Jason activates the door-and-steps into the Qdisc, steps aside to let me climb in. Silently, I do so.
I’ve been mostly silent since the trio of announcements Leo had to make. His resignation from the Menagerie. His anticipated marriage with Aria. Their planning to be parents.
Where to begin? It just keeps going around and around in my head. I gave my congratulations (quite sincere) to the happy couple, but we bailed from the group as soon as practical and polite (especially since Leo had parting gifts for everyone. Very thoughtful ones. Of course.).
Jason sets the autopilot, then turns to me. “So. Some party. And here I thought getting a mystical team base would be the most interesting part about the afterparty.”
“Hmm,” I respond, looking at the passing streets.
“Marriage. Wow.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“And kids. That’s a huge step, emotionally, not to speak of technologically. I gotta ask him about it.” He doesn’t clarify which aspect he’s going to ask about.
“Hmmm.”
“And that giant floating head of Magus Everard that rose up out of the --”
“I am listening, Jason. Just … thinking.”
“About what?” he says, more softly.
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, gee, let me think. Was it the giant floating head of Magus Everard? No, I don’t think so. Whatever else could it have been, then?”
“The base. Marriage. Kids.”
“I suspect each of those topics has crossed my mind.”
“Want to talk about them? Any of them?”
“It would help talking if I knew how I actually felt about them.”
He grins. “Sometimes talking about it with someone else can help you figure out how you feel about it.”
I mull that hypothesis. It has some value. But. This is all weird enough. Talking about this stuff with Jason, while everything’s still up in the air, is fraught. How can I figure out my own reactions if I have to worry about his, or the feedback loop that causes.
Eat the elephant one bite at a time. “I’m moving in with Summer tomorrow.”
He blinks at the seeming veering of subject. I watch emotions run across his face. Hurt. Anger. Guilt. Confusion. Give him credit, he simply nods. “Need any help?”
I snort. “It’s hardly like I have a four bedroom flat to get packed and loaded on a moving truck. I think I can manage. But … thanks.”
Jason looks out at the midnight traffic, such as it is. “Thought you were looking at finding a place at the base, once one showed up. Well?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Yyyeah, no. I was thinking someplace more … barracksy.”
“Sounds homey.”
“Sounds familiar, thus safe, thus lacking in magical food supplies and healing auras and paths that take a straight line in a circle.”
“I thought you believed in magic.”
“Which is why it gives me some pause to pull up a magic deck chair and call it home.” I shudder. “My believing in something beyond conventional empirical, material science doesn’t mean that I trust it, or even like it. There’s lots of things I believe are real that I don’t trust.” That last comment slips out before I can parse it for other meaning, and I hope Jason doesn’t take it amiss.
He doesn’t seem to notice. “Well …” He’s quiet a moment. “The offer stands. If you change your mind.”
I nod. “Thank you. For all my --” I wave my hands about a bit. “-- your offer is both tempting and … very much appreciated.”
“Then why --” He cuts off. “Right. Let’s not do that again.”
“Learning has occurred!” I say, and give him an elbow on the bench seat.
“Well, I am a hyper-genius.”
“I can’t tell you how annoying it is that certain problem sets don’t seem amenable to hyper-genius analysis and resolution.”
Jason barks a laugh. “I hear that.” Then his face gets serious. “So …” and for a horrible moment, out of nowhere, I’m terrified he’s going to ask me to marry him and have children, right here, right now – but that tragic twelve-car collision is averted as he veers off to “… Harry. And the HHL.”
I swallow, and hope my voice is normal as I say, “Not a surprise, I guess. His parents are both on the team. Were. I’ve not been keeping track of all the latest. But they’re responsible sorts out their ears, least in that fashon, so if they’re trying to revitalize the team, Harry’s a natural choice.”
“I think he’s ready. You’ve seen him in action more recently than me, but he’s got a lot on the ball.”
I shrug. “He has the power. He’s tapped into it even more of late. I worry about the will. He’s just the kind of go-along person that got the HHL into the mess they’re in now. He got that from his father, too.”
“Sometimes I think,” he says, “we should have that as a motto for the Menagerie: ‘We Have Daddy Issues.’” He chuckles at his own joke, then adds, “I don’t think you’re giving Harry enough credit. I think there’s a core decency to him that any team needs. He shows what a hero should be every time he jumps into action, every time he runs off for a bag of chips – no, I’m serious – and every time he quietly shifts the conversation to show the underlying question.”
I purse my lips, non-committal. “Do you think he’ll jump?”
“We weren’t that close, even before the Menagerie. If he does, it won’t be because the HHL is more famous or important or anything. It will be because he thinks he can do the most good there.”
The streetlights flash overhead on the expressway. We draw looks from the few vehicles, mostly trucks, out this time on a Sunday – Monday, now – but aside from that, it’s like we’re alone. “The Menagerie hasn’t been around that long, and we’re already looking at over half the founding members gone – more, maybe, depending on how you count Leo’s gang.”
He shrugs. “We didn’t band together out of any great purpose. We banded together because we wanted to hang out and be able to do good at the same time. If the team goes its separate ways … well, that’s life sometimes. There are other ways to fight the good fight.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Hey.”
“Dammit, Jason --” I grip the cushion under me tightly, a little reservoir of anger I hadn’t even realized was there bursting forth. “It’s easy enough for you. You have your big Foundation. You’ve got ‘purpose’ every direction you look, and all the resources you need to pick and choose, and everyone rooting you on and putting you on magazine covers. That’s you. Me? I’ve got – I only have this team. These people here. If they all go away --”
I realize, to my horror, that my eyes are wet, and I shift to look away from him so he doesn’t see.
“Alycia --”
“It’s all crashing and burning. And it all started when I joined. Correlation, meet Causation.”
“Hey, hey,” he says scooting closer and putting his arm around me. If he can’t see my face, he can hear my voice. “It’s going to be okay.”
I shake my head with a sharp gesture. “Dammit. It was all so carefully c-crafted. Had it all figured out, an instant after I saw you there, in the Sepiaverse. A way for me to get out, to get away from what I’d been doing, my past, my father – come in from the cold, but with you, not in some – with strangers. Going over to AEGIS. Winning their trust. Getting on the team – and then you left, and now everyone else is leaving and I don’t know what’s going to happen --” – to me. I cut myself off before I sound completely pathetic.
“Hey,” he says again, gently – very gently (clever boy) – pulling around my shoulders, lettiing him look at me. “This is not everything. You’re smart, you’re strong, you’re useful – even if the Menagerie disappeared tomorrow, which it’s not, you would land on your feet.”
“Yeah, I’m sure AEGIS would be happy to have me stashed away somewhere as a weapon for them,” I retort. “Or any other agency of that sort, black or white or gray hat. That’s who I am, to them – a genius raised by a master science villain to be his weapon, to do his dirty work, to --” Kill. "-- follow orders and survive. That’s not what I want to be."
He pulls me into him, and I let him hug me as we hum down the expressway, my face against his shoulder. I feed his nanobots some moisture.
A few minutes later, I pull back a little, and he lets me, no restraint. His blue eyes meet mine for a long moment, and I suddenly realize he’s got to be (metaphorically, I hope) biting his tongue to not say anything about his previous offers. So many points to him for that. I snort, lightly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to – go off like that.” I rub my uncovered arm across my face. A heavier snort. “Weddings make me cry.”
He looks at me, puzzled for half a second at the topic shift. “Oh. Really?”
“No, not really, though that whole thing didn’t make me feel any more – settled.”
A pause. “Do you ever think --”
“No.” I set a finger to his lips. “No, I don’t. It’s way too soon, with everything else. I’m not sure I’m …” I trail off, then say, “I can’t talk about marriage. Or, for Kali’s sake, babies.” There’s so much there for me to unravel – and would be, even if we were talking about two “normal” associates of ours.
“Okay.” He’s quiet a bit, then chuckles.
“What?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Really? The chuckle-then-stand-mum ploy? And here I thought you were a hyper-genius.”
“I don’t want you to hit me.”
“Then you’d better talk.”
“You should take over.”
“Take – what?”
“Take over. The Menagerie.”
I stare at him.
“I can’t believe you haven’t thought of this yet. Leo leaving means there’s nobody in charge. Sooner or later someone’s going to question my name on the official paperwork. And with Leo gone, we lose the helpful and sympathetic Agent Waters. So AEGIS, and the City, and the media, oh, not to mention the people on the team, are going to want to know who’s running things.”
“Yes, I took that cognitive jump as soon as you said ‘Take over the Menagerie.’ I was waiting for the point where you demonstrate you haven’t suffered a mental break.”
“Who else? I mean, Charlotte is a nice person, but is she leadership material? Or Adam? Summer?”
“Harry.”
“We just talked about that. You don’t think he’d make a good HHL member, why would he make a good leader of the Menagerie?”
“Jason, this is insane.”
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“Doyle was a spiritualist who believed in faeries in the garden.”
“Whatever, it’s still a good quote. And my point stands.”
I shake my head. “You’ve just added another ‘impossible.’” I tick off on my fingers. “AEGIS will never agree to it. The team will never agree to it. And, not least, I will never agree to it.”
“You would never lead the team?”
“I’d be a horrible leader. I’m better at being pointed at a problem and fired at it.”
“One, you exaggerate. Two, you just said that’s not what you want to be in life. Three, you’re the one who was worried about the group falling apart so you have the most motivation to keep it running. And, four, have you ever seen Leo hanging back and not acting in a battle?”
“Well … no. But it’s all the stuff outside of battle that’s just as important, and that I would suck at. Leadership stuff. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“When?”
“I couldn’t keep my father’s empire together --”
“There’s a difference between running a global science criminal empire that you don’t really want to run anyway, and being a leader of a small super-hero group.”
“I tried leading squads in the field. I failed. Miserably.”
“How long ago? How old were you?”
Pause. “Fourteen. Fifteen.”
“I think maybe you’ve grown a bit since then.”
“I --”
“Just think about it. And maybe think about what sort of a leader the Menagerie needs. It’s not a military chain of command. It’s not even always being the tactical mastermind. Just … think about it.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. I’ll think about it.” He nods. I continue, “When I need a laugh, or a frisson of horror to keep me awake.”
He snorts again, puts his arm around me, and pulls me – gently – next to him.
I don’t object. For once I’m willing to just feel, not think.
* * *
As the Qdisc pulls up to the passenger drop-off for the Quill Family compound, I pull away from him and raise an eyebrow.
He holds up both hands. “No! No funny business. Since I’m not allowed to know where you are --” He continues sotto voce. “-- (I totally know where you are) --” And back to normal. “-- it made more sense to drop me off here, and let the disc take you back ho-h-h-h-however you want to refer to that place.”
I glare at him, and give him a light (honest!) punch in right shoulder. The nanobots probably keep him from even feeling it. “Goofball.”
“My middle name. Though --” he says, then slowly and carefully picks his words. “-- If you wanted to come inside, for a cup of coffee or whatever, you would be welcome. No expectations or ulterior motives or cunning plans.”
I smirk. “I would be gravely disappointed if there were no ulterior motives. But – I think it best to call it here. For now.”
He nods, with a smile. “I’ll you hold you to that ‘for now.’”
“No doubt.” I close my eyes, take a moment. Put aside the snark. Put aside the teasing. Put aside the anger and envy and loneliness. Just … be … honest.
My eyes open. I reach out and take his hands. “Thank you. For tonight. For everything. It was more special … more precious … to me than I could ever tell you. I very much want to do it again.”
He grins. “Maybe not do all of it. Just the good parts.”
“I liked the part with the knife.”
“Yeah, I was hoping to skip that part.”
“And the dancing.”
“Some of the dancing.”
“Some of the dancing.”
“Not the parts where I looked like someone was shooting random electrical impulses into my spine.”
“Oh, so none of the dancing?”
“Smartass.”
“Geniusass.”
“Cuteass.”
I blush, for the love of Ishtar. “C’mere, you.”
I pull him closer. We kiss. A while.
“Are you … sure … I can’t invite you --”
“Jason.”
“Well, I’m happy to see you.”
“Clearly.”
“Talk tomorrow?”
“Let’s not set a schedule quite yet. But if it happens, that’d be nice.”
He nods. Gives me another quick peck. Takes a jump out of the Qdisc, though not quite as gracefully as before for some reason. “James, take the lady wherever she wants to go.”
Oh, that’s still a temptation. “Back where you picked me up for dinner, James.”
“Encrypted Destination Code ‘Durance Vile,’ yes, ma’am.”
He’s waving at me when we pull out. I shoot him with finger guns. The corner of the gate cuts off his smile. I close my eyes and begin the long, lonely ride to my last night in a cell.
-fin-
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6722421