This Shattered World

“This will tint your skin.” She dips the rag into the paste and reaches for my arm, scrubbing it in circles and leaving dark brown smears behind, like shoe polish. “You won’t find a white guy from Avon with a tan. Everyone will assume you’re an off-worlder.”

“I’m going to look like an idiot,” I mourn, looking down at the unnatural brown of my arm.

“What else is new?” she retorts. “Idiotic is good. Nobody pays attention to idiots—they dismiss them. No one suspects they’re hiding anything.”

I watch as she works her way up my arm. It’s clever. It’s beyond clever—it’s brilliant. It’s what a lifetime of living on a planet torn by war teaches you: How to read people. How to blend in. How to disappear. But this—this never would’ve occurred to me.

“Sofia—why do you have this stuff?”

She doesn’t answer, her lips pressing more tightly together. Instead she concentrates on working the paste into my shoulders, my neck, my ears, my face. I watch her as she dabs carefully around my eyes, noting how different she is from Jubilee. Fair, gentle, her features soft, her mouth made for smiling. She looks innocent, even happy, but for the grief in her eyes.

“You were going to run,” I say softly. “When they came for you.”

“Where would I have run to?” She spreads the mixture down my chest a ways, stopping when she’s sure the line won’t be visible under a shirt. “There’s nothing for me on Avon anymore. Unless you think the Fianna would take me.”

I watch as she shifts, leaning over so she can work at my hands, staining carefully around the nails. Someone like her would’ve been a major asset for us—quick thinking and a silver tongue. Maybe she could have helped me fend off McBride.

Or maybe she’d have been dead alongside Mike and Fergal, and I’d have lost one more person that day.

“Don’t go into the swamps, Sofia.”

Her eyes search mine. “No,” she agrees, letting her breath out. “Let that soak in for a while,” she commands, getting to her feet and dipping a glass full of water with which to scrub at her stained hands over the basin.

“Whatever you were going to use this stuff for…can you get more?”

Sofia shrugs. “It’s fine, I can take care of myself.” She rinses her hands and tilts her head so she can peer at me. “But can you?”

“I don’t think Sean would even recognize me now.” There’s a cut at my heart for that, but I shove it aside.

“That’s not what I mean.” Sofia’s eyes are on mine, raking across my features, trying to read me the way she reads the trodairí when determining which one to try to swindle out of his extra rations. “Flynn…is she worth it?”

That brings me up short, and I stop picking at the paste drying to a crusty mess on my arm so I can gaze back at her. “She’s not why I chose what I did.”

The corner of Sofia’s mouth quirks. “You can hide from the Fianna, Flynn, but you can’t hide from me. Your eyes dilate when you think about her; you speak more quickly, less carefully. I’m used to watching for the signs—how do you think I get things out of the trodairí?”

I shake my head, knowing Sofia will read guilt clearly across my face. That the girl who killed my people, who I found covered in their blood, whose hands I had to wash clean—that the thought of her still does this to me is detestable. “It doesn’t matter. What she’s done, Sof—it doesn’t matter what I think or feel.”

“You were never a very good liar, Flynn.”

She gives the dyes time to set and then helps me wash my hair and scrub the paste from my skin. To my relief, when the dark brown gunk is swept away, the skin underneath is a much more natural shade of golden brown. Still ridiculous on me, but it’ll pass all but the closest of inspections.

I brought nothing with me, so once the mess is cleared away, I’m left standing by the door, bracing myself to step outside. It’s begun to rain, its patter on the roof muffled by the moss that grows there for insulation from the cold.

When I look back at Sofia, she’s biting her lip, her tired eyes finally lighting a little in amusement. Seeing my glance, she quips, “You do look like an idiot.”

“Good, I guess.”

“You can get into the bar via the back door. It’s in the alley behind the building, it leads into the storeroom.” The amusement flees her expression. “I’m probably not going to see you again after they take me away.”

Her matter-of-fact tone cracks my heart. “Maybe not,” I concede. “You never know.” She’s my last hint of home—the last person truly of Avon to look at me without hatred in her gaze. I’m forced to swallow, clear my throat as it threatens to close. “I’ll think of you.”

She shakes her head, lips curving a little. “I’ll think of you too. I’ll remember you looking absolutely ridiculous.”

“At least I’m memorable.” It’s gallows humor, but it helps. A little. I step toward her, lifting an arm to reach for a hug.

Her half smile vanishes, and she pulls away as her gaze slides from mine. “It’ll be easier for me if you don’t,” she says softly. “I have to stop thinking of this place as home. It has to just be a place I lived for a while.”

My throat does close then, and we’re both silent, with only the rain on the roof to break up the quiet. I study the girl I knew, another casualty of this fight, wondering how the wounds of it will mark her. “Clear skies, Sof.” It’s all I have left to say.