But all he could think was that he wanted to be her ally. He did not like being shut out of her world like this. However, he knew he deserved it. He had done the same to her on multiple occasions.
“My dear wife,” he said as he stepped over the debris of burning military vehicles. He stooped to the ground to examine the bodies of the fallen CIA agents. He shook his head and smiled. “I’m always three steps behind you, love. But I will find you. I love a good chase, and you’re not escaping me so easily. Not in this lifetime.”
Vachlan rose to his feet, and crossed his arms as he stared at the wreckage. “Maybe I should think a little further ahead, and come at you from a different angle. You’re not as impenetrable as you think. I know all your weaknesses. I know you better than you know yourself.” He strummed his index finger against his own arm as an idea began to form. “Maybe I’ll write a little something for you. You never could resist my words. Although understated, they are far more powerful than any other skill or attribute I possess. I just bet that I can find the words to thaw your frozen heart.”
Chapter 12: He Becomes Ill
Meanwhile, in Lake Vostok…
Varia was running out of good books to read.
She had packed thousands of volumes of every sort onto her device, with information on every subject known to man. It was a virtually inexhaustible pile of information, and it would keep her busy for years. She could not spend all day, every day reading—she needed to condition her body as well, as her mother had always encouraged her to do when she was younger. She spent lots of time training and wrestling with Glais, and this was great fun. Although he usually won, due to his larger size and heavier muscle mass, she still found it exhilarating.
However, she was disappointed to see that she had read most of the books that she had really been excited to read. She had gotten caught up on a few new series of stories written by famous sea-dwelling authors, and they were riveting. It bothered her that she had no internet connection, and could not check for updates. There were fascinating new books being written every day, and she was beginning to feel upset at having cut herself off from accessing all the beautiful knowledge and art in the vast world outside Antarctica.
Varia looked up from her novel, and examined Glais’ body as he trained with a heavy wooden sword in the water. He had been wise to bring several important items and games that they could use to occupy themselves indefinitely. However, she was worried that he was growing bored. He had seemed listless for the past few days, and she could see that his sword fighting was not up to its usual standard.
She remembered that he had missed his fencing competition for her, and she felt guilty. Maybe he was losing his zest for the sport. Putting her tablet aside, Varia moved over to stand near to Glais to observe his fighting. He smiled at her, and put his sword down.
“Anything exciting happen in your book?” he asked.
“I finished the fantasy novel you recommended,” she told him. “It was pretty great! But when I went to start a new one, I couldn’t find any that were as good. I began over ten books, and got bored and stopped reading. It’s so hard finding a really exceptional novel that can make me feel things.”
Glais grinned. “So, let me guess. You came over here so that I can make you feel things?”
“Will you?” she asked shyly, moving closer to him.
In response, Glais picked her up. She was light in the water, and he could easily manipulate her body. He pulled her toward him for a kiss.
Varia did feel things. However, she wanted to feel more things. He was always so tender and careful with her, like she was made of breakable glass. She had expected that this would change once they were alone, and committed to each other, but he was still so cautious and protective. It was driving her crazy. She wanted to be wild and free, and discover the aspects of herself that she did not yet know. She was an adventurous girl, and she wanted to be adventurous physically; she wanted to explore this new territory with Glais, and truly conquer the final frontier of adulthood. Whenever she addressed the issue with him, or asked him to be more aggressive with her, he requested that she be patient.
“We have all the time in the world,” he would say. “There’s no need to rush into things. You know, our actions could have very serious consequences. We might be too young for that sort of thing.”
Varia tried her best to change his mind, every single day.
Glais pulled away and looked at her with puzzlement. He spoke into the water, allowing her to read his lips. “Are you okay, Varia? You seem far away.”
“I guess I’m a little sad,” she responded.
“Do you miss home?” he asked.
She shrugged lightly. “Somewhat. This place did seem so much more interesting when I was younger.”
“You were more easily amused,” he told her. “You required less stimulation.”
“So amuse me,” she urged him playfully, tugging on his shirt. “Stimulate me.”
Glais flinched and moved away.
Varia’s hands fell in disappointment. It was as expected. She felt like every time Glais touched her, he saw an apparition of her father standing behind her and wagging a threatening finger. It was like there was some critical barrier keeping parts of his mind locked away from her, and they were parts she really wanted to meet. She did not know whether to give up, and go back to reading, or try a little harder. He was the only person she had in the world. She had left everyone behind, except for him, and he was refusing her the intimacy she so desperately needed.
“Will you make love to me?” she asked him, embarrassed at having to say the words out loud. Then, she felt a rush of clarity and resolve. Glais had asked to marry her, and given her a ring. He had said great words of passion, but had barely demonstrated any carnal interest in her. She stood a little taller and reached up to slide her dress off her shoulders. She repeated her words as a command. “I want you to make love to me, Glais.”
The young boy’s eyes widened, and he moved backward in fear. “I—I—I think…”
Varia glowered at him.
Glais looked around sheepishly, as if seeking a good excuse. “I’m not in the mood for this right now, Varia. It has to be right.”
“Are you ever in the mood?” she demanded, stepping forward in fury. “Do you even find me attractive?”
“Of course I do! You know how much I do!” He threw his hands up in the air defensively. “I love you. I just want to take it slow. I don’t want to be a mistake that you regret.”
Varia took in a deep breath of water, and held it for a moment, before releasing it in defeat. “It’s okay. I get it. You just see me as your little sister.”
“That’s not true,” he told her.
“You don’t love me. You don’t want me. Are you just here to babysit me to make sure I don’t get into trouble?”
“No! I’m here because there’s nowhere I’d rather be.” Glais frowned. “Whether you know it or not, this is not the right moment. I need to protect you from your own rebellious nature. If we did this, you would just be using me as a method of coping with everything else—a method of escaping everything else. You would be doing this out of boredom, to kill time. And I want to be more than that.”
“You are!” she shouted into the water. “This isn’t about anyone else but you and me. I just thought… I just needed…” She shook her head. “Forget it.”
Glais was growing upset. “I’m really getting sick of you pushing me, Varia. These things you’re asking, they’re new to me too. I don’t know how to do what you’re asking. I’ve always followed your orders and done what you told me, but I’m not going to hurt you. I’m scared of hurting you.”
“You are hurting me by keeping this distance between us,” she told him.
“Is this all you want from me?” Glais asked. “Because it’s not fair. Maybe I’m not ready. Why isn’t my friendship enough, for the moment? Why does something critical have to change, just because we’ve decided to be mar
ried?”
Varia sighed. “I just thought you meant ‘right now.’ I didn’t know you meant ‘someday.’ I didn’t know I had to wait even longer than I’ve already waited.”
Glais frowned. “Look, I’m a little angry with you. I’m going to stay in the cabin for a little while. I don’t want to talk to you right now. Don’t follow me.”
When he left, Varia sank to the ground, where her dress was sitting in a pool of abandoned silk. She glared at it in contempt, as she hugged her knees to her chest. She suddenly felt like a five-year-old girl again, playing in her little lake, all by herself.
“Maybe I should have stayed at home,” she said to herself softly. “I miss my mother.”
A few days later…
Glais weakly rested his forehead on his arms, which were loosely folded across the porcelain bowl. He waited a few seconds, and then began to retch. He watched in dismay as his vomit splattered the insides of the white toilet. When he was finished heaving, he groaned and allowed his upper body to collapse to the ground beside the bowl. His curled up into a ball and wrapped his arms around his stomach.
“Dammit,” he muttered to himself. He lifted his wrist to wipe the sweat from his face. “Why is this happening to me?” He allowed his body to roll so that he was lying on his back. He stared up dizzily at the small bathroom of the metal cabin. The chamber was cramped and ugly, and he was lying in an uncomfortable position, but he was too weak to move to the bed. When he heard the airlock opening, he quickly tried to push himself off the ground and flush the toilet. But he did not manage to do this quickly enough to avoid letting Varia see his condition.
“Glais?” she whispered, moving to his side. She put a hand on his forehead, testing his temperature. “Sedna. How long have you been like this?”
“A few days,” he answered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. She slipped his arm over her shoulder and struggled to help him stand. “I thought you were upset with me, and that’s why you weren’t coming out into the water.”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he told her. He moved to the sink and splashed his face with water. He tried to rinse out his mouth and clean himself up, but he began coughing violently. Varia was instantly at his side, holding him. He looked at her with regret. “I lied about being angry at you. I was just feeling like shit that day.”
“How could you do that to me?” she asked as she guided him over to the cot. “I was freaking out. I couldn’t think about anything else.”
“I’m so sorry, Varia. I mean, I wasn’t totally lying about everything I said. But if I was feeling better, I might have tried to make love to you, if it would have made you happy.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” she told him with a frown. “It’s insignificant.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with my body,” Glais said, shuddering a little. “I’ve been weak for a while, but it’s getting really bad. It’s pretty gross. I thought you might think less of me if you saw me lying on the floor and vomiting. It’s really unattractive.”
“But what if you needed me?” she asked him, running a hand over his chest soothingly. His shirt was soaked from sweat. “What if something went really wrong, and you were all alone?”
“We are all alone,” he told her. “If something goes really wrong, there are no hospitals or doctors around for thousands of miles. I’m screwed.”
Pulling her lips together tightly, she frowned at him. “That’s all the more reason for us to spend every minute together. You need to let me take care of you. What if you had died, and I hadn’t come in here to check on you? What if I waited for weeks, and then when I finally came, I found you dead on the bathroom floor? After the fight we had?”
“Shh,” he told her. He tried to lift a hand to touch her leg and comfort her, but his hand just sort of flopped against her thigh. He sighed in exasperation. “I’m sorry, Varia. I was trying to focus only on getting better. I thought I could will myself back into health. But my willpower doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“Did anything happen to you around the time this started?” she asked him. “Can we figure out the source?”
He shook his head. “I guess… it could be a deficiency of some sort. We did run out of vitamins recently, and our diet is limited. But it could also be a surplus of something negative, some mineral or toxin from the marine life we’ve been hunting in the lake. Or it could just be a bacterial infection from something in the lake. A new type of disease. Even if I could get to a hospital, they might not know how to treat it.”
Varia had never seen the young man so pale and weak. She stared at him in amazement; it had never crossed her mind that this could be possible. Glais had always been so active, so healthy, so energetic.
“The way you’re looking at me,” he told her weakly. He had begun to shiver uncontrollably. “That’s what I wanted to avoid. The pity, the fear. I want you to keep looking at me with desire. I want you to always look at me like I’m your hero.”
She smiled, and moved to lie down beside him. She cuddled up against him, and pulled the tattered blanket over their bodies. “You are my hero, no matter what. You carried me out of a burning blaze, that one time.”
“You’re exaggerating, as usual. It was mostly smoke by the time I got there,” he said modestly. He tried to encircle her body with his arms, but they would not seem to work. His limbs just flopped around uselessly. This frustrated him. “I can’t get warm, Vari.”
She made a face. “Here, I’ll be your blanket.” She shifted her position from lying beside him to lying directly on top of him. She put her face against his shoulder and breathed hot air against his neck. “Is this working?”
“No,” he said in disappointment. “I can’t even enjoy this situation.”
“I’m enjoying it,” Varia told him. “You’re comfy.”
He sighed, putting his arms around her and hugging her tightly. “Can you promise me something?”
“Sure.”
“If I die, promise that you will go home to your mother.”
Varia pulled herself away from him and stared down into his face angrily. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Let’s face it. We’re so far away from civilization, and we have no idea what’s wrong with me. We have a few antibiotics and general kinds of medicine… but I tried taking some, and nothing helped.” Glais reached up to touch Varia’s shoulders gently. “You have to be prepared for the worst. We have to make plans for the worst.”
Shaking her head in refusal, Varia buried her face in his shoulder. “No. I forbid you from dying. You’re not allowed. You can’t leave me.”
Glais smiled. “There’s a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been having those dreams again,” he told her. “Dreams where I’m dead. Dreams where I’m close to you, and trying to talk to you, but you don’t hear me. You can’t see me. I’m just a ghost.”
Varia sat up abruptly, accidentally yanking the blankets off him. “Was it one of those kinds of dreams?” she asked. “Like… the one you had before my mom died? Or… Aunt Sio?”
Glais closed his eyes. Shivering, he reached weakly for the blankets, but failed to grasp them. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Vari. It didn’t seem very urgent. I’m pretty tough, so it will take a few days for me to get really worn down. But I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. Maybe next week.”
“How can you be so calm?” she asked him.
“Well, I’m happy. These past few weeks, down here with you—I’ve never been so happy. We just left the world and all its headaches behind, and we’ve been so free. It’s so serene and quiet. I don’t have any regrets.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Varia told him. “You’re happy, so you want to die and leave me so I can be unhappy without you?”
“No. I don’t want to die,” Glais admitted. “But, if it’s going to happen, I might as well make peace with my life now. I know you love me. I know you w
on’t forget me.”
“Don’t make peace. Don’t accept it.” Varia looked at him angrily. “I don’t want to be with you for only a few weeks. I want centuries. I have so much more love inside me, and it will take me a millennium to give it to you. I want you to fight to live. There’s so much we haven’t done, so much we haven’t learned. Will you promise me that? Promise me that you’ll fight.”
“Only if you make your promise first,” he told her. “Promise you’ll go home to your mother.”
“Alright,” Varia said angrily. “If you die, I’ll leave your rotting corpse right here and go home to my mother.”
“Thanks,” he told her.
She growled. “But not right away. I’ll probably hug your rotting corpse and cry for a few dozen years, so if you want to save me from serious emotional trauma and possible necrophilia, you should fight to live.”
“Necrophilia?” he repeated with surprise.
“Mhmm,” she teased. “Since you wouldn’t oblige me while alive.”
Glais began to laugh at this ridiculous prospect. He kissed her hair. “Do you really like me that much, Vari?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How crazy will I go when my only friend, the person I love most in the entire world, just falls over and dies? I guess we’ll find out. But I’m perfectly determined to just act like nothing happened and pretend you’re still alive.” She gave him a suggestive little wink.
Glais stared at her with wide eyes. He cleared his throat. “Well, maybe you could pretend I’m dead right now. You know, while my body’s still warm.”
“No way!” she said, repositioning the blanket over him. “You’re sick and you need to rest.”
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