Chapter 22 – To Cherish, To Hold #3
We passed the levels of the common areas, the track and training ring, the pool.
At the bottom level, Araxis took a keycard from a pocket at his waist and pressed it to a panel set into the back corner.
There was a soft chime. A door that had been nearly invisible opened, revealing a more utilitarian stairwell beyond, all metal grating and cold, sterile railings lit by too-bright lights.
He looked at me then, holding the door open and gesturing toward the stairs that went somewhere. I might have hesitated or at least asked a question or two, but his eyes had softened, just a bit, and he looked… I don't know, wistful, maybe? Sad?
A couple weeks ago, I had been incredibly confident in my ability to read his stoic features. In some ways, I had been in command of his reactions: I knew how to make him blush, or fall quiet, or gasp, or go soft and pliant.
Now, I felt like I barely knew him at all.
I guess that feeling was closer to the truth, in the end.
How arrogant, to assume that I could have ever known him when we were on the ship.
I didn't understand his culture or his identity, and I sure as hell didn't understand what it meant to be the head of Creche Thiel.
I didn't know what it meant to be sinnenthi.
I didn't know anything, but I had believed that I did.
I had felt that I knew him on some deep, instinctive, truthful level – like we were two souls tethered in our own way.
I likened us earlier to comets locked in a decaying orbit together and that's what it felt like.
Of course, now I see that he was never a comet; I was the comet and he was the supernova that pulled me closer, and I wanted to spin around him forever, drawn closer and closer until I burned myself out with want and affection.
I was locked into orbit around him, and where he beckoned, I would follow.
It didn't matter how mad I was; our connection was gravitational, inevitable, and I wouldn't want to escape it anyway.
I couldn't dream of wanting to be cut loose, tracking through the vast emptiness of space again, not when I had come to understand what it meant to be bathed in his light.
So I slipped past him, stepping into the unseen depths of the building and following him as we continued our descent down.
We travelled down to a final level, the stairwell ending abruptly in a broad white hallway. White tiles, white walls, buzzing white lights overhead. I glanced down the hallway to either side and each direction seemed to branch off into a series of other corridors. "Where are we?" I asked.
"These corridors connect all of the buildings in the complex," Araxis said, brushing past me and heading to the left.
I had a moment of wondering, distantly, if we were allowed to be down here.
Silver Sea had stressed at great length and in great detail the number of things I could do that would result in disqualification.
Leaving the village without permission was among them – but she'd scheduled this…
appointment, and Araxis had a keycard, so it had to be fine.
Besides, I trusted him. Even if he looked at me differently. Even if he thought I was a liability. Whatever he had in mind, I knew he'd take care of me.
Adelaithe had, in her own way, said I was stupid to trust Araxis so entirely.
But when you've had a lifetime of having to take care of yourself, of being the only one who has your own back, you just get tired of it. And maybe I wanted to believe that there was still kindness and nobility in the universe, that what was waiting for me wasn’t just heartbreak and ruin.
I wanted very much to not be let down, not by Araxis, not more than I already had been by having hopes and dreams that outpaced the material realities of my life.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
But then, despite everything else, I knew who Araxis was, and even if I was uncertain about what had happened since the fight with Grigor, I knew with every cell of my body that Araxis would care for me.
So I continued to follow him, peering down long, perfectly empty hallways as we passed. Many were dark when we approached the corner, lighting up as soon as we crossed the junction.
It was eerily quiet down here, the weight of the complex above making the air feel too still, too heavy.
"This way," said Araxis quietly, turning a corner and leading us toward a curve in the distance.
His footfalls were quiet on the tiles, while my boots made loud thuds as I walked, echoing in this strange, empty maze of hallways.
As we drew near, the curve peeled back to reveal a hidden bank of windows that looked out over a tapestry of rich green.
I nearly missed a step in shock. The green before us was made from the tops of trees. Hundreds of them.
Of course I'd known, distantly, that the complex was above the jungle below, but I felt as if I was deep underground.
I felt, I'd thought, the weight of the earth around me.
The curving bank of windows looked out over the deep shadows of the forest, colours winking in the distance as some sort of animal darted from frond to frond.
My head spun, dizzy for a moment. Outside, dots of water speckling the curved expanse of glass.
I drifted toward the bank of windows, hand touching the pristine glass.
"It wasn't raining earlier," I said quietly, tracing one of the drops of water as it trickled down the glass, gaining weight and momentum as it went.
I'd never been in the rain. I'd heard it before, back at the re-education camp on the colony – but we didn't go outside. It wouldn’t have been safe, even if I’d been allowed.
Clearly, I'd missed out. It was beautiful.
"They have robust environmental controls. It never rains on this moon, but the conglomerate wished to have a forest – so they have arranged the weather accordingly. It rains below, out of sight." I glanced at Araxis, who was standing near a gray door set into the curved interior wall, waiting.
"It's nice down here," I said. "I'd love to get into the forest. I've always wanted to see a tree in real life.
That probably sounds stupid or – Well. Whatever, it's true.
When I caught the flight here from the waystation above Thenat-2, they had this massive biosphere and I was tempted to stay for a little longer so I could visit.
Walk between the trees. Smell the foliage.
Who knows, though, maybe I'm deathly allergic to alien pollen.
That would track with the rest of my life. "
Araxis was quiet, his features very still, although his crest rustled and rippled softly behind him.
Finally, he looked past me and out the glass to the forest beyond.
When I looked as well, I could see the heavy leaves of massive trees nodding in the gentle rain.
I wished that I could stand out in it, smell the rain on the soil, feel it on my skin, hear it tip-tip-tipping down the leaves and pattering against the leaf litter below.
"I did not grow up on a ship." Araxis's voice was soft, barely more than a breath.
I let his tone wash over me as I stared at the beads of rain, the emerald green foliage, the gray and brown of trunks like lines in a painting.
"When Creche Thiel regains our status, we will reclaim our estate on Thelessia.
It is in the mountains, and so it is not like this, but…
the forests there are still and quiet and often thick with snow.
It is the place I think of when everything else seems too much. "
Not too long ago, I would have imagined that was an invitation, an offer for me to join him there at his ancestral home. Now, I knew he was sharing what he wanted to share with the aim of continuing to impress the abayan audience.
The noble prince in exile, who yearns for serenity and to return his creche to glory.
The fact that I wanted to go with him didn't amount to anything.
I turned, reluctant, and he tapped on his wristband, lifting it to a gray display panel in the wall. A soft chime sounded, and then the door slid open, leading to a short hallway that ended with a familiar door.
I glanced at him as I went past. "Is this yours?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, closing the hall door behind us and then tapping at his wristband to open the shuttle, the familiar space like a beacon of sanity in this particular hell. He gestured and I went in, the doors shutting firmly behind us with a soft hiss.
At once, a tension I hadn't quite recognized drained from Araxis's body, his shoulders slumping as he pressed one hand, hard, to his face, covering his eyes. "Sashen –" he started, his voice hoarse, raw.
"Wait," I said, sharp. His hand dropped away, his eyes gleaming and wet as he stared at me. I tapped my ears, then tapped our wristbands and gestured at the shuttle around us. We were being listened to. This wasn't an oasis for us, not entirely.
His face fell. Araxis's arms folded tight across his chest and he turned, walking to the pilot's chair. One hand shot out to hold the top of the seat, his grip tightening, fingers digging into the fabric.
But I'd come prepared. I folded away the page I'd scribbled back in my own room, trying to put my thoughts in order, and instead pulled a pen and handful of papers from my pocket, smoothing one hastily on my thigh.
As he stood there, his head tilted down and his shoulders tight while he looked pointedly away, I scribbled some lines of text.
Come sit with me, I wrote. And then, emotion tight in my chest as I looked at Araxis's unmoving form, I added, I miss you.
It was such a small shuttle: just the two seats at the front and the bench at the back, only a few paces of distance between them. But it felt like an impassable gulf then. I clenched the note in my hand; he'd stood like this back in his rooms, when he'd touched me and then told me I was weak.
And I was. I knew that now.