Things had been strange lately, Lawrence found himself thinking as he set his phone aside on the bedside table and lay back on the soft clean sheets. As he'd told Melvin the other day something horrible was most certainly looming on the horizon. someone or something was creating clones which were more refined than anything which had ever been seen before, practically human, perhaps even better at being human than he was, and like everything else, there had to be a motivation and reason for it all. If there was one thing he'd learned it was that no one did anything that required any degree of effort without some manner of gain in mind. As long as he was left intact and alive it did not concern him, and even if he would be killed by what happened and aware of that fact, it was unlikely he could do anything to change the trajectory of what was on its way. He was one man, one rather irrelevant man and he did not care to intervene with what was going on, privately hopeful that in some way the mother horseman was behind the events and that if given the choice, he would be able to aid her and harvest himself all the additional years he might need as a reward.

As always, he was concerned only with himself and prolonging the usefulness of this human shell as long as possible, maintaining it as best he could to stave off the eventual degradation which would rob him of the understanding and epiphany that he sought. He had been told that the bond delayed ageing to some small extent, but he was not inclined to count on it, nothing on this island could be relied upon for any length of time and with individuals like H in charge, boons were prone to be taken away without warning when he was slighted. He was still adjusting to being back in his true body, and at times it still felt like an ageing outfit which did not quite fit, Chantelle had felt more proper, more youthful and alive, being her had taken him back to his prime and freed him from the problems which came part and parcel with his age.

There was relief to be found if he sought it, with his artifact he could temporarily turn into anyone he'd ever known and wear their illusion. He could be anyone he wanted with the exception of those he had already been. Of all the endless potential open to him, he remembered, fingering the runed necklace that there was always one individual who he would never revisit. Maja was out of bounds in his mind, associated with things that he did not and could not truly understand and by that very association rendered dangerous. If he became her, even for a moment he knew he would break down in some way, unable to gain traction on who she was and why she did what she did. She was an unanswerable question in his life, a piece which did not fit and who was responsible in some way for taking away his certainty that it was possible to be a human without the emotions to sense one's way.

He had been more confident then, his existence had been a set of solid facts. Moving away from his past and the disappointment of his parents he had found university a liberating experience, able to redefine himself as who he wanted to be. Of course he'd been tethered to his name, forced to deal with it on official documentation and registration lists. He'd been Lawrence Weiman and at that time, he had wanted nothing so much as to be normal, to be able to pass as a person, always hoping that one day like a reconnected house all his lights would come on and he would taste the rich emotional life that those around him seemed to experience without effort or concentration. In many ways he had sought to make himself an acceptable vessel in that hope that like an empty nest box, something alive would one day move in.

Being a doctor initially had crossed his mind, but some part of him had been concerned that in the medical field they would see what he was, look at him and realise he was a sham of a human being, that he didn't relate. He had worried that he would struggle to excel in his chosen field because he would only ever be able to treat other people as objects, not as living breathing things which were worthy of respect and care. People had told him you really had to care to want to be a doctor and as such he had shied away from it as a risk. Veterinary studies had made more sense, there would be the same essential knowledge, the understanding of how to manipulate flesh, bone and blood, but without the focus on psychological care and humane treatment. Animals deserved a limitation of pain, certainly, but he would not have to make idle conversation with them and death would not be the end of his career. He had aims, and those aims had for the most part been simply to excel at a chosen career, find a place in society and reside there, waiting for that moment when he realised that he fitted and things fell into place. Of course, nothing he ever did was straight and narrow, there was always money to be made on the side, and the constant testing of other people's gullibility was a marker in his mind of how well he had learned to understand people and their motives. He understood where he was going, he had a direction, he had a plan.

Maja had never been part of the plan.

After graduating, before settling down to finding a practice, he had taken a year out to travel, set on seeing parts of Europe but ultimately finding that the place he enjoyed most was Sweden, feeling strange echoes of his mother in the people and things he found there, slipping back into speaking the language and getting a part time job working in a shop. He lived in hostels on his travels and found it most satisfactory, with constantly shifting groups of people around you, every day you could be someone else. Whenever he arrived in a new place he tested new stories about his life to see how palatable they were to people and simply move out and begin again if it went ill. It was here he learned that people were willing to believe almost everything they were told and to blindly trust the intentions of those around them, they wanted to think the best of other human beings, and this was what made them so fundamentally gullible. In comparison he felt like a wolf amongst sheep and toyed with the threads which bound people, finding rapidly that love was the most potent restraint of all. It only stood to reason that his final exam, his final test in the act of being a human being would have been to get another human being to love him.

Maja was not who he'd have chosen given an open choice, but fate decreed otherwise. She was there at the local museums, she visited his shop, she talked to him far more than was to be expected and over time he realised she had to be attached to him. He mirrored her gestures and gradually escalated things into a tenuous relationship. It was unfamiliar to him, used to sexual encounters but not the associated emotional exchanges. He was caught up before he knew it, fascinated by how straightforward it had felt to make up tales about his emotions, about his family and his relationships with them and to press forward. When she told him that she loved him, he was satisfied he had all but attained a certificate of human qualification and when he naturally progressed things (in a way he felt was natural) to pregnancy, things were going better than he could have expected.

The years afterwards had been content for him, working in his practice and outside of work doing whatever he wished, watching the small boy that he had created grow up in possession of everything that he seemed to lack. He wanted to grudge him it, but at the time had not been able to.

Still, there had been moments where he'd felt the mask slip, moments where he'd been doubtful that Maja really was in love with him, moments where he would question her commitment, but he reassured himself it was irrational, she had said she loved him and much of what she exhibited meant that she did. Everything stable hinged upon that fact.

And then the night had come where that fact had slipped, where everything for a moment had fractured and broken, where something had logically misfired and she had tried to leave and to fight back against him, he'd been forced to trap them forever in that moment where they had loved him. They could not deny him his excellence if they did not live to refute it. He would have succeeded if she hadn't enlisted help. He'd waited afterwards, living his life for days and days, knowing that if she loved him, she would come back no matter what he did and that perhaps he would reconsider erasing her if she did.

She never came back. She took Mikael and vanished, both of them untraceable and leaving him with a life which was untenable in their absence. To him it meant she had never loved him, and that alone was enough to make him realise that he had never managed to truly be human, that he'd been being indulged all along. It snapped him, there was no point, no point to keep trying when he'd never be able to be what they were, he was something else, something different.

Something better.

But the fact remained that even as he left and went back to the UK, looking for Maja and Mikael in the only places he could think of, met with nothing but silence from his family and re-naming himself as someone else entirely that he didn't understand. He didn't understand why she hadn't loved him, what he'd done wrong, and he wanted to know, to shake her till the words came out. It was curiosity without resolution, and he even tried to repeat the situation, roping Susan into nothing more than an echo of Maja, a dress rehearsal. But she wasn't the same, she was weaker willed, more desperate and crass and he found that he savoured her fear more than her love. He grew bored and abandoned her, seeking his fortunes elsewhere and giving up on Maja.

Only he never really gave up. Not really. It was a question which needed answering, and America had felt like her, that same dream of a family and order underpinned with a fire that was not feminine yet was everything femininity should be. America fought when cornered too, and all it had done was re-affirm he was on the right track.

And on the island, she could not run. She could not leave. Or at least that had been the case.

And perhaps, he thought that was part of why he could not stop thinking about the huntress, because she was part of that curiosity, part of the key to feeling that he was capable of being human and not simply understanding them.

He did not enjoy thinking too hard or too long, it simply led him in useless and convoluted knots and answered nothing. All there were were facts. Those facts were that at present he had access to as close to America as it was possible to possess (though at times he found himself inclined towards strange and stupid things to try and retrieve the original and was almost glad there was no clear path in that direction), Horace was gone, off island and if he did not return, he had not loved him either. Melvin stayed, but cared only for Rin. Time and time again he was reminded that he had not passed that last test, and if there was anything that stirred him almost to anger (at the very least that restlessness, that twisted pent up motivation) it was imperfection.

He rose from the bed and moved to the door, unwilling to lie there any longer, habitually heading in the direction of a house where no one lived any longer, where repetition and habit could push aside self examination.