Shutdown (Glitch)

throughout the long night.
    I looked down at Adrien. Even in sleep he looked different than the old Adrien had. As if his features weren’t quite relaxed. Was he having a bad dream? The scars across his head gave him a slightly menacing look. Maybe he was only here because he’d seen himself present in the vision of the cave, so he was staying in order to fulfill it? But he’d had that vision after coming back for me.
    I suddenly felt inordinately tired again. I had a feeling the boy on the ground in front of me was a mystery I might never truly figure out.
    My clothes felt crunchy, having dried on my body after the storm. I tried running my fingers through my hair to rebraid it, but it was dirty with clumps of mud from dropping into the ditch yesterday. I picked out the dried mud for half an hour before I gave up and sat back against one of the mounded cave formations on the ground.
    No matter what Adrien said, I wasn’t going to stay here forever. I wasn’t going to just wait around safe and sound while my brother was still caught in the Chancellor’s snare. I should have gotten him out of the Community before she moved him to her personal estate.
    At the same time, I wasn’t foolish enough to leave yet in case Adrien was right about the second vision still possibly coming true. I’d just have to trust that his first instinct about his new visions happening simultaneously had been right. I’d give it two weeks at the most to make sure we averted the second vision.
    Adrien finally woke up a few hours later. He glanced in my direction, but didn’t say anything. After the hours of quiet throughout the night, though, I’d had enough silence. I went over and plunked myself beside him while he reached for half of a protein bar for breakfast.
    “So if we’re going to be stuck here, we might as well talk to help the hours pass.”
    He looked over the water bottle at me, as if suspicious of how nice I was being after our fight. “Talk about what?”
    I shrugged. “Anything.”
    He just stared at me.
    “How’d you sleep?” I finally prodded.
    “Fine.”
    “Now you ask me something.”
    He raised an eyebrow and gave me a half smirk. “Trying to teach me to converse like a normal human?”
    I rolled my eyes. “I’m only trying to fill the silence. It’ll help the time pass quicker.”
    “I didn’t notice the time was passing slowly.”
    “You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?”
    The smirk was in full force now. “It’s my style.”
    I laughed and sat back with my elbows on my knees. “Okay, I’ll try another tactic. How about a hypothetical? What would you do if the war was over and you could do anything?”
    His jaw tightened. “You know I have his memories. He played this little game with you before.”
    “I know,” I said softly. “That’s why I’m asking. I know what his answer was. But now I want to know yours .”
    “Oh.” His face softened lightly in surprise. “Well, um. You go first. You never did tell him yours.”
    I looked out the cave entrance at the bright midmorning sunlight sparkling on the lake. “I’ve thought about it sometimes since then. I’d want a really big house.”
    “Really?” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t figure you for the materialistic sort.”
    “If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that I’d want a big house where all my family and closest friends would live. Markan would be there with me.” I swallowed hard at the mention of my brother’s name, then went on. “Kind of like the Foundation, but everyone would be there because they wanted to be. They’d all go out to their separate jobs every day, but we’d all meet together for dinner every night. There’d be this huge table and we’d all sit together with mounds of good food and talk and laugh for hours every night.”
    “And what about the rest of the day?” he asked. His voice had lost its mocking tone. “What would you do?”
    I smiled and closed my eyes, imagining it. “I’d buy a hundred canvases and fill each one. There would be academies just for artists, and I’d go and learn to paint all day.
    “So what about you?” I opened my eyes. “What would you do?”
    His voice was hesitant at first. “I’d be a mathematician. But we’d be doing the kind of math that leaves numbers behind. That happens when you get deep enough into studying it. It’s more about theories than facts. Actually, it starts becoming a little like