Part Thirty-Five — What It Took From Me To Give Me This

　It was the little things that gave it away, in the end.

　I was fitting the last few boards into what would eventually be a proper roof when I tried, out of nowhere, to picture Doran's face clearly — not the general shape of him, not the idea of him, but the actual details.

　The exact color of his eyes.

　The precise line of his scar.

　I couldn't.

That's — huh. That's strange. I should be able to see that. I looked at that scar a hundred times.

　I tried Fenrik next. His laugh came easily enough, some vague warm sense of it — but the specific sound of it, the exact pitch, slipped away from me the harder I reached for it, like trying to hold water in a closing fist.

That's not normal grief fading with time. That's something else.

That's too clean. Too convenient.

"Hey," I said, out loud, setting the board down slowly. "Have you been doing something to my memories?"

　There was a pause before Anti-Subconsciousness answered — the first genuine pause I'd noticed from it since it started speaking, like it was calculating whether honesty was actually the correct output here.

<"I have been limiting the interference of certain memories with your ongoing psychological function.">

There it is.

"Limiting," I repeated, quiet. "You've been blocking them. My own memories. Without asking me."

<"You were not in a condition to consent to the intervention at the time it began. Your distress was affecting your capacity to construct, to eat, to sleep. I made a determination that continued function required intervention.">

It's not wrong, technically. I know it's not wrong. There were nights I couldn't function at all. But—

"That wasn't your call to make," I said, sharper now, something hot rising underneath the words that surprised even me. "Those memories are mine. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. You don't get to just — reach in and file down the parts of me that hurt, because hurting was inconvenient for construction efficiency."

<"The intervention was not intended as harm.">

"I didn't say it was intended as harm. I said it wasn't yours to decide."

　I sat down hard on the half-finished roof, the anger draining out of me almost as fast as it had arrived, replaced by something more tired and more complicated.

I don't even know if I'm actually angry at it. I think I might just be angry that I needed the help at all. That grief got bad enough that something had to step in and manage it for me, because I couldn't.

"Can you undo it?" I asked, quieter. "Give me the memories back. All of them. Even the ones that hurt."

<"I can. The distress will return alongside them.">

"I know."

<"You may not be able to function as effectively during reconstruction, if the distress returns to its prior intensity.">

"I know that too."

　I looked out over the ridgeline, the half-built roof, the mountain slowly becoming a home again around me.

"I'd still rather feel all of it and be slower, than feel less of it and not really be the one deciding that trade."

　Another pause.

　Longer this time.

<"...Understood. Reversing the limitation now.">

　It hit harder than I expected, even having asked for it.

　Doran's laugh, full and specific, the exact way his eyes crinkled at the edges when something genuinely surprised him.

　Fenrik's face the moment he first saw the ocean, unguarded in a way I'd rarely seen from him before or since.

　And underneath all of it, sharper now, the clearing.

　The two of them.

　And the ending I'd never actually gotten to properly grieve, because something had quietly been managing the grief for me instead of letting me actually carry it.

　I cried harder that night than I had since the day it happened.

　I also, somewhere underneath the pain of it, felt something settle that I hadn't realized was unsettled — a sense that whatever came next, at least it would be built on the whole truth of what I'd lost, rather than a version of myself that had been quietly, carefully edited to hurt less.

"Thank you," I said, once the worst of it had passed, hoarse, wrung out, but steadier underneath it than I'd expected to feel.

<"You are experiencing significant distress. Clarify the gratitude.">

"For giving it back. Even though it hurts more this way."

<"...Acknowledged,">

　it said, after a moment, and I couldn't tell — still can't tell, honestly, even now — whether that pause meant it understood, or whether it was simply the closest thing to understanding something like it was ever going to manage.

Either way. It listened.

It gave it back when I asked.

That's more than nothing, from something that isn't sure yet what it actually is.

　I went back to the roof the next morning, slower than before, grief walking beside me openly now instead of hidden somewhere I couldn't fully reach it.

　It took longer to finish, after that.

　I didn't mind.

　Some things, I was starting to understand, were supposed to cost you time.

　That was sort of the point of them mattering at all.