THIRTY
ARSENY
I knew that Caiden wouldn’t come, but still, I wait longer than is wise. Some stupid part of me keeps thinking I’ll hear his steps at the last second, or see him crossing the yard with that particular scowl he gets when he’s angry.
By the time I stop pretending I’m still waiting by choice, the place is dead silent. Caiden is precise when he’s angry. If he says he isn’t coming, he means it. But that doesn’t make it easier to swallow.
I stand there for another minute with my hands in my pockets and my jaw clenched hard enough to hurt, then turn back toward the barracks.
There’s no point waiting any longer.
Back in my quarters, I take my coat off, hang it up, and sit at the desk by the window.
The lamp throws a small circle of light over the reports stacked there.
For a while, I sit there looking at nothing.
Then, because doing nothing tends to make everything worse, I pull a report towards me and start reading.
At first, the words go in. Names, numbers, times, distances and small failures with clear causes.
It helps a little at first. The further I go down the page, the memories from earlier creep in.
The corridor outside admin, the voices, Caiden’s face when I told him to back off and the way he agreed because he had no real choice, not because he wanted to.
He hates stepping back, I know that. It’s not because he enjoys defiance for its own sake — though, since he met me, I think he does enjoy that a little more than is healthy — but because stepping back looks too much like surrender and he’s had enough of surrender dressed up as policy to last him the rest of his life.
For me, helplessness has always been worse than anger. For him, maybe it is the other way around.
That means he will do what I asked and hate me for a while in the privacy of his own head, which is somehow more difficult than if he had just snapped at me properly and got it over with.
I get it. He’s angry because he cares. He cares about Niko and the baby, and he cares about me enough to keep putting himself last. And yes, he’s also angry because I stepped in and made the decision for both of us.
I accept that part.
The alarm on my watch goes off, pulling me from my thoughts. I grab my jacket and head out of my room. By the time I go to Niko’s flat, it is later than usual. The lights are still on, which, it’s hard to tell these days, is either a good or bad thing.
He opens the door before I’ve finished knocking the second time, and one look at him tells me he hasn’t slept properly again.
“You’re here late,” he says.
“I had something to deal with.” He steps aside and lets me in without another word, but I can feel him thinking anyway. Niko sits down at the little table in the kitchen, and I take the chair opposite him.
“Where’s Caiden? He hasn’t been by.” For a second, I consider leaving it alone until morning. Then I look at him properly and decide that it would be better to get it over with.
“I asked him to step back,” I say. “From being here so much.”
His head snaps up fast from looking down at his mug. “What?”
“People are gossiping.”
He stares at me. “About what?”
“About him being here too often.” I keep my voice level because I don’t want him to panic. “It is not a problem yet. And I want to keep it that way.”
Niko’s shoulders fold inward a fraction.
The reaction is so fast and so instinctive, it makes my chest hurt.
“This is my fault,” he says, looking at the table instead of me now.
“I didn’t mean for any of this. He was helping and I let him, and now you’re both having to…
” He cuts himself off and rubs a hand hard over his face.
“Fuck. I— I should have got back on my feet before it got to this point. Before either of you had to get involved.”
“That’s not how grief works, Niko.”
“No?” His laugh is short and ugly. “Looks exactly like how it works from where I’m sitting.”
He finally looks at me then, and the exhaustion in his face is bad enough that for that second, he looks ten years older than he is.
“I’m dragging both of you into this,” he says.
“Cassie is dead, the baby needs something every ten minutes, I can barely remember whether I ate, and now people are gossiping because Caiden keeps turning up to stop the whole place falling apart around me.” He squeezes his eyes closed and takes a deep breath.
“I don’t want him taking hits because I can’t get my shit together,” he says, eyes locked on mine.
“You’re not failing some test,” I say. “Your fiancée died.” His mouth twitches hard at that, and even saying that out loud hurts.
“I know what happened,” he says quietly.
“Then stop talking like you’re inconveniencing everyone.” He drops his eyes again and the room goes quiet except for the faint sounds from the base outside.
“Do you know what happened?” he asks, his gaze meeting mine again.
“I saw the report, but I didn’t read it. I couldn’t.”
He nods, like he expected that. His thumb rubs back and forth over the mug handle. “I’d left Vladimir with the sitter. Just for a few hours, to give Cassie a break.” He stops there, but I don’t push.
After a moment I ask, “Do you want to tell me?”
His laugh is short. “Not particularly. But I think I need to get it out.” He glances down again and keeps talking.
“I came back, and the flat was quiet,” he says.
“That’s the bit I keep thinking about. It was too quiet.
No radio, no TV, nothing in the kitchen.
Just... silent.” His fingers tighten on the mug.
“I remember thinking she must have gone to lie down.” He swallows hard.
“She was at the table. Right where you’re sitting.
Still sitting, kind of... more... slumped over it.
” He drags a hand over his mouth. “At first I thought she was just asleep.”
I say nothing; there’s no useful thing to say to that.
“There were pills,” he goes on after a second, his voice roughening further. “I knew before I even— I knew it straight away. I don’t know if she meant to sleep,” he says. “Or if she meant—” He stops hard enough that the rest doesn’t need saying.
“Overdosed,” I say, because he looks like he needs the word said by somebody else.
He nods. “I should have known,” he says after a moment. “She’d been off all week. Worse than off. Not sleeping again, snapping at nothing, saying she could hear things in the walls again, then laughing it off like she was joking. I should have—” He breaks off again. “I should have stayed home.”
“You’re not psychic. You didn’t make this happen by failing to notice one perfect, magical sign,” I say. “And if you start telling yourself that, it will eat you alive.”
“Too late,” he mumbles and looks away. “I had to call the sitter before I called anyone else. It keeps turning over in my head. I saw her, and the first thing I thought was, thank God Vladimir wasn’t here. Then I hated myself for thinking that before anything else.”
“You don’t need to hate yourself for that.”
His head lifts sharply. “Don’t I?”
“You were relieved your son didn’t see his mother dead at the kitchen table,” I say. “That’s not a crime.”
His eyes shut briefly. When he opens them again, they’re red. “I still see it,” he says. “Every time it goes quiet. I’m sorry, I hate causing problems.”
“Listen to me. You’re not causing problems. You’re not creating some burden you need to apologise for. You’re surviving something awful, and that’s not the same thing.”
His hands tighten on the edge of the table. “I hate needing help.”
“I know.”
“I wake up everyday and for a second I forget why I’m already tired, and then I remember.
” His mouth twists. “I hate that people keep looking at me like they’re waiting to see if I’ll collapse.
It makes me angry that Caiden knows where everything is in this flat now.
” He scrubs a hand over his face again and lets out a breath through his teeth.
“And I feel guilty that part of me is relieved every time one of you walks through that door, because it means I don’t have to be the only one in here who knows what’s missing. ”
“That doesn’t make you weak.”
A small, humourless laugh escapes his lips. “No? What does it make me?”
“Human.”
He looks at me like he wants to argue, but he doesn’t have the energy for it. I lean forward slightly. “Caiden stepping back doesn’t mean he stops caring,” I say. “It means I do what I should have been doing. That’s all.”
“It shouldn’t be on either of you.”
“It already is. I’m not saying that to make you feel worse,” I add. “I’m saying it because it’s true, and pretending otherwise is a waste of energy.”
He nods again. “I’ll pull it together,” he says after a bit. “I will. I just need—”
I stop him before he finishes the sentence, “You don’t need to rush anything. You need to eat something, sleep if the baby lets you, and let people help without feeling bad.”
His mouth twitches a little, “That sounds suspiciously like an order.”
“It is.” That gets the faintest huff out of him. It’s not quite a laugh, but it’s close enough. “You’ll eat before bed,” I say. “Something real, not whatever is left in that mug.”
He looks down, giving a tiny eye-roll. “Yes, sir.” That almost gets another laugh.
“All right.” I stand after a minute, then head for the door. When I begin to open it, he says my name and I turn.
“Ari, I’m sorry,” he says. “About Caiden. I hope I haven’t caused any problems.”
“That’s between him and me; he’s really angry with me, but we’ll be fine,” I say, which is true.
Caiden didn’t come tonight.
But tomorrow, I’ll still be here.