Chapter 7 #2
He flickered again, becoming fully translucent for a moment before solidifying. “Maybe it would be better if I just…stopped.”
“No.” The word came out sharper than Ava had intended. She knelt down beside him, though she was careful not to touch him while he was so unstable. “Lysander, look at me.”
He raised his head, and she could see tears in his amber eyes. Real tears, from a being who was questioning the reality of his own existence.
“I—I can fix this.” She thought she could, anyway.
It was a guess. But all of this reality was her doing, right?
She could just grab it and rearrange it, couldn’t she?
Right? “I can stabilize you, strengthen the bonds that hold you together. But…” She hesitated, knowing she had to be honest. “But I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m still really new at this. I’m making this up as I go.
There’s a good chance I fuck this up. The other option is I… ”
“What…?” he asked, though from his tone, she could tell he already knew the answer.
“I can unmake you. Let you fade peacefully, without pain. Return your essence to the Web, where it can become part of something new.” The words tasted like ash in her mouth. “The choice is yours.”
Lysander was quiet for a long moment, his form flickering between states. When he spoke again, his voice was small and lost. “I don't know what to choose. I'm not even sure I have the right to choose. I'm just…a story you told yourself. A character you made up because you were lonely.”
“That's not true!” Bitty flew over to hover in front of him. “You're not just a story. You're my friend. You've been kind to me, protected me, made me laugh when I was scared. That's real, regardless of how you came to be.”
“But what's my purpose now?” Lysander shook his head. “Ava doesn't need a guide anymore. She doesn't need someone to explain the courts or teach her about the fae. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to be?”
Behind them, Serrik had returned to his human form, though Ava could still sense the spider lurking just beneath the surface. He approached slowly, his golden eyes thoughtful.
“I have spent two millennia questioning my purpose, cat. Wondering if my existence had meaning beyond the revenge I sought. And I learned something in that time—purpose is not something given to you. It is something you choose.”
“Easy for you to say,” Lysander replied bitterly.
"You were born real. You had a life before the Web, experiences that shaped you.
I'm just—fragments of Ava's subconscious stitched together into the shape of a person. And you—you have someone you love, and maybe someone who even loves you back! I have nobody!”
“You feel pain,” Serrik observed. “You experience joy, fear, friendship. You make choices. You care about others. What more is required for personhood than that?” He shrugged.
“I felt no such thing as love for nigh on two thousand years. I would ask you to show a little patience, perhaps, when waiting for that emotion to come along.”
Ava had been listening to this exchange, her heart aching for Lysander's pain. But his words about purpose had sparked an idea. “You're right about one thing, though, Lysander. I don't need a guide anymore. I don't need someone to explain the courts or protect me from political intrigue.”
Lysander's face fell, and he began to flicker more violently.
“But," Ava continued, "I do still need a friend. I need someone who'll call me out when I'm being an idiot. Someone who'll make me laugh when everything seems hopeless. Someone who cares enough to argue with me when I'm about to make a terrible decision.”
She reached out, slowly, carefully placing her hand over his translucent one. "I didn't make you to be my servant, Lysander. I made you because I was lonely and scared and I needed someone who would care about me. And you do. That's real. That matters.”
“You really think so?” he whispered, his form solidifying slightly at her touch.
“I know so.” She smiled. "So what do you say? Want to stick around and be my friend? Not because you have to, but because you want to?”
For a moment, Lysander was perfectly still. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. “Yeah…I think I'd like that.”
“Then hold still.” Ava felt her power respond to her intent.
“This might tickle.” Reaching out with abilities she was still learning to understand, Ava began to weave new threads through Lysander's essence.
Not changing who he was, but strengthening what was already there.
She reinforced the patterns that made him himself, solidified the bonds that held his consciousness together, and anchored him more firmly to reality.
At least he didn’t explode into apple trees like the first time she tried to learn how to use magic.
It was delicate work, like performing surgery with lightning. Too much force and she could destroy him entirely. Too little and the instability would return. She had to find the exact right balance between preservation and transformation.
As she worked, she could feel Lysander's nature settling into new, more stable patterns.
His flickering stopped, his form becoming solid and real.
The borrowed voices faded, leaving only his own.
The existential uncertainty that had been tearing him apart transformed into something healthier—not blind certainty, but the kind of comfortable self-acceptance that came from knowing you belonged somewhere.
When she was finished, Lysander was more himself, somehow. Still recognizably the same person, but with a solidity and presence that hadn't been there before. He was no longer just a dream given form.
It felt right.
Somehow.
She smiled. “How’d I do, kitty?”
Lysander sat up slowly, examining his hands with wonder. “I—” He paused, searching for the right words. “I feel like matter. Like I matter.”
Bitty squealed and threw her arms around his neck, knocking him over where he was still sitting on the ground.
Lysander laughed hard, hugging the little Seelie creature.
Ava sat back, and suddenly felt the exhaustion wash over her again. But the two of them were adorable. Her two little dream friend-creations.
Lysander climbed to his feet, still hugging Bitty, which wasn’t hard to do given her tiny size. He plopped her down on her feet before offering Ava a hand up. There were tears in his eyes as he did. Not tears of despair, but gratitude. “Thank you. For…not simply forgetting me.”
“How could I forget about my favorite snuggly pussy ca—” The opera house around her wavered. She swayed on her feet, suddenly feeling like she hadn't slept in days.
“Ava?” Serrik was beside her instantly, his arms steadying her. “What's wrong?”
“Tired, that’s all.” Though she could feel it was more than that. The power she'd been wielding so freely was taking its toll. She needed rest, needed time to recover before she accidentally reshaped something important. “I think…I think we need to stop for a while. Find somewhere safe to regroup.”
“This place is stable enough.” Serrik glanced around at the walls. “And it has only the one main entrance. This will do for a shelter, once I secure the remaining side entrances.”
“I can try to…reality-magic us up some supplies.” Ava rubbed a hand over her face. “Unless you think you can, Serrik?”
“Hm. I am not sure which of us is more of a threat at the moment.” He smirked. “If you have the strength, I hate to admit you may be.”
“I’ll do it.” Reaching out with her power one more time, she began to weave reality around them. Nothing grand or impossible. Nothing life-saving or strange. Just some comfortable chairs and warm light and a kitchen that would provide whatever food they needed.
And a few private rooms where they could actually just sleep and rest.
A sanctuary in the storm, a place to catch their breath before facing whatever came next.
As the last details settled into place, Lysander collapsed into one of the chairs with a groan, finally allowing himself to show how exhausted he was. “This is perfect. It almost feels like home.”
“That was the idea.” Ava settled into her own chair with a sigh of relief. For the first time since waking up in the merged world, she felt like she could actually relax. Outside, she knew the world was still chaos.
“So,” Bitty said, perching on the arm of Lysander's chair, “what do we do now?”
“We rest.” Serrik was already heading toward the doors that led into the rest of the opera house, likely to secure it against interlopers or to kill anything else that might interrupt them. “We recover our strength and determine how we locate more allies.”
“And after that?” Lysander asked, betraying his nervousness.
Ava looked around at her unlikely family—two dreams given substance and an ancient spider exile who'd learned to love. It wasn't what she'd planned to do with her life, that was for fucking sure, but it was what she had.
And somehow, it felt like enough.
Now she just had to figure out how to salvage it all.
“After that,” she said, “we figure out how to fix this. All of it. We either un-fuck these three realities, if it can be done…or if it can’t? We figure out how to make it work.” She smiled tiredly. “We figure out how to build something better than what we started with.”
It was an impossible task. The scope of it was staggering, the potential for catastrophe enormous. But as she looked around at her friends, Ava felt something she hadn't expected in the midst of all this chaos.
Hope.
They would find a way. They had to.
Outside, three realities were either learning or failing to coexist in ways that had never been imagined.
But inside their sanctuary, surrounded by people who cared about her—real or constructed, it no longer mattered—Ava finally allowed herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, she hadn't broken everything after all.
Maybe she'd just created the opportunity for something new to grow.
Or maybe she was very, very wrong.
Time would tell.