Nine-Tenths

Forty-Two

All my life I've known that dragons run the world, but in a sort of vague, abstract way. They head BIAs, they own land that they manage for municipalities, they have parallel parliaments and support human governments, they write policy and invest in charities, they create structure. What I didn't realize is that they don't just run the world... they control it.

So much of what I know about dragons has been fed to me by those very dragons themselves. It's the ultimate propaganda machine, and I've been trapped inside it my whole life.

I spend the rest of the night trying to reach out to someone, anyone who might help, and can't. The emails I send to every major newspaper in Upper Canada get stuck in my drafts. When I dial 911, the operator laughs me off, and when I try the non-emergency line, my call won't connect. The news is playing a loop of me looking like hot garbage whispering "We didn't break up", delusional and desperate. The commentators insinuate that Dav's brief blip of a reappearance was just that—a blip. And that I'm a mistake he's retreating from.

Lies!

...aren't they?

Dav would come back to me if he could.

Right?

He loves me. He said so. Even if I never got to say it back.

After a shitty, nightmare-plagued sleep on Hadi's sofa, I expect to have to elbow my way through a sea of cameras and obscene shouting the next day. But when I leave the building, there's nothing but footprints scoured into the trampled grass. I slink home, hollowed by the perpetual fear that I'm worth abandoning, and drop into bed, missing the warm comfort of Dav with an ache that's physical.

Mum visits for a few days. She believes what the news says, tells me I'm better off, while I lay on the sofa with my head in her lap. She doesn't say 'I told you so', and I don't try to tell her the truth. What would be the point?

After she goes home, Gem and Stu call every night. They trade off, as if they're on self-harm watch.

Huh.

They're probably on self-harm watch.

Another week passes. Then two.

I talk to Dr. Chen every other day, and on the days it's not her, it's Dike, or Mau, or both "just popping by" with takeout and beer, or new video games to try, or some journal article to read aloud and mock.

I try very hard not to resent everyone.

They only want to make sure I'm healthy.

Fuck.

I just want to sleep.

I sleep too much.

With nothing better to do, I go back to work.

Our popularity is the same, but now it's not because of the coffee. I don't want to be gawked at. I stay in the kitchen, hiding in the stainless steel cave like Dav did. I roast. I bake. I call, I tweet, I email. Letters are returned unopened. Security won't let me get close to government buildings. (Though, even I know better than to rock up to Chorley Park and bang on Lt. Gov. Scumbag's door.)

I reach out fruitlessly, work resentfully, sleep fitfully, and miss Dav terribly.

By the fourth week, I'm mad at myself.

How could I let him mean so much to me, how could we spend so much time together, and I know so goddamned little about him? His address, his family, I don't even know what his dragonshape looks like. Why didn't I push more? Why didn't I care more?

It's stupid, but Dav never got to tell me what it is that "I've done it again" meant, and I think that out of everything, that's what pisses me off most. He promised me he would explain, and they wouldn't let him keep that promise.

The sharp pain of missing Dav turns into something else, something resentful and moldy. It feels like giving up. I'm just human, after all. What can I do if the Draconic Powers That Be want to do something horrible to the man that I love? (yes, I still love him, and they can choke on it.) Shit-all. And it's wretched.

And then somehow, it's been five weeks.

Then six.

It takes a few weeks for me to catch on, because I'm so cocooned in misery, but one morning I leave my house, I realize with a sudden-fog-clearing fury that I have a stalker.

There's some goddamned dragon following me around. Or at least, I assume he's homo draconis because he's a mountain of muscle with a vibe that frazzles my short-hairs when I walk by his vehicle-du-jour. Maybe he thinks he's being inconspicuous, but hanging out in different cars outside of my apartment and my place of work only functions in movies. Especially with a neck like that—you don't get a neck like that just being a driver.

Is he security?

Or am I being tailed to make sure I don't do anything naughty?

Fuck 'em.

Fuck every single one of the split-tongued, scaly-assed bastards keeping me and Dav apart.

So I...

I don't know why I do it. Except that I'm angry. I want them to know that no matter where he is and what they're doing to him, Dav is mine. I am his, and he is mine.

So, on the morning of the forty-sixth day, I step out of my apartment, stare the security dude straight in the face, and put on the little rose-and-laurels lapel pin. I stick it right on my Henley, directly over my heart.

The guy's face goes ashen. His car peels out of the parking spot.

Three hours later, Onatah calls me for the first time.

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