Fifteen minutes later, she was in the shower again.
Curled into a tight, desperate ball, she gasped desperately for air in the steam, fought a blind, internal battle against the burning downpour, one shaky hand rising, pushing through her rough-cut hair. After the initial slice, the scissors had picked up speed, had worked with a steadiness that was driven and passionate, each stroke, each clip shredding length, butchering hair down to a shorter, more utilitarian cut. Later, as she’d stood in front of the mirror again, seeking out a complete reflection among the shards and studying the short, brutal cut, she’d found an odd sort of solace in the spiky messiness of it, in the features that stared back at her. Like a fragment of some hazy and forgotten past, it was almost comforting, familiar, some older portrait of herself that she recognized, that didn’t remind her of Izzy.
Climbing into the shower, there had been no thought, no pause to adjust the temperature. Hands had gone to work immediately, cranking the controls to max on temp and flow as Tessa hurled herself into the furthest corner from the showerhead, shivering through the initial frigidity, hunkering down into herself as the heat rose steadily around her. Fingers flexed into fists as sweat broke across skin, the hail of scalding droplets biting into flesh, stinging her, scouring every inch of her body with a fierce cleansing that burned like liquid fire. Lips parted, drew in another brutally humid breath, strained as she forced the exhale, growled through bared teeth. In another instant, she was moving, soles of her feet catching on synthplast tile, hands finding resistance in the surface as she threw herself against the controls, grasped at the polyquid display and forced the water temperature all the way down again. Shivering and gasping as the pelting water turned suddenly icy, fingers spasmed desperately, arched wildly against the controls, mercilessly stabbing the display back toward hot. A warning flashed, a silent red reminder that successive rapid changes in temperature were not advised– and then she was on the floor again, sprawled across cool bathroom tile outside the steaming box of the shower, beyond the reach of the burning, pummeling fall. Hanging half open before her, the bathroom door yawned, stretched like a portal to some other world, some other dimension or time. Hands flexed against smooth floor, palms pressing, lifting her dripping body up, pushing, giving her knees a chance to shake into place beneath her. Breath came quick, muscles tensed, hardened in her limbs like the toned whipcords of a runner, and in an instant, she was on her feet again, sprinting full on into the bedroom, losing her footing on the edge of the wet tile and falling backwards, the ceiling rushing by in a blur of broken black.
When she came to again, she woke up cold, chilled to her very core and aching for heat. Lips quivered, hands flexed, arms numbly coming to life as she stared blankly at the wall that seemed so distant, so far away. Fragments of hair lay everywhere around her, spread across the carpet like fallen soldiers on some barren, nameless battlefield, each shard shining in the dim light with the glint of silken midnight. In the half light, there was no sound, nothing beyond the soft glow of appliances on standby and the steady vibrations of the ship– even the overhead lights and the shower had switched to automatic and turned off. Licking dry lips, she tried to turn over, fought the bending, spinning of reality as she pushed herself back onto her chest and stared blankly toward the bed, toward the little figurine of St. Von Mitternacht. Phantom sensations of hair in disarray played in her mind, left her reaching back, grasping at empty air, hands finally settling on the broken edges of what was left of that long, silken mane, fingers brushing, moving through damp blades of spiky hair. Shivering, she felt the cold set in deeper, felt it touch her heart, and for a moment an irrational fear seized her, a loss of identity, of self and time. Where am I? She wondered. This isn’t... Teeth set in against each other, jaw locking, setting with a sense of resolve as she regained her feet, stood slowly, staring at the little figurine in the cubbyhole by the bed.
“Grandma?” She whispered, blinking as she shivered, covered herself reflexively. A voice tugged at her mind, the edges of a thousand voices, all crowding in, whispering.
“Is someone there?” She called out, turning suddenly, stumbling as disorientation set back in. This is my room, my room aboard the Von der Tann IV. She swallowed at the thought, shivered again as she glanced around quickly. I am a lieutenant commander of the Terran Galactic Navy, leader of Multipurpose Squadron Minerva...
“No.” She whispered, turning back to the bed, stumbling toward it. There was something wrong, something that didn’t make sense, something... “No, I...”
And then the smell, the sweet, familiar scent that seemed to cling to everything reached out and caught her senses like the sweet essence of some invisible angel. Skin tingled, responded to a touch that wasn’t there, wasn’t... “Who’s there?” She tried again, blinked, felt the edges of tears as they built in the corners of her eyes. In her mind, she was seventeen again, sequestered in an academy solitary cell overnight for something the navy passed off as isolation training. In space, the general had said, sometimes you have to be able to function in open void with no conversation and no support for forty-eight hours or more, depending on circumstances.
The only way to get used to it is to live it.
And then there was Izzy.
Tessa closed her eyes as memory danced through her tired, broken mind like a reel of pastel fragments strung together by madness and injury. Stumbling forward, moving suddenly toward the one thing she knew could get her through the night, would get her past the demons of memory that haunted and tormented her, she swallowed against the spinning, the disorientation. Wet hands guided her to a drawer, yanked, reached, grasped the thick, smooth leather of her riding jacket and pulled it out, forcing herself awkwardly forward into it. Pulling it close, she shivered against it, felt the leather warm up against bare flesh, eeking a subtle heat back into her skin. Beside her, the bed looked comfortable, inviting, a meal set before the starving prisoner of a labyrinthine dungeon– but it was all deception, the comfort illusory. Within the soft fabric of the blankets crouched more memories, thoughts of Izzy that waited in the darkness like cruel and mischievous imps, eager to torment her through the long, dark night. Pulling the jacket closer against herself, she stumbled into the center of the room and lay down, curling up inside the jacket, pulling her knees up against her chest and hugging them tight as eyes fluttered brokenly with the onset of sleep. Bound up in the coat, there was no trace of Izzy, only the sweet blackness, the scent of rain and bike leathers, the smell that flooded her senses with clearer, kinder memories of a past when she flew solo, when Izzy was just a distraction, a possibility, and the sky and the stars, the night and the open road were her only true lovers.
In the darkness, Tessa breathed a tired sigh, sunk into the steadily warming leathers. In the morning, she would meet with Virek. She would put in for a transfer and leave for some other ship, somewhere where she could start her life over again, where she could be the Tessa Eisenherz she’d left behind somewhere in her past, life the live she might have lived without Izzy, and smother the memories of that broken love under something newer, something...
There’s plenty of time to figure that out... She burrowed closer into the jacket, grimaced as she tried to put the thoughts out of her mind. Plenty of time...
