He frowned deeply as he felt hands gliding across his head, stroking his hair and face.

"Alias," they whispered, gentle voice caressing him muddled ears. "Alias, wake up."

The world was dark, just as it always had been. Well – not always. In a distant past, he could remember the sensation of warming light tingling against his skin, could hear the bright laughter of his younger sister as she tumbled through the fields behind their house, beckoning him to follow her. His name would float from her lips much like the voice above him now, but Alana's voice had never been tinged with the pain that crept into this person's tone. She was always beaming and struggling to subdue her giggles in his happy memories, in some of his dreams.

He groaned; the sound slipping from his mouth. He hated vocalizing weakness, pain. His body ached alright, but it felt a hell of a lot better than it had before. Before...

Eyelids snapping back, he looked up to a bewildered and troubled Acacia. Her eyes were wide with worry and she clutched him against her. His head rested in her lap, and her hands were woven in a startling fashion through his hair. He blinked for a few beats as they simply stared at each other. Her mouth shaped words, but he couldn't discern them yet.

"Wait..." He struggled to say.

She tensed up, her stress tangible through the bond. His mouth fell open.

"Acacia..." He rumbled out, voice thick and husky. "The bond is..."

She grinned, eyes growing glassy. Her voice was equally unsteady. "Yes, yes it's back. But so are you. You're back. You're okay." She leaned down and peppered kisses across his face, brushing his forehead to his nose, to his cheeks. "You're alive," she breathed cheerfully.

He had become ice beneath her touch, unresponsive to her sudden burst of affection.

She pulled back and giggled at him. "Calm down, silly. It was an innocuous gesture. It's a way to show your relief and care for a person. My people did it..." She sighed. "It seems that memory is still a bit fragmented."

She allowed him to move away and sit up; his hair tumbled in every which way as he looked at her. He moved his arms up and down, flexed his muscles, and fisted his hands open and close, testing his abilities and searching for limitations. He looked up to her in slight awe. "I'm completely healed. I thought the venom would kill me for sure."  He met her eyes as he withdrew his eyes from his torso and arms. "Thank you."

She gaped. "You're thanking me, willingly?"

He shook his head. "You don't have to act so surprised."

"The surprise is entirely genuine, I assure you."

"I am capable of manners, when something moves me. You weren't really competent enough to do that before recently."

Her eyes narrowed. "Pardon?"

Alias sighed, turning his head from her to the dark sky that had briefly lightened, the closest this world would ever come to day. "Do we have to have this discussion now?"

She didn't speak until he met her gaze once more. "We need to talk about what happened in the caves, Alias."

His eyes seared hers, a fierce intensity burning in their obsidian depths. "It is not a pleasant topic for me."

"Please help me to at least understand what happened, how it happened. I'm sure you have questions for me too. If we are to brave this world together, we should start on a good foot."

"I think this is more due to your curiosity rather than propriety." Alias huffed. "But if we are to air all of our soiled laundry, I want to do the questioning first."

Her lips twitched. "Go ahead."

"How the hell did you go from a meek little girl to 'daughter of the gods'? I was running, and we were both in tremendous pain, and suddenly the pain was replaced by this tension... and I blacked out. I remember hearing fragment, probably through our tether, but what happened on your end?"

She paused, thinking. "Both Amit and Edmund were straining the bond, exhausting their powers on it, and with how taut it was already with you pushing the distance, my powers began to rumble. It was an innate urge to unleash them and protect myself, and that extend to the bond and you. With awakening such deep rooted magyk from within me, it in turn awakened my true nature.

"The memory is sharp at certain points, but in others in becomes hazy with all the faces and buzzing. I remember expanding... I grew larger, feet bigger, and light poured out of me. It was glorious how it made the cave glisten, how it made your people shine. Everyone could sense the power, and they came tumbling out of their houses. I thought they would be joyous...that they would understand my sweet intentions, but they were too frightened and blinded to understand. They were overrun by fear, and to try to placate them, I allow Edmund to 'subdue' me. I allowed his power to make me grow small and feeble once more, but I always had control. I would never allow them to harm you or me, unless you decided it so."

She stretched her arms, rolled her shoulders. "Well, that's enough of that. But it shifts us nicely to what I wish to ask you. Out of everyone there, of each of your kind, you were one of the only ones to support and trust me." She grew quiet for a moment, brow scrunching. "You are devotedly loyal to your people, and never cease to voice your distaste towards me. Why sacrifice everything you cared for, for me?"

Alias trailed his eyes over the black earth. Brown swirls of mud appeared here and there, but the grass remained frayed and tinged brown. "I may have misperceived you, not entirely, but enough. I did not trust you, and I hated the position you had put me in, and that malice of our situation ended up directed towards you. You also embody everything I have grown to hate. Compassion, sweetness, joy, vulnerability, these are all attributes that I no longer possess, really that none of my kind does. You were a walking punch in the gut."

Her gaze was steely. "And what changed?"

"The moment that you revealed your true self," he answered. "I realized that I had misjudged you. You were the opposite of weak, you were so strong and powerful in that moment, and you just don't always present your capabilities." He sighed. "What you must understand is that it was the gods that put us in this horrid state. They decimated the entire human species, and what was left of us was corrupted from what we had to endure. They ruined humanity, and much bitterness and resentment still exists towards the gods we'd once worshiped. For you to show up, one of their breed, people identify you with all of their suffering and think that by destroying you, they somehow will find revenge."

"You do not understand. Whoever I come from, whoever sent me, they have no cruel intent."

"I know you have no ill will for us. I could sense it through the bond, see it and sense it. But outside of that, I believe that you are more related to us than you believe, and that helped to dissipate any anger I could have towards you."

Her magyk jolted through their tie. "What do you mean?"

"For you to be casted down from the heavenly and blissful realm of the gods to this dismal plane of existence, I think you are being punished like the rest of us. You are not corrupted as we are. You partially resemble part of what humans used to be. You are damned just as the rest of us, and I cannot find resentment or jealousy towards you when we are in the same sinking ship."

Her gaze sliced through him. He felt her anger flare. "I am not being punished. They would not do that to me. Not after...after..."

"They took your memory, Acacia. Does that seem like a loving gesture to you?"

Her mouth thinned into a tight line. "I know well enough to trust their actions."

He shook his head, chuckling without humor. "Then I might've been right when I first called you dense."

"Shut it," she snapped. "Why did you condemn yourself for me? I still do not understand why you would do that for me."

He fell silent, arrogance shaken. "Has it ever occurred to you that I did not do it just for you?"

Her eyes widened, but she did not speak.

"I desire freedom. I dream of a world that used to be. As much as I treasure the sanctuary Community offered me, it smothered me, and I have always favored solitary. It felt as if there was nothing left for me there, and I was not willing to sacrifice myself for something so brainless. Kill both of us? Truly? That is the densest thing I have ever heard." He shook his head in disbelief. "I would not ruin my life and yours just to satisfy their irrational fear. It was never a choice when they presented it that way."

"You do not find me a threat?"

His eyes raked over her with a scrutiny that made her squirm. "You are powerful, so powerful that you could be labeled dangerous, but I have felt your heart, and I know that your power would never be misused."

A smile broke out across her face, the first true sign of her usual peppiness she flashed. To his dismay, she launched towards him, arms wrapping around his shoulder and pulling him uncomfortably close to her warm body. He was not accustomed to such affection, and it made him yearn to break free of her grasp.

He remained tense under her touch until she drew back slightly and met his eyes.

Her exasperation was evident as she looked to him. "You are being ludicrous. Reciprocate my kindness, or else I will never let go."

His arms awkwardly reached up, and he tentatively placed his hands on her back, shaking as they held each other. Something in his heart shook, tried to unbury itself, but it was kept underneath a tight lock. He would not allow his heart to budge, and it took a great amount of self control not to flee as she held him to her.

She finally withdrew and beamed at him. He tried to quell the disgust that wailed inside of him at her ethereal beauty. Her startling radiance contrasted the gloom of the rocks that shielded them, and illuminated the dark of the ragged world. She was utterly otherworldly before him, with her shining silvery hair and eyes as sheer as glass. They were sharp as glass too, cutting through him until he felt reduced to a terrifying pile of bits and pieces. He stumbled back a step, and she smirked.

"What are you so afraid of?"

He shook his head, a shining memory of Alana dancing across his vision. She had been crafted by the same intensity, the same light. And thinking of Alana always made him dizzy, always shook something inside of him that didn't want to be grasped.

He cleared his throat, voice holding a slight quiver. "Nothing, nothing at all."