Shibrogane
Elke cried the entirety of the cab ride home. It was undignified. It was awful. The cab ride lasted forever, and the concerned looks of the cab driver only made it worse. Once they stepped out in front of her mother’s town house, Elke wrapped her hands around Carson’s and said, “Please don’t go. Let me explain.” She had to explain, didn’t she? Or he’d go.


Carson knew a PTSD attack when he saw one, because he’d had them too. In his experience, the best thing he could do for Elke in the car was to hold her close and try to keep her grounded and talk about something other than what had just happened or whatever was going on in her head. That turned out to be a recipe for chicken parmesan that he’d read in a magazine two days prior, and he wasn’t sure if it was helping, but it was the best he could do off the top of his head.

He had no plans of leaving her alone at her mother’s house, even before she grabbed hold of him and begged him not to leave. Elke was in a vulnerable state right now, and out here, they had to be each other’s support. He would have expected her to do the same for him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, squeezing her hands. “Let’s go inside. We can make some tea. Something warm would be nice right now, right?”

He was feeling chilled. He bet that she was, too. “And you can tell me whatever you want to tell me.”

My baby. My lover. My home, he thought. Elke had seemed so much older than she was when she said that. He wanted to know more.

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“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she said. She fumbled, one-handed, with the keys to the townhouse. What the hell was wrong with her that she couldn’t even open a door? This was something everyone else did by rote. They could do it in their sleep. But one little monster, one little confrontation with Castor, and now she was a shaking mess. “You’ll hate me. It won’t make any sense. I can’t even really prove it.”

She got the kettle on the stove, and then she just. She couldn’t. Elke sat, all at once like the collapse of a building, her bloodied skirts spreading out around her. “I can’t even prove it,” she said. “I could be crazy. I’m probably crazy.”


Carson got down on the floor with her, nudging her skirts out of the way - where had the blood come from? He took her hands again and turned them over, finding where she’d pressed cuts into her palms, and he leaned down to kiss them carefully. “Elke,” he said, “After the night we’ve just had, I think I’m ready to believe just about anything.”

There was a war in Destiny City, one she’d been fighting since she was twelve years old and never been able to tell anyone about. No wonder she’d taken a step back from it and had a complete and total breakdown. Anyone would, after going through that kind of hell. “I might not understand,” he said. “It might not make any sense to me. But I’ll try. And I won’t hate you.”

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The way he kissed her hands so delicately despite the blood smothered her protests in her throat. She hiccuped, and wiped her eyes dry with her sleeve; it only lasted a moment before she hiccuped again and another few tears trickled down her face. “I can’t,” she said, hiding her face in his shoulder, “you heard Castor, you’re safe because you don’t know, and I don’t want you to die on my account. I don’t want to die. I want to--I want to live. Why is he so mad at me for that?”

She wanted to tell him. Her chest hurt and she was so tired of being on alert all the time. Carson’s hands around hers were warm and solid. He’d stuck by her in that. He’d saved her. She needed to explain. “I’ll try. Is it okay if we. Can you help me with the tea?”


“My experience with war,” said Carson, helping her to her feet, “is that it’s just as easy to be a civilian casualty as it is to die in battle. Easier, even.” He didn’t have any energy left tonight to pretend not to be jaded, and he set out mugs and teabags and dropped one sugar cube into each before he poured the water. “Castor may think that ignorance will save me, but you and I both know that’s not true. You and I both need a support system, and if being that for you means I have to know some things I shouldn’t, then I’m prepared for that.”

He shrugged and offered her a mug, although if she wasn’t ready to take it then he completely understood. “Let’s go sit down - the couch, so your mother won’t think we’re up to anything? Is she home?” He hadn’t thought to check for Aysel’s car in the driveway.

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Elke shook her head, suddenly and fiercely. “No,” she said. “Maman can’t overhear. Please just come upstairs. I won’t do anything. You can sit at my desk. Please? She’d hate me if she knew.” She pulled him upstairs, one hand clinging shakily to the mug he’d given her. The door shut too loudly and she cringed, sitting down against it to hold it closed against any theoretical invaders.

“You must promise you won’t laugh,” she said. “And you must let me finish. No interruptions. You must promise.”


Carson followed her upstairs and took a seat on her desk chair as she suggested, and he watched her sit and wanted to go and hold her but she was being very clear about her lines right now. “Okay,” he said softly, wrapping both hands around his mug. When he was Elke’s age, he’d been starting his first deployment. She’d been at war for seven years already, longer than he’d been in the army, and starting at twelve-

Oh, his heart was absolutely broken for her, and he wanted to make everything right and he wanted to love her but, for now, it seemed like the way to do that was to listen. “I promise, Elke.”

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She took a deep breath. She’d never spoken of this to anyone outside the Zodiac before--even Babylon didn’t know the whole story, just bits and pieces. He was predisposed to believe her, but even then she’d held things back, held the truth of her back. Even now, she wanted to bite her tongue on the weirdest parts of her story, but Carson was right. Someone had to look out for her. No one else could.

“I was born one thousand and thirty-six years ago,” she said, “in a city called Babylon, at the foot of the Caloris mountain range on Mercury. When I was eight, I was Selected to serve as the next guardian of my people. One of the twelve senshi at the edge of the universe.” She paused. “You see, senshi--that’s Japanese for soldier, I don’t know why but that’s the word used--like me, and like Castor, we have spheres. We’re born what we are and we embody something. Castor is Hail, and I’m… I was Innocence.” She smiled, a little crookedly.

This story was enormous, too large to make any sense without context, but Elke was not a natural storyteller. A natural chronicler, yes, a natural at keeping records, but she had never been meant to tell the history of a whole world off the top of her head. She’d try. She would try. “So for thirteen years, I stood guard. There were… it was tradition, that all of the Zodiac consider themselves married and dead. But I loved Leo. He… he didn’t love me as much, I suppose. And I fell in love with someone else.” She paused, sipped her tea, the sugar too sweet and too cloying but she bore with it. She hadn’t yet had dinner. When she said the name, it was a sigh more than anything, empty of longing or hope: “Menachem. I had a baby. A son. His name was Phoebus, and I never saw him again. Because… the Zodiac, we never lived long. Did the ones who saved you--those knights--did they tell you about Chaos? They were the ones that we were defending against. And in the end, we were… overwhelmed. And I died.”

She sighed. “Fast forward now to 2008. I woke up first, of all of the Guard, and the--and Zue found all of us except one. Except Pisces. She was too little. She was just eleven, and in France. But me… I was twelve. That was old enough. So he woke me up. The Princess last of all. Which was good, because… the enemy, the Negaverse? They caught her. And they tied her to a chair in a warehouse and we found her and there was a bomb and I died. We all did. Except Scorpio.” That coward. “It’s true. You can find it on Google, North Street Warehouse Explosion. They found… pieces of us. Of me. That’s how they identified us and told our families we were gone. We didn’t disappear. We were dead. And we came back to a school that wasn’t a school. It was called Barren Pines. You can google that too. And…”

She had skipped Aly. She smudged away a few tears. “We came back because of Aly, our Prince,” she said. “A Cavalier. They’re… not a populous group, not anymore. He was the only one I ever met. He thought we’d be needed, so he bargained with Cosmos--sort of a Queen--and brought us all back.”

She paused, then. “I died in a fire there. Are you following? Do I need to slow down?”


My baby. My lover. My home, thought Carson, putting the pieces together with an odd sort of relief. Would it have crushed him to know that Elke had someone else recently? No, he didn’t think so, but those three things together were so incredibly heavy and, well, he didn’t suppose it made any difference to her. From the way she talked about it, it had might as well be yesterday. “Yeah, I - I’m following.” He needed a few things clarified, but so far, well, she was a very good storyteller.

She looked so alone sitting there against the door, and Carson wondered if it would be amiss of him to get up from his chair and join her. He couldn’t sit on the floor, of course - with his leg, he’d never get up again. But maybe… he eyed the bed. Would it be too forward to ask her to move, even if he had no plans on seduction?

He didn’t think she’d take it that way, so he got up and moved to crouch awkwardly in front of her. “Elke,” said Carson, “Can we sit together?” She didn’t have to be alone, he thought. Not through this. “Please?”

He got up and slowly went to take a seat on the bed, stretching the stiffness out of his knee. “So, to be clear,” he asked, “when was everything before 2008? Another lifetime? And did you remember everything right from the start, or only after Zue… awakened you?”

(That must have been what Castor meant by finding a cat, he thought, but it still wasn’t fair. Elke had been dragged into this against her will by some cruel trick of fate. But there was glory for those who defied their fates, wasn’t there?)

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“A thousand years ago,” she said, joining him on the bed, leaving her tea behind. She tucked herself under his arm. What did he intend to do? She didn’t want to sleep with him, she didn’t want to sleep with anyone. She wanted to talk, and maybe to cuddle, and to just forget what had happened, if she could. “I didn’t remember until after Barren Pines,” she told him. “I had dreams. But no memories. And more of them come over time.”

Elke paused to resettle herself across his lap, a position they’d held before while watching movies or just talking; it was easier when she didn’t have to look at him. “I’m… everyone died. Or left. Imagine if your squad just disappeared, one person at a time, into the darkness, and you never knew where they’d gone, until you were all that’s left. And then they come back, but only for a little, before disappearing again. Without even saying goodbye. And the ones you know about, they’re dead.”

Gemini could be alive. She didn’t know. Aquarius could be alive; she didn’t know. Taurus, and Cancer… who knew? “I had a baby in this life, too. For two weeks. I… She was so little, Carson. Barely as long as my forearm.” She held her arm out for him to compare. “I wasn’t eating enough. She died. And I c-can’t. I can’t fight it anymore. I’m not that strong. I don’t think anyone is.”


Carson settled his arm around Elke’s shoulder, his fingers brushing over her hair, and he held her close. It wasn’t hard for him to imagine what she was describing. He’d lost his squad, too, crushed under an avalanche that nearly took his life, too. He was down there for hours before they cleared the rocks away and at first, he’d thought there were others. People had died around him until he was the only one left and--

Carson shook himself. He couldn’t afford to slip down that dark hole, not when Elke was already there. “Yeah,” he said. “I - I know what that’s like.”

His breath caught in his throat for a moment, and he watched her arm and tried to count backwards in his head. It couldn’t have been that long ago, he thought. Maybe it had even been the low point that pushed her into recovery. What should he say to that? “You don’t have to fight it anymore,” he said, kissing her forehead, conscious that Castor’s lips had graced the same place just an hour ago. “You’ve been so brave, Elke.”

God. What was he even supposed to say to that?

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“I broke my pen,” she said, tucking her arms close around herself again. “I can’t transform anymore. No more war. No more fighting.” Nothing but her own life, she wasn’t going to live for Aria anymore, she didn’t owe anyone ******** duty, ******** the war, ******** all of it, if she was going to die anyway she wanted to live first--and it was okay, wasn’t it? Menachem had told her to live and be happy. This was how she got there.

Elke tipped her chin up, pressed her lips to his, gently, chastely. “It’s a dishonorable discharge if it’s anything,” she said. Her mouth felt dry. Her hands hurt. “Is that okay? Are you okay with that?”


Carson had… thoughts, about whether that counted as dishonorable discharge or not. It sounded more to him like Elke had fulfilled her contract, and just because the war wasn’t over didn’t mean you had to stay in when that happened. “Yeah,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face. All of this was ******** weird, but he’d seen enough actual proof that he had to believe it. “I’m okay with that.”

He took gentle hold of her right hand, easing it open to investigate the cuts she’d inflicted on herself. “Let me clean this up for you,” he said softly. “Please.”

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She let him shift her hands open. Her fingernail polish was stained by blood; there was glitter from the fake-French tips in the half-moon scrapes. “Okay,” she said. It was certainly a way to step back from whatever precipice she’d been teetering on, and it brought her to a stop. Right in the middle of that train of thought, as if she’d hit a brick wall.

“You don’t think less of me, do you,” she said, nervously, swinging her legs off of his. “Knowing I’ve--I’ve been with someone else. And been. You know. People care about that.” They’d never talked about sex, or plans, it wasn’t that kind of relationship, they didn’t act that way, but… Men cared about that sort of thing, didn’t they? Maman said so, and in Elke’s experience, the only one that hadn’t was Menachem. He was dead now. “I have a first aid kit in the top desk drawer.”


Carson gave her a wide-eyed look as he reached for the first-aid kit. Maybe it was because he was older than her, but he hadn’t ever even thought that her sexual history was any of his business. “No,” he said, fishing out a cotton ball and uncapping a bottle of peroxide. “That doesn’t matter to me.” How could it matter to him, when his own history was so- so--

It seemed like it was his turn to come clean about some things, given that they were on the subject. “Elke,” he said, busying himself with dabbing her cuts with peroxide. “I have a - a traumatic history, when it comes to sex.” It wasn’t the sort of thing that men were supposed to admit to. His brother never talked about the abuse they’d been through, as far as he knew, and Carson doubted he’d have even mentioned it to Elke if she hadn’t been so open with him already.

He set the cotton ball aside and smoothed a bandage over the cuts, then reached for her other hand, his lower lip caught between his teeth. “I - I’m not sure how comfortable with it I am,” he said, looking down at her hand. “Or how long it’ll take me to be comfortable with it.” He’d tried to rush past the discomfort before, and all it had done was ruin the relationship. “It’s - it’s not anything wrong with you.”


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She smiled at him, relieved, and then grimaced at the sting of the peroxide. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with sex, either.” It’d been good, with Menachem. He was a special case. She’d been perfectly happy to be a virgin before that, and if it had been anyone else, she still would be. Elke curled her fingers in over the bandage and tried not to look at the bloody cotton balls as Carson set them aside. Aly had sung to her once, doing something similar. Hemoglobin goblins, and blood staining the spring green of her fuku. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

With the hand he wasn’t tending to, she lifted his chin. “When we’re ready. Not an hour before.” Reassuring him made it easier to focus on something else, anything else. On him. “So tell me if I’m going too fast, ever. I promise I’ll do the same.”


He didn’t think he wanted to talk about it - Elke didn’t need to know about his messy family dynamics, or else she might decide that he wasn’t worth the trouble. He’d be lying if he wasn’t curious to know how her daughter had come to be, but that was none of his business and he knew it. “Thank you,” said Carson, pressing gently with the cotton ball. “I’m sorry that this stings,” he sighed, but he couldn’t leave the cuts uncleaned. It just seemed irresponsible.

“I’ll stay a little later,” he offered, smoothing out a second bandage. “If you don’t think your mother will mind.” (Aysel’s protectiveness made more sense now, knowing what he knew. She’d lost and found her daughter more times than any family should.)

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His first class wasn’t until late, she thought. Like noon. They had the same class. If he had clothes, she’d ask him to stay--not for sex, but just so she wouldn’t be alone--but he didn’t. She didn’t want to make him take the walk of shame back to his apartment, not after dumping all of this on him. “She won’t,” she said. “You could stay the night, if you wanted. Not for sex! I don’t want to be alone.”

Elke caught his hand in hers before he could pull it away. “Please,” she said. “It’s selfish and I shouldn’t ask, I know.”


It didn’t actually seem like that selfish a question, not to Carson. He doubted anyone would notice if he wore the same clothes two days in a row (well, he would notice, but he’d get over it). “I’ll stay,” he said, catching her hands in his. After the night she’d had, he didn’t blame her for not wanting to be left by herself. “You don’t have to be alone, Elke. Okay?”

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“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.” She looked towards her wardrobe--she had to get her clothes into the washer before the blood really got to set--and padded over to it, stockinged feet hardly making any sound at all. “My maman has a spare toothbrush, if you need it,” she said.

Once she had changed and completed her evening ablutions--complete with a furious scrubbing of her messed-up makeup--she snuggled into her bed, tucked her chin under Carson’s. “Thank you,” she said. “Good night, Carson.”


He lost his jeans and his flannel while she was changing, and trusted her reaction to mean that it was okay for him to sleep in boxers and a tee-shirt. He settled under the covers with her, his arm draped around her shoulders. “Good night,” he murmured, lips brushing over her hair. “Sweet dreams.”