Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia joined her, panting, and showed no qualms about using the wall for support. She leaned back and slid down to a sit, peeling the helmet off her head. Hair was sweat-stuck to her face, she blew strands out of her mouth and took long draws from her own water bottle. It seemed like she was even more winded than Quinn was. Perhaps that shouldn’t have come as such a surprise; Dragon wasn’t a marathon Savior after all, it was a sprinter.

“Good,” she breathed hard between gulps. “You’re getting quicker. S’good. Gotta watch the blindspot—if I hadn’t caught you with that hook, I think you would’ve gotten me.”

These sessions had been good for Dahlia, too. Teaching was more difficult than she’d suspected it would be, harder than Besca or Ghaust made it look, and she was always anxious that she might explain something poorly, or unintentionally help foster bad habits. Her lessons weren’t perfect, and were far more about instinct and reflex than anything else, but seeing Quinn improve so much in such a short time—especially with her particular background—gave her confidence.

It also reminded her that one day, perhaps sooner than not, Quinn might have to put what she’d learned to use. That was much harder to square herself with, but she tried, if for nothing else than to make things for Quinn easier. There was enough stress in this job already.

“We can call it for now, what are you feeling for lunch? Tohoki Grill? CB Danes? We could always grab whatever’s in the mess, or something from the vending machines. Your call—I’m starved, I’ll eat anything.”

It was true enough, but Dahlia and Besca had both been making efforts to give Quinn choices where they could. They kept the schedule as strict as the higher-ups commanded, but when it came to things like meals, or movie night, or even just what she did with her spare time, it was important that she felt she could choose.

She got up off the ground, tossing her gloves and pads into the hamper. She gave her sister an expectant smile. “So? I’ll text Besca once we’re settled down.”

Amygdala Circuit

The earth shook with the footsteps of giants.

Enavant vaulted the mountaintop, coming down hard on the forest decline. He slid, the trees snapped beneath his hip and he flattened a wide swath on his way to the base. Desmon Solier’s body sweat through the chill of the cockpit, but for now all he could feel were the seconds clawing for hold as they ripped by.

Twenty to go.

The hills opened up before him, miles and miles of shallow rises and river-marked valleys. Plenty of space at a glance, but was it really enough?

Behind him a low, bestial howl pierced the wind.

It would have to be enough. He hit the mountain’s bottom and kicked off into a sprint. His Savior was larger than the average, but still fast. Desmon had run track as a boy, he had the form, and the beast had the lungs. Even if he wouldn’t win out in the long run, he only had to last fifteen more seconds.

“She’s just left Spectre,” Toussaint’s voice came through the comms. Normally a composed man, Desmon could hear the barest hint of revulsion in his voice. “You’ll have time but you need as much distance as you can get.”

Enavant pushed harder, ran faster. He didn’t think about Spectre, about the sound of Lousei’s screams before control had cut her comms. She was already dead when he’d left her, or as good as. Mourn later, win now.

Five seconds.

He stomped through the narrow valleys, the courses of centuries-old rivers changed underfoot. Hands digging into the hillside, he pulled himself up onto a level stretch of the plain as another howl reached him. He froze, whirled. In his hands he held a wing-tipped spear as long as he was tall, and as he clutched it tighter, a coil of white light spiraled up the blackened shaft. The tip burst into pale fire.

Enavant phased.

He felt a static tingling on the back of his brain. He heard his own thoughts in stereo, layered with the thoughts of something else that was trying to be him as much as it was trying to undo him. As long as it had taken him to run out the first clock, he now raced a second. Three years without a growth, but today he feared he might walk out of the cockpit and into the operating room.

If he walked out.

“She’s coming,” Toussaint said.

Enavant held his spear across his body, as though he meant to slash out with it, and waited. Waited. He did not need to wait for long.

It cleared the mountain he’d come from, a Savior silhouetted by the sun. It fell upon the side gracelessly, righting itself partway down and then leaping into the air and crashing down onto a low-rising hilltop. Earth and rock exploded beneath it, the hill caved into a storm of dust.

Enavant swung his spear out, the light on its haft and the fire of its tip left a white-hot trail that lingered behind as an after image, then two, then three. They hovered before him, spears of burning light. With his free hand he clasped one, twirled it ready and reeled it back.

Moments passed. The dark edged his vision, his Savior had no eyelids to blink it away.

A shape pulled a plume of dust to the side like cloth. Enavant stepped and launched the fiery spear forward. It soared like a bolt of lightning, the air shattered at its tip, and it connected with the dirt in an explosion of white flame that blew the dust away and replaced it with a gout of silvery smoke.

The shape carried on, buried itself into the earth. Desmon felt a spike of confusion as the smoke cleared and he saw that it was not a Savior.

It was an axe, and in the next moment it vanished.

She came charging from the ruined hillside. Smaller than he was, but more for the thinness of its limbs than its height. In one hand she clutched a second axe, a mirror to the first; its hilt was short and its blade curved wickedly down almost to the curled pommel. Her other hand reached out, clawed fingers clutching into a fist. The air bunched in her grasp, tore like paper, and with a sharp swipe she ripped her first axe back into being.

Blotklau ran at him, not like a person, but like a beast trying to mimic one. Her mouth was a fanged, panting grin, her eyes a foursome of red fury. She was drenched in ichor, and though there were a number of gashes on her body, Desmon knew that most of it had come from whatever was left of Spectre.

What would she leave left of him?

“Solier!”

Desmon snapped back, snatched another spear from the air and hurled it at her. Blotklau ducked low like a dashing wolve, digging her axes into the earth for leverage as the bolt passed over her, only managing to sear her shoulder. He grabbed the next one—god, she was close—and took a moment to aim, to try and anticipate. With as much force as he could muster, he loosed the spear, and with her drawing ever closer he was certain she couldn’t dodge it.

And he was right, she couldn’t. She didn’t. Instead, she whirled one of her axes up with incredible speed and slapped it by the haft, sending it spiraling out and unwinding into smoke.

There was no time to make more. There was hardly time to grab his spear with both hands. He wasn’t primed for a melee, he was meant for support. He’d done so well when it was two versus two, when he and Spectre had pinned the second opponent down and pierced its heart. Alone, what was he meant to do, really?

Blotklau opened her mouth wide, roared so loudly Desmon thought he could feel his real ears pop. She leapt into the air, axes raised high over her head, and all he could do was scream back and bring up his spear.

Then she was on him.

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Dahlia was on her, throwing fast but telegraphed hooks at Quinn’s head with her kick-pad gloves.

“Remember, don’t watch my hands, watch me,” she’d said. “Watch my body, watch my eyes. Don’t try to figure out what I’m going to do, I’ll tell you. You just have to listen.”

This had been their routine for the past month. Dahlia couldn’t really practice with her in Dragon, so when Quinn wasn’t getting adjusted to moving around in her own Savior, she brought the girl here, to the pilot’s gym.

When she’d first started, Besca had told her that CQC was the bedrock of all Savior combat. The giants moved as fast and felt as responsive as their own bodies, and if weapons couldn’t be relied upon—or in some cases, especially if they could be relied upon—then you had to know how to kick and punch like you meant it.

Dahlia still had trouble swinging at Quinn like she meant it. But they’d been rigorous, their hours were long and hard, and once they’d gotten her over the initial aversion to hitting back, Quinn picked up fighting pretty quick.

Besca came by when she could. Today she couldn’t, but she’d promised to meet them for lunch when they took a break. There was no window in the gym, but a wall clock promised that once this set was finished, they could be done until their evening session.

Amygdala Circuit

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Amygdala Circuit

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Amygdala Circuit

It was a hard question. Not for its answer, but for the journey to it.

For Besca, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d used the word for herself. A part of her had always considered the pilots king of a sort, and when it came to people like Dahlia, and Safie, and for a time even Ghaust, there was a pull, like the tugging of a fishing line.

Lana. Tayson. Bosco and Gilly. Natt Jr. Little Dora. Her own mother and father.

Besca hadn’t had family in a long, long time. It was so close to the word home for her, which only conjured up flashes of fire, the smell of blood and char. Faces in flame-cast shadows. Her heart grew leaden. No, when you lost your family, that was it. You weren’t borne another. Wasn’t supposed to work like that, not for anyone. Not for her.

For Dahlia, the wound was at once older than her own memories, and fresher than anything she’d ever remember again. The people she’d lost in Westwel were ghosts to her, distant as ancestors but still so real that she bore their presence in the color of her eyes, the softness of her face, the wave of her hair. When she mourned her old home, she often mourned it for the sake of others.

Hovvi she mourned for herself. She had known family there, as truly as anyone else ever had. And as she looked at Quinn she knew she’d lost it in those fires in a way the girl never had, and likely never could have. She’d never known the safety and comfort Dahlia had with her own father, and while her home had always been a fond place she longed to return to, Quinn’s had been a cage.

Dahlia pulled her in and hugged her tightly. Besca ran a hand through her hair, rested her head against Quinn’s. They held her for a long time, and though they didn’t speak, their answer was abundantly clear.

That nudge in the back of Quinn’s mind, that gentle suggestion that she was safe, faded. Not for danger, not for despair, but perhaps for the hope that she would feel it all on her own.

A Song of Ice & Fire: After the Spring [AU]

Amygdala Circuit

There was quiet, without intent.

What had they done to her?

A vague question, and Besca could only sit there and think. She thought about Hovvi, about the interview, and the feeling that something wasn’t quite right with Quinn even though they’d only just met. She thought about her questions when she’d woken up. Her panic, so much panic, so much fear and all of it made sense viscerally but logically, emotionally…

She thought about Follen, and their talk in his office. He had known something that she had only just begun to piece together—a puzzle she was too afraid to complete.

She was still too afraid.

“They hurt you.”

Hands came to rest on Quinn’s cheeks, guided her head back down to meet Dahlia’s eyes. The girl knelt in front of her, holding her gently by the face, not firmly, but unyielding. She could not look away.

“They lied to you,” Dahlia said. Her lips quivered, but with how still her face was, it was impossible to tell if it was the grief or the anger that touched her. Her eyes glistened, but no tears spilled. “And they hurt you.”

They hurt us.

A chill bristled Quinn’s skin, not sharp, it was almost comfortable in fact. The hollowness that had enwrapped her cooled, eased into a pervading calm.

In the doorway a small figure stood, too shadowed to see much but the glinting of the metal horns on her head. She watched impassively, but Quinn could feel something radiating from her, touching her, or perhaps it was trying to escape from her own depths.

Anger. It wanted her to feel angry. But below that was something else, something…curious. Probing. It wanted to know why she was so resistant.

It’s not fair. They locked us away. They hurt us.

“They can’t hurt you anymore. Quinn.” Dahlia sounded so sure. So certain. “We won’t let them.”

The shadow’s head turned down in thought. The light caught her, illuminating the barest hint of confusion on a strange face.

Then in a blink she was gone. The chill went with her, and warmth found Quinn again.

It was just the three of them. Dahlia before her, Besca besides, cleaning her up. Just them. Safe. That feeling came next, and it was foreign, but it was the first one to come to her as a suggestion, not a demand. An acquiescence.

Safe…

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn’s hands fell away, and Besca took the opportunity to continue cleaning her up. The scratches staunched easy enough, and she wiped her fingers clean with the towels. She dabbed her lips; the girl was slurring like a drunk, but it didn’t look like she’d chewed through her tongue, and not deep enough into her cheek that she couldn’t speak.

Dahlia kept a hold of her hand, brushing fingers through her hair, checking where she’d clutched at her forehead. No blood there, thankfully.

“Th' Savior. Tell me 's got both eyes. Pleeeease.”

Besca shivered. So she had noticed it after all; it had happened during the phasing. God, but if she’d felt that she would have been shrieking through the comms, wouldn’t she? She’d had pilots go numb, ignore the pain, but for someone like her? It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense.

“Don' wanna be them. Tell me 's not true.”

Now what did that mean? Besca watched Quinn’s head roll back, watched her mumble nonsense into the air. Something was broken in this girl, and while she was no longer sure that break had happened during the invasions, it had certainly been irreparably worsened there.

Quinn was not a pilot. She couldn’t be. Besca was absolutely certain of that now more than she’d ever been before—a bar so high Aerie Station couldn’t have cleared it. Her mind was gone, and if she was ever going to get it back, it wouldn’t be in the cold dark of a cockpit. There was no way she could go back there. No way Besca would let her.

God, but she couldn’t make that promise.

She’d seen the readings. The times. She was fast—very fast. Off the top of her head, she could think of two, maybe three pilots in the world who could match or pass the speed she’d phased in that test, and one of them was sitting right next to them. RISC wouldn’t let that go. They didn’t see how unfit she was, they saw her numbers, they saw statistics. They saw a buoy in the storm of the Hovvi disaster, and they were going to latch on.

“Your Savior…” she said, thinking it over. “It, uh…it did lose one of its eyes during the test.”

And it wasn’t regenerating.

But she didn’t say that. It wouldn’t help, and she was being paranoid. Head wounds always healed slower, and the process wasn’t always uniform. Sure, normally they’d have seen some sort of mending in the socket, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen.

It had lost an eye. That didn’t mean anything. It didn’t.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn went limp, falling back against the wall but for the grip she had on Besca’s shirt. Besca caught her, lowered her to the floor as gently as she could and didn’t let her go. She was dumbstruck, which, considering how utterly wrecked this girl had been since she’d woken up, was a statement in and of itself. Eyes, eyes, what eyes?

“Quinn,” she said, softening her own voice as Quinn’s withered to a wheeze. “Whatever you saw, it was nothing, it was a dream. You’re awake now, breathe. Breathe.”

Dahlia returned, roll of towels and small red bag in hand. She knelt down beside them, handed Besca a few swabs and a bottle of strong-smelling liquid, then took Quinn’s hand in hers. “You’re okay, you’re okay. Relax. Talk to us.”

Besca wet the cotton swabs on the bottle, dabbed them lightly on Quinn’s arm, over the shallow gashes. Nothing too deep, thank god, but a whole hand’s worth of nail-work to worry about. It would sting slightly, but she wasn’t sure Quinn would even notice in her state. Blood stained her lip as well—she must have bitten her tongue, or her cheek.

What in the world was this?

“What eyes, Quinn? she asked, low, sincere. “What needs to have its eyes?”

Amygdala Circuit

“I told you, I appreciate the position you’re in, Minister Toussaint. Losing a national idol isn’t easy.”

“Losing Abroix isn’t the problem, miss Darroh. Losing him with ministerial reviews so close is tantamount to murdering my career.”

Besca took the phone away to breathe, and swallow down the urge to scream at the man on the other end. “If you’re looking for a murder charge, Jaime, that’s all well and good. But you’ve got the wrong subject. Maybe take another look at the evidence I sent you, and then you tell me who should be on the block for what happened in Hovvi?”

“He ran. From a situation you failed to prepare him for.”

“Killing civilians, RISC personnel, and pilot, she hissed. “You think Abroix’s death is killing your career? What do you think happens if that footage goes public? My predecessor ordered it seized, not me—I’m under no obligation to hold it, and frankly, if I don’t, you can expect the Runan people to be demanding repayment from Casoban.”

There was silence, and if anger weren’t burgeoning within her, she might have let herself feel smug. Eventually Toussaint spoke again, his voice thin and frustrated.

“Your predecessor,” he said. “Understood the nature of our relationship. He understood how tenuous the ties between our countries are grown.”

“What? What do you mean ‘tenuous’?

“I mean that Westwel was fifteen years ago, commander. The sentiment of international unity between us is beginning to wear. Eusero has been pushing for partnership for years, and while miss St. Senn’s abilities have been keeping our support exclusive, more and more the common citizen is starting to wonder what an affluent nation like Eusero could do for them. Our Savior programs being so interlinked will prevent that, but what do you think happens if I’m replaced with someone who doesn’t value our relationship?

“So go ahead, commander Darroh, release the footage. When the dwindling love between our people turns to fury overnight, see where that leaves you.”

It was Besca’s turn to be silent, and Toussaint gave her the same courtesy to let her find her bearings. It took some time.

“We can’t repay you for Magnifique. We’re crippled, we just can’t.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“So you need to think of something else.”

A pause, then. “I’m sorry?”

“Think of something else,” she said. “Something else we can do to reaffirm things.”

There was a shout in the next room—Quinn? It was. She was starting to learn to recognize the sound of her screams.

“Well what in the world would you suggest?”

“I don’t—uhm, what? It’s your fucking country, Toussaint, figure it out.”

A thud, heavy, frantic footsteps. Her door flew open and Quinn came barreling in, so fast she carried on right past her and into the wall.

“Quinn!”

“Quinn? Commander, who—”

“THE EYES!”

“What was that?”

Quinn was positively frenzied. There was wrought madness in her eye, and blood on her—she was bleeding. She was clawing herself like a panicked animal.

Besca cut the call and tossed the phone aside, scrambling over and pulling Quinn’s hand away from her arm. “Quinn! Quinn stop! What are you talking about? What eyes?”

Dahlia appeared in the doorway, worry all over her face.

“Towels! Get paper towels and—just grab the first aid kit!”

Dutifully, the older girl ran off. Besca turned back to Quinn, still holding her firmly, desperately trying to calm her down. Eyes? What eyes?