JAE
Inwardly, Jae seethed. She would show them; she planned to rise to a position of power and become a force within the Montagne military and then she would demand their respect. Then, this treatment would be naught but a distant memory.
The bag she was carrying through the UpMountain clanked as she shifted it on her shoulder. She gritted her teeth.
Forcing herself back to calmness, Jae walked on. This was all part and parcel of the military experience: completing insignificant tasks for her superiors. She needed to accommodate these requests for now, because later it would be her making the demands. She held fast to that thought as the dance school came into view.
Entering through the wide foyer, she made her way into the dark auditorium where she scanned the few scattered groups for her contact. Disgust flooded her when her eyes landed on that fat clown, G, and a dark-skinned individual with tight braids she didn't know. Her lip turned up as she recognized Travis Lensherr sitting beside them. That boy was a complete failure, though she would never voice that opinion out loud. She moved away from them as she continued her search.
Spotting her contact, she made her way down one of the aisles. Selene Allerdyce looked up lazily as Jae approached.
"Ah, Cadet Summers, how good of you to bring those. Please leave them in practice room 2B." Jae just stood there for a moment, grating at the woman's tone. They had started training at the same time, and while Selene was a couple years older than Jae, from the point-of-view of the military hierarchy, the woman was her equal. She considered telling Selene to drop the bottles off herself. Then, glancing around, she decided she didn't want to make a scene. She nodded and turned away.
"Um, Cadet, it is rude to walk away without acknowledging your superior." Jae looked back in disbelief as several of Selene's friends tittered. The woman's eyes had a nasty glint to them, and Jae reevaluated this individual she had sometimes hung out with over the years when she had tagged along with her brother.
"That is true, Cadet Allerdyce," was all she said as she turned to leave., ignoring how Selene's eyes narrowed.
Jae didn't recall the layout of the rooms at the dance school – it had been a while since she had spent any time at there – but fortunately, 2B turned out to be one of the first doors in the hall outside the side door of the auditorium.
She received a small shock when she entered: Jenna Frost was there warming up. The auburn-haired woman smiled warmly, and Jae relaxed a bit, a grin tugging at her own lips.
"Hi Jae!" Jenna came over as Jae went to the table in the corner to deposit her load. "I think your brother is smartening up, and you'll be seeing me around again."
"Jen, you are too forgiving after the act he's been pulling! But it would be great to have you at the house again," Jae replied, the last said in a softer tone. "Um, Selene said I should leave these here."
Jenna looked on as Jae pushed away the paper packaging to reveal a set of 6 glass bottles filled with water. She blushed, hating the fact that Jenna was witness to her performing such a menial task. Jenna grimaced in sympathy.
"I'm sorry if Selene put you up to that. I made a comment to her about the taste of the water from the taps here, and she's gone and made it some kind of joke." Jenna laughed, and Jae thought there was a nervous quality to it. She appreciated the fact that the woman felt some responsibility for her humiliation. She smiled to reassure.
"It's ok, Jen. I'll be seeing you around then." Jenna grinned and nodded. Jae couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the woman looking so happy, but was glad for it, no matter the reason.
As she left the room, Jae saw her brother emerge from the auditorium, and turned the other way, walking further into the network of halls behind the auditorium. After loitering for a minute, she retraced her steps and was relieved to find the door to room 2B closed and no sign of her brother. The hallway was empty save for two individuals huddled in quiet conversation. She passed them, but instead of leaving immediately, she went back into the auditorium to meet up with some other friends she had seen hanging out there.
ELENI
Eleni finished clearing the sheets of math problems she had been doing with some kids at the Towers. Many of them had sentences from a variety of languages jotted on the edges now. The kids constantly tried to stump her by pulling out what they thought were obscure tongues, but she had known them all so far. It was a pleasant distraction for her.
Everything clear, she checked the clock and decided it was time to leave.
"I'll see you tomorrow!" Eleni called, as she moved towards the entrance to the Towers. A scattering of 'good byes' followed her out. At the entrance, Patches looked up from the message he was sending to smile at her. She nodded politely and mustered a small smile back.
Walking the familiar path to the station, her eyes were watchful of her surroundings. Her mind, however, quickly became preoccupied with the thoughts that pestered her no matter how hard she tried to stop them.
She felt trapped. Ever since the night Matthew had followed her DownMountain, she had been filled with a hopelessness that she couldn't shake. It had grown over time and mixed with her other sundry feelings: her anger at what Matthew had done, at odds with how much she missed him, her exhaustion in the face of the abuse she faced UpMountain a war with her dedication to Madam P. It all stirred her to inactivity and made life a series of meaningless motions. She just wanted to sit somewhere safe and watch the world dwindle away around her.
Eleni sighed longing for her bed where she could do just that, when she suddenly realized there were two people walking abreast of her. Alarm spurred her and she picked up her pace. They did, too. Dropping back and cutting behind one of them, she moved down a different street as if she had just recalled something she had to do. She walked fast, and when she turned the next corner, she spotted them again. They had backtracked and made the same turn she had, even though they had already gone past that intersection. Eleni started breathing deeply and prepared herself, pushing down the panic that arose inside of her.
A third person literally materialized in front of her.
"Oh, sorry!" they said as if their appearance had been an accident. Eleni knew now that anyone with an ability to disappear wouldn't be living DownMountain; they would have been moved Up with the rest of the gods.
"Pardon me, I'm in a bit of a rush." Eleni made to circle the person, but they stepped with her. She veered back and made to run, but then a feeling of calm came over her.
"Come with us," a voice said behind her. The other two had caught up and were flanking her. Though she didn't understand why, she went with them.
Her brain, weak and lackadaisical, struggled to work, and was slow to make connections, but it did. Matthew was the only telepath in the Montagne, so they were controlling her via other means. Or, calming her, not controlling her. She could still think. Somehow, they were calming her so she was less likely to resist. But how? Her brain struggled on.
After learning the Head was an empath, she had done some research on the ability. Empaths were people who could sense and manipulate feelings, though they couldn't discern specific thoughts or enter another mind. So, it was likely she was dealing with an empath; one of the three people around her was making her feel unnaturally calm and wanting to accompany them. It had to be one of the original two, as the third had revealed her powers already.
Eleni noticed that one of her original two pursuers was walking close enough they were almost touching. She guessed he was the empath.
That knowledge didn't spur her to act, however, and while she tried to think of a way out of the situation her brain kept stumbling on the eerie thought that she should be feeling very afraid as they guided her into a dark building that looked to be abandoned.
MATTHEW
"Here, Mattie" Jenna passed him a bottle from the pack on the table, and he took it gratefully.
Things finally seemed to be looking up; he had had no telepathic slips since he had found that foothold and programmed in the mental loop a week and a half ago. Matthew was feeling hopeful and had started carefully choosing the words he'd say to Eleni when he told her of his success in a few more days.
On top of that, Jenna had backed off a bit, making rehearsal easier. February had just begun, and they hadn't lost too much time to the awkwardness of the past few weeks.
He drank half the bottle, then set it down next to Jenna's. They resumed dancing.
It felt good. The difficulties between himself and Jenna melted away further. He was dedicated to this performance and was happy they were finally on the same page. He found himself grinning at how well they were dancing together, and then laughing when he tripped a bit. Jenna smiled, understandingly.
"Maybe we should take a break." That sounded like a good idea. They settled in a couple of chairs at the edge of the room. Jenna leaned over and kissed him.
"Jenna, I told you. It was a mistake when I let that stuff—" She kissed him again.
"Really, Mattie? Is that how you feel now?" She had moved her chair closer to him, and now their bodies were touching in several places. It felt really good.
"Jen…I…don't…think…" She kissed him again, and he forgot what he had meant to say.
ELENI
"We just want to talk to you. It's Elayni, right?" The woman's tone was friendly. "You are very talented and everything, but your place is not UpMountain. We think you know that."
"I do." The woman smiled. It was proving easy enough to make them happy. Then maybe they would let her go.
Eleni was sitting by the wall of a room in that abandoned building, with the three crouched beside her. It was dusty, and her fingers idly brushed a small pile that had collected on the floor besides her.
"Good, good. Then, we think you will understand what we are about to say. It's only to help you out. We've talked to the Cisco Dance Studio, a fine DownMountain institution. They are happy to take you on."
"That sounds good." Another smile, and Eleni smiled back. Yes, she would still be able to dance, without all that pressure.
"And you can live in the dormitories. You'll have so much more freedom there!"
They had had her, until they mentioned the dormitories.
She had thought she was playing along. No, she had been playing along. Until she hadn't. Her distaste to living in the dormitories was strong, but when her objection met resistance, she understood what they were doing. The empath was changing how she felt about the things they were telling her to do. Making her want to do them. Could he permanently change how she felt? She recalled that it depended on how strong he was and quickly determined she didn't want to find out.
"So, after we're done here, we'll go set you up. Don't worry about Madam Pietrovich, we'll explain it to her."
That sounded good. Eleni hated to betray the woman's faith in her.
No.
Dimly realizing she was losing herself again, she despaired that she could fight the empath's power. Moving on instinct, her hand desperately grabbed at the sand on the floor, and she flung it at the empath before her will disappeared entirely.
The man's head snapped back and he cried out in pain. The pain flooded Eleni but being used to managing another's feelings in her mind she pushed it aside and grasped for the emotional autonomy she felt returning.
The other women didn't fare so well, and Eleni saw one of them close their eyes and flinch back as the empath's now-unfocused emotions struck her. As Eleni lurched to the side to get away, however, the other noticed and tried to grab her. An arm clipped Eleni's shoulder, pushing her against the stone wall where her head collided painfully. She ignored the hurt and tried to scuttle away.
The woman grabbed her leg.
MATTHEW
"Eleni!" A sense of pain lanced through the bond and shocked Matthew back to himself. He was on some kind of semi-soft surface. The mats. The mats that were stored in each practice room had been unfolded. And he was lying on one. Why-?
A sensation answered that question with horrifying clarity, and he realized Jenna was with him, too. And he realized what they were about to do.
"No!" He pushed her away. If this got out, Eleni would never come back to him.
"Wha..?" Jenna was breathless. "Mattie, don't fight it. We are so good together. You know that." She tried to climb back on top of him.
Matthew was having trouble focusing. What she was offering was so tempting…
There was another burst of pain through the bond. Pain! Eleni was hurt! He pushed Jenna away again.
"Eleni," he whispered desperately trying to focus on his goal. Something was wrong; he could feel that she was scared, terrified, but it was hard to motivate himself even with that knowledge. Jenna grabbed his arm as he tried to stand and pull his practice pants back on.
"Mattie, forget about her! Please!" Matthew pushed her away, managed to dress himself, and stumbled towards the door. He wrenched it open, and nearly lost his balance as it turned out it had already been ajar. He clumsily pushed past two people who had been hovering outside and stumbled into the hall.
ELENI
Eleni managed to flip herself over and kick the woman who was holding her leg in the face. Her opponent recoiled back, both hands over her left eye. The empath was still trying to scrub dust out of his eyes, which left Eleni with the last one, the woman who could disappear. She was nowhere in sight.
Eleni scrambled to her feet and ran for the door. When she passed the threshold, she was grabbed by a pair of arms as the woman rematerialized.
"You effing sewer rat, if you know what's good for you, you'll hold still." The arms tightened around her as Eleni fought back. As if following the woman's orders, Eleni relaxed, and the woman breathed out in relief. Then Eleni lifted her foot intending to bring it down hard on the woman's instep. The woman felt her move and shifted her foot away at the last moment. Keeping one hand tight around her, she punched Eleni in the side with the other. Eleni winced collapsing slightly into the injury.
"Stay still, dammit. Jonas! Get your butt over here now!"
The mumbled reply from the empath was lost as something hard hit the woman holding Eleni in the head, then clattered to the ground. The second projectile made the woman let Eleni go, and not looking to see who had come to her rescue, Eleni fled the building.
Eleni!
The distant, but familiar mental call made her sob. There was nothing that she wanted more in that moment than to have Matthew by her side.
JAE
Eleni!
Jae froze in horror. What was wrong with her brother? He never projected telepathically. Why was he doing it now? To prove some kind of point? Jae ignored the questions from her friends and made for the side door.
There she found her brother, shirt off, staggering down the hall, yelling like a lunatic.
"Eleni! I have to get to her. I have to tell her, it wasn't….it wasn't…" He lost his train of thought and grabbed his head with his hands. Jae was rooted to the spot in shock as she watched the tall man lurch like he was drunk. Something was seriously wrong with her brother.
The fat man and Travis pushed through the crowd that had gathered behind her and went over to Matthew.
"Mattie, you ok?"
"G. G! It's Eleni. I need to find her. I hurt her…she's hurt…" Still holding his head, he was shaking it back and forth as he spoke. Jae found it disconcerting and uncomfortable.
"Mattie…did you take something?"
"I feel…weird… I gotta get to Eleni! I need to talk to her!"
A motion to the side drew Jae's attention, and she welcomed the distraction. She looked to see Jenna, covering her face with her hands, slip out of room 2B and run away down the hall.
"Come on, G. Let's get him to the hospital."
Jae, attention focused on the practice room she had been in not so long ago, hung back while G and Travis led Matthew away towards the front exit with a couple teachers and students following. The remainder of the crowd buzzed as they pressed back into the auditorium. Belatedly, Jae started moving after her brother, but once the hall was clear she turned and slipped back into the practice room.
There, the package of water bottles stood as she had left them, save for two: one nearly empty and one barely drunk. She returned those to the sectioned box, and wrapping it back up as best she could, slung the carry strap back over her arm. Relieved to see the hallway clear, she wracked her memory for the way to the back entrance and left in the direction Jenna had fled.
ELENI
Back at the safety of the Towers, ensconced in the 4th floor room in which she used to spend many of her waking hours, Eleni focused on her breathing and calming her racing heart.
Once she had escaped the building, it had been clear they had brought her to Katya's Locker. Oriented, she had come straight back to the Towers. It had been the closest destination that she considered safe.
Now, she took stock of her physical injuries. None of them were bad – no one had noticed anything strange when she came in. She had a lump on her head where it had hit the wall, and her side throbbed where she had been punched, but she was fairly certain both would subside to bruises within a day.
She shivered with memory and, wrapping her arms around herself, and took another deep breath. Just as she reached her baseline, Patches appeared at the ballroom doorway and came to sit down next to her. His eyes were concerned. She hoped he hadn't noticed anything untoward. He hadn't, but what his words revealed did little to assuage her state of mind.
"They talked to you, didn't they? They said they would." As she struggled to attach Patches to the people who had essentially taken her prisoner and tried to change her mind against her will, she remembered the young man sending a message on his mote as she left. She felt sick.
He was still talking.
"This is where you belong. They're just a bunch of self-centered snobs up there. It's not worth it to deal with them. And the DownMountain has so much to offer. G helped me to see that. We have a strong community here, good people. And…and you can dance down here, too…" So, they had told him about that. Eleni said nothing. She didn't have anything she wanted to say to this man.
He took a deep breath. "My mom always said it was important to tell people how you feel, to give them a chance to respond. I like you a lot, Eleni. I hope you might consider me…" He looked at her expectantly. She forced herself to speak. Soon enough she would never have to see this man again.
"Patches, I…I'm just not in a place where I can think about things like that." His face fell. She didn't care. "I need some time to myself." He hesitated, but thankfully got up and left her on her own.
She sat, desperately trying not to think of the attack she had just escaped. The attack Patches had unwittingly aided. The young and naive being used to forward the aims of the ambitious.
Unbidden, a memory caught and held.
"Don't you make a sound, bastard, you hear? It makes me sick just touching you. Your daddy should never have let you be born. Your mom is pretty, and maybe I can't blame him for slipping it in there, wouldn't mind doing it myself, but she should have been spayed like all the other bitches in the city. An effing disgrace."
10-year-old Eleni was pinned to the ground in the sheltered nook off an alley. No one from the busy street that was only 20 feet away would see what was happening if they glanced down. A total of four gang members encircled her. The leader, a boy of perhaps 18, had her pinned on her stomach. He straddled her back, his legs pressing down on her arms rendering her helpless. She struggled to breath and to control the panic that fluttered in her chest.
"And the children shall be cherished," intoned a voice behind him, picking up the familiar litany, "when born of one man and one woman, joined under the eyes of the Human Christ. All others, and all other intercourse, is filth. Until the day we renounce our sin and embrace the pure, the demonspawn shall be visited upon us, and He shall rain Hell down upon the Earth!"
"We seek only His forgiveness!" came the echoed reply.
"You know your place, don't you, bastard? You're nothing. But if you know what's good for you, you'll tell us what you hear, when you're playing under your daddy's desk, after he and your mommy are done screwing on top of it. You tell us all of that, ok? And things will be just fine between us."
The young man would have continued his threats, however a cohort of his, a large boy wearing a spike studded jacket, tripped and collapsed on top of him. The leader's knee, carrying the weight of both the men, crushed her right arm as he was shoved off her to the side. The pain made her scream.
"You idiot!" came a voice. "We weren't supposed to hurt her. No physical proof they said!"
"Forget about her! Ted needs us!" It seemed that the leader had also been injured, jabbed by the jacket's spikes and badly bruised. In the confusion and concern over his well-being, Eleni was able to scramble out of the nook. Her relief at seeing a person the alley mouth was palpable. They had heard her scream and paused. They, unknowingly, helped her get out of the alley safely, although she quickly begged them off, saying her arm was just sore.
Making her way down the street, tears started pouring down her cheeks as the adrenaline that had helped her escape faded and the pain took over. She made her way home but didn't bother to call her mother. She lay in her bed for hours, with her pain, until the woman came home and found her there.
Eleni shivered and held herself again. She did her best not to remember the majority of her experiences from the Citadel. When, months later, she had returned to school, she had been relieved to find the Humanist gangs had not resumed their pursuit of her. Her mother mentioned that Senator Kelly had taken some action, and apparently it had worked.
Turning to the present again, Eleni sought to fight off the anxiety Patches' inadvertent revelation and the memory had caused in her. She had to push the feeling away, so that she could think. So that she could figure out what to do next. In her desperation, she drowned it.
As the emotions receded, she stilled. What was she doing? The answer was obvious. It was time to leave. She had already given up on removing the bond, and she would just have to trust that Matthew would not try to follow her where she planned to go. She could slip away tonight.
Matthew. She gritted her teeth and purposefully thought of the disgusting experience he had put her through. It did the trick. But thoughts of Bright, G and Travis and the other people she had come to know, including Madam P and Adam, pulled at her heart. She focused on something less confusing.
In the months since she had been here, she had been attacked three times; the cadets, Dwyane and now this anonymous group. Was she going to sit and wait for the next time, with the potentially devastating consequences that could result?
Then there was the logic of this moment. She didn't even need to return to the UpMountain; she had been stocking supplies down here for the past few weeks.
These thoughts battered at the foolish emotions that would have her stay. Finally, she took a deep breath, and pushed her feelings down, hard, subsuming them again. She knew she could leave it all behind: she had done it before. She stood up to leave.
Her message mote vibrated, and Eleni froze. Her hand hovered above her pocket where the mote was located. She made a fist, then grabbed the device and dropped it behind her. She walked on.
Scarlet was at the entrance to the building, locking up for the day. When she saw Eleni, she was surprised.
"I didn't think you were still here. G's looking for you. I just got a message."
"I came back for something. Heading back Up now. See you tomorrow?" Eleni lied smoothly.
"Yeah. I hope Mattie's alright. Give him a good smack when you see him, but then consider giving him another chance. I hear he's behaving himself now, and you are one unhappy puppy when you're not getting your just desserts."
Most of Scarlet's rant washed over Eleni without effect as she latched on to four words: "I hope Mattie's alright."
"I dropped my mote," she mumbled, and ran back to where she had dropped it.
G met Eleni at the entrance to the hospital.
"She drugged him, Elle." He said this firmly, holding her eyes, and not giving her any chance to be contrary, though she didn't yet understand the import of the statement. This was only the second thing he had said after telling her that Matthew was a bit out of it but that he would be ok.
Eleni had gleaned that Matthew was not himself on the train ride up. Opening herself to the bond as she had not actively done for weeks, she had been assailed with panic, anxiety and desperation. She supposed the emotions had been masked by her own anxiety, else she probably would have picked up on them sooner.
As G quickly filled in the details, Eleni found herself nodding, numbly, and she understood. She tried to keep the information distant. Her head did not want a reason to exonerate Matthew. Her heart, however, was another matter.
Giving her the floor and room number, G left for the train and she slowly mounted the stairs. She shouldn't be here. That thought kept echoing through her mind. Nonetheless, her feet kept climbing.
Her mind reached for something to distract her. Had the incidents from this afternoon been coordinated? It was logical, but it seemed absurd that these frivolous people would go to such lengths. In G's fight to claim Matthew's soul, it suddenly seemed that the UpMountain would inexorably win. It was a terrifying thought.
When Eleni reached Matthew's room, his eyes found her immediately. He tried to get out of bed, but his father pushed him back down. The effect of the drug was evident in his wide, darting eyes. Eleni crossed to the other side of the bed from Adam. Both the father and the son looked a wreck.
"Are you ok, Matthew?"
"Elle, oh Eleni, I didn't want it. I don't want her. I only want you. I love you! Oh Elle, please believe me. Please don't leave me!" Matthew was on the verge of tears. He could be emotional at times, but this was extreme. She didn't know what to make of what he was saying to her, and her dominant reaction was revulsion. She held her own emotions close.
Adam came around the bed and stood behind her.
"He needs to sleep. It's the easiest way for his body to clear out the drug. Keeping himself up like this is making things worse." Eleni nodded to the whispered information. She sat down on a chair beside where she was standing, but then moved on to the edge of the bed itself so she could reach up and take Matthew's face in her hands. She needed to calm him down.
Lightly stroking her thumbs on his cheeks as if he were a child, she reassured him, "Matthew, I'm right here. I'll stay with you until you wake up. I won't go, I promise. It will be easier to talk after you sleep."
Panting in his exhaustion, he put his hands over hers. He calmed a bit.
"Are you ok? I felt…" She spoke quickly, hoping Adam hadn't been listening closely.
"You mean this scratch?" She pointed to the bump on her head. "I was hurrying and tripped and bumped my head." She didn't think Matthew could pick up lies in his current state. She was right.
Matthew nodded, gripping her hands lightly. "I'm so tired. But I don't want to stop looking at you. I've missed you so much."
She pushed him down on the pillows. "Then don't stop. Like I said, I'm not going anywhere." The words tumbled out of her mouth, bypassing her common sense.
She moved back to the chair and laid her head on the pillow so she was looking at Matthew. He shifted his position, and smiled at her, resting his hand on her cheek. "I love you," he said again. She just stared back at him, not trusting anything he said. Anyway, she couldn't allow herself to let him back in.
It was a mark of his exhaustion that his eyes drooped shut within a minute of lying down. After he had been asleep a few minutes, his breathing became deep and even, and she sat back up. Adam tapped her shoulder, indicating that he wanted to talk to her in the hall.
Madam Pietrovich was there. She handed a cup of tea to Eleni, and the three sat on chairs outside Matthew's room.
"G told me what happened," she said before they started reiterating the story. She had no desire to hear it again.
"Thank you for coming," Adam said, after a pause. Eleni looked at her cup of tea and nodded. "He cares about you very much. I hope you know that. I," he paused, but then pushed on, "I don't think everything he said in there was because of the drug."
Eleni again nodded to her tea. She didn't want to think about what Matthew had said. Feelings were piling up in her, feelings from the past couple of weeks, feelings from her decision to leave made only an hour ago, feelings from what Matthew may or may not have meant. They were getting difficult to control. She tried to push them under, but they bobbed back up.
She took a deep breath, finding something to focus her. "I'm going to stay here tonight. I told him I would."
"Child, you need rest, your schedule probably is going to be getting a lot busier." Eleni looked at the dance teacher in confusion. "While there remains some doubt now, once the truth teller questions Jenna, she will be expelled from the school. That includes the annual ballet." Though there was a note of vindication in the woman's voice, it was not without sadness and regret. "I anticipate some resistance, but if I have my way, you will be the Swan, as you should have been from the start. Jenna is technically flawless, but your dancing," the woman paused, and a determined note pierced her regret, "is both skilled and mesmerizing. You have a depth that she lacks."
The ballet. As understudy, it had been an almost passive part of her schedule. Much of the practice had been done on her own, supplemented by limited partner rehearsals with Adam or the male understudy. Mentally, however, with Matthew becoming distant in her life, so had the ballet.
Now, she was suddenly in the spotlight. Just when she had decided to quietly slip away. Trapped again. She forced incredulity.
"I, I just can't believe it." That was true. "It will take Matthew a few days to recover."
"The drug should be out of his system by tomorrow morning, so the doctor's say. It is only because he was forcing himself to stay awake that he ended up in that state. It normally doesn't happen. So, the two of you will be at the studio after lunch. We will take it slow, for sure, but there is plenty to keep us busy even with limitations."
Unable to think of an objection, Eleni nodded numbly.
MATTHEW
Matthew rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. It felt like a rock. Experimentally, he opened his eyes. They seemed to be working fine. He rubbed the feeling of gravel out of them.
Looking around, he saw that he was in a hospital room, and started to recall bits and pieces of the previous afternoon. He had been out of it, and Jenna had tried to have sex with him. He pushed that memory away. Somehow, Eleni had stopped them. No, that wasn't quite right. Eleni! She had been at the hospital. She had told him she wasn't leaving him. Hadn't she?
As he moved to sit up, his right arm bumped a warm body. Slowly, he turned himself sideways, and relief flooded him as he saw Eleni's sleeping form. She was sitting in a chair, leaning forward with her upper body resting on the bed, her arm pillowing her head. Her face was turned away from him. Gently, he laid his arm on her shoulders and rested his cheek against her swathed head.
"We tried to get her to go home, but she refused." Adam sat on a couch against the far wall, a rumpled blanket and pillow to either side of him. He looked from Eleni to Matthew, then looked away.
"I feel awful." Adam stood up and brought a cup of water to Matthew who drank it down awkwardly, trying to stay as close as he could to Eleni but not wake her up. The water tasted wonderful. "Why am I in the hospital?"
"You can thank Travis and G for that. They brought you straight here. You probably didn't have to come– you weren't in any physical danger. But the blood test confirmed that you had been drugged. We still don't know how…."
Matthew handed the cup back to his father and laid his head back down next to Eleni. The previous afternoon was still coming together in his brain. "Jenna gave me some bottled water…it must have been that." Adam looked ashen at that news. "I can't believe she did that to me."
Adam turned away rubbing his face. "She made a terrible choice. This is the sort of thing Madelyn and I were worried about. I feel like I should have seen it coming. I tried to talk to Jenna a while back, but she blew me off." Adam didn't look at Matthew while he talked. His discomfort was clear. This time, it was Matthew who looked away.
Matthew knew Adam didn't expect him to try to cast his troubled past in a positive light, but he usually acknowledged his father's turmoil. He couldn't today. He understood only too well what Katyana Pietrovich might have felt when Adam, with what he thought were the best of intentions, had drugged and raped her.
The room lapsed into silence. To distract himself from thoughts of his father's past and its wretched similarity to what had just happened to him, he instead gazed down at Eleni sleeping beside him.
"I'll go get some food," Adam said, his voice cracking. Matthew wasn't sad to see him go.
Matthew lay there beside Eleni and took in her presence. He had missed her so much these past weeks. He tried to move closer to her without waking her but failed.
She sat up and looked at him. As usual, a curtain fell over her mental state.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"OK. Better than last night," he replied. "Eleni, with Jenna, I, I didn't—"
"I know. G told me," she said, and he was relieved he didn't need to defend himself. "Matthew, what Jenna did-" Now he cut her off.
"I don't want to talk about it." Her sympathy was welcome, but he didn't want to dwell on what had been done to him. Eleni looked at him, then nodded.
In the silence that followed, he got himself ready to say the words he had practiced, hoping against hope they would bring Eleni back to him. His voice wasn't as steady as he had imagined, and his stomach refused to shake off the queasy feeling it had adopted since he had recalled yesterday's events, but he nonetheless pushed on.
"Elle, I haven't had a slip in my telepathy in a week and a half. They did increase," he admitted, "and were happening every few days, so this change is significant. I found a method. I think I was using instinctively, before. It makes my brain constantly pull in any subconscious telepathic urges."
"OK." Eleni was non-plussed.
"If I have any more slips, I promise, I will tell you immediately." She looked at him, dismay clear on her face.
"Matthew, that doesn't matter anymore." Matthew's heart stopped. "And anyway, after what has happened to you, this isn't the right time to talk about us," she continued quietly. Her hold on the veil over her emotions was slipping, and trepidation leaked through. He almost started crying.
The door to the room opened, derailing their conversation. Adam entered with a woman and a man Matthew didn't recognize.
"Eleni, good, you're up. We'll need some time while the inspector speaks to Matthew. Why don't you head home and get some rest?" Eleni nodded and got up to leave. Matthew caught her hand.
"Will you wait here? I still need to talk to you." She hesitated for a moment.
"Mattie, you saw how she slept."
"It's ok, Mr. Summers," Eleni said softly, looking at Matthew. "I'll wait in the hall." She turned away.
"Matthew," his father continued once Eleni had exited, "this is Inspector Munroe. She has a few questions to ask you."
Matthew suffered through the interrogation; the inspector asked questions and her assistant wrote down his answers. The fact that the drug test had come up positive necessitated action by the authorities. Some of their question didn't make sense to him, such as whether he accepted the water bottle willingly. Matthew, wanting to put the whole incident behind him, focused on answering them as quickly as possible.
"So, Mr. Summers, you have the option of pressing charges. If you do, there will be a trial, though it seems the outcome of that would be fairly certain."
"Fairly certain?" Matthew asked sharply. He hadn't really cared about what the woman was saying, but it was clear cut what had happened.
"Well, we don't know for sure how you were drugged. You know, whether it was voluntary or not. Or whether Jenna Frost was, in fact, responsible."
"What? She provided the water."
"Yes, but there are no water bottles now, and no one recalls seeing Jenna with them. She was with her friends in the auditorium until shortly before you arrived. There wasn't much time for her to retrieve them, if that is what she did." Matthew stared, stunned. Some of the questions they had asked started to make more sense, "It doesn't mean you wouldn't win the case, I am just pointing out that some of the facts are not yet there."
"Mattie, we'd get a truth teller," his father reassured him. He knew that of course, but his mind still grappled to reframe the events as an encounter between two willing individuals.
The inspectors left, and Adam as well to get the food he had been waylaid in obtaining. Matthew was still managing his disbelief when Eleni came back in.
"If Jenna wanted to, and I didn't have access to a truth teller, she could try and make it look like I took the drug to have a good time!" he burst out.
"That sounds about right," Eleni said softly as she sat down next to the bed. He stared at her. She met his gaze evenly. "Do you want to talk about it?" He shook his head. He wanted to forget about it.
"I want to talk about us." He reached out and grasped Eleni's hand. Eleni looked down, and then away.
"This isn't a good time to do that, Matthew. Not after what you have just been through," she repeated.
"Is there ever a good time, Elle? Is there any time you'll let me have a real conversation with you anymore?" Her eyes flickered back to him, then away again. "Please, Elle, I told you about my telepathy. I don't think there will be more slips, and I promise I will tell you if there are."
She listened but didn't look at him. The silence dragged on.
"Eleni, I'm just asking for another chance."
"You are going to insist on doing this now?" Her voice shook, but he was happy she was responding.
"Yes."
"Then tell my why you had sex with Jenna."
"Wha-? But I didn't-"
"A few weeks ago! When you knew I'd be able to feel it?!" She looked at him now, anger and accusation on her face. Her tone echoed with hurt. He gaped. Somehow, he'd thought they were past that.
"I…I wasn't think…" His voice faltered as a dreadful certainty settled over Eleni. It was his turn to look away. He knew he had to admit what he didn't want to. "I was really hurt when you rejected me for something I felt was beyond my control. And then…you asked me to wear a collar." That still made him uncomfortable, "I suppose some of it was...revenge for that. I'm sorry I hurt you in that way."
"Beyond your control? One of the first things you said to me when you told me you were a telepath was that you never go in someone's mind without their permission. How can you hear my thoughts if you weren't in my mind?"
He gaped again. There was more nuance involved in what happened when telepaths picked up stray thoughts, but he couldn't deny her logic – he was the only one here who had the ability to stretch his mind beyond the confines of his brain. "You're right. I didn't intend to lie, but…what I told you…it wasn't entirely the truth." Eleni took in a deep breath. She almost looked surprised. She went on, a bit calmer now.
"You must have felt my reaction. You had your revenge. But you didn't stop." He closed his eyes; she wasn't giving him an inch. Part of him rebelled. He didn't deserve this treatment, not after what he had been through.
He opened his eyes on her, and saw something in hers, in her hurt, that he wouldn't have understood until today. A weight settled into the bottom of his stomach. She seemed to understand what had finally clicked in his brain.
"I couldn't stop feeling it, Matthew. As hard as I tried, I couldn't block it out. You must have known that." Her eyes were hard, but they glistened and her voice grew thick.
The least he could give her was the truth.
"It…felt good. I wanted to have sex. I wanted to…have sex with you." His head dropped again and the next words come out quieter. "I wanted you to know what you were missing."
Eleni stared at him. He sensed that she hadn't expected his answers; he could feel surprise seeping through the bond.
"Elle, I'm sorry. What I did was…hideous. I am so sorry." Getting her to give him another chance seemed next to impossible now. He gazed at Eleni, trying to figure out how to get her back, and why it was so important to him.
ELENI
Eleni looked at the man who wanted her back and despaired. He hadn't copped out and said 'I wasn't thinking,' or 'I was too far gone.' Those lies would have made it easy for her to walk away for good.
She stood up and turned away, pacing the room.
His answers had been difficult for him, and she was inclined to believe they were true.
"Elle, please forgive me…I…"
She clenched her jaw tight. Forgiveness wasn't an option; she didn't have the capacity to forgive. But…she might be able to put it in the past, and move on, as she had done her whole life.
No! She reached for the pain he had caused her, and the feeling of betrayal, but they slipped away, mitigated by his honesty, pain and regret. She desperately sought the numbness that had settled on her the past couple of weeks, but it's comforting embrace eluded her as well.
"Elle…I…" She could feel that he was looking at her intently, but she didn't dare meet his eyes.
It had been a relief, she told herself, when his telepathy had gone rogue, and then when he had had sex with Jenna, because it had been clear to her that there was no way back for them. There should be no way back. It was better that way. And yet...
He was finding a way back.
She let her head fall backward in dismay.
Why, oh why did they try so hard?
A pair of beseeching grey eyes flashed through her mind, and her heart broke.
No. There was no comparison there. She and Dave had known each other since they were infants. He had been forced to come to terms with who their society made her out to be and seen it for the empty construct that it was. More, he had embraced that uncomfortable truth, and her with it. Matthew could never know, or understand her, as Dave had.
However, her brain forced her to acknowledge, her love for Dave, still strong though it was, had not proven enough to stop her growing feelings for Matthew.
"I love you." Matthew's voice, wretched, broken and harsh with sobriety, reached her ears, stilling her efforts. At first, the words echoed hollowly in her, and for a moment she believed she could walk away as she had planned. But then they penetrated and sank beneath the surface. She found herself blinking rapidly and she knew she had been wrong.
She turned towards the window, refusing to look at Matthew, and focused on reality.
Eleni thought about the denizens of the Montagne. She thought about how she should leave, in spite of and because of the way they treated her. She prepared herself to again be decided.
But that last thought reminded her of the previous day's events.
Jenna, drugging Matthew, removing his autonomy and hijacking his desire, then attempting to rape him. His peers and members of their society twisting an undeniable assault into something they could write off, preserving their fantasy world. Allowing others to suffer so that they could sleep soundly.
These people, she knew them well. In the Citadel they had hidden behind a veil of piousness while here it was pretention, but their methods were the same: self-aggrandizing built upon a foundation of lies and the most heinous of acts.
And then there was the fact that they had coordinated an attack upon her as well. And that was because…they already knew she was a threat. The corners of her lips twisted up.
Eleni's disgust and derision for the people she lived among suddenly outweighed the pragmatism that told her it was dangerous to stay. She reevaluated why was she trying so hard for these nauseating people and found the answer hollow.
Turning around, she looked at Matthew, and let that nothingness go, in favor of something real: what he was to her.
Distantly, she felt herself nod.
Matthew exhaled with relief, then he reached for her as she came to him. She almost cried feeling his lips on hers again. She moved to the bed, and he gathered her against his chest, which was heaving with sobs. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.
JAE
Jae sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the seemingly harmless bottles of water. She had rushed them home yesterday and hidden them in her closet. She had since received confirmation from her father that Matthew had been drugged. Now, instead of going to her morning classes, she found herself unable to look away from the offending items.
Taking a deep breath, Jae reviewed the facts. She had been coming out of the dorms at the military academy the previous afternoon and there had been a group of senior cadets, hanging out at a nearby table.
"Hey, there's Cadet Summers," one had said, "let's give them to her."
Jae's plans of going to the theater district had slipped away as they focused on her.
"Take that to Cadet Allerdyce at the dance school," one of them had said, gesturing to the package on the table. "You know the way, right Cadet?" And they had sniggered.
Jae had no idea where or with whom the package had originated prior to that moment. She hadn't known what it held until she opened it at the dance studio, and then she had believed that the bottles held nothing more than water.
While she felt she would be exonerated should there be any investigation, her anxiety lingered. Along with her guilt.
Taking the top off the red marker she had brought upstairs with her, she took the bottles one at a time, and carefully drew a line over each label. She didn't know if it was a good idea to keep the incriminating items but having them in her possession gave her some level of control. Also, she recognized that her anxiety could be clouding her judgement, and it might be better to decide what to do with the bottles of drugged water later when she wasn't as emotional.
She tried not to think about the fact that when she thought of disposing them, it made her feel like she had been a willing accomplice in drugging her brother.
"Jae. I didn't realize you were home." Jae jumped at Adam's voice, and quickly moved to block his view of the bottles from where he stood in the doorway.
"Yeah. I, uh, came to pick up some things. I need to get to school now." Her father studied her face for a moment, his eyes serious, then opened his mouth as if he were about to ask her something. Then, he closed it again, and nodded.
"Will you be home for dinner tonight?"
EBONY
"Jenna admitted to it." Ebony gauged Travis' reaction as she set her tray down. Eleni was nowhere in sight today, which was a pity. The scandal of what had happened between Jenna Frost and Matthew Summers yesterday surely would have gotten a rise out of the woman.
Travis gaped in surprise for a moment, but then remembered he had food in his mouth and quickly swallowed.
"Why would she do that?"
"Why did she drug him in the first place?" Ebony countered.
"It was a play to get him back, of course," Travis mumbled, still thinking. "If it had worked, they would have had a pleasant tumble she could use to keep Eleni away, and no one the wiser."
"Yes, but, you are missing the point. Only an idiot would think to go ahead with such a plan. She has proven herself to be seriously lacking when it comes to brain cells." Ebony's estimation of Jenna's intelligence had taken a severe hit.
"Or desperate," Travis said, distractedly. "She's protecting someone. Or several someone's." Ebony paused in her eating while she connected that he was responding to her original comment. It made sense, but she wanted to hear Travis's analysis – he had an interesting way of looking at things sometimes.
"How do you get that?"
"She loses quite a bit in admitting to drugging Summers." Travis cleared his throat and straightened up. "Madam P is very strict when it comes to infringements on fellow dance students, and this definitely qualifies. She will probably be expelled and will no longer be in the ballet. Given her dedication to dancing, and the fact that she could have probably delayed the truth telling for a while, there must be a good reason why she admitted to what she did so quickly. There was probably a deal, and she wasn't questioned about certain information."
"Like, how she got the drug." Travis nodded.
"At the least. There probably won't be any investigation beyond her confession. Unless Summers pushes for it."
All of what Travis said rang true, and Ebony tucked it away to consider further later. There was something more urgent that she needed to confirm. "Travis, didn't you say that Eleni was the understudy?"
His eyes opened owlishly as he started to understand the implications of her question.
"She is."