Kess pulled us as fast as she could through shadows until the three of us stood out of breath in front of Lina’s house.
“Stay outside until I call you!” I took the porch steps three at a time and burst through the door. Lina’s house was dark and quiet as I ran past the front parlor toward the spare bedroom in the back where she treated her hardest cases.
Brand blocked the door. “It’s almost over.”
“Son of a bitch!” I tried to draw my katana but my hand slipped right off the handle. “Fuck!” My own soft, moist skin betrayed me. I aimed a snap kick at Brand’s face but he was ready for it and took me down. All the sparing at the dojo got him up to speed on my moves, and we both knew how good he was at mimicking my skills. Stupid, stupid me.
“Lina!”
No answer.
Brand pinned me to the floor. “I just want you to know I’m totally unarmed,” he said in a steady voice as his body shook.
“Nope. You’re a weapon.” One especially designed to inflict pain on me. “So that’s lie-number-what that you’ve told me in the past twenty-four hours?”
“Not lies. Omitted truths…well, you could argue that.”
“Semantics.”
Lina moaned in the room behind us. Sweat popped out on Brand’s forehead as he glanced backward. I tried to take advantage of the distraction to head-butt him and failed.
“Kelly, I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Least of all you.”
“What’s happening in there?” I struggled and Brand pinned me tighter. His gaze grew distant.
“We didn’t exactly meet in class. We met up again. Daphne’d been in Afghanistan, too. Same camp. Yeah, we hooked up. You do that over there, when you’re lonely. When you think you’re gonna die at any time. You know how it is.”
“I don’t.” I felt my heart breaking under him. I kept my face neutral.
“We were out on patrol when a godforsaken sandstorm came up out of nowhere. The insurgents took advantage. Bullets and choking sand and total darkness. Couldn’t see a goddamned thing. We called to each other, like some fatal game of Marco Polo. Then she went quiet. I lost her, Kelly. Lost her in the chaos. You don’t leave someone behind. But I did that day. I should have tried to find her. Instead, I found the transport, climbed in and off I went. I made my report and they went out to find her. I didn’t go. I had my orders to return stateside and I never looked back. Couldn’t.”
Is this where I say it’s not your fault because you were young and panicked and blah blah blah?
“So when I saw her in that class. I couldn’t look her in the eye. I already saw her eyes in every nightmare. Filled with sand, dead and staring at me. But she forgave me, Kelly. Even tried to help me. She wasn’t lost in the sandstorm. I was, every single night. I couldn’t leave her behind this time. I’ll never leave anyone behind again. I hope you understand.”
Lina moaned again. Her voice sounded muffled.
I allowed emotion to creep into my face. Starting with the eyes, which I let go teary. Then I turned the corners of my mouth down, made sure my bottom lip trembled ever so slightly.
“Do you understand now?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
I nodded. A tear slipped down my cheek.
His smile was made of pure joy and relief. I head-butted it hard enough to break his teeth.
The deadliest weapon I keep is me.
I pushed his unconscious body off mine and would have finished him then and there but for Lina. I ran into the bedroom in time to see the last of the healing happen.
The cocoon was gone. Daphne was curled up asleep in Lina’s arms on the bed. She looked the same as she had the night she cozied up to Brand, down to the neon face paint. Similar pattern, but the opposite of camouflage. I couldn’t hate her. She had no idea and never asked for this. Brand hadn’t either, but that’s how it goes.
Lina, though. Oh, sweet Lina. She’d gone stiff, eyes rolled back in her head, dark brown skin shiny. Too shiny in the mid-morning light coming through the window. She’d taken on the monster thinking she could heal it, but it stopped her midway. The cocoon thickened over her skin as I watched, sped up by Lina’s own magic, I suspected. In another minute, I’d lose sight of the face of the woman I considered my adopted mother.
“Lina? Can you hear me?” I knelt beside her and tried to take Lina’s hand. Her fingers had fused together under the shell hardening around them. She heard me though and tried to hold my hand. The shell crackled like cellophane as she closed her fingers around mine. My skin thickened and I realized she was trying to heal me even as she lay dying.
“No!” I pulled my hand away. The tears that rolled down my cheeks were real this time.
“Let me help.” Ramona’s Grandma knelt beside me, her kind face close to mine.
“Can you save her?”
The doctor ran her hands over Lina’s arm up to the shoulder. “She’s very strong. Determined. I can help her save herself. She just needs a little push forward and some time.” She smiled at me, wrinkles creasing like waves around the deep pools of her eyes. “I love it when they live.”
I sprang to my feet. “I’ll get Daphne out of your way.” I picked up the unconscious woman still curled up in Lina’s arms. Kess called my name from the hall. Brand was waking up. I looked out the door to where Kess stood looking in.
“Go ahead, Kelly. Do what you need to do out there. We’ll be fine,” Grandma said. As I watched, her hands glowed with power and she laid them on Lina. The cocoon seemed to thin out. I took a deep breath, believing Lina would be all right.
I carried Daphne to the front parlor, stepping over a groggy Brand as I went. Kess followed me. Her high heel found Brand’s palm.
“I know he doesn’t feel pain, but it felt good to do that,” Kess said. She sniffed the air, now redolent with cinnamon just on the edge of burning. “I think Lina’s breakfast rolls are done. I’d better go check on them.” She followed her nose to the kitchen, where Lina almost always had something good cooking.
I laid Daphne down on the couch. She murmured in her sleep. When I turned around, Brand stood at the parlor door.
“I’m surprised you haven’t killed her. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. This woman didn’t do anything that merits death. You, on the other hand….” I drew my katana.
Then, bam! Got hit with déjà vu. All over again, to paraphrase Yogi Berra. The first time I’d felt it, Brand and I were about to square off in a death match at DGI. My time twin did kill a different version of Brand Easton.
“I feel like time’s trying to right itself. Like you’re destined to betray me – whoops, looks like that already happened – and that I’m destined to kill you.”
“Oh, here we go with the woo-woo layered time thing again.” Brand rolled his eyes. “Look, if you’re mad at me, I get it, okay? I wasn’t entirely truthful with you, I’ll admit—”
“There’s an understatement.”
“But why don’t you try owning up to your actual feelings for once, okay? Instead of pawning off your actions on destiny or layered time or whatever bullshit gets concocted in your empty excuse for a heart.”
My empty excuse for a heart clenched. We stared at each other across the silence. Brand broke first.
“God, I’m sorry, Kel. I didn’t know that was gonna come out. I don’t really mean it.”
“You know what?” I laid my katana down. “I’m not going to kill you. You’re right. Fuck fate, fuck time, whatever. Just get out. You don’t belong in Lina’s house.”
“Please, Kelly. I love you.”
“No. You got exactly what you wanted by using me. Just take your little girlfriend and get out. Now.”
Brand opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. He walked to the couch and picked up Daphne. She roused a little, saw who it was, and curled into him. She looked pale and weak in his arms. Nothing like him. Nothing like me.
“Let me get the door for you.” I opened it, and watched Brand walk past me and down the porch steps. He didn’t look back.
I closed the door, then leaned back against it and took a deep breath. With that breath, I took in the eternal tranquility generated by Lina’s house. Same peeling paint, same comfy old furniture, same good smells coming from the kitchen. Lina’s always felt like the warm, fuzzy home I never had.
So I didn’t kill Brand when I had every reason to. He came this close to taking away all the warmth and safety I felt at Lina’s, taking away the closest person I had to a loving mother. The old me would have killed him for less, but I was different now. I wrapped my arms around my body.
Because DGI changed me against my will, I had to embrace what I became, or hate myself. That was an easy choice. So why was it so scary, now that I was the one making the changes?