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Of all the things Jolene has forgotten about Boston, all the ways that it’s changed since he left, the hardest to deal with is the cold. It’s not winter, no snow or frost, but the spring air feels brisk and harsh compared to the Core. Everything’s cold compared to the Core, a hard-learned lesson from away games.
He’s wearing a parka over a jacket, something that’s excessive for the weather, something a step shy of a security blanket. It was a gift, a long, long time ago. He was almost surprised it still fits, but it does.
They decided to meet at a bar, some schlocky island-themed place. Not Jolene’s first pick, but at least it’s a little warmer inside. He barely has a chance to catch his breath before someone calls out, “Will, over here.”
“Just Jolene,” he says automatically, even as he’s turning towards the booth. “Hey, Ace.”
“Hey, just Jolene,” Chambers says. He looks exactly like Jolene remembered, hair maybe a little longer, eyes maybe a little dimmer. But still the same, and there’s some comfort in that. Jolene can tell, as Chambers looks him over, that the feeling isn’t mutual. “You kept the parka.”
“Didn’t have a lot else to keep,” Jolene answers. He hasn’t worn it in years, not since the trade. “How’ve you been?”
“Depends. How long has it been?”
Jolene rolls his eyes and slides into the booth across from Ace. “I was hoping you knew.”
“I’ve been around a long time,” Chambers says. “These things blur together. I was surprised to see you were still around. It’s been a while.”
“A lot of things work different there. Including time.”
“In the Core?”
“Just…” Jolene waves a hand. There’s no way to describe what Ascension was like. “There.”
“Whatever you say, captain.”
“Not captain,” Jolene says automatically. He’s surprised to feel a flash of irritation, although maybe he shouldn’t be. Just because Chambers is the last Flower left from when he was on the team, the last one left who actually remembers playing against the Mechanics, doesn’t erase the fact that they never got along.
Ace just shrugs and motions at a glass on the table. “Ordered for you. Hope your taste hasn’t changed.”
Jolene takes a sip of the drink — a gin fizz, same as he always ordered when the team went out together. “Why’d you want to meet here? It’s not exactly your speed.”
“Our new captain owns this place.”
“Beck’s supposed to be your captain.”
“She was for a long time. She’s on another team now.” Ace’s gaze sharpens. “You put a lot of pressure on her, you know.”
“I had thirty seconds,” Jolene says, a little harsher than he intends. “The blessing was going to kick in and I was getting traded to an ascending team, what was I supposed to do? I needed to pick someone.”
“You should’ve done better.”
“You should’ve handled it better.”
“You should call her. You owe her that.”
“I will,” Jolene says. He actually has already, is going to Miami once he’s done in Boston, but that’s none of Ace’s business. “Are we all that’s left from that team? Us and Beck?”
All the fight leaves Ace at once. He takes a long drink of his Shirley Temple, but he turns away when he answers, “Yes.”
There’s not a lot to say to that. When Jolene was the captain of the Flowers, they had been a pretty good team. Not great, not championship-winning, but still good. He still remembers Beck as a fresh-faced rookie, and the day she showed up to practice with fangs and a parasol. He still remembers the slow, creeping realization that Chambers hadn’t gotten older at all.
It’s been a long time since then. A long time since the Flowers won a blessing that pulled a player away from the Mechanics, a blessing that activated as the Mechanics ascended. A long, long time since he’s been in Boston.
After a minute, Chambers points at Jolene’s chest. “That’s new.”
“It is.” He waves a hand in front of the hole in his chest. There’s a small piece of sunlight — not exactly sunlight, something artificial, something he’d worked hard to replicate. “You like it?”
“I don’t understand it.”
“You know much about the Core, Ace?”
He glares. “I haven’t thought about the Core in decades.”
It stings, although not as much as Jolene expected. “We don’t have a lot of plants down there, at least not naturally. When I grew something, a lot of the time it’d die off before long. I had to get better at keeping things alive under worse conditions. Not everything’s as hospitable as the Garden.”
“Hospitable’s one word.”
“Don’t talk about it like that,” Jolene snaps. “You never understood.”
“I always understood,” Ace says. It feels like a taunt. “Not all of us who understand are lucky enough to be loved in return.”
“Don’t—” Jolene forces himself to take a drink. This is the last thread he has to the old team, to his life before ascension. He can’t afford to be angry yet. Instead he sets his glass down and says, as calmly as he can manage, “Is she still there?”
“Yes,” Chambers says, and Jolene’s heart thuds painfully. “She’s growing a forest now. Teams can bring her the bats of their dead players and she’ll make sure they live on.”
“How is she?”
“I don’t visit her, and she doesn’t talk to me.”
“I don’t understand how you can live like that,” Jolene says before he can think better of it. “How have you been there for so long and you still hate the Garden?”
“I love the Garden,” Chambers says, more viciously than Jolene has ever heard. “I’ve spent my life with it, feeding it. I haven’t left it the way you did.”
“I didn’t choose to leave.”
“And she still chose you.” He shakes his head. “Why’d you call me, Will?”
Jolene wishes he had answers. Jolene wishes that he could say something moving, something to keep this tenuous thread alive. Jolene wishes he could say that he missed Chambers. Instead he says, “You’re the last one left from my team.”
Ace gives him a considering look. “Tell you what,” he says at last. “You tell me about that weird thing in your chest, and I’ll answer questions about anything except the Garden, and then we don’t talk to each other unless our teams are playing. How’s that?”
It’s not a compromise. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to get Jolene to shut up and leave. But he’s willing to take it. “What happened to Matheo?”
“Dead.”
Jolene winces. “How?”
“Umpires can incinerate players now. It’s a different game than you left.” He pauses, and adds, “Everyone else was gone by the time that started. Traded or retired or just plain gone.”
Jolene lets out a breath. There’s a cold, guilty relief to that. At least his people weren’t the ones who dealt with that. But he remembers Matheo Carpenter, at least a little bit. He was clever, got along with everyone he met.
The Mechanics loved Matheo. The Mechanics missed him, even though they did their best not to show it. Losing somebody as they were ascending had hit them hard. They’d been good to Jolene, but goodness can only mask so much.
“So.” Chambers points at his chest again. “You grow plants in the core?”
“As much as I can. This helps.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” Jolene admits. “Lady and Bees helped me figure it out. I know it functions like sunlight, as best as we could estimate. I like the living things, they help me grow them.”
“You any good at it?”
“It’s harder without—” Jolene grimaces. Chambers said not to mention the Garden. “It’s harder by myself,” he amends. “But it’s a novelty. I’m not the only person there who likes plants, but I’m one of the only ones who does flowers and not crops.”
“You still grow flowers?”
Without thinking Jolene runs his fingers along the lapel of the parka. It had been a normal coat, once upon a time, something simple and free of symbolism. But the Moss Woman had touched it, and now it blooms. She’d made rainbows, explosions of petals and spores and things that Jolene couldn’t even recognize as plants.
It feels dead now by comparison, nothing but moss and the occasional leaf. It’s been… a long time since Jolene had real, normal sunlight to sit in, to grow the coat back out. Maybe he should visit the Moss Woman, sometime. Maybe she’ll even remember him.
Chambers is still staring, looking at Jolene’s fingers against the lining of the parka. Jolene forces himself to straighten up. “I grow flowers. I’m the main florist in the Core. And I’ve been helping them figure out reusable energy and things like that.”
“Has it been good for you?”
Jolene blinks, surprised. “I think so,” he says, instead of asking why Ace cares, the way he so badly wants to. “What have you been up to, anyways?”
“Taking care of the Garden, taking care of the players.” He pauses a beat. “Adopted some kids.”
“You what?”
Ace waves a hand dismissively, as though it’s not a big deal that he adopted actual, living children. “Orphans. They needed someone, I was better than nothing. One of them even plays on the team now.”
Jolene takes a drink of his gin, trying to absorb that. “You’re the least fatherly person I know,” he says.
To his surprise, Chambers snorts. “You’re telling me. All of those kids are doing great things, and most of them don’t speak to me anymore. I made my mistakes, Jolene, don’t you ever think I didn’t.”
“Ace,” Jolene says dryly, “trust me, I’m never going to accuse you of not making mistakes.”
They fall silent together, nothing but the sounds of the bar around them. Someone opens the door, sending a gust of spring air into the bar. Jolene shivers. Chambers doesn’t react at all.
He has so many questions, teammates he wants to ask after, people that only he and Ace and Beck will ever remember. He knows how it works. Blaseball scrubs the records. He’d be surprised if he existed in any capacity outside the Mechs. He’d be surprised if Ace remembers them all.
“It’s not that I love her,” Ace says abruptly. Jolene sets his drink down in surprise, a harsh noise in the space between them, but Ace doesn’t seem to notice. “It was never about the Moss Woman. It was about the Garden.”
“Was it?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“We had a lot of arguments about her.”
“We argued about everything.”
“We’re still arguing about everything,” Jolene points out. Chambers doesn’t smile. “She’s just one piece of the Garden. That place loves you. You’ve given it everything. It’s why you’re still alive. It’s why you look the same.”
“I wish it’d give me the gift of change,” Ace says. It feels like a confession, one that Jolene shouldn’t push. “And it never loved me the way she loves you.”
“Loved me.”
“Loves you.”
Jolene pulls the parka a little tighter around his shoulders, letting his fingers brush near the familiar warmth of the sun-core inside him. “Wishful thinking.”
“You should wish for more,” Chambers says. It’s a surprising gift, considering. “Was it worth it?”
“Was what worth what?”
“Any of it.”
“No,” Jolene says. “And yes. It’s not as simple as being worthwhile. I made it worthwhile. And it’s worthwhile to be home.”
Ace sighs. “You know why I don’t like you?”
“I know many reasons you don’t like me.”
“You’re bad at straight answers, Will. Always have been.” He pauses. “They don’t call you Will.”
“I asked them not to,” Jolene admits. “You can if you want.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t have a straight answer. Names aren’t that easy either.”
Chambers shakes his head. “Sick of you already,” he mumbles.
“I’ll drink to that,” Jolene says, and to his surprise, Ace taps their glasses together. It’s not a truce, but it’s close. “I’ll visit Beck.”
“You’d better.”
“And I’ll make sure you’re not there if I go to the Garden.”
“And never call me again,” Ace finishes. This time Jolene clinks their glasses together. It is not camaraderie or solidarity, but it’s close enough to pretend.