Briefly, Follen paused, though he seemed to be considering what she’d said rather than her request. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I think that might be a good idea. Here, he reached into his desk, retrieving a small key and handing it over. “That’s a spare, her number’s printed on it—104. Feel free to hold on to that, so long as you don’t lose it. I’m not too thrilled by the idea of someone else having access.”

He smiled again, and every bit of that pride was in it. “You’re a good girl, Quinn, darling. I’m more and more certain of that every day. Good luck.”

As Quinn left his office, she could hear the artificial birdsongs chirp to life behind her.

The walk was long, but not solitary. Nurses and other orderlies shuffled by, busy with this and that, but all who passed Quinn paused long enough to look at her. The wonder was painted clearly on their faces. Wonder at their hero pilot. Wonder at where she was going. The closer she drew to room 104 the less wonder there was, and in its place was concern.

It was within her, too. A slow, low simmer at the bottom of her mind, so wary of rising, but unwilling to stay sunken. Careful, came the warning, not vicious but soft, worried. Just…be careful.

As she stood before the door, the feeling retreated. The anxiety in its wake still rippled the surface of her thoughts, but Quinn pushed through. She fit the key, opened the door and let herself in.

From after Hovvi, to after the duel, these rooms seemed so clean, so safe, so confining. The sensation of an IV pushing fluid into her veins shuddered through her. Her neural plugs itched, briefly, like they were still new. No machines beeped, no radio played and the screen on the far wall was off. The ceiling light was off, there was only the dimmed glow of a simulated overcast through the blinds of the faux window, casting the whole room in gray.

Roaki lay in the bed, covers pulled up to her waist. Her head was turned away, to the window, but it was clear she wasn’t asleep. Her fist wound in the sheets, she took a deep breath.

“What—” she began, only for her voice to wither when she turned to see Quinn standing there. Her dun eyes widened in their pits, and though her face was shadowed by a tattered veil of hair, panic passed through it, clear and quick, before it settled into a more subdued uneasiness. Her eyes instantly fell away.

“Oh… she said, raspy and quiet, but at least the shiver was gone. “It's you...again.”

She shifted uncomfortably, like she meant to sit up. Instead, she seemed to just burrow deeper into her pillow. “What...why are you...here?"

Quinn shut the door.

She was tense as she did; the room's four white walls immediately felt like a trap. But with how the station had reacted to Roaki, she certainly didn't want to leave a way open for other people to come in or listen in, no matter how small.

That daunting task done, she took the seat that sat across the room from the bed, using the time it took both to calm herself down from the seething fear that briefly bubbled up behind her eye and to prepare herself for what was to come.

Just like before, seeing Roaki like this was like a punch to the gut. Well, at least she didn't sound as openly hostile as she had. But on the other hand, Quinn might have preferred the anger to the panic that had flashed through across her face. Roaki...really was terrified of her, wasn't she?

And though she obviously didn't like it, there was little wonder why, Quinn reflected. The first interaction the two of them had after Roaki went through something horribly traumatic—both at Quinn's hands and otherwise—had been marked primarily by Quinn's intense and violent anger. Of course, it had been anger at how Roaki had been treated, how people reacted to her, and not at her, of course. But a first impression was a powerful thing, and for someone who had been through something so horrible, that was...not the greatest she perhaps might've made.

At least Roaki seemed less like she was going to crumple in on herself than she did last night. As afraid as Quinn was of the Board's retribution, one look at the girl in front of her immediately reaffirmed to her that no, there was absolutely no way Quinn was going to let her be tortured like that again, and neither was she going to let her willingly walk to her death if she could at all help it.

So today—and tomorrow if she could, and the day after, and the day after that—she would be as comforting as she possibly could. It was the least she could do after causing all of this, and the poor girl certainly didn't anybody else yelling at her.

Quinn didn't know exactly what had happened to her that would turn her into what she was today, other than a feeling of deep familiarity and creeping unease. Still, regardless of any of that, she knew if the first impression she'd gotten after she'd woken up on the Aerie was someone yelling at her, her life might've gone a very different and very unpleasant direction.

She'd been given every chance and welcomed with open arms. It stood to reason that she should do the same for others. So although she didn't really know what to say, when she spoke, it was as calm, kind, and gentle as she realistically could be.

"I thought that...maybe after last night you might like someone to talk to? And I'd like to talk with you too. It gets boring and lonely in here pretty quick with no company, right?"

This was a trick, Roaki knew it right away. People called her stupid, but she had nose for this sort of thing. Schemes, plots, strategies—the tools of weaklings who never knew what to do when their plans fell through.

But that was the shit of it. She wasn’t dealing with a weakling, she was dealing with Quinnlash. Roaki followed the girl’s shadow as she stalked from the doorway to the chair across from her bed. She didn’t look at her face. Couldn’t, still. It was pathetic, but she couldn’t. That golden eye burned in her mind, more monstrous than the red gaze of any Savior. If she looked at her, somehow, Roaki knew she would see Ablaze staring back at her. The muscles in her arm twitched at the thought. Her leg ached even below where it had been cut, still, despite the pills these nurses had crammed down her throat.

In the cold, at least she’d been in too much pain to think. Now with the unnatural warmth and comfort of a hospital bed, even with the exhaustion still lingering behind her eyes, all she could do was think. Think. Think.

Fuck, it felt like she could hardly breathe.

Her hand kept a firm grip on the sheet. She didn’t know why, it wasn’t like she could fight her. She couldn’t fight anyone. All she could do now, and for whatever was left of her life, was sit and hurt and fucking think.

And talk, apparently.

Roaki chewed her lip. Of course, she should have seen this coming. This must have been why she wasn’t dead yet, why they’d stuffed her in that icebox and now, why they’d thawed her again. They wanted something. Quinnlash wanted something.

“What…” she started, forcing herself to sound at least somewhat like a person, and not a frightened worm. “What do you want to know?”

Quinn linked her hands behind her head and leaned back, hmming as she pondered what to ask.

A deal of it, though not all, was putting on an act, though. At least to an extent. She knew what she wanted to ask. She'd known what she wanted to ask since last night. She was less wondering about that, and rather pondering how to ask it. What she wanted to know was what had happened to Roaki. Hell, she was almost desperate to know what had happened to her. Why she was like this. Why she'd already been missing limbs. What had been done to her, and who had done it. But asking it directly...she knew that if someone she didn't know asked her about her childhood, she would have a bad response, and she had no reason to think Roaki would be any different.

So instead, she needed to take a slightly more indirect tack and hope that it didn't blow up in her face.

Her hmm ended, and she let herself fall back forward until she was looking at Roaki again. Again, not directly—she seemed to have an aversion to meeting Quinn's eye—but that general direction.

"Honestly, Nothing in particular. I just don't know anything about you as a person and I never really got the chance to ask."

She lapsed into a momentary quiet as she thought. Roaki was so scared of people taking from her that it seemed almost paralyzing. She remembered in crisp and horrible detail her own terror of being left alone or sent home those first few days, when everything felt so tenuous; like anything she did wrong would get her sent away from the Aerie and Besca. Roaki was...she wouldn't think of an innocent line of questioning, Quinn was sure. She didn't know what Roaki would think, but she didn't want to take any risks.

"You don't need to tell me anything if you don't want to. And..." Her voice caught. It had seemed to innocuous just thinking about it. But saying it was...it was scary. She could feel her body tensing and the instinctual and elemental part of herself, deep down—perhaps Quinnlash as well, perhaps her alone—wanted her to close off, to ignore the rest of the world and stay safe and secure inside of her head.

But the rest of her knew that if she did that, she would never reach Roaki. Never, never, never. And the thought of that hurt more. So she fought off that animal within her and finished the sentence.

"...And anything you want to know about me—anything—I'll answer as best I can, 'kay?"

With any luck, that would be enough—if only just enough—to get her to open up, even just the smallest crack.

“…I just don't know anything about you as a person and I never really got the chance to ask.”

Too late for that, Roaki thought bitterly. Not talking to a person anymore.

But that didn’t change anything. She was at Quinnlash’s torturously inexplicable mercy—what she thought of herself now didn’t matter. Person, pilot, worm, all of it was meaningless. She was a bundle of answers, waiting for the right questions.

These, however, did not seem like the right questions.

Was it a game? Toy with her, make her divulge her life’s miseries on her way out? That seemed appropriately merciful. But then, the girl had also offered to lay her own secrets bare. Tit for tat? Smart, if she thought about it. Roaki would be taking them all to her grave, anyway. Of course, normally she wouldn’t have given half a shit about knowing who Quinnlash was as a person. She’d never cared to know any of her enemies, and none of them had cared to know her. That was the way things were—or at least, how they were supposed to be.

But laying there, Roaki couldn’t help it. There was an almost animal curiosity within her. Quinnlash wasn’t just another enemy, Quinnlash had beaten her. She was terrifyingly strong, and bafflingly cruel in ways that Roaki didn’t even understand, ways she had never seen and never dreamed of. How could she not want to know, even just a bit?

She fidgeted, lips pressed tightly together in a last ditch effort to maintain what little dignity remained. Don’t play her game. Die silent.

“…What happened to your eye?”

"…What happened to your eye?"

Quinn sucked in a sharp, pained breath. She should've expected it, she really should've. But she somehow didn't, not so early out of the gate. She hesitated, her last breath half in and half out of her throat. Her eye flickered for a moment with...not with terror, per se, but certainly with some kind of deep discomfort, like a poison that lay beneath her had floated briefly to the surface.

Still, her hands were already behind her head. So she could at least cut that agonizing part of the process out.

"I did mean what I said at the...Henkersmahl, I think it is? I don't really know what happened to it." She paused, rewound. "Or...no, I know what happened to it. I just..." She finally managed to untie the knot and, for the second time in as many days, let it flutter down into her lap like a windless flag. This time she resisted the urge to run her fingers across the scar tissue, to see how expansive it was. She just sat there, hands clutching tightly around the strip of black and yellow fabric. "I just don't know why."

"I was...twelve? Thirteen? Something like that, I'm never quite sure. And it just...went. Burst right out of my head." She shuddered and, forgetting her resolve to not, dug her fingernails lightly into the sleeves of her t-shirt. She hadn't thought of the sheer pain of that moment for some time now. Tried not to think about it. She could practically hear the shrill screaming, all the pain and the heart-stopping terror, ringing through her ears. "My...parents dug it out and bandaged it up, then gave me the eyepatch and I've been wearing it ever since."

After a few shaky breaths, she let the arms down again and rebalanced her voice, purging the tremble as best she could. "I've never seen under it myself. Too scared to look."

"What about you? How did you lose your arm and leg?"

Roaki wasn’t sure what she’d expected.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. She’d expected a lie, like the one back in Casoban. Maybe that she really had lost it in Hovvi, or during training, or that someone had gotten to her young and gouged it or popped it or something. She’d expected—hoped, even—to catch a glimpse of the hidden truth that someone had managed to beat her in the past. That she wasn’t an invincible, unbreakable champion. That she was weak.

Then again, would that really have made it any better? Would she rather have lost to Quinnlash the monster, or Quinnlash the weakling?

Well, she’d rather not have lost at all.

Roaki could read people well. She was good at sniffing out fear, and even without looking her in the eye she could tell that Quinnlash was afraid even before she admitted it. Maybe this really was the truth. She didn’t know, it had just happened and that was that. It was so tempting to look, to see the proof of that fear forever marked upon her face.

She couldn’t.

When Quinnlash asked about her lost limbs, Roaki shrank back into the pillow. An old and familiar anger flexed instinctually inside her. She’d hurt people, badly, just for looking at her arm, just for seeing her slip the prosthetic on. Her teeth gritted together, an ache shot down her leg, all the way to the foot she didn’t have anymore, the one she’d lost in Casoban.

How much of her had Blotklau eaten before it died?

Not enough.

“I…” her voice withered. She squeezed the sheet so hard her nails dug through the fabric and into her palm. Speak. You lost, now you speak. “I can’t phase, she rasped. She didn’t have the strength or the will to lie, and she was never very good at it anyway.

“I tried, when I was old enough. I got in before the scars were even healed, and I tried.” She blinked, and in that darkness she felt the cold cage of the cockpit around her. “I stayed in the whole time, like I was supposed to. I never disconnected—not until they made me. They said I almost completed the Circuit.”

How disgusting.

“My arm and leg were…part of it,” she said quietly. “They had to cut me out.”

Roaki stared at the sheets, how they fell flat just beneath the stumps of her legs. How disgusting, he’d said. Only half a daughter, but a full measure of failure.

She’d almost proven him wrong.

“Why is Dragon’s pilot afraid of you? she snapped, before she could dwell on those memories a moment more. “Why does she do whatever you say? She’s one of the strongest pilots in the world. And that woman, I heard her this morning—she’s the commander. What did you do to them?”

Quinn opened her mouth to say...something. She didn't know what she'd say to that, what she could even possibly say to such a horrible thing. Her mouth went dry as she realized that she really, truly had nothing to give.

Luckily, Roaki saved her from that with another question. Quinn almost smiled; that snapping voice, one she'd been so afraid of just days before, was almost comforting somehow. She sounded a little bit more like Roaki now.

But any chance of that smile was lost with what she'd actually said. And a grim and foreboding question it was. It truly seemed like she just...didn't understand how...no, it wasn't even not understanding how 'love' worked, or friendship. It was more that she just didn't understand relationships as a whole. A strange mixture of dread and anxiety began to bubble up within her, along with a tiny seed of anger that was slowly germinating, despite her best intentions

"I wouldn't say," she began carefully, "that she's afraid of me, or that I did anything to them. Deelie—" Should she say this? Was it a violation of Dahlia's privacy? She didn't know, but she had no way of stopping now that she'd committed. Only way to go was forward. "—well, Hovvi was Dahlia's home. When it burned down," a shard of guilt dug into her, edging into her voice, "she lost everyone. She lost her dad, she lost her home, and she lost her best friend, all her friends." The guilt was joined by a low note of grief, forming a horrible harmony which spat out, "And all she got in return was me," with no small amount of spite.

"...When I made it out of Hovvi, I was..." She swallowed heavily, anxiously running a hand down her braid. "I was destroyed, both physically and mentally. I spent a week comatose. By the time I woke up I had the implants, because it was the only way I wouldn't be—"

She nearly choked. No. Dragging up all the memories of Hovvi and the immediate aftermath was already crushing her enough as it was. She wouldn't be able to hold it together if she...no. She wouldn't acknowledge it. She couldn't. Not right now. A few seconds passed before she felt like she could properly speak. "—I could barely walk. It was weeks before I stopped waking up screaming."

"So we started to lean on each other. And Besca took care of us, so we both leaned on her."

A deep breath. She tried to dig out those fragments from her heart, and was met with...minimal success. They would be there for a long time now, she knew. Her voice was starting to thicken, just a little. She knew that she was going to cry today. She was going to cry for a long time. She just hoped it was after she'd left Roaki's room.

She shrugged helplessly. "We're a family now, that's all."

It was strange, the more Quinnlash spoke, the more she revealed about herself, the less Roaki felt like she knew her. There were gaps in her story, but they didn’t feel intentional, they weren’t lies like she was used to, they were omissions of…grief? Anger, maybe? She didn’t know, she wasn’t used to seeing people act like this. She’d heard them break down over comms, she knew what pathetic sounded like, and while Quinnlash certain didn’t sound like the warrior she’d been in Casoban, Roaki couldn’t bring herself to see this display as weakness.

What she did recognize was self-loathing. Roaki hated Quinnlash, instinctually in the way a hunter hated its prey, but also deeply and personally. She knew hate, she was good at hate. She’d clocked it perfectly at the Henkersmahl and she was reading it just as clearly now.

No one hated Quinnlash Loughvein more than Quinnlash Loughvein.

“So we started to lean on each other. And Besca took care of us, so we both leaned on her.”

“We're a family now, that's all.”

Roaki sucked air through a tight cage of teeth. Days in the cold, too tired and beaten to muster anything more than a glower and curt words, had dulled her. It was whole moments before she realized just how furious she suddenly was. Fucked that she didn’t have the energy—or the means, really, anymore—to do anything with it. She could still hardly sit up without the aches and exhaustion laying her out flat.

It should have been great news. Quinnlash was doomed, hopelessly and completely. It might take weeks, or months, or maybe years, but if what she’d said was true—and more and more, Roaki was starting to doubt that Quinnlash knew how to lie at all—then there was no avoiding it.

So why did she feel so compelled to warn her?

“You’re a moron,” she spat, unable to stop herself. Idiot, you’re helping the girl who killed you. But she went on. “They don’t need you. They hate you. They’ll turn on you the second they get the chance, and if you let them do it because you think you need them too, then you’re a moron. You don’t need them.”

It was true. Quinnlash Loughvein didn’t need anyone. Roaki was so sure of that.

“You’re strong. People are afraid of that—even if they say they aren’t. If you let them, they’ll take all that strength away from you. Know where you’ll be then? Six feet under. Or worse, you’ll be right where I am. Fuck's sake, don’t…” her jaw clenched so tight it popped. “If you’re gonna beat me, don’t be me.”

Quinn sat stock still, frozen in place, stunned by the sheer force of the fury that was now pouring out of Roaki.

And anger rose to match it within her. Both her own, and the deep and seething rage that she recognized as Quinnlash's. How dare she say that about her—their—family? The sudden surge of fire that burned bright and hot through her body drew a harsh gasp from her during Roaki's speech. And it wasn't just anger, but a complex cocktail of anger, self-loathing, searing guilt, and—even worse—a nagging doubt.

Maybe it was true. Maybe they didn't need her. Maybe they were lying to her, and they really did hate her.

She fought to wrangle it all down, but it was stubborn and would not be silenced quickly. For the first time she was glad that Roaki wasn't looking at her, so she couldn't see Quinn's face struggling to settle itself against all her instincts.

But fought it she did. Struggle to settle it she did. This wasn't like the Henkersmahl. This wasn't Roaki trying to provoke her. By the time she'd finished speaking, Quinn had managed to force the anger back down into the pit in her head that it so desperately wanted to crawl back out of, ignored Quinnlash's boiling resentment. And though that powerful urge drained out of her, the rest—guilt, fear, doubt, self-hate—remained. Then the last thing Roaki had said seeped in through the cracks:

If you’re gonna beat me, don’t be me.

So it was Roaki's family that had done this to her? Quinn couldn't think of any other reason for her to react so violently to just the mention, just the thought, of the word. Another painful piece of kinship between the two of them, it seemed. That hurt, that scarring that they each bore on their shoulders, it all came from the same source, didn't it? Why? Why did these things need to happen? To her, to Roaki, why, why, why? It wasn't fair!

Trying to ignore her inner turmoil, Quinn's voice when she spoke was quiet, so quiet—a stark contrast to Roaki's—and only shook the smallest bit. "It's my turn to ask a question. Remember, you don't need to answer if you don't want to."

And now, finally, Quinn got the chance to ask the question that she'd wanted to ask since the beginning, the one that she'd tried so hard to work around to, though now she was almost afraid to know the answer.

"What do you mean, 'be you?'"

Her clamp on the storm of negativity inside her was creaking and straining, and she could feel heat building around her eye as her voice's trembling grew stronger. Still, she kept it as gentle as she could.

"What did your—what did they do to you, Roaki?"

“…What did they do to you, Roaki?”

She didn’t know, at first, and in a way that was funny. So many years of pain, and ridicule, and shame, and yet she was hard-pressed to recall, in detail, anything specific. There were flashes in her memory, of her cramped room, of the cold stone floors of the castle. She remembered meal after meal eaten alone, listening to the rest of them above her, speaking of their futures, and their duties to the family. She could see their faces—the sneers, the disgust, the pity. She could feel the hollow pit in her stomach when they’d stopped calling her ‘sister’.

Before it all, the silence had eaten at her, but eventually she realized it was more that it was cocooning her. The burn, she knew, was her body melting away, so that it could reform again as something greater, something terrifying and beastly.

And she remembered the first night, after it was done. The silence didn’t burn anymore, because even in the dark, if she shut her eyes, she could see him sitting up there at the table, alone. Alone, because she’d made him that way.

For too brief a time, he finally knew what it was like.

Roaki looked up, not quite to Quinnlash’s eye, but close. Close as she could get. So close. “They doubted me,” she answered coldly. “And they were right anyway, but when I’m hanged it won’t matter. Nothing can undo what I did. The whole world’ll know that if I’m weak, then the mighty House Tormont, Sword of Aridea, Bane of Aridea, fell to a weakling.”

Roaki certainly didn't give Quinn much information when she finally spoke. The look in her eyes—pain, terror, hate—said that truly horrible things had happened to her. 'They doubted me' gave away only a fragment of what Quinn was sure was a much deeper and darker past.

But through all these conversations, all the interactions they had, there was one throughline that Quinn had arrive at. She'd thought before, and said to Doctor Follen, that it was winning that Roaki cared about. But that wasn't quite right. Winning was just how she reached what she really cared about.

She wanted to be strong. Or...maybe she just wanted to not be weak. Quinn wasn't sure quite yet which it was, or even if they were separate at all. And it also explained very neatly why she felt being a pilot was so important. Quinn remembered her first time in Ablaze with a jagged clarity, and that feeling of barely restrained strength that had run through her even before she'd phased had felt very good. She could easily see how it could become intoxicating to someone like Roaki.

"If you don't mind, I have another question, Roaki." What would Besca say? How would Besca say this, if Quinn were like this? What would she do?

An answer jumped out at her, and a moment passed as she weighed what she was possibly about to do. It could help. It had helped Quinn before when she was upset. But, given how Roaki had acted up to this point, it could also very much hurt, and she wasn't quite sure which. Was it worth it, now that Roaki was starting to open up to her?

She thought that maybe it was.

So, air still moving unfamiliarly and uncomfortably across her eye socket, she hunched forward and, for the first time since the Henkersmahl...

She made eye contact.

"What is it you want?"

Roaki grimaced when Quinnlash mentioned asking another question. A part of her wanted to point out that wasn’t fair—it was supposed to be her turn now, even if she didn’t quite know what she wanted to ask. But that was stupid. Somehow, she had almost forgotten that this was anything but a brand of interrogation, and that she was not a prisoner waiting out the last of her days on enemy turf.

So she shrugged. Really, what did it matter? Quinnlash could ask whatever she wanted, and Roaki had no right to refuse her an answer.

Then she went and looked at her.

It was brief, but there it was—that fiery golden eye. Roaki gasped, fixed there like Quinnlash had her by the throat. Her hand went numb, the sheet fell from her fingers.

“What is it you want?”

She had felt the scorching barrel of the cannon against her arm and knew she had no choice. She had screamed with her own memory when her legs were blown away, and then screamed again when Dragon’s pilot had cut her from the cockpit, and knew she had somehow chosen wrong anyway.

What did she want? She wanted her body back. She wanted her life back. She wanted to be Roaki the pilot again. She wanted to have been born as anyone else, and failing that, she wanted not to have been born at all. She wanted not to cry in front of Quinnlash Loughvein.

She got nothing.

“I…” Roaki’s voice shook, her throat burned but not as hot as her eyes. She tore her gaze away to stare back at her lap. Everything still hurt, but she knew it wasn’t sweat dripping from her face. “I want to be alone now.”

She'd messed up.

She'd messed up badly.

She didn't know why she'd messed up. Why Roaki had reacted to eye contact like that. But she definitely knew she had, and that was more than enough.

Quinn didn't want to leave. Didn't want to leave Roaki alone there, didn't want to stop talking to her. But she'd already made her cry, and the last thing she wanted was to upset her more. It was the first time she'd upset somebody enough to cry, she thought. She really, really didn't like it. So as much as she wanted to stay, she stood from the (uncomfortable) chair, tying the eyepatch back on as she did. She immediately felt better. More comfortable. Maybe if she'd had it on before, she thought bitterly to herself, she wouldn't have done something so stupid.

But she had. And she had to live with it.

"Okay," she said; soft, quiet, and a little bit sad. "I'm going." She walked to the door and...stood there for a moment, just...staring at it.

Shut. Shut. Four white walls. Everything was white, white all around her, four white walls and a shut door she couldn't get out she couldn't leave she was trapped again again again—

She jolted as she came back to herself. She'd been standing there for...she wasn't quite sure how long. Long enough for tears to roll down her face and dribble from her chin. She was shaking badly now. She'd thought she'd gotten better. She really had. But she just...

With a herculean effort, she finally managed to place her hand on the door and slide it haltingly open. She could barely get words out, two words so mangled by her tears she needed to repeat them for them to even be comprehensible.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry."

Then, supporting herself on the door jamb, she left, shutting the door behind her. As soon as it closed, she sat down against it with a loud thump.

She cried for a long time.

There was a brief and terrifying moment where Besca thought there might be war on the Aerie. Her stunt that morning had been bold, but ultimately toothless. The soldiery onboard hadn’t taken kindly to one of their own being fired for “doing his job”, and in his defense that was mostly true. Her inbox was inundated with complaints, criticisms, and demands for her resignation; in the end it hadn’t mattered. He’d been rehired by dinner, and the emails had stopped.

As commander there were only a handful of people she couldn’t touch. One was Follen—a fact that would never cease to frustrate her—and another was Bren Caster, chief of security operations, and liaison between RISC and Runa’s military. No soldiers got in, or out of RISC without his say so, and when word had gotten to him about one of his men getting the can, his say was: “No.”

His predecessor had gone the way of her own after Hovvi, and they’d risen to their leadership roles together. She’d been vaguely aware of him beforehand, and thus far their working relationship had been relegated to CC-chains and occasionally seeing one another in the hangar or at the bar in Dane’s. He’d asked her there the next day, where they sat in the corner and, over a beer, he told her in no uncertain terms that if she tried to go over his head to fire one of his own again, he’d come after her job with the support of RISC’s entire military personnel. She agreed, and told him that next time someone tried to take Roaki back to holding, she’d just break their hand instead.

Another empty threat; Besca was still powerless to refuse a direct order from the Board. But the Board wasn’t here, and while Caster might have been in charge of RISC’s military personnel, there were plenty of soldiers who still knew her, and trusted her, and he would never have their full, undivided support. He didn’t strike Besca as a vile man. He enjoyed power, but not necessarily lording it over others. If he wanted a coup, he could have it, but that side of him that preferred reason to feeling must have known that a mess was the last thing RISC needed right now.

So a tenuous deal was struck. As it stood, the Board still had not decided who was getting Roaki, and orders aside, Caster admitted he had no desire to put a child in an icebox. She could stay in the ward for now, but when the decision did come, Besca had to swear that she would stand aside.

That left her with a nebulous and dwindling amount of time to put together a plan. Otherwise she imagined she would end up seeing how uncomfortable holding was for herself.

Quinn had put her on to something—or rather, Follen had put Quinn on to something, which was immediately alarming. That was: turning Roaki on Helburke as an informant. They’d granted a similar status to Ghaust when he’d defected, and it had offered him all the rights and protections of a Runan citizen—so long as he continued to aide RISC.

The difference was that Ghaust had wanted to join them. Besca wasn’t even convinced Roaki wanted to live. Quinn was, though. So the planning continued; what could they do to convince the girl she didn’t have to go meekly to her grave? The answer hadn’t come to anyone yet, and though Quinn had resolved to visit Roaki each day, Besca was forced to turn her attentions elsewhere.

The interview was coming. She’d been surprised it had taken so long for the Board to approve Quinn’s first appearance, but then, when she thought it about it made enough sense. The duel in Casoban might have been over some inconsequential territorial dispute, but it would not phase out of the public conscience in a mere few days. No, this breather had been necessary. The Board had wanted time to measure the world’s—and especially, Runa’s—opinion on what Quinn had done. Likely, they’d waited to find the right host.

“Dinner With Mona” had been the final call. Not a news channel, but a celebrity talk show. It was a smart choice; Runa National or Pastel News would have had hundreds of people drafting hardball, invasive questions to throw at her the instant she sat down, trying to get at the heart of RISC’s operations through her. It would have been…harsh, and difficult to watch. Mona was a one-woman operation, so to speak. She had a team, but by reputation she handled most of the legwork herself when it came to actually preparing for an interview. She was also avidly interested in the piloting world and so, Besca hoped, she’d be more likely to go easy on Quinn.

That was tonight. As soon as she found out, she shot Quinn a text to let her know. Not a lot of time to prepare, but she made sure to emphasize that it would be fine, and that she would be right there in the studio watching just off camera. Deelie would have to stay onboard—Besca was beginning to doubt the Board would ever let her be more than five minutes from Dragon’s cockpit ever again. Besca hated that, but with what had happened at Casoban, she understood why they were afraid.

Two singularities had formed out of nowhere. An immediate and furious terror had nearly pushed a national emergency to the public, until it was noted that the two singularities that had opened nearby the dueling grounds had never produced a single creature. That, and the fact that nothing had opened up in Runa since then had quelled the fears—somewhat. Perhaps the Modir couldn’t spontaneously open singularities, but even if they could only move them, which seemed to be the prevailing theory, that was hardly any more of a comfort.

And all of this was still leagues away from the fact that the Modir had spoken. Besca still couldn’t wrap her head around that. She’d heard it, and she still couldn’t. It was still a closed secret; there were no recordings of the logs after the duel had ended—that hadn’t been her doing either, they’d just been wiped. Still, Research’s attention lingered on the swordsman. It had appeared twice now, and while no one had yet made the connection to Quinn, Besca worried it was only a matter of time.

She was worrying a lot these days, and sleeping less. Last night she’d returned to the dorms at two in the morning, and left for the office again at five. It was noon now, six hours ‘til the interview and there were still a thousand things to do before then. Sighing, Besca brewed another pot of coffee, lit another cigarette, and sat down at her desk. Any minute now Toussaint would be calling, or the Helburkan Ambassador, or the Board to tell her they were fed up with her now, and it was time for her to pack her shit and go. A small part of her hoped that call would come. She was ready, she thought.

But she wasn’t, really. And part of her knew that as long as Deelie and Quinn were around, she never would be.

---

---

The simulation fizzled and the world went dark before it exploded back to light. Dahlia disconnected her neural plugs and sat up in the pod-like seat, blinking the dizziness away. Sims weren’t meant to be as disorienting as a real cockpit, but they always left her just a little bit nauseous. It passed quickly though, and she swung her legs over the side as Quinn rose up in the seat next to her.

“Sorry,” she said, giggling nervously. “That probably wasn’t super helpful, was it?”

This session had gone like all the others. Either she blew Quinn away the moment she phased, or she turned phasing off, and let herself be absolutely steamrolled by Ablaze’s superior strength. Dragon was many things, but it was not a brawler, usually. If she tried she could throw a few good punches, bob and weave like a boxer, but as had been demonstrated to her back in Casoban, she was much better off at a distance.

Neither scenario made for particularly good practice. She was glad they muted pain receptors in their bouts—neither of them was particularly interested in hurting the other, even if it wasn’t really hurting them.

“We could try again after lunch if you want? Maybe a run without weapons, or we could just do some target practice or something. Or do you wanna focus on the interview tonight? Oh! We could make up some questions while we eat? Get you in the mood for it, y’know? I still remember some of the things I got asked the first time!”

Quinn had been a bit a bit...off since that first visit to Roaki in the medical ward. More off than usual, even. It seemed almost like she'd gone backwards, fell back down a little ways into the hole that she'd fought so hard to claw her way out of; that crushing sense of desperation she'd felt when faced with a closed door and four white walls had really gotten into her head.

And so, for the past few days she'd been more emotionally unstable than she'd been for a good while now, and she'd certainly been clingier. She was actually afraid of being alone for the first time in quite a few weeks now, and so she'd spent as much time possible with company, whether Besca, Dahlia, Doctor Follen, or Roaki.

Unfortunately, Besca had been extremely busy—mostly because of her, she acknowledged with no small amount of guilt—while Doctor Follen had his own work to do and her relationship with Roaki was extremely odd and awkward. She'd therefore been spending as much time with Dahlia as she could reasonable get away with. So sitting together with her at lunch for a while suited her just fine. And besides...she really was nervous about the interview. She thought she knew what it was mostly going to be about, but...talking over it never hurt, right?

So, sitting up from the sim seat—she hissed quietly as her plugs disengaged—she swung her legs over the side and faced Dahlia. "I...think I'd like to talk about the interview." She lapsed into silence, rubbing her eye with the ball of her hand as she tried to banish the mild disorientation that always came with connecting or disconnecting, no matter the situation. As comforting having one eye always was, it had its share of downsides. "I think that I...that I've had enough of sims for now."

Dahlia smiled gently. “Yeah, you know what? Me too. How about we hit up Danes? I’ve been dying for a milkshake.”

She helped Quinn down, throwing an arm around her shoulder and staying close. The past few days Quinn had been…more dependent than usual. Not that Dahlia particularly minded—she didn’t need any excuse to spend more time with her—but ever since she’d started going to see Roaki, she’d been decidedly off. It was tempting to ask, and even more tempting to just assume the Helburkan girl had done something to upset her, but whenever she thought that way, she remembered her promise. She wanted to be better. She wanted to be more like Quinn.

Besides, she’d kept visiting, and would have told them if anything truly bad had happened. Maybe it was just the state Roaki was in that was bringing her mood down. Quinn had asked her and Besca for help coming up with some way to convince the girl to stay. Dahlia would have been lying if she said she’d given it a tremendous amount of thought, and that did make her feel guilty. Besca was up to her neck with work and worry, and all Dahlia did all day was the same thing she did every day.

This was important to Quinn. She resolved to put more effort into it, starting right now.

Danes was comfortably busy when they arrived. Where Tohoki Grill was dim and gentle and had the feeling of an old tavern, Danes was bright, excited and warm. Its faux windows were opened and their screens rolled footage of a sunny beachside afternoon. Long, sandy shores stretched endlessly either way, scattered with people laying on towels or under great big umbrellas. More played out in the sapphire blue water, splashing and laughing, or waving out to sailboats rocking gently in the distance. Upbeat, tropical music played over the speakers, as though from a band not too far outside. A series of screens on the walls were tuned in not to the news or the Savior-obsessed talk shows, but to sports and campy daytime shows.

Normally she’d have gotten them a seat at the counter, but today Dahlia brought them to a booth along the wall, where the AC blew fresh air only just tinged with the hint of a salty breeze. The tables were wooden, and weathered in the same way designer jeans were weathered—artificial, but convincing.

Taking one of the menus from the tabletop stand, Dahlia thumbed to a selection of burgers.

“Oh boy,” she said, cheery. “I am about to destroy a pineapple burger.”

She held off asking Quinn what she wanted, let her have a little more time to think today. Instead, she turned her attention to the faux window, smiling out at the ocean. The water was too dark to be a Runan sea, so she guessed it was somewhere in Eusero.

That’d be a nice trip, she thought. Me, Quinn, Besca. Just a day laying out on the sand.

“So how’re you feelin’ about the interview? she asked lightly. “For what it’s worth, Mona’s always been super nice to me. You talk at a table over some food, and it’s really casual. Kinda feels like eating in the dorms. She loves pilots, so I bet all she really wants to do is get to know you a bit!”

For as much as Quinn loved Tohoki Grill, she also adored CB Dane's. For a very different reason, though, and one particularly relevant to the past few days. Tohoki gave off a gentle aura kind of like tranquility, and though it was nice, it wasn't quite what she really wanted today. Dane's was just...happy, an unrepentantly cheerful place to eat. So she nodded as Dahlia took charge, leaning subtly into her when she wrapped her arm around Quinn's shoulder. Snuggling into her, almost, as the two headed to lunch together.

When they arrived, it was just as welcoming as Quinn remembered. She'd only sat at a booth here a handful of times. Usually she loved the bar; though she still hadn't tried anything from the intimidating assortment of bottles that lay in neat rows behind it, talking to the people that ended up sitting next to her was always fun. But, she reflected, very conscious of the looks that were coming her way still, maybe not so much now.

So she picked up a menu, flipping idly through it. Just like Tohoki Grill, she still wasn't through trying everything on the menu. But she didn't really want to try something new today. She wanted something that she knew she liked.

"I think I'll get...um..." A brief spike of anxiety shot down her nerves, mild but pervasive, as she tried to make a decision. She shook her her head, keenly aware how pathetic it was not to be able to even choose what she wanted to eat and trying to clear the anxious fog from her head. "Or maybe I'll..."

Thankfully, Dahlia's question served to distract her for a moment, and she lifted her head from her arduous task to meet her sister's eyes. "I'm...I won't say I'm not nervous," she said tightly. Immediately after, the tension leaked out of her voice, replaced with...not hopelessness, but more...resignation.

"It's just...all she's going to talk about is the duel and Roaki, I know it. It's all anyone talks about." Perhaps it had been unwise for her to watch a bit more news in the past few days. It certainly hadn't made her feel any better about how people talked about her, both on and off the station.

She returned her attention to the menu, trying to decide what to eat and coming up empty until she just...gave up. Rubbing two fingers into her eye, she let a quiet sigh filled to the brim with disappointment slip out of her and folded the menu before looking down at her lap.

"Deelie, can...can you choose for me today?"