Flashes Of Light

Present Day

There is finally a break during the transmission. Sveta thought it would go on forever, examinating and dissectioning every single interaction a member of the group had with the other. She knows it won't stop until someone admits they have killed the Anti.

But what if it wasn't any of them?

Sveta decides that breaks are mostly useful if you want to use the toilet, and so she heads to the restroom. She avoids fans asking her when Jonath Cincinnati will show up, and she takes precaution to hide from Percie. She doesn't want to talk to him.

But when she sees Logar Iris in the distance, her heart skips a beat. It is the first time in years they meet face to face without a presenter asking them asinine questions, or without the glass door of the cell acting as a barricade.

"Meet me in the bathroom," Logar smirks and says. "The gender-neutral one."

And so they meet.

"Do you think you will show up as Jonath?" Logar asks.

Sveta has always felt a little resentful of how easy it was for Logar to be around Jonath, much easier than to be around her real self. 

She wasn't so sure, however, that Svetlana Metis was her real self. And maybe not Sveta, maybe not the Grenade either.

"I thought you knew what was the deal," Sveta takes time, washing her hands. "He is me, I am him. I'm trying, to be him."

Sveta's hair is shorter now, a dark pixie cut. Her blue eyes are smudged with black make-up. She looks like Jonath Cincinnati, reverse-colour.

She is Jonath Cincinnati, reverse-colour.

"I miss the blond hair," Logar says.

"For God's sake, Gary, you're colourblind."

"No, Jay, I am only slightly colourblind. I see everything you see, it's just that not all the shades are quite there. There's lots of types of colourblind people, do not talk of us as if we were all the same."

"Do you know why it was easier for me to be around Jonath Cincinnati?" Logar asks.

"Because he was a boy?" Sveta asks.

"Do you really think me so narrow-minded? I've always enjoyed the company of women, in moderation, and with both parties fully clothed. No, the real reason is why it was easier for you to be around me, too."

Sveta knows what Logar means. It is almost embarrassing to think of, now, but it was natural back then. The two were best friends in some sort of intimate way, and Jonath looked up to Logar in almost a reverent way. And now, the both of them know the truth.

And for some reason, Sveta decides to accept it instead of being ashamed of it. Of course, had they met in less difficult circumstances, she could have grown to admire Logar. Their shared humor might have made them best friends. Being Jonath meant forgetting about most of the things that made her Sveta, and revealed a side of her attitude that perphas was buried deep under the trauma, but that was there nevertheless.

"Oh I see. You understand," Logar says. "The kind of relationship we had those weeks was the relationship we could have developed if we'd never met the Anti."

Sveta is about to bite back that maybe she would have been careful in picking her friends anyway. That the Anti hadn't driven them apart. But she can't say that, and make it sound like the truth. And Logar had always said he liked her for her honesty.

Instead, she says, "It might have been better to be ignorant about it, to have never experienced it. It breaks my heart, to think that this is one of the things that he took from us."