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When Bronya wakes up, it’s to the memory of a girl she’s never seen before.
She can’t remember details about the dream apart from the fragments floating around in her mind. She recognises their subconscious attempt to piece themselves together, but it is a futile effort. Her skin has gone cold from what seems to have been a harrowing dream—tip-toeing the edge of a nightmare. She presses her palms against her cheeks and squeezes her eyes tightly shut, trying to figure out the identity of this girl because she appears too often in her dreams, in a nameless form. She has midnight purple hair that fades into an enchanting blue, and lilac eyes that glitter like stars in a night sky.
Bronya thinks she’s pretty—much more than that, really, but they’ve never met before. She would have remembered, even if the girl was someone from her distant past because the memory categorisation system in her brain is swift and efficient, leaving no room for error or faults like this one.
In her struggle to recall the contents of her god-awful dream, her head starts to throb. Bronya leans the edge of her palm against her forehead and leans her head back against the back of the bed, though it provides little support for her limp body. She can’t make sense of it, not in this disposition, when a throbbing sense of familiarity reverberates throughout her body and leaves her sick to the stomach. Bronya tries to rack her brains, because now, more than ever, she needs to know who the mysterious girl in her dream is—the one responsible for bombarding her thoughts and containing all space in her mind.
Bronya leans backwards till she’s finally lying flat on the bed, her eyes gazing up at the ceiling. She clears all her thoughts and makes space for emptiness, a state of unthinking where there might be enough space for memory. She closes her eyes and she waits. She waits, and she counts under her breath, counting on the picture to fade back into her mind.
And when it does—Bronya’s breath hitches.
(In a faraway past, there was a world where there were no gods, no Aeons like they did then. It was when the creatures with a fraction of corrupt power were so forsaken that all the wars in the world were a battle of humankind against each other. Amid it all, there were two girls. They were small, merely a speck of dust in comparison to the vast world but satisfactorily contained within the miniscule space that accepted them and kept them safe.
Bronya saw herself in clear waters, looking into a lake that reflected the galaxy abovehead. Her hair was tied in ponytails to the sides, in the shape of drills, instead of the way they are let down in the far future. Her face looked a little younger, but her eyes are the same shade of grey. Then, she saw it—what seemed to be causing her so much agony. Bronya was on her knees, blood pooling from her forehead and trickling slowly down the curve of her face. She pulled the skin beneath her eyes and felt a shiver against her skin, a result of the unforgiving winds around those parts.
Bronya fled from the orphanage—the white building with high walls that were not far in the background, covered by the hedges and trimmed bushes of the garden. Bronya wasn’t sure how she found herself here, succumbing to her death in front of such a mesmerising lake—but, really she didn’t feel anything at all. Maybe she felt something, little things, like the growing weakness in her body that showed through tremors in her hands, or the sting from the wound.
They didn’t add up to much. Petty realisations, they were at most, because knowing them only made her wounds hurt that much worse. She had been on her knees for a while, but kneeling this way left them bruised and her skin torn because of the rough soil. She should not have come out her; her crutches were on the ground then and her broken leg was sore from bearing the weight of her body. Bronya, unable to keep herself seated, leaned to the side and fell weakly.
Looking at her, one might think that this didn’t happen often. Bronya was a talented fighter, even at the ripe age of seven. She knew how to defend herself. She may be petite, but her technique made up for what her physique lacked—or so, she told herself, before she ended up in a position like this. She’d never felt as alone as this, and perhaps that was why her heart ached so badly even though it remained unscathed from the supposed scuffle.
Bronya let out a breath and pulled her hand away from her head. Blood spilled between the gaps of her fingers, down her knuckles, and traced the lines of her palm like a stream of crimson. It would have been beautiful, but to die on such a pretty night would be a waste. Bronya tipped her head up to the sky and collapsed to the ground with a thud, on her arm that was already hurt enough before.
She winced, but she spared no further reaction after that. The sky truly was beautiful, the most captivating thing she’d ever laid her eyes on. She felt something warm around her neck, something uncomfortably sticky, and she wondered whether her blood would seep between the blades of grass and fertilise the soil. Bronya rolled onto her back, hands outstretched on the ground. She looked up at the stars and sought a friend.
For a moment, she wondered if a situation like this warranted any emotion. She couldn’t feel anything in her legs, and even now, her death reminded her only of the fact that was half of a human at best. Bronya didn’t move after that, neither putting in an attempt at mustering a self-pitying smile nor wasting a tear. She remained completely still, like a statue subject to the cruelty of an eternity of quietude.
She was thinking about something—someone, rather—even then. She felt somebody lingering at the back of her mind, but she could not recognise it, so she kept quiet. She closed her eyes weakly, succumbing to the fatigue dulling her mind.
Then, she felt something, a pair of hands grabbing her by the shoulders and rattling her awake. “----- is here! ----- has arrived!” the voice reached her, miraculously, from what felt like the unreachable depths of an abyss. Bronya hadn’t realised how close to dying she was until she noticed the sliver of light breaking through the darkness that fogged her vision. It was then when she realised how much she wanted to live; how deceiving the shackles of death could be—how easily it would have consumed her, had closed her eyes for a second longer and let her body get colder.
To the feeling of being lifted off the ground, Bronya opened her eyes again and there it was—the girl with ombre hair, caressing her like they meant the world to each other. It was not one-sided, and Bronya could recognise it immediately. Something shifted in her chest like gears being set into clockwork, there was fire in her body like that of a young flame, and her heart was undeniably, and irrefutably, alive. Her eyes widened and that rumble in her chest erupted into something worse—desperation. She let out a gasp and pushed herself up with the support of the girl.
Bronya hadn’t seen her in forever, till that point. Her name…)
She cannot remember.
Then, a certain voice mumbles, “I think Bronya might be dead.” Pela leans over the commander. Bronya’s expression has contorted into one between worry and contempt, arguably because of her attempts at deciphering the cryptid dream.
At the sound of a foreign voice interrupting her train of thought, Bronya rouses from her slumber, groggier than when she first woke up. She grimaces to make her consciousness known, and Pela peels her gaze away from her phone. “Bronya! I was starting to think you would never wake up. Gepard probably wouldn’t be too happy if you died on us, you know,” she wags a finger.
“And you would be?” Bronya furrows her eyebrows, scratching her head. She tries her best to retain as much from the dream while not sounding too distracted during the brief exchange, otherwise, the intelligence officer over here might pull up a stethoscope and start checking if she’s ill. “A Silvermane Guard would never turn their back on their home,” Bronya recites out of habit because it’s the most fitting response to any question the latter might have. Her mind circles around the dream from seconds ago, trying to retain details from it while it’s still fresh in her mind.
It’s a struggle, especially when Pela’s chattering in her background, talking about Gepard’s hundredth attempt at making a simple plate of bacon and eggs but somehow failing at it once again. He is living proof that humans are far from perfect, and a person can’t be good at everything because somehow, the masterful swordsman and fighter can’t make breakfast to save his life—as Pela comments.
Bronya, in the foreground, is still thinking about the girl with a missing name, how close she’d been to finding out anything about her but being so far regardless. Her chest tightens, and the ridge in her heart that had been created by loneliness widens. She doesn’t know why she’s so interested, and she comes back to this doubt now and then when she finds herself digging too deep. Sometimes, she thinks of reasons like the deep-rooted, inexplicable familiarity or the affection that doubles her over at any memory of the girl. Bronya knows, by a large chance, she might only be a figment of her imagination—but wouldn’t it be so nice if she was real?
“Oi, Bronya,” the officer pouts, snapping her fingers to catch her attention. “If you keep frowning like that, you’re going to have wrinkles by the age of thirty.”
“Pela,” Bronya says back, unimpressed. She would have had a lot to say, but she determines that most of them are better off kept to herself. She sighs. “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t know why you’d come in here to look for me in the first place,” she continues with a sigh, rising from the bed. Bronya lowers her head to the floor, to the purple that’s a royal shade and it’s no wonder that the girl from her dreams returns to her so frequently. It’s because of the damn carpet.
“Don’t I always come in here, though?” Pela quirks an eyebrow, tucking her phone away.
A valid point, indeed. Bronya withholds a response for a second. “Now that you know I’m alive, you don’t have to linger around here anymore,” she speaks up, along with a subtle invitation for her colleague to leave her be. She has better things to contain herself with, and she’s sure she has that much time with how uneventful things have been around the frontlines lately.
Pela continues walking forward, instead. “Before you try to shoo me away,” she begins, holding a finger up. She is well aware of the stare pointed at her upon her advancement. Bronya looks away to promise her silence, and the former continues, “We’re having a guest over tomorrow. A member of the Wildfire.”
“Wildfire?” Bronya enunciates, turning her head quizzically. “Why can’t Gepard deal with it?” And it’s a reasonable question because her presence is rarely required for meetings like this. Her expertise lies in delivering commands—just as her title would suggest—and it is difficult enough monitoring the influx of soldiers every time they are dispatched on missions to account for emergencies. Nothing is easy around these parts, especially when the current version of the world is no better than anything before.
(Although, those are only cover-up excuses to hide the fact that she doesn’t like interacting with people outside the bubble over here.)
“I don’t know,” Pela shrugs. “Gepard told me you had to be there. I’ll be there too. It’s an important meeting about some change in decision, so it needs coordination from both sides.”
Bronya doesn’t think it’s a good enough reason to warrant her presence. It’s not like she has much of a say in it either unless she wants to ruin her reputation whining over a meeting she doesn’t want to attend. It shouldn’t be that hard, she persuades herself, because they’ve worked closely with the faction on many other occasions. She has never met the captains on their side, surprisingly, but it’s about time to hope that they aren’t so bad at conversation. “Fine,” Bronya relents, given no choice. “If you plan on showing up, make sure you aren’t caught up with your phone. That way, it’ll feel like you’re actually there.”
Pela, who’d been happily on her way to leave the room, having successfully delivered the news as she was tasked to do, turns her head. She pushes her glasses higher onto her nose bridge and squints her eyes at the captain who can’t hold her tongue. “I wonder how you’re able to say so much without letting a single emotion pass over your face. Curiouser and curiouser.”
The corners of Bronya’s lips turn downwards. She rolls her eyes and turns to pull her uniform out of the cupboard, disacknowledging her friend’s snarky words, and in the meanwhile, Pela takes the opportunity to return to the room. She’ll find somewhere else to humour herself, likely trying to crack another mysterious code in the lab or bothering Gerard if he’s still on campus.
It takes her only a few moments after that to think about the dream again, both of them, one distinctly clearer than the other but either one leaving as many questions as the last. Bronya feels strange, an uncomfortable burning at the back of her throat that makes her think she has something to say. She lifts her head and places her hand against her neck, eyebrows furrowed. Can you find my name, Bronya? she hears an unknown voice trying to reach her.
(A pair of hands held Bronya by the shoulders, clutching her with so much force, it was as though her bare hands were enough to claw her out of the shackles of death. Bronya struggled to remember the details of what ensued earlier—a fight, perhaps, because her wounds weren't old and it didn’t seem like she’d gotten her bandages wrapped that much time ago.
“Bronya! Bronya! What happened?” the nameless girl called out to her, voice stretched thin with distress. They were be friends, or at least, they weren’t strangers.
Bronya felt something envelop her, something nearly as warm as an embrace. At this point, however long she must have harboured these feelings, it seemed like she wasn’t accustomed to them just yet. It was not a sensation, but rather a series of thoughts that led her to this half-cooked epiphany. Bronya peered through bleary eyes and damp eyelashes, and there were a pair of faded eyes staring back at her. They looked like they were nearly as agonised as Bronya; pupils dilated, shaky eyes. Her words caught in her throat and she looked down slowly, where she came to notice the damp fingers that were holding onto her. “Please don’t leave me, Bronya! ----- cannot live without you!” the girl cried, pulling her closer.
They were hugging then, or as close to it as they could without Bronya reaching her arms out. She was stunned, and even then, she tried to talk. She tried to say something, utter a single sound so she could confirm that was alive because she hated seeing her friend—a label that she could confidently say, given how much they seemed to care about each other—crying over her. Crying over what? Maybe because they were too young to lose each other, and the possibility was imminent.
“Your hands…” Bronya mumbled weakly, avoiding a name. She couldn’t tell why it was so necessary to not utter her name. Maybe it was the fear of saying the wrong name because the girl with indigo hair and starry eyes wasn’t the same one she’d always known. Bronya looked at her, and she had a gut-wrenching feeling that her eyes weren’t always such a jarring shade of red. She could not be sure, but her hunch must be right, otherwise, she would not have felt something in the pits of her stomach.
Bronya, leaning away from her friend, held her hand and lifted it. “They are red…” she pointed out and rubbed her thumb against the smaller, paler palm in her grip.
The girl looked down, and for a second, the awry red in her eyes flashed. “----- did it to protect you, Bronya, because it was my fault that you got hurt. It hurts very much to see you this way. My heart cannot take any more of this. She deserved it. Anybody who hurts Bronya would deserve it. Don’t hate me, Bronya. Don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you…” Bronya said, and it was a promise more than reassurance. A promise that she would not hate her. She meant it with sincerity. Even if she tried, Bronya could not hate her, even though she was sitting there with bloody hands, reeking of another person’s stench that wasn’t her own. She could not hate her, even though her eyes were such a cruel shade because she would always be the most gentle girl in Bronya’s eyes.)
Bronya finds herself standing in the middle of an empty corridor. Her eyebrows crease at the idea of being plunged face-first into another dream when she was supposed to be on her way to Gepard’s office in the meanwhile. Bronya walks with slow, staggering steps because the dream was so strange that she doesn’t know what to make of it anymore.
It has started to feel more like a memory than a dream, something that happened instead of being a mere fiction of her imagination. In trying to recall the events, her mind goes blank. Bronya doesn’t know how long she’s been standing here, but it must have been a while since her heels have started to ache from the pressure and her skin is cold from standing in the corridor that’s always too cold.
“Bronya,” she hears behind her, and she recognises the voice too well. Bronya exhales and turns around, where she notices the captain approaching her at perfect timing—well if she wanted to see him, to begin with. “You’ve been here since I left my office to fetch papers from the storage. It’s been twenty minutes, and you haven’t moved an inch.”
It’s his way of sounding concerned—this interrogation. Bronya is grateful that he cares, in a however roundabout way he can with his unscrupulous attitude, but she’s better off not being asked questions about something she can’t explain herself. “Good morning,” she greets in a monotonous voice, somehow masking her discomfort. “I was busy with my thoughts. Forgot I had to walk,” she lies, though it’s probably not all that serious, to begin with.
“I see,” Gepard notes, striding forward. There is an air of confidence that surrounds him as he does, marching in a soldier-like manner with his arms swinging uniformly by his side. “I take it that Pela has informed you about the meeting with the ally faction tomorrow? You’ll have to be up earlier than your usual time because they’ll be arriving in the morning.”
“Noted,” Bronya nods, confirming her understanding. “On which note, I won’t be around today. I will be visiting Belobog for a short while for an errand.”
“Oh,” Gepard begins, checking his wristwatch. “If you’re heading to Belobog, I need you to stop by my sister’s shop to pick up some equipment. There has been a decrease in the weapon stocks, but there have been increasing threats around the area because of the approaching winter. I can’t attend to it myself because I have important business to handle but I trust you’ll be able to take on the task just fine,” he elucidates. Clearly, anything Bronya said must have flown over his head, and the man has a habit of making transparent excuses just like herself.
She would like to deny the offer, but she knows no excuse she has in store would help her weasel out of such a demand, especially when it comes to Gepard. All is negligible in the face of duty, he would tell her before giving her a lecture, and Bronya would rather attend to the assignment than deal with that. “I understand,” she acknowledges, and Gepard doesn’t spare another second after that.
“Thank you, and good luck on that journey,” he nods stoically, turning on his heel. Bronya isn’t allowed to respond after that, because he’s off flouncing in the opposite direction, the same way he came. She watches him, too dazed to believe that the entire interaction happened, and decides she’s better off heading to Belobog instead of worrying about that enigma of a man.
(The first time they met was under unfortunate circumstances.
One would think that nothing good could happen to a friendship, should it be born out of situations threaded with so much agony. But stars can only emerge in the darkness, so that statement must have been created by a cynicist who doesn’t know how to hope. Bronya understood the falsity of that assumption after an interaction with a girl from her orphanage whom she’d never met before. It was such a simple beginning to something so enormous; when she was in the clinic trying to tend to her wounds and a fellow orphan traipsed into her life equipped with a bandage and cotton balls.
Bronya was a sensitive child; not emotionally, but physically. Her bones were brittle and her skin was easily torn, but she tried not to make too much of a fuss about it. She found herself injured so frequently, she’d gotten used to it with time. Waking up with bruised knees or realising an excruciating pain over a cut she didn’t know she had was normal. Adults at the orphanage didn’t care much for the children, even though it was their life’s goal to pretend they did in front of the watchful eyes of a righteous society, so Bronya would make a home for herself in the small room of the clinic.
It was an easy feat when the rest of the world didn’t open its arms out to her, and she was left looking for comfort in places that couldn’t deny her presence. Having woken up with another slit on her arm from cutting it against a tree bark when she was running with the other kids, Bronya pressed her hand against the open wound and hobbled into the clinic. As always, there was nobody to watch what she did.
At that age, she didn’t know the names of things, but she knew how to tend to her wounds. She kicked the lowest drawer of the medicine cabinet and leaned downwards to choose bandages for her arm. Bronya chewed on her lower lip anxiously, trying to retrieve the equipment without injuring herself further. In her attempt, she accidentally knocked over a metal tray with her elbow. She stared at the mess with wide eyes, and suddenly, there was a sting. A sting in her arm, then everywhere else. The ever-familiar sensation of something terribly damp enveloped her and her chest tightened.
Looking at it all, Bronya was certain she’d landed herself in boiling water.
She felt a presence lingering at the door, watching her. She was apprehensive about looking, but it dawned on her that no adult would be watching her in silence. Bronya turned her head to the doorway and noticed a girl around her age looking at her, hugging a stuffed toy to her chest. She calmed down a little, but she wasn’t at ease just yet. She looked away to hide her face.
“Bronya,” the girl beckoned to her, even though they’d never interacted before. “Bronya is hurt?” she asked, taking a step forward. Bronya looked at her again, taking a step backwards. She didn’t want to involve herself with the latter when they’re no better than strangers to each other. They were distant acquaintances at best because they’d played with each other and the other children on weekend mornings, sat at the same breakfast table on weekdays and slept in the same room every night. They never interacted before, because Bronya was closed off and from her observations, the latter was too.
“----- is worried,” the other girl told her, stepping over the clutter on the ground. Without a warning, she held Bronya’s hands and pulled her closer. It was an awkward interaction, knowing that the most they knew about each other were what they noticed through furtive glances and dinner tables, but Bronya didn’t resist her grip. She was fascinated, to say the least, at the fact that this girl with pleading eyes was so determined to help her. “Let me heal your wounds. I will make it all better.”
Bronya was inclined to deny the offer. She looks down at her wound, blood pooling between the gaps of her fingers and an ugly gash left behind. There were still splinters from the tree and while she’d like to help herself, she would have to believe that it wouldn’t be an easy task. Not to mention, the state of the clinic at this moment is… disastrous, and it would get her into trouble if she couldn’t fix it up quickly. Bronya looked back up at the girl, hesitant, but she asked, “Why?”
“----- cares for Bronya,” she confessed, and although it should have been revelation, there was a feeling in her chest that suggested she'd always known. “----- wants to care for Bronya, and heal her wounds,” she said, threading their fingers together. It was such an intimate moment for two children who should not have known each other before then, and Bronya felt things that she never did before. She could not recognise those feelings, and she was not an expert at hiding them either. She felt heat in her cheeks, then at the tips of her ears, like an ocean of fire was flooding her face. She felt heat in her palms, and eventually found her rubbing them against the fabric of her skirt in an attempt to scrub the inescapable clamminess. She was overwhelmed by a multitude of emotions she was not capable of understand, but for what it was worth, Bronya nodded her head.
Upon receiving Bronya's approval, the girl led her carefully to the bed at the edge of the wall. She held her by the waist and lifted her onto the bed so she could sit comfortably. She was cautious to steal a peek into the corridor before shutting the door, but it seemed like she knew enough about the schedule to know there wouldn't be any adults in the halls at the hour. She was aware of the glaring issue with whatever she had offered to do—as were most children when it came to punishments—but she didn't hesitate once.
Bronya leaned forward, following the girl with a concerned stare. Her heart was racing in her chest, and she was sure her face was helplessly red. She prayed that she wasn’t ill, otherwise, she’d be subject to lie on a rigid bed for days and she’d be living off nothing but watery oatmeal. The girl returned to her with paper bag of cotton balls, a bottle of antiseptic, and a bandage to wrap the wound. “Let me see your arm,” she said gently, taking a seat on the bed beside Bronya.
Bronya didn’t want to, because she knew the injury was hideous and might scare her away. She clasped her hand tighter around her arm and tried to hide it, but her attempts to shy away were barely subtle. The girl, her make-believe doctor, clasped a hand over her hers with a reassuring smile. Her actions felt tailored; hesitant. Her arm would pause ever so often when it was lifted, and it would look to anyone else as though it was forced, but Bronya found sincerity in her eyes that meant otherwise. Their eyes met, and she said, “I have seen worse things. I will not be scared.”
It was like she could read Bronya’s mind.
Bronya lowered her head and averted her gaze. Slowly, she pulled her hand away from the injury and pushed her shoulder forward for the other girl to see. She was still scrutinising her injury and the rest of her arm which was slathered messily with blood. The girl was expressionless, and Bronya thought this was strange. She was conditioned to be unfazed in the face of such, but she knew many children her age who would have burst into tears at the mere sight of blood.
“Trust -----, okay?” the girl made her promise.
Bronya wondered if she should. Her stomach fluttered like the wings of a butterfly and as good as she was at hiding her feelings, she didn’t like the sensation. She searched for any reason to remain silent, but the earnestness in the girl's eyes made it impossible for her to remain quiet. “Okay,” she replied inaudibly, speaking for the first time.
And as was promised, the nameless hero kept her safe.)
Bronya isn’t new to the Belobog. In fact, she would be able to draw a labelled map on the spot based on what she remembers of it from the back of her head. She is fond of the place, but she visits so often that she gets sick of it sometimes. She doesn’t visit Boulder Town often—the Underworld alternative of the city—because she is told that its buildings are eroding and its fabric of reality is tearing because of the chaos down there. Upon hearing news like this, Bronya reminds herself to be thankful for leading the portion of the soldiers that aren’t dispatched there—otherwise, her job would be that much harder.
It shouldn’t be a long journey, after hopping on a single-cabin train that would drop her off in the central district. Bronya, on her way to catch one, notices Gepard strutting towards his car, with his signature grumpy frown on his face. He never knows how to loosen up a little (even though Bronya is no better when it comes to smiling) and anyone might believe that it’s the reason he’s so stuck-up all the time.
Bronya decides not to stare before he notices her and strides over with another assignment in tow. She catches a ride from the station that’s not far from the Silvermane’s headquarters, and on a weekday afternoon such as this one, it’s no surprise that there are no passengers to accompany her. She hands a ticket to the collector and nuzzles into a seat at the very back of the train, the seat that’s always left empty and the one she always takes, whether or not the train is vacant.
Bronya leans her arm against the windowsill, propping her elbow up against it. She leans her cheek against her arm and looks out of the glass, waiting for the train to embark on its journey. She feels the train rumble beneath her feet, and the coal engine running not far in the front. Not long later, with the absence of any more passengers, it embarks on its journey. Bronya tips her head back against the seat with magenta cushions and stares absent-mindedly at the view.
It has always been her favourite part about being on the train, watching the view as it slowly melts into a blur of colours dragged by the bristles of a paintbrush. Bronya rests her fingertips against the windows and notices her reflection against the glass, staring back at her with that smileless expression. She looks herself in the eye, and they are haplessly grey, humming under her breath.
It would be nice to ride the train with somebody else, she thinks at random because it dawns on her that she has never travelled with anybody before. Gepard is a man of solidarity who would much rather die than be near a woman (trauma left by his older sister, perhaps), and Pela would much rather die than be anywhere close to the sun’s exposure. There is a reason her whiter-than-snow skin doesn’t have a dash of red on it at all.
The train can be crowded at times, mostly on weekday evenings or throughout weekends, but Bronya’s too busy during those times to catch the train at all. And when the cabin’s empty, it’s usually empty throughout so peace comes in a package-deal with loneliness too. Bronya feels her eyes coming to a close again, but her chest feels tighter than it did before. A suffocating feeling; it makes her lungs stuffier, more spaceless, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. She sits up, looking down at her feet but her vision divides and blurs. Bronya can’t feel anything, but there is so much more to it than numbness.
Naturally, thoughts of falling asleep bring Bronya returning thoughts of the girl from her dreams—the one with a pretty face, and bloodied hands. It must seem like she was a fierce protector of things, possessive in better words, and from the passion in her voice it would seem like she cared about Bronya dearly… or, at least, the Bronya in that dream. She has never worn her hair up like that, in drills, and she’s sure her chin is sharper than what she saw.
Maybe the girl in her dreams fell in love with a different version of herself, and her dreams were a way for Bronya to fulfil her loneliness. That way, she could pretend that loving her is not an impossible feat and in another universe, that which is in her mind, she has a friend who would do anything for her. Bronya has been dreaming about her for a while but, sometimes, more often than not, they are recurring dreams of the same situation. Bronya is intelligent, but she can’t fathom what any of it means. They are cryptid in the sense that they are sensical, but she can’t decipher their meaning.
A few minutes later, the train makes a stop in the middle of the tracks. Bronya tilts her head to the window and notices the view of the Underworld, or the entrance to it at least. It’s in the middle of the road between Belobog and the headquarters, which are at the edge of the Overworld. She squints her eyes at the opening door, not knowing who could be boarding from such a place. Not many from that part of the world choose to come over to the other side, mainly because the security there is so tight and so many of the residents don’t dare to step foot out of their houses, that Bronya would have assumed they’d much rather conduct their business in Boulder Town than waste their time travelling elsewhere.
Then, eventually, another passenger boards the train, and Bronya’s lips part. She follows the stranger with her eyes, teetering into the train while brushing her hands against the top of the seats. She has electrifying purple hair, a portion of it glowing gently like a luminescent firefly, and mellow eyes that are kept on the floor. She is dashing, in a midnight princess kind of way, but that is not what shocks Bronya. “The girl from my dreams,” she murmurs, surprised.
Unfortunately for her, the stranger doesn’t spare a glance in her direction and sits in the row that’s diagonal to Bronya’s right, across the narrow corridor. She leans her back against the chair and pulls out a manual to read. She’s wearing tedious clothing that’s easily impractical in Bronya’s eyes—instead of a simple dress, she has cloth tied to her arms and a rope hanging from her hip. Even though she doesn’t know her very well, Bronya would be certain the girl from her dreams—wearing a simple dress—would never entertain extravagant clothing such as this.
Bronya continues to stare out of curious habit, wondering if she may be the girl from her dreams. It would take a miracle and a coincidence to work hand-in-hand, and it makes even less sense than they meet under such boring circumstances, but she’d like to think that there’s more to them than what shows on the surface. Although she would like to act on her suspicions, Bronya knows better than to approach a stranger with no reason apart from, “I think we’ve met before… in my dreams.”
By the time she reaches the end of her thoughts, the train comes to a halt. Bronya’s eyes travel to the stranger, who promptly packs her things away and stands up, almost hitting the roof of the carriage with her height. She rises as well, hands on the seats for support. They approach the opening door of the train and Bronya doesn’t realise how much she’s been staring until a pair of violet eyes turn to her. Bronya gulps in response, expecting her to say something but she’s returned with a look of raised eyebrows and before she knows it, the stranger’s gone.
Bronya slips out in time before the doors close, but once she’s on the road, she can’t see the stranger anymore. She didn’t come out that much later, so she should’ve still been visible in the area but even looking in the distance doesn’t show her a silhouette. Bronya leans her hand against her hip and squints her eyes. Maybe she’s seeing things.
───────
But there is a half chance that she isn’t.
Bronya sees the pretty stranger for the second time on the streets when she’d been busy in her mind trying to figure out a plan for the day. It’s not like she wanted to drop by the camp, but she’ll have to make sure she visits at a strategic time or she’ll be stuck helping out in the middle of chaos. Bronya looks to her sides as she’s strolling down the road, at all the familiar buildings that stand high and tall, and navigates to the hub of stores around the statue. She visits the bookshop enough to know it’s there.
Then, upon making a turn, she catches sight of the stranger standing in front of the Golden Theatre, reading a sign on the closed door. Locals, or frequent visitors, would know that the building is closed on weekday mornings and its stingy owner doesn’t open its doors. It looks like the stranger hasn’t inferred that, from the way she’s knocking persistently in hopes of somebody letting her in.
Bronya pauses in the middle of the road, watching her from a cautious distance. She’s standing in broad daylight, and with how much she’s staring, she expects the stranger to have noticed by now. However, the latter looks perfectly contained with her knocking, which later escalates into yelling as she demands to be let inside for business she has to conduct. Bronya notices passersby staring the stranger down as they pass her, wondering if she’s gone mad.
She thinks about approaching her and sparing her from any more embarrassment, but Bronya knows herself well enough to know she won’t be able to manage the words to help. She purses her lips and averts her gaze, continuing on her way down the path. When she reaches the front of the theatre, the fervent knocking stops, and the stranger pulls away from it. She bends to lift her bag off the ground, and upon turning, notices Bronya watching her from the pavement.
She pauses too, her bag dangling mid-air with its contents threatening to tip out. Bronya doesn’t move an inch, nor does she look away, despite knowing she must. She continues to stare rudely, as though searching for something in those violent eyes, an ounce of red emerging from her irises. Bronya finds herself squinting, taken aback by that distinct red that hides under a blanket of calm purple.
Just when Bronya thinks that, maybe, they were sharing an intimate moment of silence as two souls reunited by coincidence, the stranger rolls her eyes and storms away in annoyance.
(Bronya’s strained relationship with injuries didn’t get any better over the years. Eventually, with time, she started to care less about the pain since it bridged the gap between her and her newfound friend. It was with little things that they learned about love—like bandaging each other’s fingers after being paper cut during arts-and-crafts sessions, delivering potato soup on sick days (in secret, because the adults wouldn’t allow it), or combing each other’s damp hair before bedtime.
Bronya wasn’t any good at conversation, and she discovered that her friend was popular among the other children at the orphanage. They adored her, and they treated her well, contrary to the way they denied Bronya’s presence entirely. Bronya would search for pockets in time to get her attention, like deliberately tripping over a rock while running so she’d be noticed, or walking up to her in the middle of the night because of a nightmare she needed calming from.
And her friend would help her every time.
For that, Bronya was grateful. She felt things because of her friend that she didn’t know existed, and many of these feelings were so incredible that she didn’t want to let go of them at all. She couldn’t get used to them, but she held onto them so tightly that she didn’t know how to live her life without them—and, by extension, the friend she adored so dearly.)
Bronya stops in the middle of the path again, and her head throbs with a splitting headache. She staggers back against a wall for support and lowers her head, unable to focus. Her breathing has gotten heavier, and a bead of perspiration trickles from her forehead. Her stomach churns and she feels each push and pull sensation inside to such a great extent that it leaves her nauseous. She sees the girl from her dreams again, her face leaning close with such a delicate smile on her lips.
Bronya presses her arm against her head and her knees feel weak, as though she’s on the cusp of collapsing unconscious in the middle of the road. A gaping hole grows wider in her chest, leaving an abyss of space within her that cannot be stitched together with needles or thread. Bronya looks around the road, at the hundreds of faces that pass by her, and a shiver runs against her skin. A cold winter breeze blows and suddenly, she’s aware of the chill running against her spine.
Groggily, she lifts her head to identify her location and finds herself standing in front of the bookshop she meant to reach. She must’ve been working on auto-pilot because she can’t remember anything about the past few moments except never-ending darkness. Bronya lets out a sigh and attempts to push the door open. It doesn’t budge. She tries again and the bell above her head rings. Then, she notices the sign reading ‘closed’ right in front of her face.
Bronya stands back, frowning at the closed door with betrayal. She leans her head towards the door, trying to peer inside but it’s too bright on the outside and the inside is too dark for her to see through something so opaque. She stands back and knocks her fist against the wall. “After coming all this way,” she curses under her breath, staring with folded arms at the closed door. “Can’t believe it had to be closed today,” Bronya grimaces and kicks the glass.
If she’d done so any harder, it might have broken too.
She combs her hands through her hair and rolls her eyes, deciding she’s better off taking her business elsewhere, lest the day will go to waste. She turns on her heel and, to her surprise, spots a certain somebody looking at her from the other side of the road. Bronya narrows her eyes and leans forward, not because she struggles to see but because she believes her eyes are playing tricks on her again.
On the other side of the road, is the stranger she has run into for the third time this day, staring at her with a blank expression. She looks engrossed in her thought, but Bronya is confident that she’s staring. She feels conscious of it, too much, and there is a burning urge deep within her to walk up and confront the young lady. Perhaps she’s being followed, perhaps they’ve known each other from before but Bronya can’t remember and neither of them can do anything else but stare at each other. It’s starting to get frustrating—the dreams that hit her while she’s trying to go on with her day peacefully, setting her day into a reverse clockwork and messing up her mind.
Bronya doesn’t even know where this started from—this mess. If she had to be completely honest, she couldn’t even be sure who the Bronya in her dreams is. There is nothing about them that’s similar, not the colour of their eyes, their hairstyle, or their personalities. She doesn’t have a single ounce of information on the source of her dreams, or what in the Aeons’ names they’re trying to tell her every night.
Bronya’s chest burns again.
(It is harder to keep friends than to make them.
No, it is not a fact, nor a statistic, but it should be.
Friendships are difficult things, so fickle and easily broken that one would reckon a glass heart is easier to maintain than them. Friends come and go, that is the moral of life. Bronya abided by it for a long time, convincing herself that would be the one way she would avoid getting hurt in her life. It was not a lesson she learned willingly, but something that grew onto her with time when she cared too much about understanding and being understood.
Bronya hadn't had many experiences with friends, or people in general, but she knew that she would rather a tragedy occured in the world than have to lose her one true friend. They didn't know each other well, but it didn’t take that much for them to form an attachment. Bronya was the product of unstable parenthood. She tried to survive alone in a world that was so wide but had no space for little girls with issues like her, and the attempts left her uncaved and helpless—but her friend loved her still. Her friend loved her conditionally, with so much of her heart, that Bronya could forget that she didn’t have one of her own.
Two broken pieces made one whole, and Bronya felt a little better every time she was around her. She learned to love everything that made her—her laughter, the way the skin crinkled around her eyes when she smiled, the way she held her dress when she ran. The world then was tough, and it got tougher with every year that beasts tormented the planet, but Bronya could not feel hatred when she was so filled with love for her friend who taught her that.
On one of those days, so filled with adoration, Bronya was practising a new technique in the bedroom. She knew her friend was watching her from the back, shaking with excitement and eyes afire with an enthusiastic flame. She knew she was being watched by an enemy—rather, a girl with short, white hair who didn’t like her very much—but Bronya paid no mind to her. She turned a shield into a project bunny, just as her friend had taught her a while back, and suddenly, holding her around the shoulders, she was pulled into a warm embrace. Bronya lurched forward and turned to look over her shoulder, where she found her friend nuzzling her face into her neck and holding her tight.
“You’re the best, Bronya!” she cried.)
Bronya awakes again as the picture in her mind crumbles to black. Her heart races at a sickening pace in her chest, and a second later, she might find herself unconscious on the ground with how dizzy she is at present. She averts her gaze to the road but she can barely make out shapes with her blurry eyes, and she doesn’t know how she’ll last herself throughout the day if she keeps slipping into a state of unconsciousness. It’s dangerous—what happens to her around that stranger, that she prays, for her own sake, that they don’t meet again.
Bronya teeters against the wall and leans her head against it, the back of her neck damp with sweat. She tries to think of what to do, and where to go, but her face has gone pale and she can’t make sense of her fumbled thoughts. It has gotten to a hazardous point—these indecipherable thoughts—so Bronya makes it a point to consult Pela about them when she’s home.
But it dawns on her that she can’t leave just yet unless she wants to earn herself a lecture by Gepard. He’s the last person in the entire galaxy whom she’d like to give her excuses.
Bronya looks across the street and notices the workshop, where she might be able to rest for a bit and pick up what she needs. She might be able to purchase a diary there because Serval has a habit of keeping around more knick-knacks than items that would be relevant to her workshop. Bronya steps away from the wall and brushes her dress, then her hair, and hopes that she can’t look any worse than she already does.
And once again, she prays that she’s not unlucky enough to chance upon the stranger of her dreams.
───────
Alas, it would seem like luck isn’t on Bronya’s side today.
It doesn’t take her long to reach the workshop, even though she’s still in a daze from the dreams she’s been lapsing into without control, and the sickening feeling that plagues her relentlessly. Bronya hobbles inside thoughtlessly, scanning her surroundings with a careful eye to look for something that might be of use. She doesn’t pay enough attention, at first, to notice who else is inside with her, because she knows once Serval is around, she’ll make her presence known effortlessly.
All of a sudden, when she roams far enough, Bronya hears a shriek. She snaps her head in the direction of the sound but before she can make sense of what’s going on, she’s grabbed by the collar and thrust against a bookcase. Bronya groans and closes her eyes to brace for the impact, but she isn’t hit after that. “Are you following me?” a voice barks, so Bronya slowly looks up again. It’s then when she notices a pair of furiously red eyes glaring at her with the terror of a thousand, forcing an answer out of her.
Bronya lowers her gaze and it dawns on her, then, that it’s the stranger from earlier who’s staring at her with so much pent-up frustration. At such proximity, heaving breaths against each other’s lips and their noses almost touching, Bronya loses herself again. Her head spins, but she cannot compose herself this way. She is backed up against a bookshelf, and her arms cannot move. Bronya tries to focus on the red to keep herself grounded, but she cannot manage the strength. “I could ask you the same. It’s not as though I ran into you first,” she forces out through gritted teeth.
The stranger says nothing after that, perhaps realising the audacity she must have had to confront somebody she has never met before and accuse them of stalking. “Shut your trap,” she curses, rolling her eyes nonchalantly. She releases her grip on Bronya and turns away, as though she hadn’t done anything at all. Bronya’s skin boils at the flippant treatment so she stalks forward and grabs the stranger by the shoulder, spinning her around and pinning her wall.
“Who do you think you are?” she seethes, voice dripping with a fatal kind of venom that could easily kill an army. Her eyes have started to flicker with uncontrollable anger, and this seems to instil fear in the stranger who had the temerity to sound so accusatory. “What are your intentions? Because you must know me from somewhere if you’re able to sneer at me even from afar.”
The stranger scoffs. “And I’m surprised you don’t know me, princess.”
Bronya recoils at the name. She draws her eyebrows together, and so deeply, that wrinkles emerge against her forehead. She glares with poison in her eyes, trying to scry out any similarities in her features. Yes—she looks familiar but Bronya thought that was merely a trick by her mind. She parts her lips, wishing to say something, but her voice hushes into a whisper. “Am I supposed to know you?” she begs the question, more gentle now and her expression softer.
Something seems to change in the stranger’s demeanour too. Her edges soften and she’s no longer frowning the same way. The red in her eyes melt into purple but, then, she promptly turns her face away and says, “You’ll realise tomorrow.”
Then, she’s gone, like she never existed, to begin with.
───────
Serval pokes her head out of the staff's room a minute too late to have caught the argument. "Did my brother chase you away again? I see he's too afraid to visit his beloved sister again," she laughs boisterously, strolling out with an ink-stained face and a wrench in her hands.
She isn't too far off on the brother part, Bronya acknowledges and wallows in annoyance after that.
───────
(Good things cannot last in a cruel world.
They exist momentarily as a deliverer of hope to people with pure hearts, but they must wither away when the time comes. Even the stars will die one day and when it happens, the universe will dissipate into a cold and congealing place.
On one of those days, Bronya was torn away from her friend before she had any right to express herself. It was then when her eyes were opened to the brutality of the world, how little it cared for the little people that resided within it. Her friend was snatched away from her, and all that was left of her was a mere hairpin and a mirage of memories for her to cling to. At that age, Bronya could hardly understand the severity of everything that was happening, but she was certain that anything that meant her separation from her friend could not be cherishable.
When Bronya saw her friend again, after an eternity of separation, her tears knew no end. It had taken a lot out of her to fight to that point—to demand seeing her friend once more. She had to scream, beg, and threaten the same people who did not listen to her before, swearing that she would end her life if she could not be reunited with her friend again. And she knew, deep down, that she would be able to end her life easier if it meant she could not see her friend once more because the world had no worth in Bronya’s eyes without her. She cried and cried for hours, holding her friend so tightly and with so much desperation, and loosening her arms for a second might mean she would disappear again.
Bronya could not afford to lose her again. That day, she promised her friend under the light of a hundred artificial stars in a lab with chilling metal walls, that she was the only one that mattered to her the most—not the tests, or the real world, or anyone else. Bronya swore to look for her again, no matter how far they would be from each other, even if it meant having to cross the world or traversing the afterlife to be reunited with her again. She did not know how well she could keep to that promise, but she knew herself well enough not to break it.
Before they parted, her friend looked at her with the light of a supernova burning in her own eyes and held her by her jaw. Then, she tilted her head and pressed their lips together, murmuring, “I gave you my first kiss, Bronya! You'll have to kiss me back when you return to take me home.”)
Bronya wakes up on a couch in the middle of an office that isn’t her own. She tip-toes the in-between of asleep and awake, but when the reality of everything that could have happened crashes down on her, she jolts up. Her eyes fly wide open and her cheeks burn bright red at the memory. She clasps a hand over her mouth and her heart starts drumming a rhythm in her chest, stringing a series of beats she has never heard before. Bronya makes an embarrassed sound as she rewinds the dream in her mind, and the thought doesn’t even cross her mind as to why she’s not in her room, to begin with.
“You’re awake,” Pela exclaims, surprised, which isn’t too good of a sign to work with. Bronya turns her gaze to the intelligence officer who’s approaching her kindly with a glass of water, and it makes sense to her why she’s in a room that’s not her own. “You passed out in front of the building, like right in front of the train station. Lucky I was there or you’d be eating mud.” Bronya’s cheeks flush, and she scratches her head in confusion. She can’t figure out what must’ve happened, but she knows it had something to do with the dream. It’s going to be a problem if this continues to happen because she’ll have work to do, and she can’t afford to keep passing out over these stupid dreams.
“Bronya,” Pela snaps her fingers, noticing her slipping into another trance. She shoves the cup of water into her hands, which Bronya dazedly accepts, and continues, “Your mind has been drifting off into another universe, these past few days. What’s going on with you? I’d say you’re lucky that Gepard hasn’t noticed this fainting spell of yours yet.”
Bronya tips her head back to drink the water, but the following epiphany crashes down on her with so much force that she almost forgets how to swallow. She stands up too quickly, which makes her stomach turn, but her colleague holds her down and makes her sit. “I forgot to do the task he told me to,” Bronya facepalms. “I don’t know what’s going on with me these days. There has to be a mistake.”
“Tell me,” Pela suggests, sitting down on the couch beside her. “If anything, I could probably solve your problem faster than you can, you know. You know I could.”
“I know,” Bronya sighs, shaking her head. “It’s just… I’ve been having strange dreams lately, and I can’t understand them. It’s always about the same person—a girl with purple hair, and purple eyes that sometimes turn red—but I don’t know her name. And the me that’s in the dream looks nothing like me now because she wears her ponytails in drills and she has a baby face. It looks like the both of us, being me and her, were in an orphanage together but I was not raised as an orphan in this life. Nor have I ever tied my hair into ponytails, much fewer drills. Then, I saw her today, when I was in Belobog.”
Bronya lets out a breath, pressing a hand against her chest. She glances at Pela who makes an increasingly quizzical expression, which, soon enough, morphs into one of realisation. She can’t figure from her expression what kind of mind-blowing epiphany she must have had, but she can only hope that it isn’t something so bizarre.
“Her, as in, the girl from your dreams?”
“Yes,” Bronya confirms, although it’s starting to sound a little strange now that she has said it out loud.
Pela rubs her chin in thought. “I think I have an idea as to what this might mean. But you have to promise that you’re not going to pummel me,” she says, looking up. It only makes Bronya wonder what exactly she has to suggest that would warrant a reaction of that sort.
“Pummel you?” Bronya scrunches her nose. “When have I ever done that?”
Pela shrugs. “Eh, then I’m pretty sure it has to do with reincarnation.” Bronya squints her eyes at the suggestion, unable to make sense of it. She sits back in thought, once again rubbing the back of her neck because she can’t understand where such a bizarre solution would have come from. It shouldn’t be possible—not when that sort of thing is impractical and has only been talked about in fiction. Science cannot prove the logic behind reincarnation, so there should be no reason as to why it would exist—not to mention, running into somebody you knew in your last life, and have been dreaming about relentlessly, is such a perfect coincidence.
Bronya shakes her head firmly at the officer, not knowing why somebody as mathematical as her would ever think about such a possibility, to begin with. “Listen,” Pela insists, holding her hands. “It’s the only logical diagnosis—see, you’re having strange dreams. You know for a fact that the events in your dreams aren’t from your past, but you know they’re familiar. The person from your mind is a living, breathing human being, and something is going on between you two so—”
Bronya turns her head away and snatches her hand out of Pela’s hands. “Reincarnation doesn’t exist,” she asserts, sceptical about the idea. “How do we even know there was a world before now? You know, it’s probably a coincidence, all of it—as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t like to be related to such a woman as her. Even if there was a world before, there should have been no reason for me to reincarnate back into the same body, the same identity as before.”
Pela pulls her back before she leaves the room. “The universe has always been around. There was a time before us, a time before everything we know now. There was a time before APHO when the Honkai still roamed the very planets that we step foot on right now. Reincarnation cannot be proven, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not real, Bronya. It could be. Maybe that’s why you’re so scared of it now—because you don’t know what you’ll do if you find out she’s from your past life.”
Bronya inhales a breath sharply, words caught in her throat. “That cannot be true,” her voice wavers. “But the dreams—what if they’re only a coincidence—”
“One time is an occurence,” Pela interrupts, holding up one finger. “Two times is a coincidence. Three times is denial, Bronya. Listen to me. I don’t know anything about your situation, nor will I ever. It’s something beyond my expertise but as your friend, I know something isn’t right here. You have to take my advice. Find out what’s going on with you, or you might make a mistake you’ll never redeem yourself from. I promise you, once you start looking, it’s going to make so much sense.” She stands up, wrapping her fingers around Bronya’s hand.
Bronya looks down at their hands and intertwined fingers and manages a tight-lipped smile. Even though she is hesitant, she closes her nod and she smiles; a promise that she will try.
Bronya doesn’t dream again after her conversation with Pela.
She awakes to the sound of her alarm for the first time in a while, and to much of her surprise, her heart is not palpitating wildly in her chest. Reincarnation, Bronya thinks incompletely, not knowing what opinion to hold on the matter. Reincarnation, she thinks again, because it’s so bizarre yet it makes so much sense in her mind. It could only be that—but there is no one else in the world who could confirm to her that she is the same person in the last life, living on in this world to fulfil a purpose that she couldn’t before. Not long later, Bronya hears a garbled voice call out to her beyond the door and decides it best to stand up before she wants to have her room bombarded by Pela’s loud presence.
It would have helped if she remembered to buy a diary from the workshop but, alas, she has reached a point where she is desperate for an immediate answer instead of wasting time piecing together clues that she knows for certain aren’t that deep. Bronya glances at the wall clock and realises she has five minutes on hand to make it to the meeting on time.
She slips into uniform promptly and combs her hair with her fingers, enough to smoothen out the knots and make it look presentable. Bronya checks her face, and she looks better this morning than she has on most, often waking up with pale skin, and clothes damp with sweat. She was lucky enough to be spared from that this morning.
Bronya steps out of the door a precise sixty seconds later and sees Pela waiting for her with wide eyes, and she claims to have been there for a while. “Why did you wait for me in the first place?” Bronya retorts while she’s being scolded for waking up only minutes away from the meeting to start. Her question isn’t answered and, instead, she’s grabbed by the forearm and dragged through the rest of the corridor lest they want to face silent treatment from Gepard about their impropriety.
Upon reaching the meeting room right on the dot, the women pause at the doorway to catch their breath. Bronya bends over and leans one hand against her knee, letting out a heavy breath because running in heels is certainly not the way she would have liked to start her morning. “Bronya… didn’t you say the girl from your dreams had purple hair and purple eyes?” Pela whispers, leaning into her.
“What about it?” Bronya inquires, looking at her.
“I don’t think you were dreaming, exactly…” Pela points out and nudges her head in a particular direction not-so-inconspicuously. Bronya looks up, following her gaze and to her dismay, finds the stranger from yesterday sitting at the head of the table, where her seat belongs. Her eyes widen, partially in shock and otherwise in anger, because the stranger who had backed her up into a bookshelf is now seated with her legs kicked up onto the meeting table, that too—in Bronya’s seat.
And then, she understands it—why the stranger told her she’d know in due time. Bronya clenches her jaw and flounces forward, slamming her palm down against the table. “You’re in my seat. You may sit at the other side of the table if you so wish,” she demands, trying to contain her anger. She knows better than to express irresponsible emotions while Gepard is in the room, but being civil was a ruled-out option the second the stranger looked up at her with a blasé smirk.
“It’s taken,” the stranger replies. “You can sit somewhere else.”
And any hope Bronya might have had in being reunited with somebody from her past is tarnished because, really, if somebody she knew back then could turn out to be so rotten then she wants nothing to do with her anymore. Then, behind her, she hears, “Bronya.” So, she turns her head with a scowl, the closest thing to an expression she would spare to the guest. “Why didn’t you know who I was before?”
“Not everybody has the capability of remembering names and faces,” Bronya deadpans, even though she knows full well she could if she wanted to. “I don’t leave the headquarters much, to begin with. I don’t know you would expect me to know your identity when I likely haven’t run into you before.”
Gepard looks up from his papers at that godforsaken moment before the argument gets any more heated. However, unassuming and completely unaware of the scuffle between the women, he says, “Ah, I see you’ve gotten acquainted with Seele already,” and proceeds to slide into his chair on the other side of the room. “And that, Seele, is—”
“No worries, Gepard, I know her well enough,” Seele clarifies, pulling her legs onto the chair.
Bronya glances at Pela, who looks back while gesturing ambiguously. A form of encouragement, she would have realised if she could understand it at all. Seele, that’s her name, Bronya acknowledges mentally before glancing back at the person who’s no longer a stranger and happens to be a member of the Wildfire. They should’ve worked with each other before, considering how closely their factions coordinate to protect Jarilo-VI, but it’s a wonder how the world has managed to keep them apart until their fateful encounter.
Bronya looks into her eyes and recognises something in them—familiarity, to an extent she has never known before. Her lips part and her fingertips tingle with the urge to caress Seele’s face, to verify that she’s real— really the girl from her dreams—and if she is, then all of Bronya’s anger would dissipate on the spot and she wouldn’t mind being so annoyed at her. She pays careful attention to the look in Seele’s eyes, and for an earnest second, she realises that she must know her too. She knows it from her expression, the way her eyebrows are briefly furrowed and she doesn’t utter a word in defiance despite this easily being an awkward moment for either of them. “Did you finally remember me?” Seele snaps at her, scrunching her nose in disgust.
Bronya blinks at her, wondering if Seele’s asking about their past life together. She almost enthusiastically agrees but another second of thought leads her to the understanding that she’s referring to her current identity as a member of the Wildfire, and how Bronya had carelessly forgotten. “I always knew you existed, I just didn’t know your face,” she sneers, maintaining her nonchalant demeanour.
Seele snickers. She leans forward in her chair, and without warning, tugs Bronya by the arm. “You have something in your hair. It’s bothering me,” she explains, but it sounds more like an excuse to make an advance. She lowers Bronya to an easier height for her to reach and fiddles with a strand of loose hair to push it out of her eyes. “There we go.”
“You were accusing me of stalking you and now you’re playing with my hair?” Bronya cocks her head, parting her fringe away from her eyes.
Seele shrugs at her. “Get over it.”
Bronya pulls back in surprise, having not expected such a reaction. All of a sudden, rage fills her insides again and her skin boils. It flushes red out of embarrassment and across the room, Gepard issues another instruction for her to sit down so they may proceed with the meeting—clearly missing any of the tension that’s brewing in the room. Bronya bemoans and takes a seat beside Pela, deciding not to resist the order.
Unbeknownst to her, Seele looks at her with earnest eyes across the table, heart throbbing loudly.
───────
Over the next few months, it becomes an obligatory matter for Seele to stop by the headquarters for frequent meetings to sort out a new issue that has been arising in the city. Bronya, as much as she would like to, does not oppose her frequent visits because, one, she doesn’t exactly have much say on the topic and, two, she learns that she isn’t so bad to have around.
The enmity between them does not heal itself so easily because of their contrasting personalities, and the ever-so-often snarkiness that Seele carries with her when she visits, but Bronya gets used to it with time and before she realises, the hatred that she bears is more feigned than it is genuine. Over time, she would look at Seele from afar, and slowly coincidences would become serendipity. They would finish each other’s sentences, tease each other about a mistake they made before, and slide each other an occasional cup of coffee on mornings when their meeting extends past breakfast, so between those moments of shared space, they would learn to get used to each other.
And, eventually, they reached a point when they could joke about the first time they met—when they hated each other’s guts and wanted nothing to do with each other. It moulded into such an easy friendship that neither of them realised what was happening until it did, and Bronya realised that it meant so much more to her than she would have realised.
Since Seele’s arrival in her life, the dreams stopped too, but she had a slight suspicion as to why they started at the very beginning. They were peculiar, definitely, and at the time, Bronya could not understand why she was dreaming of a time that was foreign to her—but one night, when she sat with Seele and talked about all the impalpable things in the world, she realised there was one thing she could not achieve in her past life that she must fulfil in this.
And as Pela promised, it starts to make sense.
───────
“Do you think it could be possible that we’ve met each other in another life?”
Bronya asks the question gently, gentler because she would not dare to ruin the conversation with such an unusual question before it has even begun. She glances at Seele, both of them sitting in front of a lake with azure waters under the vast, blue sky. Seele bursts into a fit of laughter upon being asked the question—not like it wasn’t a predictable reaction from her. Bronya tries to join her, but her smile eventually fades, wondering if Pela’s theory isn't true. Even though she had written it off as nonsense for a long time, how closely and miraculously she had gotten close to Seele could not be explained any other way. She left her faith in that theory, as bizarre as it was, because she knew there were things that she didn’t know, and those things burdened her soul.
There was a reason why the dreams stopped after they imparted their final message upon her, begging her to reunite with her one true love from a past life. Bronya knows she must sound foolish after believing in such fallacies, thinking that such impossible feats are believable. She knows she must not count on one-perfect chances that matters like this are real and not fiction, but she does, and she cannot stop after she has indulged herself for too long.
Then, Seele says between her laughter, “I think we could have. I would believe it. We could’ve been friends in our last life too.” And then she lifts her hand to her face in a feeble attempt to hide how red it is.
Bronya, observant enough, notices her flushed cheeks. Her heart starts throbbing incessantly against her chest, and she can almost hear it egging her on, urging her to say something because she has gotten so far and she must not abandon the conversation right there. Bronya averts her gaze to the water, wherein she sees her reflection watching her back. “Would it be weird if I told you that… I see you in my dreams?”
Seele’s laughter stops. She looks at Bronya with an unreadable expression on her face and for a punctuated few moments, utters nothing at all. She stares, and she stares, but she doesn’t move an inch of her body—and this goes on for so long that Bronya starts to worry that she said something wrong. “Seele,” she leans forward, propping herself up with her hands. “You’re looking at me like I said something that changed the entire course of my life, you know I’m not being serious—”
“Bronya,” Seele reaches out for her, now kneeling on both knees. She holds Bronya and pulls her closer, such that they’re forced to look each other in the eye. “Don’t take back your words or I’m really going to hate you forever. How could you say something like that and suddenly pretend you didn’t?”
“What?” Bronya narrows her eyes. “Did you want it to be true?”
Seele blushes furiously in response and she turns her head away. She ducks her head under her arms and hides it, but she leans forward and pressed up against Bronya’s body in the process. All of a sudden, neither of them is sure whose heart is racing faster but enough time ensures that their hearts are one and the same, equally mischievous as the other. “I don’t know. Is it so bad if I want it to be?” Seele murmurs shyly, unable to meet Bronya’s eyes.
“In my dreams, we weren’t the same people, Seele,” Bronya utters, and when she does, the force of her words is so magnanimous that she realises, for the first time, that she called out her name. Seele looks up in surprise, and her face looks as though it’s been burned under the sun. Neither of them the wiser, Bronya decides to continue, as though the situation isn’t embarrassing enough with the half-confessions that could easily change the course of their friendship for good. “In my dreams, we were children. We were younger, and you weren’t you and I wasn’t me, but we looked like us. We loved each other there, and I’m almost certain that was a past life. A past world that isn’t the one that we’re living in now—but back then, we had to face so, so many turmoils. You loved me there—”
“I love you here too,” Seele snaps at her, squeezing her shoulders. She lowers her hands and takes Bronya’s in her grasp, holding them tightly even though their palms are so red and sweaty, and holding them together could be so uncomfortable. If it is, neither of them notices because of how enchanted they are by the moment—or Bronya, at least, because she makes an expression for the first time in her life. A new one, that isn’t just blank or unknowing, but a heartwarming smile. “Bronya, it isn’t just you. You’ve been in my dreams every night for the past two years, and I can’t get over you. I have tried, time and time again but I could not get you out of my mind from the very first second that I knew you. I prayed that you knew me too, but I thought you were ignoring me purposefully because there was no reason that you wouldn’t have known me before, me being a part of the Wildfire. Then, I found out you just… didn’t know and I was making problems up in my head. Oh, princess—”
I would love you in this life, and every other.
Bronya proceeds to feel so much after that it’s like a flame had been set off to the domino of matches that coiled around her heart. She wishes she could say something, anything, in response but they’re are as broken as they’re whole; and all the fallen pieces that had been left behind by their failures in their past life will finally be glued together with careful hands.
Remembering her final dream, she closes her eyes softly and leans forward, gently leaving a kiss against Seele’s lips to interrupt her spiel. It catches her off guard, but it works well in keeping her silent. Her words catch in her throat, and Bronya’s heart is hammering out of control in her chest. She wonders what she should do—where to put her hands—and then Seele kisses her back, resting a hand on the back of her head and the other on her forearm. She pulls her closer and guides her into the kiss, and simultaneously heals what they couldn’t a lifetime ago.
And maybe this was what they were reborn for—to engage in this true reunion of hearts.
I was devoured by loneliness long long ago. Nothing keeps me company, except... my thoughts for you.