Chapter Text
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Damon looks up and wonders if their souls are scattered across the cosmos, one with the stars. He can only hope they’re at peace now, wherever they may be.
It’s been a month since he survived the killing game.
Damon was home again, in the familiarity of his bedroom.
He’d grown up in this house. There are pictures of him on the wall: at the zoo with his grandparents, his first tournament win, his thirteenth birthday… Medals and certificates on the wall, trophies in glass cases. Downstairs, there are his parents, his mother washing dishes in the kitchen, and his father taking out the trash. Sometimes it still feels surreal, like he’d wake up in his lavish dorm room in Eden’s Garden Academy and find out it was all a hopeless dream. He’s had hundreds of those dreams before, after all.
He’s sitting on his bed, staring out the window, his luggage prepared near the door. The last time he sat like this, looking out into the dark blue of the night, was three months ago, the night before he left for Eden’s Garden Academy. It feels much longer than that.
He looks down on his wrist and sees the faint remnants of a bruise there, where the trinket jabbed its needle into, letting poison course into his veins. Damon shakes his arm out; he knew it would bruise. He’s always injured easily, especially when he was younger; pale kid that he was, littered with yellow dimples all over.
Damon absentmindedly pushes his bangs out of his eyes, listening for the chirp of the crickets in the lawn. His roots are showing, but he hasn’t dyed his hair in a while, allowing his dark hair to grow out. It almost feels absurd that back then, he didn’t know his life would change forever, better or for worse.
There were a few nights like these when Damon didn’t let himself sleep. He always gets this creeping feeling right before he dreams of Eva or Kai. All he sees is the blank, cold horizon of the midnight sky, and all he feels is dark, choking water all around him. Then, from the darkness, either Eva Tsunaka or Kai Monteago’s ghostly apparition will extend their hand out to him, radiating warm light. When he does, however, they pull him down as the air grows thin around his head, suffocating him, embracing him. It’s something he doesn’t intend to admit until one day he startles awake to find his mother’s hand on his arm, tight, gripping him in place and keeping him from thrashing around further.
Damon looks up at the night sky and the scatter of stars. He wonders if his friends are looking up at the same sky, too: both alive and dead.
A loud honk jolts him from his thoughts, making his heart thump as he sits up at attention. His sudden jolts at loud noises would often stun his parents. Damon looks up to see a jeep in the driveway, illuminated by streetlights. A familiar young man in white dreadlocks waves enthusiastically through the window. Exhaling, Damon stands up from his bed, takes the suitcase by the handle, and leaves his room.
He hurries downstairs, his suitcase bumping against each step as he descends. His breath catches a little. The poison injected into him at the end of the killing game didn't kill him, but it's left him uncoordinated and ill in ways that persist almost a month after rigorous medical treatment. But Damon still takes pride in his ability to recover. Since he didn't die there, it’s as if nothing outside can hurt him anymore.
“Mom, Dad…” he calls through the hallway. “Jett’s here.”
His parents hurry out of the living room. His mother wordlessly wraps her arms around him, and he hugs her back tightly. He’s much taller now: he can see the top of her head when she hugs him, a swirl of dark and white hair. He feels a tinge of guilt, knowing that his disappearance caused most of it.
In his mother’s arms, he suddenly feels a strong urge to beg to stay home, like a child pouting about not going to school. The safety, the comfort, his parents – he missed them all, and he’s just gotten used to it again.
But Damon knows he can’t delay – there are too many people waiting for him, too many to say goodbye to. He forces himself away from his mother’s arms and makes his way to the front door as his parents follow closely behind him.
He feels almost dizzy with deja vu, his suitcase clacking behind him, the night, and his parents staring at him with affection and worry. It’s just like the day he left, like he’d turned back time to three months ago.
He knows it’s impossible, he knows he shouldn’t think about it that way, but –
If only.
“Take care, darling,” his mother tells him, her hands clasped together. “Make sure to call us. Give all of them our love.”
“Be safe, Damon,” is all his dad says, holding the door open. The lines on his forehead crease worriedly.
“I will,” Damon nods, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Don’t worry.”
“See you soon, baby.” Mother kisses him on his cheek, the smudge of lotion and lipstick familiar. If he were younger, he would’ve pushed her away, embarrassed, but now he knows much too well that mortality is too fragile, that one kiss from his mother might very well be his last.
“We’ll watch you go,” says his father. “Your friend is waiting for you.”
“I call shotgun,” Damon calls out, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips despite himself. A weight seems to lighten from his chest at the sight of him.
“Hey, man!” Jett says brightly, slapping Damon’s shoulders roughly as he stumbles into the car, his luggage loaded in the trunk. The racer is freshly shaven, his hair newly styled. “How ya doing?”
“Hey. I’m good.” Damon snaps on the seatbelt. Calm down.
“Good to go on an adventure?”
“If we can call it that.”
“C’mon, anything’s an adventure if you put your heart into it!”
“You do realize that you sound like Diana, do you?” Damon retorts, but there’s no bite to it. He and Jett weren’t the closest, but he’d forgotten how much he missed his friends from the Academy – those who understood and shared the memories, even the hurt.
No one else understands what it's like to see someone vomit dark blood or drown in alcohol. To see someone speared with dozens of bullets, to see someone burn alive. To find someone, beneath the floorboards, knowing he could have been saved–
Jett only laughs, giving Damon’s shoulders another rough pat, unbeknownst to his internal whirlwind. He steps on the pedal, and the car revs into a start.
It’s nearly dawn when they reach the reservations. Damon wakes up to the sun turning the sky pink and purple, a brilliant sunrise cascading over the sandy plains.
“Morning, bro!” Jett sounds cheerful, though he’d spent the night driving. “We’re almost there.”
The car is driving through a desert, sparsely studded with dry bushes and cacti. They’re the only ones on the highway. Sloping sandy hills and multicolored rocky valleys brighten under the clear sky – the color reminds Damon of his childhood cat’s fur, back when he lived in Japan.
Waking up to an unfamiliar scenery in a car, going to pick up a friend… He’s never been one before, except for attending competitions abroad, but he can almost pretend that this is just the start of a regular cross-country road trip.
That they aren’t meeting up to visit funerals, cemeteries, and graves.
“When we pick Wenona up, she’ll switch to driving,” Jett yawns. “So I can get some shut-eye.”
“You know I know how to drive, too, right?” Damon attests. “Even Diana does.”
“Yeah, but remember what the hospital said. You gotta rest, bro!” The racer gives him a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry, man. For this trip, we’ll do the driving!”
Damon knows it’s for the best, but he can’t help the tinge of irritation as he settles back into his seat. He hates the idea of being a burden when everyone is stepping up to support one another.
That’s when his phone buzzes in his pants pocket, and he fumbles to take it out, the angle cramped in the small passenger seat. After a moment, he manages to press it to his ear.
“Wenona?”
“Hey,” says a familiar, lilting tone. “I’m at the bus station.”
When the car drives into the reservation, a small village with rusty trailer-house settlements and asphalt roads, Wenona stands at a run-down bus station, a small suitcase in hand. Half a dozen small children surround her, hugging her legs and clinging to her back. Her dark hair is undone from its braids, free to cascade down her shoulders.
“Yo, Wenona!” Jett exclaims, rolling down the window. “You started a daycare or what?”
“Far from it,” she says, but she’s smiling. “These are the village children. I’m… sort of a hero here.”
Jett exits the car and amiably shakes hands with the entrepreneur, and helps her load her suitcase into the trunk.
“How’s the car looking?” Jett asks excitedly as Wenona critically examines the car. The horde of children now surrounds him, chittering excitedly and pulling at the colorful badges on his jacket. “Bought this beauty in a record deal!”
“Shabby,” she remarks, examining the windows. She blows away dust from the windowsill. “I never thought I’d say this, but frankly, I don’t mind.”
Jett throws himself into the back seat with a sigh of relief, lying across the seats and taking up the entire space. He pulls his cap over his eyes, and sooner or later, he’s snoring, fast asleep.
Great, Damon thinks, exhaling in acceptance. He’ll have to survive Jett’s snoring for pretty much the whole trip. Just like the ‘old days’... If a month ago counts as that.
“All right, before I go…” Outside of the car, Wenona puts her hands on her hips. “What is the first step to economic sustainability?”
“Saving pocket money!” The children holler in unison.
“No sweets,” she adds.
“No sweets!”
“That’s right,” Wenona looks satisfied. “Oh, and… No pulling pranks on the elders. It’s very impolite… though I admit I’ve done it too, as a child.”
“Awwww,” the children pout.
After saying goodbye, Wenona opens the door and settles into the driver’s seat next to Damon. She dusts the seat carefully before sitting down, as if she’s afraid to catch germs: Same old Wenona.
“Typical of you to teach kids how to inherit your capitalist empire,” Damon mutters.
“And hello to you, too, Damon,” she sighs, pressing down on the pedal.
“So… straight to the airport?” Wenona fiddles with the GPS, one hand on the wheel.
“Damon and I actually haven’t had anything yet,” says Jett, stretching in the back seat. “So we do need to get breakfast!”
“Ah. I had an early breakfast.” Wenona murmurs. “You two are free to choose the menu.”
“Hell yeah – McDonald's!” Jett pumps his arms in the air. “McDonald’s!”
An uncomfortable silence falls.
“Jett,” Damon hisses. “You know that she hates–”
“...I refuse to buy any of their unhealthy corporate slop,” the entrepreneur huffs in contempt, scrunching up her nose. Instead of entering the highway, she veers off the road so suddenly that Damon’s head slams into the window.
“W-What the hell, Wenona!?” Damon shouts, clutching his forehead. He never took her to be a reckless driver, more or less a careless one. She has chauffeurs driving her everywhere, after all: was it stupid of him to think she’d be a good driver?
“That was the highway, dude!” Jett exclaims, apparently stuck between the front and back seats and struggling to pry himself free. “You– You just missed it!”
“You all need a better diet,” Wenona announces, apparently unfazed. “I’m taking you two somewhere healthier for breakfast.”
“Where, exactly…?” Damon might dislike fast food as much as Wenona, but he’d rather have oily fries than whatever she might subject him to.
“Oh, don’t fret,” her lips twitch into a familiar smirk, unsettlingly reminiscent of the time she ran a bread monopoly in the academy. “Somewhere decent.”
…Surprisingly enough, Wenona takes them to a local falafel place, where she orders two sandwiches. Jett gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up, and Damon tentatively tries it. It’s good, better than he expected of her choice of ‘healthy food’.
When he begrudgingly expresses this sentiment to her, Wenona scoffs amusedly.
“Am I still so distrustworthy to you, Maitsu?” She looks at him pointedly from the driver’s seat, one hand jauntily placed upon the wheel. Humor glints in her blue eyes, and one of her earrings catches the rising sunlight and sparkles.
Damon has to admit that he missed that look in her eyes. It’s of someone who’s started in a place as wrong as his, and slowly, gradually worked her way up past everything. He realizes that if she were the person before the academy, she could have and would’ve taken them to some horrible salad chain, just to laugh while they complain. But the woman in front of him is not the same: she’s someone who’s kept him alive all those months, through the toughest of times. One of his closest friends.
“In all seriousness…” he picks at his sandwich, separating a piece of cucumber from the pita bread. “I trust you.”
“Oh?” she raises an eyebrow, almost testing. “How so?”
Dammit, Wenona. He’s still not the best at this ‘communicating your feelings’ thing, and it makes embarrassment prickle up his neck, but at least he’s been trying, really – harder than ever.
“...A lot.”
“Hm.” In the corner of his eye, he sees her lips twitch into a smile as she turns to face the road again. “I appreciate that.”
The next stop is the airport, where they arrive around midday. They wait in the car in the parking lot. The sun blazes down onto the asphalt and the palm trees, the massive glass building glimmering from afar. Hundreds of people move around them like one giant crowd, carrying bags of varying sizes.
Damon considered taking a walk outside, anything to escape Jett’s snoring and to stretch his cramped legs, but reluctantly decided against it, considering the heat.
“When’s Grace coming? She said she’s on her way, right?” Damon frowns, squinting through the shifting mass of people.
“Mm.” Wenona has been staring into the mirror for the past minute, moving a strand of her dark hair over her face and tucking it just behind her earring.
She grimaces at the empty soda bottles littering the center console, and she chucks them into the back seat. One hits Jett square on the forehead, and he yelps.
“Your car is a junkyard,” she chides. “Really? Was this the best you could clean it, even when you’re expecting four visitors? Grace will bite your head off.”
“I was busy, man,” Jett shrugs apologetically, rubbing his head. “Mandated therapy… Cleaning my apartment… All that stuff.”
“Ah,” Wenona sounds a little guilty, her tone softening. “I see.”
Then, the entrepreneur opts to wait outside in the heat, much to Damon’s confusion. Sooner or later, a familiar, thick accent echoes through the parking lot.
“Oi! Soybeans!”
A young blonde woman is striding towards them, grinning ear-to-ear, dragging a large suitcase behind her. She’s newly tanned a healthy bronze, and freckles dust across her nose under her cap.
“Madison!”
Wenona runs ahead, and the two women embrace in the sun.
“Fresh from Australia, baby!” Grace laughs. “It’s bloody nice to be back. Missed ya.”
“Oh, have you?”
“Yeah. We’ll catch up in the car. It’s fuckin’ hot out here.”
Damon smiles despite himself, watching the two women approach the car again, bantering good-naturedly. It’s a pleasantly familiar sight. He turns to tap Jett on the knee to wake him, and the racer jolts mid-snore, looking around confusedly.
“Maitsu, you sneak!” Completely unprovoked, before he realizes that she’s already here, Grace reaches in and promptly pinches his ear through the open window.
“OW!” He clutches his ear, jumping away. “W-What the hell was that for?!”
“Don't get all pissy at me. You stole my seat!” the golfer grins mischievously. “Wenona’s driving. I call shotgun.”
“What? I got here first!”
“Good lord,” Wenona grumbles, rolling her eyes. “You two are like bickering children, fighting over car seats. Just sit wherever.”
“Oi,” Grace demands, jabbing a finger through the window, her blonde head bobbing in and out of sight. “I will be sitting with you, at least for the first part of the trip. We got some catchin’ up to do. No objections, not that I’ll take any.”
“Seriously?” Damon turns indignantly towards the back seat, where Jett lounges sleepily.
“My car, their rules. Sorry, man,” he shrugs.
“...fine,” Damon mutters, unclipping his seatbelt. When he reluctantly opens the door and slips out on unsteady, cramped legs, Grace Madison promptly pulls him into an embrace, knocking the breath out of him.
“Glad you made it, soybean,” her arm tightens on his back. He smells the 13-hour flight and the minty scent of cooling patches on her clothes. “Let’s do this, aye?”
“Yeah,” he says, his throat closing up unexpectedly. “Yeah.”
While Jett snores away next to him, Wenona and Grace chat in the front. Wenona laughs out loud – a clear, cascading sound like wind chimes, one he hasn’t heard for a long time.
“Mm. Family reunions, yeah?” the entrepreneur smirks. “How’d they treat you? Sounds like we had a similar trip.”
“Oh, hear me. So turns out, my brother – Ay, watch the road, dumbass!” Grace angrily shakes her fist as a car precariously cuts in front of them.
“Now I know that your road rage is genetic,” Wenona remarks.
Her teasing lilt is nostalgic: it reminds him of when he would offer gifts to his friends with the earnings he gained from that stupid pachinko machine. He wonders if she still keeps the tree necklace. He knows Kai was wearing the fake piercings.
Damon eventually drifts to sleep under the sun, listening to their familiar banter.
It’s late in the afternoon when they arrive at a low-rise suburbia, filled with white houses with red roofs and a swimming pool in the backyard. Grace switched with Wenona to take over driving at some point, and Jett is wide awake next to him, his sleep schedule successfully reversed. The car comes to a stop in front of a small house, the air humid and warm in the afternoon light.
Grace eagerly looks out the window, craning her head for a better look.
“Where’s she?” she mutters. “She said she’d be waiting.”
“I’ll call her,” Jett declares, reaching for his phone.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Damon sees the house’s front door creak open.
“Hey, there’s–!”
Before he finishes, Diana Venicia bounds outside, skipping across her lawn with a wide smile, waving her arms above her head.
“Hi, guys!” she beams.
“Di!” Grace throws open the driver’s seat door and leaps to embrace the younger girl.
“Oh, you guys…” The young cosmetologist looks much healthier, the rosy color back in her face as she hugs Grace back. “How’re you all doing? It’s so nice to see you again!”
“Awesome!” Jett gives her a thumbs-up. “My legs are all better now.”
“As well as I can manage,” Wenona answers coolly, pulling down the car window and extending a hand to shake Diana’s. “Taking time off from the company, as you recommended, has been good for me.”
“Aw, I’m so glad!” Diana smiles kindly as ever. “Wait, where’s…” Her searching eyes eventually land on Damon.
She smiles, sad and heavy and heartbroken like he’s a corpse again, slumped over his own podium, blood trickling from his nose and mouth. He wonders if she still sees him like that now – body still and lifeless. He wouldn’t be surprised if she reached out and pressed two fingers to his jugular, seeking out his pulse point to confirm he’s not a ghost.
“Hey, Diana,” he tries to return the look as best as he can. She’s been through horrible ordeals as much as he has, maybe even more. He still doesn’t know how to repay Diana, how to thank her, how to treat her – they’ve been on both rough and good terms throughout their time in the academy, and in the end, he owes his survival to her.
“Damon…” Diana strides forward, opens the car door, and before he knows it, she’s embracing him too, enveloping him in her arms. Her silver chameleon bites into his back, and she smells like caramel. “Thank you so much for coming.”
When she pulls back, Damon sees tears in her large, doe-like eyes, glittering like jewels. She sighs, taking a look around her neighborhood, surrounded by familiar air and friends. The sun sets on the horizon, washing the white houses in pink and orange. Streetlights flicker on, the pale light illuminating the five young survivors.
“We’re… we’re really saying goodbye, aren’t we?”