Strong Enough 3.6

Refugee Arc Finale

Two girls stumble back into their first-floor studio apartment.

The TV bolted to the ceiling blares some nonsense commercial before flicking over to two minutes of news at the top of the hour. Taylor sinks onto the couch. The remote sits just out of her reach. She would just download the digital remote, but according to forums the code for this model TV contains a loadbearing bitcoin miner. No one even has bitcoin anymore.

Taylor slumps over, reaching. Her fingers bat against the edge of the table, scraping against the cool chrome.

“God, Taylor. Still?” Emma sweeps up the remote and turns off the TV before plopping down next to Taylor.

Then neither of them says a word.

Because it’s not just the job that was exhausting. It’s this. Every time Taylor thinks they’ve found a new equilibrium, one of them will step out of an old memory and break it. Taylor will remember that this girl was her sister, that she…

Taylor swallows the playful giggle that got stuck in her throat, a reflex from back when she used to do things like this exactly because Emma cared so much.

“…Thanks,” Taylor says.

“Yeah.” Emma swallows too. “No problem.”

And maybe Emma’s sorry; maybe she’s realized that she was wrong to abandon Taylor. All it took was almost dying and having her best-friend-for-never save her life. Taylor can’t know for sure, and she can’t bring herself to believe, either. It grates at the edges where they touch, embittering every interaction.

Taylor is exhausted.

“How was the meeting with Wakako?”

Also because of that.

Taylor rolls onto her back. Wakako, the Lady of Westbrook, called Taylor to her ‘office’ after the job. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but a little room at the back of a pachinko parlor had not been it. A tall, too handsome merc had smiled at her and pulled back the beaded curtains.

“She said she would have work for us in the future.” Taylor says. “She also talked a lot of shit about me recruiting nobodies.” Made more cutting because of the woman’s disciplined eyes dissecting Taylor through half-moon spectacles. The wrinkles on Wakako’s hands and face looked like war scars.

Emma hums. “A test.”

Taylor shivers. “More than one.” Emma quirks an eyebrow, and Taylor adds, “We’re talking Lucy.”

Emma pulls a face. “Doesn’t she have other runners? Can’t we find our own?”

Taylor swallows. “She doesn’t trust a bunch of kids,” she says.

“My third husband believed in giving people chances to ‘prove themselves,’” Wakako said. “And look where he arrived, guided by blind trust.”

“If you don’t trust us, when did you even give us that job?” Taylor asked. It was a foolish, impertinent question, but Wakako chose to answer.

“Because there was no way for you to fail me.” The beads hanging from the rim of her lenses flashed as she turned her head. “Your deaths would have warned the shrine that they tested my patience, and they either would have moved the meetings elsewhere or…underestimated my influence, and left a much more valuable prize ready to be plucked in the future.”

Beware the old, who yet remain in the professions of the young.

“I do not care to control for failure in every task I hand down to you,” Wakako had said last. “Now out of my office, child. The contract is closed.”

Taylor doesn’t share that part of the conversation with Emma. The knowledge that Wakako Okada had sent them off with little care of their success or failure sits ill inside her. Working with a veteran netrunner almost is care, in the face of that callous disregard.

“Oh, sure.” Emma rolls her eyes. “She doesn’t trust us. That’s why we have to take her shitty, doesn’t-play-well-with-others problem child off her hands.”

Taylor lets her eyes drift shut, because it’s true. “Either we don’t work with Lucy, and she doesn’t have to worry about us. Or we do, and she knows that there are at least two experienced edgerunners on this crew. From her point of view, it’s a win-win.”

“And also if Lucy screws us then it’s your fuckup,” Emma replies.

“And also if Lucy screws us then it’s my fuckup,” Taylor echoes.

“Win, win, win,” Emma mutters. “How nice for her.”

Taylor curls up slightly, on the couch. She didn’t use the Sandevistan much today, but the new cooling implant still makes her chilled. It’s meant to cope with much heavier usage.

“Are you…” Emma doesn’t finish that sentence. Taylor doesn’t ask her to.

A few moments later, Emma grabs the blanket from the bed and dumps it on top of Taylor, before sitting silently. She doesn’t say anything. Taylor doesn’t either, but…she does pull the blanket over her middle. She doesn’t even check it for glitter first.

Okay, that prank was from when they were still friends.

“Isn’t it crazy,” Taylor whispers. “How I used to be the brat?”

Emma snorts. “Oh my god you were the worst…” Then. “I missed you. The whole time. I’m sorry.”

Taylor wants to ask why. She wants to know what broke between them and sent them spiraling into hatred and vitriol, but what answer could ever satisfy? What could explain all the abuse, the pain and the lies and everything else that followed? If Emma tried to defend herself, Taylor’s not sure if she could stop from ripping the blood red heart from the breast of her once-and-maybe-future-best-friend.

That the worst part was that Taylor still missed Emma, too. The whole time.

“Yeah,” she says. “Thanks for the blanket.”

It’s as close as she can yet come to forgiveness.

There’s a pause, Emma shifts on the couch. Taylor doesn’t need to open her eyes to see Emma’s expression. The woman is annoyed, and then frustrated, and maybe a little sad, at the edges of her eyes. Emma’s always been impatient, but she’s never been an idiot. Emma knows that it will take time before Taylor can bring herself to trust more than a blanket.

It’s funny, because Taylor can trust Emma at her back on a job. She knows how competent her friend is. Now that they’re not probing each other for every weakness, they can read so much more from each other, they can move in concert almost without thought. It’s muscle memory. Taylor had wondered how much of this relationship was dead impulse. The answer is ‘enough to bring it shambling back to life.’

But here, in this space, they sit farther apart than ever and all of their conversations die stillborn.

“Are you sure about David?” Emma asks. “He’s…”

“We need more people,” Taylor says. “He’s smart.”

“So are you.”

“How kind.” Taylor huffs. “But he’s smarter. Better at memorizing information. And he needs us more than we need him. We can use that.”

“Still, we only got sixteen hundred.” Emma shrugs. “Could have been two thousand.”

Taylor lets that thought sit with her for a second, then she rises, rubbing the tiredness from her eyes. She turns to look at Emma.

“Maine...did one thing right,” Taylor says. He chromed up too much, he put too much on his shoulders, but, “He was fair. That’s why we’re still alive. Because he was fair, even to a rookie member like me, once I proved myself. I’m not going to do anything different.”

Emma huffs, slouches in a way that means she’s conceded the argument and just wants to whine. “He can’t even shoot a gun yet.”

“I’ll get Becca to teach him. She was upset she just got to drive last gig.” Taylor shrugs.

“Becs will set him straight.” Emma nods.

Taylor crushes the ember of jealousy that flares between her chest. Emma and Rebecca hit it off at once. Emma and Rebecca went shopping, they painted each other’s nails, they talked about what updo to pair with different firearms.

“Have you kept up your shooting?” Taylor asks instead. “Just because last job was no guns…”

“I know, I know.” Emma crosses her arms. “I prefer practicing with you.”

She can’t ignore that ember sparking and blazing into childish glee and hates herself for it. “Becca’s a better shot.”

Emma tilts her head. “So?”

It hurts, being this close to something you once had. It hurts more because maybe Taylor can have it again. She told herself she didn’t want it, that she could never want it again. She had forgotten how Emma slotted into place inside of her, and it hurts.

They still fit together.

“I’ll think about it.” Taylor shrugs. “Maybe with the whole crew.”

Emma’s face flickers through the barest impression of her own hurt. “…Yeah. Can you imagine that bitch Lucy at the firing range?”

And then the real pain, the first pain, comes roaring back. Taylor remembers why she told herself those things. The wound bursts open once more.

Emma sees it, because when you know someone’s every movement, even stillness becomes a signal. “Taylor…”

Taylor looks away, half slouching. She doesn’t think about what her posture says, only that she knows Emma will read it just as well. “I hate when you do that.”

“Do—” Emma stops, with deliberation, with intention, and takes a deep breath. “I’m allowed to not like people.”

“Yeah,” Taylor whispers. “You really are.”

“Oh my fucking—” Emma stops again. She stands, pacing across the bare floor, only a chrome and faux-laminate table between them. “No, I deserve that. I really do deserve that, but it still sucks. And Lucy is a bitch, okay? That’s not me—that’s not bullying. She was rude the entire time and you could tell she didn’t want to be there and that’s not my fault. I can’t, I don’t, I’m not gonna go gooey-gooey on bitches who wanna rip my face off, and don’t think she didn’t want to kill us all the entire time!”

Taylor lets Emma rant, this too, a painfully familiar refrain. Taylor was the chatterbox, in their shared before, but Emma would let emotions build up inside her, chewing them over and over until they exploded.

The rest of it is mostly repetition and angry invectives towards Lucy, for being a bitch, and towards Wakako, for putting them in this situation.

There, Taylor empathizes. If they didn’t need money so desperately, they could just go to another fixer. But they do need money. Sixteen hundred isn’t a month’s rent, and even without that, the small amount of money that Alan gave them is quickly draining. Taylor’s savings vanished into the maw of Arasaka Academy, but bills don’t stop coming just because the money goes away. Wakako told her clearly, either they do jobs with Lucy, or they don’t do jobs in Japantown at all. They don’t have time to build rep with another fixer, if one would take a look at a ragtag group of kids and offer than anything but scut work.

In the end, Emma sputters out, and collapses back onto the big L-shaped couch. She still picks the same arm where Taylor sits. Close enough that she could lean over and rest her head on Taylor’s shoulder.

Old familiar verses, written into a new chorus.

“I’m trying, okay?” Emma says. She pillows her face in her hands instead. “I know, I know that—look, I’m trying.”

Taylor doesn’t have the words to express her emotions. Her mother did, before she was torn away by Maelstrom. Taylor tried to express her devastation at her mother’s death by devastating Maelstrom in turn. She ran out of targets to vent her anger upon before she could even begin to process the grief that came after.

From faded memory, Taylor tries to piece together the words her mom would use. They are different from how Night City teaches her to speak, because they are open, they are honest. They hurt to say.

“It’s…hard to trust,” Taylor says. “You—I trusted you a lot. I trusted you with everything I was. After that…it will take time, for me. I don’t know if I’m even strong enough...”

“You’re strong,” Emma says. She pushes her hands up into her hair. “You’re so much stronger than me.”

Taylor laughs, bleak and short and all too wry. But despite that, they do—eventually—keep talking. Practical matters, what needs to be done and who needs to do it. They pick a way, slow and stilted, around impossible topics to address the merely difficult. It’s not easy, but it’s less slow and stilted than before, and it’s oh so very familiar.

They talk until they both fall asleep on the couch, but not before Taylor agreed to take Emma shooting, just them.