“Where am I?” My voice sounds like footsteps on the path outside my dorm.
“A hospital.” His voice is tired. I am sure that he has not been sleeping enough.
I take the rest from his mind and watch as the city outside collapsed and then resumed normal life because of me. No, not because of me. That makes no sense. It is my fault, and Seamus' fault, and the Kiranese government's fault for how they have been treating everyone. It is Midbar's fault. But I am here because of the courtroom, and Rayland. Desmond wants it to be his fault because he did not tell me and because he told everyone that I was missing, but that does not make sense. He was not allowed to tell me. It would have hurt him.
He will not look at my face. It is just like I am back in my village but I do not understand why. We have the same eyes. I reach for my face but there is a burning in my elbow and I cannot get my fingers there.
“Don't bend that,” he chides, and smooths my hair behind my ears. Something about the way it sits on my neck feels wrong but I am too tired to understand why.
“Do you remember everything I've been telling you?” he asks me, and I nod.
“I have wanted to be awake so that I could tell you that mama forgave you.”
His eyes widen.
“Not Xander. She never talked about you to me, but I would know if she hated you both.”
He likes this answer in some ways and hates it in others. I realize that I have a question of my own.
“Why am I awake?”
“We petitioned that you needed to be conscious so that you could defend yourself. They finally agreed.” He looks at me and wonders whether or not to ask if I remember anything.
“I am sorry, Desmond. I do not even know what they looked like. And one of them had a name, but I cannot....” My head hurts. I want to tell him that it was Sanjay but Sanjay is not here and I do not want to talk about him with these people.
He sighs heavily and buries his head in his hands. They think it was done by employees here and he was hoping that I could tell them if that was true.
“They were employees.”
He raises his head. “They would have to be. They tampered with the feed from your room, and no one saw anyone enter or leave. They also knew your doctor's schedule and got to you while he was out of the building so that he would not feel you. But the police have some blood we took from your hands, and as soon as everything in the city is a bit more normal they are going to check it against the employee records. It's only a matter of time.”
“Who found me?” I remember the smell of iron. I must have fought back.
“I did. That's why your lip—” he cuts himself off, but I catch a flash of what I look like in his mind. My tongue runs along my lips and feels roughness on the left side. A new scar from a new battle. It makes sense and I do not understand why Desmond is so upset.
“How long has it been since I was taken?”
This question disappoints him. “I have no idea.” He wants me to tell him a day and time. I remember flowers, and tea.
“I was shopping for presents with Reid. We were supposed to catch the train to University in two days.”
Desmond curses. “Over two months. They've had you under for over two months.”
I am surprised that he is here and does not know that, but he is angry and I learn that the Fleet is being allowed to guard me but was given no information about “my case.”
“Oh. Am I going to be on trial now?”
He runs his hands through his hair. “Asha-na, you just woke up. We don't have to talk about this.”
“I am not worried, Desmond. I have done nothing wrong.”
This response makes him angry. He thinks that I am being foolish and that I should understand how much trouble I am in. But I cannot be in trouble if I have done nothing wrong.
“Is Reid in trouble like you say that I am?”
I did not expect for his mind to close off completely. “We're not sure, Asha. No one can find him, and... actually, Caroline had hoped that you would know where he was.”
I think of the flowers, and of the way he turned when he saw the guards, and my stomach feels cold. I reach for my scar without thinking and make my elbow burn. “I did not see him get taken.”
I wish that he did not know what the look on my face meant. “Asha-na, what happened?”
“I am tired, Desmond. I do not want to talk any more.”
He is going to urge me on but there is a hunter at the door. I turn my good eye and see Rayland and start to shake. He ignores Desmond completely and walks to the side of my bed.
“Hello, Ms. Indrani,” he growls. “I heard that you were awake again and thought I might offer my condolences.” He holds out a vase of blue flowers and I feel sick to my stomach. Reid had bought me those on the day I was taken. He sees the look on my face and bares his teeth. “Should I have chosen another color?”
He tries to cloud his mind but he is not very good. I see myself in the square with the guards closing in within the confines of his mind. The flowers in his hands match the one the me in his head clutches in hers.
“I do not want to see you. You are why I am here.”
He shrugs off my anger. “I was horrified when I heard what happened. I am a man of the law, Ms. Indrani, and not one to rejoice when someone is brutalized, even if they are a seeder.”
“Get out!” Desmond is so angry that my heart races but he cannot do anything and so Rayland ignores him still.
Something in his head. I want to see it but cannot catch it in time. Manning-ku told me that this would happen because of the drugs.
I force my voice to work. “I am not a seeder.”
He shakes his head. “We have you on record admitting otherwise.”
“That is not what happened in the courtroom.” Speaking makes my jaw hurt. I raise the arm that can still bend at the elbow and rub at my face.
In his mind I am punched. Stan's dark hair is sweaty and his knuckles are covered in blood from my lip when I break his nose seconds later with a shriek and a punch of my own. Second time I had done that to his face. Bitch.
I blink at Rayland and try to clear the fog in my mind. “How do you know that?”
Darkness and more teeth. “I beg pardon?”
“You saw the fight.”
Desmond wants to slam Rayland into the wall and clutches at the chair instead.
Rayland shakes his head. “You're clearly exhausted, Ms. Indrani. I'll leave the flowers by your bed.” His mind roils. “Oh, and a card from my daughter. She wanted to practice her Native with you. I hope you don't mind.” He dismisses it with his fingers and watches it fall to the table.
“She has done nothing to deserve your hate,” I mutter. He almost hits me but his body gives no sign.
“Rest up. As soon as the courthouse is repaired, we're taking you to trial.”
“That might not end very well for you.”
He stops in the doorway and chokes the room with his anger and his hate. I try to breathe and try not to think about how Reid had told me it had been a mistake to make this man want to hunt me.
“The people who did that to you will be found.” His teeth flash again.
“...Stan. Thank you, I had forgotten his name.” When I say the name he flicks at the shoulder of his suit and flees from the room.
Desmond meets my eye and forces himself to calm down once Rayland's feet cannot be heard in the hallway.
“He told them to do it. He watched the recording from the room.” My eye closes and I relax into the bed. Why am I so tired?
“I know. But we'll never prove that.”
“Who is Eli?”
“...He helped them get rid of the feed tape.” His mind is clouded again and I am too tired to find out why.
“He is the one who tried to warn me, but I was on too much medicine to understand.”
Desmond rises to his feet and looks at me while his fingers rub over the knuckles of his right hand. “I'll let you rest, Asha-na.”
And then he leaves me alone. I close my eyes.
Caroline is sitting beside me when my eyes jump again. I am confused about how she got there.
“Welcome back, sleepyhead.”
“I was asleep? For how long?” My back does not feel right.
“Two days. You have a lot of healing to do, and the sleep is helping your body. Does your jaw feel better?”
I open and close my mouth. “Yes, and my lip, too.”
She smiles. “There's a scar there, but I think that it looks good.”
“Can I see? In the mirror?”
Her smile fades. “Asha, you really shouldn't be moving around.”
“Oh. A hand mirror, then?”
“I'll see if we can find you one later.” Her eyes dart to the envelope on the desk and she thinks of Reid. “Who sent you the card?”
I look at the envelope on the table beside me. “Rayland's daughter.”
“Why haven't you opened it yet?”
“I do not feel like it.” I think again of Rayland and the flowers. I am not sure it is a letter from his daughter at all. He could just want to hurt me with another memory he is not supposed to know.
“Do you want me to do it for you?” Her hands are already reaching for the card and so I nod.
Her nails slice the envelope open with a sharp tearing noise. When she sees the note inside she frowns. “I think this is Native, Asha.”
“I will read it later,” I sigh.
“Fine. I want to ask you a question, anyway.”
“I don't know where Reid is,” I reply, and try to reach for my braid. My arm burns and I stop again.
Caroline sighs. “Please tell me how it happened. I need to make sure he's okay.”
“He is okay.” The blanket they have over me is blue like Rayland's stupid flowers. If Reid had not broken that flower he never would have left me while we were shopping and then we would both be like this.
“How do you know? Asha!” She is frustrated and so I try to answer but it is very hard.
“Because he left when he saw the guards. He saw them and walked away and so they did not find him when they took me.”
Caroline sits in stunned silence. “He left you?”
I do not reply but I am crying so I am sure that she knows the answer even if she is not an empath.
That idiot. She thinks it but does not say it. I take a deep breath and shake my head. “No. You are thinking that he abandoned me.”
“Asha, he left you to get shot down by the police!”
“He wanted to help. He would not have left me alone to escape. He could not have helped if they had taken him, too.”
“Did he tell you this?”
His mind had been closed and so I do not answer. Caroline shakes her head. “I hope you're right. Because from what you've told me, he sounds like a fucking coward.”
Anger surges in my chest and I sit up straight and ignore how it makes my arm burn to move it so quickly. “Do not say that! You know him!”
“Yes, I do.”
Something is wrong and it is distracting me from the terrible things she is thinking about him. I am sitting up and my ears are telling me that my hair is loose but my back is cold. I bring my fingers of my free arm to the hair at my shoulders.
“Asha, don't!” Caroline yells, but it is too late. I feel with my fingers and more memories of the fight come back to me through the haze of medicine that keeps it hidden.
“Bring me a mirror.”
“Asha....”
“Now!” The word makes my ears ring and my throat hurt.
She pulls a hand mirror out of her pocket and hands it to me. I see my lips first as my fingers struggle to hold it where I can see the most of me. The left side of both my upper and lower lips are split by a thin, pink scar where Stan's knuckles made me bleed.
But what hurts is my hair. It is gone and I knew it was but now that I can see that it is not there it makes me feel sick to my stomach. The mirror falls out of my hands and I am shaking.
“I would like to be alone now, Caroline,” I manage once I remember that she cannot feel that I want to be alone.
“Oh, honey....” She starts to move toward me but I do not want anyone to touch me. When I flinch she turns for the door instead. “Tell Dr. Manning when you want one of us to check in on you.”
“Yes.”
And then I am alone. It takes several minutes for me to become surprised that I am not crying.
Mama told me once that they cut her hair when I was born even though the color of my eyes should have been shame enough. She told me that she had not cried because she was too happy to have me. I had been worth it in the end.
But that is not why I am not. I have gained nothing. I do not know if Seamus-Reid-Elene-Bastian are safe. Desmond thinks that I am not safe. I have made enemies by helping my friends and Nanda would be horrified if he saw how my hair brushed against my shoulders like any other girl's on Kiran.
Oh.
That is what I wanted. That is why Nanda had not been able to stay with me. And now without my hair I can look more like these people and fit in which is something I have wanted for my entire life. That is why I am not crying.
But it should have been my choice. Caroline would understand. I want Caroline back. She is talking to Manning-ku about getting food for me and so it does not take her long to find me again.
“You called?” Her face is pale. She does not know what to expect but I am too worried about fixing this to take the time to calm her down. Elene would agree if she were here and heard me wishing that Desmond and Caroline were empaths.
“I want to fix it.”
She sits on the bed next to me but does not understand.
“This is not pretty. I want it to look like it is supposed to be this way. I want this to be something I chose instead of something they did to me.”
Now she does understand and I feel her mind working furiously in the way that used to make me so captivated by by her thinking when I first came here. No. That will make me think of Reid.
“I used to cut hair when I was at the University,” she says at last. “I don't think they'll let us actually bring someone in to you. Do you trust me?”
When I smile, she laughs. “And by the end you'll know how to cut it yourself, if you decide that you want to keep it short later.”
“...I want it off of my neck.”
“Oh, very short. Think about it while I ask Dr. Manning for some sci—oh, hello.” Caroline laughs at me and feels silly as Manning-ku hands her the pair in his hands. The blades feel warm on her skin and she thanks him.
“I keep forgetting that he's an empath,” she sighs. “Doctors so rarely are.”
“He was on Midbar before they sent him away from his family. A friend here gave him this job.”
“I'd say he got lucky, but something tells me he was sent alone.”
I nod. Caroline shakes her head and helps me sit up. “If you get too tired to keep sitting up, tell me.”
“Yes.”
I have never felt scissors in my hair before. The way they sound to my ears is strange and my neck shivers when the metal slides over my skin which makes Caroline annoyed at me. “Hold still. The last thing Desmond needs to see is that I've cut you.”
She thinks of several styles and I tell her the one that I like. I have never had bangs before and so spend a long time listening to my forehead tell me that it feels strange.
“Oh,” Caroline breathes. “This is going to bring out your eyes, Asha.”
I am surprised to feel myself smiling. Now that I know about Desmond my eyes are a good thing.
By the time she is done I am sleepy. This is normal but she thinks that I need food so she leaves to find Desmond and have him come in to bring me some. I wish that I could run my fingers through my hair and feel how exposed my neck and ears are but my arm burns when I bend it and so I lie back on the bed and spend a few minutes breathing and feeling the ends of my hair tickling against my temples and forehead.
The card is still next to the vase. Desmond is not here yet and I am bored because I cannot see my hair so I pick it up. The Native is badly written but the grammar is good. I wonder who has been teaching her.
I cannot believe that my father gave this to you actually. But I have to tell.
He made me seed you. It was not you. It was me, and I should be in trouble not of you. If you get me away I will tell anyone you want because I hate him.
I did not know, Asha. I would not have if I had known he was going to say those things about your family.
Grey eyes in the crowd. Hidden under long, pale hair. Rayland's daughter.
I feel surprise and look up to find Desmond in the door. “Oh, does it look bad?”
“Asha, you look beautiful.” He sets a tray down on the table and the smells tells my stomach to be hungry. “What's that you're reading?”
“Proof.” He is confused but I do not want him to know yet. “I will let you read it if you do something for me.”
He runs his hands through his hair and is confused. “What, Asha-na?”
“Please hug me, uncle.”
Desmond's eyes go wide. When his arms wrap around my shoulders and I lean my head against his chest it makes me so happy that I start to cry.
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