lady_mab | Meliora - Extricate

Zoné Altair

I have to stay after class in order to revise one of my essays. For some reason, the teacher thinks that the narrator's relationship with food and their later existential crisis have nothing to do with one another -- which is pure baloney, if you ask me.

Glen and Jun agree to wait for me, taking refuge outside of the school building in the rare bit of sun in the otherwise gloomy late winter. The others had to go, various other obligations keeping them busy after school.

More and more, I feel myself drifting away from Beat, Mal, Robbie, and Ayumu. We hung out over Christmas, and we still have lunch together every day. But it's harder to keep abreast with them when half of what we do has to be kept secret.

The addition of the Darcy twins doesn't help that situation in the slightest. I don't regret inviting them to join. I just wish that everyone could get along.

Of course, with that wish, I just would like to not have to keep secrets from them.

Once my essay is to the teacher's approval, I grab my bag and high-tail it out of the classroom. Ignoring the warning from a proctor to not run in the halls, I round a corner with a bit more speed than is probably safe.

I practically collide with someone walking in the opposite direction, and she yelps in surprise with my sudden appearance. I shout an apology as I swerve out of the way and struggle to maintain my balance.

"Hey, careful--" Her voice cuts off an instant later and a laugh comes from her instead. "I should have figured."

I adjust my backpack and look up to see-- "Starling."

She grins. "Altair."

"What are you doing here?"

Her shoulders lift in a delicate shrug. "I thought this was a public school."

"Uhhhhhhhhh pretty sure that doesn't mean you can just wander around as you please."

"I was looking for Lysander," she sighs. "Do you know where his classroom is?"

I give her a hard stare.

She stares right back, and arcs an eyebrow.

"Why do you need Lysander's classroom...?" I remember that the two of them had a weird sort of moment when they ran into each other back on the uni campus. I guess maybe they did talk a bit after that. He did mention going with her to that meeting at the end of January.

But why would she come all the way out here to the high school to see him?

Starling doesn't clarify. But she does hold out her arm towards me and says, "Why don't you be a gentleman and take me there?"

I don't know what sort of expression takes over my face but her returning grimace is fairly mocking.

"Alright, you don't have to take my arm. Can you at least show me where it is?"

"Again: Why do you need Lysander's classroom?" I keep my fingers wrapped around the straps of my bag just so she won't try and take my arm without permission.

She stares at me with wide eyes. Not that her eyes aren't ever not wide in the few times that I've run across her. Still can't remember her from New Ox that well, but I bet they were equally wide then. "Because... I'm visiting him...?"

There's clearly something I'm not getting that she's not getting that I'm not getting. "Why?"

This time, recognition dawns in her expression as both eyebrows shoot up. "Because we're dating?"

The words take several seconds to process in my head. Then several more as I try to rationalize it. "What? Why?!"

"Why?!" Starling repeats, surprised. "What do you mean why?"

"No, not why. Sorry. I don't actually care." I hold up a hand to stop any potential explanation forthcoming. "I mean. I thought you and my brother--"

Several emotions pass over her face that I don't know how to interpret. But then it settles into something that resembles exasperated fondness -- only I don't know who it's aimed at. "No. You think Catoir is capable of something like a relationship?"

A snort of amusement escapes me before I can stop it, and she smiles in victory. "He isn't even capable of a relationship with his family."

"No." Her voice is cold, but her expression is soft. "He isn't." There's a beat before she finally returns to whatever sort of present we're in and lets her head cant to the side. "Now are you going to tell me where I can find Lysander, or shall I just follow you around instead?"

"Uuugggghhhhhh." I groan to the fluorescent lights of the ceiling. "Alright, fine. Come on." I don't reach for her arm, and she doesn't offer it again.

Instead, she locks her hands behind her back and trails along half a step behind me. "So, have you remembered me yet?" she asks, teasing.

"No. Are you going to ask me every time we see each other?"

"I've only asked you once before."

That's true. I tend to avoid anywhere she might be because it means that my brother would be there too. "Who knows how often our paths might cross if you're dating Lysander."

"Not too often." She pauses a beat, considers something, then adds, "You don't have to worry about running into him either, if that's any consolation."

I don't have to ask for clarification. "I seem to do that well enough on my own."

Starling makes a small sound in the back of her throat.

We walk another few feet in silence. Halfway to Lysander's classroom, she speaks up again. "I know everyone has reassured me that Jun is okay, but how are you?"

"I'm fine."

"Zoné."

"I'm fine."

"I know that tone of voice you had on the phone. I know how not okay one is when they sound like that."

I stop in my tracks and she moves around to stand in front of me, forcing herself into my line of sight. Her expression is serious, concerned, and the hesitation and fear that I felt that night in December comes rushing back.

How I finally bit the bullet and called my brother. How he wasn't the one who answered, but she did. Her even tone pulled me off the brink of hysteria until she could pass me over to Catoir.

I stop and take a moment to breathe. "Thank you, Ayn."

She holds my gaze steady, breathes in time. "Are you okay?"

"I think..." I start, trying to figure out just what she wants to hear. When that doesn't work, I shake my head and try again. "I think that I'm learning how to be. It was horrifying."

"I can only imagine. Jun is lucky to have you there for her, but don't forget to look out for yourself, okay?" A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. "Fletcher and I can't always be there to look out for you."

I scoff and look away. Oddly enough, some of the tension that had built up in my chest releases with that. A weight I didn't even know I carried. "Great. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

She hums in response and starts to walk ahead of me.

I let her go for a few paces, even though she clearly doesn't know where she is going, before I release a loud sigh. "No, take a left. His classroom is down that hall."

Starling spins in a full circle, saluting as she faces me, then carries on. "Thanks for showing me the way, Altair! Maybe you'll remember me next time."

I remain standing in the middle of the hall, listening to her footsteps fade, and a moment later, the murmured conversation between her and Lysander as it echoes off the walls back to me. "I can't believe they're dating," I say out loud to the empty hall before I drag my feet in the direction of the front door.

I don't like trying to think about the time she might have been friends with my brother back in New Oxford. That was when he started to drift apart from the rest of us, focusing more on his studies than he did on his family. The fact that she might have known him in a way that I didn't is still upsetting. We had been best friends in the way that siblings are when we were younger.

Then to have all of that just immediately forgotten and ignored?

One day, I'd like to stand up in front of him and just say 'fuck you' and to not care about it a single bit. It would be cathartic, refreshing, like pulling off an entire cast instead of just a plaster.

Only the problem is that I know I care too much.

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