the world takes. parker knows this. parker has always known this. 

she's lost a home before. it was a broken home, sure, but it was still home. one of the only ones she's ever known. it had looked different, the breaking, than this. when she'd walked through the door as a kid and saw all the blood (so, so much blood. the first time she learned a body could hold so much.) and hadn't been able to think. 

just stare blankly.

but this is a different sort of wreckage. the sight of it doesn't make her angry. hell, it doesn't even make her feel sad. not really. it makes her feel sick. 

like all this time they've just been playing pretend. she thinks, as she steps around the soggy remains of their polaroid box, that she shouldn't have suggested all of this. shouldn't have reached for more. shouldn't have kidded herself into thinking she was destined for anything but the same bullet to the brains her parents got. 

"i always hated those squeaky chairs," she says, toeing the one kitchen stool that remains. 

Naomi Sato

☉

other people lost more. they don't deserve their grief. not when they had a hand in it. there are hundreds of others who never asked for this. fucking innocents. this is what they deserve, for thinking they could have their silly little picket fence house with their extra bedroom and room enough in the bathroom for parker to stretch her arms out really wide. 

"called my old landlord already," she says. "no one wanted the shithole so he's renting it back to me."

flat and non-negotiable. good-bye, life earnings. good-bye, blood money. they have insurance, yeah, but nomi's the one who insisted on it. she'll have to figure all that shit out. but whatever. they just need a place to sleep. nomi can come with her if she wants. 

she finds herself picking up the chairs anyway. they're basically plywood. no cushion. somehow still in one piece, albeit bloated. she thinks of sitting in it, and then thinks better of it. just wipes the top off of it and chucks some seaweed away. 

the kelp lands on a broken picture frame with a spongey FWACK.

"oh well," she says and kicks some rocks. "house broken. the end."

Naomi Sato

☉

this is maybe the closest she's come to ever imagining a life without nomi. it's when she's toeing at a piece of porcelain that somehow ended up where their back door was supposed to be. it crunches under her boot when she loses her balance and splits right in two, already weakened from getting tossed back and forth in their bathroom, taking a wholeass ride straight through the waterlogged floorboards, and splitting apart once it hit the ground.

and man, what a terrible life it is. 

she can't go back to that. she could never go back to that. her life was painted in shades of gray and angry red and nomi brought all the stupid, gay colors of the rainbow with her, and everything was good.

and even though everything is bad right now, it's not the worst it could be. it would be worse if she was completely, and utterly, alone.

so fucking hold her, you asshole.

her conscience can bark at her all it wants. it's like there are two parkers right now. one that's sitting in her heart, hammering at the walls, screaming at her to stop being an idiot. and the other has dick for brains and is currently sitting in the cockpit piloting UNIT JONES. 

"wahoo," she says with all the enthusiasm of a wet brick. "we'll go get a queen air mattress or something. i've slept on worse. but you'll lose maisey snuggles for a bit."

Naomi Sato

☉

right brain parker wants to mimic nomi's reprimand with baby speech, but left brain parker is where the dick-for-brains pilot is from and captain shithead makes her sigh and makes her frown and makes her shrug her awfully big shoulders at nomi. 

"i'm givin' solutions, nomi. no house? check, got us a place. no bed to sleep in? check, makin' plans so we don't gotta sleep on concrete."

she prowls around a little bit more, traipsing through the wreckage of where their second floor bedroom had crashed through the ceiling. all of their clothes are sodden and musty. ugh, damn it. avery got her that worn and torn shirt from sloppy sam's years ago. 

but shit, is that...?

she yanks aside a couple of broken boards and hauls a fat piece of concrete to the side. it crashes into their broken wardrobe, where all of nomi's dresses have spilled out in tatters. 

the bag is wet, but it's intact, and when she opens it, only a few of the marbles are cracked. they once sat in a bowl on the back of her toilet, interspersed with her mega stones (before nomi pointed out to her what those were). 

"damn. sal's old marble collection really is fuckin' indestructible." she shakes them out of the wet bag and tucks the marbles in her back pocket. the weight is a nice comfort. 

"anything else you see we can salvage?"

if she wants a fight, parker's not having it. 

Naomi Sato

☉

the marbles clank, clank, clank as she walks and it's ridiculously nostalgic. makes her think of late nights up with avery, playing with their dumb marbles in the dark, sal none the wiser and conked out on the couch after watching reruns of old soap operas. 

it was that first night. avery was talking too much, and parker was talking too little. she couldn't do it. her mouth would go all dry and she'd choke on some sarcastic comment, consonants too thick with the iron tang of blood. they had nowhere else to go, so they went to sal's. 

and he showed them the marbles. 

nomi ghosts past her. it's just the sounds of the two of them, glass crunching, debris shifting underfoot. and then a weight catches before it bursts; parker's shoulders sag. she doesn't have the right words to comfort her right now. she doesn't have any.

but she has the marbles.

so she tromps around, kicking a path clear. wood crunches. tchotchkes, unrecognizable, most of them broken or swollen with water, tumble away from her. the toe of her boot scrapes heavily against the ground, raking aside glass. 

she finds one of her old tees, wrings it out, and strips it into butchered cloths. it's not exactly string, but whatever. they can make due. 

then she goes to nomi, and she holds out three of the marbles. forgets, or doesn't realize, that one of them is an absolite, and she says, "you ever played this before?"

Naomi Sato

☉

"marbles," she says because she doesn't know it to have any other name. although her and avery called it jawball once or twice when sal hid the marbles and they were forced to raid his jawbreaker stash for replacements. that didn't stick, though. they liked the simplicity of marbles. 

that's what they are, that's what the game was. sometimes things just get to be simple.

parker's knees creak a little when she straightens. so much of her is still sore. there's pain with every movement, but she's used to that, and she's not one to complain. still, where she'd usually crouch to get a shot in, she just plops right onto the sodden floor - criss-cross, applesauce. 

the rest of the marbles from the bag are already in her makeshift circle. she tucks her biggest under her thumb, sizes up a shot, and flicks. 

it bounces into one and sends it, and another nearby, rolling up and over the torn fabric. she grins and scoops them. 

"you take your biggest marble. like yours would be this one - " she says, pointing to crux's absolite, "and you just shoot the rest of 'em outta the ring. go on. try."

Naomi Sato

☉

it's all they want. connection. through the blood and tears and the bodies piling up all around them, they want - no, need - a tether to keep them grounded. to keep them from absolutely fucking losing it. it's not about winning this silly, stupid game. this game that means the entire world to her because every clack makes her think of her sister's smile, of sal's laughter.

it's that spark of wonder in nomi's eyes when she completely whiffs it, about that vein of joy that splurts in parker's body when nomi looks at her, pink-cheeked and almost breathless. 

"yeah," she says and when nomi scoops it up again, parker catches her wrist before she can shoot again. she untucks her thumb, carefully readjusts, and says, "not so hard this time. just a little flick. yeah, you got it."

Naomi Sato

☉