#;;plot

She knew, in her fully rational self, this wasn’t the way to handle this. 

She should have confronted her matesprit himself. She should have asked why, after everything he’d subjected her to, he really insisted on letting comments like ‘get a room’ slide, why he never made note to his seemingly-endless admirers that he was spoken for. She should have asked why he felt the need to stay in contact with his exes to begin with, when she had written off the idea of befriending her own without him having to ask. 

She should have asked him if this was all a game to him.

But she reckoned that conversation risked shutting him off again, risked chasing him away, risked losing him altogether, and she had backed herself into a corner where she once again found herself ill-equipped to address that prospect. 

So she looked for Jett, instead. 

He was an easy object for her anger. He had wronged DC in the past, and many times at that, a man whose stable friendship had meant the world to her in the moments it mattered most. He had wronged other people, too, that much she was sure of. He was constantly causing trouble, and to her, he was the perfect example of too little, too late. 

(She didn’t really believe the last part, she always believed in possibilities for redemption, but she had believed in that for Dolch once, too. She lacked the strength to give the benefit of the doubt to them both. So why not give it to her matesprit, and spare herself the discussion?) 

“Do you always have to do this?” 

Jett nearly falls off the couch at the troll’s hollow voice behind him, tainted with the burden of death that she carries with her everywhere she goes. He shoves his laptop aside, and is on his feet fractions of a second later, his blade pulled down from the wall, extended, pointed at her. She doesn’t waver. 

“Is it a compulsion?” 

His eyes tick over her black dress, her dark red sweater, her horns curving like spirals. She doesn’t sound mad. She almost sounds cheery. Almost looks it, too, were it not for her voice. Even her eyes seem to sparkle with warm, childlike curiosity. 

“Who are you?”  “You know who I am, I’ve no doubt you’ve met my alternates before.” 

She steps closer. He steps back. 

“Can you keep to yourself, for five seconds? Can you stand to bear the weight of not shattering somebody underneath your grip?” 

He stares at her, and the silence between them is long. 

“Yes,” he finally answers, voice soft and earnest, “and I will. Whatever the problem is, or I’ve done, I’ll... I’ll fix it.” 

Aradia hesitates. 

This is not the answer she expected. The spark in her eye flickers like a dying lightbulb. 

“What?” 

“I’m not trying to hurt anybody. This? This exact position I’m in? Where I piss off strangers and they want to kill me? I’m trying to avoid.” Even if she’s a troll. “So, what’d I do. Is this about Damara?” 

“...What?” 

He lowers his sword. “What is it about?” 

And now, it is Aradia’s turn to stare. She doesn’t know how to answer. His honesty, his ownership, caught her off guard, and suddenly any catharsis she could reach through this exchange is stripped from her. Indulging in an impulsive confrontation where she could toy with the offending human a while was her own gift to herself today, and not even that had wound up successful. 

She swallows hard. 

“Whatever you do on your free time is your business,” she finally answers, slow, “but do not drag Dolch down with you.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” 

“It means I know who you are, and I know what you’ve done to other pushers offered up to you.” Her speech was almost eerily light in spite of the heaviness of her words. “He’s worked too hard, come too far, to be slipped up by somebody like you.” 

“I hardly know the dude. Why do you care?” 

Silence. 

“...Do you love him or something?” 

She takes a breath in that lifts her chest. 

“Does he know you love him?” 

“How could you ask that?” 

“Isn’t this something you should take up with him?” 

Yes. 

“Don’t deflect.” 

“I’m not trying to drag him down into anything. We’re amicable.” 

She wants to fight him on it. She wants to insist he’s flirting with Jett, the same way he’s been flirting with his ex. She can feel the suspicion that Arch stoked -- rightfully, she now feels -- in her chest, she can feel it bubbling up and gripping her throat and pressing her to press Jett on it, even if her issue really isn’t with him. Even if he really isn’t the one with answers. 

The realization that her love for Dolch, for someone whose loyalty to her seemed shaky at best, was once again driving her to erratic behavior settled on her shoulders like a heavy blanket, all at once. Not that she necessarily took issue with being erratic, but she was calmer without him. 

The sort of love that sets your heart on fire . . .

“Are you okay?” 

He steps forward. She steps back.

Her hand lifts in warning. He doesn’t ask, she doesn’t explain; Jett doesn’t take another step. 

The next time Jett blinks, when his eyelids open again, she’s gone. 

He wonders how she found him, if it was the same way Damara could have. He wonders how she knows the things he’s done, and upon whose behalf her anger rests, if not merely her own. He recognized the pain in her eyes -- he’d seen it before, in DC’s, and in Jake’s, the pain of heartbreak and betrayal, even if she had only allowed it to seep through for a glimmer of a moment before she vanished; he wonders what Dolch did to her, and if it really was like the things he’s done. 

He feels overwhelmed with the urge to speak. 

He looks back at his computer. His impulse itches his fingers to speak to Dolch. Tell him, irresponsibly, recklessly, if he loves someone, to hold onto her. His broken heart begs him to beg Dolch to hold onto her tight enough to suffocate her if it’s the only way he can keep himself grounded, to bear his soul and bury his heart inside of hers. He feels the failure of his own actions, how he failed DC sharpest of all, crawling up his spine, and he wants to cry, and tell him that if he continues down this path, if he loses her, whether he can ever overcome the pain of losing her or not, the guilt will never go away. He feels compelled to ensure his alternate, effectively a stranger, doesn’t make the same mistake he did, in some desperation for cosmic meaning for his own stupid mistakes. 

Yet Jett knows he doesn’t actually have any idea what path either of them are on, be it the troll that visited him or Dolch, and he has no right to be pushing his own regrets onto somebody else in order to feel absolved of them. He doesn’t deserve that absolution, and perhaps if he did, he wouldn’t be punishing himself by keeping Aeon at such a distance. He’d let himself care again, he’d let himself trust again, and maybe, maybe, eventually, he’d love again. 

Either way, talking to Dolch, he reminds himself, won’t make those things happen.

He doesn’t touch his computer. 

Burn the empty, abandoned fighting arena that he’s standing in, tear down the tracker screens they used to use to monitor the fights, to critique them, to train them, wreck the entire headquarters. Wreck the bathroom DC hid in while he cried, wreck the room they kept her alive in for so long, only for it to fail in the end. A desperate mother’s desperate last chance, only for her own arrogance and lust for power result in her daughter’s death anyway. 

How many times had Rose died? Jett had lost count a while ago. But she’d always come back, every time. Just not this time.

He looks up at one of the cameras, gazing into its lens, as if he could still gaze into her eyes by doing so, still pretend he knew she was watching him on the other side. Kotone or Rose, he felt just as desperate to see both of them again, and they were so similar in so many ways. Too many.

Rose should have been left with her real mother. In ‘saving’ her, this version of Kotone broke her.

“This is messy. Messy mind, messy fighting.” 

“I know.” 

He’s speaking to someone that isn’t there. And he knows that. He knows Rose isn’t here as he circles the body, pushing it from the ring and past the rope, so it can fall from the platform and onto the plastic he had laid out for it. 

“Why did you leave it here all this time? Were you afraid to face it?” 

He starts scrubbing at the bloodstain still in the ring. Why, he’s not sure. Either he’s not ready to part with this place, or he’s not ready for the massive undertaking of trying to destroy it. He concludes it’s the latter. It’s its own massive network, intended to be a self-contained base to train new soldiers without causes, recruited for gang wars like that can satisfy a rebellious heart. But it did satisfy yours, didn’t it? It was another war to fight. It didn’t matter whose side you were on. 

If you think about it, really think about it, you can trace most of your identity issues back to here. The second splinter. The first was just before the game, and then just inside the Medium; the second was here. In these halls, in these fighting rings, in these labs and situation rooms. You lost yourself to a cause solely of violence for violence; another story you’ve neglected to talk about at much length. You let yourself be turned into a weapon. You were weak, and you let yourself be used. 

“Don’t be so dramatic. You wanted this, we didn’t use you.” 

He ignores her voice in his head. 

Bit by bit, the soapy water coaxes the stains up, to the best he’s going to manage. He discards the cleaning supplies onto the plastic tarp, too, bending under the rope to hop down so he can tie it up. He can all but see her leaning over him, hovering, peering down at him from the platform. 

“You needed this. The last time you really felt like a man was with me.” 

He stops on the last knot. 

“You needed me. You’re nothing without me.” 

“Wait.” 

“And now that I’m gone, you’ll never--”

“Stop talking.” 

Of course, she wasn’t talking. He was experiencing his own memories, morphed with the present moment, but it was different this time. Of course it was different this time.

He slowly got to his feet, watching the center of the room. Watching the platform, empty, dark, only able to see to begin with because of the night vision his shades offered. 

No one is home. 

“...It was you.” 

“What was me?” 

He pulls himself back up onto the platform, onto its edge, keeping hold of the rope. He can still see how he and Rose danced across it, like he wasn’t even a participant so much as an observer. They could spar for hours with no clear winner. 

“I never cheated on anyone, before I met you.” 

“You never cheated with me, either.” 

His jaw sets as a ghost twists his words. He pulls himself back under the rope, back into the ring. 

“But you knew what you were doing. When he and I broke up, you were there, and you told me that letting a hole grow inside of me is letting them win. And you convinced me to let you fill that place until I found something better.” 

“I was helping you.” 

You step forward, in accusation, as if the accused were here to answer the charges. “You didn’t give me a chance.” 

“I gave you a chance.” 

“Everything, everything, that ever happened in my life after you, I was trying to chase this, fucked up, broken, shadow, of what you and your fuckup of an adoptive mother told me it meant to be a man, and why the fuck did I listen to you in the first place?” 

(Because Richard wasn’t here.)  (Because it was her war, and she wanted you to fight it for her, and she saw you the protege that Rose was.)  (She was there, and Rose was there, when Richard was dead, and your friends were all gone.) 

He doesn’t realize how his fingers curl into a fist, but there’s no one to hit. 

“You’ve always been weak in every way but one, Strider.” 

You want to protest, but how can you? How can you say you’re not weak? 

“...Do you have any idea, how much has been destroyed, because of the ideas you put into my head, because you taught me to recoil at the thought of incompletion?”

“What makes you think I care what you destroy?” 

“Because that was the whole point, right?” 

“Right.” 

“And it didn’t matter to you if there was collateral damage, because the only shit the two of you cared about was your own fucked up vengeance quest, right??” 

“Right.” 

You feel anger bubbling up in your chest at the memories of Rose and her counterpart, the one that had loved her, whom she had loved too, who had broken her, as your projection of her admits to things she never would have admitted to herself.

“What the FUCK MAKES YOU THINK you got to PLAY WITH PEOPLE LIKE THAT, ROSE?” 

It’s the sort of display you would never open yourself up to were anyone else present to see it, but no one’s here. 

“WAS THIS WORTH IT? DO YOU SEE WHAT THIS IS NOW? DO YOU SEE THE STATE OF YOUR EMPIRE? IT’S NOTHING, ROSE! IT ISN’T SHIT! YOU AREN’T SHIT, WAS IT WORTH IT?” 

When his robotic heel hits the ground for some sort of release, the foundation’s lining tears underneath the pressure. It breaks him from his own head, and the delusion of a woman that once held too much power over him.

You wonder if she’s the reason Lysanias ever happened at all. 

He’s sinking to his knees, hands in his hair, only the sadness left, the remorse burning his throat too badly to swallow. To understand the root of his flightiness was a relief, to know he might be able to truly fix it, grip the weeds and tear them out; to feel the crushing weight of his own failures, however, the pain of the reflection of his mistakes that first caused it all, silently begging his past self never to do it, never to speak to her, never to agree to this, to have left the moment she spoke to DC the way she had, or at any of the multiple red flats, to have to hear the sentence in his head, “It’s too late, it’s too late, you can’t undo it, it’s too late,” over, and over, and over again... 

Jett forces in a shaking breath as his hands lower to rest on his legs. 

He wants to destroy this place. He doesn’t want to destroy this place, he wants to forget it existed. 

He stands. He forces himself to stand. He drops a match on the bags in hopes the fire might eat some of the plastic and the body, but he doesn’t think it’ll do much more. He doesn’t care. He adjusts his mobile transportalizer so that seconds later he’s standing back in his own apartment, feeling cold and empty and with that same familiar bitterness of regret in his heart he’s felt so many times, and clears the saved coordinates from his system. 

Tonight, he’ll clear them from everywhere he can possibly think of, so that no matter how hard he might try, he’ll never be able to go back there again. 

You could have stayed with your friends. DC knew you might have been gone a while, and you could have stayed to celebrate, basked in the glory of being the man that brought home the head of the Batterwitch as the hero they all thought you were. But that’s not what you did. You went home to him, and waited for him, and when you saw his face again, it was the only face in the world that mattered. It was the face you were going to spend the rest of your life with, waking up to every morning, falling asleep beside. 

You could paint it from memory. You could place every freckle on his skin, and you could pinpoint the places on his cheeks that curve to let him smile. 

You remember when you made dinner for him. You remember feeling like you finally had a hold of it, you could finally love him, this could finally work. You weren’t even through the half of it. 

You can still feel how your body fits around his, how easy it is to hold, how his body curls right where your arm falls over his stomach. 

It’s been a long night. 

You’re happy, to finally see new faces. To hear stories and voices you’ve never heard before. It’s been a long time since that’s happened to you. It’s been a long time since you’ve been ready for it. The nagging voice in the back of your head promises that none of them mean it, swears to you you’re an object for their enjoyment, whispers predictions that they will project whatever broken man onto you they can fix so that they can fall in love with him. Maybe the voice is right. It’s too early to tell, surely too early to back out because of it. 

You’re trying anyway. For Richard, first and foremost, because you know your brother’s dying wish would be your happiness, and you’re prepared to die yourself trying to get there if it could bring him some peace. But it’s hard, too, knowing how badly you’ve ruined it all, knowing how brutally you’ve undermined the chances at happiness you’ve had up until this point. Undermined, beyond repair. Not in the poetic sense, not in the sense that tempts them back to be fixed again, but in the real sense, the true sense, the finished sense. You and DC aren’t a dying star, you’re a dead one, and he doesn’t want to see you again. 

But you still remember the look in his eyes when he’d cry for you, begging you to stay. 

You never did. Not once. Not really. Every time, every single time, you left, so he’s finally stopped asking. 

You’re trying to move on, for Richard, and you’re succeeding, slowly if surely, but every new face is a reminder of the one you lost. The ones, you lost, but his, most of all. The fighting, the screaming, the crying, and in all of it, the one thing you should have done, you never did. It’s impossible not to wonder how it would have gone. You think, sometimes, someone should have physically stopped you from leaving, and you wonder constantly what would have happened if instead of leaving, you’d clung to him. If in all the fighting and screaming and crying, you’d stopped, you’d cut through it all, you’d grabbed hold of him and held onto him so tight that no force in this world or the next could have pried you apart, if that would have saved you, or him, or whatever broken attempt at love the two of you so desperately wanted with each other.

It’s for the best you never did it.

You know John will give him what he needs and wants, a thousand times over, a thousand times more than you ever could, even if you had done that. It’s better that you left, like a coward, again, and again, it’s better that you screwed it all up, it’s better that you shattered his heart and stomped on the pieces so violently that he’ll never come back, because he’ll be happier with John than you could ever make him in this life or the next. You can only give him that broken love that will never, ever be enough, not a candle to all the stars in the sky that he deserves to have someone give to him.

But that doesn’t mean that on nights like this, when the company of someone else reminds you what company is like at all, and makes you long for a feeling other than the one of sleeping alone, you won’t still think of him.