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.He also thought vaguely that maybe it would be a while before he could talk to C.J.again period.“C.J.,” Anderson muttered, looking up to the desk in his aesthetic little room at the mental care facility, and not, for the first time in two months, from the holodeck of the shuttle, where he felt like he’d never disembarked.“C.J., don’t give up on me.I’ve got… I’ve got a fucking chorus of idiots in my head, man.They won’t shut up, and I didn’t want to tell anyone they were there because then I’d really be crazy, and then you’d never want me.But I can’t lose you.You… you are the lover I never would have programmed.You are a person who’s so amazing, not even the things I imagined could have imagined you.I can’t lose you.I know you’re real.And I know that’s not a good enough reason for you to hang in there, but….” There was a banging at the door, and still, C.J.’s voice was the only one that Anderson could hear.“I won’t give up,” C.J.said softly.He had reached out and put his fingertips on his own vid screen, and Anderson pulled himself to his knees and leaned over the desk, doing the same.“You don’t give up, I won’t give up,” Anderson said, and rested his cheek against the cool veneer of the wooden desk.He felt strangely exhausted, like he hadn’t just gone round and round in his head but round and round in a mass melee in real life too.“You look….” C.J.swallowed—Anderson could even see it on the monitor, and he abruptly wanted to be there to touch C.J.so badly he couldn’t even stand to think about it or the idea would hurt his skin.“You look… you look sad, and angry, and tired,” he finished.“All of that?”“Yeah, it’s the best thing I’ve seen on your face in two months.”“Well, no offense, man, but I think it’s just as well you don’t get to see what I’m about to look like in therapy.”C.J.’s smile was crooked.“I think I just did.No worries.Have I mentioned I’m here for the long haul?”Anderson waited for the cacophony in his head to assure him that C.J.wasn’t the only one.It didn’t come.“I’m glad,” Anderson muttered.“You could be the only one.”Dr.Cherry came in then and looked through the monitor as he bent down to assist Anderson to a place where he could sit.“Hey, C.J.,” he said, his voice a study in forced cheerfulness.“Hey, Jensen.He going to be all right?”“Maybe,” Dr… Jensen said, his pleasant voice throaty.“Maybe.Anderson, can you say goodbye to C.J.for a bit? I think you and me, we got some actual truth-telling in our future, okay?”“Yeah,” Anderson mumbled, his face wet and sticky against the desk.“Yeah.C.J., I love you.I’ll see you later, okay?”“Guaran-damned-teed.Love you too.”Jensen very gently turned off the monitor and then wrapped his arms around Anderson’s shoulders and simply held him, very quietly, while Anderson went limp against him, as emotionally exhausted as he could remember without being sick or in denial or dizzy with his own creations dancing macabre in his brain space.Jensen’s arms were warm, and male, and neutral, but that was not what Anderson felt.He felt C.J., that last day, that final hug, his unspoken wish for the real Anderson in his arms, and not the blank, neutral, emotionless holo-dummy that he’d become.Maybe, just maybe, Anderson could be that person.It was that hope that let him close his eyes and sleep without sedation, and that hope that kept him from screaming when the dreams came.It was a start.Part 6: C.J.Chapter 19The Day I Met You“C.J., MAN, you look nervous.”C.J.swallowed and looked at Julio, feeling self-conscious.“I am nervous,” he admitted as they watched Hermes-Eight-Prime get nearer in the window of the planet-to-station shuttle.“It’s not like your first date.” Julio grinned, and C.J.looked at him seriously.“The hell it’s not,” he murmured, feeling it in his gut.Anderson’s breakthrough over the monitors had been the beginning, but only that.The rest had been long and hard, and a lot of C.J.’s free time on the station had been spent on the monitors with Anderson and with Jensen and even with Molly.It had been painful, but not as painful as the pale imitation of Anderson who had taken up residence in his body for the weeks after killing Alpha.C.J.hadn’t really seen it until after Cassie had come and ordered him to step away from the hologram repair and back into the real world, but she, and Jensen, and Molly, and their mother, who had more degrees than Cassie in psychology and neural function in space, all agreed that something was going on in Anderson’s head that he wasn’t talking about.They also agreed that the thing he wasn’t talking about was taking up most of his energy—energy that he should have been using confronting all of the other painful things he had to deal with but wasn’t.That night—that terrible night, when C.J
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