[darth vader]

II.

Even years later, Mina never spoke of what she saw. She carried the memory silently in the back of her throat, between her palms, in the long months afterward. Watching Thalia wipe her horse down with a soft brush after a mission, oiling the leather of the saddle with the same mechanical movement she executed every action with in those long months after Zeyn left them. Her eyes focused in a blank gaze on what no one else could see.

The memory tasted like salt. It was relentless. She could not escape it. When Mina tried to remember Zeyn as she had been at the end, her face streaked with blood, her eyes wide and gleaming with a wild light, swinging her blade at each of them in turn, she could not. Only that moment returned to her.

The excursion that day had been long and unforgiving. Thalia's squad had limped back to headquarters with nothing to show for their time but hastily bandaged wounds and dulled blades. Even Thalia had been silent as they stabled their horses. Outside there had only been the bite of the first winter wind as it whipped around the corners of the building, a shrill howl that faded into white noise. Mina's fingers had been clumsy with cold as she lead her horse into his stall.

Mina herself, of course, had no options besides the barracks but both Thalia and Zeyn were far beyond being reduced to the common soldier's barrack by then, with the indignity of its public bathhouse and cramped quarters. No matter what sort of ridiculous prestige the greener recruits attached to the fact that she had graduated with Thalia and then gone on to be hand-picked for her squad, she still lived and ate with the other soldiers. She was no officer like Thalia, and her family had no pull to arrange for her private living arrangements as Zeyn's had. When Mina stepped into the small room of lockers adjoining the baths of the barracks, however, there the two of them were.

One of them had bothered to light a lantern that stood atop the row of lockers, but most of the room still lay in shadow. Thalia stood with her head bowed, Zeyn in front of her. Mina watched as the taller woman unbuckled the straps on Thalia's shoulders, the leather stiffened and dark with dried blood. Zeyn sets the harness aside on the bench behind her. She turned back to Thalia and took the other woman by the wrist, frowning at something Mina couldn't see.

"Lucia was careless," she said. "You shouldn't have stepped in to take the hit for her. If she lives in a world where you buffer her from the risks, she'll lose what edge she has."

Thalia shrugged her way out of Zeyn's grip, and sat down on the bench beside her harness. She was still facing away from Mina. In the half-light, Mina couldn't see the muscle of her shoulders, her back, as Thalia leaned forward to slide off her boots. Only how slight she seemed against the shadow. 

"Lucia is a child," Thalia said. "If you had your way, she'd be shattered before she was ever fully forged. Broken to run before she could walk."

Zeyn tilted her head. "I know you think I'm cruel," she said softly. "But you were her same age once, and twice her worth. Or were you also not a child when they gave you a squad to lead?"

Thalia laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. Mina was suddenly, shockingly glad that neither of them knew she was there.

"I was never a child," she said. "You know that."

Zeyn put a hand on her shoulder, and Mina watched as Thalia turned her face toward the other woman. Watched Zeyn cup the side of Thalia's face in her palm. For a moment there was only silence. Mina was amazed they couldn't hear the sharp whistle of her breath, the blood pounding in her veins. She felt loud beyond all reason in the face of this understanding.

"You should at least let me bandage that wound," Zeyn said. Thalia had no answer, but only began unbuttoning the collar of her shirt. She slid one arm out and Mina could see the angry red twist that curled over the top of her bicep where a titan's teeth must have raked through skin, the bloody stain on her sleeve that had been hidden by her jacket as the squad reformed and pulled back to the Walls. She tried to think if Thalia had given any sign of hurt, any careful wince or hiss of pain as they bedded the horses. None that Mina had noticed. If there had been anything amiss with Thalia, her eyes had not noticed it. 

Mina stepped away from the door. She thought of the Zeyn she had always known: sharp-featured with her fiercely inconvenient long hair she refused to cut for field work. Aristocratic and proud, glaring at all of them with steel eyes and far too good at what she did for her quick temper to be anything more than a passing frustration in the scheme of things. Her calculated movement when she fought--lacking Thalia's fluid grace, her instinct, but as equally beautiful, maybe, in its own way.

She couldn't forget. In time, it became the only image of Zeyn that Mina could summon to mind: not the woman she'd fought beside for three years trying to cut her down with a blade, not the ritually efficient killer on a mission, the aloof blue-blood when they were on leave. Only the memory of Zeyn bandaging Thalia's arm with a delicacy and care she'd never seen her attend with to anything else. She didn't know who she was carrying the memory for. She didn't know if it was justice for Zeyn, or an insult to her. If Thalia remembered it. If Thalia could not forget, no matter how she wished. She didn't know.

Outside, the wind was beginning to rise. Mina started her walk back to the barracks, head tucked down against the cold.