He couldn’t really concentrate, rain on the windscreen, deepening fog in the brain, covering traces of desperation and decay, of denial, and a most disastrous defeat at the Harbor. Cloaking him. Choking him. No breath came easy now, no beat of the heart; he could swallow what was left of his pride and turn to face her, silent, and ashamed, an empty man with empty eyes, expiring on the inside and dying to change. Change gears, change his mind, change something to make all the pain go away.
It took a while for him to speak, for him to react, and at first he supposed she was going to strike him, and so clutched at the wheel til his knuckles turned white, lightning above and beyond him and so quick that nothing could catch it. But between her fingers was a scrap of paper with a peculiar address, someplace he recognized on the other side of the city. But he didn’t know what to make of what she’d said.
“You’re… sorry?” the words left his tongue like a coat of heavy metal, and he stared in suspicion, his crooked teeth showing–not a snarl, not a smirk… Just a somber expression, trying too hard to focus–on her movements, her face, the writing on the paper slip.
It was strange to him; it didn’t sound right. Burton was used to being given orders, not concessions, and now he struggled to process truth and reason and whatever she’d meant. If she’d even meant anything at all.
Almost hoping the thunder would smother him, and he bowed his head to his breast, his voice nothing more than a washed out wraith of a whisper. Fragmented.
“Don’t you suppose-” a pause, “-that I’m the one who should apologize?”
Lollygag would have wanted him to say it… and that was the very least he could do.
For there was little to the plague born inside him that had killed his courage, and the will to fight. Just a boring, and recurring onslaught of pain, and he was so, so tired of it all. Was left powerless; the water on the car roof rattling to a rhythm he was all too familiar with, only the constant cries of a circling storm.
Caught in the middle, he reached for the parchment, noting the numbers across it, and pushed his foot down on the pedal. The old vehicle hacked and crept gently forward, braving the rain, and the cracks in the pavement, to the edge of the lot where he stopped it again and looked at her.
“And you’re sure about this?” one brow settled, the other lifted, very little to his voice. He held the paper against the steering wheel with one thumb. “This area code is for the Grün Region. You know, it’s mostly a wreck now, after, erm-” After Alpha had set the Leogator on its Zoid-hunting rampage. Richter Scale had wanted to rebuild it–to rebuild all of Blue City, but he thought better of mentioning her brother in front of her. Not now, at least. “Never mind.”
He was still doubtful, afraid, and hesitated after nudging one foot down on the pedal, steered the car toward the corner of the block. The traffic light flashed, red, gave him time to think and steady himself while his gaze wandered slowly over slopes of city streets in the distance.
“Turn on the radio, if you wish. It’ll be a while.”
Then he feared he’d said too much, and fell into a stubborn silence. Just the car engine and thunder crashing while he drove, signs that told him to slow and to stop, and not to turn other directions–there was one way to drown and to come up for air, and one steady, snaking path through flanking walls of long-aged shadow. Filled with rusted, ancient faces. Like the buildings were bending over to turn their backs on him.
For a long while, he just watched the road and the dials on the dashboard that nodded back and forth and were always predictable, pointing at numbers. But they couldn’t turn back the time. And again and again he glanced at their reflections in the wind shield and remembered how they’d scheme and laugh together, then make answers from nonverbal cues, subtle, and slow… Just the way things used to be.
He was sick of all the secrets, and of stupid, twisted mind-games. Alpha had told him to kill her at the Harbor, but he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, and he wondered again if she was trying to off him now, or lead him into a trap. He could end up back in jail, broken, forgotten. Maybe he deserved it–maybe he’d never make it out alive–maybe this was all a foolish sport of make-believe, dead-end dreams and some bigger scheme he’d no idea of. Always the pawn. Always expendable. Always putting his neck on the line.
He would risk it for Lollygag. He’d give anything. Everything.
And his heart- the damned thing- was pounding faster while he tried to force away another question that had been hounding him from the start, pressing and piercing him from all angles. At the next light, he could have coughed out his lungs and managed some way around it, forming soft words instead, for it couldn’t possibly hurt anymore, not between the bladed bones of his ribs, not in his throat, where the sentences caught and he could feel his own pulse amid the beat of the rain.
“Sandra-” Whether or not she’d answer him was up to her. He told himself he wouldn’t care either way… understood, deep down, that was a lie, and cursed at every breath he took. Blunt, but gentle.
“-I need to know why you’re doing this.”
For now there was just the whine of traffic and the sinking, blackened road.