"Feelings are not enough, you know.."

Harper Moore did not have an "off" switch. He was dimly aware that this was true, and his acceptance of the fact led to difficult decisions such as pausing to eat and sleep, occasionally shave, and, once in a blue moon, think about a subject aside from science. But when he was on the job, it was very unusual for any of these things to occur.

Tonight he could not stop thinking about women, and it was driving him to new and uncharted depths of madness.

There were women in the sciences, he knew this; he had worked with some of the best and brightest, but their various biological...realities had never occurred to him. They were to him androgynous blobs of efficiency, sexless and visually uninspiring, existing only to further the advancement of their species. It wasn't that he had no interest in women. He could, in fact, recognize when something was female. There were...clues.

In Professor Moore's youth, his head had been locked in a metal orthodontic cage which had surely been devised by the most wicked of barbarian torturers; a beehive's worth of freckles did not help the overall aesthetic, and as a resultant relic he thoroughly mistrusted anyone who found him attractive. It was the flippant, glib sort of insecurity that scientists were known for.

In truth, when he thought back to Sarah, he felt only a deep sense of shame. As a plumber might appreciate a sunset, he knew that, in bare fact, she was beautiful. That he had seen her in the same shade of fuzzy grey as every other person was something he did not volunteer at the time.

Smart girl, that Sarah.

As he climbed the numberless stairs to the top of the Astronomy Tower, he panted and leaned against the wall. Time was catching up to him; he was not quite as spry as he had once been. Those endless nights of research had taken their toll. Soon the age-old question of finding someone to settle for would be moot, and he could sleep easily knowing that his life would never be upset by sticky noisy children or a burdensome spouse. Sooner than he had ever imagined.

Wendy, too - there was a profound source of shame. What he had felt, those dark emotions, deserved to be shoved forever out of sight; that he had even briefly considered her would never be spoken of to another living soul. He decided not to think about it anymore, but it did no good. Like any other thought forcibly denied, it ran like a ticker tape in the back of his thoughts, a hideous undertone to the music of his mind.

As he reached the landing of the observatory, all rattling pilfered keys and nervous, exhausted breathing, he paused to wait for Abeline.

Not sunset-pretty, not like Sarah, or forbidden, he thought. Not an amorphous phantasm of science, either. No, her features had begun to emerge from the grey mist like a statue carving itself, lending details to his imagination, and in past weeks it had been more and more difficult to keep his mind on lofty ideals like truth and logic. Whether she had destroyed his tireless pursuit of science or inspired it was unclear. But he had been sleeping less and less, as he had more and more thoughts to think, and many of them entirely unrelated to ley lines.

At last, something worth living for!

Up to this point, Abeline had been muddling about in life, trying to find some use for herself, some way she could justify her existence. Healing seemed to be it, and for a time, it was. But it wasn't enough.

If she could gladly sacrifice a normal life--and she could, there was not much there that interested her--if she could comprehend vast ideas, if she could sense that unknown terror on the horizon.. there may yet be a purpose for her greater than patching up scrapes and bruises.

As she climbed the stairs, she fiddled with an abacus in her pocket. The jade beads clicked together, and she rearranged them constantly.

Eighteen for The Work. One for her patients. One for herself. No. Nineteen for The Work. One for healing. Nothing else.

Around a corner, and there he was, lofty as ever. If there were a creator, he must be its masterpiece. Such a mind! For a second, she couldn't tear her eyes away from his twig-like shell, but neither could she look at him for long. Her head stayed bowed as she went up the last flight of stairs.

"Good evening." Couldn't say his name, even. Quick, shallow breaths. A nervous smile, shaking like a leaf. And she clutched the strap of her bag, digging her close-clipped nails in. "I-I have a present for you."

This was unexpected. His adrenaline level had surpassed even the wildest of surprise birthday party expectations in anticipation of the discoveries they might make that evening, and he was brought rather jarringly back down to earth by the arrival of Abeline.

He paused at the handle of the observatory door, one hand on the large ring of skeleton keys, and cleared his throat. One half of his mouth attempted a wry smile while the other insisted on looking earnestly glad to see her. "Is that so?"

"I.. um.. yes." She moved her head in a jerky, indecisive combination of a nod and a shake. "You're not going to like it."

The healer rummaged in her bag, continuing softly, "I hope you won't be too surprised, but..."

Her fingertips at last found the smooth texture they were seeking. She brought out a folder, and gripped it tightly. Too late to keep it, now. On the file was a name in red pencil - 'Ethan Dell.'

"Here." Hesitantly, she held it out for him, her face going paler than the paper.

Professor Moore took the folder with a bemused grin, one that gradually sank into the realm of confusion.

"What..." He turned the folder over, opened its cover and scanned the first few pages. Then he looked up, and caught Abeline's eye. The meaning of what had just occurred was slowly catching up to him.

Ethan Dell...

"Where did you find this?" he asked, his voice low and perplexed. A month ago he would have suspected the worst of her, especially after his office had been ransacked, but he was unwilling to do so now. Perhaps she had merely been tidying up, and the folder had been misplaced. Ignoring the unlikelihood of such an error, especially with a set of information as vital as Ethan's, he began to doggedly knit excuses for the healer.

She didn't quite expect this. What she had planned for, what she had rehearsed for, was much worse. Never did she once consider that he might think she was innocent.. that he might hope she wasn't the traitor that she knew she was.

The urge to lie welled up. Her first instinct was to cover her tracks, to flee like a doe from the avalanche that was the truth. She couldn't stand and fight the coming wall of cold, but, perhaps, if she allowed herself to be swallowed up, she might, by chance or mercy, make it out alive.

The bespectacled girl simply stood there for a while, wavering, tempted to fall backwards and crack her skull open on the stairs.

"I'm sorry."

Just two tiny words whispered at the top of the Astronomy Tower. They couldn't be for anyone but him.

Panic overtook him as his mind flashed to the image of the book box, to his files on Wendy, to the picture of Gertrude...

"Where did you..." He blinked, frowning. He hadn't left it out for anyone to touch, of course he hadn't. Had she gone through his things? No part of him wanted to believe it.

"You took this from my office?" he asked, trying and failing to keep his voice level and calm as he imagined the other secrets she might have gleaned. Why was she saying this now? Why, on the verge of perhaps the greatest discovery known to galdorkind, was she choosing to air this kind of misdemeanor? If she had planned to betray him, she might have waited until later.

Ethan Dell...the folder had contained evidence of things the ethics committee might deem suitable grounds for dismissal. It had all been done with fair consent, of course, but they never considered that a human could give informed consent in the first place. But he had never mentioned a human test subject to her. Why would she have...?

"I should've gotten it back to you sooner. You might need it for..." She trailed off, motioning faintly to the door.

"As for my reasons," she bit her lip, still avoiding his gaze. Those reasons pertained not to herself, but to a person she considered a patient. The code of confidentiality held her tongue. "Well.. curiosity killed the cat, you know."

Turning to the side, she slouched and crossed her arms loosely. "You can kill me, too, if you like. I won't mind."

His eyebrows disappeared into his hair.

She could have seen the file on James Carr. What conclusions might she have drawn? What kind of a person did she imagine him to be? No evidence pointed to him, nothing insinuated that he had been responsible for James' death...only the fact that he and Devlin had been working intently with him. But there, in her hand, was the file he had placed in his secret box, one he had believed to be well-hidden and totally inconspicuous; she could only have found it by spying. Ethan's file, not James'...she had only meant he could punish her if he so desired, an odd sentiment in any situation.

A feeling of hurt crept into his lungs and he almost suffocated on it. He struggled to put into words what he was thinking, but...

"What the hell?" he sputtered, staring from the file to her and back again. Not bothering to ask forgiveness for his language, he turned around to the door, not wanting to look at her. He fiddled with the keys for a moment and then turned around again. "Wha...what? Why did you take this? I thought..."

The hurt in his voice... How very unexpected. How strange.. how unbearably dear.

Why? Why was she so eager to destroy each and every chance at happiness she had? Even the remotest of possibilities weren't safe, it seemed.

Did he really--?

"Tris--" Abeline coughed, closing off words she ought never utter.

The black-clad healer curled in on herself further. Those stairs were looking rather inviting, all those sharp edges.. how many flights would it take, she wondered, before her life would finally expire?

"Nevermind."

She couldn't leave just yet. The world still needed healers, and although nearly anyone could replace her at her day job, they couldn't replace her here. Too few people on Vita could follow Harper's brilliant leaps into the theoretical. Fewer still would want to. Rather worrying to admit, but she might be his only ally in the world. Gods help us all.

What he was getting at, scientifically.. whatever it was.. she knew it was vital. Somehow, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself of the necessity for evidence and facts, she knew.

"It's trivial," she sighed. "We should get to work." Despite her misery, she smirked a little, and that soon graduated to a full ironic smile. "And you should keep better track of your things."

Work long forgotten, Harper glared in her direction, feeling all the goodwill built up over the past month rapidly draining out of him. What a simpleton he had been to trust her so willingly, after she had all but confessed to being an ethical plant! And now, perhaps she was only assisting him in order to assess what he knew. What other secrets had she spied into? What else did she know about him that he had not been willing to reveal? That she had owned up to taking the file and apologized was a piece of the puzzle that didn't fit with his paranoia, so he ignored it.

"What's your game?" he demanded, stepping over to her and shaking the file in her face. He felt quite outside himself, like a private corner of his life had been invaded, and looked more incensed than she had ever seen him. "Keep better track of my things? Trivial? That is my private--it's--yes, I do mind, actually! Why did you take this, Abeline? Why didn't you just ask me?"

He wanted to shout, I trusted you! I let you in! I would have given you anything!

When the file was waved in her face, her arms twitched, but she didn't raise them to defend herself. Instead, her hands dropped obediently in front of her, and she winced like a schoolgirl caught dissecting a body after curfew. Internally, she debated dozens of responses, wondering if she should respond at all or just let the teacher lecture her and send her home.

She screwed everything up. It was as simple as that. Anaxas would fall, ghosts and hatchers would take over, everyone on the planet would be dead, and it would all be her fault. All because she was a paranoid, obsessive, jealous bit--

That was it! Why hadn't she realized before? Of course, she never did want to help Triston, did she? That nonsense about serving the poor downtrodden passives, being that little maid's knight in shining armor--bah! No, she wasn't seeking vigilante justice or anything moral or good. That snake of a woman just wanted to know that Moore was hers.

Sickened by her own possessiveness, Abby cast her eyes down, away from the virtuous professor.

"I couldn't ask," she whimpered, guilt staining her cheeks red. "I just needed evidence that you aren't what they say you are.. that you're actually--" Her lungs froze, and her breath felt like an icy breeze. "--that you are in fact the gallant gentleman that I desperately need you to be. Harper, you restored my faith in galdorikind.. but I.. I'm a paranoid fool and I have no faith in myself. I had to know I wasn't being naive by trusting you with.. my..."

Quite suddenly, she cut off her confession, blushing deeper than she ever had in all her life.

His heart sank like a stone and a billion thoughts flooded his mind. To Abeline, he must have looked like a pathetic dodderer, too simple and absentminded to even realize when important files were missing, gullible enough to ignore the glaring clues and continue telling her everything she wanted to know. Anger and embarrassment and despair bubbled up in his stomach. Flatterers - his father had always warned him to look out for flatterers.

He simply didn't understand; even if he were privy to her innermost thoughts, he was certain he would never understand. The concept of friendship had already been dubious at best, and now his emotions confirmed the futility of it. Devlin had jokingly called it his "everybody's out to get me" complex.

"What is it that they say of me, exactly?" he asked quietly.

He had always dreaded his other colleagues, though he pretended that the rumors didn't bother him, and in fact feigned ignorance more often than not. They were the boundaries he faced in life, blocking him whenever he got up momentum, quietly suffocating his hopes. He had had a few individuals casually befriend him over the years, too, usually out of curiosity, and he had always ended the relationships with indifference.

Curiosity! What a dreadful and ephemeral thing they called curiosity, hailed as some sort of romantic ideal of the pursuit of knowledge, damn the odds, the thing that always killed the cat. But it always amounted to the same halfhearted routine - spying and gossip, superficial interest, fleeting fancies. He was sure that none of them felt the burning curiosity that he felt when he read through intricate spellwork, or stared at a heart in a glass jar, or mapped the stars, or chanted a prayer, or gazed at the faded spectragram image of the child that could have been his. They claimed to want to know the truth, but what they really wanted was as airtight a lie as could be conceived by science.

The only person he had ever met who was even remotely as curious as he was standing before him now, looking for all the world like a distraught student, one he would normally have yearned to comfort and forgive.

Were the situation different, he would have applauded her curiosity and diligence...and keen eye, he thought bitterly, still convinced the book-box had been a brilliant hiding place. But he was violated, unable to view this through an objective, scientific lens. He felt as though she had flayed him open and laid him bare. Thoughts he had long tucked away in shame and regret rose unbidden to his lips, as though he couldn't wait to confess them. She might as well know the whole truth; then, at least, one person would.

"You mean you don't know?" Caught off guard, she looked genuinely puzzled.

So, he didn't seem to have noticed (or cared [or believed]) what she'd come so close to admitting. Good. Probably for the better. Yes, definitely. It was bad enough he thought she was a backstabbing hypocrite, he didn't need to know she was an unhinged admirer, too.

Rather unsettling, really, just how well she could hide her own motives from herself, even when she'd thought she was doing the right thing. Calls everything into question, doesn't it?

"Weellll," she began, eyebrows befuddled, "most of it isn't worth repeating. You know, silly things that could very easily be disproved with a minimum of fact-checking. There's one that proposes you're not even fully galdori--plainly ridiculous to anyone who's sensed your field." (A remarkably impressive field it was, though she refrained from mentioning that.)

"And then there are the darker ones." Abeline spoke quietly, glancing down the stairs. She would have inched closer, but, assuming merely being on the same planet was a grave insult to him, she stayed put. "The worst crimes imaginable."

"And you thought it was likely I was guilty," he said blankly. The worst crimes - murder? Had suspicion over James Carr's death finally come back to haunt him? What else could it be? The files had said nothing incriminating, but an imaginative young woman could surely construct a convincing fabrication of what had really happened.

"Why did you tell me, though?" he asked, trying to work through this anger by talking, stalling for time. He glanced up and was startled to see her expression. "Why say anything at all? You could have replaced the file and I would have been none the wiser."

"I wish I knew," she sighed. "I haven't been thinking straight for the last..."

She paused to lean on the wall, trying to think back to when she could trust her own judgment. Clearly, taking the file wasn't a wise move--she even knew that at the time. She wouldn't have considered it if she hadn't learned of Triston's predicament. And that only affected her on such an astonishingly personal level because-- And she wasn't exactly sane at the phasmonia, either. Climbing up a tree to impress him, really.

But it wasn't just Moore. She had other obsessions. For one, that blasted arrogant notion that she could figure out ghosts, creatures that had mystified science for centuries. Medicine-- she didn't want to help people at all, she actually wanted the self-satisfaction of manipulating matter to fit her desires, though earning heart-felt gratitude in the form of gifts and a modicum of status weren't off the list of perks.

And then there was Millie... Abeline wasn't staying quiet to protect the other girl, no, not at all. It would just be too embarrassing to admit that naive mistake.

Further back, even. Little Abby could be a cruel thing, indeed. Those tricks on her cousin were purely out of spite, and poor Mortimer, her aunt's wice, did not die a natural death.

"... oh.. twenty-three years."

With that, she let her weight slide to the ground. Her hairbun collided with the wall when she looked up. Surprisingly, Harper was still there.

"I never wanted to think you were guilty." She bit her lip, hugging her knees to her chest. "I tried to remain.. unbiased."

He winced again; she was so young. What had he been thinking?

As she slumped to the floor, he turned again to look at her. She looked so miserable and small, hugging herself like a child might. He softened. She had been following her instincts, her moral center, possibly like everyone who had ever investigated him. To them, he was understandably a monster: interfering with nature, victimizing passives, trying to discover things mankind was never meant to know. It reflected poorly on him that he had not seen her intentions from the start. But he had seen a lovely young woman, seemingly infatuated with him, intelligent, willful, fascinating in her own right, and such a good listener.

He felt very lonely as he listened to the plaintive sound of her voice. Earlier she had been prepared to shrug off her invasion of his privacy as inconsequential; she had acted like it was a good joke, a spirited thing for a woman to do. Now she seemed to reflect a guilt that might have come as a reaction to his anger. Did she not realize what it had meant to him?

It was a ploy, he thought, surely. She was trying to make him feel that he was overreacting, to forget the offense in lieu of comforting her, and to allow things to go on as planned. Already the minutes were ticking closer to the hour when the security guards would patrol this tower. The sharp edge to his indignation had dulled already.

He realized then what had upset him most; he had thought she trusted him. How surprising it had been to find that he had craved and needed the companionship of another person! And was it for his own narcissism that he had kept her involved in his work, beyond any practical reasons he might have had? Someone to be on his side, to approve of him, to be his friend, someone to talk to...it had been like a drug, and he had ignored her, ignored how she felt and ignored her motivations. He would not have wanted to believe that she could have done such a thing, and it had taken her waving proof in his face for him to see it.

How had he been so wrapped up in his tiny life, when the stars had been aligning, the world had been turning, and these incredible revelations had been thrown at his feet by mere chance? Should he ignore these gifts, and continue stewing in his own mad desire to clear his name?

Harper knelt beside Abeline almost unconsciously, touching her shoulder. He looked pained; he wore the same expression when he was trying to decipher his own handwriting.

"We can't keep doing this," he said gently. "I don't know what you want from me, Abeline, but you've seen the same things I've seen, and you know the implications. And they're terrifying...and much, much more important than me, or you, or any other individual. None of us have time to waste on mistrust or...bitterness. Those emotions have only held the world back, since the beginning of time." He swallowed. "And I can't do this without you."

She never should have thought she could join him in his lofty tower. An idiot and a turncoat, she had no right to be there. She had contributed nothing, only ever hindering his work--which was as imperative as it was groundbreaking. Rather conceited of her to think she could be part of something so.. so more than herself.

He'd be better off without her. The universe would be better off without her.

Too weak to depart without permission, the healer sat at his feet, entirely at his mercy. She turned her head away, awaiting his verdict. All she needed was his word, and she'd leave him forever.



Stunned, she stared fixedly at a point far beyond the walls. Enlightenment cascaded over her imagination; everything was revealed to her for a timeless instant. Realities and dreams, shades and lights, worlds and otherworlds. And Harper. Dear, noble Harper...

He understood. He knew their clockwork world was not as perfect as the Everine would believe. He knew the apparatus, like any other, could be broken, and he knew their part in it was to fix it. Up to this point in her life, she hadn't met anyone so dedicated to that ideal as her. He'd put aside his resentment and--

Was.. that his gentle hand on her shoulder? She chanced peeking over--so it was!--and she made a tiny noise of surprise. A disturbingly pleasant shudder played upon her every string, and as it came to a crescendo, her enlightenment was forgot.

Abeline melted, sinking slightly toward him. She couldn't help but glance at his eyes (from which there gleamed a profound light) and his lips (from which had slipped those lucid words).

He hadn't forgiven her, but he had given her a use. And with that, he may have saved her life.

"Lead on."