and — he knew what, exactly, about her ? a name, in its various forms, none of which belonged to him, and the names he had given her to replace it, kitten, little fox, beautiful traitor, cruel saviour. the length of the space between her pupils, the slope of her nose, the tone, clear and high, in most ordinary circumstances, with which she spoke. she was beautiful in the way botticelli’s venus was, windswept rising from the sea foam: classically. she studied medicine at the international operative academy. she shared her room with matilda. she hated him. ( somewhat reasonably. ) she cared for the lives of others, near-total-strangers who found they had become targets, as though theirs were her own. she had a penchant for morality. she was unselfish. he was undeserving. he knew — callie was so close to him he felt as though he was electrified, one misplaced spark away from being engulfed in flames. her fingertips cut through the cold. gabriel doubled over, chest heaving, unable to breathe, eyes wide with panic even though she had told him to close them.
her room faced north, but her window was at least fifteen metres from the ground. there was a staircase two doors down. there was another seven metres or so east, a fire escape that lay mostly abandoned because it was dark inside at all times. over his shoulder: her door. at his feet: another. and another. he counted silently, choking, drawing in a shaky inhale and holding out his hands so he could see his fingers trembling, evidence that this was real. verification. twenty-nine. if something — someone — wanted him so desperately they were willing to take him by force, and they wanted to strike when he was weakened by his body’s betrayal, there were twenty-nine points of entry and exit on this hall. thirty if he was willing to break his bones and callie had a suitable rope in her room. his breathing steadied.
it was an ugly but unshakeable habit. every room he stood in, every hall where he collapsed, every quad with unnaturally bright green grass, every bar with cameras mounted on the wall, every beach party. he always counted quickly, wordlessly, so deeply aware that any just-as-fast gesture he missed, any alley or path through the crowd or staircase he skipped over, could be his undoing. he refused to be caught off guard ever again. he refused to be anything less than meticulous. and — his throat was closing, as though he was poisoned instead of panicking, and he clutched at the wall behind him, scrabbling desperately for something he knew was real, something he could touch, fingers locking around callie’s wrist — he kept notebooks with names and features and stray observations not for study, the reason he would swear his life on if she ever read what he wrote about her, but for control. he had convinced himself he knew everything about the people whose names littered his notes, he was so careful to record everything, unflinching in his pursuit of knowledge. but — they had known everything about him and he knew nothing about them. callie knew so much about him and he knew so little about her. he had refused to be held captive by someone who knew everything when he knew nothing ever again, the same way he had sworn never to be caught off guard, the same way he had sworn never to be caught. he was rotting, that was what this was, not one of his childhood migraines, something was wrong, he was deeply, virulently wrong.
“ don’t leave me. ” gabriel didn’t recognise his voice when he spoke. it was lower in pitch, nearly half an octave, deep and pleading and dangerous. he had never outgrown his accent. he remembered, distinctly, someone, one of his father’s aides, promising him that the longer he stayed in their country, speaking their language, the more he would sound like them. he wanted to tip his head back and scream, suddenly, violently, at the top of his lungs, in an effort to dislodge the imposter speaking for him. he was delirious from both pain and the fever he’d worked himself into. he wasn’t going to survive this. he still had callie’s hand grasped tightly in his. she had asked him a question. not, ‘ show me where it hurts .’ something else. he couldn’t bear to ask her to repeat herself. he couldn’t bear to ask her to save him from this, a immense, irreparable vulnerability of his own making. not when she was the one who had exploited it.
gabriel had been so dedicated; he had counted doors and millimeters and vowels, all of them, and still, it was though he had never woken up finally alone. “ you can do whatever you want to me, just don’t leave me. ” his own voice, higher, innocuous and unaccented and painstakingly crafted, was suddenly foreign. a sharp twinge of pain in his head when he inhaled was a solemn, solitary reminder that this body was still his, he had not been forced from it.
regaining control, he let go of callie’s hand and forced himself into stasis. he knew where he was — the ioa. the hallway outside callie’s room. three-one-two. there were twenty-nine points of entry and exit in the vicinity. he knew he was alive, he was not dreaming, he was sick, she had said it herself. his head hurt. he was cold, but he was so, so hot. gradually, cautiously, gabriel returned to movement, tugging at his sleeves and withdrawing inside the last of his hoodies, pulling it over his head and leaving it atop that pile callie had made. she could help him. she had helped him. he shivered.
and — he expected what, exactly, from her ? that he would be so lucky as to be allowed to walk free without having to shed any blood twice ? that she would tell him everything when she had refused him her name the first time they had met ? that she would miraculously heal him ? that she would stay by his side until his headache dissipated and his fever came down and he could breathe again ? that she would be everything he had lost when she so closely resembled the reason he had lost everything ?
“ please. please. don’t leave me. ”
gabriel was crying, his eyes stung, his cheeks were wet and his lashes tangled together when he blinked, but exhaustion won out, and he didn’t make a sound, closing his eyes like she had told him to what felt like hours ago.
his grip around her wrist was surprisingly firm for someone who was in the throes of a fever, who was suffering from a migraine, whose lucidity would have been called into question if not for the way his eyes shone. but it wasn’t gabriel’s hold that shackled callie to to him, it was the lingering agony left in the wake of his plea. his words had been so steeped in melancholy that callie hadn’t noticed, at first, the way his tongue curled around them — different, carrying an accent. and the answers that she had sought, that had so eluded her when he spoke words she had no hope of understanding, seemed to almost be within reach, taunting her in the way ‘ don’t leave me ’ fell from his lips. never before had callie wished so fiercely that words, language could be a tangible object, as shining and extraordinary as the tears bathing his cheeks. she wanted to hold those three syllables in her hand, and demand from him, what does this mean ? who are you ? it was agony that she couldn’t; it was relief that she wouldn’t. gabriel claimed that she’d taken too much — everything — but he had willingly sacrificed it all, pieces of his memories for her to bite into like an orange slice. she had never claimed something he hadn’t given, and this, he wouldn’t relinquish.
callie thought of the first time she’d seen him, hand around some other boy’s collar. how fitting it was now, she realized, that he had his hand on her wrist but the ghost, the one she fiercely wanted to keep and so viciously wanted to exorcise, had his imprint around her neck. his touch was far too hot, a byproduct of his fever, and it seared her skin. when gabriel spoke again, callie hungrily clutched at those syllables, as if picking them out of the air faster would help her understand them better, but in her eagerness — for she realized soon after with a sinking heart that they failed to hold the weight of the ones before — callie had forgotten the anguish that was buried within them. was this the sort of feeling she’d been so blindingly searching for ? how the old her — just a few years younger, an entire world apart — would have begged to feel this sort of pain on behalf of someone else, to feel so desperately that if there was something, anything she could do to relieve them of it, that she would, without hesitation. what an idealistic dream it had been to seek this exquisite kind of torture.
callie had wanted to reach out and stop him, even has he peeled out of his last layer of clothing — this was bad. despite the sweat lingering on his hairline and the heat blazing through his body, this sort of chill, the real kind and not the type his fever had tricked his mind into believing, would only make whatever this was, worse. callie reached out to grasp the hoodie he’d just removed; the material was too soft for her clenched grip, her curved nails digging into the seems. earlier, she had mistakenly, hastily urged him for his trust, even when she hadn’t earned it, and now, he was catching her in a lie and asking her to prove it. ‘ you can do whatever you want to me, just don’t leave me. ’ instinctively, the part of her that had been trained to reassure and the part of her that had been born to lie, wanted to make him more promises, give him more guarantees. but the way he'd sounded, begging, broken, told her this wasn’t just about his fever or his migraine or this pinpointed moment in a school no one besides them knew about. this would be a promise — once made — callie could never get away with breaking. ‘til death do us part. silence engulfed the hallway, leaving only the low hum of the light fixture above them. she had unknowingly crumpled the thick fabric between her fingers, as if punishing it for the choice he was forcing her to make — between denying who she wanted to be, who she should be and the cruel devotion he was asking of her.
if she was to give him this, he would give her something, too. his eyes were closed and she had the advantage, but it wasn’t one she could take with good conscious. callie didn’t know this boy, despite all the facts she could rattle off about gabriel, and she didn’t understand the cause of his furor, his horror — only that he would discard her touch in one moment and then beg for her presence in the next. callie’s teeth closed around her bottom lip, hesitating. “ gabriel. ” his name, that was safe — or it should have been. “ i’m going to touch you. ” a warning; she’d just given away her advantage, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to claim her due. callie reached towards his face once more — one hand still on her knees clutching his shirt — and used her thumb to lightly brush away the dampness on his cheeks. the movement could have almost been misconstrued as care, as tenderness, but he would know what it meant, because he had denied her once before. “ i’m here. ” an assurance and an exchange. “ i’m not going to leave. ” the last promise she would make to him.
callie’s hand didn’t move — her palm tucked against the curve of his cheek, her fingers resting on the edge of his eye, her thumb damp from his collected tears — as she brought her other hand and his still-warm shirt up. rising up on her knees, she tucked the collar, slowly, this time gently, over his head so it hung limply from his neck. “ you need to put this back on; you have a cold. ” and in an echo of another moment that had just passed, but that also felt eons away, callie pulled away and repeated her words: “ can you stand ? let’s get you to bed. ”
