These Broken Stars

THIRTY-SEVEN

LILAC

I LET HIM LEAD ME BACK TO THE STATION, and even after he lets me go and retreats to the common room, I can feel his hand in mine.

Now, back in the dormitory, I’m standing in front of a mirror. It shows me freckles. Scattered across the nose, pointed up, too pert for real beauty. This nose I’ve always hated—now it doesn’t even seem like mine. A tiny white line graces the edge of one cheekbone, a memento of the blow Tarver delivered in his delirium. The lips are chapped. The eyes sunken, the skin below them like a bruise. Under the freckles, my face is pale.

For a moment I’m standing again in the forest, looking into a shallow grave at the translucent gray porcelain skin, the long lashes sweeping the cheek, the hair a bright mockery against the dull gray earth. Her lips are violet, slightly parted, as though she might draw breath in another moment. My own breath stops, the sound of my heartbeat roaring in my ears.

For a dizzying moment I don’t know which body I am: the one in the grave or the one in the mirror.

No. I’m not her.

I’m not her.

Then I am once again back in front of the mirror in the station, staring at this too-thin body wrapped in a towel. Not my body—something else, something other. Something created.

The towel chafes at me, an agony of sensation. I let it fall. Tarver isn’t here anyway. There’s no one to see this body but me.

I close my eyes, shutting out the sight of the face in the mirror. Before I found the grave, I was a prisoner in my own body, feeling the impulse to reach out, to touch, to love, but unable to act on it. Now it’s like I’m an echo, inhabiting nothing more than a statue. A memorial to the Lilac who once lived here.

The old Lilac, the one Tarver loved, would have patted herself dry, combed out her hair until it dried shiny and smooth. She would have stood near enough for him to feel her warmth, for their arms to brush now and then, her hair to tickle his shoulder, until he could not help but turn and reach for her, on fire. She would have loved him.

For the first time in a life of balls and salons, designers and high fashion, flirtations and intrigue—that Lilac came alive inside her own skin. Who am I now?

Tarver is so certain I’m me, I’m his girl—but how can he know? I want to believe him. Sometimes I almost do. I want to believe I’m more than imaginary smoke drifting from an imaginary chimney. But for the scrape of fabric against my bare, raw skin as I dress, I would think myself no more than a memory.

By the time he returns I have forced myself into my clothing, put my wet hair into a knot that drips ice down my neck, cleaned my teeth, sipped enough water to give these chapped lips a semblance of color.

Tarver pauses on the threshold as he enters and smiles at me.

“Lilac,” he says. He thinks I don’t see how he starts to reach for me and stops, the movement so quick it’s barely there. My thoughts scream at him not to use that name. Lilac. An echo.

Without him to say the name, I could just fade away.

He busies himself trying to make the bare dormitory habitable, oddly domestic. I know he’s doing it for my sake, but he’s also not used to being helpless. He sees me falling apart, little by little. He’s torn, wanting my help to sort through documents and try to bypass the locking mechanisms, and wanting me nowhere near the underground station and its weakening influence.

He doesn’t know I want him to touch me, that I want nothing more than to throw myself into his arms. My body’s still raw but I don’t care anymore. I want his fingers in my hair and his lips on my face—I want his warmth and his strength so much it hurts. I want it every moment, for as long as I can, before I’m gone forever.

But I am not his Lilac. I can’t think about what I am or who I’ve become, or let him touch me—all I have is what drove me before I died in the clearing. All I have is the need to find rescue and get him home. If I’m to be dust at any moment, and I can’t fight it, then at least I can finish what I started when I blew the doors off the station.

I can save him.

He’s better able to tolerate the strange energy field in the bowels of the station, the power radiating from behind that door. He’s not the one who knows electronics, though, so I’m slowly dismantling the wall panels, inspecting the circuits, trying to bypass the lock electronically. I think the only reason he hasn’t forcibly dragged me away from the round door in the basement is that he thinks getting through is our only hope. Everything that’s happened here has led us to that door, and he thinks he can use what’s behind it, if only he can get to it. He thinks whatever’s behind the door will save me.

But how can you save someone who’s already dead?

I’m beginning to think I know what’s behind the door. The shakes, the metallic taste, the dizziness that touched me every time I received a vision or a dream—the sensations are overwhelming when I come close to the door.

I can almost feel the whispers behind it. Desperately wanting something, but unable to do anything but reach for it in our thoughts. Trapped there. Waiting.

And I’m starting to understand what it is they want from us.

After all, I’m a prisoner now too, in a body that’s falling apart. I understand better than Tarver what an agony it is to be so trapped.

I can’t keep this up. It’s harder and harder to focus. I can’t help but imagine that their pain is like my own, trapped as they are between life and death, unable to reach past their own torment. When we get through that door it will be all I can do to use whatever’s there to power the distress signal, and not succumb to the urge to give them what I know they want.

Because while that tiny part of me wants him, and only him, the rest of me wants what the whispers want. An end to it all.

During the day, at night, while we eat, he watches me, and I can’t—my mind doesn’t work. I can hear him trying to get my attention.

“Lilac, you okay?”

My spoon is in my hand. We’re eating dinner, and a bowl of rehydrated stew sits in front of me. I’d forgotten.

I stare at him, blank, confused.

“Lilac?” His voice is softer, his brows furrow. His left hand twitches where it rests against the table, as though it might reach across the gulf between us and take mine.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What?” He’s staring at me, bewildered. “It’s your name, what else should I call you?”

“I don’t care. But you can’t call me that. I’m not your Lilac. I’m a copy.”

“Are you serious?” Shock gives way to anger, hurt, confusion. His voice is ragged. “You’re you. You have your memories, your voice, your eyes, the way you speak. I don’t care how it happened, you’re you. You tell me what the difference is.”

Breathe. I force myself to watch him. Lilac would’ve looked away. Somewhere inside my mind she’s desperate to get out, to go to him, stop torturing him like this.

“The difference is that she’s dead.”

I can see him warring with himself. The urge to go to my side. The urge to shout. The urge to give up, just for a little. I will him to let the latter win, let us both rest. Just for a little.

“You’re you,” he repeats, his eyes full of grief. “You’re the same girl who crashed on this planet with me, who I dragged through forests and over mountains, who climbed through a shipwreck full of bodies to save my life. You’re the same girl I loved, and I love you now.”

Stop. Stop. No more. Please.

My throat seizes.

“I love you, Lilac.” His voice is soft, intent. “I love you, and I should’ve told you before you—”

I listen to the way his voice catches, feeling the break in it deep in my own chest. I close my eyes.

“You’re my Lilac.”

I shake my head, find my voice. “I don’t know what I am or why I’m here, but until I do, I’ll do what she would’ve wanted. Which is to get past that door, power the signal, and get you home.”

“Get us both home. I’m not leaving without you.”

“My father is a powerful man, but we’re talking about a corporation powerful enough to bury an entire planet. He may not even know what’s happening here, and if someone else is the one to discover what’s happened here—you think they can’t bury us? I was dead…you think they’re going to just let me walk back into a normal life?”

Tarver’s jaw clenches. “They’ll never find out what happened here. We’ll lie.”

I stare at him, my heart aching. “Tarver,” I breathe. “You can’t lie. They’ll know. They’ll run tests on me and find out. They’ll court-martial you. You’ll lose everything.”

“Not everything.”

He watches me calmly. Now that he’s made up his mind about what I am—that I am his Lilac—it’s as though nothing else matters. He looks so tired. If only he would sleep.

“She loved you so much,” I find myself whispering. “I wish you could have heard it from her.”

It isn’t until later, when I’ve changed for bed and he’s cleaned up the few dishes from dinner, that he speaks to me again. He stands in the doorway, watching me open the window shutters so I can look out at the night.

“Do you really imagine yourself staying here if they come for me?” he asks.

“No. But I know I’m here for you. They didn’t bring me back to be nice—they brought me back because they need us both to get past that door and do what they’ve been trying to get us to do all along. Without you here there’s no reason for them to sustain me.”

I keep my eyes on the night outside, trying not to let him see how afraid I am.

“It’s not that I imagine myself staying here when you go,” I say softly. “I imagine myself ceasing to exist. You have to let me go, Tarver. You can’t…”

“I can’t what?” His voice is lower, tightly controlled. I’ve never heard him sound like this before. I turn to find him clutching the door frame, his grip white-knuckled, every muscle tense.

I swallow. “Lose yourself in a ghost.”

For long moments he’s quiet and still, the silence drawn between us as tightly as a wire. At any moment it will pull me from my spot at the window and draw me toward him at last.

I can’t keep this up.

But he breaks first, and vanishes from the doorway. I hear his footsteps, angry and quick, crunching over the debris in the mudroom as he heads out into the night. The tension drains and I find myself falling, hitting the ground with bruising force, my skin fragile and paper-thin now. I can barely summon the energy to drag myself to the bed.

I can’t—

I have to get past that door, and for the first time, as my eyes light on the LaRoux lambda embroidered on the blankets, I think I know how. I have to do it soon. I don’t think I have much time left.

“This is insane. You’re the one who imagines I’m being less than truthful, then you want me to explain why? You tell me.”

“Perhaps we can both agree, hypothetically, that there may exist some reason for you to conceal the truth.”

“Hypothetically.”

“It means conditionally, conceivably.”

“I know what the word means.”