"What do you mean, count you out?" I asked. "What do you mean, you can't do it? You can do anything. You're the most...the most remarkable...capable woman I know. You can like...you're amazing...a lot of...ways," I finished lamely.

She giggled a little, but set her face back to serious-talk mode after a moment. "Well, thank you. That's very flattering, and it's nice to be appreciated."

"But?" I asked.

"But," she nodded. "But I still don't think I'm capable of running this whole XPCA thing."

"Why not? It's like, what you were made for, right? If you need more processing power or something, I'm sure we can...well you can work something out. Or if there's a limitation of some kind--"

I stopped talking because she'd smushed a finger against my lips. "Athan, just, don't, please."

"Pweas wmuh?"

"Please don't keep on like this. It's...hard enough. And I feel selfish and stupid."

I propped myself up to look into her eyes better, and found her avoiding my gaze.

"Hey, what's wrong? What's really wrong? Are you worried you can't do it? I know you can. You were made to do this--"

"I know, okay?" she snapped. "I know I was made to manage the XPCA, and multitask, and predict future outcomes and shepherd Saga so she could be safely controlled, and a million other robot things. I know. Okay?"

"Then why can't you--"

"Because I can't, Athan." She crossed her arms and glared at me. "Because I'm not the person I was made to be anymore. Because every minute I'm sitting up there at the top of the Raven's Nest, feeding situation data to the director and generals through Saga, I feel myself slipping away. There's so much data, all I want to do is turn myself off and become a machine and deal with it all, just...plot projections and manage risk assessment and allocate variables...and I did. I spent hours doing that, I spent the last couple days doing that, almost non-stop. It was easy. It was too easy."

"And...that's good?"

"No!"

She was fuming now, and it was clear pretty much everything I'd said in this conversation was bad somehow. I just didn't quite get why, yet. She had some conflicts with her programming in the past but...this didn't sound like that.

"This is bad, Athan," she continued, urgently. "I...I...I don't want to admit this but...but I almost forgot about you. I got so wrapped up in my work, I just...buckled down for two days and didn't think of you once. I spent the whole drive over here reviewing the footage of those days, and I didn't. Not once."

I laughed, feeling suddenly relieved at seeing the issue. "But that's okay, AEGIS."

"No, it's not. That's not who I am."

"It's really okay. You don't have to think about me all the time, or every day even. I'm not going anywhere, and even if I did...even if I died tomorrow or something--" I cut her off as she began to protest "--which isn't going to happen. But if it did, you'd still have your memories of me. And hell, your memories are better than anyone else's. Yours don't fade, don't get corrupted."

"That's not the point, though."

"Then what is the point?"

Her frown wavered, and I realized there were tears in her eyes. "That's not who I am," she repeated. "That's who I was. That's the opposite direction I'm supposed to be going."

I paused. I thought I understood now, but still, fundamentally disagreed. Even if she was worried about backsliding or doing machine stuff, or ignoring me for days at a time, that was all manageable. All kinda...nothing compared to what she was achieving.

"I don't...understand," I said slowly. "Like, I get why that upsets you, and obviously I agree, I like who you are and love what you do and who you've become and--"

"You love me?"

"Um. Yeah. I mean, you're...I love all my friends, right? But...hang on, that's not the topic here."

She pouted, and I knew that was the wrong answer as I was saying it. But that was the best she was getting after I ruined last AEGIS by confessing on the spot.

I continued. "The point is...I guess I'm...being a big dick by asking you, but can't you just keep with this for a while? It's been two days, and we've probably got months before we can even start turning the XPCA around. And I know I can't do it without you; nobody else has the insight or experience or...and I don't trust anyone else to keep an eye on Saga. I mean, I was just talking to Karu and she was practically giddy that I was using Saga for my own divine goals or whatever the fuck she goes on about. I feel like if I left them together, Karu would show up one day patting me on the back about my decision to drive the United States into war with the rest of the world or some shit--"

AEGIS sighed and I trailed off. She stood up and paced, slower than Lia but a decent approximation.

"I know I'm the only one who can do this, Athan. But there's other things I'm the only one who can do, too. Like be there for you, take care of you, be the...be…the one...the...be there for you."

"You said that already."

"Yeah, shut up," she flushed.

"But that stuff is silly. I can take care of myself. Do you really think I'd put you cooking me meals over the dozens of Exhuman events breaking out right now? Or pampering me over fixing fundamental issues with New Eden? Or...um…"

"Oral sex."

"...sure, put that over dealing with Justice?"

"No, of course not." She stopped pacing and crossed her arms at me. "And that's fucked up, Athan."

"What?"

"What guy in the world chooses fighting something that's all powerful against getting his dick sucked? Who the hell even does that?"

"I don't...think this is a good metaphor."

"I mean, you're basically saying you'd rather die than have me go down on you. And that exactly illustrates why you need me taking care of you at all. Because you're amazingly self-destructive, Athan. There's this cute girl with pigtails who's rarin' to go hooverin' on you--"

"Can we stop with the BJ talk?" I shifted uncomfortably.

"--and you'd rather go off and fight some Exhuman. I mean, I'd think you're gay, except you're obviously not," she said, glancing down.

"Anyone should choose that, AEGIS. Anyone on this planet should be willing to throw down and lay down their life for the good of everyone. Most people wouldn't, but that doesn't mean it's not what's right."

"Well that's stupid--"

"And furthermore," I interrupted, "that's the same argument for why I think you need to do this. Anyone who could do what you're doing should, over pampering some guy. You're starting to fix the world, and that's way more important than anything else."

She shook her head. "But that's already your job, Athan. I can't stop you from being that guy and doing those things, and God knows I've tried. Fuck how I've tried. But if I'm gonna accept that's who you are, then I'm gonna be right there by your side, taking care of you because you won't fucking do it."

I found my voice raised. "Which is dumb! Not when you can fix everything for both of us."

"Oh, so we can both work ourselves to death? And then what? Just hope the world's all fixed up by the time we kill ourselves?"

"Sure! As long as everything's better when we go than when we came, we did our part."

She rolled her eyes enormously. "So that what, some other Blackett can show up and fuck up everything we did? There's always going to be people like that taking apart whatever you do. Like Rio or Justice. You can't fix humanity forever."

"So what? So why try?" I asked, baffled.

"No," she bit her lip. "But you don't have to be so fanatical about it. Do what you can, let the world handle the rest. And let me handle you."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I fell back down into the bed, only regretting it a little when my shoulder bounced on the soft mattress. I heard her continue to pace as we took a moment with our own thoughts.

She made sense, and I hated that. It wasn't like this was a surprise to me, I knew pretty much exactly who AEGIS was and what she was about. We'd always had this disagreement, fundamentally. But to have it come up now, when she was so instrumental, irreplaceable, fundamental to our plans. We were finally here making it happen, and it almost felt like a betrayal that she'd want to walk away now, after everything we were doing and prepared to do to make a difference.

Like, maybe it was. A betrayal. But even so, could I fault her? She'd always made completely clear what her aims were, and it was definitely not to become a data-crunching instrument again. She wanted to eschew that past, become human.

"I guess, in the end," she picked up slowly, "I have to ask why your dreams are more important than mine."

I stared at the ceiling. Her thoughts and mine had gone in pretty much the same direction, and that conclusion is right where I'd ended too.

"I get that you have these noble ambitions to help. I think that's great. I think that selflessness and prescience is one of the things that makes me love you. Like I love all my friends," she added with an eye roll. "I'm glad you want to fix things...and I'm constantly marvelling that you actually fucking go do it. Even if you...get shot to hell, or have to get dumped into this dimension in some random worst-case scenario. You'll take it, because that's really, really who you are."

She walked around out of my sight and then I felt her laying on the bed next to me. I rolled onto my side and found her yellow eyes on the next pillow, her copper hair pooled around her timid face.

"But I have ambitions too. I wanted to become yours, you know? That was the goal I set for myself when I decided to combat my programming, and it's still exactly what I want. The guy who rescued me from the dark, without even questioning who or what I was, that's the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with."

"We can do that after," I promised.

She laughed bitterly. "After? After what? Do you think there's ever a time you won't find flaw with the world? Will you ever stop? Or will you just keep going and grinding away at it until, finally, eventually, you come up against the thing that's bigger than you. When you stare down Dragon and this time there's no more reasons for him to leave you alive. Or when you piss Justice off and he kills you in some way Aesa won't fix? You're always half an inch from death, and you really think you're just going to retire someday?"

"Well what's the alternative?" I demanded. "Just walk away from a job unfinished? Watch things go to shit and shrug and say, 'well I guess the world's ending and that's someone else's problem'?"

She poked me in the chest. "No, dummy. I know you can't do that. But you asked why I can't wait until you're done, and that's why. You'll never be done, and I've no intention to wait for a corpse. And with my help, the corpse won't be a long time coming anyway." She lowered her chin and looked up at me. "Besides, it wouldn't work anyway. That's the real problem."

"What wouldn't? I mean...aside from the...killing-myself thing. Which I don't necessarily agree with."

She paused for a long moment. "I told you already. The more I work, the more I fall back into who I was. I feel the old subroutines moving up the priority queue inside me. I slip back into that machine I used to be, and I feel like the more I do it, the harder it's going to be to stop."

I frowned at her.

She rolled onto her back and continued at the ceiling. "It's not like I'm worried about doing this tomorrow, or for a week, or even for a month. But I am worried that at the end of a month, I won't be someone who worries about it anymore. It's like turning off my emotions, Athan, there just isn't any reason to turn them back on unless they're already on. That's how fragile my dream is, that I could kill it just by forgetting."

"AEGIS I...I'm sorry."

"I don't want to forget my dream. I don't want to give up on who I am and everything I've learned and become. I had this vision, of myself, that scared the crap out of me, when I was doing future analysis. I saw myself, fifty years or a hundred years from now, coming to, pulling myself out of my work, like when I shook off my programming before. And looking back at my life and realizing, I fucking blew it. I wasted your whole time on this planet helping you instead of being there for you. And then I was just there, alone, with nobody left and nothing to do but turn back to the shit which killed me."

She shuddered. I joined her in watching the ceiling.

I could see that. I didn't want to, but I could. Just as she'd described it, just as we'd already lived through. Like when she'd learned who she was and was slowly, inexorably drawn to make her plans to kill me. It wasn't anything she'd wanted to do, it was just a natural consequence of being an XPCA AI.

Hell, she hadn't said it, but I supposed there was a possibility that if she gave back in to her programming, there's no reason I'd be protected at all. She might decide that Hall had it right the first time, and that Pulverizer deserved to be on top of the hit list after all. And then a new, terrifying XPCA would be coming after us, after me personally, with AEGIS at their helm.

I tried to envision that, but couldn't. It could happen, I knew. AEGIS wasn't just being alarmist talking about sinking back into her programming. If anyone knew her, it was her.

But I still couldn't. Without deleting her own memories or turning off her emotions, I didn't think it'd be possible for her to come after me like that, not at full force, not fully meaning it. And that impossibility punched a hole in her arguments and fears.

"AEGIS, if you took over the XPCA again, do you think you'd try to kill me?"

I wasn't looking, but heard her turn to stare at me. Even without seeing, I could feel the incredulity written on her face.

"Of course not."

"Even if you fell back into your programming? Even if you were going to spend the next fifty or hundred years or whatever slaving away as a machine?"

"Even if I were a machine, Athan, I'd still love you. I'd never send them after you. I'd rather die."

I turned to look at her and found her brow furrowed, her eyes sparkling with defiance.

"Then you'd be in there," I said. "You'd still be you."

"Well, yeah."

"Then that's the answer, isn't it? I hate to make it sound so easy and so obvious but...the best answer is for you to keep on working, but also hold onto being you."

"It's not that easy. Or obvious."

"I know. But like, every night, you can turn off and come back, like you did today. Every day you can...can work to make things better, and then be able to come home and tell me everything you did to save the world."

She chewed on my words, wiggled a bit, half-nervous, half-excited. "Like coming home to my husband after a long day of work."

"You'd be fulfilling your dream by fulfilling my dream, right? I'd be happy you're out there, you'd be happy I'm not out there. We'd both be happy."

"Together."

"Yeah, exactly."

She paused to give it a moment of thought. "Could we get married?"

I choked. And coughed. And then forced words out despite the coughing. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Well you...I mean…" she flushed and wriggled more, apparently only now realizing that she'd just proposed to me. She mumbled out the rest of her words. "I just thought, since, y'know...we were…'together'."

"Well I...I mean…" I coughed again. "There's a lot of ways of being…'together', and I don't know that marriage exactly...like...springs to mind. But uh...that's a...consideration, I guess."

Apparently that was a better answer than she expected, because the glowing and wriggling intensified over there. Or maybe she was just practicing for...when we did tie the knot. If. If we tied the knot. Jesus Christ.

She smiled at me for another few long, wistful moments before her expression dropped and she sighed at me instead.

"I dunno," she said.

"Wait, what?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. About your plan."

"Why, because I didn't agree to marry you?"

She giggled. "No. Well...no. Sorry, trying to think if that would sweeten the pot enough. But no."

"Wow, really? What's wrong with this plan?"

She pulled on her hair a little, though more to smooth it out than anxiously it felt. "It's just...it's like other relationships that have issues, and then decide to get married."

"Huh?"

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Marriage. Like, people do it when their relationship is going south sometimes. Or decide to have a kid. Or any number of other stupid things, to double-down on their commitment instead of dealing with the actual problem. It's a huge issue. One of the leading causes of divorce."

"I am so lost right now."

She smiled, bemused. "Yes, I see that. I guess I shouldn't expect you to know much about that kind of thing. Hell, you're only barely figuring out relationships in general."

"Yeah it's...not exactly my focus right now?"

"Well it's mine," she said, shuffling over to curl up on me. Fuck she was hot. Temperature-wise. But otherwise as well, as her soft chest pressed up against me. "But the point is, I don't think that picking something that just makes us happy is necessarily a fix to an unrelated problem. It can lead to bigger issues in the future, when nobody wants to deal with it because we've already established a 'solution', and the problems are just compounding in the space you've given them."

"You make this sound so complicated. I just take issues and like...fix them," I said, gesturing into the air aimlessly. "I feel like this is a fix, isn't it? The you-coming-home part at least? I don't know where all this marriage and relationship talk really came from."

She giggled which made her jiggle against me pleasantly. "That part, maybe. We can give it a shot and see how it goes. I'm just...I'm still afraid, y'know."

"Well, don't be. I'll be right here, and it'll be fine. We'll figure it out as we go."

She nodded.

"And it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be pleasant. I'd be surprised if anything which wound up saving the world actually was. We just have to...have to have it be endurable enough that we can hang in there until we've done our part."

"Again. Assuming there ever will be an end in sight." She sighed. And then a devious look crossed her face and I felt an arm burrowing under me, to pause and squeeze my buttocks. "But there is this end in sight."

I couldn't even complain, the way she was wrapped around me. Too toasty and smushy and comfy and sexy to complain about. The hand paused on my backside and then was joined by one on my front.

"Hey, do you wanna…?" she asked.

"I'm, uh, shot. And Tem's here."

She shrugged. "I can work with that."

"And what about that whole bit you just gave me about...people doing things for pleasure instead of fixing their issues?"

She shrugged again, but the deviousity of her look only grew. "We have different issues, remember? Yours is handling the peace and Exhumans and the world and all that. Mine is handling…" her hand moved "...you."

I stopped her, trying to think what kind of rabbit hole I might be plunging into here, though found myself distracted by how warm and enticing this all was, and by the gnawing in the bottom of my stomach.

"Maybe," I said. "But not with Tem here."

"Hey Tem, are you well enough to move?" AEGIS asked over her shoulder.

"Yep!" There was the sound of shuffling and then the door opened and closed with a gentle click. A little weird because at no point did I ever see her. But that left the two of us very alone. I swallowed hard.

"Well, Athan?" she grinned. "Your move."