As a result, now she has to either wait for Ajax to wake up, or she has to wake him up. She doesn’t care for the first option very much as there is a possibility that Ajax’s regeneration is on its last legs and might fail before it could regenerate enough of Ajax’s body for him to wake up and finish healing himself.
It isn’t that big a possibility when she really considers it, but these healing powers are still quite new and she doesn’t want to test their limits in this situation. Even if the chances that his regeneration would ultimately fail were only one in ten, even one in a thousand, would she bet Ajax's life on that?
Still, there is no hope in the second option either. For the life of her, she cannot figure out how to help him. She has no possible way for her to meaningfully interfere with his healing factor. The idea of even trying feels infinitely complex. She has no idea how her healing actually works. For a few minutes, she tries to figure out how she can possibly help him.
She brainstorms possible solutions and creates a cloud of possibilities in her mind. Yet, everything she thinks of to restore Ajax in safety and security is built on nothing but baseless speculation on her part. She has no real options as a result. She feels fear thinking of how she had tried to feed her heat into Ajax’s head.
Does she really want to put her hopes into something again just for it to fail to revive Ajax? She doesn’t know if she can handle that despair right now. Maybe it is cowardice on her part, but she considers it lucky if she can get out of this situation with Ajax returning to life and without developing post-traumatic stress disorder.
She examines Ajax’s head over and over. She waits and feels for his regeneration. Is it slowing down? No. Is it stopping? No. His head is healing at a continuous pace, though still slowly.
Shaula takes a few deep breaths. She wants something to trust right now. She cannot trust herself, she still hates herself for her own complacency and neglect towards Ajax. There is however one thing she can trust right now. Her and Ajax’s powers.
She cannot doubt his healing factor right now. Ever since they were placed in this world, their regenerative powers have never failed them. They have had body parts removed. They have been cut, sliced and stabbed repeatedly, at least she has. Her own heart was repaired within seconds of receiving a fatal attack.
Even right now, in this current situation where Ajax’s healing will take hours more time, there is still some kind of logic to it. For a few seconds, she takes solace in that fact. All she can do is have faith that Ajax will live. Faith not in the divine but in something tangible.
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If his decapitated head is trying to regenerate a body even now, what else could she comment with? How could she speculate on their almost divine powers?
So instead of thinking about it further, she does something she knows that she needs to do. She cries. The tears flow from her eyes, landing on Ajax’s cheek as she holds his head close to her chest. There is nothing she can do for him. There is so much she regrets, and in the end, she can do nothing for him. Whether he will live or die, there is nothing she can do.
She weeps. For her powerlessness. For her complacency. For her ugly bloodlust and cruelty that resulted in negligence towards her friend. She weeps for Ajax.
—
An hour passes while Ajax and Shaula remain in a room in one of the abandoned slum buildings. The surroundings of the room are covered in a bright red mold, something that she long ago learned is somewhat poisonous to normal people, but with no effect to either Ajax or her.
She keeps a close eye on Ajax’s regeneration progress. His head doesn’t look pale at all, even with the lack of blood flow. It seems that even if blood isn’t “circulating” through his veins, it still remains within his blood vessels and capillaries.
He’s made slow progress. His neck has restored itself partially. His Adam's apple has grown back as well, his neck restored to the point right before where his collarbone should be. Furthermore, his neck wound is no longer open. It looks like the closed over skin of a person’s lost limb. There is no blood flowing from it, even though there is still blood staining it.
What makes her the most hopeful is his face. He really does look like he is asleep, even if he isn’t breathing. His eyes look calm. She noticed it half an hour ago, but his eyelids are staying closed now rather than being powerlessly open. So, rather than being a corpse, it’s more like he’s comatose.
Shaula opens his left eyelid and examines his eye. The eye isn’t moving around like when a person dreams which makes her feel unsteady. However, she notices his pupils being wide open. This room is very dark and it is nighttime after all, so with his eyes closed, his pupils have been dilated. She raises her index finger towards his open eye.
She forces the tip of her index finger to become brighter, expelling heat from it. When she does so, Ajax’s pupil contracts. Shaula gasps. Then, she smiles, a smile even brighter than the brightest lights she can conjure. He is alive. Ajax is alive! His brain must be working in some capacity, even if it cannot support his higher cognition, at least that is what she theorizes.
At the very least his autonomic nervous system is working again. She had seen his pupils an hour earlier and they weren’t responding to any stimuli.
Shaula feels amazing. She feels better than she’s ever felt before, a feeling of pure relief overflowing. She believes strongly that Ajax is not going to die now. Perhaps it is still too early to properly confirm, especially when he isn’t conscious yet, but her faith in their new powers only deepens.