Above

Chapter Four: Igniting a Flame

Author's Note: 

Such a quick update for me! Hip-hooray! Hopefully I can keep this up! I actually like this chapter, but it may be because I am running on a serious lack of sleep and a sudden(and very welcome) burst of inspiration. I hope everyone enjoys it. :) 

Song above is very fitting for Rose and Fenris. 

In her existence, Rose Ramsay had only ever known the life of an elite soldier. From birth, she had been coddled with professors that taught her formulas inconceivable to most. Raised beneath the suffocating guidance of fleeting teachers who showed her different methods to hack into the most secure programs in the world, ways to come out alive with the highest probability of remaining just that, and proved that bruises and broken bones and mental collapses were and would always be finite.

But, in the entire span of her life, Piper had always been beside her.

At birth, they had been paired together, naturally. Each of their own parents had once been Elysians. Rose's father had been one-half of a prolific Elysian team, before she died underneath circumstances Rose did not even know. But, with his Intelligence gone, Colonel Ramsay requested to be stationed on Earth. Piper's mother and father are legendary, there is no past pretense to it. There is no secret to the nature of what most Elysian relationships are, and Captain and First Mate Bradshaw-Yamura are no exception.

Piper and Rose were born in the same month, Rose in one of the many towers in the Republic of Elysium on Earth; Piper in a docked spaceship two galaxies away. To everyone, it was obvious what should be done.

Rose doesn't remember a time without Piper, without her body directly beside her, Piper's hands guiding her own, or her voice acting as an anchor when the entire world became one massive disembodied scream.

She's desperate to hear Piper now, to see her again, to feel and to hold and to touch the other girl until she remembers once again that everything is always finite. But not them. Never them. Piper and Rose were always going to be Piper and Rose.

The teenager sits on the edge of the mattress, the IVs are now gone, but Charles flicks a flashlight back and forth between Rose's eyes, trying to find any anomalies. It feels strange to be without Piper, to not have her in the same room, or the proof of her existence reverberating a pulse through Rose's absent Root.

"Other than, y'know, the huge blank space in your brain, everything checks out fine, Rose," Charles observed, stepping away from her to record their findings in the tablet Charles carried all over the place.

"Thank you," Rose tells the doctor before standing up from the bed for the first time. On the ground with numb feet, the room seems much smaller. On closer inspection, it seems set up hastily, as if Charles prepared for a quick change of scenery. "When will Fenris be back?" Half of the question stems from curiosity, the other from the inexplicable. 

"Why?" Charles's fine eyebrow lifts up in question, a smile that isn't well hidden dawns on their face.

"I have questions," Rose replies, honestly. Fenris left in a flurry of seconds after Rose confessed she had no recollection of him. She doesn't know how she felt in that moment, watching him turn his back on her, fleeing in a way reminded her of a surrender. 

"Rose," Charles's voice became sincere, enough that Rose's head lifted up to make eye contact with the young doctor, and for once, their nose is not stuck beneath digital files in the medical tablet. Instead, the doctor stares directly at her with solemn eyes.  "I know this is going to be hard on you, and I know it's very difficult for you to trust right now. The kind of environment you grew up in, was, at best, unhealthy in the nature of dependency you relied on from your superiors, and even Piper at times. Here, though," and where here exactly was, Rose did not know. "With Fenris, with Piper, with me, and with many others, you learned to be more than a soldier," Charles pauses thoughtfully before continuing. "You are more than a computer posing as human."