“Why are we—” Halen cut off to take another deep breath, his Censor lit up with a dozen bits of information on his current state of suffering. It wasn’t
too
terrible—his Perfect Physical Levels wouldn’t ever leave him suffering too much due to physical exertion—but it wasn’t great because some crazy child had insisted they were climbing the Huss’tra’s outer wall
the hard way.
“Why are we doing it the hard way?” he managed to ask after a moment of rest, his brain trying not to focus on the burn of his muscles or the absolute misery of his fingers, digging into the fine grooves of the wall—grooves that definitely weren’t big enough for anyone sensible to climb.
Emilia wasn’t sensible, and he—lovesick fool that he was turning out to be—wasn’t sensible enough to tell her to fuck off when she suggested they climb without the use of skills or even functions to force their Censors to redirect their brain away from the pain of their endeavour.
Once, his mother had told him, her soft gold eyes dreamy as she smiled into the abyss of memory, about how much of a dumbass his father had been while courting her—yes, the woman actually called it
courting,
like the word weren’t so outdated it only appeared in scant physical documents from at least two Colonial War informational purges ago. The stories she had told… they were mortifying, even from a secondhand perspective. The man had fallen for his mother within moments of meeting her, practically stalking her as he
tried to gain her favour.
At the time, his mother had thought it was only due to their shared heritage. It wasn’t like Baalphorians who actually publicized their Grey Sander heritage were common, so why wouldn’t his father try to attach himself to one of the rare women who also fell into that strange category? In the end, between flowers and cringy love poems and what
may
have been a fist to a purist’s face or
may
have been his father killing said purist, the two were in love, apparently.
It was embarrassing knowing his father had followed his mother around like a stray animal, just begging her to look back and take him home. So, as any sensible person would do, Halen’s younger self had declared he would never do such a thing himself!
He’d only been about fourteen at the time, struggling with feeling so
different
at his school. Not only was he of Grey Sander descent, but it had been so clear to everyone that he was bored with all the things his peers were into, not to mention in classes that weren’t even close to challenging enough for him. That school hadn’t been capable of supporting someone like him—someone motivated and curious and troublesome when he wasn’t being challenged. There were no extra classes, no assignments to keep his brain from spiralling into drugs and graffiti and pranks that left him with only other troublemakers, all but one of whom fell into the
troublesome because they’re troubled kids from troubled homes
category, for friends.
Even those friends who were truly little shits, thanks to their shitty parents and the lack of supports for kids who were
different
outside of The Penns—unless they actually had to be sent away to
special schools
, anyways—had been able to find true friendship and love, stupid as that barely teenage love tended to be. Not being able to find a girl he even wanted to flirt with, none of them striking his interest because he wanted someone who liked a challenge just as much as him—the few girls at his school like that had definitely not been interested in someone like
him
—had just added one more thing to his list of reasons he was
different,
and it was never
different in a good way.
So his mother’s solution had been to tell him about how late in life she and his father had met. They’d been nearly seventy at the time, each of them just finishing up their graduate studies. It was definitely on the later side of things, but not so late as to be that outlandish. Plus, they’d both had lovers before meeting one another, and overall, it hadn’t helped. Mostly, he’d just promised himself that he would never allow himself to be as stupid in love as his father, and yet here he was, chasing this gorgeous, infuriating woman up a wall that wasn’t even meant to be climbed
with
skills or the aid of their Censors, let alone without.
What a cringy, lovesick fool he was, especially since at least his mother had known what his father wanted from her, even if her assumption as to
why
had been wrong. Really, his father had just found her beautiful, had thought the way she wore her heritage with more confidence than even he himself did something special. Then, each new thing he learned about her added up, attraction turning into love, her apathy for the strange man obsessing over her changing into affection before either of them realized it.
Emilia had no idea how he felt, and as much as he was trying to be nice, mostly, he was pretty sure he was confusing her. That was probably pretty fair; it wasn’t like his attraction to her was new, but his feeling like maybe he could do something about it was definitely new—at least, he’d felt like his could before seeing the way Olivier watched her.
Halen almost felt bad for the man, especially given the look of horror that had overcome him as he’d watched Emilia topple off the walkway. It hadn’t occurred to him that the lawyer might not know about the net—not that Halen would have worried much for Emilia’s safety even if there weren’t a net; the woman was terrifyingly skilled, and even if her Censor somehow went offline, he’d be more surprised if she didn’t somehow survive such a fall.
So, he was pretty sure Olivier felt something for Emilia—definitely something more than the animosity she seemed to think the other man had for her. Attraction? Definitely. Some sort of non-dev camaraderie? An affection for someone who was open to the world and all the people who inhabited it? Curiosity in someone so open and free, despite the horrors she had experienced—horrors Halen doubted Olivier could even guess at the extent of?
What sort of idiot would Olivier have to be
not
to like someone like Emilia. Sure, she could be annoying, spontaneous, and overactive, practically vibrating the entire room when she really got going, but the lawyer was like him, Halen thought: someone who was quiet and a little lost when left to their own devices; someone who really only came out of themself when dragged into the current of someone else’s chaos.
For so long, that person had been Emilia for him, the absence of her in his life leaving Halen feeling unmoored—like a piece of himself was gone simply because she wasn’t there to drag it out of him. Part of him knew he needed to learn to bring that piece out without her, but even if he did manage to do so, Halen still thought he would miss her.
After half a life together, Emilia was a piece of him, and she didn’t even know it. He wanted to tell her—wanted to lay it all at her feet and hope she wouldn’t just outright reject him. Originally, he’d thought to do it the first chance he got. Then, he’d thought to let her see more of the real him first—the person who existed without his often questionable friends around. Someone who was still young and inexperienced but could take care of her, could be her partner in crime and life.
Someone who could bring her a little joy, who could match her energy and drive and desire to always keep learning.
Then, he’d seen her with Olivier, heard her talking about him, seen his eyes following her as she moved. Halen knew it was stupid to feel intimidated by the man; it wasn’t like they were
that
different in age or D-Level. Yet, there was something of a symmetry to Emilia and Olivier that just seemed right, and he
knew
that was stupid. Still, he couldn’t seem to shake off the feeling that something about the timing of him trying to confess even a small portion of his feelings to Emilia wasn’t right, and fuck his grandparents!
Both sets of his grandparents had been big on keeping their Grey Sands heritage in their lives, knitting beliefs and customs into their children and grandchildren's lives, despite how they would never be allowed to return to the culture their ancestors had fled from for reasons unknown to even him. Even visiting the Grey Sands to have his piercings done the traditional way had been challenging—uncomfortable—everything about him so
Baalphorian
that he could never hope to fit in.
Yet, he had these beliefs that were wholly
not
Baalphorian; a belief in timing and letting the aether guide your decisions was perhaps the most obvious to anyone who actually cared to look. There were just so many moments in his and his family’s lives where a more rational—more logical—person would have done one thing while they did another. Had anyone asked, they might have even admitted it was because of some feeling—some tug on their mind, body, and the cores Censors all but locked them away from—leading them down another path that almost always turned out more wonderful than the more sensible path would have, even if it sometimes took decades to get there.
Halen felt that pull now, the urge to confess everything to Emilia and hope she’d at least give him a chance fizzling out. The timing wasn’t right, and he needed to wait, and he
hated
it.
Fucking aether. Fucking grandparents for not just letting them all assimilate into Baalphorian culture fully so they could forget about the culture that hated their guts, even generations removed from the ancestors who had probably prioritized their own safety and happiness over the collective. It would have been so much easier to just be Baalphorian at the moment, even if his stomach turned over at the idea, because being Baalphorian in this moment would destroy the world—and
what?
Halen was still blinking into the cavern of his mind, trying to figure out whether the idea that confessing his feelings to Emilia at the moment would somehow end the world was some errant thought or a message from the aether—it was seriously hard to tell sometimes, feelings from the aether so easily confused with wild thoughts and gut feelings that turned out to be indigestion or one of Emilia’s viruses doing truly strange things to his brain—when Emilia let a skill rip out of her.
“How have you not been banned from travelling
anywhere?”
he asked as a section of the Huss’tra bent and shifted until there was a small ledge left jutting out of it.
“Who says I’m not?” Emilia asked, hauling herself onto the ledge, and honestly… yeah. Halen could totally imagine a world where she was banned from travel but she’d hacked into so many systems virtually no one actually realized it, and definitely, no one stopped her.
Her bare legs dangled off the edge, kicking idly, while Halen fought the urge to grab them. Would they tumble back down? Or would Emilia activate a skill to keep them there, him left to just hang from her legs until he let go, until she kicked him off, until he hauled himself up her and—
A hand extended towards him, Emilia’s eyes glittering purple globes as she smiled down at him. Little stars of silver danced in those eyes, set off by the sunlight, slowly drifting towards the horizon.
“Worried I’ll drop you?” she asked when he didn’t immediately grab the offered hand. “Don’t worry, I’m stronger than I look!” The smile the girl gave him was all teeth, and while Halen simply needed to rearrange him limbs until he could reach for Emilia’s hand, he was suddenly very glad a net was under them; he definitely wouldn’t put it past his former classmate to drop him, just for the fun of it, net or not.
.
!
Arc 9 | Chapter 318: The Lovesick Fool I Promised I’d Never Be
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