Alchemised

by SenLinYu

A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

“Everyone wanted a lot for me, and I’m not sure I ever knew what I wanted.” She shrugged. “Probably good that I didn’t, since it didn’t matter in the end.”

Sometimes she wished she’d died in the hospital with her father, to be remembered and mourned for her possibilities, rather than live day by day growing ever lesser. Now it didn’t matter if she’d been an alchemist, or a healer, or anything else. To anyone who ever learned of it, she would only be that one thing. Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.

“You don’t get to lie to me and then get angry when I make the mistake of believing you,” Helena said.

Helena was not a planet or any celestial thing. She was just a human bound tight to the present, to the brevity of existence, and she could feel time running out.

“I—didn’t know I was coming here. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“If it wasn’t on Resistance business, you shouldn’t have come.” She nodded jerkily. Of course he was right. She should have just gone to the bridge. And jumped.

Even now, his jaw was tense. His expression guarded. His mouth held in that hard, flat line. But his eyes… She could tell— He was hers. The realisation broke her heart.

“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.” He searched her face. “They didn’t tell you.” She shook her head, giving a broken sob and—before she let herself think—she kissed him.

He was a spy that they depended on. And she was— Not his handler. No, that role belonged to Crowther. She was— A prison.

Like a star, he was glittering and ice-cold from afar, but when the space was bridged, the heat of him was endless.

When he kissed her, it felt like the beginning of something that could be eternal.

“You’re mine. You swore yourself to me. Now and after the war. I’m going to take care of you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be lonely. Because you’re mine.”

She was locked in the dangerous embrace of Kaine Ferron, and it felt like home.

I love you. She told him in the way she held him close; in the way her mouth met his; in how her hands trailed across his skin, mapping him, memorising every detail of what it was to be with him, his scars under her fingers. I love you. I love you. She told him in the way she let go of herself and held on to him instead. With every beat of her heart. I love you. I will always love you. I will always take care of you.

“She won’t leave if you’re dead, either. You’ll come with us. We’ll all go. I’ll heal you, and then—” Luc swallowed hard. “She has another—another Holdfast to protect. Not me—anymore.” Helena shook her head. “Luc, don’t do this to me.” “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be you, but it has to be.”

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

“I’ve never gotten to tell anyone about you. I’d want someone to know what you were like.”

guess in the end, I am like Luc. I thought that we could suffer enough to earn each other.”

He held her face in his hands. “Helena, look at you. You have broken yourself into pieces, over and over, because of me, and you don’t seem to understand that it kills me. Living is not worth it to me if you’re the one who keeps paying the price for it. Let me fix what I can.”

She slept beautifully and rarely cried. She would sleep for hours in her overly indulgent father’s arms, snoozing on his chest as he watched Helena work in the kitchen or in the little laboratory set up in one of the outbuildings.

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”