"No. No no no, you-you're lying to me!" But the evidence of it being true showed clear. His form glitched and shook like one of those spectres would.
She wasn't sure if the tears running down her face came from the pain of knowing that she had lost him, or feeling that she was losing him right now, at this moment.
"I'm sorry, Aelita," The thing that held Jeremie's appearance said once again. His expression was as somber as hers, except there were no tears to make it a perfect match.
"How long?," She tried to sound demanding, but her words were as weak as she felt. She was barely able to choke them out above a whisper.
"Three months."
Three months. Jeremie had been dead for three months, and she hadn't known, hadn't realized it at all. She'd been completely fooled by this…thing. This computer program. And she hated herself for that. She hated Jeremie for that. She tried to form words, but found that she couldn't.
This was hard to take in. Hard to really fathom.
Jeremie had been dead for three months.
The Jeremie she'd been around was just one of his own spectres, created so the rest of them wouldn't know he was gone.
Aelita was perfectly capable of taking his post if he were to die. And she could still call on Laura for assistance if she needed it. Even knowing that, Jeremie still did this.
They couldn't always win. They wouldn't always win. This was something that they had to expect. There had been so many close calls in the past. But if one of them were to actually die, XANA could use the loss of their friend against them in some way. He could use that to pick out an edge.
Jeremie always had a feeling that if one of them was to die, it would be him. He would protect his friends with everything he had, but while he was doing that, he knew that nothing could protect him. So he made this thing. A spectre clone of himself that needed no active tower on Lyoko to move about in the real world.
What it did need though, was for the supercomputer to remain on. And now that they'd shut it off, it couldn't remain stable in this world much longer.
Aelita couldn't stand watching it stare at her, glitching with that sad smile on it's face. It was Jeremie, but it wasn't. And she didn't know what to think. She didn't know what to say. She wanted to yell at it, to verbally lash out at the spectre for this. But in a couple of minutes it would be gone. And the real Jeremie was dead. Doing that wouldn't do her any good.
All she did was stand there, her fists shaking at her sides as her sadness and frustration dripped down her face.
"All he wanted, above all else, was for you to come out of this okay, Aelita. Th-" A green glow enveloped the spectre as it began speaking. Whatever it was going to say would go unsaid. "You really changed his life, and he loved you more than anything."
In a green flash of light, the spectre Jeremie was gone. And Aelita was left alone in the lab. The place where the spectre had insisted to be alone with her. The place where she finally found out the crushing truth about Jeremie. The place where she would stay, sobbing against the command chair, for a very long time.