The Kiss
Sept 13, 2018 12:39:09 GMT -8
Post by aabria on Sept 13, 2018 12:39:09 GMT -8
Faïza’s closed her eyes and leaned in towards Lance. As her lips met his, she caught the faint scent of chlorine that seemed so integral to him now. Her heart raced, and something automatic in the back of her mind whirred to life. She felt her attention drift away from the man and the moment to the interior of therapist’s office.
Like she had a thousand times before, she sat. She knew every part of this room without so much as a look. It was gray, a dull cinderblock shade that was shared by the structured wool shift dress she smoothed as she sat on the couch. By contrast, the woman occupying the armchair was a riot of color: red dress and gold jewelry and electric teal hair cut into a fringe to match Faïza’s own. She smiled - her large mouth became a glossy pink frame for bright white teeth with a little gap in the front that Faïza found charming. Though Faïza did not smile back, she felt her heart rate begin to calm.
<< So, you finally did it. Are you pleased with yourself? Lance is a handsome man. >>
Meena spoke to her in French this time. Sometimes it was Tamaziɣt, but most “sessions” were in Arabic. Though Faïza spoke English and Mandarin as well, her mind only let Meena speak the languages she had known in life.
If she’d been this fluent on that day, she might still be alive.
Though there were no windows in this little room Faïza’s mind built, Meena looked away as if staring out on the world beyond the walls. Faïza fought to keep her attention in the present instead of repeating yet another lap of the endless cycle of remembrance of that awful day. She heard the sound of metal filing cabinets scrape across the concrete floor of the diocese’s basement; it sounded so very distant now as she conceded to memory.
She always began at the memory of tears. She was 11 and standing in the airport with her mother, aunt, and cousin Meena. They were roughly of an age, but while little Meena seemed too scared to cry, Faïza howled and clung to her mother’s skirts. The civil war had gotten too dangerous to bear, and they were being sent away to boarding school in France for safety. But Faïza didn’t want to go; she begged Mother to stay at home. She barely spoke French. She wouldn’t know anyone. She’d miss her and Baba and her puppy Oma. Through her litany of sobbed excuses, she felt her mother kneel and grasp her firmly by the shoulders.
<< Faïza, my daughter, stop making a scene. To me, what is your happiness compared to your safety? Enough tears. You must be strong for your cousin. She is even less prepared for this than you. >>
As her mother spoke, her words switched from the comforting Arabic she’d always known to harsh and unfamiliar terrain of French. Mother, like all government officials, was fluent. Faïza’s stomach knotted up with frustration - why was it so hard for her to learn it when both Mother and Baba could speak so easily? She rubbed her still-wet eyes and nodded, taking Meena by the hand. Meena squeezed back so hard Faïza thought she felt a bone pop.
The memory lurched forward to the dean’s office at Lycée Saint-Antoine, where Faïza and Meena sat in overstuffed leather chairs that squeaked as they shifted. Faïza held Meena’s hand and nodded hesitantly as the ruddy old dean slowly explained that two boys from an older year would show them around the grounds. Faïza could hardly understand him; Meena was absolutely lost, and the urgency of her hand squeezes told Faïza she was near tears.
Before Faïza could turn to comfort her cousin, the door swung open and admitted two laughing boys of forgettable description. Their easy smiles around the dean never quite reached their eyes, though, and Faïza warily followed them from the room, pulling Meena along with her.
Forward again to a stable with 4 horses saddled up in the English style, ready for the children to ride. The boys were pushing Meena’s bottom up over the saddle of a great roan beast as she shook her head emphatically. Faïza quickly ran out of words in French to try and explain to them that Meena didn’t know how to ride, and that they both wanted to go back to their room, and why weren’t there any adults there to chaperone this? She instead yelled at them in Arabic, which seemed only to make them angry and redouble their efforts. She picked out phrases she could understand from their foreign utterings like “fit in” and “have to” and somewhere along the line gave in to their bullying. Barely able to sit a saddle herself, Faïza mounted her horse and did her best to look fearless as the four explored the wooded grounds at a trot.
For some reason, the memory always skipped over the boys moving behind the girls’ horses, and the unintelligible whispers between them. It simply jumped from the stables to the grass clearing when Faïza and Meena last locked eyes and traded uneasy smiles. Memory stretched that last good moment into a lifetime, and then whipped violently through the subsequent seconds like a rubber band snapping back into shape:
Meena and Faïza’s horses spook and throw them to the ground.
Faïza hears a sickening crunch as her left leg and two of her ribs break on impact. It hurts to breathe or move.
Faïza looks over at Meena on the grass. Her neck bends at an uncanny angle, and her eyes are open.
The boys exchange panicked looks and start to bolt away on their horses.
Faïza doesn’t know what to do, or how to get to Meena and help her. She only knows that the boys can’t leave her alone to do it. They have to stay here and help her. They MUST stay.
Her heart races. It feels like it could burst right out of her tiny chest. She reaches out with her powers and pulls as hard as she can on all the metal she can feel in the direction of the fleeing boys. She pulls on uniform zippers and buttons. She pulls on horseshoes and and bits. She pulls on the iron she can sense coursing through the blood of the four living creatures running away and leaving her here with Meena in the strange and terrible woods of a strange and terrible country. The horses topple. The physics of their falls are surreal. Faïza’s broken body launches forward a good ten feet from the effort of stopping them.
She opens her eyes. The boys are on the ground too. They aren’t moving. Just like Meena. Faïza doesn’t think she can move anymore either. She can barely breathe. Her eyes close. She doesn’t dream.
The boarding school treats the event as a tragic accident. Faïza doesn’t yet have enough words in French to tell the grieving parents that their sons were bullies and died for nothing. She doesn’t remember her aunt visiting her in the hospital when she came to retrieve Meena’s body, but she knows that her own mother never came.
After that, she sees Meena all the time in her mind. She wears all the colorful clothing and jewelry she loved in life, and Faïza even imagines her with the beautiful teal hair she always wanted. Meena always appears the same age as Faïza, so in that way she still gets to grow up with her beloved cousin. She remains Faïza’s sole comfort in this foreign land.
Faïza builds a little mind palace for her, and visits her whenever she’s sad or scared or angry. Eventually Meena learns to come forward whenever Faïza’s heart races, because Meena is the only one that can calm Faïza down so she doesn’t lose control and do something like she did to those boys again.
As an adult, Faïza understood that Meena was a coping construct, however elaborate, but as she told Colleen in their drunken breakfast, analyzing her emotional state in real time with something external to herself was how Faïza kept the level head that allowed her perfect control of her powers.
Meena looked back towards Faïza, sighing. Construct or not, she took no joy in this particular conversation.
<< Have you forgotten Edison’s words? Your would-be killer is someone that knows your schedule and has access to you. >>
“I remember.”
<< You know that makes Lance your prime suspect. His seeming devotion towards you only reinforces that. >>
“Yes, of course.”
<< Not even the revelation of his X status exonerates him; as far as you know, Bishop Bowen is also an X with an anti-X agenda. Not to mention the X that attacked you in your office. They could be working together. >>
“I understand.”
<< And yet here you stand, kissing him over a pile of mildew-ridden storage boxes. >>
For that, Faiza had no reply. In this construct, she knew that it was only her voice that spoke through two faces. There was no argument to be had. She would not plead righteousness for her indiscretions.
<< Is the hope that this man isn’t the villain you fear he might be worth risking your life? You associates’ lives? The future you’ve dedicated yourself and millions of Hahn’s dollars to realizing? >>
“No. It is not.”
Her heart rate slowed further. The part of her awareness still standing there kissing Lance put a hand on his chest - began to push away.
<< You have so many assets: money, beauty, youth, your powers, the resources of Hahn...but the luxury you do not possess is the time and bandwidth to entertain these feelings. You’re not like Colleen or Simon or even Edison; every moment you waste on emotion drives you further from your purpose! >>
Meena now stood over Faiza, beautiful and furious. She felt the hot sting of tears welling up in her eyes, eyes that drank in Meena’s resolve. Her resolve.
<< In here only. Never out there. >>
She blinked, sending a single tear running down her cheek. But only in here. Never out there. There, she felt herself sigh softly as she moved from Lance’s embrace.
<< I know how hard this is, but you’re the only one that can see it through. If you play this right, you can secure peaceful prospects for countless millions of Xers. Change the legislation. Give a public face to the movement. Set global precedence for X inclusivity. Nothing gets in the way of this. >>
“Nothing.”
“What was that, ma’am?” Lance looked down at her, curious.
Faiza’s brows knitted with confusion. Had she spoken aloud? She blinked a few times and returned his level gaze.
“Nothing. It’s...nothing. We have the hair sample; we should return to the others.”
She turned from him, walking briskly towards the staircase as though the kiss had never happened. She made a mental note to start looking for rival firms that would kill to snatch up an asset like Lance - assuming he wasn’t complicit in a conspiracy to murder her. Either way, she would have to get rid of him. There was only room in her life for her work.
She noted the little part of her power that reached towards Lance, that tugged gently at the metal in his clothing and pulled him toward her. She imagined the connection as piece of fine golden wire. She could swear she felt Meera standing beside her as she severed the thread.
She felt nothing further.
Like she had a thousand times before, she sat. She knew every part of this room without so much as a look. It was gray, a dull cinderblock shade that was shared by the structured wool shift dress she smoothed as she sat on the couch. By contrast, the woman occupying the armchair was a riot of color: red dress and gold jewelry and electric teal hair cut into a fringe to match Faïza’s own. She smiled - her large mouth became a glossy pink frame for bright white teeth with a little gap in the front that Faïza found charming. Though Faïza did not smile back, she felt her heart rate begin to calm.
<< So, you finally did it. Are you pleased with yourself? Lance is a handsome man. >>
Meena spoke to her in French this time. Sometimes it was Tamaziɣt, but most “sessions” were in Arabic. Though Faïza spoke English and Mandarin as well, her mind only let Meena speak the languages she had known in life.
If she’d been this fluent on that day, she might still be alive.
Though there were no windows in this little room Faïza’s mind built, Meena looked away as if staring out on the world beyond the walls. Faïza fought to keep her attention in the present instead of repeating yet another lap of the endless cycle of remembrance of that awful day. She heard the sound of metal filing cabinets scrape across the concrete floor of the diocese’s basement; it sounded so very distant now as she conceded to memory.
She always began at the memory of tears. She was 11 and standing in the airport with her mother, aunt, and cousin Meena. They were roughly of an age, but while little Meena seemed too scared to cry, Faïza howled and clung to her mother’s skirts. The civil war had gotten too dangerous to bear, and they were being sent away to boarding school in France for safety. But Faïza didn’t want to go; she begged Mother to stay at home. She barely spoke French. She wouldn’t know anyone. She’d miss her and Baba and her puppy Oma. Through her litany of sobbed excuses, she felt her mother kneel and grasp her firmly by the shoulders.
<< Faïza, my daughter, stop making a scene. To me, what is your happiness compared to your safety? Enough tears. You must be strong for your cousin. She is even less prepared for this than you. >>
As her mother spoke, her words switched from the comforting Arabic she’d always known to harsh and unfamiliar terrain of French. Mother, like all government officials, was fluent. Faïza’s stomach knotted up with frustration - why was it so hard for her to learn it when both Mother and Baba could speak so easily? She rubbed her still-wet eyes and nodded, taking Meena by the hand. Meena squeezed back so hard Faïza thought she felt a bone pop.
The memory lurched forward to the dean’s office at Lycée Saint-Antoine, where Faïza and Meena sat in overstuffed leather chairs that squeaked as they shifted. Faïza held Meena’s hand and nodded hesitantly as the ruddy old dean slowly explained that two boys from an older year would show them around the grounds. Faïza could hardly understand him; Meena was absolutely lost, and the urgency of her hand squeezes told Faïza she was near tears.
Before Faïza could turn to comfort her cousin, the door swung open and admitted two laughing boys of forgettable description. Their easy smiles around the dean never quite reached their eyes, though, and Faïza warily followed them from the room, pulling Meena along with her.
Forward again to a stable with 4 horses saddled up in the English style, ready for the children to ride. The boys were pushing Meena’s bottom up over the saddle of a great roan beast as she shook her head emphatically. Faïza quickly ran out of words in French to try and explain to them that Meena didn’t know how to ride, and that they both wanted to go back to their room, and why weren’t there any adults there to chaperone this? She instead yelled at them in Arabic, which seemed only to make them angry and redouble their efforts. She picked out phrases she could understand from their foreign utterings like “fit in” and “have to” and somewhere along the line gave in to their bullying. Barely able to sit a saddle herself, Faïza mounted her horse and did her best to look fearless as the four explored the wooded grounds at a trot.
For some reason, the memory always skipped over the boys moving behind the girls’ horses, and the unintelligible whispers between them. It simply jumped from the stables to the grass clearing when Faïza and Meena last locked eyes and traded uneasy smiles. Memory stretched that last good moment into a lifetime, and then whipped violently through the subsequent seconds like a rubber band snapping back into shape:
Meena and Faïza’s horses spook and throw them to the ground.
Faïza hears a sickening crunch as her left leg and two of her ribs break on impact. It hurts to breathe or move.
Faïza looks over at Meena on the grass. Her neck bends at an uncanny angle, and her eyes are open.
The boys exchange panicked looks and start to bolt away on their horses.
Faïza doesn’t know what to do, or how to get to Meena and help her. She only knows that the boys can’t leave her alone to do it. They have to stay here and help her. They MUST stay.
Her heart races. It feels like it could burst right out of her tiny chest. She reaches out with her powers and pulls as hard as she can on all the metal she can feel in the direction of the fleeing boys. She pulls on uniform zippers and buttons. She pulls on horseshoes and and bits. She pulls on the iron she can sense coursing through the blood of the four living creatures running away and leaving her here with Meena in the strange and terrible woods of a strange and terrible country. The horses topple. The physics of their falls are surreal. Faïza’s broken body launches forward a good ten feet from the effort of stopping them.
She opens her eyes. The boys are on the ground too. They aren’t moving. Just like Meena. Faïza doesn’t think she can move anymore either. She can barely breathe. Her eyes close. She doesn’t dream.
The boarding school treats the event as a tragic accident. Faïza doesn’t yet have enough words in French to tell the grieving parents that their sons were bullies and died for nothing. She doesn’t remember her aunt visiting her in the hospital when she came to retrieve Meena’s body, but she knows that her own mother never came.
After that, she sees Meena all the time in her mind. She wears all the colorful clothing and jewelry she loved in life, and Faïza even imagines her with the beautiful teal hair she always wanted. Meena always appears the same age as Faïza, so in that way she still gets to grow up with her beloved cousin. She remains Faïza’s sole comfort in this foreign land.
Faïza builds a little mind palace for her, and visits her whenever she’s sad or scared or angry. Eventually Meena learns to come forward whenever Faïza’s heart races, because Meena is the only one that can calm Faïza down so she doesn’t lose control and do something like she did to those boys again.
As an adult, Faïza understood that Meena was a coping construct, however elaborate, but as she told Colleen in their drunken breakfast, analyzing her emotional state in real time with something external to herself was how Faïza kept the level head that allowed her perfect control of her powers.
Meena looked back towards Faïza, sighing. Construct or not, she took no joy in this particular conversation.
<< Have you forgotten Edison’s words? Your would-be killer is someone that knows your schedule and has access to you. >>
“I remember.”
<< You know that makes Lance your prime suspect. His seeming devotion towards you only reinforces that. >>
“Yes, of course.”
<< Not even the revelation of his X status exonerates him; as far as you know, Bishop Bowen is also an X with an anti-X agenda. Not to mention the X that attacked you in your office. They could be working together. >>
“I understand.”
<< And yet here you stand, kissing him over a pile of mildew-ridden storage boxes. >>
For that, Faiza had no reply. In this construct, she knew that it was only her voice that spoke through two faces. There was no argument to be had. She would not plead righteousness for her indiscretions.
<< Is the hope that this man isn’t the villain you fear he might be worth risking your life? You associates’ lives? The future you’ve dedicated yourself and millions of Hahn’s dollars to realizing? >>
“No. It is not.”
Her heart rate slowed further. The part of her awareness still standing there kissing Lance put a hand on his chest - began to push away.
<< You have so many assets: money, beauty, youth, your powers, the resources of Hahn...but the luxury you do not possess is the time and bandwidth to entertain these feelings. You’re not like Colleen or Simon or even Edison; every moment you waste on emotion drives you further from your purpose! >>
Meena now stood over Faiza, beautiful and furious. She felt the hot sting of tears welling up in her eyes, eyes that drank in Meena’s resolve. Her resolve.
<< In here only. Never out there. >>
She blinked, sending a single tear running down her cheek. But only in here. Never out there. There, she felt herself sigh softly as she moved from Lance’s embrace.
<< I know how hard this is, but you’re the only one that can see it through. If you play this right, you can secure peaceful prospects for countless millions of Xers. Change the legislation. Give a public face to the movement. Set global precedence for X inclusivity. Nothing gets in the way of this. >>
“Nothing.”
“What was that, ma’am?” Lance looked down at her, curious.
Faiza’s brows knitted with confusion. Had she spoken aloud? She blinked a few times and returned his level gaze.
“Nothing. It’s...nothing. We have the hair sample; we should return to the others.”
She turned from him, walking briskly towards the staircase as though the kiss had never happened. She made a mental note to start looking for rival firms that would kill to snatch up an asset like Lance - assuming he wasn’t complicit in a conspiracy to murder her. Either way, she would have to get rid of him. There was only room in her life for her work.
She noted the little part of her power that reached towards Lance, that tugged gently at the metal in his clothing and pulled him toward her. She imagined the connection as piece of fine golden wire. She could swear she felt Meera standing beside her as she severed the thread.
She felt nothing further.