Duality

part twenty-four

"It's really quite simple," Elaine provided, even as Ashton continued muttering no under his breath. "Ashton takes the remains of your powers, and you cease to exist."

Mila wasn't sure how simple that actually was, considering she had no powers at the moment.

"No," Ashton repeated, louder this time.

Finally addressing him again, Mila sighed, bringing his pacing and muttering to an end. "I can't stay like this," she said, gesturing to her torn legs with her skeletal fingers. "You can't think that." He'd said he wanted to stay by her side, but surely he knew when it was better to let go.

Shaking his head again, Ashton said, "There has to be a way to heal her."

"Sure," Elaine said easily. Mila had her first shred of doubt: could Elaine really be trusted if she changed her answers so quickly? "But she wouldn't get her powers back, and the world would continue being out of balance."

As though they bartered in the market, Ashton said, "I'll take it."

"This is a choice for two people," Mila reminded him. "You said it earlier, the world will suffer without our powers being in balance. Maybe you could heal me and I could live, but at what cost?" Crossing her arms over her chest, Mila said, "I want to regenerate."

Exhaling loudly, Elaine rose from her seat. "I'll let you two talk," she decided. "Nice meeting you," she offered to Mila in passing. She swept into a room on the side and closed the door.

Unexpectedly, Mila felt worse without the guardian there. Maybe because she'd thought Elaine would have a better chance at changing Ashton's mind. So far, Mila had only managed to do it a handful of times, and ended up dragging along behind him the others.

"We have a duty to the world before we have a duty to each other," Mila reminded him.

"Do you not want to stay with me?"

He didn't look at her, as though afraid of the answer. "I do," Mila admitted, finding it hard to look at him too. Anna had told her not to care so much about one person, and this seemed like the perfect example: she wouldn't see him for at least a century. "But I know the world will dissolve into chaos if I don't go."

Moving so that he stood at her knees, Ashton towered over her. "And you think one person can handle both of the powers and not run the world into chaos?"

"That's what I was trained for," Mila reminded him. If not trained, at least raised.

And they'd practiced using each other's powers for a whole week: Ashton should have no problem taking over both.

He kneeled, placing his hands on her knees. Her dress did nothing to stop the heat of his palms from reaching her skin. "Let's heal you first," he said. "And then we'll see how you feel."

"We've already tried this," Mila said, attempting to dislodge his hand by jostling her knee. While she focused on something else he reached for one of her hands, ignoring her words. He closed his eyes, probably drawing on his power.

A thin line of red traced around her fingertips, and she thought he'd made things worse. She felt no pain, so she held out a little longer.

Flesh laced around the bone, skin knitting over as though nothing had happened. Ashton looked in time to see her fingernail form, and he smiled. At Mila's look of wonder—and suspicion as to why he hadn't done something sooner—Ashton said, "It hadn't occurred to me to feed my power into you."

Mila could picture nothing else than a wilted flower coaxed into a bloom. She stretched her newly fixed fingers and tried to feel the stirrings of power as Ashton placed a hand on her calf and started to knit her skin back together.