My week at Alex’s was the best week of my life.

With caveats.

Look, I’m sorry. I’ve talked about honesty before, and to an extent, honesty is coterminous with truth, but not always the same thing. The truth was, I had maybe the first truly enjoyable period of my life since I was eight years old. And to be honest, the things that stand out most to me are the exceptions.

It’s the sword of Damocles. Nothing is happy for her over whom terror always looms.

For me, that sword was Aurora University. At the moment. Really, it was a lot of things, but that was the one currently doing the looming.

I had no idea what I was going to do. My plan to rob it had been shot down what felt like a lifetime ago, and since then, I had pretty much dismissed it as a possibility. Hyperion had said it wasn’t going to happen. Hyperion controlled most of my life. That meant that what he said was how it was.

Except he hadn’t been able to do anything to keep me from being taken by SCAR, and he hadn’t been able to come and get me. Now, forces at work looked like they were going to guarantee that I ended up in Aurora one way or another with no plan in place and no way to contact him. What he said…wasn’t how it was going at all, and you’re probably hoping that this was some sort of major revelation for me, but it wasn't. It felt wrong. It felt like I was breaking the rules. It made me nervous and jittery. I considered just flying back, but something told me it wouldn’t be quite so easy getting over the Wall this time.

The Wall, by the way, wasn’t a literal wall. The Skip was an island, and wasn’t Alcatraz or anything—though it was so heavily developed that most of ground was raised at least a hundred feet above the actual dirt. It’s more a metaphor for the various defenses in place to keep people in and out, on both our side and SCAR’s. We employed trustworthy—as trustworthy as we could find anyway—villain gangs to watch and defend certain points along the Skip perimeter, and SCAR had a series of automated and manned defenses that assumed everyone trying to cross them was an enemy. For the longest time, we had assumed from the volume of metahumans who found their way in that SCAR’s defenses were garbage, but something Siege had said rattled in my brain like a lugnut in a blender.

Why is it always so much easier to get into the Skip than out?

I remembered what I’d seen in Grey’s mind, the thing she had been fighting to keep me from seeing. From the little bit I had gleaned, SCAR wasn’t actually trying to keep metahumans out. And the more I thought about why that might be, the more I felt the need to run to the nearest toilet and dry heave.

Long story short, I was pretty sure that SCAR’s defenses would become suddenly much more competent if they spotted me trying to cross the wall anywhere.

So, effectively, I was short on options, and to be frank, after a while I wasn’t looking for them very hard.

After I signed the paperwork, Alex got out her comm—which looked like a small, steel rectangle the size of a postage stamp, the interface being entirely augmented reality—and sent a message to the Starflight courier on standby. I knew Starflight couriers were fast, but I still jumped to my feet in alarm when someone knocked on the door less than a minute later. I stayed out of sight, ready to fight if they tried anything tricky, but Alex gave me a look and just…answered the door. She barely even peeped through the spyhole.

I tried to stay out of sight as Alex turned over the legal packet and the brown envelope they had come in, but my curiosity got the better of me. I had never seen a Starflight courier up close. I peeked around the entranceway from the living room to the foyer as Alex exchanged pleasantries.

She was tall, dark-skinned, very fit, and pleasantly pretty with closely-shorn hair, dressed in the standard Starflight gear, the sky-blue and yellow tights evoking their superheroic origins, brown flight jacket and goggles evoking their founder, Captain Starflight, the first officially recognized metahuman and superhero. Whereas most of the first big name heroes had gone on to establish their own supergroups or join the Sentinels—sometimes both—the Captain had instead decided to found the Starflight Squadron, a premium courier and airborne cab service. There was still a functioning hero team bearing the name, but for most part, the only thing you needed to be able to do to join was fly and deliver mail.

She looked past Alex and saw me, then smiled and gave me a little wave. I think she assumed I was much younger than I actually was.

Alex cut her chitchat short and glanced over her shoulder, then beckoned me forward. She said, “Morgan, this is Anna. She’ll be joining AU as a freshman.”

“I thought she looked familiar,” Morgan said in a throaty, confident voice. She pulled her goggles up to her forehead, revealing direct, friendly eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, Anna. Are you excited?”

I was too busy trying to stuff my soul back into my body from how easily Alex gave me up to comprehend her words at first, but after I realized violence wasn’t imminent, I regarded the courier cautiously. After a moment, I nodded, since it was the least amount of effort you could put into a reply and more or less accurate.

“Which dorm are you hoping for?” Morgan asked, pleasant, as though I myself had answered politely.

I frowned, then looked at Alex.

“Anna’s not familiar with the dorm system,” Alex explained on my behalf. “She was never in the Junior Heroes program.”

Morgan nodded in understanding. “Oh, fair enough. Well, before anyone else tries to stake a claim on you, me first.” She winked. “Shoot for Solstice. We’ve got a good culture, an amazing Patron, and first pick for practice times, on account of winning the Stan Lee Cup last year. And the year before that. We’re pretty awesome.”

I thought she was talking about hockey for a moment, before I parsed the minuscule pause between “Stan” and “Lee.” I looked at Alex again.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Use your words.”

I huffed, then asked, “What’s the Stan Lee Cup?”

“It’s the trophy we give to the winner of the Trials,” Morgan explained. “And ‘Trials’ is just a fancy term for the annual inter-dormitory team fighting tournament.”

“And Solstice hasn’t just won the last two years,” Alex said. “They’ve won fifteen out of the last twenty, and more than half of the total tournaments ever.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said with an easy grin, “but I only care about the ones I was there for.”

“And you’ll be Captain for this next one,” Alex said.

Morgan made a skeptical noise. “I’m only a junior. That’d piss off a lot of seniors.”

“Then they should try harder,” Alex said, bluntly. She looked back at me and said, “Morgan here is the biggest overachiever in the dorm for overachievers. Perfect grades and totally undefeated in both team and personal matches for her first two years.”

“First time since Paragon himself,” Morgan confirmed. “Also a Solstice boy, go figure.”

I saw Alex flinch, and I moved forward to put a hand on her back. Unfortunately I forgot about the IV stand and nearly pulled it over, so I had to stop, catch it, and then move it with me, which really took away from the concerned spontaneity of the gesture.

She shrugged me off and gave me a look that even I could parse to mean ‘say nothing.’

“What’s wrong?” Morgan asked, having also picked up on the tense moment.

“Nothing to worry about right now,” Alex said. “Thanks for standing by, Morgan.”

Morgan shrugged. “No problem. I get paid by the hour. You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Alex said, convincingly. “I’ll see you soon, alright?”

“Sure.” Morgan looked back to me. “It was nice to meet you, Anna. Find me at school and I’ll show you the ropes.”

I stared at her for a moment before Alex nudged me with her elbow. “Okay.” After another nudge and a belated second, I added, “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She winked at me again as she turned around, then pulled her goggles back down over her eyes.

I wanted to watch her take off, and maybe get a peek at the street outside, but Alex quickly shut the door. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against it, and took several deep, labored breaths.

Wordlessly, I reached up and stroked her back, mimicking the same comforting gestures she had used on me a little bit ago. I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do—nobody makes a manual for this kind of thing, which would have been super helpful—but after a few moments, I felt something warm kindle through the contact between us.

She sighed. “Sorry, kid. I should handle this better.”

“It’s okay,” I said, because it seemed like the thing to say. After a pause, I asked, “She didn’t know about Paragon?”

“Nobody does. Not yet. There’s going to be a—” The contempt in the next two words was so palpable that I would never again hear them without feeling it a little myself. “—press conference soon. Until then, it’s under wraps.”

“Oh.” I had a thought. “What about the funeral?”

“I don’t know. There’ll be something for the public, and then I probably won’t be invited to any of the private stuff. His family didn’t approve of me.”

“They can keep you out like that?”

She let out something between a grunt and a chuckle. “No. I just won’t be invited.”

I smiled hesitantly and pressed myself against her. In a comforting way. Not a weird one. Don’t be gross.

After a minute, she leaned back and turned to me, gave me a quick hug, and straightened. “Alright. Enough of that. What’s your favorite movie?”

“Oh,” I said, taken off guard. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” Alex said, smiling a little. “You make references to an obscure, forty year old adult cartoon from a different, higher point of world technological development. Not only do you have a favorite movie, you have strong opinions on why it’s the best movie ever that you’ll defend until the sun explodes.”

I had never felt so called out in my life. I stared at her.

She stared back.

“The Princess Bride,” I finally admitted.

We went back into the living room. I was briefly puzzled, as I didn’t see a television in evidence, but Alex said, “TV on,” and a light lit up in front of the couch. I was still confused, until it shifted and coalesced into the shape of a widescreen. I tried not to gawk like a yokel, but even growing up in Sanctum City hadn’t prepared me for such casual ultratech usage. Alex told the screen to start playing The Princess Bride, and it just…did. And not only did it play the movie, it did so in 3D with actual depth. It was less like watching a movie and more like watching a bunch of tiny people moving around a little stage.

I sat close to Alex on the couch, wanting very much to be closer, which I think Alex picked up on, because less than a minute into the movie she put her arms around my waist and hauled me in to cuddle with her. I was both delighted and desperately hoping that she never picked up on why I wanted to be closer to her.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I knew it was a bad idea. I knew that Alex didn’t feel that way about me. I knew with certainty, in fact—there was nothing romantic or sexual in the feelings seeping into me through our physical contact. I knew my crush was destined to go unrequited.

But I couldn’t help it. That’s not really how it works.

So I laid my head against her shoulder and watched the best movie ever, letting myself be happy that my little fantasy from earlier had so quickly and perfectly come true.

That lasted until Cary Elwes put the sleeper hold on Andre the Giant.

There was a quick, sharp rushing noise, like someone sucking in a breath hard enough to implode a vacuum cleaner, and Riley Harper appeared next to the couch.

I tried to jump to my feet, but Alex kept an arm around me. I’d forgotten about the blue-haired girl entirely.

She’d complied with Alex’s directive to put on clothes in perhaps the most malicious way possible. Her “outfit” consisted mostly of leather straps and buckles that technically covered her…intimate areas…but mostly in a way that specifically drew the eye to them. She looked like a fetish model for a very specific type of alternative nude magazine, or any evil female character in a fantasy novel.

She leered at us cuddling on the couch. “Room for a third?”

Alex looked her up and down, eyes flat. “What the shit, Harper?”

“You told me to put my ‘fucking clothes’ on,” Riley said, affecting innocence with the same grace and charm of a hyena affecting humor. “If I’m wearing clothes when I’m fucking, these are it.”

Alex rolled her eyes so hard I thought that her pupils might get stuck staring at her brain.

“Besides, I’ve got to look my best for Morgan,” Riley continued. “That girl is going to realize she’s gay one day and I will be there for it, and probably the cause of it.”

“Already come and gone,” Alex said. “So if you could go put on human clothes and take that back to Dominatrices ‘R’ Us, I’d appreciate it.”

Riley’s lip stuck out in a theatrical pout. “You didn’t come and get me?”

“No, Harper, and I also didn’t slather her in chum and throw her into shark-infested water for the exact same reason.”

“Ah, well, bollocks to you then,” Riley said. “No big loss, though. I’ll have most of a year to work on her at university.”

I had been trying to concentrate on the Dread Pirate Roberts and his compellingly cordial fight with Fezzik, but that caught my attention. I looked at Riley, then Alex, questioningly.

“Yes, she’ll be going to school with you,” Alex answered. She sighed, then said, “Pause.”

The Princess Bride hologram froze on a shot of Andre the Giant’s massive head grimacing as a black-masked Cary Elwes hung from his neck, barely able to fit his arms all the way around.

I watched Riley distrustfully. “But she said—”

“Anna, Riley is the reason you’re getting this chance, in part,” Alex said.

“So, no joke, you really haven’t heard of me?” Riley said, for once displaying a genuine emotion—confusion.

“Harper, she’s been in the Skip for two years, and I doubt she was especially plugged into pop culture before that,” Alex said. “About as much as you are current events and politics, actually.”

Riley shook her head. “Weird.”

“So she’s part of the At-Risk program?” I asked.

“She was how it got brought back,” Alex said. “Riley was performing when her powers activated, and a lot of people got hurt.”

“Not how I would have phrased it, but close enough,” Riley said, for once speaking without seven layers of irony and innuendo smothering everything she said. “Your Tesco Value Gestapo moved in and tried to call me a supervillain, but the dumb cunts didn’t stop to consider the optics of trying to disappear a high-profile British national. The King objected. Strenuously.”

My eyebrows furrowed, not at what she was saying, but the subtle shift as her accent seemed to smooth out into something closer to bill’s.

“It was nearly an international incident,” Alex continued. “Until the school stepped in with a compromise. They worked out a deal that they’d enroll Harper in the At-Risk program, and further, train any metahumans the King thought would benefit from it. Congress forced SCAR to give Riley up, and we set the precedent that got your name on the table.”

“Sounds like you owe me, Snow White,” Riley said, voice reverting. “And I know just how you can repay me.”

“Of course, then Riley had to throw a wrench in everything by flunking out her freshman year,” Alex said, pointedly. “Which wasn’t really part of anyone’s gameplan.”

“What can I say? I’m a wildcard, baby.”

“Now she’s getting the opportunity to redo it, and she had goddamn well better spend more time in class and less time in her classmates.”

“Not a chance, mate,” Riley said. She looked at me and added, lasciviously, “And class-mate.”

“Seriously, Harper, keep it in your pants or get out of my house,” Alex said. “I’m not dealing with this for a week.”

“Oh, untwist your knickers,” Riley said, exasperated. “Besides, if she’s in my same predicament, she’s lucky I’m here.”

Alex eyed her, suspicious.

Riley leaned in and, with an absolutely scorching heat, purred, “I know just how to turn naughty girls into good girls.”

My mouth went dry.

Alex stood abruptly and crossed over to Riley, taking the blue-haired girl by the arm. Riley let out a squawk of protest, but Alex dragged her, stumbling out of the room. As she left, she said, “Unpause, volume up,” and The Princess Bride resumed, too loudly to hear anything else.

I sat there, alone, until the Dread Pirate Roberts was explaining the secrets of iocaine powder, and tried ignore the heat growing inside me.

Alex marched back in and sat down next to me, clearly trying to clear the thunderclouds from her expression before she spoke. “I’m sorry about her. She’s not that bad, I promise. She’s going to leave you alone.”

I nodded, and wished for nothing more than the resumption of cuddling.

Alex’s eyes searched my face. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, voice a hoarse whisper.

She watched me for a couple more seconds, then shook her head and lifted an arm. “Come here, kid.”

I scooted back into her arms gladly, and tried not to think certain thoughts.

Riley reappeared—literally—a couple minutes later, now dressed in ratty jeans and a faded graphic t-shirt, looking none too pleased. She cast us a grumpy glance before sitting in one of the lounge chairs, and turning to the movie—and then she froze, and looked back at me specifically, closer. Her eyes narrowed.

I tried to ignore her, and held on tighter to Alex.

Riley smirked.

Caveat one, Riley Harper.

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

We continued our movie marathon. Alex let Riley pick next, probably as an olive branch, and shot down a suggestion for a movie called Blue is the Warmest Color. She reluctantly acceded to a movie called But I’m a Cheerleader.

A little ways into the movie, Alex said, “You know, you’re allowed to have personality traits outside of ‘gay’ and ‘horny.’”

Riley just shrugged. “Agree to disagree.”

Alex sighed, then turned back to the movie.

Riley watched me watching and I saw her smirk again out of the corner of my eye.

At around noon, Alex took out her comm, apparently reacting to an alert that nobody else could see or hear, and left the room for a few moments. When she returned, she smiled at me. “Good news, kiddo. The doctors say you’re clear.”

“Clear?”

“Of refeeding syndrome. Apparently you’re doing better than expected. Let’s make some lunch.”

I blinked. “How do they know?”

“The nanites are still monitoring and regulating your bodily function. They said we should get some food in you. So, lunch. Doctor’s orders.”

We took the IV out. I was worried she was going to try to stuff me with food, but instead, she put together a pitcher of fruit and veggie smoothies we all shared, including Riley. They were good, and in very little danger of provoking any of my typical reactions to food. Since we had the all clear, Alex ended up making a giant bowl of popcorn, and picked the next movie, Sin City. We shared the popcorn. Riley got her own smaller bowl.

The three of us spent the rest of the day like that, and aside from Riley’s knowing glances, it was lovely. I was too preoccupied by having Alex so near me to feel my usual level of anxiety, though that was itself its own form of anxiety. For something I had only really discovered that morning, my attraction to her felt absolute, almost inevitable. Several times, I felt like I wanted nothing more but lean in and kiss her, and while I don’t think I was in any real danger of actually doing that, picturing it so vividly was its own kind of torture.

When dinner rolled around, Alex switched it up. We ordered in food, and I tried Vietnamese food for the first time. I was flabbergasted at how—for lack of a better word—clean it tasted, like every bite came with its own refreshing drink of cold seltzer water. Again, it didn’t feel like it was in danger of making me purge, and I even ate enough without prompting to satisfy Alex.

Of course, the second caveat was that my body was a tricky asshole, and half an hour later I found myself bent over Alex’s toilet, breathing heavily, chunks of chewed spring roll floating in the water, trying to both spit out the remaining bile and mucus while keeping the rest of the food down. I almost managed.

Afterwards, Alex talked to me soothingly through the door while I furiously, shamefully brushed my teeth. I’d always lived in fear of the day I’d start to see them rot. I knew that over-brushing could be just as bad for them, but I didn’t know what else to do.

When I came out, Alex hugged me and told me it was okay, and while she was hugging me, I believed her.

Movie night had been winding down, but Alex didn’t want to leave the evening on that note, so she introduced me to another form of TV-centric pastime: Videogames.

Hooboy. Let me tell you something about ultratech videogames.

I used to go a few streets down to the arcade where all the rich kids—or rich relative to my dirt poorness, anyway—like to meet after school before things got really bad with Judith and the bullying. I never went in—there was a charge just to be in the building—but I sometimes loitered around one of the big windows they put out front to torture any passing child whose parents weren’t willing to shell out. I watched screens as other kids entered full immersive VR environments, controlled holograms, and even laid down on the tables with the deep-dive technology that was just starting to come out when I was ten.

I’m not sure what videogames were like before the technophage. I’m sure they were neat. I know that some extremely retro arcade machines were still functioning. I hear they’re very nostalgic for older folks.

But I didn’t think they could be nearly as cool as stepping into another world and, to one or more senses, becoming someone else, or taking part in scenarios that were functionally impossible in the real world. For a little while, even mundie kids could feel what it was like to be meta. And poor little rogue girls could dream about that feeling and be deeply, profoundly jealous.

Alex’s home system was a more refined version of the deep-dive technology I’d seen, sort of a halfway point between that and augmented reality. You put on a thin little headband, and it dropped you into a digital world. You could play videogames the “normal way,” with controllers, albeit fake controllers conjured by the headband, or through direct neural inputs. It wasn’t quite full immersion—I was never quite convinced I was anywhere except Alex’s living room couch—but she said they were working to make the technology available for home release with the next generation of consoles.

Alex dropped the two of us into a spooky dungeon crypt and together we fought skeletons and gathered loot. I almost regretted spending the whole day watching movies when we could have been doing this.

Riley watched on Alex’s holo-TV for a while, before exclaiming that she was bored and popping into nothingness again. I asked Alex if Riley was upset, and Alex assured me that Riley was going to ditch us eventually to go out anyway.

Curious, nonchalantly bludgeoning a skeleton to re-death with a warhammer, I asked how Riley’s power had hurt anyone. Teleportation could be dangerous—just ask Voidwalker—but it hardly seemed capable of causing some kind of mass casualty event.

Alex floored me by saying that Riley’s power wasn’t teleportation at all. Apparently, Riley could “become weather.” I had no idea what that really meant and didn’t press, but like any cape nerd—former cape nerd, I reminded myself sternly—I was insanely curious.

Eventually, we wound down. Alex told me to go get some sleep, and that we had a busy day tomorrow.

I asked, tremulously, if she’d stay with me again, and immediately regretted it. Alex gave me a long look, and I feared the worst, but then she nodded. She slipped away to change into nightclothes, and then came to my room, her guest bedroom. I was already waiting as she climbed back under the covers with me.

Feeling both sheepish and moderately gleeful, I snuggled back into the warmth of her.

A few minutes passed by in the darkness.

“Anna?” she asked quietly.

“Hm?”

“You know I love you, right?”

My mouth went dry again, and I nodded.

“I’ll try to be there for you however you need me to be—except one way. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

My breath hitched and abruptly my entire body went cold.

“It can’t ever be like that. I don’t and won’t feel that way about you. It’s not in the cards, ever. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I do, and always will.”

I felt a sob boil up and tried not to let it out.

“Anna? Do you want me to go?”

“No!” I blurted wretchedly and pushed myself back into her. “Don’t go.”

She wrapped her arms around me as I unraveled and held me, and I felt exactly what she did. Love, more than a little guilt, and more than a lot of resolve. She was telling me the truth on all counts.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, sweetie,” Alex murmured. She kissed the top of my head. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

I tried not to cry, but like most things I’ve tried in my life, it ended in failure.

And yet, it wasn’t really that bad. There’d been a pressure building up. That was the release. And Alex was there to make sure it didn’t turn into an explosion. I loved her so much, and I resolved to prove that to her by respecting what she said, even if I couldn't quite convince my feelings to let it go yet.

To be honest, it was almost a relief.

Still. Caveat three.