𝕋𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕘𝕖𝕣 𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕕𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕕 𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣
identity
-the distinguishing character or personality of an individual: individuality
-the relation established by psychological identification
-the condition of being the same with something described or asserted
-sameness of essential or generic character in different instances
I lose myself again more often after the day in Corros. The next time it happens, I sit on a table. I feel like I float, staring at the reports in my hands. My ears pound, my eyes burn.
I can't follow the words. Something in me knows that Hector send me pieces of paper. Something in me recognized the small words about my parents and the word 'Loren'.
One deep breath and I can decipher at least some more letters. Nothing new yet. Loren is working on it, he will send something elaborate very soon. Whatever that means. It can't be good. I hope it just means that I have to show patience. But how much patience can I have? Everything I have done so far was a fruitless attempt of pinpointing rebels. On the few occasions someone reports a sighting, they are gone before they can be detained. They have some sort of flying transport and they have operatives that at least know some of the technical aspects of the rudimentary command systems. And they seem to turn invisible wherever they go and disappear.
How much time do I have until Elara and Maven change their mind and decide that I would be well suited for the cell next to Ara?
The dogs have a distinct smell, and it clings to me with force with the window closed. At least it glosses over the constant scent of the dread from the prison cells that cling to me. I feel the white light flicker behind my eyelids in sterile tiles.
I can't follow anything. A screen flickers in the background of my table. I look up, heavy like a sleepwalker. Are those my hands?
I recognize some sort of small broadcast, with Maven's face in the middle, Evangeline in the background, some sort of inspection. Of another kind. No prisoners this time. No one grips my arm or shakes me. Without Ptolemus or anyone that cares, I just float above myself until something in me decides to return.
It happens after another arrest. I'm angry, lashing out at everyone around me. The anger consumes me in flames hotter than any burner can conjure. It feels oddly good to snap. It always feels good to gives orders. It feels good to be valuable and alive. This anger is searing as my hatred, but it grows, and it feels as raw as the days around my period. Maybe it wasn't my period at all.
The last thing I consciously ponder about is Asher and Bryce watching me. I hiss at them to watch themselves. Hadrien strums around on his feet in the corner of my vision, with One Ear licking his silver sister's bloody chaps. I stare at the blood as if I haven't seen so much of it in the last weeks. Silver and red, dried and liquid. Under nails, in hair. On limbs. Dangling from nooses, shot in squares.
I watch the dogs' tongue and don't move.
Then, my thoughts are gone. I have no sense of time. I have no sense of being. If someone just extinguished a candle, my whole being is the smoke that drifts off. I am not a person. I have no sense of time, I don't exist in a conscious form.
I stand in the poorly lit room of a tiny house, the home to a family, then, nothing. I vaguely know I move. I vaguely know I get dragged along. But I don't feel anything. I don't think anything.
"keep postponing-" A voice next to me says. It keeps talking. "Can we talk about the report to my father now?"
I blink out of the state of dreaming. I sit in a vehicle and we drive over a rough patch of stony grass, a street in disarray.
Hadrien's hand is stained with inky splotches, and the riffles of his jacket stand up in wrinkles.
I brush my hair back. The air is stale and every breath makes it worse. "Now?"
He scratches his eyebrow with the pencil in his hand before staring at a part of my ear. The birthmark under his heavy-lidded eye seems to twinkle when he scratches himself again. "We have an unused time window of a few hours, judging by what Asher told me. Tell me about the prison, if you are allowed to."
"It was a prison. With cells," I tell him brusquely.
"Can you tell me at least something about the way they contain the prisoners? And will we be on the road for much longer? I didn't bring anything of interest with me, and the book is almost full." He taps on the corner of the page.
"I want to visit my cousin. And then I have orders and a delivery to make at Templyn. So yes, in between transmissions and shortstops, we will be on the road for another week, if not longer." I stare at the ciphers scribbled on the edges of the pages in curlicue. "Why do you even keep these with you when you are on a mission to arrest prisoners and escort me to a secret prison?"
"It would be a boring wait if I didn't have anything to note." He shrugs, a hacked off motion before he rattles on. "And I don't write anything that would warrant my removal. I just shorten some of the things I think and put them down in shortcuts so I don't forget."
One Ear yawns, showing his sharp yellow teeth. I look at the dogs curled together in the foot space. They are so big, so familiar, how did I not notice them there before?
He closes the book slowly.
"I can make a copy of the ones that are about you," he offers and stretches his legs beside me, careful. "But I wrote about the dogs and the possibilities of mutations the last week, so I don't know if you would care. And I would need to write them out. And you would probably think I was lying about it. People do that all the time. Think others are lying to them. "
Well I can't disagree with that. I clear my throat and shake off the rest of the numb feeling."If you are a danger, someone more lethal will take you out and decipher your books. Perhaps stop writing about New Bloods if you want to live."
He unwillingly stares into the distance, past his glasses, past my face.
"Now that you mention it, maybe I should stop writing in shortcuts. I don't want to be suspected of spying. I don't want to be taken back to that prison in manacles." When he grimaces slightly, the glasses slip down the bridge of his nose, and he tries to push them up, leaving smears above the material. "But that makes everything so tedious, Lady Viper."
I love being called in form of authority. But something in me that keeps asking Hadrien's questions hopes that some form of familarity makes him open up enough to tell me things that aren't just formal repetitions or tiny scraps about a person I don't understand. I can't trust my guards. Can I at least pretend this one stands behind me when he has to? He is one of mine, he and his father are the most capable. But he is also extremely well guarded and void of social cues and emotions.
"I call you by your first name, and you are one of my people. You can call me Daliah. Just between us."
"Fine. Daliah," he repeats, just as unwillingly. The offer seems to evade him the same as my distress or confusion does. "If you want me to do that, I guess I have no choice."
"Well, no one has a choice. We're all under someone else's orders."
"Maybe. But I guess it could be worse than you ordering me to call you by your first name."
The wheels get caught on stones, and we jump up and down on the uneven ground as we shoot through the day. "You keep saying that."
One Ear yawns again. Hadrien leans down to scratch him. "It's the only thing I know for sure, but I can stop if it bothers you."
If it bothers me? How considerate.
The airbase is structured like any other military base. I have spent so much time in the air lately, I recognize the lights, the metal fences, the concrete buildings and barracks, the towers in the blinking lights awaiting radio signals, the landing site stuffed with small and big airborne vehicles. I announce myself, and the personnel relies the information about my visit. I have permission to enter the base.
My guards and Hadrien stay around, for now. They never leave me too long. Perhaps that is a lucky coincidence since I keep forgetting what I am doing.
Just like the Captain in prison, I am greeted by a superior here. Not a Captain or Major though. This is just a visit, an unofficial one. You don't disturb the higher operations for a family lunch and a small talk here. And I am not a queen.
Lieutenant Laris is a spitting image of clean boots and shiny insignia, and the worst thing is that he is at least one or two years younger than me. His strud and haircut remind me of Roman, and I feel an uncomfortable tug in my stomach- it has become smaller since I am around military personnel all the time. But I can't fully turn it off.
He leads my group along the landing site. Along the edges of the training grounds and barracks, another row of high fences.
The motors soar behind the metal-plated hide of the jets in the distance, and it almost overrules his voice shouting. He has turned his head to his left. "Viper!"
It takes me a moment to recognize her form in the yarn of bodies moving. They do it half orderly because they are clearly on break. When Laris shouts that one word, only one frame listens up, head perking.
The first thing I notice is the difference in her gait. She walks much more relaxed, then even loosely jogs. No skirts, instead it is a formless uniformed ensemble of dark colors and combat boots. She carries a helmet under her arm.
Many women in uniforms prefer a braid or stick their hair in a knot when they are on duty. Long hair is still valued.
Atara Viper used to have long, straight, sleek black hair in a flood, and she was proud of it.
It used to sway open at most given opportunities, accompanying her swaying dresses.
It accentuated the smudged lines around her eyes and smears of makeup left from the day before in the morning. Now that sleek, black hair is so short you cannot even pull it back. It reaches just barely below her chin. A little ruffled in the back. The charcoal lines are still there, at least, and her face turns as stretched in animosity as ever when she sees me. The untamed distance grows a notch in surprise the longer she stares at my face.
In the same way everything shifts to necessity and utilizing what you can, grabbing every asset tightly, she has changed the style of a girl in times of shaky unease into the time of violence. Knowing us both in uniforms and the military would have rattled me a few weeks ago. Now I have to take it as a given, and I have to swallow hard.
"Well don't you flourish," I greet her. My voice almost gets swallowed over the shouting and the machines. "Your superior says I can borrow you during your break."
She snaps her head away from me. The wind tugs on our bodies. "If you have to."
Atara has a nod for Hadrien and the dogs. Her eyes lock and linger too long at the sight of my guards. Bryce doesn't even look so sour staring back, and Asher obviously is interested. If it is because Atara is pretty enough to catch attention when you look at her the first time and don't know her yet, or the uniform and helmet, who knows.
As soon as we break off the sight, her body loses some of the swaggers, and instead, she regresses into the same gurning wait she always has when she sees me. For the lurking attack and the daggers, we throw at each other with our eyes.
"Do you have a place to talk-" I look up to the walls around me. Cameras ought to be around, and patrolling officers. They have been doubled since the day jets have been stolen by the rebels. "In private?"
"If you promise not to tell anyone," she answers. "The other cadets and sergeants will find and destroy you and me otherwise. Come on."
And with that, she leaps forward and leads me away from my entourage.
She slaloms between the barracks, harsh, grey concrete in tight squares. It reminds me of Corros. I banish that thought.
We pass the last building by the fences and I am met with an unexpected sight.
Ivy and wildflowers crawl between the nips and cracks of the fence. A few big, yellow flowers turn their heads to the way the sun shines. They shouldn't bloom anymore, but they do, and brilliantly so. They lure buzzing insects to their stems. The small, brightly colored flowers are a paradise for bees. Someone even has dragged two old folding chairs here- they are anchored into the space by more vines crawling along with them like chains on ankles.
"I like it," Atara explains and puts the helmet beside one of the chairs. "Because it is quiet. Everyone on the base takes turns coming here from time to time, just to be alone."
"And you are sure you don't like it because the flowers remind you of a certain someone?"
A slight flush of grey creeps over her neck.
"She writes to me." It sounds almost flustered. I bite my tongue from telling her that I have sent her brother to bring Heron's family down if necessary. "But yes. The greenies on the base made this."
A bee crawls over a lilac flower back to the big petal of the yellow ones. I sit down on the other chair, fold my arms and look at the cloud of yellow bees happily frolicking. A single yellow butterfly joins them, strumming gracefully through the air.
"I came here because I could need you. You're brilliant on birds. You are good at surveillance and at the height of fighting prowess. I need every resource and every animos if it means I can catch rebels and favor."
"I won't leave my training," she refuses, without even another second of thinking about it. "This is what I want to do, cousin. You can stay in the capital with your stolen title and your father and your whisper husband. Leave me alone."
"What if I force you?"
She chews on that, and her eyes are gunshots penetrating me. Her whole being is repulsed by the idea. She looks like she will kick her helmet.
"Are you really happy, Atara?"
"I'm fine here." She presses the words out of her throat. "The training is hard, but I learn so much. I will become a pilot, Daliah. I will literally fly. I left everything behind after Calpurnia, Loren and I buried father. Everything except Heron. I miss her. But she says she will visit soon. And it is not new. We've been separated the whole last year before Summerton too. Why are you really here?"
The bee lands on my neck, where all the tension contracts my muscles. It is soft and careful. With a few twitching moves, it runs up to my hair. I put my hands up, smooth over it. It still feels a little brittle from all the fire and death. I certainly don't have that much time to care for myself.
"I sometimes don't know who I am anymore, Atara. Something is wrong with me."
"I mean, yes?" She stares at me with a scrunched nose and a wrinkled brow. "Are you asking me who you are?"
"Maybe."
"That's easy," she scoffs every word out. The bees around us flutter upwards. They hum angry now. "You always kicked down on me if you could. Every time anyone made fun of me. Every time Evangeline cut me or Calpurnia made Loren beat me, you laughed at me. When my mother died, you didn't have one nice word for me. You patronized Heron and me. You used me for access to Queenstrial. Your father and you both. I think you are a horrible person."
Her words stick uncomfortable needles through the top of my skin. "I never claimed to be good, my darling."
She gives me her mocking smile. "I know. You are a murderer and you are a thief. You are a liar. You are an abuser. It's the way most silver people are. It is how we survive." Her hand stretches out, the smile on her lips fades. The butterfly lands on it, slowly, softly, wings beating. "I don't say I'm a good person. But now that I am away and you're all dead and gone..."
I shift and wheeze out a chuckle. The insects around me move, startled. "Atara, you could have just said that you hated me and moved on."
She looks like I just made the best joke, green eyes gleaming. "I don't hate you, that's the problem! A part of me does. But I don't fully hate you. I wish I just could. You are so horrible, Daliah. You asked me if you are wrong. If you think something is wrong with you, go to your whisper husband and ask him to fix your head. He fucking ruined it even more in the first place."
I want to hurt her. I want to kick her helmet into the fence and unleash something on her.
"Maybe I will." I lie through my teeth again. "And you ask your precious Heron about her relationship with your brother next time you write her."
She seems startled by that. "What?"
"He's with Calpurnia and her, didn't she tell you? He's cozy up there with her. And you're here."
I leave the airbase with no new information, no new ally, nothing. All I have is Atara's words about how horrible I am.
I have orders and designated sealed envelopes with me the next time I move on to another target or arrest. Both go straight to the governor, and when I stand in the streets of Templyn, I am surrounded by a lot more soldiers than usual. Most of them looks pale and distracted by something. They march in order, but they don't seem to be too eager.
The house is small, but again, nothing is as tiny as the huts that held my forst two arrests in the villages. These red clearly have some more luck in the positions they are. They also are a family at dinner when the door flies open. The children rank in different ages. The youngest is not even able to move on their own. It is a baby, startled by the crying that pierces through my skull.
I take my boon, I make my arrest, the rest of the family is in shambles. It is another ripped apart unit, and when I move back out, I can't decide who screams louder, the mother or that baby.
The soldiers don't retreat with me. Even though most of them look almost uncertain. Whatever their orders are. I will leave them to it. Asher drags the helpless wiggling body over the street, leaves a small trace of dirt between flowers in a garden that remind me of a silent hideout in a base.
The mother is silenced first. I only hear one shot. Then there is the screaming of the baby. The crying continues.
One long sound, a wailing, whimpering nothingness from a creature that hasn't even learned to speak. That knows nothing but the instinct but to scream and cry for help. Then nothing from inside the house. Silence.
Silence that means an end. A death.
My heartbeat vibrates through my bones. It shakes fingers. It shivers and trembles through my face. It forms goosebumps on my back. The skin bursts into bubbles of fear and pain. The vibration travels into my eyes and my lips.
I can't breathe. And if I just stop, I don't care.
The girl looked at me like I am a monster. The prison cells with their mangled bodies. The deadpan face of Ara mocking me. Atara telling me that I deserve whatever will happen to me.
But nothing happens to me right now.
No.
I just watch.
I watch everything die. I watch my enemies perish. I watch soldiers die. I watch children die.
That is what I always do. I watch the corpses form a tower in front of my window and applaud myself for being merciless and eager.
I want to scream. I want to fill the silence of a smothered child with my voice screeching.
I clasp my ruined hand over my mouth to stop a sound. It waves up and down- a twig that shakes in a blowing breeze. Everything in me squeezes together. I press the hand down harder and turn away from the house, take a few steps. If my voice breaks now, no one will ever take my command seriously again. I try to breathe.
Too late though. Hadrien stares at my face as if he sees it for the first time. I turn away and I run. For the first time in my life, I desert my post and I don't care about the consequences. I make it down the street before my legs give in and I almost fall.
The next moment, I spit out gurgles of air mixed with bile. I vomit so violently, I stumble. If I choke on my own puke, I don't even care.
No whisper locks me in place now. For a moment, I fall through the cracks in my head. Everything loses form, and I don't know who or what I am.
The silence is mocking me so loud it breaks in my ears like a pop trauma. My skin widens and doesn't fit me, a badly tailored jacket.
The more I puke, the more salty, cold liquid leaks out of my eyes. They violently tear with every pressing of my guts, procuring more sour drops to fill the puddle that forms around me and sticks to my jacket.
I roll together right here, on the road somewhere in Templyn, and I lose myself again.