The city of Tall Titan is surrounded by hills and mountains like rolling waves, waves of dense jungle. And tucked between a hill and a valley, hidden by its curves and dips, is a hospital compound. Gaia alights us in its courtyard.
The rain is all thunderous applause. My vision washes out with it, curtains grey. Out of that grey comes people – men and women in hospital gear – that rush to my side and Naqi's, Naqi who is still on my back.
They carry us in. All is a blur.
#
This is the hospital Naqi mentioned that time in the nest, the one that Yashi went to for the removal of her omen stained tongue.
It's a humble complex, only three floors high with two small wings, a courtyard, a wind-tossed garden. No roads connect through the mountains to the complex. Instead, behind the building, a line of tracks run straight and sleek. Freight trains rumble over it every once in a while, and the mountains rumble along.
Inside, the fluorescent lights catch in the polish of the halls, looking like wet smudges, and the silence of the halls are sterile.
When the doctors look me over, when they examine my body, they tell me that my stain is gone. I do not understand.
I look at my bared back in the mirror. I see the curve of my shoulder blade. It is pale, and without blemish, smooth in the absence of scabs. The doctors are telling the truth. My stain is gone. I am no longer an Omen.
I feel—nothing.
All my life, all my life, I've wanted this, dreamt this.
But the reality of it thuds hollow, falls empty.
The truth of it rings through me and then peters out, away, gone. Nothing is left.
I stand outside an infirmary room after. I look in through the window.
Naqi is on the bed inside.
His eyes are wrapped. His hands are taped down with drips. Flakes of dried medicine-oil still cakes the inside of his ears, where the nurses and doctors didn't reach far enough to clean. His chest rises up and down with breath, shallow breath.
I don't move any closer. I don't deserve to.
A doctor asks me questions I do not know how to answer, because I was a monster then, and knew only monstrous things. But while I was a monster, I felt Naqi. I felt him touch my cheek. I felt his pain. I know, now, that Naqi had traded places with me.
He took Gaia my star and transferred his human senses to me, and then took on for himself the senses of a monster's. He took on my omen.
The doctor says it's dampened his sense of touch, though it seems to be returning slowly, surely, as most of his stains recede slowly, surely away – it's a blessing no one understands, though I think I do. The original state of my stain was six or so inches long, two or so inches wide. If Naqi truly took my stain, it would make sense that his would be the same size.
And while the omen had caused extensive damage to his eardrums, those stains are also receding. With the doctors' help, his ears should heal with time.
But his eyes. But his eyes.
I don't know why the omen didn't settle over Naqi's back like mine. I don't know why it's chosen to seat over his eyes, instead. They're painted like brush strokes over his nose and lids, black beneath his bandages.
I see Naqi smiling at me, puffed with pride, saying things like, takes skill to walk around perfectly without my eyes, and I crumple my hands against my own eyes, because I don't deserve to see.
I don't deserve to look at him.
#
The news on the screen says this:
The Decade-Races have been put on hold indefinitely. The Omen girl has fled. She rampaged out of her confines like the monster she is and abducted Naqi Imka. And the temple guardian Yashi Quay is currently under investigation for her involvement with the escaped Omen.
Authorities have retrieved Lumi Sidik's body. They were given an anonymous tip – likely from the same mysterious woman that tipped Lumi's mother – that led them to a small but kempt shack by the system edge of the sea sector.
Her body is intact, in one piece.
When you turn me in, I tell the doctors and nurses, will you please continue caring for Naqi? Will you please keep him hidden, keep him safe? And the doctors and nurses say only, Yashi sent you here. She risked her guardian-hood, her life, to send you to our hidden sanctuary. Therefore, here you will stay.
I will stay by Naqi's side.
They say it will take a couple of months before his hearing returns. They say it will take a couple of miracles before his sight does.
It does not matter, the months, or the miracles. I will care for Naqi.
I will care for Naqi for as long as I am allowed.
#
The hospital is different from those black market places I'd heard about, with the doctors that operate in the dark of night, and the patients that have to hold back their cries.
It is privately funded by several anonymous donors, and hosts only a dozen or so patients, all Omens. Aside from my help in the kitchens or out in the gardens, or fetching supplies in the halls, the doctors and nurses require no capsules from me.
For days, Naqi sleeps.
I keep him clean. I change his bandages. I stand in the corner with my hands gripped tight when the doctors come for checkups. I learn which sets of wrinkles mean Naqi is improving. I learn which smiles are lies.
Gaia no longer responds to me. I whirl her in her whistle-sling, but she does not crack awake. I had wanted to write a line of healing over Naqi. I had decided that, if the healing did not work, that I would trade places with him again – reclaim my stain and take his suffering from him.
Gaia only slumbers on.
I weep against her glass-like skin. She does not stir.
On the third night, Naqi eases gentle out of sleep. I take his hand. He starts, and says, "Who's there?"
And then he asks again, louder, "Who's there?"
And then he forgets how to breathe. He shouts on frenzied beats, and cuffs his ear again and again because he's trying to strike sound back into it. I cannot help him. There is nothing I can do. I wind my arms around him to keep him from thrashing. I trap his arms in my hold. My ear is pressed into his chest, and I hear the rhythm of his fear there.
The nurses come at all the noise. They sedate him, and check his vitals. Naqi's shouting dims when the medication seeps in. He sags with weight. He lolls against his pillow, and slips back into sleep.
#
The next time he wakes, I bump light against the side of the mattress so he knows someone is there. I touch the backs of his hands before I take them. I perch his hands on top of mine so he can feel my signing.
I sign: good morning.
He doesn't understand, not the first few times. I slow my signing. I exaggerate the motions. He says after, slow, unsure, "Good morning?"
I nod, and remember he can't see it.
I sign: good. I sign: you are safe. And I have to sign through the words several times again before Naqi understands. He swallows. He squeezes my hand, and maybe that means he's scared. Maybe that means okay, alright, go on.
I don't know enough hand signs to explain everything to him, so I flip his hand over and brush open his palm. With my finger, over his life and heart and sun line, I trace out the shapes of starsongs.
You're in Yashi's hospital, and you're safe. You fainted at the temple and was omen stained. The stains have mostly faded. Your hearing will return. They'll do what they can for your eyes.
And then he fumbles for my hands and flips them over and traces out his own lines, over and over my palms.
His first question is this:
Lumi? What about Lumi?
Then he asks with his mouth, "Is she alright?" He asks, "Is she safe?"
Oh.
Naqi can't see. Naqi can't hear.
His hands are the sole windows to his world now, and his hands do not know me.
For a long while, I write nothing. So Naqi fumbles for my hands again and traces: I don't know her real name, but I'm talking about the girl from the race. The one they locked up. Is she alright? What happened to her?
Anger pops through me. Guilt follows sharp. Why is Naqi still asking after me, after everything, everything? Why is he so foolish, so naive. Hasn't he hurt enough?
I trace: She's an Omen. What does it matter?
Naqi's brows crumple. "It matters. Please."
When I write nothing still, he says again, breathes out, "Please."
So I trace: She's safe.
Naqi sighs out a smile. He squeezes my hands again, and this time I know he means gratitude. He asks, "When can I see her?"
I flinch at the word 'see' and trace: You want to see her?
"Of course."
After everything she did?
Naqi shakes his head, but says nothing, so I trace harder: She did this to you.
"She didn't do anything to me. I chose this."
I jerk away. He's right. But why? Why would you choose this, Naqi?
He says, "I want to see her."
"Khab," I say, because he can't hear, and I trace: Aren't you scared?
"What?"
Aren't you scared she's going to hurt you again?
Naqi only smiles. "She's never hurt me," he says, lies, because doesn't he remember? That night in our nest, he was hurt enough to cry. That time in the dust, he was hurt enough to bleed. Why doesn't he remember?
I trace: I'll see what I can do.
"Thank you," Naqi says. "Hey," he says. "What's your name?"
I don't answer. I'm numb.
When we were bonded through the sense-transfer, I felt him hurt. I felt him hurt because of me. And though he says he chose this, that it is not my fault, he will not be saying the same things days later, weeks later, when the reality of the finality of his hurts settle in, settle like the stain over his skin.
He will come to hate me.
I know it.
So with guilt like a spice over my tongue, over my skin – with heat enough to sting my eyes wet – I take his hands. I work our fingers through the letters of a name he does not know, and am reminded how I'm a liar.
Ever since that time under the people like stars, I've always known how to lie.
S, O, Z, O.
Sozo.
I tell him: My name is Sozo.