I woke up. My breath felt heavy. My hair and body were wet, as if washed.
It was not the first time I 'died' during one of our experiments. Matter of fact it was almost the tenth time it happened. The difference is that, all those were mistakes. The last memory of her face was a smile, one that was intended. That was intentional.
I tried getting up, but I fell on my back almost immediately.
"Where are my clothes?"
Steam clung to the ceiling like a second skin, beading and running in slow, thoughtful tears down the dark tiles. The world smelled of lye and cedar and the faint copper of blood, that wasn't left out long. I blinked grit and heat out of my eyes and forced everything into focus by habit, not comfort.
I looked around me, making sure to take into regard all my surrounding objects. The floor was river-stone worn slick and black as sealskin; the benches were low, and too narrow to brace on. A slipper rested near my hand, the top smooth and wet. A brass hook for lanterns hung low on the wall—reachable. A slatted drain ran like a narrow, waiting mouth along the center. Two exits: a crack to my left with light seeping through it, and a proper door ahead, oiled and silent, hinge-side weak. It was big and brown, outlining the bucket near it. I unconsciously scanned around for weapons, and a way of escape. An old habit of mine. The slipper could be a distraction. The hook could be a persuader. The bucket by the door would be heavy when full, heavier when swung.
"You're finally awake?"
The voice came from behind the steam, low and unbothered, carrying the calm of someone who had stood in hot rooms and hotter situations and learned to breathe anyway. I tried to push myself up and the room shifted sideways, lazy as a cat rolling. My limbs didn't answer in time. My muscles remembered the order; my nerves delivered it late.
I couldn't move.
Heat flushed my face—not just from the bath. Instinct reached for cover. I dragged my hands toward my body, too slow, as if moving through a dream where you run and your knees are mud. I moved my hands to cover myself, but I was too late. She was already near where I was, more silhouette than person, steam drawing her edges and erasing them again. A towel snapped softly in the wet air.
"Easy," she said, and the word was a palm pressed flat. She tossed the towel, not unkindly, and it landed across me with the blessed weight of modesty and warm cotton. Luck had nothing to do with it. She'd judged the throw, the arc, the moment I would lift my head. Practice lives in small mercies too.
"Oh," I said—or thought I did. My mouth was dry where everything else was wet. "The towel, the mist. This is a bath-house." I blinked at the polished stones, the coils of steam, the candles smoking gently.
"No wonder it was so slippery."
Memory slotted in like a stubborn gear: the sudden shout, the stumble, the world tipping, a body colliding with mine, my foot losing purchase on a floor meant to be clean, not kind. I closed my eyes and saw it again, the useless flailing, the elegant chaos of falling wrong. I swallowed the taste of pride cracked on tile.
"My skills are already rock bottom." The laugh that tried to come out stayed in, became a small ache in my chest. "I bet she is really disappointed in me." The word she wore its old weight—the one who taught me how to walk without leaving a sound, how to count breaths between beats, how not to mistake caution for fear. If she could see me now, draped like laundry and helpless as a pup—
The woman took a half-step closer, enough that I could see the bead of water at the end of her jawline, the small pearl of it trembling there before it fell. Her hair was braided tight, pinned at the nape. Her hands were empty. Her gaze was not, though I couldn't quite read what filled it. Assessment. Curiosity. A slice of professional concern.
"Do you need help getting up?"
The towel steamed where it touched my skin. Heat seeped into the bruised places and found the hurt with a seeking intelligence. I flexed my fingers once. The left answered. The right tingled like a limb waking. I tested my calves. Not broken, only humiliated. My head throbbed to a rhythm I didn't choose.
"I can move just fine." The lie tried to swagger and stumbled on the first step. I got an elbow under me, then a shoulder. The room slid and came back. "Now get out of my face."
She didn't. Not exactly. She took a considerate step to the side, giving me air and angle, not distance. "It's your face," she said mildly, as if we were discussing a misplaced comb and not my ruined dignity. "I'm only borrowing the space in front of it."
I got to sitting, towel clutched in one fist, the other braced behind me. The stone was warm under my palm. My skin hummed; my heartbeat had migrated to my bruises. I cataloged it all the way I always had: right shoulder, strained; left hip, blooming; ribs, tender but uncracked; confidence, perforated.
"You went down fast," she observed. Could've cracked your skull. Would've been a waste. I just finished scrubbing that corner."
"Glad to be considerate," I said, teeth barely showing. My vision quit shimmering long enough for her to come into focus: tall, shoulders set like a soldier's but easy, a linen wrap tied tight and practical, around her waist. An interlocking that gently seethed into the curves on her waist.
"She knows a thing or two about the human body. Even seemingly, totally irrelevant details like knotting were taken in to account. Such knowledge about the human body is hard to come by, and so difficult to learn. Such that one can only obtain said knowledge, by saving it, or taking it apart."
"Someone's interested in something else here. Does your attention wander like that with all w-"
"Shut up. I, uh, got sidetracked for a bit. But that's beside the point-I dont care about what you know or why you took advantage of me. Just give me my bag, and you wont deal with me much longer."
I tried to get up again, pushing with my hands this time. I thought I would make it as I saw the tile floor get farther and farther away. My arms creaked, my shoulders trembled, and before I knew it my back hit the ground again.
"Where's my bag?" I asked under my breath, full of embarrassment.
"In a bin," she said. "Under lock and my eye. You'll get it back if you stop trying to stand up like you're in a burning building." She looked down at my hands, both freckled with old scars, newer scrapes.
"Had a long dream, haven't you? Y'know, while you were asleep I had some time to myself. Took some glances, made some observations, drew some conclusions".
She bent her knees as she lowered down to my height, some droplets of water that trickled off her skin landing on mine.
"You got some secrets you're hiding from me. And from everyone else. There was another person, no, two more that know that side of you."