A/N: Arrrrr our internet shitted out again. I would have typed this sooner but I have to do it at my mom's work.. soo…. Blahhh. Here we go.

Nyon was still as stone.

Thirteen minutes ago, he had started yelling. Yelling at the cheering idiots who called for Fer's unjust death. Eleven minutes ago, he hit another worker in the head, and robots rushed to restrain him. Ten minutes ago, he had been struggling and calling Fer's name. Two minutes ago, he had received and given another thumbs up to Fer. One minute ago he had begun to think everything would be okay. That Fer would escape and they could run away together. That Fer, Stek and Nyon would all make it out okay together.

But at the present moment Nyon was watching in horror as the green smudge that was Fer's head fell from the body, a purple shaded spray dripping behind it.

It was too unreal. It was not real. This was not real.

It couldn't have been that he…

The robots, sensing the immediate decline in adrenaline and activity in Nyon, released him and scurried off toward some of the rambunctious workers, who were getting over excited at the bloodshed. Nyon dropped to his knees, then fell entirely to the floor. 'This is not real.' He couldn't think, or feel, and as he lay on the cold floor at the back of the crowd, Nyon was not even aware that he even existed. 'That did not happen. Fer is real. This is not real.'

Tears built up in his eyes. Where was Fer now? Fer was coming up with an escape plan. What Nyon had just seen was… not real.

He didn't notice the hand that softly graced his back as he remained on the ground trembling, he couldn't have noticed, but eventually the gentle hands began to move him. Nyon closed his eyes and didn't open them again until he had been forced into a sitting position. A blurry female…

"We need to go," she said. We? Like Stek, Fer, and Nyon needed to go… Oh, wait, could this be Stek?

"F… We… Fer… We need to wait f-for F-Fer…" Nyon gurgled, putting a hand to his head.

Fingers dug into his arms, and sharp words cleared a path through his disjointed mind. "Nyon, we need to go."

Nyon's eyes cleared enough to see that it was Stek holding him upright. Judging from the tears flowing freely from down her face, her vision was probably just as blurry as his was. But her voice was oddly stiff. "Come on. We need to go now."

Nyon dully noticed her scooping up a blue cap, though there was something different about it than the one he was used to, and he was vaguely away of her taking his hand, and then he was blindly led along, still too shaken up to notice what was really going on.

Through hallways, past large sets of doors, outside, inconceivable amounts of starlight reaching his eyes. Up sidewalks and down sidewalks, breaking out past the fence…it all was a blur to Nyon. It wasn't until they stopped moving that he began to collect himself.

Stek stood facing him, the still odd blue cap in her arms. "Fer's…. dead," Nyon said, letting the finality of the word hang in the air, though he said it as if they were going to have a casual conversation.

"I know," Stek replied after a minute had passed. Both Irkens had stood there with their eyes trained on the ground, not in a particularly awkward way, but in a way that made them standing there acceptable. Along with her reply Stek held the cap out, and pulled it back a little.

Nyon realised what was so strange about the cap. It was bloated and stained purple. It was stretched. There was something in it. His thoughts moved in a mechanical, uncomprehending way as Stek revealed that she had been carrying around Fer's severed head.

Nyon's eyes were wide, but he couldn't seem to say anything. It was as though his brain was in overload. Stek had begun to speak. Her voice was as rigid as his thoughts. Nyon couldn't hear was she was saying. There was a buzzing in his ears.

"I couldn't let them have it. They would just launch it out into space or dump it on some trash planet. Fer's thoughts… I couldn't let them have his head."

Stek had finished her speech before the words finally worked their way around Nyon's mind to the point where he could understand what she was saying. The buzzing had begun to lessen a bit as his body became less tense.

"How… No--No one saw you?"

Stek shook her head as she answered, "No one saw me."

"And… Fer's thought's are…?" Nyon was in a disjointed state again, though this one was much more surreal, somehow. Stek was holding Fer's head; it could have been a dream. But Fer did not have a relaxed, sleeping expression, as Nyon, who had never seen death, assumed it would. On the contrary, Fer's eyes were open, wide, his expression frantic. Nyon looked at the ground again, the only choice he had.

"Fer's thoughts were different from everyone else. Fer is different."

Nyon nodded. The whole situation was slowly becoming more fitting. "Thoughts that were not puppet thoughts. Thoughts that needed no outside source. Thoughts that belonged to him alone."

Stek nodded in approval. "Thoughts belonging to someone who did not become a puppet."

"What do you plan to do with him?" Nyon asked, feeling like he was floating somewhere far, far away.

Stek was holding the head close to her. "We're going to give him a burial."

Nyon repeated the word. "Burial…" It sounded strange and foreign on his lips. "…We should probably do it without puppet strings."

He grinned at Stek, who had a strange grinning expression on her face as well. "If only for a minute. When we cover him, we'll do it as ourselves."

Under a lavender sky, at the shallow base of his beloved hill, Fer's favorites buried him in the red sands of Irk, they also having removed their clothes and Paks before the hill as Fer himself had done.

BAH. You know what? I loved writing this but I just went over and read it again and I don't like it too much at all. Oh well, I'm not changing it now, I hope you like it.

ONE MORE CHAPTER! Please put up with it until the last chapter. Then we're done and you can go eat babies or whatever.