Chapter 124: Absolute Idiot

"Your turn," Nia asked, resting her chin on her knee. "I watched the smoke up north from our balcony for two days, Nikki... The whole northern sky..."

"I was short on credits, so I went for that horde..." I said. "Rang the dinner bell and..."

"And?"

"... Handled the Tank too..."

She went still.

All of her, at once, as two lifetimes’ worth of images of that horror flashed through her mind, and her jaw set before she spoke.

"Where is it?"

"Dead."

"You... how?" She blinked.

"I... Animed out..."

The silence that followed had actual texture.

"You know what, no." She held her good hand up. "No. I’m saving that one for when you can stay awake through the whole telling, because I want every single detail and I want to watch your face while you say them."

"Fair."

I reached for the thermos on the nightstand, and I reached the way I have instinctively begun to reach for things.

And the moment I did, the coal behind my forehead flared white.

The hiss came out through my teeth before I could stop it, my hand going up to my brow, and by the time my eyes opened she was leaning in, and everything playful had left her face.

"Nikki."

"It’s gone," I said, and in her eyes I saw the reflection of my face going pale. "TK. All of it... Pushed it beyond the point it should go, and now it’s..."

I let out half a laugh with nothing in it. "System’s exact word is Unquantifiable... It comes back when it comes back. Days. Months. It doesn’t know."

She sat back slowly, and I watched her run it, the whole ledger, everything I am without it, everything we are without it, her eyes moving like she was reading a range card only she could see.

And watching her sit there doing that math with her arm in a sling, I couldn’t hold the other thing down anymore.

"Nia... back at that truck stop..." My voice came out wrong on the first try. "What I said out there... What I did to you, I need to-"

"It was a lie."

She said it flat and firm and immediately, and her eyes came up and pinned me to the pillow.

"Every bit of it, Nikki... Every word, every swing. I know Revenant’s breath as well as you do... It reached into your mind, found the softest thing it could find in there, and armed it... That’s what they do. You didn’t choose one second of it." Her voice stayed level the whole way through. "... And if it had been me breathing that night, it would be you in this chair with your arm in a sling, and you wouldn’t want my apology either, so I’m not taking yours... We’re not doing this. There’s nothing in that conversation for either of us... We have a problem to solve. Arguing about where it came from solves nothing. We just get more careful."

A beat of silence descended before-

"...Besides~" One corner of her mouth tilted. "I got my hits in. Ask your nose."

And for half a second, my mind flashed gold sunlight lying across a wooden floor that has never existed, and somebody’s voice complaining about snow on the stairs, warm and clear and gone.

[Chemical imbalance... That’s all that is.]

I wanted a cigarette so badly my fingers knew it before I did, but I breathed it down slow instead, all the way to the bottom, while Tikki’s weight rose and fell on my chest.

"You know I would have stopped you..." she said, looking at the window. "If I’d been awake. Whatever it took... I want that on the record."

"It’s on the record. You tried with a pistol to your own head."

"And you did it anyway."

"And I’d do it again."

She breathed out through her nose, long and slow.

"Look, I’m not going to pretend my math changed, Nikki... My life against millions... that was never a trade I’d sign... It still isn’t." Her eyes came off the window and landed on me. "But you signed it... It’s done. The receipt is walking around in my bloodstream as we speak... So here’s what I decided, around day three, sitting in that chair listening to you breathe."

She leaned forward, elbow on her knee.

"If this is the road you’ve picked, then I’m not standing on the shoulder yelling directions at you anymore... I’m walking it. Every step, every city, every stupid plan, all the way to whatever end it has... Someone has to shoot straight while your head grows back."

Then she leaned in close, close enough that her hair fell forward, and her voice dropped into something quieter than the room.

"You absolute idiot."

And then she flicked me in the forehead.

Dead center. The exact spot.

The white went off behind my eyes like a struck match, and my whole body jolted, "OW-!"

Tikki bounced awake with an offended "Mrr-!", and Nia’s hands instantly flew up, sling and all.

"SHIT- sorry, sorry, sorry, I forgot, I FORGOT-"

"You FLICKED the-"

"I know! I’m sorry! It’s just such a flickable spot!"

And then we were both laughing, wrecked and stupid and too loud, me clutching my own forehead with a cat re-settling grumpily around my legs and her doubled over the edge of the bed wheezing apologies, and it went on way past the point either of us could have explained.

When it finally ran out, the light through the naked window had climbed a little higher up the quilt.

Nia settled back into the armchair, pulled my Excalibur, my 200k Credits SR-25 across her lap out of pure habit, and looked at me over it.

"Twenty-five days..." she said. "So~ ...How do we make a hundred and fifty million before the timer runs out?"

"...We? You sure?"

"We." She leaned forward, her brilliant emerald eyes not leaving mine.

And from my chest, without opening a single eye, Tikki let out a:

"Mrrh."

[...Motion carried.]