Stefan and Aimee had their fully-automatics at hand, and The Arena breathed with them. There were innumerable bodies of men closing in on them, AIM and AIM America soldiers, and it seemed as though there were only more to come. That was, until The Arena's sequence was interrupted. Rifles turned to dust between their fingers and soldiers evaporated, before that bright and blinding florescent light bloomed.

"Someone's entering The Arena," noted Stefan, the metal walls sprouting from the ground.

Aimee scoped her surroundings meticulously; they did not know who it was, but they were prepared for anything. It could have been anyone, even Abba herself. Once their eyes had adjusted to the light, they spotted him, Gavin, and lowered their guard. He called them as the alder doors closed behind him. The sound echoed in The Arena, a new Arena. A tropical forest replaced the marsh, and the tree plantation became a thriven cotton field, the cotton plump for harvesting. The desert sand and beachfront remained, but out of those stepping stones grew a path of rose petals. The weird thing was that they began at Gavin's feet and ended at Aimee's, as if leading him to her. She tried to overlook it, while Stefan neared her protectively, stood on her immediate right.

"Gavin, what are you doing here?" she questioned, her voice slightly raised due to the distance between them.

Gavin followed the path up to them, "Molly and Clifford asked me to find you; they wanted to know that you were okay."

"I'm fine," she tested. "Where are they?"

"Don't worry; they're safe with the RDAs. They just wanted me to tell you to go home and get some rest," he paused. "Buckley told us about the chip thing. If you need a break, you should take one."

She sighed faintly, "Thank you. I'm okay; just get back to them, please. I don't want anything to happen to my parents."

"Nothing's gonna happen to them, they're in a highly guarded facility with trained agents," he breathed, until he realised that the gap between them had greatly diminished, and then the thought of breathing was overwhelming.

Aimee stepped closer to him, which he did not think was possible, looked him in the eyes, "Gavin, I don't trust just anyone to protect them. It should be you or Stefan because I know that you care. I trust you. I trust you to keep us safe."

He nodded in comprehension, but then a strange sensation overcame him – one he could not comprehend. He did not feel like himself when he stared into Aimee's eyes, when his brain did some attack on his body and consumed it. It evoked the image of the crying girl in the mirror. "You are so beautiful," he had said to her. And in that evocation, in that moment, he kissed her. Kissed her in front of the deep mix of incredulity and birse, betrayal and hurt that engorged within Stefan.

Aimee pulled away, and in one motion, her elbow introduced itself to Gavin's Adam's apple. When he gulped, she felt it.

"What was that?" she demanded, sternly.

"I don't know."

The strange thing was that he seemed to be telling the truth.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" blurted Stefan, storming closer with that mix in his eyes. "You kissed her! Get over your damn crush and deal with the fact that she's my girlfriend!"

Aimee yelled at Stefan then, and suddenly she was holding him back instead of Gavin.

"Freaking hell, Stefan, I've had it with your trust issues! I am your friend. Yeah, I like Aimee," – he glanced at her – "and a part of me really wanted to kiss her right then, but a bigger part of me has moved on. You know that I wouldn't hurt either of you," he looked between them both. "I don't know what happened."

Aimee let her arms fall to her sides because Stefan had cooled down and he looked like himself again. They believed him.

"This isn't right," uttered Aimee.

She remembered the words she had said: We'll remember that he's a hero, a good person and not just a robot of yours. This was Buckley. This was his doing somehow, they just knew it.

Aimee headed towards the door that had already become somewhat imperceptible, and the rose petal path tailed her. Stefan ambled behind her, Gavin behind him, and the path was swept away in the wind with each step he made. They took the elevator, and when its doors spread again on the appropriate floor, Janet was standing in front of them. She told them what Otis had done at the hospital and kept pace with them as they hurried towards Buckley's office. Aimee was the first to go in. Empty. The only movement in the room was that of his unrealistic fish.

"He's not here," she breathed, spinning on her heels and facing the group.

"He should be in Central Command," tested Janet.

Aimee ran as if she had been there before – at least she had Gavin and Stefan to tell her which way to go. Central Command was the room wherefrom The Arena, as well as other major operations, was controlled, and once they stepped out of the elevator, they were already in it. It was extremely futuristic, white-and-silver and expensive looking, unnecessary. It looked like Buckley. They found him; he was the one man in the room who stood up.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Buckley!" shouted Aimee. "You repulse me."

"Is this about Gavin? He knows what happened," he said, unscathed.

"Mitchel, stop talking shit," he replied.

"It's that new mind control doo-hicky. I used it to enter your thoughts while you were in The Arena. You wanted to kiss Aimee, so I helped you do that."

"Helped me?" he spoke through his teeth. "You told me you wouldn't use that thing."

"I changed my mind. I thought I'd test it out – see how much of ones emotions I could access. It worked!" he said, and for some reason, he was an impressed kind of proud, but that changed when Gavin shoved him at his chest.

"Those were my emotions! That was my kiss. You stripped me of that, to test some useless upgrade?" he glared at him, his eyes ignited, before he turned away.

Buckley watched him and said the first thing that came to mind, some excuse to keep Gavin from leaving, to keep him from hating him for this. "Don't forget that I'm the reason you're here, Gavin. If it wasn't for me, you'd still be at AIM."

Gavin remembered how they had cried...

"You know damn well that Stefan saved me from that hell, not you. You just barked out a few orders and sat in that fancy-ass chair of yours."

Hell. Abba used to make him kill people – she was good at making – at the snap of her fingers. He had tried to run, on countless occasions, but the last time – when he thought he had succeeded – Abba found him, and when she did, she had his parents killed before his eyes.

Gavin remembered how they had cried, how they had beseeched for his help when they looked at him, but he also remembered how they had traded him, how they been the ones to hand him over to Abba in the first place. They would come to AIM headquarters once every month for almost a year, asking for their payment, their microchips, but they had died without them in the end. Had they ever loved him? Gavin wondered – he always had wondered – still he cried true tears over their unmoving bodies.

A moment later, Stefan, Dominick and four other RDAs came along and opened fire on the small army of soldiers around them. When Stefan saw Gavin, he knew that he was good, somehow, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it was the lost-boy look in his eyes, or that he had not removed those eyes from his parents. Stefan told him to get behind him, regardless of the height difference between them two years ago, and he protected him until there was nothing left to protect him from.

The memories brought a tear to his eye. "He's my best friend, and that stupid stunt you pulled could've cost me his trust."

"That's not true," uttered Stefan, sighing out his tremendous guilt. "I promise I'll trust you from now on, and I'm sorry I haven't been doing that lately. I know who you are – you're my best friend. And as yours, I'd like to do the honours..."

Without giving it a second thought, Stefan charged forward and punched the smug from his father's face.

After the initial round of shock, Aimee and Gavin smiled like they could not control it. The other agents and scientists gasped and gaped at the scene – those in particular, who actually seemed to care, were all but reassured by the next words to fall from Stefan's lips.

Austerely, he said, "He's fine."

Aimee approached Buckley. The floor seemed suitable for him. She was astonished by the amount of scorn twisting inside her, reserved for him, but then she thought about Stefan and how Buckley treated him, and it made sense.

"Just remember that you'll need us in the long run," she posed. "So no more mind games, or we'll walk out of here. We don't need to be a part of this organisation, me especially."

"You won't get your old life back after all of this over. GINM protects you, Aimee."

"I don't need your protection," she hissed. "And what happens next in my life will have nothing to do with you."

Wordless and pathetic, Buckley lay on the ground, and as helpless as he seemed, he still had that permanent unscathed look on his face. Maybe Stefan hadn't hit him hard enough. Aimee had nothing left to say; Buckley was aware of how headstrong she was now, how independent she was becoming. She thought about that as she, Gavin and Stefan waited for the elevator doors to close them off from the room.

"I think I'm done for the day," she muttered.

She had had the most eventful morning – for lack a better term – and now she just wanted to go home and do nothing. Or eat. Like most people did on Sundays.

Stefan drove Aimee home. They were standing at her door when he kissed her forehead, and she hoped it was not his way of avoiding her lips simply because Gavin had temporarily stolen them.

"I'm really glad you're okay," he said.

"I told you I would be," she smiled. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Call me if you need anything – anything."

On the drive over, Stefan had offered to stay with her for the day, but he did not need to. Aimee wanted him to know that he did not owe her anything, that none of what had happened that morning was his fault. That she would be okay.

"I will," she promised, giving his hand a squeeze.

Stefan would not leave until she was safely inside. Firstly, since she was still in her pyjamas and GINM boots, she took a shower as well as washed her hair. She donned a pair of black jeans and a blouse with a print of Big Ben, which had recently become more appealing to her than the Eiffel Tower T-shirt folded at the back of her closet, the one she used to wear so often that the print was fading. She sat in front of her open wardrobe and stared at the shoes that were scattered on the cupboard floor. She held up one of every pair of sneakers she owned, until she finally decided to just walk around in socks.

Aimee went downstairs to bake herself some pancakes, even though her only knowhow on the matter was based on what she had seen on TV once or twice. The first pancake she flipped ended up on the floor, but the second survived (she got the hang of it). She made two more, eliminated all proof of her baking experiment in the kitchen, and took her brunch to the TV room, where she sunk into the sofa and watched Marvel movies – starting with The Amazing Spider-Man.

Her marathon lasted until Molly and Cliff returned home, and she got up from the sofa to hug and greet them both.

Molly spoke, "Did you enjoy your day off?" and Aimee relieved her of her handbag.

"I did, thanks."

"And you've been watching," – Clifford glanced at the TV screen – "Marvel all day?"

"Like a pro," she joked, already on the stairs and heading towards their room to return Molly's bag to its rightful place.

She tried not to notice the concern in their eyes and appreciated the lack of probing. There was no "how is your arm, is it okay?" and she thought it would be better if she did not mention how her mother had injected her AIM, that it was not just a name but a piece of the future.

"How do you feel about... tuna wraps for supper?" Molly offered.

"I think I'll have the mousse."

Aimee overheard them, and she pleasantly shook her head. Cliff would do it. He loved his chocolate mousse.