Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“You’re wrong because I’m part of the universe,” she said. “A tiny piece, I admit, maybe never an important or mathematically significant one, but still a piece. You and I are not separate from it. No one is. It matters to me, everyone who’s died and everyone who will, and everyone who suffers. As long as I exist, I will always care. And that means that part of the universe does.” She smiled at him. “Doesn’t that make it all a little brighter?”

before she was through the door, Kaine had her in his arms and was kissing her as if starved.

“I want to see you more.”

She could see the hunger in his eyes. Possessive. Ravenous. He would drag her from the war and hide her the instant she let him. The conflict was visible in his eyes.

“Call me, and I will come.”

Kaine called her. Often.

“You’re mine. You’re mine.” He’d repeat the words over and over. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

There was a possessive terror in him—in the ways he touched her—as though he always expected it to be the last time he ever saw her.

“You’re mine. I’ll always come for you.”

“I’m going to take care of you. I swear, Helena, I’m always going to take care of you.”

He clenched his jaw, and she knew what he wanted to say, that he didn’t care. He didn’t care whether anyone survived except her.

“I’m going to take care of you. I swear, I’m always going to take care of you.”

“I’m going to take care of you. I promise, I’m always going to take care of you.”

“Being alive is not the same as living. I hope someday you’ll have a chance to realise the difference.”

“Because I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order of the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s. If you die, I will kill every single one of them. Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own.”

“Just live, Helena.” His voice was shaking. “That’s all I’m asking you to do for me.”

“What exactly is it that you think I do with all my time? I kill people. I order other people to kill people. I train people to kill people. I sabotage and undermine people so that they will be killed, and I do it all because of you. Every word. Every life. Because of you.”

“If you die, Helena, I’m done. I won’t continue this. I’m tired.”

“You are. It doesn’t matter what happens to you, you will still be mine.”

“Be careful,” she whispered. “Don’t die.”

She had not saved him; she had created a new way to lose him instead.

The Helena of two years ago would not recognise the person she was becoming.

She was so tired of everything, of begging him not to get caught, not to die, to come back to her. Of trying to convince herself that a promise meant anything in a war like this.

He caught her by the arm. “Wait. Don’t go.”

“You know I would if I could. I’d run with you and never look back.”

“Mine. You’re mine,” he said as he kissed her. “Always.”

“I found you after a bombing. I had to watch them cut you open, trying to get the shrapnel out. You nearly died so many times on the operating table, I lost count. If you’d been an inch closer to the blast, that shrapnel would have gone through your heart. You want me to set a bomb, I will do it, but you will not touch it. Do you understand?”

Someday, she promised herself, someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn’t stolen.

I’m going to take care of you. I’m always going to take care of you.

“If I survive, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“You’re mine,” he said almost against her lips. “Mine. You swore it. Your Resistance sold you to me. I’m not going anywhere without you. And if anyone touches you, immortal or not, I will kill them.”

“Helena—breathe.”

“Helena—don’t—come on—breathe—Helena, please…”

Hold on. You promised you wouldn’t break.

But if he was alive, that meant he had not come for her, and she had waited.

“Of course I looked for you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?”

He was always cruellest when he was vulnerable.

“This is the best I can do, Helena. I’m sorry, I know it’s never been enough for you.”

“Helena…breathe. Please. You have to breathe.”

“Please breathe,”

“I promised to take care of you first,” she said, snatching her hand back. “Always. I promised you always. If you’d gotten your way, you would have sent me off, and I wouldn’t have even remembered you. Wouldn’t have had any idea until it was too late—”

“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.”

“You shouldn’t have assumed I’d be willing to lose you,” she said. “Did you think I cared less because I had other obligations? That I don’t feel things as much as you? I did everything I could to keep you safe. You don’t know all the things I did.”

“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”

He’d loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything but doomed. He’d loved her all the same.

“I’m going to take care of you,”

“I am,” she said. “And I want you to know. If I didn’t, I’d wonder about everything. If our baby would get your eyes or mine. What kind of resonance they’d have. If they’d have any, or if they’d just get to be ordinary.” She was speaking quickly, because her throat was growing thick. “I’d wonder if they’d have hair like mine or if it would be straight like yours. If I have to go without you—if you—if you die—I’d want to tell them all about you.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve never gotten to tell anyone about you. I’d want someone to know what you were like.”

“Kaine…” She reached towards him. “You’re not a monster. You didn’t have any choice. Neither of us—we were both raped.”

“I love you. And I always will. Always.”

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything I did to you,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. “I love you. You left, and I’d never told you.”