the only way out is, in fact, through.
live through the horrors of war and manage to live through new horrors because you lived through old ones. live through being misinterpreted, on an existential level, and live through finally learning to interpret yourself at all costs. live through being loved from a distance and live through being loved from the inside out.
spoilers below:
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i suspected that sasha was telepathic during the spider raid sequence, but learning that she's been telepathic the entire time and simply never knew what to do with what she learned was a gut punch i was wholly unprepared for. it's not a twist in the traditional sense, it doesn't cast the prior events in any new light, only the same light again, overexposed: the discovery that everything the reader knows, and much much more than aliska has allowed herself reflect on, sasha has heard on mental intercom for over a decade.
it's so unique to their circumstances that it becomes impossible to put a label on it, the thing that's been quietly happening inside sasha—it can't be called grooming, and at the same time it's impossible to argue that sasha hasn't been shaped by hearing aliska's thoughts about her. love precipitating at the intersect between what someone has been willing to do for you and what they've been unwilling to act upon.
it's phenomenal. the fact that a happy ending exists for these characters, despite the immense loss both of them have survived before and during the story... i was so relieved it hurt. deeply earned.
thank you for writing this, and for writing in general.