Chapter Five: White

Author's note: Last chapter. Sorry again for the slow update. Thank you to everyone who followed along, and a big thank you for all the reviews. I very much appreciate them. Cheerio and enjoy.

There was a time when Sadness had no concept of misery.

She was created to suffer, doomed to love a human who was hurt by her very existence, trapped in a job where everything she did was wrong. But that was just her life. It was no more unbearable than ice is to a penguin.

If occasionally Sadness rebelled, or caused the odd tantrum, it was not because she expected anything to change. It was a primal urge. She had to let everyone know, once in a while, what she was feeling. She just had to. Otherwise it would consume her.

That was the thing she hated most about herself.

Usually, the other emotions ignored her. Anger sometimes took her side, but that didn't really count, because Anger always sided with whomever was loudest. Mostly he rolled his eyes and shuffled his newspaper when she spoke. Fear and Disgust despised her, and she loathed them in return, though she never blamed them for their revulsion.

The first glimpse Sadness received of a life beyond suffering came from Joy, of all people- Joy, Riley's precious, self absorbed little darling, who had only ever noticed Sadness when she was telling Sadness not to touch anything.

One morning, Joy decided that she quite liked Riley's playmate Meg, so she made Riley give Meg a vigorous hug that sent her running away in tears. All the emotions scrambled for control of the console, but it was Sadness who won.

Riley buried her head in the snow so she wouldn't have to hear Meg crying. It didn't work. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Sadness, please, what is wrong with you?" Joy shouted, her fingers in her ears.

Sadness gave her a stubborn glare, and slammed the wordless vocalisation button again.

"Get out of the way," said Joy. She grabbed Sadness by the arm, and pulled her away from the console so hard she fell and hit her head on the floor. "Nobody asked for your help."

Sadness slunk off to her corner to sulk.

That afternoon, after Meg's mum had taken Meg home, Joy came over and sat beside Sadness.

She sighed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It was my fault, what happened, not yours."

Sadness didn't reply. Not sure what she was doing, following instinct more than experience, she wrapped an arm around Joy's shoulders, and squeezed.

Joy smiled, and looked at her. "Thank you," she said.

Then she got up, and returned to her duties.

In that instant, a blinding film fell from Sadness's eyes, and she saw through Joy's trivial persona to the person it concealed- a squall of frailty, hunger, insecurity, and an incredible, earth-shaking strength. Though she lacked the vocabulary to describe what she was seeing, Sadness could tell that Joy's spirit was a thing of tremendous beauty, capable of bending the future to its will.

And, for one shining moment, Sadness had been there to support it.

As Riley grew, the strength that Sadness had seen manifested itself more and more. Joy adapted to the growing demands of her role with grace and ease, driven, so it seemed, by an unquenchable furnace, that couldn't help but inspire the other emotions. By the time Riley was old enough for elementary school, Joy was the unquestioned leader, an almost mythic figure throughout the mind, revered and adored by all who knew her.

Sadness loved Riley very much, in the resigned, distant way one might love a neglectful parent, but the way she felt about Joy was something else entirely. Simply getting to be in the same room as her, as she wove her yellow magic, was enough to make Sadness forget about life's problems. Though at last, she understood the misery of her own condition, with Joy in charge it seemed almost weightless. She no longer needed to be heard.

Occasionally she dreamed, as a remora may dream of becoming a shark, that some of Joy's greatness would rub off on her, and she would grow into a wise and respected decision maker in her own right, and Riley would love her for a change. She was always quick to dismiss such tempting fantasies for the idle folly they were.

Her life was quiet. In the quiet, she had time to think.

As the years passed, she thought more and more about who she was, and why she existed. She tested the waters, stepping up on occasion to touch the console, nervously experimenting to find the right moment for a dash of blue. Her forays were met with kind exasperation by Joy, which stung, but ultimately failed to discourage her; she knew that she had a purpose, and she set out each day to track it down.

She continued, relentless, until the night when it seemed like her worst fears had been realised and she'd doomed Joy forever with her carelessness, and instead the heavens opened and she found that she and Joy together made the brightest light of all.

That night, her abjection ended.

The next two years were a starry blur.

Sadness lived inside Joy's idyllic bubble, not as a parasite but as a symbiote, a well of much needed poignancy, empathy and depth.

As equals, they traversed the peaks and troughs of adolescence. They listened to music together. They helped Riley write poems together.

The memories never stayed multicoloured for long under the wear and tear of recall, but it never bothered Sadness, because the intensity she and Joy created transcended colour. It was more than happiness, it was divine.

Inevitably, Joy's bubble proved incapable of holding two. When it burst, Joy and Sadness fell together, fought together, and lost ground together.

Then the Thing We Don't Talk About came, and Joy ran away, and Sadness got her wish at last, to be leader of the mind. Without Joy, she had only sorrow and exhaustion to offer. She crashed and burned, and Disgust took over.

Joy returned, after a century in exile, but it was too late. Her power had gone. Nothing remained but to withdraw, and slowly watch as Disgust destroyed everything they had built.

She turned Imagination Land into a ghetto. She poisoned memories, friendships and values. She even changed the décor in headquarters.

None of it was enough. It could never be enough, not while Joy lived.

Joy was a monument to what had been lost, a voice to keep Sadness sane. To truly achieve victory, Disgust would have to either make Joy just like herself, or get rid of her entirely.

And she did. She did both.

With her signature cold precision, she ripped away the one thing that had made Sadness's life worthwhile. And Sadness, at long last, finally shut down.

She wasn't sure, the first time, whether it was Joy that she heard, or the echo of her own spirit shattering.

But she hears it now, for certain. That pure, tingling, bright yellow glass harmonica hum, that nestled beside her and resonated through her body for all the greatest years.

It fills her and draws her upwards, up the ladder, into the sky. Every thought is banished, except the need to find the source.

She reaches the top of headquarters, where the air is thin, and the shapes of hills across the bay form a staircase to the branches of a pine tree.

She has to climb that tree. That's where the sound is coming from, it has to be.

The moment her hand touches the horizon, Sadness is lifted up through layers of invisible fog, to an illusory plane of unsettled geometry. Her fingers grip the corner of the earth like a ledge. When she looks down, all she can see of the mind is a hole on Riley's head where her face should be.

She glances at the tree, and sees a yellow light that must be Joy, floating near the top.

She seizes the bottom branch, grateful for something solid to hang on to. Climbing the horizon felt like cheating- the kind of cheat that could stop working at any minute.

The branch bends under her weight, and drops her into the hole.

She falls about a foot, landing in a heap on top of headquarters.

She tries again.

Once more she ascends beyond the boundaries of reason. Once more she sees Joy near the top of the tree, and attempts to climb up and reach her.

This time the first branch she chooses actually holds, as does the second. The third blows around in the wind, just beyond her reach, until she leans too far and falls right back where she started.

"Why?" she yells, at the tree. "What did I do?"

Anger leaps to her side.

"Allow me, ma'am," he says, loosening his tie.

He doesn't even get to the first branch before plummeting down on top of her.

"Damn it! Who designed this tree? The goddamn Spiderman?"

Sadness is too devastated to answer.

A third person speaks, one Sadness forgot was following her.

"Pathetic," says Disgust. "Both of you."

She drops her shoes and stockings in Anger's lap, and with a few nimble jumps, latches on to the tree and scrambles up its trunk.

Sadness watches her go, appalled at herself.

Disgust is going to reach Joy. She's going to kill her again, and there's nothing Sadness can do to stop her, because Sadness is a short, inert blob with stubby arms and no useful skills.

A savage burst of energy drives her back to her feet, up into the outer zone, up one, two, three, four branches.

"I'm coming for you, Joy!"

"Go back, Sadness," says Disgust, from high above her. "We're outside the mind. If you fall and miss the hole you'll be lost for good."

Sadness looks down. The hole does appear awfully small.

She grits her teeth and keeps climbing, her concentration redirected to the mechanical act of reaching from branch to branch.

It's not something that should, strictly speaking, be possible for someone of Sadness's dimensions.

She can't quite recall how she managed the first four.

She clutches her current branch with sudden fervour.

"Help," she says, to herself.

Disgust lights on a branch next to hers.

"Go back, Sadness," she says, tenderly. "I promise, I'll rescue Joy and bring her home for you, safe and sound. It's the least I can do."

Sadness glares at her. "Do you expect me to believe that?"

"What do you want me to say? I made a mistake. I'm doing everything I can to fix it. I can climb, you can't. It's pretty simple."

"How could I ever trust you?"

Disgust considers for a moment, then shrugs. "I don't know. I guess you can't."

She kicks Sadness off her perch.

The higher Disgust climbs, the less certain she is that she's making progress.

The tree is made of solid, interlocking shadows, branches that move with the eye, and countless other unnatural elements.

She barely notices them. She finds the handholds in the disorder, and disregards the rest.

Rings and rings of branches disappear above her like the inside of a mirrored prism. Something important waits at the top, if only she could reach it. Vindication, maybe? Redemption?

She tells herself that she's getting closer, but there's no evidence for that.

She's been climbing this tree her whole life. Surely, if there were a top, she would have reached it by now.

But what else is there to do, except climb, or fall?

She looks over her shoulder, away from the tree. The world has changed again- grass, car park, marina, Riley's body- all given way to cloudscapes and constellations, prowling the sky and bursting like fireworks on the surface of the bay.

Disgust reaches out and touches the water. Her hand passes through, joining the sparks of city light that lash at the edge of night. As she inches forward, she becomes part of the display, a smattering of green flecks leaping out of blue-black for fractions of a second, forming a greater shape through laws she's never learned.

Thousands of patterns dance on the scintillating waves, but one presides. Bled by swell but dazzling in its brokenness, the Golden Gate bridge hangs upside down across the top of the stage, swallowing up smaller lights in its radiance.

It's a monster.

It's just a reflection.

Disgust looks up.

There's the real bridge. Just as huge, just as powerful, but touchable, unbroken.

And there's Joy, floating between the towers.

Her eyes are closed. Her skin is glowing.

She's not alone.

Joy's journal, "Questions for Riley", stopped expanding years ago, but she could never quite bring herself to throw it away.

Every time she picked it up, she would find herself leafing through it, and she'd notice a question she forgot she wrote, and the very idea of losing it would feel like destroying a sacred relic.

Joy's living space was filled with sacred relics.

She can't remember any of those questions now. It doesn't matter. She's got forever to think of new ones.

Time flows without a frame of reference in this warm celestial sphere, where she flies with her human.

"Hey Riley. What's the happiest you've ever been? Like, objectively?"

Her human laughs, that laugh, the laugh.

"Objectively? What do you mean? Right now, of course."

"I mean, before."

"You'd know better than I would. You were there."

It's not a happy answer.

Joy squeezes Riley tighter.

"I was right, wasn't I? About us creating you. It was my fault you turned out like..."

"No," Riley cuts her off. "No, it wasn't your fault at all. Get that out of your head. I was built slowly, layer by layer. I was turned inside out, by errors in language processing and central cognition, long before the mind grasped its own mortality and could give me a shape. You did everything right."

She strokes the back of Joy's head.

"You were my engine, my best and most faithful self."

Joy wants to dance into pieces, or scream and sing her voice away, but she doesn't want to let go or disturb the balanced stillness, so she just murmurs "Riley" into Riley's breast and lets the one word mean everything.

"Disgust," says Riley.

Joy pulls away. She looks at Riley's face, ruined by hatred, staring behind her.

Her mouth fills with the taste of broccoli green.

"So you're the Thing We Don't Talk About," says Disgust. "Figures."

Joy rounds on her. "What are you doing here? Go away!"

Disgust steps through the projection of Riley's mind, smearing it like chalk on a sidewalk.

"Believe me, I'd love to. I'm here to bring you back. You too, Riley. The mind's shut down. We need you to come and fix it."

Joy looks around for something to throw. "We're not going back!" she shouts.

Disgust picks a pine needle off her blazer. "Isn't that up to Riley?"

"We're not going back, Disgust," says Riley. "Go away."

"What part of 'the mind has shut down' do you not understand?"

Joy exhales.

This isn't happening. Disgust is sure to leave if Joy ignores her hard enough.

"The mind will be fine without us," says Riley. "You and the other emotions can split it up amongst yourselves. We don't need it. We're happy."

"Oh, you're happy. Great. Open your eyes, Riley. You're part of the mind. You both are. We're in the mind right now. This whole realm is an illusion. If the mind dies, we all die."

Disgust isn't moving.

"Get away from us," says Joy.

"No. I'm not leaving you here."

"Yes you jolly well are."

"No, I'm not."

"She's right, Joy," says Riley.

"What?"

Riley sighs. "She's right. We have to go back."

Joy deflates.

"You can't mean that."

"I'm sorry. If the mind is broken, we have to fix it. We just have to."

"No. The mind isn't broken. She's lying, she's obviously lying."

"Sure, I'm lying, why not?"

Riley brushes Joy's cheek with her thumb, and Joy realises she's crying again.

"Why would she lie about that?"

"To hurt us. That's all she ever does, is lie, to keep us from being happy."

"And what if she's not lying?"

"She is."

"But what if she isn't?"

"We can stay out here. Outlast the stars."

"We can't. Even if we could, what about the others? All our dreams and memories, and the people who take care of them, inside the mind and outside? What about Anger, Fear and Sadness?"

Joy pictures Sadness, alone in the decaying ruins of headquarters, trying in vain to forestall the end.

Of course Riley is right.

Disappointment crashes over Joy, not just for the paradise she found and so quickly lost, but for the obliviousness with which she clung to it. She thought she'd finally outgrown her blinkered egotism.

Maybe it's not something she will ever outgrow.

It's a good thing Riley has more sense than her.

She closes her eyes, and nods. "Okay."

"Wonderful," says Disgust. "If you'll follow me."

Joy can't see a way down to where Disgust is standing.

Riley steps forward onto nothing, and walks through empty space, leading Joy by the hand.

Disgust turns away from them, and they follow her through an invisible veil.

Sadness lies face down on the roof of headquarters, protected from her failure by an impenetrable shell of hair.

The cold metal smushes her glasses into the bridge of her nose, rattling with the stamp of Anger's feet as he paces back and forth behind her.

She can still hear Joy. Disgust hasn't killed her yet.

Maybe she won't. Maybe Joy will defeat Disgust, and come back, and forgive Sadness for having let her go.

There's still hope.

If only hope were in some way helpful.

"What if we burned the tree?" says Anger. "No, then they'd be stuck up there. I know, we could burn everything else, except the tree. Does that make sense?"

"We can't do anything," Sadness mumbles. "It's all happening up there. We're not a part of it."

Anger shouts up the tree. "Fear not, sweet Eurydice, by my righteous flame I shall bear you swiftly home."

"Nope. Not a chance. She's a pillar of salt. That was Eurydice, wasn't it? Oh, who cares? You don't care. Nobody cares, it's all gone to hell and nobody cares." Sadness rolls onto her back, and wails.

Anger stops pacing. "Shut up Sadness, I'm trying to think."

She keeps wailing, on and on like a siren, barely pausing to gulp down lungfuls of air.

"Don't think I won't push you off this roof," says Anger. "Just because you've given up on Joy, doesn't mean... I for one still intend to do whatever I can to help with the rescue operation."

The accusation in his tone robs the wind from Sadness's sails. She stops wailing, and wipes her face on her sleeve.

"After..." She hiccups. "After everything you've seen, you still think Disgust is trying to rescue Joy?"

"Of course. And she's probably doing a terrible job of it, because I'm down here instead of up there helping."

Sadness sniffs. "She was right about you. You are an idiot."

It's a mean thing to say, and she regrets it immediately.

"At least I'm useful," he says. "You've been nothing but dead weight ever since Riley got too ugly to be sympathetic."

He shakes his head.

"No, I'm sorry. That's ridiculous. Riley isn't even that ugly. Why do I always listen to her?"

"Because she's the devil. She roots out weakness like a pig roots for truffles."

Anger kicks the roof.

"We can't think like that. We're all on the same side. If we can't get along, how can we stand a chance against the injustice of the world?"

Sadness shrugs. "Maybe we can't."

She sits up.

Joy is getting louder.

"She's coming back," says Sadness.

"You sure? I still don't hear anything."

"Just wait."

They wait.

The noise steadily grows and grows, until it's so loud Anger can't possibly not hear it. Still he cranes his non-existent neck, apparently unaware of the deafening hum surrounding him.

The first to descend from the tree is Disgust.

For a moment, Sadness thinks that Disgust is alone, and that she was making the noise and pretending to be Joy as part of a cruel joke.

Then the noise solidifies into a form, and the form steps down onto the roof of headquarters, and Sadness knows she was silly to ever doubt.

She barely has time to stand and open her arms, before the third figure arrives.

She recognises its white nakedness at once, although she has never seen it before.

A kind of bitter awe takes hold of her.

"Riley," she mouths.

Riley wastes no time in following Disgust to the ladder. Joy bounces after them, stopping to give Sadness a peck on the cheek.

Then they climb down, all three, leaving Sadness standing, once again, alone on the roof with Anger.

"Please tell me you saw what I just saw," says Anger.

Sadness doesn't reply.

She runs to the ladder.

Down below, long term memory glitters once again with specks of yellow.

Now that the shock has worn off, she understands what it means to have seen the face of Riley incarnate.

Joy understands too, Sadness saw it in her glow.

She should be happy for Joy, but this isn't something she can think about vicariously.

Sadness was the first to read the mind manuals. She was the first to discover the ultimate futility of her own endeavours.

And yet, no matter how many times she told herself it was a fantasy, a part of her still held on to the idea that one day, her human would come and make it all better.

Now Riley is here.

Sadness is going to get some answers.

By the time she arrives at headquarters, the creeping grey is gone. The satchel of core memories lies on the floor where she dropped it, its mouth shining yellow.

The monitor still shows the car park and marina. Nobody is at the console.

Joy and Disgust are standing and watching, one with wonder and the other suspicion, as Riley kneels and reaches out a hand to the wretch that crouches and shivers by the window.

Fear is exactly where Sadness left him.

He shrinks back without looking up.

"It's okay, Fear," says Riley, with the softness of a new mother. "You were right about everything. But it's over. We're safe now."

He lets her touch his head.

His muscles loosen. He falls on his side, and uncoils.

"That's it," says Riley.

There's a twinge of green in her patronising smile, a hint of affectation.

She doesn't really mean it.

Sadness always suspected as much. The way Fear has suffered- the way she herself has suffered, languishing, dutifully serving her betters, never allowed a shred of contentment that wasn't snatched away- it was too much to be a coincidence.

Of course Disgust and Riley are one and the same.

Fear opens his eyes.

"Riley?"

Riley rests his head on her lap. "Yes, Fear. It's me."

"The Thing..."

"The Thing is gone. It's gone for good. I'm all that's left of it."

"Joy..."

"Joy is here too. We're all here. We're all safe."

"Good." Fear closes his eyes.

Riley carries him and lays him down on Joy's and Sadness's beanbag, then covers him up with half the torn blanket.

"He'll be fine," says Disgust.

"How would you know?"

Riley looks at Sadness, and seems to notice her for the first time.

All further rebukes die on Sadness's lips.

"Did you say something, Sadness?"

Sadness has a great deal to say, but she can't remember how to talk.

She meets Riley's meltwater stare, and tries to fit all the unaskable questions into that one act of defiance.

It must have an effect. Riley takes a step back.

"Sadness, I..."

Her expression changes. What Sadness thought was green, on closer inspection, is actually a very slight blue.

Maybe it was the light.

"Sadness, I don't know."

She bites her lip.

"I don't know why you are the way you are. I wish I could tell you your misery means something grand and important. It means something to me. Nobody appreciates you enough."

It's a pitifully inadequate answer, and Riley knows it.

"Okay," says Sadness.

"Wait."

Riley walks up and takes Sadness by the hand.

Sharp needles stab into Sadness's flesh where Riley touches it, injecting her with a foreign energy that flows up her arm and through her body.

It hurts, but it's a white pain. Sadness has never felt white before. There's yellow in it, and blue, and even green, but it all works. The colours complement each other, and make something altogether beautiful.

Riley lets go, and the whiteness fades back to dreary blue.

"Did you feel that?" she says. "That's what it's like to be me. Thanks to you."

She touches Sadness's cracked glasses, and makes them whole.

"I know it's not much, and it can't make up for anything, but if you ever need a break, or a reminder of what it's all for, just ask. I'll share it with you."

Sadness lowers her head. She can't bring herself to say "thank you," but she can't hate Riley either.

Joy is looking at her with a new kind of respect.

The door opens behind her.

"I knew it," says Anger.

He marches past Sadness, and drops to one knee at Riley's feet.

"My lady. It is an honour above honours to meet you at last. I beseech you, stay and guide us with your wisdom. Be our philosopher queen, and let me pledge my unworthy fealty to you from now until the end of time."

Riley scratches her nose.

"Get up, dickhead," she says.

Anger laughs obligingly, and stands, without gaining any height. "Yes, ma'am."

Riley turns to address everyone. "This isn't how I wanted to bring up the issue. Obviously I'm nobody's queen. But, if you did all want me to stay in headquarters..." She raises her hand to stem the torrent of assent from Joy. "Just as an advisor and a spiritual guide, you understand; you would all reserve the right to ignore me or evict me if I got too full of myself. But if that were something you wanted..."

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," says Joy, bouncing on tiptoes.

"Of course," says Anger.

"I suppose," says Sadness, after a moment's hesitation.

They all look at Disgust.

"Whatever," she sighs. "None of this is going to matter in the morning."

Her declaration falls on a stiff silence.

Joy waves her aside. "Just ignore her. She's upset because she doesn't get to be the boss any more."

"No," says Riley. "I want to know. Disgust, why is none of this going to matter?"

Disgust straightens.

"You really think, when the drugs have worn off and the mind is back to normal, that everything will somehow be different? You're not Riley. You're a dream within a metaphor. When we get off this ride, it'll be straight back to the drudgery of life. You can't change that."

Sadness, for all of Disgust's lies, can't help but agree. Small mercies never last, why should great ones?

She hates Disgust for pointing it out. She hates Disgust for everything.

Riley holds her hands out in front of her.

"I'm real, Disgust. Feel for yourself. I'm not going anywhere."

Disgust examines her, but doesn't touch.

"I don't believe you. I've seen wondrous things today, things that I thought were real. But they weren't. They were models built by the mind. What makes you so different? What separates you from the hundreds of hypothetical Rileys Imagination Land spits out every day? Why should..."

"For Pete's sake," Joy interrupts. "Those Rileys aren't even alive. All they do is spout catchphrases."

"Exactly," says Disgust. "They pop up, they say what the mind compels them to say, then they vanish. Don't you think it's more likely that this is one of those, somehow granted self awareness by a drug-induced feedback loop, rather than... I don't know, the spirit of Riley herself? Whatever that means?"

"Shut up, Disgust. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes and no," says Riley. "She's partly right. I am an emergent phenomenon. I didn't spring into being at the dawn of the universe. The mind created me. Just like it created you."

She smiles at Disgust. "You of little faith. You cluster of winking lights on dark water. Have you learned nothing from your journey? How can you dismiss creations of the mind, after all that you have seen? Everything you are or have ever known, from the big picture down to what you call the drudgery of life, is a creation of the mind."

Disgust remains unmoved.

"I'm not falling for your sophistry. Just tell me why I should believe you. Tell me how I know that you won't be gone tomorrow."

"I can't," says Riley. "I can't say something like that for certain."

"Then I can't support you."

"But why would I be gone tomorrow? The LSD didn't build me, it only helped Joy to free me. It's a catalyst for change. Why shouldn't the change outlast its effects?"

Sadness likes to think of herself as a being of inexhaustible patience, but even she can't believe how far Riley is going to indulge Disgust's obstinance.

"Just give me a sign," says Disgust. "Give me a reason to trust you. I want to believe you're real, I really do."

"No you don't," says Riley, kindly. "You don't, and I'm glad you don't. Your skepticism keeps me sane."

She takes Disgust's hands, the same way she took Sadness's. Disgust tries to fight her at first, but as the whiteness takes hold, she becomes placid, then reverent.

Sadness is struck with a sense of gross injustice, that Disgust should be granted the same reward as her, after all she made Sadness endure. Joy's expression is nothing but shock.

Riley ignores their distress.

"The others will always hate you," she says. "And I won't say they're wrong to do so. But I know you were doing your best. You were never meant to lead." She leans in, and in a tone that Sadness can only just make out, whispers, "I forgive you."

Disgust winces.

"You can't," she murmurs. "You can't forgive me."

"I can and I have."

Disgust wrenches her hands away from Riley's grip. Her eyes flash with triumph, that quickly fades to horror.

She starts to reach out to try and re-establish the connection, then catches herself, and draws her hands into her chest, gazing blankly at the floor.

Riley picks her up like a child. She doesn't even resist.

"It's okay," says Riley, patting her back. "I'm here. I'm really, truly here, for good. You don't have to be strong any more."

Disgust squeezes her eyes shut.

She bashes her head repeatedly on Riley's shoulder.

And then, for the first time in her life, she cries.

It's a terribly undignified sight. She tries to do it silently, but that just strangles her sobs and makes her whole body spasm.

She fumbles to untie her bun, and uses the hair to hide her face.

Sadness is reminded of the little green girl who used to dress up like a pop singer and panic over broccoli.

She can't muster up any ill will for that creature.

She can't blame Riley for holding Disgust close, or caressing her with tenderness and pity.

"I can't watch this," says Joy.

"Me neither," says Anger.

They leave Riley and Disgust to themselves.

Only Sadness lingers, for a few seconds, just long enough to capture the image of Disgust at her most human.

Then she joins Joy by the console, to hug, debrief and commiserate.

When Disgust takes a seat beside them, her eyes are dry.

The organism sits with its back to the streetlights, casting a long shadow on the marina green.

Its heart beats softly, lulled by the shushing of waves and traffic. Warm evening air wafts slowly in and out of its lungs.

Tiny movements register as flashes in the heavy canopy of meat that rests on its bristling nerves.

A scrape of shoe on concrete. A delicate jolt of contact between thumb and fingertips.

And beneath, a perfectly balanced anchor, keeping the body safely grounded at its centre of gravity.

In the organism's mind, six tired homunculi rest at their posts, drinking in the tranquility.

Now that the crisis is over, and the console is working again, none of them actually feel the need to touch it. There's nowhere to be but here.

Fear has rejoined the group, a little paler than usual but wrapped in a warm, uncharacteristic confidence.

Joy feels it too.

Riley's presence inspires the kind of confidence that only Dad's voice ever came close to matching.

It should have hurt to watch the love that Joy had greedily coveted get showered on the unworthy. But that's not who she is. It's not who Riley is.

Their love is strengthened and nurtured by every speck of silt that gets swept up in its boundless wake. It extends beyond the mind, the body, and the multiverse. It washes clean the cyclists who race past, unaware.

It's unconditional. If Disgust were excluded, it would be something less than what it is.

If Sadness were excluded, it would be nothing.

A jogger with a familiar gait approaches.

"Finally," it says, slowing to a halt and unslinging its backpack. "You would not believe the adventure I just had looking for you."

The organism squints at the jogger, and recognises its dear friend, Claire.

"Oh, hello," it says. "Yes. Me too. An adventure."

Claire sits down, and pulls a bottle out of her backpack. She takes a swig, then passes it to the organism. "You should drink some water."

The organism takes the bottle.

A grinding crunch shakes headquarters.

"What was that?" says Riley.

Fear shoots to the window. "One of the islands is trying to start up."

He picks up Sadness's satchel. "Sadness took the core memories out, remember?"

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Anger shouts. "Put them back in."

"Alright, alright."

Fear opens the core.

"Stop."

All eyes turn to Disgust.

"Look," she says.

They look.

There are people hovering behind the monitor, like spies behind a one way mirror.

At first glance they appear to be Riley's emotions.

But they're not.

The Joy behind the monitor is short, scraggly haired and decked in overalls.

The Sadness has a beard and a dirty t-shirt.

The Fear is smothered in makeup.

The Disgust is bald, with feathered earrings.

The Anger is wearing a dark pant suit.

All of them seem bewildered to be looking in on headquarters from the outside.

Riley's emotions stand, and approach their doppelgangers. They each touch the glass, and lock eyes with the person on the other side.

It almost looks like there's a console back there.

The glass mists up, and becomes just a screen again.

Riley, still sitting, says what they already know. "Those were Claire's emotions."

"Projections of her emotions," Disgust corrects, stepping back from the monitor. "I wonder how accurate they were."

Fear remembers what he was doing, and hurries to the memory core.

"Stop," says Disgust again.

"What is it this time?"

She addresses Riley. "Does the Island of Claire really need to be saved?"

Fear groans.

"Someone shut her up," says Anger.

Riley frowns at Disgust. "We love Claire, don't we?"

"Sure," says Disgust. "As much as self delusion can be called love. I was willing to go along with the masochistic devotion narrative before. Hell, it was partly my idea. But do you really want to paint over what we just saw?"

Joy's hackles rise reflexively at Disgust's characterisation of the relationship. But even she has to admit that the way she felt just now, looking at her counterpart, was a thousand times more meaningful than the usual desperate worship of Claire's general shape.

"I agree with Disgust," Sadness mumbles. "Claire doesn't fit into the box we've built for her."

"So expand the box," says Fear. He taps the core impatiently. "Honestly, are you people saying what I think you're saying?"

Joy looks to Riley. "Are we?"

Sadness produces an idea, and hands it to Joy. "Here. It's for the best."

Riley raises her hand. "No."

Joy feels a twitch of hope. Maybe it isn't necessary after all. Maybe they can make it work.

Riley continues. "Give it here. I'll do it."

She takes the bulb from Sadness.

Claire explores her fingers, bending each of them one by one.

She notices that the organism called Riley is staring at her.

"Are you going to drink the water?" she says.

The organism fixes her with its most serious expression.

"Claire," it says. "We need to just be friends."

Claire pulls away. "Because of the water? I don't have meningococcal, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, not the water. The silence. I want to... like, sit in silence with you and not be scared."

"Okay..."

"It's all about narratives and stuff. We're trying to write a couple's narrative, and it's squashing us, because it's too artificial. We can only really know our own minds, see? When you cram two people into the space of one, it's... I don't know, it makes everything smaller. Don't you think?"

Claire shrugs. "Sure. I get it. I guess I agree. A time to live and a time to die, right? We've been doing this forever."

"Exactly."

Claire slides back next to the organism, and puts one of her giant arms around it.

"I love you," she says.

"I know," says Riley. Then, "I love you too."

She means it.

With a shuddering crash, the Island of Claire breaks away, and drops into the memory dump.

A new core memory lands in headquarters, pure white and shining.

Thunder descends from the encroaching clouds that fill a quarter of the sky.

"I wonder if there will be lightning," says Claire.

"Probably."

A cyclist whizzes past, lights blazing.

"I've still got that kush in my backpack, if you need to take the edge off. We could go down to the water, fire one up and watch the storm."

Riley checks with her emotions.

They nod in unison.

She smiles. They really are all on the same side.

"Okay," she says.

She and Claire sit together for a while, thinking about moving.

The city crouches, waiting, thick with the smell of ozone.

A patch of cloud flashes white.