- XVII -

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         Tristian enjoys the night air. Such a simple statement. He pours over it for a few moments, twisting it this way and that, like someone would appraise a rare gem. Staring into it trying to find deeper meaning in the facets.
         It's not even the solitude, though everyone probably thinks that of him. Oh, that Tristian, he's so antisocial. That's probably what they say. And maybe it's true. Maybe it is. But the reality is that all those people crammed inside, measuring their space in bare inches, not even able to hold your arm out without touching a bare person, Tristian doesn't like that. Give him corners, give him high places, give him some place where he doesn't have to stand there and take it all in at once. Where he has to pretend he fits in. Mingled smells, tight and cloying and lingering, they fill his nostrils to the point where he wants to gag. Yet this never bothered him before. It really didn't and he's not sure why it's bugging him now. He used to be able to stand indoors and not feel this great need to get out , to not feel four unyielding walls pressing down on you. Maybe it's from the tunnels. The damned tunnels, they still split his head with nightmares. Twisting paths down dark corridors, muffled roaring in the distance, the only light a rich red glow that seemed to pierce his entire vision. That's where it all started. But it was only a start.
         And so here he is out here. And Tristian takes a deep breath of the cutting winter air, feeling it enter his lungs and fill them, pure air. It might not be the cleanest, but there aren't any memories contained in this air, no whispered glances, alcohol soaked giggles, sloppy passion. Just air. Still, the traces of people are all over this place, even without seeing any of them, he can hear them, see their passing, a discarded cigarette, a tossed fast food wrapper, the diced up fragments of a conversation, bitter arguments, sighs of love. Above him some one, maybe in the dorm over from Will's, has opened their window, maybe to enjoy the same air that he's enjoying and they've got a radio on, singing out into the night. For lack of anything better to do, Tristian listens. Listening is better than watching, he finds it more passive. You can sit there and the world can play games in your hearing and it's just something that happens. You don't change anything. The problem with observing is that whenever you watch, you change things, you alter them simply by presence, by the weight of your eyes.
         That's what sent Tristian outside eventually, as much as he tries to pretend otherwise. In the end it was either become an active participant or an active witness and he couldn't do either. Every time he mistakenly made eye contact with one of them he was reminded and the old hollow pain clenched his chest again. Get away from me, the eyes tell him. You did this to us, caused this lurking pain. You set fire to the curtains cloaking the world and showed us things we didn't want to see. And you had no right to do that. No goddamn right at all.
         You're right, you're right. That's all Tristian can say in response. What else is there to say?
         So Tristian's not really sure what he's going to now, really he's quite content to stand out here all night until Brown retrieves him and they can go home. Technically, he's still at the party, fulfilling the letter of the law if not the spirit, he can leave this party with his conscience clear. Of course now that he's appeared at one of these things, they might want him to come again, that's the trap they want him to fall into. Oh Tristian you came once what's your excuse this time. Why don't they get the message, why won't they understand. It makes him want to scream in futile rage sometimes. But his thoughts are flat, level things, suffused with grey monotone. Even in his mind he can't get angry. His friends, he doesn't deserve them, that's really what it boils down to, Tristian had his chance and he blew it and that's that. Let him go and their lives will be better, Tristian's sure of it. More sure of that than anything else he's ever thought about.
         His thoughts are crystal drops on a string, utterly clear to him but merely a bizarre pattern to everyone else. Tristian doesn't care, there's not much he cares about anymore, he thought he did once but that was some strange fantasy. Even hours before he tried to convince himself that there was a purpose to coming here, a quaint simple purpose but it's radically out of place here. This isn't a place for the simplistic, for the old yearnings, it's been replaced by a cynicism that even he can't fathom. Nobody cares about themselves anymore but here it's a choice. Something to be admired. In a cynical fashion of course. Sweeping your arms out to the world and shouting bring it on. Welcoming the anvil when it drops onto your head, even as your eyes go cartoon wide and you run in place endlessly as the shadow grows larger. All part of the game. Apparently.
         Maybe it's self pity, heaped on in spoonfuls. Tristian wishes he could punch through the dulled soup of his musings. Still, Tristian feels oddly calm in this moment, without the presence of people reminding him of how different everything is now, without the constant clamor of the party to assault his senses and tell him again and again that he has no right to be here, he can relax into the world and let himself go. The stars are out now, in this early morning hour and his eyes greet their pale light like old friends. Companions in war. Somewhere out there someone is staring at the stars from the opposite end of the Universe but all they'll see are old photographs, light rewinds history backwards until all you can see is the past. And maybe in millions of years someone will catch this bit of light he's riding right now and see Tristian and see his face and wonder, why was he standing there, what was he thinking. Read the lines on his face, read the set of his brow, puzzle it all out and come back in time and tell him what it's all about.
         Because in the end, Tristian doesn't know anything. And he's very much like to know something. About life. About feelings. About emotions and what they make people do. Turn himself inside out and try to figure out how it all works.
         But Tristian can't do that, nobody can. And the only beings that could do that for him tell him truths that his infant mind isn't ready to hear. It just shuts itself down, singing lalala in a boisterous voice, hands over ears.
         He sighs, shaking his head a little. He's had his hand on the railing for a while and the cold has seeped up his arm. Tristian's tempted to keep it there, just for the sheer thrill of sensation. But that's a dangerous road. Sensation has to come from inside. He remembers a girl drawing a razor across her arm, gritting her teeth and telling herself how bad she was. Her soul was beaten and numb and she looked at him with tears welling in her eyes, asking him why it doesn't hurt more. Doesn't she deserve all the pain in the world. And she kept asking him that and all he could do was stand there and watch with detached horror as blood welled up from the fault line in her skin faster than he ever thought possible. Tracking down her arm, spinning and falling to the floor. Star splatters on concrete flooring. We grow paler each day and the world leeches the blood from us. Desperate to feel, we let life draw razors all over us, never feeling the one snaking around to slice you in the throat.
         He opens and closes his hand a few times, thinking he sees tiny scars there from battles already too numerous to recall. He finally resolves to just keep it in his pocket. Just like that. Simple logical thought. Every goddamn decision is like that now, just weighing facts. Clinical. Antiseptic. God forbid we let actual emotion guide us. Tristian's had warmth and happiness peeled from him, sunburn flaking and dropping right off. What's left is tender, red and sore, but ultimately numb. He wants to do something impulsive, spontaneous but the only real decision making gets done in battle now, life or death. Everything else is just puppet theatre. Step back into real life and it just feels scripted. How can you bring yourself to care about the same stale plots, the overworked and flat characters, the bland settings. No vibrancy. No life.
         Distantly he thinks he hears footsteps behind the door, rapid ones, like someone nearly falling, or running and trying not to. Probably someone out here to vomit because someone's here in the bathroom. Tristian gets this absurd image of that person running out and pushing past him and running down the stairs into the parking lot and spilling themselves all over the pavement and Tristian just standing there, some forsaken ghost just watching. And finally the person will stand up and wipe their bile stained mouth and stare up at Tristian and be like
         Oh wow Tristian, I didn't even see you there. How about that, I walked right past you and didn't even see you. Isn't that a kick?
         and then brush past him, desperately trying to forget that he even existed, up the stairs and into the apartment and gone, a memory taking flight even as it jettisons the ballast that's represents the memory of him. If he could make them all forget he would, if that power existed he'd exert it. In an instant. And sit there on a bench and watch them all walk past and nod to him and not have a clue about who he was and he'd feel totally happy. And the fact that something like that would make him happy, even content, scares some part of him that's frantically holding on, trying not to let the rest of him go. But it's getting so tired, he's getting so tired.
         A banging on the door makes him spin around, his motion smooth and oddly silent, his hand travelling to his belt, every limb and muscle locked into place. Moments like that he can see himself as if from a great distance, and he wants to wail and scream. Put some expression into your face, dammit! Show some feeling, something honest to God human. You're falling apart, leaving little pieces of your humanity like bird droppings wherever you go. But it's all on automatic, a grim detachment. Moments like this, caught in the unwavering purpose of the situation, he could easily slaughter everyone in this apartment. He knows he could with the clarity of thinking that only comes when you've withdrawn so far that the road to total abandonment of yourself has less to travel on than the road back.
         He catches a sight of reddish hair in the wire crossed window of the door and he pauses, feeling his heart starting to race. No. It can't be. For a second he finds himself actually paralyzed, falling directly into a confused clustered indecision. Once sitting in some alien dive bar ten people had burst in to overwhelm and kill him and he had been on his feet in motion even before the first one had cleared the door. Automatic reflexes. That's not the case now, he wants to run and he wants to open the door and the twin desires keep him firmly rooted in the same place. A physics diagram, showing the unmoving box and the million forces acting on it to keep it from falling or floating away. Inertia, Tristian resolves to stay in one place unless acted on by an outside force but the friction just isn't there, he's oil, slick and greasy. Try to get a grip on him and your hands just slide off.
         Turn around. That's always the right plan. Turn and don't face your problems, if this is indeed a problem. Maybe she'll go back upstairs now, maybe she saw him and decided against it. Decided against whatever she was planning on doing. But what if she was planning on coming out only if he was there? Right, some thoughts are too laughable to entertain. In just a second he's going to hear fading footsteps, slowly rising. He tenses, waiting for it.
         Instead he hears the door opening and inside his pockets his hands clench. Blood rushes to his head and he feels light, even as the pooled blood screeches back down into his stomach, tying knots and laying there like some God awful biological brick. Her footsteps are the tappings of a blind man's cane, clear and staccato. He can even hear the pause, hear the emotion in that very pause. Tristian can see it all, read the nuances of every person but he can't feel it, can't experience it, someone took the time to wrap him in plastic and all the nerve endings are dead. Burned away.
         His mouth is so dry, but he feels he has to say something. Maybe if he's calm it'll scare her away, maybe she'll get nervous and run back inside, telling all her friends that Tristian is out there and for the love of God don't go out there because he's acting like a goddamned lunatic.
         Tristian's glad she can't see his face. He's not sure why that is. It would probably frighten her even more. But he's got to say something, right? It would be impolite otherwise, right?
         "Hello, Lena," he says and he winces inwardly as the sharp intake of breath he feels more than hears, "it's really a nice night, wouldn't you say?" God, she must think he has magic powers or something, she doesn't know that he could see the barest contour of her face and know who it is. Tristian's got a good memory for faces. That's what he tells himself. For some reason, he lets himself believe it.
         "Hey," is all he hears. Her voice sounds tired, almost drawn, but he can understand that. They've all been here for hours and that's tiring enough. Even without the dancing but Lena's been dancing a lot. Tristian knows because he's watched her, he's watched everyone but his eyes keep coming back to her. Her motions, her poise and grace, mostly just the way her face screws itself up in concentration, as if he's dancing to forget and remember and paying tribute to something lost long ago.
         There's a long silence where Tristian doesn't hear the door opening and closing again so he figures she must still be here. Probably should turn around. Tristian's gotten himself so detached now that it's all happening to someone else, he's got his feet propped up on a couch and is drinking beer and watching the life of this pathetic loser they coincidentally happen to also call Tristian. Boy that guy's a moron, all those great friends and he can't ever appreciate it, why the hell do they keep him around anyway. Tristianonthecouch can't figure that one out. Maybe the final episode of the show will have all the answers, but he doubts it. There don't seem to be any pat endings, just a stammering stumble to the finish line, all loose parts and blind direction. Enough to make you want to heft another beer. Bottoms up.
         Tristian's got to turn around. He really couldn't live with himself otherwise, ignoring her like this. Maybe she expects it or maybe she doesn't really care either way but it's something he just has to do. General decency, he's still got that, the world can wear him to this paperthin doll of himself but there are some things that can't be stripped away.
         And so he does. She's not looking at him, she's not looking at the ground either. Some in between unfocused diagonal direction, her arms lightly crossed, almost hugging herself. One shoulder is leaning on the door, her body is tilted, one foot crossed over her ankle. Tristian feels that old taut feeling again, the kind that makes you feel awkward and mighty and powerless all at the same time. Caught in the tide, you have no choice but to sweep forward.
         Her face is solemnly blank but there are tracks of something traced down her face, canals drawn out by the indigenous life. Every so often she sniffs, as if she's got a cold. Distinctive as always, it's a face whose features he could find in the dark. Looking on her like this he feels like a snoop, intruding on some awesomely private moment, some ghost who can't affect anything, getting his kicks vicariously. Feeding on the pain of the world, letting it all pass through him, like it's supposed to give him purpose, give him reason. That's not how it should be. That's not why he's here, Tristian thinks darkly. He's supposed to help people, you can't take that away, no matter how hard you try.
         "Ah, is everything okay?" he finds himself asking. Startled, as if forgetting he had ever been there, she looks up at him, her eyes briefly wide. Deer in the headlights. Maybe she's forgotten what his voice has sounded like. It's probably different now anyway, lower in tone, a near whisper, as if afraid someone might overhear.
         ". . . she's waiting for me, when I get home from work . . ."
         "No . . . I'm fine . . ." Lena responds to him softly and it's such a blatant lie that Tristian isn't sure what to do. He's prying where it's not his business, he should just let the subject drop. But for some reason he can't, there's emotion fluttering in the air around him and like some mad scientist, he wants to try and capture it, see if he can use some for himself. Morbid curiosity and an overriding belief that he really can't affect anything anymore. Ghosts hands passing right through you with translucent vibrancy, a mere tingle if that.
         "You . . . you don't look all right," Tristian finds himself pointing out, feeling himself sit back, the world plopping itself down into the driver's seat. She stares at him suddenly but her face is utterly unreadable. It scares him a little, the line he's treading. But her eyes are so naked that he can't help but do something. Anything. "I mean, you can . . . you can tell me whatever you want, but you still . . . don't look fine." He ventures a smile to ease the stiffening blow.
         "No, really, I'm really all right, Tristian, thanks . . ." she can't finish the sentence and her voice can't even find the strength to lend it some conviction. If Tristian cared more he could tear her argument to tissue paper, point out exactly what he thinks is wrong. For someone like Lena he would have done that once. Once. That's the problem, he's not that man anymore but that man hasn't gone anywhere, he's still there beating against the flesh walls of his mind, his clenched and bloody fists making pointless dents in a prison he fashioned for himself when the world got too rough for him.
         "What's wrong, Lena?" Tristian's asking, prying more than he thought he would. It's almost insulting how he won't take no for any sort of answer. She could always go back inside, but she's not, instead she's shifting her back against the door, her hands at her sides, touching the cool steel. Her eyes stare straight ahead, past him, into the endless night, the cold expanse of space. The wind gently tugs at the few strands of her hair that's trying to escape the clip that's using to tie it back. It's the only motion in her face. Up against the wall she looks pressed, scared, unsure. Tristian sees the danger signs, her features threatening to slip into that grim uncaring mold that he's trapped himself in and with a desperate arcing vow he finds himself affirming that he won't let that happen to her. Tristian isn't sure where this new desire is coming from. But he can't let her fall like that. Show her that someone cares. Show her that whatever is bothering her will go away eventually. There's always a point. There has to be.
         But how? How?
         "Really, Tristian," Lena replies and she smiles a little, looking down at her feet, "there's nothing wrong. Sorry to disappoint you."
         "You're out here for a reason," and he can hear his voice sliding back into the grey numbness of before, elusive victory rocketing away faster than he can run. "I'm the anti-social one," he tells her, echoing his own insipid joke. "Not you." He sticks his hands in his pockets, and then takes one out to gesture at her. She's still not looking directly at him, he wants to leap in front of her and wave his arms, shout to her I care but he can't. The capacity in him is deadened, cut off. He would never even presume to dare.
         "Just wanted some air," she mumbles, looking down again, scratching absentmindedly at her arm with slim fingers, her nails making gentle noises against the skin. "That's all."
         "Lena," he responds, putting his hands in his jacket pockets and holding his arms out, so that the jacket spreads from him like some sort of cape, "I may not be a lifelong friend," and his utter gall surprises him even as some voice in his head keeps egging him on, "but I can tell when someone is upset over something. And . . ." he hesitates a little here, especially now that he can't tell if she's listening or not, "and I know that if you don't talk about it, you'll just feel worse. Trust me." I've written the book on it, he wants to say but that would sound too damned self pitying. It's not what she wants to hear, he's sure. She wants confidence. He can give that to her, the confidence that every day he wishes he felt, chipped away little by little. "And . . . and maybe," now he's looking down, pacing in a small circle, his voice rising and falling in gentle waves that he's not even aware of, "it's not me you want to talk to but, someone, Jina, anyone. Just to get it out." He finishes his small circuit back at the railing and places his hand on it again. This time Tristian's not surprised to feel it trembling, it's matching the marching beat rhythm of his heart.
         ". . . oh but things ain't just the same . . ."
         Lena draws in a sigh, but says nothing otherwise. Tristian feels his heart speed up again and then after a silent moment slow back down and his mood drops a little. Some part of him . . . he had hoped she'd want to talk to him, he's not sure why, he's not even sure why it matters to him anymore. But it does. It really does. Right now he's aching to have her tell him things, to open herself up to him. Because maybe then he'll feel something and she'll feel something and everything might just be a little bit better.
         But nothing. Dammit, he really had tried this time.
         "Has something . . ." her small whisper makes his previously bowed head jerk right back up like radar, "ever . . . bothered you . . . so much, that . . . it . . . it just keeps coming back?"
         He turns his head slowly to face her. She's looking right at him. And he can't read her face and she probably can't read his but it's a start, they're both in the same boat. Eye contact.
         Almost instantly she looks down, a little to her left, just slightly enough to break the connection, as if afraid of dropping a veil and revealing too much. It's still a start.
         But Tristian isn't sure what to do next. She asked him a question. Is he supposed to answer it or was she just talking to the air? He doesn't know, all the knowledge he's got wrapped up in his head, stuffed so tightly that there are times when someone will talk to him and Tristian won't be paying attention and he'll answer in a language that wasn't born on this planet. All that damned useless knowledge and he can't figure out how to answer a question.
         He's watching Lena and maybe she's watching him out of the corner of her eye. Tristian would like to think that she is. Her hands keep squeezing her forearm, as if trying to cause the problem to ooze it's way out of her system. Answer her question, dammit. The one thing you've always wanted is for someone to open up to you and for it to be her, for you it's a winning streak, the closest you've come to one in a long while. Don't screw this up. Please. This might be the hanging branch that sticks out as you plummet off the cliff, grab on and see if it will hold the both of you, and maybe just for a second you can stop the fall. Maybe just for one moment you can see the world and not wander with eyes tightly shut hoping that because you can't see anything it can't see you.
         He's got an answer for her and it's the only one he can give. The honest answer. Taking a deep breath, he finds himself saying, "All the time." His lips twitch into something resembling a smile. "Sometimes it's like someone constantly following you around, just reminding you over and over."
         Lena starts again at his words, but it's gentler now, like she dozed off for a second and now she's waking up. Glancing up at him again, she shifts her weight against the wall and says, "I don't know," and her eyes narrow, her face is wrestling with a concept larger and stronger and faster than she, "it's . . . when you think you've . . . over something, just little . . . little things remind you of it and you . . ." she shakes her head. "It's like being back when it happened all over again."
         "It gets better, eventually, you know," Tristian tells her, injecting a helpful note into his voice. There's pain in her voice, stumbling confused pain, someone hurt and trying to come to grips with it. Trying to understand. For a second Tristian thinks he knows what she's talking about but he can't imagine her talking to him about it. About the restaurant. But she hasn't run away, hasn't gone back inside. Hope beckons on the far side of a chasm, telling you it's not that bad a jump, the hole isn't that deep. Try it anyway. Cajoling.
         A snorting laugh is all the answer he gets from her. "Yeah, that's what they keep telling me, but . . ." and for the first time she looks him right in the face, "you wish there was like, like some sort of table or something, where you could just . . . crossreference what happened and see how long it'll take for you to get over it."
         "Right, right," Tristian says, staring at her straight on. Her eyes are tinged with red, there are hints of a blurred lack of focus but her essential nature shines right through. "And there could be a little chart of times, you know, so you could see where you'd place. And . . . with, like notices for you at certain times, like six months: dear God seek help now!"
         "Or even . . ." Lena adds, looking down a second and looking back at him, "a chart of where you should be, you know, week three . . ." and her voice takes on a prim lecturing tone, "you should only be crying two times a day now, with the occasional suicidal thought every other day . . ." her voice has sparks inside, not enough to flare but enough to color her voice, give it another dimension. It's a little hoarse at the edges, probably from shouting all night but there's an easy tone to it, a gentle casual canter.
         "It'd make it easier in the psychologist's office," Tristian notes abstractly, "we could all wear color coded nametags, like we're at some convention of something . . ."
         "A mental health gathering," Lena suggests, grinning all too briefly.
         ". . . yeah, like that and . . . he could just, you know, walk out and look at all the colored tags and make all the depressives sit on one side and the megalomaniacs on the other . . ."
         "They'd probably each want their own corner," Lena adds suddenly, the same impish smile flashing. "The megalomaniacs, I mean."
         "Probably," Tristian deadpans, "but the depressives would just all, like, cluster in one corner and . . . insist the other person sits in the chair . . ." Tristian draws himself up a little, his voice going down on octave even as his expression droops accordingly, "No, go ahead, you deserve to sit so much more than I do . . . no, no, I insist after you . . . you've all got it wrong . . ."
         But by the third voice he hears a muffled sound and looks up to see Lena covering her mouth with one hand, her eyes closed a little, shaking with something that he can only call laughter. He wishes she'd unleash the sound completely, let it fly into the night, instead of clipping it, grounding it between the two of them. It's a sound he's heard often and rarely gets tired of, he'd poke himself full of statements at his own expense, until he was more hole than man, to hear it. Tristian gets the sense that the emotion is trying to tell him something but he's dense, ignoring it.
         She looks up at him suddenly and their eyes meet again. It's like he can see into her brain, he's surprised at the clarity twinkling out at him. But yet there are still shadows in residence, you can only use the spotlight to ward them off for so long before the batteries start to go dead. And it's in that inky blackness while you're scrambling around for more that it strikes. Until all you can do is sit there and not care. A vicious stupid game we play with ourselves, purely to remind ourselves that we're human, that we're not perfect. When we know that from the day we're born, that it can't be any other way.
         And yet, Tristian, you sit there and debase yourself for being the same as everyone else. Even as you excuse them from a standard you can't even hold yourself up to. Does the irony never strike you, or do you need it written on a mallet and swung at your head. Imprinted on your face.
         Silently they stare for a few seconds, neither of them saying anything. He gets the feeling she's about to say something and turns away for reasons he's not too clear on, spinning on his heel in an almost comical fashion and gripping the railing once again. His head bows almost of its own accord.
         ". . . she turns out the light and cries in the dark . . ."
         "But seriously," Tristian says suddenly, cutting off any comment that might have come from her, "if it's over and done with, don't let it bother you. Really. Because it's just not, not worth it, you know?"
         "I know," Lena sighs and he can hear the humor drain from her voice again. Two steps back. Damn damn damn. Tristian silently curses himself for a fool for ruining the mood before he had even gotten a chance to enjoy it. Any moment now he expects her to go back inside and talk to someone that she'd rather have a conversation with. Any second he'll hear the door opening. But she keeps talking. How is that? "It's funny how you know something is just . . . bad, you know, bad to get all worked up over . . ." a small silly laugh, "especially when you can't do anything about it . . . but you keep letting it bother you anyway."
         "Believe me," Tristian responds, still not looking at her, looking at his hand on the railing, trying to focus his world on it, "it's even worse when you think you can do something about it. Because you sit there and just, just go through all the things you could've done, when in reality . . ." here he pauses, shaking his head a little, "there was no way you could have known. And nothing you could have done." His hand tightens a little on the railing, blood from metal.
         He expects a terse silence at this point and he does get his wish, but only for a second. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Lena shift her feet again, placing them right next to each other, her legs out at a diagonal from her body, her back straight and flush with the wall.
         "I . . . used to be like that," she tells him quietly, as if relaying some dark secret in a confessional. To Tristian, it might as well be her taking a knife, ripping her soul out and waving it still dripping in front of his shocked face. "You know," and he sees her hand wave lazily in the air, indicating the problem that must clearly be drifting right past her eyes, "thinking I could have . . . done something. And when I realized that there was nothing I could have done, I thought, oh now I'll start feeling better, that whole acceptance thing." He can hear the shaking of her head, almost feel it disturb the air around her. His senses seem oddly in tune now, buzzing along with the quiet racing of his pulse. The night's strangely warm suddenly and yet the chill brushes across his cheeks still. "And I did, a little, I felt better, but . . . every so often something, it's like flipping a switch and poof!" she snaps her fingers, "I'm back there again. Where I don't want to be. Like no time passed at all."
         Lena seems to sigh, drawing her arms closer to her chest, crossing them and rubbing her legs together for apparent warmth. Tristian almost leaps over and offers his coat but he's paralyzed. He can't see her face anymore and very much wants to, but he's afraid if he makes eye contact again she'll see his face and see his eyes and know. She'll know and that will ruin everything and it'll all fall apart. He'd rather let her wallow in this mellow ignorance, get on with her life and never know. It would only be a burden to her, knowledge like that. Just some three legged pack horse that someone sold you, it's usefulness doubtful and unlikely.
         ". . . and she won't answer when I call her name . . ."
         "It's stupid, but . . ." her voice is more hesitant now, she's charting waters that are new, unknown, "but I think of something my grandmother used to tell me . . . after my grandfather died . . . a couple of years later and she used to say . . ." Lena draws in a deep shuddering breath, the memory raking her across the face with ice claws, "that, when he died it was terrible, that she'd walk around in a daze and she'd see like an old picture or something, and just . . . just start crying again, little things like that would just trigger it . . . but . . ." and here she sounds confused, the way you always do when someone tries to describe something you have little concept of, as you wrap your mind around it and think you have it all down when you know nothing, in the end, "it gets better. That's what she told me. That she could look at his picture and feel a . . . pang but she wouldn't have to . . . remind herself not to set a place for him at the table or, or sit there and expect him to come home any second." One hand is rubbing her thigh, like she's trying to get some feeling back into it. Tristian watches the play of light on her fingernails, small fireworks, flashbulbs in the night. "Just like that, she said. And I keep thinking of that, what she said. And it's . . ." that small laugh again, gently mocking herself, "just stupid. Because they aren't the same thing at all."
         "The loss, the death," Tristian finds himself replying and his voice is the creak of ancient timbers rocking and coming back to life, "of anything, whether it's a person or even something like . . . like innocence . . . it always . . ." he allows himself a small smile, "you keep expecting the whole situation to reverse itself and every day the way things used to be becomes like this . . . weird dream . . ." he gives a shrug, "or maybe that's just me. I'm strange like that." He stands straight suddenly and somewhere pulls the courage to look right at her. It's only with some surprise that he realizes she's looking right at him as well. Her eyes are still veiled but cracks are beginning to show. He can't remember even talking to her for this long, about these things. There were nights at friends' houses, where they could sit in a group and he'd mostly listen to her talk, to everyone talk but those don't count. This here, she's telling him things. It takes the right combination of chance and emotion, he guesses, the right combination to push events along. To start it moving. But where it goes, they have control over. Tristian's starting to realize that now. It's always their choices.
         "Sometimes," Lena says slowly. Her eyes are a little wider, but she's fixed on him, as if studying his face, looking for crevices that weren't there before, regions that she hadn't noticed the first few times. "Sometimes I feel that way. Like a dream." She looks down, as if considering whether the laces on her sneakers are tied tightly enough. Tristian feels his heart intensely beating again, he's going to faint at the rate he's going. Except that he knows that his body will compensate for it anyway. Fitness trainers would have a field day with him.
         "But we're not talking about the same thing, are we?" she asks him with odd bluntness. Her face snaps up to stare right at him, piercingly even as she says the words. "I mean, I've got my little problems here and . . ."
         Tristian instantly feels a small chill and a block of distance time can't rupture. "They aren't little, Lena. They're not," and the conviction in his voice rings like a distant bell.
         ". . . and you . . . it's just . . ." she finishes, waving her hand a little in the air, indicating the sky, the stars, the things that she'll never see in her lifetime. Lena pauses for a second and then laughs, toying with her hair a little. "I mean, Tristian, you sure know how to make a girl feel insignificant." The laugh that follows that statement might be a little forced but it rises from a well of something far more honest than he's been all night. Emotion pulses underneath while all he can offer are placating statements read off cue cards, the sound of a man responding as he thinks he should in a given situation, not even knowing what's appropriate anymore.
         Insignificant. Tristian would very much like to do the opposite. To make someone feel anything other than insignificant. But when he barely feels like a person himself, there really doesn't seem to be any chance of that happening. He needs to try though. Just to prove it to himself that he can still try. That's all. That he's still got the capacity.
         "It's not all it's cracked up to be," Tristian notes to Lena. Someone she keeps the same expression on her face through his statement. He puts his hands in his pockets and strolls around the concrete landing. "When you come down to it, it's totally different out there but at the same time . . ." he pulls his lips back from his teeth, drawing them into something resembling a grin. But he can't look right at her. He still can't for extended periods. She might see. Might see what's shapelessly drifting behind his eyes. "It's not different at all. And no matter what's out there, your significance doesn't change, Lena. Not where it counts." Something stabs through him and he thinks that it's almost honest emotion. But he's not sure, he can't be sure, it's been so goddamn long.
         Lena blinks at that statement, for a second not sure what to say. Finally she crosses her arms back over her chest and gives him a small grin. "Flattery? From you, Tristian?"
         Sheepishly he just shrugs at her. Something is tearing him up inside, struggling to get out. Looking at her, he can see what's happening and realizes that in the end he really has no choice. Maybe if he cared more he could stop it but to procure that effort, it's not there. It went and left and found someone who could actually get some use of it. "I just call the truth as I see it," he replies modestly, his breath catching as he says it. Dear God, it nearly hurts. It shouldn't be a physical reaction, there's no reason to gasp and turn away. And he can't. In end he has to face it.
         And he can almost guess her words before she even says them, before her lips start to form them. Everything is scripted down that far, down to your motions, your actions, the soft flutter of a nostril or the fact that you tend to put more weight on your left foot in this moment than your right. "Gee," Lena says with some cheer, cocking her head a little to the side as she talks, "and here I was, thinking you had all these lofty concerns on your mind." Her eyes crinkle as she jokes with him a little more, "Yet you set aside some time in your mind for little old me. That's nice, Tristian." Her tone is kidding, she's not making fun of him but having some fun with him, his detached persona. Maybe she thinks it's an act, not realizing how deeply it plunges.
         And yet it's a pulsing glow rising right from some misplaced center of his mind. From a far distance, he can feel himself smile back at her, finding her eyes and holding her gaze. Distantly he can feel his leg trembling a little, like when he used to have to stand in front of a class and give a speech. Like a goddamn rubber band. In melodrama the world always seems to hold its breath in moments like these. Here there's the shotgun echo of a car backfiring and the gagging refrain of a drunk tipping over the edge finally. The world goes on, no matter what we might want to think. Even in our most private moments, darkest intimacy, it goes on.
         "Well, you know, I guess it's understandable," he says to her, his voice so maddeningly casual he wishes there were some way to warn her ahead of time, "since I've always had feelings for you." He wants to flinch away when he says it, but he can't, something grabs hold of his head and holds it steady, staring right at her.
         ". . . on the stairs, I smoke a cigarette alone . . ."
         When the sentence hits her, it's like being struck. He can almost see the gears running in her head, grinding to a halt, shifting direction, even as she tries to hide any sort of reaction, even as her eyes grow wide. Something flashes in her eyes suddenly but she clamps down on it, drawing the curtain over it before he can clearly see it. If she were leaning against the wall she might stagger back a few steps. Too shocked to even speak.
         One word manages to escape from her. "Oh." That's all she says. There's an elegance and simplicity there that Tristian can't help but admire.
         Tristian looks down, not wanting to see anymore, even as he has to physically tear himself away. In his head there's the sound of ripping paper and some dry voice keeps reciting the recorded history of the fourth planet from the sun over and over again. He wants it to stop, but at the same time he focuses on it. The knowledge trapped in his head, unfurling every day. It keeps him sane, dry facts, cold clinical diction. He can deal with that. It's tangled emotion, he can't handle that. Someone cut the little crucial piece that allows him to integrate all of it into his body and now he's just stating things without knowing what they mean. But his body knows, his body still holds the memories. The warm flush when you see someone you care about laughing, the jittery feeling you get when they stop and say hello to you, the tense jubilant sensation when something you've said made them smile. The body never forgets anything, it's the mind that convinces you that it all ceased to exist. And when you cut the connection, it's little more than a B-movie brain floating in clear fluid, deprived of sense, of emotion, of anything but grim logic. Tristian wants to break out of the glass jar that he's immersed himself in, but he doesn't know how. He doesn't know if he's doing the right thing anymore.
         He hears a small sound from nearby and lifts his head slowly, quite prepared to see her crouched on the ground sobbing in uncontrollable horror. But Lena's still standing, she's braced herself against the wall and she's tipped her head back until it's touching the bare wall and her eyes are just about closed. The stars glimmer dispassionately overhead, their secrets a million years out of date before we even get a chance to see them. Lena seems to be considering something, or trying desperately to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist. It could really go either way, conceivably.
         Tristian's got to say something. It's not fair to her. Maybe tell her he was only joking, tell her he was sorry. Only at the last moment he remembers her boyfriend and a sudden cold fear seizes him. Just what he needs, a jealous drunk defending his woman's honor. Tristian could easily take each and every person in the apartment building to pieces, sober or drunk, alone or en masse, but that doesn't mean he has to remind them of that. They hate him rightly enough as it is, no need to give them more reasons. But maybe he's not here, Tristian thinks that he remembers seeing the man wandering around at some points but he didn't come in with Lena. But he hadn't been paying attention, and now . . . now he has to do something.
         "Lena . . . I-"
         "I'm sorry it's been a . . . rough night so far . . ." Lena murmurs, shaking her head as if waking from a dark coma. Looking down suddenly she fumbles in her pocket for something. A cigarette. "I'm really just not . . ." and she pauses to find a lighter in her other pocket, lights the cigarette in a practiced motion. Her hands are only shaking a little bit. Tristian finds himself somewhat proud of that, like it's some trick he taught her. The world's some weird tunnel and he happens to be looking down on it and seeing these people, their lives. It can't connect to him, it has no right to. And yet here he is.
         "I know, I know," Tristian says quickly, it's faster than he's accustomed to talking but he has to get the words out, before the other sentences settle into her brain and take root there, "and I'm . . . I'm the one who should be sorry, I'm just . . . I'm making your night worse, I'm . . ."
         "You're not making it worse, Tristian," Lena says without looking at him, staring straight ahead, one arm wrapped across her stomach, as if holding it in place, the other holding the cigarette at a perpendicular angle, inches from her face. Acrid smoke drifts into the air, a seemingly endless supply. Like one of those movie machines that vomits it out for a living. "What you are making it . . ." and she pauses again, and when she does speak again her voice is much quieter, "I don't know what you're making it."
         "I shouldn't have said anything," Tristian offers, hoping she'll agree. To his dismay she says nothing, merely takes a drag on the cigarette, staring into some inverted distance. It's all falling into pantomime motion now, absurdist displays of reckless endearment and all he can do is try to ride the flow. But he can't, it's pulling him down, he's not sure what to do, someone came behind and pushed him into waters that he kept whining he wasn't ready for. Maybe he is ready and he can't admit it. To himself. To anyone. Especially not to the quiet girl standing right across from him, trying to fire her brain up with the stench of smoke and the shuddering rush of nicotine. A screen up between them. Blot him out and neither of them will exist. "I didn't mean to, I . . ." and he has to no idea what else to say. How to explain? How to describe? He can't create giddy romantic poetry, his words don't turn with the grace of verse, nobody reads anything he ever wrote outloud, just enjoying the sensation of the words themselves caressing their collective tongues. His sentences, his words are stumbling drunken things, constantly verging on the edge of collapse, implied meaning strung out with hollow echoes and bits of perverse nothingness. It's his life. It's what it means to be him. But does it have to be? Doesn't he control his own destiny. Is he just settling for the easiest option. Why?
         ". . . she gives me her cheek, when I want her lips . . ."
         "Lena, you have to realize I didn't . . ." he's trying again, he is, trying to reverse a course that's been set since the night began. There are choices and there are choices. Just because a path forks doesn't mean it won't ever reconnect again. There are different ways of reaching the same goal. Tristian should know that. He really should. He wishes she wouldn't be so quiet, he wishes she would say something.
         "Tristian, it's okay, I'm not . . ." and she just trails off, blinking as if someone just shown a spotlight glaringly right onto her face. Her sentence remains dangling, unfinished. The cigarette balances in her hand, emitting smoke, glowing gently at the end. Tristian remembers watching a spaceship leave port. The ion trail looked just like that. Funny how certain things, when your brain is all wired, funny how certain things just recall memories. Memories you think you forgot. He keeps remembering the stars. The stars and her face laughing at a joke he made. To turn back time. To turn it all back.
         "I know, it's a shock, right . . ." Tristian laughs suddenly, at himself mostly. "Just a stupid shock, I'm really sorry," he's almost babbling, trying to turn it all back. You can't make the world go somewhere it doesn't want to go. Unwinding eternally goes time. "Hell, you . . ." and his smile is abruptly vicious, "you probably thought, I mean all this time and you were thinking I was, you know, gay or something because, good ol' Tristian . . ." he puts his hands in his pockets, pacing around just to ruffle the air, to clear his head, to hear his own words that were too long bottled up, "Tristian, he doesn't show interest in anyone, anyone at all. And yet here we are and . . ." Feeling strangely old, wanting madly to just feel something, something solid, safe, real, he places his hands on the railing. Both of them and he leans heavily on his hands, until he can see the blood fleeing the extremities. It's all turning into the pale. Life's bleeding us dry. "I'm sorry, Lena. I really am."
         He can sense Lena's eyes on him, hear her slightly accelerated breathing, the slow mournful intake of the cigarette, the quicker, smoother outflow of smoke from her throat. It's all happening around him, but not to him. There's a stranger wearing his skin and that person's name is also Tristian. And she won't accept his apology. Tristian wishes she would.
         A small gulping laugh behind him warns him that she's still there. Damn. She's not making this easy, she's not doing the proper things. She's supposed to be screaming at him, calling for her boyfriend, something. Not just standing there and smoking a cigarette like he just told her that he had bought a new car. Oh. That's nice. What color is it? How many miles? Inane questions on an inane subject. His body is coiled in preparation for brutal conflict, to take the brunt of her whiplash words but it's not there. You invite everyone to the war but nobody bothers to come. Too bad. Would've been a grand old time.
         "I didn't think you were gay, Tristian . . ."
         "Oh, then I guess I wasn't trying hard enough," even in this moment he can gather the tattered remains of his shriveled sense of humor and manufacture something plausible, something sardonic.
         ". . . Tristian, why?" and there's something real and natural in her voice. It's begging him to look at her. So he does. Her eyes meet his and the questions that for some reason she can't ask are swirling around there. Between grey rags of smoke between them, he can see her face. It's slightly pale and she's very tightly gripping her side. Trying to hold herself together.
         "Why?" he asks, smiling a little at her. It seems the right thing to do. "Ah, because I guess, you're, um, intelligent and, ah, a sense of humor that . . . it reminds me of mine I guess and . . ." this isn't at all easy for him, there's a small part of him tearing these words out and casting them kicking and screaming to the wind, "and attractive." He glances down, as if ashamed of his own thoughts. Perhaps he is. Tristian shrugs, a helpless gesture. "I'm not sure . . . what else to say, really. I'm not really good at this sort of thing."
         Her eyes crinkle a little as he says this but she covers it by looking down. He barely catches the motion even she rearranges her position by placing her foot up against the wall, her leg forming a triangle in the air. "No, that was . . . that was fine, Tristian," and there's a somber quality in her voice that he can't fathom, can't isolate, "but . . . what I meant was . . ." and she finally looks up at him again. There's honest questioning in her face, blatant and open. Tristian's never seen that before. ". . . why are you telling me now? Here? Tonight?"
         "Why not?" he quips offhandedly, figuring it would be something Brown would have no trouble saying. He wishes that Brown were here right now, prompting him, guiding him, whispering phrases in his ear that would somehow convey the elusive thing that he's trying to say. But Tristian can't even define it for himself, how can he expect someone to nail it down in concrete wording for him.
         ". . . oh but I don't have the strength to go . . ."
         "Tristian . . ." her voice starts out as a warning but swiftly degenerates into a sigh. She's tired, he can tell. It has been a rough night for her and regardless of what she tells him, regardless of how much she's trying to shield him from it, he's making it worse. Just thinking of that brings on an aching need to do something about it, to soothe it somehow. Memory can't be smoothed away though and that seems to be Lena's problem. The problem they both share. A shaky common ground at best.
         "All right, Lena," Tristian says slowly, like's she got this rope and it's wrapped around his thoughts, his feelings and inevitably she's tugging them out of him, pulling them up from his throat bit by bloody bit. "All right." But then his knotted feelings are what started all of this, when you come down to it. He goes down a few steps, until he's in the center of the stairway vertically. "I needed to . . . remind myself of . . . to remind myself that I can . . ."
         He stops, expecting her to say something but she's just staring at him, staring down at him from her position. He can't see her legs anymore just her chest and head. Her arm holding the cigarette must be below her waist because all he can see is smoke curling around her. Between them in that moment no words pass. He gets the sensation that she's waiting for something and the words are beating so hard against the inside of his head that it nearly makes his eyes tear.
         "I wanted to know that I could feel, Lena, I just . . ." he stops, just shakes his head. Clogging up the works, the words are, all trying to be the first ones out. He's got so much to say and in the end no time to say it in. Always out of space, always fighting for that last second, that last edge of the conversation. She's letting him talk and he still can't figure out what to say.
         "What are you saying, Tristian . . ." and she's speaking slow as well, choosing her words carefully. Apparently. From this distance she seems so small. And yet he's the one walking around with the constant sense of being diminished. "What do you mean by . . . by not able to be . . . feel?"
         "Numb," he mutters, his hands working the air, shaping it, talking in that wordless language we've all forgotten how to speak in. We thought words would explain everything so much better and so we forgot. It's just in times like this it comes back, when all our civilization and all our culture can't disguise that we started all the same, naked primitives dancing under the sky, calling out to the stars, screaming for an answer from the implacable endlessness. "I . . . want to feel happy . . . or sad, or anything . . ." and some bitter anger leaks into his voice now, "but it's just . . . muffled, like being buried under . . . under like some kind of cloth." He's babbling like a madman and yet she's not frightened. Maybe it's ignorance, maybe she wants to think that this is still the same shy and quiet man that Jina introduced her to as a old friend. That day receding every second now. He remembers shaking her hand in greeting and it was a loose tentative touch and when he took his hand away it was tingling. He kept looking at her in profile because he didn't want her to see him staring. He left that night convinced she knew right then even if he didn't and that she had already judged him. Rated him with that scoring system everyone tells him women use and filed him away under "not if he was the last guy on earth".
         "But you told me . . . you said . . ." and he can't bring her for not being able to say the words, if their places were switched and he was the normal person and she the madman he would have fled in abject, unreasoning terror, like one of those lake monsters from the black and white movies came up from the depths and decided that you were going to be its bride and perpetuate a new race of men in bad rubber suits.
         But he hears a note of tentative betrayal in her voice. Like she was convinced of one thing and he's telling her something different. And he's not sure what that means.
         ". . . we gave up trying, so long ago . . ."
         "That was real . . ." Tristian blurts out suddenly but even his blurted sentences have a hazy unreal quality to them. Pinwheeling through a world of fog, tearing holes through the smoke. It's all so slow. "What I said. I meant it, I really did . . ." and he feels a twinge inside of me, reminding her of what he had said before. Smoke covers her face suddenly and he can't read her eyes, can't see the pain no doubt hidden there. "It was real and . . . I knew it was real and . . ." he's gripping the railing again, trying to find support in its solid steadfastness, "but I couldn't be sure. You know? I really . . . it was like, until I said it, until I heard myself say it, it didn't mean anything. Does that make sense?" he asks her suddenly, braving a question.
         "I . . . I don't know," Lena answers softly, honestly. Her hand is on the knee sticking up in the air. "I don't know if it does." She takes another drag on the cigarette and then swings it down sharply, leaving trails of smoke fading rapidly into the night air. "But Tristian, why don't you . . . if you feel that way . . . all the time . . . why don't you get help?" He expects her to say it derisively, but there's actual concern in her voice. She can see what's happening to him and she doesn't want him to be like that. He's not sure how to respond to that.
         Still, the thought of help makes him laugh, a low chortling sound. "And what am I going to tell them?" he asks her, spinning to face her, climbing the few steps back up to the landing, "That three billion old energy beings came to me and . . ." he gestures in the air, his words gathering force, picking up speed, "and I've been to other planets, other stars and . . . it's that everything feels so goddamn different now that I feel so . . ." and he stops a few paces from her, holding a hand out in front of him, closing it slowly and tightly into a grim fist, "like I'm drifting . . . every day. From my friends. From my life. That I look at my life and everything seems different, like, like someone went and changed it while I wasn't looking." He stares back at her. Lena's expression is guarded, her cigarette hand is covering the bottom of her face and all he can see are the eyes. They blink at him, hooded and open at the same time. His jams his hands back into his pockets, flashing her an ironic grin. "I can't quite tell him that now, can I? Or I'll wind up wearing those, you know, those white jackets that lace in the back."
         She smiles and glances down again without moving her head. The mental image is probably an amusing one, but he's trying not to think about it too deeply. It's still a possibility. "No. I guess you can't do that."
         "It might be a good place for me though, I don't know," Tristian wonders outloud, shrugging at her when she looks back up at him again.
         "I don't think it would be," Lena tells him, scratching at her knee a little. Her voice is painfully friendly, like they're discussing the latest sports results. But she hasn't changed the subject either. "You're not crazy enough."
         "Yeah. Right. That's the funny part." Slowly, he resolves around on his heel, pacing in a slow circle, trying to get caught in her gravity, trying to be drawn but keeping his distance at the same time. Because he knows it's not a place he should go. Jagged magnetism keeps him back. "I'm not crazy enough," he admits and it's a truth he's managed to keep to himself up until now. "If I got help and . . . and I wasn't instantly committed, they'd tell me the same thing that I already know . . ." he sighs heavily, burdened by the weight of self revelation and knowing that it's not something he can easily cast off, the alternative is too dangerous, too tempting in its rank simplicity, "that in the end I'm just doing it to myself. The whole time, it's just me." The words pass like misted air through barely parted lips, almost a hiss of speaking. He's known it all this time and he's never said it. And yet now it floats in front of him, real. What he said before was true, saying it gives it life, gives it substance. When it's in your head, you can delude yourself infinitely. Once it becomes speech there's no hiding anymore.
         "Tristian, if you . . . if you know that you're doing this to yourself . . . if you . . ." she shakes her head, not able to understand, hardly able to even finish the sentence. She can't fathom it, it's mutilation on a grand scale, cutting yourself not because you think you're bad or because you feel dirty but because you can and you have no reason to stop. Masochism. It's how it must all seem to her, she's never taken a ride inside his head and he'd never want her to. "I don't understand," she finally admits. "I just don't."
         Tristian lets a small laugh escape from his lips. "I'm not sure I understand it myself. I . . . I'm feeling so detached lately, that's the only way I can describe it." He's not facing her when he says this and so he turns around. Her reaction is a struggling one. She's seeking some sort of comprehension but it's just not coming. But it's Tristian the entire time, there are words and there are ways to relay the sensations that ripple past him in rainbow hues, that tremble at his fingertips but his tongue is a leaden misshapen thing, some medieval curiosity to be used in some alchemist's dark workshop. Turn gold into lead. What kind of a skill is that? A wooden voice not unlike his own spouts off obscure facts about cultures who's economies are based on lead. Tristian wants to clutch his head and block the world out. Every scream every cry every plea he can hear and there's a dispassionate counter hiding in the folds of his brain marking off his successes and failures. Tristian feels a sudden chill, the first temperature he's noticed all night. Wrapping his coat tighter around himself, he continues haltingly. "Ever since, since . . ." the word gets lodged in his throat, screaming not to be said. But he has to. There's no other choice. ". . . the restaurant . . . I've, it's like I've been sliding down this hill, and I can't . . . I don't know how to care anymore." Lena's been oddly silent so far. Maybe she did the smart thing and ran for her young life. Not for the first time, Tristian wishes he had the courage to make her leave, if he scares her maybe, whips that damn sword out and waves it at her, shouting gibberish and gouging slashes in the solid brick. That would send her away and they'd never talk to him again. Not a single damn one of them.
         "That's not true," Lena interrupts suddenly, her voice distantly fierce. To Tristian's ears at least. He's not sure if he's hearing anything right anymore. "You care. I know you do. I can tell." How she knows and how can tell she doesn't say, and Tristian doesn't press her for fear that she's making it up. He doesn't want to expose her benevolent sham for the fake that it is.
         "Where it's important, Lena, that's what I can't feel . . ." Tristian explains to her, wishing he could dig his nails into his arm, maybe then he might feel something, biting sharp pains, the rush of warm blood over his numb skin. Anything. God, something. "I've let the world get to me to the point where I'm not . . . I'm just not thinking rationally anymore, I mean . . ." and he laughs again, a cracked bitter sound, "that thing, that incident at the restaurant, what the hell was I thinking, sending a god in my place . . ." he turns back to the stairs, standing at the top, suddenly crouching down and balancing on the balls of his feet, his elbows resting on his knees, his clasped hands gently resting on his forehead. For a second he balances there, precarious and unsteady, his breathing coming rapid and shallow. "At the time it seemed . . . it seemed like such a normal thing to do and now I think about it and I . . ." he bows his head a little, "did I not want friends or something. Because sometimes I think, I think that I do all of this because I want to be alone because . . ." and he breaks off, making a small noise, his eyes tightly closed, his knuckles stark white against the tan of his skin.
         "Tristian . . ." in the distance he thinks he hears Lena take a step toward him but he's not sure, he's just not sure about anything. Reality's just some pasted on cardboard backing that covers the utter chaos beneath everything and for him the glue holding everything together is starting to unravel. Peeling off in thin sheets and he's left there with the brush and the bucket wondering where the hell he's supposed to start first. It's not fair.
         "I'm sorry, Lena," Tristian gasps out from behind clenched teeth, his jaws shuddering with the effort of speaking. He's dangerously tipped forward to go headfirst down the stairs but it makes no difference to him anymore. Dash your head on the rocks and everyone will call it karma. You had it coming. "I'm so sorry," and he's apologizing to more than her, to everyone, to every person who carries the scars from that night. "Oh God, every day, I keep thinking about it and I keep trying to think of some way to make it up to everyone and the only . . . the only thing I can think of is to go away . . ." he thinks he hears her give a sudden intake of breath. Lost in his own cascade of deadened emotions, he barely recognizes the world. ". . . and so every day I let myself get a little more numb, a little more dead inside and so that when . . ." his hands are shaking and his eyes are shut so tight that the world has become a thick soup of red darkness. There might be tears attempting to swim free but are they any left in him? The first time he had to kill someone he cried for an entire night, sat there with blood on his hands. He can't remember what he felt the last time it happened. The reservoir is all dried up inside, it takes caring and emotions to fill it back up and those just aren't there, the world revoked their passports and they aren't allowed back inside. Sorry, we don't want your kind here, we're trying to keep the country pure, you see. Pure and free of such things. "when I finally do go away . . . for good, it won't bother me because I just won't . . . won't care anymore . . ."
         In Tristian's dreams he's had this conversation a million times before, said these things in his head until it reaches broken record status and Lena's reaction is always somewhere between dropping dead from horror or throwing herself on him in unmitigated passion. In just one of them he's bent over like this and he can hear her footsteps walking toward him, growing visibly louder and the gentle pressure of her hand on his shoulder and a voice saying softly into his ear:
         "Why are you doing this to yourself?"
         It may be happening now, it might be still part of his dreams. Tristian finds that all he has to do is open his eyes and look to his right. But he can't. Because he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to turn and face her eyes. And what he might see there. Or what he won't see. All the love in the world could be filtered into her expression, all of it for him and he would refuse to see it. Erasing words until you totally change the meaning of the sentence. Context is key but he's adrift, floating in a space where he can't see the connections, where the simplest actions are stripped down to base motivations. Minimalism at its most brutal. Actions are just pure reflex, like we're just a summary of the interactions between the chemicals in our brains and nothing more. No heart no meaning no feeling no caring. The mantra runs through his head like plague children chanting the deaths of their parents.
         "It'll all hurt less if I go away," Tristian rasps out, his throat hurting for some reason, like someone has probed and scraped it raw. "For me, for everyone. And if I'm . . . alone, . . . I won't hurt . . . anyone again just . . ." and his throat constricts, and he grits his teeth as if in pain. There is pain but the knives are directed inward, slicing up his insides. "Just me," he finishes softly, almost too quietly to hear. The perhaps imagined pressure on his shoulder is gone now, and maybe he is alone. But no, he can hear her breathing. Even and steady. Why can't she walk away? It'd be so much better for her if she did.
         "We won't let you do that, Tristian," and there's surprising urgency to her voice, as if a previously unknown fact has just come to light, changing her opinion, changing everything. "You don't deserve it, you're too good a guy for that." Her voice seems to catch as she says that and some of the veneer coating her words chips off then. Lena almost revealed something important right there, she almost did. But Tristian's too dense to even pick up on it right now.
         ". . . on the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone, Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below . . ."
         "How many nightmares have you had since then, Lena?" Tristian asks suddenly, forcefully. There's no answer from her immediately. Only silence. Tristian stands and spins on the ball of his foot, one smooth motion. Greased joints. She's moved since he last saw her, halfway between him and the door but he doesn't know if she's coming or going. Her stance is casual, the cigarette in her hand burned out long ago. "How many times have you had to sit in your bed and listen to Jina yelling in her sleep from the next room?" She's still saying nothing, her gaze meeting his evenly. "I know what I did to people, Lena, I scrawled my name across their minds with a rusty nail and they've been paying for it ever since." His hand slices the air between them, cutting sideways. "Do you think I can't see it in their eyes, I can't hear them when I sleep, blaming me, asking me what they did to deserve it . . ." he shakes his head, running a tired hand through his hair, blinking blearily. "And it's not enough, it's just-"
         "Dammit, Tristian!" Lena suddenly shouts at him and the sudden force of that brief phrase sends him a step back. Lena blinks as if wondering where those words came from but then recovers and continues. "How long are you going to do this to yourself?"
         "Until I've suffered enough-" he starts to say.
         "I don't get you," Lena exclaims, her voice bordering on frustration. "You've apologized a million times, you've done all you can . . . you tell me that you torment yourself almost every night over all of this . . . when the hell is it good enough for you, Tristian?" Lena's face is flushed as she says this and she takes a step back away from Tristian, twisting her body as she does so. Tristian thinks that's going to open the door and run back inside which would be utterly fitting, the proper way to end this, with her screaming in his face and then storming back inside, leaving him to stand alone. With his thoughts.
         But she doesn't go back inside. She keeps talking. "You . . . dammit, Tristian you made a bad decision, but you didn't do anything to anyone, that . . . that thing that follows you around, that did it . . ."
         "It was my responsibility, Lena-"
         "Bull!" Lena retorts. "Are you going to tell me that you're the boss of . . . of whatever that was," her hands are gesturing wildly in the air, but not randomly, there's a method to her assumed madness. Her arms drop to her side, even as she says, "Tristian, why don't you see, not everything is your fault." Her shoulders slump, like the argument has taken everything out of her, all her energy just draining into the night air.
         Tristian's about to say something when she sighs again, turning her body so that her left side is leaning against the door. Her arm is braced against the door, making a right angle over her head and she's leaning the side of her head on it, staring partially at Tristian and partially at the faceless brick wall in front of her. "I don't know, Tristian," she tells him quietly. "You frustrate the hell out of me sometimes." There's almost a smile on her face as she says it.
         It's news to Tristian at any rate. Not sure how to respond to that, he just takes a step back, leaning his back against the black railing. "Lena . . ." he starts to say.
         But she stops him just by talking. "Think . . . think of it from my perspective, Tristian. You come out here and you . . . you admit that you have feelings for me," her voice hesitates over those words, as if trying them out first before launching them into the air for all to hear. Both of them admitting it outloud makes it all the more real. Lena closes her eyes a little, tipping her head to the side until her arm is cushioning it neatly. "And then . . . then you go and tell me that you're, that what you really want to do is go away . . . from all of us . . ." she opens her eyes and turns her head to stare right at him. Something hard edged glints in her eyes. "How is that supposed to make me feel, Tristian? What am I supposed to think about that?"
         "I don't know," he nearly spits out, suddenly disgusted at himself. He starts pacing back and forth in front of the railing, along the edge of the steps, his feet nearly going over the side with every motion. His hand slashes the air in front of him, up and down. "Everything's just . . . it's all wrong lately, I . . . I don't even know what I'm doing anymore, or . . . or why I'm doing any of it." He stops back in the center again, hands back in his pockets, staring right at her. His words are torn sails, propelling him forward backed by the night wind but it's slow going. The path keeps twisting, no matter how hard you try you always wind up veering off course. "I mean, just look . . . just look at tonight, at this conversation, here I am . . . telling you've I've got feelings for you when . . ." he shakes his head suddenly, laughing at perhaps the funniest joke in the world, his reflection in the bent and cracked mirror, "it's so messed up. You've got a boyfriend and here I am, babbling all of this to you, isn't that . . . aren't I breaking some sort of dating code by doing that . . ." He's been looking down as he says that but now he looks up to get her reaction, since this is the one thing he's been sure of, the one solid thing that he's based all his assumptions on all night. Even when all the evidence suggests otherwise he kept making himself believe it. Because in the end self delusion is about the only thing he can do properly.
         Lena's laughing. Tristian sees that and he can't understand it. It's quick silent laughter, she's got a smile creasing her face and her hand is covering her mouth and she's quaking. Like a jolly fat man in a silent Christmas movie except she's a girl and very far from plump.
         "Oh God, Tristian," she finally says, breaking off and looking up at him. Her face is a little red from the mirthful exertion, but her eyes are holding some lost sadness close to her soul. "God, you . . . you never cease to . . ." she drops her hand and leans back against the door, grinning at him. "It's true, isn't it? You never do pay attention to anything. Jina told me, she said that the world could end and you'd just think that it had just suddenly gotten quiet, you . . . I don't believe it . . ." she laughs again.
         "Lena," Tristian says slowly, "I may have visited other planets and seen things no one else has ever seen . . . but it hasn't made me any swifter on the uptake. What are you-"
         "We broke up two months ago," Lena blurts out, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the door, as if the coolness of the metal might give her some calm. Even as she says it, even with all the cheer she's injecting in her voice, one hand is still tightly clenched at her side, shaking ever so slightly. The other hand is flat against the door, but it keeps curling involuntarily. She's afraid, he realizes finally. She's afraid of something, but what? Not him. Something more abstract maybe? Again she's not meeting his eyes completely.
         But all his head can think of is the last six words she just said. "What?" he says dumbly. For the first time all night he feels utterly, stupidly normal. Taken by surprise by the simplest of matters, if he was any sort of detective he could have figured it out right away, he's watched her long enough. Pick up the details in the small gestures, the tracking glances, the cleft in the voice. But he's no detective, for all intents and purposes he's just a glorified soldier, fighting completely by himself. Or that's what he likes to think. It makes it that much easier.
         "Yeah, we did," she says, softer now and with a gentler look in her eyes. Her quick glance up at him is all he gets from her. Then it's back down to her feet. Must be something darn interesting down there. After a second she just shrugs, like she's not sure what else to say.
         But even if she did say anything, Tristian doesn't think he'd have heard it. The force of the soft sentence has knocked him back a step, he's back down onto the stairs and he's not sure how he wound up there. Putting a hand on the railing to steady himself, feeling that he's been doing too much of that tonight. Relying on other means to stabilize himself, when the only tripod he should need is himself. And yet here he is, leaning on all of them, even as he claims that he wants nothing more to do with them. For your own good, you understand. It's just the way it has to be. With the greatest of efforts, Tristian forces his jaw to stay clenched shut, so that it doesn't open and close soundlessly, a fish gulping dirty air. He should spare himself that cliche at least, though if it might lower her opinion of him, part of him would be all for that.
         "Oh," is all he says, echoing her statement from earlier in the night, when he had decided that he was going to steer the conversation into previously uncharted waters without warning. Oh. Is that all you can say? He's surprised. He's not surprised. The clues were right there all night but he was too busy watching the tainted mirror hovering in front of him to care, to pay attention, too eager to stare daggers at his face simply to see all the blood drain out in rivers. You tell yourself that don't care, that you can't care and at the same time what else can you call that sudden tight feeling in your chest, the gasping bottom of the ocean pressure? Caring. The only conceivable obstacle that had been thrown in your path torn away, leaving the way clear and the sky light. You don't have any excuses anymore, you don't. The only thing stopping you now is yourself. For Tristian, that's a hard fact to admit and not something he's sure he can overcome.
         "I thought everyone knew by now," Lena says, and she's finding some amusement at his utter astonishment. He wonders if the obvious questions are going through her head, if he would have said anything he had known that she wasn't with anyone. Tristian's mind works contrary like that, most people wait until they think they've got a good shot to say something along those lines, in Tristian's case he waits until he has no chance at all. So he thinks. So he thought.
         "I've been . . . out of touch lately . . ." Tristian remarks, giving a small shrug. Then he allows himself a quick chuckle, letting out a low whistle in lieu of further comment. "Boy, have I been."
         "Apparently," Lena notes but she's being kind. Tristian isn't sure what to say anymore, before he felt he could say anything because there was no chance of anything changing. He had told himself that he was pushing forward into territory that remain unmapped when he was really just skirting the borders, peeking in and convincing himself that he was seeing something new. And now that he's fallen over the boundaries, face down right into the next country, it's unsettling the way it's making him feel. Nervous. But not the kind of nervous he can understand, he knows the nervousness that you can stab or run from or shout at, all to hide your nagging fears. He can't do any of that here. He can't help thinking that Brown would know exactly what to say here. But he also can't help realizing that Brown wouldn't have let it devolve to this point, where surprises are springing every other second, where he's not sure if all the things he thought about the last few months are even true anymore.
         "I, ah . . . I thought that you and . . ." his words are crumbling things, cake left out in sun for too long, "I thought you two were, you know, set."
         Old pain stabs her eyes for a shining second and instantly he knows it wasn't the right thing to say. The wounds are mostly healed but he's spitting salt at her, talking like this. She hugs herself and leans her full weight against the door and then pushes back some strands of wayward hair that are threatening to tickle at her face. "Yeah," she sighs and there's still old longing there, perhaps a sense of whatmighthavebeen, caught in her voice and the way she expels the words, "I thought so, too."
         "If it's . . . if it's any consolation," Tristian says, like he's talking to someone at a funeral, and it shows him just how much he's out of it, "I'm sorry to hear it. That, you know, you broke up and everything. I mean, it wasn't . . . what I mean is . . ." Crying at your best friend's wedding, laughing at his funeral, his emotions are skewed and turned around, strapped into contradictory clusters. There should be a sense of burgeoning triumph in his chest but every time it starts to rise he wants to shove it back down into the pit of his feeling. It has no place here. She deserves to be with someone. She deserves better than being alone.
         "It's okay, Tristian," she says quietly, the response more automatic than anything else, the way you just tune someone out at a funeral when they're telling you how bad they feel and what a tragic loss it is. Just leave me alone you want to scream, stop talking to me and hugging me and thinking that it'll all make me feel better. So in the end you have to pretend that nobody is there and give standard replies, hoping everyone will just blame it on the grief. A second later she seems to blink and flash back into the present, looking at Tristian as if he just appeared there, falling down from some faraway sky. "You know, you sound sincere," she notes, making a little joke out of it, "but I wonder . . . are you really sorry?" and she grins at him. Laughing at old pain is really the only way to move forward sometimes, it kicks the mind into the next gear, helps the focus.
         The humor's too sensitive for Tristian, he refuses to acknowledge the nuances. Tonight's the night he plays it straight. Bad timing. In his stammering way, he manages to get out, "Yeah, I mean, I am, it's . . . I'd rather . . . you should be happy, you know, either happy with someone or . . . happy by yourself . . . or . . ." and there actually is a third or but he can't make himself say it. Or with me. He can think it but even in his mind it's oil, the ocean of his thoughts just shies away from it. Bad thing. Bad.
         "Oh, I'm happy," Lena admits, even though her voice isn't totally convincing. But it's late and she looks tired and he wants to tell her that they could pick up this conversation another day, that she should get some rest or go back inside so she doesn't freeze. Only Tristian knows in a panicked sort of paralysis that he'll never mention any of this again if they stop now, he'll deny it right to her face. Whatever amorphous force is providing him this cramped courage, it'll leave him soon. He knows that. "I'm happy," Lena's still saying, "overall. Some days more than others I guess but that's normal, right?"
         "I wouldn't know," Tristian remarks sardonically. She just looks at him but doesn't ask if he means he wouldn't know what happy is or what it means to be normal. Tristian himself doesn't know what he means. Words and thought are being controlled by two different portions of his mind tonight and those parts aren't talking to each other. Can't agree on anything, it seems.
         "I broke up with him," Lena says softly, and maybe this is the first time she's actually admitting that fact. He wouldn't know. "It was me . . . I . . ." and she stops, massaging the bridge of her nose with two fingers, looking down, her other arm tight against her abdomen.
         "Lena, you don't have to tell me this," Tristian tells her, his voice hiding an insistent urgency. He's got this sudden fear that she might cry, that whatever taut story is collecting inside of her, getting ready to be expunged, it'll tear her apart. And he can't bear to see that, he's never seen her cry before and he doesn't want to now. Because he knows she probably doesn't and the worst sight in the world is watching someone who doesn't normally cry try to hold it in and ultimately fail. Standing there you think that they're going to rip themselves in two right in front of you. As you watch. And if sparing her that, sparing himself that sight means knowing that much less about her, missing that small revealing peek into her emotions, he wouldn't hesitate in stopping her. Because no amount of knowledge is worth making someone relive a pain they thought they had forgotten.
         "No, I . . . I want to say this . . ." Lena replies, her voice curling itself into something oddly thick. "I . . ." she tips her head back and laughs with her eyes closed, "everyone told me I was nuts, Jina, she kept telling me to think about it, to think it over one more time." Her eyes open and she stares right at him. "I couldn't explain it right. I just couldn't. Even now, I don't know how."
         "You don't-"
         She waves him into silence even as he wants to leap across the gap between them and fling a hand over her mouth, telling her it doesn't matter, that it makes no difference to him. And then what? What else would he like to do? Is that all? Are his ambitions that stunted, that it's all he can think of?
         "I didn't love him . . . that's what I told myself at least," Lena finally says haltingly. "I mean, I think I did at one point, or maybe I convinced myself that I did and I really didn't." She blinks, not looking at him directly, her face distant and asking her question to some other source, already retreating backwards faster than any of them would like to admit. The admission appears to be something that costs her a great deal. "But something . . . things happen and you . . . feelings change and you don't know whether it's because you changed or they changed or . . . or because you're just seeing things differently. And . . . and you want to go back to the way things were but . . . when you take that step, it . . . you see it all different, like even stuff in the past, you . . . you turn around . . . and nothing seems the way you remember it.
         "And for the longest time, I . . . all I kept remembering were the good moments and after a while I realized that I was, like . . . forcing myself to only remember the good moments . . . just to, I was just avoiding the bad stuff and . . ." she rubs the bridge of her nose again, her eyes pensive, "God, I still can't explain any of this. But I just had to get out. That's all I knew. It's all I know now. Because, because he felt one way about me and I felt . . . I felt another and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't . . . one of us changed, I'm not sure which. But one of us did and it changed everything and . . . I could have gone on, I guess, I could have stuck with it and probably would have enjoyed myself, been, you know, somewhat happy but . . . it's not what I wanted." Her hands drop to her sides, as if she's just presented a case to the most unlikely jury ever. "And stepping away from all that, it . . . it really felt weird for a while . . ." a slim slow smile, "hell, it still does some nights," and that's why she's out here even though she doesn't go so far as to say that, "but I don't think I could have done anything else. In the end. I just didn't have any choice."
         ". . . whatever happened, I apologize, dry your tears and walk outside, it's the fourth of July . . ."
         Her voice has been the only sound creasing the air in the last few minutes. Tristian has listened silently to her story, running the words through his head, trying to find other meanings, the images you get when you run the words backwards, slurred and drugged out. Why is she telling him these things? Because she wants to, or because right now she's feeling vulnerable and maybe a little upset and she just needs to talk to someone, anyone and Tristian just happens to be there. Drive by confessing. The newest crime. Don't stand around outside too long, you don't know what the hell people will tell you. These days, it's just all going into the toilet, spiralling right down and we're hunching over the rim with acid in our throats and the light spray of antiseptic water tickling our drawn faces. Even as we keep flushing. Just send it away. Send the whole damn lot of it away.
         "That was probably more than you wanted to know, right?" Lena says to him and he looks up sharply at her. He didn't even know he had been staring at the ground. He looks into her face and there's an easy friendliness there, but she's scared. Scared of something, scared of him maybe, or maybe even herself. Of something rousing itself inside of her, triggered by his hesitant words, his useless gestures. So he thinks. She hasn't gone back inside. It's cold out and the night is being blistered by the misted timelessness of the breaking day but she hasn't left. Tristian very much wants that to mean something. On this layered winter night, even the abstract has to have meaning.
         "What . . . no! No, not at all," Tristian replies, shaking his head vigorously. "It was . . . I was really flattered, I mean, that you, that you told me all of . . . that. You didn't have to, you know."
         "I know," Lena answers simply. Her sudden smile is somewhat impish. "Someone has to bring you up to date though . . . and it's better that you hear it from the source."
         "No. No, I guess not," Tristian admits slowly. "We wouldn't want anything to lower my already high opinion of you, hm?" He says it in the most casual manner possible, as if he says off the cuff things like that all the time, they come as natural as breathing or sleeping. But it was taken apart and put together and taken apart and reassembled ten or fifteen times in his head, turning it this way and that, planning for what he felt to be the perfect moment before he could actually say it. He'll never be a spontaneous person. There's just no way around it.
         Lena laughs in an offhand manner at his comment, wordlessly dismissing it but she doesn't say anything else. They're talked about so much in this night, it's feel like hours when it's been no time at all. There's barely been time for a song through all the babble, when you come down to it. Tristian knows that he's lucky to have been given this conversation and if he never gets anymore than this, even if a meteor came down right down and incinerated him where he stood as some sort of cosmic balancing act, he wouldn't have any regrets. It's not even low expectations, deep down Tristian still hopes for so much more, there are steps laid out in front of him like the bodiless feet you use to teach the waltz that he wants to find the strength to move into, catapult himself into something different. But he never thought the pathway would even be open to him. Surprises. Branching roads. For someone who once thought himself trapped in some eternal locked pattern, the idea that you can move aside and try something else astounds him. Like having one hand tied behind your back all your life and then someone unties it finally and now you're standing there with this apparent extra hand and you've no clue what to do with it. You know that there are uses and abuses assigned to it but it's all a matter of trial and error. And trial time is running out.
         Even with all this talk, all this verbal intimacy, the gap still exists between them. The distance between two stars. He's standing there on the steps and she's standing there against the door. And the two of them have tried to close the gap, bridged some of the distance but the effort it takes, it's just frightening. What if it's not worth it, in the end? What if it's just another deadend street and when it's all over you're back where you started, pale and shaking and no better off. The devil you know and the devil that knows you. Take a step forward, perhaps intelligently decide against it and jump back before anyone thinks you might have been even considering that step. The old game. Tristian can see her standing across from him and she might as well be a million miles away. A star and the light reaching him from her ancient even as his eyes drink it up, nothing but dust left at the location but the radiant memory spanning distance, flipping the finger at time. We'll outlive you all, the party screams from the inside. We're young and immortal and all those things that happen, all that getting old crap, it's only because you let it happen, because you're tired and you just want to lay down and rest. It won't happen to us, they say, we'll just push on forever, eternally restless.
         Tristian's utterly tired, weary down to the core. Sandpaper grinding against his body, wearing him down, wearing him to nothing. Going away. "I don't know, Lena," he sighs. She cocks an eyebrow at him but says nothing in response. He turns from her, facing away from the looming apartment, his face presenting itself toward the sky. Out there it looks so quiet but there are a million wars going on, machines larger than planets cruising in silent paths, voiceless explosions swallowed in vacuum, the blood and debris of a thousand thousand worlds floating, entropy breaking it all down in the end. It's so deceiving, the looks and the peace. It's no better out there. It took him a long time to learn that. "Some days, I just wish . . . that all the stuff that happened to me . . . didn't happen. You know." He's reaching into his belt, his hand easily finding something surprisingly light and smooth. Without really thinking about what he's doing, he unclips it and brings it out from the recesses of his jacket. Holding it in front of his body, blade out, even though the blade isn't there now. But one button is all it takes, one switch to color the air red. "I look at my life and I wonder . . . what it would have been like if things, if they'd been different and . . ." he hefts the sword in his hand, hating himself for noting how it seems shaped perfectly for his hand, "I'd be happier. I know I'd be. Maybe I wouldn't have seen the things I've seen, but . . ." he stops, turning his body sideways, the sword arm facing back. Locked and ready. "I just want to throw it all away, just take it and . . ." he's not even looking at the sword anymore, but he's holding it above his head, his arm curved to match the arc of the sky. In his mind he turns it into a symbol, a representation of all the things that are wrong with his life. "Just throw it as far as I can and run in the opposite direction and never ever look back." He sighs, a gnarled and strangled sound, trying to take a breath with the world right up against your chest, pressing down hard. "You don't understand, Lena. You don't understand how badly I want to do it, some days."
         There's a scuffling from behind him, sneakers on ridged concrete. He can't turn around, his body is locked in the same position, frozen by indecision. If there was a river he could fling his life into and wash himself clean, toss this damned sword right into it and proceed on as just some faceless member of the planet we all share, he'd do it. But that river doesn't exist. Tristian should know, he's been searching for it since the beginning. Wash your face clean off and present a smooth slate to the world.
         "Why don't you?" a soft voice says near him, to his hearing nearly dangerously close to his ear. He spins a little, the sword coming down to parallel the side of his body. Lena's standing right across from him, only the railing in between them. Her eyes are bouncing questions off of him, staring at the sword without trying to obviously see it. Her hands are on the railing, pale and trembling just a little, protesting the chilled treatment. He wants to place his hands over them to give out warmth, but he's holding a sword right now and his mind can't comprehend giving out comfort.
         Her simple question hangs between them, the same inquiry he's been making of himself all night. Why doesn't he just toss it all in and do what he wants to do, dammit? Walk away from all of this and try to make something else, something better. It must be so easy, people do it all the time. The sword hangs in his hand with barely any weight at all, like it's too slippery for gravity to claw at it with grasping fingers. If he threw it now, right now, he could easily clear the parking lot and the street and it'd land in the bushes and he could go and never see it again. Just that simple.
         But he knows the answer to that already.
         "Because I can't," he answers her slowly, staring directly at her face. "Because," and he holds it with both hands in front of his body, "I was given this . . . and a responsibility that came with it and . . ." he looks down at the sword, his face thoughtful, "I don't understand the responsibility or even what I'm supposed to do or even what I can do but . . ." and his voice slithers into a sigh even as he looks back up at Lena, "it's mine. And . . . just because I don't like it or want it or know what it's all about . . . I can't just walk away from it. That's not how it works. I have to make it work for me, in the end." He laughs and runs a hand through his hair, "And so, really, I'm stuck with it, with them . . ." even as in a smooth motion he slips the sword back into his coat and clips it to his belt, "and I guess they're stuck with me."
         Lena smiles a little but doesn't seem too sure as to what to say to that. Tristian wonders if she really believes that was the sword, if she even believes in such things. He didn't either once, no aliens or stars or spaceships or galactic wars and yet here he is, Tristian Jacart, ambassador to the planets. There's not even sad irony there, it's just blunted fact.
         "Wow," is all Lena says after a moment. She's shaking her head, one hand still clutching the railing. A second later and she's sliding down to the ground in a controlled descent, sitting down on the steps, rubbing her arms a little. Again Tristian feels a twinge that he hasn't offered his coat but he thinks that she'd probably just refuse anyway. He'd do the same thing, if their places were switched. He should offer anyway, his logic keeps catching up and tripping him up, he sees the inevitable conclusions before the steps are even laid out. The journey is just as important sometimes as the ending itself. You know how all of this is going to end, it really can only end one way, but would you skip the intervening steps. Would you have them suffocate you as a baby because you know you're only fated to die anyway? There has to be a point to simple action. There just has to be.
         Lena speaks before he can say anything though, put forward any offers. She appears to have been thinking solid, heavy thoughts. Her arms are draped over her knees now, her hands intertwining and unclasping over and over. She ducks her head, shaking it again, smiling a little and staring up at Tristian. "You . . . I could never do that . . . any of that, I don't know how you do it. You know, keep going, after all of that. I couldn't do that."
         "It's not anything special," Tristian replies, staring at the top of her head. Which is an absurd position, he should be level with her, sitting with her. His knees won't bend. "People think that . . . it's different up there, that it's a whole different set of problems, like everything down here is unique. It's not. I wish it were."
         "But all . . . everything you've been through . . . I'd be out of my mind . . . just that one night . . ." the swirling events of another day are implied in her words, even if they can't talk about it directly for fear of setting off conversational land mines. Lena just puts hand on her face and shakes her head before staring back up at Tristian. "Is that what every day is like for you?"
         "You get used to it after a while," Tristian replies somewhat lamely.
         "I guess you have to," Lena shrugs, her voice distant. She's not at the party anymore, she's back to another night, a night they both want to forget, when for just a second the world stopped being a sane place, when a split second of translocation cracked your head wide open and laid it all bear to the air so you could see just how damn little you knew, how you understood nothing. She laces her hands behind her head, bending her neck so that she's staring at the empty space between her knees, a crash position for a touchdown that'll never come. A muscle in her shoulder twitches. Tristian just stands there, feeling more the observer than ever, he could just watch her like that all night, the simple act of breathing holds endless fascination for him. And he's not sure what that means.
         "I wanted to blame you, Tristian," she says finally, her voice softly numb. "For the longest time I really did. Every time I woke up in a cold sweat . . . every time I went through a tunnel while on a train and felt like I was going to cry, I threw another dart at the imaginary picture of you I had in my head." Her voice is stuffed with emotions Tristian can't name because they've never touched him, there's barbed wire around his soul and a giant no trespassing sign to keep it all out. You're not wanted here, you just turn your dirty ass around and get yourselves home. "I told myself that . . . in that one second you did more to me than any other person had ever done . . . and I just . . ."
         "Lena, you know if I could-"
         "Shut up, Tristian," Lena orders quietly, but there's no command in her voice, it's more friendly than anything else, if that's at all possible. Let her finish, the tone states simply. She's got something to share and it's something that takes precious time to say. There's no way around it. "But I couldn't." He can't see her face but the contour of her cheek shifts slightly under the influence of a small wistful smile. "Did you know that? I couldn't. How's that for you, Tristian . . ." and she unclasps her hands and stares up at him again. "You've spent the last few months trying to make me, make all of us hate you for something that you didn't even do and it didn't work. Because we don't hate you."
         You should goes his unspoken rejoinder.
         "It wasn't you," Lena says quietly. "That night. The person I sat next to, it wasn't you . . . oh hell it wasn't even a person-"
         "He sat next to you?" Tristian blurts out. The two of them look at each other silently before Tristian finally laughs and gently massages the back of his neck, staring up into the sky. "Figures. And they tell me they don't read my mind. I should have known."
         "Don't give yourself so much credit," Lena replies a bit cagily. "Maybe I sat down next to you . . ." letting the sentence trail off, dangling the soft hint right in front of him. Tristian wishes he had the nerve to sit next to her, this dance keeps spinning them closer and closer together but nobody's leading, there's no rhyme to it. The fact that they're made it this far in without missing a step is nothing short of miraculous. They should have stumbled over one another long before this. "It's not like I get many chances to talk to you, you know."
         "Lucky you," Tristian murmurs but Lena just gives him a vaguely irritated look.
         Then she gives a sort of soundless laugh and rests her chin in her palm, her elbow on her knee, squinting out into the parking lot drenched in night, a pincushion of stars reflected in her eyes. "I . . . I had thought you were acting funny and I even asked you, if, if something was bothering you. You were all evasive and I couldn't figure it out, it just didn't make any sense."
         "Then it didn't," Tristian points out somewhat uselessly. All of this is a revelation to him, he's never been told that much about exactly what went on that night, before everything started to get bad, no one was ever willing to talk about it. A blank spot in his memory, he was there and wasn't there, his doppleganger pulling the strings and all, cheerfully running the show.
         "I can't say I understand much better now," Lena mutters, eyeing him sideways. Then she gives a sniffling sort of laugh. "It's really funny though because, you know, right when, when we got . . . sent away, in that second, either coming or going I really don't remember but I do remember thinking oh that's why he's been acting so strange, it all makes sense now . . . like that one second explained it and that was all that mattered." That sniffling laugh again, fluttering in pieces around her. "It's just funny, how, how your mind works, the things that come to mind when . . ." and her head rotates on her arm to look up at him. Going to get a stiff neck doing that, Lena, you are. "When you least expect it."
         "That's probably one of the nicer things people were thinking about me . . . at the time . . ." Tristian, hands in pockets, swivels on his waist to stare at the featureless door, as if expecting to see the party causing the walls to bulge outward. The pressure of too many crammed into one place, too many thoughts, too many wants and needs and desires. You can't fulfill them all, even with a god at your side you can't right every wrong and correct every mistake before it starts. As much as you desperately want to do so. "Even now, I can't imagine I'm doing so hot in people's thoughts."
         "It's not like that, Tristian," Lena tells him. "Maybe you wish it was, but it's not. We're your friends and we do care. You might not want us to care, and maybe you want us to forget that you ever existed . . ." and Tristian somehow resists the sudden urge to nod vigorously in total agreement, "but you're stuck with us too, it seems." She's smiling as she says that and Tristian finds he has little choice but to smile back. On her it looks great, on him it probably looks like one of those sickly pumpkins that are left well past Halloween with their rotting orange teeth and melted hollow faces. Overstaying its welcome. She ducks her head, staring at his knees while smoothing out her hair with her right hand. "Hell, Tristian if people stood by me when they all thought I was crazy for ending a relationship, I think they can make the leap of faith for you."
         "But your decision worked out well for you," Tristian points out, not even bothering with the other inverse half of the sentence. From somewhere deep inside him courage decides to boil over and he bends down, balancing back on the balls of his feet, his head almost level with hers. Lena seems to be trying to keep her face expressionless but her other hand keeps giving her away. Opening and closing into little brief fists, trying to hide the trembling. Tristian has seen nervousness, this anxious speculating kind, so many times that he can almost smell it.
         "So far it has," Lena admits a tad mysteriously. "But I didn't know that at the time. I thought I was making the biggest mistake of my life." She arches her body into a tired yet catlike stretch, her hands lacing together backwards, finger entwined and backs of her hands touching. Her body shakes for a second as she tenses it and then she relaxes, leaning against the railing, resting her head against it. Staring into the night. "So don't give up on yourself yet, Tristian."
         "Aren't we inspiring tonight," Tristian notes sardonically. There's a nagging burning pain in his knees and so he sits down to relieve the pressure, stopping just short of leaning on the opposite of the railing. Too soon. It wouldn't be right. He can't do that. Tristian wonders if the pain in his legs really was that bad, or maybe he was just looking for an excuse. An excuse for what? A slow ballet executed in water, sliding past each other, missing by inches, turning in slow motion with bubbles trailing past containing silly stupid words. And even if by some miracle they touch, what then? Do sparks fly and electricity immolates them, slashing stars flaring briefly in a dense ocean, pushing the darkness away for just one second. Or would it just be a touch, nothing more. In the end, that might just be enough.
         One second can last an eternity if rationed wisely. So they told him one time. Two voices speaking in tandem, measuring out his life. But they did know he'd wind up here, in this place, talking to this person. How much of the script do they get to say, are allowed to affect?
         "Thank the alcohol," Lena replies offhandedly, deliberately slurring her words. "It tends to make me profound. You're just the unlucky person who gets to be on the receiving end."
         "That's right," Tristian grins at her. "Poor me." Leaning back, he finds his back touching the railing, a cold pillar of solidity on this otherwise shapeless night. He cups his hands around his knee, bracing it a step up from the other foot. "I think I can live with that."
         She grins back at him, her hand twitching a little on her knee. He finds himself staring at it, feeling the gap creeping right up against his face, to the point where they can hear each other finally, the glass isn't as thick as they thought, a swift strike and it can be broken, there's nothing special about it. Just glass. Distantly and yet all too intensely, he feels her shoulder brushing against his. Even through his jacket, he can feel the almost reassuring pressure. She's there, he's here they're both real.
         He exhales slowly, seeing his breath misting into the air and perform an exotic dance before dispersing into seemingly nothing. But it's still there, that's the point, just because you can't see it anymore doesn't mean a damn thing. If all the air in the world vanished he'd know that right away, yet he can't see air with naked vision. His friends might not be falling all over themselves to crush him in great embraces, but maybe they still care. Maybe they don't see him as a grim stranger screwing with their lives. Maybe he's just a friend going through what seems to be a rough time. And they can't understand it anymore than he can. It's hard for both of them. Tristian sees that. But it doesn't make the solution any clearer.
         Instead he's going to enjoy just sitting here for a moment. He's not looking directly at Lena but can see her as a wavery sort of object in his peripheral vision, unmoving, real. She's closer to him right now than she's ever been and he aches to take the next step but the closer he gets the harder it is to move. To the point where he could lull himself into thinking that basking in this motionless morning is all he can aspire to. But there's more he can do here, he knows that with utter clarity. Her shoulder shivers a little at his side. Say the wrong word and you could crack the moment but something else has caught his tongue and is relaying the words, a mystic playwright standing in his throat with a megaphone and a perception that Tristian can only hope for. A perception that he can only glimpse in filtered fragments, sideways flashes of colors that there aren't words for, a pounding sensation that he knows might supply every answer if he could only open himself up all the way. But it's just a crack, a hairline gap that only lets a trickle through.
         It's enough. In the end, it's all he needs.
         A wind picks up a little, with all the force of someone gently blowing on a cup of soup to cool it down. It's enough to chill Lena and Tristian feels her shoulder shudder a little against his. He wishes he could say he were a source of warmth but he'd never know. It's all still so numb that there might be this raging bonfire igniting under his stomach and it would all be the same dull ache.
         "What are the stars like, Tristian?" Lena asks suddenly. He's been staring out at the stars actually, and from here they look like someone shining a flashlight through a moth eaten piece of black gauze. He turns to face her, and she's looking right at him, honest questioning in her eyes. Not begging, nothing so debased but at the same time there's a silent request for serious answers infused with a sense of honesty that maybe doesn't exist anymore. She thinks he might have that sense. That he might have found it out there. On level it's more than flattering.
         Still, he just can't resist. "Hot, mostly," he deadpans. He holds her gaze for just a second before turning back to serenely contemplate the stars. Silently he counts down in his head. Three. Two.
         Her hand strikes him in the shoulder, little actual force behind it. One. "Asshole," she laughs. "You know that's not what I meant."
         "Oh, I'm sorry," Tristian replies slowly, hooking his hands around his knee and drawing it up, torquing his body to face Lena again. His shoulder is throbbing a little from her touch, like all the blood in his body is surging into it. It's a sensation he can't say he dislikes. "I must have misunderstood you."
         "Yeah, I'll bet," Lena responds, giving him a sly smile out of the corner of his eye.
         He looks down briefly, runs a hand through his hair, feeling the individual strands sift through his fingers, grainy and dry. "They're beautiful," he says finally, giving the smallest of sighs. "It's beautiful out there." He pauses, expecting her to accuse him of joking again. Maybe she'll even slap him again. Perhaps if he insulted her hair. But she says nothing and in the corner of his vision he can see her just looking at him. Just staring at the side of his face, like something important might be there. Watching. Listening. He gets the feeling that she really, truly wants to know about this, about the stars and that whatever he says, she'll hear it. Hear it and listen. As long as it's sincere, as long as something resembling truth is wrapped around it, tying the entire package up neatly. Not at all like real life but close enough.
         So he tells her. "When you go out there, it's all so still, from far away . . . it's . . ." he's about to say something inane like you'd have to see it for yourself but he does the intelligence thing and stops himself, "and then you get closer, to a star, I mean, and there's all this activity, you don't know where to look because there's so much happening, flares and prominences and swirling gases and spots and . . . it's the machinery of the Universe and you're staring right at it. And the weirdest part, you know what the weirdest part is?"
         "There's a weird part to this?" Lena asks in her best oblivious voice, as if viewing a sun from close up was the most normal thing imaginable. Happens all the time. But almost instantly, as if afraid he might take offense and stop talking, she taps him lightly on the shoulder and says gently, "I'm just kidding, Tristian. What's the weirdest part?"
         Tristian glances at her, like he's about to say something. But he just smiles and shifts his weight, settling more comfortably against the railing. His eyes fixed on the stars, radio telescopes screaming silent signals into the night. We're over here, they say. Come and find us. We're over here. Waiting. "It's totally silent," Tristian finally explains, his voice oddly soft. "Totally. You keep expecting sound and you think you've gone deaf because it's . . . it's like if there was sound it'd blow your eardrums completely out of your head. But there is none . . . and it doesn't matter. The most primal reaction in the Universe and there's no soundtrack . . . it, it adds this kind of majesty to it, I guess." He laughs a little at his own sentence. "Oh hell, I don't know how to describe it, it's a goddamn star . . . if it wasn't already huge as hell I'd feel like the smallest speck around. And yet," his eyes narrow, "for all that wonder . . . it's still lonely out there, even with the stars. There's still more empty space than anything else, even in the center. It's just empty," he finishes quietly. "Silent and stark and empty." He wants to note that it's exactly the way he feels, and that maybe he's trying to turn himself into a true man of the age. All the important gears that run the world are sparse, separated, the atoms, the stars, it's the tight clusters of matter that always make the difference. When you reach out into the void chances are you won't grab anything at all but if you can get your hand firmly around something that's important, a rare pocket of preciously condensed matter then you know. It's all clear then.
         Tristian can't bring himself to say anything like that though, it seems to have little place here, in this conversation. Lena is partially resting against the railing, partially against him, although both of them are pretending not to notice and have already made a silent pact not to bring it up. Which is just fine with Tristian, he'd rather talk about the stars. It's a subject he knows. People and emotions and sensation are quicksilver butterflies, melting into nothing and sliding away just when you think you've pinned down the form. The stars are unchanging, placid and slow burning even as their appearance hides a fire and a violence that we could never match. All our bombs, all our weapons, all the goddamn hatred of the world pooled and fired at the stars would hardly burn for even the brightest sliver of a second. Hardly a dent in the Universe. Rotations and revolutions, that's all it is, existence is drawn into circles, the plan of everything. From the electrons spinning frantically in nuclear orbits to the galaxies wheeling around each other like austere dance partners too polite to even join hands, their barest movements encompassing the sweep of a million generations. Even life never moves in a straight line, even sitting still you're always moving, spiralling in cautious ellipses, trying to decide whether to let the gravity of the moment capture you and drag you in, any second expecting either the cool whisper of a splash down or the searing heat of rushing air taking you to pieces as you plummet. We look at space and think we see the Alien, the Unknown when there's more hidden in a cracked mirror than any shifted spectrum. If anything, we mirror the curvature of the Universe, our pathetic fumbling movements part of a grasping effort to reenact a grace that we can only be sickly pale reflections of, our circles mere mimicking of the grand and stately motions of the spheres. We think it's the best we can manage but we don't even know that we can do better. We accept it and move on, fixing gazes on the ground and never bothering to look up and dream, letting the stars belittle us instead of inspire.
         These thoughts pass through Tristian's head in slow revolutions of their own. He's very conscious of Lena's breathing, of his own heartbeat. But that's not what he's thinking about. Tristian's finds himself staring at the void and the stars and the sky, drinking it all in, knowing it's not the way things should be. It shouldn't be like this, he thinks fiercely and impulsively, the thought almost a shaken fist at the heedless sky. It doesn't have to be like this at all.
         "Lena . . ." he says, twisting his body to face her.
         "Tristian . . ." she begins at the exact same time. The two of them shut up right then, staring at each other, four cars at a four way stopsign, each inching forward and then stopping and waving the others forward and then pausing and then moving forward again to repeat the cycle.
         "What?" he asks her, his response slipping just under hers, giving him bragging rights. She has to answer me, ha!
         "No, what were you going to say?" she asks him, glancing at him. Before Lena had looked like she had gathered some form of courage together, but now it's vanished back into whatever hole such emotions hide when we're not using them. Still her eyes are oddly clear and he has to blink and cough to keep from staring. Even so, he thinks she notices the charade anyway and just doesn't comment. It quickens his pulse a little, though he has no idea what it actually means. Perhaps she just doesn't care. That must be it.
         Tristian feels a smile plucking at his lip. "Please don't make me say I asked you first."
         She gives a brief laugh at that, drawing her knees up closer to her body, her arms encircling her legs. "I won't make you do that . . . I wouldn't want to ruin a conversation that's been going so well so far." Lena pauses, as if reflecting on what she just said, trying to convince herself that she actually said those words, that they were something she wanted to say. After a second though she just shakes her head. "But it really wasn't that important . . ." she breaks out into a small grin. "In fact I've forgotten it already." He can tell she's lying and not even hiding it that well. She closed off the world to deal with matters that she didn't think she could handle but all she managed to do was draw it all in closer to herself, tighter, so that in the end it's all opaque but skintight, so that you can see the outlines, the imprints, and from those make educated guesses. We can try and maybe succeed in obscuring things but we can never remove them completely from our lives, nothing is ever really hidden, you just need a certain way of looking at someone to find it, one of those old sets of decoder glasses are required, filter out all the nonsense and when you've eliminated that what you have left has to be the important stuff.
         "I see," he tells her, sitting back a little more, letting the railing dig into his spine and ooze a chill into his back. Oddly enough it's almost a relaxing sensation. His voice is telling Lena one thing but there's a subtext rushing under the ice, he reveals just enough so she can guess the shape, see the general figure.
         "So what were you going to say?" Lena asks him suddenly, pushing some hair back behind her ears and looking down. It's probably a ploy to keep him from pursuing the matter any further but she's really only delayed it a little. He can tell her what he was going to say and then she won't have any other reason to duck out of that portion of the conversation. Tristian doesn't even know why he wants to hear it so badly. Because they've never talked this much before and every word she says is a precious jewel waiting to be cherished? Romantic sure but not quite his style. He's got reasons that are more honest and less glossy, maybe it was the catch he thought he heard in her voice, the hints of meaning in that pause right after his name.
         "What was I going to say . . ." Tristian muses, settling one elbow on the ground and tilting his head so that the sky is all he sees. Blot out the world. "Wasn't anything important . . . I was just looking at the stars and one of them reminded me . . ." he shakes his head, forcing a laugh out of his chest. "It, ah . . . oh the hell with it . . ." the decision is made on such a subtle level that for Tristian it's like stepping off to the side and watching someone else take control of your body. Distantly he aims a pointing finger at the sky, the tip hovering in front of his eyes, quivering only a little. "See that star . . . right over there, where I'm pointing?"
         "Ah, yeah . . . I think . . ." he can't see her face but Lena's hand suddenly enters his vision, thin fingers floating right into view mere inches away from his hand. It's all he can do to avoid touching her hand. If he could only reassure her, if only something real and honest would break through the clear plastic he's covered himself in, reducing all sensation to nothing more than memories experienced by someone else. Another man. He did it to keep the world away but it works both ways, it keeps everything inside. And maybe the heat necessary to crack the coating can be generated and maybe even tonight, with the chill of winter crawling all over their faces, their arms. But it still might not be enough, he might get closer than he's ever come before and all he might feel is the same plodding numbness, with the world flickering higher up, just out of reach. Tristian doesn't know if he can take that, why not keep it safe.
         But he can't, it's been so long and he's come so far that if he stops trying now he'll never try again for any reason. He knows that with a quiet desperation. He wishes he could convey that to someone, get some help, have people pull from the other direction, yank him back up again. Just to feel the warmth of it all again. But sound is trapped, expressions are frozen, he's caught in a crude form of stasis afraid to move forward for fear that he might get worse but too tired to stay in the same place, knowing that he needs something different.
         "No, no . . . over to the right more . . ." he points out and in a move that surprises both of them equally he gently touches her hand, his fingers encircling her palm, guiding it an inch or two over. Her skin is chilled but there's an odd flushed warmth underscoring it all.
         "That one there?" Lena asks, her voice achingly casual. Tristian lets go of her hand, dropping it back to the concrete no man's land between their bodies. Probably pushed his luck with that as it was.
         "That one," Tristian confirms. "You can't tell from here obviously but . . . there was a planet there once . . ." he sighs a little, letting his eyes close halfway, drawing memories up from the depths, stringing them out to dry properly before he can let anybody view them.
         "Was a planet?" Lena inquires, actual curiosity in her voice, noting his use of the past tense. Maybe she's not just humoring him. She could have gone back in a long time ago, he tells himself. Perhaps she's just bored. "What happened to it?"
         "It got destroyed," Tristian explains simply and he hates the tone of his voice for sounding the way it does, like he's lecturing one of his students. The dry, matter of fact tone. Tristian doesn't even really know what his voice actually sounds like, he can only go by what his own ears tell him but one time he heard a tape of himself speaking and he couldn't believe that the voice on the tape was the same one he was so used to hearing. It made him wonder how much his ears lied to him every day, what everyday noises really sounded like without the filter of his eardrum to stifle and alter them. The fact that he'd never know bothered him for a day or so before he got over it and went on with his life. That's a skill he seems to have lost over time, a muscle that gets smaller when you don't use it too often.
         "Oh," is all Lena says. Then she giggles a little, a sound unfamiliar coming from her but pleasing all the same. "Damn, Tristian," she says, rubbing her eye a little and glancing at him through the spaces in her fingers, squinting a bit. "You sure know what to say to get a person's attention."
         "I like to think of it as a conversation stopper," Tristian pronounces sagely. He pauses a second and then turns to look at her. "For when you need the room quiet, you know. I only use them in cases of extreme emergency."
         "I see," Lena notes, staring straight ahead. The edge of her lip is twitching upward just a bit. "So, ah, this planet . . . was there anyone on it?" Tristian desperately wants to convince himself that she's merely humoring him, that she's indulging this little story because he listened to her and she figures that'd be harmless fun. But her reactions still aren't right, he's looking up and down and sideways into the dark corners and the spaces he's searching for just aren't there. How can something like that make you excited and absolutely frightened at the same time? It's not a feeling he's used to, he can deal with the fright well enough but the other thing, there just isn't a precedent he can fall back upon. Racing across the tightrope and getting halfway through before you realize that somebody forgot the safety net. No turning back now, it just adds another dimension to the whole sick affair. Head down and shove onward.
         "Yeah," Tristian answers her after a second's pause. "Yeah there was." He straightens his back out against the railing a little, pulling out of the slouch he was threatening to slump into. "You must think this is nuts, right? Tristian's finally wigged out for good and you're just looking for a good excuse to get the hell out of here, right?" He laughs, a constricted sound. "Because I sure as hell wouldn't believe me, were I sitting in your place."
         "If you've gone nuts then you've taken the rest of us with you," Lena tells him, and she's staring at her knees but the smile coloring her face is wistful. It's not that she doesn't believe him, Tristian realizes, they passed the point of belief a long time ago when he took them all on a ride they weren't meant to go on. Lena can't wrap her mind around the concept of an entire planet getting destroyed, to her things like planets are solid, unchangeable, she's never watched one break apart in a slow motion ballet of entropy, all silent fire and colliding debris. Tristian has seen all of that and still when he wakes up in the mornings he can barely believe the memories. The fever dreams of a madman obsessed with an obscure mythology to the point where it starts intersecting life. He fully expects any day to wake up with a straitjacket pinning him and a cushioned wall pillowing his head, with all the rest of it just gossamer threads he wove for himself when real life got too rough. Some place to escape to. Only the escape became worse than real life and now he can't find the way back. Trapped in the dream, groping for some purchase on a rock wall slick with the blood of lives gone before. So many of them, stretching out in a line that crosscuts infinity. The first time you see someone bleed, really bleed, the first thing you think is that you can't believe a body could hold so much blood. It just keeps pouring out and you keep waiting for the body to start deflating, the face collapsing like an inflatable dummy someone stabbed in the back. That's all he is in the end, a drop in the bloodpool of billions, allowed for one moment to stick his head above the ocean and see the world around for what it really is, even when the light threatens to sear his eyes right in their sockets. Wouldn't you still want the chance to see the truth? In the end, isn't that all that matters? Tristian can't be sure. There's a certain argument to be made for calculated ignorance.
         Caught in the overgrown hedge maze of his thoughts it takes Tristian a moment to realize that Lena is still talking to him. Her voice fades into the other sounds of the night, the subsonic murmur of the life muttering around him. With an effort he rips her voice back to the foreground. Focus, Tristian. You were telling her a story.
         "Hm?" he says, hoping that his voice sounds appropriately distant. Can't have her thinking that we're actually putting some effort into this, can we now? She might get the wrong idea and think we care about something, eh? When we both know that's not true, it's not true at all. Isn't that right?
         And yet the swift flash of hurt in her eyes, a blurred face seen in a subway window as the train rushes past, replaced by cool amusement still opens a sinkhole in his heart.
         "I said it must have been terrible to have been there . . ." Lena repeats for the first time, her voice soft and only tinged at the edges with a little bit of coldness. Her arms are crossed against her chest again and her palms are working the muscles in her upper arms, reviving the chilled skin. "I really can't even imagine it."
         "It happened a long time ago," Tristian whispers, staring up at the star. He can sense Lena glancing at him in surprise, the story not twisting the way she thought it would, perhaps she assumed that it would be some tale of triumph and tragedy involving him, the usual story where he makes the big attempts, give it his all and then fails in the end anyway. Some days Tristian feels it's the only story he really knows all that well. He can recite it by heart, backwards and forwards, it's written in the shallow reflections of a haunted gaze deep in his pained eyes. In the mirror he only accuses himself. It's just the way it has to be. "Before there were even people around actually . . . I . . . just happened to see the aftermath, millions of years later."
         "Oh," Lena responds, and she seems hesitant. "It must have been something to see." Her reply is noncommittal, almost bland, to the untrained observer they might as well be discussing a recent rainstorm that caused a mildly annoying flood. Tristian can feel her receding from the emotional level she was at before, sinking back into two friends talking about random nonsense when before it was . . . it was something else, a level that Tristian has never bothered to give a name to because he never felt he'd ever experience it. And yet the softness of that brief touch of her hand glows in his memory, reminding him that it's only an icewall separating the two of them. A self imposed barricade of solid air, the simplest of barriers and the most insidious. The space between them lingers with poised comment, trying to ignite the magnetism of the moment but not finding the right amount of friction necessary.
         "It was," Tristian says, giving her a grin she doesn't see. Maybe she can feel it, sense it. Her face implies that she's thinking about something important. But he has to finish this story if Tristian does one thing that he can take some form of pride in, it's that he finishes what he starts. "It was really, it . . . they took me out there . . ." and there's no need to even mention who they are, the passing shudder of recognition in her eyes is almost more than he can stand, ". . . and showed me all this . . . this destruction . . ." he's looking at the star again, wondering how far away it is, how much time you can cram into a simple number. We speak in terms of light years and parsecs but we have little sense what those numbers mean, what the concepts hovering just behind the shadow variables actually stand for. The only time travel he'll ever do is staring at those stars. Maybe it's far enough away that if he did take a telescope he'd see the planet still there, the people going about their daily business, completely unaware of what was going to happen to them. And even if he could send them a signal by the time it got there, the only reception it would get would be from stone and dust sixty five million years dead.
         "And I . . ." Tristian continues, "I couldn't even understand what it was I was staring at . . . you know it's not like I see many destroyed planets" and Lena gives a little smile at that, "and they told me what it was and . . . it was just a giant cloud of dust, Lena. That's all it was. Just this vaguely spherical cloud of dust and rock, just . . . floating there, and for all the world I swear to God it looked utterly normal there." He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes briefly and letting his mind paint the visuals across the widescreen of his eyelids. His words can't do justice to it, if such a justice exists. Floating in an endless darkness, weightless and timeless, his eyes desperately trying to drink in the meager light so much that it actually hurt, with a celestial body all laid out for him to see. No one had ever touched the crime scene. "And they told me what happened and I realized . . . someone did that, it wasn't natural. Someone came along and decided they were going to destroy that planet and did it." He opens his eyes, giving a cascading laugh. "It's funny, Lena you think there are some constants in life, not many . . ."
         "Death and taxes," Lena murmurs, staring almost fixedly at the star, like she's trying very hard to picture what Tristian is saying, like she wants to be let into his strange life for just a second, just a single second and see the world the way he sees it. If Tristian thought she was even close to opening her eyes to the way his world works, he'd cover them in a heartbeat, cover them and hold her back and spin her around before she turns to stone. Don't dare look, he'd whisper harshly in her ear. You'll go blind. Don't do it. It's not at all worth it.
         "Right, death and taxes," Tristian agrees, nodding briefly. "But hell, you hope that the planet you're standing on is going to outlast you at least." The statement seems oddly absurdist to his ears, performance art punctuated with little intrinsic meaning. Stating your point and sticking around until you've worn it into the ground. "Apparently you can't even rely on that these days."
         "You said it was a long time ago." Her voice sounds almost accusing. But maybe it's just his lying ears following their own twisted agenda.
         "It was a long time ago . . . sixty five million years ago," Tristian tells her, rolling the number around on his tongue, trying to get a feel for the weight, the sheer heaviness of all those years. Years are like air, it's not until you get enough clustered in one place that you realize the hidden weight trapped inside. It get heavier and you get weaker, eventually just stumbling to a halt and lying face down on the cold ground and wishing it would all go away. "The planet was destroyed and it all started a war . . . five thousand years they fought," and there's a detached bitterness to his voice, a secret yearning to have been there, to have had a chance to make a difference. "And in the end all they agreed to do was stop fighting each other. There was no point at all, Lena . . . it . . . ah, God it just makes me sick. It did then and it does now. I floated there in space in front of ruins that were old when monkeys finally came down from the trees" and he catches her smiling a little at that comment, "and turned to them and asked them why the hell was I here. I asked them why they were showing me all this, was it just to show me that the Universe was dangerous, that in the end no matter what you do there's always one factor you'll never catch, one plot you'll never see coming . . ." his voice is rising a little in time with his words, the rage from that caged in day coming back to him now. He finds himself laughing at the self imposed righteousness of his memories. Tristian remembers straining his vision at the sundered planet, hoping maybe to see a desiccated body, perhaps caught with an expression halfway between numbing shock and stout resolution. Something else to rage at, to put a face on it and give him another ghost to haunt his dreams at night. "I stood there and asked the two most powerful beings I knew to tell me why? like I had some right to know." He shakes his head in mild disgust. "God damn I was arrogant. Still am, I guess."
         "No, no you're not," Lena whispers. Her hands are shaking a little, creasing her skin with little motions. She glances down and seems to swallow before staring directly at him. "I don't think I've ever met anyone less arrogant." There's the ghost of a smile on her face and something unquantifiable in her eyes.
         "Oh . . . ah," Tristian murmurs. "I'm sorry. You must not know many people." He somehow manages to say that while still meeting her eyes, like that adds some kind of credence to his words. It's all in the delivery. The mumbled voice stringing the words into one cramped syllable. His legs are starting to develop cramps sitting there but he makes a silent vow to not stand up until she does. Like this is some child's staring contest, each waiting for the other to blink.
         "That was a compliment, Tristian," Lena grins at him, suddenly. "You might want to thank me for it."
         He gives an exaggerated sigh and rolls his eyes. "Thank you, Lena," he replies in a hyperbolically deadened voice before hanging his head as if in utter shame. "For giving me compliments that I do not and will never deserve." Pausing a beat he then looks up at her with his most honest face. "How was that?"
         Lena just laughs. "You're something else, you know that?" She just shakes her head, still laughing a little and settles back against the railing, the pressure of her shoulder more of a presence than ever. Tristian wants to respond to it in kind but his muscles are locked in between gears and the only sound that he can elicit is this horrendous grinding noise, more suited for a horror movie soundtrack than anything else. "Just finish your story . . . I think I'm starting to remember what I wanted to ask you . . ." and the hint in her voice is naggingly familiar even as her face never changes from the expression she previously wore. Her voice is humorously peevish, she wants him to hurry but she's in no hurry to get there.
         "Finish? Oh. Well there's not much more to tell," Tristian admits, feeling like a walking anticlimax, flattening mountains of expectations just by striding across their lives. You cross the Universe and except big things whenever you go when all the important events are dust and everything we do is just coming to grips with the collective remembrance of something that happened long before we were even motes. "I mean, I asked them and . . . they just . . . they told me before the planet was destroyed, the people there they knew . . . they knew it was coming and they gathered everything, all the knowledge, the books and the culture, even the genetic codes of everyone and it was transcribed onto these . . . capsules and sent away before it all turned to dust." He licks dry lips, the air coating and drying his saliva before it even has a chance to moisten. "They could have tried to get themselves off the planet in time but there was no guarantee that it could be done and so . . . so they just let everyone there die and sent those . . . race banks out into space. Because . . . because they felt the knowledge of the race was more important than anything else . . . that even if they survived it would never make up for everything that was lost." Tristian smooth some of his hair down that has been ruffled by the wind. "Who makes decisions like that, Lena? Who chooses something as abstract as knowledge over lives?"
         "But they all died anyway," Lena points out softly, as if in reverence for the long departed people. Her hands are knotted together, interlacing and rubbing together for warmth, for feeling. For sensation. "So what was the point?" Her voice is utterly serious and if Tristian was making all of this up then this is the point where he'd start to feel bad about it. But it's true, he was there and Lena knows that he thinks. She's seen the tiniest portion of what he's been through and it was enough to make her believe. That when she stares out at the stars she sees something more than just cold points of light punctured in deepest velvet. It's all part of the same curve. Try as you might you can't separate yourself from it.
         "They didn't all die," Tristian tells her. "They . . . before that they had spread to other planets and after the war, those others planets started to search but . . . the banks weren't anywhere to be found. And . . . to this day they haven't found them . . . sixty million years and nothing . . . it changed the entire race, Lena, they spread out and changed . . . you never see two of them in the same place anymore, they avoid crowds and each other and . . ." he finds a laugh sticking in his throat sideways, "it's the weirdest thing to see because they're all searching for the same goal and . . . they don't know how to work together anymore. Every man for himself," he finishes numbly, resting his arms on his knees, folding his hands together until they meet in the center of the space between his knees. He looks down finally from the stars and brings his mind back to the party, resting his eyes on the parking lot and it's silent museum of cars. He can't see Lena but he can sense her and in the end that might just be enough. "I should learn a lesson from that," Tristian says too softly for her to hear. So he thinks. So he hopes. No human being will ever witness the spectacular passing of a cloud of dust in front of that distant star, no one will ever see it color the motes with dazzling hues that there aren't names for. All that he's seen and it's still not good enough. Tristian wonders when he'll be satisfied. If ever.
         "I guess that's kind of sad . . ." she says to him, almost in his ear. The quiet murmur almost makes him jump, were he not so settled into his position like some grim statue.
         "That's not everything though," Tristian interrupts her suddenly, his words lancing out into the unforgiving darkness. "Because I was floating out there near the skeleton, the corpse of this . . . planet and I asked them . . . I asked them where the race banks were. I asked them if they knew where they were. I wish I knew why I had asked them that. Maybe they made me ask them." Cynically he wants to add that he wouldn't really put it past them, but without waiting to see if Lena is going to comment, he continues, exhaling the story out of his system, "And they said yes. And they told me. Everything. Where they were and who had them and why they were there." He glances at Lena but she can't ever realize what that means, even if he used the smallest, simplest words possible to relay to her. Because she has no frame of reference for it, no one does. Like watching the president of some foreign country being killed, you know you're seeing something bad unfolding before your eyes but you can't ever appreciate the sheer depths involved. Staring straight up until your back is bent at the unscalable heights of the world's tallest mountain and merely thinking wow that's high.
         "They knew," Tristian whispers. "For centuries they knew and they never said a damn word. Not a goddamn thing. For some reason, it made me angry, that they would do that, keep it a secret and not tell anyone. And I went to start screaming at them and . . ." he gives a wry smile, "I hope you can never understand what it's like contemplating yelling into your own face . . . at least I hope you never get a chance to understand it . . . but . . ." and his face turns deadly serious, "I looked right at them and I . . . I realized I couldn't grasp it . . . it was . . ." he bows his head, bracing it with his hand, feeling the feverish warmth of his forehead pulsating into his hand, "it was too big, Lena. This was something that had gone on for centuries and I came in with my silly stupid human rationales and . . . they meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like tissue paper I felt them fall apart and . . . and up to that point I thought . . . I thought that everything I would experience would be like what I had run into back home . . . here, on Earth and it would be the same situations with different faces, different names. It's not. There are some things that I can stare right in the face and not even come close to understanding . . . because they're so . . . so alien that . . . in that moment I knew. That there were a lot of things that would make absolutely no sense at all to me and that there was nothing I could do about it. I just had to accept them." A shaky laugh worms its way from his lips. "And God, it scared the absolute, living hell out of me, Lena. It really did." A swallow, then more whispered words. "And it still does. It still does."
         Tristian sucks in a shaky, shuddering breath, as if trying to draw the story back into himself, like the air is saturated with memory and if he keeps breathing in he'll take it all away from them. All the memories of tonight, give them blessed ignorance, instead of this abusive, daunting knowledge. And maybe if he keeps inhaling, eventually there'll be nothing left of him except for an old rumpled coat and a small device that might very well be a sheathed sword. Perhaps that's all he is now. He's drawn everything that makes him Tristian into a small, dark dot in the center of himself and the body is just going through the motions because it refuses to give up. Or admit that there isn't any point anymore.
         But there has to be some kind of point. There has to be. It's sitting right next to you. He can see Lena vaguely out of the corner of his eye but after telling his story he can't bring himself to turn and face her, see her eyes, see what curled emotions might be lurking there. This night has taken so much from him, from both of them, turned them inside out and twisted them all up until they can't be sure who's feeling what anymore.
         "Why do they do those things to you . . ." comes Lena's ghost of a whisper, gently floating to his ear. He tenses a little, her voice sounds so close that he can almost feel the faint pressure of her breath. Tristian takes a shallow breath to settle himself and tries to get some comfort from staring at the stars. Gleaming faintly they beckon to him, microfine strings tugging at him, pleading with him to leave it all behind.
         "What do you mean?" he asks her without looking at her, not quite sure who she's talking about. Nobody's ever done anything to him his entire life, everything Tristian's done he's managed to inflict upon himself. Punching a mirror and staring at your own face even as you drive it into your arm, blood welling up in your cracked reflection, tainting it forever. The garish brutality of the sudden mental image makes him shudder a little. Lena's shoulder is still brushing against his and he can feel it tighten slightly. Whether in fear or in sympathy he's not sure. Tristian finds he'd rather not know for certain.
         "Those . . . those things . . ." Lena has no word for them, even the word Tristian uses for them is only a pale attempt to describe something that predates language itself, ". . . why don't they just leave you alone . . ."
         Tristian smiles a little at that, thinking of all the times the very same unspoken thought has ripped its way across his mind. Why don't they just leave me alone? If only. "It's not that simple, I don't think," he tells her. "It's one of those big things that I mentioned . . . something that I'm not going to understand." He gives a laughing sigh, placing his hands flat on his knees and sitting back a little, the cold railing in his back, the muted heat of her body leaking through his jacket. "Not that I wouldn't mind a little bit of understanding. But I figure any day now."
         "That so?" Lena says, her voice lightly casual. The pressure of her shoulder seems almost a stabbing pain against his arm but he can't bring himself to move away. Or move closer. Opposite magnetic poles struggling to touch but nature is against the whole thing. It's not the way it's supposed to be. You don't understand. You never understood. Some things just can't be done.
         "Apparently," Tristian replies. "They keep telling me it's going to get easier. In time. But it's not like there's anyone to compare notes with, so I can only take their word for it." He bows his head a little and laughs, a more sincere sound than before. There is humor in his situation he just blinds himself to it because self pity is more inviting, a more comfortable lake to fall into, the water lukewarm and cushioning even as you're drowning on the way down.
         "You're the only . . . one?" Lena questions, and Tristian gets the feeling that she really is trying to understand, her voice is gnarled with a vague sense of frustrated searching. The answers are out there, in his head, locked into his voice it's just a matter of finding the correct questions. Lena knows that and she's trying to find it because unlocking it might lead to . . . what? An understanding of a world she can never touch? A glimpse into a reality that's superimposed invisibly over the one she knows, with only people like Tristian serving as the reluctant bridges? Is that what she really wants? Tristian can't fathom that at all. Maybe that's been his problem all night, his vision has become so wide that he's missing all the details. The details always make the difference. Always. He can't believe he keeps forgetting that.
         "Just me," he confirms for her somberly, as if pronouncing his own death sentence. Life is the death sentence we get when we're born but Tristian is lucky enough to get another sentence tacked on. Just because he's special. Because you can only kill someone once.
         "That's just messed up," Lena notes, and that might the truest sentiment expressed about the entire sick situation this whole night. "I mean . . . it really is, Tristian." The pressure on his shoulder seems to clench, an emotion held barely in check, straining to burst against the fence corralling it in. "I mean, you . . . you're not happy anymore. Doesn't that matter to them, don't they care about you at all?"
         The naked exasperation in her voice is a solid comfort to him strangely enough. It's a sharp counterpoint to the willowy mists taunting him all the time, the blurred mess his life has become these days. Waking up from dreams of blood and fury, knowing that they aren't dreams. Someone asking him a question when he's not paying attention and him answering it in a language not derived from human throats. A second of nothingness buffered by a world of golden sparkles, opening your eyes and finding that everything around you has changed.
         Tristian remembers Lena before the restaurant and he knows that she's changed in a million subtle ways from that night, maybe even more ways than she even realizes. But all she did was hide herself behind layers and walls and more layers, burying her core the same way all of them did. Because it was either that or make choices and accept facts that their minds didn't want to even acknowledge. But in her voice, without even seeing her, the way her features scrunch up when she gets frustrated, the small motions she makes with her hands when her words aren't sufficient to describe all she's trying to say, all those visual cues mean nothing because everything of importance in encoded right there. Tristian doesn't need to see. In a moment like that, Lena blazes right through to him and Tristian knows that even if he had a choice over his feelings, it wouldn't be much of a choice at all.
         "In some ways they care about me more than my parents do," Tristian says softly, as if he's revealing some intimate secret. In a way perhaps he is. "They're not human, Lena, feelings and emotions, the kinds we think of don't apply to them, not in the way we want them to." He risks another smile, throwing it out at the stars. Watch out, Tristian, you're going to surpass your quota. "Believe me, I've made that mistake more than once." The smiles drips from his face, replaced with a cool certainty. "But I know they care, Lena. I don't know how to describe it or even begin to explain how I know but they do. It's real."
         "Then why are they letting you be so miserable?" Lena nearly spits out, though her voice is tinged with an uncommon sadness as well. Tristian's tied to a balloon and he's floating away, right toward the stars and all they can do is wave goodbye with tears in their eyes, knowing that he can't sustain himself that high up, unable to look away but not wanting to see the terrible moment when the balloon ruptures and he crashes.
         "Because . . ." and he finds he has to pause and clasp his hands together, "because they can't change what I feel." Tristian finds himself looking down, the curve of her body matching the arc of his peripheral vision, the concrete still a cold, unyielding cushion beneath him. "They know that. I know that. And I think they want to help but it's something . . . what I feel is something I have to deal with on my own. It's not that they aren't allowed to help, it's that . . . there's nothing they can do . . . I . . ." and his voice catches a little, images of war and wreckage and bodies and blood and the keening wail of single lost child over the roaring din of a battle flash through his mind. It reminds him of why he's here. "I do it to myself," he admits slowly, bowing his head even lower, feeling his hair brush the top of his eyes, "I do it because it reminds me that I'm a hell of a lot luckier than a lot of people. I really am. And I've done nothing to deserve that luck." His breath shudders down his throat like an overloaded freight train. "And if I don't do something to . . . to deserve it then . . . all of it means nothing. Less than nothing." He stares up slowly at the stars again, letting the expanse of the sky fill his vision, the light of the million ancient suns reach right through his eyes and into his brain. Even from here they have power. Even from here, he can feel it. "And so I go out there. To help. To make things better, as much as I can. And every bit I change, every time I give someone the same chance I got, the chance to live . . . it brings me one step closer to deserving all of this. One tiny step." The pressure on his shoulder seems to increase slightly. He finds it almost unbearable, but for some reason it makes him want to take her hand. Except he figures he'll only do something patronizing like pat it gently or a ridiculous thing like that. Not the gesture he dearly wants to give her. "It's enough though, Lena. I may hate it to death some days, but even I have to admit, it's enough."
         There's a long silence. Tristian feels something brush his cheek but he doesn't turn to look. Like it might ruin something. Words are fluttering unbidden to his head, swirling around, free now with his admissions, knowing that he has nothing left to lose anymore. Nothing that he can't somehow regain, nothing that he can't carry around in his heart forever, where the world can't reach it.
         "It's not all bad out there, you know," Tristian says softly to her. "There are some beautiful things I've seen, Lena." There's the brushing against his cheek again and this time he turns to say something to her. Only to see her head gently resting on his shoulder. It so startles him that he almost jerks away but he does the smart thing and stays put. Her head is resting there and her eyes are half closed like she's falling asleep and he wonders how long she's been there like that. Or what made her do that. And there's a quaking clenched sensation in his chest, like in that reckless moment when he touched her hand and even when he goes to suppress it, somehow shove it back down in the depths where it belongs, he knows he can't because it's a damn fine feeling. Tristian closes his eyes briefly, feeling the calmness of the night settle on him. Now he feels the pressure for what it is, a comfort, a gesture in the dark when words weren't doing any good. Tristian made the mistake of thinking that talking explained it all, that his words could somehow wrap around and outline the concept, showing her the shape and form of it all. When all it takes, in the end, is just a simple touch. A million connections come alive in that second that speech can never hope to reach. Tristian feels as if he is standing on the tallest peak, ice air knifing through his lungs, soaring through his veins and sending his head spinning. But he's never felt more alive. That much he knows.
         "Really?" Lena almost murmurs, her breath soft against his face. There's a veiled tremor there, she knows the effect she's having on him and it's happening to her too and she's trying to hide it. In case she's wrong. In case she's making a huge mistake. But she's not. She's not. Tristian very much wants to prove that to her. "Like what kinds of things?"
         "Ah . . ." and Tristian finds himself driven momentarily speechless, stumbling into a recovery and hoping she won't notice, "like, well . . ." he squints up into the nightsky, as if he knows all the stars by name, like he's staring at the photographs of old friends long gone. His breath mists from his lips, obscuring his vision briefly. Tristian isn't cold anymore. "That one." He points again into the sky, opposite from the star he noted before. "There. That one right there."
         "You were there too?" Lena asks him, shifting her weight near him, until it seems her hip is resting right against his. She might be doing it for warmth, the rational part of his mind is trying to explain to a dwindling audience. Because in times of cold people have to huddle- before it gets cut off. "Boy, you get around, Tristian," she notes with some sly humor.
         "And amazingly I've never been off the east coast," Tristian quips dryly. The silent quiver that he feels more than hears he takes to be an attempt at a suppressed laugh. He folds his hands in between his knees again, turning his head slightly toward her until he can see her face. God she's so close. Almost agonizingly so. If only he had any courage. "But out there . . . there's this place where they . . . I guess they can control the weather but I have no idea how but . . . Lena, they paint the sky."
         "What?" Lena says, lifting her head just a little to face him. The sudden absence leaves his shoulder feeling briefly cold.
         "All sorts of colors . . . I mean, colors I don't even have names for . . . you stand there and you look up and the sky just keeps changing . . ." Tristian realizes that his voice almost sounds enthusiastic, a little kid discussing the possibility of early Christmas, "and I don't even think I caught half of it because my eyes weren't good enough but it's the most amazing thing, Lena. You probably don't even believe me. Hell, I stood there and I don't even believe it."
         "It sounds beautiful." He thinks he catches a guarded wistful tone to her voice. Her head has left his shoulder but she hasn't moved away from him an inch. Tristian wishes he had the nerve to cross that last near inversely infinite distance.
         "It is," Tristian instead whispers, wires crossing his memory, lifting images from the recesses. "It was. You think your eyes are playing tricks on you . . . or that it's a projection but no . . . it's real." He grins, running the hand that's farthest away from Lena through his hair. "There are days when I think there isn't anything beautiful out there to be found anymore, that all I get to see is death . . ." he stops and swallows, letting the breath ease itself from his body, "but I think of that place . . . that place and a hundred others where . . . where they have the chance to make something extraordinary and they take it, they do it. Because it's better than killing each other, better than ruining other lives." Tristian bows his head a little, hearing a ragged edge to his voice, shreds torn by memories, striding across a silent battlefield, with nothing but blood and dust swirling around him. Everyone disintegrated, because they learned how to deconstruct matter down to base components. And that was the best thing they could think of to do with it.
         He doesn't tell Lena about that though. She's near him and he almost gets a sense that she's content here, content to sit and talk with him about these far flung planets and the monsters running around his head, listening to his cracked, hesitant voice spinning out stories of places he can barely believe in. Maybe it's better than facing real life. He's almost forgotten about the party they came from, it seems and feels like so long ago, another life, some other person. Far away and just not a hundred feet behind them. Time can be measured in distance and they've come some way, taking baby steps and finding that you can change without altering the scenery. Tristian feels no different but that's just false sentiment. No matter what he thinks, it's all changing around him. Every morning you wake up and they've remade the world.
         "Sometimes I think there's nothing but pain out there," he finds himself saying, words coming in hushed bursts, "that we all start out bad and it just gets worse from there." A sigh creeps from him, a resolute detachment. "That's not the way it is, though. We all get the same chances and the same choices, to do whatever, to take whichever route we want. And nothing . . . nothing's ever set in stone, it can always change . . . you just . . . there just has to be a . . . a desire to not, to not like the way things are and . . ." his voice flares with sudden unexpected intensity, a sun burning itself into his brain, "and to know that things can be different. Changed."
         Tristian feels utterly drained, and yet there's a trembling energy coursing through his body. The soft pressure of Lena's head on his shoulder is a sensation he desperately wants to feel again but he has no idea how he made it come about the first time. Every second more they sit here he's afraid that the conversation is going to end and they'll both go back to the party separately and that'll will be that. His chance tossed overboard because he couldn't grasp the intricacies of a silent language that he should have mastered years before. And now that he finds he needs it, now he finds that all the gestures are little more than half forgotten ghosts. Trying to explain to the blind the vibrancy of a blue sky. The words are there but buried so far down that he might lose his arm trying to pull them back up.
         Lena rests her hand on the palm and looks toward him, her eyes colored with an emotion he can't explain. Her other hand is resting on her knee, close to his leg, closer to his hand. Neither of them make a move, not so much expecting the other to move first as wondering how they got here in the first place. How no matter how much you plan, no matter what your thoughts might be or what you think your feelings are, in the end the forces that guide us make us their puppets even as we do the same.
         "You really believe that?" Lena asks him suddenly, piercingly, like the answer might mean everything in the world.
         "Some days," Tristian admits with a sheepishly passive grin. "Some days more than others but . . . yeah. I do. I know I do." He looks down, shaking his head a little. "But I definitely have to keep reminding myself, sometimes."
         "Even tonight?" Lena playfully questions.
         Tristian appears to consider the answer for a long time, debating whether to give her a smartass response, even as he knows she's expecting something like that anyway. He finds that he can't, for some reason. Instead he gives a small shrug and stares right at her, conscious for the first time how close her face is, realizing with only the vaguest feeling of tenseness that he hasn't been imagining that closeness, that it's real.
         "Tonight?" Tristian wonders outloud, glancing up at the air for just a second as if reading the answer there. Then he glances down, then back at her and finally just shakes his head. "No, tonight's not a problem. Not at all."
         Lena blinks and her breath seems to catch for a second. And in her eyes Tristian sees what he didn't think he'd ever see in anyone's face. Certainly not Lena's face. Glimpses perhaps, roundabout glances that he could never be sure of, the shutters opening to let the sunlight in just for a second, giving you a view of the cozy living room before slamming shut and leaving you to wonder what exactly it was that you saw. This time is different though. The shutter haven't gone away yet. And Tristian can't imagine that at all being a bad thing.
         "Hm," Lena murmurs, settling more comfortably against the railing again. For some reason he can sense a little nervousness in her, like now that's admitted something and she can't go back and the fact that she doesn't want to isn't bothering her at all fails to surprise her. A quiet tense thing, a cat shivering from frost and fright, staring at you with calm eyes even as it seems unsure of what to do next.
         "Can I ask you something weird, Tristian?"
         Tristian chuckles at her question. "Lena," he sighs, "in the last year I've had three people claim they've seen me when they were abducted by aliens, six people accuse me of conspiring with those same aliens and one person beg me to tell him the location of the hidden planet where the beautiful women who kidnap the men for breeding stock to replenish their race live. So, please," he tells her, smiling, "if you think can top those, go right ahead."
         Lena grins a little but then gives him a puzzled look, her eye narrowing. "There's actually a planet like that?"
         "I couldn't say," he says in his blandest voice.
         She merely gives him an amused look and mutters, "Wimp," before glancing down and muttering almost inaudibly, "Are you . . . . glad you came here tonight, Tristian? You know, to the party and everything?" Lena shrugs as if ashamed of herself for even asking. "I was just curious," she adds quickly, by way of explanation. Her slim smile is utterly self effacing. "I know, I'm strange like that."
         "I think this is where I say, that makes two of us," Tristian responds, glancing down at her hand, willing his paralyzed muscles to twitch even an inch toward her, to forge some sort of connection before she vanishes down the horizon completely. "But . . ." he continues soberly, "I'll be honest, I really . . . I wasn't sure what to expect tonight . . . I just figured that I wasn't going to enjoy whatever it was. I told you, since . . . since the restaurant I haven't felt like much of a friend to . . . to anyone, really. And so I was kind of dreading all of this . . ."
         "And now?" she asks quietly.
         He goes to answer, glancing at her and then the words leave his head and all he can do is sit there and laugh at him in as gentle a manner as he can, waiting for speech to return. And when it does, it comes so easily to him. "Right now," he says, "I'm dreading the moment where I have to wake up."
         Lena looks away quickly, as if to hide something unfolding in her face, but he catches her smile from the angles. One hand is brushing her hair back behind her ear and Tristian very much wants to help her. His impulses are faraway things, messages radioed in from some other world, giving him explanation and reason. "This . . ." she says, her voice sounding distantly surprised, "if someone had told me what I'd be doing at this party, who I'd be sitting with" and she glances at him, still smiling, "and what we'd be talking about, I . . . I don't think I would have believed them."
         "No one said you had to," Tristian says to her, his tone calmly serious. "You can get up and walk back inside the party right now and this conversation will never have happened . . . I'll never mention it to you again, if that's what you want . . ."
         "But wouldn't you hate that?"
         "Maybe," Tristian replies, drawing in a sigh. "And maybe not. But I wouldn't hate you, Lena, if that's what you're afraid of. I can't, I don't have it in me. There are a million things out there that deserve my hatred, my anger. But you aren't one of them, Lena, I'm sorry. You won't ever be."
         "That's . . . that's really nice," she smiles before faintly slapping her hand down on her knee, "I mean, that's one of the things that . . . that I think I like about you . . ." and she just stops in midsentence. Tristian expects to have grown another head, so sudden does she cease speaking. It takes only a second to realize what she's been saying, the things that she's been trying to tell him.
         it's one of the things
         Tristian stares at Lena and he's reminded again of the first time he saw ever saw her. It was the first time he had been out after it had all started, before any of them knew about the mess his life had become, before it all started to fall apart, all they knew was that their buddy Tristian hadn't been around for a while and they wanted to see him, take him out for a bit. So they made him come to a restaurant and he had gotten there late and as he was walking over to the table he was painfully aware of all the new faces, different voices, all forming a circle already tightly closed to him. And he sat there on the end feeling that he had been gone for too long, that he would never be let back in again. And she was sitting there on the end, talking to someone, maybe Jina, maybe Will and he could barely hear the words in the cluttered ambience of the restaurant but he could watch her face and pretend to listen. And then she stopped talking and glanced over at him and their eyes met and the moment became frozen in time. Somewhere, in a space that can only be described by mathematics, it's floating there still, shimmering and solid.
         one of the things that
         Distantly there's a faint, dry sensation creasing the back of his hand and he doesn't have to look down because in that flash he knows what it is. One second has passed and they're still staring at each other, time grinding to a needed halt and Tristian can see in her eyes that she realizes what he's been trying to say all along but didn't know how. That however clumsy his phrasing, his words were, he was never lying. And that when he admitted his feelings, it was because he felt he had nothing to lose.
         things that I like
         Without any hesitation in the next second he turns his hand ever so slightly, finding her fingers flush against his. And he grasps them with gentle pressure, feeling them respond in kind. She seems to have gotten so much closer and any moment now he expects to be interrupted, that's the way it generally works, right? That's the way it has to be, you spend hours working on setting up the expectations and you spend a second tearing them all down. It's so much easier to destroy because we lie to ourselves and say that we can create further beauty out of the wreckage. When all we're doing is crawling from underneath the piles and breathing sighs of relief that we didn't get hurt this time.
         like about you
         And Lena looks at him and he can hear her lips move but there's a roaring like a waterfall in his ears and it doesn't matter because they've both said all they want to say, all they need to say and there's only thing left now.
         about you
         And somewhere Tristian thinks he hears a whisper tickling his ear.
         you
         and it's his fear and hesitation and doubt crying for one last reprieve, one last chance, one last hearing
         ". . . baby, we forgot, it's the Fourth of July . . ."
         and with an inward grin, Tristian finds that he's finally found something worth not caring about.