NO MORE SHAME / NO MORE FEAR / NO MORE DREAD

"I don't reckon love keeps count like that. It grows where it's wanted."

A small shrug follows. Men always seemed to think otherwise. They mistook possession for devotion, money for obligation, blood for entitlement. They could vanish when it suited them, then return years later convinced they still had a claim. Funny, really, how often they expected women to carry the weight they'd been so eager to put down.

SOMETHING SO POETIC, SO TENDERLY OPTIMISTIC, DOESN'T IMMEDIATELY COMPORT WITH HOW FELICITY SEES THE WORLD. On her good days, she'd love to be this encouraging and resilient. Sometimes, she surprises herself with how good at it she is. On other days—even if she isn't coming down, the consequences of her actions, her reckless decision-making, still weigh so heavily that she doesn't know how to be strong.

Felicity does nod, though—a bit emphatic. She has been thinking about Amelia for every single second that she can.

"What were your parents like?"

aria looked out the window. in certain lights or lack thereof—when passing a black car, when driving under the shadow of a billboard—he caught glimpses of her reflection: blurry, fickle, fractured. and behind it, his own.

ranta considered her answer and took it to mean yes: it hurt. it always did, always had. and someone had made her feel it, or else had made her make herself feel it while they counted the seconds. and now she was the one doing the feeling, the hurting, the counting.

in this, too, he recognized his reflection.

GROWING UP ZEN’IN, AS REMEMBERED BY R. ZEN’IN: are you alive? yes. does it hurt? yes. are you glad? [instead of an answer there is a helpless look.]

what colour is your blood? red. what colour is our blood? red. is it thickened? yes. what does blood make you think of? family. family. and the insides of eye sockets.

is it enough? sometimes. are you happy? sometimes. does it hurt? [instead of an answer there is a helpless look.]

will it get better? yes no yes yes.

' i’m sorry that it hurts. ' he said. and he was—for her pain, for his part in it. of course, what he was also doing (what he was really doing) was feeling sorry for himself. and because he was feeling sorry for aria-as-himself, he deluded himself away from his honestmost thought: that she (that he) brought her (brought his) pain onto herself (himself). and maybe even deserved it.

' i’m sorry about earlier. your arm … ' it seemed as if he might say more.

but then the traffic hit—or rather, they hit traffic—or rather, somebody had hit somebody else because of traffic. the car jerked to a stop; yanigawa leaned over the steering wheel, straining to get a better view. outside, the air was polluted with the noise of honking, yelling, and dozens of radios as doors were opened and windows rolled down.

aria and ranta, still reflections, turned their heads at the same time.

Aria's arm now occasionally tickles as her muscle tissue finds new places to repair or mend—subtleties in the harshness of the injury inflected so effortlessly by Ranta. She's felt worse, she keeps telling herself. There isn't even any blood—any sign at all that she's been injured except for Ranta's acknowledgment. She wishes he wouldn't do that.

Yanigawa shifts in his seat, but Aria does not pay him any attention. She has decided that he drives cars for people like Ranta because he does not have psychic abilities that render people paralyzed. She's more concerned about the kid who definitively can do that.

The kid who's not paying her any attention at all for one glorious split second.

Aria moves quickly. Due to having no respect for traffic laws and her reckless belief that any injury sustained by her in a car crash will heal eventually, she never buckled her seatbelt when Ranta did.

She lunges across the middle seat—where an armrest or console would be if either of them had thought to deploy it—and into Ranta's space. Her palm collides with the side of his face. She isn't smacking him. She's grabbing him, his very skull, with her freakishly long fingers. Solid grip.

She uses her hold as leverage to slam Ranta's head into the Toyota Century's tinted window.

This close to him, she can see where blood smeared and subsequently dried near the watery corner of his eye, above the bridge of his nose. Her nails scrape down his scalp across his face, cruelly exacerbating the wound she thinks exists in either his medial commissure or his lacrimal caruncle.

Firmly keeping him pressed against the window and now crudely cornering him with her entire body, her unoccupied arm hastily begins rummaging around in Ranta's pockets until she locates her knife. Aria deftly presses her thumb against the thumb stud, thus triggering the blade. She drags it harshly across her cheek, like she's more mad at herself than she is at Ranta, and as soon as blood begins to flow, she forms into daggers that target Ranta.

he won't roll his eyes at her. it's not cool. especially when she's been so sweet to him. but he does do that thing where he clenches his jaw and has to look away, towards eagly, towards the whisper of the ghost of his father, you fucking seeing this?

flag's face flashes through his mind and he grimaces worse, teeth grinding.

FROM WHERE SPIRIT STANDS, IT LOOKS AWFULLY A LOT LIKE CHRIS IS MAD AT HER.

She doesn't take the time to reason through why that isn't the case. She does, however, endeavor to make him less mad.

        DR. ONG'S DEEP-SEATED martyr complex imbues within him the firm belief his own arrogance is earned, unlike either Dr. Hayes. And while he has no appetite for fame and accolades, he does have an appetite for baiting his employer into potential casual xenophobia. ❝ Oh, my background ? ❞ he balks, feigning innocent offense. Thin fingers splay against his own chest. ❝ I wasn't aware you found my educational background to be lacking. That makes perfect sense, then, because I must be stupid to think any amount of degrees from overseas could ever compete with good ol' American ingenuity. You just make so many good points, ❞ he seethes, slamming his chair into his desk as he shoves it out of the way, ❝ that, y'know, I've been thinking, maybe you should be the one telling me what to do. Yeah, that's it. So you tell me, Dr. Hayes - ❞ and he rounds his desk, slinking forth as he puts his full height to good use.

She waits this out. His little rant—his convenient donning of victimhood in an attempt to make her squirm. It's becoming increasingly difficult to resist rolling her eyes. Instead, she blinks slowly.

Harold's more violent with the office furniture than Max or Kingsley would ever conceive of being. This is not to say that they are objectively rational and polite men by any stretch of the imagination. Harold's so outrageously volatile that he makes the other manchildren he works with look damn good, though.

With that in mind, Jacqueline's not used to being intimidated in such close quarters. She grinds her teeth—jaw tightening, muscles in her neck fluttering. The sound of the chair cracking against the desk sits with her longer than she would like.

"You know that isn't what I meant. Don't waste your time ranting to me about things that didn't happen—things I didn't say. I know how precious and valuable your working hours are." With that in mind, she seems to realize:

"So I shouldn't keep you." She smiles coldly as she steps back, turning as if to leave.

INTERLUDE: aria’s attempt to sew doubt. ranta’s i-have-spoken-and-therefore-it-is-so silence. in japanese, tanigawa asks where to go and ranta responds: i don’t know. ( did she understand the question? ) yeah, she understood the question. ( she’s taking a long time to answer. ) she’s like that, i think. ( slow? ) particular. ( you shouldn’t have asked her; you should have just decided. ) i don’t want to decide. besides, i’m being nice. ( she isn’t. you see how she hits the seat with her legs? ) she’s pretty tall, isn’t she? ( no consideration at all— ) aria’s eventual answer is what interrupts tanigawa, but a gesture from ranta is what silences him.

in the raised and dismayed octave of skepticism: ' pizza? ' he knew this because there were signs everywhere advertising sliced pieces, diced tomatoes, bloody sauces, and bits of mystery meat that could be anything.

' of course. as you wish. ' pizza was an uncivilized food. it didn’t surprise him that it was aria’s dinner of choice. she seemed like someone who—some-body that—needed something to sink her teeth into, to tear apart.

he tells tanigawa to please drive. ( where? ) into the city. ( she didn’t give you an address? ) i told you: she’s like that. just head downtown. she wants pizza from one of those best-in-america places. ( as you say, mr. zen’in. ) thank you, mr. tanigawa.

the car pulled into the street, out of the block, and away from this disenfranchised borough of a borough that was new york by association rather than proximity. while waiting on red, tanigawa turned on the radio.

She did not expect him to want to go to a hole-in-the-wall for pizza. In fact, she expects him to delicately blot the grease off of his slice of choice—if he manages to stomach the thing at all.

She sinks back into the seat, really makes herself at home. The Century's still got new car smell, which means they either just bought this thing to drive around harassing the various mutants of New York City, or Mr. Tanigawa is diligent and tidy. Both things could happen at the same time, too.

Aria resigns herself to not understanding anything that gets said, and she does not humiliate herself by demanding a translation. She either has faith that Ranta and his driver will figure this out or wants to watch them suffer and toil.

Aria stares out the window. Tanigawa has to enter the highway to take a meandering route into the city proper. And Ranta has to ask irritating questions, apparently.

"Someone else has," she mutters. She stares out the window even more pointedly. Ranta's eyes creep her out, and any emotion that flickers across her face right now is, frankly, none of his business.

"Everything hurts. Everyone feels pain. Even if they don't think they do because their body's never been hurt, they've never broken a bone as a kid, whatever—you can make them feel it."

This is not a very good answer, but look at what he's asking and who he's asking it to. She won't give him the satisfaction of acknowledging she feels pain and the discomfort of nearly-spontaneous healing with no buffer, no mercy given by her mutation. He's clearly only asking to be a sadistic little freak. Why'd he ever be curious enough about her to realize she's useful to have around?

it would change nothing. he had a job to do, demands to follow, expectations to fulfill. and whether aria borden thought he was a coward didn't matter at all, because she may be extraordinary, but her opinion ultimately still meant very little. which did not mean that she wasn't right—and in fact proved that she was.

ranta trailed behind her, taking care not to step onto cracks, into puddles, or through washed-out anthills. he missed the transition between when she was talking about her father and when she began talking about him. none of this, he thought, had anything to do with him. he let aria exercise her profanity and rage and considered himself very charitable for doing so, for taking on the role of unlikely (though not unwilling) confidant.

the way ranta understood it, mr. wiseman was a loser on the path of redemption. and also a stalker. which was a misunderstanding that he would deem a failure on the part of aria's poor communication skills rather than his own selective listening skills—if only he were aware of said misunderstanding.

as he was not, he stared at the back of her head with an i-am-loftily-overlooking-your-provocation expression and said nothing. occasionally, instead of looking at her hair, he looked at her pale and twitching hands or her scuffed and stomping boots.

' yes, ' he said as they turned the corner, faced the car. ' no, ' he said about the car-nies.

and then aria couldn't move.

ranta walked around her to open the door, exchanged words with the driver in quick, emotive japanese, and then released her again. he stood back—further than at the gas station—and beckoned aria to get it.

' please. after you. ' this time, he did not make the mistake of smiling.

' this is tanigawa. he doesn't speak english, but he says hello, and to tell him if you need anything. ' he was mostly making that up, and mostly because he knew that aria could not verify the information one way or another.

"Oka—"

Abruptly, rudely, Ranta cuts Aria off, thus preventing her from maliciously dragging out the last syllable. What she would have said is: Okaaaaaaa-yuh. It would have been an efficient way to convey her disdain—even her distrust. She has no reason to accept Ranta's words at face value because she doesn't trust anybody until they've really earned it.

Maybe you believe that or maybe you don't. The truth is that Aria is still climbing into this fuck-you-fancy vehicle. When Daniel's needed her to travel for jobs, figuring out how to get to point a from point b had been on her—unless Vincent was also helping out, of course, and then she'd be kicking her legs up onto the dashboard of whatever fuck-you-fancy vehicle he'd bothered from his father's assortment. Anyway—as far as Aria's concerned, she's not doing a job for Ranta—or for anybody on earth, what with having abandoned that gas station to the known mercy and benevolence of the average New Yorker.

"Do I have a preference on dinner?"

What Ranta has asked is not a stupid question, but Aria would like for him to think that it is. She gets comfortable in the backseat, which is not an easy place to get comfortable when you've inherited Rhett Wiseman's legginess. Her knees bump against the back of the passenger seat.

She doesn't say anything for awhile. Then, she realizes that due to this, Tanigawa does not know where to take them.

Dolores hopes that Dafne didn't notice the microscopic flinch her jarring laugh elicits. It's nothing personal and she's gotten better about it over the years, but some sensations stick with her. The smell of laughing gas invading her senses. The high pitched whirring of an old drill. The shrill, ear piercing laugh of a dead man. She takes a deep breath. Piles of wet curls slough off her head and already she feels like a massive weight has been lifted from her shoulders. If hair stores memory, she's glad to be rid of the dead ends. "Yeah? What do you recommend," she asks, still picking away at the upholstery from underneath the cape. "I feel like I've tried just about everything and nothing seems to keep me from frizzing out." She'd like to avoid looking like a Chia Pet if she can help it.

When Dolores exhales, though, Dafne does acknowledge that it's because Dafne is taking too long or behaving inappropriately. She focuses on the task at hand, which has a calming and stabilizing effect. She does love her job—and when she and Dolores find harmless common ground, they can maybe hold a lovely conversation!

his first instinct was to push aria away. not to hurt her, per se. though that would of course have been the consequence—and justified. his second instinct was to kick her, splinter apart her shin in such a way that would bring her to her knees, or at least to some level below his own. his third instinct, and ultimately the one he acted on—the one he understood to be his own and not some facet of his father that he'd come to inherit—was to stand very, very still.

there was murder in aria's face: the curl of her lip, the crease of her nose, the hot expulsion of her breath, unsavoury. but there was murder in ranta's eyes, and it was not new, it was not novel, it was not reactive. it was there, just the same as it always was. only that most people did not stand close enough to see it.

he did not allow anybody stand close enough to see it. but aria hadn't asked permission. worse: she seemed to believe she didn't need it.

when she finally stalked away, the poster in his palm was a crumpled, strangled mess: a result of some subconscious fourth instinct. he exhaled, brushed off the parts of his clothes that he suspected she might have touched, or had merely gotten too close to, and followed her. on his way past the pump-two garbage can, he threw out the poster.

' mr. wiseman? ' his voice had an edge to it. ' we did. ' well, he didn’t. but somebody else had, and so they all had. or at least anyone who was worth knowing, capable of listening, and allowed to speak. which didn't amount to all that many zen’ins.

' he is ... ' theatrical? entertaining? precisely the sort of man you'd expect to ringlead a circus? ranta settles for diplomacy rather than detail: ' he has a presence. '

as did aria. though the apple seems to have fallen backwards off the tree, rolled down a hill and under some thorny bushes, and started to go bad. or possibly had sprouted that way: already rotten and sheltering a worm or a wasp.

all of this which he also, politely, did not say.

Just a teeny-tiny fuckin' coward who's never had to fight for anything in his short life. Not like Aria has. Of course, any fight Aria has had to engage in, and subsequently win, has ultimately been one that she started all on her own. Even when she was a little girl, this is how it went. This is how it will always go.

And she'll heal, of course. From various batterings and beatings—from having her shin shattered, even, if Ranta were formidable enough to do such a thing.

As far as Aria's concerned, he isn't.

Aria listens to the grating sound of Ranta's voice, to his pathetic footfalls. She still doesn't know where she's going, but she sure as hell appear to have a purpose.

"Don't call him that," Aria mutters, which is what she would have muttered no matter how Ranta referred to Rhett Wiseman. Any reference to the man is completely distasteful—even if it is necessary, as it is here and now.

Aria rolls her eyes. Spectacularly, she rolls them a second time right after. Jaw swinging and creaking where her mandible attaches to her maxilla, she glances behind her so she can follow Ranta's directions. They traverse the block and round the only available corner to round without any further snips or quips from Aria.

She really doesn't like the sound of Ms. Borden, is the thing.

"I cannot fucking believe that guy!" she finally blurts, seething at nobody actually present to experience her wrath. "He's a loser, and his obsession with his fucking—redemption arc is creepy. It's sad. He sucks at it, too! Obviously! 'cause what the fuck are you doing stalking me and stuff?"

She thinks to check her phone for the first time in hours, but she doesn't want to have actual knowledge of Rhett directly reaching out. She doesn't want the distraction around Ranta, either.

"This your ride?" She points, head tilting. The Toyota Century is running—perhaps to provide Ranta's abandoned driver the luxury of air conditioning on a day as insufferably hot as today.