Isendel and Northgate
65 – 75 Winter 217
The last time she’d said “I love you” was to her mother’s body.
She didn’t know why she’d said it this time. Perhaps it demanded an answer in kind—wasn’t that how it always went in stories, after all? Perhaps some wiser part of her understood that, if this was truly the last time she was to see ‘Star, as seemed likely, she would forever regret remaining silent. Perhaps—the simplest answer—it was just true.
And then there was Vanja, displaying the reckless apathy toward her own life that made a thick, panicky feeling rise up in Sav’s throat when she thought back to it. That someone might be lost due to being taken by surprise or otherwise overpowered—that made sense. It was a clean loss, it was the way of the world. That someone might die because they no longer cared to live any more—
She’d seen one or two people like that, in the camps. Haralf Longwall had seen too many comrades spill their guts from between their fingers and one day just refused to pick up a spear again, so the story went. She’d seen him shuffling mutely from one task to another; he’d worked willingly enough at any nonviolent task, but shook like a rabbit when pressed to hold a weapon. Those who had family were usually mustered out when they started staring at nothing, but he’d had no one left. He’d been allowed to remain as a camp follower of what was left of his unit as it slowly refilled with new recruits, but never returned to what he was.
There were other people in Vanja’s life now, too, if not her family. Vanja herself was in her own life, for that matter. If they weren’t enough for her to want to live—if living alone wasn’t enough—why?
If the last time Sav had said it was to her mother, whom she’d truly loved, was it true now, too? If it was—what did that mean?
The sight of her former home, torn apart and desecrated, left her feeling oddly hollow but tearless. It was no longer her home—could no longer be her home. But she’d known that. She’d known that since she’d left Northgate, really, even if it had taken the fall of Rog Hodun for her to acknowledge it. If the Swans had already taken Rog Hodun, there was little chance for her former hideaway to remain intact.
If the thought of losing any more of her erstwhile companions gave her a similar feeling of panic and loss as when she’d first fled the sewers, what did that mean?
She knew she couldn’t run, not when others depended on her, not when she depended on others. But it felt like there was more to it than that. The specificity of a connection to a particular person, not the general draw of kind to kin, or the glue between a person and a principle.
It pulled on her as she pulled on it, worrying at the concept as she worried at the Stuff one night in the inn, until it snapped into shape so absurdly, appallingly clearly that she had to laugh at herself.
She cared for them. Specifically them, not just the purpose that bound them together. One could no more swap out Ethan’s cold calculation with Astarael’s cold calculation, or Lumotu’s unflagging optimism with Warbler’s (apparent thus far) cheer, or Bax’s strength for Roux’s iron will, and expect everything to remain the same, than she could swap her face with someone else’s perfectly. The panic she felt was not the panic of losing an ally and a resource, but losing a friend. Just as she’d built a bond between herself and her once home, she’d silently, unwittingly built bonds between herself and the members of the rebellion, replacing the blocks of fallen aasimar stone with every smart comment, every story, every shared struggle. The bonds weren’t equal, but that was inherent to the nature of any tie—every bond was distinct.
As she thought this, she delicately twisted a thread of Stuff that resonated between her and the stone she held. The broken power core bobbed up in the air, held aloft by her understanding of its mass and the presence it exerted on everything around it, guided by the thin, unique resonance between her and the sphere.
She laughed again at the stunning simplicity of it. Once she understood the tie between herself and any other object, it made the manipulation of it so easy.
She laughed until the tears began.
She understood now that she cared for them, and in tying herself to her companions—her friends—she’d opened herself to more pain and suffering. Once love happened, loss followed. It was the way of the world: change, and loss. If the resonance between her and any other person was inimitable, no victory or addition could replace those losses. And unfortunately, unlike the tie between her and other objects, these intangible bonds weren’t so easy to manipulate.
(Unless—
No. The idea made her queasy, and she forced the thought away.)
She could end it. Cut those ties, run away. She was good at that, as she so often said. Even as she thought it, she knew she wouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t exactly belong with them. For all that she realized that she liked them despite herself, there was no guarantee they felt the same bond (save maybe the now-gone Astarael). Certainly she had given them no reason to. But they were the closest thing she had to people who understood her and knew something of what she’d been through. Perhaps they were no more a home than the sewers had been, but they were a shelter, borrowed for a time. She would remain until the shelter fell apart, and if she survived, she would collect her scars and move on.
Maybe one day the weight of that suffering would slow her to a crawl until the life snuffed from her eyes and her body went onward without her. Or perhaps the Suffering would be proven right, and she would grow stronger from it. She took a grim amusement in the idea as she swiped the tears from her cheeks—Harvest, but she was tired of feeling so much—and cleaned up the mess of her night’s experimentation.
“It’s a pity I ent the gamblin type,” she said to the charcoal briquette that had once been a woman’s heart, “but I suppose you ent in a position to lay any bets neither.”
Then, because a leathery piece of flesh was a poor substitute for companionship, she tucked it away and went out to find a drink and someone to talk to.
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