Chapter 10 #4
"If I'd had the integrity to be honest with you, you would not feel the need to keep me at a distance. If I had not ruined, through my cowardice, what we had –"
I didn't want to hear this. I couldn't hear this.
My chest was tight, my whole body aching, and I didn't know how to separate what my body was feeling from what my heart was.
They were one and the same. I hadn't realized before all of this that heartache could be literal, that it was possible for someone to hurt you so deeply that you felt it in your bones, in your tissue, in your blood; that it became a memory that lived in every cell of your body, a bruise that wouldn't fade.
"I can't talk about this now," I murmured, my head still resting against his shoulder, although I could feel the muscles of my neck start to tighten. I could probably sit up straight if I tried.
Araxis was looking out the window, his face turned away from me, but I could still feel him nod sharply, just once. "I understand," he said, strained. "And you may never wish to. I know this, Sashen."
And although he fell to silence after that, and I was silent too, for some reason I felt the slow trickle of tears over my cheeks, slipping one by one from my eyes and falling onto my battered hands below.
But there wasn't anything else to say then, in the shuttle from the guard station in Radiant Ward to our creche, so I let them fall in silence, unremarked on, and I didn't move to brush them away.
* * *
The first thing I did when we got back to the creche, after Araxis forced some painkillers and a glass of water into me, was go to our closet to change.
Araxis followed, apparently unwilling or unable to be anywhere that wasn't by my side.
I didn't bother looking at myself in the mirror – honestly, it was probably better not to know – but Araxis hissed when I peeled out of my sweater and down to my tank top, which was still spattered with my own blood from the earlier training session.
"Where –" he started.
I waved a hand, woozy. "Not from the alley. It's nothing."
Araxis was silent, watching me carefully as I hauled off the shirt and started inspecting the bruises that had turned my torso into a mottled canvas of blue and purple.
I heard his tight subvocal and glanced up, risking a shrug, which didn't hurt as badly as I'd feared.
"This is more or less what I looked like when they hauled me off the sands.
Well, the elbow's worse, but the throat's better," I admitted, trying for a smile that felt as fake as it was.
"I gave as good as I got this time though. Better. I –"
I had killed someone. I'd killed someone, beaten them to death with my own fucking hands.
I staggered a little, and Araxis was at my side in an instant. "Sit," he murmured, nudging me backwards as I nearly collapsed on to the little bench in the closet. "Just rest here for a moment, beloved. Let me get you cleaned up."
He strode out of the closet. I could hear him rattling around in the hygiene room, running water.
I thought about digging out something to change into, shivering in the chilly air in just my underwear – god, I wanted something comfortable and soft against my skin; but there was no way I deserved it; I didn't deserve anything soft, I didn't, I didn't – but Araxis was back before I could leverage myself up.
He looked at me trembling, and slung the damp cloth he'd brought back over one shoulder.
Before I could really understand what was happening, he had slipped a soft shirt on over my head, threading my arms – carefully, so carefully – through the sleeves.
"Sweater or jacket?" he murmured, stroking my hair as I leaned into his touch.
"Jacket," I mumbled, and then he folded me into one of his, which still smelled dizzyingly like his skin.
Or maybe I was just dizzy. I couldn't tell.
Once he'd pulled a butter-soft pair of lounge pants up over my hips, looping the waist tie carefully, he tilted my face upwards as he stood above me and started brushing the soft cloth over the planes of my face with infinite tenderness.
I saw, as he pulled the pale cloth away, that it was covered in green and yellow blood.
My eyelids fluttered, my eyes hot and prickly. "Am I in a lot of fucking trouble?" I asked, breathy, as if I'd just been running; a headache throbbed behind my eyes, which ached and burned. "Like, I mean, am I being charged with –"
I couldn't say murder. I couldn't. But that was what I'd done, wasn't it? I'd killed someone. I had, with my bare hands.
Araxis's eyes shimmered as he looked down at me, his thumb moving across the shape of my cheekbone.
He shook his head, his stare not moving from me, not for a second.
"You were attacked. You were fighting for your life.
There is no crime here, not on Sozamia Station. You did what you needed to do, Sashen."
I didn't know about that. My stare slid past Araxis and to our dark bedroom beyond. "Okay," I breathed. "But – But how – Who –"
"We do not know yet," said Araxis. "But I will find out. I will be certain that I find out." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my temple, and I trembled against him, at the feel of his mouth against my skin, the care with which he touched me.
"And you said – You said Elethenn is here?"
Araxis leaned back, slowly and carefully, but when I looked up, something sharp, maybe wounded, had reshaped his expression.
He smoothed it away with some difficulty.
"He is in the dining room. I thought we could sit down with tea while we wait for the physician to arrive.
Rodil, as you suggested. I've sent an inter-ward transport shuttle; the clearances have already come through, so they should be here soon.
You could wait here, Sashen, if you like. I can speak to Elethenn."
He was so good at taking care of things. Efficient and competent.
"No, I can come. I want to talk to him too." How had he been there? How did he know how to fight? He sold dumplings. I used to work in security, he'd told me. Maybe that was how. But I still didn't know why.
Araxis watched me, his stare shimmering. I could see him chewing on the inside of his lip, working it between his sharp teeth. He was going to hurt himself if he wasn't careful. He swallowed once, hesitated, and then squared his shoulders. "Elethenn is – important to you," he said carefully.
My body was throbbing, my head tight, like it was still beneath that paledrian's relentless grip, squeezed tighter and tighter.
I squinted against the bright lights overhead, and Araxis took a half-step back, dimming them without me asking.
"He maybe saved my life," I said, shaky. "And he's a friend, I guess?"
Araxis's chin jerked down a little. "Hm. As I am your – friend."
There, in the dim light of our closet, while my body was still shaking with the aftershocks of violence and pain, I stared up at Araxis, all pale skin and dark eyes, black clothes and soft hands, and I shook my head.
"You're not just my friend. I don't want you to just be my friend.
I want – All I could think when I realized what was happening, Araxis –" This time, the tears surged readily to my eyes, hot and wet and painful, "All I could think about was that I should have called you right away.
I was supposed to be getting stronger but I didn't, I wasn't, and I didn't want to die when everything between us is like this –"
He crossed the space again, folding me gently against his chest, cradling me as a ragged, broken sound left my aching throat. I fisted my violent hands in his clothes, and he kissed the top of my head and said a thousand soft things that were meant to hold me when I was most broken.
I didn't cry for long – I didn't have it in me, too exhausted and spent, each and every muscle protesting every single sob and hitched breath – and Araxis carefully helped me up, saying gently that we should go and see Elethenn now, who had been waiting for some time.
"Yeah," I said, wincing as we made our way from our bedroom toward the kitchen, step by treacherous step.
"He's probably a nervous wreck. He's always a nervous wreck. "
Next to me, Araxis made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort. "Yes," he said evenly, "I suspect that is the case."
When I shuffled into the dining room, Elethenn was waiting, although he wasn't seated at the table. Instead, he was hovering by the counter, a tray before him as he stared emptily at the teapot.
When we stepped into the room, he startled – badly – and then ducked his head, looking pointedly at the ground, hands clasped before him, saying nothing. I thought I could hear a hushed conversation somewhere in the series of rooms that was our creche.
Araxis also said nothing, although he stepped in close to my side and helped me as I sat down on the low cushion with a stifled groan.
He adjusted the location of another cushion, settling in so close to me that his body felt like a line of heat at my side.
Considering that he was colder than me, I knew it was probably in my head – but it felt real all the same.
"Bring the tea, Elethenn," Araxis said, tone flat, and Elethenn did – lifting the tray and setting it down on the table with a bit of a rattle.
He stepped back, then, hands still clasped in front of him, head still bowed.
"Sit," Araxis said. Imperative sentences, I thought fuzzily, as Elethenn swiftly sat down on the side opposite us, still unable to look up.
We sat in prickly silence as Araxis poured tea into three delicate cups I hadn't seen before.
Araxis handed one to me, then placed one in front of Elethenn, his head still bowed.
One of Araxis's hands moved to my knee, his thumb brushing against my skin repeatedly, unthinking.
Was it meant to soothe me, or was it meant to soothe him?