Kolveth #3
“I decided I would never open myself that way again. I would not give someone access to that part of me, and I would not enter that part of anyone else. I would not risk feeling those three days again.”
She spoke as though she were reciting an order.
I looked across the yard at Gaius.
“He reminds you of him?”
Varia shook her head. “In the way he moves.”
I rested my forearms on my knees.
“I came here with a similar decision already made. I had decided that wanting someone intensely was an unacceptable risk.” My ring caught the pale morning light.
“I knew what I wanted. I had developed a detailed specification. Then I categorized the entire thing as aspirational so I would never have to risk anything for it.”
“That sounds like you.”
“It was an extremely sophisticated avoidance system.”
“And Mytharo corrected it?”
“Mytharo removed my ability to stand at a safe distance from my own life.”
She listened with the full attention she gave to things that mattered.
“Everything here was too immediate. I had to act. I had to decide. I could not analyze events forever and call the analysis participation.”
I looked toward Gaius.
“You have spent years holding the wall. You do the work. That is honorable, but Yravel’s principle cannot apply only to war.”
Varia’s eyes narrowed slightly, though she did not interrupt.
“The flame burns completely,” I said. “That includes wanting things. It includes moving toward them. It includes choosing the full version of your life instead of the protected one.”
Her grip tightened on the flask.
“Loving your claimed man did not become a mistake because you lost him. The loss was terrible because the love was real. Refusing to love anyone again does not change what happened. It only gives the loss authority over everything that comes after it.”
She went very still. I chose the next words carefully.
“The flame going out is not an argument against burning. It is the reason to burn while you have time.”
She closed her eyes and drew in a slow, steadying breath.
“He would have wanted that,” she said quietly.
Her eyes focused on the yard. Gaius finished his sequence and reached for his water flask.
“And the available evidence regarding Gaius remains extremely encouraging,” I added. “Tall, capable, excellent with his hands. Statistically, those traits tend to predict promising developments elsewhere.”
Varia’s solemn expression broke into a grin.
“Oh, would be thorough. Extremely thorough. Have you watched him strip and oil his blade? A woman notices these things.”
“Obviously, a transferable skill.”
“One would hope.”
We sat together in the companionable warmth of two women who had reached the same empirical conclusion through rigorous observation.
“Go and talk to him,” I said.
Her amusement faded.
“I do not know how to do this anymore. I have forgotten how to want things I am allowed to keep.”
“You speak to him regularly.”
“As his lieutenant.”
“You begin the way you begin everything else. You move toward the thing instead of away from it.”
“That sounds like Scipio.”
She looked back at Gaius.
“You do not wait for the perfect moment,” I said. “The moment becomes possible because you move.”
Varia studied me.
“You have become very certain of yourself.”
“I defeated you ten minutes ago. My confidence is temporarily unmanageable.”
That drew a brief laugh from her. Then she grew quiet.
“You are the closest friend I have ever had,” she said.
The words came without ceremony, as Varia’s truest statements always did.
“In any garrison. At any posting. In my entire life.”
Her blue eyes were bright and no longer entirely steady. A single tear escaped and tracked down her cheek, apparently having rejected the chain of command.
“In my world, we have a phrase for that,” I said. “Ride or die.”
“Ride or die?”
“It means I am with you through everything. No conditions. You are mine, and I am yours.”
She considered the phrase with the focused attention she gave to anything she intended to keep.
“Ride or die,” she repeated.
“Absolutely.”
Varia set her flask beside her and pulled me into her arms.
The movement was abrupt enough that I barely had time to respond. Varia did not hug tentatively. She held me with the same certainty she brought to everything else, one arm firm across my back, her face pressed briefly against my hair. I wrapped my arms around her.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke. The snow fell around us, and the garrison moved through the yard below, and the woman who had spent years refusing to let anyone close held on to me as though she had finally decided closeness was not the same thing as weakness.
Then she released me, cleared her throat, and retrieved her flask.
A moment later, she walked toward Gaius.
I watched him notice her approach. His posture changed before his expression did. Then warmth reached his face, unmistakable and immediate. He had been waiting.
Varia said something I could not hear. Gaius laughed. The smile she gave him was small but unguarded.
Varia looked back once.
I raised my flask.
She smiled.