Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

She nodded, and he gave her and Jace a collective once-over before disappearing inside, leaving the furs to sway in his wake. She forced herself to even out her breathing. This was for Jace’s own good. This was the right thing to do, even if it hurt him.

Jace cocked his head. “What’s up?”

She scanned the long hall behind them. “Here, come this way a bit.”

Some space from Locke’s room was necessary. Jace wouldn’t want to be embarrassed within hearing distance from the others, and truth be told, she didn’t want to be either. Her opinion on his involvement clearly wasn’t the popular one. A small part of her writhed in guilt, frustrated at herself for betraying everyone else’s consensus. But he couldn’t go. He wouldn’t survive it.

She stopped a good distance from the room and turned to see him. His eye ridges flattened over his eyes, and that bit of guilt grew dangerously in her gut.

“I can’t let you go with us,” she murmured. She averted her eyes from the instant pain in his expression, the widened eyes, the slightly ajar beak, the way his head shrunk into his shoulders.

“Wh-what? I don’t—”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“But—”

“Your wing is broken, you could barely run fast enough in the woods two days ago to save your life, and you aren’t trained to defend yourself. You don’t even think conflict is necessary . You abhor it, right? What do you think is going to happen if you go with us? The Rokkir are just going to part your path and let you slip by because you’re a pacifist?”

Jace’s beak fell open. He blinked and shook his head like a gnat had suddenly flown too close — stun locked. Tayel winced. She shouldn’t have been so blunt.

“Well,” he said. “My wing is broken, I’m not in the best of shape, sure, and you’re right — I’m not going to murder anyone.”

Now he was being blunt.

“Jace—”

“I’m not even going to bother rehashing the meeting we just had, where everyone agreed I’d have value in this fight, because apparently you were spacing out — like you always do.”

“ Hey. I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t know why Shy sees it and you don’t, but I am valuable. I’m important and — and I can do this. It’s not like Locke could help fight if he went instead. I’m just as much — no — I’m less of a burden. My side isn’t busted open. I don’t need a cane. I can move fast, and I’m small, and I handle directions really—”

“It isn’t about all that!”

He narrowed his stare. “What, so you don’t think I’d be a burden?”

“I—no—well.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s more than just that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Jace, just accept that this is too dangerous for—”

“I have accepted it. I know what I’m getting into.”

“Then you should understand why it’s a very bad idea for you to go!” Tayel snapped.

“No more than it is for anyone else!” Jace shouted.

“Your wing is broken !”

“Oh, and your arm is fully functional?”

The response went dry in her mouth as Fehn stepped out of Locke’s room. Embarrassment froze her to her core, but it only took a second to superheat to anger.

“What?” she yelled.

Jace turned around.

Fehn rubbed the back of his head. “Are you two okay?”

“Yes!” Tayel shouted.

“We’ll keep it down!” Jace yelled. “Sorry!” He waited until Fehn receded back into the room, allowing for a few seconds of silence before whispering, “I don’t understand why you don’t want me to help, Tayel. I thought you’d like me stepping up.”

Tayel spoke quietly, her temper evaporated from the interruption, “You stepping up is fine, but not now.”

“Okay, well you better start making sense because I’m wasting time I could be using to prepare for this thing.”

He wasn’t skipping a beat. Hadn’t changed his mind even slightly. Tayel ran her hand down her face. Everything considered, she couldn’t blame him. She’d done a hack job of being the concerned best friend she was supposed to be. And as painful and as embarrassing as the truth behind her vindication was, it mattered little in the face of the very real possibility he wouldn’t listen to her.

“I’m scared,” she muttered.

“What?”

“I’m scared,” she said louder.

He blinked. “And? You don’t think I’m terrified?”

“Just listen, okay? After the invasion, I thought about the way Mom died, almost every day.”

“Tayel…”

“Please? I’m not trying to throw a pity party, I promise.”

“I’m not going to die.”

“You said you didn’t understand, so I’m trying to explain myself better.”

He sighed. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I pictured Mom all the time — especially on the refugee ship, you know, right after… I’d see her face as it fell under the road. I’d dream about her at the bottom of the city, dead or dying, or alive and scared. I’d think of her screaming for me — at me — demanding where I’d gone or why I left her to die. I felt so guilty, and so alone, and you have no idea how easy it is…” Tayel halted, willing the lump forming in her throat to dissolve. “How easy it is to get lost in those feelings. How easy it was to accept nothing would ever be better than those moments.

“And yet I pulled out of it. I teamed up with Shy, and fought Rokkir, and now we’re all here, taking a stand, and I try not to let that guilt over Mom’s death get in the way anymore. And when I think about what gave me the strength to press on like that, it’s you. You picked me up, you didn’t let me wallow endlessly when I could have. You gave me a reason to stand up to what was happening instead of just accepting defeat, even if you didn’t always like how I did it.”

He quietly whistled his assent.

“But if you go off to the mothership with us and face the real odds of dying and lose, I don’t know if anyone will ever be able to pull me out of that. I — I honestly think only you could. If I lost you — if I lost the last tangible happy memory of home I have left, I just don’t know how I could go on.”

He nodded slowly, eyes on the floor. “I didn’t get you out of that slump, Tayel. I supported you and encouraged you, but no one but yourself can pick you up and make you fight. Even if — and I don’t intend for this to happen — but even if I did, you know — you would make it through that loss.”

“Jace, please.”

“Originally I thought that, when you offered to help Shy, you were just trying to push away the reality of your mom’s death, and of Delta, and that you were just being reckless. I thought you’d accepted Shy’s story because you’d given up trying to reconcile what had really happened. But you hadn’t. You’d overcome it and were ready to fight back. You saw the truth when I was completely blind to it. That decision to trust yourself — to take the action you knew was right, was all you. I didn’t support you then. I didn’t encourage you. I wasn’t there for you. And that’s something I’ll always regret.”

Tayel stared down at her feet as the guilt from earlier resurfaced.

“You picked yourself up and fought back, and now, I finally have the opportunity to do the same,” Jace said. “I realize I don’t deserve it, because I wasn’t there for you that night in Shy’s tent, but I really want your support. You don’t have to like my choice, but I would like you to trust that I’ve thought this through and am making the best decision for me.”

“I want to support you, Jace.” She squeezed her temples until they hurt. “But I don’t get it. Don’t you want to be safe?”