Chương 8: What they traded

It was like the cat could sense something was amiss. Like he knew that all it would take was a little push, and everything would shatter. He trotted up to us, cocking his head at me and yawning wide, soaking the heat from the fire before approaching the sofa. He paused when he was between our legs, licked his paw, and then prepared to jump up and take his rightful position on the soft cushions that were so old even a little cat with his tiny weight could sink halfway into them.

"Aww," Nadia cooed as he curled up next to me. She raised her hand to pet him, then remembered that last time, the cat had bolted away, and stopped there, arm raised and frozen in mid-air. The action was enough to rouse the animal from his light sleep, though.

"Mrrow?" he complained, sniffing the air and turning to face her. She was still. Utterly still, hand open, palm facing the little cat's snout. Then the unexpected happened. The cat got up, stretched and approached her, stopping only a few inches from her hand. He sniffed her skin, pretended not to care for a moment, and then booped her hand with his nose. Nadia gasped.

"Ohmygod," she said, tensing. Her eyes sparkled in the firelight.

"He's… his nose is cold and he's rubbing on me and ohgod, is he purring?" Then the cat did as all cats do and ignored her hand. He curled up beside her and went to sleep, purring softly as he did. I glanced at the woman, still frozen, and nodded towards the little creature. Her eyes widened as she caught my meaning, brows arching, but I nodded again.

"He likes pets while he sleeps, trust me," I said. Gingerly, she laid her hand on top of the cat's fur. When he didn't react, she began to stroke him lightly, and I could swear she was almost purring herself, looking at the scene with misty, half-lidded eyes. She pet the cat for a few minutes, her body relaxing more and more as the tension left her and was replaced by a sense of peace.

"He chose to trust you," I said.

"It's a big honor." Her smile was radiant.

"It is! You have no idea how much this means to me, Adrian. What's his name?" I shrugged.

"I just call him cat. It was just he and me until recently, after all." She cocked an eyebrow.

"Cat," she said deadpan.

"Cat," she repeated. I met her stare.

"Cat." The moment was tense. Her stroking became almost possessive.

"Cat," she said again. I shrugged, and then we broke into laughter.

"I can't fucking believe it!" she said between fits of laughter that rocked her whole body.

"No, actually, I totally can. Adrian! You can't call your cat cat!"

"I mean, why not?"

"Where did you get him?" she asked.

"Didn't he have a name?"

"Nope." I shook my head.

"One day he started appearing in my garden and I started feeding him."

"Grave mistake," she commented.

"Very. Didn't take him long at all to move in. I guess he sort of adopted himself, huh?"

"You know, Adrian. I didn't take you for a guy who likes to collect strays." A pause. Nadia looked at me, eyes round and brown and golden with the licks of flame from the fire. The reflection was deep, the veil of unshed tears making everything ten times more brilliant. If there was a charged moment, and there had been many, then this was one of them.

"They just tend to wander into my life, I don't know how or why." She smiled.

"You radiate a warm sort of energy, and there's strength in it, that's why. Adrian, all this…" When she blinked, this time a tear did fall. It rolled on her cheek, and I had this urge to just reach out and wipe it for her, to touch her soft skin. But I resisted.

"…and you still call your cat, cat."

"Come on!" I said, laughing.

"It's not that bad."

"I double triple quadruple dare you to keep calling him cat in my presence," she challenged, her fingers curling into the cat's fur.

"You lived with him for weeks, I bet, and you didn't even bother to give him a name. Well, I can't keep calling him cat if I'm to stay here." She stopped midstroke, searching my face. The cat, outraged, meowed at her and demanded that the pets be resumed, and she relaxed a fraction.

"Y-yes," she said, trembling.

"A name. He needs a name. How about Nero?" It was a deflection, I knew. But I humored her.

"Like the emperor who set Rome on fire?" I asked.

"He didn't actually do it," she said.

"I think. Not that we know much of the ancient world, now, do we? But still. Nero, the emperor. A name fit for your cat, I mean, for any cat. Right? You must agree, you lost your cat privileges, dashing young man." I chuckled. Damn, I might not be the brightest when it came to girls, but she was laying it thick here. It was very endearing, and the cozy atmosphere with the crackling fire, the rain outside, the cat and the soft sofa helped put my mind at ease.

For a moment, the weight of her deconstructed power within me didn't even register, didn't even matter.

"Nero it is," I said, booping the sleeping cat in question. He was scandalized, of course, for all but two seconds before he yawned and curled up tighter than before around Nadia's arm. She vibrated with joy at the fact.

"Good," she said. We made some more small talk after that, talking about nothing and everything. Safe topics by the fire, idle chatter, the glasses of chamomile tea slowly emptying, spreading their warmth to our bodies.

"You know," I mused after some minutes of silence.

"I was thinking about what you said before, about collecting strays. Why did you count yourself among the strays? Was it because of your power?" She cocked her head to look at me without upsetting Nero.

"Isn't it obvious? Well, not that it matters anymore." I ran my fingers through my hair.

"Yeah, that," I said weakly.

"I could pretend but… I won't. I still don't fully understand what it is that I did to you. I awakened only recently and, despite how it might look, I didn't really win the power lottery myself." She didn't say anything, but she was listening. So I told her about myself. How I was seventeen when the Onset happened. I was still in school, and I watched as some of my classmates awakened in the first wave of powered individuals.

I watched the world change around me, but the loss of my parents meant that I had nobody to help me navigate it. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I did my best, though. Odd jobs, shitty apartments. No money meant no degree, though. Still, I kept trying to claw my place in the world, in this depressing town, surviving its empty winters.

There always was, in the back of my mind, the faint hope that one day I would get to awaken and everything would change.

"You know what my hint was?" I said, chuckling." The world will wait for you. Now that was the biggest joke of the century." I told her what my original power was. I did not mention the nanites or the upgrade, just the power. And the incident that got me fired from the grocery store.

"Now, that's just unfair," Nadia growled.

"It was hardly your fault. I bet they just needed an excuse."

"That they did," I agreed.

"Assholes," she said, huffing exaggeratedly and looking at me with a hint of a smile.

"You were just a normal guy, dealt a rather shitty hand. You did well with what you had. Clearly, or Nero would have never chosen to trust you."

"True, true." Silence. The way she looked at me, I almost felt like she actually meant that she would have never chosen to trust me. Despite all my secrets. And perhaps with secrets of her own. I could see that she was about to speak, but then she shook her head and retreated into herself. She even stopped stroking Nero.

"It's late," she said weakly, lifting the now-empty glass.

"And your potion made me sleepy. Perhaps you are the witch."

"See you tomorrow morning?" I called when she was halfway up the stairs. She froze mid-step.

"Yeah," she said, smiled, and was gone. I shook my head, inhaling deeply. There was a faint smell of smoke from the hearth, but also a lingering scent that belonged to her. Nero had woken up when she left and was now curled against me.

"The secondary source of warmth, huh? The backup? Asshole cat," I muttered. It didn't stop me from petting him, while my other hand went to the key in my pocket. My house key, as well as the key to the cellar and the lab. The key to the undisclosed secrets between Nadia and me, secrets I knew were holding us back. I wondered. If I told her, how would our strange relationship change? I took the key out and rolled it between my fingers. It looked like a work of art.

I wasn't one to wear random keys around my neck, but this one looked more ornamental than functional. Sure, the bottom part that went into the actual keyhole was just that, a key, but the rest was like a sculpture. Gothic wings of black filigree that framed a red gemstone of some kind. It was beautiful and enchanting and not something I could carry around and risk losing or getting stolen. I got up, grabbed some length of thin chain and some tools, and went to the kitchen table.

The key had a small loop I could run the chain through, and after some messing around I managed to turn the winged key into some sort of keychain necklace. If I wore it under the shirt, people would think I had strange tastes and nothing more. They wouldn't suspect it was there so I could keep an eye on it at all times. They wouldn't know what it opened. Well, maybe Nadia did. She never managed to open the cellar door, but the key had slotted in before I caught her. I wondered if she knew the cellar was important.

Despite the heavy thoughts, I slept well that night. And the next morning, I was happy to see that it had stopped raining and the sun was finally out. Nadia had made breakfast for both, using what little she found scattered around the kitchen. A mix of cereal and leftovers, out of the ordinary and strange, but it tasted wonderful. Plus, I was beyond happy that she was still here. I could try to fool myself and pretend I was simply relieved she hadn't run away with all my secrets but no.

I was happy she was still here with me. And she noticed.

"Is my cooking that good? I'm going to have to start charging you, then." She grinned mischievously. I was about to reply in kind when I heard a meow and a startled hiss. Nero had been roaming around the garden, playing in the wet grass, but now he was staring at the bushes by the road. Immediately, the woman at the other end of the kitchen table got up and looked out the window. I joined her.

Nero was stalking towards a dark shape hidden inside a patch of thorny brambles I hadn't cut because I thought they produced edible berries in spring. The cat stalked, hissed again, and finally pounced.

"Huh," Nadia said, the tension draining away and leaving her like a deflated balloon.

"Looks like the monsters are encroaching. Luckily we have a scary, powerful, brave guardian cat." The animal in question stopped in the middle of the road and looked back. Nero hissed again and turned around, proudly walking back to demand food after having successfully defended his humans. Later, that night, we found ourselves on the sofa in front of the fire again. This time, however, Nero had immediately joined us, extracting all the pets he could from Nadia.

She sighed when I offered her the glass of chamomile tea, enjoying its warmth.

"No joking about us being old souls today?" I asked.

"Nope," she said.

"You worked me hard today, young man. Is this the way to treat a lady?" It had started as some light yard work after the rain, nothing too tiring. But the cold had seeped into our bones, and more stuff that needed to be done piled up as we assessed the state of the massive garden, to the point that we barely stopped to eat a quick lunch. By the time we were done, we were wet, tired, and dirty. I had made dinner while Nadia took a hot shower, then she washed the dishes while I cleaned myself up."

Life flows to you, and it shows," Nadia said.

"Huh?" I asked, a bit dumbfounded.

"That was my hint. When I awakened," she said.

"A cruel joke, that's what it was."

"Oh." I didn't know what to say. What could I say? Because I could feel her power inside me, and I had to agree that the hint had been nothing but a cruel joke.

"Cat stole your tongue, young hero?" She was attempting to make a joke, but I knew how vulnerable she was.

"No, I'm sorry. I was just thinking about bad hints and shitty powers. I thought I had been screwed over but…"

"Yeah," she said.

"When I saw the hint, I was overjoyed. A bit like you, I let the words fool me. Except I didn't have to wait long to realize I had been duped. I thought I'd been blessed, you know? And, fuck." She paused, breathing heavily." Life flows to you? Yeah, because I was fucking stealing it! And it shows? The mutation? An elf, graceful and beautiful and a fucking monster. I had no idea, of course. I thought I was gorgeous.

I had no idea, and the illusion lasted all day and night until the next morning I woke up and everything was dead. The plants were dead. The dog was dead. My…" she sniffled.

"Well, they didn't die that night. They died at the hospital. I stopped visiting them when I realized I was the reason they were there, but it was too late." The silence that followed was heavy. I recalled the sensation of being drained by her, and the panic it instilled in me. And as I did, the feeling from the nanite swarm finally revealed the last of their secrets. The murk cleared, the parts of her deconstructed power laid bare before me. And it was tragic because, I learned, she had read her hint right.

Her gift was life—had been—but with an unwelcome addition like a cancer twisting it. Life, yes, but the aura was inverted and the off-switch was damaged.

"You know why they didn't lock me up, Adrian?" she asked. Her face was like a mirror about to shatter.

"Why?"

"Because nobody knew what had happened. I got my powers right at the Onset, so they had no idea and the chaos was too much and… I slipped away. Since then, my aura kept the world away from me." My hand found hers. She looked at me, her voice hitching for a moment.

"You should stay away from me, dashing man. I'm a fucking biohazard. I kill all that I touch."

"Do you?" I asked her.

"You are touching me, and yet I feel perfectly fine." She looked down, her fingers entwining with mine and squeezing hard. Her voice faltered.

"Hold my hand like this for a while?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"For all these years, I've been utterly alone, Adrian. Until one day I decided to break into a random bozo's house. The fucker was supposed to be out in the rain, dammit. But nope. There he was behind me, and I got all spooked. I still don't really get it. Was it your time slow? I know I did not miscalculate. And you know what? I don't care. I don't give a damn. I could have miscalculated and I'd be happy. I am happy… that I met you." I opened my mouth to speak, but words failed me.

I hadn't realized that she had scooted so close to me that our legs were touching, while holding Nero in her lap. She leaned into me.

"You fixed me, Adrian." Her voice was low, like a whisper. She was so close. Her eyes were liquid pools of brown and gold, and I could lose myself in them. Her face was wet with tears.

"Hold more than just my hand, please?" I did. I embraced her, squeezing her against me as she inhaled and took in the scent of me. I did the same. She smelled… of her. And her lips… I felt their softness, their impossible heat, the passion as the dam burst and Nadia kissed me fiercely. I reciprocated, prying open her mouth with my tongue. She was shy, surprised, but she allowed me to slip inside.

She moaned into me, relief and desire and tears staining our faces, her hand forgetting all about the cat she was petting and holding the back of my head, as if to make sure I couldn't run now. As if scared that the kiss wasn't real. But it was. It fucking was. I showed her how much I wanted her, just like she showed me how much she wanted me.

We inexpertly invaded every inch of each other's mouth, me because I've always been an idiot with girls and she because it had been eight years since she had last felt the touch of another human being. Our breath was stolen from us by the passion of our lips. And then we broke apart, a thin line of saliva stubbornly connecting us for a few seconds longer.