To say his team wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea that he wanted to spend the night in his own apartment would have been an understatement. Even though Creed decided to stay with him, they didn’t consider it safe, even though their apartments were around his. They only agreed after he allowed Xavier and Eli to sleep on his couch, while Creed and Jamie took his bedroom.

Deep down, the hero was glad for their company. Because when he entered his apartment, he realized everything was not only exactly the same as before, but also identical to what he had seen in his mind.

It made sense. It was his apartment. He remembered every detail of it, so it was logical that his mind could replicate it perfectly.

Jamie managed to pretend he was fine for exactly an hour before deciding he needed fresh air and moved out onto the balcony.

Of course, he sat there for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet of the night and the view of the city lights, which looked tiny from this height, before the door quietly opened and without needing to look back, he knew who had decided to join him.

“I’m fine,” he said before the question could come.

“I wasn’t planning to ask,” Eli told him, and Jamie turned surprised eyes toward him. “I figured that question must already be getting on your nerves.”

The blond walked to the second wooden chair and sat down. He didn’t say anything else, and silence settled between them. Clearly he hadn’t come to offer words of encouragement, only quiet support, assuming that was what his teammate needed most.

“I hate that I missed so much.” In the end it was Jamie who couldn’t stay silent. “All the missions, all the meetings, all the celebrations at the bar, all the birthday traditions—”

He couldn’t list more because Eli interrupted him.

“We didn’t celebrate.”

“What?”

“Celebrating successful missions didn’t feel right when we couldn’t solve your case,” the freckled man said first. “As for birthdays… Adrian celebrated with his family, but otherwise no. We couldn’t celebrate yours, so we didn’t celebrate ours either.”

“You didn’t have to—”

“We wanted to,” Eli cut in firmly again. “Without you it wouldn’t have been the same.”

“Now I feel bad that I celebrated my birthday without you. The real you,” Jamie muttered, his own words turning bitter in his mouth. He had enjoyed false celebrations while his friends had actually been suffering.

Elias didn’t blame him for anything, though.

“How was the party?”

“What?” Jamie was clearly surprised. Not only by the question but by the light tone he used to ask it, as if it were a joking conversation.

For a second he looked into his amused eyes and let them convince him to give a truthful answer.

“You got drunk, and so did Nate. He forgot he had a deadline for an important project the next day,” he revealed. 

“That sounds accurate.” Eli gave a short laugh.

He could enjoy it and take it lightly, but Jamie had trouble seeing it the same way. He had a year of memories that were useless and couldn’t replace them with the real ones. On top of that, he was the only one who had them, so even talking about what was real and what wasn’t was difficult.

Melancholy almost washed over him again if Eli hadn’t disarmed him with a question.

“Was I handsome?”

“What?” For the third time he asked the same question, because it seemed this conversation might be the most shocking of all since he returned.

“They must have created me based on your memory. So… was I handsome? I need to know how much you exaggerated my beauty.” Eli gave him a radiant smile.

The dark-haired hero stared at him for a few seconds, then felt the corners of his mouth lift and laughed. “You’re ridiculous.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he had actually said that.

“Ridiculously handsome?”

Jamie rolled his eyes, though the smile was still on his face.

“You wish.”

“Rude,” Eli declared, but from his expression it was clear it hadn’t ruined his good mood.

Despite succeeding in getting Jamie into a better mental state, the hero with glasses found that it still wasn't enough to be able to sleep peacefully in his own apartment.

While Creed slept without issue in the bed they had moved there from the guest room of Xavier's apartment, not even the sounds of his sleep and the quiet breathing echoing in the silence and darkness of the room helped Jamie reach the same level of ease.

Everything in his room, besides the extra bed, was the same. Perhaps the only difference was the alarm clock, which wasn't broken but sat on his nightstand. 

Furthermore, without everyone else around and without the extra fatigue stemming from his medical condition, Jamie found himself in the dark, staring at the ceiling above the bed, as if waiting for a monster to appear on it at any moment. 

Instead, he saw only darkness, so he could only be haunted by his own thoughts. 

In the end, he only closed his eyes for a few hours and woke up in the morning feeling stiff and achy, but he was home, and that was what mattered.