I make her pancakes.
When I lead her into the kitchen and pull out a chair for her, she sits, silent; she's not entirely here. I can tell.
She looks like a PAL-caught Piece.
I triage her as much as I can without alerting her of it. Well, she's breathing. That's a start. No open wounds. Some bruises along her cheekbones and down her arm. Pupils look alright. No face sagging. No twitches. Dark, dark circles under her eyes.
Bastion watches from a corner, arms crossed. She starts to phase out her armor in gold bursts until she's standing in gray shorts and a t-shirt. She has a long ponytail of grey hair, a similar color to mine, and yellow irises. Still, we could pass for siblings, with our almond-shaped eyes and pale face. That is, if it weren't for her metal plated wings.
"Do you want to mix the batter?"
Alexa doesn't respond. When I ask the question again, she nods. I hand her cups of flour, milk, eggs and she obediently mixes them together. I pour the batter on a pan, four small circles. She moves, opening cabinets, and sidles up next to me, two blue plates in her hands.
"Thank you," I say, slipping the pancakes onto the plates. Does she have a concussion? Fever? She doesn't look red. I take out cups and syrup, but Alexa is already eating. I originally made two for me and two for her, but after she finishes her second one, I give her another one of mine. She doesn't seem to notice where it came from and keeps eating. I cut half of what I have left, slip it onto her plate, and slowly eat mine while she finishes everything. I take away her milk and give her water instead.
Where are her Pieces?
She sips the entire glass, steadily.
Where is Torrent?
Her left middle finger has the covenant on it now. Stavros's and mine are right under our left collarbones. She's wearing my ring on her thumb.
I give Bastion a look and she signs back at me in the half-movement, half-mouthing language we have.
"She smells like death," Bastion signs inaudibly, quiet without her armor. Then she shrugs and makes the the sign of pity over her heart. "God bless this soul" is what it means. Any God. Maybe every God.
Alexa sets down her glass. What now? I look at Bastion for help.
"Would you like to take a bath with me, child?" the Skarmory asks, holding out an pale hand. Alexa takes it.
I lay out clothes, mine, because I don't have anything else. Boxers, a t-shirt, and sweatpants that she'll probably have to roll up at the waist. I hear splashing and it echoes in the large bathroom, bouncing off granite walls that I rarely see. I usually use the shower and the small bed in the guest room. Less space, less lonely.
I pick up a book then put it down. Where are her Pieces? Are they all dead? From what? The Gym? When I pull on a shirt, I look up to see her standing in the half-dark, moonlight reflecting off her eyes, and I flinch in fright.
"You scared me," I confess, as calmly as I can. She doesn't respond, black hair hanging down, dripping with water, white bathrobe coming to her feet. Every horror movie rolled into one. "Are these clothes okay? I'm sorry. I don't have anything else." She takes them and goes back into the bathroom as Bastion walks out.
She flicks her wings, spattering me with water.
"Nice," I say, wiping my face.
She snaps her fingers, a flash, and her grey shorts and shirt come back. There is a corresponding shimmer in the bathroom as her clothes on the floor disappear.
"I need the sky. I'll be back in a bit." She opens the window and jumps out.
Liar. She'll come back the next morning, exhausted, like she always does when she's worried about something.
"Yo." Sapphire eyes look in from the doorway.
"Won't Stavros bite when he finds you're not in bed with him?"
"He sent me down to check on you," Damien says, only the top half of his face showing. The rest of his body is hidden in the hallway. "He sensed the child."
I sit on my bed, the one I never use, and lay back, sighing.
"Go back to bed, Damien."
Close my eyes. Hear him leave.
Open my eyes when I feel the mattress creak.
"You dried your hair?"
A nod. It's damp now.
"Do you want to talk?"
She shakes her head. Her pants aren't rolled up, so the legs go over her feet.
"Would you like to sleep together?"
I tuck her into the bed when she nods, settling next to her on the same pillow. It still smells like sunshine from the last time I washed it. She wiggles closer to me, off the pillow, until she is pressing her face to my chest, fingers clutching the fabric. Big eyes blink sky blue with yellow rings.
"It's okay to sleep. Everything will be here when you wake up," I say. Is she consoled by that thought? She glances at me, briefly, and then closes her eyes, the violet half-moons underneath cradling her lashes.
Bastion comes back in an hour, not a minute more or a minute less.
"Oh, good. You didn't do anything," she breathes. Whether she's genuinely relieved or not, I can't tell.
"I wouldn't do anything to her."
"Wouldn't you?"
Back when I was was eight, I would have jumped on her for challenging me with a comment like that, rolling her on the dirt, not caring that she could flick me off with a twitch of her wing, even though she was smaller than me. Now, I simply lock eyes with her, steady, infallible. She stares back, defiant, always my wild-card, always more headstrong than the rest of my Pieces. Then, she looks away and her wings droop until the tips brush the ground.
"I was worried," she says quietly. "She is but a child, Steven."
"Oh, ye of little faith."
She makes a sound of disgust, but when I hold out my hand, she takes it, fingers cool and bony. I've held these hands for more than a decade, almost two. We've watched each other grow up.
"Go to bed, Bastion."
She does so, yellow eyes peering at me once more before she leaves. Her armor phases back in chunks. She never sleeps without it. Not since Ash carved his permanence into my back with a kitchen knife.
The sun is just starting to lighten the sky. I close my eyes and when I open them, the sun is overhead and Stavros is sitting across from me on the sofa.
Pain in my chest. I take a couple of shallow breaths and look down. Her head is on my ribs, her arm thrown over me. A couple more shallow breaths. I look up to see Stavros smirking and gently extricate myself, taking care not to wake her.
"Ow," I groan, moving my arms up and down. My ribs are sore beyond mentioning.
"What a terrible, frail boyfriend," Stavros snickers.
"I don't even know if that's what I am. What do you want, Stavros?"
"I checked the gym," Stavros starts, not smiling anymore. He runs his hand through his short-cropped hair. He doesn't have on his jacket or his metal plates, just one of my long sleeved shirts and sweats. And his mask. "It's dark inside. I checked the back, and the windows are blown out. It's a fucking mess. Like someone used Earthquake without caring about the pipes or splitting the fucking island in half."
"That bad?"
"Yeah. The cracks go down deep and it fucking feels like death down there. You know, it says something that no one has fixed it yet. That means the Gym Leaders don't have any Pieces to repair damage with."
"So she won."
"If she's the one that battled, then yeah. She did."
"Where are the Gym Leaders?"
"Where the fuck else? Sitting on their tilted, concrete throne, eating candy and playing Animal Crossing."
What now? I glance at her. She breathes deeply, carelessly. I feel the urge to run a light fingernail down her cheek.
"Don't let me stop you," Stavros remarks.
"Don't do that."
"Why? Your thoughts are funny sometimes."
"Go fix the Gym for them. That's our job."
"If you say so," Stavros shrugs and stands up, stretching with a flexibility I wish I had. My ribs and back hurt just from looking at him. "Make sure to take your medication."
"Yeah, alright."
He bends over me and kisses her on the shoulder, red eyes uncharacteristically concerned. Then, he kisses me on the forehead. Nineteen years we spent together. I got him as my fourth birthday present, as a blood egg that I kept with me wherever I went. I was the first person he saw when his soul formed, already looking older than me.
When he leaves, I swing my legs off the bed and get up. Doing the shoulder blade stretches the physical therapist told me to perform every morning, I wander around the house, taking deep breaths that send stabs of pain through my side. Three white pills. Glass of water.
What now?
Time passes.
What now?
I go back to the room to find her staring out the window, hands folded neatly on top of the blanket. She kicked off her pants at night, probably because it was too hot, and my black boxers look like shorts on her.
"Good morning."
She looks my way and then looks back out the window. Maybe I can do the seizure test and coma scale. I walk over to her slowly, bare feet making no sound, and sit beside her.
"What's your name?"
No response.
"Hey." I shake her hand a bit. "What's your name?"
"Alexandra."
"Alexandra what?"
"Alexandra Ming-Zhu Oak."
Alright. At least she knows that.
"What day is it?"
"Monday."
Both of her pupils are the same size. No visible sagging of the face. Eyes unclouded. Skin color, fine. Temperature, fine. Pulse?
I hold her hand, two fingers at her pulse point, hoping she won't notice what I'm doing. She doesn't seem to care. Fifty BPM. Strong. That's fine. She looks fine.
"Do you know my name?"
"Yeah."
"What's my name?"
"Steven Stone."
"Where are you?"
"At your house."
"Where is Torrent?"
She doesn't answer.
"Where is Briar?"
"Dead."
I stop myself from recoiling just in time. Briar's dead. That snarky Breloom, with his crooked smile and clear eyes. A friend. A friend completely gone — what about the others? What happened to the others?
"Where's Skyra?"
"Dead."
"Where's Aiden?"
"Hospital."
"Capala?"
"Dead."
"Skye?"
"Hospital."
"Where's Torrent?"
She hesitates, but answers.
"Hospital."
Three dead, three in the Piece Center. She lost half her team. Half her team is deep underneath the Gym, being turned into grass and stardust and dirt. She doesn't have a concussion. She's in shock. She's depressed. She—
"Why are you crying?" she questions, her voice monotone.
I quickly wipe away the tears with my shirt.
"Do you want to eat?" My voice breaks on the last word.
She shakes her head.
What now?
She lays down and goes back to sleep. Her breaths come evenly and the sun outlines the tiny capillaries on her hand.
What now?
When I walk into the kitchen, I see Damien eating the bag of iron screws I gave him so he wouldn't eat the foundations of the house.
"Yo." When his mask and armor are off, as they are now, he looks the most human out of all my Pieces. He could be a C-Key, if he wanted. But Stavros wants to stay with me, so Damien stays as well. "How's the little princess?"
I inhale until my lungs beg for me to stop. Exhale until my body is starved for air. Repeat.
"In shock. Depressed. I mean, she had depression, but it was moderate. It's severe now." Push my hands together by my mouth like I'm praying. "Half her team is dead."
He says nothing.
"I don't know what to do," I say.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I don't know. How do I get her to see a therapist? How do I get her to take her medication? How do I make her better? How—"
"You ask her."
"And if she says no?"
"Then don't do any of those things."
"And what if she refuses to eat? Or drink? Or—"
"She'll eat when she's hungry. She'll drink when she's thirsty. She'll sleep when she's tired."
"You expect me to do noth—"
He slams a hand on the table so hard, the wood cracks beneath his fingers, like thin ice. Damien is supposed to be the gentle one, the quiet one, but here he is, so furious that his mask materializes over his face. The only thing I can see is his mouth and royal blue eyes.
"No." His voice is controlled, quiet, seething. "I expect you to follow your own damn advice. You tell us people are not medicine, but do you even know what that means? "Don't find salvation in other people," you tell us. Yeah, we got that. But I have never heard you fucking say, "find salvation in yourself." It's a two part thing, Dr. Stone. Do you think she'll get better if she doesn't want your goddamn help? No. She won't. She'll get better when she fucking chooses to get better. And if you're gonna grind up tablets and spike her fucking drink with it, then you might as well pack her off to one of those insane asylums where they'll force a fucking tube down her fucking throat to get her to eat."
Stavros walks into the kitchen and freezes when he sees the situation.
"You don't want to sit on your ass and wait? Then don't. Ask her if she wants to do things. Ask her if she wants to eat. Ask her if she wants flowers or wolves or fucking video games. Because that's the only thing you're going to be good for right now. Until she reaches out to you for help, until she's ready for that, the only thing you can do is ask. You're so used to giving orders. You're so used to having everyone listen to you. You're so used to having people jump to their feet to applaud your fucking opinion and you've had no repercussions for it until now." He stabs at the general direction of the bedroom. "She's at stake here now. She's the gamble. This is a human life. So why don't you stop playing Mr. Doctor-CEO-President and start acting like a fucking decent human being."
He holds my gaze for one second, two seconds, three seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. He finally looks away at forty seconds.
"Damien," Stavros coaxes. "Come on."
"We look away from him because we defer to him. It doesn't mean he's smarter than us. It just means he can piece together emotional and analytical and moral and a bunch of other fucking bits of information. That's how his brain is wired. That's how ours isn't. That's what makes him human. His ambition. His greed. But if he's going to act like scum, then there is no fucking need for respect anymore."
"Damien, you're overreacting."
"No, he's not," I concede, calmer now. I feel like two bones that were grating together were set back into place. "That was fair. Thank you. I needed that. But you didn't have to break the table."
"…Yeah," he says, sinking back down into his chair after a long pause. He puts a handful of screws in his mouth. Stavros takes some, too. The mask disappears of his face with a sudden flash. "Probably. But I wanted to make a point. And I was angry. I'm tired now."
"The last time you got that angry was seven years ago," Stavros says, nudging him in the side with his knee. "I had to go in my PEN, you needed to apologize for creating the largest sinkhole ever recorded in the area, and we realized our hearts both pointed to each other."
"It was eventful," Damien agrees. "Eventful makes me tired."
"Hell yeah it does. You wanna go make out while you're still angry?"
"Don't you go have to fix the Gym?" Damien is back to normal now. Stavros nuzzles into his shoulder and bites down hard enough to draw blood, but Damien puts another handful of iron into his mouth, patient, tolerant. They balance each other out very well.
"I just came back from fixing it. Steven, about her Pieces, I placed them in the forest for now, all three of them. Are we going to dig their graves on our property? Oh, by the way, the Gym Leaders are going to be coming over any second now."
"What—"
The doorbell rings.
"We'll talk more about the Pieces later," I finish and hastily make my way to the door. The doorbell rings again, insistent.
"Hello, Ex-Champion," they both say when I throw open the door. They each have a video game system in their hands, and a box of crackers in the other. "We need Bastion."
"I heard you tried to kill Alexandra Oak."
"Red Oak murdered our Pieces," Haru says. Neither of them stop playing their video games.
"They aren't the same person. She isn't responsible for what her brother did."
"They are both one half of their mother and one half of their father." Hansol looks up, black eyes similar to mine. "That sounds like they are the same people."
I rub my eyes. They aren't being serious.
"You killed three of her Pieces. Three of my friends."
"And she killed all of ours," Haru hisses, eyes narrowed. "Do you think that we don't care about our family because we don't cry as you do, Ex-Champion Stone? Do you think tears are the only form of expression? We're not sorry we killed her Pieces. Our Pieces wouldn't be sorry either, if they were here to speak now. Gym battles must be and are consensual for every party that fights, but Pieces die, people die, and that's how life is, Ex-Champion. You should know better than anyone. Now will you lend us Bastion or not?"
"That's a very nasty tone for a couple of C-Keys who don't have any form of defense," Stavros coos, hooking his chin over my shoulder.
"Hello again, Stavros," Haru says. She resumes playing her game. A flutter of wings behind me.
"I'll take them," Bastion says, striding out the door. She flips her saber into the air.
"Yay," Hansol says, moving his sister and himself out of the way. The saber flashes, changes, and thumps on the ground as a large metal basket, similar to the ones under hot-air balloons.
"Get in. I'll be back late, Steven. Meteor Falls first, right?"
"Yeah." They hop into the basket. Bastion grabs the long handle and flaps hard. They shoot into the air, coast, and then disappear into the late afternoon sun. From the corner of my eye, I see sheer curtains sway in the wind.
Her window is open.
"They look like you," she murmurs when I walk in, chin in her arms. She's sitting by the window seat and her hair ripples in the same breeze that moves the curtains. "Same shaped eyes. Bastion, too. You would be Korean in my world, I think."
"It's Kanto lineage here, at least for humans. Appearance of Pieces seem to be vaguely based on their type, but that's just something I've noticed."
I settle next to her and she looks up at me, not quite meeting my eyes.
"They told me to come here. I was at the hospital and they told me to get out and go find you. They said that you would know what to do."
"I'm pretty sure I know what to do," I say carefully. "But I'm not going to do anything you don't want to."
Glance at me. Glance away.
"I wanna brush my teeth," she says, sitting up.
"Alright. Let's get you a toothbrush."
"You brush your teeth, too."
"Alright."
There's something unspeakably comforting about having a morning routine. There's something achingly satisfying about waking up the person beside you, about two people sleeping in a bed appropriately meant for two. Sometimes, I wake up with her gazing back at me, neither of us completely conscious.
"You snore," she says sometimes.
"Sorry," I respond.
"Don't worry. It's cute." Then, that half-smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.
In the bathroom, she hops back and forth on one foot, then the other, trying to keep herself off the cold marble. We brush our teeth together. While I shave, she counts out my pills, fills a glass of water.
"What are they for?" she asks one morning.
"Anti-depression, anti-anxiety."
She takes a long look at them. White tablets scored by a single line. They leave a disgustingly sweet aftertaste in the back of my throat.
"Doctors take medication, too, huh?"
"Of course."
"Is this on the list you showed me that one time?"
"Yes."
She examines the orange bottle, reading the prescription, but doesn't say anything further. I don't push it.
She'll eat breakfast at times. Maybe lunch. Rarely dinner. Or she'll eat nothing the entire day and spend the hours in bed with the blinds drawn. I make sure to leave water beside her on those days. But Damien was right. She eats when she is hungry. She sleeps when she is tired. She hasn't lost the will to live and perhaps she's refusing to. When I look into her eyes, I see someone who is exhausted, but not too exhausted to continue existing.
"By the way, when is your birthday?"
She looks up from the leather-bound book she's leafing through. It was beside her when I came back from the Psychiatric Center yesterday night; she must have fallen asleep reading it. It's a book of Kanto fairy tales. The late-afternoon sunlight sends sparks running along her hair and gleams on my ring around her thumb. Just my shirt and boxers again today.
"December 31. The last day of the year," she answers.
I set down my book.
"That's very soon. It's about a week from today."
"So it is." She returns to the page she's reading, stretching her legs out in front of her and on top of my lap. Her calves are wiry from walking; the mark of a traveling C-Key. Tiny, pointed feet. I tap the blue couch beside her thighs to get her attention.
"Do you want anything?"
She holds up the hand with the ring on it.
"You've already given me enough."
Gratitude? I've never seen that before. I don't know how to respond, so I scratch the back of my head, wincing when my ribs pull at the sudden motion.
"Everybody gives me so much," she muses. She sets down her book and climbs into my lap. I automatically adjust now, from habit. Her head nestles into my shoulder and my arm curves around her waist. She holds my free hand, gently. "I don't know why."
"Maybe it's a blessing," I say as she settles in between my legs. Her eyebrows quirk into a question mark. A week ago, her face would have been blank. "Maybe one of the legendary Pieces put a blessing on you so that all things go your way."
"Not all things," and her voice is quiet in grief. I close my eyes and let her pluck the loose threads in the bottom of my shirt. She doesn't cry, though. She hasn't. Maybe she doesn't need to. Curled up like this, her head fits into the crook of my shoulder. She's a pocket-sized girl. "Is your backyard empty?"
Still with the wrenching topic changes.
"Empty? What do you mean?"
"Are you using it for anything?"
"No. Why?"
"I would like a garden for my birthday." She looks up, biting her already torn, bleeding lips. I brush my mouth against hers to remind her to stop and she smiles, the corner of her eyes crinkling the tiniest bit. "Not a finished garden. I wanna do it myself. No. Together. I wanna build it together with you. That's what I would like for my birthday. I don't want a cake or anything else. I don't want anybody to sing the song or anything like that. I would like a garden."
"Alright. We can do that. What would you like to plant?"
"Vegetables that my mom had in her garden. And flowers. Lots of flowers. And maybe trees?"
I think for a minute, deciding whether to push my luck or not.
"I'll give you a sketchbook. If you sketch the layout of the garden and what plants you want, it will be easier to pick up supplies. After, we can go choose the things you need together. How does that sound?"
It would be the first time she is leaving the house since she came. Her face, for one fleeting second, looks uncertain, and I am about to recant my offer, but her expression clears.
"Okay."
She's thinking of a tomorrow.
There's an old saying that people who want to die don't do gardening or farm work. They can't tend plants with a future in mind. I'm sure it's not scientifically true, but all the same, the proverb gives me comfort.
Later that night in bed, she sketches on the crisp, new pages of the sketchbook with a mechanical pencil, and I'm surprised to see how accurate and pretty the drawings of various flowers are.
"I told you, my mom was an artist," she declares when I point it out. "I drew a lot with her. Lots of practice."
"Still. You are very good."
"Thank you," she says softly. In the dim light, I'm not sure if her cheeks are red. I kiss her anyway and she kisses back for the first time in a while, hands curled like flowers petals in her lap. I break away laughing when she licks the roof of my mouth again, batting away the pillow she throws at my ribs.
On the morning of her birthday, while she's still asleep, I confide my congratulations into her hair, praying for her health and happiness. But I don't mention a word of it when she wakes up, as she wished.
When we do go shopping, she refuses to look anywhere but the ground or the plants. That's alright. I know what she's afraid of. We take the long way back and avoid the red-roofed Piece Center. Back at the house, she breathes a sigh of relief and sinks onto the wooden floor of the hallway. But that doesn't stop her from gardening a little later, digging up soil with a spade, leaving dirt streaks across her face when she wipes away the sweat.
It's hard work and the sun tries to make up for all my years spent in the darkness of caves. I don't mind. She refuses Damien's help when he offers. He understands and drags Stavros away into the town to do one thing or another. Bastion sits on the roof, keeping watch but not interfering.
I make sure she drinks often.
"What's wrong?" I ask when I see her staring at her hands. "Did you get a splinter?"
She shakes her head and continues digging.
"When I first came here, my hands were soft. But they have calluses on them now, like Brendan's hands, or yours. My mom also had calluses." A pause while she struggles with a rock. I kick the stone away from the point of her shovel and she continues digging. "In Asian culture — that's a type of lineage. It's sort of like Kanto. But anyway, in Asian culture, it's always good to have soft hands and a pale face. My mom is Caucasian, but she grew up in Koreatown, so she knew some of these things and Grandpa is full Chinese, so he knew all of these things. But it was more my mom that told me to keep my hands smooth. She lived a pretty hard life and I guess she wanted to make sure I lived better than her. A life that had less work in it."
"Do you miss your mom?"
"I don't miss anybody." Her mouth is set in a line. "Do you miss your brother?"
"No."
She doesn't pry. Some things are better left unsaid.
"Do you have other Pieces? In the video game, you have others. A Cradily and two more. I forget what."
"I have a Cradily, a Claydol, and an Armaldo. They're traveling, currently. They're not the type to stick around, but they'll come if I call. Whoever wants to stay can stay and whoever wants to go can go."
She nods, spreading soil.
We set spinach and tomatoes and peas and lettuce and peppers. She plants Pecha berries for the sweet fruit and raspberry bushes to dye her tongue red. And all around, she plants rows and rows of flowers. Lilies, allium, hyssop, poppies, sage, plumeria, verbena, lantana, yarrow, lavender, hibiscus, bluebells. She throws wildflower seeds in empty patches of dirt, around fencing, on paths. She points to the flowers one by one with the hose, carefully avoiding butterflies and ladybugs. Some days, I come home and she's still in the garden under the moonlight. She'll wave me over and put a garter snake in my hands, or a turtle.
"They eat the bad bugs," she'll say and nestle them back among the lettuce.
One time, she falls asleep under the stars and instead of moving her back in, I bring out a blanket and sleep outside with her.
Stavros reports on the status of her Pieces each time he visits the Piece Center. They kicked him out today. They let him in today. Torrent woke up today. Torrent's asked for Alexa today. They all asked for Alexa today. They begged for Alexa today. It's pitiful, Steven, even for me. Can't you talk to her?
But when I tell her Torrent is awake, she hides in the closet for the rest of the day, facing the wall. I'm too small to fit in there with her, so I sit outside, carrying her out when she falls asleep. In bed, she cuddles up to me, half-awake, apologizing for something I'm not aware of.
I don't mention it again.
"Can I have one?" she asks one morning. I swallow half the cup of water before looking down, trying to wash away the taste in my mouth.
"Have what?"
"One," she picks up a pill between her fingers. "You said it would make me feel better, right?"
I do my best to keep my face neutral.
"Yes. Are you allergic to any medications?"
"I'm not allergic to anything."
"Then take one everyday for a week and then two everyday from there on."
She weighs the pill on her palm, deliberating, and then quickly gulps it down with the water.
"Ew, it tastes weird," she makes a face and then pulls me down to kiss her.
She tastes like mint and the faint dregs of the medication.
"Are you going to marry me?" she questions the next night, when I'm reaching over to turn off the bedside lamp. I freeze and then slowly turn to look at her. She's sitting up, pillow in her lap, serious. Her attire so far as been a cycle of my t-shirts and boxers. Shorts, sometimes.
"Are we dating?" I counter. I expect her to think for a moment, but she answers without hesitation.
"Yes."
Were we on the same page this whole time?
"I intend to marry you, yes," I say, evenly, "But whether you say yes or no is up to you."
"I wanna be the one to ask."
"You want to propose to me?"
"Will you say yes? If I propose?"
"Yes. I would say yes."
"Then when the time comes. Yeah. I wanna ask so I can decide."
I shrug my shoulders and turn off the light. She crawls into her favorite spot, huddled against my chest with her head on my arm instead of the pillow.
"Alright. I expect a fancy restaurant, flowers, a ring, and a quartet of violins playing my favorite sonata."
When she laughs, I realize how much I missed that sound. It's her first laugh in weeks. I want to kiss her, but I would rather die than cut the sound of her voice short.
"Alright," she giggles, wiping her eyes. I blot away the tears that start to drip down her face. "Alright." The moonlight in the window shifts while she sobs. "Do you love me?" she asks later, when she's cradled in my arms, hair spilling over the pillow like soft ink. She asks shamelessly, boldly.
"Yes."
"Is it because I remind you of Ash?"
"No." I rub the back of her neck, where I know there is a scar. I don't think she knows or remembers. "In the beginning, I liked you because your eyes were similar. But that's not why I fell for you. You don't remind me of him now. You don't remind me of anyone. You are nothing but your own person."
"Why do you love me?"
"Because you make funny noises when you sleep."
"Aren't you supposed to be a poet?"
"Poets have the hardest time describing why they love someone."
She smiles, sleepy, and brings her hand to my hair. My scalp tingles under her nails. I could watch her forever, the gleam of white teeth and fluttering eyelids.
"Do you love me?" I ask, uncertain of the answer.
"Yeah." Her eyes are closed.
"Why?"
"I wonder." She opens them again. "It's not so much that you gave me a home, or that you remind me of home. To me, you are home. If somebody were to ask me where my home was, I wouldn't think of this place or my house back in California. I'd think of you and your hands and the way you kiss the back of my neck in the morning and all the times we watched it rain from the back porch." I'm too surprised by her response to say anything. She pauses, thinking. "I think it's different from you being my medicine. I can live without you and I can get better without you. But you are something that I dearly want and dearly love and will fight to keep." She looks at me, tilting her head. The pillow rustles. "You're making that face again."
"I love you," I say. She draws the back of her hand up to her eyes, blushing crimson, but I stop her and prop myself up, my elbows on either side of her head. Her pupils are dilated. I breathe in her exhale. "I love you. Do you need me to write it down? Will you remember?"
"I'll remember," she whispers.
When we kiss, it is the sweetest thing in the world.
The doorbell rings early in the morning, early enough so that it wakes both of us.
"I'm gonna get it first," she mumbles, stumbling out of the blankets. When she turns it into a game, I rip the sheets off and sprint after her, throwing her over my shoulder when I catch her. It's worth the dull ache in my ribs to hear her laugh, limply hanging over my shoulder. I set her down and she opens the door, rubbing her eyes.
"Oh, President Lytton," she says, surprised. "Hello."
He looks as unassuming as ever. Black suit, green tie, green hair, green eyes. His gaze flickers from Alexa to me and then back to Alexa with a confusion I haven't seen in a while. I know what he's thinking. I know what this looks like. I rub my shoulder, trying to pat down her wild bed hair. Luckily, we're both wearing shorts today.
"How old are you?" he asks her, setting his briefcase down.
"Hm?" she yawns, covering her mouth.
"How old are you?"
"Just turned seventeen. Why?"
He straightens up and hits me across the face so hard, my skull slams into the doorframe and my teeth cut the inside of my cheek. I manage to grab her by the wrist before she jumps on him, snarling.
"Alexa." I have to call her name twice before she stops lunging at him. "Alexa." I shake my head and my jaw pops. She turns to face me, anxious. "Ice, please. Can you, darling?"
"He hit you," she quavers, her shaking hand reaching for my face. "He hit you!"
"Alexandra, ice. Please. Come inside, President Lytton."
She takes a good look at me and then runs to the kitchen. I shoot a glare at Stavros, who is standing in the half-darkness of the stairwell. His eyes stop glowing red and the metal railings groan as the pressure eases off them. I hear the grind of the ice machine as it dispenses ice chips into a bowl.
"You're lucky Stavros didn't impale you, President."
"My apologies," he says, not sorry at all, "I saw your face and simply had the overwhelming urge to punch it."
"Whatever you're thinking, I haven't done it. Have some faith, President. I can control myself." I taste the bitter salt of blood. "And please excuse our clothes. We don't wake up with the sun as you do." I lead him into the sitting room. She comes back with a pouch of ice and a towel, which she wraps and gingerly holds to my face. "Thank you. I'll be fine, Alexa, honest." But she stands protectively next to me, fingers in my hair, staring at President Lytton with venomous eyes. She's biting her lip again. I touch her hip with my free hand and she stops, eyes darting to me.
"So now you two are in a relationship, I presume? No longer, "just friends" as you told me the last time I saw you."
"How can I help you?" I say, pulling her onto the couch next to me. He sits across from us, setting his case down. "I don't think the nature of our relationship is what brought you here."
"No. That is merely curiosity. A future and ex-champion, my, my. The press will have a field day whenever you choose to announce it. But first, I'm sorry for the loss of your brother, Dr. Stone. I'm sure it was a difficult time for you. I heard you didn't attend the funeral."
"There was no need to." I keep my words curt. "My father's presence was all my brother had ever wanted. Surely you could have expressed your condolences over the phone, President Lytton. Why are you here?"
"I'm here as an… intervention, you could say. Your father has been up to some strange things."
He has my attention now. Alexa takes my hand calmly, eyes focused.
"So I've heard. However, if this is about him, why didn't you go talk to him? I'm not his keeper."
"Because you are much easier to talk to, especially in front of your little miss."
"You will address me by my name," Alexa says coolly, in a tone that I've used with disrespectful CEOs over the phone. Did she pick it up from me? "I am not an accessory or a bartering chip. I am not sugar you can stir into your tea. I don't belong to Steven."
"If anything, it's the opposite," I mutter to myself, adjusting the dripping ice pack to the part of my head that hit the doorframe.
"What a fierce face," he chuckles. "Of course. My apologies, Alexandra. I didn't mean any offense." She's sitting up straight, legs crossed and tucked under her, chin high, hand in mine. "As I was saying, your father has been up to no good, it seems. Tell me, what does every C-Key have?"
"Pieces."
"Yes, but what else, Alexandra?"
"Phones," I fill in. "More specifically, iPhones. There is no other brand, and you need it to sync your identification with all the PENs and PALs you have. They aren't very expensive, though, and you can get one if you apply for Financial Aid with the Piece Keepers. I don't know what this has to do with Devon Corp. We don't sell iPhones. Apple does."
"Thus, you'd expect no connection between the two companies. Yet, a connection has been found." He unlatches his briefcase and pulls out a clear plastic box. Inside is a tiny microchip, no larger than the head of a paperclip. "At first, we thought there was a dead pixel on the monitor of the x-ray machine, but it turned out that every iPhone comes with this."
"What were you doing x-raying iPhones?" Alexa asks, puzzled, but he waves away her question.
"That's not important. What's important is what was on the chip. You would think it would be crucial for the phone, yes? It isn't. It's line after line of non-essential code that ends in something being triggered."
"Something?"
"Something. I say something because we don't know what. Yet. But what's more interesting is that one of my employees used to work at Devon, and she recognized that the chip had Devon's base code on it, all the way down to the formatting of the comments."
Every single one? He must have tried older models, too. The iPhone's debuted about six years ago. Significant events around that time? None, unless you counted the pathetic launching of PALs the year before. Everybody had used PENs, so PALs hadn't made much of a headway until Red. Devon didn't specialize in phones; President Jobs had a monopoly on that. So why the connection? Why had there been Devon base code found on an iPhone?
Is he lying? I don't think so. I can't see the micro expressions like Brendan Birch can, but I have enough perception to know when people are not being truthful. But there has to be a reason why he's bringing this to me. Something beneficial to him. Something that will help his company. In what field? Electricity? Technology? PENs? How would this help? A connection has been established but nothing negative has been found. I'm missing information. I can't make a conclusion from this. What am I—
"Do you want an ice pop, Steven?"
The hand on my face breaks my train of thought. No more than a few milliseconds have passed, but she looks at me with a smile, willing my brain to slow down. I can feel her pulse persuading mine to beat more methodically. President Lytton looks mildly bewildered, unaccustomed to her chaotic changes in topic.
"Do we still have orange ones?"
"Nope. We ran out. I'm gonna get you cherry."
"What? I hate cherry."
"I know," she taunts, sticking out her tongue. "Do you want one President?"
"…Yes. Thank you."
"I'm gonna get you cherry, too, because you hit Steven."
I try not to think during her absence. I can tell President Lytton is thrown by the turn of events.
"Her mind moves in leaps," I explain, filling the silence. I set the melted icepack down. "She makes a series of small, unconventional connections in her brain and then talks about where they led her. But we only hear the conclusion, so sometimes it feels like a completely different topic."
"Ah," he says. "Yes. My wife used to think like that. We used to call them her "leaps of faith". Her conversation topic changes, that is."
The late Mrs. Lytton, who had died shortly after giving birth to Wally. I am confronted with a sudden wave of pity for the man before me, who dyes his hair to keep it from turning grey.
"I got lemon for you," she announces when she comes back. "And grape for you, President Lytton. Nobody actually deserves cherry."
"You said we ran out of orange," I accuse when she crams an orange popsicle into her mouth.
"Yeah. We just ran out. Besides, we wouldn't want a distinguished individual like yourself to have your mouth turn orange. President Lytton gets a purple mouth as punishment."
"I'm buying all cherry next time so we can all suffer equally." But I take a bite of the lemon ice pop anyway. "Moving back to our original topic, I still have to ask why you brought this matter to us, President. As we don't know what the code is for, it can't be determined as legal or illegal. And if it turns out that there is a miniature bomb planted in every single iPhone, that's more of a matter for the Piece Keepers and Gym Leaders rather than myself."
"...It's odd that your brother was cremated, rather than buried, as is the tradition in your family." He hasn't unwrapped his popsicle, but holds it loosely in his hands. "You were hospitalized for gunshot wounds shortly before the media announced that your brother was found, dead. What is your father doing? Is he trying to kill off both his heirs?"
"The bullets were meant for me," Alexa says quietly.
"I did warn you about President Stone and his sons. A threat to his PAL business is a threat to him, Alexandra. Well, you have one less to worry about now." He stands up, placing the unwrapped popsicle on the table between us. "As I said in the beginning, this is an intervention. Try looking around in your father's phone records, Dr. Stone. You might find something… unexpected. Curiosity can uncover a great many things."
Of course he wouldn't tell me straight out. He knows every word can be used against him in court. I wouldn't sue him for any of this, but this is how he is. Careful. Sly.
"I'll see you out, President," Bastion says from the doorway.
"You should spend more time with Wally, President Lytton. Your son needs a father," Alexa comments as he slips the plastic box into his jacket pocket.
"Speaking about fathers," he says with a wry smile, "your father is visiting very soon, isn't he? In less than a week, I believe." Alexa visibly pales and her breath hitches. A part of her ice pop breaks off and plops on the wooden floor. "I knew I had seen those eyes elsewhere, Alexandra Oak. You should listen to your father. He has much more information than me, as his methods are not always... legal."
With that, he stands up and walks into the hall. I hear the front door open and close.
I let her sit in stillness for a while, cautiously taking her hand.
"Father?" I prompt gently, when her color returns. She turns to me, tearing at her lip with her teeth. I touch a corner of her mouth, but she doesn't stop, so I kiss her, hard, until she's breathless. She wipes some of her blood off my bottom lip, distressed.
"I have to tell you something," she says.