beneath Vincent's skin lay Ergo Proxy.

They never talked about that night, but the memory of it hung between them: sharpening her tongue, stretching in the silences between them, lingering in his gaze when he thought she wasn't watching. Every night when they sat down to another dinner of beans, they bowed their heads—not praying— just not looking at each other, and very deliberately not thinking about the thing that had almost happened between them.

A word written in the shower steam, dripping like dark blood. Even as she stumbled back from her own bathroom mirror, her investigator's instincts kicked in and she saw that the finger that wrote it was too large to be human, and that whatever had scrawled the message had talons, for the word was haloed by curling slivers where a claw etched the mirror.

She did not have time to see any more than that before the ceiling imploded, the impact flinging her backward into the wall.

But it was not the physical impact that held her.

Neither was it the fear.

She saw it.

It saw her.

And the connection between them was as instantaneous as it was absolute.

It was huge: more shadow than substance, thin and hulking at once.

It closed the distance between them in a movement too fast for her to see, and bent over her to murder or devour, and she could not move.

She could never move, ever again.

Vaguely, she was aware that the strap of her sheer undershirt had slipped off, leaving her breast exposed, and still she could not even try to look away from the monstrous majesty of its face.

It was grinning, but it grinned the way a mask grins: strangely expressionless even as it showed all its teeth. The skin was midnight black, but she could hardly see it behind the exoskeleton. A kind of ivory half-mask covered most of its features, then branched out—twining hard, white snakes through the creature's short black hair.

The eyes glowed strangely in the dark. Green. Or blue. Looking at her with more searing intensity than anyone had ever dared to look at her before. It angled its head this way and that, as if trying to place her, or search her face for a sign.

Absurdly, what came to her were Iggy's words, teasing her: You like him, don't you?

When the taloned hand touched her face, it was as if she had never been touched before. The dark, dry hand touched a chord inside her that hummed like the nursery cryotank in which she was born. It angled her face up, bending over her like a lover.

Oh, Creator, it's going to—

But what it did was more intimate than a kiss.

A tear welled in the shining eye, and slid down the black cheek: a star sliding down the night sky.

The ancients believed we could see our destinies in the stars.

Her own body answered, and, though she had not even realized that her eyes were filling, a single tear slid down her face.

She had not cried in front of anyone before, ever.

And now she had shared with this creature what she had never shared with anyone: raw emotion and her own wet salt.

Its thumb touched her lips, then. Not gently, but not with the crushing strength she saw it to be capable of. The taloned digit pushed between her lips, ran along her teeth, and for a moment, she tasted the dark skin.

It tasted like the end of all things. Like the cement of her ceiling, and the prayers of her city, and death.

It had paused, holding itself in her mouth, feeling her feel it.

She had the sense that something profound was happening to her, something that would hurt, but more was the only thing that could happen.

And it would have, too, but for the second black shape that fell from the sky and attacked the monster pinning her to the wall.

Her body still did not remember itself, but with Ergo Proxy gone her legs forgot how to hold her up, and she slid down the wall and sat, unblinking, until Iggy came to pick her out of the rubble.

Her head bowed over her beans, Re-L knew that the second creature had not saved her. It had been far too late to save her. The single touch had blasted her to ash and burned her shadow into the wall. She still remained there, boneless, a black line of mascara running down her face, sitting beneath the writing on the wall.

Awakening.

The word shone: dark clarity etched into a smooth cloud of fog.