Pieces of Autumn (41 page)

The Syndicate had created our own slice of heaven in the midst of hell.

I was sitting out with the cattle, my back up against a tree and the sun warming my skin, when Joshua found me one day. His arms were laden with bread, cheese - a dusty bottle of wine. I squinted at it, sitting up to get a better look.

"A housewarming gift, of sorts," he said, grinning. "From the Narvaez family. It was for all of us, but...I don't think anyone will miss it."

That was a blatant lie. Alcohol was still a precious commodity, but I hadn't tasted wine in so long. Not since Tate. I wasn't going to argue with him, even if I wasn't sure I would be able to withstand the torrent of memories.

I smiled, accepting the food and watching him uncork the bottle with a jagged piece of metal. The first sip warmed my throat, and though it didn't taste anything like what Tate had - it was too musty, too dry - the memories came anyway.

"Are you happy, Autumn?"

Joshua's voice cut through the fog. I looked at him, really looked at him, maybe for the first time ever. He was boyishly handsome, disarming, when he wasn't affecting that stern, cold look he used for Stoker. He had a lightness to him. In spite of everything, there was optimism. Happiness. Another time, another place, I could have fallen for a man like that.

"Yes," I said, hoping my face wouldn't betray me. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

Sighing, Joshua shook his head slightly. He was smiling, but it was a tired smile. A disappointed smile. I took another sip of the wine, made a face, and then handed it back to him.

"Sorry," I said. "Was...was that the wrong answer?"

"No." His eyes stayed on the grass, watching a parade of ants marching towards us. "There was no right answer. But you did lie, and that tells me all I need to know."

"Stop being so god damned mysterious," I demanded. "You think I didn't get enough of that with..."

I drifted off, unable to finish the sentence. I hadn't spoken his name out loud in so long.

"I hoped you would tell me the truth," he said. "That you still miss him. That you think about him sometimes. He haunts you. If you could admit that, then maybe - maybe that would mean you're ready to move on."

Move on. From Tate?
 

That's a funny fucking joke.

Jerked back to the present, I suddenly realized what I'd missed.

"Oh, God. Joshua, I'm..." I swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. I didn't..."

"It's fine," he said, with a slight laugh. "I was stupid. I knew I could never hold a candle to him. But I thought maybe, you know, it couldn't hurt to ask." He took a long swig of the wine, pulling a face as it went down. "Jesus. This is awful."

"It really is." I smiled at him. "Listen, Joshua, I didn't mean...I didn't mean to shoot you down."

"I know you didn't," he said. "And that's very sweet. But I'll never be what you need."

I wanted to tell him it wasn't true. I wanted to let the memory of Tate fade into almost-nothingness, until it was nothing more than the faintest whisper of a dream.

"He loves you," Joshua said, quietly, turning the wine bottle around and around in the dirt. "He still loves you. He always will."

"Fucking lot of good that does me." I picked up a rock and hurled it harmlessly into the woods across from us. A sharp realization grew in my chest. "Wait. Did
he
tell you that?"

Joshua nodded, once. "In so many words."

My heart throbbed traitorously.
 

"Did he use
that word
?" I couldn't bring myself to say it aloud.

"He didn't have to." Joshua looked at me, seriously. "Autumn, you should have seen his face."

I swallowed hard, staring at the dirt.
 

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," I said. "I'm not leaving here."

Joshua nodded, staring thoughtfully into the woods.

Before long, I met one of the girls we'd saved.

She was so pale and pretty, and so painfully young. I was afraid to ask. She walked up to me without hesitation as I hung my laundry up to dry, and her shirt was loose enough for me to see the sigil.

"Hello," she said, shyly. "My name's Hannah. I'm from the..." She made a vague gesture in the direction of the other camp. "I mean, not anymore. I'm moving in today."

"That's wonderful news," I said, my heart squeezing guiltily in my chest. "Please, let me know if there's anything you need."

Her eyelids fluttered. "I couldn't possibly ask you for anything more," she said. "But, thank you."

Did they know? The guilt was like a vise now. I couldn't accept her gratitude for what I'd done. Not when all I could imagine was the horror in her eyes, if she knew how much I still wanted my Master.

"I haven't done anything," I said, finally.

"You have," she insisted. "You took them out. The..." She shuddered. "Seven Devils. You helped Tate." For a moment, doubt crossed her face. "At least, that's what everyone is saying."

I sucked in a breath. She said Tate's name like a prayer. How could I possibly explain any of this to her?

He's not who you think he is. He's a monster.

He's my monster.

And I'm a monster too, for falling in love with him.

He wasn't. It wasn't true, any of it, but these women would never understand. I'd forever be blemished in their eyes if they knew how weak I was.

"What are you doing?"

I looked up at Hannah, with the severed blossom of a squash flower in my hand. She was watching me curiously, with my clippers and my masking tape.

Smiling, I gestured for her to join me. "I'm pollinating the squash, so they'll grow. Otherwise they just wither on the vine."

She frowned slightly. "I never knew that."

"Yeah," I said, chuckling a little as I taped one of the female flowers shut. "Neither did I."

Watching me carefully, she picked at a few scattered weeds in the bed. "Where'd you learn?"

She already had her suspicions. Everyone in the camp knew about my time with Tate - or at least, they thought they did. I rarely spoke about it, to anyone but Mary. I didn't know how I possibly could. The moment I opened my mouth, the guilt would come crashing down. How could I possibly tell this girl, who'd survive much worse than I had, that I'd fallen in love with the exact same kind of man who tormented her?

"Tate," I admitted, finally. "He's very particular with the way he raises his plants."

Hannah giggled. "From what I've heard of him, he's very particular about a lot of things."

I nodded. I knew this conversation was dangerous, but I still ached to talk about him. It was hard to have any kind of conversation without him popping into my head. He was my entire life, for those few months - and he'd eclipsed nearly every other aspect of my existence. When I ate, I thought of his cooking. When I tended the garden, I thought about his plants. When I rode Chimaera, of course, all I could think about was her master.

Her master, and mine.

Hannah would never understand. None of the women from Stoker would ever understand. It was for the best, then, that he'd ultimately refused to come. We never could have lived together among these people. These broken remnants of Stoker, serving as a constant reminder of all his sins.

In my quiet moments, I still wished for the impossible. I wished we could have been normal, or as close to normal as any two people could be. If only we'd met when we were still young, and untouched by all the suffering and death.

But I wondered - would we have the same connection, if we hadn't lived through what we lived through? How much of that thread depended on mutual pain?

I still felt it tugging in my chest, from time to time. And it only grew stronger, whenever I did something that reminded me of him.

"You miss him," Hannah said, softly.

I just nodded.

"Sorry." She twisted a piece of grass in her fingers. "Do you not want to talk about it?"

"It's all right," I reassured her. "It's just...sometimes he's hard to put into words."

"I can believe that." She nodded. "I'd love to know more about him, though, if you ever feel like talking."

She was smiling shyly. I felt terrible. Could I possibly ruin her hero worship? But she deserved to know the truth, didn't she?

"He's not quite who you think he is," I said, gently. Carefully. "I don't know if you really want to know him, as well as you think you do."

"What do you mean?" she frowned.
 

Sighing, I wrapped up the last of the flowers. "I don't want to say anything that would upset you," I said. "I'd better not."

"I'm okay," she insisted. "I really want to know. If it gets to be too much, I'll tell you."

I took a deep breath. "He used to be one of the headhunters. One of the men who...trained you. Tortured you."

"And you," she said.
 

"No," I reminded her. "I got out, before the worst happened. I never experienced what most of you did."

"That doesn't matter." She laid her hand on my arm, speaking fervently. "It doesn't matter if you were with Stoker for an hour, or a year. We're all sisters. We all knew what it felt like to be treated like a piece of meat for sale. Some of us got it worse than others, we all know that. But I'm sure you were just as terrified as the rest of us. I'm sure you got hurt."

Yeah, but not the way you think.

"Thank you," I said. "That's...honestly, that means a lot, Hannah."

"We all feel that way," she said, smiling. "We compare scars, we don't argue about how had it worse. Some of us were luckier than others. But Tate...of course, he used to work for Stoker. Everyone knows that."

"But it changed him." I stared at the ground, unable to meet her eyes. "He didn't give himself credit for what he'd done. Not the way everybody else does. He'd never call himself a hero. He hated himself for everything he'd done, and he was angry. At himself, mostly, but he took it out on me."

Hannah let out a sharp breath, staring at me. I could feel her eyes, even if I couldn't bring myself to look at them.

"Sometimes he was cruel," I said. "Twice, I tried to run away from him. Both times I ended up worse than I'd been before. But I was terrified of him, sometimes. I never knew what was going through his head."

"Autumn," said Hannah, softly, "is this what you've been afraid to tell everyone?"

"That's not all," I said, hollowly. "When I first got there, he called me his property. He wanted me to treat him as my master. He didn't always hold me to it, and most of the time, he seemed to hate himself for it. But he couldn't hide his desires. And I didn't..."

My stream of consciousness finally stopped. I couldn't believe I had been so honest, but after hiding all of these feelings for so long, it felt impossible to stop. Even so, I still couldn't bring myself to admit the one thing that I knew Hannah wouldn't understand.

I liked it.

"Autumn," she said, softly. I finally looked at her, unshed tears swimming in my eyes. "Whatever it is, it's fine. It's okay. No one is going to judge you. Not after what you did for all of us."

I just shook my head, wanting to believe her, but unable to.

"Tate might have been a twisted bastard sometimes," she said. I almost laughed out loud, hearing such language come out of her sweet mouth. "But that doesn't undo what he did."

It was so strange. I'd never thought of it that way before, with the situation reversed. I had always considered whether or not his inherent goodness - the conscience that still lived inside, no matter what happened - could make up for his actions. And I wondered the same thing about myself. Did my compassion excuse my submission? I had never stopped to consider this. Hannah was telling me that it didn't matter what darkness lurked inside - because we'd saved her. We'd saved all those people. It was our actions that counted, after all.
 

I couldn't control the nightmares, the memories, and neither could Tate. But every day, we faced choices. We had the option to do right by the people we met. And every action was the first step forward on a new path. Every act of compassion was a step towards a new life. There were no cosmic checks and balances, but it didn't matter. We weren't the sum of our actions from the past. We could only move forward, and every decision made from now on was an opportunity.

"Thank you, Hannah," I said, very quietly. "You're very smart, do you know that?"

She grinned. "I've been told."

Laughing, we stood up, and she pulled me into a fierce hug.

"I understand," she whispered, in my ear. "I know you don't want to tell me, and you're afraid, but I do understand. And I meant what I said. Nobody here would judge you. Not a single one of us got out of there unscathed. Most of us have some kind of darkness now, too. We'll all have to learn to live with it. Not deny it. Not pretend it's not there, and not act like we can be the same as we were before. We'll have to build ourselves new lives with everything we've become."

I had just taken Chimaera out for her morning ride, and as I made my way back, the little girl with the violin came running to meet me.

"Someone's coming," she panted, gesturing me to follow her. "Come on! Come see!"

New arrivals who came unannounced were always fuel for speculation and rumors. The camp was well-guarded, which meant that whoever it was, they were expected. Joshua hadn't said anything to me.

I went to the edge of the fence, looking where the girl pointed.

There was a figure on the horizon, growing closer. I squinted to try and see better, raising my hand to shield my eyes from the sunset.
 

"Who's that?" somebody called out. No one answered.

But I knew. The quickening of my heart, the soft humming in my mind told me everything.

He's your nightmare.

And, in the same breath:

This is what you dreamed.

I had to laugh. A few people stared, trying to understand why the arrival of a tall, dark stranger laden with old leather bags in each hand, cresting the hill just beyond the pastures, could make me so giddy.