Closed RP Aftershocks

[HighVoltage]

Mari never thought that she’d get cabin fever. She was the type to stay cooped inside for days on end, maybe even weeks, without seeing the sun in order to get some specific project finished. But that was fine when it was on her terms. She’d been trapped inside for a few days at this point, under mandatory bed rest ordered by one Dr. Fuchs. It didn’t matter that their degree was apparently in “Being a Bad Bitch”, they enforced their prescription quite heavily.

That included such measures as laying in bed with her to keep her entertained, sitting directly outside her door, and stealing all of her clothes and hiding them in the apartment. After one spirited escape attempt, the good doctor’s methodology expanded to include laying on top of her. As brutish as their methods were, Mari couldn’t deny that they worked. She had effectively been confined to bed rest until Spork had deemed her able to move around and work in the lab through some arbitrary metric known only to them.

So, unable to leave her room or go to her lab, Mari did the only thing she could: searched for contracts. The increase in metahuman activity had a corresponding effect on the amount of illicit contracts. Some of them were clearly murdering them for the sake of being different, which Mari promptly filed in the trash. They weren’t strapped for cash, she could afford to be choosy about which contract they took. It had been a while since they’d donned the mask professionally, the bank incident notwithstanding, and she wanted something simple.

After a few hours of searching, Mari found just the contract she wanted. It was a little below their usual rate, but she’d make an exception for this one. Nathaniel Reddington, 53 years old, ran his own investment firm. Some people were convinced that his firm was a front or a scam entirely, funneling money from new clients into his old ones’ pockets, or even his own. Regardless, the job itself was a simple one: break in, get all the documentation, smash as much as possible. Spork would have fun with that.

Mari spent the rest of her time researching Nathaniel and his firm. The addresses for both were in parts of the city that certainly reeked of, as Spork would call it, “fuck you money”. Regardless of whether this man was a scammer or not, nobody came by this much money ethically. Searching through his firm’s socials netted her the exact information she’d been hoping for: an investing conference that Mr. Reddington would be in attendance at. It wasn’t for another week or so, but that just meant she could afford more prep time.

She typed up a quick dossier on the target and all information related to his firm. She’d ensure the audio reader could handle it later, so Spork could have it for reference. They’d required that she ensure all audio dossiers start with “this mission, if you choose to accept it”, despite her protests that it was a waste of her time and energy. Lately she’d had to run it through the audio reader and manually tweak any pronunciations it may have gotten wrong. She’d never wanted a contract finished quicker than the one on Richard Debusi.

Mari leaned back and felt her back pop in several places, probably due to her frankly abysmal posture. It was a habit at this point, and she knew that at this point it would take more effort to correct than it was worth. Some part of her dimly wondered if dying due to a spinal injury would fix any back problems she had, but quickly that thought was squashed. After her previous conversation with Spork on the topic, it was best left buried for a bit.

She exited her room, poking her head into Spork’s to ensure they weren’t in there. The presence of loud music usually indicated if they were, but sometimes they surprised her. With no Fuchs in sight, Mari made her way to the living room. Spork was where they usually were, hogging the entire couch.

“Hey, we’ve got a new contract in a bit.” Mari announced, moving to where she could see them. Theoretically they could’ve seen her, and Miku would inform them of her position. If they had Miku in, that is. “Right up your alley. Go in, break stuff, take other stuff, leave. Nice and easy.”

 

[Katpride]

It’s hard, babysitting a mad scientist. It’s hard, and no one understands. Not even Mari understands, because it’s for her own health, and that means her heels have dug deep. Like, seriously, their carpets will never be the same after all the furrows she’s worn into them when Spork has had to drag her back to bed. She’s damn lucky that Spork, saint that they are, has only had to resort to actually sitting on her a few times over the past few days, because if she didn’t have little twig bones they would have a righteous new throne and way less problems.

But nooo, they aren’t even praised for the restraint they’ve shown in not bodyslamming her when she tries to sneak out of the apartment. It’s all “Jesus Christ, Spork, how did you even set up a tripwire?” and “Is this dirty laundry?” and “You put my keys where?!” Seriously, they are underappreciated. And it’s not like they’ve made more than a token effort to keep her from her lab, after she got a decent sleep that first night. They didn’t even hide her tools or anything. They’re going easy on her.

(And they know that, if they did lock her out of her lab, she’d just turn to dismantling and ‘improving’ whatever electronics she could get her spindly little hands on. Up to and including their cybernetics, and they are not going through a redux of the Zap Incident of ‘23. No, it’s better to let her think that she’s won, and continue to monitor her once she’s settled into her natural habitat.)

At least she’s resting now, or whatever, which means that Spork can lay upside down on the couch and do their own research for a bit, one earbud in and their free ear tilted towards her door. Just in case.

See, usually Mari does the research for their jobs. She’s way faster at it than they are, since she’s an uber nerd and they’re somewhat limited to digging through only what their screenreader can parse, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t picked up anything from hanging around with her for 20-odd years. They know how to track down their own leads, and so they’ve been tapping discrete contacts and scanning forums when they have a free moment away from their partner.

This is their project, and not one they want to bring her in on until they have a solid lead. They’re still toying with the idea of pursuing it on their own, actually, though they know that Mari would have words with them if she found out that they did that. It just doesn’t sit right, though, clawing at them more the longer they’re forced into inaction.

The Resonants fucked up majorly when they hurt Mari. That can’t be allowed to stand. As soon as Spork sniffs them out, they’re going down.

They close out of Safari hurriedly when they hear footsteps, opening Tumblr and half-listening to the screenreader spazz out as they flick a thumb and zoom down the dash. The footsteps circle into the living room, but Spork stays where they are, listening to the end of a post and greeting Mari with a distracted smile. It falls too quickly when she speaks, and they can almost hear it shattering on the floor as they drop their phone on their chest, scrambling to sit up. “What? A job?”

They don’t bother to hide the confusion on their face or the surprise in their voice. If it were anyone else, the look they give her could very well be read as, ‘are you stupid?’ They know she isn’t, though, so it falls somewhere around ‘what the fuck?’ instead.

“Is that what you were doing?” they ask, their tone surprisingly sharp. Accusatory, almost. Their mouth twists like they’ve popped too many Warheads, and they cut their hand to the side sharply before flopping down again. Even if part of them is kicking in the first stages of becoming stir-crazy themself, they shove it down and pick their phone up, turning away from her. “Fun joke, Mar. Go back to your lab.”

What the hell? They aren’t taking Mari out on a job so soon after the last fiasco. She should know that. Sure, they haven’t told her in as many words, but it’s the kind of thing that’s implied. It’s common sense.

They won’t let her get hurt - killed, some part of them insists, and they have to shove the anger down before it can lash out at the least deserving victim - on their watch. Not again.

 

[HighVoltage]

Mari raised an eyebrow at their accusatory tone. Spork was acting like she just told them that she’d spent the past year building a Sporkbot that was twice as strong as they were and had a waffle iron in its chest, and now they had to pack up their stuff and leave. Which she hadn’t. As tempting as it was for Mari to craft a robotic counterpart to her partner, the sheer amount of robotics work it would take just made the whole endeavor a waste of time. Besides, Spork listened well enough, even if Mari had to sit through the odd Homestuck reference or five year old meme.

“It’s not a joke, Spork. I found an easy target for us to get back out there. He’s a bastard, he’s got ‘fuck you’ money, he’s probably got goons to beat up. What more could you want?” Mari crossed her arms, confused. Spork wasn’t normally this hard of a sell, especially when they got a chance to release some of their pent-up energy. It didn’t matter how long it had been, they were an energetic person. Sure, the last time they’d been out in costume things had gone south, but that wasn’t even a contract-

Oh.

God damn it.

“It’s been three days. I’m fine, Spork.” Mari said, a defensive edge creeping into her voice despite her best efforts to keep it neutral. They’d talked about this back in that alleyway, after the Resonants had interrupted her bank visit. After she’d died mid-fight. After Spork had found her and carried her body away. She’d explained it to them: she could die, she was fine, they didn’t have to worry about her. Well, she hadn’t said that in as many words, but it was implied. Spork understood, they’d known each other long enough.

"What's the big deal?"

 

[Katpride]

Mari is not making it easy for them to keep a leash on their temper. Spork bites their tongue, keeping their back turned and their shoulders tense for a long moment as they wrestle with the part of them that wants to snap at her. Why can’t she just back off? They gave her their answer, didn’t they?

Finally, they sigh, and push themself up again. Their damn bullet wound is hurting, which means it’s time to take more of Mari’s semi-illegal painkillers. Carefully keeping their face turned away and their voice light, they say, “Yeah, sure, it’s not a big deal. Whatever you say.”

With their feet under them at last, they tuck their phone in their pocket and tug the earbud out of their ear, shoving it in after their phone with more force than they mean to use. They take the long way around the couch, strides long and purposeful as they beeline for their bedroom.

Yeah, they’d already pilfered what they wanted - totally on doctor’s orders, aboveboard as hell - when they first got back, right after they got the slug dug out and the hole stitched up. And then they pretended not to notice when Miss Micromanager swapped out one of the bottles, because they have the patience of a saint, dammit. And the meds still worked, so, like, whatever.

They don’t bother to shut the door when they breeze past it, coasting to a stop by their nightstand. Immediately, their hands snap out, and they pick up the first tiny bottle they find, running their fingers across the braille on the label. They keep their back turned to the door, but otherwise they’re the picture of serenity. They are a still, undisturbed pond, and nothing has ever bothered them. Ever.

 

[HighVoltage]

Mari groaned internally, pinching the bridge of her nose. She could feel a headache coming on. She recognized that clipped tone, the way they moved with a purpose and kept everything delightfully neutral. She’d done something to piss Spork off, and now she had to go through the process of figuring out what exactly it was, why it upset them, and how she could fix it. All while playing a horrible social deduction game, because Spork refused to let anybody know they had real emotions.

She followed them down the hall, noting the way that they were favoring their left side before they made a practiced turn into their bedroom. Mari hung outside for a moment, pulling her phone out and marking the time that Spork had taken the painkiller. They all usually had similar half-lives, although Mari doubled the length of time recommended between doses. Spork had a habit of going against medication labels because they wanted the pain to be resolved now instead of waiting. They’d never called her on it, and Mari wasn’t about to tell them.

They were still standing there, back to her as though that would hide the fact that they were probably about five minutes from punching something. Normally she’d suggest a job to get the aggression out but, well, that’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.

“What’s up?” She asked, a knowing tone in her voice that she pushed as far away from motherly as possible. Giselle had ensured that anything maternal only put Spork more on the defensive. “I can tell you’re angry, Spork. I can tell it was something I did. So what was it?"

 

[Katpride]

Eh, good enough. They tap two into their palm and swallow the pills dry, then reach for whatever can they’ve left on their nightstand today and take a sip to chase away the bitter taste. The lukewarm lemonade isn’t much better, honestly, but they take another sip anyways before setting it back down. Bluh. Why must Mari get the nasty-tasting painkillers instead of the fun, sugar-coated and definitely-tampered-with ones?

Spork had heard Mari follow them. They were just hoping she’d leave well enough alone. Their hopes are dashed, naturally, when she speaks up. They roll their eyes in response, still facing away, and pop open the drawer to their nightstand, searching through its unorganized contents expertly. Ah, put two and two together, did she? Great.

“It’s nothing,” they reaffirm, voice deceptively light. Their fingers close at last around what they’re looking for, and they pull the box of cigarettes out, movements practiced as they shake one out and place it between their lips unlit. They have a spare lighter in there somewhere, they know, but they’ve also got one out on the fire escape, and since that’s where they’re headed anyway it’s a waste of effort to search for it.

“I said it’s fine, didn’t I? Lay off,” they mumble, already clambering over their bed and pulling the window open. They never bother to put the bug screen up in the winter, so there’s nothing stopping them from slipping out the window and into their nest on the fire escape. Well, there is a faint twinge from their side, but they’re doing their level best to ignore that.

The wind is cold against the bare skin of their arms - they’re just wearing a t-shirt, but who cares - so they pull one of the blankets out from under them, pulling it around their shoulders to ward against the chill. A faint clatter alerts them to the new location of their lighter, and they snatch it before it can slip through the grate or something dumb like that. The flame catches on the first try, but they still snap the lid a few times as they settle back against the cold brick of the building behind them.

They haven’t been out here much in the past few days. They’ve been too busy making sure Mari doesn’t run off and get herself killed again. But if she’s already ready to throw herself back into their stupidly dangerous gig after just a few days, then maybe Spork has just been wasting both of their time. Maybe they should let her.

(Even the thought makes their hands shake. They take another breath of smoke, wishing the nicotine could stop them from caring so damn much.)

 

[HighVoltage]

Mari grimaced as Spork dry-swallowed their pills. While not necessarily a bad thing to do, she’d done it once and wound up with a pill dissolving in her throat. It was quite raw for the next few days, and when she’d told Spork, they'd simply told her 'skill issue'. They never were one to let pain inconvenience them.

Their chipper facade couldn’t fool Mari. She’d known them too long. They only used that tone when they were hiding something or talking to their parents. So, in other words, when they were hiding something. Spork grabbed their cigarettes and headed out to their ‘perch' as they’d called it once. Mari almost darted back to the lab to grab the lighter they kept there until she barely caught the words they muttered under their breath.

She followed them, perhaps ill-advisedly. She was less graceful than Spork, who had done this routine hundreds of times. Mari nestled down next to them, trying not to think of how long these blankets had been out here since their last wash. She noticed the tremor in Spork’s hand as they brought the cigarette to their lips, but didn’t say anything.

Some part of her knew that she should just leave them alone. Spork could take a lot, but they had to be left alone to blow off some steam before they became a rational person again. Well, as rational as they usually were. But she couldn’t just let it go. Normally when they were upset they were grouchy or pouty, but here they were actively trying to push her away. That meant they were keeping something from her, and while they both kept all sorts of things from each other, this couldn’t be left alone. It could cause cracks in their relationship that, if left untreated, could shatter at the worst possible time.

“I’m not going to lay off.” Mari said, once enough nicotine had entered their system to take the edge off. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” She huffed, god this was always such a pain.

“Look, you want to be alone, I get it.” An edge of patronization crept into her voice, as much as she tried to keep it out. Honestly, Spork could be a child sometimes. “Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll leave you to your cigarette. Sound like a deal?”

 

[Katpride]

Mari follows them onto the fire escape. Of course she does. Spork throws her an aggrieved look, then they pointedly turn their face away, blowing smoke into the alleyway in stony silence for a few blissful minutes. Of course, it’s only when they relax minutely, the buzz of nicotine and the sound of her breathing - steady, familiar, and she’s alive, god, they hate that they have to keep checking - working to ease some of the tension that grips them, that she speaks up again.

“Fuck’s sake, Mar,” they groan, thunking their head into the brick wall behind them. Fitting, they think, even as they take another drag and blow the smoke up in a plume.

They drag a leg up to rest their arm on, tapping ash through the bars of the fire escape, and scowl up at the sky. Mari and her puzzles. She always went after them like a dog with a bone. Just this once, they wish she would let it go. They weren’t even sure they knew what was wrong, just that something was deeply, terribly wrong and- Nope, not getting into it. Not for love or money.

After a long moment, in which they heavily consider not responding at all and letting her be on the receiving end of the silent treatment for once, they turn their head, fixing their sightless eyes in her direction. Another moment passes before they place the cigarette almost delicately between their lips, take a breath, and say, “You aren't my mom,” with an accompanying cloud of smoke blown purposefully in her direction.

Their smile is small and mean, and it’s one that they’ve turned on other people plenty of times but rarely on her. That shouldn’t make as much difference as it does. It shouldn’t make their chest as tight as it does, that they have to bring out the barbs to keep her away. She should know better, some part of them thinks, and it’s all too easy to listen to that voice above the others, to sink into the irritation, the anger, until it drowns out all the rest. If she'd just stop pushing, they could let it go, but it seems neither of them are going to get what they want.

 

[HighVoltage]

For a moment, Mari allowed herself to think that she’d won, that Spork’s silence was a concession, and that any moment now the stone crust would crack and reveal the boiling magma underneath. But she should have known better. A quiet Spork was a plotting Spork, and she’d had a hand in enough of their plots to know how dastardly they could be. It was foolish of her to think that their silence meant anything other than that.

But even if she was only sometimes a fool, Spork was always a bastard.

Mari choked on the smoke and their barbed words, letting out a few hacking coughs as it burned. She knew they were an asshole, a bastard, and a million other things. She’d watched them take a stab at almost everyone they came across, but they rarely turned the knife on her. Mari felt her face heat up, splotches of red filling her cheeks. She was just trying to help them, for fuck’s sake. They always acted like this, stubbornly digging their heels in the moment that anyone showed the barest hint of concern. No matter what age they’d been, trying to figure out what was bothering them was like pulling teeth with a pair of tweezers.

She wanted to scream, wanted to wipe that smug smile off their face however she could. There were words that Mari wanted to say but she bit her tongue. Even angry she knew that some things would do irreparable damage to their friendship. Mari let her anger cool, the roiling magma becoming a smooth, glassy surface; calmer, more restrained, but in no way less hot than before.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to act like a mother,” Mari said through gritted teeth, pushing aside the comparisons to Giselle that she knew they didn’t mean. “If you stopped acting like a fucking child.” She spat the last two words out as she stared daggers that wouldn’t be seen, but she hoped could be felt.

“You’re being petty, Spork. And as much as you want to tell me it’s none of my business, it kind of is!” Her voice raised a little, not quite shouting but on the louder end of talking. “You’re still shook up about me dying, but I’m fine. It happens! I die, I take it easy for a day, then I’m fine! What’s the big deal?” She may have been shouting, now that she thought about it, her voice rising in time with her anger at Spork. So what? They deserved it for the way they were acting.

 

[Katpride]

The regret is sharp and immediate. Mari coughs, a terrible sound that they remember too well, that sits jagged and too fresh in their memory, and Spork flinches, hard, knocking their elbow into rough brick with enough force to scrape off a few layers of skin when they recoil. Their eyes are wide, stricken and shamed and terrified in equal measure, and it takes all of their self-control not to reach for her, to reassure themself with a touch that she’s still there and breathing and not fucking dying on them again.

Again, some part of their brain screeches, blasting its furious despair above even the sirens. It isn’t fair. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to be the one to burn out first, not Mari. She was always the reasonable one, the smart one. They were the one on the supernova track, all set to burn bright and hot and fast and then wind up in a ditch somewhere. They were doing a fine fucking job of it, too, until she had the gall to give them something to live for, like it was just that easy all along, like letting them crash into her life again wasn’t the worst imposition they’d ever put on her and the best decision they’d ever made. And now they’re supposed to, what, just shrug and move on when they know that they’ve already failed her, already let her die?

They can’t deal with the rush of emotions, so they shut it all down, a shutter falling over their face just in time for the fit to pass. The cigarette in their hand spills ash into their lap when they lift it, but they still manage to take a shaky breath of smoke, holding it in their lungs for a long moment before blowing it carefully away.

She snaps back at them, but they are silent, statuesque, their whole body angled away from her in a silent refusal to engage. Yeah, sure, they’re being immature. What else is new? They lift the stupid cancer stick to their lips again, wondering in a vague, two-steps-removed sort of way if she’s going to come after that next.

She doesn’t. No, what she says is much worse, because it snaps Spork back into their body, and they find that they’re trembling in a way that has nothing to do with the cold and too much to do with the hot flush burning over their face and chest, their skin too tight and their teeth so tightly clenched that they can hear their jaw creak.

“What’s the big deal?” Their voice is tight and low and too calm. They flick the butt of their cigarette over the railing without bothering to put it out, sitting up in a way that makes their side scream even through the painkillers.

Their face is terribly, stubbornly blank, until it isn’t. The crack runs through their expression like lightning, and then they’re electric, eyes and teeth flashing in the light from the window as they gesture sharply. “What’s the big deal?! You fucking died, Mari! You died, and it was on my watch. It was supposed to be me!”

They push forward, into her space, balling a fist in her shirt and dragging her close. Then they release her, pushing her away with a high, frustrated sound and scrambling to their feet. There are tears in their eyes, but they blink rapidly, turning their face away. Their voice is like shifting rubble, when they dredge their words out next. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? I’m supposed to keep you alive, Mariko. That’s all I’m good for, but apparently I can’t even-”

Another sharp, catching noise, and they swipe a hand roughly across their face, still turned away. The hand drops to their side, where the fingers curl into a fist and then explode out again in a dismissive flick, making a brief, cutting motion before they rip the already drooping blanket from their shoulders and slam it back into the pile. “Fuck this.”

Their hands find the window, and they swing a leg over the sill, rough and graceless as they duck through it. Retreating with their tail between their legs like a kicked dog. God, they need to get it together.

They don’t know where they’re going, their mind is just spinning with the need to be anywhere else. To do anything else, to feel anything else. To make their world stop collapsing around them. They wish they could make it so Mari never died, not even once, or, hell, maybe they could make them both twelve years old again. Start this shit over, do it better this time.

Protect her, this time.

 

[HighVoltage]

Mari had weathered this storm before. Spork was a firework, bright and loud, but their anger usually burned out pretty quick. And while they had never intentionally hurt her, there were a handful of times where they’d gotten physical. Despite that, Mari had never truly been scared of Spork, knowing that they would never actually hurt her. However, as Spork stormed forward, lightning in their eyes and thunder in their voice, Mari felt something fearful tighten in her throat as their fist tightened in her shirt.

Their words crashed over her as she was yanked to her feet before they just as abruptly let her drop, pushing her away in both senses. She hit the railing of the fire escape with a dull clang, and Mari fell to the ground, her ego bruising worse than her shoulder. Spork’s words rang in her ears, a dull whine that was only cut through by the noise they made; one of frustration, anger, and pain.

She’d misjudged this. She’d severely misjudged the situation here. Mari assumed that Spork was still upset that she had died, that they still thought she was fragile from death and was heavily recovering. They were still upset about her not telling them about her ability in the first place, true, but it went deeper than that. Spork felt that they owed Mari their life. They weren’t just upset that she had died, it was because they saw themselves as something expendable, someone who was living on borrowed time and was angry that a new debt had been made instead of Mari calling theirs in.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why. Spork had been in pretty bad shape when they’d turned up on Mari’s doorstep, claiming her spare room as their temporary domain. To say they spent the next month or so slowly circling the drain would be doing Spork a disservice; they’d dived headfirst into it. Mari had to begrudgingly give them credit, she’d never seen someone so quickly or so thoroughly attempt to destroy themselves.

She’d only interfered when she couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t stand to see her friend drink, smoke, and fuck themselves into an early grave. So she helped them. She got them to clean, to sober up for more than an hour, to eat food that wasn’t just whatever you could get in a bar. And slowly but surely, they had gotten better. Mari knew that if she hadn’t intervened, Spork probably would have been dead by now. And apparently, Spork was all too aware of this.

As Mari pulled herself out of her thoughts, Spork had almost finished pulling themselves back through the window. Some dim part of her wondered if they would slam it shut and lock her out on the fire escape. Before they could even try, Mari climbed out of the nest of blankets and pushed herself towards the window, awkwardly clambering through and wrapping her arms around them. She managed to catch Spork off-balance and they both tumbled and crashed onto their bed, Mari taking great pains to avoid their injured side.

“I’m sorry.” Mari said, her voice low and rough. She expected them to fight, to try and shake her off, but she clung to them like a lifeline. “I fucked up. I thought it was better to keep it from you, and I was wrong. I should have told you once we started doing this together.”

“Your life is valuable, Spork. I don’t want you throwing it away because you think that you owe it to me. I helped you get things together when we started sharing an apartment, but I didn’t do it so you could throw yourself on whatever grenades land at our feet when we could just throw them back.” She let out a shaky breath. Mari meant everything she said, but she was bad at this. She didn’t apologize, hadn’t really needed to apologize much since they became roommates, and her rustiness showed.

“You don’t get a do over, not like me. And I’m not saying I want to keep dying,” She added hastily, before they could explode again. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t be so ready to trade your life for mine. We’re a team, Spork. Your life isn’t worth any less than mine simply because of how you chose to live it. You don't owe me anything, least of all that.”

 

[Katpride]

“Ack-” They don’t have solid footing, when Mari’s arms wrap around their hips, the woman in question doing her best impression of the world’s clingiest cannonball. Their bed is an ever-shifting collage of pillows and blankets, sheets rumpled because they can never be bothered to make it, and Spork doesn’t have the coordination to both gently pry Mari off of them and keep their balance when a stray blanket catches them around the ankle. They go down in a flurry of swears, narrowly avoiding cracking their head on the wall.

“Get- off-” they huff, already attempting to squirm their way out of her grasp. They could make another good-faith attempt at prying her arms away from their person, but it’s an awkward angle and they don’t want to accidentally hurt her, even now.

The apology is unexpected. It isn’t enough to prevent them from placing a hand on her shoulder and attempting to shove her away, though. They bare their teeth at her, hissing, “No shit!!” with enough venom to kill a horse, and struggle with renewed vigor.

Yeah, duh, of course she should’ve fucking told them. Finding out that she had revivification powers would’ve been weird enough on a good day. Finding out on the job, when she had just died on them? Worst way to impart that news, Mari. F-. That wasn’t just get-held-back-a-grade bad, it was a go-back-to-kindergarten level fuck-up.

Her next words take the wind out of their sails, and, even though they’ve managed to get a decent amount of progress on the whole escaping thing, Spork pauses. It takes them a second to untangle the metaphor. It’s a second in which they’re relatively still, too confused to keep up the fight, and Mari must take that as some kind of confirmation, because she just keeps going.

They stare in her direction for a long moment after the words peter out. They’ve stopped pushing her away, their hand resting lightly on her shoulder as though they’ve forgotten it’s there. Their expression is odd - a mix of confusion, faint offense, and vague, flickering amusement. “Are you… slut-shaming me?”

The amusement seems to be winning, for the moment. They laugh, reflexively, as though the sharp barks can cut through the tension that still grips them. What the fuck? “What the fuck?”

Yeah, okay, they weren’t stupid. Spork knew that wasn’t what Mari wanted them to take away from her apology. It was just all they could focus on, because they weren’t really sure how to feel about her accusing them of having a deathwish. They… didn’t, and she should know that. She knew that, right?

“I don’t want to die either, Mari,” they tell her, suddenly unsure. Their shoulders hunch defensively, though they couldn’t say why. It’s true. They wouldn’t be able to protect her if they died. She needed someone watching her back. They weren’t going to put her in danger like that. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”

Their smile is twisted, almost nervous despite the forced levity in their tone. They turn their face away, take a breath, and when they turn back it’s more solid, though it doesn’t quite reach their eyes. “Is it really so hard to believe, that I just don’t want to let you die? Even if you get back up, that’s- it’s not- it can’t be fun, for you.

“I know I can take more hits than you. Just let me take them. It’s fine. It’s… efficient, or whatever.” What argument would convince her? She liked numbers, right? They didn’t have any hard numbers, though. Just basic common sense and the feeling of their heart bashing itself against their ribcage, desperate to never again have to feel her die. They’d do a lot of things, to avoid that. A lot of stupid things.

Maybe that was why she thought they were throwing their life away. But they weren’t! It didn’t count, if it was for her. It wasn’t some weird eternal life debt thing, either, not like she was making it out to be. They just… couldn’t live without her. Or, no, they could, technically. They were plenty capable of taking care of themself, thank you very much. It was more that they wouldn’t want to.

But it didn’t matter, because she was fine, and she was going to stay that way. They just had to convince her to keep her fragile twig body behind their much more reasonably equipped one, and everything would be fine.