Chương 7: What they did not say

The question lingered for a moment. Then, Nadia met my eyes and said: "We should be safe." We. She did not say you. She said we. I didn't know why, or perhaps I did, but it filled me with liquid heat that spread from my chest all the way to the tips of my ears. It took all I had not to grin like an idiot, because—I told myself—this was a serious conversation and not the light flirting at the end of a date, even though I just then realized how much I'd like for it to be.

She seemed to read the emotions on my face, because her cheeks reddened to match mine, and she pulled her hands away while casting her gaze onto the couch. I went back to idly petting the cat, thoughts churning in my head, while the presence of her deconstructed power somewhere within me, held by the nanite swarm, weighed me down. I couldn't help but steal a glance at her, though.

Her brown hair, her eyes that looked like molten gold tempered by the warm brown of sunlight, even though the sky outside was still overcast from all the rain, as if the sun was inside her and she didn't need the real thing to shine, because the light had always been something that came from within. But then, the rational part of my mind caught up with me.

"We… should?" I asked, hiding the mess of feelings with a veil of pragmatism.

"I—" there was a flicker of fear in her features, as if the thought of uncertainty was threatening to unmoor her from reality, and her gaze searched the mirror and failed to see her reflection in it again.

"Yes. We should be safe, Adrian." I inhaled, for a moment feeling the edge of what had to be her scent. The soft fur of my cat grounded me, though, and the inhale turned into a sigh.

"Alright," I said.

"You won't tell me who sent you. Or who you are. Or who you work for."

"Worked," she corrected me. I cocked an eyebrow at her, feeling the warmth return, except this time, it was a fiery blaze and it sent all my thoughts in disarray. Damn, woman. But she did not elaborate, so I pushed on, almost regretting the fact that my question killed the moment.

"Can you at least tell me what you were looking for? You know, I caught you red-handed trying to go into the cellar and all." I smiled, trying to appear friendly as I let the words hang. I did not mention the fact that I knew what hid beneath the cellar, of course, because I didn't know what she knew. I liked her, a lot, but I was not stupid enough to ignore the part of my brain that screamed at me that I needed to be wary of her.

"You weren't here to kill me in my sleep, now, were you?" I added, still smiling, trying to lighten up the mood. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I chastised myself. Why was my tongue running without my brain knowing? And yet, an echo of my smile appeared on her face and her grip on the hem of her shirt slackened a little bit.

"No, Adrian," she said softly, once again wielding my name without knowing it was a weapon capable of melting me.

"I wasn't sent here to kill anyone. There was a rumor, of exotic tech hidden away somewhere around here…" She searched my gaze and I realized that it had hardened, and what she was seeing made her recoil. Well, of course it had. I was panicking a little because, fuck me, she was here looking for Gus's nanomachines that were now—all of them—happily swimming along in my bloodstream or something, manifesting as my second superpower.

"What else did the rumor say?" I asked, harsher than I wanted to be. She didn't flinch this time.

"Nothing specific. There was supposed to be tech here, but I didn't come because they wanted it." The realization hit me.

"You did it for yourself. You thought it could help you with your curse."

"I did, yes," she said, her voice a whisper. It was like the floor had vanished from beneath me, and now I was falling down a deep, dark hole, sofa and cat and all. And Nadia was there, looking from the edge of the chasm, watching me fall. And in me, just like the very same tech she was searching for, was the urge to just tell her more. Because she must be putting two and two together, what with my touch that robbed her of her powers and all of that, but she wasn't saying.

There was guilt too, trying to make my walls crumble. I had just robbed her of a part of herself, of her identity. I couldn't, though. This was not just a normal secret, but a secret that could cost me my life. This tech… people were looking for it, and it was tech juicy enough that someone like Nadia got a whiff of info about it and decided to act on her own just so she could get her hands on it. If they knew it was inside me? And, I searched the lab. There were no schematics. No backups. No reserves.

This was all there was and there ever would be. They would do unspeakable things to me, if word got out. Or they would just kill me outright, if only because I was a threat that could take their superpowers away with a touch. And Nadia knew, at least this last part. This drew my eyes back to her face. She was studying my expression, searching for something in it. I thought about her curse, and how harsh the tone of the words I just said had been. My features softened.

I felt my muscles relax and unclench, as within me bloomed a deep care for this person sitting on the other end of the sofa, almost pressed into the far pillow. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I wanted her to stay, I realized, and not just because she was a liability. In fact, the thought only came later, after the desire manifested unbidden in my mind, a sort of post-facto rationalization.

Nadia was waiting for me to say something, anything. She was trying to make sense of this situation, same as me, save for the different point of view and privileged information. We both weren't sharing the crux of what we knew, and neither of us was making the first step.

"Well," I said, rising to my feet. The sudden motion made the cat leap down from the sofa, away from Nadia to bolt towards the kitchen. I pointed at him.

"Someone is hungry and, honestly, so am I. How about you?"

"I could eat," she said. And so we settled into an apparent equilibrium as we prepared lunch with the supplies I bought earlier that day. Our interactions were almost too-normal, like a forced sort of familiarity, a gentle current that hid a treacherous undertow of unasked and unanswered questions right beneath the surface. But damn if it wasn't nice.

For a moment, we lost our past and lived in the present, struggling to understand how to make the age-old kitchen appliances I never really used work, so we could prepare something more than just microwave pasta.

"Really?" she asked, deadpan, staring at me.

"A dashing young man like you and the only item in the kitchen you know how to use is the microwave. Set the time and click start, Adrian. That's not cooking. Let me take over. I refuse to eat like a college student." Despite her harsh words, I saw how the corners of her mouth were struggling to break free of her hold and tug upwards into a smile. I shrugged, meeting her stern, hands-on-her-hips expression with a chuckle.

"The dashing young man says the kitchen is yours, pretty lady." Her cheeks reddened for just a moment. Before she huffed.

"Of course it is. Now get out, and set the table near the fire. It's cold here. Do you not have central heating?" Soon enough, amazing smells began to make their way into the living room from the kitchen as I fed the fire and prepared the table, dragging it over and bringing chairs so we wouldn't have to sit on the sofa. I even spotted the cat sniffing, and Nadia attempting to feed him some of the meat she was cutting, but he was still wary.

Warier than I was, I realized, looking at her whenever I could catch glimpses of her form moving about the kitchen, handling knives and pans and pots like she owned the place. It felt nice, cozy, warm. Like we were a family, even though it was just a pretend-family for a single meal and I had just met her and had things gone differently— Except they didn't, and instead we laughed and chatted and ate. Nadia was warming up, cracking obscene jokes and poking fun at the way I kept the house.

"In my defense, it's just me here. I can't be expected to make a whole three-story house feel lived-in, right?" She eyed me sideways.

"You still have tarps over all your furniture save for the sofa. Does the bed you sleep in also have one, or did you remember to pull it away? God, please tell me you dusted the nightstand and changed the sheets when you inherited this place." I hadn't told her about the inheritance. It must have been a wild guess. Shit, I had not told her anything about me just like she had not told me anything about herself. We were pretty much strangers. She saw my expression fall, and I was glad she misinterpreted it.

"You!" she said accusingly.

"The bed! Come on!" I cracked a laugh.

"I swear it's all in working order."

"Is it?"

"It is!" She punched me lightly.

"I almost fell for it!" she said.

"Hey. I make my bed every day, I'll have you know." She smiled, then realized she was still touching me and retreated, almost like the realization brought about an electric shock at the point of contact. She closed herself off for the rest of the meal, retreating into her shell of silence, and I saw her touch her ears and look into the reflection in the mirror every now and again. She had sat in such a way that the mirror let her see her own reflection, and I hadn't realized.

I thought about her mutation, her changed looks. How long, I wondered. How long had it been since she last saw herself like this and not changed? And it was hard to tell if what she was seeing now made her relieved or the opposite. It didn't help that her changed face also carried the undertone of a lot of unspoken secrets, muddying the waters. After lunch, she forced me to do a few chores around the house.

She was being exceedingly chipper and blunt and direct, mocking me for the "three fingers of dust on the far side nightstand? Unacceptable," or the firewood having run out, saying "you need to go for another firewood run. Maybe even split some wood with an axe, while I watch with popcorn. Come on, dashing young man, this is no way to treat a fae princess." Then she'd correct herself, her face frozen until she cracked some manner of joke.

"Well, elf-fae turned human once more. I should thank you for that." She never probed deeper, and I still couldn't piece together how she felt about her transformation. Or the undoing of her mutation, that is. She looked relieved, but then again jokes and bullshit were sort of her armor when she wasn't comfortable, weren't they? After that, we had dinner and I prepared a room for her.

I offered to clean it and dust it and do all the things I saw her demand of me when she saw the state of my own room, and she let me do it for her. When I was done, she examined it with a playful smile on her face.

"I guess this will do." And then, with unexpected softness.

"Thank you, Adrian. You know I don't deserve this." But she did. In that moment, I was ready to tell her that I'd give her the whole world if only she asked. Luckily, my brain took over.

"Do you need anything else? You can't sleep in those clothes. Let me see if there's something here we can use." She must have known it was a deflection, so that we wouldn't have to speak of heavy topics, but she allowed me to sweep her away in search of clothes she would be comfortable sleeping in. It took a while, but we found some old white nightgowns that might have been fashionable six decades ago, according to her.

"They make me look like an old hag," she said.

"Oh, like a witch of the woods. Careful, young adventurer. This is but a human disguise. I'm still a monster underneath, and I'll drain you of your life if you get too close." I knew she was joking about her aura drain power, of course. What she didn't seem to be joking about, was the monster part. Perhaps she really didn't like how the mutation had made her feel. The way her smile felt all brittle whenever she used humor to deflect made me want to hug and hold her and keep her warm.

At least we had the fire doing the warming, and we sat on the sofa, drinking some chamomile tea.

"Like an old married couple enjoying their retirement," she joked, looking out through the window into the pitch-black darkness of the early winter night. The rain had picked up again.

"It feels nice," I blurted out. She turned to me, eyes twinkling with mischief.

"What are you, an old soul inside a young body or something? Is that your power? Being an old man who can't cook for shit?" She knew she fucked up by mentioning powers, even though I tried to keep it off my face.

"It does feel nice, I'll admit," she said, staring at the flames in the hearth longingly. The moment felt just as brittle as her smiles. Both of us, deeply uncomfortable. Our salvation came in the most unexpected form. That of a cat.