Zachary Rawlins - The Anathema

“I wouldn’t,” Eerie said softly, her irises briefly turning the color of a golden oil slick, a metallic rainbow. “But she would.”

“Who is that?”

Eerie shook her head.

“You know who. You already know each other,” Eerie said, standing up. “I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want you to do anything except leave us alone.”

“Maybe,” Anastasia offered, leaning back in her elevated chair, “instead of things getting ugly between us, we could talk about something you could do for me. A favor for a favor, Eriu?”

There was brief pulse of light in a brilliant range of colors surrounding Eerie’s head, and then it was gone. However, Anastasia could still smell a faint trace of sandalwood in the air.

“I don’t know who that is,” Eerie warned. “My name is Eerie. And I’m not doing you any favors, because I’m not asking for anything. Leave me alone. Leave us alone.”

Eerie nodded at the end of her speech, as if she was satisfied with her performance, and then stood up and headed for the door.

“Eerie, that is no way to make friends…” Anastasia offered, as the Changeling slipped out the door.

After she left, Anastasia shook her head, as if to clear it, and then laughed once, cold and contemptuous.

“As if I would,” she said, grinning at the chair the girl had vacated.

Then she composed herself, sighed, and went to go see if Eerie had killed Renton.

“I’m not sure where to start.”

“Why don’t you start by telling me how you feel?”

“About what? You? Me? What happened? What?”

Rebecca shrugged and tapped ash from her cigarette into the stained ceramic ashtray.

“Whatever you want. Just start with what’s bothering you the most.”

That prompted another silence, as the boy sat on her leather couch with his forehead as creased as the cushions he sat on. The t-shirt and jeans he was wearing were getting tattered and ratty, Rebecca observed critically, and made a mental note to take him shopping soon, if she couldn’t wrangle one of the girls into doing it.

“Okay,” he said finally, folding his hands as if he planned on praying. “Why didn’t you tell me you were an Auditor?”

“Didn’t want you to know,” Rebecca said, anticipating his complaints and forcing her recalcitrant window open to let out the smoke. “Didn’t figure that you would talk to me if you knew.”

“Oh. Okay. Um. I don’t feel good about that.”

“Why is that, Alex?”

“It feels… dishonest, somehow. I mean, I know you didn’t lie to me or anything, but…”

He trailed off, staring down at his sneakers, which, she noted, were in even more dire shape than his clothes.

“I wasn’t honest with you,” Rebecca admitted. “I should have told you right away. But I thought knowing that would frighten and alienate you even more than you already were. The Academy has been a challenging experience for you, Alex. I wanted to be someone who you felt comfortable leaning on. Someone you could trust.”

“And that’s the other thing,” Alex said, more forcefully, clearly getting to the heart of the issue. “Once you… well, once you got hurt, everyone went crazy, Rebecca. Everybody. Even Anastasia. Now, well, now I’m not so sure that you aren’t manipulating me, my emotions — hell, everybody’s emotions. It’s not just that I am having trouble trusting you. Now, I’m not even sure I can trust the way I feel.”

“Alex, if I was manipulating your emotions all the time, would you be so worried about it?”

She gave that time to sink in.

“Hmm.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t work that way,” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I give you an example from your life?”

Alex nodded slowly, brushing aside the hair that stubbornly insisted on falling in his eyes. Rebecca added a haircut to the mental list she was compiling.

“When Emily was manipulating you, do you remember how hard she he had to work? How close she had to stay to you, and how much she followed you around? Do you remember how much… contact she had to make with you?”

Alex nodded again. She decided not to notice the blush openly, but in a way, she was a little bit glad for Alex, that he had done something worth blushing about. It was another connection in the web of connections she was building around the boy, tying him to the people around him and the place he was in.

“Well, if I wanted to control your feelings to any great degree, all the time, then I would pretty much have to do the same thing. So you see why that’s impossible, right? I see ninety students in a slow month, Alex. No empath is that powerful.”

“But, then, why did it get so weird? When you were…”

She didn’t make him finish the sentence, but she was touched by the genuineness of the pain she felt radiating from him. Even if Alex had mixed feelings about trusting her, he obviously still wanted to. So all it would take was a little nudge…

“I didn’t say I wasn’t doing anything at all, either,” Rebecca said, grinding out her cigarette. “I do smooth out the occasional wrinkle, and I do my best to improve my student’s general mood and outlook. And yes, for some of our problem students, I do tend to try to limit their own destructive tendencies. However, before you ask — no, you aren’t one of those kids. When I have used empathy with you, Alex, it has always been to help — to limit your suffering, to ease your shyness, to help facilitate your transition to the Academy. I never once tried to make you do anything, or feel anything that you already didn’t. I’ve tried to make things easier for you. Moreover, if you want, I won’t even do that anymore. We can just talk and pretend we are still normal people, Alex, if that’s what you want to do. We can pretend that the rules they made up apply in the circumstances we find ourselves in. On the other hand, you can accept that we are both very different from what we used to be, and in a different world than the one we used to live in — and you could try giving me credit for having good intentions. Up to you.”

Alex considered it.

“They made me see a bunch of different shrinks, psychologists and psychiatrists, I never could figure out the difference. You know that?”

“Nope,” Rebecca said, getting up to pace the room restlessly. “I don’t know anything about you, other than what you’ve told me and what I’ve seen since you arrived.”

Alex didn’t look skeptical. He looked like someone was trying to play a bad joke on him.

“How is that possible? You must have access to that sort of thing. There must be records…”

“Sure, but that shit doesn’t mean anything to me,” Rebecca said, leaning against the corner of her desk. “It wouldn’t be relevant to my job, anyway. Those shrinks — whoever they were, whatever the reasons you had to see them, they had a different job than mine. They were trying to make you better, make you healthier, a better person, a better citizen, right? Well, that’s not me. I’m not out to confront your innermost demons, Alex, not unless you want to. I’m just here to try to be a friend to you during a very difficult experience. Because the Program is a traumatic experience, a deliberately designed one, and we have studied it thoroughly. Candidates who have someone to turn to, someone to trust and someone to care for them — well, they tend to make it through more often. And I want to be that person for you, Alex, for a whole host of reasons, some professional, and some personal.”

“Ah… that. Um, I just… well, thanks for that,” Alex said, rubbing his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in a long time, as absurd as that was. “Thanks for being honest with me.”

“And I am fond of you, smartass. Don’t get me wrong. I really am pulling for you. I think it’s important that you know this: you aren’t there yet, but there will be some critical work very soon, and there won’t be many people who will be able to do it. It will need to be done, Alex. The kind of work that I used to do,” Rebecca said, trying out the past tense and not very sure how she felt it about it. “It isn’t healthy, or nice, or even right, Alex. But it is necessary. And I need you to know that I believe in you, and your ability to do this work, better than anyone else at the Academy.”