Chapter 86: 86 Coal, Part Three

Sophie had become peppy again, but Angharad could only go through the motions of talking whenever she was in their room. She tried to smile in all the right places, but ever so often she'd feel the smile sliding off her face and then an awkward silence would wrap around the room.

It was easier in the library. Quiet and lonely, so she didn't have to keep up pretences. The books didn't care what she felt. She knew she couldn't hide away for long, it wasn't healthy or whatever, but Tsuyoshi seemed to be avoiding, well, everyone, so she couldn't go bother him, and she could barely remember how to talk to anyone else.

Josephine found her in the library a few days later.

The door opened and spilled some extra light into the room, and she announced herself with a soft-voiced, "Hi."

"Hi."

"Can I come in?" Josephine asked.

Angharad was all scrunched up with her arms around her knees, but she let her arms drop and made herself smile, just a little, even if it wasn't like the big smiles she'd known how to give when they met.

"Who's going to stop you? It's not my personal library."

Josephine sat down next to her, and they were quiet for a while, the world contracting to nothing but the tin walls and the sounds of their breath.

"I..." Josephine cleared her throat. "I won't make you talk about it."

"Well, that's good, because I don't actually know what to say."

Josephine hid behind her hair, but Angharad remembered how warm her hands had been in the hospital and the strength in Josephine's arms.

Angharad pushed the hair behind Josephine's ear.

"Just once, okay?" Angharad said, but she didn't give Josephine time to ask what.

Angharad leaned over to kiss her, open-mouthed, then Josephine's warm hand was on her waist, then somehow they were rolling on the floor. Angharad couldn't struggle long against Josephine's strength, as pleasant as the struggle was.

Josephine pressed her flat, pressed a thigh between her legs. The ceiling crackled with electricity, like a threat.

Angharad pushed Josephine back, stared her down. "If we could, I would."

Josephine looked at her with frantic eyes. "There are things you can do without... the zapping."

Angharad laughed, and shook her messy hair out of her face. "But I don't want to risk hurting the books."

"Then we could do that, but not here?"

Could the camp hear them? Angharad knew it could see them in there, with its camera eyes looking over them all, but was it recording their voices, too? Was that how it worked? She didn't trust that saying yes wouldn't be used against her by the tyrant trapping them.

"Maybe," she said.

Josephine scrambled to her feet and pulled Angharad up, over eager.

Outside, Angharad couldn't stop feeling watched.

"Nobody will see us in here if we find the right place," Josephine said, dragging her through the entrance to the hospital.

But the awareness of surveillance wouldn't leave Angharad's mind long enough to get that mood back. Even as Josephine pressed her against a wall, kissed her again, all Angharad could think about was that something was watching, and judging, and laughing, that out of the darkness of the hallways was going to come some sort of terrifying robotic form. She thought of the Henry-bot squealing as it was beaten, of the blue cloud pattern in 1090's eyes at rest.

She heard footsteps, coming close.

Angharad shoved Josephine away and stepped into the well lit area where the hallways crossed, just to see.

It was only Rod Spark, holding something confusing, his face in its his usual obnoxious form. He scoffed when he saw her and said, "I want Dr Bitch, not Assistant Bitch."

"Nobody here wanted to talk to you anyway," Angharad said, feeling prickly all over, and a little bit foolish. But relieved. It was nothing after all, just her stupid psychological trauma.

He walked off. She put a hand to her chest to feel the panic beating through her bones start to settle.

Down the hallway Rod Spoke chose to walk down he found Niall and started to talk and gesture. Had Niall seen them? Angharad turned back to where Josephine stood, hands held awkward in front of her body. For a moment Angharad was sure that Willow stood watching at the other end of the hallway, but she blinked and that image disappeared.

"I... I'm going to bed," Angharad said. She didn't give Josephine time to argue with that, either.

*

Days later, Tsuyoshi turned up at her door. At the sound of someone's fingers drumming against the door frame, she rolled over in bed, looked up, and there he was, waiting for her.

"Come on. Get up. Take a walk with me," he said.

"Yeah, okay."

What was she going to do? Say no?

He started to walk out before she finished untangling herself from her bed. She quickly put on clothes and shoes and rushed to follow him out the door and down the stairs. The world outside was even colder than it had been the week before. Angharad wrapped her arms around her body and pulled her layers tighter around herself.

"It's new year," she said.

"Yes," he said.

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And then they were silent again. She followed him on his slow, circuitous path through Zapville. They veered close enough to the electrical field that she could see inside, but not so close that she got near its dangerous parts. They walked behind the freezer shed and weaved between empty tin cabins.

And she waited for him to say something.

"My dad was in a punk band before I was born," he said.

She stumbled at the sound of his voice, but righted herself before he could notice. Not that he was paying attention. "What?"

"He played the bass and my mother was in marketing. That was how they met."

"Oh, well, I guess that makes sense. I mean, like, you like rock music and I guess also marketing bands?" But he didn't say anything to that so after an awkward moment she followed that up with, "My parents met at a house party. That's way less exciting."

He finally looked at her, his face scrunched up in a cartoonish expression. "A house party in New York? Are you serious?"

"No, a house party in St Kilda. Why would you think New York? Is it just because we have an office there? Daddy was born in Los Angeles but grandma Julie moved them to Melbourne when he was young. Then daddy met Moshe at RMIT, and my mother was Moshe's girlfriend from Canada."

"Wait, so your dad stole his friend's girlfriend from Canada? Are you serious?"

"Oh, please, the whole thing was way more complex than that."

"So your Australian office is in Melbourne?" He waved his hands around in the air while he talked, like they helped him propel the words out.

"No, it's in Welshpool in Perth."

Tsuyoshi shook his head. "Your life is too complicated."

"How is it too complicated?" she asked. "Just because we've been a lot of places?"

He shrugged. "My family has been in Canada for 150 years. Not always in Toronto, because... politics. But, yeah."

She was about to ask him to tell her more when Zelko came barrelling out of an empty shed yelling, "I'm not going to kiss you again, Tabitha."

Tsuyoshi froze. He clenched a fist and said, in a quiet, steady, voice, "Really."

Zelko swung around to look at them. He stumbled, eyes wide. Tabitha came out of the shed like a thunderstorm, her feet stomping heavy on the ground.

"As if you'd be able to help yourself," Tabitha said, voice unkind. "You're just that kind of stupid man."

"And what kind of stupid person are you?" Tsuyoshi asked.

Tabitha's eyes narrowed when she whirled around. She started to laugh, something so bitter it almost sounded like she was choking.

"I think... this is not really my business," Angharad said.

"You're right it's not," Zelko spat out.

"No, stay," Tsuyoshi said, voice like a knife. "Everyone should get to see this."

"So everyone can see how pathetic you are?" Tabitha hissed.

Tsuyoshi rolled his eyes and cracked his knuckles. Zelko stood in front of him and mumbled something about bad ideas. But Angharad could see from the incandescent look in his eyes that Tsuyoshi's mood for violence hadn't passed, that the thing that led him to walk out into a field of monsters with nothing but a sword he couldn't use still moved within him.

Behind them, Tabitha stood, shaking and bug-eyed, chewing on her fingers and looking like something on the edge of finally disintegrating.

Zelko stepped away, right into Angharad's path, and said, "You get out of here," with that annoyingly paternalistic look on his face.

"Why do you always have to ruin the chances of any of my friends getting along?" Angharad hissed.

"Why are you such an interfering pain in the neck?" Zelko snapped back.

He moved an arm like he was going to push Angharad away, but Tsuyoshi grabbed his wrist with a vice grip, then shoved him back so hard he hit the ground.

"Don't you fucking touch her," Tsuyoshi said.

Angharad was already moving back, ready to flee the scene.

"You're a psycho," Tabitha said, her shaking hands pulling at something in her coat. "Everyone's going to see it."

"Yeah? You think I care?" Tsuyoshi said, stepping closer to her with every word. "What are you going to do about it?"

Tabitha pulled her gun from her jacket, even as her hands continued to shake. That was too much, much too much.

"Do it," Tsuyoshi said, leaning closer. "Do it."

Tabitha pushed the end of her handgun against Tsuyoshi's thin shirt, and he leaned even closer and grabbed her wrist.

Angharad hadn't really known how bones sounded when they cracked before. She kind of wished she could un-know it.

Was that Tabitha's scream or hers? After that, all she could hear was a buzzing sound. Things became a blur of walking away and people running past. She couldn't be sure what happened between leaving that scene and Dr Yeoh handing her a cup of black tea, hands steady as she told Angharad that everything would be okay. It wouldn't, but who was she to talk back to the first optimistic thing Dr Yeoh had ever said?

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