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Jaiden is more tired than she thinks she's ever been. There is a weight in her chest, heavy upon her lungs and heart, constricting every strangled breath she tries to draw in and making her feel dizzy. The floor of the treehouse is cold despite the sun having shone on it just moments earlier.
She's so, so tired, but she knows what awaits her once she closes her eyes—Bobby's bright eyes, staring wide up at her and Roier and asking them if they were going on an adventure. She could almost laugh. The three of them on an adventure together—never to happen again, locked away in her memory.
Her wings are painfully pressed up against the wooden wall of the treehouse, but she can't gather the energy to move them. Roier is leaning over the balcony, head hung low as he stares at the ground below him. His hands are hanging over the edge and the spider legs jutting from his back are folded against it, abnormally still.
It has been silent for some time. Jaiden can only think about how painfully quiet and empty it feels. If Bobby was there, he'd be drumming upon the walls with sticks, or tapping his foot on the floor, or swishing his tail and flapping his wings in such a way that creates a cacophony of noise from the little bugger. Despite not having a voice to express himself, he always made sure that he was heard and not just seen by whatever means necessary.
The only noise is the whistling of the wind and the rustling of the trees outside. The silence feels like it's rotting her heart from the inside out.
"You know," Roier says, the translator crackling to life in her ear. She lifts her head up and lets her legs and arms relax a bit as she does, the sharp ache registering but not drawing a reaction out of her. "I feel like I shouldn't be so upset."
Jaiden laughs hollowly, turning back to the ground in front of her. "Yeah. It feels kind of stupid. I mean, we've only known the kid for two months, but..."
She trails off, and Roier does nothing to fill the sudden quiet. He lifts his head up and looks towards the horizon, shoulders sagging. "He was such a little shit, too. He acted like a mama's boy around you, Jaiden, but around me—" He waves his hands a little, shaking his head with a quiet, "Rahh, rahh, hyper all the time."
"He was hyper around me, too," Jaiden says with a small smile. She can clearly see Bobby shimmying his tiny body onto any roofs or walls he could manage to scale, swinging his way into trees with a dexterity that often floored both her and Roier.
"No, no," Roier says, shaking his head. He turns around to face Jaiden, leaning on the balcony still and putting his elbows up on the ledge and slotting his spider appendages through the bars and over the ledge. "Not as bad. Never as bad. Were you ever punched in the gut by a small, scaly fist?" Jaiden shakes her head, her smile growing wider. "I have, many times. It hurts like a bitch."
Jaiden laughs, lifting her head further until it's leaning on the wall behind her.
"I mean, seriously, he would just punch for no reason, all the time. Not to get your attention, not because he was angry, he just liked punching people." Roier pauses, then shakes his head, a small smile on his face as he huffs, letting his head drop a bit. "Pendejo."
"Don't call our son a pendejo, pendejo," Jaiden jokes, finally shifting to unpin her wings from the wall behind her. They twitch and fold as she leans forward a bit, arms propping her up as she tilts her head toward Roier. Her smile immediately falters when she clocks Roier's expression—twisted and blinking away angry tears, eyebrows heavy set against his eyes.
"Pinche pendejo," he says, voice strained as he holds his fist to his mouth and stares at the ground. "I told him not to go. I directly told him not to go ahead and fight, and he did anyways—idiot."
"Hey, hey," Jaiden stammers, pushing herself off the ground and crossing over to Roier, whose shoulders are violently shaking in lieu of actually crying. "Roier, come on—"
She's cut off by his various swears, the translator cutting in and out as he talks too fast for her to pick up. He's trembling and his eyes are wide as he gestures with his hands to go along with his speech, which Jaiden can hardly pick up through the brokenness of the machine in her ear. "Roier—"
"I'm sorry, Jaiden," he says, the words finally being picked up by the translator as his movements slow down and his face contorts even more. His four eyes are shining (the second pair having opened up quite a bit ago), but he doesn't blink the tears away. "I—I'm sorry. You weren't even there, you couldn't even see him before he died."
"It's okay, Roier," Jaiden says softly, taking one of Roier's hands in hers. It's shaking so hard that it moves Jaiden's own arm, and she squeezes and presses her thumbs into the back of his palm. "We were able to see him before he..."
A ball rises in her throat and she blinks back her tears. "It isn't your fault."
"I'm still sorry," Roier says, bitterness and anger and grief all tied together in one short phrase. The translator quiets as he speaks in English, "I tried to...protect him. But—the lag—" He cuts himself off, struggling with the words before speaking in Spanish again, "The lag, it was all so...fuzzy and broken. I—"
"Roier," Jaiden says, quietly cutting him off. "It's okay."
"Our son is dead, Jaiden," Roier half-snaps, voice breaking. He blinks, and tears slip down his face. "It's not 'okay.'"
Jaiden gives him a watery smile and huffs, air blowing from her nose in a half-laugh. "You're right, it's not. But...you can't blame yourself. Okay? You can't—" Her voice catches, and the tears rise to her eyes in earnest, trying to force her expression into a smile as it twists. "You can't start talking about...what you could've done or what you should've done or..."
She trails off and lets go of Roier to wipe away her own tears. Roier sniffs, his entire body tense as tears continue to roll down his cheeks, stinging his second pair of eyes until they close altogether. He looks more than distressed at the fact that he's crying, but the sadness in his eyes only seems to grow alongside his words.
"I'm sorry," he says in English. "I...miss him."
Jaiden's resolve breaks and she sobs. She pulls Roier into a tight hug, her wings wrapping around him as she buries her face in his shoulder and Roier rests his cheek on hers. There's a broken series of clicks that leave Roier's mouth, and she instinctively replies with a comforting trill of her own, despite the two of them being wildly different species. Roier's hands are fists against her back under her wings, and his legs are folded against his back as he cries, otherwise silent and shaky.
"He would have hated this," Jaiden says after a moment, and Roier laughs. His entire body shakes with the movement, and it sounds more like a sob than anything else. "He would have pushed us apart and punched you until you fought him back."
"He'd rather start a...a fistfight with me than sit and cry," he says, the translator switching off. "He...he would hate this."
Jaiden giggles, squeezing him tightly before pulling back and holding his hands in hers. His eyes are all twisted shut before the top pair open, taking back one of his hands to scrub at his eyes before letting Jaiden take them again.
She opens her mouth to speak, then lets out a huff of a laugh and meets Roier's eyes. "I guess we can't sleep forever like we planned, huh?"
Roier laughs too, squeezing Jaiden's hands. "No, no. Bobby would attack us if we showed up...there."
"I think I'd finally feel one of his punches."
"I think we'd experience death a second time over," Roier corrects, snickering. "He would beat the life out of us in heaven, that little shit. If—if we died now, he would kick us into hell."
"Pendejo," Jaiden laughs.
"See, now you get it!" Roier exclaims, pulling her a bit closer. "He's a little shit. He's a bastard."
"I love him, though," Jaiden says quietly. "Even if he was a bit of a bastard."
"We still have to build his city. If he ever comes back and his city isn't there, he'll sulk for a week."
Jaiden's skin prickles as she glances to the side, heaving a deep sigh and letting go of Roier's hands to stick them in her pocket. The sentence itself makes her want to cry again, the unwelcome sight of her and Roier reuniting with Bobby popping into the forefront of her mind. She takes a step back and shakes her head.
"Don't say that, Roier," she quietly pleads. "Don't."
Confusion fills Roier's red eyes as he tilts his head to the side. "What do you mean?"
"Don't say he'll come back," she clarifies. "I don't want...hope. It already hurts. Having hope that he might come back just hurts more. Because he won't." She takes in a shuddering breath and blinks back fresh tears. "I just want to grieve."
Ever the activist, Roier immediately reaches out and places a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, that's okay. I understand." He grips Jaiden's shoulder a bit tighter and shakes her a bit, speaking in English. "We can build the city in his memory, you know? That's okay, too."
Jaiden nods, smiling, and pulls him back into a hug. They stand there for several minutes before Jaiden gasps and points behind Roier, across the balcony. "Hey, Roier, look."
Roier turns around, almost smacking Jaiden with his legs in his surry, and then his shoulders raise as he leans forward over the balcony as he exclaims, "Oh, wow."
The sky has burst into a dozen different colours, shades of pink and yellow and purple and a bit of fading blue splitting through the clouds and originating from the setting sun poking from just behind the stretching forest ahead of them. It almost looks magically bright, so vivid that it seems to light up the sky more than it would if it was the middle of the day.
The sight brings tears to Jaiden's eyes, but they don't feel as sad or choking as they did before. Roier lets out a deep, shaky sigh, leaning forward on the ledge, and Jaiden leans on his side and lets one of her wings pull him closer.
Through their grief, the sun continues to shine—and when it finally sets, they sit and sleep in their son's treehouse, holding each other to try make up for the cold.