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i.
Calliope Cooper grows up on the north side of Chicago, stories of the Firefighters dancing in her ears since before she can remember. It’s to be expected, really– with a firefighter for a mother and a father who works for the dispatch, the Call’s been a distant hum her entire life.
So she grows up with stories. Stories of a wolf that died to protect a gorgon. Stories of an availing angel that saved a statue that came to life. Stories of a pitcher and his catcher and a cyborg and a thousand more.
She grows up with stories she can’t escape.
ii.
Ava Chimney is one grade up from Calliope, but their parents work together and they’re on the same Blittle League team. They’re more like cousins than anything else, annoyed with each other at the best of times, but still orbiting each other despite their best efforts. She grows up in her shadow in a way she can’t describe, striving to burst out of it and never quite succeeding. Still, they take turns playing catcher on the playground, throwing ‘til the other hits the ball or the frozen ground below them.
Neither of them have known anything but winter, after all.
iii.
Calliope hears the Call abruptly, violently, halfway through a lecture in her second year lit class, and she's out of the classroom before the professor can even finish their sentence.
It's what she's been waiting for. It's the dangling axe over her neck. It's everything in between, and so much more.
That night, she runs, and runs, and runs until she's at the lake, crashing waves of magma against the shore. The dispatch is louder than it has any right to be, and still it’s her father’s voice in her ear, telling stories of what she might become.
iv.
Ava shows up at the Firehouse four months after her, because of course she does. It’s frustrating, almost, the speed at which she picks things up, the ease with which she moves through it all. They haven’t talked in five years at least, and continue not to for the next few months that follow.
Finally, during a 3am drive back to the Firehouse after a call, Ava looks at her.
“I was halfway through culinary school, you know.”
Calliope gives a laugh. “Urban Planning.”
Ava raises a brow. “I guess there’s something to be said for predestination, huh?”
“Guess so.”
v.
There's a great fire, not too many years after that. The last one was many years ago, much before her time, before her parents’ time, even. Still, there’s two instincts ingrained in the core of the city; to run with the wind and rebuild, or to stay and fight. Raging flames and frozen winds do not mix, but she stands her ground.
Calliope barely makes it out. Her mother doesn't at all.
It’s Ava who finds her in the end, burns trailing up from fingertips to neck, and they don’t say a word, either of them. They just try.
vi.
Calliope, in Greek mythology, was the muse of epic poetry. She wonders, some days, if her parents were setting her up for failure with a name like that. She is built upon stories, knows the expectations they carry, the intent they leave behind. She also knows, though, despite what her father once said, that stories cannot save her.
She spends half a year in and out of rehab, willing her arm to work again through severed muscle and tightened skin. It does, eventually, even if not quite like it used to.
Just in time, too, because a month after that, Blaseball comes back.
vii.
She can’t decide whether it’s horror or relief that fills her when it’s her name on the roster, second from the top. The Firehouse is filled with new and old faces now, Ava and Ken and Hugh, but Hops and Dom from the bar down the street are here too, and the energy that permeates is tense but bright.
She’s not as good as she once was, not by far. Ava is better, her natural talent as a kid increased by tenfold. But together they’re a team, haphazard at best, but a team nonetheless, and together, they try.
viii.
Chicago has been frozen since anyone can remember, but it wasn’t always. There’s stories she was told, years ago, of a river that ran free into the lake, not of ice or of magma but water, plain and simple. A river that could reverse itself, once upon a time, and a lady that controlled it.
She finds herself there, the day before the season starts. Calliope’s never been devout, but that night she prays and prays and prays to the Lady of the Hearth to protect them, because Calliope grew up on stories about Blaseball, and she knows what it can do.
ix.
It takes a day for Ken to get frozen. Eight, for Ava. She watches as it happens, as her teammates turn to stone, impenetrable. She stocks the dugout with shock blankets, hands them out after games, and does what she can.
Calliope Cooper is not good at Blaseball. She doesn’t claim to be. But she does stand tall and stoic at the plate, waiting with measured patience until a walk is called. Keeps calm in the face of it all, steady as she walks to first, because someone has to.
When the snow comes for her, she screams.
x.
The snow doesn’t feel like much, really. Reminds her of those first few days or so after the fire ended, up to the gills with pain meds and antibiotics; a floating stasis. She thought she might be terrified, claustrophobic, but instead she just… is.
The Firefighters swing in variation from bottom of the division to third. It doesn’t matter. To the city, having a team again is enough; to the team, making it through another game whole is all that’s needed. The cheers of the crowd mask their failures, and Calliope can’t help but wonder if she’ll be a story told, one day.
xi.
Still, she stands. Still, she tries. Still, she screams when the snow comes to get her. Still, she cries in the cold of the dugout, some days. Still, before every game, she prays.
Oh, lady who shines so bright, won’t you set the world to right.
Between innings, the fires glint. Ava stands next to her, matching childhood pendant of the six-point star of Chicago around her neck.
“You think we’re gonna make it through this?”
Calliope takes a long, hard look at the outfield, at the packed-down snow and frigid falling winds.
“I think we’ve gotta try.”
xii.
They make it through, though. Fingers cracking in the cold, lungs hurting with bitter wind, they make it through. Kid, on the run, sends her regards, but they end the season safe and at home.
At the end, Calliope finds herself hand in hand with Ava at the frozen banks of the river. They’ve always been two extremes, the two of them; the best of the worst and the worst of the best. Still, they stand. Still, they try.
Staring up at the hulking statue of the Lady, she cries.
“It worked,” Ava whispers in her ear. “You worked.”