She was free.

It kept her on light clouds for the next couple of days, even as reality began to creep behind her eyes and her touch and her every breath. There wasn't another moment in her life where she would have to worry about someone else teleporting her to their location to demand things of her. There wasn't another moment in her life where she would have to think about the lives getting destroyed around her, shattering to pieces and her not helping. There wasn't another moment in her life where she would have to understand what starseeds meant and be okay with withdrawing them, be okay with people eating them, be okay with people collecting them. There wasn't another moment in her life where that would be on her shoulders, on her back, all around her and within her and pleading and bleeding for her to commit more to it until the truth set in that she instinctually knew but had been oddly fine with.

Eventually, Metallia would consume all of them. And eventually, she would have hit the limit of her usefulness, especially as someone who was so non-combative, and eventually her starseed, too, would just become another one that was withdrawn and consumed for the cause.

Now, it felt galling to think about, even if just a few days ago she was okay with it.

The lightness, though, had a way of being impermanent.

For her first day out of the Negaverse, all she wanted to do was rest. And she did that by sliding into her civilian form, something that was once more uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Her hands felt like they belonged to a different person; her face felt like a mask she slid on to keep the eyes off her. As fake as it was, she was too wiped out to evaluate it in full detail, crawling into the bed that Phaethon -- Loren, she learned -- provided and falling asleep for what felt like an unreasonably long time.

The second day, there was a part of her mind that desperately begged to let her slide the senshi guise back on her body just for a feeling of familiarity. Nembus -- the only name she had, the only name she ever had -- fought herself tooth and nail until one half of her stubbornness won out and she remained in her civilian form. The lightness remained. After all, there was nothing that forced her to give that up. There was nothing that would pull her from this simple meal in front of her and tell her it was time to go on a mission to Witzend or the Rift or Argent Industries or to a place by a fountain that would lead to her getting stolen. There was nothing that would pull her from the mask she wore, even as much as it was a mask, even as much as it wasn't anything she necessarily desired.

She could have it.

On the third day, she knew she couldn't simply keep floating, but she also knew she could, so she did.

On the fourth day, she was asked for a name by one of Loren's well-meaning relatives. Blanked, upon realizing "Nembus" was not an acceptable answer. She was covered for it, but she floated back to her room afterward. Loren visited afterward to apologize, but she didn't feel like speaking.

On the fifth day, she looked at the box she had given Phaethon. He had given it to her without her even asking for it. There was a part of her that was putting off exploring it. The realities of her life were within. What she had left behind was within. What she had left to never return to was within. Her old team was within, she knew that for certain. Faustite, the leader she had left behind, was in there. Albite, the himbo she had left behind, was in there. The empty life that she called 'Delilah Diana Samson' was in there, too, an empty life that possessed more meaning than her life even did now. She no longer felt like she was barely four years old, but she also did not feel like she was quite nearly twenty-four. Her life felt like half of that; perhaps she was two years old, a toddler, one that barely knew how to walk or speak or articulate. Perhaps she was still four, just with the holes that were natural in memory as one grew older. Perhaps the lightness began to weigh on her more like an anvil, perhaps she picked up the box and found herself unable to confront it, perhaps she tucked herself back into bed and refused to emerge.

The sixth day brought the same.

The seventh day brought the same, though at least that time, she emerged for food.

The eighth day was a sunny one, and she only knew that because she drew back the curtains to let the light come in. It was barely a motivator; it felt lighter than she was. She never wanted to return to Chaos, but she also knew she had to start again with plugging up the holes and it felt nigh overwhelming, and it begged to pull her under the waves and never let her back up. She gripped onto the rigging of the boat and forced herself back up, except the rigging was the box and the forcing was the final opening of one of the drives. She plugged it into her laptop and stared at the files.

Her civilian life had always felt hollow, she knew that from her thoughts as a senshi of the Negaverse, but the selection in front of her displayed much of the same. She knew there was more to her collection of Negaverse-related files because there always had been, but even when expanding this folder to its full size she hadn't needed to scroll. It brought a hollow laugh to the surface; perhaps she hadn't lost much because there was never anything to develop.

But it still mattered to the ghost that Delilah was, and it would still need to matter to the mask that Nembus was developing.

The first file was a summary of the story of her life as she knew it, and the story of her life that she had faked whenever anyone had asked. She told them she was an only child of two parents who loved and adored her who lived on the West Coast. She told them that she went to school on the West Coast, too, and that she moved to Destiny City because she had been offered a scholarship she couldn't refuse. She lived by herself in a complex that was owned by the Negaverse. She once lived with the person who corrupted her, but she had gone away on some important business and left Nembus in Destiny City. She had recently graduated with that degree she had gotten on scholarship, a Bachelor's of Arts in Communication, which she could see sitting in the box alongside her.

The second file held notes on people she knew and mattered to her at some point or another. Knot, who she reminded herself had purified and gone by a new name now she didn't know. Omorose. Jade. Seren. Waruhiu. Eion. It cultivated a picture of someone who was floating by, but someone who was desperately trying to have connections, and, sometimes, those connections were returned.

The third file consisted of notes on her name and why she had chosen it. Samson, a man who had seemed impossibly strong, brought down by the persistence of a woman he loved named Delilah, so simple in the words she spun and asked. She didn't give up, she didn't falter. When he lied, she only questioned if he loved her. When he lied again, she did the same. And Delilah continued until she had the answer she sought. And Samson, a reminder of what would happen if that faith wavered; he fell to the persistence and told her, which led to, ultimately, his death, even if he was forgiven in it.

Funny to think about now, considering she had lost faith.

It was a dark chuckle under her breath.

Perhaps she would pick something with different meaning but a similar cadence. There was no need to tell herself to believe in the people who were caring for her. No one was telling her to do anything, now. This life was not her own; that had been taken when her original life had been taken.

But it belonged to no one else.

The fourth file was explaining the few pictures she had brought with her and the events around them. The fifth showed off her apartment, explained what she was leaving behind, explained why she couldn't ever go back. The sixth was a reflection on her favorite narrative games and the choices she had made in case whoever she became wanted to replicate them, because, in truth, she knew she would never get to know how her favorite roleplaying games ended with her characters unless she did. The seventh was a summary of the classes she took and the basic concepts she should at least be aware of, as well as a summary of her time in the organization called Argent Industries where she was functionally an intern. The eighth was health records, age, height, blood type, the summaries from her most recent appointments. The ninth was about her love of thrifting. The tenth was about formative experiences in taste, smell, touch--

Despite its shallowness in size, the length of what Delilah had grasped onto and desperately retold felt endless. She watched until she slept and on the ninth day, she watched some of the files over again. Loren came to check on her a few times. On the last, she turned and asked her--her, it turned out, Loren was genderfluid, and it was funny all these things she was finding out on these extended connections--how Dahlia sounded.

A name for the fake life she was inheriting, a flower that was complex and bushy and full of petals and eye-catching when it bloomed, something she wished and desired to be. It was a flower that was considered by those who ascribed meanings to flowers to be elegant and dignified, something she could only dream of. It was a flower with complexity, with plentiful species, including one which was lost to time and hybridization that was frequently nicknamed "Les Etoiles du Diable"--a reference to what she once was, another one of the twinkling starseeds stuck in Metallia's grasp. It was a name that sounded similar enough to 'Delilah' and rang familiar enough to be acceptable, even to the point where she could readopt the nickname 'Dee' that Delilah had so loved.

The last name would be Astera, short for 'Asteraceae,' the family in which dahlias resided, and a name that she knew would be unbelievable even in the best sense.

She had called the name beautiful and Dahlia found that to be an exaggeration, but she had allowed it. That was what she would tell Loren's family the next time they asked. That was what she would tell the guardian cat that had offered to help her put her life back together; before they could do any of that, after all, they needed to know who she was, because the government was inconvenient about making people exist from nothing unless it was in a spy novel.

And perhaps inspecting her old life made things feel a bit like a spy novel, but the reality was not the same way. The reality was closer to something dystopian, where one could live somewhere that smoothed over all the problems below with excuses that were invalid and ignore the war for their souls that was occurring right under their noses.

A war for their souls that Dahlia was avoiding.

The avoidance could not last forever, and she knew that the only part of her that had any real backing begged for her return.

But she knew one of the things she told herself. If she wanted any chance of safety, she needed to wait long enough for her death to be assumed. Once she was discovered, it would spread, and she would likely be branded a traitor in the same way Cybele was. But if no one was looking for her, that made her security more likely.

And so, on the tenth day, Dahlia continued her avoidance, with an exception of meeting up with a guardian cat to exchange information for her necessary documentation.

And on the eleventh, she would do the same.