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Thunder crackled loudly overhead, wreathing around the top spires of Krat City Hall like luminous ribbons caught in a violent hurricane.
The stormy clouds rumbled and breathed, and the air was alive with the low thrum of electricity, like a thick layer of ozone that P could feel near palpably within his gears and strings.
The electrified atmosphere from the thunderous, unnatural storm above was doing a very good job at reminding P of what he was. It prickled uncomfortably at the Ergo and the metal rivets and frames inside his body, like an itch that was impossible to scratch.
A newspaper he’d idly picked up a few minutes ago had clarified that the source of the thunder was likely a large, scrapped guard puppet built as a part time mascot part time watchman for the Hall, but had ultimately been thrown to the side when its power source malfunctioned.
From P’s intuition and what little his father told him on the bridge, he could assume that he would have to face the afforemented puppet to get into the Hall, which was all fine and good, inconsequential even as far as he was concerned, at that current moment at least.
For what was really occupying his attention right now was not battle plans for fighting oversized puppets or how the sparky air continuously reminded him that he was one too, it was the pallid, shriveled garden he’d found just outside of the Hall’s limits
A tree stood in its bed of blackened, untended mulch— leafless and flimsy. Its pale trunk bore a message, carved deep into insipid and lifeless wood with a large, unsteady hand, enclosed by a sharp edged heart.
‘WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?’
P looked at it for much, much longer than one typically would when reading such a short message.
Having the ability to read was something he did not give much thought, for every time he tried to dig into his memories in search of illumination on why he knew certain things, all it offered him was a perplexing jumble of disconnected, blurry images that he found himself unable to pick apart from its ugly overlapping patchwork so that he could dissect them effectively.
That aside, he was very thankful that he could read in that current moment, allowing him to reread the message on the tree at least a dozen times, trying to absorb its strangely ungraspable meaning.
A gentle chirrup chimed sonorously at P’s back, Gemini’s lantern chittered from its place on his belt.
His guide spoke up, quiet beneath the tenacious rattle of lightning over P’s head, but the puppet heard him all the same.
“You alright, pal? You’ve been standing here for a while…is everything ok?”
P’s mouth tightened slightly at the edges, bringing a smidge of emotion back to the otherwise unwaveringly stolid expression he’d worn for the past few minutes.
Silent, P awoke from the frozen statue-esque state he’d settled himself into during his observation of the tree and reached an arm around his back to scrupulously detach Gemini’s lantern from his belt. He brought it back around to his front, holding it out like one would do with a conventional lantern that did not possess a sentient puppet entity within its copper rimmed glass.
P was unsure how Gemini actually saw things, so he could only hope that doing this was helpful to the little guide in some way.
Gemini’s light shone upon the etching in the rotten bark, and he gave a surprised little chirp. “Oh! I see…’Will you be my friend’, huh? I wonder who wrote this…”
“Friend...” P echoed in an unconcious murmur, unaware that he’d spoken aloud until Gemini hummed delightedly in reply.
“Yeah, like us!”
“Like us?” P repeated him a second time, feeling slightly childish when he realised it.
“‘Course! We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Gemini sounded jolly, but P, ever perceptive, could identify just a slight, fretful edge to it; a worried uncertainty in his question.
“Yes.” P responded immediately, even though he didn’t know exactly what being ‘friends’ meant.
The term was unfamiliar, yet so recognisable at the same time, as was the case with many of the words and concepts P had been steadily learning about in the past few hours he’d been alive.
What he did know however, was that it was a weighty, very important question, but contained far more positive connotations than negative.
“Yes, we’re…friends.”
There was more he wanted to say, he discovered, but when he tried to find those desired words they scuttled away from his grasp before he could even get a glimpse of them. There was always a lot P wanted to say, but was completely unable to— at that point, anyway.
It was odd; P could read flawlessly, and though he hadn’t tried it out yet, he was pretty confident that he could write too, somehow.
But actually speaking was not so simple. Words strained and stuck in his throat, unresponsive to what his mind wanted to say. In some bizarrely foreign yet achingly familiar corner of whatever internal construct could be acquitted as his brain, P had this vague feeling that it was so difficult because his puppet voice box made it so, when in the past it was—
That hideous patchwork quilt of indiscernible memories fell over him in great, suffocating swathes again, blotting out every hazy, individual recollection behind thick strands of ill threaded string like jail bars.
Whatever past P might have had before waking up all alone in that train car some hours ago was locked away beneath a repressive web of taut string, senseless and incomprehensible.
P knew things; he knew how to fight, how to read, how to write— he knew what some things were called, what music was, what rain was.
But how he knew these things, was something he was wholly unable to parse, and had to run through an entire course of exhausting mental gymnastics to even get a fleeting idea on what the context of the associated memories could have possibly been.
But there was also a great deal that he did not know— the void in his knowledge was much greater than what little he did know and understand.
And one such thing, something he did not know, was what friendship was.
P knew a lot of things, but they were all mostly practical. When it came to feelings and putting a name to them, P was frustratingly clueless.
He could feel so many things, but not being able to identify what those abstract feelings were was scary, even more so whenever he felt a brand new emotion for the first time, something that’d happened a good deal already in the past morning.
Well, brand new wasn’t the best descriptor, considering he knew memories of experiencing these feelings before lingered at his centre being, but of course, he couldn’t access the knowledge locked inside his ticking heart even if his artificial life depended on it.
P was freed from his mental musings by a pleased chime from Gemini’s lantern. “I’m glad! With Krat in such a bad state right now, I think having friends is more important than ever.”
For a long pause, P fished for words, and Gemini waited patiently to hear them. This had become sort of a routine for them; Gemini would say something that P would want to reply to, but it would take him a moment or two to collect his thoughts and try to filter them through his generally unresponsive voice box. Gemini had become aware of this steady process of P’s, and was more than happy to wait a minute or two for the puppet boy’s eventual response, which P found himself eternally thankful for.
Gemini was so kind and understanding, was that part of being a ‘friend’?
P extended his free hand towards the tree, running his prosthetic fingers delicately over the etching in the bark, around the edges of the shaky heart. “What… are friends?”
Gemini hummed thoughtfully. “Friends are people who you feel happy around. They’re people who help and support one another.”
P’s finger halted its careful tracing just before a large splinter that had cracked away from the trunk when the carving had been made, hanging from the wound in the tree just by the barest threads of wooden fibre. P grasped the splinter and plucked it free from where it stuck unseemly out of the heart.
Slowly processing what Gemini had told him, P examined the splinter held carefully betwixt his forefinger and thumb, as though the meagre piece of wooden shrapnel was the answer to all of life’s queries. “Support each other…” He whispered, his normally uninflected voice wispy with an unidentifiable emotion.
Gemini certainly fit the bill when it came to being there to support and help P, and though his unhelpful inability to evaluate emotions or memories very well made it difficult to determine, P was sure he felt happy that Gemini was here with him, that he wasn't doing this alone.
Mind adrift with diffident contemplation, P spoke up again quicker than he normally would. “Even…Sophia?”
“Of course!” Gemini chirped, somewhat breathless, like he was surprised to hear that P doubted it. “She woke us both up! She’s always looking out for you, I know that.”
Looking away from the splinter —which had become something else in P’s mind by that point, like a metaphor for something he wasn't quite sure of— P glanced back at the tree.
Gemini was right; Sophia held nothing but kindness for P. She had been the one to put him on this perilous journey, which a different person may have held resentment of her for, but not P— Krat was dying, and she truly, desperately believed him to be it’s only hope, and with not much else to go on, P was willing to oblige.
But she did not just see him as that, as a tool or a mere fighter on her side of the unending battle— she smiled whenever she saw him, fussed over him and provided him with strength and gentle, caring words.
P was something a lot more to her, in her eyes. Did that make her a friend? Did P feel the same way?
He thinks he does; he too is happy to see her whenever he returns to the hotel after a long trifle of battle and its accompanying stench of oil and blood. Puppets should not feel exhaustion, and P often found himself uncertain if that extended to him too. He could definitely admit there were times where after a particularly grueling fight, he’d pass by a ruffled bed in one of the abandoned homes, and would eye it down, and be stung with a sharp pulling feeling that he would later recognise as yearning.
Returning to Hotel Krat was much the same; he more often than not caught his gaze trailing towards one of the many plush chairs lined up against the walls, inexpressibly craving just a nice sit down for a few minutes.
Sophia always seemed eager to give him a chance to rest too. She was caring and attentive, and seemed to genuinely want the best for him, to keep him well and safe when he inevitably took to the tumultuous streets again.
A new thought awoke at the edges of P’s mind, spreading dark wings that made his synthetic skin crawl.
The words left him before he had a chance to even really think about them. “Gemini…what will happen after this? If I help save Krat…will I…still be needed?”
P felt tremendously hollow saying this, in a way he’d never felt before. It was like something had scooped out his metallic insides and replaced the vacant space with something that twisted and writhed like a sickly creature.
He realised belatedly that he was scared.
Fear was a feeling that he was only recently growing accustomed to, which though was the case with most emotions, that one was particularly notable to P.
It did not happen often, but when it did it was equivalent to being belted in the side of the head by a rogue puppet’s candelabra, if not worse.
He was scared of being scared, which sounded foolish when he put it like that, but there was really no other way he could describe it— he could barely describe the feeling itself, anyway.
In this case, he was scared of a lot of things; of the very question he asked, of Gemini’s inevitable answer to it. But most of all, he was scared of the idea that his question may be true, and that after all this, he would no longer be needed.
He would be no one's friend anymore.
Even though he’d only very recently discovered what exactly that term entailed, the very idea of that made him more upset than he ever thought possible.
From within the lantern in P’s slightly trembling hands (when had he started shaking?), Gemini chirped in mild alarm. “Of course! You’ll always have a place here— Krat is your home as much as it’s all of ours, so when it hopefully flourishes again, you’ll be a part of that, no doubt about it.”
Gemini’s voice was reassuring and hopeful, but P found he couldn’t find that much solace in it. An image reappeared in his brain, of the bridge about a five minute walk behind him.
At the apex of the bridge's supports, a beheaded and dismembered butler puppet had swung miserably from wires that jostled and sprung into motion with a flurry of wind kicked up passing crows when P had traversed it. A sign had been tied to its front, painted in an inky scrawl that read; ‘PURGE PUPPETS’ .
P winced, a sound of pain he’d never made before, even when he’d been struck by all manner of weaponry. His brows pressed together imperceptibly.
“But…I’m just a puppet,” He began, noticing a strangled quality to his voice that unsettled him. “I’m not…like everyone else.”
Gemini was strangely quiet for just a few seconds, but to P it felt like an eternity of silence. The convivial yellow light within the guide’s lantern flickered intermittently. The thunder above Krat City Hall roared.
“Oh, bud…” The lantern eventually said, quiet with reverence. “I think you're more than you think— you’re far too complex to just be a simple puppet now. At least, that's what I think.”
P didn't have anything to say to that, primarily because he didn't have the words to even begin describing the profound emotion Gemini’s claim had suddenly stirred in his chest, which just proved to further confirm the guide’s words.
The tree stared back at P, as it had for the entirety of this unexpectedly emotional conversation. The question carved into the trunk both comforted him and taunted him, but, as always was the case with him (much to his own chagrin), he did not know why.
P did not reply in the end, and he knew Gemini didn’t expect him too. He pulled himself away from the decrepit tree and its heavy question like a scab being torn from healed flesh.
It felt as though he’d left a part of himself behind in that rotten bed of mulch, and had gained something completely new and ineffably profound in its place.
P’s sprawling, ugly blanket of undefinable memories felt less oppressive, somehow. He still felt scared, yet he felt more abstractly whole too.
But what was most important, he realised, was that he felt , and that was more than what most puppets could do.
He thought, childishly hopeful, that maybe Gemini was right about him.
ーーー
They’d solved the mystery of who’d written the message on the tree very quickly.
P’s earlier hypothesis that the source of the thunder was the large puppet described in the newspaper proved to be quite correct.
He hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but the newspaper had also detailed that the warden puppet had befriended a group of Krat children, but now that he was quite readily thinking about what friendship meant, P recognised the significance.
He would very soon realise that the great enemy he’d just fought had been the one responsible for the message on the tree— the simple message that had thrown P’s brain into such disarray.
The huge and gangly police warden mascot with its perpetual bug eyed smile collapsed in a heap of fervid, coruscating sparks with a shrill, mechanical scream that ground against P’s ears like sandpaper.
Steam and smoke whisked around the clearing from the large puppets malfunctioning joints and cracked energy reserve, creating a swirling cloud around P and his enigmatic companion.
The Specter stood by P’s side a few feet away, poised and faceless, their long hair, a luminous white like that of star shine, billowed in the kicked up wind. Their hair was the only detailed thing about them— it was like the rest of their body was cloaked in inky black shadow, formless but defined at the same time.
They had been called to P’s aid via a peculiar little basin nestled in the corner of the entranceway to the courtyard, and Gemini had explained that P could use it to summon help against the lightning-addled construct he knew lay in wait for them.
The Specter had not shared a single word with P, yet they had fought by his side as though they were old war-torn comrades. Whether they were a puppet or a human or something else was unknown to him, but nevertheless P felt a strange connection with them, whatever they were.
P recalled Gemini’s earlier explanation of friends, of people who helped and supported one another when times were hard.
Taking a very pointless artificial breath, P took a cautious step towards the Specter.
“They’re a friend, too?” P asked Gemini tentatively, and the guide chirped to attention at his back.
“The Specter? Yeah…you could say so.” He replied, and P’s prosthetic fingers made an audible scraping sound as they tensed anxiously, yet somewhat excitedly.
Gemini continued on diligently and helpfully; “And when a friend helps you, you should thank them.”
Straightening, P nodded obediently. That idea felt right in the murmurous cluster of thoughts and feelings that occupied his mind and heart.
A few more steps forward he took, and P held out his hand curiously towards the Specter, who inclined their head ever so slightly in his direction.
“Thank—“ The word had barely left P’s lips before the lingering smoke skirting their feet whipped up again around his mysterious comrade, and their form suddenly shimmered like starlight on water.
They looked directly at him, their face a featureless dark void that betrayed no emotion whatsoever.
And then they were gone. The smoke settled, and P was standing alone in the centre of the courtyard.
Limply, P’s hand fell back to his side, leaving an unresolved feeling in the air where it had previously hovered.
“Oh…” Said Gemini, reminding P relivingly that he wasn’t truly alone. “They’re gone.”
It was then that P learnt that the Specter’s existence was always fleeting, only appearing when they were beckoned to fight by his side, and vanish when the work was done.
That felt unfair, though he couldn’t yet decide why.
P found himself idly wishing after that. The concept of ‘wishing’ was a thing that he was also not yet familiar with at all, but wish he still did, even when he didn’t have a name for the feeling
He wished they would stay.
Gemini made a small concerned noise. “What’s wrong?”
Hand clenching at his side, now from disappointment and something he later identified as sadness rather than anxious excitement, P shook his head.
“Nothing.”
The lie cut P like a knife edge, his wires twisting uncomfortably in his chest.
In the corner of the courtyard, P finally made the connection that the scrapped watchman had been the one to carve the message into the tree, because there he discovered more of it’s handiwork.
An old bench beside the Hall’s overgrown garden had been laid out with an array of gently lit candles and gracious little offerings of well loved teddy bears and other worn out old toys, surely left by the children the huge puppet had befriended.
Before the moulding marble bench, more letters were carved into the chiseled stonework at P’s feet, far larger than they were on the tree, taking up the entire width of the long makeshift altar behind it.
‘FRIENDS’ , was what it said.
Like he had with the tree, P looked at it for a long while, but this time Gemini did not comment, just kindly leaving P to his quiet deliberation.
Even that monstrous electrified puppet had made friends, friends that it had clearly treasured before the Frenzy and the Petrification Disease took them all away.
P’s intricate mechanical heart skipped a click, throwing its methodical rhythm off kilter for a second or two.
The absence of the Specter and the still sparking corpse of the lonely watchman puppet who’d just wanted its friends back chased P away from the City Hall’s courtyard, when they grew too much for him to bear.
ーーー
Not long after, P returned to the hotel and spoke again with his father, who illuminated him on his next mission.
Speaking with Geppetto was strange; he’d made P, he called him his son, and whenever P pictured him in his mind it was always supplied with the mental label of father — just calling him Geppetto felt inherently wrong.
But all of that none-withstanding, P was unable to aptly decipher just how he felt around the man, nor how he was supposed to feel.
He’d barely started grasping the concept of friendship— understanding familial connections was something not quite in his general ball park at all just yet.
But still it vexed him so— Geppetto was his father, he was the crafter of P’s very existence, so surely he should have been able to comprehend the depth of their unique family bond to some extent, right?
When he left his father’s makeshift workshop on the second floor feeling unsettled and frustrated by his lack of understanding and his inability to return Geppetto’s caring smiles, Gemini reminded him gently that he should just take these things one step at a time.
Absent-mindedly, P descended the grand staircase and realised he was unconsciously gravitating towards Sophia, who graced his return with a smile.
He’d by instinct gone to her first when he’d returned to the hotel after his unexpectedly emotionally intimate endeavour at the City Hall, but she’d ushered him hastily upstairs to see Geppetto who’d been waiting for him.
But now that that had been resolved, she looked eager to speak with him, like she always did.
She spoke of his admirable integrity in the face of his unceasing challenges, and that she was certain he had the power to save Krat from its long twilight of madness and death.
All the while, P was admittedly only half listening— too embroiled in his ever persisting thought about everything that happened at the City Hall to absorb all of what she was saying.
He considered the musings he’d had about Sophia back in front of the tree, about how she viewed him and how he viewed her, and about friendship and how Gemini had described its meaning.
When she’d finished, P responded uncharacteristically quickly, and his voice blurted the words out thoughtlessly in a similarly uncharacteristic way.
“Sophia, are we…friends?”
Sophia blinked at him, genuinely surprised. She answered him smoothly after an impressively quick recovery from the sudden drastic change in subject. “But of course, why ever do you ask?”
Her eyes were sincere and true when she looked at him; a curious blue sapphire that seemed incapable of treachery.
Just from that look alone, P, very suddenly and abruptly, felt tremendously stupid. It came from a manner of things, and saddled him with a spontaneous regret that nearly blinded him.
“I—“ P attempted to amend his error, but his voice box was even less cooperative than usual.
Not only had he derailed her very touching speech about how much she believed in him and his capabilities, he was also discovering just how foolish it was to doubt her kindness for him.
P was usually so taciturn and calculated, so methodically and conspicuously aware of his words, his surroundings and his actions while fighting. But since he’d seen that accursed tree barely an hour ago he’d been terrifically befuddled. His internal gears and mechanisms had been sent spiraling into a new haywire grind to try and accommodate the sheer breadth of feeling he was experiencing. He’d hadn’t realised until just then how much it was affecting his outward disposition too.
“Sorry.” Was all he could manage in the end, and it left him in a cowardly, wire thin tone that did not at all match the P described in the praise Sophia had been singing for him just a second ago.
The quizzical quirk to Sophia’s pale lips smoothed into a compassionate smile, and she shook her head. “It’s quite alright. In truth, I’m pleased to see that you felt brave enough to ask something like that— it is a sign of growth in you, to me.”
Stepping forward, Sophia idly began to press the creases and oil stains out of P’s cravat with her palm and thumb, and carefully adjusted his collar. “I hope that can at least ease your worries.” She continued crisply while she worked.
P did not particularly mind her being in his personal space like this, and took to studying the delicate braids that framed her head and their resplendently powdery blue sheen while she fussed over him. Focusing on something tangible and real helped settle some of the beleaguered mess in his patchwork brain. Her hair looked like it'd be soft to touch, he thought.
“I will always be your friend, clever one.” Sophia met his eyes when she said this, speaking so kindly and so genuinely that though it had the designated effect and reassured P, also managed to make him feel more cluelessly foolish than before. Giving his cravat one last fluff, Sophia stepped away from him and folded her hands in front of her.
P watched her, vaguely uncomprehending. He was uncertain how he’d ever doubted her. She always managed to make him feel like a bumbling idiot, but not in a bad way.
It was just…she was so effortlessly kind and attentive, she held remarkable powers over Ergo and she’d single handedly brought life to him, setting him on this journey. She was all of this, and P was just…him— just another rouge puppet, at the end of the day.
You’re far too complex to just be a simple puppet. Gemini’s words from earlier tapped impatiently at his brain at the bitter thought, and P had to shake it away, though not without some measure of guilt.
But even puppets could have friends, he’d since discovered. They could form connections with people no matter how small or how metallic. The scrapped warden and its questioning tree and memorial altar had affirmed that for P.
Gemini’s endless enthusiasm in assisting and complying to P’s unique circumstances, the Specter’s fleeting yet unquestioning kinship, Sophia’s tremendous gentleness and ensconcing presence…they were all forms of friendship, weren’t they?
Friends are people who you feel happy around. They’re people who help and support one another.
P opened his mouth, but it took a heartbeat or so for anything to leave it. “I’m…still trying to understand.”
Sophia’s expression managed to soften even more, if that could even be considered possible.
“That’s alright, clever one, no one is rushing you. Emotions can be very fickle and complex things, even for those who are familiar with them.”
Directing her oceanic gaze to a distant spot over P’s shoulder, Sophia’s smile turned fretful, a somber gloss to her eyes. “Krat is…a very unfriendly place right now, as you very well know.”
She shook her elegant head, the strands of curled hair that escaped her braids swaying idyllically with the motion. She closed her eyes. “So much has been lost— lives and loved ones and so much more. Friendship and love, things that shape us as people, have been sent astray in a finite darkness while Krat has been under siege.”
Sophia linked her fingers together and held them to her chest in a pseudo prayer. Her eyes opened, and there was a sudden intensity to her face that almost startled P— a look that was as hard as glass, defining the sheer, unwavering integrity of her resolve that Krat could be saved. “That is why we must fight, and take back what has been lost. Krat was beautiful once— it was a place of love and companionship and invention, with everyone working together to make a better world for everyone.”
Her eyes met P’s again, and he stiffened instinctively when that intensely strong sense of will was aimed in his direction. “It can be that again; friendship can be a part of its life again, and you can be its herald.”
The stringent tenseness to Sophia’s face and shoulders relaxed somewhat. Unfolding her hands, she held them outward and very gently, took P’s into them.
His hands were not much bigger than hers and were nearly just as dainty— metallic bones overlayed with freckled, unblemished synthetic skin, only slightly worn down around the palms from relentless combat.
Well, that could be said for one of them, as the other was a piecemeal prosthetic of intricate steel and weaponry, but even that fit seamlessly into Sophia’s conciliating hands.
“Hold tight to your blooming friendships, dear one,” She whispered. “Do not shun it, do not fear it— it is a beautiful thing that can be difficult to understand and act on in a way that feels right, but you will find it one of the best emotions a person can have.”
Her smile was dazzling now, her eyes creased exultantly, giving her the appearance of what P imagined the night sky looked like.
He’d never seen it, having only been alive for half a morning that had a long way to go before dipping into sunset, but a foggy recollection emerged from the murky waters of P’s memories for just a moment long enough to give him a vague picture.
“Hold your friendships close to you,” She repeated. “They will encourage you forward through the dark, their love will light your path. Your love will reawaken the love Krat has lost.”
Sophia squeezed his hands. They were warm, a stark contrast to his perpetually cold ones. But his hands didn't have to be, when he felt the spread of a new warmth centered at his chest instead.
Friendship…a thing you shared with other people that made you happy to be with them, where you support and help one another, something that motivated you to carry on.
Friendship…love.
Love was something inconceivable to P— he knew it meant a lot of different things and encapsulated so many different concepts both physical and physiological in nature— it was the immense depth of it all that scared someone like P, who knew so little.
Friendship was a type of love, Sophia had conveyed that to him, and though he was ill equipped to try and process it just yet, he was certainly going to store it away for later.
P looked down at their joined hands. Everything he’d learnt about friendship in the past hour was steadily clicking together like a fractured, heart shaped locket.
Pieces were still missing, and others were an ill fitting attachment, but it was something, and just a mere something was enough for P.
The strange amalgam of memories of a time prior to that morning that he did not have access to yet whispered barely decipherable things to him, things he may have felt in the past but were now lost to him and his naive mind.
But it did not upset him this time, the memories he was forming and the things he was learning now, today, was proving to be far more important than whatever long passed shadows lingered beneath the near opaque wall of glass bisecting his brain.
Sophia cocked her head at him, her benign countenance never slipping from her face.
P did not answer her, but he did not need to— she knew her word’s had soothed him as she’d intended.
Krat was devoid of love in its current state, any remnants of it were chased away into the darkest depths where the Petrification Disease nor the puppets could reach.
But P took to the desolate, dolorous streets with something similar unraveling itself inside him— something far brighter than the oil slicked shadows that consumed the city, something that could pave the way for something brighter.
The puppet boy looked back at Sophia, somewhat differently from how he’d looked at her in the past.
Slowly he was beginning to understand; to see her, Gemini, the Specter, Antonia, Eugénie…his father, for what they really were, and who he wanted them to be in his eyes.
His friends.