Chapter 100: 100 Hello World, Part Four

Two weeks of quarantine. A week of questions on the Zapville event and a pointless debriefing intervention. A day of hearing the bad news about the time distortion and the even more bad news that his grandmother had died while he was away in robot torture camp, leaving him with no surviving family members to claim him. Another half day of trying to convince everyone in charge of deciding his fate that Freya's family would take care of him, in the hope that they'd release him, and that Freya's family would feel obligated once he'd backed them into the corner.

It's what Angharad would have done, he thought when he finally triumphed in convincing them, and then felt surprise at his own thoughts.

"It's what I would have done," Freya said, when she collected him.

"Right," Jin said. "I thought you would be impressed."

"They already let me go three days ago, though I've been reporting back every day since," Freya said as she led him to her mother's car.

She was wearing her full dress uniform, neatly pressed. It wasn't like she'd completely loosened up in Zapville, at least not more than she usually did, but he could see her professional manner surrounding her completely like armour again. She smiled at him as he got in the passenger seat, and it was warm but professional instead of warm and intimate like her smile had been allowed to be in Zapville. He was going to have to go back to pretending like he didn't know what it was like to kiss her. He leaned his head back against the head rest and let himself think about how much that would suck.

"They said they'd call me when they needed me," he said.

He didn't want to open his eyes to the view as Freya drove off. He wasn't ready yet.

"Don't worry. They'll definitely need you," she said.

Jin had barely thought about his grandmother even once during his time in captivity, except to look forward to seeing her again and now he never would. He'd wasted all his time worrying about robots and Sophie and Tabitha and Angharad. In the back of his mind he was still worrying about Sophie and Angharad. And as for Tabitha, he was just waiting for that waveform to collapse so they could all be sure that cat was dead.

He opened his eyes and forced himself to face the world. Every garden they passed was landscaped, every building solid and bright. The Northern Constructed Territory didn't look like it had ever been a war zone at all.

*

The house Freya's family lived in felt crowded, overstuffed. Jin took off his shoes, dumped his small pile of stuff by the door, and tried not to slump when he looked Freya's father in the eye.

There was no warmth in the looks Freya's parents sent Jin's way, but Freya's mother nodded and said, "Come in."

"We'll make a bed for you on the couch," Freya's father said.

"Thank you," Jin said, and realised he didn't remember their names.

Jin watched the way Freya's parents watched him, the way they watched Freya with strange, stunned looks on their faces, and decided, for the first time in his life, not to make waves. He didn't have anywhere else to sleep, and what was he going to do, run away to America to sleep on Angharad's couch?

They were quiet around the dinner table, which suited Jin fine. The meal wasn't great or anything but it was better than anything he'd been served in Zapville.

All night long Freya's sister kept staring at him, big eyed like a tree frog. He stared back for half a minute to see if it would make her stop and that only made things more uncomfortable. He'd never had much to do with Freya's younger sister before, but... No, he reminded himself, Minerva Moon was older than them now.

Next to him, Freya stared at her gloopy peas until the meal was done.

*

When it got late and everyone else had gone to bed, and the only sounds were the whisper of the wind and the faint rumbles of Minerva asking Freya if she had Andrew's phone number, he made his way to the pile of blankets on the couch and made his bed. And then he heard a tap being turned on somewhere in the building, and video game sounds courtesy of the students upstairs, and a distant train whistle, and a low flying plane.

He stared up at the ceiling and tried to adjust.

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He remembered them all sitting in that hospital room in their last night at that place. Freya had leaned her head against his shoulder and held his hand in hers as they sat opposite Sophie and Angharad, who were cuddled up on Angharad's bed, sharing a pile of blankets they'd wrapped around themselves, in spite of both wearing thick pyjamas.

They had talked about all the things they would do at home, the things they would eat and touch and smell.

"I'm going to see my grandma," Jin said.

"I can't wait to see my parents!" Sophie said. "Mama and papa and Manon and the cows. I miss all the cows! They're so fluffy and stupid. I hope they've missed me, too."

"I am going to check on my younger sister and make sure she hasn't been completely lost without me there to keep her in line," Freya said.

At that moment Jin vaguely remembered Freya's sister, a mousy little thing who was always on a diet she didn’t need to be on.

"And what is the princess going to do?" Jin asked, smirking at Angharad.

"Why are you the worst, Jin?" Angharad said. "Why is that what you've chosen to be?"

"What's your first move – buying an outfit you don't need or a new designer purse?" he teased.

It's what Tabitha would have done. Or... maybe it was just what he wanted to believe Tabitha would have done, if she'd come home and not just disappeared into the void. Even at that moment, with that small amount of shared levity, her absence had hung over them like a shadow, her abandoned belongings scattered between their bags as the only things they had left of her. Even back then he was aware she was probably already dead.

Angharad had clapped her hands together and squeaked. "I'm going to see daddy and drink coffee again and eat real food and, oh, oh, I might go to a museum or something! I mean, I've totally meant to develop an appreciation for art. I want to walk in a crowd of people I've never met and be unknown and unnoticed. I want sunlight and full moons and bird sounds and flowers. Latkes! Deep fried tofu!"

"You want everything," Jin said.

"Yeah, I want everything. Oh, and I want to officially break up with James but I don't know how," Angharad said.

"Just tell him you have an incurable Asian fetish now so it won't work out with a white boy anymore," Jin said.

"You are the worst!" Angharad said.

"You could pretend to date Freya again and really sell it," Jin said.

At the time Angharad shrieked and laughed, and then Sophie laughed and looked shocked at her own laughter, and Freya's only reaction was a soft kiss behind his ear.

But in this moment, as he lay on her family's couch in the dark, covered in a scratchy synthetic fake-wool blanket, all he could think about was the things they wouldn't get to see after all, of Freya suddenly younger than the sister who used to look up to her, of Sophie going back to a family that spent a decade without their only child. He stared up at the ceiling, almost as grey in the dark as the grey barrier in Zapville. That big world of possibility he'd dreamed of was gone.

Maybe this is what Tabitha would be doing, he thought. He imagined her lying on someone's couch, thinking about her dead when the world around her had already moved on. She wouldn't buy more things she didn't need. Where could she put any of it? She'd been dying half the time he knew her, and yet still he wasn't ready for her to be really, truly dead.

He was too haunted by ghosts, with not enough people who would hold him tight enough to anchor him in time.

Jin rolled over, shoved his face into a cushion, and tried not to be loud when he cried.

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