I hadn’t really thought about it much, but her character this time was almost unmistakably her. The face was different, as it always was, a little bit, but the way she stood, weight on the balls of her feet, one leg slightly in front of the other like she was half-ready for a fight to start at all times was fairly recognizable. Combined with the cold, appraising gaze and slight tilting of her head as sounds caught her attention, I didn’t need the name to recognize her.

“Hey there. We should get out of the sun?”

When I’d sent Alex the text about needing to get the items from each other, I had really expected something along the lines of the typical offline trade expectation– placing an item up on the trade boards, with an absurd cost on it and a second, hidden, buyout offer of a specific sequence of low-to-moderate rarity runes.

When she’d, instead, sent me back instructions for meeting her, I was initially surprised– but then it became obvious. The guilds would be checking my trade history. It was trivial to keep that hidden for trades with specific people, but the offline auction system? Public record.

Plus, this way would let me actually get some experience with the rune, so it was a good idea in more than a few ways.

Her voice was strange as she responded, “Yeah. I’m… not quite finished for this session.”

I didn’t mention it, but the way that she set herself had changed. The readiness was still there, but it seemed… for lack of a better word, fragile. I wasn’t sure what to make of that at all.

The conversation that had followed that though…

Well, there was a reason that I was in the car, stomping down on my anger as much as I could.

It wasn’t terribly successful.

I just wish it were more useful.

Frankly, I hadn’t been thinking when I’d yelled at her, so preoccupied with the fact that she was acting counter to my expectations that it hadn’t quite processed exactly what was going on, nor how threatening I would sound. She didn’t really have much to worry about from me, but it would be perfectly understandable for her to think otherwise and be gone by the time I got there.

Theoretically, I could get Hasanat to let me in, but I was hoping that that wouldn’t be necessary. A few weeks ago, I would have thought that she might have just called the police or prepared herself to stab me, but that didn’t seem particularly likely at the moment.

Not least of which because it seemed like the first one she’d attack was herself. And that was where I was hung up so hard, really. It was, like the discovery of her identity in the first place, simultaneously a tiny, little thing and an enormous recontextualization of all of her behavior.

I was starting to think that she may not have been as okay with Falling Dawn’s breakup as she had let on at the time. Or ever.

It shouldn’t really have been much of a surprise– Novsha, leader by virtue of being just barely charismatic enough that you paid attention to her long enough that she started making sense.

Novsha, who drifted around to each little social group in the guild, slipping in to make sure that things were going okay and leaving before anyone got around to asking her anything.

Novsha, who hadn’t even started the guild, just been its longest-surviving member.

Even then, she’d tried to push off the responsibility a few times– something I was now realizing was not, in fact, a joke. It had been so easy, at the time, for everyone to brush it off.

‘Hey, weird question I know, but did you think Novsha was serious when she said she was “collecting applications for guild leader” and stuff?’

It was essentially the middle of the night, but Brian didn’t tend to be in Rune until way later, almost instantly responding.

‘kind of? I don’t think she wasn’t, but also don’t think there was a good candidate or anything. why?’

‘dealing with someone who reminds me of her recently. its weird. wanted to see if I could get a better read’

There was a much longer pause this time, and I could see his typing stop and restart a few times. ‘There’s two of them now? god save us all

‘makes sense tho. she’s a weird one but nice to have around. Kept things together. didn’t ever seem like that’s what she was trying to do, but it worked. gave me more vice-gl energy than anything else but we didn’t really have an actual leader sooooo

‘re your first q tho, I don’t think she would have left or anything, just wanted someone else to be the face. prob wouldn’t have ever thought anyone was good enough lol

‘imagine trying to be better than Novsha’

I left an emoji acknowledgement before I went back to staring out the window.

“Imagine trying to be better than Novsha.”

The sentence was like biting into a fruit rind. The kind of thing I would have said flippantly a few weeks ago, made so bitterly ironic. I didn’t need to imagine it anymore, but her position on the matter was less “a worthy rival” and more “of course you are.”

I was missing something; I just didn’t know what.

But I’d run out of time.

Her car was still there, at least, though every light in the house appeared to be off. Suddenly considering the merits of being anywhere but there didn’t even slow me down on the way to the door, where, when I went to knock, I was instead met with Alex opening it violently, the movement of air into the house tangible from a few feet away.

A loose t-shirt, the same sweats as the previous day, shoes that she’d obviously slipped on as quickly as possible, with messy hair down and half in her face, wild eyes shooting directly to my face, visible only from the ambient street lighting because the light in the house was still off.

“Busybody fucking AI,” she snapped, looking off above my shoulder for a second before she brought her gaze back to meet mine. “kept me in psych hold and didn’t even bother to show up. Obviously it thinks I deserve whatever the hell you’re here to do, so get it over with.”

She stepped back slightly, and if I hadn’t been looking I don’t think I would have understood. Head up slightly, eyes closed, jaw flexed but not together, muscles tensed but arms to her sides…

The way you stood to let someone hit you.

The sounds of the city at night rose around me, a wave that overwhelmed rational thought, and I was moving before I finished processing the thought of it.

I’m not sure I’d ever hugged someone so hard in my life.

It hadn’t really been my plan on the way over, so much as one had existed. I was just so angry– at myself, really, for not noticing before, but a not-insubstantial portion at her for never saying anything– that I’d wanted to yell at her to take better care of herself; to tell her that we’d been angry with the situation, not with her; to make sure that she wasn’t dedicating herself to something she didn’t actually want to do… but she thought what I was presenting was what she deserved, and that wasn’t anger.

I was almost whispering in her ear when I spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t try to keep in touch. I thought… I thought that if you needed us, you would ask. I’m starting to realize… well. A lot of things.”

There were tears on my shoulder before she started to move. Tentatively, with a touch so light it felt like she thought I was going to shove her away, she hugged me back.

It was almost frightening; how little I could tell. The tears kept falling, a barely-noticeable feeling on one shoulder, but everything else was the same perfect control as always. Regular breathing. Good balance. Smooth movement.

And dead-silent tears.

She was the one who eventually broke the silence. “Why?”

It took some time to respond, the anger having evacuated the moment I’d realized what she'd expected from me. “Because if you’re expecting what you deserve, this is as close as I can get.”

After a few minutes in the door, we’d migrated up to Alex’s room. Part of me thought that it hadn’t been long enough, but that part was quite thoroughly shouted down by the realization that it was decently chilly outside and she hadn’t been dressed for that. We sat next to each other on her bed– she’d tried for more distance, but the strange stiltedness about the way she did it was more than enough permission for me to bowl through it– and the complete lack of resistance to that told me it had been the right decision.

So I leaned on her side and the wall behind us, my head on her shoulder.

“I don’t suppose there’s something I could do to get you to forget everything that happened today.” Alex said. There was a tone of question there, but she finished it as a statement.

“Probably not.”

She paused only momentarily, and I felt her partially relax. “And if I offered to have sex with you to make it too awkward to bring up later?”

I jumped, lifting my head up. That… had not been something I’d thought was on the table. Still… “Uh. Tempting! But… no.”

She sighed. “’T’s a shame. And it’s already way too late to pick up anyone who’s not a creep.”

“Is that how you usually deal with your problems?”

Alex finally turned to look at me, and I could see a tinge of desperation behind the veneer of unaffectedness. “It’s not really dealing with them. Just… makes it so I don’t think about them too much. For a while.”

“The guys in class have been trying to find out if you’re ace. Since you never react…”

She laughed, short and sharp. “Ha! No. The opposite, if anything. Constantly attracted, to a lot of people that it doesn’t make any sense to want. But… it’s so common that I… get a lot of practice. Ignoring it, that is.”

I hesitated. “Wait, so you actually would...?”

She nodded. “In a heartbeat. Not that it would be a good idea. Or that you seem all that interested.”

It took me half a minute to work out how to actually communicate the racing thoughts in my head. “If I weren’t genuinely concerned about you, I’m not sure I would have been able to turn you down. Even now.”

Alex looked, for some mind-shatteringly incomprehensible reason, surprised. “Oh.”

“You seem… calmer.”

“You’re here,” she said, so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t begin to think of how to respond. She leaned into me, leaning on me in much the same way I’d been leaning on her. Eventually, I pieced together enough of a semblance of a thought to speak.

“I wouldn’t think… didn’t think… we were that close.”

Alex sighed, unhappily. “I want to do this with almost everyone. That I like, at least, and that’s not exactly a high bar.”

“Oh. So the sex would be–”

“Mostly an extension of that.”

I tried to piece that together with what I knew of her, feeling like I’d grabbed an uninsulated power line. “Which means the aloofness is–”

“To keep me from doing something stupid. Or insane.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes after that, me considering and her seemingly just enjoying the closeness. The image was so at odds– cocky, often-abrasive, always-distant Novsha, and Alex much the same– contrasted too extremely against the girl currently cuddling with someone who couldn’t possibly be more than an okay friend. It was too much, obviously didn’t make any sense… But I was learning not to trust anything obvious, with her.

The part of me that had been thinking of the whole endeavor I’d wrapped myself up in as the repayment of a debt made its presence known, for a second… and I released it back into the pond of my quickly-crystallizing thoughts. It wasn’t really a debt, and Alex wasn’t the kind of person who liked to be owed. And yet, with that thought gone, I was almost bowled over by the emotionally-loaded conviction that replaced that fleeing obligation.

I want to help her.

It came fast, and no amount of preparation in the ride over would have pulled that out on its own. I’d always enjoyed working with her before, but it had been distant, friendly acquaintances more than friends. That, suddenly, no longer felt right. I’d stayed in touch with plenty of people in the guild that had “just” been friendly acquaintances.

I’d just always thought that Novsha, that Alex, had had somebody more impressive to care about. And who cared about her.

I want us to help her.

I nodded, slowly.

“Are you going to be okay, to keep this up? It’s going to be difficult, and I really wouldn’t think that taking an easier way out on this would reflect poorly on you.”

She took one of those long, regular breaths that so rarely deviated at all. “Maybe. I’m… better. Than I was. But… would you mind staying, tonight?”

I grimaced, thinking. “We still need to finish… well, you know. And then there’s class, tomorrow.”

She shrugged, the motion clearer to the touch than sight. “Whatever, on class. I’m not going to keep you up, just… I sleep better with other people close.”

“I’ll grab Hasanat’s access for an hour, we finish what we were doing in Rune, and then… okay.

“I’ll stay.”