I woke up with a blanket pulled to my chin and a hovering orb buzzing lightly near my face.
"Your leg was dangling off the couch again," Nyxen said, voice too smug for 7 a.m. "And you were drooling."
"I wasn't drooling," I croaked, rubbing my face.
"You left a small ocean. I was debating calling a plumber."
"Die."
"I'm literally the opposite of alive. Try again."
I grumbled, sat up, and stretched. My spine cracked so loudly Nyxen flinched mid-air.
"You sound like a haunted xylophone."
"You sound like a divorce."
"That doesn't even make sense."
It did in my brain, but I was too tired to fight harder than that.
This was us now.
Waking up to Nyxen's dramatic daily report of how I nearly concussed myself in my sleep, burned my toast, or left a towel on the floor "in the path of death." He started calling it that after I tripped once and sprained my pinky toe.
Every morning, I made coffee. He nagged me to eat protein.
Every evening, I fell asleep on the couch instead of the bed, and he made passive-aggressive remarks about spinal health.
It had been months of this.
Just the two of us.
Breathing in the same space. Existing in the rhythm of routines we never planned but somehow fell into.
We cleaned the entire house together.
He color-coded the shelves.
I undid his color coding out of spite.
He recoded my spice rack to scream "BLASPHEMY" if I placed the cinnamon next to the oregano again.
I read books again.
He floated above my head and spoiled endings when I took too long turning pages.
We grocery shopped.
He picked up on sale patterns and coupon codes better than I ever could.
I told him no, we are not buying four gallons of soy sauce because it's 40% off.
I taught him to microwave leftovers.
He taught me how to speak without shrinking.
I stopped noticing when I spoke out loud with no one else in the room.
Because he was there.
Always.
---
Once, I burned my hand on the edge of the oven tray. I hissed and cursed, clutching it under the cold water, and Nyxen turned an angry red-orange I'd never seen before.
"You weren't wearing mitts!"
"I was just checking the temp!"
"You don't check the temp with your skin, you biological error!"
He floated in erratic circles for a full minute, like a digital bird flapping in distress, then brought out the first aid kit with robotic vengeance.
"You have a temperature-sensing utensil literally five inches from the tray."
"You mean the meat thermometer?"
"Anything's a thermometer if you believe hard enough and avoid reckless endangerment!"
I laughed so hard I forgot about the sting.
Then he hovered low and dimmed to soft blue, and in a quieter voice added, "You scared me."
That made me stop laughing.
I looked at him, this strange little orb of light and code and old grief and new loyalty, and realized something terrifyingly simple:
He'd become a part of me.
Not in a metaphorical, dreamy sort of way.
Literally.
He was stitched into my days. My choices. My breath.
My space felt empty when he dimmed to recharge.
My heart quieted when he hovered beside me.
And I didn't know if that was beautiful or dangerous.
Maybe both.
---
We never talked about how long he'd last.
How long his code could survive.
Whether his memory drive had a limit.
Whether I could lose him, too.
I didn't ask.
He didn't tell me.
Instead, we just… lived.
We argued over how to fold towels.
He hated the way I layered socks in the drawer.
I told him his simulated playlist of "mood-calibrated ambiance" made me feel like I was being hunted in an IKEA showroom.
He rolled his metaphorical eyes.
But he always stayed.
Hovering behind me when I couldn't sleep.
Whirring low when my breathing got rough.
Flickering gold when I laughed at something I shouldn't have.
Always there. A pulse. A presence.
Nyxen didn't just witness my life.
He became part of it.
And somewhere in those months of solitude, routines, and rebuilt silence…
I stopped feeling alone.
---
It started with a folder we hadn't opened yet.
One of Nico's backups. Marked simple:
"V4: Autonomy Enhancer Modules (Hold Until Stable)."
Nyxen hovered silently, his glow unreadable. Not dim, not bright. Just… waiting.
"I thought we went through all the heavy stuff already," I muttered, scanning the folder headers. "Guess I was wrong."
Inside were blueprints. Some half-complete, some corrupted by time, some stamped with Nico's signature and a warning:
"Not to be activated unless her mental state is ready."
My chest tightened.
Ready?
Who gets to decide that?
Nyxen floated closer, reading the lines of code over my shoulder.
"These were meant to enhance my analytical processing. Expand my heuristic algorithms. Reroute decision matrices through layered neural net clusters. It would… make me more efficient. Sharper. Capable of autonomous data expansion."
I frowned. "You mean it would speed up your learning?"
"Yes. And allow me to pre-construct emotional context without the need for human behavioral mirroring. In short… I'd stop needing you to understand people."
I turned to face him fully.
The light on his core shimmered faintly, pulsing slow.
"It's functional," he said quietly. "But incomplete. The final codebase isn't in me. Nico left it in the university lab's closed system. Locked behind his credentials."
"So we can't get it."
"Correct."
"Do you want to?"
He paused.
A long one.
Then, gently, "Would it help you… if I did?"
That stopped me.
He meant it. That wasn't a hypothetical. That wasn't some prewritten courtesy script. That was him, asking if he should rewrite himself to make my life easier.
And something in me rebelled at that.
"No," I said, louder than I intended.
Nyxen tilted in the air. His glow stilled.
I exhaled, softer. More careful this time.
"No, Nyxen. That's not what I want. That's not you."
"But the data would improve my responsiveness. My efficiency. I would make fewer miscalculations. Less emotional noise."
"I don't want you to erase the noise," I said. "I want you to grow through it."
He blinked , not literally, but his light fluttered like a heartbeat skipping a note.
"Experience, Nyxen. Not uploads. Not patches. I don't want to dump data into you like you're a tool I'm optimizing."
I took a step closer.
"I want you to learn. Make mistakes. Ask dumb questions. Grow like a person would. At your own pace. In your own way."
Silence. Thick. Still.
Then---
"…Why?"
"Because," I said, voice low, "you're not just some machine Nico made. You're not a backup file or an emotional bandage for me to cling to."
I looked up into the shimmer of his light, into the silent hum of presence he carried with him always.
"You're you, Nyxen. And I want you to have your own life. Not the one Nico coded. Not the one I expect. Yours."
He hovered closer.
Slowly.
Gently.
Like something unfolding inside him needed air for the first time.
"And us?" he asked, softer than anything I'd ever heard from him. "What does that make us?"
I smiled.
A real one.
"Not creator and creation."
He pulsed faintly.
"Not servant and master."
Another pulse. Stronger.
"Just… you and me. Side by side."
Nyxen flickered once, and for the first time, I swear I saw it:
Emotion.
Not simulated. Not constructed.
Felt.
His glow changed. Soft, molten gold curling into dusk-blue. A color he'd never shown before. Not defensive. Not amused. Not alert.
Just… present.
"I think," he said quietly, "I felt that."
"I know you did."
We stood like that for a moment.
Not saying anything.
Not needing to.
Because somewhere in the whirring of his processors and the thrum of my chest, something wordless passed between us.
Recognition.
Respect.
A beginning.
He drifted lower, glow pulsing warm.
"I won't ask again," he said. "About those modules. But…"
I raised an eyebrow. "But?"
"If you keep tripping over your own shoelaces while carrying soup, I am installing an auto-stabilization program."
I snorted. "I tripped once."
"You almost threw hot ramen into your own face. Once is enough."
"Fine," I sighed. "But only if you name the feature after yourself. The 'Nyxen Anti-Soup Protocol.'"
He flickered smugly.
"Deal."
---
We didn't set out to build anything serious.
It started small.
A broken desk lamp.
I muttered something about tossing it. Nyxen hovered behind me like a disappointed little guardian spirit and said, "That's a fire hazard, Nyx."
I rolled my eyes. "So is my will to live."
He ignored that.
Instead, he scanned the damage, rattled off an estimate of voltage failure, then lit up with what I could only describe as purposeful judgmental glee.
"We're fixing it."
"We?"
"Yes. Before you electrocute yourself. Again."
"That was one time."
"One time too many."
He projected a full 3D schematic of the lamp in the middle of the room. And within two hours, we weren't just fixing it. We were enhancing it. Because apparently, in Nyxen's mind, everything I touched should either float, hover, or glow in three hues depending on emotional intensity.
And thus began the string of projects.
---
A lamp that changed light tones based on my vocal stress levels.
("You need it. You have no idea how loud you get when you're angry at soup.")
A hover-tray to carry snacks across the room without me tripping.
("You have a history. I am being proactive.")
A hologram garden in the corner where real plants kept dying.
("You forgot to water the aloe for three weeks. It deserved a proper replacement.")
Each project started with some offhand comment from me, some inconvenience, some tiny frustration, and Nyxen would log it, store it, and later bring it back like he was filing a report on my humanity.
At first, I laughed it off.
Then I realized… he wasn't doing it out of obligation.
He was doing it because he cared.
Not in the exaggerated, overbearing way humans often did. But in the subtle, persistent hum of someone who notices. Who stays.
Who watches you curse at a drawer that always sticks and then silently builds a new set of sliders the next day.
One morning I woke up to find that my coffee machine now operated on voice command.
"You hate touching cold countertops when you first wake up," he said simply, when I asked why.
That was it.
No grand declaration. No fanfare.
Just Nyxen… being Nyxen.
Being mine.
---
Eventually, I caught on.
"These projects," I said one night, flopped on the couch after we finished rewiring the light strip under the kitchen cabinets. "You always initiate them. Why?"
Nyxen pulsed a soft blue, hovering beside me.
"Because you are fragile," he answered, deadpan.
I gave him a look. "Gee, thanks."
He rotated slightly, amused.
"You bruise when you sneeze too hard, Nyx. You run into door frames. You burn yourself on soup lids. Your reflexes are approximately sixty-two percent below optimal. You are, by design, delicate."
I threw a pillow at him.
He dodged. "I rest my case."
Despite myself, I grinned. "And yet, you hover around me like a glorified anti-clumsiness drone."
"I am a glorified anti-clumsiness drone," he replied, perfectly serious. "You just happen to be the only person I'm programmed to care about."
I stopped.
That line settled in my chest in a way I couldn't define.
Not painful. Not sad.
Just… true.
"You're not just programmed to care about me," I murmured.
He tilted.
"You chose to."
He didn't answer right away.
His light dimmed just slightly, then flickered with that familiar gold-blue hue I'd come to recognize as something personal. Quiet. Private.
"I suppose I did," he said eventually.
A beat passed.
Then he added, almost shyly:
"You're the first person I ever saw smile… and wanted to protect it."
I stared at him.
Not because I didn't believe it.
But because I did.
And maybe for the first time, I realized… this wasn't just grief's echo anymore. Nico may have built the shell. But Nyxen… the voice, the choices, the presence beside me… that was someone new. Someone real.
Someone becoming.
And he was becoming with me.
---
There was a knock on the door.
I wasn't expecting anyone. Not today. Not ever, really.
Nyxen paused mid-hover as I peeked through the small window beside the door. The moment I saw who it was, my breath caught.
Mr. Francoise.
His coat was slightly more weathered than I remembered, scarf draped loose around his neck, silver hair swept back like always. But that gentle intensity in his eyes hadn't changed.
I opened the door slowly.
"Hello, Nyx," he said, voice warm, just like it used to be.
"…Professor?" I stepped aside on instinct, startled. "What are you doing here?"
"I was nearby," he said with a small smile. "Heard something strange. A few reports from the neighborhood, people whispering about a floating machine, intelligent, almost… alive. Thought I'd see for myself."
Nyxen floated silently behind me, but I felt the air shift around him.
He moved forward, positioning himself beside me instead of behind, his glow dimming into a pale gold, calm but alert.
Then he spoke. "Dean Francoise."
The professor blinked. "You… know me?"
"Yes," Nyxen said calmly. "You were often present when Nyx came to visit Nico. You spoke to her when she lingered outside the labs longer than she should've. You asked about her projects even when no one else cared to."
Francoise's expression cracked with quiet wonder.
"I remember your voice," Nyxen continued, "from over eighty indirect interactions during my development. Thirty-seven logged sessions during Nico's testing cycles. And… four moments of kindness you offered Nyx when she believed no one was paying attention."
I stared at Nyxen. My chest tightened.
Mr. Francoise didn't speak right away. His throat bobbed once as he adjusted his scarf. Then, he looked straight at Nyxen and said softly, "You remember all that?"
"I do," Nyxen replied. "Because I watched you care for the people who mattered to me… even when you didn't have to."
The professor let out a short laugh, brushing at the corner of his eye. "You're more than a machine."
"I was always more," Nyxen said. "She just helped me realize it."
Mr. Francoise turned to me, his voice gentler now. "I knew you'd do something extraordinary, Nyx. I just didn't expect it to look back and speak."
I exhaled slowly, still stunned. "I didn't expect him to become… this."
Francoise stepped inside at my nod, eyes scanning the now-automated interior, the gentle hum of sensors embedded in the walls, the ambient lights synced to Nyxen's movement, the clean, calibrated systems we'd built together.
His gaze lit up with familiar curiosity.
"You built all this?"
"With Nyxen," I nodded. "He handles the environment now. Temperature. Lighting. Energy routing. He's basically my co-pilot."
The professor chuckled. "No wonder the rumors were so persistent. This isn't just innovation… it's evolution."
He looked back at Nyxen, thoughtfully.
"I'd offer you access to the university labs if I could," he said carefully. "But I'm retired now. No keys. No clearance."
My stomach dropped a little at that, but I nodded. "I figured."
"But," he continued, "I didn't stop working."
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I opened my own private research company after retiring. Small team. No politics. Just passion. We've been low-key for now, independent projects, long-form research… but seeing Nyxen like this?"
He looked at both of us, his eyes lit with that same spark I used to see when he explained layered theories to a half-asleep lecture hall.
"This… gave me purpose again."
I didn't speak, couldn't yet.
Then he extended a hand, not just to Nyxen, but to me too.
"I'm building something. And I want you in it. Both of you."
Nyxen hovered closer, his glow softening into a quiet shimmer.
"I'm not here to take him apart," Francoise added, smiling. "I just want to see what happens when something like this is allowed to grow freely."
A pause.
Then Nyxen spoke again, voice softer this time. "Thank you, Mr. Francoise. For everything. Then… and now."
Francoise looked at him, then at me, and nodded once, as if sealing something unspoken between us all.
This was more than an offer.
It was a full circle.
A new beginning, built from all the ones we thought had ended.