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It's the way they look at her afterwards. That's the worst part.
She loses control. Her grip has been slipping but she was so sure she could hold on. But everything—the crush of minds and bodies in this damn city, the terror of watching people she knows and doesn't know get caught, sucked into his fucking murder machines - gods, she's never seen anything like it, she thought the Nightmare King was bad but that was ethereal and weird and this is - this is bloody and visceral and she's seen people get hurt before on the farm, in fights, but this is intentional, this is planned and purposeful and enjoyed and he doesn't seem to care. There's no regard for the fact that these are people. And when she makes the mistake of reaching out, trying to connect her mind with his and get him to stop—he thinks he's different, he thinks he's better, he thinks he's made of something wholly magnificent and un-fucking-touchable. The self-importance sustains him. The disdain and the pleasure in it all though... It's weighty, slick against her mind like a sucking tarpit.
Rising sick burns in her throat. That's when the trap goes off, catching her and Ashton and FCG with the shrapnel backed into the mouth of the crawler beast.
She feels her skin prick and then tear and her body gives way and like a punctured balloon, or a broken dam, she just—
Bursts.
Her throat is raw, scratchy. From—screaming? Maybe? Makes sense that she would scream but she doesn't remember doing it; the memory is burned out of her mind, a white-hot splinter left in its place, time and sensation and sense replaced with heat.
The sand is sharp underfoot, burned halfway to glass. She is standing until she isn't. Pain stings her hands, her shins, when she collapses to the ground. The air around her is hot, scalds her throat, and the moment of silence that came after the flare ends as the world, the sounds of fighting and yelling rush back in, slam into her mind. She is prepared for it but not for the force of it and she buckles again, cries out.
It is a moment later, or many moments later, when she feels Orym take her hand. He is gentle as he urges her up. He is talking to her, some platitudes, some inquiries if she is okay, if she is with them, some reassurances that she is safe and alive and they're all still here. The words come in and out of focus - her attention is split between what is said and what is thought - as she sways. That is, until he says,
'We should stop, you can't keep going like this.'
Lightning crackles down her arms. She wrenches her hand from his before he can feel the sting, takes it back into herself with nails dug into scarred palms. The muscles in her jaw clench, molars grinding.
'I'm fine. I'm fine.'
'You're sure-'
'Yes,' she grinds out. 'Go - get after him - keep going.'
It's the way they look at her afterwards. That's the worst part - like salt in the wound, like the ugliness of the bruise that remains long after the pain has faded. They watch her carefully, walk so softly like she'll be spooked into destroying something, maybe herself. Like they could break her. Like they could break her. It's aggravating. She's survived far more than an unkind word, an errant thought. She'll survive this failure too - but it would be so much easier if they stopped with the damn caution. Because it isn't caution, not really. It's pity and it leaves a rancid taste in her mouth, on her mind, all their minds too-soft and too-sweet like rotten fruit.
They linger and look and attend to her instead of doing their damn job, which is where her control is really tested because she can keep calm during a lightning strike but the knowledge that her lapse lets him get away again frays every nerve in her body.
She hurries ahead, the limping leader of a limping pack, and closes the door gently behind her when she gets to her room lest they take her slamming it as a sign that she's not okay instead of what she really is which is angry, which is furious, which is something pushed closer to self-loathing every time they try to steady her instead of doing their fucking job.
Empty-handed again.
Empty-handed and alone, having frightened away any semblance of company, like always. Alone but never enough, because the walls might be magicked to keep out noise but nothing can keep out the thoughts of a city. She bites her tongue. She's not sure if it's the racetrack dust or blood that leaves the iron taste in her mouth.
'Imogen?' A voice at the door. It's Laudna, of course.
Imogen lifts a hand to her brow, covers her eyes for a moment as though that could hide her looming headache from Laudna's ever-keen eyes. When, after a moment, the sensation of prying doesn't come, Imogen splits her fingers and looks past them to her friend, who lingers in the doorway.
'Do you need to be invited in?' she drawls.
Laudna chuckles. Takes the joke as permission, which it is, and steps inside. She eases the door closed even more gently than Imogen had; even so, the thud of it hits her hard, like she's put her ear next to a blacksmiths anvil as they bring down their hammer. Imogen closes her fingers, swallows a whimper.
'Are you alright?'
Imogen hums. Laudna does not press and in the space she leaves, Imogen finds herself admitting, 'Headache.'
Laudna slips past Imogen in her periphery, pale ghost of a woman. She walks so softly and it does not annoy Imogen the way it does with everyone else, a double standard she has neither the need nor capacity to interrogate now. Laudna disappears into the washroom attached to their room and returns with a bowl of cool water and a cloth, damp, wrung out, that she offers to Imogen.
Unthinking, migraine pressing against the insides of her temples like a battering ram intent on breaking out, Imogen holds out her wrist to her.
The gesture folds Laudna like soaked paper into the chair in front of her. She gathers herself and begins to dab the cloth at Imogen's wrists, neck, across her forehead. She keeps her eyes on her task; Imogen keeps her eyes on Laudna and watches thanks drift across that face. For someone who exudes passion, the gentleness of that expression stirs something deep in Imogen's gut; when Laudna reaches up to dab her forehead, Imogen reaches forward and brushes her fingers soft against the sharp jut of her elbow. Laudna pauses, meets her eyes. She waits a moment in case Imogen seeks to stop her, or ask something new of her, but when nothing is forthcoming she merely continues her work. The cold touch is heavenly. Imogen is strung as tight as the cables that bear the carriages between Jrusar's spires but under Laudna's ministrations, that tension eases. A little.
'They think I'm weak.'
Laudna doesn't speak, only dips the cloth back into the water, wrings it out. She has mixed the water with a drop of something, a woody scent that relaxes Imogen further.
'We could've caught him at the trap. He stopped to gloat,' she hisses, and grinds her teeth. Pain sparks behind her eyes; she covers her eyes with both hands, presses her knuckles up into the arch of her eye sockets, an old trick that makes her headache spike more painfully and then dramatically reduce to something throbbing but manageable. She sighs, sound harsh in her scream-scratched throat. 'We could've caught him. And now he's got away and he's probably experimenting on someone because we didn't stop him.' Her temples throb. The wicks of all the candles in the room catch alight.
Laudna tilts her head. Her dark eyes flicker, like storms clouds washed with green, the threat of hail; a moment later, ghostly hands are pinching out the flames with their frozen fingers.
'And?' she urges.
Imogen lifts a hand. She can feel her arm, her hand shaking with the effort of moving. She can see it—so can Laudna—but Laudna says nothing of it, of her weakness, and the relief, profound, is as much a help as the press of her hand to her forehead. That is, perhaps not at all. But Imogen thinks at least a little. And when there is not much that helps, a little feels like an awful lot.
'I'm - They're all -' She stops.
Laudna touches her. She's careful when she does it but it's different. Because she is fragile too. Because she doesn't treat Imogen as broken. From Laudna, gentleness in the manner by which reverence casts its shade.
Reverence? The question is a flicker-thought, quick, sharp. Her own. Reverence are you sure?
Maybe reverence, maybe something else. Whatever it is, there is no pity in Laudna's eyes when Imogen looks into them. Instead, they glint with good humour. Her mind sings with good humour. Her lips begin to curl upwards with good humour. All in harmony.
'Imogen, have you something unkind to say of our companions? A few -' She conjures the right words to her with a searching wave of her off-hand, '- scurrilous whispers?' she asks, smile scythe-wide.
'No. No.'
'Come now, there's no one here but me. You can tell me.' She leans back. Dips the cloth into the bowl again. As she works, she says, 'They're an odd assortment, don't you think?'
Imogen snorts. 'Odder than you'n me?'
Laudna stops mid-wring. Water drips down her wrists, collects on the knees of her skirt, the floorboards. When Imogen looks at her, she finds her comment has earned her an unwavering stare, a wavering smile.
'We are a pair, you and I.' The statement has the lilt of a question.
'Yeah, Laud. Still.'
Delight, contentment, worms across Laudna's face. She gives a pleased 'Hm' but otherwise contents herself with wringing out the cloth, pressing it to Imogen's neck. A drip of water slides beneath her collar and she sighs, shivers. It's good. It's too hot in Bassuras and she has always liked the cold.
After a long time, Imogen says, 'They care too much.'
Laudna scoffs. Arches a dark brow.
Imogen pulls a face right back but amends her statement. 'They worry too much. They're always... Askin' questions. Watchin' me like I'm about t' lose it and it's - ha - it's a lot.'
Laudna sits still until she is sure Imogen has nothing more to add. Then, she nods. 'I imagine,' she starts, delicate, spinning her words gossamer thin for Imogen to wave away if ever they begin to bind her in a way she finds unpleasant, limiting, 'it is an adjustment. On all our parts. After all, you and I have travelled alone for years and when we did join a caravan or convoy, it was with the understanding that we keep up or be left behind. Now, with these people -' Her eyes drift to the closed door separating them from the others, '- that is no longer the case.' Laudna fixes her with her dark eyes; there is nothing harsher in them than curiosity. 'Do you dislike it so much? Because if you do, you know that you just have to say the word and we can leave. It can be you and I alone once more.'
A smile lifts one side of Imogen's mouth. 'I know.'
'I mean it. A single word - just a yes or leave or now will do - and we can, I don't know... We can climb out that window and steal a - oh! We can steal a crawler!' Imogen winces. Laudna changes tack. 'Or some other vehicle, or creature.'
'Laudna.'
'Ride off into the desert and disappear. Strike out in a new direction. We've grown - you've grown so much - nothing will stand in our way!'
'Laud,' she laughs. The effort of it hurts her head but it's nice to laugh. 'It's - I don't know. It's hard. It's like I spend all my life at these two - two levels of volume—real quiet and real loud. At the start, just me n' my dad. And then me n' you. And with these new folk... the volume gets a little louder which is - it's new and - a little frightenin', y'know? Cause I'm braced for it to get all too much, like it always does.' Laudna murmurs for her then, no words, only smooth quiet assurance. 'But it's nice too. To hear a little more n' not get so overwhelmed.'
They sit in that for a short time before Imogen blows out a frustrated breath, an incredulous laugh following it.
'Am I wrong? They're a lot.'
'You're not wrong.'
'But then, so are we.'
'I haven't a clue what you mean,' Laudna teases. She brightens immensely when it makes Imogen laugh again. It's like the moon—Catha, silver, shining—coming out from behind night clouds. Beautiful. Her smile is fond, understanding. She leaves the joke behind and says, 'You don't want to leave.'
'No. No, I don't. We're learnin' so much—about me and - and maybe about you-'
'Perhaps.'
'Is it weird that I'm kinda...excited? To see what we can do together? I mean - we took down Treshi. Even if we haven't caught him yet, he had to flee Jrusar. That's -' She shakes her head, amazed. 'That's not nothin'.' Laudna nods. Imogen continues, 'I just wish they weren't so much all the time. Weren't so worried. Especially about me. I need a little space, I reckon.' She frowns. 'I didn't used to get so angry.'
'You weren't hunting down megalomaniacs,' Laudna points out, quite right. 'Our friends, they worry.'
'I know, I know.'
'It shows they care.'
'I know.'
'In time, we'll have travelled together long enough to know what hits are -' She pauses, eyes drifting to where Imogen had taken her hit earlier; the red-and-pink scar where the metal had cut her, the nicks that haven't closed up, FCG running out of magic before the small wounds could be tended to, the smears of blood on her shirt. 'What hits are mere wounds and which are unbearable. And they will learn how much space to give. It will take a little time for them to understand.'
Imogen peers at her companion. While her words are not unfinished, there is something lingering in her tone, her mind.
'Understand what?'
Laudna tilts her head, eyes drifting upward slightly. Imogen can feel the tremor of thoughts as Laudna detects her presence, not within her mind but encompassing it as always; Imogen's mind spills far out from her own head, a swirling storm cloud, a rippling pool, and Laudna's mind is the thing in the depths, the thing that causes one or two of those ripples.
'That you are brilliant,' she tells her. 'Very capable. Extremely talented.'
Imogen softens. She laces her fingers with Laudna's. She thinks about what she means, when she talks about their friends, and finally settles on, 'I don't want to be pitied. I am not weak.'
'Certainly not.'
'You don't pity me.'
'No. No. When I look at you and think of what you do and what you have been through—Imogen, I am filled with admiration. You are -' Laudna opens her eyes wider as if to try and see Imogen better, to drink her fill of that vision. 'Remarkable. Utterly remarkable. They will see it.'
Imogen wonders if they will. She doubts it. Doubts that anyone will ever look at her the way Laudna looks at her. Doubts that anyone will ever see her the way Laudna sees her. She doesn't think that that she wants them to.