Doubt settled like debris in Lu’s gut as he moved through each lonely day, nightmares reminding him of the shadow he’d slunk back into, the dark house, the empty commute, the quiet office. He was back to waiting, to hoping, to obsessively convincing himself that Adon would return, simultaneously running through every reason he might not. 

Mess had explained that Adon once made him and Euri promise to comply with any would-be kidnappers or opponents looking for him, and swore he’d figure out the rest. Just wait, they kept telling him, frantically messaging each other before returning to Lu with that rhetorical command: just wait, Adon will be back when he’s ready. When he’s done. When he’s better. 

But Lu didn’t want to wait. He didn’t want Adon to do anything but be okay, to tell him he was okay. He didn’t want Adon to use up the rest of himself protecting him from Gideon, from his past, from the Ground they were both born to. He didn’t want a sacrifice, and he didn’t like how easily the others accepted the freedom Adon gave them: not to worry, he always figures it out—like it didn’t cost him anything, like they could ignore every new scar while Lu had them mapped out like star charts, dreading the arrival of each comet, tracking every asteroid for potential impact. 

☆

After two weeks without a message or update, Lu descended to the Ground just to be closer to wherever Adon probably was, wandering until Phaios dragged him to Nyx’s. Mess laughed at him because two weeks was nothing for Adon, and that made Lu even more determined and scared and lonely. Two weeks should feel like an eternity, because Adon should be living, not surviving. Two weeks should feel full of lost potential and possibility, not a reason all the people around him didn’t worry yet. A two-weeks’ absence was enough to push even the most resilient Grounders into a sec-off office, hoping for closure, usually dead-ending, quite literally, below the Wells because some fish had slipped in through the Arcade. 

“What did you ask him to find?” Phaios glanced around at Nika, Xeri, Nyx, Mess, and Euri, searching for whoever had sent Adon on his most recent MIA excursion, confused by their gaunt expressions. 

“Me,” Lu snorted to himself. 

Only Phaios heard him, his face twisting in a slow disgust at his friend’s lovesick pout while Xeri eyed Lu curiously. Neither Phaios nor Nika introduced Lu, letting Xeri struggle to remember where she’d seen him before. Phaios was busy watching for Y, grateful that she seemed too occupied by whatever mess X and D’Arjon had started. He didn’t know what would happen if she came stomping in to meet Lu without Adon to step between them, he didn’t even know if Adon would step between them. Either way, Yas would ruin the diner and start a million other fights and Nyx would kick them all out. 

Phaios shook his fears away and joined the others trying to distract Lu. Nika teased that he’d kink his neck from staring at the door from his seat at the bar, and Mess even pushed a drink at him, but he ignored them, straining to see through the noise of the crowded tables, and he looked like the Gideon Phaios had first joined. It was haunting, to see the cold patience on Lu’s sharp face, too familiar. Phaios shifted uncomfortably, sighing, willing himself to remain beside Lu, though every instinct urged him to run away from the familiarity. How many bouts had he talked Lu into at Arez’ gym just to face that fear, and how many times had he walked away more afraid. His guilt waned slowly, still too heavy despite Lu-Lu’s apparent forgiveness. Phaios focused on the drink Nika passed him, ignoring Xeri’s questioning frown.

The door banged open with a soft ding as Adon shoved through, his orange coat quieting even the loudest groups. He surveyed the staring dining room, spotted his target, then stormed over to one of the largest round booths, sneering at a man who was already quivering. 

Lu drank in the sight of Adon’s back, no limp, no blood, searching for signs of his other wounds. He stood to move toward Adon, but Mess, Euri, and even Phaios, grabbed his arms to stop him. 

“That’s my stone-cold ice-bath-bro,” Mess warned with a shake of his head, eyes sparkling in admiration.

“I don’t think that’s what ice-bath means,” Euri finished an order and slid it toward Xeri, tabbing the digital order counter so the plate would lead her to its customer.

Mess shrugged, patting Lu’s shoulder with surprising sympathy, “that’s not Adon, it’s the Finder. You don’t want to interrupt it. Not when it’s looking for something.”

“Especially not when it’s looking for something,” Euri agreed, pushing off the bar and crouching to restock the garnish prep-line.

Lu frowned, it…? Hestared at Mess, waiting for the joke, a slow chill passing over him as he looked around and saw no one objecting. He shuddered at the sincerity of Adon’s friends reveling in his bitter cold while diners fidgeted nervously or relaxed because he wasn’t looking at them. Lu wondered how deep the cracks went, watching Adon drag the pleading man out by the back of his collar. No one stopped him. No one assisted the man, or questioned Adon, because the Finder was known to them, an identity Lu had thought of as a necessary shield, one he’d caused. But watching Adon stride between tables with a flailing man in his grip, he wondered how much of Adon was even left. Was that what the Pits did? Tumbled a person down to their hardest parts, squashing them into gemstone shapes, then spitting them out—no, the Pits swallowed every offering. It hadn’t spit out Adon or Y, they’d escaped and everyone whispered about it like a miracle, but all Lu could see was a demon too far away from its home, yearning for the warmth of hell.

Lu watched Adon exit longingly. Adon shoved the man into the quiet corridor, the conversations returning to normal volume as the entire diner turned to gawk at the Finder barking at the poor man through the wall of windows, laughing because he wasn’t them. The man quivered, cried, and pleaded, then straightened and said something that resulted in Adon swinging a hard fist across his jaw, dropping him instantly. The bar broke out in a cheer, patrons returning attention to their plates, nodding approvingly at his single-hit K.O., and gossiping about all the reasons the victim probably deserved it. Adon was their hero and they would keep him that way.

Lu gulped, forcing himself to inhale and count to ten, clenching around his pitting gut. Adon the Finder was not a layer of paint to be chipped away one hug at a time, and Lu felt embarrassed for ever thinking himself strong enough to pull Adon out of the chaos. Not when he’d been to the Pits, not when there was a chain of people desperately holding onto him, pulling him back down. What did Lu know about the chaos of the Ground to heal the kinds of wounds it would leave? He’d seen the scars on Adon’s body when he’d changed him into the hospital scrubs, he’d stared at the medical print-o for ages, willing himself to understand how broken Adon’s body was, but he hadn’t considered the mind, only the heart. Now he was stuck in a bar feeling stupid for dreaming about a future, for nearly forgiving himself, while Adon disappeared into the shadows, not hiding like Lu, but stalking his prey from the dark… and the part of himself Lu hated most in the world whispered: like Gideon. 

The corridor darkened as the sunlamps winked out without any of the dimming technology of the Mids, the floor light-strips and neon ad-boards sputtering awake as the shadow of the Finder passed the bank of windows and Adon dragged a screaming man down the hall. He did not return. 

Lu nearly vomited, still watching the others for fear, worry, disgust, anxiety, anything other than that sickening reverence, that respect for their stupid Finder because, as Lu was quickly piecing together, the more dangerous or feared Adon was, the safer his people were. So… not like Gideon, Lu winced, rubbing his temples, his eyes straining in the cacophony of Grounder lights as clothes brightened and makeup glowed and the millions of emitters that made up every non-glass surface flickered glitching ads for PSAs that were no longer relevant, businesses that didn’t exist, and services the Grounders wouldn’t even dream of.

Mess, Euri, and Xeri all relaxed in Adon’s absence and served dinners with smiles. Seeing Adon was enough for them. Phaios had followed Nika out, returning with a sour expression and drinking the line of shots Mess had continued to slide in front of Lu. That Adon was moving was enough for them, alive was enough. They didn’t need to know whether he was whole, or whether he still had nine and a half (debatable) fingers and three-quarters of an ear. They didn’t think about all the ways he was dying, all those oranges and reds splattered over his print-o, only that he had another tally because he’d survived, as promised. 

They didn’t dwell in the almosts or what-ifs, and Lu suddenly realized how privileged he’d become, how much he’d healed and grown in the Mids. He could worry, but they could only wave. He didn’t think making Adon worry would be a kindness and he stewed over every twisted future he might have committed himself to while spitefully shooting Mess’ disgusting drinks. Phaios finally dragged Nika out and Lu followed, walking past where they turned at the bike rail with a wave, and trudging to the public rail. He watched the other Grounders, separating them into people who still worried, and people who only waved their hands, contemplating what kind of future was possible between someone who’d been so thoroughly broken by the world, and a person who’d broken himself. 

But that wasn’t fair. Gideon had broken him first. Lu snorted at his swampy thoughts, rolling his eyes at the depressing buzz of Mess’ drinks and wishing he hadn’t drank them. Adon the cat met him at the door, but Adon the person still did not return.

Lu distracted himself in Arez’ gym every evening, Phaios only joining him on workshop days (their most recent being a new round of agricultural-raft supervisor training for leads and cultivation crew-hands). Lu had no idea what was real anymore, the silence from Adon stretching the memories of the hospital into doubt and wishful thinking. He half expected Adon to waltz in, claim he’d changed his mind, and stick his dumb knife right in Lu’s gut, twisting and pulling down with both hands. Lu might even let him. 

Instead, he religiously ran through Arez’ neverending revenge circuits, his reflexes honed to tight-rope instinct. In the future he wanted, Adon would have to go through some kind of withdrawal, from violence, or people, or himself, ridding the bad coping mechanisms (like that god awful pink hair dye). And though he’d never swung at Lu with anything but bare threats to not-die, Lu couldn’t help but imagine Adon waking up from nightmares, fists clenched in a dark room, unable to distinguish reality the way Lu sometimes had when he’d first reached the Mids with his new ID. He thought of how much Adon might hate himself for hurting Lu accidentally (which was maybe wishful thinking), and trained and trained so that if Adon came home, if he came to be warm, he could thaw responsibly. So that he couldn’t hurt Lu, so that he wouldn’t be alone the way Lu had been, in that blank Midder unit, watching his peers smile effortlessly and gossip about nonsense that mattered only above the Mids, unable to keep a light on because Gideon might see, shivering awake in the empty shadows, alone, alone, alone, until he’d decorated himself with Adon. 

But he wasn’t alone anymore. He was in a crowded gym, on a crowded train, walking down crowded corridors, sitting in a silent office, then back out to the shuffle and sweat of the gym. He would be a person, he punched bags and jumped ropes. He would be a person, independent of Adon. He would let Adon be whoever he had become, he sparred Arez and rejected another local fight; he would find goals or hobbies so that Adon felt safe enough to return. He left the gym each day with a determined stride, and spent each night restlessly waiting for Adon, drawing his face with a million different smiles. 

Lu went to work and Apolla continued to hover and stare, but was more careful to look away when Lu sighed. When Esther asked what was going on, Apolla huffed that she’d been recently traumatized and stomped her little clicking shoes out to the executive elevator. Lu had laughed so hard, he’d fallen out of his chair, then went to splash water on his face in the bathroom because his heaving giggles too quickly turned into wracking sobs. He hid in a cubicle, sniffling, and scrolled through his calendar on his phone, horrified to realize it hadn’t even been three weeks. It felt like forever, like another life, cornered by a boss and a client coercing him into drinks he didn’t want, then Doni who said he’d come to kill Lu, broken and bleeding and gripping Mr. Adipo’s jaw. Lu wiped his eyes and sneered at himself, shaking his head. He understood why they liked Adon’s strength, how easy it was to hide behind, to be saved by. But he refused to need saving again. He would be a person on his own, and then, eventually, Adon would come home. 

Now, if only there was some guidebook that could tell him how to do that, when his entire purpose, existence, and peace was made up of Adons. He remained in the bathroom stall for another ten minutes, staring at his blurred reflection in the chrome-paneled door. Lu, as he was, was like the impression Adon might leave in a bed or sofa or chair. He was made up only of the space Adon had occupied, now absent, still warm but fading. And he was terrified Adon wouldn’t return, that he would inflate and… and what? Be revealed? Be seen? Be known?

Lu dropped his head into his hands and gritted fists through his hair and realized he was made of absolutely nothing but the space he’d made for Adon. Determined to fill himself, out of spite or hope or raw self-awareness, he stood, brushed his hair smooth, and returned to his desk to set the next week’s appointments. He spent that night staring blankly at his tablet, refusing to draw Adon, unable to imagine anything else.