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They aren’t who they were.
Mikhaila wonders, sometimes, if she were who she’d been, would she have loved Morgan? This Morgan, who isn’t Morgan, too selfless in the way she shields Mikhaila from the all too frequent Typhon attacks, as if Mikhaila still retains her frail human form. This Morgan, who is still Morgan, staring down at the corpse of something that had once been human, had been something she’d never been, shot through with the darkness she is. The keen insight, the insatiable curiosity, that’s the Morgan she knew. The Morgan that killed her father in cold blood, for nothing more or less than the progress of science she should never have touched. The Morgan that infuriated her, and scared her. That still scares her now.
If she can still be scared.
She asks about it once. If she has ascended, become lines of code running on circuity shot through with sparking wires, can her fear be programmed out? Can she be changed?
When Morgan answers, she looks sad. It’s a too human sadness, and all the more alien for it, because her Morgan never looked sad like that. Not that Mikhaila remembers, but then maybe she never looked. What need is there to look closely at someone you know, someone you might love, someone you hate for all they have and haven’t done for you, to you? She looks at Morgan now because she is strange. She looks to Morgan now because she is familiar.
Yes. Morgan doesn’t lie, rests a hand on Mikhaila that wavers into darkness when she forgets, grips harder when she remembers. Do you want me to do that?
Would you, if I asked? The words sharper, more suspicious than she intends. But then, even now when they are no longer who they were, they remember what they are. Transplanted memory and existence and consciousness still retains the imprint of what came before. Morgan withdraws. Looks away. And for a moment, Mikhaila is alone. And for a moment, she is as she was. Waiting for Morgan to be who she wants.
But then Morgan turns back. And Mikhaila is.