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Kyr opened her eyes to the sound of rain pounding against the window, her heart lodged in her throat. She knew by now not to look around frantically for Mags; he was in his own room, probably sleeping soundly, whole and alive.
Raingold lived up to its name at all hours. Tonight there was a real storm, not just the gentle mist that covered the city most days. Kyr told herself it was a crack of thunder that had woken her. She still wasn’t used to weather, two months in. That wasn’t it, though.
The dreams had only started after things settled down, after the machine of Chrysothemis’s human refugee resettlement program—everyone kept calling the remnants of Gaea that, refugees—had found housing and temporary assignments for everyone who wanted one. Everyone who was willing, who hadn’t disappeared onto the first ship off Chrysothemis, going who knew where out into the universe.
They weren’t assignments, Kyr could hear Ursa’s voice telling her that. They were jobs and school placements. Kyr did know the difference, even if she didn’t always feel it. Ursa also wouldn’t hear of Kyr and Mags staying anywhere but with her and Ally. It had been cramped for a few weeks, a strange awkward mirror of Kyr’s first-but-not-really time here.
But once Ursa found a new, bigger place, once Kyr was back into a routine, then the dreams came. The first night, it was her combat knife in her hand, pressed to Mags’s throat, and it was her voice, calling him a traitor as she cut deep, sure in her heart it was the right thing to do. The next night she stood over him in the Halls of the Wise as he bled out from his stomach wound, because she’d been too stubborn to call a fucking medic. Because she wanted to win more badly than she wanted her brother to live.
Tonight it was just the truth that had never been: Mags with Kyr’s stolen gun pressed to his temple, not even looking at her. Kyr catching him as he fell, too late to save him, so stupidly shocked, because he was her brother and she barely knew him, because it took the universe being ripped apart for her to even notice something was wrong.
Kyr was sick of lying awake and staring at her ceiling and listening to the rain hitting the window like bullets. She still wasn’t used to having her own room, overly spacious and empty of any signs of life but her own. She’d preferred Ursa’s old tiny apartment, perfectly sized for two, where she’d shared a room with Mags. Back there, Kyr could have just turned her head and seen for herself that Mags was still breathing.
Even here, she could have gone to check. Magnus was a heavy sleeper when he knew there wasn’t a shift change coming, and there never would be one again. But it was stupid. Kyr knew who she was and what was real. She wasn’t a child.
She gave up on sleep anyway, and ducked out of her room and into the kitchen. At least there might be something to clean.
The light wasn’t on, but there was enough of a glow from a few appliances to see by. There was a figure sitting at the table, hunched over. It moved.
Two months on a peaceful planet couldn’t undo ten years of training. Kyr went for the knife block, and only recognized who it was as she was brandishing a knife at him, ready to cut: Avi with his hands up, flinching back from her.
“What are you doing here?” Kyr hissed, even though she knew. What else would Avi be doing here in the middle of the night? He must have been with Magnus.
“I promise I was going to sneak out in the morning,” Avi said. His eyes were still on the knife. “If that makes you less inclined to stab me.”
“How did you sneak in?”
“The window,” Avi said. “Obviously.”
Avi was like a cockroach. Kyr had learned about those from Ally, not Nursery. They were an invasive creature from Earth that had somehow made it to Chrysothemis: unkillable, gross and annoying, and always turning up where you least wanted them. “Well, what are you doing here?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Avi said. “You too?”
Kyr shrugged. She turned on the light, and put the knife back in its block, so that Avi would stop holding himself so tensely. The scared little hunch was familiar, like some part of him still remembered Kyr killing him, and expected it.
Avi nodded as if she’d answered. “Let me guess—nightmares about all your awful numerous mistakes in various realities?”
“Spoken like someone with experience in that area.”
“Duh,” Avi said. He deliberately planted himself back into Ursa’s nice kitchen chair, folding his arms on the table. There was a cup of tea gently steaming there. “Haven’t the shrinks tried to give you something for the dreams?”
Kyr didn’t answer. Her government assigned caseworker had referred her to a therapist who had nodded very kindly and understandingly at Kyr’s case file during her first session, while Kyr answered her questions in monosyllables. She had not been back.
Avi snorted. “Yeah,” he said. “Not very helpful, are they.”
“Do you want something stronger than that?” Kyr asked impulsively. She knew where Ursa kept the good liquor, the stuff that was completely unfamiliar to Kyr’s tongue. Except for the times when she drank it and for a moment felt like she was someone else in a bar back on Hymmer Station, a place that had never existed and now never would.
“Sure,” Avi said. “Trying to get me drunk and take advantage?”
Everything was different here, but Avi could be annoying anywhere. Kyr rolled her eyes and turned to find the right cabinet. She pulled out Ursa’s bottle of whiskey and two glasses, bringing them back to the table.
Avi watched her pour. His hair was cut the same way he’d had it the first time they were both on this planet, the sides shorn all the way down. At least this time it looked like he’d had a professional do it. “What should we toast to?” he asked. “Our beautiful brave new future?”
Kyr raised her glass to him and didn’t think about the toasts she’d made with her mess. How it had felt to do it together. Assignments were horrible. Her first assignment had been a prison sentence. But at least she’d had less time to think. She’d never had time to dream at all back on Gaea. No matter how long she spent in the gym here, she could never recreate that same blank starving exhaustion. It just wasn’t something you could do to yourself unless you had to.
She said, “To sweet dreams.”
Avi snorted, raised his glass, and poured half of it down his throat. He made a face at the taste. “So should I guess what it was?” he asked. “Me, or Jole, or Magnus—”
She did not want to talk about this with Avi. She cut in and said, “What are you doing? With my brother.”
Avi raised an eyebrow at her. “I assume you don’t want a diagram?”
Kyr closed her eyes and thought about throwing her whiskey in his face. “Avi.”
He shrugged, a jerky, undignified motion. “You’re the one who changed the subject.” He sounded tired. “I don’t know, Valkyr.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?”
“What? Me and Magnus? No, it’s a fucking stupid idea. Did you forget I’m the worst person in the universe?”
“So why are you here?”
“Because,” Avi said, “I’m the worst person in the universe.” He didn’t say it like a joke this time.
“That’s not a reason.”
“You were there,” Avi snapped. His eyes were hard on hers. Kyr knew exactly what he meant. She could hear the sharp report of the gun echoing. She could feel the blood on her face, Mags’s heavy weight in her arms. “You were there with me. You saw.”
“I was,” Kyr said. “I did.” Part of her would always be there, in that universe that didn’t exist. Just like part of her would always be on Gaea, waiting for Commander Jole to tell her she was going to be the one to save humanity.
“So you should know. Come on, you do know. It’s all fucked.”
“So what, you still feel sorry for him?”
“Who knew you could be such a mother hen when you’re not busy bullying children,” Avi said. “Sure, I feel sorry for him. Who wouldn’t. I pity all of us. What the fuck are we doing on this planet? They gave me a job doing routine computer maintenance. Do you have any idea how fucking boring that is?”
“You think you’re bored? They put me in school.”
“Wow, the fearsome Valkyr, finally forced to read a book. Must be tough, huh?”
It wasn’t. It was just weird, and Kyr wasn’t any good at it. She wasn’t used to not being good at the thing she was supposed to do. But Kyr didn’t know how to have peers that weren’t her mess. People were curious about her, and kind, and she felt wrong-footed and uncomfortable every time she talked to them.
Magnus fit into it, the way he had the first time. He made friends, he joked around. Kyr followed all the rules and wondered why she was there. Her mess was scattered, and they didn’t need her to lead them. They didn’t need help surviving. It was just school. She did her homework at the kitchen table with Ally some nights. Magnus knew what to do here better than Kyr did.
Except Kyr couldn’t stop watching him and looking for the flaw. Magnus just…did what everyone expected him to, and so no one looked closer. That’s how he’d made it on Gaea, and it had worked on Kyr for years. It scared her. Chrysothemis was supposed to be safe. Maybe it was safe. But how was Kyr supposed to know?
Maybe it wasn’t so bad if Avi stuck around. Surely he would be able to tell if something was really wrong. He’d do something horrible about it, but Kyr could watch him. At least she would know.
Kyr said, “Do you remember the tiger?”
“Oh, is the books thing actually a really sore subject for you?” Avi asked. “You can always start with something easy. You can try The Hobbit.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re always serious. It’s what makes you so much more boring than Magnus.” Avi rolled his eyes at Kyr’s expression. “Yeah, sure. My glorious creation that was no match for sheer warbreed brute strength? I remember. It was pretty fucking cool, to be honest. I’ll miss the Wisdom for that, at least.”
Kyr took another drink, and didn’t think about the remains of the Wisdom locked away in Yiso’s ship. It was safer not to think about that where Avi could see her. “Would you have really let me call the medics for Mags?” she asked.
Mags had survived it. She’d judged it right, but only by accident. It was just a twist of fate, of luck, of eugenics, that had saved Mags from Kyr’s carelessness.
Avi stared down into his glass. He poured himself more before he answered. “Maybe,” he said. “If you’d really insisted on it I would have had to. I needed your help to crack open the Wisdom.” He grinned at her, nastily. “And you could always have just beaten me up about it.”
Kyr didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse. “He could have died,” she said. “Then, I mean. That’s why I can’t sleep.”
“Right,” Avi said, with understanding. “Yeah, well, cheer up. That would’ve been my fault too.” With an awful little smile, he raised his glass to her in salute, and drained it.
“He was only there because of me,” Kyr said. “He followed me. He would never have known you were even on the planet.”
“Are we seriously doing this?” Avi asked. “Fine. It was your fault too, and so was what actually happened, except none of it did, so—” he shrugged. “Fuck us.” He poured himself another.
“I’m worried,” Kyr said. “About Mags.”
“Well, he’s alive,” Avi said. “We’re all alive, I’m not even a little murdered, you’re not even a little obliterated by shadowspace. Magnus isn’t…”
But he was, in both their memory. He was, and it had been real. Mags was still the same person he’d been then.
“I wish you hadn’t asked Yiso to show you,” Kyr said.
“Sure, fearless leader. You could be going crazy about this all by yourself.”
Kyr wondered if that would be better. Yiso would remember too, even if Avi didn’t. But it was strange sometimes, talking to Cleo, to Lisabel, to Magnus, and thinking about the other ones, ones that Val had known, who were gone forever.
“Do you seriously not regret it?” Kyr asked.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not really big on regrets,” Avi said. Maybe that was true. Kyr wasn’t so sure. It was hard to tell, sometimes, if Avi really believed his own bullshit. If it really didn’t hurt, that he remembered how it felt to die. That he remembered the look on Magnus’s face right before he shot himself. Even Kyr didn’t have to remember that.
“You didn’t know the other one,” Kyr said. She was starting to feel drunk. “In the other world. The—the wrong universe, the right universe. Humanity’s world. Max. His name was Max there. He was—better. Happier. He’d found something to run towards. Or away from.”
Avi’s mouth twisted. “Yeah,” he said. “Probably for the best we were only in the same room for like an hour before that whole universe was destroyed.”
“You’re not a fucking bomb, Avi,” Kyr said. “Don’t be so full of yourself. You never would have looked at him twice there. You were too busy being unbearably annoying.”
“It’s a lot of work, you know.”
“My point,” Kyr said, “is that—I’m glad I have my Mags. Do you see? That Mags, Max—he was my brother, but he wasn’t mine. He was Val’s. He was doing better, he was happier, he had a real life, I should want that for him, but—”
“But you can’t,” Avi said.
Kyr could only want the brother she had, as miserable as he was. Mags was doing better on Chrysothemis—Gaea Station wasn’t hard to beat—but Kyr saw, now, the times when he went quiet. She saw at least some of them. Who knew what she was missing. If it was Mags, watching her, he wouldn’t miss anything.
“He always knew,” Kyr said. “In every universe. In the one where everything was—fine, for us, he knew it was wrong there too! How does he do that?”
Kyr had always envied her brother as much as she loved him. He would always be bigger than her, he would always have better training scores. He would never be assigned to Nursery. But none of that mattered anymore, and there was still something left. Magnus was good without even having to think. He always knew what was right. He knew Gaea was rotten for Kyr’s whole life. It took Kyr three universes just to get to the same place he started from.
“What? How does he do the right thing?” Avi snorted. “Great question. If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here.”
That really was just it. It was something Magnus knew, and they didn’t, and it was true in every world. Gaea was in Kyr and Avi forever; and it was in Mags, too, except it hadn’t twisted him that way. To him it was just poison. It could kill him here too.
Kyr lay her head down on the kitchen table. She could feel the impending headache at the base of her skull.
“Do you make him happy?” she asked, almost muffled into her own arms. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Mags had never been happy on Gaea, except when Kyr couldn’t see him. Except when he was with Avi, playing games and looking at gardens, being anywhere else but where he was.
For a long time she thought Avi either hadn’t heard her or was pretending that he hadn’t. Then, he finally said, “I don’t know that either.”
“Wow,” Kyr said. “You’re not very good at being a know-it-all, are you.”
She heard the scrape of him pushing his chair back.
“Sleep well, Valkyr.”
Kyr closed her eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, remembering the last time Avi had said that to her in the Sparrows bunk. “Fuck off and die.”
-
Magnus looked up from the game he was playing and said, “Oh. You couldn’t sleep either?”
Avi hadn’t come here looking for him. One of the other techs at his temporary work placement had told him about this place in an attempt to make conversation after Avi made the mistake of mentioning he liked video games. Even he couldn’t help a Valkyr-like burst of incredulity—an all night arcade, seriously? What a waste of resources. But they had plenty of resources for frivolous expenditures on Chrysothemis, because it was a real planet with a functioning economy and wasn’t barely held together with string and desperation.
“Yeah,” he told Magnus, because it would just be embarrassing to try to lie. It was halfway through Chrysothemis’s nightcycle—that is, its actual night. Avi still wasn’t used to that. The arcade was almost deserted except for them, because even delinquent teenagers had better things to do right now. Maybe Avi was a liar, and he had actually hoped to find Magnus here. He made Avi sick to his stomach, queasy and anxious, which was Avi’s second worst way to feel right above useless. And Avi had tried avoiding him for a week and that only made it worse.
Things were weird with Magnus. They’d been weird on the Victrix, for the two days it took them to limp their way through shadow space to Chrysothemis. Weird was a hilarious understatement, considering the situation. A group of teenagers had executed a coup, Corporal Lin and Sergeant Harriman had taken charge of it in Kyr’s absence, and oh, right, Magnus was destroyed, because he thought his sister was dead.
And, of course, that last part was Avi’s fault. The worst thing had been that Magnus wouldn’t even say that, even though it was empirically, obviously true: Avi had rigged up the shadow engine explosion that they thought had smeared brave noble Valkyr across the universe like so much mud getting scraped off a boot. That would have, if she wasn’t constantly doing things that shouldn’t be possible; that was typical too.
Magnus insisted that it had been her choice to go after the majo, her own fucking stupid bullheaded decision—his voice cracked when he said that—and Avi knew what to do in a lot of situations. He knew how to be yelled at and threatened and underestimated, he knew how to kill billions, he knew how to make a sad pining teenager a little less lonely. But he didn’t know what to do with Magnus crying, crumpled on the floor at Avi’s feet in a tiny cabin on a stolen ship. He couldn’t stop thinking about the last time he’d shattered Magnus, and how exactly that had turned out.
Avi thought about saying sorry and not meaning it. He’d told Valkyr sorry when he killed her brother. Or maybe that apology had been for everyone else he’d murdered. Really hard to keep track when you were him.
No one in any universe would ever call Avi kind, and Magnus was the only one stupid or lonely enough to ever come to him for comfort. But he could be kind to Magnus, couldn’t he? Just this once. If he could only figure out how.
Avi leaned down, took Magnus’s face between his hands, and said, “It was my fault. You know it was my fault, Magnus. Take it out on me if you want. Maybe you’ll feel better.” Avi had certainly always felt better with someone to direct his anger at.
Magnus hadn’t flinched away from Avi’s touch, but he did when Avi said that. He pushed Avi away, which meant right into the wall, because there was nowhere else to go.
Avi closed his eyes. He didn’t actually think Magnus would hit him. It just wasn’t his style. He kind of thought he was going to storm out and find a better person—so literally anyone else—to cry on. Instead, Magnus pressed him back with the weight of his body and kissed him.
It was way worse than the one Avi remembered, the one that hadn’t happened back in the Halls of the Wise. Somehow the circumstances were even sadder, which was almost funny. Avi kissed him back. It didn’t stop Magnus from crying but it kept him from sobbing himself sick, so hey, that was a win, right?
Like everything Avi had ever done it was the wrong thing to do, so of course he kept doing it.
When the Victrix docked, there was a lot of paperwork and shouting, but when they were allowed off the ship, Valkyr and Yiso were already there. Somehow they were alive, and had also ended up with a faster ride. Magnus ran whooping towards his sister and picked her clean up off the ground in his joy, and Avi got to take two murders off his mental tally—which left him with zero, actually, if you didn’t count all the nonexistent war crimes.
It was all very touching. And it should have meant the end of Magnus needing Avi without Avi even having to do anything about it.
Except somehow it wasn’t. And now here Magnus was, looking back at Avi with a shy smile on his face in an empty arcade, like they’d never left Gaea Station at all. What a joke. They really could take it with them, every single part.
Magnus shuffled over, making space for Avi in front of the console. There were two square control pads on the floor in front of it. “Ally showed me this one,” he said. He tapped his foot on the arrow he was standing on. “Want to try?”
They’d had a few games like this back on Gaea Station. Avi wasn’t any good at them—his combat scores weren’t great, and neither was his sense of rhythm—and he’d always preferred to stick to the games he could win.
“Sure,” Avi said. He stepped forward, squinting down at his feet.
Magnus scrolled through the list of songs on the display. “This one’s not too hard.”
It was an invitation to shoot back with something clever and sarcastic. Avi wasn’t in the mood. He reached past Magnus to select the song. Avi thought he’d probably heard it on the radio here; it sounded familiar.
They played. Avi, predictably, was shit at it, and definitely looked really stupid; Magnus only looked kind of stupid, because at least he was winning.
The song ended. Magnus was watching Avi and grinning. He was happy here, in the middle of the night playing a stupid game with Avi. This was still the thing that could make him smile like that, as if nothing had changed, as if they’d traveled nowhere.
Avi said, “Is this seriously what we’re doing now?”
Magnus turned away from him to scroll through the songs again. “Why not?” he asked.
“There are so many answers to that I don’t even know where to start.”
Magnus had lost the smile. “Avi. We’re just playing a game,” he said, very neatly ignoring the fact that they were doing it in the middle of the night, and mostly to avoid thinking or talking about anything else. He shrugged. “What else is there for us to do?”
“Fuck if I know,” Avi said. He waved a hand to dismiss the menu Magnus was scrolling through. He slid down to the floor, sitting with his back against the game console, his feet on the control pad.
Magnus joined him without complaint, bumping his shoulder against Avi. He was warm and solid.
“I mean, seriously,” Avi said. “Is this all there is?” He didn’t realize how much he really meant it until he was already talking, but fuck, was this it? Two million humans on this planet, maybe a quarter of a million scattered elsewhere. A drop in an ocean. A bigger drop than Gaea, sure, a less pathetic and despotic and generally shitty one, but this was what humanity was. Avi had always known he was bigger than the life he’d been born into, except then he escaped it and somehow it was all even smaller.
He was free, and he also wasn’t anyone that mattered.
“You could always leave,” Magnus said. His voice was careful. It never meant anything good when Magnus tried to be careful with Avi.
It was true, of course. Avi had wormed his way into a few places he wasn’t supposed to be on the Chrysothemis servers. He knew where Gaea’s soldiers who hadn’t wanted to integrate had gone. They were being tracked, obviously, by about ten different government agencies at various levels, and Avi wanted to know where they were too. Just in case something happened, and he needed to say I told you so.
“Pretty sure they’d shoot me immediately,” Avi said. “I think they know I tried to leave them all to die.” He smiled at Magnus as he said it. Magnus just watched him placidly.
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Nothing,” Avi said nastily. “Be bored. Not blow up any planets or cause any more suicides. You?”
Magnus visibly held himself still, the way he did when he was forcing himself not to react. He didn’t take the bait. He’d always been immune to Avi’s sharpness, except for when he wasn’t, and Avi never quite knew when he was going to hit the line.
One of these days Magnus would wise up and punch him.
“I get it, you know,” Magnus said. “I do understand Vallie sometimes. Gaea was awful, it was miserable, but at least I always knew what to do.”
“Wanna go back? I bet there’s still some smoking rock left behind we could shack up on.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It is,” Avi said, “and you like it when I’m funny when I shouldn’t be.”
There was that helpless smile again, small but undeniable, because Avi was right. “Yeah,” Magnus said. “But I mean it. Maybe you and Vallie are right, there is something fucking wrong with me. I feel like I miss it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Avi said. “Or, it’s the same thing that’s wrong with all of us. Did you think you would come here and everything would just be fine? We’re all fucked in the head. That was the whole point.”
“There are so many humans here,” Magnus said, and then he winced. “So many people, I mean. I don’t know. It’s like I can finally breathe but the air’s too thin.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Avi said.
“What if I don’t?”
“Believe me when I say that it could be a lot fucking worse.”
“You’re always doing that,” Magnus said. “Bringing up things that didn’t happen.”
Avi shrugged, jostling Magnus when he did it. “Oops,” he said, insincerely.
Magnus grabbed Avi’s chin, in the kind of sudden fast movement that reminded you that he’d had the best combat scores out of all of Earth’s children. “Vallie looks at me like that too.”
“Like what?”
“Like there is something wrong with me,” Magnus snapped. “Like I’m broken.” His fingers were gentle, but he was really mad, actually, the way Avi had only ever seen him a few times. Even after Avi murdered all those aliens, all those people, Magnus had been too hollowed out to be angry. He only got like this when he talked about Gaea, and sometimes very rarely when he talked about Valkyr. “It didn’t—happen.” His voice broke on the last word. “Not any more than all those other Doomsdays happened. Vallie always treated those like they were real. I thought you would know better.”
Yeah, Avi would love to forget about it, but it turned out he and Vallie had the same fucking problem. Wasn’t that fun: no scenarios anymore, just nightmares!
It was hard not to wonder if the nightmares were real too. Just like the agoge, just like scenarios. Fourteen billion people dying over and over again at the whims of humanity’s finest and last and worst. Maybe every night, Avi peeked into the universe next door and borrowed some other Avi’s misery and mistakes, as if he didn’t have enough of both of those on his own.
Magnus with his head blown off, Magnus dying slowly with his intestines showing, Magnus becoming nothing in an instant because Avi asked the Wisdom nicely. Magnus doing the right thing and actually just fucking shooting Avi instead of himself. Avi watching it all and knowing exactly why it happened.
There were so many ways to kill a person: Avi had always known that. You didn’t need violence or strength. Avi had done it with despair.
Sometimes when he touched Magnus he was sure he’d be cold under Avi’s fingers. He was warm, now, when Avi reached out. He could feel his heartbeat. Somewhere else he was dead.
“If you want someone to tell you what to do,” Avi said, cradling his jaw, “I’m right here.” He snorted. “Just like running Doomsday.”
Magnus closed his eyes. “I’d probably have gone with you,” he said. He was close enough for Avi to feel the words. “Before any of this happened. Before assignments. If you ran. If you asked. Maybe then things would have been different.”
Avi jerked away. “No,” he said, “you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” Magnus said. “There’s no way to know.” He sounded bleak. He sounded the way he had when he’d said I was never going to stand up to you. Avi fucking hated it when Magnus agreed with him.
“I was there,” Avi said. “I know. You would not have fucking listened to me. Ask your sister, she knows.”
“She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, and I do?”
“You don’t really have a choice, do you?”
Magnus was wrong. Avi did have a choice. Chrysothemis was big. He could get up right now and never see Magnus again.
“I’m not sorry,” Avi said. “For any of it. For the fucking war crimes or for humoring your little crush. Okay? This is it. This is what you get.”
“You were sorry about Vallie,” Magnus said. “Isn’t that why we’re even here?” He meant the way Avi still had his hands on Magnus, the way any time he held on to him he couldn’t bring himself to let go.
It was a really funny joke, but it was so much easier to be honest with Valkyr than with Magnus. Valkyr had seen him do worse shit than he’d ever be able to manage in this reality. Magnus thought he knew what Avi was, all the things that were wrong with him, but he had never seen it. He knew, but he didn’t know, because Valkyr kept getting in Avi’s way. Because if he really knew, if he’d really seen, he’d be dead.
Avi said, “Your sister isn’t dead anymore.”
“I know,” Magnus said mildly. He’d never been any good at staying angry, even when he wanted to. Even when he should be. “Neither am I.” He looked at Avi with measured eyes. “Neither are you.”
Avi remembered what it had felt like: Valkyr’s arms around his neck. There hadn’t been much time for it to hurt. Some of that was probably shock, too. Avi had never been good with blood, and Magnus had bled a lot.
Magnus reached out and turned his face back, because Avi had looked away. He left his hand there on Avi’s cheek, warm and a little sweaty, very much alive.
“You’re still here,” Magnus said. “What were the gardens for, Avi?”
It was almost sweet, that Magnus still remembered the fucking gardens. The gardens had always been about showing off. Avi liked the cities he pulled from books better, but no one else bothered to read them, not even Magnus, so there was no audience. No one to look at something Avi had made the way Magnus looked at the garden, at the world as it should be. Could never be, because they would always live in the world where Earth was gone.
And even if they didn’t, Avi wouldn’t be any better. He was only ever himself. He hadn’t needed Valkyr’s pet majo to show him to know that. He’d get what he wanted, no matter what he had to do; and all he really had left to want was to never see Magnus broken open like that again. That wasn’t love; Avi didn’t do that, clearly. If he loved Magnus he’d stay the fuck away from him. It was just the usual shit: doing what you had to do to survive with the fucked up hand you’d been dealt. Taking what you could, because no one was ever looking hard enough to stop you.
Avi said, “You,” and didn’t wince at the way Magnus smiled. He’d killed a lot of fucking people in that other world, but at least he hadn’t done this.
He thought about Valkyr, knowing that other Magnus had been happier and still preferring the one that was hers.
Magnus said, “I’m glad to be alive, you know. I’m really glad we made it out.”
Who knew. Maybe that was even true.
“Yeah,” Avi said. Magnus liked gardens, and games, and lies he could believe. No wonder he was so hopeless about this; those were the things Avi was best at. Of course they hadn’t really made it out of Gaea. They never would. Avi let himself be kissed, and let Magnus have that lie too.
-
Vallie wasn’t sleeping again. She thought Magnus hadn’t noticed; for someone who was so single-minded herself, Vallie didn’t think highly of other people’s observational skills.
Of course, Magnus was awake too. He had a prescription for sleeping pills he didn’t take, because they made him groggy; they made everything fuzzy and indistinct in a way that reminded him of Gaea.
So he was counting sheep like Ally taught him when he heard the soft click of Vallie’s door opening as she slipped out. He sat up and followed her. He was kind of curious what Vallie would find to do in the middle of the night—maybe she had something like the arcade, like what Agricole used to be for him. A place to go when she didn’t want to deal with where she was.
Honestly, he should have known where shadowing Vallie would take him. He ended up following her to the cramped gym in the basement of Ursa’s apartment building.
He stepped in after her, making sure to use a heavier tread so she’d hear him. It was an old habit from Gaea he hadn’t shaken: you never wanted to surprise someone with combat training, and Vallie especially had always been on high alert. Magnus had thought it was almost funny back then, in a messed up kind of way: what exactly was she afraid of? They were isolated on Gaea. It wasn’t like the majo were actually going to attack them.
It hadn’t actually been very funny, for a lot of reasons. But Magnus still did it.
“Oh,” Vallie said, turning around. “You followed me. Of course you did.”
“What does that mean?” Magnus asked. Vallie didn’t answer. She was always doing this these days: leaving blank spaces and refusing to fill them in. Magnus knew the drill by now. All those blank spaces came from the same place. At least when Avi did it, he was blunt about it. Vallie wasn’t any good at subtlety, and Magnus was sick of her trying.
“Did this happen before?” he asked.
“No,” Vallie said. “Not exactly. Ignore me.”
Magnus didn’t want to ignore it. But it was easier to push with Avi, who would snap back—and who deserved it, maybe, if Magnus was too harsh. Probably that was being unfair to Avi, or Vallie, or someone.
He looked around the gym. It was pretty similar to the one they’d had on Gaea, which meant it was woefully under-equipped and a little shabby. Ursa’s apartment building was nice enough to have a gym, but not nice enough to have a fancy one. Magnus was working hard to pick up these things, the stuff that would have been second nature on Gaea: the things clothing told you about a person, accents and political parties. The kind of stuff Vallie would never notice and Avi absorbed almost instinctively. Magnus had to work at it.
To Vallie he said, “Want to spar?”
“Sure.” She brightened up immediately in a way that made Magnus want to smile. Some things never changed, including that Vallie always thought it was a good time for Drill.
They picked a mat and fell into position. Magnus barely had to think about it. He and Vallie had never sparred much with each other instead of with their messes. Only when she could drag him from his napping spot in Agricole down to the gym during rec rotation.
Sparring was more Vallie’s thing than Magnus’s, really—although, like anything, it was hard to say if that was because of Gaea or because of her. Magnus was still untangling the parts of himself that weren’t really him, weeding them out. Maybe if she hadn’t been so worried about her training scores, she would care less. But watching her circle him now, more focused and calm than Magnus had seen her in a while, he thought this was just Vallie, not Gaea.
She lunged, and Magnus stepped neatly out of the way, and then they were off, trading blows. It was familiar. Vallie was relaxing into it, but Magnus couldn’t. He’d never found Drill relaxing. It was just the same as Gaea always was: being watched and measured, and knowing that if he fucked up, let any of what was going on inside slip, that it might kill him.
Also, Vallie was holding back. It was obvious. Just as obvious as the blank spaces, the glances she shared with Avi when they thought Magnus wasn’t looking, all the evidence that she didn’t trust him.
Magnus knocked her down in a hit she should have dodged. He didn’t offer her a hand up.
“You don’t have to go easy on me,” he told her. Only a little of the frustration leaked into his voice.
“I’m not,” Vallie said. She was such a terrible liar.
“I’m right here,” Magnus said. “I’m here, me, the real me. Not a ghost.” Not for the first time, Magnus felt a sick queasy burst of anger at his other self. The one who couldn’t take it. Who was just him, and was ruining everything.
Magnus turned, but Vallie was up and grabbing for his arm before he could stalk away. Then she pulled him over her shoulder and slammed him down to the mat, knocking the breath out of him.
“Better?” she asked. Magnus started to laugh once he had the air for it.
“You can be such a bitch,” he said fondly, and Vallie collapsed down beside him. She didn’t laugh.
“Are you really okay?” she asked.
Magnus put an arm over his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be,” he said, and waited for Vallie to say it.
She didn’t. She never had, not after the first time when she’d told him everything.
Vallie just said, “Well, I don’t think I’m okay.”
“Yeah,” Magnus said. He moved his arm so he could look up at her. Vallie was looking down at her own knees, frowning. “I thought you were dead.”
“What?”
Magnus sat up. “After we left Gaea. I thought you were dead until I saw you again. I thought we left you there to die. You’re not the only one who—I lost you too.”
Vallie looked wrong-footed. “I know,” she said, a little stilted.
“I don’t think you really do,” Magnus said. “I know I didn’t—see it—like you did, but I had to sit with it. I told you goodbye. You’re not the only one who lost something and got it back.”
Magnus tried not to think about the journey on the Victrix too much. Avi had been there, just like on Gaea. Magnus had clung to him, which was pathetic and typical. He’d been stuck in a universe where his sister had died trying to save a single alien. It made no sense, but also it did. He’d always known she could have been like that in another world, and somehow that other world was real and he was living in it. And she wasn’t there anymore.
Vallie said, “I’m sorry.” She was kneeling in front of Magnus now, and he was crying, which was stupid and embarrassing. And made him a hypocrite, because he was crying about something that hadn’t happened. “Mags, I’m sorry.”
She put her arms around him, and Magnus held her tight.
“This is stupid,” Magnus said, once he’d cried himself out into Vallie’s shoulder. His head hurt, but he felt better, lighter. He’d never cried much on Gaea. Sometimes in Agricole, if he was sure he was alone. Once in front of Avi, who’d dragged him to the garden in the agoge afterwards and told him to do it there if he had to. “We’re both alive.”
“I know,” Vallie said. “I know. I know I should forget about it. I just wish I hadn’t let it happen the first time. Even though it didn’t. You’re not like me. You’re a good person without having to try.”
Magnus shook his head. “If that was really true,” he said, “I would have stopped Avi.”
He’d thought about it a lot. About what he would do, in the situation Vallie had sketched out for him there in Agricole. About talking Avi down, about realizing something was wrong before it even happened, because—he knew Avi so well, right? Surely he would know.
He’d thought about stepping forward and taking Avi by the wrists and making him stop.
Except apparently he hadn’t done any of that. Apparently he didn’t know Avi at all—or he did know him, but in the way Vallie had known Gaea. He’d known him and made himself not see the ugly parts, except they were integral to the whole. It kind of sucked to have your fantasies about the great hero you’d be if it was ever asked of you just ruined like that. When it really happened, he’d stood there and watched Avi obliterate hundreds of worlds. Watched him find a worse thing to do than anything that had ever been done to humans. And then he couldn’t even live with it. He’d left Vallie to do it all alone.
“No one can stop Avi when he puts his mind to something,” Vallie said, as bad at comfort as ever. “He’s a genius and he only has morals when they sneak up on him.”
“You did.”
“What?”
“You stopped him.”
“I killed him,” Vallie said. “And it was too late. It wasn’t even—it wasn’t even everything else. It was because he killed you.”
“No, Vallie, the world ended and you went back and fixed it.” As a child in Nursery, Magnus had naively believed that his sister could do anything; that she would always save him. Eventually he had to learn it wasn’t true, except—it turned out to be right in the end after all.
“It’s still there, though,” Vallie said. “It still happened, and—I wanted to fix it. I wanted to fix it all. I wanted to win at Doomsday, and it’s just too late. No one ever will. How is that, how is this—” she flung an arm out, gestured at the shitty gym they were in, and also at everything, “fixed?”
“Twenty billion fewer majo are dead,” Magnus said. “They probably appreciate it. I know I do.”
“That’s not funny,” Vallie said, in exactly the same tone Magnus had used three nights ago.
“Sorry. Blame Avi.”
“Ugh,” Vallie said. She flopped back down onto her back. “What do you even see in him anymore? We’re out. We’re free. It’s not like he’s the only person who gets it.”
Magnus had just always liked Avi, from the moment he met him. Avi was cutting, and mean, and brilliant. He saw through bullshit and he didn’t let it get him down. He understood Gaea and he understood Magnus, instantly with a glance. Everyone else pretended not to see the things they didn’t want to, but Avi had always looked at everything straight on and laughed in its face. It wasn’t that Magnus didn’t understand who he was and what he’d done. But Magnus didn’t know anyone who’d never done something horrible. Not even himself, no matter what Vallie or Avi thought.
It didn’t make sense, but that was just one of the parts of being human Gaea had tried to stamp out.
He didn’t want to say any of that. “Maybe I’m just into redheads,” Magnus said. “When are you going to tell me about what’s going on with you and Yiso? What do you like about them?”
“Nothing’s going on,” Vallie snapped, and then she visibly reined herself in. She shook her head, almost laughing at herself. “I don’t know. Their crest is really soft.” She put her head down on her knees. “I kissed Lisabel,” she said. “In the other world.”
It took Magnus a moment to place Lisabel—the sweet one in Vallie’s mess. “And how was that?”
“Nice,” Vallie said, in a small voice. “I was really horrible to her here. I didn’t realize I was, but—I think maybe I was worse. Because of how I…whatever about her.”
“You can say you had feelings,” Magnus said, teasing.
“Fine!” she snapped. “I had a stupid crush on her and it made me awful.”
Magnus suddenly felt like an unbelievable asshole. Vallie was trying, really trying. Magnus never imagined he could have had a conversation like this with her back on Gaea. He’d thought bleakly sometimes that he’d probably die in a combat wing before he was twenty-five, but probably it didn’t matter. At least then he’d never have to worry that Vallie would find out he was queer. Forget all the shit he got from his mess: it would be so much worse when Vallie looked at him like he was—some kind of traitor. The way she looked when she talked about Ursa.
He used to daydream about ditching that fucking rock. Refusing assignment. Finding Ursa. It was a great dream, except he’d have to leave Vallie behind. And she would hate him, just like she hated their sister.
It would have been unimaginable to sit here like this and talk, really talk. Vallie was being honest with him. He owed her that too.
He said, “Avi was there for me. Through all of it. Gaea, and after, when I thought you were gone. I know what he did, I know what I did, I know all of that. But Gaea ruined so much. I was always afraid it would take you away from me, and—I don’t know. He’s an asshole and a would-be murderer. But I don’t want to let Gaea take him too.”
“Gaea didn’t kill all those people,” Vallie said quietly.
“No,” Magnus said. “I know. I know.” He didn’t have an answer for it. It was true. Avi hadn’t changed, really. But he was here, where it was safe. And Magnus just liked him anyway.
Vallie said, “You were afraid of me. There. I found you kissing Avi and you were scared. Of me. Of what I would say, or do.”
“That makes sense,” Magnus said. It did. He reached out and flicked her in the forehead. “I promise I’m not scared of you now.”
“I’m sorry,” Vallie said. For a few minutes she was quiet. “I was always glad, you know. Even before I learned to want to break the rules, I was always glad they let us break them. I was always glad they let me have a brother.”
Magnus couldn’t help but smile. Vallie could make him crazy, but her sincerity was like a brick wall: solid, immoveable, hurt like hell if you smacked into it too hard. “Me too,” he said, and put his arm around her and squeezed. They were both still getting the hang of hugs, but she leaned into his hold.
He checked the time on his visual feed and groaned. “It’s almost morning,” he said. “Let’s skip school.”
Sometimes Magnus couldn’t help but expect Vallie to be her old self; to flinch from even the suggestion of shirking duty, even if it wasn’t a duty she cared about. Vallie wasn’t the only one who couldn’t shake her ghosts. But she just snorted, and said, “Okay, but you’re explaining to Ursa.”
“Only if she catches us,” Magnus said. “Want to sneak up onto the roof? Ally showed me how.”
It wasn’t actually that hard; there was a trick to fooling the door lock into thinking you had the right permissions. It was the kind of thing Avi was always doing to keep himself from dying of boredom.
Light was only starting to peak up over the edges of the horizon when they got there. Chrysothemis had a twenty-seven hour day, and it was nearly summer now. Sunrise started early.
Magnus sat down on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over. Vallie settled down beside him.
“We made it.” He thought of saying the same thing to Avi. The look on his face, fragile and resigned. “You fixed that much. That has to count for something, right?”
“It’s the wrong sun,” Vallie said.
“Is it that different?” Magnus had never asked Vallie about the Earth she’d seen, in that other world. The one that had still existed, that she’d grown up on, that part of her still remembered.
“The sunrise?” Vallie tilted her head up, like she was really thinking about it. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s nice,” Magnus said. And it was the one they had.