"It's really really useful. You can be my anchor."

"Yeah," and he knows Lev can't see how he's smiling but he hopes Lev can feel it, can hear it. "Yeah, I can." 

"It was my fault Asher blissed."

— ah. 

"How was it your fault?" His voice is very gentle. 

"I was his anchor. The first anchor." He strokes Sasha's hair. "Damage to your anima damages the relationships you made it from. I-- I got jealous and insecure. I was scared he was going to leave me for someone better. I was-- scared that everyone thought Eros was working well because of him, because he was handsome and charming and funny and people liked him, and I'm odd and kind of weird-looking and scared of people. I thought he was trying to take away credit from me. I yelled."

"So you fought," he says, very carefully, "that doesn't make it your fault he blissed, people fight, I don't know if I even think it's possible for two people to never fight about anything." 

"We figured out it was the damage to the anima that caused it," Lev says, "and he figured out-- if you build your anima strong enough, you don't sustain damage when the aliens attack. So he did, he had four intimacy five relationships, it was insane, and we were so happy, it was okay, I woke up in the morning next to him and didn't hate him, we had plans. And then three months later he blissed." Lev swallows. "Strong animas make you bliss."

Sasha doesn't even believe in fault he is so unqualified for this. 

But he's the one who's here, so. 

"That — sounds like he blissed because he didn't know that about animas. Not because of you." 

"I just keep thinking-- if I'd been better at anchoring, if I'd known how to talk through my feelings and not believe things just because I was thinking them, he'd be awake right now." Lev sighs. "Thank you. I haven't gotten to say this to anyone."

"Maybe he would be." Sasha reaches up to pet Lev's hair. "Or maybe he would have decided to make the strongest possible anima anyway, or maybe he would have died in a fight with the aliens, or maybe he would have blissed because of something else, just because you think it's your fault doesn't make that true." 

He makes a happy hissing noise. "I feel better getting to say it to somebody. I-- couldn't fall apart after he blissed. I wanted to. But if I'd shown anybody how fucked up I actually was they'd have been scared and Eros would have collapsed."

He thinks of Loki telling him that he wasn't there after Asher died, he has no idea how fucked up Lev was by it. He debates telling Lev that maybe they didn't know the entire extent but they had some idea. 

He doesn't do that. He nods and says "Yeah," and keeps petting Lev's hair. 

"Thank you."

He kisses Lev's shoulder. "Thank you." 

"I want to talk about something that's happy and not depressing and won't make either of us cry, but all of my good memories have Asher in them and I think most of yours have your crew or your family."

"Yeah. You're not wrong about that, even before the Bliss most of my friends were the people who became my crew. — I can talk about my crew, I just — don't want to talk about the end." 

"I'd like that." Hair-petting. "I can talk to you about, uh, war strategy? Or economics? But that's probably really boring."

He leans up into Lev's hands on his hair and makes a sound like a pleased cat. "That doesn't sound boring at all." 

He laughs. "My war strategy is very controversial."

"That's even less boring!" 

"I want to figure out how to talk to them."

"...that sounds... difficult at best." He doesn't say 'nigh impossible' but he's thinking it. "— but I've known about the existence of animas for about a month so you've probably come up with several hundred things I haven't. Has anything — not worked, we would be having a different conversation if they'd worked, has anything gotten interesting results?" 

"They do seem to understand that we only attack them around Eros, so if you set up the computer so you pop up in Dream Japan they usually won't attack the anima. The results are-- weird. We've tried showing them the Fibonacci sequence and they look at it very solemnly and then complete it by spontaneously generating a chicken."

"Huh. Is it always a chicken — if you go up to 21 does that get a different response than if you go up to 55 —" 

"It's not always a chicken-- there's not any obvious pattern but you look at it and it feels like there's almost a pattern and if you get more information you can crack it-- if you want to take a look at what we have you can talk to Chris."