I wish I could tell you that it went smoothly.
That I parked my car in the garage, went inside, and everything was great. No drama.
It didn't play out that way. It was okay in the end, but it was probably one of the most gut wrenching days of my life.
Shoto was the only one that I actually wanted to see, when I got home. He was the one person who I knew was on my side right now. And he'd taken off for Japan again.
So instead, naturally, the first person that I spoke to, the very first person to cross my path when I got back to Og's, was her. Of course.
It's still startling, even now, to be face to face with another person unexpectedly. Anyone.
But especially her.
She probably wasn't expecting to see me either, come to think of it.
It was awkward, but I wasn't going to act like an interloper.
She looked as though she'd seen a ghost, or, almost, as though she were scared of me.
I'm supposed to be here, I reminded myself. If she doesn't like it, she can be the one that leaves.
This is my home, and I won't be made to feel unwelcome here. No, not when I wasn't the one who had… I can't think about that right now.
Doing my best to ignore my pounding heart, and not betray my feelings, I fixed my expression into a mask of ambivalence.
"Samantha," I greeted her formally. No smile, no emotions at all. I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much this hurts.
I'm never going to call her Arty again. That's over.
"Wade?" she looked at me, her head cocked to one side. "You're back?"
So over.
I nodded, curtly, and tried not to look at her. It was a fail. So beautiful. The lock of hair was pulled down low over her face, hiding one eye again, like in her file photo I had seen at IOI, and it hit me like a kick in the gut.
She's hurting, too, I thought, amazed that I even cared. After what she did. After what he did. I still care. I still… and I can't even fathom, it's just beyond me right now… I still love her.
It's not over. Not at all.
I love her anyway.
What am I even supposed to do, with that? But I know it as sure as I know my own face.
I still want her.
Well, I'll tell you what I did. I looked at her coldly, and then I turned on my heel and I walked away.
I wanted to go straight to my rig. My fists were all clenched and it was like it was calling me, the OASIS, and I wanted the soothing numbness of letting something else do all my thinking for me.
It's an addiction, I thought, not for the first time, with my hand on the door. When the going gets tough, an alcoholic wants a drink; a drug addict wants their fix. And the rest of us, we want our OASIS.
Unwillingly, I thought about my mother, then. She was all of the above.
I paused, with my hand on the door, and then I recoiled from it. After two months away from it, I was starting to look at the OASIS in a different light.
No more.
Outside, I thought. Nobody can get in my head when I'm outside.
A few minutes later, I was outside on the grounds, feeling the fresh air, and my feet seemed to automatically pull me there again. It was getting colder, and like usual, windy as hell.
To Kira's garden. That's what it was, I realized that now. I'd thought it was just her grave before. Well, it was, and it wasn't.
There were fresh flowers again, crocus and lilies, and I wonder if Og hurts every day the way I do. Probably worse.
I don't want to be Halliday. He couldn't forgive, couldn't forget. And he died alone, knowing only at the last that he, and only he, was the one who'd fucked it all up.
I promised.
I made a promise to Jim, and I never thought it'd ever be this hard, but I promised him, and I'm not going back on my word.
Already, I know what I have to do.
I hate it. I already hate it, and I hate myself for condoning it.
I could almost see Kira smiling though, could feel how much she approved, as I walked back inside, into the kitchen where the three of them were seated. I didn't even have to imagine the smile on Ogden's face, when he met my eyes.
They were sympathetic, his eyes a little sad behind the smile, as I pulled out a chair.
Aech coughed, uncomfortably.
"Look, Z," he began, and quickly caught himself. "Wade. I meant Wade." He held his hands up, apologetically.
"Z is fine," I shrugged.
He looked at me quizzically, his quirked eyebrows making him look, momentarily like Aech, and not like Helen.
I looked at him, silently giving him permission to continue; it was time to hash this out.
Get it all out into the open.
To see where I stand, yes, but this was more than just that. This is me, listening to Kira, and giving him his say.
"I'm…" he stumbled over the words, as he seemed not to know where to start. "I'm sorry," he finally managed to get out. "I'm sorry. We should have told you. I should have told you." He tried to make eye contact with me, but he didn't manage it. "I'm sorry," he said again, finally, seemingly unable to continue.
"After the first key," Arty volunteered, as Ogden's eyes widened.
"After the…"
No. I don't believe it.
"First key?" I repeated dumbly. "You guys were together back when…" I was racking my brain here, trying to put the pieces together. I hadn't even introduced these two until well after the first key. So…
Wait, what?
"It was before that," Aech said, his voice sounding strangely monotone. "Arty and I were together for a year before that."
I sat there frozen, certain that I wasn't hearing this correctly. They didn't even know one another back then.
Had they?
"It was over by then, by the first key, it had been over for a long time," Art3mis added.
Ogden cut in, then. "So you guys… just kept that to yourselves then, all along?" He looked floored. With all the time he'd spent eavesdropping, it's a wonder that he never knew, either.
"He was my first boyfriend," she said, looking at me with sad eyes. "My first love. But he broke things off when-"
"My mother threw me out of the house," Aech finished. And unbidden, I remembered that plane ride when he'd told me the whole story.
"And you didn't think it was relevant that the girl in question was my girl?"
"I was going to tell you-"
"We were going to tell you, together," Arty said, then. "Only, I was kind of surprised, myself…" she trailed off as she looked at Aech.
"I should have told you guys," he said. "I wanted to."
Og sat, eyes wide, glancing from one end of the table to the other, as though he were watching a tennis match.
I wonder who's winning here. It's definitely not me.
Maybe this silence means that the ball is in my court, so to speak. It's been silent for way too long now. Someone needs to say something.
I don't know what the hell to say, so I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
"It doesn't bother you, that he's a girl?"
Arty's eyes flew open at that, and Aech coughed and turned away, looking at the floor.
"I mean, you say you didn't know, before," and this is uncomfortable and probably none of my business anyway, but it's been bothering me and I just want to know. "That he's in a woman's body. And I don't remember you ever mentioning that you were also attracted to women, so how do you explain…"
"I'm not," she started, and then she shook her head abruptly. "Well, obviously I am, but I never knew it, back then, and maybe I should have known, I don't know. Maybe I did know, in some regards, a long time ago, back when Aech and I first met." Her eyes were unfocused and far away as she tried to make sense of some memory or other.
"I did know that he was different from other guys. But I never stopped to consider whether or not he actually was one. After we had known each other six months or so, I started thinking long-term," and she couldn't seem to help herself from meeting my eyes. "I asked him what his real name was, where he lived, and he wouldn't give me a straight answer."
I mean, I had always figured she'd learned her reticence from somewhere, it hadn't seemed in keeping with her natural personality.
All those times I had asked her for information, during the hunt, and it had been like talking to a brick wall...
"I told him my name, I told him everything. I told him about this," and she gestured to the birthmark on her face. "I didn't show him a picture, but i told him about it, hoping that it would help him to open up."
I had to hold back a chuckle of ironic amusement.
It was almost amusing, now, to realize that I actually knew the brick wall she'd learned it from.
Almost.
"I knew that he and his mother didn't get along, and when…" she glanced at Aech, sadly, "they had their… falling out," she had a look of hurt on her face as she remembered, "He went off the grid for weeks. I was worried."
Aech leaned across and squeezed her shoulder; evidently it still made him feel bad, years later, that he'd worried her like that.
Nobody just quit the OASIS, after all, staying away for that amount of time was plenty long enough for her to have reasonable assumed that he had died, or something awful had happened.
"When I came back," Aech's voice sounded husky, a better approximation of how he had always sounded to me, back then. Before. "I told her that I was done. I didn't want to lie to her anymore, but I wasn't ready to tell the truth. So I broke things off."
"I didn't want to accept it," Arty continued, "and I probably wound up sounding more desperate than I would have liked, to try and fix things between us. I didn't know what I had done wrong."
He squeezed her shoulder again, mouth formed into a tight, straight line.
"But I cut off all communication with her after that; I guess I just wasn't ready. And we never really talked about it, not even much later when you reintroduced us."
"Cause that wasn't awkward at all," Arty smiled, and even that small wry smile of hers made me have to swallow hard.
Aech snorted. "I wanted to tell her the truth. We were talking again, during the hunt, and I wanted to…" he trailed off, trying to find the right words. "I wanted to tell her that it was okay, that it wasn't her, that she didn't have to be like that, not with you," he glanced up at me then.
"I wanted to tell her that she was screwing things up with you, playing things so close to the vest, but i couldn't seem to… quite get there. It was too much of a temptation, being around her again."
I had to resist the urge to keep looking at her, when he said that. Guess I know how that feels.
More and more, I'm feeling like Kira did me a solid here, because my anger at the two of them seems to be slowly receding.
Staying away, that had seemed like the safe choice at the time, but now I had to learn how to counteract my natural urge to isolate myself. That had only fanned the flames, made me more angry at them. This was, for better or worse, my family now, our family.
"Shit happens," I replied, too forcefully, without really thinking, as Art3mis stared, and Ogden's eyebrows snapped together. "I mean, no, it's okay, I'm just trying to say," I trailed off, trying to organize my thoughts. "That I… don't like it, but I do understand, or at least I'm trying to."
There was a long moment of silence before Aech finally looked up, met my eyes, and said, "Thanks," before returning his gaze to the tabletop.
"You've been like a brother to me," I added. "I'd have never gotten through the hunt without you. Never. And I don't ever want you to feel like you can't be yourself, in your own home. Not ever again."
Arty did something that kind of surprised me, then. While Aech was apparently still too overcome from my little speech to respond, she'd circled her arms around my neck and hugged me, huffing out her breath in a long sigh of relief.
Ogden got up then, too, and made his way to me, where he clapped his hand on my shoulder, a little awkwardly, but hey, he's new at this fatherhood thing, and who I am to judge who's awkward at this real life shit, anyway?
Then he shrugged, and swooped in for an actual hug, too.
"Come on," I told Aech, who looked up at me with wet eyes and a tentative grin. "Get in here."
The four of us hugged it out, right there in the kitchen.
And somehow, we were a family again, and even stronger.
We were leveling up.