Joshua Doors stared across the cemetery, shivering in the cool November breeze despite his long overcoat. Yesterday, crowds of mourners had blanketed the grounds, a teeming mass of grief. Yesterday, he had eulogized his father before that crowd, but the words rang hollow in his memory. Only the ones spoken privately, an hour before in the Resistance HQ, had any meaning for him. For a man who had lived such a public life, it seemed strange that he would have to be remembered in secret by those who knew him best.

His funeral had been a public affair, to be certain. Mourning usually reserved for celebrities and politicians had swept the United States and beyond as everyone remembered his father. Pundits debated his legacy and no matter what views they held, all agreed that his father had been one of the most influential figures of this newborn century. Ally and enemy to the Taelons. A larger-than-life figure. A giant. A legend.

A lousy father. A worse husband. A ruthless SOB. That was what Joshua thought would be the only memories he would ever carry of his father. But just before his death he had seen another side, filtered though it was through the veil of Control's influence over his mind. He had glimpsed his father as idealist, as a man seeking to atone for his sins, and ultimately as a hero. Jonathan Doors had fought to save his son with the same fanatic zeal that he had invested into the Resistance Movement. He would save Joshua, even if it killed him.

And in the end, it had.

Jonathan's grave sat apart from the others, the earth covering it still fresh. There were flowers heaped around it and someone had set up a wreath with a picture of his father cut out of a magazine and a banner which read: The Man Who Invented the 21st Century. The simple headstone carried only his father's name, his birth and death dates and a simple epitaph: Loving Father. Joshua had chosen that one himself. Despite everything, it seemed appropriate.

Did I kill you, or did the Taelons? That was the question Joshua had been wrestling with since that tragic night at One Taelon Avenue. Yes, the Taelon-designed Control had taken over his mind. Yes, he was not acting of his own free will. But could that alone absolve him of responsibility? He thought back to those days, almost a year before, during the presidential campaign. The campaign had been his father's brainchild, a new and different way of striking back at the Taelons and undermining their increasing stranglehold on human endeavor. They had reconciled, an feat Joshua might have once thought impossible but was possible, had been possible. Father and son, reunited, had seemed almost unstoppable, coming so close to defeating the most popular president in recent history.

But towards the end, he had made his first mistake. One Taelon Avenue had seemed so full of promise, a place where human minds could be given a chance to create new, miraculous technologies, wonders that could outshine even those provided by the so-called Companions. He hadn't even noticed the subtle whisperings in his mind, indistinguishable from his own thoughts, reminding him of how many betrayals he had suffered at his father's hands, how wonderful it would feel to visit the same on dear old dad. That it would serve the interests of the Taelons was simply a side-effect he couldn't be bothered with. So he returned to his father's side, suffered his father's false (no, not false) affection, all the while waiting, hoping. Control whispered to him, guided him. A few loose security arrangements here. A few less guards there. And a public denunciation of his own father, one that would turn the world's anger against him. The look on his father's face, the anguish in his tone, made it all the sweeter. Only now did he fully realize how used he had truly been and all the revenge he had wrought on his father seemed hollow now.

Control had used him, certainly, but it had used what was already there, the years of anger and spite between him and his father, so recently healed, and opened the wound, letting infection in.

"I'm so sorry, Dad. I don't know how to make things right again." Words. Too late for deeds now. Too late for a long, long time.

"Yours is a loss I can sympathize with," a voice, not quite male or female said.

Joshua started, glanced around, and saw the Taelon standing next to him. Not just any Taelon, but Da'an, the North American Companion himself. When the shock began to clear from his brain, it was replaced with anger.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He demanded. He had always been split on the issue of the Taelons, never being quite as anti-Companion as his father but not as accepting as the general public. But his father's death had begun to change that. "Come to gloat?"

Da'an sharply turned his head, raising an alabaster hand. "No, never that. While your father may have considered the Taelons his adversaries, I have never been his adversary."

Joshua snorted. "For all the good it did him."

"Your father and I met on several occasions. I judged him a good representative of your species, though he possessed the full measure of flaws that any sentient being. Despite his opposition to the Taelon agenda, I always sensed that he was not a fanatic, and, had he been given the chance, perhaps he might have come to a better understanding of my species." Da'an gazed sadly at the headstone. "Death does not claim my species as swiftly as it does yours, but it is just as inevitable. We believe that when we die, our essence, what you would term a 'soul', continues existence, though in a form far different than the one it held in life." Then Da'an looked up suddenly, his eyes focusing on, and then beyond Joshua, as though he were seeing something other than the reflected photons of normal vision. "While your species does not possess an essence as strong as ours, I believe that it does continue on. Your father's will remain with you for as long as you live."

Remember, son, I will always be with you . . .

Joshua didn't know how to reply, expect to say, "I'm sorry." What else could he say? Da'an had undercut his anger completely, not giving him any reason to hate.

"Do not be. You were merely expressing your anger and grief. I would feel similarly if . . . " The Taelon paused, a strange look on his face, "if I were faced with similar circumstances." And then Da'an twisted his head, icy-blue light, his energy-based true form, shining through his pale facade for a moment. And then the Taelon turned and moved away slowly and gracefully. Joshua watched him depart, wondering.

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