She feels like she’s been dreaming out of order. She sees blurred images and blood and dark skies, but she doesn’t know what comes first or why. She feels something itching her skin like fingernails or hipbones scratching warnings into her flesh. There are dim-lit places with bright lights shouldering their way through and a heavy weight that urges her along as if time is running out.  She wakes with her hands shaking, in physical pain, and goes about her day with a sickening anxiousness like she knows something’s going to happen. She feels burdened down, soaked to over brimming. Full. Her projections have become harder to sustain. The slightest startle sends them cracking and shifting.

It’s only when she’s with him - that other - that she feels like herself. Which is disturbing, to say the least. She figures it’s only a matter of distraction. That her mind simply can’t focus on whatever’s wrong inside her as long as she has to keep a careful eye on him, on all his movements, from a twitch of his hand to the downward curve of his smirk. She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for, really.

She only understands the universe in glimpses, it seems. Maybe not even that much, considering how much time’s spent in a cocoon of the artificial.

She understands more than he does, though. She’s sure of it.

Laurant had waylaid her on the way to one of their meetings, catching her by the arm and asking brusquely, “Where are you going?”

Towards the sunrise. It was on the tip of her tongue but she swallowed the words and shrugged out of his grasp.

 “He’s going to kill you, you know,” he told her, cruelly.

But obviously he’s wrong. It’s been months and the other has never laid a hand on her. Never even brought a weapon with him. He stands stiffly across from her, bandying words with a strange indulgence, as if he means to stretch out their encounters to avoid … something. She doesn’t know what. She wants to ask, sometimes, but she realizes that she can’t.

She also wants to ask him if he remembers her. If he remembers the water and the death and the cold air against wet skin. The smell of wet foliage and cold dew collecting in the air. Wants to ask him if he remembers the sky aflame with stars. But, no, he doesn’t remember that part because there were no stars, not for him. That was all her. The only reality for them, for the both of them, was the water and the air and the large spread of his hands around her back, carrying her to safety.

Why?

Another question crouching in wait. Another thought piling up beneath her feet, all the uncertainties of the world she has tried to cast aside.

Sometimes he looks at her as if….as if.

She wonders what happened to her hate. When her rescuer had been faceless, the irritation, the shame, had been so easy. Now, though.

Now.

Now, she’s sitting in Basile’s room, waiting.

With her bare eyes, she sees the room as it is. Gray. Full of stone. Padded at the corners with dust and grime. The jars are cloudy with old film. The chair beneath her is cold, but it’s always cold even when her mind paints it into dark wood and silk covered cushions. She focuses on the jars until the dirt and plants disappear. A pinprick of light in each. Then a haloed glow. Soon each jar houses a blinking star.

She taps a rhythm out against the armrests and watches the stars flicker in time.

When Basile walks in, she pulls her hands into her lap as if caught at something, and rearranges the projection into the usual one. It’s silly, she knows. He can’t see her mind.

“How are we this fine morning, Ilena?”

She laces her fingers together as he settles himself into the chair across. “Just fine, councilor.”

“Ready for another informative debrief?” he asks, voice teasing. “Oh, I know I am.”

She gives him what she hopes is her most disarmingly rueful smiles. “I’ll have something for you one of these days.”

“Mmmhmmm.” He shuffles a few papers. She knows she could just get up and leave. She knows, in fact, that she doesn’t really need to show up at all. These debriefs have been going on for months and they always end the same. What have you found out, Ilena? Not much, sir, but I’ll have something soon. 

Another rueful smile. A glance up at the shimmering constellations chalked in the ceiling above her.

“What about the samples? Have we found anything out there?” she asks, eyes still trained upwards.

Basile doesn’t answer until she lowers her gaze back to his face. He stares at her for an interminable moment, his expression so curious that Lee rethinks her assumption about his inability to read her mind. But then he shrugs.

“As far as we can tell, everything is normal - normal in our terms, that is. Her white blood cells behave much like ours do. No extraordinary healing ability. The skin samples do show her age, though. Fourteen. She doesn’t look fourteen, does she?”

She thinks of those big, still eyes. Her small hands.

“No, she doesn’t.”

A pause.

Basile changes the subject, his voice cautious but firm. “Laurant thinks we should call the whole thing off.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “I know what Laurent thinks.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. He thinks I’m incapable, delusional, and worthless.”

Basile smiles. “I’m not entirely sure that’s accurate.”

“Really? So what does Laurant think?”

Basile’s smile fades. “I think he looks at you and sees a young girl who’s stressed. Not eating. Completely withdrawn.”

“Well. I’ve had a bit on my mind.”

He leans back in his chair, eyes pensive. “Maybe we should call this off. You aren’t gaining much. And I think that the fact that you think you should be is putting too much weight on you, Lee.” He pauses. “We aren’t expecting you to save all of us.”

She isn’t expecting to either, to be honest. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting anymore. She thinks of the mission in different terms now. She still thinks about tactical advantages and scientific discoveries, but that’s all second thought to whether or not the other remembers her from long ago. Second thought to how to repay him.

She’s considered just telling him the truth. Saying we’ve met before, years ago, on this very shore. You carried me away from battle. Away from death. I would not be here with you now if you had not saved me then. She knows he would not appreciate it, though. She can’t say thank you – simple and direct and honest – without exposing his weakness.

She doesn’t know what he needs, what he wants, so there’s no way to know what to offer him. 

To Basile she says, “There is no harm in continuing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. He has made no move to harm me. He only wants his little girl fixed.”

Basile laughs. “Oh, I’m sure he does. But that is not all he wants.” She feels a blush rising, but Basile continues on down a different path, “He – they – want us all dead. That’s how envy works, Ilena. They want what we have. I sometimes wonder what they would think if they were suddenly given what they wanted. I think they’d be disappointed.”

Do you? she wants to ask. Do you really? Because I think they’d be astounded.

And that’s when she knows what to give him.

Her heart sinks with the thought, but the reality of it settles in her bones like a memory, something that can’t be undone.

If Basile notices her distraction, he doesn’t mention it.  

“In any case,” he continues, “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t meet with him. If it were anyone else, I may be more hesitant, but with you, well, I trust you to take care of yourself.”

She’s about to say thank you, but instead she asks, “Why?”

“You’re part of a tough breed. Your father and your brother were too. But it’s particularly strong with you.”

“Are you saying I’m special somehow?”

He laughs, “I’m simply saying you’re strong, Ilena. That’s all. I’ve always know it. You don’t even get sick. That’s special, I suppose.”

She’s slightly insulted that he thinks she can’t see through his lie. Not for the first time, she’s certain he’s keeping something from her.

“I thought you were worried about my health?”

“Not your physical health.”

She scoffs before she can stop herself. Silence. She’s waiting for reproof, but the councilor merely taps a tortuous rhythm against the desk and stares at her.

“I’ll keep you apprised of anything else I come across,” she says, rising from the seat. He doesn’t stop her from leaving. She casts one last glance up at the flaking ceiling as she goes.

 Not your physical health

Her brother got sick much more than she did. His illnesses were never very serious, but when he would crawl into bed and burrow under the cover as if he would never come out, she would set up vigil next to him. She’d sit with her heels knocking against the leg of the chair. Sometimes she just stared at him, willing him to get better. Other times – most of the time – she’d draw him pictures of things she wanted him to see. Looking back, she realized she wanted to give him a piece of her reality just in case. Just in case this was the one that got him. Just in case this sickness took him away from her forever.

She couldn’t draw though. She tried recreating the things they read in the book – horses, stars, faeries and imps, flowers and firebreathing dragons– but they never looked the way she wanted. When her brother saw them, he’d shrug at her. Don’t worry, I can make it looked better he’d tell her and she would have to bite down the surge of anger she felt because he didn’t understand. She didn’t want him to make them look better. She wanted them to share it, together, as it was. She didn’t want to look into his eyes and not see what he saw.  She would grow so frustrated and curl the pages up, twisting them, and shrug back. Don’t worry. Doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t sickness that got him in the end, anyway. It was a bullet to the side of his head.

She didn’t see him at all on the day he died. The day he finally died. She always thought of it as finally because she’d always been expecting it. When she was told he was gone, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, gently toeing off her boot. Basile knocked on her door and entered.  Told her, gently and cautiously, and she just sat there, one foot bare, until he turned and left. She didn’t cry. Didn’t even feel angry. She simply curled up on her bunk, one boot still laced up, and thought finally.

She isn’t heartless, she tells herself. She had loved her brother more than anything. But she’s smart enough to prepare herself for the inevitable. She would have accepted her own death with the same stillness because she is trained for it, fortified against it, primed for it. And if she wakes at times in the middle of the night to the painful reality of her dark room with the salt of tears tightening her gums, she brushes it off and goes back to sleep.

She decides to go down to the lab even though she isn’t sure why. Lackme’s the only doctor there, bent over a concrete table and tinkering with some tubes. All the slabs that serve as beds are empty. She knows what she wants to ask, and she knows what the answer will be, but there’s no turning back. When Lackme looks up at her, he glares.

Still not over her sticky fingers, apparently.

She forces a polite smile. In her mind, she searches for some projection to cover over all the cold and gray corners of the room. Marble or wood won’t do it.

She pulls up briar bushes and roses. Lackme’s bent over a table of thorns and thistles. Rose petals are scattered over the grass. The vision’s heavy and tiring, but she holds onto it viciously.

“I thought you had a prisoner down here?” she asks.

“We did.” He doesn’t even look up from his work, intent on letting her know he doesn’t much like her. She honestly doesn’t really care.

“What happened?”

“I was doing some spinal work on him, and he died.”

“Work?”

“We were looking at his spinal nerves to see…well, I don’t know what, exactly, but in any case the subject died.”

“You were looking while he was alive?”

“Of course.”

She runs a hand over the leaves sprouting from the table. The stone’s cold and hard beneath her hands. She reminds herself not to touch. It always ruins the illusion.

“Did you already bring the body out to be burned?”

“Yes. You just missed it.”

Missed it? What a strange thing to say, she thinks.

“You couldn’t learn anything post-mortem?”

“Not as far as we could tell.”

She nods, scanning the table for any sign of Ada’s samples. Any sign that what he’s working on had anything to do with her mission. She doesn’t want to ask, for some reason.

She must have been silent for too long, or perhaps he simply feels the need to get in an insult before she forgets that he’s still unhappy with her because he glances up and gives her a condescending glare. “You’d think with all that damage done out there, we would have been able to collect more than one specimen.”

She tries not to focus on the word specimen. She also tries not to focus on the smell of blood or the feel of Lamb’s soaked jacket sticking against her hand or the feel of heat against her back. Bites back her annoyance and nods with as much false conviviality as she can manage. Wonders instead why she never sees him – the other one - in battle. Thinks she should ask him why he stays out of the fighting now, especially considering how many decorations he has on him.

Is it Ada?

What would it mean to ask him?

She feels an undeniable wave of relief, for whatever reason, that he stays out of harm’s way. She isn’t sure what she would do if she met him in battle.

She turns to leave without saying goodbye. She stops at the door, though, and looks back at Lackme hunched over a table covered in rose petals and twined in thorns, the blue sky fluttering and shimmering above his head, and suddenly feels so very, very alone.

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