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nineteen

Alouette bolts out of the room without even bothering to give Harry one last glance. She feels nauseous, and her head hurts. Get yourself together, she tells herself. She can't freak out—not right now, not where Harry can see. She doesn't know what to make of anything he's told her. Her father was never like that—he was the kind of person that protected others, that fought for others. He would've never used and discarded anyone. He would've never sought out a sixteen-year-old and made him risk his life or his sanity, no matter who that sixteen-year-old may have been. He would've never—Get yourself together. Everyone is a bird. Everyone is a bird.

She can't think about this now. Elijah is awake—Elijah can talk. That's all that should matter—she's one step closer to finding her sister. Compared to this, everything else should be small and unimportant, even if it makes her feel sick. Even if it hides secrets about her father she's never wanted to discover. Get yourself together. Everyone is a bird. She'll freak out—later. She'll see how much of this she can trust, she'll let it destroy her, but—later. First, she has to speak to Elijah. She has to find out how much he knows, how much he's willing to tell her. Afterwards, she'll go back to her room and scream and break down and cry and do all the things she does when she lets Harry get the best of her. She just has to hold it together until then.

She needs some clarity, some distance, so that she'll get to think of what she was told clearly, without being haunted by the look on Harry's face while he was speaking the words. She's glad he doesn't follow her out—though, how could he? He's wearing bed clothes and a robe—he's confined to his rooms. For the first time since she was taken back to the Palace, she doesn't have to worry about crossing paths with him in the corridors. It feels a little bit like freedom, though she knows it's nowhere near.

Alouette makes her way to Elijah's room in the middle floors. She tried to convince Jackson to move him to the top floors last night, but he refused. She knows it's a matter of safety and he's just doing his job, but still. This is Elijah. It feels like betrayal. She hasn't told them, but only some weeks ago he chose to go against Ezra to help Harry, just because she'd asked him to. It doesn't feel right to see him treated like a criminal now, but maybe it's what he truly is to the Palace. After all, when he chose to help Harry he didn't do it for him, but for her, and she may have access to the upper floors and be allowed to step foot outside, but she isn't foolish enough not to know she currently is one of the Palace's most valuable prisoners. It's logical for Jackson to assume that whoever is on her side isn't on theirs.

When she enters the room, Jackson and Brooks are already there. They're not saying a word, but the glare Jackson is sending his brother makes it clear they've just argued. Since they came back, he's been picking on him constantly. The fact that Brooks came out to Greenside for her even knowing it would anger Jackson makes her appreciate his action even more. The willowy figure of one of the Palace's doctors is standing next to the bed, speaking to Elijah in low tones, but she goes silent in the instant Alouette walks  in.

Elijah is lying down on the bed, one leg in a cast and propped up on some pillows. He seems confused, and he's barely paying attention to the doctor at his side. When Alouette comes in, his eyebrows rise. "Al?!"

The doctor flees the room, and Alouette closes the door and leans against it. The temptation to ask Jackson and Brooks to leave is high, but she knows they'd never let her speak with Elijah alone. It's already surprising they're letting her talk to him at all, though she knows it must be because they assume he's more likely to open up to her than to them. "Hey," she says, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. Elijah is the person that has known her the longest, yet she can't find any of that usual easiness now. In front of him, her guilt is unbearable. She's destroyed everything, and she knows he'll never forgive her.

"What—what is going on?" he stutters out, and she sends Jackson a pleading look, that is only met with silence. They're leaving the explanation to her, but she doesn't even know where to start.

"We found you in an abandoned warehouse in Greenside," she says, because it's easier to pretend she hasn't heard the question hidden in his voice. Why are you here with them? "Do you know anything about that?"

"A warehouse?" He seems even more confused, now. "No, I—"

Alouette takes another deep breath. She can feel her mind unravelling—she needs to finish this quickly. "You went missing three weeks ago. Are you aware of that?"

Elijah's eyes widen. "Three weeks—"

"The last time I saw you, you freed me." Chose me instead of Ezra, helped me save your enemy, simply because you trusted me. Because you trusted I'd do the right thing. Pain spreads through her temples. "Do you remember that?"

"I—yes." The look he gives her is nearly impossible to stand. There's no embarrassment, no shame, like he still thinks that was the right thing to do, despite everything.

"What happened after that?"

He seems to think for a moment. "Some men took me," he says in the end.

"Did you know them?"

"Yes." He frowns. "I—not directly. My team was never paired up with theirs, but I've seen them around."

"So they were Revolution." The mention of her organisation tastes sour in her mouth, like it has no right to be on her tongue. After all she's done, she doesn't deserve to speak of it. Brooks notices the way her throat clenches around it and sends her a long look, but Elijah doesn't pick up on it.

"Of course. Who else would it be?"

She pretends not to have heard the question. "What happened after that?"

Elijah's eyebrows furrow, and he looks down. For a long moment, he scratches the blanket with a nail, not saying a word. "They said I'd betrayed the Revolution." His voice is a little shaky, like he doesn't know what to make of what he's saying. "They threw me into the trunk of a car and drove away."

Alouette's breath catches. "Was Ezra there?"

"Yes—I think?" Elijah frowns. "I don't know. I think I heard him once, but I'm not sure, it was dark, I was blindfolded, I—"

"Was Amina there too?"

Elijah tenses up.

"Was Amina there?" Alouette repeats. Her heart's thundering in her ears. "Was she?"

"I—" He looks to the side. "I don't know. I didn't see her."

Alouette's lower lip trembles. Suddenly, she's ready to collapse. He doesn't know? She's put so much faith on her assumption he must know something about her sister over the past couple of days, and now she just wants to cry. Still, she forces herself not to fall. Everyone is a bird. Everyone is a bird. Everyone is a bird. Ezra was there—Elijah's told her as much. He might've not seen her sister, but that doesn't mean she wasn't there too. This can still mean something. "Where were you taken?" she makes herself ask.

Elijah frowns again, looking down. "I don't know."

A wave of nausea crashes over Alouette. "You don't know?" Her disappointment is so heavy that his eyes snap to hers.

"I—I'm sorry. It was dark, there were no windows, I never heard them say anything—"

"Then how did you get to the warehouse where we found you?" If he was in Ezra's hands, how did he end up in theirs? Ezra would never give him up so easily, not like this, without asking for anything in return.

Elijah looks down again. "I don't know," he says once more, and now she really, really wants to cry. He seems to be debating something silently for a few instants. Then, "Where are we, Al?"

"The Palace," she replies, too easily, too carelessly, because it's such an innocently posed question. But the next isn't.

"Why aren't we at the Revolution?"

Her breath speeds up. His eyes are boring through her, but she can't bring herself to meet them.

"Al?"

Her head swims. Her heartbeat is thudding so loudly she can't hear anything else. The lights in the room are suddenly glaring too strong, and she can hardly see anything.

"Did something happen to the Revolution?"

She falls back against the door. She feels it through a haze, gasping and shivering. Her hands close around the key at last, but they're trembling so heavy it takes her several tries to turn it.

"Al?"

The door swings open, and she nearly crashes to the ground. "I need to go," she barely hears herself say, and then she's dashing out of the room and into the lift. She presses the button to close the doors over and over again, even though none of the guards has followed her out. When the doors close, she cuddles up in a corner of the lift and hides her face in her knees.

Elijah doesn't know about the Revolution.

Elijah doesn't know about the Revolution.

Everyone is a bird, everyone is a bird, everyone is a bird. He doesn't know. She hadn't expected him not to know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. She wants to cry. She wants to break everything in her path. He doesn't know. How could he not know? Didn't he feel the shift in the air when the Revolution was taken down? Didn't he feel that earth-shattering desperation?

How could the Revolution be gone, just like that? How could it be taken down without the whole country feeling its loss? Is this truly what's left of her father's organisation—some broken buildings, a few shattered dreams? What about their ideals? Their plans? What's left of them now? Nothing is left.

There is no going back.

This is the future her actions created, and she hates it. She hates every part of it. Nothing makes sense anymore. Maybe nothing ever did—she was just too blind to realise it. And now—what now? What is she meant to do with these ashes? She's the reason they exist. She doesn't even deserve to gaze at them. She doesn't deserve to be here.

The doors to the lift open. She's reached her floor. She wipes off her tears and prepares to stand up—and immediately stops.

Jesse is standing in front of her, just beyond the doors. His eyes are wide, and his face looks shockingly pale against the black of the uniform he's wearing. He didn't expect her to be here.

A sob breaks through Alouette's chest. Jesse turns his head, like he's counting the steps that separate him from his room—like he can't even bear to look at her. She can't bear to look at herself in the mirror either. It's no surprise he hates her; she hates herself too. She hates herself so much that the word isn't strong enough to describe the full extent of the wrath and loathing she harbours. She wants to disappear.

The doors of the lift close, but he stops them with a hand. Alouette's breath catches. He hesitates, but then steps into the lift. After a moment, he sits down next to her, extending one of his legs in front of him—the one that got hurt during the attack on the Shade, just a few weeks ago. The doors close once more, but the lift doesn't move.

"I can't stay," he says. His voice is thin, fragile. She can't get herself to look at him. Words fail her. "Why are you crying?" he asks after a few instants of silence.

She shrugs. Why is he talking to her like this after everything she's done? He should just continue to hate and avoid her like he's done until now. That's the only right thing to do.

He points to his leg. "My ankle has got better, but it still bothers me sometimes." His voice is light in the quietude of the lift, soft, even. "My shoulder's still painful, but it's alright. Gunshots don't get fixed overnight."

"Why are you doing this?"

He grows immediately still. A hard silence follows. "I just..." He pauses. She's never heard him sound so sad, before. So empty, like he's already given the world all he's got and now he's too spent even to pick himself up from the ground. "I'm sorry," he whispers out. "I just—I'm sorry."

She frowns. "What are you sorry for?"

"I didn't want to, I..." His voice fails. "This." He pinches the black fabric around his thigh. "It isn't what I wanted, it—"

"I know." It breaks Alouette's heart that he was forced to do this—to join his enemy, and why? Because Harry was bored and wanted to have some fun at his expense? It's needlessly cruel. But what breaks her even more is realising that he feels guilty because of it—guilty enough to apologise to her, the cause of all this. Like he's got anything to be sorry about—like he thinks he's the one that should grovel instead of her. It makes her feel ashamed. He may have joined the Palace, but didn't she do the same, over and over again? He was forced, but she did it all on her own, because she's dumb and foolish and never learns from her mistakes. "I know what he's like."

Another long silence follows. She's wanted to talk to him for so long, but now that he's right next to her she doesn't know what to say. Nothing she says will change a thing, anyway.

"I wanted to come."

Her head perks up from its hiding place between her knees. "What?"

"The other day, in Greenside. I wanted to come." Jesse looks down, and his wavy dark hair fall over his forehead. "But with my ankle... I would've just slowed you down." He sighs. "I don't want... I don't want you to think I didn't come because of you. If I could have, I would've come because of you." Another small silence. "I thought you hated me."

Alouette's heart drops. "I don't hate you. Why would I?" You're not the one that destroyed everything. You're the one that should hate me. "I thought you hated me. Because of—because of..."

"Why would I hate you for that?"

"Why wouldn't you?" The question makes her want to cry all over again as soon as she lets it out. He should hate her. He has every right to. He should despise her with all he's got.

"I know you didn't want any of it."

"That doesn't make a difference."

Jesse tenses up. "Doesn't it? I think it should." He leans his head back against the side of the lift. "Sometimes things just happen. Even if we've played a hand in making them happen, does that really make them our fault?" He frowns. "Can't things just happen even when they're bad? We can't always know—" He pauses and takes a deep breath. "Yes, anyway."

"That's no excuse."

Jesse hums, then, "I should go." He stands with some difficulty and presses the button to open the doors. They open silently; they're still on the same floor. He makes to step out, but pauses in the last instant and turns to look at her. "It wasn't your fault," he says, and he leaves.

She keeps sitting there for another long moment, but then the doors threaten to close again, so she stands up and pulls herself out of the lift as well.

She leans against the wall of the corridor. No one is around, and, surprisingly, she feels calmer than before—calm enough that she dares to think, truly think, about that mess of a day. It wasn't your fault. She shudders. What does that even mean? Of course it's her fault. Still, those words send a shiver through her. Is she so desperate for a friendly face that she's clinging on everything she comes across?

She's been so lonely, lately. Her desperation has sprouted roots and now she doesn't know where to turn. Brooks was right; she isolated herself. She did it because she was scared, because she was enraged, because she was in despair and surrounded by enemies. But now—what can she do? How can she survive in this place long enough to get her sister back and not lose herself among the way?

Once, Harry told her that it doesn't matter how rich or clever you are—if you want to survive, you have to make the right friends. If she wants to make it through her time at the Palace, she has to find people willing to be on her side. But who can she trust?

She bites her lower lip nervously. She's thinking too much ahead. She still has too many things to settle in the present. It's time to start doing things; she's flailed left and right hoping someone would come around and rescue her for way too long. She needs to go back to all the things she's dismissed until now, and she knows just where to start.

She gets back in the lift and goes one floor up. The corridor the doors open to is busier than the previous one, but no one tries to stop her or pays her any attention. The attack on the Palace has left everyone scrambling, and no one has any time to waste with her. That's convenient for her.

When she enters the archive, the guard behind the desk lifts his gaze towards her but doesn't make a move. He's in his fifties, and there's a book open in his lap. Alouette doesn't dare imagine what Harry would do to him if he discovered he's lazying about. Thankfully, he too is indisposed today.

"I'm here to look for a thing," she says, wondering if he'll stop her.

The guard hums. "Don't bring anything out of the archive."

What a lucky strike. Alouette proceeds through the shelves and looks through the many folders. It doesn't take her long to find what she's searching for.

This time, when she pulls out the folder with her father's name, it's full.

She sits on the floor between the shelves and opens it on her lap. The first few papers contain all her father's information—not much, but enough for anyone to have a mostly clear idea of the kind of person he used to be. After those, she finds a list of his associates working within the Palace—all dead, if Harry told her the truth. Then—pages upon pages of plans and directives, written in her father's elegant hand. Her breath catches. She skims them, but they refer to names and moments so far in the past that they make little to no sense to her. Still, they're enough to prove that her father was, at some point, indeed working for someone within the Palace. Harry. The headache comes back, and she has to drop the papers on the floor and rub her temples.

When the headache subsides, she goes back to checking out the contents of the folder, but nothing rings any bell. There's a letter, written in her father's hand, that starts with,

Don't act like a child. You should know to at least keep your promises, if you can't help your cowardice...

She can't get herself to continue. She doesn't want to know anything about the version of her father contained in those pages. Her memories tell her it's wrong, that it must be fabricated, but she's spent too long going through her father's book and his papers in the past few years, and she knows he's written that letter himself. Still, she doesn't want to know. She tells herself it isn't any of her business, it doesn't matter. What's the point of going through this now? She came here only to look for confirmations, after all. She doesn't need to know more.

Still, she can't help but skim through the remaining pages. More pointless directives, more names she doesn't know, and—

She gasps. The papers fall on the ground and scatter. She brings her trembling hands to her mouth. This makes no sense. She must be going crazy. She must've seen wrong.

Hesitantly, she flicks through the scattered paper sheets. When she finds the one that shocked her, her heart jumps to her throat.

Slowly, she picks it up and turns it. It's a page, yellowish with age, one side of it roughly torn where it was ripped away from a book.

She knows this page. Page 127.

But this makes no sense. She's already found a copy of page 127 in the book at her mother's apartment. How can there be one more now? If that one was from her father's copy of the book, where is this one coming from?

She lets her eyes travel over the lines of the poem, as if they hold the secret of how it got there in the first place. That's when she notices an entire side of it is covered in scribbles from a conversation—a conversation between her father's hand and that almost-familiar handwriting she once saw in another copy of this same page. She starts reading it, and her eyes widen. On it, there's a side of reality she's never seen—something she didn't even know existed.

I've been trying to contact you for weeks. Where were you?, the gentle, almost-familiar handwriting asks. It's a little faded because it was written in pencil, but it's still readable.

I was playing it safe, her father replies.

She can almost feel the annoyance in the reply—Harry's reply. You're always doing that.

That's what happens when you have things to protect. Her father's replies are always written with different pens, the only sign of time passing on the page.

Like what?

My daughter, her father says, and Alouette has to blink a few times not to start crying. Everything I do, I do for her. She deserves a better place to live her future.

Harry's next reply seems curious. I didn't know you had a daughter.

Her father's, unwilling to partake in the game. Why would I tell you?

What's her name?

I'm never telling you her name. Alouette lets out a faint chuckle. She's pretty sure she's said the same thing to Harry once.

Still, Harry doesn't desist. Then how old is she?

A few years younger than you. There's resignation in her father's reply. Then, suspicion. What's it to you?

I'm just curious. Then, in the next line, I wonder what kind of person your daughter is.

Why?

Harry's reply, this time, is enigmatic. You're her father.

And so? Faint annoyance radiates from her father's reply, together with a certain degree of playfulness. He didn't have to partake in this conversation that must've lasted weeks, if not months. He could've ignored it—but he didn't. Did he feel bad for the boy trapped in the Palace that he'd savagely pulled into a game much bigger than him? If so, his guilt must not have lasted long, because Harry's next reply is the last.

She must be lonely.

There's a pang in Alouette's chest, though she can't tell what struck her so deeply. She turns the page, but nothing is written on the other side.

She goes back to looking at the conversation. Every time she reads it over, her chest tightens. They must've met only some months ago, but she's unknowingly existed in Harry's life for a decade. What did he think, when he found out that the girl he wondered about so many years ago was right by his side?

A shiver runs through her. She folds the page and hides it into her pocket, collects the other papers into the folder and puts it back in its place on the shelf. She leaves the archive without a single word from the guard.

When she's back in her room, she pulls out her father's book and opens it to the place of the missing page. She doesn't know what makes her do it—sixth sense, the memory of the perfectly straight edge of the page she found in her mother's apartment months ago, that tells her that maybe, maybe that one wasn't what she thought it was.

She takes the stolen page from her pocket and unfolds it. She puts it on the book and holds it so the torn edges are side by side.

They match perfectly.

From the page, Harry's handwriting blinks up at her.

She must be lonely.





I hope you liked this chapter x
Miki

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