He went and got the gap-toothed wooden comb they had to share. He sat on the edge of Ash's cot. Steeling himself for the disturbing touch of another person's damp skin, he slid his hand under Ash's sweaty hair and began dragging the comb through it.
At first this just made Ash cry harder. Eventually, though, his sobs subsided to hiccups, then to even breathing. It took forever. By the time he finally cried himself to sleep, his hair was dry enough to curl again, and Kieran's hands were tired.
And Kieran had spent way too long looking down on planes and curves of milk-white skin spotted with tiny freckles, the infant delicacy of Ash's red-bitten mouth, the slender smoothness of his curled hand, and now had to fight with himself to put the comb away and go back to his own side of the cell.
No, he told himself. No. Absolutely not. Never again. They will kill him sooner or later. You will not allow this to scratch you.
Chapter Four
Ashleigh didn't trust himself to speak for a long time after that. Kieran made no attempt to break his silence, for which he was grateful. The tall Iavaian hovered protectively near him whenever they were taken out of the cell, a powerful shadow to shield him from the stares and laughter of those who'd seen him crying. Ashleigh thought that if he had that dark, quiet presence beside him all the time, he could bear these violations and not go mad, but it was a near thing. By lights-out on the third day, he was ready to talk.
"I want to thank you," he whispered. Curled on his side in the dark, he could still feel Kieran's protective presence. Strange, that he could sense it despite being without his Talent. It crossed his mind to wonder if he would find Kieran so comforting if he could feel the ghoul-witch's morbid power; he'd never been near one before. But then, he'd never been near a murderer before, and that didn't seem to matter either. "You've been very kind to me."
There was a rustle and a creak. The mattress shifted; warmth of Kieran's hip beside his thigh; hair draped over his hand, telling him the tall boy had bent his head nearer. "Feeling better now?"
"Yes." Without turning over his hand, he spread his fingers, and felt strands of heavy black hair slide between them, fascinated by the tenuous sense of connection it brought. "I didn't... I didn't expect... I'm very grateful."
"You want to tell me what happened?"
"No. But I'm going to anyway. I think I have to."
"I'm listening."
"I learned why I'm here. Me personally, as opposed to all of us."
"Yeah?"
"I met that Warren person you mentioned. He wasn't alone. He had some students with him.
Other Watchmen. Surveyors. Recent Collegium grads, I think, because you know they take the braid off when they wash their uniforms, and these guys had one loop brighter than the other."
"You don't miss much," Kieran praised him, and he felt warmer for it.
"I want to figure these things out," he explained. "If I know more than they think I do... There were three of them. Warren probably did his explaining before I came in, so I wouldn't hear it, but he had to instruct them a little bit. He told me not to fight, and went into my head. Which of course I didn't like. But he just went in and touched something and came out.
"Then he told one of the students to go in, 'Paying special attention to the inflamed state of the linkage.' And that one went in and blundered around a bit. When he came out he said he couldn't find any Talents."
"Wait. He said Talents, plural?"
"Right. I know, that's weird now that I think about it. I haven't heard of people having more than one."
"Me neither. But go on. Couldn't find it."
"Warren told him that 'a marginal Talent is sometimes eclipsed by flaring in a periodic stress environment,' whatever that means. And he should try again. Um. I kind of lost track after a while, but I think they each made two or three attempts. I don't remember exactly what I heard after that, but I gathered the impression that the reason I'm of interest is that my Talent is so small. Hard to detect. They were practicing." He hesitated, because if he went on and Kieran was indifferent... but he remembered the gentleness of Kieran's fingers, gathering up his hair, smoothing it back from his face. Caring wasn't guaranteed, but it was possible. He took a deep breath and continued. "One of them was enjoying how much it hurt me. That room's not warded.
I had my empathy -- more sensitive than before, sort of rubbed raw -- and one of the students, he really liked that the Surveys distressed me. The more upset I got, the more excited it made him. I mean... sexually. Excited. And. And he. He was being. Hurting me on purpose." Ashleigh held very still, waiting to learn whether his pain mattered to anyone but himself.
A large hand landed on his hair, the sympathy he'd hoped for but hadn't expected. Gratitude and relief made his heart clench, and suddenly he was fighting tears. Kieran's rich voice was soft and near: "You're okay now. It's over now."
"They'll do it again," Ashleigh choked out. "Again and again, until I crack. And then they'll kill me. Or, worse, they won't."
"No. We'll think of something, Ash. I --" The hand tensed, there was a swallowing noise, then a long breath. "I'm angry too," Kieran murmured at last. Ashleigh got the impression he'd almost said something else. "Look, I know you're scared of me. But you have to trust me. That's why you have to trust me. Because I'm mean enough to take what these sadistic fucks deal out and keep going. So you have to lean on me, and learn from me, and you have to keep going too."
Ashleigh rolled his head to search for Kieran's eyes, but couldn't read what he found there.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I'm going to keep you sane. Don't be afraid of me anymore, I'm not going to beat you up if you step wrong or something. When trouble's flying from everywhere, I'll be the direction it's not coming from. I'm saying you do what I tell you, and maybe... maybe we can get out of here."
Though he knew it was a lie, it helped to hear it. "Thanks," he said. "For trying."
Kieran snorted. "At least try to take me seriously, okay? Sure, we have about a housefly's chance in a hurricane, but I for one am going to give it everything I've got. You should decide whether or not you're with me."
"Of course I'm with you," Ashleigh said instantly. "A fly's chance is still a chance, you're right.
What do you need me to do?"
"Whatever it takes. For now, sleep. Get your head straight so you can function tomorrow. And no more crying. They pity you now, but do it too much and they'll peg you as a nutcase." His hand stroked Ashleigh's hair once more, and then his presence receded. A creak from across the room; a rustle of blankets. Eventually, his slow breathing: sleeping as if his conscience were clear.
Ashleigh lacked that ability. He lay awake, thinking so hard his head hurt.
Earlier, he'd tried to understand what made Kieran how he was. Now he thought he was beginning to see it. The first Survey he'd suffered had been painful and humiliating, but he'd been sure it would be the only one. When the rawness in his mind had faded, he'd just been glad it was behind him. This time, though, to have it done a dozen times in an hour, by amateurs, and to feel their emotions at the same time -- clinical indifference from three and perverted joy from one -- he'd been gang-raped, whatever they chose to call it. No wonder he was a mess.
He wondered if shame like this was something Kieran had lived with all his life. Why hadn't it wrecked him? Ashleigh was afraid that one more white uniform would drive him screaming, head-banging, eye-clawing mad. Might have done this time, if not for Kieran's kindness.
Whatever inspired that kindness, be it pity or calculation or -- he wasn't sure whether to hope for or fear this -- desire, it was the only thing in his world that didn't hurt.
So he would take Kieran's advice. Learn from him. Become someone who could do what was expected of him. The person Kieran wanted him to be. Someone who could swallow horror and keep walking. Who didn't care if people didn't like the truth. Who didn't need to be protected like a child.
"Ash," he whispered, trying it out.
"Ash Trine. Good to meet you, I'm Ash Trine."
"What's that?" Kieran mumbled sleepily.
"Nothing. Just changing my name."
--==*==--
"Um, 'scuse me?"
The guard paused outside their cell, throwing a suspicious glance past him to Kieran -- who was, by agreement, nonthreateningly washing his face at their tin mirror. "Need more water?"
"No, thanks, we're fine for water. But I wanted to ask you if there's any way I could get some paper."
The guard gave him a wry half-smile. "Sure, but it won't do you any good without a pen, and I can't give you one of those."
"How about a pencil?"
"Nothing sharp. Sorry." He began to turn away.
"Um." Ashleigh would have given up, but he was being Ash now, and Ash didn't mind if the guard got annoyed. "A crayon? Stick of charcoal? Please? I'll owe you bigtime."
That made the guard get a funny look. "Owe me what, Trine?"
"Whatever. I'll shine your shoes. Come on, I'm going bugs in here with nothing to do."
"Look." The man was getting exasperated. "If I give you a pen, and they find out, I'll lose my job."
"They won't find out. I can hide it." He did his very best needy-kid look. Today, unlike previous instances, it was a mask. "Please?"
The guard's face closed up. "I'll see what I can do." He went away.
"Worth a try," said Kieran when the guard was out of hearing.
"He'll get it. Tomorrow, probably."
"He didn't sound real cooperative."
"That's how I know. Did you hear how he called the prison authorities 'they'? And if he didn't think it was possible, he wouldn't have bothered arguing with me. When he got all stiff, when he left, he was feeling guilty. We can start our census tomorrow. Bet you anything."
Kieran looked impressed and skeptical at once. "You sound like you still got your Talent."
"I guess I learned how to read people, sensing what was behind their faces. I still feel blind, though."
They were confined to quarters today. There had been neither breakfast nor excercise. An earlier attempt at charm had determined that the guard didn't know why either. From time to time the sounds of conversation rose to shouting, always followed by the click of a guard's boots and a barked order to break it up. Everyone was restless.
"Hey," Ash began, not sure what he was about to say but knowing he wanted to talk.
Kieran was cleaning his fingernails with the handle of a mess hall spoon. He just grunted in reply.
"Can I mess with your hair?"
"Mess with it how?" Kieran examined the spoon.
"I don't know. Comb it or something."
"If you're returning the favor from the other day, save it for when I need calming down."
"What, like there's a limited quantity of hair-combing in the world? I'm just bored. My hands want to be doing something."
"Guess I don't care."
Ash fetched the comb. When he turned around, Kieran was taking his shirt off. Ash goggled.
"Um."
"Just a second." Turning the shirt inside out, Kieran lifted one of the shoulder seams to his teeth and snapped a thread.
"What are you doing?"
"Alterations." He bit at the seam of the other shoulder. "What are you looking at? Never seen tattoos before?"
"Um. Not that kind. They're nice." And so is the skin they're on, he added in his mind. "What do they mean?"
Kieran looked surprised, as if no one had ever asked that before. Ash couldn't imagine why; the tattoos were mystifying. There were bands of dots and slashes and symbols all over his arms, a sawtoothed spiral curling down his left forearm, and a large black glyph that covered the upper left part of his chest, as well as the band of dots around his hand that he'd explained before.
Kieran tapped his chest. "This is a wind knot. It's a really old symbol, you find it carved on ruins and painted in caves and stuff. It's kind of a clan thing. This," he indicated two bands of symbols around his right bicep, "is a poem. These here --" the dots and slashes -- "are memorials. And, um, this zigzaggy thing is just decoration, and I did it myself, so it's not deep enough and it's fading. Why, you want one?"
"No. Thanks."
"It would stand out nice on that white skin of yours."
"I'm sure it would, but --"
"I'm just playing with you. Here, do your fidgety hair thing." He turned sideways on the edge of the cot, making room for Ash to sit behind him.
Ash gathered up the thick, black length of Kieran's hair, preparatory to starting the comb through it. It was nothing like his own chaotic mop; it felt smooth and cool and heavy in his hands, and it was all he could do not to bury his face in it. He wished he could find out if tattooed skin felt any different. If it tasted any different. With what Kieran had said the other day, there was even a small chance that such a thing would be welcomed -- Right, because a twiggy freckle-faced twit like you is just what he needs to take his mind off his dead outlaw boyfriend. Stick to combing.
But since Kieran's back was turned, he could gorge himself on the sight of it. He could imagine what it would feel like to run his fingers down the furrow where muscle met spine.
He could sit with his knees up and pull his shirt down in case Kieran turned around, or things might get embarassing.
"When you're done playing," Kieran said, "Make two braids. You know how to braid, right?"
"I guess so."
"You guess? You never braided yours?"
"I mostly had it short. That's -- well, up north anyway, that's how everybody under thirty's wearing it. What you're seeing now is three months waiting for my trial and not being allowed scissors. I managed to talk someone into shaving me before I went on the dock, or else I'd look like a complete bum."
"Oh. Fashion." Kieran sounded disgusted. His shoulders tensed, and there was a ripping sound.
"Speaking of which, think they'll shoot me for wrecking my regulation shirt?"
Still reeling from the sight of lithe muscles rolling under cinnamon skin, Ash made an incoherent noise.
"My bet is they'll just give me a new one. You going to make those braids any time soon?"
"Uh. Yeah. Sorry."
Bending to his task -- and to conceal his discomfort in case anyone looked at him -- he ran the comb through in long strokes. Gradually, he realized he was happy. How strange, that in the middle of one of the worst situations he could possibly have ended up in, he could be content.
But he was. To hell with the Watch and their Surveys, to hell with the bored nastiness of the other prisoners, the bad accomodations and worse food, despair and doom, to hell with it all. He was glad just to be near Kieran, to be touching him even if only a little, to be trusted by him even if only marginally.
Kieran liked him. He'd said so. 'No one I like uses my last name.' And 'Lean on me, I'm going to keep you sane.' Kieran was his friend.
"Kieran?"
"Yeah?"
No, that would be ridiculous. Even if Kieran were desperate enough to go for someone as boring and funny-looking as Ash, there was no privacy whatsoever. "Never mind."
"No, tell me."
"I forgot."
"You have to quit doing that."
"Sorry."
Kieran made another ripping sound, and then another.
"Kieran?"
"If you say never mind --"
"What the hell are you doing to your shirt?"
"Show you in a second. Make the braids here, behind my ears, but leave the back loose. They should be about this thick." He held up his thumb to illustrate.
It took some doing, but eventually Ash managed to make a braid of the correct size behind Kieran's right ear, and he discovered what all the shirt-ripping was about: Kieran had removed the sleeves and torn them into strips, which he began wrapping around the braid.
"Fashion?" Ash said wryly.
"Tradition," Kieran returned. "These should be red leather, but you make do."
"What is it, a t
ribal thing?"
Kieran turned to give him a poisonous green glare. "Yes."
Ash leaned back from that stare, realizing what his words had sounded like. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say, and after all the anti-assimilationist pamphlets I've written too. It's just, you seem so --"
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