Kai noticed it first when Selene began to stir.

It had scared him witless, seeing her every day in this state. She thrashed and cried and screamed in her bed in the wake of nightmares and terrors, too weak and tired to get up. Kai had bit his nails nearly to the bases and had dark circles carving crescents beneath his eyes from late nights worrying. He looked like a mess, he knew; he hadn't brushed his hair in two days, and it stuck up in untamable clumps, even more disheveled than usual. He didn't care anymore. And if sitting by Selene's bedside every day meant she might start to get better and that Kai might be the first to see her health return, his hair could go to hell for all he cared.

It was the first time she'd truly waken in an agonising eternity for Kai, a whole three days. He sat beside her bed, staring sunken-eyed at something on the wall, holding her hand loosely as if it were to fall out of his grasp any moment. Selene stirred in the hospital bed before him, craning her neck and stretching out her legs. Kai watched, stunned. And then her eyes were half open and staring at her hand in his.

Kai blushed, the red spreading all over his face like a wildfire, and he made a move to let go, but Selene grabbed hold onto his fingers.

"No," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. "No."

Kai stilled, afraid to move, lest she fall back into her endless slumber and leave him again. Selene looked around the room slowly, out the windows gifting her the darkening evening sky over New Beijing, at the door, at the ceiling, at Kai. She blinked slowly and painfully many times before she seemed to recognise him. She lowered her eyes and let go of his hand. Kai's hand twitched-- he could feel the ghost of her skin.

"Kai," Selene murmured. It was not a question, but more of a declaration. Kai nodded, his face still red, and Selene shifted her eyes away from him. Guiltily. Sadly. "How are y- where's Jacin?"

Kai nodded softly. "Your pilot? He's fine. A little rough around the edges, but he's completely okay."

There was silence. And then, "I'm sorry I came," Selene said abruptly, as if she hadn't really needed to ask the question. As if her mind loitered elsewhere. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know where else to go."

Kai folded his legs under him. "There's nothing to apologise for. I'm happy you're here. I mean-- I'm not happy you're here, of course, under these circumstances. I'm glad to see you-- I mean, I was worried about, about Luna, about-- But I-- Oh, stars." Kai ducked his head and tried to fight away his blush, and Selene turned to the windows, uncharacteristically embarrassed. Why couldn't Kai just control himself? He chastised himself and slowed his thumping heartbeat. This was dire. Selene was sick, and she was fleeing something horrible. This wasn't the time.

"This is cruel of me, I know." Selene's eyes were swollen and sad, and she gazed out the windows at New Beijing, neon lights illuminating the late evening city below. "I left you so suddenly and so awfully, and now I have the nerve to return so soon as if nothing happened. You must despise me." She sighed. "I know I would."

Kai peered at her, his blush fading to just his ears. He opened his mouth, and then paused, and then spoke.

"Two months, Selene. Two months."

"I'm sorry I came. I'm sorry I came at all."

"You don't understand." Kai studied his wrist and fought back the heat flooding his cheeks. "You don't understand. It was an eternity for me. I spent all that time waiting and wondering if I could have done anything to-- I don't know, to make you stay. To not force you away. Selene, was it my fault?"

He could feel Selene's tired eyes on him as she shifted uncomfortably. She wrung her hands and flexed her joints, mechanical and flesh, until she had nothing else to fidget with and sighed dejectedly.

"None of it was your fault, Kai. It never was. It has always been me. It has always been me with the issues, me with the problems. And that's why you have no idea how much you don't want me. No idea." Selene turned to face him, listing her head half-heartedly. A tuft of hair fell into her face, and Kai had to resist the urge to brush it away. He evaded her gaze again. "I'm a monster. I'm no different than any of the criminals I've ever executed. No different than my mother. How can you just sit there-- how can you stand to be in the same room as me, after everything I told you before? Don't you hate me? Don't you find me repulsive?"

Kai glanced painfully up at Selene to find her eyes boring into his. They were hard and implacable, and he could tell she wanted an answer. He swallowed a lump in his throat. He couldn't speak. He couldn't decide on what to say. He couldn't decide on any of the emotions going to war inside of him. When he looked at Selene, all he could feel was warm. When he closed his eyes and saw her face, all he could see again and again like a broken record were those memories he had of her being the one constant thing in his life. She had made him feel understood when no one else could have. She had made him feel like a normal teenager when everything in his life was guiding him towards premature coronations, towards becoming an adult. Someone hardened to the world and impassive.

But when he thought about that horrible night in the gardens, all Kai could see again and again was that face Selene had made. The look of loathing. How utterly had she hated herself for so long and kept him completely in the dark? It became painfully obvious the more he thought about it that he had never known Selene the way he thought he had, and he knew that she had withheld so much from him. So much. How much had really been her, and how much was her act? Had she ever glamoured him? Had she ever pulled screens over his eyes that he didn't even know about?

Kai opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it, swallowing one last time, before responding. "I could never find you repulsive. I don't think I could ever even hate you. But I do think that you're a liar. You lied to me so much, Selene." Kai hung his head and shoved a hand into his messy hair violently, his eyes misting over. "How much did you really lie to me? Was every bit of it a lie? Every bit?"

Selene's hand twitched as if she wanted to reach for him, for a split second, but then she drew it to her chest and held it close with her steel hand. "I- No." She paused and looked out the window again. She bit the inside of her lip. "I did lie. I lied through my teeth. I cried fake tears and turned around overcome with remorse for it. But then I did it all again. I've been lying all my life, Kai, and you were never an exception." He heard her rustle in her sheets, and he tilted his head up, a small tear gathering in the corner of his eye.

Selene was sitting up against the headboard, gazing at him contemplatively. When his eyes met hers, she averted her gaze. "I learned to lie when I was very young, and when I realised it could get me exactly what I wanted, I couldn't stop. I don't think you can understand how it felt." She clutched the covers harshly, as if remembering something painful. "I spun my entire life into a lie from that point forward. I never met someone who I wasn't manipulating. Everything I ever did was carefully mapped out according to my master plan. A child, trying to fix a nation and fix the hurt she felt. She never succeeded," Selene scoffed, bowing her head and shaking it sadly.

"I had-- I have. I have guilt for things I've never seen, things I never decided for myself and my family and my country. I had nowhere to run, up on Luna, from everything my mother had ever done. Every man she'd ever toyed with I saw painfully clear. Every selfish decision she made for Luna, designed to keep her comfortable and happy, was as evident to me as day. And eventually, I thought I had all the answers. I thought I would be fine if Mother was out of the picture. She was the source of all my woes, after all. She was the target of all my hatred. I can see now--" Selene's voice choked up, "--how misdirected all of that hatred was."

Kai's heart felt like a rock in his chest. He knotted his fingers together. "So..."

...He couldn't say the words.

"So I killed my own mother. As certainly as if I had stabbed her myself." Selene clutched her covers in tight fists and hid her face from Kai, as if she couldn't bear to let him see it. "Maybe if I could go back, maybe, maybe I would have done it differently. Maybe I wouldn't have done it at all. Maybe I could have found a way. I regret it every day of my life-- well, I have been." She sighed. "Since I met you."

Kai's heart took a turn in his chest, in spite of the somber air. He was silent for a long time, thinking, opening and closing his mouth stupidly like a fish. He couldn't decide on what to say. He couldn't smooth out all the things he wanted Selene to know, but Kai exhaled slowly and tried. "I know you're not going to want to hear it, and you're probably not going to believe me, but it doesn't sound like you're a monster to me. It sounds to me like you're getting burned because of things you did long ago as a very different person." Kai ducked his head, almost resigned. "I'm not going to-- to insult you, or myself, by saying the things you did weren't horrible. By forgetting. But there comes a time when you have to come to terms with those things and maybe forgive yourself. Know that you've changed."

Selene was very, very still, her body as breakable looking in that moment as a porcelain doll. She held tight to her sheets, as if they were her lifeline, and her face was hidden from Kai except in the reflection from the window. Her features trembled as she spoke.

"And what if I haven't changed? What then? What do you know about me?"

Kai was aware of the irony, and he nearly smiled sardonically. "I know nothing about you. That's what you've been trying so hard to make clear. But I'm not entirely stupid. I can tell you've changed. I guess even better than you can."

There was a long pause, and the room was filled with a thick silence Kai could nearly touch as Selene began to cry, her short sobs the only noise in the entire calm corridor. Kai suddenly felt very awkward in the worst way possible. Should he comfort her? Should he touch her? He didn't know what to do with his hands-- he shouldn't just be sitting there.

But he didn't think twice about falling to his knees, off the chair, at her side, as Selene curled up into a ball and pressed her hands against some intense pain in her arms, squeezing her eyes shut, letting her tears fall like rivers down her cheeks. Kai knit his brow and placed a hand gently on her forearm, and Selene rocked back and forth.

"It hurts. It hurts so bad, Kai," she gasped out, and Kai couldn't tell where she was hurt the most-- physically and tangibly, or inside her heart, pain eating away at her until she broke down. And that's when Selene's eyes went glassy and she touched his hand on her arm, and Kai could tell as she stared right at him that she no longer saw him. That she was hallucinating again. That his hand was as cold and foreign to her as ice.

He cocooned her hand with both of his and squeezed it before pulling away. She would start crying, sobbing again soon. She would start screaming and yelling about pain, about wolves, about blood. About things that weren't there. Kai wished more than anything in that moment that he knew what was happening. That he could help fix whatever was going on inside her head, that she had told him what had happened to her before she thought to apologise for something that he never would have minded.

Most of all, he wanted to be sure of anything-- of Selene's safety, of Luna's now even more confusing peace settlements, of the warring sides of him telling him to love and never trust Selene again in turn. He wanted to feel again like he felt in those days before she left, the way she had picked up his broken pieces and made him feel so remarkably whole, but he knew that nothing would ever really be the same as those times when he had lived in blissful ignorance of anything real about Selene. He didn't know if anything would ever be the same at all.