15. Truths

Hera.

He's awake. Staring blankly at the hospital's white ceiling, his body stoic and still apart from the gentle rise of his chest. So much scar tissue around his body, old burn marks on his back from the apartment fire that seemed like an eternity and a life time ago. His ear is split at its top, faint scars from scratches on his cheeks, and those different color eyes belonging to the one boy in the Gray that could swing the pendulum of power in a moment's notice.

A broken chess piece.

Boots tap against the hospital floor next to me. She's been waiting for hours now, ever since she leapt into the river she's been leaning against the observation glass and staring at Daniel.

"He's finally awake but he's just lying there." She turned her back to the hospital bed and leaned against the glass, arms folded and brows furrowed. "Shouldn't we do something?"

"Do what, exactly?" I asked. I'd seen soldiers shell shocked, soldiers two and even three times older than Daniel frozen in place whilst their world crumbled around them, as their brothers and sisters in arms died at their feet.

He was too valuable of a piece to let that happen.

He was my second in command's brother. And I owed it to Hunter for keeping his promise and coming back.

The hospital lobby was empty: a few white leather couches circled a small table behind me. Saia tapped against the table, Draco was looking through the glass next to Kira, and my bounty hunter continued her constant battle against the smudge on Daniel's aviators. It was a special wing of the hospital that I built personally, only for my people. The people of the Gray were still mine, but they didn't bleed, sweat and cry for what we have now. So it was just us: myself, Kira, Saia, Draco and Sergeant Ryan.

"Ma'am." Sergeant Ryan had poured a glass of liquor for me, it rested on the white table, silver condensation rolling down the crystal and pooling at its base.

I shook my head. Hunter was back, I didn't have to wash down the sick taste that bubbled in my mouth every time I thought of him anymore. Before Hunter had destroyed my taste buds, I'd tasted liquor for the first time. I'd been pressed up against the Major, with my back to the damp tunnel we'd dug the day previous, boots flooded with rain water, arms bony from lack of nutrition, and the bombs raging above us.

He'd seen my shivering, he'd heard my teeth chatter, he' heard my soft cries and sniveling. Frankly, everyone had gotten sick of me, and he'd stuffed the flask of liquor in my hand and told me to zip it.

I'd spat out the first sip. Forced down the second. And gulped down the third. I'd hated the taste, but it made me warm, it had sparked a fire deep down that kept me going. I drank because it distracted me. I didn't want to become like the soldiers who drank themselves into oblivion, but I'd wanted something to rip my memories away from my parents and my home.

But I was just a child then. Barely scraping past the war, used for errands and climbing through small spaces that even the hounds couldn't get through.

But now I own the Gray, and all of the soldiers who looked down on me, who belittled me, who kicked me when I was asleep and spat in my rations, were all either in my battalion or six feet deep.

The person who'd done this to Daniel was going to end up with the latter option. Harming one of my own was a death sentence.

Saia sprung up from the couch and paced around the small waiting area. "I can't deal with this shit anymore."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kira said, a low growl and a stare coming from just behind her dark eye lashes.

She abruptly stopped and pointed at Daniel. "Are you telling me that that's Dan? Are we really going to believe that shit?""

"He looks exactly how we last saw him," Draco muttered, "eyes and everything."

"'part from the new metal arm," Sergeant Ryan mumbled.

"That doesn't matter!" Saia said, a decibel below a shout. "If that's him, then why, and give me a straight fucking answer, why the hell did he kill Mei?"

No one responded. I had an answer for her but being with Saia for years now you learn when to speak and when not to. They'd all been busy since Mei's death. Draco the busiest, trying to get his brother to fall in line with the rest of my battalion. The Berserkers, however, are extremely difficult to work with. Kill enough of them and they eventually listen to you. But they'd all found time to get an ear piercing, all of them wore one of Mei's studs. Saia a small star, Draco a blooming red diamond, and Kira a purple flower.

"Then who else could he be, Saia?" Kira growled. "Because Dan doesn't have any twins that I know of."

"Okay. Fine. If we're going with that logic, then Dan went and stabbed Mei for the fun of it, right?"

Step over the line. I put a hand on Kira's shoulder and looked at Saia from the glass' reflection. "Saia."

"You're being irrational," Kira said.

Saia laughed and brushed her green locks back. "Well I am so, so sorry that I haven't had time to deal with my best friend being fucking murdered by someone I thought was dead." More unhinged laughter – dry and hysterical. "I just…I can't deal with this right now."

"You've dealt with worse," I said. "What has changed so drastically?'

She let out a frustrated sigh. Before she could speak, Draco shook his head, so minute that it barely swung his tied back dreads.

Sergeant Ryan whistled, cutting away Kira's glare. "Sleeping beauty's up."

We turned collectively, and there he was. He stared at us, shaky on the leg that had been perforated by bullets, holding himself up with the glass window in front of us. One hand pressed on the glass, the other brushing back his long black hair. Tears drew rivers down his cheeks, he was mouthing something. He was mouthing I'm sorry.

Kira pressed her hand to his, separated by the crystal. He stared at her, and she stared back.

"Isn't this one way glass?" Draco asked.

"Yes sir it is." Sergeant Ryan beside me, hand wresting on his side arm. I shook my head and his hand dropped, he wasn't the enemy. Not anymore.

"The Unit," I said, "must be letting him see through it. Or at the very least, our heat signatures."

"I…let me go talk to him. I'll go talk to him."

I put my hand on Kira's shoulder. "I'll talk to him first."

She blinked. "The hell? I'll go and talk to him. He's mouthing my freaking name." A glance at Daniel, and he'd moved away from solely 'I'm sorry', to mouthing 'Kira' as well.

I needed information from him first. He was alive, and he had answers that could change a lot of my plans. Sergeant Ryan stepped in front of her and I moved behind him, the silver door blurring into a haze of pixels as I stepped through it.

It was cold, my breaths condensation floated towards the ceiling. The numb smell of medicine tinged the room's air, and Daniel's rasping breaths echoed around the small chamber. I walked towards him, close enough to for my face to be inches away from his. He'd grown taller in these two years, tall enough that I had to look him straight on and not down on anymore.

I tapped the glass and it became silver, cutting us off from the stairs of the waiting room.

He took a shaky step backwards. "Are you…Are you Kira?"

A smile tugged at my lips' edge. "No, Daniel. I'm not."

"How do you know my name?" His eyes were darting from me to his hospital bed, like there was something else in the room with us.

"Because." I took a seat on his bed's edge, tapping the spot next to me for him. "This is the third time I have met you."

He didn't take a seat, his guard was still high up. Just like the day he wandered into my office. "I'm sorry, but I don't remember you."

"I guessed that."

"Can I…ask you questions?"

"May I ask you one first?"

He nodded.

"Hunter." I slid the desert eagle out of its holster, gold gleaming in the harsh white light. I placed it on the bed and looked at him. "Is he still alive?"

He stared at the gun, and then at me. "That…I've seen that before. But silver. How do you-"

"Is Hunter alive, Daniel?" I pushed.

He nodded slowly. "The last time I saw him, yeah." He chuckled. "That jackass wouldn't die if you dropped him off of a building."

I smiled at that. I'd spent enough time trying to kill Hunter myself to know he's too stubborn to die. "Fallows don't die easy."

"Sadly we don't," he muttered. His eyes glazed for a second and stared at the space next to me, snapping back to my face he said, "Wait, how do you know that?"

"Because I've come close to killing him before." I polished the gun's barrel. "I hate your family to be very honest with you, Daniel."

Guard back up, fire in his green eye, and defense in his blue. "Grace. You're working for her?!"

"I do not work for anyone but the Lord." I put the gun back in its holster. "Let me rephrase that. I hated your family. But I no longer do."

"What changed?"

I shrugged. "We grew up. We matured. We lost everything but gained everything."

He nodded and then shook his head. "Wait. This is…I've learnt a lot in the past couple hours." Deep inhale and then he said, "You and my brother are…a thing?"

I laughed, for the first time I can remember, I laughed a genuine laugh. Not a laugh that held hate or pain, a laugh that resonated from my gut. "No, we aren't." I smiled. "Where is he?"

"He was coming with someone else."

"Who?"

He had Hunter's tendency to fiddle with his hands. "A girl. Tohka. She's…good with a gun."

I nodded. We couldn't replace Mei, Ceejay was having a hard time taking up Mei's side of the work of keeping the Gray locked down and in my palm. But having someone new wouldn't hurt, someone who wasn't so worn down, someone now tinged by loss like the rest of us.

"Can I ask my question now?" His guard had fallen and he'd sat down next to me. He still stared at the wall next to us, like he was attempting to split the cement with thought alone.

"What do you keep staring at?"

He sighed and put his elbows on his knees. "Mei."

Irony. Hunter had said he'd seen Nero for months after…after the night in the abandoned farm house. The price of being a Fallow: naturally skilled, bred to rule and kill, a family that used to own the world during humanities reach into the stars. But they hold onto their dead, they walk past shadows that cling onto them. They all had some sort of exhaustion to them, shading just underneath their eyes. A price for prosperity. And a price I couldn't pay to Hunter, I didn't want to hurt him, but I couldn't become one of them.

The bodies I stand on would drown me in the shadows if I said yes to him.

"What was it that you wanted to know?"

"You said this is the third time we've met." He looked at me. "What were the two other times?"

"The first time was just before the war. We were already enlisted and two weeks out from being deployed." I gazed at the pale ceiling. The memories of that bitingly cold day playing like an old film. "Eight, I think was how old you were. Just a little boy with the brightest green eye I'd ever seen. Clinging onto your mother's leg as Hunter hopped into the train taking us to base."

"The second?"

"Two years ago. Stumbling into the Gray and looking for your mother." I leaned forward. "I was elated that day. It sparked something. Hope, I guess you would call it. That if you were alive, so would Hunter. But I saw the way you looked at me, the brightness in your eye had dimmed and I could tell you didn't remember me."

Stoic and silent, like he was back in the hospital bed.

The door hazed open, revealing the Sergeant. "Ma'am. We've had a breach."

I stood. "Gatekeepers?"

He nodded. "One Gatekeeper." He shook his head and smiled. "And LC2 Fallow."

I smiled inwardly. "Tell the Major to get ready to receive him. Have the girl transported here. Secure, we can't trust her yet."

He saluted. "On it." He left and the cold silver came back.

Daniel was still hunched over and nodding to himself. Fiddling with his metal hands, mouthing unintelligible words, and thinking of a life he couldn't remember. We'd be at war from now on, my third in one decade. The previous war had been a cold war, gathering intelligence and treading over the Council's feet. But this time was different, this time the Gatekeepers had a Fallow at the helm, but this time I had Hunter with me again.

We'd won the last time we'd worked together. Nero had been with us, and he was still with us. Hanging around our necks and in the small of my back. My shield and my sword.

I sat down and took his hand, the same way I used to with Hunter. We wouldn't have time to let Daniel gather himself and his bearings. We needed him at his finest, and that meant he learnt who he was.

I started with the information I'd heard from whispers. Whispers that had told me about General Fallow and his abusive nature, about Daniel's mother being bought from a Skin Farm, about the terrible storm torn night that he lost his green eye. About his father's attempted suicide that was pinned on him, about his years in Young Haven where his life would change permanently, about his meeting with Tick. About the journeys he had with Runt and his resting former best friend.

He choked when I mentioned Tick's death.

He'd fought down a cry when I told him about the Founder's street massacre.

He'd laughed mirthlessly when I told him about his friends in the waiting room.

And he finally fell silent when I reached Mei. His body rigid and cold, breathing shallow enough to warrant a search for a pulse.

He knew the rest. I pulled away my hand and strode towards the door. Pausing to brush the sole tear that had broken down my cheek. The only tear I'd spilled since Nero's funeral. The sound of the bed creaking as he lay back down silently echoed through the room, his soft groans background noise to his heaves.

Daniel Fallow knew who he was. And now it was time for war.