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[The following records are confidential and should not be read by anyone of rank A01FW or lower. It is prohibited to share or redistribute any of the information included in this document; if you are not the person or entity of the corresponding rank, you may not disclose or use the information in any way, shape or form. The future of the Federation relies on these texts.]
[June 25th, 11:02:13]
Good morning. I am part of the QSMP Census Bureau. This interview is a standardised procedure following your request to
[REDACTED]
on the island. It is imperative that you answer all of the questions with utmost honesty.
May we begin?
Yes.
First question: What is your name?
Humid breeze brushes against her calves as she lays on the ground unmoving, hair woven with rubble and soot, privy to the creak of ligaments and roused muscles that make up her ribs.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Her ears ring.
With each footstep taken around her, a heavy thud sounds an echo into her slowly waking mind. It bounces around the hollow cartilage of her cranium, reverberates down her spine to the very tips of her fingers…
Did Icarus ever find out just how loud the sun is?
Exhale .
Inhale .
Maybe it's best he didn't.
Her fingertips scramble for hold on the ground then, more sensitive than she remembers them being, more sore too, as they brush against sharp andesite gravel.
The world is so loud already.
A cacophony of voices and yelling mingle somewhere around her, demanding to pry apart the wax shell lulling her to sleep. Then, within a second of calm, something touches the tender skin of her hand.
"-en, are you okay?"
The force with which she sits up meets her stomach on the way back—a bit too fast, even for the adrenaline making rounds through her pumping heart, and it's a hand on the sleeve of her shirt, warm and steady, that helps the bile settle back down where it should be.
Her chest spasms as it tries to regain lost control.
Laugher bubbles from her throat.
"I totally didn't survive that fall, did I?" she wheezes, and the low rumble of amusement above her tells her everything she needs to know in response.
"No,” laughs Wilbur, “no I think you left us for a moment there.”
When he stands up then, tall and lanky, his silhouette provides a pleasant relief from the afternoon sun. With all the running around, she hadn’t realised just how hot it had gotten.
More footsteps grind against the gravel somewhere near her back.
"Are you all good now? All your senses back?"
She doesn't exactly recognise the voice, even with a face attached seconds later, hair hiding what little the mask hadn't already, but it is friendly enough to relax.
A few other people take a break from their confusion to look her way, worry and interest etched in their eyebrows.
All familiar strangers.
"Yup, I'm good.”
She glances at her hands without moving her head.
“Just… Might need to take it slow for a minute, y'know," her fingers, singed and beaten beyond recognition, barely twitch when she tries to raise them. "Take a bit to regain feeling in my hands. Get my breathing under control, all that stuff."
Wilbur nods his head at her.
A lyre of sounds nestles itself into her brain steady as an upcoming tide; rustling of leaves, pinging of communicators, calls of bugs scuttling between fallen rocks. Something that sounds like laughter, too, a bit to her left—if she reaches out past the ringing.
A group of friends, standing not far from her feet, swear excitedly at a young man with some fast paced Spanish. The boy is lying flat on broken andesite, limbs sprawled and face stuffed in a patch of moss, and even though his fingers are a distinct shade of dying purple, his friends appear to be doing anything but helping him regain his bearings.
One of them pokes him with a stick and she giggles despite herself.
“Can he even breathe?”
Recounting the times she herself fell face first on the ground, her nose scrunches in phantom pain. Getting your breath knocked out is one thing, but a smashed nose hurts , first and foremost, before you even start drowning in all the blood. It's not the most dangerous way to go, certainly no lava, but it is unpleasant like nothing else.
"Está bien," comes the relaxed reply from beside her and as if on cue, the man on the ground turns his head just enough to bark out a string of curses.
She smiles something crooked and amused. "I see, that's good."
The masked person turns their head just so, as if to ask the same right back at her; if she's okay, despite having just had that exact conversation. It is redundant and sweet, and she's anything but used to it.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one that ate shit in the explosion," she jokes, just to steer conversation.
There's an explosion in her chest then, albeit smaller, more personal than the detonation that's still ringing around her neurons. A rib suddenly pops back into its place, between her breaths and laugher, and she yelps in surprise more than pain.
The concerned look is back for a second.
Then she wheezes, laughs like she just got caught with her hand in a cookie jar and surprisingly, the person joins right alongside her.
Humid breeze picks up and she feels her hair brush against the small of her back.
"I… know we probably met already, before all this," she coughs, feeling her face twist in embarrassment as more and more words fumble out, "but I'm horrible with social interactions and honestly, I think my brain is a bit fried. So I'm really sorry, but I think- I totally forgot your name, is what I'm trying to say."
One would think she'd get better at talking to others with age, not the reverse, yet the last time she got to speak to a living person had been back in the jungle commune and even that was… Too long ago to properly comprehend.
“Don't worry, don't worry I totally get it," the person says, and she catches a glimpse of a toothy smile beneath the mask. "My name is Missa.”
"I'm Jaiden," she tells him, extending her aching wings in a way of greeting, and then recites slowly with great concentration, "Mi nombre es Jaiden."
My name is Jaiden.
Is that all there is?
I don't know, I can't remember. I can't remember if I ever went by a different name. Or, well, there was this one time-
Wilbur called me Javiera. Back at the very beginning. It was a role we played though, more than anything, me and him and Charlie. Philza too, for a bit.
Is that important?
I don't know. Maybe.
It's been a long time since then.
Everyone just calls me Jaiden.
Noted.
Where do you live?
With quick but uncertain movements, Jaiden shakes out the duvet in her hold, once, twice, before folding it onto the bed.
Just like she did yesterday.
Just like she did the day before, and the one before that, and yet…
Her hands hesitate as she checks the bed next to hers, the washed-out red cotton of it creased and folded with lazy practice that still, despite her best attempts, escapes her muscles.
Fold the duvet third of the way.
Above.
Tuck under.
That's how it was when she first came through the door. That's the way Roier does it.
Jaiden isn't used to living in other people's houses—or even staying for long enough to know how they make their beds. Before boarding the train, she mostly lived in inns. Her wanderings led to villages and camps and canopies atop the world, few of them so high up in the sky the flowers bloomed in fertile ground of decaying meat. She was welcome in some of them, hunted in others, but blissfully alone in most. That is the way she had lived for as long as she could remember.
Just her alone. Nothing to her name. Nothing to be left behind but poorly concealed memories and fading bonds.
Her eyes dart back and forth as she brushes out a crease, picks up a stray feather that escaped her sight the first time.
Today, like most days, Roier's house smells of toasted bread. There is a plate waiting for her once she's ready to move from the beds, still warm and buttery and delicious to her growling stomach.
It was tamales yesterday.
The day before that, she woke up to a bowl of soup.
There must have been a deciding point, some time this past week, where Roier clocked her as a horrible cook; correctly so, but it did nothing to ease the anxiety in her chest as he showered her with food. Only ingredients, at first. Then it was the toast, simple yet fulfilling, and sushi after that—accidentally made too much of it—until it turned to pizzas and pies, quesadillas and tamales and keys to the farm in the lower part of the house.
She supposes it must be a survival tactic on his part. After all, she is just as responsible for Bobby's wellbeing as him. Taking care of her until she gets her own food, until she gets her own resources and makes her own armor and tools and roof to crash under—it makes sense.
Anything for Bobby.
It simply means that, until then, her brain has to take careful note of every little thing. Make a list—one that has her teeth snap too hard on her breakfast, has her wings bristling and legs bouncing underneath the table—and add onto it, until her debt is cleared.
Cookies and oil, iron, coal, barrels, glass, motor fuel, a new dust pan (probably, since the one Roier has has feathers and hair stuck in the bristles), redstone and copper, one motor boat (lost the last one when killed out at sea), some wool, lapis lazuli, bread, new sheets…
She finishes her toast and looks out the small window to the purple leaves fluttering by.
She should really move out soon.
There must be a tipping point to Roier's patience.
I recently moved out.
I lived inside the wall at first, until I kinda invited myself to move in with Roier, once we became partners. It was convenient, in a way, because at least I was around if anything were to happen to Bobby.
Which is…
Haha… There's something to be said about that, in retrospect.
In any case, I have Bobby Fields now. That's where all my stuff is.
Noted.
Are you happy?
We already had this conversation, didn't we? You know the answer. I'm pretty sure that's the reason I am here in the first place.
Yes.
I'm learning to live with it. It's… a very slow process.
What would make you happy?
I want all the eggs on the island to be safe, so that no other parent has to go through what I have. I'm prepared to do anything to make that happen.
You didn't answer the question.
I… what?
…
I don’t understand.
Who are your friends?
A droplet of sweat falls onto the cracked stone surface at her feet.
She raises her arms, the rusty pickaxe in her hold slipping slightly with the precipitation covering the handle. Her fingers move instinctively, here and there, rotating the tool with practised subtle movements, trying to find a spot on the handle that isn't so awfully wet.
Jaiden bares her teeth. There's no time for a break—not yet, at least. She’s found barely enough iron to make a set of new armor. That won't cut it at all.
Holding her breath, she flexes her arms in preparation to slam the head of the pickaxe against the wall, makeshift and barely scratched, when a horrific inhuman wail sounds from the mine behind her back.
She freezes dead cold in her tracks.
A few feathers fall left and right when she turns, brandishing the pickaxe in both her hands like a weapon of mass destruction. Her wings touch the surface of the uneven walls and then some, an animalistic ghost marking the edges of her silhouette despite the desperate voice in her head screaming at her to dig down and cry.
She bites into her lip to keep quiet.
There's a sound of collision then, a splash right after, claws scratching against hard stone, each single noise making its way straight to the heart beating loudly in her throat.
Another screech rounds the corner and her heart stops beating altogether.
The creature flaps its wet wings. Jaiden holds her breath as steady as she can, strengthens the hold on her pickaxe for good measure and when she turns her head ever so slightly, it is just in time for the flame of a torch to reveal a hurling blue blur.
Her pickaxe clutters to the ground.
"Bobby!"
The second she kneels down, Bobby barrels into her with his full running speed, tiny arms wrapping around her neck and feet clawing at her shirt for leverage.
"Bobby! You scared the living bejesus out of me!"
She cradles the baby against her chest with laboured breath and bits of laughter spilling from her throat. Bobby snaps and screeches right against her ear, babbles complaints she can't understand and sounds that make her chest grow fonder.
"Are you alright? I thought you were with Roier.”
She caresses his back and Bobby lets out more clicks. “Where is he?"
At her question, Bobby's wails increase in intensity, the sound like a bullet brushing against her frail feathers. He jumps down from her chest—claws snatching at the fabric and adding to the ever growing collection of holes—and lands on the ground with a wet slap.
The single torch at their feet dwindles minutely.
There's a notepad in his hands within seconds, shaking here and there as he furiously scribbles onto it with a coloured marker. When he turns the page towards Jaiden, his eyes are enormous and watery, and the text that spans over the whole paper with barely legible letters says:
"apa is sad at me"
It's a tragedy.
"Is he… You made Roier sad?" She tries to hold her disbelief at bay as she squats down to his level and leans over to read the text better.
This time, the page he shows her has droplets of tears warping the paper, the letters almost lost to the discoloration.
"I said a bad thing and apa is sad"
Oh.
Bobby throws his notebook on the ground and stares at it with disdain, looking for all the world like he wants to start chewing at it just to calm himself down.
"Where is Roier, Bobby?" Jaiden asks.
The thing about Roier was that he didn't tend to get sad. Not exactly, at least.
Not with his friends, certainly not when he was playing around with Bobby, trading punches and words she barely understood, ones that only people who loved each other very much could exchange with such velocity.
Roier didn't get sad and Bobby didn't cry. That was one of the things she knew about the two of them.
Even now, it is evident with the way the little dragon is stamping his feet and running around with snot pouring down his snout, that he doesn't know what to do with himself.
Jaiden watches him pick up the notebook and marker, falling over himself several times as he runs around their little spot, writing and screeching at the same time. At last, she is begrudgingly shown another page.
"apa don't want to see me" it says.
Jaiden coos at him sympathetically.
"Aw, Bobby, don't say that! Roier loves you! Maybe he just needed a little time for himself.”
She opens her arms and Bobby latches around her neck again, sniffing and chewing at the collar of her cropped jacket.
“Listen, Bobby, when you play around with someone, even if you love them very much, you might accidentally end up hurting them. That just happens. What's important is that you realise you made a mistake and you apologise, so the other person knows you didn't mean to hurt them. Okay?"
Carefully bending down to pick up her pickaxe and the dwindling torch, she slowly makes her way back, with the baby dragon fast secure around her chest.
"We'll find Roier together! And you can tell him how sorry you are for what you said.”
And that is truly the plan. It just turns out the way back is longer than strictly necessary, because Jaiden isn't exactly made to navigate the underground, and Bobby is too busy trying to find a diamond or a cool rock he can give Roier in an apology.
They finally find him at sundown, hunched over on the roof of their house.
When they make eye contact, Jaiden's eyes turn to crescents.
"Hola!"
“Hola, Jaiden.”
It's a bit of a way to scramble on top of the roof, especially with three thin arrows incessantly stuck in her back. Bobby beats her to the climb, jumping around the crumbling stone pillars without slightest worry in the world.
The wind ruffles the purple canopies of the yard and she feels some of them brush against her feathers.
She doesn't catch Bobby moping anxiously once he's standing on the roof, even if she can hear it in the way his tail rapps on the tile. Instead, when she finally pulls herself up, it's just in time to catch the little dragon running around Roier’s feet, with the man himself reading a crumpled wet note. He looks....absolutely shit up close. But when he picks Bobby up and spins him around, some of the weight visibly crumbles from his shoulders.
And Jaiden thinks there are certain sights that are worth crying over.
Later, when she's in bed and pointedly not watching Roier crawl out as silently as possible, she thinks back on his sadness.
Because Roier, as long as he could help it and then some, did not let himself be sad in front of others. That was the truth.
And even then, in the little time they had spent together on the island, she had seen him openly forlorn only once; not for his lack of trying, but because she was nosy when it came to other people, and because she couldn’t sleep, and because there was a fire and smoke and ash rising from their yard.
When she perched on the second floor balcony that night, the fire burned ever brighter in front of her.
The wind made her eyes water with a sting.
Down below, pacing around the wilted grass in shades of olives and reeds was Roier. The amber glow reflected against his skin in warm flashes and illuminated in his hold, burning and alive with dancing flames, was a white patterned shirt, with a tear straight down the sternum and a crime scene around it so bloody it looked alive.
He threw it into the fire unceremoniously.
The smell of it was foul.
Under the flickering licks of fire, Roier's face contorted into a grimace. She left right afterwards. Grief was too intimate of a thing to watch from a balcony.
I'd say my only friends are Bobby and Roier.
Or, were, I guess.
I haven’t been around anyone else. To be fair, I haven’t been around in general.
Who will miss you the most?
No one.
You are lying to me.
I devoted my entire life to Bobby. Now that he’s gone I… don’t really have anyone else.
You were assigned a partner.
Yes. We were paired together to take care of Bobby, though.
I don't think I should stick around any longer, now that he’s-
…
He let me stay in his house. He gave me items when I couldn’t manage to get them myself, gave me armor, taught me how to get stronger.
I really liked spending time with him but honestly, at this point, Roier must think I'm a burden to him.
You are lying to me.
You are lying to me.
Tell me about Roier.
Is this the next question?
Yes.
Sticky air penetrates her lungs.
Jaiden isn't a stranger to clubs. Arguably, maybe a dance club in the midst of a desert would not be her first choice, but it makes little difference when she was invited for the drinks anyway, much less when the music is hypnotic enough to make her pulse speed up before she's even through the doors.
Three steps in and Fit meets her with a firm clasp on the shoulder, one song later and it's Mariana with Foolish and Bad at her side, Charlie close behind, exchanging words she barely understands and shots she vaguely remembers drinking.
It's been a while since she last had something like this.
Foolish spends his time screaming Bad's ear off and it suits them, all of them, doing something other than fighting off nightmares for a change. She chats with Quackity in the filthy bathroom—between sounds of pissing and someone heaving their guts out—as she keeps his hair from falling into a pool of his own vomit, and it's disgusting, but also normal enough that she's high off the feeling of being alive.
It's a good night.
Once she steps onto the dancefloor, a flirty remix fades out into a different tempo.
The lukewarm glass of something-or-other sloshes in her hold as an elbow bumps into her side. A bit of it spills over and there's an apology, somewhere to her general left, but she's enjoying herself enough to not care. She lost her suit jacket a while back, along with the dignified knot of her tie; there's no loss to the shirt she's got left.
Her eyes close of their own volition as she moves to the rhythm.
Stroboscopic lights flash through the veil of her eyelids—red, white, raspberry pink—discarded photographs painting her every step like a collage, like a stop motion video. The bass is heavy enough to make her stop thinking, carrying her movements away from her tired body. She can faintly feel sweat weaving between the ridges of her spine when she raises her arms high, high up above her head and then some, her lips stretching into a wide grin and someone, with long fingers and practised ease, takes her hand to spin her around.
The sombrero on her head falls into her eyes and she feels herself laugh more than hears it.
Éxtasis.
She moves her chin to smile at the person still holding her near. It's hard to see, with flashing lights and alcohol swimming in her tear ducts, but the crimson blur slowly, painstakingly, reveals a feminine figure laughing faintly with her eyes creased. And Jaiden feels her heartbeat on her tongue.
The dancer takes a sip from a glass—Jaiden's weird lukewarm rum—leaving a loving crimson mark around the rim with her lipstick. There's a gemstone under her eye, few more scattered around the heavy wings of eyeliner, several placed near bare collarbones, and then it's a curtain of dark hair, vermilion lace on bare skin, glitter on very faint scar tissue until Jaiden's eyes flick back up in a display of pure will.
The girl follows her eyes. As if sensing Jaiden's words on her tongue, she licks her lips and stumbles to say something, anything, before Jaiden even has a chance to register her own thoughts.
"Hi!" she shouts over the bass, the tone of it nervous, almost rushed as she continues, "I'm Melissa."
And so, Jaiden's first proper introduction to Melissa, outside of the safety of Roier's base, is as such; thinking but not saying that she is the most beautiful person she's ever seen. Or maybe she does say it, somewhere between the loose whistle of her lips where she can't stop smiling—because Melissa's grin turns lopsided, almost sheepish, and her nervous giggle is rougher around the edges now, in a way that is too familiar to Jaiden's ears.
Éxtasis.
She kicks back the rest of Jaiden's drink.
"First time here?" she asks, despite the fact they both know the answer to the question. Jaiden puffs her wings and yells "Yes!" and then—not because she has to, but because she needs Roier to know—she adds, "I haven't had this much fun in ages."
The words seem to bury themselves in the dancer’s muscles.
Melissa's shoulders unwind ever so slightly and she takes Jaiden's hands. She spins both of them round and round under strobing lights, until Jaiden barely feels her soles hitting the floor. They step on each other's feet, move like an undignified animal left loose, the music devolving into a desert thundercloud, loud and humid, and Maxo says something into the microphone, words that barely grace Jaiden's ears but catch Melissa's attention instead.
Jaiden just faintly catches a shiny glint in the dark abyss of her pupils.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" yells the DJ, breathless and high, "It is almost time to welcome one of the best dancers of Quesadilla Island!"
They look at each other and Jaiden gets it, even before the crowd starts their drunken cheer; she knows Roier too well to understand she's not the highlight of his night. No, he's here to get high off the dozens of eyes watching his every move; to do all the things he does that have him stumbling home sore and content at daybreak.
Instead of a goodbye, Jaiden smiles all the encouragement her hazy mind can muster. She puffs up the small feathers lining her ears, for good measure, and then she's being held by warm palms around her shoulders as Melissa kisses both her cheeks.
She throws her head back and laughs in glee.
Melissa goes on her way after that, toward the stage of lights and sweaty bodies and hunger strong enough to sate her appetite. It's the part Jaiden follows with her eyes, through eyelashes at first but soon enough the awe spills from her gaze—because she is no liar, and because Roier didn't kick her out, didn't tell her to leave out of embarrassment like she'd expect him to. She looks her fill as long as she's allowed to, and then under the flashing lights and deafening music, Jaiden swallows another shot and runs to the front of the stage to cheer her heart out.
And she has one of the best nights of her life.
Once the moon turns to dawn, the bass fades into the sounds of the waking desert and Jaiden slumps against the club entrance, Melissa finds a way to her side once more. It's a meeting a bit less ceremonious than the last, more honest and familiar, too, when their company is no one but the sandy dunes lining the club.
Melissa's lipstick is all but gone and she's missing the heels and gems. The content seeps through the clear layer of fatigue and alcohol clouding her sight despite.
She takes Jaiden's hand and quietly grins to herself, as if she'd just won the lottery, and Jaiden laughs and laughs, while they stumble back home through the sand.
Roier is the funniest and kindest person that I know. He is an amazing partner and the best dad, he cares about every single egg so much.
He's got his revenge plan, all his jobs, his builds, his boyfriends. He has things to do, people to love… That's much more than I can say for myself.
Why?
It wouldn’t make a difference if there was one less Jaiden. I'm already away half of the time.
If anything were to happen to me, no one would bat an eye.
You are lying to me.
You were being followed.
What?
Roier takes her hand as soon as he’s within arm’s reach—sweaty palms where his face is all careful nonchalance. The sun beats on his clothes, amber embrace like that of death clinging to both of them. When he shifts, the mud and soot and grass staining his hoodie move with it.
Jaiden's head swims with adrenaline.
Her knees feel seconds from buckling, in the rare waves where she gets to feel them at all, that is—a luxury that doesn't extend to her arms, where she stares at them now in something close to disbelief.
This is something she has to do herself, is it not? Just her alone.
Roier tugs on her hand.
She can feel his heartbeat on her palm. Frantic. Desperate. Did he run here?
"Jaiden! What's going on, man?"
There's a strain settling in the curve of her neck, something that must have been forming for some time now, actually; ever since she met up with Cucurucho this morning.
It hurts.
All her ligaments scream, tense, ready to pounce at a moment's notice. Something about this day made her head fill up with impenetrable molasses, thick and oozing into every crevice of her brain, until she's nothing more than a flickering ember in a shell of void.
It is better this way though. More efficient.
As long as Jaiden bears all the painful cravings of a living body—all the moving; one leg in front of the other so they can keep walking, laughing and smiling and talking—she is free to think about the tasks, without so much as having to feel a single thing.
It is better, because this way, she's the one in control.
Even if she has to drag her body around like a paper-mache marionette, shaky around the elbows and holding on for dear life.
Roier takes her second hand and when he squeezes, a drop of molasses finds its way into her throat.
"I've been following you the whole day. Jaiden, Cucurucho is very very dangerous."
She can feel the words he doesn't say in his hold on her, trying so hard to appear nonchalant, but the fingers around hers are iron and steel.
And she doesn't understand any of it.
Oh.
That day, you were being followed.
You knew that?
Hahaha.
Silly me, of course you did.
Is Roier happy?
I… don’t think so. I think he hasn’t been quite happy for a while now.
Why?
Shouldn’t you be asking him that?
…
I think he’s sad, because he’s been betrayed and left behind. By uh. Spreen I think it was. Then it was Quackity, Bobby and now Cellbit.
He loves everyone so much and they keep leaving him.
You said no one would miss you.
… I…
Hahaha.
Jaiden's boots squeak fatigue on the hardwood floor.
When she falls face first into her bed, it's a near miss with the frame hidden between two mattresses. Not enough nerves in her body remain conscious to care. She doesn't think about being home, doesn't think about the familiar detergent and the feeling of safety enveloping her aching muscles and neglected wings in a warm embrace.
Jaiden breathes in and falls asleep, spread between two empty beds with feet hanging above ground.
…
She's clawing for her life when she comes to. The silence around her doesn't match the ringing in her ears and the lighting is wrong, too, much too dark for a high noon sun. Her eyes desperately search for an anchor, nails picking apart the worn red fabric, when a hiss penetrates the nightmare.
"Cállate, pendejo. Te dije que te calles, Bolby.”
Her head snaps up and the audible cracks that follow almost have her wince more than the pain.
“Chinga tu madre-”
A familiar weight crashes into her torso before she can get her bearings. He's jumping around the bed in seconds, making the poor frames creak in pain, but Jaiden disregards all the noise for the grin settling into her cheeks.
“Bobby! Hello! My little Bobby, I haven't seen you in so long…”
Warm light floods from above the crafting bench then, bathing the whole room in a serene embrace. It doesn't seem like much has changed while she was gone. The flowers on the windows have been replaced by fresh ones and there's new drawings stuck around the staircase, sure, but her chests are still in the same place where she obnoxiously stuck them all that time ago, and so is her change of clothes and spare backpack and bike. She looks at Roier standing at the light switch and he's the same as always, too; dirty and sopping wet and grinning.
She opens her mouth to greet him, but her attention gets caught by incessant tugging on her sleeve. There's a notebook in her hands right after.
"Pa said you left us. I kicked his nuts," says the messy handwriting when she reads it out loud.
She barely has time to register what she’s said before Roier is at the bed, squabbling and pointing his finger at Bobby accusingly, while the little dragon hisses and babbles at him back, standing in front of Jaiden on the bed in his pyjamas, proud and tall, with his tail wagging all around.
Jaiden laughs over the mess.
"Bobby! I just needed to clear my head for a few days.” She catches him minutely to place a kiss on the shell of his head. “I could never leave you!"
There's a new kind of fatigue settling into her bones as she lies on the bed while the two shove and bite at each other—one that has the survival fueled anxiety in her gut slowly melting away, in exchange for something enveloping the muscles of her chest; a type of yearning that only appears when your fingers brush against the finish line.
"No, no! Bobby!" Roier warns next to her face, and she stretches out her hand towards him, happy and content and mischievous to a fault.
"Oh? What did he say?"
He's got Bobby caught to the fabric of his sleeve by his teeth, stuck and growling, his head twisting to get out while his claws desperately try to reach for the notebook Roier’s holding just outside his reach.
"Eh, Bobby said he'd cry so much he'd poop his pants."
She plays along, the lilt in her voice clearly amused.
“Oh, is that so?” There’s warmth spreading across her trachea that’s threatening to lull her back to sleep.
Bobby wiggles himself free then, running directly to show his notebook to Jaiden, incredible urgency and desperation marking his movements, his claws tapping at the page Roier must have overseen:
"Apa would shit and throw up and die if ma left!"
It’s the final straw that has her laughing until her lungs hurt.
"It's okay! It’s okay, I'm not going anywhere, ever!”
The yawn that turns her whole body soft and pliant comes not long after that, sooner than it takes Roier and Bobby to stop teasing the other.
It doesn't bother her one bit.
Jaiden isn't the residual type; never was and frankly never will be. There was a sort of calling running through her blood, one that made her sick and dangerously flippant if ignored for too long, and so she got used to travelling from place to place instead. She didn't have any roots. She didn't have a home, didn't have friends nor a family to come back to. The only thing temporary in her life were the ever growing tattoos spanning the entirety of her arms.
As she lies in their beds, with Bobby curled around her feet and Roier's weight comfortable by her side, telling her about anything and everything, she thinks about the meaning of a home.
What a fascinating thing it must be, to have a place to come back to, once she's had her fill of the entire universe and then some.
Shit.
Hahaha.
Bobby stumbles around the beaten soles of her combat shoes, slashing and hacking at any blade of grass that dares to grow taller than him, stopping only to point the tip of his sword at the occasional cicada—when the opportunity calls for it. All three of his pockets crawl with a colourful plethora of bugs, molluscs and a single round rock, something Jaiden suspects might be a geode, and the cuffs of his overalls are still soaking from a fall into a river.
"Para bailar la Bamba,"
Roier swings their hands as they struggle through the tall savannah grasses. Golden yellow blades brush against her arms where the plants grow taller, under tepid shade of acacias, near bushes and around ravines, where the ground is richer, laced with decay and calcium.
"Para bailar la Bamba se necesita una poca de gracia,"
It's the wet stillness of the air that has them going forward with some semblance of confidence. Mangrove swamps hold heat and water all throughout the year, and the perspiration on Jaiden's bare arms is as much of a lead as any that they're getting close to one. The horizon promises a change in scenery soon enough, and at the very least, this time around, they're looking for something much bigger and noticeable than a singular wild onion.
"Una poca de gracia pa’ mi pa’ ti, y arriba y arriba,"
Roier swings her arm higher as he sings and she complies easily, humming along.
"Ay y arriba y arriba por ti seré, por ti seré, por ti seré,"
The sun beats down on them.
"You know, my hands have been really sweaty for a while now, what with all the adventuring we've been doing since I woke up."
Her grin is a mischievous slanted thing in the heat of the world around them.
Roier stops singing to answer, "Yes, me too," but despite his words, his smile is as carefree and content as always.
It's a beautiful day, after all.
As good as any to do their homework and show Bobby the wonders of wetlands.
"I thought it was just drunk Melissa that really liked holding hands," she says into his song, teasing like it was a competition between them. She knows better than to bring up Melissa's very existence out of nowhere, especially with Bobby within an earshot, but she feels like she deserves to poke at him, even if for a little bit.
"It's okay, I don't mind," she adds when he stiffs ever so slightly
When he still doesn't answer, she turns around until she's walking backwards, carefully matching the pace so they don't stumble in their silent tug of war.
Why have you been holding my hand, ever since you first met up with me this morning?
Roier tugs at her with a grin so playful she feels like they're ten, and she unwins to follow properly.
"This way, Jaiden." It is a game, then. "Ven, Bobby, ven!"
She drops the subject afterwards. It is a beautiful day, after all.
It isn't until they are climbing upwards on a hill of wet fern and slippery mud that she feels the need to bring up the predicament once more.
Her wings flap uselessly at her back as she tries to find her balance.
“Man, if I slip, we’re both gonna fall!”
She barely catches a hold of some plant or another, one that's hopefully strong enough to keep her from sliding all the way down to the bog.
“Yes but, you keep leaving, Jaiden!” Roier shouts with exasperation from below her, “I have to hold you.”
She rolls her eyes with a smile and he hoists himself closer to her level, vastly more unsteady than she'd like. From the other side, she hears Bobby stomping into puddles with glee, talking to himself and having the time of his life.
“Okay if I just- If you let go of my hand for a second I think I can pull out a pickaxe or something.”
There's a loud splash as the little dragon presumably jumps into an especially big puddle of wetlands.
“Hmm. No.”
A bark of laughter gets stuck in her throat.
“What do you mean ‘no’?”
He crawls higher then, struggling so obviously with only one hand, but making no move to let go of her palm any time soon.
“No, Jaiden, I have to keep holding you.”
Weirdest of all though, is that she does mind one single bit
“Okay! But if I eat shit, you're going down with me!”
"That's fine! As long as you don't leave."
There's desperation in his voice that slips through for a single heartbeat.
Fuck.
I have to go.
We can finish later, but I need to do this first.
Hahaha.
I hope you enjoy the island.
Soft wood creaks under her weight as she lays atop a table, simply breathing, staring at fake stars glowing at her from the ceiling. It's been a while since she last spent the night in this house. The furnaces burn with dying embers, flowers bloom from the balcony and the broken windows upstairs—cracked and replaced time and time again—remain taped up to keep the breeze out. Exactly like when she left.
When the doors chime open, keys clinking against metal, it's a sound so familiar her eyes water minutely.
"Welcome home," makes it past her lips.
Roier's eyes find hers, easy like breathing, even in the layer of night.
"Jaiden," greets her back, "Hola."
The table protests against the weight once more when he joins her, bare legs dangling next to hers, nothing but shorts and a red hoodie over vermilion bralette and the headband sticking to his forehead—like every other time she had seen him, alive or not.
She wants to crawl away and hug him at the same time.
"You look tired," she says instead.
It's a simple enough statement, true enough, too, though admittedly lacking in all the other departments—like how she's pretty sure she's sporting the exact same eyebags.
Roier laughs a quick breath.
"Yeah I'm… a little tired. Un poco cansado, un poco triste, sad." He doesn't look at her as he says it, just holds the edge of the table with both hands and swings his legs underneath. There's sand all over his shoes and calves.
Jaiden knows him too well by now.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"It's just everything that happened, y'know?"
He smells like cigarettes, the floor of a bar and floral shampoo. When he inhales, his breathing stutters like a broken phonograph, so gentle it reminds her of songbirds getting ready to cry for the first time in their life.
“Me pica la cara.”
He kicks off his shoes then, tired, so incredibly tired, and it's only when he rubs his eyes with a curse under his breath does she notice he's still got make-up smudged all over his face.
"Oh, you've got…" She's moving before she can think, hands raised like she is going to take it off with her skin if she has to. The embarrassment hits right after. “I’ll get you something.”
Jaiden belonged to this house just like the art plastered all about, still does, maybe, forever will whether she wants to or not. Part of her soul is scattered in the mascara stains on the mirror, in the carbon burns on pots and pans from where she panicked during a pizza night, in the way her legs take her to the corner with a washbasin and cloths and the oils they both used to remove their make-up back then. When the night was still young and they actually cared enough to take it off, that is.
It's not completely the same, of course. There's a cyan rose glowing faintly on one of the windowsills.
When she comes back to the table—with lukewarm water to top off all she's collected, Roier is lightly singing to himself a song she doesn't recognise, while in his hands he coddles the dirty fabric of his headband.
The words don't sound Spanish. That's new as well.
She jumps back onto the table and occupies her hands with the ritual she knows like the back of her hand.
"I'm surprised Melissa still worked tonight," she shares into the sorrowful silence.
Her nails pick at strings of dried latex, bits of it stuck to Roier's hairline still or glued in the short stubble where his hair ends. It sticks to her skin in a tacky mess, but she makes quick work of it, her hands long since used to the calmness of unmaking. Roier closes his eyes under the warm wipe cloth, obedient and plient as she wipes the pesky remains of black eyeliner.
"Melissa should take a vacation," he answers in turn.
Jaiden washes the dirty cloth in the basin and pours the oil over, taking great care to make sure there's nothing remaining on his face.
"Mmhmm, yeah, I agree. I haven't seen her, but I bet she deserves to rest,” she says. It feels like they're talking about the weather. “Where would she go on her vacation?"
"A la playa, on the beach. Get drunk on the beach."
"Oh yeah?" she laughs and Roier matches it under her hands. "That sounds nice!"
"Yeah. Y'know, with everyone. Maxo, Mariana, Quackity, Jaiden, Vegetta, Cellbit.. Everyone. Get drunk and dance and sing and do a lot of-" he raises one of his hands to his nose then and sniffs theatrically, “drugs, y’know? Cocaína.”
She laughs again.
And then it's just…silent.
A bell chimes somewhere outside.
Maybe she should have come up with some plan before she made her way over to the wailing echo of a house they once shared as a family.
This was always going to happen.
She was always going to run out of things to do before something had to break.
In all honesty though, she never did have any plan when it came to Roier. From the very beginning, anything she did around him, anything she said, it was all born of the gut deep comfort that she could do no wrong to him. Because that's just the type of person Roier was.
He looks at her now with all his sadness and she feels like she's been handed a noose.
The wind howls outside and she tastes her heart on the tip of her tongue.
If she dared to close her eyes, even for a second, she could see it in picture perfect detail: her fingers wrapped around Roier's neck, claws buried in the short hairs at the base of his nape, thumbs crossed in a promise around his windpipe, resting against the pulse and waiting, waiting…
"I'm sorry I'm not always around," she tells him instead, and the abyss in his eyes flickers, searching her face for some semblance of context, of something he expects to come next.
“I know I’m doing some dangerous things right now. I heard Cellbit got kidnapped and I still... Part of me was still okay with it being me. I thought, now that Bobby was gone, I was all alone, and I thought about the eggs and how I never, ever wanted anyone to experience that grief. But it's not the fact that they're eggs that hurts so much—it's that they're someone you love with your entire heart. Your family.
"And, I was so unbelievably mad about Cellbit leaving you, you know? Dude, I even threatened to hunt him down, because he hurt you, and then I almost went and did the exact same thing."
She's rambling again. Her hands tremble ever so slightly under her own words and Roier simply looks, still calm and unmoving, just like the night they took Bobby away; forever waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She takes a deep breath and claws the truth out of the fragile burrow of her heart.
"Roier, even if they drag me away or lock me up or bury me in the ground, I'll come back. I swear, on everything that I have, I swear that I'll always come back."
It feels foolish, promising something like this to a man who's lost everyone around him already. There's nothing that makes her more special than Cellbit, who crawled through the permafrost of hell to get back to him, only to get caught up by his own trauma. She's not more special than Mariana, who crumbled beneath the weight of his own acts and left without saying a single word.
There's no other shoe. It's just that there's too much of her scattered around his life to ever feel whole without it.
He puts one of his hands over where she's holding his face, desperate like it would all break apart the moment she let go.
"I trust you, Jaiden," he tells her, gentler than she's ever heard him.
She doesn't know which straw breaks the camel's back. It might be the night, or the grief or the eyebags or the tequila that wafts off Roier's clothes like a cheap perfume, or any of the thousand things she doesn't know about him. There is, however, this: Roier, warm beneath her hands like the sun caressing his skin, with heavy tears rolling down his chin and onto the tabletop, landing in his dimples and on the skin of her thumbs.
She gently tugs him forward until he's pressing his face into her neck. Then he's hugging her so close she's trembling with the grief of them both.
There's also this: Jaiden never had a home. She never found a place more inviting than the vast world with canopies of maple red and olive green and all possible shades in-between, than the love she got to feel minutely glancing into strangers’ lives, like pages of books torn crudely, but kept safe in her own hands nonetheless.
When Roier laughs with her afterwards, once they're both taped back up into something more functional and less broken, it's not a root as much as it's a mark, just like the flowers dancing atop her skin are; a reminder of a promise. That wherever she is, she will always have a home in him.
[End of transcription.]