I debated about posting this because I wrote it for my sister and I struggled to keep everyone in character. I think I succeeded.

Adam entered his new apartment with weary steps, jumping slightly when the voice of his security system greeted him. He glared at the panel and fisted his new hand tightly at his side, feeling the fiber-coated metal grind into itself. His old apartment had been re-assigned in the three months he'd been gone after the attack. He'd lived the last few months of his life stuck recovering in a back room LIMB clinic, hidden away from official channels just in case the terrorists who'd attacked Sarif wanted to try and finish the job they'd started when putting a bullet through his skull.

As part of his compensation package and in an effort to make him harder to track and sneak up on, David had personally signed papers for the company to pay a whole year for a brand new apartment suite on Sarif's budget in Detroit's nicest complex. The raise that was the other part of his package would surely make the apartment affordable for him even after the lease was up.

It wasn't that Adam was incapable of appreciating the gesture, it was just that his augments were aching at the joints and he wasn't sure an unfamiliar room would help anything. He dropped his bag wearily on the kitchen floor where boxes of his things had been half-heartedly stacked, no doubt by a handful of David's less enthusiastic employees. Employees who probably blamed part of the attack on Adam himself.

When he was certain he could unclench his hand and control it enough not to break his security panel, he locked the door for the night and wandered into the kitchen, running his fingers along the marble countertop. He dug through a box until he found one of his glasses and he retrieved it carefully, the static feel of his fingers on the slick surface unnerving.

He was about to turn on his faucet when a glint of amber caught his eye and he looked up. His retinal enhancements focused on the coffee table sitting in front of his TV and he took his hand off the faucet, walking slowly into the living room. A new bottle of his favorite whiskey was sitting in the middle of the table, a note underneath it with David's signature.

Don't drink it all at once. Welcome home, son.

He sat on the couch and cracked the bottle open, trying not to acknowledge the actual cracks that spider webbed down the neck of the bottle. Carefully, he went to tip some of the liquid into his glass, but a sharp twinge shot through the shoulder that had been supporting his duffle and he tensed, crushing the glass with a sudden splintering. A hot wave poured through his chest and he hurled the shards, gripping the whiskey bottle so tightly the glass strained with more hairline breaks. He bent over the table, breathing heavily, closing his eyes to try and get himself under control. His back was tense with anger, tense to the point where he couldn't physically order the muscles to unclench just yet. Slowly, he managed to calm his breathing and gentle his hold on the bottle.

He got unsteadily up, moving with a heavy, unfamiliar tread up the steps and towards his bedroom. At least they'd brought his bed and computer from his old place. Out of everything in the new apartment his room was the most comforting, even though it was the first time he'd set foot on the dark flooring. Faridah had left a note on his door that said she'd been by earlier in the week to unpack the basics that they'd already shipped over from his old place. As a result, his dresser was full of his clothes and his bed was carefully made, the pillows set over a tucked back comforter. He tried to ignore the fact that Faridah made the bed the same way Megan used to. Before he and Megan had started living together it had never occurred to him to fold the top of the comforter back. He still didn't see the point of it, but he'd grown to associate it with Megan's attention to detail and he'd gotten used to the way it looked.

He sat wearily in the chair by his desk, dropping his head into his hands and turning the chair a little with his foot, the swaying oddly calming. He could feel his heart pounding hard inside him, as though he'd been in a firefight. His shoulders both ached with a deep, muscle-clenching weariness and the implant sites in his chest were each throbbing slightly off kilter to his pulse.

He turned on his computer and logged in, scrolling through his emails. There was one from a Sarif secretary giving him access to his safe and welcoming him to the apartment. Another was from the apartment's manager, giving him basic information about the building and policies. He barely skimmed it. As he continued to scroll through emails, some of which were forwarded from David, another shot of pain went through his shoulder. His fingers shuddered oddly against the touch-screen keyboard in response and his hand slid, creating a grating scratch in the glass. Adam's jaw clenched and he stared down at the damage, curling and uncurling his fingers in a spasmodic anger. A prescription bottle of pain pills was sitting on the desk within reach and his retinal augments prompted him towards them, a diagnostic on the upper left of his HUD flashing warnings about damage. He grit his teeth and gripped the pill bottle, hurling it against the wall as he retracted his sunglasses, shutting the HUD display off and silencing the alarm. He watched the chalky pills scatter and bounce across the floor like dice.

Snatching up the whiskey, he took a long draw from it and closed his eyes, breathing out carefully as the burn branched through him. He coughed and his healing lungs hurt for it, but he grit his teeth against the pain and clicked on the next email. The first word that drew his eye took the air right out of him and sent his heart pounding again.

Megan.

He blinked back tears that had come both from the whiskey burning in his nose and the unexpected reminder and took another, measured drink before forcing his gaze back up to the top of the email to see what it actually said.

Adam…Megan died…nobody knew if you'd wake up…Kubrick…I'm really sorry. He was a sweet dog.

The top of the whiskey bottle shattered and he got up, shaking glass shards and drops of amber liquid off of his hand. He cursed under his breath, trying to swallow back the lump that was making it hard to breathe. His entire body was aching from the tension holding him together and the burn in his stomach was going past numbing things and starting to make him nauseous. He'd known better than to drink after not having anything but carefully regulated food for three months, but right then he didn't care. Couldn't care.

The only thing that was keeping him from throwing the toxic liquid back up was the food they'd encouraged him to take before being released. He'd eaten it, but mostly just to get out faster. Nora, the intern who'd been staying with him for quite a bit of his recovery, had seemed optimistic about his release. He had felt optimistic too, at first. Then he'd walked out the door and felt the way his new body felt stepping too heavily against the street. He saw billboards talking still about the dangers of the protests that had become more and more prevalent, and he heard people talking on every corner, some eyeing him with envy, others condemning him as he brushed past like a shattered shadow. Even the air he'd been breathing for most of his adult life tasted different, felt different. They'd switched on part of his gas filter augment right before releasing him, reasoning that the smog-heavy streets of Detroit wouldn't be good for adjusting lungs.

Moving slowly, gingerly, he worked his shirt over his head and dropped it on the dresser, walking into the bathroom where low-lights flickered on with the tap of a switch by the door. Even breathing was getting difficult as the pain refused to decrease and he tried to ignore it, heading for the shower. Before he got there he caught himself in the mirror out of the corner of his eyes and it froze him.

He'd been told the specs, the details, the list of his augments a thousand times in a thousand ways, but none of it had prepared him for what he saw in the mirror. He was thinner than he used to be, much of his muscle depleted from spending long days barely conscious swathed in sterile sheets. His eyes were red with exhaustion and alcohol. Framing his gray gaze were pieces of metal responsible for more than half of his visual augments, slicing into his face like the black-bone corners of a cybernetic skull. They gave him an unnatural, aggressive expression and only highlighted the unhealthy cut of his skull under pale skin. Dotting across his chest were the struts and ports from his chest re-construction, the bolts holding him together across the upper chest as though they'd begun the Y of an autopsy and thought better of it for the moment.

In sharp contrast to his pallid skin and weight loss was the glistening black of the cybernetic muscle swelling healthy and whole down both prosthetic arms. The glittering metal and synthetic skin mesh burrowed into the surviving flesh at each shoulder socket like a living thing, slowly eating him alive. It was strong, parasitic, and he was the host playing for what little time he had before it would consume and replace him completely.

His chest was heaving with suppressed emotion and the bolt sights ached with the strain. His vision tunneled in and he felt an overpowering rage rush up and explode before he even really knew what was happening. He threw a fist forward with unnatural speed, the thick glass of the mirror splintering in a hundred directions, the sound barely registering over his gasping breaths. His fingers slid down the mirror from the point of impact, triangles of glass pinging down to the counter and winking back light like the remnants of a ruined sun.

He reached for the largest shard and clenched it in his hand, staring up at the disjointed remains of his reflection. The mesh of his new palm registered something like pain to warn him that he was damaging the touch surface, but he only clenched harder, wishing he could draw blood. As the adrenaline ebbed he felt nauseous and dizzy all over again and he leaned heavily against the counter, suddenly losing the will to stand. The glass fell from his hand and slowly, as though sinking into the ocean, he slipped to the floor and lay there on his side, staring sightless and half curled at the distorted metal framing his cabinet.

The floor was cold and foreign against his bare skin, but lost as he was inside the overwhelming tide of memories, he didn't register the way he'd begun to shiver or the pain as the shards of glass bit into his side and left weeping scratches.

He lay there and quietly took the assault of memories, nothing but quiet breaths sustaining his tears.

The way cool glass had felt to whisky-warmed fingers. The way Megan had folded back the bed spread the morning after the first night they'd spent together. The first night she'd told him she loved him. The way Kubrick wouldn't let him sleep past six am so he never had to set an alarm for work again until Megan moved out and took Kubrick with her. The way his body used to be smooth and breathing was easy and his eyes didn't prompt him with clinical suggestions at the expense of his aching heart.

Back at his penthouse David glanced at the clock, wondering if it was safe yet to patch into Adam's comm. He didn't want to do anything until he was sure Adam was in his new building and away from any stray signal hackers on the streets. His security chief had been scheduled for release almost two hours ago, and judging from what he knew about Adam he would be going straight home. Sarif tapped a few commands into his computer and activated the comm link.

"Adam? You there son?" he asked hesitantly, his metal fingers fidgeting with the pen on his desk. The link had gone through successfully but there was no feedback and no response, which meant either Adam wasn't conscious to respond or he was intentionally not connecting back.

"Adam, I just wanted to check up on you. If you're asleep that's fine but if you can hear me and you need anything just let me know." David waited several long minutes before reluctantly disconnecting the signal, rubbing his forehead with worried fingers.

For a moment he deliberated and then he tapped a different channel. "Pritchard? Are you still in the building?"

"Yes, unfortunately I'm having a difficult time tracing all the loose ends on this hacking signal. What's going on? Did something else get lost in an email?"

"No, but I can't get through to Adam. Do you have his comm signal?"

"Yes, but if he won't answer to you I highly doubt he'll answer if I try it," Pritchard responded, and his voice sounded frosty.

"I don't need you to try talking to him, I just need you to see if you can patch into his neural chip. I want to make sure he's okay."

"You want me to hack his bio-monitoring signal you mean. The one that's only supposed to be used by Doctor Vera during his recovery period. The highly-illegal, medically licensed tracking chip that could get me five years minimum for medicinal tampering if I get caught."

David turned in his chair, rolling his eyes. "Yes, Francis don't make it sound so scandalous. You know you won't get caught. It would take me or Adam reporting you for that and I think you're safe. I just want to know he's okay."

"You could page Doctor Vera, ask her to report back to you," Pritchard pointed out. "I know computers, not brains. Unless you completely re-wired his body I won't be able to tell you much."

"You can tell me if he's conscious and breathing. Vera would give me a million reasons why she won't tap in right now, and none of them will end with me knowing if Adam is even alive. Are you going to help me or not?"

"They wouldn't have released him if they thought there was danger of him dropping dead," Francis pointed out, but David could hear the tapping of his fingers against keys. "Well he's alive," he responded after a moment. "Not like I can read brain-waves so I can't tell you much else but his heart's beating and his blood is registering oxygen. Maybe you should leave him alone."

David rubbed worried fingers across his chin, thinking. "What's his pulse at?"

"Holding around 95. That doesn't seem unusual for someone dealing with pain. He could be asleep."

"All right. Go ahead and cut the connection. Keep me posted on that hack lead." David tapped the screen and ended the call. He wanted badly to go check in on Adam himself, but he knew that going anywhere near the apartment or out on the street by himself was stupid. There'd been way too much hostility towards his company lately, and with his face on half the billboards he didn't exactly have public anonymity.

He checked his watch. It was nearly ten PM, which meant that Faridah would be home for the night. She lived only two floors below Jensen in the Chiron building, and she usually left her comm active well into the night. He tapped in her code and was almost immediately rewarded with her response.

"Something I can do for you, boss?"

"Yeah, do you still have the key I gave you to Adam's apartment?"

"Sure do, did you need it back tonight? I can bring it in to work tomorrow."

"No, actually I was hoping you could go up and check on him. He isn't responding to my comm."

"It's getting late and he's been through a lot. Are you sure he's not asleep?"

"It's because he's been through a lot that I know he's not."

There was a pause at the other end. "Understood. I'll keep you posted."

"Thank you, Faridah."

Faridah changed from her shorts to a pair of sweatpants and shrugged on a sweatshirt. The Chiron building was warm as a general rule but she had no idea how Adam would have his apartment or even what she'd find. She wasn't taking chances, and having an extra bundle of cloth in case she needed to stop bleeding was not a bad idea. Jogging into her bathroom she grabbed her first-aid kit and swiped Adam's key off her table before darting out her door.

When she reached Adam's door she knocked, waiting a few moments and hoping he'd respond, hoping that he'd been ignoring David out of spite or general weariness. He wasn't answering. "Adam? It's Faridah, I'm going to come in, okay?"

Though she had every right to be, she wasn't afraid of what he'd do if she startled him. The man had been torn apart and built back up as a weapon, and even a misjudged reflexive hit from one of his arms could do serious damage. But she was more concerned by the fact that he wasn't answering her than by anything he could potentially do to her. In his heart he was a gentle, careful soul and she trusted that to protect her.

She clicked his door gently open and slipped inside, glancing around with raised eyebrows. She'd been by earlier in the week but seeing the apartment at night really highlighted how nice it was. The view was stunning, the city skyline just far enough away that the apartment seemed separate and safe from its chaos. There was a muted golden glow streaming through the windows that gave it a dreamlike, warm atmosphere. Her apartment was nice, but Sarif had really pulled out all the stops for Adam. She supposed it was the least he could do, and David was aware of that.

She padded across the floor, glancing into the kitchen and then around the living room. "Adam?" she called, tentatively moving towards his bedroom. She thought she heard something, but she couldn't be sure and she gripped the first-aid kit a little harder. When she saw the broken bottle on his desk she pressed her lips together in worry, and only a few seconds after she caught sight of him curled up on the floor of his bathroom.

"Oh Adam…" she whispered, moving towards him carefully, not wanting to startle him. "Adam? It's Feridah…" she knelt next to him and gently put a hand on his shoulder, worried when she noted a pool of blood under him. She glanced up at the mirror and then down at the shards left on the floor. "Come on spy boy, let me look at you," she said gently, pulling at his arm with a careful pressure, coaxing him into a sitting position. Slowly, Adam sat up, though his gaze was distant.

"I'm just going to clean this, make sure there's no glass left in the wound," Feridah said, nudging his arm aside and leaning in with a flashlight, looking for glittering in the bloody gashes marking his side. When she found none she got up and ran the water warm, wetting down an antiseptic cloth from the kit. Adam just sat there, slumping part of his weight against the cabinet, dried tear tracks on his face.

She squeezed out the excess water and sat down again, brushing aside the remaining glass so that it didn't have the chance to injure either of them further. "Okay, this is going to sting," she warned, pressing the white square to the cuts. His side tensed up and he hissed through his teeth a little, but he didn't jerk away. The glossy black of his hand was clenching and unclenching where it rested in his lap. Slowly, she wiped away the blood and cleansed the area, trying to decide if he would need stitches. Normally his Sentinel implant should take care of anything deeper than a scratch, but he was still healing from so much else she knew the injury wouldn't be priority and could get infected. The white glisten of the severed fat layer only showed in one of the cuts but the others were superficial and had already stopped bleeding.

"I'm going to close this up with liquid stiches and butterfly bandages, but you're going to have to move carefully," Feridah said, leaning over her kit and digging for supplies. "If you tear the liquid sutures we're going to have to do this the old fashioned way and sew you up."

"Then I'll really look like Frankenstein's monster."

His words gave her pause—she hadn't expected him to speak. He met her eyes briefly and then looked away again, returning to his dead stare.

"Hey, you're giving that monster way too much credit," she said, pulling out the tube of adhesive and breaking the seal. "If he looked anything like you the only mobs he'd have to worry about would be smitten girls. I'm personally having a hard time controlling myself, and I have excellent taste in men."

He didn't reply and she worked in relative silence, closing the wound and wiping away the last traces of blood. "There, looks like it didn't even happen. Come on, let's get you out of the room. I'm not sure I managed to clear all the glass out."

"If I hurt myself again just have David cut it off. I'm sure he has a prototype somewhere he can use instead."

Malik's brow furrowed and she felt a deep unsettling in her chest. Adam had never talked like that, not even when he'd first woken up and found out what had happened. "Adam, I know you didn't choose to be augmented, but what David did he did to protect you. To help you heal. The damage was too extensive, he had no choice," she said carefully, reaching out to take his hand.

He glanced down at their fingers, but he did not return the clasp. He slipped his hand away. "He could have let me die."

The quiet sentence barely had a moment to sink in before Adam was getting himself up and moving into the bedroom.

"Adam," Malik scrambled up after him and grabbed his arm, turning him around to face her. He looked at her, but not before shielding his eyes with his HUD glasses. The black glass gave emphasis to his locked jaw and tense stance.

Her voice was wavering with suppressed anger and grief when she spoke. "Don't you ever say something like that again." She was staring up into his expressionless eyes, gripping his forearm harder than she would have ever dared to grip flesh. She knew he could feel it. "Do you hear me Adam Jensen? I was one of the ones who found you after that attack. I saw how they tore you to shreds and seconds after realizing I lost one of my best friends to those monsters I thought I would have to watch you bleed out too. I held you until help arrived, begging you to hold on, feeling your blood soak into my flight suit. I didn't sleep until there was news, and when I found out you pulled through surgery I cried so hard I passed out from relief."

Her touch eased some and she slipped her hand up to cup his jaw. She blinked back tears and swallowed, stroking her thumb along his temple. "I know you lost Megan. I know you lost your arms. But I have never been prouder to work for Sarif than I have been for these past three months because they gave me one of my best friends back. Now you might not see it like that right now, you might not see it like that ever, but don't stand there and tell me you wish you were dead when your survival is the only good thing that's happened in the hell those terrorists left behind."

He swallowed and she traced the flesh just underneath his left lens gently, tapping lightly on the base of the implant. "Come on Adam, don't shut me out."

For a while nothing happened and they stood there like that, each looking at the other. After a long moment he finally retracted the glass with a quiet whirr and the gaze she finally saw was so broken all words evaporated from her mind.

"Oh spy boy," she whispered, stroking his temple and then wiping away a tear that slipped down his cheekbone. She pulled him into a sudden hug, her head resting against the mix of metal and bone making up his shoulder, her arms pulled tight around him. She felt him bend his head towards her shoulder, but he didn't hug her back. He just went partially limp in her embrace. She was so close to him she could hear quiet crying as he brought up one hesitant hand and twisted his fingers in her sweatshirt. His heart was pounding against her chest and she turned her head to kiss the side of his neck, pressing her nose into the tendons pulled taught with grief. "It's going to be okay, Jensen. Not yet, but some day," she said quietly.

She lost track of time as she held him, but presently, when his sobbing had softened into quiet, exhausted breathing, she pulled away, running her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes with the contact and swayed a little, and all Malik could think was that she had a new measure for exhaustion. Never again could she claim fatigue compared with what she saw settling over his entire frame.

"Come on, let's get you to bed," she coaxed, turning him towards the mattress. The cargo pants he was wearing were more like glorified sweatpants so she didn't worry about trying to help him change. Her only goal was to get him properly on the mattress.

Letting go of him, she knelt down and peeled the sheets back. He stared down at the bed and didn't move, so she slipped her sweatshirt over her head, tossed it on the dresser where he'd thrown his shirt, and climbed into the bed, kneeling on the far side of it and reaching a hand out to him. She clasped his fingers and tugged, encouraging him to kneel down and then lay down next to her. When he was settled she worked the covers up to his waist, and was somewhat heartened when he grasped the edge of the quilt and drew it up over his own stomach.

He lay on his back, the arm near her mostly hidden beneath the covers, the other resting on his stomach like it weighed more than he could handle. He stared at the ceiling and just breathed, and Malik scooted closer to him, her chest pressed against his shoulder, her arm resting across his collarbones. "Let me know if I'm hurting you," she whispered, running her fingers through his hair with a steady ease. He blinked and she took it as acknowledgement.

It took a while, but eventually his eyes slipped closed and still she kept tracing her fingers through his hair, sometimes stroking along the back of his jaw, sometimes smoothing out tension lines around his eyes. At one point David tried to comm her, but she silenced it, sending back a brief email that Adam was asleep and she was going to stay with him. David didn't reply but she knew her text had put his mind at ease. For at least two hours she stayed awake watching him, hoping and praying that he would be able to sleep the night through without sudden pain or the poison of nightmares to wake him up. When she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore she rest her head on his chest and curled her arm around his stomach, careful to mind the major areas still healing. She fell asleep listening to his heartbeat.

Malik's internal clock as a pilot was obnoxiously strict and so, despite the late night, she woke up fully alert at five thirty a.m. She sighed, cursing her strict schedule because she was warm and it smelled nice and she would love to go back to sleep but her body wasn't going to let her. She blinked a few times before remembering everything that had happened, and she looked up to realize that most of the warmth and the comforting pressure around her was from Adam.

Subconsciously he'd wrapped his arms around her in the middle of the night, and the padded weight of the heated prosthesis was way more comfortable than she would have expected. It didn't have the same supple give as relaxed muscle, but it was darn close. Shifting carefully she tried to slip out of his grasp, but his brow furrowed and his hold tightened, almost painfully. She bit back a cry of surprise and tried to turn without disturbing him, running her knuckles along his forearm until the fingers twitched open and his hold gentled. That time she was able to slip away and she got up silently, tucking the covers around him before going briefly into the bathroom to sweep up the last of the glass and splash some water on her face.

When she was finished she checked on him one more time and then went into the apartment, the first rays of sunlight starting to creep over the skyline. It was an even more beautiful view than the night expanse had been. Rifling through his kitchen she realized that no-one had thought to get him groceries.

She went back into his room and retrieved her keys out of her sweatshirt and then slipped out into the hall. She ran down the stairs to save time and grabbed supplies from her apartment. Arms full, she sprinted back up the stairs and let herself back into his apartment, locking the door behind her. Dumping things on the counter, she turned the built in radio to a low frequency and started shifting boxes so she had room to maneuver.

Almost a half-hour later Adam came groggily into the room, blinking in the morning light, rubbing his eyes in such a natural, easy gesture that Malik was convinced his nerves over his prosthesis were completely psychological. He already had excellent control over them when he wasn't overthinking it.

"Malik?" he said, voice raspier than usual. He blinked, staring at her through the open wall between kitchen and living room. "Are you cooking?"

"Sure am, hope you still like pancakes. You don't have much for a dining table so I figured we'd use your work table by the window, if that's all right. I don't have syrup but I do have strawberry topping and milk."

He blinked again, as though he was having a genuinely difficult time processing.

"Oh come on spy boy, you didn't think all I ate was Chinese, did you?"

"No I—I just thought you'd left. I wasn't expecting to wake up and smell pancakes." He climbed the steps, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. "Do you want help?"

She flipped her spatula around, nodding to the box half-open from the night before. "I've got the cooking covered but you could get us dishes and pour the milk if you like."

He went to the box and retrieved forks, cups, and plates, returning to the living room to set them up at the table, nudging boxes aside with his foot as he went. When she pointed him towards the milk he hesitated, his fingers working nervously. Eventually he reached for the plastic jug and took it to the table.

They ate together watching the sun rise. Rather, Adam watched the sun, and Faridah watched Adam. He didn't look so pale as he had the night before and his posture was easy, elbows on the table, spine curved with a gentle relaxation. The light caught in his eyes flared out the green specks that had always been there and Malik thought for a painful moment how green their kids eyes would have been if Adam and Megan had stayed together. He handled his fork exceptional care, but he ate three platefuls, which Malik counted as a personal victory.

At least for the moment, sitting with him in the dawn of his first day out of the clinic, her words to him the night before felt more certain. Things weren't all right yet, but eventually they would be.