Chapter Text
“Okay,” Player says in Carmen’s ear, aghast. “What on planet Earth is a polynomial?”
Carmen shrugs to herself, because she might actually go insane without pretending that Player is right next to her. “Well, poly is a Greek root meaning more than one.” She muses, “And nomial sounds like number. So a more than one number thing,”
“Oh,” Player says. Then, “Ohhhhh. So like. A multi-variable function. That makes sense. I guess it doesn’t matter though.”
Carmen props herself up on her elbows, finally getting her back off the floor after three hours. “What are you even doing?”
She hears him sigh over the line, very, very long winded. She’s glad she figured out that he had schoolwork he was meant to do, mostly because she knows Normie school and Thief school are different and the former is actually good for him. Now. Which he had to explain to her, when the tea was spilt. And there’s maybe, maybe a tiny part of her that is enjoying listening to him suffer. It’s only fair; he’s always listening to her rants without a single complaint against his life. It’s great to know that her Mister Regular Civilian who is also coincidentally Mister Self-Hired Hacker has something to be upset about.
She’s so normal. Promise.
“Algebra.” He groans, finally. “The bane of my existence.”
“Send me a problem,” She flips over onto her stomach, holding her phone out in front of her. “I wanna try.”
“No, you don’t” Player tells her, deadpan.
“Yes I do!”
“No, you don’t” He says, more vehemently.
Carmen straightens on her elbows. “Yes I d- oh.” In her hands sits an equation of… some sort. With letters. “Why are there letters in the math?”
Over the phone, Player laughs. “Basically, X is a mystery number. We can plug in whatever number we want instead, and each number you get will be different, so it’ll make a line on a graph. Hang on, lemme send a photo to you.”
She hears the telltale clickity-clacking of keyboard keys, and then she receives a new photo of a… arc trajectory graph. Like, the jumping ones. Or, an axis graph, before that became irrelevant and turned into a trajectory graph.
“Doesn’t that include numbers that aren’t full numbers?” She asks, just to make sure this isn’t another gap in her unconventional education. “Like decimals. There are decimals on a graph, right?”
“No,” Player says, then, “Actually, wait. You’re right. Its a continuous… thingie.” He says, which. Oh. Okay. Hey! One thing VILE hadn't lied to her about!
“A whole dimension spanning forever,” Carmen chants. She always thought Bellum said that like a skipping rhyme.
“...Yes,” Player says, slowly. “Why is that the thing you know about this?
Carmen flips back to face the sky. It’s getting cold, but she doesn’t quite want to get up yet. Maybe she’ll reach for the rag in the maintenance compartment; it could probably work as a blanket. Or she’ll use her coat, but she has to go inside to grab it, which, ugh, No. “Bellum loooooves going on random tangents,” she hears herself say. “We can never get through one class period without her interrupting herself and finding the newest invention idea she has. She tried to leave class once to go to the Himalayas once.”
“The Himalayas.” Player repeats, incredulous. “What could she possibly need in the Himalayas?”
“She has a lab there,” Carmen supplies. She hears a faint hum of acknowledgement. “It was so weird, too. Like, hello? You’re teaching, miss. It’s literally just been, like, five minutes of class.”
Player cackles. “Did she make it?”
“No,” Carmen huffs. “The cleaners caught her and made her figure it out in her lab on the island. They had to teach the rest of the class for her.
“Honestly, though, she’s so real for that.” Player says. “When inspiration strikes, you better do something about it before the idea is gone for good. Do you know how many apps I’ve forgotten the concepts for? I almost invented UberEats, you know.”
Carmen… isn’t betrayed. This is a normal sentiment to maintain, even if this agreement is towards someone who would undoubtedly call for her death now. Don’t wince. She’s pretty sure Player isn’t exactly aware of that fact, anyways.
Instead, she drawls, “Which isss…..” because he has this horrible habit of speaking Normal Person to her, which is Black Sheep Gibberish.
There’s a pause over the line, where Player clearly struggles for words. “It’s like… takeout. Kind of. Uber delivers food from restaurants to people’s houses. Uber as a company is mostly known for their taxis that are called using an app, and UberEats is an extension of the original service. Basically a food taxi. They get a certain amount of money for it.”
Carmen frowns. “How much? And how come the restaurants don’t deliver it themselves?”
She has a hard time believing that there’s not enough people for the restaurants to hire to do the delivering, considering the nine billion people on the planet. And clearly, the deliver-ers are hired anyways. Just not by the restaurant themselves, for some reason.
“Uhhh…” Player trains off, and Carmen hears his clicky-clacking again. “The restaurants usually don’t have the money to deliver the food themselves. Or they think it’s more convenient. After some time, UberEats also got a brand for themselves? So people tend to try and order food there before checking if the restaurant delivers. And they get… roughly thirteen dollars. Er… Canadian dollars. What currency did they even teach you?”
“Most of them,” She says absently, swatting at the air because there is a fly in her face and if she doesn’t shoo it away for good she will be killing it. “That’s like. Nine dollars something in USD, right?”
More clacking. “Yes,” Player says, after a long pause. “And you just… know that. Why do you know that?”
Very solemnly, Carmen says, “ We were forced to memorize currency exchange rates. The Cleaners would electrocute us if we were wrong.”
Player takes a sharp breath in, which is how Carmen knows that he believes her. It really says something about how odd their friendship has become; for years, he used to be able to tell when she was being sarcastic. It wasn’t like she was hiding it, or anything. But he believes her now, because she finally unveiled her secret double life. And he’s involved in the stakes, even if he’s a bit fuzzy on how they apply.
So she says, “I Googled it a couple days ago, dude. Most of our class material was in USD, and I knew you lived in Canada, soooo…”
“Ohhhhh,” Player laughs, but it's unconvincing. “How many of my VILE facts are you messing with me?”
That hopefulness is… oomph. “Dude,” She laughs, probably at least half convincing, “If i meant this to be a long-con, I wouldn’t have showed my hand so early.”
She stands to lean over the rails of her boat, restless. Her eyes land on the horizon instinctively; she’s mostly gotten used to the feeling of seasickness, but Player’s advice really had helped and the habit stuck.
There’s some vague, slightly strangled hum in her ear, then quiet. She lets herself pretend that he’s just working on his homework; maybe he really is studious, and not struggling to put together a response! Maybe she isn’t incredibly overwhelming and horrible at conversations!! Maybe she isn’t entirely ruining his life!! Maybe his grades haven’t been slipping dramatically, because he has to take care of her, and he’s totally getting enough sleep even though she wakes him up in the middle of the night, and he’s okay with this new and crushing pressure of dealing with her!! Maybe she isn't as costly as it seems!! Maybe they're both perfectly fine and chilling and thriving in their lanes!! Maybe VILE won’t find her and kill her before she can convince Player to let her-
Bad thoughts. She thinks firmly, and lets out her next breath slowly. Player would be really upset. He doesn’t deserve that.
She’s not sure what her plan is, here. She’s out, sure. Now what? She’s seventeen years old, jobless, unsure of what to do once she gets to Toronto. Why is she going to visit Player anyways? To make him a target? VILE might as well have eyes on her right now, for all she knows.
Except… they probably would have tried to kill her by now. She suppresses the instinctive wince, because it’s the second time today but probably the hundredth time since her escape, and she’s got to get over it soon. It’s been two weeks. Here are the facts: VILE wants her dead. Carmen has no job, no qualifications, and more importantly, no plan. That’s what she needs right now.
She’ll… probably get some kind of job. Settle into a normal life, maybe. Slowly forget everything VILE has taught her, because it’s all criminal and wrong and horrible and-
“I hate math,” Player blurts.
It’s… Sweet of him. He was clearly not doing his work, if the breathing getting louder over the line was any indication (and hey, look at that! Twinsies). Probably, he was trying, and failing, to panic silent. But Player has been trying to protect her from his own issues, and Carmen doesn’t have it in her to fight back against it right now. At least with him, he’s not protecting her for his own gain.
He’s sweet.
She’s going to poison him.
“Math is so fun, though,” She says, teasing. And it almost sounds convincing.
“That's because you’ve never done algebra,” He tells her, sounding less frantic. “Algebra is the bane of my existence.”
“You already said that. And untrue!” She says, just to be contradictory. They glossed over algebra, clearly, as made obvious by his graph equation thingie.
He doesn’t take the low-hanging fruit, thankfully. She doesn’t know what she would have said if he’d made a comment on her lack of basic Normal knowledge. “Fine, then. Do you wanna do my homework for me?”
“That’s cheating,” She tells him, wagging her finger in the air. “That’s not good student behavior, Player. What would your mother say?”
Player sighs good-naturedly, but doesn’t answer. It's technically a socially acceptable response. It’s mostly a hypothetical question. It’s just… he never answers questions like this. For all the gory details of her life Carmen has spilled on him, he hasn’t revealed much of anything in return. They’re good instincts, all things considered. VILE can’t get anything out of her if they learn of his existence. But…
It doesn’t sting. It doesn’t. Maybe if she repeats it enough, it’ll magically become true.
“I’m sorry,” She says. “I must be crazy distracting right now. Do your thing, dudebro.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Player repeats, because that’s all he’s had to say to every apology she’s given him, ever. It must be instinctive by now. He doesn’t even mean it, probably; there is so much of his life she’s ruined already. He can’t be blind to it. “And it’s not like I want to be doing algebra. Distract away.”
She could, is the thing. She could ruin his entire life, and he’d let her. Silently, without her knowing a single thing about him. She could keep talking, force him to fail his classes because he can’t get a spare minute to study, because he’s so incredibly stressed over her. She could poison him for real. From the inside out.
She’s got to stop. She’s got to pull herself up by her bootstraps, because this is unsustainable, and his mom doesn’t even know why he’s so unfocused recently, and Carmen has heard her get on his case about playing video games too much, and he can’t deal with the stress of Carmen’s disastrous life and getting his schoolwork done. She wishes she could help him.
“No getting out of this, buster,” She says, tone light. “Do your work. You can do better than my example.”
He’s too kind when he says, “No I can’t.”
“I’m a dropout,” She says flatly, because that's something she doesn't want to touch. She can’t do this, she can’t do-
“Well, other than that.” Player says. And he really is the best person in the world. “You know what I mean.”
He really is the best person in the world, because he doesn’t say what she’s sure he wants to: you’re amazing. Brave. Awe-inspiring. He’s been repeating the sentiment time and time again, trying to convince her of her goodness when it’s all a lie. Everything she has ever done has been evil, and it’s all she’s ever known, so by association, so is she. It’s basic math. Far easier than algebra, probably.
She does know, though. She knows what he wants to say. And she needs to stop getting upset over him trying to help her, because he’s already throwing away his schoolwork for her without telling her. If he hadn’t forgotten to mute himself when his mom came to talk to him, Carmen wouldn’t have even known. The least she can do is be grateful. Which she is! It’s just… hard. Not to be angry that he can’t give up, like she has. He has a whole life ahead of him. How can’t he see that she doesn’t?
Bad thoughts, Carmen repeats. Because that is a hole she has fallen down too often, and Player doesn’t deserve it.
She goes back inside the cabin after a few moments, because the sun is setting and she’s cold. Finds her coat and a spare blanket. Quietly, she tells Player, “I’m turning in for the night. Don’t slack off while I sleep, kay?”
“G’night, Carmen,” He says, matching her volume, because he is an angel. “I’ll stay on the line.”
She doesn’t respond, because in her make believe, normie-fied version of her life, he didn’t say that last part, and she hung up. She unplugs her earbuds, because they’ve been getting really uncomfortable while she’s sleeping, and instead puts her phone on speaker. She can hear Player breathing, writing, typing. It’s reassuring, even if he can’t see her right now. Even if he can’t protect her. He’ll know if something goes wrong eventually, and she trusts him to find something to do about it. He’s incredible like that.
And slowly, softly, she falls asleep.