nostabbing | 014 | Goldenrod City

[Dream Sequence]
Parker's dreams are filled with music, and she's just conscious enough to find that strange as she wanders through the narrative of images they present for her.

It's a beautiful symphony in its own right. Hardison's violin often takes the lead, alternating flashes of bright smiles and sweat-beaded apprehension as his long and nimble fingers find the right strings to press. Eliot's guitar is there, too, and sometimes his voice — she hadn't known he could sing, just like they hadn't known he could cook or play chess or...really do anything besides busting heads. She wonders if they make priceless guitars the way they make priceless violins; maybe next Christmas she ought to steal one for each of them. Nate and Sophie gave presents last year; they knew just what everyone wanted most.

In the music she hears, the percussion comes from the clink of whiskey bottles and the ceramic thud of coffee mugs and shot glasses meeting polished wood tabletops. He's back to drinking again, Nate. That doesn't mean they don't trust him.

And of course the vocals are Sophie — Princess Sophie the first lady with her grifter's voice, saving the day so effortlessly with bright chatter and impeccable lies. Grifting is just like stealing someone's soul, and fitting in isn't as hard as she'd once thought it would be. Sophie helps her. She'd never really realized she could do it until she'd done it.

There's music in her dreams, and feelings provide the color. She'd had feelings. At least one, really, but probably more than one the more she thinks about it. Someone...someone would be proud of her for that, but she can't call up his face in her dream. But he'd be happy, and Nate's percussion takes on an auxiliary set of sounds — clapping hands and a forced-out bark of heavy laughter that sounds like tears and the crick you get in your neck when you tip it back to look at the sky.

Eliot had smiled like that when he'd bounded down the hotel corridor, darting away to go get Nate because Damien Moreau is gone. Hardison needs to put away his violin, she thinks; he'll need both hands to help her move her crate of gold bars, and it's his job to figure out how to get them on the plane without incident anyway.

It's finally over; that's what Eliot had said. The music sounds different now, because no one is playing it; Nate's asleep and Sophie is dead (twice, but not really either time) and Eliot is holding the doorjamb and Hardison is hefting the crate. Without them, the music is tinny and bright like a video game, and when the elevator doors close, she's not sure what will be waiting for her when they open again.

"Make sure they get on the plane," she says aloud, and frowns because the words seem so faraway, like she's hearing them through water, and her throat grinds and grates like she hasn't used it in a week.

Did Michael Vittori wear white? She'll have to check the campaign posters — the other guys were the army grandpas, not him.

"Give some to the president guy," she insists as the elevator floor sound rings, pushing the words out before the thought and the resonance of chime recedes. "He likes school a lot."

Hardison already has his phone out, taking notes like an accountant, and this is her floor —

She opens her eyes, and doesn't know where she is, but there's music in the air again, and it's certainly not the hotel.

~

[A few hours after she's woken up and had the chance to get settled in to the Pokemon trainer life again, Parker eventually finds her way back onto the Gear network, opting to send out an anonymous text with a question that's on her mind, more just for the sake of reminding herself how things work around here than anything else.]

Is there a thing about yourself that you never tell other people? I guess it doesn't even have to be a bad thing, but just something that you don't talk about or anything.

I don't want to know what it is. But what made you decide not to tell people? Like are you ashamed of it, or are you trying to forget it ever happened, or did you just not think it was important, or are you protecting people by not telling them?

I guess you could not tell somebody something for a lot of reasons. That's kinda weird.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It goes without saying that ever person has a secret they don't want getting out.

Maybe multiples. It's not much of a shock that people would continue to keep secrets here, too.

Right, but I don't care what the secret is. I just want to know why people are keeping it.

Pride, cowardice, fear.

Could be love. Could be that they're being threatened. Could be that they did something they regret. Maybe they did something they don't regret at all but that this place has told them that they should.

Which one is yours?

Let's go with "all of the above."

You sound like a real charmer.

Sorry to disappoint you.

So when you love somebody, is it better to not know their secrets?

In most cases it would be.

But the person I love never did love me.

How come? Were they just bad at it?

I don't think they have the capacity to love anyone.

I don't know. Maybe they're just bad at it. I think sometimes people say other people can't do things because they're just not able to, but a lot of times they're wrong and just not giving the other person a chance.

Maybe so. Either way it hardly matters since they're not here.

But you still like them, right?

[There's a very long pause.]

Of course.

So shouldn't you still give them a chance? If they're not here it's not like you'll know either way, right? So you could be wrong the whole time and never know it.

Sometimes people fall in love when they shouldn't.

They do?

There are a lot of assholes in the world. I'm not about to pretend I'm not one of them but the person I'm talking about isn't innocent either.

Selfishness doesn't beget itself to healthy relationships.

Then why do you like them?

I mean, if you fall in love with somebody that's usually because there's something you like about them, right? So even if they're terrible, isn't there still something that's good, if that's what you like about them?

Left over remnants from when I didn't know any better.

There was something, once, but I don't think it was ever real.

...I don't get it.

To be honest I'm not sure how to explain it.

I feel any attempt to do so wouldn't be very satisfactory.

...I think it's still better to feel something than to not feel anything at all, though.

Even if it sucks to like them, at least you have the ability to.

You're probably right.

What about you? Surely you wouldn't ask a question like this if you didn't have secrets yourself.

anon text;

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