Alone: Safiya

Written for a prompt on tumblr from Jade Sabre: "Autophobia – fear of being alone or isolated or of one's self - Safiya". Consider it semi-canon for the All It Takes timeline.

I have never been alone.

I have been isolated. I spent most of my time sequestered in my lab or in the library; it was preferable to dealing with my peers and their power plays. While I enjoyed teaching, even there I remained upon my guard. One does not become a student at a Thayan academy if one is devoid of ambition.

I have been lonely. At first I had only the occasional company of Master Djafi, but later there was Kaji and his ilk. My mother was not a warm woman, and in any case, the Academy's politics do not allow for the fostering of trust or for emotional intimacy. The physical kind is rare, too; a tool that a few do not scruple to use against those who leave such a vulnerability open. I learnt that lesson later than most...

But I have never been alone.

How to describe it? Imagine, if you will, a tower. You stand at its pinnacle, and you know there is nobody else within it. The bare, empty landscape stretches from its base to the horizon. There is nobody there, either. You should be alone – but you aren't, because you can hear voices. They're hardly distinct enough to separate one speaker from another, or to discern words or meanings, but they're unmistakeably voices and there's meaning there.

You wouldn't think it unusual, because you've known nothing else, but you would look for them. You would wonder about your sanity when you could find no sources. You would panic, sometimes, or scream yourself hoarse trying to drown them out. Given time, you would grow used to them; you would even find them comforting. You would feel yourself less isolated, less lonely, while you could hear them.

Certainly I did.

And then, when there comes a flash of pain and the voices become quieter, you would fear. When fire burns across the surface of your mind and never touches your skin, when it fades and the voices fade with it until you can barely hear them at all... then you start to believe that they are abandoning you, that your oldest companions will desert you and leave you alone, and you won't know who you'll be without them, but you can only imagine the emptiness and silence inside your mind as a kind of death.

And then, if you are me, you would refuse to think of it at all. I simply listened more attentively to that quiet murmuring and got on with my task.

It was not without its dangers, that task. My mother's last request had been to accompany the spirit-eater woman and to aid her – to look after her as if I loved her. Truthfully, that part surprised me... both as a request from my somewhat distant mother, and because it came so easily. For all that she was reserved and stubborn and could devour my soul if her control slipped for even an instant, I enjoyed her company. I liked being with her, and with the others who joined us to end the curse – the vain and talkative hagspawn, the multi-coloured bear spirit, even the evangelistic half-celestial with her ideals.

Along the way, I discovered the truth.

I am not a person. My mother never birthed me. I was brought into being as a splinter of another's soul and left ignorant of my nature – a pawn to be played in a game that had lasted for centuries. The voices I had heard all my life were echoes of other fragments, a shared resonance that gave us the illusion of being whole.

She stood in front of me, an old woman who had mutilated her soul to try and free her lover from his torment. A woman who had torn me away from herself, who had ruthlessly manipulated me and others I had come to care for, and I was unable to hate her.

She was, after all of it, still me.

And if her voice fell silent, if I no longer had her company in my mind... then what would be left of me except a shard of a soul, incomplete and totally alone?

We left her in her sanctuary, and continued to the land of the dead. I am... proud to say that I never hesitated, although I knew that we were unlikely to succeed. Even if we did, ending the Hunger would also end the old woman. I would be alone, if I survived her destruction at all... but she would sacrifice everything to end Akachi's suffering, and I... would take that risk for my friend's sake.

I knew it when the curse was undone. Her voice – my voice – called his name and then fell silent forever.

Cold, empty, alone.

But she was there, my friend, smiling as she so rarely did, free and joyful and whole. The bear-god roared his triumph, the angel offered her congratulations, and the dreamer... well, he was less than decorous. I looked around at them, smiling myself, and decided it was worth it.

Life is very different, now. I have friends – a woman who was once a spirit-eater, the dreamwalker who loves her, a bear-god dreaming in his barrow, others I have come to know. I have a lover, and I share with him more than my bed. Magic, trust, laughter – these things flow easily between us. If I have not misread my body, I shall soon share a child with him as well.

There is silence in my mind, a silence I once feared, but I have never felt less alone.