I open my eyes to a familiar ceiling, painted a light pastel blue like the sky on a clear day. Then, as with every morning, I raise my hand and stare at it. Slowly, I open and close my fingers. The digits obey, and I can't help but stare at them in wonder. The pull of tendons, the soft grind of bone on cartilage… Even now, after almost a month, it is still amazing to me to be able to move under my own power. To have control over my own body.
Then the sun peeks out from behind the clouds and light from the windows hits my eyes. With a wince I pull the covers up over my head, groaning as I roll in bed to turn away from the window. I don't want the day to start. Getting out of bed means being beholden to certain uncomfortable responsibilities and acknowledging even more uncomfortable truths. But if I close my eyes I can return to blessedly dreamless sleep. I can avoid thinking about anything and just let life pass me by.
It's a forlorn hope, of course, but I've lived the last four years on even less. It's comfortable here, and warm. God, but it's nice to be able to properly feel such things again. I just want to enjoy it and not have to worry about anything. I've earned that much, haven't I? So if the world wants me out of bed then it's going to have to damn well make me.
As if mocking my resolution, there is a knock at my door.
Another groan escapes my lips and I bunch the covers more tightly over my head. If I just ignore it then perhaps it will go away. I'll just curl up into a ball. A nice, tight little ball. I'll be so small no one will notice me or bother me and I can sleep true sleep instead of oblivion clawing at my every waking moment trying to drag me under and dammit I'm thinking about everything now and I don't want to.
"Kendra," comes my mother's voice from behind the door. "You can't just stay in bed all day."
"I can certainly try."
If Mom hears me she gives no response. She just opens the door and walks into my room, sitting down on the bed to place a hand on my shoulder. There's barely enough room for her, especially considering the mattress is only just large enough for me, but Mom has this ability to take up space and command attention. It's probably why she's so good at her job.
It's unfortunate for me, however, as she gently but firmly shakes me. I give a muffled protest and try to hide deeper under the covers. This is a mistake, as with my mother taking up half the bed my movement sends me tumbling off the side.
I wish I could say I handle this with dignity, but the truth is I let out a squawk and almost knock over my bedside table in my flailing. I emerge from the bedding, my hair unkempt and deep bags beneath my eyes, to glare up at my mother. Mom, for her part, just smiles.
"Rough night?" she asks.
"Not really," I say as I stand up. My back pops and there is a delightful feeling of releasing tension. "The sleep is fine. It's just that it takes a while for me to actually get to sleep."
"Is that why you're so late getting up?" Mom asks. "You're still in bed most times I go off to work."
"That's part of it," I say. "Actually, speaking of that, why aren't you at the Senate? Isn't there more you need to do?"
"There always is," Mom says. "But things have settled enough that I can spend the day with you."
"Oh…"
Mom raises an eyebrow. "Is that a problem?"
"No! No. It's just…"
I frown as the right words to describe what I'm feeling don't come to me. Mom doesn't push the issue. She just pats the space on the mattress next to her, encouraging me to sit. I take her up on the offer, looking down at my hands for a time before taking in the rest of the room.
It's my bedroom, the one I used when visiting Mom. The walls are the same blue as the ceilings, though covered with posters of various stage plays and music troupes. Mostly jazz and swing music, but while those are my favorites there were a few groups in other genres who hold places of honor on my walls. I enjoy anything that mixes styles together, that pulls from different corners of the world to make something new and fun. These kinds of music are often peppy or sad, but even more they usually have a satirical bite that appeals to me. Listening to tracks on the radio has mostly been how I've distracted myself these last few weeks.
Everything here feels small now. I've grown a few inches over the years, so nothing quite fits like how it used to. Even my guitar over in the corner feels strange to my hands, and when I strummed a few chords my fingers didn't respond with the same grace they used to.
Just another thing Aidric took from me.
I sigh and fall back onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Mom has kept this place tidy, and when I first came home there wasn't even a hint of staleness to the air. One might say that was just her coping with my situation, but I know her. She never gave up on getting me back, just like Dad…
"I don't know," I say at last. "Everything is familiar and different and I don't know what to do with it. I can't even play music to clear my head like I used to. The sounds just don't come out right."
"You'll learn again, if that's what you want," Mom says. "You've done it before."
"Sure," I say, turning over to look at her. The lines on Mom's face stand out more than I remember, and there's gray in her hair. Not much, but it's there. "How are you holding up?"
"As best I can," Mom says. "It was touch and go in the beginning, but we've managed to get everything stabilized. The Kordian Satellites have managed to keep the farms and factories going long enough to start pulling more people in, so hopefully in the next few months we'll see the economy settle with everyone getting what they need."
"That's good," I say. "I'm glad Dad and I didn't just end the world."
I mean it as a joke, but the look on Mom's face tells me she caught the tremor in my voice. She gently pulls me up and cups my face with both hands, forcing me to look at her.
"Is that what you thought you did?"
"Well, yeah," I reply. "Necromancy is more difficult without the Engine, right? And the whole empire runs on it, so…"
"Honey, no," Mom says, drawing me into a hug. "We had plans in place, and with all the Possessed gone it's been easier to get those plans in motion. It's rough right now, but the nation isn't falling apart. You just helped precipitate its change."
I wrap my arms around Mom, pulling her close. It's nice to hold someone, to feel someone and not have it come across as if through a wall of cotton. To smell the scent of flowers from Mom's shampoo, and to feel her heartbeat next to mine. After so long it still seems unreal to me that sensation is more than just an echo. That I'm free, and all this is mine again.
On my bedside table I see a photograph. It's in color, which had to have been expensive, but Mom and Dad must have thought the price was worth it. It's a picture of the three of us together, before the divorce. I'm still little, maybe six or seven, with Dad holding me up and Mom leaning her head on his shoulder. We're out by a lake, and we're smiling in the sunlight surrounded by green and blue.
That smile looks strange on my father's face. I don't recall him being happy often. Mostly, I remember him being very quiet and sad save for the times he was frustrated with me. But he must have been happy at least a few times in his life, with me and Mom. There must have been more to him than the melancholy that led to so many arguments between us when I was growing up.
"Can we tell them what Dad did?" I whisper. "Can we let them know he's a hero?"
"They won't see it that way," Mom says, her voice just as soft. "They'll just see him as the man who made their lives more difficult."
"But he saved me!" I say, leaning back from Mom. "Hell, he's probably saved all of us! They don't know what I know, what Aidric and the others were going to do! More war, more people begging for scraps. Desperate, hungry…"
I trail off at the expression on Mom's face. Her eyes narrow, and her lips are set in a tight, thin line. I know that look. It's one she's given me before when she won't be swayed by any amount of cajoling or tears. Mom is set, and she's not moving.
"You said it yourself," she says. "They don't know, and if we tell them it reveals our involvement. It makes it look like we enacted a coup, which brings more uncertainty. We've only just avoided civil war, and we're going to need time to get things settled properly so we can make something better than what came before."
"It's not fair," I say. I'm crying, wetness falling down my face and I can't stop it. I wipe it away, but it just keeps coming back. "It's not."
"No, it isn't," Mom says, drawing me back into another hug. She brushes my hair as I cry. "But this is also to protect you. No one knows you destroyed the Engine, and I'm sure Randall would prefer it that way."
I sob into Mom's chest for I don't know how long, the shadows slowly moving in my room as she holds me close and rocks me back and forth. It's comforting, reminding me of a time when I was very small and safety was always a few steps away in the arms of my parents. I should be embarrassed. I'm a grown woman bawling my eyes out to my mother. But there's no shame. There's no room for shame. There's just grief and confusion at an unfair world, and my mother helping me through it all.
But I can't just keep crying. Nothing gets better if you hide away. Nothing changes if you just give up. So when I finally stop shaking, when the tears stop flowing, and look back to the photo. I look at how happy he is, how happy we all are, and can't help but wonder what happened to all of that.
"She told me about him," I say. "The ghost that worked with Dad. The one who killed all the Possessed when I broke the Engine. She told me about him."
"And what did she say?"
"She said he suffered," I say. "She said he bled and screamed, but that he kept going. That he kept going for me. And when she said that I couldn't help but think it was strange. That we always argued, that he was always so busy and scared he never had time for me or you or anything."
Mom doesn't speak. She doesn't need to. Even as the silence stretches on and I wrestle with what to say next. Because it's horrible, admitting all of this. It's horrible admitting that I have mixed feelings about a man who died for me. A man who died by my hands, even if I wasn't the one in control of them.
What am I supposed to do with that? What can be done with that? Dad and I are never going to get the chance to talk things out, never going to clear the air. All the times he berated me about my music, about how I was wasting my life, and every time I yelled that he was a miserable bastard who hated everything that brought me joy. We're never going to get the chance to make things right and that sits like a weight in my stomach I'll never be able to shake off.
"I was never sure he really loved me," I say at last. "And the last thing he said to me was how much he did."
Mom sighs and gets off the bed, kneeling before me and taking my hands in hers. I look down into her eyes, and that earlier sharpness is gone. There's nothing hidden there, and the softness and love I see in her gaze almost makes me turn away.
She fought for me too. She's still fighting, and I'm not even sure I'm worth it. Four years in hell, and now that I'm out I don't know what to do with myself.
"Your father… He was a man of ideas and vision. It's one of the things that drew me to him when we married. But he always had trouble accepting that other people had their own perspectives, and he couldn't just impose himself to make everyone go along with what he viewed as 'correct.' And that's one of the reasons we divorced."
"I remember him being like that," I say, my voice so quiet it can barely be heard. "It reminds me of Aidric."
"That old monster did more harm to your father than I think any of us will ever know," Mom says with a grimace. "But I believe Randall did this because he wanted you to have a future. Because he realized, when you were taken, that it was more important that you make your own choices than to live by what he or anyone else felt was best."
More tears, but this time when I wipe them away they stay gone. I think I'm probably all cried out for the day, and even if I'm still sad and confused and angry I'm starting to feel a little better. I don't really know why. Maybe it was what Mom said, or maybe it's the fact that I know Dad loved me despite all of our differences. That I felt it all when he pushed Aidric out, pure and shining like the sun. There's no doubt left on that end, even if it's difficult to understand.
I still don't know what to do with it, or myself. But I suppose I'll have the chance now. I can't waste that. Too many people have done too much to give me my life back. I'll cry again, I'm sure. I'll question myself and my parents and a world that did its best to break everything good in it. And despite all of that, I'll get back up again and keep moving forward.
It's what Dad did. And if he could do it, so can I.
Mom stands up and claps her hands, drawing me out of my musings. She's smiling, and despite how puffy and red my eyes are from all the crying I find myself smiling too. Mom helps me to my feet, and she smoothes out my dress before leading me to the door.
"I only have a few days with you before I have to get back to the Senate," she says. "And we're going to make the most of it. I'm thinking lunch, maybe in the garden. The sunlight will do us both good."
"Yeah," I say. "That sounds nice."
Mom is first out the door, calling for Aysha the maid to prepare something in the kitchen. I'm close behind, but I linger for a moment to look back at the picture of all of us together. How happy we all are. That will never come again, but maybe there's a chance to find new happiness in the future.
"I love you too, Dad," I say, and a little bit of that weight in my gut goes away. "Goodbye."
Then I follow after Mom, closing the door behind me to walk out into a brand new day.
