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Ayin doesn’t leave his apartment much.
Over a decade ago, when Benjamin had told him he’d be able to comfortably live in a Nest for the rest of his life with the money he’d earned, he was right. This came as no surprise—he should’ve been listening to Benjamin from the beginning.
(He can’t help but wonder, how much of this could have been avoided, if he made the effort to properly look at the people around him?)
He tries to get outside sometimes, though. Mostly on days when it’s cloudier, and the forecast is rain all day. He’ll get groceries, or run other errands, or just go for a walk, with a clear plastic umbrella shielding him from his surroundings. Every time he thinks someone is staring at him, he’s desperate to run back home, shut all the blinds, lock himself up again. It’s not like anyone’s going to see him and know who he is, but he feels the weight of his misdeeds in everyone’s eyes.
(He changed his name, moved to a different district. He didn’t want to let go, wanted to hang onto the ghost of Lobotomy Corporation—the ghost of Carmen—forever, but… it was the best decision for his mental wellbeing to leave District 12. And as for his face, he’d always been godawful at business etiquette, so he never handled public relations. Even now, when he’s changed emotionally, he still doesn’t show much expression on his face.)
His apartment has amassed a small army of houseplants, all on a rigorous watering schedule. It helps him keep track of time, and gives him something to do. The first one he bought was Zamioculcas zamiifolia, which has many common names, one of them being the eternity plant. That name in particular originated from the belief that it could live forever, due to its low maintenance care regimen. So, not only did he assume it’d be good for a person who had only owned a cactus beforehand, but he couldn’t ignore how the concept of not dying piqued his interest. Ayin had let enough people die. It was worth trying to help something live for a change.
It’s lonely being on his own, of course. He can’t tell if he just doesn’t know how to make friends outside of work at this stage in his life, or if it’s another method of self-punishment, another trap he’s locked himself into and tossed the key for.
Though Ayin may be the only person living in his apartment, it’s not exactly just him—naturally, the fragments of his self remain in his mind. Adam relentlessly criticizes him, telling him he’s wasting his talent and knowledge. Abram renders him unable to leave his bed some mornings. Abel’s… well, he’s pretty alright, actually. None of them are particularly helpful, but Ayin’s grateful for the company.
They make it hard to recognize himself in the mirror. It’s not like he looks like any of them, but he doesn’t seem like himself either. It’s like someone he’s never seen before is looking back at him. He’d like to think that whoever that reflection may be, they’d be a bit nicer to him than he is to himself.
Besides, the lessons he learned from the Sephirot are still with him as well. Ayin has spent an exorbitant amount of his lifetime studying, researching, absorbing all the information he possibly can. Most of that has now been rendered obsolete, and he mostly relies on what he’s learned in the final loop.
He often dwells on that: that he erased his memory hundreds and hundreds of times over. What would have happened to all the Ayins that didn’t make it out? Would they all just have died, like the Ayin who he saw nearly killed himself? How can he be sure the man he is now isn’t still just hurtling towards his own death?
He thinks of Angela, too. Even if she was a machine, he’s not proud of how he treated her. Ayin had always known no replacement would match up to Carmen. He knew this when he found Carmen in the bathtub, when he copied her nervous system digitally, when he constructed Angela’s body, when she opened her eyes for the first time. Futility had overtaken him, and he was desperate to try something, anything, even if it was destined to fail.
When Angela awoke, told Ayin that she remembered him, that she knew him as someone with a warm smile… he was finally forced to confront his mistake. So he did what he did best, which was to not confront it at all. He had used Angela as a scapegoat for his anger and grief, constantly lashing out at her. She had to deal with his verbal abuse and scorn day after day, when he was the one who had given her the emotional capacity to be hurt by his words. One time, in a fit of disconnection from reality, he yelled in Angela’s face that she was dead, that she never existed in the first place. He said that there was no point in her being here if she wasn’t Carmen, that she’d always be an imitation made from the afterimage of a memory. He remembered the sensation of his voice scratchy from the volume, the way his throat tightened so intensely he thought he couldn’t breathe, and the face Angela made. At that point in time, she had become mostly expressionless, no longer reacting to his cruelty. But the pain on her face… she looked as if Ayin had hit her. There was a raw regret in her eyes in that moment that reminded him of how Carmen looked after Enoch died.
In the period shortly after Carmen’s death, one of the only things that soothed him was the idea of killing himself in the same bathtub she died in. He would have lied there, surrounded in his own blood, vision fading. As everything went black, he would have seen her over him as if his head were on her lap, smile backlit by a glowing halo and with three pairs of pure-white wings that would shield his body. She would be ready to lead him to whatever hell he was going to end up in next, and not a single speck of his blood would tarnish her as she escorted him.
Everyone had known Ayin was suffering, as they were experiencing the same grief. But because of that, they were busy keeping themselves afloat—many of them had no time to check in on him. Except for Benjamin, who made time no matter what. And Ayin had lashed out at him as well, became sick of him following around like some lost puppy. He was the only person Ayin had left, and his reward for his loyalty was to be shut out entirely. The only time Ayin had probably smiled at him after Carmen’s death was when he finished the alliance negotiations with the Udjat.
Ayin devoted his everything to Carmen, and was ruined by her death. Benjamin had devoted his everything to Ayin, and Ayin dragged him down into hell.
…Speaking of the Udjat, it had occurred to Ayin recently that Dias was pretty much his only ally remaining that he hadn’t locked up in a metal box. But it’s not like they really cared about each other or spoke beyond introductions to begin with, so she certainly wasn’t someone he could reach out to again after ten years of radio silence and bond with. Besides, she was quite an awful person. Probably very fun to be around, but she was amoral on a level he still hasn’t seen someone beat. Binah may have been a potential challenger, but her situation as a Sephirah had been… nuanced. Dias, on the other hand, wasn’t chained down anywhere, and used that freedom to be entirely self-serving. The point being—if he was trying to nurse his morals back to health, she would not be ideal company.
He has vivid dreams often.
Some are calm: him and Benjamin at the ocean, or meeting one of the volunteers he’d later imprison for the first time again, or him alone in a desolate wasteland. Others are him meeting violent ends, or replaying the scene of someone’s death that he could’ve prevented.
Carmen doesn’t show up in any of them. He wonders if it’s some kind of cruel punishment—he’d do anything to see her again, even if she told him she never cared about him and wanted him dead, or that his actions after her death ruined her mission (which admittedly would be true, but even the thought of hearing her disappointed voice directed towards him makes him feel like his chest is caving in).
No matter what the dream entails, Ayin wakes up in a cold sweat, craving the company of another human being. It’s difficult to fall back asleep after that. All he wants is a half-decent night of rest.
And if the dream’s something violent, it’s hard to go about his day as usual the next morning. It makes a sense of unease sink in him that makes it anxiety inducing to even move. Yet nonetheless he must, so he’ll heat up some shitty processed breakfast, take his meds, water his plants, and so on, and so forth. All the while thinking about all the horrible things that were hidden for him by the cognition filter. Maybe if he had been able to see it all for what it was, he wouldn’t be able to get any sleep at all. It’s not a farfetched assumption; he saw firsthand how many people lost their minds working with the Abnormalities. And in the evening, as he drifts into sleep, he hopes that he won’t see something terrifying this time.
One day, he’ll wake up, and the sun will stream through the curtains, and he’ll soak up the warmth. It may be far away, but… he wants to have faith it’ll happen.