A/N: Something I wrote 2 years ago and never published. I still love Motorcity.
In the old café he could rest. Barely any customers came at this hour, though there were a few silent men in the back blowing smoke into each other's faces. He didn't like or dislike the smell of cigarettes, if the white mist dared to tread near his nostrils he barely noticed. The light pollution seemed to be just another part of the scene that he most definitely didn't want to disrupt. Dim green lamp shades hovering on the ceiling did little to fight the darkness and the colors of the old parlor-like room didn't mind because they knew they were well past their prime. Peeling faded greens, browns and reds didn't uplift anyone and they'd accepted their unattractiveness and hid in the dark gratefully.
He shared some empathy with the beat resigned colors, he too was hiding. He'd ordered a hot drink only to feel like maybe he belonged.
"Black, no sugar."
He'd taken a few sips and welcomed the bitter taste. The fact that it would keep him awake was an unintentional plus, he hadn't premeditated its advantage; he was improvising a calculated plan since he was never one to lay out the details of his actions.
Alone with the sound of the barista wiping old glasses with a wet towel near the counter; about 5 squeaks per glass- he'd noticed when he failed to clear his mind; his intention for the night. One of the men in the rear booths coughed violently in his own cloud of smoke, the sound echoed eagerly, bouncing off the walls; he pictured the ashy residue in smoker's esophagus gurgle up and down.
He took another sip to let his mind focus on the bitter taste.
Bitterness, he thought was simple and easy to fill one's self with. He'd avoided the taste, the emotion, the taste of emotion up until today. Today seemed like a good day to break a clean streak.
Filling oneself with smiles and reassuring embraces was much more difficult than he'd first thought. In the beginning they lured him effortlessly. His friends, their cars, and their trust was the perfect medicine to ail his previously bitter core.
Upon arriving, the first weeks in the underground city were the worst. At first he missed the bright smooth shapes of Deluxe luxury. There weren't any interactive service applications for the trivial tasks of daily life in Motorcity. Everything was manual; no voice commands or fingertip sensors and in his disturbed state of mind it was excruciatingly frustrating. In one of his fits he'd had to pay for some hotel damage in labor. At the time he was a broke defector, he didn't have another means and he'd felt a little guilty so he took the work on without complaint.
He smirked against a swirl of smoke that wandered into his booth. That was the perfect combination. Bitterness and guilt.
The hunger pangs did more than he could ever give credit to his "clear-headedness" or "self-revelation". He couldn't thrash motel rooms and kick trashcans without any energy. Even fits of anger cost something. He'd lost 10 pounds before he started eating regularly again, which technically made him anorexic since his original physique was naturally lean.
He'd worked several odd jobs to relieve his cheeks and limbs from their hollow state. Mostly unspeakable cleaning duties he still has nightmares about. The labor, however, disgustingly stomach churning gave him time to work out his bitterness in small strains at a time. The stress of his troubled mind felt significantly lighter after an evening of delving into sewage pits. He almost didn't even mind the smell. He was alone and no one could complain about his odor; except for the landlords. He was told to either take a shower every day after work or leave. He left; not because he was repelled by the idea of bathing but because he was done taking orders from authority figures. Later that same night he broke into a closed diner and bathed in its bathroom. He only had to break one window and he left a pile of cash near the register before he left as reimbursement.
After that night his anger, frustration, guilt….bitterness dug itself a nice deep hole inside his brain to sleep and hide. As of late he'd almost forgotten about it, but now he could feel it surfacing again. Its claws digging slowly but thoroughly, effectively, cementing the walls of its hole along its path to make a permanent open space for it to come and go at its leisure.
He clenched the coffee mug handle placed on the table tightly; his knuckles turned white.
He'd been betrayed again
The café, his pitiful beacon of hope had done the job of detouring his mind but now the side show made his anger bubble with more intensity. He had feared this outcome but he knew it was coming.
He stood; threw a few crumpled bills near the coffee mug and exited, wiping the smell of smoke from his nose with the sleeve of his coat as he left. The barista's glass squeaks didn't fail to bid him farewell as he swung open the double doors into the dark night.
His steps sang awkward off key sopranos. His upper lip curled distastefully.
The smiles, back pats, embraces, kisses, hand holding, and the sweet verbal exchanges for a brief moment became something ugly, fake….dead.
He stopped at Mutt's door, folded his arms into a half rectangle onto her cold metal to lean his forehead onto. Heavy exhales escaped his chest. His breathe materialized in the cold air in front of him as if he was supposed to breathe it back in again and stay polluted. He let out a loud groan and pushed himself away from his makeshift confinement of bad spirits.
Fake and ugly he could deal with, but he didn't want her to die inside the blissful dream that his skin, head, and heart had her in, propped up on a throne made of pure gold.
He'd die too.
When he arrived at the mouth of their headquarters, he felt surprised that he felt a little car sick. He had rushed—zoomed really passed the long snaky highways across Motorcity, mind intent on reaching HQ before she could leave. The sudden drastic change in speed seemed to catch up with him on the center of his forehead and stomach when he hit the brakes to wait for the metal teeth to open.
If Mutts engine hadn't naturally been so obnoxiously loud he would have revved it purposefully anyway. He didn't want to sneak up on anyone or mute anything he was about to perform. They all needed to know he was back; she needed to know.
Exiting Mutt didn't appeal to him, she was his calming agent but he decided he needed to face this alone.
While planting his feet on the pavement to stand up from the driver's seat he heard rushed footsteps on the metal platform above.
He looked up imagining her stance, her face before he actually saw her standing on the platform's edge alone, her hands clenched up at her sides embodying her worried expression. Her eyes were intently fixed on his trying to cradle his negative energy into neutrality.
She stood alone but he could see the shadows of the others behind her in the yellow light from the bar; their whispers hushed and suddenly too loud as soon as Mutt's engine died down. He paid them no attention. He knew they'd be present for this no matter what, he wasn't the only one who was betrayed and he felt some slight ease to have a third party as a precaution. Once that hole was open again, he couldn't close it; not by himself. He still had composure, but that all depended precariously on whatever was to come out of her mouth, the way she moved…
They stayed in locked in stare for a long dreadful moment. He was trying desperately not to leer and she longed to smooth over with her palms the deep furrow in his brow and loosen the tightness of his jaw. Her hands twitched thinking about it.
It had come out all wrong. Her secret, the despicable double life she lived. She had been telling herself over and over again all the while that she was waiting for the right time to spill out her deceit but the waiting had made her weak, each moment became more sensitive and more valuable to the point that her conscience would become bankrupt with guilt if the slightest bit of rotten truth slipped out.
Desire had gotten the best of her, and Buddhist priests could come to think of her as the devil. She couldn't resist the delicious invitation into his heart where she could curl up and pretend everything was okay. She had been pretending at a high extreme, but no matter the lies she honestly wanted more than anything to belong with him, at his side and in his heart.
She was outed, thrown out of her position without so much as a warning. Police sirens blared inside her ear drums when the detestable truth exposed its ugly head to destroy her blissfully ignorant haven.
Red, had been watching her more closely than she'd realized. He had in his merciless cold hands the power to figuratively murder her.
The day he'd attacked them for the first time equipped in Kane technology she was glad that for the first time she didn't have to know before the Burners, it surprised her just as much as it did them. However having him around up in Deluxe was another story. She had to make sure that he could never spot her directly, down in Motorcity and throughout her "normal" routine in Deluxe. As far as she knew she'd averted him gracefully with little to nothing traceable left behind.
She had been wrong.
Screens of evidence pounced into view after he had provided his allegation in front of them and to the world. Before the screens appeared Mike had snickered mockingly believing that Red was pulling bluffs and succumbing to a new low. She had stayed frozen, anticipating, dreading what she knew was to come, and he had caught her worried expression in disbelief.
"Jules?"
She couldn't respond she had to see the volcano erupt before she ran away from its lava. When the screens caught his attention and mortification spread on his features she saw the red hot waves approach her at a thousand miles per hour, but she had no desire to flee; she would let herself burn.
Lasers quickly ensued. Red never had the intention of a peaceful gathering. She was forced to ignore the invisible third-degree burns sprouting from her face and onto the rest of her skin. Her brain snapped into auto pilot as she drove 9 lives and evaded Red's attacks along with the other Burners. It seemed that they had no intention of attempting to attack in return, they were all only fleeing. None of them spoke to her on their coms, not even Texas. She didn't know what to do besides follow them anyway. They all were heading towards HQ, all except Mike. In one of her mirrors she could see him distantly speed off in a random direction. Her head lowered.
She decided to stay and wait for him. There would be consequences back with her father later, but she asked Claire to do the best she could to cover for her. She needed this time before he could grow away from her. She begged Dutch and Texas to let her explain herself. Chuck had been in the garage and quickly became distant when he heard the news. Jacob was in utter shock trying to understand how something so monumental about his former partner could have escaped him. She guessed he was thinking of possible identities for her mother, but gave it little attention at the moment at hand.
She had to stay outside the doors of HQ before she finally convinced them to let her in. They prodded her with questions and allegations, but she insisted on waiting for Mike to return for them all to hear the truth together.
They briefly suspected her reasoning, but took into consideration Mike and Julie's close relationship, and decided if she was at all lying about her motives they shouldn't know before Mike knew.
They waited for hours. Julie wasn't allowed to be unsupervised. The boys took shifts watching her and she tried to act as harmless as possible and even handed over her boomerang, though she couldn't keep from pacing and listening to the faintest sounds of the city waiting to hear Mutt and see Mike's face.
Thinking of what to say dumbfounded her. The moment she had always planned to bring up gently and by no one other than herself had now become a severely hypersensitive open wound that could mean life or death.
'It's not what it looks like.'
No, and possibly the worst thing to say.
'Give me a chance to explain.'
She might not deserve one.
'Before you completely hate me forever….'
Did he already?
Their gaze was still held in place, neither of them ready to let the other go. She fought with much difficulty the urge to bite her lip and appear guilty. Instead her lip quivered into a frown, his stance jerked in place very slightly in response.
She realized her wasn't going to budge much more than that. Carefully without moving her eyes from his face she began to step aside and head down to meet him, cautiously like a cat approaching a stranger who's not certain will be friendly or not.
She took the long way down to avoid jumping off the edge of the platform and creating a distraction.
He watched her every step of the way, in certain moments her face looked as though it were ready to weep hysterically but she caught it every time it got too close; it made him wary. There was a creaking noise from above again, the boys he assumed.
He wanted to look at her without knowing what he knew; without thinking back to the flashes of her on those cursed screens addressing his enemy as father, speaking to Claire about her enormous secret in a casual manner. He noticed she never took her gaze off him either. He wasn't sure what her eyes were trying to say.
In a sense they definitely seemed… broken and he couldn't tell if it was because of his shrewdness or because of her blown cover. For a moment he pretended she was just worried about something trivial, something he could handle and console without hesitation, but the betrayal ran deep. Teeth ground together.
Unbiased judgment, he wasn't the only one affected. He was a little surprised the boys weren't already falling off the platform's edge to get a better view.
As she advanced towards him, she became too familiar, too harmless and he had no idea if she was or not.
She was really close now and he recalled too clearly her warmth, her breathe… her skin. He moved back instinctively trying to stay immune to her aura. Her lips parted and a short frightened gasp escaped in reaction to his first pronounced movement. Her hand lifted from her side and began to reach towards him.
"Mike….I…"
His head leaned in to her voice involuntarily waiting for her sentence to continue. Her hand caught in the air and returned back hesitantly on her opposite forearm beginning to rub it nervously. His brows furrowed in deeper. She winced.
"Mike, there are few things I know for sure…first, my dad…Kane is blind. Second, Motorcity needs the Burners. Lastly, I'd never do anything to hurt you. I'm always on your side."
In the quiet where Julie's voice registered in his thoughts, he could find no tangible trace of deceit. He looked up to see the guys standing over them watching and registering as well. He looked back to her adjusted his voice before he spoke.
"Do I have any reason to be angry aside from the lie?"
She looked at him hardly face completely composed, though a ghost of shame lingered and she paused.
"No."
His jaw loosened, he had to ask. He didn't want to but he'd had a taste of ugly truth and he had more than himself to consider. He relearned that a relentless bitterness still lived inside of him and he couldn't help it, but he realized that Julie quieted the monster that turned him sour. He wasn't thrashing around like before; recklessly trying to express his frustration. There had to be something genuine alive inside her; inside the both of them to relieve their highest anxieties.
He closed his eyes and swallowed deeply. He'd been mistaken, he didn't need to run off the way he did. The space he'd created between them gave his monsters strength. She had always given the team advantages they couldn't dream of. She had never let them fall into the clutches of her father. She never failed to do something extra around the garage when she realized they were all beat and every time they touched he saw she got goosebumps.
He opened his eyes and saw the girl he trusted, no one else.