[Can’t Opt Out]

“He’s dead now.” It was such a simple thing to say—a simple statement of truth. So, why did her voice crack? As though she gave a shit, even after all this time, for that man she had loved and hated and left behind that day because both of them taking R&R at the same time wouldn’t have been sensible, even though they’d done it a million times before.

That day, though—the day Alliance Ridge had been wiped from existence along with faces she had loved and hated and felt far too many conflicted things for—Emilia had refused to let him come. It had been years since they’d started dating—years of love and hate and frustration and hurt. They’d vacationed together before, each of those days tinted pink with an optimistic eye, red with pain that had always felt a moment away from lashing over her skin.

That day, all she had wanted was a day away. Just her and her friends—people she felt nothing but love for, regardless of how briefly she had yet known several of them

“Was he bad and dangerous?” Sil asked.

Emilia’s eyes refocused, pulling away from the hot heat of that day, the swell of the ocean, the feel of The Strats under her hands as laughter lapped over their brief freedom and happiness, and well, at the least, Payton’s extra grounding knots were working to keep her from devolving into a puddle of trauma. While Conrad could keep his energy connected to her even while he was in the Virtuosi System—a wholly odd sensation, as she could feel the man’s energy fluctuating slightly as he did things within the virtual world, something she hadn’t realized happened until he had descended into the Virtuosi System at Simeon’s—Hyr could not, their grounding presence vanishing each time they logged in, only reappearing with a physical touch once their consciousness returned to the real world.

Shameless as she could be, even in the brief moments the syn returned while training with Conrad and Samina, Emilia had been unable to resist going and reconnected to them, even for the minute or so that they’d remain within this world—within her reach. The source of thɪs content is novel⚑fire.net

Was it weird? Probably more than a little, but only Conrad had noticed her doing it, and he wasn’t saying anything about it—he had raised an eyebrow at her, though, which wasn’t exactly a judgment but wasn’t exactly not a judgment either.

Sil shifted his weight from foot to foot, crossed his arms—his way of reminding her and Pria that he was speaking to them and expecting an answer without actually telling them to answer the fucking question. Personally, she kinda assumed it was something he’d started doing during the war when dealing with someone just as annoying and distractible as the pair of them were.

“Uh…” she said, unsure of what even to say to his question. What had it been? Whether her ex had been a bad or dangerous man? How was she even supposed to answer that, complicated question that it was.

“Emilia?”

Oh shit, Sil wasn’t using Em but her whole first name. Danger alarms blared in her head. The last time he’d done that, he’d kidnapped her and made her sit through a number of lectures on safety, as though she was a child. Had she nearly fallen off the slide lines while doing something profoundly stupid? Maybe, but still! She was a grown ass adult! Plus, even at her worst, the chances of her dying while falling off a slide lines had been extremely low. A few broken bones and a concussion, max.

“Uh… maybe. A bit,” she said, knowing that there was no way she’d be able to blow off her comment as just a joke—Sil was too good at seeing through even the most bald-faced lies, and given Samina had hated her ex…

Yeah, it wouldn’t matter how much her childhood friend wasn’t willing to out most of her secrets. If Sil asked Samina for her opinion of her ex, Emilia’s childhood friend was going to lay it all out.

Sil’s eyes sharpened, and—

[Emilia:don't]

Sil’s eyebrows pulled down as he messaged back, asking what she didn’t want him to do.

“Contact your… friend, hookup person, asking him about my ex. I don’t know what he’ll say—most people in our unit just sort of… didn’t see how bad a guy he was. Some people, like Sammie and Olivier, saw it, but I didn’t listen. Then, when I realized they were right, I mostly just tried to ignore all the bad things about him. I was in love and stupid and in too deep—and his good parts were good. I don’t know how much other people saw his problems, but either they didn’t bother fighting me on it—cause they knew it wouldn’t work—or they didn’t see it, and they don’t deserve to know how bad things really were.”

The people who had seen it and hadn’t tried—or hadn’t tried harder—to make her see reason didn’t deserve to know either. It wasn’t their fault, and some of them, like Samina, would be able to take the truth without layering themselves over with grief or guilt. Samina would freak out, more because her ex was already dead and couldn’t be killed again. Olivier… Emilia hoped Olivier never found out because he was the type of person who would sit her down and force memories out of her, just so he could torture himself for not seeing it—for not just killing the guy back when they’d first met and fought. Everyone else—the few people she thought had an inkling that things were bad but weren’t sure how to approach the situation—didn’t need to know it was worse than they’d assumed it was.

They already had enough guilt. None of them needed more.

Her friend’s jaw clenched, unclenched. Sil was like Olivier, she thought. If Elijah had ever been guilty of more than having shitty friends—which, she supposed, he was now exceptionally guilty of, after the various incidents throughout the day—Sil would have fought him. It was sweet, if guilt inducing—she didn’t want him to get in trouble because of her, even if she knew a very good lawyer.

Actually, it was a lie that the two of them were the same. Sil was probably more extreme than Olivier, who was inherently just… optimistic about people and the world. Olivier hadn’t seen how bad things were because she had blinded him to it—had insisted that things were fine and her ex wasn’t that bad. There was no fucking way Sil would buy that shit because he knew most people were fucking terrible—knew that she was the sort of person who would grin and bear it, who would accept violence and anger directed at her because the reality had been that both she and her ex had been the leaders of their unit. If they’d broken up, shit would have been… messy, to say the least.

Ironic, then, that losing half their unit at Alliance Ridge had actually made them stronger and more cohesive in the long run.

Still, she couldn’t deny that she really did need better taste in partners…

Emilia forced herself not to look—not to let her eyes flicker to anyone other than Sil—her eyes staying glued to her friend—to her sweet, vengeful friend who also had terrible taste in men—until he finally deflated.

“Dead?”

“Dead.”

Nodding, he pulled her into a hug because he wasn’t stupid—because he could read between the lines, the crease of her brows and tug of her frown to find to truth of just how bad things had been, about how she had been unable to escape a horrible relationship through anything other than one of their deaths.

Emilia knew the others had left, Payton and Pria disappeared back in the training room to chat and practice with Beth. They hadn’t said anything, trusting that whatever was happening between her and Sil was fine—that Sil was perfectly capable of handling it because despite how many people looked at him and thought he wouldn’t be the type to be able to manage big feelings, he was. Sil was a solid block—a nice, comfy person to squeeze and quietly cry into… and then plot someone’s murder with.

Honestly, he and Samina would probably become fast friends too, if allowed the chance to mutually hate someone together… someone who wasn’t one of her exes, preferably.

He rocked slightly, pet her hair, his Censor gently connecting with hers in silent acceptance that anything she wanted to share, he would take. No matter how bad, he would accept stories of her ex from her—of the terrible moments between them, of the love and happiness and grief.

The arms around her tightened, as she gave him the smallest of details. Little moments, cracking and painful all the same. That first time he’d smiled at her—felt something other than frustration because their leadership styles were so different, and he really resented having to share any of his power with her. The fleeting moment where she’d realized he was watching her with interest, blue eyes skimming over her body before turning back to his friends.

Various moments of victory in battle. Smiles and wandering hands. Laughter and sunshine and stolen days together in the midst of war.

Happiness. Freedom. Safety, brief as it had been.

The first time he’d slammed her up against a wall—and not in the sort of fun way Olivier once had. The times he’d returned to their room without food for her, refusing to let her leave to get her own. A collection of moments where he had spoken over her, eyes icy when she dared open her mouth.

The relief she had felt, returning to their room—her room, the one not at the then-gone Alliance Ridge—after he died, and knowing he couldn’t hurt her again. The guilt at being thankful he was dead. The grief, for all the lives lost that day. The rage, for all the people she had loved and trusted but who had done nothing but try to save themselves in those last, terrible moments.

“You can’t tell anyone that last bit,” she said into the damp skin of Sil’s neck—damp with her tears, her open-mouthed sobs.

“I already knew,” he replied, simple, easy, secrets sliding between them without ever really being said. “I won’t tell anyone,” he added, like she actually needed him to promise her that suddenly hearing something he’d already been aware of from her would break his decades long silence on the matter, the lips pressed to her forehead twitching when she laughed.

Part of her wondered how he’d known—how many more people there were out there who knew the full extent of the horrors that had occurred in those last moments of Alliance Ridge. There were a handful, outside of their unit and the brass. People who had been nearby when the attack happened, who had picked up bits of what was happening in their unit’s panic, who had gone in after the base had been levelled, trying to save someone, anyone.

Most of those people, brave and trying to help, had died, in the second wave of attacks. Then, the clones had locked their memories away. Then, The Flaming had erased those locks and the physical records of those memories. What had happened to all those people since then? Emilia knew at least some of them still blamed their unit for all the lives lost that day, as though they should have seen it coming, as though they should have done better in their last, terrified moments, as though there was something obscene about half of their unit taking a few hours for themselves.

Emilia felt Hyr’s presence flicker back into the real world, somehow. It was strange, comforting—something she couldn’t explain even if she tried. There would be no trying, just her brain deciding that whatever it was drawing her attention back to them constantly, it was fine. Probably some strange result of their cores being connected sometimes, or Hyr being a syn, or Caro’s soul existing within each of them, calling to its other half.

Yeah, it was probably one of those things. Maybe. Regardless, it wasn’t something she had the time or mental capacity to examine too closely right now, and rather, she was content to let Sil turn her and let the northerner gather her up, like it was the most natural thing in the world for them as well.

Maybe it was. It didn’t really matter, not when their energy was winding its way through her, soothing a decades old hurt that she wasn’t sure would ever heal.

Strong hands heaved her up, despite the fact that she definitely could have walked wherever they were going—the huge chair in the corner, apparently. Tall as Hyr was, Emilia could barely tuck herself into their neck when they sat, hauling her into their lap and just holding her, whispering softly to her in Brylish—lulling her into a light nap while Conrad and Sil discussed something in the distance, her Censor recording it to look over later, Conrad’s energy vibrating in what she could only assume was anger, pressing further inside her as though trying to confirm that she was okay, those dark tendrils wrapping more firmly around her damaged core.