Gwenh wasn't with the group, and her cot was still in disarray from the morning's struggle to get her out of bed. Everyone who would speak about it had the same answer: she had been taken away shortly after Mal had been summoned to the penthouse, she would be returned some time in the night, and she would be in a foul mood the following day. It was apparently very routine, to the tune of every two weeks under normal circumstances.
Mal didn't find that particularly reassuring. Exhaustion clung to every inch of her as she laid down in her bed, but her body stubbornly refused to rest, even after everyone else was asleep; after an hour of tossing and turning on her lumpy mattress she finally pushed herself upright with a frustrated huff, deciding that she would stay up and wait for Gwenh to return. She pressed her back against the cold wall, keeping herself alert as she waited, the silence pushing in on her ears like cotton plugs, the darkness gently pulsing as she let her eyes slide out of focus.
It felt like hours before the door slowly creaked open, letting in a wedge of yellow light and a skulking silhouette before snapping shut once more. After so long in relative silence, Gwenh's breathing was almost deafening as she hovered at the threshold, and her footsteps sounded like stomps as she rushed to Mal's bed, lightly nudging her aside and sliding under the covers in jerky, frantic motions. Under the blanket, she was little more than a shivering lump.
Carefully, Mal shifted to the foot of the bed to retrieve her knitted blanket, tucked safely beneath the mattress. Someone stirred in the cot across the room, and she froze: as soon as the shifting stopped, she crawled underneath the covers and laid down next to Gwenh, tucking the knitted blanket around them for good measure. Gwenh turned onto her side to make room, and Mal found her hand easily in the dark with a toe-curling yawn — now that she was back within reach, it was an uphill battle to stay awake.
“Are you—” Another yawn came in at the last syllable, almost spoiling her attempts to be quiet. "Are you okay?"
“Mm, try again.” Gwenh's voice was raspier than normal, as though she had been shouting. "I don't speak Kanien'kéha."
“Nuts." She shuffled closer to share her heat, and Gwenh bridged the last of the gap to take advantage of her open arms, pressing her ice-cold nose against her collarbone with a sigh. "How are you? Are you hurt?”
"I'm fine."
She kissed her forehead and pressed a candy into her hand, smoothing her fingers over the painfully tangled hair at her nape. “Liar.”
“I’ll tell the truth if you promise not to blame yourself.” The cellophane crinkled as Gwenh unwrapped her gift, sniffing the candy appreciatively and humming with satisfaction as she crunched it between her teeth.
Mal would never say the words I promise, and Gwenh would just have to live with that. “What did they do?”
"Nothing bad." Her quiet sigh was obvious, and so was the chemical scent on her breath, strong and metallic under the artificial strawberry. Her thumb rubbed a small circle on the back of Mal’s hand — who was meant to be soothing who was unclear. “They take me away, give me medicine. Things tastes like blood for a few days after. It's not that serious.”
"Is it very scary?" Mal cringed as her hand snagged on a tangle. "Sorry. I have a hairbrush, I can take care of this for you—"
"Leave it. If I let it mat, they'll eventually shave it off."
She debated insisting, fingers already seeking out the less-tangled ends down at the small of her back. Gwenh had always been sensitive about her hair, often turning antsy and snappish when it started to grow too long, and she would always preen insufferably after a fresh shave down to her preferred half-inch of peach fuzz — brushing out the tangles would be a lot of pain and irritation for a negligible change in her quality of life. "I can try to cut it with the shears tomorrow—"
"Tai-Song already tried — the blades are too dull. And the guards get nervous if they see shears near someone's face." She rocked her forehead against Mal's shoulder tiredly, her skin like a cold-compress. "It's not that bad. Your hair's so pretty when it's long, maybe I can pull it off too."
"Mm." She carefully petted over the tangles, dutiful not to let her fingers dig any deeper. "What if I braided it for you? To keep it out of your face, and a little off your neck?"
Gwenh was quiet for so long that Mal wondered if she had fallen asleep, and when she finally spoke, she sounded unspeakably peevish: “I have to turn around, don’t I?”
“Yeah, looks like it. Need help?”
“Fuck off, I’m not that hurt.” She took a deep breath and quickly rolled herself over, letting out the pain in a long, low hiss as she sagged into the mattress. She didn’t protest when Mal met her in the middle, saving her the effort of shifting back from the edge, but she flinched a little when her hair was gathered up and lifted it off of her neck; the sudden motion made her tense in pain, her voice escaping in a quiet squeak.
"Sorry, did I pull something?"
"No, I think—" Gwenh hissed again, one hand wrapping around her right-side ribs. “Ouch.”
She bit down on her lip, telling her hands to stay on their task of carefully parting the hair into three tangled strands. “Did they beat you?”
“No — I was coughing pretty hard from the medicine they gave me.” After a moment her breathing started to come easier, and she relaxed against Mal’s ginger touch with a huff. “I think I bruised a rib.”
"I wish I knew first aid," she said wistfully, afraid to even look the injured area in case she made it worse. "Then I might be able to do something about it—"
"It's just a bruise. Nothing you can do about it." She was quiet for a moment, and tentatively asked, "You said you worked at the clinic, when we first met. That was a lie?"
"It was."
"You're actually an undertaker. I found out when Sulien— when we brought Sulien to you?"
"That's right."
"Good. I thought I remembered that, but I wanted to be sure."
Mal held her breath, waiting for the why'd you lie that would soon follow, but it never came. Her fingers moved slowly down the braid, hoping to catch any problem areas before they pulled on Gwenh's scalp. “Why’d they take you? You call someone a goon again?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was so quiet that Mal wasn't sure she had heard her correctly. "I’m scared to know."
“What do you mean?”
“When they came to get me, you were already gone. I didn't want to go, I wanted to wait for you to come back, but they said that I hit the kid, and I needed to be disciplined. I don't even remember doing anything to him.”
"You didn't." Isaiah would have said so if Gwenh had hurt Navy, even indirectly. "I know you didn't."
"I hate not knowing." She tipped her head back against Mal’s hands with a teary sigh. “I don’t even know what’s happening half the time unless you tell me. I barely recognized you, and I can’t remember Sulien’s face, or Rowan’s, or Goose’s — I can’t even remember what happened to Tai-Song.”
"Render says he's not here."
"Yes, and he's such a trustworthy man, he'd never lie to you about that." Her body shuffled, arms folding defiantly. "I know he's still here, I just— I just don't remember where I left him."
Mal gently scratched her blunt fingernails against her scalp and shuffled closer to tangle their legs together, wishing more than anything she could take her frustration and her pain and her fear and store it all in the attic — or the fireplace. “What’s the last thing you do remember?”
Her mouth worked in concentration as she pulled her thoughts together. “We were in the loading bay. Me, Zed, and Tai-Song. He bribed one of the guards to smuggle us down there, and we just had to get out of the parkade. We were about halfway, when I heard a sound like someone falling, but it was strange. It was just—“ She thumped the mattress. “Quiet, like that. And Tai's never quiet when he falls, right?"
She didn't realize that Gwenh was waiting for confirmation, until her hand reached back to pinch her waist. "Right, that's right."
"And I turned around to check, and then— nothing. I know I saw something, but I don't remember what.” She took hold of Mal's wrist and tugged her arm to settle around her waist, interrupting the braid for the moment as she tucked their entwined hands against her chest. “I’m tired of this place. I’m tired of forgetting and remembering and forgetting again. It wasn't so bad, in the beginning, when I was on the textiles floor: I could hold onto everything, most days. But then I— I tried to escape, and— something happened, but I couldn't—" She huffed in frustration. "I need to get out of here."
Mal’s eyes started to burn as she ducked her head against Gwenh's nape. “I’m sorry, Gwenh — I’m really, really sorry." She furiously scrubbed the tears from her cheeks, but her voice began to warble regardless. "I wish I’d never put you here, I wish I could go back and—“
“Oh, you have a time machine?" Her tone was carefully distant and unaffected, and somehow that was worse than anger or blame. "Don’t wallow, Mal — I hate it when people wallow.”
"I can't apologize?"
"No, I won't allow it." Her hand clasped around Mal's elbow like a stuffed animal. “Zed’s ready to talk, but you have to make the first move.”
"Great." She felt no closer to feeling ready to face the drone, despite the ticking clock and a complete lack of other options. "Awesome."
Gwenh made an unsympathetic noise. “Still not over it?”
“I have a right not to be.”
“I mean, I was the one who was kidnapped, and I manage to talk to her just fine—“
“Well, Goose lost a leg, and they don't like drones either.” She gently tugged her hand free and returned to the braid — she was a third of the way down, and was considering unravelling it and starting over.
“Right — the blood.” Gwenh's voice was faraway again, and before Mal could cry over it, she shook it off and continued, “They're not here, so they don't count. Mine still beats yours.”
“I’m being serious.” She blinked back more tears, swiping the back of her hand over her eyes. “The first time I saw that drone, I thought she was going to kill me — I can’t do it.”
Gwenh was mercifully quiet for a while, but it couldn't last. “So, what’s Plan B?”
“I don’t know — why do I always have to come up with the plan?”
“Because you're good at it, and I’m not carrying you out of here.” She rolled over and landed on top of Mal's chest, stealing more of her body heat as her head landed next to hers on the pillow. After a moment of letting her rearrange and settle, Mal reached around her back and continued to braid, trying not to shiver as Gwenh's voice huffed warm, damp air over her ear: “Do you really think things will be better, up there?”
“I hope so.” Her hopes were stretching thinner and thinner these days, turning as insubstantial as Gwenh’s body. She experimentally took hold of her wrist, and had swallow a wave of panic when her fingers closed around the bony joint with room to spare. She'd force Gwenh to eat two servings at breakfast tomorrow, and at lunch — it was likely that Mal would be eating supper with Render, and that would make up for the missed meals. “What else am I going to do, crawl back home and act like I never tried to leave? I’m sure that’ll go over well.”
“Since when has embarrassment ever killed anyone?”
“I could be the first.”
“Oh, please. No one cares if you end up changing your mind.” She shook free of Mal's grip to pinch her waist. Her grip was weaker, this time. “Except for me. I’ll judge you to your core.”
She resisted the urge to tug on her hair. “Like I care what you think, butt-breath.”
“Short-stack.”
“Oh, get original.”
“I’m sticking with the classics, Munchkin.”
“I hate you.”
“Liar.” The soft silence lingered between them for a moment, and Gwenh’s fingers began to drum against her sternum. “Did you ever make it to Kawehno:ke?”
“Right after we lost you. Lived there for about eight years. I left when I heard about Niña.” She hoped Gwenh wouldn’t ask for more, hoped that she wouldn’t have to grapple with the fond memories made sour with regret: all the festivals and ceremonies she’d never see again, the berries she’d never eat, the people that she would miss in every idle moment. She cleared her throat and finished the braid, weaving the end back through the interlocking strands above to tie it off. Her fingers longed for more to do, sweeping over Gwenh's hairline to pin back the wisps and tuck them behind her ears, trailing over her face and finding her eyes relaxedly closed. Before she could tell herself not to, she leaned her head down to lay a lingering kiss between neck and shoulder, a question that already had its answer.
And the answer was unchanged: after barely a second of contact, Gwenh planted her palm against Mal's forehead and pushed her off. "No."
"Sorry—"
"It's fine, just— don't kiss me like that." Despite her harsh tone, she didn't distance herself, and Mal let her hands settle on the neutral territory of her upper back, feeling the tired sigh move through her body. “Do you really want to leave?”
“Of course I do.” Her answer was reflexive, and no longer entirely honest.
“Because I don’t.” Gwenh's head lifted from the pillow, and Mal could almost see her brown eyes glowing in the dark as she stared down at her. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” She couldn't stand how her tone begged and pleaded like a child, how her face turned to Gwenh's like a flower seeking the sun, but it was out of her control, just like everything else.
“I don’t know — maybe because I didn’t get to have the life I wanted here. Did you?”
“Does that matter?”
“Oh, you only want questions that matter? Here’s one: why aren’t you happy here?”
Her teeth snapped together, catching the tender inside of her cheek as she turned her face away from Gwenh's — the faint tang of fresh blood stung her tastebuds. “Because I’m ashamed of what happened,” she said to her pillow. “I tried to keep it under wraps in Kawehno:ke, but my parents told one person, and then everyone knew." Her hands curled into fists at the angry memory, and she told herself to let it go. "I’ll have a fresh start, up there. Goose is staying behind, so I’ll be the only one who knows what really happened, and I know that Jay and Yuen-Fa and everyone else will leave it alone. No one on Proxima will treat me like they did in Kawehno:ke.”
"Did they treat you that badly? Over something that could have happened to anyone?"
Mal sighed in frustration. "It's not that, it's— everyone wanted to know about you. They asked—" She stopped herself before she could admit that everyone wanted to know why Clover was named Clover and not Gwenh, and quickly soldiered on, "They always asked if I wanted to talk about it, if I wanted them to pray for you — they couldn't understand that I just wanted to get over it and move on with my life."
"Without me." Instead of understanding, Gwenh sounded unbearably hurt. “Was I not important enough to mourn?”
“It hurt worse than anything, having to remember that you were gone,” she replied bitterly, feeling brave enough to face her again. “The only time it didn't hurt was when people left me to my own business.”
Gwenh's stunned silence held a simmering kind of irritation that quickly boiled over. "That's not what I would have done, if I had thought that you were dead."
"Yes, I remember very clearly how you felt about me." She couldn't bring herself to care that she was being cruel, that she was crossing a line she herself had drawn in the dirt.
Gwenh simmered for a moment before curtly replying, “I wasn't trying to reject you.”
"Oh yeah? What was this, then?" She lightly prodded her forehead with her thumb. "Just now?"
"Me telling you that I don't want to be kissed like that. I didn't—" She huffed in frustration. "I know I wasn't clear with what I wanted when we were younger, but I wasn't upset that you felt— the way you felt about me. I just knew that I didn't— that I wasn't able to feel the same way. For anyone, not just you. I still want to be around you, like this, just without all that other stuff."
Mal turned her head away, cheeks burning in shame. “I was in love — can you blame me for feeling rejected?”
“I felt rejected, too.” She grabbed her hand again and squeezed, almost painfully tight. “I know it's not the same as how you feel, but I still want you, Mal. It might not be everything you imagined, but this is everything I have to give, and I’m not going to give it to anyone else but you — can’t that be enough?”
“It's not enough for me.” Even true, she hated to admit it. "That's the problem, isn't it?"
She folded her arms over Mal's chest and planted her chin on top, pinning her down. "You know I love you."
"But I don't know what you want from me," she hissed. The chasm between them ached like a missing tooth. "I'm sorry, alright? I'm sorry that I can't think when I'm around you, I'm sorry that I always want to kiss you, I'm sorry that I can't turn it off—"
"Will you stop apologizing?" If possible, Gwenh dropped more of her weight onto her chest, as though trying to press the insincerity out of her. "It doesn't have to all or nothing, you don't have to be a martyr and make me out to be some kind of heartless villain—"
“I'm not," she insisted stubbornly. Even to her own ears, she sounded like a child. "Maybe the problem is you: maybe you should keep your hands to yourself, and stop confusing me."
Gwenh froze down to her breath, her entire body turning stiff. Before Mal could press on and make things worse, the answer came in a small, careful voice: "If you really don't like it, I'll stop touching you."
Mal instinctively wrapped her arms around Gwenh in a protective squeeze, her body panicking at the thought of losing her tethering presence. "I don't want to fight," she whispered, trying not to give away the hotness in her throat, trying to convey an apology without saying the words. "Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it."
Gwenh relaxed with a satisfied noise, her fingers settling back over her sternum. "Talk to Zed."
She sighed heavily. "Fine."
"Don't let Render take you away again."
"No. I need to keep him happy, otherwise—" She shook her head. "I don't know what will happen if I don't keep doing what I'm doing, but it won't be good."
"And what happens when you can't keep him happy?" Gwenh's fingers had stilled except for her pointer, drilling a quick rhythm into her breastbone. "There are people relying on you to come home in one piece, Mal."
She froze, certain for a moment that Gwenh somehow knew the truth, but how could she? "I know what I'm doing," she stiffly replied, not even trying to make it sound convincing. Nie mam ying’er. Wo meiyou saghiir. Laysa laday dziecko.
"You really don't. I can't express how little you know what you're doing. Tell him to fuck off."
"And what's to stop him from taking you away in retaliation? Where does that leave me?"
"Better off." Gwenh's tone had lost all of its momentum, and Mal sensed that she was close to falling asleep. "One less person to take care of. I think sometimes you would be better off if we hadn't met: I'm glad I don't have a time machine, because I'm too selfish to go back and change things."
She pressed another kiss to Gwenh's forehead, just above her right eyebrow. "You're not selfish."
"Yeah, but I am — especially when it comes to you."
Mal shook her head, ready to argue, but her voice abruptly gave out before she could utter a single word. She cleared her throat and tried again, and had to clamp a hand over her mouth to muffle nine years’ worth of bitter tears as they suddenly burned their way up her throat and down her cheeks. Gwenh clicked her tongue fretfully and wrapped her arms tightly around her; she wanted to push her away, to hide herself in the bathroom until she could get things back under control.
One hand cupped the back of her head and urged her to stay put, as though Gwenh could hear her thoughts. "You're okay. You're with me, you're okay," she whispered; her lips pressed softly against her temple, curving around the words of a softly-sung lullaby. Mal ducked her head into the cradle of her shoulder and let the tears silently fall, Gwenh's low voice rasping like sandpaper and scouring all the rust off of her aching insides.