The fact that I’d missed something so obvious should have embarrassed me, but if I got embarrassed about every little thing I did wrong, I’d never do anything at all.
Instead, I smiled and pulled her chair out.
She eyed me as though she didn’t at all trust me, so I left it pulled out and sat in my own, giving her space.
Dealing with her felt like trying to befriend a feral cat, where I just had to keep doing my own thing and hope she eventually realized I wasn’t going to hurt her.
Except, I’d never given a damn about a cat the way I did about Yun.
She sat, though she didn’t eat right away.Instead, she waited for me.
“I didn’t do anything to it,” I muttered, and took a bite from her plate first to prove it.
“I just wanted to make sure it was edible.”
“My food doesn’t look that good, but it always tastes good.”I swallowed down the scrambled eggs, then grinned.“See, I’m a bit clumsy, so things like plating?I can’t manage it.But trust me when I say it’s always delicious.Sometimes Carter plates for me to make it look a little better.He likes to say that how it looks is as important as how it tastes, but I don’t really get that.Maybe it’s because I grew up eating whatever I could find—how it looks doesn’t change if it’ll keep you alive or not.”
“But he didn’t do that today?”
Did she not know they’d left?“Carter’s gone, along with Shear and Ingram.They had to meet up with another squad.”
Was she going to feel uncomfortable with just her and me here?If so, I couldn’t blame her, really.I’d leave her be, give her space.
I glanced down at my hand, frowning at the size of it.I’d always been large, even bigger than Carter, and people had specific ideas because of that.They figured I was scary, that I was mean, that I was a bully.How many times had people stepped up to me just because of my size?
Then I’d ended up an esper, and everyone assumed I’d be combat.
Instead, I’d turned out to be a healer, even looking the way I did.
It was hard to think she was wrong to be uncomfortable.
“I can eat downstairs,” I said, grabbing my plate, ready to head out and give her space.
“Why?”
Her question caused me to pause, half out of the seat, to stare across the table at her.Her expression wasn’t full of pity, not even confusion.It felt like a challenge.
“Because you might not feel safe with just me,” I explained.
She laughed, but the sound didn’t strike me as all that happy.“One esper or four doesn’t really make a difference, does it?In my experience, one esper isn’t going to stop another, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t change anything.So, no, I’m not worried about being here with just you.”
Her words sank in, and I struggled with them.They sounded pained, almost hopeless.It wasn’t fear, and that felt worse.Fear said a person still believed in good things, but acceptance like that happened when they thought nothing better would come, when they expected the worst.
Which meant she was saying that she fully expected us to hurt her eventually, that she didn’t care if there were one or more of us, because she felt sure it would happen, regardless.
I considered all the times she’d been moved from one place to another, from one squad to another, as though she were the problem, as though she were failing others.Each time the system had told her it washerfault, and that lesson had stuck, given her tone.
I lowered myself back into the chair, unsure how to continue.
Hearing her speak, though, the bottomless despair in those words, the absolute certainty of them, made me wonder if there was anything we could do to convince her otherwise.
So we ate in silence, because I doubted anything I could say would help.If all I could do was make some food and keep her safe, well, sometimes that was the best a person could do.
Sometimes there was no fixing someone else, no making things better, no healing.If anyone understood that, it was a healer.
I recalled an esper, years ago, who had taught me that lesson.They’d gotten gored by the horn of a monster, one that had run them through from the back after breaking clear of a cluster of trees in a dungeon.There had been so much blood, with flesh in big chunks all over the ground beneath him.I’d dropped to my knees beside him, my hands raised above him, pouring as much energy as I could into his failing body.
I’d gone at it for hours as the battle had raged around us, until I couldn’t stand anymore, until I was so close to corruption that Carter had had to haul my ass away and to a guide outside the portal.
