Simplicity [Zoethian]

‘Do I love her?’

The answer, even now, isn’t as simple as a yes or no.

Rythian watches as she shifts again, covers tangled around her legs, prosthetic strewn at an unnatural angle up against the enclosure’s wall.  She’s moved it again and again trying to find a comfortable spot for the foreign appendage.  Even in her sleep her body could tell that something wasn’t quite right.  The thought makes him sick.

Even now, nearly a month after the incident, he still can’t shake the image of her as she fell from the sky in a streak of cloth and blood…  He thought she was dead.  How couldn’t she be, after an explosion like that?  How wasn’t she charred and blackened and broiled, torn to shreds and scattered across the landscape, obliterated beyond recognition?  How wasn’t she dead?

He actually has to touch her to prove this wasn’t a dream.

Zoeya shifts under his fingers.  He shrinks back, breath caught in his throat, as the girl restlessly turns once again.  Within seconds she calms, mechanical arm now outreached off the bed as though it were trying to escape.  Again he sees red, again his stomach twists, again he starts to doubt that any of this is real.

It’s a cycle, this wave of guilt, and he grasps past it all to ground again in that thought:

‘Do I love her?’

The obvious answer is yes.  If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here.  If he hadn’t, she would have drowned in the lake.  If he hadn’t, she would have bled out long before anyone had bothered to notice.  Everything he had, everything he grew to possess, was poured into her.  Every ounce of magic, from the life stone to the powers within him to the dark sliver of End running through his veins, went into saving her life.  Everything he was was in her now, pumping through her heart, humming in the circuits of her arm.

Did he love her?  She was him.  Where would he be without her?  What would he be without her?

Rythian, the magic-weaver?  Rythian, the Enderborn?  Rythian, the warmonger who would rain hellfire upon the world that had blighted him?

Rythian, the boy that had let the only good thing in his life slip between his fingers like sand?

Saying he ‘loved’ her was like saying he ‘loved’ air.  It transcended far beyond that, so far it felt like something else entirely.  There wasn’t a word for what he felt for her.  ‘Love’ was an understatement.  ‘Love’ was an insult.  It wasn’t as simple as yes or no when the question itself was flawed.  She was his light, his smile, his laugh, the gleam in his eyes, the reason worth living for, the cause worth dying for.  She was everything he was and everything he wished to be.

And she was staring right at him.

Rythian jolts back, nearly falling off the edge of his bed, eyes wide as saucers at being caught.  “Z-Zoey?”  It feels like his face is burning.  He’s suddenly very grateful for the darkness of their tent.  “You’re – you’re up…”

“For a while now, Rythi.”  There’s a smile in her eyes that does little to settle his nerves.  “Hey, are you okay?  You’ve kind of been staring at me.  It’s a little weird.”

“I-I – what?”  He audibly chokes.  “No!  No, no, I wasn’t – staring at you, w-why would I do that?”  He laughs nervously.  “I was, um, just – i-inspecting your arm!  Making sure it, uh – it was okay, you know?  Not caught on your sheet or anything or-”

“Mhmm.  Right.”  It’s embarrassing how flimsy his lie is.  It’s physically painful.  That smile is still splayed across her face.  Even if he can’t see it clearly, he can feel it radiating.  It makes him want to crawl in a hole.  “Sooo… how is it?”

“Uh – huh?”

“My arm.  You said you were looking at it, right.”

“Oh.”  And his resolve crumbles even further.  “R-Right, I was, that’s all, just your arm – it’s fine, by the way!  Looks great, ah, everything working so far?”

“I wouldn’t know, Rythian, I’ve been sleeping.”

“… oh.  Uh.  Right.”

Zoeya giggles.  He almost reaches for that shovel.  “I’m not gonna fall apart, you know.  I’m pretty strong now!  Like a – super Saiyan cyber-borg thing!”  She sits up to flex her arms as if proving her point.  It isn’t that impressive of a display.  “So you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just…”

His eyes meet hers, and his words fail.

This was her, after all, this bundle of red and green, tied like a bow with a smile so ridiculous it couldn’t be anything but genuine.  Even now, after walking through hell and back, she continues to shine for him.  And though her logic never quite added up in the end, and though his guilt was far deeper than what she could mend, and though any sensible and sane human being would have dropped her and ran long before this…

“… okay.”

If she was going to shine, who was he to try and snuff it out?

“Just promise me that you’ll be careful, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course I will, promise!”  Zoeya waves his paranoia off with her still-living hand.  “I still have to reunite the band, after all!  There’s people waiting for our next performance.”

“… right…”  And despite himself, he gives a smile back.  “Well… we can focus on that once you get better.”

He’s greeted with a hum in response as the girl pulls the covers back over herself and slides down against the mattress.  This time her robotic arm lies almost naturally across her hip.  It’s relieving, in an odd way, and with a sigh he lays back down himself.  Her eyes are still following him, he notices, and it takes a moment to realize what they’re asking for.

“Oh… uh, g-good night Zoey…”

“Good night, Rythian…”

And with a wave of warmth flooding over his skin, he pushes his questions aside to replace them with the living miracle lying just outside of his reach.

His eyes soften and flicker with the faintest glint of purple as they finally fall shut, like the afterglow of an Enderman as it recedes back into the darkness of its home.

‘Do I love him?’

Zoeya laughs silently to herself before closing her own eyes.

‘Of course I do.  More than anything else.’