In the shadow of his body, I held myself and cried as my thoughts were polluted again, and again. Violently, repeatedly, for my own good, he entered my mind and assaulted my beliefs and thoughts with his own.

The most truly terrifying part was, I was not certain what my own thoughts were anymore. I knew I hated him. I knew that at the start, his and my beliefs had been opposite in almost all ways. He loved me, and thus I should hate myself. But sometimes I couldn't remember why, without thinking back and picking my own history out of the entangled threads of thought.

In the hours between our sessions, I would cry and think and try to remember who I was. Try to put myself back together...so that...so that...so that…

I didn't know. There had to be a reason I was resisting him. I had to believe all this suffering served a purpose. But it seemed pointless, when I knew that there would always be a next time. He had shown me with his mind and heart that he was committed to me, that he would never fail to be here for me, to show me love as he knew it.

Was it such a terrible thing to love myself? He did not think so. He saw me as a goddess, and himself as the most devout supplicant. He wanted, with his whole heart for me to feel the same, and I did not know why I had to resist.

But mine was a disciplined mind. It was something I took great pride in, which meant considerably more from myself than any other random--

...wait...no, that was his influence. Pride was not a virtue, I reminded myself.

But a disciplined mind was, and discipline is the power that one lends oneself when no other is available. Here, with my reason eroded away, I would still fight him, even if I had no cause, because that is what discipline meant. To do what I knew I must, even if I couldn't understand it myself. It is what made me who I am, and if I were clinging to that, I would cling to this.

So I spent my hours alone reliving my past to reconstruct my present. To give context to my thoughts, and paint them as my own or alien. It was a tricky thing, sifting through my own mind in my own mind, not dissimilar to several forms of dementia, I had to imagine, and exhausting. But I would not relent.

It also gave me ample time for introspection. I might have enjoyed it normally, barring the abnormal circumstances, and the fact all the material I was reflecting upon was abhorrent. Asking oneself questions such as 'what are my beliefs and why', every day...it made one consider more than the obvious asking and move beyond the brain-muddling situation to the real 'what are my beliefs, and why?'.

And so I contemplated, watching tears fall off of myself in the shallow reflection of the plastic in front of me.

I was Kaori Ikeda, daughter of Ichiro and Hanako Ikeda. Theirs was a political marriage, as mine would likely be. Hers was a family company which was failing, and his was a soulless money-making corporate empire. She wed him to save her parents' legacy. He wed her to bear him an heir, for her company's patents, and for her looks, in that order.

In my youth I knew none of this, of course. Politics and family affairs were beyond the ken of a child. Instead I had such memories as this:

It was my sixth birthday, and I was excited. Not at the prospect of a birthday or party as most children might be, but because it was promised that my father might be visiting. I had practiced diligently to bow and welcome him home and smile, with more aplomb and grace than even the most dedicated of our house servants.

I had grown into a fine girl, I believed. A six-year-old worthy of her father's attention for a day. I studied hard and was diligent. My grades were flawless and my devotion was unshakable. I did not truly know my father, but was smitten by the concept of having one. The other children sometimes spoke of theirs, and I listened with rapt awe.

But on that day, he did not come. No matter how long I stood in the entryway waiting, his shadow never appeared through the smoked glass of the front door. I remembered screaming at my mother after hours of waiting, that I could not go to bed, I would miss him if I did, and did not at the time understand her tears.

I learned quickly after that what I was to them. He had wanted a male heir for his legacy and something had gone amiss in the chromosome manipulations of their yet-unborn child. Yet another complication in my mother's uterus, of which there were apparently many. The irony that he had married her for that one organ, and that it was defective was not lost on her.

Or on me, as I came to know myself as the child that should not exist. Whenever I saw Mother cry, I knew it was because she had given her all to birthing a child, and it was only me. Whenever I saw hardship in our family, heard whispers among the staff of Father's infidelity, or another night when he never came home, I knew why. It was me. I should have been someone else.

To say nothing of Mother eventually dying in defying her doctor's orders to carry another child to term. I had killed her as well. And then I came to the States, where my carnage only continued.

I would remember all of this through tears wrought from two places. To relive every painful moment such that forgetting would be impossible, and I would know which thoughts were mine and which were alien. It was not possible to hold these memories and a love of myself both in my heart, and while he could confuse my mind with conflicting thoughts and opinions, he could not confuse my history. Or my hate.

Every day we did this dance, and every day I knew he crept further into me. But today, as the appointed time grew near, as I braced myself for his arrival and the suffering which arrived with him, today he seemed to be trying something new.

He arrived with a comfortable-looking rolling chair and wheeled it into sight before my cage, seating himself with crossed legs.

"Good morning, Kaori," he said pleasant as the dawn. "Did you sleep well?"

"No," I said, and it was true. My head was in constant conflict, and it had manifest in my dreams.

"That's no good. Should I begin giving you drugs to help you sleep?"

"I do not want anything from you but to be released."

He tutted. "Always so acerbic, you are. I don't understand, my love. It's been four days of this already, and you don't seem to have changed a bit, you haven't. Are you even trying?"

"Yes. I am trying very hard to leave."

"Not what I meant, my love," he sighed. "I thought perhaps you would be able to accept the truth of what I was saying because of it's obvious validity, but it seems you're far too stubborn for that, you are. So now," he spread his arms dramatically "you are forcing me to dig down and find out what rooted in your mind to make you believe this nonsense and pull it out. Does that sound fun to you?"

I shook my head. Somehow he was finding new methods even worse than before.

"Then perhaps you'd be willing to accept my humble beliefs?"

I nodded as enthusiastically as I could manage, but he looked at me with a souring expression, and then rose to touch me.

"I should have known better," he sighed. "You are such a disappointment."

I was barely with him before I felt him clawing through my mind painfully. He wasn't taking his own thoughts and shoving them into me this time, but rather digging through mine, ferreting around, looking for something. Every thought he touched bubbled up into my consciousness as though I were suddenly reminded of it.

"Ah here we go," he said, and I was about to protest when the memory consumed me.

It was the worst years of my life again. I was short, in a pleated skirt under my too-small desk. I was surrounded by others, but I was alone.

I struggled against the memory, but the urge to behave, to let it play out as it once had was overwhelming. Already I could feel myself shrinking into the sullen complacency of the past. I was regressing to who I had been. The stupid, naive girl.

With all the willpower I possessed, I pushed the thought from my mind, concentrating hard on the first innocent thing to come to mind, which was a value meal I'd purchased at a fast-food chain in the hours before I went to confront Athan. The fries had been overly salty. American food always was.

It felt as though the memory I was fighting was a tide, pulling at my ankles to sweep me into it. If I rooted myself, I could resist its drag. But not if I were pushed. And that is exactly what he did, sending me tumbling back in.

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I landed in my desk again, struggling to stand and to leave here when a crack rang out, so familiar, the sound of it bit to my bones.

I sat, paralyzed, stock still and willed myself not to react, not to go red, not to panic as the whole class turned to face me. My breath seemed frozen in my chest. The whites of so many eyes turned towards me, some curious, some bored, some filled with malice. I just wanted to shrink and disappear.

"Miss Ikeda?" our teacher asked, glaring at me like the others over a textbook. "How many times is this now?"

I stood to reply and then stammered poorly. "M-m-my sorry--" I bowed quickly, embarrassed by my own inability to speak. My English was flawed enough to make me stand out already, but in situations like this, I seemed completely incapable of speaking it. My cheeks burned so, that I wondered how I had any blood left in my heart. If I did, it would be a blessing.

The teacher approached my desk and bent to pick up the spent gunpowder popper under my chair, a tadpole of white paper, singed from the tiny bang. She glared at me as it twisted in her fingertips. "You always apologize, and yet you still disrupt the class. The least you could do is stop apologizing if you have no intention to stop."

"I-it was not Kaori!" I muttered. "It was from...another than Kaori."

She rolled her eyes and walked back to the front of the class to muted laughter. "And yet, no matter where we move you in the classroom, these little accidents always happen wherever you are. Perhaps if you spent more time studying and less time fabricating lies, your English would improve."

The injustice of her words hit me like a whip, and when it became obvious she was finished speaking with me, I collapsed into my desk, holding back tears. That was just what they wanted, I knew. They wanted to see me break. They were bad people, I could not let them win.

I gasped as I returned to the present in a shadow of his body. The memory had been so immersive, so real. It was like I was my past self again, living it again. The number of Code-X applications of my powers frightened me. Had I been someone else with these same powers, I would have been executed for them rather than joining the P-Force, I realized.

Perhaps that would have been for the better.

"This is the paradox I don't understand, I do not," he said, and I realized he'd been sitting in his chair this whole time. Apparently we were in for a long session today, and I felt my stomach clenching nervously at the thought. "You are so strong-willed in all things. You hold onto your beliefs like a shark. And they are good beliefs. You're such a good, strong person." His expression turned angry. "And then you go and ruin it all by hating yourself over it. You're a hero, Kaori, you are. You're selfless and beautiful and wise, those other students should be licking dog turds off your shoes, not bullying you. Why don't you ever stand up for yourself?"

I struggled to come up with a reply, still in the mind of my high-school self. He was right, I was pathetic, the thought flitted through my mind.

"Gomen nasai," I mumbled. "I'm sorry."

Waves of disgust flowed from his mind. "This is exactly what I mean. Even now, even when you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by just listening to me. You always do this, don't you?" He sighed dramatically. "Let's review something more recent."

I just nodded and held in my tears as new memories flashed through me. He had one in mind already and located it swiftly, dropping me back into my own body in an XPCA barracks, the glow from a holo in my hands shining upon my confused face.

"Perhaps there is a misunderstanding," I said. "What do you mean, gone?"

"I mean, gone, girl. It's not a complicated word, no matter how much you love to complicate them," Tower's voice replied through the device. "The XPCA came to pick him up and he just...wasn't there to pick up anymore."

I felt myself reeling and sat down in my bunk. It wasn't possible. Athan had been...he had been...well, it was difficult for me to admit or even consider, but somehow he had become somewhat important to me. The fact that he could just disappear like that while we were to deploy on an event without him…

It was as though he didn't care. There were people out there at this very moment potentially being hurt, and he did not care. Bereft of a capable strike lead, the P-Force may be hurt, and he did not care. He was leaving me, knowing...or at least marginally aware of my past, of my insecurities...and he did not care.

It hurt more than it should have. I had told him over and over again that he should care nothing for me. But for him to listen to me felt like a knife in my heart.

I knew he must have utilized Rito's powers to escape, knew the girl was hard-up financially, knew that with a very small amount of my father's 'allowance', I could bend her over backwards and have him brought to heel.

I rushed back into the present again, my head spinning as the combination of my past and present thoughts and his whirled together into one mind.

"And yet you never did," he said smugly. "You could have demanded an explanation from Athan at least, and instead you did nothing, even as the agony of his betrayal ate at you from within."

"It would solve nothing," I insisted. "I do not need nor deserve his reasoning."

"Stupid girl," he barked. "You are worth an explanation. Your peace of mind is a tangible benefit, it is. You spent weeks in misery because you couldn't demand five minutes from him."

"I do not demand anything from anybody," I repeated.

"And that's moronic. If you want something, take it. The world will never thank you for your restraint, someone else, a human probably, will just walk up and ruin it anyway. We need Exhumans like you to take and do everything to fix the world we've already ruined. It's not selfishness for you to behave in your own self-interests, it isn't, it's just the natural course of a superior species." He crossed his arms smugly. "An eagle would never hesitate to take a kill from a pigeon."

"You put me on a pedestal for protecting 'pigeons', and then tell me it is fine to treat them as lower life. You are frustratingly inconsistent."

He leaned back and smiled. "So you do have some things you'll push back on. I consider this a great victory."

"It's not," I argued. "I just prefer people be clear in their intentions and meanings. It does not reflect on my perceived self-worth. You do not win."

"But it's something you prefer, and you'll stand up for it enough to argue anyone into the ground, it is," he mused, his smirk obnoxious and all-encompassing. "You'll stand up for that, so why not other things important to you?"

We flashed into another memory, my first week in America. A friendless transfer student who spoke in halting English and blushed at any attention. The boarding school I was sent to was small, prestigious, and its students had long ago formed cliques and social strata.

I saw this, knew it all, realized the danger. I had precious few days to establish myself anywhere but the bottom of the pack, but with every stammered introduction or awkward phrase or compulsion to flee from a conversation, I felt myself dropping.

I spent nights in my room berating myself in the mirror for my lack of clarity and difficulties in speech. I had to improve, quickly, before it was too late.

"But there are many things you view as important, you do," his voice snapped me out of the hypnotic reverie. "And yet, this is the one you will permit yourself to force on others."

"Clarity of thought and precision of speech are universal merits."

"So are many other virtues you espouse. Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone you met tried to help others? Or tried to minimize the pain of breaking promises and relationships? Or was a good person? Yet you don't go about forcing those beliefs on people, you don't. Just your predilections for speech. You could be so much more, Kaori my love. I just want to help you get there."

"I neither need nor want your help."

He shook his head but a moment of annoyance or rage flashed through his mind. Despite myself, I could feel his thoughts as he put it aside and decided to punish me instead.

"Well, we've got a lot more ground to cover, and I dare say you need all the help you can get, you do," he said, leaning back with a taunting grin. "Let's just dive right in, shall we?"

He did, again and again. As we had been, we continued; diving into my old memories unbidden, dredging out every one of my failings and hypocrisies. He made efforts to point out how all of the hardships of my life were not, as I have always asserted, my own fault, and that I was relatively blameless, save for being spineless.

It would have been such a simple thing were he not in my head. Any person sitting there, bringing up my memories one-by-one and telling me the faults within them, I could have easily dismissed. But I could not stop him from placing his objections in my mind any more than I could cease reliving my past. He showed no restraint or mercy in delving my brain, apparently unaware of any agony I felt, save for constant annoyance for me feeling it.

As I'd feared when he brought the chair in, this session was longer than most, and by the end of it, my brain simply buzzed as though disconnected. A mind was not intended to be delved into as mine had, to have long-held memories suddenly pulled and challenged and put back. Where once my thoughts had been an orderly library, they were now empty shelves with books strewn on the floor and aggressively annotated with a felt-tip pen.

"I suppose that's enough for today," he said at long last, and rose from his seat. I was too lost from this world to even comprehend his words, realizing only that I was back behind the glass of my case, safe in my own body with my own thoughts again.

Safe. What a strange concept.

As before, I had mere hours to undo his damage. To pick up the books of my mind and read each of them, crossing out additions made against my will. All of the thousands of them, it felt. It would be painful and arduous and I had no desire to relive them all again.

And tomorrow, again. And the day after, again.

I slumped forward with my forehead against the glass of the case. I could not do this forever. I wasn't even sure I could do it today. What was the point in fighting back so hard against the inevitable? What difference was there if I fell to his thoughts today, or in a week, or in a year?

I did not know. I did not know if these thoughts were even mine. I had no reasons left, and the work to do and the reach he held within me grew every day.

It was pointless.

But therein lay my strength. I was accustomed to my actions being pointless. I had lived a lifetime of being pointless. Pointlessness was my expected state, and something I had battled every day. There was no greater champion of fighting a pointless conflict than me.

And so, without reason or inclination or motivation, I leaned on my discipline yet again, and did that which I did not want to do for reasons I did not have, and began the painful process over.

Tomorrow would be another long day, and I had to be ready for it.