Empty mind

Ajak's words hung in the air like a dark cloud surrounding her, pressing down on her shoulders and mind, trying to suffocate her.
Finally, Sersi recognized where the strangely depressed mood in the room came from as the meaning behind the whole situation slowly sank in.

Just a few minutes ago she had been in a pretty good mood. Ikaris and Thena getting into fights like the one in the hallway had been a regular occurrence over the past few months and while that wasn't exactly pleasant, it wasn't anything that would have shocked her in the long run. It had happened before the Emergence too, often enough.

But Ajak's words were a whole different story altogether and Sersi had to lean slightly against the table Druig was laying on. She swallow a few times before she stopped feeling like her throat was going to constrict.

The occasional soft beeping of the engines and the constant hum of Phastos's machinery receded into the background. She couldn't take her eyes off the still face of one of her brothers.
Until a few moments ago, Druig had seemed peaceful to her, but now she saw a thousand little things that she hadn't noticed before.
Had he already been that pale this morning, or was it the light in the room that made his skin look almost ashen? Did gray-tinged veins suddenly appear on his neck and jawline, or was it just her imagination playing a particularly horrible trick on her?
Sersi balled her hands to fists. Should this really be the end now? That couldn't be, they had survived so much. He had survived so much.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat and against the fact that her mouth felt like it was filled with ash, once more before she was able to formulate a sentence.

"By 'reboot' do you mean erase his memory? Like you you would have done with Thena?" her voice was shaking but either Ajak didn't notice or she decided not to bring it up out of pity for her.

It was not a memory anyone of them where font of in any way as it had been the end of their long long lifes together. Fivehundret years ago, Ajak had promised Thena that her spirit would remain the same even if she made her forget the life she had lived up until that point. But a spirit was not the same as a lifetime of experiences, emotions, memories and feelings, the story they shared and that made them unmistakable themselves.

Druig had always had such strong feelings, even if he didn't like sharing them.
Sersi wondered how much of him would really remain after such a procedure.

"It wouldn't be the same," Ajak replied. "Thena's mind is torn apart by Mahd Wy'ry. Old memories eclipsing the here and now from time to time and she reacts accordingly. In Druig's case, it's not just his mind that's affected. Something is tugging at him, from within and robs him of his cosmic energy. I can't stop it."

And Sersi knew enough about the topic to know that this was serious even without Ajak's tone of voice. Cosmic energy was as essential to an Eternal's body as the blood that coursed through his veins. She had seen for herself what happened when a body was deprived of this energy and just the thought of seeing another one of her siblings in this state, helpless to do anything but watch them pass, almost brought tears to her eyes and made them burn so she had to blink a few times.

Not Druig, she thought, not after all that had happened, to him especially.

She had not forgotten what he had done for her. How he had tried to protect her from having to be the one to kill the Celestial Tiamut. He had doubted his own abilities to put the Celestial to sleep but had accepted to lead the Uni Mind and take responsibility for all of earth the moment he had seen how conflicted she had been about it.
She would always be entirely grateful for that selfless act, even if he had not been able to spare her from having to finish the deed by herself. He had taken the hardest blow for it. Sersi had not forgotten.

"What would you have to do?" she asked tonelessly.

"I would have to disrupt the flow of energy in order to completely sever the connection of whatever is tearing on him. His body has to stop all functions, including the mind. I have to reset everything. Then I need to reestablish his connection to the cosmic energy through my own."

"That would mean it could just as easily go wrong!" Sersi exclaimed in horror. She stared at Ajak with wide eyes.

She had assumed that she would suggest a safe method, but in order to completely cut off an Eternal from its connection to the cosmic energy that gave them their powers, the body had to cease to be alive. She knew enough about humans to be aware that resuscitation didn't have to be successful, that there was a more than possible chance that it would fail and to her ears it sounded more like a last-ditch effort than a real chance. Besides that, there would be not a fragment of his mind left afterwards, even if it succeed.

Ajak's expression spoke volumes too.

Sersi shook her head vehemently. "We can't do that. There must be a way to help him somehow. It must have had something to do with that Deviant attack."
It couldn't be a coincidence, after all. The timing was too perfect. An Eternal didn't lose all of his energy just like that, that was impossible.

Ajak sighed and rubbed her forehead. She leaned her back against one of the golden devices Phastos had set up for her to treat various injuries. Deep lines appeared like wrinkles on the tanned skin of her ageless face and for a moment she seemed incredibly tired to Sersi. Something clicked in her head.
She didn't know what to do herself.
For as long as she could remember, Ajak had cared for all of them, chiding them whenever one of them had overstretched their powers and insisting on healing even the smallest of injuries for them. It must be just as awful for her to think about not being able to help one of them as it was for Sersi to be unable to spare Druig of losing who he was.

She pressed her lips together.

"Have you told the others?"

"No." Ajak looked at her, her warm brown eyes suddenly stern and serious. "And neither will you. Especially not Makkari, do you hear?”

She frowned. "But Ajak-"

Ajak immediately interrupted her. "You won't tell Makkari, Sersi."

For a moment the two women just stared at each other until the atmosphere of the room seemed to overwhelm Sersi once more and she had to look away and break eye contact, admitting defeat.

Her eyes found Druig's face again and she felt the urge to apologize to him a thousand times over. For very different things, for having put the weight of the world on his shoulders, for having pulled him away from the savety of the home he had build for himself, but above all for not being able to help him.
She had been there too, at the market, only hours before, or had it been a whole day now? She wasn't sure anymore.
She'd heard Sprite yell his name and had seen him fall under the Deviant's weight as the beast had jumped at him, but she still had had to protect the humans.

It all seemed like lame excuses.

"I would want to know if it was Ikaris." she murmured after a while, knowing that Makkari would be absolutely devastated. Still, she didn't feel like she had any right to hide something like that from her sister.

"Ikaris." said Ajak, almost thoughtfully. "And your human?"

Sersi blinked in surprise. The abrupt change of subject made her look up. "What?"

Sersi trusted Ajak. For as long as she could remember, she had always looked up to her. She believed her former leader to be smart, sensible, and always looking out for all of their best interests.
Even today, she would have given the sphere that Arishem had left with her, for reasons she still couldn't understand, back to the healer without even a second of hesitation.
Nevertheless, she had the feeling that Ajak would make a huge mistake that could not only be fatal to Druig.
She couldn't explain where it came from, but it was there and growing stronger by the minute.

"I love Dane." she said, surprised at how steady and sure her own voice sounded. “But Ikaris and I have a history together. He's still important to me.” She looked down at her brother, who couldn't speak for himself.
And while she didn't feel like she was the right person for this, that moment, she was the only one here beside Ajak, who seemed to have already made up her mind.

The situation reminded her too much of five hundred years ago in Tenochtitlan. Back then he had spoken out for Thena and turned against Ajak. Now she would do the same for him.

“Druig wouldn't want that, Ajak. You know it." and she knew that the other was aware of it and remembered exactly the same situation as Sersi herself. "What if we don't do anything?"

"Then he will wither away until there is nothing left of him." she said sadly, clear regret in her voice, yet it did not shake at all.

Of all of them, Druig had hated the thought of wiping Thena's memories the most.
While neither of them had particularly wanted to see her forget everything they had been through together, and become a virtual stranger to a sister who had stood by them for millennia, it had been Druig who had been the first to oppose Ajak's offer.

It had been he who had claimed that destroying Thena's memory would also destroy who she was.
That was why Sersi knew, with absolute certainty, that he would never agree to that. Only he couldn't speak for himself at the moment. It wasn't fair to rule over his fate over his head. Over Makkari's head. Over all of their heads. The fact that it was unfair, however, would not make the healer change her mind. Life wasn't always fair, that had been a bitter but necessary realization Sersi had made.

"How much time do we have?" she asked instead.

Ajak regarded her thoughtfully but her expression remained unreadable for a long moment before her wise eyes swept over Druig and she finally turned back to the holograms.

"A few days. It's hard to say. I'd have to stabilize him. Maybe two weeks. I would have to do more tests to be more specific."

Maybe it was actually her naivety that Thena had spoken about, and that Sprite had accused her more than once during the time they had lived together in London, but Sersi found new hope in that.

"That's enough time to find out what happened. Let me go back to that town. Let Phastos examine the deviant's body. Maybe we can find something that might help."

She could see that Ajak didn't really believe her, but she wasn't ready to give up without a fight. It was a stretch, she knew, but she would grasp for any straws she could find to save one member of her family and she was sure the others would be no different.

"Give him a chance. Please. I won't tell the others until you've finished your tests, but please."

Ajak sighed. Her shoulders slumped and she admitted defeat.

None of them knew of the red-haired human girl, whose back was pressed firmly against the wall of the hallway next to the infirmary's entrance, completely hidden by the door's massive metal frame, yet in perfect earshot and wide-eyed from the conversation she had just overheard.

Sprite walked away with quick, silent steps, but without a word.