(LIMITLESS) CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: COMPLETION

When Taylor woke again, the blinds cut the evening light into thin orange stripes across the floor, making everything feel quieter than it really was. For the first time since she’d been brought to the PRT’s in-house hospital, there was no one else there. Even the steady beeping of the telemetry monitors that had kept her company before was gone.

And that was okay.

She didn’t mind Armsmaster’s presence; he was… comforting, in his own brusque way. Reliable, too. And Dean had been a good friend, even if she could sense how hard he was trying to sound casual for her sake, as though pretending things were normal would make them so. But right now, silence was what she needed more than company.

She needed to think, because something had changed.

A lot had happened—too much, really, and in such a short time—and now that the fog of painkillers had finally lifted, even before she opened her eyes fully, she knew her body wasn’t the same. It was as though something fundamental in her had been replaced, or made so much better. She felt awake in a way that was almost unnatural.

Taylor sat up, pushing the blanket aside, and froze at how effortlessly she did it. She didn’t know how long she’d been here, but it should have been long enough for her muscles to ache, for her body to feel heavy and uncooperative. Instead, there was a lightness to her body that made her pause. It was subtle, but unmistakable. She could feel everything, from her balance, to the distribution of weight in her muscles, and even the shift of air brushing her skin. 

She had always seen the world differently ever since the locker. Back then, she had thought it was her trigger event, an awakening of some parahuman sense that granted her the extrasensory perception she’d come to call her power. The Six Eyes, her mind supplied now. A name that finally fit what it truly was: an innate gift that granted the bearer the ability to master Limitless. 

But this… this was new.

Before, her body had always felt like it was lagging behind her awareness. Her perception moved faster than she could act, like she was watching the world in slow motion while she herself was trapped in real time. But now, for the first time, her mind and her body were synchronized.

It was disorienting in a way that almost felt euphoric.

Was this how Gojo felt every day?

Taylor swung her legs off the bed, her bare feet touching the cool tiles. The temperature registered instantly—cool, but not cold—and her body adjusted without so much as a shiver. She tested her weight as she stood slowly, but even that cautious movement carried a kind of effortless grace that hadn’t been there before.

It was frightening, though not like her powers had been when they first manifested. This wasn’t alien. It was… her. Though, admittedly, deeply strange.

She took a step, then another, drawn more by curiosity than vanity, and stopped in front of the bathroom door. What else about her had changed? When she flicked the light on, the reflection that met her in the mirror made her breath catch.

The girl staring back wasn’t a stranger, but she wasn’t the Taylor Hebert she remembered, either.

Her face was the same, more or less, but the exhaustion that had once clung to her features had disappeared. Her skin held color again, the pallor of stress replaced with something undeniably healthier. The shadows under her eyes were gone, and though said eyes still shone a clear, crystalline blue that caught the light, they didn’t look out of place anymore.

Because her hair was white now.

And she didn't mean silver, or pale blonde. She meant pure white, the color of salt and snow and Alabaster’s skin, and unmistakably, Gojo’s own. 

Taylor reached up, taking a lock between her fingers. It felt different too: softer, smoother, and impossibly clean for someone who had spent the past few months fighting, running, and bleeding when she wasn't sleeping or eating. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d used shampoo.

She watched her reflection breathe with her, as if testing whether the person in the mirror would do the same.

The last time she’d really looked at herself had been back at that motel, after she’d broken into her own home to steal clothes. She’d cut her hair short then, uncaring for how it looked, because they were remnants of a girl who had spent too long clinging to a life that wasn’t hers anymore. It had been an act of defiance, of grief, and ultimately, her way of letting go. The life she’d lived before had ended the moment she survived what should have killed her.

It had been dramatic, she could admit that now. But it felt right. 

And somehow, this did too.

Gojo’s words returned to her, clear as if he were standing beside her: “…you are going to do it with everything I left behind.”

She had thought he just meant power, to fight like he did, but maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe he’d meant completion. The final alignment of what had always been there, waiting for the rest of her to catch up.

Her fingers trailed down her temple, along her cheek, before she let her hand fall. She studied the reflection that stared back. There was strength there, yes, but there was also calm. A balance she sorely needed.

She wasn’t the girl who’d been locked in the dark, nor the one who’d stumbled through alleys half-starved and desperate. She wasn’t even the fledgling hero who had stared down Stormtiger and pretended she wasn’t afraid.

She was all of them at once. And for the first time, it didn’t feel like a contradiction.

She exhaled again, slowly this time, fogging the mirror slightly. Outside, somewhere beyond the vicinity, the city was slowly healing from Bakuda’s bombs. People were shouting, living, grieving, surviving.

There would always be more battles, and more villains to face. There always was. But for now, Taylor Hebert allowed herself to breathe.

She turned from the mirror, her reflection shrinking as she moved further away, and thought with quiet certainty, not arrogance or fear:

 So this is what it means to be the strongest.

Maybe Gojo had been wrong to entrust her with so much. Maybe she wasn’t ready. But the truth was simple: she was tired of watching people die despite having the power to stop it.

The exhaustion she felt wasn’t a sign of surrender. It was a show of resolve.

If strength had been given to her—no, left to her—then she would use it, not to rule or to dominate those weaker than her, but to protect them. To try, at least, to make something better from the ruins left behind.

It was time to stop surviving and start shaping the world she wanted to live in. Time to take what she had become and turn it toward something greater.

And maybe, if she tried hard enough, she could bring about something this city hadn’t seen in a long time: hope, and the peace that came with it.