Chapter 2: Broken Wings
Eyelids heavy as ceramite plates, I force them open against the glaring sterility of the medicae chamber. The light assaults me, too bright, too harsh, carving through the dim comfort of unconsciousness. The air reeks of disinfectant, a sharp, chemical scent that invades my nostrils, far removed from the stale, recycled air of the schola dorms. It's a clean, merciless smell, one that speaks of wounds scrubbed raw and the relentless pursuit of purity.
Pain greets me like a worn blanket, a familiar bedfellow made anew. It radiates from my left side, a chorus of agony wrought in bone and flesh, screams protest with every shallow breath. Yet, amidst this torment, my right hand grasps a truth, cold and solid—the Broken Guardian. It lies in my grip, and in that moment I feel relief and an acceptance of life that mirrored my acceptance of death when I released my grip and made my mad grab for it.
A laugh, bitter and choked, bubbles up from my throat, a dark mirth born of pain and the absurd realization of our shared fate. Broken, both of us, yet clinging to a stubborn existence in defiance of the fall.
The medicae center comes into sharper focus, its walls a blank canvas of white, oppressive in their unblemished expanse. Memories of this place flicker at the edge of my consciousness—memories from my early days at the schola, when I was more wraith than child, a spirit nursed back to the semblance of life.
"Survived, did we?" I rasp to the air, my voice a frail shadow amidst the clinical silence. The question hangs, suspended between jest and earnest. "Seems so," I whisper to the Guardian, acknowledging our mutual endurance.
The pain is a constant, a relentless tide that threatens to drag me under with each labored breath. Yet, in this moment of lucid agony, amidst the disorienting clarity of my senses, a grim acceptance settles over me.
I'm alive. A stark, unyielding fact.
The realization doesn't come as a comfort but as a mere acknowledgment of the brutal truth. Alive, yes. But at what cost? The Broken Guardian in my hand serves not just as a symbol of survival, but as a reminder of the toll extracted, the scars earned in the pursuit of something beyond mere existence.
As the waves of pain ebb to tolerable levels, a shadow looms into my narrow field of vision—a figure swathed in the stark whites and reds of a novice Sister Hospitaller. Her face, young yet marked by a solemnity that belies her years, is framed by black hair cut short in the style of her order, her eyes a clear, unwavering brown that seems to pierce through the dimness of the medicae center.
"Valeria," I mumble out the name as I read the golden thread depicting her rank and name on the otherwise spotlessly white robe.
"Good morning, Aurora," she begins, her voice a gentle melody amidst the discordant chorus of my pain. "By the Emperor's grace you've come back to us." Her eyes meet mine with an empathy so palpable, it feels like a balm against the sharp edges of my pain. She moves with a precision that speaks of rigorous training, yet there's a softness to her, a kindness that seems out of place in the harshness of the sterile cold medicae. "You must be brave, for I must tell you about your injuries."
Her hands, encased in thin, sterile gloves, hover over me, hesitating as if the very air around my battered form is a sacred barrier. With a reverence reserved for the holiest of relics, she begins her ministrations, adjusting the drip of a painkiller with practiced ease as various apparatus whine and pump around me.
I try to focus on her words, to anchor myself in the reality she's painting with each careful sentence. The list of my injuries unfolds like a litany of battle scars: three broken ribs, a shattered arm, a shoulder wrenched from its socket. Each word is a hammer blow, yet her tone remains steady, infused with a warmth that seeks to soften the cruel edges of truth. Then the final truth, the measured cost of my decision, not death, but loss all the same, the overall irreparable state of my left arm.
"But the Emperor protects, Aurora," Valeria continues, her gaze never wavering from mine, a beacon of faith and calm in the bright, sterile gloom. "And with His blessing, you may yet be made whole, healing to a semi-useful state or submission for blessed augmentation and amputation." Her attempt at spiritual ministration is earnest, a balm meant to soothe the deeper wounds that flesh and bone cannot comprehend, but its bland, uncertain delivery is lost on my racing mind.
I can't help it; a laugh bubbles up from somewhere deep inside, a reaction as unexpected to me as it is to her. It's not the humor of the situation that strikes me—it's the absurdity, the sheer, unadulterated madness of it all. Even if my survival was pure chance and had nothing of the Emperor's protection in it, then the coincidence of my broken form was the surest proof of his sense of humor. Broken Guardian in hand, broken body in bed, and here she is, speaking of blessings and healing as if my faith wavered on a knife's edge.
"L-laughter is good medicine too, b-but we must be careful!" Valeria seems wrong-footed by my unexpected reaction.
Valeria's hands, steady when administering care, now tremble slightly as she reaches for a vial of sedative. "I-I'm going to give you something to help with the pain and... the laughter. We wouldn't want your injuries to worsen," she stammers, her voice betraying her uncertainty.
My laughter, though fading, still lingers in the air, a specter of defiance in the face of grim reality. "I'm not mad, Valeria," I manage between the tail ends of my amusement, seeing the concern etched deeply in her youthful features. "It's just... all of this," I gesture weakly with my right hand, encompassing the medicae bay, the Broken Guardian, and myself in one sweeping, albeit feeble, motion. "It's like a story from the saints, isn't it? Tested, but never forsaken. Broken but with some mark of the Emperor's light still shining through all the bad?"
Valeria pauses, the vial held uncertainly in her grasp. "You find faith... funny?" she probes, her brows knitting together in a mix of confusion and concern.
"Not faith," I clarify, still smiling faintly. "Just the situation. Me, with my broken wing, like my Guardian." The mention of the Broken Guardian threatens to drag me back into the throws of mirth.
Her hand steadies as she administers the sedative, a gentle press against my arm. "Tell me," she urges, her tone softer now, inviting confidences. "What happened to you, Aurora? Why were you climbing the wall?"
The sedative begins its work, drawing the edges of my pain and amusement into a gentle blur and suppressing my few social filters. "I was protecting Him," I say, my voice growing distant as the medication takes hold. "The Guardian. From Lucius." I should feel angry as I say the name but all I feel is a slight warming of my cheeks "Lucious, he wanted to... he stole it... I couldn't let him… I couldn't lose it…" I managed to relate the whole story, at least I think I do, my mind is fuzzy but at least the pain is a tolerable throb that encompasses the left side of my body.
Valeria listens intently, her earlier hesitation giving way to a deep, genuine concern. "You stood up to Lucious and climbed a fifty-foot sheer wall... for a… a broken aquila?" she asks, her voice a whisper of curious awe and disbelief.
"For the Broken Guardian," I correct her, "my guardian, my mother's guardian, all I have left of…" and then it all spills out, either the exhaustion or the sedatives and painkillers are to blame, but for the next few minutes I cover the poor novice in a deluge of my life's story from my earliest memory of home and the brick shrine, the Broken Guardian, to the light woman and the two years of constant lonely dedication to stoic faith and service broken up only by the daily torments of Lucious and his ilk, a single name and face that stands like a billboard for all the myriads of sneers, whispers, beatings, spittings, and scorn from upper classmen, faculty, and all quarters that have accompanied my rise from hive rat to schola student.
Through it all Valeria listens politely, nodding, not commenting, eyes wide as an existence she likely cannot even imagine plays out before her in the horror theater of my short, and quite nearly ended, life.
The silence that stretches between us after my tale feels like a chasm, wide and deep, filled with the echoes of my recounted sorrows. Valeria's face, etched with a kindness that seems almost foreign in its depth, struggles to bridge that gap with words that might soothe or mend. But what solace can be offered to a story such as mine?
She finally speaks, her voice a hesitant whisper against the magnitude of my despair. "The chief hospitaller will need to decide whether to try and preserve what's left of your arm or... to amputate and fit you with an augmetic."
Amputate. The word echoes in the caverns of my mind, not with fear, but with a clarity that pierces the fog. "Amputate it," I find myself saying, my voice steady, even if my heart is not. "But no augmetic." Like the Broken Guardian, an aquila missing a wing… a sad smile graces my lips once more.
Valeria's confusion is palpable, a silent question hanging in the air between us. "But Aurora, an augmetic could restore so much of your functionality. You could return to your classes in just a few weeks or..."
"I know what I could," I cut her off, more sharply than I intend. My gaze drifts away from her, focusing on something beyond the walls of this medicae chamber, a future I'm hastily rewriting. They settle on a shadow silhouetted against the wall, the woman in metal, metal I now know to be power armor, probably not the same one, Helena. Tears sting my cheeks and I bite out the words. "But I also know what will happen if I go back. The next time... there might not be a next time. I can't do it, Valeria. I'm not strong enough. I..."
It's a confession, a surrender not to defeat but to the reality of my existence, a reality ground in my face through a daily stream of abuses small and great. "All I've ever wanted was to serve, Him, like…" I can't bring myself to say it but my right-hand signs 'mama'. I continue, my gaze locked onto hers, willing her to understand. "And if losing an arm means I find a place, even if it's just as a menial dusting the shrines and scrubbing the floors, then that's more than I ever had any right to hope for."
The silence that follows is heavy, a chasm, deep and wide, filled with experiences so different that it's clear Valeria is struggling to reach me on the other side of it. Valeria's hand, when it reaches out to touch the Broken Guardian in my grip, is gentle, her touch a benediction.
She turns her head and I perceive the smallest of nods at the edge of my peripheral vision, a unseen approval of an unknown observer.
"There's honor in all forms of service, Aurora," she says, her voice soft, a balm to my frayed edges, bridging a gap by means of the same simple faith that brought me out of squalor and threw me from a ledge. "In your sacrifice, you embody the spirit of the Emperor's teachings more than you know."
They're kind words, kindly spoken. But the truth isn't lost on my drug-addled mind. It is giving up. It is giving in. My grip on the Broken Guardian tightens, it burns in my hand as though indignant in my choice. I ignore it, some things are just expecting too much and this life was never meant to be mine.
Greatness was never meant for me. I'm no hero. Mama, she was a hero, my hero. Mama worked all her life in the service of the Emperor and she was the least of all. So perhaps I am a hero too, in my own way, following in her footsteps. My mind drifts in a sea of sedatives and painkillers as I feel consciousness slipping back out of reach. I wonder, in that in-between place between the waking and sleeping world, what the light woman would think of my choice. The thought brings no peace to my feverish dreams.