"I...how can...what is...?" Sajida asked in exasperation as she tried to process everything that Yusef had just said.
Guys that showed their teeth as much as Yusef must have fangs, Sajida had always thought. What she had expected from him was something more like what she was seeing in Akari's face- a look that practically screamed
Love me, hate me, just pick a lane already, Sajida! (Which Sajida heard in Akari's annoying and somewhat cute angry voice; and oh, how she wished she could make a decision, any decision at this point!)
The thing that made her want to smack his pretty face, first of all, was just how...fucking...
genuine Yusef was being right now. That meant that there was real hurt, real thought, real feelings behind what he said, and that meant Sajida couldn't be mad at him when she needed to be mad, but she still wanted to be mad at somebody, anybody so it might as well be him, and wanted to kiss him at the same time. It was confusing and scary and frustrating to no end.
What stuck in her craw more, however, was Yusef's reference to her husband. That brought up memories like how she'd betrayed him by sleeping with Abigail and Alice. How she'd run from her own grief for seven years. How she'd turned down happiness with Kalisha. How guilty she felt for having sex with everyone in this house. How much she wanted to have sex with everyone in this house- even Tomasi. How much of a whore she felt like for wanting that.
"Don't you
dare bring up Vivaan Dhawan ever again," Sajida said with a finger pointed in his face. "You are not one to talk, when you claim to be deeply in love with all these women after what, one, maybe two days of knowing each other? It's not up to me to defend monogamy, when you're so clearly being a foolish, horny boy, diving in to something very serious with little thought and taking so women into your delusion with you; when I'm the one who's been through this pain before. This is all going to end in tears, just you wait and see..."
Chloe sniffed and wiped her eyes and nose with her arm as Akari watched from the shadows, occasionally petting Arcturis. Both women were watching Kalisha try to hold it together as Tomasi rubbed her shoulders.
"Look. I'll continue with you to Kadugimir, but after we do what we need to there, I'll be taking a boat back to Surabamba, and you can all go on your way."
"So, you're gonna dump all of us after taking a free plane ride? Nuh uh, I don't think so, miss prickly," Akari snapped.
"I'll pay you. And Kalisha...you could come with me," Sajida said while softly smiling at her best friend. “
"No, Sajida, you don't get to...you
cannot make me choose. I love him, and you, and that will never change, even if you leave, even if you break everything! I don't know if you understand how he makes me feel, since you're not letting him open the doors that I have seen...I know I might be irrational right now, but that's how I feel.”
"Look, Sajida, would you just listen to me for once? Nobody's getting married any time soon, nobody's having kids any time soon...we're just in the exciting new phase of our various relationships, exploring what we mean to each other, when we've all been yearning for companionship," Akari said, giving Yusef a sad shrug since she knew what she'd said about having kids but took a swig of one of the extra doses of Kalisha's contraception potion since her mind was telling her that she was just being practical, and her facial expression was doing the same thing for everyone else. "Maybe we'll all end up hating each other's guts and leaving after this war is over. Maybe we'll all have kids and be one big happy family. Maybe we'll just have sex a bunch with no marital obligations. But you're being so obsessed with the maybes of life that you're blowing up something that's good right now for everybody else, as well as all of our aspirations."
"What aspirations, exactly? To be a dutiful wife and stay at home mother? I know you, Akari. I know you because I've been you. You seek freedom above all else. You're going to feel guilty, trapped, and then..."
"Don't you characterize my fiancée!" Chloe demanded.
"And
you! You think life is just a grand, fun little adventure, don't you, you naïve little girl! Well, guess what,
Caledorian? Life
IS fun and games for entitled white people like yourself, until you send Goliaths to murder good men like my husband and crush villages like mine underfoot," Sajida lectured Chloe.
"That...that was the darkest day in Imperial history. I am ashamed. But I didn't do any of those things. It's not my fault..." Chloe started to tear up.
"Oh, now you've really gone and done it, you cunt!" Akari fumed as she held her crying girlfriend.
"I only meant to make her see the ramifications of...fuck it, whatever, I'm out of here!" Sajida growled.
"Yeah, go and run like you always do!" Kalisha yelled. Then the next few minutes were a blur of people shouting at each other. Things like:
"What's that supposed to...?"
"Hey, what the-!"
"You just!"
And next thing Chloe knew, she was lying on the couch with Tomasi applying a damp towel to her forehead to cool her off, with Arcturis
"What...happened...?" Chloe wondered with a groan.
"I don't really know," the poor boy whispered weakly. "One minute, everybody was there with you. Then your eyes got red, you yelled, 'Enough of this!', you started sounding like a Goliath- all
whistling and
horn calls, I don't know...and suddenly, all the others were gone."
"Gone? Gone! I...I don't...I can't have..." Chloe started sobbing. "How did I...
what did I even...?"
The others were not, in fact, dead. But they were gone from this reality, trapped by Chloe's angry thoughts of wanting to smack them for what they were all saying. Now Akari, Sajida, and Yusef were residents of
The Void, a place full of nothing but black, craggy rocks, a foggy, churning soup of violent water that clearly no one in their right mind would go into, and shades of
whales, complete with wounds sustained during their harpooning, Goliaths, planes, dragons, and other creatures both manmade and natural. And soon they would wake and be forced to settle their argument...or so, perhaps, Chloe had unconsciously hoped for.
After much debate about what had transpired, both Chloe and Tommy (her new nickname for him) agreed that the others had appeared to vanish into Chloe's head, as improbable as that sounded.
"I wonder why
I wasn't sucked in to your brain," Tomasi wondered as he rubbed the robes of his Nightstalker uniform under the chin.
"Maybe because I remembered what you said about needing to stay here to keep them off our trail? Maybe because you, me, a panther, and a little robot were the only adults in the room? I don't really know, or care," Chloe said. "I mean, I care...but...I know that I'll find a way to get everybody out of the old noggin. So I don't care, you know, because why worry?" she joked and bopped herself on the back of the head a little.
"How do you know, though?"
"I'm sure either I'll think of something, or they will. Besides, this'll make moving around Sudavadir easier. After all, the Iron Guard can't get to Yusef if he's in my noodle."
"Valid points. Shall I help you pack?"
"If you wouldn't mind, my good sir," Chloe beamed and curtsied.
"I would not, mademoiselle," Tomasi bowed to her.
While Chloe was handling the logistics of getting all the equipment together, which was a lot to handle as only two of those still in the real world had opposable thumbs, Akari was the first to wake up. Then she sighed, quite unsurprised and yet awed by The Void, as she'd heard of it before but had never seen it up close before, and it helped her understand the balance of the universe more. If Chloe's mind had somehow made direct contact with The Void (but never heard voices or been taken by The Darkness, which, along with Chloe's power to keep everybody in her mind, puzzled Akari) then...it would explain a lot, certainly.
"Hey," she whispered to a sleeping Yusef. She tried laying a gentle touch on him, but her hand passed through his body, as those in The Void had no corporeal form and could only interact with the rocks and water present in this environment. "Listen, uh...just stay here and try to talk some sense into Sajida. I have to go find out where Kalisha went off to, or how we got here...or even where
here is, exactly. Just...be careful, love," she added. If Akari was honest with herself, and that was incredibly hard to do, she would have gone out into The Void with or without the need to find Kalisha, as here there was boundless Darkness. Here, she could move through the air like water, as though the shadows were an ocean that she could swim through. And that's what she did.
Meanwhile, in this place, Sajida reverted back to the way she looked
when she was 21 years old. That was when she'd gotten married; when she'd discovered her curiosity for women; when she lost everything, and blamed herself for it. This was the woman she'd been at heart for a long time, only she had refused to see it.
