//------------------------------// // Take Your Medicine // Story: Sweet Nothings // by Golden Tassel //------------------------------// It was not very long after I'd given Starry another leaf when there was a knock at the door. I pretended not to hear it. The knock came again. "Day?" It was Chrys. I felt my heart start racing. I tried to just ignore her. "Day, I'm—" She hesitated. "I'm leaving some food and water, some clean blankets, and your and Starry's uniforms out here. I'll be downstairs if you need anything." There was silence for a moment before I heard her hoofsteps moving away from the door and back down the stairs. I didn't go to check what she left for us right away; I wasn't hungry or cold, Starry was still asleep, and I didn't really want to get up anyway. After a while, though, I did climb out of the chair and made my way over to the door. I opened it slowly, taking my time with each of the locks. There were no locks on doors inside the stable. At least, not on any of the living quarters. Security had locks on the detention cells, of course, and the stable door itself was really nothing but a giant lock on the whole stable, but that was it. I had never locked myself in before—I'd never been able to, and there had been a certain feeling of comfort in locking the world out. I turned the final deadbolt and opened the door. The hall was empty save for the food, water, blankets, and our uniforms. I brought them into the room quietly and then closed and relocked the door, though I only bothered with one of the deadbolts; it had felt good to lock them all when I had chased Chrys out, but now it just seemed excessive. I threw one blanket over the armchair and pulled the other one over Starry. Chrys had gotten the stains out of my uniform, but the colors were still severely faded. I climbed back into the armchair and settled down to watch over Starry. But I suddenly felt restless. My legs ached as though I'd just run a marathon, and no matter how I stretched out or curled up, I couldn't get comfortable. All I wanted was to quietly care for Starry, but the only thing on my mind was Chrys. Part of me started imagining her coming back into the room. I imagined her pleading for forgiveness, saying anything and everything to try and convince me that she was sorry. And from there, the daydream split in two: In one version, I yelled at her—I told her that she had no right to do what she did, and that nothing she could ever say or do would make up for it. She'd given me an impossible dream, a dream that showed me everything—the only thing I ever wanted. But it was only that: a dream. And that dream hurt. She had teased me with a vision of joy and happiness as I had never felt before, only to devour that joy herself and leave me with only the emptiness of knowing that I had glimpsed something I would never have. And yet . . . In my imagination's other version of events, I accepted her apology. I knew she didn't intend to hurt me. I couldn't blame her for it. And even though that didn't make it hurt less, I wanted to pretend as though it did. I wanted to hold her, cry with her. And as I let my imagination run with that vision, I thought of asking her if she could give me another dream, but one that wouldn't hurt. The warmth and comfort that I had felt, if only ever so briefly when she had fed off me, had been wonderful. I closed my eyes and rolled over, finally getting comfortable. With my head leaning back, I let my imagination wander. I thought about what kind of dream I might have that would give me that—the good without the bad, the joy without the pain—what kind of dream I would ask her to make so vivid for me. Would that make up for what she did? Was I just deluding myself, just looking for something to make myself feel better? Was it even anything she would agree to? I didn't know. And as I let my daydreams play out in my head, I didn't care either. *** The rest of the night went quietly. Chrys never came back, though I found myself wishing that she would. I didn't know if it was because I wanted an excuse to yell at her or if it was for something else; I tried not to think about it. I didn't sleep at all. I kept thinking about how, only a few days earlier, everything in my life had been completely normal—the status quo, as it has always been. And then I had woken up one morning and it all had simply fallen apart; my entire life had shattered to pieces, and I had been left all alone with no place to fit in. And here it was about to happen all over again. I didn't want to wake up to find that something had happened to Starry while I had been asleep. So I stayed awake for the entire night, watching over her. It was early in the morning when I heard Starry groan, and I looked up to see her rolling over in bed. She covered her eyes with one foreleg while she hung the other one off the side of the bed and blindly fished around with it, looking for something. "Starry?" She winced. "Not so loud." Her voice was strained, and she panted as though out of breath. "Where're my bags? My head's killing me. Can you get my aspirin bottle for me?" I hesitated. In my naivete, I had simply assumed that Starry would wake up and everything would be fine, that she'd be all better. But it couldn't be that easy. "Day?" She asked again, "Aspirin? Please?" "I . . . I'm sorry." My voice trembled. "You can't have any more." Starry sat up at that, though she seemed to immediately regret the movement as she clutched her head and groaned. "What . . . what do you mean? I . . . I need it. My head's killing me." "Starry, what's the last thing you remember?" She slumped over and let out a pained moan as she peeked out from under her fetlock. She spotted her bags in the corner and slowly started crawling her way out of bed. Starry tumbled onto the floor and continued crawling toward her bags. "Starry?" "The forest," she murmured. "We got separated somehow." She paused for a moment. "How did we get back here?" She reached her bags and started digging around in them. "Day," she asked after a moment, "where is it? Where's my aspirin?" "Chrys took it," I answered. "What!" Starry clasped her hooves over her ears at the sound of her own voice. "Starry, you . . . you overdosed. You nearly died." She forced a laugh through gritted teeth. "Day, that's silly. You can't overdose on aspirin." "Starry, I know it wasn't aspirin. Chrys told me." "What does that bitch know?" She started crawling toward me. "Day. Do me a favor and go get it back for me? I need it." She reached a hoof out to me. She was shaking terribly. "I need it." I bit my lip. "You need to rest, Starry. Kijiba gave me some leaves to help with the shaking. Just let me help you back into bed and I'll give you one and—" "I don't . . ." She cringed and lowered her voice. "I don't need any damn leaves. If you want to help me, then get me my pills." "No, Starry. You're sick. Please, just get some rest—" "Fine! Don't help me!" She pushed herself up onto her hooves and started for the door. "Starry, no!" I rushed to catch her as she stumbled toward the door. "Let me go!" She screamed and started trying to push me away. I held her tighter, and she bit my foreleg. We stumbled, crashed back against the side of the bed, and slumped to the floor together where I held her down. Starry kicked and bucked and screamed at me, but I wouldn't let go. Eventually, her kicks settled down to only shaking and her screams turned to sobs. She just kept repeating: "I need it. . . . I need it. . . . I need it . . ." After she settled down, I helped Starry back into bed. She was mostly dead weight, but at least she wasn't fighting against me. Her whole body felt cold, but she was sticky with sweat. I got out another leaf for her and told her to hold it under her tongue. I wasn't sure if she understood me, or if she just didn't have the mind to do anything else with it, but she held it there while I pulled the covers over her. A few minutes passed and Starry's shaking subsided. Her eyes closed, and she fell asleep. *** For the rest of the day, I continued to keep watch over her. She'd wake up every couple of hours or so. I tried giving her some food, but she couldn't keep down anything other than water, which I gave her plenty of. I had to hold her head up for her while she drank. Starry was rarely lucid while she was awake. When she did have the presence of mind to talk to me, she'd try to convince me to get her pills for her; she was too weak to fight back when I told her no. Most of the time, though, she'd just mumble incoherently until her tremors would come back, so I'd give her another leaf, and she'd fall back asleep. Thankfully, her tremors weren't as bad and were coming less frequently as the day carried on. I lost track of time like that. There was no ticking away of seconds, minutes, hours; there was only the tense quiet between Starry's fits which marked the passage of time. It was late at night, but it could have been a week, a month, or even a year later for all I could tell. I certainly felt as if I hadn't slept in a week. And whatever sleep Starry was getting, it wasn't restful. She twisted and turned, and shivered in a cold sweat most of the time. I had kept the lights off ever since she had woken up that morning. It seemed to help her sleep and to stay calm during those brief periods of consciousness. Somehow, even without any windows in Starry's room, it had grown darker. And it was in that night's darkest hour that Starry began mumbling in her sleep. It wasn't anything I could make out, but as I watched and listened, she started thrashing about. The blankets tangled up around her legs, and Starry sat upright, her eyes wide open and mouth agape, frozen as though about to scream. She sat there for a moment and looked around. "Starry?" I got out of my chair and leaned over the foot of her bed. Her eyes found mine in the darkness and she scrambled across the bed toward me. "Day," she whispered as she reached a hoof toward me. She hesitated when I flinched away, but I saw the look in her eyes: she was terrified. So I leaned in toward her and let her put her hoof on my cheek. "Day, I was so lost without you." She shivered and started crying softly. "In the forest. I saw . . ." She wrenched her eyes shut and shook her head vigorously, as if trying to rid herself of an image she couldn't bear the sight of. Her eyes opened and fixed on mine again. "They tried to make me think you were dead. You're here, aren't you? Please tell me this isn't another dream. Are you hurt?" "I'm . . . I'm here," I answered. "You saved me." I felt my chest tighten. "I almost lost you, though, Starry. You . . . you poisoned yourself." She turned away from me and let out a trembling sigh. "I . . . I had to. The . . ." She cringed at trying to say it. "Those . . . pills were the only thing that let me see through the horrible things they showed me. You had just vanished and I was running around, trying to find you. And I stumbled over your body . . . you had been crushed. And . . . and then y . . . you got up . . . and you started telling me it was my fault, but that you were better off dead, and I shouldn't worry about you." Our dreams had been tailored so they could feed off our worst fears and memories. In my dream, Starry had beaten me. In hers, she had gotten me killed. Slowly, I climbed up onto the bed and sat next to her. "Starry . . . how did this happen?" I asked. "How did you end up . . . like this?" "What do you mean?" "The pills, the drinking . . . why are you so afraid of . . . losing me?" Starry looked at me, right into my eyes, and I saw the tears welling up in hers. She blinked and they began to stream down her cheeks. "You remind me of my son," she said with a trembling lip. She reached a hoof toward me and brushed it against my cheek as she smiled briefly. Then as her smile faded and her eyes stopped watering, she took her hoof away from my face and stared out at the wall ahead of her. "I can't go through that again." "I don't understand . . ." She looked back at me, and I saw in her eyes a silent, despairing plea. I moved closer to her, close enough that I could hear her shallow, trembling breaths. "I took him salvaging in the city ruins," she said. "The building we were in collapsed on us. Help came, and they dug me out first. Chance wasn't far from where they found me." Starry paused and rocked back and forth slowly. "He was . . ." She winced and gritted her teeth. "You don't have to say it," I said. Starry shook her head. "No. I've avoided saying it for too long. I've been hiding behind euphemisms like 'he's gone' or 'I lost him' and I can't bear it anymore." She sucked in a deep breath and blurted out, "He's dead!" The whole room became silent in the wake of that admission. It was a fragile silence that shattered as Starry's face contorted, and her eyes closed tightly as she let out a loud, sobbing wail. "I was supposed to take care of him and protect him, but instead I got him killed!" "Starry . . . I . . ." "You're sorry? It wasn't my fault? There was nothing I could have done? These things happen? I'll get over it? I've heard it all, Day. For weeks it was all anyone could say to me. What else can you say to someone in my position?" She sighed and sniffled as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "I got so sick of hearing it. So I just put on a smile; I resumed my duties, and I told everyone that I was fine." Starry sat there quietly sobbing for a while. She chewed on her lip as she stared ahead blankly. "I wasn't," she said at length. "I wasn't fine. Lying to everyone like that—lying to myself about it . . . it ate away at me. I couldn't sleep. So I started drinking. At first it was only at night; I'd drink until I passed out. But the hangovers got worse and worse. So then I started drinking in the morning, and then while I was duty . . . until it was the only thing that could get me through the day. "I'm sure everyone knew about it, but nobody ever said anything about it to me. Even when I started screwing up, they'd cover for me most of the time, but even when I did get reprimanded, they never said anything about my drinking. But I knew I couldn't keep it up; eventually they'd confront me about it, and I didn't want that. So I started taking pills to keep me alert." Starry took in a deep breath and smiled. "Oh, I felt incredible! I was on top of everything." Then her eyes opened and she looked down at the floor. "I don't really remember how I ended up thinking Chance was still alive. But that thought was even more addictive . . . it became the only thing I had to keep me going." She waved her hoof around at the walls and the mosaic of notes and maps she had covered them with. "This is all a lie. It's a lie I wrapped myself up in so tightly that I actually believed you were Chance under all that rubble. I really did. I thought I had found him. After all these years, I was happier than I've ever been. And then I saw that you weren't him and . . ." She sighed again and turned to face me. "I'm so sorry," Starry said as she leaned over and hugged me. I hugged back as she began to cry openly again. I didn't know what to say, and I wasn't completely comfortable in her embrace, but I could tell that she needed it, and I even found a certain comfort in her warmth myself. So I didn't pull away, and we just sat there. I let her hold me, let her rest her head on my shoulder, and we stayed like that until I felt her go limp against me; she'd fallen asleep. Carefully, I laid her down on the bed and pulled the covers over her. For the first time since I'd known her, she actually looked peaceful while she was sleeping.