Chương 68: 67. Even I Can Tell There's Something Wrong With Me

"I am mad," Pink summarizes succinctly, "because you don't trust me." I blink, tendrils on my head squirming. That… of all the things, I never expected that.

"But… I do trust you?" I point out.

"I trust you a lot."

"It's kind of sad that you think that's true," Pink says. I… okay. No. We're not having the conversation this way.

"I get that you're mad at me," I say, "but if we're doing this, we need to do it without snide comments. You also talked to a fake me, so assuming I understand Joy is Reality's power correctly, that means you actively want to have this talk. Let's do it right, okay? Mutual respect." She scowls, but nods as she lets out a sigh.

"Okay. Fair enough," she concedes.

"Let me clarify, then. I think it's pretty clear from the way you act that you don't trust people, because you insist on doing almost everything yourself. You act like you think everyone else will fuck everything up if you let them do anything."

"I… I literally just left you to watch Ana alone just now," I point out.

"Julietta, that's not trusting me to handle Ana. That's not trusting Ana to handle herself, when she obviously can, and it's only because she can obviously handle herself that you trust anyone else to take care of her in the first place! If she was actually needy, you'd be sticking to her like glue." I… well, I mean, of course I would. Why would I not be helping someone who needs help?

"I trust you to handle your body," I say.

"That's a pretty big job." She gives me the most unimpressed look I've ever seen.

"Firstly, 'trusting me to handle my body' is never a phrase that should be considered an exception or counterexample."

"I didn't mean it like—!"

"Secondly, the only reason you trust me to handle myself is because you were forced to either trust me enough to handle myself, or trust me enough to let me go with you, and you never let anyone do the latter."

"I… what?" I ask.

"We're literally all traveling together right now!"

"That's not what I mean!" Pink snaps.

"You're not 'letting us go with you.' You're bringing us with you so you can protect us. Keep an eye on us. In your head, this is all your mission. Your responsibility. Something you have to do and make sure goes well. You don't think of it as a team thing at all. We're not your partners, we're your… your charges." Oh. I… well that's…

"Should I… not be taking responsibility for everyone's safety?" I ask.

"It's more than that, Julietta," Pink insists.

"Back when we were going after those supervillains, your orders were to have everyone else stay outside and let you handle everything yourself."

"I needed you all to keep a perimeter to prevent the target from escaping," I insist.

"When we fought at St. Louis, your response to your team falling under an Angel attack was to fly off and fight it entirely by yourself," Pink continues.

"It was tearing us apart," I tell her.

"But I was durable enough to take it. It was a sound tactical decision."

"You waited ages to actually tell the military you could talk to aliens."

"Okay, not trusting you and not trusting the military are two totally different things," I insist.

"And then you flew into an incursion scar, entirely by yourself, without consulting anyone about it first," Pink refuses to stop.

"I… I don't think I could have brought anyone if I wanted to," I say.

"And there wasn't any time for consultation!"

"And then, when we got completely fucked up as a direct result of it, you didn't even bring any of us with you to fix it."

"I… I needed you where you were," I say.

"I couldn't be in both places at once."

"But I can, Julietta!" Pink snaps.

"You can't talk to aliens, though!" I remind her.

"What were you going to even do? Float around in the depths of the ocean with nothing to do but wait around while my Queen repeatedly dissolved me for a month? You would have been miserable!"

"We were miserable anyway!" Pink snaps.

"Because you were off doing god knows what, by yourself, again! And when you come back, it's with a goddamn Angel transformed to look like our freaky lesbian lovechild hanging off your arm and trying to get you to have sex with her!? Like holy fucking shit, Julietta, do you seriously not think having just one of us there with you could have prevented everything from going quite that insane!?"

"You… you don't think I cheated on you, do you?" I ask, furrowing my eyebrows.

"Oh my fucking… no, I don't think you cheated on me!" Pink groans.

"That would at least make sense, but I know you, and I know how goddamn hard I had to push you just to help you realize that it's not some kind of comprehensive moral failing to think your own girlfriend is attractive. And as arrogant as you are, I don't think you're narcissistic enough to be more attracted to someone whose face is also half of yours. Or… half of the face you usually wear, or whatever."

"You… think I'm arrogant?" I frown.

"Julietta, do you or do you not believe that you are always right?" Pink asks.

"Of course I'm not always right," I answer immediately.

"But I am certainly right most of the time."

"Oh yeah, that doesn't sound arrogant at all. What was I thinking?" Pink says, rolling her eyes.

"It's not arrogance if it's true!" I insist.

"And I know that sounds arrogant to say, but unless I am missing something big, I feel like I have been pretty fucking successful, overall! Luring away the Angel from my squad in St. Louis worked. Posting all of you outside the aquarium so I could corner the target without needing to worry about escape worked. And as another recent example, having you all run out of the Queen of Legion's territory and leave me behind to face Danielle also worked.

The simple fact of the matter is that I've been blessed with an extremely powerful and versatile ability that lets me accomplish things most people can't. Taking advantage of that isn't arrogance, it's minimizing potential harm to people who stand to lose a lot more than I'm capable of losing! If I get stabbed through the head, I don't die! Everyone else does! Placing myself in the most danger is just optimal."

"Okay but it fucking sucks!" Pink says.

"You get that, right? How would you feel if I was constantly running off alone to handle dangerous problems by myself without letting you help?"

"I… well, I would probably be terrified, but like I said our situations are very different. It's not any indictment towards you, it's literally just the consequences of circumstances outside our control that make me more suited for danger."

"But how am I supposed to be your partner if you're always treating me like I'm so much less than you are!?" Pink practically shouts at me.

"It's not even just the fighting thing! Every other thing with you is some huge, horrifying revelation that barely makes sense to the rest of us, yet you treat like it's no big deal! You aren't just handling dangerous situations this way, Julietta. You don't even consult other people about all the crazy things you learn, you just keep it to yourself and make decisions on your own and leave the rest of us to flail around with whatever scraps you share after the fact.

A partner is supposed to be more than just someone you hug and kiss and care about. I'm supposed to be a confidant. I'm supposed to be someone who can help you just as much as you help me. But not only do you never ask for help, you keep running off on your own the moment anyone could potentially offer any. I feel… useless. Like our entire relationship isn't because you need me, but because it's just something else you can do to make other people happy." Oh. I… Is it just something I'm doing to make her happy?

The question stops me short, because I realize I don't know the answer. I genuinely do not know the answer. I absolutely find Maria attractive, but she's right. There's more to being someone's girlfriend than just that. This is the same problem as everything else, isn't it? The same set of shit Blossom has been trying to push me to leave behind. I don't ask other people for help if I think I have any hope of doing everything by myself.

"I… I didn't want to bother you," I admit.

"To burden you with my problems. I thought if I could handle something myself, then I should. I mean, who wants to deal with other people's problems?"

"Me!" Pink insists.

"Not everyone's problems, but I care about yours! And I really think at this point you're just… so inside your own head, so focused on doing everything yourself, that you're totally missing how much you're cutting all of us out of everything. We don't want to just follow you, Julietta. We want to stand with you. You shoulder so many of our burdens that it's only right we return the favor."

"Well, I… I mean I don't really mind doing all this stuff for you guys," I say.

"You don't have to return any favors or anything, that's… I mean, I'm used to doing this sort of thing."

"If you don't mind it, why do you think we would?" Pink says, reaching over and poking my cheek.

"Like, seriously. You're smart and strong; I won't deny that. But you have a huge blindspot when it comes to this stuff."

"…Blossom keeps saying the same thing," I admit with a sigh.

"She's been bugging me to open up more since the day we met."

"Oh," Pink says.

"Well, good, I guess. She's right."

"You don't like her," I conclude.

"I don't know her," Pink corrects.

"I just know she's a weird alien that cracks a lot of jokes and has killed a lot of people."

"Most of those people were other aliens," I assure her.

"Aren't you the one always saying that we should care about alien lives just as much as human ones?" Pink asks.

"…Yeah," I confirm.

"Yeah, I am. But the aliens have a really weird relationship with war. They're all zealots, so it's usually like, religious war? And none of them have an innate fear of death, so they just… aren't as horrified by the concept of attempted genocide as we are."

"That's kind of terrifying," Pink says.

"I know!" I agree.

"I told them as much. Blossom gets it, but she also doesn't get it. There will always be that culture gap, even if she's by far the most human-thinking alien I've ever met."

"Oh yeah?" Pink asks.

"Why's that, do you think?"

"Well…" I start, realizing I don't quite have an answer. Because she understands what it's like to live in an oppressive society? Because it's easier for her to understand how people communicate without borderline telepathy? Because she comprehends why someone wouldn't want to share information freely?

"Because she's… traumatized?" I conclude lamely.

"You find this particular Angel much easier to talk to and relate to… because she's traumatized," Pink repeats.

"Well, by alien standards, anyway," I clarify.

"She's had experiences that most people in her culture haven't, and they're more analogous to human experiences than usual for her kind."

"Uh-huh," she says, sounding entirely unconvinced.

"So… I've heard from Peter that you were passed around a bunch of different foster homes as a child? What was that like?"

"That's… are we going to pretend you're asking because you're interested in learning more about me and not because you're trying to make a point about me being abused as a kid?" I sigh.

"So you're self-aware about that much, at least?" Pink smirks.

"I probably have PTSD, too," I say.

"From various things, really."

"And you're still convinced that you don't need to consult with other people because you're right most of the time by default?" Pink presses.

"That is not what I said!" I insist.

"Even if that were true, it's what you do," Pink counters, poking me again.

"Talk to us more. Share what's on your mind. Let us help, Julietta. You need to believe that my thoughts are just as valuable and potentially insightful as yours, or else what's the point? Do you really want to be in a relationship with someone you think is so much less capable than you are?" I… it's not a matter of capability. It's a matter of tangible results. Capability is a hypothetical. An estimation of what someone could do, if they applied themselves. Everyone is 'capable.' Everyone has to be capable.

It's not okay to not be capable, no matter who you are or what problems you have. And so you have to provide results, as it's the only way to prove you can.

"Then quit telling me I'm wrong and show me," I say.

"Excuse me?" Pink scowls.

"Pink, I think you're probably right about most of this. I have been trying my level best to be more self-aware about my faults recently, and… yeah. You have a point. But at the same time, everything I've done has been because I thought it was the right thing to do. Because I thought it was the best option available to me. Because I wanted to make sure everyone was as safe as possible. And despite whatever flaws were in that decision-making process, I can't say I regret any of the results. We're here. We're safe.

We're on track to solving the biggest issue we've run into so far. I absolutely care about your concerns here, but I care about your safety more."

"You'd better not be saying what I think you're saying," Pink glowers.

"I'm not," I assure her.

"I'm just saying that some of this is going to have to come from you. I'm… very stubborn, Pink. I'm probably going to try to leave you behind again. I can't slow down, not with so much at stake. So when I need the most help, it's not going to be in a situation where I'm waiting to consult with you and work out a plan alongside everyone. It's going to be in a situation where I'm doing it all again, and pushing all of you away, and you'll just have to catch up with me anyway." Pink stares at me.

Then, she gives me a slow nod.

"Alright," she says.

"I can't say I'm happy about that, because it sounds a little too much like 'I will not be getting better at this,' but… it's not like I don't get it. Change is hard. If what you need help with is not being able to accept help, I guess that's what I'll have to do."

"Yeah, it's… going to be hard," I wince.

"Sorry. Blossom only got through to me by literally beating the stupid out of me. I'm probably going to keep trying to do everything myself because… I just don't know how to do things any other way. I don't know how to be helped. No one ever… I mean I've never…" I gesture helplessly, far too embarrassed to finish the thought. No one has ever tried to help me before. What a stupid thing to say. It's probably not even true, it's just begging for pity.

A manipulation tactic, to take someone who's rightfully mad at you and make them feel bad instead. But at the same time, I'm not sure what else to say.

"I'm going to be bad at it," I summarize lamely, "so you'll probably need to be pushy. I'm sorry." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Pink stares at me, her wings twitching behind her a few times before she gives me a nod.

"Pushy, huh?" she says, mostly to herself.

"I can do pushy."

"Sorry," I say again. Ugh, I need to stop. No one likes it when people say sorry too much. At a certain point, it stops being polite and just starts being annoying.

"The Queen's power here makes the things we want into reality," Pink says.

"So why was the thing you wanted a version of me that wouldn't forgive you?" Ack. Uh. Okay.

"…I think it's more that I wouldn't have believed the illusion if it had forgiven me," I admit.

"It wouldn't have made me happy, it would have made me suspicious."

"My creepy Julietta simulacrum made me plenty suspicious," Pink points out.

"You're not getting out of this that easy."

"Ugh," I groan.

"Fine, okay. Given I apparently have a problem with doing everything myself, the obvious extension of that is that I believe everything bad that happens is definitionally my fault, because I was the one who should have prevented it. So either I'm so desperate for this delusion to be true that I need outside reinforcement to reduce my cognitive dissonance, or I'm so overwhelmingly guilty about what happened that it was a relief to hear someone outright blame me for it rather than just nudge the issue around.

I'd like to believe it's the latter, but considering the former is based on my own personal delusions, I can never be truly qualified to confirm or deny it. So up to you, I guess!"

"Wow," Pink blinks.

"You, uh… really had a dressing-down for yourself ready, huh?"

"I didn't need to have one ready," I say.

"This is just how I think about other people all the time. It's only fair that I turn it against myself once in a while."

"You really are a piece of work," Pink says, scooting over and putting an arm around my shoulder.

"Somehow I still like you anyway, though." Oh. Well. That's good. Honestly, I was starting to get worried I fucked it all up.

"Despite my powers, I don't know how to be anyone other than me," I say lamely.

"All I can do is my best."

"Yeah," Pink agrees.

"And like, don't get me wrong, I'm really annoyed with you for leaving me in alien apocalypse hell for a month, but even if it's annoying how you do it by yourself, the fact that you can is a pretty attractive quality. I don't want it to go to your head, but you're right. You haven't let us down, Julietta. I'm grateful for that." She leans her head against my shoulder, which… okay, I guess we're in the post-argument makeup phase. That's neat. Um… shit, I should say something… girlfriendy.

"The sundress looks really nice on you," I try.

"Thank you!" Pink smiles. Oh thank god.

"It was a little creepy to suddenly have a full outfit on without warning, but it's startlingly comfy. It's just so silky! And like, vaguely cool to the touch? Because magic clothes exist now, I guess."

"I can't make them self-cooling, but I could probably weave really basic clothes out of silk," I realize.

"I… am not any kind of seamstress or whatever, I have no idea how to form silk into the shape of real clothes, but I could make you all tube tops and skirts and stuff." She snorts.

"Now you offer? I dunno, I might take you up on it sometime, and I definitely would have a month ago, but it doesn't feel like a priority anymore. If I really don't want people looking, I can just turn the brightness up, but the others and I have been living in a de facto nudist colony for a whole month now and I just… eh. I'm used to it."

"I'm… kind of surprised none of you scavenged for stuff you could have used to cover up," I admit.

"We tried, trust me," Pink sighs.

"We even found some full-sized clothes and tried to dress big-freaky-alien us, but she just tore it all to shreds. Our physical bodies are too tough to get hurt by her claws, but she got pretty rough with us, too. Blue scavenged a lot for the first week or so, but we eventually just got tired of having to constantly get new scraps of cloth to wear like cavewomen. And like, what was the point? Everyone there was either us or… you know. Weird monsters we couldn't talk to and don't know what boobs are anyway."

"Well yeah, but… you clearly wanted a dress," I say, motioning at her.

"I do enjoy looking pretty," Pink agrees with a sigh.

"But honestly? I mostly wanna wear a dress in my full-sized body. And take you on a date in it, ideally."

"Oh," I say.

"Honestly, I kind of thought you'd still be too mad at me for that."

"Maybe if our talk had gone differently," Pink shrugs.

"But you're as annoyingly mature as always. Or, well… you're as effective of a problem solver as always, anyway."

"Somehow I feel like you're saying that as if it's a bad thing," I frown.

"I love you," Pink says.

"I really do. My frustration isn't going to go away just like that, though. I'm gonna need to spend some significant quality time with you to refresh my 'Julietta is awesome' batteries."

"I see. Well, my 'Maria is awesome' batteries are pretty full, but they could always be fuller," I do my best to joke.

"I… hope we have time. We are going to have very high priority arrest warrants, I think."

"Yeah," Maria sighs.

"I know. I can't even be mad about it. I literally got turned into an alien, what else can I expect? Though on the subject, Infrared popped out a bit earlier to say hi. She's surprisingly chill, which is nice, but the thought that I'm going to share a mind with her someday is… a little spooky."

"Well, you don't have to," I point out.

"It's pretty clear at this point that your power is never going to make you recombine."

"Yeah, but I want to, I think," Pink says.

"I'm me, and I like being me, but I also liked being us. I miss it. The others think about things so similarly to me, yet also so differently. We're entire people by ourselves, but we're also fragments of something even more complete. It's hard to describe, but ultimately I like being Maria just as much if not more than I like being Pink."

"I see," I say.

"That's… honestly really nice to hear. I'm glad."

"Really?" Pink asks, raising her head and giving me a somewhat insecure look.

"It's not weird?"

"We first met because you were so scared of yourself and your powers that you felt the need to seek out someone who also had blessings that were messing with their head and form an impromptu support group," I remind her.

"To be honest, I had no idea how to handle the situation at all, so I did what I always do when it comes to serious discussions on the nature of self and fell back on nihilism. Fundamentally, I don't believe there's a 'correct' way for a person to be. You can't change what you are, so what mattered to me was that you could be happy with it.

'Weird' was never part of it."

"…Thank you, Julietta," Pink beams at me.

"That really means a lot to me."

"Of course," I say.

"Though on the topic, I do feel the need to admit I'm not a hundred percent clear on what you being one person and also lots of people at the same time means, vis-à-vis our relationship. Because like… I mean, each of you do make your own individual decisions on this, and while it previously wasn't an issue because you were combined most of the time, now you're all… apart most of the time. And I get the impression that's likely to diverge your opinions more than they were before."

"That's… true," Pink concedes.

"I think overall we are in agreement about you, though. Even Infrared remembers you a bit, and she obviously likes you."

"Right, but I mean… am I dating one person? Am I dating around a dozen people simultaneously? Or am I dating like, some divine-Trinity superposition of multiple people and one person at the same time?"

"Ooh, the last one, definitely that last one, that sounds awesome," Pink answers immediately.

"That… doesn't seem like the well-considered answer I was hoping for," I say.

"What, is the nihilist going to tell me that I can't determine my self-perception based on whatever has the coolest description?" Pink asks.

"Well… no, obviously you can, I just… okay, a different question. Are any of you dating each other?"

"…Huh?" Pink asks, a bit caught off-guard.

"Think about it," I say.

"If I'm dating you and Blue and Yellow and everyone else all individually, and each of you is only dating me, that creates an extremely different dynamic depending on which end of the superposition we're currently observing. If you're all one person, hey, whatever. We're each dating one person. If you're all different people, I'm splitting my time between potentially a dozen individuals, and you aren't. That isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but it's something that should be addressed, right?"

"Well, I mean, it doesn't really matter," Pink says.

"Once we can finally recombine, anything I do with you will be remembered by the others, and vice-versa. We're all still Maria."

"What if one of you doesn't want to be?" I ask.

"What if yellow decides to never recombine? Or Orange, for that matter. You haven't seen her in weeks. What if she comes back? Am I still dating her? What if she decides she doesn't want to date me, but also that she does want to recombine? We can't be making these decisions under the assumption that all of you will be in agreement all the time. You know that's not how you work."

For that matter, we should probably be having this conversation with everyone, but waiting until after the entire Maria Crisis is over to have the full version of the talk is probably wise.

"I… don't know," Pink admits.

"Ugh, I don't know! Why do you always have to make things so complicated?"

"I'm not making anything more complicated," I insist.

"I'm just making you think about the complicated things that were going to be there regardless."

"What does any of this have to do with us dating each other anyway!?" Pink groans.

"Why did you bring that up?"

"I don't know. Because you're a bunch of lesbians who didn't try very hard to wear clothes while living with each other for a month?"

"We all have the same body!" Pink insists, the glow on her face getting a bit brighter.

"It's not weird to look in a mirror."

"Look, I'll be the first to admit I don't understand this relationship stuff," I say.

"But it's been my impression my whole life that hardly anyone understands relationship stuff, they just flail around like idiots and act like they understand it or don't understand it according to their general confidence level. So I'll just say that if any of you are interested in each other, I am apparently dating all of you anyway, so I certainly don't have any reason to complain."

"Julietta, stop!" Pink groans.

"We're basically sisters!"

"Well one, you very much aren't, you have an entirely unique dynamic that comes from sharing an actual singular living brain, and that really isn't comparable to familial relationships at all," I say.

"And two, incest is mostly morally wrong because any offspring resulting from it are dramatically more likely to have genetic disorders that harm or in some cases outright ruin their future lives, and that's a really fucked up thing to skew the odds on when making an entire human being.

That and familial power dynamics can be very, very unbalanced in terrible ways, but again, your relationships with each other are only comparable to family in the way that you're all very close to each other and know basically everything about each other, and that's just the colloquial use of family. Like two best friends who insist they're 'like sisters.'"" Why are you pressing this date-myself agenda so hard," Pink groans.

"I'm not trying to press anything," I say.

"I just like to explain my thoughts completely. What does it mean for you to be one person and multiple people? We have to figure that out together."

"Uugh, but I don't want to get all philosophical about this, I just want to celebrate the end of the argument by making out with you," Pink sighs.

"Oh," I say. I pause, trying to get my thoughts in order to formulate a response, but all of a sudden it's a lot more difficult.

"… We can do that, then," I give up. Pink grabs me and pulls me in, and… well, it's quite nice. I'm still not the most physical person in the world, but I'm slowly learning to lean into it. Though it's far from the main thing, one of the problems I have with physical pleasure actually comes from the knowledge that my powers make something like that pretty trivial. Chemical reactions determine the relative pleasantness of most sensations, and I can artificially induce chemicals into my bloodstream at will.

Frankly, it might be because I have such an aversion to physicality that I was granted these powers at all. Many people would use my abilities to fall into an addictive chemical haze, casting out their thoughts and becoming nothing but their feelings. Personally, I can't consider the thought of something like that as anything but repulsive. I guess it's no wonder that Blossom told me to just shut up and not say anything to the worshippers of Bliss.

Even more than Blasphemy and Perfection, perhaps even more than Failure, I think the god I have to disagree with more than any other is Bliss. It's fine in small doses, but as something to worship? To venerate as the good above all others? It's disgustingly self-obsessed. In fact, it's the thought that the god is probably watching our tender moment and approving of it that makes me finally back away from the kiss.

"Already?" Pink pouts.

"We should probably check up on the others," I say.

"Just in case any of them are being led astray by suspicious simulacrums." Speaking of, what happened to P(ink)-Zombie? Glancing down at where she faceplanted, I don't see anything at all anymore. I guess she either wandered off or, more likely, ceased to exist the moment no one on the island wanted her to anymore. That's… possibly even more terrifying than her existing in the first place.

"Always business with you," Pink sighs.

"Can you not even relax on the magic island of Bliss?"

"It's kind of because it's the magic island of Bliss, actually," I say.

"I'd be a lot more comfortable if we were somewhere that actually felt private."

"…Okay, that's fair," Pink concedes.

"Ugh, are we even going to get another chance, though?

"I mean, there's always the deep ocean," I remind her.

"Plenty of space to be alone once we get down there."

"You actually sound excited about that," she comments.

"You've always been a deep-sea creature at heart, haven't you?" She bumps me with her shoulder as I suppress a blush.

"I… hey," I manage.

"My little fish out of water," she presses the attack, pulling me in for another quick kiss that comes and goes before I can even think about objecting.

"Come on, then. We'll check on the others." She flits up into the air, and while I could fly beside her, I opt to hop off our perch and grow back to my usual size instead, creating myself a passably normal-looking dress of flesh to match her own as we wander off towards the direction I last saw Emily and Christine. We pass by Peter's hut on the way, where we find him lounging on a now-extravagant porch, a bowl of sour grapes and a bowl of salted nuts accompanying his infinitely-refilling glass of alcohol.

He raises said glass as we pass, taking another gulp shortly after. I resolve not to fix his hangover for him. At this point, he deserves it. We find another hut as we wander on, this one a lot smaller than Peter's, but much more modern, looking like it probably has electricity somehow. It's also entirely windowless. I step up on the porch and knock on the door.

"Don't come in!" Christine shrieks.

"Okay," I answer her simply and walk away, absolutely not wanting part of whatever she's involved in. She sounded more embarrassed than panicked, and she hasn't self-harmed in a long time, so… not my business! Emily isn't quite so easy to find. I'm pretty sure she's not involved in whatever Christine was up to, but there's no large, out-of-place building marking her location from a distance like with the last two. Eventually, rather than see her, we hear her.

"You can't be serious," Emily insists. She's talking to someone else, meaning we've probably encountered the situation I was explicitly worried about. Pink and I nod at each other, approaching the sound with the intent to help… but the next voice stops us in our tracks.

"Of course I'm serious. You slipped with me a lot more than you slipped with Jules. I knew what I was getting into, Emily." From my perspective, it's a voice I haven't heard in a very long time, even though it's one everyone else has been listening to every day since we reunited. A voice sounds different when it's coming from your own mouth, after all.

"You couldn't know I was going to kill you, Lia," Emily snaps.

"I didn't even know! I was planning to live with you forever!"

"Yeah, 'cuz you were a gold digger," Lia's voice laughs.

"You think I've never dealt with that before?"

"Is that…?" Pink asks, turning to stare at me, and I snap out of my stupor.

"Yeah," I confirm, starting to walk forward again. After a few steps, I pick up the pace.

"Yeah, it is."

"If you knew I just wanted your money, then why did you… why keep dating me? Why promise me everything you promised?" Emily asks desperately.

"I don't know," Lia answers. Or… not Lia. As much as it sounds like her, it's not her. Right?

"I guess because you felt so sorry about it."

"What?" Emily asks.

"That's it? I felt bad about using you, so it's just fine?" Lia laughs again.

"Everyone used me," she says.

"My parents, my friends. The fact that you were using me was never the issue. What made you different is that you were doing it out of desperation. You needed me, Emily. That was the closest I ever got to real love, I think."

"Emily!" I shout, finally making it to the crest of the fleshy hill she's sitting behind. And there they are. My sister, and my most-used body. Once, my most-hated person. And now, one of my most-remembered regrets. Lia Morgan. Sitting there, cross-legged on the ground, wearing the same outfit she died in.

"Hey Jules," she greets me, that same smarmy grin on her face that she always had.

"Emily, she's not real!" I blurt.

"No duh I'm not real," Lia rolls her eyes at me.

"We know that, idiot. …Though it's a bit weird, 'cuz I definitely feel real."

"This is surreal," Pink mutters beside me, but I'm mostly focused on Emily, who looks up at me with a sad smile.

"I figured it out immediately," Emily says.

"There's no reality where she survives more than a day. The moment we leave the Queen's domain, she's gone for good."

"Which is terrifying, but… less so the second time," Lia chimes in, her smirk briefly looking a bit brittle.

"Been dead a while, haha! Don't recommend the experience, honestly."

"…What I mean is that she's just the Queen's power making what you want to see," I elaborate.

"She's just responding the way you subconsciously want her to respond." The fake Lia and Emily glance at each other, then back to me.

"Yeah, I don't believe that for a second," Emily says.

"Sorry. This conversation has been way too crazy to just be my imagination."

"I'm… a little unclear on what exactly is going on," Lia says, wincing slightly.

"You… ah. You chatted with a copy of someone else here, right? There's no need for the power to make someone perfectly if they're already here. There's no need to create that which already exists. But I'm… dead, yeah? I'm gone. So there's a lot of meaning behind making me, as long as we know what to make. And as luck would have it… you brought a whole lot of me with you, didn't you Jules?"

"You're saying that the Queen's power is recreating you from the template I keep with my power?" I ask.

"Even if that's somehow possible, one, my template doesn't retain any of your personality or will, and two, the real Lia wouldn't have any way to know any of that!"

"Yeah, and I'm not real!" she snaps back.

"We fuckin' established that, quit… rubbing it in, Jesus. Even I can tell there's something wrong with me. I got all this shit in the back of my head pushing me to say or do this or that. I can feel what all of you want. So I know you want me gone, but… Emily doesn't, and I'm here for her. So like, fuck right off?"

"Yeah, I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine," Emily speaks up.

"I just… I need this, okay? We need this. Let us talk." I glance between the two of them, honest desperation in both their expressions. I… I can't say I like it considering how I'm still reeling from my own encounter with the fake Pink, but… this isn't my decision to make, is it? Emily knows. She's choosing with full knowledge of what's going on. There's nothing for me to object to.

"If you're gonna stick around and stare, you should at least sit down, Jules," Lia says.

"It's story time, and you're invited if you want."

"Don't call me Jules," I tell her, and she laughs.

"Or what?" she challenges.

"You'll kill me? Plant your ass down already." I bristle but do as she says, joining the two of them on the ground but giving them a bit of space. They were having a pretty personal moment, and honestly I'm not sure why I was invited to stay.

"Now, where was I?" Lia asks.

"Ah, right. So the thing is, my parents hated my ass." Oh. Well… fake or not, I suppose it's best to stay quiet and listen.