"Happiness," her mother said once, low and quiet and angry, "is something you have to take for yourself."
Carolina is ten years old, with a ten-year-old's scraped knees and a ten-year-old's frustrated fury and a ten-year-old's clumsily curled fists. The punches she throws are fast but imprecise, and the overcorrection in her stance is a vague annoyance that her backbrain coldly, critically notes. But it doesn't matter that the old lessons are inaudible over the roaring in her ears, it doesn't matter that Wegner's bigger than her. He's standing still, rooted, entirely on the defensive. She could beat him with one arm tied behind her back.
It hurts to hit someone and mean it. There's blood on her knuckles, but it's the bone-deep jarring up and down her arms that scares her, the feeling like she's going to hit so hard she'll shake herself apart. She remembers seeing a video, in school, of a bridge collapsing in the wind. Something about sympathetic vibrations.
Someone is calling her name, distantly. Sharply.
Her shoulders and her spine know that tone even if her brain hasn't caught on yet, and she snaps to attention, swinging her bloodied hands to her sides. Wegner sways on his feet, hunched over, his arms still raised to protect his head.
"Carolina," her father snarls again, and it's only when she turns to look at him that she realizes her vision is blurry with tears. She doesn't brush them away. "What is the meaning of this outburst?"
She remembers that he was going to pick her up from school today. She remembers why.
Wegner whispers, "Freak," very quietly under his breath. He's lowering his hands, slowly, a smirk spreading across his face now that an adult's in play, an Authority.
Carolina takes a deep breath. Her hands feel swollen and too-large and clumsy at her sides. She says nothing, thinning her lips to a line.
Her father cocks his head to one side, and she can see, somewhere beneath the wrinkles and the gray hairs and the droop in his shoulders, that his gaze is just as sharp and calculating as it's ever been. Cold.
"Is it important?" he asks, at last.
Carolina squares her jaw. Five years since the death-day, since the quiet words at the doorway, since she found out what her dad sounded like when he cried. Five years to the day, and Wegner decided it'd be funny to call her dead mother names.
"Yeah," she says. Her voice is very calm. Very steady. "Yeah, it's important."
Her father raises an eyebrow, crosses his arms. Stares at her like he's measuring her up. "Then I recommend you finish what you started," he says, simply.
Wegner's jaw drops. "Wait," he says. "Wait, I-"
Carolina breaks his nose.
Later, standing at the gravesite, her father shows her again how to make a fist so she won't hurt her thumb, reminds her that an open-handed blow can be more effective, more dangerous. She's not sure how to explain about the roaring in her ears, the collapsed-bridge feeling in her arms, so instead she nods solemnly and listens.
"Will you remember that, next time?" her father asks. He asks a lot of questions that have only one correct answer. It's easiest to give him that answer immediately.
"Yes," she says. She's looking at the grave marker, trying to connect it with a face she barely remembers.
"Do you understand why you were suspended from school for what you did?"
"Yes."
"Do you feel better, now?"
"Yes," she says, one more time, and wonders when she got to be such a practiced liar.
"Happiness," her mother said once, soft and distant and dreamy-eyed, "is something you stumble into."
"Uh," York says, "do you need me to-"
"I've got it," she says, and straddles him awkwardly to try and get a better grip on the knot. "Damn. This got tight."
"It's not the only thing." York waggles his eyebrows.
Carolina rolls her eyes. "Shut up or I'll leave you like this and call maintenance."
"Shutting up."
"Besides, if you hadn't squirmed around so much-" She manages to work a fingernail under the fabric and pulls the knot free triumphantly. "Hah. Easy."
York rubs at his wrists, grinning. "If I hadn't squirmed around so much, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun."
"There is that." She straightens up on her knees, stretching out a kink in her back, and watches York's ridiculous smile fade into something... awestruck. It's a weirdly serious look on someone who's currently wearing a grand total of one sock and nothing else, so she leans forward again to run her fingers through his hair, standing it on end until he looks properly ridiculous again. He smirks. "Hey," she says. "You okay? Not too rough?"
"No such thing," he says, then, more seriously, "Nah. I'm good." He pauses, a little nervousness coloring his voice. "You good?"
"Yeah, York," she says, grinning, because it's one thing to have a security specialist who never stops mouthing off, and it's another to have a security specialist who also knows how to put that mouth to good use. "I'm good."
He bites his lower lip when he's thinking. She really wishes he wouldn't, because it's late and she'll be on duty in five hours and round three might be pushing their luck-
"Hey," he says. "This, you know. What we've got. It's great."
She tries not to tense up, keeps her voice light. "But?"
"That's just it. No buts. Well. Some butts. Not that kind, though. I mean, man, it's just-" He raises a hand, hesitantly brushes a finger against the side of her face, traces it down to her bare shoulder. "I can't quite believe it, is all. You know. I'm happy with, just. Just this. And that's kinda freaking me out."
She sighs, sinking down beside him in the cramped space of her rack as best she can with their legs still intertwined. "York."
He rubs at his hair, distractedly. "It's okay, man. I'm trying to say it's really okay and I keep messing it up, here. I know we're gonna be working together through this whole project, and, let's be honest here, you're gonna be running the show in no time flat. So, you know. You do what you have to do, and I'll be here if you need me. When you need me. If. I don't know."
"When," she says, and nuzzles into the hollow above his collarbone, feeling him shudder in reaction. He smells like... well, he smells like sweat and sex, but she can't really bring herself to care about cleanup right now. He smells good. "I got you," she says. "Don't worry."
He gives a little shrug, bumping his shoulder against her cheek. "Hey. I worry. It's what I do. But I gotta say, it's nice seeing you so happy. Different."
She yawns, draping an arm across his chest and pulling him closer. "You change too, you know. Around me."
His laugh is a little puff of breath that tickles her hair against her face. "What, do I become more devilishly handsome?"
She raises her head, making a show of looking him over, then says, "Nah. Just marginally less annoying."
He snorts, reaching behind his head, and she raises her arms just quickly enough to block the oncoming pillow.
"Happiness," her mother said once, furious and frustrated and alone, "is something that gets torn from you."
She's made it to the bottom of the mountain from the edge of the cliff, and her mind is shredding.
Eta and Iota are the ragged slices through her memories, the blood matting her hair, the rattle of her breath rising in a mist through the cold air. They're the persistent tremor in her hands, the thick smell of burning in her nostrils. She's losing blood, she thinks. The hookshot only got her so far. She remembers falling. She remembers falling a long, long time.
When she jerks back to consciousness, she's half-frozen, sick and lethargic, the screams in her head only low, hollow echoes. She's alive. She feels a wave of disgust at the thought, so deep it nearly drags her under. She's alive, and she's breathing, and she can feel her mind shifting back into focus, which means she's in an impossible situation and now she's going to have to do something about it.
She drags herself to her feet, amazed that none of her bones are broken—at least, not badly enough to hamper her. The bleeding at the base of her skull has stopped. She knows she should be thinking about what it all means, about why Tex and why York and why Maine, but right now she only knows she needs to retrieve her helmet if she can, she needs to keep from freezing out here on the ice. With all the confusion after the crash, it shouldn't be too difficult, and then she can move on. Figure out what comes next.
The prospect of survival is beginning to seem plausible, and from survival will come... what? Satisfaction? Renewal? Change?
Revenge, she thinks, trying the idea on for size. The echo of it is drawn in by the echoes of her A.I.s, whispering again and again in her head, a rattle deep inside her bones, a vibrating hum, revenge.
"Happiness," her mother said, again and again, crouched in front of Carolina with her hands on her shoulders to look her straight in the eye, "is something you always deserve."
Carolina's crouched at the peak of a ridge, out of the damn armor for once, breathing lungfuls of cool, crisp air. Epsilon's back with the jeep—he understands, she thinks, the overwhelming need to be alone sometimes. Once you've shared your mind with a few other people, single-occupancy can be refreshing.
The sun's coming up at the horizon, distant and faded and glimmering through the dew-covered leaves. She's seen enough sunrises on Chorus to know what's next: the shocking orange-pink of low cloud reflecting new light, the greens and grays of the trees shifting into sharp relief. The predictability is soothing, all tied in with endings and beginnings.
She thinks she feels the echoes of Eta and Iota, sometimes, when the sunrise dredges up her more scrambled, painful memories. Sometimes she likes to pretend they're still at her side, appreciating the things in life that go beyond terror and battle and the burning need to win. Fighting their way with her back to good.
Sometimes she likes to pretend York is with her. She doesn't linger in solipsistic misery like her father, tries to hold on to the warmth, the easy smiles. Sometimes she convinces herself of the weight of his arm around her shoulders, and most days, that's enough. That's more than enough.
Sometimes her companion is a ghost, distantly remembered, built up and torn down so many times in her memory that she's only an idea, half-forgotten words, a remembered ache in her arms, in her chest. She likes to think her mother would be proud, in a strange, twisted way. She likes to think it wouldn't matter.
The sun rises over Chorus, and today she is content to be alone in her mind and staring out at her future, always outpacing the ghosts crowding her past.
Epsilon's hologram flickers to life beside her. There's a smile in his voice. "Ready to suit up and head out?"
Carolina grins. "Heroic rescues our specialty?"
"Damn right. This Locus fucker isn't gonna know what hit him."
She pulls on her armor as the morning dawns warm and promising and takes one last breath, deep and slow, before sealing her helmet. "A lot can happen in a day," she says.
Epsilon snorts a laugh. "Tell me about it." He slips back into the A.I. slot on her armor, and she feels the waiting hum of her speed unit intensify. "You ready?"
Carolina stares out over the valley below, her HUD already picking out heat signatures. She's still smiling. She's not sure why.
"Yeah, Church," she says. "I'm ready."