49. I'm So Sick – Flyleaf
She came to him. She came to him. That mattered afterwards.
He was never quite sure why. They were always on the road, sometimes together, sometimes apart. He went where he was told, following Master Dartz's orders because Master Dartz knew what was best – for him, for them all, for the whole planet. Valon said they'd 'hitched their stars' to Dartz and Doma, but when he looked into the sky he didn't see any star for him, just a black void where his might once have been. If he'd ever had one, his star had fallen a long time ago, and though he'd travelled the world in honour of their mission, he'd never found its crater, and never felt whole since his family was taken from him.
He was used to being alone, but that didn't stop him when she came to him. There was no personal connection; for all that they were on the same side working towards the same goals. He'd said maybe a handful of things to her since she joined, and she looked on all of them with vague disdain. The only thing that passed through him was surprise when she appeared in the doorway to his room, and until she left again he wasn't thinking about anything much.
She was used to being alone, too. Maybe it was because of that. Maybe she was tired of being that much alone. Maybe it was because she was sick of Valon making puppy-dog eyes at her, trying to alleviate the loneliness in her head and her heart when she just wanted it lifted from her body.
Oh yes, he'd seen that too. He'd seen the flickers crossing Valon's face whenever she walked past him with her stray-cat-strut. Valon liked her. He'd actually taken a bullet for her when they duelled someone with a trigger-happy wife in Mexico. You couldn't make up anything more clichéd than that. The wife took exception to them taking her husband's soul, but Valon played hero and trailed blood from his shoulder all the way across the border. When Amelda dug the bullet out, Valon bit down so hard on the piece of wood they gave him that it shattered and he got splinters in his tongue. She never thanked him for that. The pathetic fool would've taken ten bullets for a kind word from her, and probably would've carved out his own heart with a blunt knife if she offered to come to his room in the dead of night when everyone else was asleep.
But she didn't go to Valon. She came to him, and that mattered.
It mattered when he stared at the cracked whitewashed ceiling and wondered why he hadn't just sent her away again. It mattered in the morning at breakfast, under Valon's hurt and accusing stare. It mattered because he shouldn't have cared that Valon's stare was hurt and accusing.
Nothing was supposed to matter now except the mission.
But of all of them, she came to him. She came to him.
And somehow that mattered.