TWELVE: BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA
TACOMA
So much of Tacoma's life (if you can call it that) is about waiting, these days. Even when Jodi's around, there isn't much she can do; a severed head can talk, but that's about it. Sure, talking can be powerful – Tacoma has said a lot of things that have really hurt Jodi, after all – but come on. It isn't any substitute for real, tangible action.
But then she realised she could do things. After whatever she did to Jodi, it just seemed obvious. She's a pokémon, right? And a ghost-type at that. She's basically magic. Okay, her attempts to get her hands back haven't worked out, but still, she has a lot more going for her than just spooky purple flames. The Pokédex said she could beat people up with their own shadows, and that seems to be true. Sitting here in Jodi's room, waiting for her to come back from her meeting with Nick, Tacoma finds that if she concentrates, she can wrench a piece off the shadow beneath the desk and lift it into the air.
She looks at it for a while, wriggling and twitching as it tries to pull free of her control and leap back into place. A scowl, an effort, and it grows still and resigned. Like that blackbird Nikki caught, way back when.
Tacoma was thinking that maybe she could sculpt it into a hand, but in the end just looking at it makes her feel too sick to go any further and she lets it go again, not wanting to find out whether it's possible for a spiritomb to throw up.
Nikki watches without a sound, leaning back on her tail by the end of Jodi's bed. She seems a little wary of whatever it is her partner is doing, and with good reason. What her partner's doing is objectively pretty bloody creepy.
"Yeah," says Tacoma bitterly. "Me too."
What is wrong with her? It can't all be Nick. Shouldn't all be Nick, even. She's had a day now; why can't she just get over the fact that he's a suspect? Maybe it's Jodi, pushing her to give up her secret. Because Tacoma won't be able to resist forever, and then she'll learn exactly how far Jodi's saintly patience goes.
But she can put that off, and keep putting it off for a long time, in all likelihood. So no, it's not that, or not all that at least. It's something deeper. Something to do with this shape, these powers. You'd think it would be cool to be magic like this, but whenever she ends up looking at what it is she can do, at her dark attacks that hurt her friend and her writhing, captive shadows, she just can't stop her gorge rising in her throat.
She thinks of Jodi probing the stubble around her unshaven face. There was a time when she wondered what that felt like for her. Hard to be sure, but she feels like she could probably take a guess at it, now.
Downstairs, the front door closes with a thump, and Tacoma feels a corresponding door open in the back of her mind, letting in a faint breeze of concern. Jodi's home, then. So Nick didn't murder her. Does that mean he isn't the one who killed Tacoma?
It would be nice if that it did. But honestly, too much shit has gone down recently for Tacoma to dare hope that it might be true.
Voices in the hall. Cane clicking on the stairs. Something sounds off, but it isn't till Jodi actually opens the door and comes in alone that Tacoma realises she didn't hear Lothian's claws following at her heels.
"Hey," says Jodi, closing the door and sitting down heavily at her desk. "Ugh. Okay. First off, he didn't do it."
Once, caught in a surprise storm up in the hills around Lavender, Tacoma saw a tree struck by lightning: a flash, a blink, and then when she could see again it was transformed from a tree into a scorched black husk. This is that kind of feeling. There was the world before she knew this, and the world after, and the difference is everything.
"You're sure?" she asks, although she knows Jodi wouldn't have said it if she wasn't.
"Yep," she replies. "I really don't think he did it. He's … I dunno, Tacoma, he's doing something, but he didn't kill anyone. Least of all you."
"So what happened?"
"As far as I can work it out, your Professor Allbright―"
"Keith."
"―Keith, right, he sent him the spiritomb rock to help with a project he was working on. You know, whatever it was that was going on in that cabin?" Tacoma nods. "Only I'm not sure Nick knew it was coming," Jodi continues, "and I think in the end he found another way that didn't involve it. Anyway, the point is, someone was reading his mail―"
"Chapter house?"
"That's what I think, yeah. So someone was reading his mail, and so they knew you were coming with the rock before he did, since I guess he was hiding out in the cabin and the mail came to your house, and so … yeah. They, um, they were waiting for you."
It's starting to fall into place now. Someone was monitoring Nick's mail. So someone thought there was a reason to monitor Nick's mail. So …
"He's on our side?" asks Tacoma, incredulous.
"I don't know about that," says Jodi. "But he's working against the chapter house, so …" She shrugs. "Enemy of my enemy, I guess?"
All this time – well, a week and a half; it feels like forever, but that's only because Tacoma has spent so much of it in the tower, wondering who put her there and wishing she could cut – all this time, and they could have just spoken to him. He'd have told her, wouldn't he? He'd have told his dead niece, if she'd asked. Maybe she should ask. It's not too late.
Who and why, huh. Here's the why, and at least half of the who. They both knew she was killed over the rock already, of course; for a while now, it's felt like that's all they do know. Still. It's a slap in the face to have it confirmed that this was all just a case of wrong place, wrong time.
"Anyway," says Jodi, watching her with the kind of careful eye that tells Tacoma her empathy is still going strong as ever, "he wouldn't tell me what he was up to. But he's going to, I think. He said to give him a week and ask again."
Tacoma frowns.
"Why? What's happening this week?"
"Dunno. I guess he thinks he has a solution or something?"
"You couldn't get it out of him?"
That's a much harsher question than Tacoma meant to ask, but for some reason Jodi just smiles.
"I didn't need to," she says. "You might've noticed, Lothi isn't around?"
Tacoma starts.
"He's …?"
"Yeah," says Jodi. "Took a lot of persuading, and I think he's expecting me to buy him pretty much his own pomegranate tree when he gets back, but he agreed to leave me alone for a bit and follow Nick around." She shakes her head. "I didn't think he'd go for it, honestly. I guess he saw how important it was to me."
Seven years, it's been. Seven years of Lothian sticking so closely to Jodi that she jokes about not being able to shower without letting him into the bathroom, and he decides to fly off and leave her now? It's hard to believe it. But given that he's not here, Tacoma supposes she's going to have to.
Maybe it makes a difference that Jodi asked him to do it. Tacoma has seen firsthand how dedicated he is; when it happened, when the avalanche bore down upon the trail and there were three living beings standing between it and the edge of the cliff, he chose which one to save without even a moment's thought. There is a reason why Jodi is alive and her vulpix and stantler are not, and it has two wings and an insatiable appetite for fruit.
"I guess so," says Tacoma, not sure what the right thing to say is. "So what, we wait?"
"Yeah," says Jodi. "We wait." Slight hesitation, probing with her eyes and mind. "I'm still not sure I trust him completely," she says. "Nick, I mean. But I'm not gonna judge till Lothi gets back." Another pause, a little longer this time. "Are you okay?"
Difficult question. Tacoma takes so long trying to figure out how to respond that she has to give up, aware that her silence has answered on her behalf.
Jodi bites her lip.
"Do you want a hug?" she asks.
Even now, the temptation to mock her for offering is there, moving beneath the surface of her depression with the other angry thoughts. But Tacoma thinks of Jodi's hand on her thread the other day, and the glow of her psionics deep inside her, and in the face of all that there's really only one thing she can say.
"Yeah," she mutters, ashamed and glad at once. "Yeah, okay."
She leans into Jodi's arms, listening to the pulse of her heart through her chest, and though she tells herself this doesn't solve a goddamn thing, she can't deny that it makes something hard melt inside her all the same.
It's a slow kind of morning. Jodi says something about wanting to talk to her family about her transition (this is what it's called, apparently), and offers to bring Tacoma's rock so she can listen in if she wants, but it's pretty clear she isn't actually up to having that conversation right now. For a couple of hours, she barely moves, listening to the radio and making increasingly lacklustre conversation with Tacoma; it takes forty-five minutes for her to even get around to taking her scarf off.
Tacoma doesn't like it at all. Part of it's down to the selfish thing, of course, rattling and roaring and demanding Jodi perk up and feed it, but most is just down to the fact that she suspects the worst is yet to come. Honestly? Jodi is what's got her through this. Tacoma herself has no staying power, not any more. She just wants this to be over. But Jodi got Nikole, tracked down Nick, unearthed a conspiracy – and, most impressive of all, managed to drag Tacoma along with her while she did it.
Except that apparently her spirit can only take her so far. Now she's hit the limits of what her mutant brain and busted leg will let her do – limits that Tacoma should have anticipated, would have anticipated if she was half as good to Jodi as Jodi is to her – and Tacoma has no idea at all how to deal with that. After a while they fall into complete silence, broken only by the radio and the scratching of Nikki's claws on Tacoma's stone, and a few minutes later Tacoma realises that Jodi is asleep.
"Hey," she says, and watches with guilty satisfaction as Jodi starts awake again. "Don't sleep in your chair. You'll screw up your neck."
"Mm," says Jodi, raising her hand to rub her eyes and then stopping herself, remembering her make-up. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry."
"What are you apologising for?"
"Falling asleep on you, I guess." Jodi sighs. "Never mind. Silly. I think … I think I'm gonna go downstairs. Is that okay? It's just I could really use a sofa right now, and also if I don't get up and have some coffee I might just fall asleep again."
"Sure," says Tacoma. She thinks of suggesting that Jodi take a nap, but it's so hard to shift the thought from brain to mouth. For the best, anyway. Best to keep her dumb ideas to herself.
It's a mark of how tired Jodi is that she doesn't even pick up on this, let alone try to argue about it. She asks if Tacoma and Nikki want to come down too, which they do, and heads downstairs to field questions about where Lothian is ("Napping," she answers; it's so obviously a lie but nobody questions it) and receive anxious attention from her parents. Is it the weather? You've been out so much recently, and with this much snow that can't be easy. Let me make you some hot chocolate. Okay, coffee, if you want. You are okay, aren't you? Kiddo? Chickadee?
Jodi smiles, but from her little window onto the world Tacoma can see the bones of her skull standing out through her face again.
"Yeah," she says. "Things are just weird right now, is all." Pause. "Um … I dunno if I can do it right now, and I want to wait for Ella anyway, but, uh, I remembered that we have some things to talk about. I know you've been pretending really hard that this is normal, and I really appreciate it, but." Deep breath. "We should talk about it. Me, I mean. I meant to do it before, but … Tacoma died."
It doesn't even hurt, at this point. She's beyond all that now, or at the very least she isn't in the right frame of mind to feel the emotion properly. Yes: Tacoma died. Now she's an awful fog ghost who weeps ooze and makes ugly shadow puppets to scare her partner with. What else is new?
"I know what I need to know," says Michelle, somewhere beyond the limit of Tacoma's vision. "You're my daughter." Jodi's fingers tighten on the handle of her coffee cup; Tacoma feels her unshed tears ripple down the psychic link between them. It hasn't even been two weeks since she told everyone, has it? Sitting around in Jodi's bag, talking constantly and catching glimpses of her minds, has kind of made it seem like it's always been this way. For everyone else, it must all still be so tender and new. "But okay, Jodi. If that's what you want."
"It's not about what I want," Jodi replies, keeping it together. "I think we need to. Right?"
"Yeah," says León. "I think so."
He sounds relieved. Tacoma wonders what it's like to have your son turn around one day and reveal she was a daughter all along. It was weird for her, of course, but she's willing to bet it's weirder for León. And anyway, once she thought about it, Jodi being a girl made sense to her. Tacoma always wondered what the deal was with her, back when they were kids. She just didn't know that this was a viable solution to the problem.
Jodi's parents probably weren't able to run those particular calculations. How could they? Only Tacoma knew, after all; only Tacoma saw her from that angle. And so it's a shock to them, and now León and Michelle are going to need some help adjusting.
"Okay, then," says Jodi. "Like I said, I really don't think I can do that right now, but … I just wanted to tell you that we will do it. Soon."
"Appreciate it, kiddo," says León. "I think it'll do us all good to, uh, understand."
They talk as if unsure how the words fit together, so awkward that even Tacoma, stupefied with depressive indecision as she is, cringes a little. Maybe she doesn't want to be there for this conversation after all. There's nothing more uncomfortable than intruding on someone else's family business. And Tacoma says that as someone whose neighbour in her hall of residence is Alice, a girl who has extremely loud and extended sex what feels like every other night and then greets her in the morning with an unvaryingly cheerful so did you sleep well?
She hesitates for a moment, unable to decide whether she should cut the connection, and then when León moves across her field of view closes it anyway. She doesn't want to think about family right now. Nick mostly kept out of her way in Saffron, presumably because he's aware that all students are constantly doing their level best to pretend they have no family beyond the university at all, but still. If she ever needed someone in town, he was there. He's actually lent her money a couple of times, and he takes her out for lunch once or twice a term, too. Tacoma always pretends that she's doing him a favour, of course, but she likes it really. Nick is the only other person in her family like her, the only one for whom the world does not end in Ecruteak. He was the one who said she should go to university, who organised her tuition on Saturday mornings and helped her apply for scholarships.
And now, maybe, he's something else: maybe he's still fighting her corner, maybe he wants to bring down the people who did this to her. Maybe he's asked for a week so that he can fix everything, to take the weight of it off Jodi's shoulders and free her from the burden of her dead asshole friend. Maybe on Saturday Tacoma can come out of her rock and talk to him.
She's gone too far. In an instant, her hope sours and turns to mockery: yeah, Tacoma, sure. You can show him the monster you've become and he'll be delighted. Just so happy to see you finally have a form as grotesque as the soul it houses. And everything will be fine.
This was why she didn't want to think about family, but it's much too late to change that now. Tacoma lets her head slump against the sarcophagus, and settles down to pick her lips until Lothian returns.
At around two, some time after the three of them have retreated to Jodi's room so that Tacoma can come out of her rock to settle Nikki, there's a knock at the window and Jodi pulls back the curtain to reveal a pointed face peering in like an inquisitive devil. Nikki snorts in surprise, pulling Tacoma away from the window with one hand and raising the other in readiness to strike, but before she can do anything Tacoma twists herself around, tries to put herself between her and the supposed threat.
"It's okay," she says. "You know who it is, Nikki."
"Yeah," says Jodi, smiling without showing teeth. Nikki has long since learned that humans use bared teeth to convey many things other than aggression, but Tacoma is touched that Jodi remembers. "Just Lothi."
Nikki glowers, but faced with this united front she does back down, and Jodi returns her attention to the window, mostly safe now from a claw in the back of the neck.
"Here's my favourite spy," she says to herself, which is much cuter than Tacoma is willing to admit to her face, and opens the window onto a rush of freezing air. Lothian seems to flow in rather than climb, twisting around from wall to window-frame to desk and finally down the floor like smoke coiling above a fire, and immediately rears to put his wing-claws on Jodi's shoulders, staring into her face like he hasn't seen her in a week.
"Someone's glad to be home," she says, leaning heavily into him to avoid being crushed. "Lemme close the window, okay?"
It takes her a couple of minutes to disentangle her dress from Lothian's claws, after which she shuts out the deepening night while Nikki relaxes with an audible sigh, evidently deciding that the danger of Tacoma or the girl she is so inexplicably attached to being squashed by this weird pointy dog is past.
"Okay, Lothi," says Jodi, sitting down on the bed. "Fifty-six, nine, twenty-one, in that order. Narrow tendency, please. I don't really want another nosebleed."
Tacoma listens incuriously to the ESP jargon, feeling like she should take an interest in Jodi's work but unable to muster the enthusiasm, and watches as Lothian climbs onto Jodi's bed to put his head between her hands. Something hums in her ears – the rock rattles slightly on the tabletop – and Jodi's look of concentration melts away into perfect, deathlike vacancy, her mind far away from her body.
Nikki scratches uneasily at the carpet. Tacoma can't blame her. It's much creepier than she thought it would be.
One second. Ten. Thirty. Three minutes pass, silent but for the relentless ticking of Jodi's clock and a few faint strains of music from downstairs, and then Jodi opens her eyes and sinks inelegantly back onto her pillow.
"Oh," she sighs, as Lothian starts back into life. "Lothi …"
He brings her chocolate and rests his head on her belly while she eats, twitching his nose constantly in some strange batty communiqué. Not batty, Tacoma corrects, a fragment of her degree floating to the surface of her memory. Vespertilian. Noivern: strideauris magna, the great screaming ear. Highland noivern are a different species, but she can't remember what the name is.
"He's looking for the chapter house," says Jodi suddenly, pushing all thoughts of taxonomy from her mind. "Lothian has a good memory for sounds. Little bit garbled because he hears more frequencies than we do, but he heard Nick ask Sam about it … I guess he knew she looked into it, back when Mae West died. And from what he said to her, I think he investigated that too. Separately, I mean. Part of why he left."
She tries to sit up, but not very hard, and after a moment relaxes again.
"Anyway, after that he spent all day wandering around town making notes, then he went to bed just now. I'm … I feel like that means something but I can't figure it out. Tired. Thoughts are a little mixed up still."
Okay. Enter Tacoma. It's a puzzle; she's good at puzzles. She's not good at a lot of things, like being kind or telling people how she feels, but she's good at puzzles. She can help.
And – thank God for the answer. Nick really didn't do it, did he? He really is against all this, really is still fighting his niece's corner. Whatever he was doing in that cabin, it wasn't planning a murder.
Small mercies, huh.
"He was looking for ways in," Tacoma says, trying to concentrate on the question. "And then – then I guess he went to sleep early so he could stake out some of the places tonight. Saturday night in Mahogany, what're you gonna do except meet up with your secret society buddies?"
Jodi smiles without opening her eyes.
"You're not gonna go to a concert, that's for sure."
"That what you do?"
"Sometimes. If I'm not too tired and have any money left." Her smile broadens. "You would hate it."
Tacoma recalls that godawful record she and Gabriella liked.
"Yeah," she agrees. "I would."
"Anyway. You're right, that's got to be what he's doing." Jodi pushes her fingers deep into the ruff of fur around Lothian's neck. "You were always the smart one."
Yes. She was. And Jodi was the kind one, and Tacoma has seen enough smart people in her time at Yellowbrick to know which of those is truly the more valuable quality.
"Whatever," she says, without hiding her disgust. She can't tell if it's because she can't be bothered or because she just can't do it. "Are you okay?" she asks, as if this could make up for her rudeness.
"Yeah." Jodi forces herself back up, dragging her eyes open. Lothian curls around her, wings folded tight against his body so that she can lean against his side. Nikki looks at them in an envious kind of way, then picks up Tacoma and holds her close, claws curled protectively around her rock. Tacoma freezes for a moment, startled, then makes herself relax into her grip. She's only just started talking like an actual human being again; she probably needs this. "Yeah, I'm fine. Gonna be craving fruit for hours now, but that's Lothi's brain for you."
His ears prick up at the word. Jodi laughs softly to herself, like she's forgotten that her dead friend is even here, and in this moment she looks so purely delighted that it makes Tacoma faintly angry at the beauty of it all.
"So," she says, looking to break the magic. "What do we do now?"
There's that old sarcastic light in Jodi's eyes again, a so now you've woken up kind of thing, but all she says is:
"I don't know."
Tacoma scowls.
"Seriously?"
"Surprisingly, Tacoma, I'm not actually sure what the correct response is to 'your uncle is probably on our side, but he seems to believe he can take down the chapter house group all by himself'."
Not a good comeback; too wordy, too rambling. But that little upward flick of the eyebrow could kill a guy, it's so sharp.
"Yeah," says Tacoma, abashed. "I, uh … I guess that tracks." She sighs. "Figures. Nobody wants you involved."
Jodi gives her an odd look that Tacoma cannot parse, even with the link to help her out.
"Well, um, based on all the available evidence – yeah, I guess," she says. "D'you think he's looking for evidence about who the killer was?"
Another puzzle. Okay. Easy.
"No. He was planning this before they got me." Barely even hurts to say it now. "There's a reason he made everyone think he was in Alola, right? He needed to be here, doing whatever he was doing in that cabin, without anyone watching. Why not do it in Saffron? It's safer. But it had to be here, for some reason." Her brain feels like it's creaking with the effort, after so many days of inactivity, but she keeps kicking it and it keeps spitting out answers. "There's something here. Something he could have monitored from the cabin, somehow. Gonna give you three guesses who's got it and where they've put it."
Jodi's wide awake now, looking startled.
"Chapter house," she says. "And this – this thing, that's why they kill people?"
"Dunno. Don't know enough." Not to be sure, no. But honestly, what else is it going to be? Circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and as far as Tacoma knows people generally need a pretty strong motive for murder.
"But it looks that way, huh," says Jodi, her thoughts mirroring Tacoma's own. "What kind of thing could you be hiding in a secret room and still have someone monitor it from miles away in the woods?"
Solve it, Tacoma orders herself. This is a good dynamic: Jodi asks questions, Tacoma answers. All this time she's left her friend to do the heavy lifting in this investigation, and sure, Jodi's done well – she found out about Mae West and Nick's cabin, set Lothian on spying duty, did all the difficult, boring groundwork – but now they have some actual data to crunch. Tacoma can help with this. She still isn't sure that she should – what's Jodi going to do with this information? Get herself in even more trouble? – but she can, and after so long being a dead weight, it feels good to have some kind of purpose again.
"Not sure," she says. "Didn't see any specialist equipment in the cabin. But Turing can pick up radio waves, so maybe that's how he was doing it. Question is, what emits radio waves and is connected to spiritomb rocks?"
This one she can't solve. She looks at Jodi, but of course she can't either. It's not a question of smarts, it's just that they don't know enough to tell what the answer might be.
"I'll get Lothian to follow Nick again this evening, when he goes out," says Jodi, after a few seconds during which neither of them can find any words. "Maybe that'll tell us something."
Something cold seeps into whatever it is Tacoma now has in place of a heart. It'll tell them something, all right. It'll tell them one thing, and it is something she would rather Jodi didn't know.
She has to ask. She's afraid of the answer, with the vicious kind of fear that seems to jump down your throat and throttle your insides, but she has to ask.
"You know the only thing it'll tell us is where the chapter house is, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," says Jodi, as if it hadn't occurred to her. "But then, you know, we could …"
"Break into the place where the murderers hang out."
"We could do it when they aren't there," says Jodi. "I'm not looking to get killed, Tacoma. But I do want to get to the bottom of this."
"Nick's going to―"
"Nick's going to do whatever he's going to do. And okay, it's probably a good thing he's doing, but I'm sorry, Tacoma, I'd be lying if I said I trusted him completely about this."
Tacoma stares.
"But he's going to stop them," she says, hearing the wishful thinking in her voice and despising it. "He's …"
Jodi is silent for a few seconds, searching her face.
"Do you really trust him?" she asks.
"What? What kind of a question is―?"
"I'm sorry!" cries Jodi. "I just – look, what I mean is, if you really think we can leave all this to him, then okay, we will. We'll wait till Saturday and see what happens. But if you don't, then we need to do something." Her upset presses on the link. It hurts her to ask, doesn't it? It hurts her because it hurts Tacoma. Empathy, or love, or both or something else that Tacoma doesn't deserve from her. "All those people," she says, and when her voice catches on people Tacoma knows that she has lost this fight. "Mae West, and you, and – and God knows how many others. What about that runaway kid? I keep wondering, did he really run, or did they get him, and I …" She shakes her head. "If I can do anything, anything at all, then I can't not do it, Tacoma. So if you aren't sure we can leave this all to Nick, then I need to know."
Once, coming out of the Galkirk Village subway station in Goldenrod, Tacoma saw a woman slip and fall heavily on her arm. She didn't immediately get up, just cried out and clutched her wrist, and Tacoma thought that's a break and she just kept on walking. She was running late. Nikki was already several yards further down the street. Someone else would stop and help. And someone else did; she looked back and saw figures gathering around her.
Jodi would have stopped. She would have ditched her appointment in a heartbeat, for the same reason that she abandoned her holiday and her psionics homework to try and save Tacoma, because in the face of human need she does the right thing and comes to help.
"No," whispers Tacoma. Talk properly, screams a voice at the back of her head, but it's no use; she can't. "No, I don't know for sure."
Jodi drags herself effortfully along the bed to its foot, next to Tacoma.
"I'm so sorry," she says, reaching out. "I am."
Nikki tenses, but makes no move to intervene. It's Tacoma who refuses this time, holding her disc back against Nikki's chest, and then Jodi drops her hand and sighs and the moment has successfully been ruined.
Lothian heads out again as soon as it gets dark, a huge leathery whisper cutting through the twilight above the rooftops. As usual, Jodi goes back downstairs, to sit with her family and read or watch TV; this time Tacoma doesn't join her, stays up in her room to keep Nikki company and call for Jodi when Lothian returns. Jodi asks her if she's sure, surprised and perhaps a little concerned, but Tacoma is adamant, and in the end she leaves her alone.
She needs a plan. This much is clear. Somehow, she has to dissuade Jodi from trying to break into the chapter house – because she will go, otherwise. With or without Tacoma. She'll go, because she wants the truth, and she won't come back and Tacoma will be alone again, with nothing left but Nikki and the knowledge that she is responsible for the death of Jodi Ortega.
There are a few possibilities open to her. She could physically stop her, probably. A little more practice with these disgusting shadow powers and she could stop anyone, more or less. Lothian might have something to say about it, but he's very reliant on his sonic tricks when it comes to confrontation, and though not a lot of people know it, they are technically normal-typed: he wouldn't be able to help Jodi out.
But force should be a last resort, obviously. What other options are there? Trying to talk her out of it didn't go so well, and Tacoma has her doubts about whether the repeating the conversation with a little more honestly about her motivations would work, either. Should've expected it, really. Who argues an emotional point with an empath and expects to win? So: that one's off the cards. It's fine. There is one other that Tacoma trying her best not to think about.
If Jodi no longer cares about Tacoma, she won't fight for her. If there were some way to make her hate Tacoma, to drive her away from this investigation and deliver her up to Nick in disgust instead of putting herself in danger, that would do it. And Tacoma does have one thing she could tell Jodi to show her just what kind of horse it is she's decided to back.
She doesn't want to. This was meant to be her second chance, right? Her golden opportunity to get back the person who still meant so much to her after all this time. But maybe people like Tacoma don't get chances like that; maybe there are no happy endings for people who crash through the lives of others with all the subtlety of blunt force trauma. What was she going to do after she answered her precious who and why, anyway? Legally, she's dead. It's not unheard-of for ghosts to continue their human lives after death – there was a Professor of Ghost Studies at Yellowbrick in the thirties who ended up as a yamask after an encounter with an irate cofagrigus and taught for eight more years before retiring – but whoever heard of a ghost doctor? Tacoma has no body any more, no hands, no pulse. How can she finish her degree now? Who would entrust their partner into her ugly, shadowy care?
No one. And Tacoma couldn't help them anyway. She's never helped anyone in her life and it doesn't look like she's going to start now she's dead.
So no: there's no light at the end of the tunnel, no purpose to look forward to. And there's no reason not to tell Jodi the truth that Tacoma has carried all these years like a cyst in her chest. None apart from cowardice, anyway, and cowardice doesn't count for shit.
Nikki's claws shift suddenly on the rock, and she twists Tacoma around to peer anxiously into her face. Somehow she knows, even without the cues of pulse and posture to give Tacoma's emotions away.
"'M okay," says Tacoma quietly, pressing her disc against Nikki's snout, the way that kangaskhan do among their own. "I just … I think I'm gonna have to do something difficult, Nikki, and I don't think Jodi's gonna like me any more when I do."
Slow blink of those crimson eyes. A delicate movement of her nostrils. Tacoma doesn't even smile.
"I know you love me," she says. "But I'm sorry, Nikki, that's not enough this time."
Nikki sniffs heavily, but she's faking it; she's worried, not angry.
Tacoma wishes she could reassure her. It's just that there really isn't anything she could say.
When Lothian comes back, it is with a memory of Nick hunkering down for several cold, fruitless hours in Tacoma's dad's car, shivering and downing coffee like a student during finals week. Apparently he kept looking around like he thought someone was watching him, but fortunately his night vision isn't great, and Lothian is certain he wasn't seen.
"Nothing," says Jodi, through the tissue she's holding pressed against her bleeding nose. Apparently trying to make sense of memories in which Lothian is using echolocation rather than sight is hard on her brain. "I guess he'll try again tomorrow?"
"I guess so," agrees Tacoma, trying to keep the relief from her voice. If Jodi doesn't know where the chapter house is, she can't go, and that means Tacoma doesn't have to make her hate her yet.
"Well, I suppose I didn't expect him to find it right away," sighs Jodi. "I mean, he gave himself a week, so …"
"Yeah."
Jodi's eyes are like backlit emeralds, their light impossible to hide from. Tacoma can feel them slicing straight through her apparent indifference to the shaky relief within.
"Something wrong?"
"Nah," says Tacoma. "Just … all this. Today. It's been a lot, you know?"
That should do it. Something vague enough that even Jodi can't really identify it as a lie. Sure, she'll know Tacoma's holding something back, but that's not exactly news at this point.
"Yeah," says Jodi, a tired little laugh fluttering under the surface of her voice. "Yeah, I … yeah. I know." She starts to shake her head, but doesn't get very far with it; maybe it hurts, maybe she just doesn't have the energy. "I can't believe it hasn't even been two weeks yet."
"Yeah," agrees Tacoma, unable for once to come up with anything more creative. "I know what you mean."
The bleeding slows, Jodi goes to bed early – as she needed to; Tacoma was going to suggest it if she didn't herself – and the house falls dark and silent, room by room. Tacoma stays quiet and still next to Nikki until she falls asleep, and then – as is starting to become a habit – gets in a little practice at being a scary ghost. At first it's just twisting a few shadows, pulling the dark out from beneath Jodi's desk and forcing it into rough balls; she tries to shape it further, to force it to extrude some shadowy fingers and become a limb she can use, but every time she stops concentrating on one finger to make the next it just collapses.
She knew it already, but it's depressing to have it confirmed. There really is only one way for her to get her limbs back. And that's next on the list: she might have failed last night, but tonight, if she just tries, she might be able to call her hand again. And then, maybe, a full arm, and after that …
Can't put it off any longer. She can do shadows and spooky flames, right? She can do this too.
She tries, and fails. She tries again, and fails again.
She keeps trying. It's a long night.
Jodi doesn't wake till eleven; she's not kidding when she says that her ESP takes it out of her. Tacoma only gets a couple of hours herself. Even after she's done failing to master the only ghost power that matters, she can't seem to fall asleep, Nick and Jodi and her great crime all going round and round her head like murkrow waiting for the honchkrow to turn up and finish the job.
At least the usual suspects are a little quieter. She knows the why of it now, even if she needs to narrow down the who a little further, and that's … not great, exactly, especially since it looks like she really was killed just because she accepted Keith's stupid rock sample and that feels like an insult, but she supposes it's better than not knowing.
Still, she's tired that morning – either even ghosts need their sleep or she's just worn out with worry – and does not do a good job of hiding the poison within her. She snaps, apologises, snaps again, and is then startled by Jodi's suggestion that she come downstairs and hang out for a bit while Jodi goes to help with lunch.
"Do you good to stop brooding," says Jodi. Apparently they're at the stage where she can just say that to her face now, and it's pretty hard to argue with something so indisputably true. Tacoma has to agree, reluctantly, and spends a reasonably tolerable hour or so in the kitchen, watching Lucille spread her four arms wide in the doorway to block Nikki and Lothian from stealing the vegetables that Jodi is chopping.
"Two of 'em now," says Michelle, closing the oven on a somewhat sorry-looking joint. (A teenage daughter, a psychic and her dragon, a birthday and Christmas coming up; Tacoma is honestly impressed the Ortegas can afford even this much.) "It's a miracle any of this ever makes it into our mouths."
"It's just till Tacoma's family are able to look after her again," says Jodi a little too fast, evidently thinking along the same lines as Tacoma. Michelle frowns slightly, puts a hand on Jodi's cheek.
"She'll stay as long as she needs to," she says. "You leave the worrying to me, Jodi."
Jodi goes pink, looks away.
"Right," she says. "Sorry, I … should have known what you meant."
"Even psychics don't get it right every time," says Michelle cheerfully. "Now how are them parsnips doing?"
Cute. Tacoma watches, even smiles for a moment before she thinks of her own mother, and almost forgets to pick her lips.
This week, she gets to sit in on the Ortegas' Sunday dinner, instead of waiting in the kitchen: Nikki makes sure to take the rock with her and place it securely on the sideboard before settling down to browse on the winter greens that Michelle has provided for her.
"She's got real attached to that focusing stone of yours, huh," observes Michelle.
"Yeah," agrees Jodi. "Um … she's welcome to it, honestly. Whenever I try to use it I get a nosebleed."
"What kind of thing is it used for, anyway?" asks León, and so the conversation goes, petty lies shading into half-truths that, Tacoma suspects, become full truths somewhere along the way, because soon Jodi is telling anecdotes about this professor, that classmate, that sound too much like the ordinary weirdness of campus life for Jodi to have made up. Her family like this stuff, it seems, just like Tacoma's like her own university stories; they are careful, attentive, and Tacoma can just picture León in the Briar Rose with some of the mill workers later this week: my daughter, she was telling me that in Goldenrod …
It's nice, in that it is normal and alive and not a dark spiral inwards towards the sarcophagus at the centre of a prison tower. Tacoma tries to lose herself in the rhythm of it, to forget that soon she will have to flick the switch on the detonator and bring her part in all of this to an end with the kind of explosion not even Jodi can forgive. Look at them. They love each other. They are happy; they are laughing. Even Nikki seems pretty relaxed, leaning back on her tail and picking her teeth, completely ignoring the fact that Lothian has stolen a leaf from her bowl so he can vibrate his nose at it and make it float.
The only one spoiling the picture is Ella, strangely. She doesn't laugh with the rest, can't even seem to look at Jodi, and afterwards when she and Jodi are washing up in the kitchen Jodi turns to her with a hesitant look on her face.
"Can we talk?" she asks, voice low so their parents can't hear it from the next room.
Ella puts down the plate she is drying.
"I'm sorry," she says. She chews her lip the way Jodi does – same tooth and everything, that upper left incisor. Tacoma never knew that about her before.
"I know," says Jodi calmly. "I forgive you. But please don't do that to me again."
Ella stands there for a moment, wringing her hands, and then Jodi turns off the tap and hugs her, holding her wet hands away from her back. Tacoma can feel her psionics activating through the link.
"I'm sorry," says Ella again, her voice thick and muffled, and Jodi sighs.
"I'm sorry too. I know this is hard for you. I knew that it would be and I still did it, so … I'm sorry for that."
This is definitely not something Tacoma is meant to be watching. She lets the window fade into the dimness of the tower, and closes her eyes. They sting like she's been watching TV too long.
She tells herself that one day when she goes home Everett will hug her the way Jodi hugs Ella, but of course she knows he never will.
It is time.
The more Tacoma thinks about it, the more certain she is. She will always find another excuse to put this off, if she lets herself. Given the stakes, this is unacceptable. And Jodi seems to be settling things with her family – sorted out whatever drama it was that she and Ella are going through, promised to sit down and talk through her girlhood with them. She has support there. She won't need a conspirator any more.
At three seventeen by the clock above the mantel, Tacoma begins.
"Jodi."
Casual, at first. Just the name. Only one word. She can manage that. Soon she will have to say a whole lot more than that, but for now, to begin with – one word. Nothing to it.
Jodi blinks and momentarily grips her book a little harder than she needs to.
Tacoma?
"I've been thinking …"
She intends to say a bit more than just that, but her voice dries up. It's okay. With psychics, you don't have to get all the words out to be sure you're understood.
One second, says Jodi, marking her place and closing her book. We'll go upstairs.
"Where are you off to?" asks León, as she gets up and beckons Lothian over.
"Nowhere," says Jodi. "My room."
"Not good enough for you, are we?"
"That's right, Dad. Sometimes genius just needs seclusion, you know?"
He laughs, clearly delighted at her turn of phrase, and that, fortunately, is an end to the questioning. Tacoma is impressed, despite her distraction. Jodi might be a terrible liar, but she's not bad at avoiding having to lie in the first place.
Upstairs, Nikki and Lothian trailing curiously after her, Jodi pushes open her bedroom door and drops heavily into her chair, although she's so light it doesn't even move that much. She turns, gives Nikki a hesitant kind of look, and after a long few seconds – so long, in fact, that Tacoma half expects an argument – Nikki hands over the rock.
Tacoma feels Jodi's hands dip with the weight of it, sees the way her skeletal arms tense through the tight fabric of her sweater. She holds back, trying to commit this moment to memory, and then she takes the deepest breath she can before she reduces herself to a lungless head and pushes out into the world.
"Hey," says Jodi. Looking worried. Doesn't know what's coming, but aware that something is.
"Hey," says Tacoma.
Now she's out, she can no longer breathe; if she tries, she will simply feel her fog shift a little, like a tremor in her marrow. But if she moves her mouth the right way and doesn't think about it too much, she can pretend.
So. She pretends, and she pretends, and – so slowly – she speaks.
"You wanted me to promise you something." Plan is to distract her. Make her think that this is because she asked. And it's not even a lie; it is because she asked. That's what made Tacoma certain that one day she would have to say this. It's just that it's come a little earlier than she would have liked. "So, um. Here we are."
Jodi sits up a little straighter, eyes wide. Somewhere behind Tacoma, Nikki and Lothian are moving, reacting to the tension they can sense in their partners and the words they are speaking. She doesn't look, but she takes a measure of comfort in knowing that they are paying attention. They deserve to know this too, after all.
"Are you ready to make that promise?" asks Jodi. Hesitant. Hopeful.
"Do you one better," says Tacoma, each word like a stitch torn out of her tongue. "I'll … tell you."
Jodi doesn't start. She barely even seems to breathe. She simply sits there, very still, and then when this information has ceased to stun her she puts Tacoma down on the desk in front of her and clasps her hands tightly in her lap.
"Can I ask why?"
Keep pretending to breathe. It's fine. She is fine. She is a disembodied head about to destroy the only thing that makes being a disembodied head okay, and she is absolutely fine.
"Because you deserve to know," says Tacoma. "And – because I need you to know."
She hates that her voice caught like that. She hates so many things, but right now she hates that most of all.
Jodi's face is still almost motionless. She must be able to feel this, although Tacoma would be impressed if even she knew how to interpret it, but still. She just doesn't move.
"Okay," she says. "I'm listening."
Tacoma closes her eyes for a moment. Nikki is scraping her claws together with nerves; Lothian is twittering to himself, so high she can barely hear it. TV downstairs. A loud, determined bird outside.
She is breathing. She is fine.
"It's my fault," she says. Her voice sounds so normal that it seems obscene. "Before the avalanche, I … it was me, Jodi. I killed Ash and Helen, and I destroyed your leg."
Seven years ago, Tacoma and the child who was not yet Jodi but who had also never really been anyone else hiked through the Silverblacks, the mountains over which Ho-oh once flew away and never returned. It was slow. The paths that they let kid trainers walk alone are safe, yes, but not easy to walk, and Tacoma and Nikki spent a lot of time waiting for Jodi. (Tacoma will call her this, even though it was not what she called her then. She remembers the way Jodi looked when she tried her old name with Nikki, and she never wants to make her feel like that again.) Still, they made it up from Ecruteak to Hawthorn eventually, and from there up to a cabin high up in the mountains, chasing rumours of noibat that for some reason Jodi couldn't let go of.
It was okay. She was so excited about sound, even then, kept chattering about the way some kinds of noivern could actually affect your nerves with their calls, and Tacoma thought it was more sweet than anything else. Besides, they had a few years, didn't they? There was time to indulge that kind of thing. And it wasn't like she didn't think Jodi could catch a noibat, if that's what she wanted. Pokémon liked her in a way that made Tacoma envious; many more wild pokémon came seeking her partnership than came for Tacoma, and very few of them wanted to fight her and test her strength, as they did for everyone else. Empathy, Tacoma supposes. Even before she knew she was doing it, she just made everyone around her feel better.
She accepted one: a stantler faun with big eyes and not even the slightest nubs of those hypnotic horns. Where's your mum, she asked, when he poked his head around a tree trunk. And when no answer was forthcoming, Jodi said well, you better come with us, I guess. You like the name Ash?
He would probably have lived longer had he stayed in the woods near Ecruteak. On their way back down to Ecruteak for the next leg of the journey – Olivine, said Jodi, I wanna see the sea at least once in my life – they walked along a clifftop path, on the lip of a great ravine carved out by a glacier or a river or just the cracking of the planet as it shrugged its shoulders. Snow-streaked stone on their right, blackened in places by a few tenacious pines; to their left, a tall, strong fence (this was, after all, the path that kid trainers took) – and then nothing at all for what looked like a mile or more, all the way across to the flank of another mountain.
And that ravine. Tacoma looked once, and then stayed on the other side of the path, trying to pretend she wasn't afraid. But how could she not be? It just … kept going, so deep it faded beyond all sight. If you jumped off, she thought, you would have forgotten what the ground even looked like by the time you finally hit it.
Staying on the other side of the path, though, you could almost forget it, and just enjoy the acoustics. Both of them had found out on the outward journey that if you shouted loud enough, it could echo through these valleys like a gunshot, and being twelve, this was something that they took full advantage of. Why wouldn't they? It was so bright up here, and the air was so cold; everything felt alien and alive and almost unbearably vivid. Tacoma looked at Nikki at her side – still her only partner, after four months; she didn't feel ready yet – and at Jodi too, just about keeping up with the three excitable young pokémon that kept bouncing around her like dogs waiting for a ball to be thrown, and the knowledge rose within her that this was only the start. Okay, the bad winter had delayed them a year – but still, just look where they'd got themselves already! Look at the size of those mountains, at the actual dragon-type following Jodi around! And by the time they got back down south, summer would have started properly, and Olivine would be a picture from a postcard, all smoke-white sand and glittering water, and hell, maybe she'd even be ready to try a Gym at that point. Or maybe not. That would be fine too. Everything would.
Echo, she shouted, out of the sheer delight of being alive and having lungs, and she and Jodi both laughed as the mountains shouted it back in a huge, hollow voice. And Jodi kept laughing for a moment, but Tacoma heard a distant crunch, a rumble, and then there was nothing to laugh at any more.
She froze. It wasn't the right thing to do; she should have shouted, should have called out to Jodi and pulled her away. But she froze, because she had shouted and now there was an avalanche and she could not quite process that these two events were connected; and she watched as Ash's ears pricked up, as Helen turned her head, and she looked with them as the mountainside began to move.
It was so hard to see how it happened, from their angle. At first the ground seemed only to slide, like a lone piece of paper slipping free of a thicker sheaf, and then without warning the ground ballooned out of itself, ripping trees and snow and stones from the earth into a huge roaring mass that came down towards them as if the Silverblacks had tired of their shouting and laughter and wanted to smash them straight back down into silence.
Tacoma ran, of course. She could see the edge of the landslide; there was a place where a promontory blocked its progress, funnelled it towards one specific point on the clifftop, and something deeper than thoughts rose within her to say that if she could just make fifty feet she would (probably) be fine. Only when she got there did she remember that her friend wasn't going to be able to make those fifty feet.
She looked back. Saw the huge fist of ice and stone, so close now it seemed like a second sky of dirty cloud beneath the first. Saw Jodi too, running weakly through its shadow.
It could only end one way. Except it didn't, because just then Lothian made the impossible choice and decided which of the other three he was going to save, and he leaped at Jodi's back and the ice roared past and the world was completely white with flying snow and the noise became so loud that it was no longer a sound but a feeling in Tacoma's bones.
Nikki pushed her against the side of the promontory, hugged her tight with her armoured back against the screaming clouds. Tacoma stayed there for what felt like forever, until the ice mist began to settle, and then took her face away purple with bruises.
She pushed Nikki back, clumps of snow falling from her arms. The world seemed shattered; it took her a moment to realise that the lenses of her sunglasses had broken. She pulled them off, squinted through the blinding light – and there she was. Jodi, lying there at the foot of a new hill of icebound debris, one leg bent unnaturally over her back and the other nowhere to be seen.
Tacoma stared. Jodi stared back.
Her face was the same colour as the snow blanketing her hair and coat. Her eyes were so wide that Tacoma was half afraid they would fall out.
She tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out but a soft, pained eep.
"I'll call the ranger station," said Tacoma, as Nikki and Lothian started to dig and the panic began to explode all over again in her mind, and sprinted back down the path towards the lodge and the radio that they had been sure they wouldn't need when they set off that morning. Because this was a safe trail. Because this was the place where they let kid trainers wander around in search of alpine pokémon.
It was almost okay. One of Jodi's legs healed. It's just that the other one had to be put back together again, repeatedly, for several years, and also that Helen and Ash fucking died.
Jodi clutches her hands close to her chest, curled inwards against her breastbone. Her eyes, and the link, are full of hurt.
Tacoma waits for her judgement, utterly spent. She feels as if she just ran a marathon; her nerves are gone, her fear blown out. It has been said, after all this time, and all that's left to see what punishment she gets.
"Oh, Tacoma," breathes Jodi. "You've – I mean, all this time?"
She nods.
"Nobody told you?"
"Told me?"
As quickly as it departed, the fear returns: told her what? Told her what, exactly? Jodi is afraid too now; she bites her lip, and Tacoma sees a little bead of blood on her tooth.
"About the tyranitar," she says softly. "It … there was a pupitar, waiting underground. Must have been there for longer than the ranger network was set up, because nobody knew, you know? That's why they said the trail was safe. Except it was there, and it – well, it came out of its chrysalis."
Everyone's read that particular Pokédex entry; every kid trainer dreams of being partnered to that kind of power. When larvitar reach a certain age, amass a certain energy, they bury themselves and let the rock harden around them. If nobody disturbs them, they might not move until a year later, or five or ten or more, when they will explode back out of their shells as one of the most formidable alpine predators in the world.
If one were to emerge halfway up a mountain, as two children walked by beneath …
"No," says Tacoma. "No, that's not – how the fuck can you sit there and lie to me like that?"
"I'm not―"
"Yes, you are!" Some small part of her tells her to keep her voice down, to avoid drawing the attention of Jodi's family, but it cannot be heard over the roaring of the avalanche inside her. "I know what happened, Jodi! I – I fucking saw it―"
"Tacoma, please," says Jodi, leaning forward. "I would never lie to you―"
"Then the ranger lied!" That could happen, couldn't it? Yes. Someone sees what happened, sees two traumatised kids who don't need any more trouble in their lives, decides to try and spare their feelings. Yes, that has to be it, because if it wasn't Tacoma then that's the last seven years gone, that's everything that makes her Tacoma Spearing atomised in one thermonuclear instant, and who the hell is even left if you take this away? "The ranger lied, because he didn't want us to know. But I saw, Jodi. I yelled, and then it fell. That's what happened."
"Please don't shout, Tacoma," says Jodi, her voice infuriatingly quiet. Over her shoulder, Nikki is shifting on her feet, trying to work out whether to intervene; for one terrible second, Tacoma imagines her claws descending on Jodi's shoulder, turning her throat into a red mess and finishing the job that Tacoma started seven years ago, and maybe it's that or maybe it's Jodi, tears in her eyes, or maybe it's Lothian twittering and trying to get her attention so he can help, or maybe it's all of these things, pounding on her head like a peasant mob battering down the doors of a manor to beat the lord to death with sticks, but Tacoma feels the shadows surging around her and she cannot stay here one single bloody second longer and in an instant she is gone.
It can't be.
It just can't be.
Tacoma thinks she might never come out of here again. Why should she? It's quiet. No surprises down here among the graves. This place is cut from the cloth of her own mind, after all. Nothing here will contradict what she knows of the past.
Jodi's wrong. She's not lying; Tacoma believes her when she says she wouldn't do that to her. But she's wrong. She has to be. Tacoma knows who she is: she's the girl who killed two young pokémon, who broke her friend's leg so badly she would never walk unaided again.
She paces for a while, unable to dispel the frenetic, directionless fear rattling against the sides of her chest, then turns with a sudden sharp movement and drives her fist into her sarcophagus. It feels exactly the way she thought it would. She does it again, and again, until there are red smears across the lettering, and then she screams and kicks it and falls without caring onto the tiles, hunched and clutching at her head.
How could the ranger lie? Jodi is psychic. Even before she got her training, you couldn't even try to deceive her without her calling you out on it. He would have had to tell her what he believed to be the truth.
They'd played with the echo before. Several times. And there was no landslide then.
Shit.
She wipes her hand across her face, tastes the salt of blood and tears. Tacoma is the smart one, right? And she knows a winning argument when she sees it.
Someone touches her shoulder.
"I'm sorry," says Jodi. "I really couldn't let you run away this time."
Tacoma looks up, certain she must be hallucinating – but it's her, kneeling at her side.
"What the … Jodi?"
"Full projection," she explains. "It's, um, please don't tell anyone I did this, because the strain will actually make my heart explode in about six minutes and I had to sign something at uni to say I'd never do it outside the psi labs, but it's basically like telepathy, except instead of just a message I'm sending my entire mind into yours." She tugs gently on Tacoma's arm. "C'mon."
Tacoma lets herself be pulled up, too overcome by the feeling of Jodi's actual hand on her own actual arm to resist. Here. Jodi is here, in the tower.
"Here," says Jodi, sitting her down on the sarcophagus. "Better than the floor."
She sits next to her, head level with Tacoma's shoulder, and holds her hand, heedless of the blood that oozes over her fingers. Tacoma can do nothing but sit there and hold it back. It's been so long. She never knew how far a week and a half could stretch until she had to spend it without any human contact.
"This is where you live now, huh," says Jodi, looking around at the green tiles and purple flames. "Did you do the ghost fires yourself?"
"Yeah."
"They're really pretty."
Tacoma is crying again now, although she couldn't really tell you why.
"Thanks," she mumbles.
Jodi leans into her, making sure she can feel her their bodies touching. She knows, doesn't she? She knows exactly how much Tacoma misses this.
"It's okay," she says, putting her arm around her. "You know it was an accident, right? Even if it was you. Which it wasn't. And … I'm not gonna say I don't still think of them, but …" She swallows. "They're gone, Tacoma. You're still here. I have to hold onto you."
"You don't wanna do that."
"No, you don't want me to do that." Jodi sighs. "I didn't come here to fight. I just wanted to see if you were okay."
"Thanks," says Tacoma again. She isn't sure what else she can say. All her usual scripts, the bluff and bluster and asinine aggression, just won't cut it now. If the blame doesn't lie with her, then Tacoma Spearing as she knows her doesn't even exist.
"I know this won't fix anything," says Jodi. "I know that there's still gonna be a voice in your head telling you that everything was your fault. But I couldn't leave you."
"Why? Why can't you just leave me?"
Tacoma knows what answer she's going to get, but she has to ask. She cannot believe it unless Jodi says it aloud. Maybe she won't believe it even then.
"Well, you're an asshole, but I love you," says Jodi, squeezing as hard as she can. It isn't very hard. Apparently even her mental projection of herself is pretty puny. "When you're good, you're really bloody good."
Tacoma can't think of an answer that wouldn't start an argument. She bows her head and simply sits for a few seconds, hoping feebly that this moment never ends.
"I do need to ask you two questions," says Jodi. "Is that okay?" Slight nod. "All right. This blood? I'm a little bit worried …"
"Not cutting," says Tacoma flatly, showing her arm. "Wounds I had before I died don't bleed." She raises her hand, takes in her ruined knuckles for the first time. It isn't the first time she's split them, but it is the first time she's done it quite this badly. Like she drove her fist into a jar of jam and took it away as a sticky red mess. "New ones do, I guess."
"I'm sorry," says Jodi. "There's nothing to clean it with, or I'd …"
"I'll survive. Next question."
Jodi pauses for a moment, just long enough for Tacoma to feel bad, and then asks:
"Why did you tell me now?"
"'Cause you needed to know."
"Liar."
Ah. Of course. Tacoma sighs and looks away, into the darkness of the stairs down to the next floor.
"Wanted you to hate me," she says, ashamed even as the words leave her lips. "So you wouldn't get yourself killed breaking into the chapter house."
"Oh, Tacoma." The link seems sharper now, somehow clearer; maybe it's because Jodi's entire mind is in her head with her, but Tacoma feels her pain the way she imagines Jodi feels the pain of others, like a wound doubled onto herself. "Look, if you feel that strongly about it, I won't go, okay?"
This she wasn't expecting. Tacoma looks up, startled, but Jodi seems to mean it.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," says Jodi. "I'm not giving up, but I can't do this to you. Won't do it, even." She smiles. "So. I guess your plan kinda worked, in the end."
It seems almost impossible, but the evidence can't be denied. Tacoma, in defiance of everything still seething within her, smiles back.
"Yeah," she says. "I'm sorry. I picked the dumbest way possible to do it."
"You sure did," agrees Jodi. "It worked out in the end, though. And hey, I even got to see you again." She gestures vaguely at Tacoma. "I forgot how tall you are."
"I forgot how titchy you are."
Jodi makes a face.
"Didn't forget how mean you are, though."
"No one ever does." God, she's missed this. It's like everything has been undone, all the way back to the avalanche and beyond – even Jodi's leg; Tacoma realises now that she hasn't brought her cane here to the tower, that she actually knelt to help her earlier. "Where's your cane?"
"This isn't me, Tacoma," explains Jodi. "I'm lying on my bed with my alarm clock set and Lothian ready to wake me up. This is just my mind, wearing your memory of me." She stretches out both legs, wiggles her feet. "It's my body that needs a stick, not my psyche."
"Oh. Right."
Pause. Jodi smiles shyly.
"It's all your mind, honestly," she says. "Like … hang on a moment."
She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again Tacoma is struck by the feeling that something has changed, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. A moment later, a guitar begins to twang – and a familiar voice informs the world that she goes out walking after midnight.
"See?" The smile broadens into a grin. "You remember it, I can make it happen. For as long as I'm here, anyway."
Tacoma listens, on the verge of tears again. Jodi must remember too, to know what music to pull from Tacoma's mind.
"Of course, you still have the same taste in music as my mother," says Jodi, nudging her ribs. "But it's okay, I guess." And then, noticing the tears: "Hey, what's that for? I thought you liked Patsy Cline."
It isn't very funny, but it makes Tacoma smile.
"Sorry," she whispers. "I'm sort of a mess."
"Don't worry," says Jodi. "When that mountain fell on me I was kind of a mess too."
Tacoma wipes her eyes on the back of her good hand.
"Yeah," she says. "Guess you were."
They sit, listen to the song. Cline has a great voice. Surely even Jodi must appreciate that.
"I have an idea," says Jodi, getting up. "I think it might make you feel better."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She turns lightly on one foot, holds out a hand. "I've got maybe two minutes left, and I don't know when or if I'm gonna be able to project like this again. So. May I have this dance, Miss Spearing?"
Tacoma blinks, surprised.
"You can't dance," she says, though of course this is the wrong thing to say. "You've never danced in your life."
Jodi shrugs.
"That's probably just gonna make it more entertaining," she says. "Two minutes, Tacoma. Last chance for either of us. Wanna try?"
Tacoma looks at her outstretched hand.
She feels like shit. Her knuckles are bleeding more and more with every movement of her fingers. She wants a sharp piece of metal to draw across her arm.
"Yeah," she says, taking Jodi's hand. "Yeah, I'd like that."
In two minutes, there will be no more music and no more hands to hold; in two minutes, Tacoma can be as violent and ugly as she wants. But until then, she is human again.
She really can't say no to that.