WARNING: lots of general spoilers for the games in here. Probably better off not reading this if you haven't played them all.
"You mean to tell me that this is the golden rule of pamphlet writing? Leaving it all until the last minute?"
Sonny Joon winces at his colleague's tone.
"You said you would help me with this!" Jamila continues, voice as hard as the edge of a diamond. "I know you've been busy, but for goodness' sake, if you say you'll have something done by a certain time, at least keep your bloody word."
He doesn't suppose the pseudo-curse she uses is a good sign.
"Sonny, are you there?"
"Yes. And I've come to the conclusion that you're much better at running S.P.I.E.D. than I am. I never made irate phone calls regarding missed deadlines."
"Don't flatter your way out of this."
"Can I at least try to?"
A long, steady exhale follows. "If I call you tomorrow, will you have it done?"
"Yes."
"Good. Bye." She hangs up.
Sonny pockets his phone and peers briefly around his seat in the University of Washington's Physics/Astronomy Auditorium, checking to see if he's about to leave any of his class materials behind. Satisfied at seeing the chair bare, he gathers his things to go home for the day. Seattle really doesn't disappoint with the rain, he notes as he rushes outside, attempting to remember which of Udub's many parking lots his car is in. As it turns out, it takes a full quarter of an hour to find the blue Eos convertible he and Nancy pooled their money on a month ago. It had to be blue and it had to be a convertible, she insisted, despite the fact that the top would always be on in weather like this. She says she wanted it to be similar to the car she drove in River Heights (that was, unfortunately, totaled during a recent harrowing case), although Sonny pretends that she was adamant on blue either because his hair had been blue when they met or because blue is the complementary color to her own titian. The first is more flattering.
The second is probably more true.
Not that Nancy's aware of it, of course. No one who shamelessly wears Mom jeans and horse shirts would be aware of such a thing.
If it weren't for Nancy, Sonny would be completely crazy with this intensive Astrobiology PhD program. Leaving S.P.I.E.D., even temporarily, sent his life into mass upheaval. Right now he's only partially crazy, and, given the fact that he's completing his degree coursework twice as fast, he considers that above par.
That and the steady flow of Koko Kringles from Nancy's lifetime supply and the fact that he's insanely happy right now keep Sonny in high spirits, and the hour commute back to Tacoma breezes by as he departs to the intergalactic path of his thoughts.
Before long, Sonny turns into the parking spot of their apartment. It's stopped raining, he notices. Significantly brighter out. A dark green flash of motion tears his eyes away right before he breaks, and a slight jolt tells him he knocked into the parking block. Sighing against his hands on the steering wheel, he fixes it just as there's a slight bump from the back. Puzzled, he looks in the rearview mirror.
His girlfriend waves at him from her green bike.
"Nancy!" he exclaims, getting out of the car. "Wouldn't you normally already be home right now?"
"Caught three purse snatchers in the last twenty minutes." Nancy beams. "This place is great!"
Sonny laughs. "Not the typical reaction," he notes.
"Speaking of typical reactions, can you try not to wreck the car?" she says, even though she's smiling.
"Can you try not to run your bike into the car?"
"Of course not. No damage done. I did it on purpose." A playful sparkle enters her eye. "Just to say hello."
"You're really psyched about the high crime here, aren't you?"
"You bet."
Sonny leans over to place a hand on her back and peck her lips. "How were your ace detective classes at Twin Udub today?"
Nancy's smile grows at Sonny's nickname for Udub's Tacoma campus, where she attends classes. "Same as always. Lots of talking, lots of taking notes, not enough getting out there and gaining experience. Not nearly as fun as catching thieves."
"Yeah, mine too. But you know what they say. Why get out there and have fun when you can stay in and do boring stuff?"
"Who says that?" Nancy asks with a chuckle.
"No one. In other words, me."
"Well, I say we forget it. It's not like degrees come in handy or anything," she returns, matching his sarcasm.
He breaks into a smile of his own.
"Just wait. Both of us getting degrees, it'll be worth it." Nancy's voice goes slightly weary at the prospect, but she sounds like she believes it. "Criminal Justice. Guess I could learn a thing or two here. At least I'm making the most of my break from cases."
"Yeah. And once you get back to your cases, once we get out of Tacoma, all the better," Sonny says as he and Nancy enter their apartment building. "It'll just take a little time, as it so happens."
Nancy's eyebrows rise. "You're already sick of it here?"
Sonny shrugs. "Haven't really been in the same place for more than three or four months since high school. I guess PhD programs slow things down, not that I'd know it from the first time I tried. Failed my dissertation defense pretty early on."
Nancy seems to notice the way his words tumbled out in a murmur on the last sentence, like he's ashamed.
Sonny can't describe the expression on her face, just that her heart leaps out to him through their eyes.
"Oh, well. I never even got around to finishing one degree. Cases always seemed to keep me too busy, but now that I'm taking a break, I'm actually a little relieved. I mean, this is my future, whatever it's going to be. Can't keep doing things the same way forever."
Nodding slowly, Sonny replies, "I know you mentioned you had to use covers more often since more people know who you are." Nancy doesn't talk about this stuff often, and he's glad they're starting. "I'm sure it'll cool off with a little time. Besides, we all did fine in Mexico. You, Lou, Dylan, me. Nobody blown."
Creases appear in Nancy's brow as she jiggles her key in the lock. "Sometimes I think it'd be easier to pick it."
"Sometimes?" Sonny chuckles, taking her key. "Here. It's tricky."
A few seconds later, the door springs open, admitting them to a modest but tastefully-decorated studio apartment with papers sprawled all over the carpet, couch, everywhere. The biggest pile leans precariously on the kitchen table, highlighted by a fat beam of sun that hits the edge of it and continues to the floor.
"Yeah. And I guess now is as good a time as ever to start working on self-preservation methods."
Sonny tries to fight back the surprise he's sure is showing up on his face, knowing it might make Nancy clam up. They haven't discussed this since Mexico. "Knowledge isn't really useful to someone who's dead," Sonny'd said then, after Nancy almost made the decision to stay with an artifact he'd been looking for. Permanently. "Can you not go into situations where you're going to get yourself killed for sure?"
Now, determined that Nancy's next few words won't slip through the wide cracks of his short-term memory, he's concentrating so hard his head starts to ache.
She doesn't continue.
He jumps back in. "Making sure you're careful isn't equivalent to slinking into a corner, you know."
"I know."
Sonny knows better than to bring up her mother. Besides, he's almost sure Nancy still remembers how her dying felt well enough not to follow her to an early grave. Nancy's loved just as much as Kate had been, if not more.
After all, Nancy has a better memory than he does. And he doesn't remember everything about the day his father left, just all the parts that hurt the most.
Nancy's hand slips into his.
He looks up.
She's examining him softly. "Let's not think about loss," she says. She knows.
"Just as long as we're not worried about you being one," Sonny replies.
"I promise I'm working on it."
"Just imagine how much better of a detective you'll become when you learn everything possible about covering your tracks—"
"I know, Sonny." Her voice grows chilly.
"I just care. Being your own blind spot… it sucks."
Her frustration dissipates to exhaustion. "I know," she repeats. "It's impossible to know the answers to everything. Until recently, I'd been lucky enough to find it every time."
"I can't wait to see you on another case, you know. It's, like, your natural habitat. And, knowing you, it won't be too long."
"That's true, I guess," she mutters.
"I think it's good to take a breather. I love S.P.I.E.D., but letting Jamila run it while I finish up school is, like you said, actually a bit of a relief. Then I can get back there with more clout—Dr. Joon, doesn't that just ring?—and do better work."
"Makes sense. More than anything you ever suggested."
"Actually, Jamila suggested it."
"Well, go figure."
"Yeah." His response is colored by a yawn, and his eyelids flutter.
"We could always move to Seattle, switch the commute," Nancy suggests idly, though Sonny can hear a trace of concern in her voice. "I drive to Udub Tacoma, you're closer to the Udub campus there."
"Wouldn't make much of a difference. With city traffic and finding an affordable place, which definitely won't be near the U-District, it'd be about twenty or thirty minutes minimum. We'd have to get another car. Besides," Sonny's eyes stop on her, hazy with pontification, "I enjoy the drive."
"You don't get distracted, do you?" Nancy asks, frowning. She's all too familiar with his tendency toward getting distracted.
"Yeah, but not unmanageably so."
Clearly Nancy is dubious. She's stopped on the stairs in her trademark dubious pose, arms crossed, lips taut, eyebrows drawn on an incline, wrinkles above her nose in a near expression of disgust. It's mostly fake anyway, Sonny knows, just her attempt at showing disapproval amidst her giddiness.
Unfortunately she's almost as bad at it as he is. Love—or whatever this is—gets too far in the way.
Sonny's eyes flicker away. "You don't have to worry about me, you know."
"Yes I do."
"Maybe I should remind you I'm the older one here, Padawan," he teases with a small lopsided smile.
"Technically yes, but it hardly counts seeing as most of the time you act like you're two." Nancy walks over to their wobbly coffee table, delicately picking up his notebook so as not to tip the whole thing over. She pulls it up to her face quickly, but still too late to hide her own grin. "Hmmm. Professor Scythe?"
"Formerly Professor Smythe. Unibrow and decidedly Russian glower. Very scary guy."
"Does he also have pointed teeth as depicted here?"
"A little."
Nancy scans his face. "It doesn't bother you that I read your stuff?"
"You've been reading it since, like, 2002, right? Who can forget Sinclair's shocking tie?"
"I had, until you brought it up." Nancy mock-frowns. "Thanks."
"Sorry about your eyes there." Sonny grins. "At least you're not blind as a result. Happened to me."
"Did it?" Nancy plays along.
He nods vigorously. "Yup. I went into his office and made the unfortunate mistake of laying my eyes on that tie. Shattered my glasses on impact. Then I ran out screaming—I swear the whole eastern half of the country heard me—and ran into one of the Metro train doors waiting for it to open. Then later I went on a White House tour and showed up still blind, still screaming. Thinking I was crazy, the security guys came running after me. I narrowly escaped. Eyesight never recovered."
"Mmm-hmmm." Nancy tilts her head slightly.
"That's why I wear these thick lenses to this day."
"You were already wearing glasses when the story started."
"I know," he says slowly. "Those were reading glasses."
"You sure something else didn't make them break?"
"Dunno. Joanna yells at a magic frequency that also shatters glass."
"Right."
"You don't believe me?"
"You're more outlandish than Jing-Jing Ling."
Sonny laughs maniacally. "High praise."
Nancy sighs. "Why do you have such disrespect for your boss?"
"Authority always wins."
"We discussed this, Sonny."
"Right." His playful expression dissolves into a concentrative one, and he starts tapping each of his fingers. "In answering questions: no song quotes, no stories—which I technically just broke—no answering with another question."
"Guidelines to help you get out of the habit of using diversion tactics. Please tell me the truth."
"I've always had my mind made up on what I want to do before people start trying to tell me how to do it. Isn't relevant now, anyway, since now I'm working for myself."
"Isn't it?" Nancy stares him down.
A thick silence follows.
Expectant, Nancy continues to say nothing.
"What do you mean?" Sonny tries, though his voice is too high and wavering to convince anyone.
"So we're never going to talk about this? Your tendency to tell yourself you're worthless and you don't have any friends?"
"There's nothing to discuss." Sonny's eyes swing sideways. "I'm taking care of it."
"Because it's completely absurd to think—"
"I know." His voice takes on the slightest of sharp edges.
Hope sparks in Nancy's eyes. "You do?"
"Because you keep bringing it up and saying that." Sonny's shoulders hunch as he takes four steps and, without checking to see where he's going, drops himself onto the sofa.
He hears Nancy sink down next to him. Then there's a light weight on his forearm. "You've helped me. Let me help you."
A muffled beeping sound distracts them both.
Turning to Sonny, Nancy asks, "Is that your phone?"
"Mine's dead," Sonny admits.
Frowning, Nancy rises and doesn't move otherwise, trying to determine the source.
It stops, though.
She sits again. "Could be one of the neighbors."
"Probably," Sonny agrees. Then his face goes still. "Oh! I almost forgot."
"What?"
"I've got a project to work on for Jamila. She'll kill me if I take any longer on it." He leans forward to shuffle through some papers that had fallen to the floor. "Hmmm. Are my notes for that on one of thes—?"
The beeping starts up again.
Nancy springs up. "Now that's odd." Bolting toward the screen divider that sections off her and Sonny's "room," she wrenches it to the side and keeps going.
Sonny follows. "Where's it—" He trails off and watches her eyes freeze on the box of case memorabilia next to her desk. A second later, she's tossing items out behind her.
Surprised at this careless gesture from his normally meticulous girlfriend, Sonny kneels next to her and starts doing the same. He pulls out a black PDA.
Nancy looks at it.
He hands it to her.
It stops beeping.
"My pager from Venice," she mutters, turning it over. "That was a while ago. Why would it be active again now?"
It starts beeping again, but this time only for a second or two. A message alert flashes on the screen.
Puzzled, Nancy opens it.
"Dork. You suck."
Nancy isn't given a chance to process it before footsteps start padding toward them.
"Hey there," sings a saccharine voice. "Are you happy to see me, you alias-stealing snot-nosed—"
Ever since reading American Psycho, I've wanted to end a chapter in the middle of a sentence. Now I have! Well, sort of. I believe a hyphen counts as ending punctuation, whereas American Psycho ended a chapter without any ending punctuation... no period, no comma, no semicolon, nothing.
Some synchronicity between Nancy's and Sonny's problems here. Since Nancy was the protagonist of the last story, Sonny's going to be the protagonist of this one, and therefore he's going to get the arc.
Many thanks go to hansbmd for steering me in the right direction regarding Jamila. Originally I wasn't going to include her in the story at all except in passing, since with 50,000 words there's hardly room, but this way I can keep bringing her back throughout the story in snippets because, let's face it, Sonny is not going to get this project done at all in this story and Jamila is just going to have to keep bothering him. xD Anyway, I thought that giving Jamila the first line would be the best way to honor her (and hansbmd) are, so, again, thanks!
I'm trying something new with the format of this story, going novella length rather than novel length, so it's going to be fifteen chapters (or fourteen? now I can't remember) and 50,000 words, so roughly half the length of RWC. This has forced me to condense my writing and work on swift and effective plot and character development. This chapter pretty much covers the exposition since the conflict will be revealed quite soon in the next one, and I also tried to pack as much character development and review (of the end of RWC) as possible.
Don't own "Star Wars" (specifically the term "Padawan,") or John Mellancamp's "Authority Song." Also don't own Joanna Riggs or Taylor Sinclair or, sadly, Taylor Sinclair's tie and its blinding quality. Similarly I don't own Nancy and Sonny and many other characters who will be returning and/or making cameos.