#errorware

@errorware

           she hates spooks. 

the kid - he’s . . . if she had to guess past the alarmingly heavy bags underneath his eyes somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties , but it’s what she’s resorted to referring to him as - isn’t a spook either. not in the traditional sense. he’s a hacker and , as far as she’s concerned , he might as well be a spy. she does her best to keep her shit to herself , to keep a low cover and details to herself , but she has a solid hunch he has enough information on her to be a veritable pain in her ass.

putting a bullet in his head if need be won’t save her any grief , but it’ll make her feel somewhat better if and when the time comes. because it will.

there are certain inevitabilities in her line of work. someone fucking you and fucking you over is as common place as breathing or a bloody nose. she prefers to be the giver rather than the receiver , prefers knowing with a certain amount of comfortability that she’s orchestrated a situation in which she’s escaped unscathed. when it comes to spooks , when it comes to hackers , when it comes to people like the kid - people she can’t so easily get a firm grasp on of who they are , what motivates them , what they don’t want others to know - kennedy would rather not deal with them.

but they are as inevitable in her line of work as someone fucking you over. life and it’s little shitty ironies. 

the blue raspberry dumdum scrapes her teeth as she shifts it to one cheek , lackadaisical stance adopted as kennedy leans back against the pier railing - head tipped back to the winter sunshine while ghost sits obediently at her side , all but hugging her leg and undoubtedly eyeing the kid up. 

the time between seasons stretches on for eons. sharp change from the usual blink-and-you-miss-it siestas — this shit’s practically eternal, two years and still going. coffee cup’s announced, but that’s only gonna be a few days a year. other three hundred sixty whatever days are still empty-empty-empty, and jaylen’s alive, really and truly, and has nothing left to fight for.

she doesn’t really remember how to not fight. it’s been six years since she came back, now. longer back than she was dead. it’s been three years since the hall stars fought and killed a god and saved the league — so they say. (new boss, same as the old boss. coin hasn’t spoken up in a while, but jaylen has a thrumming paranoia under her skin. the shares of her debt were sold to someone. she has a bad feeling, and her bad feeling has a bad feeling, and she’s an endless sea of wrongness that’s only partially the fault of necromancy.) no games, just free time, and jaylen doesn’t know what to do with it all. her hands are empty without a ball in them. they curl into fists but it’s not enough.

so she ends up at elliot’s place. long way from san francisco, but being there for three years doesn’t mean it feels like a home; the only place that does is seattle, and half the garages still hate her — or worse, pity her, look at her like it’s such a shame she’s here instead of the happy-go-lucky jaylen she’d been when she was alive the first time, like if they just said the right thing she’d be back to normal. (what the fuck is normal anymore?) 

she’s been thinking about baltimore. she’s been thinking about the hall stars fight. thinking about how every time she forced herself to shift back between teams, swapping with that shelled pitcher guy from the crabs, it was death all over again. to be on a team of ghosts, one must be something less than alive. (common sense. still. everyone looked at her like she was being overdramatic when she collapsed on the mound the moment the game was over.)

the newspapers afterwards hailed her as the twice-dead jaylen, but she thinks it must be more than that.

and elliot knows the behind-the-scenes shit. elliot’s easier to talk to than most, for her. doesn’t judge or pity her for the things she’s done to stay alive. doesn’t really get the experience of being a blaseball player, either, but sometimes that’s better — she hangs out with mike and the elephant in the room is always whether the next eclipse is gonna lead to one of them dying again; hangs out with the lovers and it’s always them strategizing about inter-team relationships. hanging out with elliot is different. she can just show up, say some shit, and — well, he doesn’t know how everything works, but he knows more than she does about the behind-the-scenes, and she knows more about what it’s like on the field.

and besides. it’s siesta. it doesn’t actually have to be constant splorts talk, now.

               Darlene doesn’t have the same attachment to Coney Island that he has, and in retrospect, she questions if the person who had the attachment to this place was Elliot himself or if it was someone else entirely. But the point is, she has only been back once since they packed up the arcade and left town. 

They’re back, though. She didn’t ask Elliot why he had the sudden inclination to take the hour long train ride out to this dump, and she didn’t ask why he wanted her to come along. She assumed it’s something he talked about in therapy and leaves it at that.

They’re walking down the beach, and why did he think going to the beach, at night, in the middle of December, would be therapeutic?? This isn’t even a nice beach. Darlene tries to dig the toe of her boot into the sand, but the ground is hard. She settles for picking up a long stick and dragging it through the sand. She smiles, and her head nods forward slightly. 

“I remember in third grade, my class took a trip to the zoo. Mom didn’t want to cough up the fucking fifteen dollar fee or even sign the permission slip so I could go. The morning of the field trip, you gave me the signed permission slip and fifteen bucks you stole from Mom’s purse. I didn’t even really have fun at the zoo, but I remember the next day I swiped some cash from her bag so we could go to the movies.” She sticks a hand out, circling Elliot, stick dragging through the cold sand. “And I think maybe that’s how we’ve always been, you know?? Self-sufficient isn’t the right word.” She stands next to Elliot now, inside their small circle. “Resourceful. That’s the word I’m looking for. We’ve always been resourceful and that’s why we push forward when every instinct says to back down. Gotta stick it to the big man, even when the other little people are throwing away their shots. If we don’t stand up for them, who will??” 

Her smile falters some now. She drops the stick beside her and her numb hands go up to pull on her backpack straps. Coney Island doesn’t hold much significance to Darlene, but somewhere on that crusty old boardwalk sits a building where their little revolution started. I wish you could have been there. 

          Finding this new balance between independence and you are still allowed to lean on others to get by has been a challenge, to put it lightly.

Everything about it feels very paradoxical. Not just the balance in these two things itself, but the fact that Darlene had been and has been taking care of herself for a very long time. She’s been thinking about this a lot. She thinks about it as she walks back from the bodega to the apartment, the cans of newly acquired Arizona iced tea and Red Bull thumping into her lower back, the sound of Flipper’s little nails tapping against the concrete below. As much as she racks her brain, Darlene cannot recall a time where either of her parents cooked her breakfast or helped her with her laundry or gave her a ride to her ballet recitals. Elliot’s there, in earlier memories, making blueberry pancakes from a mix, picking her socks from his from a pile of clean clothes, holding her hand while they cross the street, but he, too, eventually fades, and then it’s just Darlene. 

So at what point did she construct this idea that she can’t take care of herself, that she does need people to take care of her?? Because even with this fantasy circling her brain, there are still clear images of Darlene doing things herself, and even more so, Darlene doing things for other people.

She stands at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the apartment building and she buries her face in her hands. There’s a lump in her throat and a knot in her stomach and a weight in her chest. She inhales deeply, and exhales. She blinks pending tears from her eyes and begins her ascent up the stairs. Perhaps, she wanted people so badly to care at least a little, that she had to convince herself she needed them, that she couldn’t do things alone, to justify asking for their presence. 

This is where that balance comes into play. Knowing when she can break down in front of others and knowing when she needs to be alone. It’s confusing. There’s no formula or flowchart or step by step list to refer to. “I’m back,” she announces as she opens the apartment door and unclips Flipper from her leash, and she flinches at the way her voice cracks. And it’s not a panic attack that’s building up in her chest. It’s something else. Overwhelming confusion and sorrow. She tries to appear busy. Kicks her shoes off. Drops her backpack on the floor. Hangs her coat up. But she can’t fool Elliot every time. He’s by her side. He rests a hand on her shoulder. He turns her to face him. Darlene’s trying to keep the tears at bay, but her eyes are already red and he’s already heard her speak. 

Elliot doesn’t ask any questions, just moves to wrap his arms around Darlene’s shoulders and pulls her in, squeezes her close, like she always does with him, and she’s quick to reciprocate the hug. It’s just tears tonight, from Darlene, and the occasional quiet sniffle. No hard, deep sobs that rack her entire body and leave her feeling like she ran a fucking marathon. She rests her chin on his shoulder and stares through blurry eyes out the window above the radiator. 

She’s uncharacteristically quiet for a long time. Just stands there in Elliot’s tight hold and lets herself shed a few tears. “I’m okay,” she manages to croak out. She moves an arm up to wipe her eyes with a sleeve but she doesn’t let go of Elliot. “I’ve just been thinking a lot. About stuff.” She scoffs quietly and manages a little smile as her eyes roll upwards to look at the ceiling. “I was planning on having a good cry in the shower, but I guess this is better.”