Chapter 34: It’s Okay
"Which wall was it this time?" Daro asked Ash.
He was in Ash’s dorm room answering an after-hour call. Phoebe was occupied cleaning, moving through the room with focused energy, needing her hands busy.
"I didn’t walk into or fall from one," Ash winced through Daro’s treatment.
Daro glanced down at him.
"I walked through one," Ash finally said.
Daro sighed at the comment. "I appreciate the after-hour call from you two. Academy pays me triple my going rate for these room calls." He turned toward Phoebe. "Try to keep him away from any walls for at least two weeks."
"Best I can do is one week. After that, I have your contact saved," she responded, de-dusting the window sill without looking up.
"I’ll see you two then," he said, and left.
"Is this really how you want to live?" Phoebe asked.
"It’s not that dirty. I mean—"
"Being bruised and brought to the brink of your life. For people you don’t know. For organizations that only see you as a convenient tool?"
"Phoebe, when I—"
A Shade’s presence interrupted his thought before the door was gently knocked on.
Phoebe opened it. Azure was waiting patiently, arms held together in front of her.
"I’m sorry if I’m intruding."
"Not at all. I was just leaving myself." Phoebe turned to look at Ash before she went, leaving a look behind that said this conversation wasn’t over, and closed the door behind her.
Azure set her black cropped jacket on the hook just inside the door. She crossed to where Ash was on the bed and straightened her white and blue dress before sitting beside him. Her hand found his hair and tucked a loose piece back from his face, the motion unhurried, her fingers lingering at his temple for a moment before settling.
"I don’t like seeing you like this," she said. "Can I help you?"
"I’m alright."
"You’re not." She said it without accusation, the warmth in her voice running alongside honesty she had decided to let out. Her Shade was at full proximity, warm and undemanding. The version that asked for nothing back. She sat close enough that the hem of her dress touched his arm.
She reached for his unbandaged hand and held it in both of hers, her thumbs tracing the line of his knuckles, reading the damage the way Daro had read it but differently. She wasn’t assessing it. Just present with it. She didn’t say anything for a moment.
"Does it always hurt this much?" she said.
"Depends on the Shade."
"This one must have been strong."
"I’ve had worse."
She looked at him. "That’s not reassuring."
"I know."
Her hands stayed around his. Azure’s Shade at this proximity was the warmest Ash had ever read it. It didn’t feel careful or calculated in how she presented it to others paying attention, this was the unmanaged version. The warmth that didn’t have a purpose except to be there for those who needed it.
He looked at her. She was looking at their hands.
"Daro did what he could," Ash said.
"Daro stabilized you." She looked at his forearm, the bandaging. "There’s more the body needs after that kind of cost than what Daro carries."
"We could go to the restorative facility."
Azure looked at him, before standing up off the bed. She re-straightened her dress and gently removed her ankle boots, before placing herself fully perpendicular to Ash. Her long warm brown hair spilled over his vision momentarily.
The corner of her mouth curved, just enough to say let this happen.
"I know somewhere better."
She held out her hand, just enough that it wouldn’t strain Ash to take it.
He took it.
The stairwell was narrower than it looked from the top. The further down they went, the more his Shade-sense stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a response. Something below was already aware of them before they arrived.
Azure led him through the academy at an hour when the corridors belonged to no one. She moved without hesitation, taking him past the maintenance corridor at the east end of the residential block, into a disused wing he had walked past dozens of times without stopping. At the end of the wing a stairwell ran down to a sub-level that didn’t appear on any floor plan he’d ever seen.
"What is this place?" Ash asked. His Shade-sense was running wild, picking up an intense congregation of Shades from where they were going.
Azure only extended her hand for him to hold. "I trust you to trust me," she said with a soft smile, "But I’ll still trust you even if you don’t."
Ash took her hand, momentarily making contact with the translucent blue sleeves from her dress.
The two continued down through several access points. A locked metallic door with no handle. Azure use her free hand, and touched certain parts of the door that caused it to swing open. Another was an iris scanner. Her blue eyes were placed in front of it for five seconds before the next door opened too.
"Azure this feels like you’re taking me to some underground fight club." Ash pointed out.
"No one would ever fight down here," her voice dropped low for a moment. "That’s not what this place is for."
The space below was older than the academy above it. The maintenance had stopped at some point and a different kind of maintenance had started. Light sources that weren’t the academy’s fluorescents, pathways worn into the stone by consistent passage, an arrangement of the space that hadn’t happened by accident. Someone had been tending this.
Azure let go of his hand to lead him through a low passage, ducking slightly, and the passage opened into a larger space.
"Azure, what is—" Ash tried to speak.
The space in front of him shouldn’t exist.
Hollows. Half-Hollows. People.
Three entities that should not coexist banded together in a familiar setting.
A Half-Hollow from near the middle of the room saw the two and gave a slight nod to Azure as they continued further in.
A Hollow near the far wall turned toward Ash. Azure made a small gesture, one hand palm down, and the Hollow turned back to its path.
She walked him through it.
"Makayla, how are you doing tonight?" Azure asked a woman slumped against the east wall.
"Better than I have ever been." Makayla responded.
A large Half-Hollow was situated in a passage between two spaces.
"Bonbo Thirteen, please if you could." she curtsied.
Bonbo Thirteen adjusted itself so it wouldn’t take up so much space.
At one point she reached for Ash’s arm to steer him around a marked path, a section of the floor that looked solid and wasn’t, and her hand stayed on his arm a second after they were past it. She didn’t comment on this. Neither did he.
The Hollow near the far wall moved slowly through its path. Somewhere deeper in the space, a Half-Hollow made a sound that didn’t sound like a scream, but something more intimate. Like it was trying to communicate the best it could.
"Why do they come here?" Ash said. "The Hollows. The Half-Hollows."
"The same reason anyone comes anywhere they feel less like a problem to be managed." She looked at a Hollow moving slowly along the far wall. "Hollows and Half-Hollows aren’t the only ones who are troubled. There’s people. All of them casted out from society."
"For good reasons Azure. The Hollows are dangerous. They spontaneously appear, destroy places and kill people."
"Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?"
"Those people do, but Azure, the Hollows and Half-Hollows they’re not—"
"They were. And somewhere deep down they are still human."
They found a space arranged with salvaged surfaces, makeshift seating, enough to be a room. Azure sat and Ash sat beside her.
"This is the Thirteenth Moon, Ash." Azure quietly spoke.
"What does it do? Who are you hunting. Why are you—"
Azure held his broken arm with both hands. "Sometimes, it’s okay to just exist. They don’t want to fight. They don’t want anything. They just want to be. Isn’t that okay?"
His forearm ached less. Her restoration wasn’t the same as the facility’s mana-treated water, but it felt different. Like when you struggle to sleep, and it finally arrives unprompted.
"Why me specifically?" Ash said. "Why did you take me here?"
Azure looked at her hands now folded in her lap. "Because I wanted you to see it." She glanced at his forearm. "And because you needed somewhere better than Daro’s bandaging."
"That’s not the whole answer."
She looked at him. "No," she said. "It isn’t."
The warmth of her Shade ran at full proximity, undemanding, present the same way it had been in his room. It didn’t ask to be looked at directly, it just wanted him to know everything would be okay.
Azure turned toward him slightly. The warmth didn’t change.
She didn’t say anything.
And neither did he.
