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She is completely numb, both inside and out, by the time Lissa manages to move her. Rose is pulled to her feet, her friend encircling her in supportive arms as she guides her back across the wardline. They trudge on through the snow; Rose, zombie-like, mindless and faltering; Lissa, steady and endlessly patient.
Rose has a feeling Lissa is talking to her. No doubt words of comfort and sympathy. But they slide right off her, whipped away by the wind before she can absorb any of their meaning.
Somehow, they end up in Rose’s room. It’s exactly as she left it: twin bed unmade, clean clothes tossed over her desk chair, dirty clothes dropped haphazardly on the floor, frozen faces smiling at her from the photos stuck to her wall. This room has been her home for the last five and a half months, and yet it may as well belong to a stranger. She feels no connection to it.
She feels nothing.
Lissa suggests she has a shower. She does so gently, her eyes and words soft, as if she’s worried that anything more than a kind whisper will break her. Perhaps it will.
Somewhere, in some barely-functional part of her mind, Rose knows that there’s a reason for her suggestion. Something about dirt and blood. A fight. Or maybe it’s that her whole body has been shivering uncontrollably for longer than she can comprehend. She should probably have a shower. But that one spark of life within her isn’t nearly enough to melt through the ice around it, and it sputters out before she can so much as acknowledge that Lissa has spoken.
But there’s also no part of her that can find the will to object, and so, once again, her friend takes control.
The bathroom feels just as foreign as her dorm room. Lissa leads her to one of the stalls, relinquishing Rose’s reins so that she can push aside the curtain and turn the shower handle. The pipes groan in complaint as the water surges up through the wall and erupts out of the shower head. Rose stares unseeingly at it. The water pulses in time with waves of fluctuating pressure, Lissa’s hand occasionally interrupting the stream as she takes readings and makes adjustments. Satisfied, she steps back and turns expectantly.
There’s something Rose is meant to be doing now, something she’s done a million times before. Lissa is looking at her. Waiting. Her jade eyes try to silently prompt her, but the bond is just as numb to her as everything else is. She doesn’t know what to do.
“Do you…do you need me to help?” Lissa asks, when Rose’s lack of motion becomes too conspicuous to ignore. The bathroom is already half-filled with steam. Lissa’s words pass through it to reach her. For the first time since she was lifted from the snow, words register in Rose’s mind as a coherent sentence, rather than as vague sentiments wrapped in careful tones.
The thawing has started. Rose can feel it. Can feel awareness coming back to her. It’s not there yet, but she knows her mind well enough to know that she doesn’t want anyone else around when it happens. Not even Lissa. Perhaps especially Lissa.
Slowly, jerkily, Rose shakes her head.
The mere existence of a response seems to surprise Lissa and it takes her a moment to speak again. When she does, it’s with more questions.
“Are you sure?”
Nod.
“I could just wait outside the curtain?”
Shake.
“What if I…” A pause. A consideration. “Do you just want to be alone?”
Nod.
“Okay.”
Lissa leaves after that. She might say something else before she goes. She might not. All Rose knows is that she’s alone in the bathroom, kept company only by shower steam and her failing numbness. She strips, half stumbling, frozen fingers fumbling as they take off layer after layer and let each one slip to the floor.
Something stirs in her mind. A memory. A memory of clothes hitting the floor, tossed instead of dropped. Of wooden walls and a bed and another set of hands. Warm hands. Rose banishes all thoughts of them into the steam-thick air as she steps under the spray of the shower.
The warm water pelts her icy skin, and her nerves ignite. It burns, and she clings to the sensation. Lets it ground her in the moment. She’s not sure if it’s better or worse than the numbness. But she clutches it all the same, letting the fire in her skin consume her so that nothing else can.
But all too soon, the heat thaws her. The sensation shifts from an icy inferno to a tolerable scolding, before settling into a pleasant simmer. Her muscles relax, her limbs loosen, and Rose finds herself sliding down the tiled wall and onto the floor as her defrosted mind forces her to remember. Forces her to know the terrible truth that she wants so desperately to unlearn.
This time, her tears are smaller. More private. They somehow feel different to earlier, when Mason’s ghost had confirmed her worst fear. Those tears had been ripped from her with a shocking devastation, leaving her torn and screaming in the snow. These new tears are born from hopelessness and grief. They are slow and deep and absolute, like molten rock that's carving her out from the inside. Hollowing her, in a way she knows can never be undone.
She's not sure how long she stays there, arms wrapped around her knees, hair plastered to her back and cheeks as the cooling water rains down on her. But the tears keep coming, and with them come memories.
Memories full of warmth. Full of safety. Of life and laughter. Memories full of love. Her mind bombards her with them, one after another. Each pulse of water brings with it a fresh agony. And it is agony. God, even the most benign of moments hurts beyond imagining. A glimpse of dark eyes. The ghost of calloused fingers against her cheek. They leave her gasping and aching until she’s sure she can’t bear another second of it, only to be overwhelmed again by a fresh wave of torment.
It’s endless, and merciless, and she’s helpless to fight it. Her new life looms before her, pitch-black and infinite, and she’s floundering alone in its darkness.
And still more memories come.
Amidst the pain, and the tears, and the hopelessness of it all, one memory sticks out to her. It's a memory of intense brown eyes. A van. A story of lovers, and of heartbreak. A question. And an unspoken promise.
And suddenly she knows what she has to do. She’s no longer lost in her midnight world. The memory has pierced a hole in the darkness, allowing a pinprick of light to slip through. It’s impossibly distant, far beyond the reach of her trembling limbs and shattered spirit. But it’s something. Something to reach for. Something to orient her, to be her guide through this blackness. A north star.
Not a thing of hope, but of purpose. She knows there is no happy ending to be gained from this, just like she knows going after it will be the death of her, in some form or another. But seeking out a blazing end is better than staying to silently drown in the void she feels stretching before her. Anything has to be better than that. Better than this.
For now, that light is enough to stop the tears. It’s enough for her to climb her way back onto her feet. It gives her enough strength to wash the grime from her skin and hair, to switch off the shower and step out of the private warmth of the stall. To slip into the clean sweats that had been left in a neat pile for her when she was either too adrift in her numbness or too lost in her tears to notice.
When Rose returns to her room, Lissa is there. She’s perched on the bed, her delicate arms wrapped around herself, a bag at her feet. Lissa is staying with her tonight.
The sight elicits a new pang of grief in Rose. It’s shallow, the loss not yet fully realised, but it’s edges have been made jagged by guilt. She’ll have to leave Lissa. Her best friend. Her bondmate. Her sister. She’ll have to leave her behind, and with her the shared life they’ve been dreaming of since they were five. Rose has already decided she won’t tell her. She can’t. Because she knows, with the same level of certainty that she knows she has to leave, that that very act will break Lissa’s heart. And her own heart will break all over again to do it.
But not yet. Not tonight. Tonight, Rose chooses to let herself be comforted. She chooses to let Lissa be there for her, just like she was there for Lissa when her world was ripped apart by an icy road and twisted metal. She lets Lissa draw her into the tender confines of her embrace. Lets her fuss over her with tissues and water and kind words. Lets Lissa brush and braid her hair. Lets herself be guided to the bed and held tightly beneath warm covers until morning.
Tomorrow, she will take her first steps in keeping her promise to kill the man she loves.
But tonight, Rose lets herself be loved.