("Girls, so pretty and poised,
And soft to the touch.
But god made me rough.
Girls, so heavy the crown,
They carry it tall.
But it's weighing me down."

"A princess doesn't cry.
A princess doesn't cry.
Over monsters in the night, don't waste our precious time
On boys with pretty eyes."

"I'm fine, I won't waste my time.
Keep it in a jar and we'll leave it for the next one.
I'm fine, I won't waste my time.
Keep it in a jar and we'll leave it for the next one.
Yeah, I'm fine, I'm lying on the floor again.")

- CARYS, "Princesses Don't Cry"

June 2017

5th year, age 17

"What do you mean, she left?" Maya asked, bewildered. "She doesn't leave the academy. Ever."

"She's freaked out, Maya," Josh groaned, rubbing his palm over his face. "And she's being dramatic. She'll get over it."

"She's furious with me," Maya pointed out softly. She stared down at her bare feet, legs pulled up to her chest as she sat on her bed watching Josh pace through her room. Josh didn't seem too worried - more annoyed.

Maya was terrified. Not that she would be caught for breaking the rules, or because she was doing something crazy by sleeping with her team leader. She was terrified that Riley would never forgive her for this.

Rubbing her temples with her fingers, she closed her eyes as she tried to stop an oncoming headache that would definitely be coupled with nausea. She couldn't get Riley's face out of her mind. She didn't even look really furious. It would be better if Riley would yell at her, scream, be mad. Instead, Riley had looked betrayed, hurt, and disappointed, and instead of a real confrontation, she had left the school to avoid her.

Why did it hurt so much more?

She knew that the reason Riley was reacting like this was because this was who she was, and Maya had betrayed her where it hurt. Riley's biggest personality trait - the thing that made Maya love her - was her love and trust for people, all the chances she gave, despite the things people did. And Maya had taken advantage of it - the benefit of the doubt that Riley always gave her.

It made her feel awful inside.

And Riley leaving for the summer was part of her personality too - she didn't like confrontation, she didn't like being angry. Rather than give Maya the cold shoulder or yell at her, she had simply decided to leave altogether.

But Riley was Maya's best friend - only friend, really. Sure, Lucas was great and he was part of her team, but Maya didn't spend time with Lucas on their own except for partner work. And Josh…

She squeezed her eyes tighter, watching the shapes swirl inside her lids.

"Maya."

Opening her eyes, she stared up at Josh, who was standing right in front of her.

"What are you doing?"

Maya sighed, letting her legs slip down to hit the ground. "I'm thinking." She stood up and pushed past him to the other side of the room. "I'm stressed. Riley and I… she's like everything to me. You couldn't really understand."

"She's going to be fine, Maya," Josh sighed, "I promise. I've known my little sister for seventeen years, and she takes time to process things but then she's fine."

"Was this a mistake?" Maya almost whispered, her eyes flicking to Josh's.

Josh's eyebrows creased down. "I don't think so. It's not like we're really jeopardizing the team, right? We're not creating an emotional complication. You and I get out the hormones that hold us back."

"We've both been much more productive in the last few weeks," Maya agreed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"This is normal, it's healthy, it's a stress relief that's a lot more effective for me, at least," Josh admitted. He met eyes with her. "But if you think it's a mistake, it doesn't have to happen again. No hard feelings; no strings attached, right?"

"Right," Maya mused softly, chewing her lip.

This physical relationship was impacting her emotions too, but she wasn't quite sure how, yet. She didn't know if what she felt about Josh emotionally was that of a friend, a coworker, a teammate, or something more. And she didn't want to stop before she found out.

"Riley will be fine, I promise," Josh repeated, seeming to read her mind.

Maya had to let herself believe that. Because if she didn't, she was making a mistake, and she couldn't accept that.

"This is stressing me out," Maya decided, pulling off her sweater. "Let's do something about it, please."

Josh frowned, crossing his arms. "Maya, are you-"

"Now," Maya repeated firmly, pushing him backwards and feeling herself start to ramp up at the change in Josh's eyes.

She needed this.

He needed this.

A net positive activity couldn't be bad.

Right?

"I went to ask Riley if she wanted to spar this morning," Lucas informed Maya over their lunch, "but she wasn't in her room."

Maya hesitated in her eating, turning the statement - which was really a question - over in her mind, before deciding on, "Yeah, her brother was sick so she went home."

"Oh," Lucas replied in surprise. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

"I don't," Maya stated shortly, putting a bite of food into her mouth.

Lucas studied her for a moment, his expression somewhere between worried and confused, and Maya resisted the urge to shrink under his gaze. She tried to think of something else to say to remove some suspicion, but she knew how complicated this situation was.

If she told Lucas what was going on between her and Josh, he might tell administration - he seemed the type, and even though they'd been working together for years, she couldn't actually predict what he would do about the serious rule break they were committing. And if he did tell administration, they might suspend her and Josh, or expel them, or remove them from their team. On the other hand, if she didn't tell Lucas, she was deliberately lying to her team member and he might find out anyways, on his own. Riley might even tell him. And it could severely damage their trust in the team.

"Do you know where Josh is?" Lucas asked, moving on without another accusation. "He didn't tell me he was missing lunch."

"Back to back meetings with instructors and administration," Maya answered, taking another bite of her lunch.

"I can't believe we graduate next May," Lucas mused, taking a bite of his own lunch. "It feels like just yesterday we were assigned to this team."

"Time goes by fast when you're super busy," Maya agreed.

Maya was just hoping the summer went by fast too.

Maya had never paid much attention to other students - the team were her only real peers since so much of their course track was team-focused and private training. Not that she had had any friends before joining the team. She had done group work in academic classes, and that was pretty much the extent of her teamwork.

Until Riley Matthews was assigned as her training partner, and she was placed on this team.

This family.

Maya was staring down at the photos she had locked in her phone, the few records she still held from the life before this. A total of four pictures with happiness and parents she could barely remember. Had it even been real?

In the first, Maya was a day old. She was curled in her mom's arms, and Katy was staring down at her with a shine in her eyes that Maya had always felt left her right after. Her hair was frazzled and her face was exhausted, but the pure joy in her gaze as she stared at the baby in her arms was so raw that it felt like something out of a movie.

In the second, Maya was five. Blonde hair wild around her face, she was laughing at something her dad had said, as he held her up above his head, probably in the middle of spinning her around, or tossing her in the air. Like a normal dad, in a normal family.

The third, Maya could actually remember being taken. It was in the final days before her dad left, and it was the last photo she had ever taken or seen of him. She was seven, and although she was sitting on a bench between both her parents, whose arms were hugged around her, she could see the fractures in their smiles. Maybe she had known back then or maybe she hadn't, but everything broke. Her family broke.

The last photo, Maya had taken herself. She had been eleven, and she wanted proof so she would never forget. Her mom sitting on the kitchen floor, dazed and high, bruises on her face and arms that she could obviously no longer feel - not with the amount of drugs in her system. Her blonde hair was stringy around her thin face, and Maya had taken the picture, not caring if her mother knew it was being taken. She had wanted to remember what her mother looked like at her lowest point. She wanted to make sure she never looked that way herself.

It really did feel like a different life.

Maybe Maya had been close with her family at one point in her life. Maybe she had been a happy child. Or maybe it had all just been an illusion that she couldn't see through until she was old enough.

Maya had hardened to it all the moment that her mom dropped her off at that military school. She'd held everything on her shoulders for her mother while she just deteriorated and didn't care, and then in the end, Katy abandoned her completely. No second thought, no visits or calls or letters.

And so she bottled every feeling she ever had about that woman in a jar and tried to lock it somewhere up inside where it couldn't be found. She tried to pretend it was all fake and gone and none of it mattered.

But her team, her real family, it wasn't fake. It mattered. It was everything.

Riley was everything.

This was the first time she had cared so deeply and wrecked it all. And she had no idea how to handle it. After all, they were taught not to care about anything, see everything as a mission, have no emotional attachments.

But then they were put on a team and expected to grow up together, and learn each others' minds so well that they could predict anything they would do. It all felt like a trick, a game of some kind.

And she was losing it.

A/N: That's right, Nodus Tollens has once again risen from the dead. I'm not really happy with this chapter - it's kind of short and doesn't fully explain what I wanted it to convey. But I've already got parts of the next Rucas chapter written out and I will go more into Riley and Maya's issues when Riley gets back to the academy in the fall.

This book will hopefully speed up a bit; their last year isn't very uneventful (in my plotline so far at least) so it will be more of a 'this is what happens, now they're graduating' thing. Then they've got a few years in the safehouse and going on missions, and I'm not sure how much I will be writing about the missions, but I've got some Joshaya and Rucas pieces already written for safehouse chapters. And then of course we arrive at the place in the book that the preface was in.

So maybe 10 more chapters? 15? Not sure. Not sure when it will get written either. I'm notoriously unreliable. The good news is that reviews remind me to keep writing (seriously, sometimes I get a random review a few weeks after I posted the most recent chapter and I'm like "oh yeah I should probably update that story"). Sorry for the wait.

Kisses,

C