Chapter 1: no
Chapter Text
There was something about the gradual realization that society was in the midst of a slowly approaching dystopia that made people want lattes. Virgil didn’t understand it. He’d had this crisis (the hey, wait, our government is useless one) five whole years ago when the dystopia was really in full-swing, and he’d never changed his coffee order. Everyone else was behind, and now he was running out of milk and he really didn’t want to close down his shop and go all the way to Block N-6 to get more.
Virgil’s phone buzzed. He ignored it, focusing instead on the woman in front of him. She was staring at the menu above his head like it was written in very inconvenient code.
“Can I… Uh…”
Virgil tapped his pen on his fingers, eying the line behind her as she shifted. In the corner of his eye, the milk jug sat behind the clear glass of the fridge under the counter. The small half-inch of white at the bottom of the plastic jug glared him down. The woman clicked her tongue and Virgil jolted, only to find her just as indecisive as before.
“Can I get a latte?” the woman said, and Virgil threw his pen at the floor. She jumped, eyes wide, as he shoved open the fridge and shook the jug at her.
“Thanks, Janice,” he seethed, “now I have to close early. Everyone out!”
“How did you know my name?” the woman asked under her breath, but Virgil was busy ignoring the rising complaints coming from the line as he furiously made her latte, chucking the empty jug in the general direction of the trash can.
“This isn’t fair!” somebody in the middle called. A glance up revealed it was a DARK SIDE general, recognizable only by the green sash around their otherwise plain T-shirt. “I walked all the way from L-9 to get here!”
“Too bad, I’m out of milk.” Virgil shoved Janice’s latte at her and flapped his arms at the rest, pushing them out of the shop and grabbing his grocery bags off the shop floor on the way. “Go on, out. I’m closed.”
“It’s noon!”
“I’ve had weirder.”
“It’s true,” somebody else piped up. “He opened at midnight once and closed once it hit daybreak.”
“Oh, that is weird.”
“Shut it and leave!” Virgil pointed at them, then the door, with increasing frustration. “If you’re going to talk about me, at least wait until my back is turned. Shoo!”
The crowd—if five people could even really be called a crowd—dissipated, leaving Virgil standing on the gray corner outside his shop, looking out at the rubble that used to be Malcolm's Corner Store before somebody (not looking at anybody in particular ) knocked it down. The sign still stood half-poking out of the bricks, now just “Malcolm's Corn.” If it had still been standing, Virgil could have run over there, got milk, and run back without losing any customers and therefore money, but no, somebody had to underestimate their weapons and push the whole building down and half of Stacy’s Sizes with it.
His phone buzzed again. Virgil finally pulled it out, pulling his face mask over his nose and mouth while he did so to avoid breathing in any building dust as he walked. He pointedly ignored the notification while he navigated to his website.
The Depresso Expresso: If you must visit, please leave soon after
Status: Closed. Blame Janice.
Hours: Eleven to noon, twelve-thirty to midnight. Subject to change again, depending.
He sent the same message to his Chatter page, adding, don’t ask who Janice is, you already know.
Luckily, his phone promptly blew up with more Chatter notifications, making it easier to ignore those notifications, two more of which had appeared.
Something rumbled in the distance, and then crashed. Virgil steered away from what sounded like District L, stepping over a large chunk of wall and onto a ruined couch that would have been very nice, had it not been covered in building plaster.
He opened a few of the notifications, the good ones. People were tagging him on Chatter, and he scrolled through a few of the messages as he walked.
Wow, Virgil-no-Dante, only an hour? New record.
—No, no, don’t you remember when he closed after fifteen minutes and one customer? That’s the record.
—Haha fake fan lol
What was it this time, Virgil-no-Dante?
—Read the message dude, it was Janice.
—Of course it was Janice.
You’re kidding me. You’re absolutely kidding me. I’m all the way from K-8 and it’s an hour by subway and all the trains on this route have stopped- I am going to scream if I get there and he still hasn’t opened. Virgil-no-Dante, you better be there.
—You’re going all the way from K-8? Just go to a shop in M?
—The Expresso has the best coffee in the Border Districts, what am I supposed to do, settle?
—The Expresso has the only coffee in the Border Districts, lol
—Suffer. Suffer like the rest of us who can only get to the Expresso once a month at best.
—!!! If you go to L-10 and take Green from L to N, it pops out by N-5 and it’s only a bit of a walk from there.
—Na-na-na-na, L went LIGHT three weeks ago, border control’s gonna be crazy.
—Oh shoot, right, my bad.
Virgil-no-Dante is an icon.
Whaaat already??? I just left my house! Virgil-no-Dante is dooming me to a day of sitting outside his shop waiting in vain for him to appear.
Us outside the Expresso waiting for Virgil-no-Dante:
Attached was a picture of a bunch of hopeful baby ducklings peeking their heads out of a gutter, all looking expectantly in different directions. One of them was staring at a pebble. Virgil pressed the Enjoyed! button for that Chat and tucked his phone away, only for it to buzz again.
He snatched it back out, flicked away all of the little text bubbles, and cursed the government for mandating that every citizen have the ClockWatcher app and be unable to turn off alerts for it.
District L, 10-8, is now DARK
District L, 10-5, is now DARK
District L, 1-9, is now LIGHT
District K, 1-7, is now LIGHT
He didn’t see anything for District M, so he probably didn’t have to worry about crossing into S (which was DARK last he checked). But he’d also sent away a bunch of alerts earlier that morning and S’s status could’ve changed, or his own status in M could’ve changed, and he’d have no idea.
Nobody cared about the Border Districts, though, aside from fighting over them. It probably didn’t matter. Virgil put his phone back in his pocket, on silent (not that it stopped the alerts from ClockWatcher), and tried his best to Stay in the moment and Enjoy the present . The walk was nice, if long and tedious, with everything in various shades of the same dull gray. The clouds above him were slate and glistened, drifting wetly across a sky of the same color. It’d rain later, Virgil concluded. As if it wasn’t already cold enough.
His phone buzzed again right as he clambered over a fallen pillar that had made its home in the middle of the street, alerting him that he was entering District S. On the side of the wall, next to him, was a great green sign plastered with the number 7 on it. S-7. He must have made a wrong turn somewhere—he’d wanted to enter by S-5, because Jo’s Grocers’ was on the corner of N-6 and now he’d have to walk essentially two extra blocks instead of one.
He turned and sludged his way across the block. S was more active than District M—it was on the border of the Border Districts, and while not technically stable , it was more secure than M. People were milling in the streets, chattering away—as he passed various roads and corners, he saw glimpses of them hanging colorful curtains out to dry along abandoned shop awnings, setting up stalls amongst the rubble and ruin and painting graffiti on the walls.
DISTRICT N FOR THE ONCOMING DARK , he saw, and, DON’T RUN FROM THE DARKNESS. A few Yo’ Mama jokes and some interesting images spattered the walls too, but also some beautiful murals that he’d never see in any of the LIGHT Districts, like A or C, because street art was illegal there.
Virgil reached Jo’s Grocers’ and pushed his way inside, the bell jingling merrily above him. Jo, a tall, string-bean-esque woman with green hair to match, stood at the counter, ringing up an elderly grandmother who was buying what appeared to be cans upon cans of cat food. “Hey, Virgil!” Jo called when she saw him. “We got a new shipment of coffee beans from Y! I put some on hold in the back!”
“Oh, nice, how much?” Virgil asked, already disappearing into the fridge section.
“Free, for you!” Jo leaned towards the door leading to the storage room, and shouted, “Jemima! Can you get those beans for Virgil?”
“He’s here?”
“Yeah, he’s here!”
“Can he fix the coffee maker, it’s broken again!”
“Hey, Virgil—!”
“I heard!” Virgil yelled back, grabbing two cartons of whole milk and one sweetened almond milk jug, just in case. People had been going on a health kick recently and his matcha drinks didn’t taste as good with regular. He swung the fridge door shut and took the grandmother’s place at the counter, leaving his purchases there while he stepped into the storage room and then further back up some stairs that lead above the shop. Jemima sat there, in a small living room surrounded by screws and the tiniest of screwdrivers. She grinned at him when he entered.
“Good,” she said, and pointed at the machine, which barely even resembled a coffee maker anymore. “Fix.”
“Can’t you order a new one? This thing is older than you,” Virgil muttered, sitting cross-legged next to her. He was looking for the panels she’d unscrewed and something stick-like to pull the pieces of torn-up, soggy, clogged filter out of the nooks and crannies.
“We just got our supply shipment in from District Y,” said Jemima, taking the stairs down by twos and proceeding to rifle around in various bags and plastic wrap. “Mom doesn’t want to risk a new machine getting lost somewhere on the way here, or our block changing and the order being canceled.”
“Ah.” Virgil managed to tug a particularly stuck piece of filter out of a joint and flicked it onto the floor. “Right.”
“I’ll put the new beans at the counter for you!”
One of the parts was snapped in two, hanging on by a thin strand of plastic. Virgil didn’t know if that had been the issue that made Jemima take it apart or if it had broken in the process—he found some tape on a table nearby and roughly bound it back up, trying not to make it too bulky. Reassembling the coffee maker after that was a matter of just putting the pieces back together, and he finished quickly.
It might not work completely, but at least it wasn’t in pieces. It was in a slightly better shape than the items in most shops, anyway. At least it was still, kinda, functional.
Jemima was busy at the counter with other customers when he got back down to the store, and Jo was nowhere to be seen (he heard her loud laugh outside the shop, around the back), but when he picked up his bags, they were heavier, and Jemima waved at him as he left.
The sky was getting dark as he journeyed back to the shop, but it was still only twelve-thirty (he updated his website and Chatter page, letting them know he’d be back by one, and the replies were amused and unsurprised). In the distance, he heard crackling and zapping. Datacode, or Code for short, one of the LIGHT SIDES’ famed trio, had boasted about a new capture tool that utilized electricity on certain nodes on the human body to painlessly knock someone out without any damage to them or their surroundings.
Virgil wondered if Code had known it would also darken the sky in the middle of the day, like a thunderstorm. He assumed not.
He wondered if Code even cared about the weather over in DARK Districts.
Virgil’s phone buzzed as he re-entered District M, but he didn’t get a chance to check it. Something had pressed against his mouth, and a second hand reached out around his eyes. His limbs grew heavy and he thrashed, as his fingers became loose and numb. He struck someone, and vaguely heard their cry.
Everything seemed far away.
Fabric rustled as someone gently took his bag out of a hand he was rapidly losing sense in. Blackness started to creep in from the edges of his vision. He breathed in chemicals that tasted sickly sweet and spots swam in his sight as the street in front of him flickered with blurred figures, and a piece of dark cloth slipped over his eyes.
One of the figures had been wearing a green sash.
Virgil woke up and his head hurt. It pounded, something inside his skull beating its tiny fists against the side of his head and screaming obnoxiously. His first instinct, shaking his head as if to dislodge it, failed miserably and only made it worse. Just his luck
He groaned and his teeth met something rough and dry shoved in his mouth. A gag.
He started to struggle. His hands were tugged loosely behind his back, and when he jerked them, his wrists bit into something cold and metal. Trying to stand up failed—one of his ankles was similarly restrained to whatever he was sitting on, which felt like some sort of round chair bolted into the ground. He was wearing a blindfold.
He had to update his Chatter page.
Instead, Virgil sat there, limply, heart pounding and head spinning both literally and metaphorically as he tried to figure out what on earth he had done that made the DARKness think he was liable for kidnapping. He barely even knew the DARK laws, but they weren’t all too different from ones in the LIGHT Districts—looser, even—and to the best of his recollection, he hadn’t broken any. Especially none that would call attention to himself like this.
The room he was in was cold. A breeze touched his neck (his mask was gone—he’d liked that mask and now it was gone. Where was it?), but it smelled canned and dusty. The air conditioning was on.
Somewhere in front of him and vaguely to the right, a door opened. Footsteps entered, and he felt a light brush of fabric. A chair screeched as it was pulled in and settled across from him, as more footsteps circled around behind him and into the room and out of the room. Two people. Three people? Four people, and one person left?
“He sauntered in,” one explained, by the door where people had just entered and exited. “From District M.”
“On the Border?” asked the person in front of him. He—and it sounded like a he, but Virgil shouldn’t assume—seemed casual, and nonchalant, and somewhat condescending.
“Uh-huh,” said the one by the door. “He stayed for about thirty minutes and left after talking to some people in a grocery store. Jo’s Grocers, I gave you their file at some point—“ the rustle of paper “—that one, yep.”
“You think he’s a spy?” asked the person behind Virgil. He seemed almost eager, and Virgil startled. He’d forgotten that person was there, and hands laid on his shoulders. Something rough, fabric, glittery and sequined fabric, ruffled at his neck.
“I think District S was under attack mere minutes prior and then he came around in an unprotected point,” said the first person, the one in front. Something shuffled—he’d crossed his legs, maybe. “Thank you, Carter, this was very helpful.”
“Of course, sir! I’ll leave you to it.”
“Bye, Carter!” said the person behind Virgil.
“See ya, boss!”
The door closed, and Virgil was left alone with the two people behind and in front, one of whom still had their hands on his shoulders, and none of whom were speaking.
The person behind him took his hands off Virgil’s shoulders and began fooling with something behind Virgil’s head—the gag. He tugged at the knot and some strands of Virgil’s hair and eventually the cloth loosened and, then, was taken away entirely.
It was only when the gag was removed that Virgil realized it had been hard to breathe with it on. He gasped for air the minute it was gone, taking a few moments to catch his breath that rasped in the empty air. He didn’t even consider saying anything. He just focused on breathing.
Once the gag was gone, the one behind Virgil circled around to the front and, after a ruffle of fabric, seemed to sit on the floor.
“Did you check his phone?” the first one, the casual one, said.
“Yep.” The second one sounded much more cheerful. “He had seventy-five unread alerts.”
“He never checked it?”
“Apparently not! That doesn’t mean much, though!”
“Yes… do we know his occupation?”
“Cafe owner! He runs the Depresso Expresso, best and only coffee on the Border!”
Did the second man talk exclusively in exclamatory sentences?
“And what did he buy at Jo’s? He bought milk?”
“One of our generals was in the store and he says Virgil ran out of milk, yelled at them, and then began the walk to District S, yeah! Seems legit.”
“It is still suspicious. And the penalty for spying is death.”
Virgil started. Death ?
“But nobody is ever convicted of spying,” the second man almost whined. “Or death. I thought we got rid of that law. And I really don’t want to clean up the floors.”
A pause. Virgil craned his neck around, tried to find words in his dry throat to explain himself or ask what was going on. Eventually, the first man sighed.
“Fine. Should we execute him or not?”
Virgil wheezed, surprised at the bluntness
“Shh,” said the first man, seemingly directed at him. “Duke?”
“Uh.”
The Duke? This was the Duke speaking? He thought he’d been in the presence of high-ranking generals, not the DARK SIDES themselves. He coughed again and was shushed again, as Duke fidgeted with various bits of fabric and produced something metallic.
Virgil heard something ping, the clap of hands as Duke caught something, and a pause.
“...heads,” said Duke.
“My fate was decided by a coin flip?” Virgil blurted, and he was promptly shushed a third time.
“Heads?” asked the first man, who Virgil increasingly suspected was Forgery.
“Heads.”
Another pause.
“Like… as in ‘keep the head’ or ‘chop off the head’?”
The metallic ping again and a clap.
“Tails.”
Virgil shifted awkwardly in his chair, shoulders tense, as Forgery and Duke said nothing and thought.
Forgery cleared his throat. “Congratulations Virgil, you’re saved!”
Duke clapped his hands and cheered, and Virgil blinked under his blindfold, confused and vaguely dizzy.
Well.
Somebody stood up and tugged at the back of his head again, and then the blindfold was slipped off and he was staring up at a man with half a mask on, on the left side of his face like an opera mask that for some reason had a scaly, snakeskin pattern, and a bow tie around his neck and ribbon around the brim of his bowler hat each the same obnoxious yellow color.
“Sorry about the misunderstanding,” said Forgery, glancing at something above Virgil’s head and then below as hands (cold hands) began tugging at Virgil’s handcuffs too. “We’re trying to crack down on leaks now that the LIGHT SIDES have been more active, and we were a bit paranoid after the battle today, you understand.”
“What—what time is it?” croaked Virgil. His mouth was dry and his head still swam, and he didn’t really know what was going on.
“Six PM!” chirped Duke from behind him. The handcuffs fell off and so did the one around Virgil’s ankle, and Duke stood up with some celebratory jazz hands. “Surprise!”
“What—”
“You’re still in District S,” continued Forgery, sending looks at the door. Somebody scrabbled at it from the other side. “So don’t worry about getting home through the subway, and your family was alerted to where you were—”
“He doesn’t have any family, sir!” called the person from the other side of the door.
“ Oh ,” said Forgery. The more the two stood there, Duke looking intensely at a spot of the wall and not at Virgil, the more Virgil realized that they were very awkward and did not look like they knew what to do. “Well—is this your first kidnapping?”
Virgil wasn’t sure, his head was spinning again, but he might have muttered an insult. Possibly about Forgery’s bow tie, and potentially about his hat as well. He just heard Forgery mutter “well I never ,” Duke sputtered, and Forgery shouted the question at the officer outside the door instead.
“This is his first kidnapping, sir!” was the response.
“Well we have gift bags—” the door opened and the DARK general hurried forward to awkwardly help Virgil up “—and complementary hand grenades if you want them—”
Virgil slurred, “I don’t want them?”
“—and we’re very sorry for the inconvenience and misunderstanding.”
“Goodbye!” Duke called as Virgil was pulled into a hallway that was just as metal and fluorescent as the room he was just in. “Come again soon!”
Virgil heard the soft slap of fabric as Forgery presumably hit Duke on the shoulder, and Duke corrected himself, voice small as Virgil got further down the hall. “I- I mean, don’t come again soon! We’re very sorry! Goodbye! I like your apron!”
It was because of the last comment that Virgil realized with a start he was wearing an old, stained apron with the words KILL THE COOK in loopy, pink font that he’d found for cheap on an auction site because it had a typo on it, and he had been wearing that apron for the whole day. He’d been kidnapped in that apron. The two leaders of a huge crime gang had interrogated him while he was wearing that apron. He’d met the two leaders of a huge crime gang and seen their faces (or half their face, on Forgery’s end, even if that was for aesthetic and not to conceal his identity), in a pink, stained, KILL THE COOK apron.
“Just take me home,” he groaned to the general.
“It’s not that bad—”
“Don’t lie to me, I really want to cry.”
“Right. Of course.”
Chapter 2: in which the rest of the SIDES, unfortunately, appear
Chapter Text
The air sang at four AM. Virgil sat in his empty coffee shop, fingers curled around his mug and head bowed over the steam, as if deep in thought. He was trying not to fall asleep.
Virgil woke up for moments like this. When the air was quiet and the world wasn’t frozen in time, because time was still sleeping. It was free of the fabric of reality (it was the fabric of reality), and a quiet chill and hum took its place.
The world glowed at four AM, the stars shimmering outside the glass front of the shop and street lights trying their best to live up to the light, and the oven clock grinning green. The light of Virgil’s phone shone blue-white. The text of his website was still displayed.
The Depresso Expresso: A resort for last resorts
Status: Open. I love my sleep schedule too.
Hours: Two AM to noon.
He didn’t expect anyone to come. He was content to sit on the high stool behind the counter, elbows bent over the marble in front of him and steam wafting warmly into his face like a hug, listening to the world as it slept.
The coffee tasted better with the new milk he’d gotten, he thought. Or maybe it was just the morning-air magic floating around in the lamplight with the dust that had snuck in through the door when he staggered through last night. The big, puffy chair in the corner still had a blanket thrown over it that he’d dragged with him when he collapsed earlier. His neck still had a crick in it from the odd way he’d fallen asleep.
The door jingled. The bell above it was old and its chirp sounded much more muted, but Virgil liked it like that. It was unique, and his.
“You should replace that bell.”
Well, that was rude.
Virgil recognized the man who entered. He’d been on television the day before, punching a woman with a green sash in the face. The moment had been screenshotted and used as a reaction image.
This man wore a red sash, over a white jacket with padding on the shoulders theorized to be bulletproof. A sword was strapped to his waist, knee-high boots gilded gold and shining in the darkness. The Prince cleared his throat, looking around. “Are you going to turn on any lights?”
Virgil reached out and clicked on the lamp next to him. Prince turned to the light, saw him as well, and jumped.
It was kind of amusing, honestly, even while Prince scowled at him and slicked his hair back, looking a bit embarrassed. “There you are,” he said, coughing into his hand.
Virgil blinked at him, unimpressed, and abruptly remembered he owned a cafe, and even if Prince, leader of the LIGHT SIDES who spearheaded battles and was bringer of peace, the pinnacle of human chivalry and honor, had stepped in, that didn’t mean he could just drop his responsibilities. He sighed and heaved himself off the stool, lamenting his lost morning.
“Welcome to the Expresso,” he said, “I hate my life, please leave.”
“No?” said Prince. It sounded more like a question, but Virgil didn’t want to get kidnapped a second time (even if the LIGHT SIDES didn’t really do that), and he didn’t know if talking back to the Prince broke a LIGHT SIDE law or anything.
“Fine,” he muttered, pulling the cash register to him and poising his fingers over the keys, “ was worth a shot. What can I get you?”
“Information.”
“We don’t sell that here, sir.”
“Fine, uh…” Prince glanced over the menu, sighed, and gestured vaguely at the whiteboards. “Whatever tastes good and has a lot of caffeine.”
That was vague, but okay. Virgil preferred to turn to the coffee makers and grab a to-go cup, one of the smaller ones out of spite, instead of standing there awkwardly anyway, so it worked out. “Information on what?” he asked.
“I, uh, heard you got kidnapped?”
Virgil carefully slid one of the measuring cups into a bag of coffee grounds he took from the cupboard and focused all his attention on the task rather than Prince, who was pushing one of the cozier, plusher chairs from the corner and closer to the counter. “Yeah,” he scoffed, trying not to let his shoulders rise with anxiety as Prince got closer (what did he want? ). “They snatched me on the way back from N-6 yesterday. Rude.”
“Isn’t N-6 DARK?”
“Yeah, so?”
“M-5 is LIGHT, you can’t go to a DARK district if you’re from a LIGHT one.”
Virgil shrugged, putting the cup under the coffee maker’s spout and pressing down the lid, pushing some faded buttons to change the settings. “Apparently.”
“You… didn’t know?" Prince stared at him, and Virgil genuinely couldn't tell if he seriously thought Virgil didn't know how the color systems worked, or if he was just teasing. "That's like. The first thing they teach you. Preschool-level stuff. If you need any education help, we can help you—”
Ah, okay, so he like actually thought Virgil was an idiot. With a sigh, Virgil left the coffee maker to its quiet chugging and turned to peer judgmentally Prince over the line of cacti and house plants on the counter. “My block changes color status each day,” he explained. “I can’t keep track of it all, so I don’t.”
“Sounds careless.”
“Either I care too much and have panic attacks or I don’t care at all and stay calm.” Virgil tapped at the side of the coffee maker’s spout to knock some droplets loose and pulled the cup away, searching along his side of the counter for various jars and bottles. “I prefer the latter.”
“Hmm.”
He found the vanilla and caramel flavor syrup bottles and lightly shook them to give his hands something to do. “So? I went to N-6, got kidnapped because I came from a LIGHT District in the middle of a battle and they thought I was a spy sneaking ‘round the back. What of it?”
Prince tapped his fingers along the marble of the counter, opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and peered at his finger. “Is this marble fake?”
“I found a video on Chatter and made it myself, keep your judgment to yourself or leave.”
Prince huffed, shifted, and, eventually, relented. “We heard you met the leaders of the DARK SIDES.”
“Forgery and Duke?”
“So you did meet them."
Virgil paused in the middle of pouring vanilla flavoring into the cup, realized he was pouring too much, and decided that it was what Prince deserved. He capped the bottle and shook his head. “Yeah, they were jerks. And?”
“Why did they meet with you ?”
Virgil’s hand froze in the middle of opening the fridge for milk to pour in the foamer. He glared. “That sounds like an insult.”
“Well—” Prince scratched at his head, making his crown crooked. “They don’t show up for just anyone. What did they look like? Did they ask you anything?”
Virgil tilted his head, waiting for the steamer to heat up. “They thought I was a spy,” he repeated, thinking. That day was hidden in sweet chemicals and fogginess. “They didn’t really ask me anything. They talked about me like I wasn’t there, flipped a coin, decided not to execute me—”
“They flipped a coin?” echoed Prince. “Like, they flipped a coin to decide whether or not to—”
“Yep.” Virgil stuck the cup under the foamer, pressed a button, and turned to put the syrup bottles back while it steamed. “So it landed on heads, they decided not to kill me, and then they let me go.” He capped the cup and wrote Sir Stinksalot on the side.
“Is their base in District N? Thanks.” Prince took the cup and didn’t notice the name.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
The sun was coming up outside Virgil’s window, and he sighed, mentally. His morning was gone. Some of Virgil’s regulars came in with the sunrise, and he really didn’t want Prince in his shop when they came. What he did want was a few more minutes of peace before he had to face the world, so he pointed his finger at the glass door and the pink sun streaking in and said, “okay, out.”
Prince had his eyes closed as he drank and he opened them now, surprised. He coughed. “Sorry, what?”
“I have to serve other people now. Out.”
“I don’t see anyone—”
Virgil tapped his foot, impatiently, and Prince seemed to get the hint. He took his cup, his sword, and his annoying questions with him. The bell jingled. Prince left five dollars on the table and a vague sense of annoyance in Virgil as he snatched up the money and flung it into the register.
His phone buzzed. He checked it, keeping an eye on the clock.
Heard Virgil-no-Dante got kidnapped yesterday. Sorry bb, must’ve been rough.
—Aww, was it his first time? Sorry Virgil-no-Dante, remember to drink water and eat lots of grain-y stuff, it helps with the dizziness!
—Lol what did he even do
—Insult an officer probably
—Serve decaf coffee and say it was regular
—Exist in the general vicinity of an officer
—Say "I bet I'll never get kidnapped" in the background of a video someone posted on Chatter where any officer could see it
—did that happen to you, Chatter?
—It did, Chatter.
—how many times did they prove you wrong, Chatter?
—Like twenty times, Chatter.
—Ahaha look at this idiot who thought they could taunt the DARKness and get away unscathed, what a loser
Hearing a lot about Virgil-no-Dante getting kidnapped by the DARKness… Do you people in the DARK Districts get kidnapped… often?
—Haha yeah, if you break a law you get kidnapped by the officers and told off, it’s like a ticket or fine but *spicy*.
—H u h.
Virgil-no-Dante’s open at like… three AM today. You okay?
—What are YOU doing awake at three AM?
—Sorry officer, you see, I don’t actually care, so. My bad.
Virgil-no-Dante first kidnapping yesterday? W E A K. I’ve been kidnapped like fourty times at this point. Get on my level.
—Dude, for the last time, nobody wants to be on your level
Can I get a quick RIP in the convo for Virgil-no-Dante?
—RIP
—Rest in pieces, Virgil-no-Dante, icon.
—RIP, you will be missed
—I wont miss him
—Get out then
Chat your favorite after-kidnapping tips in the convo for our absolute legend Virgil-no-Dante? Or best first kidnapping stories?
—Ohohoh I have a good one, so this was back in the old days of the darkness when it was still lowercase and our men Forgery and Duke weren’t in charge so getting kidnapped was like actually dangerous and scary, and I had just finished robbing a bank with my ex-wife and cat (in parts bc long)
—Where’s the story Chatter
—Chatter, the story! Where’s the rest of the story, Chatter!
—Oh no they’re wearing Oxygenpods they can’t hear us—
The door jingled. Virgil looked up to see five minutes had passed, and in front of him was a young lady staring up at the menu and looking a bit like she had no idea what coffee even tasted like, and was also very, very tired. She saw him looking and waved, a bit, smiling nervously.
Virgil sighed and took up his position at the cash register again.
“This is Depresso and so are you, what do you want?”
He worked at the front until eleven and closed early to bake, waiting until the moment the last customer was gone to flip around the open sign to a blunt GO AWAY and disappear into the back to grab batter he’d made two days ago and hadn’t gotten a chance to use. Virgil had been planning on making scones and shortbread to fill in the gaps now that District K had stopped shipping pastries from Nora’s to him, citing the unreliability of Border Districts. Which… well, he couldn’t really blame them for.
His phone buzzed.
District H, 1-5, is now LIGHT
District H, 10-5, is now DARK
District H, 1-5, is now DARK
District H, 10-5, is now LIGHT
WARNING: Please stay out of District H! A battle is underway.
Virgil pushed his spatula along the underside of the pan to catch all the chocolate chips that had sunk down and wondered who in H-6 or H-4 had reported that.
His door dinged.
That shouldn’t have happened, he thought, and jerked his head up. His hand slipped and spattered shortbread batter on his fake marble counter, and he frowned.
“Shouldn’t you be fighting over H-5?”
Heartbeat shrugged his gray shoulders, sticking his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. The color distinguished him from the other members of the health department who wore a more traditional white, but looked out of place on a lab coat. It opened over his blue polo shirt, which was pristine and unrumpled—not like he’d been running around in a battle mere minutes prior. “The others have it. Besides, I was supposed to talk to you earlier to follow up after Prince, but I forgot.”
“You were busy,” Virgil tried to say awkwardly, but it didn’t really work. Heartbeat grinned cheerfully at him anyway. “I’m closed.”
“Your website said you were open?”
Virgil paused. “ Shoot .”
He’d forgotten to update that.
Heartbeat hesitated, still grinning, albeit a bit more awkwardly now. “I don’t want to steal business from you—I’ll take three of whatever pastry you recommend and a mocha.”
The issue was that Virgil liked Heart. Out of all of the LIGHT SIDES, he was the nicest and seemed to make the most sense. Datacode was removed and callous, the Prince was arrogant and over-dramatic, but Heartbeat was kind. Naive, and occasionally short-sighted, but kind. Genuinely.
“Why bother checking the website?” Virgil asked eventually, after retrieving three cookies he’d made the day before (before getting kidnapped) and putting them in a paper bag. “Why not just come in and interrogate me at, like, midnight when people were guaranteed to not be there and I was guaranteed to not be busy?”
“Oh!” Heart startled from the seat he’d taken in the corner and draped himself over a stool at the counter instead. “Well I wanted to be polite!”
Virgil squinted at him as he measured cocoa powder. “Uh- huh .”
“And—” Heart shrank down a bit, and his grin turned kind of sheepish. “Prince was gushing about your coffee and the DARKNESS took over the district of the shop I usually go to.”
“Oh.” Virgil put the go-cup under the coffee maker and grabbed cinnamon and nutmeg jars from the line in front of him.
He didn’t like that. Prince didn’t get to gush about his coffee. Prince had come in at four AM and ruined Virgil’s morning, how dare he enjoy it. Virgil seethed quietly as the coffee maker poured, and quickly dumped in his spoonfuls of cinnamon and nutmeg before he could snap and insult the main LIGHT leader right in front of the other LIGHT leader.
Heart fidgeted with his gloved fingertips awkwardly as Virgil watched the coffee maker. “So, I uh. I heard you got kidnapped?”
Virgil groaned, loudly, and Heart’s hands flew up to wave in the air as he shot out of his seat and rambled, “sorry! I shouldn’t have asked that, I’m sorry, I was just told I should see if you knew what the leaders looked like or what they were doing or if they spilled any plans to you or what their base looked like and—I’m so sorry, I’ll shut up now, the pastries smell amazing and I’m so sorry, please have all my money.”
He tossed a bill onto the counter and slammed himself back down into his stool, eyes wide and mortified.
Virgil put the cup of mocha on the counter between them, looked at the money, and said, “that’s fifty dollars.”
“Mmhm,” said Heartbeat.
“This is ten dollars worth of food.”
“Yeah.”
“...you have a fifty dollar bill just. Sitting in your pocket.” Virgil picked it up. “With a money clip.”
“It’s to throw ‘em off their rhythm.”
“Who are ‘them?’”
A shrug. “The Prince insisted.”
Virgil sighed, taking the money. “You’re nice. You’re not as bad as the others. So you can stay— but, ” he added, seeing Heart sag in relief, “no shop talk. I’m making that a policy. You can’t talk about LIGHT and DARK stuff while in the building. No asking me about that! I have to deal with that every five minutes and I don’t want to deal with it any more than that, so zip it.”
“Got it sir, right-eo sir.”
“Good. Enjoy. Now go.”
Heartbeat scrambled for their pastries and mocha and scurried out the door, calling, “thank you have a nice day Virgil!” as he left.
Virgil stared at the door as it slowly closed behind him, jingling. “I’m closing early today,” he said. “I’m taking a few more orders and then closing. I hate this.”
“Depresso Expresso, love the coffee, hate the service. What’s your order?”
“Depresso Expresso—” Virgil screamed, loudly, for exactly twelve seconds, then cleared his throat. “—how may I be of help?”
“Depresso Expresso, because apparently you hate me as much as I hate myself. What’s your serv—gosh darn it!”
He threw his pen on the ground. It clacked unsatisfactorily and skittered off somewhere under the counter, and Virgil crouched down to find it and avoid Datacode’s eye contact.
“Sorry?” Datacode said, sounding a bit confused. Virgil patted along the ground, found the pen, and threw it again. This time it hit the wall with a loud, much more satisfying clatter.
“Why,” Virgil gritted when he stood back up. “Why are you here.”
Code pointed at the whiteboards above both of them. “To order coffee.”
“Is that it.”
“Yes,” said Code. His blue suit looked annoyingly unruffled. His glasses were designed to reflect light off them and turn the clear glass into bright white squares to an outside looker, and Virgil found it all very irksome.
“Is that all it is.”
“It is.”
Virgil stared. Code stared back. Eventually, Virgil grabbed a go-cup from the stack under the counter, uncapped the pen, and wrote Pocket Protector on the side, out of spite. Code glanced at it, back up at him, and Virgil watched as he made the conscious decision to not do anything about it.
“It’s too early in the morning for this,” muttered Virgil as he turned to add more grounds to the coffee maker.
“Is it?” asked Code absently, examining the shop. Unruffled. Annoyingly. Virgil hated him, in that instant. “It’s two PM.”
“Are you going to make me tell you about the kidnapping?” Virgil asked instead of replying that afternoons might as well be mornings too and time was a scam.
“...no.”
“ Really .”
“Would I lie?”
Virgil leveled him with a look. He was very proud of this look, but Datacode barely blinked (though admittedly Virgil wouldn’t be able to tell past those glasses). This was just another reason to dislike him.
“It seems like your hours are rather… sporadic,” said Code, conversationally. “Your practice of keeping a website open for updates is very similar to businesses in the DARK Districts, actually.”
Virgil rolled his eyes at him, taking the most chipped mug he had to put under the espresso machine. “Yeah, I copied them.”
“Well, you had a lot of contact with them. District M was originally a DARK District.”
“I don’t care,” he said plainly, watching with no small amount of delight as Code recoiled at the bluntness. “I don’t remember, and either way I keep— changing .”
A chair flew by the glass windows at the front of the store, quickly followed by a block of rubble and a person, a LIGHT officer. They landed on the street, rolled, and lay there, unmoving.
Then they stuck their thumb up. “I’m okay!” Virgil heard them call through the glass. “I’m okay!”
His phone buzzed.
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
Virgil snatched up his phone and shook it in front of Code’s face while six shots of espresso filtered into the mug. “ See ?” he spat.
“Dear.” Code pushed his glasses up, squinting a bit. “That seems… inconvenient. Chaotic.”
“Yeah. It’s the worst.” Virgil tossed the phone back down on the counter, and Code leaned forward a bit to track its movement.
“That’s a bit reckless,” he pointed out. “What if it cracks?”
“This thing is old as all time,” muttered Virgil, stirring the drink. “It’s indestructible.”
He’d poured a generous amount of milk in, adding sweetener and vanilla flavoring, and when he shoved it at Code he didn’t bother to warn him about the caffeine or sugar intake. Code had watched him make it, he’d be fine, probably.
“You always keep it on you?”
Code’s voice seemed too interested. Virgil frowned at him, thought back through their conversation, and realized it had all been centered around his experience with the DARKness or LIGHTness and that was shady as heck.
He wondered if Datacode could track phones.
“You’re trying to trick me,” he said, eyes widening. “You want to know the location of the base they took me to.”
Code sighed, taking his go-cup and scratching at the name Virgil had written. “Worth a shot.” He lifted the cup in a toast and slid off the chair, backing towards the door. “You’re a clever one. Have a good afternoon.”
And then he was gone.
Worth a shot—was that a pun?
Virgil hoped Code’s heart was beating two paces too fast for the next three days. Annoying cactus old vanilla paste saltine oyster-cracker-crunching man.
So, Virgil was wrong. The most irritating thing about the LIGHT SIDES wasn’t the constant war they insisted on waging, changing Virgil’s color status and living situation every two seconds, keeping the sky bleak and gray and dark, no, it was that they kept coming back . It was like that old saying about feeding stray cats, and now Virgil had to deal with them all.
“Welcome to Depresso,” he said, counting money and writing down his last count on his notepad to keep track, “I want to die, how may I help you?”
“...hi.”
Virgil looked up, hit the table, and considered screaming. Instead he pointed at Prince, then at the door. “No,” he said.
“I swear I’m just here for the coffee.”
Prince looked a little worse for wear. His white coat was stained gray from rubble dust and the sash was ripped and torn across his chest, which heaved as he tried to catch his breath. It seemed as though he’d run all the way from the fight in P-9, almost three districts off.
Virgil still glared at him. “The coffee isn’t that good.”
“Don’t insult yourself.”
“Please… leave.” Virgil jutted his pen at the door. “Go away. I’m too tired to deal with—frickin’— you .”
“ Please? ” asked Prince, and was he pouting ? “Just give me whatever you gave Code. He said that was the most awake he felt in weeks—give me two, actually. And, uh, two of whatever’s smelling really good right now,” he added, glancing at the oven behind Virgil.
The timer went off, at that minute, and Virgil wanted to throw it out the window. He didn’t, though, because he was composed. Instead he clenched his fist under the counter and grabbed two go-cups.
Heartbeat gave him fifty dollars last time, maybe Prince would tip just as well. Only worth it part of this whole thing anyway.
So Virgil turned to make the drinks, muttering, “fine, what do I care. Happy to help.” He tried his best to ignore Prince as he took a seat at the counter and tapped his fingers.
“What’s your favorite color?” asked Prince eventually.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” huffed Virgil instead of answering. He only gave Prince two shots of espresso, because Prince looked like a wimp and he deserved it. Code, on the other hand, got eight. The bags under his eyes were impressive and rivaled Virgil’s own, and that was… worrying, if Virgil could think so without being a hypocrite.
He would either way, but it’d make him feel better if he could do so from the moral high ground.
“No,” said Prince bluntly. “What’s your favorite color?”
“I’m not answering your dumb questions.”
“Your mom’s a dumb question.”
Virgil threw a pen at him. Prince ducked. Virgil was going to put so much milk and sugar into this coffee it’d barely even be coffee anymore, and if he had to switch to a larger go-cup he normally only reserved for customers he liked, he’d do it.
So he did.
Take that.
“It’s purple,” he said eventually, because Prince’s true power was staring so expectantly that Virgil started to get anxious on principle, and he disliked that feeling immensely. “I like purple.”
“Like, a dark purple or a light purple?”
“Lavender. Shut up.”
“What’s the last lie you ever told?”
“‘Happy to help.’”
“You just said that to me.”
“And I meant none of it. Shut up or I’ll ban you.”
Prince, miraculously, snapped his jaws shut and didn’t test that, and left after getting his coffee. He’d taken a swig, looked shocked, then delighted, then a bit sheepish, and he ducked out the door and turned down the street.
Virgil checked the news, something he tried not to do, to see if Prince had maybe gotten hit by a new DARK weapon that made people act weird. But nothing, as far as he could see.
After updating the website with his new hours, Virgil swept the floors, watered the plants and changed the coffee filters and refilled the syrup bottles. Under the counter was an air mattress he blew up and laid out under the tables when he got tired, and he shook it out now. He kept looking outside the windows, like he was waiting for someone to walk in and bother him.
That turned out to be a good idea, when he saw a man cross the street a few minutes before he made it to the shop. Virgil quickly put away his cleaning supplies, finished wiping the counter, and squinted past the dusty glass. Nobody else was around, like they normally weren’t, and that made it easier to see the man—the only moving thing outside, other than the wind.
He had a bowler hat, and when he lifted his head the yellow ribbon shined in the gray sun. he wore a black suit, with yellow trim, and as he got closer Virgil saw the scaled mask against the left side of his face.
Virgil watched, through the glass, as Forgery inspected the front of the shop, saw the clear GO AWAY sign, and pushed through the door anyway, because Virgil hadn’t locked it, foolishly thinking nobody would come around in the first place, let alone try the door after seeing the sign. He thought, watching Forgery leisurely enter, that Forgery wouldn’t be so easily convinced to leave.
Virgil sighed, heavily, and sat himself down on the stool in front of the cash register. “Unwelcome to the Depresso Expresso, aren’t you the guy who kidnapped me?”
Forgery raised an eyebrow and mimicked his annoyed tone. “Aren’t you the guy who called me a try-hard idiot for wearing a bowler hat and a bow tie at the same time?”
Oh, so he had insulted Forgery while still out of it on whatever chemicals the DARK generals shoved in his face. He glanced at Forgery’s over the top fanciness. “It’s still true.”
“It is not true!” spluttered Forgery. “It was never true!” The right side of his face not covered by the snake mask flushed a bright red along the cheekbone.
“What do you want?” Virgil asked eventually, trying not to snicker while he put his fingers over the keys of the register.
Forgery shifted a bit, tucking a hand into the pocket of his slacks. His eyes—right eye, more of—drifted over the menu consideringly, but they eventually settled on Virgil’s face in a way he didn’t like. “We’ve been getting intel that the LIGHT SIDES have been here.”
“Oh for the love of—” Virgil cut himself off by biting one of his knuckles and thought about throwing the pen again. He let his head drop onto the counter instead. “What is with you people?”
“What?”
“First I get Prince and Datacode in asking about the kidnapping, now I have you asking about the people asking about the kidnapping, I hate this,” ranted Virgil, waving his hands about in various upset motions. “I have a policy. No shop talk. None. Nada. Zero. Is that so hard to follow?”
“So the LIGHT SIDES were here,” Forgery said, like it was an achievement and he’d managed to squirrel it out of Virgil and Virgil hadn’t at all offered it up on his own. “What did they ask you?”
Virgil stared. “About the kidnapping you absolute ravioli.”
“Don’t call me—”
“Ravioli head. Ravioli man. You little bean paste chicken ravioli lookin’ man. I just said it was about the kidnapping, what do you want from me?”
“More details!” Forgery snapped. “What did they want to know? Did they bring guards? A force? Did they force it out of you? Tell me everything you know.”
Virgil blinked at him, deciding in that moment that he did not just hate the LIGHT SIDES but also the DARK SIDES too, which landed him in the awful position of hating everyone. He’d hated everyone before this decision too, but it was still inconvenient to note. “Well Datacode ordered the most caffeinated thing we had, so I gave him seven shots of espresso and he wanted even more, what a legend, and Heartbeat likes mochas—”
“About us kidnapping you.” Forgery sounded very annoyed. This was good, because Virgil was very annoyed too, and if he had to be then Forgery did as well. That was the rule.
“They wanted to know your reasoning and your base and what you looked like—”
“What?” asked Forgery, blinking a bit, and Virgil wondered if he had hearing loss. Then he began wondering if he’d have access to hearing aids, then if Forgery, as a mob boss, would get insurance for that, and then if the DARKness even had insurance and if Forgery as the leader would get the benefits as well. Was there mob boss insurance? Did they get healthcare?
“They wanted to know what you looked like,” Virgil repeated, after realizing he’d been quiet for a bit too long.
“They know what we look like,” said Forgery, almost to himself. “Why would they…”
“They do?”
“Of course they do,” Forgery muttered. “Duke doesn’t wear a mask. You think this one stays on easily? It doesn’t. It’s adhesive. It’s fallen off in front of them at least ten times in fights, they know what I look like.”
“Sounds embarrassing.”
“It wasn’t,” said Forgery quickly, in the manner of someone who agreed that it was embarrassing and the fact haunted him in late hours when the only thoughts present are the really embarrassing ones, like having your aesthetic snake opera mask fall off after getting punched in the face so hard your gaudy hat probably fell off too, all in front of your greatest enemies. Virgil guessed that would be embarrassing.
The thought comforted him.
“Whatever.” Forgery waved a hand, leaning in. “What else did they ask? What did you tell them?”
Virgil was just tired. His phone buzzed on the countertop and when he glanced on it he saw ClockWatcher notifications scrolling up and taking over the screen, and outside he heard yelling.
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
“Did you say—”
“The next person who comes in this door, talking about status, is going to be banned." Virgil snatched up his broom from the corner. He waved it in Forgery’s face. “The borders of my shop change every hour because people try to get to N and L, and everyone else is gone, and now I can’t get more milk— ” he grabbed the empty jug he’d washed out to use for water from the fridge under the counter and chucked it at Forgery’s face.
Forgery ducked. It landed somewhere on the floor and scatter-bounced into the corner.
“Without getting kidnapped, and then questioned endlessly about it,” Virgil finished. “Either leave, or order then leave. No shop talk .”
Forgery blinked his one visible eye and coughed. He straightened his bow tie, then the cuffs of his sleeves, then the hem of his coat, and readjusted his bowler hat. “Well, then,” he said. “Well.”
“Well?” demanded Virgil, and Forgery huffed, shifting a bit.
“Well I’m very sorry for the inconvenience our questions have caused you, I’m sure the integrity of our secrets and the safety of our forces should not concern you in the slightest and I apologize for assuming it would.”
That was either a genuine apology that happened to be a very bad one, or a sarcastic apology that came off as almost whole-hearted. Virgil peered at Forgery’s mask and tried to look past it, and noticed that the cheek uncovered by the mask was bright red.
Genuine, then.
“Are you going to order?”
“I’ll have a vanilla matcha latte and a hot chocolate with cinnamon. Lots of cinnamon.”
Virgil paused in the motions of reaching for the milk. “How much is a lot of cinnamon, for you?”
“Like.” Forgery pinched his fingers together, then hesitated and widened them. They were at least an inch apart. “This much?”
“...that’s a lot of cinnamon.”
“It’s for the Duke.”
“Ah.”
Chapter 3: Virgil is bothered by many different SIDES today
Chapter Text
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
District N, 1-2, is now LIGHT!
District N, 10-1, is now DARK!
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
District L, 1-3, is now DARK!
District L, 10-2, is now LIGHT!
District L, 10-1, is now LIGHT!
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
Warning: Please evacuate District M! A battle is underway.
Virgil turned his phone off. He held the button on the side down until it flickered black and he saw his reflection in the screen, and then he chucked it across the store and let it bounce off a houseplant and fall into the watering can.
Green light flickered through the street outside, lighting up the dim morning light in lime and viridian lasers. Somebody screamed.
“Don’t worry!” somebody else yelled. “They’re non-lethal!”
“They still hurt! ”
“Oh, well, yeah I guess—ow!”
“Medic!”
Virgil wiped down his counter and watched as a red-clad body flew by, followed closely by a woman in a white coat, red sash wrapped around her waist, and a couple other LIGHT officers wielding glowing crimson swords.
Something rattled. He dropped the rag he was using and stomped over to the watering can. With two fingers he pulled a dripping wet phone out of the inch of water left in it, shook it, and glared.
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
In a burst of scarlet light and a heavy, uncertain rumble, the world shook. On unsteady, shaking legs, Virgil ran back to his counter and ducked underneath it, hand pressed against the underside of the fake marble and fridge clanking next to him.
Wind pressed against the windows at the front of the shop and made the panes tremble, and even after the shaking stopped the glass was still quivering.
Somebody shouted, “there it goes!”
Virgil took that as his cue to poke his head over the countertop to see how much building dust he’d have scrape off his windows, and found Duke there instead.
“Hi there!” said Duke, backlit against what sun managed to get through the gray-caked glass. “Your bell broke.”
Virgil squinted. “You… broke my bell?” he asked.
“Well not me personally,” said Duke, taking a few steps closer. His mace, dripping with green light, was cocked over his shoulder. He took the chance to turn it off, and the light retreated into the handle. “But it is broken, yes.”
“Because you broke it.”
“Uh, indirectly maybe.” Duke set his mace on the counter and leaned over it, standing on his toes to better see the menu. One lock of hair was white, and Virgil wasn’t sure if he dyed it or if it was natura. “Can I have a hot chocolate?”
“With cinnamon?”
“Yeah, exactly!” Duke clapped his hands as he watched Virgil make it. “Oh, more than that.”
Virgil had already put at least three tablespoons in. He raised his eyebrows and looked Duke dead in the eyes as he tipped the jar over more.
“A bit more…”
There was more cinnamon than chocolate powder in the cup at this point.
“Almost there, and…”
Virgil added a pinch of nutmeg and hot milk, stirred, and handed it over.
“Can you add whipped cream?”
He took it back, added whipped cream, and, on an afterthought, cinnamon sprinkles. He mourned the Duke’s lost taste buds, put the lid of the go-cup on, and pushed it across the counter. “Ten bucks,” he demanded.
“But hot cocoa is only five on the menu—”
Virgil slapped his hand palm-up onto the counter and waggled his fingers. “Ten bucks. For the psychic damage and the bell.”
“Sorry about your bell.”
“And the windows.”
“Well it was the LIGHT SIDES who brought that building down, not us—”
“Fifteen bucks.”
The Duke handed Virgil his money and waved as he left the shop.
See, the annoying thing was that Virgil thought raising the prices a truly unreasonable amount would make the SIDES stop coming. Instead, they came just as often and kept giving him more money. Money that he needed and resented.
“Welcome to Depresso Expresso, I don’t care, what can I get you?”
“Could I get a green tea?” asked Datacode, fidgeting with his tie. His blazer was tied around his waist, and his shirt looked ruffled. He’d been out overseeing one of the more weighty battles all the way out in Q, where a major DARK base was kept. “Iced, please.”
“And can I have a vanilla mocha on ice?” piped Heartbeat behind him, playing with the sleeve of his gray coat.
“Sure, that’ll be twenty dollars.”
The woman behind them startled and peered around Heartbeat’s shoulder (she was at least a foot shorter than him and it ended up being around his elbow). “It’s twenty dollars? Is everything that pricey?”
“No, for you it’s two.”
“What?” whined Heart. “That’s not fair!”
“You broke my bell.”
Technically, it had been a combined effort between the DARK and LIGHT both, but Virgil was more focused on the fact that his bell was broken and they were involved.
Datacode silently handed him an extra twenty bucks, and Virgil wanted to crumple it up and throw it away, but he needed more cinnamon for when Duke inevitably came back, so he kept it.
“Good. Now go away.”
“Hi, Depresso Expresso cafe, you should spend your money on therapy if you’re here, how may I help you?”
“Can I just get, like…” Duke motioned with his hands, wafting them in the air like he was trying to summon up whatever he was thinking about through sheer willpower.
Virgil wordlessly handed him a go-cup filled with cinnamon and just enough hot chocolate to turn the cinnamon into some sort of goopy sludge. Duke took it, drained it, and gave him a thumbs up. “Thank you!” he chirped, leaving the store with forty dollars on the counter behind him.
“That was scalding,” Virgil whispered.
“Could I have a… nonfat vanilla-caramel latte with two sweeteners, nutmeg, some cinnamon, a splash of the pumpkin spice syrup I know for a fact you have hiding somewhere because you gave Heart a pumpkin mocha two days ago, half fat free milk and half soy, sugar-free whipped cream with dark chocolate drizzled on top and white chocolate marshmallows, on ice. Please?”
Virgil blinked one eye at a time, one hand holding the milk carton and the other hand holding a go-cup with the name Prince Underarm Stink. “No,” he said.
“What? Why?” asked Prince, slumping. He promptly jerked back up and whipped around before Virgil had even blinked. In one long, smooth movement, Prince drew his katana and cut a glowing red line of light across the chest of the DARK general who’d tried to sneak up on him. The general crumpled, knocked out but unharmed, and Prince tossed him outside, back into the battle.
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
“Shop talk,” said Virgil, pointing with his pen.
“I wasn’t talking.”
“Too bad. You’re banned.”
“What?” Prince cried. “For how long?”
“As long as I feel like it. Out.”
“ Man... ”
But Virgil couldn’t ban him forever, because then he’d stop earning money, because one by one each block around him was moving away into safer, stabler districts and he was slowly being left behind. His Chatter fame could only get him so far, and customers were starting to decide they bother traversing the rubble or figuring out what side he was on this hour just for a cup of coffee they could have closer and easier to home.
“You really are the only coffee in the Border Districts,” said Forgery one day, leaning against the counter and entertaining himself while he finished his coffee by watching Virgil clean.
“Sorry, I don’t serve people in bowler hats.”
Forgery glanced up, at his brim. “What if I take off the bowler hat?”
“Then I don’t serve pushovers who follow dumb rules I made up on the spot because I wanted to take my break early. Please leave.”
It was a testament to his willingness to put up with absolute tomfoolery that all Forgery did was shrug. “Fine. How long is my ban this time?”
“Wait and see.”
“I hate it when you’re just vague ,” Forgery complained, but he left, and Virgil was left sweeping the floors and scraping dust off the windowsills and clearing debris from the front of his shop alone.
He was alone a lot, alone with the buzzing of his phone and the dust motes drifting in the sunbeams that made it through the streaky windowpanes.
The Depresso Expresso: lactose intolerant? lame
Status: Open, if you can make it through the rubble
Hours: one AM to two PM
Virgil considered changing his status to Closed , but decided against it eventually, checking his Chatter page instead. He’d been tagged a ton since he last checked it and he scrolled through some of the replies he got, replying to a couple.
Virgil-no-Dante hasn’t changed his hours at all today, good for him
—He woke up at one AM
—Maybe he forgot??
—Let’s hope he forgot
I think I saw the Prince exiting Virgil-no-Dante’s??? Do they go there now?? Is this a thing?
—The Expresso is LIGHT SIDE approved!
—!!! It’s Prince!
—Oh its Prince better salute <3
—Hello Prince!
—Our highness <3
—Hello our highness! <3
—<3 Highness!
—<3 <3
—Wassup Royal-Gent howsit shakin
—It better not be
—Oop there he is
—there’s our legend! Hi!!!!
—Hello Virgil-no-Dante!! Drink some water!
—Do I hear some d r a m a on the wind or did a building just fall down?
—There’s our salty supreme dark overlord of negative commerce! How’ve you been?
—Virgil-no-Dante are the LIGHT SIDES bothering you? Are they being rude to you? Do we need to give them a talk?
—I’m up for that! I’d love to give the LIGHT SIDES a talk
—Here’s the link to sign up if you want to volunteer for giving Our Highness (<3) a talk
—Honestly though I could see Code or Heart nagging at him too
—You leave our boss alone okay Code would never
—Heart’s too nice for that
—Yeah true (Hello heartbeet! and Data-code-1 what’s up)
I’m going through the Border District on my way to Depresso and??? Nobody’s here?? These blocks are completely abandoned like what the fridge
—Yeah haha the Border Districts are like that, I think the DARK SIDES had a movement to get everyone moved out because of safety reasons?
—Yep! They realized everyone was fighting so much so they got everyone in the worst blocks and sent them further in, so like 4, 5, 6 mainly in those middle districts
—Isn’t Virgil-no-Dante in a DARK block?? What’s he still doing there then
—Who even knows at this point
Virgil-no-Dante has been open for thirteen hours I don’t even care if he forgot to change his status once or twice this is a new record and we applaud that
—He’s been open for thirteen hours?? Is he okay?
—no
—Oof hello please get some sleep
—no
TOPIC STARTED: SLEEP EXPRESSO
Alright who’s gonna storm the Expresso with me Topic: sleep Expresso
Okay folks it's that time of year again get the blankets Topic: sleep Expresso
—Again??? He does this a lot???
—Oh honey you have no idea
You’ll never take me alive Topic: sleep Expresso
His phone started blowing up at that, replies of no??? You should sleep?? and absolute legend, clapclapclap and death is just sleep+ my guy that overwhelmed the ClockWatcher notifications and tuned out the buzzing of various districts changing colors.
Virgil-no-Dante please go outside sometime today, touch some grass, pet a dog, please, do it for us, for all of us
*Virgil-no-Dante enjoyed this chat!
—Oh shoot where is he
—YOU SUMMONED HIM
—where’d he GO—
Maybe he should go outside today. For just a moment.
He updated his page to closed , shut off his phone, and stepped outside his door, newly-repaired bell jingling merrily.
“You’re outside! Great!”
Virgil blinked but didn’t have time to turn before a cloth was pressed over his face and sickly-sweet lemon smell overwhelmed his nose, and he thought, not friggin’ again.
“So in our defense, we talked shop outside the cafe, and that makes it okay.”
“It does not .”
“It kind of does,” Duke protested, and Virgil wriggled in his chair. The handcuffs were biting into his wrists.
At least he wasn’t blindfolded this time.
“It really doesn’t,” he muttered.
“Well, that was the rule,” said Forgery, clipboard in hand as he signed some papers that he claimed were to authorize the repair of a bridge somewhere in R-9. “So you can’t blame us for finding a loophole.”
“You kidnapped me. Again.”
“You can’t blame us.”
“I’m suing.”
Forgery opened his mouth, presumably to say another you can’t , but then closed it. He looked to Duke. “... can he do that?”
Duke shrugged.
“Whatever,” Forgery decided, “we kidnapped you, you can’t sue us, and Duke wants scones.”
“...what?”
“I want scones!”
Forgery scoffed, muttering something about childishness and a waste of DARK resources.
This was hard to wrap his head around, Virgil decided. Although he didn’t know if that spoke more to his own head-wrapping ability or to the wrapableness of the topic. “You kidnapped me,” he said, “for scones?”
The Duke hesitated, probably realised how that sounded, and pulled at the white bit of his hair. “Well, yeah, kind of. I wanted to ask if you’d start baking them?”
“He loves your shortbread,” added Forgery. He frowned down at his bridge papers. “I’m not authorizing a program for the new bridge that plays the Little Einsteins song when a LIGHT SIDE crosses and then springboards them off.”
The Duke peered over Forgery’s shoulder. “Yeah you are.”
“...yeah, I am.”
Virgil blinked, slowly, trying to get the fog out of his eyes. His head pounded and ached like it was going to crack open and pour his brains on the floor, and he resisted the urge to shake it. “You kidnapped me,” he repeated, “for scones.”
“Uh-huh!”
“You couldn’t have just asked me?”
Duke tilted his head at him. “You banned me for a week two days ago.”
Virgil thought about it. He remembered Duke ordering a cup of cinnamon and hot chocolate powder to pour in hot water when he got home so it didn’t go cold on the way and handing him fifty dollars. He remembered Duke saying that since the cinnamon jar was almost out, he could just take the rest of it. He remembered that the cinnamon jar was half full at the time.
“Ah, right,” said Virgil, remembering. “I did do that.”
“Mmhmm!” Duke agreed happily. He spun on his stool and the metal squeaked. “And then I realised you only sold shortbread and cookies and I wanted scones. So I asked you!”
Forgery glanced up from his paperwork. He hesitated. “Can you make lemon scones with chocolate chips?”
Virgil could. Technically.
“No.”
“ Man —”
Virgil got back when the street lamps were just starting to flicker on. The ones near his shop were green today, and he remembered somebody on Chatter saying that they were changing the color temporarily in celebration of the DARK’s recent victory. His block must have turned DARK when he wasn’t looking.
Duke had handed him his phone as he left. Virgil half wished Duke had kept it.
“Oh, hello Virgil, I was wondering when you’d get back.”
Virgil turned on the lights and glared. “Wait outside like a normal person next time.”
Datacode hummed thoughtfully, thumbing through a book he must have taken with him, legs crossed. He waved a hand at the green lights outside. “I’m not a fan of the color.”
“Well that’s too bad,” Virgil grumped. He slid himself behind the counter and filled a mug with water. His mouth felt dry, like confetti and sponge. “Punch a guy in the face maybe so you can turn the lights red.”
Code sniffed a bit, and adjusted his tie with long fingers. “I don’t do the punching myself.”
“Do I care?”
“I’d hope you do, I’m—”
“I don’t,” Virgil answered for him. He pointed a finger. “Order or leave.”
“Alright, I know the drill. Could I have eight shots of espresso—” it was the middle of the night “—and two teaspoons of… this .”
Code rustled in his pocket, pulled something out, and set it on the counter. The glass gleamed in the lamplight, shining off a red metal lid and a paper label. Virgil picked it up.
“Crofter’s Organic Spread,” he read.
He was too tired for this.
“I keep a jar on me at all times but it really would be much more convenient if you stocked it, I—”
“You’re banned for a month,” Virgil interrupted. “And I’m upping prices for you specifically. Goodbye.”
“...well that’s a bit unfair.”
It was at the point where each SIDE were giving him up to a hundred dollars for each order that Virgil realized this was getting ridiculous. However, he was making so much money he could afford the subway fare to R-7 to buy a new coffee machine, and now he could make latte art like he saw on Picture Instant screenshots people posted to Chatter. He resented that. How dare his most annoying customers be the ones to make him the most money, truly. It was awful.
(They were not growing on him. They were not. They made people flee the Border Districts and drove away his customers and they were causing so much harm to him and everyone else. He did not care about them.)
(Those two things could not coexist.)
The bell rang at two-thirty AM and Virgil hoisted himself up to prop his chin on the counter, rubbing his eyes and regretting his decision to open at midnight again. “Depresso Expresso—no, we’re closed.”
Prince blinked. “The website said you’re open—”
“We’re closed for you.”
“Well what about Heartbeat?”
When Heart bounced to wave, the soles of his sneakers lit up and flashed. “Hi!”
Virgil blinked and rubbed his eyes some more. “...Heartbeat’s fine.”
“ What? ” sputtered Prince as Virgil pulled himself up to standing and slumped on his stool, which he’d upgraded with wheels duct-taped on.
Heartbeat clapped and bounced to the counter, quickly rattling off a vanilla-nutmeg-mocha-frappucino with whipped cream and chocolate chips and cookie bits and rainbow sprinkles and exactly one tiny marshmallow on the very top with dark chocolate drizzled over it and no lid. Then he turned and looked at Prince.
“...one black coffee,” decided Prince. Virgil turned to make the orders, Heartbeat getting a phone call and leaving to take it. Prince tapped his fingers against the counter. “Hey, why weren’t you in yesterday? This place is always open.”
Virgil huffed. He still had a headache. “Well I’m sorry if I wasn’t there to serve your highness—” he sarcastically made a heart with his fingers “—but I kind of got kidnapped so if you could lay off me for just a minute then maybe I’d actually give you coffee.”
Prince frowned. “You don’t need to be rude.”
“Yeah, well I’m going to be. I’ve had a very long day and I’m really tired and all I want is some gosh darn coffee so maybe keep your comments to yourself.”
“Fine!” Prince snapped, snatching his coffee and Heart’s frappe. “Forgive me for being worried!”
“I won’t! Two hundred dollars!”
“Wha—it’d be six dollars for everyone else!”
“Not anymore! You can afford it!
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
Prince spun on his heel, flung the door open so it slammed against the wall, and stormed out. Virgil shot him a very complicated gesture as he left.
He was very grateful that he finished right before Heart wandered in, face glowing from the green light of the street lamps and straw of his frappe stuck in the corner of his mouth. “Come outside for a sec?” he asked.
Virgil warily stepped out from behind the counter, following Heart’s handwaving to the sidewalk. The air was muggy and thick with dust. Heart didn’t seem affected by it, instead slurping at his frappe and waiting for Virgil to step over the doorframe.
Virgil waited.
“Are you really helping the DARKness?” demanded Heart eventually.
At least he was outside, thought Virgil, although this kind of defeated the point of not talking about the whole DARK versus LIGHT thing and the policy. He sighed. “What do you mean ‘help?’ Like, not telling you stuff—help?”
“One of my medics said they saw you walking with the Duke yesterday,” said Heart, like he was heartbroken at the notion Virgil would spend time with anyone but the LIGHT.
“Yeah, he was walking me back from kidnapping me,” Virgil muttered.
“They kidnap you and you still don’t turn them over to us? You could help us win the war!”
“I’m staying out of it.” Virgil felt like he’d said this before. “I don’t want anything to do with the war.”
Heart looked at him for a bit with big brown eyes, picking at the plastic lid of his drink. “Is that the right thing to do?” he asked eventually.
“How do you mean?”
“Well they’re trying to overthrow the government,” said Heart. “They’re breaking the law and kidnapping people and dismantling any sort of order, and that’s— wrong .”
Virgil blinked at him. Something seemed fishy here, and he scratched his head and said, “overthrowing the government? They are the government.”
“They’re a gang!”
“...I mean, kind of?” Virgil wafted a hand. “I know the actual government’s the worst and they aren’t technically a government themselves but they’re the ones actually governing, so. They’re the government.”
“We have a government,” Heart protested. “They’re kind of the worst yeah maybe but they’re still the government, what the DARK SIDES are doing is wrong and—”
“Kind of the same thing you’re doing?” said Virgil. This was awkward. He dug his foot into the sidewalk and considered running back inside, but now Heart was looking at him all confused and apparently nobody on the LIGHT SIDES was self-aware in the slightest. “You’re also acting as the government.”
“We’re helping the government!”
“Yeah then so are they?” Virgil shuffled back and forth on his two feet. “We wouldn’t have half the infrastructure work we do without them. I mean, the actual government kind of abandoned the DARK’s districts when they started doing their own thing, and all of the damage from your fights have to be repaired by someone … Besides the DARK SIDES have been doing a whole lot of outreach work to fight against poverty and homelessness, so they’re not just fixing their own problems.”
It was cold outside. It was cold everywhere, really, but in his shop he could warm up the coffee he’d made for himself three hours earlier and forgotten about, and outside he could only suffer. And his head still hurt.
He was taking off the Heartbeat Discount starting now, he decided. Anyone who forced him to stay outside and answer stupid questions like “are the DARK SIDES overthrowing the government” could pay the exact same price the other leaders were paying.
“I… have to go,” declared Heart, and with that he turned and rolled away down the sidewalk. Abruptly.
“Rude,” Virgil muttered, and he shoved himself back inside the Expresso.
I would like everyone to know that Heartbeat just heely-ed away from me with his lab coat on his shoulders and also has perfect vision but wears glasses because he thinks they look cool and if heartbeet! wants to contest me on that he can fight me I have the power of insomnia and anime on my side and I bet if I hugged him he’d cry
—Dang you’re really just gonna spill that to the whole world huh okay
—Sheesh what did he do
—Honestly it’s Virgil-no-Dante Heart probably just told a really bad joke
—Have you even met Virgil-no-Dante his jokes are worse
—rude
—Yes hi sorry my bad please don’t ban me
—...so we do need to give the LIGHT SIDES a talk
—where’s that petition again?
—Link
—Thanks
—I will fight you with friendship! :)
—Hey doctor dad have a nice day
—!! Sir :D :D
—Hello sir what did you do
—I’m not sure but I will find out! :)
—heartbeet! sir that smiley face looks very ominous
—Clean your room :)
—Yes sir
—What did Heart do? Are you gonna ban me too by association or
—Ohp hello our highness <3
—<3 I don’t think he will our highness
—Wassup our highness howsit hangin
—You forgot to salute
—Right my bad <3
—Is that why Heart ransacked my library
—!!! It’s Data-code-1!!
—Hello boss!
—GUYS IT’S DATACODE HE’S HERE
—Hi boss! Have a great day!
Huh I wonder what happened at Virgil-no-Dante's? Lotta drama on Chatter this morning
—Eh probably a coffee thing idk & idc
—...then why would you respond?
Data-code-1 on Virgil-no-Dante's chat see you all here next year
DATACODE: SIGHTED
—WAIT REALLY WHERE
EVERYBODY GET YOUR BINGO CARDS OUT DATACODE'S ON CHATTER
—Didn’t expect to see that this year,
NO WAIT HE’S GONE HE'S OFFLINE
WHERE’D HE GO—
Anyone have any idea what happened yesterday? The Expresso just closed and it was only open an hour, and Heartbeat didn’t show up to work today?
—Oh geez he never does that
—Well the Expresso having weird hours isn’t unusual, right? Idk I’ve been lurking I’ve never gone
—Yeah but Heart always comes into work
—Drama in the LIGHT districts huh
—Eh nothing new
—Idk its kinda new, the LIGHT SIDES don’t really interact with us a whole lot aside from work so it’s weird they’re even hanging out so much with the owner of the DE (edited)
—Don’t summon him!!!
—Hey can you edit it so that it doesn’t tag him? Maybe say “owner of the Expresso” instead or something? Idk I think it’s a bad idea to call his attention here
You know, I thought it was weird that the LIGHT SIDES were spending so much time with a civilian, but is it just me or is it getting weirder?
—Yeah man the vibes… they’re off.
—No yeah I know what you mean? I can’t explain it but something’s up
Has anyone seen the DARK SIDES lately?
—Oh yeah, that is weird. I haven’t seen them on Chatter really.
—Are they ever? Forgery’s kind of aloof, isn’t he?
—Eh, if you know where to look for him he’s everywhere
—Yeah but Duke’s here a lot
—Actually it's been a hot second since we’ve seen Duke is that weird?
—No yeah that’s weird if it was just Forge it’d be fine but Duke is weird
Has anyone seen Duke?
—No only in person
lol look at DARK Chatter realizing Duke's been awol for like two whole weeks when Datacode literally chatted for the first time in a year today
—HE DID WHERE
you guys. you guys this is literally none of our business. let the goblin do what he wants.
Okay so it’s been a few weeks since Duke has been online I think we should do something
TOPIC STARTED: FINDING DUKE
Chapter 4: special today: conflict and suffering, my favorite
Chapter Text
Ch. 4
Tent-acles where are you!! Topic: finding Duke
Hey!! Hey Tent-acles! Hey! Topic: finding Duke
Tent-acles boss hey boss hey hey where are you hey Topic: finding Duke
Can’t find him Topic: finding Duke
Virgil-no-Dante i’ve been outside your shop for two hours now you better open soon
—Don’t rush him our man was open until four AM last night
—Oof really well I was up until six searching District U for Topic: finding Duke and I need coffee stat
—you’re really doing that??? Heaven’s sakes just do something to get kidnapped or something that’ll get his attention
—NO
—Do not.
—what would you even have to do to get kidnapped??
—...do it i dare you
—okay
—wait no i didnt mean seriously
—I’M GONNA ROB A BANK
—nO
Virgil watched with glazed eyes as his phone screen was overwhelmed by Chats, not paying attention because he was considering whether or not to add a new special to his menu. Virgil hadn’t had a special in months. Last time he got bored because people only ever ordered it and so he took it off halfway through the week and people started getting mad at him because it was too soon and there was a whole big drama about it. But now people only ever ordered lattes, and he was just as bored.
His phone buzzed, but not with ClockWatcher notifications.
Reminder: kidnapping is conducted by low-level generals and high-level officers and therefore not an advised strategy to attain a meeting with the Duke or me. If you must speak to us, don’t.
—Hello sir!!!! Have a great day!!
—lies-and-slander hello sir nice to see you
—Actually mr. forgery sir its the duke or i
—Actually mx. karter-eats-kake its the duke or me since its “a meeting with me” not “a meeting with I” get your facts right or get out
—OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH
—Hello mr. lies-and-slander can you stop rubble from falling off my building rooftop it hit one of the cacti on my balcony yesterday
—Have you considered, mx i-have-a-candy-crush-on-you, bear with me… moving the cacti?
—I hope you get cheeto dust on your keyboard and it never comes out
—Well it got you here didnt it
—He’s not responding because he knows youre right
—...sure.
—IT WORKEDDDD
—SIR FORGERY HIMSELF SAW MY CHAT I CAN DIE HAPPY NOW
—Sorry for doubting you man my bad
WAIT WHERE’D HE GO
SIR WE KNOW YOU LIKED THIS CHAT WE KNOW YOU’RE HERE WHERE DID YOU GO
*lies-and-slander enjoyed this chat!*
The bell jingled, and Virgil tossed his phone down, shaking his head like it’d get him focused more quickly. Instead, his head just hurt.
He should probably drink more water.
“Unwelcome to the cafe, I’m Virgil, I hate everything including myself but excluding our new special, a double macchiato with handmade whip... and… a—” the timer by the oven beeped “—and a scone. How can I help you?”
Prince scowled at him, for some reason. “I’ll have the special.”
“Then you’re unoriginal and indecisive for picking my recommendation, but sure, coming right up.”
“I’ll just have my usual, please,” said Code behind him, tapping away at his phone. He paused, pulled out a second phone, and began tapping at that too. “Also, you know, you’re very rude. That can’t be good for business.”
Virgil tried to pull the scones out of the oven with his bare hands and promptly discovered why oven mitts were invented. “And you’re an absolute dork for unironically wearing those glasses and I bet you think pocket calculators are cool, but you’re still a LIGHT SIDE so I guess anything can happen.”
Code frowned. “They are cool.”
“Use a phone.”
“But—”
“Code,” Prince snapped. “Wait outside.”
Virgil waited for Datacode to protest, maybe level Prince with one of those looks he and Heart were so fond of using on pretty much anyone, but instead Datacode took himself and his three phones outside without argument. He stood outside on the sidewalk, patted around his pockets and found a fourth phone, which he held up to his face. “Hello?” Virgil heard, through the glass.
He puffed out his cheeks in a sigh, looking around for the coffee beans.
“Look,” said Prince eventually, in a tone of voice that wasn’t condescending yet but seemed to indicate it would be soon, “I know you’ve got that whole neutrality thing going on.”
“I dislike the air quotes you put around that greatly, but yes.”
“I didn’t do any air quotes.”
“It was in your voice. Shut up and continue.”
And again, Virgil waited, this time for Prince to frown and point out the paradox of that statement, but instead he leaned against the counter and seemed overall unsettled. “I just wanted to say that I get it, you don’t want to get involved with us, but don’t you see how cowardly that is?”
Virgil closed the fridge and set the jar of whipped cream down, spoon still dangling from his other hand. “What are you saying?” he asked.
“I’m saying it’s cowardly ,” Prince seethed. Virgil wondered when this turned into an argument. “I get it , okay? You don’t want to pick a side because you’re on the Border and it changes, so you pick neither and try to make friends with both so you’re safe regardless of which color you are, but what you don’t see is that you’re just scared.”
Virgil leaned against the drawers and waited for Prince to finish.
“You think you’re being brave by—by picking peace , but in reality you’re just enabling the DARKness, I don’t—”
“What do you think I should do instead, then?” asked Virgil, interrupting. “Only serve the LIGHT and cut off half my income? Or move districts? Well I don’t have enough money to afford the LIGHT’s rent—”
“We have a program for that—”
“That I don’t qualify for half the time because I’m DARK every other day,” Virgil snapped. “So what, should I become a LIGHT soldier? Fight against the DARKness? Is this a recruitment speech? What do you want?”
“I want you to understand that you can’t play for both teams, Virgil!” Prince shot. “Either you help one or the other—”
“What if I chose the DARKness, then?” interrupted Virgil, again, half to just see Prince steam at the utter disrespect. “Hmm? I’d have chosen a side, but you’d still be unhappy because it isn’t that I’m being neutral and cowardly , it’s that I haven’t chosen you . Right?”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Prince, “because the DARKness is evil . You got kidnapped just the other day and you still don’t see that?”
“Evil,” Virgil repeated. He wanted to laugh, so he did. “ Evil. You really think this is a good guys-bad guys kind of thing? Really ? Are you that much of a child?”
“What good thing have they ever done?” Prince demanded. “They’re a gang, a giant mafia. The LIGHT SIDES rose up in opposition of them, I know what I’m talking about.”
“ Do you?” insisted Virgil, “Do you really ? Do you even know what they do over there?”
“I—”
“No, shut up, I’m talking right now.” He slammed his hand on the counter and pointed left, towards the DARK districts. “Duke and Forgery have almost completely alleviated poverty and homelessness in every district that is stably theirs. They have gotten rid of hunger due to poverty entirely and repair every bit of damage done from your battles. They have such good addiction programs that petty crime has dropped enormously simply out of a lack of motivation due to all of the above, and all of that so their army is supplied by people who want to be there and not people who have no choice.”
“So it was done selfishly—”
“ I’m not done, ” Virgil gritted. Prince shut up but it seemed reluctant. “They have brought back the arts and funded scholarship programs so that there is no college debt. They’ve established a free, universal healthcare and every single building has accessibility features built in. The DARKness you knew before Duke and Forgery has been one-hundred- percent overturned and you not knowing that does not give you the right to try and destroy everything they’ve built because I can assure you they did it better than you . Sure there’s fraud and duplicity and chaos and arson but on such a minor scale why on earth do you care?”
“They’re not doing it better than me,” said Prince, sounding worried, and Virgil could only stand there.
It took thirty seconds for him to collect himself.
“ What?” Virgil demanded. “Is that it? Is that the only reason you hate them—”
“I don’t hate them—”
“Are you that insecure—”
“I’m not insecure!”
“I don’t care,” said Virgil. His face felt hot and his bones were vibrating with rage. “Duke and Forgery are helping people, the people you abandoned and they saved, and your inability to accept your failure and their victory does not make you the good guys and it certainly doesn’t make them the bad guys. Get out of my shop.”
“What?” asked Prince. Virgil shoved the order at him and pointed at the door.
“Get out . You’re banned.”
“For how long?” Prince sputtered, edging towards the door. His face was drawn in and troubled, wrinkles creasing his forehead. Virgil hoped he’d made Prince worried. He hoped he’d put thoughts in Prince’s head that would keep him up at night.
“Until you manage to get your crown off your eyes and actually look around for once. Go.”
Code hung up when he saw Prince approach, face carefully blank but eyes worried. Prince bent down and began whispering questions that Virgil could only hear the tone of through the glass, and whatever Code said in response made Prince storm off. He must not have liked the answer.
Code hurried back in, pressed three hundred dollars on the counter, and said, “I’m—apologize—for everything. Bye.”
It took an hour for Virgil to stop wanting to storm all the way to District A, Block 1, and punch Prince right in the jaw.
He had a headache. He took two advil and kept working.
“Depresso Expresso—do your friends hate you, or do you just need sleep? The Depresso Expresso will answer both those questions! Our special today is a caramel s’mores frappucino with blue food coloring, what’s your order?”
“...why the food coloring?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything."
The coffee machine broke. He fixed it, and it broke again.
Sorry, we don’t ship to LIGHT blocks!
Sorry, we don’t ship to DARK blocks!
Sorry, we don’t ship to LIGHT
DARK
LIGHT
YOUR DISTRICT is now DA
YOUR DISTRICT is now L
YOUR DISTRICT is
YOUR DIS
WARNING: Please evacuate District M!
(A battle is underway.)
“Hey, is it true the LIGHT SIDES come here? What do they get?”
“Banned.”
“...oh.”
“Look,” said Virgil, fumbling with his phone for his digital ID, “I need to get home to put away the groceries, go ahead and escort me if you want I don’t care but the milk’s going to go bad, could you just—”
“This will only take a second, sir,” said the DARK officer. Her face was set. There would be no changing her mind. A second DARK officer was talking to Jo, who was waving her hands emphatically.
“Could I please just—”
“Sir,” repeated the officer.
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
“Is it true the DARK SIDES come here? Even Forgery?”
“Not if people keep asking.”
“I did hear you ban a lot of people—who’s the worst customer you’ve banned?”
“You. Get out.”
The milk went bad.
“You’re a chicken!”
“I’m a—what?” Virgil blinked. He checked the clock.
Four PM.
“You’re a chicken and you’re very stupid and I dislike you!” Heartbeat declared. “I dislike you immensely !”
“What did I—”
“You made Prince cry!”
Had he? Virgil tried to remember, but he didn’t think Prince left crying. Maybe Prince cried when he got home.
Because of Virgil?
“I’m. Sorry,” he said, awkwardly. “I’m very confused right now.”
“Yeah!” said Heart, “You better be! You’re a big bully and I’m never talking to you again! Have a great day, I hate you!”
And then Heart left.
Well.
Virgil’s headache was getting worse. He ran out of advil and couldn’t place another order.
And people kept ordering pumpkin spice lattes. What was up with that?
“No.”
“I didn’t even—”
The cloth Virgil was using to wipe down the counters was only spreading grime around. Virgil ran it under the tap in the hopes of getting it cleaner, but eventually gave up, throwing it in the direction of the door.
“Hey! ”
Virgil squinted. He didn’t see anyone, but the cloth had clearly smacked right into someone (something?) and now lay wetly on the floor. “Who—”
The air shimmered and pulsed, and Forgery blipped into existence, holding a box in front of him that was carved with green light.
It did not go well with his bowler hat.
They stared at each other.
“You can do that?” asked Virgil, eventually.
Forgery looked at the box in his hands. “It’s a perception cloak.”
“Oh.” Virgil didn’t know what that was, but he assumed it cloaked one’s perceptions, and, through further use of his powers of deduction, that it was his own perceptions that had been cloaked just before. “...cool.”
Forgery nodded a few times, set the box down in the middle of the floor, and sat at the counter. He placed two fingers on the fake marble. “So, you and I both know that if I ask you about the LIGHT SIDES rumored to be acquainted with this place, you won’t tell me anything.”
“True.”
“But I have to ask why.”
“You…” said Virgil, long-sufferingly, “you really don’t. You don’t have to. You don’t.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“Answer the question.”
Virgil leaned his elbows on the counter, considering. He’d talked shop with Prince earlier. To make it even, he could bend the rules now. “They’re customers,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“They’re LIGHT–”
“Yeah, and you’re DARK, so?”
Forgery’s eyebrow furrowed, the one not covered by his Phantom of the Opera snake mask. “I know you’re working with them,” he said, “so work with us too. I promise we can give you the same as, if not better than whatever they’re offering—”
“Oh, so this is a recruitment speech,” Virgil interrupted. He was really getting sick of those. “One, I’m not working with the LIGHT SIDES, and two, I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate me telling you all of their secrets. I don’t even know their secrets.”
“I—”
“Actually that’s a lie, so okay Heart drinks the most disgustingly sugary drinks known to humankind and Prince is—”
“Super basic, everyone knows that and nobody cares,” Forgery snapped. “Why not work with us? We could get you out of this—dim place.” He wafted a careless hand around the shop, and Virgil maybe snapped.
He threw a cup at Forgery.
It shattered loudly on the floor, and so he threw another. The pieces looked like glittering snow in the afternoon light.
“Why not stop fighting?" he yelled at Forgery, "Why not stop hurting people and their lives and innocent people and why keep breaking buildings and changing the laws on me and everyone else on the Border? I am the only one! I’m the only one! I have stayed in this place throughout the entire war and I refuse to leave, not that you’d let me if I tried! Oh, you’ll let me go if I work for you? Am I a prisoner then? Is that what I am?”
“You—”
“You know what, no! You have upended so many lives in this war and for what ? More land? You have tons of land! Go conquer some other place and leave everyone else alone!”
“The LIGHT SIDES—”
“I don’t care about the LIGHT SIDES! I’m talking to you!”
“Do you even know what the DARKness used to be?” Forgery yelled back, face red and hot. Virgil took some sort of sick amusement from the realization he got Forgery to lose composure. “It was an actual gang. Did you know that? When people got kidnapped, they died. When people broke any kind of gang law, they died. You couldn’t walk down the street without tripping on someone homeless or getting mugged, and Duke and I made it better . Look at everything we did!” Forgery spread his arms wide, like he wanted to hug their street. “We fixed it! We came in and reformed the whole system from the inside out. And the LIGHT SIDES are trying to stop us—what do you think they’re going to do if they succeed? They don’t care about our people they just care that they don’t own us. They'll leave us to rot and then everything will go back to the way it was.”
“Yeah, and wonder what the LIGHT SIDES were doing while you did that?” Virgil threw back. “Reforming their side of the bridge. You think the DARKness was sitting around for three years? You think the original LIGHT SIDES were dealing with that well? No! The DARKness were out trying to conquer more districts and the LIGHT came to stop them —”
“They don’t care about us —”
“You think they don’t care about people? They have done everything you have done, step for step, with a police state instead of a gang.” Virgil ran a hand down his face. “You’re all such hypocrites! What, you can’t stand the thought of someone else being on the same level as you? Is that it? All this for your stupid— pride? ”
Forgery stood there, speechless, and that made it worse. Virgil threw a fourth cup and Forgery’s startle was more satisfying than anything Virgil has ever done before in his life.
“Die,” Virgil spat, his battle cry the buzz of ClockWatcher and his own exhaustion. “I hope you die. I hope you trip on your ego and bash your skull on the pavement of that pedestal you insist on standing on. Choke on your bowtie you snake-faced asparagus . ”
Forgery stood there, box glowing behind him. He gaped for a second, hand over his mouth as if to stop it from hanging open, and abruptly snatched the box again.
The door opened with no one perceivably opening it, and this time Virgil noticed the jingle.
“And you’re banned!” he yelled after the wind.
This day was officially the worst day.
The Depresso Expresso: “I’m apologize for everything.”
Status: Closed, all SIDES are the worst, don’t talk to me
Hours: Four AM to four PM
Virgil-no-Dante what did they do
Alright guys we have over four thousand signatures on the petition, accessible here , but the goal is six thousand so everyone sign!!
—What’s the petition for again
—dude read it
—Sorry I’m Jason, 18
—We get it carla-vintage you were born in the wrong century stop being cringe
—dont cut out the part of you thats cringe, cut out the part that cringes
—Who said that
—Idk confucius maybe
—It’s to give the LIGHT SIDES a stern talking to
—Aight i’ll sign where is it
—d u d e
Okay theories why are the SIDES the worst
—Honestly it could be anything
—Lets not theorize?? They could see this??
—Lame I think it was a shark
—How was it a shark? Elaborate?
—Sharks find a way
*6,701 people enjoyed this chat!*
Virgil-no-Dante confirm was it or was it not a shark
—I think it was a shark and that’s why he won’t respond
Petition, sign here if you think it was a shark
—bro stop it with the petitions
—no they spark joy
Why is everyone talking about a shark? What’s going on?
—The LIGHT SIDES started going to some coffee shop on the Border and now there’s drama and people think a shark started it
—How do they think the shark would get there??? The Border is way far from the ocean???
—don’t question it
Has anyone found Duke yet Topic: finding Duke
—no we’re working on it
—work faster
Okay so the Dramapresso from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know what’s going on: some guy who runs a coffee shop has an entire fanbase and knows a gang leader and a police chief and got into a fight with both. somehow he’s allowed to do that because his coffee is that good.
—Yeah pretty much! Although idk if Prince is a police chief really but if we’re doing gangs then yeah sure I know the OG LIGHT SIDES were like that anyway
—Oh hey hey hey hey maybe the issue was that he was friends with both sides?? Like, they thought he was betraying them?
—Nah it was a shark
—I think they knew about each other, besides he’s on the Border it’s different there people know its chaotic they don't assume anybody's loyalties
Y’all everyone is talking about light and darkness and what on earth is going on in your city why is a gang the government what the heck what happened
—yo i forgot there were other people on this site
—your governments don’t do that?
—no????
—Don’t worry its just America lol
—We aren’t America actually!
—what since when
—Well technically we are
—Nobody cares about that besides we’re essentially separate
—Shhh don’t listen to them we won the war
—We aren’t America in spirit okay in spirit
—w h a t
— Are we gonna talk about this??? What war????
—no
—Okay i guess
He might close early today. Virgil closed out of Chatter and considered it, looking at the glass door in front of him.
He could get a few more customers.
Guys, I saw Forgery today, something was wrong.
—DARK SIDES too? Man, what’s happening lately?
I hate to say it but I think it all started with the Depresso, that’s the weird bit of all this, right?
Nobody use tags, we don’t want to catch attention.
What’s going on?
Forgery too now?
Where’s Duke?
Guys, check the news.
GUYS
Virgil’s phone buzzed. He silenced it.
Guys, there’s something happening on the Border—
My mother went shopping and I can’t find her, please, if anyone has seen LANE CARTER tell me she’s okay she has black hair and is wearing a blue shirt I have a picture
What’s happening?
—CHECK THE NEWS
Please, if you’re on the Border, leave, please leave, run, just get out and run, I just saw LIGHT wheeling the most enormous laser thing through the streets and it looks terrifying
MY BROTHER IS IN DISTRICT K, IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE JAKE IS PLEASE LET ME KNOW
—I’ll be on the lookout, don’t worry
Is there a topic for missing people I can check so I can keep an eye out?
—Yeah, I’ll find it for you
June-the-dune I found Jake, I attached a picture below. We got out of District K and made it to I. We’re on our way further to H, which is safer. He’s fine, I promise. Topic: Person sighted
—Oh dark thank you so much please he doesn’t have a Chatter account tell him he’ll be okay and his big sister loves him for me please
—Another picture attached below! He says hi back and that he loves you too.
What’s going on? Does anyone have visuals?
—No, it’s too smoky
People are running by my apartment in Q10, I see a lot of medics and so many fighters. Also lots of DARK spies carrying these plastic pieces—like machine parts? If it is a machine, it’s huge, I don’t want to know what they’re planning on doing with it. Be safe, everyone.
LIGHT has a weapon it’s ginormous everyone hold on
My dad won't answer his phone and it's just me and my brothers in our apartment and everybody's yelling outside and im starting to get really worried i have a picture can someone help find him please
Everybody should get out of N-O like *right now* the LIGHT is turning on whatever giant gun they have and it's starting to make weird noises
My building is shaking this video is for my parents just in case
guys there's screaming outside my house whats going on
I think DARK has a weapon of their own look link
Good luck everyone.
Nobody was coming into the shop today. He’d been open for a few hours now, and yet nothing. Virgil tapped his fingers at the counter, watching the doorway. His legs were getting sore from sitting on his stool all contorted for so long.
The air was frigid around him.
Virgil breathed, and the world trembled.
WARNING: Stay out of District N!
WARNING: Stay out of District O!
DISTRICT P, blocks 1-10, are now LIGHT!
WARNING: Stay out of District L!
Stay out of District K!
Stay out of District J!
DISTRICT P, blocks 10-1, are now DARK!
A battle is underway.
Chapter 5: haha, five chapters in and this is the first time virgil learns their names, loser
Chapter Text
When the shop stopped shaking, Virgil woke up. He pressed a hand to the wood next to him and the wood above him, rapping it a bit to see if it made a hollow noise, and if anything fell over at the vibration. Nothing came.
Virgil rolled off the mattress and onto the floor, and looked around.
Dusty, he thought. The windows were brown-gray-brown and blurred out light, but he didn’t see any big shadows that would mean something fell in front of them and potentially blocked the door. All of his chairs had fallen over except the biggest, which still stood in the corner, plush and overstuffed as ever. His stool was by his feet, and he kicked it up and got it standing again in one motion.
The coffee maker he bought with the SIDES’ money had tipped off the counter, knocking down two syrup bottles on its way and breaking neither but spilling one. The coffee maker lay in shattered pieces on the ground, coated in sticky caramel flavoring. The broom was on its side, but for now he just splashed water from the tap on the whole thing and dragged a rag through the mess to help with the stickiness. He yawned.
Of course the only time he could sleep was when buildings were falling over, and of course he woke up when it was pitch black outside.
As far as he could tell with the dust.
Virgil flicked on a lamp to get some light and check the electricity, and it turned on, which meant his fridge was probably working. His stomach rumbled.
In the fridge were vegetables and old ramen packets. Virgil pulled out both and realized his coffee maker was broken so he couldn’t heat water. He settled for hot water from the tap and hoped it would be hot enough to boil the noodles.
“I’m sorry about your stuff,” said a shadow.
Virgil responded, “Is that white streak natural?”
Duke crawled out from behind a chair, tugging at the lock of hair with the hand that wasn’t clutching his shoulder. He had a scrape down the back of his hand that disappeared into his ruffly sleeve. The sequins couldn’t have felt good on it. “I’ve been going gray since I was ten,” he said.
“Are you okay?”
When Duke said, “no,” his voice sounded strained, almost choked up. Virgil squinted, and couldn’t tell if it was from pain or tears.
Pain could cause tears.
Maybe it was both.
“Hey,” he said eventually, when he’d realized he’d been quiet for too long, “do you need any help?”
Duke didn’t speak, but he did nod. He edged closer and sat on the floor in front of the counter, legs crossed under him. Virgil blinked, decided to go with this, and gathered the first aid supplies from a drawer by the back of the shop. By the time he’d gotten around the counter too, Duke had shifted so his knees were by his chin, head tucked over them.
He seemed really small, like this. Virgil wondered how old he was.
(If he had to guess, he’d say younger than himself, and the thought startled him. That was too young.)
(Everyone was so young.)
Virgil sat down next to Duke and tapped at the hand over his shoulder until Duke moved it and let him look. No blood.
“It hurts when I move it,” said Duke, to his knees. “I knocked it real bad against a building.”
“Think it’s dislocated or just bruised?” asked Virgil, who had only treated broken fingers and cuts before and one broken rib when he got caught in rubble on his way home from an errand.
“Uh… I don’t know. I don’t think it’s supposed to hang like that.”
Virgil looked, and noticed, a bit queasily, that Duke was right. He prodded around the shoulder, stalling. “The DARKness has medics, why didn’t you go to them? Should I do this first or the hand?”
“They were with Forge,” said Duke, watching Virgil’s fingers warily. “I didn’t want to talk to Forge. Shoulder first.”
“Hm? Why not?” Virgil waited while Duke spoke, looking for an opportunity to jerk the shoulder back into its joint when he’d be distracted.
“I don’t know. He seemed mad about something and I didn’t want him to be mad at me so I decided to go somewhere else.”
“Why come here?”
Duke stayed quiet for a bit. He had a cut by his eyebrow, and it looked like he’d been punched in the eye at some point.
“You were nice to me,” he decided eventually. “You gave me cookies and told me to have a good d- AY —”
Virgil had placed one arm around Duke’s back so he could get to the back of Duke’s shoulder, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to turn the position into a hug. Duke sank into it, non-scraped hand shoved into his mouth to muffle his cries.
Virgil wondered where he’d learned to do that.
“Okay,” said Virgil, trying to be comforting (he didn’t know how). “Okay, it’s over now. You’re gonna be okay. I did it, it’s done, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Duke mumbled from around his fingers. He sat up, rolling the shoulder around. The grin he gave Virgil was out of place next to a red, teary face. “Thank you!”
“Let me get your hand.”
Duke seemed a lot more cheerful now that his shoulder wasn’t hanging out of its socket, but compared to his usual behavior, it was subdued. He didn’t chatter, or ramble, or gush about everything. The topics seemed pre-picked, like he was filtering himself to find “safe” topics when he’d once held a debate with Virgil about the right way to defang a spider. He didn’t bounce or shift around, he just sat there. It was weird.
It was worrying.
He finished a story about a cool bug he saw on the road while coming to the shop, paused, and examined the bandage Virgil had taped over his hand. “Huh. That’s a weird way to tie it.”
“I took a course in LIGHT a few years ago. Before Prince came around.”
Duke was quiet for a while, picking at the white fabric as Virgil shifted to get his face. “My brother used to tie it like this,” he said, almost whispering. It was as though he hadn’t intended to say it, or realized he had at all.
“Your brother?”
And here Duke perked up, eyes gleaming and squinted-up happy. “My big brother was the best when we were little!” he informed Virgil, wriggling around on the linoleum floors. “He was so nice and fun and I think I miss that a lot but he isn’t like that anymore and I’m always sad and lonely and cold.” He sagged, over exaggeratedly. “It’s really cold in the DARK districts sometimes. Cold and dark and drizzly and dim. Forgery likes that but I don't.”
“Oh.” Virgil blinked. “Uh. I didn’t know you had a brother.”
Duke sagged further. Now it didn’t seem overexaggerated. Just that he sagged. Deflated. “We don’t talk much anymore.” He pressed at the bruise around his eye and looked like he was remembering something. Virgil had to move his fingers to reach the cut with the antibacterial wipes he had.
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t like me.”
Virgil coughed, awkwardly. “I—well I mean, how do you know?”
“I tried to talk to him,” said Duke, scratching the groove in the tile before him. “He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t want to? I guess I don’t have good enough things to say.”
“But you have so many things to say,” said Virgil, thinking about long rambles on bugs found on the road and shapes in the clouds outside the storefront windows. “One of them has to be good.”
“I tried talking about the DARK? We’re doing a lot of really awesome stuff but when I showed him a few years ago he yelled at me and I don’t know what I did wrong but it hurt a lot. I felt really bad.” He hugged his knees. “So I’m not going to try.”
“Right, right,” said Virgil, getting another bandage, this one adhesive. “I have some family members like that, it’s not fun.”
He hadn’t seen those family members in years. He left, started his coffee shop, and forgot about them, because they weren’t worth it, and he didn’t care about their opinion if they didn’t care about his. He doubted, though, that Duke would want to forget about his brother.
Or if he’d ever be able to.
Duke curled further in on himself. “Yeah…”
“Is it just him? Do you have anyone else?”
“Nope!” exclaimed Duke. “I have Janus, and the team, and all my friends in the DARKness, and that should be enough but I want him there too, you know? Maybe that’s why I’m sad. I found a really good thing but all he did was criticize it and it makes me wonder if it’s not good at all?”
Virgil patted him on the back, steering clear of the previously dislocated shoulder. “You’ve helped a lot of people, Duke. If your brother doesn’t see that then he—”
“He’s a blind idiot? Forgery says that a lot.”
Virgil tilted his head. “—he’s closed his eyes to it and you just gotta wait for him to wake up. It's not your fault." He felt like that was almost too cheesy, but it was what his friend had said to him in the past.
Picani lived in the LIGHT side. Virgil hadn’t gotten to see him in a while, because calls didn't always make it past the Border.
“Oh,” said Duke, head tilted. “So like he's sleeping."
"Yeah, I guess."
"...my whole family is sleeping,” he added, almost contemplatively.
“They’ll come around eventually.”
“No, they’re dead.”
“ Oh. ” Virgil almost dropped the box of first aid stuff. "Uh—"
“So it was just me and my brother, you know?” Duke leaned back so that he was lying on the floor. “We grew up in a bad spot and he fixed it and made it better and fun. So I tried to do the same thing, but it’s never good enough. I can’t reach his standards. They’re so high up and I’m too small enough. It isn’t good enough.” His voice got small. “I’m not good enough. Why am I never good enough? Why can’t I do anything—”
Right , Virgil finished in his mind. Why can’t I do anything right. Why can’t I make you happy. Why do you hate me why can’t I do what you want what do you want why is nothing working why am I always failing failing failing you —
“I don’t have much advice for you,” said Virgil, eventually. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t think you would.”
“But I promise that what you’re doing is awesome. It’s so cool, with or without his approval. What you’ve done doesn’t need his acceptance to be good . It just is.”
Duke hummed. He stayed there, lying on his back and looking at the ceiling, green sash covered in grime. “Thanks,” he said, softly. “I know. But it’d be nice. You know? If I had his approval too.”
“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Yeah.”
He laid back with Duke and tried to see what was so fascinating about the light fixtures. In that moment, they were more interesting than anything else in the room. He imagined they were the sun, the stars, the smile of someone finally crossing their face because he put it there, and wondered if Duke saw the same.
“It would be nice.”
The sun came up. Duke left with boxes of pastries and cocoa powder in his arms and the bell jangling behind him, an empty cup of hot chocolate on the counter with whipped cream still around the rim.
The fight had lasted all through the night, from five PM to five AM at anyone’s best guess. It had spanned six of the twenty six districts, through his own but not in, never in. They had avoided him to the best of their ability as far as he could tell. There wasn’t a single block of rubble in front of his door. It had fallen, but it had all been moved.
Virgil cleaned up his shop and opened it, like always.
The Depresso Expresso: I got nine whole hours of sleep last night, who’s seen a flying pig?
Status: Open, if you can get through the rubble
Hours: seven AM to ten AM
So far, from what people could tell, nobody had died. But people were crushed beneath buildings and had gotten separated and lost and hit by stray lazers and paralyzed for three hours in the middle of the street and trampled, and that was bad enough.
Six blocks. Twelve hours.
Virgil, and thousands of other people, wondered what started it. Out of all of them, Virgil could probably make the most accurate guess.
But he didn’t guess. He wiped down the counter and waited for customers.
Y’all Virgil-no-Dante is open again, that man is * fast.*
—that’s our legend for ya
“Welcome to the Depresso Expresso, everything is half as strong because I’m working with unheated water, what can I get you?”
“Unheated water?” asked the woman. “What can you even do with that?”
Virgil paused. “Good question. Hot chocolate?”
“I’ll have that then.”
He sank behind the counter the minute she left, mumbling into his sleeve about how that was so embarrassing until the next customer poked his head over the counter and asked if he was okay, and Virgil remembered why he didn’t have breakdowns behind the counter anymore.
“Depresso here, I’m Virgil and if you clean my windows you get a free scone.”
“...what if I don’t want to get a free scone?”
“Then you just clean my windows and get nothing.”
“Oh okay, I’ll do that.”
Well, Virgil figured, free labor and he’d been dreading doing that later because it made his shoulders hurt, so it was fine to let the guy take his window stuff and have at it.
Anyway, the guy was having fun, he was smiling, that was good, right?
It was a little weird, but that was fine right?
Right.
“No no I’ll pay extra, I want to!”
“You really don’t have to if you don’t wan—”
“I want to! ” the woman hit her fist on the counter. “I want to!”
“O-kay okay sure yeah go ahead okay—”
Alright, nobody use tags, but today everyone go do something nice for someone. Particularly the owner of you know where but also just like, just everyone. Do something nice for someone. Smile at someone. Buy someone’s coffee. Give the you-know-who of the you-know-where an extra large tip. Let’s spread some joy after that sadness.
—Aye-aye captain!
TOPIC STARTED: Expresso for the depresso
“You know you haven’t ordered anything—”
“Actually, that was good enough for me, you should make this part of your brand, you know, interactive activities and stuff. Here, I’ll pay you ten dollars for that.”
“You’re paying me for getting to clean my windows.”
“Yes, exactly.”
The day had been weird so far, Virgil decided. Weird was a good word for it.
It’s been a few hours since the battle last night and I still can’t find my friend Sarah. Please, if anyone sees someone who matches this picture, let me know. Topic: Person sightings
—Topic: Person sighted I found her!! I saw her in K and took this picture. She’s fine!
—Oh thank the LIGHT thank you so much
—No prob dog
Guys I can’t find my dad does anyone know where he is he looks like this please find him he’s been missing the entire time he was in P-8, please help Topic: Person sightings
—No luck yet, but we’ll find him soon! Don’t worry!
Has anyone been… you know…
—Thankfully, no, but they’re still looking for people. Hang in there. We’ll make it out.
“Hey, this was sitting in front of your door…”
Virgil took the package and flipped the tag up. We like your coffee a latte! It said, with a little octopus doodled in the corner. The octopus was holding its tentacles up in a heart shape.
He set up his new coffee maker the minute the customer left.
“Welcome to the Depresso—”
“This is the Expresso—”
“Hey, what can I get you?”
Virgil was in the middle of welcoming in another customer when the door slammed open. It was honestly a bit impressive that the customer still walked up to the counter when the leader of the LIGHT SIDES was standing right behind her.
“Hey, Prince—wait a minute. Hi!” he chirped. “Welcome to the Depresso Expresso. How may I help you?”
“Hello Virgil!” sang Lonnie right back at him. “You have my usual?”
“Wonderful, yes I do! Coming right up!”
He’d already made the two scones and black coffee from the minute he got her Chat message and handed them over now. She waved her fingers and grinned in a thank you as she left the shop.
“...what was that?” asked Prince. He sounded strained.
“My customer service voice. Shut up.”
“Okay.” He really sounded strained. Virgil paused in sweeping the floor again to squint a bit, inspecting the way Prince was standing.
He was leaning on his right foot, one hand around his elbow, and his smile looked more like a grimace. Virgil sighed and leaned himself on the counter as Prince collapsed into the nearest chair. “Okay,” he said, “what happened?”
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t be more of an idiot than you usually are. What happened?”
Prince huffed and rattled out a short list of injuries while Virgil got the first aid kit. Sprained ankle, burned elbow, bruised ribs. One of the lazers had malfunctioned and set something ablaze, and that something happened to be Prince.
“I didn’t know they could do that,” said Virgil, trying to find the burn cream. Prince had taken off his outer suit coat and sash, leaving him in a printed t-shirt that advertised some theatre group.
“They aren’t supposed to.”
“I got that with ‘malfunctioned,’ thanks.”
Prince hummed, shifting a bit. The burn covered his elbow and stretched up and down his arm, shiny red and blistering. Virgil used the last of the burn cream on it and searched around for more bandages, Prince quiet throughout the process.
Until Prince mumbled, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
“What was that?”
Prince stared, long and unblinking, at the floor. Virgil got the sense he didn’t even register Virgil’s presence much anymore. “I have ideals,” he said finally. “I have principles and processes and dreams, and they can’t just be brushed over. I can’t just let them go, and it’s—it’s wrong to ask me to give them up. Right?”
“Okay,” said Virgil, feeling a bit impatient, “who asked you to do that?”
“My—” Prince groaned “—my stupid little brother thinks—I’m trying my best, okay? I’m trying to make a peaceful world that he can live in where he can do whatever he wants and he doesn’t want it! I transformed the LIGHT SIDES so he could be free to do what he wants, I made it what it is now and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t want it. He spits everything back at me and is so stubborn— ”
“Okay, okay.” Virgil tossed the roll of bandages on the floor and sat down next to them, poking at Prince’s foot (it was swelled and purple, how had Prince been standing on it earlier?). “So your brother—”
“Hates me. I don’t know why.”
“Have you asked?”
“Yes!” Prince ran a hand down his face. “I have! And every time it’s—it’s that I’m controlling and all I want to do is hurt him and why can’t I let him be himself and I am! I’m trying! I made all this so he could be himself and then he—I’m trying to help and—but I can’t stand by and—I can’t let him attack me and what I believe in. I can’t stand by and somehow that’s all he sees. I gave him the world and he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want it. ”
“I… get that, I think,” said Virgil, and he thought about leave your shop and trademark this . He thought about how he doesn’t want it sounded so much like he doesn’t want me .
“He’s betraying me. He doesn’t care.”
“Well, that might be a bit strong.”
Prince didn’t respond, hiding his face in the hand that wasn’t connected to a burned elbow as Virgil finished wrapping bandages around his ankle. Virgil tied it off and stood. “I can’t do much for your ribs, but the rest is done.”
“Thanks,” said Prince, muffled.
“Why didn’t you go to Heart?”
Prince hesitated. “I told him I was fine,” he said eventually.
“You’re an idiot.”
“No, I’m a Roman.”
Virgil froze. He frowned. “Your name is Roman?”
Roman nodded into his hand. “Yeah, my—my civilian name is Roman. Roman Prince, I haven’t… you’re the first person I’ve told. Aside from the others.”
“... huh ,” said Virgil, and that seemed to jolt Roman out of his haze.
“I—I’m sorry, was I—was I stepping out of line?” he asked. “Oh my gosh I just put you in so much danger, I’m so sorry, pretend I never told you I—”
“No!” Virgil waved his hands to stop Prince from getting up. “No, no no no, I’m fine, it’s fine. I’m not going to get attacked because of this. You’re okay. It’s just.”
Virgil paused. This, he thought, might be a horrible idea, but it was too funny not to try. His anxiety could go trip on a rock.
“What is it?” asked Roman. His eyebrows were all creased and worried.
“...you’re pretty tired, right? It’s been a long day? Almost got your arm burned off, ran across half the city…”
“What—yeah, I’m tired, I don’t—”
“One Espresso Romano, then!”
“Oh my gosh,” said Roman, gleefully, “you’re an absolute nerd, aren’t you?”
“I am not!" sputtered Virgil, "Shut up!”
Prince had to hang around for a bit while he waited for someone to pick him up. He sat in the chair and ate scones until then, scrolling through Chatter while Virgil worked.
“Hey ,” he muttered at some point, scowling at his phone. Presumably at Virgil's new update.
The Depresso Expresso: hey Code and Heart pick up your kid
Status: Open
Hours: Ten AM to twelve PM
A LIGHT general came to grab him, wearing the combat gear styled after a knight. Must have been one of Prince’s then, which was confirmed by the way Prince lit up seeing her. She quickly made a heart with her fingers, sighing. “What on earth did you do, our highness?”
Prince held up his arm, showing off his bandages. “Sorry, Tam.”
Tam stared at him. “I’m gonna say it,” she said.
“Don’t say it.”
“I’m gonna say it.”
“Don’t say it—“
“I don’t care that you burned your elbow.”
Prince let out an ungodly wail and sank off the chair onto his knees, shaking his fists at the sky and mouthing why, why would you say that . Tam grabbed his non-burned elbow, slapping twenty dollars on the counter. “For babysitting our highness,” she said.
“I’ll take it.”
Virgil updated his website. Closed, because yes.
He stepped one foot outside his shop and got kidnapped.
Virgil woke up on the ground, wrists tied with rope in front of him and head covered with something like rough fabric. A bag, he thought, as his senses slowly came back to him. His head pounded, worse than ever, worse than when the DARK SIDES got him.
This, he thought, was not the DARK SIDES.
“Oh, he’s awake,” said an unfamiliar voice. The bag was ripped off and he found himself somewhere dark, and wet feeling, a cold chill stabbing through his fingers where they touched the floor. A tall man stood in front of him, arms crossed.
He was much too tall to be either Duke or Forgery.
Virgil coughed, then coughed again like that would do anything but make his throat hurt more. “Who—what—”
“We hear you’re in contact with the LIGHT SIDES,” said the tall man. A stream of white light, too white to be natural, streamed in from a crack in the wall high above them, like a thin window. He leaned into it, and when he did, Virgil saw that his whole face was painted a luminescent lime green. It looked stained on, like he’d soaked his skin in food coloring, except slimier, filmy.
“I—”
“Answer yes or no.”
Virgil wondered if the man would hurt him if he didn’t respond. Virgil didn’t see any weapon on him, but weapons could be concealed. And he didn’t doubt that the man could do just as much damage with his hands and no tools.
Virgil coughed, a third time. “Yes. What do you want?”
“ Are they in contact with you?”
He couldn’t exactly deny that. “Yes.”
“Did they tell you anything?”
My civilian name is Roman. Roman Prince. “No.”
The guy frowned. “Really?”
“Yeah?”
“They told you nothing.”
“Why would they—” something got stuck in Virgil’s throat and he wheezed, making his headache worse. He longed for a glass of water. “No, of course they didn’t tell me anything. I run a coffee shop what on earth would I do with—state secrets or whatever. Geez. Who even are you?”
“What are their weaknesses?”
“I don’t know, Heart likes sugar?”
“That’s useless to me,” snarled the man.
“So am I!”
“Not yet.” The man circled around Virgil, pulled him up by the ties of his apron, and tossed him further into the room. Virgil crashed into a corner and banged his shoulder on the wall. It ached. He couldn’t move, stunned for a moment, as the man roughly jerked his tied hands to the right and messed with the ropes. When the man stepped back, Virgil’s hands hung from some hook or nail stuck into the wall. It was dark, and he couldn’t figure out which one.
His shoulders were going to cramp like this.
“Dude, what?” Virgil asked, as he’d been hoping the lack of information would mean the man would just set him free, and he was disoriented and groggy and maybe a bit confused.
“You’re bait,” explained the man. His voice was raspy, Virgil realized. He wondered if the man needed a drink of water too. “We’re going to sit here and wait for the LIGHT SIDES to come rescue their favorite barista. Now shut up.”
Virgil doubted the LIGHT SIDES would come, if only because it seemed like a stupidly obvious trap and they’d have a better strategy than coming in person and bursting through the door. They might not even know to come at all. He’d changed his status to closed and nobody would realize he was gone.
He was in shock, he thought. Maybe that was why he felt no fear, just a kind of empty nothingness as he struggled to process his capture. The man hadn’t threatened him. He’d accepted Virgil knew nothing and left. He seemed more like a harmless fanatic than a killer.
Virgil was scared. He knew that. This was real, and he knew that too. No gift bags on the way out, or complementary hand grenades.
But he couldn’t stop his mouth from babbling on its own.
Out of all his nervous habits, panic-rambling was probably the worst to have in a kidnapping.
“Do this often?”
“Stop talking to me.”
“No.”
“You—” the man spluttered. “You don’t just get to say no! ”
“Too bad. Why do you hate the LIGHT SIDES so much?”
“Shut up!”
“So how do you like your coffee?”
The man paused. He then proceeded to rattle off the longest, most complicated order Virgil had ever heard, which boiled down to only one tablespoon of coffee and literally everything else in the store in these exact measurements.
“You’re the worst.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“I’m supposed to be asking you questions.”
“Yeah but then you decided not to, so what’s your favorite color?”
The man blinked at him, and his eyelids were as green as the rest of his face.
“Oh.”
“You’re an idiot.”
It was probably weird that Virgil was feeling anxious about not being a good enough kidnappee. More likely, he surmised, with his surmising ability after hours on the phone and in the office with Dr. Picani, he was just anxious in general, and he was fixating on one thing as a reason for that anxiety. However, that was in situations were there is no conceivable reason to be anxious, and there clearly was one in his case—being kidnapped, and the fact he was focusing his anxiety on not getting a good grade in kidnapping victim was—weird. Something that was not both normal to want and possible to achieve.
Probably.
“I think I ran out of my anxiety meds,” he realized aloud, thinking about the orange bottle he’d thrown in its drawer after taking his dose and the full-bottle rattle that may or may not have accompanied it.
“Sorry man,” the guy said awkwardly.
“The knockout chemicals you people use mess with the meds and make me dizzy, you don’t get to be sorry.”
“...sorry.”
“Dude, what did I just say—”
There were five stages of grief, and so Virgil assumed there were five stages of kidnapping too. He didn’t feel as empty anymore, so he guessed he’d passed through denial. He was currently feeling very annoyed at his kidnapper, who was keeping him in a dark room. His legs were sore. His shoulders hurt from the position they were in. His eyes hurt from straining to look around.
(His heart hadn’t stopped pounding in his chest from adrenaline dear DARKness he just wanted to be home— )
So, anger.
Bargaining was next, but he didn’t feel like bargaining much. He was too tired for that.
Then again, the stages didn’t necessarily have to be in order, he thought. He might have heard that somewhere—or maybe it was that the stages
did
have to be in order, and he got it mixed up.
“You know, most people scream,” said the guy, leaning against the wall. “Or plead for their life. Most people don’t ramble about the stages of grief.”
“I’m not like other kidnapees,” Virgil concluded, saying it in the most I’m not like other girls voice he could pull his dry vocal chords to.
“You’re so chatty . Shut up.”
Maybe Virgil was going a bit hysterical. Maybe he was about to have a panic attack. “No!” he insisted.
“You’re so annoying.”
“You kidnapped me!”
Virgil wanted a watch.
“How long has it been?”
“Why do you think I would know?” asked Virgil, grumpily. He wanted to cross his arms, but he was tied up. He couldn’t get comfortable on the floor.
“I don’t know, I heard people who work with customer service have a great sense of time because they keep track of their shifts.”
“Maybe for other people but I control my shifts. I am the shift. When I want to leave, I do.”
“Oh.” the man checked his watch. “It’s been four hours.”
“So, you like the DARK SIDES?”
“So,” said the man, in the same voice, “you like the LIGHT SIDES?”
“Not really, actually. But they tip well.”
“How much?”
The man sounded too eager. Virgil narrowed his eyes at him. “Do you really think that’s going to help you? Like, a hundred bucks per order.”
The man scoffed. “When I was at Wall’s Market I only got tipped five dollars a day at most, why do you get that much?”
“I don’t sell them out to kidnappers.”
“...ah.”
“Can I have a drink?”
“Can I have the LIGHT SIDES?”
“No,” said Virgil. “But you can still get me a drink.”
“Get it yourself.”
Virgil stared at him, but either the man never realized the issue with that or he refused to admit it.
“Okay, I spy with my little eye, something gray and rectangle.”
The man groaned. “Stop doing bricks! You always do bricks!”
“I do not!”
“Bricks have been your choice for the last six rounds!”
“But which one?”
Virgil was met by a stunned blink.
“Which one?” asked the man.
“Yeah.”
The man grumbled a bit, shifting around on the ground and scowling. Eventually he shot a dirty glance at Virgil and pointed.
“...that one.”
Virgil didn’t even look. “No. Pick another.”
“I hate you.”
“So what’s your name?” asked Virgil, sometime in hour six.
“Uh, Kevin.”
“...seriously?”
“Yeah,” said Kevin, sounding almost insulted. He’d moved from his position by the door of the room to somewhere in the middle, sitting on the floor.
He hadn’t brought a chair in, and Virgil hoped he regretted that.
“Kevin’s a stupid name.”
“I swear, I’m going to torture you.”
“Try it, I dare you.”
The man looked disturbed, and Virgil counted that as an undeniable victory.
“I spy with my little eye—uh.” The man squinted. “Uh.”
Virgil shifted impatiently.
“Uh. Something ropey.”
“A rope.”
“...yeah.”
“You’re horrible at this game.”
“No, you can’t split if you have an odd number.”
“Yes I can,” argued Virgil, holding three fingers out on one hand and two on the other. He hit his hands together as much as he could when they were tied, and when he brought them apart he switched the fingers he had up so the other hand had two and the first hand had three. “See?” he swapped them again. “Like that.”
“But it doesn’t work like that,” said Kevin, who had four and two fingers up. “Like, I can split now because I have six and then I’d have three on each hand. You can’t split because it wouldn’t be even.”
“That’s not how I play it.”
“That’s the correct way to play it.”
“You’re kidnapping people, you have no say.”
“I mean, I’d argue that it’s because I kidnapped you that I have a say.”
Virgil hesitated. His pride wanted him to fight back against this idiotic man who didn’t know the rules of Chopsticks. But common sense told him that this was the first time Kevin looked even remotely dangerous, and he didn’t like the frown in Kevin’s eyes or the way he was clenching the fingers he held down so tightly against his hands that the knuckles were white.
“Fine,” said Virgil, “there.”
He tapped Kevin’s two fingers with his three to make five and Kevin shrieked.
“Okay, something green,” said Virgil.
“Uh, the mold in the corner.”
“No—there’s mold in the corner?” Virgil tried to twist and look, but he couldn’t while tied the way that he was.
“... no .”
“Do you like, even have a life?” asked Virgil, trying to rub life back into his red wrists. He was getting hungry. His only comfort was Kevin’s rising discomfort, since he wasn’t able to leave while Virgil was still bait. “Do you have any friends?”
“Of course I have friends!”
“Are you sure?” asked Virgil, trying to sound sympathetic. “If you’re kidnapping people you probably don’t have friends.”
“ I have friends ,” gritted Kevin.
“And your name is Kevin, so. No offense to any Kevins out there, but you just sound rude.”
“I do not!”
“You kind of do.”
“I don’t . Shut up.”
“No.”
“Uhh, your eyes?”
“My eyes aren’t green,” said Virgil, a bit confused.
“Well okay, it’s dark in here, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Kevin said nothing.
“So if you don’t have friends—”
“I have friends!”
“Then do you have a house at all? Where do you live?”
Kevin’s eyes narrowed, fist frozen above his hand. Virgil took that as rock and quickly switched his own hand to paper . He’d been planning on scissors but whatever.
“I’m not telling you where I live,” said Kevin quickly.
“So you’re homeless,” concluded Virgil.
“No, I have an apartment—”
“Where? What district?”
“I’m not telling you!”
“It sounds like you’re lying,” said Virgil.
“I’m not!”
“...what else is in here that’s green?”
Virgil made a noncommittal sound. “Not much. You should have furnished this place more.”
Kevin shifted, a pained look crossing his face. Virgil viciously hoped he was in pain. Virgil had been sitting tied to the wall for eight hours. He’d have joint problems now.
Virgil had earned this.
“...I don’t know, are you wearing anything green?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
Virgil was not. “Maybe.”
Kevin blinked. “I’m not untying you to move you into the light, just to prove a point. I’m not.”
Virgil looked at him, and slowly, slowly, raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not!”
“So,” said Virgil, “you’ve kidnapped other people before?”
Kevin hummed.
“Who?”
“Oh, a few medics here, a few coders there, anyone who I thought could give me more info on the LIGHT SIDES or be bait.”
“...you’ve been doing this for a while, then?”
Kevin’s grin was sharp, and Virgil didn’t like it. “Anything for my grace.”
“There’s nothing in here that’s green!”
Virgil tried to get weight off his legs and shoulders, but he couldn’t without standing up, and the nail he was tied to positioned him in a way where he couldn’t, really. “I mean—”
“You’re cheating!” Kevin shouted. The white light shined off his painted face and made him look alien. “You’re a cheater!”
“I—”
“You can’t do that!”
Virgil pushed himself against the wall as Kevin stormed around the room. He was glad there was no furniture. He thought Kevin might have flipped it, thrown it, torn off the legs and used them as a weapon, like a knife, or a bat. He thought about how much a ripped piece of wood would hurt against his skin. He thought about splinters. Splinters, flinging away from the wood as it snapped in two and broke away into Kevin’s hand, poking and scratching down Virgil’s skin like little, brittle needles. He had nothing wooden in his shop, he’d never gotten a splinter there. Splinters in the rubble outside the shop, digging into his fingertips.
He was thinking too much about splinters.
He was panicking.
Something crashed, and Virgil flinched because he thought somehow Kevin had gotten a chair and broken it on the floor even though there was no chair in the room. But Kevin had frozen, seemingly just as startled as Virgil at the noise.
The white light flickered green, casting the room in lime. Kevin stood straighter, but he didn’t look scared, or guilty. He was bouncing from one foot to the other, eyes locked on the door. His neon face almost glowed in the colored light.
Virgil watched, plastered against the wall and cowering, as Kevin whispered, “ my grace?” and the door burst open.
Virgil had his hands over his ears, so he didn’t hear the pleading as Kevin was dragged away by DARK generals. But his eyes were open, so he saw as Kevin reached, desperate, towards Duke’s back and was pulled out of the room with his green face contorted in awe and terror.
He thought maybe Kevin had been screaming. His mouth was all scrunched open like he had been. He didn’t know what Kevin would have said.
Anything for my grace.
“Why is he… what’s up with the green? Looks gaudy. He couldn’t have had a nice green?” Duke asked Virgil, head tilted while he worked on cutting away the ropes.
In the distance, Virgil heard Kevin yell, shoot! I get it now! Hey, bring me back, I gotta tell him—
“He’s a fanatic,” said Forgery, eyes pinned on his phone. “I don’t care what he thinks.”
“Do you—” Virgil hacked out what little water was in his throat, and Duke pressed a plastic bottle in his hands. Virgil hastily unscrewed the cap and chugged it down.
“He was horribly unprepared for how experienced he was,” said Forgery, disapprovingly.
My grace?
“He’s in the car, boss, sir!” said a DARK officer, head poking into the room and haloed by white light. “Handcuffed and mad about it!”
Forgery waved a hand in acknowledgment, but didn’t look up.
“Thanks, Jenny!” chirped Duke, “take him away!”
“Roger that, boss!”
“Do you get a lot of those?” asked Virgil, once he managed to get his throat working again. “Fanatics, I mean.”
“More, recently,” said Forgery, eyes on his phone. “Kevin Craner, a bricklayer in District T, block 6. His parents were killed by rubble in District K during the battle on may eleventh eight years ago, and he was pulled out by DARK officers. He’s twenty-six.”
Forgery’s knuckles were tight around the screen. Duke’s face was tight around his grimace.
They both looked guilty.
“How did we not know about this?” Forgery barked at the officers behind him. He strode out of the room, interrogating one of the officers who followed.
“I’m really sorry, Virgil,” said Duke, quietly. He sat cross-legged in front of Virgil, who had laid himself on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
“You couldn’t know,” said Virgil, accepting the second water bottle handed to him and sitting up to chug it. He wiped his face with his hoodie sleeve.
“We should’ve,” corrected Duke. “I don’t know why we didn’t.”
They probably bugged his shop at some point, Virgil thought. But he’d been outside his shop when he was kidnapped, and he’d updated his site saying he wouldn’t be back. They wouldn’t have known.
“Whatever,” he said, with a Forgery-esque handwave. His wrists hurt, red rings surrounding them. They were rubbed raw and bloody, and he smelled iron, hovering in the back of his mouth. “It’s in the past. Focus on doing better I guess, I don’t know.”
“We’ll get you home,” Duke promised.
Virgil was almost asleep already.
Hey I’m outside the DE and Virgil-no-Dante isn’t here???
—Didn’t he close?
—Yeah but he was supposed to open again like thirty minutes ago
We should make a topic for everyone waiting outside the Expresso
—Why we can just talk to each other
—Talking to each other? That’s so 2000s. Live in the present!
—I am and I want to talk to people
Lol just passed by the Expresso and there’s like fifteen people hanging around the entrance staring at their phones
Maybe if we tag Virgil-no-Dante enough he’ll be woken up by the phone buzzing and open for us
—He might have just been kidnapped again
—No but if the DARKness kidnaps you they alert your family about where you are and the last time Virgil-no-Dante was kidnapped Duke updated his website for him
Y’all it’s fine he’s probably just asleep. We shouldn’t bother him he needs it.
I —dk something’s fishy about this
Hour two of Virgil-no-Dante’s disappearance!
Hour three of Virgil-no-Dante’s disappearance!
Hour four of of Virgil-no-Dante’s disappearance!
I’m getting worried?
—It’s probably fine
Who wants to have a rock-paper-scissors tournament?
—its paper scissors rock
—Okay which one of you is no-money-for-chicken-tendies i just wanna talk
—I thought you said talking was for the 2000s
—Shut it Brenda this means war
Virgil got back to his shop six hours after he said he’d open it, sneaking around the back while the DARK officers who escorted him chased away the small crowd that had gathered about his doors. He was busy fiddling with his phone as he entered.
The Depresso Expresso: the caffeine in my veins prevents me from dying.
Status: closed, see above for reassurance
Hours: one AM to two AM
It was eight in the morning at the moment. He’d been kidnapped sometime yesterday afternoon, and he didn’t bother counting the hours (he already knew it was too many).
He stepped around the counter, eyes still on his phone, and heard, vaguely, the creak of his stool as someone shifted weight on it. Panicked, he shot backward, eyes jerking away from his screen.
Prince spun around, arms crossed. “Where have you been?”
Virgil blanked. Kidnapped again . “With—Heart.”
The lamp turned on in the corner, revealing Heart with his legs crossed, eyebrows raised over his glasses. “Guess again, please.”
“Uh. Code, then.”
Prince held up his phone and pressed the speakerphone button. “Say that again, Code?” he asked.
“Uhh,” said the phone, “I’m a bit busy with the rest of the coders to be there, but I’ve been in headquarters all day, so he wasn’t with me either. Talk to you later, bye.”
Prince frowned at his phone. “Well that was curt.”
“We were worried,” said Heart, more concern in his voice than Virgil thought was strictly necessary. It was nice to have that concern directed at him. It was nice to be thought of and fretted over, but he didn’t know what to do with himself now.
Virgil coughed. “...I was kidnapped again.”
“For fourteen hours?”
Had it been fourteen? Virgil tried to remember, and he thought maybe three of those fourteen were spent with Duke’s medics and Forgery’s lawyers and some DARK officers and on the trip all the way over in X-2 to M-5, where his shop was. And that trip had to be made to get there in the first place, and he imagined Kevin would take longer lugging an unconscious kidnapee with him.
“Ten,” he corrected. “I was kidnapped for ten hours. The other four was… something else.”
“What on earth did Duke want with you?” asked Heart, sounding genuinely curious.
“Nothing good,” Prince growled.
Virgil blinked.
“It wasn’t them.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t?” echoed Heart. He pointed a finger at the glass, where a DARK officer waved good-bye at Virgil and set off down the sidewalk with the rest of her squadron. “But—”
“No, no, Duke and Forgery came to rescue me.”
“ They— ”
“Then who?”
“Some guy named Kevin, I don’t know.” Virgil paused. “He was really bad at I-spy.”
Prince stared at him, calculatingly, for a long while, as Heart fidgeted in his chair.
“The DARK SIDES got to you before we did,” Prince said, finally.
“Well, yeah. I was taken somewhere in their borders, so you wouldn’t have been able to get there anyway.”
“We didn’t even know you were gone until an hour or two ago,” said Heart. He opened his arms and stood, and Virgil assumed he wanted a hug before Heart had the chance to take a step and decided to accept, proactively, because it had been so long since he’d been hugged and he was tired and scared and maybe a little teary.
Heart practically crumpled into him, which was a bit awkward since Heart was a good head or so taller than him, but it felt safe. It was warm, and Virgil leaned into it, trying not to cry.
Kevin didn’t do anything. Virgil had joked with him, tried to antagonize him for the sake of antagonizing him, and it had been fine.
But it might not have been.
“I’m so sorry,” Heart mumbled into his shoulders.
“It’s—fine?” said Virgil, feeling slightly befuddled. “You couldn’t have known.”
“We should have known,” said Prince. He’d steepled his fingers, and now sat on the stool that was too short for him and glared somewhere off in the middle distance. “We should have known before they did.”
“Roman—”
Prince stood up, abruptly, and Virgil snapped, “I’m not turning either Forgery or Duke over to you.”
“But—”
“I won’t. It’s against company policy.”
“What?” asked Heart, tilting his head, which was preferable to Prince’s irked sputtering. He stepped away from their hug and Virgil wanted to drag him back, but he didn’t, because that’d be embarrassing.
“Company policy,” Virgil repeated. He waved a hand around. “I don’t get involved in any of this.”
“Ignore policy!” demanded Prince.
“I can’t,” said Virgil, turning to make himself a cup of coffee (he hadn’t slept in fourteen hours). “I’d get fired.”
“You’re the only one here!”
“Can’t hear you, policy.”
“I—”
“Sorry! Policy!” exclaimed Virgil, widening his eyes like, I don’t know what you want me to do sir, I just work here.
Prince gaped, jaw somewhere dropped on the floor, and eventually scoffed. He turned like he wanted to walk out of the door and leave, but hesitated. “Are you hurt?”
“No. They burst open the door, took Kevin out, and made sure I was safe before anything else.”
Prince turned again, and turned back again. “They did a good job,” he gritted. It sounded like it physically hurt him to admit it. “I suppose.”
Virgil felt like he should say something, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He settled for a bewildered, “uh,” that he didn’t get to finish because Prince finally made a decision about leaving or staying behind and whirled out the door.
Heartbeat sighed and made his way over to the counter, grinning tiredly. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I’m glad you’re alright.”
“Long day?”
“The longest! ” Heart groaned, leaning his head on the counter. “We were pulling people out of rubble all day.”
Virgil hesitated, then turned to make another drink. “Any…”
“No,” Heart shook his head. “Thank heavens, no. Everybody got out alive. You can thank your good friends the Patton Pals for that one.”
“Patton Pals?” asked Virgil, and Heart looked almost offended.
“The Patton Pals! My lead medics! We have a group chat and were working all night!” Heart clicked a couple things on his phone and turned it around.
*The Patton Pals!*
Maryyyy: Boss boss boss boss I’m on my way to kate anyone there too?
Duplikate: I’m off duty today what are you talking about?
Maryyyy: K8 sorry
Duplikate: oh
Maryyyyy: I am
Maryyyyyy: my unit is in k9 I can be there soon but it might take a while
Maryyyy: am I supposed to go to k9 or k8?
Maryyyyy: ask mary
Maryyyy: which one, five ys or six ys?
Duplikate: we’ve got to get new codenames
“Why Patton Pals?”
Somehow Heart looked even more offended (although if Virgil looked closer it seemed more like amusement). “That’s my name! ”
“Your—name?”
“Yeah! You didn’t know it?” Patton put his elbow on the counter. “I’m your happy pappy father figure Patton! At least to all my medics, I don’t know, they all seemed to just imprint on me? Like baby ducks!”
“Your medics are baby ducks.”
“Yes,” said Patton seriously. “The babiest of ducks. So small. Tiny. I love them so much.”
“Right…” a thought struck Virgil harder than Kevin knocking him out. “Wow, Pat, those are pretty red eyes you have, you okay?”
“Yeah, just a long day kiddo. It kind of got a bit… violent at the end… well, anyway—where are you going?”
Virgil coughed, pushing the cup closer on the counter. Patton looked at it, then up at the menu, then squinted at him.
“Is that a Red Eye?”
“Maybe.”
“Can I adopt you?”
Chapter 6: geez, buildings should really stop collapsing whenever duke is nearby, someone's gonna get the wrong idea
Chapter Text
“Virgil! Virgil back me up! Cup ramen is superior!”
“ No! It tastes like styrofoam!”
“It’s supposed to!”
Virgil took a sip of his coffee, watching idly as the Duke dodged a beam of red light and fired back a green one of his own and a punch along with it, slamming the Prince down to the pavement with a sickening crack. The panes of the shop windows rattled. “I hate you both,” he said, fully aware neither could hear him. “I would pay you to go away.”
“You’re supposed to make ramen yourself!” an explosion boomed. “You can’t just boil water, there’s more! ” Prince hollered, catching Duke’s swing and pulling him off the ground. Duke went soaring through the street and landed somewhere past Virgil’s vision. “Virgil! Virgil, tell him!”
Virgil drained his cup of coffee and turned back inside the store, letting Duke and Roman fight it out.
YOUR DISTRICT is now DARK!
“It takes too long to cook! Cup ramen is more convenient!”
YOUR DISTRICT is now LIGHT!
“Convenient does not mean better!”
YOUR DISTRICT is now—
The bell jingled.
“Welcome to the Expresso, unhappy to have you here. What can I get you?”
Datacode pursed his lips, looking up at the menu. Presumably. Virgil couldn’t see his eyes past the light of his glasses. “What’s your special for the day?”
“Look deep inside your soul for the answer, and if your soul likes you, it might actually provide the right one.”
“...I’ll just have a black coffee, then.”
“Coward.”
“Noted.”
Virgil poured more coffee grounds into the machine and grabbed a cup, a ceramic one. He grabbed a dry-erase marker and wrote nerd on the side of the cup.
Code saw it and sighed. “I thought we were past that.”
“Shouldn’t you be—” Virgil waved the marker at the window, in time to catch Prince sailing through the air and Duke leaping after him.
“No, thank you,” sniffed Code, accepting the coffee and rubbing out the nerd . “I’m not really into that kind of thing. I could have sworn I told you this? I do the technical… machinery and digital things. Directing people where to go, hacking locked doors to open and such. I’m not a front lines kind of guy.”
“I heard none of that,” said Virgil blankly, remembering tell me what the LIGHT SIDES do and a green-painted face. “You said nothing. I have no clue what your role is, and I never will.”
“Noted,” repeated Code, with a smile. The smile quickly fell. “I’m… I wanted to apologize.”
Virgil hesitated. “You’re apologize?”
“Yes, I’m apologizing—” Code stopped, frowning, as though he was very confused and a little bit insulted, but he wasn’t quite sure why. “Anyway, I’m sorry for… ah, our disagreement a few days ago.”
It was a bit more than a few days ago, but sure, Virgil thought, better late than never.
“See, the whole DARK-LIGHT , that’s more of Prince’s thing. Heart and I handle the aftermath and stuff, yes, but it was never our idea.” He shrugged one shoulder. “This is Prince’s fight. We’re sidekicks, here to make things run smoothly and keep the people happy. I do tech and logistics work, Heart does education and healthcare, Prince handles things with the government and, you know, fights the good fight. Keeps people out of poverty and out of gangs. Keeps us going and the people happy.”
Virgil fiddled with the handle of his own cup, sliding it back under the coffee maker for a refill.
“He’s our leader, according to the masses, but the masses only think that because he’s the only one really into the—pushing back the DARKness and bringing the world into the LIGHT kind of thing. He’s been through a lot. We’ve all been through a lot, to make this city better, but it’s personal for him.” Code tapped at his mug. “I’m… defensive. Protective, over him, is all. I’m sorry I got sucked into it.”
Virgil nodded a few times. He thought about it. “So this whole LIGHT-DARK, that’s Prince’s idea?”
“Well, sort of,” said Code. “I mean that he’s… particularly motivated, in that area, whereas Heart and I are only in it to support him. We’re as invested in our SIDE as he is. But it’s his fight, when it comes down to it. None of my business.” He paused. “I’m sorry I tried to make it yours.”
Virgil wasn’t sure how to respond to that. So he buried his face in the steam of his coffee mug and mumbled something eerily similar to no problem if no problem was incomprehensible and muffled. When he looked up, Code was talking to a LIGHT medic outside the window and dodging laser beams as Prince and Duke continued to hash it out, and there was a check on the counter from Logan P.
“Huh,” he said aloud. “I wonder who Logan P is.”
Logan suddenly interrupted his conversation with LIGHT medic to groan, loudly, and drop his head into his hands. Virgil wondered what that was about.
It appears that Virgil-no-Dante needs exactly three cups of coffee to regain his intelligence, and when he has only two he is an absolute idiot.
—Hello sir!
—Reason #32 why Virgil-no-Dante is relatable
—DATACODE SIGHTING PULL OUT YOUR BINGO CARDS FOLKS
—Wow, sir’s out here this early in the morning throwing shade
—Its eleven
—My point remains
—It really doesnt
—DATA CODE! DATA CODE! DATA CODE!
—Wow sir the one time you come on Chatter and it's to insult our man geez
—I know right its hilarious
—Sir is it true the new ClockWatcher update will allow you to turn off notifications?
—Why would he do that?
—Idk I mean it was kind of annoying
—Wait really? But what if you miss your district updating?
—Maybe those notifications won’t be allowed to turn off? Just ones that don’t apply to you? How would I know?
—Oh is that why Virgil-no-Dante just threw his cup at the door?
Day 24 of telling Virgil-no-Dante to go to sleep for once instead of drinking more coffee because it’s bad for him and I care about his health :)
—You tell him boss!
—Has Heart been doing this the entire time?
—Boss shouldn’t you be at work?
—It’s an automatic Chat that Code made for me! Don’t worry! :)
—Heart… why?
—He is a sweet and sour misunderstood shadowling and I love him :) !
—Ohp guys guess who just got adopteddddddd
So, who called Virgil-no-Dante getting pulled into the ranks of our boss Heartbeat’s children? Enjoy this Chat if you did!
—...I have not, for the record, been pulled into the ranks of your boss Heartbeat’s children
—You have, for the record
—Kat-8 you’re banned for a week
—I’m not scared of you! I’m not scared of anything you could throw at me. I’m fearless. I would bring dizco back and be unafraid. I would juice the sun and drink it like a protein shake. I would win a staring contest with Medusa, do what Bellerophon could not and make it to Olympus just to overthrow Zeus and rule in his stead. I would fight a goose and win. Your threats don’t work, Virgil-no-Dante. I’ll be back after that week, teeth bared and fists up, and you can’t stop me.
—I’m discontinuing the lemon lavender shortbread then
—WAIT DON’T I’M SORRY
*9,230 people have enjoyed this Chat!*
It started, this time, when Virgil was serving a customer. The line of people behind her started to trickle out of the door, at first one at a time, and then faster, their heads tucked in their phones. The girl at the front started to shift, nervously. She looked at her half-finished drink with an unsure face.
“Just go,” Virgil sighed, and she took off running down the street.
The ground was starting to rumble.
Fight’s on again, everyone knows the drill by now
—Yeppp thanks for letting us know about it
I’m at work, what’s happening right now?
—Just a small battle, don’t worry
—Thanks, I’m kind of paranoid after, you know
—Yeah no worries man! I don’t think it’ll get that bad this time
…is this weird, for them? Seems kind of bloody, even last week’s fight wasn’t this… angry
—Yeah, but I’m sure it’s fine, right? Their weapons are non-fatal.
—But the buildings might fall again
Dude Duke and Prince are really tearing into each other, theyre shouting a lot does anyone know what theyre saying?
—I caught something about ideology or something idk
Stay out of the fight, guys! It's a nasty one!
Hey, the fight’s getting kind of violent, anyone have visuals? I can’t see very well
—*video attachment* tw blood
The ground is shaking again everyone duck and cover
SHOOT NOT AGAIN
WARNING: Please stay out of District M! A battle is underway.
Somebody was screaming in the streets.
Virgil woke up in a metal chair, in a room bare save for Forgery’s pacing. He blinked, groggily, remembered trying to shake the fogginess out of his head would only make the pounding worse, and realized he was annoyed (in that order).
And then he realized something was wrong.
“I need your help,” said Forgery, uncharacteristically worried.
“What?”
Forgery grabbed his hand and that was when Virgil noticed he wasn’t handcuffed, at all. A cup of water was immediately shoved in his grip and he was led out of the room. And then he realized this was a different room--it looked the same, but the hallway outside was furnished, with photos on the wall of Duke with various DARK officers and generals. It looked like they had yearly picnics. They played “pin the hypocrisy on the prince.”
This was a weird place, Virgil decided. Forgery was still fretting beside him, jaw set. They turned the corner, opened a door, and Virgil decided it was weirder.
A DARK general immediately whipped towards them when they entered, hands thrown in the air and eyes pleading at Forgery. “Sir, help, he won’t stay still— ”
“I don’t need to stay still,” Duke complained, in a fluffy green bathrobe with shark slippers on his feet. The bathrobe was loosely tied, opening over a T-shirt with a rude gesture on it and some sort of caption hidden from view. The shark slippers had mustaches stuck on. One was falling off. His own mustache was sticking out from his upper lip in two sharp spikes, like he’d tried to style it with gel but hadn’t been able to make the curls. He struggled to get past the couch with the DARK general still pushing him towards it, frowning greatly.
There was a bandage around Duke’s head. His hands were wrapped in unwieldy, bulky casts, one arm in a sling. A long cut crossed over what Virgil could see of his shoulder and disappeared down his chest, bandages closing it in regular intervals. His skin was pale and sickly-looking.
As Virgil watched, he swayed on his feet and almost toppled over the arm of the couch.
(His pajama pants had trash cans on them.)
“Thanks, Noah,” said Forgery, arms crossed. “You can go.”
“O-kay,” said the general, Noah, examining the situation with the same wariness you might use to examine the broken glass of an empty bear enclosure at the zoo. “Get better soon, boss.”
“I don’t have to get better ,” Duke huffed, “I’m already good.”
Noah didn’t look like he believed that, but he left through the same door Virgil and Forgery had come from. Virgil thought he might have whispered, “good luck sir,” as he went.
Forgery sighed and tried to corral Duke into sitting down. Meanwhile, Virgil looked around.
A television with a few gaming sets sat by the right-side wall. To the left were windows looking out into an enclosed garden that seemed to be the home of several Venus flytraps, one of them horrifyingly almost Virgil’s height. A table with a line of coffee machines was by the far wall, next to another door.
Somebody’s homework was thrown on the coffee table. A coat lay on an plush chair that had a book flopped open over the armrest.
“Remus, Remus please , at least not in the breakroom—”
“I’m fine ! Stop worrying, worry wart. Hah, wart. You’re a wart.” Forgery didn’t let him go or laugh, so Remus (Remus, his name was Remus) snarled. “ Let me go. I’m fine. ”
“You don’t look fine,” said Virgil.
He instantly regretted it when Remus turned annoyed eyes at him, sneering, “Like you get an opinion, coffee raccoon.”
“ Hey .”
“Remus, please.” Forgery tugged at Remus’ arm and eventually managed to swing it over his own shoulders to force Remus back to the door at the other end of the room. Virgil took Remus’ other arm, and together they managed to manhandle Remus through the door and to the other hallway.
“I don’t need—”
“You kind of do, man,” said Virgil.
“You don’t get it, I have to—”
“It can wait, Remus,” glowered Forgery. “I’m sick of you staggering back here half-dead with medics hanging off your arms.”
Remus grumbled, and to Virgil’s surprise and immense discomfort, tears started to gather at the corner of his eyes. His breath quickened.
Virgil was used to handling stuff like this in himself. It was infinitely more bewildering when Remus did it.
By the time they reached what seemed to be their final destination, Remus was crying into Forgery’s shoulder.
“...I can get the key,” said Virgil quietly, looking for anything to do where he didn’t have to look at Remus’ face while he cried. He set about unlocking and opening the door while Forgery figured out how to get Remus through the door and off the ground.
“It hurts .”
“I know.”
“Janus, I don’t understand.”
“I know . ”
Virgil stepped inside the door so Forgery (...Janus?) had more room to handle Remus. The inside of the room was small. A desk in the corner, a bed on the left side of the room, some huge round pillow thing on the right. A big window in the middle, a TV on one wall. The blankets for the round thing were strewn on the ground (presumably for the round thing, since they were also round), so Virgil picked them up. They were pirate themed.
“Okay,” said Virgil, turning to look at Remus and Janus. “What’s going on?”
“He hates me,” said Remus to the wall, voice horribly blank, “he tried to kill me.”
Which didn’t help Virgil at all.
Remus didn’t seem willing to go any further than the floor, so Janus closed the door behind them and sat on the floor with him.
“It was an accident, Remus,” he said.
“He’s better than that.” Remus wrapped his arms around his legs. He was really tiny, even though Janus was smaller. “He doesn’t make stupid mistakes like letting buildings fall on accident.”
“Buildings fall because of the LIGHT SIDES all the time—”
“Because of the LIGHT SIDE generals. Not because of Prince. He’s better than that. He did it on purpose. ”
“Prince dropped a building on you?” Virgil interrupted. Remus sniffed, wiping his eyes with his bathrobe sleeve.
“Why does he want to kill me?” he mumbled. “What did I do? I did something, I must have done something, Prince doesn’t do things without a reason, he’s better than me.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t want to kill you—”
“It doesn’t matter. I almost died anyway and it would’ve been his fault and he knows that. I know he knows that.”
“Why do you think he wants you dead?” asked Virgil, sitting on the floor on Remus’ other side.
Remus curled up tighter, mumbling into his knees, “I don’t know. ”
“Make a guess.”
“I’m a disappointment who keeps messing everything up and makes everything chaotic and disorganized and horrible.”
“I thought you loved chaos,” said Virgil, thinking of graffitied walls and cinnamon with hot chocolate.
“He doesn’t. He hates it. He hates me. My brother called me chaos and then said he hated it.”
Virgil wasn’t sure what Remus’ brother had to do with any of this. He figured maybe Prince reminded Remus of him, and that was good enough.
“You two can disagree on ideals without hating each other,” said Virgil. Remus didn’t seem like he wanted to listen, though. He was shaking. He was on painkillers, probably.
The fight had been just that morning.
“Why does he hate me?” Remus sobbed. Janus didn’t seem to know what to do. Virgil didn’t either. “What did I do —”
In the end, all Virgil could do was be there as Remus wept.
Janus escorted him back to the Expresso. Virgil waited, silently, for Janus to blindfold him at least, but instead Janus let Virgil see exactly where their headquarters were, and how to get there.
Virgil tried not to pay too much attention.
“I’m sorry about that,” said Janus. Virgil only now realized that Janus, like Remus, was dressed casually, in one of those T-shirts with a tuxedo print and black sweatpants.
“Hmm?”
Janus heaved a sigh and stuck his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and his face looked weird without it. “We did all this to impress Duke’s brother but he’s never impressed. I’m sorry you got dragged into it.”
This, Virgil thought, was eerily similar to another conversation he’d had today.
“...right. This was all for his brother?” Virgil waved around him at the bustling, green-lit cities.
The grin Janus shot him in return seemed smug. “Yeah, we wanted to reform the DARKness, but it was for Duke. It was Duke’s cause…” his smile dropped. “I was only there to support him.”
This was really familiar, Virgil thought, uncomfortably.
“Does Duke’s brother really hate him?”
Janus shrugged, and they turned the corner. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but they never actually talk so who knows? All we have to go by are actions, and those definitely aren’t pretty.”
“...do you think Duke hates his brother?”
“Oh, definitely not.” Janus shook his head. “No, if anything, Duke loves his brother too much. I think that’s why he’s hurting so much.”
In Virgil’s head, love was never the problem, only ways of communicating it. In his experience, love was the solution. But his nerves were jittering out and he felt like he was going to fall over from exhaustion, and his eyes were darting around looking for enemies in the shadows without his permission and he wasn’t sure how to stop them.
His brain whispered in his ear, something bad is about to happen and you have to stop it before it does, what could it be? and it was harder than normal to convince it that there was nothing bad and nothing to be afraid of.
“Oh,” said Forgery, stopping. “ You. ”
Virgil looked up from the ground.
“Hey, snake boy,” said Prince coolly. He’d been waiting outside Virgil’s shop door. He glanced at Virgil, eyebrow raised. “Should I go?”
His head was bleeding, Virgil noted, shoulders slumping. “No… step inside, I’ll be there in a second.”
When Virgil turned back, Forgery was halfway down the sidewalk, walking backwards to maintain eye contact. “Have a good night,” called Forgery, “and remember what I said.”
“Okay?” Forgery had said a lot of things. Virgil wasn’t sure which one he was supposed to remember.
“Good night.”
“Bye?”
Forgery turned the corner and vanished dramatically.
Prince was pacing inside the Expresso, behind the counter. He held a mug in his hands, one of the bigger ones, but was staring along at all the machines with a blank face. He looked up helplessly when Virgil approached.
“What can I get—”
“He hates me,” said Prince immediately. It looked as though he had just come to that realisation, even though Virgil had heard those words out of Prince’s mouth countless times. “How do I fix this—” his hands were shaking “—what have I done?”
“What have you done?” asked Virgil, just to ask something while he rummaged for the first aid kit.
“I dropped a building on him.” Prince wasn’t really talking to Virgil anymore. “I was trying to protect him, all this for him not that he ever wanted it and I almost killed him. I nearly killed him.”
Prince dropped his mug. It shattered on the floor, but Prince barely noticed. He had his head in his hands, and Virgil thought he may have been crying as he mumbled, “I hurt my baby brother and I didn’t say sorry. I didn’t even say sorry. What do I do?”
Oh, thought Virgil.
Oh.
“By the freaking light and also darkness,” said Virgil, “you guys are the worst and I absolutely hate you.”
Virgil never really ever used the menu anyway, but he felt like buying a corkboard for this instead of using the menu whiteboards. So he did, with the seventy-two dollars in change Prince left on the counter the night before. Why Prince had so much change, Virgil wasn’t sure, but at least it was enough for Virgil to buy a corkboard.
The Depresso Expresso: the stupidity of humankind is inconvenient for me personally.
Status: closed. Ask again later.
Hours: not now.
He tossed a ball of red yarn in the air and fumbled with it when it came down. In his other hand he held a black marker he normally used to write down menu items. With it, he wrote Operation: My not-Friends Are Idiots.
Virgil organized the board into two sides. One side was reasons , the other side was plans. The reasons part was really just so he could vent, because he hadn’t been able to get in touch with Emile. The phone lines were down from the fight earlier.
Virgil firmly believed that if he didn’t have anxiety meds and the best therapist on either side of the Border, he’d be behaving worse than both the DARKness and the LIGHTness combined.
He crossed out the old title.
Operation: Just Talk To Each Other, My Lord.
Reason 1: Prince is an idiot.
Reason 2: Duke is also an idiot.
Reason 3: They need so much therapy holy soda cans and coffee grounds I swear I’m going to boil their eyeballs if they make me patch them up again
Reason 4: I’m running out of first aid supplies
Reason 5: this is bad for business
He didn’t put down reason six, but he kept it in his head.
(Reason 6: Brothers. They’re brothers. Why is that not surprising?)
“I don’t know, it sounds like you guys are friends,” said Remy, through the phone. Virgil scowled at him and was very frustrated that Remy couldn’t see it.
“When’s Emile getting back?” Virgil needed a therapist for himself but also for everyone else and Emile was the best (and only) one he knew.
“Uhhh…” A rustling sound, like Remy was rifling through papers, or watering plants. “Soon. Probably within the next few days. Honestly, if you can get those two to realize that they have fixable problems and not just vague issues then he’d be back in time to deal with the aftermath. Therapists, you know. He’d be overjoyed that he doesn’t have to work them through that much at least.”
“Great. Good. This shouldn’t be my problem.”
Remy gasped. “Emile would be so proud of you right now—”
“Right thank you Remy bye,” said Virgil, hanging up.
Ew, he thought. Emotions and vulnerability.
Gross.
Reason 7: how dare they be my friends I’m gonna kill them
Overall, Virgil thought, he wasn’t the worst at planning. Anxiety made him think ahead, and then think ahead again, and then think two times faster ahead so he could deal with any possible potential outcome. Not caring had stopped him from freaking out about everything in eye-sight, and now he was slipping dangerously into the realm of caring too much again. He had to find the balance.
Unfortunately, it was hard to balance when people were throwing unexpected nonsense at him, and Duke and Prince were the kings at unexpected nonsense.
He had to resort to drastic measures.
Virgil-no-Dante what the heck are you trying to kill me
—What did he do this time
—Check his hours
—HOLY WHY
Okay okay okay does he actually expect us to wake up at three in the morning for him or is this a ploy to not have to deal with us
—Why would he open if he knows he isn’t getting customers
—Oh good point
Hasn’t he done this in the past?? What’s the problem??
—He’s done this before yeah but normally its like. Reasonable. Like, night shift kind of thing. And long to give people time to even get there. Three am to three thirty am is ridiculous.
Who’s even going to go there??
I have a term paper due, I’m going in
—Brittney’s-spears no don’t please you have so much to live for
—IM GOING IN
Insomnia was probably not helping his anxiety. In fact, according to Emile, the amount of caffeine he ingested during the course of a single workday was probably exacerbating both problems and likely one of the roots anyway, though maybe not a major or sole cause. However, Emile Picani was a buzzkill and having an office lined with cartoon posters was admirable but didn’t absolve him of his crimes, so what did he know?
A lot, Virgil thought, two minutes into his thirty-minute first plan. Probably a lot.
“Welcome to Depresso cafe, everything is twice as strong today because I broke my machine, how can I not be of service?” Virgil looked up from cleaning the countertop. “Ah. Don’t break anything.”
Duke pointed aggressively. “ You .”
“ Me, ” Prince snarled, although Virgil noticed that his eyes were running over Duke’s body, as if noting any injuries. “So, I suppose you made it out of that building alive.”
“What, are you disappointed? Sorry your weapons weren’t good enough to kill me?” sneered Duke, and wow , thought Virgil, these words were the exact worst words to say at that particular moment.
Prince roared and grabbed one of Virgil’s chairs, storming outside. Duke followed, and Virgil resigned himself to watching as they proceeded to absolutely ruin one of Virgil’s favorite chairs by throwing it at each other across the sidewalk.
He was starting to think the no shop talk inside the shop rule was more harm than good at this point.
“Oh no, customers, this is truly the worst timeline. Welcome to the Expresso, we aren’t happy to see you.”
“How on earth do you get customers being as rude as you are?” asked Code.
“Am I rude?”
Code blinked, staring at Virgil like he thought this was obvious. “... yes .”
Virgil hadn’t slept in nineteen and a half hours, fun fact. “And you have the proportions of a stickman drawn by a two year old,” he said, “but I’m not calling you out on that am I?”
“You just did!”
“Well, I was right. What can I get you?”
Code rattled off his order (he got the same thing every time, Virgil wasn’t sure what Code thought he was up to) and went to go sit down.
The bell jingled again, and the door opened, letting in a cool breeze of early morning air.
“This is the Depresso, we aren’t happy to see you here.” Virgil raised an eyebrow, keenly aware of how Code suddenly went on-guard in the corner. “Are you going to kidnap me again?”
“Depends,” said Forgery, smoothly. Also on guard the minute he saw Code.
“Dude, why?” asked Virgil, already turning to make Forgery’s usual and hoping his store wouldn’t be razed to the ground with two people who he thought were above such things. “Nobody will read your demands, your handwriting is too loopy to comprehend.”
“How would you know?”
“I see your tips, you draw your twos as swans. Extra as heck, man.”
Forgery paused, mouth open like he wanted to retort. He slowly shut it, scowling. “...shut up and get me coffee.”
Virgil handed him his order, and Forgery turned, as if to leave, but paused, sighing. Instead of approaching Code, though, he just stood in the middle of the shop and stared stubbornly ahead.
“...do you really draw your twos as swans?” asked Code, accepting the coffee Virgil handed him.
“Maybe,” said Forgery, defensively.
“...I draw my As as stars.”
Forgery blinked. He turned his head and looked Code straight-on, examining him. Code examined him right back. Whatever they found must have been acceptable to both of them, so Forgery sat down in the chair adjacent to Code and crossed his legs, setting his coffee on the table between them. “I believe a talk has been long overdue, Data.”
“Call me Logan, I’m off-duty.”
Behind the counter, Virgil hit himself on the forehead.
The Depresso Expresso: frickin LOGAN
Virgil-no-Dante who’s Logan
—the worst I hate him
—Elaborate?
—no
—Okay-dokay then have a nice day
—I will not, just to spite you
The next day, Virgil began to wonder if the flaw in his plan was the timing. He had stopped opening at absurd times at night and begun opening at absurd times in the morning, like six or seven AM, times when only workaholics like Forgery, Code, or Heartbeat were awake and moving.
“Well I understand your reasoning about the oatmeal, but why the raisins?”
“Raisins and oatmeal is the combination that works best. Everybody thinks an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie would be better, but I’ve tried that, and it’s too heavy.”
Forgery hummed, absently stirring his coffee. “Have you tried fewer chocolate chips?”
“What? No! The chocolate chips are the best part!” Heart pointed a finger. “As a choc-chip fan you should know that!”
“I just hope you don’t have the same mindset with raisins,” Forgery mumbled.
“They are healthy!”
“They are zombie grapes with hate in their eyes and I won’t stand for it!”
“Then sit down!”
“I am sitting!”
Then they both huffed exasperatedly and looked at something other than each other for a few minutes to calm down.
Virgil, in turn, looked mournfully at the board he hid under the counter and took plan 1 to the failure corner.
Plan 2: find allies before you live long enough to become the villain
“So,” he said, catching both Heart and Forgery’s attention. “What do you think of peace?”
Chapter 7: lol these idiots are so bad at plans
Chapter Text
“For someone who thinks peace is a great idea, this plan is awfully violent,” said Virgil, looking around at exactly nothing, because he had a blindfold on, and that was how it worked. He knew, though, he was in a warehouse, and it was cold.
He was cold.
...he didn’t like being cold.
Forgery scowled, presumably, swatting at the back of Virgil’s head. “Shut up, you’re supposed to be acting.”
“Oh no,” deadpanned Virgil, “help me. I’m a victim. I’ve been kidnapped.”
“You’ve been kidnapped before, draw on that!”
“Yes, but I’ve always been unconscious while I was—” Virgil was interrupted by Forgery’s gloved hand shoving itself over his mouth and he grumbled a bit.
“Prince is coming, but Duke should have been here a while ago. Where is he?”
The door burst open, red light shining under Virgil’s blindfold. Forgery shrieked and scurried off somewhere behind Virgil, and then somebody was untying him from the chair and pulling off his blindfold. Virgil frowned.
“That was rude,” he complained.
Prince blinked. “What?”
“You couldn’t have waited five more minutes? Geez.”
“Our trackers—”
“You’re tracking me?” Virgil flapped a hand, looking for Forgery, who he thought was somewhere amongst the many boxes in the warehouse Virgil had been dragged to, which, in his mind, was a fitting result. “That’s an invasion of privacy, what the heck. Don’t do that.”
“So you want me to just let you get kidnapped by Kevin? ”
Virgil wasn’t sure how he had gotten in an argument. He didn’t really care whether or not he was being tracked, as long as it didn’t interfere with any of his plans—he’d been relying on the tracker to alert Prince that he was moving around and being fake-kidnapped in the first place. But Forgery had gone flying somewhere and he wasn’t sure exactly where, and Duke was supposed to show up ages ago and he wasn’t here either.
“Whatever,” grumped Prince. “You’re obviously fine.”
“I am!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
Prince stormed off, katana swinging at his side, and Virgil turned to keep looking for glimpses of Forgery behind the crates like the world’s boxiest game of Where’s Waldo, and also stew a bit too.
He stewed more when Duke showed up two minutes later, saying, “why am I supposed to be here again?”
“Maybe we can drug him,” said Forgery, leaning his elbows on the table. Virgil refilled his coffee mug, and Forgery looked like Virgil had saved his life. Heartbeat looked scandalized.
“We aren’t drugging our highness!”
“I meant the Duke.”
“We aren’t drugging your grace either,” said Code. He was on the floor, apparently to think better. When Virgil had returned his tray to the counter, he joined Code on the linoleum tile. “No drugs.”
“Fine,” grumped Forgery. “What about a really big blow to the head?”
“ No! ”
“For the Duke , Heart! I’m not touching your highness.”
“I don’t want Duke to get hurt either,” said Heart, sticking his bottom lip out.
Forgery blinked, slowly. He seemed to reconsider some things. “Oh.”
“Forgery probably knows what his grace can and can’t take,” mumbled Code, staring up at the ceiling. “How are we going to get Prince there? Maybe bait?”
“We already tried using me,” said Virgil. “Maybe…”
He and Code both looked at Heart. Heart looked at Forgery, then realized Virgil and Code were both looking in his direction, so he turned and looked behind him, through the windows. “...who?” he asked. He pointed at a guy standing on the corner. “Him?”
Forgery sighed. “I’ll wear better armor this time.”
Virgil hoped Forgery’s armor was tough enough to survive that wall collapse. Prince grabbed Heart’s shoulder and hoisted him up, worriedly scanning over him.
“I’m fine!” Heart chirped, still happily blindfolded.
“You’re a medic ,” hissed Prince, scowling. He snatched Heart’s hand and tugged him out of the warehouse. “What he even wants with you…”
Virgil emerged from behind the stack of boxes he’d hid behind and squinted at the pile of rubble Forgery had been tossed into. “Hey!” he called. “Are you—”
“I’m fine!” came Forgery’s mumble, along with a long line of curses which Virgil was glad Heart had left before hearing.
“Well, maybe if we used Code— ”
“Why does this always happen! ” Forgery screeched, flying into a pillar with a crack. Virgil hoped that was the plastic armor and not his spine, but then Forgery stood up and very calmly walked into a stack of cardboard boxes and seemed okay, so it was probably the armor.
Prince had Code in a bridal carry, since Code was too busy on his laptop to even notice he’d been rescued. He probably hadn’t even noticed he’d been kidnapped
“Plan B, I guess,” muttered Virgil.
Forgery rolled out of the boxes next to Virgil so he could squint at him. “Your plans are numbered, what are you talking about—”
Virgil served another round of coffee, settling down in an armchair himself. Forgery scribbled out a half-planned plan on the portable whiteboard he brought, while Heart mixed jam into Code’s coffee for him, since Code was immersed in his phone.
The phone was notably of a different size and make than any of the other six phones Virgil had seen Code use before.
“We can get Prince there, but Duke never shows,” said Virgil.
“He’s been showing,” Forgery grumped, marker on his fingers. “Just right after Prince does.”
“It’s like he has some sixth sense!”
The bell jingled, and Virgil returned to his spot at the counter, leaving the SIDES to plan while he worked with the customer. He was still thinking about the plan, though, even as he mixed syrups and cream. Bait worked for Prince, but not for Duke. Maybe they should switch it.
Something was up with the money he’d been handed. “Did you just tip two percent?” he asked. “Did you seriously calculate two percent of six-fifty-nine just to tip me two percent?”
“What?” asked the customer, snacking absently on his scone, flicking through his phone. “I’m a busy man, I have more important things to spend money on.”
Virgil raised an eyebrow, watching the man’s arm. “You are wearing six watches right now. You clearly don’t.”
The man scoffed, straightening his expensive-looking suit and adjusting a seventh watch that had been around his other wrist. He could block a knife with those arms. “Whatever. Hurry up my order, I have to get back to work in Block A and it’s a...” He sniffed, adding an eighth watch. “Long trip from here. Furthest from the Border, you know how it is.”
Virgil rolled his eyes, writing absolute jerk on the go-cup. “Of course, Block A, right. The fancy Block. I hope you step on an ice cube with your socks on.”
“I’m taking my tip back,” scoffed the man, snatching away the twelve cents he’d dropped on the counter.
“I’m refusing service,” Virgil shot back in the same tone, pointedly tossing out the man’s coffee. The man sneered and stormed off, stuffing the rest of the scone in his mouth. Virgil hoped he got crumbs on his suit. He stashed the rest of the money in the cash register and looked up to three very surprised faces.
“...do you get customers like that all the time?” asked Heart. Virgil hadn’t thought they’d been listening.
“The only people who come to the Border like this are weirdos,” he explained. “I get like one actual person for every five DARK or LIGHT members. I’ve considered throwing myself out that window and letting myself pass out in the garbage bags by the bridge at least six times.”
“You’d sleep in garbage?” asked Code.
“The shop that throws it out is a mattress store. The good kind.” He grinned just thinking about it.
“Ah.”
“I really don’t think this is going to work,” said Prince, pacing around the street. Virgil sat on a piece of rubble, shivering. He was wearing an apron (black, dignified), but he hadn’t grabbed his coat before he’d been snatched away.
“It worked for you,” said Heart, next to Virgil on the rubble and playing hangman. “E?”
“No ‘E.’” Virgil drew an arm with his chalk.
“Rats.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it work on Duke ,” muttered Prince. He didn’t seem bothered by the cold, but he was the only one dressed for it. Heart’s gray lab coat was thin, and Virgil was wearing a worn, papery sweater. The cold ripped through it like it wasn’t even there.
“Why not?” Virgil asked.
“Forgery…” Prince paused, then started again. “Duke…”
“Take your time.”
Prince tossed Virgil a scowl, but he did take his time, pacing more. “I don’t think Duke cares.”
“About me?”
Prince crossed his arms, scowling more. Virgil would have worried that the scowl would overtake his whole face at this point, if Prince didn’t seem equally as worried. “About Forgery.”
“I think he’ll surprise you,” said Forgery, cross-legged on the ground, blindfolded and handcuffed. “What about ‘T’?” he asked Virgil’s general direction.
“No ‘T,’” said Virgil, drawing another arm on the brick with his bit of chalk. “You have I, P, and A. Not in that order, sorry—P, I, A. Three more letters to guess, two chances.”
“I’ve had plenty of time to be surprised,” said Prince. Something shifted, and he put a hand on his katana, but there was nothing there to fight.
Forgery didn’t seem concerned. “And plenty more time ahead of you,” he said. “Unless you mess it up.”
He didn’t add don’t mess it up , but Virgil heard it. He wondered if Prince had.
Heart frowned at the brick they were using for hangman. “...S?”
“No ‘S.’ There goes a leg.”
“He’s not coming,” said Prince. “He’ll send a general or something. Why did you guys think this would work?”
“You didn’t send a general,” said Heart, similarly unconcerned.
“Duke’s different .”
“Yeah, you keep saying that, I really don’t see how.” Forgery sighed, shifting into a more comfortable position on the ground, head tilted. “...G?”
“No G, and there goes your hangman.” Virgil drew the final leg and sat back. “It was ‘Pizazz.”
“I hate you. What about his hat. What about his sixty-two million buttons. Did you even add a face. This hangman is so unfashionable. Why pizazz. I hate you so much.”
“Forgery! Hate’s mean!”
“I have a strong dislike of you in the present moment,” Forgery amended.
Rubble shifted in the street in front of them. Code picked this spot because the other end of the street was utterly blocked by wreckage. They had considered all angles Duke could approach by, and cut them down to just one.
Although Virgil had a nagging suspicion that Duke would be more creative than that.
Duke jumped down from a building before anyone could react. Virgil caught the flash of a sequined green sash and a sparkling ruff before Forgery was snatched around the waist and both of them went flying back into the sky.
“Ah,” said Heart, shading his eyes with his hand as Prince gaped. “I’ve always wanted to try bungee jumping.”
“Try it and I’ll tell Logan.”
“But Romannnnnn… ”
Virgil mentally crossed out plan 2 .
District J, blocks 1-10, are now LIGHT!
District J, blocks 10-1, are now DARK!
District J, blocks 1-10, are now LIGHT!
Warning: Please evacuate District J! A battle is underway.
“We can’t get them to talk . That’s the most important part and that’s where we keep getting stuck,” Virgil decided. “That’s all we really need.”
“Maybe a voice call?” Logan held up his phone, out of uniform and horribly tired-looking. “We could record them, share it with the other…”
“But when they find out the trick, they’ll hate us,” said Patton, also out of uniform. He had big, round glasses on instead of his blocky black work ones, and they made his eyes look enormous.
“Why would they hate us when—”
“People aren’t logical when they’re emotional, and this would call up a lot of emotions,” Janus interrupted, flipping his mask over his fingers. “They’d get over it, but they’d hate us in the meantime, and it might shatter something we don’t want shattered. Dagger, not a saber, here. Fine touch.”
Logan nodded, accepting that answer. Virgil hadn’t anticipated this, when he began serving SIDES. Two LIGHT SIDES, one DARK, all in pajamas at his table, over laptops and notecards and one big corkboard full of writing from many different hands, discussing how to bring two other LIGHT and DARK leaders together. To make peace, and start a treaty.
He hadn’t anticipated this, ever.
“The issue is getting them to the same spot, right?”
“I tried trapping them under a building, but Prince just lifted it off,” Janus muttered, pillowing his head in his hands.
“What happened to plan six again?” asked Virgil, spinning a pen in his hands. His coffee was cold, he thought, and he turned to make a new cup, and another one for Janus when he saw the empty mug on the table.
“Well, we started the fight,” Patton began, “and then we brought all the other generals and left with them, and Roman didn’t notice for—”
“Sixteen minutes and thirty-four seconds,” said Logan. “Point-nine.”
“—Yeah, that. And when he and Remus did, they panicked, because they thought we’d been kidnapped again.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have stuck with plan one for so long?” said Janus, squinting. Logan raised a hand for a new cup of coffee, and Janus raised his eyebrows, signaling Virgil, who raised his own eyebrows in return.
Logan was not to be served any more caffeine. Virgil gave him decaf instead, and he didn’t notice, which confirmed it.
“I’m running out of ideas,” said Virgil, looking at their corkboard—a mess of string, notes, pictures and tacks.
“This is why Roman and Remus are the leaders,” Patton lamented, picking at his cookie. “They’re the creative ones. Plan-wise.”
Logan hummed agreement. “Maybe we could…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and nobody seemed keen to finish it for him.
Roman didn’t seem to like going to Patton lately, Virgil thought, searching in his updated first aid kit for bandages. Maybe that was because plan 9 was about dropping hints, and Patton wasn’t subtle. Either way, two weeks later found Roman sitting in Virgil’s armchair, sipping at tea with a split lip and bloody hands.
“What did you do this time?”
“I was climbing a ladder,” said Roman, watching the floor. “I didn’t know the ladder was covered in glass until Code told me later.”
Virgil never asked how the codenames worked. He figured, in-costume they were Prince and Forgery and Heart, out of costume they were Roman and Janus and Patton. He went with it.
“And then I got punched in the face,” Roman added, as an afterthought. “That hurt.”
“Hmm,” said Virgil, thinking it was obvious a punch in the face would hurt. He set about wrapping Roman’s hands, since he’d already disinfected everything. “Would you ever consider talking to your brother?”
“Not you too ,” Roman complained, hands jerking like he wanted to throw them in the air.
“What?”
“Patton and Logan have been on my case lately,” he muttered, slouching in his chair. “For heaven’s—I’ve tried. What more could I do? I tried, I failed, I cut my losses and myself out of the picture.” Roman rubbed at his face with the back of his wrapped hand, and looked a lot older than what Virgil knew he was. “End of story.”
Virgil sat back on his heels, keenly aware of how fragile this moment was. The moon was high above them through the ceiling, and the air was gentle and quiet. Early morning silence that could shatter if he said the wrong word. He sighed.
“Stories change,” said Virgil. “People change. I don’t know. I cut myself out of my own family long ago, I had to run away to save myself from them—what are you running from? I don’t think it’s your brother.”
“My brother doesn’t want anything to do with me,” said Roman, which wasn’t an answer. “I created all this for him, he doesn’t want it, that’s it.”
“So this is a pride thing,” Virgil deduced, going to wrap Roman’s other hand (it twitched under his fingers and Virgil wondered when his hands had started shaking).
“It’s an ideals thing,” Roman insisted. “We disagree. Chaos and order, that old story. He didn’t like the way I crafted my world, so he went off and crafted his own, and that’s—that’s it. I can’t make a world he’d like.”
“Oh,” said Virgil, peering at Roman, who had hidden his face in his hand. “Okay. It’s a failure thing.” He tied off Roman’s hand and stood, before Roman could try and protest again. “You care about how you failed more than you care about him. That’s the issue.”
“I care about my failure because I care about him,” said Roman, but he sounded unsure. “I—I can’t fail him.”
“Really? Does he know that?”
“He should know.”
“Have you told him?”
“...he should know,” repeated Roman. “I care about him. That’s the problem. He doesn’t care about what I do, he hates me, I can’t make anything good enough for him to—”
The last bit was mumbled into his hands. Virgil thought it might have been stay . It might have been love me. It might have been a sigh.
Virgil thought he may have pushed too far when Roman didn’t raise his head again, so he went back behind the counter, and made himself a cup of coffee. Busying his hands with the coffee maker made it easier to pretend he didn’t see Roman leaving.
District H, blocks 1-7, are now LIGHT!
District H, blocks 10-3, are now DARK!
Remus was easier to talk to than Roman, Virgil thought. He accepted things, maybe too easily, and any kind of topic of conversation along with that. Virgil could just go up to Remus and ask, “why won’t you talk to your brother?”
Remus shuffled through the old pack of Uno cards, laying them out. He shrugged. “He’ll yell at me. Do you know how to play?”
It was Virgil’s pack, so he did know how to play. He’d gotten it vintage off an old website, and he sat cross-legged in front of Remus while he dealt out the hands. “Do you know he’ll yell at you?”
“He always does when I talk to him about our issues. That’s how the story goes.”
“Stories change,” said Virgil, recalling what he’d said to Roman.
“Yeah, that’s what’s fun about them. But when you have something that works it’s hard to change it into something better, because it also might be worse. It’s scary.” Remus bent one of the cards over in his hands, arching it back into a curve. Virgil flipped one of the cards over, a blue four. Remus went first and put down a blue five. “My big brother doesn’t like change. He doesn’t like thinking there might be a better ending than the one he chose.”
“Didn’t you choose this ending too?” Somehow Virgil had been dealt all greens, and he drew another card. Red.
“Uh-huh.” Blue seven. “He doesn’t like being out of control. He likes having decisions and choices and perfection at his fingertips. I like… letting things happen. Enjoying them. The uncertainty of it all.” Remus’ eyes were glinting. “You never know what happens in the DARKness. Everything is clear in the LIGHT.”
Virgil finally got a blue card and set it down. Blue eight. He shuffled through his hand while Remus set down a red eight. “I heard the LIGHT was created for you.”
“It was forced on me,” Remus corrected, frowning. His mustache trembled, with the frown. “I never asked for it! I have my own plans.”
“Plans out of your big brother’s control,” Virgil concluded.
“Yep.” Red three. “My ideas aren’t good enough. Everything has to be made by him, following his ideals, otherwise it isn’t—I don’t know, good enough again.” Remus sighed. “I’m not good enough.”
“Don’t just accept that!” Virgil protested.
Remus looked… tired, Virgil thought. Tired and young. “I didn’t, and now I have. I can’t do anything, so I won’t. My big brother hates me, because I won’t do what he wants. It’s okay though! Yellow, plus four. Uno.”
Virgil didn’t have any yellow cards, and he didn’t have any yellow cards after he drew four extra either. Remus somehow knew that, Virgil thought. He somehow knew what cards Virgil would get, and how to avoid picking a color that would match them. Virgil would learn his tricks someday.
“What would happen if your brother let the story change?”
Remus held his one card in his hand tightly. His eyes were narrowed. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t have to. He won’t. He cares about it too much to let it change just for me.”
Remus set down a yellow plus two and left the bell jingling in the empty air.
Virgil pulled out his phone and updated his website.
The Depresso Expresso: Commence Operation 601
Status: Commence Operation 601
Hours: Commence Operation 601
Hey, Virgil-no-Dante…. What the heck?
—Topic started: Commence Operation 601
—NO GET BACK HERE EXPLAIN
—Commence Operation 601 Topic: Commence Operation 601
—THAT DOESN’T HELP
Chapter 8: almost there :)!
Chapter Text
The number 601 was chosen arbitrarily by Forgery in an attempt to make the plan sound cooler, and to serve as a red herring. Virgil thought it did make them sound cool, Code thought it was dumb, but Code made his glasses glow specifically to look like a smart anime character, so Code didn’t get an opinion.
*Commence Operation 601*
Datacode1: does it at least have a meaning?
Datacode 1: what does the 601 stand for?
Janice: the O is for awesome
Datacode1: Forgery, I am going to rearrange your phone layout.
hiiiiiiii: oh noes propa grammar :(
“I’ll be back by tomorrow,” said Emile, through the phone. “So all you have to do is get them to agree to mend the relationship bridge in the first place, and then I can help with the actual mending. And if that doesn’t work, then it’s okay. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“If it doesn’t work,” Emile continued, “we can try again, and I’ll try my best to work through it with them. It’ll be fine, if it doesn’t work out. You aren’t the therapist, and nobody is expecting you to get it right.”
“But it’d be easier for everyone if I do,” said Virgil, thinking about Emile trying to shout advice over Roman and Remus fighting.
“...yes.”
“I got it,” Virgil sighed, “I’m cool.”
“You sure?” asked Emile, which was… valid, because Virgil was rarely cool. He was one of Emile’s top patients for a reason.
“Yeah, I’m chill. I’m fine.” He shuffled his socked feet on the linoleum tile, watching the door. “I think they should be here soon. Thanks.”
“Anytime. See you soon!”
*Commence Operation 601*
Datacode1: Target moving in on location.
hiiiiiiiii: do you have to say Target and Location?? It makes this sound so serious haha
Janice: it is serious. We’re approaching the back door.
Kylofriend: roger that
Janice: I’m Janus not rofer
hiiiiiiiiii: hi Janice Im Patton
Datacode1: This is a nightmare.
The bell jingled, and Virgil practically hurled his phone away from him. It landed between his two coffee machines and then slid down to the counter.
Prince, Heartbeat, and Datacode walked in one after the other, Heartbeat chattering about something loudly, quickly, and very poorly.
“And then I said to her , I said, I said ‘ well well well if that’s not a waterhole I don’t know what is!’ and then she said ‘water you know about waterholes?’ and I said ‘do you really want me to spring the hole story on you—’”
Prince blinked, one eye at a time. He looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Virgil hoped that wouldn’t be an issue.
His phone buzzed. Virgil knew what the message said without looking, because at the same time he heard the back door open.
“Depresso Expresso,” he said, talking fast, “I just ran out of anxiety meds and I’m going to jitterbug into the next reality. Hold on a second.” He nodded to Heart and Code and raced out of the room and into the small storage cabinet behind him.
“Um,” said Duke, one foot on a box of coffee grounds. “I ground your coffee.”
“That’s fine,” said Forgery, awkwardly closing the back door while not knocking over any of the various items Virgil kept in the storage cabinet. “Can we come out of the closet now, or—”
Virgil listened, and heard a vague, “uh, what are you guys doing?” and he grabbed Duke’s hand, pulling him out of the closet and back into the shop. Heart and Code were pushing various tables and armchairs in front of the door.
Virgil scurried over the mess, ignoring all of them in his haste to lock the doors from the inside. He tested the door, made sure it was secure, and ran back to the storage closet and the back door, which he locked too. It was only after all of this that he thought to check Duke and Prince’s reactions.
He found himself surprised, because Duke and Prince didn’t have reactions.
They just stood there, staring at each other. Duke was shrivelling, Virgil thought. His shoulders were rising, his head was lowering, and his fists clenched by his sides as Prince closed his eyes and tried to collect himself.
“I just wanted coffee,” Duke muttered, scowling. “I thought I was getting—”
Forgery took one of the mugs Virgil had prepared and pressed it into Duke’s hand. Duke blinked down at it. “Oh,” he said.
“Fine,” said Prince, rummaging around in his pocket for money, snatching his own mug as well. “I’ll get the coffee, and then I’ll go.”
They both turned around.
Roman and Remus were creators. They looked at the world and thought, no, this can be better , and they went out and fixed it. They were constantly designing, refining, adding and tweaking and making anything that popped into their head, but it started with saying no. There’s more. No. This isn’t it. It isn’t right.
Virgil wasn’t a creator like them. Virgil didn’t go out and change the world when he found it lacking, he tried to come to terms with the lacking world he lived in. But he watched Roman stand there in his white coat and crown and Remus cross his arms and scowl in sequins and glitter, and he thought, this isn’t finished yet.
So Virgil said, “no.”
“No?” snapped Duke, glaring. “ No? No what?”
“You don’t get to walk away again,” said Virgil, standing his ground. He felt stares on him, but he scowled back. “You don’t get to walk away from each other and leave this undone. You’re being childish.”
“I’m not—”
“Sit down.” Virgil pointed at the chairs, the two Heart and Code had left facing each other. “You are going to sit down, and you’re going to talk to each other. You’re going to work this out. And if it ends with both of you leaving and never talking to each other again, so be it. But right here, right now, all of you are going to fix this mess you made. I don’t care if you decide you’re better off without each other, as long as you stop fighting.”
“You can’t— keep us here,” Prince sputtered. “I’m the prince, this is illegal.”
Virgil raised an eyebrow and held up his key. “You aren’t in the LIGHT SIDE, Roman Prince. You’re in the Expresso.”
“He’ll always be on that high horse,” said Duke, fingers so tight around his mug they blended in with the white ceramic. “He doesn’t care he isn’t in a LIGHT district, he’s still Prince Roman. ” He waved a hand and turned away, arms crossed..
Virgil plucked the crown off Prince’s head and tossed it aside. “There. No more crown. Weapons down. Crown off. You too, Remus.”
“Should’ve known you’d figure it out,” Roman muttered.
Virgil ignored that. His heart was too tired to pound, so he just stood there. “You, sit down over there, and you over there, and I’m locking the shop down until the day is up. You talk, or you don’t get coffee.”
“But Virgil —” Remus whined, but Virgil cut him off, pointing.
“Sit. I don’t care. I want my corner back.”
“You already had your corner,” said Roman, also glaring, “that was the deal. ”
“Yeah, well it’s my corner and my coffee and I’m changing that deal and there’s nothing you can do about it if you don’t want to get banned permanently. Deal with it, suck it up, and talk about your feelings.”
“What’ll they be doing, then?” asked Remus, slouching in his chair as he scowled at Forgery and Heart, who were busy getting rid of the more unnecessary parts of their costume.
Logan waved at him. “We’re going to be discussing a treaty between the LIGHT and the DARKness. You know. All the logistics of this new peace.”
“So this is a thing now? You’ve been working behind my back?” demanded Roman.
“We’ve been working right in front of you.” Patton flung his lab coat across a chair. “You were too caught up fighting to notice! Funny, right?”
“Why do you even care?” Remus asked, sulking. “It’s fine. ”
They really were acting like children, Virgil thought. He wondered if they had been children, the last time they really spoke.
“It’s not fine,” he insisted. “It’s not fine that I’ve had each of you in here repeatedly beaten up and crying because you each think your brother hates you because you’re not good enough. It’s not fine, and you can fix it. Now talk .”
He took his place behind the counter, and waited for the yelling to start.
“You told Virgil about me?”
“ You told Virgil about me! Oh, so you can do it but I can’t?”
“It’s different!”
“How! How is it different? Oh, I know, it’s not! You’re so controlling, DARK this is the worst, what so I can’t make my own choices? Step on a squirrel, Roman!”
“It was never about the choices—!”
“So, twenty-six districts, in a four-by-six rectangle… ten blocks per district...” Logan sketched out the rectangle on the whiteboard Virgil had given them, and added the extra squares on the bottom-left and top-right corners, so that the first and last vertical columns had five squares instead of four.
Janus tapped a square, frowning. “From top to bottom, left to right, Y-S-M-B-A, X-R-L-C, W-Q-R-D, V-R-J-E, U-O-I-F, Z-T-N-H-G,” he read, while Logan added in the relevant letters. Janus steepled his fingers under his chin. “Originally, the DARKness had control over districts Z-M. And the LIGHT had A-L, with the border here.” He traced a line through the middle of the rectangle, lengthwise, zig-zagging around M and hovering his finger so he didn’t smear the dry-erase marker.
“Pat, what’s the current border?” asked Logan, humming. “Just districts, please, majority blocks.”
Patton fidgeted with his phone and pulled up a map, taking a different colored marker and tracing the most overly complicated borderline Virgil had ever seen. It gave LIGHT twelve districts—A, B, C, D, F, H, K, L, Q, R, S and P—which left G and H alone on the edge of the city, disconnected from the rest of the LIGHT and surrounded by DARKness. It also left M and G stranded as DARK districts surrounded by LIGHT and almost cut off J, I, and E, which barely hung on to the rest of the DARK through O.
LIGHT’s districts kind of looked like a lizard thing, this way.
Logan fidgeted with his glasses. He’d turned off the lights on them, and his brown eyes were narrowed and thoughtful. “Now including blocks?”
Patton grimaced, redrawing the border. Virgil blinked, as Patton kept having to reference his phone and retrace his steps, doubling back over so that most LIGHT districts had at least a block or two that was DARK. The Border Districts were a mess, with some districts stranding blocks on the wrong SIDE and others such a mess of color and ink that Virgil couldn’t even tell what they were. It looked like someone had taken string and some tacks and strung it up randomly, with no thought for organization.
Logan hissed, rubbing at his face. Patton glanced at him and corrected a stray line.
Somehow that made it worse.
Janus narrowed his eyes. “Let’s fix this.”
“I’m a person , Roman! I change! I can change if I want to! You don’t control me! ”
“I’m not trying to control you, I’m trying to help you!”
“What’s with all those rules then, huh? What’s with all the, the no Remus, you can’t do that Remus, not like that Remus, I can’t do anything! Nothing I do is right so why should I even bother to follow your stupid nitpicking—”
“They aren’t rules! I was trying to help!”
“ I don’t want your help! ”
“I see what you’re trying to do,” said Patton, looking down at the new border—essentially, the original border, with a few changes. “But what about the people who’ve been living as DARK for so long and have established their own lives in that system? Should we really uproot them? Like, I do agree that LIGHT should get L, but what about L-10 through 7? They’ve been DARK for almost a year now. Should we change all the rules that quickly on them by forcing a border change?”
“...that’s a good point,” said Janus, leaning over the table. “Okay, what if we leave those blocks and districts be?”
“I think the issue is trade, not the differences in legislature.” Logan tapped at the lone districts that were stranded. “You can’t order anything from a different color district, and you can’t get orders through if they have to pass through a different color district too. Maybe we should focus on trade first and establishing some agreements there.”
Virgil smiled, quietly.
“What about you? What do you want ? I’ve done all this for you and you seem to think it doesn’t matter at all so what do I need to do for you to—”
“What? For me to what? For me to do what you want? I’m not one of your characters and I refuse to be. You can’t make me!” Duke stomped his foot.
“You’re so stubborn , I’m trying to make you happy—”
“You can’t make me happy, because you can’t make me do anything—”
“Why aren’t I enough? Why aren’t you ever happy with me? What am I doing wrong—”
“You can’t really believe that I ’m the problem — ”
Virgil passed out new cup of hot chocolate, extra cinnamon for Remus, and ducked away before they could get distracted.
Yelling was good, it was better than spitting or sneering or cold, annoyed mumbles. It meant they cared enough to yell, even though he knew neither of them saw it like that. They were hurt, he could see the raw wounds every time one of them raised their voice. But they needed to talk, at least.
Virgil thought that neither of them could hold their emotions in place long enough to talk about them if they couldn’t let those emotions out at the same time. Yelling was better than fighting.
Does anyone know what operation 601 is yet? Topic: Commence Operation 601
nope
Do you think he’s gonna tell us?
...nope
Dude the Expresso is like, locked down completely
Hmmm
“I can’t do anything right, okay? I’ve accepted it! I can’t do enough for you to stop treating me like the before image in your stupid– reformation savior program with your stupid rules and stupid ideals and look at the real actual me instead of your imaginary ideal potential me so I don’t care, okay? I don’t care! No matter what I do I’m not good enough for you—”
“They aren’t stupid!”
“Oh of course that’s all you care about. Your dreams are more important than me! They always take priority! I’m your brother!”
“You are my dreams!” Roman shouted.
Remus actually stepped back at that. He wiped his eyes. They’d both been crying. “...what?”
“Everything I do has been for you! I wanted to give it all for you! Look at this! This entire— kingdom, ” Roman spat, “has been for you! I made it for you. So you could be safe, and happy, and have freedom to do what you wanted, safely. So you could do—everything.” He waved a hand, then dropped it. He rubbed at his forehead. “I wasn’t trying to—to push it on you. Or force you to do anything, I just wanted you to stay. I just—I wanted you. To stay with me, I didn’t want to lose you and… LIGHT I never wanted you to die I was trying to keep you safe I love you I was trying to—” he cut himself off, face red.
Remus didn’t respond for a long while. His shoulders were shaking. He grabbed at the neckline of his T-shirt, using it to wipe his face and maybe hide it too. “Is that why you’re mad?” he said into the fabric, “because I don’t— need you?”
“I was trying to make you happy. ”
“I wasn’t happy!” snapped Remus.
“I know !”
Virgil sipped at his own cup of hot chocolate, casually moving things out of Remus’ way so he couldn’t hurl them at his brother. Logan leaned back in his chair. “Do we…?” he pointed at the fight.
“I think we’re fine,” said Janus, grabbing a potted plant before Remus could and setting it back down once Remus moved on to the chairs, which Patton scrambled to snatch away from him.
“I was trying to make you proud!”
“By kidnapping people? Yeah, that’ll definitely work—”
“I just wanted you to—to be pleased for once! You don’t—you’re never happy with anything I make—”
“Hypocrite! I made an entire kingdom for you and you hated it, I—”
“I worked so hard and you still don’t love me—”
“ Of course I do!”
Remus dropped his mug. Roman froze, but at the sound of the shattering he was leaping forward, pushing Remus back so he wouldn’t step on any of the shards. They were both breathing heavy.
Virgil raised his eyebrows over his mug.
Roman coughed. “I’ve got it.”
“I can—”
“You don’t have shoes on.” Roman seemed to realize his tone was too harsh by the hurt look on Remus’ face and softened. “I’ve got it,” he repeated.
“Okay.”
Virgil itched to stand up and get it for them, but he let Roman clean up the ceramic shards and wipe up the spilled hot chocolate, fidgeting with the rag once he was done.
“You’re my brother,” Roman said, voice breaking. He reached forward, to clutch at Remus’ shoulders. Remus almost seemed to melt into the touch, and Roman’s voice softened. Big-brother voice, Virgil thought. “I never stopped thinking that,” he promised, “I swear I never stopped.”
“I know.”
“And I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I tried to force you to—stay when you didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“I know,” said Remus. He wrapped his arms around Roman’s waist. Virgil didn’t know he could be quiet. “I’m sorry I left.”
“You had to.”
“I’m still sorry.”
Roman nodded. He pulled away, to put away the rag and the broom and the dustpan. Remus just stood there in the middle of the shop, waiting for Roman to come back, instead of trying to make a break for it.
Virgil thought things were progressing.
“What about if a criminal breaks loose and runs into a DARK district?”
“Got a lot of criminals lately?” asked Logan, eyebrow raised. He yawned, but Virgil didn’t give him more caffeine.
“People seem to think the DARKness would be more lenient on them,” Janus scoffed. He had bags under his eyes. “If anything, we’re harsher with the laws that matter.”
“...we can work on an extradition system,” Logan decided. Patton had fallen asleep on the table, and Virgil brought him a blanket.
“Should we schedule a different time for that?”
“Yes, I think it’s more important for now that we finish the inter-district marriage agreement, right?”
“That’d be great,” said Virgil, thinking about Emile and Remy Picani, separated on either side of the Border.
“Wonderful.”
“I think,” said Roman, “we need to talk more often.”
They were laid out on the floor, feet pointing in opposite directions and heads together. Virgil thought this was a layout they were used to—he wondered what they talked about like this, before.
“Yeah,” Remus laughed. “We do.”
A pause.
“I’m sorry about the building,” said Roman, suddenly. Like he’d been waiting to say it.
“I’m sorry about the lazers, and the rubble, and saying you were a sensitive idiot paler than a dead man with the love life of one too. And I’m sorry for meaning it when I said it.”
“I didn’t know you said that, when did you—”
“I blocked you on Chatter for a week?”
“Oh, right, yeah I remember that. That was after the crane?”
“Mmhmm, I hate cranes now.”
“Then I deserved it. Cranes are the worst anyway.”
“They really are.”
Another pause. Virgil kept one ear on the discussion going on in the corner, now on the Border Districts, and brewed another cup of coffee.
“I think,” hummed Remus, “thinking you hated me hurt more than the building. And the crane. And I think realizing you thought I hated you hurt worse.”
“Yeah. It hurt.” Roman sighed. “But I think it would have hurt more to think you didn’t care at all.”
“I waged a war to know you cared about what I did,” said Remus. He turned on his stomach and propped his head on his hands. “I wasn’t worried about that. I was worried you didn’t care about me. Or what happened to me. You dropped a building on me. And a crane.”
Roman reached up and took Remus’ hand. “I’ll always care.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll care enough to run after you when you leave. I’m not sorry about that.”
Remus smiled. “Good. I’m not sorry for leaving.”
Roman took his other hand and ruffled Remus’ hair. “Good. You should dye that white streak red.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Was that a pun?” Patton shouted, interrupting his conversation with Janus about bettering the perception of the DARK SIDES in LIGHT DISTRICTS and vice-versa.
“Why do you think we have so many issues?” Janus asked the room sometime when it was quieter, and Virgil was guzzling coffee from the jug to keep awake.
“We grew up in a gang-infested police-state of a city with a useless government,” said Logan. “That’s probably part of it.”
“We’re also orphans,” said Roman, casually. Virgil had forgotten about that.
Remus took another scone from the counter. “It’s the trauma.”
“When in doubt, it’s always trauma,” Roman agreed.
They should put that on a shirt. When in doubt, it’s trauma. Remy would love it. Remy would buy it for Emile, and Emile would love it too.
Maybe Virgil should start making merch.
“They’re doing fine,” said Virgil, when he sat down at the table with his tray and a plate of pastries. Logan looked up from a stack of papers, and Janus smiled at him.
“I knew they would.”
“It was how much screaming it’d take to get there that was the issue,” Logan agreed.
“Hmm.” Virgil passed out new cups of coffee, caffeinated, now, because the day would start soon, and rallied up confidence he hadn’t had to grab in so long he was unused to it. “I have some demands.”
Janus raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You’re trapped in here too. You have to do what I say.”
Logan opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. He slumped. “...that’s true. What is it?”
“I don’t want to be in either district.”
“You’re kidding,” Janus whined. He shook one of the papers. “We just got the border done, I—”
“The border can stay the same,” Virgil interrupted. “I can be in both. And neither. And it doesn’t even have to be the whole block, just this shop. No fighting in here, no politics, no border. Just the Expresso.”
“Can he do that?” mumbled Patton, sleepily, into his arms. Logan readjusted the blanket, thinking.
“...he will anyway,” Janus said. Virgil liked it better when his mask was off, because this way his whole smile shined through and it looked much more genuine, much less devious. “We can’t stop him.”
“True.”
Seriously Virgil-no-Dante what’s Operation 601?
—Complete.
—well that isn’t vague at all
“Why didn’t we ever talk before?” asked Remus.
“I was scared,” said Roman. Virgil thought people could only admit things like that at night, in the dark. It was safer, then, before everyone else was awake. It was quiet. There was space in the air for the words a confession takes up. “I was scared that I was admitting I was lesser, and I already wasn’t enough for you to love me.”
“You… don’t have to be enough,” said Remus. He leaned back, into Roman’s arm. “You just have to be my big brother and that’s you.”
Roman tucked his head on Remus’ shoulder. “Thank you.”
“...you smell bad, are you wearing new cologne?”
“It’s not bad! ”
“It’s awful!”
“It’s sophisticated. ”
“You smell like a rotting beach, how is that sophisticated—”
“It’s sandalwood!”
The thing about time is that it always moves, and quite often it moves linearly. No matter how still a moment might feel, time is always ticking away, and the earth is always turning, and the world is always moving, somewhere. In the Depresso Expresso the sun rose, casting warm yellow-gold-orange on the fake marble counter and linoleum floors. Logan and Janus moved the furniture back where it used to be, and Virgil unlocked the doors. Patton was still sleeping, but Virgil thought he was already awake, just pretending so he could give Roman and Remus a bit of privacy while they said goodbye. That was why Virgil was struggling with a lock he’d used a million times before, anyway.
Remus left first, with Janus, towards the DARKness. Roman watched him go with a smile softer than anything Virgil had seen him wear before, a go-cup in his hand. Virgil didn’t remember giving that to him—he must have gotten it himself.
“Thanks,” Roman said, as Logan tried his best to get Patton on his feet and out the door (maybe, on second thought, the sleepiness wasn’t a ruse). “For the coffee, and the hot chocolate, and the mochas. I wouldn’t have survived the night without them, I don’t think.”
“I switched it out to decaf halfway through.”
“I hate you.”
“Happy to help,” said Virgil. He updated his website, open , thinking about contacting Emile to let him know where they were progress-wise, about how they still had some ways to go but they were getting there. The broken bits of the old bridge had been taken down and plans were made to build a new one.
It didn’t have to be good enough, Virgil thought, it just had to be. First step was existence.
The bell jingled. Virgil grinned, probably a bit deranged since he’d been up all night, and poised his fingers over the cash register. “Depresso Expresso, how can I express your depress?”
“Can I have a vanilla iced latte?”
Virgil paused, something horrible building in his chest. He’d forgotten that people loved lattes somewhere between his first jug of milk and half of the second one, because his hot chocolate recipe needed milk and so did Logan and Janus’ favorite drinks and they’d been chugging coffee all night. And the dread was crawling up his spine by now, and he choked out a hurried, “...one second, please.”
“Okay?” said the woman, sounding confused about why he was suddenly ducking behind the counter.
Virgil opened the fridge, rummaged around, and pulled out an empty milk jug.
Chapter 9: unnecessary bonus epilogue! for fun!
Chapter Text
“No, no, you can’t make something that thin with ice, what if it breaks?”
“But what if it doesn’t break?”
“...but what if it breaks?”
“Do it,” said Remus, interrupting Patton and Roman’s conversation. “Do it, or you’re a coward.”
Roman gasped, snatching the ice pick. “I’m no coward!”
“ Please ,” Virgil begged, watching this happen from behind his counter. “I just need ice, I don’t need an ice rose.”
“Only the best rose for the supplier of our coffee!” Roman declared. Jo stepped into the shop at the same time Roman ran out, arms full of boxes of food.
She wrinkled her nose. “Who was that?”
“Doesn’t matter!” Jemima called from behind her. “Virgil, where do you want the sweet potatoes?”
“By the mashed ones!” Virgil yelled back, watching as casserole pans and pots and takeout boxes were lined up on the counter. “You… didn’t need to bring that much food.”
“It’s a potluck dinner, right?” Jo asked, grinning widely. “Well I got to thinking, what if nobody else brought food? And I was the only one? So I brought enough for everyone so my anxiety could shut up and eat the rest!” She laughed at his expresso and punched him in the shoulder. “Relax. You’ll have leftovers. Maybe you can put it on the menu if you have too much.”
“Okay, so we have Owen, Steve, Joan, Linda, all three Marys, Blendan, Enigma, Tyler and Sasha, the Dragon Witch, Lee, Mary Lee, Remy and Emile Picani, and…” Logan tapped his pen on his clipboard, fidgeting with his glasses and accidentally turning them on so they flashed.
“Thomas,” Janus added. “And that guy.”
He pointed across the room to a man sitting in one of the armchairs that had been pushed into the corner, to make room for a table that stretched far into the street. The man was wearing orange, and had an eyepatch, and was generally scowling at everyone who passed. It was a very grumpy and indignant scowl, like he had been dragged here against his will and he wanted to make sure everyone knew he was upset about it.
Virgil squinted at him. “Do you know who he is?”
Logan shrugged, returning to his clipboard. “He’s on the DARK SIDE, I know that,” he said. “I’m not too concerned. We’ll know eventually.”
“Huh.”
Something crashed outside, and Virgil almost fell over. He straightened, mutters his annoyances, and yelled, “What was that?”
“Sorry!” Remus yelled back. When he poked his head back inside his face was streaked with dust. “We ran out of tables but have more people coming so Roman and I broke a pillar to use as another table.”
“You broke…”
“A pillar, yes.”
“We ran out of tables?”
“There were more citizens who wanted to come than we anticipated,” Janus said, dictating where the next round of dishes would go. “Anniversaries are like that, I guess.”
Roman wandered into the shop with Patton, arguing. His crown was gone, and Virgil wondered where it went for exactly two seconds before he saw Remus run by, waving it over his head. Virgil decided not to say anything.
“We can’t have the coders next to the knights,” Roman was protesting.
“Why not?” Patton countered. “That way they aren’t next to the DARK medics and it’s fine.”
“They’re so boring! All they want to talk about is code and literature and tech programs and it’s so annoying .”
“Just place them next to the DARK technicians?” Virgil suggested, only to have to roll his eyes at Roman’s look of utter exasperation.
“That’d be even worse! ” he gasped. “They’d be competing all night. No. Coders next to the medics.”
“LIGHT medics or DARK medics?”
“Either set are good, they’re too nice.”
“The DARK ones are tougher than you’d think,” Janus sang, passing by with the largest cake Virgil had ever seen.
Remus raced into the shop and almost tripped over a fallen fork. “There’s a badminton tournament going on with a disabled grenade and old swords,” he reported.
Something exploded outside. “We’re good!” A DARK medic called through the door. “I won!”
Remus paused. “There was a badminton tournament with a disabled grenade and old swords,” he corrected. “And I had nothing to do with it.”
Virgil stared at him. Janus lowered his head onto the counter and didn’t make a sound. Remus shuffled awkwardly.
“Thought you should know,” he added, and then he raced off again. He still had Roman’s crown, Virgil noted. Roman was coming up the street with arms full of baguettes that he was helping a family carry. He expected Roman to be angry his crown was taken.
Instead, he and Remus stood in the middle of the street and pointed at each other.
“Dust dusts dust, you know,” said Remus.
“Huh. Verbs,” Roman responded. “That’s cool. You beat the rhythm, congrats.”
They high-fived, then continued walking.
Odd.
guys, i cant even get close to the expresso today whats with all the traffic??
—war anniversary block party! bring chips!
—no dont bring chips we have too many
—no such thing!
—yes there is were blocking the street take your chips and leave us alone
pic with the ladies at the warniversary party!!
—is that prince in the background? What's he doing?
—no I think that's the duke
—Did they switch clothes again??? I thought Data made them stop doing that
“We were supposed to start eating two hours ago!” Patton complained, holding up his wrist with the watch Janus gave him a month ago.
There was still a long line of people coming up the sidewalk, mainly LIGHT and DARK officers, but also civilians. Virgil noted, “People are still coming—”
“Emile and Remy are already here, and everyone else can trickle in! It’s fine!” Roman decided, grabbing Virgil’s arm and tugging him out of the shop. The sidewalk was full of noise. Somebody had gotten a karaoke machine and was trying to sing along to some old vintage Disney song. Something about letting it go, or snow.
Once everyone was gone, they were supposed to have a Disney movie marathon. Just the first fifty movies, since apparently after that they got bad.
“Virgil! Over here!” Emile yelled. He and Remy were sitting near the middle of the giant table, with Roman and Remus.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s here, great,” Roman said, waving a hand dismissively. “But as I was saying—”
“ Hey ,” Virgil complained, sitting on an old lawn chair. Somehow, Roman had gotten a throne pulled around to the table (a folding table, with a plastic tablecloth thrown over it). “You get to talk to him every week in therapy, I haven’t seen his face in a month.”
“You get to talk to Remy all the time too! You hired him!” Remus whined, pushing at Virgil’s shoulder to get him to move over. He was constructing his own chair out of fallen bricks from uncollected rubble (a year wasn’t long enough to get rid of all of it, evidently).
“He only works on weekends,” Virgil grumped. But he was smiling.
He’d been smiling a lot, lately.
“HEY!” Patton declared from the shop, waving everyone in. “FOOD!”
Janus raced by, somehow having made it all the way across the street while Virgil wasn’t looking. Virgil called, “what are you—”
“They have pistachio cheesecake!” Janus yelled back, words lost in the rush of people running to get plates full of food. And Virgil still saw more people coming up the street, bringing their own tables and chairs and picnic baskets. One person was rolling up a projector, and people were hanging sheets from their balconies to act as a screen so they could show an old cartoon about precious gems and war. Virgil wasn’t really watching. His phone was off and somewhere in the shop, and even though he’d never heard his street so noisy, he felt quiet. Peaceful.
He was staring up at the sky, the clear, blue sky, the sun still beaming down at six PM.
It was nice.
For people going to the War-niversary Celebration at the Depresso Expresso: We appreciate your generosity, but if you are going to bring an item for the potluck, please refrain from choosing chips, pie, or soda, and instead choose something like salad, fruit, or wine. Thank you, and please enjoy the festivities.
—hello Data!!!
—Is it just me or has Data been on Chatter a whole lot more recently? Like we went from one sighting a year at best to seeing him like every month?
—sir is on social media nature is healing
—but sir you said no alcohol in our meeting just last week though
—The wine is for me.
Selfie with Heart!! <3
Secret recipe for Depresso Expresso Caramel Dream Latte: link
forge has like not gotten off his phone the entire time he's been here what's he doing
—secret mission secret mission mission impossible lets all spy on him
—Or. We could. Respect his privacy? Maybe?
—no let's be spies Topic: Spying on Forgery
Secret recipe for Sleepy Fantasy Purple Macchiato Swirl: link
guys he's on Chatter I'd recognize that formatting anywhere Topic: Spying on Forgery
We could at least be a bit more subtle about it Topic: Spying on Forgery
Guys, I just tried the Heavenly Dream Pink Pink Pink Drink with Fudge Drizzle and it was so good!! Everybody should try!! recipe here
is anybody still kind of weirded out that the war is over? like I keep expecting to hear laser guns at night but there's nothing there of course and I just end up staying awake all night.
—That! Is! Trauma!
—Great thank you I'd never realized we were all traumatized before you told me thats very helpful
Secret recipe for Block Party Block Party Chocolate Strawberry Delight Sundae Dream: link
—Janice_Sights none of your links work! They only take me back to the Expresso Depresso home page, which even seems to have a glitch. Please fix this soon, because I want to try the Matcha Green Lawn Day Frap today at the block party. Thank you.
—oh no, really? what a shame...
Hey guys the Depresso Expresso page is being really weird?? Is that happening to anyone else?
—I think the Duke pranked him and stuck a virus or something in the page honestly. The tentacle gifs scream "our grace" all over them.
He updated his website.
The Depresso Expresso: marking one year anniversary of when I locked two people in a small room for world peace
Status: Open indefinitely for party
Hours: idk just come when you want, no restrictions
"You know," said Janus, sitting next to him on the counter while Virgil made them all coffee. The party blared on outside. "The 'Status' bar was meant for color status. People can tell whether you're open or not by the 'Hours' bar, they don't need an extra one to tell them how to look at a clock."
Virgil threw the milk carton at him, and he squawked and fell off the counter. "I do what I want."
"To my despair," Logan muttered. Virgil raised a carton of soymilk, and Logan wisely backed off. "Fine, whatever, do what you want."
"I don't need your permission. Get that jam out of here or I'll throw it."
"It's just Crofter's," Logan pleaded.
"Yeah, Virgil!" shouted Roman, from the party. His crown was missing again, and a group of DARK generals were trying to goad him to the dunk tank. "Let loose a little!"
"It's blasphemous. Fine. One spoonful. And I'm never doing this again."
"A small price for peace," Forgery commented into his coffee. "Our work here is done."
"Shut up, you barely helped."
Guys seriously stop bringing chips we're going to sink the city
—we can use the chip bags as floaties!
—Heartbeat no-
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Pan_without_a_plan1776 on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Mar 2022 06:13AM UTC
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Duckduck_Scribblerswan (Caellie_E_and_Vaye_R) on Chapter 2 Sat 26 Mar 2022 03:14AM UTC
Last Edited Sat 26 Mar 2022 03:15AM UTC
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TheOneAndOnly25000 on Chapter 2 Sun 27 Mar 2022 05:33AM UTC
Last Edited Sun 27 Mar 2022 05:33AM UTC
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Duckduck_Scribblerswan (Caellie_E_and_Vaye_R) on Chapter 2 Wed 30 Mar 2022 04:25PM UTC
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Emily_rose_06 on Chapter 2 Wed 13 Apr 2022 08:43AM UTC
Last Edited Wed 13 Apr 2022 08:43AM UTC
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Duckduck_Scribblerswan (Caellie_E_and_Vaye_R) on Chapter 2 Thu 14 Apr 2022 05:01PM UTC
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Nayv on Chapter 2 Sat 24 Sep 2022 06:56PM UTC
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VorpalGirl on Chapter 2 Wed 22 Mar 2023 06:20AM UTC
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Its_Maggie on Chapter 2 Sat 18 Nov 2023 03:38AM UTC
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