The Rebel Assassin

Chapter 37: In Laughter and Tears

"I knew what you meant," Morie insisted. "You forgot I speak Nemian."

Nemia swatted her head lightly. It was an old joke of theirs, that Morie claimed she could read Nemia's posture and indefinable noises, and sometimes delighted in translating them completely wrong to make her laugh.

In the mirror's reflection, she could see Morie's faint smile staying on her mouth as she flicked a coin — where had it come from? — between her hands. Roll over her palm, drop between her fingers, reappear pinched in her other hand.

"You still have everything you learned as a thief," Nemia said.

Morie's smiled disappeared.

She looked so vulnerable in that mirror, sitting cross-legged below her, looking down at the coin she had stopped rolling and catching. "Makes me wonder where the line is. The things I'll keep." She looked at the coin for another moment, then dropped it. "Guess I'm finally going to find out how much of myself is really me."

Nemia didn't know what to say. Though Morie's voice was level, there was a hollowness to it that made the room feel very empty around them.

She looked down at the red and scabbed marks across Morie's shoulder. If she concentrated, she thought she could feel her own mark rub against her shirt, but that was silly. The metal felt nothing.

She cleared her throat. "I think you should let it air for a bit."

Morie rolled her shoulders and didn't answer. She hadn't moved on.

Nemia closed her eyes. She shouldn't have said anything before, even though she meant it to be comforting. But she should probably try to dig herself out of it.

"I know what you meant, about finding out how much of what you could do was because of being a Guardian. But don't think of it like that, like how much of you is you. That's not something that changes with a mark on your shoulder. Who you are can't be cut out. Iso can't take it. You may feel like he can if you think that way, but if you even just pretend to be yourself... eventually you'll find it isn't an act at all. Just don't forget yourself, Morie. We can't lose you." I can't lose you. She was looking at her without having meant to open her eyes or stare at her, just taking in every inch of Morie that she had known since they were eight. The cleverness in her hands and the defiance in her face, the new responsibility that had settled in the set of her shoulders.

How terrible it would be, for the world to lose someone like Morane Laerhart. How terrible for Nemia.

Morie drew one knee up to her chest. "I know, and it helps. But it's hard." She held up one hand, and Nemia took it, rather astonished. Morie was always affectionate when it came to teasing and defending her, but only physically affectionate when either of them was very upset. She wondered which of them Morie thought needed comforting.

"How do you know this?" Morie asked, squeezing Nemia's hand. "How did you know to tell me that earlier?"

It was a good question. "I guess I was just trying to help based on the mistakes I've made."

"What do you mean?" Morie was looking up at her over her shoulder; Nemia had to look away.

"I guess I lost myself. After I... after..."

Morie flinched, her hand pulling from Nemia's gasp.

"I'm sorry," Nemia whispered. Tears were hot behind her eyes. She was always surprised, when it had been a while, how fast they could come up like that. One moment fine, and the next overflowing. "I shouldn't have brought it up." Her voice wobbled a little.

"No," Morie said, quickly. "Don't just never talk about it. That's not fair to anyone. I made a mistake when I left you the night you told me. I let you down. You've always been there for me, and I just left you there."

"You had the right," Nemia said miserably.

"Sure. At the time." She fell silent, and there was no sound aside from Nemia sniffing back tears. Then she said, "I couldn't not be angry and upset then. But he's not here anymore, and you are. I can't hold on to him in a way that hurts you." She swallowed. "You were alone for so long after I ran to Maenar, with no one who could understand. I shouldn't have left you alone then. You aren't alone now."

Nemia wiped her nose on her sleeve. It still ran as tears squeezed out. "That doesn't mean you have to listen. Not when it hurts you."

She ignored that. "Tell me how you know pretending makes it easier."

Nemia's eyes stung. She wrung a corner of the blanket in her fists. "I just... when I was all broken up afterwards... I felt like I wasn't even me." The words were mangled up in her throat. "I didn't know how to be myself anymore. It's been months, and it took until a few weeks ago for me to just look around and think... I am who I say I am. I am what I act like. If I couldn't control my feelings, then maybe I had to start with the other side of things. I needed to begin to act like myself before feeling like myself could follow." She let her breathing slow, forced it deeper.

Morie was still listening.

"I don't think I am like I was before. But I think I can salvage the things I liked best about myself."

It was strange. How saying those things out loud, while they tore her open, softened a different ache inside her. She had been fighting to reclaim herself all on her own. Someone else just knowing what was happening inside her helped.

"It was like his face was more familiar than my own for so long. Now I can see myself, what I want, instead of being back in the training yards whenever I close my eyes. How dark it was, one lantern, how sick I felt when I got as close to him as I could... and when he turned around. It was like he did it just so I would have to know the face of the first person I killed. Like he knew that would make me pay for it. His eyes were so dark in the red light, so big and surprised. His hair was long enough that it got blood in it when he fell..." She choked off. How could she talk about that moment, with Morie right here—

Morie, who was grabbing her arms so tight it hurt, and Nemia was crying harder than ever. It was hard to understand how Morie had moved so fast, and hard to hear over her own sobs, but Morie was close now, pushing Nemia's hair out of her face with urgent hands, squeezing her shoulders and — crying? Laughing?

"It wasn't him," Morie was saying, over and over, almost incoherent with the fervor in her voice and the way she kept leaning in to bury her face in Nemia's hair, her breath catching as she laughed. "It wasn't Jaden." There were tears on her face — were they hers? Or were they Nemia's, smeared on Morie's face as she kissed her, quick and hard at first, her mouth so warm, and her skin warm too where Nemia's hands curled around her neck, and then longer and longer with each time she said, "You didn't kill Jaden." Her mouth moved against Nemia's, whispering it over and over again as she rocked her and stroked her hair back and made the words unintelligible against her lips.