Sister Cities

Part 97: Caitlyn

I give a bit of a gasp, my high-class conditioning automatically activated, and he looks over and seems to register his own words.

"Sorry," he says, scratching at his hair. "Um— that didn't actually happen. She just had it in her head that it was a good idea, like hurting her might get me to stop holding a grudge and making her feel guilty. That's what she said, that I could hurt her. She came to my room and kind of— not that you want to hear about this— I just can't tell Vi, clearly, and I can't tell any of the Firelights, because they'd feel like shit knowing I wanted that when it hadn't even been a day since she admitted she did anything wrong. That I wanted to— that I wanted the other stuff, not to hurt her. I didn't want anything after she brought that part up. I kicked her out." He drops his hand. "Still not your problem, though. Sorry."

"No, it's all right," I insist. "This is what bosom friends are for."

He laughs reluctantly. "Is it?"

"Yes. You tell them anything you can't tell your other friends or your family, and they keep it in confidence."

He laughs again, more bitter now. "That used to be Powder."

"You can have multiple bosom friends," I say. "Perhaps she'll be one of yours down the line. I find it difficult to believe that she simply doesn't care for you."

"It was difficult for me too."

"She really propositioned you just to get you to hurt her?" I ask.

"Sure looked like it," he says, scuffing a boot on the stones. "But I didn't ask for clarification."

"You did the right thing in rejecting her."

"I know."

"But I don't think you have to feel sorry for participating to begin with. It doesn't mean you don't hold her responsible for the damage she's done, or that your losses at her hand don't matter to you. It can be something that exists separately, contradictingly. That happens sometimes."

Ekko toys with the pocket watch in his holster, considering.

"Just try not to judge yourself too harshly," I say. "You know who you are. So do your people."

"Yeah. They do."

"I don't have experience with loving someone who's wronged me the way Jinx has wronged you, but I understand well what it's like to have an attachment that's looked down upon by the people around you. You can talk to me whenever you'd like."

He bristles at the word "loving," but we both let it pass. "Thanks."

"Of course."

We walk a few yards in comfortable, if thoughtful, silence. He eventually asks, "How're things on your end? With your mom?"

Mum and I have become even colder with each other since the abduction and that first Council meeting, if that's even possible. "No fighting right now," I say. "That's the best I can hope for until one of us cracks. It's quiet without the girls around."

"Is that good or bad?"

I smile at the memory of the honking noise that came from their room the night of the ball. And of evading Mum's wrath with Vi, and of seeing Jinx in my periphery, slithering past an air vent or scribbling a monkey on a countertop. "It's funny," I say. "I'm only now realizing just how big my house is."

"'Only now'?"

"What an embarrassment, I know."

Ekko gives me an unexpected shoulder-check, which has me scrambling for an apology in the split second before I register the amusement in his expression. The first time I was knocked that way was by Vi the day I freed her, when we were looking out over the Last Drop, and that one wasn't so friendly.