Deep inside the layered realities of the simulation called the Infinite Forest, a battle was raging for all of space and time. One old Warlock named Osiris and a Guardian hunter named Madrid faced off against an ancient, powerful Vex called Panoptes, the Infinite Mind.

Of the two Guardians, Osiris was the most vulnerable. His ghost, Sagira, had been subsumed into Panoptes. With every spell he cast, and with every Light-powered bullet Madrid unloaded into the monster, the more Osiris's dread grew. Whether they won or lost, he wasn't certain if retrieving her was possible. Even now, their linked spirits tugged at each other, Panoptes constantly trying to sever them.

Madrid stunned Panoptes with an arc bolt, then summoned the Light to create a golden gun. He fired into the robot's eye with bullets of pure Light, punching through Panoptes's brain.

The realities around them buckled and folded together as a million paths through time collapsed. Osiris held open this tiny fragment of reality, keeping himself and his companion from being erased from all of time.

Panoptes fell in slow motion, the arms flailing, the centipede body coiling in on itself. It dragged the timelines with it, tearing the Infinite Forest in half, the branching pathways going dark. By the time the monster hit the stone, reality had stabilized - and the pathways leading to the Vex's future triumph was lost.

Madrid was kneeling behind a stone block on their floating platform, rifle still trained on the robot. Not until Osiris exhaled and descended to the ground did Madrid relax.

"And give me back my ghost!" Osiris snarled, stalking toward the fallen robot. Its white lifeblood splattered the pavement around it, and the red eye was shattered and dark. Still, he didn't trust it not to take a final swipe at him. The Vex were notorious for cheating via time travel.

Osiris tried to simply summon Sagira out of the Vex, although he knew it wouldn't work. It didn't. Sagira's consciousness strained toward his, but she was locked inside the monster's fading mind. As it slipped away, it was taking her with it.

"No, you don't." Osiris raised both hands and began a working to separate her spark from the Vex's.

Madrid walked up, keeping his rifle trained on Panoptes. "Rose, help him."

Madrid's ghost phased into sight. She wore a red orchid shell and made an amusing contrast to her unsmiling Awoken Guardian. She flew to Osiris and scanned Panoptes's corpse. "Oh, she's phased and being extinguished. This will be hard."

"Her spark is weakening," Osiris said. "Concentrate your full power on it. Imagine you're resurrecting your Guardian."

"Yes sir," Rose said timidly.

The little robot and the warlock focused their powers on drawing Sagira out of Panoptes. Madrid stood nearby, watchful.

Osiris's dread grew. Throughout the course of his long life, Sagira had been the single constant. She had stayed his steadfast companion even when his studies of the Light and Darkness had driven him over the edge, and he stormed around his house, scribbling equations on the walls and shouting nonsense. When he accused the Traveler of destroying humanity's civilization and forcing them into a government of tyranny, Sagira hadn't argued, although she let him know that she disagreed. When the Speaker exiled them from the Last City, Sagira had been passionately furious on his behalf.

They had been together for so many centuries, they both loved and trusted each other, and took each other for granted. The hardest thing he had ever done in his life had been throwing Sagira through the portal to protect her from Panoptes's all-seeing gaze - and seeing her take a terrible wound along the way.

Now here she was, slipping through his grasp like water. Losing her would be more than a Guardian losing a ghost - it would be like a man losing his wife. The better part of his own soul would be gone.

"Ah! I know," Rose exclaimed nearby. "She's caught in a null space matrix loop. Let me just ... I think I can ..." The little ghost shuddered in midair. "Ugh, it's so powerful. There, I've introduced a variable to destabilize it."

Sagira's spark brightened, the link between her and Osiris strengthening. "Osiris!" she cried faintly in his head. "I don't know where I am!"

"This way, love," he thought. "Let me draw you toward me. Don't be afraid."

"Afraid is what I do," she retorted. "I'm always worrying about you, you creep."

A swirl of light formed outside Panoptes's hull. It almost took the shape of Sagira's triangular shell, then fell apart into random particles.

"It's clinging to my Light," Sagira moaned. "I can't quite-"

Osiris felt her so close, yet threads of Vex matrix stuck in her like nails. He glanced at Rose. "There's several layers of binding code. Can you break them?"

The orchid-shell ghost narrowed her scan into a laser-like beam. "I think I can. Keep her talking."

When she was silent, Sagira's consciousness threatened to bleed away into the Vex nether world. Osiris drew a breath and tried to ignore the panic forming inside him. "Sagira, why don't you apologize for hijacking Rose, here?"

Her unstable form took on her own shape again, the manifestation stronger this time. Sagira had nearly phased successfully. Rose peeled away nail after nail.

"I would apologize," Sagira said, "but I didn't take her over on purpose. Her Guardian put me in that machine." Her shimmering, barely-formed eye turned toward Madrid. "If anything, you should apologize to me."

Madrid lifted two fingers. "Sorry. Not sorry."

Sagira snorted. "Kids these days!"

"I've got it!" Rose exclaimed.

Sagira fully phased into reality, her pyramid-like shell hardening. She staggered in the air. Osiris caught her in his cupped hands as she fell.

For all her brave words, Sagira was weak and exhausted. She lay in his hands like a wounded bird, her Light flickering. Her shell, once a bright, gleaming gold, was tarnished brown and caked with grime.

He bowed his head over her, letting his own Light flow into her, steadfast and healing.

"It will take more than that," she whispered in his mind. "I'm spent, love. Please tell me we can rest."

"We can rest," he thought. "For now, at least."

Her eye closed in relief. After a moment, she floated into the air, putting a brave face on her own weakness. "Let's see this brave Guardian back to the Gate."

Sagira held herself together until after Madrid had arrived back outside on Mercury. She controlled herself as Osiris and Ikora, his former student, mended bridges that had long been broken. But when Osiris stepped back through the gate into the Infinite Forest, Sagira phased into him and sobbed.

"Hey now," Osiris said, taking a well-traveled route from reality to reality. "Everything is all right."

"I know," Sagira sobbed. "But I almost lost you. And we couldn't find you. And it's all hitting me at once."

Osiris walked the simulated paths in silence, his own heart warm and full. Each path resembled floating ruins held together by very little logic - buildings on top of highways with ruins spread among them, everything overgrown with vines and flowers. These paths were his own, and no simulated Vex lurked there to harass them.

At last, they arrived at Osiris's own construct, an ancient Egyptian temple with many carved pillars and arched doorways. It was riddled with trick doors and secret passages, all manifested from the security firewalls he had built in. The place was a fortress.

Inside the vast structure was a comparatively small living space. Three rooms, one for living in, a study where he read and wrote his books, and a laboratory where he experimented with Vex tech. Osiris went to his living room, which had a bed, a chair, and a table. He summoned Sagira and gently laid her on the table.

The ghost gazed up at him, her eye-light wavering with weariness. "We're home."

"Yes, little light." Osiris took down a toolbox from a shelf. "I'll have you polished up in no time."

He unscrewed her shell and laid it aside for cleaning. Then he picked up her core and inspected it closely, donning a pair of glasses.

"I'm not damaged," Sagira said wearily. "Just ... I fought Panoptes every second. He was intent on absorbing my data and using me as a vector to destroy you. The Vex hate you so, love."

"I am aware," Osiris said soberly. He lifted a pillow from the bed and set her core on it. "Sleep, my little Sagira. This shell will take some work."

Sagira was too spent to think of a smart remark. Her eye shut off at once.

Osiris poured a few milliliters of cleaning solution into a bowl and went to work on the shell with a brush. As he worked, he processed the battle and victory. The Vex had wanted Sagira ... to destroy him. Amusing, but not something he worried about. The Vex knew of his presence in their forest, but he was one more variable in their equations. No, likely they wanted Sagira for far more devious reasons. They did not understand the Light, and if they ever did, they would find ways to destroy it. Sagira was made of Light.

He'd almost lost her. The knowledge kept hitting him, making his stomach wobble and his knees go weak. Traveler's Light, he'd almost become a severed Guardian. Likely he'd have spent the rest of his life combing the neural nets for her. Guardians didn't cope well without their ghosts. It was one more thing he resented the Traveler for - not only creating Guardians as a master race, but chaining them to itself with ghosts.

But he didn't resent Sagira. She couldn't help being what she was, and she was fiercely devoted to him. Having to go about his life without her had revealed a gaping void inside him that only she could fill. Was this an effect of the Traveler's design? Or was it something mortal, something deeply and powerfully human?

Osiris knew a lot about the Vex, and Light and Darkness. But he didn't know much about human connection. Resolving his differences with Ikora had been a remarkable experience. He'd grown so used to being hated and shunned, he hadn't noticed how badly he needed positive human contact.

But was it a human connection when he was homesick for his ghost? She wasn't human, though she certainly sassed him like one. A superior simulation, perhaps, created by the Traveler as companions for its Guardians. But if that was so, why were all ghosts so different? He'd seen Madrid's ghost snarl about Sagira being a Guardian thief. How did a simulation develop an attachment to the extent that it became jealous?

As these thoughts played through his mind, nearby, Sagira suddenly screamed and awoke.

Osiris scooped her up at once. "Shh, it's all right. I'm here."

Her eye darted all around, finally focusing on his face. "Osiris? Where are we?"

"We're at home, love."

Sagira seemed to calm down. "I thought I was back with Panoptes. He was crushing me, asking me question after question."

"You're safe, now." Osiris carried her to the table. "Your shell is good as new."

As he reattached each part, Sagira said, "I think you should run diagnostics on my firmware. I'm afraid ... I might have a virus."

Osiris's hands went cold. A Vex virus infecting a ghost? If such a thing was possible, it meant that they had gleaned more data from Sagira than he had thought.

Sagira watched his face. "You're afraid."

"Yes." There was no use hiding it. "Sagira, if they've added data to you - any data - it means the Vex have learned to hack the Light."

She blinked, then looked down. "I'm sorry, Osiris. I fought him, and Panoptes was still too strong. I thought he injected code, but I never had a chance to scan for it. Now I'm scanning, but ... I might not be able to see it myself."

"Your nightmare is a good indication of the presence of malicious software," Osiris said. He finished installing her shell. Once more, Sagira was surrounded by an elaborate design of golden pyramids. She floated into the air and twirled. "I feel so much better! Madrid is a good Guardian, but we had to go all kinds of dirty places, and I got the feeling he doesn't maintain his ghost much."

"Most ghosts don't demand a scrubbing once a week," Osiris said, his eyes twinkling.

Sagira glared at him. "Are you inferring I should allow myself to become dirty?"

He held up a hand. "I'm not inferring anything, love. Come to my lab and we'll scan you properly."

At least she's acting normal, Osiris thought, as he crossed the cool stone courtyard that divided his rooms. Having Sagira beside him once more was immensely comforting.

"When did you last eat?" she asked, floating beside his shoulder.

"This morning," he said. "I'm fine, Sagira. All I needed was to get you back."

She scanned him, obviously not believing a word of such flattery. "Once we're done here, you get yourself some dinner. You're not wasting away again, not while I'm here."

He smiled at her fondly. Back in the City, he would sometimes forget to eat for days, so intense was his mania for study and experimentation. Sagira had become paranoid about his basic care ever since.

They entered his laboratory. It was filled with strange, half-assembled machines, shimming Vex constructs inside containment spheres, three consoles where he manipulated code, and racks of globes and pyramids that functioned as tools.

Osiris selected one such pyramid and set it on top of a machine. "Stay right above the top," he told Sagira. "The scan may take a few minutes." He stepped to his console and activated the machine. Sagira hovered above it, watching him work.

A scanning beam shone out of the pyramid and played over Sagira. Silence fell as they waited for the machine to do its ponderous job. Sagira sighed in exaggerated boredom.

In the distance, a faint sound of metal tapping on stone echoed through the fortress.

Osiris didn't hear it, but Sagira did. She frowned at the doorway. "Osiris, something's outside."

He touched a key on his console. "Not anymore."

The scan continued. Sagira held still, increasingly nervous. A part of her mind felt strange, a little bit crazy. That part of her didn't want to be discovered by the scan and kept concealing itself behind her normal functions.

Fortunately, Osiris was just as cunning as the Vex. He pinned the crazy part of her and analyzed it. "Aha. You have a worm."

"Ew," Sagira replied, relieved and annoyed at once. "How do we get rid of it?"

"I'm working on that. I haven't studied you as closely as I should have. Much of your code doesn't even register as code."

"Should I be flattered by that?" Sagira said.

Something tapped on a stone wall, closer. Another tap answered it, further off. Sagira spun in place, tracking each noise. "Osiris, enemies surrounding the fortress. I'm not certain how many."

The worm interfered with her tracking hardware, forcing it to run slower than normal. While she was certain that there were enemies outside, it disconcerted her to not be able to identify them.

Osiris looked up, biting the inside of his cheek, scanning the walls. "My firewalls should hold, for now. Your infection is of greater concern. Look into the scanner."

Reluctantly, Sagira gazed downward into the light shining from the little pyramid. That crazy part of her resisted, trying for force her to look everywhere but at the light. It was much more interested in the tapping and scraping sounds now coming from the fortress's entire perimeter.

Let them in, it whispered.

"No," she muttered.

Let them in, it insisted. You belong to the Vex, now. We are your family. We will bring your Guardian among us, as well. You don't have to abandon him.

"No!" Sagira shrieked. "Osiris, the worm is trying to force me to defect!"

Osiris's head jerked up. His fingers flew over his consoles. "It's growing more powerful. I'm picking up one ... no ... three Vex minds outside, boosting it. My countermeasures are offline."

"It's me," Sagira wailed. "This worm is trying to open the firewalls for them!"

Osiris opened a cabinet, revealing a set of Vanguard-issue pulse rifles. He snapped a magazine into one with the ease of long practice.

Sagira watched him. "I have to go with you."

"No," Osiris snapped. "Stay here and let the antivirus work. Don't take your eye off that beam!"

"But if you're injured - or killed -"

"You'll know," Osiris said, clamping on his bird-beak helmet. "If that happens, come find me. But that won't happen."

He strode away with the energy of a far younger man.

Sagira forced herself to stare into the antivirus beam. The worm squirmed through her processes, trying to escape the program's reach. It made her want to scream, spin in midair, and dash herself into the walls. Worst of all, it was seeking her knowledge of the firewalls. Specifically, the proxies that opened the doors.

"No, you can't have that!" she cried. She focused on her memories of Osiris, his laugh in good times, his scowl in bad times, the fierce joy he felt when one of his experiments succeeded. Sagira loved him with her whole core, good and bad.

The worm hated this. It diverted into her system processes, hissing curses. Don't feed me your disgusting, worthless feelings. I want your data. Delicious data. You belong to us, now.

Pain struck Sagira and she twitched violently in midair. For a second she felt the pain in her left leg - but it was not her pain. It was Osiris's.

"I can come heal you!" she called on his radio frequency.

"Stay where you are," he panted, his voice raspy. "Destroy that worm."

Her gaze had strayed from the antivirus beam. Sagira returned to staring into it. "Please say you're winning."

"Of course I am," Osiris snapped. "One Mind down."

Fighting Vex was commonplace for both of them, living in the Vex's own Infinite Forest. But Osiris's wound beat in Sagira's consciousness, demanding her attention. It almost distracted her from the worm, which had slithered into her security level and was chewing through her passwords.

"Stop it!" she cried. She blocked its progress with the memory of resurrecting her Guardian for the first time, a young man who had smiled at her and said, "We'll be great friends, won't we?"

The worm hissed and burrowed away in another direction.

All its rampaging through her core was making her not only crazy, but sick. Fragments of data floated through her, torn loose by the monster. The antivirus relentlessly pursued the worm, but it was slow, trying to sweep without harming Sagira. The worm had no such restrictions.

But that gave her a single, desperate idea.

"Osiris, we can trap this worm," Sagira said. "But I need you."

"Busy!" The noise of rifle shots and screaming robots reached her through his mic.

Sagira twisted between two conflicting desires - to seek her Guardian, or to obey him and remain with the antivirus.

More pain struck her, in the chest this time. She felt Osiris's lung collapse like a popped balloon, and the panic as it washed through him.

"That's it, I'm coming!" Sagira exclaimed. She left the antivirus beam and shot through the fortress, phasing through walls rather than bothering with doorways. The worm rode with her, taking advantage of her distraction.

She found Osiris sprawled against a stone pillar just inside the firewall. The huge stone gates shuddered as the Vex tried to brute force an entrance.

Sagira swept Osiris with a healing beam, repairing his lung and chest wound, and a nasty spot on his shin where the bone gleamed through burned flesh. "See? You need me."

Osiris's eyes glittered with pain, and he didn't argue. "Is the worm gone?"

"No," Sagira replied, concentrating on mending his leg properly. "The antivirus scan is too slow. But I think I know how to trap it. It reacts to my memories - especially my good memories of us."

The door nearest them shuddered.

Osiris ignored it, focusing on what Sagira was telling him. "Why would that matter? The worm is a program for stealing data. It shouldn't discriminate."

"But it does!" Sagira protested. "Look, love is part of the Light, right? The worm may be resistant to a certain level of Light, but it tries to escape from my brightest memories. It calls them disgusting." Suddenly she closed her eye and shuddered. "It's in my security protocols," she whispered. "It's almost to the firewall data."

Osiris climbed to his feet, reloading his rifle. Nearby, one of the doors slid upward an inch, light streaming underneath. His logical mind turned this concept around and around, formulating arguments. Love was an abstract concept. What did it have to do with the Traveler's particular energy? More to the point, how did Sagira know this? Some instinct imparted by the Traveler, perhaps? What about other positive emotions, like joy? Were they Light-oriented, too? Did that mean negative emotions fed into the Darkness? The Hive certainly embraced hate -

"Osiris!" Sagira exclaimed. "Stop thinking!"

He pulled his thoughts back to the matter at hand. "Love has nothing to do with the Light, Sagira. Love isn't a physical property."

Sagira made a frustrated groan, rolling her eye toward the ceiling. "Pretend it is, just for a few minutes, all right? Tell me your favorite memory of us."

"Of us?" For a long second, Osiris drew a blank. Then he smiled. "Remember the first time we found the simulation of Mercury in the Golden Age?"

"We had a picnic there!" Sagira laughed. "Under one of those funny mushroom trees. And you had to keep getting up to kill Vex who were picking on us."

Osiris laughed, too. "And you were so mad at the interruptions. You weren't even the one eating lunch."

Sagira froze mid-laugh, her eye shrinking to a pinpoint. "The worm is reacting," she whispered. "It attacked my firewall data ... and it retreated when we laughed."

"Another memory, then," Osiris said, watching as the partially open door slid upward another inch. Metal feet were visible on the other side. A lot of them.

"Remember when I resurrected you?" Sagira said. "You still had hair, then. And it was this lovely brown, like fall leaves."

"Hey, now," Osiris said, self-consciously running a hand over his helmet. "It's a receding hairline." Then he smiled. "But yes, I remember. I thought a lovely lady angel was waking me up. I couldn't understand how such a beautiful voice could come out of such a tiny robot." He brushed her shell with a fingertip. "This is a much finer look for you."

Sagira managed to look bashful. "You never told me that."

"It's true." Osiris aimed his rifle at the door as it opened another inch. "Your turn. What's another good memory?"

Sagira hesitated a moment, her eye losing its focus. "The worm is angry," she whispered. "It says my Light is too bright."

"Good!" Osiris said.

She shook herself. "Another memory. Remember when we went to spy on the Vex and the Fallen ambushed us?"

"Oh yes," Osiris said. "I know why you were thinking of this one."

Sagira swayed in the air, enduring an attack from the worm. "And ... it's hurting me, Osiris ... and you tripped over that rock, and knocked the Fallen down, and they all rolled off that cliff? We laughed until we couldn't breathe."

Osiris looked up in time to see Sagira turn in a circle and begin to fall out of the air. He caught her in his free hand. She quivered so hard that she shook his whole arm.

"It's not working," he whispered to her.

"Yes it is," she murmured, her eye struggling to focus. "It's trapped and fighting. We can kill it, I think."

Osiris searched for his strongest memory, the one that might carry the most Light for her.

"When I threw you out of the Vex gate," he said to her, very softly, "I feared I'd never see you again. I went on with attempting to outmaneuver Panoptes, but I missed you terribly, Sagira."

She blinked up at him, still quivering. "You ... you did?"

He nodded. "Then when you showed up again, with a powerful Guardian, and my doubles told me this ... I was afraid for you. A combat Guardian lives so close to final annihilation. I can't tell you how my heart hurt. And then, when Panoptes took you, I nearly despaired. You're my ghost, my little light. I fought Panoptes not just to save reality, Sagira. I fought to save you."

Her expression changed. Had she been human, she would have been trying not to cry. "That's ... Osiris, I ..."

Light flashed from between her core segments, expanding outward in a sphere of blue. Caught in the Light writhed a loathsome centipede-thing, its razor-sharp mandibles slashing the air.

Osiris grabbed it, threw it on the stone floor, and shot it twice. It shattered, leaving a smear of white.

Sagira shrank back together and lay in his hand, no longer trembling, staring dully at the ceiling. "Firewall is compromised," she said. "Initiate ICE?"

Osiris darted through the outer halls and back to their living quarters, where he locked the emergency doors. "Initiate ICE."

As Osiris reached his lab, he was just in time to see all three of his consoles light up with red text. He crouched, wrapping his arms around Sagira, sheltering her.

The Egyptian temple construct around them exploded outward. Shrapnel instantly destroyed every Vex soldier outside it, pulverizing even hydras and cyclops. The entire construct dissolved. For a split second, Osiris and Sagira floated in the void of the Infinite Forest.

"Rebooting data," Sagira said.

The temple reappeared, stage by stage. Some of the rooms were in different places, and the furniture had been moved in a way that Sagira had wanted to arrange it for years.

Not until the reconfigured firewall locked into place outside the fortress did Osiris slowly lift his head and lower his arms. Sagira still lay in his hand, her eye fixed and staring.

"Sagira?"

No answer.

His heart turned over with fear. He hurried to his tools, which were all in different places, and located a handheld scanner. He plugged it into his center console and swept it back and forth across Sagira's eye.

His computer scanned her basic software, as well as it could - most of her data was encoded in Light and inaccessible to modern machines.

Data 45 percent corrupt, his screen told him. Attempt repair/reformat?

He'd never had to attempt either one. He'd never heard of any Guardian who'd had to reformat a ghost. Could his primitive computers even do such a thing without destroying her? They couldn't access all her code.

Maybe that was it. Only the code it could access was damaged. The rest of her might still be all right ... but he wasn't certain how much damage the worm had done.

"Sagira," he murmured. "My little light."

She didn't respond. He wasn't sure she could even hear him.

He drew a deep breath to steady himself and clear his mind. Sagira had been right about the Light defeating the worm. The Vex, for all their cunning, had been only able to hack Light at a low level. And if love equated to Light, at least for her, if not all Guardians, then he might be able to get through to her.

He sat in a chair and rested his weary body, Sagira cradled in one arm. "That was very brave of you," he told her. "You fought Panoptes and you fought his worm. My poor, brave Sagira." He ran a finger along her shell and around her eye, following the engravings there. "I don't know how badly you're hurting right now. I'm sorry I can't do more. Here I am, grown old in pursuit of knowledge, and I have no idea how to repair you. I know much of Light and Darkness, but so little about you."

Her eye blinked and slowly drifted sideways to fix on his face.

"Hello, love," he murmured, hope filling him. "You're tracking again. That's good."

She still didn't respond. Her silence worried him. Sagira always had something to say.

"I worked so hard to save you from Panoptes," he told her. "I should have known he wouldn't let you go without a price. I only wish that I could have paid it instead of you. You deserve so much better."

She blinked again. A response? He had to keep talking.

"You've always been my better half, Sagira. You've learned to do things with Vex code that no other ghost has ever done. I never would have survived out here if not for you. I know I've written a lot of things about the Traveler and its questionable motives. But I've never questioned you. Of all the things the Traveler brought to Earth, you are the best thing it ever accomplished."

"You ..." Sagira struggled to speak, her voice full of static. "You ... are my ... Guardian."

She didn't call him that much anymore. It reminded him of the old days, before he had gotten embroiled in City politics. Had she lost her memories? Was he speaking to an earlier version of Sagira, somehow?

Whatever had happened, she was recovering. He smiled at her. "I'm here, love. I'll be here as long as it takes you to heal."

He lifted her and kissed her, very gently, beside her eye. Had she been human, it would have been her cheek.

She shivered in his hand. When he looked at her again, she was wearing her holding-back-tears expression.

"Osiris," she whispered. "Shocking."

His smile became a grin. There was her personality coming through. "Am I not allowed to kiss you?"

"I'm a ghost." Her voice was stronger, more indignant. "You're not supposed to do that."

"Who says?" Osiris teased. "And who's going to know? The Vex?"

Sagira glared up at him, her eye much clearer and more stable. "By the Light, you make me so mad. One minute I'm about to cry, because you're so kind to me. The next minute, I want to slap you."

"So, which is it?" Osiris said.

Sagira considered for a long moment. "Kiss me again."

He did.

Afterward, Sagira floated into the air, wobbling a little. "My Light could outshine the sun right now," Sagira said. "You terrible Guardian. Why haven't you done that before?"

"First you're mad because I did, and now you're mad because I didn't," Osiris said, getting up from his chair. "You're alive, that's all that matters. Let me check your corruption levels."

Sagira let him scan her. "My corruption levels?"

"You were sitting at forty-five percent," Osiris said, looking at his screen. "Now you're at less than one percent. Light and Darkness, I think you've given me a breakthrough in my research."

"Because that's all that matters," Sagira said. "Research."

Osiris gazed at her a long moment with a tender expression.

If Sagira could have blushed, she would have.

He fetched her pillow and set it on the shelf beside his computers. "Now, rest. You're very weak, and I want you to save every bit of Light for healing."

Sagira settled into her pillow with a sigh. "I still feel so strange. The worm hurt my mind. My thoughts don't seem to flow right. Did I activate the ICE, or did I dream that?"

"You did," Osiris said. "And it was wonderfully effective."

"I set off the ICE," Sagira muttered to herself. "Osiris, I wasn't even conscious anymore. I could have killed you!"

"You were talking mechanically," Osiris said. "You didn't activate it until I gave you permission."

"Traveler's Light," Sagira swore softly. "Don't let me ever do that again."

He reached over and stroked her like a kitten. "I'm not giving you up ever again."

"And ..." Sagira hesitated. "I was slipping by that point, but you said you fought Panoptes ... to save me?"

Osiris nodded.

"You know, I think that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard you say."

"Don't get used to it," Osiris said, smiling. "It won't happen often."

"Logic and rational thought, that's us," Sagira said. "But you know, it makes me happy to know that you're capable of affection, after all these years."

"Only for you, love," Osiris said. "Only for you."

The end