it is chicken, it is eggs, it is in between your legs

---

He sits in nothingness. He lived in nothingness, after all. I was never alive. There is nothing here, and there was never anything there.

Ether. The Bionis feeds on ether. Zanza feeds on ether. I, who could never taste Fiora's cooking. I only ever hungered for ether.

Ether glows a warm green. But it is cold. Not the brisk cold of life, the slow cold of death. Of being not alive.

Not that Shulk would know that. Because he wasn't alive.

An aurora blinks.

"How are you, Shulk?"

How am I. How am I?

"What kind of a stupid question is that, Alvis? For starters, I can't be any way at all, I'm dead. And secondly, I can't be any way at all because I'm DEAD! I was never alive!"

"Four years do not constitute the span of never, Shulk. Let alone eighteen of them."

Birthdays. New pairs of shoes. Cuts and scrapes on his elbows. Burns from a soldering iron. Things a normal Homs experiences. Am I normal? No I'm not. No I wasn't.

And Alvis isn't normal either. Having an imaginary friend in your dreams is not normal. It's not normal!

Maybe Reyn was the imaginary one. Hey, maybe Alvis is the only one who's actually real. Not that Alvis ever got a cut on his elbow.

Did Alvis ever get new shoes? Alvis can control the Monado, too. The Monado doesn't need new shoes. The Monado doesn't care about new shoes.

Zanza doesn't care about new shoes. But maybe Alvis would. Alvis knows about never.

Alvis. Real. Here. Always. Never. Forever.

"You...and you would know, wouldn't you. You saw this whole thing happen! You let me live, with the Monado and all! What's the difference between you and Zanza? What's the difference between me and Zanza?!"

What is it?

"Your friends do not love Zanza. I do not love Zanza."

Shulk might not have been good at picking up on social cues, but he saw this one loud and clear. Loud, in the vacuum, and clear, in the astra, of space. Was the space fake, even? Maybe it didn't matter. I do not love Zanza, Shulk. I love you.

No, it did matter. "Where are we?"

"We are in memory space."

"Whose memory?"

"The memory of our world."

There is nothing here. There is everything here. Your Monado, the very fabric of will and the mechanism by which it bends and folds...it is all here.

"The stream of consciousness. Ha."

"I am glad to see you smiling, Shulk."

You're glad. You are. I do. No I don't.

"You only see me smiling. But I'm not happy. Because I'm dead."

You can't feel emotions if you're dead. But then why am I angry now? And did Zanza...did Zanza love my friends?

"I know your smile, Shulk. Yes, I am not glad to see your suffering, but I am glad to see you."

If Alvis did, then maybe Zanza did. What is the difference? How am I? No, who am I?

I'm no one.

"Oh, as if. I was laughing before you came, you know. Would you have been glad to see that?"

Somehow he knows that Alvis will realize the nuance, inwardly cryptic and outwardly literal though he always is.

"That all depends, Shulk."

Shulk. Who is Shulk? Shulk's smile. That all depends.

"Why do you say my name like that?"

"Like what?" There is a peculiar weight to the words as they carry together in a single phrase. They would be so unimaginably different if spoken apart. But there is always a peculiar weight to the way Alvis speaks. And that's the point.

"You know. Or can't you hear yourself, out here?"

"I can always hear myself. As can you."

I can always hear Alvis. Because I am Zanza. I am this world.

"You didn't...you didn't answer my question." And Alvis didn't bother quibbling about whether he had or he hadn't.

"It is your name...Shulk. And doesn't that mean that you are alive? If you can hear me? Speaking in a way so apparently different to what you expect?"

Alvis is calm. Zanza was calm too. How does Shulk even know this? Because Zanza let him, apparently. If he was dead the whole time, well, what's the harm in seeing outside the bounds of your own perception for a few more minutes?

Outside his own body. Shulk's, whoever Shulk is. Was. He was always outside it. He was always inside it.

Everything we did was meaningless. We, you and I, Alvis.

Are you certain?