Lia had never allowed me to pin her down in a real conversation after that. The only real change that had occurred was that she was slipperier than ever when talking to me, and in the few moments AEGIS came in the room before seeing me, she tended to carry a scowl like she'd just passed something unpleasant in the hallway.

As she was presently doing now. Upon glancing over at me, her face went from annoyance through a whole spectrum of emotions in almost an instant, but landed on a tranquil smile.

I wondered if this was her mask. Lia could still fool me wearing hers, though recently she'd been more troubled and it had obviously shown. AEGIS...had never struck me as the long-, quietly-suffering sort. Her solution to problems had always seemed to be to throw herself at them full-bodied, working away day and night until she managed something, even if it wasn't a great solution, just the action of working on it was what brought her peace of mind.

She was carrying a tray of simple breakfast, eggs and toast, still steaming, and my thoughts clicked with some words Lia had mentioned offhandedly.

AEGIS was starting to take over cooking for everyone. She wasn't smothering me with care because she thought I was broken, it was her way of dealing with the stress.

It would have been nice to believe, but it still didn't add up with the looks on her face at the threshold. Like, it was almost certainly true, but it didn't account for everything. I was still missing something here, whatever it was that put that tranquil subservient smile on her face whenever she walked in here.

"Good morning, Athan. Do you need to use the bathroom?" she asked, still smiling, like she was inquiring about the weather. I shook my head. "That's great. Breakfast for you," she added, completely unnecessarily, while setting the tray down next to me.

"Thank you," I said. Her smile disappeared for a moment and then returned twofold. She'd been surprised. Had I never thanked her for any of the work she was putting in? That seemed impossible, but I couldn't remember doing so. And then I remembered that this was basically the first time I'd talked to her all week.

Good God, something was wrong with me.

"Thank you...for everything," I said, not sure how to express what I wanted to say. Again, her smile vanished, but this time it didn't come back.

"There's really no need. And...if you could…" she sighed. Again with the hanging thoughts.

"If I could what?" I asked.

"Sorry, it is nothing." She smiled again, and this one I pegged immediately as fake.

"No, tell me."

She pulled at one of her pigtails, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet, like she wasn't sure she wanted to take the plunge.

"Tell me!" I said, again, almost shouting like I'd done at Lia, even though I wasn't angry in the least. She fell back onto her heels.

"Yes. I'm sorry. I was just...I was hoping you could avoid...if you could refrain from saying anything that made it sound like you were...leaving," she finished, weakly.

"I'm not leaving. I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done."

"Yes, I understand."

She just stood there, fretting and pulling at her hair while I stared at her. I should have felt bad for snapping at her, I knew it, but it didn't come. Why?

"Do...you need help eating?" she asked, facing me, but her eyes locked on the floor.

"I'm fine. Can I ask you a question?" I said as I cut a piece of egg off and put it in my mouth.

"Um, of course. I'll do anything I can for you."

"Why do you look so angry before you walk in here?"

"Angry?" she laughed unconvincingly. "Oh. Uh, it's Tem. She's become increasingly surly and disruptive since we've kept her away from you. Of late, it's become like trying to keep a cat from getting out." She sighed. "One of these days, she's going to get in here, and we'll never be able to keep her out. I'm sorry."

"I don't mind her around," I said. "I just ignore her."

"Well, we do mind. You're in a...I mean," she stopped and chewed her words. "You don't need that kind of disruption right now. We're fine handling it. Uh, her."

"Thanks, I guess." She looked at me funny again. "Is it weird for me to thank you?"

"I...I don't know," she stammered, eyes glancing all over except on me. This wasn't the AEGIS I was accustomed to.

"Look, if you want me to be normal, you have to be normal too. I only just learned from Lia the other day I wasn't sick or dying. I might be a lot better off right now if you had just told me that from the start. I spent all of last week lying here wondering when I was going to croak."

"Ah. I'm sorry." She didn't say more, and I forced myself to wait instead of barking at her.

She was being torn, I knew, between wanting to tell me whatever was bothering her and not wanting to burden me with it. Between the two, I'd rather she just spit it out, that was how AEGIS and I had always been, and whenever she'd decided to start hiding things from me was always a first step towards problems between us. I knew I could push her to tell me, and that's all I wanted to do, but...that's not what I would have done before, was it?

Seeing her stand there, rocking and fretting and tugging her hair, glancing around the room like there might be answers on the walls, all I felt was mild annoyance that she couldn't make the right decision faster.

I guess I was worried on a level about that, too. Feeling dead, having all my feelings buried, pushing people into what I wanted. Was I turning into a sociopath?

So I didn't yell at her, startle her into acquiescence, and when she finally smiled and shook her head, and changed the subject, I let it go without complaint.

"I've never asked. I guess after all we've been through, I'm still surprised I get the chance to, but...how do you like your eggs?"

"This is fine," I said, taking another bite.

"Oh, okay. Is there anything you'd like me to make you for lunch today?"

"Anything is fine."

She just smiled and let the conversation drop. I was a crap conversationalist, and I knew it. I at least tried to hide it behind the pretext of being busy eating to avoid hurting her feelings.

Eventually it was just me and my thoughts again.

The only reason I could think why she wouldn't want me thanking her was she didn't feel like she deserved my thanks. Given the situation, maybe she also accepted blame for Lia's stunt. If that were the case, every gratitude I had for her would just be needling her for allowing me to be hurt, from her perspective. A guilty reminder that I needed taking care of because of what she'd done, or hadn't done.

I didn't know what, if anything I could do about it. Whenever I tried to focus on engineering a solution, I just found myself distracted and time started jumping by in big leaps like it had been doing all week. If only Lia were focused on getting things back to normal instead of beating herself up and calling herself an idiot, I felt like we could come up with a plan to get everyone back to normal.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Instead, I drifted uneasily through the day. The fact that I wasn't about to keel over dead felt more like bad news than good, because that meant there was some other reason I was being treated like there was a 'fragile' sticker on my forehead.

Lunch came and went. Lia came and went. Dinner came and I found AEGIS standing there smiling the tranquil, subservient smile again.

"Are you okay?" I asked. I had experimentally taken a couple of bites of chicken to see if she was just watching to see if I'd eat, but she hadn't changed her expression or standing in the slightest.

"Please don't worry about me," she said weightily.

"And why shouldn't I? You're worrying about me all day."

"Yes, but there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not going anywhere."

"And there is with me, and I am?"

She tented her fingers experimentally and when that wasn't sufficient, began tugging at her hair again. I wondered if that was bad for the cables.

"You...have before. Look, please just humor us and try to relax and be happy. We're doing everything we can for you, and if there's anything else you'd like, just tell me and I'll do it in a heartbeat."

"It's fine, really."

She leaned forward insistently, bringing back memories of an old AEGIS I'd worried I'd lost. "No, seriously. Anything. Please."

I shook my head. "I'm fine."

"I don't want you to be fine, I want you to be happy."

I frowned at this. I felt like she'd just asked the impossible of me, in telling me to ask anything of her. "AEGIS, I feel dead inside," I said. "I feel like everything that happened to me, everything that is happening to me, I'm outside of it all. I don't know that I feel pain anymore, and I don't think I can be happy either. I just kind of am."

"I...see," she said. She had the habit of her eyes flickering back and forth habitually while she read off the 'net, and there was a moment of that now. I'm sure she was putting my symptoms into some database and would be telling me I had stomach cancer and needed snake oil. To my relief, her reply was much more grounded.

"I don't think this is a big problem," she said.

"Me neither."

"I'll ask Lia what she thinks, but...emotional detachment is a very common defense against mental trauma. Just a sec."

I waited while she took out her mobile, and a few seconds later, Lia slipped into the room.

The two of them conversed in hushed whispers for a minute, making me wonder why they brought Lia here instead of just going elsewhere, but eventually Lia took a seat on the foot of the bed and they turned to me.

"I disagree," Lia said, at long last. "I think you need to try."

"Try what?"

"Try to be happy. Be proactive, instead of just waiting for things to come back."

"I can't just turn on my feelings again, Lia. I'm not AEGIS."

"Even if you could, I don't think it's healthy," AEGIS agreed. "I actually wrote countermeasures into myself after...after the last emotional shock. Instead of simply blanking out, my emotions will numb themselves a bit until I can cope, and will return gradually. I based it on this phenomenon. He should wait it out."

"He's not well and it's my fault, AEGIS. Our fault. We need to do what we can."

"We're doing what we can," AEGIS replied calmly. "It's been a week and change, and…" she just gestured towards me like 'exhibit A' spoke for itself.

"It can't hurt to try."

"Because it worked out so well last time you tried to help?"

AEGIS' retort was pointed, and needlessly cruel, I thought, still delivered in the same pointed calm as the rest of the conversation. Cruel, but effective, and Lia withered, her face going ashen as the words hit her.

"Just...because I was wrong...doesn't mean I can't be right," she muttered, but her fire was put out.

"Then we're decided," AEGIS said with a serene smile, tenting her hands successfully this time. "I will keep taking care of Athan until he is fully recovered."

"You mean...we will."

"Correct."

AEGIS seemed conspicuously happy at the decision to do nothing, and her last few exchanges with Lia indicated some issues between the two of them which I guessed I hadn't been privy to with them visiting me in shifts as they had been. The ruthless efficiency with which she'd torn Lia to shreds was savage, but you wouldn't guess that by the peaceful smile on her face.

Overall...I thought the situation would have given me a bad feeling if that were still a thing I had. Instead, I faced their battle with the same dispassion as everything seemed to hit me with now.

I wasn't even surprised when somebody knocked on the door.

"Think it's Tem?" Lia sighed.

"Here's hoping Chiho." AEGIS said, and opened it.

Possibly the last person I expected in the world greeted us with a simple upraised hand.

"Hail," Karu said, visor tucked under her arm.

"Ka...Ka…" Lia stammered.

"Hi Karu," I said, returning her small wave and getting a curt bow of acknowledgement.

AEGIS frowned at the situation. "You came?" she said.

"I heard my presence may be of service. It's not in me to avoid such a responsibility if I can help it."

"We were actually just discussing that. I am not sure you would be much help anymore, unfortunately," AEGIS replied.

"Perhaps I may contribute to this discussion? I have a personal stake, as it were, in anything which involves Ashton or his well-being."

AEGIS wavered, and I understood her position. She'd already won this debate, at the expense of stabbing Lia through the heart, even, and now Karu wanted to reopen the discourse. Perhaps she was wondering how many times she could stab Lia with the same knife before it dulled, or was simply worried about Karu agreeing with Lia, and had nothing prepared to shoot her down.

Damn I was such a cynic. Sitting here, tearing apart everything everyone said and did and doing nothing about it. Maybe I really was a sociopath.

To my surprise, it was Lia who spoke up. "No, we already decided it might be a bad idea to try. I'm sorry, Karu."

"To try what, if I may at least inquire that far?"

"To...try to make Athan happy."

We stood and sat there in silence for a moment before Karu laughed. Snickering at first before breaking into a full peal of laughter. Lia and AEGIS smiled, embarrassedly.

"I am afraid I do not understand," Karu said, wiping a tear from her eye. "It would seem, as his friends, his happiness is something we should always be striving towards, when possible."

"Here," said Lia with a sad smile and flicked a page off her holo in Karu's direction. She glanced at hers when the message arrived.

"Emotional detachment, dissociative--"

"Read to yourself, please?" Lia asked. Karu nodded and resumed on the holo. I wished they wouldn't infect her, too, with treating me with kid gloves.

After a minute, she looked up. "And this is he?" she looked me in the eyes, but unlike the others, didn't shy away from my gaze. She frowned, but held it, until one of the others confirmed and she nodded at them.

"I am fine," I told her. "I just feel a little distant and numb. I'm still capable of thinking and fighting."

"Those are the last words of many a brave soldier," Karu said with a frown. "'I'm fine, just--' means 'I am not fine'."

"I am not them. I am me, and I'm fine," I snipped at her. I couldn't believe she would side with AEGIS in this. Was she planning to shuffle around the kitchen making me eggs and toast as well?

"Is that so?" Karu asked, her green eyes flashing dangerously. "Ashton, stand, if you would."

I sighed but it wasn't worth arguing. I swing my feet carefully past Lia and stood up.

"Impressive, standing on your own two feet. Now, can you walk, I wonder?"

I fell back into the bed. "Yes. But why would I?"

"Because often, one who says 'I can but I won't' is simply saying 'I can't, but don't want to know that'."

"I've walked to the toilet this morning," I said with a sigh. Why was she bothering me with this?

"And fight, can you? I heard you say that you can think, and you can fight. Let us put that to the test as well."

Lia and AEGIS who had been watching with mild confusion now erupted into concern. Both began shouting at once, arguing in defense of my feebleness, currently damaged state, and not wanting to exacerbate issues I was still recovering from.

Privately, I agreed with Karu, but I would side with the others anyway if possible. I was sure I could fight, I just had no interest in it. It was troublesome.

"I do not mean to simply assert that I am the authority on mental health, in fact, I came here because I am having troubles of my own and hoped to face them." Her eyes met mine for only an instant. "But I have seen enough soldiers coping with mental distress to know that coddling an illness such as this is the surest way to promote an acute case to a chronic defense. People are only as helpless as they believe they are. Neither of you are doing Ashton any favors by treating him as such."

She glared them down, and neither would meet her gaze. It was impressive, how she had swept into the leaderless situation and immediately established herself as in-charge. It also said a lot about how I was far from the only one here who was currently emotionally crushed. And this was with Karu apparently suffering herself in some regard, though what that could be, I couldn't imagine, given her performance.

"Now, it seems to me, you two have had a week to inflict your mercy on Ashton and he remains soft. I believe it is now my turn."

"You are seriously going to fight him? He's half out of his mind, and his arm is broken," Lia pleaded.

"And my guns were lost, my jetpack is destroyed, and yet I remain willing to fight. There is no grounds for negotiation, the terms have already been set."

She turned and fixed her eyes on me again, the piercing green looking right into me.

"I believe I am owed two more combats yet?"

I sighed heavily and again swung to my feet.