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Camilla hadn’t yet gotten used to coming back after Palamedes inhabited her body. It wasn’t the same as the way he’d described the place he’d been after his death but before they’d tied his soul to her body. It wasn’t even blackness, though perhaps that would have been less jarring. Time just…skipped. There was no break in her memories but suddenly time had passed and she was in a new place and she knew Palamedes had been there but it was hard to believe that he had been. She wasn’t sure how Gideon the First had put up with this for thousands of years with no idea what was going on. She was surprised he hadn’t concluded he’d lost his mind, though she supposed that since Pyrrha and her necromancer had had no communication across the myriad they’d shared a body, Pyrrha probably wouldn’t know if he had thought that.
Today, however, Camilla came back more confused than usual. She was in the bedroom with her and Palamedes’ notebook lying before her along with the recorder they used to record Nona’s dreams. At first, she was confused on the time of day. If she was sitting here it must be morning but the apartment was silent, with no busy chatter and clatter from Pyrrha and Nona in the kitchen making breakfast. Then she saw the clock and realized it was late morning. Pyrrha was at work and Nona was at school. Memories of the rest of the morning slotted back into place. She’d been doing everyday things and let Palamedes take over for a while. She wondered why he’d felt the need to leave her sitting here with the notebook and recorder at this time of day.
She went to put the notebook and recorder away and then saw there was a single new line on the open notebook.
Play back the most recent recording.
It was in Palamedes’ hand or at least as close to his hand as she was likely to ever see again. It definitely wasn’t in her handwriting, but her body and muscles were different enough from Palamedes’ that his handwriting never looked quite right when he was writing with her body. Cam swung wildly between finding that creepy and wanting to cry every time she saw it.
Still, she had never ignored something Palamedes had asked of her without good reason, so she reached for the recorder rewound it a little and then hit play.
The voice that came through was Nona’s, describing her most recent dream. Cam listened until the end, thinking that perhaps Palamedes had been listening to the recording again and noticed something noteworthy that she had missed, but she heard nothing. Nona’s recording ended and there was a stretching silence. She was about to hit stop when she heard her own voice saying something she had no memory of:
“Camilla, can you hear me?”
But it wasn’t her voice, not really. The pitch was lower, like the person speaking was used to hearing themself with a much deeper voice than she had. The inflections were different as well. It was a voice that sounded nothing like the one she was used to, but it was also a voice she couldn’t mistake for anything. It was Palamedes.
She pressed her face into her lap and burst into sudden, violent tears. She’d known it had worked. Pyrrha had told her that it had worked. She’d been writing notes to Palamedes for months, but this was different. This was actually hearing him for the first time since Canaan House and somehow it was more real than anything that had come before.
It was a while before she was able to regain control of herself. She listened to the recording several times to make sure she wasn’t imagining it, then she was careful to make sure the tape recorder was in the right place and hit record.
“I can hear you, Warden.”
She rewound the tape enough that all he had to do was press play, positioned her finger over the correct button and went away.
When she came back her finger was still on the play button, but almost ten minutes had passed. She hit play immediately.
“It’s so good to hear your voice, Cam,” Palamedes said. Her voice sounded stuffy and snotty. She wasn’t sure if that was all left over from her crying fit or if he’d been crying too before recording this message. “I miss you.”
She swallowed thickly and hit record. “I miss you too, Warden.” She felt like she should put on a brave face and point out that they’d been writing each other copious notes for months, but it felt like the wrong time for that.
She was gone and then back again. Palamedes was on the recording again saying, “Are you alright? How have you been?” It was awkward as if they were old friends meeting randomly after decades. What did you say to the person you’d been sharing a body with in the first real conversation you’d had since their untimely death?
“I’m alright,” Cam said because some social niceties had to be maintained and then more honestly, “Better now that I’m hearing you.”
Another jump in time. Her hand wasn’t on the button this time but when she pressed play there was a new message. “I’m better now hearing you as well.”
She paused with her finger over the record button trying to decide what to say. She had so many questions she wanted to ask Palamedes that had felt wrong to write out or at least like they wouldn’t mean as much if they were written out. Did he want to talk about what had happened to Dulincea? Or about his last minutes of his life and his confrontation with Cytherea the First? Did existing in her body give him gender dysphoria like existing in Gideon the First’s body did for Pyrrha? And more than anything, she wanted to hear him say how he was. She knew Palamedes and surely if she listened to him say how he was she’d be able to tell if he was lying to spare her feelings, even if it was her voice speaking not his.
But could she really fix anything for him? She’d already come as close to resurrecting him that she possibly could, but she was uncomfortably aware that she had probably reached the edge of the miracles she was capable of performing for him. She couldn’t remake his body and give him his true life back the way that the Emperor had done at the Resurrection. She had done everything in her power and she hadn’t been able to bring him back enough to make things go back to the way they had once been.
She cried again, lying half on the bed until she was entirely spent. It had been a very long time and she felt guilty for making Palamedes wait even though she knew that he had no more consciousness than she did while not driving her body. She straightened up, wiped her face and blew her nose so Palamedes wouldn’t have to do that, then pressed the record button again.
“I have so many things I want to ask you,” she said, honestly, because she and Palamedes had always been honest with each other. “But I don’t know where to start and I don’t want to ask you something that it would hurt you to talk about.”
That would have to be good enough to start with.