To the Well-Organized Mind

Chapter Nineteen

[Hale]

We have lost so much. As a people. As a group of lab scientists. As a man with a family. I have but one mission left for the world. For my daughter. I am so close that I cannot let anything get in the way, not even her happiness.

-from Gerald P. Anagnost's logs

*

He had fallen in love with Tavelin when she was no more than a mirage in the Barrens. When he reached her and found out she was flesh and blood, he swore he would never leave her side: she was an angel incarnate, and the glowing halo of her blond hair bobbing over him as he passed out just made that more obvious.

She cared for him in an underground laboratory, and both of them had their worlds expanded by the other.

Thus it was easy for him to keep her attention when he was the only one even close to her age she had ever met before—when he was representative of all things outside the lab that she could only wonder about.

"I was Rapunzel and you freed me from my tower," she used to say, not that he really understood the reference. She tried to explain it one time, and showed him a book with pictures, but he couldn't read and couldn't appreciate the parallels.

But since those first months after meeting and nursing him back to health, when it became clear that it wasn't just Tavelin he had a relationship with, but Tavelin+HerFather, he realized that despite what she said, she was one Rapunzel not ready to leave the tower.

And even after the horrible incident at the lab and fleeing together from the carnage, his devotion to her had not wavered, but he could not say the same for her.

All he wanted to do was keep her safe and protect her. But time and time again, she seemed determined to thwart those very intentions. She doled out to strangers in the Barrens the supplies he had carefully salvaged from the lab—their very livelihood. She had admitted her origins to the people of Asis despite his warnings not to. And now he could tell she was plotting something new.

They were snatching a moment together in privacy, which was harder to come by in Asis than he had initially thought. Or, he should say, he was enjoying a moment of privacy. Tavelin hadn't even realized they were alone. Milovitch had stepped out to replenish the water jugs and then had sewing to do at someone's house. Fen had moved in with Nia and Jaden days ago. And no one else was sick or injured and taking up the spare beds in the hospice room.

Hale stopped massaging Tavelin's shoulders since it was futile and looked at her digging through her bag from the Barrens. From the lab. She pulled out her map of the Barrens and spread it on the bed beside them.

He tried to get her attention. "Gregg finally assigned us our main jobs: gardening for me, and I convinced him to have you apprentice under the nurse. That's more in your interests than physical labor. Still science, right?"

She was still studying the map. "Milovitch? I don't think he really wants an apprentice."

Hale shrugged. "It's not for him to decide. Gregg is the headman around here." Then he smiled. "Don't worry; I'm on his good side; I made sure to befriend him. He even assigned us our own private house. I convinced him that we would do better with some privacy. He's all for growing the population, so he was happy to oblige." He waggled his eyebrows at Tavelin to see if she understood the hint, but she wasn't looking at him.

"Apprenticing under Milovitch may get in to the way of my research," Tavelin continued. It was clear she hadn't been listening to what Hale just said.

"Gregg is supportive of your research. I did have to tell him a little bit about your background, though." He grabbed Tavelin's hand and swiveled her until she was looking at him directly. "Tav, I had to tell him you knew less than you do, for your own safety. So you grew up in the labs as a child of scientists, but I said you weren't taught everything they did and didn't know how to create more vaccines. You mostly knew basic chemistry and stuff." He squeezed Tavelin's hands a little, trying to impart the importance of his words. "It's important you remember what you don't know. Otherwise..." He shook his head. "I don't want to think about what they may force you to do."