Nobody's Servant, Act 1

Hatchet

By now, I'm out of the ward and I've healed up nicely by means of my own unsuppressed abilities; Nym's dialysis worked wonders, but I still feel sick and weak for lack of coagulant.

More than that, I feel weird.

Nym and I haven't seen much of each other since yesterday, not out of deliberate avoidance, but even the times he checked up on me were awkward and held a tension they hadn't previously.

You know, before we started putting our mouths all over each other. Yhana hasn't heard either, unless he found the nerve to bring it up before I could. I actually don't know if I'm on "let's talk about boys" terms with Yhana, but Nym certainly must be; he's gotten just as close with her, and for much longer than I've been around. So that's two angles I'll need to prepare to broach the topic from.

Actually, he might not even need that conversation himself. His youthful appearance, preserved around the same age I had been too, if I had to guess, does a good job of making me forget just how much older he really is. I would think that should put me off, but give it another four decades and I'll be an example of the same, eerily youthful on the outside, but on the inside, insisting to myself that half a lifetime has not exhausted me.

What was it Suraokh had said about an attraction to older men? The half-recollection makes me cringe a little at having validated him.

But I've made an assumption about the permanence of my form too, I still don't really know how stagnant my form is anymore. Over just the past couple of days it's been changing faster than I can really cope with. For a good five years there, even cell division was something I'd simply adapted out of, and now my prosthetics self-repair just as well— or poorly, depending on how I look at it —as my flesh. For all I know, I'm aging again.

I wonder if I'll get to age that far along.

I could probably have ruminated for a while, but for the sudden return of a familiar face, newly rejuvenated with fine fabrics, appearing at an offshoot of the corridor. "I think I owe you an apology."

"Aaah shit!–" I yelp, stepping to the side on instinct, but my initial fear and irritation at Suraokh sublimate all at once when I process what he said. "...Wait, what?"

He enters the corridor proper, turning onto my route and beginning to walk. "I brought you here for your safety."

"To mixed success," I reply, catching up to him before slowing my stride to compensate for his.

"There was a plan," he continues, not looking at me. "Things did not go according to plan."

"If you're going to start berating me for my deviation from it, I get it, but I wanna hear you finish first."

"No, I made you think you had more responsibility than you really did," he clarifies. Now he looks at me, eyes newly shiny and bright. I can see my reflection in them, the sclera of my left eye jet black, the amber glow of its embedded hardware a permanent fixture. And I have time to take that in, because he doesn't continue immediately, letting that silence hang.

"Well... why's that?" I press.

"Both sides at play here are acting with far greater urgency and aggression than I had accounted for. You do not have any power to affect that, and you never did." His eyes return straight ahead.

"...Yeah, that makes sense."

"You are a pawn, with no autonomy."

I huff. "Yes, I get it."

"You are like me." He's asserted that before.

"Yes, I get it," I reiterate, but catching the point in my tone, I feel a need to correct myself. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you."