When the Wind Rises - Kidman

Kidman was on the roof again. She was sure she wasn't supposed to be up there but she doubted anyone really cared. If they did, she could just claim it was part of her training. She was unable to lie outright, but so long as a piece of truth remained in the statement it was fair game and everyone was expected to know their way around a fire escape. Training ran smoothly now. The girl had evened out, a steady B, B+ level. There were some places she was oddly efficient, such as picking locks and other arts of precision, but she was never able to gain any ground where physical strength was needed. She was capable of great bursts of speed or strength, but she lost it after a handful of seconds, and once gone, her body was next to useless. The girl found it worrisome. 'What's the point of being able to crack locks if I can't do the legwork to get to them? I'm amazed I can even get up here. And if they chase me... No, I just need more practice. My muscles have to grow eventually, yes?' The problem had never come up when she first joined. Then again, she hadn't gotten this far when she first joined. Somehow she had sensed that being a full on agent wasn't the best way for her to go and had veered off towards maintenance. She soon found she preferred being just be a cog in the machine. 'Now I'm not sure what you want with me." She said to the clouds above. "If you even remember me." It had been so long since that damp, chilly night. Carmen came and went, came and went, all around the world. Time passed, and the girl was still here. True, Vic still popped up here and there, but by now Kidman assumed this was something he did for everyone and had always done. It meant nothing. "Maybe you just wanted to scare me." But what about the tower? Nothing had come of it. Had it been a fake secret to test her? Carmen had never made it clear that this was a secret, though. That had been the girl's assumption. "Maybe she was just tired." 'No...that's not it...' Kidman nodded in agreement with her inner voice. She and her soul fought much less now, having grown closer, almost one for the common goal that led her up here now. Something was rising in the wind again. 'Do you feel it? Is it our restlessness?' It was impossible to say. 'We did what we could to prepare,' it answered back. The girl nodded again. She had put her helicopter training on hold to take up low level electronics and as much medical science as she could take in. It had been a difficult choice to make, but while being a pilot was what she wanted to be, it was not what she was needed to be, regardless of what Carmen's ultimate intent for her was. It was the way of things. However, with her growing awareness of herself came the growing need for confirmation that the one she loved was indeed the one she loved. She needed to see Carmen's face one more time. "I came to you with a vision and a feeling. The vision, though probably still accurate to a degree, is a distraction; one you designed yourself. The feeling ran the other way. I felt a good heart and a complicated soul thriving yet wearing under the strain of such weight. I felt..." Kidman closed her eyes and tried to recall the woman's face. It had been dim and she had been tired and scared. The memory was scratched and faded, but she could still just make out her face, the face beneath. "When you spoke of that tower...I felt the room tilt sideways around you. You spoke as if you were as certain as always...but you weren't. I didn't think about it until now, perhaps...unable to conceive of it until now, that you could feel uncertain. What a stupid thing to think." A gust of wind tried to take her gray cap from her head for the third time, but by now the girl had pinned it to her collar. The lights from the airfield twinkled in the growing dusk and voices of comrades floated up about her. It felt like home, home as it once was. "You made this, but you sleep and bleed and brush your teeth like everyone else. You're human. I still maintain my admiration for what I already know of you and you will always have my gratitude, but before I can go any further...I need to see you, really see you...one more time."