“Trixie gave us all the full rundown on you and your situation while I was carrying you, while you were passed out,” he says. “But what I’d like to know is: when you reunite with your mother, what will you do, where will you go?”
Seven catches Phoenix off guard. She looks bewildered.
“Er,” she starts, with uncertainty. She struggles to find any words.
Seven notices the confusion and trouble in Phoenix’s eyes as she stares into the fire, which is starting to die down.
“Do not trouble yourself with things that haven’t happened yet,” Seven says. “When we find her, I’m sure things will work themselves out.”
Phoenix turns and smiles at him.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Those words again,” he replies. “Why? I have done nothing.”
“I have met monsters in my life, and you are not one of them,” Phoenix replies, standing and pressing the switch in the corner with her boot, the grate opening.
She moves towards the ladder, and strokes her hand across Seven’s left shoulder as she brushes past him. Phoenix takes a few steps down the ladder, her head poking above the grate, her eyes focused on Seven’s.
“Because you didn’t say if we find my mother, you said when,” she smiles, and continues down the ladder, not waiting for a response. He nods, stony-eyed and serious, but as she leaves from his view, he smiles. Seven stamps on the dying embers and puts out the small, flickering flames that remain.
.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-.
Most of the group are laying in their beds and hammocks asleep when Phoenix reaches the bottom of the hideout, as she realises she’s been talking to Seven for quite some time, though there is a lone candle still lit, flickering at the table. Django is sitting beside it, playing a card game by himself. Some traces of white powder are on the table near him. Phoenix smiles at him nervously as she moves to her bed, but he doesn’t return the smile. He looks at her in thought, and simply nods his head upwards, partly in acknowledgement and partly ushering her to sleep.
As Phoenix lies in bed and closes her eyes, she hears the loud steps of Seven coming down the ladder. For the first time in her life, she feels like she is making friends. Solari, the old bouncer back at the inn, got on well with her, but he felt more like a friendly colleague than someone she would want to be around. She feels warm and in good spirits.
Just as Phoenix is drifting off to sleep, Chrim’s smashed-in face appears in her mind. She opens her eyes wide, and turns to the wall, trying to shake the image away. She forces her eyes shut and tries to think positively, of the safety of this group and a potential new life: perhaps not the life that she dreamed of but one of relative freedom nonetheless.
She shifts again, this time to her right, to face the rest of the room. Through her half-closed eyes she sees Django calmly playing cards by himself. Patience, probably. Beyond him, in the bed at the other end of the room, she spots Seven, on his back with his eyes closed. The bed is slightly too small for his large frame, his legs dangling off the edge of the bed, his left arm resting on the floor.
Phoenix thinks back on the events of the past two days. In less than 48 hours she has murdered, stolen, lost control of her conscious mind three times, joined a group of misfits, and angered a dangerous gang. What is she becoming? She looks across at Seven’s bunk one last time before she falls asleep, and tells herself she’s the real monster in the room, not him.
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