Episode 183: Zero Hour (Camilla)

She was home. Home home, with her dad. Daddy. She couldn’t stop shaking, but somehow she’d stopped anyway because shaking looked pathetic and she’d just survived kidnapping and all that other mess, somehow, and it seemed like someone who survived that shouldn’t be someone who shook.

So she wasn’t shaking anymore.

“At least you lost weight,” her dad teased. “Or is it Mara who thinks she’s too fat?”

Didn’t all girls think they were too fat? Wasn’t that some kind of rule to being a girl?

“Did I?” she asked. That would be a nice advantage to being stuck there.

“I have no idea,” he said.

Duh. It wasn’t like he’d weighed her. Looking notably thin was just wishful thinking, after only a few days there.

He hugged her again. He hadn’t stopped. But he wanted to process her before she saw her mom, who wasn’t going to hug her. Her mom was going to be all cold and distant and use complex terms to make sure Camilla knew that her mom cared enough to hug her but she wasn’t a hugger.

Processed first, which meant dealing with all the problems. Even if he was her dad, he was the doctor too and she needed a doctor right now.

“I, um…” she started. Shoot, she was shaking again. She pressed her hands together. “I need a test. Thing.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I have one. And I have the other spell, if you want the test to have a different answer.”

Well obviously he wanted the test to have a different answer.

She took the test he got out of his office drawer and went into the little bathroom off his office. It was easy. Put test in toilet, pee, watch the water do its thing.

She did all of that, and then she watched as the toilet bowl divided itself into ten sections.

Ten. She flushed the evidence down the toilet because maybe if it was gone it wouldn’t be true anymore. Except it was true..

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t think about breathing.

Her brain totally shut down, and then she gasped and it turned into a sob and she collapsed against the bathroom wall.

Then her dad was there, blocking the whole doorway, and then he was there, right next to her, arms around her. “How many?” he asked.

“He said five,” she told him.

“The test should have been specific,” he reminded her. Right, because he wasn’t just her dad, he was the doctor, and he knew all the most annoying facts.

“It was specific,” she cried. She looked away from him, toward his office. “I never noticed all your medical posters before.”

“Camilla.” His voice was firm. One second her dad, the next he was the doctor, and then he was her dad again and she felt like she was about five years old. “How many?” he insisted.

“Too many,” she admitted. She hid her face against his arm, staining his shirt with tears. “Ten.”

There. She’d said it. It was now officially true.

He was a jerk for making her let it be true.

He leaned his back against the wall, stroking her hair. “We’ll terminate the pregnancy.”

Okay, yeah, she could just kill her babies she hadn’t even known she wanted. “Yeah, I know,” she said.

“It will be like you were never pregnant,” he promised her.

“Don’t tell Mom?” she begged. Her mom would freak, and pretend not to, which was actually worse than anything she could imagine. Her dad’s comfort was good for him too because it let him get out whatever he was feeling about this, but her mom would just hold it in and then paint it out and then there would be a painting on some wall somewhere in the palace and Camilla would always know it was the Camilla was pregnant painting.

“You’ll have other chances,” her dad promised, like she was ever going to manage to find a boyfriend who wasn’t just using her to make kingdom-conquering heirs. “Ten is too many. They won’t survive regardless. This is the best for them.”

“I know,” she said. “I knew as soon as I saw. I just…” she bit back another sob. “Can you kill me too? Not permanently, just…for a little?”

“I can,” he said. He seemed like he was measuring his words really carefully because he decided she was deranged. “But pain is no reason to die. Your pain will persist in death.”

Gah, they all thought she was so dramatic! “The elixir won’t though, right?” she asked, pointedly.

She could hear the anger in his breath. Anger at Tarragon, Ionia, maybe even at her for getting herself kidnapped in the first place. “I’ll skip the drink,” he decided, “but you will be called back in a few hours. Come back for your family.”

Ew! She didn’t want to be dead that long, that was gross. “You don’t even have to wait,” she told him.

She stood up, and he hugged her again. “I’ll prepare everything. Would you prefer your bedroom?”

Nope, she actually really didn’t care where she temp-died. She could do that anywhere and be alive again in a few minutes. “Here is fine,” she told him.

She walked back out to his office, where he got a handful of stuff out of some cabinets and drawers while she sat on his examining table and tried not to freak out about the fact that her dad was about to kill her.

Kill her babies, too. She’d come back but they’d…

The hours. He was giving her time to spend with her babies.

She felt sick. She wanted to see them, to know them. But leaving them would be awful. And what did she have here? Ionia kidnapping her wasn’t going to be the last time someone realized who she was and used her. Maybe dead, with her babies, was better than here, without them.

She decided not to say anything. She could just not come back.

“Lie back and relax,” he told her.

He was so nice. The best dad, the best of the best. If she didn’t come back, he was going to blame himself. Her mom might even blame him. They’d get divorced, because that kind of blame would ruin their marriage, and it would be her fault.

She hated this. She wanted easy, and somehow the universe had decided she needed difficult.

“You don’t think it’s a little creepy,” she joked, “that you just have this stuff ready?”

He laughed in agreement. “An air bubble in your vein is faster and just as effective.”

That sounded painful, even if it was fast. She laughed, from nerves. “Okay, I’m ready.” She settled against the examining table and closed her eyes.

She felt the needle enter, and then horrible pain in her chest, like an elephant with the weight of a hundred elephants was sitting on her, and then her head kind of exploded in pain and then…she was fine.

“Camilla,” her dad said.

“Yeah?” she asked. “How long does this take?” She’d heard about the euphoria before death, but she hadn’t expected it to be this boring.

“Just another moment,” he promised. He cut her arm – she could feel the hot stinging, the blood on her skin, the tingling of the skin weaving itself back together.

“I may have to postpone this,” her dad said.

“What’s wrong?” she sat up.

He cut her again, this time so she could watch the healing. “You’re Dragon.”

She laughed, but it did heal. Really quickly. “Oh my god, I can’t even die right,” she whined. It was just like her, to suck at dying too.

If she was Dragon, that meant that Tarragon…

She was a horrible person. She needed to find him, talk to him. He had to know she wasn’t dead, because the babies weren’t.

“Your body can’t sustain them,” her dad told her. “We can find another way. I can remove them and see if they survive or find a way to sustain them outside of you.”

“Okay?” What did he mean, sustain them outside of her? The way he talked, he already knew how to do that, or suspected there was a way, which meant he’d looked into it before. She wondered when, why. “That works,” she murmured.

“Which?” he asked.

That had been a question? “Um…” she said, to buy herself time. He’d said he could take them out to see if they survived or take them out to see if they survived…how was that different things?

She couldn’t think.

“How long can my body handle them?”

He sat in his swively doctor chair. “Two or three months at most. I lean weeks to be safe.”

Weeks. Okay. Okay. Um…

Bentley!

He could tell her when would be the safest time to take them out without killing her. Not that she could be killed…

“And what’s the other choice?” she asked.

He leaned back in his chair. “We keep you here, attached to machines to ensure you get enough calories and fluids for the pregnancy. Or we cut them out and see what happens.”

That was a choice. Not one she wanted to make, but it was at least an A or B option set with outlined differences. “Do I have to decide, like, right this minute?” she asked. “They’re not going to kill me today.”

“I am going to realm travel today if needed,” he explained. So the equipment was somewhere else, and he needed to know if he needed it.

“Okay, well I don’t know!” she told him. How could she decide something like that right now with everything else going on? Shouldn’t she be in counseling or being debriefed by Konrad or…anything? Not more pressure, going home was supposed to be the easy safe part of all of this.

“Today you have a job,” he told her. He stood up, like let’s go. “We’ll drop you off.”

“What job?”

“Test Ach’s spa equipment. All of it.” He said it like this was not the most disgusting thing in the world. Most disgusting.

“Ew, no,” she complained. “Can’t I just be in my bedroom?”

“Will you panic in your bedroom?” he challenged.

“Will I panic imagining Spence having sex in the spa?” she countered. She knew she’d won this argument when her dad’s face almost winced.

“What about an out of realm spa?” he suggested. “Noc Thui has one.”

Probably people still had sex in it, but at least they were strangers.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’m sorry, it’s just gross.”

He laughed. “You’ve convinced me not to use it either.” He stepped out into the hall. “Indy? We’re dropping Camilla off in Noc Thui.”

So her mom had been waiting in the hall. Probably waiting for her to be dead, so she could help revive her, and instead Camilla was Dragon.

She felt very other and alone all of a sudden.

Her mom looked at her like she was an alien. She probably was an alien. That was way more likely than that she was actually her mom’s daughter. “What are you doing there?”

“Detox spa from all that stress,” she said, shrugging.

Her mom probably hadn’t been to a spa in her life. She liked very specific touch – from her dad – and didn’t like covering herself in chemicals.

Right now Camilla wanted to drown herself in chemicals.

“I’m sending Mara with her. Girls day,” her dad said. “Will you come on a trip with me?”

Her mom, to her complete shock, wrapped her up in a hug and kissed the top of her head somehow even though she could barely reach it on tip-toe.

“Sure,” her mom said to her dad. “Adventure.”

Camilla sighed. They were so happy together.

She had one shot at that with Tarragon if she decided she wanted it. One shot, and she’d already messed it up by trying to kill herself.

Her parents were going to be mad if she included Tarragon in her life.

“Thanks for this, Dad,” she said, from the security of her mom’s arms, arms that hadn’t held her like this in years.

“Anytime, Mills,” he said, and they started off down the hall. Whatever she decided today, her life was never going to be the same.

One chance. With Tarragon, one chance. For the babies, one chance.

What was the right move?

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