"Well, Jay made dinner today. He was all proud of himself for making banana bread, but he forgot to put in the flour, so the whole thing was like a rock!"

I giggled as I entered the kitchen, placing my phone down on the counter. "Well, maybe you can help him next time."

"I feel like I'm always helping them with stuff in the kitchen!" I laughed again as Zane spoke, reaching to pull out a cup from the cupboard. "They need to learn how to make their own food!"

"What's so funny?" Cryptor asked, walking in from the other room.

I put my finger to my lips, shushing him with my eyes. I reached for my phone, showing him the live feed from the bridge and mouthed I'm working. "Maybe you should just leave for a month. See if they can feed themselves."

Cryptor put his hands up in surrender, rolling his eyes. "Yes, working very hard I see," he whispered.

I rolled my eyes back at him, turning to fill up my glass at the fridge.

Zane sighed over my earpiece. "Yeah. Go on vacation for a little while and just… talk with you all day." I could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke. It was infectious.

"What would we even talk about?" I put the cup down and picked up my phone, watching as his body language shrunk.

"I don't know. But it wouldn't really matter... It'd be kind of like before."

"Do you… miss how it was before? Me being in your systems and all?"

Zane thought for a moment while Cryptor leaned over the kitchen counter, peaking at the feed from my phone.

"I miss how it was before. I miss how it was before that. I guess I just miss… you."

"What do you mean?" I chuckled. "I'm here, I'm talking to you right now."

"I know," he smiled, reaching for his head. "I mean, you're in the bridge, you're literally right in front of me," he chuckled. "It's just… I don't know. It's different. I just feel like there's this weird distance between us now, you know what I mean?"

My eyes drifted from the screen, sinking with my heart as I listened to him. "Yeah." My body started to tense under the weight of the conversation.

"It's just…" he sighed. "I'm really sorry, Pixal."

I looked up at Cryptor, still looking a bit confused from the one side of the conversation he was hearing. I turned from him, walking a few steps over to the side of the room, adjusting my earpiece. "Zane, you don't have to apologize-"

"No, it's just, I feel like you've missed out on so much. I wish I could take you on all these adventures and show you these amazing places and... hold your hand again."

I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth that comes with a forgotten memory. The sort of feeling that almost makes you smile while also leaving a small strand of pain in your heart. "Zane, none of that is your fault-"

"No, but I have so many regrets. So many things I wish I'd done sooner and… now I can't."

"Zane," I stopped short, trying to think of what I could say. "Are you… is everything okay? How long have you been thinking about this?"

The com was silent for a moment, only a short sigh filling the space. "I miss you Pixal… I miss you a lot, I miss you more than I let on most of the time. The months after you disappeared were… tough for me." The pain in his voice was restrained, but very present.

"Zane-"

"It's okay though!" He chuckled. "You don't need to worry about that. I'm just… I'm glad you're back."

"Zane, I'm not going anywhere. You don't need to worry anymore."

"I know. And I'm not! I'm not, I'm just…" he thought for a moment. "I'm just holding on to what I have left of you."

My lips parted, but I had nothing to say. What was left of me. He knew. He knew I wasn't all there; he knew something was wrong, he knew how fragmented my life had gotten. And yet I understood it. I was doing the same thing. I had set this whole system up so that I could talk to him. So that I could hold on to a piece of him.

"Well, I should probably go anyways," he shrugged. "We have a meeting in a few minutes."

My mind stumbled, trying to respond. "Um…" I turned back around, looking at my phone still sitting on the counter. "Yes, right. Just… talk to me soon, okay?"

Zane intently stared up at the camera, his eyes filled with this empty sort of hope. "Of course," he smiled. "I'll be thinking about you."

"I'll be thinking about you too," a grin snuck onto my lips as I watched him leave, pausing at the door to turn around, and glance back at the camera.

I pulled off my headset, still in a bit of a daze.

"So, what did lover-boy say?"

I looked up at Cryptor, realizing just how watery my eyes had gotten. I blinked a few times, quickly clearing the tears as they fell.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, his tone changing drastically. "What's going on? What'd he say?"

I leaned on the counter, closing my eyes. "I never meant for this to make him feel that way," I sighed.

"Like what?"

"Like he needed to worry about me."

Cryptor looked at me for a few seconds, his expression shifting.

"You should go back."

"No!" I stopped him, straightening up. "No, I don't. Don't even start on that again."

"You miss him. He misses you. You obviously want to be close to him, or you wouldn't feel so bad about all this."

"It's fine! I'm talking to him every day, and I'm participating in the team-"

"Pixal!" He cut me off, holding up my phone, the empty feed from the bounty still playing. "You cannot do this forever."

He stared at me, pressing his words into me as he spoke. I could feel myself squirming under his gaze.

"I'm not leaving." I shook my head, grabbing the phone from his hands. I closed the feed and started to leave the kitchen. "Eventually I will have to tell them, but not now. Not soon. Not for a long time."

"You're going to drive yourself crazy living like this!"

I turned around to look at him again. "Why do you even care?!"

"Because I don't like seeing you hurt yourself like this!" His voice wavered as he spoke. "You're keeping all these secrets and isolating yourself from the people you care about, and you're trying to live these seven different lives all at the same time, and I… I don't know why!"

"Cryptor, I'm fine! I'm stressed, and I'm busy, and yeah, everything's a little chaotic right now, but I'm handling it fine!"

He took a moment to cool down, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'm just worried, because... I've done it before, and it's the most miserable I've ever been."

"I'm not… I'm fine." I walked over to him, trying to find his eyes. "Everything's okay. The last thing I need is you worrying about me too."

"Don't you think there might be a reason everyone is worried about you?"

"Because it looks bad! But it's not! It's just not, okay?!"

"Why don't you want to go back?"

"It's not that-"

"Why don't you want to go back?" he pressed. "Because you think being here gives you some sort of control? Because isolating yourself makes you feel safe? Because you lied to them and you're too scared to admit it?"

"Because I just don't want to! Okay?" I screamed back at him. "They probably don't want me back anyway! They like having me confined to a tiny computer where they can turn me on and off and I spew out whatever random information they need! The last thing they need is another body taking up space! It's just... better this way, okay?"

Cryptor looked at me for a moment, a bit defeated. "Okay," he sighed. "I mean, I have my doubts about them being so willing to abandon you, but hey you know more about them than me, right?"

"That's not what I said-!"

"No, no, it's okay." He stopped me, taking another step forward. "I'm willing to put up with all of this for as long as you want...as long as it's making you happy."

I felt my mind go blank as he looked at me. I could feel my hands begin to shake as I tried to find words to respond with- but there were none. He was waiting for an answer I couldn't give him.

"Are you happy, Pixal?"