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Emery felt peaceful, for the first time in what felt like ever really. There was nothing here reminding her of the past. No ache in her chest. No betrayal, no hurt, no lies, no pain. Only peace, a comfortable numbness, empty of the worries of tomorrow and yesterday. The door, however, was unsettling.

Do you wish to return?

Why would she want to return? It was peaceful here; she didn’t want to go. Again, the question was asked. Something was wrong with this; she wasn’t… The door. It wasn’t the door that was unsettling, it was her. She was this door, somehow, and everything around it quaked, unsettled by the door, by her.

We have been given this gift, the gift of leaving our pain behind. What part of our burden should we discard?

Emery considered it for a long time, a very long time. She would have considered it longer. She hurt all over. But her decision was easy. If she was going to leave this place, she would not sully it with her burden. She left nothing behind. The pain was unbearable, and she wanted to take it back, take it all back as everything flooded into her, pouring into her until she felt full to burst, like any moment she would overload and cease to exist.

But pain was good. Pain was a sign of life, and life was pain. It was instances of time that stuck in her heart and head like needles, pinned there for her to remember no matter how old she was, no matter how tired or how betrayed. It was betrayal, and lies, and family, and comfort. The good could not be appreciated without the bad. She would not give this up. She would wear her scars like armor.

Emery went through the door, leaving nothing behind her.

It hurt too much, all these memories. She didn't want sad ones, she wanted happy memories, memories to share with her friends, memories of them laughing and having a good time. If she had a fresh start, would she be able to make happy memories again?

And so Mayaa cried, cried and cried and left her whole body behind.

The pain hurt. It hurt a lot. But for Ryan, forgetting wasn't an option. No matter how painful the memories were, or how miserable they made him, these memories were all that he had. There was no giving them up. No matter how heavy the burden got, Ryan would continue to shoulder them for as long as he could.

His decision made, Ryan left nothing behind before he pushed through the doors.

Tybalt's body ached from head to toe. However, as tempting as the offer was, there was no way the black dog would surrender even a single memory. Because it was thanks to those memories that he had become both stronger and wiser. He wouldn't discard them now so that he may pull the wool over his eyes and pretend it never happened. Rather, he would keep them and continue to learn and grow from them. Both the good and the bad.

Besides, how was he supposed to pay people back if he didn't even remember them?

With a huff, the black dog pushed the doors open and with no regrets, left nothing behind.

Van did not want to forget any more than he already had. These memories were part of him, and he was brave, he knew he could be brave-- even the painful ones, he just had to take them all in stride. "Yes, please, I'd like to go home-- but no, if it's all the same, I'll keep everything that belongs to me," Van said, rocking back and forth a little.

Admittedly, he was tired, but... it could have been worse! He'd made it out alive, after all, hadn't he?

"So... I guess I'll just find a way out, then, yeah?" he asked, mostly to himself.

He hugged his arms around himself, and smiled, as he thought I have nothing to give away.

Cava wondered at the gift that he was being offered, staring down at his hands. He flexed his fingers slowly, and then straightened them, watching the star patterns of his skin remain a constant. "A gift? It is, it is a gift indeed, I suppose, for anyone who has something that weighs them down. Chains them, when they would otherwise fly," he agreed.

He had hardly met anyone, hardly done much at all. It was no great feat to him to pull out his own heart and drop it away. "To become more myself," he said, smiling so that his black lips parted faintly, the star p***k light of his eyes sparking from the dark hollows above his cheekbones.

Robert had already given away everything he was prepared to. Everything else was his. So he walked through the door, losing nothing.

Freya did the same. Who would want to live without their memories, anyway? There would be nothing left to make them who they were; and that wasn't very interesting at all.

A door.

Again.

There was a feeling that was minimally similar to annoyance in Mimsy's mind before it cleared itself away, replaced with a calm that might have seemed impossible were she thinking more clearly. It was the glassy surface of a lake at dawn, undisturbed, waiting for a pebble to drop, expecting all of the ripples that would have to be embraced and accounted for.

It was ridiculous poetic nonsense that she had no space for in a mind full of numbers and theories, and were she thinking more clearly, she would not have wanted this calm.

But she had it anyway, and she smiled, because that was what a peaceful body did. She closed her eyes, because there was nothing left to achieve.

This was everything.

"Do you wish to return?"

She shook her head, slow, euphoric.

"Do you wish to return?"

She opened her eyes to look at the door again. To look at...herself again? Self-conscious, she wrapped her arms around her chest, picking at the skin of one arm with her fingernail. Fidgeting. It was her that disrupted the calm here. She was the cause of this unease.

"I have no desire to stay here," she finally replied, glancing at her feet. This world made her feel like the monster after all, like the skin she wore was transparent, like everything in her heart was laid out and obvious in dark shades of red and black. That was not how she functioned. She required subtlety, careful planning, injecting a sickness under the skin that spread and replicated and destroyed over months and months. Blatant was not synonymous with her existence.

"We can return," she murmured, nails nervously digging into her skin over and over, leaving indented indications of anxiety. It worsened as the sensation that everything could see through her worsened, every wall was destroyed, every defense disarmed.

"We can return, but not as the same. We have been given this gift, the gift of leaving our pain behind. What part of our burden should we discard?"

It began as a tingling, then it surged through her legs, toes to hips, searing pain all at once. She clenched her teeth and bent to put her hands on her knees, clutching them as if it might help her in some way. It didn't. She had walked too far, over a decade of a journey, across a country and an ocean and a continent. No more walking.

Not for this.

"I have no qualifiers for what this is. I had something I needed to do."

"I needed to be the first."

"I removed myself from a promise of steady research to be here so I could be the first."

"A team in Switzerland has succeeded. I have failed when failure was not an option."

"I lost it. I lost the Higgs Boson, and someone else found it."


It hurt, of course it hurt, because these were her legs, despite the overwhelming pain that they were causing her. But it made more sense to get rid of them, excise the tumor, amputate the gangrenous limbs. She tore at them with those overwrought nails, flesh, muscle, tendon, bone, until the pain subsided and everything felt right again.

A long-absent feeling of accomplishment began to return as she pulled herself through the door, away from a world that saw right through her.