In the end, he really didn’t need to do anything physical. He didn’t even need to touch Matt, though he did sit on his bedroll somewhere that was clear of rocks so that he wouldn’t hurt himself if he were to pass out and fall over or have a seizure or something. He even wrapped a stick with a belt in case it hurt, and he needed something to bite down on.
He didn’t expect it to, of course, but there were times in the past when this had been exceedingly painful, so he was ready. At least he thought he was until he started the process.
Benjamin very carefully set up his interface, and then searched for a sector surrounded by known good sectors. He had no way of knowing what was in each one. He lacked the software to dig that deeply. He didn’t know what he’d be copying over from Matt either, honestly, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. Anything would be better than random garbage, which was his soul scar.
He’d considered just copying over pieces of his own soul to fill those gaps, but for whatever reason it had transferred the cell rather than copied it and left him with a feeling of vertigo. There was clearly some uniqueness property he didn’t understand that would make it impossible for him to be the skin donor for his own spiritual burns.
Because, of course, that would have been too easy, he thought.
Benjamin wondered if the same might be true between systems but saw no reason that was likely. Still, he’d study the issue closely. The last thing he wanted to do was break Matt any more than he already was.
In the end, he opted to pull the same sector over as the one he was replacing rather than choose one at random. Not everyone had the same brain, but all the brain's lobes were in about the same spot. He just had to hope that the same thing held true for souls.
The process took only seconds, and though there was a sharp stinging sensation, it didn’t hurt too badly. Benjamin immediately looked to see if his debuff had changed at all, but even before he could read the letters, he felt a jolt of anger flow through him.
It was only there for a moment, but then it passed, like a stronger version of the surge he felt when he used vampiric bolt on someone. There were pieces of memories there, too. A bike he/Matt had been given for Christmas when he was twelve with black rubber grips and gold handlebars. There were other things, too, like medical exams and songs he couldn’t remember hearing before. They were gone almost as soon as he reached for them.
All he was left with was another sector glowing bright green against the surrounding dark field that was the ragged edge of his soul. The darkness had been pushed back, but only a little. It hadn’t been enough to fix anything, but it hadn’t broken anything either, for him or for Matt.
So, all together, Benjamin counted it as a win. One sector was mended, and thousands more waited to be filled with something besides pain and garbage data.
Benjamin picked another one near the first and copied it. This one contained sports he’d never played, restaurants he’d never been to, and more anger. The third one contained rage, too, along with holiday trips to mass at a church he thought he recognized. Each one of these sectors came with a jolt of pain, followed by rage and more memories. The fourth sector finally forced him to pause, though, as Benjamin saw himself through Matt’s eyes for a brief snippet of time.
It was when they were preparing for the fae’s arrival just before the snow came, and Benjamin was working with Emma to prepare the pavilion. For a moment, the jealousy that he felt at seeing another man with his Emma was overpowering, and then it was gone.
The more I pull from him, the more likely I am to think I remember things I’ve never seen before, or worse, things I never wanted to see, he realized. It was just like how the system gave him skills he’d never used in his life if he put the points in the right spot.
For a moment, Benjamin wondered if he could tweak his skills the way he could edit the abilities and spells he’d been doing for a while, but they weren’t in their own separate registry. They were memories of a sort, so they were bound up somewhere in the soul.
That meant he might absorb some of Matt’s skills with medicine or melee combat, he supposed, but examining his character sheet, he saw no changes there. He was fairly sure he would if he incorporated larger chunks, but for now, he opted not to test that theory because this already felt a little too much like an invasion of privacy.
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He eyed Matt to see if his friend looked uncomfortable, but he seemed entirely unaffected. He probably doesn’t feel a thing, Benjamin realized. “Well?” he asked finally, as he saw Benjamin staring at him. “Are we going to do this or what?”
“It’s already done,” Benjamin said with a smile. “Four sectors copied, and I never even got close to exploding.”
“So then you can just keep going and fix the problem tonight?” Matt asked, but Benjamin shook his head.
“First of all, I’m not sure I could handle all the anger you keep bottled up inside,” Benjamin said, “and second, I have thousands of little sectors to fill up. Even assuming everything goes right, that would be like going to that… the guy that works on your teeth with the drill?”
“Dentist,” Raja, chimed in.
“Right, Dentist,” Benjamin agreed. “That would be like going to the dentist and sitting there for hours while he makes you hurt like hell. I think this is going to have to be a slow process.”
“Is it my turn next?” Raja asked, “Or do you want a little copy of Emma inside your head, ready to chastise you at every opportunity?”
Benjamin was about to tell him that it didn't work like that, but Emma beat him to it. “I don't want any part of me inside Benji or vice versa, thank you very much. God knows what sort of peek he’d take, and he’s never leaving the friend zone.”
Benjamin was pretty sure that was supposed to be hurtful, but Emma couldn’t hurt him anymore. He understood why she was lashing out, and honestly, after seeing how much Miku’s copies of Emma had affected her, he was inclined to cut her a little slack.
So, he ignored her jab and moved on to Raja, repeating the process he’d done with Matt. This time, Benjamin picked a different, ragged edge on the tapestry that was his soul. As a result, he didn’t have many similar memories. The part he’d chosen for Matt seemed to focus on occasions when he was working together with others, but when he copied four or five sectors from Raja, he found almost exclusively memories of the man alone.
He’d expected to find any number of wise cracks, but instead almost all the memories he encountered involved his friend stalking quietly through the trees or the grass lands hunting. That has pretty much been our life lately, Benjamin realized.
Still, it felt much safer than the rage he’d encountered in Matt. At least until he picked a random memory that overwhelmed him with grief as he glimpsed Nicole’s grave through the eyes of the man that had missed her the most. It was a painful memory, and it stopped Benjamin in his tracks. He quickly aborted out of the interface and rejoined his friends trying to put the memory of someone else’s heartbreak behind him.
“Learn any new jokes?” Raja asked, but Benjamin just shook his head ruefully, eager to put the moment behind him and not yet trusting his voice. He’d take random bursts of incoherent rage any day of the feeling of love lost like that.
After that, they chatted a little longer, but Benjamin only lay awake in his bedroll until he heard Matt snoring. That was when he sat up and pulled out the Prince’s phylactery and gave it a long hard look. He knew that he should wait until his friends were awake and could keep an eye on him, but the process so far had seemed so harmless that he wanted to just get it over with, and the quickest way to do that would be to play with this thing.
He waffled, but only for a moment, then he put the thing around his neck and prepared himself to start the process all over again. That was when he felt eyes upon him, and turned to find Emma watching him.
“You’re really going to do it?” she whispered. “Not even going to warn us? Tsk tsk, Benji.”
“It needs to be done,” he said defensively. He knew that the right move would be to wait. He also knew that if he waited, Matt would insist he use pieces of his friend’s souls, or even other members of their army. He could practically hear Matt’s voice inside his head. These men would die for you man, why choose pieces of the Prince when you could build yourself from a legion of heroes?
Because the brave men and women that fight with us don’t have the nuclear launch codes I need to win this war, Benjamin thought ruefully.
“Well, if you act weird, you know I’m going to have to put you down, right?” As she spoke, her sharp steel blades appeared in her hands as if by magic.
“I’d expect nothing less,” Benjamin said, flicking through his mind before passing her a file. “Here. This will kill me a lot faster than even your knives. If I don’t come out of this as the person you know, then please pull the trigger.”
“Benji,” she sighed. Just like that, her knives disappeared, and she looked at him with sadness more than anything. “You need to stop being the hero, okay? You’ve gotten yourself killed too many times now. It's hard on your friends.”
“I know,” he agreed. “I—” Before he could finish his statement, she’d moved forward and hugged him tightly.
“If you make me kill you, I’ll never forgive you,” she whispered after an intense squeeze before she pulled away.
It startled Benjamin as much for her speed and intensity as because it was the first time she’d shown any sort of emotional vulnerability and attachment toward him in months.
“I’ll be fine,” he promised, making himself comfortable. “It worked great with Matt and Raja. What could possibly go wrong?”