TIMING: April 13th LOCATION: WR Hospital & Seven Peaks PARTIES: Nova (@punchalot) & Daiyu (@bladesbounties) SUMMARY: Following her scrape with Paddington, Nova gets medical attention. Lacking the funds to get home, she calls Daiyu.
Nova spent the last of her wrinkled, mud-spotted cash on a phone charger, which she jammed into the wall of the hospital lounge, waiting for the cracked screen to glimmer to life. She winced at her own reflection. There was a point of injury in which things could only be described in childish abstract terms: her face looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to it; the various bandages and wrappings on her body were puffy like marshmallows; her bruises were watercolor splotches on her skin. The longer she looked at herself, the more unreal it seemed. If not for the constant throbbing, she’d think it was all make-up. Her wounds weren’t that bad, which was a cushioning way of saying nothing was broken.
Her phone jumped to life with a shrill ping—in the seconds it took for her to tap on her notifications, she imagined a great flood of everything she was missing out on: plans, texts, funny images, dates (which she wouldn’t accept, but liked having). And while she was at it, imagining her life to be greater than it was, why not Ellen Ripley realizing that, despite being completely fictional, she was in love with Nova—and also a million dollars plopped down into her bank, tax-free? There was a Happy 29th Birthday! from Gmail of all places, and nothing else. Maybe it wasn’t so bad tech companies had all her information, at least they could offer her perfunctory birthday wishes. It was a childish thing, anyway; expecting the balloons, candles, and cake. Real adults counted on Google Calendar to remember that they’d been born.
Whatever. It was fine. She wasn’t all that happy about it, anyway. She barely cared. It was all just a day. She could spend another one in the hospital, alone.
Nova picked at her wristband. She needed to get home—which was to say, she needed to get back to her crumpled lump of a van. She wanted a shower, to feel the hot spray down her sore muscles, the pressure pelting her tingling skin—she didn’t even own a fucking shower. The last of her money was plugged into the wall right now and she didn’t need to open up her banking app to understand the state of her finances. Thoughts of her impending medical bill coiled inside her stomach and Nova bent over to find she couldn’t move her elbow without being shocked by pain. She needed an uber, or a cab—she couldn’t even afford a coffee right now. So, she needed to call someone.
But, burned into the front of her skull, was the image of her father’s gaunt face and wrung-out body. She wrinkled her nose, as if the whiskey and plaque reek of his wheezing breath was here. She swallowed just as her memory of her father creaked down to his knees, hands clasped. No daughter should ever have to see her father beg. What Nova needed was someone who wouldn’t ask and, hopefully, wouldn’t care. Someone who was up at this hour, someone with a car, someone who liked her enough to show up but not enough to scream about the state she was in. What she needed was right there, alphabetically sorted under near the top of her contacts.
She tapped Daiyu’s name.
“C’mon. C’mon.” What would she do if Daiyu didn’t answer? Cry? Cry, probably. The call clicked. “Hey!” Nova’s voice cracked. “So sorry to call you in the middle of the night. I have a bit of a—Well, I was wondering if you could—I need…” Nova sighed. “Could you pick me up from the hospital?” There was something a little embarrassing about asking, like a kid wanting to know if mommy would come pick them up from a party that was getting a little too loud. “It’s just, y’know, don’t want to pay an uber.” Nova laughed nervously. “It’s no big deal if not.” She was talking so fast, she hadn’t let Daiyu get a word in. “It’s just, y’know, I can walk even. Don’t even know why I called.” Nova limped out of her seat, biting her split lip so she didn’t scream at the pain of putting her foot down. She grabbed the crutch and tucked it under her arm, leaning on it.
—
Daiyu could not sleep. For all the ways she had trained herself to fall asleep under and all circumstances (on some hunts, you never knew when your next sleep would be after all), she seemed to have forgotten all the methods. Being in her bedroom made it so that she had no view of her front door, and being in her living room kept her from keeping all her windows in the bedroom in check. Sleeping soundly when she was thinking of all the ways someone might enter the place she called home was a no-go, a lost cause. She kept thinking of Talia on her living room floor and how close she had gotten to finishing her off. How if she had succeeded, she might have slept more soundly. (Or how she might not have, considering the people who might stand at her door in stead.)
So she had set up shop on her couch. She’d installed new safety guards. She watched the screen of her television flicker with a rerun of a television show she’d seen three times over. She had her hands dug in Nugget’s fur. The taste of Red Bull stuck to her palate, sticky and sugary. On her lap laid a notebook with a messy overview of her finances, an attempt to figure out how many bounties she had to go after to make ends meet. Cheeto dust stuck to one of the pages.
When her phone rang, her body jolted in a way that she could only permit in the sanctity of her own home. Not that there was much left of that sanctity now, but even so, she was alone and unwitnessed, and so it should be accepted for now. Nova’s name blinked up at her, her eyebrows creased. Even though the other had officially branded their scrappy agreement as ‘friendship’, she didn’t expect a late night phone call from the other. Her mind hitched on a few worst-case scenarios, all of which had to do with Nova being part of a grand conspiracy against her.
Daiyu picked up and her mind hitched again, this time on its selfishness. Nova sounded different from her usual self. Reading emotions wasn’t her strongest asset, but the crack in her voice could not go unnoticed. Words fell into her ear like a waterfall, Nova’s words clattering against her auricle. She muted her television halfway through the story and was somewhat caught up by the end.
“Jesus,” she muttered. Swiftly, her mind flicked to her time in the hospital, and how unwilling she had been to have someone help or visit her. The memory was then discarded, that event more than one and a half year ago now and so no longer relevant, if it ever had been. “You sound like shit.” She wondered what had attacked Nova. A vampire, perhaps, or some kind of beast. Probably a worm, knowing her luck with the creatures. She looked down at Nugget, who was looking up at her with a questioning look on his face. She wasn’t sure why she was looking at her dog as if he would have the answer to what to do, because deep down she knew. Deep down, Daiyu would like to help her friend, but somehow she was prone to making that seem more convoluted than it was. This could be a trap, she was aware of that, but she did not want to be the person who ditched their friend at a hospital because she was seeing danger in every corner. She cleared her throat and got up. “Stay put. I’ll come.”
—
“I don’t sound like shit,” Nova warbled, sniffling. She was getting to the blubbery stage of crying—all limp and liquid. She braced herself for the inevitable denial—in Daiyu’s silence, was the truth Nova was so certain of. Daiyu would say “no”, and within that “no” all of Nova’s fears would be confirmed and in that confirmation, some allaying of burdensome hope. Uncertainty was an unwelcome house guest in her life; maybe a psychologist would tell her this was a childhood wound, some old needs that fell on deaf ears and so she’d pressed into her body a stone that said no one could ever help her, and that no one ever wanted to. Her stomach was gnawed at until Daiyu’s voice rumbled through her phone: “Stay put. I’ll come.”
If Nova wasn’t already crying, she would’ve started. She hung up and lunged—and winced—for a tissue. She wiped her face. Uncertainty clawed at her—the worries were doubled, tripled, so many more ways Daiyu could hate her—but at least she didn’t have to shamble around alone at night. She did, though, hobble out of the hospital. She wanted to scream—“I have a friend! Look everyone! I have a friend who cares!”—but she worried the crying would start up again. With her crutch clicking against the ground, she walked through the parking lot and towards the street. She didn’t want to make Daiyu have to pull inside—it seemed bothersome. She definitely didn’t want to make Daiyu pay for parking—hospitals were tiny robberies at every corner. She was pretty sure they’d charge her for the disposable scrubs she was in, but she wasn’t the one that claimed her clothes were a biohazard. She was a paper sheet crinkling and grimacing with every step. By the time she got to the curb, she felt worse than she did in the lounge.
She waved at Daiyu’s Dodge Ram. Smiling was important, she had to smile. She had to look OK, despite the bandages, the limping, the bruises, the stitches, the throbbing pain squeezing every inch of her body and the exhaustion which perched on top of her like a vulture made of lead. Nova hobbled to Daiyu’s passenger side when the car slowed. “Uber for Nova?” She asked, smiling, opening the door. “Kidding. Please don’t charge me for this.” She stared at the seat. The thing about trucks was that they were really off the ground—it wasn’t a seat so much as it was a mountain. But she was OK, she was fine, nothing had happened to her—nothing more than any of her usual scrapes! She whimpered as she threw herself into the seat, tears prickling the edges of her eyes. “I got it!” she said. “Thanks for doing this, Daiyu. I owe you…” She winced, adjusting herself. “I owe you a… burger. Or like, seven.” She smiled as wide as she could, her fresh stitches straining, her tight and sore skin screaming at her.
—
She was glad that Nova cut the call, that she did not want Daiyu to hang onto the line as she drove over as some poor source of comfort. Not that she would have agreed with something like that, but if she had been the one to end the call when the other still needed something from her, she would have felt that pathetic guilt that came with being a shit friend. She did not want to be a shit friend right now, even if she was not sure how to be a good one. Moving from her couch to put on her shoes the moment the phone ended was probably a good first step, as were the ones that followed. Getting a few (sort of) clean and comfortable clothes for Nova, throwing some food and a juice in a bag, and then getting into her car.
The drive was swift, the roads mostly empty at this hour. Intending to pay the stupid parking fee and go get Nova from wherever in the hospital she was holed up, Daiyu almost missed the other standing at the edge of the street. All the subconscious preparation she had done to return to the place she’d stayed in after Cass had attacked her was for naught and she was glad of it. She did not want to smell the bleach, hear the squeaky linoleum or be confronted with the bright, white lights of the hospital once more. Pumping the breaks, she squinted at Nova, who waved at her with a smile that looked pathetic. The only thing that would have made the whole display worse, was if she was holding one of those ‘Get Better!’ balloons.
As she wondered if she should get out and open the door for Nova, the other was already hobbling over. Daiyu felt useless behind her wheel, watching Nova quip and joke in a way she recognized from her own behavior. Being on the receiving end was making it all seem quite desperate. “First ride’s free,” she offered in response, trying to ignore her ability to reflect on herself and Nova. She had no need for metaphorical mirrors. Or actual ones, for that matter. She just took in the other’s injuries quietly and tried not to think about all the ways most of her friends tended to get hurt, but how she was mostly okay with it, as it came with their territory. But Nova wasn’t a hunter, who periodically got hurt. She was… just Nova. She felt discomfort crawl at the base of her neck as Nova got into her car, seemingly struggling with every inch she moved. “Don’t … no need. What happened?” She looked her up and down. “You … in trouble?” She reached for the bag in her backseat. It was an old take out bag, the logo blasted on the front of the plastic bag. “I got … juice. And dunno, some protein bar situation. Whatever. And clothes.” She frowned even deeper. “Those hospital gowns get itchy.”
—
Nova held the bag in her hand, the plastic rustling. Her fingers over the handle trembled and thinking it was the weight, she set it down in her lap. Her hands, laid on her thighs, continued to shake. She couldn’t make herself smile. Slowly, she opened the bag; as Daiyu had said, there was a bottle of juice and a protein bar laid on top of some extra clothes. She hadn’t asked for any of it. Nova swallowed. Oh no, Daiyu was being nice to her. She’d worried this might happen: with the being friends thing, and the asking her to come pick her up thing—which was itself nice. It wasn’t that she’d disliked Daiyu before—she liked Daiyu, but the affection was untested and therefore, preferable. She could like people up and down and up as long as it was inside her head. When it came time—inevitible—to drop them or be dropped by them, her pain was insular and therefore, safe. She didn’t want to put it outside herself, to have it live on her skin, in the air, inside another person.
She looked at Daiyu, lit by the streetlamps and the moon: this woman she had expected nothing from; not in a personal way, but in the way she expected very little from anyone. People were always good, she just never expected them to be good to her—as though she didn’t count as a person. She was sorry for thinking Daiyu would show up, ask no questions, and drop her off in the middle of the woods without any of that messy, inevitable human reality of care. She wanted to explain she didn’t mean anything by it—not that Daiyu was even privy to her thoughts—just that, when it came to herself, she didn’t think she’d be cared for a juice, protein bar, and spare clothes amount. Every act of kindness, no matter how plain, was a mountain to her and she never knew where to put them. Kindness was terrifying. Because she wanted it, because she needed it, because she didn’t deserve it—and she knew, out of all the people in the world, it was dramatic of her to think she didn’t deserve so much as a bottle of juice. Even her sadness wasn’t deserved. She was sorry, always very sorry.
She didn’t have the strength to confess her desire to be human—to subject herself to the complexities of life. These things could exist outside of herself, distant. The inside of her was for the familiar pains, which had been her friends for a long time. Cowardice took many forms, Nova would know: point to any spot in her life, and she’d been practicing at least one version of it. So, anyway, back to the mitigation. It wasn’t lying exactly, just distracting herself—think not of the juice!
OK, so, there was Daiyu, and Daiyu had some questions—gross!—but a little endearing? The stilted way Daiyu was asking after her was, unfortunately, very cute. It reminded Nova of awkward, grumpy old men. Daiyu seemed to be one step away from patting her on the shoulder and telling her to hang in there, sport. Nova snorted—the more she thought about it, the more adorable it seemed to her. And so, she thought about it. She pictured Daiyu in an old-man-certified newsboy cap—rocking aggressively on her chair, threatening to beat the local kids up—and laughed. Which hurt, but it was preferable to crying, which the plastic bag was whispering to her to do. She resisted the urge to pinch Daiyu’s cheeks.
“I love random protein bar, how did you know?” she asked. “Is it a little expired? I only like them when they’re dubious.” She leaned down into the bag, which smelled of takeout food still, and laughed harder. She hoped the smell would seep into the clothes and make her burger scented. She took the protein bar out. “This expires in… 2045?” She scoffed. “Well, now I’m concerned about whatever chemicals are in here.” OK, good. This was totally normal; Daiyu wouldn’t suspect a thing. The overly-dramatic, drain-circling, tar pit of her mind was invisible! As it should be. No one look. Get this internal monologue out of here. “Oh, right.” She cleared her throat. “Yeah, actually, massive trouble. The guinea pigs are after me; apparently you can’t just”—Nova lifted her fingers in the air, and curled them into air quotes—”’take all the hay’. They’ve sent the whole herd, Daiyu. I need to go into guinea pig-witness protection.”
Knocking her head back against the car seat—Ow—she grinned. “Thank you for the stuff,” she said, unable to even name the items in the bag—thinking about the juice made her voice wobble. “And if you want to know, it was the usual: it’s Wicked’s Rest. I’m not in trouble. Can’t even spell trouble. T-R-O-O-B-E-L? See.” Perfect execution! Ten out to ten. “Can you take me to Seven Peaks? Just the road going up into the mountains—y’know the road. You’ll see some skid-marks and a tree kinda knocked over. Just drop me there!” So OK, so alright, so doing-just-fine. Look! See!
—
She was not used to being the one people called for this kind of help. Sure, Daiyu was the speed-dial contact when you had a monster problem, or when you needed a beast culled. Eve had called her to help her clean that horrifying torture scene, but she had not expected any emotional or caring support from her. Was this like this? Had Nova called her because she could be expected to drive and deliver, with little strings attached? She had no mothering instinct, no intentions to coddle the other. She would not be offering her couch (unless it was really necessary) or stroking Nova’s hair as she told her whatever had happened. But even so, this was something she was doing for free, and even that was a touch out of character. A favor, with nothing expected in return. She preferred it that way. Owing favors made her skin itch, after all.
Nova was digging through her poorly packed bag of little things. A crinkly thing, that smelled of deep fried food and too much salt. A shitty attempt at trying to help, really, and for a moment she felt embarrassed as she watched Nova took stock of what she’d brought. Someone like Jade would have done it more properly, she was sure of it. Even so, Nova was chattering on as if she was trying to fill the empty space in the car with floating words and Daiyu was glad for it. She gripped the steering wheel and laughed with little passion.
“I bought them to prepare for the oncoming apocalypse. I’ll never starve,” she pointed out dryly, glad that the part of her that liked to have quippy conversations always seemed to remain alive and kicking. Daiyu looked at the rest of the bag, wishing she’d dug an old tote from under her bed in stead and had sniffed the armpits of the t-shirt properly to make sure it didn’t smell like her in a bad way. Whether there was a good way for something to smell like her, she deeply doubted, but she could only spend so much energy on self-pitying.
Fiddling with the gear stick, she grit her teeth through Nova’s vague explanation. Without being able to seemingly control her mind, she thought of her time in the hospital after Cass. The amount of stories she’d come up with to explain away what had caused the scars was still piling up. Fireworks, explosions, sticking her arms in the deep fryer… she didn’t even know which one she’d told Nova. What she did know was that evading the truth by saying something stupid was the easiest way to try and get onto a new topic. Daiyu remembered too, the cab ride home she’d taken, the way she had sat in the back of that stranger’s car and had silently begged him to ask what had happened to her, even if she knew she’d react with vitriol.
The main struggle now was whether she should honor Nova’s attempt at evasion or press. Daiyu wasn’t the person you called for hair-stroking, shoulder-rubbing or tear-wiping, she knew that. She let out a breath. “Those bitches are real vindictive. I lost fifty bucks to them last year,” she said, deciding to let Nova keep her facade up. She did not know what she would do with whatever the real truth was. And she understood, most of all, the need for these kinds of pretense. But there was something she had to add. “If you ever need someone to beat up those guinea pigs, just give a shout. Witness protection sounds shit.”
She put the car in first gear, looking over at Nova. “Just drop you in the … woods?” She did start the car, ready to make a U-turn to go back where she came. “Nova …” She was not the person to extend this kind of help. “You sure?”
—
It was easy for Nova to like people; everyone always had something to like about them. She could pass hours happily watching people from afar, loving them for how human they were—not herself, hypocrisy was a survival mechanism—and she often had. Once again, she found herself charmed by Daiyu—not for anything Daiyu was actively trying to do, but probably because Daiyu wasn’t trying to do anything at all. This woman beat her up regularly, shamelessly squeezed out Nova’s pennies for greasy burgers, and had managed to scrounge up a protein bar for her. What wasn’t there to like? She smiled. She didn’t know how to say she appreciated it; or that she wished that they could sail over the awkward new-friends lump into the zone of slightly-closer-friends. Probably you didn’t just force things like that. Nova sometimes thought of making friends like latching onto the skin, and ballooning with their blood. She couldn’t stop thinking about herself in parasitic terms.
If she were a better person, she’d talk to no one, lock herself up and never go outside. She wanted to crack into Daiyu… and then do what? Make the woman like her just so she could ruin it later? What was she supposed to do with the gnashing desire to be liked and the need to be hated? Nova stared into the bag again. If she were a better person, she wouldn’t be here. She pulled the shirt from the bag and held it in her fist—it was so soft. How did you thank someone for this? How could you make words mean what was being felt on the inside? She curled into the shirt, trying not to look like she was hugging it. She felt a lot younger than her twenty-eight years—shit, it was twenty-nine now. Thanks, Gmail, for reminding her. She glanced at the clock; it was well into the thirteenth by now; her birthday had come and gone.
She had no claims to the day.
“Did you lose the money gambling or from theft? ‘Cause if it's the former, you’re narratively compelled to gamble with them again to win it back,” Nova said. “Double or nothing; gambler’s rules.” She didn’t know what the fuck she was saying, honestly. It had the sounds and shape of something vaguely normal(ish, for Nova) and it slotted into the air with the assurance that you could forget that she said it. A brushing word breeze to be nodded at and given, if so inclined, a polite chuckle (but not a laugh, it wasn’t laugh-worthy). She leaned down and tried to look like she wasn’t smelling the shirt. It smelled like Daiyu and a bag of fries, which was a scent Nova associated with Daiyu anyway—couldn’t so much as drive past a McDonald’s without thinking about what the woman was doing. To know someone was to allow the environment to be colored by them. Well, Nova was OK with that, but Daiyu didn’t need to know that she thought about her every time she looked at a slab of ground beef.
“I’m sure,” she said, looking at the shirt instead of the woman it belonged to. A shirt couldn’t make any expressions she didn’t want to see. “Drop me off at the woods, I can walk from there. Or hobble, I guess.” She hoped Daiyu wouldn’t do anything stupid like offer her a place to stay. Except, also, she hoped Daiyu would. Even if she’d just decline anyway. Still, still…
She waited for the car to start moving before she dared to stop sniffing the shirt. Anyway, she was getting to that point of sniffing where her nose was getting acclimatized to the smell—needed to cleanse the nostrils before she went back in for another sniff. Did the sweatpants smell different? She’d have to investigate in the privacy of her crumpled van. She looked at Daiyu. Or… not. This was probably weird. She cleared her throat, turning her head away. Just say something normal, you dolt. “Have you ever killed anything before?” Nova asked, her voice tempered by embarrassment. “I mean…” She swallowed. “Y’know, like a… deer. Or…bird. Or—I dunno—maybe a bear?” She tensed, holding on to the shirt tighter. Her heart hammered up into her throat. Stop talking, stop talking, stop— “Like a talking bear? Or anything like that?”
—
Though Daiyu knew better than to underestimate small rodent foes, she did seriously doubt that Nova had ended up in the hospital due to some guinea pigs. Her mind went to the ones that she’d gambled with, the way they had smoked and shown a human aptitude for bluffing their way to victory, but they were still small. Nova wasn’t some (completely) defenseless human either, anyway. Even if Daiyu constantly beat her in their fights, she had to admit that Nova wa a skilled fighter. She had good technique, and what she lacked in supernatural strength should not pose an issue against guinea pigs. But she let the lie for what it was.
“Gambling,” she admitted, the embarrassment of the memory still strong even in the face of a hurt friend. Suddenly, she was glad that Nova had asked for that explicit definition, all those weeks ago. That there was no need for her to now wonder if this made them friends, or if Nova was just asking her from some sense of opportunism. Daiyu was also struck with the realization that she had not yet made a possible connection to Talia. This was a poor trap, if even one. “I’m shit at poker. At least I knew when to stop. So don’t even tempt me to try and win it back, because I will try and … man, I can’t start owing a debt to guinea pigs. Look at what they’ve done to you.”
She looked over at Nova, watching her nose hover close to her shirt. Daiyu was certain then, that this was an unwashed shirt. That the sleeves smelled like armpits, maybe even pheromones. She grit her teeth and tried to act casual, not wanting to admit that she was incapable of being on top of her laundry as well as able to lure animals with strange, mostly stinky scents. One was an uncomfortable fact, but the other was one of those big hunter truths she had to keep hidden. After all, if she was to reveal to Nova what she was, she had to confess that she’d been on a never ending winning streak due to her nature, not her skill. Not that she really needed the upper hand over the other right now.
“Hobble where?” She did not know where Nova lived, because she had not asked. Asking that meant having the question returned, and Daiyu did not want to tell her where she lived. Her house was no longer as much a sanctuary as it had once been, but it was still her place, and she felt hesitant to share it. “I can drive in the woods. I’ve done it. It’s … the park rangers can get fucked, ya know?” Especially one in particular.
Driving was a welcome distraction. The motions of shifting gear, of pressing the gas pedal just right so that she was speeding just enough to get by … it all kept her body in motion while her mind wondered what she ought to do. But then Nova asked that question, and suddenly handling the steering wheel and gas was not enough. “Huh-what?” She snapped her jaws shut, waiting for her to be done. A talking bear, she said. Daiyu reached up to one of her temples, rubbing it for a short moment before gripping the steering wheel again. “You encountered a talking bear?” She shot a quick look over and stopped speeding. Maybe taking their time with this drive was better. “Was that what …” She cleared her throat, shook her head. She had accepted the guinea pig lie. “What a question to ask, Jesus.”
—
Nova laughed, and was so grateful, she wanted to cry. “That was funny,” she said with a voice touched by water. Usually when people found something funny, they didn’t point it out like it was the best thing they’d heard. Careful, she was starting to sound not OK. Nova pressed into Daiyu’s shirt, holding it tighter to chest, raising it to her face. She wished it wasn’t so cold, but the heat from her own body was an adequate replacement for something almost human enough. Careful, she was starting to act like there was something wrong with her; like she had desires, and needs, and things she couldn’t ask for.
If she didn’t watch her words, Daiyu would catch on. “You know, just like… a hut,” she said, thinking of her van crunched up against a pine tree. “It’s a secret hut. You get it, y’know. You get it.” If she pleaded enough for Daiyu to understand her, maybe she would. “You get it. I can’t show you. Don’t drive in the forest. Just leave me on the road.” Careful. Careful. She could hear herself in her own ringing ears; the smoothed over mumbling turn of her voice, the unconvincing assertions about something that didn’t sound right. Nova was terrible at convincing people that the smoke was not a fire and the flames were not a fire and the charred remains of the body were something else, if only you’d give her a moment to think of what. Some people were very skilled at it; she’d met them. But she wasn’t like them. She didn’t like lying, she just did it all the time—that was different. Honesty was a guillotine, and she needed to cushion everything with excuses. It had to be OK, it had to be that there was a hut, it had to be that the trees were too dense to drive through anyway, it had to be no one’s fault. “It’s bad for the vegetation, anyway. I think.” She didn’t know. “There’s a lot of trees. You can’t.”
She watched Daiyu’s reaction over the curled mound of Daiyu’s shirt in her hands. It wasn’t exactly the surprise of someone sharing a foreign concept; she looked annoyed, not confused. Nova didn’t want to tip-toe around the supernatural stuff; in a town like Wicked’s Rest, it got exhausting very quickly. Nova nodded. “Yeah. Not… I don’t think it was a bugbear. Those just… those just look like normal bears, right? This was…” She lifted her hand and spread two fingers, mimicking the pronged double heads of the—of the—of the— “It had…” Of the— “It was…” Of the— “It…”
Nova turned her head. She could hear it: she was not OK. “Sorry. Yeah. No. I was just thinking out loud.” She watched the town blur out of Daiyu’s window and then looked at her friend—they were friends, right?—again. “Have you? Is it… hard? To kill an animal. It kinda… It could…” She turned her head away, squeezing Daiyu’s shirt. “Nevermind.” She didn’t want to kill it anyway—she wanted to help—but the curiosity settled inside. She’d killed spawns before, and at least a few creatures—and though she hated it, she’d smushed a lot of spiders in her life and swatted dozens of flies and mosquitos, and what about all the animals she ate—wasn’t it all the same? She’d never thought about it much before. But that thing…
—
Any other day, Daiyu might have pointed out that it was rude to laugh at her suffering and have acted offended. But tonight she did not, letting Nova have her amusement about her losing her money to a bunch of small rodents. It was objectively funny, but subjectively it had cost her fifty bucks and her pride, which was a hefty prize to pay for some laughs. She just wished it had happened to someone else, but the only other person she knew who had gambled against the guinea pigs had walked away with a ton of profit. “Did you know,” she said, indulging Nova, “That you can also bet in carrots? I’ll do that next time.”
She did get it. She did not quite get what Nova’s house looked like, but she understood the ‘secret’ part of it. It had not been that long ago that someone had broken the sanctity of her own home. Her address was something she kept close to her chest, closer now that she’d been made to use the emergency weapons strapped against her furniture. But Nova wasn’t a hunter (and if she was, she was a really shit one), and she could not imagine what kind of risks she was wary of as she evaded sharing her address. But Daiyu understood the need for privacy, and that that wasn’t necessarily tied to hunter-brand paranoia. She nodded, then voiced her understanding, “Yeah, sure I get it. You think you can manage the terrain, though?” She frowned a little, trying to navigate the new social structure she and Nova were constructing. “Don’t want you to get my clothes dirty.” That might work — to make this seem like a selfish ploy, rather than her being worried about Nova slipping and falling and not getting up in the woods. She glanced over at her, taking stock of the injuries once more. “If you’re worried about the trees, I can walk you up.” Why she was trying to fight her on this in a manner she never fought (subtly, with some mild prodding), she didn’t know.
Her foot let go of the gas pedal when Nova said the word bugbear. She pressed down it again after they’d lost some speed, not wanting to reveal her surprise any more. The frown was back on her face, eyebrows creasing in confusion. Nova knew about bugbears, which made her label of ‘normal, unsuspecting human’ make place for a ‘????’ label. “You know about bugbears?” Obviously she did. And so did Daiyu. She took a left turn, not looking properly as she did. It was all fine, though, so far. “I mean — yeah, normal looking bears, but they can make stuff appear. Like illusions. So they can be anything.” Manipulative assholes, she often thought them. Fear was an instinct with a function, but in front of a bugbear it had none at all. In front of a bugbear it was just a knife pointed at your own stomach. She looked at Nova, mimicking something and sounding afraid. She swallowed a comment that this fear was useless. “It had antlers?”
Nova was not just an ignorant human any more, but that did not mean Daiyu wanted to tell her about all the blood clinging to her hands. She felt the car go faster as she grew more tense, her foot using the gas pedal as an emotion regulator. “I’ve killed something before, yes.” She wondered if Nova knew about hunters, if she knew about bugbears. The fact that she knew the actual name of them, and not just that supernatural bears existed did make her wonder how extensive her knowledge was. “It’s … not worth thinking about the hardness of it.” A beat. They had been constructing a social structure where they danced around the elephant in the room, but Daiyu attempted to point it out again anyhow. “What happened?”
—
Daiyu was nice. Daiyu was so nice. Daiyu was maybe the nicest person Nova had ever met. Every laugh pulled from her was watery, but she was grateful for the ability to laugh—the opportunity—that Daiyu’s little jokes were the funniest, nicest things she’d ever heard. The burdensome weight of her life, both the burden to herself and the expelled burden she pressed onto others, (Maybe you should learn to help yourself, did you ever think about that?) was something whose question of existence was, to Nova, so certain, that even for one moment, to feel lighter, was a kindness so profound that she couldn’t put words into its shape. Maybe it wasn’t actually the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her, but it felt like it. She’d watched worry for her transmute into anger, blame and sadness before it ever trickled back down to being worry for her. And here was someone trying to make her feel better. When was the last time that had happened? God, maybe Daiyu wasn’t even trying. Nova had about as much luck deciphering this woman’s motives as she did beating her in a fight. Did it matter? What Nova felt was thankful. What Nova wanted was the permission to find things funny. It mattered to know she wasn’t being blamed for her reckless condition of life—even if it was all her fault. If, for just a moment, she could feel less guilt, why would she want anything else? And so, the best she could do to articulate it was to snort. “Carrots,” she repeated, wanting to cry.
Oh, and now Daiyu was doing that thing where you make a selfless offer seem self-motivated. That was the sort of thing you did to people who couldn’t accept any help—Nova had to do it to Granny all the time. Wait, did that mean she was the person who couldn’t accept help? But she was inside another person’s truck, wasn’t she? And she had to draw the lines somewhere or else she’d be asking Daiyu to carry her around and give her a million dollars—asking for help was a slippery slope. Not that she wanted a million dollars from Daiyu in particular, but who knew. She smiled and shook her head passionately—which hurt immensely, like her brain was loose in her head, sloshing around. “I can manage,” she said, but it sounded a little slurred so she quickly added: “I used to be a manager.” Which wasn’t even true. She grabbed the handle of her crutch, which had been leaning on the dashboard, and pulled it to her. “Me and Mr. Crutch go way back. Like… old lovers.” She wrinkled her nose. “Or old friends. I don’t know why I went with lovers. I’m not—I’m not attracted to the…” She looked at the crutch. “Well…” She laughed. Could you be unwell if you were laughing? Didn’t think so! The Joker was excluded from reasoning. “I’m alright. Need the walk alone to get to know Mr. Crutch. I’m seeing him in a new light. Don’t want to turn you into a third wheel.” And if you said you needed it, who could argue?
Nova felt like wiping her hands. Job done: Daiyu successfully convinced of okayness. All in a day’s work of—Oh shit. The bugbear thing. “Yeah, well, I mean… I was born here. So.” She laughed nervously. She only knew what one was because of the parts of Granny’s notes she’d decoded. But now she had to wonder what Daiyu was, that she knew what a bugbear was. Probably a werewolf or something; she had that ruggedness about her. Except that Daiyu didn’t just know about it by name, she knew about its powers. Maybe Daiyu was a bugbear? She shook her head. “No, not antlers. It was…” No. She wasn’t going to think about it. She shrugged. In case Daiyu didn’t see, she shrugged again.
Then there was the rest of it—why did she ask? Why couldn’t she have just shut up for once? (Stupid.) “Killed something before,” she repeated. Most people in Wicked’s Rest seemed to have. If you killed a spider, that was killing something, right? Something Daiyu had said—that was so important. A thing! What was eating meat anyway? Note to self: look into vegetarianism… except the dairy industry wasn’t much better about the treatment of animals. Note to self: look into veganism… God, but she loved cheese. Note to self: stop talking to self. (You like your own voice too much for that.) I do not like my—OK. Moving on. “Hardness,” she repeated. (OK, maybe say something for yourself, you miserable–) “Ha, like penis,” she said. That was funny, right? What were they talking about? “Except it kinda…” (Stop.) “It is. Worth thinking about. It’s the part that tells you that you care, right? That it’s hard. It's one of the only parts worth thinking about.” Nova swallowed. “Sorry, I didn’t—“
“What happened?”
Nova’s skin turned to ice. Her features fell. She brought Daiyu’s shirt up to her mouth and wadded it up in her hand, holding it roughly to her face. Parts of her brain scrambled to think of a lie; hazy, rolling thoughts clambering over each other, mixing to new thoughts, dissolving to static. She lifted her face up. “It had skin,” she said flatly. “It had…two heads. One was…” Her voice started to crack. “It wasn’t a bugbear. It wasn’t an illusion. It had a stomach like a bowling ball and it…” Her hands started to tremble. “It had skin. With little hairs. And pores. And…” She started to cry. She dropped her face back into the shirt and sobbed. She screamed at herself to stop, but the more she tried to, and the more she reminded herself of how evil crying in front of someone was, the harder she wept. She needed to give Daiyu enough information so the woman could tell her what she wanted to know: that it was just a monster, like any other monster. That in catalogue of monsters in this horrible, disgusting, terrible town, it was just one out of dozens. It was normal, for how abnormal it was. She needed to believe it.
But it was inside her Granny’s basement, and had been, judging by the state of that room, for over a decade. Nova had seen dozens of monsters she couldn’t name. And that one…
Nova’s skin prickled with ice. She bent into the shirt and wailed. “I’m an alchemist,” she managed between heaving gasps. And that was as far as her mind was willing to travel.
—
Nova was laughing and repeating the word carrots as if there was something about the humor of them that might fix her. Daiyu could feel the desperation in the air, the wanting to laugh rather than cry or riot. She grit her teeth in the face of its ugliness but said nothing more on the gambling and ridiculousness of it. Escapism was something she understood in certain contexts, but she did not know how to give Nova the right kinds of things to keep her distracted and laughing. She was not even sure if she wanted to. There was something unnerving about the way Nova laughed, the way she kept talking in endless circles as if filling the space in the car with words would somehow make Daiyu ignore the great, hurt elephant in the room.
“You’re gonna fall,” she stated bluntly, and she failed to keep the unspoken ‘not that I care’ part of her statement. She did not want Nova to fall. Maybe it was ironic, considering all the ways she’d handed the other’s ass to her while sparring with her, but Daiyu was very much disliking seeing the other hurt and grasping at straws. The fact that she was one of those straws did not go unnoticed either. “You’re gonna fall on your ass and that crutch is not going to be doing you any fucking good.” The words held both sharpness and softness, living on the knife’s edge of Daiyu’s complicated relationship with compassion. She decided she would just go out with Nova. There was no way the other was going to be able to stop her, even without all the injuries. With them, she was as threatening as a fallen, broken bird. If Daiyu lacked the verbal skills to convince her to let her come with her, she’d just use her physical prowess.
She looked over at Nova, an eyebrow raised. “Plenty people who were born here don’t know shit,” she pointed out. Nova continued being evasive about the nature of what had done this to her and Daiyu wondered what kind of horror it must have been. Had she been hurt before? If she had grown up here, perhaps she had had encounters of this nature earlier. “So it’s, whatever. Fine if you don’t know. I can …” Help? Was that what she was going to say? She wasn’t sure if she should finish that sentence, because she was not sure if she was capable of such a thing. Not in a way that mattered.
And besides, Nova was making it starkly clear that there was a fundamental difference between them. She was talking about caring in the face of murder. Daiyu figured that it made little difference if you cared or didn’t. The person you murdered would still end up dead, and what the fuck could the dead do with sentimentals? Her thoughts went into a direction similar to her arguments with Henri, when they had argued over a corpse that had died at his hands. A woman whose death had paid for part of her rent, who was just as dead as she would have been had Daiyu not taken the money. Caring just made things complicated. But Nova wasn’t a hunter, and as far as she knew, not a killer either. Maybe it was worth caring about a death if only one had happened at ones hands, but when ones hands were as red and ruined as Daiyu’s? It was a death certificate to start caring. It wasn’t a nuance she could explain without baring herself. Without a confession that would tear open the world between them.
“Yeah. You didn’t,” she said shortly. “You don’t.” Her own sentences remained unfinished, her desire to talk about death and murder close to zero. Sub-zero, possibly. This was why Daiyu usually didn’t befriend humans. Normal people who had grown up with some growing pains and some struggle, but who had not been made to look creatures in the eye as they killed them as kids. Who had not learned how to file away the weight of death before high school. Even now, she found herself envying Nova. Even if she was hurt. Even if she had seen something real bad. The envy burned in her throat, making her want to spit out something about having the luxury to care and how that had been taken from her a long time ago. But she swallowed the metaphorical bile and pressed down on the gas pedal in stead.
The stripes in the middle of the road passed by her and her gaze was pulled to that in stead of Nova. Nova, who was displaying such weakness and humanity that it made Daiyu uncomfortable, because it wasn’t supposed to be this easy to cry. (As if it had been easy for Nova to get to such a point.) The description was vague and nothing she could work with. Two heads, a pot belly, in possession of skin. She racked her brain but found nothing that matched the description. “Probably some weird fucking local thing,” she muttered, mostly to herself. She eventually gave a glance sideways, feeling a new kind of envy now. It was similar to the one she held for Fries, her squonk — the ease with which Nova cried (which could not be called ease at all, but still seemed like it to her) was something she could not recognize within herself.
No conclusion came, no determining factors that would help Daiyu identify the thing that had hurt Nova. She needed to know, she realized. Because she wasn’t really sure how to help Nova right now, with all the crying and limping, but she knew how to hunt something. How to hurt something for hurting someone she cared about. She noted all the details that Nova had offered and tried to think — but was soon interrupted.
The ‘???’ label she had applied to Nova just moments ago was replaced. She was a spellcaster. An alchemist, to be precise, who she dealt with from time to time when it came to potion ingredients. Daiyu released the gas once more, looking at Nova. She swallowed another mouth of envy. “I’m a ranger,” she offered in return. She wasn’t sure why, just as she wasn’t sure why the other had brought up her own identity. Not much made sense by now.
—
Nova had always been impressed by movies where single tears rolled down pretty, movie-star faces: everyone cried beautifully. Especially in the older movies; that lack of color called for more attention on the lighting, and all of that light caught on wetness inside an actress’s eyes. She could still see it: Joan Crawford standing in her furs in Mildred Pierce, watching her daughter sob and beg, droplets of water poised at the edges of her own eyes threatening to spill down her stone face. They sparkled as she held the phone up to her ear, warring between calling the police and protecting her daughter. Nova cried, but it wasn’t crying like that. She wailed and sucked in air, heaving it into her starving lungs, over her trembling lips. The bag nature of her lungs—squeezing and expanding, squeezing and expanding—made her body feel like a collection of things; no miracles inside a human, just machinery, a little chemistry. She was snotty and her wailing drew out like coughs—she had the shirt half-stuffed into her mouth and she still couldn’t stop the sound.
By the time she felt calm enough to look at Daiyu, she felt too gross to do it. She probably shouldn’t have wiped her face on the shirt, but it was in her hands already, and she liked the way it felt. Now she’d ruined the thing she was supposed to wear, streaked it with human emotional waste. “Ranger,” she repeated. “So when you say you’ve killed things you mean…” She swallowed. Probably things just like that… bear. Paddington, she thought to call it. Sniffling, she looked at Daiyu. Rangers and alchemists were like butchers and chefs; they brought in the raw materials, Nova turned those materials into workable goods, in theory (her potioncraft left much to be desired). The ethics did concern her, but not so much that she was tracking down rangers to ask how they got their basilisk venoms—mostly, she avoided buying what she could just get herself. She had the urge to pick a fight with Daiyu, roiling with imagined crimes; burn another bridge, she always did. If her horse was high enough, the smoke wouldn’t touch her.
She sniffled. “Look, Daiyu just…” She bit her lip. Then, sighing, she uncorked. Might as well, she thought, they’d talk in circles otherwise. “I don’t have a house in the woods,” she said. “I live in my van. I crashed it. It’s inside the trees. Well, not inside-inside…” She chewed on her lip. “Just drop me off. Just forget about it, OK? I…” Nova watched the road, her belly tightened and she took that to mean they were close. “The thing I saw… I…” She swallowed sand, she swallowed ocean, she swallowed air and nothing. Her body fought her; her stomach kicked, her brain punched, her muscles choked. Her eyes threatened her with crying again. Nova pushed through; if she didn’t say it at least once, it might live inside her forever. In a meek, quivering voice, she offered, “I think it was human.” She leaned back into her seat. “Not like a bugbear. I think…” Nova looked at Daiyu. “You know, alchemy is… I mean, of course you know. You get all sorts of shit for us. We can do anything; we rearrange the world. You’ve seen it, right? I could take a rock and merge it with your truck.” Once more at the road, those lines of white smearing past them. There were the silvery guardrails: her saviors. “I guess it’s not that big of a stretch to do it to someone’s body. It’s similar enough—what’s inside the skin, inside a tree, inside a rock. We’re just different arrangements of the same notes.” Nova closed her eyes. “Isn’t that why we have to care? Because if you think about it, there’s no reason to be a good person. It’s easy to trample over everything. Easy to just… point your crossbow at something and stick it between the…” She opened her eyes. “No offense.”
Nova leaned forward, pointing. “There,” she said. “Right there. Just drop me off.” Don’t think too hard. Wasn’t that easier?
—
As Nova wept, Daiyu stared at the road ahead. The action of crying in any way was a weakness, a display of emotion that was simply inexcusable. She imagined that Fries was in the car with her instead, as she had grown to tolerate his tears even if she found them still quite frustrating. A crying human was harder to deal with. A crying friend, even harder. She did not know how to deal with it without making her judgement clear, how to offer what friends in movies and TV shows offered when someone was upset. She did not want to comically pet the other’s head and say there there like some demented fool, so she opted for silence. The quiet made all the gross noises that Nova made all the louder. The heaving, the snot, the choking. Daiyu wanted to clamp her ears shut. She wanted to tell her to stop being a Squonkbaby. She wanted to stop the car and get out so Nova could calm down. She wanted to be a better friend.
Eventually it stopped. Like a storm ended, there was only the drops of water trickling through the leaves left. She felt her grip on the steering wheel slacken, only to increase the hold when Nova started on the Ranger subject. “Beasts,” she confirmed. It was a large umbrella term that did not even cover everything she had killed. Some might not categorize shifters under there. And then there were the fae, the undead, the worms. So many worms. Never humans, though. Daiyu wondered if that made a difference to Nova, or if she thought everyone equal in that sense. At least she wasn’t a vegan — that helped in some departments. Even so, she should not have to explain herself, should she? She did what she had to. She did the only thing she knew how to do. And somewhere, at the end of the balance sheet, she hopefully spared some lives.
At least Nova circled back to her, to the depressing truth she’d been dancing around. Daiyu was gripping the steering wheel even tighter now. If trying to explain the nuances of hunting to a human was complicated, dealing with someone revealing ugly truths about their life was even harder. “That’s cool,” she mumbled, “Living in a van. When it’s not crashed.” She wanted to make the easy choice here and let Nova return to her crashed van and sleep on what was possibility a huge risk. But she also still had that previous want – the wanting to be a better friend one – that weighed on her. She let it go for now as Nova told her what she’d been up against. Eyebrows creased, and she moved one hand from the steering wheel to fiddle with the string of her hoodie. “Jesus.” A beat. She had seen some alchemy. Not a whole lot. She had wondered about the weaponry potentials of it, but had mostly just tried to make a buck of spellcasters and leave them to their weird wizardry as they left her to her hunting. “So it was like a fucking hybrid of … human and other things? Jesus.”
Daiyu stopped her car. She let her hands drop from the steering wheel. She let Nova’s words run through her as she looked at the wreck ahead of them. “Way I see it, there’s no such thing as a good person. Just people pretending and trying. We’re lucky most of ‘em don’t have claws or … alchemy or crossbows. That’s all that separates us, sometimes. But it’s not fucking easy.” Sometimes it was. Sometimes there was nothing as easy as taking aim and letting a bolt fly and killing a creature.
She looked over at Nova. “You’re fucking confusing. Telling me to care, then telling me to drop you off at a car wreck after you spent a good fucking time sobbing in my car.” Daiyu took a deep breath. “You can’t — that’s not how this works. I care about some shit.” Unspoken was the like you of it all. She put her car in reverse. “I can drop you off at a motel. Pay for your room. Figure I owe you after all the burgers, right? Biological advantage.” She knew that was a piss-poor offer. She should invite Nova to her house. To make her some tea even. Offer her more than the crinkly bag of clothes and snacks. She looked ahead at the wrecked car, then pulled her car around and started to drive off somewhat slowly.
—
When had anyone called her van living cool? She knew there was nothing wrong with it in theory—she’d never say anything to anyone else living in their cars—but the reality of it made her feel like she’d shattered someone’s expensive vase and was waiting for them to pull up the rug to find where she’d hidden the shards. She’d like a house, if she could afford one. She’d like to be the sort of person who could stomach roommates, being looked at in her routines. She’d like to not be herself, really. Nova stared down into the bag. “Thanks,” she mumbled. At least she didn’t think Daiyu was saying it just to flatter her; she couldn’t imagine Daiyu saying anything just to flatter anyone. Not like her; she had that sticky human quality that boarded between friendly and manipulative. “Yeah,” she said, “fucking hybrid. Abomination. Whatever you want to call it.” Beasts, Daiyu had said—she’d save them both from picking apart whatever the fuck that meant; the umbrella was way too big.
The car stopped. Nova reached for the door handle, rehearsing her exit-speech of appropriate friendly gratitude. Thanks for the ride! You’re cool, Daiyu! Weirdly I now hope we never see each other again—it’s me, not you. Yeah, right, like she’d ever let loose that level of honesty. Admitting to Paddington was bad enough. The wreck of Nova’s car was a shimmering white star; metal compacted to a shape that implied nothing of its previous vehicular nature. Daiyu’s words made her tense and then she went on, and Nova’s raised shoulders drooped. She laughed, softly, lowering her gaze to the shirt. She’d really ruined the thing with her snot, but on the underside, where it was clean of her, she rubbed her fingers over the worn fabric. “I want you to care, just not about…” She stopped; it was too dramatic of a sentiment to finish.
Daiyu started to drive off, and Nova didn’t have the energy to argue. “Sure,” she said. “OK.” In her heroic fantasy, she was jumping out of the truck and nobly accepting her wrinkled van. Looking at Daiyu, she resisted the urge to reach across the console to hug her. “There are good people,” she said, leaving unspoken the like you that she was thinking. “The way I see it,” Nova started, “the trying is what makes someone good. I think what separates us is how much you want to pretend; not the claws or the… other pointy things.” She stuffed the snot-shirt back into the bag and pulled out the juice, feeling her throat burning after all the wailing—feeling herself wanting to wail again at Daiyu’s plan. When had anyone ever done something so nice for her? The shape of thank you was stuck in her throat, and washed down by fruit-sugars. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About the… thinking you wouldn’t care or…” Nova bit her lip and closed the juice, stuffing it down. “Your, uh, hair…” She gestured. “It looks… cute,” she said—which was not to flatter Daiyu, but probably didn’t mean much coming from the person who thought the xenomorph puppet was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. She liked uneven edges, messy results, imperfect attempts—it was cute to her because it was so obviously a terrible fucking haircut. It made Daiyu look like she’d been rejected from the 90s boyband factory. Did she do it herself? Was it one of those bad breakup haircuts? But it was easier to compliment the hair than it was to apologize. “It’s—um. It’s…” She stopped. “Biological advantage?”
If there was one thing that could be said about Nova’s deduction skills, it was that sometimes her gears turned a little slowly. “You—!” She jumped up, the seatbelt holding her back. “The hunter healing! The strength! You—!” She fell back into her seat and laughed. “Fuck you! You’re such an asshole—I can’t—and all that time I spent complimenting you on how strong you are!” She laughed harder, shaking her head; hard to think she’d been sobbing like a baby moments ago. (If there was one that could be said about Nova’s ability to bounce back from any occasion, it was that she’d give a spring a run for its money).
“How much of a putz did I sound like when I kept asking you for your recovery tricks?” she asked, grinning. “Gee, I think I deserve one of those fancy motel rooms for this. It’s the only way to make it up to me: I want the best parking lot view.” She leaned back, staring at the sky through Daiyu’s windshield. “When I’m better, we should spar properly. I’ll use my magic and you can… Well, I guess you were already using your superpowers, huh?” Once more, looking at Daiyu, she smiled. “Asshole,” she said, the word taking the texture of fonder compliments; she might’ve stopped herself from calling Daiyu a good person, but for the way she called her an asshole, there wasn’t a difference in the syllables. What could she say? She liked it because it made Daiyu a bit of a jerk; slimy alien puppets bursting from chests.
Daiyu seemed so much more human to Nova then, and in seeming that way, she shone. “It is cute,” she reiterated.
—
Nova did not start arguing her. She did not do what Daiyu would consider, should the roles be reversed: throw open the car door and let herself fall out of the car. Injuries worsening be damned, she would not stand for practically being kidnapped for comfort. Especially not in such a frail friendship, when the air was charged with talks of goodness and whether she had killed things. But Nova just remained seated, saying sure, okay, and Daiyu was relieved to not have to argue for once. Usually she would take the verbal scarring, but right now she was tired and frustrated, and just wanted to drop Nova off somewhere that wasn’t wrapped around a tree. Unless it was in a cute architectural way, she supposed.
Goodness was a concept she had long ago stopped believing in. It must have been when she was in her early twenties and had attempted to turn her back on a life of destruction. When she had not found any other way to live life. Sure, there were people who weren’t as bad as others, but goodness? There was no such thing in the circles she ran in. The argument that some normal humans were good lost much traction too, considering all the atrocities committed on a daily basis.
So perhaps there was some stock in what Nova was saying. If people were bad by default, then trying mattered. But Daiyu found trying painful and uncomfortable. It was too confrontational. She did not try to be good, just as she tried not to be bad. She had forgone a hunter’s code, in stead opting to hunt for the highest prize to outsource hard decisions. She prioritized people she cared about, even if that list was short. She tried not to make her hunts suffer too much before snuffing them out (though failed aplenty, that werewolf she shot recently burning on her mind). There was no goodness there, no attempt at it. Most of it was pure selfishness. “Trying doesn’t matter,” she muttered, “If the result at the finish line is the same. Or if the past is riddled with …” Bodies, crimes, guilt.
Nova then apologized. Daiyu’s grip on the steering wheel tightened once more. “No need to be,” she muttered, “It’s probably a fair assumption.” She knew she wasn’t the one to call in an emotional crisis. Maybe the one you called for a distraction (see: podcasting) or a violent solution. Even now, she wasn’t reaching out to Nova. She wasn’t inviting her to her home, where she could take proper care of her and ensure she would not run herself into more trouble due to some kind of pride or stubbornness. She hadn’t even bothered to make sure the shirt she got her was clean. Not that it mattered much; it was all snotty now. Speaking of, “I’ll bring you a change of clothes. From your van?” It would be unwise to let Nova run around in her crinkling hospital gown at a motel. People would get the wrong idea.
Her car was driving at normal speed now that she was sure that Nova wasn’t going to throw herself out of it. And then came the relief of hearing her laugh. Sure, admitting that she had been winning by cheating was an embarrassing thing (but a truth that Nova would surely uncover at some point, now that she knew she was a hunter), but it offered the levity they needed again. The guinea pigs wouldn’t do any more. Daiyu started laughing too, snorting as she watched Nova move up and down her seat with laughter.
“You know, I know I should be sorry, but fuck, I just really love to win,” she confessed. Unsaid went the ways she had never won with her siblings and how that had probably given her a tendency towards cheating and playing dirty. “I guess the jig is up. I will have no more free burgers.” She jut out her lip, before offering Nova a grin. “I’ll get you the very best room. No bullet holes or jizz stains. And — yes. I wanna see your magic fighting.”
Daiyu was called an asshole often. It was probably because she was one. But when Nova said it, she heard a kind of fondness in it. Despite all the squeezing the steering wheel, all the ways she was falling short in the friendship department and the outing of her own lies, she felt something terrifying — a deepening of their friendship. One of those points of no return, like when she had entrusted Jade with her dog or had saved Emilio from the bies. One of those she was still happy about, the other stung like a chronic bee sting. She swallowed, tried to move past the lodge in her throat without choking on it. She moved forward to her console, hitting play on her music. Turning the knob, she lowered the volume from the deafening level it had been at before. Not loud enough to make it so that she and Nova would no longer talk, but loud enough to be something in the background as she drove Nova to the best thing she could offer. It did not feel like enough, but she figured if the other truly believed in what she stood for, it was at the very least an attempt at goodness.