Archive of Our Own ^beta

INT: HEWITT BEST’S BEDROOM - MORNING

It’s hard to say what time it is. Not too early, hardly the crack of dawn or anything, but not too late. There’s a lot to do in a day, after all. They like to sleep late, perfectly late. They were this way when they were alive the first time. Now, here in the vault, they’re this way again.

The townhouse is filled with modern decorations. Everything is light colors: light-wash wood, sage green curtains, pastel walls. Downstairs there’s a kitchen, but we aren’t there. We’re in the bedroom. There’s a sleek nightstand, a lamp made of white porcelain, a walk-in closet with the door closed, and a desk that has never been touched.

In the middle of it all is a California King sized mattress, with pastel green sheets, and lying in the middle is HEWITT BEST. They’re a little on the short side, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to them while they’re awake. Big personality. Filipino, dark hair, but some of it is dyed green. Not pastel green like the walls, but a real, proper, Kansas City Breath Mints green.

Hewitt wakes up in one smooth motion, eyes opening and muscles flexing. They sleep curled up, but as they awaken, they spread their arms out, flattening onto their back. A close-up shot: their fingers flutter, reaching towards the ends of the mattress. Another close-up: their ankles flex. We close in as they drape one arm across their eyes, squinting at the ceiling.

HEWITT
(still heavy with sleep:) Ugh. Sharpie.

#

In the beginning none of the marks stuck, not even on the bedroom walls. Hewitt had to keep track of the days in his head, something he wasn’t very well-suited for. Eventually the tally marks took, though, after a week or something like that of marking every single day. The rest of the house was quick to follow, probably understanding that blaseball magic wasn’t going to be a match for how goddamn mad he was.

These days, he wakes up in a bed he hates in a townhouse he can’t stand. He’s not meant to be in a townhouse. He’s not meant to be in a vault at all, a picturesque pristine little Barbie house where he’s just a doll. But at least he can write on the walls now, so before he even rolls out of bed he can mark on the wall behind him: another tally. Another day here.

When he heads downstairs, there's breakfast waiting for him: coffee that’s almost hot enough and buttery toast that’s almost dark enough. And on the back wall of the kitchen, a nice clean wall with a backsplash in a lovely shade of sage green, there’s a map. It’s drawn with Sharpies, because the vault was stupid enough to give him Sharpies, and he was determined enough to Sharpie up the walls.

It’s not finished. Hewitt doesn’t think it’ll ever be finished. The vault is not designed to be mapped. But it doesn’t change. He’s completely confident that it doesn’t change. Every day the same things are in the same places. He knows the bakery on the corner and the park half a mile west, or at least to the direction that he decided to call west. He knows everything for a good four mile radius.

He knows there’s nobody else there.

It’s been weeks, and he hasn’t seen another person. Not anyone from the Legends, not anyone that he recognizes, not even a weird Twilight Zone-y faceless person playing the role of barista for the day. The vault is huge; the vault is perfect; the vault is empty except for Hewitt Best.

He sips his coffee and looks at the map. He’s been pushing north lately, and the map is getting lopsided, so today he goes east. After a couple days of that he’ll go northeast. He’s been walking everywhere, not that he ever gets tired or sore. He’s wondered before if the vault would give him a bike or something if he asked nicely enough, but the vault doesn’t give him things he wants. Only things that are perfect.

East. Today he’ll go east. And maybe that'll be the day he sees someone.

#

The third last thing that Hewitt remembers before the vault is dying. The less said about that, the better.

The second last is the Hall, which is less clear than they expected. Something about “hall” called to mind barracks or residence halls, but the Hall of Flame was neither of those. It wasn’t anything. It was wet, they think; it was lonely, they know.

The last thing before the vault is the Rising Stars game. Seeing Winnie again. Seeing a lot of people that meant less to them than Winnie. Hands on their arms. Shouting and knowing it was too late. Being carried away. Gold pouring into them and gold pouring out of them.

And now here they are. The less said about that, the better, too.

#

There’s nothing east. There’s nothing northeast. There’s nothing south, or southeast, or any other direction for another mile. The map gets bigger, and lonelier, and fuller and emptier all at once.

There are places, oh, plenty of places. A merchandise store selling Tlopp’s cards of the Vault Legends. A boutique clothing store that has sparkling champagne flutes out front. A playground where everything is adult sized. Restaurants and bars and coffee shops, dozens of endless ones where everything tastes a little plastic.

But there are no salespeople. Nobody manning the fitting rooms. Nobody on the playground. No waitresses or chefs or bartenders. No neighbors. No other legends, even. It doesn’t matter where he goes or how many steps he walks. It’s been weeks and there’s still nobody. He’s starting to wonder if this is his own personal vault, and everyone else is in their own personal vault, and never the twain shall meet. Maybe he’ll never see another person again.

Hewitt always kind of thought the whole introvert-extrovert thing was bullshit, but the loneliness is becoming all they can think about. It’s a finite list: they want to get out of here, they want to see their team again, they want to get the gold out of their body, they want to find someone else in this vault.

Another mile west. Another empty restaurant. Another cup of coffee. Another slice of toast. Another tally mark, although that’s less for counting and more out of habit. He’s not sure he wants to know how long it’s been.

#

In the days before the tally marks stuck, Hewitt would go home in the evenings. And then one day they didn’t, just to see what would happen, and they woke up in the townhouse even though they’d fallen asleep a mile away. It felt like giving up power when Hewitt stopped trying to walk home, but at the same time it felt like a victory. Like learning to take advantage of something.

So they go wherever, wander freely and do what they want, and then they get zapped back home. Back into their bed. Their massive California king bed, the one that makes them feel small, with pristine satin sheets and everything sage green and too lovely.

When Hewitt was young — elementary school aged, old enough to clearly remember this — their parents got a king-size mattress off the side of the street. It was for the kids, all six of them, because it was easier to cram three kids onto one mattress than to cram three mattresses into the one-bedroom apartment.

He was the middle child and that meant that he was old enough to understand that money was tight, and that the mattress wasn’t a treat. His little brother didn’t realize. He would call dibs on being in the middle like it was a game, and Hewitt would make eye contact with his older sister and they’d agree not to spoil the fun, in that solemn, silent way that kids agree on serious matters.

After about a year, they moved into a bigger apartment. Their parents got rid of the king-size mattress, much to his brother’s despair and his sister’s relief. They went up to two mattresses, and then a bunk bed for two of them, and then all three of them had a tiny corner to call their own even in their shared bedrooms.

But Hewitt still remembers being home alone, for just a handful of seconds as their mom went to ask a neighbor for something, and crawling into bed. And they spread their arms out as wide as they could go, and then flopped around for a while, and never got near the edge of the mattress. It felt impossibly huge.

He could never fit a full-size mattress into any of his shoebox apartments, let alone a king-size. Not with his ILB salary. The occasional hotel room was as luxurious as he could get, and even those were a treat reserved for playoff games. Anything bigger than a twin bed feels luscious, impossibly extravagant, too fancy for him.

They promise themself they won’t get used to this, to a California King mattress and breakfast premade every day, to things fixing themselves when they break. But some mornings, some mornings when they’re bone-deep tired, some mornings when they spent the day before walking and don’t even have an ache in their muscles to show it — those mornings, Hewitt lies down and stretches like a starfish and tries to remember that for some people, this would be the best thing that ever happened to them.

#

It goes without saying that the gold is a problem.

It was slow enough that he didn’t notice it at first, just assumed that his hands were getting clumsy from the sudden transition into a cushy life. But then one day he looked and saw that his fingertips were turning gold. Actual, real gold that flaked off when he rubbed at it furiously. Four days later there was more gold, and then a handful of days later there was more.

He had worried about the gold when he first got ego. He wasn’t alive for terribly long after that, but he had heard rumors, about York Silk and Nagomi Mcdaniel, about the ways that being loved changed them. He was religious about searching for changes that never came. At least, they didn’t come while he was alive. Not till he was back, till he was pulled away from his teammates by disjointed mannequin hands and faces he almost recognized and—

So the gold is part of the routine now. Tally marks. Coffee and toast. Picking a direction. And the gold. He leaves flakes of it scattered on the marble counter in the kitchen, the upsettingly clean sidewalks, the tables of restaurants that he stops at along the way. It’s easy to get rid of, but it’s persistent.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice. It’s easy to be preoccupied with trying to make sure your hands are hands and not something else, that the skin you were born with is still comfortingly wrapped around your body, same as it’s always been. He’s sitting on a park bench inspecting the webbing between his fingers when he hears footsteps.

There’s an instant that he doesn’t understand why that should matter, and then all at once he does. He leaps to his feet and turns, and—

“Um,” says a stranger, says another person, and Hewitt could start crying from that alone. Judging by the stranger’s face, they’re not the only one. “Wow.”

“Wow,” Hewitt echoes. It’s a little strange for someone to see them like this, because the vault… changes things. It’s like a photo filter, or a movie shoot. Their hair lies flatter, the green dye doesn’t fade, and their clothes are far too nice and uncomfortable. It feels like this stranger is meeting them at a party or something, somewhere that’ll make the real Hewitt indistinguishable.

For eir part, the stranger doesn’t look uncomfortable. E’s wearing chunky, sparkly platform boots, ones that click loudly on the pavement. E’s impossibly tall, even without the heels, and has biceps about the size of Hewitt’s head. E looks human, mostly, although there are blotches of green on eir throat and leaves growing in their dense perm.

“I’m going to hug you,” e says, making determined headway. “So, like, speak now, or—”

“God, please,” Hewitt says, and meets em halfway. They’re only chest height on the stranger, but that doesn’t matter, because there’s another person here. Another real, breathing person.

“Can I tell you something?” the stranger mumbles. “I don’t even care if this isn’t real.”

“I’m real,” Hewitt promises. “I ate toast for breakfast.”

“Toast?”

“It’s what my townhouse gives me. It’s nice bread, but it’s just… toast.”

“You’d think the food here would be better,” e says philosophically. “Like, if we have to eat. We didn’t have to in the Hall.”

That’s enough for Hewitt to pull back and look at the stranger again. Up close Hewitt can see more leaves tangled in eir hair. When e shifts eir hands to take Hewitt’s own, they spot sprouts tangled in eir fingers. “The Hall?”

“For the dead players,” e says helpfully. 

The Hall wasn’t exactly a social scene, but the Rising Stars game… sort of was. There had been a lot of faces, a lot of reunions. Hewitt recognized most of the Legends, and a fair number of the Stars, too. There’s only one person that went from the Hall to the Vault that they didn’t already know.

“Sosa,” they say cautiously.

E blinks furiously. “Oh, this is embarrassing. Please tell me you’re introducing yourself and we have the same name, and it’s not that I forgot yours.”

They shake their head. “You were at the game,” they say. Sosa’s face twitches, the smallest shift. “I was too.”

“Oh,” e says, and then pauses. “I don’t recognize you.”

“The Legends stole me too.”

Sosa nods slowly, eyes trained on them. “Well, clearly you know me, but I’ll be polite. Sosa Peperomioides, of the Carolina Queens.”

“Hewitt Best, of the Breath Mints.” They pause. Winnie had explained some things to them at the match: history, missing teams, all that, but it had been far from comprehensive. “I don’t know the Queens.”

“They’re—” Sosa’s face splits into a smile and then falls immediately. Hewitt knows what e must be remembering all over again. E clears eir throat. “They’re my family,” e says quietly. “Even if I never see them again, they’re still my family.”

“Good,” Hewitt says, for lack of anything else to say. They look down at their hands, still clutched in Sosa’s own, and then squint. Just below one of eir thumbnails, there’s a patch of gold. Immediately they move to rub eir thumb against the back of their hand, knocking the flake off.

“Oh,” Sosa murmurs, and Hewitt looks up. “You too?”

“Me too,” Hewitt says heavily. “You wanna get dinner or sit down or something and tell me about the Queens?”

Sosa sniffs loudly. “Yes,” e says, and eir voice is heavy with grief that doesn’t feel like Hewitt’s to hear, but eir head is held high, and e manages to smile through the tears gathered in eir eyes. “I would.”

#

THE VAULT PRESENTS
FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE
THE HOTTEST NEW INTERVIEW
LEGENDS IN CONVERSATION
HEWITT BEST & SOSA PEPEROMIOIDES

Hewitt Best (HB): Is this good? Do you like Indian food?

Sosa Peperomioides (SP): Yeah. Yeah, this is good. God. Sorry, I’m not normally a crier, it’s just—

HB: Yeah. I get it. So, the Queens? The Dakota—

SP: Carolina.

HB: Right, Carolina. The Carolina Queens.

SP: We were there from the beginning. The… the real beginning. I know it started over, we knew in the Hall when it happened, but we were there when it started. A lot of us were performers.

HB: Drag queens?

SP: Some of us. I never did drag, actually. I was a lounge performer.

HB: Singing?

SP: Yeah, singing. Dancing. Emceeing, sometimes. I was at different clubs than a lot of them, but we were all in the same neck of the woods, so we all knew each other. I wasn’t the captain or anything, but I was… you know. The best on the team. Good pitcher.

HB: Crowned queen of strikeouts.

SP: Ugh. You heard that?

HB: We all heard it.

SP: What did you say your name was? Hewitt Best? Mister Better-Than-All?

HB: I wasn’t, actually. Better than everyone else.

SP: Weren’t you? You got ego for a reason.

HB: I was good at stealing bases. That was enough. But I don’t think I was the best. Not of all time. The best are in here too, though.

SP: Yeah. That happens.

HB: So. This is a little indelicate, but I have to know. Did you have the plants before the team?

SP: These? [E raises a hand to touch some of the leaves in eir hair.] I’ve always had these. Since I was a kid.

HB: They look nice.

SP: I know. The Breath Mints were there at the beginning, you know.

HB: …really?

SP: Yeah, really. I don’t recognize you, obviously. And you don’t recognize me.

HB: No. But I was— I mean, I thought I was one of the first.

SP: One of your first, maybe.

HB: That’s true. Do you still sing?

SP: I don’t know. I’m new to being alive properly. I haven’t been singing much. I’ve just been looking for other people.

HB: Me too. Holy shit. We did it.

SP: [laughing] We did it! Cheers.

[The two lapse into a companionable silence, eating their curry. Celebrities: they really are just like us. Of course, the silence is only temporary.]

HB: You should tell me about them, though.

SP: Hm?

HB: The Queens. Like, the actual people.

SP: Oh.

HB: If you want.

SP: Of course I want, I just — maybe not right now. Maybe tomorrow.

HB: Yeah, tomorrow… How are we going to find each other tomorrow? Every time I fall asleep for longer than a few minutes, I wake up in my bed, so where should—

SP: That park.

HB: Good idea.

SP: It’s a bit of a walk for me, but I can be there.

HB: Me too.

#

INT: HEWITT’S BEDROOM - LATE, OR MAYBE EARLY

We open looking down at that giant mattress from above. Hewitt doesn’t bother making the bed, so the sheets are a mess.

The camera pans to the side and down, rotating around the bed until it’s a perfect side view of the mattress. There’s a comforter, white and sage green, floral with burgundy beading details. The comforter has been kicked so far to one side that it’s hanging over the edge, fully obscuring the mattress itself.

We go down, down, all the way to the floor, and then back up. The comforter isn’t hanging over anymore. The messy sheets are suddenly neat, a perfect parallel with the top of the bed. The corners are tucked perfectly. And Hewitt himself is lying in bed, curled up in a ball.

We cut to a close-up of his hands, resting near his face. There is a glimmer of gold on his knuckles.

#

Hewitt half expects the rules to change now that he’s met Sosa. Maybe the streets will get longer, or his townhouse door won’t open. But the next morning he wakes up to the same tally marks, and the same sunny weather, and the same toast and coffee waiting for him. It’s almost unsettling, the way the world stays the same even after things have cataclysmically shifted.

He half-jogs to the park, just to feel a little of the exhaustion as he goes. He doesn’t let himself doubt anything on the way there. He doesn’t.

When he gets to the park he can hear Sosa before he sees em, and it’s enough to make relief wash over him. E’s talking to emself, mumbling something that Hewitt can’t make out.

“Sosa?” they call, just to make themself known.

“Hewitt?” There’s a loud thump, and then e says reproachfully, “You scared me.”

“You’ll get used to it.” They round the last corner and see Sosa rubbing one elbow, smiling at them. They can’t help but smile back as they head towards em. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Sosa says. “I guess I should thank you, you scared me so bad I ripped the last bit out of my arm.”

“More gold?”

“Always more gold.”

“Let me see.” They hold out their hands. “Better to have another set of eyes.”

Sosa holds eir hands out obediently, eyes already roaming over Hewitt’s hands. Hewitt squinds down at eir fingers, and then eir palms, the backs of eir hands, everything up to eir elbows. “You’re good.”

“You’re not,” Sosa says, and rubs a hand along Hewitt’s forearm. A shower of golden dust falls to the perfectly manicured grass. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” Hewitt says, and resolutely does not get choked up. “What did you want to do today?”

“Nothing,” Sosa admits. “But I can guess you want to do something.”

Hewitt does. Yesterday was good, talking to Sosa, getting to be with another person. But they saw the Legends, all of them. There are well over a dozen people here, and some of them have been there a lot longer than Hewitt and Sosa have. Hewitt remembers seeing them at the game looking dazed, shying away from one another. Now they think they understand why.

“I want to keep looking for people,” they say slowly. “But— maybe tomorrow. I still want to get to know you.”

“Do you have a game plan?”

“I have a map.”

Sosa laughs in delight. “Can I see it?”

“It’s a wall in my townhouse. I couldn’t figure out how to make one I could take with me.”

“Can you show me?”

Hewitt doesn’t necessarily want to go back to their townhouse, but… “Sure,” they decide. It’s just a house. “Let’s go.”

It’s not a short walk back to Hewitt’s townhouse, but they pass the time by talking. Sosa tells them about a couple teammates, and about what it was like being a performer in the eighties; Hewitt talks about organizing unions, about Kansas City, about growing up with a tiny bed.

They stop for lunch, which means it’s a good couple of hours before they get to the townhouse. Sosa reaches the door first and pulls on it, then frowns. “It’s locked.”

“I have absolutely never locked this,” Hewitt tells em. “If someone robbed it while I was gone, it would be a kindness.”

Sosa steps to the side and gestures. Hewitt takes a step forward, just a little cautious, and rests their hand on the doorknob. The door opens, as though it was never latched.

“I don’t like that,” Sosa says cheerfully. “Where’s the map?”

Hewitt guides em into the kitchen, where there’s a platter on the counter. Sosa inspects it. “Spring rolls?”

“Lumpia,” Hewitt answers quietly. It’s been so long since he was in this townhouse for lunch that he forgot that it gave him this. His parents weren’t great cooks, but lumpia was one of those things that they did. Hell, lumpia was one of those things that they taught him to make for himself. He remembers sitting with all three of his parents as they took turns showing him how to mince the pork, how to season it, how to fold the wrapper just right.

And then, then, after he’d left home and dropped out of community college, after bad jobs and good jobs, once he joined the Breath Mints, he’d shown Izzie how to make them. She had recipes of her own, but she’d sat with Hewitt as he went through the same motions his parents taught him. She’d shown him the ones that she and Atlas made, and those were the ones she made most of the time, but every now and again Hewitt would join her and make lumpia of his own.

He’s had this before, the vault’s lumpia. It doesn’t taste like his parents’. It doesn’t taste like Izzie’s. It tastes like pinoy Panda Express, like something designed for white people, like… like it’s not his.

Sosa takes a bite of one of the rolls and immediately wrinkles eir nose. “I mean, I guess,” e mumbles. “Homemade is better.”

“Isn’t it always,” Hewitt sighs, and gestures at the wall with the map. “Here you go.”

E doesn’t have a memory for locations the way Hewitt does, but e’s able to roughly describe things. E’s to the north, pretty far up, far enough that e ends up marking it on the ceiling, because Hewitt’s wall isn’t big enough for the map.

“You know,” Hewitt says, staring up at Sosa’s Sharpie marks, “I didn’t think I was in over my head until now.”

Sosa rocks back on eir heels and looks at him. “Until I literally reached over your head?”

“Until I realized my wall wasn’t big enough for a map that covered me and one other person.”

“How big do you think the whole thing is?”

Hewitt shakes his head. “I have no idea. I’m not good at spatial things like that.”

“You made a map, that’s pretty good.”

“It took me a long time.”

“Oh my god,” Sosa sighs. “If you say so. But I think tomorrow we should go…” e squints at the map. “West? Your west side looks smaller than the rest.”

It’s true, although not by much. Hewitt wants to ask about what’s northeast, about everything Sosa has seen, but e won’t be able to answer the questions. “West,” he agrees. “And I hate to say it, but we could probably find more people if we keep splitting up.”

“Not every day,” Sosa says quickly, and Hewitt nods. “But yeah. Some of the time, we should probably go our separate ways.”

“And then debrief the next day,” Hewitt finishes, and Sosa breathes a sigh in relief at what he’s not saying: that they’ll stay in touch. That they won’t have to spend every single day alone. “I bet we can do this.”

“You’ve got a lot of confidence,” Sosa murmurs. “I’d like to have it, too.”

Hewitt flashes a grin at em. “I’ll believe enough for the both of us.”

“Oh, I believe too. It’s just the way I believe in wishing on stars and tarot readings. I believe in them, but mostly I believe in you and me.”

“You and me,” Hewitt repeats. He can’t say he disagrees.

#

After dinner, which is an incredibly fancy version of a pasta dish that PolkaDot Patterson cooked for everyone once all the way back in Season One, and dessert, which is ice cream — after debating turning on the TV and then deciding both of them would rather not know — after all that, Hewitt looks at Sosa and says, “Is it weird to ask you to sleep in my bed?”

“I was trying to figure out if it was weird to ask if I could.” Sosa claps delightedly. “Is your bed also big as fuck for no reason?”

“For no reason!”

“Beds like that are made to be shared.”

“Yeah,” Hewitt says. “I don’t have pajamas that would fit you, but—

Sosa waves them off. “I can sleep in anything. Don’t you worry about me.”

Eir clothes don’t look particularly comfortable; they all look synthetic and stiff in the way that all clothes from the eighties do. But Hewitt isn’t about to push it. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” Sosa says, “let’s go to bed.”

It’s nice, the familiar dance of getting ready for bed alongside someone else. Hewitt and Yeong-Ho never lived together, and they hadn’t had many chances to do this together. Most of Hewitt’s memories about routines involve siblings and roommates, some teammates in hotel rooms, shifting in and out of the bathroom, answering questions about what’s where.

They make it to bed eventually. Hewitt lies down on one side, and Sosa says “Why are you acting like we’re not going to be clinging to each other in our sleep,” and they have to admit that e has a point so they both end up in the middle.

“It’s good,” Sosa says into the darkness, “just being here.”

Hewitt doesn’t want to be here. They hate this bed. They hate this house and its food. They hate the furniture. They hate the vault. They think they didn’t know what hatred was until now: this seeping, oozing dislike that saturates their vision, that permanently changes their ability to so much as look at things.

“It is,” they agree, because if nothing else it’s good being there with Sosa. Maybe they should visit Sosa’s house soon, and make sure that e gets a night with someone else in eir house. Maybe it’s easier being the one visiting, instead of being visited.

#

Hewitt doesn’t remember falling asleep.

In time, they will forget waking up. In time, it won’t hurt as much. They will have endless days with Sosa, stumbling into random townhouses in the dark and falling asleep together on the couch. They know it even before they live it: they are going to wake up in their townhouse alone every day for the rest of their life. In time, this will be normal.

But today, the first day that it happens, when Hewitt rolls over and they’re alone in this bed, with not even the cotton swabs Sosa used to take off eir makeup, with only a heart scribbled on their ceiling in permanent marker — today is hard.

#

On the first day: they go west. West-northwest, to be specific. Sosa’s townhouse is straight north from Hewitt’s, so it’s easier to explore the northern areas with em there. There’s a boutique stationery store that’s completely empty. Sosa takes a couple journals without paying, because e doesn’t have money and there’s nobody there to pay. E tries to write notes while e walks, and falls asleep with the journal stuffed down eir shirt, just to see if that’s enough to keep it there.

On the second day: by mutual agreement Sosa goes northwest from eir townhouse and Hewitt goes southwest from theirs. After three days having someone else for company it’s almost pleasant to have a little bit of time to themself, something that they try not to think about extensively. It feels like bad luck to dwell on. There’s not much to find to the southwest, and they fall asleep in a karaoke bar with comfortable couches and no music.

On the third day: they meet Sosa in the park and spend half an hour prying a particularly stubborn piece of gold out from the crook of eir elbow. Eventually e mentions that the journal was gone when they woke up, but e doesn’t seem disappointed. They go north-northwest and find nothing in particular.

On the fourth: there’s a lavish Ethiopian restaurant with steaming platters of injera and bowls of stew, no chairs but plenty of floor seating. They’ve walked in a straight line for miles in one direction, just to see, not even particularly searching for anything. The two of them sit across from each other and eat with their hands and hardly talk, even when the meal is over.

The fifth: They split up again. Hewitt finds a clothing store and takes a jacket just for kicks, dark green and far too big on them.

The sixth: The jacket is waiting in their closet when they wake up. It’s one of few changes; it isn’t the first time that they’ve taken clothing. They meet Sosa at the park and e flakes off a patch of gold from behind Hewitt’s ear and doesn’t ask about the new jacket. They go east and don’t find anything.

Seventh: They go east-southeast and don’t find anything.

Eighth: They go southeast and don’t find anything.

Ninth, is it really nine already? Sosa wants to go back to the Ethiopian restaurant, and Hewitt doesn’t want to isolate the only other person in the world so they agree even though it doesn’t feel like the best use of time. They sit and Sosa tells them about the formation of the Queens. Hewitt replies with stories about Boyfriend, and both PolkaDots, and the Ingrams, and the Guerras.

Tenth: The stories spill over into the new day and it’s sweet to talk about. They find another stationery store and this time Sosa grabs fistfuls of pens. They’re going east-northeast today, weaving through the streets, glued by each other’s sides. Half the townhouses are locked but they find one that opens eventually and fall asleep together in the massive bed.

Twelfth, because on the eleventh Hewitt was alone and there was nothing: they are with Sosa and there’s nothing. Of course there’s nothing. But they notice that Sosa’s collarbones are turning gold. E takes care of it privately and discreetly, but when e gets back e’s not smiling so much. The stories, the nostalgia, they don’t feel like escapes anymore. They feel like reminders.

Thirteen: It reminds them of the Breath Mints, this number. They tell Sosa that, mention that it came up more than once, that it was like a lucky number for them. And e smiles faintly and doesn’t say anything about luck or futility and Hewitt appreciates that. They bear west from the park, straight west, and there’s nothing there.

Fourteen:

“Tomorrow we should split up,” Sosa says gently, and Hewitt nods.

It was a lot easier to avoid frustration when they were the only person in the world, when everything was impossible. But now they know that there are other people here. Not in pocket dimensions or too far to find, but here, in the vault. The people are there and Hewitt isn’t finding them.

But Sosa pulls them into a hug. “We’ve covered so much ground,” e says, “so much more together than before. We’re doing it.”

“We’re doing it,” Hewitt repeats, and tries to feel that resonance, that significance, tries to mean it.

#

EXT: THE VAULT - DAY

A wide shot looking at a row of townhouses. They’re immaculate, naturally. It’s quiet, without so much as a breeze rustling through leaves, without so much as a birdsong. That silence makes it all the more important when the first footsteps break through, slow and steady, the sound of high heels on pavement.

Eventually SOSA PEPEROMIOIDES walks on screen. E’s tall, 6’2'' or something like that. Chinese and androgynous, curly hair, fashionably dressed, unibrow. E looks at home here, but you wouldn’t know from looking at em that e likes brighter colors and uglier makeup, louder noises and even louder music, all the things that the vault won’t give em.

Still, e walks slowly through the row of townhouses. We cut to a profile as e keeps walking down a seemingly endless column, straight through the middle of the street. E’s humming a song to emself, tuneless but still pretty.

There’s a statue standing on the street corner. We see it at the same time that Sosa does: it’s a young man, and it looks like it’s made of solid gold. The statue has long hair tied back in a ponytail, down to his shoulder blades. It’s wearing square glasses that aren’t very flattering, and clothes that are a lot grungier than anything Sosa is wearing.

This is what catches eir attention: the clothes. They’re not gold. They just look like clothes. Almost like this isn’t a statue.

SOSA
(tentatively, hopefully) …hello?

#

Hewitt spends the fifteenth day in a coffee shop to the south. It’s not particularly nice, and the coffee isn’t particularly good, and he isn’t looking particularly hard for anyone. Today is for him, so he sits in a coffee shop and drinks coffee that’s too sweet, and he thinks — he tells himself — one day this will be over. And until that day comes, pushing never did anything but break people. So today he won’t push. And tomorrow he’ll talk to Sosa about burnout or something.

It’s nice, taking the day off. He’s not used to things like that. Blaseball doesn’t allow much time for days off, and neither did the jobs he worked before blaseball, retail or construction or janitor work. He used to have to fight for things like this. It seems absurd now that they’re an open option, something he can elect to have whenever he so chooses. It’s a bizarre luxury.

When he wakes up in his townhouse on the sixteenth day he feels genuinely refreshed in a way that he hasn’t in a long time. He eats the toast and drinks the coffee from inside his townhouse, luxuries he rarely affords himself, and why not? Sosa can wait a few extra minutes while he sits and dwells in the peace.

It’s normally a long walk to the park, but Hewitt can feel a little extra energy, some kind of rejuvenation from the day off. He walks it quicker than normal, and he’s brimming with ideas and suggestions.

All of that comes to a screeching halt when, a handful of blocks before the park, Sosa appears in the street in front of him and says, “We need to talk.”

“Uh,” Hewitt says, brain pinwheeling at the unexpected appearance. Even now, after the couple of weeks he’s spent with Sosa, it’s strange having another person actually there. “Talk away.”

“I found someone,” Sosa says. Hewitt takes a sharp breath, but Sosa shakes eir head. “He’s in a bad way. He won’t talk to me, won’t even say his name. I convinced him to come to the park today, but — Hewitt, he’s made of gold. Completely.”

Hewitt sucks in a breath. “As in—”

“As in, it's not just skin deep.”

“And he’s here?”

“He’s at the bench. I didn’t want you to scare him.”

“Does he know I’m coming?”

Sosa nods, curls bouncing as e does. “He said he’d wait. Or, he nodded, which I guess counts.”

“Okay,” Hewitt says. His mind is spinning. There were people at the Legends game that he didn’t recognize. He remembers some of them made of gold, more than one, but he can’t make sense of that right now. There are a lot of people it could be. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Wait—” e reaches out and runs a hand through Hewitt’s hair. A spray of gold flies out; they both grimace. “I don’t know if it would freak him out to take the gold off in front of him, but—”

“Good call,” Hewitt says. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

When they finally get close enough to the bench that Hewitt can see the new person Sosa has found, his back is facing them. He has long hair, spilling over the back of the bench, and he’s sitting perfectly still. Hewitt finds himself wondering if the gold hurts when it’s like this. He hasn’t kept it on him long enough to find out.

“Hey,” Sosa calls. The new person doesn’t react. “I’ve got them.”

Hewitt doesn’t say anything yet. There’s something in the back of his mind that’s beginning to fuzz out like static, like an animal scrabbling to get away from a predator. It’s an instinct that very few people would be able to trigger, which is enough to narrow down who this is.

“Normally we go looking for other people,” Sosa continues. “But I think that Hewitt can be convinced to hang out here, right?”

At this, the new person turns his head slightly. Enough that Hewitt knows.

“York,” he says, a little resigned. “You’re alive.”

And at last, York Silk turns around. He looks older than Hewitt remembers — not just because some of Hewitt’s most striking memories of York are of an apple-cheeked third-grader, but because he remembers York at the end of the Grand Siesta. He had been profoundly happier around the end of Season 12. Hewitt never knew him well, but he knew that York had aged up to his early 20s, that he had gone back to school, that he had friends and a life.

He remembers when York died. He remembers seeing that healthy glow vanish when York came back. He remembers York Silk boy legend, York Silk agent of the gods, York Silk in recovery, York Silk recovered, York Silk undead. And now—

“I am,” says York Silk in gold. “Hey.”

#

EXT: THE MEADOW - DUSK

This is a flashback, a long time ago. We see The Meadow, but it’s sepia-tinted and faded. LEACH INGRAM is on the pitcher’s mound, a green-flaming skeleton. She takes a deep breath before pitching the ball, grunting as she does.

We follow the ball, flying from the pitcher’s mound to home plate, until we see YORK SILK. He doesn’t look like the man we just saw: his hair is cut in a messy bowl cut around his ears, and he’s not wearing glasses. He looks thin, almost skeletal. Most notably he’s not made of gold yet: he looks like a regular Hawai’ian man, brown-skinned and dark-haired.

York hits a pop fly, one that soars almost directly to right field. Hewitt, looking much the same as he does in the vault, jumps up to catch it. The ball lands squarely in his mitt, but—

HEWITT
Shit!

Hewitt falls to the field, ball firmly clutched in mitt, mitt firmly clutched in opposite hand. The crowd falls silent. KINA LARSEN and MARCO STINK, both in the outfield, rush towards Hewitt. The rest of the Breath Mints watch in concern, ready to bolt over at a moment’s notice.

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Oh, would you look at that, folks! A flyout from golden boy York Silk, but not a normal one. This is his Debt at play again.

Cut to York Silk, walking back to the dugout. A flicker of something red and static passes across him, an arc leaping from shoulder to shoulder. He doesn’t wince, and he doesn’t look back.

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
That’s right, you saw it here. Hewitt Best is now being Observed.

#

The gold has been getting worse lately.

It’s not dust anymore, and it’s not flakes. Hewitt wakes up one day with one arm turned to gold from fingertips to elbow, and they have to sit in bed peeling sheets of it away. Sosa starts bringing a hairbrush to the park because e keeps finding whole sections of eir hair that are made of gold. They’re getting to the park later because Hewitt spends mornings in front of the mirror looking for every last glimmer that they can find.

It’s probably not actually York’s fault. But it doesn’t help having him there. He’s quiet, dead silent most of the time. He doesn’t say anything as Hewitt and Sosa check over each other, as they pull the gold off and away from their bodies. He also never participates. And he doesn’t talk about his own gold.

The first day had been… awkward, to say the least. Hewitt had been about as nice as he could stand to be, and York had been perfectly civil back, and Sosa had asked questions that went unanswered. E explained that e and Hewitt were looking for people, that they always met at this park, that York was welcome to join them whenever he wanted to.

“Sure,” York said, and that was all he said.

The only point of genuine discomfort had been that first night when they picked a random townhouse to sleep in, and York had looked at the both of them with confusion bordering on anxiety. “Don’t you go home?”

“We end up a long way from home sometimes,” Sosa said. “We just crash wherever we are.”

“And you’ve never found someone that way?”

“Never. It’s always empty.”

York had looked between the two of them before saying at last, “I’ll go next door.”

Here, now, a week or so later, York has stuck to the same pattern: every time they’ve stayed in someone else’s townhouse, York has been next door. Within shouting distance, which Sosa had made sure to test, but not in the same house as the two of them.

“Do you worry about him?” Sosa asks. E’s sitting on the bed, looking towards the window, not quite able to see into York’s townhouse. “Not, like— I mean, I’m not stupid, I know you don’t like him, but—”

“I like York fine,” Hewitt says, and then amends, “Mostly.”

“Hewitt.”

“I tolerate him.”

Sosa gives them an unimpressed look. “It’s not a judgment of your character, you know. I’m just saying.”

It’s hard, Hewitt thinks, to figure out accountability in a world like this. Who should they blame for the fact that they don’t like York Silk? The fans wouldn’t let him rest. The Shelled One trapped him the first time. The umpires killed him. The game gave him debt. But it was York that slowly, systematically redacted half of the Yellowstone Magic. It was York that hit Izzie, and then Rod, and then eventually him. It was York that could have redacted him.

“He’s been through a lot,” Hewitt says quietly. “And he’s done a lot too. I don’t know what you know.”

“None of it,” Sosa says, a sharpness to it that belies eir frustration. “Because he won’t tell me, and you won’t talk about it.”

“It’s his to tell.”

“I know.” Sosa turns away from the window and looks at Hewitt. “He’s so much younger than us. I just want to know what he needs.”

Sosa is thirty-something. Hewitt can’t remember exactly how old e is, only that e’s older than him. And he meant it when he said this wasn’t his to share, it’s York’s, but he thinks if there’s one thing he could say—

“Did you know the Fridays?” he asks, and slowly goes to sit on the bed. Sosa nods, and he continues, “Did they have their Lady back then?”

Sosa’s face scrunches up in thought. “They talked about a Lady. Sometimes. I think she was new.”

“She’s old now. And she grants wishes. She helps people live in moments forever.”

“And?”

Hewitt sighs. “And York was eight years old when he joined the Fridays.”

For a minute Hewitt thinks Sosa didn’t hear, but then he looks at em and sees the look on eir face, thunderstruck, heartbroken, outraged. “Tell me you meant to say eighteen.”

“Eight,” he repeats. “And he’s been through a lot.”

“How long has he been here?”

Hewitt doesn’t like thinking about how long they were dead, but they got an idea from Winnie. Five seasons, plus some offseasons. Which is about how long York has been vaulted. “Ten years.”

Sosa shakes eir head. “No wonder he doesn’t want to be in a room with someone else. He hasn’t had to spend time with people in ten years.”

Hewitt knows that. Hewitt also knows all of the ugly things about York Silk that might ravage Sosa’s empathy. The redactions and the pods, sure, but York used to get into fights with Jess when the Mints and Moist Talkers played each other, and Hewitt has heard that the ego made him unkind. Or uncaring. Or maybe just too tired to care. His struggles were graceless, vicious, hard to witness. He did terrible things and didn’t care. He hurt people and he didn’t care.

But tonight, they close their eyes and try to picture York not as an eight-year-old but during the Grand Siesta. They try to understand him the way that Sosa is understanding him.

They don’t try to forgive him, not tonight. But they try to remember him.

#

Of course, it’s not as easy as that.

The first fight they get into isn’t really a fight. They’re debating which direction to search today and York mumbles something to the effect of “I didn’t die for this,” and Hewitt pauses, audibly and clearly. But Sosa narrows eir eyes at him, so he keeps talking, stifling his irritation.

The second fight they get into is the next day and it’s a little closer to a fight. They’re going straight west and York keeps mumbling things that Hewitt can’t quite hear. He thinks York’s talking about the Fridays. But he keeps doing this… thing, this thing where he’ll say something and then look at Hewitt expectantly, and Hewitt’s trying to remember York kindly but it’s hard to do when the guy’s acting like they’re on the inside of the same jokes. So he doesn’t answer, and the efforts turn into glares and reproach.

The third fight is Hewitt’s fault and he’ll admit it. It’s just that every time he tries to stand near York, York will move away: to Sosa’s other side, the opposite direction, just plain away. So Hewitt’s testing it today, moving closer and closer, trying to bridge the gaps until York snaps “What’s your fucking damage?” and then it doesn’t feel worth trying.

The fourth fight is the inevitable blowout. Hewitt barely even remembers what he says. Shit, he barely remembers how it starts. Hewitt says something about the Pies and York says something back about Peanut Holloway, and Hewitt knows that they were on the Pods together but he also knows that York redacted Holloway into nonexistence, and next thing he knows the two of them are shouting about… something.

Hewitt hasn’t shouted in a long time. He thinks it’s more about the rawness in his throat than anything he’s actually saying.

Sosa ends up dragging York away, glaring viciously at Hewitt. “You need to figure this out before I figure it out for you,” e snaps, and Hewitt knows that e’s right but that doesn’t make it easier to be rational right now.

It’s a hard question to answer, what to do with this personal kind of hatred. When Jaylen Hotdogfingers killed Boyfriend Monreal he had hated her, aggressively, for what she did to them. To the league and to the Mints, but specifically to Boyfriend. They didn't deserve that. It didn’t matter that Jaylen hadn’t deserved what happened either.

And when Jessica Telephone landed in Kansas City it’d been an uphill battle — a little easier, sure, because he could tell Jess was a victim in the same way everyone was a victim of blaseball. He had fought that same squirming distaste and been kind to her.

It’s a little harder, it turns out, when York is one of the only two people in the world. When Hewitt was the one at risk. When the two of them are stuck somewhere designed to tip them past their boiling points. When Hewitt doesn’t want to be here. When he knows, somewhere bitter and distant in the back of his throat, that York doesn’t want this either.

#

He spends the next day alone, by unspoken agreement. He considers finding that same coffee shop, the one from the day before York appeared in his life, but he ends up finding a different place. It’s a deli, one with memorabilia on the walls for teams he’s never heard of. He eats sandwich after sandwich and stays there for hours, memorizing names. Faraday Birdfather of the Kola Boar. Nyx Konk of the Louisville Lobsters. A whole world of history that Hewitt never knew.

It makes him wonder if, one day, there’ll be a deli in Kansas City with a framed Hewitt Best jersey on the wall. Or a bar in Seattle with a York Silk bat. Maybe there’s something in South Carolina now with Sosa’s name on it, or maybe something in the vault.

It makes him wonder if there’ll be a deli with merch from Leach. Or Hiero. Oscar. Atlas. Whit. Because he could tell stories about all of them, better stories than he could about himself. He’d rather see them get memorialized. God forbid they become legends, but god forbid they get forgotten. He wouldn’t want them to be forgotten.

He stays in the deli until he gets tired, and walks home. There’s a note pinned to the door; when he pulls it off there’s handwriting so curly that it takes him a few tries to read it. It’s from Sosa, and it says something like “See you tomorrow,” or maybe “Missed you today.” It’s genuinely hard to tell.

But it’s nice to see. He has to try with York, he thinks. If only for Sosa’s sake.

#

It takes Hewitt far longer than it should for him to catch onto what Sosa’s doing. But none of it is unusual, at least not enough to ping his radar as weird. It’s normal for Sosa to say “Let’s go this direction,” and normal for Hewitt to agree. It’s even normal for em to be quiet some days. York doesn’t ask em questions, and neither does Hewitt, and neither of them look at one another either.

They grab takeout from a German place and wander along a road munching on bratwurst in fluffy hot dog buns, and nobody says anything until Sosa says, in a tone of surprise, “Oh, shit, we’re by my place.”

Hewitt glances over, and Sosa points down the street. “Let’s go, I want to bitch about my decor.”

York shrugs, and Hewitt does the same, and so they reach Sosa’s townhouse around the same time they finish their lunch. Sosa bounds up to the door and opens it, sweeping an arm in front of em. “After you.”

York goes first, and Hewitt goes second, and Sosa… shuts the door behind them.

“Hey,” York says, sounding startled. “What—”

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” Sosa says cheerfully. “Don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”

“We can just—” Hewitt tries to open the door. Except it’s not his house, so he can’t open it. “Are you kidding?”

“Half an hour,” e sing-songs. “Be back soon.”

“Sosa, come on.” Hewitt tries the handle again. There’s nothing, of course, and he sighs in irritation. “Seriously?”

“E’s watching us,” York points out. When Hewitt turns he sees Sosa standing outside one of the windows, giving the both of them an incredibly pointed look. “So I don’t think e’ll let us out until…”

“Until what?”

York glances at Hewitt sidelong. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Until we fight about the fact that we’re fighting.”

“I didn’t think it would bother you.”

York sighs. “I’m going to get water. Do you want water?”

“Sure,” Hewitt says, because he definitely wants to hold a water glass in his hands, if only to help keep him in the moment. By the time York comes back and hands him a glass, Hewitt has set up shop on Sosa’s eye-strain pop-art couch, staring at the one black square of carpet. Everything here is so colorful it makes his head hurt, clashing in a carefully coordinated way.

“Do you think this is actually what eir design taste is like?” York says idly. He sits on the floor, legs pretzel-crossed beneath him, looking thoughtful. “Or, like, this is a twisted parody nightmare version of it?”

“This is twisted, alright,” Hewitt mumbles, and York snorts. “We’ll have to ask once we’re freed from this very eighties prison.”

That doesn’t get a reaction out of York. Instead he looks at Hewitt appraisingly. It’s a little strange, still, looking at York and seeing someone made of gold, someone who’s not that much younger than Hewitt himself is. York drinks his water, and Hewitt does the same, and they both wait, patient and still.

“Do you remember,” York says at last, “that you signed a bat for me once?”

“No,” Hewitt says. “Sorry. I’ve signed a lot of bats for a lot of people.”

York smiles, there and gone in a second. “It was before I was even in the league. My mom is a reporter for BNN. Her beat is covering the Fridays.” He pauses and frowns. “Was a reporter? Is?”

“Is,” Hewitt answers softly. “Until we know she’s not. Is she really?”

He nods, staring down at the carpet. “It was always intentional that nobody knew. York Silk isn’t my real name, and she made sure that nobody pried too deep and found the connection. But I used to go to Fridays home games with her before I was on the team. And they had a series against the Breath Mints, so I made you all sign my Blittle League bat.” He pauses. “I actually just wanted to ask Boyfriend. But I felt bad about only asking them, so I asked all of you.”

Hewitt snorts. “None of us would’ve minded.”

“I was seven,” York says reproachfully. “I was worried. Everyone signed it, including you. I don’t remember what you signed, but it was something nice.”

“Everyone was probably nice.”

“Classic Breath Mints.”

Hewitt squints at York, trying to remember any of this. He doesn’t, of course. “Why are you telling me this?”

York shrugs. “I don’t have a lot of common ground with you, but we had this, sort of. I just think it’s funny, thinking about that kid. He was so excited about… everything.”

“And you’re not?”

“Would you be?”

“If I were you?”

“I don’t know how you manage it as yourself,” York says. It sounds like an insult, but he sounds completely genuine, brows furrowed and tracing patterns in the carpet. “How you can stand to have so much energy. Looking for people, having a mission statement. Coming here was the biggest relief I could’ve imagined.”

Hewitt reels back a little. Some of the water sloshes out of his glass, landing cool and uncomfortable on his wrist. “Here? Why?”

“I died,” York says, completely casual.

“So did I.”

For the first time York looks at him, a little surprised. “I don’t think I realized that.”

Hewitt shrugs. “Ego doesn’t save you from umpires.”

York just nods; he knows that as well as Hewitt does. “Did you come back for the Legends game?”

“Just the one game, yeah.”

“I was back for more than that. You know that, but…” York shakes his head. “Two years in the shell and one on the pods, and I still landed in Canada. Twenty years of siesta and still more games. I died and then I played for three teams in the next three years. And then I came here, and for the first time in my life there wasn’t something next. I didn’t think I’d ever have to play again.”

“You did.”

“But I didn’t know that.”

“Did it make that much of a difference?”

York huffs out a laugh. “It was the first time since I was in elementary school that nobody expected anything of me. The first time in forty years. I think I spent the first month here sleeping nonstop. It didn’t occur to me to try and find Nagomi for…” His brows furrow. “I’m not sure how long it took. And I didn’t try very hard.”

“York,” Hewitt says quietly. “Do you know how long it’s been?”

“A decade,” York says, like it’s nothing. Maybe it is to him. That’s about how long he was a third-grader. “My point is that I know you don’t like me. We don’t have to like each other to get along.”

“That’s not true.”

“You’re saying you like me?”

“Do you remember everyone you redacted?”

York pauses. “Maybe,” he says at last. “If I thought about it long enough. I remember the ones on the Magic. Glover, Chorby, Oscar, Tiana. There were people who would shout their names at me before games. Like they were taunting me.”

Hewitt shudders. “That’s terrible.”

“It was hardly the worst thing anyone did.”

“Do you remember everyone you hit?”

“No,” York says. There’s something to be said for candor, Hewitt supposes. “Not even close. Did I hit you?”

“You did.”

“Well, clearly it didn’t take,” York says. It has the cadence of a joke, but his brow is furrowed. “Is that what it is about?”

Hewitt shakes his head. “It’s about all of it.”

“All of what?”

“All the things you did and all the things that happened to you. I don’t like you,” Hewitt says, and there’s something of a relief to putting it into words, “but I don’t dislike you. I blame you for parts of it and not all of it.”

York sits back, watchful eyes on Hewitt. “Which parts?”

“The redactions.”

“The necromancy?”

“No.”

“So it’s not my fault that I came back, but it is my fault that I did what I had to?”

Hewitt pauses. “Maybe.”

“You think I should’ve done more to stop it,” York says. It’s strange how he says it: even, rational, not at all accusatory. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” Hewitt says, but he can already tell where this is going. He can feel the holes in his logic, neat little perforations that mean the whole thing is about to collapse under pressure.

“You’re thinking,” York says, and his eyes are sharp now, fucking observing him in a way that feels too familiar, “that if it were you, you would’ve found a way to avoid redacting anyone. And if it were you, you would’ve found Nagomi and whoever else is in here. You think I didn’t do enough. I think I don’t need to do any more than I already have. And we’re going to disagree on that.”

Hewitt wants to argue, but York has a point. That is what he’d thought, on some level: maybe not as pointedly as York is phrasing it, but he had never considered coming back like this. He had never considered having to redact people himself, willingly or unwillingly.

York gets to his feet, sharp and a little clumsy, eyes still boring into Hewitt. “I’m not apologizing or justifying anything to you, so if that’s what you’re looking for here—”

“It’s not,” Hewitt says. York’s wrong. He’s wrong. It doesn’t matter. “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends.”

“What’s your degree in?”

York stops short, looking at him quizzically. “What?”

“Over the Grand Siesta you went back to school. And you made it to university, right?”

Slowly York nods, still looking confused. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“I wouldn’t forgive you if you apologized,” Hewitt says. “But I wouldn’t forgive the fans either, and they’re not sorry. I wouldn’t forgive the gods and we all know they don’t care. So in this world, this post-forgiveness world, I want to get to know you. If you’d let me.”

York’s lips quirk up into a smile, slow and hesitant but still present. “Political science,” he answers quietly. “Bachelors of science, with honors. I wrote an undergraduate thesis about international relations. I was really proud of it.”

“That’s incredible,” Hewitt says, and he means it. It sits in his stomach like a rock: he is trying to befriend York Silk. No forgiveness, no understanding. Just knowing what he knows and moving on. It feels bad. But it feels right, too.

The door swings open. “Alright,” Sosa calls, “sound off, boys, what’s the situation?”

“Tenable,” York answers, and Hewitt stifles a laugh. “Don’t do that again, please.”

“Sorry, kiddo, desperate times.” Sosa wanders into the living room and wrinkles eir nose. “God, I never come in here anymore, but this is disgusting. It looks like an acrylic paint set for children threw up on my furniture.”

“Like an acrylic paint set threw up on a stained glass factory,” Hewitt corrects em.

“After having an affair with glitter glue,” York adds.

Sosa glances between them and nods. “Glad you’ve worked it out,” e says. “Let’s keep this energy going. And I hate this room so goddamn much you don’t even know.”

E gives them a tour of the rest of the townhouse and, unsurprisingly, it’s all just as bad. The food doesn’t taste like anything and the water glasses look like cheap eighties-fancy crystal.

But at the end of the night, when York would normally excuse himself to go next door, he sits down on the ugly couch. “I’m sleeping here,” he says, in a tone that doesn’t allow for argument.

“Good luck with these eyesores,” Sosa mutters. “I think they’re practically reflective.”

“I’ll be fine,” York says, and somehow, Hewitt believes him. “It’ll all be fine.”

#

AN EXCLUSIVE?
BETTER BELIEVE IT!
VAULT LEGENDS DISH
ON THEIR FAVORITE DISHES

HB: Oh, you know what I’d kill for? Hopia.

SP: Hopia?

HB: Yeah, it’s like — okay, it’s super thin flaky dough, and then a filling, and you can do meat or whatever, but Izzie — uh, Eizabeth Guerra from my team, she runs a bakery, and she would make hopia with purple yam for her sister’s birthday. And I was the only other pinoy on the team, so she would always save me some.

SP: That’s sweet.

HB: Did you cook?

SP: [laughs] God, no. I light kitchens on fire.

HB: I’d like to see that.

SP: Careful what you wish for. It’s funny, my parents ran a Chinese restaurant. They opened it after we emigrated. So, like, I’m Chinese, but when I think of Chinese food it’s all American Chinese food. Even at home, I grew up on greasy lo mein and orange chicken, the same stuff they made at the restaurant. And I never learned to cook it!

[both laugh]

SP: But Jazz did. Cook, I mean.

HB: Jazz?

SP: Um. [takes a breath]

HB: You don’t have to—

SP: No! No, it’s fine. Jazzmeralda Cevapcici. We lived together, and I can’t cook, so ze learned to make Chinese food. Like, the takeout stuff, for me, but also actual mainland-China Chinese food. Ze made a lot of char siu, barbecue pork, and we would devour it. It didn’t matter how big the batch was, we’d eat it all.

HB: [groans] I’d kill for some Kansas City barbecue right now.

SP: [laughing] That’s not the same thing!

HB: No, it’s not, I know. Keep going.

SP: There’s not much more to say. Jazz could do anything ze set zir mind to. Ze grew up in Serbia, and ze didn’t move to the States until ze was well into zir twenties, so we had a lot of Serbian food. I don’t even remember what most of it was called. [pause] Except cevapcici. Because it was zir name.

[a few seconds of silence]

YS: Loco moco.

SP: What?

YS: It’s like… classic Hawai’ian fast food. It’s a staple.

HB: Is that the thing with the egg?

YS: Yeah, it’s a fried egg and hamburger and gravy and some rice. That was… it was what my mom used to get for me after big wins and team practices. Back when I was actually living in Hawai’i. I haven’t had it in a while.

[another silence, this one shorter]

HB: Spam musubi.

YS: Oh, spam musubi.

SP: Spam like… the canned ham?

YS: It’s like. Okay. You slice the Spam, fry it, put on some teriyaki sauce. And then you put it on rice and wrap it in nori, like sushi. It’s the best.

HB: I would do anything for Spam musubi right now. I would happily turn my whole body into gold for Spam musubi.

YS: I tried that. It didn’t work.

[HB bursts out laughing. After a minute, YS and SP join him.]

#

It was only a matter of time before York stopped being patient with the gold. Things have been… better, Hewitt would say. Sosa is still keeping a watchful eye over the both of them, but Hewitt has been getting more comfortable with York. And York has been coming out of his shell, voicing opinions, even occasionally disagreeing with what Hewitt and Sosa say.

So the question is a long time coming, even if it’s abrupt when he actually asks it. Hewitt isn’t surprised when one day, as Sosa and Hewitt are sitting on the park bench rubbing the gold off of each other’s hands, York says, “Why do you still bother with it?”

“Because I don’t like it,” Sosa says instantly.

“Because it’s not me,” Hewitt adds. “And I don’t want it to be.”

York looks between the two of them searchingly before plopping on the bench next to Sosa. “We lose time every day you do it. And it’s taking longer every day.”

“I’m okay with that,” Sosa says. “If you don’t want to wait, you can go without us.”

“It’s just gold,” York says, not confused or frustrated. Curious, more than anything. “That’s all.”

“Why’d you stop taking yours off?” Hewitt asks, forcing their voice to be casual. Like this isn’t something they’ve been wondering about since they first saw a solid gold York Silk. They remembered him when he first got the ego. They played against him. They don’t even remember so much as a fleck of gold in his eyes, either before or after he died. And for all their efforts at understanding, this is one thing they can’t understand.

York doesn’t answer for a while, watching as Sosa picks a particularly stubborn bit of gold out from between two of Hewitt’s fingers. At last he says, “It started with the hands. Not all patchy the way it is for you, but starting on my palms, every day. Gold blobs covering my palms.”

Sosa glances over eir shoulder for a second. “And?”

“And when you’re playing every day you need your hands. You can’t stand to have your hands covered in something else, so you pull the gold off every day, because you think it’s on you and not inside you.”

Hewitt meets Sosa’s eyes. They haven’t talked about the gold, the way that it’s not flakes anymore. It’s bits and pieces, things they’re not pulling off but pulling out. And it’s not just their hands anymore. Hewitt has been scraping their legs raw, pulling gold away from their ribs. It’s getting worse.

“But then,” York continues, a distant note to his voice, “the weirdest thing happens. You get carpal tunnel. You’re exerting your hands every day, scraping the gold away, and it hurts. Your fingers aren’t as good anymore. And maybe you’re going away soon, so you think, well, it’s just the hands. I don’t need those where I’m going. And golden hands hurt less, and they work just as well, so you get gloves, and you let the gold cover your hands.

“But then your hands are made of gold — not covered in gold, but made of it, inside and out. And it’s heavy, and it hurts your wrists, so you let it take your forearms. And then you can’t bend your elbows, so it goes up to your shoulders, and then you can’t stand up straight because your arms are gold. And now is when you think maybe, maybe the carpal tunnel would’ve been better than this, but you can’t pull the gold out with gold hands, and you’re by yourself.”

Sosa, looking stricken, says, “But you’re not—”

“I was,” York says. It’s not an accusation, not bitter, not cold. Just a fact. “I was by myself. It was me and Nagomi and all these empty buildings, and we still haven’t found Nagomi. So I’m gold now, so what? Can’t I do the easy thing?”

Yes, Hewitt wants to say. No, Hewitt wants to say. But they don’t get to choose, not for York.

York fidgets with the hem of his shirt and looks down. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s the part I care about.”

“Me too,” Sosa says quietly. “York, I’m sor—”

“Don’t.”

E nods. Hewitt looks at York, trying to decide what to say. They have any number of unhelpful ideas. That York should’ve kept trying. That York should start trying now. But they think of being in Sosa’s townhouse, of how simply he spoke about being exhausted. About how exhausted he still must be.

“If you change your mind,” they say at last, “I’m good at this gold removal stuff.”

York nods. “I’ll let you know,” he says, and Hewitt knows he barely means it, but that still counts. “You missed a spot.”

“What?” Hewitt cranes their neck, trying to look at Sosa’s hair. They spot York pulling the edge of his shirt away, and a perfect green leaf left behind. “Good catch.”

“Did he get it?” Sosa tries to look over eir shoulder, flipping all eir hair in the process. “Oh, damn it.”

“He got it,” Hewitt says. They can see the pads of York’s fingers, brown and fleshy and human, but they decide not to bring it up. If York wants to bring it up, he will. “Thanks.”

“Course,” York mutters. It’s hard to read his face sometimes, but Hewitt thinks he looks pleased.

#

Hewitt still knows the numbers of the days. How many days it’s been since finding Sosa, and York. How many tally marks are on their wall. But they’re finding, strangely, that it matters a little less every day.

They know, for example, that it could matter what day it is that the three of them go east, straight east, and find a pond. It’s not very big, and it’s a little too pretty: perfectly round, not too deep, dotted with lily pads that feel plastic to the touch. But all three of them take off their shoes and socks and sit with their feet in the water. Conversations come and go, but none of them feel the need to talk, only to sit.

Or it could matter the day that Sosa suggests looking for that Ethiopian restaurant, the one that e and Hewitt found early on. Between the two of them they find their way back. This time the tables are big enough to seat three. York has never had Ethiopian food, and it takes him a joyful while to get used to scooping the stew up in the bread, to the sourness and the spice.

It probably does matter the day that they go northeast and York says, “We’re by my townhouse.”

Hewitt and Sosa glance at each other. It’s by some unspoken agreement that Sosa says, “Lead the way.”

It really is close, only a handful of streets away. York pauses in front of the door before putting his hand on the knob. “I hate it here.”

“It’ll be better with us there,” Sosa promises.

So York leads them into his house. Hewitt understands instantly why he hates it: everything is a little shabby chic, a little too much like a cutesy beach house. This isn’t Hawai’ian, it’s Hawaiian, sanitized for tourists, polished wood and shiny palm fronds and everything green.

They glance around, and their gaze finally settles on a footstool made of dark wicker with heavy metal legs. They point at it. “Do you like that ottoman?”

York blinks. “Not really.”

“Cool,” Hewitt says. They don’t give themself time to second guess: they step towards the footstool, and in one fluid motion they pick it up, turn, and hurl it through the window.

The number of windows Hewitt has broken in their life is greater than zero, which means that they know that the way the window shatters is too much like a movie, fine glass that grinds down into sparkling dust in an eyeblink. The footstool sails too far, which is less satisfying than if it had thudded into the narrow alley between townhouses. And it’ll certainly be back in its place tomorrow, like nothing ever happened.

But when they turn, York’s eyes are shining. “Can we do the couch?”

They throw the couch. They throw the TV that doesn’t work, and the stand the TV was on. Sosa throws a couple of kitchen knives so hard they embed themselves in the space between the bricks of the brownstone next door. York goes upstairs and smashes every window and comes back down grinning.

“I haven’t done that in a while,” he says, and for a second he doesn’t look like a legend or a statue. He looks like a regular twenty-something, a normal guy fucking shit up in his house.

Dinner is poke bowls, none of which are particularly fancy but which are a serviceable dinner. Dessert is shave ice. York has stories about poke and shave ice, and spam musubi and taro poi and his mother. Mostly his mother.

Afterwards, Hewitt stretches their shoulders and gets to their feet. They glance at Sosa. “You wanna crash next door, or—”

“With me,” York says, so fast that it sounds like a single strange syllable. He’s not looking at either of them, instead staring at a knot in the wood on the table. “If you want.”

Hewitt looks back at Sosa and shrugs. E nods decisively. “With you,” e says.

At this point Hewitt and Sosa know how to dance around one another, barely have to speak, but it’s nice adding York. Figuring out the way he prefers to do things. Making sure he settles into bed first before they lower themselves into the bed with him: Sosa in the middle, York and Hewitt on either side of em.

“You can kick us out at any point, honey,” Sosa says.

“Nope,” York says. “You’re stuck. I’m also stuck.”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you,” Hewitt mumbles, and York barks out a laugh. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Sosa echoes. York doesn’t say anything, but his eyes slip shut.

Hewitt doesn’t fall asleep for a while. It’s partly because there are actual streetlights, and with the windows broken it’s bright outside. It’s partly because they’re thinking about York. It’s partly because if they fall asleep they won’t wake up here. And they badly, badly want to wake up here.

They sleep eventually, though. Of course they do.

#

EXT: THE VAULT - NIGHT

The streets are dark. You think there’d be streetlamps, and there are in some parts of the vault, but not here. Out here it’s uninviting. The houses aren’t crammed together, they’re spaced out. It makes everything look bigger than it actually is.

We hear footsteps, and then emerging from the dark: JAZZMERALDA CEVAPCICI. There are others a couple steps behind her, but ze stops, and they stop behind zir.

Close in on Jazzmeralda’s face. Ze’s tall, almost six feet, and fat, and blue-eyed. Zir hair is curly, dirty blonde with highlights that look just a little too light to be believable, styled into a tall pompadour. Ze’s wearing a Carolina Queens jersey and bright red lipstick. Jazzmeralda frowns, biting zir lip.

JAZZMERALDA
Is this… it?

Behind zir, and behind all the Queens, there’s a loud creaking noise. They all turn as the gate to the vault swings shut behind them.

JAZZMERALDA
Yeah. Okay. That’s what I thought.

#

There’s no toast.

Hewitt doesn’t actually like toast, especially not the decadent thick-sliced bread here, but after dozens of consecutive days of toast, it’s strange not to have it. Stranger still when they realize that they’re not actually sure if there are groceries in their townhouse — luckily there are, but they’re getting sloppy if they didn’t know what food is available to them. There’s some cereal in one of the many cabinets, so they have some of that as they look at the map, trying to figure out where to go next.

By the time they get to the park they’re brimming with excitement. Sosa is pacing back and forth, a long slit-legged skirt swishing around eir legs. When e sees Hewitt, e leaps onto the bench. “My house was a mess this morning.”

“Mine didn’t have food.” Hewitt reaches out, and Sosa offers eir hands. There’s not much gold today, but what’s there is under eir leafy fingernails, so he digs in and gets to work. “What do you think it means?”

“Someone’s here,” York says. Hewitt doesn’t turn, but he sounds confident. “I think that’s what it is. This happens once a year or so. Whenever there are new legends forged.”

Hewitt frowns. “But it hasn’t been a year since we got here.”

“That’s why I’m excited.” He leans in, inspecting Sosa’s nails, then leans back. And then Hewitt feels a hand on the back of his neck. “Hold still a second.”

Hewitt obliges. There’s a sound that reminds him of biting into an apple, and for a second his neck feels tingly. Sosa makes a disgusted noise.

“I wouldn’t recommend looking,” York says. Naturally Hewitt turns to see him holding a chunk of gold the size of a golf ball. York grimaces at it. “Don’t touch your neck for a couple hours. It’s healing over already.”

“Yuck,” Hewitt says. “Why would someone new be here before the season is over?”

“I don’t know,” York says, a manic, excited tilt to it. “But I think it means something is happening. Actually happening.”

Hewitt digs the last chunk of gold out from Sosa’s fingernails and lifts his left arm. E immediately starts scraping at his forearm. Something warm trickles down his wrist. He doesn’t bother to look. “What do we want to do?”

“West,” York says, with an awful lot of confidence. “I want to try west.”

“West,” Sosa affirms, and drops Hewitt’s hand. “Let’s go.”

There’s nothing to the west, but York doesn’t seem disheartened. Neither does Sosa, and for that matter neither is Hewitt. There’s something happening in the vault. Not all of the street corners are as perfect as normal. Not every facade is spotless. It almost feels like they’re in a real city.

They walk for hours, fanning out onto side streets, coming back together in random formations. Hewitt walks for a mile by himself and turns and runs into York, and then York wanders over to Sosa, and… it’s good. It feels like canvassing. It feels like they’re getting somewhere.

They stop, by Hewitt’s best guess, a good twenty miles west of the park. The three of them don’t even need to speak to come to a consensus: Hewitt says “Restaurant,” and Sosa shakes eir head and says “Townhouse,” and York picks the closest one, and that’s the end of it.

The townhouse they end up in is uncomfortable in ways that remind Hewitt of their own townhouse. Everything is maroon and navy, a little claustrophobic for their taste, and definitely far too fancy. But there’s food waiting for them — and it has to be for them, because it’s a lot of food. It’s an impressive spread of falafel and hummus and what they think is lamb, all Middle Eastern and glorious.

“This is incredible,” Sosa murmurs. Hewitt kind of agrees, even if everything is too fancy, even if it doesn’t taste like proper food from Hades. Whenever they were there for games, they and Marq would split giant orders of Hades Greek food to take home to Kansas City with them, and it was always a little smoky and strange. This doesn’t taste like that, but at least it tastes like something.

This time, there’s not a conversation about all of them stumbling into bed together. They all just kick off their shoes and head upstairs. “We’d better not have to do this again tomorrow,” Sosa mumbles, but e flops into the bed easily. York follows suit, tucking himself into eir side, looking impossibly small in the giant bed.

“It was fun once,” Hewitt agrees. “But not again. Do we want sheets or blankets or anything?”

“I am asleep,” Sosa intones. “Right now. I am asleep right now.”

“I don’t care,” York adds, but then there’s a pause. Hewitt can feel it. At last, he says timidly, “Can you turn a bathroom light on or something?”

It’s not dark outside, but it’s dark enough that it’s hard to see, and there are no streetlights. There’s a master bathroom adjacent, so Hewitt heads over and turns the light on. 

York relaxes palpably. “Thanks.”

“Sleep tight,” Hewitt says, because they also plan to do just that. Even if they have to do this all again tomorrow. Even if nothing changes. They’re going to have this, goddammit.

#

INT: PAULA TURNIP’S TOWNHOUSE - MORNING

You did figure out it’s Paula’s, right? Look at the walls: everything is dark colors, all Tigers maroon and Garages navy. The furniture is walnut, or some other dark wood. It’s classy. It’s expensive. But there’s still sunlight everywhere, and houseplants. Massive ones. Is that insensitive, giving a dryad house plants? Either way, she has a plethora. All her food is Greek food. The vault just made a little extra for the visitors.

(Where’s Paula? Not here. What, you think our heroes are the only ones who went looking for someone else?)

The camera cuts from room to room. A kitchen where everything is stainless steel. A sitting room with an uncomfortable modern-looking futon. Then: a wide shot of the bedroom. There are three people lying in the massive bed together. Let’s get a closer look.

On the left side is York. His glasses are gone (if we looked a little further left we would see them on the nightstand) and his hair is out of his ponytail, spread over his face and the sheets. He’s curled up on his side facing Sosa. He looks younger when he’s asleep. A little more human, maybe. A little more like a regular young adult having a regular night with friends.

Panning right, in the middle we see Sosa, leaving leaves in the sheets. E’s lying on eir back, limbs sprawled out and head firmly on the pillows. E’s snoring, just a little, very quietly.

Furthest right is Hewitt, lying on their opposite side, curled in the opposite direction. Their back is pressed against Sosa’s side, and one of their hands is reaching out behind them, towards York.

Close up on Hewitt’s face as their eyes blink open. He moves and stretches, then freezes. A wide shot shows that his arm is still on Sosa’s body, nearly reaching York.

HEWITT
(whispering) York?

YORK
(indiscriminate mumbling)

Hewitt rolls over, turning to face their friends. They stare at the two other people in the bed with them. Their mouth opens and closes, but they don’t say anything. Instead, they just stare with a wonderstruck expression. At last: they’re not waking up alone.

#

Hewitt doesn’t cry, but it’s a close thing. The same is true of Sosa. York, when he properly wakes up, doesn’t say anything for a good forty minutes, instead just staring between Hewitt and Sosa like he can’t believe they’re real, or they’re actually there.

Breakfast is Greek yogurt parfaits, with one set to the side that Sosa claims as being dairy-free. E says it’s just a hunch, but Hewitt’s pretty sure that e knew, somehow.

“Where to today?” Sosa asks as they all sit around the kitchen island. There are fresh berries here. Hewitt didn’t realize how badly they missed strawberries until they got to eat one.

York lifts his spoon and points at a wall at random. “That way,” he says, with the same amount of confidence that he said it yesterday. Hewitt thinks it might even be the same direction. They finish breakfast, they pull out what gold they can, and they go.

There’s not as much bobbing and weaving this time. It’s less ground covered, but also more efficient, because York seems to have a laser-focus in one particular direction. He seems sure of himself, and it’s easy to seem sure of him when he’s like this, taut and vibrating with a purpose that Hewitt has never seen before.

When they stop for the day Hewitt finds them an honest-to-god bed-and-breakfast, a cutesy little place that seems out of place with all the townhouses. There are steaming plates of breakfast food for dinner, and drip coffee, and three full-sized beds waiting for them.

Sosa looks at the beds critically. “It’s not like there’s an owner to this place, right?”

“No,” Hewitt agrees, and so they push the beds together. It’s lumpy and strange, so they all end up piled in on the middle bed, but none of them complain. Not even York, who’s still brimming with energy as they settle in to go to bed together. This place has pajama sets and changes of clothes for tomorrow, which is enough for Hewitt to wonder if they should’ve been looking for hotels this whole time. Another thing to consider as they keep looking.

They leave a lamp on the nightside table turned on for York. The light doesn’t keep Hewitt awake at all. It’s easy to sleep here, strange and comfortable as it is. It’s easy to be hopeful.

#

The thing that wakes Hewitt up the next morning isn’t sunlight, or the awareness that he has teleported back to his townhouse. It’s someone in the bed shifting with him.

“Yeong-Ho,” he mumbles, and then pauses. It might not be Yeong-Ho. Actually, considering he’s slowly remembering that he’s in the vault, it’s almost definitely not.

Whoever it is shushes him, waving a hand too close to his face. York, then. Hewitt grimaces and rolls onto his back, trying to blink awakeness into his eyes. York is sitting up, staring intently at one of the windows. One of his hands is gripping the blankets, flexing his fingers.

And then Hewitt hears it.

He’s actually not sure what it is. Someone yelling something indiscriminate. Not a voice he recognizes. But it is, decidedly, a voice. Another voice coming from outside of this room, outside of the only two people left in the world with him.

York whips around to look at Hewitt. “Did you—”

“Yep,” Hewitt says, and scrambles around, trying to get out of the bed. He ends up in the divot between two of the full-sized beds and swears, trying to kick his way out of the sheets. “What the fuck is—”

“Too loud,” Sosa mumbles, flopping an arm over eir eyes. “Cut it out.”

“Sosa,” York says, practically shaking, “listen.”

It takes another few minutes, during which Hewitt manages to extricate himself from the sheets and grab the set of clothes that’s his — or that he’s assuming is his, because it’s green and gold. By the time he’s changed he actually thinks Sosa fell back asleep, but then the noise comes back. It’s even louder this time. And it sounds like laughter.

“Bennett, I said too loud,” Sosa groans, and then freezes perfectly in place. When e sits up, e looks wide awake. “That was Bennett.”

Hewitt glances at York, who shrugs, and then back at Sosa. “How sure are you?”

“We lived together for seven fucking years,” Sosa says impatiently. E’s already moving, rolling out of bed deftly in a move that Hewitt definitely isn’t jealous of, landing lightly and looking around. “I’m going.”

“Give me two minutes to put on real jeans,” York says, “and we’ll all go.”

That’s what ends up happening: York in a pajama shirt under jeans and a jacket, Hewitt fully dressed, Sosa not even bothering with shoes. As soon as they get outside, York points one direction wordlessly, and Sosa starts walking.

The thing about Sosa is that e’s tall, which is something Hewitt has always known but never understood in this way. E walks fast, taking massive strides. Hewitt ends up jogging to keep up, and York doesn’t even bother with that. They’re all trailing one after the other.

It takes a while for Hewitt to notice the incline, the gentle uphill slope of the ground. Sosa slows down a little, and Hewitt does the same, dropping back to a walk. It doesn’t take long for York to catch up to them, breathing heavily. “You think this is it?”

“What?”

“You know.” York gives Hewitt a meaningful look. “It.”

Hewitt doesn’t understand, but at the same time they do. They’re heading towards Something, and whatever It is will change things. It doesn’t matter if It’s another player who got zapped into the vault, or if It’s the vault doors opening up. This is momentous. He can feel it in — well, honestly, in the parts of his arms and toes that still feel like gold.

“Yeah,” they say, and together they pick up the pace. They’re both still trailing behind Sosa, climbing doggedly uphill, but it’s a little easier with York by their side.

The hill crests. Sosa lets out a shout.

“Sosa?” Hewitt says warily, but e takes off, running down the hill, purple pajamas flapping in the wind.

“Uh,” York says, and by mutual agreement they jog the rest of the way up the hill.

To say that there are two encampments would be an exaggeration, because it looks more like a gaggle of people that are trying to settle down together. One of them, the one that Sosa is running towards, is full of people in purple jerseys, people shouting eir name. The Queens, Hewitt would guess, although that doesn’t make sense given that the Queens are all dead.

But the other half of the encampment, the people looking up at the top of the hill? Those are definitely the Georgias.

“Fuck,” York breathes. He doesn’t sound excited.

Hewitt follows his gaze all the way down. Teams change, of course, but last they remember Fish Summer wasn’t on the Georgias. The two of them don’t know each other well, but well enough. Definitely not as well as York would know Fish.

“If you want,” Hewitt says, and it feels like a knife in his mouth but he spits it out anyways, “you can duck into a building and I’ll go down and say I don’t know where you went.”

York looks at him in utter bewilderment. “Why would I do that?”

“If you aren’t ready to see them.”

He blinks a couple times, and his face softens. “I am,” he says. “I just don’t know how to start.”

“I can take care of that part.”

“You can?”

“Course I can.”

“I trust you,” York says.

It feels like a medal being placed around his neck: some kind of honor, some kind of responsibility. Hewitt nods, throws both arms up in the air, and shouts with all their might: “Hot Fish Summer!”

Fish, who is somehow not the tallest person on the Georgias, turns. For a second they can’t identify who said their name, and then they do. They laugh, booming through the air. “Hewitt Best!”

“Not just me,” they shout, and grab York’s hand. The metal of his wrist is sun-warm, and trembling so finely that they almost don’t notice. “Got an old teammate of yours!”

As a general rule Fish Summer is always moving, swaying this way or that, but for a second they’re completely still. And then Lachlan Shelton breaks out from the group at a run, and Fish is hot on their heels.

“Too late to back out?” York mumbles. Hewitt looks at him in alarm, but York just squeezes his hand and starts stumbling down the hill, dragging Hewitt behind him.

Fish and Lachlan meet them in the middle, both of them wearing expressions that Hewitt would place somewhere between shock and grief and joy. York’s still gripping their hand, so they end up pulled into one of the most powerful group hugs that he’s experienced in a long time. Fish is huge, obviously, but Lachlan gives great hugs, too, and he’s responsible for most of the crushing.

“This place is horrible,” Lachlan murmurs, and York snorts. “It’s so big, and you— god, were you alone here?”

“Doesn’t matter,” York says, and Lachlan and Fish both stiffen like they know what that means. Hewitt wants to step in, to promise that they kept York company, but this isn’t their moment to claim.

“York,” Fish says after a second, “the vault and the fire, I can’t— I’m so sor—”

“Don’t.”

“But I should’ve—”

“Fish, I said don’t—”

“If I’d eaten the fire—”

“You can’t control the—”

“They’ve had this conversation before,” Lachlan mumbles. Hewitt snorts out a laugh, and Lachlan smiles before his expression transforms to horror. “Oh god, Hewitt.”

They blink. “What?”

“Shit, Hewitt. I’m sorry.”

“About the vault?” Hewitt shakes their head. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

“No, I mean about the Mints.”

“What about them?”

Lachlan stares. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

It’s only now that they realize that Fish and York have stopped their babbling back-and-forth. York is looking at Fish, and Fish is looking at Lachlan, and Lachlan isn’t looking at Hewitt anymore, and their ears are ringing, and something is wrong. Something is wrong with the Breath Mints.

“Lachlan,” Hewitt says. “Heard what?”

#

#

#

NEW INTERVIEW
LIVE FROM THE VAULT
HEWITT BEST INTERROGATES
THE NEWEST ARRIVALS
THE ATLANTIS GEORGIAS

Q: …all of them?

A: Yeah. All of them.

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

“It doesn’t look that bad,” says York.

He’s hovering, which any other day would be hugely frustrating to Hewitt. Today it’s minorly frustrating, because he’s busy looking in the mirror, inspecting the damage.

The past few days have been a blur of grief and confusion. He remembers time passing abstractly, but not any details. The days were marked with Sosa coming in the mornings and the evenings to check his hands for gold. E hasn’t been there much outside of that, busy with all the Queens, and Hewitt doesn’t begrudge them that. Or he wouldn’t, if it weren’t for… for.

Hewitt’s been sleeping a lot. Not going outside as much. Not speaking much. Not doing much of anything. Their brain is an endless loop: The Breath Mints died. They’re in the Hall. Hewitt was also in the Hall. Hewitt could be there. If it weren’t for the ego, the game, the fucking vault—

“I mean it,” York continues. “It’s kind of glam rock.”

Right. The hovering. The three of them have been staying in an empty townhouse, but really it’s the two of them, because Sosa’s gone with — not eir real friends, that would be bitter, to call the Queens eir real friends, and Hewitt’s not bitter, he’s not going to be cruel. But it’s mostly been York, sitting vigil over Hewitt. Fish and Lachlan, occasionally, coming to play board games or just be near York. Hewitt has been as sociable as he can bear to be.

It’s funny. All that time wishing for other teams, for anyone at all to be here, and now he can’t look any of them in the eye.

He lifts a hand to his face to trace a line down the gold. It’s blotchy, but there are clear tracks from where the tears were. He remembers crying in the early days, remembers Sosa crying when he found em. It was tears, back then. He doesn’t know when his body started rewriting itself. It’s been so long since he cried that he didn’t realize that he would be crying gold.

“Sosa would probably agree that it’s cool,” York tries. He’s trying so goddamn hard. York Silk redacted a dozen players, nearly took out Hewitt and two of his teammates, and now he’s leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom, watching Hewitt like a hawk and trying to be reassuring. “It looks like makeup.”

Hewitt digs his thumb into the edge of some of the gold. He’s not typically an ugly crier, but he had cried… kind of a lot, and nobody can blame him for that, but it means that there are flakes of gold across his nose, on his forehead, on his neck and shoulders. In his eye. On his forearm. On Sosa’s shoulder, too, although e’s been doing eir best to hide it. Maybe on Fish or Lachlan. Maybe on York, not that it makes much of a difference.

“I want it gone,” he says at last.

York startles. “What, like… all of it? That’s—”

“I want it gone,” Hewitt says, and he can feel the need, the animal urge to claw at his own face until the foreign objects are gone. He can’t look at himself like this, a permanent reminder of his own loss staring him in the face. “I want to look like me, and I don’t want any of this fucking gold here.”

York sighs and vanishes, footsteps clomping away from the bathroom. Hewitt frowns; normally York would at least say goodbye. But it’s fine. He can pull his face apart just fine on his own. He just needs to figure out where to start, or maybe how—

“Sit,” York says, and sets something down with a thud. “It hurts to get it out of your hands now. I can tell, I watch you and Sosa. It’ll be worse getting it from your face. You need to be sitting down so you don’t pass out and bleed all over yourself or something.”

Hewitt hasn’t considered if his blood is gold, and he doesn’t want to, so he sits on the kitchen stool that York has dragged in. “You need to help me.”

York looks at him for a minute. Hewitt is convinced that he’s going to say no or why or just accept that this is your life now, but after a second he nods jerkily. “Fine.”

“I’m not kidding, York, I want all of it gone.”

“I know you’re not kidding.” York takes a cautious step forward. “Can I touch you?”

“You’re going to need to,” Hewitt says dryly.

“That’s not—” he huffs in frustration. “Can you just say yes?”

“Yes,” Hewitt says, and York takes his face in both of his hands. It’s not a gentle touch, but it’s light, the gold warm against the skin. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, it’s not over,” York mumbles. He turns Hewitt’s head this way and that, leaning in close, inspecting every inch. “It’s getting deeper.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I need to work fast.”

Hewitt takes a deep breath. It’s a little too real now, the pressing future of what’s about to happen, but he doesn’t want to turn back now. “Then do it.”

“It’s going to hurt,” York says in warning. But he’s already rolling up his sleeves, peering at Hewitt’s face. “Probably a lot.”

“I’ll avoid mirrors.”

“That won’t make it hurt less.” York shakes his head. He adjusts his hand on Hewitt’s face, thumb against the border between gold and skin. “If you need to stop, tell me to.”

Hewitt wants to say something about how they won’t need to stop, but instead he forces himself to nod. “I will.”

“Alright.” York’s fingers bend slightly. The edges of his golden nails dig into Hewitt’s face. “Brace yourself in three, two—”

#

YOU WON’T BELIEVE!
SHOCKING FOOTAGE
OF THE LEGENDS
AT HOME? IT’S TRUE!

[HEWITT is asleep on the couch, face-down. YORK is sitting nearby, perched in an armchair, looking at nothing in particular. SOSA walks in and looks down at the coffee table. There is a small lump of gold, the size of a tennis ball or a fist. There is no blood on the gold.]

SOSA: [sighs] Do I want to know?

YORK: It’s from his face.

SOSA: From his fa— York, what the fuck—

YORK: He asked me to.

SOSA: You didn’t wait for me?

YORK: You try asking him to wait.

SOSA: Jesus Christ, I leave you two alone in a room and—

YORK: I couldn’t get all of it.

SOSA: What?

YORK: This is from one side of his face. And we had to stop. He didn’t want to, he was so angry, but he was about to start crying again, and I didn’t want him to have to feel it again, so I told him I wouldn’t do any more, and he knew I was right even though he was angry, so I gave him bandages and he fell asleep afterwards, but his face looked— it looked—

SOSA: Hey. Hey, shh, it’s okay.

YORK: [choked up, but not yet crying] It was in his bones.

SOSA: You did good. C’mere. You did good.

[SOSA kneels next to the armchair, and YORK leans over the arm of it into eir embrace. E holds him for a while.]

SOSA: He’s asleep?

YORK: [still sniffling] Yeah.

SOSA: Hewitt, are you actually asleep?

[HEWITT does not respond. His breathing doesn’t change. SOSA snaps eir fingers a couple times, and Hewitt doesn’t move.]

SOSA: Okay. York, don’t repeat this. Hewitt shouldn’t know until after. But I’ve been talking to the Queens, and there’s… there’s something going on with the black hole. Outside.

#

Jazzmeralda Cevapcici sings while ze works. Ze flits around the kitchen with ease, and sings under zir breath all the while. It’s not particularly good singing, but there’s enough of a tune that Hewitt can half-recognize the songs, the kinds of things they used to hear on oldies radio.

More importantly, Sosa sings along. Sometimes it’s harmonies, sometimes it’s words that Jazzmeralda can’t quite remember. Half the time Jazzmeralda stops singing to beam at Sosa, only picking up the melody again when e stops or makes a face at zir. It’s the most Hewitt has heard Sosa sing; judging by York’s face, it’s the most he’s heard, too.

It looks breathtakingly easy, watching the two of them. Like they’ve done this their whole lives. Hewitt remembers the hall: it wasn’t a place, as such, more of a void that they floated in until they were pulled out for the Rising Stars match. Sosa and Jazzmeralda had been there for… what, decades? A century? Longer than either of them care to talk about. But here they are in a kitchen together, like they just did it yesterday.

Actually, maybe they did it yesterday. The Queens have been here for a week or so now, and Sosa has spent most of eir time with them. But watching them move in and out of each other’s space makes Hewitt miss Izzie and Atlas, making lumpia together, the way they celebrated the end of every Breath Mints season. And the hopia, of course. Izzie’s hopia.

Izzie and Atlas are dead now. Hewitt stares that thought down, cradles it in their hands, and lets it go. It’s a mindfulness technique, or something. Sosa’s idea. It’s the only thing they can do: feel the grief, and try to stay in the moment.

“Do you cook a lot?” they say to Jazzmeralda. “I know Sosa said that you were good at it, but is it something you do often?”

“Yes,” Sosa says, before Jazzmeralda gets the chance. “All the time. It’s how we met.”

“Sosa was a performer at a club, and I ran the kitchen.” Jazzmeralda beams. Ze’s a handful of inches shorter than Sosa, made worse by Sosa’s ever-present platform heels, but ze moves like ze’s used to the height difference between them. Ze ducks under eir arm to open the fridge and makes a noise of distress. “Why is every ingredient so… so…”

“Fancy?” York says wryly.

Jazzmeralda huffs in frustration and mumbles something in Serbian to zirself. Sosa shakes eir head. “You get used to it.”

“No,” Jazzmeralda cries out, “I will not! I want regular ground beef, and that’s all.”

“You’ll get wagyu and you’ll be glad for it,” Hewitt mutters, and Jazzmeralda laughs. “How is it out there?”

Jazzmeralda makes a quiet noise. Sosa shoots Hewitt a frown, but they frown right back at em. They have as much a right to know as anyone.

“Weird,” ze says at last. “Not good. Getting worse. The black hole is getting bigger.”

Hewitt knows about the black hole — the black hole, the one with an appetite too big for runs and wins that’s swallowing the universe, about Leach and Rod taking refuge in an impossible desert. They haven’t asked about who the black hole has swallowed yet. They don’t think they could stand more grief.

“We’re safe here, though,” Jazzmeralda adds. Ze doesn’t sound too happy about it, but ze doesn’t sound unhappy. “Nothing can reach us.”

“And we can’t reach anything,” York mutters. “Nothing outside.”

Jazzmeralda tuts. “That doesn’t mean the world outside the vault is gone forever. It just means we’ll be here a while.”

“You have a lot of faith that the world will come back.”

“I died,” Jazzmeralda says. York lifts his eyebrows, and ze amends, “I know you did too. But most of my league died. And we still got to come back. We weren’t forgotten. The vault won’t forget us either. And you’re not as alone as you may think.”

Ze heads back over to the stove. For the first time, Hewitt looks around properly at everything that’s cooking: the rice still simmering, the gravy cooling, the carton of eggs. They cut a glance over to Sosa, who’s forming the too-expensive hamburger meat into patties, and lifts their eyebrows. Sosa just smiles, and Hewitt decides not to spoil the surprise.

“Do you have any good stories about Sosa?” they say instead.

Jazzmeralda’s face lights up. “One time,” ze says, and Sosa groans, and ze launches without hesitation into a story about a guest singer that had been trying to hit on Sosa and e had interpreted it as a rivalry. Ze talks quickly, rapidfire launching from story to story, but ze’s funny in the way ze says things. York laughs more than once. Hewitt does too, a welcome reprieve.

The last story ends as Jazzmeralda finishes cooking. Ze assembles the plates with a brutal diner-like efficiency: a bed of rice, a hamburger, a fried egg, the gravy on top.

York gets the first plate, and he looks down at it without saying anything for a long minute. It’s long enough for Jazzmeralda to hand a plate to Hewitt, long enough for zir and Sosa to settle down.

“Loco moco,” he says, like he can’t believe it.

“You’ll have to tell me how I did,” Jazzmeralda says. “I’ve never made it before, so I’m happy to try again.”

York picks up his fork and spears through the yolk of the egg so it runs all over everything. He scoops up a forkful of the meat and rice, doused in gravy and egg yolk, and takes a bite. And then another, and then another. He doesn’t say anything, just stares down, transfixed.

“Good enough for me,” Jazzmeralda murmurs. Hewitt stifles a laugh and starts eating too.

#

On the day that Sosa goes missing, Hewitt doesn’t notice. At least, not at first. York and Lachlan are doing their board game thing, and Hewitt is invited. So is Fish, and so is Flattery McKinley, and so is Bennett McClutch from the Queens.

Hewitt’s not a board game guy — or, well, it depends on the board game. But it turns out that board game night was a thing for York and Lachlan, and the vault has no shortage of incredibly complicated board games stacked immaculately in a closet somewhere. Flattery is terrifyingly smart, and Bennett is also a board game person, which means that the board game thing is a lot of Hewitt and Fish making increasingly frightened expressions at one another.

It’s something with a lot of cards, so when Jazzmeralda walks in, Hewitt is shuffling the cards in his hand just for something to do. Jazz raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed, and then says, “Has anybody seen Sosa?”

“You slept in eir bed,” Bennett points out. “But no, I haven’t seen em.”

“They must’ve woken up before me,” Jazz murmurs, but there’s an undercurrent of concern to it. “E’ll… come back.”

Hewitt looks up. “E’ll come back,” he repeats, as pointed of a reassurance as he can manage. It only halfway works, judging by how strained zir answering smile is. But ze goes on zir way and leaves Hewitt to lose to York at cards, the way things should be.

But Sosa doesn’t show up to help Hewitt with the gold, leaving him to pick halfheartedly at some of the gold spots, and when he checks in with Jazz later e still hasn’t come back.

“It’ll be okay,” he says quietly, and Jazzmeralda smiles that same overwhelmed smile at him, and Hewitt tries not to worry. He tries.

#

On the second day Jazzmeralda is on the verge of actively tearing zir hair out. The Queens have a game today, so when Hewitt and York find zir, ze’s wearing a jersey and looking like ze’s about to climb the walls.

“I just don’t understand,” ze says. There are piles and piles of brownies cooling on the kitchen counters, which Hewitt has to assume is a product of stress-baking. He’s a little afraid to ask about it. “How can one person go to sleep in one place and wake up somewhere else?”

Hewitt blinks. That happens all the time in the vault.

“Goddammit,” he says, at the same time that York says “Oh, fuck.”

Jazz looks at both of them in bemusement. “Something I should know?”

“That’s how this place operates,” Hewitt says, a little relieved to have something approaching an answer. “You go to sleep anywhere, and you wake up… home. E’s probably just in eir townhouse.”

Jazz doesn’t seem nearly as reassured by this as Hewitt does. “What does that mean?”

“It means e can just walk back,” York says, albeit not very confidently. Sosa isn’t the best with directions. Jazz knows it too, judging by the way ze grimaces. “It was mostly a straight line.”

“If e’s not back by tomorrow afternoon, we—” Hewitt glances at York. “Do you think you could find em? You were good at navigating here.”

“Maybe,” York says thoughtfully. “I think it helps being… gold. Being made of what the vault wants.”

Jazz spits out a couple curses in Serbian, but ze nods. “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” ze says. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“E’s going to be okay,” Hewitt says, partly for himself, partly for Jazz, partly because it’s the truth. “E found me first, even though we had no reason in the world to find one another. E can do it again.”

“I believe you,” ze answers softly. “And I believe in Sosa, always. Thank you.”

Ze leaves to find zir team. York immediately snatches a couple brownies off a tray. “What do you think?” he says. It’s a little brusque, a little nervous.

Hewitt pauses to think about it, actually think about it. “There are a lot of people in the vault.”

York nods, watching him. “And?”

“And if—” he holds up a hand. “Hypothetically. If Sosa doesn’t come back, I would want to look for em. I’d want to look for everyone here, and make sure that they know there’s a place they can come to.”

“What if e gets back?”

“Then I’ll tell em the same thing.”

“You’re planning on leaving?” York says. There’s a careful neutrality to the way he says it, a softness that doesn’t suit him.

“I’m thinking about leaving,” Hewitt answers. “And not right away. I wouldn’t just… go.”

York looks at him doubtfully, but nods. “We’ll argue about it when Sosa is back,” he says, and it’s so unexpected that Hewitt snorts. “Eat a brownie, they’re good.”

Hewitt takes a brownie. It’s pretty damn good.

#

On the third day, Sosa comes back. Or more accurately, e comes back on the third night. The third day is spent with Jazzmeralda asking Hewitt questions about cooking, so they spend the day in the kitchen together, Hewitt desperately trying to remember everything his parents taught him about lumpia.

By the time they get to the fourth batch, Jazzmeralda has the folding down, and zir filling tastes almost as good as Hewitts. Ze insisted on practicing the seasoning on zir own, so Hewitt is mostly there to supervise and try not to think about why ze’s asking him to supervise.

And he’s actually doing a pretty good job at not thinking about it, until the front door to the townhouse they’re squatting in bangs open and Sosa says “Oh, fuck, that smells good.”

Jazz immediately startles so badly ze crushes the roll of lumpia ze’s folding. By the time Hewitt turns to face the door, Jazz has already run out from behind the counter. Ze shouts something angry in Serbian, and then stumbles straight into Sosa’s arms. 

“We were right,” York says. He’s by Sosa’s side, but he’s a good twelve inches shorter than em in heels and frankly nowhere near as sparkly, so Hewitt didn’t notice him until he spoke. “Townhouse.”

“I thought it was a nightmare,” Sosa says mournfully. “But it’s fine. I found my way back. And didn’t actually get lost that badly.”

“It’s a miracle,” Jazz mumbles into eir chest.

Sosa exhales in relief and then looks at Hewitt. “I’m feeling a little frozen out, you know. York hugged me.”

Hewitt feels his eyebrows raising. York doesn’t hug people. “He did?”

“Oh, fuck you,” York mumbles.

“Big hug,” e says cheerfully. “You’re next once Jazz is done.”

“Which is never,” Jazz says, “so you should’ve moved faster.”

Sosa smiles, but eir smile fades into something a little more serious. “Did I miss it?”

“Miss what?” says Hewitt, and he’s expecting York and Jazz to say similar things, but instead they both shake their heads. “Uh—”

“We’ve been lying to you,” York says. Hewitt has to appreciate the forthrightness, he supposes. “And also you haven’t been asking, but—”

“Asking what?” Hewitt says, trying not to sound too annoyed. It helps that Sosa, who’s chronically honest to a fault, is in on whatever this is. Or it makes it worse.

Sosa gently peels away from Jazz and heads towards Hewitt. E wraps eir arms around him, and he squeezes em, and it feels like that first day when he had forgotten what it felt like to see another person. Very gently, e says, “Hewitt, the world’s ending.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Not like this,” Jazz says quietly. “The Fridays escaped from the Hall, and now they’re gone.”

Hewitt jolts in surprise and twists to look at York. He’d known about the black hole, and he’d known about the Fridays dying, but this… “Are you okay?”

“It was almost nobody I knew,” York says quietly. “And I was never going to see them again anyways. It’s a different kind of grief.”

Different than Hewitt’s, he means. Different than the tear tracks still on half his face, the blotches where he sobbed into his hands that still haven’t completely gone away.

“What does this have to do with everything else?” he says, because he can’t bear to think about that any longer.

Sosa exhales, long and loud enough that it ruffles Hewitt’s hair. “Some teams are trying to get into the vault. And today is— Jazz?”

“Today was day ninety-seven,” Jazz murmurs. “We think they have tonight and tomorrow night to get here. And everyone else…”

Hewitt doesn’t need zem to finish that thought. “So we’re waiting for teams to show up?”

“I was going to tell you tonight,” York says. Sosa shoots him a scandalized look, but he only shrugs. “From what I hear a few people are getting close, and some of the Georgias were going to go to the gate.”

“The gate?” Hewitt repeats. He doesn’t remember how he got here. It’s bizarre to consider a gate, or a door, or… a way out, really. “Are you going?”

“No,” York says. “But I’m waiting up until they get back. They think it’ll happen at midnight.”

“I was going to go,” Sosa admits. “You can come if you want.”

Slowly, Hewitt shakes his head. They didn’t want him to know this, which means — he can’t think about what it means, because if it doesn’t mean the very specific thing that’s in the back of his mind, he won’t be able to handle it. He won’t want to be at the gate, at least not tonight. “I’ll stay back with York.”

“Okay,” Sosa says. “Okay. And not that I’m enjoying the moment, but I’m starving, so—”

Hewitt steps aside, and Sosa immediately scoops up a couple of lumpia. E takes a bite and eir eyes widen. “The vault didn’t make this.”

“Jazz and I made it.”

“It’s so much better than that shit in your townhouse, oh my god.” E waves at York. “Come eat some of these, come on.”

York dutifully wanders over and picks up a roll of lumpia. “Good job,” he says, before he even takes a bite.

Hewitt rolls his eyes. But he smiles. And he thinks about the gate. And he understands all over again why Jazz was cooking all day.

#

It’s a group of them waiting at the edge of the hub: Hewitt, York, Hiroto Wilcox, Lachlan, Sandi from the Queens, and a deck of cards. They all keep glancing at Hewitt, and he keeps having to bite his tongue. He doesn’t want to ask who’s coming, because he doesn’t want to know the answer. He doesn’t want to know if it’s— or if it isn’t— he can barely even think what he’s thinking, has to approach the thought from the side like a skittish animal.

Something is about to happen.

It’s strange seeing Hiroto Wilcox in a Georgias jersey. She’s handling it well, all high spirits and a good attitude. A lot of the homes in the hub have more variation than where Hewitt’s from: instead of townhouses there are high-rise apartments and cottages. The Queens claimed a couple cottages, the Georgias claimed a couple floors in a high-rise, Hewitt has an apartment of his own that’s a little too big but better than the townhouse. It’s an adjustment, in a good way. Having space to fill.

More people will be here. Tonight.

Hiroto knows a couple weird card games, so she teaches them all slowly, walking them through Hellmouth poker and Mao and a couple of other things that she doesn’t say the names of. She’s dealing cards with the same fervor that Hewitt’s trying to play the game, so the Tigers must be on the other side of the gate.

The gate. The fucking gate.

Hewitt wins a couple rounds and loses a couple more. Sandi cleans up. Lachlan keeps checking his phone, although Hewitt doesn’t know if he’s looking for the time or the news or for somebody to call him. York keeps asking Hiroto questions about the games, and Hiroto keeps answering, and Hewitt isn’t thinking about what’s about to happen next. He isn’t thinking about it at all.

He isn’t going to think about it.

He’s thinking about it. Obviously he’s thinking about it. There are words he can’t say aloud and questions he can’t look at head-on, a low buzz of something in the back of his head, empty space that he didn’t know was empty until the wasp’s nest of what-if moved took up residency. And now the only thing he has to focus on is every wingbeat and every flicker of a thought.

He’s playing cards. Only cards. Only cards, only cards—

The thing that reaches them first is the light. When the vault gets dark it’s the dreamy semi-dark of movies, a haziness that you can see through if you try hard enough. But before he hears anything he sees light, not from a gate opening but just because it looks like a couple people might be glowing.

Lachlan’s next to see it. He looks at his phone again, then looks at Hiroto and shakes his head. Her shoulders visibly slump, but she still looks towards the gaggle of people. The gaggle of… a lot of people. There are footsteps and low voices and more that Hewitt can’t make out.

York touches Hewitt’s shoulder, light and careful. “Let’s go.”

Hewitt can only nod. Lachlan pats Hewitt’s leg, and Hiroto offers a wan smile. Only Sandi gets to her feet alongside them. “I’d like to see if there’s anyone I know,” she says, and so she comes with the two of them. Hewitt likes Sandi: she’s light on her feet and quick with her words, and in the handful of days he’s seen her, she’s had her Afro dyed different colors every time.

There’s no single moment where the light breaks and Hewitt can make out faces. He recognizes Jessica Telephone, looking slightly different; Cory Ross, smiling broadly; Sandi points at a couple jerseys and calls them Whales, and Fireballs, and Immortals. That last one is enough to set her off running towards someone in a jersey Hewitt doesn’t know.

It’s here, in the midst of strangers and acquaintances, that Hewitt finally thinks to look up.

Helga Washington, standing head and shoulders above most of the crowd, with instability flickering in her eyes, sees him immediately. Her mouth opens slightly; Hewitt can feel his own jaw hanging open.

“What’s up?” York says, and then looks follows his gaze. “Ah.”

“Holy fuck,” Hewitt whispers. He’s not sure he says that, actually. He’s not sure he says anything at all.

York fumbles with something and then grabs one of Hewitt’s hands and presses something into it. When Hewitt looks down, it’s an honest to god lace handkerchief. “Why—”

“For the crying,” York says, and then plants a hand between Hewitt’s shoulders and shoves him forward. “Have fun.”

Hewitt stumbles a couple of steps forward, and for a second that’s it, his brain scrambling to make sense of what’s going on. The Breath Mints are dead and they’re in the vault. They haven’t seen him since before he was stolen into the vault and turned to gold, since before he was seized by grief and loneliness, since—

God, does it matter?

Helga breaks through the crowd first, and stops just in front of Hewitt. He has to crane his neck to look up at her. “Hi,” he says, breathless, tearful. He feels the lace of the handkerchief against his fingers, tries to let the strange textures ground him.

“Hewitt,” Helga says in disbelief. She holds a hand out. “I’m dead.”

“I know.” Hewitt lifts his hand and tries to take hers, heart racing, and— and watches as his fingers go through hers and has to fight down a sob. “God fucking damn it, I can’t—”

“Hew,” Sosa says, appearing at his shoulder. “Switch hands.”

He looks at em, feeling something bubbling deep inside him. “What?”

Gently, e touches his other hand. He shoves the handkerchief in a back pocket and lets Sosa guide his hand towards Helga’s. “The gold,” e says. “It’s the gold.”

This time, Hewitt’s gold-riddled fingers close around Helga’s. It’s strange, like he’s feeling pins and needles; when he looks closer he can see that the fleshy parts of his fingers aren’t quite making contact. But his hand is golden enough that he can hold Helga’s.

“Hewitt,” Helga says, wracked with grief, or maybe joy, or does it make a difference? Behind her he can see other Breath Mints breaking out from the crowd, Marq with a scarf sailing behind them, Izzie with Atlas hot on her heels, Marco shouting in excitement, Winnie sprinting straight towards him, even Eddie and Whit.

“Hi,” Hewitt says, and the tears start, and that’s the last thing he says for a long, long while.

#

NEED A WAY
TO PASS THE TIME?
HERE ARE FIVE THINGS
YOU (YES, YOU!) CAN DO
HERE IN THE VAULT

1. Say hi to your friends. We know, it’s a little passé, and maybe you don’t have friends here. But what if you do? It’s nice to meet up with people you haven’t seen in a bit! Pass the time together — it’s probably better than passing it alone.

2. Go out exploring. Did you know we have an Oblympic-sized swimming pool? Pristine blaseball diamonds? A small theme park? Local businesses? It’s a big world here! Check some of it out — you won’t be disappointed.

3. Try your hand at interior design. You may be new to the vault, but it might surprise you to learn that everybody has a designated living space, somewhere in the vault. Even if you haven’t found yours yet, you’ll get there one day! Designated living spaces should be designed to your satisfaction, but if they’re not, who says you can’t try something new? Mix it up!

4. Pick up a hobby. Remember those local businesses? We’ve got craft stores, stationery stores, a fully functional pottery studio, plenty of libraries (and a league-mandated Library — what, you think we wouldn’t?) and way more. Check some of those out, we promise you’ll love it.

5. Get some rest. Burnout is real, y’all, and sometimes self-care really means doing nothing at all. We’re designed for the days where the most you can do is move from bed to couch. You won’t even have to cook! We have all the amenities you’ll need for those lazy days, cross our hearts.

And if none of these sound good, you can do what HEWITT BEST does. (We know, OMG! The Hewitt Best!) Stay up all night catching up with your old teammates, maybe cook them dinner. Cry some tears if you want! It’s okay, emotional vulnerability is in. Fall asleep with them. We can’t guarantee you’ll wake up with them, but is that really the point? It’s just another fun experience provided from the vault: wherever you are, we’ll make sure you get back home.

#

Hewitt opens their eyes. The perfectly blank, smooth ceiling of their townhouse stares back at them challengingly.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” they mumble. When they roll over in bed, the rows and rows of Sharpie tally marks are still there. There aren’t enough marks now, not that it matters. They don’t need to keep track anymore.

It’s easy to get ready, to put on a too-nice shirt and too-nice pants, to grab a piece of doughy buttered toast as they head out the door. They stop just long enough to make a guess on the map about where camp is, where all the teams are waiting for them. Just in case someone else ends up here, and needs a little guidance.

When they get to the park, following a hunch, York is already pacing back and forth by the bench. His head snaps up at the sound of footsteps, and his face floods with relief. “Hewitt,” he says, and before Hewitt can even blink there’s a solid gold person slamming into their chest.

“Right here,” Hewitt answers, a little winded. They wrap their arms around York’s shoulders, and it’s awkward, because York doesn’t do hugs most of the time and they can tell he doesn’t like it. But this, the solidarity, the presence, that’s all more important than any of that.

“Can you fucking believe this?” Sosa demands. Hewitt gives York one last squeeze and backs away to see Sosa striding towards them. “They kicked me out again!”

“They kicked all of us out,” Hewitt points out dryly.

Sosa shakes eir head. “It’s targeted,” e mutters. “Swear to god. Are we ready to go back?”

York goes still for a second and then looks at Hewitt, face completely neutral. “You were talking about looking for other people.”

“You were?” Sosa says brightly. “Are we doing that now?”

They could, Hewitt realizes. Whether or not York and Sosa come with them, they could look for people now, could explore the vault endlessly, could find Nagomi Mcdaniel and everyone else here. They could lead them all back to the hub with everyone else, reintroduce them to society, do something grand and adventurous.

Or.

“Not today,” Hewitt says. York startles; Sosa raises eir eyebrows; they feel a smile threatening to spill over. “Could you act a little less surprised?”

“No,” York says matter-of-factly. “You’re sure?”

Of course they’re not sure. It feels ridiculous to ask. But Hewitt thinks — knows — that taking a few days or even a couple weeks for themself will be good for them. They think of loco moco and tally marks, molten gold and their ghostly teammates, the surety that there will be time for them to do whatever they want. Things have a way of working out, and if they don’t work out, Hewitt will make them work.

“Yeah,” they say. “Let’s go home.”

#

INT/EXT: A TOWNHOUSE / THE VAULT

So, okay, here’s our closing sequence. We’re in the sitting room of a townhouse. Everything is red and gold, gilded and extravagant and tasteful. The camera is pointing out the front window, towards the street. Everything is still and silent until—

V.O.
(Laughter - it could be Hewitt, Sosa, York, or all three. Take your pick.)

There’s a sharp scrape of metal on a wooden floor, like a chair being moved, and then someone getting to their feet. Someone runs to the door, wearing a black and gold cheongsam, and throws the door open.

Cut to outside. Our three heroes stop short, looking at the new appearance. After a couple of seconds of shocked silence, Hewitt ventures a guess:

HEWITT
…Glabe?

Now we get to see GLABE MOON, a Chinese woman, tall and slender, made of solid gold. But there are pearlescent dragon scales peeking through the gold, and she has an iridescent dragon’s tail. It’s lashing back and forth, but it stops when she recognizes Hewitt.

GLABE
I thought I was the only one here.

A wide shot now. Glabe on her front steps, still staring in shock; Sosa, York, and Hewitt on the sidewalk, looking up at her. Hewitt holds out a gold-mottled hand.

HEWITT
Do you want to go somewhere else?

Without hesitation Glabe descends the stairs. Our last shot is a close-up of her golden hand reaching out, and Hewitt taking it in theirs.