a/n:

well, it’s been nearly two years since i last updated. to those of you reading this – damn. i don’t expect anyone to be here doing so, but if you are, thank you. thank you so, so much. the fact that many of you have let this mean something to you is so special. your support is the reason this got anywhere. please don’t think i took this long because i take you for granted. i lockdown, when it comes to endings. one thing: there’s an inconsistency in this chapt because i changed my mind about something; it’ll be fixed when i rewrite – which hopefully won’t take me another four years.

okay. so – last chapter (it's about 45 pages long, fyi).

there’s always been something about this story, these characters, that makes me reach inside. as dramatic/cliché it is to say all this, writing DH – took me to places i didn’t want to go. i knew all along where it was headed, but i had to develop the end until it made me believe the ending could lay this fic to rest. & to do that, i had to get to a point where i could lay this, not just the fic but also everything i put into it, to rest. i had to let go. & i don’t believe it’s possible to let go of something completely. so. i’m laying this down now, but – if it settles, it won’t be for a long time. but maybe that’s okay. maybe that’s okay.

i think some scars are meant to stay.

-kait

Dedication: to BrainStew, for seeing through the words, & to bulletproof. cupid because – my god, dear – you make me forget i’m the writer.

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if you left a signed review, i used the reply function to respond. the replies to the anonymous ones are here because i didn’t want them to go at the end.

Writeress: i agree with you, there are/were a lot of loose ends. that’s why i’m planning to go back and rewrite this. i’m really glad you like this fic, though. thanks for the review.
Crazy Kawaii: not enough people check profiles. heh. thanks for the review(s)! you read this for seven hours? ohmygod. i’m floored. good to hear you like the way aiur doesn’t use contractions. & for the compliment on my style – wow. just thank you.
2lazy2signin: haha, that’s true, about being good in either the arts or the sciences. i do well in both, but i’ve forsaken science. itmakesmyheadtrytokillme. wow, the story’s far from perfect, but thank you! i’m – reallyreally sorry about how long it took. truly i am. i wish there was a way to make it up to you. thanks for reading.
bulletproof. cupid: i would never tell you to fuck off. & the time you took to review is nothing compared to the time i took to update. thanks so much for the long review (again!). it’s just – you’re amazing. the bit about endings & landslides is among my fav lines from this entire thing, too. you said: “ah, dahling fenix, you cannot save things that do not allow themselves to be saved” – i love that you recognize that. glad you liked the kiss. & i’m just flattered that you think what you do of my portrayal of love. thank you, so, so much.
flipstahhz: tch, you could never be a bad sis. :hug: um – pronounce “Torrake” any way you want lol. thanks much for the review.
anon: thank you so much. i don’t deserve any of what you said, haha. publishing – eh, we shall see.
liz: go into mourning? aw! thanks so much for reading/reviewing, as always. the language change paralleled aiur’s break-down ... you know, i didn’t even notice that myself. haha!
Pamela: to be deemed your fav on fp – wow. just – wow. thank you so much. for being so understanding & just – thank you.
Perfect Bliss: i want a fenix, too. i think writing this has been bad for me; now i’ve got ridiculous standards. i’m honoured the last chapt touched you. thank you ever so much for reading.
rejected: aw, thank you! i hope that i never stop writing, but i don’t believe i’ll continue on fp. one has to move on. you’re probably right, about me italicizing too much. i’ll be watching that from now on. thank you very much for reading!

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Chapter Twenty-Three (version 6.14)

You Are the Music While the Music Lasts

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The sun was trembling, its glow weak in the early hours. When Fenix lifted his arm, daylight splintered. He tipped his hand from one side to the other and the light seemed to scatter, rebounding off his skin to melt into the open morning, cold as smoke dissipating into silver-lined air. Everything seemed to be cold. In honour of him, maybe, or perhaps everything had to mock him now.

The days were strange. Foreign. Stretched out and trickling through time’s fingers, and then pulled thin until they threatened to fall apart. Still beautiful, though, and he had no idea why. He wondered if it was always like this, when you counted your life down to the hours, the minutes. When you measured it against one thing. One person.

A mirror, inverted, hung folded over land and sky. The land was knotted together, forlorn and mismatched. Fragile, with a chasm threatening to break open under his feet. The sky was frozen. Fire and water shifted, blended into a thin glowing band of light that rested heavy on the edge of the horizon. Cracked. Still natural, at first glance, but the longer he stared out at it the more it disturbed him. And it drew his eyes, lying there. Just lying there, waiting to be burned away.

He wished it wouldn’t. It shouldn’t have been wrong, but it was – everything was wrong, in a way – and he didn’t need to be reminded. The world reduced down to him and her, and it was wrong.

No, he didn’t need to be reminded.

It was so easy, to accept an illusion as truth, to overlook how the scene was pieced so delicately it felt it would slip away if he breathed too deeply, moved too quickly. It was only wrong if he focussed on it, thought about it. It was so much easier to ignore it ... but he couldn’t do that. Some things you couldn’t ignore. The things you knew, the things you wished you didn’t.

He’d always seen truth as a separate entity, independent of anything else. Even if he wasn’t there to understand it, even if he couldn’t, it was there. He’d always believed in justice, in an intrinsic integrity in the world. Somewhere, it would be put right. There would never be a time when he could believe differently; he couldn’t be who he was if he didn’t believe in an objective reality. It was why he had never been able to be comfortable with himself. He’d never known who he was, not the truth of it. That was something that limited him, much as he’d never liked thinking about it. The problem was he had too much time to think on things now.

And what could you ever hope to become, if you didn’t know who you were?

He couldn’t live a lie, not knowing that it was a lie. He wanted more from life from that – his life had to be more than that. Aiur had shown him that about himself, somehow.

Belief was a dangerous thing, maybe. It had been something simple to him once. When what he believed in was never challenged. When he hadn’t noticed the pressure behind it, the power. But it was dangerous. He understood why she believed what she did; he thought he did, anyways, and at times he even found himself agreeing with her. Something was there, in her words, even when she said it wasn’t.

It wasn’t so much that she had changed; it was that he had. And he knew where the change came from – he wanted her to be right. No. Her vision was bleak, hopeless. She could never be right. Not with him, because he didn’t want to see the world the way she did. Still, he wanted her to feel right with him. A lie, but it was all he had.

He knew that she would never believe in anything outside of herself. She had to be able to control it, abuse it, distort it. If it went right, it was because of her. If it went wrong, it was because of her, too. It was her fault. Everything was her fault. But it was all because of her.

He understood that, that desperate need to mean something, understood it as well as he understood that as long as he insisted in believing what he did he would never be able to touch her. If he let go of his faith, though ... then he gave up. Give up and everything would come down to context and perception, about what could be proven, what could be explained, what could be repeated. What held him together was a blind hope that there was more than that, that there was more than anyone could ever know. He did not think he could give that up. Not even for her. Something had made Aiur hold on for as long as she had. Something could still make her hold on. He could hold on for her until something did.

Perhaps it was stupid, self-centred, to think that if he gave up she was as good as gone. To even hope that he meant enough to keep her from death. But it was true. She’d looked at him, and – it was true, although he couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t explain it, not with words.

She wanted him to give up. Hell, he wanted to give up. This wasn’t how he wanted it to be, the weight all bearing down on him against her will. Never against her will.

But there was something else, out there. An ending that wasn’t what she predicted, one that would let everything fall into place and be all right. One that would let her feel right with him. That was what kept him going.

Each step forward with her was a step back, each hesitation a wordless acceptance. Any attempt to find distraction rebounded inwards ... and he didn’t want to go any further in. If he was too much inside himself, he wouldn’t be able to find her. There was so much that was off-balance. So much that was straining, on the brink of collapsing, and he didn’t know how to stop the landslide.

Nothing belonged here. Nothing belonged. Except, somehow, he had to find a way to.

He propped himself up on one hand, turning to look at Aiur, who lay on her back beside him. The last time she’d moved had been close to an hour ago, he estimated. She was staring blankly at the sky, her skin dusted by the weary light. Something in him wanted to weep, suddenly. He watched the slight rise and fall of her chest, every breath she took tugging at him to – what? Break down? It did nothing. She refused to believe he was breaking. In her mind, there was nothing he could do. In his darker, more desperate moments, he thought the same. After all, how could you save someone who didn’t want to be saved? Who didn’t believe anything could be saved?

No, he couldn’t think that now. He wasn’t going to give up. He knew when something was wrong, and he simply worked until he changed it, but this ... the worry fretted at him. How was he supposed to stop this?

The danger was becoming tired, he knew. Apathetic, like she was. There’d been three times so far that she’d rolled herself over to the edge – he knew that there’d probably been other times he hadn’t been aware of – and she was going to do it again. And again. And again. She appeared oblivious to the hurt she caused him, but she seemed to know that eventually she’d drain him dry. Not right away, but after, when the danger had passed over. False alarm. He’d panicked, mourned, every time, never knowing when it might be it.

She wanted him to let go of her. She wanted to be free to die, though she'd never said it aloud. He couldn’t let go; he stood between her and the edge. For some reason, he didn’t think she would topple over while he stood there. Oh, god, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. That – that wasn’t what she was trying to do.

He was in love with her, damn it. There was no use trying to run from that. The guilt, the regret – he’d never get over it. Over her.

There had to be a way out. No problem came without a solution. Nothing was impossible. There wasn’t any other option for him – he had to believe in her. He had to try, again and again and again. He damned himself if he didn’t. He’d never be able to forgive himself. It wasn’t that he thought he could save her, but he forced himself to believe he could.

Fenix turned his head away. Looking at her made him curl up inside, made something try to burrow right through his gut in abject terror and desperation. Because he was tired and he couldn’t be tired. Because maybe he was the one feeding an illusion.

She was everything to him, in a way he couldn’t express. Some things just didn’t fit words. Some things just ached. He was who he was, but she made him more.

Since she’d kidnapped him, he’d learned how cruel the world was. How broken people were. How deep the lies ran.

She was – so fragile, wavering across his hands just like the morning was doing now. He didn’t know how long she’d be there for him to turn his head and see.

Sometimes he could nearly believe nothing was wrong, when she was angry enough at him and her eyes were cold and half-cracked. There was passion there, and fire. Life. But other times, when she looked at him and there was nothing at all, he feared she would stop breathing and simply never start again, right there in front of him. It was exactly what he had told her: he didn’t want to turn around to watch her sink. To reach for her, touch her fingertips, only to have her hand slide through his – that, he couldn’t bear. All he wanted was to hold her and not have to feel she was slipping away. Because she was slipping; he couldn’t deny that. She wanted to slip.

If he held on to her hard enough – would that be enough to keep her here? He thought maybe it could be, somehow. It had to be. He didn’t care what her reasons were; just because she couldn’t love who she was, just because she seemed to think she’d never be able to ... it was no reason for her to kill herself. There was more here than that. She couldn’t go.

He was selfish, he was wretched, but she couldn’t go.

If she left this world, left him ... Fenix eyed the rigid sky critically. He couldn’t follow her if she did that. He knew that. That hurt him, but what scared him was he thought he might still try.

When he glanced her way again, he found that Aiur was watching him. Studying him unabashedly, not bothering to hide it when he caught her eye. She did that a great deal lately. Looking for something, maybe. He wished he knew what. If it was something he could give ... he’d give her anything.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, softly.

She looked at him a moment longer before looking away. He felt like he had lost something he hadn’t fully realized was there.

“No.” Her voice nearly cracked.

He hesitated, then shifted closer so he could reach out to her, traced her jaw lightly with his fingertips. Her eyes flew back to his. He pretended he didn’t notice, carefully avoiding her eyes.

The way she’d tensed, though, stopping just short of pulling away ... did she think he couldn’t feel that?

“If you dreamed-” He floundered under the depth of her gaze, the weight in her eyes. That look made him feel ... like his lips were moving but no sound was coming forth. Worse than useless. He didn’t know what else to say.

Maybe he’d never be able to protect her from what haunted her. It didn’t mean he could stop trying, though.

Aiur sat up, shaking him off as she did so. Fenix ran his hand though his hair, frustrated, his sense of loss deepening by the second. It was something he should have realized was there, now.

She was rigid where she sat, her head bowing over her knees, her fingers raking through sand.

“My terms,” she grated, suddenly. Anger sharpened her voice, sent it running into the distance after an enemy he couldn’t see. There were ghosts in her words, ghosts and memories that should have been dead. She always tried to bury them before he noticed they weren’t. As if he wouldn’t fight a memory for her. “This is on my terms – my terms, not yours. Do you understand? My terms.”

Her jaw clenched, her eyes flickering rapidly beneath her lashes, her breath hissing. “This is not yours to control anymore.”

He was silent, but his eyes drifted, automatically, to her arms. She tried so hard to control her environment because she herself had been controlled that way. Someone had ripped her from her life and forced her into the mould of what she was now, he was sure of that. Too quickly, and far too violently. The experience must have shattered something in her, ruined her perception of others, of herself. Even now she was still being controlled in ways: her fear of fire – though maybe that no longer applied – and of failure, of being weak. There was nothing wrong with being afraid, except she found so much shame in it she forced herself to live a certain way just to avoid facing it.

It wasn’t just a fear of failure. It was fear that was fire. Fire and failure. Fire and failure and weakness of the worst kind. He didn’t understand that, but if that was the way she lived ... he could make sense of her self-mutilation if it was a cry for freedom, or a way to feel, or how she was able to keep control of herself when control over everything else slipped away. It was the way she pretended nothing of the sort occurred so damn well that perturbed him.

Locked away, secret. Why keep it a secret? Why keep it a secret?

“Do you ever feel like you are not real?” Her question leaked out into the air, surprising him. He looked up from her arms. As rigid as before, but her mouth trembled.

He leaned forward, cautiously. She didn’t hide things as well as she used to. Maybe she didn’t want to – he hoped that was the reason – or maybe it was simply manipulation. He didn’t care if she was just manipulating him. He could have just been trying too hard to find meaning where there was none, but he didn’t care if that turned out true, either.

“Dead, you mean?”

“No.” Her voice clawed through him. “Alive. Just not real.”

He remembered the last time she had talked about being real; his chest clenched where she’d rested her hand. The body remembered what the mind did not, and she was mapped on him, a web of black and blue fingerprints resting under his skin.

She glanced at him, the briefest of glances. It weighed on him, solid. Something like a touch, except it woke a deeper longing, made him aware of a greater distance. “But then – it does not mean much. Not as much as it should.”

His brow furrowed. “Being real?”

“Being alive.” Her hand moved, in the space between them. Idly. Purposefully. He wasn’t sure. Drowning, trying to hang onto air. Or waving as she went down. His fingers dug hard into his knees, to keep himself from grasping that hand.

I could save you. I could save you ... I want to save you, I have to save you...

He still thought he could feel her touch in-between his veins, hidden in the air shifting across his neck. God. It was all in his mind, and it still tripped him up. How did she do it, manage to take away his breath and give it back at the same time?

“What do you mean?” he asked, careful not to squirm.

“Sometimes I breathe, hot against my own skin, and I do not feel it.” She was hushed, reflective. She reverberated around him, inside him. Her words kissed their way across his face, and he inhaled deeply before he could catch himself. The edges of the horizon frayed. Colour shifted. Daylight spun itself across the sky, without seeming to realize how thinly it was spread.

There was something in the way she spoke ... so soft. Vulnerable. When she left herself this open to him, he walked on air. He dared to dream. But it was when she was like this that lightened the weights dragging him downwards, that allowed something to materialize from the dark waters below in one sweeping rush of passion.

Once you glimpsed that, you never stopped watching for it to return. You stayed crouched at the edge of the water, draped in desperation, staring through your own reflection. Even if you forgot what you were looking for along the way, you didn’t forget seeing it. How could she show him this and then expect him to forget? One of the cruellest things you could do to a person, he thought, was to give them false hope.

She was still talking. He forced himself to listen to her words, not just the sound of her voice.

“A heartbeat is empty, just an echo. It is so easy to doubt. You are distant, separate. Yet so close and so deep that you are a stranger inside yourself. Alive, and it does not matter, not until the blood-” Her voice caught, slightly. He couldn’t keep from wincing, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. She thought he didn’t know, after all. As long as he didn’t know, she was free to tear into herself with her words. Why remind herself like that?

Her words were softer, now, falling through the air. “It does not matter unless you are real. And being real ... maybe rests on more than being able to find your veins in the middle of the night.”

There was ice sliding beneath his bruised skin, so cold it burned. He shivered.

“You think you’re not real, Aiur?”

He expected her to flare up at him – half of him wanted her to, begged her to – but all she did was hug her knees to her chest as if trying to cradle that breath, that heartbeat, against her body.

“I do not know.”

Just that, words stripped bare to the bone. No fear. He might have felt better if she’d sounded afraid.

“You’re real.” The urgency in his voice didn’t surprise him, but the lack of conviction did. She shook him, every time. Shook him and forced him to ground himself; no one had ever done that. “Remember what you said? ‘This is real. This, and you, and me’,” his chest clenched again, “You have to be real, if I can – if I can feel you like this.”

“Are you real, though?” It wasn’t an attack; not even a question. Her words were hollowed out where they lay shuddering in the corner.

He couldn’t answer her.

“The breathing you can check,” she said, quietly. “Count, the way you count the seconds the sun is late in rising. Your pulse, too.” This time, it actually was her hand touching him. The heat of her touch seared through his clothes, seared across his skin, seared into his bones. He nearly jumped, pulling back so she couldn’t feel him fall apart at something so easily. She affected not to notice. Or maybe she really didn’t. “But what does that prove? This could be nothing more than a dream.”

“You don’t know that it’s not real,” he disagreed.

“Even if-” She broke off what she had been about to say, harshly. “No. This is a dream. A dream, but how do you make yourself wake up?” Her voice faltered. “Make yourself want to wake up?”

When he pressed his palm against her cheek, she exhaled. That was all. She didn’t tense, she exhaled. And he nearly forgot what it was she’d said. His fingertips trembled against her skin. Ice drilled into his hand, crept up his arm and into his shoulder, immobilizing him.

“Why – why do you have to wake up?”

Aiur moved her head slightly, away from his hand. Stirred, as if she’d been resting. As if he’d disturbed her.

“I mean,” he added, quickly, “I just thought ... if you thought your existence is a dream, then – you would...” He trailed off, realizing what he’d said.

Her eyes swallowed his without a sound. “Sleep forever, you mean?”

He cringed. “No!”

Nothing came out right when he was touching her. Nothing wanted to come out. It wanted to freeze where it was, because if it moved it risked losing what it had. Except nothing could remain frozen, could it? Nothing that was alive could.

She laughed, briefly, humourlessly. His skin crawled. She was everything, she took everything that meant anything to him and twisted it about her hands. And she laughed.

“Strange, is it not?” she mused. “You should be the one who would not want the dream. I should not even care.”

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think. Was dreaming the same thing as sleeping?

His hand found its way to her arm, and all of a sudden, she was so very still. She’d been wandering through the middle of a graveyard, and he’d gone and reminded her of where she was.

“That, I suppose,” her voice dropped, slowed, “is what makes this so ... wrong.”

“But...” He knew she wanted to die. To sleep forever. How did he say that, without saying it?

She dragged one finger through the sand, her brow furrowed deeply. But she didn’t speak.

“Okay, then-” he tried again, “why is it wrong?”

“Everything has an ending,” she said, haltingly, her eyes fixed on the sand. “A dream cannot last. Whatever this is – it is not going to last.”

Fenix frowned. That didn’t explain anything. If anything, it made him more confused. What was meant by ‘this’? Did that mean she thought they had something? No, that was too much to ask for. Of course she didn’t think that. He thought he’d figured this out. He had figured this out. He had!

“But I thought you didn’t care. A dream might be a dream, but if it’s the only reality you have – it’s enough for you, isn’t it?”

“Enough?” She paused, seemed to think about that. “Maybe.”

He let out his breath. “I do not understand you.”

She leaned her chin on her knees, a small, sad smile creeping across her face. “I am saying that ... all dreams end. Whatever you do with a dream, whether you accept it or fight it – that does not stop it from ending. Only waking up stops it from ending.”

His head spun. Wasn’t waking up the ending? He struggled to understand. “And you ... don’t want it to end? But you should?”

She looked at him, then, eyes shredding his as easily as her fingers had gouged at the sand. And something trembled at the edges of her gaze, withered and fled into the grey air around them. He knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t coming back. That he had moved.

“This is not yours – not ours – to control anymore.” Regret tinged those words, regret and something that sounded like sorrow.

He tried to pretend he wasn’t taken aback. The inclusion of him alongside her, the recognition of his presence, was surprising, to say the least.

“There – was a time when it was?”

“I would like to think,” her smile was obviously insincere, and it twisted his throat, “that there was.” A blatant lie, except she wasn’t mocking him. There wasn’t anything to mock, she seemed to be saying. There wasn’t anything worth mocking. But she did look at him, hard.

Abruptly, her face became blank; her eyes released his. She let go of her knees, unfolded, and her heartbeat drifted away. A part of him followed it.

“In any case, I did not dream. I did not sleep. It does not matter,” she said, before he could open his mouth, “and you gave me the Torrake back, remember?”

It wasn’t just his throat twisting now. He bit his lip. “Aiur-”

She turned her head away. “Let it go.”

Let it go? All he could do was pretend to. He wasn’t very good at pretending. Exactly what was she telling him to let go?

A quiet, overwhelming sadness, an ocean of it, bubbled deep within his chest. He closed his eyes, feeling it expand within him, soaking steadily through flesh and bone. And opened them, inhaling sharply, when her hand touched his thigh. His instinctive reaction was nearly frightening. He looked at her, trembling, holding himself back. God, he wanted to touch her. His nerves were on fire, despite the ocean. He thought he could ignite water.

She didn’t look at him. “This is going to be over soon,” she told him. Her voice was soft, but it didn’t comfort him. Not with what she was saying. He didn’t think anything could comfort him.

Her hand slid from his thigh; the skin she’d touched throbbed distantly, aching, yearning. He shifted furtively, hoping to shake off the memory of her touch. It didn’t work.

“It will be finished.” A slight tremor rolled through her. “I will finish it.”

“Are we ... are we moving on?” He hated to ask. What would happen to her, once she completed this job?

He nearly laughed at that thought. Death marched closer and closer to him, and all he could do was fret over her.

She took a deep breath, held it. Let it out, her expression thinning as she did so. She could inhale sunshine – she could catch something that intangible – but all she exhaled was dust. Anything bright and hopeful was simply absorbed and churned into black despair. And she refused to reach out her hands, because she had learned what she’d receive. What she needed most, she didn’t find. There was no end in sight for her, no rest. No place where she would find peace. What was the point in her trying?

But then, he thought bitterly, even if she found peace she wouldn’t know what it was. He might have thought, once, that she would find it with him, but he didn’t hold to any such foolish illusions now. There was a difference between being safe and being at peace. There was a difference between being independent and being free.

“No,” she finally answered. “I – I want to stay here a little longer.”

“Why?” There was nothing where they were. “Why are you prolonging this?”

She faced him, and it looked – difficult. Like she was pushing through water. When she spoke, her words were slow, weighted by the same effort. “I am not prolonging anything.”

He frowned in thought. “What are you taking me to that you don’t want to face?” he asked. She was – uncertain, as if she didn’t know what she was doing. No, as if she didn’t know what she was doing was right. As if she cared, suddenly, about what the right thing was to do.

Shock, and then anger, contorted her face, so quickly he almost missed the way she’d flinched. Almost. He twisted further.

“Do not push me,” she snapped. “If you are that eager to die-”

He interrupted her, softly. “I don’t want to die.”

“Then you should have left when you had the chance!” Disgust rolled over in her voice. He watched her gaze slide sideways; she shook her head once, then twice.

The words spilled out from her. “Do not think you can sit and blame me for your cowardliness, or that I will stand for your self-pity.” Her eyes were tight as they stared, striking for how dark they were. “You had the chance, and you did not take it. This is your own fault. All your own fault. Deal with it any way you have to; roll over and die, for all I care. You still will not be free. You will never be free, you pathetic, wretched-”

She choked on her words as his hand touched her cheek. For that matter, he wasn’t sure how his hand had got there, either. She recovered quickly, though, tension winding through her body.

“What the hell,” she gritted out through clenched teeth, her eyes shooting fire at him, “are you-”

“How many times did he say that to you?” he asked her, gently.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” she mumbled, but her eyes were bereft. Burnt out. Dried up, hazed over.

“How many times, Aiur?” He searched her face, his hand shifting to cup her chin. Her eyes darted. One time only, but he noticed. And let her go. Didn’t she know ... couldn’t she tell how badly he was aching? If he twisted any more he’d pull himself apart.

Sudden heat welded her lips into a sneer. “What makes you think-”

Fenix smiled, even though it was a foolish thing to do. She stiffened. At least they were back to something he understood. So much was a bluff with her. It would have fooled him, previously, but he knew enough about her now to challenge her, and that meant things came to a stand-off. The more it happened, the more he realized that she simply pretended she was the one in control, when the truth was she wasn’t. What was strange was the way she acted like he was pretending, too. And whoever cracked first, lost.

It made him think. It made him ache all over again.

“You think I can’t tell when you’re not talking to me? You said ‘wretched’, Aiur.” He couldn’t hold onto his smile. Had she even known what she was saying? God, why did she do these things to herself? “The only time you’ve ever used that word has been to describe yourself.”

The strength of her gaze wavered. “I-” She shook her head, drew in a deep breath. He waited. “There is not – I do not-”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said, quietly.

Her eyes lurched away from his violently, but she didn’t bother denying it. The ice was gone, as if it had never been. The ocean was gone. He was gone. The only thing there was her, hammering into every inch of him.

“I-” She swallowed. Her hands twisted in her lap. He leaned over, took hold of them. She moved away, and seemed to find a little of her equilibrium.

“What did he do to you?” He couldn’t keep the roughness from his words.

“Nothing.”

“Ai-”

“It is none of your business,” she muttered, with considerably less fire than she might have the day before.

She’d left him the opening he’d been watching for. He took a deep breath, apologies beginning to drift, in crooked circles in his head. “Is he why you hurt yourself?”

Aiur froze. “What are you talking about?” she breathed.

He edged towards her. She watched him guardedly, and when he laid his hand on hers once more he felt her stiffen. His ache deepened, tried to shudder its way through his skin. Slowly, trying not to make her baulk, his fingers slid to encircle her wrist.

She licked her lips nervously. And he burned, watching her, despite the circumstances.

“What – what are you doing?”

He looked down at her arm, silent. Not wanting her to see what he knew was clear in his eyes, the frustration and sympathy and desire. Desire had no right to be there, not during a time like this. He could feel her breathing, light on his face, and tried not to let his hand tremble. He wasn’t at all sure that he succeeded. It really wasn’t fair, what she could do to him without even trying.

His fingers caught the sleeve of her shirt, caressed the skin underneath, hesitating.

Aiur’s breath hitched. And metal, colder than he remembered, pressed itself flat against his neck. He looked up, carefully, feeling more calm than surprise. This was something he hadn’t been supposed to find out, something that didn’t fit what she pretended to be. What she had to be.

This was a part of her he wasn’t allowed to touch. Nobody was allowed to touch this. It was a secret she kept close; something about her cutting revealed something she didn’t want anyone to know, something that ran deeper than her addiction to Torrake did. It left her exposed. She covered up what she saw as weakness and she denied truth, forcing herself to believe she could shape reality if she pretended hard enough. Maybe that was all that kept her going. Maybe if he shattered that, she wouldn’t be able to piece it back together.

The apologies spun faster, thickening. Break her. He never wanted to see her hurt but he had to break her. Just because he wanted to be with her. He had to break her – dammit, wasn’t she broken enough? – and he hated himself for it. Worse than hated.

He couldn’t live a lie, not if he knew it. Couldn’t settle for a dream. And pretending she was okay ... he wished he could. But that was no way to help her. If he wanted to be with her, he had to break her.

Her eyes stabbed into his, a clear message: Get out.

If there had been some way he could have, he’d have backed off already. He’d known how much this would hurt her. But he was halfway in. He’d seen too much to forget it. Getting out meant forgetting it. What did she think she was doing? She wasn't a fool. Why had she made it so obvious? If he hadn’t known what he was doing to her before, he knew now. She knew that he couldn’t get out. It was too late for that. And, truth be told, he didn’t fully want to get out. He wanted so badly to touch this, to be the only one who was allowed inside. Worse than foolish, worse than selfish – but he couldn’t get out.

“Aiur...” He wondered if he could placate her. Her knife pressed harder, her eyes flashing.

“Let go of me,” she ordered, anger etched deep into her voice.

The scent of her wreathed him. He forced himself to focus. If he breathed in...

His pulse jumped against the knife, knocking on the dead metal. She hadn’t killed him yet; she hadn’t even drawn blood. And they were sitting down. It was strange, to be sitting down at knife-point. Surreal. Ineffective.

“And if I don’t?” he countered.

“Let go.”

He might have imagined it, but he thought her voice trembled, and he tightened his hold on her wrist, just a little. She noticed, of course; the knife tilted.

Focus. He was invading a place he was willing to bet no one else knew even existed. Why was she letting him? Or was she letting him? His thoughts tangled, but threaded over and over into the confusion was his apology. Even if she ended up slitting his throat he’d be apologizing.

“Let go of me,” she hissed into his ear; and his shiver wasn’t from fear, “or I swear I will.”

He looked at her, as steadily as he could. Focus. If she leaned any closer he wouldn’t be able to anymore.

“I will!” she insisted, fiercely, even though he hadn’t replied.

He blinked. She’d repeated herself. That meant she had to convince herself, meant saying it once hadn’t been enough – and that meant she’d lost control. The game she insisted on playing, it didn’t mean you lost when you weren’t in control. It meant you lost when they knew you weren’t in control.

That damn ache threatened to rip his skin clean off.

He smiled at her, with his lips only. “Well, then,” he said, as pleasantly as he could manage. It was a miracle he wasn’t choking, with how hard she was pushing against the knife. A miracle she didn’t topple him over backwards. He tried to clear his throat, and nearly gagged, but he still managed to get it out: “I dare you.”

She merely shifted her grip, and he shuddered. He knew there had to be a reason she hadn’t gutted him yet, but he liked very much the thought that she couldn’t kill him simply because she didn’t want to.

“We both know you’re not going to kill me, Aiur.” His voice sounded thin in his ears. “So there’s no point to this facade. Give me the knife.”

So close to him, and not a flicker from her. He still admired the way she kept her balance even after losing, at anything, but he wished she would show some emotion, give some sign to say she was faltering. That, or preparing to slit his throat from ear to ear. God, did she do this just to torment him? Her eyes bored into his, trying to drill through to the back of his skull. He didn’t look away. There was nothing in those eyes. They had gone flat, and if he didn’t keep a grip on himself they would take him alive.

But, despite all of that, he wasn’t scared of her. What was more, he couldn’t be.

She didn’t answer him. Didn’t move, either. The silence ate the seconds away.

“Aiur?” he asked, cautiously, wondering whether it was safe to touch her. He wanted to touch her, whether it was safe or not. Had he said something wrong? What had he said?

There was still no reaction from her. In fact, her expression didn’t change when he finally dared to reach up with his other hand to push the blade away from his neck. But neither did she loosen her grip on the hilt.

“Aiur,” he urged, “please – give me the knife.”

“Why, so you can turn it on me?” she spat, coming to life suddenly. Except for her eyes; those remained dead.

He couldn’t help drawing back. But as soon as he did so, she let go of the knife. He fumbled, dropping it in his shock.

She wrenched her wrist out of his limp hold and stood up. He gaped at her, rising without thought and leaving the knife on the ground, but she was already walking away. She tossed him what was probably meant to be a dismissive look over her shoulder, but her eyes were stricken. Splintering. And she was skidding somewhere he couldn’t see – just feel – and grasping for anything that would make him leave so he wouldn’t see her fall. It said something, that he knew what she was doing and it could still hurt him. One look, her eyes in pieces, and he simply blew apart. In slow motion.

He went after her, grabbed her hand. She jerked it away, rounding on him angrily, and he grabbed it again. God, those eyes...

Not much to show she was breaking, but it was more than enough.

“Mind letting go of me now?” she snarled.

He tightened his hold, flinching. All that time, and she’d been breaking. He’d been able to break her. Was this really what he had wanted, though? He didn’t know anymore. “Wait.” She shook her head, took another step. “Please?”

It stopped her, though he wasn’t sure why.

“For what?” she whispered, and the sheer hopelessness in her voice shook him to his core.

For a moment, he was still, steeling himself against collapsing. Then, shaking, he pulled her back towards him – yanked her, really – and she came. Without resistance, but the way she looked at him hurt. He deserved it, but it still hurt. His words shrivelled on the tip of his tongue, leaving the taste of ashes in his mouth.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he said, softly, touching her cheek.

“What way?” Her voice was near mute.

“Like you don’t care.”

“I do not.”

“Yes,” he insisted, “you do.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again there was fear in them, and more fear encased in the taut lines of her body. He wondered at how quickly she had cracked. There should have been anger, for what he had just done to her, but there wasn’t. Just the fear, in starts and bursts that threatened to overwhelm him. Fear she’d always masked better than this. No fear of him, or he would have retreated by now and cursed himself to hell no matter how necessary breaking her was. But he was helpless. She was a trembling mass, her head sinking towards her hands, an empty shell. And he was helpless.

Maybe there wasn’t anything worse than this, having to admit she was scared of something he couldn’t control, something he couldn’t take away.

Fenix folded his arms around her, and just that quickly her tears unlocked. She pressed herself against his body; his breath rattled harshly in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. More than sorry, but there wasn’t a word for that. He wished she didn’t affect him so badly, wished he wasn’t still in pieces. She needed him to be whole. “But I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen.”

“How long have you known?” Her words quivered along his neck, her lips just brushing his skin. He shivered. His blood sang, pounded inside his head, deafening him.

“Only since Keith tried to-”

She whimpered, and he bit off the rest of what he’d been about to say. Instead, he pushed her back a little, to look at her. She was still crying, dark eyes shining and engulfing him. The slightest bit of colour stained her cheeks as she lowered her gaze. God, she was beautiful. He shouldn’t have done this to her. He should have waited, found another way ... his head was trying to separate from the guilt raging inside it.

“Aiur, I – I wouldn’t try to hurt you, ever.” Except he just had, hadn’t he? “I just – I couldn’t pretend...”

Desperation set in. “You know that, don’t you?” That didn't justify what he’d done. Nothing could justify any of this. When you hurt the one person who you didn’t want to see hurt – when you’d intended to ... he might have had a reason, but it didn’t make it easier to do. Didn’t stop him from hating himself over it. He’d spend a lifetime apologizing for it, if she let him, if he could. A lifetime.

She looked at him through her tears. He had a sudden urge to drown. He could drown, in her eyes, and be happy doing so.

“I know,” she murmured. Sadly, he thought.

He tugged her closer, pressed his lips to her forehead. He thought he heard her breathing hitch, but it was hard to tell. He kissed her cheek, her jaw, her neck.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her skin.

Her head tilted back, slightly, and there was no doubt about it this time – she sucked in her breath. His heart lurched, and his hands began to tremble, but he forced himself to pull back. She was no longer crying. Her gaze had darkened noticeably, but he could see the confusion, the uncertainty, obscuring the craters the tears had hollowed into her eyes. Fear tightened her face, running over her body until she shook from the cold. Like she couldn’t hide it anymore, wouldn’t hide it anymore.

She needed him to be whole, begged him to take that fear away from her. No, not him. Anyone. She had let him in – and he was certain she regretted it already – but it was because he’d broken her. It wasn’t because of anything he meant to her. It was because she needed the contact, needed to reach out to something outside of herself to hold herself together.

Contact. Just for contact. He couldn’t do this, not with her this vulnerable. He could control himself, for her; she meant more to him than that. This should be more than just need – he wanted it to mean something to her. But he didn’t move, and every second that passed with her pressed against him made it harder to think, harder to breathe.

Silently, he cursed himself; why wasn’t he letting go of her?

“Where did the knife go?” she asked, suddenly. She looked over her shoulder, began to edge away.

He nearly growled, pulling her back towards him before he could think about it. So much for trying to let go. Why did she care about a damn knife? She probably had ten of them.

“Forget the knife,” he hissed. Oh, god, was he jealous? Of a knife?

Aiur laid her palms on his chest, but she didn’t push him away. His breathing became a little erratic. “That knife – is...”

Fenix tensed, looking down at her. She was staring at her feet as she let her breath out. Her fear, her tension, made it tremble. Its warmth eased along his neck, and he shivered.

“He is the reason for everything,” – her eyes closed – “but he never gave me a knife and told me to cut. I do not think he even knew.”

He was silent, holding himself absolutely still. Had she just...?

She had. She’d just laid herself open to him, explained something she had long kept secret, admitted to the existence of more than one wound she’d tried to hide. It wasn’t like her at all, and that scared him. He might have broken her in order to get inside, but he’d never expected her to allow him to watch her fall apart.

So much fear ... but to get her to cling to him this badly? This was more than just fear. More that he couldn’t take away for her. She’d never made a perfect picture. There’d always been something missing. Cracks ran across her surface and under her skin, always keeping something wrong, always turning something ugly, but he’d come to love that, eventually. Why had he wanted to break her? Just to prove that he could? He didn’t need to break her to love her.

He’d tried, though. And she’d broken. Didn’t that mean, in a way, that he had failed? Failed because he’d tried to change her. Tried to make her need him, want him.

Whatever he’d been trying to do, he’d shattered her. Shattered her, and she hadn’t even tried to put herself back together.

That meant something. That should have told him something, but he had no idea what.

“How much are you going to tell me?” he asked, softly. There had to be a line. There were always lines around her. She played her entire life by the lines.

Her eyes flickered up to his briefly, gleaming dark, bleeding. “How much do you want to know?”

The resignation in her voice was the worst part of hearing this. The lack of resistance she was offering made him tremble. She wasn’t fighting him, fighting anything. It wasn’t that he wanted her to fight him; it was that fighting meant she was still holding on.

You couldn’t make people believe because you couldn’t make them try, you couldn’t make them want to try. It had to come from inside. But what was inside her? Was there anything left?

“Anything.” He had to force it past the lump in his throat.

She nodded, a little, but this was all wrong. It felt like the death of something. So she’d found out that he knew she hurt herself and something had died for it. Somewhere along the way, while he’d found – no, while he’d lost – himself in her, it wasn’t him who had paid for it. And now she was letting him in completely, and it wasn’t anything like what he had wanted. He got what he wanted, and he still wanted it, but he didn’t want it like this. Was there any other way, though? Was there?

“Why tell me this, Aiur?”

“You want to know, do you not?”

“You don’t care about what I want!” Screaming wouldn’t do anything. He was screaming at himself, though, not her. He checked his voice with some effort. “You don’t – you don’t do this...”

She looked at him, silent. It hurt. Everything was hurting, and that was stupid and pathetic but there was nothing else for it. He was dimly aware that he was shaking. “Why are you doing this?” Shaking badly. The fear wasn’t because of him, but he’d set it free. This was his fault, in the end. “I can’t – telling me isn’t going to...”

He still wanted to drown. To make her cry and then go so far as to drown in her. The way she was looking at him...

“That’s why, isn’t it?” he realized, suddenly. The words skittered on frozen tears, somewhere deep inside. He wished they would drown instead, so he wouldn’t be going down alone. “Because I can’t – because I’m going to die, I can’t ... you finally tell, and it’ll go to the grave with me. But you’re telling me, giving me something. You know it gives me something. At the end. Only at the end.” His hand moved towards her face. He snatched it back before he did something foolish. “This is my goodbye, isn’t it?”

Emotions he couldn’t place words to had crossed Aiur’s face while he was speaking, but now her eyes slid away from his, spinning across that ice. What if she could drown with him? Oh, that was a terrible thought.

“Something like that.”

He could accept that, couldn’t he? He should be grateful she’d chosen to give him anything. Breathing was still a trial. Letting the subject drop was worse.

“Why keep it from him?” He smoothed the hair back from her forehead, unable to stop himself. His hand didn’t linger. Not for very long, anyways. Not really. “It doesn’t sound like he would have cared.”

She smiled, wryly, and whether it was in response to his remark or to show she noticed his efforts to not push her he didn’t know. Her eyes shone, wet. In pieces and frightened into desperation, completely absorbed in herself, and she still had him twined around her finger.

“He would not have.” Her voice strained, and just like that the smile was gone. “I was free to do whatever I wanted, so long as I did what he told me to along the way. He would not have approved, I do not think. He never – he would never weaken himself. But in the end, as long as I did my job, he would not have cared. It was always about the end; the road to that end never mattered. And keeping it from him ... kept it for me. It was one of the only things he did not know about me – maybe the only thing. He took everything else. It was – it was mine.” Her look, hard as it could be with her eyes so broken, said it was still hers.

“Why do you do it?” His fingers found their way down her face, rested at the side of her neck. He couldn’t help it. His pulse tried to break through his fingertips. “What you said about not being real – does it make you think that you are?”

“No.”

“Then why...?”

“I just – need to make myself hurt.” Though she’d already been looking at him, he got the feeing that she had only started to see him now. Shadows of fear still swelled and danced just under the surface of her eyes, distorting her expression. “Not always in order to feel.”

Was that a reason, or wasn’t it? He had to know the reason. Had to understand this, had to be able to justify this away for her. That was startling to realize.

“There has to be – something you can ... something that will...”

She shook her head. Her expression had become thoughtful as he spoke, gratified and disturbed at the same time. She’d probably recognized what he was doing before he’d known himself.

If there wasn’t always a reason – then how could she...

“You’re not doing it again,” he told her, “not while I’m still here.” He couldn’t keep it from being a demand. Aiur frowned at him, opened her mouth. “You said it yourself,” he went on hurriedly, his throat beginning to close again, “being alive is more than finding your veins at night.”

She made a soft noise of disgust. “Sometimes, I forget there is someone listening.”

He refused to be distracted. He ached from the cold, ached from the heat. Which was worse, aching because she was close or far?

“Tell me what to do, Aiur.” His eyes flickered down, over her arms. “I don’t want you to have to – just tell me what to do. If there’s anything I can do, if there’s anything that can help you ... I’ll do anything.” He would, too. Anything. Admitting that should have scared him – was there such a thing as being too deeply in love with someone? he wondered – but it didn’t. It wasn’t hard to say, either. “I know there’s something I can do. Please – I can’t see you like this.”

“You think there is a solution to this?” Her face darkened. “That I am hiding from you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he answered. The words tasted of dust and sand. “Do you even know what you do to me? What you mean to me?” She blinked, tensed against him, but he kept talking before she could interrupt him. “I know you’re not just a problem to fix, I’m not thinking that you are. I just – I have to believe there’s a solution to this. You could ... don’t think it’s never crossed my mind that I can’t do this. But I can’t think that. That would be giving up, on more than just you. I can’t be helpless in this, Aiur.”

“Sounds like a lost cause,” she scoffed, scathingly, a hint of her old coldness creeping back.

“You’re not lost.”

She rolled her eyes, derisive. “Why, just so you can be the one to find me?”

“At the beginning of this, yes,” he replied, voice hushed. “But not now. Truth is ... truth is I’m scared to death that I won’t find you, not in time.”

She stared at him, her eyes sinking into his ever so slowly. The silence swelled, full and heavy as it sealed over his confession.

There was an echoing pause. “I ... I will stop.” There wasn’t any emotion in her face, but she sounded shaken. “In a way, I suppose it might be my apology for what I did with the Torrake.”

“Don’t bring that up,” he snapped. Controlled himself as he straightened his shoulders roughly. He just wanted to be able to forget the entire thing. “That was an addiction, it wasn't – you don’t need to apologize for that.”

It was all markedly close to her asking for forgiveness, and he’d forgiven her everything without having to be asked. Strange, that. Unlike him. It was something he knew he would have scorned once to hear about someone else.

Aiur didn’t respond for a while. Just stood with her arms around herself, staring at the line of the horizon, watching as the morning light leaked from it.

“Remember the oasis?” she finally asked.

He nodded. Shivered. How could he forget?

“There was a little girl living in my head,” she whispered, not looking at him, “a reflection in light, in water. Her blood is all over my hands, all over me. Am I – am I crazy?”

He turned her to face him, cupped her face in both hands. Her skin was oddly flushed.

“When you told me you’d killed her,” he informed her, as sincerely as he could, “I thought she was still alive, that you’d kept her alive somewhere.”

“She is not alive anymore.” She searched his eyes as she said it, breathing shallowly – fearful of his reaction, maybe? That his reaction meant anything to her made the blood in his hands throb headily, trembling. “She was me, and not me. Me and another. Another who became me. She was just one. Just one, but she – she liked me. Trusted me, in a way, and I just stood by and let him...”

She inhaled, shakily. He waited, said nothing, feeling the way she leaned her head against his right hand keenly. She sighed. “Should I start from the beginning?”

“Only if you want to.” His thumb ran along her jaw, returned to linger at the corner of her mouth. “You don’t have to. It’s enough, what you’ve told me.”

“I want you to know.” She laughed, dryly, when his eyebrows rose. “I think I believed that even less than you do, but-” Her voice dropped, along with her eyes. “I do want you to know. You – might want to sit down. This could take a while.”

“I’ve got all day,” he offered, pulling her down with him as he sat. Her smile was forced, but there.

He faced her, and waited. Her hands folded together on her lap. She gazed down at them fixedly, but didn’t speak.

So he sat, looking at her, scouring her features with his eyes. One day she wouldn’t be there. One day he wouldn’t be here. He wondered if she'd ever seemed this inaccessible before. This beautiful. He wondered just what it was about her that caught him so tightly, drew him in so deeply. Was he simply attracted to her because she was different from everything he’d used to know? Was it because she was the only thing here? Or was it because she was so obviously broken, and still tried so hard to keep him away? Maybe he liked fixing things, liked the challenge she presented.

His brow furrowed. That was some of it, he reasoned, but it was more than that. He’d always been drawn to knowledge, to truth. He could see life in her; it flared up at times. She still had desires and dreams, just like everyone else. And yet she shut herself down constantly, and then hated herself for it. He wanted to know why. He wanted to understand her. Did wanting to understand her really explain his falling in love with her?

But maybe you just couldn’t explain love. Maybe if you justified it completely, you belittled it.

“Aiur?” he prodded, gently, when she continued to say nothing. “You don’t have to do this. Really.”

“No. I want to do this. I just...” She sighed. “I am sorry. Remembering all of it, delving into it ... it is like it all happened yesterday. But I want to do this.”

“Wouldn’t you rather just forget?”

Her head bowed, and her hair fell forward, hiding her face. “If I forget, then there is nothing. Nothing for what it was, nothing for what happened, nothing for what is left of them. It is past time I remembered. And – I am not alone anymore.”

He thought she looked at him when she said the last sentence, but he couldn’t be sure. She sighed again, and shook the hair back from her face. Her words flowed over him. Into him. This was a piece of her very self she was offering to him, and he was going to treasure it for as long as he lived.

“When I was eight,” she began, “there was a heat wave. Dark days, dry days, a storm building behind billowing air. It was burning hot, and everything was steaming and baking and melting everywhere you went. My father said the city was just waiting for a spark. A night came, a celebration with it. I cannot remember what it was for. But there were – explosions in the sky. Balls of fire spiralling into six different colours, red sparks showering the air. Fireworks.”

She glanced at him, and he nodded. “I’ve seen them.”

“It was so hot that night,” she went on, her words scraping at his skin, “that we went outside. We danced down the street. There were white lights floating in the darkness, a shadow stream of dancing bodies carrying them. I remember wearing nothing but a shift and feeling it cling to my back because of the heat. When I walked, the ground burned my feet. But I danced anyways.

“We returned in the morning, and everyone went to bed, but I could not sleep. It was too hot, I was too awake. So I went outside, still in my shift, and I found a man, in the gardens. He wore nothing but black, and it was like the heat did not affect him, could not touch him. He-” She shuddered, then, and he knew she was eight years old again at that moment, barefoot in a garden and sweating through her shift. Reliving it. He had to clasp his hands together to keep from touching her.

“His eyes were the strangest I had ever seen. His face was marble white, but his eyes – they were so ... so dead. He smiled at me, a cold, cruel smile, and I nearly screamed. I would have run, but he had a – a stick, that sparked colour when he lit it on fire. So I thought – I thought that he must be alright, since he had that.” Her face coloured. He thought it was adorable.

“I did not tell anyone about him. I just wanted to be able to see fireworks again,” she muttered. “I never thought that ... in any case, that was the first time I saw him.

“After that, he began to watch me, mostly when I was by myself. Sometimes Naomi was there, or others, but they never saw him. I started to see him everywhere I went, in the garden, in the city. Just glimpses – a black boot behind a hedge here, a black hood ducking back into the crowds there. But I knew he was there, following me, staring at me. Those eyes – they might have been dead, but I swear they could burn right through the back of your neck.”

Her knuckles turned white, and her words began to tumble out of her mouth, tripping over each other: “I started to become paranoid. I stayed indoors, and even then I refused to go into a dark room. I jumped at every shadow, ran from any sudden sound. But I still felt his eyes. Especially when I slept.

“One day, I was in my room, and I happened to look out the window down into the garden, and I saw him there. He was pacing back and forth beneath my window, the way an animal does when its prey climbs a tree. He looked up and saw me. And he smiled.

“And then he disappeared. I did not see him for weeks. I began to get over my fear. Began to think he had decided to leave me alone.

“So I eventually went out again, into the gardens. Just wandered aimlessly among the flowers and trees, drinking it in because I had not walked through it for so long. I came across the body of a man. Stared down at him, stared at the blood running from his face. I did not know what to do.

“And then – I looked up, and saw him. He was ten feet away. Calm as calm can be; in that moment, the entire place belonged to him. He looked down at the dead man, and I remember him saying, softly, that the blood was the exact colour of those fireworks.

“I ran.

“I do not know what happened to the corpse, if it was found, or if he removed it before it could be discovered. All I knew was that he had killed a man. A killer had been stalking me, watching me. He had come to murder me. What else could he want with me? I locked myself in my room. Naomi pleaded with me to come out, but I refused to talk to her. I would not talk to anyone. I did not tell anyone about him. My blood curdled when I thought of the way he had simply walked his way into the grounds, never detected by anybody, and then disappeared. I thought of the way he always knew where I was.

“I should have told somebody; the murder proved he was not just in my imagination, but I – it was always hard to think, when it came to him, even back then. He was always watching me. He knew where I slept; he could climb through my window and slit my throat any night. I began to think he could not be seen by other people. He could not be caught. That was irrational, but he scared me, scared me so badly. I should have known nothing he touched was safe. I should have told someone about him, but I said nothing, just hid in my room.

“I began to dream of him when I slept. I dreamt of him, laughing, as fire shot from his hands. His hands turned into my hands. I dreamt of him kicking me, stabbing me. I dreamt of him – stripping me and ... and...”

She drew in a trembling breath. She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

“It was during one of those dreams that I was jerked awake one night, because of a great crashing sound. Something exploded, and there was a fierce crackling all around me. I nearly drifted back to sleep – it was not too far in likeness from some of my dreams – but the air smelled funny.” She whimpered, but didn’t slow down. “So I got up and – and I opened the door, and fire, a wall of fire, burst towards me. I fell backwards, onto the floor, but it simply overwhelmed me. And somewhere in this I heard the screaming. Theirs. Mine, too, but it sounded so far away. It hurt so much, everything was burning – and they were still screaming, I do not think I stopped screaming...”

“Oh, god,” Fenix breathed. He took her elbow in his shaking hand. She didn’t look at him, but he could see the tears shining on her cheeks.

“Heat everywhere, fire everywhere.” Her voice rasped dreadfully. “I think the entire street burned down, I think I...”

“How did you survive?” He faltered. Where were the words, he thought, frustrated, angry at himself. Where was the power to comfort her, to change the past? But what could he say? He hadn’t expected this. No wonder she had been so terrified of fire.

“I do not know.” Her lips parted. “I woke up, with him looming over me. He said he had saved my life – chosen me,” she spat, “for some reason.”

She pulled her elbow from his grasp, and the words flooded out of her: “I never asked him to save my life! I should have burned, I should have burned...” She began to rock back and forth.

He watched her rocking, and his heart constricted. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I could have stopped him,” she rambled. “This is why I can never be anything, never have anything. See what I do? I taint and I kill and I-”

“Stop it!” He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her. “Don’t say that. He’s the one who burned it down, not you. For god’s sake, Aiur – you were just a child!”

She only shook her head, jerking away from him, and they sat in silence, her crying as she rocked, as if she was trying to wash the pain and the guilt out of her, him watching her, aching. He wanted to touch her, hold her, but she glared at him, eyes hard despite the tears that swam in them – eyes that said she didn’t want comfort or reason – and he didn’t try. Just watched, though it was hell to have to stand by.

The hours slipped past them on tottering feet, and morning heightened into noon. The sky enclosed them, a blue so clear and vibrant that it seemed artificial. Overhead, the sun flared. Its light blazed down on their heads, dazzling as it reflected off the golden sand around them.

Aiur looked at him, her black eyes a stark contrast to the light that surrounded them, drifting lazily through the air. “There is more.”

He winced. “Are you sure you want to keep going?”

She didn’t answer, just continued her narrative. “After I recovered from the burns, he began to teach me things. How to move, so that I would make no noise. How to steal and live on the streets. How to fight. What would kill a man. He would always punish me when I did not meet his expectations. I was yelled at, and beaten, and starved. He said there was no excuse for failure. He said it was weak. He hated the weak.”

Her hands wound around each other as she stared down at them. “I was terribly frightened of him, and he said that was weakness, too.

“He tore at me, physically, emotionally. I was nothing, he said. I would never be anything. No one loved me. No one was there for me. All there was for me was him. Him and hunting. He wanted me to succeed him as a hunter, but if I had died in the process he would not have blinked twice. I was expendable, just like everyone else. He just did not want to see his time, his effort, wasted.”

She shivered, despite the heat of the day. “I did not die. I lived, and did what he told me to without questioning him. Let him do whatever he wanted to do to me. Because he could kill me at any time, but also because – because I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to love me. Because I fucking cared about what he thought.

“He was right – I did not exist to anyone else. I had died in a fire. I wanted to gain his approval, to exist to him. Everything became about his opinion. He was always right, I was always wrong. He was so strong, and I was so weak. I was weak and it had destroyed everything I knew. I wanted to be as strong as he was. But I did not want to be a hunter. I could not kill anyone; I would fight them, disarm them, knock them unconscious, and walk away.

“It made him furious. The beatings were especially bad, after I did that. He started killing everyone we came across who was alone, to desensitize me. But I still would not do it.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?” he demanded, before he could stop himself. Cringed, closed his eyes as he fought to calm himself. “I’m sorry. It’s easy for me to sit and pass judgement, but I didn’t live what you did. I don’t have a right to-”

“Fenix,” she interrupted him. He choked in surprise, looked at her. His name, coming from her mouth – it did something to him, parted his lips and pulled his breaths shallow.

She seemed sad; he didn’t know why. She shifted closer to him, but withdrew before she touched him, to his intense disappointment.

“You have – you have an innocence in you that gives you a yearning for justice, a sense of right and wrong that is missing in this world. Do not ever apologize for standing up for what you believe. Belief was stamped out of me. In the world, in myself. He believed in me more than I did, if you could call his plans for me belief. You have no idea what it is like, when the one person who knows you are alive is the one who beats you at night. I stopped believing in anything at that point.”

He shook his head. “Everyone has to believe in something. You can’t live if you don’t believe in anything.”

She met his eyes, steadily. “And I never have lived. I died in that fire, but I did not die.” He understood. “You cannot make ashes into flesh again, raise the dead from the ground to walk. It is something I can never be forgiven for, something that can never be undone. How do you justify those days, those choices? There is no such thing as redemption.”

“It doesn’t have to be the end,” he insisted. “People make mistakes all the time, but they don’t have to let it define their lives.”

He hesitated. If it had happened to him, would he have reacted any differently? He would have, he decided.

... Right?

“There’s no such thing as a mistake that can't be forgiven,” he forged on, shaking off the sudden doubt. He would have. “There’s a way to save everyone, everything. You can come back from something like this.” He pushed his own voice to the back of his head: I’m scared I won’t find you, not in time. “Without redemption, what would the world be?”

Instead of answering him, she turned her head aside. “What would you do if you killed someone?” she asked, lowly.

He blinked, thrown off-guard. “I’ve never-”

“What would you do if you could save someone’s life and you did not?”

He couldn’t lie to her. A part of him wished he could. “I don’t think I’d do that.”

“I do not think you would do it, either.” She laughed, the sound strangled. “What if you did, though? What if you did it more than once? Ten times, twenty times. Fifty. Innocent people. Men, and women, and children, and babies. They were people with so much more potential than me, people who were so much better than me. And I stood by and watched them die.” She softened her tone for him; the words still twisted his gut. “Any time, I could have walked away. And I never did. Because I wanted him to love me.” Self-disgust laced her voice. “Because I wanted the approval of a monster.”

“Aiur...” Fenix struggled for something to say, something to counter her words with, but his thoughts slid through his hands like water, floated out of his reach the way a rainbow did when you tried to follow it. The way the horizon moved further and further away the closer you got to it, forever out of your reach.

“You had to live,” he finally said, desperate.

The look she levelled at him brimmed with disappointment. And behind her eyes, a dark, endless pool of sadness spread as far as he could see, resignation glimmering in its depths. He looked back at her, confused.

“You never would have said that, in the beginning of this all,” she murmured. “You would be telling me it was wrong.”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “I can see your side of it now.”

“That is not what this is.” He didn't think he had ever heard her sound so sad. Her dark eyes shimmered, wavered like moonlight over water. Another thing that was insubstantial, that he couldn’t hold safe in his hands. So, so beautiful. The waters swept over him, welling up inside his body, and then he was adrift and out of sight of the shore. He floundered as his breaths began to drown.

She fixed him with a gaze that pierced through the waves, spearing him. “When did you start giving up?”

Oh, god. There was water in his lungs, in his head, in his veins. He couldn’t answer her. Finally, she looked away, and he was on land again. Coughing up salt water, tasting her acute sorrow in the back of his throat, shivering on wobbly legs.

“I killed him,” she revealed, quietly.

“W-what?”

“I killed him,” she repeated, her voice now hard. “In cold blood. And I do not regret it,” she hissed, defiantly, at the sky. “I don’t!”

He flinched. “You said, once, that – you said you weren’t a murderer.” And had been near taking off his head for suggesting it, too.

She looked at him, smile brittle and fractured. “Did you believe me when I said it?”

“Aiur...” No, he hadn’t. The day seemed cold, all at once. “But he had it coming to him.”

Her eyes fluttered shut. Tired. She was tired, and he was getting tired. No. He couldn't tire. He stood between her and the edge, and he couldn't tire.

“And the others?” It was rhetorical. “They died because of me. Family, neighbours, friends. I should have said something, but I said nothing – just hid in my room and left him free to burn it all down.” She swayed, even though she was sitting. “He said – said that I must have wanted him to do it, deep inside, because I let him wander free. Said that made me an accomplice to murder. He always called it that – murder.”

“He had no right.” The sudden strength of his voice surprised him. Determination and anger mixed fiercely, grated against rock, chipped and flew back into his face, cutting him deeply. His face bled, but he hurt for her, not for himself. “That isn’t true, Aiur.”

“It is true enough.”

“Aiur-”

“They are dead!” she shouted at him. He jerked backwards, reflexively. Her eyes snapped open, filmed over and fever-ridden, to stare at him. Her voice scraped thin, hit bottom. She was crying again, and it did nothing to soften her guttural tone. “You say I can come back, because that is all you know. Because your world is one framed by belief, where salvation exists, where people are forgiven and forgive themselves. Where streets do not burn down because of one wretched girl. I do not deserve to come back. I deserve everything I got. The beatings, the abuse. They are not coming back, ever.” He watched the tears flow down her face, transfixed. “Every smile is a smile they will not smile. Every laugh is a laugh they will not hear, every touch is a touch they will not feel. Each day a day they will not live.”

“You didn’t kill them.” It was hard to speak.

“I did not save them.” Her voice cracked, again. “I as good as killed them. So many lives, so many people ... how do you give that back? Can you give that back, after you take it away? Can you get over taking so much away? Someone has to take the blame for it. They deserve to mean something, affect something. After you get this deep ... there is no going back. There is no going on.”

His blood ran cold. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

He reached out to her tentatively, and when she didn’t move away he ran his fingers over her cheek. He tried to wipe away her tears, but all he ended up doing was smearing them. His hand slid down to curl about the back of her neck as he moved closer to her, squatting beside where she sat. She lowered her head, resting her forehead against his chest – his heart jumped sideways at that – and his other hand came up to stroke her hair, trying wordlessly, futilely, to impart some form of comfort to her. Her heat soaked into him, spread through his bones and melted them one-by-one.

“I am sorry,” she mumbled.

He looked down at the top of her head. “For what?”

“For everything.” Her head lifted from him. He mourned the loss. “Taking you from Alaidya. Dragging you across this damn desert.”

Seating himself behind her, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her backwards between his legs, so that she leaned snugly against him. She stiffened, then relaxed. Her head tipped back, slightly, to nestle in the curve of his neck, bringing a soft smile to play about the corners of his lips.

“I realized something,” he said, when she’d settled. He had to speak softly, seeing as she was so close to him, but the quietness suited what he was saying. “Sometimes things happen, that are out of your control, that change your entire life. This has actually been – freeing. It’s forced me to come to terms with my life, with my death. To determine what’s truly important to me. To reflect on what I’ve done, to reconcile myself with my past. I see things differently now. Things are – they’re all temporary. And they’re so much more beautiful for it.” He paused. “And I realized that even though I have no power over what happens to me, I still have a choice.”

She shifted against him. He bit down on his lip. Hard.

“Sometimes there are no choices,” she protested, mildly.

“No.” His voice sounded strangled, and he had to clear his throat before he could go on. “There is a choice. Inside you. Perhaps it changes nothing, but in a way it changes everything. Things happen, and you can choose how you perceive them, how you react to them. You can struggle and kick your heels against the inevitable, and vow to hate it and never accept it ... or you can take it for what it is. Learn from it, because every experience is a path to deeper understanding. Grow from it. Find something beautiful in it. And, Aiur, I’ve learned that there’s always something beautiful to find.”

“How could you find anything beautiful in this?” She shook her head, scooting forwards, slightly.

He tightened his arms around her, pulled her back against his chest. She moved forwards again. He pulled her back. She blew out her breath – half in exasperation, half in amusement – but she stilled.

“Believe me, Aiur,” he murmured into her ear, smiling, “it wasn’t hard.” He relaxed his hold, and was happily surprised when she remained where she was. “Um ... can I just ask you one thing?”

She nodded.

He braced himself. “When do I die?”

Aiur went rigid in his arms. Wrenching herself away from him, she scrambled to her feet, took three fumbling paces backwards.

“Aiur?” he questioned.

He advanced on her, but she kept retreating, her eyes darting, wrapping her arms around herself, keeping him at bay. He held up his hands in surrender, to assure her he wouldn’t touch her without her consent. She eyed him slowly – literally raking him from head to toe and back again as he coloured, heat flushing through his body, blood rushing downwards – and then moved to the cadra, placing it between them, fiddling with the packages on its back.

This was beginning to feel very familiar. Fenix sighed. “Don’t I have a right to know?” He walked nearer to the other side of the cadra, but she refused to look at him. “I just want to know how long I have left.”

As he came around the cadra, she bent her head fully over the packages.

“When do I die, Aiur?” he repeated.

The packages fell from the cadra’s back, thudding into the sand with an awful finality, startling him.

“You do not,” she muttered, arms crossed once more, staring down at the packages.

He froze. “What?”

“I am not completing this mission.”

“What?”

She looked up at him. He couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Every assignment, it continues. He is dead, and I am still dying for his approval. Sometimes, when I wake, I think of all the people who never will, because of me. And I just – keep going. Keep finishing what I started.” Something flickered over her face, so quickly he nearly missed it. Something that made his breath catch and his knees want to buckle. He hadn't thought she would ever look at him that way. She looked away, swallowed. “But I cannot – I cannot do that to you. You do not deserve to be touched by any of this.”

He could only stare at her.

“So.” She cleared her throat roughly, but she still didn’t meet his eyes. “You are free. You can choose what you want from these,” she indicated the packages lying on the sand, brusquely, “and you can take the cadra and go. If you keep moving in this direction you will reach Nattad in two days’ time. That country is friendly with yours; you will find your way back home with ease.”

She appeared on the verge of saying something more, but after a moment of fighting with herself she closed her mouth, turned her back on him, and began walking away.

Take the cadra? But then how was she going to carry her provisions, if she wasn’t going to Nattad, too? What she’d said echoed dully in her ears as he gaped at her back; he was still stunned.

That was ... that was all? His head spun. Just like that, everything was over?

He looked at the cadra, numb. It blinked apathetically at him. He scowled at it.

At that moment, his eye caught the sight of sunlight glinting off something in the sand. It was the knife. He hesitated, before moving to it and picking it up gingerly. Shuddered. She had used this knife to cut herself. Its hilt was cold to the touch, colder than it should have been. He placed it by the packages carefully, then went after Aiur. Where was she going? Damned if he knew, but he wasn’t letting her out of his sight. She wasn’t going anywhere without him.

It wasn't over.

He caught up to her before long, and slowed to match her pace, trailing her.

She stopped, turned to look back at him. Disbelief formed crackling bursts in her eyes at first, but her face rapidly began darkening with anger, and rage swamped the incredulity. It only served to animate her, in his view, make her come to life. “What are you doing? I told you to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he responded, evenly.

“Do not fuck with me,” she warned.

“I’m not-” He sighed. “Aiur...”

“Just go.” She began walking away again. He followed her. She spun around. Her eyes were abysses and, god help him, he wanted to fall. “Go!”

He raised an eyebrow. “You just freed me. This is my decision to make.”

She shook her head angrily, her breath hissing between her teeth.

“It’s my life, Aiur.” He touched her arm as he said it. She didn’t flinch, but she came close. He didn’t care at the moment, didn't wonder if she'd shied because of his words or his touch. There was confusion raging in his head, confusion and worry and fear. What the hell was going on?

“Do you want me to go?” he asked her, softly. He bit his lip, pleading with her silently to say she didn’t. He’d do anything for her, but if she told him she wanted him to leave her...

She looked at him, her own plea in her eyes. If only he knew what she was asking him for. He’d give it. Didn’t she know that?

“Please do not do this to me.” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. It shook, too. He went cold. Oh, god. She was begging. Why was she begging?

“What? Do what to you?”

She dropped her struggling gaze. “You should leave. Go home.”

It spilled out before he could think. “Come with me.”

Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with shock. “What?”

“Come with me,” he repeated. He licked his lips; his mouth had gone dry. Hoped his voice wouldn’t crack. Wished he knew what she was thinking. Did she know just how hard he would try, if she would only let him? Funny, how he felt more fear now than he had when she’d had a knife against his throat. How had all of this happened, anyways? His head swirled, the undertow threatening to pull his thoughts under. This all felt so surreal. She'd let him go. She'd let him go, but it wasn't over.

He was sure she’d take it the wrong way, but he said it anyways: “I could – I could take care of you.”

Her reaction left him completely bewildered: instead of the anger he’d anticipated, sorrow swept through her face, drenching her features. It wasn’t pity he saw that filled her eyes. But it was something very close to it.

“Fenix...” She trailed off.

“Please?” And now his voice had dropped to a whisper. She looked at him, looked right through him. “Aiur – please, I ... I don’t want to be without you.”

She looked away, her mouth a thin, trembling line. “No.”

“Why not?” he demanded. He wanted to shout it. Reason was gone, winging away over the desert, sprinkled over the sand dunes, evaporating in an instant. All that was left were his emotions, and they were lying in a wet, tangled heap, and when he tried to extricate any of them he felt like he was trying to untangle a pile of nerves – it gave him a shuddering jolt of nausea that left his skin crawling off his back.

He didn’t know what he felt. He just knew he felt, so deeply, so intensely, that it was agony. “I wouldn’t – you wouldn’t have to see me if you don’t want to. We could live apart. If you want me out of your life-” He bit his tongue, exhaled nervously, unsure of what would happen if that was the case. He would fall apart, that’s what. “If you – if you don’t want to be with me-”

She cut him off. “It is not that.”

Did that mean that she did want to...? He didn’t dare hope. Didn’t dare. But he still couldn’t seem to breathe properly. He stepped closer to her, forgetting his earlier pledge to not touch her. His hands framed her face, threaded themselves in her hair, shifted to caress her neck.

“Then what?” he questioned, voice ragged. He tilted up her chin with his thumb to force her to look at him, but she dropped her eyes. “Aiur?”

She pressed her lips together, said nothing.

“What?” he repeated. “Do you think it wouldn’t work? Do you think I don’t understand enough about you? Because this is what I understand: I know you hate yourself and you define yourself by that hate, because at least you know what it is and what it does. I know you believe everything wrong around you is your fault, in one way or another. I know you’ve given up on yourself, let go of dreams, because holding onto them stopped being about dreaming. I know you just want a place to be safe, where you don’t have to run anymore.”

Aiur’s eyes lifted, slowly, to his. He held them as best as he could, but there was a gravity in them that made it hard.

“You’ve created a mask for yourself, an identity, and it’s because you had to, it’s the only way you were able to survive, and now you’ve hidden behind it for so long you don’t know who you are anymore and you don’t think you exist anymore.”

“I told you,” she stated, impassive, “Aiur died in that fire. I buried her. I do not know why you-”

“Because I see her sometimes,” he interjected, quietly. Leaned closer. “Because she looks at me sometimes, talks to me sometimes. She’s still there, Aiur. I can see her. Why can’t you see what I see?” Even closer. He was talking about more than just her identity. His voice dropped yet further. Closer. “Why can’t you feel what I feel?”

While he’d been speaking the solemnity in her eyes had begun to shift, metamorphosing into terror. Seeing that brought him back to himself. He became conscious of the fact that he was breathing hard and that her breath tumbled, erratic, against his lips when she exhaled, and he realized with a start how close they were. Close enough to kiss if he just...

He let his hands fall and took a step back, off-balance.

They stared at each other, and though the fear gradually subsided in her eyes, it felt like they stood on either side of a gaping rift in the ground. He couldn’t have touched her if he had had a ten-foot pole in his hands.

She broke eye contact first, blinking rapidly, and he saw tears for a moment. “I said this was going to end. I said I would end this.” She crossed her arms, hugged her sides. For warmth, for comfort, for protection. Fenix didn’t know. She looked at him. Hesitant. He didn’t understand why, until she continued talking.

The plea was back. “I – I need to end this. I should have died ten years ago, before I could do any more damage. There is no point to – I need to end it.”

Now it was Fenix's turn to feel like terror was gripping him. His breath came harsh and uneven, his heart pounded into his ears, his stomach turned to ice. It was one thing for him to know it, one thing for her to attempt it. It was another thing for her to say it.

For her to finally admit it.

He had to try twice before he could get the words out. “Aiur, are – are you saying you want to die?”

That smile crossed her face again, small and sad. She looked down. Her voice was a low murmur. “I just want this to be over.”

He took a step towards her, pained. She took a step back.

“Will you please just leave?” Her voice caught.

“So you can kill yourself as soon as I’m out of sight?” He shook his head, fiercely. “I can’t let you do that.”

“I do not deserve to live anymore.” Frustration marked her face, strung her words on a burning cable and hung them to die. “I have tried to pretend that I do not care. I thought I had succeeded in convincing myself that I did not, but you – you have shown me that I cannot run from what I have done. That I cannot run from myself. That I cannot live like this.”

What did she mean? He had shown her...?

“But,” he protested, “you can – all those years ... you survived, you kept yourself alive.”

“I kept myself from death. Different thing.”

He shook his head, again, in silent denial. This wasn’t happening. This – wasn’t – happening! “I can’t let you do this. I can’t stand by while you...” His heart twisted just thinking of it. Because it was her. “I can’t do that.”

“Just let me go. Please.”

“What happens if I don’t?” It was barely audible, even to him.

She stared at him. “You cannot save me. You cannot – I am beyond redemption.”

“You can save yourself,” he entreated. “You have it in you, if you’d just believe in yourself-”

He stopped. She was shaking her head. He tried again. “I believe in you-”

“How can you believe in me?” Her eyes tore at his. “I am against everything you believe in. You believe there is always hope. You believe there is truth in this world, and you want to know it. All the wrong that is here – you look at that and you refuse to stand by. You work to right it. I accept what I am given, settle for what I have, hold no belief that there could be more. You want to find reality, touch it, understand it. I do not even believe there is a reality. All that matters is what one believes is the truth. He taught me that, and what I learned from him I will never be rid of. I cannot live in a reality. I cannot live with your sense of truth.”

The depth of her perception left him shaken. “I’d let it go.”

“No, you would not!” she exclaimed, her voice pitching sharply, sounding deeply distressed. She came towards him, her hand brushing his face with the lightest of touches. His stomach turned over. “You cannot-” He caught her hand, brought it to his lips, and her breath hitched. She looked up at him unsteadily for a moment, then regained her composure, insisting, “You cannot, Fenix. You can not lose that part of yourself.”

“I don’t care.”

“That is not true.”

“I don’t!” He didn’t, not at that moment. Throwing himself away didn’t seem such an awful thing anymore. Not if it was for her. Not if it kept her with him. He couldn’t be who he was if he didn’t believe what he did, but he didn’t want to be who he was if it meant being without her.

“Why are you trying so hard?” she groaned.

Fenix rested his forehead on hers, keeping his breathing steady only with a conscious effort. “Don’t you know?” he asked her, seriously. He felt her tremble, heard her breathing quicken.

His hands settled on her shoulders as he pulled back to look at her, his fingers pressing softly.

“You make me ache,” he told her, keeping his voice low, intimate, “because you make something inside me spurt into life. Something I never see alive, and it doesn’t matter. You make me mean what I say and live for what I believe. When I’m with you I want to throw everything else away so there’s nothing to go back to. Throw myself away so there’s nothing but you.” He smiled, wryly, at that. She was staring at him, ashen. Her mouth opened, but he continued recklessly. He couldn’t tell her outright that he’d fallen in love with her because he knew she would simply dismiss it, but he was damn well going to make sure she knew. “You make my heart pound and my head swim and my stomach churn, and I live to feel that. I sit – for hours – ringing circles around one word. It’s – it’s ridiculous, what I would do to get you to look at me, to get you to smile. You tear me apart and put me back together, and somehow I’m more complete after. You don’t have to do anything or even try – you’re in everything I’ve ever known. You’re everything I want to know.”

“Please stop,” she murmured, shakily.

The expression on her face nearly broke his heart. He touched her cheek. Her eyes shut as his fingers trailed down her neck, and opened nearly immediately after again. She jerked her head back. He dropped his hand to his side.

“Do not do that,” she whispered. Her eyes drank him in. Sadly. Fearfully. But they drank him in. “I want to die, remember?”

“Can’t you ... hold on somehow?” He tried to keep the despair from his voice. Wasn’t sure how much he succeeded. “Take it moment by moment, day by day? Not forever. Just here. Now. Believe in me?”

She regarded him, sombre. “Is not the point of believing in someone else learning how to believe in yourself? I cannot do that. There is nothing to believe with. Belief has to be internal. It has to come from inside.” What she was saying mirrored his earlier thoughts so closely he winced. “I cannot believe in myself. Ever.”

“If you can’t believe in yourself,” he avowed, “I’ll do it for you.”

That sorrow was back, welling in her eyes, shifting over her face. It captured him as thoroughly as her tears had, tied barbed wire around his heart.

“That would mean being dependent on something external. Could you live like that, always relying on something else?” She was right, but he still struggled against it. It couldn’t be hopeless. This couldn’t be the end. It couldn't be over. “I know you would believe for me,” she sighed. “I – I know you could. Except – you cannot make me believe. And what you said was true: you cannot live if you do not believe in something. My life would be a lie. I would be living a lie.”

“You seem to have no problem with that,” he pointed out.

“But you would be living it, too.” The sorrow wasn’t receding. If anything, it was deepening, soaking into her skin. The wire wound tighter, penetrated further. “That is what you are saying, is it not? That you would live a lie for me?”

She didn’t have to wait for confirmation. She knew it as well as he did.

“That is not you, not who you are. You would hate yourself for it. Fight yourself every day over it. And even if you could force yourself to do it, it would only be a dream. And dreams are dreams for a reason. They are not real, and there is always a point where you have to wake up. I need to wake up, on my own terms, before a dream can end on me.”

“Is that what this is about?” he shot, harshly. Even though he finally understood. He wished he didn’t. “Waking up?”

She tilted her head, slightly. “This is about – choosing an ending. I never could do it before. I was always afraid to, because it meant giving up for good. It was the ultimate failure. But now ... now it is not about failure anymore.”

He wanted to fold in on himself. What could he say, against that? Hadn’t that been what he wanted for her, to be beyond that fear of failure?

“Then what about me?” He was frightened – no, terrified – to hear the answer.

“You deserve more,” she told him, simply, shaking her head, those dark eyes sinking hooks into his very soul.

“I don’t want more,” he protested.

Aiur exhaled, slowly. “Being with you – is the closest to life I have ever been. But I cannot believe in you. I cannot believe in something, be near something, without tainting it.”

“That’s not true!” This again?

“Yes, it is,” she said, calmly. Her eyes held him fast, consumed him. That bundle of emotions knotted further, but he was numb, too cold to notice the shocks it emitted. “I will pull you down until everything you believe right now, you will not.” She paused, an eyebrow cocked, daring him to refute what she was saying. He couldn’t. He knew she was right, because he was willing to do just that, throw away what he believed, for her. “And I will not do that to you. He taught me something, about life and death. You cannot die until you accept life. You cannot live until you accept death. If I cannot live through belief, then death-”

“No,” he said, forcefully.

She looked out across the desert, away from him. “I do not belong here.” Her voice was quiet, but it still rent him in two. She turned back to face him fully. “You can do anything, so long as you know there is going to be an ending. I need my ending; it is the only thing I have left. The only thing that remains mine. No one is going to take it away from me. Not even you.”

“Aiur...” But he had been stripped of any other words.

“I – I am sorry,” she faltered. She said nothing for a moment, and then she averted her gaze, biting her lip. “I wish – I wish that this hadn’t ... if things were different, I – I just need to ... I ... this was – you have been ... the most amazing,” she flushed, stumbled over her words, “um, that is ... the innocence you have shown me, the belief, the hope...” Her eyes flickered to meet his. “You do not know how much you have given me.”

He was silent, but inside he was beset with alternating waves of, on the one hand, elation over what she had just said, and on the other, anguish over everything else she had said. His innocence was choking itself with shaking hands; his belief was sinking down to the floor with its head bowed; his hope was thrashing about in its fatal throes.

She scattered his thoughts. “There is something I want to give you.”

She reached a hand into the collar of her shirt and lifted a chain from around her neck, where it had hung unseen beneath the fabric, handing it to him. He examined it, trying to distract himself from what that was happening, but there wasn’t much to the thing. There was a medallion affixed to it, black, with some sort of insignia that he couldn’t make out, because the lines were twisted and melted together.

He ran his fingers over the design. It must have been beautiful, once. “What is it?”

She smiled; it didn’t reach her eyes.

“A dream. Or a nightmare. Sometimes there does not seem to be much of a difference. Once it was the future; now it is nothing but the past. It was my mother’s.” Aiur’s head jerked sideways, in answer to his unasked question. “I am giving it to you because – because what you touch ... what you touch comes to life.”

He came to a decision, in that moment.

“There’s something I want to give you, too.” His voice came out splintered.

The cadra hadn’t moved at all; it had folded its legs and was laying sleepily beside the packages, content to be free of its burdens. He really did think he hated it, in that moment. What right did it have – what right did anything have – to be so at peace, when he had to go through this? Fenix took Aiur by the hand and led her back to the cadra, where he knelt and picked up the knife. He fiddled with it for a moment, running his fingers over it, torn – was he actually doing this? – before he stood again and handed it to her.

She stared at him.

“It’s – it’s your life,” he said, awkward.

“Fenix,” she breathed, “I cannot believe you would-”

Breaking off, she let the knife drop to the sand, and, to his complete and utter astonishment, literally threw herself into his arms. He held her to him readily, knowing he was shaking, on the verge of crying. God, why couldn’t they just stay like this, forever? Why did he have to let her go?

“Thank you.” The words came out muffled against his chest. He noticed that she was shaking, too. “I know what this – thank you.”

“There’s just one condition I have,” he said, softly, fighting hard to keep back the tears. She looked up at him curiously, and he swallowed. “You can’t try and send me away before you – before you do it. I want to be there.”

“Why?” she whispered.

He looked into her eyes. They were the expanse of the cosmos, the dark spaces in-between the stars. And he couldn’t fly. “Because no one should have to die alone.”

She didn’t reply, but the way she burrowed her face back into his chest and tightened her grip around him spoke loudly enough.

-

-

It was dark where she lay. Dark and cold. The darkness whispered to her as it groped its way down her body thickly, pressed in close and suffocating around her. It was not afraid to touch her. She wished it was.

A dampness clung between her shoulder blades, trickled down her front, as the dark’s icy fingertips moved across her skin, reading the sins that were branded into her flesh. She raised a hand to her slit throat. There was no confusion in her mind as her fingers trailed over the slashed flesh and felt the hot blood that still flowed down her neck. Her life was seeping through her fingers, liquid fire that burned as it drained from her. She remembered what she had done.

And if this was what she found, if this was all there was, then so be it. She was sure, though, that the inferno was waiting for her somewhere, sure that those flames she had seen before would leap up and engulf her at any moment. But so be it.

A voice boomed in the darkness, so deep it resonated in her bones as it echoed around her. The voice became a tremor within her blood, a low timbre that shadowed every heartbeat. “You are cleansed of fear.”

She got up, and began to walk.

The pain slipped from her body with each step she took; her wound closed over and the blood disappeared. She didn’t notice. She walked through a light so bright it burned her eyes, so pure it seared her lungs. The light pulsated, as if it was alive and had its own heartbeat. It swept over the darkness in a flood, removing all memory of it. She wanted to weep, for the purity of the light. That something so beautiful could exist, that she could be allowed to see it.

Behind her footsteps rang the sound of chimes, pure and sweet. The air dangled around her, wreathed about her body, kissing her exposed skin.

Before her rose two massive gates, intricately detailed and wrought with adamantine gold. Silver vines climbed their way around the golden bars, silver vines and crystalline leaves newly bloomed and glittering jewel-flowers.

Three figures stood in front of the gates, identical in outward appearance. They wore robes of a soft, tender white that hung from shoulder to calf and left arms and feet bare. Their skin glowed. Droplets of light drifted towards them, circling over their heads in firefly-halos, and their feet were shod in clouds. They were beautiful.

The figure in the middle spoke, and its voice stirred her hair, gentle and warm as a summer breeze. It caressed her flesh, soothed away the tension and aches she hadn’t even known were there. “You are cleansed of pride.”

“No more tears now, child,” the figure on the right added, in the deep, booming voice.

She hadn’t realized she was crying. But she couldn’t seem to stop. She lifted her chin up despite her tears, the tears that were rolling off her face in perfect, round drops to fall at her feet, meeting their flashing eyes. Lightning crackled within each orb, but she was not afraid.

“I let go.” A statement as flat as possible.

There was a pause, and her nerves started to burrow into her bones. Then the gates began to open. They made no sound, rotating forward on their hinges slowly. She stared wide-eyed at the world that lay beyond them. Floating meadows and streams and mountains, all made of liquid light, beckoned to her.

“But I deserve – I deserve to burn,” she whispered. It hurt more than it ever had before to say it, looking at the light that would be denied her. The truth hadn’t changed. She was done running from it. “Forever.”

The third figure was at her side, touching her head in benediction, its hands cool. “You are cleansed of guilt.” It spoke with such a melodic lilt that it seemed to sing the words.

The music seized her soul, uplifted it to the highest plane of existence. And she soared, buoyed further with each note that floated through the air. Currents swirled under her feet, dancing to the rhythm of the music. It was as if she walked on water. Wonder filled her.

A hand found the small of her back, ushered her gently toward the gates. “It is time for you to wake up.”

Those words tugged at something in her memory. She stopped moving, at the very entrance.

“Go on, child,” the centre figure urged her.

Instead of doing so, she turned back to look at them.

At the very end, when everything else was over, he was still ablaze and flaring in her thoughts, a shadow rising to meet her, waiting before her at the dawn of each breath she took. His fingers resting at the side of her neck, his arms holding her tight against him as she slept, his heartbeat burning his name into the palm of her hand. Her stomach knotted, hollowed and shivering, turning inside-out, remembering that night, the air that had shifted as he leaned over her, the brush of his lips over hers. Remembering the way he’d looked at her, as he told her he was willing to throw himself away for her. If there was anything in her life that she would regret leaving behind, anything she would never get over, it was tied to him.

She had to know. “Where will he go, when he dies?”

“Did you let go, or not?” the figure with the deep voice demanded, angrily. It was beside her then, gripping her arm in glowing, unblemished alabaster fingers, preventing her from going on. The lightning in its eyes scorched the air, turning it into glass, and she had to shut her eyes. Nails dug into her arm, but though pain wracked her, she didn’t tremble. This lightning was nothing, this fire was nothing; he remained, burning behind her closed eyes, and everything else paled beside him.

Except the light.

She opened her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she loved the light for that, or hated it.

“Let her go, Oma,” one of the other two figures sang. It walked towards them – glided, really.

The third figure stood, silent, and did nothing.

“She can’t hold on!” The light vibrated with the intensity of Oma’s rage. Its hold on her tightened even further.

“Let her go,” the figure repeated, upon reaching them. There was a crackling pause, and then Oma’s hand released her arm, flinging itself away as it disappeared in a flashing burst of violent light.

A bell began to toll, deafening her. She didn’t care.

“Where will he go?” she whispered.

The singing figure looked down at her, something like compassion swirling in its eyes. “Even we do not know that, child.” It bent, and kissed her forehead, softly. Tenderly.

The way he had.

Her hands began to weep. She let them cry, accepting the grief as it reverberated through her, as she drew in her breath, inhaling the music, feeling herself being knit painfully back together. In her mind’s eye, she could see it once more: a young girl, dancing down the street in her shift while the night lay hot and still around her, her face lit up in the amber glow of the fireworks exploding overhead. Moonlight flooding over her, soaking into her. Smiling. Home.

“Go in peace, Aiur,” the figure told her, quietly.

Peace.

She walked forward. Her tears dried.

-

-

fin.