Chapter 70: The Question Underneath

He walked to her line slowly that evening, turning over how to open a conversation he'd never needed language for before, and put it to Vek before anyone else. It touched her more directly than it touched the rest of the colony.

I think it's happening to me too, he marked. The threshold. I don't know if it's happening to you.

Vek held still long enough for Sacha to understand the question had landed somewhere she hadn't expected.

I have felt something, she admitted, finally — the plainest admission of uncertainty he had ever read from her. I did not have a name for it. I assumed it was the border. Everything that has changed about me this season, I assumed was the border.

Maybe it is. Maybe the border's what asked it of you, the same way the pale ones' wall asked it of Khrr.

And if it is not a maybe, she sent. If it is simply happening. What does it cost?

Sacha didn't have a clean answer.

Khrr's crossing had happened gradually, alongside language, alongside a bond neither of them had built on purpose.

No ledger told him what a body spent to become more than it started as.

I don't know, he sent, honestly. I know it isn't free. Nothing here has been. I know Khrr doesn't regret it, and I know that's one data point, not a law.

Thresh found the two of them still at the border that evening, deep in a conversation that had stopped being about tactics and, without either of them quite naming it, become about what they were turning into.

You are both frightened of the same thing from two different directions, it observed, settling its bad side against the wall. He is frightened of what it costs to become more. You are frightened of what it costs the ones who do not.

Vek considered that a long moment.

The colony is ninety bodies now, she sent. If the threshold keeps finding the ones who lead, what does that make everyone who is not chosen for it? A permanent floor under something that keeps rising away from them?

Sacha felt the question land — something he should have asked himself already, and hadn't.

Then we don't let it be a floor, he sent, slowly, working the answer out as he built it rather than arriving at it whole. Whatever this becomes — for me, for you, for Khrr — it doesn't get to mean the rest of them matter less. If the ladder wants to keep asking more of the ones who lead, fine. But leading was never supposed to mean leaving people behind. I built this colony to prove a roach could be more than the shape it started in. I'm not going to build a version of "more" that only applies to three of us.

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Vek didn't answer immediately.

When she did, it was short, the closest thing to warmth Sacha had read from her since the day he'd named her.

Good, she sent. Because I intend to hold you to that longer than either of us is going to enjoy.

Khrr, who had been standing at the edge of the conversation without joining it, marked something once Vek had gone back to her line — brief, the way everything from Khrr had become brief.

It had clearly been holding this particular thought since long before tonight.

I did not understand what it cost until it was already spent, Khrr sent. The threshold. I want to tell you both something true, since you are standing where I stood.

Tell me.

It does not take anything from what you already were, Khrr marked. I thought it would. I thought becoming more meant becoming less of the thing I started as. It did not. I am still the roach who watched you across a spider's wreckage and decided to trust a god who had just gambled everything on ten bodies and a ring.

Its antennae settled, level, certain. Whatever it costs you, it will not cost you that. I would have told you sooner. I did not have the words until now.

Sacha stood with that a long moment.

I didn't know you were carrying that, he sent.

I was not going to say it until I was sure it was true, Khrr marked. I am sure now.

Vek came back from her line alone, later that night, once the reporting junction had quieted and Khrr had gone to check the healers' rotation one last time before rest.

I was not finished, she marked, without preamble — her own particular way, by now, of admitting she needed something. Earlier. I said good and walked away because I did not know what else to do with what you had just promised me.

What else is there?

She held still long enough that he thought she might not answer at all.

I have spent this whole season becoming someone I did not ask to become, she sent, finally. An anchor. A name people bring their fear to before they bring it to you. I do not regret it. I want you to hear that clearly, because what I am about to say could sound like regret and is not.

Her marks slowed, weighing each one before she laid it. I do not know who I would have been if the border had never needed moving. I think about that sometimes. Not with grief. With something closer to curiosity about a person I will never get to meet.

Sacha didn't rush to fill the silence that followed.

Vek's silences did work.

I think about that too, he sent, eventually. Who I'd have been if the scaffold hadn't come down. I don't get to meet him either.

He paused, working out how much of it he wanted to send. I used to think that was the tragedy of all this. Dying twice. Waking up here. Losing every version of myself that might have existed otherwise.

He let the thought finish forming before he sent the rest of it. I don't think it's a tragedy anymore. I think it's just the price of becoming anything at all.

A beat. Nobody gets to keep every version of themselves. You just get to choose, as honestly as you can, which one you spend the rest of your life being.

Vek considered that for a long while, antennae level, and when she finally answered, it was short.

Then I choose this one, she sent. Not because I had to. Because I have looked at the alternative, and I like this version of myself considerably more.

[Sanctuary: internal structure — differentiation deepening.

Divine Creature — Echelon 6 of 9.]

He read it standing between the two people who, without either of them planning it, had become the actual architecture of everything he'd built since a water heater and a spider.

Six, he sent to them both. Three left in this tier.

And then what, Vek sent.

Then we find out what the ladder wants from us next, he sent, and I keep the promise I just made you regardless of what it costs to keep it.

Khrr said nothing, but stayed close enough that the silence carried its own agreement.