I decided on the spur of the moment that I would spend the rest of the day and night with (Y/N), to make sure she was feeling better. However long it took to sort this out, we had nothing but time on our hands. “So, party girl, you want to go by your quarters to pick up some pants, or are you most comfortable just enjoying the breeze and freeballing it?”

I tried to give her my silliest smile, and got a blush in response. After a minute, she looked at me bashfully, “I was following my instinct, I didn’t want to take the time to put my clothes back on; I thought if I did, I might lose it.”

I nodded in an over-exaggerated fashion. “I see. So, what you’re saying is that you’re still following your instinct, and it requires you wear no pants?” She chuckled and smacked lightly at my hand. “No? So now you really are just loving getting some air-“

She snorted, and it was good to see her happy again. “-No! But it hardly matters, it’s just you and me here, I think.” I nodded, not sure if I should take her seriously or not. I still had no clear idea of what exactly had happened to her.

I decided to be light-hearted about it, for now. “Well, damn, I don’t mind the view. You’ve got some mighty fine gams!” (Y/N) giggled, turning a pleased pink, and I marked that off as a victory.

When we got to the lounge, I gestured to an intact sofa. “Have a seat. I’ll get you a snack and one of those girly drinks you like.” She nodded gratefully as she sat down, folding her legs underneath herself like a scared teenager. Poor thing.

I walked over to the bar and talked at the ceiling, hoping that would make it clearer. “Can I have a nice, comforting snack for (Y/N), and one of those froofy drinks she likes?”

Kama’s disembodied voice responded right away. “Certainly. Does she require a sedative? Would you like something to eat or drink of your own?”

I looked back at (Y/N), who nodded. “Uh, yeah, sure, just a little something to take the edge off. But make sure it’s safe with her drink. I’ll, uh, have some iced tea, with-“

Kama interrupted me! “-two teaspoons sugar, of course.”

I clamped my mouth shut and refrained from bickering with a computer-thingy over interrupting me. It was pointless; probably didn’t even know it was doing it.

After about ten minutes, the wall slot slid open, and I went around the bar to fetch the tray with our stuff. I took it back to the sofa where (Y/N) still sat, looking at her hands.

I set the tray on the coffee table. “Seriously, are you cold?”

She shook her head. I gestured at the tray. “Hey, at least we’re eating real food now. Looks like canned peaches and some crackers, mmmmm!” She grinned as she picked up her drink and took a sip.

Right away I made a dramatic face. “Oh no, I’ve ruined everything!”

(Y/N) raised an eyebrow. “You? How?”

I grinned. “You just had something to drink, so you can’t go swimming for another twenty minutes!”

She chuckled. “What? Are you serious?”

I nodded casually. “Yeah, you’ll sink.”

She snorted as she took another sip. “Right, that’s totally why!”

I nodded again, ever so sagely. “Absolutely.”

There were a few minutes of silence, and (Y/N) broke the little pill Kama had provided on the tray in half, then swallowed half of it. After a while, I decided to gently-carefully-softly probe for information. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She sounded a lot saner now that she had earlier. She told me this whole story about waking up with some weird feeling, going through the wall, and finding a bunch of crazy shit, everything covered with pictures of me. The worst part for her was clearly the digital recording she thought she had seen. She was convinced that she was personally responsible for everything that had happened.

Arguably, what she said was not completely out of the question. But my gut told me that (Y/N) could never have done something like that. Besides, why would she cause herself to lose her memories?

When she was finished, I brought up the obvious point. “You know holograms and all kinds of shit like that can appear like anyone that’s been entered into the database, saying anything the programmer wants. This could easily be some kind of fucked-up plot to try and pin us against each other.”

She nodded slowly. “But why would they do that? I thought they wanted, err…”

I understood why she trailed off. We pretty much never repeated exactly what Kama had said out loud. The L-word made us both acutely uncomfortable. For my part, I now knew that I had to disguise any feelings I might be starting to form. (Y/N) probably just thought mentioning it was creepy and disrespectful of Juliet.

I decided to sort of dodge the topic. I didn’t want (Y/N) getting stressed. “Well, even if Kama did absolutely nothing to you, and that stuff really is inside the wall, it seems there’s nothing we can do about it right now. If,” I held my hands up in quotation marks, “’you’ said that only time will return your memories, I don’t see why that wouldn’t be the case. It seems to be so far. So let’s just try and relax.”

She nodded, agreeing, but held up a finger. “But not by swimming, for at least the next twenty minutes.”

I laughed. “Exactly.”

Notes

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