*COMPLETE* "People don't believe in us anymore. They don't believe that in the end we will do what is right. We can't let them down. We can't let Ben win."
Decisions made on top of the lonely, wind-swept cliff of Lethinor reverberate around the five...
"So what," are the first words she says, a hoarse whisper that breaks over the 't.' Her arms are folded around her, but she can't feel them. "I really died?"
The worst part of his answer is how long he takes to say it, the slow way he measures his words.
"I don't know," he finally replies in that careful, delicate tone. "I think physically, perhaps, you were. But spiritually... it's hard to say."
She stares at the ledge in front of them, not really seeing it. She now feels like there is this hulking, mass of flesh hanging around her, smothering her, and it is dead, decaying in microscopic specks...
Soon it will smell, soon it will tell—
She's nauseated, but she doesn't want to move it, doesn't want to feel it quiver—
She pukes over the side of the wall. She feels his hands pull back her hair, gently, and she can't stand it, can't stand being touched, being comforted, being human—
Meat. I'm just slabs of meat.
She runs, down the stairs, past her team, her wide-eyed, gaping team (whole, uncorrupted) and out, along the corridors, somewhere...
She feels her hands, trembling, push past the hair at her temples as she slides onto her knees. She's in the training room, the place no one comes.
I died. I died. I died. It echoes in her head, unasked for but incapable of leaving. She feels like a ghost wearing a shell of putrid flesh and, staring down at her ashen skin, she wonders if that's exactly what she is.
If I looked in the mirror, would I even recognize what looks back at me?
She hears the footsteps and thinks it's Ruben.
I can't— The thought comes up, uncalled but desperate, spurring the clumsy shuffle of her deadened feet beneath her, trying to get her up, off to somewhere else, somewhere she can't be found. I can't—
But it's not Ruben. Finn's legs bend out like butterfly wings when he sinks down next to her. His hands curl together on the floor in front of him; he's kind enough not to touch her.
"You look awful," he says and it's so rude—and probably so true—that a bark of laughter escapes from between her hands. She drops back down, kneeling as if in prayer, still cradling her head.
"They're all searching the grounds. Lei thinks you made a run for it," he continues, fingers drumming on the floor. "I don't think he trusts you very much. But I knew you were up here. I could hear you all the way from the rooftop."
"Did Ruben tell you something about your family?" he asks after a moment. "Is someone dead?"
"What? No," she shakes her head, bringing her hands down a bit so the light hits her face. "No, he just... he just told me something about myself."
He hums to that, his brows knitting.
"Well, I don't know what you have to be so upset about," he says after a minute. "You're really nice, you know. Well, not to Lei. Or Hiran. Or the Cabal. Or the Jarles..."
She laughs then, because she has to, but the laughter brings a sting of tears to her eyes and she has to hold her head down to hide it. Her vision blurs and she swallows it back because it won't change anything, won't fix what's been broken.
"I just," she says, and her voice wobbles, "I just feel like there's this plane of glass between me and the rest of the world." She struggles, but it doesn't matter if he understands, if it sounds crazy, she just needs it to be said. "It's like I can reach out and grab people but I can never really touch them, never really get past it, and I'm just going to spend the rest of my life in here, untouchable and alone."
"Finn," she continues, and her voice is reedy, shaky in ways she wishes it wasn't. "Can you tell me the truth about something?"
She looks up at him now, at his wide eyes, his innocent, unassuming face.
"Can you sense anything wrong with me?" she asks, her voice breaking into a whisper. "With your Skill."
His brow crinkles; his head tilts to the side. He reaches a small, pale hand out and presses it against her forehead and she almost recoils for his sake. His palm is smooth and warm, that dry warmth that is soothing to the touch.
"No," he says after a moment, still sounding confused. "Your heart sounds normal, so does your breathing. You don't seem to be ill."
"Not a physical illness," she answers, pressing. "Do I... do I just feel wrong? As a being."
He puts his hand there again.
"I don't..." he says, perplexed. "I don't sense anything. Is this a test? Do we have to do that gauntlet thing again?"
"No, it's not a test," she answers, strange relief crashing through her as she wipes her eyes on her sleeves and breathes in deep, tense breaths. He didn't find anything. He can be trusted—he wouldn't know to lie, to deceive, I would be able to tell—
"Oh, good. I like our team. I don't want to get rid of anyone."
"I'm not getting rid of anyone, Finn," Allayria answers pulling her knees up. She still sounds like she has a bad head cold but her voice is stronger now, laced with some mild irritation. That's good. Better. She climbs to her feet, brushing the dust off the knees of her pants, straightening her clothes with more fastidiousness that she would usually bother with.
"So we'll stay together then?"
She looks around at him. He has stood up as well, and his hands twist together in front of him.
"The team," he clarifies. "You'll keep us all together after the mission, then?"
And he looks so cautious, so hopeful, that she forgets all these things wrong, all the dark thoughts of trust and flesh, of glass and ice, and pulls him into a hug, ruffling the top of his scruffy hair.
"Of course I will, you nimrod," she mumbles. "There's no way in hell I'm going through another one of Ruben's tryouts."
When Lei turns up, splotchy, panting, and jumpy, it's easy to act like she has no idea what he's in such a state about. The firefly assurance of an honest, lonely boy flickers in her heart, a tap of relief to supplement the resurrected thing beating along in there. This fear, this unease too can be buried under another mask, disguised under another facade until even she forgets it's there. At least, this is what she tells herself.
Lei trails her when she walks back to her room—old habits die hard—and it's only after she closes the door in his face, after she extinguishes the lights, pulls off her day clothes and slips beneath the blankets and sheets, that she lets herself think about it again, think about the corpse floating in the pool and the slimy, creeping creatures around it.
The scar on her chest twitches and she drifts off to sleep.
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A/N: I know, another triple-chapter post. I don't know what I am doing to myself. I wanted to post the first one Tuesday/Wednesday and then these two last night but life has been... Well, we're here now, and you're getting all of them because I think a week between them would be detrimental.
You're only getting one chapter next week though, so don't get any ideas. :)
