“I think you should know,” Nenene says quietly, letting her pen fall to the desk and looking up at the woman radiating tight control and tense fury at something that she probably can’t even put into words. “She still cares about you.”
Maybe it’s because she’s been here and isolated without any company for too long, when she’s kind of gotten used to having people around to listen to her in the last year. Maybe the kid only a steel reinforced door away is no substitute for Michelle, who would soothe and console or giggle and chirp until you felt better either way; for Maggie, who could soothe and console without giggles and big warm smiles or even words; for Anita, who could make a goddamned mortician crack a smile with her blustering and creative uses of profanity. Maybe that’s why she’s talking to this woman with her blank expression and icy voice and icy touch at Nenene’s back when she escorted her into this stark white cell.
Not that she’s a substitute, either. But at least Nenene can be a bitch to her all she wants without feeling guilty when those big, lost, appealing sad-little-orphan eyes flickered hurt and apologetic over her face for a second before dropping to the floor.
Nenene’s willing to bet that this girl’s eyes haven’t been sad or hurt or anything else in years. The fact that they’re still big and lost and there are traces of desperation and panic and even tears in the slip of paper she’s been twisting to confetti when she turns from the door isn’t important. And the author thinks, absurdly, great, time for a party. Pass the champagne, and all hail our wrinkly new god.
“Don’t be ridiculous, please,” Wendy says, flatly and coldly and not even bothering to pretend that she isn’t perfectly aware of whom they’re talking about. Bloody hell, she’s been living in the wreckage that that woman made of everything she cared about, for the last four years. That isn’t the sort of person that can be forgotten. Particularly when her boss won’t let her, taking an almost sadistic delight in seeing her wince every time he calls the memory of panic and devastation and loss back up, just as it was beginning to fade enough to let her remember why she once adored the woman responsible. “She still cares about ‘the Wendy she knew’.”
“And that’s not you?”
She laughs. Nenene shivers a little at that laugh.
“Of course not. The one she knew was a pathetic little pushover who kept her skills and intelligence painstakingly hidden and depended on the protective instinct of powerful older men to get anywhere in life.”
“Yeah,” Nenene agrees flatly, still not entirely sure why she’s bothering with this woman, so obviously beyond help. “The one she knew also didn’t have a single enemy, and probably couldn’t have named anyone she actually hated. Give me a break; you can be a nice person without being weak.”
“I’ll believe that when I meet one.”
“Yomiko.”
“Ah,” the blonde says, voice like ice. “And was it nice, destroying a national monument and killing hundreds of people, or was that a glowing example of her strength? Or maybe the strength was when she ran away and didn’t face up to her own mistake for five years?”
“She’s been punishing herself the whole time; I think that’s enough,” Nenene says softly, examining her fingers very closely. Then she looks up again, and glares. “Letting you people help would be superfluous.”
“I’m not here to argue,” Wendy shrugs. “No one in their right mind chooses debate as their primary weapon.”
“Yeah, speaking of him,” Nenene smirks nastily. “If you’re through being weak and pathetic, why are you still acting like his goddamn puppet? What part of that is strong? The part where you raise a kid like he’s a piece of furniture, or the part where you turn on your friend just because you don’t want to find yourself in the position to make up your own damn mind?”
“It must be nice, being able to sum up everyone you disagree with as weak-willed and stupid.”
“It must be nice, being able to sum up everyone you disagree with as a terrorist, and having the money to back it up,” Nenene shoots back. “Although, it’s probably not money you’re using. Maybe that’s why he keeps you around. You can be a bitch and be someone’s whore at the same time.”
And when her hands tremble to the point that she almost drops the empty food tray she’s just picked up, whirls around to glare at Nenene and orders her to take that back, the befuddled author notices something funny about her eyes: a bright, warm, clear blue ordinarily; dark and clouded with anger right now.
Dark blue. Midnight blue.
Hey, she’s an author; she’s made her living noticing these things about people.
And before she knows what she’s doing, she can feel her mean-natured smirk relax into a real smile.
“Hey, sit down. I want to try something.”
“I didn’t come for a social call.”
“Would you just do it!”
With an irritated sigh, Wendy sets the tray back down on the table, reflecting that after all, she’s been called worse, and Sumiregawa’s been surprisingly well-behaved so far; maybe she can afford to humour the girl who’s going to write out human history, past and future, for their icon of wisdom in the form of a little boy.
And you’re supposed to humour crazy people, right? Because she must be crazy, Wendy thinks in despair. Nothing else could explain why she’s taking off her glasses and putting them, carefully, on a girl who’s always thanked the heavens for twenty-twenty vision. Everything is wobbly and distorted behind those thick lenses, but it must be crystal clear to Nenene, who leans swiftly closer, like she’s trying not to talk herself out of it, and pushes one hand back into the other girl’s hair.
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It’s not working, Nenene thinks sorrowfully. Even if this hair feels just as cool and silky running through her fingers, the eyes she remembers, the eyes behind the thick black frames she’s worn for years to keep them in her memory so she’d recognize them when they came back, are soft and gentle and melancholy. Melancholy, because of the woman sitting here wearing her glasses, and the people she reports to.
Even the eyes she remembers back from when she used to know this woman, back when she thought briefly that it might be fun to grab her and see what kind of bluster she made about it, were warm and expressive and couldn’t stay angry with anyone for more than the time it took her to get good and angry.
These eyes are emotionless, unreachable, enshrouded in ice, although Nenene thinks hazily that she can see some startled puzzlement away in the back that makes them a little more familiar.
And even though they’re still not the eyes she hoped she could trick herself into seeing, she doesn’t pull away, but pulls a thoroughly confused little blonde closer instead.
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These bloody glasses are making her dizzy, but even so, Wendy knows she should be doing something to stop this. After all, she’s the grown-up here, relatively speaking.
Twenty-three is not a child, by any means, but no one would ever guess that to watch this little green-eyed hellion right now.
Maybe someone’s slipped a drug into her food, even though they were told specifically not to because there was no need, she’d cooperated thus far, she mentioned wanting to do some writing tonight and she couldn’t do that if she was flat on her back from sedatives.
Wendy decides, ominously, that she’s going to have to have a word with them when she gets out of this, because Sumiregawa would never do this on her own. Even though there were times back when they knew each other through a girl that Wendy considered a friend at the time, back before all this, when she wondered why the foul-mouthed psychopath was watching her like that. If she would have pulled away if it had been her that this little madwoman had snatched up in the interest of authorly experience, instead of the girl that was all they had in common.
Nenene has just finished murmuring, crestfallen, that it’s not working, and Wendy doesn’t know what she means, and probably couldn’t ask even if she really wanted to know.
But whatever it is that’s not working, it doesn’t stop her from closing the space between them, and pushes a surprisingly sloppy, surprisingly hesitant kiss against the older girl’s mouth, open a little bit in bewilderment.
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It’s over almost before it begins, Nenene releasing Wendy at the same instant that she scrambles, alarmed, to her feet and to the other side of the room.
“You authors always like this?” she asks, raising one eyebrow, the tiny bit of emotion that Nenene thinks she’s managed to draw back into her eyes fading in an instant.
The brunette smirks again, but instead of turning away and going back to ignoring her hostess, tells her about a crazy thirteen-year old girl who gave up her first kiss for writing experience, but wouldn’t change it now if she could. She probably knows that story; it seems like everyone knows that story. But Nenene still tells her, because small-talk is unthinkable, and she doesn’t think either of them is really in the mood for a shouting match.
And almost before Wendy realizes that it’s her that’s talking, she tells Nenene about a silly nineteen-year old girl who lost her first kiss and her first everything else to her boss ten years older who seemed twenty, because by the time she realized what was happening it was too late to leave. And it was easier, anyway, to just let him keep his image of her as a pretty, adoring little girl who would move heaven and earth to make him happy. A silly little thing that would all but die, and probably even that, to please him.
Because even confident, powerful men like to be told that they’re wonderful by untutored, sweet, girlish innocence.
Nenene tell her, flatly, that that’s sick, and she just sort of smiles.
“I know.” A long pause, drawn out uncomfortably. “Get back to your writing. I wasn’t supposed to disturb you.”
She has just reached the doorway, and is in the process of calling for someone to unlock the door, when Nenene’s voice calls her back.
“Hey.”
“Hmm?”
“You really don’t like it, do you? Then why the hell are you here?”
Wendy smiles, sadly, but more genuinely than Nenene’s seen her since she was nineteen and bouncing and tripping over everything and its shadow.
“We’re not all lucky enough to have a sweet, naïve, wantonly destructive little Paper Master running after us, begging us to see the light.”
Nenene’s face hardens, but not because of the girl in the doorway. It's a different girl this time.
“We’re not all lucky enough to damn well give her a reason to stick around, either.”
The blonde watches her for a long moment, and for a brief second, the sympathy in her face is very clear, her eyes that bright, clear, warm sky-blue that might not look like the soft, gentle midnight blue, but is kind of nice in and of itself, now that Nenene gets a good look at it.
“Get back to your writing,” she says again, and with a sarcastic little shrug, Nenene obeys, picking up her pen and tapping it absently against the edge of the desk.
But when she looks up again, to tell the woman that Yomiko would probably forgive her if she made an effort to apologize, she’s gone.
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As soon as the door slides shut behind her, Wendy takes off down the hall, stumbling a bit in her haste to get away, eyes blurring behind a sheen of tears.
How is it, she wonders miserably, that she felt more love when that crazy girl kissed her, pretending she was another crazy girl that both of them have spent years thinking about for reasons that aren’t as different as she thought, than she’s ever felt in all the long, slow, unbearably sweet caresses of a man who knew exactly who she was?
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And soon enough, they’ll meet again, when everything comes to a boil and nothing could defuse the situation anymore, and Nenene will try one last time to convince Wendy that she’s insane, that he’s insane, that this whole thing is insane, and nothing is worth giving up who you are.
She’ll recoil in a chilling, horrified sort of surprise mingled with disgust when she realizes that she was wrong before, and the girl that she didn’t mind kissing all that much wants this to happen as much as the madman who shares her bed. A part of her wonders what the hell was so bad that the glassy-eyed little blonde wants to forget all the good along with it, but the rest of her doesn’t care, and gets safely back to despising anyone who could be a part of this.
Wendy, meanwhile, will fight back a grin at Sumiregawa’s brusque, impatient words, knowing full well by now that the side she’s given her life will lose in the end, because these girls are willing to sacrifice far more for the freedom to think for themselves than Mr. Joker is for his new world, when it comes right down to it.
And, through the haze of pain and exhaustion and terror for her friends and for herself, she’ll notice the brunette perched on a heap of rubble, next to Agent Paper, looking perfectly content, and will smile her first real smile in ages.