It...didn't feel like it had been a week since the events at New Eden. Though I was barely conscious for the first few days, after that, I spent countless sleepless hours staring at the white panel ceilings of my hospital room.

Thinking about every moment of those few days I spent in New Eden. Thinking of the decisions I'd made, of regrets and loss, of what I could have done better, of how many ways I had failed everyone and myself. Thinking of how needless it was for me to be there in the first place, a simple mission to look for a missing girl who didn't even turn out to be missing.

But more than anything, thinking of her.

It felt...surreal. It felt like whenever one of us was in danger, the other would always show up at the last minute and save the day. True to the visions Moon and I had experienced, things had gone south across the field and it took everyone's combined strength to just save themselves. Some had been injured, but disregarding the dozens of Exhumans and hundreds of XPCA, there were only two casualties I could put a face to.

AEGIS, of course. And Blackett, found burned alive in his office by Cosette.

She'd come to visit me in the hospital. I think she had a lot of questions, but asked none of them. She just sat mutely beside Saga and Tem--whom the hospital staff could not displace with any amount of threats or force--and studied me. I think she wanted reassurance that she'd chosen right, that it wasn't a mistake for her to put her faith in me instead of Blackett.

I had no such reassurances to offer her. I didn't know if it was right. I wasn't sure that his death outweighed AEGIS'.

But whenever I began to tread that dark path, I could always look up and see Saga. AEGIS had chosen to sacrifice herself to save me, and I had chosen to sacrifice myself to save Saga. And as a result, she was alive and intact again, though she sat there, mute and unreadable, subdued and as sleepless and introspective as I was.

I knew...just by the merit of the pain which wasn't emanating from her in waves, or the desperation, or the fear...I knew in my heart that the decisions we made were right. That in the great karmic balance, one life freely given was worth a life stolen and suffering.

But what I knew and what I felt were as opposite as two things could be. I loved Saga, but even if she could live in my head a hundred years, it still felt like she couldn't know me as AEGIS had. Her new air of still silence just felt like a pale mockery of AEGIS' accommodating warmth. She felt like a consolation prize for losing.

Which wasn't fair to her, I knew. And I knew she was in my mind as these thoughts bubbled up unbidden, unwanted, and felt and saw it all, even if I tried to hide them from her. But it was the truth, that AEGIS was the woman I loved, and now she was no more.

On the table next to my bed were the boot drive, the broken backup, and the strips of AEGIS' wispy yellow dress, stained and heavy with my blood. The staff had tried to take them away as garbage, but I'd threatened to kill them on the spot if they dared. They didn't dare.

It was...an overreaction. But they were threatening to take away the last of AEGIS from me. They were just trying to help, and as an Exhuman, I should have always been in control of myself or I was a danger to everyone.

But as a man...a boy, even, I was so scared and so, so alone.

It felt like the hours dragged on forever with nothing to keep each day from blurring into the next as the only sleep I found were a handful of minutes snatched from the cruelty of my re-imaginings here and there. People would come to visit and I would find them an imposition and want them to leave, and then they would leave and I would regret being alone.

And the whole time, all I wanted was her. Everything reminded me of her, from the smell of antiseptic to the meals they served me to the poor company she was not here to improve. The machines crowded around the bed and the practical but ugly hospital scrubs. Everywhere I looked I saw her, only to glance again, my heart pounding and see only a nurse walking past, their eyes only glowing yellow from the reflection of their mobile.

The middle of the night found me sleepless again, sitting up in bed with the lights in the hallway dimmed and, a small bedside lamp illuminating a cone within the room. I closed a book I had just been glazing over, one of several left by Moon during a visit she stressed was nothing but a formality as she went down a sterile checklist of platitudes to give me.

"Hey, Saga," I said.

"Hey, Athan," she whispered back.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Silence answered me. I waited a moment and was about to continue when she did.

"I don't know what 'okay' is, really. I'm alive. I'm safe. You killed the one Exhuman in the world who might be able to hurt me again. So I guess I'm okay, yeah."

"You only guess so?"

Again she was silent before responding. Being so pensive and reserved, speaking in low tones, it was more like talking to Moon than Saga...albeit with a lot more emotive range.

"This one really hurt me, Athan."

"I know."

She shook her head. "Nah, not like that. Pain and dying and fear...they were awful. You know how awful they were, I don't have to tell you. They were bad enough...to push me into a dark place. But it's what I did when I got there that...that I don't know if I'm okay."

"You mean brainwashing those Exhumans?"

"I mean giving in." She sighed and seemed to shrink even further into her chair, which already dwarfed her frail frame. "Do you know...pretty much every person I've ever met has a lot of the same delusions? They think, if I ever got in a fight, I'd do this and knock the guy's lights out, or if I ever got in an argument about that topic, I'd say this and they'd be dumbfounded by how smart I am. People like to believe they're more than they are. I used to laugh at the stupid bravado sometimes, wondering how they could be so blind."

I had to admit, I'd had thoughts like that. I wouldn't call them delusions though, just bored, idle thoughts. When I started playing football competitively, I found myself going over plays in my mind and thinking of counterplays. But I knew they were just random thoughts. Some of them might even have worked, maybe...not really, but maybe.

"Yeah, they wouldn't, but nice try," she said, responding to my thoughts. "It's normal, we all like to feel comfortable in our own skin, but trust me, every person you meet isn't going to win a fight every time they're in one just 'cuz they imagined it up. If for no other reason than the other guy did exactly the same."

"I don't get your point here, Saga," I said, already regretting opening my mouth.

"I'm getting there. My point is, I'm human too...or...close enough anyway. I'd always thought, I've endured a bunch, I'm tough as nails, I can withstand anything. Even if someone did chain me up and throw me in a volcano, I'd go down telling them exactly how tiny their prick was."

Her head tilted downwards, casting long shadows over her face, just a small nose and two sunken eyes in the dark.

"But that was a delusion, too. I might have been through a lot and thought myself tougher than anything, but I'd never faced real danger before, never had to fear for my life. And when it came down to it, I cracked like all the other millions of people on this fucking planet who've been tortured until they screamed. I'm not as invincible or as hard or as awesome as I thought I was, mentally, and it hurts."

"That's...it?" I asked. "You were almost flayed to death and you're not sure you're okay because of your ego?"

"Don't underestimate someone's ego, Athan. For a lot of us, it's the only thing that gets us through the day. Take it away, and a someone can lose their personal identity." She sighed. "Look, I know why you were asking that question, you want reassurance that you did the right thing. That saving me meant something, that I'm a-okay and it's because of AEGIS' sacrifice."

"No, I--"

"You can't lie to me, dummy. You can lie to yourself, but not me. And what you want is fine. So I'll just answer your question straight -- if you and AEGIS and everyone else wasn't there, I'd be dead. Dead, dead, or worse. Ego intact or no, I'm a hell of a lot better than if you hadn't saved me. So yeah...I'm okay. I'm hurt...I think we're all hurt, but I'll survive, and we have her to thank for it. Her and you."

I nodded at her. She was right, that was what I really wanted to hear, and I appreciated her taking the time to say it.

"You really don't have to be grateful. It's just words. I'm not the one who saved anyone."

She was so serious and earnest, and it stung. Just a few weeks ago, she'd have made a joke or shot me a snarky you're welcome, but now she was just…

I thought over her words which I'd half-ignored when I had realized they weren't about AEGIS or me. Lost her personal identity. That wasn't a bad way of putting it. She was still Saga, yes, but less. She might do the same things she always had, still be there to probe my mind for the secrets I kept from myself and offer me the advice I needed even if it wasn't what I wanted. But behind it was something else. Not exactly fear, but…

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"Man it's awkward to have you psychoanalyzing me," she said. I looked over and frowned, realizing she was sitting there holding herself awkwardly and avoiding looking at me.

"Sorry. That was really rude of me," I said.

"It's nothing I haven't done to you a hundred times, I'm sure."

I hesitated, and then kept talking because it was less painful than the silence. "I don't know if you've heard this one in my mind before...stop me if you have. But a long time ago, when I freaked out about you being a Sino when I first met you, AEGIS gave me some advice."

Saga shook her head and listened. I guess the story had never bubbled to mind in her presence before.

"She said that we don't live in the real world, we live in our perception of it. We see things tinted through our past experiences, and sometimes, we can run into trouble when our view of the world doesn't line up with new things we encounter. Like how I was fine with you being an Exhuman, but not being a Sino...I had to come to terms with the fact that I was racist and never even knew it."

For some reason Saga was smiling, which was an odd reaction to the anecdote but I pressed on.

"She said that when we encounter something which makes us challenge our world views, we can either ignore it, or look inside ourselves to see what assumptions were in us that made us see the world wrong. And, that it was looking in like that which helped us grow. So...like you said...you've always thought that nothing could shake you, and now you're shaken. You're faced with the problem of coming to terms with the issue and accepting that you're not as invincible as you thought...or wilfully ignoring that fact and continuing on, a little more wrong but without changing who you are."

"That son of a bitch," Saga said, still beaming at me, seeming to illuminate as she leaned forward towards the light.

"What?"

"I told her that, a hundred years ago. When we were friends a lifetime ago. When she was figuring out who she was...before I blew up her base. I can't believe she held onto that all this time, and then used it on you so that you'd accept me."

"Well...I think she was offline for like ninety of those years, and didn't have her memories so she wouldn't know it came from you."

"But that's the thing, see? Without her specific memories, she still knew it, because it was knowledge so precious to her she integrated it into her being. She saw it as such a pervasive truth that it literally became a part of her." Saga shook her head. "Fuck, and I thought we were just talking at the time. I had no idea."

"I guess you never know what you say or do that'll make the biggest impression?"

"I mean...I usually do. I'm in their head. But I get the meaning."

As the unexpected happiness of the last exchange faded, we lapsed again into silence. To my surprise, Saga spoke up again.

"I miss her, Athan."

"You do? You weren't even really friends, were you? I mean, a hundred years ago, but since then?"

She shook her head. "At the Christmas party, remember?"

"I remember her killing you like, thirty times."

"Not that. She asked...totally seriously...if I was lonely and wanted friends. If I wanted her to be my friend." Saga retreated back to the shadows. "You have no idea how badly I wanted to say yes. Ever since I found out she was alive, that's all I've wanted, was to have my old best friend back, to tell her I was sorry for everything I'd done to her, for killing her mom and ruining her life, sorry that we were destined to be enemies because I was a prisoner and she was my warden."

She sighed and shrunk again, rubbing her eyes on the sleeve of the sweater she'd found to replace her ancient prison uniform.

"But I couldn't. Too fucking prideful to just say yes. Had to laugh in her face about it, and now she's dead. Probably the only person in the world from my old life, and my best friend, and I couldn't even fucking say yes."

I knew how she felt, and not just because we were connected at the head. I had my own share of regrets, all the times I'd hurt AEGIS or just been intolerably stupid...how long I'd strung her and Karu along for fear of hurting either of them. Not to mention almost everything I'd said or done at New Eden which I could have done better. If I'd handled things better when it was just me and Karu, she wouldn't even have been there to die.

Silence pervaded again. Whoever said that when a person dies, you should celebrate their memory instead of being sad had no fucking idea what they were talking about.

Saga snorted into her sleeve and then laughed a tiny delicate laugh.

"What?"

"Sorry...your thoughts...sorry."

"You have a problem with them?"

"You're just so mad at yourself, you're taking it out on someone who came up with an idiom a thousand years ago. It just...seemed silly."

"Yeah, whatever," I said and rolled over on my side facing her. I wanted to argue but it didn't feel worth the anything.

"Athan?" she asked.

"What?"

She leaned forward into the light again, her face stone serious. "You're okay too."

"What?"

"You asked me earlier if I was okay. Trying to gauge if AEGIS' sacrifice meant anything. I know you don't put a lot of value on yourself, but lots of us do."

She pet Tem's sleeping head with a surprising amount of affection.

"And even if you think that doesn't matter for shit, consider that it mattered a lot to AEGIS. She knew exactly what she was doing when she did it. You're okay because of her, and that means a lot. Give her that credit, too."

"Meh."

"Yeah, I know," she gave me a wan smile and then leaned back again. "I bet she really loved you."

I turned the other way, my entire lower half kind of throbbing weirdly through the painkillers, and picked up my book again. It was stupid, but I didn't want Saga to see me cry.

We didn't say anything else for the next few hours and I fell asleep with the book propped open in front of me, not waking until morning, and feeling just as tired and shitty as ever.

I sensed someone sitting next to Saga and Tem and when I woke slightly and listened, realized it was Lia, speaking in a whisper so quiet I couldn't hear more than a low murmur.

I laid there for a while long before the pain in my legs made me sit up to take another painkiller.

"Not on an empty stomach," Lia said, and pushed a plate at me. Peeled apple slices. I pushed the plate away. "Eat, or Tem won't," she said, and I realized Tem was curled up with a similar offering sitting next to her and similarly being ignored.

"Tem, eat," I said.

She began to oblige until Lia spoke up again. "Tem, don't eat unless Athan does," she said glaring at me. "He needs to eat or he'll never get better."

"So you're blackmailing me with starving Tem?" I asked.

Tem looked back and forth between us, looking completely lost. She was so thin already, and hardly ate unless someone made her. If Lia pulled this shit, it could seriously fuck the girl up.

Lia smiled as she regarded me coldly. Of course, she already knew that. Which is why I'd eat my fucking apple slices like a good boy. Once I was, Tem followed my lead experimentally, still waiting to see if anyone else would yell at her.

"You guys are fucking weird," Saga said.

"If you have a problem, tell Athan he deserves to be able to eat and enjoy a dang apple no matter how much he's beating himself up," Lia said, stretching luxuriously in the chair. "So, have you made up your mind bro? Ready to just accept the obvious?"

I knew in my mind that Lia was just being strong because that was how she coped with sadness, that she'd had more practice than anyone ever should at forcing a smile, but even so I hated her a little right now for seeming so nonchalant when AEGIS was dead.

But I guess depending on how you saw it, maybe she wasn't, and maybe that's why Lia's smile could still seem so genuine.

"No," I said between bites of apple. "I don't know. I feel like...I'm just being greedy. You can't just demand someone live because you want them to."

"Not a human, no. But AEGIS wasn't that, so...yeah, you can. She's gotta be the one person in the whole planet where you could do that, actually. She might even have been expecting you to do this when she--"

"Lia, shut up," I said, and she did. "I've talked with AEGIS a lot about how she saw herself and copies of herself, and I can tell you with certainty...past a few minutes, she didn't see copies as herself anymore. She thought of them as completely different people from her. So, no, she wouldn't just expect a backup of her to be coming back. At best, she'd see it as us replacing her with her own sister or cousin maybe. And that's pretty fucking sick."

"But bro...she's also...dead," Lia said, her voice suddenly a lot more gentle. "A backup would be better for everyone who's still alive, it'd be better for the backup who gets a life. For everyone, really."

"It wouldn't be better for AEGIS."

"Yes...but she's dead. Do you think she'd want you to be miserable like this, or alone? Don't you think, if she could, she'd send anyone to help you, even if it's a copy of herself?"

I didn't know. AEGIS had a lot of strong opinions on her copies, and I'd never fully understood her perspective on them. And with her dead, I never would.

Lia stood up and paced. "Look, I know it's selfish, but I want her back. I don't care if we have to...have to replay out every second of the last two months for her, I want her back."

I shook my head. "Lia, the last backup we have is from a couple of months ago, but we don't have anything to put that backup in. If we bring AEGIS back, we're not just going back a few months. We're going back to the only copy of her we have which runs."

Lia sat back down. "The box?"

I nodded.

"But she's like...almost nine months behind. I knew her for like a few weeks tops at that point. She still hated Karu and Saga, never saw you start working at the XPCA...wow, never even saw us lose at Canada. Oh my God, that's so long ago!"

"Yeah."

"But we have all her data. She can use the backup and catch up, right?"

"She won't want to. It'd be overwriting her with someone completely different in her eyes."

"W-well," Lia said, standing and pacing again, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum when she turned. "Well, I don't care. Any AEGIS is better than no AEGIS."

"I think I can agree with that," I said.

"But would she? Will she?" Saga asked. "And will you let her exist as she is, or force a life on her she's never lived?"

"Saga--!" Lia blustered and then froze, going unnaturally still. "Yes, you're right," she intoned as Saga sighed painfully.

I'd almost completey forgotten that Lia was still under a compel where she couldn't ever defy Saga. What a shitty fucked-up life I lived.

"I shouldn't have spoken up, sorry," Saga apologized.

"It's okay," I said, feeling pieces of my heart breaking as the normally unceasing Lia stood there like a statue, the only movement on her, the slow dilation of her pupils. "They were good questions. But...I do think my mind's made up."

"Even if you know you're doing this for yourself? Not for her?" Saga asked.

"I am doing this for her too," I said. "Lia's right, any AEGIS is better than no AEGIS."

"Hmm, I wonder," Saga said, as she watched my mindfucked sister with pain and regret flickering behind her eyes.