From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 206
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"Vita!" Katya cried, nudging her partner's shoulder to no response.
When frost began crawling up the walls, Katya shook her more sharply, and her eyes flew open straight into panic.
Vita bolted upright and shoved herself against the bulkhead, shoulders heaving. The reality that her eyes were telling her was as slow to sink in as consciousness, but when it did it was all at once, and she collapsed bonelessly into the corner. "Kiska?"
"Yes, my shadow. You were having a nightmare."
Dulled blue eyes searched around the cabin as if Vita expected something should have been happening to it, but as her breathing slowed, so did her search, until Katya became the sole occupant of her attention. "I'm sorry."
Vita's skin was pallid, her face drained of colour. Whatever she'd seen had ripped away her outer layers of rationality and confidence, leaving bare the vulnerable core that sleep had exposed. "You needn't apologise. Are you all right?"
The answer was alarmingly slow to come. Elise had said there was no lasting damage from the experiment, but the look in Vita's eyes spoke of a type that Elise could do little about.
"I have seen the face of my failure, Kiska. It was so… vivid. It was like standing at the mouth of Hell."
From the tremor in Vita's voice and the look in her eye, Katya knew she wasn't talking about her failure to monitor herself. Whatever she'd dreamed wasn't about Vita or Katya at all. The fear, the disbelief on her face was far more profound than disappointment, it was outright horror.
Running a finger across Vita's sweat-slick forehead, Katya parted the thick strands of hair threatening to smother her eyes. "You've never failed at anything, my shadow. It was only a dream."
Vita shook her head violently, spattering Katya's neck and chest with sweat. "Touching uranium in those amounts, feeling the energy potential within it… Even a single device would be a cataclysm. Everything not vaporised… burning… skin melting from bones… the radiation released… walking, shambling corpses begging for death…"
Katya took a deep, steadying breath against the memories of Badensburg that threatened to pour in through the crack such imagery blew open. She knew Vita didn't mean to evoke what Katya herself had done, she hadn't been there to see it. Nonetheless, it took a conscious effort for Katya not to equate herself with such a horrible weapon.
She was only partly successful, but enough to set it aside and be present for Vita.
"It was a nightmare, Vityusha. They aren't real, and they never will be. I admonished you, but I still support you. We will do this, just as you said."
"What if I fail? I've seen what will happen."
"You are not a prophet, you haven't seen the future."
"I've done the maths, which is tantamount to the same thing!" Vita snapped. "It isn't enough to neuter a portion of U-235, I must destroy all of it. Everywhere. It is unconscionable to allow even a single one of these weapons to come into existence. To even let their potential enter the heads of the kind of madmen who perpetrated the World War would result in indefatigable pursuit of their creation. They cannot be allowed that chance."
"Those madmen are being and have been replaced, Helga saw to the last of them. We learned from the war, the EFPP will ensure it won't happen again," Katya said. She had to believe it. To not would be to give up on diplomacy, and that was insanity. The price had been too high, they had worked too hard. "I've sworn to do what I can to effect both, Vityusha. The peace will last because the temptation of these weapons will never come to pass. We will succeed in this together, my shadow."
Vita's head thumped against the wall. "I want to believe that. Truly, I do, but every ounce of uranium on this planet is older than the sun. It will be here long after we are gone. This cannot be a partial effort. It is only a matter of time before those who made the energy proposal do the same maths I did and follow the same path of investigation. They can't know that U-235 ever existed or they will never stop looking for it. They are scientists, too. Their curiosity will demand it, even if they don't see the ends to which it will lead. I must do this, on the same time scale. My rationale has not changed, only the scope of the task. One to which I may ultimately prove inadequate."
It was hard not to hear the pessimism in Vita's voice, but Katya needed to support her partner. If Vita was right, then there wasn't a soul alive who could afford her losing faith in herself now. "I don't believe such a thing is possible. You know the problem, you know yourself. The solution lies where they intersect, Doctor. You can do this. Safely. You made a mistake, but one that can be rectified. Doubts are natural, but this is your life's work."
Vita dabbed at her brow with a pyjama sleeve. "I still don't know what I can effect beyond staying the chosen course, though. I need more exposure, more practice. The earth is a natural system, evolved over eons into a coherent whole. Uranium is undoubtedly distinct, but nonetheless a part of that whole." She reddened slightly and looked down at her fidgeting hands. "I'm sorry to wax philosophical, but that's what I felt when I was down there. Human beings like to think ourselves separate and unique from that whole, but…" she shook her head. "There are no borders down there. It's primordial, timeless. Singular. Water is as much a skin as air, and no more a barrier."
Vita wasn't one often given to speaking in such terms, and that made her contention all the more poignant. And weighty.
"Then use it. Keep gathering information, combine it with what you know and what you can do. You'll find the answer, Vityusha. Meanwhile, I too will stay the course. The size of the crowds we've seen, all those hopeful faces… there's a whole world outside of Europe, and they are our responsibility too. What we're doing is about more than just witches and madmen." The truth of it settled on Katya as she spoke. The witch bubble she had been living in was ever-growing, but still a bubble. Where she'd come from, the people they'd met so far on this trip, it was all so big. And because of it, that much more important.
They held each other in thought, insulated from the cold by magic and sound by distance. "I suppose in trying to see the long view, I have grown rather ironically myopic. You are correct, my light. As you so often are," Vita said eventually.
"Not always?" Katya bumped her shoulder playfully.
"To be perfect is to be stagnant, and where is the living in that?"
Katya kissed her partner on the cheek. "My beautifully vexing puzzle, you've charmed me again. If you're feeling better, shall we get some sleep?"
Nodding, Vita helped Katya wriggle back under the covers. When the witchlights went out, they were still looking into each others' eyes. "Thank you for listening."
"Of course. I will always be here for you." They shared a short good-night kiss. "Sleep well, my shadow."
Mercifully, she did.
All the way to the Pacific.
Contrary to what Millie may or may not have believed before arriving in New Zealand, nothing was upside-down except the seasons. With that knowledge in hand, she could have come to truly like the place if it wasn't so bloody hot. In December! She wasn't a dullard, she understood why summer happened when it did, that knowledge simply failed to make it easier to accept when she was standing in the middle of it. Or cowering from it, which was more accurate. With her complexion, she was only mildly surprised she didn't burst into flames the instant she stepped off the ship. Her skin was at war with itself, alternately screaming for her to rip off her sleeves while at the same time threatening to blister every time it saw daylight.
Still, there was something about the place that appealed to parts of her she thought had shrivelled and died a long time ago. The crowds that showed up had a very working-class bent to them, and that included the witches. After a week-and-a-half cooped up in a flying palace and spending the laziest day of her life on a tropical island, she'd needed a solid, treaded boot in the arse to remind her who she really was. The only place less pretentious she could think of was Scotland.
It was also beautiful, especially from the air—all of the best parts of everywhere Millie had ever been, plus proper mountains. Now that she'd been to Canada, she actually knew what those looked like.
When they got to Australia, Millie's love for the Southern Hemisphere was solidified.
"I want to come back here," she said to Elise as Kat gave another of her barn-burner speeches, refined down to perfection after so many renditions, "preferably when the sun is farther away."
Ever polite, Elise's laughter was silent, echoing only across the Bond as the rest of her paid studious attention to a speech even she had all but memorised by now. There were additions—the ANZACs had bled as much as the Canadians had during the war, and for a British, nee Russian, witch to mention Gallipoli by name was met with much appreciation.
True to Millie's perceptions, however, the questions that followed revealed how far Australia was removed from the mission EVE was ostensibly there to carry out. Peace in Europe was all well and good, but was Katya's hair naturally white? What was the name of Vita's tailor? Did Millie have a hard time finding shoes? Was Doctor Cotillard a real doctor, or was it honorary?
Perturbed though such questions might have made Kat and Vickie, Millie appreciated such directness. EVE was here, Europe was far away and a bit blurry. People wanted to know what they wanted to know; it was all very grounding.
Being so far from home under such extraordinary circumstances also helped to stretch taut the threads trying to keep her tied into the shape Niamh had made her until more than one of them snapped completely. What could have been nightmarishly tense was instead overwhelmingly positive. For years, Millie had mistrusted shadows, now they were a refuge; strangers had been an omnipresent danger, now they provided smiling hospitality, and the most pointed things they brandished were questions.
For the first time in over a decade, she felt free. There was no longer a rush to get home—the house wasn't finished yet, at any rate—and even at the oblique reminders of her past, the future opened up wider than it had since the day she'd met Elise. She held a koala and saw a pack of wild kangaroos from an airship, who wouldn't think anything was possible?
But the trip wasn't just leaving impressions on Millie. EVE was gaining as much as it was giving through sheer perspective. The witches they were encountering were numerous, but nowhere near as powerful as what any of them were used to. Across the whole of Canada, New Zealand and Australia, no-one could recall sensing more than a handful of Manifests.
"It would appear Carice was correct in her assessment," Vickie said as the quartet sat down to discuss things after lifting off from Sydney, bound for Adelaide. "Perhaps it was the war that directly contributed to the spike in Manifests Selene spent so long documenting; a response to it. A defence mechanism."
"For?" Millie asked.
Vickie set down her tea. "Humanity. One of the theories Carice put forth was that a rise in Manifests could be proportional to the killing power of modern weapons."
Millie grunted. "I thought you didn't believe in Morrigan, or any of them."
"I do not. This is evolution in progress, not a divine intervention," Vickie pronounced in her teaching voice. "The same way giraffes evolved longer necks to reach higher branches, or frogs evolved to survive both in water and on land. Perhaps magic, or its expression in us, is doing much the same. Directly in response to weapons, as in you, or as an amplifier. Or yes, a catalyst."
"Whatever the case may be, we aren't done, so I don't see a point in speculating," Kat said. She took a sip of wine. "When we're home safe from Geneva, we'll have all the time in the world to wonder how and why we did what we did. The important thing now is doing it. Safely. We're a few hours from the next uranium deposit. Are you ready?"
If Millie hadn't known Kat as well as she did—and sympathised completely with her concern for her partner—she would have been surprised at Kat's tone, given that her speech had gone over so well. But in the look in her eye, and how closely she hedged towards Vickie physically, Millie saw only the deeply familiar.
In response, the sober cloak of the Raven settled over Vickie's shoulders and she met the Firebird's challenge with eyes keen on redemption. "I am. My calculations have backed up my intuition, and exposure to multiple deposits in Canada has proven that the scale of my task is no less geographically spread out. However, I have reduced the scope of it by integrating theories put forth by some of my geology colleagues. Our flight over the Pacific gave me ample time to re-read several journals and correspondence, and perhaps in them find a solution. My experience in the Red Zone was all about sifting through earth to find what shouldn't be there, this is no different. Seek, map, follow, destroy; this is the order of operations in order to…" Vickie looked about to the crew as they went about their duties "…defuse things… with maximum efficiency. Just a few neutrons makes all the difference."
"Yes, just," Millie said. No matter how many diagrams Vickie drew, the entire concept of making a bomb out of a few atoms simply would not stick in Millie's brain as a real possibility. Even the existence of atoms themselves she had to take on faith, let alone the idea you could cut one open and blow up a city with it. Almost everything Vickie did with her Manifest proved her right, but every time she tried to sit down and explain how it actually worked, Millie had to reduce it down to 'magic' and leave it at that. What she wouldn't take on faith was how serious it was to Vickie, and how far she was willing to push to exorcise her ghosts. And save the world, by her reckoning. "What help do you need?"
The look Kat shot Millie didn't miss, it bounced off. Kat's concern was understandable, but she couldn't put herself above what Vickie was trying to do no matter how strongly she felt about the woman who was doing it.
"I was foolish to not use the fuel source I had prepared explicitly for this," Vickie said with a nod to Kat, "and I will listen when an expert speaks," she said in Elise's direction. "Changing those two factors should lead to a much more efficient process."
"I will be with you again," Elise said.
"As will I." Kat gave Vickie a look that would suffer not a word of argument, but it was clear that wasn't what Vickie was looking for.
"Thank you," she said. "I know how esoteric and opaque my… mission is, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your faith in me. I was afraid you would think me mad."
"There's still time for that," Millie said.
Vickie's smile was bright but brief. "Indeed. I will endeavour to avoid earning such a description."
Kat set her hand on Vickie's. "Focus on staying alive and whole. The rest will follow."
Victoria wound up in bed sweating again after her next uranium neutralising exercise was finished, only this time she wasn't doing so alone.
Soft moonlight drifted in through the portholes, arcing shining highlights across Kiska's every curve. Victoria knew them better than she did her own, yet she didn't refrain from paying every one the rapturous attention they were due. Kiska was always impossibly warm, and Victoria allowed herself to become drunk on it in observance of the occasion.
Every ounce of U-235 in southern Australia was no more and she had used only a minor fraction of a single diamond to do it, reaching efficiencies in practical application she had never managed in her exercises back in Longstown. With Kiska as an anchor, Victoria had pushed herself further than ever, experimenting with different approaches. Her construal of the earth being a singular whole had been more than romantic imagery, she had taken full advantage of it by using her magic as a kind of sonar, in full accordance with (and validation of) the seismographic mapping proposal she'd seen in London. Once charted, she could use the conductivity of the metals as a kind of amplifier, and through such narrow conduits send her magic reverberating outward much farther than she had been able to previously reach. It was a phenomenon she planned to spend a good portion of their journey northward trying to understand, but the current moment celebrating.
Victoria stared at her hand. As frail and human as always, yet capable of harnessing energies heretofore unthinkable by humankind—and bringing the softest, most sublime pleasure to the woman she loved.
"This shell of mine… you encouraged me to embrace it." Victoria rolled onto her elbow so she could look Kiska in the eye. "To be proud of it. The resentment is gone, replaced by possibility. Canada was a toddler's unsteady first steps—this time I felt… connected. Purposeful. Directional. I find it difficult to articulate precisely. Perhaps akin to electricity moving through metal or water rather than wood or stone."
Kiska stroked the back of Victoria's hand. "I've never felt you work like that before. It was like you locked into perfect harmony with… yourself. The heat, though, was a bit alarming."
"Unavoidable. In the Training Hall, I can redirect the energy, spin it back into matter or dissipate it. Here, the space is too small and I am too far away to split my focus. Perhaps I will add vents to the cargo hold before we reach the next deposit."
"We have to cross the entirety of Australia to get there, so you won't lack for time."
"A journey not nearly as impressive going south-to-north," Victoria said.
Kiska's bare shoulder bloomed in the moonlight. "A continent is a continent."
"Fair enough." Victoria thumbed the fine, almost invisible hairs on Kiska's arm; wisps that rose to dance on a field of sudden gooseflesh. "I had always thought I could find a way to break magic down, quantify and categorise it, divorce it from the witch into some kind of objective thing to be studied on its own." She found the inside of Kiska's arm, tracing out the faint blue veins below her flawless alabaster skin. "But I am increasingly learning that merging the two is what I have been meant to do all along. We must remind the girls so often that a witch is nothing without her feelings, and yet I have spent so much of my life in fear of mine."
"You feel as strongly as any of us, my shadow. Your denial of your own true self was crippling you," Kiska said.
"Yes." Victoria's tracing fingers found the lines in Kiska's palm, the unique patterns found nowhere else in space or time. "Perhaps I am finally becoming who I was meant to be. The one Selene and Colette saw all those years ago."
