Shilo's discharge from the hospital was only somewhat eventful; throngs of well-wishers and the more polite paparazzi lined her path from the sliding front doors to the waiting car. A security guard on loan from the medical center kept people from getting too close, though with the amount of antivirals she was on he needn't have worried about her getting infected. Even with an artificial, lab-grown heart there was a risk of her body rejecting the eleven ounce organ.
Her recovery had taken place over the better part of a week thanks to technology and her commitment. She could walk without assistance, pain management consisted of deep breathing and loud music, and the statement she gave on the kindness of hospital staff included a smile, incognizable of anguish. As soon as she slid into the car and the door with its blessed tinted windows closed she sank into tears, mewling and dark. He hadn't come for her.
Though hell should bar the way, he'd quoted to her. I love you, he'd told her. He'd supported her but it seemed there was a limit to the goodness she knew was inside him. Maybe it was only a spark after all. Maybe he was just a bastard. Only seventeen, though the scars on her heart would mark her as older, hopefully wiser, and now alone. She almost called the Senator. In the end she went back to her gifted apartment all alone, leaned on the front door and looked around the shadowy space that she and Graverobber had consecrated every inch of with hate sex and arguing and the one factor that all those encounters had in common was her ire and suspicion. It was all her.
A discarded undershirt of his draped a chair. She picked it up, brought it up to her face, and breathed in. His smell filled her like the tears filling her eyes, both threatening and comforting and here was a tantrum of reproach. The last time they'd fucked was easy to remember, even if her pelvis had recovered. He'd clutched her head in both hands and forced her to look up at him, swearing her name as he came inside her. With a condom, of course. The one time they hadn't, he'd fetched her a pill to ensure she wasn't pregnant. What a mess that had been. Other than being especially sticky after sex, the "morning after" pill had made her especially prickly, and she was already prickly.
Knowing Graverobber and where his anatomy had been – all over Sanitarium Island – she could probably stand to get some sort of screening. That could wait. She smelled the shirt again. Already it was fading, not new, not special, leaving her with an unremarkable, dingy undershirt, another piece of him she'd chased away.
Something had changed. In place of the resentment she'd planted in her gut when he'd disappeared sprang... guilt. This was how she'd repaid his devotion, leaving his home, his vocation, his safe havens. She'd basically spat on his love.
Shilo Wallace really was a fucking monster.
Two hours later, she'd washed and dried all of Graverobber's clothes and folded them, placed them in the chiffonier in case he came back. That helped a little. She'd ordered and then consumed a vanilla milkshake with nutrient powder. That helped, too. Her chest hurt, the seam with the thick black stitches down between her breasts where they'd sliced her open burning like birthday candles. Meditative breaths from her diaphragm were no match for this type of heartburn. There was always Zydrate, a phone call away, a quick trip to a pharmacy, a cold glass of water to wash it down... It had been so sweet before her surgery when she'd felt nothing and seen Graverobber next to her gurney when he wasn't even... She shook herself, took a sleeping pill, and faded to sleep in bed, laying on her stomach with her arm outstretched to hold someone who was no longer there. If she dreamed, she didn't hold onto them; they faded, too.
Shilo woke up at six the next morning with a dry mouth and discharge seeping from her stitches. She cleaned the affected area and took the medication she had to take with vitamin water. After the first days of sedation wore off, eating hurt, swallowing hot food hurt, so she'd mostly been drinking her nutrition. Milkshakes, protein powders in cool water, slightly warmed bone broth. Was her whole life going to be sickness, treatment, and recovery? She slapped a palm to her wrist communicator to check her messages, hoping for a ghost-faced friend. The message was from a friend, just not the one she'd hoped for.
The Senator's prissy portrait flickered over her arm and his voice played. "Good morning, Shilo! Sorry, I know it's early. Are you settling in alright?" There was a pregnant pause. "Right, the reason I called. There's a soup kitchen I volunteer at in the afternoon monthly. If you're at all interested in joining me, you have my number. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. If you call back."
She did call back. "Hello?" she said.
"Is this Shilo?" he guessed. He sounded out of breath.
"Yes, I'm calling you back about the volunteering opportunity. Are you okay?" She scrunched her hands in her skirt and counted lines in the ceiling, waiting for him to answer.
"I was taking a constitutional jog. Got to keep healthy, you know. Oh, shit, I mean..."
"It's fine, Senator. You didn't offend me." Shilo smiled, though he couldn't see, and didn't take much consideration into her next words. "I can be ready to be picked up whenever you need me. Oh, um, I mean..."
"Of course," he said, smoothly paving over their embarrassment. "Wear something comfortable. Don't fret about looking cute; you always do. I will be outside your place at noon."
"What, not going to come up to the door to get me? That's not gentlemanly of you," she scolded him.
"Who says I'm a gentleman all the time?" he said, his voice cracking in the effort to drop it low. Even with his healthy crop of facial hair, he didn't seem old, certainly not as old as the nearly thirty year old Graverobber. Her brand new heart fluttered pleasantly. "See you at noon, Shilo."
It was temperate outside, clouds shielding her from the sun. Shilo read a tabloid magazine she'd fetched from the lobby and discovered that Graverobber had been busy getting involved with the seedy underground. Her lip curled between a grimace and a grin. That slippery rat, she was almost proud of him. Seeing his picture was almost a comfort. He would be safe without her, and that was half of what she'd wanted all along. They would both be safe, and if they couldn't be happy they could at least pursue their individual drives. He was a force for chaos and crime, and she was the self-appointed champion of justice.
Their relationship might not have made sense to anyone else but – as she rode in the passenger side with the Senator lambasting Graverobber's legal descent – she was starting to make peace with it. Even separated, she could love him. Maybe she loved him more in his absence.
"You know what I think," the Senator said hotly, chewing a wad of tobacco and occasionally pausing to spit black and thick into a mug. He wore green mirrored sunglasses and a grey pullover sweater that only made the white in his hair shine even brighter. "He wanted to come to the mainland all along. Sure, it's a good opportunity for a grifter."
"Uh-huh," Shilo said, looking out a window. "If that's true, I'm happy for him. What do you want me to do, Senator, be full of hate? Look where that gets people. Look where that got Rotti Largo."
"That's completely different. Rotti was a misogynist who abused every woman who came into his life, including you," the Senator said. Chew, chew, spit.
"Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm perfect. Women can absolutely be hateful and abusive, and I have experience with that."
"True. You'd be surprised how many men would pay for the privilege of being abused by a woman."
Shilo sparked with laughter, leaning to and fro in the seat and cackling. The sound was foreign to her ears; she'd rarely laughed ever. "Men are so weird."
"I don't disagree." He didn't take his eyes off the road and drove competently, from what she could tell in her limited experience with cars.
"I'd like to learn to drive," she said, and hadn't realized she wanted to until she said it out loud where she could face her thoughts. "What are, um, the laws on that?"
"If you're willing to brave the most terrifying place in this world – the DMV – then we can certainly arrange for you to get your permit and, after some practice on the roads, your license. It's an inspired idea, Shilo, it'll help you build your independence and your brand."
She called Rachel then and there, at his behest, to make an appointment for driving classes. Rachel was better at negotiating tedious paperwork and phone calls according to the Senator, though Shilo felt a twinge of guilt for treating her like her personal secretary even if Rachel seemed genuinely thrilled while working.
Photographers were already on the scene at the soup kitchen, and she chided herself for being at all surprised. Politicians did good if it was visible, if it helped them. The Senator wasn't an exception. She helped pass out food, handing sweet rolls out at the end of a line. These men and women and those who weren't quite either and the little kids thanked her and ate the food with sunken eyes before it could ever reach their mouths. In the midst of the opulence she lived with, she forgot about the hungry. The poor. The ones most likely to end up on the wrong side of GeneCo. The ones who relied on charity that benefited the careers of Senator and, to a lesser extent, Shilo. She watched him feeding the homeless and the nearly homeless and wondered how much of it was performance art.
It didn't matter if he used the positive clout to create positive change in their world. Everything had ripples: charity and friendship and love. She could help him. She ripped off her gloves and slid up beside him, slipping an arm around his waist and smiling as the cameras flashed. He was startled only a few seconds and recovered nicely, putting his arm around her shoulders and hugging her close with his own smile.
With the flashes dying down and the burning in her stitches resurfacing to the forefront of her mind, she looked up at the Senator, his boyishly round features and his well-oiled beard, and his smile faltering as if he could see the calculation inside her. "Having fun?" he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. She was shorter than him, of course, but not by all that much.
"It's been enlightening," she said, looking around them. "I wish there was more I could do for them."
"You will. We're just getting started. I can get you an audience before Congress so you can testify. There's so much we can accomplish if we work together."
"I know," she said. "It's just... I wish it would happen faster. People are dying, Senator. The cleanup crews are more efficient here, but I'm sure there's still graveyards underground. Well?"
"It's true," he said. "Miles and miles of death. But we're not in the ground. Not yet."
Dropping her off at home, he asked if she wanted to go out to dinner for a second time. "A date," he clarified. She hurried out of the car without answering, went upstairs, and laid on her bed, listening to the whirring of her heart.