II.iii ; Somewhere in the Middle


"So you really, honestly, really don't remember anything?"

William groaned, rubbing the back of his head.

"No, I don't, Odd! How many times do I have to explain until you—"

"Alright, alright, you don't have to get all mad," Odd muttered, throwing his hands above his head in mock surrender. "I'm just…a little shocked, I guess. You've been gone forever! What happened to—"

"Stop pestering him, Odd," Yumi growled from behind him. Odd threw a glare at her without thinking and immediately regretted the decision. Yumi's dark eyes flashed more powerful fury than anything he thought possible—for a human being, at least. The frustration seemed to radiate from her entire body: her posture, the way her mouth was pulled into a thin line, and, even more, from her eyes. Odd was forced to look away. "All you've done is ask him the same questions since you…" Yumi stopped, and Odd flicked his eyes back up—compelled by curiosity—in time to see her irate gaze float past his shoulder. Odd followed her glance.

A small crowd of students was beginning to assemble at the sudden reappearance of William, and that clearly annoyed Yumi more than Odd had, if that was physically possible. Yumi swiftly took William's arm and, with Odd power-walking behind, dragged him toward the boys' dorm building.

"Let's go somewhere where we can talk privately," she muttered through gritted teeth. "William, do you mind if we take over your room?"

"Yeah, that's fine. If it's still there," William added with a shake of his head.

Odd reconsidered following for a moment; being the subject of another—possibly worse—argument today scared him to death. But surely Yumi's rage would fizzle out by the time they reached the dorms and escaped their peers, and he reasoned that Yumi's fury couldn't be any stronger than Aelita's, so he continued to tag along.

Besides, even if it made Yumi mad, he was dying to find out what had happened.

Once safely settled inside William's dorm room, the three finally had a chance to relax. Odd's prediction had thankfully turned out to be true, and Yumi seemed much more calm. He also couldn't help but notice that sometime during their trip to the room, William's hand had found Yumi's. Again. Odd chuckled once.

William hadn't changed a bit.

"So," Odd began slowly, testing the waters to see if he had truly been forgiven or if he'd simply been forgotten. Yumi waited for him to finish, and William seemed fairly preoccupied by the girl beside him, so Odd continued. "What do you remember? Start from the beginning, when you were virtualized."

Yumi turned eagerly to see William's response. The dark-haired boy sighed, shaking his head as his eyebrows pulled together in concentration. "You know, I'm really not sure I'm remembering this right. It's all so blurred together, like I can't distinguish one picture from another. But I'm pretty sure XANA had me before I got onto Lyoko." His brow furrowed as he waved his hands around. "No, that's not what I meant. It was more like he had me picked out from the beginning. I dunno.

"All I remember is the jellyfish—Scyphozoa, sorry—coming up on me. It didn't seem very dangerous at the time"—Odd rolled his eyes—"but y'know, I really thought I could beat it. I didn't think it would…suck up my brain or whatever." Yumi grimaced at the memory, but William put up a finger, concentrating hard. He sat against the floor and pulled his head between his knees, locking his arms over the back of his neck. At last, he sighed and reclined against the wall, laying his head back against it.

"I saw little flashes of…it must have been Jeremie or something. It was so dark; I really couldn't see much of anything. It was like I was fading in and out of…sleep. It felt like a really bad nightmare. Not bad because it was scary with monsters or anything, but…scary because of the nothingness. Everything was empty—there wasn't a meaning for anything, because nothing existed. It's weird to describe it. But I was unconscious for most of it, so it felt like I'd only been sleeping for a little while. You know how you can have a few dreams a night, feel like it lasted forever, and wake up to find you'd only been sleeping for a few hours? I figured I'd been out a day at the most, because I only came to a few times, and every time I 'woke up,' I was sure I was in a fleeting little dream. I never imagined…" He let the sentence trail away.

They all stood there, silent for a long time. It didn't feel awkward at all, because each was occupied by his or her own thoughts, imagining what it must have been like. Odd lifted his eyes to meet theirs, searching their faces for a trace of tolerance that would allow him to speak.

"You…saw Jeremie. Why are you here, and he's not?" The question took none of them by surprise; it was something that they too had questioned, if only for a moment during the succession of fears and wonderings that had flitted through their minds. When no one bothered to respond, Odd expanded the question, filling in his own thoughts. "Why shouldn't he be here? Maybe he's already here. Maybe he's out there wandering in the woods or something—maybe—"

"Or maybe we haven't seen Jeremie yet because he's not coming back." Yumi's voice cracked in the wrong place, destroying the defensive façade she had otherwise successfully established. "Think about it. When Lyoko was destroyed, XANA was in control. Who was under XANA's influence? William. So who would XANA have protected from deletion? William. Unless Jeremie formed some secret alliance with XANA or something"—she had no idea how close to the truth she had come—"he's probably little bits of data floating around in that cyberspace hell that William lived through, except he can't exist, and he can't wake up to have little dreams and little—"

Yumi stopped when her voice failed and her systems betrayed her. Her face burned red as her body shuddered in tremors of despair, shaking the building saline tears from her eyes. Odd looked back down at the floor, burning a hole in the carpet with his steady gaze.

"You don't know that," he whispered bitterly without looking up. "For all we know, he's still there, waiting for us to come help him—"

"Oh, don't even start, Odd Della Robbia!" Yumi snarled viciously, refusing to allow more tears to leak down her face. "Don't start that crap."

Odd snapped his head up, glaring at her defensively. "What? You don't like what I'm going to say? I don't care, Yumi—we need to go back to Lyoko! We need to go to the factory and check it out, even if there's no chance! How can we know if we never even try? Just once—just for Jeremie—let's go to Lyoko and fight! If William really is back, then some part of Lyoko must be there waiting for us. Some part of…XANA." Yumi winced, trembling with fury.

"I've already…I've already lost so many…Even if Lyoko is there," she managed to mutter, "I won't have any part of it." Odd looked at her pleadingly, begging with his eyes for Yumi to reconsider. He turned to William desperately, but the older boy shrugged. He wasn't going to interfere.

"Please, Yumi," Odd begged, his heart aching to restore some semblance of their former life. If they could just defeat XANA for good…If they could just go to Lyoko, just like old times…maybe his friends would forget the hatred and distance that festered between them. Maybe they could laugh together, joke together, hang out without throwing verbal blows like lances, stabbing out each other's hearts. His own heart was already swathed in the biting cuts that had split open because of his previous attempts. "Just this once," he tried again, desperate more than ever, "can you pretend that none of this happened? Can you just pretend like the world never ended and consider going back?"

He was afraid to look up, afraid to meet her gaze. "Out," she growled maliciously, throwing her finger up to point at the exit. "Get out now, Odd. I never want to see you again. Never."

Odd threw her one last glare—filled with every drop of spite he could muster out of his failing heart—before stomping willingly out of her room.

It was difficult to fight the scream building in his throat, but he managed to contain it until he reached the solitude of his own room. Immediately, he collapsed on the bed, burying his head into his pillow, and shrieked. Again he filled his lungs, and emptied them in a cry that even the spongy pillow could barely muffle. He fought away the urge to cry and rolled onto his back.

A tiny scritch scratch on the floor below him (and the tiny whine that followed) reminded him of his little dog. The mongrel slipped up onto the bed with a little effort, and, sensing Odd's distress, came up beside him before curling into the boy's chest. Odd absentmindedly stroked the little ball, glad to have his one friend beside him. Even Ulrich wasn't there, he noticed dismally. He frowned in disappointment and turned onto his side, facing the wall and his companion.

"Why can't they all be as loyal as you, Kiwi," he muttered angrily under his breath, ignoring the stink that rolled off the dog's tongue. "Why can't they all care as much as you do? I tell ya, buddy, if we were a bunch of dogs, we would've forgiven each other by now." He frowned at the wall and closed his eyes.

He didn't have much time to fall asleep, though, because almost a full second later, a succession of quick, heavy footsteps erupted from the hallway, and a panting Ulrich burst through the door. Odd was about to turn on his roommate with fury, but stopped immediately when he saw the dire expression on Ulrich's face. His breath stopped when he recognized Jeremie's laptop in Ulrich's arm.

"It's…XANA," Ulrich managed to gasp, waving the laptop wide-eyed. Odd's body stiffened. "I…figured it out! Haha—Odd, it's XANA. There's…an activated tower in…I can't tell which sector, but I think a couple of scanners were activated too!" He paused a moment to calm his breathing.

It took a few seconds for the gravity of the news to fully settle on Odd, but soon his eyes widened at the knowledge he'd known must be true. Despite the alarm XANA's name set off in his body, Odd couldn't help but grin wildly.

"What are we waiting for?" Odd exclaimed, flying off the bed and bursting through the door. "Let's go!"

"Odd, I'll meet you at the factory," Ulrich called after his vanishing friend, barely in time for Odd to stop at the end of the corridor. "I'm going to find Yumi—she won't answer her phone, but I sent Aelita a text already. I hope she gets it," he added under his breath.

"She's in William's room," Odd called over his shoulder. Ulrich nodded once, and Odd disappeared, barely able to contain the warmth that had suddenly returned to his limbs.

He'd been right all along. There was no way his friends could say no now.

"In just a few minutes, everything will be"—he grinned madly, surprised at his own enthusiasm—"just like old times!"

He couldn't have been more wrong.

--

Sorry for the delay in updates! This story is drawing near a close, so I'm trying to drag it out as I iron out the kinks in the last chapters.

-Nimfalas/Nimfalath