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The light glinted off of their composite parts, as the two robots stood and watched the sun sink beneath the horizon. One of them had the face and memories of Ikusaba Mukuro, the other Celestia Ludenberg.
Were they who they remembered living as? That was a question for greater theologians than were available to them.
They were silent, for a long time.
When the sun was halfway gone, Mukuro spoke. “It’s nice.”
“Hm?”
“The sunset. It’s nice.” She leaned forward on the railing, and tried to focus her eyes beyond the chain link fence, beyond the guard tower. She just wanted to look at the sun. “I never had the time to watch them before.”
“Even if you had,” Celestia said. “You wouldn’t have been able to watch them so closely as you are now. You’d have burned your eyes out.”
“Still might.”
“Hm.” Celestia turned back to the sunset. She had to admit, it was nice.
They were silent for a while longer.
Eventually, Celestia moved to go back inside.
“Wait.” Mukuro turned to her, holding out her hand. The dying sun made the two of them look almost alive again. Almost human.
“What?” Celestia asked.
“I wanted to apologize,” Mukuro said. “For everything. Everything I helped my sister do, and everything I might have done since then that might have hurt.”
Celestia considered this.
“I know,” Mukuro said. “I know you can probably never forgive me, but--”
“She did kill you, too.”
It was Mukuro’s turn to be taken aback. She blinked, a behavior left over and allowed for from living, from flesh and blood and beating hearts.
“She killed you,” Celestia said simply. “I was executed, but you were killed.”
“That’s… I’d never thought of it like that before.”
“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about you,” Celestia admitted. “I mean, this isn’t a circumstance one can train for.”
“So don’t worry about ‘supposed to’,” Mukuro blurted out. “Where did ‘supposed to’ ever get us? What good has ‘supposed to’ ever done?”
Celestia considered this for a long while. The sun was almost completely set when she spoke. “I suppose you have a point.”
“You think so?” Mukuro muttered. She glanced back to the dying embers of the sky, the fading pink lighting up her face as she avoided the other girls gaze.
“Dying has…” Celeste said. “Changed a few of my perspectives, I think. There are things I’d like to try, now, that I never thought I had time to before.”
“I’d like to see a thousand more sunsets,” Mukuro offered.
Celestia stepped up to her, and they stood together. “I’d like to watch them with you,” She decided.
The two of them looked at each other. The sunset was gone, now, but Mukuro’s face still held that same fascination, the awe of something never fully appreciated until that moment.
And then, the two of them found out that robots, for all their uncompromising metal and unyielding shells, could kiss.