hours creep forward, each minute an eternity in its own right. there is a smear on her phone screen, making it glitch as she tries to swipe it away, but it doesn't matter. no new messages. no new callbacks. no word. no nothing. just voices in her head, vying for dominance against the swell.

she's in his room now. had to go outside, get away from that sniveling little man, but when she stepped out and hit asphalt and a parking lot, she got stuck there. and then promptly unstuck, swearing as she traipsed through bushes.

found his room, jimmied the latch, nearly fell in. 

there for a couple hours more, thinking slateport fuckin' general right here. all they can, yeah. doing all they can. hooking him up 'n leaving him. 

her head's in her hands when the air crackles with psychic energy and her fingers flex on impulse. exhausted eyes peer through the cracks. then she jolts upright and crashes into nomi with little regard if she breaks her. arms become iron bars, the shaking palm a lock on the back of her neck, pained snarl made the sneer of a warden.

anything to make it permanent. anything to make it so she can't leave again. 

"two fucking days, nomes," she growls. 63 hours, to be exact. 

Naomi Sato

☉

and inevitably, as will always be the case, nomi eludes her grasp. no amount of wanting can keep the woman in her arms and the space she leaves behind is a jagged, empty hole. frustration makes her face pinch, makes her fingers clench up into knuckles, but with nomi gone she's left to stare straight at the man she put in the bed.

one by one, finger by finger, she relaxes. 

only two?

two agonizingly long days of not knowing whether the drk triad finally got her. or if that bitch councilwoman got her. or if any of their other fucking enemies got her. not knowing if her body was rotting in a ditch or if her ashes were made part of mt chimney as some backwards retribution for the life their side took. 

she collapsed in a chair like that once, leg flayed open from Cillian Quinn, and nomi had pulled out a medkit. fixed her right up. parker kneels down too, wants to take her hands to stop their shaking, but she removed herself with such violence before. 

she kisses her knees, brow creasing at her too-pale flesh, the way her veins look in the light (lavender?). she touches her calves, ghosts her ankles, and says, trying not to let it sound as hollow as she feels: "i'm here."

Naomi Sato

☉

it felt like weeks to her too, but she doesn't say that. how can you say that? how can she sit here and feel so sorry for herself? and just as quickly feel nothing with nomi quivering like a bird in front of her? warmth sifts through her hair, trying to draw her back.

she noses closer, cheek on her knee, and looks up at nomi as she looks out, over her, to the bed. to the aftermath of a monstrosity parker's tried for so long to keep choked down.

i love you.

there's no flinch, no wolfish grin, just a deep inhale and a slow, slow exhale. 

"i saw the unown after. the one you make watch me. you know what i did." it's not a confirmation. she knows the truth. which means nomi knows too. nomi saw it all. she says, "i love you," and "i think i would've killed 'im, nomes. i think i would 've killed him to get you back.

"and i don't know what to do, knowin' that."

Naomi Sato

☉

that's it, then. that's the truth of it. the cold revulsion she felt looking in the glass doors outside the hospital is going to be a constant now. that haunted, tired light in the back of her eyes. that's gonna be there too. she does not deign to question if it's worth it. 

that's not how these things work. life's shit and then you die, except sometimes life is brilliant. sometimes someone like nomi walks into your life and makes wading through all that shit worth living. 

and in their line of work, makes it worth killing too.

but - "i can't. i can't let us do that, nomes. can't let us be 's bad as that bitch council-lady thinks we are." i can't let you become a monster.

Naomi Sato

☉

"like hell we aren't," she snaps. the body in the bed says otherwise. or, would, if she hadn't mangled his jaw to all hell. they'd struggled getting him fucking intubated because of the mess she made. he's never gonna look the same. he's never gonna be okay again.

and the two of them? her soul blackens with each passing calamity. she's long past turning back, but what do you do when you can do nothing but walk forward into that darkness? when turning your back would mean losing all that's made you you. 

she turns her head, hides her face in nomi's lap, bunches her fingers in her shorts, and holds her tight because she doesn't know what to do. or how to help. she tried to tell her that it wouldn't work. they'll always be the enemy, burned in shades of purple and blue.

parker had always known this was inevitable.

she shifts her arm, shrugging away the phantom pain of her flesh sloughing off, and says, "but you're doin' this all to save everyone. save the world. so if violence is what y'need, nomes," she says and lifts her head, gathers herself, takes her beloved's face in her hands and stoops low, "then let's give 'em hell."

Naomi Sato

☉

she's kinda used to that. to not being enough. to being told she's not enough. she tries her best to get by - always has - but there are days when she still has to stoop to cover her debts. people she's gotta bruise. good people who don't deserve it. 

but the wheels need to keep turning and she's destined to remain the grease. 

she wants to say, you have others, but those others are mr nightmare one (Cillian Quinn) and mr nightmare two (Zev Harcourt) and all the varying degrees of crazy in between. why this side, nomes? why'd ya pick this side?

at least with their side, you know what you're getting. nothing like the councilwoman and her goddamn burning hands trying to burn down the world, one person at a time. 

she might be too close to the situation.

"then, cupcake, we're fucked." she kisses her. hard. rough. sloppy. and when she pulls away, she says, "but we'll give 'em hell before that anyway."

Naomi Sato

☉