Amy smiled, her arms folded. She only wore a simple short sleeved top, crimson fabric, and with her arms exposed her fucking tattoos were plainly visible. She looked as at ease as I’d seen her in recent memory.

A doctor said something in a foreign tongue. Amy stumbled through her response. Fucking Citrine had been better at speaking the language, and Citrine hadn’t lived here for any length of time.

Emotion choked me. Everything I’d felt in the last two years at once. Every swear word I’d uttered multiplied by every jawbone and sternum, every rib I’d shattered, the lives I’d taken and the damage I’d done. I trembled with it and I couldn’t find an outlet. I would have puked again, I would have screamed at her, and I couldn’t.

Only paralysis.

Then fear. Every flicker in my peripheral vision, every doubt that had crossed my mind, all gathered together. Except… she was here, a half smile on her face as she said something to the doctor, who looked annoyed.

I felt like there was a deal we made with ourselves growing up. That we were kids and we were scared of the dark and the unknown, and we braved the world and each fear we faced down was a promise to ourselves. Fourteen-year-old Vicky enacting an unspoken agreement with little waist-high Vicky, saying ‘We’re going to approach that boy, and it’s exciting and it’s scary but I’ll handle it if it gets messy’.

That I’d step into that first fight with an adult man almost twice my size, and I’d manage. A pledge from myself to a more vulnerable myself, that we were strong enough.

A silent promise to myself when I fought a person with powers. Scared every time, but earning that trust and the ability to make bigger and better promises along the way.

Here, that vulnerable, small, childish part of me that was ready to be scared of everything was in the driver’s seat.

The bigger, adult me was paralyzed, thrust away. Because in that storm of bound-up feelings that were hitting me full force, there was another kind of non-feeling process. I’d disconnected, pulled away, detached so many times. Gone to another place, dove into academic thought, dove into memories, lost myself in violence, even.

As I felt anger like I’d kept all of the anger of the last few years in reserve, and a quiet terror that seemed to encapsulate every fear I’d ever had, I felt the safety of the disconnect, observing everything from arm’s length, even myself.

I tried to speak and only a small sound came out.

Immediately, that ease I saw in her disappeared. Amy turned my way, then hurried to my bedside.

I reached for powers and found paralysis instead. They were there, but—

I thought of the Gimel refugees. Of the need for supplies.