Atonement
by BridgitKiido
Disclaimer: Code Lyoko? Not mine. It belongs to a really creative French person.
He wanted to curl up in a dark hole somewhere in the middle of the swamp somewhere, to live or die as nature would see fit.
After all, how much worse could that be than living through this agony? None of his friends blamed him out-front for what had happened, but he was certain that all of them were still a little wary of him, even after a week had passed.
Who could blame them? He had attacked them with electricity, for crying all night.
No, he hadn't done that; he had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't the one who had done it. It was XANA who had done it.
And XANA had just happened to have been using his body.
He slammed his head against his desk for the fifth time that night. His intention was to attempt to drown his sorrows in physical pain, although that was not actually helping much, if at all. How could he have been caught off guard like that? How could he not have at least put up a fight, breaking through even for a second to warn everyone of what was happening?
Of course, it probably would have helped had he been conscious at the time.
But that brought in new issues in and of itself. He hadn't been conscious at the time. He could not remember a single event that happened during that time. Other people might think that a good thing; after all, who would want to live with watching yourself doing something horrible and not being able to do a single thing about it?
But this was worse. He had no clue what he… no, XANA had done. What if his friends were hiding something from him? What if he had done something truly horrible, and Aelita…
Aelita…
He collapsed onto his desk in tears, hardly caring that he had landed right on top of his keyboard, which was now typing a single straight line of "p"s across the screen. What if he… that is, XANA… he had done something truly unspeakable to her?
And he had been unable to do a single thing to stop it. Heck, he wasn't even aware of what happened until being informed after the fact. He was useless…
But then again, that was just letting XANA win, and then everything would have been for naught.
Jeremie Belpois sat up, wiped away his tears, straightened his glasses, and began to erase the string of "p"s that now covered his computer.
He would discover Aelita's anti-virus, and he would do so as soon as he possibly could.
Until he found it and freed her from XANA's grasp, he could never forgive himself for what he had been forced to do. Feeling sorry for himself would accomplish nothing.
He would atone.
Author's Note: I've been playing with this idea for a while, but I only just decided to write it down. And that's really all I have to say.