Blackheath
***
He locked the hotel room door behind him as Dorsey shed her shirt and sank onto a bed, flapping her tank top. It was stinking hot, and the tiny airconditioner did nothing. He tugged off his shirt and balled it into a corner, pacing up and down under Dorsey's watchful gaze, feeling the sweat sliding down the flat of his belly. The more she watched him, the less he could relax. He wished like hell they'd got two rooms. But that would have looked odd for the single woman booking.
The long plane journey had been hard on his leg. He had had to pretend to be asleep, his face covered with a hat, to avoid the risk of being recognized by a passenger. So when his leg started to ache, he couldn't walk it out down the cabin. Now finally they'd reached the safety of a hotel room, and his whole body screamed to lie flat and succumb to sleep, but his spasming thigh had to be dealt with first.
"Here," Dorsey said finally, pushing him onto the other bed and pressing the balls of her thumbs through the hard muscles. He curled up, biting back a grunt of pain.
"Would you relax?" she muttered, shoving his shoulder back down into the bed. Easier said than done, he thought, pressing the back of hands to his forehead.
"You should've told them you had a medical condition," she said, frowning harder, "Got us better seats."
"I got first available," he said, struggling to keep his mind calm, his muscles loose. He was so close now, he craved being able to just walk out and look for her. But it was still light outside, people everywhere, too much risk of him being seen.
"So you going to tell me what happened?" Dorsey said quietly. It was the first time they'd been alone and able to talk since he'd picked her up. She knew he had lost their daughter, and needed her help to find her. But as to how and why, she was still in the dark.
"I had a meeting in the city. I left her hidden while I went to it. There were complications… a disagreement, I had to get out of there. But I got a one way trip back to the Soul-free zone. She got left behind."
Her fingers dug into his thigh.
"And you just left her? How long ago was this? Why didn't you just come straight back, how could you leave her here-"
He sighed through gritted teeth.
"I was unconscious when they found me," he said, shifting his leg out of her grasp.
"What do you mean you were unconscious? Would you just talk straight with me!"
"I got shot. I hid in a truck. The truck took off," he said shortly, "They found me when they were unpacking it. In the Soul-free zone. I got back as soon as I could. But I can't look for her properly here. You can."
"Jesus. She's been alone for what… months? She could be dead She could be-"
Finally he sat up, caught her wrists, and held her still.
"She's not dead. She's here. I checked the news stories as soon as I got back into the city. She was put in the healing system. She'll still be there, or she'll have been fostered."
He didn't mention the possibility that she had been implanted already. He didn't want to consider that until he had to.
"Well what the fuck are we waiting for?," she pulled her hands out of his grasp, and something fell inside him to see her pulling away from him so easily, "let's go get her now!"
He closed his eyes and let himself drop back onto the bed.
"Visitors hours close at 5," he said, keeping his voice still, and though it was still bright outside, it was 7 at night, "We can't do anything til morning."
He could feel her trying to calm down, sitting on the other bed, digesting this information.
"And then what?" she said quietly.
He shrugged unhappily. This was not a question for him to answer. That was up to her. But she was asking, which meant only one answer he could think of.
"We go on like before."
"What, and you'll look after her?" she said, voice rearing, "You'll take her to your frikkin meetings so she can get shot next time?"
He hated that he loved her even when she was being impossible. It wasn't fair.
"I'm not asking you to stay," he said quietly.
"No you wouldn't, would you," she muttered, shoulders falling, "How can I stick around while you kill people meaninglessly."
"It's not meaninglessly-"
"But it is, isn't it? You're not getting anywhere. Is there even a plan anymore? It's just random killings-"
"They have to know we feel strongly-"
"Oh I think they get that part!"
"I cannot just sit by and do nothing-" he sat up angrily, facing her across the narrow space. You can't argue lying down. Not properly.
"But they're already here, why can't you accept that? The past is the past. Why can't you just deal with the present?"
"And just forget about all the lives they stole? Do they mean nothing?"
"They're not implanting us anymore."
"So far. The moratoriums are not definite"
"They've been extended twice! They may as well be!"
"And what about their children? They are human too. Their own children!"
"And that justifies you killing them? Children included? It's alright for you to kill them, so long as they don't get implanted?"
He said nothing, and the response she saw in it made her stand up, furious.
"Because dying would be preferable to you, wouldn't it, than getting implanted? And you assume it's the same for everyone – for my daughter!"
"Our daughter," he muttered, though a voice in his head hissed My Daughter.
"Jesus! Bhask got implanted, and he survived, but I don't see a whole lot of people surviving death! Get your frikkin priorities right!"
"So what are your priorities?" he asked sourly, if only to take the spotlight off him. But she didn't respond, sighing and sitting back down again, looking at him with haunted eyes.
"It's crazy," she shrugged, "And at the end of the day, it's pointless, isn't it. All that you achieve is killing random people. All you'll do is get yourself killed… and get her killed."
The distance between the two beds was small, but it seemed unspannable to him, til she reached forward slowly and drew her finger down his chest, watching the trail it made through the sweat. Her face was sad and longing. His whole body screamed to touch her. Did she know the trail of fire she left through his heart?
He caught her hand and she let him, curling her fingers round his.
"Don't do this to me," he muttered, looking away, exposing the vein throbbing in his neck. Her hand stilled in his. "Don't make me believe you love me then take off again."
"I didn't leave you because I didn't love you," she whispered. Then a small, hopeless smile played on her lips.
"I think I've loved you ever since I first saw you at that stupid congress-" she murmured.
"And I ignored you."
"Yeah. And you're still running away from me. I can't just let you do this. I hate being away from you. I hate it."
"I hate it too."
Exhaustion washed over him, and he no longer had the strength to fight it.
"We can't do anything til dark anyway," she said softly, pulling away from him again and lying down on the single bed, "Get some rest."
***
He woke up empty of tiredness, staring at the wall. It was the deep silent dark of the midnight hours, when the daytime world seems to have disappeared. The street lights painted their slanted lines on the wall, but his body clock was still on a different rhythm, and couldn't recognize the dark as night.
Dorsey had shifted from the single bed and lay alongside him, the entire length of her body never more than 2 inches away from him, but never less. Her closeness made his muscles contract warily, and any small chance he'd had of getting back to sleep was obliterated by the stress of being so close to her. Refusing to give up, he continued to stare at the wall, hating how he reacted to her, hating that he loved her still. The still night slowly grew cooler until he could feel the sweat drying, stretching tight across his shoulders.
He got up and drowned himself in the shower spray, washing off the thought of her along with the tightness on his skin.
"You love me," she said, and her voice was inches away, not in the next room where by rights it should have been.
"Jesus, woman," he muttered, turning and seeing her standing in the doorway, getting ready to join him. He backed away carefully, glaring at the wall. What was she playing at? Why couldn't she just leave him alone?
"You hardly slept. You've just been lying there all stiff," she said, stepping into the shower bay. She had been watching him then, as awake as he had been. Damn body clocks. Why did his have to be synchronized to hers tonight?
"Maybe I hate you," he said tensely. He imagined letting her push him up against the wall, pressing her body to his, cupping her perfect shoulders in his hands.
"You hate that you need me," she replied easily, "but you don't hate me."
Bitch, he thought, wandering how she could know.
"Tell me you love me," she said, leaning forward into the spray.
"Tell me you won't leave me again," he said, resisting moving towards her. His body may ache for her, but his heart would not let her hurt him again.
"Tell me you don't want to kill my sister," she countered, and caught the disturbance this caused in his face. She stilled, intrigued by this revelation.
"You really don't, do you? You don't want to kill her," she breathed.
He said nothing.
"Tell me you do then. Say it."
He pushed past her, grabbed his towel and his jeans and escaped into the bedroom. It was impossible to argue naked. She let him go, deep in thought at this new turn in him. He felt better able to handle her clothed in his jeans and a fresh wave of determination. Until she came out of the bathroom.
She knelt on the single bed, towel wrapped around her body, accentuating her collarbones and shoulders, and he knew her skin would be still warm and damp from the shower. He couldn't help but think of the countless times she had knelt on him that way, arms wrapped around his shoulders, cradling his head. He could feel her shoulders in his palms, trace the graceful bones that led there with his fingertips… his hands balled into fists to rid themselves of the memories that plagued him.
"Why can't you admit it? Why is it so hard for you to admit this?" she asked softly. She was so much harder to fight when she was soft.
"She's a Soul and Souls are barbaric, thieving, two-faced, fuckin parasitic invaders-" his flow was interrupted as she moved over and sat on his knees, her knees beside his hips. He could smell her skin like a night-time flower opening after rain. He didn't move away, but he didn't give an inch either.
"Forget about them. Tell me about Flame. Tell me you think Flame's a thieving, two-faced parasite."
He couldn't. He knew she was not. Flame had always been open to him, ready to sacrifice whatever she could, even after he had held a gun to her head.
"Tell me you'd do the same thing again, if you saw her tomorrow; you'd let her drown."
Her towel had fallen around her hips and he struggled to keep his eyes from wandering. His hands levitated to her hips.
"You use unfair methods, woman," he muttered.
She wrapped her towel around herself more tightly and removed his hands from the curve of her hips, holding them firm between hers.
"You wouldn't, would you?" she whispered.
"No," he admitted finally.
She could read that this was the truth in his troubled eyes, the thorn that this pressed into the soft underbelly of his ideals. She released his hands to wrap her arms around his head and kissed him gently and lengthily, like drinking in the tiny icy stream from a subterreanean spring.
"I forgive you," she whispered. And he lost himself to her.
***
He woke with his arms around her still, and hers folded like wings snug between their chests. She was awake and staring at him, blowing on his eyelids. He pressed his face into the mattress to escape her, tightening his grip around her as if he could press her into obedience and keep her yet. But she slipped out of his leaden embrace and pulled the sheets off him.
"Come on, it'll be light soon," she harried.
"What have you done to me, woman?" he groaned, feeling as if he had never slept, his limbs weighted with fatigue, "go away."
"No, we're getting up. Now."
His body didn't care what the clock said. It was sure it was 1am, and dragged him back towards the deep sleep of the early morning. He trapped a pillow over his ears and started to drift away in the hot muffled silence beneath. Until she tugged it away and threw it on the floor.
"You are going to show me where you left her."
***
They walked along by the side of the river, the smell of damp river weed sweating on the banks in the dark. Hunting night herons watched them beadily from branches shrouded in shadows. Near and far, the calls of frogs penetrated the darkness, a patchwork of small territories the diametre of a croak.
He thought of the river by their old house, the golden afternoons in secret swimming lessons. The rivers, the sense of loss, Dorsey, their daughter, all seemed intertwined like negative and photograph. That afternoon, everything had come apart. This morning it would all begin to come together again.
"This is where you left her?" she said, looking into the abandonned church, the moonlight falling through the dust and illuminating the emptiness inside the building, hiding the cobwebs and decay.
He said nothing, but his silence spoke plenty to her. A patch of white shone reflecting the creamy moonlight: a folded piece of paper with a familiar cat drawn on its centre.
"Dorsey no!" he hissed, but she was too quick, padding through the moonbeams light as a cat.
She grabbed the note and read it mutely, devouring every word.