The emotional overload of the evening has become physically exhausting. Not only that, but Tay physically exhausted. She has had the shit beaten out of her by Warden Morgan, she’s beaten the shit out of a few dozen bugs, and she’s had the shit beaten out of her a second time by her own sister, May. There’s just not a whole lot of gas left in the tank. Her face looks like a child’s crayon drawing, flecks of red and brown smeared smeared every which way. Mercifully, she finds a few minutes of sleep, aided by the ever growing warmth as the inferno rages on.
She dreams of being a little girl. She dreams of all of the times that she came up short. She dreams of all of the times that May beat her -- as in, beat her in some sort of competition. She also dreams of all of the times that Mother beat her -- as in, with a sock full of quarters. She dreams of what her life would have been like if she had been born in Camp Trin. She dreams of laughing around a table at dinner time. She dreams of being tucked in by warm, loving hands. She dreams of falling asleep in a warm bed, knowing that tomorrow would be filled with just as much love as today. She dreams of being slapped across the face.
Wait, no, that part isn’t a dream. The icy sting of a cold hand whipping from cheek to cheek shocks her back to the land of the living. She instinctively jumps up to her feet, but her legs are unwilling to support her. She comes crashing back down towards the earth, but she’s caught by a pair of arms. She looks up to see that the arms belong to Cannon.
“Wha?” is all she manages to say.
Cannon looks at her like she just ate glue. “Wha me? Nah, kid, wha you?”
Tay makes another attempt at standing up, this one with shaky success. She brushes some dirt off of her chest, then draws the crook of her elbow down across her face like a windshield wiper. She spits out the remaining dirt and blood from her mouth, blinks a few times, rubs her eyes. “What? What’s going on?”
“We oughta be askin’ you the same thing. In fact, we ah askin’ you the same thing. What the hell is goin’ on heah?”
Tay scratches her head. “We?”
“We,” Cannon says, pointing to himself then pointing to the hooded figure behind him.
“Fuck,” Tay says, and instantly she feels blood rushing back through her extremities. Her legs feel solid. Her arms feel strong. Without even thinking about it, her hands dig themselves into her pockets and she grabs a fistful of cards. “You.”
“Easy, sheesh, chill, kid. You wanna cut someone, how about you cut one of the bad guys for once, eh?”
Hoodie steps forward. “Where’s Lex?”
The fight or flight response reverberating through Tay’s body starts to dissipate. She lowers her arms. Releases the tension in the muscles in her legs. When that sensation of being a cornered animal leaves her body, she feels absolutely hollow. “Gone.”
“Gone?” Cannon asks. “Whaddya mean gone? You had him like five minutes ago. You know, right befoah you lit the goddamn buildin’ on fiyah? Ring any bells, kid? Fuck you for that, by the way. I was ready to bust the shit outta you for what you did, but Hoodie heah talked me off the ledge. You can thank her for your life, kid.”
“Hoodie, what?” Tay’s mind races, as if her train of thought is trying to bob and weave through the veritable Mulholland Drive of depression and realizations that is her current brain state. It’s hard enough trying to process years of trauma and the explosive culmination of those years, but now she has to do so while also trying to understand who the fuck this mysterious hooded figure is and why she no longer seems to want Tay dead. It’s all quite a lot for Tay right now.
“Hoodie, what?” Cannon parrots back in a mocking tone. “What, you hit your big stupid head on the way out?” He grabs Tay’s shoulders and shakes her vigorously back and forth. “Tay, tell us what the fuck is goin’ on. Bugs, fiyah, Maraudahs, Lex. Any of this sound familiah to you?”
She shoves his hands off of her. “Okay, okay. Yeah. Yes. Just, give me a sec.”
“We don’t have a sec,” Hoodie says. The subtle rasp in her voice fills Tay with vague feelings of dread. She takes a deep breath, the cool air piercing her lungs like thousands of tiny needles.
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“I needed an out. That’s why I came here in the first place. I needed an out.”
“Tay, what the fuck ah you talkin’ about?”
“This was my final chance. Every mission they sent me on, I kept on fucking it up somehow. Over and over and over again. So they sent me here. They told me that if I didn’t come back with enough of a prize to make up for all of my fuck ups, they’d kill me. I wanted so badly to show them that I was capable. Not just to earn my life. To earn their respect. Their love. When I saw Lex here all by himself? I thought it was a sign. A sign that finally, finally I would be able to show my family that I deserved to be there. That I belonged. But then you--” she jabbed her finger at Hoodie and her voice broke.
“You,” she continued, “You showed up and ruined everything for me. I was this close-- this close-- to getting over that fence and home free. But you had to ruin my fucking life. Who are you? Who the fuck are you? And why are you following me? You and you sick, twisting arm? Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up. I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re some kind of abomination. Some kind of fucked up little monster who’s hellbent on stealing my life away from me. Standing next to you makes my insides feel like they want to shrivel up and die.”
Hoodie is, of course, covered in a hooded sweatshirt, as well as about a thousand other assorted rags and bandages that essentially cover her entire body head to toe. The only part of her that’s visible is her eyes, which are an awful shade of gray. As such, reading her expression is a difficult task. Up until this point, it’s been fairly clear that she’s been angry. Back when she first met Tay and Lex by the city fence, she looked angry. When she just met them again on the second story of the apartment building, she looked angry. When she was fighting alongside Cannon on the third floor, she looked angry.
But now, the fire that burned behind those gray eyes has extinguished. Her body language - which is, again, hard to read as she is essentially a vague silhouette of gray, feels less tense. She’s no longer a coil under heavy tension. She looks more like a limp noodle. Wind out of her sails. At first, Tay sees Hoodie’s deflation and takes it as a badge of honor. Good riddance to whatever self worth that monster has. She deserves to be sad for what she’s done.
But what, really, has she done? Protect Lex? The innocent life of a naive, good natured kid? Some villain. Tears well up in the corner of Tay’s eyes. She tries to hold them back. Act now, think later, feel never. Be the stony force of destruction that you’re supposed to be. But she can’t. The breaks into heavy, hysteric sobs. Sobs that wrack her chest. She can’t breathe, she can’t see. She crumples back down to the ground and lies face up, watching plumes of smoke reach out like drunk fingers to obscure the stars above her.
“I’m sorry,” she sputters. “I’m so, so, sorry.”
The dark space between the stars has never looked so inviting. She wishes she could just evaporate and float up into that big expanse of empty. She doesn’t want to be here anymore. Here is a place of pain, sadness, and disappointment. Anywhere is better than here. Her eyes lose focus on the big, vast nothing above her. But then, something enters her field of view that blocks out the nothing. She barely manages to bring her eyes to focus on it. It’s Cannon. He extends an arm down to Tay, but she doesn’t take it. Realizing this, he instead just grabs her and yanks her up back to her feet.
“Listen, kid. Me and Hoodie heah didn’t just rescue a shitload of people and fight a shitload of bugs in a buildin’ that’s fuckin’ on fiyah just so we could come back down heah and look at you bein’ all sad and mopey and sorry for yoahself. I thought I couldn’t be more fuckin’ pissed than I was when you told us what you and the othah Maraudahs do with the bugs. But hearin’ you say all this shit? That you feel like a fuck up and that you wanted your shitty ass family to like you? Well, congratulations, kid. I’m more pissed. You wanna say fuck you to your family? Say fuck you to your family. You wanna be good? Then just be fuckin’ good. It’s not hahd. Do the right fuckin’ thing. Help us help you. We wanna. But you gotta tell us what in the good hot fuck is goin’ on.”
Tay looks at him with wide, dinner plate eyes for a long moment. Finally, she nods. “Marauders are here. I don’t know how, but they found out that Lex was here, unguarded. Luckily, they didn’t send the whole family. Just a couple dozen or so of us, led by my sister, May. I brought Lex to her, thinking it would be enough for them to take me back. Of course I know now how stupid that was--”
“No self loathin’, sistah. We’ah too fah gone for that now.”
Tay nods, trying to hide the blush in her face that bubbled up when he used the word “sister.” She fights a smile, then continues. “They split up. May took Lex and half the Marauders into the chapel. Sofi, that’s my sister’s second in command, took the rest of the Marauders to the southern district. They’re trying to find anything else they can steal while the city falls apart around them. Ordinarily, I’d say we’d have to act fast because they should be wanting to leave with Lex as fast as possible. Knowing my sister, though, I have a feeling that this charade of stealing what they can is really just a flimsy pretext for destroying and killing as much as possible.”
Hoodie nods. “So we split up. Two of us go after Lex, one of us go south to fight the Marauders there.”
Tay shakes her head. “Two of us can’t fight May, especially not when she’s got her crew around her. I know you’re both tough, but May isn’t like anyone you’ve fought before. She’s strong as hell and even more bloodthirsty than she is strong.”
“Then we’ah just gonna have to trust that Rach and the Wahden have figyahd out theiah shaeh of the bugs and ah up to a little Maraudah maulin’.”
Hoodie looks at Tay. “Can you translate?”
Cannon asks, “Translate what?”
Tay snickers despite herself. “The town warden and Rach-- she’s tough-- they’re in the southern district right now clearing out the bugs, same as we were doing in the apartment complex. Hopefully they’re okay, and hopefully they’ve got enough energy left to fight Sofi and the others.”
“Yeah, I just said all of that,” Cannon yells.
Tay smirks, a giggle escaping her. “You tried to, I’ll give you that.”
“I literally have no idea what you’ah talkin’ about. Can we just go into that chapel and kick some ass please?”
The smile fades from Tay’s face. “Let’s do it. But first,” she raises a hand, then curls her fingers in and scratches her chin. “Are we, like...?”
“What, ah you askin’ if we’ah good? We got a lotta shit to solve before we’ah good, don’t kid youahself. But when we were up theah? Squashin’ bugs? Well, hell. That felt good. Like family.”
Tay smiles. She nods. Then, wordlessly, Tay, Cannon, and Hoodie all run across the Camp Trin quad towards the magnificent stone chapel.