Aug 27, 2015


After the station, after the hospital, after parting ways with Benji and having her own bruises seen to, after her mother picking her up and driving her home, Gigi sits in the loungeroom, smothered in blankets, staring blankly at the TV screen. Reports are spotty so far, phone footage and garbled eye-witness. Nothing accurate except the bodies. All the bodies that she knows won’t wake up. They are only showing them because they look whole.

She lifts her hand again, pressing it against her chest. There’s a place she can’t reach into, and a chill she can’t warm up. Fingers around her starseed. She was so close to lying there still and silent forever.

And she can remember his eyes, clear and pale and cold. And his voice, so sincere, so sure. So heartless. His laugh. “I definitely want to.” And she’d believed him. He’d looked her right in the eye. There had been nothing left to do, no mercy in that mocking gaze. She couldn’t do anything. The Negaverse was smoke and choking darkness. The Negaverse was a General’s aura suddenly, unavoidably right behind you. The Negaverse was a wavy-haired blond, grinning while he decided to take your life force away.

If the knight hadn’t been there... She’s been so stupid. All along. It’s just like in her nightmares. Worse, because now she’s actually trying and it fixes nothing, she’ll just die sooner, get others killed, put people in danger. She’s useless. Why power up? A civilian could do as much as Subamara could.

Her mother sits down next to her, setting down a steaming mug of cocoa that they both know she won’t drink, wraps an arm around her shoulders. It’s warm, but superficial. Like the blanket. The damage is internal.

“You don’t have to stay here,” her mother says softly. “You can go back to Australia. Your grandparents would love to have you.”

Gigi doesn’t respond. Running away won’t fix it. She already tried that. She wants to be safe, to feel safe, but beyond that, she wants everyone else… Her parents, her cousin. Arian. Benji, all busted up and still looking for a way to help. All the unknown faces, fallen bodies. She’s still alive, still moving. She has to keep moving.

“You don’t have to stay here,” her mother repeats, as if she somehow hasn’t heard.

“Yes. I do.” Until everyone is safe.

For a long moment they sit in contemplation, the TV playing muted ads between news.

Her mother doesn’t like the quiet. “Well, um,” she says, still squeezing Gigi’s shoulder over the bruising. “We’ve decided, public transport’s not safe and all. We’re going to buy you a car! For your twentieth! What colour would you like?”

A car? Gigi looks up doubtfully, sensitive to her mother’s anxiously cheerful words, her sudden generosity. She doesn’t have to ask ‘we who?’. She knows the tone of voice that includes her father, and even with the subway system in disarray, this is not a normal birthday gift. Too early. This is a new addition to the pile of toys and treasures she’s been receiving for years – 'yes, we’re fighting but we both love you, hon. Please don’t cry, it’s not your fault.’ The tension in her mother’s voice has shifted, taking on an awkwardness she’s heard before, but also a new elation beneath it.

Gigi drops her eyes from the scenes on the TV, staring into the steam rising off the cocoa in gentle blurry curls. The clues are not hard to fit together, and she feels a new kind of hollow opening up inside her. “Oh,” she says softly, “You finally finalised the divorce.”

Her mother pales, then flusters. “Well. I – this isn’t really the time to talk about it. I didn’t mean to bother you. But it’s been a long time, Geej. I hoped you’d understand.”

Gigi nods. This is why she’d come back from Australia. She’d kind of guessed, but thought she could pretend she hadn’t. The unit that was mum-and-dad is gone. She’s lost. A battle she’s been trying to fight since she was a little girl. In a way, it frees up space. To pick a new fight, choose something she can make a difference with. She’ll be twenty in a few short months, and it’s not a surprise or anything, but it still hurts. As an adult, she understands. But they are her parents, and for them she’s always been a child, and how could they? It’s not the worst thing that could happen, she tells herself. They are both still alive. They aren’t lying half-digested in the guts of the subway, or empty without their starseeds. Dangling broken from a youma’s claw. They’re both still here. Just not together. In the face of all that, it seems small, a little selfish hurt. Just bleeding like a paper cut, right inside her heart.

“I could. Move closer to Uni,” she says distantly. “Then I wouldn’t need to drive, or take the subway.”

“You could, hon. Is that... What you want to do? Move out?”

“…I don’t know.”

Her voice comes out small and tight, barely there. She turns towards her mother, but can’t meet her gaze, just leans forward, buries her face against her shoulder and cries and cries and cries.


(881 words)