In a deep corner of my mind I could actually see Kis sleeping, tossing and turning and fitful but at least dead to the world and my treachery of speaking with the enemy. Chico was doing a good job of being quiet and stealthy for once, watching from the bough of a nearby tree with powerful, silent owl’s eyes. Except I wasn’t sure how the hell his heart wasn’t pounding a damn war-drum capable of snatching her from sleep, cuz I could feel that thing rattling my entire body from miles away. It made paying attention to Volterra’s plight that much more difficult.

*I'd hoped it would help...her attacking me. I know it won't remove the grief, nothing will, but I thought it might...disguise it. For a while, at least.*

I bit my lip hard at that statement. She wants you dead, bro. It was clear to me that he cared for her and her well being, but this dude...I dunno. It didn’t seem like he understood like I thought he would. Like...as if breaking his fucking body wasn’t enough to clue him in on the kind of pain he was causing her.

So then then I started trying to give him benefit of the doubt. Maybe he didn’t know her like I thought he did, or I guess there were sides to her that I didn’t know that she showed him. Maybe he didn’t know just how cold she was, how much of an analytical asshole machine she was, and that this hot messiness was out of character for her from my perspective. I mean...I dunno what this relationship was supposed to be. All I knew was that it had been physical; except there had been a child. There was an investment in this, at the very least. I was trying to see how much of a stake he had in it.

Except that thing was happening-- y’know, the thing where you meet someone new and their slate is completely neutral in your head but then they keep talking and they keep talking and you start to lose what ever ambivalence you had with that person, and most of the time you find out they suck like everyone else. I wasn’t at the Jeez Volterra Sucks part of it process yet but the sympathetic light in my eye certainly dimmed a bit the more with every word he said. It was, like, a three-part process:

I didn't even know there was a baby…

I think she discovered that I already had children…

I'd proven myself a useless father to them…

With all of those points my brow cocked a bit higher, my head tilting a little bit more, my face gradually shifting from “Wow dude you’re fucked right now” to “What even the fuck are you talking about?”. But what really got me was how he...just...sorta glossed over all those points, as though they were factors but they weren’t the Big Deal of the conflict. Like they were details that could be glossed over. And instead of chewing on those things, he dove straight into theorization, just wondering to himself Augh jeez bro what if I had been there, would she still have lost the baby?

Like.

Dude it’s a little too late to be worrying about that now, you dun’ already--

Oh shit, I was saying this out loud.

“Dude, it’s a little too late be worrying about that now, you dun’ already knocked her up and left the bitch,” I blurted, the words flying from me before I could stop them. I was almost breathless when they left, too, like…Holy shit there was so much wrong with this picture, I didn’t even know how to start. His concern seemed so real, his...his love for her seemed so pure, so complete, so out of place with the searing hatred Kis had spew at him.

Was it out of place because he just didn’t know?

Was it because he just didn’t listen?

“Like…okay,” I took a deep breath to steady myself, because this was a thing he needed to learn and I had to do my best to teach him. “Here’s the thing. I’ve known her since she was a child and in all that time, she never wanted to give me her name.” I looked him dead in the eye, trying to impress the enormity of my point. “Her name, dude, I don’t even get that from her, I first learned her name from you.” Someday soon I was gonna get the joke of my last statement.

“But with you?....She gave you her body.” My voice dropped, choked a little bit at the thought, at the idea of how much of her that really was to give. “She gave you her child. She gave you...dude. She gave you something that’s hard to give another person. It’s fragile, man. It’s everything you can give.” I saw her sleeping in my mind’s eye, fretful, still healing. “That’s a hard thing to do.”

Then I snorted and pulled myself back from the soft stuff, my voice coming out harder, sarcastic, “But you didn’t even know she had a baby? You ain’t even stick around, at the very least? Oh, and you been with other women, too, and you had other kids by themoh shit you’ve been with the Sun bitch,” I realized, really realized, in mid sentence, that he might’ve had a child with her as well. Which was fucking me up harder than I thought it would, because this was another person I’d seen as a baby--but now they were grown enough to have babies of their own. Something was shifting and I wasn’t prepared for it but I shoved that bit of trauma to the back of my head to deal with it later.

I’d been getting tense this entire time, speaking to Volterra like that. I’d been swelling with a thing that’d been growing with my speech, a righteous…feeling, I dunno what it was, but it was on Kis’ behalf. I couldn’t imagine being alone with the loss of a child like that. Having to deal with two heartbreaks in one.

I sighed, though, and the tension melted and I deflated somewhat, my shoulders drooping. I paused. “...See,” I said in a low voice, “When you give something so personal like that, something that took a lot out of you to share….when you give it up, and you see that it’s only one of many...one in a horde...” I bit my lip again. For the briefest second I was back in the Edge, and I could see Tembovu looking down on me with kind eyes, giving me a gentle guidance with a bewildered heartbreak of my own.

If that’s the case, then I know many friends who I care deeply for, and wouldn’t begrudge them ’dozens’ of others who, also, care about them; especially in an hour of need. Would you?

“...it makes you feel cheap,” I was telling Tembovu Volterra, “knowing you’re just lost in a group of them, and the one you gave it to was the only one in your eyes. They were special.” Was that selfish? I guess that was a thing me ‘n Kis had in common after all. I cocked my head at him suddenly, shooting him with a question. “You love her?” I’d been assuming that this entire time--but now it was time to hear it from him.



"talk"