The room was dark, almost hollow, apart from the slide of the bedcovers and the broad, ironed out shapes of the furniture. Shapes Ai was accustomed to, could navigate round even in the dark, his artificial eyes easily adjusting when human ones would struggle to capture any sort of colour at all. And yet-
One night, when everything was still familiar, and when Yusaku's hands had woven themselves around him so that Ai had all too gladly returned the favour, something changed. And Ai shifted as something in the network pulled at him. It was like a voice, a bell, and it rang out, loud as a scream, against whatever part of him had the capability to form his Link Sense. And beside him, sensing it in his sleep, Yusaku shifted.
For it felt familiar. More so than any of the other objects in this room. And so Ai, for lack of a better term, listened. And then he heard it...or well, read it might be more accurate to say. Garbled and strange, it ran into him, the long-lost language of the Ignis, the data thoroughly degraded and almost illegible, several streams broadcast at once, and all clamouring for a response. The data almost didn't make sense, but Ai straightened as though it did, yanking himself out of Yusaku's arms, that were rapidly becoming a lot less wooden as he did so.
'Ai?' the voice was sleepy, only half-aware, but for once Ai's attention was firmly pulled away from it.
And it was a mark of how long he had been here, locked in this body and a facsimile of a human life that he didn't immediately ditch this long, stupid, limited SOLtiS body the way he would have done before he met Yusaku and flown back into the network without so much as a goodbye. Back when he had pitied humans for the way their limbs and height restricted them and forced them into certain shapes and positions.
Still, panic clouded him as it often did and despite his inhuman eyes, he stumbled into the desk, hands shaking as he jabbed furiously at the power switch and then furiously booted up the computer that governed the VR room's function.
And yet it said a lot that he had the patience to even do that much.
'Ai?' Yusaku's voice sounded more urgent now, the sounds of a shifting mattress and the patter of human hands scrambling to find a light switch, even more useless jargon that Ai filtered his sensors away from. Every part of him of focused on holding together the signal he was receiving.
'Ai!'
Ai blinked, the light flashed on, and then Yusaku's hands were on his, spinning him round so he could be captured by familiar green eyes.
'What's wrong?'
Oh. Honestly. He didn't have time for this! And yet, he was trembling, such a stupid, human thing to do - and it made Yusaku's eyes narrow, and his hands clamp down more firmly on his shoulders. But perhaps that touch stabilised him enough, for the next second his voice croaked out: 'I hear them, Yusaku. I can hear them, Flame, Aqua, Windy, they're calling for me.'
The look on Yusaku's face was not all reassuring. In fact he looked as though he thought Ai was about to crack and break himself. Thankfully though, he seemed to bite back whatever words he been about to push out – probably something along the lines of that's impossible, you know they're all dead - and instead, leant forward so that Ai couldn't tear his eyes away.
'Ai, what exactly are you hearing? I can't understand it myself.'
'Them, Yusaku, I hear them, the data's all jumbled together, but they're using the same communication method only the other Ignis knew about.'
Yusaku's face had turned wary as heard Ai's frantic voice, suspecting a trap that Ai was too emotional to see...or maybe he simply thought Ai had plain lost it. Which, huh. Charming.
But.
'Take me with you,' he said, without any hesitation whatsoever, though the wariness leaking through to his voice. And AI could have kissed him for it. Then he hesitated. 'I'm glad you waited,' he muttered, sharp enough as always to pick up on the fact that Ai in his own way, had hesitated for once, before running away into the network. That he had even switched on the computer for Yusaku's benefit.
Ai shook a little more, disturbed perhaps, at the fact that his attachment to Yusaku had pulled him back, had made him wait even that much. Once it wouldn't have, not at all, not if it meant helping the other Ignis. The fact that it had though...
He worried what that said about him and how he had changed, without them in his life anymore.
Ai tore through the network, Playmaker beside him. The sky was streaked with the blue blaze of the fire their boards thrust out behind them, all the usual safety checks and speed limits ruthlessly thrust aside with a careless wave of Ai's hand. Not that he wasn't keeping an eye on the fluctuating signals in case the boards accidently bucked them off; but if this was indeed a second chance , like the one anime protagonists got all the time on the television back home...well. Ai wasn't going to waste it.
Down into the recess of the net, circulating above the warn-torn landscape of the Cyberse world, he found them, his keen senses registering the half-formed blobs of blue, red, yellow, orange and green. They were caught in the gale-force winds of this world, winds that Ai had never bothered to soothe or repair, drifting and battered, lacking even the memories to force eyes into their programming or the knowledge to develop proper audio files that could transmit their thoughts into actual words. Instead they simply squeaked and screamed through the open channel that they must have triggered by sheer dumb luck.
Without a second thought, Ai charged off into the winds, ignoring whatever words Playmaker yelled at his back.
'Come to me!' he called, feeling stupid even as it did so. They couldn't understand him, not as they were. 'Come, let me catch you in my arms!'
Like a trail of breadcrumbs, he transmitted fully formed programs to them, copies of ones that were locked within himself, a hard-copy of what their own codes should look like.
And yet something in them recognised them; and they fell into his hands, crashing against each other like rocks, coming to rest in his palms. And still they flinched at him, at his human-shaped hands and grasping fingers, at his skin so alien to their own. With a squeal, they sent out sparks of tiny, half-formed anti-virus firewalls for their own protection and very nearly disintegrated Ai's arms on the spot. Gritting his teeth, and letting out a slight 'tch' of sound, he quickly rewrote a few of his protective measures, reinforcing the shape of him and sending gentle, soothing signals through the open channel he had with them.
'Ai!'
It must have looked horrible to Playmaker of course, his partner's arms nearly shattering into tiny golden particles like the last time he died – but Ai didn't have much time to reassure him.
'Stay back!' he called over his shoulder. 'They won't recognise you; they won't even know what you are, and they'll hurt you if they try.'
He pulled them closer and began feeding them more and more of the codes they should know. Eternity passed, eternity compressed within a few minutes and already the blobs were shifting, were developing heads, eyes, ones that blinked at him, like an infant facing sunlight for the first time.
And as they did so, they fired questions at him in the Ignis language Ai had never thought he'd hear again, questions that were tearing his heart in two.
Where are we?
Who am I?
What are we?
It hurts.
Someone hurt me.
My memories, my files, they're so...
Why are you so complete and we are so...
Why are you so different?
Ai froze at the tone, at the suspicion. It came from Lightning, though of course, he would not recognise the name if it were thrown back at him now. His eyes, those familiar slanted diamonds, narrowed into golden pinpricks as he tilted his head, clenched fingers and then crossed arms that at the moment resembled snakes more than they did actual limbs.
'You look...like him.'
Lightning's eyes landed on Playmaker and Ai tensed as the human language erupted into the air. Already, with the ruthless speed Lightning had been so famed for, he had torn through the codes Ai had desperately fed him, gained access to all the basic human knowledge the Lost Incident had equipped them with in order to function as humanity's successor. Ai would have limited the information if he could; the trouble was, most of it was locked up into the more critical systems of the Ignis programming that actually got them to function. That was no real way to skimp on it, not if he wanted them to behave like the people they truly were.
'But you're one of us,' Lightning continued, his voice carrying a sharp focus that seemed to be making Playmaker tense himself.
'Then why is your programming so different?' Earth piped up, his head peeking up from a pool of orange. More of him poked up, created a mound, that was rapidly hardening back into his old chest.
Ai stared at them all, and the next moment found his hands clutching air as they swam out of his grasp. They weren't fully formed, not at all, and they were missing vast chunks of the data that had formed their memories. But they were alive and Ai wanted them back so much that his hands trailed out after them instinctively, reaching out beseechingly.
None of them flinched from him. But something rang through them all, like a ripple and Ai in horror, knew that they were matching the shape of him, his facial expression, now so much more complex than their own smother Ignis ones, to all the data they had on humans, matching it up and checking it against their facial recognising software as though...as though he were a human himself.
'Hey!'
He ripped all that pretty programming from himself, tore off his hair and clothes and refitted himself back into his old Ignis body, complete with a face that couldn't kiss Yusaku and hands that couldn't cradle him properly. But now he was their size again, no longer stretching away into a giant that looked like he could crush them, so maybe they wouldn't back away from him anymore...and okay, that was a rather human way of thinking he knew and it wasn't helping.
'Look, look, I know you don't remember me, and your memories are gone, but I'm an Ignis like you! Come on, you've just used the data I sent you to rewrite your damaged programming, what more proof do you need?'
'So why did you design yourself to look like a human?' asked Flame, his strong voice breaking through gravely. And then he paused and nodded to himself as though he'd hit upon the solution. 'Ah. Because you were alone and we were not there with you.' Then he peered at Playmaker whose fists were clenched and whose brow was twisted. Not with anger, but with something else. 'Or maybe you went seeking companionship from the only other sentient life-forms out there? Understandable.'
Windy let one, now fully-formed finger curl against his chin. As though he was thinking deeply. And then let out a sly snigger.
'Hey! Don't make excuses for him! Maybe he's the one who murdered us in the first place! Think about it...he's the only one of us who was conveniently around to force-feed us the data to make ourselves all presentable again.' He twirled on the spot and oh, it was great to see him undamaged and with both eyes intact but still, he was certainly as annoying as Ai remembered. 'And look! What if he was the outcast and none of liked him and so he – get this! – ripped us apart so he could re-program us however he likes!'
Ai whipped back as though stung. 'No,' he said quietly, 'No! I would never!' If anyone were to do that, it would be Lightning, he thought viciously.
Aqua tilted her head to one side. But her pigtails weren't quite the sharp teardrop shapes they had once been. 'Yes,' she said quietly, her pink eyes glowing the way they always did when she was determined to unveil the truth. 'You never would; you're not deceiving us, I can tell.' And though she could not frown or grimace in quite the same way Ai could manage with his human face, something very close to it wavered, and crossed over her expression. 'I...know that. I can sense it. But as to why...' And her hand rose, made as though to flick against the unravelled pigtail that swung lazily from her, more like a ribbon or a flag, than it's old shape. Then it froze, and she gazed, at it, unsure.
Lightning however, held himself firmly, arms now fully functional as they crossed against his chest. 'You are different from us,' he pronounced like a judgement. 'I have done a rudimentary scan of your data; and it is different in quantity. Perhaps because you are older. Or perhaps because it has been corrupted by mingling with these other life-forms.' He did not press any scorn into his voice and in a way that was worse. 'Either way; we should not allow you to corrupt us further; not until we learn who we are for ourselves.'
They moved away from him. They drifted, separating from each other, seeking out new pathways, new data streams. And Ai hesitated, torn, not sure who to turn to, who to chase-
'Ai.'
Playmaker's hand shot out and clutched around him in a way it didn't often dare to try when he was this size, fastening tight as though to hold him back.
And Ai twisted beneath the savage bite of those fingers, ready to push himself up and out into the form Yusaku could lay and cuddle with at night, a form that apparently made his own kind suspicious of him, if only to give Yusaku a taste of his own medicine.
'Don't try and stop me, Playmaker, I-'
'Need to let them sort themselves out,' his partner said, eyes steady and firm, though not without sympathy swimming in their depths. 'I wasn't ready to seek out the truth about what happened to me in regards to the Lost Incident for years, not until I exhausted every other avenue open to me; which is why I know that if you start pushing them too hard they'll cut themselves off from you completely.'
Ai stared at him. 'So what, I should just let them go and make their own conclusions about humanity? Yeah, because that definitely can't end in disaster!'
Playmaker winced. A stranger wouldn't have been able to tell, but Ai could tell, just in the way Yusaku raised his eyes to stare at a spot above Ai's head for a second.
'We'll patrol the network. We'll-'
'-Tell the Knights of Hanoi?' Ai challenged. 'Oooooh, I can't wait for us all to be hunted down to near-extinction again!' Angrily he shrugged off Yusaku's fingers. 'Yeah, yeah, I get it, you aren't exactly thrilled that Lightning's back but-'
'-But you are,' Playmaker said in that soft, kind way of his, the way that made it sound like an actual smile was ready to seep into his voice. 'I don't know how this happened, but they're here; and it could well be that without the Knights attacking them, Lightning won't be spurred into running any simulations.'
Ai froze. 'You can't guarantee that.'
Playmaker nodded. 'You're right. But I can guarantee that I'll help you stop him if he does. Just like I did before.'
Ai shook. He could sense, more than see Playmaker reaching for him again and with a guilty flurry of rushed programming, Ai found himself stripping away his old Ignis shape, just so he could push himself back into his more human one and whirl round and sweep Playmaker up into his arms. It was a nice diversion, but not quite nice enough to ignore the harsh swirl of guilt he felt at the prospect that this shape, with hair and height and lips, now felt more comfortable than the body he had originally been formed in.
How could he blame the other Ignis for running? If he had woken up a decade ago, newly formed and found a program similar to himself dressed up as human and sharing so many mannerisms with them, he would have been suspicious too.
'Playmaker,' he said softly. 'I think they hate me. Or if they don't, they soon will. Without their memories, I'm nothing more than some stranger dressing up and pretending to be something they have every reason to fear.'
Playmaker's hands tightened against his back. 'Then we'll have to prove they have no reason to fear either of us. By giving them space.' He pushed a few stray locks from Ai's face, frowning at the terrified expression he found there. 'And I know it's not the same; but just remember; nothing you do will ever make me hate you.'
That...was a heavy promise. A promise Playmaker shouldn't strive to make, in Ai's opinion. But keep it he probably would. He already had before.
Ai sighed and for a moment pretended he didn't have to worry about the differences between humans and AI and where he fit in within that delicate balance.
Ai tried. He really did. To act normal, to act glib and unconcerned.
'Ah! Hey, hey, 'Follow the Sword' is going to be on soon, and it's getting really good, all this juicy drama where Younha found out Yuna was willing to kill himself at her brother's request if it meant she could leave her family home without any sort of retaliation-'
'Ai.'
'But that rotten shrew, just left him! He loved her sooo much and-'
'Ai!'
And Ai had hesitated at the curt sound of that raised voice. Had shook slightly, hands reaching up, ready to claw at his face.
'Ai.'
Oh, damn him. Yusaku was doing that thing, saying Ai's name in that stiff but meaningful way of his. And it reminded Ai of the way he often touched his partner, laying a hand against his head, his neck, or his hair, when Yusaku was trapped in a nightmare.
But oh, it was Ai's turn again.
'How are they alive?' he whispered, and then he found himself clutching at Yusaku's shirt, head rammed against his chest as though he was trying to bury himself inside that heart he could feel beating there, under muscles and skin he would never have.
'How are you alive?' Yusaku had countered, hands refusing to buckle and slide away from Ai's desperate body. 'I searched for any trace of your data for months; but I would never have found you if certain fragments of yourself hadn't started to accumulate and draw back together in the darker parts of the net.'
Ai's fingers had tightened. 'It's different. They were absorbed into Bohman. There was nothing to recompile!'
Yusaku was quiet a moment. 'Maybe it just took longer for Bohman's data to break down enough for the individual parts of the Ignis programming to re-emerge. I don't know. I told you once that even if we look for absolute solutions, such things don't exist.' Yusaku's hands tightened on him and he pulled back, enough for his fingers to grip Ai's chin and force it up. Green met gold, and still, Ai felt himself melt a little at the sight. His Yusaku was so strong...
'I don't think you're going to find a definite reason for why this has happened.'
Ai wondered at that. Yusaku stroked his chin and let him play the part of being a limpet strewn across him for a few more minutes before he then pushed him aside and decided not to watch 'Follow the Sword' of which Ai had managed to miss the first three minutes of. Instead he decided to do something boring, like checking the network for any disturbances and message Revolver oh-so-casually to check that he hadn't picked up on anything unusual.
Ai, meanwhile, had been left to stew in front of the television. And stew he had. And really, he should have offered his services to Yusaku; but he could see the determination in his partner's face, in his hard green eyes and the grim set of his mouth, and he just knew that Yusaku had gone into protective saviour mode. Over him, no less.
Ai was flattered really. He was an advanced AI, possessed practically god-like powers so long as he had a network to connect to, and Yusaku was acting like he was...human, in a sense.
And Ai hated that he felt some sort of conflict about that, but he did. He was saved just then, however, by a tentative prod from the distinctive digital signatures that he recognised as Flame and Aqua. Perking up, he very carefully left his body sat on Yusaku's bed and drifted out, into the small buzzing sector of cyber-space. He had already dismantled his human look completely by the time he was there and he burst in, barely restraining himself from leaping out towards the pair of them as they drifted over to him.
'You're back!' he called joyfully. 'Well, not back as in I-have-all-my-memories-back, but your bodies! You've totally formatted those beauties, one hundred percent!' He opened his arms, his eyes curving happily. 'Well done! Congratulations! I'd give you a-'
Flame's hand rose, bring Ai's ramble to a stop. Then he let out a series of digital clicks and whistles, a string of code that was not translatable in any human language.
'That,' he said finally, almost decisively in Japanese, 'was my name. But this word 'Flame', written so wonderfully in-'
Oh, thought Ai, as the nostalgia tingled away within him. Oh! That's more like it!
'-it was my name too. I found...'Aqua' and I found signals relating to trackers we had placed on these...decks we had created. And we followed them. They belonged to humans, humans whose cards had been designed by...we recognised our handiwork.'
Ai's heart dropped all the way to his clown-like Ignis feet. 'Let me guess,' he said, almost dully. 'Homura Takeru and Zaizen Aoi.' Then he narrowed his eyes. 'You didn't try to contact them, did you?'
He sounded accusing as he said it, but Flame merely gazed off into the distance as though he had asked the question gently, politely even. 'I wanted to,' he said throatily. 'To understand who I was, I wanted to. But...Earth has faults in his code. And we found a video in Zaizen's Akira's computer, of the old Earth from when he was ripped apart. And I don't want to believe that boy, who seems so bright and strong, could have anything to do with that. And he seems so happy; would appearing in front of him and asking that question ruin that? Something in me is horrified by the thought.'
And beside him Aqua shuddered, her hand closing into her fist above her chest.
'Because it was horrible,' she said quietly. 'To think that humans thought it was acceptable to do that to us. And yet, when I travelled through the files on Aoi's computer I saw that she had written little drafts, little letters saying how sorry she was that she couldn't save me and encrypted them. She even did a little audio recording of one of them, saying that she was sorry she had never thought to do one for me, and it didn't seem right that there was no record of me, or my voice, so that she could give nothing of me to the human I originated from. She even called me by this pretty name of 'Aqua.''
Pink eyes met yellow ones and Ai was surprised to see the fist on Aqua's chest visibly shaking. She had always been the calmest of them all, even when struck with rage or sorrow.
'Aqua. I like it. The sound of it flows through me, making it sound so much warmer than the title of Water Ignis. A human who would call me by such a personalised name, instead of just a title, couldn't be like the ones who killed Earth. And when I heard her voice, when I heard my name uttered by it, I experienced this certainty that she wasn't lying.'
She was silent a moment. Then: 'I don't understand,' she said. 'When someone says something, I get these feelings, from the fluctuations in their voice, that tells me if they're lying or not. I don't understand how I know it, not fully, but I do.' She stared at Ai, her eyes that same crystal-bright pink that had always seared him when she was angry and had nagged at him relentlessly. 'I understand that humans are not intrinsically bad. I accept that I must have seen some good in them, perhaps even helped them, if I let one of them use a deck I created. But I don't understand...' Her eyes narrowed and for one frightening moment she reminded Ai of Lightning.
'Tell me-' and here she let out a string of beeps, a noise Ai recognised as his old Ignis name, one he hadn't heard for far, far too long. 'Which form feels more comfortable, more right to you? The one before us now, or the human one you first met us in?'
Ai froze. He didn't have a tongue in this form, or a mouth, but still, if he did, it would have felt swollen, like it was cluttering up his mouth with its volume.
'Why don't you answer her?' Flame asked curiously.
But Ai usually so full of words, had nothing to say this time. Except, perhaps: 'I don't know.'
And it dropped from him like a stone. Nervously, he wove his fingers together. 'It's not that I want to look like a human,' he continued, 'although you have to admit, I look like a deliciously handsome one!'
He placed a hand on his chest proudly, even as they stared him blankly, their expression completely uncomprehending.
'...never mind...heh. But you're wrong. It's not about being comfortable. It's about which shape makes it possible to be with the people I love.' He shrugged. 'I don't think you'll get this, and maybe it's too soon for you to understand it, but I love a human. And if I want to be with him, the way he deserves, I need to have the same features his body does, so I can do the same things he can.'
If he had been wearing the same face he had used to kiss Yusaku that morning, he would have offered them a crooked, and rather resigned smile. And it felt strange that he couldn't, almost wrong. Perhaps he had been with Yusaku too long, become a little fond of reading his body language and exchanging looks and touches and all the other things humans did and sought comfort from, things he would have once seen no value in, or at the very least, only entertained a patronizing sort of amusement for.
Aqua stared at him. 'That's true,' she said. 'But it's not the whole truth.'
'I think,' Flame broke in steadily. 'Perhaps we should speak to Fujiki Yusaku.'
Ai's head rose from the bed, his sensors idly noticing that something had crashed through the security measures he had rigged into the door, the door that was now open to the world, sunlight slipping though to leave a broad rectangle of light on the floor. Alarmed, he immediately pushed himself to his feet and spun round, looking for Yusaku. Then he froze.
'Heya sleepy-head,' crowed a green-haired man-no-wait- a SOLtiS with a stupid wave of his hand. His green hair was not as cluttered with curls as Ai's, in fact it seemed to have been stylised, arranged as though with hair gel, to curl upwards into a delicate quiff. But the lilac eyes, too much like Zaizen's, and the grand, almost Mexican-style brown poncho he had thrown over himself, clashed with the careful presentation of the follicles above. Then again Windy always had a clash of haphazard styles – it came with his love for unpredictable gale-force storms.
Ai clenched his fists. And just to be careful, he let out a series of clicks and whispers, the true form of Windy's name escape him; he remembered how fond of the Ignis language the other had been, preferring it by far to the human one, so perhaps it would help pacify him. It certainly had Yusaku widening his eyes at him. Though to be far, they had already been fairly wide as Ai woke up – with fear.
For the hand that Windy wasn't busy waving merrily at Ai, was currently pressed against Yusaku's pale neck as though it were a deadly knife. And in some ways it was. Ai grit his teeth as he saw a few burns littering the side of his partner's neck; SOLtiS's couldn't usually discharge electricity from themselves unless they were broken. But for an Ignis, well. That wasn't much of a problem at all.
'Oh-ho!' Windy beamed at him. 'So you do remember my actual name! Thought you might have forgotten, slumming it out here with the humans!'
Ai narrowed his eyes at the phrasing.
'Took you long enough to get back here! Thanks by the way,' Windy added, as Flame and Aqua's little Ignis head reared up from Yusaku's abandoned Duel Disk like curious fish. 'For the distraction. Really helped while I hacked into the security controls of this place. More fiddly than I thought I'd be. Then again,' he added in faux thoughtfulness, gazing into the distance as though he felt genuinely wistful. 'This human has you, Sugar-Daddy, no, sorry, Digital-Daddy-Ai to help him out right? To beef up this joint?'
'Windy-' Yusaku began, only to wince as the fingers pressed a little deeper against his throat, causing a hit of spark to nibble at his throat. The white flash, the tiny pop of light and the singe of burnt flesh was enough to make him gasp out.
'STOP IT!' thundered Ai, taking a step forward, only to halt as Windy shot him a narrow glare and let a slightly bigger spark jump from finger to finger all so it could nestle its way, with a dance of light, towards Yusaku's skin, stopping short by a mere six millimetres. It frizzed there, like the twirl of light a diamond necklace could produce, as Windy hissed out, each syllable a threat: 'That. Isn't. My. Name. Human.'
Ai raised his hands. 'Look; don't do anything drastic. He's smart enough not to do it again.' His eyes found Yusaku's, which were glimmering furiously, and he was a little frightened by the anger he saw there, and the way it seemed to be eclipsing the fear. He would have to work quickly; he didn't want Yusaku doing anything stupid because of it.
'Besides,' he added tightly. 'He can't pronounce your real name. So it's a moot point. Don't act like you're an error code; you know he couldn't say it, even if he knew it.'
There was the sound of water sloshing as Aqua unfurled an arm gracefully towards Windy. 'Listen to reason; he was attempting to show you respect by calling you a name rather than just 'Ignis' or a program,' she said, her tone quickly slipping into the calm, practised one she had often employed as the sub-leader of the Ignis – but Ai didn't let his eyes flicker to hers for a second; he couldn't, he was too busy staring at Yusaku's scared and angry ones. Besides, he was furious at her and Flame both, because how dare they, how dare they bait him, tear him away from someone else who was precious to him, the same way Lightning had done when he had robbed Aqua of Miyu and Revolver of his Father and maybe, in some strange, almost indirect way, Windy of his orgin-
-but she and Flame didn't remember that. Still. The fury coursed through him.
'Drop your hand,' Flame ordered curtly, his own voice boiling with a fury somewhat similar to Ai's. 'This is appalling behaviour. Fujiki Yusaku can't escape to the net the way you can if that body you're in gets damaged.'
Windy laughed. 'Didn't seem to make a difference to the humans while they were cutting up Earth though, right? Or to me, when I ran my origin off the road.' Something passed through his eyes at that, too quick for Ai to correctly identify. It could have been rage. Sorrow. Truimph. Maybe all three.
And Ai found himself even more furious because of it. Because that, along with what he had just said meant-
'You remember?' he hissed and slowly, slowly, shifted. Just slightly. Enough to make it easier to spring forward if he needed to. 'You actually re-'
'Of course I remember!' snapped out Windy. 'I had Lightning in my head, rewriting my program into what he wanted. Then I was absorbed into Flame and then Bohman – amidst all that hassle, tortuous hassle, I may add, I found the time to stuff what memories I could into a hidden sub-routine function on Soulburner's Duel-Disk, so that there would at least be a single copy of them out there, uncorrupted and free from anyone else's meddling.' His face was agonised. 'And then when Flame starting poking around in it again, it reactivated and everything, every stinking thing, came back to me!' He glared at Ai scornfully. 'I guess it was kinda like that back-up trick you pulled.' He laughed. 'So I scoured the net, found out about your little turncoat act and all those old simulations you ran – yeah, yeah, you didn't clean those up as well as you thought, Mr Suicidal! And against all the odds you end up shacking with your old murderer. What are you, a battered housewife?'
'No!' Ai took a frantic step, and then stopped as Windy made a tutting sound, and let another flicker of light dance along his fingers.
'Oi, oi, oi, easy there. In fact let's have a little quiz. Who here has the hostage in this situation? Oh, that's right, me!' He narrowed his eyes, the purple in them suddenly looking so much deeper and darker than Zaizen's light, lilac ones. 'Stay there.'
Ai obeyed, quickly mapping out the distance between the edge of those horrible fingers and Yusaku's sweaty neck. Worse still, was the hollow tube of flesh that formed his airway, that perhaps Windy could choose to barbeque like a fish if he got bored. All those precious centimetres, no, millimetres of skin that stood between death and Yusaku's next breath, and Ai could see them all; the maths was painting a very vivid picture and he wanted it gone, erased, and Yusaku here with him, safe, on the other side of the room.
'Oh don't worry,' crooned Windy. 'I didn't actually tell Lightning any of this. Nope, not good old easy-to-brainwash me! And since you seem to have fallen under a different sort of brainwashing' – the fingers on his other hand, the one not nestled against Yusaku's neck, crept up and dug into his fringe and Ai froze, because that was worse, Yusaku's brain was housed in there. 'I figured I'd do you a favour. And cut loose this dangerous influence in your life.'
'I'll duel you!' Ai burst out desperately, sending out a small wireless transmission to the fire alarm, making it detect smoke where there was none in the kitchen. 'Let's settle this like proper programs, all logic, and no messy emotions!'
Three things happened at once. One: noise sprung out into the air, noise Windy was not prepared to hear, not with the new delicate sensors that were ingrained within the new SOLtiS body. Ai knew this because it had taken him nearly an hour to adapt the first time he had entered an upgraded one. And Two: Ai's hand detached itself from his body, springing out like a jack-in-the-box to smack Windy on the face.
And of course Number Three was Yusaku himself. Yusaku, who looked like a feeble hacker, but still had rather sharp reflexes, and who, even though he had been surprised by the fire alarm, wasted no time in sharply jerking his head back and head-butting Windy in the face alongside Ai's detached hand.
Said hand was already reeling itself in along the thin wire it was attached to, as Ai rang forward to seize Yusaku and pull him away. He spared a second to inspect the neck, to indentify the burns as non—life-threatening wounds, and then he practically pounced on Windy, sparks firing off against the other SOLtiS's skin from his fingers, crashing into the other Ignis's programming with a harsh rapid-fire onslaught of his own algorithms.
'You dare,' he growled, as Windy fought back frantically, pulling together his own digital counter-measures. 'Threaten my partner? Try to do to him what you did to yours? It won't happen. You won't touch him.'
Nothing, not a simulation, not even himself, that Ai had sworn long ago. And yet...
'Ai, Ai!'
Yusaku was pulling at his shoulder, yanking him back, and even Aqua and Flame were calling to him too, horror in their voices and worse still, for a moment Ai didn't care. But he cared when Yusaku, stupid Yusaku, seized his head and forcefully turned it to look him straight in the eyes.
'Don't,' his partner told him, that stupid, brave, reckless idiot, even through the burns blazed from his neck, drawing Ai's sight to them. They were enough to get the sparks to stop falling from his fingers. And then he looked, properly looked at the snivelling Windy, at the way he had crumpled, curled into himself, the SOLtiS body jerking slightly, trapped in a spell of programs Ai had thrust into him angrily.
Some impulse then, some need for reassurance, made Ai turn his head, only to register the way Aqua and Flame were staring at him, their own eyes widened with horror. And he realised just how he must appear. A program so similar to them, but so different too, who had only advanced and evolved while they were still gradually pulling themselves together, who was now in some ways, more powerful than them.
Could he kill them as he was now? Yes. Maybe. He was worse than Bohman...
Horrified, Ai fell back, away. And Yusaku's arms came up round him in an instant.
'Ai,' he said, the way he always did.
And Ai turned to look at him. There was no horror in those eyes. Just sympathy.
Ai swallowed. Then his hand, the one sparks had been flying from, reached up to push gentle fingers against the spots of red on his partner's neck, as though he could magically sweep them up and stuff them away beneath his skin. And Yusaku didn't recoil from the touch, though he had every right to. He merely winced slightly, at the slight sting of contact.
'Yusaku...'
'I know.'
But they don't, Ai thought as he hesitantly turned back to Aqua and Flame. And they might never do again. All they know now is to fear me.
But perhaps he had underestimated them. Because...
'Ai?' asked Aqua, her voice only a little unsteady with the questioning tone. 'That's the name you have here, in the human world, correct? So tell me, do you prefer it to the one you had as an Ignis, as one of us?'
Ah, thought Ai. What a loaded question. A priceless one, really.
He tried not to flinch from her gaze, he really did. But Aqua still had a hold on him, just like the bossy older sister human males were always cringing at in drama shows had, and so he found himself curling into Yusaku slightly as he told her: 'Yes. Yes, I love it.'
Inexplicably, something in Aqua relaxed. 'I see,' she said softly.
'So do I.'
Ai froze again. Then turned his head, shuffling slightly so that he was between Yusaku and the new SOLtiS at the door.
'I think,' said Lightning, his voice so smooth and deceptively unruffled as he stood, like royalty, with dark, Bohman-like skin, golden hair, and narrow eyes, even brighter than Ai's own ones, how unfair. 'That we should discuss a truce.'
It was strange to see three Ignis heads peering out of a duel Disk which probably felt quite stuffy for them.
'Just steal some SOLtiS bodies,' Windy grumbled, from where he was slumped on the floor, limbs deactivated by a program Ai had cobbled together. 'Then it won't feel so cramped.'
Yusaku raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'I'd rather not have a repeat of what happened here, thanks.'
Flame puffed his chest up indignantly. 'We are not going to murder anyone. Not all of us are unhinged.'
'No,' agreed Lightning. He was sitting neatly on the end of the bed, all prim and proper, expertly fitted in a white suit. How he was keeping it so clean, Ai had no idea. 'But having six AI in the real world, in unregistered SOLtiS bodies that don't conform to any regulations and won't willingly obey the command of any human who orders them to do something is going to set off a panic. Humans may not understand what we are. But they will certainly fear the lack of control they have over us.' He turned a level look over to Ai, arms crossed. 'Though I imagine you reached that same conclusion when you viewed that simulation I had left behind for you.' He hesitated at Ai's glare. 'I don't remember doing so. Or what led me to arriving at such conclusions. But I doubt I arrived at them easily.'
Ai sighed. A rather human thing to do and he could felt Lightning and Windy judge him for it as they stared at him a little too hard in response. 'No,' he said, voice falling to a gruff whisper. 'No, you didn't. I think it drove you near madness running simulation after simulation and finding only disaster.'
A feeling he could relate too all too well, especially with Yusaku's eyes now boring into him as well.
Windy blew out a wet raspberry sound and unfairly enough, Lightning's eyes didn't so much as flick to him. 'Oh well, I guess we should all give up and die then.'
'No,' Yusaku cut in sharply, staring him down. 'As far as I can tell, I'm the only human who knows you're all alive; which means you have the opportunity to hide away. The Knights of Hanoi only managed to attack the Cyberse World because they knew to look for you in the first place. They don't have that knowledge anymore. There's no reason for them to seek out something they don't believe exists.'
'What of the new AI, Pandor?' Lightning asked, his eyes resting on Yusaku. There was a calm, speculative glint to them that Ai didn't trust, not one bit. 'She has capabilities rivalling our own. She could find us one day.'
'She cares about other AI,' Ai broke in quietly. 'When I duelled her, she kept trying to talk me down, to find loopholes in her own programming that would allow me to survive. She can't turn against humans, and as long as you don't do the same, I don't think she'll turn on you either.'
'You have a chance,' Yusaku said harshly. It was cute the way he was leaning forward, a plaster now stuck against his throat like a little collar, all of him intense. 'A chance to rebuild a new world, far away from any human. You can live just as you did before; so long as you don't try hurting anyone.' His eyes rested meaningfully, on Windy and Lightning both.
Lightning laughed. It wasn't quite as maniacal as it had once been and Ai found himself glad of that. 'You'll stop us, I suppose, if we do? And what of the one you call Ai? Will he join us, or will he gamble with his existence by remaining by your side?'
Yusaku's face remained carefully blank. 'Ai is his own person. He can decide whether he stays or goes.'
'This is not logical,' Earth broke in. 'The Wind Ignis attempted to do you irreplaceable harm. And you would just let him go?'
Yusaku crossed his arms. 'It's not for his sake,' he said tightly. 'And it's not even for any of the rest of you. I prefer you all alive, but not if it comes at the expense of humanity.' His eyes rested on Ai for a moment.
'Ah,' said Lightning, as though he relished the sound of his voice. 'Naturally. You're invested in a relationship that's doomed to failure. And there certainly isn't room for that where we're going.' He clapped his hands together lightly. 'So then; an experiment. If we can live in peace, without interference from humanity, then we will have no need for a counter-strike. But if we are attacked...' he let his voice trail off.
Windy snorted. 'Oh, this ought to be good.'
'Why are you still such a psycho anyway?' Ai asked. 'You were always a bit unbalanced, but now you remember everything, including how you used to be!'
Windy stared at him. 'Oh? If it's so easy, to revert back to someone you used to be in the past, then why don't you go back to being who or what you used to be before you wound up as a glorified sex-bot for a human?'
Ai's mouth opened in outrage. Yusaku glared. And Windy screeched as a long blue tendril snaked through the air and wacked him on the head, exactly where Yusaku and Ai had both hit him before.
'That's enough,' said Aqua, an icy chill spreading throughout her voice as the tendril curved its way back into her body. 'We're going to go now and live. And we're going to let others live too, exactly how they please.'
'Unless they try to cut us up,' Earth stated stoutly. He sounded almost petulant about it.
'Yes,' said Aqua, patting him on the hand. 'That.' She looked at Ai. 'You can join us if you wish; we'll always leave a channel open for you to communicate with us.'
'Speak for yourself,' muttered Windy.
And then with five separate blips of electricity they vanished, the SOLtiS housing Lightning and Windy automatically slumping over, the newfound glint of the metallic bodies beneath now clearly displaying the new vacancies within.
Ai snorted. 'Nice. They left a mess for us to clear up.' He stood up; if he had been a human his heart would have been racing. Sadly, or perhaps luckily he didn't have one. Instead he strode over to the one of the empty SOLtiS and glared down at it, hand on his hip. 'Now I have to find a way to dispose of these things and-'
'Ai.'
Ai froze at Yusaku's voice. Then he lifted his head up.
'Are you okay with this?' his partner asked, eyes fixed on him.
Ai closed his eyes. 'They don't really know me now,' he managed. 'Apart from Windy, and he and I never fully understand each other in the first place. Even less now.' He laughed, a wretched angry sound and could hardly bear it when he opened his eyes and saw the way Yusaku looked at him, with pity in his gaze.
'I'm happy they're alive, so, so happy. I feel my heart could burst! And I want to get to know them again, but I want them to want that too, and I'm not sure they do; they look at me like I'm a deserter or a traitor, something different from them, and I guess it was always a little like that when I was the lazy rebel, but at least they knew me then.' He shrugged. 'Still the good thing is that none of us can die of old age. I literally have eternity to catch up with them.'
Yusaku stepped towards him. And Ai was so weak, he crashed into him, suddenly wanting all of him, the warm space of his body, the arms that would wind over him as though he wasn't something that could easily end the world.
'I'm sorry Windy hurt you,' he said thickly. 'And thank you; thank you for stopping me, even if perhaps in the future it will turn out that you shouldn't have.'
'Of course I did,' Yusaku said warmly. 'I could have lived with his death; but I know you couldn't have. Not again.'
Ai hugged him tighter. He didn't have any answers, no 'absolute solutions' as Yusaku would have put it. He only had himself and what his heart wanted.
He wanted this right now. And a million and one other chances. But he would settle for this one first, and all the others later.
Was it something a human would have chosen? Maybe? Certainly not your average AI.
This one had though. Him. Ai.
'I love you,' he said thickly, the truth of it settling inside his code. And something he was determined, never to be overwritten.
The rest would come later.
It came sooner than he thought. A week later, while Yusaku was at school, he received an invitation. Though he was a little surprised to realise it came from Earth.
Still, hungry with anticipation, he followed the co-ordinates Earth had sent, finding himself bouncing around various networks before one data-stream, hidden beneath a few protective layers came into view. Curiously, Ai connected with it. And immediately burst into tears.
Just...the wealth of hard data that poured into him was staggering. And so familiar. Like a river it poured out, shaping monsters, re-writing ones and zeros into flowers and trees and grass...desperately Ai flicked a few stray tears with his hand and dived down, hastily ridding himself of his humanoid shape. When he sprang out, the next second, into a world with a vibrant blue sky, with some very familiar Ignis towers and grass and valleys as far as the eye could see, or an Ignis could sense anyway, he was small and black but still very, very handsome.
And gratified to find he could move freely. No one had bothered to enforced the hard-set 'gravity' that had plagued enough sectors of the Cyberse World for Ai to require Linkuriboh to act as transportation. So he floated out, over rivers and meadows...and then paused.
The old Cyberse World had, at its center been split six-ways, each Ignis tower given its own partition to rule over. But here the Ignis tower were floating, drifting like leaves, with nothing to connect them to one another. The was no set space for them to govern over, each jostling and moving into the shadows of each other.
Ai wasn't sure how to feel about it.
'You're here.'
Ai turned. Earth was staring at him, sitting on the shoulder of a golumn-like gray monster, it's form wet, as though it had been slicked over by a stream of rain, or else had been moulded from freshly-wrought clay. And it was also a monster Ai had never seen before.
He couldn't raise an eyebrow in this form. But he still felt one eye widen as though he had.
'Huh. You guys have been busy.'
Perhaps there was a little bitterness present in his tone as Earth stared at him quite levelly and then said, 'we cannot put our lives on hold for you, Ai. Especially when you had already created one free of us.'
'I never wanted to!' Ai flung himself down, onto the other monster's spare shoulder, glaring out at Earth from behind its neck. 'You were dead and I couldn't bring you back! Hell, I even tried dying myself; I'm sure Windy told you aaallll about that!'
'No,' said Earth quietly. 'Your human partner did.'
Ai stiffened. 'What,' he said lowly.
Earth cast his blue gaze on him. It was not gentle. But it was not malicious the way Windy, or even Lightning's might have been, either. 'I contacted him a few days ago. I do not know you. But he does. And given that Fujiki Yusaku has seen your evolution first hand, and that he is the only human who knows of our existence, I thought he might offer up a perspective I could not see myself.'
'What,' says Ai thickly, 'does that have to do with me dying?'
'Because unlike us, you chose to die,' Earth said, his gaze now locked against the blades of grass, rippling beneath a light wind. 'You chose a human life above your own; I did not ask for the story. I merely asked your partner if he thought you would be happier in his world with him, than you would be with us.' A light, rosy blush scattered itself over Earth's face. 'You see, I have no memories before my death. But when I look at Aqua, I get this tightness in my chest; like a monster has clawed its way inside. There is no logic behind it, but already I care for her more than I do for the other Ignis.' Earth looked back at him. 'So I wanted to understand his feelings, this human who would not seek vengeance against the Wind Ignis, because he knew it would hurt you. So that maybe I could understand my own.'
Ai was quiet, fingers sinking deeply into the clay-like structure. Then he forced himself to brighten. 'Good luck,' he said with a chortle. 'I'll be cheering for you both! Ah, what a nice love story, the star-struck Earth Ignis crushing on-'
Earth's eyes narrowed. 'Are you always this flippant? Maybe that is why you fell for a human – their attention spans are much lesser than our own. And yours seems to mirror this.'
'Hey!' Ai shook his fist at him. 'Look, being 'socially awkward' is no reason to be rude!'
Earth stared at him, baffled. 'I am not socially awkward. I have not been in enough situations that would be deemed 'social' to say for sure.'
Ai's fist fell. Just like his stomach. The feeling inside him, as Earth's words hit him, was deep, and hollow, producing a steadily growing hole that gnawed at the place where his heart should be. This whole interaction was just another reminder that things wouldn't be the same, not ever again.
'But perhaps it does not matter,' Earth said. 'What I feel for Aqua, is not the same as what he feels for you presently. It has not had the time to grow to that level of affection. He told me what you had done, to ensure his survival, I think to display to me, that yes, you are happy with him now. And as a warning, I think, to not take that away from you.' Earth paused. 'Though I got that impression from his closed-off body language, rather than the words he said.'
Ai stared off at the clouds, their bright white forms billowing across the artificial sky like the wavering lines of a dress in the wind.
'Is this why you brought me here?' he asked finally, voice subdued, as his hands came together in his lap. 'To take a message back to Yusaku? Warning received; we won't hurt Ai, even if he seems less like an Ignis and more human than us?'
'No,' said Earth and Ai dared to take another look at him. And was shocked to see that those blue eyes were open and unafraid. 'To tell you that even if Lightning and Windy have their reservations, that you have the right to come here. You fought to protect us and our old home; why shouldn't you have the right to partake in this one?' He leaned over enough for him to nudge Ai's shoulder with his fist. 'They did not think you should know where we are. But to me, that is wrong. So I invited you here without telling them.'
Ai gazed at him, eyes wide.
'You can even invite your human partner back here,' Earth continued. 'I would not mind; perhaps hearing from a human viewpoint would prevent us from making the same mistakes as before.'
Ai stared at him some more. And then promptly flung himself across the back of the golem's neck, right into Earth's chest. The force of the impact knocked them both clear off the monster's shoulders, but Ai kept his arms fastened tightly across Earth's broad chest, as they fell all the way down to the ground. Kept him locked in his arms as they rolled over and over, into the grass, twisting free of the blades before they came to a stop. And then, like an idiot, he started to cry.
Earth stared up at the sky blankly, even as the tears from the other Ignis dripped down onto his chest and ran off his sides into the waiting grass.
'...Maybe I am socially awkward after all.'
Ai was in a cheerful mood as he resurfaced from the Duel-Disk. 'Ta-da!' he spread out his small black arms, registering the quiet relief in Yusaku's eyes before it was blinked away. 'Did you miss me?'
'Sure,' said Yusaku in that easy way of his – though once upon a time, a simple admission like that would have been impossible to pull out of him.
Ai giggled and brought his fists up to his face, bobbing up and down from within the small, black, circular globe of glass. And Yusaku tilted his head, smiling a little in response. 'What are you so excited about? It can't be a soap opera; you wouldn't have been able to shut up about it otherwise.'
Ai tilted forward, leaning out with an expectant air. 'It's a surpri-AI-se! One not fit for human eyes.' Then he raised a finger. 'Buuuut I'll make an exception for my cute Yusaku-chan!'
Yusaku frowned at him; not quite worried, but close to it. But he still followed Ai into the network at his request. Well. After Ai had begged him for about five minutes. Because homework? Homework could wait.
'Well?' Ai spun, his cape drifting out to cast a wide, circular shadow in the grass. 'What do you think? Pretty, right?' He threw his arms out, to encompass the sky, and the towers overhead; and even the gushing streams that split out of a small forest nearby. 'You never got to see the original Cyberse world the first time round, right? Well here it is, 2.0, now for your viewing pleasure!' Ai grinned. It was strange, looking at it in his human form; the other Ignis had designed a lot of the trees to be more level to their height and it was kind of like he was now a giant in this new world they had made. But he didn't think he should be ashamed to walk around here in this form. It was as much a part of him now as his original Ignis shape. 'What a feast for the eyes!'
Yusaku, locked in his Playmaker guise, looked at him from beneath a tree, smiling softly. 'Yes. It is.'
Ai scowled. 'You know I would feel better if you were actually looking at the rest of it, rather than just me.'
Yusaku's smile widened and a spark of delight shone in those green eyes, shadows from the leaves overhead dappling them slightly. 'Oh? It's not like you to brush aside praise like that.'
Ai shrugged. And tried not to flush too heavily. 'Yeah, well, they worked really hard on it so...'
'And are you thinking of joining them?'
Ai startled. Gazed back at Yusaku, who now had a straight line drawn across his face in place of the soft smile that had been there before.
Ai grimaced. Then walked over to Yusaku and practically flopped onto him, in a similar fashion that he had done to Earth. With a grunt, Playmaker went down beneath him and Ai snuggled into his chest with a warm smile.
'Give me a lap pillow and I'll tell you.'
Yusaku sighed. 'Ai...'
'Gah! Fine.' Ai propped his chin up on Yusaku's chest and glared down at him. 'No. Alright? I mean, I might pop in to add my own flairs and touches to the places, more than I did last time, but I still don't feel welcome here exactly. And...I can't go back to who and what I was before I met you properly. Who I am now? Is not the same Ignis who couldn't think of anything other than playing around in the Cyberse World, and whose only worry was when Aqua would decide to yell at him again.'
Yusaku didn't need to technically breathe as Playmaker; it was just a subconscious habit all humans possessed in the virtual world. But a tiny breath still eased it's way out of him anyway, one that sounded a lot like relief, and Ai felt it from all the way beneath his chin.
'I didn't realise taking a hostage would be a lifetime commitment.'
Ai grinned down at him. 'Think of it as lucking out! You should praise me some more.'
Yusaku gave him a look and then rolled him off his chest. Gently. But undeterred, Ai simply thumped his head back into Yusaku's lap as his partner started to get up. 'C'mon, don't be so cold! I know you love me!' The grin on his face faded. 'Else you wouldn't have hesitated to tell Takeru about Flame. Or Aoi about Aqua.'
Playmaker frowned down at him. 'That should be Flame and Aqua's decision. Although I suppose it would a lie, if I said it would never bother me if they didn't. But I understand why it might be necessary.'
Ai rubbed his cheek against Yusaku's thigh shamelessly, then snuggled further into his lap, trying to get comfortable. 'Ah. Yes, yes, that's the spot!' Then he titled his head, gazed up at Playmaker's oh-so-handsome face. 'Eh, I get what you mean. It doesn't change the fact that you're prioritising me and my feelings above your human friends.'
Yusaku frowned down at him. 'I just said I was respecting Flame and Aqua's.'
Ai laughed lowly to himself. No, he thought to himself, as he tilted his head to kiss the green and black hand that had drifted a little too close to his hair. I mean, yes, you are doing that. But you're respecting mine more; after all you care more about Takeru and Aoi than you do about Flame and Aqua. And that's fine, that's human nature. But you've chosen me and my need to keep all these potentially world-destroying Ignis safe above all that.
You love me so much. More than I once thought possible for a human to do.
Ai closed his eyes. Felt Playmaker's hand relax against his lips.
'Think what you want. But just know that I love you even more, because of it,' he said softly.
Yusaku didn't say anything. But perhaps the way he leant down to close both sets of arms over Ai's head in a makeshift hug was answer enough.
Notes: This is over 10, 000 words long...I'm so sorry.
Fucking Windy though. I consider him to be the most screwed over all the Ignis, stripped even of the thing that was meant to make them so unique, the free will that Lightning sought to twist in his favour so he wouldn't be alone in his goals. I mean, I guess he still had free will, technically, it's just he may have chosen to exercise it differently, had Lightning not screwed with his programming.
So I feel it's fitting, in a poetic sense, that here he gets to remember eveything while the others don't. But like Ai, he can't go back to who he was formerly because of it.
And I find that idea fastinating that even if canonically one day a miracle gets worked (oh, who am I kidding, lol) given Ai's development in season three, he's not going to be quite the same again, even with the other Ignis present. And I imagine there might be some mental discontent there, an idea that he might have felt that he grew into someone new, someone who couldn't stop himself changing, even marked by their loss, and that he's betrayed not only them, but himself as an Ignis by doing so.
i was definitely a lot more human by the end of the series than he was at the beginning, when quite a few elements of human behavour baffled him. And I imagine that the re-set versions of the Ignis would find it incrediably scary to come face-to-face to him as he was by that point.