Time had no meaning in the Nightmare Zone.
But if it did—if someone had been counting the moments that passed between the violet hedgehog's declaration of love and what came after—they would have measured it in eons.
She never left his side.
Not for a single moment. Not for a single instant. She was there when he sat in silence, staring at nothing. She was there when he walked through the artificial landscape she had created. She was there when he lay down to rest, even though rest was unnecessary for beings who existed outside physical reality.
Always there. Always watching. Always loving.
"Good morning, my love," she said as Nazo opened his eyes to another meaningless cycle of existence.
"The concept of morning doesn't apply here," he observed flatly.
"I know. But I like saying it anyway. It feels domestic. Normal." She smiled, and the expression was radiant—and slightly unhinged. "Like we're a real couple in a real world, waking up together."
"We're not a real couple. I don't feel anything for you."
"Not yet. But you will. Eventually. I have forever to make you love me."
Nazo sat up, noting that the landscape around him had changed again. She did that often—reshaping their environment based on whims he couldn't understand. Today, there was a cottage. Flowers in window boxes. A white picket fence.
It looked like something from a children's storybook about happy families.
"You've redecorated," he said.
"Do you like it? I made it for us. Our home." Her golden eyes shimmered with excitement. "I know you can't appreciate it now, but when your feelings come back, you'll see how perfect it is. How perfect WE are."
"My feelings are not coming back. I've explained this."
"You're wrong." She moved closer, her impossible curves pressing against his side as she wrapped her arms around him. "Love is patient. Love is kind. Love never gives up. I read that somewhere. Or maybe I made it up. It doesn't matter. The point is, I will never stop loving you, and eventually, that love will reach you."
"That's not how emotional capacity works."
"You don't know that. You don't know anything anymore. You're empty." She said the word without cruelty—almost tenderly, as if his emptiness was an endearing quirk rather than a fundamental destruction of self. "But I'm full. Full of enough love for both of us. And one day, my love will overflow into you, and you'll feel again."
She pressed her lips to his cheek.
"And then you'll love me back. And we'll be happy forever."
The obsession had grown gradually, then all at once.
In the early days—if "days" meant anything—she had been patient. Gentle. Understanding of his condition and respectful of his boundaries.
But as time passed and his emptiness persisted, something in her had shifted.
The being who had once been the Nightmare Zone's primary construct had transformed herself out of love. She had betrayed her purpose, abandoned her function, remade herself entirely for the sake of the silver hedgehog she had spent almost a million cycles tormenting.
And now she couldn't let go.
"I made you breakfast," she announced, presenting a plate of food that couldn't possibly exist in a realm of pure psychology.
"I don't need to eat."
"I know. But couples eat breakfast together. It's what they do." She set the plate before him, her smile unwavering despite his complete lack of response. "I made your favorites. Or what I think would be your favorites. Or what I've decided are your favorites. Does it matter? I made them with love."
Nazo looked at the plate. It contained items that resembled food—eggs, toast, fruit—but had the slightly off quality of things imagined by someone who had never actually experienced eating.
"Thank you," he said, because that seemed like the appropriate response.
"You're welcome, my darling." She sat across from him, chin resting on her hands, watching him with an intensity that would have been unsettling if he could still feel unsettled. "Aren't you going to eat?"
"I don't experience hunger."
"Eat anyway. For me."
He picked up a fork and took a bite. The food had no taste—or rather, it had the idea of taste without the actual sensation. But he chewed and swallowed because it seemed easier than explaining again why the action was pointless.
"Delicious, right?" she asked hopefully.
"I can't taste anything."
"But you ate it. That means something. That means you're willing to do things for me, even when you don't see the point." Her smile widened. "That's the beginning of love."
"That's not what love is."
"How would you know? You can't feel it." She reached across the table and took his hand. "But I can. And I feel enough for both of us. I love you so much, Nazo. So much that it hurts. So much that I can't imagine existing without you. So much that I would do anything—ANYTHING—to keep you with me forever."
Her grip tightened.
"You understand that, right? You understand that you're mine now? That nothing will ever separate us?"
"I understand that you believe those things."
"Not believe. KNOW. I know you're mine. I know we're meant to be together. I know that our love—MY love—is the most important thing in any dimension."
She stood and circled the table, positioning herself behind him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, her chin resting on top of his head.
"Say you love me."
"I can't. I don't feel love."
"Say it anyway. The words. Just the words. For me."
"Saying words I don't mean would be—"
"SAY IT."
Her voice cracked with an edge that hadn't been there before. Something desperate. Something dangerous.
Nazo considered his options with the same empty calculation he applied to everything.
"I love you," he said, because it required less energy than refusing.
She shuddered against him, a sound escaping her throat that was somewhere between a sob and a moan.
"Again."
"I love you."
"Again. Again. Keep saying it. Forever."
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
The words meant nothing to him. They were just sounds—vibrations in a space where vibrations shouldn't exist. But they clearly meant everything to her, because she held him tighter with each repetition, her body trembling with an emotion so intense it seemed to warp the reality around them.
"I knew it," she whispered. "I knew you loved me. I knew we were meant to be together. I knew—"
"I don't actually feel anything," Nazo interrupted. "You understand that, right? The words are empty. I'm saying them because you asked, not because they reflect any internal state."
She went still.
Then, slowly, she released him and walked around to face him. Her expression was strange—a mixture of hurt and something else. Something that looked almost like amusement.
"I know you don't feel it yet," she said. "But that's okay. I have patience. I have forever. And I have something you don't."
"What?"
"Certainty." She leaned down until her face was inches from his. "I am absolutely, completely, unshakably certain that we are meant to be together. That you will love me. That our love will be the greatest love in all of existence."
"That certainty isn't based on evidence."
"It doesn't need to be. It's based on faith. On love. On the absolute truth of my heart."
She kissed him—long and deep, pouring every ounce of her impossible devotion into the contact.
Nazo received the kiss passively, as he received everything.
When she pulled back, her eyes were shining with something that looked like triumph.
"See? You didn't pull away. You let me kiss you. That means you want this. You want US."
"I didn't pull away because pulling away would require motivation. I don't have motivation. I don't have preferences. I simply exist."
"You exist WITH ME. That's what matters." She straightened, smoothing her fur with hands that trembled slightly. "Now, I have plans for us today. I thought we could go for a walk by the lake I made yesterday. Then maybe a picnic. Then maybe—"
"You're aware that none of this is real, correct? The cottage, the lake, the food—they're all constructs of your imagination, existing in a realm of pure psychology."
"They're real to ME. And you're real to me. And our love is real to me." She smiled, and the expression was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. "That's enough. That's more than enough. That's everything."
The pattern continued for what might have been days or years or centuries.
She never tired. Never wavered. Never accepted his emptiness as permanent.
She built worlds for them—houses and gardens and entire landscapes designed around her fantasy of their life together. She cooked meals he couldn't taste, gave gifts he couldn't appreciate, spoke words of love he couldn't feel.
And she never. Stopped. Watching.
"You blinked seventeen times in the last minute," she observed as they sat together by one of her imaginary lakes. "Yesterday it was fifteen. Are you becoming more present? More aware?"
"Blinking is an automatic function. It doesn't indicate anything about my mental state."
"But what if it does? What if your body is waking up before your mind? What if the love I'm giving you is slowly, gradually, healing you from the outside in?"
"That's not how consciousness works."
"You don't know how consciousness works. Not anymore. You're empty, remember? An empty vessel can't understand its own emptiness." She scooted closer, resting her head on his shoulder. "But I understand. I understand everything about you. And I know—I KNOW—that you're getting better."
"I'm not getting better. I'm not getting worse. I'm simply existing in a static state of non-feeling."
"That's what you think. But I can see the changes. Little things. The way you sometimes pause before answering, like you're considering your words. The way you occasionally look at me when I'm not talking, like you're curious about what I'm doing."
"Those behaviors don't indicate emotional recovery."
"They indicate SOMETHING. And something is better than nothing." She lifted her head to look at him, her golden eyes filled with love so intense it seemed to radiate like physical heat. "I'll take any sign, no matter how small. Because every sign is proof that you're coming back to me."
Nazo looked at her—really looked, with the detached analytical attention that was all he had left.
"You've changed," he observed.
"Changed how?"
"When you first transformed, you were patient. Gentle. You spoke of love as a gift freely given, with no expectation of return."
"I still feel that way."
"No. You don't." He tilted his head, studying her the way one might study an unusual specimen. "Now your love has conditions. Expectations. You need me to recover. You need me to love you back. The freely-given gift has become a transaction you expect to be repaid."
Her expression flickered—just for a moment—with something that looked almost like anger.
Then it was gone, replaced by her usual adoring smile.
"That's not true. I love you unconditionally. I always have. I always will."
"Then why does it bother you when I point out that I feel nothing? Why do you need to interpret every random behavior as a sign of recovery? Why do you need me to say words I don't mean?"
"Because—"
She stopped. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no words emerged.
"Because you're not actually capable of unconditional love," Nazo finished for her. "You're a construct of the Nightmare Zone, designed to understand and manipulate psychology. Unconditional love is beyond your fundamental nature."
"That's not—"
"What you feel for me is obsession. Possession. The need to own and control something you've spent almost a million cycles intimately connected to. It's not love. It's dependency."
Her eyes flashed, and for a moment, the golden warmth was replaced by something colder. Something that looked almost like the apparition she had once been.
"You don't get to tell me what I feel," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "You're EMPTY. You don't feel ANYTHING. You have no right to analyze MY emotions when you have none of your own."
"I'm not analyzing your emotions. I'm observing your behaviors and drawing logical conclusions."
"Your conclusions are WRONG."
"Perhaps. I have no way to verify internal states I cannot access."
She grabbed his face with both hands, forcing him to look directly into her eyes.
"I love you," she said fiercely. "I LOVE you. Not obsession. Not dependency. LOVE. The real thing. The kind that transforms and transcends and persists through anything."
"If that's true, then my failure to reciprocate shouldn't distress you. True love doesn't require return."
"I'm not DISTRESSED. I'm—"
She stopped again, and this time, Nazo could see something cracking in her expression. The facade of perfect devotion struggling against something darker beneath.
"I'm just trying to help you," she said finally, her voice smaller. "I'm trying to bring you back. Is that so wrong?"
"I didn't say it was wrong. I'm not capable of moral judgments. I simply observed that your stated philosophy of unconditional love doesn't match your demonstrated behaviors."
She released his face and stepped back, her arms wrapping around herself.
"You're cruel," she whispered. "I didn't expect you to be cruel. Broken, yes. Empty, yes. But not cruel."
"I'm not being cruel. Cruelty requires intent to cause harm. I have no intent. I'm simply stating observations."
"Your observations HURT."
"I can't help that. Hurt is an emotional response that you experience. I have no control over your internal states."
She stared at him for a long moment, and he could see the war playing out behind her golden eyes. Love and anger. Devotion and resentment. The desperate need to save him battling against the growing suspicion that he couldn't—or wouldn't—be saved.
Then, slowly, the conflict resolved. The warmth returned. The smile reasserted itself.
"You're testing me," she said. "That's what this is. You're testing my love, seeing if it can withstand your emptiness, your logic, your observations."
"I'm not testing anything. I'm simply—"
"And I'm passing the test." She moved forward again, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace he didn't return. "I'm proving that my love is real. That nothing you say or do can drive me away. That I will be here forever, loving you, no matter what."
"That interpretation doesn't match the available evidence."
"I don't care about evidence. I care about you." She pressed her face against his chest, holding him with a desperate strength. "I love you, Nazo. I love you, I love you, I love you. And I will never, ever, ever stop."
Nazo stood in her embrace, feeling nothing.
And in the depths of his emptiness, something stirred.
Not emotion. Not feeling. Just a small, quiet thought:
This is very strange.
It wasn't much.
But it was the first thought he'd had in a very long time that wasn't a direct response to external stimulus.
And somewhere, somehow, that might have meant something.