Chapter 17: "I'm not him."

At last, the door opened.

Only then did the chair holding Yasha in place loosen its bonds, allowing her to run toward the door. The Consul’s heir walked out; he staggered as his little sister ran straight into him, but only shook his head tolerantly at her, continuing to wipe the blood from his hands with a silk handkerchief. The smell of blood seeped out of the room, mingling with other unclean odors, before the purifying system quickly whisked it away without a trace.

But the smell couldn’t be so easily dispersed inside the room; after all, they hadn’t taken care of its source. A chaos of pheromones assaulted Yasha’s senses. She froze at the doorway, her eyes wide, while her brother’s report went on the background like a blurry cassette. “He won’t be any threat after this…gone so insane he couldn’t take care of himself, needed further treatment before he can be used as bait…”

Yasha had arrived too late; the adults had done everything before she even knew. Torture wasn’t the only thing that had occured. All the prisoners had been drugged and locked into one room; unspeakable drugs had incited a fine show of gang-rape-the-Commander. Top-notch cameras had filmed it all; traitors circulated rumors and the recordings through the entire Protected Area. Secret agents had pushed the remaining rebel leaders toward the dirty tactic of denying that the captured man was the Commander, and insisting that the Eagle was someone else—the omega who’d appeared so many times previously, the current “star of the show”, was only a figurehead taking others’ credit for the purposes of propaganda.

These people shattered the legend themselves, driving a rift between the believers and unbelievers, infighting between the contemptuous and the agonized. The rebel army fragmented, and was gnawed away bit by bit. They filmed the rebel army’s claims of a figurehead, and the rebels’ progressive defeats and retreats, and played it all to the Commander. They executed every prisoner who supported Eden in front of him, at the hands of those who’d surrendered.

—Her father thought that the recently perfected brain procedures were more than enough to eliminate anyone, even the former commander of the rebels. Her brother, on the other hand, believed that the traditional methods were better at setting a public example, and would be more entertaining. If anyone dared to stand up against authority, he deserved that treatment. Not to mention he was an omega. “A pretty, combative omega,” laughed her brother. “Those swine will love it. They’ll broadcast the recordings themselves and jack off to their hero.”

Yasha wanted to vomit.

The instruments of torture had been put away, the corpses dragged off. Only the medical staff remained in the room, and the half-dead man on the bed. He was naked, wearing only his blood, scars and new wounds running into each other. His hair was matted together with filth. The gold from the propaganda videos had grown lightless, mixed with silver-grey. His body lay splayed on the surgical table, connected to a maze of wires and tubes, like a dead butterfly caught in a spiderweb. But he was still awake. Trembling, Yasha walked closer, and saw a pair of eyes despairing to the point of surrender.

“Yasha.” Her brother’s voice came from a long distance away. “Still want him?”

Yasha clapped a hand over her mouth, her head filled with static, a thundering in her ears. She heard her mother reprimanding her brother (you’ve made your sister ill.) She heard her brother apologizing to her (I’ll bring you a clean one tomorrow.) She heard her own blood boiling.

No, it wasn’t nausea that roiled her organs. It was rage.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said.

The sound caught in her throat, too weak, like the whine of a defeated dog. So Yasha whirled around, raised her voice, and said it again.

I’m. Going. To. Kill. You. She said, staring at her brother. She did not turn back to look at Eden. Now was not the time. All her pain and regret, all her rage and determination, went into this vow. This was her start and end. This was her response: I still want him. I will have him. I will become the lover and not the beloved.

Everyone who heard it laughed.

Her brother laughed, her parents too, everyone, like hearing something funny said by a child. Yes. Naturally. Yasha was the sweet little girl her Mama raised, the spoiled-rotten baby sister left out of the game, the littlest alpha who was nothing like an alpha. While Eldest Brother and Eldest Sister schemed for supremacy, she was still playing with her dollies. While Second Brother was going around killing bastards, she was still smiling dopily at posters of the rebel omega. They forgot that she, too, was the product of top-tier gene selection. They forgot that she, too, had the best resources and education that money could buy. They forgot how much she’d learned for the sake of her “laughable crush,” forgot that she’d shot down an ace pilot from four thousand meters away.

They forgot that she, too, was a challenger.

The young alpha had no shortage of time.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come for you the year before,” says Yasha. “You were under heavy surveillance the entire time, as bait for the remaining rebel army. Last year, both my father and brother were personally keeping watch over you. I didn’t have the power to stop them yet. If I can’t have you forever, what’s the point of possessing you only temporarily? I endured it all, using the time to take care of business, so that this moment could arrive sooner. This year, their surveillance finally loosened. I couldn’t resist going to see you.”

“I’m sorry I let that madman attack you,” says Yasha. “The last few months, just as I was close to success, I’ve been transferring the surveillance system over to my control, bit by bit. I never imagined the blind spot caused by my hacks could give that trash an opportunity. It was awful. I was so scared my heart nearly stopped. I immediately moved you here…It was all done in such a rush, it must have been hard on you.”

She murmurs her apologies, explaining the reasons behind her absences. Today, Yasha can finally tell him, “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” This sentence has more significance than what she voices.

Eden wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t remember the events that had driven him insane. The surgery cleared away those cruel months alongside over a decade of glorious memories. They needed him to be an unwitting piece of bait, not a broken wreck. So Yasha won’t tell him. Those memories have been deleted. The perpetrators are all dead (Yasha has made sure of this.) The injuries have been repaired by the finest medical technology. It’s as if those months have never happened.

Eden doesn’t need to remember. No one can remember besides Yasha. She’s carved this lesson into her heart, to warn herself of the cost of naivety.

She starts to kiss him again, her lips grazing over scars, her tongue probing between his lips, kissing like she’s licking a candy. Before, her kisses were stolen; only now can she enjoy him to her heart’s content. She can spend hours, an entire night, an entire day doing this. Eden belongs to Yasha. No one can take him away.

“...”

It’s Eden himself who pushes her away.

His hand is on Yasha’s shoulder. He doesn’t apply enough force to push her away, but enough to be taken as more than playfulness. Confused, Yasha looks up. Her omega looks down, the sadness in his expression unfaded.

“I’m no longer him,” says Eden.

“You are!” Yasha answers. “You’ve just have some memories deleted. You’re still you.”

“Deleted…” He smiles painedly and shakes his head. “It’s not a matter of ‘just.’ Commander Eden was obliterated. I’m just Exile No. 329.”

It’s not something she’ll want to hear.

But he has to say it anyway. If a broken bone heals in the wrong position, it’s naturally better to re-break and re-heal it as soon as possible. There’s no other way, 329 thinks. He can’t spend his entire life playing the role of his own replacement goldfish. He can’t, and he doesn’t want to. He gazes at those hope-filled green eyes, waiting for them to show anger or grief, but Yasha only laughs lightly, perched on his chest, propping up her chin to look at him.

“Do you want to be called 329? It doesn’t sound very respectful, but if you prefer it, I’ll have everyone call you that,” she says. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“You don’t understand.” 329 shuts his eyes. “Everything he experienced, all the memories that made him who he was, are gone. The one you love doesn’t exist. I’m not him.”

“If ice melts to water, is it not still the same substance?”

“If you love the coldness and hardness of ice, then what’s the point of water?”

“How do you know what I love?”

329 has no response to that.

“You don’t know,” says Yasha. Suddenly she laughs. “I don’t know either.”

She finds a more comfortable position, resting atop 329, hair brushing his chin. Her voice is as soft as someone talking in her sleep, but her air is perfectly awake.

“But I know whether I’m in love. When I saw the posters, I knew I loved your golden hair. When I saw you, I realized that silver hairs are just as mesmerizing. I loved your handsome, youthful face in the propaganda vids. But only when we met for the first time in person could I see your body. Only then could I discover how soft your lips are, how lovable your scars are—I love every inch of you. You say that the one I love is ‘Commander Eden’, but you already know that we never met. The one I see, talk to, touch, is none other than you. You insist on separating yourself from the ‘Commander’, but you don’t have memories of being the Commander, while I remember him. Don’t you think that it should be up to me to decide whether you’re similar, whether I’m in love?

329 says nothing. Yasha continues.

“I love your righteous expression on the recruitment posters, and I love the way you look as you try to hide the tears in your eyes. I love the bravery with which you rose up, and I love the compromise that bows your head. I love your kindness and weariness, I love your apathy and your passion…You’re right, unlike those who once followed you, I don’t know the ‘Commander.’ I only know you.”

She loves this living corpse, perhaps even more than before.

There are some things that Yasha won’t say. For example, even as her heart aches for what the one she loves has been through, she’s never regretted bringing him down. She loves to see the eagle soar through the heavens; she loves more to nurture the broken-winged raptor inside her cage. She loves a shining hero adored by thousands; she loves more to see him fallen to earth, scorned and spat upon, with only her arms for refuge. He has nothing, nowhere to go, tragic and alone—and thus she has him, he can only love her.

They wail for the fallen star, but she alone possesses the meteorite. From now on the sky is lightless, the night endless, and the shattered guiding star illuminates her dreamscape alone. Dawn will never arrive. The dream will never end.

Those golden memories, this agonized, mesmerizing soul, is all hers.

“That man wanted to kill you, simply because you were different from what he imagined. I’m different from fools like him,” says Yasha. “Those useless hangers-on only love your glory, but I love all of you. Whatever form you take, whatever form my love takes.”

Yasha says, “I love you.”

329 feels terror, because he believes her.