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The smell of rot filled her lungs, an unholy stench of blood and bodies and something new, something in the air that laid thick and heavy in her chest. Her head was floating somewhere between her body and an empty space. Hazy noises and sights whizzed past her each time she blinked. She gasped down more of that rotten air. Her blood turned to fire and her back split open in a cacophony of otherworldly screeches and wails. She clawed free of a massive hand that was squeezing her throat and ran, escaping to somewhere, getting nowhere. Stars exploded behind her eyelids, burning hot and cooking her alive. Her feet pounded against an invisible floor, over an endless black hole that turned her flesh to string.
She threw herself to the right, a momentary wave of equanimity overtaking her, then she landed in a pool of dense warmth. She could barely comprehend the world around her, all void and deep red, nothing but the same horrid stench suffocating her with every breath she took. She sank further, her limbs unresponsive, her body detached from her mind. Nonsense exploded out of her mouth, meaningless words strung together by some vague feeling of distress, and they were uselessly snatched up by the empty red sea that chained her to the bottomless floor. The silence was deafening, taunting, utterly tortuous to her, too familiar, like the quiet that follows the sound of a gunshot.
She blinked, and the sights and smells before her snapped away into a dim room. Suddenly, she was sitting upright, chest heaving and blonde hair matted to her face and neck with sweat. A dull, constant hum filled the empty space, cool air blowing over her. She dropped her head into her hands, wiping off her forehead and tugging sharply at her bangs in a vain attempt to bring herself back to reality.
A harsh chime rang out suddenly, blaring in the otherwise hushed room. She jolted straight up, hand twitching for her knife on the stand next to her cot. Hissing a curse under her breath, she swiped down on her illuminated phone screen, but the noise hung heavy in the room some time after the alarm had stopped chiming.
Her eyes fluttered as she held her phone up to her face, scrambling to find the dimmer and sliding it all the way down before reading the overwhelming two notifications she had received. She forced back a frown as she deleted both of them. Meaningless spam from the latest news; one regarding a Hollow alert, and one spilling the latest celebrity scandal.
She tossed her phone back onto the nightstand and stretched her arms over her head, rolling the soreness out of her right shoulder, and then laggardly dragged herself out of her cot to switch off the fan.
The faint sound of traffic rumbled outside her apartment, ordinarily quiet for the very early morning. She kept the lights off, content to let the dim early morning light illuminate the apartment, as she yawned and walked the very short distance from her bedroom to the bathroom.
She flicked the lights on, the faucet handles squeaking as they were turned, cool water flowing into cupped hands and then being splashed onto her face, reeling what parts of her were still floating in empty space back to the ground. She rubbed her forehead to her cheeks to her mouth, moving back up to dig the sleep out of her eyes.
She looked up at the mirror and counted the seconds, lilac eyes running up and down the figure staring back. Heavy, dark circles sat under her eyes, probably permanent by this point she often joked to herself, and the flush on her face was beginning to settle back into her pale complexion. Her skin was still warm to the touch, but the roaring flames in her veins were retreating into a gentler pulsing heat. Constant and dull, as it had been for years.
She tore her eyes away from her reflection and undid her braid, fingers quick and still a little shaky as they combed through her blonde hair. A cheap black brush sat on the sink and she grabbed it without much thought, absentmindedly running it over and over and over the little tangles here and there, before she yanked her hair back—admittedly more rough than she should have—into a neat bun.
She finished up in the bathroom quickly, was tugging her shirt up and over her head as she walked back into her small bedroom, and began rummaging through her closet after tossing it to a small pile on the floor. She pulled out a plain black sports bra, a plain black hoodie, some basic running pants, and her white sneakers. How exciting.
She plopped down on her bed after changing and tied her shoelaces in a bow, once, then twice to make sure they wouldn’t come loose, and picked up her phone from the nightstand. She slipped it into the pocket of her hoodie, grabbed her wallet, and left the dingy little apartment.
The rest of the complex was quiet, as usual, not only because it was nearly 4:30 in the morning, but also because not many people would choose to live there if they could afford anything even slightly better. It was just about the worst complex in all of New Eridu. She never paid it any mind, or not as much as she used to. The stains on the floor went unnoticed, the loud creaking of the elevator was hardly bothersome, and the cat Thiren dozing off at the front desk was just a part of her routine.
The outside of the building didn’t fair much better, its old red bricks stained with mold and various liquids she didn’t even want to think about. She didn’t spare it a single glance before she turned right and started jogging, the sidewalks empty and the streets only just beginning to be filled with cars and buses.
She inhaled through her nose; exhaled through her mouth. The wind was sharp and chilly against her front, but delightfully cool once she started to work up a small sweat. She blinked, and the rest of the world became distant. The sound of her shoes on the pavement became the only thing grounding her. Her eyes were set ahead on nothing in particular, the weight in her chest lessened slightly by the fact that she did not have to move her attention every few seconds in the empty streets.
Inhale, exhale.
She was in Lumina Square a moment later, eyes snapping to just a few feet in front of her. There were a few Public Security officers out on patrol, one or two shop openers arriving for work, and traffic Bangboos swaying unbothered at their posts. She swallowed and her throat burned.
She forgot her water bottle.
Her feet slowed and she stopped just in front of the movie theater, where ads played on the screens around the Square and soft jazz floated through the air. She looked around, eyed some of the officers out on duty and marked every detail about their faces and eyes and hair; body posture and the way they walked. All non-threats, she concluded.
The metro station was just ahead. She placed her hands in her pockets and swore under her breath.
She forgot her knife, too.
Then again, she had gotten up earlier than usual. No one besides construction workers and PubSec officers would be out, and despite a little worm in her ear telling her she needed to do something, she did not plan on going into a Hollow so soon. She glanced to her right, past the openness of the Square and just over the ocean, where a massive black hole swallowed a vague, mangled outline of a city from a bygone era.
She sighed and turned around, nodded respectfully at the little Bangboo standing at the crosswalk, and walked down the stairs to the metro station. She made her way to the water fountain along the side of the wall and drank her fill, until the burn in her throat was quenched.
A train clanked by as she stood straight, and she flipped her hood up over her head. Hands in her pockets, she marched back up the stairs and into the Square. The sun was peeking over the horizon, the light warped by the black holes scattered along the coastline, and the buildings casted long and endless shadows against the ground.
She pulled her phone out and checked the time: 5:07.
Inhale, exhale.
She turned right, and began running.
She blinked.
Waves gently crashed against the rocky shore. The wind cut sharply through her. She opened her eyes, and saw the sun’s rays sparkling over the water. She was shrouded in shadow, the warmth just out of reach, though she did not reach for it. She stood and stared, breathed in the too-familiar salty air. It was dangerous for her to be there, too risky, too vulnerable.
She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand and shook the stray thoughts away. The waves drowned out the rest of the noise in her brain.
She blinked.
Inhale, exhale.
She was back in her apartment, sitting at the small coffee table in the tiny living room, staring at a chain of messages on her phone screen. A cup of Instant Noodles steamed in front of her. She picked her chopsticks up and shoveled some into her mouth as her eyes glanced over the conversation she had seemingly just finished up with her superior.
She went to her calendar app and lazily marked down the plans.
“8:30 PM-New assignment-Meet @ Simmer Hot Pot Restaurant”
Thank god, she thought, tossing her phone next to her noodles and eating another handful of them. Her days off were arguably the worst part of her job. Outside was too busy, too crowded, too loud, but her apartment was too cramped, too lonely, too quiet. She could feel an invisible target placed on her back, not by PubSec or the government or the people who probably hated her without even knowing she existed, just something always there, something forcing her to move when she felt too still.
It was too loud again, so she switched the little boxy T.V. on. Commercial break on every channel it seemed, but she wasn’t really paying attention anyway. She slurped up the rest of her noodles and leaned her head against the back of her plain looking couch. Her eyes slipped closed.
She dreamed of guns and knives and blood. She wished it was a dream. Her name changed every second, codenames tacked on as if they were simply drawn from a hat. Shattered mirrors and broken faces surrounded her. Then she stood, and was looking over New Eridu City on top of an empty building, while the wind lashed at her all around.
She knew the city when it was in shadow, full of gangs and thieves and the lesser fortunate like her, as well as she knew the city in the light, with big names and deep pockets and prima donnas. The difference ran as deep as a child’s sandbox, separated only by the lavishness of people’s lives. In the end, everyone bleeds the same.
She had driven her knife into the throats of men, ignited her garotte so that it seared burns into the flesh of their limbs, held the barrel of her gun to their heads as she pinned them to the ground. They could only pray to land a hit on her, too quick for any of them to react, some too caught up in their egos and taunting that they simply forgot to actually fight, though it would be fruitless in the end. Her scars were hard-earned, a prize that weighed heavy like a curse, marring her body, a permanent symbol of her eternally torturous survival etched into her skin.
Sometimes, she would simply lead her target into a Hollow, a planned path of their destruction, and abandon them there in an endless maze of warped spacetime until they succumbed to Ether corruption or were inevitably taken out by the monsters that roamed inside.
She fought back a strong urge to rip at her scalp at their cries and pleas that echoed in her head as clearly as the day she completed each mission.
She would sink down, down, down in a bottomless black ocean, looking up at a distant light, unable to grasp it, surrounded by hundreds of names and faces crossed out with red ink from a pen that was tapping, tapping, tapping, tapping, tapping, tapping.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Click!
Her mind snapped awake, her eyes darting for a second around a lone table in an empty restaurant, sounds of clinking dishes and heavy footsteps of workers cleaning up filling in the empty space. She relaxed her shoulders, laid back into the red cushions of the booth she was seated in, and flicked her knife open to spin it gracefully—skillfully—between her fingers.
An aging man sighed in front of her, pushing his glasses up on his nose, well-worked and wrinkled hands trembling slightly as he pulled a file out of his briefcase, blank except for the strip of green near the top.
“This is the last one I’ll give you,” he said, sliding it across the table. “You’ll be given a new supervisor after you finish it.”
She remained silent, pointedly ignoring the age in his features, or the slight tremor in the hands she knew were once precise in their movements. She opened the folder, and her eyes were quickly drawn to the picture of her new assignment. She recognized her fuschia eyes, her long midnight black hair, and her flawless makeup on billboards and ads and commercials before. She had heard her voice in stores and from people blasting music from their headphones, but also from somewhere else. Deja-vu settled in her mind, but that was probably all it was.
Astra Yao was easily one of the most famous and beloved songstresses in the world— what little of it remained outside of New Eridu, at least. She never paid much attention to the way she climbed the ranks of TOPS so easily, how firmly she had cemented herself in society. She was simply there one day, a sweet voice quietly playing in a grocery store. Her eyes twitched for a moment before she looked back to the man sitting silently across from her.
“’Scheele’s Green’,” she read aloud from the mission notes, “‘working with Fugue‘… Espionage, but it could change?”
The man nodded. “If it’s in the best interest of their company.”
She hummed shortly. “There’s no name listed.”
“You’ve used all the ones I have listed here.” His pen tapped along each one, leaving small red dots in its path.
“Pick something off the top of your head, then.” Her knife stopped twriling for a second as she limply waved it around from her lap. “I don’t care; it’s just a name.”
Silence passed between them before she flicked her knife closed, uncrossed her legs, and stood up from the table, stashing her knife away in the pockets of her black flare pants.
“DM me when you have one.” She had all of tomorrow to study her role, grow familiar enough to whatever name he chose to respond naturally to it.
“Wait!” He called after her as she began to make her way to one of the back exits of the restaurant. “Say goodbye to me using your real name.”
She said nothing, stood stock-still, kept her face turned away because as good as she was masking any expressions over with cold neutrality, she could not risk showing him her eyes.
Thoughts flew in her mind, all garbled and fused together in some awful, constant noise. She bit down on her tongue, and forced her legs to move.
“Just think about it,” he tried again just as she reached the door and placed her hand on the cool steel of the handle. She swallowed quickly, blinked, and looked back at him.
“Fine.” she sighed.
She saw something in his eyes. Pride, but not for himself. She became sick, tried to keep her breaths even as her stomach flipped uncomfortably, painfully. She cleared her throat and nodded to him. She pressed down on the handle, pushed the door open with a soft creak, and stepped out into the cold night.
She ran a hand over her head, through her bangs, and breathed. Counted to ten slowly. She was not attached to her birth name anymore, hadn’t been since she was so, so young. She regarded it as much as her other aliases. She did not exist. She was not a person. It was wrong of her to have a small, selfish part want to keep it to herself, because it would be thrown away after this mission, wiped off the face of the earth for all eternity. It would be no different from now, and from now until forever the binds of her rescuers would remain unshaken.
She blinked, and exhaled, and felt the world drift away, further and further.
Evelyn looked in the mirror, adjusted her tie, and checked to see if her braided bun was neat and tidy. A knock came from the door of the dressing room, polite and courteous, and a deep voice asked if she was ready to go.
She double checked the cuffs on her sleeves and stepped up to the door. A bear Thiren waited patiently outside for her, wearing an almost identical company suit from Odeum Entertainment.
Never thought I would be caught up in some big company rivalry. She mused in bitter amusement. A long-term mission, no more than five months long, most of it being spent finding out information and relaying it to Fugue so they could climb back up the charts of both profit and public reception, she remembered as they approached one of the elevators. The call was on them for her to take Astra Yao out, a risky move but nonetheless theirs to make.
“Nervous?”
Evelyn nearly flinched when her new coworker spoke, and she noted the way the fingers on his right paw fidgeted with one another.
Not good with starting conversations.
“No, actually. I’ve been in the business for years.”
He chuckled. “Good luck,”
She bit back a snarky remark and waited for the doors to slide open. The building was as clean and company-friendly as they could get. Small splashes of color here and there, long hallways with fancy doors and even fancier plaques. She trailed closely behind the bear Thiren as he led her to a door labeled “Meeting Room 3“ and knocked politely.
A muffled “come in”, some faint shuffling of chairs and feet, and the door opened wide for them to step in.
The first person Evelyn noticed was a man with medium length gray hair and glasses resting on the bridge of his nose standing near the front of the room. The second person she noticed was who she easily pinned as Astra Yao, sitting at the table, looking like she would die to be anywhere but in that room. Her eyes turned to Evelyn, sparking curiously, head tilting enough to send a few sections of her long dark hair cascading down over her shoulder.
“Astra, this is your new bodyguard, Evelyn Chevalier.” the gray-haired man said, his tone dipping into an oddly chiding one for a moment before he dismissed the other company suit who accompanied Evelyn.
Astra grinned slightly, then pushed her chair out languidly before rising to her feet. She strode over, hands clasped behind her back casually, the pearls on her dress and collared bow catching the artificial lighting of the room.
Then, she smiled.
Whatever Evelyn expected was wholly outdone by the sheer genuineness of it, if not for the way her eyes twinkled with something more aligned to mischievousness as Evelyn extended her hand out to her. She was a threat, she reminded herself. She had a mutation, a result of the Hollows. She was one of the only people able to control Ether energy, potent, powerful, and dangerous.
“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Yao.” She said coolly, practiced in professionalism, one hand placed behind her back and both face and voice containing nothing more than simple objectivity. “I hope my services will be up to your standards.”
“Ooh,” Astra giggled, and Evelyn was also not nearly prepared for the way a single sound could be so melodic as she shook her hand, “straight to the point! No praises or requests for autographs? It’s my specialty, you know,”
Evelyn had barely a second to figure out if she was joking or not before the same man cut in again, clearing his throat as a clear warning.
“Director Hodges?” Evelyn queried, and he nodded. She stepped around Astra and met him halfway, their hands meeting in a firm shake.
“Pleased to have you working with us,” he said. “This is Astra’s manager, Mr. Hart,”
Evelyn looked across the white table between them and saw a short and stout man with slicked back brown hair. She reached across the table and shook hands with him as well. How exhausting.
Hodges gestured for everyone to sit, and Evelyn seated herself across from Astra.
“We’ll keep this short and sweet,” he began, and she noticed Astra become far more interested in the pen laying next to where her elbow was propped to use her hand as a rest for her head.
“She’ll follow me around, make sure where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there, detail security, run background checks, yada yada.” Astra mumbled. She looked up from where she was spinning the pen around on the desk and met Evelyn’s eyes. “And I’ll just have to shake you off my tail.”
Evelyn stared at her, mind hopelessly blank, and Hodges was far too quick to jump on her case with a short “Astra!” and an attempt to spit out an explanation.
“Actually, Miss Yao, I’ll be offering a more discreet surveillance that should be more to your liking,” said Evelyn. “I was told about your past experiences with bodyguards and your tendency to roam during your free time, so you won’t have to worry about seeing me at all times of the day.”
Astra’s eyes widened, and a brow arched suspiciously. “You’re that good?”
“As good as you need me to be, Miss Yao.”
She stared at her in an odd way Evelyn had never been looked at before, with wonder and curiosity and astonishment, before breaking out into a wide grin and shooting up from her chair.
“I think that concludes the meeting,” she announced. Hodges and Hart scrambled to their feet, yelling for her to stop as she skipping over to the door.
“W-we haven’t even told her your schedule!” Cried Hart, and Astra hummed lightly.
“Today’s her first day, right? I wanna see how fast she learns. Maybe I can put those ‘discreet surveillance’ skills to the test!” She remarked. Evelyn’s throat suddenly felt drier than it did the moment before.
And then, Astra turned on her heels and slipped out the door before anyone else had the time to get a single word out, and Evelyn looked awkwardly around the room before running after her.
Evelyn would never admit that the highlight of that day was seeing Astra’s triumphant smile melt right off her face when she saw her new bodyguard talking with the limo driver outside when she came waltzing out the front doors.
It took one day for Evelyn to understand how infuriating Astra Yao could be. Slipping out of company events the second Evelyn made the mistake of taking her eyes off of her, wearing nothing but a pair of sunglasses as a “disguise” while she window shopped and actually shopped and talked with anyone she wanted just because she felt like it. It wasn’t very hard for Evelyn to find her, in fact, with her training, Astra’s escape plans were always sloppy at best.
But one week of it started to add up and up and up. She was always so persistent, even when Evelyn decided she had enough of her fun time and dragged her back to work, always trying to break some part of her down to just look at one more shop, or make just a teensy stop at the harbor.
Astra knew damn well what she was doing every time she smiled at her, never disingenuous but always impish, always so childish for a grown woman with a job to have. Evelyn couldn’t really tell if Astra liked her or not. After all, she was first and foremost her bodyguard, someone to reel her back in and take her to another meeting, another fan meet-and-greet, another interview, another concert, another something.
She hated how, by the third week, it started to get to her.
In little ways, here and there, while tipping off information about Odeum’s management to Fugue, or Astra’s jam-packed schedule, or just going home after a long day of being around her and her music and listening to her weird rants about whatever she was in the mood to talk about to complete silence and stillness— It was maddening.
One month passed, and Astra was absolutely berating her with questions.
“Why are you so boring?” She had asked in a fit of annoyance one day, when she was trying to figure out what Evelyn Chevalier liked to do when she wasn’t her bodyguard, and she said that she enjoyed running.
“What if I bought you a new outfit!” She gasped several weeks later, after a photoshoot to debut her newest role in a sitcom television series. “You always wear the same suit—not that a suit doesn’t look good on you, of course—but you could do with some variety, you know?”
“I don’t know, Miss Yao. I need to maintain upmost professionalism.”
They were driving to the studio Astra recorded her songs at, in her convertible because she had declared that it was too nice of a day to waste in a stuffy limo, and she wouldn’t even be able to drink any of the wine she had stashed in there anyway. Evelyn always drove her car, and each day she had to fight back the urge to ask her why she even owned a car if she couldn’t drive in the first place.
“What’s your style? Or your favorite colors? I could buy you something,”
“I really don’t need anything, but thank you.”
“You do so much for me!” She said, turned to face her fully. “I want to give you something in return,”
Evelyn chewed her lip for a moment, a habit once broken but brought back by the sheer will of Astra, somehow. “If you promise to go to all of your scheduled events tomorrow, we can go shopping.”
“Deal!” And Astra flashed her a celebratory smile and switched on the radio until she found her favorite channel and turned the volume up to sing along.
Eight months flashed by so quickly, and Evelyn found that Hodges and Fugue’s management had something in common: both were hopelessly enraged by her. Somehow, Evelyn became Astra’s new manager after Hart kept filling up her schedule with worthless meetings and annoying contracts that only served to profit on Astra’s image and brand rather than the music she poured her heart and soul into. It was a very impulsive decision in hindsight, because now she found herself struggling to hand off her role as bodyguard to other company suits because she had some stupid meeting with Odeum’s higher-ups, which Astra hated with her whole being.
Her organization cut off contact with her the moment they realized her loyalties shifting. Fugue began reaching out less and less in response to the increasingly vague information she was giving to them. She had gone soft, terribly soft, wrapped all the way around Astra’s fingers to the point she could never unravel herself if she wanted to.
And she never wanted to.
How horrifying the thought was, how sick it made her to feel her beating heart inside her chest. How disgusting she was to instantly feel better than she ever had each time Astra walked into a room, or played gentle keys on her piano, or chewed on her pen as she pondered over lyrics and melodies and key signatures. How beautiful she was when she ran away to Port Elpis with the setting sun casting a glow over her tanned skin, because she never wanted to perform for the bigwigs at TOPS who saw her as a product and nothing more. How endearing it was, how special Evelyn felt when Astra called out her new nickname, something just for them, something no one else could ever call her.
“No one can replace Eve,” She heard her saying to a stand-in bodyguard while she was walking up to them, obviously somewhere Astra was most certainly not supposed to be. She wanted to hate how her heart swelled, but she couldn’t, because Astra was the one who made it so.
Evelyn’s first time in her penthouse was everything she didn’t dream of. It was the week before the 10th Anniversary of the fall of the old capital, the day the world was nearly swallowed up by strange black holes, and people were either killed or turned into monsters. Odeum had wanted her to perform, not just to her fans, not just to give a somber but hopeful message of their continued survival and their thriving last chance at saving humanity, but to the people who sought to monopolize the fall of Old Eridu.
Astra had forgotten her notebook in the car after Evelyn had dropped her off, just about to pull out of the private parking garage before she noticed. She knew which floor she was on in case of emergencies, had walked her to and from her door many times including that night. She had the keys also, per Astra’s request in case she ever needed anything (though Evelyn always argued that it was for safety precautions), but she never used them.
She knocked on her door, waited, and nearly half a minute later it opened, and Astra was standing there looking an absolute wreck. Makeup haphazardly wiped off, eyes red and puffy, and she apologized several times before taking the notebook, and several times after.
“Could you stay?” She muttered after Evelyn asked her at least a dozen times if she needed anything. Any hesitancy Evelyn felt was laid aside for the sake of Astra, who seemed ready to burst into tears any minute, so she shucked off her shoes and followed her in. There were three bottles of wine on the table, one opened and half gone.
“Sorry,” Astra sniffed, “it’s just one of those nights,”
How terrible it turned out to be for both of them. How awful Evelyn was for agreeing to go in and comfort her, as if she knew anything about comforting another human being. Astra’s parents were victims of the apocalypse, casualties lost for weeks and weeks until their bodies were finally found. Rescuers who came to save her while she was trapped for over a day as a child, who gave their lives to save her, were ripped to shreds by the otherworldly animals as she was taken out of the Hollow.
And all Evelyn could do was lie. She knew nothing, remembered nothing about her past. She was taken into the organization as a child, raised to be a weapon, forgot all about her humanity, had no memories of home or her parents besides what little the salty air of Port Elpis offered in resemblance to the smell of her old home, which was the closest she got. She lied about her past, said she grew up in an orphanage, just like Astra, who hopped from family to family in the foster care system until she finally grew up because there was always something wrong with her, something people didn’t want.
Evelyn felt nauseous by the time Astra calmed down and thanked her for listening, told her how glad she was to find someone like her. She left without saying much more than a strained “goodbye” and had to pray she didn’t crash on the way back to her dingey apartment with how distracted she was.
The silence after Evelyn shut the door was enough to drive even the most rational person insane. She tossed her keys on the moonlit table, the dull blue-gray of the room enveloping her in shadows as she walked out of the gentle reach of the silver light.
She walked almost in a daze, her stomach churning with every obscure thought that bounced around in her spinning mind. A jumble of words, a relentless attack of fiery arrows in her brain. All of it and none of it made sense. She shrugged her coat off her shoulders and threw it somewhere— she wasn't concerned if it had fallen on the floor. It would lay there and collect dirt and dust until the next day when she would wash it. She couldn't be bothered to care about much more at the moment.
Every action that could take away her focus from the onslaught of vicious insults simply made the nauseous feeling that much worse. She deserved to dwell on these awful words. She stumbled into the bathroom and slapped two shaking hands over the sink to keep herself steady. She looked up and saw a stranger in the reflection. Strands falling from her once tight and neat bun, face pale and sweat-slicked, and, most horrifying, tears pricked the corners of her lilac eyes like some cruel joke.
She tore off her gloves that were now becoming too much like a second skin, and gazed at the cuts along her left arm. She swallowed a sob that nearly wrenched its way from her tightening throat. Disgustingly healed scars because she had trained herself out of it, because she was told that even the act of punishing oneself was too close to feeling guilty for one's targets for the Organization. To hurt is to feel. Feelings lead to hesitation. Hesitation is an invitation for death.
She gasped for air as that stupid bloodied fist in her chest pounded and beat against her ribcage, relentlessly thumping and thumping and thumping, knocking the breath from her lungs every time it slammed against her chest. How shameful. How embarrassing it was to lose so much control after one night. How dishonorable to let herself be this affected by a relationship built on lie after lie after lie, to let herself hurt in this way after sharing a simple but carefully curated story filled with events that never happened and memories she never had. How disgusting she was to pretend to be someone she could never dream of being.
She ripped her hair out of its once perfect braided bun, took off her jewelry and accessories Astra had bought for her and let them fall carelessly on the sink counter top. She yanked her golden locks back again, uncomfortably tight, biting her scalp from where each strand was planted. Tonight, she would indulge herself in a little punishment. Tonight, she deserved to feel this pain. Tonight, she had done something far more unforgivable than break the Organization's rules.
She rushed out of the small bathroom, tugging her shirt over her head, nearly tripping as she shucked off her leather pants. Both were thrown somewhere she didn't care to acknowledge. She grabbed a loose long-sleeved shirt, white and plain. She collapsed onto the small cot she could barely call a bed, on top of a couple of blankets that kept her just warm enough.
She dug her head into her pillow, gritting her teeth as she felt the shameful proof of tears against her cheeks, staining the fabric below with salty wetness. She fumbled open a small drawer in the night stand next to her, chucking her knife into it and slamming it shut before taking a key and locking it. There was a hidden notch to open it another way, in case of an emergency, but at least it was out of sight.
She wanted to cut herself up into tinier and tinier pieces until there was nothing left. She wanted to carve out her heart and hide it far, far away, so she could never feel this hollow ache it gave in these moments. Adding new scars to her already beaten and bruised body was not enough for what she had done. Looking into the eyes of her targets—the people she was paid to kill—just before she finished the job was far, far easier to stomach than what she had done. She heaved into her arm, begging the tears to stop, the urge to vomit to go away, the insistent pounding of her heart to still. She was losing her grip on the situation. She was losing her control over her own body and emotions.
She had barely kept it together, looking Astra in the eyes as she laid herself bare, as she found consolation in a non-existent person. She had looked her in the eyes as Astra told her all about her childhood after the apocalypse, baited into a false sense of security by Evelyn's own fictional scenarios of growing up in an orphanage. She had looked her in her terribly perfect, vulnerable eyes as Astra thought she'd found someone to share that experience with for once in her life, to bond with another human soul over growing up unwanted and unloved after losing the only family either of them had.
She had sat there and listened to her comfort Evelyn over events that never happened, and she had the audacity to listen to her further tell her things nobody else knew.
Evelyn had sat and stared her in her beautifully dangerous eyes as they shone with tears while she bared her throat unknowingly to her greatest threat.
She had looked her victims in the eyes before. All eye contact accidental. She had watched them bleed out with a bullet in their head and a knife in their back. She deserved nothing less than the cruel isolation of cold and unwavering death.
However, for what she had done tonight, she deserved to burn in hell.
There was nothing that shred her inside-out as much as the look on Astra's face. So open and vulnerable, given to her, Evelyn, a fake name tacked onto a false identity, so willingly. Her eyes so understanding, so able to empathize with a story that wasn't even real to begin with. How disgusting of her to sit there and let her bare her throat to her enemy. She felt dirty for letting her do such a thing. She could barely stand her name on Astra's tongue, spoken so earnestly as always, even more so tonight, gentle and warm and affectionate all for her.
She deserved none of it. Her name was something to be spat upon, choked out with hatred and disdain and cold unwelcoming. All of her names. She deserved nothing, and tonight Astra had looked at her like she deserved the universe.
She tossed and turned in her cot, but sleep never came that night.
Evelyn guarded herself from Astra the next morning, and it was harder than she thought it’d be. She arrived on time as always, Astra still snoring into her pillow and begging for just five more minutes after Evelyn switched on the light. She walked to the kitchen afterwards, not a word more to Astra than reminding her she had a meeting in an hour and a half, and stared helplessly at the cookbooks on one of the shelves.
She had started teaching herself how to cook after noticing how crammed her schedules were to the point she barely had time to eat, and Evelyn had no time to run to the nearest convenience store because of her duties as both her manager and bodyguard. Preparing meals was usually the only option.
Only, neither she nor Astra could cook.
Astra’s attempts for cooking for her were disastrous at best. She remembered how Astra walked out of the kitchen, long midnight hair tied up in a ponytail and nothing short of covered head to toe in smoke. It was by some miracle the smoke alarm didn’t go off.
The fried rice, for as horrible as it looked, was far from the worst thing Evelyn had been forced to eat to survive before. Objectively, it was bad. The texture was all wrong, the flavor too strong in some bites and barely existent in others. And yet, as she forced down bite after bite, an unfamiliar warmth filled her stomach. She belatedly noted that it was her first homecooked meal.
Evelyn then went out and bought a dozen cookbooks after she saw the small band-aid over Astra’s finger. She had been getting better in the past few weeks, perhaps now on par with Astra’s cooking. Astra had jokingly told her that at this rate, she could become a world famous chef in a year if she kept improving at this pace.
One year of cooking for Astra hardly sounded awful at all to Evelyn.
Then, two years blinked by in an instant. They were the best Evelyn had ever had. They were all she would ever get. She sat in front of Astra, on her knees, close to crying, with bullets in her side and Astra looking at her in fear.
An attempted assassination, not from her, but it might as well had been. It was all her fault. All the lying caught up with her, exploded into something out of control. Tonight was one of Astra’s largest concerts, hosted at Starloop Tower, where the stadium’s engines had roared and they ascended towards the sky. Only now they were falling, the power completely out, members from Fugue and the organization surrounding them and the audience.
“I’m so sorry, Astra,” Evelyn choked out, fighting back tears with all the strength she had left in her body. “I’m not who you think I am, I’ve never been someone you could trust—”
Astra’s hand cupped her cheek, so soft and gentle against her grimy skin, dirty from all the fighting she did to get to her. The pad of her thumb brushed a tear away, just under the teardrop mole beneath Evelyn’s left eye.
“You’ve always been someone I could trust,” she laughed tearfully, so ridiculous for their situation, a smile breaking out on her face despite it all. “Look at me, I’ve grown dependent on you because you protect me, you see me for me. You’ve proven time and again that the person in front of me is the Eve I know and love,”
Evelyn gazed at her, so perfect in what little spotlight there was left from the light of the moon shining through the glass ceiling, so radiant and pure. A determined look grew on her face, fuschia eyes burning into Evelyn’s with passion and encouragement.
Evelyn understood. She placed her hand over Astra’s, pressed it into her cheek for a second before dragging it down to her lips to graze butterfly kisses along her knuckles. They stood slowly, Evelyn’s knife raised and ready to protect for a change she hoped would last forever.
“Will you be okay?” Astra asked before Evelyn went to fix the backups for the engines. She eyed her left arm, now unhidden from her jacket and covered in blood.
“Keep singing so you can power the backups, and don’t worry about me. I’ll be right here the whole time.”
Astra’s voice filled the stadium as Evelyn rushed to each engine to manually power them back on. She stood anxiously, eyes unblinking and focused on Astra and Astra alone as she and the rest of the crowd joined in, and Astra’s mutation—magic—finally jumpstarted the engines and golden light enveloped the room.
When stars reached the end of their lives, not a single one could have outshined her in this moment. Even as the song began to end, as the stadium touched back down on the rest of its tower, the lyrics still hung heavy in the air, the piano echoing through the stage, and Astra’s eyes peeled open, and she looked at Evelyn, wet cheeks shining like diamonds in the spotlight.
She beamed, and Evelyn felt a home in the light she was given.