I Want You #3
"You said love," she said.
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face did."
Oliver looked back at the shadow.
"Love." The darkness behind him deepened.
"Preference." The darkness held.
"Choice."
The oil flame leaned away. Marin inhaled sharply. Oliver felt the next word before he understood it.
Want. The shadow's open hand closed. You.
Nothing in the room moved. Oliver's heartbeat became offensively loud.
He had spent months imagining Hunger as an appetite for outcomes.
Futures. Power. The ability to reduce the world until only a preferred path remained.
The new appetite was narrower than futures or power, and therefore harder to dismiss.
The thing did not point toward his magic.
It pointed toward him. Oliver forced his breathing even.
"You want me alive." Attention sharpened.
"Awake." The same focused attention held.
"Still becoming."
The cold at his chest sharpened. Marin said his name quietly. Oliver kept looking at the shadow.
"You don't want an empty body." The oil flame guttered.
"You don't want obedience."
The shadow gave him nothing he could call a response, which disturbed him more than agreement would have.
"You want the part that keeps deciding."
The shadow's fingers opened. A sensation entered him.
Pleasure did not come with it. Hunger did.
Vast enough that his knees nearly failed.
It was not directed at Marin. Not at the Maw below them.
Not at the sea or the Cut or Hollowfang's apparatus.
At him. At every next sensation he had not yet experienced.
Every preference not yet formed. Every door not yet opened.
Every person he had not yet met. Every argument he had not yet lost.
Every pleasure he had not yet discovered. Every grief he had not yet survived. Bhodi did not want Oliver finished. It wanted continuation. The sensation withdrew. Oliver realized his nails had cut crescents into his palm. Marin moved one step closer and stopped there.
"Can you hear words?"
"Three. Maybe four."
"Maybe?"
"Awake. Intact. Continue. Want. You."
Her jaw tightened. "That is five."
"I was distracted."
"Understandably."
The shadow lowered its hand. Oliver's mind moved because that was what it did when frightened.
Evidence. Sequence. Mechanism. It had copied Marin's touch.
It had reproduced bodily states Oliver associated with curiosity, jealousy, pleasure, love.
It had spent weeks in his shadow. Watching.
The explanation arrived with almost indecent neatness.
"It has been observing us."
Marin looked at him.
"Possibly."
"The shadow is present during almost everything now. Firelight. Sleep. Arguments. Sex. The Compact. The storm."
"You think it learned the gesture by watching me touch you."
"Yes."
Marin's eyes narrowed slightly.
"What?"
"Nothing proven."
"Of course."
"You sound relieved."
Oliver considered. He was. Relief had entered before evidence earned it. Oliver noticed the order and disliked himself for finding it.
"Watching is invasive," he said. "But comprehensible."
"And the alternative?"
He looked at her. "That it didn't need to watch."
Silence entered the room. Marin's expression became unreadable. She did not tell him he was wrong. She also did not let him pretend his preferred explanation had become evidence.
"Keep both," she said.
Oliver nodded. The shadow remained still.
He understood, suddenly, why he wanted the observational explanation so badly.
A watcher existed outside him. A watcher could be denied access to rooms, blocked by light, confused, deceived, starved of examples.
Something learning him from inside his own wanting offered fewer architectural solutions.
He looked away first. Marin crossed the remaining distance only after he did.
"Do you want me to touch you?"
The question hurt enough that Oliver laughed once under his breath. "You have exquisite timing."
"Answer."
He looked at her hand. Actual fingers. Warm skin. Small abrasions. Bandage at the other palm. A person he knew could stop, change her mind, become angry, misunderstand him, leave the room, return later.
"Yes."
"Where?"
He swallowed. "My face."
Marin lifted her right hand slowly enough that he could watch every inch of the approach. Four fingers behind his ear. Thumb beneath his jaw. Oliver flinched. Only a fraction. Marin stopped. He closed his eyes.
"Again," he said.
She repeated the touch. Warm. Human. Hers. Oliver turned his face into her palm. The shadow did nothing. Marin's thumb moved once along his jaw. His body answered again, but this time recognition arrived with source. He opened his eyes.
"Better?"
"No."
She waited.
"Real."
Something changed in her face. "That I can work with."
Oliver kissed her palm. Behind them, the rain weakened. The shadow stayed one shape against the wall. Oliver told himself it had learned by watching. The thought fit the evidence. He wanted it to be true badly enough that he should have distrusted it more.