A very belated giftfic for NHOrus. Wow, I'm way behind on these. I mean, I have no control over what I write anymore and have to hope my brain is in an accommodating mood, but ten?! Hoping that I'll be in a less brain-frying situation before the end of June, though.

The Mother Elf wasn't exactly a judge of human appearances. Compared to the range in shapes and colors available to reploids, humans tended to look basically alike. If it weren't for facial recognition software, the way humans didn't wear the same colors of clothing from one day to the next unless it was a uniform (which obviously wouldn't be any help telling two humans apart) would have caused some serious problems.

So Aurora Elpis had no idea to what extent Ciel, a biological descendant of her creator, looked like that creator. Yes, they looked alike from the viewpoint of a member of a different species, but did they look similar by human standards or not?

Ciel looked more like Arciel than she looked like Weil, but was that because Arciel's descendants had removed Weil's genes from their bloodline or was it because Ciel and Arciel shared the same physical build type while Weil was a different sex?

Arciel's hair was light brown, not blonde, so according to what reploids looked for to tell individuals apart, Ciel looked more like Omega than she did Arciel. Since Aurora was inside Omega's body, for now, that meant she looked like her… something-niece?

The fact Omega's armor was partially red while Ciel's skin was partially red with sunburn didn't quite help. Omega was Grandfather's creation, so looking like him would make Ciel like Grandfather, not like Arciel.

Changing Omega's body, the body Aurora currently inhabited, so it wasn't recognizable as Omega or Zero would make Aurora look less like Ciel, then. The white labcoat, however?

Aurora wasn't sure if she wanted her… grand-niece? To look like her mother. Family was, was dangerous.

Her father, Weil, went mad and… Her mind flinched back from thinking about what he'd done to and with her.

Her grandfather had seemed kind. Well, maybe not seemed kind. Seemed like family. Seemed like a scientist, and therefore like Arciel and X, even if Weil was also a scientist. Seemed like Arciel when she was cranky and not making an effort to not strike out at people.

Everyone had just assumed that Ciel was the one who was going to check Aurora over and work on her. There weren't many other scientists of Ciel's caliber, and she was already briefed on what was going on. Fefnir and his family weren't going to spread truths around unnecessarily, not when that was so much of what produced Weil's madness.

Aurora was afraid. Of Ciel.

Even if she was in control now and not Omega, to be in this body, in the grasp of a scientist…

Family wasn't a comfort, not the way Fefnir assumed. Family was dangerous. She'd thought that grandfather wasn't going to hurt her, even if he wasn't interested in helping X's family, but… dangerous.

She wished this worktable was against a wall, so she could sit with her back to it instead of having to watch Ciel walk all around it, checking various readouts. The cyber-elf lazily circling Ciel might have felt reassuring – one of her own kind – if it weren't for the war. When cyber-elves, when she drove their reploid partners mad, and it was no longer a good sign, to see someone with a cyber-elf friend.

At least it was a sign that Ciel was in danger, and not dangerous.

At least Ciel didn't seem to notice that Aurora was nervous. If she stopped what she was doing to reassure the Mother Elf, this would take longer.

Humming.

That was like Arciel, and like Grandfather.

Puttering around. If she thought of it that way instead of a very intelligent shark mechaniloid circling, then it was like home, like before.

"Um," said the superscientist who had found a way to imprison Grandfather. One that still seemed to be working.

"Yes?" Aurora responded, after a pause to see if Ciel would continue. And another few seconds while Aurora decided whether or not responding was the best course, but from the way Ciel's hands were fidgeting, this wasn't something that would be forgotten about that easily.

"I shouldn't ask you about anything that happened," Ciel clearly knew, looking to the side guiltily. "But we're related so, if there's anything else I can do to help – I mean of course," she said, eyes meeting Aurora's. Of course she'd help a member of her family. Or would she help anyone? "My mother died when I was four, so I was raised in the creche. There was a problem with her genes, so she became a geneticist to try to fix it but she couldn't do it fast enough. It wasn't because of the genemods, except that she had two copies of the same chromosome and there's a lot of human upgrades that are great if you have one copy of them, but if you have two copies and don't have a copy of the baseline gene without the upgrade, then your body doesn't have the programming to do what the original gene was supposed to do. That's part of why it's really important for humans to have as many different genes as possible, but, um…. I'm sorry," she apologized. "I'm wandering off-topic again. Reploid and cyber-elf design are different, because if you put two different sets of programming into a reploid you'll end up with two reploids in the same body, which would be mean, and a cyber-elf probably wouldn't be viable. But, um, most of my family's programming – genes – comes from Arciel, so…" She looked embarrassed, but it was hard to tell if her face was flushed or not, under the sunburn.

"…You want to know what Arciel was like so you'll know how you will turn out?" Oh, Aurora realized, remembering what happened to her mother.

Maybe Ciel really was someone she should be scared for.

"No." That wasn't it. "My mother. If she lived longer. What was Arciel like when she was your mother…" Ciel's hands rose up to cover her cheeks. "I'm so sorry! I shouldn't remind you of things, or make you think of them!"

It felt like it should have taken longer for Ciel to run out of the lab, with all the valuable equipment arranged throughout the room, but it seemed to take her only an instant to clear the doorway.

The two cyber-elves left behind stared after her.

"It's changed," he said, looking around them in a way that might have seemed casual if it weren't for the charged buster. The armor he was wearing wasn't his normal armor either, but she could feel the energies of the buster.

"You've been here before?" she asked, circling his head.

X raised a hand to block her path, but not abruptly. "I have other visual sensors, but this place is… strange. Try not to fly right in front of my eyes while we're here, please. I'm worried I might not be able to protect you."

Well, of course he was, she thought. Arciel and Weil worried about her because they made her, so they were her parents. They said that X was the parent of lots of people, so of course he was going to worry.

She ignored the statement of the obvious, except it reminded her not to float too far away.

There were glowy things, but different glowy things. Red and purple and black.

"I think I have been here before," he told her, answering her question even if he was still questioning this place and his memories. "It might just be that there was a mass of the virus during the Eurasia Incident and the clean-up, but losing Sigma…" X shook his head to clear his thoughts and scanned the area again. "Let's get back to the real world first," he said lightly, turning back to her. "We should make sure that we can get back, before we do anything else. Otherwise, they'll be worried about us."

At the time, she thought he was just talking about her parents worrying about her, but with Zero sealed and Axl not-quite-trusted because of Lumine and Redips both turning traitor? Yes, everyone would be very worried if the only immune person vanished with something based on Zero and couldn't get back.

X stiffened a fraction of an instant before she heard the voice. "Leaving so soon?"

X turned slowly, and his eyes narrowed. "Ah," he said, and closed his eyes for a moment. When they reopened they seemed brighter, (mask donned, she knew now) and he smiled at her. "Aurora, I'd like you to meet your grandfather."

The old man sputtered. "Grandfather?" he demanded.

"She is code of Zero's code," X nudged, as though he was reminding the old man with his wings of hair of something he really should know already.

"This knockoff, my granddaughter?" the scientist fumed, putting gnarled hands on hips hidden by a labcoat.

"Isn't she?" X asked. His voice seemed light and mild, but there was something in it that reminded Aurora of Arciel when she was surrounded by idiots, even if X was hoping that this person would stop being stupid if pushed into thinking while Arciel would have gone right to the cutting words. "You had a great many children, many of them adopted, and I'm told you were fond of all of them in your own way. I'd have thought that you'd be happy to finally meet your first grandchild."

The old man's (her grandfather's?) eyes narrowed. "I know what you're doing," he growled.

"Am I wrong?" X asked.

The android smiled. The old man grumbled and folded his arms, finally looking away and letting out an extremely disgruntled sigh, conceding the point.

X touched the charged buster shot he was holding with his other hand. It absorbed the energy, silencing the whine of the held charge. He separated his hands again.

A grey eyebrow rose, eyeing the megabuster X had just turned back into a hand. "I should take her with me, then. Upgrade her into something less pathetic and set her up to become Queen of the World."

"I think you mean what's left of it…" X said, a corner of his mouth turning up. "Zero hasn't even gotten to meet her yet. For a parent to have to… fight their children is a very painful thing." He was smiling now, but it was a sad one. "I would know. Is that really what you wanted for Zero?

If X had disarmed, things must be safe now. Aurora was used to people talking about the wars. Her parents had told her not to listen since they didn't want her to feel bad about not being ready yet, so she was dutifully mostly tuning the conversation out, since they were talking about fighting.

She could feel that both of them were watching her, and since she had supervision she could explore a bit. X would tell her if she went too far.

"He's fought his brothers cheerfully enough."

"You know it's not the same thing," X said, with that same tone of 'You know I'm right. You know this already.' No triumph or mockery in it, just a patient reminder.

"Children and everyone else? It's true, but if you knew it, why are you killing reploids for humans?"

"I fight for everyone's sake," X said calmly. "Everyone includes reploids. I have all my family's data on the situation in 20XX, but in 21XX, it was never humans against reploids. Perhaps it would have been, if you hadn't created that virus. Perhaps I would have had to face the consequences of releasing plans that made sure that every reploid built in the first five years, when the reploid population was small enough to be controllable, had a megabuster or other weapon. My father wanted me to be able to defend myself, even if that meant I posed a threat to the world. I wanted the same for my children, and I was willing to accept the consequences. But the virus… I couldn't give them a weapon to defend against it. So, for their sakes, I had to become that weapon."

"Did you hear that, knockoff?" The old man laughed. "You're a weapon to him. Just like your father."

Back then, she had no idea what it meant, to be a weapon.

Back then, she'd spread her wings proudly, showing off her ability to generate and control energy. "I'm the best. I'm going to beat the virus and no one will fight anymore." She'd fix all the mavericks and nobody else would dare.

"Aaargh. The knockoff thinks she's dynamite." Her grandfather's palm hit his forehead. "The weapon to end all wars, now… The idiots who made you must be as delusional as Alfred Nobel. They won't let you stop fighting. There will always be something they want you to kill." A snort. "Telling you that you can defeat my virus…"

"She doesn't need to defeat your virus," X said, and that made her turn towards him and flicker in place of blinking. "Your granddaughter is a child: I don't want her to have to fight Zero. Zero needs her help."

"My creation doesn't need the help of some knockoff, even if it is based on my technology."

"You must know," X said sadly. "How much it hurts Zero to-"

"It doesn't," he interrupted. "I made sure of it."

Once again, Aurora's younger self had lost track of what they were talking about, but hadn't really cared. It was just grown-ups talking grown-up things that would take very long, boring explanations for her to understand. Very boring, especially when there was virus right there.

Before she could get close enough to try to cure it, X's hands were around her, yanking her back. She squeaked. "Careful now," he said.

"It's only a little virus! I can do that all by myself!"

"That doesn't mean you should."

"You're admitting she shouldn't cure my virus?" Grandfather interrupted.

"You need to be careful, Aurora," X told her, lifting her up to his eyes and seemingly ignoring the old man. "A lot of people are counting on you. If you can cure the mavericks, then so many people won't have to die. It's one thing to risk your own life, but think of how many people need your help. Including your father."

"Ah, so you do want her to destroy the virus within Zero. Haven't you figured it out yet? Zero is the virus! He trusts you, the fool, and you're going to kill him while he sleeps!"

"No," X said, lowering Aurora. "I trust Zero to win against the virus within him. What I'm afraid of is that he'll kill himself instead of change himself."

Apparently-grandfather glared, but it wasn't really a scary glare. Maybe Aurora was just used to her mother glaring at stupid people.

"No," X said, as though he was agreeing even though he'd said the word no. "That wouldn't be for the best. I'm glad you still love him, no matter what you think of his life choices."

"It's all your fault. You're the one who tampered with his systems in the first place!"

She felt a slight shudder in X's hands, even if his voice remained calm as he said, "Perhaps." That was like dad, not Zero but actual-dad, who was jittery sometimes but rarely shouted at people or acted jittery because mother would pick up that he was being jittery and start shouting at people well before he had to do more than bite his lip. So he was able to be good cop and try to calm mother down instead of feeling like he was the reason there was shouting or having people be angry at him. Mother enjoyed being angry, but it bothered dad. Everyone said that X was a really nice person, so he probably didn't show that he was angry or upset much either.

Back then, she'd wondered if Zero was like mother, only with stabbing mavericks instead of yelling at people, before X had to get upset enough to be vicious, and thought that Zero was asleep instead of there to yell at people.

She hadn't thought of either of them in terms of fragility. Not when X was a hero and dad was dad and said no to mother a lot, which was a very scary thing to do. They were adults, so she'd thought patient, and the impatient people beat them to acting angry.

Patient. Not brittle.

No. X was worn down, worn thin, but not brittle even now. Or maybe he was, but that was why he'd withdrawn from Neo Arcadia. X considered himself already broken, but no.

She'd seen what happened to her… to Weil. That was not X, that would never be X.

"You're just being mean!" she said back then, slipping out of X's hands to dash in front of the man's face, not hitting him but coming close enough fast enough to cause a reflexive flinch before darting away again. "Don't be mean," she said, straightening out her wings (once again not quite hitting him). "We're doing an important experiment." Go be silly and mean somewhere else, science deserves better.

It drew a laugh from X, or at least a chuckle, kind and fond. People had very different laughs: with X it was almost impossible to think that he was laughing at you, or being unkind, even if from the grandfather's glower he was trying. "You take after your mother," he told Aurora first, so she didn't think he was laughing because of anything embarrassing. "You should… It would be interesting if you met Aurora's mother, you have a lot in common."

"I, the great…" he paused. "I have anything in common with a maker of knockoffs?"

"Grumpy labcoat person," Aurora said, and with the matter settled landed on his head, in between the hair tufts.

X's eyes widened slightly before he ducked his head and covered his mouth, trying very hard not to laugh and succeeding in not making a sound, even if it was very obvious that he was laughing inside.

"Get off, you damn firefly!" he said, swiping at her with an open hand. Not hard, but she lifted up to avoid it.

"I'm not going to burn it, I know how not to burn things!"

"Fireflies don't… Fireflies didn't set things on fire, Aurora," X told her. "Personal space."

She tilted. "Are grandfathers not like parents?"

X made a thoughtful sound. "That depends on the grandfathers. And the parents."

"He's a grumpy labcoat person." So how not like a parent could he be?

There was an incoherent growl of outrage.

"Oh, she's not saying you're not dangerous. A parent isn't, well, a parent shouldn't be dangerous to their children," X said, smile becoming a little sad again, which drew the grandfather's attention back towards him. "Your granddaughter shouldn't have to be afraid of you."

"That's what you want, trying to get me to tolerate her existence even if she's a knockoff that exists because of Zero letting himself be experimented on by incompetents. If you hadn't…" he growled.

"Even if installing that chip into Zero to help him think and speak did mess up his systems, you existed. If you were able to repair and rebuild him, then I know you could have contacted him, fixed his software so he didn't have to suffer like this."

"He hasn't suffered anything! Trying to play on how much I care for my creations at the same time you insult me by implying that Zero is suffering because of my programming, as though I didn't make damn sure that he wouldn't…"

Like mother's reaction when people wanted her to make other versions of Aurora for external testing, or implied that this was a thing she'd be willing to do. Or let them do. Ever. When that would almost certainly end in mavericks trying to get their hands on mother's creations and trying to do things with them or testing-to-destruction. There was a long boring time when Aurora had to stay in the case, or not even think about trying to do things, since mother had managed to make an Aurora but wasn't quite sure how to make one stay alive yet.

"Oh!" Parents worrying! "If you're not letting me do anything, we need to get back! Bye grandfather!"

"Right," X agreed. "We shouldn't worry your parents."

Hmph, went the grumpy labcoat person. "And don't come back. You, anyway." He told X. "If either of you show yourselves around here again, I'll have something waiting for you, and only one of you will like it." He crossed his arms and vanished.

"Your parents are going to be very angry with me," X said regretfully, looking at where the man had stood, "But Aurora, do you think it's worth making an attempt to cure the virus now?"

"I can do it!" she said. "Mother thinks I can, otherwise she wouldn't even have let me start testing for it! She's only saying I might not be good enough because parents are stupid when they're worried!" That wasn't exactly what Dad said after Mother ordering Aurora not to even try anything because she might be weak and pathetic enough to die instead of being even good enough to do what she was for made Aurora's frequencies get all slow and her energy signature get all weird, but that was because Dad was too nice to say mean things. He'd only barely raised his voice at Mother to make her stop yelling at Aurora. Well, he'd tried to say things to make Mother stop a few times, but she'd ignored him until he raised his voice and then flinched as though he'd expected Mother to start yelling at him now, and that made Mother look at him and Aurora and realize that she was hurting them.

Mother couldn't stand it when she did that any more than Dad could stand confrontations, so she ran away then and Dad had to calm Aurora down and then go find mother.

"It's much better if we do it now," Aurora said. "That well it will be done and we can go back and they can stop worrying because it will be over." They wouldn't have to fend off people demanding Aurora do something that might kill her yesterday. It really, really upset Dad and Mother only enjoyed yelling at people to make them stop bothering Dad and Aurora so much. There were people that even Mother couldn't stop by yelling, though, if they gave orders.

Mother contacted X, though, and after that the stupid people went away.

"Maybe we can tell them that we just had to fix it all, though? To get out?" Aurora asked hopefully. "Please?" Lying was bad, but Aurora really wished she was better at it.

"Well," X said, glancing at her but then looking back at where the grandfather was, looking a little concerned. "I can certainly say honestly that it would be safer to do it now than the alternative…"

X could say she'd been innocent and carefree back then (as well as a child, without the kind of preset social strategy set humans or reploids had, trying to figure things out from scratch) all he liked, but she still called herself blind. Self-centered.

Here she was, flinching back, as afraid as her father made her after he broke, and tried to make the world a place where everyone had to exist with… not even fear. With the certainty of pain.

Ciel ran away because she was afraid of hurting Aurora with her words, because she was afraid she didn't know how to not hurt people, and the only way to stop bringing up memories might be to not be there.

Until he announced his intention to kill them all (except her), she'd thought that grandfather was safe because he was like her mother.

Now, she knew that her mother had been terrified that she wasn't safe, not for any of them, not for the world, because Arciel was made to be another Dr. Wily.

An attempt to harness that genius, make a version that was safe, keep it from destroying the world. The way Aurora was an attempt to harness Zero's power.

Knock-offs. Imitations, meant to oppose the originals. Did Arciel consider herself just as much a pale shadow of the original as Aurora did?

If X hadn't pointed out that she was Dr. Wily's granddaughter (twice over, she knew now), if he hadn't encouraged her to act immediately and anchored her while she destroyed the virus and much of the power Dr. Wily could draw on with it? She would have been captured, too pathetic to escape or fight him off for all her power. She would have ended up like Lumine, used as the figurehead of another war.

The way her father used her.

Or perhaps grandfather would have tried to use her mother instead. Like Dr. Cossack. Blame the human for something that twisted and used reploids, to fan the fading embers of the Maverick Wars.

She thought that grandfather was safe, even if he hadn't intervened to save her from father. Just let father do what he wanted with that technology and Omega, the way he'd let Sigma ravage the world.

"Are you alright?" asked the other cyber-elf, turning in midair.

"You should go with her," Aurora said.

"Is thinking about your creators that painful?" the cyber-elf asked, and then shrunk quickly when Arciel turned the gaze of Omega's optics away from the door to stare at it.

It wasn't that a cyber-elf should be too afraid to talk to her. Perhaps it was just that she was unused to being spoken to at all, but for some reason that hesitance surprised her. Or was it that the question was asked at all?

"You're Ciel's friend." That was why the cyber-elf was asking, right. So it could reassure Ciel that, "She didn't upset me."

The cyber-elf tilted its glowing body. "If she didn't, then what did?"

She'd gotten out of the habit of lying about her feelings, after so long with X. It never worked and giving an honest answer got the conversation over with faster. "Mother, Father, Grandfather. The legacies we're trapped in. X's children are heroic, but I have madmen on both sides of my family. Am I supposed to tell Ciel that she's like Mother when that means like Grandfather?"

"You think that your mother was like Dr. Wily?"

That was common knowledge? Well, if this cyber-elf was Ciel's companion, then she might be cleared for this, or have pieced it together during what happened. "That was why I thought he wouldn't hurt me. The way Mother wouldn't have. Even if Father did, when I thought he never would. Zero had to seal himself away, to keep himself from being a threat to the world. I was sealed away, X thought it was for the best, and now the young one and Fefnir ask me to help, but Fefnir is too kind and the young one is Ciel's creation. So is he from our family line, and doomed to, to hurt the world no matter what he wants, instead of someone with X's infinite potential? Someone who might be right when he says that I can help?"

Why was she inflicting this on a cyber-elf? Letting them see that their progenitor was pathetic like this? There was an obvious solution: ask Leviathan and Harpuia. She didn't know Phantom as well as the two of them, but she knew the twins would never sugar-coat their opinion of anyone.

Lie to them in order to use or destroy them, yes, but if that was what they thought she deserved…

Staring at the wall, she said "Father didn't capture mother, even though he could have. She came to speak to him, to try to get through to him, and he, he was insane, he said that she wasn't capable of being good, of helping him the way she'd promised or helping anyone. That she was evil, just like X," that was proof of his insanity, even if the history the cyber-elf had to know wasn't proof enough. X might be terrifying, after the war stripped every bit of real softness from him, damaged his ability to restrain his will when other people got in the way, but evil? Never. That made him even more terrifying, when he guarded her, to feel that righteous strength, not cold but absolute, and know she deserved for it to crush her. He had so little mercy left, she knew, and she didn't deserve to have it wasted on her.

"What do you think?" the cyber-elf asked quietly. "About," a fraction of a second's pause, "Dr. Arciel?"

"If Mother was evil, she wouldn't have put herself in danger, she would have fought him. If Mother was evil, she would have stayed alive and maybe rescued me. If she was evil, she might be here now… But if she was evil, she wouldn't have saved me any more than Grandfather did. I should have known he wasn't a good person from the way he just watched."

"I suppose that's true," the cyber-elf said. "Dr. Light gave X armors. He even exceeded his programming to give one to Zero, and Dr. Wily brought Zero back from the dead even when Zero was fighting his plan and protecting X. No matter what their objective was supposed to be, only a very evil person would have just stood by and let her daughter suffer during the Elf Wars."

Aurora turned Omega's head to look directly at the cyber-elf.

"Even Dr. Wily did all of this to protect his child, and all I am is the fear of what my children might do to other people. I knew that Weil could, would use you to override my programming and turn me into another Baby Elf, or worse, but that doesn't excuse the fact that I didn't even try to help you. I can't even claim it was because it took everything I had to keep our flesh-and-blood daughter alive, when she was in protective custody and hidden away as safely as anyone possibly could have been, to help the war effort with her work.

"Even Dr. Wily kept his son alive and well no matter what, so I really can't blame some family curse, can I? The evil of abandoning you isn't something that I inherited. It's entirely my own."

"Mother," Aurora realized, and Omega's hand darted out with all the swiftness and accuracy of a warrior god, Aurora's will channeled through it.

"Mother," she whispered, holding the small light up to her eyes.

Alfred Nobel (as in the Nobel Prize) thought that his invention, dynamite, was such a terrible weapon that no one would fight wars anymore.

Yeeeeeeeah.

There were references to X's first meeting with WilyAI when he wasn't thinly disguised as a reploid in Definition, and also the revelation re. Passy being the product of Arciel's awareness that she was genetically based on Dr. Wily and she and her descendants were very dangerous because of it. Look at what the virus did to the world... That was done to continue the themes of the fic, but it could have used following up on.