Holding Everything

Chapter 41: U Can See Me; I Can See Me

"Don't do anything to her!!" My mouth is open, and my voice ready to scream, but a voice that isn't mine speaks before I can, though saying the same thing I was about to. I look over at Rika, her small yet firm body is shaking, her fists balled tightly and her usual composed stature completely dimished when the sound of her cracking voice fills the room, "Please don't do anything to her, she's been through enough we just," she trails off, unable to come up with good reasoning like she usually can, so I do.

"We've almost gotten down how to be Handlers; you yourself say you don't know what the Gray Path is, so technically this is even harder for us since we can't turn to you for answers either." She continues to look at me, giving the impression that she's giving me time to talk in order to convince her not to do anything to Lillya, "not only that, whether or not you're the cause for this switch thing that happened to me against Arbror, it's still completely abnormal for people like me to experience something like that."

"Is it, though? Upon further research its quite common for your species to experience that, they generally call it 'mental problems', which usually tend to occur when traumatic experiences occur in your life, for some it can be of abuse from early years, for others it can one bad situation that disrupts their everyday life to an extremity so large they're unable to cope with it; and upon observation it appears you handle 'coping', well horribly."

"But I wasn't 'angry' I just wasn't me." I retort

"No, you were a version of you that could cope." Rika, having calmed down and is now talking like her analytical, blunt self speaks up; drawing a smile of amusement from Gloria.

"What?" I ask

"She is quite the clever one," Gloria says, lowering her hand and releasing the tension that built in the room, "able to figure out the hardest puzzles that even I couldn't piece together." She walks back to the entrance and faces us once more, "I accept your reasoning but fair warning, it can't be your excuse forever; who knows maybe this 'other version' of you will get the job done. I will continue to watch you, Handler."

She leaves the room before I can respond, Rika grabbing my attention immediately after the entrance closes and we're alone with Lillya in the room once again. A look of panic apparent,

"I think she really does know something, Kou. I think she just doesn't know enough so she's forcing us to figure it out. I think she's afraid of it," seeing my confusion she answers the questions I have before I voice them, "think about it, Kou! She has no problem throwing all of us into a warzone of torture, she doesn't even ask if we're okay when limbs are being reattached, she could care less if we die so long as you stay alive; she literally hasn't shown a shred of emotion toward us, but just now she had to approach us herself and make us promise to figure something out. Something is going on and she doesn't know exactly what and it's freaking her out; she's always had all the answers; she'd just pick and choose which ones she gave."

"So how do we break down what she does know and what she doesn't?"

"Impossible to know for sure, see if she knew one thing then she wouldn't know the other; she may know exactly what the Gray Path is but not whether it's an ally for her or not, or maybe she knows exactly why you switched into that 'other you' but not why you don't remember." She paces around the room while talking, I follow her with my eyes, nodding ever so often; I walk to Lillya's bedside and hold her hand, it sits limp in my palm and my heart aches.

"What are we going to do though, even if we figure all that out what can we really do?" Rika stops pacing and focuses her gaze on me; a slight smirk appears then vanishes in an instant before she walks up to me.