“Let’s go,” Anna said.
I followed her out of the medical bay and into the outside corridor. I wasn’t sure where she was leading me. We made our way to the bridge. In the past few days, the deck had been cleaned by Community members. Every vestige of Elias was gone from this place.
Anna sighed as she sat in the pilot’s seat. I took up a jump seat not too far away. She stared out the windshield that had once been covered with Elias’s slime. Now that it was clean, it revealed the dark hangar outside. Several New Angels walked past below, staring into the bridge.
“I just wanted us to be alone for a moment.”
Even though we’d had three days of down time, Anna and I had not seen much of each other. This was our first time to talk since we got everyone settled in here.
She reached for my hand, intertwining her fingers in mine. I drew the hand toward my chest. Anna followed my pull by standing and sharing her seat with me. Her head settled into my shoulder, her hair caressing my cheek.
“I just want to stay here for a while,” she said.
I held Anna close, as if to protect her from everything we had gone through. Her moments of vulnerability were rare, so all I could do was cherish them when they came.
“You doing better?”
She nodded into my chest. “Yeah. I don’t know why my nerves got to me up there. I think it was the flying more than anything else. I’m used to copiloting, but piloting is much different.”
“How so?”
“How to explain,” she said. “For one, you are in control. Anything that goes wrong is your fault. You control the steering, and in a tough situation, you have to make a snap decision. And it has to be right.”
“Sounds like a lot of pressure.
“It is. I’m not sure that kind of pressure is for me. I’m happy just to stab a Howler or two.”
I felt the same way. Though I had led the team in Bunker 84, it didn’t exactly go well. Everyone had come out in one piece at least.
I’d played the scenario over and over in my head and I didn’t see how I could have done anything better. If I had pulled everyone out of the Bunker, as Makara had wanted, then we wouldn’t have gained Bunker 84 in the first place and the Community would still be down there with their ship. Maybe Askala would have forced them to come out and they would have actually nuked Los Angeles.
There was no telling. No one died, which was the most I could hope for.
“What are we going to do, when the time comes?” Anna asked.
I didn’t have to ask what she meant: the coming fight with Askala and my part in it. It was something we had talked about before.
“The Wanderer told me,” Anna said. “That I would lose the one I loved.” She looked at me with a mixture of pain and longing. I was held by her gaze, those beautiful eyes that had captured me time and again. I hated to see them looking at me like that.
I touched her face, stroking her left cheek with my thumb. “You need to smile.”
She did, but the sadness still lingered. The sadness I could never take away, no matter what I tried. Because, like it or not, the Wanderer’s words held true. I would have to sacrifice myself. Whether he meant death, or something else, Anna was going to lose me. I was going to lose her. It was the price that had to be paid. If everyone else in the world could be saved, what was our love in comparison to that? Our love was our world, but it wasn’t theirs. Our sacrifice would be worth it if thousands or even millions would go on to love because we had sacrificed ours upon the altar.
Even if this thought made sense logically, every part of me screamed against it. I didn’t want to be with Anna merely now — I wanted to be with her forever. When all of this was over, I wanted to settle down with her. Marry her. Have kids…
Unbidden, tears came to my eyes. These thoughts were cruel and I didn’t dare mention them aloud. Anna only held me. She kissed me on the cheek, twice, her mouth trailing down my neck. I relaxed into the chair.
“Sorry,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t…”
I pulled her close, silencing her with kisses. She responded in kind — but we couldn’t go on. We couldn’t take this any further because it would only make it more painful, in the end.
At last, she desisted and rested her head on my shoulder. We sat there for a while, enjoying each other’s warmth in a cold world. It was as sweet as it was painful.
“I love you,” I said. “I needed to tell you that.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Anna didn’t answer.
“Don’t say don’t,” I said. “It’s what I wanted to say, even back in the arena.”
She didn’t say anything for a long while. Even if she didn’t return the words, I could rest content, knowing that I’d told her.
“I know you love me,” she said, finally. “I see it every day in your eyes. And I’m sorry.”
“I…thought you felt the same way.”
“Of course I do. It’s just…don’t be sorry. About anything. And don’t feel pressured to…I don’t know. Haven’t you thought that it might be better not to love?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But isn’t the cat already out of the bag?”
“I already told you I loved you, Alex. But I guess you weren’t listening.”
“When did you say that?”
“The Wanderer,” Anna said. “Don’t you remember? He told me I would lose the one I loved. That the one I loved would…”
She sighed, and never finished. She gripped my back, nestling even closer to me.
“I just wish it were different,” she said. “I feel like every day that gets closer…”
“Just don’t think about it,” I said. “Just…enjoy the moment. What’s simpler than that?”
Anna said nothing. I felt troubled the longer the silence went on. After a while, I looked down at her, seeing that her eyes were closed. Soon, her breathing was even. She had fallen asleep right on top of me, arms wrapped around my torso as if she never wanted to let go.
Since I wasn’t going anywhere, I closed my own eyes and also fell asleep.
Anna woke me sometime later. We had probably dozed for fifteen minutes or so.
“Come on,” she said.
She led me to her cabin aboard Gilgamesh. She led me to her bed, where we lay down together.
“I want you to be near me,” she said.
We crowded onto the tiny bed and covered ourselves in the blanket. Anna cuddled against me.
“This is better,” she said.
I wrapped my arms around her, kissing the top of her head. I’d never felt about any girl the way I felt about Anna.
“When the time comes…” Anna said.
“Don’t talk about it.”
Anna was quiet for a moment.
“When the time comes,” she began again, turning to face me. “I will save you. I will find a way. I promise.”
I knew she meant it, and that was what pained me the most. There was nothing I could say to dissuade her from that. So I said nothing.
She kissed me on the lips.
“We’ll find a way,” she said. “The Wanderer doesn’t know everything, does he?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Anna’s eyes showed her hurt. “Don’t tell me to not to worry about it, Alex. Because it’s all I can do. I have nightmares about losing you.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to anyone feeling that way about me, so it felt…wrong. I didn’t know how to explain it. It made me more afraid than I’d ever been in my life.
“Just accept everything for what it’s worth.”
I looked into Anna’s face, realizing just how very young she was. How young we both were. We were both technically kids, and yet the world had turned us into something different, something in between. Right now, I saw her fear, her vulnerability. All of the things she had been hiding from the others, and I loved her all the more for it.