WARNING: This story contains spoilers….like, seriously, I basically spoil the majority of the plot in the first few sentences.
ALSO WARNING: Bad Language is bad, if you care about that.

Aiden Pearce was incredibly tired. After finally killing Damian and Lucky Quinn, after escaping the cops and letting Maurice live another day, he could finally rest.

But it wasn't that simple, not for Aiden. He was never the best sleeper. He was restless, awake, and aware of everything. Even then his body was heavy with fatigue, his mind and eyes darted with life and energy. He sits on the bed in one of his many hideouts, trying to relax. Yet his muscles were coiled, strained with paranoia.

"Even after solving everything, I still can't fucking sleep," Aiden finds himself muttering to the air, laying on the bed with little success of relaxing. He remembered Jordi joking once about growing lavender in his hideouts, the punch line being that Aiden wouldn't be able to keep crab grass alive, much less a flowering plant. Despite how depressingly true the statement was, Aiden took little offense to it, much to Jordi's disappointment.

The hacker shifts slightly, glancing at his phone. The clock read 1am, that being pretty early for him to attempt to rest. He often pulled all-nighters stopping street crimes or running from the cops as a result of stopping street crimes. He usually ended up sleeping half the day instead of at night, like normal people did.

Despite his nocturnal nature, Aiden wanted to sleep. He had been so neglectful of it that it felt like he forgot how. He closes his eyes, taking deep breaths and, with abnormal struggle, tried to clear his mind.

Yet it was a far greater task than Aiden was willing to endure. He sits up, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. With instinctive eyes he checks his phone: 1:05am. A sigh escapes the man as he lays on his back once again, scrolling through his phone with little interest.

He stops at the digital trips app, seeing a small, white notification in the corner. He raises an eyebrow, clicking the app and seeing a new trip now available. Something called Conspiracy.

Digital Trips were interesting little mind-fucks. Aiden had indulged in them before: apps that transmitted binaural frequencies through headphones to put the listener in a dream-like state. It created different simulations for pleasure and relaxation.

That's something Aiden needed.

"I don't care if I have to knock myself unconscious. I'm going to fucking sleep," Aiden speaks to himself once again, clicking the new trip, a message informing him to put in headphones or a Bluetooth device. He stretches and picks up a small, white earpiece from the table in front of him, plugging it in. A wave of lightheadedness washes over him, followed by a spike of pain, then darkness.

He woke in a darkened Chicago. The atmosphere was familiar to that of another trip: Alone. Yet, the artificial and all-consuming darkness was replaced with a foggy, twilight setting.

And a giant flying saucer blocking out the sun.

The hacker slowly stands, examining the spaceship with minimal alarm, "How do they come up with this shit?"

He stands, glancing at his clothes. Everything he wore was black, saving minor tints of blue. He seemed to have a different outfit in every trip, never what he was wearing when he activated it. Upon further investigation, he notices a strange, eye patch-like device on his right eye.

He doesn't attempt to take it off, already knowing what it did. The instructions had said something about destroying cyborgs. Something that Aiden caught onto quite quickly.

Equipped with nothing but a pistol, he finds his eye device is a scanner, revealing the cyborgs in the area and their weak points. Destroying them was as easy as hitting their weak points with a single bullet. The cyborgs tended to explode if they got close, though, prompting quick elimination before they are successful, lest Aiden is forced to do the wave again. One wave was giving him a lot of trouble, full of cyborgs with multiple points to hit.

"God damn kamikaze robots…" Aiden finds himself muttering, moving to the same area for the fifth time. He identifies all the cyborgs, killing the cowards and causing the other six to be alerted of his presence.

"No one must know about us," one bot drones, "destroy him…destroy him…"

"Take him to experiment…" another says from behind, Aiden shoots it quickly to prevent an explosion.

He grimaces, shooting the last one, "You can't have it both ways, you know, it's either dead or alive."

He heads through the remainder of the district, slipping his hands in his pockets, wondering if this counted as getting rest. The entire experience was just a simulation, and he supposed there were worse ways to relax. Then again, he was just doing exactly what he did on a regular basis. The trip was extremely exaggerated, but basically the same thing.

The hacker stops in a small park, noticing a distinct lack of people. The other waves were in a populated area, but not a soul resided here.

Not a soul except one.

Aiden sees a familiar man with his back turned to him, standing out in the open, playing on his phone. He paid no attention to him. The hacker's eyes narrow, activating the detection device. The single man was the target, but even upon switching the device off, no weak points were revealed.

With a scowl, Aiden removes the device, examining it in his hand. He was surprised it wasn't working, let alone being able to take it off in the first place.

"It's working fine," he hears himself say, but is confused by the words, as he isn't the one that spoke them.

He looks up to meet the speaker, becoming face to face with himself.

He jumps back, aiming his pistol at the double's head, ignoring the obviously strange feeling like he was shooting himself. Aiden knew it was just a simulation. But, whoever designed this feature needed to be shot.

His double raises his hands, seeming overly satisfied by the reaction he received. He was the spitting image of Aiden, the one visual difference being in the red tints in his clothes and the darkness in his eyes, "You're not going to shoot yourself, are you?"

The double's voice lacked any robotic tinge. It sounded exactly like the true Aiden, something that made him shift only slightly, "Nope, I'm shooting a simulation."

"Really? You sure about that?" The second Aiden speaks steadily, smirking.

Do I really look so evil when I smirk? Aiden thinks off handedly, keeping his pistol aimed, "Aren't you supposed to blow up or some shit?"

"I don't think so," he answers, holding out his hand, "Aiden Pearce. I'm a part of you."

The hacker looks from his double's hand to his face. He lowers his gun, "I think I've had enough of this, I'm waking up."

He reaches to take the ever-present earbud out, but his double takes two strides forward, snatching his wrist, "No. Not yet."

Aiden yanks his hand away, staring at him, "How did you do that?"

He steps back upon his twin's reaction: raising his hands again to assure he meant no harm, "You're my other half. I see that now. I've never seen you before….but I am real. We're the same," he says calmly, lowering his hands and staring back with the same dark eyes, "And you know me more than you think."

Aiden stares in silence, trying to understand the game this simulation was playing. But simulations were never able to touch him like his twin did. It all seemed like some kind of sick joke that Aiden was certainly not laughing at.

"You seem anxious now, I can't imagine why," The twin speaks again.

"No idea," Aiden spits sarcastically.

"Don't you understand? And I thought I was smart…I am you, you are me."

"You are not anything. You are a simulation, just a bunch of coding trying to mess with me," Aiden pulls out his phone, hoping to perhaps hack his way out of the trip. Maybe it was malfunctioning. He didn't really know why he could even use his phone unconscious, but he wasn't questioning it now.

"Would coding know about Clara?"

Aiden freezes, the mention of the name tearing at his whole being. He looks up, there is absolutely no way a simulation would know about Clara. Clara was dead. Gone.

"How about T-bone? Jordi? Damian…" The twin continues, slowly dropping his hands.

"Stop…" Aiden says, it wasn't what he wanted to say, but his mind was running in circles, this made no sense.

"…Or Lena?" His twin speaks, and Aiden sees something in the back of his eyes, pain; a heated anger. Something he felt, constantly. But now…now at the mention of his young niece his blood went cold.

"You can't know about them…you're—"

"A simulation, right?" The twin almost seemed offended by the statement now. He steps closer, "Would a simulation go through weeks and weeks of research, of pain-stacking, sleepless nights to find those responsible for her death? Would a simulation hunt them down and make them rightfully suffer? And make every God forsaken man or woman that—that dare step in my way meet a similar fate?"

Aiden wanted to protest, to say yes, that is what a simulation would do, someone that isn't human. But his answer was picked far before he could even think about it. This twin….it was him, it was who he had become. But, he couldn't accept that, he couldn't.

He shook his head, stepping back as his twin advances, "No…No I'm not you. I am different."

His twin laughed, a startlingly similar laugh, it was short ended with a scoff, "You cannot deny yourself. I protect this city, I am the only one that cares. The police, they don't matter. I killed them before. Like I killed the others, Damian, Iraq, Quinn. They are all dead by my hand. And I don't regret it, I don't regret anything. Because they got what they deserved."

"I didn't kill Maurice…" Aiden said, as if that said anything. Sparing Maurice only furthered his suffering. But that wasn't the point here. His twin was speaking as if he did everything Aiden did…but he was Aiden. At least, he spoke and stood and looked like Aiden.

His twin frowned, "I shouldn't have. He killed her. He shot the tire."

"He was a victim, he suffered enough—"

"I should have killed him!"

A deadly silence grew between the two of them. Aiden saw every fiber of his being over the past weeks in this man. That unrestrained passion for revenge, blind to the rest of the world. He knew what he thought, but he also knew what he should be thinking. He should be rejecting this part of him, pushing it away, breaking apart from the menace that he had become.

But that was just it. What he turned to…it saved him, it saved the most important people in his life. No matter how much Aiden dreaded the sight of the merciless man in front of him, he was a part of him. But someone he could control now.

Aiden looks back at his twin, "I didn't kill him, no. Does that piss you off?"

The twin seems stricken, "Are you challenging yourself?"

"Yes, I am. You may be me, but you are not all of me. Not anymore," Aiden looks back at his phone, beginning to connect to the system, "I'm waking up."

"No."

Aiden hears a gun shot, his phone flying from his hand and shattering on the ground, a bullet hole pierced right through it. He turns to his twin, who pointed his pistol right at him. The darkness in his eyes more intense, the kind of look Aiden was sure was faced by many that he had killed.

He didn't realize how terrifying he looked.

"You're not waking up, you are my weakness."

"Same could be said about you," Aiden pulls out his pistol again and steps away from his shattered phone, his twin mimicking his movement. They walked a circle, neither one dropping their aim.

"I'll kill you…I'll kill you and then everything will be right. I can't be tortured anymore. Don't you understand? You are making me weak, you'll get me fucking destroyed!" The twin hissed, the grip on his pistol tight.

"Because I have feelings, right?" Aiden couldn't help but remember what Jordi told him, about separating your morals from money and business. It made him wonder if the man ever had this kind of conversation with himself, though it was obvious who won in the end.

"Yes, at least you understand that much…"

"You know you can't have it both ways, right?" Aiden says suddenly,

"What are you talking about?"

"It's either dead or alive. It's either having purpose or no purpose at all. If I die, all you have is hate, you'll be like every other fucking soulless piece of shit that you've killed."

"That's not true, I'll remember. I told you I remember!" His twin was angry. Of course he was, he was Aiden, and if Aiden knew anyone, it was himself.

"I'm what keeps you sane," Aiden said, knowing he had the upper hand now, "I'm what keeps you human."

His twin's eyes flare up, "You're nothing!"

Aiden feels the bullet hit his shoulder, dropping his own gun. Surprising, he couldn't feel any pain, as if it never happened. He grabs his shoulder, blood seeping through his coat despite this. His twin steps forward, shoving him down, pointing the pistol back at his head.

Aiden looks up, straight at his twin, "Go ahead, do it. You won't feel a thing. You won't regret it."

The twin growls, readjusting his grip, "I'll kill you, everything will be alright."

The way he said it. He actually believed it. Aiden knew he has said that to himself before. Kill Damian, kill Lucky, kill Maurice, and everything will be alright. It was a stupid way of thinking, everyone knew that. But it was the truth.

"Keep telling yourself that, but I'm the one that decides your fate." Aiden says.

The twin watches him, as if he expected a different response. With blazing eyes and a hollow face, he pulls the trigger.

Aiden eyes fly open, sitting up from the boxcar floor, gasping like had just been in a marathon. The sleeping bag that had been on his bed was tangled and snake around his leg, his jacket pulled off and in the corner and his hat lay beside him.

"What the fuck….?" Aiden moans, slowly pulling himself up. His phone sat charging next to his computer, the earpiece for the digital trips nearby, in its usual place.

Aiden had never put it in.

The hacker picks up his hat, placing it back on his head. He heard the sound of traffic beyond the walls of the boxcar. He takes his phone, reading the clock: 12:45pm. He didn't just sleep, he over slept.

With a growing confusion he goes through his apps, seeing the new digital trip frozen on the instructions.

The night's events suddenly came back to the man. He had seen the app before, he'd read the instructions on the way to his hideout, but he didn't play it, only watched a small video presentation showing what happened in the little game.

Aiden leans against the counter, gripping its edge, "I was dreaming…?"

Instinctively he touches his shoulder, which was completely normal. His phone was fine. He couldn't say that much about his head, however, which was pounding as if…well it had been shot.

"I was fucking dreaming…" Aiden speaks again, feeling the need to keep telling himself. It was the most realistic one he had ever experienced, like the nightmare of the night Lena died, it tore at his thoughts and feeling. It felt so real.

With dazed movement he changes his clothes, throwing on a particularly dark jacket, grabbing his phone and stepping out into the blinding sunlight. He keeps his gaze down as he moved toward the coffee shop. On his way he contemplated the bizarre experience facing the darker side of himself. He could admit that he had thought about it before, but never like this. When he saw himself, he couldn't see anything but malice and intimidation.

Is that really all he's become?

Uncertain, he enters the coffee shop. A young man works behind the counter, Aiden saw his hair was purple under his work cap. The young man looked at him briefly, smiling, "What's your liking, mate?"

Aiden orders absentmindedly, his thoughts still captured by his dream. The young man creates his coffee with efficiency.

The hacker didn't hear the kid say any price, but in his stupor he realized he didn't bring any money with him. He swears under his breath, but when he looks back the young man, he is putting some bills in the register, looking back at him with a smile.

"It's alright, mate, I've got it."

"You don't have to do that, I've heard they don't pay you well here."

"I have other kinds of work, mate, it's the least I can do," He said and smiles at Aiden's confused expression. The young man leans against the counter, speaking quietly, "Listen, my girl comes home the other day and says she got attacked. But the vigilante stopped the guy."

Aiden stares, and the young man chuckles, "It's alright, I'd be confused too, mate," he pushes the coffee to him, "The news always focuses on the bad shit in this town. You're not as bad as they say you are. Personally, I think you're a damn blessing in this place."

With nothing else to say he goes to organizing pastries in the display case. Aiden slowly takes the coffee, walking out and down the street. He passes by some stores, his reflection pacing with him. Aiden stops, looking at the window, his reversed eyes watching him.

"I think I'm going crazy," He speaks to the window, "Really fucking crazy."

He sips his coffee, it was strangely good, perhaps because it was free, or maybe it was what the young man said.

His phone vibrates in his pocket. Aiden looks at it, a group of gang members were hiding out in a parking garage in the area.

Aiden sticks the phone back in his coat, "Sounds like a good time," He says, turning the corner and walking among the crowd, sipping his coffee, a new wave of alertness fueling his struggle.

I thought of this after finishing Watch_Dogs. Even though I didn't think Ubisoft did a good job with Aiden's character, I saw what they were trying to do. A least I think I did. The last few comments Aiden had at the end about the choices he made inspired this little one-shot. Maybe this is not everyone's interpretation of him, but honestly, this is the closest I can think, as in the actual game he's a walking contradiction.

With the personality of an unsalted cracker. :P

Eh, for some strange reason I can't help but like the paranoid little bastard. Maybe he just needs a hug.

Anyways, I'd be happy to write more one-shots if you guys like this one. I'll even take requests.

Ta-ta :D