God, it might have been an hour she sat crouched there, staring into the dark. The room was silent as the void beyond the walls, broken only by Quinn’s breathing, and the cacophonous banging of the words I love you bouncing around inside her skull. Quinn had long since let go of her hand, but Besca held firm, like a corpse in rigor mortis. How long had it been since she’d heard those words? How long since she’d said them? Years, easily. She had the distinct feeling that everyone saying or hearing it was dead.

But, it occurred to her that it had not been very long at all since she’d felt those words.

Eventually Besca stood, wobbling only partly from the ache in her knees. She left the room as quietly as possible, and left the door cracked as she stumbled into the common area, where her legs finally buckled beneath her, and she crumbled against the base of the couch. Hands to face, fingers pressed into eyes—still dry, not today—Besca sighed her lungs empty and tried to calm her mind.

I love you.

Every ounce of her wanted to warn Quinn that was a bad idea, but she knew she’d break her own legs before she let herself try. Instead she tried to reason; what did this change, really? If she was being truly honest with herself, was she really going to treat Quinn any different? Did she feel any less protective of her before? The answer was yes in a roundabout sort of way. The truth was that protective feeling was always there, it had just been growing steadily stronger with each passing day. And it was a mistake. Anyone in any program anywhere in Illun would say as much: don’t get involved, don’t get attached, they drop like flies.

Dahlia had spoiled her on all that, though. Hovvi had been a cold reminder, but here she was again. She asked herself if there was any reasonable expectation she might ignore it, or pull away, as she ought to. The answer was a very visceral no.

Her foot kicked against something, and she remembered Quinn’s phone, discarded on the ground. Sluggishly, she stretched out and pulled it close, snatched it up and shut it off. But, in that last second before the screen went dark, she saw familiar names.

The screen flashed back on—bless Quinn’s heart, she didn’t keep the phone locked—and there it was, the article speculating on the disappearance and possible deaths of Sansean and Locke Loughvein. Suddenly, things were beginning to make a bit more sense.

Her own phone buzzed in her pocket. Right, she’d left business unattended. “For your sakes,” she mumbled to the screen, before setting Quinn’s phone aside. “You’d better be fuckin’ dead.”

It was the bridge buzzing her, she took her call out into the hallway. “Yeah, hey, sorry. I’m coming right back up, tell Toussaint…what?...what do you mean settled it?...the Board? I was only gone…yeah, I know I walked out, it was an emergency. Can you just…they can’t just not answer the phone…no, the matter isn’t settled!...well I don’t give a shit what the Board said, get…fine…fine…no, don’t do anything…yeah…okay.”

With a frankly saintly-degree of restraint, Besca managed not to torpedo her phone into the wall. She didn’t have time for a meltdown right now, she had duties to perform, and while she wasn’t sure she could handle any more crying today, something told her she wasn’t going to have to worry about that.

The walk to medical felt brief, but she’d managed to cool off by the time she reached the room of their foreign ward.

It was empty, of course, as it always was, except for the brief drop-ins from nurses and visits from Quinn. Besca had promised to do better, or try, and she had made considerable efforts in private, but the idea of coming here as…what? A friend? Hardly. Not an ally, either. In fact, whatever personal grievances she might have had with Ms. Tormont, one of the things keeping her well away from visiting was the fact that it would have made her feel like a spectator. Like someone visiting a zoo to see some rare, miserable animal languishing in a cage.

Laying there in her bed, turned away from her would-be audience, Roaki looked exactly like that.

“You awake?”

Roaki’s head rolled over to see her, and there was definite surprise in her eyes. Their last meeting was the night they’d brought her here, and while Roaki had withered considerably, Besca was no different. “What do you want?”

Besca shut the door, came over to stand beside the bed. “Are you, uh, doing…okay?”

“…What do you want?” she repeated, somehow with even less patience.

Looking down at her now didn’t feel much different than it had in the cell. She was…small. The sheets lay flat where her legs ended, her one hand held the fabric in a tight fist. There was no shortage of malice in her eyes, but it was only a look. Besca knew what it was like to be afraid, to feel threatened. Roaki afflicted her with neither. But she was not some broken child. Besca couldn’t see her like that, and she doubted the girl wished to be viewed as such. Were she anyone else, that might not have mattered, but because they were enemies, and because Besca could not treat her with the contempt that often warranted, she decided instead to give her honesty, untampered.

“It’s about you,” she said, not kindly, but not unkindly either. Like she was speaking to a colleague. “Your situation. It’s over. Casoban is done waiting, they’ve given us a week to deliver you to them, and we can’t put it off anymore.”

She waited. Roaki took it well, which was to say, she didn’t react at all to being told they were handing her over to die. She just stared up at Besca with that same impatient vacancy, like how dogs looked when their dinner was an hour late. Eventually she just huffed. “Why Casoban?”

“Have to,” she said. It was a fair, if odd question, and she saw no point in hiding things from her anymore. “If Casoban leaves us for Eusero, Runa’s fucked. World can stonewall us out ‘til we, I dunno, close down RISC, hand over our Saviors, whatever they decide they want.”

“Think this’ll make’em stay?”

“Nope. But it’ll buy us time to think of something else. Right now that’s all we got.”

“Mmh.” Roaki looked down at her lap, scowl curling up into a crude smirk. “Guess I’m dying in Casoban after all.”

Besca nodded absently, walking around to the empty chair at the end of the bed. She sat quietly for a while, followed Roaki’s gaze out to the faux-window. “Quinn told me she loves me.”

“Gross.”

“Like family you little creature.”

“Yeah, gross.”

“I’m worried about her. Can I be honest?” she asked, rhetorically. She'd already determined to be honest. “I don’t…like that she comes to see you. I’m afraid she’ll end up like you. Think like you.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t tell her to do it.”

“Do you want me to ask her to stop?”

Roaki glanced at her, lips twitching. She looked back at the window. “Do what you want. Least I won’t have to hear her crying over her stupid fucking parents.”

“She’d come anyway.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“I can be so sure. I can be sure about a lot of things with her, so much so it’s almost scary. I’ve met a lot of people—a lot of pilots. I’ve never met anyone like that. She’s special.”

“She’s a moron.” Besca looked over, but Roaki didn’t meet her. “The way she talks about you guys, it’s pathetic. She has no idea what you’re gonna do to her.”

“We’re gonna love her back.” She said. Roaki shook her head, but didn’t say anything else. Eventually, Besca stood back up. “I’ll try and delay things to the last day, give you more time.”

“Could just do it now. Drug me, airlock me, put a fuckin’ pillow over my face.”

“Sorry, deal is that Casoban gets you alive.” She had to stop herself from making some vague, empty promise like, it’ll be quick or it won’t hurt. Truthfully, she doubted either was true. Instead, she just said: “Goodbye.”

She made for the door, hand on the handle when Roaki reached out with a surprisingly small voice. “Do you…” the girl said, grunting with frustration. Besca turned to find her staring at the ground, working the sheet with her fingers. “Do you think…I’m disgusting?”

“Disgusting?” Besca balked inside. It was an absurdly childish question, which would have been perfectly acceptable coming from any other child. For a moment, she did see Roaki that way, and she felt sympathy burgeoning within her. “A few weeks ago, I…would have said yes,” she said, finally. “Now, though, I think you deserve a better person to answer that question.”

Besca knew what it looked like when someone was about to cry—better recently than ever, really—and Roaki was indecipherable. Silent, stony, she just nodded and said nothing. One might have been forgiven for thinking the girl had been lobotomized. But Besca knew better, because she also knew what it looked like when someone wanted to be alone, so they could cry without feeling ashamed about it.

She couldn’t feel for her the way Quinn seemed to, she tried, but she just couldn’t. Not yet. There was an instinct in her to stay, and talk, and offer her comfort the way she did to her pilots, but it was distant and buried in a lifetime of hateful fog. She was right, Roaki did deserve a better person, who could give her the compassion she was evidently too late for. All Besca could give her right now was respect. She nodded goodbye, and left Roaki alone to cry.

--

The world rocked around Quinn, even with her eye closed. It shook the senses from her, left her fuzzy-headed and drifting, and where usually the arms of her dreams swooped up to snatch her, this time they were late. She hung in somniatic limbo for an indistinguishable time, a mind in a void, not quite aware but not yet truly asleep. It was soft, and gentle, and there came with it a feeling of profound safety. Her fears and anxieties drifted from her like mist until she was a single-minded missile, hurtling ever-onwards to rest.

Then, as if suddenly reminded of her, she was caught and cradled down deep. Dark became darker, the last lines of her consciousness were plucked. She rocked end over end until there were no directions to know.

Her eye opened, or was already open and had been for some time. The sky was above her, a dark smear of black and abyssal purples and blues. Here and there were haphazard clusters of stars, like pinpricks, twinkling with random brightness on and off, in and out. The moon was far-flung and in an uncharted phase somewhere between full and waxing, but committed to neither so it hung in the air like a great silver-white bean.

The world rocked slowly beneath her. Wood beneath a soft towel, the deck of a boat swaying softly upon the waves of the lake. Hovvi’s lake. Her lake. The water was a similar sort of black as the sky, but the reflections were ridiculous. The stars were nowhere near the same, and the moon was a waning sliver, hanging upside-down like a white grin. The waves and ripples did not disturb it.

On the shore the details were fuzzier. There were impressions of a forest, dark, vaguely tree-shaped things stretched off into the distance at varying heights. Ablaze still sat limp upon the shore, legs in the water as if there were no shallows to speak of.

Quinn’s awareness wasn’t quite sober-sharp, but she had a significantly firmer grasp on her thoughts than she had while awake. It was as if something had drained most of the alcohol from her, or perhaps, more accurately, was shouldering some of its burden.

“What…” came the familiar voice of her small companion. “…Did you do to us?”

Quinnlash sat upon the railing, or inches above it. Her hands rubbed her face, pulled the skin low around her eyes. She blinked hard once, twice, and then hopped down from her impossible perch to stand on the deck above Quinn. She looked down at her hands, shook them, and snorted.

“Feels…fuzzy. Are you sssssss…sure we did this right?”

[double post]

Quinn was...

...Well, she was still a little bit fuzzy and a little bit dizzy. But less so. She could think properly again, and speak properly, for the most part. The dream was so much more chaotic than it had been up to that point; even in the beginning, with the black water and the mismatched reflections of the sun and moon, even then, it had made more sense, the stars had been achingly familiar. Now it was as wild and disarrayed as her thoughts had been up until she slept.

"I..." Her voice echoed oddly around the space, as though it was so much smaller than a lake. It hadn't done that since right after her phasing test, she thought, though she was still a bit muddled and might've forgotten something. But at least it wasn't as slurred and incomprehensible as it had been when she was awake, though she didn't really know enough what she'd been like to appreciate that. "I dunno. Think we did it right, but...maybe it...was...a bad idea."

Looking out at the meandering nightdark water, she could faintly see the buoy in the distance, and the two figures that were by it, dead still, locked there instead of swimming or even treading water. A sudden feeling of desolation took her and she hung her head. "I din't forget anythin' after all. It jus' made it worse."

A long beat of silence followed, and Quinn averted her eye from the distant head that she could somehow tell, even all this distance away and with all the darkness between them, was blonde. In lieu of that, she mirrored Quinnlash, staring down at her hands, curling them in and out almost meditatively.

"I don't unnerstan.'"

Her voice was slightly choked, though as usual emotions felt far away here, so there was no chance of her crying again, not really. "I don't unnerstan,'" she repeated, almost blankly, "why am I thinkin' these things about her?"

There was silence for a little while, punctuated by little, aggravated grunts as Quinnlash proceeded to stumble towards the rear of the boat, having seemingly not heard her. She wobbled onto the seat, leaned strangely sideways as though she thought it might propel her back to her feet—which it did anyway, of course. She mumbled, “This sucksh,” and turned back to Quinn, face scrunched up like she’d smelled something foul.

“Forget?” she said, incredulous. “‘Course you din’t forget. Think some ssssssssstupid drink s’gonna take our memories away? Need those. Mmh. Need those.”

“why am I thinkin' these things about her?”

Quinnlash threw up her arms. “‘Cuz she’s mom. Duh! That’s what she did. She got in, she put herself into our head, deep as she could, like a worm, but hey,” she hunched down low, at-eyes with Quinn. “Look. Watch. C’mere…”

Twirling around and nearly falling over again, Quinnlash walked right off the back of the boat and into the water. Or rather, onto it. Her feet made contact with the strange waves and sunk no further than an inch in. With each step, the water flattened and hardened like sand, and when eventually her imbalance got the better of her and she flopped down onto it, it didn’t splash so much as rustle like grass in the wind. More grumbling, more pushing herself upright again at impossible angles. As she rose, she flung her arms like she was slamming a door shut, and the whole world followed that motion, smearing entirely out of focus one way, and then snapping back into clarity the other.

They were no longer on the lake, but overlooking it from high above. Quinn still sat in the boat, which now rested in the grass of a cliff—though still rocked as if upon the gentle waters. The lake was below, complete with its smudgy surface and poorly-rendered reflections. Off to the distant, lower side was the dark blur of Hovvi, dotted with lights that were clearly meant to be coming from inside the buildings, but more than a few simply hung in the air, attached to nothing.

Around them, the cliff was empty, but right away Quinn would know that was wrong. It shouldn’t be. There should be something here. There was something here, she knew it, even though she’d only ever seen it the one time.

They were where her house had been.

In the vacant grass Quinnlash stood triumphantly with her hands on her hips. “Lookit this. She’s gone here. They both are. Plucked’em out. This is where we forget. But out there, where it’s real, we need to remember. We need to remember so we know who to hate.”

It was disorienting, the way that Quinnlash shifted the scene. Disorienting the way that everything seemed off, even though Quinn knew why it was. Disorienting the way she talked about their mother, and the way she...got deep into their head and stayed there. Disorienting, the way it felt to once again look out over the lake from the cliffs, like everything had moved back to the start again, almost like nothing had ever happened.

But most disorienting of all was the undisturbed grass.

She knew, of course, that the house wasn't here in the dreams. She couldn't see it from the boat, Quinnlash had told her that it was gone, even, that she'd taken it away because their parents were takers. But it was one thing to know something, and quite another to experience it.

Though the boat was still moving like it was on the water, Quinn slowly, almost meditatively, walked out the back and set her feet that were all of a sudden barefoot on the grass, felt it tickling her feet, not at all considering that she'd never walked barefoot on grass and that this was probably not at all what it felt like in the waking world. No, she was preoccupied, as she meandered almost in a trance to the very edge of the cliff and sat down, staring out at the wildly shifting lake from far above it. On an impulse she reached her hand out as though to touch it. And even here, in this dream where she felt so much less, her heart burned like fire as she looked out over what Hovvi used to be.

"...But out there, where it’s real, we need to remember. We need to remember so we know who to hate."

She finally tore her gaze away from the false town and looked back over her shoulder at the tiny self that stood there, little hands balled into fists. And by way of response, she let her shoulders sag and lay back, looking up at the stars decoupled from the sky. She sighed. Her voice, when she spoke, was heavy as lead and quiet in the evening gloom, filled with a nameless futility.

"...Can you help me hate them?"

The sky above her righted itself, at least partially. Patches of blurry umber snapped into focus, and there the stars were crisp and vibrant against the black. But it wasn’t stable, it didn’t last; if she looked closely she could practically tell where Quinnlash’s focus was, where she meant to put things back together, and where they slipped from her grasp. Far away, the stars dripped from the sky in shooting strands of silver, falling clear past the horizon, and then lapsing through it.

“Incredible, right? All the things we lost. All the things we never had to lose.”

The moon high above began to quake, pulling at both ends as if it meant to split in half. Instead, gradually, it became two overlapping discs, still vibrating in the distant, imaginary void, and it was impossible to discern which one lay atop the other.

“So long, alone. Trapped. What they did to us…what they made us into, taking away all we could ever be. They stole love from us.”

There was a heavy sound, a long-delayed splashing of water as something cleaved through the lake. A great shadow was cast over the cliff. Standing at the edge, tall enough that its head was level with them, was Ablaze. Quinnlash stood before it, her back to Quinn, but her tiny voice was as clear as it might have come from her own mouth.

“Hate…all they left us was hate,” she said, and with a rumbling sound, Ablaze’s eye burst to life, washing them both in dark cherry light. “It was always inside us, wasn’t it? Confused, looking for purpose—but we found that too, just like we found love. No, I…I can’t teach you how to hate them. We already know how to hate them. We were just…we weren’t ready, before.”

She turned to Quinn, practically a silhouette. A crackling like ice. Her horns split suddenly into forking branches, and a dark liquid dribbled down her scalp. The dreamscape sagged, the grass beneath them fractured and sank, the moons dropped like coins into the lake of pitch. All that remained was the bloody tide of Ablaze’s eye, and the dark figure of Quinnlash, reaching out to her with a look of joy so pure, so eager, Quinn might not have recognized her. The girl’s hair shimmered white, just as it had the night before the duel with Roaki—so brief as to be almost imperceptible.

“But we will be.”

Then the light vanished. The void enwrapped her again, cradled her, held her close to its endlessness as if she were something precious. In that emptiness, Quinn felt the weight of a promise sink her down, slowly, gently, until she could be absolutely certain she would never be alone.

And then she woke up.

Everything was dark, and still, and quiet, and empty, and void. Quinn floated through it in a haze; half awake and half not, she was embraced softly by a wonderful senseless ataraxia. There was something comfortable about the eternity that she was bathed in, something beautiful and certain, in a life where nothing ever was. Like a warm blanket on a cold night, wrapping her up, cradling her, keeping everything soft and numb.

A part of her subconscious mind—a part that was slowly but steadily growing—wanted to stay there. Stay in that perfect peace. The world outside was...so confusing. So difficult and complicated. But this—this tranquil anesthetized bliss—it was all so simple. So easy. Nobody could take anything away from her here. Nothing could hurt her. She didn't need do anything. She didn't need to think about anything. She didn't need to think at all. Here, she could just...

Sink.

Sink, Quinnlash.

And she did.

Until suddenly an image flashed through her mind. There and gone in the space of of half a blink. Perhaps it was longer, or perhaps shorter; time meant so little here, and it was so hard to bring herself to care. The image was impossible to tell as well; no rhyme or reason in the brief space her mind had to breathe before it was slowed down again. It was...it was white, she knew that. It was all white, with—with some silver-gray, and—

In the waking world, Quinn's body shifted.

The image retreated, and she began to slowly, certainly sink again. Sink into peace. But then another image blurred past. She caught some of it this time; it was a person, a person with brown hair, but that was all she could tell. And then after that, another. Again, almost no rhyme or reason, as Quinn's mind struggled against itself. Nothing to do. Nothing to remember. Just a woman with brown—

Besca.

And all at once, that brief eternity between dream and reality—her wonderful little pocket of blurred nothingness—shattered. It was filled in the space of a heartbeat with flashes of blazing colors, pieces that didn't fit together that shattered into shards all around her. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, she wanted to go back into the soft quiet where nothing could hurt, her almost sleeping form began to thrash, and standing above and behind it all was Quinnlash outlined against the bloody red of Ablaze's single blazing eye as her horns split and contorted and thick black liquid began to drip where they were attached to her head, her look of joy, then—then—As she unconsciously gasped in frantic breaths of air—

"Nnnnnnnnhhh—"

"AH!"

Quinn cannoned upright to a sitting position, and the short, sharp cry spilled out of her room and rebounded through the dorms. Her eye was wide with disbelief and fear and filled with tears. She had just enough time to realize she was hyperventilating madly.

And then her body caught up to her brain.

Her own scream felt suddenly like someone was pounding nails into her skull. And it was immediately followed in rapid time by an intense and powerful nausea, enough that she could barely hold back another round of vomit as she flopped back down, pulled her cover over her, and curled up in a ball. As the minutes ticked by, the images blurred, and the instinctive terror abated. Her heaving breaths turned to shivers, and a long, feeble groan dribbled from her mouth before trailing off into nothing:

"Ughhhhh..."

There was a brief rebounding of Quinn’s panic, a surprise that it was there, then a scramble to soothe it. A thin sense of ease simmered within her only momentarily, before the ache and the nausea tainted it. That invisible hand within her recoiled, and she could practically feel her sink away, twisting uncomfortably with the new, awful sensations.

So, Quinn lay alone in the dark for a time. A bit odd, it was rare these days that no one came running at her cry. But the dorm wasn’t empty—she could hear sounds from the kitchen, vague activity, a single set of footsteps. It was many more minutes until, finally, the sliver of light from the cracked door widened, and a shadow stepped into the room.

“Hey, hun,” Besca’s voice was soft, quiet, a breath soaking the fabric by Quinn’s ear. Her footsteps were silent, not even her clothes rustled. A hand touched her gently over the sheets, pulled them back. “Don’t worry, you’re alright. You’ve just got a little hangover from drinking so much. Happens to almost everyone. Here—”

Besca held something close to her face. It smelled sweet, like apples, and in the faint light she could see it was a glass with a long straw poking up from it.

“Drink some juice, it’ll help. Little sips, c’mon. I brought some medicine too,” she set a tiny, plastic cup on the bedside table with what couldn’t have been more than a tablespoon of bright, cherry-colored liquid inside. “You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to, but it’s safe, I promise, and it’ll take the edge off that headache.”

Quinn's brief tenure alone in the darkness, absent of both Quinnlash and whoever was moving around outside of her door, was an upsetting one indeed. The pain in her head, the horrible sick feeling in her stomach...they cast her mind back years, to that awful, awful day she'd first seen the sunset. When her eye had burst from her skull. So, all alone, there was nothing she could do but stare at the wall and try not to cry.

Then the door creeped open, and she turned her head leaving laconically to see what was happening, even through the light from the kitchen hurt to look at. When the shadow loomed in front of her, synapses sparked on her brain and her eye shot open. The memory of the pain and sickness...the shadow of a woman coming into her room...for just a brief, heart-stopping moment, her muddled mind was terrified, truly terrified and utterly convinced, that MOM had come back to punish her.

Then the moment passed, and the shadow revealed itself as Besca. So Quinn let that eye loll half-closed as she watched Besca, and her voice, so incredibly soft, spoke to Quinn. Told her what was going on. Told her why it was going on. Offered her apple juice and said it would make it better, so even though she didn't want to put anything on her stomach again ever, Quinn leaned forward slightly and sucked some juice through the straw. Just a few sips before she leaned back again.

Then the other thing Besca has said. Quinn looked distrustfully at the little cup on her nightstand. It had been made fairly obvious after Quinn had discovered what her parents did to her that she now looked very fearfully at any medicine.

But...

But Besca was giving it to her, right? She trusted Besca.

So, feebly, she reached out a hand for the brilliant red stuff. She looked at it again, eyeing it suspiciously.

Then she tilted back her head and dribbled it into her mouth.

The instant it touched her tongue she gagged on the taste, nearly choked, and spat back up most of it. She only swallowed about a third of it in the end, the rest ending up on either her own face or on the covers piled on her as she coughed.

When she spoke, weak, humiliated tears starting to bead already in her eye, her voice was thin, hoarse, and reedy; barely even there.

"I'm...I'm sorry..."

Besca couldn’t help smiling just a little. It wasn’t the state of Quinn that was funny, and it certainly wasn’t her attempt to keep the medicine down. But how many times had this been her, back in her youth—or, if she was being honest, long after her youth as well. How many times had her own mother found her like this, curled up on the couch in their living room after a night spent rebelling against her father’s growing legacy. It had taken her a great many headaches to find her place, and a great many more to accept it.

Their journeys were different, but where Quinn’s drunkenness had frightened her for how unrecognizable her path had been, this was a very familiar pit stop along the road. No matter where they came from, no matter their upbringing or their resilience—pretended or otherwise—almost every pilot ended up here at some point. Sick, in bed, fighting off the urge to vomit and regretting ever discovering the taste of alcohol.

She dabbed up the spilled medicine and brushed some of the hair out of Quinn’s face. “Don’t be sorry, hun. Not about this, not about anything. Just close your eyes and rest. Drink the rest of the juice if you can. This’ll pass quick enough. If you feel like you’re gonna be sick, just use this,” she pulled a small trash bin over beside the bed.

“Deelie’s out at the sims, but I can stay for a bit if you want.”

With the matter of the Tormont girl settled, most of her administrative duties could be handled with a tablet for the moment. She wasn’t excited to break that news to Quinn, but she also wasn’t about to do that now[. They could cross that bridge over dinner, though part of her was tempted to say nothing. Maybe the week would pass, and Roaki would be whisked away and no one would notice. Of course, even if she didn’t say anything, Roaki would.

Besides, she didn’t want to lie to Quinn. Not about this. Besca was a firm believer that lies of omission were sometimes necessary, but this was important. She wouldn’t take this away from her—not when she was about to lose it anyway.

It took Quinn a few minutes to fall asleep. More time than it had before for sure; she didn't manage did drink all the juice, more or less half wasn't bad before she nodded off. Her dream, most unlike her last sleep, was more typical; a warm fuzzy daze that she'd never remember on waking up, but would let some of that warmth linger in her.

And it did. Next time she woke up--her clock said it was late morning--the warm Safie fuzzies replaced the splitting headache. It wasn't quite gone, there was still a little bit of both it and the sickness lurking in the back, no but she could mostly ignore them.

She rose, blinking the sleep from her eye and yawning cavernously. She didn't quite realize it, but with the brief break she'd had with Besca and the medicine--though just like the dream it was a bit of an indistinct blur--she'd slept for nearly twenty-four hours. So really, it was small wonder she felt a bit sluggish as she managed to extricate herself, and finally stand on her somewhat shaky feet.

Only after she looked around did she realize this wasn't her room, it was Besca's. She felt a brief tug of guilt, but ignored it as, at long last, she walked back out into the commons in what felt like the first time in years.

Everything was as it had been for the past few weeks. With one very major exception that brought a faint smile to Quinn's face. For the first time in who knew how long, Besca was there when she woke up. Just her presence was a bit of a balm for Quinn, and the last of the headache flickered and died as she walked over with somewhat unsteady feet and wrapped her in a brief hug that was meant to be tight, but she wasn't the absolute strongest right now, as she buried her face in the crook of the woman's neck. Despite the day and night she'd had, just being around Besca made her feel miles better.

"Morn'ng, Besca..."

The dorm was still quiet, and as she made her way out into the commons, Quinn could see Dahlia was absent again. But indeed Besca was there, sitting at the counter with her tablet to one side, and a bowl of cereal on the other. She’d been here nearly the entire time since Quinn had fallen asleep again, save for a brief aside to take a call on the bridge—she wasn’t about to risk missing another one after what had happened last time.

If there was a single, silver lining, it was that relations with Casoban seemed to be on a slowly-smoothing track towards reconciliation. Eusero’s diplomats had allegedly left empty-handed; the recent cycle of talk shows endlessly praising Casobani politicians and culture and celebrities had abruptly stopped. Now the focus was back on Helburke, and recent—likely exaggerated—tensions regarding some oceanic dispute, which would be quickly forgotten the next time a duel came around.

Peace, she told herself. Runa’s survival. That’s what we’re paying for, and dammit, we’re getting a good deal. How many international unions can be bought with one life?

It’s worth it. It has to be.

“Morn'ng, Besca...”

Quinn startled her, but the girl was quiet and as unintimidating as anything. “Oh! she brought and arm around and pulled Quinn into a hug. “Morning to you too. Feelin’ better? Restocked on cereal if you want some.”

She set her tablet aside and let Quinn go, brushing her hair back. She smiled. “Deelie’s out again, but I told her she has to be around for dinner tonight, so we’re eating together. Here or out, doesn’t matter—your call.”

For just a moment, snuggling against Besca in that brief hug, everything really did seem okay. And maybe even like it'd be okay.

Then the hug ended, and the world came rushing back, with all the associated aches and pains. She wasn't incredibly nauseous anymore, but she certainly didn't feel good. Her headache had abated and being around Besca really did help to distract her, but it still thrummed cloyingly against the back of her skull. And the physical pain was only half the battle, really. If even that.

But she nodded, seeming almost solemn by the look on her face. But then, it wasn't uncommon these days for that drawn look to be present. "Y—yeah. I feel...better."

After a moment, she left Besca's side, retrieved the milk from the fridge, and sat down, though she pulled her chair much closer so she could still lean against Besca as she did so. Her pouring of the cereal was a bit clumsier than is usually would be, and she blinked blearily again and let her mind go slack as she began to spoon the cereal into her mouth. Though it didn't show, a brief, dim glow of happiness lit her up. It was her favorite.

Then, as she stared off into space and her eyelid dropped a bit lower, her thoughts wandered back to last night, or...whenever it was, and what preceded her brief moment of wakefulness. Without really realizing it she dropped her head slightly, face turning downcast as she thought. She didn't remember much of it at all, which was a mercy. But what she did remember was the feeling of blissful peace that was painfully shattered. She paused a moment before she spoke. She'd never really talked about her dreams with Besca, largely because of the shame attached to Safie. But...it was okay to talk to her, right? And, as the pressure of the memory built, Quinn needed to talk to someone.

Her voice, when she finally broke the silence, was quiet and tremulous, almost indistinct.

_{"...hdabddrimlassnht..."}

Then, realizing that even she could barely understand that, she took a deep breath and tried again.

"...I had a bad dream last night."

She was quiet again, looking down at the bowl of cereal like it held the answer to everything and biting her lip. A lump was starting to form in her throat, and it was evident in her voice as she pulled herself inward, dropping the spoon with a clink.

"...I don't remember much of it. But..." she shuddered as she recalled an echo of that empty calm, "...everything was..was so dark. So dark and quiet and...peaceful." She screwed her eye shut. "It was like...like nothing could hurt me. Then..." An image leapt to her mind then, the vague blur of Besca's face. "You...you were there, I saw you. But..."

A tidal wave of shame rushed through her, and her right hand resting on the table clenched into a tight white fist. She opened her mouth, but the words stuck in her throat. She shoved the bowl out of the way, ignoring the half-eaten cereal as she dropped her face into the crook of her arm. It took several seconds and a great deal of effort for her to finally choke out through the guilt and shame, "...But I--I wished...I wished you weren't."

Her voice shrank to a tiny hoarse whisper, almost inaudible through her arm,

_{"I'm sorry."}

This, too, was not an entirely unfamiliar place for Besca to find herself. As many mornings as she’d awoken with her head pounding, she’d had just as many nights plagued with bad dreams. Unfortunately, the similarities ended there; it had become clear that Quinn’s dreams were different from the dreams of others. As long as she’d been here, and for as many troubles as she’d had, Quinn had rarely—perhaps ever, even—listed nightmares among them.

Perhaps that should have been concerning, but right now Quinn wasn’t asleep. The dreams couldn’t touch her here. A part of Besca briefly, selfishly saddened at the idea that whatever spark of her had appeared in Quinn’s sleep had been unwelcomed, but it was gone before the girl had even uttered her meek apology.

Besca put an arm around her, rustled fingers through her hair. “Nothin’ to be sorry about, hun. Dreams are dreams. Important thing is that you’re feeling better. Here, c’mon, eat up. Want to get your energy back, get some momentum in you. S’what always helped me.”

Leading by example, she took another spoonful from her own bowl, which had been somewhat neglected as she’d worked. “So, start thinkin’ about what you want to do today, help get yourself moving again.”

Quinn nodded and exhaled heavily, then picked up both the spoon and the bowl so she could lean back into the comforting warmth of Besca's shoulder as she ate. The cereal had gotten soggy by now. But that was okay; she kind of liked it better when it was soggy anyway. So instead of picking ineffectually at it as before, she really gave it her all to eat it. Her stomach was still a little bit upset, but it seemed to settle a bit as she slowly and steadily ate, and contemplated her day in silence.

The immediate thing that leapt to mind was that she wanted to check Ablaze again. It had become a bit of a daily ritual, after all. That, and she supposed it was helping her look at it more as her own and less as an object of terror. As much as she tried to shunt it to the back of her mind, the image of the cannon glaring down on her in the streets of Hovvi wasn't an easy one to ignore. And, she supposed, she wanted to talk to Tillie more, if she was there. She was nice, and leaning into Besca as she ate cereal notwithstanding, Quinn was still feeling a keen sense of lonesomeness. Maybe--hopefully--the dinner with Deelie would help alleviate that some.

Speaking of, she needed to decide where she wanted to eat. And as much as she loved the places in the Aerie, she wanted less to eat with her family as much as spend time with them. So maybe she could help Dahlia make something in the kitchen. She was a pretty hopeless cook, but hopefully Deelie and Besca would be enough to make up for it, right?

And then the other thing she needed to do today. Something that she selfishly wanted to put off out of sheer embarrassment; returning to Roaki after she'd made a fool of herself, throwing up like that. And then she'd doubly made a fool of herself by getting drunk in response to it.

She briefly paused eating, and a moment passed.

"I think..."

She wasn't particularly looking forward to anything until dinner. The pause dragged on as she thought, until: "I still need to see Doctor Follen this week. And I think I'll visit Roaki after, since I'll be in medical anyway."

Then, with the clink of a spoon, she resumed eating.

Besca didn’t know why Quinn’s plans surprised her. The girl lived on a schedule, and stuck to her habits as often as was physically possible—healthy or not. So it should have been obvious that she’d want to go see the Tormont girl again today, and not, say, in a week when it would be most convenient and infinitely less upsetting. Part of her regretted that she hadn’t just acquiesced when Roaki asked to just get it over with. Quick, painless, she’d be cooling in the morgue out of sight, where she couldn’t affect Quinn anymore. It was the logical answer in some ways, the one that eschewed political responsibility for the sake of her family; the tough, but compassionate decision that would have taken time to be forgiven for, on all fronts, but at least she could have felt like it was worth it.

Of course, now that wasn’t the case. Now she had other feelings. She had pity for people she wasn’t used to pitying, and guilt for having failed to pity them sooner. She would have liked to say that her hesitation stemmed solely from the way Quinn would have felt about her actions, but the reality now was that her own conscience wouldn’t stand for it either.

So, she’d developed a moral compass. Great—it still pointed nowhere. She had no idea what to do. Sitting there, Besca’s mouth went dry, and she suddenly remembered how bad she was at actually being someone’s family. It wasn’t a matter of being out of practice, either; sister, niece, cousin, daughter—especially daughter—she’d been shit at all of them.

Lie. That was instinct. Repugnant, but natural. She could pull it off, she could convince Quinn that Roaki was ill, or that there was some kind of test being run today, or something, and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind the girl wouldn’t believe her. But, a week would pass, and then inevitably they’d have that crushingly familiar conversation. Besca was a natural there, too, but there was something lost between people after a lie that stark. The idea of losing anything between her and Quinn horrified her.

Honesty was next, an only-recently acquired taste. Really, what made this any different from breaking the news about anything else? Quinn was as powerless here as she was when she’d become a pilot, when she’d been forced to link with the Modir that destroyed her home, forced to duel, to interview. What was this but another stone on the table?

Too many stones, she thought. And the table’s a kid.

But what did that leave? She couldn’t lie, she couldn’t be honest, and she couldn’t just stay silent and hope she turned invisible. So what could she do?

“That…sounds great, yeah.”

Fucking. Idiot.

“As long as you’re feeling up to it, I mean. Don’t feel bad if you need to stay in, lie down a little more. God knows I needed to take it easy after my first hangover. I could square things with Follen if you wanted to take a raincheck today.”

Quinn shook her head, firm but quick. Any more might reawaken the nausea or headache and that was the last thing she wanted, but an emphatic head-shake was an emphatic head-shake all the same. "Nuh-uh, I've already been putting it off. I was going to see him yesterday before," she swallowed uncomfortably.

"I just really need to see him soon. Aaaannd...I wanted to ask his advice myself, too." She sighed. "Roaki still doesn't really seem to want to live and I wanted to ask him what he thinks I should do. Last time I asked him, he mentioned making her an informant like...um...what did he say his name was...Gast?" She took a deep breath, collecting herself as her thoughts began to run away with her. "He said she'd be safe if she did but I never brought it up because I never felt like it was the right time."

She started to go on, but her head started to throb again. She winced, then took another spoonful of cereal and slurped it down, staring off into the distance. She should've mentioned it to Roaki by now, she knew. But a part of her knew that it wasn't because she never felt like it was the right time.

She was scared. Simple as that.

Scared that Roaki would yell at her for suggesting she work for Runa. Or, even worse, terrified that Roaki would just...say nothing at all. Would turn and face the wall again. And Quinn had no idea how she'd react to that.

Roaki didn't deserve to die.

After a long spell of cereal slurping and spoon clinking, she spoke again: "I just..." she lapsed into silence again, trying to collect her thoughts as they started to fray, then hung her head as her voice dropped to just above a whisper in a tone filled with self-loathing and self-pity.

"I just want someone to tell me what to do."

It took a great deal of restraint to keep herself from getting angry. Of course, not at Quinn. If everything else in the whole world had been going perfectly, the idea that Quinn might be seeking out Follen for advice on any topic which might be encountered between a person’s first breath and their last, would still tempt Besca to violence.

Again, not at Quinn.

It didn’t surprise her that he’d suggested making Roaki an informant. It had worked for Ghaust, and in fact, Runa’s acquisition of a high-profile Helburkan pilot openly derided as a traitor by his homeland had been good for appearances. Even Eusero had focused more on shaming the Great Houses than whatabouting the consequences.

Roaki, however, was not Ghaust. The Tormonts carried ancient prestige, yes, but the girl had seen to sullying it on her way out. Not to mention that, when Ghaust came to them, it had been easy to portray his distaste for dueling as a virtue to the people of Casoban, who were understandably accepting of someone who didn’t want to kill their heroes. They didn’t mind Ghaust, in fact as the years went on they seemed to even like him. They hated Roaki, and she’d given plenty them of reason to.

Before, bringing her on would have been a PR nightmare and might have pushed Casoban into Eusero’s arms even quicker. But to do it now, with their deal already in place? The Accord would strain, and if it didn’t break, Runa wouldn’t have a friend left on Illun by year’s end. Complete and utter catastrophe. Yes, it did sound like something Follen would recommend.

Quinn withered, and Besca let her frustrations go with a sigh.

“Me too, hun,” she said, brushing a hand through Quinn’s hair. “All the time. Most days I wake up feeling like I missed the instructions, and no one seems to be able to send me a copy. I…don’t know if that ever goes away, but you do eventually figure out that there are no instructions. No one has the answers, not all of them—even if they say they do. You just gotta…do it, on your own, sometimes. And you’ll make mistakes, and you’ll learn, and sometimes you’ll make the same mistakes again because most people don’t get good at something only doing it once or twice. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be right every time. You just have to do your best. That’s how your best gets better.”

Quinn's head stayed hung for another few moments yet. It seemed almost like she hadn't heard Besca, only a quiet "mmh" confirming that she had as she stared into the mostly empty cereal bowl like the brown-tinted milk held the secrets of the universe. A dull ache returned to the back of her head, and she echoed Besca, letting a long, slow sigh seep from her mouth.

She'd tried her best to help Deelie and now she was locking herself in sims out of pure worry for Quinn. She'd tried to help Roaki, but she still didn't seem to care about living, and Besca was still driving herself to distraction trying to handle the political fallout of her being here. It seemed like no matter how hard she tried, the things that she cared about only grew further away, and the things that she didn't care about but everyone else did like who won the duel or your phase speed is so fast seemed to cling to her no matter if she tried to distance them. Nobody cared that she'd never wanted to be a pilot, and that looking at Ablaze still sent a harsh shiver down her spine. But it didn't matter. She needed to. She'd needed to, or else she would've been sent back.

So if she could do all these things everyone else cared about except her, and she had to do them, then why did the things that she wanted need to be locked behind a thousand closed doors? It wasn't...it wasn't fair! Why didn't what she wanted matter? Why was everyone important except her?

Her voice was thick and strained, if quiet, when she spoke. Almost broken too. A sure sign that something had to give, and it was almost certainly going to be Quinn. Tears had beaded in her eye, though it was a little tricky to see from the angle she was leaning over the bowl.

"How long until my best is good enough, Besca?"

Besca let Quinn go, frowned, and found herself wishing she could smoke in here. She knew this week was going to be trouble but she hadn’t expected it right out of the gate. More fool her, with how things had been—why would she ever expect mercy? ‘When will it be good enough?’ she asked in echo, and bitterly the answer came: ‘Never.’ But you couldn’t say that, not to a kid, and certainly not to Quinn. The cynic in her believed it though; Quinn could give her best every single moment of every single day, and surpass every pilot in Illun’s history by every metric, and it wouldn’t matter. The world would push her further, and keep pushing her until she collapsed, and then it would toss her aside. Maybe in memory her valor would be honored, and people would appreciate her suffering, but it would only be because they couldn’t squeeze any more out of her.

Perhaps the more appropriate answer would have been: ‘When you’re dead,’ but that seemed like an even worse thing to say.

This was the pilot’s lot, and Besca had seen it claim them all, sooner or later. She was fooling herself believing she could bring any true happiness to people like Quinn. Eventually she’d see through her, eventually she’d want more than comfort or sympathy, and when Besca couldn’t give it to her, this would all come crumbling down. Then, brick by brick, she’d rebuild it for whoever came next, because that was her lot.

“I don’t know,” she said, eventually. “I’m sorry, hun. I don’t. It might be tomorrow, it might be a year from now. Some people wait their whole lives for it to be good enough. By then they either give up, or they keep trying, and settle for the good they can do.”