And All the Stars

Chapter Twenty-Six

A neutrally-decorated guest bedroom dominated by a four poster bed. Sunlight streamed through French doors, danced with dust motes, and kept Madeleine, tucked beneath a quilt, toasty-warm. Inertia pinned her in place.

"I’ve bad news if you’re planning to stay in here permanently. All your little playmates are talking about leaving town."

Madeleine shifted gingerly, moving from her side to her back. "Noi told me," she said. "Did you find your friends?"

"Only Eliza. She thinks Josh is still Plus One." Tyler put down a carry bag and sat on the side of the bed, rearranging the long skirt of his dress before surveying Madeleine judicially, from her scraped and bruised face to her tightly wrapped left arm. "Malingering, or genuinely can’t cope?"

"Both?" There had been a patch, when she’d woken early in the evening after the battle of the Spire, where it had all slammed down on her and she’d wept herself numb, barely responsive even to her Blue’s hunger. The next day she’d slept when she no longer needed it, and struggled to have anything to say to Noi and Emily when they brought her food and news. "I just…don’t know how to be."

"Would it help if I mentioned that burning first loves rarely look quite so eternal from the perspective of a couple of years? Or weeks. No?"

"Has saying that ever helped anyone?"

"Probably not." Tyler shifted so he could see through the French doors to the long sweep of sunlit garden outside. "I will concede that this is deliciously complicated. You’re not sure if you were in love with the alien, or the boy, or a pastiche which was neither of them. What do you think would have happened if your Théoden had settled on a different host? The practical Noi, for instance?"

Tyler could be unsparing. Madeleine tried to picture a Noi who was Théoden, but it was impossible, so she dived into a different subject.

"Was the fight with the dragon bad?"

"No, highly entertaining." Tyler accepted the redirection without comment. "You chose a terrible moment to pass out, and missed a most impressive exhibition of bronco riding from our junior acting squad. Though with the Spire and the Core gone, I’m fairly sure the thing was only trying to run away. All I had to do was provide suitable applause." He caught Madeleine’s change of expression and gave a tiny shake of his head. "Yes, I am aware of the massive crush. Sixteen. Not going to happen."

Madeleine wondered if she was sorry, and sighed. "I’ve missed you, Tyler. You never walk on eggshells."

He laughed, that beautiful, warm chuckle. "You have a most lowering opinion of me, judging from that excoriation on my bedroom wall. How unsparing, Leina." But his smile faded, and he touched her strapped arm, which she’d been told was likely only a hairline fracture. "Did you blame me?"

"No. A bit. I blamed everyone. But I didn’t really care whose fault anything was – I just wanted to get away, not have to see any of those people again."

Tyler waited, humming softly.

"That’s not what I’m doing now."

"It mightn’t be what you want, but it is what you’re doing. Not that I haven’t gone out of my way to avoid an awkward conversation or two in my time. Do you really want to not have this one?"

The thought of talking to Fisher, sitting down and properly trying to work out where they stood… She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Things worth having are rarely easy, kiddo. There are worse responses than deciding how you want things to be, and doing everything you can to make that what is. Here." Tyler plopped the carry bag onto her lap. "If nothing else, get out of this room, sit in the sun a while. Your complicated beau is off having discussions with a crowd of military types who showed up this morning, so you’ll have an hour or two to lose your nerve. If it all ends up being too much, my couch is always available. Oh, and I’ve spoken to your parents, but you might want to call them."

Dropping a kiss on her forehead, Tyler left Madeleine to inspect the carry bag, which held a pile of unused sketch pads. She still felt absolutely no impulse to put them to use, but supposed she could at least open these without fear of coming across drawings she couldn’t bear to look at.

Madeleine’s eventual reason for getting up had more to do with not liking the extra burden she was putting on everyone. The two days since the fall of the Spires had spared the Musketeers little time for victory parties. Around a third of the Blues in the city were still possessed, and for the first day both they and the Greens had continued to either attack or hide. The second day the Greens had stopped, like run down toys, which was not a better situation, but after several hours of emptiness they’d started to show signs of reacting. And new Blues and Greens were returning to Sydney, helping to lighten the load of people who’d started out damaged and exhausted.

Two possessed Blues had surrendered themselves, but both Moths had died at separation.

It hurt to walk about, but it hurt to lie down, so there was no real reason to stay in bed. Noi had left her a choice of painkillers in the en suite, so Madeleine first took a fresh dose, then went through her bags until she found her original phone. A little reassembly, and a brief charge while she washed and dressed, and then she was listening to a stream of voicemail. Her parents had called every day, despite her warning that she wasn’t using her phone, just to leave a message, to let her know where they were. Her own call was met by a busy signal, so she sent a text and email.

Then, taking a sketchbook and pencils, she went outside.

The backyard was long, with a central gazebo, a number of blazing Japanese maples, and a wisteria arbour winding to a tennis court hidden by hedges. A tall sandstone fence, a shade darker than the walls of the house, kept it private, a little world of its own. Madeleine liked it very much, exploring with interest, then sitting on the rear stairs of the gazebo.

The house was Fisher’s. With half the Musketeers in various states of collapse, he’d suggested it as an alternative to the hectic confusion of the Elizabeth Street hotels. Because it was away from the centre of the fighting, and wasn’t known to others, they’d been able to use it as a retreat, moderately confident of not being attacked. Noi had told Madeleine this carefully, as if she’d half expected Madeleine to immediately try to escape out of the window. But the place didn’t bother Madeleine, just the prospect of talking to Fisher and finding someone unrecognisable.

Almost everything Théoden had told her had to be Fisher’s past and Fisher’s opinions. A smart, incisive boy, layered over with a quiet consideration which didn’t match up to the Fisher Pan had first described. It had not been Fisher’s deep anger and black fear, nor Fisher who would stop and be amused at himself. How many times had she tried to draw that expression?

Madeleine found herself impatient, wanting to get it all over with, to face the fact that she’d killed the person she loved. A conversation as a burial, a wake, and then perhaps she could find the strength to not keep pushing everyone else away. Lacking a necessary participant for the conversation, she opened the sketchpad and balanced it on her knee. If nothing else, not wanting to sketch people would give her a chance to improve her non-figurative work.

"You’re drawing again. I’m glad."

Working on a study of the arbour had helped immensely, and Madeleine felt only a sense of inevitability as she looked up at Fisher. But there in front of her was the beloved shape of him, the face she had kissed, that direct gaze. She turned all her attention back to the page, to gnarled cords of wisteria, and the slight problem of perspective she’d been trying to correct.

After a pause, Fisher sat down on the opposite side of the gazebo stairs, where he would have to reach to touch her.

"Hello," he said, and held out his hand. "My name is Fisher."

Madeleine stared at the pad, entirely focused on her peripheral vision. She understood the gesture, but could not bring herself to move. He sat with hand held out, waiting long after the moment had become awkward. A stretched eternity, and his arm shook a little, reaching the point where muscles would be longing for release.

The pencil Madeleine was holding snapped, and she looked down at the faint suggestion of marks on her blue palm, wondering at herself. Had she always been this person, completely unable to cope with any private crisis? The tightly-wound paralysis was familiar, was, as Tyler had pointed out, very like her reaction when she’d been knocked down a flight of stairs for having a cousin.

Carefully she put the pencil on the wooden boards beside her and felt ill and alive to take the hand which a spare few days ago she had reached for with complete confidence.

"Madeleine."

The hand clasping hers tightened in a way which was achingly familiar, then let go.

"Why does your cousin call you Leina?"

The casual, neutral question helped. Perhaps it was real, this introduction. Strangers who had just met. She could deal with that if she didn’t look at him. And tried not to react to his voice.

"When I was, oh, five I think, I lost my temper at something at the family Christmas party. My uncle – Tyler’s Dad – told me I was a real little Maddie and teased me a tiny bit during lunch. My family had always called me Maddie, but I had no idea the word meant anything but me. I spent the afternoon – and much of the next few months – insisting that people call me Leina instead. Tyler was the only one who did. Everyone else thought it tremendously funny."

"Why not introduce yourself as Leina, then?"

"I prefer Madeleine. And I’ve gotten over caring about being called Maddie. Leina’s just become Tyler’s name for me."

Fisher was looking at her sketch, and she checked a ridiculous impulse to hide it, lowering her hands to her sides.

"I wouldn’t have reacted to your painting in the same way," he said then, with the air of a confession, and beneath that something like a challenge. "I’m interested in art, and I think I would have enjoyed watching you paint, but it’s difficult to imagine – imagine the me before this – sitting for hours, so singularly absorbed. I would have at least read a book at the same time."

Madeleine glanced at him, uncertain. To start by making that clear…

"The others are talking over Melbourne and Brisbane," he went on. "The Sydney situation is stable enough we could leave tomorrow, perhaps splitting into two groups." He took a deep breath. "I had such a…visceral reaction to the idea. That I didn’t care what group, which city. The only absolute was that I go with you."

She sat frozen, found that he was waiting for a response. "You said you thought those feelings weren’t real."

"I said I don’t know how much of these feelings are mine. I wasn’t in control, but I was there, for all of it, every moment. The pretence that we just met falls down straight away, because every time I look at you I’m slammed in the gut. It’s not possible to start fresh, to go back. Feelings so strong and deep they make you stop and catch your breath don’t need rediscovery. They need decisions."

He rose, but to her relief paced a few steps away, and stood with his back to her. His voice was crisp and almost combative when he went on.

"I’m not the same person. I would not have behaved as Théoden did. I would have admired your painting, your talent, but I would not have sat and watched you. I would never have made so much interest clear, or told you half the things he did, things that I don’t admit. I would have put up walls against you because I’ve spent years being bored by people, finding them an annoyance or untrustworthy. I’m not bored by you. I can hardly breathe when you’re in the same room."

He paused, turning just enough for her to see his profile.

"I also refuse to be the kind of person who follows you around making you flinch. So, I’m not going to follow you. I’m choosing Melbourne. If you want time, or want to never think about the parts of the past few days which involve me, go to Brisbane. If you want to find out–" He broke off, and summoned a wry, self-mocking expression which faded as he glanced at her. "I sound like I’m throwing down a gauntlet. Perhaps I am. I want you to come to Melbourne, to let yourself find out if any of what you felt was for me."

Without giving her any chance to respond, he turned on one heel and strode off, back to the house.

Madeleine looked down at clenched hands, then slowly opened the right to inspect the tiny scratch which marred her view of her stars. There had been a lot of pride in that speech, and hurt. Had she really been flinching from him? She’d been trying not to.

She had to admit he had immediately attracted her on a physical level, and she’d been intrigued by things which couldn’t possibly be Théoden. A boy who couldn’t draw but wanted to be da Vinci. Whose mother had been his ideal. Who hadn’t faltered from necessity in the days after the Spire’s arrival, then had had nightmares about the people he’d failed to save. Driven, time-poor, prone to putting people last outside of emergencies. Very like her. And, if that conversation was anything to go by, just as shielded and defensive as she, for all his clear self-confidence.

It mattered a great deal that he’d made sure the entire world knew the debt they owed to the Moth who had possessed him. And he’d seen that the first thing she’d needed to know was how he felt about her art. But how could she go with him, constantly seeing only that he was different from the boy she loved? That would only hurt them both more, a long spiral of comparisons and disappointments she didn’t have the strength to face.

Fight. Always fight. No matter how impossible the odds, no matter who you’ve lost, how you’ve been hurt. If there doesn’t seem to be a way out, look for one. If you seem to have come to an end, start afresh. Never, ever give up.

Had Théoden foreseen this choice? Unable to settle her thoughts, Madeleine walked up to the house, to wash her face and follow the noise of discussion to a crowded lounge room. Musketeers dishing out food and talking over what to do next. They greeted her cheerfully, entirely as if she hadn’t been curled up in her room for the past two days, and shuffled about to make a space for her to sit. Madeleine tucked in beside Emily so she could thank her for a timely rescue, remarked on Gavin’s impressive black eye, and accepted a piled plate from Nash. Pan grinned at her from the floor beside Noi’s feet, then turned his attention back to a sniper war of paper balls with Min.

Acceptance washed over her, a sense of care and belonging, a certainty of place. Whatever happened, they would support her, pick her up if she fell, cover her weaknesses and be glad of her presence. She ate, and found herself almost smiling, and when Noi asked which city Madeleine thought they should go to, she looked across at a closed, expressionless face and said:

"Melbourne."