Page 29 of Nansar
The guilt in his voice hit me like a wave, but not in the way he probably expected. I didn't feel betrayed or angry at him—I felt something else entirely. A strange, fierce protectiveness that surprised me.
But even as the words left my mouth, I could see they bounced off him like rain off stone. He didn't believe me. Couldn't believe me. The self-recrimination was written all over his face, carved into the lines around his eyes, in the way his shoulders hunched slightly inward, in the darkness clouding those blue-green eyes like storm clouds. He was carrying this like a weight, like he'd personally handed Hewes the weapon and watched him use it.
And maybe that's what hurt most—not what he'd unknowingly been part of, but watching him torture himself over it. Watching him look at me like he expected me to recoil, to blame him, to see him as just another monster in a world full of them.
When all I felt was...
Safe. I felt safe with him.
How ironic was that? How utterly, impossibly strange? The man who'd helped mine the drug that had been used to control me, to violate me in ways I still couldn't fully process, was the first person who'd made me feel like I could breathe again.
"You didn't know," I said quietly, though my mind was reeling, spinning through implications. Mumje. The med-tech George had mentioned it when I'd received my vaccinations. But no one told me what it did. No one told me it could turn me into a puppet in my own skin.
"I should have known." His voice was raw, scraped hollow. "I should have questioned where it was all going, why Yaard needed so much of it. Why the quotas kept increasing." His arms tightened around me again, almost desperately, like he was afraid his confession might make me disappear. "I was complicit in the supply chain that gave him the weapon he used against you."
I felt his guilt like a physical weight pressing down, threatening to crush us into the ground. Part of me understood why he blamed himself—the connection was there, undeniable and damning. But the larger part of me, the part that had lived through Hewes's manipulation, that had survived his calculated cruelty, knew the difference between someone who unknowingly provided a tool and someone who deliberately wielded that tool as a weapon.
"It's not the same as what Hewes did." My voice was steady now, certain. "You didn't drug me. You didn't watch me lose myself and laugh about it. You didn't orchestrate my destruction for your own pleasure."
His eyes squeezed shut tighter, as if my words caused him physical pain rather than offering absolution.
"Nansar, look at me." When he didn't respond, I reached up, my fingers trembling slightly as they touched his jaw, feeling the tension there. "Please."
Those blue-green eyes opened slowly, reluctantly, and what I saw there took my breath away. Raw emotion swam in their depths—guilt and anguish and something else, something that made my heart stutter in my chest.
"If you had known—if you had even suspected—would you have stopped it?"
"Yes." The word came out immediately, vehement and certain, with no hesitation. "Without question. Without hesitation. I would have burned the entire operation to the ground and salted the earth where it stood."
"Then that's all I need to know." My thumb brushed across his cheekbone, feeling the warmth of his skin, the slight roughness of his alien features. Touching him felt strange, but not uncomfortable. "You're not responsible for this. That's like blaming the person who mined the metal for a knife used in a murder."
"It's not the same—"
"It is exactly the same." My voice came out sharp, but I needed him to hear this, needed the words to penetrate that wall of guilt. "I won't let you carry Hewes's sins. I won't let you take on his evil as your own."
I pulled back enough to look at him properly, my hands pressing flat against his chest, feeling his heart hammering beneath my palms. "Nansar, you didn't do this to me. Hewes did. He's the one who chose to use it. He's the one who looked at that drug and saw an opportunity to break someone. He's the monster, not you."
"You should hate me." His voice was raw, stripped of all pretense. "You should look at me with disgust. I helped put that poison in his hands." He started to pull away, as if he didn't deserve to hold me, as if proximity to me was a privilege he'd forfeited.
"Nansar—"
"No." He shook his head, the movement jerky and pained. "You should never forgive me for this. I was so focused on the profits, on advancing my own position, on climbing the ranks—" His voice broke again, fracturing. "I never asked the right questions. Never looked beyond my own ambition."
The anguish in his eyes was so profound it made something inside me twist and crack.
"Is that what you want?" I asked softly, holding his gaze. "For me to hate you? Would that make you feel better? Would it ease your conscience?"
He flinched as if I'd struck him, as if the words were physical blows. "It would be... appropriate. Deserved."
"Well, I don't." The words came out firmer than I expected, stronger. "I don't hate you, Nansar. And I won't let you punish yourself for someone else's evil. I won't let you take responsibility for choices you never made."
His eyes searched mine desperately, looking for something—forgiveness, absolution, permission to stop drowning in guilt. "But I helped make it possible—"
"You didn't know." I pressed my palm more firmly against his cheek, making sure he felt the contact, the connection. "Hewes knew exactly what he was doing. Every time he used that dust, every time he touched me while I was under its influence, every time he watched me beg and smiled—that was his choice. His evil. Not yours."
Nansar's hand came up to cover mine, his fingers curling around it, anchoring it against his face like he was afraid I might pull away. "I will do everything in my power to see him captured," he said, each word edged with steel. "Whatever it takes to make sure he faces justice."
"Thank you," I whispered, the words barely audible over the wind.
