The last trip into the Veins is the worst, but I still find myself desperate for Shiloh's personal time. Karen and Garrett's Diosite are almost immediately forfeit, and they leave shoulder in shoulder, laughing at a joke about a video game I've never played. I guess they've probably stayed on good terms throughout the whole incident. I wish I'd been half as gracious, but whatever relations they decide to have, with or without me, at least someone got something out of all of this.

Amanda kneels down next to Shiloh next and ruffles his fur. "You guys really screwed us over," she says, with no hint of sarcasm. "I'm going to think about this for the rest of my life, chew it up like bad gum until it's been too romanticized and ague to elicit any emotion, and then, when it has become synonymous with everything else that went wrong in my life, I'm going to cry again."

"I am sorry for what happened to your friend," Shiloh says.

"You aren't, and you know that. Thanks for everything, buddy." Amanda hands him her Diosite, shedding her costume, and she winks to me as she exits. Shiloh mulls it over in his mouth before swallowing.

I lean down. My brother's long departed Anthem's side, leaving her oddly dormant in her own corner. She casts a long glare in my direction. This is likely not somewhere I'm supposed to be, and my intrusion is wasting her time. "Siblings," I mutter, in spite of myself.
Shiloh turned his head. "I know all about siblings."

I sigh. "I know this is all over, that I can't tell anyone... but I need to know. Why don't you give me your life story, seeing as you've probably inferred or dredged my memories for mine?"

Shiloh nods stiffly. "Anthem and I were from the same nine-cell Diosite shard, which split into a less potent five and four cell. Anthem ended up being capable, while I was... less so. She's dealt with several groups before, this is my first time. I was, as such, generally not up to where I should have been in my tactics. She was even concerned I might be feeling some residual sentiment as a holdover from when we were the shard being controlled by a hapless human-"

"That's how you guys are born?" I exclaim.

Shiloh nods again. "We never lied about your planet being in mortal danger, though. We can't choose what the Veins do, either. It is a larger organism than us, and we are born to protect and die for it. Past this, we have no autonomy. Because of this, we are willing to go to any lengths to do what we deem to be our responsibility."
He's trying to justify to himself what he had to do with me.

"Fair. I mean, not fair at all. Completely unfair and morally wrong. Maybe that's not... entirely your fault, though? I mean, the system sucks," I say.

Shiloh fakes a smile for my human sense of comedy. It's become so much easier to sense who false his emotions are now that I almost grimace at the sight of what I guarantee was supposed to make me feel better. I can't help it. He knows he hurt me. "I will admit she made the plans, but that does not mean I was in no way complicit. I used you, Will Rosenbloom, and I did it without any capacity for shame or regret in my heart. Someday, I will use somebody else in the same way. It is only now, upon having met you, that the prospect of doing this forever is..."

"There has to be an alternative," I say. "Be... be better to them. Be honest. Maybe they'll still help you."
Shiloh's deep, purple eyes look up at me. "I know what you're thinking, Will, and no, we were not and will never be friends. All I can give you is my promise that I will be better to the next set of children, and that I will do my best to protect all of them, especially from me."

I pick him up and hold him, and he becomes an other, writhing out of my arms. The empty stuffed animal stare no longer pretends to understand me. It is less than the emotional reaction you'd get from an animal. Reluctantly, I give him my shard, and he tastes it, and the lair begins to disappear around us, crumbling like Ignatius's plants. I watch the whole place disappear into stardust around me, hanging like stardust in the air for a moment too long. This is our real goodbye, and as the last of the bright dust dissipates into the open air, I'm left in my room, the world around me gone seamless, still. My brother lies besides me.

Goodbye, Shiloh.

I didn't understand how tired I was until I was in charge of deciding if I could fall asleep.

I don't dream, and I don't think I ever will again.

No, I don't miss it.

---

My mom smiles as we go out the door together. I think I hear her mouth something like "take care of your brother" through the window. I almost smile back, but upon remembering an eerily similar sentiment from Evan, I give her a thumbs up and keep walking, maybe a little faster than beforehand.

I turn towards the church alley, Adam trailing behind. He has this dull, almost dead gaze, which I try to counteract with a smile. It achieves nothing. Adam points down the alley, to where the garbage cans are lined up. "I've used another portal around here," Adam says.

I laugh. "Yeah, out behind the trashcans? Me too."

He raises an eyebrow. "You still hysterical?"

"Maybe a little, but I did sleep for almost all of Sunday and through all my classes Monday," I say, then shake my head, planting my hands firmly on my hips. "I still can't get over this. Knowing you were engrossed in this the whole time..."

"Hasn't sunk in here either," Adam responds. "Give it time."

"You sure you don't want to come along?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "They're your friends. This is your battle. Thanks for the alibi, though."
"Where do you have to go?"

"Looking."

"Still?" He was out walking around the neighborhood for three hours yesterday. Apparently he made it all the way out to Evan's house and back. No luck.

"He wasn't in school yesterday." His voice is intimately defensive.

"So he'll be there tomorrow. There's only so far you can go before they drop you from the system, right?"

"He doesn't care."

"You'll find him," I promise him. Evan, I want to say. Evan. Say his name. My brother merely stands there, arms crossed, his flare for the dramatic the only thing still burning in him. He is still standing there when Amanda's mom comes around to pick us up, and as I go one way, he goes the other, wandering down the street.

There are popsicles in the fridge. Garrett says we can't let a drop fall on the bedsheets, but it's his fault for letting us down here, into the game den. Four-player Mario Kart flashes on the screen, standing between us and uncomfortable questions. "I'm just impressed you can all stay so late. None of you have homework on a school day?" asks Garrett as he laps me. Karen zooms by a second after. She burns with the vengeance of someone who has taken a direct insult to her dignity instead of a nonexistent blow to the go-kart in a video game.

"You can just tell us to leave," Karen says as she speeds past Garrett just in time to win the race. "It's okay. We know you don't like us."
"I do too," Garrett insists.

"Of course I don't have homework. I'd rather go kick Ignatius in the balls again than actually do my social studies reading," Amanda says, sliding into third.

The joke brings on a wave of silence that not even the cheerful Mario Kart music can cover up. We all remember the obituary, although it was a relief, if anything, for most of us, and I bought flowers to the grave at least once, even though my hand was shaking the whole way, like he would reach up from the earth and drag me down with him under the dirt. Worse, I found his work a few days after it was all over, after some truly extensive google searching.

His art is beautiful, lush and vibrant, and adorned with plants. His backgrounds are astounding, his color work is perfect, and the last bit of art posted on his personal blog was a self-portrait of himself, done digitally, with his signature flower crown upon his head and the two Diosite shards positioned on his head and around his chest. He has a soft, mysterious smile and eyes full of life. It doesn't look how we remember him at all, but maybe the person who he was beforehand, the first few times we met.

It was months ago.

I think I must have browsed for hours, until my eyes stung and my throat was sore from crying. I think I've fallen in love with his style. Amanda passed on viewing it, for personal reasons, but I've noticed certain design trends in her recent classwork.

I finally cut across the finish line in last place. My remote glints back at me, informing I'm Player One, still, for reasons unknown, even though I'm not hosting. Somehow, I'm still 'in charge' by default, although I'm not sure if I should be, but as we coast the tracks, I fall into it anyways. I definitely never earned it. "If Ignatius had just taken me in a game of Mario Kart," I say, bitterly, "He would have won the first time."

"Not with all of our combined powers of karting," offers Amanda.

I put down the remote and cross my arms together, burying my face between them.

Karen pauses Mario Kart. "You're still thinking about that."

"I haven't felt right since. I still can't focus in class. I'm still scared. Now that there's nothing holding me up, I don't know... I don't know who I am. Worse, even when I did have them, I was never more in tune with them than when I was alone, when Shiloh just had me to manipulate, so that wasn't my power, and I couldn't even work in a group setting, and I'm so happy you all want to talk to me at all, but do I really deserve it?"

"Yes," Amanda unpauses the game.

Karen pauses it again. "Will. You heard that speech, right? 'Manipulate'. As in, he was using you. You should be angry, not apologetic. He had you under his thumb and you were going along with it because you genuinely felt you had to."

"Did I?" I ask.

"Yes," Karen insists.

"Then I'm a victim," I say. "I didn't do anything of my own accord, and--"

"Stop," Amanda says. "Will. You saved the world. Maybe we've all done dumb things and hey, Will, you can't magic away anxiety. I know this will sound stupid, given circumstances but... don't stress about it. At the very least, don't stress about this aspect of it. We're always getting better. That doesn't mean you'll ever get to some point where you'll be over everything. Over life. Who do you want to be, Adam Rosenbloom?"

Karen snorts, and I laugh along, uneasily, although my brother's haunted glare still unnerves me more than I can admit to anyone. He's not over anything, but hey, boys don't cry. At least, they don't cry and tell.

"Anxiety or no anxiety, we're going to make it through this. All of us. Do you hear me? You are going to be something incredible if I have to push you up that hill myself." Karen says.

"I think that goes against the point," I tell her, half serious, and she leans her hand into my shoulder.

Garrett puts his hand on my other shoulder. "Dude. Trust me. Don't disagree with her. It never ends well."

"I guess I put all that energy and spirit to good use then," I say. "I mean, some of the skills I've been trying to develop for the last few months have to be good for something, and I have friends now. That's an accomplishment."

"That's the spirit." Karen slaps me on the back, and I flinch.

"Karen!"

We laugh, Amanda drops a popsicle and goes for it over Garrett's cries that the dog has stepped there, several times, and who knows where the dog has been or what its paws are covered in. Amanda responds by taking a larger bite of the next cookie, citing the five-second rule, and then we play Mario Kart for hours, reciting powers back and forth for old times, trying to seize on something that could have fixed everything.

"Common sense," decides Karen, finally.

Can't argue with that one. The best powers are found strung into the normal, earned one day a time, and I may not have much in my arsenal yet, but these are powers I can get from other people without taking anything, and someday, I'll be strong without having to pull from any magic stone.