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The day Collei escaped, she promised herself one thing: she will never be trapped again. Never will she let anyone lock her behind bars, restrain her movement, treat her like an animal that couldn’t make a single decision on its own. She had wish for this freedom for as long as she could remember, and the first few hours out of the hospital were truly the greatest she had ever lived. Yet, reality had catch her back eventually, and so did her body. Because no matter how far away she was from the Fatuis, she will forever be the sick little girl who was abandoned but her own parents. A dead weight that will end up dying anyway, soon enough.
The people around her seemed to ignore that fact, she didn’t know if it was out of stupidity or pity, but both the General Mahamatra and Tighnari always told her she wasn’t dying whenever she tried to bring up the subject. Collei believed more in the pity theory. Although she had only spend a few months with the forest watcher so far, he looked everything but stupid to her, the same went for his partener, despite his few questionable jokes.
But their kindness was completely useless, as it couldn’t take back the constant pain she was feeling in her limbs, and the fever that would sometimes get unbearable. Just like this past few days. It as been three days since Collei was instructed to stay in bed to rest, her Eleazar was absolutely horrid recently.
She hasn't run anywhere in three days. Can't even make it to the kitchen without Tighnari hovering nearby, watchful, ready to catch her if her legs give out the way they sometimes do when the fever's climbing fast. He had decided to let her stay at his place whenever her health was becoming critical so he could watch over her better.
It isn't the same as the hospital, she knows that, holds onto it carefully even through the worst of the aching. Nobody's strapping her down here, nobody's treating her body like a specimen to be optimized rather than a person to be cared for. Tighnari brings her food and medicines daily without asking anything in return, adjusts the blankets when she shivered so hard it had started to come off, sits with her sometimes just to keep her company through the worst of her discomfort. He always made sure she wasn’t left alone for too long. She never told him this, but she was sure he will one day make a great dad if the idea of becoming one ever came to his mind.
Maybe once she’s finally free, he will be able to have his own family… And by free, Collei didn’t mean actual freedom.
She is never going to be fully free. Not really. Not in the way she used to imagine, back when freedom seemed like a mirage.. She escaped one cage only to discover, slowly, painfully, that there's a second one underneath it: her own body, unpredictable, fragile, prone to betraying her at the worst possible moments, flaring without warning, stealing days and sometimes weeks at a time regardless of how carefully she tries to manage it just like her master had taught her. And this place was now her new prison. Golden bars instead of iron ones. Kinder, warmer, filled with people who seems to actually loves her standing just outside them. But still bars, keeping her away from experiencing a somewhat normal childhood.
She was born to die, the Gods clearly hadn’t planed a long and happy life for her. And yet, she sometimes find herself imagining her life in a decade, at The Akademiya of Sumeru, being a bright student like her mentor once was. She, despite everything, kept a tiny hope in her heart that maybe one day, her Eleazar wouldn’t be a handicap anymore and she will be able to do everything like a healthy person. And although she had always despite the very concept of divinities, she had several time secretly pried to anyone who might hear her to please, make this plague stop hurting her body, and let her have the life of any normal girl her age. She was ready to give up on anything in this world if it meant she could get ride of this disease once and for all.
She always felt stupid afterwards, because she knew that her dreams were just that: dreams…
And underneath that realization, quieter still, something even heavier settles into place. The understanding, arriving slow and unwelcome somewhere in the long, aching hours of those infinite days since she was send to rest, that this illness isn't simply an obstacle she'll eventually clear. It's not a chapter with a guaranteed ending.
"Get better soon!" Amie would sometimes say. But why was he not realising that soon will never come ? Why was everyone in this village acting as if she was a kid with a great future ahead ?!
Some nights, lying here feverish and exhausted, she lets herself consider, just briefly, that this house, this bed, this same patch of ceiling might someday be the place everything simply stops. That the illness chasing her since infancy will eventually, catch her here, in the place that makes her feel trapped. Had she even truly escaped from anything ?