23.1 Fic: Cypher Reflection 3

Mirage’s curse drew his eye away from scanning the many exits.   You catch something I missed?   She met his eye, indignant anger pressing her brows together, twisting her mouth to a scowl.   “A man who keeps prisoners doesn’t give two shits about freedom, or autonomy.”   It took him a second to realize she was referring to the chapel’s divine. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised at the strength of her reaction. She never said she wasn’t religious, and a deity of liberty definitely made sense for her.   He made a mental note to learn the name of this deity later. He could probably just ask. He wondered if there were holy days Mirage would celebrate, blasphemies she’d revile.   Other than kidnapping. Maybe he wasn’t the greatest hypocrite in the area for once.   “A front, then.” Keeping up appearances. A man afraid of the mask slipping.   Ugh, don’t make me relate for fuck’s sake.   She nodded, then started her search. She stayed low, gliding near the tile floor, Nimbus a trailing mist behind her.   He watched from the doorway, keeping a running scan of the many unshuttered, paneless windows. They were tall enough that he wasn’t sure whether it would be more accurate to describe the walls as columns. They made the icy wind just as relentless here as it had been on the airship. He shivered. Ignored a sensation of warm pressure in a gentle grip on his shoulder.   I am stood against a solid fucking door. There is no one there.   Honestly, he almost preferred the insects. The grip grew icy, sharp. He clenched his teeth and started counting windows.   Mirage finished her search, shaking her head in the negative as she made her way back toward him. He stepped away from the doorway and followed her through it, shutting it softly behind them.   His eyes strayed back to the journal on the nightstand. It was there, right? On that angle? That side up?   Keeping up appearances, and openly spied upon. Did one cause the other?   She led him back to the study, then hesitated, her stormcloud eyes switching from the stairs to the east door.   ‘My old cell is down that way’   Her hissing whisper from earlier echoed in his mind as he followed, keeping one eye on the stairs, chewing the inside of his cheek.   Mirage moved her hair back from her ear and pressed her cheek to the door, listening. He did his best to be quiet.   He scanned the room. Empty. No movement. If Amir was a djinn, he could probably float as well as Mirage could – would they hear him coming? Questions it would probably hurt more than help to ask her right now. Better to just be ready.   Her silence was running a second too long. He glanced at her. She was still. Too still.   He risked the noise of a half step to see better. Pale, eyes open. Frozen. Was she breathing? Her shoulders and chest were as motionless as her face.   He reached for her before he could think of how an unexpected touch might affect her tension. Hand on her shoulder. She didn’t move. She felt cold. He could see her pulse pounding in her neck. Her hair twitched with a growing tempest of air.   "Marwa?"   She darted a look over at him. Her pupils were only pinpoints. She stepped back from the door, he moved to let her.   “Two rooms over.” Her voice was a hoarse croak.   He didn’t need to ask who. Involuntary, he flicked a glance at the wood like he could see through it.   Two rooms over. Guarded, surely. Ta’lok and Saeldor and Cri with him, unless things had gone bad already. If they came in hot, the boss would be mad, but he’d back them up.   The wisdom of an open fight in the heart of his stronghold was dubious at best, but the impulse was alluring. Suppose they got the bastard as a hostage or something. His magic paralyzing his nerves, her knife on his pathetic throat.   He looked back at her. She was trembling. Gravity pulling hard on her limbs and the corners of her mouth. She hugged her arms. She looked so small.   Oh, no. No, you’ve got it all wrong.   How do I make you realize that you’re not alone – I’m not an army, but I’ll go to war for you. I’d throw the Door wide open and break my brain all over again just to get between that coward and a single hair on your head. But I know it won’t come to that, because you don’t really need me.   He should be afraid of you.   "Okay.” Refocus. Come back to me. Remember. Realize. “Breathe, kay?"   She nodded, a jerky, truncated, antithetical motion. Put her hand on the hilt of her knife. Getting ready for a fight, but her fingers were shaking.   Her face was a storm, flashing with fury and terror in a rending gale. Her hair twisted like a typhoon. His hands were useless, earthbound. Her eyes were so far away.   Shit. How do I do this? How do I reach you? How dare this motherfucker tear you up like this. How do I throw you a line? Should have been Cri. Cri would know what to say.   Nimbus hovered by her ear. She turned to face the elemental. Said something brisk in Aurian, and the little cloud slipped away under the door, dispersing to mist.   Did she know how beautiful her language was? How dare this fucker stifle her music. Where were the words to bring it back?   "Wh...” His throat was tight, he tried again. “What do you need?"   She said nothing, reaching toward him.   Shit, no, can’t. Mirage you have no idea how willing I’d be to hold you until you feel strong again but we might not have time and I will not be the reason you get hurt-   Pressure on his chest. She pressed her open palm over his stammering heart, her other mirrored over her own, rising and falling with her breath. His breath.   Oh.   “Okay?” She whispered.   As if I could ever say no to you in a moment like this, to anything that brought you peace, meu sol e céu.   “para você, yes.”   Of course it’s okay, but sweet Christ, my chest is the wrong place to go looking for peace right now. Calm down, calm down.   Inhale. Slow, measured. Count to four. His hand found her shoulder as he let it out. Felt the answering rise. Out again, sinking. ...Two, three – her exhale stuttered, fell short. Try again.   I hate this. Breathe, please, breathe. You weren't made for rain.   Fog creeping under the door. Nimbus. Already? So much for getting his heart rate down.   "Company?"   Mirage was watching The cloud reform, looking like she was listening.   “They’re with him in a guarded office,” she said, letting her hands fall.   "Guards are posted, not patrolling?" he directed the question to Nimbus, who bobbed a nod in the air.   That might be the first time you’ve talked to me without going through your mistress, little fog. Somos amigos?   "Boa"   “What?”   "’Good.’ Sorry. Good."   She nodded. Her voice sounded more normal, her breath steady, but there was a nervous intensity in the way she studied his face. She did not look like someone ready to keep going, and he was biting his tongue to keep from telling her she didn’t have to.   You didn't need to be here. Could have dropped you off at home, Cri and I could have snooped. You could be happy right now, laughing.   Right, because things went so well last time we went ahead without her. Besides, she said, right?   “I don’t want to go back, but I want to fuck Amir over more, so.”   I want answers, retribution, as bad as you do, but...   "Marwa?"   “Yeah?”   He fumbled, trying to link his scattered thoughts together into something reassuring.   "Look, we can go. We can slip out how we came in, wait for boss and the others to leave, and nuke the place behind us if you want,” he hesitated. Her turmoil was intolerable, but failing to eliminate the source was worse. She was watching him closely, focus slowly returning. He pressed on.   “We could do that. But listen, if you feel like we're not done here, then like I said – like you said, you're not doing this alone. Not that you need the backup, but, well, I really hope you don't think I came here to stand idly by."   He forced a half-smile. The rain abated as she listened. Thunder darkened her eyes, tightened her jaw, tilted her brows. Righteous fury. Relentless drive. The passion of the storm.   There you are.   He smiled without thinking.   "Fuck that guy, yeah?"   She nodded, static crackling sparks across her incandescent hair.   “We’re not done. Fuck this guy.”   You are. Unfair levels of hot when you’re like this. Holy hell.   Belatedly, he realized he was still holding her shoulder. He gave a soft squeeze before letting go.   End of summer, I’ll be lucky if I don’t break before the end of the week in this gale. Cut me some slack for gods' sake, I’m only a man.   “You got any ideas?”   "Oh several."   Focus, you’re here to play backup, not to daydream.   “Hit me.”   The joke was automatic. "I already mentioned liquefaction, catatonia... Oh, you meant for getting through there"   She snorted.   He grinned, it was hard not to.   Gods, please. Even if you don’t want me any closer than this, can I still make you laugh? Will you let me chase off your rainclouds?   Focus.   “If you want to slip past, I can try to distort both of us,” he offered, addressing her more likely plan, “we'd have to move fast, though.”   “Fuck yes.”   Vicious. Do you know what a force of nature you are? Can you feel your power? Your thunder? Marwa, you are a tempest.   “Should I try and help or try and make a distraction to draw their attention?”   Yes, now you’re getting it. It’s me who can’t do this without you.   "A distraction could be good - it's not invisibility.” He sorted through options for a second, then recalled the imp.   “Can you throw your voice again? That north door probably leads outside"   “You bet your ass I can.”   It was good she had long since dropped her hand from his chest, because he had no simple explanation for the skipped beats.   She moved to the door, waiting for cover. He focused on his heart, the shaking of his ribs like an animal’s cage. Looked past the tactile. Smoothed the reverberations, combing through vectors of light and color, brushing them past.   He welcomed the disconnection. The passive unpresence. It was so much easier to think, here. Carefully, keeping a thousand mental hands on a thousand cognitive threads like a human loom, he shifted focus onto Mirage and added a few million more.   Light first. Much easier to work when he could no longer keep an eye on her. Sounds, air currents – a lot of those – everything smoothed over under his focus, slipped through her like water, covered her. Nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to perceive.   When he was only thirty percent are she was still standing next to him, he reached for the door handle.   Hesitated.   If someone saw the door open, it wouldn’t matter whether they saw anyone go through it or not.   It’s too big. I’m already holding as many threads as I can.   His own protest sounded familiar. A mountainside in the grey, pre-dawn dimness. Stony, dew-slicked, slopes steep life cliffs. Realizing how long it would take him to scramble up, even at his top speed.   If his own legs couldn’t move him any further...   He didn’t like the similarity, but he couldn’t deny it had worked then. If he was holding all be could already, then he needed more hands.   It would only take a second.   The Door in his mind was barricaded, for all the good that did. Acknowledging its presence put his back against it by instinct, crammed between chairs and bedposts – no time for rest under siege. He pressed into the floor, pushed his shoulders backward, plugging his ears with both hands against the whispers crowding like fog through the spaces.   It hadn’t closed properly in a long time, but damned if it was opening any further.   “Okay, okay okay okay, focus, focus, be fast. Hands. I need hands.”   Clarifying his focus would do nothing to soften the cacophony, but it passed for reassurance.   He took a breath, braced his feet, and let his hands fall.   Screaming babble poured into his ears like boiling oil. He clenched his jaw against the reflex. Tried to imagine iron bolts holding his teeth together as nonsensical sibilance rushed through him like a river breaking its banks, like a wildfire breaking into a sprint, consuming.   There was no point trying to interpret the deafening panoply of sound into language. It was never made for language, or ears, or a brain with aural processing. Sound was only the closest analog his mind could find, and it was overloaded, shaking apart trying to make it fit the mold.   He searched the noise by feel, following the rapids though himself, trying not to dissolve his hands in the panning as innumerable, nameless feelings of alien senses foamed over his nerves.   He found it between fifth degree burning and the bitter crush of the space between bone and marrow. It made no sense. It never did. He grabbed it anyway, flung it at the real, wooden door in front of him as he scrambled to remember fingers, ears, sound, self.   It blurred. He watched the vectors shift, let whispered intuition guide him gathering them into threads, connecting, rerouting.   Yes, that makes sense. Good, just a little more.   It wasn’t a weave, it was a song; notes without music. Group them into chords, wrap the frets, gag the vocals. Simple. Hold tight. Save the handle for last.   Somewhere on the other side the space he distantly remembered a door being, a distant noise of heavy steps approaching from the north.   Time to go.   He turned the handle with one hand and reached for hers with the other.