Chapter 17: Held in the Dark
Chloe made it as far as her own bed before her legs gave out. She dropped onto the mattress face down and the sobbing that had been held behind her teeth since the vault came out in great ugly bursts, her fists knotted in the blanket, her whole small body shaking with it.
Her mother. First in all six categories. And Anneliese's father, that polished man in the photograph from 1994, standing beside her mother with his hand on her shoulder like he had a right to it. Her father. Her genetic father, fathering Anneliese three years later with another graduate of the same school, and both families built on a file Chloe had read with her own hands.
The door opened and shut. Ruby's weight settled on the mattress behind her without a word, and then Ruby's arms came around her and pulled her back against a soft warm chest, and Chloe turned into it and cried harder.
Ruby just held her. One hand cradled the back of Chloe's head, fingers moving slowly through her hair. The other rubbed circles between her shoulder blades. She didn't say it would be all right. She didn't ask what happened. She lay down and drew Chloe in against her and stayed.
Chloe cried until there was nothing left in her, and then she cried a little more, quieter. The moon moved across the floor. Somewhere in the building a door closed far away. Ruby's heartbeat under Chloe's ear kept its steady stupid perfect rhythm, and Chloe's breathing found it and slowed.
"Voss told me to watch you," Ruby said at last, into her hair. "Report bad ideas."
"Is this one?"
"No. This is just me." Her thumb wiped under Chloe's eye. "Sleep if you can. I'm not going anywhere."
Chloe slept in torn pieces. She woke once with her mother's face in the dark and gripped Ruby's arm until she knew where she was. She woke again and it was late afternoon, the moonlight replaced by flat grey, and Ruby was still there, awake, watching the ceiling.
"I can't eat," Chloe said.
"You can't not eat." Ruby sat up. "Stay here."
She came back forty minutes later with a tray from the kitchen: bread still warm, a wedge of cheese, two apples, a pot of tea balanced between them, and Marta's knowing look apparently survived the trip because there was a small extra square of chocolate tucked by the napkin. She sat cross-legged on the bed and broke the bread and held a piece out.
"I mean it. One bite. Then we negotiate."
The smell hit Chloe and her stomach heaved and she almost refused. Then she took the bite, and her body, having opinions of its own, took the rest. Ruby talked her through it in a low running commentary about nothing, the state of the third-year common room, a girl named Thea who wore too much perfume, anything that wasn't St. Aurelia's real business. Halfway through the tea Chloe's eyes were burning again and Ruby set the pot aside and pulled her back down.
"She was extraordinary," Chloe said. "The file said so. First in everything. And they photographed her and filed her and a man who wasn't my father put his hand on her."
"Your mother was a person before any of that," Ruby said. "Whatever the file says."
"And Anneliese is my sister."
"Half."
"Ruby." Chloe laughed, and it came out wet and broken. "I put a strap-on in my half-sister."
Ruby was quiet for a second, then she laughed too, low, and the absurdity of it cracked something open in the room that grief had sealed. Chloe pressed her face against Ruby's neck and laughed and cried at the same time and Ruby held her through both.
It changed somewhere in the dark. Chloe couldn't have said when. One moment she was curled into Ruby, and the next her mouth was against Ruby's throat and Ruby's hand was flat on her back under her shirt, and neither of them was pretending it was comfort anymore.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," Ruby murmured.
"Don't."
Ruby pushed the shirt up and off her. The room was cold and Ruby's mouth was hot, tracing down her sternum, pausing to take one small nipple in, sucking until it peaked hard against her tongue while Chloe arched under her. Her skirt went. Her socks stayed. Ruby's fingers slid down her belly and into her, and Chloe was swollen and aching and so ready it embarrassed her, two fingers sinking in with no resistance at all.
"There she is," Ruby whispered against her mouth.
Chloe fucked herself up onto Ruby's hand, greedy, graceless, the day burning out of her in the only language left. Ruby curled her fingers and found the spot that made Chloe's hips stutter, thumb grinding her clit in slow circles, and Chloe came with her fist stuffed against her own mouth, shaking, a long whine leaking out around her knuckles anyway.
Ruby didn't stop. She worked her through it and into a second, slower, crueler, until Chloe grabbed her wrist.
"Your turn. Get up here."
Chloe pushed her onto her back and stripped her with shaking hands. Ruby's heavy breasts fell free and Chloe buried her face in them, mouthing and sucking until Ruby's breath went ragged, then moved down her soft belly, over the curls, and put her mouth on her. Ruby was soaked, slick coating Chloe's chin immediately, and Chloe licked her the way she'd been taught and then the way she wanted, sloppy and open, tongue deep against her entrance before dragging up through her folds to circle her clit.
Ruby cursed, one hand fisted in the sheet, the other in Chloe's hair, and rolled her hips up shamelessly. Chloe pressed two fingers in beside her tongue and found the rough patch on the front wall and Ruby's thighs clamped around her ears.
"There, there, don't you dare stop."
Chloe didn't stop. She sucked her clit between her lips and fingered her through it and Ruby came silently the way she always did, whole body locking, heels digging into the mattress, then collapsing with a long exhale that was almost a laugh.
They didn't separate. Ruby dragged her up and they lay tangled, faces close, kissing slowly, tasting each other. Somewhere past midnight Ruby's hand found her again and Chloe's found Ruby and they brought each other off one more time, unhurried, half asleep between strokes, Chloe's face pressed into Ruby's red curls breathing her in.
It was comfort. It was also, Chloe thought in the last clear moment before sleep, the first thing in two days that belonged entirely to her.
Morning came grey and hard. Ruby shook her awake, pressed tea on her, and watched her dress with an expression she couldn't read.
"Class," Ruby said. "Voss takes attendance personally."
Chloe walked the east corridor on legs that felt borrowed. She pushed open the door into the classroom and stopped.
Three people sat among the twelve first-years, wearing the standard white blouse and dark blue skirt as if they'd always owned them. The twins, side by side, hair immaculate, watching nothing. And Gwenn, blonde and thirty-five, seated in the very chair beside Chloe's empty place, turned halfway toward her, smiling like a hostess.
"Morning, Bennett," Gwenn said. "Sit. She's early today."
The door at the front opened. Voss walked in with her notebook under her arm and her eyes went straight to Chloe.