((Darlene Silva continued from
Mama's Gonna Look So Great))
It was hard for Darlene to say exactly how long she'd been gone, or how far she had traveled. These were details that had held the utmost importance to her on the way out, when the very worst things she could possibly conceive of happening were her getting lost or left behind or else Abe and Christina getting into trouble and needing her while she was too far away to effectively intervene. None of those worries had been unfounded, but in hindsight she had been guilty of a certain lack of imagination. In reality, things had turned out much, much worse.
Really, it had been pretty improbable that she end up shooting probably the only person left whose death would tear her up in new ways. Had it been anyone else, she would've been upset, sure, and sad, and guilty, but not to the same degree. Anyone else, and she would've maybe stayed with them still, talked still, but their dying wish wouldn't have attained the same importance that Arizona's had. Darlene wouldn't have put her return to her living friends on hold for anyone else, because she hadn't owed anyone else in quite the same way, either directly or by proxy. But here she was, in the wake of delay after delay after delay.
Just how long had it been? When she left, it was raining, but the precipitation had been getting lighter and lighter. By the time Arizona's guns had been disposed of, it was functionally over, though the humidity still lingered in the air. Time always seemed to stretch for Darlene, or to contract, based on what she was doing and what was happening around her. When her primary goal was to pee in the bushes and change her shirt, and her biggest concern was getting far enough away from the others to have privacy while doing so, it had felt like a really long time. Those events, so small and meaningless, had felt like they'd taken ten or even fifteen minutes! But then, the shooting and the conversation, that had felt like forever, but if she had to pick a number, Darlene would've also said ten or fifteen minutes. Actually watching a movie, paying attention to the events and dialogue, she'd always found it incredible how much happened in a quarter hour. It was enough time to meet someone, fall in love, fight, and split up. Even the longest scenes were almost never that long, but so much was conveyed in the dialogue regardless.
And it was the same, again and again. Disposal of the guns? Ten to fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty for that, because she'd run around a lot, but maybe less, because things always felt way longer when she was running around. That was how being miserable worked.
Lunch with Ace? Yet again, ten to fifteen minutes. Darlene ate quickly a lot of the time, and even trying to slow it down, it had only been two ribs. Ten minutes might be pushing it. How long did it take to tie some shoes? How long did it take to finally say goodbye all the way?
The walk back had felt both quick and interminable. Put together entirely, Darlene had been absent for somewhere between forty minutes and an hour, probably. Maybe even less. That was all the time it took to upend and reconfigure everything she thought she knew about her life in this place, all it took for one of the strongest people she knew to fall by her own hand, all it took for a reunion to come and go.
What might have transpired with the others in that same small span of time?
The voices were the first sign that something was seriously wrong. When Darlene heard them, her hurried walk broke into a jog, even as her legs and lungs screamed at her that she'd had far more than her fair share of exercise in the last little while. It wasn't screaming. It wasn't even normal anger, exactly, not like when Darlene heard those two girls shriek at each other before the fight in the halls a million years ago, but the tone wasn't one bit friendly either. She recognized Abe's voice, and thought she heard Christina's too, and nobody else, but they were testy, bickering not like siblings but like rivals. They weren't happy.
Darlene wasn't being quiet or sneaky. Her shoes scraped along, shoveling dirt and twigs and loose bark and dry leaves up into the air. Her breathing was painful. She wasn't watching the ground anymore. She'd diverged from the track, just a little, but it didn't matter because she could hear them, she knew they were here, at any moment she'd see them and—
And then she did.
Darlene's momentum carried her towards the pair even as she slowed her pace, her bag thumping against her side. They were in a little clearing, and there was a body nearby, and a shopping cart, and even if the latter hadn't been enough to know for sure who it was, Darlene would've recognized Sakurako. Her throat felt tight all over again, but she had little time to spare for the body, because the living demanded her attention.
Abe stood back, guarded, defensive. It was a stance she could make sense of in her mind, the sort that said things were bad, things had gone wrong. It was probably how he'd looked all that time ago, back on the first day, when she shot Beryl, though there had been other things demanding more focus at the time. That instantly got Darlene's heart pounding faster.
Christina, meanwhile, stood near the cart and the bags, but not nearly so loose and easy. She had something big and metal in—no, on—her hand. Darlene squinted and almost took her glasses off to clean them before she remembered and then she didn't have to. The trap! Sakurako had had a bear trap, and it had been in her things, armed, and, and was that blood trickling down Christina's hand?
"I, guys, w-wait, I just, I," Darlene stammered and stumbled, as she leaned forward, bracing her hands on her knees while she panted, revolver pressing into her skin cool and metal. Her spit tasted tangy, and she really hoped she wouldn't puke. She didn't want to have to explain what she'd had for lunch just yet.