Chapter 17: Back Among the Plants

Cerys stopped at the turn in the passage, where she had nearly fallen the last time she'd tried to reach hydroponics.

Elis stopped with her. He had walked beside her from her room without offering an arm she hadn't asked for. Today she didn't need one. She did need the wall for a moment, and she put her hand against it without pretending to admire anything.

“You can still change your mind,” he said.

“About the whole visit?”

“About any part of it.”

She waited until her breathing settled. The short visit was all he'd agreed she was ready for. She could already imagine herself trying to turn it into a workday if she let the plants distract her.

“I want to go,” she said. “I also want to come back under my own power.”

“Those sound like two reasonable things.”

“Don't look so surprised.”

“I wasn't going to,” Elis said.

She left him at the turn and took the rest of the walk slowly. By the time she reached the growing rooms, she was tired enough to resent the familiar doorway. Then the door opened and the warm, damp air met her, and the resentment went away.

Her coworker was talking to someone across the room. He stopped in the middle of a sentence when he saw her.

“You're actually here.”

“I did send a note.”

“You've sent a lot of notes.” His grin arrived a moment after the words. “I wasn't sure you'd let us finish reading them before you came to check,” someone said.

She had planned to answer with something sharp. Instead she looked past him. The beds were green. Not all the beds; she could see an empty stretch where the team had lost plants while she was away. She knew about that loss. Seeing the space was different from reading it on a page.

Her coworker followed her gaze. “I should have warned you.”

“You did.”

“I could show you what we kept.”

“I'd like that,” someone said.

Someone behind him hurried to bring her a chair. Another offered to carry her bag, though she had nothing in it but the page she'd promised to bring back. Cerys thanked them both and kept the bag. She took the chair because standing for the sake of refusing it would use up the visit before she'd begun.

Her coworker watched her settle. “You don't have to do anything today. We just wanted you to see the place.”

“I didn't come to be displayed.”

His smile disappeared.

She wished she hadn't said it quite that way. They'd been frightened for her. Some of them had seen her carried in after Wolf Night, and none of them had been able to do much except hope she survived.

“I know you're trying to help,” she said. “But I'd like to choose what I do while I'm here.”

He glanced at the bag in her lap. “All right. What do you want?”

She pulled out the page, the one with his corrections and her single sentence on the back. It looked embarrassingly formal now that she was sitting in front of him.

“Show me the section you changed. I want to see whether I was wrong about it.”

“You weren't wrong about all of it.”

“That's not an answer,” Cerys said.

He laughed, properly this time, and led her toward the beds. He didn't try to move her chair for her. She stood, walked the short distance, and sat again when she reached a place where she could see.

The section he'd changed had new growth beside the gap. Cerys looked at what was there, not at the space she still wanted to fill. Her coworker had made a choice when she couldn't be here to make it with him. He'd saved something by giving up something else.

“I would've argued with you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I might still be arguing.”

“You can. After you've looked,” Rhys said.

She looked again. She could make a list of what she'd have done differently, but the surviving plants would not grow better because she won a conversation about yesterday.

“You made the right call,” she said.

Her coworker stared at her. “I wish I'd had someone here to hear that.”

“Don't get used to it.”

Across the room, one of the others called over to ask whether Cerys could look at a bed they'd been uncertain about. Before she answered, her coworker said, “She isn't staying long.”

“I know,” Cerys said. “I can hear you.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed.

She turned toward the other worker. “I can look at it from here. I can't stay to do the rest. If you need a decision after I leave, make it without me.”

The answer didn't make her feel generous. She wanted to stay and see what happened next. She wanted the old ease of being useful without calculating what it would cost her to stand up again.

The other worker nodded and came to her. Cerys gave the bed her attention, offered what judgment she could, and left the work itself in capable hands. Her coworker didn't interrupt. When the conversation ended, he asked if she needed a break.

“I need to go soon,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment, then back at the plants. “Rhys asked me whether we needed to make things easier for you down here.”

Cerys kept her eyes on the bed. She hadn't expected Rhys to enter the room by way of her coworker's voice.

“What did you tell him?”

“That we'd talk to you. He didn't tell us what to do.”

She could have made that into a kindness she owed Rhys something for. She could also have decided the question was another attempt to manage her from a distance. Neither answer fit what her coworker had actually said.

“Thank you,” she told him. “For saying I'd decide.”

“You would've told me if I got it wrong.”

“I would've.”

He took the page when she held it out. She had meant to leave it as proof that she could come back, but she no longer needed the proof. She stood without reaching for the chair again. The room seemed louder than it had when she arrived, full of people doing work she had missed.

“Don't wait for me to finish the bed,” she said.

“We weren't going to.”

That used to be a joke between them. Today she believed him.

She left while she could still make the walk upstairs. At the turn, Elis was no longer waiting; they'd agreed he wouldn't stand there unless she asked him to. She rested briefly, then made it to her own passage.

Rhys came around the bend as she was nearing her door. He stopped when he saw her, leaving enough room for her to pass.

“I heard you went back,” he said.

“For a little while.”

“I'm glad.” He looked at the bag she was carrying, then at her face. “I was going to ask if they needed anything.”

“They know how to ask me.”

He nodded. It wasn't an argument. She noticed that before she could stop herself.

“I don't want to keep you standing,” he said. “Could I come by and see you sometime?”

Cerys had been looking forward to sitting down. She still loved him enough that the sound of his voice made her want to stay in the passage. He had not moved toward her door, or assumed she'd open it because he'd asked.

She could say no. She could say yes and set a limit neither of them would be able to pretend hadn't been spoken. Rhys stood where she'd left him and waited.