SIXTH RIDE ✦ ANONYMOUS TEXT

[diamondo]

what do you do if your friend won't wake up
he's been like this for a whole day
should i take him to a pokémon center??
do they even treat humans??

[Well, this text might explain why Ishimaru and Mondo have been suspiciously absent lately.]

Comments

[nostabbing]

[At first, she just pulls right out of his grip — proving again that despite her size and generally petite appearance, she's unusually strong (after all, she hangs off of buildings by her fingers) — but she doesn't make it more than a few extra paces before she slows down, like a wind-up toy grinding down to an agonizing still.]

He was fine.

[...]

Why isn't he fine.

[diamondo]

[Mondo seems a bit startled by that and is fully prepared to grab her again when she slows down.]

I don't know. Fuck, if I had any sort of idea, I'd tell you. But I've got no fucking clue. He was fine when he went to bed and then he just... didn't get up. I thought he was tired or something, so I let him sleep and kept an eye on him, but he's been asleep for a solid day and... and shit, I don't know...

[He's rambling. Mondo runs a hand back through the shorter strands of dark hair on his neck and shifts a bit, awkwardly.]

But... I'm sure he'll be fine! I'm sure he'll get up soon! So c'mon, let's let the nurses do their jobs and we'll wait for him right here, okay?

[nostabbing]

Someone did something.

[She doesn't notice it, but her hands are curling and uncurling into white-knuckled fists at her side as she slowly seems to process whatever it is she's working through.]

People don't just fall asleep and not get up. He was fine. Someone did something. Someone did something to him. People don't just do this.

[diamondo]

No. No one did anything to him. We bolt the door every fucking night without fail. Fuck, I watched him do it. No one could've gotten in to hurt him. I was the only other person in there, and I know for a fucking fact that I didn't do anything to him.

[Mondo reaches out hesitantly to touch her shoulder. The touch is gentle and it's clear he's not really sure if he should be doing it.]

Believe me, if there was someone behind this, I wouldn't be here. I'd be beating the shit outta 'em.

[Never mind the fact that Ishimaru doesn't want him doing things like that...]

But no one's at fault here. This is just something that happened.

[nostabbing]

No.

[It's flat and heavy, and final.]

Someone did this. This is what the bad guys do. This. Good people get hurt. Someone did something and nobody knows what it is.

[diamondo]

...If someone did something to him, we'll catch 'em together.

[He doesn't believe anyone did anything to Ishimaru, but he's not sure what else to say.]

[nostabbing]

[The thing is, Parker has never been very good at empathy. Emotions aren't something that come easily to her, either in teasing them out in herself or in reading them in others. It's why she's a terrible grifter; it's why she so frequently gets things wrong socially, and has to be guided back around to an understanding the long way, because she simply doesn't intuit the same things that other people take for granted.

They'd all known about Nate and his son. About the hospital. It was why Nate always got a little hinky on jobs that involved little kids. Everyone knew it because they all knew to watch for it, because when Nate wasn't at his best, when he was going off the rails, that would put all of them in danger and he was the one they were trusting to get them all out with sense and reason and cunning.

Parker's always sort of understood the situation with Nate and Sam, but she's never really empathized with it. It never really clicked, to stand in Nate's shoes and experience what he must've felt, standing there, watching his son die because his own insurance company had denied the special treatment.

Except that now she's standing here, in a hospital, and Ishimaru is somewhere that she can't see, and something is wrong and no one knows what it is, and this isn't like her little brother at all. She'd known what had killed him. She'd seen it. It was fast, and final, and over.

She's never had to stand around in Nate's shoes and try to bear up against the heavy weight of futility like he had.

All of a sudden she gets it. It took her awhile, but she's gotten it now.

Ishimaru was always good at helping her understand things like that.]

...

[She doesn't say anything, really. She's not Sophie. She can't just magically make words come. And she doesn't know how to put what's inside her into fitting words, anyway.]