Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

All the tension inside of Quinn's body drained out and she slumped backwards. She leaned against the wall at an awkward angle and there was a sharp clicking sound as her plugs rattled against the drywall. Somehow that sound—that feeling—had become familiar to her. Not even familiar; comforting. And something about that made her so horribly upset.

"...Did I really?"

She went quiet. Thinking about something. The expression on her face steadily became more and more drawn. Minutes passed before she pulled herself upright again, looking...not at Dahlia, but in her general direction.

"Besca said she told you about the water."

She took three deep breaths. Then slowly, almost meditatively, she picked up her braid and reached behind it with both hands, just above the main neural plug. Fiddled with something.

"...They said it was because I looked outside."

The fiddling ceased. The knot came undone.

In dead silence, the eyepatch peeled away from her face and fluttered to her lap like a mourning ribbon, revealing an eye socket that was absolutely mangled. And not just the socket; her entire right orbital and then some was covered in ragged white scar tissue. Her one functioning eye remained downcast.

"I don't—know what really happened to it. I don't think it was good."

She grazed her hand over it, feeling the unfamiliar, uncomfortable skin. Thick. Callused. Almost numb to the touch.

"I've never taken it off before. I've never even seen it."

Then slowly, almost unwillingly, she raised her head and looked her sister straight on. Her eye—the one that still worked, anyway—barely held back a tsunami of sorrow and despair.

"...Why did this have to happen, Dahlia?"

Amygdala Circuit

"There’s been some…developments. She’s still here. She’s in holding."

Quinn frowned. She didn't like that.

She didn't like any of that.

From what little she remembered of Dahlia's rescue—god she was like a superhero—she distinctly recalled that Roaki was going to have to have—have her leg cut off. She thought. She had no illusions that people on the Aerie would like her, but...

Frustration nipped at her heels, and her visible brow slanted with a barely-visible combination of irritation and confusion. "Why is she in a holding cell instead of in medical after what happened? That just seems...cruel."

And that was an excellent way of distracting herself from the other thing Besca had said. Developments. What did developments mean? At least she was alive, but the vagueness was enough to set Quinn's teeth on edge. Her stomach dropped out from under her as the thought of something terrible happening—some horrible complication, a growth in her heart, something like that—bled through her body like dye.

She freed herself from the wall and unwound herself, sitting on the edge of the bad instead, staring at the floor. The satisfaction and...glee that she'd felt when she'd taken Blotklau's legs off ricocheted through her head. A deep breath. Two. Three.

When she looked up, her face was writ with sheer mulish stubbornness. Don't even try to change my mind, it seemed to say.

"I'm going to see her today. Soon."

Amygdala Circuit

---

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn shook her head, and her voice began to level out. "No, never. She's never hurt me. We just..."

She paused. How would she describe what it was like talking to Quinnlash?

She shrugged helplessly. "...We just talk. About all kinds of things. What I think, how I feel about stuff. And she really wants to know why I feel the way I do too." She paused to collect herself. "She talks too, about people mostly. My—" Her voice strained, "—them, she talks about them—the people on the station, Doctor Follen...all kinds of things."

She looked between Dahlia and Besca and a ghost of a smile flittered across her face for the barest fraction of a second before it was crushed back down. "She likes you both a lot. She got mad."

"Like the last time we talked, it was right before the duel, we talked about—"

Her eye snapped wide like she'd just remembered something very important, bounced back between the two of them again. How had she forgotten? How could she have let herself forget? Another searing shot of guilt lanced down through her veins. Her voice, so recently settled, began to tighten again. "—Roaki! Is she—how is—did Dahlia—" Her head whipped back to Dahlia, mouth immediately dry. "Did you—oh god—where is she?"

Amygdala Circuit

Even as Quinn had said it, a deep, faraway part of her knew she shouldn't have.

But she didn't answer right away. Couldn't, really. She—

She looked into Besca's eye, searching for something. Seeking. Probing. Digging as deep as she could. There was concern there, and she realized it was concern for her. There was confusion. There was caring and hope. And beneath all of it was something else. Something she recognized, but couldn't say, couldn't think about, something that hurt just as much as she wanted it.

But what there wasn't, was anger. Or hate. Or even indifference. None of it anywhere.

She turned, letting the barest fragment of vision skate over Dahlia. She was sitting on the bed, looking at her worriedly. Worry. She was worried. She wasn't—Quinn didn't think she was angry. Dahlia would never lie to her.

They didn't hate her.

Her face crumpled and she fell back into Besca. She kept crying. But instead of the long, terrified sobs of before, it was a soft, gentle weeping. Almost serene. Her family didn't hate her. She didn't understand why. She knew it was her fault, deep down. She knew that it was her presence that had doomed Hovvi.

And now...her family knew too. And they didn't hate her.

The quiet crying lasted for several minutes as she buried her head in Besca, cut through with words now and then. Simple words, simple ideas. I'm sorry, and thank you, and why?

But eventually, the tears stopped. She went quiet. She released Besca and slunk—like an animal still, but wary instead of hurt and terrified—back onto the foot of Dahlia's bed, where she leaned herself against the wall and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

"Do you—" She stopped, reached up, rubbed the tears away from her eye as she looked at Besca. "Besca, do you remember when—when I told you I heard a voice in...in Hovvi, telling me to run?" Even saying the word, there was something of that savage energy to it, that deep and primal urgency. Then she paused again, hesitant. It still felt wrong to tell someone about Quinnlash. But her family—

The more she spoke, the calmer her voice grew. It was still halting, but no longer so sickeningly shaky it felt like it would shatter at any moment. Her family was there, and they cared about her, and didn't hate her. "It's—it's still there. And it's in my dreams, and she's a little me. Both eyes, but they're black. She has horns, they're modium."

She realized suddenly how suspect that sounded, so she added hastily, desperate for her family to believe her, "But she's good! I promise! She told me to run in Hovvi, and she told me to get back in when the Modir were coming, and—" Her voice grew quiet. She hadn't told anybody this. Some of it to Doctor Follen, but not the whole truth, of course, not Quinnlash. She looked down at herself, wrung her hands where she'd clasped them in front. Fretted. Then finally,

"—And when I phase, she's what—she stops me from falling in."

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn was like a cornered animal. A cornered hurt animal. She pressed herself into Besca, shrinking terrified away from Dahlia as she stood.

"No—yes—it was there, it was there, I know it was," she gibbered, trying to get more words out than could fit in the space and only making things more garbled, "and the one from the lake—mine oh god it's mine now—it was LOOKING at me I saw it, and she said that it was hunting me and I needed to run and run and run and run—so I ran but it was still looking and it was going to kill me until Safie—"

She turned, burying her face in Besca, unable to bring herself to look at her sister. That concerned look on her face. It was too nice. Too nice, she didn't deserve it. Her voice was muffled now, but still she kept talking, words pouring out of her like water from a broken faucet. "And—and—and what else could it have meant, it found me in Runa, it knew I was there, it KNOWS MY NAME, it was looking for me! I brought them I'm the one that brought them to Hovvi and if I had just stayed inside none of this ever would have happened!"

She'd given up holding back the tears and was crying openly into Besca's stomach now. She was terrified of this. Terrified of how nice they were being.

It wasn't right. This wasn't how it should be going. They should be screaming at her, blaming her, sending her off the Aerie, putting her somewhere she couldn't hurt anybody anymore.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn's head was churning as she walked slowly—slowly—to Dahlia's room. It felt almost odd to be back in the Aerie. Haunting, almost. The cold white hallways felt like an artifact from a previous time, and it didn't feel like anything outside of medical even existed yet. She would enjoy sleeping in her own bed again for sure, but everything just seemed like there was a hazy filter of unreality spread across it.

Perhaps she just didn't want to think about what she had to say.

She'd had two days in medical. Two days of stewing with her thoughts. Two days of the secret burning a hole in her stomach. She hadn't told anybody yet. Dahlia should be the first to know. She was the one that Quinn felt the worst about. Her best friend. Her dad. Her home. Quinn had torn them all from her, just by being there. Her heart hurt more than any time since she'd first woken up on the Aerie all those weeks ago.

She'd thought she'd made her peace with Dahlia hating her after this. With Besca not talking to her. But the more she thought about it, the worse everything grew.

She stepped forward. Besca had never been such a force of anxiety before. When she'd asked her to come to see Dahlia, her voice had shaken so much she could barely get it out. It certainly wasn't any better now.

Knock, knock. "Deelie, it's—it's me. They let me out. I'm coming in."

She opened the door, awkward, quiet, shivering slightly despite the pleasant temperature, and sat down at the foot of Dahlia's bed. She looked at Dahlia. Looked at Besca. The pain in her eye was visible, even from a moderate distance. She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

She'd thought so much about what she could say to Dahlia. She'd spent days thinking about it. And she still didn't know.

"I—"

Another pause.

"...If you hate me after this I won't blame you."

She hugged herself close. "Before you got there, Deelie...the Modir with the sword. It—it talked to me." A shaky breath. "It knew my name." She'd said as much to Besca. She looked at her again. Back to Dahlia. Her breathing accelerated. One breath. Two. Three. Still fast and hard. Wasn't enough. Her vision began to blur around the edges. Her heart was pounding, up in her throat. Her voice sounded like it always did just before she broke into tears. But she held them back. She needed to.

"And it told me...it said it had—"

She covered her mouth. Closed her eye so she wouldn't need to see their faces, forced the rest of it out.

"It had found me there. And—and—" Her voice dropped to a whisper. It was all she could manage. "And that it had found me—in Runa."

She quaked silently. A tear started to roll down her cheek, and she hated herself for it.

"My fault. It was my fault my fault all my fault." The hand over her mouth slid up to cover her eye and socket, revealing teeth clenched so tight she felt like they would shatter like sugar glass. "I brought them to Hovvi. They were looking—hunting me. Everyone who died there—your dad and Safie and—and EVERYONE. THOUSANDS. IT'S ALL MY FAULT."

She stood up violently, revealing an eye puffy and red with held-back tears. "I—I should go," she stammered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so so sorry."

She ran for the door.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn hung her head. Besca was right. She did everything that she could. Everything.

"O...oka—"

She tried so hard. But sometimes things just didn't work out, right? Sometimes as hard as you tried, it didn't matter. She'd done her best. Wasn't that all that could be asked of her? It wasn't her fa—

Don't look, Quinnlash.

Alright! Wish me luck!

I found you in Runa. I found you here.

"NO!"

The word burst from her almost without warning and she thrashed, fighting against Dahlia's hold. Fighting weakly and getting nowhere, but fighting nonetheless, clawing uselessly at the air. Her breathing was loud and frenzied on the comm, and once again she started to scream. "No! God no god no no no!"

How many people?

Thousands, her cruel brain echoed back. Thousands, and now another one.

"Let me go! Let me go, please, no more, no more, please no more," her voiced lapsed back on itself, the frantic energy petering down as she tired herself out. Her struggles weakened quickly until before long Dahlia was holding a limp doll again. Still, she croaked feebly: "Please...no more, don't—don't let anyone else die—" Tears, momentarily arrested by her frantic outburst, poured out again, and she finally let herself close her eye, shutting Blotklau's dissolving carcass away.

"...Don't let anyone else die because of meee_eeeeee....."

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn's head spun. Just too much. Too much was happening. She let Dahlia take her by her thin, shaking shoulders, walking her to a rock to sit on. God. They did it. She was right. They did it. The hills passed around her in a blur. The craters of combat, Ablaze lying down before her, the sun above her head, Blotklau—

She stared at the smoking, blackened wreckage of Roaki's Savior that lay smashed upon on the side of the hill. Even from here, she could tell that something was wrong with it. Something was wrong with the head. It was the wrong shape, all twisted and warped like a crushed soda can.

She gave a ragged shout, muted and garbled and barely louder than her normal speaking voice, but no less pained for it:

"Roaki! Please! Roaki!"

She pulled herself away from Dahlia's gentle hands and tried to run, to break into a sprint, to ignore it like she'd done while in Ablaze. She tried. She really, really did. But now, at last, her body had reached its limit, and told her: no more. The second she shook free, her legs gave up and turned to jelly underneath her. She pitched forward, hitting the furnace-hardened ground and crumpling in on herself.

Still she tried to get up, to drag herself forward. Guilt burned in her stomach, pulling her ownwards. But she'd run herself to the end of her rope, and she knew it. And what would she even do? There was a moat around it by this point. Blood that she had spilled. So all she could do was watch the silent, ichor-drenched hulk in terror.

"Besca!" The tears still on her cheek and spinning in her head conspired to make her sound desperate. Like someone was dying in front of her. Like she'd killed someone just in front of her. And maybe she had. "Blotklau is—it doesn't—Roaki is still in there!"

Amygdala Circuit

For just a minute—a half-moment of peace—Quinn lay there, squeezing Dahlia like she'd disappear if she let go. Her voice, her great desperate sobs, blotted out everything. It was fine. Dahlia was here. Dahlia was alive. Everything would be okay.

But that moment didn't last long. The world began to assert itself, creeping back into that void of sensation and thought. And the first thing that tore through as Dahlia embraced her was stunning, eviscerating guilt. What gives you the right to be close to her? The Modir came to Hovvi for you. FOR YOU. It's all your fault. You killed Daz. You killed Safie. You KILLED. EVERY. ONE. Those sobs didn't get any louder, but they grew heavier. They tears flowed more freely. She gripped tighter and buried herself deeper, like she was trying to hide herself in Dahlia's arms. And at some point, though she wasn't quite sure when, her keening wails were punctuated with anguished, crumbling words.

"...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...! I'M SORRY!"

The words were already hard to understand. Her voice was too tired, panicked, and tear-stained to be clear. But then her guilt caught at her throat again. Force her mouth open. Forced the words out as she gripped so tightly she could feel her whole body shaking from the strain. And then the guilt screamed with her voice.

"It's my fault, it's my fault, it's ALL my fault," she babbled, brain caught in a short-circuiting logic loop. "He was looking for me, he was looking for me, he found me, he found me before he was hunting me they came for me I led them there I let them in and without me Safie—" She went totally limp, barely holding on to her sister as she plunged further and further into self-loathing. Her voice broke and the sobs decayed, then collapsed into barely-breaths cut through with miserable, mewling apologies.

"_{I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't hate me...I'm sorry, I'm...}"