Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Gheraa wasn't used to this.

Not the act of existing in realspace, though that was certainly strange in and of itself; the straight lines and square rooms of his home were nonexistent here, and the purity of Firmament he was used to was nowhere to be found. A part of him rebelled against it—yearned to apologize to Lhore and to be accepted back amongst the Integrators—but a much greater part of him reveled in it. Delighted in the thought of what they would think of him if they saw him now, cavorting and befriending the so-called lower lifeforms of the galaxy.

He was even getting used to the dirt. He didn't like it, exactly, but he was getting used to it. That was something, right? He could hold it in his hand without shuddering now.

All that was... different. But it wasn't what took the most getting used to. That honor was taken by Ethan and his friends.

Gheraa had never been able to let his guard down before, at least not to this extent. Integrator culture was competitive. Any interaction was a display of social dominance, every fight a battle for the right to exist. It was a necessity for their growth and evolution, or so the upper echelons claimed, and yet he'd never felt like he belonged.

In fairness, he wasn't sure he belonged here, either. Ahkelios and Guard treated him with respect, but he could tell they didn't entirely trust him, and he couldn't blame them. Ethan was the only one that seemed to look at him without judgement.

Sometimes, he was afraid that would change. He tried not to think about that too much.

"Hey, Gheraa?" Ethan called, knocking on his door. Gheraa flinched for a moment before he remembered himself and coughed, opening the door and putting on a beaming smile. At least, he assumed it was a beaming smile? Ethan seemed to interpret it just fine, but Ahkelios seemed a little creeped out by it.

"What is it?" Gheraa asked.

"Can we talk for a moment?" Ethan gestured inside, and Gheraa blinked, hesitantly stepping aside and allowing the human in.

"Of course," he said, with perhaps a little more doubt than he'd intended. "What about?"

"I just want to know," Ethan said. He leaned forward, a slight furrow in his brows. "What do you want out of all this?"

"What... do you mean?" Gheraa asked. Mostly to stall. He knew what Ethan meant, he just didn't know how to answer.

Ethan seemed to realize this, too, because he just raised an eyebrow and waited. After a moment, Gheraa sighed.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Half of this he'd done on a whim. He'd known bringing Ethan into a Trial would interfere with the Integrators and their plans. He hadn't anticipated how much, and more importantly, he hadn't anticipated...

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Well, he hadn't anticipated caring.

He wanted the humans to succeed now. He wanted Ethan to succeed. Even wanting something was a new experience for him, in all honesty; he'd spent so much of his life simply serving the cause that he didn't know what to do with things like personal desire.

"This is your fault, you know," Gheraa grumbled.

Ethan blinked. "What is?"

Gheraa gestured to himself. "This," he said. "I don't even regret sacrificing myself, you know that? Do you know how out of character that is for me? I'm all about the show! I'm not supposed to care about what happens to my charge, but you just had to be..." He made a frustrated gesture. "You know! You."

"I don't know what that means," Ethan chuckled, amused. Gheraa let out an aggravated sigh.

"You noticed," he said. "Do you know how many people notice when I'm hurt? No one. I'm very good at hiding it. You had the nerve to ask me about it."

"Is that so bad?"

"I don't know!" Gheraa threw his hands up in exasperation—a decidedly human gesture, but how else was he going to communicate his frustrations? "And I don't know how to answer your question. I don't know what I want. I want to help you, I guess."

"And after that?" Ethan asked.

After that. He said it like it was so easy—like he would succeed and that would be that. Gheraa couldn't even imagine what a victory for Earth would look like. Would the Interface even still exist? Would the Integrators? ṜÅＮΟβЕṤ

Would he?

Gheraa sighed again. "I'll have time to figure it out, won't I?" he asked quietly, leaving his uncertainties unspoken. Ethan watched him for a moment, expression unreadable.

"True enough," he allowed. "I just wanted to make sure you know you're a part of this team. And that means what you want matters, too."

"You are infuriatingly nice," Gheraa muttered. "But—" he struggled for a moment. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Ethan said simply. "Now, about my core..."

Gheraa groaned. Ethan had been absolutely relentless on this matter, asking him questions about cores and phase shifts on a near-daily basis. Truth be told, Gheraa barely had any idea what Ethan had done with his core; the only thing he knew was that it felt similar to seventh-layer Integrators that had broken through the sixth-layer bottleneck. It was incredible. It was also bizarre.

But he steeled himself to answer the questions anyway. He enjoyed this process now, strange as it was. All these years and he'd never once really enjoyed being a practitioner of Firmament. It was just a means to wield his power. Helping Ethan figure out whatever it was he'd done was the first time he'd actually played around with it, stretching both himself and Ethan's capabilities in ways he hadn't known was possible, and it was… nice.

Funny word for it, that.

The days passed. Gheraa eventually came to admit that this experimentation with Firmament was some of the most fun he'd ever had with his skills. And this was in spite of the fact that he was weaker than he could ever remember being—all their experimentation had shown that he was at most equivalent to a fourth-layer practitioner. Presumably either his death or the form of resurrection had struck a blow of sorts to the foundation of his power.

There were times, though, where he felt his core tremble in a way he wasn't used to. He tried to tell himself it was nothing. Just another side effect of the way he'd been brought back.

Yet he didn't miss the fact that it happened not when he experimented with Firmament, but when he spent time with Ethan. Sometimes, though more rarely, it happened when he spoke with one of the others. He had no idea what it was or any way to find out, so he did what he could not to dwell on it.

Intead, he found himself going back to that question Ethan had asked him.

What do you want out of all this?

He didn't know. Not yet.

But he did realize at least one thing: he wanted to find out.