Chapter 43
His first step back was the most unsteady I’d ever seen Elio Marx. There were a thousand different emotions running through his eyes all at once, to the point they all seemed to cancel each other out, and I was left with the reflection of nothingness in the fire of his irises.
“That’s why your bench weight was so weak…” He muttered in stunned disbelief, like a quiet thought spoken out loud.
My expression flattened. Of the million revelations this brought to the surface, that was seriously his first thought?
This fucking guy.
He shook his head, then took another step back.
“You said you didn’t have an A2, but you’ve been wearing an illegal gender modifier all this time?
Through every sparring match. Through everything.
You never said anything. I never suspected…
” His next thoughts were fragmented, shaky, and shattered, and his broken eyes hinted at something much deeper than those superficial statements.
“Y-you let me think you were a guy. I hurt you. And I… I was starting to…” His adam’s apple bobbed, his cheeks reddened, and his breathing was sharp and fast. His retreat put his back against the wall. “You lied to me.”
“Please, let me explain,” I pleaded as I watched sense and reason plunging into the pool of his panic. “This wasn’t something nefarious. I didn’t want to trick you. I wouldn’t have done any of this if I didn’t have to.”
“You’re the sister you said you were protecting.
” Elio’s hand was shaking, so he clenched it into a fist as he deduced the most important point of all.
“And I…” Yet he kept cutting himself off, his thoughts too jumbled for me to fully understand.
I couldn’t even guess how those sentences were finishing in his own mind, and that lack of transparency only had me more and more on edge.
He shook his head again, forcing some semblance of focus.
“But your records were legitimate. How…”
He looked into Vann’s records? That shouldn’t surprise me, but it did. I guess everything about our arrangement had been hard for him to wrap his head around, so it made sense. It was a good thing I’d used Vann’s name instead of coming up with a fake one.
“My brother was injured and ended up in a coma during the conflict on 005. I just took his place in the draft.” I needed to start injecting the real story into this situation, lest he assume something worse that would ruin any ounce of trust we’d finally started to build.
Even if that was likely destroyed already.
“After watching my colony get decimated by Gehenna for the second time in my life, I wanted to help. I couldn’t just sit by and watch my home get destroyed again.
This was the only way to protect the only person I have left, and I…
I had to. Please, you have to understand.
” My own panic was starting to overwhelm me as Elio remained against that wall, backed as far away from me as he could get.
“I never could have predicted everything that happened once I got here. I had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew it had to be better than the alternative.”
“Who are you.” He demanded more calmly now, yet without any inflection of a question.
“My real name is Fianna Callan. I’m a medical student from Protectorate 005.
” I confessed at long last, but there wasn’t the relief I’d hoped for when I finally got to say it out loud.
“Vann Callan is my older brother, one year ahead of me at Medella University. Everything else I’ve told you has been true.
The only difference is that I’m me and not him. ”
“So you’re not twenty-two, you’re twenty-one.
” He said, fully understanding the weight of that number based on his expression.
“You would have already started matchmaking and been married within the year.” Was I getting through to him?
“That’s why you were so afraid of me looking at the matching modules. ”
I nodded, fighting the first quivers in my lip and the threat of tears in my eyes with silence.
So he said the words I was struggling to get out.
“You decided to run away and join the draft, because you didn’t want to be sold to a stranger.
” He covered the lower half of his face with his hand, leaving only his eyes for insight into his soul.
Though the tale they told was obscure and unreadable.
“No wonder you’re so afraid of me.” A crack broke his voice.
“If I’d realized it, I would have kept your secret.
I wouldn’t have hurt you like I did.” His eyes were glossy as he stumbled over every fragmented thought.
“I… I’ll still keep your secret.” He said, defeated in his promise. “But fuck, Vann—or Fianna.”
“Mishka.” I corrected him with a sad smile, in a bid for playfulness and connection.
“Mishka.” He repeated in a singular defeated word.
“I know you will.” I whispered, unexplainably but innately believing that to be true. That was the trust he’d earned, and I hadn’t.
I hated myself in that moment, when I realized that I only knew he was safe because he’d entrusted me with his own story.
One that was more broken and painful than mine had ever been.
Because I understood enough of him to know that he wouldn’t risk putting another person through a single minute of his own life, no matter how rough he was in every other way.
He wouldn’t be the reason someone else was bought and sold by the Counsel or anyone else.
I was banking on his trauma to protect my chance at a happy ending, and I’d never felt so terrible about using information to my advantage.
I took a step toward him, and he pressed harder into the wall. He shook his head and I stopped.
Elio was the strongest and scariest and most intimidating, untouchable person I’d ever met in my life, and yet now he couldn’t even look at me.
I expected him to get mad. Maybe threaten me. Maybe storm off. I thought if he ever found out, he’d be enraged and mocking and cruel.
Why was he this upset? Why did he look like he was about to break down completely?
I should have been the one who was crying.
I should have been the one who was shaking right now.
But Elio looked like a man who was reliving a thousand tragedies in the span of seconds, and I was terrified of what I didn’t know about him.
“Does this have to change anything?” I asked, however na?ve and ridiculous the question may be. “I’m still the same person, and to everyone else, I still will be the same person. I’m still just as pathetic, and I can still beat up most men in a Shinka.” I attempted again to lighten the mood.
“How the fuck could it stay the same?” He snapped, not entertaining me at all.
Crazy as it sounded, this hint of anger felt much more comfortable and familiar than his devastation right now.
“You’re a woman. You’re…” He panned his gaze downward, moving from my face to my shoulders to my toes.
He shook his head and looked away again, his cheeks reddened while mine flared just as hot.
I squeezed the towel more firmly around myself.
Even having seen me fully naked in the locker room as I changed into my skin tight Imperium suit, this was the most exposed I’d ever felt in front of him.
“You think I can just stand on the mat with a woman and put all of my strength into beating her?” He shoved a hand forcefully through his hair and tugged.
“I guess I already fucking did that.” He wouldn’t look at me at all anymore, as he bit into his lower lip.
“Fuck. I should have known. The first time I grabbed your waist and it felt so small, I should have figured it out. I knew something was off, but it never occurred to me that, in any universe, a woman would voluntarily find a way to be a part of this hell scape. I fucking felt the difference, and I still told myself that you were exactly what you presented.” He was purely chastising himself now, and I felt a sense of guilt for that too. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“The same thing you were. I wanted power that I couldn’t have on my own.
” I shook my head, still hoping he might hear me out and understand.
We really weren’t that different. “I didn’t want to be used by some stranger, kept in a gilded fucking cage, only let out once I bore some man’s children.
And I didn’t want to be someone who sat at home in a war torn galaxy, hoping some big, strong man would come save me, while at the mercy of those men if they didn’t.
I didn’t want to be helpless and trapped in a fate I didn’t choose.
I wanted to be the solution that helped people, and I wanted to prove I could be. ”
“You were a medic. You were already helping people. If that was all this was about, you didn’t have to do this.” He let his head fall back against the metal wall, and he dragged a hand down his face in a subtle way to wipe away the first hint of tears I knew he didn’t want me to see.
“You know it’s more complicated than that.
I was a medic until being a mother would take me away from my ambition and career before it even had a chance to begin.
I was helping people until I was going to be lucky to have the time to help myself amidst my responsibilities to children and a husband.
I had a time clock with an imminent expiration date ticking over my head, where my life and my body were going to be forfeit to someone else, and I couldn’t accept that.
” Please understand. “At least here, with a weapon in my hand, I can protect the people who are already here, who I already love, instead of being forced to be the vessel for someone else’s wants and needs.
This was my only chance to have a choice.
” We were both going to be late, and I didn’t care anymore.
I couldn’t let him bear guilt for beating me up when he had no idea I wasn’t a guy, nor did I want him to see me as some delicate flower.
“You thought I was a man, and you treated me exactly like you treat every other man. You assumed I was strong enough to handle anything you could handle, and I did handle it. Time and again, I endured. When I came here, that was all I wanted. I didn’t want to be held at arm’s length with kid gloves, like I was a second tier human being.
I was doing my best, and you treated me like I had the same potential as everyone else—”
“Stop talking.” Elio interrupted harshly.
His swallow was thick, and the hurt in his eyes was paralyzing.
“By the stars, please just stop talking. I get it. I wish I didn’t get it, but I do.
” It sounded nice, yet it was clear that every bond we’d finally started to form was shattering right in front of me.
“But I can’t deal with this right now. I don’t know what to say to you, because none of it’s going to come out right, and I have to go.
You have to go, too.” He dropped his chin, his eyes obscured by his crimson hair.
He took a full and deep inhale, then released it slowly, before he turned toward the door.
He paused before he opened it. “Keep your distance from me, and I’ll do the same.
I won’t report you, but I don’t want to see you standing across from me on the fucking sparring mat ever again. ”
The door slid open, and he left me there, alone in our shared dorm room, still completely shattered, but knowing I’d have to figure out a way to get through the day anyway.
He was right. I had to make my orientation, and he was obligated to make Basics, being a unit captain. We could figure this out another time, when the shock was less intense and fresh and we were both in a more rational headspace.
I activated my A2, and I started getting dressed in my uniform, as if there was any chance of shaking off the last 21 hours.
Elio would keep my secret. I believed that. And if he planned to avoid me from here on out, beyond just our dorm room, then my life should get much easier at Astaroth. The only thing that was ruined in all this was our relationship.
Why did that thought make me so fucking sad?