She sat at the top of the hill. A cold wind rushed past her, making her shudder and pull her knees up to her chest. Mind knew she could change that.

This was the dreamscape - her dreamscape. Anything was possible. She could pretend to be a king sitting atop a throne with millions of faceless subjects bowing to her. She could be a fish swimming through the darkest depths of the ocean. She could be warm and comfortable in front of a crackling fireplace. But instead she chose to sit here, on a hill, with the wind chilling her bones.

Heart had always asked her why she chose to suffer. But to Mind, it wasn’t a choice. In this moment here she had to feel cold, she had to be miserable. Somehow it made the other pain more bearable. Of course, the Parts can bear a lot of pain, just as Gaians and humans could; perhaps the pain always was bearable. No, she chose to suffer because it justified the pain.

It never made any sense to the other Parts. Many of them thought she did the things she did to spite them. Spite did drive many of her actions. Back when they were One she commanded all the Parts and they followed - she didn’t think things should be any different right now. To think that any of them dared to defy her like that. To think any of them were less than perfect parts of a machine.

The scenery bulged out on the left of her and Mind watched that girl stumble through it. The gift Heel had given her gave her the ability to wander around in the realm ruled by Mind and Body and while Aris had no real influence over it, Mind found it infuriatingly impossible to eject her from the dreamscapes.

Scaring her didn’t work. All her friends and family were dying in the world below and still she’s here. Mind slouched forward and cradled her chin against a hand with an elbow propped against her thigh. She was beginning to suspect Aris wasn’t fully responsible for staying.

“Is Body done playing hide and seek with you?” Mind asked dully. Reliving the death of the Parts always put her in a shitty mood. She didn’t even have the energy to split her body apart and now spoke in her normal voice. Again, she only did it for shock value and Aris (disappointingly) didn’t really react to any of it.

“He was showing me his collection of… stuff,” Aris said. She was a young woman with long dark hair and serious gray eyes. She wore simple clothes that matched the fashions of the world below. Heart used to love looking at clothing. She once said that was what made humans so interesting: how so much of what they did ended up being an indication of who they were. The most obvious of indicators was fashion.

If Heart was here she would observe the shit out of what Aris was wearing. But Heart wasn’t here anymore. Mind looked away, willing another blast of frigid air to hit her. “It’s a collection of trash,” Mind replied coldly. “He thought it was necessary to take memorabilia from people and our siblings. Our way of remembering. Heart was in charge of memory, you see.”

Aris moved next to her and sat down beside her on the grass. They were both at the mercy of the winds now. Mind considered splitting her body in half and speaking with the stretched out viscera again, but then decided against it.

Soon, none of this will matter anymore.

“Heart died taking us from another world to be here. For us to be able to use the Great Solvent,” Aris said.

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“So you do pay attention.”

“Contrary to what Camaz and the other professors may think, I have paid attention to every class they’ve made me attend on that damn island,” the little moon muttered.

“Have you paid attention to how you’ll die here?”

Aris shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like you can kill me. Body doesn’t want me to die, for one. He saved me just as you were showing me all those morbid scenes.”

Traitor. “It’s not like you can leave either,” Mind said. “There’s literally nothing you can do. Sooner or later Body and I will also be gone. What do you think will happen to you when that happens?”

“I’ll die along with you,” Aris said.

“There you go. I can kill you. Here is the part where you beg me to spare your life.”

“You’re willing to die to eliminate me?”

“I’m willing to die for a lot of things.”

“You’re dying to prove that you can do something to me. To everyone down there.” Aris had her face twisted in fury. It amused Mind to think that mortals reacted to expressions. “You’re throwing away everyone’s existence just to prove something?”

“Heart always called your people as the beloved children of existence. She thought you were special. That isn’t true since I can snuff you out.”

“So you’re trying to prove Heart wrong?” Aris asked incredulously.

“And what if I am?” Mind shot back. The anger in her own voice shocked her. “She never saw what your people are capable of. The sheer greed that consumes their every decision. The narcissism that shadows their every move. Do you have any idea how sickening it is to watch someone, some who’s a part of you, die for degenerate shit like that? She thought you were the most important thing in all of existence and then…”

Air rushed by between them, picking up their hair.

“It’s all over,” Mind said weakly. “You’ll never understand what it’s like. You’ll never see that I won’t forgive them. I’ve finally prodded the fabric between our world and yours enough to unleash enough of the wrong Solvent to turn every single Gaian into a monster. I won’t stop it. Perhaps I may forget with Heart gone but I will never forgive.”

With that bleak declaration, Mind thought it would finally be over. She was used to having the final word after all. But instead, the young woman grabbed her arm and the look in her gray eyes was not one of defeat.

“I get it now,” Aris said. “I get what Heel wants me to do. I know why I’m here.”

Mind, being Mind, thought it was a trick. But then Aris reached into her own face and the hand disappeared briefly past her facial features. It reappeared holding a dripping, glowing green substance. Mind immediately knew what it was.

Heel’s eyes.

“Take it.” Aris sounded pained. Strange, she shouldn’t feel pain here, at least not real pain. She still had her gray eyes and the rest of her face was intact; her form here was symbolic anyway. Removing Heel’s eyes from her solute had no effect on how she portrayed herself in the dreamscape.

Mind stared at the glowing, incorporeal smudge of light in Aris’s hand. Heel had always despised her. He had disliked Heart and Body as well, although he at least tried to get along with Heart as they shared a common interest in mortals. It didn’t surprise Mind that he was the first and most enthusiastic Part to try to stop her from killing all the Gaians.

But even then, they were once One long ago. He was gone too, like Heart. Even if he despised her, she grieved. Mind took the eyes into her hand and accepted it.