Copilots

by Laura Schiller

AU for "Reached". "Because she's my co-pilot. And you ... you're the North Star I can never reach."

Copilots

By Laura Schiller

Based on the Matched Trilogy

Copyright: Ally Condie

"Come away," Xander murmurs, touching my shoulder. "You need rest."

I'm sitting between Ky's and Indie's beds at the medical center, trying to talk to them, call them back with my voice, except that nothing feels right to say. Small talk is too trivial, and as for what I really think, it seems unkind to say such things to the still.

I only found out about them days ago, on the airship en route to Endstone. If someone had told me months ago that Ky would ever leave me for someone else, I would have laughed. Now I feel like crying, but not for the reasons I would have expected, and that confuses me. I feel as if my foot had slipped while climbing a canyon, leaving me scrabbling for purchase in mid-air. As if I had jumped from the diving board, only for the pool to disappear underneath me.

"I'm so sorry," Ky says to me, his blue eyes shadowed. "I should have written to you … should have explained ... "

Xander, next to me, draws in a breath of indignation. "Are you two - ?"

"Together," Indie confirms, lifting her chin, a hint of a smile lighting her face even as she braces for my anger. "And I don't just mean for flying."

I laugh, breathlessly, shaking my head. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out, just like the dead fish on the shore of Central Lake.

"She told me once," Ky says quietly, glancing at Indie, "That we were more alike than you and I, Cassia. She was right."

"Because she's an Aberration?" I ask bluntly.

"No … not only that." He lifts his hand, hunting for words, in an awkward, foggy-minded way that is unlike him. Early symptoms of the Plague. "Because she's my co-pilot. And you … you're the North Star I can never reach."

That's when the Pilot broke in, with his questions and his accusations, followed by this enormous task he placed on the shoulders of Xander and me. We have to find a cure as soon as possible. Our tangled loves and rivalries will mean less than nothing if they die.

But Xander's right. My head aches and I'm hungry; I'm no use to anybody like this. He takes my hand and leads me out of the chemical-scented room into the freshness of a summer evening.

We walk along a dirt path through the waving stalks of wheat the farmers have planted. Sunset light makes the golden grain brighter, the color of Xander's hair. It also disguises the weariness on his face, which is probably on mine as well. But his head is bowed, as if from many weeks of bending over his patients, and there is a line of worry between his eyebrows. He looks older than he should after six months apart. That never showed on the ports – or was it only that I didn't look closely enough?

I should have.

"How are you?" Xander asks.

"I'm fine."

"No." He raises an eyebrow. "The real answer, please. We're not on the port now. You have every right to scream if you feel like it."

"But I don't," with a shrug and a small laugh. "That's the confusing part."

"Confusing? I should have thought those two made it pretty clear." Xander's voice has an edge to it that I find curiously endearing. He's angry on my behalf. Most boys in his position would have been happy, but trust Xander to be unselfish even at a time like this. "How could she do that to you? Didn't you say she was your friend – or was that part of our show?"

During our port conversations, I tried to convey as much about my travels to Xander as I could without giving my secrets away. I told him I'd made friends at the work camp with a girl named Indie Holt, who loved the ocean but crossed the skies for a living, who was blunt and fierce and not afraid of anything. It was the truth, but not the whole truth.

"She is. But she's … she's someone who goes after what she wants. I admire that about her. It's why we became friends in the first place."

"Even when she takes what's yours?"

"She didn't take Ky." I find myself blushing. What a strange conversation this is; say about the Society what you like, at least they did their best to help us avoid this sort of confusion. "He chose to be with her. She can't steal from me what isn't really mine."

I remember how frightened she was when she found out she had the mutation. When did Indie ever show fear, even when we saw the corpses of the farmers or when we ran the poisoned river? But going still terrified her. She curled her hand around Ky's sleeve in the same delicate way she used to touch her wasps' nest, and he gazed into her eyes and promised her she wouldn't be alone.

He used to look at me that way.

I expect to feel heartbreak when that thought occurs to me, but I don't. All I feel is … shame? Yes, shame, for reading this situation with him so wrong for so many months. And here I call myself a sorter.

"He's the one I can't understand," I confess. "He … he told me once he had more faith in me than he thought he'd ever have. In anything. So why … " I stop myself. "I'm sorry. Should I be talking to you about this?"

"You can tell me anything, Cassia." I watch him carefully, but there is no trace of pain at the mention of Ky. "I thought you knew that."

"I know. It's just … " I shake my head. "All this time, I've made him the center of my universe, and we never really knew each other. He must have figured that out before I did. A star he can never reach, he said."

"What does that mean, anyway?" Xander crinkles his nose at me, hoping to cheer me up. "Isn't a star just a big ball of gas in the sky?"

I laugh. "Flattering. No … no, what he meant was that I was his ideal. That he loved what he thought I was instead of who I am, and I did the same to him."

Ky. My poet, my stolen secret from the Society, the lonely Aberration I meant to save, the living, breathing symbol of my rebellion. I thought I needed him – to write, to break free, to think my own thoughts. But I've been doing all those things on my own for months now. I thought he would show me the way to the Rising, but in the end I found the way myself, and he – reluctantly – followed me. He never wanted to help people, like Xander, or share beauty with the world, like me. All he wants is to survive, like Indie, to carve out his own little corner for the people he cares about. It's a reasonable goal, but it's not mine.

Xander lets out a long, low whistle of sympathy. "I think I get it now," he says. "He worshipped you. I could see that, ever since we were kids. He thought you were too good for him. I can see how that would become tiring after a while."

I remember how, on our last morning in the Carving, Ky painted all night long and then refused to touch me with his color-marked hands. He's always been like that with me, so terribly careful, telling me his story in bits and pieces, as if too much exposure to him might break me. I can't see Indie putting up with that kind of behavior. Maybe that's why he fell in love with her.

Xander never worshipped me. He's known me since we were in daycare. He knows all my flaws – the way I hold a grudge, put off making hard decisions, blow small details out of all proportion in my quest for meaningful symbols – regularly teases me about them, and loves me anyway.

Or at least, he used to.

"So what was it like?" I ask him, to change the subject after a long and awkward silence. "At the medical center?"

"Difficult." He smiles wryly.

"Obviously. But what were your days like? The people you worked with? How did you feel when the mutation broke out?" What has your life been like without me? When did the book I loved every time I read it become a code I can't decipher?

He runs his fingers through his hair and squints at the sun. "You know I'm not any good at telling stories."

"I'm not asking you for a story. Just the truth."

He pauses, frowns, swings my hand a little as we walk. I'm still holding it. The thought makes me blush a little, but I don't let go, even as he tells me about watching patients die, about the trained virologist he had to tackle to the ground to stop him running away and infecting the rest of the building, about Nea Lei and her favorite painting, about watching her go still.

"She was … important to you, wasn't she?"

Do I sound jealous? I have no right to be. But I feel just the way I did catching Indie with my microcard, like I wanted to climb inside her head and demand her thoughts. Does this Lei have feelings for Xander? Does he have them for her? Why should it matter, when we are no longer even Matched?

Xander eyes me with wry amusement, the way he used to do when we were younger and I sulked about losing a game. "She's a good friend," he says firmly. "A good medic. I liked to talk to her because she understood … she's married to an army officer, you see. She misses him as much as I missed you."

His eyes are warm as a summer sky. I'm an idiot for doubting him. I smile to myself as he continues with his stories.

"You did that?" I ask, surprised and touched, when he mentions putting up the Hundred Paintings on the ceiling. Xander's never loved art the way Ky and I do.

"I'm not an uncultured idiot, you know. I may not be a poet, but I still know beauty when I see it."

He's joking, but there's a flash of real hurt in his eyes and it makes me ashamed. Did I ever make him feel inferior because he can't create like Ky and I can? I never once recited the Dylan Thomas poemto him, afraid he would be confused or, worse, make fun of me. But of course he still knows beauty when he sees it. And he joined the Rising, opened his eyes to the Society's crimes, before any of us. He must have learned years ago what it means to rage against the dying of the light.

"I never said you were uncultured," I tell him, more fiercely than I intended. "You heal people. That's a form of art – maybe the most important one there is."

"I haven't been doing much of that lately," he confesses with a sigh.

"You will." I squeeze his arm for reassurance. "When we find the cure."

"You think so?"

He looks down at me with a longing that takes my breath away – not only for me, though he feels that too, but for me to believe in him. He always used to believe in himself; I used to envy his confidence at the gaming tables or during a swim meet. But today he needs me, and I'm astonished by how good it feels to be needed.

"I know so."

I stop, turn to face him, and put both my hands on his forearms. We stand together in the middle of the path, our shadows twice as long as we are, our faces only inches apart. If I stand on tiptoe, if I aim just right, I may discover whether I was right in Tana six months ago. Our first kiss was innocent and sweet. Would we kiss differently now?

He pulls away. The evening air comes rushing into the place where he stood, cold against my burning face.

"I – I'm sorry. Don't you … ?"

"Oh, Cassia, I do. So much." He draws in a heavy breath, his hands tight on my shoulders as if I might fly away. "I want you so much I can't sleep sometimes. I have for years."

Passion lights up his face like a campfire in the Carving – the last thing I would have expected from safe, comfortable Xander, but something I should have recognized years ago. The energy rolling off him when we play, the restless motion, the sparkle of laughter and confidence – how much of that was for me, and I never saw it?

But then he swallows hard, and the fire is drowned in cold water. "But think about this," he says, tightly controlled, letting go of me and raising his hands as if in surrender. "Make sure you know what you want this time. Don't … don't settle for me, Cassia. I couldn't stand that."

Then – before I can say a word or even move – he turns his back on me and strides away into the darkening night.

I'm frozen to the path. I've never seen him so hurt before. I did this to him – and all because I was too young, too sheltered, too Society to understand what love is.

But it's not too late. I've always been a fast runner, more than ever since the Carving. I take off like the birds in Dylan Thomas' second poem, the birds of the winged trees flying his name.

"Xander! Xander, wait!"

He stops, looks over his shoulder. He stands with his hands in his pockets, waiting, his face unreadable now the sun has gone down.

"I'm not," I say. "I'm not settling. I … Indie was right. I didn't see you or Ky clearly for the longest time. I sorted you. You as Society, Ky as a rebel. But you're both so much more than that, and you … you are what I wanted all along."

Xander. My best friend, always there for me, from the first day I scraped my knee in the playground and he helped me to my feet, until today. Xander who loves me, but loves to do what's right even more, enough to give up our Match in order to help make our world a better place. I know he's not perfect; he can be vain about his talents and his looks, he won't speak to me for days sometimes when we argue, and he takes on more work than he has to out of his conviction that no one else can do it as well.

"I don't want a star in the distance, Xander. I want a co-pilot by my side."

His eyes glitter in the last rays of sunlight falling through the grains. A slow, thoughtful smile crosses his handsome face.

"I'm not talking about flying," I add hastily, just in case. "It means - "

"I know what it means," says Xander, shaking his head. "You and your metaphors."

And then he pulls me into his arms and kisses me like there's no tomorrow.

I was right. It's so much more than sweet. It's the taste of salt and ration bars and exhaustion, the heat of his mouth against mine and his hands running through my hair, the fierce triumph of hope fulfilled after so many months apart. Our bodies are used to moving side by side when we run or swim, but not together; it's a dance we'll have to learn, but then we've always been fast learners.

Should I feel guilty for doing this when my best girl friend and my former lover are sick? Honestly I don't. I feel as if I can face them better now than I ever could have before, especially Indie, whose unashamed directness has inspired me tonight. When I go back to the medical center tomorrow, I know what I will say.

First, I forgive you.

Then, Please come back to us.