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Lottie is fast.
But that’s not even it, really. Lottie is fast. Fast the way sports cars are fast, fast the way soundwaves are fast, fast, fast, fast. She doesn’t even think about it; running feels like nothing, feels like flying, feels like what she was born to do. The sound of her feet pounding against the dirt is just as familiar as her heartbeat. It’s as familiar as breathing, both the ordinary kind and the kind that burns, the kind that makes her ribcage crack and her lungs ache and her throat itch.
Lottie Ceilingfan is the fastest player on the Hades Tigers. She is their best, their brightest, their quickest. And yet even she cannot do anything when the sound of feedback rings in her overlarge ears. Even she cannot make it to Famous in time, or know what it is she’s supposed to do even if she could.
No. Lottie is fast, and she is good, but even still, the best she can do is catch the ball after it cracks against Famous’ bat.
“Nice one, darling,” Famous calls out from the first base line, and the mask they wear is unfamiliar. Bright, garish, laughing, red lips like a smile carved from the skin.
“Do better!” Lottie calls back, a half-hearted attempt at something close to normal. It doesn’t work; they both know that.
++
She can’t swing. Lottie knows she’s supposed to. She can feel the eyes of everyone in the Pocket trained on her, waiting for their double payout. This is what they’re paying for. This is what they want.
But Famous is standing at second base, too close and too far all at once. There’s a moment, a breath, where it doesn’t look like them at all; they wear the face of Combs Estes, and Lottie wouldn’t know if not for the fact that same face had stared down at her during warm-ups this morning.
“You’ll end up dead just like them, someday,” Famous had taunted, even as they wound up for a pitch.
“Not today, though!” she’d taunted back, laughing despite herself. As if this was all a game, and wasn’t it all so funny.
Lottie isn’t dead, and Famous isn’t either. But this is worse, somehow. This is a loss more keenly felt for the fact that Famous is still standing there, just like always, and not like always at all.
She thinks too hard. She thinks too long. Lottie is fast, but she is not moving. Five pitches go by, and she barely notices; the sixth one strikes her out, easy as anything.
Famous sighs, and it would be imperceptible if Lottie hadn’t learned how to look for it months ago. The shoulders of their cloak waver, a tremor that may as well be an earthquake. It doesn’t tear down any buildings; it doesn’t rewrite reality. It is worse, because nothing changes at all.
++
Famous is a good batter.
Not the best batter, by any means. Not a star player. They are memorable for the presentation, for the way they step up to the plate and pull their hood back to reveal the face of someone the pitcher once knew.
They did the same thing when they pitched. Lottie’s seen it. When they feel particularly vindictive, Famous starts to beg; please bring me home and please come find me and help, help, help. Even Dunlap was awed by the performance, though she never let go of her pride long enough to admit it.
They don’t do that now. Famous walks up to the plate and reveals monsters from Hades, a rotating cast of imps and demons and gods. One after the other, before the pitches even start.
“What are you doing?” Lottie calls out, in spite of herself. The best she can hope for is silence. Worst, a tongue-lashing that brings the whole game to a halt.
Famous laughs in response, and something about it hits like the broken bitter notes of a piano left to fall out of tune. “Consider it a farewell tour!”
It’s over in a moment. Siobhan throws a single pitch and Famous knocks it down, straight to Erin’s glove. The inning isn’t over yet, but they take a bow anyway. Like it’s all some grand show, like Lottie isn’t fighting every bone in her body to stop herself from sprinting to home plate and tearing the stupid mask right off their face.
If you’re going to leave me, do it as yourself.
She doesn’t say that part out loud.
++
It gets hard to follow. Lottie’s ears ring from the feedback, the LCD. Every pitch brings with it the reverberations of a bassline; every bat, the crash of cymbals. If she never enters the Pocket again, it will be too soon.
She knows the names. Landry, Moody, Scorpler, Yazmin, Frasier. Hiroto, too, and Dunlap. The Tigers have lost people at every turn, at every opportunity. Somehow, Famous stayed. Somehow they were there to show her around Hades, to the dive bars and the back roads full of shades with haunted eyes and stories that made her skin crawl and her spine shiver.
They were never supposed to leave Hades. It’s a bigger loss than she can put the words to. The dugout is silent between innings, and the field is silent during. The only noise is the weather; the only sound is the frustration they dare not speak.
And here they are now, wearing the face of Sisyphus. Here they are, refusing to swing the bat once again. A ball flies, then another, then a strike.
Famous’ bat stays still, resting on their shoulder. Lottie wants to scream until the glass of the press box shatters.
“What are you doing,” she demands, kicking the dirt with the toe of her cleat. “Swing your bat, Famous!”
This, it seems for a moment, makes a difference. Famous looks over at her and raises an eyebrow, pointed, like there’s some kind of response waiting on the tongue hidden behind their painted smile. They hold up their bat and point it at her, chin slightly raised.
“Well,” they say, and their voice is louder than any feedback, “since you’ve asked so nicely.”
When Siobhan throws, Famous swings. Once again, the ball connects with the wood – once again, Lottie reaches up and snatches it out of the air without hesitation, throws it to first base without thinking about it.
Double play. The inning ends. Lottie wants to scream; she walks to the dugout instead.
++
“What was it you said?” Famous calls, as Lottie stands in the batter’s box. “Swing your bat, Lottie, darling.”
No one else has said a word all game; Lottie wonders how much of that is because of them, two tigers stalking one another in an endless wait for something that may never happen.
Lottie will not give Famous the luxury of enjoying themself. She stands stock-still and watches as Chorby Short throws her pitches – one, two, three, strike, strike, strike. That’s it, the end of a show no one wanted to see.
She tosses her bat to the ground and starts to walk back to the dugout. Lottie is so caught in her own thoughts, the swirling and twirling of Famous won’t be here when it’s over and I am on my own and This is not what was supposed to happen that she barely even hears when they call her name again, and then a hand is on her shoulder, long nails digging in hard enough to leave marks.
“If you make my devastation about you, Lottie Ceilingfan, I will never forgive you,” Famous says, mouth close enough to her ear that no one else could possibly overhear. “Play the game, and let me have my little show.”
When she turns to look, she has to cover her mouth to stifle the screech already leaving her lips. Famous has turned their mask to hide them both from onlookers, to provide the myth of privacy; in exchange, it is their own face looking back at her, bare and plain and so human, so hurt.
“Famous!” Lottie yells, through her fingers. “Put it back! Someone could see!”
Famous grins, and it’s almost soft, almost gentle. “Only you, darling. Keep it a secret, would you?”
They pull the mask back, though, brown eyes replaced by red and smile swapped for a toothy grimace.
Lottie nods. Swallows. “I will.”
++
Famous is on base when the feedback echoes. Lottie allows herself one moment of hope, a second of wishing for something she knows she won’t be lucky enough to see. A deep breath; closed eyes.
But that doesn’t last. Eventually, she has to open her eyes again. Eventually she has to see Walton Spoons standing on the pitchers’ mound, and Famous standing at second base. Just where they were before, just like they’re supposed to be. In a mask that looks like a bat, no less, and Lottie knows better than to think that’s an accident.
The game blurs together after that. Lottie swings the bat; Edric Tosser catches the ball. Famous hits the ball; Hatfield Suzuki catches it. Over and over, the crack of a bat and the thump of a catch. Never once the sound of a feedback coming, no second chance for Famous to come back.
Lottie doesn’t want to make it about her. She won’t. She can’t. This is Famous’ show to run, their team to lose. This is not about her, and it never has been. She catches the ball when it flies toward her; she walks up to bat when it’s her turn.
She does not think about Famous. Not the way they call out to her, the way their face changes colors and paints and creatures every five minutes – and normally she wouldn’t mind it, but she knows what’s behind now. Lottie knows Famous’ smile, and their eyes, and she knows without question that they are terrified if only because they let her see so much.
Lottie does not manage to hit anything for the rest of the game. She barely manages to catch the ball when it comes toward her. But she runs, as fast and as much as she can.
++
This is the part Lottie will never tell a soul.
When it happens, she doesn’t let herself look. Feedback screeches through the infield like mourner sprinting toward the River Styx, and Lottie… Lottie closes her eyes. She breathes in deep and thinks of running just like that, of letting her wings spread and taking flight.
There is that moment of stillness just after her feet leave the ground, before the work of pushing against gravity begins; she finds solace in that hesitation, the perfect distillation of peace.
The umpire calls a third and final strike. The game ends. Whatever has happened will remain, now, and Lottie almost cannot bring herself to see the world that has been left behind.
And then Famous, with a kind of laughter verging on hysteria, says, “You cannot expect to get rid of me that easily.”
It is the ground rushing up to meet her. It is a waterfall crashing into the earth with a thunderous roar. Her heart skips a beat and the tears come before she even realizes, and she takes off toward home plate before she even opens her eyes.
"You waited until the last second on purpose!" she yells, and now is when she finally looks, as she leaps through the air to cover the last few feet to home plate.
Famous is there in a Tigers jersey, with arms spread open – not for an embrace, but for gloating. They catch her just the same.