The evening fog outside the ward was thick enough to mute the distant hum of Zenith's engines. It left the two of them in a silence broken only by the scrape of plastic spoons on metal containers.
Vane had outdone himself tonight. No nutrient paste. He had brought actual roasted fowl and tubers seasoned with herbs that smelled like real dirt and sunshine rather than an alchemist's lab.
Senna ate slowly. Her hands shook less than usual. The real food seemed to put a temporary dent in the exhaustion radiating off her.
"Where did you get this?" she asked eyeing a particularly succulent piece of thigh meat. "This wasn't left out on a counter."
"Didn't steal it," Vane said. He leaned back against the cold concrete wall balancing his own container on his knee. "I facilitated a donation."
Senna raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"There is a table of third-year Earth-aspect nobles near the north window of the dining hall," Vane explained gesturing with his spoon. "They spend the entire meal complaining that the food isn't up to their family chef's standards. They barely touch it to show how refined they are. It is a status performance. Waste as a virtue."
He took a bite of potatoes.
"So I walked over. Told them I was working a penance detail hauling supplies for the 'mana-exhausted reserves' in the lower infirmary. Told them it was a shame such exquisite food was going to waste when the 'heroes of the academy' were eating paste."
Senna snorted softly. "And they bought that?"
"I laid it on thick. Talked about noblesse oblige and the duty of the powerful to sustain the weak. By the time I was done flattering their sense of superiority they were practically shoving their plates into my travel containers so they could feel like benevolent lords."
He grinned. It was a flash of the Oakhaven street rat cutting through the academy uniform.
"Weaponized vanity. It is a renewable resource around here."
Senna shook her head slowly. There was a grudging respect in her eyes. "You really are a bottom-feeder Vane. You swim in their excess and convince them it is charity."
"I prefer 'resource redistribution via targeted ego-stroking,'" Vane corrected.
They finished eating in comfortable silence. Vane collected the containers. The ease of the evening felt fragile. It was a thin layer of normalcy stretched over the reality of her dying body and his predatory nature.
Senna seemed to feel it too. She didn't immediately order him to leave. Instead she leaned her head back against the mildewed pillow. Her dark eyes tracked him in the dim light.
"Answer me one more thing parasite," she murmured. The humor was gone from her voice replaced by the cold clarity of the balcony.
Vane stopped nursing his cup of lukewarm water. "What?"
"If you knew for a fact that you could trigger that loophole right now," she said quietly. "If you could copy the Silver Fang today and walk away... would you do it?"
The room went dead silent.
Vane looked at her. She wasn't testing him for morality. She was testing him for consistency.
The easy answer... the nice answer... was no. Of course not. We are building trust now.
Vane remembered the Oakhaven rule. Never lie to someone who knows exactly what you are.
"Yes," Vane said. His voice was flat stripped of charm. "I want the power. I want to not be the weakest thing in every room I walk into. If I could snap my fingers and have what you have? Part of me would do it in a heartbeat."
He saw her eyes narrow slightly but she didn't interrupt.
"But I won't," Vane continued gripping the metal cup tighter. "First because my power doesn't steal Senna. It copies. If I took it now you would still have it and I would just have a messy shallow duplicate of a concept I don't understand. It's inefficient. Wasteful. I need the structure... the Art... to make the copy worth a damn."
He paused forcing himself to say the uglier part out loud.
"And second... the loophole isn't just holding hands during a seizure. The resonance requires physical union. Sex. To do that just to grab power while you are like this..." He gestured to her frail state. "It is desperate. And it is disgusting."
Senna stared at him for a long agonizing minute. He couldn't read her expression. It wasn't anger. It wasn't warmth. It looked strangely like relief.
"Good," she breathed finally. "If you had tried to give me some noble bullshit about friendship I would have thrown you out. At least you are practical about your depravity."
She shifted wincing as the movement pulled at her corrupted core.
"Listen to me. I am going to die in this room. Soon. The Academy forgot me. My family wrote off the loss. When I am gone the conceptual power I hold... the thing that stopped the Hydra... ends. The Art, the philosophy, the stubbornness of the wall... it all rots with me."
Her voice hardened. The steel returned.
"I hate waste Vane. More than I hate parasites. I won't let the legacy of that corridor turn into dust just because the world decided I was done."
She held out a trembling hand palm up. It wasn't a gesture of friendship. It was an offer of a transaction.
"So here is the pact. We finish the foundation. We build your body and your mind until you can hold the weight of the concept properly. And when the end comes... when there are no more good days left... we will use your loophole. Deliberately. We will open the door together and you will copy everything I have."
Vane stared at her hand. It was a death sentence and an inheritance wrapped into one.
He stepped forward and took her hand. Her skin was cold. The bones were fragile beneath his grip but her squeeze was surprisingly firm.
"Under two conditions," she added sharply.
"Name them."
"First... You use me as a stepping stone. You climb over my corpse to get where you are going. Don't you dare build a shrine to me. Don't turn my art into some sacred relic you are afraid to scratch. You sharpen it on the world and if you find something better you discard it without looking back. Weapons are meant to be used."
Vane nodded slowly. "Agreed. I'll use you. What is the second?"
"You remember the name of the stone you stepped on."
Vane looked into her sunken defiant eyes. He thought about the Barons fighting over cravats while she held a corridor against a nightmare. He thought about her dying alone in the fog because she was too expensive to fix.
"I won't build a shrine Senna," Vane promised his voice low. "But I won't forget the wall either."
She let out a short satisfied breath and pulled her hand back.
"Good. Now get out of here. If we are going to make that copy worth anything we need to start breaking your legs for real tomorrow."