Deserts, he figured, must have been devised to punish humanity for straying from their bounds.
The searing bright of the sun overhead substantiated his theory, broiling his bare arms and shins, melting his sunscreen so it drooled into his eyes. The rest of the sky stretched out in a pale, empty blue, while the soil was smothered in coarse shrub and thorny trees, giving the impression that the clouds had long ago turned spiteful and cruel and were dragged aground by the weight of their own ugliness. The humid breeze hurt more than it helped, as the moisture only made the heat it draped over him more tangible.
The fact that it was nearly the dead of winter seemed both nonsensical and distressingly believable. In Brockton Bay, days with highs in the upper 80's were enough to get people panicked about global warming for at least a few hours. Here in Caatinga, where the seasons stood inverted and the topsoil trapped warmth like a pot lid, that breed of vulnerability had to be either sloughed off or grueled out to make way for a Stockholm sort of acceptance. For him, that was still a work in progress.
He kneaded the fabric of the mask in his hand. He had to hold it at an awkward angle, nearly vertical, to keep the shattered remains of its cyclopean lens from catching the sunlight and glinting him blind. Its functionality evaded him; he'd sort of gathered that its features were meant to evoke some specific myth or figure, but he'd never been invested in that sort of thing, and the tech wedged into its form was even further beyond his understanding. It was probably beyond anyone's, now.
He looked it over one last time, then, after a false start, tossed it into the grave. He turned to Circus, who was leaning on the shovel planted by the dirt pile, wearing cotton clothes loose over their lithe frame, somehow unbothered by the conditions. They nodded, straightened, and handed him back the shovel.
Filling it up again was easier than digging it, except for the first few shovelsful. The sunscreen crawled down his neck while he worked, mingling with his sweat, and the streaks his shirt didn't catch at the collar dribbled down his chest. By the time he was done, the sweat had subsumed it completely.
He held the shovel out. "Here, could you-" He licked his chapped lips. "The rock, please."
Circus gave him a look but took the shovel from him and pushed it away into thin air, making it disappear. They pulled the stone from the same not-place, supporting it with both hands, and transferred it to his.
He rounded the grave's edge with a wide margin and placed the improvised marker at the head. He adjusted its position some, then retread his steps and took in the scene.
A clearing in the otherwise thistle-choked scrubland, backdropped by distant mountains. A patch of disturbed dirt in the center of the clearing, marked by the dry, lifeless tangles of roots dug up in the process. A gravestone, as good as could be made in so little time. Two words, a name, carved cleanly into its face with a flathead screwdriver and the help of his power.
All in all, there were worse final resting places. Probably.
He was committing the sight to memory when Circus spoke up. "I'll wait in the truck." They turned without waiting for a response.
He shook his head. "No, it's… that's about it, I think. That's enough."
He followed them back to the rust bucket they'd arrived in and climbed into the passenger seat. It rode rough and overheated if they didn't stop every hour to sizzle on the side of the road, but it moved and it had a wide bed and a tarp, and thieves couldn't be choosers.
Not when they needed to keep their heads down, at least.
It didn't take them long to rejoin the highway, trading untamed earth for pavement. The ride wasn't all that much smoother for it, but the reduced jostling meant the suspension squeaked less. He propped an arm on the open window, leaned his stubbly jaw into his hand, and watched arid nothingness pass by as the wind wicked away his sweat.
Minutes passed like that before Circus spoke again. "So. Was his name really Derrick?"
He lifted his head to look at them. Their dark hair was whipping around just above their jawline, and at some point they'd pulled a toothpick and a pair of aviators from nowhere and were chewing on one and wearing the other. Not for the first time that day, he wished he'd picked up shades of his own, before things had gone to shit.
"Yeah."
They grunted, almost a laugh. "Fits."
"Yeah."
He leaned his head back into his hand, then lifted it again and let his forearm drape over the door. He squinted out at nothing, trying to ignore the notion that was simmering half-recognized in his gut. He shifted around in his seat, fanned himself by the collar of his shirt, cracked his knuckles one by one. When his fidgeting lapsed, words bubbled up into his throat.
"Should I have done more?"
They turned to him, then back to the road. "I wouldn't've."
"You didn't really know him though."
They shrugged. "Didn't seem like there was much to know. He played video games, he made shit Wile E. Coyote wouldn't touch, and he called people slurs when he thought they couldn't hear. Includin' me. I think that's worth about what you gave 'im."
"That's not what I meant."
Despite the sunglasses, he could tell they were rolling their eyes. "Well, what more would you've done? It's not like we were rolling in options."
He sighed through his nose. "I don't know. It just feels a little too… normal? Even with his name on there I don't think anyone would look at that and think it was his."
"Maybe that's a favor."
He ran a hand through his close-cropped hair, then started scratching when he reached the back of his head. "If I'd had more time and a bigger rock I could've carved something extra. A joke, probably." He hummed. "Here lies Derrick Fleming, he died of dysentery."
They snorted. "Alright, yeah, he'd've deserved that."
He wasn't sure if they meant that as derision or not. He didn't ask. His eyes traced the mountains, his chin reacquainted itself with his hand, and time washed over the windshield like oil over water.
~/\^/\^/\~
They spent the rest of day's light putting as much distance between them and Fortaleza as they could, stopping only for food, fuel, and the whims of the engine. At one point, Circus produced a map they'd lifted from some gas station, replaced their hands on the wheel with a knee, and scoured the routes. They spent a good couple minutes like that, driving without looking like it was as easy as breathing, and he wondered how much of that was their power and how much was simple confidence.
They wrapped up the night at a small town motel priced to gouge travellers and tourists for the privilege of being mostly roach-free. After insisting on wearing a blonde selection from their myriad collection of wigs, Circus nabbed them each a single from the mousey old woman working the counter. She gave Circus the kind of once-over he'd learned not to do early on, but they ignored it. The two of them passed a pair of vending machines on their way to the rooms and he stopped at the one with drinks, looking over their selection of all things bubbly, caffeinated and/or sugary. They had an impressive variety of canned coffee drinks, though the time he'd spent in Brazil so far had already taught him to expect as much.
"C'mon," Circus said, grabbing him by the shoulder, "you don't have to fuck around with that, I've got more good booze in my space than they've got kiddie swill in there."
He brushed their hand off. "No thanks, don't drink. Just gonna grab a coffee."
If they'd been surprised by his first statement, they were baffled by his second. "The hell are you talking about? It's past ten, and we've gotta be up early if we want to jump the next forty miles of morning traffic."
The coin slot accepted his 25 centavos coins and the button for his choice lit up when pressed. "I know. I'll get a couple more for the road tomorrow. It's just, I need to process some stuff. It's not something I can sleep on."
When he'd retrieved his can and turned back to Circus, they were giving him a look he didn't understand. He was about to spur them on when they groaned, grabbed him by the arm and led him to the rooms. They used the keys to open the door to one, tossed some things from their space onto the bed, and shut and locked the door. They then opened the other, dragged him inside, closed the door behind them and sat in a little chair set kitty-corner from the bed.
"Alright," they said, drawing one leg up to rest a foot, sandal and all, on the seat, while the other sprawled further out. "Let's get this over with."
Bewildered, he said, "What?"
"Siddown." They nodded at the bed.
He sat, but still asked, "Why?"
"Because you need to talk about this or you'll sulk through the whole ride tomorrow, and I'd rather play stupid road trip games with you than listen to the radio the whole time."
Their answer caught him off-guard, and, not knowing how to respond, he simply said, "Why?" again. He immediately realized that wasn't the right answer when they leveled an irritated glare at him. "No, wait, I mean… I don't even know what it is that's bothering me so much. Beyond, y'know, him- him being dead."
"Then just talk." They summoned a beer bottle and a bottle opener, popped the cap, and dismissed the opener. "Can't get anywhere if you ain't moving."
Rubbing his brow with his free hand he said, "I could... tell you about him, maybe. How I knew him."
They shrugged.
He opened his own drink and sipped. It tasted of cinnamon and milk. He rested his elbows on his thighs and took a heavy breath. "I had a brother. Older brother, by a good six years and change. He… he died, when I was almost done with eighth grade. Leukemia, and we couldn't get anyone with powers to help him. I got mine after, even though they wouldn't have helped anyway."
"Powers," they said. "Go figure."
He looked up at them, then back down. "I didn't know what to do with myself, much less my powers, so I started to drift. Going through days doing the bare minimum, not talking to anyone I didn't have to, that sort of thing. And then summer vacation rolled around and I stopped seeing my friends from school. When I finally got stir-crazy enough to leave the house, I just wandered around the Boardwalk. You remember that arcade they used to have there, with all the old-school cabinets?"
They shook their head. "Used to? Leviathan or Burnscar?"
"No, neither. It went by the wayside a couple years ago. Most arcades have, now. Way back when, though? It saw some good days. My brother was on the tail end of that, hung out there when he was barely a teenager and the place had more people than games, and when my parents wanted to get away from us they had him take me with. We went a lot. He lost interest eventually, and I did too, but passing by the place after he was gone… well."
Another sip. "I got it in my head that I'd get the Frogger cabinet to myself, since the place looked so dead. But when I found it, Derrick was already there, all scrawny and hunched the way he got, glued to the screen, with a stack of quarters on the rim taller than my thumb. I had nothing else to do, so I watched him play and waited for a turn. He didn't even realize I was there until he ran out, and-" he chuckled, a low and ember-warm sound, "and I think he thought I was there just to watch him."
A smirk tugged at their mouth. "Sounds about right."
"Yeah, doesn't it. So we play some games together, 'cause we were about the only ones there that day, and we just… worked. I didn't mind him dragging me from game to game and he didn't mind that I didn't talk much. I kept meeting him at the arcade after that, and then we hung out at home too, and yeah. It wasn't even something to think about, after we found out we both had powers; it was just the next step. He needed some backup, I needed someone to point me towards things to do, and we both wanted to have some stupid fun. He had his own set of issues, sure. Lots of 'em, and he dealt with them in the worst way: taking it out on others. And I should've done more about that, I know. But as far as me and him went? It worked." He drained half of what was left of his coffee. "You probably know the rest, or at least enough of it."
Circus didn't say anything, letting him stew in memory for a minute. He welcomed it- he wasn't sure he'd have been able to respond at the moment. Reminiscing so much had left him treading water in a sea of feelings too great to be named, had poked holes in the numb he'd worn all day, and it was taking most everything in him not to break down in front of someone he still didn't know very well.
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, strained: "I sort of knew it was gonna happen, that he'd die early. It wasn't a conscious thing but I was… anticipating it, for somebody we pissed off to one day come back steaming and packing real power, or- or for physics or electrodynamics or whatever to hit back so hard he wouldn't get up. I wasn't ready for someone to just… shoot him. Like a regular human being." He moved to take a sip but hesitated, grimacing, before the can reached his lips. He sighed and lowered it, brow furrowed, eyes sunk beneath the swirls of dregs. "That doesn't sit right."
After a patient, necessary moment of quiet, Circus said, "So, where do you wanna go from here?"
He sucked in a breath, gathering himself back into his self. "Well, we're on our way back to Mexico, right? And we've got all the money we need to lay back for a long while, wherever we each go from there. I figured that was what you had in mind."
They finished off their beer, belched, and reared an arm back to fling the bottle behind them. Animal panic almost found a foothold in his heartbeat, but the bottle vanished when it left their hand, and he exhaled his relief through his nose. "Close, but I wasn't planning on just laying back."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, oh." They put one foot back on the carpet and drew the other back in, leaning forward. "I don't know about you, but I'm not one to stand still for too long. We're still allowed to do what we do best, long as we use different names, right? Way I see it, the cash just means I don't have to worry too much about payoffs or fencing. It'll be all about the challenge."
He nodded slowly. "Not a bad way to think about it. Gonna run the solo cat burglar thing again, I assume?"
"Actually, I was thinkin' I'd ask if you wanted to join."
He blinked. "Huh?"
"You heard me."
Frowning, he said, "But you've been doing the lone wolf thing for years. And I know it wasn't because Coil asked you to; from what I heard you could've been on the Undersiders if you'd wanted. So why me?"
They considered the question. "Well… if there's one thing I got from the snake that wasn't money, and it probably is just the one, it's that connections matter. And here, now? You're about my whole list. And I think I'm most of yours, too. So."
He worried his lower lip. Trepidation and compulsion writhed against each other in his chest, tugging at his spine in opposing directions until one outgrew the other. "I- Okay. Okay. I'm in."
Flashing him a cheeky grin, they held out their hand. "Alex."
He matched one with a small smile and the other with his own and shook. "Scott."
"Yup, sounds right." They stood and ambled over to the door. "Well, looks like my job here's done. Do your thinking, go the fuck to bed eventually, and don't knock on my door before six without a deathwish or a damn good reason. Oh, and here." They tossed him his room key, opened the door, gave him a mock-salute and said, "Welcome to the team, Übergoober," before shutting it.
He sat staring at the chair for a moment before rising off the bed. He dumped the dregs into the tiny sink in the back of the room and recycled the can. The bed, not as comfortable as it should have been, given what he'd paid for it, called to him nonetheless, and he kicked off his shoes and lay back over the sheets. With nothing else to do, he waited for the caffeine and his thoughts to work their ways out of his system.
After some time, an idea wormed its way into his brain. It was absolutely ludicrous, so he dismissed it, but he couldn't quite shake it, and the more it reappeared, the more it appealed to him.
He rolled off the bed, slipped his shoes on, and left the room. He passed by more identical rooms before reaching the vending machines. The last of his centavos were lost to the slot in exchange for an energy drink with a gaudy black and neon green design. From there he made his way to the parking lot, then to the parking lot's edge, where imperfect pavement gave way to dry, cracked earth. The ridiculousness of his intentions tried to drag him back inside, but when he considered his witnesses - the sleeping locals, the distant mountains, the hollow, speckled night - what he was doing seemed to make more sense, like his irrelevance in the scale of it all meant permission now.
As far as the object of this farce went, a little inanity?
He cracked the can open and poured it out onto the ground, where it splashed and fizzed and stained the dirt dark.
It fit.