No Longer A Dreamer

[MurderWeasel]

((Mina Mashall continued from Strange Bedfellows))

"I'm sorry."

Mina sat out on the edge of a pier, feet dangling over the twenty feet of nothing between her and the water. Her left sock had slid almost all the way down her leg and was bunched above her ankle. She held her recorder to her face, cupping it with one hand like she was trying to light a cigarette, in hopes that it might make her words more audible over the crashing of the waves.

"I'm sorry. I wanted—I meant—I...

"I fucking suck, okay? I suck. That's it. I'm just, I'm worthless. I'm nothing. I'm worse than nothing."

She'd slept back in the market, back where this had all started, and had reflected that she had achieved absolutely nothing in leaving that building in the first place. She'd found others and then she'd abandoned them. She'd failed to help Kassandra and Marion. She'd failed to find connection. She'd saved Charlie, but then she'd left her to die. She could've stayed put, crouched in a corner, and nobody would've missed her presence. When she departed, she left her hook sitting there, to complete the cycle and make it as if she'd never been.

"I left Charlie. I left everyone. It's, I... Charlie, if you're, if it's you who's hearing this, I'm... I'm glad. I'm glad because that means you're still alive and I'm not."

It was stupid, but the primary reason Mina wasn't hurling herself into the water was that she was pretty sure it would destroy her recorder, and even if it didn't nobody would fish her out and rummage through her clothes to find it. She could maybe set it down on the edge of the pier for someone to notice, but it had been a long time now that she'd been here and nobody else had come by. She sort of wanted to die somewhere a bit more traveled, so that somebody might think to loot her body.

Mina didn't really want to die, of course, not any more than she had at any point. But now, just like at every other moment, she knew she had no chance. All that would await her, no matter what, was a bullet to the head. Who cared if it was now or later? Why did she have to keep stalling? What had she told KeKe she was going to do? Get killed or something, wasn't it? She shuffled her hands, pressed a few buttons, held one down as she estimated the seconds.

"Thank you, but no." Her voice was recognizable but a bit tinny. "I have to go get killed or something,"

Mina clicked the recorder back to standby. Good to know her memory was still sharp enough, even if nothing else was.

When she was a child, she would sometimes spend the Fourth of July with her grandparents. They lived in a little town up in the mountains, and they'd always buy baskets of fireworks that were illegal to set off within city limits. After dinner, Mina's family would gather out in the long, dirt and gravel driveway and put on a show of their own.

Mina's very favorite type of firework were these green cardboard tanks. Once lit, they'd roll forwards, then spray sparks and small explosions from three barrels. Sometimes they'd misfire, leaving weapons inactive or immolating themselves, which her father used to explain the importance of proper equipment maintenance and the potential for disaster to strike anyways.

As she grew older, her grandparents would even let her light the fuses herself. She'd imagine that she was a pilot somewhere far away, driving into battle and opening up with all weapons, or else that she was a general, maybe even The General, standing and watching the fighting unfold on screens in her command center. Every so often, she'd point two of the tanks at each other, holding her breath and waiting for one or both to catch fire as their shots struck and scored the ground. Her father wasn't enthused about this, but he tolerated it as long as she stood a respectful distance away.

"Have fun," he'd say, "but remember, you need both your eyes to do your best for the country."

And Mina would nod and smile and watch the smoke and sparks and flames.

Maybe she should make the soldiers shoot her. Maybe that was how this all had to end. It wouldn't have as much impact as it might've had she really committed back at school. Then, it'd've really made a splash, her blood sprayed over the kids in the front row, an execution in front of everyone. Or would they have dragged her outside first? Hard to say. Probably it would've depended on what she did. The bruising on her back felt so minor now. Everything felt minor, fuzzy.

It would still be something, right? She'd make them act. She'd have, for that one brief moment, control.

Or was it even about that?

She didn't know. It was also sort of about sending a message to Charlie, if the girl was still alive. Maybe then she'd understand. Maybe then she'd forgive, if it seemed like Mina had run away to go die. That would at least explain, even if it wouldn't be true. No, it was the other side of the coin that had led Mina to flee. She hadn't thought of Charlie's feelings one bit, not in that moment. She'd been trying to spare herself.

"I didn't want to watch you die."

Quiet, muttered under her breath.

"I didn't want to care.

"I don't want anything to mean anything at all.

"I don't want to hurt."

She hadn't recorded that, she realized. She'd paused her transcription of her thoughts when she played back the words she'd spoken to KeKe, and she didn't have the energy to say them again. Did it matter? All her assigned weapon was doing was giving her more excuses to shove her fate away, to keep breathing when she didn't deserve to.

Mina pulled her arm back, winding up to pitch the recorder as far out to sea as she could, thinking maybe she'd follow and knowing in her heart that she wouldn't, that she'd continue her coward's path until someone cornered her and tore out her throat like Victoria's.

She counted in her head, one, two, but before she could follow through with her pitch she saw something that made her pause and lower her arm.

Something was happening with the patrol boats. There were more, now, or maybe not more but patrol boats and something else, some other boats, and gunfire was echoing, she thought, not just from inland but also from the sea. And faintly, other sounds began to permeate her consciousness, chief among them the unmistakable roar of helicopter rotors.

For an instant, she fantasized that she'd been brave enough to say the right words, and that they were coming to kill her.

Then she set off, to see what the commotion was about.

It was as good an idea as anything else she had left.

((Mina Mashall continued in ...And An Ending))

[Namira]

((Charlie Cade continued from Strange Bedfollows))

At some point, the wound stopped hurting. Charlie took some more painkillers anyway. She was vaguely conscious, in the type of vague way that only occurred when one deliberately wasn't thinking about something too hard, that a reduction in pain probably wasn't a good thing. A few hours of sleep wasn't a miraculous cure all to her ills. Or, in layman's terms, a nap wasn't going to suddenly heal the barely-patched holes through her abdomen.

Really, she was doing surprisingly goddamn good for what had to be up there as a contender for the most adhoc surgery in Program history.

Which was to say, it'd saved the dying for a little bit down the road.

Wandering around wasn't a good idea. She should save her stamina and hole up. There weren't going to be too many more Victoria situations where she could bluff her way into confidence. Even if someone was willing to buy the lie—staggeringly naive at this point, given the three murders she'd committed—Charlie wasn't certain she had the steel to actually follow through any longer.

Her will to continue was a guttering ember. When had the presence of Mina started to count for so much of her own confidence? She'd known it was temporary. She'd known.

And she'd told herself she hadn't.

And now was telling herself that it maybe didn't have to be.

She didn't bother trying to tell herself that the reason she was blundering around through the pain barrier wasn't because she wanted to find Mina again.

Why did she matter? Why did she matter? Charlie owed Mina, but there was something other than that to it. Charlie didn't let emotions override logic.

Except for that fight back at school. Except for her paranoid descent into arguing, murdering Dyne. Except for... all of this with Mina.

Charlie was pretty confident she was dying now, as much as she wanted to skip on past the issue. Colours were looking washed out. Her eyes kept losing focus. At times blackness swam in front of her eyes. She kept losing time. Once or twice, her eyes had fluttered closed, and when she'd wrenched them open again, she'd fallen.

If nothing else, she had to say... something.

What would she say, if she caught up to Mina?

She didn't know.

There was a figure sitting away off in the distance.

Charlie breathed out softly, took a step, took another step.

The distance didn't seem to grow smaller.

They had an object to their mouth. Small, square, dark.

It was her.

"Mina," her voice cracked. There were sounds off away in the difference.

"Mina," she tried again. No louder than a whisper.

Her eyes swam as the figure turned away in the opposite direction.

Charlie's legs gave out from underneath her.