Work Text:
Bkornblume was weird, as far as arcanists go. Her unique skill of “listening” has always made her a little more chummy with people than they were comfortable with. It's only natural, when she tunes in to their secrets, their struggles, and the grumbles under their breath. She formed opinions—attachments, even—to people and things she'd never touched. But the one-sidedness of it was never a concern. Because this, to her, was love.
Leaving headache pills at the door of her neighbor who'd complained about their migraines. Cheering alongside that student some blocks away when she'd finally become monitor assistant after all those late nights studying. Slipping a flower into the room of a girl who'd joked to herself she was alone for Valentines day.
It could be nice. It did mean well. But it was also pretty weird.
Of course, Lilya wouldn't say that to her face. Not after the first time, when she got such a lukewarm response. But this opinion of hers was just something to keep in mind, so that she doesn't end up doing anything stupid.
“Weird girl,” Lilya thinks to herself, on the way to the weird girl’s room. Her comrade had odd boundaries, or, lack thereof—giving the pilot a spare key and an invitation to walk in ‘any time’, since the sound of her standing by the door would be like a knock in itself.
She knocks anyways.
“Hello? Comrade Bkornblume? Are you free today?” What's with me getting formal all the sudden? “It's Lilya.”
There’s no sound from the other side of the door. Strange, since she should be off work by now, and Lilya knew her to be a terrible shut-in. The cafeteria, maybe? No, Blume usually eats early in the evening, not 9 o'clock. The shower didn’t sound like it was running either.
“Wanted to stop by, are you there?” She knocks again, but gets no response. Now Lilya felt weird for trying. It’s perfectly normal for someone to be out of their room. It’s not normal for Lilya to try and barge into someone else’s space, especially when she didn’t need anything.
She presses her ear to the door, but the sounds of the halls overtake anything that could be in Bkornblume’s room. That is, until–
“Ой!” Lilya jolts backwards after hearing a loud, raucous sound, like furniture falling, and wood boards yawning. But nothing comes after.
“Bkornblume?”
Her keyring clamors and jingles as she fiddles to find the one for this room. She’s never been eager to intrude, exactly. It must be the alcohol talking, or the strange, restless loneliness that’s nagged at her the past week, supplemented by the excuse of checking on Blume, that finally spurs Lilya to walk in after hearing the crash.
She enters to a dark room illuminated only by Bkornblume’s sprawling array of desk monitors. For most people, this would signal that the occupant wasn’t home, but it was par for the course in Bkornblume’s case. Lilya steps through the door, fists raised, until the source of that sound makes itself clear.
The middle monitor is honed on a camera feed in some decrepit house. The noise-making wardrobe in question has fallen on its side, depressing the boards around it. Sun and snow invite themselves through the open roof of this faraway abode without a care.
“Whose old house is that?” Lilya wonders aloud, before scanning the darkness of the room. No reply, no movement. The girl really isn’t here. The pilot sighs.
“There’s got to be some actual light in here,” Lilya grumbles, feeling around the dark room for a switch. She knew the shape of Zeno-assigned rooms well enough, but she wasn’t used to the Foundation’s dormitories, and Bkornblume was often so well prepared for her that she’d never need to search for it.
Before Lilya knows it, she’s gotten exceedingly comfortable—laid her jacket on the chair, her flask and keys on the mousepad. With each aimless turn around the room, her gaze is once again lured back to that monitor, and the many others around it.
“Seriously… what kind of hobby is this?”
Lilya sits down on the chair driven by a sudden curiosity despite her criticism. The leftmost monitor showed a shockingly modern, tall glass building—moreover, one she’d heard of. Schocken? A department store chain one of her mentors in Zeno mentioned. But in this era, 1913, it’d been brought back to life from its future demolition, brimming with shoppers in black coats, stepping off their trams. So these feeds must’ve been set up in Germany. It’s anyone's guess how Bkornblume got them working, though.
To the right was the dark, unstable image of an underground tunnel. Clinging to the wall’s shadows were the stone-faced, silent crowd, sleeping on anything from thin mats to their own suit jackets. Lilya had heard this story from a disheartened Bkornblume before—mass migration and industrialization led to severe overcrowding and homelessness in Berlin at the time. “But filling your room with such a depressing sight isn’t going to help anyone,” Lilya sighs.
A German radio broadcaster prattles on in the murmur. Could’ve been good news, could've been bad. Whatever it was, the crowd liked it enough to leave it on, but, for a moment, Lilya wonders if Bkornblume wished she could’ve been the one speaking hope to them. When Lilya saw the faint markings of graffiti across the wall in a flicker of light, she began to recall a corny joke of Blume’s:
“Do you know where you can see flowers? In a parterre or in a garden? Neither, my friend, you should go under the bridge where even a tramp will find it too dirty to spend a night. Only on the mud-coated walls of the aperture can you see the most beautiful cornflowers'... graffiti.”
“No flowers here,” Lilya mumbles, taking a sip from her canteen, before realizing it’s empty. “Not even a Bkornblume,” she jests.
Lilya’s ‘comrade’ never really liked it when she reeked of booze, nor did Lilya feel very courteous making her taste it off her lips. Since she didn’t know what today might bring, she tries to swallow the lingering flavor to the back of her throat.
The top-right monitor is dead and pitch black, but the sticky note attached to it explains its story well:
1966 Deutsche Oper Berlin
Pilar Lorengar Performance Dates:
Feb 05, Feb 11, Mar 04, Mar 12, Apr 24 (TOSCA!!!)
‘1966’ ended last February 15th, just a few weeks ago. The dates following it are crossed out in a solemn recognition of that fact. Wasn’t Bkornblume bugging Lilya to watch one of those with her some time ago? The pilot feels suddenly awkward.
Another monitor, a quiet moment of children eating supper. The kids, likely of an orphanage, tiptoe uncharacteristically carefully with their trays in hand today: Bread and watery porridge with a side of the particular luxury that is meat, at least if the ‘Sunday = Dessert Day (?)’ note is to be trusted. Below it was a list of children’s names and their most defining physical qualities to recognize them on the camera feed.
Lilya matches a few faces to their descriptions unconsciously before catching herself. “Nope! No way, фу (yuck), where's the off?”
Another, the break room of a baker, who apparently struggled from a bad wrist. Another, a thin, greyish striped stray cat in the alley Bkornblume seems to have named Hermann. Someone’s kitchen, someone’s boat, another, another, another, all split across the changing screens. Too many noises and distractions—or no, Lilya was plenty used to noise—rather, it was all too intimate and closeup for comfort. She had no reason to know so much about strangers.
She ends up cutting all their feed off in haste. Bkornblume can chew her out later if she wants.
Just, her gaze settles back on the wardrobe in the center of that odd, abandoned house. It was the only thing peaceful enough to stay on. Where was it? Could it be Bkornblume’s old home, just reversed? If she even cared for such a thing. But it wasn't like her to keep an eye on unmoving architecture over people.
What if it were mine? Obviously, it isn’t, Lilya knows that. But she’s been to so many places and let so many closeups like this fall from her mind, that she wonders if her old home could show up on one of these monitors and feel just as alien.
Even if Lilya wanted to keep an eye on Moscow, she doesn’t have anyone left to watch. War buddies are always on the move. Either they pass on like so many others have, or you meet up with them when you do. But there’s no sense in keeping your heart and eyes peeled when they’re out of your grasp. Mom and dad, childhood friends, neighbors, teachers—their silhouettes all fade like dots in the aerial view. Moscow was her home, but her Moscow was gone. A true home could only be found in the transient sky, misted like clouds drifting up in the Storm rain. A little camera to peek at whoever did or didn’t sleep in her old room wouldn’t help her one bit. If nothing else, maybe a street view of her favorite pub would do fine.
This house here, there's a couch and an unlit hearth, ash piled before it. Utensils and random objects scatter across the counter and floor, as if the owners dug through their drawers in a hurry. Textiles, kid’s toys, paperwork, old clothes; right before the door, they're left in a neat pile, never having passed the final screening of this fleeing family, it seems. What’s left behind isn’t very telling. What the family truly held onto dearly—what would truly represent them as people—had vanished with them into obscurity.
“Running from conscription or something?” Lilya wonders aloud, leaning into the screen.
“You'd be correct!” Bkornblume chimes in from the dark, touching a hand to the pilot's shoulder.
“Блин!”
Lilya’s reflexes fire before her brain does. Her hand latches onto Bkornblume’s forearm with an iron grip, eyes blown wide in the sparse monitor light. Only when she noticed the long, blue wool scarf dipping down to brush against her wrist did the adrenaline begin to fade, leaving her exasperated. She releases Bkornblume, rubbing her eyes to squint past the dark.
“Bah! Don't sneak up on me like that, Blume, I could've tossed you!” She exhaled sharply, trying to mask her jumpiness. “When’d you even get here?”
“A minute or two ago—you left my door wide open, grumbling all the way back down the hall about this and that,” she laughs. Lilya almost waggled her finger in indignity, to express her privacy had been invaded, but, Bkornblume having an ear to tap into her own room was probably the most reasonable place to have it. The agent leans down, brushing her lips to Lilya’s ear in a hush. “Besides, it's fun to see you flustered.”
“You're so…” Lilya’s brows furrow in frustration, but she can't muster the courage to bite back at Bkornblume’s soft, smiling, scarf-covered face. Lilya pinches the bridge of her nose. “What did you hear me say, anyways?”
“It's easier to ask me what didn't I hear,” Bkornblume spins the desk chair to make Lilya face her, gesturing to the blacked monitors. “Not a fan of my picks, I guess? Come on, I'll show you something you'll actually like. Let me take a seat.”
“Seat? ‘Kay, I’ll–”
Lilya plants her hands on the arm of the chair, ready to push herself up, but Bkornblume doesn’t step back. She stands right in front of her, eying the leather seat, leaving absolutely no room for Lilya to stand.
The implication takes a hot, awful second to sink in. Before Lilya can react, the agent moves forward. Lilya's arms awkwardly splay out, her hands instinctively grabbing her comrade’s waist to support her as the agent smoothly sits down sideways right onto her lap, a knowing, mischievous crinkle in her eyes.
“Geez, seriously, you are so–” Lilya chokes on the rest of her complaint when Bkornblume plants a gentle, self-steadying hand on her upper back. It always surprised Lilya how light the girl felt in her arms, yet her touch felt more real and crushing than the hands of any odd Zeno bunkmate she’d messed around with.
“I'm so… what, Ms. Lilya? You never seem to finish that,” she giggles, twirling the pilot's hair in one finger. “Oh, here, let me take that,” she plucks off Lilya's wool hat and goggles to lay on the already cluttered desk. Her hot ears feel suddenly cool in the air.
Two can play at that. “Then you better drop this,” Lilya responds, plucking Bkornblume's headphones from her head.
“Hey!”
“Don't need it, don't wear it,” Lilya scolds bluntly, plucking down her face-covering scarf in tandem. “Don't they give you headaches?”
“Mhm, but I was listening to something nice…” The agent pouts softly without the scarf, making Lilya think for the thousandth time that this girl was far too soft for her cold line of business, despite sharing the same tired eye bags as everyone else. “Alright,” she shrugs, her expression light again. “You look very pretty with your hair up. Can I give you a kiss on the cheek, comrade Lilya?”
Suddenly, the air along the back of her neck feels cool. “Uh, ha, you've already taken to sitting on me, haven't you?” Her pitch unfortunately cracks at the last word, readily revealing her embarrassment.
“Maybe, but that's plenty different from a kiss.” Her hand slowly trails to the back of Lilya's neck, neatly tucking the hair out of the way. “So may I?”
Lilya’s mouth moves a few times wordlessly, before she just nods with a grunt. If she’d wound her jaw up any tighter, she might just screw her eyes shut.
Bkornblume’s breath hovers over Lilya’s cheek, deliberately teasing to see if taking it slow will make the pilot melt, or just become more rigid. ‘Mercifully’, she leans in and presses a soft, lingering kiss on the center of Lilya’s cheek.
One. Two. Three, Lilya counts to herself, before her own lips part, eyes trained to Bkornblume’s face. It’s not so bad after all. It never is. And it’s much too soft. So Lilya thinks the only way to make it right—to prove how easy it is to take—must be to return the favor. She focuses. Bkornblume perks her eyebrows coyly, yet the slight dilation of her pupils conveys a delighted surprise. She turns her head slightly, offering her cheek up. Lilya takes the back of the girl’s neck in one hand, shoulder in the other, and plants a firm, clumsy kiss that aims for the cheek, but lands right at the corner of the agent’s mouth.
“Whoops,” she mumbles halfheartedly, going for another one, softer on the jaw.
Bkornblume draws Lilya’s head back up in her hands, but the pilot’s eyes stare down at the girl’s lips a few seconds too long, flickering down and then up. A confused, silent exchange takes place between their darting eyes. Bkornblume, too—looking up, then down again, the mischievous smile lost from her lips in equal, rigid contemplation. Only an intimate, unknown, shared awe remains between them. Are we…? Should I…?
Lilya certainly didn’t hate noise. What she couldn't stand was the hair-raising tension, where the intimacy of this silence forced her to hear each and every ruffle of fabric against leather. She presses down gently on Bkornblume’s back, more cautious than kindly, craning her own neck up and leaning forward with her eyes wide open on the off chance she might miss something. Hell, what am I being so careful for?!
Bkornblume shuts her eyes. With the suddenness of flight, Lilya closes the gap.
The agent had once teased her that just kissing aggressively didn’t do anything to mask Lilya’s inexperience or nervousness, so she had to tone it down a bit. Kissing this softly and sparsely felt more like a game of cat and mouse, the roles tossed around with each sigh into the other’s mouth. That girl thinks she’s got everyone figured out, just because of her eavesdropping. But in moments like these, Lilya got to watch Bkornblume completely lose her cool—and hell, she felt the blood rushing to her own head just the same.
A small, shocked laugh slips from Lilya’s lips when a thumb slips under the edge of her leather glove, finding the sensitive skin of her palm. Bkornblume shifts in the chair, pushing herself up to face Lilya better, her knees bracketing Lilya's thighs.
“Damn,” Lilya curses softly, separating their mouths briefly. “You’re gonna fall off if you straddle like that.”
Bkornblume fidgets, but eventually accepts that logic after she wobbles unsteadily in the chair. “Hmm, then should we stop here?”
“You’re the one who wanted to show me something,” Lilya shrugs, shoulders rubbing against the leather seat.
“I know. I just figured you were scared of what might happen if you keep kissing me,” Bkornblume teases, still panting.
Oh, that’s enough! Lilya thinks.
In a sudden, somewhat rough motion, Lilya bunches up the girl’s scarf and yanks her down. The chair groans under the quick shift in weight, rolling back slightly. Lilya brings their faces inches apart, locking her gaze onto Bkornblume with the discernment and fierceness of an eagle. Trying to make herself into someone soft and mushy was like trying to bend scrap metal with your bare hands. This is what she was good at.
“I’m not scared,” Lilya whispers with a bite to it, and for the first time tonight, she can be believed. She wraps her fingers back around the cold hand under her glove, sending warm tingles up Bkornblume’s spine. “You can’t get away with teasing me all the time, okay?” She chides, raising her eyebrows in an earnest challenge.
Bkornblume’s breath hitches, her face pulled in a goofy, nervous little smile. She nods automatically, her mind scattered. Lilya hums in satisfaction, glancing shamelessly from the girl’s eyes to her lips. Bkornblume nods a second time in silent validation.
Lilya pulls her in by the scarf into a slow, tender kiss, careful not to upset the balance and send them both falling like idiots. Bunching their bodies so closely together—as nerve-wracking as it is—is, in truth, the best way to stay steady.
Once the short embrace ends, a cocky yet soft grin returns to Lilya’s face. “Geez. Spook you that much?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘spooked’ is the word,” Bkornblume murmurs.
Her arms tremble slightly as she finally pushes herself aside. She turns to face the monitor, opting to sit safely between Lilya’s legs, and reaches out an unsteady hand to the keyboard.
The one Lilya least wants to see is the first to flicker alive. “Hello little friends,” Bkornblume casually greets the unaware children on the screen, as if it were no more than a courtesy.
She senses, or anticipates Lilya’s discomfort. “Don’t worry,” she reassures, and with a few clicks, the brightness lowers until the scene is no more than shadows and silhouettes to squint at. “It'll be just me who hears them. Now, for you,” Bkornblume closes her eyes in thought, her weight shifting as if she were skimming a dense paper. She takes a quiet, grounding breath.
“Ich lausche…” I'm listening, she whispers.
The middle monitor suddenly cuts black, and then the picture foams with static and distortion. An auditory hiss from the screen, likely far louder to her ears, makes Bkornblume’s brows furrow, before it smooths out with the untensing of her body. Amidst a bright white snow, black and grey blurs of movement sharpen until the picture becomes clear. Weapons and soldiers, lost in the tedium of the arctic wind.
“Polar bears?” Lilya’s head perks over Bkornblume's shoulder. She drags the chair wheels forward with her heel.
“Right. And some… um, a Zeno outpost.” Bkornblume inches forward on the seat stiffly.
“Hm?” Lilya tilts her head, trying to gauge why the agent had become so still, before she looks down, realizing the girl was politely trying not to brush or lay against Lilya's chest. “Don't bother yourself,” the pilot chuckles, tapping Bkornblume's shoulder to settle back.
“I’d approximated its location using a frequency I saw in some Foundation documents,” she shifts backwards, her hand accidentally brushing against Lilya’s thigh as she reaches for the armrest. “Ah, I don’t usually go outside of Germany, but I was looking for interesting places to listen to in Moscow.”
“This is for sure Russia, but those guys aren’t in Moscow,” Lilya presses her fingernail to the screen, as if scratching the polar bear’s head. “But isn’t using classified stuff like that super illegal?”
Bkornblume looks back at her incredulously, but her expression conveys nothing but yes.
“Attagirl,” Lilya smiles, affectionately rubbing Bkornblume’s shoulders. “Screw rules. But break more interesting ones, yeah?”
Bkornblume rolls her eyes, a soft smile tugging at her mouth. “Either way, I thought of this place because you were from Zeno, but it looks like you’re more interested in the bears.”
“What, I’ll like it just because we’re all Zeno? What am I gonna say about this guy?” She flicks her hand dismissively at the officer leaning against a guard post. “Eh, his hat is too big for his head? Barber cut his hair uneven?” They both giggle at her remark. “Don’t know these guys. And I don’t miss getting our butts frozen with nothing to do but small talk and some guy’s half-missing Durak deck.”
“I guess I could miss it,” Bkornblume leans her head against Lilya’s shoulder, staring at the grainy figures.
“What, you were a soldier?”
“No, but I’ve listened to plenty of them over the years. Haven’t you ever been forced to be around someone for so long, and hear everything they talk about, that their life starts becoming yours?”
“Huh…” Lilya purses her lips, knowing, despite Bkornblume’s accurate example, what she was referring to had to be worlds apart from her own. “I’ve definitely met some chatty guys whose lives I don't want to be mine. I can see it.”
But, could Bkornblume? As much as she immersed herself in their sound, would she ever feel the frostbite on her fingertips as they clung onto the hard wood of their guns, or understand the bored foreign phrases they spoke, or revel in the unmistakable camaraderie between them?
“But what’s with the bears?” She asks, curling her hand around Lilya’s
“Oh, yeah.” Lilya’s smile crinkles slightly in embarrassment. “We fed some of those guys, back when I was a kid.”
“Fed them?!” Bkornblume’s brows rise in disbelief.
“All garbage food—that sweet condensed milk from the can. The higher-ups were telling us to take pictures for some PR nonsense. Half the guys were telling me to go for it, the other half telling me to back off. Can you guess which half I listened to?”
Bkornblume gives a knowing, resigned look. “The one telling you to feed them?”
“Yep. Don’t wanna look like a little kid, right?” Lilya brushes aside the fact she just admitted she was a kid at the time. “I had the shakes still. Told them it was ‘cause of the cold, but it was probably obvious."
“Anyone would be terrified,” Bkornblume offers easily, her thumb tracing the back of Lilya’s glove. “Even I get kind of nervous when they come closer to the outpost.”
“I wasn’t crazy enough to hold the can to its mouth like the other guys. But we’d been doing it so often I guess the whole family got used to us. So when they saw me with the food, they started following me around. I got spooked and tried to walk away—no sudden movements with these guys, y’know?” Lilya shrugs, smiling at Bkornblume’s utter confusion as to how she could recount being chased by bears with such fondness.
“But you were still able to feed them?”
“I was stupid and smart. For some reason, I didn’t wanna let go of the can, even though that’s all they wanted. Lucky I still got these hands, huh?” She gently sways their intertwined hands between them. “The boys were aiming their rifles at that point in case I started getting mauled. But I managed to climb onto the loading truck for dear life, and had the cubs and mom waiting for me at the box’s edge. That’s where I gave it.”
“That’s scary. They still could have climbed up after you.”
“They should've," Lilya shrugs. “But I started pouring it for them so fast I guess they didn’t need to. I swear a quarter landed on their fur. Such a mess,” she laughs. “No way they used those for the official photos.”
Yet, as bad as she must’ve looked, she did feel powerful in that moment. She still found the bears rather cute. At least, when they were nothing more than shapes on Bkornblume’s screen. When they were nothing more than fuzzy dots of terrain on the air of her Red-38. The danger remained, but looking down at it somehow made it bearable. Beautiful, even.
Perhaps that was how she’d endured every Storm, every fear, and every loss. All from the safety of the sky.
“Ms. Lilya? Are you still with me?”
“Mm?” The pilot couldn’t tell how long she blanked out, but her eyes open sleepily to a few new dim screens. “Yeah, yeah,” she slumps back into Bkornblume, hands haphazardly framed around the girl’s waist to hide the depth of affection she held. Being tired, being drunk—these too were safe heights for her to touch the world with, to do what she wanted to do, and say the things she otherwise couldn’t say. “Do your thing,” she mumbles into her neck, lazily watching the screen in one moment, and resting her eyes in another.
What Lilya didn’t realize was that Bkornblume, too, loved the high vantage point of ‘air’, and her comrade’s inebriation of drink and sleep.
Bkornblume places her free palm tentatively on the warm monitor, watching the baker prepare his overnight pastries alone. “Poor Hans,” she mumbles. But he isn’t quite alone with her here, she’d like to tell him. He fans himself, wiping sweat from his brow. There must be no cooling in his establishment. She imagines the gusts of heat from the ovens hitting her face in a hot, stuffy, yet comforting air, the smell of bread and butter all around them. Yet, when her eyes unfocus from the scene, and she hears the soft breath next to her ear over the hum of the oven, the palm she’d placed on the monitor begins to feel no more than lukewarm again. And Lilya’s hand, curled around her other wrist, overtakes it. Beyond a figment of imagination. Beyond a sound.
Beyond understanding, thinks Bkornblume.
“I think, if you couldn’t fly, you’d be just like me,” Bkornblume whispers to the air.
“I’m not like you,” Lilya’s mind snaps back immediately, but her mouth remains unmoving under the guise of disinterest. You’d tap into your little screen to hear a play. I’d go and see it. From the rafters at least.
“Don’t you get tired of it?” Lilya asks, her tone somewhat defeated. “Pretending you can taste their bread a hundred miles away? Hell, this is what you do when you’re off the clock, too.” Lilya sighs, resting her chin against Bkornblume’s scarf. “I thought you even said you were jealous of how I lived that one time.”
“It’s not pretending.” Bkornblume corrects calmly, though her fingers hook on the armrest. “At least, it's more than that for me. I can take a walk to anywhere in the world—in anyone’s shoes, just from my seat. Like the way you can fly anywhere you like. No one can hear the opera like I do, or watch the world so entirely like us.”
It’s not the same, Lilya feels. She tightens her hand around Bkornblume’s. For all the roughness of her leather glove, it’d touched many more hands than Bkornblume’s. It had to have, right?
“But…” Lilya’s face scrunches in a frustration, compelled almost by a fear she had buried in herself. “Don’t you ever try to reach or talk to them?”
“Talk to them?”
“The people you’re always watching.” Lilya feels immediately foolish for proposing the idea. It was creepy to watch them! Even worse to ever interact with their lives. But even Lilya knew, begrudgingly, how important it was to be grounded. And Bkornblume, she hardly ever touched the world with her own hands. Just hovered in the web of screens and soundwaves. If ‘landing’ meant getting hammered and waking up having kissed some pretty girls in Lilya’s case, it was a start. If Bkornblume had to reach out to those she loved in some way… could that have been a start? “I know you’ve called help for them a couple of times, or sent them gifts, but they don’t even know you. Didn’t you say, um…” Lilya continues, her voice growing small as she rubs her fingers together awkwardly, “Like how you said you wanted to be a radio show host, one time?”
“You remember that?” Bkornblume sounds flattered.
Frustrating, Lilya thinks. It’s not as if the agent were the only one listening.
“But, that’s different.” Bkornblume lays back detachedly, as if she’d forgotten thee warmth of Lilya’s body was even there. “You don’t really need to touch something for it to be real. If I gave them a poke, the baker stops humming to himself. The kids will walk on their toes and lower their heads like adults, and the crowd will speak only cold necessities with each other. Nobody wants to be seen through.” It seems like it’d already happened. “This is how… I make sure things stay the same. I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help, but I can’t see myself out of this room. You don’t have to worry about me, though—it’s not as terrible as you think.”
She smiles weakly, the monitor’s blue washing over her face in a subtle coldness. “Maybe we’re just different.”
Weren’t you just going on about how we were the same?
What was it that led to this feeling of resignation? She heard it in Bkornblume’s voice, and she felt it in her own slackened arms. Another step up they were too afraid to take. Lilya exhales deeply.
It had to have started just one day her buddies were out on the field, and Bkornblume approached her in the cafeteria, assuming she must’ve felt lonely. At the time, the pilot thought Blume must not have known The Goddess of Victory to be strolling up so calmly—but that would be nigh impossible once Lilya learned of the girl’s listening talents.
Bkornblume ‘knew’ who she was, at least if the grumbles and rumors were anything to judge by. And that’s why she knew Lilya was just soft enough and didn't have it in her to turn a nice girl away.
Lilya didn’t yet know Bkornblume’s ‘hobbies’, or her solitary obsession with her work. But day by day, Bkornblume had chipped away an inch more at her, until she’d come to her room, until they’d share dreams, and she’d scowl at those damn monitors, and they’d hug, and chat, and kiss, and bicker all over again—and none of it would make any sense at all.
Was it fair that only Lilya got to love her, here in this dark, secluded room?
Of course not. Not at all. The world deserved to be held by Bkornblume’s compassionate hands, and spoken to with her voice, if only she’d try again. And Lilya deserved to touch the ground in places other than here. I do touch the ground. I do live life to the fullest, she repeats to herself. Because if this room had to remain nothing more than some strange, detached flight of fancy, she had to remind herself, as always, to never do something stupid she’d regret.
“You know,” Bkornblume begins, barely breaking the silence. “There is a skill like that. I haven’t brushed up on it in a long time, but, you can pop your voice out of a little wire. It’s just a little more volatile than an arcanum powered radio.”
“You wanted to use it once?” Lilya perks up, eyes narrowing in interest.
“The times never stop. Maybe… if those who I’d been with were panicking during the storm, I would like to comfort them in the end, even if I couldn’t save them myself. I regret only being able to watch the rain fall on them, yet I could never look away.”
A bleeding heart till the end. Lilya rolls her eyes, but her voice lacks any bite. “It’s not a bad idea.”
It’ll hurt like hell. Lilya would never dream of it. Idling in one place for too long will get you nothing but a lungful of painful smoke. Connecting in these finite eras was like pulling teeth. But, in ways like that—in getting attached—Bkornblume could be far braver than her.
“So. Did you eat dinner?” Lilya asks abruptly.
A sharp, intentional change of topic. It is comfortable, safe, and deliberately pulls them both back from the ledge. Maybe it was something like giving in—Lilya had done a lot of that in this room.
“Ah…” Bkornblume can already sense the admonishment on Lilya’s tongue. Her shoulders tense. “No. I was running a few errands, and–”
Lilya hoists Bkornblume up under her arms like she was picking up a befuzzled cat. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”
“Go where? The Foundation’s cafeteria has long been closed!” Bkornblume protests, her legs dangling just slightly in the air. Lilya only does this because she finds it funny; their height gap isn't quite large enough to justify it, but the pilot's strength certainly is.
“Yeah, well, Zeno’s is open all the time. Let’s go bug them,” Lilya says, setting the agent back down on her feet. She reaches past her, grabbing her leather jacket, hat, keys, and flask from the desk. “The food isn't as nice, but we can’t all be so lucky, huh?”
There wasn’t much room for convincing when Lilya gets like this. The monitors will continue to play to an empty room, as they become just another pair of lives moving through the building’s camera feed. Yet another change to simply give in to.
“Hey,” Lilya waves a hand in front of Bkornblume’s face, leaning on the doorframe. “You’re won’t be using your listening trick on them even now, will you? I got very uh… complex, important topics to quiz you on. Can’t miss a moment.”
“Hmm,” Bkornblume dons a coy smile, forgetting for a moment she hadn’t buried it in her thick scarf. “Are you sure it’s not that you just want all my attention for yourself?”
“Agh—!” Lilya whips her head around, scanning the empty hallway the way one would scan a battlefield.
“No one heard me, don’t worry,” Bkornblume laughs, her voice light and teasing. “I’m sure. I was Listening.”
“Just get out here.” Lilya plants a palm on her forehead. If anyone in Zeno sees her looking like this, she’ll get teased to hell. Her trainees were already annoying enough as it is. She’ll just have to fly a little better tomorrow to make up for it.
Lilya spares one glance to the door before stepping out into the corridor with Bkornblume.
Once, on a day like any other, she’d bickered with Bkornblume about her surveillance. Lilya had asked how she would feel if the tables were turned, and it were her privacy being invaded on those screens.
“I'd be more worried if nobody's watching me... If that happened, I'd wonder if I were dead,” she replied.
If Lilya could keep an eye on anything in the world, it’d have to be something unmoving, that wouldn’t get washed away by the storm. Like the tall sky that would never leave her side. Like a mountain, that would only shrink and grow by the change of the eras.
Maybe…
Like Bkornblume. She trusted in her, for that same exact reason. Sat in her chair, neither pushing nor pulling anyone towards her, but holding the weight of the changing and unchanging world in her heart always.
Just a peek at the foot of her door might be enough. A lens just sharp enough to see the monitor lights flicker to life, and know she was still kicking. To know that there was always something solid that Lilya could come back to, no matter how dangerous life had become.
What the hell am I saying?
Lilya catches herself, quickly pulling her hat back on and smoothing back her ruffled hair. She lets out a quiet, self-deprecating huff as her shoes hit the stairwell.
She’s really rubbed off on me, huh?