My spot for the night was only three buildings down from the remains of the Wellington, and perhaps that's why I found her.
The figure of a woman, sprawled face-down on the street, her white uniform a dingy gray by now. I sidled closer, noting the dark hair that looked all too familiar. I already knew who it was before I crouched by her side and pushed her onto her back with a heave on her shoulder.
Rachel's face was as pale as her uniform, her green eyes closed. Scrapes marred her skin, some bleeding and some partially scabbed over. A bruise mottled her eye, and her lip was swollen and split. I sent a glance down her body, quickly finding the rust-colored stain near her midsection. Only the middle was still a bright ruby red. She'd been injured a while ago.
"Rachel," I said, gently shaking her. She didn't respond at first, and I did my best to cradle her head on my lap. "Rachel?"
Just when I thought perhaps her wound had claimed her, her eyes fluttered, and she opened them with a painful wince.
"Did I make it?" she whispered, her voice barely above a whisper. "Am I home?"
"Nearly," I said.
"I was..." she closed her eyes as she struggled to breathe. A wet whistle punctuated each breath, and I began to suspect the wound to her middle had caught a lung. "I was trying to find you."
"Why?" My eyes flickered toward the end of the street, wary that a group of Vigilant Men might even now be waiting in the shadows to pop out and force me to fight.
A strange noise came from Rachel, and at first I thought she was gagging. I looked down, ready to adjust her head so she could breathe easier, but then saw the tears sliding down her cheeks and neck. With each sob she struggled against her wound, her back arching and her hands scrabbling along the cobblestones.
"Calm down," I whispered, wiping her hair away from her sweaty brow. "It's all right. Calm down."
"It wasn't what I thought, Nadia. It's nothing at all what I thought," she gasped out. "I thought we'd fight for our friends, for a right to a life in comfort. But all I found was death. Miserable, rotten death."
"Rachel, it's all right. Sh. You're hurting," I said, voice quavering.
"They sent us out to die, droves after droves. If you survived one battle you were sent to another, on and on until you die. This isn't helping the normal people, Nadia, it's murdering them in piles."
I cleared my throat, and looked up to stop the tears building in my eyes. "You're out now, though, Rachel. We'll get you healed up and then..."
Rachel shook her head, her green eyes staring into mine. They were so wide and feverish. "They're all dead. All dead around me. Blood and guts and souls. I waded through it like rivers, Nadia."
I tried to make comforting sounds, but she wasn't listening to me at all. She gripped the side of her uniform in sweaty fists. "Ferdinand."
I froze. "What?"
"I saw him once. In one of the battles. They could have filmed him for their Vigilant moving pictures. He looked like a god of war, beautiful and heroic, leading a group to save their commander."
"What happened, Rachel? What happened to him?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. It was a battle that ended in lakes of dead. I don't know where he went. I was... stabbed."
"Today? It was today?" I asked, hope blossoming in my chest even as Rachel's face grew paler and paler, and the stain on her midsection seeped deeper.
"I have to tell you something, but you're going to hate me," she whispered. "Promise you won't hate me?"
"What is it?"
She coughed, going into a fit that sent her into spasms. Blood splattered onto her chin in ruby droplets, and I tried to keep her steady as the spasms rippled through her body. When she finally calmed down, her breath was even more ragged and wet. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she gripped her uniform with shaking hands.
"I thought he should be serving in glory with the other young men of the city." Her voice was so light, I had to lean in. "He held a title, but I knew he wasn't like the other nobles. I knew he had some good in him, and I thought I'd help him along. He needed to be fighting alongside his brothers against our oppressors, but he wouldn't leave you if I didn't do something."
My face buzzed and her green eyes swam before me. "They aren't his brothers," I whispered. "They forced him to fight. That's not something a brother would do."
"I thought it was," she wheezed. "I thought they were holding him accountable to being moral."
"What's moral in forcing young men to fight for a cause they don't believe in?" I hissed.
"The King's Army would have done it if we hadn't."
"I don't care."
"I thought he should help us, that he needed someone to take him away from you. He wouldn't be doing any good attached to your skirts."
The lump in my throat strangled my words, and bitter tears splashed down from my chin onto her cheeks. "How could you, Rachel? We were kind to you. I told you where we lived, and we shared our food. We were doing no harm, and yet you reported Ferdinand? You were the reason he was taken away from me? The reason he could be dead this very minute?"
"I'm so sorry. It wasn't what I thought it would be. It wasn't what I thought." She gasped on her sobs, trying to repeat her words.
A rush of heat ran through my face, numbing it. Irrational anger boiled in my stomach. I shoved her head from my lap and surged to my feet. She devolved into a fit of coughing, but I didn't care. She'd betrayed Ferdinand. Betrayed me by ripping him away.
"How could you?" I snarled, tears blinding me as the anger crashed inside me. "How you could you bloody dare to do this to us?"
Rachel couldn't answer. She just kept coughing.
I took a step back, and then another. I kept walking until I was back in my doorway, huddled against the wood, and watching Rachel as she struggled to breathe on the cold street.
I didn't sleep that night. The moon sunk and the sun began to take its place. The cold was bitter and deadly, seeping my energy, but still I gazed on at the white figure laying before me. Her rattling breathing was the only sound, and it echoed off the walls. She didn't try to move, or even to talk to me anymore. She only coughed and coughed.
I had to leave soon. The inhabitants of the house would soon be stirring, getting ready for the day, and I needed to be far away from their doorway by then. I stood, bundling my coat closer to my body, and stepped back onto the street.
I tried to skirt around Rachel, wanting to just walk off and leave her for the junk man to find on his rounds of the city, but as I came closer to her body, I heard the hitched sound of her crying.
My feet stilled. I glanced to my right, where she stared at the sky with glazed green eyes.
"Nadia?" she whispered. "Are you there?"
I fought against myself. One side wanted to leave then, ignore her and let her rot. The other knew she was just a young girl, looking for somewhere to belong. Just like me.
"I'm here."
"Nadia," Rachel said, her voice whittling down.
I crouched, my skirt brushing her forehead. "Yes?"
"I'm so, so sorry. Forgive me."
I bit my lip, watching as her eyes fluttered shut and her hands went slack. I could have waited until she slipped away, just not answered her plea. But I couldn't let her face the darkness without some comfort. Even if it broke my heart to forgive her for taking Ferdinand away.
"You're forgiven, Rachel," I whispered, trailing a hand across her cheek and feeling the heat seeping away from it. "Sleep now."
Her chest stilled, and the labored breathing was put to rest.
I didn't stay for any longer. I got to my feet and walked as fast as I could away from her cooling body, trying desperately not to think about the sad girl from my ballet corps any longer.