In which why Elysium Regained did not have a happy ending becomes a bit more apparent, although it'll hit in the next chapter.

X had gotten up and was already heading towards the door as Harpuia entered. When Harpuia tried to attack, he easily turned to the side, grabbed Harpuia's overextended arm, used it to pull him forward, further off balance, and in the same movement brought his mouth next to Harpuia's ear and sternly said, "Sage Harpuia Light."

The coded harmonics buried in that vocalization triggered something, and he felt his body freeze around him.

Zero stood up and walked over, wide-eyed. "A failsafe?" Some idiots had wanted to build failsafes into all hunters so that they could be shut down if they ever went maverick. "You put in a failsafe? You always hated those things, one maverick getting their hands on the codes meant a unit could be wiped out!"

"I was trying to replicate what my father did to make sure that no one would try to take me apart for the sake of the technology I contain. Figuring out this form of failsafe was a side effect that I left in and improved on, in case Weil was able to get his hands on any of them." X picked Harpuia up and laid him down on the couch Zero had been sitting on. "There's more to the code than the words and harmonics. I made certain that no one could activate it but me." He put his hand on Harpuia's forehead, and Harpuia felt the system diagnostic query. "You haven't energized properly in years, have you?" X sighed, sitting on the arm of the couch. "You really believed that you were doing the right thing." He'd starved himself of energy voluntarily, just like he'd helped force the reploids of Neo Arcadia to do.

"Zero?" Ciel asked slowly, carefully approaching the door after that display.

Zero nodded, acknowledging her presence.

"I'm glad you could join us, Ciel. Alouette said that you liked coffee, but she didn't know what kind or how you took it. What would you like?" X genuinely liked being the host.

"…Anything's fine." She carefully walked forward, off-balance but not disarmed.

"Zero, would you mind pulling out a chair for her?" That was only polite. "Alouette…" X looked down behind the couch and, with a gentle voice, said, "Come out now, Alouette. Ciel's here. You don't need to hide from her." Even if Alouette's recovered memories contained many people she should have hidden from.

"But…" a small voice said.

"She doesn't hate you." X looked at Ciel for support.

"Alouette?" Was that really Alouette, here? Harpuia had said so, but there was a difference between the Alouette she had taken care of and the one that had attacked her with a knife. "I don't hate you, it wasn't your fault." It was the virus', she knew Alouette would never try to hurt her.

"Ciel?" Alouette carefully looked up over the couch.

"Alouette…"

Her little girl ran to hug her, and Ciel wrapped her arms around her, almost shaking with relief. Alouette wasn't a maverick anymore, everything was going to be fine. She finally pulled Alouette back a bit to get a good look at her face, to check that she was alright, since she had been shot…

And froze, forcing herself not to jump back when she saw those same red eyes.

But… X's eyes hadn't been red.

"And Sage Harpuia Light?" Zero was saying to X. "You gave someone like that that name? You gave them all your family name? You didn't even give it to Sigma!"

"That was because Sigma was Dr. Cain's creation as much as mine, and we decided we didn't want to burden him with the name of Light, on top of being the first reploid. Harpuia and the others were built when I thought it was going to be over. I thought the name wouldn't force them to put themselves in danger and be heroes, not in a peaceful world. When Dr. Weil… I took the name off of their registries, but I still built them with my own hands. It is their name."

"Yes, and that's going to help convince people that they shouldn't be permanently destroyed for what they've done."

X's eyes closed, and he suddenly looked so very tired.

The way he had when Ciel had known him as a child, under the façade.

"Why should they be killed? No… They killed inno…" X frowned. "What?" Something was so very strange… there were things that weren't quite fitting together, and for a terrible instant he felt utterly lost.

Zero took X into his arms. "Shh, it's okay, X. No one's killing anyone unless I say so."

"Yes." That was truth.

Alouette tugged at Ciel's arm. "There's coffee, and cakes, and anything!"

"…Yes, right…" She let Alouette lead her to her seat and tried not to obviously stare at the two ancient heroes.

X's eyes were green, but there was an empty feeling to them, like the broken body of a reploid who had been terminated but not recycled yet. "Zero…"

"Forget about it, X. It's not important. I'll take care of everything."

"Alright." Those eyes closed yet again, obediently.

"They're mine now, and I won't let any of mine be killed. What happened before doesn't matter anymore."

X nodded, listening quietly.

"It was because of them, anyway, so that won't matter anymore. You'll have Elysium, X, with your-what's left of your family." Now Zero was the one who seemed pained.

"It doesn't matter, Zero," X looked up to reassure him. "Not when you're here. It doesn't matter." There was some other element to those words: they were spoken not with affection but… Like he had been programmed to say those words, feel that way, regard this as truth.

There were only two things that could do that to a reploid.

Dark elves… and the virus.

"…X" Zero touched his face, frowning. Then he straightened himself. "Well, cheer up. We shouldn't act depressing, not in front of the children."

"Zero." X raised an eyebrow.

"You were the one who started bringing them up every five seconds," Zero said in his defense.

"Right." X smiled again. "Another couch?"

"Sure."

X closed his eyes for a moment, and took Zero's hand to stand up from the arm of the couch. "Let's get this one out of the way." Zero helped him push it against the wall, and X made sure that Harpuia was comfortable.

"Is your coffee getting cold? There's cream, and sugar."

"Thank you, Alouette." Ciel took them from her politely.

She'd never actually had coffee. Her great-grandmother was the one who had liked it: Ciel had always wanted to try it, but always been told 'when you're older.' It was one of those things too precious to be wasted on children, like wine. Her great-mother had been one of the Council of Neo Arcadia, and Ciel thought that she hadn't abused her rank. Yet there had always been coffee, and she'd only found out years later how impossible it was to procure.

Ciel's great-mother had been the only surviving scientist who had worked on the Dark Elf by the time Ciel was born (except Dr. Weil and X, of course), and money, power, and fame had meant most barriers didn't exist for her.

It was bitter. She hadn't expected that.

It was appropriate, though.

She stirred in cream and sugar, hoping that would change things, as a couch was teleported in. Such a casual use of energy! Zero led X over to it and sat him down on it, acting almost courtly. Had they been in love, before? Was that why Harpuia had said that Zero wouldn't fight X, not the real X?

"So," X said brightly. "It's nice to see you again, Ciel. Please don't be angry with Alouette, she insisted that she didn't want anyone else to kill you." He could talk about killing as though it was a favor? "But that doesn't need to happen now, since Zero wants you to live."

"Does this mean that…" She didn't know how to finish that sentence because she didn't even want to hazard a guess at what all of this meant. "What about everyone else?"

"Everyone's going to be fine. It's going to take awhile to make Cerveau a new body, since there are so many people waiting for one to be built, but he's keeping busy," X assured her.

Cerveau was a reploid. "And the other humans?"

There was a… pause, somehow. A flicker, before X resumed. "They'll be taken care of."

Ciel was used to Neo Arcadian doublespeak. She'd built Copy-X. She knew what that meant. "You mean you're going to have them killed."

"Yes." This time there wasn't a flicker, and Ciel remembered what Zero had told her about why X had left them.

He'd stopped caring about the people he had to kill. He'd left so that he wouldn't become… what her copy of him had.

So he wouldn't become this.

Then she'd dragged Zero into this, and X with him, and Elpizo had destroyed X's body and managed to infect him.

Or, you could also say that she'd woken up the source of the Maverick Virus before he'd finished purifying himself and then trusted Zero even after he'd told her the truth. "Zero, are you… I thought you were…" Trying to save everyone. "We've taken Neo Arcadia, there's a new energy source…" If they stopped this, everything would be over.

Just like everything had been over when the Mother Elf was made, until Dr. Weil had betrayed the world.

"And X, you're fine with this?" There had to be something still in there, or why that moment of hesitation?

"Yes, of course." He smiled. "I'll do whatever Zero wants."

"But do you want to?"

"I want to bring peace, bring Elysium so my children don't have to suffer anymore."

"Do you want to kill people?"

X paused. "I've had to kill lots of people. It was necessary."

"What if it wasn't necessary?"

"Then I wouldn't kill them."

"Is it necessary to destroy humanity?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because that's what will create the new world."

"I've already got control of Neo Arcadia, Zero gave it to me, he could take control, and if he has control of the mavericks? Humans can't fight reploids, we can't stop you from having a peaceful world."

"But you will."

"Why?" Then she realized the obvious counterargument to the notion that humans didn't do things that caused immense amounts of human and reploid suffering for selfish and short-sighted reasons. "We're not like Dr. Weil!"

"But he was. You aren't, so I'm happy that Zero's letting you live. Would you like one of those cakes? Some of them were made especially sweet so Alouette could taste them, but the others turned out quite nice." For recipes the cooks had never laid eyes on.

"So why not let everyone who isn't Dr. Weil live?"

"Then what about the next generation?"

"You could just not let people like him get any power!"

"That would be eternal strife. Eternal fear." He looked over the table without seeing any of the delicacies: Ciel had never seen a cake that wasn't a birthday cake. "I'm tired of that. Zero would protect us, I know that he wouldn't mind, but I'm tired of Zero sacrificing himself. But how is it different? Humans are not people, but Dr. Cain, and Zero's father, and…" Another little flicker. "It is the will of the virus, Zero's will, that all the humans not personally vouched for and guarded by reploids will be killed."

"But what if it wasn't? Would you still want us dead?"

"No." X seemed even more confused by how simple it had been to answer that question. "I… am tired of death. I was always tired of death, from the first day I woke up." And found that all of his family was dead.

"Do you wish that it wasn't the will of the virus?" She leaned forward.

"Yes." That word was quiet. "But I am… I should not… I must not defy the virus." That sentence was firmer, with that same sense that there was something besides X that was speaking. "I am the last child of Light, son of a murderer and brother to traitors to their kind, and owe my life to Omega's mercy." Then his voice softened. "Zero's kindness."