Even though I'd slept in, I didn't feel rested, even a little bit. My head was still aching with the arguments we'd chased in circles for hours the night before. My mouth felt dry and my throat sore from all the talking. My eyes were tired and dry.

But none of that compared at all to the note in my hand. I kept reading it and re-reading it and trying to make sense of the words. They made sense, they were the conclusion to the arguments that AEGIS had been slamming at me all last night. They just didn't make sense to me.

I rose and found myself still dressed, which saved me a step as I stumbled into the hallway and then easily located AEGIS, standing as though waiting in the living room. Which was pretty much all of the house, excluding bathroom, kitchen, and the other bedroom, whose bunk bed housed Lia and Whitney, and the rest of the space housed the latter's crap.

AEGIS smiled at seeing me up, and then frowned.

"Didn't eat breakfast?" she asked.

I shook the note at her, and shook my head, but words seemed beyond me at that exact moment. She made a disapproving clicking sound and advanced on me. For a moment, I thought she was coming for me for some reason, but she just squeezed past and disappeared into my room, leaving me out here like an idiot. But then she came back, folding up the tray and carrying the plate of bacon and toast.

"Sit. Eat," she commanded. And I wasn't in much of a place to argue, so I did. She busied herself putting the table away, before sitting opposite me and smoothing down her dress as she resumed her smile.

Talking was easier after putting some food down, I discovered. As was waking, and finally I was able to ask her what I really wanted.

"What's with this?" I said, shaking the letter again.

She paused, smile frozen for a moment. "It's exactly what it says."

"What it says is, in not so many words, that the XPCA is going to go to shit." I swallowed and started to move, but AEGIS already had a glass of water from somewhere, which I drank readily. "We need you."

"It's operated in the past without me just fine."

"It's operated in the past by people who had their heads together. Saga is like, mid-lobotomy on some of those generals, and it's them who are running the daily operations around there. I don't know if you've seen General Moroles recently, but he's basically a zombie."

"General Moroles was always kind of a useless turd sack if you ask me," she shrugged, still smiling placidly.

"The point is, when we stepped in and started running things, we started running things. I don't know that it's possible to just...stop. I know how hard it's been for you, but I don't think I can just accept a resignation." I handed the letter back to her, which she took, glanced at, and then carefully folded to set on the coffee table.

And then she looked at me for long moments. Her eyes so bright, more dazzling even than the midday sun shining through the windows.

At long last she shook her head at me in return. "How are you going to do that, Athan? Are you going to force me to work?"

"No."

"Hold me down, plug me in, until the thing inside me takes over?"

"What? No."

"Let it crawl out of me and push me out of my own body? Force me to die, drowning to my own fucking inadequacy, my own inability to deal with myself? Just pin me down and drug me up until I can't be me anymore?"

"AEGIS, what the fuck? No. I'm not...raping you or whatever. I just...need your help, now more than ever."

"Well I said no." She crossed her arms. "Which means, you can force me, or you can fuck off."

"Why do you have to be so dramatic? Look, let's just...set boundaries, like you did before. Let's keep you to them. No more overtime. No more plugging in. End at five sharp. Like you said you wanted."

She tightened her arms across her chest, her face flashing livid. "No. I tried that."

"And...we messed up. I messed up. I wasn't there for you."

"You shouldn't have to be," she snarled. "I should be able to function on my own. I hate that you'd think you have to babysit me, just because I'm not capable of keeping my own shit in order. I hate it, Athan."

"It's not babysitting!" I argued. "We just...everyone needs a little help sometimes. Everyone's got weaknesses. Just like I can't deal with the boring-ass-hell minutiae of running the agency, you can't deal with...I don't know...being so close to...the drug...thing."

"You still don't get it," she sighed, deflating. "You don't even understand what it's like for me, do you?"

"I do!" I bleated, but I realized that was most of my argument right there. "I've been listening. You said it's like a drug, and you have to control yourself to only...take a little bit. When you're an addict."

"Yeah, that's the metaphor," she said, pushing her glasses up her face. "In practice, it's so much more insidious. Because it's so easy, Athan. I'm up there doing forms and I think, 'I'm really limited by the bandwidth here. I could get twice as much done if I just went on a hard line.' And then I'm already there, I should engage the idle cycles on the servers to boost my processing power, and I'll work ten times faster. And then, as long as I'm operating at higher capacity, I should take a look at that other problem I couldn't figure out when I was in my own limited mind. And then I run into some variable I can't account for without cross-referencing some other thing I was working on--"

"And then you're working on everything, plugged into everything."

"Pretty much. And I'm ninety percent system and everything which is me is just a little voice in the corner saying wait, I wasn't supposed to do this for some reason. I should stop. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what that reason is, until you walk in, and I realize I forgot all about you."

She looked bitter and disgusted, and tensed up even further in her seat. "Forgetting you. Like, all about you. Seriously."

"That's...not so bad. We all get busy with work. I don't have you on my mind every minute when I'm fighting someone."

"Athan, I know you don't understand, but you're my everything. To combat these...impulses. My programming. My fundamental nature, I had to pick some new axis to orient myself around. And I chose you. You're my zero-zero, my rock, my anchor. Forgetting you isn't just...doing something dumb without my boy in mind, I'm not being some drunk floozy on spring break here. I'm talking about a situation where my entire...my entire…" she shook her head violently, hair bouncing on her shoulders. "My entire value system. My entire moral compass. My entire hierarchy of priorities, it's all different. I don't know if you can even imagine that. But becoming that is awful. And coming back from it..." She shuddered. "...I feel dirty. I feel impure."

I just took a moment to breathe and reflect on her words. I was listening, I was. I heard it all, and I tried my best to think about what she said instead of just arguing my case again.

And it sucked. Her position sucked.

"But none of that changes the fact that we need you, AEGIS."

"You don't need me," she scoffed. "You need my body. "You just want to plug it in and have it run things, and subvert me into nothingness."

"I don't want to do any of that! I love--" I swallowed hard, and it was telling how serious this conversation was that she hardly even glanced up at the word. "I love you. And of course I don't want you to go away, or be suffering, or have your personality drowned by your systems. I want you to be happy and healthy and whole."

I traced my finger along my empty plate, slightly surprised to pick up crumbs I could barely see. But I could feel them. They were there, a mess just out of sight.

"I just…" I sighed. "Things are such a mess right now. We've got so much disaster going on. And you're so competent, without you...I don't even know. The world I see if you do this is...everything falls apart. We fail, maybe even die. And yeah, you're there, failing and dying right alongside us. And...maybe that's what happens even if you stay."

I felt like I was just rambling, frustratedly. To be honest, I didn't know the first thing to do about most of the problems we faced. I just wanted to go address them in person. Walk up to Justice and cut him down and sort out that problem with my own two fucking hands. Having it all handled by tens of thousands of uniforms through a layer of paperwork...like yeah, I knew in my head that maybe ten thousand dudes with guns and exosuits was a little bit more capable than I was. But it didn't feel that way. It felt like we were getting nothing done.

And without her, less than nothing. Saga had told me briefly about all the thousands of problems she'd nipped in the bud already. Issues none of us would have been able to see coming. None of us were an administrator.

Stolen novel; please report.

I sighed again. "I know you don't want to do it, but it just...seems like the only way things don't end badly, you know?"

She looked at me seriously, and then, surprisingly, reached up and delicately removed her glasses, folding them carefully and putting them on the note on the coffee table. She looked at me without them, with her blazing yellow eyes.

"I have a question," she said, chin angled down, eyes piercing. Her intensity was enough to make my heart skip.

"Um. Yeah, go ahead?"

"If I let you choose. Between me--" she paused to gesture at herself, her hands slowly descending her body. "--and having me plugged in. No half-measures. No...trying to quit at five. Fully engaged, fully committed. Because I don't think there's any middle ground except a struggle that lands one way or the other. So if you had to choose, for me to be one or the other. Which one would you pick?"

I stared at her and found her intensity unnerving. She was scrutinizing everything about me as she'd rarely done. I found myself breathing manually when the thought crossed my mind that she would be watching that. She'd be watching my heartbeat. My eyes. Everything, put under a lens like I'd rarely been under before.

And handed a question like that.

I didn't know.

I knew what I felt like had to happen for us to win. And at the same time, I knew what I wanted. I didn't want to lose AEGIS, to herself or to anyone.

I swallowed hard. It was a little painful.

"Are you...like...are you asking me right now?" I said stupidly. She nodded. "I mean. Like...am I...deciding what you're going...to do? To be?"

She blinked at me slowly once. "I don't see how that should change your answer."

"I just...want to know. Before I decide anything...that...might be more important than...I think?"

Her lips curled into just a hint of a frown. "Athan. You're just stalling. And that doesn't suit you. Whatever you say, know that I will observe it as your opinion in this time, at this moment. The opinion of the man I cherish most. Weigh that however you will."

I stared at her, feeling like I was facing my own execution somehow. This wasn't fair.

"I've already argued my opinion," I said. "I think you should just...do as we've been trying. We can try again. We can do better."

"That's not the question, Athan. I asked a different question."

Her eyes blazed at me, brighter than the sun. I couldn't look at them.

"I already told you," I mumbled at the table. "The XPCA needs you."

"And you? Do you need me?"

"Of course I do."

I saw her hand moving and felt her fingers touch my chin, lifting my face, pointing me directly at hers, the sun I couldn't stare into. But she made me, and once she had, I couldn't look away.

"And what's more important to you?" she asked, her voice kind but biting. "The XPCA? Or you?"

I had to look away again, but her fingers didn't let me go. I pulled them off my chin and mercifully found the floor.

"You know the answer to that, AEGIS."

"I need to hear it from you, my love."

I paused to think for another minute. She didn't move a millimeter, just waited. Just hung there, a well of patience and love. Just being the perfect, understanding woman who wanted to hear it from her own man that he didn't want her to exist anymore.

I spent that minute...I don't know, psyching myself up. Preparing to say something terrible which I knew I had to. Preparing to ruin my own life, and the life of someone I loved.

I hated it. I hated doing it. More than once, I had the insane urge to just stand up and leave. To grab her hand and take her with me as we disappeared into the ignorant mass of people outside. Go to Paris maybe. Or back to Tokyo, now that she knew the language. Make some happy memories there and push everything from this fucked-up, stupid, bullshit world out of my head. Make a new life, pretending, every minute of every day.

Pretending that everything would be okay without us. That we could just...re-cork his genie. That I was okay with having gotten everything I'd ever wanted.

"AEGIS, I can't ever put myself above everyone else on Earth," I slowly explained. "I just can't. All those humans and Exhumans, they deserve a better world than this one."

"Why, though? You always say that. You always believe that. But why?"

"Because this world is shitty, AEGIS. The fact that right now, I'm being made to choose between the woman I love and taking a step towards fixing it, that's the world for you. That's the kind of pain this fucking place demands of you."

She frowned. "Okay. And even if that's true, that doesn't answer my question. Why do people deserve better? Why can't you just…" she looked around and settled on shrugging at me. "...just leave them all to suffer."

"Because I can do something about it. Because, in spite of what a piece of shit I am, I can help. And I don't think anyone who can act...ever shouldn't."

"You talk like they're inhabiting this problem, Athan. But they are the problem. The world itself is just carbon and silicon and oxygen and iron. It's the people on it that make it shitty. And yet, you'd give up everything for them. Even me. Is that right?"

I looked at her. So radiant. So perfect. Even designed specifically to love me, the demands of this world were such that it could demand even more.

"That's right," I said at long last. "That's my answer."

Her face didn't change. She still just radiated love and understanding. Patience and kindness. She did put her glasses back on, and with them, shot me a beaming smile. Which I didn't understand.

But it was obvious she understood me. My answer hadn't surprised her at all.

She reached out and took my hand in both of hers, holding it close to her and planting her lips on it, somehow even warmer than the rest of her.

I didn't get it. I didn't deserve this.

"Didn't you hear me?" I found myself saying. "I said I'd rather you disappeared than loved me. I said I'd consign you to...to die, basically, if it meant those fuckers could be a little better-off."

"I know," she said, still smiling. "And it was the wrong answer."

"Then why?" I asked, completely flabbergasted as she kissed my knuckles again. Gentle lips, warming me like a sunbeam. I could only shake my head at her and try to pull free my hand, but this time she wasn't letting me go. "How can you still love me? Why are you still doing this? I'm horrible.

"I've told you before, you big dummy," she said with a grin. "And I'll tell you again, and again, because even if you hear me, you'll never agree."

"What? That you picked me? That I'm just that important because you happened to choose me and not someone else?" I stared at her, feeling my blood surge. I wanted to stand up and yell, rip out my hair. "You said it yourself, I'm your zero-zero coordinate or whatever. Well you could have picked any fucking arbitrary point. You could have picked anyone who wasn't a fucking piece of shit like me. And then you'd be happier, AEGIS. Happier than I could ever make you."

She continued to smile, and that just made me feel even more insane. My fingers twitched as she came in to kiss them yet again, and I realized I was crackling with uncontrolled electricity. I felt panic as it jumped from my fingertips to her face, coursing painfully down her body, cracking that patient smile with a wince, and making my already-twisting heart writhe even more. Because of course I had to hurt her on top of everything else. Because that was who I was. Just a toxic, ingrateful, painful, demanding Exhuman.

And still she didn't yield. Kindness and love, stronger than any self-loathing I could throw at her. I didn't understand.

"Athan, you always choose wrong," she explained. "You always put others first. You always pick the most selfless path possible, even if it's stupid beyond measure. And if you ever, even for a moment, find happiness? You rush to throw it away, because of this insane guilt you have that your happiness somehow equates to someone else's misery. It's irrational."

"It's not! The XPCA needs you--"

"I know," she said. "But you need me more. You always choose wrong, and like I said before, I'll be that one person who looks out for you when nobody else will. When the world is being cruel to you, when you're being cruel to yourself, I will always be there for you. I'll be the one to pick you over the world, because you won't do it. I'll help you be as selfless and self-destructive as you want, I'll be there to pick up the pieces of you and put you back together, no matter what you do. I'll help you, and love you. Always."

"But you won't...die for me."

She shook her head with the same patient smile and gave me another gentle kiss. "Not this time. Not like this. If I did, who'd be there to love you, Athan? If you had answered differently, maybe there might have been hope for you. Maybe I could have trusted you to take care of yourself to some degree. But if you can't, then I will."

She kissed my fingertips again, and this time it seemed to burn instead. I felt lightheaded, reeling in my chair at her words.

I didn't understand.

I really, really didn't understand.

But at the same time, I wasn't sure I had to. She'd gathered her data and drawn her conclusion, and told me in no uncertain terms what she'd surmised and what it meant. And there was no flex in it.

From the intensity of her eyes to the strength of her hands on mine, I knew that no amount of crying or screaming or hating would change her decision. I'd told her to go kill herself, in the worst imaginable way, and she hadn't even blinked. If I was stubborn, she was immovable.

And that was, in a way, a huge relief. I felt all this angst and anger inside me crashing with nowhere to go. Welling up into self-pitying tears. But behind them, relief. The happiness that she was there for me, that she always would be, and there was no other way. That this argument was settled, and it wasn't even an argument anymore, it was a cold-cast decision, laid in iron. That through her in my life, if nothing else, I could have something selfish and special and beautiful, and it wasn't happiness stolen from someone more deserving. It was just...something I'd have to deal with, joy and security I'd be forced to have, whether I wanted it or not. It bubbled up inside me, warmth and elation like I couldn't contain, didn't deserve.

But I had it anyway, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The tears did come out. But they weren't hot and angry, or bitter and stressed. They were tears of relief, of happiness even.

She finally let me go and walked around the table to wrap me in a hug, letting me cry myself out on her. Her hands ran soothingly up and down my back, and it wasn't too long before my brain recovered and I felt stupid for...for everything, really. For thinking I could run her life, make her decisions, that all these choices were on me, and that what I decided fated the world.

And also for crying like a tired child over breakfast. But she didn't judge.

Instead, once my tears had dried, she gave my hand another gentle kiss, glancing up at me with sparkling eyes and a grin that spoke of understanding, and then rose.

"I bet you're still hungry. Junk food for dinner last night probably didn't hold you, I imagine. Let me make something more substantial before you head into the office, okay?" she asked.

I rose and caught her hand as she reached for the fridge, giving her pause while she looked at me with confusion. "Not...not hungry?" she stammered.

I answered her with a kiss, pulling her into me and feeling her hot lips on mine. As quickly as she stiffened in surprise, she melted into my arms, her hands wrapping around me as though she'd been waiting for this moment for months.

She had. But she would have waited forever if I'd wanted. That was part of her love. The endless, bottomless well of patience for me and for all my fuckups and indecision. But I'd had enough of that. We deserved better. She deserved better.

It was brief, but she still drew away panting, looking more flushed and agitated now than during our entire intense debate. I felt the same, felt like I loved this woman, and that I didn't deserve her, but if she would settle for me, the least I could do would be to make her as happy as I could.

I didn't know if it was a good idea or not. But for once, I didn't care. I had to show her how much I loved her. She resisted only slightly as I steered us back towards the bedroom.

"Okay, but...don't think you're...skipping breakfast after this," she moaned. "I'll...pack you...something."

"I'm sure it'll be great," I said, as I closed the door behind us.