All my old nightmares are standing before me
And I lay on the carpet and sift through my reveries
Try on the ones that still bite
Sometimes I wonder where you are now
And if you ever found some happiness
Or just another way to kill the time
I don't owe you a thing
You were always just something that I could never save
________________________________________________________________________________
"You shouldn't be doing this," Scar says, not for the first time.
"I'm the stealthiest person we have."
"Doesn't matter. We have plenty of members that are stealthy enough to handle it."
"I would be a shitty leader if I put it off on someone else."
"Uh, you aren't the leader," he says. "I'm the leader. You voluntarily relinquished the position to me."
I push off the door frame. "Yeah, well—"
"I'm not going. Am I a shitty leader?"
"You can't go because of the baby," I say. "I'm just—"
"You're just our councilor, directly going against what the Council voted for. If you're caught, you're off. That'd be a bad thing for everybody in the long run— Firelights, addicts, the whole Undercity. I agreed to take credit for the idea if it comes to it, but that won't stand if you're the one carrying it out."
Not that I ever asked him to take credit. "I'm not gonna get caught," I say.
He massages his forehead with a knuckle. "You need to examine this at some point. You know that, right?"
"Examine what?"
"This need to be involved in everything. I know it's worked out for you so far, but if you keep going on like you are, there'll come a day where it doesn't." He tilts his head at his cracked window, evening light and laughter filtering in. "All of us joined up expecting to risk ourselves sometimes. They want to be called on."
"I don't care."
"Then suppose I call on them for you. And suppose I order you to stay back."
I freeze, fingertips braced on the frame. Scar looks at me levelly and scrapes a claw across his desk.
"You wouldn't do that," I say.
"I don't want to. I can't promise I won't. I know it's harsh, but I'm not willing to put everyone else at risk just to ease your guilty conscience."
"Fuck off with that," I say unthinkingly. "Order whatever you want. It won't stop me."
He keeps scraping that claw, and I wince at the petulant words. He knows a lot about my guilty conscience, probably only second to Snake and maybe now Vi, and he's never said anything about it that my rational side can disagree with.
"Sorry," I mutter, dropping my hand to my side.
"I know I can't stop you if you're set on it, Ekko. That's not how we do things here. But I'm serious about your behavior— you need to stop being so reckless, or your luck is going to run out." He gets to his feet, a new gouge in the surface of his desk, and I make myself meet his eyes. "We've lost too many people," he says. "I don't want you to be one of them."
I'm sorry.
You're welcome.
I look out the window again, teeth clenched. The sun's setting. People are probably already collecting at the drop-off point, even though I warned them not to come until nightfall and to try to stagger their arrivals. I tasked a handful of addicts with spreading the rumor and there's no telling how it's morphed. For all I know, the enforcers have gotten wind and a squadron is waiting to catch me out as soon as I show up.
"I'm going," I say. Scar droops. "But after tonight..."
He brightens, ears perking.
"I'll work on it," I say. "I'll stop trying to be involved in everything. I know what you mean."
He exhales and hugs me one-armed. I exhale too.
"Who's your backup?" he asks.
"Jinx."
The hug ends abruptly. "What? Why?"
"We used to sneak around all the time as kids," I say. "We never got caught. It wasn't luck, either— we were synced. Like clockwork."
"You can sync with anyone."
"She's different. We grew up together."
Scar goes back to scratching lines into his desk. "Fine. Who else?"
"Nobody else. We work best alone."
He stares me down. I tolerate it. He picks up his budgeting planner and a quill.
"Fine," he says, even more reluctant now. "Comm me if you get into trouble. I'll do what I can."
"Thanks."
I drag my feet to Vi and Jinx's treehouse. In reality, Jinx is the last person I want to bring on this operation— the reason I haven't asked her yet is because I've been praying some other option will come up. But what I told Scar is true: me and her have the best chance of succeeding without getting spotted, caught, or killed, so I knock on their door.
Jinx opens it with a bored expression that turns horrified as soon as she recognizes me, then smooths back into boredom. "Yeah?" she says.
"Can I come in?"
She's stuffed in the small open space, blocking my path. "Why?"
"Let him in," says Vi from somewhere out of view. Jinx huffs and steps out of the way. I follow her inside, closing the door and leaning on it while she backs away to stand in front of her worktable at the other end of the room.
"You guys fighting or something?" Vi asks. She's in the middle of her cot with an upside-down clipboard on her lap and a pen behind her ear.
"No," me and Jinx say in unison. Our eyes meet for a split second, her alarm mirroring mine, before I quickly flick mine to a green bar light attached to the wall. The two of them hauled in a bunch of equipment and decor from God-knows-where the other day and it's taken over the treehouse like a fungal growth of neon.
"Right," says Vi, unconvinced. Neither of us try to persuade her. Better that she thinks we're fighting than that she finds out what we really did. "What's up, then?"
"I need Jinx to come with me on the mission."
Jinx's lips part in surprise. I try not to perceive it. I don't want to have any thoughts about her lips, however objective.
Vi echoes Scar: "What? Why?"
"Best shot at success."
I don't have to argue my case beyond that for them. They remember where it comes from.
"All right," says Jinx. "I'm in."
Vi looks between us skeptically, and I'm reminded of coming up with the plan for the coup and the way she tore into me, swearing I was as good as dead if I went. She got a lot more serious about this operation once the extra enforcers came into play. We give her a minute to work through it.
"How about neither of you go and I do it myself?" she suggests. Me and Jinx both stifle a laugh, and she sighs and takes her pen down to tap it against her clipboard. "Yeah, I figured."
"We'll be careful," I say.
"You'd better be."
She gets up to squeeze us both in turn, then digs up the map of entrances she made for me from her satchel. I fold it into my pocket. Jinx puts on her boots and a couple empty holsters, looking keyed-up.
"Check in when you get home," says Vi, snapping my backpack strap. "You too, Jinx."
"I sleep in here."
"Even better."
We have a half hour before it's dark enough to leave that we spend separately on the ground, having a snack and chatting with people and thinking through logistics. That's what I do, at least; I spot Jinx playing peek-a-boo with the baby, who's slung on a distracted Tei's back, ears flicking delightedly. I go up and nod wordlessly to the weapons arsenal when I'm ready, and we walk there spaced apart.
After the coup, there's no point in wearing my owl mask for anonymity, so I'm in head-to-toe black and I grab black armor and a scarf to tie over the lower half of my face. Jinx is wearing a striped purple top that leaves her entire midriff bare, and her braid glows royal blue under the moon.
"You need to put on something bulletproof," I say.
"Oh?"
"And you need to cover your hair."
She's sliding a pistol into her belt. "And you don't?"
I flip my hood up. "I'm serious," I say. "You're not operating by reputation anymore. If anyone sees you, they need to think it's not you."
"No one'll see me."
"We can't risk it. You can be traced back to the Firelights now."
She rolls her eyes like I'm the most annoying person in the world and pulls a giant gold claw clip out of nowhere, looping her braid twice to a quarter of its length and accepting the sleeveless bulletproof jacket I toss at her. The hood doesn't completely cover her forelock, but it's close enough. She ties a scarf over her face too without me having to ask.
I fish out as many opaque bottles and canisters as we can attach to ourselves. Maybe this would've been a multi-day errand before the enforcer mandate, but as it is, we're just hauling over as much Shimmer as we can carry in one round and hoping it's enough. It won't be— we can still expect a few dozen withdrawal deaths, if I'm being optimistic— but taking multiple trips is too dangerous, and it's better than nothing.
Without speaking again, I set off for the back entrance, assuming she's behind me. Me and the guards exchange nods. Scar is the only person besides Vi and Jinx who I told about the mission, because we don't want anybody else to accidentally indict themselves if I get caught and they get interrogated, so Belle and Walker probably just think we're spying on someone. They look at me in confusion when they notice it's Jinx I'm taking, but I give them a reassuring look over my sudden paranoia that they can tell. They shrug it off.
I keep in front of Jinx on purpose; we're going the whole way on foot for stealth. We turn off our comms once we're back in the open and I double-check the factory map under a weak red light while she rubs her arms as if she's cold. She isn't— the way I've permanently adapted to overdressing for the weather, she's adapted to underdressing. Either that or she's stubborn and always hides it.
Just as I expected, she was pretending what happened didn't happen as soon as I first saw her. She gave me Clotstech filters like it was any other day, although she left for the lab early, probably to escape my awkwardness. I figure that's what's had her acting weird since. It could be regret, but something tells me she wouldn't see anything wrong with what she said about me hurting her— she just saw me balk and started regretting putting herself through the hookup pretense now that she knew it wouldn't have gotten her the results she wanted.
We make it to the factory without issue. It's guarded by two trenchers and two now-armed enforcers, a division meant to ward off corruption exactly like mine, and we can't afford to be seen by any of them. We stop behind a last bend to determine what we're working with.
"There's a guard on every side," I whisper. "Distracting them is probably our best bet."
Jinx pulls a nondescript gray grenade from one of her pouches. "Ten-four."
"Hold on—"
"Cover your eyes. Or ears. Whichever you like better."
She hurls the grenade before I can respond. I shut my eyes and cover the ear closest to her. Two seconds later, there's a sound like a point-blank gunshot and my eyelids burn bright red, and Jinx grabs my wrist and yanks.
I look up as she drags me off at a run. The four guards are staggering in the direction of the explosion and don't turn even when we pass right at their backs. We dip behind the factory, out of their field of vision, and I snatch my wrist away.
"Flashbang." She answers my unasked question smugly. "Fragmenting type, so you don't have to worry about them recognizing my work. They should have afterimages for five minutes, tinnitus for fifteen."
"Whatever. Come on." The best entry point Vi gave us is on the roof. I brace my foot on a metal pipe and start working my way up, unable to hear with my own tinnitus if Jinx is following. I only get confirmation when I'm through the hatch and she lands next to me, only the faintest clap of her boots on the gritty floor proving she's corporeal. Her hood blocks the dull glow of her left eye, but washes of light from the boiling tanks of Shimmer along the warehouse walls ice her forelock in purple; I do everything I can not to notice the contours of her uninked deltoid, shifting as she lifts her arm to push the hair back.
We dart to the nearest tank and I use my ax to lever the lid off. Our years of independent work have made us even quicker than when we were kids— we fill case after case neatly, studiously, clipping and unclipping and strapping and unstrapping and latching and unlatching until we're both carrying our weight's worth. By then, we're not getting to the roof subtly anymore, so I peer through a broken-out wall panel Vi marked and find a trencher guard in our way and poised to fight, a crystalizer pellet primed in one hand and a machete in the other.
I gesture for Jinx to look. She's not supposed to do anything but assess our surroundings, but while she's crouched down, she pulls something else from her thigh holster and throws it. Bright white light breaks around her, accompanied by another blast of noise. She gives me a thumbs-up.
The guards go stumbling in the grenade's direction again, and we slip out behind them and vanish into the alleys, stopping against opposite walls as soon as we're safe. Jinx's eyes dance over her scarf. I grin back involuntarily, head resting against the concrete, gloved hands on my knees. Canisters of Shimmer rattle softly with our breathing.
"Where to next, grumpy-pants?" she asks.
My amusement wanes, but not as fast as I'd have liked it to. She's high on the risk the way she always was, the way she was at the gala, the way she was in my room, and it's as magnetic as it is frustrating. I want to enjoy it. I have no right.
"Follow me," I say. The corner of my eye catches her shrinking a little from the curt tone of it. I don't react.
The point I gave the addicts I talked to is the ravine underneath Silco's sign where lots of them tend to hole up. My hope is that the enforcers will be too afraid to venture down there— it's kind of out of their way, anyway— and that if the info didn't spread as far as I wanted, I'll still catch the most people I can who could benefit. It's not a place I frequent, but I know the route, and I know when I should start seeing the neon lights, so it's disconcerting when I don't.
"Do you know that chasm?" I ask Jinx. "With the purple eye over it?"
Her footsteps slow, then speed up. "Boy, do I!"
"What happened to the sign?"
She shrugs. We keep on, hackles raised, but we reach the edge safely and I look over it to see splintered slats of wood and massive unlit bar lights spilling across the floor of the pit. The structure's collapsed. I'd hate to see what happened to anyone who was out at the time.
"We used to live down there," Jinx says.
Most of the shelters are dark, but a few figures weave in and out of shadows, and there's a small, shifting crowd gathered in an open space. No enforcers, as far as I can tell. "Who? You and Silco?"
"Me and Vi. Before we met you."
I glance back at her and look into the chasm again. I never saw the place before it became an addict haven. Before the rebellion, I lived a few blocks from Benzo's shop.
"You can climb in, then?" I say.
"Duh."
"Let's go."
We're halfway down the cliff face when people start chittering their notice. I flash the light hooked on my backpack so they know it's me. The crowd limps closer and is ready to engulf us once we're on the lowest shelf, so I stop there, Jinx doing the same, and look down at them from a few feet up.
"Shimmer?"
"Shimmer?"
"Shimmer?"
"Where?"
"Shimmer?"
"Where?"
"I have your Shimmer," I say over the buzz. It stops instantly. "But you need to listen to me first."
A whine swells into the dense air. Jinx points a finger and says, "Shut your pie-holes! Are you trying to get us caught?"
The mob quiets again, but not to total silence. I take a canister and uncap it so the glow can calm them. They surge first, making me have to yank my foot back, then grudgingly relax when they see me leave it open at my side.
"This is the only time I can do this," I tell them. "You have to do your best to divide it fairly. Don't start taking it until you've made sure everyone who needs it has some. There are people throughout the Undercity who need it and aren't here— make sure to find them if you can."
Someone lunges for the open canister. I jerk it out of their reach and a few others drag them back. Jinx takes a subtle step forward.
"You have to use it to taper," I say. "If you've already lost your dependence, keep it that way. Don't take any. Everybody should try to visit a rehab clinic too. Remember that taking Shimmer is decriminalized now— you don't have to avoid stuff that's government-run anymore, so don't. Take every option you've got."
"Shimmer," someone cries. Another claps their hand over her mouth.
"Me distributing it like this is a crime," I say. "I'll get kicked off the Council and probably jailed if it gets out. If anyone asks, you got what I gave you from your own stores. You understand?"
Nods and grumbles. I wave forward the first person in front of me and cap the open canister for him. He skitters off through the crowd and his space is filled by three more people. A similar dynamic starts in front of Jinx. It doesn't take us long at all to have everything off our hands, and that leaves a single addict left patiently waiting, his bottle clutched in a fist.
"What is it?" I ask.
He takes a second answer. He's old, either that or the addiction's aged him, with a purple rash over half his face. "This will come back to you," he says.
My skin prickles. "What?"
"Karma. What you do comes back to you." He twitches, scratching an arm with broken nails, but doesn't break eye contact. "We're always forgotten," he says. "We won't forget this."
He's gone before I can ask if that's supposed to be an expression of gratitude or a warning. If we weren't in the dark, rotting quarters of the dead and the almost-dead, I'd go with the former, but I can't convince myself completely.
"Can we go now?" says Jinx.
I adjust my empty backpack and reach for a handhold. We climb out easier than we climbed in, hitting the top of the cliff at the exact same time; I see her turn to me as if she's gonna remark on it, but I stare straight ahead.
We settle into a casual pace for our walk home, separated vertically and horizontally by a few feet. She lowers her scarf in my peripherals. My focus is set on threat detection, so I jump when I hear her speak a while into the trip.
"You know," she says, "the other night—"
"No. Don't."
She pauses. "I just wanted to say—"
That's what I get for thinking I was in the clear. "Don't say anything. We don't have to talk about it."
"Well, I wanted to say I'm sorry."
I—
Get out.
I'm sorry. I—
Shut up and get your shit and get out.
I try to give her a dismissive grunt to make this stop, but it doesn't get past my lungs. Her form sharpens in the corner of my eye. Closing in.
"I shouldn't have done it." Her voice lowers. "I didn't mean it. I just thought—"
I'm not tricking you. I want you too.
How naïve do you think I am?
I mean it.
"I know you're still mad," she says. "I just thought, maybe if you had the chance to take it out on me—"
"Well, you shouldn't have thought that." I say it way too loud for the position we're in, and we both stop in our tracks to glance around. The streets would usually be busy at this time, but the enforcer patrols have most people shut in, expecting them to be even more trigger-happy than before the revolution. There's basically a self-imposed curfew, particularly in the area we're in.
"I know," she mutters.
I start moving again, fingers locked around the Z-Drive. She creeps up to my side and I accept it for the sake of safety.
"It was for you, anyway," I say. "Not me. You wanted me to pay you back so you could stop feeling guilty."
"I guess," she says. I'd hoped she'd deny it so I'd have more reason to stay angry. "But you know I meant what I said to the Firelights, right?" she says, a bit strained. "You know I'm sorry for what I did. I wasn't just trying to make you go easy on me. You believe me, right?"
Goddamn her. "Yes, Jinx."
"Because I really don't blame you for being mad, but I want—"
I clap my hand over her mouth. Old instinct kicking in, she stops in her tracks and lets me yank her around a corner, the heel of her boot eluding a sweeping flashlight beam by millimeters.
"Who's there?" comes the filtered voice of an enforcer, maybe ten yards away. We run soundlessly down our new path. The light passes perpendicular to us, but just when we start slowing, it doubles back and washes down the alley. Jinx is the one to pull me out of its way this time. We duck into the gritty shadows behind a wide trash bin.
"Who's there?" the enforcer calls again.
"There's no need to run," says another officer. A second flashlight clicks on. "You're not in trouble. We just want to identify you."
All trenchers know that's code for "You will be seized as soon as you're in arm's reach." Jinx ties her scarf back on and, without a syllable of discussion, we make a mad dash for the alley that breaks off five feet ahead and across the street. It means we have to go straight through both beams of light, but our only other options are continuing on this street and being in the light a lot longer or staying still and possibly getting trapped in this tiny corner. It's no contest.
The enforcers bark "Hey!" in unison and the click of their shoes turns into a racing clatter behind us. We have a fair head start, but we zero in on the first slanted pipe we see and get onto the roofs. There's no way to do that part soundlessly, and as soon as Jinx lands on the rusted sheet metal, followed by me a half second later, the lights lift toward the sky.
"Think we're in trouble now?" says Jinx. Her eyes are crinkled in a grin. I can't actually make out the words over the rush of air past my ears, and I can't read her lips through the scarf, but I hear the inflection and know exactly what it means.
"I'd bet on it," I say, and I'm sure she doesn't hear me, but she understands anyway too.
Unsurprisingly, we pick up more pairs of patrolling officers the longer we run. None of them threaten us, though, because none of them can traverse the roofs. They don't even try. We leap across alleys and swing around support girders, staying steadily between levels so nobody can reach us from an overhead bridge either; bullets start flying in our direction after some time, but not as many as I expected— they're not uniquely eager to shoot, just not really any more sparing than before, either. Go figure. At one point, Jinx's braid tumbles out of its clip and I think that's it for us, but she catches it before it can fully unravel and pins it up again mid-sprint like she does it all the time. At another point, I miscalculate and have to use my ax as a brace on the very edge of a roof to keep from falling. Even though I make it look smooth, she thrusts out an arm to catch me and then laughs at me when she realizes I'm fine.
I'm sure we're in the clear once a tunnel comes into sight. It'll be a bit of a jump, but one we can make, whereas no enforcer would try it in their dreams.
When we got into hijinks as kids, we never did any honorable "No, you go first" dances at the single-file parts of a route. That only gets everybody killed. Whoever got there first went first, and anyone else hoped for the best while they waited.
One-and-a-half steps in the lead, I'm set to be the first one to go. Jinx even gives me a prod between the shoulder blades to acknowledge it. So I hit the edge with as much momentum as I can muster and I jump— six feet forward, six feet up— and hook my fingers in the tunnel's opening and drag myself inside with the help of my treads against the wall. I hear Jinx catch herself a second after I'm over the threshold and turn around to pull her in faster, but as soon as I get my left hand on her right wrist, she jolts back like she's being pulled from the other side. Her eyes go round.
I grip her other arm and shift my weight backward, but the opposite force is just about equal to mine. It's obviously an enforcer— their yelling is filtered tinnily, mixed with that of several others. I can't see from here how they got the vantage point. Judging by her scrambling, they have her by her foot or ankle. She can't kick because she needs her other foot braced.
I only try to pull for another second. Then I push her left arm against the tunnel floor, signaling for her to brace harder, and let go. She surges away toward open air. The enforcers cheer. I free my ax and thrust it around her, over the edge.
I have to let go of it to get it far enough. I only hear the thudding impact; what I feel is Jinx jolting forward again and pressing both feet into the wall, propelling herself upward as I grab her by both wrists again and wrench her toward me. While the enforcers cry out behind her, she crashes into the tunnel on her knees. She's upright a millisecond later, scarf loose around her neck.
Whatever the enforcer was doing to reach her, it won't get them close enough to the entrance to get inside. Even if it did, these passages split off multiple times, and they're full of precarious structures and bats. We've already lost our tail. Still, we run and keep running all the way until the labyrinth spits us out.
We slow to a walk on the crossbeam we end up on, and I realize I still have hold of one of her forearms. I release her immediately. Her hood is off and her braid came out of its clip again somewhere inside; her leggings are torn at the knees, blood beading on raw skin.
My hood and scarf are off too, and I feel slightly unbalanced without my ax strapped on. It wasn't my own personal ax or even the same model, just a spare from the arsenal, so it shouldn't get traced back to me, but I hadn't planned to leave anything behind at all. And God knows what happened to the officer I hit— I could've just surprised them, or I could've knocked them out, or I could've sent them plummeting thirty feet to the ground.
"That was fun," Jinx says.
"Wh— how the hell was it fun?" It's a hypocritical question; I know exactly how it was fun. "I might've killed an enforcer," I say. "That's not gonna do anything to get them out of the fissures."
"Relax," she says. "You didn't kill anybody. You just knocked that guy back into his friends."
I let out a sigh and tuck my scarf into a side pocket on my bag. She does the same, shedding her jacket too. This close to home, without our wares, it's better to move casually and hide in plain sight as ourselves.
"Why didn't you use the Z-Drive if you were worried?" she asks.
"You can't just use the Z-Drive."
"Why not? If I had one, I'd use it all the time."
I pick out the shape of the watch face through my pocket with a hand. "You probably wouldn't," I say. "The novelty wears off fast. Life stops feeling real when you do half of every day three times over."
"At least you wouldn't screw up."
"It's not worth it. You're supposed to screw up sometimes. That's what separates humans from machines."
"Profound." She hops down to the beam below us and tips her head back to smirk up at me. "And thinking you killed an enforcer wasn't a good enough reason to have a machine moment?"
"It's not that. The problem is that it takes energy, so you can only do so many do-overs, and some situations are too variable to risk it." I land next to her and we start edging toward the next drop. "Suppose I brought us back, knowing there were enforcers able to get us at the tunnel— we could have you go first, but then I'd be the one to get grabbed, and you wouldn't have an ax to shove him off. We could forget the tunnels and take a different route, but what if we got caught for real somewhere else? Or identified? I'd rather kill an enforcer. For all we know, what we ended up with was the best turnout we could've ever had."
Jinx looks unconvinced. "When do you use it, then?"
"It's better when there's one problem. If we're climbing and somebody hits a bad spot and falls, all I have to do is tell them to step somewhere else next time. If we get ambushed at a scene, I just go back a few yards and start the interaction over with a weapon ready.
"When you shot Eve—" I cut off as Jinx suddenly wobbles, but she recovers and flips down past the last few crossbeams to the street. I give myself half a second to figure out where I'm going with the sentence before following. "When you shot Eve," I say again, "I wanted to use the Z-Drive, but I didn't have any idea what to do with it. You seemed to lose your head when her mask fell off, but I couldn't stop in the middle of the fight to tighten it for her. I could've taken you out while you were holding her in place, but whatever I was doing at the time instead wouldn't have gotten done, and that could've started some other chain reaction." Not to mention that it really wasn't something I wanted to do in the first place, irrational as that was. "I could've been ready to intercept the bullet, but then I could be dead, and you might've just shot at her a second time," I say. "There wasn't room for strategy, so any redo would've been a gamble at best. Honestly, the most use the Z-Drive is in battle is just that I know it's there— it keeps me calm."
Jinx is a couple steps ahead; I let her have the space because I'm certain from her pace and posture that she's listening. I didn't have to tell this story to answer her question. I know that. I wanted her to squirm— I am still mad at her— only now that she is, it's making me feel more pity than vindication.
"You know, the first time I met you at that Shimmer trade, you shot me in the chest," I say.
She freezes. I thought it would cheer her up, that she'd gloat about it, but when she turns around, she looks stricken. "I did?"
"I don't blame you. I was wearing a mask and a voice modifier and called your old name." This line of conversation is even worse than the last one, so I walk past her and add without preamble: "Come to the Council dinner with me."
It takes a solid three seconds for her footsteps to resume. In that time, I lay at least a dozen curses on myself and feel my cheeks heat up so much that I think the glow will give us away.
"Why?" she finally says.
I shrug one shoulder. "You were a better threat detector than anyone else at the last party we went to. You saved my life, even if it was an accident."
"It wasn't an accident. I threw you on the floor, remember?"
The blood quickly starts draining back out of my face. "I thought we thought they were aiming at you."
"Maybe you thought that. But they obviously weren't."
"Oh."
We walk a block or so in a tense silence.
"Why haven't you been holding it over my head?" I ask. "Were you even gonna mention it if Caitlyn hadn't given her report?"
"Because you don't owe me anything for it. I threw you on the floor. It wasn't hard." Her feet scuff the pavement. "And no, because I knew you'd be all stupid about it like you are now."
"I'm not being— just tell me if you're coming to the dinner."
"'If'?" she says, drawing the syllable out. "I didn't think it was a question."
"It was."
"Maybe you should say it like one."
I spin around. She's closer behind me than I thought she was, so we end up nose-to-nose, with her already up on her tiptoes and smiling widely.
I'm not interested in doing whatever this is after whatever we didn't do the other night in my room. But I'm even less interested in dragging the dance out when we should be getting home, so I say, "Will you go to the Council dinner with me, Jinx?"
She lowers her heels to the pavement, furrows her brow, and makes a show of tapping her chin in consideration. I fight the urge to roll my eyes. After an agonizing pause, she moves around me and skips on past, braid swinging. I trudge after her.
"Will I go to the Council dinner with you?" she sing-songs, turning to skip backward. I raise an eyebrow wearily. She laughs at the sky. "Why, it would be my pleasure, grumpy-pants."
________________________________________________________________________________
Intro lyrics from "Reveries" by Radical Face.
we have 2 more updates after this one! I'M SORRY for talking about the council dinner and not writing the council dinner but at least we got some quality bonding time for the besties