Namrat always wins.
But when I saw Jake staring up at that mural, I knew what drove her. Fear. Same as me. But unlike mine, her fear was that the Goddess wouldn’t love her, would turn her away unless she fought, more and more, always. Brought up in violence, that was always Jake’s first reaction to anything. Now she stood there, splashed in blood that wasn’t hers, looking more like that Downside Goddess than ever, and it was the fear that was killing her.
She didn’t take her gaze from the mural when she spoke, and her voice seemed very small in the silence, flat and toneless. “Why didn’t you leave me up there? I wanted to stay.” She scrubbed a hand across eyes that were red-rimmed but dry. “I suppose I’ll have to go to the gates then.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. I didn’t have time for this, not really. I didn’t have the blood for it. The Storad wouldn’t stay where we’d lured them; I had to get going, but there was always time for this. I had to, not for me or for Jake but for Pasha. “They say it’s the fight that’s the thing, for her. But you’re giving up.”
She whirled on me, and her hand caught me a ringing slap around the side of the head, which I really could have done without. With that slap still stinging, I shook my head and spat out another mouthful of blood. I was surprised I had any left.
“What do you know about it?” she snarled.
“Pasha once asked me if I would let you go and dice with death every day because it made you happy. And he did, but it didn’t, it won’t make you happy because that’s not why you’re doing it. Look at her, the Goddess, who you want, always, to love you. Always trying to prove to her that you’re worthy, and she says the fight is the thing. To fight. But you’re not fighting, even if you’ve got swords in your hands and blood in your hair. You’re not fighting, because you want someone to beat you, even I can see that. You’re giving up, and do you think that’s why Pasha put himself on that machine? So that you’d die too? He told me, and I get it now, that a sacrifice has to hurt or it’s no sacrifice at all. Do you want him to have done that for nothing? Do you want to make that sacrifice useless and stupid? Because I won’t let you do that to him. Not to Pasha.”
She stepped back and I thought then she might cry at last, but no. No tears, or not in public. Maybe she’d cry later, but not now.
“Bastard,” she whispered at last. “What you know about it, about Pasha and me, eh? Bastard.”
“Technically no, but I can see why you might think so. You’re probably right too. But I can’t go and do what I have to up in the lab unless I’m sure about this, about you not trying to get yourself killed. I can’t let Pasha dying mean nothing.” Or perhaps I was kidding myself, trying to put it off, and that sounded more like me.
Jake’s glance flicked upwards, towards the lab, and she flinched. “You’re scared. I never thought you were scared. You were always Rojan, who helped us when no one else would, or could. I never thought you were scared.”
“I’ve always been scared. Scared to be alone. Scared to be with anyone, because I’ll fuck it up. I thought I loved you once. I still do, in a way. I loved you for Pasha. I loved you because you were safe – I knew I’d never get the chance to fuck it up. I’m scared, but I’m going to do it anyway. I have to. And then I won’t have to be scared any more.”
I hadn’t said what I was going to do yet, but I think she knew. She shut her eyes against the tears that threatened, but even then she wouldn’t cry them. “Then you and I are the same – that’s why I fight like I don’t care, because I don’t want to be scared any more.”
I wanted to say something – that there was hope, for all of us perhaps, even her and me, screw-ups that we were. But I couldn’t because I don’t think I’ve ever really believed in hope. Hope is a crock of shit and never gave anyone a damned thing except a buffer against just throwing themselves down a gap and having done with it. Sometimes it made it more likely. Not the most helpful of things to say, so I didn’t.
She turned away, her back rigid, hands on the hilts of her swords, and made for the door. I wanted to stop her, I wanted to tell her… what? I didn’t know, only that I didn’t want it to mean nothing, any of it, Pasha, me, her, everything. But by the time I got my tongue and brain in gear, it was too late. She was gone, and I never saw her again. And funny, I didn’t mind, or not much. It wasn’t her that drove me after all. All that time, all that mooning as Erlat called it, and it wasn’t her. So funny I almost laughed, and instead choked on the blood in my throat.