Unruined

     Contrary to popular belief, Xandra wasn’t fully conscious of her imprisonment in stone, but neither was it like being knocked out. She had slept, and she had dreamed. She had an awareness that some time had passed. Her mind slid across the smooth surface of reality. Pain, dull and warm, enveloped her body.

     “Careful,” said the one on the left. The blue one. “Lay her down slowly.”

     Xandra smashed her elbow into his mouth and made a break for — well, where the door might be, for lack of glasses.

     It was a wall.

     She wasn’t tackled, but she was grabbed around the waist and lifted off the ground by a pair of orange arms.

     “Knock it off! You’re only making things worse.”

     Xandra’s mind slowed. Her blurry eyes dropped to her own body for the first time.

     Where her left arm should have been, it was not.

     Predictably, she fainted.

     ———

     Xandra slept for three days, dead to the world, with occasional interruption by faerie nurses. They poked and prodded her, changed her bandages, stared at her until she took a few bites of food. Occasionally, they exchanged whispered words with Brynnso. Eventually, Xandra became lucid enough to realise that they were her guards, taking turns in a sleeping bag on the floor.

     Steadfastly, she ignored all questions. It was only when Hanso started eating her abandoned jello cup that she spoke.

     “Haven’t I suffered enough?”

     Hanso choked. “I thought you were asleep.”

     “It wasn’t enough to take years of my life? You had to take my arm, too?”

     He rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t us. There was a hurricane, and you fell over, and it broke off. Freaked Fyora out so badly she decided to wake you up. Guess it never occurred to her that stone’s, y’know, brittle.”

     Xandra idly traced stitches on her leg. She had stitches in multiple places — spending years as a garden statue, even without getting knocked over by a stray gust, had worn and torn her body. Cracks in the surface of the stone had manifested as cuts. One of them was worryingly close to her eye, but the healers seemed tentatively optimistic about it.

     “It was never of consequence before,” Xandra sniffed. “The only enemy she’d cast that spell on before was another faerie. Their bodies are mere illusions.”

     Her hand wavered over her ribcage, in the place where her left arm was supposed to rest.

     “I’m sorry.”

     Xandra’s head snapped up. “You said you didn’t do it.”

     “I didn’t, but I should’ve said something. When they said they were gonna put you in the royal garden, I thought it was weird, like, what, they’re just gonna leave you outside indefinitely? I mean, I did say it was weird, but they told me it would be fine. I should’ve, I don’t know. Pushed harder. I guess.”

     Anger existed in Xandra. It had existed, at minimum, since she woke up from her confinement. Its flame didn’t exactly go out at that moment, but it did quiet.

     “How long was ‘indefinitely’?”

     “Five years. Yeah, a little over five years.”

     That tracked. Brynnso didn’t look that much older, but their appearances had changed. They both looked happier. More relaxed. Hanso, far less gaunt.

     Xandra stared at the ceiling. “Now what?”

     “Great question,” Hanso said, and did not answer.

     ———

     In the morning, Brynn came bearing gifts.

     Eggs. Toast. Orange juice. Two muffins. Oatmeal. Pancakes. Apples slices. Syrup. Sausage and bacon. Coffee, hot and cold. Both black.

     Xandra threw the breakfast platter out the window. Brynn pulled out a second identical breakfast platter.

     “There are starving children in Dacardia, you know,” Xandra said flatly.

     “Yes, and I’m sure the plate you threw out the window made it all the way there,” said Brynn, unamused. “Eat. Your body needs calories to heal.”

     “I’ve been eating.”

     “Your body’s going through a massive adjustment. A few mouthfuls of terrible hospital food aren’t going to cut it.”

     “Doesn’t look like a hospital to me.” Xandra knew what Faerie City’s hospital looked like, and while it wasn’t a modern hospital, it also wasn’t a stone tower. Not a terrible place by any means. It wasn’t a dungeon. Just another one of Fyora’s soft-handed approaches to things that really ought not to be treated with soft hands.

     It wouldn’t be that difficult to escape. Physically, anyway.

     In all other senses, escape just couldn’t happen. Xandra was maimed, she’d burned all her goodwill with other people five years ago, and she had no idea how the world had otherwise changed.

     She had to stay. For now.

     “But it is horrible?”

     Xandra grunted. “Not dangerously so. If anyone’s tried to poison me already, they’re bad at it.”

     “I made this food myself,” Brynn said, her fingertips drumming the table. “And I’m sure that doesn’t make you feel better, but it puts my conscience at ease.”

     “Did someone actually try to poison me?”

     “No, but there’s been talk.”

     “Why?”

     “You dropped a city out of the sky, Xandra. A lot of people evacuated in time, but—”

     “I understand that. What I don’t understand is why you wouldn’t want me just as dead.”

     “What would the point be? More blood in the gutter won’t bring anyone back.”

     “It would stop me from doing it again.”

     Brynn raised her eyebrows. “You could stop you from doing it again. I don’t know why you’re gunning so hard for your own death, but I won’t oblige you while your blood sugar is low. Drink. The. Juice.”

     Scowling, Xandra did. It was infuriatingly good juice.

     “And take a shower.”

     Xandra scoffed. “Are you going to help me do that, too?”

     “I might have to.”

     Brynn looked at the empty place where Xandra’s left arm would’ve been. Persistent application of potions and healing magic had sealed it off by now. Xandra hadn’t showered since the curse was lifted, but surely it couldn’t be that hard.

     It was that hard.

     For one, Xandra had underestimated how much her left arm factored into the process. For another, Brynn had work today. Hanso did not.

     “I can’t express how displeased I am with this.”

     “Dude, I work emergency medicine. I wouldn’t see anything I haven’t seen before.”

     Xandra paused her struggle to raise an eyebrow. “Emergency medicine?”

     “I mean, I couldn’t keep pickpocketing under Fyora, and I have to do something between missions or I’ll die of boredom.”

     “Odd career change.”

     “Not really. At the end of the day, I’ve got a weird sleep schedule, I’m good under pressure, and I’m good at, like, moving heavy things really fast. At the gym, there are nice, convenient handles. If somebody’s grandma passed out, or it’s two AM and you’re trying to steal a bathtub without the homeowner noticing, there are no convenient handles.”

     “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that second part.”

     “Eh, the statute of limitations is up.”

     Opening the shampoo bottle with one hand didn’t work out, and when Xandra tried to get it with her teeth, it slipped and fell in the water. The bar of soap, at least, cooperated, working up into her fur quickly.

     It occurred to her that her fur was long and scraggly. This wasn’t a recent development; she hadn’t been awake that long. It must have been a product of letting herself go a bit before the Ruin. She’d been so fixated on pulling it off that everything else had fallen by the wayside.

     Fat lot of good that did her.

     Xandra squinted at her wrist. There was something dark around it that wasn’t scrubbing off and suggested a design. “Thief?”

     “Yuh huh?”

     “What did they tattoo on my wrist?”

     “Oh yeah. That. It binds your magic.”

     “What was that?”

     “What?”

     “Just now, that thing your voice did.” A hard edge, one that Xandra wouldn’t have noticed if this were anyone other than Hanso, who seemed to live and breathe nonchalantness. The only time she’d heard him get serious was when she rammed a country into the ground. Hearing it come out of nowhere was disconcerting.

     He cleared his throat. “Bad history with tattoos, is all,” he said.

     Xandra came dangerously close to falling when she got out, but she gritted her teeth and managed it. Redressing herself was just as annoying as undressing — it should’ve been easier, but the simple act of taking a bath had exhausted her.

     “Welcome back, sunshine,” Hanso said.

     “Are you drinking my coffee?”

     “Are you gonna?”

     “No,” said Xandra, pitching forward onto her bed. She laid unmoving and sideways across it.

     Hanso snorted. “I’m taking the coffee and leaving the rest. Seriously, listen to Brynn on this one. If you’re gonna keep being evil, at least do it with food in your stomach.”

     The shower was needed, but a thin stickiness settled on her fur shortly afterwards, anyway. She cursed this. Cursed herself. She, after all, was the one who had brought Faerieland down from a higher altitude and into this hotter, more humid air.

     Xandra’s exhaustion had eased somewhat, but the waking world wasn’t exactly interesting. Her ability to leave the tower was throttled by bureaucratic cruft, and there was so little to do inside it that Hanso had resorted to taking up knitting.

     “Actually, this is crochet.”

     “They’re both women’s work.”

     “Dude, don’t be a jerk, you’re better than this.”

     “I exploded a country, Hanso. I am not better than this.”

     “You could be if you weren’t a jerk.”

     Dinner was consumed. Hanso stole her jello cup again. As they fell asleep, it began to rain.

     ———

     It took Xandra a while to fully wake up. It was mostly lost under the thumping rain, but eventually the muffled noises became loud enough that Xandra, groggy and unmoored from space and time, sat up and said, “Lux?”

     After all, it was clearly discernible as coming from beside her. But when she put on her glasses and saw hair that was dark, not yellow, the present snapped back.

     “Please… no… please… I’m sorry…”

     Hanso’s sleep-speech was occasionally interrupted by whimpers and, more worryingly, something like the noises her childhood Angelpuss would make before it threw up.

     She prodded him with her paw. “Ixi?”

     Hanso jerked awake, his eyes snapping open and, for an uncomfortable few seconds, fixing her with a wide-eyed stare. Then he rushed into the bathroom, retching.

     Xandra blinked. Tentatively, she crept to the ajar door. Hanso was panting weakly into forearms resting on the edge of the toilet, hurting too badly to care about whether this was gross or not. He was drenched in sweat.

     Her hand flexed at her side. She had seen a blonde body in this exact position so many times that she had to suppress the urge to go over there and pull his hair back. For lack of a more hostile way to phrase the question, she said the obvious: “Are you okay?”

     Hanso lifted his head, and Xandra had the distinct sensation that she wasn’t supposed to see him like this. “Just dandy,” he said, looking like he was about to pass out. Then he threw up again. He was steadier after this one, or at least, his teeth stopped chattering. “Think the worst of it’s over.”

     “Do you… need something? Should I call someone?”

     Hanso didn’t miss the blood in the water. He smiled, teeth faintly jelly-pink. “Aw, look at you. So sweet.”

     “I’m not sweet for wanting to keep you from vomiting on my floor.”

     “Keep telling yourself that,” Hanso said, eyes fixed on a blank wall. It was a familiar look — the sort of thing someone does when they’re too weak to get up, but they don’t want to risk vertigo by setting their head down.

     The immediate alarm having passed, Xandra’s eyes wandered. It occurred to her that she had no idea what Hanso slept in. She’d changed clothes in the bathroom, and by the time she came out, he’d already pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin. The tank top and boxers combination didn’t surprise her as much as what it failed to hide.

     Hanso, when not showing the exact amount of skin that his usual outfit did, had a single tattoo, and a lot more scars.

     There was scar tissue around his wrists and ankles, raised and ridged. Through what she could see of his back through the big, douchey arm holes, streaks from whips. When his shirt lifted a bit, there were short, random ones that made her think of a knife fight. The dark tattoo that hooped his neck would be evocative of strangulation bruises if she hadn’t put her glasses on, but she had, and they looked like magical runes.

     It was surprising how much this surprised her. Xandra knew for a fact that Hanso was a felon. A career thief. He’d spent most of his life in organised crime. But the romanticised image of a dashing thief he’d projected was so strong that the reality of his body was like the carcass of a ham.

     Hanso cleared his throat. Xandra realised she was staring.

     “Go back to bed,” he muttered at the wall, acid-hoarse. “I’ll be fine.”

     “Do you tell that lie to Brynn, too?”

     Hanso turned, raising an unamused eyebrow, and said nothing.

     ———

     “What’s the purpose of Hanso’s tattoo?”

     Brynn’s hand stilled on the cutting board. She was pitting cherries, removing their stems and rubbing them against the wood with the heel of her palm. While Hanso reached for a crochet hook as a means of distraction, Brynn had taken up flour and sugar. “He showed you that?”

     “On accident, when he threw up last night.”

     “...He threw up?” Brynn said, confirming Xandra’s suspicions. Hanso’s mythology was that of a man perpetually cool and mirthful, and he wouldn’t pierce that by confessing vulnerability. Not even for Brynn. Perhaps especially not for Brynn, a person he would rather not lose. It was a bad quality, but one that Xandra related to.

     She watched Brynn’s expressions as she explained. They were layered with muted anger and exhausted understanding.

     “We’ve been working with a light faerie lately,” she said. “Subconsciously, he might be… nervous.”

     “Why?”

     “Personal reasons.”

     “And why the tattoo?”

     “Also personal reasons.”

     “The very same reason?” Brynn was unenthused. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

     “Listen. Hanso’s a very private person. It took him years to share this information with me, and I’ve done far less to hurt him. Unless you want him to stop speaking to you, I suggest you don’t push it.”

     “Trust me, I want nothing more than for him to stop speaking to me.”

     Brynn rubbed her temples. “Let me put it another way — Hanso’s job right now is to watch you sleep. Perhaps you should stop screwing around.”

     “When you put it that way, he sounds like a bad guy.”

     “Xandra, we’re both bad guys.”

     “He’s a bad guy,” Xandra said, sensing an opportunity to get under her skin. “You’re a guard.”

     “Legality never made anybody less dead. In material terms, his career path and mine are shockingly similar; I just had the opportunity to pick the mafia de jure.”

     Xandra nodded in something that was almost approval.

     “Don’t look so happy,” said Brynn. “You’ve got work to do. You’re getting a new arm.”

     ———

     Getting the shoulder mount installed took several hours of full-on surgery and knocked Xandra down for another two days.

     Hanso, curious, looked over Xandra’s healing shoulder at the catalogue. “That’s not the one the healer gave you.”

     “Correct. Brynn’s has a better selection.”

     “Brynn, you just had a catalogue of prosthetic arms?”

     Brynn shrugged. “We’re in a dangerous line of work. Best to be prepared.”

     “Well, you better make a decision soon,” Hanso said to Xandra. “We’re heading out to the Haunted Woods next Tuesday. The clowns have been making some weird noises.”

     “Which clowns?” Xandra grumbled. There was nothing in the Haunted Woods except the undead, the unserious, and the ungovernable. Thankfully, she was just the latter.

     “The actual, literal clowns.”

     “Ah.” She’d forgotten about them. Within the first week of living and working in her library, one of them jumped her, and she’d caved its stupid red nose in. They didn’t bother her after that. “Either they’re more dangerous than I remember, or you’ve been demoted.”

     “The former. Something’s turning them into big monsters.”

     “It’s an artefact, or it isn’t,” said Brynn, “but either way, they’re getting too close to the border. They had better not lead us too far into the Woods; logistics in there is a nightmare.”

     Very true. As a major region with no central government, the Haunted Woods were a haven from those governments, although this did have its drawbacks. Xandra had been sent out there because there were some magical tomes that Fyora wasn’t allowed to store on Faerieland soil. The grocery options sucked. She couldn’t imagine how much of a pain it would be to go in as the Queen’s agents.

     Xandra tapped one of the listings. “This one.”

     “Hm?” Brynn moved to look over Xandra’s shoulder, only for Hanso to take the catalogue out of her hand. “That’s a bit theatrical, don’t you think?”

     “Have I ever not been theatrical?”

     “Heck if we know,” said Hanso. “Before you got released from your statue form, we knew you for, what, two days?”

     “Two and a morning,” said Brynn.

     “My point remains, but it’s good to have a friend who appreciates drama as much as I do — I’d pick that one too if it came in a darker palette.”

     Xandra was aghast. “No. We’re not connecting over this.”

     “Ah, c’mon.”

     “We’re not friends.”

     “Uh-huh.” Hanso smugly pointed at Brynn. “That’s what she said.”

     ———

     “Does it hurt?”

     “There was a little pressure when you mounted the shoulder, but no pain.”

     “Hopefully, that’ll get easier with time. Hold your arms out with your palms up.”

     Xandra did, and as she did, the doctor clicked a stopwatch. It didn’t surprise her that her prosthetist was a Neopet — it surprised her that Faerieland had prosthetists at all. Faerie bodies were malleable in a way that made the field unnecessary. And yet here she is, opening Xandra’s palm, splaying her fingers, testing her wrist, her joints, her range of motion.

     The arm was mostly made of enchanted wood, inlaid with crystals she could channel her magic through. Obviously, she had to do some haggling to get Fyora to approve of it. The arm had embedded tracking spells, and could be shut off remotely at the Queen’s command, leaving Xandra dead in the water if she put a paw out of line.

     It was an indignity, but one that she was willing to accept if it meant getting her magic back. If you want to take a mile, you’ve got to take an inch first.

     The installation had involved some clothing removal, so Brynnso had been asked to step out of the room. Hanso whistled as they came back in. “Snazzy work, doc.”

     “Almost too snazzy,” Xandra said, flexing her fingers, both artificial and flesh. “My real hand is fatter. But it doesn’t affect function, so we can smooth that out later.”

     The appointment had been long and tiring, and the sun had gone down while they were in the doctor’s office. Faerieland had always been laid out strangely — one might even say it was hostile to anyone who didn’t have wings — but even if the state that was supposed to fix these things moved glacially, people didn’t. There were almost as many ladders as there were exterior doors that led to two-story drops.

     “Hey.” Brynn nudged Hanso and directed his attention to a bakery window.

     “Ooh, faerie bread! Back in a sec.”

     “Who enjoys faerie bread?” said Xandra, wrinkling her nose. Unless things had changed drastically in the past five years, faerie bread still tasted like a brick of styrofoam with sprinkles on top, and was about as nutritious. It was also cheap. Xandra ate a truly inadvisable amount of it in grad school.

     Brynn shrugged. “This bakery gives it out for free at the end of the day because it goes off so quickly.”

     “That’s not what I asked.”

     “Well, when we booked people at my old precinct in Brightvale and they wouldn’t give us a last name for the record, we’d write down their favourite pastry so the field wouldn’t be blank. Hanso’s favourite pastry was madeleines because they taste about the same after a night in the dumpster.”

     “Typical.”

     ———

     That night, none of them were in the mood to entertain the hospital food. Luckily, Brynn had brought instant noodles. Unluckily, they were kind that upcharged for the experience of burning your mouth.

     “Don’t be so dramatic, this is nothing,” Brynn said, utterly unfazed.

     “This,” said Xandra between gulps of water, “is a gentle reminder from the Grim Reaper that he’s always there.”

     “You aren’t beating the stereotype.” The stereotype was that people from Brightvale, Faerieland, and — insert all the other east coast kingdoms here — had terrible spice tolerance.

     “Aren’t you two from Brightvale?” Xandra said.

     Brynnso glanced at each other. “Yes,” said Brynn, looking awkwardly at where her hands were folded in her lap. “But my parents were Wanderers, so the genetics are different.”

     “What is it with you people and strange career changes? Wanderers aren’t exactly known for being cosy with law enforcement.”

     Brynn took a measured sip of her drink. “My parents decided to leave the community, and they were lucky enough to have the money and connections to do it. They’ve always had a problem with thinking that, you know. ‘Other Wanderers are criminals. We’re not like them.’ I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

     Hanso, sprawled out with his head propped by an elbow, said, “I have no idea who my real parents are, but at least they gave me good taste.”

     “An orphan. How protagonistic,” Xandra sniffed.

     “I know, right? The closest thing I ever had to a parent was Imago, and that turned out splendid.”

     His tone dripped with venom.

     “Imago?”

     “The faerie that adopted me.”

     Oh, he was one of those children.

     Faeries, at times, adopted mortal children. Sometimes, this went well. It usually didn’t. They were faced with a massive gap in knowledge — some faeries couldn’t reliably determine what was and wasn’t edible, let alone nutritious for a growing child.

     And that was assuming they took the assignment seriously. They usually didn’t do that, either. More often than not, the unfortunate child was treated, at best, like a doll or a pet.

     Xandra recalled the collar-like mark. It was warped, as though initially wrapped around a smaller neck.

     ———

     Hanso had one of those undramatic bad dreams. Don’t get him wrong — it wasn’t like he enjoyed the nightmares about his childhood, but at least those had pathos. They had mystique. He could angstily say “I don’t wanna talk about it” with a straight face.

     And then sometimes he’d dream about getting waterboarded with jelly. If his subconscious was gonna torment him, he’d like it to at least take the job seriously.

     Brynn had mashed her face into his side, as felines are wont to do, and woke when he sat up. “Mm,” she mumbled. “What time is it?”

     Hanso sighed and rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. “Way too early o’clock. Go back to sleep.” As he absent-mindedly patted Brynn’s hair, Hanso looked over at Xandra’s bed and found it empty.

     There was a brief, cold spike of panic, and then his ears located a distinctly non-Brynn snore.

     The wicked witch, the stone sorceress, the feller of Faerieland was… curled up at Brynn’s opposite side.

To be continued…