Arc 7 | Chapter 252: The Guilt Within

Leerin didn’t even bother glancing back at the hero attempting to ambush them, the skill they’d thrown at her and her cousin already sparkling out of existence under the pressure of Darrian’s defences. Two shots ruptured out of her cousin and into their assailant in turn—one to shatter their shield with the sort of brutality that could honestly traumatize a person, and another to knock them out.

“Sparking on a moving vessel? That’s brave,” she noted, letting go of her cousin’s arm to skip over to the now-incapacitated man—young adult, really. Weird—it was rare to find someone so confident with sparking who wasn’t a vet. Leerin couldn’t really blame people for avoiding the training—Darrian had once said the pain of losing a limb wasn’t nearly as bad as the combined misery of spark training.

“He is young for that sort of confidence,” Darrian commented, his brain having gone to the same place: either their attacker had bothered training to spark, or he was an idiot. Leerin was betting it was the latter.

“Ah~ don’t you remember when we were young and had all the stupid confidence in the world?”

“I think drugs were responsible for a lot of the confidence,” her cousin noted dryly, coming to stand by her as a raid monitor stepped off the exit line. “That, and all our fearless, non-dev friends.”

The monitor, who had been reaching for their knocked out assailant, paused, peering up at them with huge, light purple eyes. They had a hat on, covering most of their hair, but a few silver strands poked out from under it.

“Hello,” Leerin cheered, giving the silverstrain a smile before pulling her cousin away, hissing at him. “Why did you say that?”

“You know why,” he grumbled, and yeah, she did know that his patience with the situation was running thinner and thinner these days.

Like so many people in their unit, both of them had chosen to keep their association with Division 30 a secret, their association with all of their childhood friends falling into a not-quite secret but definitely not often spoke of—and definitely never mentioned in public—territory as a result—one of them being outed would lead to a landslide of connections being made, after all.

Over the years, however, Darrian had come to regret that decision. If it were up to him alone, Leerin knew he would have told the world the truth—proclaimed it loudly, and then been seen fraternizing with their public members.

She

didn’t want that, was the thing. Her parents knew that—that was why they held threats of publicizing her membership over her head, forcing her to stay connected to their family and be the

good daughter

if she wanted to retain some normalcy.

Unfortunately, even if she stayed and Darrian left, it wouldn’t keep her membership a secret; they’d spent most of the last decade being upfront about how they’d served together.

Darrian outing himself would effectively out her—that landslide of connections a simple step in her direction—and he wouldn’t do that—not right now, anyways. Leerin knew it was just a matter of time until something snapped in him, though. Honestly, it might very well be this trip that broke him, his patience with the Dryden’s open hatred of everyone

different

so much more than what they heard from even their most hateful relatives, who he was generally content to avoid or glower at. Leerin wouldn’t even be able to blame him if he freaked out that the Drydens, or even at their family. Darrian was a good person, forcing himself to put up with their family for her, and she knew it took a toll on him, pretending to be even more soft-spoken, passive and malleable than he actually was.

Her cousin had spent his whole life hiding so much of who he was, wishing he could be as confident as so many of their friends—wishing he could say

fuck it

and just be himself. Even now, there were still things he kept buried within himself, secret to even her—although she had her suspicions about a few. He wanted to let them out, rather than hide even the parts he was okay with, and she was holding him back.

“I’ll get there,” she whispered, glancing back at the silverstrain who was preparing to move the hero down the exit line when the majority of their cousins, plus a handful of other heroes who had probably also been taken out by that trio, erupted around the corner, startling a squeak out of the monitor.

“This way!”

“We’ll get ‘em together!”

“That silverstrain whore won’t get past my defensives this time!”

“Anyone know what that Free Colonier was doing? The tall one?”

“Fuck if I know! Some core shit, for sure.”

“I asked the monitors, and they said—”

The massive group’s words cut off as they rounded the corner—the system must have a sound limiting skill running.

A silverstrain and a Free Colonier? Wild, especially the Free Colonier. This definitely wasn’t the sort of airship where she’d expected to come across many. Certainly, neither her nor her sister-in-law to-be’s families had expected it. Hopefully, there weren’t many on board—listening to their purist rants was annoying enough when they were vague, without a specific target wandering around, potentially overhearing their hatred.

If they were so hateful to a specific person… Leerin wasn’t sure what she would do, but she knew exactly what Darrian would do.

Seriously, getting off this ship without being outed as a Division 30 member was looking less and less likely, and they’d only been on the ship for a few hours!

“Did you ever message Emmie back?” Leerin asked as they continued on, wondering if perhaps their childhood friend would be open to chat, if she knew how bad things were—how much chaos and self-hatred as swirling inside her head.

A smile tugged at her lips as their cousins’ group bared down on the supposed location of the trio. There had been over twenty people in that group, but still, she didn’t think they’d succeed, almost all of them having been under forty. They were raid babies, and something told her the trio weren’t, not with the sorts of skills they’d been using to take out her cousins. Maybe, being repeatedly beaten by a silverstrain and a Free Colonier—people her cousins, and to a lesser extent herself and Darrian, had been raised to view as

less than

—would open their minds a bit?

Yeah, Leerin didn’t have much hope in that happening either.

“No. It feels weird to be like

‘Hey, I think you sent me a message by accident, which really fucking sucks. We miss you. Stop being a fucking baby and come visit soon.’

” Darrian scoffed, but with a little more prodding—as well as some laughing when the entire group was seemingly wiped out with a single attack by the trio—Leerin eventually convinced him to send off a slightly more polite message.

“You never know, maybe she actually meant to send that message,” she said, giving her cousin’s arm a squeeze. “Or, she’ll take it as a sign that she should come back to us. Emmie always was a little… weird about signs and shit.”

Emilia might never have been one to believe in the synat or Glorious Trio’s ridiculous claims of fortune-telling, but she’d definitely had some quirks about

signs,

taking random thoughts and instincts as a reason to do this or that.

Once, Emilia’s desire to follow the flow of the day had been charming, if sometimes annoying—seriously, as a kid, Emilia had been a force of nature, dragging everyone along on insane missions and adventures because

something

had told her to. The number of times that

something

had gotten them in trouble…

Still, some of Leerin’s best memories from her days of compulsory schooling had been trailing behind Emilia and her strange urges. Their friend group hadn’t always been following her, of course. For as much as Emilia had often been the centre of their world, dragging friends and enemies alike into her orbit, she hadn’t been the only one with that power, nor had she been the sort to demand she always be the leader—actually, as much as she was a good leader and loved having friends to follow her silly instincts, Leerin wasn’t convinced Emilia hadn’t actually hated being the leader, even if she’d never said as much.

Leerin had never been the leader, always just a follower, content to continuously fall behind the most terrifying members of their friends group, knowing that she’d slowly be left behind by their greatness, no matter how much she tried. Even before Censors—before their D-Levels had been tested and revealed the insane disparity among their friends—it had been clear that some of them were just… different.

Of course, that had always been obvious with Simeon, with the Laprises, Baxters and Hyrat triplets. For the rest of them, though? For the more terrifying members of even those they already knew were different? Some people said that it was impossible to guess a child’s D-Levels, the true extent of the terror of low-devs not showing up until their teens and twenties. Leerin knew that was a lie: their non-dev friends had always been monsters, running so far ahead of them that keeping up had never been an option, only an exercise in frustration.

Even the low-dev members of their group—those under 10D or so—were monsters unto themselves. Perhaps it had been the draw of power pushing them on, the knowledge that if they worked a little harder, they would be able to match their non-dev friends, if not in everything, then at least some things.

At a 21D, Leerin was not a low-dev with near limitless potential, and she was content with that. She had fought in the war and done well—saved people, killed countless enemies, escaped alive and proud of herself. Unlike many members of their unit, who had gone on to do impossible things—Helix, working for Hail and becoming the hero he had always been, Annette, topping the music charts with every song she released, and Sorvell, spreading friendship through cultural exchange programs, stood out to her the most—Leerin was perfectly happy living a normal life.

Find a husband. Have some kids and raise them in The Penns. Hope whatever it was that Emilia had done to end the war stuck.

The fact that her life wasn’t—couldn’t be—that cut and dry was aggravating. Yeah, Leerin knew well enough that the war had ruined countless lives, that she should be glad to be alive with only a minimal amount of trauma and most of her friends still in her life, if mostly in private. Somehow, she couldn’t be. Happiness seemed so foreign now, so impossible to find and hold on to.

And the reality that Emilia was out there? Possibly having fun inside raids without them? Living her life, blissfully unaware—uncaring—about all the shit that had been happening in her friends’ lives in the last decade?

Well, on top of just missing Emilia, that was pissing her off, and the fact that it was pissing her off was making her feel like shit.

Leerin missed Emilia—missed her friends who had died as well—but everything was just so… messy. Yet, while she knew that Emilia coming back could very well be the fix they all needed in their lives, she was also afraid of that change—afraid that after all these years of dreaming that one day Emilia would come back and make everything better, that that wouldn’t happen. Not for her, anyways.

Emilia would come back, see the disaster that was her life, and be just so… disappointed. Leerin wouldn’t even be able to be mad, if that happened. She knew what she had done—what she had allowed to happen around her as she fought to keep her privacy.

Even Leerin knew she was disgusting, pathetic, despicable. Emilia should leave her to her misery, just as Darrian should.

If she were a better person, Leerin wouldn’t ask Emilia to help her, but Darrian—only Darrian, sweet and loving and filled with so much kindness that he was letting her toxic inability to let go of the life she had hoped to find after the war go.

If she were a better person, Leerin would beg Rafe to send Emilia a message for her, so she could beg Emilia in turn to help her cousin. That woman had always just been the sort of person to inspire people to be themselves. Even when they were children, she’d always been so accepting, so willing to fight for her friends and encourage them to do what was best for them, even at the expense of other people—within reason, of course! It wasn’t like she was out there advocating for murder or hatred, as long as it got you what you wanted!

Rather, Emilia just knew how to draw lines into the perfect place—that place between being selfish at the expense of others, selfless at the expense of yourself. Leerin knew that, if Emilia returned, she would draw that line for Darrian, one she may very well find herself on the opposite side of.

Perhaps, if she were lucky, Emilia wouldn’t completely write her off, once she learned just how much she’d fucked up both her and Darrian’s lives these last decades, because stars knew that their problems hadn’t just started after Emilia left.

Too bad neither of them had had the sense to tell Emilia about their problems when they first started, way back when they’d still been in school.