The Other Side
Chapter 7: Dualing

After that first, short-lived trip with Silas around Cumula City, Chuva primarily got to know her new hometown only from afar – both through Silas’s memories, and by actually gazing at it from strategic vantage points around the castle. She wasn’t an ordinary guard, which meant that there would be no long, dull shifts at the watchtower for her, no running police reports back and forth to be filed by the appropriate authorities; proximity to the King was part of her job description. Like Silas, her primary task was to protect the monarchy. Unlike Silas, she would also have to step into the middle of various conflicts whenever they got a little too ugly for other people to handle.

Over the course of her training, she got to explore every nook and cranny of the castle, from the disused dungeons (“a relic of older times – nowadays we prefer regular jail,” the guard leading her had explained wryly) to the barracks where most of the soldiers lived, from the ballroom to the armory, from the formal dining room to the secluded narrow room where Royal Guards generally took their meal breaks. Silas always dined alone, and while she would have liked to join him, he insisted that she spend her first week eating with her new coworkers. “Let them get used to you,” was the way he put it, which she took to mean let them get used to the fact that you’re now in charge of them.

It was, quite literally, the best job that she’d ever had; she’d finally been placed into the sort of leadership position that she’d always coveted. But getting there without having to work her way upwards was more disorienting than she’d expected. During her three years of travel, she’d unwaveringly believed that she deserved far more than the peon jobs available to her, but she’d also never stayed in one place long enough for any employer to promote her. Now she was realizing the disadvantages of being a total stranger and also being the person who was supposed to give orders, because the soldiers hardly knew what to make of her. The only thing that bolstered her was her reputation of being “Sir Silver’s old friend”…and the knowledge that she plucked from her double’s brain, guiding her towards the norms of this odd new life. Sᴇaʀch Thᴇ Findɴovel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Chuva was careful not to show any uncertainty around the rest of the Royal Guard, knowing from experience that an insecure authority figure was an ineffective authority figure. Sitting among them during mealtimes, watching them eat and gossip and play cards during their reprieve from professionalism, was a constant balancing act. She wanted them to see her as friendly, someone to be respected rather than feared, but she also couldn’t become known for letting her underlings step all over her; they had to understand that she was in charge. A benevolent ruler, but a ruler nonetheless. And okay, she wasn’t really a ruler, just the third link in a chain – right underneath Silas, who was in turn underneath King Cecil – but thinking of herself as one helped her to maintain the right attitude.

And so she walked among them with her head held at just the right height, day by day, while every night arrived a little earlier and her god-senses detected a subtly increasing chill in the air. The last day of her training period arrived, which also happened to be the first day of Harvestmonth.

It was also the day that she received a note – unsigned, but with Silas’s aura all over it – requesting her to come to the courtyard during her afternoon break.

“You’ve picked up some quaint habits while you’ve been on Atlas Isle. I mean, handwritten notes? What happened to our usual way of communicating?”

Silas did not turn around as Chuva crossed the carefully-cultivated grass to meet him. “I did not want to intrude too deeply into your affairs after our last encounter.”

He was using “affairs” as a tactful synonym for mind, but he hardly needed to say it; she’d already figured out that, after their disastrous meeting on the balcony, he’d gone a little clammy about doubles-telepathy. Not only had he conspicuously abstained from reaching out to her, but he’d also set up a fairly strong mental shield in his mind, blocking all but a trickle of incoming and outgoing consciousness; she could feel his presence but usually not much else. And he had made himself scarce over the past week or so, confining their interactions to occasional glimpses and brief greetings when they passed in the hallway.

“So I noticed,” she responded, folding her arms. Her eyes burned into the back of his head, willing him to look at her. “Seems like you got all you could handle of me in just one day.”

“You know that isn’t true. I simply needed time to…recover, that’s all.” He angled his head to not quite look over his shoulder, simultaneously sending her a wordless request to reopen communications between them. She accepted immediately, and was soon flooded with the reassuring sensation of the empty half of her mind filling up with him.

“That’s more like it,” she declared.

Silas chose not to respond with his mouth. I think that the time has come to explain certain things to you. Also to warn you, because I’m not certain that you’ve been taking our need for secrecy seriously.

’What?!’ She recoiled from his accusation, which physically manifested as no more than a flinch. ’I haven’t been blabbing to anyone!’

You were having a certain discussion with Miss Haraka two days ago…

’Two days ago!’ Chuva flung the words back at him. ’And I felt your disapproval, believe me, but if you really didn’t want me to talk to her, then you should have said something. Besides, I didn’t tell her anything important. Not about my stasis, not about our old chosen-ones theory…I didn’t even use the word “doubles”!’ That was actually an obscure term formerly used by theologists to describe the connected pairs of gods, but it had fallen into disuse not long after the gods’ disappearance; she had only incorporated it into her vocabulary fairly recently, when she’d found out the truth about what she was. Generally the word was even safe to say aloud because so few people had heard it before, but with a kid as well-read as Violet, Chuva hadn’t wanted to take any chances.

Silas protested with his usual infuriating stoicism, But you told her about our wings, about our stones, even about our unusual magical inclinations –

’And it’s a long jump from that to “Wow, golly gee, these people must be mortally incarnated gods!” Honestly, Silas. I figured that by giving her enough to make her feel like she was getting at the truth, I might be able to dissuade her from digging up the really dangerous stuff. She spends a lot of time in that library, I could tell.’

Yes, she does. But you took a thoughtless risk, sharing our personal history with –

Chuva’s nostrils flared. ’Tell me something, Silas. Are you upset because you’re afraid that she might figure out what we are, or because I told her that the perfect, mysterious Sir Silas actually has emotions?’

She was met with the familiar flat silence that always appeared when she’d had the last word in a situation. Usually it felt good to know that she’d gotten her point across, but this time, she half-wished that she could take her comment back. She took no joy out of arguing with her double.

Silas finally sucked it up and made eye contact with her, which was somewhat of a relief, even with his damn mask in the way. “I apologize, Chuva,” he said aloud. “I’m not trying to reprimand you. I only want to emphasize what the consequences would be if…” He trailed off, venturing too close to the territory that could not be openly spoken of.

“I know damn well what the consequences would be,” muttered Chuva. Widespread shocked indignation that the gods were still around – people demanding to know why their divine protectors had allowed the world to go to shit – possible riots, possible mob mentality, possibly the kind of activity that would topple some of the more unsettled cities out there. Despair could turn to anger all too easily. Even the very few mortals who knew the truth (for whatever reason; usually because they’d had some sort of personal contact with the gods during the Thirty Years’ War) were smart enough to keep it to themselves.

Silas brushed his fingers lightly against her shoulder to calm her. “I know you do. Let’s drop the subject. We have other things to talk about.”

“Such as…?”

He angled his head until she got the sensation that he was gazing into her eyes. Don’t you want to know more about what it means to be the Light?

Chuva blinked, then offered up a coy smile. ’I was starting to think you’d never bring that up.’

Come on, then. We’ll walk and talk – well, not talk, but communicate. It will look as though we’re patrolling; no one will be the wiser.

Following him out of the courtyard, she couldn’t help wondering why he had decided to plan this for the middle of the day, instead of arranging another late-night tryst. Maybe he was too anxious about entering an intimate setting with her again, figuring that if they were out in broad daylight and in plain view of any passerby, they’d both have to keep their composure and there would be no danger of spontaneous unmaskings…or maybe he just wanted to get a full night’s sleep. He revealed nothing either way.

Do you know much about Light and Darkness?, he asked as they passed by ornamental shrubs and statuary.

She shrugged. ’I know a little bit. They were considered second-tier gods, on par with Life and Death and only below Creation and Destruction. Light had domain over not just literal light, but also positivity, kindness, happiness, the daytime, and goodness. Darkness got things like selfishness, despair, hatred, war…and evil.’ She added quickly, not wanting to sound as if she were accusing him of anything, ’At least, that’s how the mortals see it. That’s why they think that Darkness helped get rid of all the other gods, but we know better.’

Certainly. He showed no signs of having taken offense…but then, would his mask even allow him to feel such a thing? That particular train of thought, which she’d been actively suppressing since getting his note, bobbed to the surface of her mind like a child’s floating toy cast into the water, and she hurriedly submerged it again.

Among the GSA, we did not believe that Light and Darkness embodied good and evil. It was too much of an oversimplification, and as we learned during the war, everything having to do with the gods is vastly complicated. But we couldn’t find out for certain what their domains really were, what with them being absent from our ranks.

She hesitated for a moment before cautiously asking, ’So, what did you and your army friends think of that, when those two particular gods just so happened to be absent?’

We didn’t necessarily think much of it, because at first, nobody really knew who they were – what they were. And when the others had figured it out, there was only one option left for me; just because I had no double present didn’t mean that I wasn’t still divine. We eventually reasoned out that I was Darkness rather than Light because…well.

‘Yeah.’

By now they had exited the courtyard and were striding along one of the outer corridors of the castle. A series of floor-to-ceiling windows splashed light on them at even intervals, illuminating the occasional politician or servant hurrying by, but things were relatively calm at this sleepy hour of the afternoon. Chuva realized that she and Silas had unconsciously fallen in step with each other at some point, their footsteps echoing off the stone floor in almost perfect unison.

I have always been prone to melancholy, he continued as if pronouncing a confession. Even before the war. You know this very well, so it makes sense that I am Darkness, because with us – with the others, at any rate – the gods we embody seem to have some effect on our temperaments. It didn’t always manifest in an obvious way, but it was too consistent to ignore. I am sensitive, some might say brooding, and prone to bouts of serious introspection, because I am Darkness. You are upbeat, energetic, constantly pushing forward, because you are the Light.

’That makes enough sense,’ she replied. The entire idea of being the Light was very new to her, but it fitted her very comfortably, like a used jacket that had been coincidentally tailored to someone exactly her size. ’So, as Light and Darkness, we must have some more specific powers than just the general magic spells that I can do. And don’t we have those, what did you call them…demigod forms?’

Yes. But in all honesty, it would not be a good idea to try transitioning into our demigod forms; I’m sure that you’re very curious, and so am I, but the transformation always attracts attention. Even if we did it in the middle of the night, someone would be sure to notice.

’Oh, great. So you’re saying that we have these alternate, powerful forms, but we can’t ever use them.’

No, I’m saying that we should not transition merely to experiment. In the GSA, we only used our demigod forms in combat situations, when there were Equalizers who could not be defeated any other way. If such an emergency were to come up here, I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to transitioning.

She emitted a short, huffing exhalation of breath, inaudible to everyone but him. ‘That’s all well and good for you to say that, but I don’t actually know how to “transition”.’

You don’t need to know, not really. He turned his face towards her for a moment before focusing once more on their path through the hallways. You’ve had magic lessons – and you never needed to know every step in the process of a spell in order to cast it, did you? All you had to have were the right words, a general knowledge of what was supposed to happen, and the ability to channel energy. Which is something that we can do quite naturally.

’I guess so,” she conceded. ’So, I just have to say “I am the Light”…and I have to know that I’ll transform. Will that really work with such a huge spell? I don’t even know what my demigod form will look like!’

No one will until you transition for the first time. But it isn’t a spell, Chuva, and thinking of it as such will restrict you. Remember, you are a god, no matter what form you’re in – it is a part of you that will always exist. This isn’t even as complicated as drawing energy from the universe and using it to make something happen. This time, you’re simply setting free something that is already within you.

Chuva momentarily broke stride with him, drifting closer to the windows inlaid along the corridor (smaller ones now; they were near the servants’ quarters, and the architectural details were less impressive here). A precise square of light fell across her, making her hair blaze from pale yellow to almost white, compounding the inner luminescence of her eyes. She imagined herself absorbing the light through her pores, sipping away at its energy and using it to activate the divine force within her…

Yeah. Like a fucking plant doing photosynthesis.

A trill of amusement played across her mind, and she realized that Silas had detected the thought and found it humorous. She smirked and turned back to him, noting that he appeared more relaxed than he had since they’d met in the courtyard.

“It’s funny,” she commented. “Every time I think I’m going to be pissed at you for a while, you do something that reminds me why I’m happy that you’re my double. Like, you may have avoided me for almost a whole week, but who else is going to laugh at my dumbass jokes?”

“I’m sorry that I avoided you,” he replied. “I was nervous, I can admit that now. I didn’t know what I would do if I was around you.”

“Maybe I come on too strong?”

“Like a chariot in a glassware shop.”

Now it was her turn to laugh – snicker was more like it, really. “Oh, I’m so sorry, did I break you?”

“Only a little. I’ll get by, though.”

An image of his reaction to having the mask removed flashed, unbidden, behind her eyes, and suddenly it seemed a lot less funny to tease him about being broken. The grin released its hold on her face.

Silas unavoidably noticed, and he stepped forward and took hold of her hand lightly, a gesture that tingled her spine; it wasn’t especially intimate, but it was the closest touch he’d initiated so far. “I am not broken,” he assured her, and for the first time, she found the forced steadiness of his voice to be soothing rather than gratingly false. “And I am not going to stay away from you any longer. Doubles are meant to be together, we both know that.”

“I wouldn’t have chased you all this way if I didn’t know that,” agreed Chuva. But…there was still the issue of his mask, which faced her no matter how she approached him, a thin but solid layer between the two of them. She no longer expected him to just take it off – at this point she understood that he couldn’t just take it off – but bumping up against its presence all the time was no less distressing than it had been a few days ago. Perhaps they could still manage to reach through the barrier and be as close as they’d been when they were children, but if so, she needed to be convinced.

Sensing her doubt, he lifted her other hand, holding them up like an affluent gentleman about to lead her in a dance. Just because we can’t transition to our demigod forms yet doesn’t mean that we can’t still practice using our abilities, he told her. Which I think would fall quite nicely under the umbrella of your training.

‘Oh, yeah? What abilities did you have in mind?’

I thought we might explore the process of fighting as doubles…the others always told me that during battle, they felt closer than ever been before. We had a taste of that last week, when we went up against the Equalizer, even though we didn’t even know yet that we were working together. But if we did know…there might be some potential to unlock there, don’t you think?

She pictured linking her strength with his, directing that power towards a physical problem with a physical solution instead of the emotion muddle she’d been slogging through for days, and smiled. “Sounds perfect. You always seem to know just what I need, Silas. So you want to do something like during the Guard test, some dueling…?”

“Dueling?” he echoed. “No, I was thinking more along the lines of…dualing. I’ll show you.”

There was a Royal Guard doing their patrol of the grounds coming down the hallway towards them; Chuva watched, bemused, as Silas hastened up to them and issued a few succinct orders. She used her mental extrapolation to “hear” what he was saying: “Could you set up the combat course in the courtyard, please…yes, for a two-by-two run. Thank you. Dismissed.”

The two of them had, in fact, almost completely circled back to their starting point, and as the Guard hurried away, Silas gestured Chuva forward. She didn’t bother asking him what the combat course was, or how two-by-two runs through it were supposed to work; there would be no point. Where she was talkative, he had always been more demonstrative, and she knew he’d never say a word if it was easier for him to just let her see for herself.

Sir Silver could have led Chuva down a shorter route – the courtyard, by virtue of being the castle’s hollow core, had several entrances – but instead, he guided her to close the circuit that they’d nearly finished anyway, buying a little more time for his underlings to set up the combat course. Sure enough, when the two of them finally arrived, walking in sync once again, the course had been constructed in its usual spot (which was as far away from the fountain and the ornamental gardens as possible).

“What the void’s this?” she demanded, stopping up short as soon as she saw the new addition to the courtyard. The combat course was a rectangular wooden frame laid out along the ground, about fifteen feet by twenty, sporting a collection of waist-high articulated posts. Perhaps posts wasn’t the most accurate term, since they were segmented and studded with jagged bits of metal to discourage participants from touching them; some of the Royal Guards called them dummies, but to him, dummies were the wood-and-cloth mannequins used for warm-up punches and testing the sharpness of weapons, so posts was what he had to go with.

“This is what we use to simulate battle conditions for training,” he informed her. Already he was relaxing his muscles from their usual rigid posture, limbering up, preparing to move. “I use it to show the Guards how to fight in groups, usually during mass attack drills – has anyone explained those to you? No? They’re a sort of spontaneous group training session; you’ll probably be called in to assist with one sooner than later...as I was saying, the combat course may not look like much, but it’s actually a fairly advanced apparatus. We can even change the size to accommodate anywhere from one to twenty people.”

While he spoke, Chuva had been pacing around the perimeter of the course, regarding it with the narrowed-eyes expression that he was becoming familiar with: I will judge this and decide whether it is beneath me, or whether it is worthy of a place in my world. He would have told her that it was dangerous to go strutting around acting as if you were divinely entitled, but in her case, her behavior had nothing to do with godly heritage; she had simply always been so confident. He both envied her and worried about her for that.

“Do you just go from one end of the thing to the other?” she finally asked.

The corners of his mouth turned up wryly. “Just go from one end to the other – I like that. It is not exactly a stroll through a meadow. The spaces between the posts are too narrow for any adult to pass through – ” That was true even of a wiry man like him, and for someone as stout as her, it went without saying – “And the instant that you bump against one, it begins to move, striking against another which will strike against others and…I think you understand the general concept. In other words, the posts are your enemies, and they will fight you every step of the way. I will be your ally, and together we will make our way through them.”

“Hmm.” Chuva squatted down, examining the construction of a post, how it was articulated and how it had been rooted into the ground frame. “So…what would happen if I just cleared a path by knocking these things the fuck down every time one of them got in my way?”

“Then I would be very displeased with your wanton destruction of royal property, and submit a form to dock the repair expenses from your paycheck.”

He said the words in a deadpan, almost somber tone, but his mind radiated amusement. The juxtaposition of the two caused her to snort with laughter. Much to his own surprise, Sir Silver found his smile threatening to expand. Before her arrival, he wouldn’t have been able to remember when the last time he’d laughed at a joke had been, much less the last time he’d told one…but now every second he spent with her drew him out a little more towards the humor they’d once so effortlessly shared. He’d been serious-minded for so long that he wasn’t sure what to think of this reversion.

“Well, there goes that plan, I guess,” she said in mock disappointment. “But I guess I’ll still play your game. So, get to the other side, try not to break anything…are there any other rules that I should be aware of?”

“Make it to the end as quickly as possible,” he recited, going by the mass attack drill guidelines, “but do not leave your partner behind…not that either of us should have much trouble with that part. Try to touch as few posts as possible; dodging is as important as attacking. And…no weaponry.”

“What?!” she exclaimed, her eyes widening as if he’d just told her “no breathing.”

Sir Silver carefully withdrew his slender sword and laid it on the grass. “Imagine that the combat course is an Equalizer with many tentacles…or many demons with many tentacles, according to your personal tastes. It has just knocked your sword out of your hand, and you have to make a quick break through the field of tentacles, with only your own body to defend you. But remember, this is an Equalizer with the ability to numb you, so you can’t take chances by brushing against it too often. But you do have an advantage: we’re together, and we’re going to stay together, all the way to the end of the battle.”

She clapped her hands a few times in half-sarcastic applause. “Still creative after all these years, I see. What a dramatic scenario – I like it. Sounds like something I’d want to read.”

“You aren’t going to read it,” he retorted, taking a few steps towards the starting end of the course. “You’re going to live it.”

A moment later, Chuva relinquished her blade and joined him, doing a few lunge-stretches like a marathon runner about to sprint. He straightened his mantle, making sure that his cape would be as out-of-the-way as possible, and shifted into what the GSA had referred to as a getaway stance. It was not difficult for him to imagine the writhing bed of tentacles that he’d described to her – he’d been in enough similar situations to visualize it now, and the make-believe demon floated before his eyes like a translucent overlay across his vision. Yet he did not feel the businesslike dose of apprehension that his mask usually allowed him just before a battle, but rather an electrifying and almost childish excitement, less like he was about to endure one of the real trials from the war and more like he was on the brink of a fantasy that he and his double had concocted during one of their storytelling sessions.

“Let’s go,” he murmured.

They stepped onto the field simultaneously, almost instantly coming up against the first irregular line of posts. Sir Silver expertly maneuvered himself between them – he had once crossed this entire course without disturbing a single obstacle – and Chuva tried to do the same, only to brush against one as she squeezed past. Her arm jerked out instinctively, deflecting a wooden jut as it rotated towards her, but she’d struck it back too hard and it knocked against another post on the rebound. That one struck two others, and while she was blocking those, he darted in to protect her from the back, and his movement activated the course even further.

“Go forward!” he shouted. Or at least, he felt as though he’d shouted it, and a couple of seconds had passed before he realized that he’d never opened his mouth. Because once the posts had started swinging, he and Chuva had formed a new kind of connection without knowing it, one that condensed their separate minds into a single awareness. Even in the brief moment of understanding what had happened, he felt their heartbeats synchronizing, their breathing aligning, and their brains merging just enough that there was no longer a perceptible delay between one of them sending a message and the other receiving it. There was no difference between thought and communication. Two minds, one heart.

Before he had even finished explaining the phenomenon to himself, she was doing as he’d said, starting to make her way forward through the course. Now, instead of simply reacting, she was fighting: still blocking or momentarily pausing when she needed to, but working towards a goal instead of letting her environment control her. And for the first time he felt her primal joy at moving like this, felt the delight she derived from physical battles as if it were his own. He saw that, for her, swinging a sword or throwing a punch was the cleanest, purest method of problem-solving in existence, far more elegant than endless research or dreary bureaucracy or wading through your own emotions to try and salvage some clarity. Not that she didn’t understand that there was a time and place for all of those other things, but when circumstances allowed her to discard diplomacy and beat a dilemma into submission, she would always be first into the fray.

Sir Silver found himself trotting beside her, trying to avoid upsetting any more posts while helping to intercept those that were already moving. He and Chuva moved, not merely in unison, but in a precise series of motions that looked as though they’d been coordinated ahead of time. With her perceptions added to his, he knew by a sort of instinct when to defend, when to attack, where exactly each obstacle was coming from. Linked, they kept going; linked, he lost almost all context for what they were doing and even for who he was, and his eyes interpreted the world as only a series of quick motions and actions, until –

They reached the other side of the course, and he felt disoriented when his feet struck soft grass instead of plywood. His shoulder was almost touching Chuva’s; they’d squeezed very close together by the end of their run. He looked at her, caught his breath, and she mirrored his actions exactly. Their connection gradually receded back to its normal levels after a small eternity of gazing into each other’s faces.

Chuva grinned dazzlingly, her cheeks slightly rosy with exertion. “Wow. That was really something.”

“It…” Sir Silver felt as if someone had suddenly splashed cold water into his face. The sharp, neutral clarity imposed by his mask returned, making the last few minutes seem doughy and vague by comparison, a dream taking place in its own reality…but now he was awake. “You enjoyed that very much,” he said.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Was I not supposed to?”

“This was a training exercise, so it does not matter, but you enjoy all fighting that much, don’t you? I could feel it within you.”

“And I could feel you – all your methods, all your strategies, all your planning.” She shrugged. “I even borrowed a little of that. But battles have to be a little spontaneous too, you know?”

“I know that very well,” he replied stiffly. “But battles should not be enjoyable.”

“Um, you just said yourself, it was a training exercise, not a battle – ”

“But when there are real battles, Chuva, do you treat them that lightly? Do you fight Equalizers because it’s all some kind of game to you?”

She recoiled, squinting at him as if she’d never seen him before. After a moment, she said, “Shit, Silas, what crawled up your ass and died? One second you were telling me how you wanted to explore our fighting bond, then we were doing great in the combat course together, and now all of a sudden you’re turning around and jumping down my throat just because I’m not as deadly serious as you are all the time? What the fuck is that about?”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort,” he responded dismissively, reaching up to adjust his mantle. And yes, a few minutes ago he had been eager to see how they would interact in a combat situation, but he knew that fact now like he knew that two plus two equaled four – dispassionately, without any strong emotions attached to that knowledge. He had simply wanted to assess their joint skills, and what he’d learned from said assessment had slightly concerned him, that was all. “But when an Equalizer attack comes – and it will come before long, you can be certain of that – I want you to understand what is truly on the line. When there are not only innocent lives but also an entire kingdom on the line, you cannot behave as though the situation was arranged for you to have fun.”

The smile that had beamed on him like light was gone without a trace, replaced by an expression of utter disgust. “What the void do you think I am?” she demanded. “I like to move, I like to use my strength – and you think that means I get my kicks from killing demons? Shit! You were being so nice before, now you’re saying that you don’t think much of me at all. What’s even the truth?”

He did not answer, privately thinking that she was being overly sensitive about this; why did she have to get so offended over an evaluation that was obviously for her own good? But she either still had a line into his thoughts, or she took his silence as the icing on a cake of perceived insults, because after a moment she whirled around and stalked away, pausing only to retrieve her sword from where she’d left it. Sir Silver watched her leave, bemused, feeling the slight after-echo of sadness that his mask afforded him.

His mask…that was what had really driven her away, wasn’t it? Not directly (although, of course, she’d openly expressed her loathing of the thing) but looking back on the events of the past hour or so, he realized what must have had happened: their connection had ushered too much emotion into his mind, and once it had been more or less severed, his mask had acted on standing orders and swept him back into aloofness…albeit so quickly that it had left him addled by the change. That didn’t usually happen, but of course, he didn’t usually have his double around, either. A similar reaction after his unmasking on the balcony had prompted him to stay away from her for so many days before this.

Wistfully, he recalled the energy that her presence had provided him, but all he had was a memory that such a thing had happened; the actual feelings were inaccessible to him. He was used to that, but Chuva wasn’t, and to her it must have indeed seemed like an unwarranted transition from loving to criticizing. He almost decided to go after her and explain what had happened, but maybe it was better to leave her alone for a short while, and besides, she wouldn’t really understand even if he told her. He had been inside her head, and now he knew that even if she’d been through everything that he had, she wasn’t the kind of person who would ever understand what had possessed him to hide his emotions from himself.

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