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Cora wasn't stupid. Never had been. Cora had a reputation for being a lot of things, and the reputation was mostly deserved, but she wasn't mentally lacking.

The first time she'd ever felt an odd sting in the crook of her elbow, sitting in a slideshow of Dr. Westerman's Greatest Hits, she'd reflexively slapped at the inside of her arm, expecting to kill some kind of a bug. A horsefly, a carpenter bee, perhaps. Cora had no idea. Cora had lunch, then AP US History, then Bio, so it was always in Doc Wes's class that the hour-after-lunch tiredness hit her. It was worse when he turned off the lights for some kind of "bulletpoint presentation," and that was her excuse for why she didn't understand it right away. She wasn't stupid. She'd just been tired.

The next few times it happened, she'd guessed, and then she'd theorized. And then she'd known. The feeling of someone sticking a needle into your arm was, ultimately, not hard to identify: it felt like someone sticking a needle into your arm.

The advantage of the cavalier-sailor soldier bond had always, allegedly, been each partner's keen awareness of the other. When Cora had been shot in the Riverina superette, Dylan had known it right away, had found her and come running. But then again, when Dylan tripped while running track and scraped his arm, Cora felt it. When Cora accidentally stabbed her own thumb trying to pit a tomato to help her mother make dinner, Cora stabbed Dylan's thumb too. The pain didn't last, but it was always genuine in the moment of impact -- so no matter how often Dylan shot up, there was a phantom needle going into the vein at the pit of her elbow, a phantom puncture.

She'd tried not to keep count. She couldn't keep count, really -- not if she wasn't prepared to make peace with however often it turned out to be.

And there it was, truthfully, there was the rub: Cora didn't make peace, did she? That wasn't how she solved her problems. She made war, and didn't stop till she'd turned the vaunted lemons of life into pulp and lemonade. It was a habit. No, it was more, it was a preference, really. It was time spent dwelling on what was wrong, letting it gnaw at her insides, knowing she hadn't bothered to handle it. It was knowing she was complacent. Most of all, maybe, it was knowing about the thing itself, whatever it might be.

She was nothing whatsoever, if she didn't stand her ground. Cora was nothing if she changed her mind. And she never did.

On Saturday, Dylan had been clean, or at least clean of injectables, she supposed, for almost two weeks. Cora had been proud of it, had even gotten a little smug about it. She'd been picturing him back at Meadowview in the fall, filling the chair next to her in the cafeteria that had been markedly devoid of Dylan Rasmussen for the past year. She'd been ready, so ready.

Then the hypodermic needle drove into her arm, like her ego was a boil swollen with too much pus and needing to be lanced. It was Saturday, and Dylan Rasmussen was shooting up, two weeks after Corinna Grant had asked him to quit. There weren't any other relevant facts. There really never had been.

Mirrorwalk took her to Dylan's room at Hillworth by the fastest route possible, the route that didn't allow her time to dwell on her feelings. Dwelling never changed anything, not in her experience: it only made her feel worse, more miserable, gnawing at her insides, daring her to be complacent. Knowing about the thing itself, whatever it might be. She never changed her mind, in the end. Dwelling on things only gave them power over her, and experience had proven that that way lay madness. She wasn't mad. She wasn't stupid. She was calm.

Jesse was out, luckily -- or maybe still at the hospital, treating his broken finger from whatever youma had done that to him. She dropped her henshin and stood there, in a room that was evidence of Dylan's past crimes, with Dylan who was evidence of his own new ones. He actually looked a little surprised to see her, she thought. He shouldn't have been.

She looked at herself in the mirror, the angry-nervous flush of her face staring back -- no, she couldn't, she looked away. Here she was, here was the road they'd gone down. He'd broken his word. She never broke hers.

"The first promise I ever made you was that I'd never marry a prince of the Imperium." Cora drove right into it, "When I say I'll do something, I do it."

That should have angered her. It was dismissive, so dismissive, and by rights it should have, would have made her furious. But instead, at first she found herself only surprised and a little stung. Cora hadn't expected to be dismissed so out-of-hand. Not really. Not from Dylan. She knew people thought she made a spectacle of herself, and she did, and didn't care; she knew the dismissiveness in their responses. She didn't need those people. Most of it rolled off her back like water off a duck.

Dylan -- Alex -- had never been one of Those People. He'd always listened to her, always. Alexandros had a way of sitting, of looking at you, of not speaking, all of which made you feel as though he was fascinated not just with you, but with the thoughts in your head, the imaginings and impressions. Always, always, he always had, even in the early days of their acquaintance when she was wary and distrustful of anything that looked like a suitor. She, the Virgin Queen of the Marcasite Millennium, she, the Woman-King.

She had frequently been unkind, and they had had their arguments, they two, just like anyone. But he had always, and patiently, listened. He had always been infuriatingly -- but also thankfully, blessedly -- and also pointedly, maddeningly -- reasonable.

Cora had simply never expected him to talk down to her. It was an injection of anti-freeze into her veins, just for those few moments. It was distress and something else, something painful -- and then it was gasoline again, flammable, burning -- and she was Queen of the Marcasite Millennium and no one talked down to her, ever.

"I asked you to do one thing for me, one." She had asked him to do thousands. "Get off drugs. And you couldn't do that, you couldn't even go a month!" Cora was shaking; her hands were shaking, fists squeezed so hard that the muscles had flickering spasms with the unusual effort of it. She felt herself take a step forward as though this might make him listen more closely. "You lied to me! Do I look stupid to you?!" She wasn't stupid, and so help her, he'd know that much before she was done.

"You want me to say my piece, Dylan? Alright, here's my piece: don't tell me I might be wasting your time -- you're wasting my time! You've wasted months of my time, just like you do a bang-up ******** job of wasting your own, and everybody else's! You don't need any help from me wasting your whole, stupid life." She was yelling now, full-out yelling. People all throughout the next several dorm rooms could probably hear her -- and by God, if she yelled loudly enough, maybe one of them would even be Dylan Rasmussen. "I can't count on you! How am I supposed to count on you when all you care about is this?!"

She drew a huge, ugly breath, and used it to demand, "What the hell do you have to say for yourself?"

"No," she said, tearing her teeth through every word, "no, we're not remotely done here. We're done everywhere, do you understand me?"

No. No, no, no, no.

"We're done clear across the universe, you and me!"

No. She didn't want this, did she? She didn't have to do it -- no, she had to do it. She couldn't even stop herself from doing it; the words just came on their own. It was anger and frustration that were herding her thoughts now, and she went willingly.

It was Dylan's fault, she reminded herself. And she sped on.

"I want out." No, she didn't. Yes, she did; she needed out, anything else would choke her with rage -- "I'm not talking out of service, out of Africa, I wouldn't hang about, here -- I want out of everything. I want no part of you." Cora looked away, looked up at Jesse's worn Gladiator poster, and for a moment, just a moment, she envied General Maximus his wife and son who never ever betrayed him, and were dead. She was disgusted with everything.

"Here my road parts from yours," she intoned, more quietly than she'd said anything else. No less angrily. "Speak the words, cavalier."

His fault, his doing, his choice. The die was cast.

"May -- " Her voice sat high in her upper register, where it sounded inane and shrill even to her own ears, so she left off. The response was a tradition, not a necessity; already she felt a wind that seemed to blow through the chambers of her heart, deceptively gentle. Then it passed, and the soul that had been cradled around her soul uncurled itself and left. There were a few brief seconds of nothingness, of an empty nirvana that must have been something like Kore's arrows. Of peace. But soon after, it was gone, reforming in his hand till he pressed it through his ribs and buried it away from her.

May all your arrows fly true, Cavalier.

The oath for Alexandros was an exception; the usual way of it was, May your steel always strike true. He had always been exceptional, and everyone had been able to see it.

Cora found herself looking around the room, and at first she didn't know what she was looking for. When it came to her that she was looking for an excuse, something more to talk about, something to delay the tolling of their last bell just a little longer -- that meant it was time to leave after all. There was nothing more to be said.

She had entered by the mirror, but she couldn't leave as she'd entered, not without drawing suspicion. People would've heard them, so she couldn't leave silently and unseen. Short strides brought her to the door, and she snapped it open, then paused for a moment at the threshold.

"May you always stay your course," she said -- but after seconds passed and he didn't answer, Cora stepped out and slammed the door behind her.

She seemed to die in the crack of that sound. May you live forever with the choices you've made. As she did. She stayed her course.

Let it be done.