Marina
The beautiful thing about a world full of people is that no one pays attention to each other. You would think that after being shown that there was an alien species among them, hiding in plain sight, planning to destroy their planet and enslave its inhabitants, that people would pay more attention to their surroundings. You would be wrong. I guess the humans were eager to return to whatever normal was for them after watching their world almost end. Sweep it under the rug and move on. It's a miracle Earth has lasted this long. No one paid attention to me as I walked up the steep path towards my destination, and no one sees me now, as I stand alone, gawking at a space both familiar and entirely foreign to me.
My hair is tousled by another gust of wind coming from the sea over the cliff's edge and I quickly tuck it behind my ear for the millionth time. This was a stupid idea. The area is too open, too many places for them to hide, to wait and strike when the time is right. Too many ways for them to catch you off guard, to turn you into a brand on someone's wrist somewhere. I absentmindedly thumb at my own wrist, just under the brace I wear to cover my own set of brands. I wonder if the charm still works even after everything. I don't suppose there is an expiration date on a Loric Elder's charm but it seems useless now that we are separated by choice and not by strategy or design. Will I get brands when my friends, my fellow Garde, die of old age or has our completed mission eradicated the tether we held on one another?
It wasn't anything dramatic, when we finally started parting ways. Six and Sam first, off to travel the world. John next, without any explanation or goodbye, just walked away and never came back. Watching Ella leave was most difficult, even with Nine going with her to the brand new Academy for the Earth Garde. I watched her pack and listened to her talk for hours about all of the wonderful things she would get to do there. Listen to her try and convince me in a hundred different ways to come with them. To teach, or train, or enlist in the Earth Garde and continue what we started, to stay with her. It was obvious though that Ella wasn't trying to get me to tag along for her benefit, but more so to help me find a direction to walk in. It's almost comical that the little girl hiding in an Abbey in Spain, a girl who didn't have legacies until she was twenty years old, saved the world by healing the person trying to end it. Even funnier that she has no idea what to do with herself now that she has served her purpose.
The sea breeze blows and I am brought out of my mind by my hair escaping from behind my ear again and tickling my face. I look around startled and start to mark the combat area in my mind before realizing I don't need to anymore. The war is over, I think to myself. No one is hunting you, no one is trying to kill you, there is no battle to prepare for. Old habits die hard. I turn back to the guardrail, resting my arms on the cool metal bars, I close my eyes and let my hair whip around me, feeling the salty caress of the ocean eighty feet below. The last time I was here was right after we found Eight. The first time we had discovered Loralite. The first time I had truly used my legacies and felt some control over them, fighting with Eight in the Spring of the Temple of Vishnu. Proving to myself and to everyone else that I could be useful, that I was a Garde and was willing to fight.
Eight. It hurts to think about him, even after all this time. Somewhere far beneath my skin and bones his name and his memory move a piece of my soul I haven't used in five years. It aches like a sore muscle, atrophied from disuse. I wonder how he would feel about the woman I am now. I think about how different the world is now as from when I first came here. He wouldn't recognize us, this world where Garde are welcomed, or this woman who hides from the freedom he gave his life for. Would he be angry at us? Me, for living as I do, in the shadows as far from other people as I can, the new world, for turning the places we discovered into tourist attractions. The spot where he showed me the prophecy of his death is covered in humans.
Hundreds of them I'm sure. All moseying around aimlessly, reading from plaques that dot the area. Plaques that talk about Loralite and the cave, that talk about the prophecy and the truth it became. The history of this place as it relates to the end of the old world and the beginning of the new one we created. Plaques that I helped write.
In the aftermath of the war, as the humans started rebuilding, historians began contacting us at the base, trying to get all of the details of, well us. Our planet, our escape, our early lives hiding on Earth. The others that didn't survive. They began adding our names and our stories to the history books and online encyclopedias. Began preserving places of meaning, like Sanctuary and here. At the time we figured that helping to build out the history was our way of helping rebuild and we kept up with them for a while. The fad wore off quickly as we began drifting apart and moving on. The plaques have quotes from us all too, our first thoughts and feelings about this place. Number Seven was "overtaken by the rustic beauty and serenity of the caves", or so they say. In reality, this place brings back only memories of Eight. Shy conversations and timid glances. Young love.
I sigh a little but refuse to get lost in my mind and memories again. Instead I check my watch, noting that we are 10 minutes past our agreed meet-up time. Nine was never one for punctuality.
Nine
"We're lost" she says, staring daggers at me.
"No, we just have to go a little further down this path", I assure her, picking up the pace. Marina was probably already there waiting for us, if she even came at all. No one had heard from her in years, she had stopped keeping in touch. Just like John had. Thinking about John makes me sad. The boy who had saved him from the Mountain, and whatever fate the Mogs had in store for me, became a shell of a man after losing Sarah. I remembered how Stanley had mourned after seeing my brand for Number Two appear. He had told me that someone very important to him had traveled here with us and that someday, he would introduce me to her. He never got that chance but after Sarah was killed, I understood. All at once, John lost a piece of himself. Just like Stanley, just like Marina.
"Wait!", Ella says. "This way, I remember!". She turns on a dime and I rush to follow her. She is fast with her Academy training. Five years in and she has climbed to and stayed top of her class, earning rank after rank, so many that they may have to start making them up to keep up with her achievements. At thirteen years old, she is a two star general in the Earth Garde and regularly plans and leads recon missions, some so secret that she won't even tell me. She used to share everything about her missions with me but recently, she is keeping more and more to herself. "Security protocol" is always her excuse, but I can see how the lie weighs on her, even in the way that she scans the ground ahead as we run. Always quick and silent but ever aware and ready to strike, like she is used to being hunted. I, on the other hand, am nowhere near as graceful. If Marina did show, she could probably hear us coming a mile away. She'll show, I think to myself. If not for me, then for Ella. She'll show. She has to.
Before I know it we are at the steps of Sanctuary, surrounded by the hundreds of tourists from around the world that have come to see our little slice of Lorien on Earth. Although "little" may not be the best descriptor since the structure is larger than the entire Academy grounds. This place, like many others dotted around the world, are places that have been restored and renovated to become historical monuments. There are even statues of us dotting the canopies surrounding Sanctuary, each one of us casted in our younger forms and plaques beside them stating our facts; our number, chosen names, Legacies, where we died. This place, just like before, will not let anyone without Legacies enter it. We bring some Academy kids here for field trips to teach them about Lorien and the war, but the feeling of passing through the invisible gateway never fails to make my skin crawl.
No matter how many times I visited this place, I've never felt the sense of calm that some of the other kids have told me about. Maybe it's because every time I am here, I think of her. After the war, when the others started trickling off, Marina and I started spending more and more time together, if only to fill the empty time now that the world was saved and our jobs were done. She told me about waking Lorien, the gift she was given and how it cemented something she had always suspected and something I had always dreaded knowing. On Lorien, love is something sacred. It is something to be valued yes, but the act of finding a Partner was more intense. Your Partner was a piece of your soul and when you found them, you Partnered for life. There was no "getting over" or moving on after losing a Partner. There was no re-Partnering. Eight was hers, and she is mine. All this place does is remind me that she never did, and never will share what I feel for her.
"Nine." Ella stops short and turns around, almost making me trip backwards down the steps. The look on her face reminds me that she can read minds and, while she doesn't eavesdrop on purpose, that she is always aware of the thoughts around her. "Come on, no time for stopping. We're already late." I say pushing past her before she can trick me into a heartfelt talk. I push through the Sanctuary doors and start towards the large Loralite vein that runs the perimeter of the large room. I spot the largest piece of the stone and fast walk towards it with Ella on my heels. "Hey! Nine, wait up!"
I don't. I reach the vein before she does and touch it, thinking of the bright blue water and warm salty breezes of Greece. I feel the portal pushing my cells and atoms around, separating time and space to force me towards her. I think of warm brown hair and eyes, smiles that grew slowly as time passed and grief ebbed. I think of her as I feel the portal separate the smallest parts of my mind to send them to the Cliffs.
She'll show. Marina, please come.
Marina
Twenty minutes late now. What a waste of time I think to myself. No, more than that. Nine knows what this place means to me, knows how difficult it is to even think about stepping foot here. Yet this was the meeting place he chose and now he doesn't even have the balls to show up. I look at my watch one more time and look around. "Huph." I turn around and glance at the sea one last time, drinking the view in. It really is a beautiful place, even if it harbors painful memories. I turn around and start making my way down the path, toward the shuttles that take tourists back and forth from the resort in town. All the time spent debating on whether to respond to Nine's message, all the effort in traveling here, all to walk up and down a neatly paved path and stand in a hurricane of thoughts and feelings, just to have to go back to the way things have been. A cabin in the woods. Far away from prying eyes or curious journalists looking for novel ideas and memoir proposals.
Abruptly, I stop in the middle of the walkway. Isn't that what you want? You could have gone with any of them, they would have let you join. Maybe not Sam and Six, since I'm sure the majority of their activities are not third wheel friendly, but Ella and Nine. What was so wrong with the Academy that made you decide to abandon the only people you have ever truly cared for. What was so wrong with training the Earth Garde, or becoming one? What was so wrong about watching everyone move on with their lives, knowing that you would remain unmoved? That you would forever be taxed with nightmares, of Setrakus Ra and the feeling of killing a being with a legacy designed to heal, of Eight and the soul shattering feeling of watching your partner be killed, and that all of those things would force you back into the body of the scared little girl from the Abbey in Spain.
I start walking again, my thoughts coming full circle after a moment of weakness. I've been through this with myself before. I did want to go with Ella, with Nine. He and I had bonded after the war, and in that bond, I found the only person I felt able to share Lorien's gift to me with. Although the gift of the knowledge that I had watched my Partner die in my arms was no gift at all,
I imagined what my life with them would look like. Ella would attend the Academy and train. She would excel because she is Ella, and Ella is extraordinary. Nine would teach, and would force us all to call him "Professor", and eventually find some nice teacher to settle down with. They both would grow and change and learn to live the life that we all fought for them to live, and I would remain. I would try training and tire of it, not seeing the point. I would never set foot in a combat zone again, if any still existed, because I remember what taking a life feels and looks like. I would try teaching, but would fumble to answer questions the children would ask me about how they came to be so gifted. I would falter when a child's parent asked me why I did this to them, why their child was cursed with legacies. Ultimately, I would fail to become anything other than a washed out war hero, destined to live in the grave I dug myself when I decided to disobey Adeline and learn to use the Legacies I had been burying.
I went around and around in circles like this in my mind until I decided that it was best if I left. Ella and Nine would grow the same way they would in my mind, just without the burden of looking back at my struggling to remain in time and step with them. I ran from them then just as I do now, as fast as I can manage to on the steep path. Back to the cabin in the woods where nothing moves, and everything remains.