Ikaris sat in the room, his right hand wrapped around a plastic cup of water.
It was cold to the touch.
He was particularly aware of his toes, as he always was during these weekly sessions. The sensation of each one pressing against the inside of his shoes, the slight discomfort of his smallest toe, and the peculiar awareness that he could move them independently if he concentrated hard enough.
It was an unusual thing to think about.
Then again, therapy had a way of making him think about unusual things.
Therapy sessions. Court-mandated.
He was an orphan. An adopted orphan, to be precise, which was supposedly the better variety.
His adoption had been celebrated as a success. A happy ending to a rather unfortunate beginning. Everyone had smiled, congratulated his new parents, and assured him that his life would be different now.
And it was.
For eleven months.
Then his new home burned down with his parents and himself inside it.
He survived.
They did not.
The therapy had started long before the fire, as it did for most children unfortunate enough to find themselves in the system. Afterward, however, the sessions intensified, as though the tragedy had created some new emotional wound that needed immediate attention.
As if he was supposed to feel anything.
He didn't.
Disappointment was a peculiar flavor, one he had become intimately acquainted with. There was little else to feel after enduring so much of it, so consistently, that even the prospect of happiness began to resemble a warning.
People came. People left.
Sometimes they died.
The distinction mattered considerably less than people seemed to think.
"Tell me about the dream last night."
The doctor's voice interrupted his thoughts.
Her tone was light but earthy, possessing a certain masculine weight beneath its carefully practiced softness. Like a woman who hadn't quite decided how much of her former self she wished to abandon.
Transgender, Ikaris thought, as he always did around this particular point in their weekly routine.
There was a certain disdain to the observation, though not for the institution of transgenderism itself. Rather, it was the doctor's apparent conviction that he wouldn't notice.
Or worse, that he couldn't understand.
Then again, orphans were frequently considered "challenged".
He had discovered that adults were particularly fond of assigning intellectual deficiencies to children whose circumstances they found uncomfortable.
"I dreamt of Sharkboy and Lavagirl," he replied.
The doctor glanced down at her notebook.
"So, you didn't have the usual dreams?" She flipped through several pages. "Showers of golden radiance, a beautiful Asian woman—the love of your life, Sersi, you called her. And a small boy—"
"A girl. Sprite!"
His irritation flared before he could suppress it.
The doctor smirked.
And Ikaris knew immediately that he had been caught.
Every week, the same routine. She would begin by desperately attempting to engage him, while he would respond with varying degrees of uncooperativeness. Then, somewhere around the middle of the session, their roles would reverse.
He would become the one desperate to explain.
And she would become the one reluctant to believe.
"Do you still dream in other languages?"
Ikaris held his tongue.
"Anāku maruṣ libbi," she said carefully. "Which means, I am a doctor."
He closed his eyes.
He knew what she was doing.
He knew precisely what she was doing.
And yet—
"You just said you were sad."
She smiled.
Twice.
She had caught him twice.
"The reason I made that mistake," she explained, "is because the language, as you describe it, does not exist, Ikaris."
He looked away.
"The phrases you remember aren't consistent with any language we've been able to identify. Your mind is constructing something remarkably sophisticated, but that doesn't make it a memory."
She paused, choosing her next words with the caution of someone approaching an animal that had previously bitten her.
"And that is what makes it fascinating. It demonstrates the brilliance you're capable of if you apply yourself."
Had this been their first session, he would have dismissed her.
During their second, he would have argued.
By the third, he would have launched into a lengthy explanation involving ancient civilizations, linguistic evolution, and the fundamental arrogance of assuming humanity had successfully documented every language ever spoken.
This was their twenty-third session.
And after years of attempting to prove the contrary, he had never been able to establish that the language appearing spontaneously in his dreams was authentic.
There were fragments that resembled Akkadian. Others possessed similarities to languages that had disappeared thousands of years before his birth. Yet whenever he attempted to reconstruct an entire conversation, the words seemed to change.
Or perhaps his memory of them did.
That was the frustrating part.
He could remember entire conversations from dreams with greater clarity than what he had eaten for breakfast, but he couldn't produce enough consistent evidence to convince anyone that those conversations belonged to a real language.
So now, he listened.
And, reluctantly, it had begun to help.
He slept better when he treated the dreams as products of an overactive imagination rather than fragments of some forgotten existence.
It was exhausting living with the constant expectation that he was somehow special.
That there was some grand explanation for why he felt older than his years, why unfamiliar places occasionally seemed familiar, and why certain faces inspired emotions he had never experienced while awake.
He had spent much of his childhood believing that he was destined for something extraordinary.
And he never was.
"Are you finding it easier to distinguish between your dreams and reality now?" the doctor inquired.
Ikaris's eyes shifted briefly to the left.
There, at the edge of his vision, sat a man.
Bathed in golden radiance.
His armor was blue, decorated with intricate golden patterns that seemed to move independently across its surface. The light surrounding him possessed an unnatural quality, as though it came from somewhere far beyond the room.
He was looking directly at Ikaris.
Not with curiosity.
Not even with recognition.
But with the exhausted familiarity of someone looking across an immeasurable distance at a mistake he had made long ago.
The man resembled an older version of himself.
An older version he desperately hoped never to become.
Because his eyes were always so empty.
Ikaris turned.
And, as always, the man disappeared.
"Ikaris?"
"Yes."
He snapped back into focus, answering with a calmness that had become second nature.
Some part of his mind had learned to follow conversations even while another wandered elsewhere. It was one of the more peculiar abilities he possessed, though he had stopped mentioning it after discovering that adults considered such things symptoms rather than talents.
"Yes, Doctor. I can distinguish very clearly now."
She sighed.
It was the sort of sigh that suggested she had recognized the lie long before he finished telling it.
Nevertheless, she rose, walked behind her desk, and returned with a small brown package containing his medication.
"I believe we can reduce your prescription this week. One pill every two days."
She wrote the instructions on the packaging.
Then she hesitated.
"You should try making friends at school."
Ikaris stared at her.
"I know you dislike social interaction," she continued, "but perhaps you could find someone who is alone. Someone shy. Someone who might appreciate having another person sit beside them at lunch."
"That sounds suspiciously like an assignment."
"It is."
"An unpleasant one."
"Most worthwhile things are."
"That's a remarkably depressing philosophy for a therapist."
She smiled.
"Remember what I always say—"
"Start small and expand," Ikaris finished automatically.
He snatched the medication from the table, rose, and turned toward the door.
Then he stopped.
"May I leave?"
It was a small thing.
An insignificant question to most people.
But for Ikaris, it represented one of the earliest changes the doctor had insisted upon.
As an orphan, he had learned to enter and exit rooms as quickly as possible. Caretakers had limited patience, foster parents had limited affection, and most adults preferred children who required as little attention as possible.
He had learned that remaining unnoticed was often the safest arrangement.
The doctor, however, had decided that this particular habit needed correcting.
Now he had to ask permission before leaving.
She gestured toward the door, already scribbling observations in her notebook.
A notebook he had never read.
Not for lack of opportunity.
There had been several occasions when she left it unattended, and he could easily have examined its contents.
But he was afraid of what might be written inside.
Ikaris had discovered that the less one understood about people, the more likable they tended to become.
Such had been the case with his adoptive parents.
Until he discovered what they had written about him in—
He shook his head.
It was an accident.
The words came automatically.
The fire was an accident.
He placed his hand on the door handle and pushed.
The door slammed shut behind him.
And somewhere, at the edge of his hearing, he thought he heard a woman calling his name.
Not the doctor's voice.
Someone else.
Someone who had been calling him for a very long time.
He continued walking.
He had learned that the easiest way to escape a dream was to pretend he hadn't heard it.
à
Monday arrived with the usual bustle of children excited to see their friends, secret girlfriends and boyfriends, and a surprising number of teachers who appeared equally enthusiastic about seeing someone else's wife or husband.
In a few unfortunate instances, certain teachers seemed particularly excited to see the students themselves.
For reasons considerably less honorable than education.
Ikaris noticed these things.
He always did.
There were subtle gestures, lingering glances, conversations that stopped when another adult approached. Small inconsistencies in behavior that most people dismissed because acknowledging them would require some form of intervention.
He had never understood humanity's remarkable ability to recognize wrongdoing while simultaneously convincing itself that someone else would address it.
Then again, perhaps he understood it too well.
He shook his head.
He was doing it again.
Observing everyone around him as though they were children.
Which was ridiculous, considering he was merely fourteen years old himself.
He had to remind himself of that occasionally.
Fourteen.
Not forty.
Not four hundred.
Just fourteen.
A sudden impact against his shoulder sent him stumbling into the lockers.
His body responded before his thoughts did.
One foot shifted backward, knees bent, shoulders lowered, and his fingers curled instinctively toward the vulnerable points of an opponent's face.
It was the defensive stance of orphanage scrimmages.
The kind involving gouged eyes, torn ears, and desperate children fighting over the privilege of being left alone on nights when certain caretakers had been drinking.
There were things one learned in such places that no child should ever have to learn.
And Ikaris had learned them exceptionally well.
But he caught himself.
Violence was unnecessary.
More importantly, violence attracted attention.
He deliberately shifted his weight, pretended to lose his balance, and tripped over his own foot.
His backpack struck the floor.
"Ow," he grunted.
The performance was convincing enough.
Tod stood above him, grinning.
Behind him were his three usual companions.
A rather useless bully, all things considered.
Tod's parents were divorcing, a fact he believed remained a closely guarded family secret. Unfortunately, one of his friends had a parent sleeping with his father, another had a parent sleeping with his mother, and the third was secretly an orphan himself.
The last one was particularly interesting.
He had discovered that directing Tod's insecurities toward other orphans was an effective way of ensuring nobody examined his own circumstances too closely.
A clever arrangement.
Cruel, certainly.
But clever.
"Move out the way faster next time, you homeless trash," Tod growled.
Several students stopped.
For one brief moment, their expressions suggested they were waiting for someone to intervene.
Then came the uncomfortable realization that they themselves might have to become that someone.
And, almost immediately, they resumed walking.
"I'm sorry," Ikaris apologized.
He delivered the words with the sincerity only someone who understood their complete insignificance could muster.
Tod seemed satisfied.
Which was fortunate.
Not for Ikaris.
For Tod.
Because Ikaris wasn't particularly afraid of him.
If anything, he was afraid for him.
There was a particular certainty that came from knowing precisely what one was capable of doing for a plate of food.
Ikaris possessed that certainty.
Tod did not.
And the difference between them was considerably more dangerous than either of them appeared.
Tod snorted and spun on his heel with the remarkable balance of a ballerina.
Which, incidentally, he was.
Twice a week, in a studio halfway across the city, Tod attended ballet lessons under a slightly different name.
He was quite talented.
Unfortunately, he had also convinced himself that his interest in ballet was evidence of something shameful, and that nobody at school could ever discover it.
Ikaris found the secrecy rather pointless.
How could anyone expect to remain truly unknown in an era when the internet was becoming increasingly popular?
For now, only a handful of teachers appeared aware of Tod's extracurricular activities.
But secrets had a peculiar way of traveling.
Eventually, someone would find out.
Someone would laugh.
And the bully would become the bullied.
The defective.
Ikaris disliked that word.
Not because he hadn't heard it before.
But because he had.
Far too often.
Tod continued down the corridor, shoving several more students into the lockers as he went.
A shorter boy.
Another student who barely managed to catch himself.
A blonde girl.
And finally, a dark-haired girl wearing a turtleneck, who appeared to stumble into Tod's path rather than being deliberately pushed.
She staggered backward with an awkwardness that suggested her feet had never quite agreed on which direction they intended to travel.
To everyone watching, however, the result appeared the same.
Another victim.
Another inconvenience.
Another reason to look elsewhere.
Ikaris moved before he could reconsider.
His backpack slipped over one shoulder as he steadied the shorter boy, then caught the second student by the arm.
"Thanks," the boy whispered.
Ikaris nodded.
Next came the blonde.
He reached out, caught her before she fell, and helped her regain her balance.
Her eyes met his.
She smiled.
He didn't.
He couldn't afford to.
Not with teenage pregnancy being what it was.
It was an absurd association, and some part of him recognized that, but social interaction had always seemed to him like a series of increasingly complicated obligations disguised as harmless gestures.
A smile became a conversation.
A conversation became a friendship.
A friendship became an expectation.
And expectations, in his experience, were simply disappointments that hadn't happened yet.
He released her hand.
Then turned toward the final girl.
Before he could reach her, she reached for him.
"Thanks, Ikaris."
She said it before he had even touched her.
Her fingers closed around his wrist.
And his thoughts stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
For one impossible moment, the hallway seemed to withdraw around them.
The voices became distant.
The lockers blurred.
And somewhere in the recesses of his mind, something stirred.
A memory.
Or a dream.
He could never quite tell the difference.
The girl's dark hair framed a face he was certain he had never seen before.
Yet there was something about her eyes.
Something unbearably familiar.
He felt an impulse to say a name.
Not hers.
Not one he knew.
A name that seemed to belong to someone who had been waiting for him through an eternity of disappointments.
Ikaris.
He steadied his breathing.
Reality and dreams.
The doctor's words returned to him.
Learn to distinguish between them.
"You're welcome," he whispered.
The girl smiled.
It was an awkward smile, small and uncertain, as though she had practiced it in anticipation of a conversation that hadn't quite unfolded as expected.
Ikaris withdrew his hand.
He had already exhausted more social energy in those few seconds than he ordinarily expended during an entire school day.
Without another word, he adjusted his backpack and disappeared down the corridor.
Following the same direction as Tod.
Not nefariously.
Not even deliberately.
But perhaps a little too fearlessly for what he was supposed to be.
A bullied child.
Behind him, the dark-haired girl remained standing.
Watching.
For a moment, she seemed uncertain whether to follow.
She ultimately didn't.