The Cracks Too Small to Slip Through

> "The ocean of grief / takes all boats up in its tide / and carries them roughshod out of the past / to the still waters / under the moonlight."

>

> - from "My Mother's Children", poem by Kehat Maya

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The ships, or at least one of them, returned far faster than Sylva had expected, a mere ten hours later. She had spent the whole time in the bridge, and had been dozing when the radio flared to life.

"First Star, this is the Echo. Come in."

Sylva shook herself awake, feeling a horrible ache in her neck and, blinking in the light of the bridge. She hit the transmit button on the radio. "Echo, this is the First Star. What's your status?"

"Your captain and crew are safe and will be returning to you in a minute. Please be prepared to provide docking information." There was a touch of humor in the man's voice over the radio. She didn't know why. Perhaps he was just making fun of her.

"Thank you, Echo. Were you successful? Where is the Kiss of Death?"

"The Kiss of Death remains in orbit around Olkye. We successfully took the Gatekeeper. Shuttles launching now."

Sylva scrambled to press the correct buttons on the console to find and provide docking information to the incoming shuttles, presumably piloted by Yan and Iri. She wasn't fully confident with all the operations of the First Star like Yan was, but she did the best she could, and she didn't usually have any serious problems. Sylva switched channels on the radio, flipping over to the shuttle's communication band.

"Yan, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Yan responded. She sounded terse, but that might have been tiredness or the flattening effect of the radio. "Be there in a minute."

Yan killed the radio on her end, and Sylva was left with nothing but a hissing silence. She didn't like that.

Sylva abandoned the bridge and trooped down to the bay, where she had set the large bay doors open so that the shuttles could dock. She waited for them to come in, one settling gracefully into the bay, the other settling slightly less gracefully and sending a thrum through the nearby metal of she ship as it impacted. If she had to guess, the one that moved naturally was Yan, and the one that had nearly crashed was Iri. With both shuttles inside, Sylva used the operating panel on the outside of the bay to shut the door and flood the area with air. It was nice that Yan and Iri had fixed the hole in the bay door

Her suspicions were confirmed as everyone climbed out of their shuttles. Surprisingly, there was one more person than Sylva expected-- a very young looking man with a frazzled looking tuft of black hair came out of Iri's shuttle. Sylva pulled open the door and went in, smiling broadly.

Yan had a blank look on her face, and she ignored, or simply didn't see, Sylva as she went about her post flight checklist, locking down the shuttle, then pushing her way over to Iri's shuttle to do the same. She was fastidious, if nothing else. Sylva inspected the group. Iri looked fine, catching Sylva's eye and smiling. Kino looked like Kino. Sylva didn't have an opinion on her, and it was so hard to figure out what her deal was anyway. She was just standing around, seemingly directionless and waiting for instructions.

The young man looked around the ship, hovering warily and watching Yan as she moved about and finished cleaning up the shuttles. Iri pushed over to Sylva.

"Who's that?" Sylva asked, nodding at the newcomer, who made no move to approach them.

"I think he makes this the most sensitive-dense ship this side of the Empire," Iri said. "Name's Chanam."

"I thought we weren't picking up kids."

"He's more dangerous than he looks, I think," Iri said. "Hard to tell."

"And he's here because...?"

"The ship he was on is, how should I say it, damaged."

"Wouldn't it be best for him to stay with his own crew?"

"He's here to babysit us, I believe," Iri clarified.

"More like we'll have to babysit him."

"I somehow doubt that. Anyway, be on your best behavior."

Sylva smiled thinly at the man, boy, really. He stared at her, unblinking. "Is he okay?"

"Probably not," Iri said. "But then again, I don't know him."

"Great."

Sylva had been staring down Chanam, and she had failed to notice that Yan had silently finished checking over the shuttles, and had pushed her way towards the door of the bay. Sylva turned around when she heard the door open with its characteristic hiss, and saw Yan's back vanishing down the hallway. Immediately, Sylva abandoned her conversation with Iri and scrambled towards the rapidly vanishing Yan. Her feet struggled to find the floor to push off of. No matter how much time Sylva spent in space, she didn't think she would ever get the hang of zero gravity. Iri helped her out by giving her a tiny shove, sending Iri back toward the shuttles and Sylva sailing towards the door.

"Wait, Yan!" she called, and followed her down the hallway.

Yan dragged her hand on the wall to slow herself down, and turned around to face Sylva. Her face was carefully blank, as neutral as Sylva had ever seen it.

"I'm glad to see you again," Sylva said, very awkwardly.

"I'm glad to see you, too," Yan replied. Her hands were floating loosely in the air, but Sylva could see that there was tension held in her fingers, as though she was forcing herself to keep them unclenched.

"Are you okay?"

"No."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"I'm sorry," Sylva said. "Did you--"

"I don't want to talk about it," Yan said, cutting her off. Sylva was taken aback by the abruptness of it. Even though Yan's tone was even, it wasn't pleasant. She wasn't exactly surprised that Yan was upset, logically, but emotionally was a different story.

"Do you want anything to eat?"

"Sylva." Yan looked her in the eye. "If I eat anything, I will throw up."

"I'm sorry," Sylva said again. She pushed off the wall and drifted towards Yan, but as she got closer, Yan flinched, and Sylva dragged her feet to stop. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No," Yan said. Yan turned around, pushed off the wall, and headed down the hallway. Sylva followed a little. "Can I just have some space, please?"

"But--"

Yan pushed off the wall, making herself go much faster. She grabbed the handholds that were built into the wall for just such purpose, and, like the natural born spacer she was, pulled herself to rocket forward. Sylva couldn't keep up; she completely lacked the rhythm and agility that was Yan's birthright as a spacer, moving through the air as gracefully as a fish. Yan disappeared around a corner, and Sylva heard the chime of the elevator that would take her into the ring. As Sylva rounded the corner, she saw the door close, and Yan vanished out of sight.

Completely dejected, Sylva slowed herself down and turned around, heading back to the bay and the others. She caught Iri, Kino, and the new kid (Chanam, she reminded herself), as they were leaving.

"Did you catch Yan?" Iri asked.

"Then I lost her again. Should I try to find her?"

"Let her have some time to herself," Iri suggested.

Sylva kicked the wall miserably. "I should have come with you."

"It wouldn't have made this any easier," Iri said. "Yan will take the time she needs, and then she'll come back to you."

"She doesn't have to treat me like I'm incapable," Sylva said. "I can understand what she's going through."

Iri wrapped her heavy arm around Sylva's shoulders, steadying her. "She's probably trying to protect you."

"I don't need to be protected."

"And by that, I mean she's trying to protect herself."

Sylva had no idea what Iri was talking about, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was, first, that Yan was back safe, and second, that Yan was miserable and wouldn't talk to her. This made Sylva miserable. It was all very simple, really.

At Sylva's silence, Iri spoke up again. "I can tell you about it later. Not right now."

"Fine." There were still the other two there, the silent Kino and Chanam. A real pair those two made. Perhaps Sylva was getting the wrong impression of the boy. After all, he had probably gone through something terrible as well, if how Yan was behaving was any indication. Sylva felt so out of the loop.

The group headed down the hall, squeezed into the elevator, and returned to normal gravity, which was a relief. "Where are we headed?" Sylva asked. She didn't know why, but she felt like this group should stick together.

"Kitchen," Iri said. "I'm starving."

"How long are you planning on staying with us, er, Chanam? I'm Sylva, by the way."

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, pay attention to where we're going so that you can find your way around the place," Sylva said, rather awkwardly.

"It's a circle," Kino pointed out.

"Thanks, Kino, I didn't know that." Perhaps she was being unnecessarily snippy to Kino, who didn't really deserve it, but she couldn't help it.

They came to the kitchen. The greenhouse was finally producing a few accelerated plants, so they had some vegetables, which was nice. There was a bowl of tomatoes sitting on the stainless steel island in the middle of the room, but nobody seemed intent on grabbing them. Sylva hauled out the stools that they used, and she, Chanam, and Kino sat down. Iri vanished into the pantry, and was gone for a long minute. There was an acutely awkward silence between them all.

Iri returned triumphantly, holding up a bottle of liquor. "Glasses, if you will, Sylva?"

Sylva looked at it, slightly scandalized. "Is that really the greatest idea?"

"Don't care. Glasses," she prompted again. Sylva got up and searched around for the fancy cups. "Doesn't have to be fancy," Iri said, seeing that she was failing in her quest. Sylva took out the coffee mugs, then, which they all used quite often, and passed them out.

"Are you even old enough to drink?" she asked Chanam.

"What?"

"God, never mind."

Iri poured four glasses of the alcohol, rather more than Sylva would have, personally. "To new friends," Iri said, holding up her glass to Chanam. "To doing what is necessary," she said to Kino. "To returning home," she said to Sylva.

Sylva hit her mug against Iri's, then took a sip. It burned, and she put it down immediately. She had never been much of a drinker. She kept an eye on the others to see what they would do. Iri seemed to be fairly enthusiastic about drinking hers, and Kino drank all of her cup with the same flat expression that she normally wore. Chanam studied the bottle, then took a tentative gulp from his mug, then put it on the table with an expression of mild disgust.

"Where are you from?" Sylva asked Chanam, trying to make conversation. Her mind was really elsewhere, on whatever Yan was doing, off alone, but she might as well try to gather information.

"Banzhing," he said.

"Where the fuck is that?" Sylva asked.

Iri rolled her eyes. "You think he's going to pull out a starchart?"

"No starchart," he said. The more he spoke, the more pronounced his accent became. Old Imperial was definitely not his first language, then. "Not allowed to have those."

"Heh, understandable," Sylva said. If that Banzhing was a planet outside the Empire, rather like Olkye was, a starchart would be the last thing you wanted anyone carrying around, especially not someone who they were sending onto this ship without an escort. "Are you here because your crew, the Dark Hands, they trust us now?"

Chanam shrugged heavily and took another sip of his liquor, staring down at the table. "My ship needs repairs. They want me somewhere out of the way."

"You'd think a sensitive would be a valuable asset when you're fixing a ship," Sylva said.

"I'm not a spacer. They don't want me touching it."

"Think you're going to mess with the stardrive, hunh?"

Chanam shook his head violently. "No!"

Sylva laughed. "I'm just kidding."

He scowled at the table. "Sylva, right?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you come with us? I can smell the power on you."

"Because I suck at using it," Sylva said, as candidly as she could muster. She couldn't quite keep the rancor out of her voice. "And because Yan wants to protect me."

Chanam looked up at her. "Nice."

"Not really, no." Sylva avoided saying anything more than that by taking another nasty sip of her drink. She could tell from the bottle that Iri had gotten the nice stuff, the fancy stuff, but that didn't make it taste any better.

"How was it out there?" Sylva asked. She looked at Iri, who shrugged.

"I didn't do anything."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Got any input, Kino?" Sylva asked.

Kino traced a line on the table with her one finger on her left hand. "Bad."

"I'm sorry."

"Sid wasn't there," Kino said abruptly. "He wasn't on the ship."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Kino didn't say anything.

"Did you know the people there?"

"Yes," Kino said. "Some of them."

"I'm sorry." Sylva felt like she was saying that a lot, but it was just something to say, in order to stop the silence from being so absolute. The whole thing was killing her. She was trapped behind a glass wall, away from the rest of them, unable to grasp what had happened because she wasn't there. They had kept her away. She couldn't understand, and she couldn't know, because no one would let her know or understand.

"Should I have come?"

"It wouldn't have made a difference," Kino said.

"I would have fucked it up," Sylva said, only half joking.

"You're fine," Iri said.

"If I'm so fine, why couldn't I come?"

"Drink up," Iri said, flicking the side of Sylva's mug and making it ring dully.

"You want to kill people?" Chanam asked, looking her over appraisingly.

Sylva stared him down. "Is that a question that's your business to ask?"

He shrugged. "It's what you seem to want."

"How many people did you kill?" Sylva asked.

"It wouldn't have been possible to get the Gatekeeper without us holding it down," Kino said. "If you count it that way, then all of them." She couldn't tell if Kino felt any kind of way about this.

"Not like that. I mean in person."

"Didn't count," Chanam said. Sylva looked at Kino for confirmation, and Kino tilted her head to the side.

"We split up, once we went aboard the Gatekeeper," Kino said.

"You're taking it pretty well," Sylva said.

Chanam shrugged. "Had to do it."

"Are you taking it well?" Sylva asked, changing the angle slightly.

"Don't pry," Iri said, laying a hand on Sylva's arm. "Not everything needs to be dissected."

Sylva frowned. "Do we know what our next step is?"

"It's Yan's choice," Kino said.

"The captains will discuss it," Chanam said, seemingly with authority.

"Is Yan included in that list of captains?" Sylva asked.

Chanam shrugged. "I don't know."

"Crew of four probably isn't worth including in the discussions," Iri said, trying to play it as funny.

"Five," Kino said.

"You staying for long?" Sylva asked.

"I don't know. Until someone tells me I'm not."

"Do you follow orders all the time?"

"Yes."

"Whose?"

"My captain's. And Faro's."

"Faro?"

"One of the other ship's sensitives," Iri clarified. "Is he your master?"

"What?"

"You know. Does he teach you how to do things, in the power?" Sylva supposed that someone raised outside of the Empire, as this kid clearly was, wouldn't have the formal structures of apprenticeships in place.

Chanam shrugged. "I taught myself."

"Like Halen, then," Iri said to Kino.

"I figured you would shut up about Halen," Sylva said. "Now that we're here."

Iri tipped her cup sideways, balancing on its bottom edge by holding her finger on the rim. "Should I?"

"I don't know."

The conversation fell flat once again, as Sylva decided that she didn't want to be the one holding it up. She drank the rest of her drink. "When can I go talk to Yan?" Sylva asked Iri.

"She'll come find you when she's ready, I'm sure."

"Really?"

Iri shrugged. "She can't stay away from you forever. Small ship."

"What did she do before?"

"She stayed with Sid."

"Sid." Sid the not-dead. Sid the not-here. What did Yan think of that, Sylva wondered.

"Yes."

Sylva drummed her fingers on the island. Chanam pursed his lips, apparently annoyed by the sound. "Anyone want anything to eat?"

Chanam reached over the top of the island and grabbed a tomato out of the bowl. He bit into it, and the juice dripped down his face. "Ugh," Sylva said.

She got up and handed him a kitchen towel. Manners would do him some good.

----------------------------------------

Sylva waited in their shared bedroom for Yan to come back. She was awake at first, waiting for the vague blur of alcohol to wear off, and then she fell asleep, curled up around her computer, sound low from a movie, on top of the sheets. Yan wasn't there when she fell asleep, and Yan wasn't there when she woke up either.

Her head felt thick and her mouth felt like it was full of sand. Not from drinking too much, really, Iri had only poured out a little bit more, but from not eating and not drinking enough water. Sylva stumbled to the bathroom and cleaned herself up. She didn't even know what shift it was; her sense of time had gotten completely destroyed from waking and sleeping at random times. She wondered if Iri was taking care of things while Yan was... incapacitated? Was that the right word? While Yan was hiding from the rest of everyone, at the very least.

Probably she was. Iri was a very responsible person, and Sylva was glad to have her around.

Feeling slightly more human, Sylva checked the time and decided that enough was enough. It was time to find Yan.

She sat heavily in the center of the bed and connected her computer to the First Star's computer system. It was easy enough to flip through the camera feeds and the intercom and check all the public (as public as anything was on this ship, anyway) rooms for Yan's presence. The greenhouse and the bridge were the obvious first choices, and while she saw Iri on the bridge (good), there was no sign of Yan. She wasn't in the chapel, or the gym, or the workshop, or any of the bays, or the library, or any of the storage areas, or anywhere else that Sylva could see. She paged the bridge.

"Iri?" Sylva asked.

Looking at the slightly delayed picture of Iri on the bridge, Sylva saw her jump. "Sorry for interrupting you," she said.

"It's fine. Wasn't doing anything. What's up?" Iri's voice sounded tired.

"Seen Yan?"

"No. I assume you haven't either?"

"Yeah." To be fair, Sylva had been mostly sleeping. "Any idea where she is?"

"No, sorry," Iri said. "Are you going to look for her?"

"It's been long enough, right?"

"She's probably moped it out by now. And she's probably hungry."

"I'll bring her something to eat," Sylva said. "If I can find her."

"Not that many places she can be hiding. Get Kino to find her, if you can't." It was true that Kino could use the power to locate Yan quite easily.

"Ugh. No, thanks."

"Suit yourself."

"Any news from the other ships?"

"No. I think they're planning to rotate in and out from the planet," Iri said. "Other than that, nothing."

"Cool." She said this flatly, realizing that she didn't actually care at all, and was mostly asking because Yan would want to know. "Have you slept?"

"I've got myself some stimulants."

"You should trade places with Kino."

"Kino has her own stuff to deal with."

"And you don't?"

"Not really, no."

"You're still human and need to sleep."

Iri leaned back in her chair, and put her feet up on the console. "I'll catnap."

"Don't let Yan see you do that, she'll have a fit."

"Then don't bring her to the bridge when you find her."

"Hah. Okay. See you later."

"Good luck."

Sylva killed the intercom call and headed out. In the kitchen, she ate a handful of cookies from a box, and prepared a sandwich to bring to Yan. Awkwardly, she put it on a plate, and was left carrying it around as she wandered the halls of the First Star.

All the areas of the ship that weren't monitored were in the rotating rings, so Sylva luckily didn't need to bother going through there. She supposed Yan could be sitting inside a shuttle, just hiding, but that seemed unlikely. Equally unlikely was the idea of her hiding in a closet somewhere. She was probably in one of the private rooms-- Sandreas's personal office, or some other place like that. Sylva didn't feel like using the power, so she walked the halls aimlessly at first. After trying the doors to a few random places, she decided that it was stupid not to use the power, so reluctantly, she cast her awareness out around her.

The power came slightly easier to her, these days. Maybe it was because she had gotten so much practice while on her trip with Iri, or maybe there was just less in the hallways of the First Star that could distract her. The moment she closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, of course, she was distracted. The feeling of the air moving through the ventilation, tickling the hairs coming lose from her braids across her face, the smell of the sandwich in her hands, the way that the bright lights shone in through her eyelids, it was all a lot, but she blocked it out, leaving only the feeling of the power, restless under her hands.

Like a fisherman, she cast out her net. She was close to the bridge, so she could feel Iri, exactly where she had left her. Sylva's range sputtered out just a little past that, so she had to keep walking, and throw her power out again. She felt someone she didn't know, Chanam, she supposed, in one of the rooms. She was glad she hadn't just been trying doors, because she wouldn't have wanted to walk in on him. There was no sign of Kino, of course, but Sylva wouldn't have been able to feel Kino in the power if Kino had come up and bit her. She wouldn't put it past Kino to do that.

Sylva walked around the ring. Finally, just barely, she felt Yan's presence, behind an unmarked door. It was duller than the vivid feeling Yan usually had, the very few times Sylva had ever felt her like this, but maybe that was because she was asleep. Sylva tried to open it, found it was locked, and resorted once again to forcing the lock on the door. She didn't like it, but it was easy enough.

The lock clicked open, and Sylva went in. The room was dark, and it had a rich smell, like someone had been burning a candle. It was living quarters, though there was no indication as to whose. It was larger and more nicely furnished than the guest rooms or staff rooms, but it wasn't Sandreas's chambers, which Sylva had identified very early on into their stay, and decided not to stay in. This was a living room, and closed doors led off to a bathroom and bedroom, or perhaps office.

Someone had been burning a candle, actually. There was one flickering on a low table in the corner of the room. It surprised Sylva, because Yan was usually quite averse to fire, especially aboard ships. She walked over and looked at it, shutting the door behind her. The candle was behind a little partition of colored glass, and it illuminated a tiny shrine, with just one of the images of the face of God hung on the wall over the table. There was a book on the table, which Sylva thought was just a prayer book, but when she flipped through the pages, she discovered that it was jammed full of photographs of people that she didn't recognize. It felt like a major invasion of privacy to be looking at all of them, so she put it down.

Sylva opened one of the doors, bathroom, and checked the other one. It opened silently under her hand, revealing a bedroom. It was simple, also dark, but in the very dim light, Sylva saw Yan curled up on the bed, face buried in a pillow. Sylva crept in to the room, and very carefully climbed up onto the bed next to Yan. She stayed sitting up, and just looked at Yan for a moment, then gingerly reached out and touched the top of Yan's head.

It was as if it was too much to even look at her. Sylva had to just content herself with being there together, which was more and less than she had ever hoped for. Yan's breathing was ver, very quiet. Sylva closed her eyes, felt the world around her, felt Yan underneath her fingertips, felt everything, so much, all the time.

The power was still there around her. It would be so easy, easier than it had ever been before, to slip down into it. She knew it would be.

Sylva considered it for a second, weighing what it would cost if she slipped herself into Yan's dream. Yan's mind was so open, all the time. She didn't know if she could, so she figured it didn't hurt to try.

Sylva kept her eyes closed, kept her fingers moving so lightly over the edge of Yan's hair, down her ear, past her eyes. She matched their breathing together.

At first, there was nothing, and Sylva tried to resist the temptation to get bored. She was kept there only by her desire to be let in to the center of Yan's heart. She knew that space was occupied by something else, and she wanted, if not to be there entirely, to at least fit into the cracks. Maybe, maybe, she had to do this.

Then, there was the feeling that Yan had, rising up from her, through the surface of her skin, into Sylva's fingertips. It was unbearably sad and sat as bitter as coffee grounds on Sylva's tongue. She almost flinched back, but kept her fingers moving in their gentlest rhythm, and kept her eyes closed, and kept breathing.

Slowly, like the first rays of the sun peeking up in the eastern sky, images formed in Sylva's mind, creating the corridors of Yan's dream.

She was in the Iron Dreams, which she knew not out of any visual recognition, but because of the strange and melancholy feeling it cast over her. Home, but a home that would never be returned to.

She was alone in the hallway, in the gravity section of the ship, and she was walking, just walking, around and around. She looked down at her hands, and they seemed to twist before her, unable to retain their shape and a consistent self image. Sylva didn't know if this was because she and Yan were inhabiting the same dream body, and their minds were trying to resolve their disparate self images into one, or if this was the way that meditation worked, or if Sylva was seeing through Yan's eyes and Yan couldn't resolve the picture meaningfully.

They walked and walked, and while they never seemed to get anywhere, the corridor also never seemed to loop back on itself the way that a real ship's would.

"Where are you going?" Sylva finally asked.

"The bridge," Yan said, and it was as though the words were coming out of her own mouth. It felt natural, though, so Sylva didn't worry about the dream logic of it. She didn't know if Yan realized that she was there. Maybe she did.

"Why?" Sylva asked.

"Because there are pirates coming."

"How do you know?"

"I felt them come in."

They were silent, and it was as though once Yan had made her decision, the path forward resolved, and they stopped moving through soup, making their way towards the bridge for real.

The door to the bridge opened, and for a moment it, too, struggled to resolve. There was the Impulse's bridge, there was the First Star's bridge, there was the Iron Dreams' bridge. It eventually settled down into a hybrid amalgamation of the three, and if Sylva looked too closely at any of it, it wobbled fiercely. That wasn't what this dream was about.

The bridge was empty, aside from Yan/Sylva. She didn't wonder where everyone had gone. She knew.

She sat down in the captain's chair and stared out at the large display. If she looked too hard at the stars, she could feel herself being pulled out towards them, as the bridge began to melt away. There was a shuttle out there. Plain, unmarked, rather ordinary. It was coming towards her, and she could feel the menace and terror coming off of it in Yan's mind.

"Who is that?" Sylva asked.

Yan didn't answer.

She floated in space and the bridge melted away underneath her. It was just her and the shuttle, coming quickly towards her. The fear increased every second, and she could feel her heart pounding, hear it in her ears. She could still breathe, which was good. This might have been a dream about dying in space, but it at least it wasn't one about suffocating in the vacuum.

The terror increased as the shuttle came closer. She couldn't see inside of it, but she could feel its presence.

"What are you going to do?" Sylva asked.

"I don't want to," Yan said, trying to back away. But there was nothing to push off against, and her arms and legs flailed madly and ineffectively. "I don't want to."

She may not have wanted to, but the shuttle came closer, somehow looming larger than life, even when it should have been right on top of them. It blocked out the light of the stars, throwing them into deep shadow. "No, please, no," Yan begged. She looked up at it, throwing her arms out wide, as though if it was going to attack her, it should go straight for the heart.

"Please don't make me," Yan pleaded.

"Make you do what?" Sylva asked.

"This," Yan said. The power screamed hungrily, and Yan ripped the shuttle apart.

There was a brief moment where the terror was replaced with resignation and an overwhelming sadness, and then Sylva was both thrown from Yan's dream and thrown off the bed, the power knocking her backwards off onto the floor. She hit her head on the ground hard, and didn't manage to stifle a cry and groan as she sat up.

On her knees now, Sylva came to the edge of the bed, where Yan was still asleep, turned away from her. She was breathing more heavily now, and her body twitched occasionally, deep in the dream that Sylva had been tossed out of. Sylva reached out again for a second, hesitated, then shook Yan's shoulder.

Yan jerked and yelped, rolling away from the touch. Sylva was frozen in place for a second as Yan's power came down around her, holding her in a tight grip.

"Stop! Yan! It's just me!" Sylva yelled, still in control of her mouth at least. Yan let her go, and Sylva's arm fell to the bed as though its strings had been cut. Her whole body felt limp and malleable.

Yan was coughing, not looking at Sylva, facing towards the opposite wall. Sylva pulled herself onto the bed, with arms that felt weak and floppy, and crawled behind Yan.

"I'm sorry for waking you up," Sylva said. "You looked like you were having a nightmare." She didn't know if Yan knew she had been in her dream, so Sylva didn't mention it.

Yan was clearly crying, but keeping it quiet, trying to steady her breathing and not letting Sylva look at her face. Sylva wasn't sure what to do. Her instinct was to grab Yan, to hug her, but from the way that Yan was hunched over and keeping herself away, Sylva figured that was not what she wanted. Instead, Sylva sat herself next to Yan, curling her own legs up to her chest, waiting for Yan to recover and say something.

It took a long, long time.

"You shouldn't have come here," Yan said. Her voice was raw and the words came out quietly.

"I needed to see you," Sylva said.

"Not like this."

Sylva didn't respond. She wanted, very badly, to lean her head on Yan's shoulder, for Yan to take comfort in her presence. She couldn't make Yan do that, though, and if Yan didn't want her here, Sylva couldn't make her want her here. Unfortunately.

But she could stay, and wait.

"I wish I could have come with you," Sylva said.

Yan shook her head mutely.

"I know you were trying to protect me." She remembered that was what Iri had said. "You don't need to protect me. I want to protect you. I want to be there for you. Please." She felt like she was begging, but she didn't quite know what for.

"You shouldn't," Yan said. "I wish I had never asked you to come."

"I would have found you anyway," Sylva whispered. "I'll always find you."

Yan hunched her shoulders up further, turned away. It hurt. It hurt so badly to feel rejected. She knew, on one level, that this was Yan's own pain and problems, and it had little to nothing to do with Sylva herself, but that level was overtaken by the emotional one that was crying out for Yan to stop pushing her away.

Iri had said Yan was trying to protect herself. "I love you," Sylva said.

"You shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because you have no idea what kind of person I actually am," Yan said. "I'm not good. I deserve--"

"No," Sylva said.

Yan was silent, and Sylva gently, quietly, reached out towards Yan's shoulder. When she touched her, Yan was still for half a second, then jerked away. That was worse than if she had moved away by instinct. That was a conscious choice. Sylva dropped her hand. She was angry, now.

"Fine," Sylva said hotly. "Come back out of your cave when you want to be a human again. I'll talk to you then." Clumsily, now feeling the throbbing in the back of her head from where she had hit the ground, Sylva crawled off the edge of the bed and left, slamming the door behind her.