Run, Part 4: Wanted

"...Des...ah ha...aren't you supposed to be at an art show?" Sine said.

"There was a rodent problem. It got moved back two weeks at the last minute. Oh, by the way Sine, you made a promise that you'd be there with me. I put it on your schedule." Desdemona said. From the looks of her, she clearly hadn't been painting, and Sine couldn't see a muted television or put-aside book that indicated she had been reading when Sine had showed up. Based on that, the fact that she was standing up, one arm leaning on her kitchen counter, it seemed like she'd been expecting Sine, and just waiting for her warning signal to go off. Sine wet her lips, the flesh suddenly appalling dry.

"Oh yes...you're right...I did." Sine said. "Uh...well um..."

"I told you about it the last two times I saw you. The last one being two weeks ago." Desdemona said, her tone calm, but firm. "You've been something of a ghost, Sine."

Sine swallowed, considering her options. Maybe she could...

Yes...go ahead. Lie to her. Maybe she'll even buy it.

Des' eyes widened a bit with alarm when Sine grimaced.

"Sine, are you all right?" Desdemona said, walking forward.

"Fine...fine." Sine said, waving her girlfriend off.

"Sine, the last time you tried to shrug off an illness, you ended up-"

"I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME THE LAST TIME!" Sine found herself roaring, causing Desdemona to step back. "Sorry, sorry...that was too harsh. Desdemona, I'm not suffering any sort of possession relapse. The Lord is dead."

Pity. That would provide the perfect excuse for the rest of them, wouldn't it? But she won't need a perfect excuse. She cares for you. Just toss something half-decent out and she'll gladly take you back. Lonely girl with the dead parents...

Sine raised her arm, slowly clenching her fist.

"Are you just suffering from a headache then? Do you want some aspirin?"

"No, it's just..."

Get to lying! It's what you're good at!

NO. Desdemona had nothing to do with any of this. If anyone deserved the truth, it was her.

"You're right, Des. I completely forgot about your art show. I was...busy with my jobs. Had some...trouble, if you missed the scuffed outfit with the facial expressions. And in truth...if it had been this weekend, I probably wouldn't have gone looking for you. I've had some troubles, I wanted to be alone...that gave you a raw deal, and I'm sorry." Sine said. "But...it worked out, right? My last job was a motherlode. I can completely stop my trips for a few months, at the very least. I can attend your art shows, we can go on more trips...or hell, we can just hang around here..."

Desdemona said nothing.

"...what do you know that you're not telling me?" Sine said.

Desdemona's laptop was a huge, bulky thing, but not so much that it couldn't be hidden behind some cookie jars. Sine already knew what she was going to show her when she pulled it out.

"What's this, Sine?"

Sine bit back the bile. Desdemona's tone was neutral. Don't fall into the outrage trap again...the outrage trap had gotten her chased halfway across the Auspex city where she'd left a few pounds of skin behind.

"It's...a misunderstanding...that I mean to correct..."

"They sound pretty damn angry-"

"THEY'RE A BUNCH OF FUCKING MORONS!" Sine erupted. She'd tried, she really had...but the second Desdemona had talked about their anger, Sine hadn't been able to keep reign on her own. Des took another step back, though she was less alarmed by this outburst, it seemed. "I mean...Zephyrus...it didn't happen that way! It's a fucking misunderstanding and...FUCK!"

"Zephyrus isn't the one posting the bad things."

"You're missing the POINT, Desdemona. Look at the overall issue here. I did shit wrong, yeah. Probably REALLY wrong. You got some of it too. But look what happened. Look at what a little lack of communication..."

"Three months is not a little-"

"We can argue semantics later! It's not GOOD, yes, but it's not UNFORGIVABLE. And this crap about using Zephyrus as bait, nearly letting him DIE, THAT IS ALL WRONG...some of that's my fault, I tried to take the path of least resistance...but look at this, Des. LOOK AT THIS." Sine said, jabbing her finger into the screen. "Calling me a monster? Telling me I'm no better than the LORD? That drug-addled insecure...you think where she's right EXCUSES this? This isn't her sticking up for a friend. This is her OPPORTUNITY. She NEVER liked me, for some good reasons but for more bad, STUPID reasons, and in her mind, THIS JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING! I mean, shit, maybe I brought this on myself by borrowing her flamethrower...but even WITH THAT, HOW IS THIS HER BUSINESS?"

"Isn't she Zephyrus' friend too?"

Sine grimaced so hard her teeth creaked, before she sat down at the kitchen counter, hands in her head.

"She's right...I have such bad habits...but it's not enough, Des." Sine said, lowering her hands, her eyes becoming as hard as flint. "Not enough to put me under this kind of moral microscope. Because she DAMN well can't stand up to it herself. I never talked about the bar people in depth, Des, because it's not my place...but look at this. LOOK. AT. THIS. Pech is swearing murderous revenge. So is Doomrider, and Jaxx is just sitting back and clapping his hands and going 'See? I told you so, the worthless ginger'. Jonesy had taken a bad situation and made it a thousand times worse, and WHY? So she can feel better about herself. That's what this is, in the end, Desdemona. It's a damn character assassination by an insecure little girl."

"...is that what you've been telling yourself since you read it?"

"DON'T start, Des."

"You're angry."

"Am I in the wrong to be so?"

"You're not in the right..."

"Like I said, Des. It's not enough." Sine said, flipping the computer around. "Friendships have rough patches, sometimes worse that rough patches, sometimes you let people down, sometimes you can't fix it...but am I really so bad in my failings that I deserve this? Is this all it takes for them to declare me a 'monster' and a 'forevercursed parasite' and all this? Because even if I'm not comprehending the size of it, if this is all it takes...Des, forget what it says about me. What does it say about THEM, that so little in the grand scheme of things prompts so much? How can I fix my mistakes when, according to them, it's automatically worthy of being declared worse than the being that possessed me, you know, the one that committed genocide? Do you know how many murders I've committed in this life, Des, where I deliberately of my own free will tried to kill someone who had done me no wrong? None. None at all. And I'm being torn down to these levels, by people, beings, who, oh if you KNEW some of what THEY'VE done..."

Sine snapped the laptop closed.

"I fucked up. I hurt Zephyrus and Annie. You too, I suspect. But I don't deserve this. Tell me I do, Desdemona."

The artist was quiet.

"...Des...please. I'm not telling you that it's my side or bust. But you're a smart girl. Surely you can see I'm not being entirely self-righteous here. I mean...you know me. Better than Zephyrus or Ann in some ways. Tell me that I'm wrong to feel this way. And why."

"...because it doesn't change what you did, Sine." Desdemona said. "That's just your thing. You've never been good at accepting what you did that you didn't like. You have your reasons...but that doesn't change it either."

"...I don't know what to do." Sine said, putting her head in her hands again.

"I do. Give me the Sifter."

Sine snapped her head up so fast Desdemona was surprised that it didn't break right off from whiplash.

"Des...that's a bad id-"

"Give it to me, and you won't be able to run from your problems. You'll have to fix them..."

"Des, these people don't want to parlay or work things out, they want to fucking KILL me..." Sine said. "I haven't even gotten into some stuff, like my Bleed exposure and what..."

"No, Sine. Don't change the subject. Give me the Sifter. I'll go with you to fix these problems. I'll demand parlay..."

"They won't LISTEN! They have the self-control of kindergardeners-!"

"Fortunately, I have some experience with such things." Desdemona said. "I'll be the neutral party telling them to be better than their anger. Just like you have to be. If they can't overcome it, if they try and harm me...well, I think your disagreements with your friends will be a relatively small problem after that. Now give me the Sifter."

"Des, they could KILL you..."

"Sine...we can work all this out afterwards. But you know how it has to start. Give me. The Sifter."

Sine stared at her girlfriend.

...she wasn't as 'loud' as she used to be. When Sine had met her, Desdemona had kept her hair in a very tall style, the epidermis dyed on the tasteful side of garish and her face adorned with multiple piercings. Since then, she'd toned her looks down, cutting her hair and taking out most of the piercings. Sine hadn't breathed a word about doing it either; Des had done it on her own. Sine had wondered, privately, if it was Des changing her fashion herself, or if she'd toned her look down as if to say that she was off the market, and whatever attention she wanted, she had a dependable source. She'd told Sine stuff, about her childhood, opened up in a way Sine had hesitated to...

But...she didn't understand.

Didn't she?

"I've been with addicts, Sine. They have to want to make a start of it, but they also have to remove themselves from temptation. You want to fix this...you can't be the cowboy, digging in your spurs and riding off to the next town if things get too hot for you here. Give me the Sifter. We'll work out stuff for emergencies, if things go as badly as you fear...but otherwise, you'll have to actually face this. Instead of just running off like you did with Zephyrus. Whatever your reasons were...they weren't good enough. So you have to TRY and be good enough."

"...and if that's NOT enough?"

"...then they can talk all the shit they want. You'll have tried. You'd be amazed...what trying can accomplish."

Sure can. You tried to be a friend, and helped give humanity back to Zephyrus and Antoinette. Then you tried to go back to what you considered comfortable, and showed everyone why the Lord hated humanity so much.

Sine stared for nearly twenty seconds, before she began to unhook the Sifter.

Halfway. Then she snapped it back on.

"No."

"Sine...give me the Sifter." Desdemona said, keeping her voice level.

"No...I can't." Sine said, standing up. "I can't trust them...I won't try and play their games with life and death...we can work something out but I can't give you-"

My freedom.

You.

"Sine, this is why the problem got so bad. You KNOW that the only way they're even going to start trusting you is if you can't run away if things get bad."

"They won't trust you either..."

"Then they can take that up with ME. They won't take the Sifter from me, that I promise you."

"What if I can't fix things..."

"Then you TRIED."

Silence settled over the loft again.

"...I can't..."

"You CAN. Sine..." Desdemona said, trying to walk around the counter and get close.

The look Sine gave her was one of the most haunted Desdemona had ever seen. It froze her in her tracks...because she recognized that look. It had stared out from her in a mirror, once, after her family had finally tumbled headlong into the abyss, and what that had ended up meaning. That sense of desolation, of the idea that if this step was taken, there would be no good end result, and no telling where the fall would end.

But it wasn't enough, as Sine would have said. Desdemona knew about the selfishness, the comforting cloak of cold numbness such a thought process offered. If she'd worn it too long...

If Sine put it back on...

"...no. NO, Sine. You are NOT doing this. You are NOT a coward. Damn it Sine, don't..."

Sine turned away. Desdemona paused a moment, began reaching out out, then stopped herself before she slapped her hand down on the counter.

"Damn you, Sine." Desdemona said, cold anger finally entering her tone. "Okay, fine. Give me the Sifter, OR DON'T COME BACK."

The ultimantum hung in the air like a blade between them.

For a moment, when Sine looked back at her, her arm shifting on her wrist, Desdemona had hope.

Then Sine's hand settled. Her gaze fell.

And then she was gone, the VROP swallowed by the walls.

For a time, Desdemona just stared at the empty air. For a bit after that, she ripped a blank canvas to shreds. Ironically, she had two paintings of Sine, but she did not damage them. There was no point. Those were finished, done. A blank canvas meant infinite possibilities...and Desdemona felt like some had just been lost forever. After that, Desdemona got herself a beer. She'd look into packing up the few things Sine had left behind later.

"...I didn't want to believe them." Desdemona said to the empty air. "...I really didn't."

Desdemona didn't speak the rest of the night. There was no point.

She didn't have anyone to talk to.

-------

"It's all the same, only the names will change...
Everyday it seems we're wasting away
Another place where the faces are so cold...
I'd drive all night just to get back home..."

A truck full of gold. Millions worth. To Sine, it might as well have been filled with rock salt. It didn't really have much worth now. None of her jobs did.

"I'm a cowboy...on a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted...dead or alive
Wanted...dead or alive..."

Sine suspected that wherever the chair had come from, it had once held technology that surpassed her Sifter. The process that had dumped it on her little asteroid had burned out all that wonder tech though, just leaving a simple chair. Sine sat down in it. For a while, she didn't do anything.
 

"Sometimes I sleep, sometimes it's not for days
And the people I meet always go their separate ways...
Sometimes you tell the day
By the bottle that you drink
And times when you're alone all you do is think..."

ALL ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES SELECTED. PLEASE SELECT OPTION.

DELETE.
 

DO YOU WISH TO DELETE ALL ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES?

"I'm a cowboy...on a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted...dead or alive
Wanted...dead or alive..."

ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES DELETED.
 

Existence was hers. All hers.

All you.

"I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back
I play for keeps, cause I might not make it back
I been everywhere, still I'm standing tall
I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all..."

"Just...see you laters." Sine said. She did not speak again.

"I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride...
I'm wanted...dead or alive...
I'm a cowboy, I earned the night on my side...
I'm wanted...dead or alive...
Wanted...dead or alive..."

-----

"You promised, Burning Moon! YOU PROMISED! But this world is ash and smoke, and the pretty thing is gone!"

"Then we'll find it again, Sky Song. Nothing escapes us."

"HOORAY!"

"You are aware that the others are going to hold this against you."

"Let them, Cloud Runner. I meant what I said. No one escapes the Knights of Maeyr.

"NO ONE."