It took me nearly an hour to convince my parents to leave me alone to talk to Jamie and the Mediators. It made sense. If I had a child of my own, I probably wouldn’t be too happy about leaving her alone with someone who had killed her by accident, and another who tried to kill her on purpose only a few minutes afterwards, but I eventually managed to convince them that I would come back to them, safe and sound.

The room went completely silent after they left. Though Jamie had taken the liberty of cleaning up my blood with his magic, he hadn’t bothered to fix the wall. Even though the storm was slowly dying out, the wind and rain was still strong enough to blow a consistent spray of water onto us, nobody suggested that we should move or that Jamie should fix the wall.

We all just stayed there, awkwardly standing around the cramped room in silence.

I knew the onus was on me to say something, but I don’t know how long it took for me to summon my voice.

“Jamie.” Once I found my voice, I spoke quickly, trying to deny myself the opportunity to hesitate. “The Mediators are trying to kill you.”

The reaction around the room was much more muted than I expected. Oren and Sera didn’t even act like they’d heard me, while Jamie only turned towards me with a furrowed brow with no other reaction. He stared into my eyes for a few seconds before turning away and staring directly at Oren.

Oren glanced at him. “It’s true,” he said, answering the unasked question.

I wasn’t sure I believed what I’d heard. I expected him to at least try to deny the accusation somewhat. What was he doing?

I looked at Sera, to see if she had an explanation, but she was adamantly avoiding my gaze, staring out of the broken wall like she was admiring the rain.

“You’re trying to kill me?” Jamie asked.

Oren nodded. Even if I knew it would’ve been a lie, I had expected him to deny the accusation, or at least pretend to feel guilty, but his expression was completely blank, devoid of the false expressions he usually wore.

“The civilian speaks the truth,” he said. “The Mediators are an organisation that aims to remove all Otherworlders from Materia.”

“Why?” Jamie asked.

“Because you’re powerful,” he said. “Powerful enough to destroy a small village like this with a single thought. Powerful enough to genocide an entire country in the span of a few days.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” I said, glaring at Oren.

“From what I’ve seen of your personality, I am willing to accept that it is unlikely that you would intentionally put another life in danger,” Oren said, not even bothering to look in my direction to answer me. “But we already have two instances where you have killed two civilians and assaulted a Mediator.”

“He healed us!” I said.

Oren turned to me for the first time in the conversation, just to give me a quick glance and a blank, unimpressed stare.

“Near-death experiences can still be traumatic. I imagine the act of actually dying would be just as traumatic, even if the victim was brought back to life,” he said.

I bit my lip and stayed silent, not wanting to answer the unspoken question.

Oren said nothing for a few more seconds until he was confident I wouldn’t answer.

“Whether your victims experience trauma or not, the fact is that you committed murder, regardless of your intentions,” Oren said, turning back to Jamie. “Or rather, you committed murder despite your intentions. You have power beyond the capacity of a mortal to handle, and sometimes, you will not be able to control it. This has been proven throughout history. There has not been a single Otherworlder that has been able to keep themselves from directly causing the death of another.

“Excluding the extreme outliers, on average, Otherworlders kill twelve Materians before the Mediators are able to eliminate them. If we include the extreme outliers, that number goes up to approximately five million. It may seem like an exaggeration, but as of this moment, there is a population count of approximately four billion Materians alive today. Fifty years ago, before the rampage of the Otherworlder colloquially known as the Plague King, that number was approximately seven billion. That is why the Mediators exist. For the good of all life on Materia, and for the sake of any goodness that might remain in the Otherworlders.”

Oren gently placed a hand on Jamie’s shoulder, a gesture that clashed with how flat and uncaring his voice was.

“I can tell you’re in pain, Jamie. You wish to be a good person, do you not? The best way to ensure that you remain one is to deny your infinite power of the chance to corrupt you.”

Jamie’s shoulders tensed up at Oren’s words and he awkwardly shifted his head as he continued to look down at his feet.

“How-”

“No,” I said. I stepped forward to place myself in between the two, pushing Oren away from Jamie. Oren stepped back without resistance, seemingly unbothered by my interruption. “Don’t finish that question Jamie. He’ll just lie to you, like he’s been lying this entire time.”

“I will not lie to you, Jamie,” Oren said. “While I have lied to you in the past, I recognize that my previous approach may have been inappropriate. After some reevaluation, we have determined that the best method of handling you would be to employ complete honesty, in hopes of obtaining your cooperation.”

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

We? The single word stood out in my mind and I glanced at Sera, who turned away before I could meet her eyes.

“You were about to say something before the civilian interrupted,” Oren continued. “Would I be correct if I assumed that you wanted to know how you could ensure that you will never kill anyone again?”

My heart sank as Jamie’s unasked question was said out loud. Jamie said nothing, and I didn’t want to turn around to see his reaction, but the look on Oren’s face told me all I needed to know. It was a surprisingly gentle expression, with only the vaguest hint of his lips being raised and a slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes as he adopted a smile, it was the most genuine expression I’d ever seen from him. If I hadn’t known who it was attached to, I might have thought it made him look innocent and almost childlike.

“You would have to die of your own volition,” he said, his normally flat voice taking on a gentle edge of quiet excitement. “Would this be agreeable to you?”

“No,” I answered for Jamie. “No it would not.”

“The civilian does not speak for you, Jamie,” Oren said, still staring over my head. “It is your decision to make. You have the ultimate control over your life. You would be doing a good thing, Jamie. A noble end makes a noble life.”

“Like hell it does!” I shouted. “Jamie, don’t listen to this crap, he’s clearly manipulating you.”

“If trying to convince you that the decision I want you to take is the correct one, then yes, I am manipulating you,” Oren admitted. “But I genuinely think that it would be beneficial for both you, and every single resident of Materia if you died. Nothing I said has been a lie, Jamie. Unless you think otherwise?”

Though he still refused to look at me, the question was clearly a challenge at me.

“All you’ve been doing is lying!” I shouted. “You’re literally trying to dress up suicide like it could possibly ever be a good thing, and you have the fucking audacity to stand there with that smug look on your face, like you’ve got an impenetrable argument?!”

Oren’s smile twitched. It didn’t quite drop off his face, but he shifted his gaze down to meet mine.

“I have not been lying,” he said. “There would only be benefits to Jamie’s death.”

“Are you missing the fact that he’d be dead?” I asked. “Speaking as someone who’s been dead before, I’ll let you know. It was the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.”

When Oren’s smile returned, it took me a moment to realise my mistake. I turned around to look at Jamie, and though he still had his head tucked into his chin with his hood drawn tight over his head, he was tall enough and I was standing close enough to see his face, wracked with pain and guilt.

“Jamie,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“A lie,” Oren said, the smile audible in his voice. “It was your hands that shattered her bones and spilled her blood. That is the truth.”

I didn’t bother glaring at Oren, knowing that there was nothing I could do to shut him up.

“You didn’t mean to,” I pleaded. “It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”

When Jamie raised his head to look directly at me, I almost flinched from the gaunt appearance of his sunken eyes. Tear marks stained his cheeks, but his eyes were devoid of moisture and life. Though he stared in my direction, he looked through me, at something only he could see.

“It was,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

When I talked to my parents a moment ago to convince them to let me talk to Jamie and the Mediators alone, I put on my brave face for them, to try and convince them I’d be fine, even though I had no idea what would happen in this room after they left.

It had been a surprisingly easy task for me to accomplish. I don’t know whether it had been my willpower or simply the fact that I was in shock from having died just moments before that allowed me to feign a stoic expression for them, but I somehow managed.

But now, watching Jamie struggle not to cry just made me want to cry for him.

And so I did.

It was a strange feeling, to cry without sobbing. Aside from a gut-wrenching twinge in my stomach that made me feel like I was on the verge of throwing up, I felt nothing. Aside from a heart-rending pain in my chest from the pain as I tried and failed to understand the amount of pain that Jamie must be feeling, I felt numb. Tears flowed down my face, but no sound escaped my lips.

“I thought I told you not to apologise for things you didn’t do,” I said, whispering unintentionally. I wasn’t sure he heard me.

Jamie shook his head, the motion so slight that I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Steven was right. I should’ve never been born.”

“Fuck Steven!” I shouted, even if I didn’t know who he could possibly be talking about.

Jamie’s only reaction was to let his head fall and stare at his feet. Through my blurry vision, the morbid part of my brain could only imagine the image of a dying man, hanging without a rope.

“Please don’t die,” I begged. “I’d miss you. Just talk to me.”

Jamie’s eyes flickered to mine, and for a moment, I swore I saw a bit of hope in his eyes.

“You should never apologise for being born, my brother,” Oren said, drawing his eyes away from me before that hope could take hold. “The circumstances of our birth cannot be controlled, but the choices we make are our own. I only ask that you make the correct one.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. Turning around, I walked up to Oren, took a moment to focus on where he was through my teary vision and reached up to slap him in the face.

It felt like slapping a brick wall, and like I guessed before, it hurt me more than it hurt him, judging from his lack of reaction.

Oren looked down at me.

“The civilian has no arguments to give and so she resorts to violence,” he said. “Is this the only argument you have left?”

“Shut up, Oren,” I growled. “Jamie isn’t going to kill himself.”

“It would be the logical thing for him to do.”

“Go take that logic and shove it up your ass.”

Oren gave me a disappointed look and sighed. “I will never understand you civilians,” he said, before looking up. “Jamie. There are three different ways that an Otherworlder can die. I will not tell you the third way, as it is too dangerous to attempt, but the first two are equally viable.”

In a moment of panic, I tried to reach up to slap my hand over Oren’s mouth, in an attempt to physically shut him up. Instead of letting me hit him again, his hand snaked up with careless ease and slapped my hand away.

“You came to this world with a dream. A defined goal that you sought to pursue during your time here, and without the goal to sustain you, your existence will fade. If you decide that you have satisfied that goal, or have given up hope in achieving it, you will pass.”

Jamie frowned.

“So if I give up on my dream, I die?” he asked.

“Yes,” Oren said. “Alternatively, if you truly believe you have achieved it, you will also pass on. However, I do not believe that is a viable option as becoming an adventurer would be a fundamentally impossible task for you. An adventurer can be defined as an individual who seeks and partakes in adventure, and an adventure can be defined as an undertaking that involves danger, risk, and excitement, but your invulnerable constitution makes risk and danger fundamentally impossible for you.”

Jamie stared at Oren, and then at me.

“Please don’t,” I begged. It wasn’t a good argument, but it was the best I could offer.

Jamie stared at me for a while longer, before he bowed his head.

“Please,” I repeated.

Several seconds passed in silence, before Jamie raised his head. His eyes were still sunken, but he tried to give Oren a shaky smirk before it immediately fell back down into a frown. He let out a sigh.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I can do it.”