Morning came the way it always did — the bell, the gray light through the window, the distant hum of Armageddon doing what Armageddon did.
Lilith and Eve woke up at the same time.
This was not unusual. They had always had a tendency to surface from sleep together, some shared rhythm between them that no one had designed and neither of them had chosen. Lilith opened her eyes and Eve was already looking at the ceiling beside her, both of them arriving at the day simultaneously without fanfare.
They looked at each other.
Then they both looked at Lysander.
He was still asleep. Deeply, thoroughly, completely asleep — curled into a ball with his back to the room, the blanket pulled all the way up past his ear, one foot sticking out from the bottom for reasons that were entirely his own. His breathing was slow and content and completely unbothered by the concept of morning bells.
Lilith sat up. "Lysander."
Nothing.
"Lysander."
The foot twitched. That was all.
Eve leaned over. "Lysander."
The blanket moved slightly, in the way blankets moved when the person inside them was aware of the outside world and had decided against it.
Lilith reached over and shook his shoulder. "The bell rang. We have chores."
A sound emerged from inside the blanket. Not words. Just a sound. The sound of someone receiving information they had chosen not to accept.
Eve took the edge of the blanket and pulled it down from his face. Cold air hit him. He scrunched his nose.
"Wake up," Eve said.
"Don't want to," Lysander said, into the pillow, with complete sincerity.
"You don't get a choice."
"Why not."
"Because the bell rang," Lilith said.
He was quiet for a moment, apparently processing this. Then: "What if I didn't hear it."
"You heard it."
"What if I was asleep."
"Lysander."
He opened one eye. It found Lilith, registered her existence and the general state of the morning, and then closed again. "It's very early," he said.
"It's the same time it always is."
"It feels earlier today."
"It isn't."
"Are you sure?"
Eve took his arm and sat him upright in one motion. He blinked in the gray morning light with the expression of someone who had been awake for approximately four seconds and was still deciding whether to commit to it. His hair was doing several things at once, none of them intentional.
"Good morning," Lilith said.
He looked at her. Then at Eve. Then at the window, where the gray Armageddon sky sat doing exactly what it always did.
"Everything is gray," he said.
"It's always gray."
He thought about this with the seriousness it apparently deserved. "Someone should fix that," he said, and got up.
Morning class had been replaced with chores.
Sister Prudence had announced it at breakfast in the tone she used when the reasoning was self-evident and she saw no need to elaborate — the orphanage had taken damage, the damage needed addressing, everyone with hands could help address it. The tech-priest assigned to their education had looked mildly affronted. No one mentioned it to him.
The east corridor was the main task. Stone and plaster from the wall breaches, broken furniture from the rooms that had taken the worst of it, debris that the Ork incursion had scattered without any particular organization or consideration for the people who would have to clean it up afterward. Brooms and dustpans, children working in groups, the older ones carrying and the smaller ones sweeping.
Outside, through the gaps in the damaged walls, the hive city continued. The manufactorums never stopped. The distant sounds of the Steel Legion moving through the outer districts, mopping up what remained of the Ork advance, came in through the broken windows on the wind. Somewhere further out a siren was going. This was not unusual. On Armageddon, a siren somewhere was simply the ambient condition of being alive.
Lilith swept.
It was useful, she had found, to have something physical to do when her mind was working on something it hadn't solved yet. The broom moved, the dust moved, and underneath the motion her thoughts ran their own course.
How do I say it, she thought. How do I bring it up without — do I talk to Ha'ken first? I should probably talk to Ha'ken first. Get his position before I say anything to Lysander, find out if it's even possible, if the chapter would permit a civilian child to—
She swept.
But if I talk to Ha'ken first and he says no then I've raised the possibility and—
She swept harder.
Except Lysander doesn't know about the possibility yet because I haven't said anything so—
Lysander was sweeping nearby, with considerably less focus than the task required. He kept stopping to look at pieces of debris — picking them up, turning them over, holding them up to the gray light coming through the broken wall to examine them properly. He had found a piece of twisted metal early on that he'd declared looked like a Sentinel walker, which he was now carrying in his off hand while sweeping with the other, occasionally holding it up to make it walk across the wall.
"Pshew," he said quietly, to himself, making it shoot something. "Pshew pshew."
Eve was further down the corridor, moving rubble with the efficient focus she brought to physical tasks, carrying pieces twice the size the other children were managing and showing no particular awareness that this was unusual.
Lilith watched Lysander make his metal Sentinel shoot something on the wall and thought about Nocturne and how to start a conversation she'd been rehearsing since last night and kept revising because none of the versions felt right.
Just say it plainly, she told herself. You're going away. He should come. Here's why. Simple.
She opened her mouth.
"Lilith," Lysander said.
She looked at him.
He had set the metal Sentinel down on a piece of rubble — parked it carefully, almost, with the air of someone setting aside something important to attend to something more important. He was looking at her with his serious face. The one he got when something mattered and he wanted to make sure the person he was talking to understood that it mattered.
"Can I come with you?" he said. "When you and Eve go away."
Lilith stared at him.
He held her gaze with the patient, open sincerity of someone who had thought about this and was simply waiting for the world to catch up to the conclusion he'd already reached.
She opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
He just— she thought. I have been lying awake and rehearsing and revising and he just—
She looked at Eve.
Eve had stopped working. She was looking at Lysander with her head tilted very slightly to one side — the Eve version of open curiosity, the one that meant she was watching carefully and waiting to understand something. The question was in her expression without being on her face: why, where did that come from, what made you—
Lilith turned back to Lysander. "Why?" she said. "What made you think of—"
"Because I promised someone," Lysander said.
His voice had shifted. Still completely him — still Lysander in every recognizable way but with something underneath it that sat differently from his usual brightness. Not heavy, just settled.
"I promised someone I'd protect you," he said, to Lilith, looking at her directly the way he did when something was serious. "And I can't do that if you're on Nocturne and I'm here." He paused, thinking it through out loud the way he thought most things through. "That's very far away. I looked at the map in the library once. Well — the old library. Before the wall fell in." A smaller pause. "The new library will probably be better. With less Ork in it."
Lilith looked at him.
Promised someone, she thought.
Who.
She didn't ask. The question sat in her chest and she held it there, because something about the certainty in his voice when he'd said it quiet and settled and completely unlike how he usually announced things which made her feel like pushing on it right now was not the right move.
She was still finding the words when she noticed Eve.
Something had crossed Eve's face when Lysander said protect you — fast and unguarded, the expression of someone who had just heard something land in a part of them that had been waiting for it without knowing it. Not surprise. Something warmer. Something that sat in her chest and brightened her eyes and didn't have a name yet but felt immediately and completely right.
He will stand next to me, something in Eve had understood, simple and certain. He will stand next to me and we will protect her.
She looked at Lysander and something in her expression did the rare thing. Her determined face. And then she straightened, and there was something in the set of her that Lilith had never quite seen before. A forward-leaning quality. An aliveness in her posture that went beyond her usual focused readiness.
Lilith noticed it immediately.
Is she— she thought, looking at her sister. Is Eve—
Lysander looked at Eve, then at Lilith, then at the corridor ahead with the expression of someone who had made a plan and was now executing it.
He picked up the metal Sentinel. Pocketed it.
"I'm going to talk to Sister Mercy," he announced, with the decisive energy of someone who had just promoted himself to being in charge of this entire situation. "And Sister Prudence. And Sister Marian." He set his broom against the wall carefully, upright so it wouldn't fall over. "They like me. Sister Mercy always gives me the slightly bigger portion at meals when she thinks no one is looking."
"That's not really how—" Lilith started.
"And then I'm going to ask Ha'ken." He said the name with the full weight of reverence he reserved for Space Marines, which was considerable. "Do you think he'll say yes? He seems like the kind of person who says yes to good things." He nodded at his own assessment, satisfied with it. "He has a very serious good face. Good faces say yes to good things."
"You should definitely talk to Ha'ken," Eve said.
Her voice had something in it that was almost though not quite, but almost bright.
Lysander pointed at her immediately. "Yes. Exactly. All of them." Another firm nod. "I'll talk to all of them." He looked at Lilith. "Is that a good plan?"
"Lysander, I think we should—"
He was already walking.
His footsteps went down the corridor at the quick purposeful pace of someone on official business, the slightly-too-big orphanage boots scuffing against the stone floor, the metal Sentinel a small lump in his pocket.
Eve watched him go for exactly one second.
Then she set her own broom against the wall — also upright, also so it wouldn't fall over — and followed him.
Not at her usual measured pace.
Quickly. With a purpose that was different from her usual purposefulness — lighter, more forward-leaning, like something in her had been waiting for exactly this and had decided it was done waiting. Her steps had an energy in them that Lilith had genuinely, in all their time together, never once seen in her before.
Lilith's eyebrow went up.
That, she thought, watching her sister's retreating back, is new.
Eve did not look back.
"Eve," Lilith said.
Nothing. Just Eve's shoulders — and if Lilith wasn't completely mistaken there was something almost bright in them, something that didn't belong to the Eve who moved through rooms like she was always half-ready for a fight — disappearing around the corner after Lysander.
Together. Already walking in the easy parallel way of two people who had somewhere to be and had decided they were going there.
Without her.
Lilith stood in the east corridor of a partially-destroyed orphanage on Hive Armageddon and held her broom.
The distant sirens continued. The manufactorums hummed. Further down the corridor another group of children swept debris with the flat efficiency of people fulfilling an obligation.
Two brooms leaned against the wall.
The metal Sentinel was gone.
Lilith looked at the empty corner where they'd disappeared. Then at the brooms. Then at the empty corner again.
She let out a long slow breath through her nose — the specific breath of someone who had spent considerable mental energy preparing for a conversation that had been taken entirely out of their hands by a six-year-old with a toy Sentinel in his pocket and her sister who had apparently discovered eagerness for the first time in her life and chosen this specific moment to debut it.
She picked up her broom.
"Fine," she said, to no one.
She continued sweeping the floor alone and decided to leave them alone for now.