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[II.]
I shut the door to Exusiai's room carefully. I have to be careful if I don't want to wake her: I'm liable to slam doors if I'm not paying attention. The click of the lock drags out into a mechanical rattle, my ears shattering the single note into tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock. Texas is waiting for me, leaning against the wall, chewing idly on a stick of candy.
I can't see the past, my powers don't work like that, but it's like turning around to see your date naked, dress puddled on the floor. She was wearing the dress, now she's not: even if you're too late to catch her in the act of stripping, you can look at the evidence visible to you in the present. You can derive a very simple cause for the given effect. You can even speculate as to why.
All I do is look at the evidence I can see in the present. The difference is that my "present" lasts a little longer than everyone else's. When I look at Texas, I can see the carnage of her history trailing behind her like discarded clothing.
[IV.]
"You're hurting her," Texas says. "Every time you leave."
"Yeah, but I keep coming back! You can't keep me away forever." It's supposed to be a joke. It doesn't land like one. Texas doesn't laugh.
"You're like a tick," Texas says.
"Is that a clock pun?" Texas doesn't laugh at that, either. I've seen her relaxing with the rest of Penguin Logistics, so I know she can, but she always gives me special treatment. That is to say, she acts like a humorless bitch and she hates me specifically.
Which, you know, fair.
"You keep coming back," she says, "you keep her wounds open, and you keep leaving little bits of yourself behind to fester. If you had any decency at all you'd stay away for good and let her heal cleanly."
"Kind of a tortured metaphor," I say. "I think you wanted to make a pun and you just won't admit it."
"Fuck you."
"Oh, do you wanna leave little bits of yourself in me? I'd be down."
[VI.]
"I could tell you what happened," I say. "It's all big state secrets, but I could tell you, and then you'd see why I can't tell Exusiai, and then you'd get off my back. And then Laterano'd kill you for knowing, of course, and then you'd really get off my back. Solve all my problems."
"You could," Texas says. "You won't. You're too tight-lipped, at least about anything that matters. You can keep a secret."
"I dunno," I say. "I get pretty talkative after I've gotten laid."
Texas slaps me then. The bruise is still there when I see Exusiai next, just beginning to fade from purples to yellows. That color would have meant a week's passage, before, but when I say I've only been gone a week Exusiai says it's been much, much more.
[VIII.]
"My memory doesn't work right anymore," I tell Texas. "The further back I go, the more it gets pressed together, and I can't pull it apart the right way. It's all tangled up. I think about the first time Lemuel kissed me, and she must have been, what, sixteen? Nineteen? Seventeen, maybe, I could give you a number if I had a calendar. But when I remember it, she's a little kid, there's this squirmy little four-year-old trying to put her tongue in my mouth. It shouldn't work like that, but if I try to put things in order the way I know they happened it gives me a splitting headache." A headache that pounds like the tolling of church bells. "It's one more reason not to sleep with her—the effect takes a while to kick in, a few years maybe, but I don't have the confidence that Rhodes Island can cure me any time soon."
"Oh, hell," Texas says, "please don't tell me you're going to think about me as a kid."
"Nah," I say. "The problem is—callsign notwithstanding, and even though it's gotten pretty rough sometimes—Exusiai's always been basically the same person. You, though, you've split your life between being at least three different people. My memories of you can only go back about one version before they get snagged. At worst, I'm going to remember you all scary and mobbed up, which is pretty hot, frankly, so I don't mind it."
"You really do get talkative after sex," Texas says.
"I told you. Wanna make me blab even more?"
She rolls on top of me again, grinding herself against the muscle of my thigh. "No," she says. "In fact, I wish you'd shut up." As soon as I grin she has her hand over my mouth. I lick her palm like we're playing, like we're both young again, and her hands slip from my mouth to my neck. She squeezes. Her knee is between my legs and her hands are around my throat and I don't know how long the bruises will take to heal this time. All I know is that I dream about Texas the entire time I'm gone, and that when I finally do go back, Exusiai pounds her fists against my chest and tells me she thought I was gone for good this time.
[X.]
"I'm lonely," I tell Texas.
"So?" Texas takes a drag on her cigarette. "I'm not here for camaraderie. I'm here because you're good with your tongue and you let me leave marks."
I rub my shoulder and let the pain of her latest bruises pull me back to the current moment. Me. Her. I only ever see Texas smoking when she's in bed with me. I think maybe I should feel guilty about that, like I'm chasing her back to bad habits, but whenever I think about her my memories smell like smoke anyway. Maybe she does it all the time and I'm too mixed up to tell. That would be nice. That would mean it's not my fault after all.
"Like it or not," I say, "you're a better companion than most. Back in Laterano—" I tap my halo. It clicks dully. "It's the price of my transgression. I'm cut off from other Sankta; even in a crowd, it's like being alone. It's like being dead. I don't know how Lemuel can stand to be around me."
"And, what, me treating you like scum makes you feel better?"
"Not exactly, but kinda," I say. "I don't need my missing senses to tell me what you're feeling. You're easy to read."
She exhales smoke in my face. "Tell me how I'm feeling now."
"Right now? You want me to stop talking so I can put my mouth to better use."
She cocks her head, trying to decide whether telling me I'm right or wrong works out better for her. It doesn't matter. I slide down her body before she can work out what she actually feels for me, which is pity. Right now I'd prefer to be hated. I bite down too hard on the inside of her thigh and listen to her swear at me.
[Midnight.]
"Why haven't you killed me yet?" I ask.
"Maybe I don't want to," Texas says.
"That's bullshit and we both know it."
"Maybe the sex is worth it. Puts me in a good mood, and all."
"Still bullshit," I say. "You've never been in a good mood after we fuck. Usually you're in a worse mood than before."
"Sure, but maybe I'm horny enough to keep you alive anyway. Maybe I'm just that desperate to get laid."
"I don't believe that either," I say. "I mean, I like to think I'm pretty decent in the sack, I've had a lot of time to practice, but I'm not good enough to make someone give up on a real vendetta. And there's plenty of people in Rhodes Island who'd be happy to get you off, if that's all you're looking for."
"I'm trying to grow as a person," she says. "I used to kill a lot of people. Now I don't."
"Better, but I'm an exception to a lot of rules. And I'm not a lot of people, I'm one person. You could kill me and not feel too bad about it."
"Maybe I'd miss you if you were gone."
I shake my head. "That's the worst excuse yet. Give it two days and I'll be gone again, and I know you have better things to do than miss me."
"Gone for good, I mean."
I count out the seconds for Texas to tell me the punchline, but the silence stretches too long even for me. I have to be the one to break it.
"Laterano's not going to kill me," I say.
"They haven't yet," Texas says. Not quite agreement.
"No, I mean they're not going to. I'm too important, for, well. Reasons. Secret ones."
"Too self-important, maybe."
"Look," I say, "I can see the road ahead of me. I can see a path where I keep going indefinitely, and everything keeps falling apart around me forever."
I take a breath. That's a lie. My relics might keep me going forever, if I'd let them, but I don't know that Terra can last that long. I'm lonely enough when the world still has people in it. "That's not an option," I continue. "I won't let it be; I've got to stop someday. But when I die, I want to deserve it, which means it can't be the Church doing the deed. It's gotta be someone I know, and someone with a good reason."
"Knowing you isn't a good enough reason to want you dead?"
"Exactly!" I say. "That's why I want you to do it."
"Because I treat you like shit? I know how hard you get off to it, that doesn't mean I actually hate you."
I take her hand and press it to my cheek. "Oh, you hate me. I hate me, so you'd better."
"What, you think I care about your self-loathing?" She tries to pull her hand away, but I press a kiss to her palm.
"Someone has to kill me," I say. "And I don't want them to feel guilty about it afterwards."