Heathens Chapter Thirteen

It's been a while.

xiii. Baseball Bat Beside My Bed

His body clock is too used to following a schedule, even with all the drugs in his system, so he wakes up at six, just like he always does, to a quiet room and a bed that’s half-emptier than it had been when he’d fallen asleep. He blinks, given that A didn’t have to go to the hospital until seven, but maybe they’re in a hurry. He’s not really surprised. 

He rolls over and tries to reach for his phone without getting off the bed, ending up crawling on his hands despite this being a bad idea, leaning his weight on the good one unsteadily, while his legs are doing their best to stay on the mattress. He pulls the charger out by the cord and opens his phone.

There’s a message. 

“MONIKA, can you read that out loud for me?”

There’s an actual pause that, if he were more awake, he’d laugh at. 

“You are holding your phone, sir.” 

B places the phone on the dresser and back-crawls back onto the bed. 

“Can’t strain my arm.”

If MONIKA could have sounded tired, she would have. “Message from A, sent at 5:37 A.M: Going to the hospital early today. Motel arrangements are taken care of. Driver will be there to pick you up and take you to next destination. Don’t wait, I’m not coming back to the motel. Key with driver. Make yourself at home, just don’t break anything.”

B raises an eyebrow. “Do you know what that’s about?”

“I was told that you’re both moving to another location, sir.”

Still not stopping at one place too long. Fair enough, given that A had already been physically kidnapped. 

B sits up and notices a paper bag on A’s desk. There’s stains on it from the steam waft inside. At least they were considerate enough to leave him that. 

The hour passes by quickly with him taking his time with breakfast and the motel wi-fi (after bullying MONIKA into getting past the password), even when his search options are limited. He hobbles around to clean the place up, takes his pain meds and does his best to change his bandages, and change into a cleaner set of clothes. At seven o’clock, the driver knocks at his door and he opens it to see the man bright-eyed in a way B never sees in most employees. 

Probably the pay. 

“Everything ready, sir?” the driver asks.

B hoists his bag up his good shoulder and nods. 

The car they take is another model than the last one, again. Not as luxurious as a Royce, again, but well-cared for despite the obvious age of it. B settles in the backseat and catches a few more hours of sleep, waking up a few minutes in between to catch sight of the buildings getting sparser and the trees looming taller above them. 

The next time he wakes up, the car jostles as it turns off the highway and into a narrower road. B watches as the vehicle slows, turning carefully, and then speeds up as it settles on steadier ground. They take a few more turns, trees all around them with only a few buildings every few meters or so, until they turn off the road and into a small clearing. 

With all the medication addling his brain, he thinks he might be shot here, in the middle of nowhere. That would certainly be reason enough for a driver to greet him all chipper-like. 

The driver opens the door for him and takes his bag for him. B takes his crutch and carefully gets out of the car. 

He looks around. There are no buildings here, only a clearing surrounded by trees. 

“So, are you going to shoot me here?”

The driver startles, like the question had taken him off guard, and looks up since B looms a foot over him. 

He laughs. “Of course not, sir, I quite like working with A.”

Oh? “How long have you worked with them?” he asks, leaning his weight on his good leg so he doesn’t sway. 

“For as long as they’ve worked with me,” the driver says. 

Before B can ask him anything else, the man seems to see someone behind B, raising a hand in greeting. B turns to see A getting out of a taxi by the road they’d just turned off from. They close the door behind them and draw their coat closer, mindful of the chill.

They smile and raise a hand back in greeting at the driver. 

“Didn’t think I’d catch you both before you got in the house,” they say as they approach, walking a little awkwardly from the discomfort of their ribs. They only have a tiny paper bag with them, maybe their medicine from their hospital check-up. Now that B thinks of it, the motel room had been a little emptier than the night before. They likely had their stuff moved out first before he’d woken up then.

“We had early morning traffic to beat,” the man says. He reaches into his pocket and holds out a shiny, clearly freshly-duplicated key to B. “It’s still my job to leave this to you.”

“Best to give it to him so he doesn’t lock himself out,” A says. B gives them a flat look, and they only snicker. 

“Come on,” they say, “I think our driver wants to get a move on with the rest of his day.”

The man only laughs again as they walk past, following them. “Well, I haven’t exactly had breakfast yet, since you called me down early.”

There’s a certain ease with the way both of them interact that speak of years of camaraderie, or maybe just amiable rapport built over time. B watches them as he follows along, doing his best not to stumble from the haze of sleep he’s still shaking off, pain meds, and a bad leg. If A had started working with whoever they were working with, L or otherwise, for two years, then clearly this man was a part of it. Important to take note of, just in case he might need the information in the future. 

The trek is short, with them only weaving through a foot path for a few minutes before a small, modest cottage comes into view. It has two floors, the upper one having a balcony, and an attic. There’s a garden out the front, and a bigger one at the back - the plants all look to be in good health which suggests that the place has been well-cared for as well.

Above the front door, once they’ve all climbed up the small set of stairs to it, there is a plaque. It reads, Lothlórien.

B chuckles.

“What?” A fishes their keys from their pocket to unlock all three locks on the door. “Let people have fun.”

“Lothlórien?”

“Like you wouldn’t like a house named after Lothlórien too,” A says, and pushes the door open. 

The inside is as well kept as the outside, so this is probably a vacation house for rent, maybe for campers who want a bit more luxury than what tents usually afford. The living room has a red and gold carpet, a couch and two love seats. There is a television set on one end of the room, and two bookshelves, one adjacent to it and one across it. To the corner beside the television set, there is a  staircase that leads to the second floor. To the left, there is a doorway that leads to the kitchen. To the right, a closed door. 

A turns the light switch on, hesitating for just a second before they let their breath out. 

Strange.

“Well, you can put the bag there,” they say to the driver, motioning to the couch. “There’s a kitchen if you want to make breakfast.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah, really.” A snorts. “Make yourself at home, idiot, I called you here early, of course I’m going to welcome you here.”

A picture starts to form in B’s head. The driver laughs, and enters the house, setting B’s bag on a loveseat and heading for the kitchen, turning the light on as he goes. 

B moves to stand beside A, really taking the house in this time, and catches sight of one of the shelves. It has a dresser beside in, and on the dresser, an empty vase, and a couple of photo frames.

He makes his way towards it, slowly. A closes the door behind him, seemingly content to let him wander around, even when it looks like they really, really shouldn’t. 

There are five photo frames on the dresser. One has a photo of A by a beach, sunhat and sunglasses and all, posing like they’re just like any young adult enjoying a vacation, none of the tiredness and the tension they usually carry themself with that B often sees. Two others have photos of A with a group of four people, there is a ferris wheel in the background of one of the photos and a rollercoaster in the other. They all look like they’re having a good time, A holding two sticks of candy floss and laughing. 

One of the people in the group looks familiar.

Another photo looks like it was a selfie, as A is closer to the camera and has a finger to their lips in a shh motion. Behind them, there are the same people in the other photos. One of them, the familiar one, is dead asleep, while the others are crowding around him with lipstick and markers in hand, ready to draw on his face. 

The last photo is just of A and the familiar person, sitting on a park bench, although their backdrop is of the ocean, and there’s a street lamp beside them, posing like they’re pretending to be fashion models. 

There are several things that B immediately takes note of. One, despite how many times he’ll see photos of A, he’ll never get over the fact that they hate getting their photos taken. Seeing them on photographs and actually looking like they’re enjoying themself is a shock, and it seems like it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. 

Two, in the time B has known them, A has had a horrid fashion sense. The most dressed up they could get was a sweater and jeans. Other times, they’d be content to lounge around in the first thing they grabbed in their closet. A looks a lot better dressed in these photographs, like they’d actually taken time off their day to think of other things aside from work, or school, and are thinking about having fun and dressing up to have fun. The fashion model photo actually looks impressive even when the outfit is casual. On any other person, B wouldn’t even take note of this, but A would rather spend their time on something they view to be productive rather than something that’s just harmless, nonsensical fun. 

This doesn’t look to be the case. This looks like someone actually learning how to relax, and it loosens something in his gut, but also stirs something bitter that he can’t quite place as to why. 

Three, A has not made mention of any of the people in these photos in all the months they have stayed with him in their horrible glass house, and they still haven’t made mention of them now, even when in the photographs they look like they’re the closest of friends. Not that he’d expected them to. They aren’t friends and they’re under no obligation to share their acquaintances with him.

And on that note, four, A is a friendly person, but they are not a friendly person, which is the reason why in the years they’ve stayed at Wammy’s, the most relationships they’ve had are rooming with B, babysitting Matt and Mello, and occasionally sharing a nod with the new kid Near. 

Which is why, five, it startles him, even when it really, really shouldn’t, that A has a photo of the same person he’d seen in the photographs in their room back at the glass house, here in this cottage. 

How long ago are these photos, if A isn’t hanging out with these people that seemed to have a friendship on par with what they used to have back before all the nonsense with the fire and the murder happened? And to have it forged in such a short time, too, when B has always known A to be closed off and built of walls upon walls upon walls. He thinks about the driver, puttering around the kitchen, about A calling someone on the phone and sounding at ease, and looks down at the photos with A having fun, having the time of their life like there was nothing else they would want to do but simply live.

That bitter thing in his stomach sparks, suddenly, and he realizes that it’s the bitterness that comes with the thought, It’s not fair; it’s not fair, is it? 

At what, he’s still not sure. He is not a creature of many wants. Is he bitter that A had a moment of finding themself and actually had a chance to be like a normal person, going out with friends, taking care of themself, while he stayed cooped up in an empty room he refused to be filled up with another roommate and inside the echo chamber of his own head? That A has friends and he’s not even friends with them anymore? That they seem to be keeping said friends from him like a dirty secret they don’t want him to get his guilty hands on?

He only realizes that he’s actually brought one of the photos up to his face when one of A’s hands settles over his fingers. 

“Oh,” they say, “I forgot those were here.”

They pry his hand off the photo, the one of them and the friend sitting on the park bench, and set it down the table, gentle.

“Come on,” they say, “I’ve got guest rooms upstairs, you can pick out which one you like.”

B nods, stiffly. He turns to follow them.

Vacation houses do not have photos of close friends sitting in them for so long that people forget they are there. 

This isn’t a rental house. This is A’s.

-

He chooses the attic, glad to see that there are actual stairs and a door to it rather than just a hatch he’d have to haul himself up through. The space is as well-kept as the rest of the house, so A must have hired someone to look after the place, which is a good move considering neither of them would benefit from being holed up somewhere dusty, sneezing up a storm and wasting time cleaning in order to stop said sneezing, not when there is a case A is working on and there are people they want to avoid. 

A tells him to unpack if he wants and that they’ll be downstairs if he needs anything. 

He doesn’t. Instead he just puts his bag, which A had helped him carry up, on the bare mattress of his bed and looks around. 

The attic is a guest room, and looks less lived-in compared to the other guest rooms of the house, which is why he’d chosen it in the first place. All the other rooms still looked like they had people waiting for them, even when the shelves were cleaned and the desks were bare, and the bed was kept the way hotel beds usually were: picturesque, but unused. 

There was something about them, maybe the general air of the place, and the suggestion from the fresh memory of the photographs he’d seen downstairs. Or maybe it was just the few knicknacks tucked away at the bottom corners of shelves, waiting to be collected by whoever owned them, the next time they visited. 

The attic looks like a proper unused guestroom, drab and light grey with one window, a white mattress with no bed sheet or blanket, and only one pillow.

B sits in the empty room for a moment, listening to the small noises that come from outside, before deciding to go downstairs, maybe grab something to eat, because he might as well fill his boredom with something that isn’t cases or talking to MONIKA or looking up random things online.

The attic staircase is at the end of a hallway, across the door to the second floor’s storage closet, so he has to make his way from there and then take a few turns to get to the staircase to the living room. He can already hear A and driver’s voice before he even gets there, and he pauses in his steps for a second, tuning in to the conversation and trying to see where they are, filling the gaps in his head as he listens, before creeping closer and hiding behind a wall that turns directly to the bottom staircase. They can’t see him from here.

“I’m sure,” A is saying. There ‘s the sound of running water turning off. They’re likely in the kitchen, then, not the living room. 

“Are you?”

“Of course I’m not, but I’m never sure about anything,” they say. There’s a small silence, then, “Except, of course, for my work. Awfully dreadful of me to be going around doing my job and not being sure of what I’m actually doing.”

The driver laughs. “I’d imagine. You can turn in your reports and tack ‘I guess’ at the end, with a question mark and all.”

“I guess he’s guilty, but I’m not really sure.”

“Could be anything at this point, really, who knows?”

They both laugh for a second. There’s a clink of glass hitting tile, followed by the sound of a fridge opening a few seconds later.

“Could you imagine?” A asks, still laughing a little. “The utter moronic inanity of that. Astounding.”

“I think we should be quite thankful you’re good at your job,” the driver says. “That’s a couple less criminals loose every year or so.”

“Yes,” A says, trailing off. They sigh. B imagines them leaning on the edge of the sink and pinching the bridge of their nose. “Sometimes I feel like I want to stop, but - not yet.”

“...A.”

“I’m alright,” A says. “Really, I am. I just get tired sometimes, and sometimes I need to say it just for it to get out, but that’s it; it’s not that I’m just going to stop.”

The driver says nothing, for a while, before finally saying, “If you ever need help, don’t hesitate, okay?”

B can hear the smile in A’s voice. “I appreciate it.”

There’s another pause as both parties let that sink in. The driver breaks the silence first.

“I know how much this place means to you,” he says, “Are you really alright with dragging it into your work?”

“If I’m going to die,” A says, and B stiffens. He doesn’t mean to, not really, but his muscles seize up and for one, solid second, but only that one second, his body forgets how to breathe. “I might as well feel like I’m somewhere close to home, you know? I shouldn’t sully the memory of something, I shouldn’t remember it as something awful or connected to something awful, recency bias and all of that, but...I just - you know.”

“Want to have a security blanket?”

“Biggest one I can have,” A says. 

Yet another pause. It’s not awkward, though. At least, it doesn’t feel awkward, from what B has heard from their tone and their words. 

“Be careful,” the driver says. “If not for yourself, then for your friends and the kid upstairs.”

A snorts. “Trust me, that one can take care of himself just fine,” they say.

There’s nothing else afterwards but something mumbled that B can’t quite hear, footsteps, and then a door opening and closing. The driver has left. 

He waits for a few more minutes before finally hobbling down the stairs and making a show of looking around the living room, inspecting things, just in case A spotted him come down. They spend a few more minutes by the sink, as he hears running water, before they step into the living room themself and find him inspecting their books.

They’re not saying anything and look like they’re spacing out, so he breaks the tension first. 

“How long have you had this place?”

A blinks, realizes he’s spoken, then, “A while,” they say. “And no, I’m not avoiding your question, I’m just too tired to think about specifics right now.”

“Several years?”

They shrug. 

B glances at the photo frames. “Had it before you got locked in the house with me, or even before you jumped in the shark pit?”

A freezes. The surprise melts out of them slowly and they make their way towards the frames, picking one up. “Way before the shark pit,” they say, “It was nice.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I didn’t steal it, or swindle it out of someone,” A says, laughing. 

“Where’d you get it, then?” B repeats.

“Had a job, a nice paying one. Had nice friends. They helped,” they say,

B hums. The conversation is getting more stilted by the second. “I never took you for the house type,” he says, “Staying in one place, I mean.”

A snorts. “B, please. I wasn’t any type when you knew me,” they say with a heavy sigh. “I was more focused on burning myself out like school and getting a title slapped on me was the most I was going to do with my life, like I was...I don’t know.” They pause. Sit down on the arm of a loveseat. “Like I was a machine made for a purpose and that was really all I was supposed to do.”

B watches them as their expression blanks out again, getting too lost in their head. “I know it wasn’t really like that, but it felt like it,” they say, “Fucked me up good.”

“I don’t think you would have gotten a proper challenge anywhere else.”

“It’s not - its not that, B,” they say, putting their face in their hands. B, so he doesn’t strain his bad leg that has been set back on healing too many times, moves to the loveseat across them.

He waits for A to speak again. 

“I love a good challenge, yes,” they say, “But when it comes to the - to the point where it’s the end-all and be-all of your existence, when in reality there’s a ton of other things that matter, it just messes with your head so much that when you get asked who you are, you actually come up with a blank.” They laugh. “I feel like a huge blank. I feel like people can just fill me up with whatever they want me to be and I wouldn’t know what to do.”

He thinks about this, for a while. Once, he’d set a goal and a purpose and that was to surpass L, and that had become the be-all of his existence, and should have been, had it not been for unforeseen circumstances. 

Does he feel like a blank?

B pauses. 

“And it was reinforced by everyone in the orphanage absolutely going mad over the goal of succeeding the L title. Nearly everyone wanted it, and we were encouraged to get it. We were encouraged that it was the greatest honor and as kids, we didn’t know any better. Hell, sometimes I still catch myself thinking that before I realize I nearly died for it,” they say, “And I did try to talk about it, to a lot of people but they…”

B realizes he’s been looking down and drags his gaze up. He hadn’t known about this. He’s never heard about this, in fact, in all the years they’ve roomed together.

“I know they meant well,” A says, “I like to think they meant well, but it hurt, and it felt like I was getting stuffed in a cage every time someone said it would be such a waste if I didn’t put all that brainpower to actual work. If I didn’t live up to my ‘full potential’. It would be such a shame and I - ”

“Didn’t want to bring them shame,” B says, “Didn’t want another reason to be ashamed.”

It clicks with something else that’s been unhinged inside of him. He knows this. This is familiar ground, not because A’s told him about it but because he’s been there and done that, too. They grew up together, after all, the first generation, the first children. A and B. The trial run. 

A nods. They look like they want to collapse but they have nowhere else to collapse further on, they’re already sitting, their full weight surrendered to the loveseat. He knows that look.

“I don’t know why I felt like that,” A says, “It feels so irrational. It feels so stupid. I could have quit anytime at all. I could have. I didn’t. I kept going until I couldn’t, and then I ended everything in the most explosive, unnecessarily dramatic exit I could have ever come up with.”

The trip to this house is proving to be a very bad move because B doesn’t think he can quite take yet another thing unearthed and turned over in the pit of his gut. But something is squirming, something he has not thought about in years. Something that’s been writhing around like a maggot ever since he’d stood in the rain in front of a burning tree house all those years ago. 

“It still feels so stupid,” A says. They wipe at their eyes, even when they’re dry. Then they laugh. “Oh, damn, this has turned into an impromptu therapy session, I’m sorry.”

“I think you need to talk, it’s fine,” B says, absentmindedly. 

He could have quit too, anytime he wanted. A wasn’t there anymore. He had less respect for L and more of an irrational, possibly-misplaced rage against him, and a ton of resentment against Wammy. He hated every single kid in the house with him. There was constantly something buzzing underneath his skin that he didn’t know how to get rid of, but he knew he wanted it to explode because it was too much. Whether that explosion happened to manifest in bloody knuckles at the slightest excuse to be able to act on pent-up anger was irrelevant. 

But he didn’t. 

It would have been too humiliating otherwise.

(“It would be humiliating because no one would even know you died and no one would care,” Jeevas says, “You’d die like a dog. )

When a child is raised in an environment that prizes something that they would otherwise think to not truly be of value, in a completely different setting, they internalize that early lesson and understand that, as this is how my society works, this then is truly what matters and is the epitome of value. Everything else is inconsequential. 

This is not always bad, of course. It also not always good. It simply is, which is the state of most things in life. It can, however, always be taken too far, just like how it can be taken too flimsily and shrugged aside.

Which is not by any means an excuse of behavior, it is just societal happenstance. 

As is the state of most things in life. 

To achieve the epitome of value, after struggling with what has to be struggled with, is a great achievement and an inspiration. To fail in this is to be a failure, a testament to worthlessness, to be a manifestation of shame. 

This, B thinks, is why A is in front of him laughing dryly at what they now understand is stupid. They hadn’t known it then, not back then, when the epitome of value was to be L, or better yet, surpass L. To fail in that is to be a laughingstock. 

This is why, he also thinks, he struggled with what had to be struggled with, to reach his goal of surpassing L.

Even if that ‘struggle’ is to murder three innocent people and die. 

(“A violinist?” the nurse asks. A is doodling on B’s arm cast with fading markers. B is watching the lines they’re scribbling so he can figure out the best time to jostle his arm and mess up their doodles.

He nods. 

A smiles. “He’s good.”

“He’s smart, is what he is, and talented,” the nurse says, and B preens, a child starved of attention and approval and is unfortunately only getting it in precious teaspoons. “But a violinist? What would you do?”

“Play violin, duh,” B says. 

“Yes, but you’d do better even being just a doctor, dear,” the nurse says. “Or an engineer, or an architect. All that brainpower would be put to good use, at least, even if you don’t become L.”

He actually bristles at that, and A, beside him, stiffens like the thought has just knocked something off balance in them. He doesn’t blame them. Not being L is absurd. Not being L is not an option. He’s got to get it. He just has to. 

“Seems like such a shame if you just settled for being a violinist, if you ask me,” the nurse says, and rechecks the items on her tray once more before wheeling the cart out of the infirmary. 

A painter, A had said, when they’d talked about their pipe dreams.

A violinist, B had said in return. 

Such a shame, the nurse had said.)

“Did I lose you?” A says. He realizes they’ve now fully sat on the loveseat, although their legs are swung over the armrest. They’ve leaned forward and are snapping their fingers. 

B blinks, slowly. “I - am fine,” he says. “Just thinking.”

“Lost you, then.”

“You didn’t lose me, I just actually use my brain, unlike some people.”

“Ah, he’s back.”

He cracks an empty grin.

“Sorry again,” A says. “I don’t think I should really just force you to listen you that.”

“It’s fine,” he says again. “And at least you did get out, even if it was a shitshow and a half.”

“Just a half?”

“Maybe two miles of a shitshow,” he says, “You traumatized Matt.”

A winces. “I owe him an apology.”

“Didn’t you apologize to him?”

A takes too long to answer. “I haven’t, no,” they say, “He was just really glad to talk to me but we never really brought things up.”

Neither have they, but B finds he doesn’t really want to talk about those things either, so he understands.

He just nods. For a minute, neither of them say anything.

Then, B asks, partly out of curiousity and partly out of a deep-seated resentment he hadn’t known existed until he asks this question, “Was it worth it?”

A looks at him, knowing exactly what he means but waiting for him to elaborate anyway.

“Faking your death and leaving everything behind?”

The smile is slow to bloom on A’s face, and it’s beautiful, but it drives a wedge into that splinter that’s already forming and adds fuel to the spark inside his gut. 

“Yes,” A says, “Best decision I ever made in my life.”