In the stories, heroes are always doing things in a swoon. It’s a lot less fun when it’s happening to you. And this time, there’s not even the blessing of Dionysus to make everything vivid, important, or comfortably blurred.

She keeps losing herself in the dark. The journey through the [i]Anemoi[/i] is fragmented, like the broken mirrors; suddenly she will see a lantern, and be struck by the knowledge that she cannot remember what she has done since the last light she saw, only that she has been moving forwards, forwards, forwards. Then she moves past the light, drawn on by that faint scent, and the dark rushes in to drown her again. In the dark, she is numb. In the dark, she is the aching, and the aching cannot hurt, it only is.

And then she is by the bed.

She sits down and stops moving. And now that she’s stopped, she can’t start moving again; and now that she’s stopped, she can hurt again. And the shape of the hurt is Redana, but it is also Bella in the arms of an insect, and it is also the scar torn across a galaxy, the list of names, the lights going out one by one, the dark pouring into the absence, and the light pouring into the dark, searing pink forever and ever.

She doesn’t find the film reel. Not at first. She lays herself down on the bed and she wraps her arms around a pillow and she buries her face in its softness and she breathes in deep until her whole head is full of the roses and the soap and the sweat and she convulses there without tears until she drowns in the dark and sinks deeper, deeper, and deeper still. She does not dream.

When she wakes, she doesn’t stir. Not yet. She clings to the pillow in misery and shame at her weakness. Bella may have held Skotos in her arms, but her touch lingers on Redana: her chin and her ear and her thigh, dirty, sullied. Like father, like daughter[1]! Give her a mask, let her think there won’t be consequences, and what does she do? She drools all over the forbidden fruit of her childhood, tries to trick her into bed, because that’s the only way Bella would ever share herself with her hated owner now.

In her mind’s eye, she sees Bella on Barassidar, sneering, furious. That’s what she’s earned. That’s all she deserves. And Bella gave her heart to someone else, someone who could be honest with her, someone who isn’t a greedy little slut. Redana grinds herself against the pillow despite herself and lets out a sound like a dying animal, gripping the pillow tighter so that her treacherous fingers do not defile Bella’s bed further.

The Redana who eventually sits up and sees the film reel waiting for her is a miserable little creature, stewing in how much she misses someone she doesn’t deserve, hiding in that pain to stave off the deep, crushing sorrow that laps at her ankles, vast enough to drown a god. If she tries to think about it, if she tries to think about her mother (and how silly old Iskarot was correct the whole time) she will be pulled back under. So she clings to the reef of Bella to stop herself from drowning, though it cuts her like a knife.

When she takes a seat on the bed by the note, she pulls her legs up to her chest and stares, flatly, at the opposite wall as it turns from monochrome to polychrome. And when Bella lights up the screen, Dany lets out a miserable groan and pulls herself tighter into herself, peeking up over her knees at the larger-than-life Servitor. And the first recording is easy enough to discount as performance. A fake smile plastered on with the makeup, a new dress for playing with her detested owner; nothing more.

But it’s the second that starts to prise her out of that shell of misery. The indignation of hearing what Bella really thought of Batrachomyomachia Untold! It’s [i]compelling,[/i] Bella, and you said you liked them! And that’s enough real feeling that when Bella freaks out over Zahar, Redana lets out a croaky little laugh. There she is. The prissy, easily scandalized Bella who sometimes snuck out from behind that cheerful professionalism. The one that Mynx loved drawing out just to entertain her.

Which means that expression of longing and nostalgia while Bella holds Cloudcuckooland in her hands slips between Redana’s ribs and spreads like venom, until her throat closes up and her eyes are hot. Because Bella’s not acting, and Dany doesn’t know what that [i]means.[/i]

So she keeps watching. She watches Bella at prayer for the first time, guilt crawling up her spine over the intrusion into Bella’s privacy; she watches Bella treat a mouse with the same incredible confidence and gentleness that she treated Skotos with, and her heart strains against her ribs; and she watches Bella, more disheveled than she’s ever been in Redana’s life, sing herself to sleep.

And by the third verse, Redana is croaking, trying to sing along, her eyes stinging and her cheeks wet, as if Bella could hear her. The thought occurs to her: she could steal this, cut it out. Put it on a loop. Make Bella sing that perfect song that means home over and over again. And she shouldn’t. But she could. She could keep this even when Bella goes off with her Beautiful, a memento of the way things used to be, a secret meant for her and only her.

Then the horror of— whatever it was. Vasilia. The tree-man. Violence. But violence like the violence against the snake-lady. Violence against a monster. Violence that Bella wields like a knife. She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. She doesn’t want to understand. But every move Bella makes makes her more ashamed of lecturing her on the Eater of Worlds, back when she was horrified by the death of a monster, back when she thought Bella was tainting herself with the kill, ruining something innocent and perfect and precious, ruining the girl at the beginning of the reel. But that was the mask, wasn’t it, Bella?

You were always ready to kill if it meant protecting someone else. Your princess. Your pet. Your Beautiful. Never for your own sake.

When the reel runs out, Redana sits there and doesn’t move, and doesn’t speak, and doesn’t cry. And she does this for a long, long time. The lights overhead are relentlessly soft; the ship groans as tension presses somewhere in its ribs. And that is really all there is to see.

***

[1]: [i]Diana’s shape and habit strait she took,
but soften’d her brows, smooth’d her awful look,
and mildly in the hunter’s accent spoke:
“How fares my girl? How went the morning chase?”
To whom Callisto, starting from the grass:
“All hail, dear Diana, whom I prefer
to Jove herself, tho’ Jove were here!”
The God was nearer than was thought, and heard
well-pleas’d herself before herself preferr’d.
Jove then salutes her with a warm embrace;
and, ere she half had told the morning chase,
with love enflame’d, and eager on her bliss,
smother’d her words, and gagg’d her with a kiss.[/i]