"Yours always are." She hugged her arms. "Matteo and Ricci asked me, when Ricci started feeding heavily. They wanted their son to be safe, here."
Safe. A human woman had asked him once about what he'd wanted to be, when he grew up, and he had said he'd never had enough time wonder about that. But this was what he wanted. He wanted to be safe. Secure. Not having to worry about the meal or the next human or the next iteration. Because his designers and engineers and techs had built in autonomy but not freedom, and they had built in free will but not choice, and Amy could give him all these things and more. She could give him the space he needed – not the figurative bullshit "space" but real space, room to move around, room to climb and jump and dance if the notion took him. And she wasn't giving him that room because she pitied him, or because she was generous, or because she was obligated to. She wanted to build that home for him and his boys. She worked every minute of every day keep him safe, to shield him from the world that he'd left behind, and she did the same for all the vN who arrived on their shores.
A chill wind lifted their hair from their scalps. "Storm's coming," Javier said, rubbing his arms.
Amy's gaze remained pinned to the lights of the cities beyond. "I know."
"Your dad's worried."
"I know that, too."
"He told me what you were like when you were little. Says you're not so different, now."
Amy stood and began circling the little island. "I know I'm different, Javier. She made me different. Even though she's gone, and I know you don't believe that, but even though she's gone, she changed me, she made me see things, do things–"
"I've missed you," Javier said, before he could think. "God, I've missed you."
She paused in mid-step, one foot raised, and pivoted slowly to face him. "How could you miss me? I've been right here."
"I've never known you without her," he said. "And I've never known you without the island. I've never known you, Amy. Just you."
Amy knelt. She gave him the look, the one that went right through him, straight down to the molecular level, right to where all his priorities were written. "Do you want to?"
He nodded. "Oh yeah. Real bad."
Her lips did that funny thing that they did when she wasn't sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. "I thought you wanted…" She nodded over her shoulder. "You know: them. Humans."
He forced himself to look at the lights hovering in the middle distance. He thought of ports and cities and people, of laughter and coughing and off-key singing. He thought about the same thing, over and over, the same conversations, the same surrender. He thought about all of his boys sleeping in the same house, on real beds under a real roof in the shadow of trees so hard no saw could slice them.
"I'm tired of loving humans, Amy," he said. "I'm so fucking tired of loving them, because I know how it's going to end before it even starts, but I start it anyway because that's how I'm built."
Amy sat back on her knees. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but he could swear the tree shifted a little to give her more shadow and better hide her face. "You mean you've finally forgiven me?"
He leaned forward. "For what?"
"For letting Portia win."
Amy's eyes rose. When they blinked, the first tears he'd seen on her face in a long time rolled free of their lashes. He reached for them automatically, and his fingers threaded through her hair. He had been here, before: another night, another sandbox, watching her level cities before building new ones, the emotions (so human and so real they twisted him, even then) rendered perfectly on her face. Javier could do now what he wanted to do then. He pulled her to him and kissed her. She was new at it, uncertain at first, but she followed his lips when he rested against the tree and cuddled into him like she'd been doing it all her life. All her hunger came with her, and he smiled through the kiss as he remembered his fascination with her lips and her teeth, after that first bite that bonded them. He had taken a long time in making his choice. Then again, it was the first choice that was truly his to make.
"There's nothing to forgive," he said, when Amy paused to look at him.
The tears returned. Other vN had a crying jag that came as a plug-in, but Amy had all the little fits and starts and snags of an organic woman. He'd heard these tears outside Sarton's office. Then as now, he felt a deep and persistent motive to stop them. Strange, how she kept opening underutilized programming in him.
"You're not supposed to cry when I kiss you," he said. "I mean, unless I'm really fucking this up."
"You're not."
He set his chin on her head. "What were you working on, before?"