“I haven’t cut it in, like, three years.”

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to.”

“No!”

“Good. You’ll have to let me do it up all nice for you, one day.”

“This isn’t doing it up nice?”

“Nicer than this. Something really pretty.”

Pretty. Like you never got to be when Legacy shaved you and everyone else’s heads clean every two weeks while you were in Saskatchewan. After you left, you told yourself, you’d get to have long hair, like all the people you saw in the movies and TV shows they let you watch.

Yeah. Pretty.

That’d be nice.

---

The world’s a bitch and everyone is out for a piece of it. Most of the time, it’s just petty thieves and burglars, people that spook at the first sign of real trouble and either clear out before they even make it into the building or get cornered by five fully-armed private security guards and are smart enough not to put up a real fight.

Tonight, though. Tonight, they’re really giving you a run for your money.

They’re still no hard-hitters, but they’re quiet, and they’re fast, and keeping pace with the human you’re chasing down a corridor is becoming harder and harder. He’s about to turn a corner when Kaveh makes his convenient appearance, and the man goes barrelling into him; it staggers both of them, but the smaller human more so, and Kaveh recovers quickly enough to seize his weapon hand and throw him to the floor. With a sigh of relief, you begin to slow your pace.

“You got him?”

“Yep.” He’s no match for Kaveh’s strength, and he knows it; he doesn’t even put up a fight as his arms are twisted behind his back and his gun wrenched from his hand. Kaveh zip ties his wrists, and hauls him up onto his feet, only for an expression of panic to strike him when he looks your way. “Aubrey--!”

You hear it, then: the near-silent footsteps racing behind you. You turn slightly, see the flash of a blade in the corner of your eye, and with a perfectly-timed sidestep, the slash whips past your head. Crouch, spin, swing your leg out; your foot hooks behind your assailant’s knee, sweeping their leg out from under them. They swing the blade in a panic as they topple, and it strikes your arm, cutting your sleeve but barely inflicting a superficial scratch on the metal. Your right hand closes around their wrist, and when they move to grab you with their free hand, your left meets it, while your foot shoots out to deliver a solid kick to the jaw. Their head flies back and hits the marble tile with a dull crack.

“Enough!” You flip yourself atop them, using the momentum to push their arm back, but in their dazed state they try for one more flailing stab up at you.

You feel the blade catch in your hair.

You feel it yank straight back out as you slam their arm down to the floor.

Jamming your knee under their ribs knocks any remaining air out of them with a wheeze, just for good measure, and the knife finally clatters to the floor. They’re stunned from their skull’s sudden introduction to the marble, too–probably concussed, but they’ll live–so the risk in releasing one of their arms to grab a zip tie is one you’re willing to take. You manage to get their wrists bound and stand before you realise your hair is slipping out of its tie. Something feels… off. You reach back and pull the elastic out.

A cascade of loose copper falls at your feet.

The next few moments are a blur. You get about five seconds of lucidity, when you’re sure this is about to be revealed as some kind of prank, or a bad dream, or that you’re about to discover you have the ability to wind back time or something. When none of those things happen, the floodgates open.

You remember crying. And shouting. Not exactly what you shouted, bar all the profanity, but you threatened to kill them. You remember the crunch of metal knuckles against weak, inferior bone, over and over until Kaveh pried you off them, yelling something about incident reports, and you thought about how easy it would have been to throw him off and floor him and break his stupid fucking face, too, if you wanted to.

If you wanted to.

But you don’t. You don’t want to be like that. Not really.

So you let him pull you off your now-groaning victim and crumple to the floor. You let him finish binding them, and though you remain a trembling heap as he assesses their injuries, you don’t protest when he pulls you to your feet and walks all four of you outside, where the custody van awaits. While Kaveh recounts the events to another pair of guards, you find yourself delegated to another one of the vans, a packet of alcohol wipes thrust into your hands to clean the blood from them. Try as you might, they can't reach what's crept into the seams around the joints. It needs flushing out with water. It can wait until you get home.

It’s not like you have anything better to do than keep trying, though. You fold the wipes and try to poke them into the tiny gaps until a shadow falls over you. You scrunch the bloodied wipe into your fist.

“Hey.” The van dips slightly under Kaveh’s weight as he takes a seat beside you. “Are you okay?”

“Mm.”

“I thought you might be thirsty.” You glance down at the bottle of water he’s offering out to you. You are--your throat is raw from the crying and shouting--so you take it with only a moment’s hesitance.

“Thanks.”

“Aubrey, why’d you freak out on that guy?”

You knew the question was inevitable, but that doesn’t make the resulting conversation any easier. Your grip on the bottle tightens and the plastic crinkles under your fingers.

“They cut my hair off.” Doesn’t that sound so, so stupid when you say it out loud? You know it does, all the more so from the way Kaveh sighs.

“Okay. I get why you’d be upset, and I'm not asking this to be an asshole. Did you really need to attack them like that?” He thinks you’re crazy. Everyone will, if they find out what happened.

“They used to--” Wait, wait. Take a moment, reassess, revise the story. Try again. “I couldn't grow my hair when I was a kid. My parents never let me. I've been letting it grow for three years. And I get it, okay?” you interject, cutting off the lecture before he can start giving it. “I know I still shouldn’t have done it. I know I can’t just beat people up because I have problems, and I’m sorry, okay? So you don’t have to give me a whole speech, because I get it. But he cut half my fucking hair off.”

You toss the bottle behind you in favour of folding in on yourself, hands on your head, fingers twitching with the urge to rake them through your hair even though you know that feeling that missing swathe all over again will only make it worse. Great job, idiot. You have to file an incident report and probably get written up and the psych department is going to hassle you about it and--

--and Kaveh drapes one arm over your shoulders and pulls you into his side, and you remember that you don’t have to navigate this on your own.

“It’ll grow back, you know,” he murmurs, his thumb rubbing circles against your shoulder. “It’s okay. Nobody’s going to stop you from growing it out again.”

“I know. But they--they took that away from me. The choice. Just like they did at home.” You uncurl yourself and pull your fingers through the left side of your hair; where the right side falls down your back, much as you’re used to, the left now only passes a few inches below your shoulder. The odd angle of the cut, stark differences in length, and random, stray longer locks that escaped the blade make it woefully apparent how unintentional it was. You can’t keep it like this.

“I’m gonna have to cut the rest off. It’s a mess.” Kaveh gives you a look, like he wants to rebuke you, but you both know it’d be a poor lie. “You can do it when we get home. It’s whatever.”

“Uh, no.” He sounds offended, reeling back from you. “Do I look like a hairdresser? We'll go find a salon tomorrow.”

“What?”

“A salon.” He’s giving you a look. You’re supposed to know what this means.

“I don’t… I’ve never been to a salon.”

“...Okay, and? There's a first time for everything. You know what a salon is, right?”

“Yes.” You kind of know what a salon is. You've seen them (from the outside, anyway). People talk about them.

“So, go see someone who’s qualified, and they’ll fix you up. I promise you don’t want me to make it even worse.” Kaveh raises his hand to ruffle your hair, and you reflexively swat it away, instead gathering your hair back up into a ponytail. If you can kind of twist the left side under the right, maybe the length discrepancy won’t be so obvious. “You wanna get out of here now?”

“Do I still have to file that report?”

“...You know I have to say yes.” You groan. He sighs.

“Really?”

“Aubrey…”

“Please?”

“You did a number on that guy’s face. Maybe we can downplay it on the paperwork, but even if nobody asks us, they’re gonna start talking the second we walk them into HQ.”

“...Okay. Sure. Fine.” Fuck it. He’s right. May as well get this shit over and done with.

You follow Kaveh back to the custody van, where--after a brief conversation with the two guards currently watching it, and some convincing on his part--he manages to secure the keys. You clamber into the passenger side of the vehicle, while Kaveh occupies the driver’s side; as he starts the engine, you pull back the grate that separates the cabin from the cell in the rear. Several people are inside; disarmed, restrained, and too worn or injured to keep fighting back. Your unfortunate victim is slumped on a bench, hands cuffed. The sound of the grate moving draws their attention, and even in the low light, you can see the extensive bruising blooming across their battered face when they look up at you.

“Sorry about your face,” you offer, painfully aware of how hollow it rings. “Like, really. I didn’t mean to go completely ham on you like that.”

“...Fuck you.” They spit--ineffectively--a mouthful of saliva and coagulated blood in your direction. It lands on the floor just below the grate with the faintest tink.

“Leave them, Aubrey.” You glance back at Kaveh, and slowly pull the cover back across the grate. “They won’t listen.”

“I wanted to at least try.”

“...Look, don’t feel too bad. They weren’t aiming for your hair when they took a swing at you. They were aiming for your head. They were ready to kill you.”

“But I didn’t have to do that to them. You wouldn't have done that to them. That's why I have to fill out a fucking report."

"The report is to cover corporate’s ass, not theirs. We're corpsec, Aubrey. If someone gets a little more roughed up than intended? That's just the job. It happens. It's what we do. Criminals know that. Runners know that. They know what they're risking. You could have done them a lot worse, honestly--"

"Oh my God, do you hear yourself? What happened to not wanting me to beat the shit out of people just because I'm emotional?" Are you going insane, or did his tune really change that fast?

"You shouldn't! I'm just saying, you shouldn't be too upset about your choice of target this time. They knew they were breaking into a building with armed guards, and they were prepared to murder you, whether you used them as a punch bag or not. It's not like you assaulted a civilian. I don't want you to get hung up on it, that's all."

It's not like you assaulted a civilian. Would it make a difference to him, if you had? Of course it would, answers the voice in your head, and you wordlessly sink down into your seat, staring out at the rows of skyscrapers looming over you on the surrounding streets as you pass through downtown. Would it make a difference to him, knowing all those times you already have--and worse?

You're back in the corridor, with a metahuman pinned beneath you. Not the shadowrunner. A middle-aged man pleads with you in a language you can't understand. He brings his arms up to shield himself, but they do nothing to keep your knife from sinking into his neck.

On the second strike, it hits a teenager, barely an adult. On the third, an elderly woman, her thin fingers pulling feebly on your shirt. You feel Kaveh’s hands on your shoulders again, pulling you away as blood pools around her body. You spin around to look at him: the expression on his face is one of pure, abject disgust. Repulsion. Horror.

"Are you okay?"

The real Kaveh's voice snaps you out of the vision.

"What? Yeah."

"You were, like, hyperventilating."

"Oh. I was just, um--I feel kind of sick. That's all."

"Do I need to pull over?"

"No, no. I'm okay." He eyes you for a second, but then fixes his gaze back on the road.

"We're almost home. If you do decide you need to puke, try and hold it until we're there. Or at least do it out of the window so we can wipe it off. They'll deduct the cleaning fee out of your salary if they have to scrub the interior."

You love working for Zodiac.

Several other staff are ready and waiting for you as the van pulls into the compound to help you offload your arrestees. Someone makes a snide remark to the elf with the bloody face, and how nobody should have let you get your hands on them. You don't look at either of them. Kaveh is chewing her out for it, but you can barely hear.

She knows what you are. A weapon. A thing for killing and maiming. You were designed like this. It's etched into your bones and everyone can see it, no matter how hard you try to cover it up. It bleeds out on nights like this, when your frustration gets the better of you, when your hold slips and instinct wins out, and your body feels like it's moving on its own. No thought. Only violence.

Always violence. You can't escape it.

The intake process takes forever. It’s always tedious, but tonight, it’s even worse. You stand in the back as they fill out paperwork, take photographs, and march each runner off to a holding cell, one by one. You can hear the elf you punched up telling the clerks exactly what they think of you, and they sneer at you through bruised lips when they’re finally led away to a holding cell.

“So, how did all of that happen?”

You whip back around, and--you’re at the desk, now, the clerk looking up at you with one thin eyebrow raised and an expectant look on her face.

“It was an accident,” is what tumbles out of your mouth, and the clerk just laughs.

“Right. Well, since we all heard that, I guess you’re going to want to file a report.”

“...Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll call someone to do a full debrief, but you’ll need to fill out a form, first. Here.” The clerk picks up a slim tablet and hands it to you over the desk. “If you have any witnesses you’d like to corroborate, there’s a section for them to fill out at the bottom.”

You look to Kaveh, and he gestures for you to follow him to the benches across the room.

The first part of the form is easy enough. Name. Employee number. Date of birth. Start and end time of shift. Location of shift. Time of incident. Nature of incident.

“Brief summary of incident.” You swallow thickly. “Where do they want me to start?”

“Go from when he attacked you.”

Truth be told, you don’t entirely remember what happened beyond that point, aside from the obvious. You can’t say that, though--not in your current state, not unless you want Kaveh to think you’re really unhinged. So they cut your hair off, and on realising, you attacked them with your bare fists until Kaveh was able to pull you off him. Done.

Were any weapons involved? Did the victim require on-site medical attention? Was the victim unresponsive at any point? Did you have reason to believe the victim was under the influence of any drug(s)?

“Are you--” You start to read the next line aloud, but what meets your eyes makes you falter. “--Are you currently receiving treatment for any mental health conditions.”

“They’ll know, anyway, from your records. Don’t worry too much about it.”

“They’re gonna be on my ass for this.”

“Maybe, but what are they gonna do if you don’t put it down?” Okay, fair point. “It’s okay. I promise, this whole deal isn’t as bad as it seems. It’s just a formality.”

So you tick the stupid fucking box. An array of extra fields springs up beneath it, asking for your diagnoses, and your forms of treatment, and whether you’re seeing external mental health services, and you scowl at the screen the whole time as you fill them out, like you can spite the fucking things back into oblivion. Unfortunately, they stubbornly remain, and the best you can do is scroll them out of sight once you’re done.

Have you previously filed reports of assault against arrestees? Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a violent crime? Further comments?

“I’m done.” You thrust the tablet into Kaveh’s hands. “You have to fill out the witness section.”

You can’t bring yourself to watch as he taps away at the screen in silence. After a few minutes, he hands it back to you, and you return it to the clerk at the desk just as a sharp-dressed, horned woman walks out from a door in the back with a tablet of her own tucked neatly under her arm.

“Ah! Bia.” The clerk looks up at her, then gestures at you. “This is Aubrey. She needs to make a statement for an incident report. Let me just check her form, and I’ll send it over to you.”

“Right.” Bia looks from the clerk’s screen to you, and something about her eyes brings a lump to your throat. “Do you have any witnesses you’d like to bring in to corroborate?”

“Yeah. Um, Kaveh--”

“I saw what happened,” he says coolly. “I can attest.”

“Great. If you’d like to follow me.”

She lets you behind the desk, and leads you down a corridor, past several more doors. It’s all so cold, so clinical. The only thing missing is the chemical smell. It’s enough to have your heart hammering by the time she stops at a vacant room and gestures for you to enter ahead of her. There’s a barren desk inside, some chairs, a water cooler, a plant you immediately clock as fake, and little else in the way of making it feel welcoming.

“Take a seat.” You do, and she locks the door before taking up the seat opposite you at the desk. “Let me just pull some things up… you look like you’ve had a long night.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, what was your full name?”

“Aubrey Still.”

“Employee number?”

“506988.”

“There you are. And you?” she asks, glancing at Kaveh.

“Kaveh Kesh. 502215.”

“Right. This will be recorded, obviously, and transcribed later to go onto your employee record. So…” She taps at her tablet a few times, and you spot the reflection of the form you just filled out in her glasses. “Tell me what happened.”

Don’t think too much about it. Just talk.

“They came at me from behind with a knife. They didn’t hit me, and I knocked them down, but then I--I noticed that they’d cut half my hair off.”

“And that was the provocation?”

“Yes.” She’s giving you a look, and you can’t figure out what it means.

“And then?”

“I started punching them in the face. They’ll have the photos of their injuries on record. I stopped attacking them when Kaveh pulled me away.”

“Is this accurate?” Bia asks, glancing across to Kaveh.

“Yes,” he affirms, in a voice that makes it obvious he’s far less stressed about this than you are. He’s done this before. “She didn’t assault them until after they’d cut her hair, and she stopped once I separated her from them.”

“That’s quite the response to being given an impromptu haircut. I bet it took you a long time to grow that out, though, didn’t it?” She points at you with her pen, and something about her tone of voice makes you bristle. “That's all there was to it?"

"Yes."

"You're not under the influence of any illicit substances?"

"No. You can test me, if you have to."

"She's barely left my sight all night," Kaveh slips in preemptively. "I haven't seen her take anything suspicious, and she hasn't acted in any way that seems out of the ordinary."

"You have no internal augmentations that could release drugs discreetly?"

"No." You hope not. It’d be news to you if you did.

"Right." She's tapping on that tablet, and you try not to think about what kind of notes she's taking. "Are you sure nothing happened before this that could have resulted in their injury? You said they came at you with a knife."

"They did." Come on. You remember how to do this. Detach yourself. "They  took a swing at me from behind. I had to incapacitate them."

"How did you do that?"

"I ducked the knife and swept their legs. Once I had control of their arms, I kicked them in the jaw. It would've hurt them bad enough to distract them, maybe stunned them when their head hit the floor. They might be concussed."

"It sounds like you hit them hard. That would have left a mark."

"It would."

"So when did they cut your hair, exactly?"

"When we were on the floor."

"So they struggled?"

"...Yes. They tried to stab me. They missed my head and caught my hair."

"They were still a threat, then."

"If they went unrestrained, yes."

"Did you restrain them?" You nod. "Before or after you noticed the hair?"

"I…"

This question interrupts the clean trail of memories you've been sailing along this whole time, forcing you to dig deeper into your conscious mind. The dull tapping of your fingers against the chair frame is the only sound in the room.

Because, see, that's the problem.

"...I don't remember."

"Kaveh?" Bia looks to him, as do you, but he only shrugs.

"I couldn't say. I was too far away to tell."

"So, would you say, then," Bia says, her calculating gaze swinging back to you, "that if they had been unrestrained at the time, you would have had to negate the threat that they posed?"

"...Yes." You don't like where this is going.

"Would punches to the face have done that?"

"...I mean, yes. There are other ways I could have done it, but the pain and impact would have stunned them further."

"It sounds to me like you were defending yourself. Or, you foresaw further problems, and took steps to avoid them." You wish you could remember when you'd got that zip tie on them. You wish. You wish.

But there's an ugly little part of you that's glad that you don't.

"You… could say that." You wanted out of here, didn't you? You wanted to leave and go home and be able to forget this ever happened. Yes. So let her jump to her conclusions. If you don't make trouble for them, they won't make trouble for you.

"Kaveh." Bia's attention slips back to him, and so does yours, from the corner of your eye. Fingers on the chair frame. The rattling fills the whole room. "Do you think she took effective measures to eliminate a threat?"

Effective. Not reasonable. Effective. You want him to vilify you. You want him to defend you. You want him to say whatever helps you leave this place sooner.

"I would definitely call it effective." Your stomach lurches but you don't know that the other answer would have felt any better. "There was no way they were going to lay a finger on her after she punched them."

"So, to summarise." Bia leans back in her chair. "Aubrey, you were attacked, and in the process of defending yourself, eliminating a threat and making an arrest, the subject was injured out of necessity during said actions. Is that accurate?"

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"Yes."

"Kaveh, as her partner on duty, do you agree that this is an accurate description of the events?"

"Yes."

"Then I think that much is settled. Now, Aubrey--I do have to file this under your employee health record.” You know what that means. You can only manage a stoic nod as she goes back to flipping through things on her tablet.

“Okay.” Don’t argue. You're so close to this being done.

“If the victim opts to press charges, we’re required to submit this interview, the incident form, and any relevant information from employee records to the enforcing law agency. Do you consent to having your records shared?”

“...Yes.” It’s not a choice, is it?

“Great. Sign here, please.” Bia spins her tablet around and hands you the pen, watching as you scrawl a messy signature in a box on the screen. “You too, Kaveh.” You hand him the pen, he signs in a second box, and Bia takes the tablet back. “Any further comments?”

“No," you answer in unison.

“Well, then, I think we’re done here. End recording.” She shuts the tablet off and stands abruptly, holding a hand out towards the door. “You’re free to leave. We’ll contact you if we need anything else from either of you.”

“...Okay. Thank you.” You hesitate to stand, almost, half-expecting her to slam the tablet back on the table and bark at you to sit back down. But she doesn’t. You exit the room without incident and your feet carry you unthinkingly out into the lobby. Kaveh asks if you want to go home, and you nod. You’re so, so done with this night. You’re ready for it to be over.

Through a dissociative haze, you’re vaguely aware of being led to the locker rooms, changing back into your day clothes. The presence of other people there barely registers. The harsh fluorescent white of the interior lighting gives way to the relative dark of the street-lit parking lot. The slamming shut of the car doors is what brings you back to full awareness with a jolt.

“Are you okay?”

You look across at Kaveh and nod.

“Yeah.” It hits you suddenly how dry your mouth is; you unzip your bag and root around inside, only to find your water bottle empty when you shake it. “Fuck.”

“Do you want a drink? I can go back and refill it, or--”

“No, no. It’s fine. I can wait.” You drop the bottle back in the bag and shove it into the footwell. “I just--am I gonna get pulled up on this?”

“...Honestly? Probably not. I’ve seen corpsec fuck people up way, way worse over much less. Besides, shadowrunners don’t tend to be fans of the judicial system. It’s not like they’ll sue. They just wanted to scare you.”

“Good for them. They got me. My psych is gonna have something to say about it. They’re gonna put me on fucking desk duty again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No. Really, Aubrey, I’ve seen people do some reprehensible shit before HQ started paying attention. This isn’t like you. I know you wouldn’t normally do something like this.”

“What if it happens again?”

“It’s not like they can cut off your hair again. I don’t know, maybe if something else triggers you–but until that happens, this is a one-off incident. Your job performance has been flawless until this point.”

“But I got shot--”

“Not your fault.”

“I freaked out at the hospital--”

“And you took measures to fix that. You are not the first person to get aggressive with medical staff.”

“What about all of my medical shit?”

“Aubrey, if they had a problem with you, you’d know by now. Trust me.” Kaveh lays a hand on your shoulder, and despite the initial urge to shrug it off, you let it sit there. “Look. I think you need to get some sleep. It’s been a rough night.”

“...Yeah. Okay.” He’s right, and you’re out of arguments, so you relent and sink back into your seat as he starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

With dawn on the horizon, the city around you is bathed in a pale blue light. The shadowed figures of metahumans dip in and out of the glare of street lights, backed by the neon glow of those few stores that have remained open all night. It all blurs together as the car picks up speed. After all the noise of the last few hours, the incomprehensible nothing of the window view and relative silence within the car bring welcome respite.

The full weight of it all doesn’t slip from your shoulders until you’re safely back inside the apartment. Here, behind closed doors and hidden from the rest of the world, the last of your resolve collapses. The door has barely clicked shut before you fall into Kaveh’s side and the tears come spilling out.

“Hey. Hey. It’s okay.” He turns into you and wraps both arms tight around you, pulling you against his chest. “You’re good. You’re gonna be fine. I know it. Don't worry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. Being difficult.”

“You don’t need to apologise.” You can feel his fingers slip under your hair to rub gently at your almost-bare scalp at the back of your head. “Do you need anything?”

“I--yeah. A drink. And I’m starving.”

“Go get changed. I’ll get it.” He relinquishes his hold and gently pries you off him, nudging you towards your bedroom. Swapping your clothes for pyjamas brings an extra layer of relief, and without even Kaveh here to see you, you take a moment to bury your face in a pillow and scream. Silently, but the energy is there.

Nobody cares. Nobody cares that you just beat someone senseless, unless it’s going to look bad for the company. Or they decide you’re too much of a loose cannon--and no longer financially viable.

Just like before.

Is this just it? Is this a cycle your life is doomed to?

Your head hurts. You remember Kaveh, and the drink, and how hungry you are, despite a lingering sense of nausea. You're not thinking straight. Maybe the world won't seem so bleak once you've eaten and slept.

Despite how comfortable your bed is, and how badly your body wants to stay put, you drag yourself from the mattress and out to the kitchen. Kaveh is fixing himself what smells like oatmeal. A plastic cup sits waiting for you on the counter.

"Thanks," you preempt, before he can point it out, swiping it up and taking several long gulps. The fatigue is really starting to set in, and you can’t help but wince slightly at the foreboding ache in your hips that comes in response to hopping onto one of the bar stool chairs. Cool. Exactly what you need.

Kaveh joins you after a few minutes, and you sit together in silence while he eats. You can’t tell if it’s tense or peaceful. Not that it matters. You’re out of energy to be angry, or upset. The only person left to take it out on is Kaveh, and he doesn’t deserve that. With thirst and hunger both taken care of in one hit, sleep is rapidly superseding them in priority.

“Don’t fall asleep at the table.”

“I’m not.” You were. You blink yourself awake and force yourself up from the position you’d adopted, melted across the countertop, but keeping your eyes open is a Herculean effort. You do keep them open long enough to see Kaveh’s incredulous look. “Okay, okay, I’m going to bed.”

“Hey.” He opens his arm out as you slide off the chair, and you let him pull you into a hug. Kaveh’s hugs are magic. They make it hard to feel like there’s anything wrong with the world. “We’ll get everything sorted out tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah.”

Bed hasn’t felt so comfortable in a long time.

Despite the exhaustion, it takes some time to fully settle once you’ve relocated. Your eyes follow the faint cracks in the plaster on the ceiling, hoping one of the trails will finally lead you to sleep. A sense of guilt has settled in your stomach, and threaded its way up to your mind.

You got off almost scot-free tonight. You shouldn’t have. But they spun the story in your favour, made it perfectly viable that they earnt that violence. And you sat there and let them.

Because at the end of the day, you’re still just looking to protect yourself, aren’t you?

Nothing matters but self-preservation, at any cost.

You don’t know what will happen to that elf, but tomorrow you will wake up and your life will carry on unimpeded.

Maybe next time you’ll have the spine to stick to your morals.

Because there will be a next time.

This is the path you walk.

---

Kaveh was right. You really did need some sleep.

You roll out of bed at noon, and you can already tell it’s going to be a bad pain day, but it’s nothing a couple of extra doses of painkillers won’t fix--you forgot to take your meds at all last night, you realise, as you swipe your pill case from the nightstand and slip out to the kitchen. Three priorities: Meds. Coffee. Food.

Kaveh’s already been up and made coffee, so you help yourself to some from the pot still sitting under the filter. He walks in on you at the counter, chasing down a handful of pills with a swig from your mug.

“Hey. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. Better,” you clarify. Not quite fine, but you’ll get there. You reach for the open box of meal bars on the countertop and rip one open; you can at least stomach the idea of solid food, now.

“Good.” Kaveh takes up the seat across from you and watches as you scarf down half the bar in a matter of seconds. God, you’re hungry. “You wanna go get your hair fixed today?”

Right. That.

“Yeah. Do you know where we’re going?”

“There’s a couple of salons in the mall. We can start there, see if they’ll take a walk-in.” This is going to suck. This is going to suck so much. But when you’re in the bathroom a half hour later, pulling a brush through your hair and inspecting the damage properly for the first time in a mirror, you know it’s necessary. It’s a mess.

You still know you went overboard, but maybe that guy did deserve to get socked in the face once.

And, yeah, he was prepared to kill you.

What you did is not the end of the world.

Is that fucked up? You think it might be, as you pull your hair through elastic--accepting it like that, like everyone wants you to. The left side of your bangs slip free from the hair tie and fall against your cheek. What choice do you have, though? You can either move on, or you can let it eat at you, like piling up enough self-inflicted shame will eventually lead to some cosmic atonement for something that almost nobody you ever meet will ever know about.

You know there’s only one option.

A few inches lower and that knife would have pierced your skull like a melon.

Maybe there’s no definitive answer to this. You’re eating your own metaphorical tail. You loop the hair tie around your ponytail one more time and flick the bathroom light off as you exit.

---

Okay, you were feeling nervous, but you assumed it was baseless anxiety. You didn’t know haircuts were actually this complicated.

The chubby, blue-haired orc at the reception desk happily informed you that they have a cancellation slot at two, if you’d like to hang around, so you made yourself comfortable on the couches in the waiting area and started flipping through a random selection of the magazines scattered around the place.

There’s a lot of hairstyles in the world, huh.

“You know what you want them to do with it?” Kaveh asks, glancing over your shoulder at the magazine you’re currently picking through.

“I… don’t know.” When you told Kaveh to cut it, you assumed he’d just… chop it off with scissors, and that’d be that. You didn’t think about whatever all of this is.

“You’ve never even thought about it before? Like, you didn’t think about stopping growing it at any point?”

“Not really.” You gazed longingly at all those people on the screens for years, but it was hard to picture yourself looking like any of them–and then you became so obsessed with growing it out that you put it out of your mind entirely.

In some sense, you’re feeling even worse about your outburst the previous night. Because sitting here, right now, seeing this infinite array of options, you're actually kind of excited about this.

Sure, your choices are limited somewhat--your perma-undershave will never grow back in thanks to whatever the hell Legacy did to you as a kid--but you've got enough hair left to entertain plenty of these ideas. That's the thing. You get to pick.

You could lean into the undercut look, flip the whole lot over to one side. The models pull it off, including the ones with obvious headware, but you're not sure you're ready to bare another big, ugly C&C brand to the world full-time just yet. It's bad enough having to see them on your hands and arms every day. The curls that greet you across the next several pages are nice, but with your dead-straight hair, they seem like a pain to keep styling.

(There's an ad wedged in between two model shots advertising a long-term curling product, and just looking at the box fills your nose with an unpleasantly familiar yet unplaceable chemical smell that has you hurriedly flipping to the next page.)

You can't really pull off the thick, voluminous layers some of these models are sporting, either. There's another ad, this one for extensions, and Kaveh's description of how they attach makes your skin crawl, so you can write off that possibility.

You keep coming back to one you saw in the first magazine.

“Look at this one.” You pick the booklet back up and flip to the page to show it to Kaveh. It’s simple. It’s sharp. It covers your implants. It does mean losing even more hair, but…

“It’s nice.” Kaveh nods his approval. “It’d suit you.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, if you’re ready to take the plunge.”

You think you might be. You carry on browsing through the magazines anyway, since you have nothing better to do while you wait for the hairdresser, but nothing really calls to you like that glossy, straight-cut bob.

“Aubrey?”

You look up. A dark-haired woman is watching you expectantly, and you jump to your feet, magazine clutched tight in your hand; she smiles and waves you over.

“Come on this way. Take a seat,” she says, gesturing at the unoccupied chair among the row of other customers. “So, what are we doing for you today? Just a dry cut?”

“Yeah. I. Um. I need to fix this.” You place the magazine on the little shelf in front of the mirror and pull your hair free from the ponytail. In the reflection in front of you, you can see the hairdresser’s eyes widen as the mishap becomes apparent.

“Oh, no. What happened?”

“It’s a long story. It was an accident.”

“...Well, I’m sure we can find a way to make it work. Your hair’s lovely.” She’s running her fingers through your hair, inspecting the shaved-down sides before combing out the longer top with her fingers. “Did you find a style you like?”

“Yeah.” Grab the magazine, flip back to the page. “Something like this.”

“You sure you wanna cut the whole lot off? We could just trim down the left side and blend it through. It’d work with the undershave you’ve got going on already…”

“No. I’m sure.”

“Alright! It’s been a long time since I’ve cut hair this long. How long did it take you to grow it out?”

“Like… three years?”

“Wow. Your hair grows fast.” Having covered your shoulders with an apron plucked from a hook on the wall, and brushed all your hair out straight, she takes the scissors from the pouch on her hip in one hand, and the longest section of your hair in the other, between her fingers. “Okay, big moment. Ready?”

“...Yeah.” Your heart jumps at the extended snip of scissors slicing through several inches of hair, and you watch in the mirror as it all falls away behind the chair.

It’s done. No turning back now.

“Your hair’s actually ideal for this,” she comments, as she works on evening everything out and tidying up the little wisps that escaped both the knife and her initial chop with the scissors, “because it’s practically all the same length already,” and according to her, the undershave keeps it from being too thick. (When she asks about that, you play it off as a style choice.)

You get the same sensation in your chest when she sweeps your bangs in front of your face, obscuring your vision momentarily until one clean cut trims it down to a fringe straight across your forehead. She’s careful and precise about it in a way you realise no home haircut would ever be, and you silently thank Kaveh for emphatically turning down your request.

By the time she’s finished, you almost don’t recognise the person in the mirror.

“There we go!” She smooths down the bangs that now frame your face perfectly one final time before whipping away the apron, sending all of your lost hair flying to the floor. “How does that feel?”

How does it feel. You lean forwards in the chair, tilting your head this way and that to examine your reflection.

It feels right.

“It’s--It’s great. It’s perfect.” You haven’t smiled like this in weeks. You can’t stop running your fingers through it, mesmerised by the way it falls back against your jaw as it slips through them.

“It’s a shame you had to cut so much off, but I think this looks great on you. It should still be long enough for you to tie it back, too.” She smiles as you stand from the chair. It’s kind of jarring to see exactly how much hair you’ve had off--it’d have been kind of cute to keep the longest part as a memoir, maybe, but it’s too late now, with it all piled on the floor, and with a cleaner drone scuttling around vacuuming everything up.

You half-stumble back out into the reception area as she waves you off, where Kaveh is still waiting. He looks up from his comm at the sound of your footsteps, and a beaming smile spreads across his face.

“Wow!”

“Right?” you laugh. “It feels amazing.”

“It was a good pick. It really suits you.”

“Thanks. Let me pay real quick, and then I’m good to leave.”

You can’t stop glancing at your reflection in every shop window you pass on your way back through the mall. You look cool. You feel cool. Feeling cool isn’t something you’ve done a lot of in your life.

“You know, I haven't even told Iloya what happened last night," Kaveh says. "They're gonna lose their mind over this."

"Oh my God, they are. I have to send them a picture."

"You're not gonna wait until you see them in person?"

"No, no, I need to see that reaction right now. Or, y'know, when we get back to the car. I want to get coffee first."

Because, c’mon, you can’t just go home without showing off in public a little bit first.

Back in the safety of Kaveh’s car, you pop your drone out and let it zip this way and that until you hit the perfect angle for a photo–you don’t normally like taking photos with your empty eye socket, but you can make an exception for Iloya. You snap the picture and hit send. No caption. No explanation. You need the raw reaction from this, and you get it 30 seconds later in a string of emojis.

❗❗❓❓😱😱😱💀💀💀

You’re laughing so hard when you answer the call that immediately follows, you almost spill coffee down yourself.

“What did you do?! You told me last week you weren’t going to get it cut!”

“I wasn’t! Okay, so, like–last night, at work, I was grappling with someone, and they caught a knife in my hair–”

“Okay, so it’s not you I have to kill.”

“--but they only got half of it, and it was all fucked up, so I had to go and get a proper haircut.”

“Doesn’t she look great?” Kaveh, who’s been outside flicking through his comm, sticks his head in through the driver side door.

“You do! You look fantastic.” Your heart swells a little bit at that. “It’s just weird seeing it so short.”

“You’ll get used to it. I don’t think I’m growing it out again. It feels… I don’t know. Right.” Is it silly? That suddenly so much of your identity feels like it hinges on a haircut? Maybe. Don’t think too hard about it. Ride this high.

“As long as you like it. I’ll just have to find a new way to do it up for you.”

“Oh, shit, you can’t braid it back like that anymore–”

“There’s plenty we can still do with it! I’ll show you.” You did want to see it styled all nice, just once, like they told you they'd do. Letting Iloya gently work with your hair feels familial and warm. You’re glad you won’t have to sacrifice that.

Kaveh climbs into the driver’s seat and pulls the door shut. “Okay, I think we’re headed home, so–” You knock back the rest of your coffee and shove the cup into a cup holder, and your drone zips back into place. “I’ll see you at work, probably.”

“Did they freak out?” Kaveh asks as the car purrs to life.

“Oh, they freaked out. But they liked it.”

“It’s just–”

“Weird?”

“Yeah, seeing you without it all.” You smile, and tell him exactly what you told Iloya.

“You’ll get used to it.”