She walks into the pub, knowing she will not forgive Gwen. She knows it with the certainty she knows Gwen won’t apologise, in fact. Or so are these the fickle thorns she holds close, sunken into the meat of her heart, now that the roses have withered away. What else does she have left, but thorns? It feels trite to cry about, too, now; loneliness, and betrayal, and all of this miserable sadness, all of it so utterly mundane, so easily seen coming, yet always striking with a shock. The understanding she sees etched into a face she has trusted, and trusted, and trusted — admired, adored, allowed close to the fragile shards she keeps mostly to her own self — and all she smells is a rotting sweetness that haunts her. That will haunt her. All she feels is fucking stupid. Besides, of course, the vindictive fury that tempts dismissing the path Gwen leads, and instead obliterating the pub till it is all rubble and debris left to be fixed back up with all of Death’s pathetic blood money. She is sick, sick to her fucking stomach, because it feels like no big deal at all to follow Gwen upstairs, everything from the merry jingle of the keys in her hand to the tread of her feet, familiar to her as any home ever could be.
It’s almost funny. ( You know, except for how it isn’t at all? ) Genie spent so much of her life trying to live a lie about who she was… and still, somehow, it astonishes her, just how believable a lie can be.
Over and over, she’s turned it around in her head. Never meaning to, always grappling with, her thoughts swirling towards darkness like suds down the shower drain in spite of her own devastation. She’s thought of Gwen’s face under PEST lights, left unveiled the mask she hadn’t worn, where so many other of them — her people, comes the thought coated in searing bile — had, like cowards with guns in their hands. She’s thought of the years of their friendship: the nights she’s passed out on the couch with her head in Gwen’s lap, deliciously buzzed and giggling over cartoons like children they never were and always will be; the camaraderie of trading stories of drunkard shenanigans ranging from hilariously iconic to mildly traumatic occurrences; the unspoken promise that there would always, always be this roof to wait out a storm. It may not have been profound, they may not have known every one of each others’ secrets… But Genie had never felt like a joke to Gwen. Not the way she does not. She’d never felt small with Gwen, never felt insignificant or powerless or belittled by Gwen. Not until three nights ago, at least.
And so, standing in the middle of the living room, clutching a bottle of Stolichnaya Vodka she wants to pour in its entirety down her throat, every bit as much as she’d be damned if she drank at all, she may as well be a stranger. Caustic satisfaction still needles from within at the halibut look on Gwen’s face, to watch her squirm, to witness proof that she, if only for a fleeting, meaningless moment in time, isn’t the only one with no idea what the fuck is going on. She listens to the graceless words she is offered without a word. Only blinks. Only drums neon green nails on clear glass in the nook of her cleavage, and watches Gwen perform, braced for proof that she does not believe anything that leaves that mouth anymore. She can’t be that stupid. She won’t be anymore.
“– What the fuck would it be worth anymore,” Genie says a question with an answer echoed in the hollow silence of her shadowed words. Vacantly, she sinks to the ground – crossed her legs, places the bottle on the ground, wrapped amidst her limbs. “I thought about just… setting this place on fire, honestly. Just block the doors with some shit like they do in the movies, wooden bar or some shit, ‘n just– burn it all down. You. This place. Whoever’s inside, who cares. Maybe I’d get a promotion if I finally offed someone. They tell me those kills are bigger than basic… fucking… morality, too, y’know. Doesn’t matter who, matters what they’re a part of, right? Not a person; a cog in a machine. A pawn. A– Whatever. Whatever the fuck you wanna call it.” Almost thoughtfully, her head shakes, gaze trained, still, all the while, on eyes she has no faith in anymore. Yet hers still search them. “Maybe that’d be stupid. But apparently, I’m so, so fucking stupid anyway, aren’t I? Maybe I wanna know, on a scale from one to ten, how stupid you knew I was– How… How blind—” No tears fill her eyes tonight. There is so much silence within Genie. So much emptiness, left in the wake of something important gouged out mercilessly. “But I don’t have questions. I know. You knew. I know you knew I was in Pestilence. Not hard to figure out, I never really hid it, never– never felt I had to, I thought. You were a loyal fucking patron at the club. You saw me deal plenty. You used me.” A nod. A swallow. “What, for intel? For entertainment? Or is this where you brainwash me into your cause?”
Never has she liked being faced with the consequences of her actions. Which, all things considered, is pretty fucking ironic in the case of Gwen Goldsmith, who has always attracted consequences like syrup attracts flies. And yet, for all her experience, she has not gotten any better at facing these consequences. So, it’s hard to look at Genie. This destruction had been calculated: it wasn’t just clumsiness, or drunken rudeness, or the kind of bout of destruction she was prone to because of the claws of childhood still stuck inside her. And while she had not befriended Genie with ulterior motive – she hadn’t even known of Death’s existence, when they had met – she had kept it up, had omitted scathing truth, had looked her in the eye after Ricardo had been murdered. It’s unlike her, in all truth: she isn’t snake-like, isn’t made for dishonesty.
Gwen Goldsmith is all heart, always has been, and now she stares at Genie, in her living room. At this girl that reminds her so much of herself, and she wants to look away. But like her mother holding her chin as a child, forcing her to look at the vase she broke, willing her to count the shards, she looks. And that heart, that sore fucking organ in her chest, wants to leap out and go away. Her anger is petulant, in a blame-avoiding way, in a way where she wants to look away from the results of her actions and pretend they are not there, at all.
Genie threatens the pub, then, and something grows tense in Gwen. She sinks her teeth into that. “If you want to hurt me, hurt me. Fuck. Slap me across the face, punch me in the tit, curb stomp me. But don’t lay your hands on this building. Yeah? Genie, really, I’ll fuck up your life if you fuck with my pub.” It’s not an entirely empty threat, she realises, and she does not like making it against the wiry thing across from her. But Gwen loves this pub like a mother supposedly loves a child, and she won’t let this, this fucking war, take it from her.
Her mouth opens to say something else, but she wires it shut, turns on her heel, into the kitchen, where she produces another bottle of liquor and one of many mismatched mugs. “Fuck Pestilence,” she says. “Fuck them for roping you in. I’m maybe in no place to say that, but fuck them.” Gwen shakes her head, then: “I’m no one’s fucking pawn.” She’d die before becoming that. She has joined Death by choice, offered her pub by choice, and will not see herself reduced to a puppet on Uriel’s strings.
She refocuses. “Sorry. Not the point.” Gwen pours whiskey in a mug, places the bottle on the kitchen table and tries to order her words in a way where they are convincing sentences and not just loose marbles. “Alright, no. No. Look, Genie, I didn’t know when we met. About Pestilence. About you. Death? It didn’t fucking exist yet, and if it did, I wasn’t a part of it. There was no motive in befriending you besides — besides the sincere shit of friendship that I won’t lament about now.” She takes a long sip from her mug. “But then I knew. I found out, yeah? I found out, through Death, after I joined — and maybe I should have cut you off, maybe that would have been kinder, but I couldn’t do that. Not when I care about you — look, fuck, all this sounds like bullshit, right? I know. I lied, I omitted truths, I’ve used people for intel, I can’t deny that, but with you? No.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t set out to use you. I like to think I never did, but I still roped you into the lies, still kept you in the dark. And it’s not — I want to say it’s not fucking personal, even it isn’t in a way, it’s all big picture, big future, et cetera bullshit. But that doesn’t change this.” She gestures between of them.
It’s not making sense. Gwen takes another sip, lets it burn a way into her body. With others she’s lied to, like Marcus, it’s easier. Easier to rationalise, easier to justify: Marcus, after all, had sold her plenty of lies himself. But with Genie, it’s hard not to see a martyr, a victim of circumstance, herself. This is pain she had caused. Simple as that. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry I lied, sorry I played you. I didn’t want to, but I don’t know if that matters. But I didn’t befriend you for intel or entertainment or any of that. I didn’t approach you like that. If it makes a difference.”
