Their progress through Luna's outer sectors is slow and tedious.
Sometimes they take shuttles. Sometimes they progress by walking through the tunnels. Sometimes they use Wolf's identity to send a shuttle on without them before skipping to a different platform and heading in the opposite direction. Sometimes they split up and rejoin one another a couple of sectors over to confuse any security personnel who might be looking for them.
As they trudge through the abandoned and dusty streets, Thorne thinks. He thinks and thinks and thinks. He has so much time for it. In the quiet. No matter who he splits off with, they walk in silence.
Cress is gone. Cress is dead. Cress is gone. Cress is dead. Cress is gone. Cress is dead.
There's nothing to distract him.
It's unnerving if not downright creepy. He's never liked silence. He can kinda understand when it's just him and Wolf. They don't get along under the best circumstances.
In comparison, walking beside Cinder or Iko in complete silence grates on his nerves.
Right now he and Iko trek along an abandoned shuttle track. The going is slow as they pick their way along the rocky ground. At least there's no sun to fry them like in the desert.
Iko slips her hand into his. Her manufactured skin is cool to the touch and smooth. It's really weird for Iko to go without talking for such a long period. She's a straight up chatterbox any other time. It's not that Cinder is super talkative, but she'll participate in a conversation if he starts it.
There's too many thoughts drifting around his head like scrambled thought soup. Cress is gone. Cress is dead. Cress is gone.
Iko's hand in his reminds him of how long it's been since he's touched Cinder. He hasn't done that since Kai joined them.
Doesn't feel appropriate somehow. Even if the touches had never been intended to cross boundaries.
Cress is gone. Cress is dead. Cress is gone. Cress is dead. Cress is —NO.
Thorne stops the repeating mantra before it can unravel him.
He doesn't know Cress is dead and he refuses to accept it. Still, he can't shake the despair. It echoes in his head, around and around in circles.
Cress isn't safe. He knows that for a fact.
Thorne's been confused ever since Kai forced that impromptu therapy session on him. It's like he can't figure out what is in his head and what is actually true. It's all Kai's fault.
He keeps telling himself that because it's easier.
"Something tells me Cress might still like you too. Against her better judgment."
Something something feelings, blah. Discomfort, that's what it really comes down to. He can't sort out how he feels. He can't separate his own emotions from the ones he knows Cress wants him to feel.
If she still likes him— loves him like she confessed in her feverish stupor in the desert—he doesn't know what he should do. Maybe he can be her knight in shining armor. Or…maybe he can live up to her expectations at the very least.
Thorne shrinks in on himself. It's a weird sensation; for once in his life he doesn't feel confident. He feels small and insufficient. He isn't who Cress wants him to be.
He doesn't know if he ever will be.
This realization sucks.
He's just Carswell Thorne. He's just a pilot dropout with a stolen ship. He's just a lucky guy who fell in with important friends.
He can't recall ever feeling this way before.
Now that he has time to think it all over, he has too much time. The silence leaves no spaces for the slippery cold thoughts to hide. He's forced to face each uncomfortable fact.
Cress loves him?
She wants him at least.
He doesn't know how he feels.
There's an absence in the middle of all this.
Cinder.
He doesn't know why she's been so distant, only that he too has drawn back to give her the space she wants. Or does she? Does she want less to do with him?
There is a barrier between them that wasn't there before Kai. He can't work out why. If they've only ever been friends, why would Kai's presence change anything?
But it has.
Everything is out of whack.
He can't put it back together by himself. It's a two person job.
They pass a huddle of quiet lunars dressed in drab clothes. Iko shifts closer to Thorne. She looks nervous which is unusual for her. Bubbly and nervous don't mix.
He holds his breath, counting the seconds.
One. No following footsteps.
Two. Still none.
Three. Still none.
Four. They're probably safe.
Five. He lets the breath out. None of the lunars they've encountered have been the slightest bit interested. Not like a couple of dirty kids on foot should attract attention.
"Phew. I'm not used to the looks." She whispers in her singsong voice.
"Looks?"
"Suspicion is written all over their faces."
He represses the urge to turn around and catch a glimpse behind them of the lunars. They've put a good 50 feet between them and the huddle.
"Maybe they were trying to get a look at my face."
"I wouldn't blame them but I don't think that's it." She frowns like she's weighing the possibility.
Another reason he likes Iko so much. She finds him as attractive as he finds himself. And she takes his words at face value AND she laughs at his jokes.
He tosses around the idea of making one now that they're talking.
Instead he says something he doesn't mean to. "Do you ever worry?"
"Of course I worry, Captain. I worry about all sorts of things all of the time. I worry about so many things. It's silly because I can just run the probabilities in my processor but mathematics aren't the be all end all when it comes to humans."
"Ever worry about anything as trivial as heartfelt emotions?" He means to deadpan but the joke doesn't quite land. He's never been good at the deadpan—that's Cinder's specialty.
She fidgets with the tattered sleeve of her tunic, worrying her bottom lip between perfect white teeth. Her tone is miffed like she's about to say something she'd much rather not admit. "There's probably better people to ask."
"You have more emotion in your pinky than most humans experience in their entire lives." He flashes her a grin.
His face feels tight with the false bravado.
Pity or something equivalent to it flickers through her artificial eyes. "Cress is fine. She's so smart! I know she's fine."
She squeezes his hand as much for her own reassurance as for his. Her words are too assured to be actually confident. She's trying to convince herself.
Thorne squeezes her hand back. He doesn't know if she can feel it because he's not exactly clear on the whole android-in-a-body situation. The gloom returns to weigh heavy on his chest.
He'd give up a lot of shiny expensive objects to go back to not being confused. It's a lot easier to not think when you don't have anything to think about. He wants to go back to before Iko and Cress and Kai and Wolf and Scarlet and—
Well, maybe not before Cinder. If he could, he'd go back to that day months ago when she broke him out of jail. He'd go back in time and settle somewhere between freedom and the weight of trying to save the world.
And maybe he wouldn't feel so insufficient because Cinder has never asked him to be anything more than himself.
He imagines briefly, the peace and confidence of before. It's kinda nice. He tries to focus on that instead of everything in his head right now.
A/N:
some thoughts on Thorne's gloom.
he's so subdued in this book and it makes me sad :(