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Paper Star liked a lot of things, but she loved none of them.
She had liked to hit targets and scare civilians and complete every last mission, would have liked to be doing that now, but it was raining and she didn't know nor care what year it was. Nothing was worth caring about, what had Camus said? When by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they (she) could forget about the plague.
It had been what felt like centuries ago. Paper Star had been sitting on VILE’s rooftop. Another spring day with the elusive Carmen (she was Black Sheep back then, no red coat to speak of) beside her. Fingertips are nominally uninteresting things (perhaps more interesting if they were to be sliced off, one by one), but Paper Star had enjoyed Carmen's fingertips that day, and the way they kept on almost touching her own.
"Do you like me, Black Sheep?" Paper Star had asked, and giggled, because giggling always made Carmen look at her.
"I would like you more if you stopped trying to–” Carmen paused, thinking, "y'know, cut the world into little paper pieces. Even if you're good at it."
Carmen had watched her. Carmen had observed her talents. Carmen had appreciated her talents. There was a knowledge, Paper Star thought, a knowledge between them, a kinship. This knowledge drew her to Carmen, made her want her. Was want what it was? Want anagrammed to tawn. Tawn, the colloquial capital of Bermuda, a tan... Carmen had a tan. Carmen had short brown hair and pained grey eyes and a tan, and she deeply cared about something beyond the horizon of VILE island, and maybe shallowly cared about the mental case sitting beside her.
Yet it was an alliance. An uneasy alliance. Paper Star got Carmen’s sharp wits and her sharper humour. Carmen was more intelligent and surely more cunning than any of the forty thieves, and yet she still (sometimes, if Paper Star got Brunt's piss-tasting beer onto the roof) talked about a moral compass and doing the "right thing". Paper Star didn't believe in the "right thing", and as a result, didn't believe in the "wrong thing" either. Maybe that was why Carmen kept her around. A reminder of amorality; a footnote in the grand story of a life Carmen hadn't had the chance to live yet.
“Would you ever want to get out of here?” Carmen asked one day. Her head was tucked in between her two perfect legs, staring into the bits of the roof which hadn't quite been painted.
“I like the isle. Where else would I go, hmm?”
Paper Star almost wanted to add that which was left unsaid – I don’t have a real place to go back to – but she didn't. It was an obvious fact. Paper Star made paper children for herself on occasion, but then she would make paper snakes for the paper babies, and beheaded they became. Obvious too was Carmen's place to return (she had none), being the other much-stuck-in-ways prodigy of the isle. It was fun for Paper Star to chase someone so beautiful, so unattainable, so very broken. Carmen didn't talk to anyone but her.
“Why were you held back here?” Paper Star asked one day. She had been bold to sneak the cleaners' cigarettes and lighter up, but truthfully she had been much bolder to ask Carmen the question. She offered a cigarette to Carmen.
Carmen took it. She thumbed the cigarette as she examined it for a location or a foreign language or something. Carmen liked to look at any smuggled good, no matter how nondescript it was, if only to know where it came from. “Why did you bring this up here? You’re not an adult.”
Paper Star rolled her eyes. “Do you really care about age restrictions, lambie?”
Carmen, irritated, lit the cigarette and started to smoke. Seconds later, she took it out of her mouth, coughing, and lay down, back to the academy roof and face to the stars. God, she was pretty. Paper Star would’ve kissed her right then if she had been brave enough. Or high enough, not just tasting an old man's nicotine. Suddenly, Carmen pulled her down so that Paper Star was laying right beside her. Now they were really touching, perfect warm hands clasping scratched cold hands.
“VILE isn’t a parent, it’s a parasite,” Carmen finally said after a minute. She threw the smoke over the rooftop and looked directly Paper Star’s eyes. “It’s holding me down. It's holding you down too. We should do something. We should escape.”
Paper Star hadn’t known what to say. She liked Black Sheep, the loner who had some sort of ulterior motive that she could never talk about unless she had a few drinks in her. Paper Star liked the version that didn't trust her, the version that shied away but inevitably kept coming back. Now Carmen had asked her to escape. Paper Star had been chosen, and somehow she had to further the cycle, keep them far away enough that they were silent but close enough that they could kiss, and so she decided on her reply.
“Poor little Black Sheep. What will your next moves be? Far away from VILE, fighting for what's right. Maybe we'll have to betray the faculty,” she crooned, because it was easier to piss off Carmen than try to understand her.
“I don’t need you, Paper Star. Go away.”
So it had ended. Paper Star went on the roof from time to time, but Carmen was never there anymore, and yet Paper Star was still drawn. She left paper sheep everywhere, spelling out her message with every piece of origami. You won’t get rid of me. In classes she grew more insane, more bored without anybody good there, and she began to relish any glance Carmen gave her (even if it was one of annoyance).
But Paper Star supposed she had let her obsession spiral. There was a proverb for her, surely, an instruction. “If you love something, set it free”. Too bad for Paper Star, the object of her love had set itself free and now stood against everything Paper Star was supposed to stand for.
“Missed me, lambie?” Paper Star teased, coming back to the moment aktuell as she remembered what she was doing on this rooftop, the Bilbao Guggenheim, having tipped off about fifty sites on the dark web.
“Two years; you haven’t tried to hide yourself a bit,” Carmen said, circling Paper Star with a strange expression on her face.
“Have you ever considered the fact that I wanted to be found?”
“I’m sick of your antics. I guess this museum was an easy target for your misdeeds.”
Paper Star scoffed. Carmen had no idea what Paper Star was doing here, even though Paper Star had practically spelt it out. There was nothing fulfilling in this life for her. Not the paper, not the flat, not the endless line of people walking in and out of said flat.
“I’m not here to rob the museum. I’m here to sit on the roof because I like this es-tu-ary.” Paper Star sounded out the words, humming them into a lullaby.
“There are ACME agents on the way. If you’re so peaceful, turn yourself in,” Carmen said. She thought Paper Star had some hidden weapon up her sleeve, was keeping her distance. Carmen's fear fuelled Paper Star better than any drug (coke, grass, acid; she'd done most of them, but they tasted worse in Japan) could.
“Your ACME agents can watch me throw myself off the roof.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Since when do you make these calls, hmm?” Paper Star looked into Carmen's beautiful grey eyes, recalling every almost that had led them here, to this moment.
“I know you, Paper Star. I’ve seen the way your twisted mind works. It spirals. It doesn’t...self-destruct.”
“Do you know me, or do you know the version that was close to you? We liked to smoke.” She pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and fingered it, and the little caged bird Carmen still looked at it just as intrigued as the very first day. “We can still smoke.”
"Fire beats paper.”
Paper Star smiled at Carmen, getting closer to her until she was right behind her. “We didn’t just smoke, hmm? We made origami too, we held hands—”
“L–leave me alone, Paper Star. I thought after all this time you would chase something other than attention.” There was some sort of a spark in Carmen’s grey eyes. Recognition. “It’s been two years since I took VILE down. We were done with you. You could have been better."
“I am better, lambie. I just don’t associate with those losers anymore,” Paper Star said, waving her hand offhandedly. “I don’t associate with you anymore either. The only question in life is whether or whether not to stay living, and I know I've made the right choice now. Catch you around, Black Sheep.”
Adrenaline pumped through her for the first time in a long time. Paper Star was finally doing backflips over the right side of the roof. She felt freedom, exhilaration, joy. Now Carmen would remember her forever. They would exist in chaos and nonchaos once more, rather than simply being enemies. Carmen would lament their semi-friendship, would beat herself up about it, would cry at the backdoor funeral, et cetera... Paper Star was really in to fall now, and she shut her eyes as she experienced the drop.
Fall. Fall. Fall. Fall.
Stop.
“I won't let you die.” Warm hands on hers again. "Not now, at least. I'm taking you to jail."
Paper Star liked a lot of things, and she maybe loved only one.