Illusory

"What was your problem back there?" I asked, breaking a silence that had lasted for nearly ten minutes. Van walked ahead of me, careful to create another foot of space between us every time I tried to walk alongside him. He wouldn't even look at me.

"Problem?" he asked in return, his tone nonchalant, and I was surprised that he'd replied at all. "I didn't have a problem. He was the one who seemed to have a problem."

"How did he have a problem?" I kicked a rock the size of my foot, and it only rolled a few inches forward. "He seemed to be acting perfectly fine to me. You were the one who was giving everyone dirty looks and throwing around commands."

"Did you not see it?" he snapped, rounding on me so quickly that I barely had time to stop myself from bumping into him. He glared down at me, something deep in his eyes hissing, "You're stupid, aren't you, you silly little girl?"

"What was there to see?" I asked, annoyed. "He didn't do anything. He was a little bit cold toward you, but it wasn't like he was being a total dick, unlike someone else in this argument."

"Do you really just let men talk to you that way? Look at you that way? Does it not register as wrong to you?" he nearly shouted, throwing his hand over my shoulder in a violent gesture back toward that little cabin-like building.

My jaw dropped. "That's what this is about? The fact that he might have been hitting on me?"

"Might have been?" he scoffed. "Might have been? He was all over you!"

I rolled my eyes. He was like an overreacting parent, and I didn't appreciate it, especially since he'd never seemed to care this much before. "If you think that was a guy being 'all over me,' you need to get out more. He didn't touch me, he didn't look at me inappropriately, and he really didn't even say anything all that bad. He flattered me once, and that was the end of it."

Van spun and resumed his huffy trek down the road. "I didn't like the way he was looking at you," he grumbled, but he didn't go on.

I sighed. "Why do you even care? I'm not your girlfriend, I'm not your daughter, I'm not your sister; we have no real relationship. Definitely nothing that would warrant this kind of protectiveness. I'm just your assistant."

"I suppose you're right," he muttered, poking a finger through one of the holes in his jacket front. "I have no reason to care about your well-being."

I nodded once, and after that, we continued on in silence. He had nothing else to say, it seemed, and I didn't have the courage to tell him how much that response had hurt me.

-?-

"Hey, Mom, it's me again," I said, spinning in slow circles in the middle of the airport with the phone pressed to my ear. I was taking in all of the people, most of them passing by me and some stopping to watch me with their heads cocked. They were all bundled up in coats, hats, gloves, the whole deal, and I wondered why I hadn't thought to bring any of that stuff. It was freaking cold up here. "I lived the first time, but the plane did crash, just like I said it would."

I stopped spinning when a child pointed at me, giggling, and asked, "What is that lady doing?" and her mother responded, a glare trained on me for reasons I couldn't fathom, "Being stupid. Keep walking." They stormed off, and I stared after them, making faces at the child who strained to watch me over her shoulder.

"So, yeah, I told you so," I said, finally returning to my role as an adult...sort of. "But there's nothing to worry about. We're all right, and so are most of the other people that were on the plane. Compared to what could've happened, the broken bones and scratches weren't really that big of a deal. We're about to go up again, though, so I just thought I would call to tell you that I love you again, just in case." I laughed suddenly, grinning to myself. "Hey, look. I don't think I'm afraid of planes anymore. I haven't stammered or freaked out or anything! Bye, Mom. I love you."

"You're even cute when you're excited," Van said from behind me as I flipped my cell phone shut. "You're good at this."

I turned to face him, my grin doubling in size and cheer. He'd recovered from his earlier anger quickly, and the pleasant demeanor he'd adopted in its place was quite lovely, in my opinion. As long as I pretended he hadn't outright said that he didn't care about me, we were golden. "I'm still not nearly as cute as you," I retorted, "and I probably never will be." Before he could argue, I asked, "Did you get the tickets and everything?"

"Yeah," he said, smiling one of his darling lopsided smiles. "I kept getting weird looks because of my suit and bandages," — he still hadn't changed his clothes — "but they gave me the tickets, anyway. Conveniently, our plane is being boarded now. Shall we go?"

"Sure," I said, and he put his arm around my shoulders and began guiding me toward our gate. My smile faltered as I watched him out of the corner of my eye. If he cared about me so little, what the hell was this all about?

I'd never understand him.

-?-

"Are you going to need me to put you to sleep this time?" Van asked after we'd been seated for a moment, still smiling that lopsided smile down at me.

"Nah," I answered. By now, my forced grin had started to hurt my face, so I let it turn into a small smile. "I think I'll be all right this time. I mean, we already crashed once, and you took care of everything."

"There's no guarantee that I'd be able to do that again," he pointed out, his smile fading into seriousness — becoming the Van I knew.

"There's also no guarantee that we're going to get attacked again," I countered, keeping my smile in place. "It seemed like you hurt that guy pretty badly when you fought him, so I doubt he'll be attacking us again so soon. He's probably still recovering."

"I suppose so," he agreed with a short nod, his eyes wandering around the plane. I allowed mine to do the same, taking in the sights of the people who were riding with us in first class.

None of the faces were familiar from the first plane — not that I really remembered many of those. I only remembered the woman who had shoved me into a wall and the man who had fallen on top of me, and even those faces were blurry. This flight consisted mostly of quiet, older businessman and businesswomen, deeply focused on their documents or their smart phones or their PDAs, and a few snobby-looking couples, childless and sneering at everyone around them. Van and I seemed to be the only normal people on the plane, which I took as another example of irony, considering we were probably the only ones who used something as abnormal as magic. It was kind of awesome, really, in a silly sort of way.

"Ember," Van said suddenly, in such a soft, hesitant voice that I wasn't sure it was even him for a moment, but when I looked back, his lips were moving, "when we get back, would you perhaps be interested in learning a bit of magic?"

His careful tone may have been shocking, but this…I could only stare at him for a moment. "Ah, um...Sure, I guess," I finally answered, offering him a hesitant smile. I'd wanted nothing more than to learn real magic, but…why now? "But what brought about this change of heart? I thought you didn't trust me with magic," I said teasingly.

He turned from me, his eyes focused on the clouds passing by the window. "Well, I already told you that I might give you a chance since you seem so eager to help people," he said, having regained his confident, casual tone, and he said it in such a way that I assumed that that was the end of it — or, rather, that he wanted that to be the end of it.

"Is that it?" I asked, eyebrows raised knowingly. "You're going to teach your clumsy, spastic sidekick magic, and it's just because she wants to be a superhero?"

"Well, no," he said slowly, and his hesitancy returned.

"Then what else is there?" I asked, leaning around him to look at his side-turned face, so very focused on that damned window. "There has to be more to it."

He was silent for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his jaw as he stared unwaveringly out the window. Finally, he turned to me, his expression so serious that I physically drew back in surprise. "I almost died earlier," he whispered, and the gravity of the situation finally began to set it, the memory of his battered, bloody body covered in dirt and fresh out of the forest flitting through my mind, "in that fight with that other magician. I managed to injure him through sheer luck; I managed to block his attacks through sheer luck; I only managed to get out alive through…through sheer luck." He paused to swallow, hard, carefully averting his gaze in shame. "If I have to fight him again, I won't make it out, and a few remarks he made before his departure led me to believe that we're facing more than him, more than just one man." He let his eyes meet mine once more, a pain to them that I didn't like seeing there, a pain that just didn't belong. "I can't take them all on alone, Ember. I could barely handle the one."

"And how am I supposed to help with that?" I asked, frowning. "I'm no magician. I can perform easy spells, little appearance-altering charms, but I can't cast anything that could hurt someone. I don't have the power for it. I don't have the sense. I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Not yet," he amended. "With a little bit of training, you can be just as good as I am. Better, even."

"Better?" I asked, already shaking my head, my eyes wide. "No, never better."

"Do you remember that spell you cast earlier?" he asked, suddenly growing excited. There was a light to his eyes that I'd seen there only a few times before, whenever he was learning a challenging new spell or a complicated new technique. "The one that created a shield?" I nodded slowly, wondering what point he was trying to make. "It's actually a spell that requires a lot of power and a lot of skill, as it turns the user's own aura into the shield. You managed to perform it almost perfectly without any prior training or practice."

"So?" I asked, frowning in confusion.

"Don't you see?" But of course I shook my head, and he went on, exasperated by my cluelessness, "You've got a knack for it, you silly girl. You've got a knack for magic, for real magic. You could be a magician."

"Maybe it was just a fluke. It was probably just a fluke," I pointed out, skeptical — skeptical and terrified. I rubbed my palms together, already slick with sweat though we hadn't even started doing anything yet.

He shook his head, the excitement in his green eyes replaced by a solemness so deep that it made me wish I hadn't spoken to the contrary of his beliefs. "For your sake — for my sake — you'd better hope that it was more than a fluke." And he turned away to resume his sad watch of the passing clouds, leaving me to stare at his statuesque face and consider his words.

This was everything I wanted, everything I'd been begging and hoping for for months, all wrapped up with a shiny bow — Van's approval, his confidence in me, the promise that he would finally teach me something more useful than what I could do by myself with a Scrunchy. My hands only grew sweatier as I fidgeted, twisting them around each other, tugging at my fingers as if that would ease this silly nervousness.

"You could be a magician," he'd said — he'd said with such certainty, such hope, that there was no way that he could be wrong.

But I could never be a magician. I didn't have the strength, the discipline, or the proper understanding for it. I was just Van Tamerlane's clumsy assistant, a pretty face, a sweet smile, and a tight ass, something for the men of the crowd to look at while the man performed the real wonders.

There was no way that I could do magic like what he'd been throwing around in the forest. There was no way that I could help him, that I could ever hope to be anything like him.

I studied his face carefully out of the corner of my eye, the epitome of perfect calm, charm, and wit, the epitome of a true magician — everything I wasn't and then some.

No, there was absolutely no way in hell that I could ever be a magician.

…Right?