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At first, Palamedes was taken off guard by the shifting between sitting in the driver’s seat of Camilla’s body and moving over to the passenger side. It felt like sleeping—like passing out, but not unexpectedly. Like willing himself to drift into unconsciousness knowing Camilla’s body wouldn’t hit the ground. She’d catch herself, and carry him while he slept.
He never slept in the River, nor in the disembodied hand-vessel Harrowhark had created for him. And he wasn’t really sleeping now, not in the way an average human being would; he would never “wake” in Cam’s body feeling more or less rested mentally than before, though he would receive any physical effects of sleep deprivation on Camilla’s body.
Palamedes tried to make sure that would never happen.
Your eyelids are heavy today, he scrawled on the journal page in front of him.
Camilla responded: That doesn’t have anything to do with Nona.
I’m changing the subject; consider it the next agenda item. Have you been sleeping?
He never knew how long the pauses lasted between Cam taking control and handing control of her body to him, but he felt this was a longer moment than usual. Her muscles were tense, and he blinked his eyes open while her leg was mid-anxious-bounce.
I have to keep an eye on her. Pyrrha usually isn’t home yet.
Cam, I think she’ll be fine while she sleeps. You need your rest too. But I need to have a talk with Dve about her nightly escapades, regardless.
She’s not going to listen to you.
Palamedes snorted. She had better start, if she wants us to have enough money for food. Speaking of, you’ve been eating less, as well. What’s going on, Cam?
Camilla didn’t answer the question. He let himself drift back, mid-afternoon light filtering in through the gaps of the window screen and illuminating the notebook on his—Camilla’s—lap, and opened his eyes again to darkness.
It felt like a slight. Like distance. Unsurety if there had been an emergency that had torn her away from him or if she had just decided she’d had enough of the conversation. She was sleep-deprived, her stomach had shrunk, she was dehydrated; not as worse off as Nona, who didn’t have someone to eat her meals for her when she refused them, but still not like herself.
Something or someone had stolen part of the Camilla he once knew, and Palamedes was beginning to fear he was to blame.
He was in the bedroom, and it had to be morning again. She’d spent the entire evening without him, and slept through the night. His hands wrung together involuntarily, a nervous tic—which he stopped immediately, because Camilla didn’t do that, and he was feeling a bit like an intruder, some sort of puppeteer—and he noticed her fingernails were bitten down to the skin. Nona and Pyrrha were not in the bedroom, and he was alone.
He found the two of them in the kitchen, after stiffly swinging Cam’s legs out of bed.
“Come on, Nums,” Pyrrha was saying, “you’ve got to clean your plate—oh, there she is. Don’t tell me I have to encourage both of you to eat at the same time.”
Palamedes smiled at her weakly. “No need to worry about that. Did you make coffee?”
He ended up writing out an apology to her later that evening; it was unusual, because he’d fussed over her well-being plenty of times when he was alive and it had never been A Problem. It could make her stubborn, or flustered, but never angry with him. She didn’t avoid him, ever. His chest ached at the thought of it.
I’m not angry, Warden, she wrote back, succinctly.
We’re both awful liars, Cam, and you’re not getting that one past me. I already feel terrible about taking up residence in your body—I don’t want to upset you on top of that. Tell me what happened.
His cheeks were hot the next time they switched places. She was embarrassed.
Worrying about me isn’t going to figure out who Nona is or help the Sixth House. It’s unnecessary.
There’s been a fatal oversight in the construction of this hypothesis of yours, and it’s that I care about you too much to ever stop worrying. I think you’ll need to rework it.
She had moved to lie on the bed. The change in the angle of her head was disorienting, and he sat up to curb any oncoming nausea.
The journal on his lap read: I should be the least of your problems right now.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair; it passed through his fingers for longer than his brain—his consciousness, his memory, it was Cam’s brain—anticipated, and his arm was thicker and more muscular than it should have been. He doubled over, breathing deeply in and out of his nose through a dizzying wave of vertigo.
That’s impossible, unfortunately, he wrote with a shaking hand, because you are the most important part of my life.
His consciousness faded out as he handed the reins to her, hoping that he would wake in the same place later on, for the sake of Cam’s stomach.
Palamedes awoke to Nona’s smiling face in front of him. She was at an angle—her head was cocked, and she cupped her jaw with both hands.
“Hi Palamedes,” she said. “Cam left you a note, but I don’t know what it says.”
He nodded and took a moment to find his bearings. They were sat at the kitchen table across from one another. The clink of dishes in the sink told him that Pyrrha was cleaning up dinner, and it would be time for necromancy training shortly. The wallpaper on his right was peeling. He found a groove in the wood of the chair that he rubbed the fingers of his left hand over a few times rhythmically until he was fully grounded, then tucked his hands between his legs.
It wasn’t as though his surroundings were unfamiliar. But he’d never know where he would end up—which corner of their home he might find himself face to face with, what orientation or direction he might be facing. It was also, in certain respects, too familiar. Camilla would always take over outside, so Palamedes’s existence was relegated to the apartment. While it was larger than the River bubble, at least in the bubble he’d always known where he was.
The worst of it was when he was needed at Blood of Eden meetings. One moment he would be sipping coffee, and the next demanding We Suffer provide the Sixth House’s proof of life.
Palamedes pulled the paper left on the table closer so he could read it. He squinted, his nose bridge void of glasses, then remembered he didn’t need to. Camilla’s note said: Nona told me you’re “always so still, like a picture.” Are her observational skills declining or has my body cured your attention deficit disorder?
Palamedes grimaced, and in the corner of his eye Nona’s head cocked just a centimeter further. I wouldn’t say “cured,” he wrote. More like intentionally suppressed. Could I talk to you over the recorder about it? It might be easier to explain that way.
Do your lesson with Nona, and then we’ll talk.
I also miss hearing your voice from your own mouth, Cam.
The lesson, Warden. Nona’s waiting.
She was waiting, very patiently. Her feet kicked at the table legs as she hummed absentmindedly and chewed at one of her braids. Nona was all too happy to put off staring at bones for as long as possible.
“What did Cam have to say? Just wondering,” said Nona, muffled around the hair in her mouth.
“Nona, spit it out, please,” Palamedes said, and she did, with an exaggerated ptooey noise. “Thank you. She’s just checking up on me.”
Nona’s eyes were round and soft in a way that still seemed out of place on Harrowhark’s face, and she pouted in a way that vaguely reminded him of Gideon, but not quite. “Cam is the best. She’s always checking up on me.”
Palamedes folded up the page of notes and slipped it inside their shared correspondence journal, a smile touching the edges of his mouth. “Yes, she is,” he said.
After laying out the pieces of bone for Nona to pick up and inspect and prod at and once, worryingly, put in her mouth, the timer on his wrist indicated it was time to switch with Cam as it always did.
Palamedes blinked. Nona was no longer in front of him—instead there was the bathtub. Camilla’s body sat on the cold, dirt-spotted bathroom floor, her back leaning against the sink cabinet, and the round handles digging into her shoulder blades. The tape recorder rested on the ground inches from the set of bent legs attached numbly to the hips attached to the torso the arms were crossed on top of. He wiggled his fingers and remembered the arms were his to move.
Clack. He pressed the play button, and Camilla’s message from two nights ago began to filter out through the speaker. She had merely left the recorder next to him, as if to say, go on then.
The record button made a bright clicking noise when he held it down. “Hi Cam,” he said. “To start—and to put it most simply—it doesn’t feel like I’m in my body.”
Pause. Clack. “Well, you aren’t. But there’s a mirror in here if you need to double check.”
Clack. Palamedes huffed out a laugh. “I don’t need to see you to know what face you’re making at me right now. Really, though, beyond that…it’s bad enough that I can’t stay too long without hurting you. I—when I watch the way your body moves as I would move my own, not yours, Cam, I feel like a parasite attached to its host.”
Pause. Pause. Clack. “You’re confusing commensalism with parasitism, Warden.”
Clack. “Cam, I’m serious,” Palamedes said, rubbing his temples.
Clack. “They’re grade school concepts, Warden.”
This was the point in the conversation where he would grab her hands or her shoulders so she would look him in the eye. Sometimes this was the point where, depending on his mood and the type of day he’d been having, he might lean in to kiss her.
Palamedes tipped his head back to stare at the water-stained ceiling and let out a single ragged breath.
Clack. “You can’t possibly think this arrangement isn’t negatively affecting you,” he whispered.
Clack. Camilla’s voice was quiet, but firm when she responded, “This is a marked improvement, Warden.” She was silent for a long moment on the recording. “My body is yours to move with.”
“Right,” he said, aloud to no one. One flesh, one end. They’ve had this conversation before. He knew they would have it again, and likely again after that.
Drip. He needed to tell Pyrrha the sink was leaking again. His knees didn’t pop uncomfortably as he rose to his feet; Cam’s joints didn’t do that. She was lithe, flexible, solid.
Palamedes tucked the recorder into Cam’s pant pocket and swiftly exited the room, switching the overhead light off without turning to face the mirror.