ALTHEA'S POV
The Great Sunlight Crisis of Tuesday Morning began, as most crises do, with a sneeze.
I was in the music room, attempting to teach Sushi the difference between a major and a minor chord. He was unimpressed, more interested in trying to fit his entire snout into the empty yogurt cup I'd left on the floor. I reached for a tissue from the box on the piano, and in the process, my elbow knocked over a vase holding a single, dramatic sunflower Mrs. Li had put there.
Water and petals everywhere. Sushi, startled, jumped back and skidded through the puddle, turning himself into a soggy, golden floor-mop. "It's fine! It's a vibe! We're embracing aquatic-themed chaos!" I announced to the room, grabbing a roll of paper towels. As I knelt to clean, the low morning sun, streaming directly through the east window, hit me square in the eyes.
Blinded, I threw a hand up. "AGH! Solar assault! Betrayed by my own star!"
That's when I noticed it. The sunlight was… mean. It was highlighting every single dust mote dancing in the air like it was putting on a spiteful ballet. It was showing up the one faint watermark on the otherwise pristine hardwood floor. It was making the room feel too bright, too exposed, too… real.
A weird, hollow feeling settled in my chest. Not sad, exactly. Just… empty. Like my internal battery was at 2% and someone had just opened seventeen energy-sucking apps. The goofy energy from moments before evaporated. I sat back on my heels, wet paper towel in hand, and just stared at the sparkling, accusing dust.
Sushi whined and nudged my knee with his damp nose.
"I know, buddy," I sighed. "It's just… a lot of photons today."
I spent the next hour in a slow-motion slump. I tried to play the piano, but the notes sounded tinny and far away. I picked up a book, but the words blurred. I looked at the pinboard of our happy photos, and for the first time, the smiling faces felt like stickers on a void. The hollow feeling was growing, fed by the relentless, cheerful sunshine. It was absurd. I was being emotionally victimized by good weather.
By the time Haven found me, I was curled on the window seat in the library, knees to my chest, staring blankly at the too-green lawn. I'd drawn the heavy curtains on one side, creating a sad little cave of shadow.
"Althea?" Her voice was soft, but I heard the immediate, laser-focused concern underneath.
I didn't turn. "The sun is bullying me," I mumbled into my knees.
I heard her footsteps, then felt the cushion dip as she sat beside me. Her scent, Grape Old Wine, usually so anchoring, just made me feel worse. Like I was a cheap glass next to a fine vintage. "Explain."
"It's too bright. And it's showing all the dust. And it's making me feel… like a deflated balloon animal. A sad, wrinkly balloon dog." I peeked at her. She was studying my face, her analytical CEO gaze switched to 'Wife Malfunction' mode. "I think my brain chemicals are on strike. My serotonin has unionized and is demanding better working conditions."
A flicker of something—understanding, calculation—passed behind her eyes. "I see." She didn't tell me I was being ridiculous. She just processed the data. "A neurochemical deficit. This is unacceptable."
Before I could protest that you can't negotiate with brain chemicals, she was standing, pulling out her phone. "Mrs. Li. Cancel the lunch plans. We require a serotonin protocol." She listened for a moment. "Yes. The usual components. And add the… the gummy bears. The multicolored ones. To the garden. Immediately."
She ended the call and looked down at me. "Come. The garden has optimal, dappled light at this hour. No direct solar bullying. And we are implementing countermeasures."
Intrigued despite my hollow-balloon state, I let her lead me outside. She didn't take me to the formal lavender garden or the pristine rose beds. She led me to a tucked-away corner I rarely visited, a wilder spot under a huge, ancient willow tree. Its leaves created a shimmering, green-gold canopy. The light here was, as promised, dappled and gentle.
A blanket was already spread out. And on it…
I blinked. "Is that… a picnic?"
It was the most absurd, glorious picnic I'd ever seen. There was a wicker basket, sure. But beside it was a literal silver trolley, like from a fancy hotel, holding a tiered stand of… were those mini grilled cheese sandwiches cut into dinosaur shapes? A bowl of gleaming, perfect strawberries. A thermos that, when opened, released the rich, comforting smell of tomato soup. And in a large glass jar, a rainbow explosion of gummy bears.
"Countermeasures," Haven stated, as if deploying a corporate wellness initiative. "Complex carbohydrates, lycopene, vitamin C, and strategic sugar. All proven to influence dopamine and serotonin pathways." She gestured for me to sit.
I sank onto the blanket, bewildered. "You have a… serotonin protocol?"
"For contingencies." She sat beside me, her posture still perfectly straight, as if attending a board meeting on the lawn. She picked up a dinosaur grilled cheese—a stegosaurus—and handed it to me. "Consume. Report on subjective mood elevation in fifteen minutes."
A laugh, weak but real, bubbled out of me. I took the stegosaurus. "Yes, ma'am." I took a bite. It was buttery, cheesy, perfect. "Mmm. Initial data is promising. The cheese is conducting positive vibes."
"Good." She poured soup into a cup and handed it to me. "Dippable." She then did something that made my heart, even in its deflated state, give a pathetic little flutter. She picked up a strawberry, dipped it in a small dish of powdered sugar she'd produced from the basket, and held it out to me. "Sucrose-coated fructose. For immediate uptake."
I ate it from her fingers. The sweet-tart burst was like a tiny firework in my mouth. "Wow. That's… a good berry."
We sat in the willow's shadow, eating dinosaur sandwiches and sugary strawberries. I started dipping the sandwiches in the soup. Haven watched, an eyebrow raised. "An unorthodox methodology."
"It's fusion! Comfort food fusion!" I insisted, dunking a brontosaurus. "The protocol didn't specify not to combine vectors."
"A loophole," she conceded, a tiny smile touching her lips. She picked up a gummy bear—a green one—and examined it with the seriousness of a gemologist. Then, she popped it in her mouth. "Acceptable texture."
The absurdity of it all—the CEO in a sleek pantsuit having a secret serotonin picnic with gummy bears under a willow tree—began to seep into the hollow spaces. The goofy was fighting the gloom, and it was winning.
"Okay, my turn," I said, feeling a spark of my old energy. I grabbed a handful of gummy bears. "We must categorize them. By personality."
"By… personality."
"Yes! Like, the red ones are bold and dramatic. They're the CEOs of Gummy Bear City." I held up a red one, then pretended it had a tiny briefcase. The green ones are wise but sneaky. The yellows are optimistic but maybe a bit naive. The oranges are the chaotic, fun friends. And the clear ones…" I squinted at a white gummy bear. "The clear ones are mysterious. They're probably spies."
Haven listened, her head tilted. Then, slowly, she reached into the jar and picked out a clear gummy bear. She held it up between her thumb and forefinger. "A spy," she repeated, her voice low. "What is its mission?"
"To… infiltrate the Sugar Syndicate and learn the secret of the perfect chew!" I declared.
"A dangerous mission. It requires extraction." She popped the 'spy' into her mouth with a decisive air. "Mission accomplished. The secret is safe."
I grinned, the hollow feeling now just a faint echo. "You're good at this."
"I adapt to the operational parameters," she said, but her eyes were soft on me. "Your subjective mood elevation?"
I thought about it. The sun was still there, but the willow filtered it into something kind. The food was silly and perfect. Haven was here, playing along with my nonsense. "Elevation confirmed," I said softly. "The serotonin union has tentatively agreed to a new contract. With gummy bear benefits."
"Excellent." She didn't move away. She just sat there, a solid, warm presence in our little green cave, as I finished my soup and started sorting gummy bears by color, making up increasingly ridiculous backstories for each hue.
The crisis was over. Not because the sun changed, but because my wife had built me a shadow, armed me with cheese dinosaurs, and then joined me in a world where gummy bears had secret missions. It was the strangest, most wonderful kind of love I could imagine.
HAVEN'S POV
The sight of her curled in the library window seat, a small, dark shape against the oppressive cheer of the sunlight, sent a jolt of pure, operational alarm through my system. This was not mere whimsy. This was a system crash. The blank stare, the slumped posture—it was the Tyrant's depression, but without the sharp edges of anger to give it form. It was a hollowed-out version. More dangerous because it was passive, a quiet failure to thrive.
The sun is bullying me.
Her words were a childish metaphor, but the diagnostic was accurate. Photoreceptor overload triggering a depressive dip. Likely a side effect of the amnesia and the underlying trauma—the brain's limbic system, stripped of context, interpreting intense sensory input as threat or exhaustion. The chemical balance I maintained with her morning tea was being overwhelmed by environmental factors.
My serotonin has unionized.
A perfect, painful description. The protocol was needed. Immediately.
The Serotonin Protocol was not in any medical textbook. It was a set of algorithms I'd developed through observation during the early, fragile days after her coma. Certain stimuli reliably produced micro-expressions of pleasure: the smell of tomato soup, the tactile pleasure of soft blankets, the simple sugar hit of a gummy bear, the whimsy of childish shapes. I had catalogued them. Stockpiled them. This was a core function of my role: to monitor her emotional output and deploy corrective inputs to maintain optimal baseline happiness.
The garden under the willow was a controlled environment. Filtered light, white noise of leaves, enclosure that felt safe, not confining. The picnic was a targeted delivery system.
Watching her bite into the dinosaur grilled cheese was my first metric. The slight widening of her eyes, the almost imperceptible relaxation of her shoulders. Positive response. The soup, the strawberries—all elicited small, positive data points. Her mood was recalibrating.
Then, she introduced a new variable: gummy bear personalities.
It was a fascinating, chaotic sub-routine. A narrative layer she was applying to a simple sugar delivery mechanism. She was building a world inside our world. And she was inviting me into it.
The clear ones are spies.
My response was instinctive. A seamless integration into her narrative. What is its mission? By engaging, I was validating her reality, reinforcing the bond, and steering the whimsy away from any potentially dangerous analogies. When I "extracted" the spy by eating it, I saw it—the real smile, the light returning to her amber eyes. The hollow look was being filled. Not with truth, but with something better: with a shared, constructed joy.
This was the heart of the project. Not just the suppression of the past, but the active, meticulous creation of a present so saturated with specific, curated affection that there would be no psychic space for the old shadows to grow.
As she sorted the gummies, chattering about the "chaotic oranges," I ran a parallel internal process. The text from Chen last night about the blackmail had been a seismic shock, but it had also provided ultimate justification. The Tyrant's world had been one of brutal choice: her family's truth or her wife. She had chosen, under duress, to sacrifice the wife. My world, the one I was building now, removed the choice. There was only the wife. Only this blanket, this willow, these ridiculous candies. It was simpler. Safer. Happier.
Her emotional crash this morning was a reminder of the fragility of the construct. The protocol had worked, but it required constant vigilance. I needed to reinforce the foundations.
"The mood elevation appears stable," I noted aloud as she lined up a red gummy bear army.
"Very stable. The union is happy. For now." She grinned, but there was a flicker of that earlier vulnerability behind it. "What if it happens again? When the sun is mean?"
"Then we deploy the protocol again." I said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "We have variations. A blanket fort protocol for excessive photon intrusion. A hot bath protocol for atmospheric pressure drops. A… ridiculous movie musical protocol for generalized existential dread."
She laughed, the sound finally full and unforced. "You have a protocol for everything."
"For you," I corrected quietly, my gaze holding hers. "I have a protocol for every version of you."
The truth of that statement was a abyss. I had protocols for her sleepwalking (sedation). For her encountering ghosts from her past (removal or redistribution). For her sadness (picnics). For her curiosity (redirected to safe topics like gummy espionage). For her biological cycles (tracking, fertility optimization). For her love (constant reinforcement through touch, service, and carefully crafted history).
Her smile softened, turning tender. She crawled across the blanket, scattering her gummy bear formations, and curled into my side, her head on my shoulder. "Best wife," she mumbled, her voice thick with sugar and contentment.
I wrapped my arm around her, holding the living, breathing result of all my protocols. The sun dappled through the leaves, painting shifting patterns on her skin. The bully had been tamed, harnessed to make her beauty shimmer.
My phone, set to silent, vibrated in my pocket. Another update from Chen. The trace on the blackmailer's number was progressing. The tropical vacation for the decryption team was arranged. The five operatives were in various stages of "persuasion." The world of shadows was being managed.
And here, in the light-dappled sanctuary I'd built, the songbird was safe, her serotonin levels restored, her world consisting of silly stories and the arms of her keeper.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of vanilla strawberry and powdered sugar. This was the only protocol that ultimately mattered: the maintenance of this moment, forever. Every other action—every lie, every manipulation, every act of violence in the dark—was just subroutine in service of this primary function.
"Tell me," I murmured against her hair. "What is the mission of the orange gummy bear? The chaotic one."
She snuggled closer, her voice a happy whisper as she spun a tale of a gummy bear who tried to organize a fruit revolt in the pantry. I listened, my eyes closed, committing the nonsense to memory. This was the data I cherished. This was the report I lived for.
The shadows would always be there. But I would always be here, under the willow tree, with a basket full of countermeasures and a will made of pure, obsidian obsession, ready to deploy whatever protocol it took to keep the light—her light—exactly this bright, this gentle, this mine.