ORIGIN

The process of getting Juggernaut back to Ursa was long and painful. Mostly for him. Finally, with the help of many lessers, he was hauled back to home base. Mother's love was his anesthetic, and his mind swam in it for hours afterward as he sat within the nest.

His eyes followed the movements of cleaners lazily as they made their way through the caves, always occupied with the many little tasks maintenance required.

He'd never been wounded like this before. His own body forced him into stasis, exhausted beyond belief. He wondered if even Mother could override that instinct - and then realised she already had. He was, at the end of the day, an extension of her. He was absent of the selfish drive of outsiders.

He only felt this need to rest and recover because she wanted it for him. He could not serve her vision effectively in this state. He felt no guilt over it, because she knew the truth and it was her gift to Juggernaut that he knew it too.

Still, his leg hurt, and bad. The pain itself was a kind of call to the network for assistance - he didn't want to demand anything from his family, not consciously.

He felt Siren before he saw her, which was a feat considering the extent of his vision. He recalled the agony that tore through his head when he... Well, when he failed. He had done that a couple times now.

He couldn't feel any resentment or malice from or inside her, nothing but that itch to fix what had been broken, scattered, disorganised. But there are some things that only Mother knew. And there were some, more distant things, that she did not.

She addressed the matter at hand directly. Who was Juggernaut to deny a sibling the opportunity to repair symmetry? "I would like it." He mumbled.

It presented the stump of its leg. The cut was incredibly clean, its pereopod severed at the last and largest section. All debris it had collected in the journey from Eridanus to Ursa had been removed since. "The only injury."

"I won." he added.

Juggernaut stiffened, joints clicking into stasis as he allowed Siren to repair the damage. he recalled the times Mother had forced it to still. The force of her command was almost painful, the structure of his body no longer his own. It was a needed reminder he was made to serve her will first, and his second. He found it comforting.

The sensation of his limb growing back was even stranger. The reborn tissue itched and ached terribly, but Juggernaut kept still.

It moved only once the sensation had left it fully, tapping the limb gently against the ice, as if it wasn't sure if it was real. It then rose, carefully, feeling its wings press up against the walls of the chamber. The leg did not give - a success.

His body glowed with pride in his sibling, sending his thank you through the network with a surge of affection and gratitude.

The true answer to that question was no, not really. Juggernaut had his leg back. Life was good again. Life was right.

But it'd been a while since it got the opportunity to talk to this particular sibling. It would be a shame to dismiss her so quickly. Perhaps a conversation was in order?

A brief one. He was exhausted.

His energy shifted from gratitude to a gentle caution, stretching across the connection. Query. "What do you... remember, of Leo?" If that wasn't too much to ask.

He switched to comfort again, reassuring his sister. "No." Not recently, at least. He'd been thinking back further than that, to the battle they shared. The wounds were older. Juggernaut hoped they were healing.

They'd both been young and inexperienced, and it'd cost them gravely. But Siren had truly fallen that day, one of the handful that'd been sent to chrysalis by enemy forces. Juggernaut's first taste of death. Not the true kind, though. Not yet.

But even that momentary absence had shaken him deeply. He'd realised he could lose more than just himself, and he'd tried to wish that away.

He'd failed. We know this already.

They'd lost more than just Leo that day. Juggernaut felt the itch of violence from Siren, and it strengthened its affirmations. She would find vengeance, in the spilling of blood and oil. Oddly, the thought sickened it.

"Nothing, specific... Just what you saw. Felt." He had been unable to connect at this level in the battle, and he felt he'd neglected her by not asking.