Chapter 9 #3
The stones. At the compound, they'd had a collection.
River stones, smooth and dark, gathered during training runs in the mountains.
They'd kept them on the windowsill of their shared dormitory.
A small, private ritual. Evidence that they'd been somewhere together.
She'd left them all behind when she'd fled the compound.
Except one.
"I kept one," she said. Very quietly. “The one with the piece of quartz running through it.” It looked like a lightning bolt. It had been her favorite because he’d given it to her. Because it was a piece of him that she could hold onto and keep with her.
She saw the emotion cross his face and looked away before love made it to his eyes. She looked away before that unadulterated emotion could do anything to her.
* * *
Four hours into the flight, exhaustion caught up with her.
She'd been running on no sleep and adrenaline since Niger. Since the compound. Since the black stone on her doorstep, the 0200 doorbell, and everything that had happened in between.
She fought it for twenty minutes. Then her body simply stopped cooperating. She was aware, distantly, of her eyes closing. Of the tablet sliding in her hand. Of the leather seat, obscenely comfortable, accepting her weight.
Her last conscious thought was that she should stay alert. She didn't manage it.
* * *
Dan watched her sleep. He hadn't planned to.
But she'd gone under between one breath and the next, the way she always had.
A complete surrender once her body made the decision, no transitional middle ground.
He'd forgotten that about her. How she could be razor-sharp and then simply not, with nothing in between.
She looked younger asleep. The controlled stillness she wore like armor during waking hours softened.
The lines of tension around her eyes released.
She looked like the girl he'd known, the one who'd put up with his terrible jokes and filled their space with color and talked too fast when she was excited about a topic.
And again, how she went completely, utterly quiet when she was thinking.
He'd thought about her every day since he was forced to leave to protect her.
Not as a concept or a motivation or a reason. As a person. This specific, infuriating, extraordinary person who’d looked at a broken half-Japanese boy in Kuro's compound and decided, without fanfare, to trust him.
He'd burned his whole world down to keep her alive. He didn't regret it. But he did regret the cost to her.
Her hand had drifted in sleep, sliding across the armrest between their seats. It lay close to his. Not touching. Just close.
He looked at it for a long time.
She kept the stone. The one I gave her.
He thought about that.
About what it meant that she'd taken exactly one stone from the windowsill at the compound where they'd been everything to each other. She would’ve had to carry it across an ocean and keep it through the years of building a new life from nothing.
She kept my stone.
He very carefully, very slowly, laid two fingers against the back of her hand.
Not holding. Not claiming anything, just feeling the life within her.
I'm here, his touch said. I know I don't have the right. But I'm here.
The plane moved through the Pacific blue.
He sat like that for a long time.
When she stirred, an hour later, he moved his hand before her eyes opened. Back to his side of the armrest. His expression was neutral by the time she was fully awake.
She surfaced gradually. Blinked at the window. Took in where she was.
Then looked at him.
"How long?" she asked. Her voice was still soft with sleep.
"About an hour."
She nodded. Reached up and pushed her hair back, then looked out the window.
“We’ve arrived.”
“We have,” Dan agreed.
Japan was below them. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Dan looked down at the country that had made them. That had given them everything and taken everything. The mountains visible through broken cloud cover, the dark coastline, the ancient and relentless landscape.
Coming back felt like pressing on a wound to test whether it still hurt. It still hurt. He heard her exhale slowly beside him.
"I never thought I'd come back," she said quietly.
"Neither did I." He’d actually sworn an oath to himself not to return, but that was before the Scroll had targeted the woman he loved.
She looked at him. "Does it feel different from what you expected?"
He considered the question honestly. There was so much hatred and anger still burning inside him.
"It feels exactly like I expected," he said. "Which is the problem."
She looked at him. “As cryptic as that was, I agree with you.”
"Ready?" he asked, hoping to take her intense study off of him.
She held his gaze for a moment. Then her expression changed.
He saw it. The dread. But underneath it, something steadier lived.
Something that had been building, slowly and carefully, for many, many years.
The calculation, the determination, and the professionalism she’d developed took center stage.
"No," she said. "But let's go anyway."