Kirin doesn't know how long Anna sits there, holding his hand as he closes his eyes and rests, with a flurry of tangled images in his mind. The images wax and wane, unevenly represented in his mind, but eventually, they settle down again, not worried into dust or tucked away in a filing cabinet of the mind, but rather they fade into the background of his thoughts, having been made familiar now.

But at the end of it all, he's relieved to see her still there.

He doesn't know if he's fallen asleep: he doesn't dream anymore, and so he can't tell if any time has meaningfully passed between then and now. The darkness sprawls over the room like a cat. Beside him, Anna has fallen asleep, curled in a half-sitting position on the side of his bed. Her fingers are still loosely intertwined with his; her head rests on her other arm as she quietly sleeps. Strands of hair waver against the dark cotton of her sleeve as she breathes.

How strange to think that she must sleep too, rather than returning to her place to rest upright every night like a perfect automation. Under most circumstances, this would be highly inappropriate, too forward on either side, but here, it's simply a gesture of concern. Perhaps, once, he would have happily taken her apart, muscle by muscle, just to see how she worked, how she could feel things that never concerned him, but now, he just watches her doze next to him, lost in her own dreams.

Her own dreams—another strange thought. There's another world behind her eyelids: goals and hopes and fears, all of which he's not privy to.

(And if he searches through the bond for Corvo, he would be able to feel his bone-weariness as well: the sores and scrapes and the slow, familiar relief that, for now, all is well, and that he must hold onto this small victory for as long as he can.)

Kirin doesn't understand why she's worried herself to sleep over him, and maybe he never will.

But he closes his eyes anyway, letting his head sink back into the pillow and curling his fingers around hers.


Morning creeps into the room, slowly lighting up the greys of night. When he awakes again, the maid is there again, her hair freshly combed and pinned back. She's in a chair drawn up to his bedside, preoccupied with one of her bone lace-making shuttles, manipulating the thin thread back and forth as it forms knots and picots, but when his soft yawns reach her, she glances up.

"Good morning," she says, stashing the shuttle away into one of her apron pockets. Bending over him, she brushes a strand of his hair back from his forehead.

He's not sure if he's slept at all—it's only another lapse of time for him—but he accepts her greeting all the same. He pauses a moment. She's... Her name is... It's no good. It's a blank in his head again, a perfectly pale spot, and he tries hard not to think of it as a growing emptiness, relentlessly severing his synapses.

"Anna," he says at last, wresting this one thing, this new learned thing, from the blankness.

(It's not over. He can learn new things. He can, he can.)

She smiles at him gently, as she prepares the morning's tray with its milk tea, buttered toast, and red currant jam. He doesn't know that she's figured out a long time ago that if she lets him acclimate slowly to waking up, instead of rushing him around to get ready in the mornings, he's less confused for the rest of the day. He slowly stretches out the sleep in his limbs, gradually becoming aware of the world again. She helps him into a sitting position, propping the pillows around him and sets the tray in front of him.

Over his teacup, he chats to her about a myriad of topics that all blend together: he doesn't catch that she can't figure out what subject leads to the next, but she'll take this any day over the disrupted silences and vague stares. When he trails off, she considers something.

"Last night, you'd said you'd been in the mines. Do you know which mine you went to?" she asks carefully.

"Shindaerey Mines," he tells her nonchalantly.

She pauses, struggling. "In Karnaca? We're not... we're in—well, never mind," she amends, resigning herself to another unsolvable mystery. "I'm glad you're back now. I was so worried about you."

He tells her about the rat he saw in the Void instead. The little grey ghost. What fascinating creatures rats were. Perhaps it was only following a trail left by other rats, or perhaps this was merely an accident: a hole in the world that it crept through.

"Did it bite you?" she asks, her brows creasing in worry. She turns over his arms, scanning them for any scratch or mark, but finds nothing.

"The rat went away," he explains. "It wasn't lost."

She nods, hiding her confusion. "I'm glad." Her gaze follows his, as it finds its way to the wall again. "What are you looking at?"

Its a small gesture of interest in his world, but he hesitates all the same. This is a precious part of his world; he doesn't want it spoiled by the revelation that other people think it's useless or stupid. He already knows that. Above all, he doesn't want her to laugh at him.

"The light on the wall," he says at least.

The soft light refractures and circles the corner of the wall like a vine of morning glory, opening for only this fraction of time before tightly furling away for the next day.

"That's beautiful," she says softly, squeezing his hand gently, and for a moment, he doesn't feel so alone.

And with that, he hums a little to himself as the light pools across the upper portions of the room, broadcast from the east in thick strokes. Must his life be small now? It's so easy to fit the confines of a life that's been chosen for you, but what did he want for himself? That was the remaining question.

There was what would be done once he returned to Karnaca. Once news of Sokolov's death reached the bureaucracy there, they'll find him a new guardian or make him a ward of the state. Terror grips at him. He doesn't want to be just another burden passed from one person to the next. Even if this new guardian is kind to him, that doesn't negate the quiet terror of knowing he doesn't have full control over himself and his body. Maybe they would ask his brother to step up.

He doesn't want to return to the world he had growing up: unwanted at worst, begrudgingly tolerated at best. Coming to terms with this strange world and learning its secret rules one by one so the other students wouldn't laugh at him. But what he wants the rest of his life to look like is something only he can decide.

What if he gets it wrong?

It's not a concern that would have crossed his mind before, largely because of his arrogance, but also because he would have simply pivoted to another direction in life. It had been a hard-won decision after the disgrace of the Academy.

Below his window, the sea waves break into a flurry of cold froth and dregs from the sea: tangles of black seaweed and shattered white shells and ship debris. Not furious, but in time with an ancient marine heartbeat, called and pulled to shore. The sea that entangled and bound the Isles to it, the sea that slipped at some point, like a floating mirage, into the Void—or perhaps the Void was only a reflection of it—the sea had always been there. It was one of the eternal mysteries of his world, and yet it was still here.

This future of his, as unfathomable to him as the sea, but just as dear, would come to pass as well, just not in the way he might have hoped all those months ago. It wasn't merely a matter of choosing, but of shaping. Perhaps the better question was what he wanted his life to look like now—for this moment in the present.

He thinks on this until the words fade away again, tangled on themselves, and only the sensation remains.


There's still so much anger within him that if he'd been conscious of it before, he might have easily turned the streets of Karnaca into a bloodbath. (And in another turn of fate, he can see the bright, bright blood welling up from the ruined bodies, but it doesn't answer any of his questions or satiate his rage. He only continues the path that Hypatia started as the Crown Killer, but more sporadic. It's a meaningless trail of pain and gore, faces twisted in agony or surprise, the endless fear of being pursued. The lines twist, and the lines cross, and the lines redouble, but at the end of it all, there's no resolution, only torrid confusion. High-born and low-born all die the same before him, gasping, pleading, threatening. And in the end, he doesn't even remember why they're dying, only that they are. Bloodflies bloom, the rats squeal, and the city plunges into fear again. And at its heart, he wanders the empty buildings, uncared for and resentful, feeling more like a stray than a person. Do people ever get what they deserve? Did he deserve this?)

Perhaps he'd repressed his anger early on, since it was so dangerous to have together with his disability. He was expected to be miserable about his disability, that was even palatable, but angry? That was the quickest way to be abandoned. An unspeakable envy burns at him when he thinks of how everyone else seems to have their own intact mind, simple and unrefined as it may be. It's not something he ever imagined himself to be envious over.

In a way, he was supposed to be envious of them now. The reverse certainly wasn't true.

What was he supposed to do with all this anger? There didn't seem to be any place to put it. He certainly didn't want to frighten Anna or do anything that would cause her to leave. He spends the rest of his time at Dunwall staring at the ceiling and thinking on the matter for as long as he's able to. He always loses his prior thoughts, and at times, the whole endeavor feels impossible. Perhaps, there's no conclusion to be reached.

Someone announces an arrival, and he misses it, as always. But when his gaze wanders again from its perch at the corner of the ceiling, he finds that it's Corvo who's been seated across from him. How long had he been intending to wait there? Had he been watching him this whole time? (But how else was he to get Kirin's attention? Snapping his fingers would have been immensely rude; tapping his shoulder or arm was out of the question—too intimate now.)

Kirin doesn't know how to communicate with him: he can't hold a thought long enough to recognize his signs and he doesn't know what Corvo wants from him. He's only vaguely aware of the new presence he can feel through their bond. A red-scabbed cut laces across the back of Corvo's hand as it rests idly against his leg.

Despite his silence, Corvo isn't a blank canvas to project upon, and Kirin understands this now. He just doesn't know how to broach this quiet. He picks at his fingers, as he thinks on the fragments of what happened between them in the Void. Corvo understood then that he was angry—would he understand now? Perhaps Corvo has had a lifetime of being angry as well: living in a world that wasn't built to accommodate his disability, ordered around in his exile like a servant or a dog, tortured for half a year while his daughter had been torn away from him.

Kirin doesn't know how to confess his anger. He thinks he will be angry for the rest of his life about everything: his stolen mind, the casual cruelty of being reminded of just how different he's been made, constantly having to navigate a hostile world. Perhaps, it's too dangerous to be voiced, but it's the only thing on his mind nowadays. Instead, he meanderingly tells Corvo about the rat he saw in the Void, how it didn't tell him anything but only watched him with its small dark eyes. Had Corvo ever seen a rat that looked like that? Did all rats know each other?

Corvo frowns slightly at the questions, not in frustration but interest.

Kirin means to continues on, but he can no longer remember what he was talking about now. He stares at delicate strips of parquet flooring, feeling like a stunned animal. He keeps hoping that one day he'll be used to this. Kirin doesn't ask if it was a rough adjustment to lose his powers in favor of another set that perhaps don't come as easily, if it had been like waking up in a different skin.

Corvo only watches him, before getting to his feet. He searches the room and returns with two practice swords: blunted enough so that they won't severely harm. He offers one to Kirin, and takes the other. Corvo's stance is relaxed, yet poised. Does he mean to practice sword-fighting? Kirin doesn't see what that has to do with anything, but it's a welcome reprieve.

Corvo starts their match, beginning with deliberately careful strikes largely to test Kirin's reflexes, using only as much force as a light tap. The swords knock against each other in a pleasing ring. A sense of familiarity settles in him: even as Kirin counters the next strike, he's not alarmed. This is only play. (He's forgotten that while Corvo might have kept an empire together for a decade until Emily was old enough, he's first and foremost a father. Play comes easily to him.) And in these carefully controlled movements with its set rules and order, the anger starts to slacken a little. It's not vanquished, but it's lessened enough so that it's not as consuming now.

Eventually, they settle back down on the sofa, panting and sweaty. His head thrown back in exhaustion, Kirin surveys the way the sweat meanders down the tendons of Corvo's neck, only to disappear into the fine linen of his shirt. Corvo tilts his head up as if to say, Any better?

Perhaps, when Corvo had rescued Emily from Havelock's cell and held her in his arms, thin-boned and trembling little girl that she was—far too delicate to be a pawn of men!—he'd seen the beginnings of an anger in her, too. Not the same anger, but anger nonetheless. And he'd known that it would destroy her before she'd ascend the throne. He could tell her again and again that she mustn't let her mistreatment color her view of her people, but what were words compared with the coiling tension of rage in her?

He'd taught her the sword instead.

They're practiced everyday for months: he'd shown her the correct position to hold the sword for different purposes, how to block and strike. She'd learned fast, his little girl, and he couldn't help but see echoes of himself in her, though he was glad she'd never have to win the Blade Verbana to have a better life.

(And eventually, her practice turned into leaping across the rooftops and sneaking away with Wyman, but how could he deny her that? His life had started with no direction; hers, confinement.)

Between Kirin and Corvo, it's not a matter of starting again. It's far too late for that one. But as they catch their breath together, under the pinpricks of fear that perhaps will never leave, a different world opens for them. It's not love, nor is it friendship, rather, it's closest to a sense of finality. Corvo knows this feeling well: it's the same one that weighed down his heart when he gathered his things in Daud's cabin in Tyvia for the last time, perched on the edge of the bed and terribly certain that this time will not come again, that what he set in motion cannot be undone, but also that he didn't wish him ill.

Perhaps, that's its own start.


Eventually, his time at Dunwall ends, and it's time again for another trip back home. In a thoughtful gesture, the same ship and crew that brought him to Dunwall carry him back. He's shy around the sailors still, painfully aware that they are different in a way he still can't determine or mimic, but all the same accommodations are left in place. When he wanders during the night, unsettled by this new environment, there is always a crew member anticipating this and willing to redirect his focus by teaching him something instead.

He learns the constellations and the names of those nightly wanderers again and again, and he starts to think of the process not as continually forgetting, but rather akin to revisiting a half-remembered favorite story. Gradually, he realizes that the ghostly balls of light are in a slightly different place everyday, and it's a thought he muses on until it fades away from him. Mostly though, he watches the clouds blow their own waves across the stars, as the moon moves throughout the night. When he's sufficiently tired again, he's guided back to his bed and tucked in for the rest of the night.

And just like that, he gradually becomes comfortable with the crew over the voyage. The voyage is an easy one, and there's time to learn the intricacies of their world as well: the rough knots, those impossible forms which hold fast despite everything; the pale albatrosses meandering through the sky; the giant sea turtles that pass through tangles of seaweed, unconcerned; and even the grey whales that briefly breach the edge of the horizon.

One night, the humming under his skin disappears: not a sudden sharp loss, but rather a gradual one over the hours and minutes. When he wakes up, it's gone, just as easily as it had come. A wave departed. But he's not surprised to feel it missing: ever since Corvo's had left him, down in the mines, Kirin had subconsciously been expecting that his connection too would fade away, no longer mediated by the Outsider.

"You're free," Anna tells him in the morning, unable to repress a smile. "You're finally free from the witches."

Kirin stares at her, uncomprehendingly. (Part of his mind insists against the banality of calling them witches—no, no, Breanna and her girls were occultists; that was the only part of the natural world he'd been willing to concede to them.)

"Witches?" he repeats, but she takes it for confirmation with a nod.

"This is wonderful news," she continues.

A little fear grips him: it wasn't the witches who gave him the Mark, it was the Outsider. This he remembers, but not how he came by it. Something about the mines, perhaps. His memory is so fragile and fleeting that he's become terribly protective of the bits he can remember. How tenuous and painfully translucent his world had been after his wound, like looking through gauze; everything could be just a trick of the light, and another angle could reveal the truth. He could barely hold onto his own name; any of the servants could have easily convinced him otherwise.

He hadn't realized how afraid he was of his fragile memory. Of course, she doesn't want to twist it into some half-truth and convince him of things that never happened, but that doesn't stop him from being afraid that someone else will.

He doesn't know how he feels yet about this dissolution of his connection to the Void: it's brought him harm and confusion and exploitation, but also connection. And most importantly, it had brought him what he's been missing in his new life: the joy of creation. Yes, that was it. The only thing left was to carry this revelation back to Karnaca.

And before he forgets, he makes a small note of it in his unsteady hand.


The cottage is just as he's left it, and he's so relieved to be back in a familiar place again.

The Duke stops by at his cottage a little later: the terrible moment has come. Over a quick tea spread, the Duke is gentle and almost apologetic, as if this were only an inconvenience of his doing. "Dr. Sokolov passed a month ago," he begins. And what was to follow—Kirin couldn't live on his own. He wasn't able to do that anymore, as if the Duke cooked his own meals, washed his own sheets, or cleaned his own home. As if Kirin had ever done that in his life.

It's strangely easier just to watch the wall now. By the Void! Is this the time when he's supposed to make an elegant plea on his own behalf? How cruel to expect that. And if he says nothing, that will only be taken as a confirmation of his own acceptance of the situation. What a hideous bind. The grey walls of Addermire are so close now; it sickens him. This is how it ends for him.

"Do you have any living relatives?" the Duke continues. A sadness hangs in his form, as if he's sorry for what he feels he must do.

By now, Kirin's not precisely sure what the Duke is doing here anyway or what he's hinting at. At least there's tea laid out on the table. That must mean something—but what? The clink of the porcelain cups against the saucers makes a pleasing sound. He'll have to remember that for later—but what was he doing here again?

"He has a half-brother," Anna says at last. She glances downward at having spoken out of turn as a servant, and with a deep, mortified breath, she continues on. "Apologies, Your Grace. We met in Dunwall. I can give you his information."

The Duke considers this carefully before turning to Kirin. "Is this what you want?" he asks gently.

Kirin doesn't understand what he means. "What I want?" he repeats blankly, and has to push himself to keep from repeating it again, to feel out the syllabic weight of the words.

"Do you want your half-brother to manage your affairs?" the Duke amends with a certain grace and patience.

A small terror re-emerges in Kirin. He doesn't want to be at the mercy of another again, not in that way: passed off again and again like an eternal, unwanted child, because no one else could figure out what to do with him. And this would still be considered a lucky circumstance—worlds better than what befell Aramis in another timeline. Does it haunt Aramis too, the painful, incomprehensible loneliness of knowing he'd been abandoned in all but name, confined to his decaying house with no one to tend to him? Perhaps it had been cruel to expose him to that tear in the Void; not everything needed to be remembered.

He still remembers the grey walls of Addermire and how frightened and lonely he was all the time. What if his brother wanted him to undertake medical treatments he didn't want? A cure against his will would be torture. What if Kirin didn't want any experimental treatments? What if he just wanted to figure out how to live his life as is? (He remembers the stroke of a pen that rendered him a nonperson in eyes of the law, how quickly everything had changed, and how that had been the beginning of a living death.)

"I want to be a person," Kirin tells the wall haltingly. Something crosses his mind, something so close to the surface that he can almost glimpse it, but then it fades away again, unrealized. "I want… to be able to say no."

It feels so shameful to say this aloud. Those things wouldn't solve all his problems, people could still speak to him cruelly and treat him with the contemptuous pity and quiet dismissiveness that he'd come to expect (and if he hadn't been such a cruel, callous, arrogant man before, it would be only an apologetic, embarrassed pity: he doesn't know that, but Aramis does). If Kirin could have sovereignty over his own body, it would make the rest easier to bear. It would be a start.

Surprise crosses the Duke's face, but he leans in intently.

Kirin has asked for the impossible: he knows this. He's done so once before, to the Duke—the true one, the selfish, self-indulgent lout. Oh, Kirin had understood him so well, or at least he'd thought he had. He'd made the Duke understand that locking him away in some miserable little cell for the rest of his days was a waste of talent. Kirin understands enough to know that this too is lost to him, slipped somewhere in the blankness of his mind. What could he give the Duke now? But then again, why must he offer something in return? Personhood isn't earned. The world doesn't turn at the whim of great men; rather, acts of mercy grow on each other. He'd been kept out of Addermire by a kindness he perhaps didn't deserve, but nothing in this world is a matter of deserved or not.

And what is this Duke, if not a man of the impossible?

"Do you like where you live now?" the Duke asks after some deliberation.

"Yes," Kirin tells the wall. He looks moonstruck or deeply incapacitated, or both; he knows this, and he's terrified of this difference between himself and the others. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, but he cannot help himself.

"Is there something you'd change about how you live?"

Kirin shakes his head. Something is happening, but he doesn't understand what. He rocks himself a little to try to settle the nervousness; it's wrong to do this, he thinks, it's wrong to look different, but he can't help it.

His movements draw Anna's attention. She pulls him closer to her. Then, she tucks his head onto her soft shoulder and taking a deep, steadying breath, rocks him slowly, mimicking his movements. She strokes his hair gently, and at least this he can hold onto.

The Duke gives him a few more moments to collect himself, before asking again. And again and again, he continues with his questions, indicating to his captain to take notes with a small gesture of his fingers, as he slowly narrows down what Kirin wants his life to look like. From his place in Anna's arms, Kirin feels the shame give way to a gradual calm.

"When Dr. Sokolov took control of your estate, he put it into a trust. Is there someone you want to manage it for you?"

Kirin considers this. No one had ever told him what happened; they'd just assumed he wasn't capable of understanding that too. And under the haze that constant fear and unease left in his mind, it had been hard to refute that. "My brother," he replies.

He closes his eyes, resting his head on her shoulder. He's so tired now: having to focus this long has left him weary, and the way his body slackens next to Anna's doesn't go unnoticed. Distantly, he listens as the Duke tells her about a court date Kirin will have to attend to finalize everything: as per his wishes, his living arrangements will remain the same, his finances will be managed by his brother, he'll be visited weekly, and he'll have full control over his medical decisions. The Duke will have a letter sent out to his brother by the evening.

Anna gently shifts Kirin onto the sofa, so that she can properly show the Duke and his captain out. When they're gone, she sets herself to tidying up after them, setting the dishes back on the tray, softly gathering up the silverware and porcelain. Then, she unfolds one of the nearby day blankets, still neatly tucked away in the linen closet. Soft, light cotton settles around him, as she tucks the blanket around him.

"You did so well," she says softly. She squeezes his hand, before leaving him to his rest.


That night, before Kirin goes to bed, he sits out in the tall grass and searches for a beetle in the damp soil. He finds one, bottle-green and disoriented, its legs waving in the air and tipped on its back in surprise, and he asks the little beetle to give a message to the big beetle when it gets a chance.

And somehow the insect must have made its way there, because a letter comes for him in the mail, a carefully printed one. And just like that, he knows that nothing is really lost, not for good. It just finds another way.

Thomas includes more drawings than words in his letters: delicately inked and lovingly detailed illustrations of the Dunwall skyline, sharp shorelines and crowded cities. The overgrown figure of the boy who was neither god nor mortal, but still dressed in black as he surveys Dunwall from the corner window of a small but tidy apartment—an eternal mourner even now. (Kirin almost knows this boy: the silhouette is so familiar to him. Had they spoken before? It's no good. No amount of puzzling resolves this mystery.) Small sketches of flowers and insects dot the corners of Thomas's letters; sometimes, he presses the flowers instead and they come to Kirin as sepia ghosts, slipping between sheets of paper.

The letters are kind but restless, sent from a new place each time. Kirin never learns if Thomas finds peace without Daud—a loss that must have been confirmed when the mark of their bond simply burned away, leaving him with only the certainty of what must have happened but with no resolution and no body. A transmission sent, but never received. How strange it must have been in the aftermath, to fumble in a world that had once been so malleable to him. If Daud has bequeathed anything to Thomas in the end, it's his restlessness.

Kirin only studies one of the many sketches of beetles crawling across Thomas's letters. A stagbeetle, Anna had called it. They'd spent hours figuring out which beetle was which, flipping through the pages of a guide to the flora and fauna of Gristol. He remembers the joy he felt there with her, the thrill of discovery, of perfect connection when the sketch matched the guide.

The walls would be beautiful with a mural or two. This little corner in the hallway next to the kitchen would be perfect for a stagbeetle.

"Please, can I paint it?" he asks her, out of the blue. He points to the drawing.

"Of course," she says. "Let me remember where I put the paints."

He hesitates, suddenly shy. "Can I paint it on the wall?"

"It's your house," she tells him gently. "Of course, you can."

She ponders where she's put the art supplies for a moment, frowning as she retraces her steps so many months ago now. Then, reaching for his hand, she guides him to an unassuming box. And he doesn't know what to do with this newfound freedom that he had been denying himself. Of course, the house hadn't been intended as a prison in all but name, meant to isolate him from the rest of society for their supposed benefit, to keep them from having to see his disability. It had always been meant to be his home, with its safe walls that didn't move and the rooms that didn't disappear or reconfigure themselves. It was his home, too.

She uncovers a pale canvas painting smock, one that is only vaguely familiar to him now, and gently tugs it over his head. He only watches her, slightly disoriented again, as she deftly buttons up the smock in the front and smooths out the shoulders.

"What colors would you like?" she asks, rifling through the set. "I like this one—it reminds me of the summer flowers," she says, holding a pale yellow paint, sealed in its tube. "But this one might be better for the shell and such." She considers a tube of dark-green paint.

He peers into the box. So many paints to choose from—he's so intimidated now. What if he chooses wrongly?

She notices his hesitation and reaches for his arm. "It's alright," she says, with a light squeeze. "You wanted to paint a stagbeetle."

The image returns to him again, briefly, fleetingly, but it's there. Dark colors would be ideal, he thinks. He selects a few different shades of green as the image slowly fades out. He trusts her to remember these things for him now. There's always a terror in the back of his mind that he's not being careful enough, that the truly safest thing is to not need anything at all.

"Here you go," she says, placing a pencil in his hands. "It might be easier to sketch it out first."

With Anna sitting next to him, he follows the afterimage of the insect with the pencil, delineating it with short, quick lines. They overlap and redouble onto each other, and the familiarity of it all feels right to him. A sense of peace returns. He's not been made so different that this has been lost to him; it's just been waiting too. And as the creature comes into view, it's the product of different perceptions: this little beetle had lived in Dunwall, only to be sketched by Thomas, and remembered by Kirin. (And under it all, it's impossible to deny that this iteration is also colored by all the other beetles that have been lost to his memory.)

If the insect were to look at its own portrait, would it recognize itself there in its false immortality? Would it be able to tease out all the threads that had made its memory so?

"Please," he asks Anna, "would you bring me the paints?"

"Of course," she replies.

She soon returns with the paints he'd picked earlier and begins to prepare the palette for him. Then, she slips it onto his hand, positioning it around his prosthetic thumb, until it feels comfortable to him. He's nervous still. Nothing is the same as before, but then again, neither is he. His head is still foggy, and it might be so for the rest of his life. He might spend the rest of his life learning to navigate it.

Noticing his hesitation, she gently brushes his arm in a wordless encouragement.

He glances back at her, and then makes his resolution.

Carefully, he picks up the brush, considers the angle of the bristles, and begins to paint.