Work Text:
Sure, things are a little tense, it’s an eclipse after all, but the Talkers are uncharacteristically optimistic.
The season’s been quieter, calmer; mostly flooding. Alston’s spot on the bench is conspicuously empty, but there hasn’t been an incineration in weeks and weeks, and everyone comes back from Elsewhere eventually. Eugenia’s testament to that. It’s slow going, but she’s okay – they all are. And the playoffs are in reach, now. It’s hard to stop the excitement weaselling in, even after everything. Maybe they can take one home together, this time.
“Let’s play a clean game,” Ziwa says, and then it starts.
---
The first moment after is chaos.
Vapor’s running immediately, charging the ump, and everyone else is yelling too. He’s never seen it… happen before. He wasn’t around for Workman, and this is York. He’s all incoherent grief and anger and surreal disbelief and he’s right there in front of the ump, just needs to…
Then he’s on the ground, wind knocked out of him, and Jesús is shielding him with the jacket as a blast of flame sears the air where he was standing.
“PLAY MUST CONTINUE,” the umpire says, and Jesús’ hair is singed as they shakily rise again.
---
Eugenia sinks to her knees, then even those collapse beneath her; she melts towards the ground, tempted to just… let herself fall apart. There’s a voice, but it’s faraway and muffled. Being Elsewhere had reminded her how it used to be, before everything, before blaseball. Before she had cared so much. She hadn’t always had a name; hadn’t always had a shape, hadn’t always hurt like this. She had peace, once. Could have it again.
“Please, Geni,” Ziwa is pleading, “You have to play, they’ll...”
They’re crying. Eugenia brings an amorphous hand to her face and realizes she is too.
---
Fish knows the signs. The determined movements, the smell of smoke. They know how to watch for it, and exactly when to step in. The timing has to be exact, to stop the umps; to protect their friends. It’s a job they’re proud of, a job they do well. When they said never again, they meant it.
They wish they knew what they were thinking about during the seventh inning.
When the ump looks towards Vapor, some kind of perverse balance-sheet accounting for his earlier outburst, Fish runs towards the flame again and tries not to think about their failure.
---
“Do you have any comments on today’s tragic incineration?” a reporter asks Greer on the way out, and she bursts out laughing. It’s mirthless, bitter; it comes out of her almost more like she’s choking on it.
“Absolutely fucking not,” she says, and she bites off every word until they’re short, clipped. Furious. “and if you and all your little friends don’t screw off, I’ll help you fuckin’ join him.”
She smiles then, all sharp teeth, and the reporters scatter. She waits until the last fans clear the field, and looks at what’s left of the ash.
“Shit.” she says.
---
The team sits quietly, listlessly, in one of the break rooms, making no attempt at conversation.
“We could do it again,” Mooney says, from the corner, and everyone turns to look in her direction. She’s less defined, more shadowed than usual, but the determined set to her shoulders, the angry almost-desperation in her voice – that’s just like it was, then. Mooney has never been one to speak lightly. She certainly isn’t now.
“…do what?” asks Jesús, even though he knows the answer, even though everyone does.
“Bring him back.” she says, and it hangs in the air like a knife.
---
“Please, can we…” Dot says, the minute they step back into the apartment, but Workman already has their bat.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Workman says, eventually, after a quiet half hour of rhythmic pitches.
“I know,” they say. “I know. It just shouldn’t have been him.”
“I know. I… if it’s any help, it’s not so bad down there.”
Dot nods. It hasn’t really hit them yet; they’re barely even into the denial stage. Maybe they’ll talk about it later. For now they pick up the ball again, listen to it spiral off of Workman’s bat deep into the outfield.
---
Kennedy Alstott steps up to the plate and looks to the Talkers.
“He’s resting,” they say, and so few recognize the voice anymore, but Vela jumps up, and then the rest understand. “He’s… it’s been rough. He’s hurting. But he’s a strong kid.”
“Tell him we miss him,” Jesús says, immediately. Kennedy lets a ball fly over their shoulder and nods.
“He misses you guys too,” they say.
They hit a graceless ground out, and then their time’s almost up.
“We’re all taking care of him. He’ll be okay, I promise.” they say, and they smile, and then they’re gone.
---
Jesús sits in the dugout and watches Vapor channelling it; the grief. He just steps up to the plate, and hits a homer, whispers “For York” every time, like it’s a prayer.
Jesús just… isn’t trying. It’s not gonna bring him back anyway. Isn’t going to take back York’s mothers’ grief. He’d had to make that phone call. How the hell do you even make a phone call like that?
He’s on base when he sees the Immateria rise. He thinks about Eugenia in her comfortable haze, and he thinks maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, and then he’s adrift.
---
They hold the trophy aloft, as a team.
It wasn’t easy; there were moments where it seemed easier to give up. And maybe it’s just a trophy; but in that moment, it’s far more; it means something real. The stands are alive with people mourning him – with signs that say “Our Dork” or are covered in art, and there’s something comforting in it, that everyone cares this much. He was so loved, and they all know it, and that makes it easier.
“For York!” they all cry, together, and for a moment it feels like he’s here with them again.
---
York is pulled almost violently upwards out of the Trench, then the pressure eases and he can see light.
There is a moment where he is suspended, almost alive. He can feel the tether to the Hall, like an anchor. He could follow it back, maybe; Sutton Picklestein did. They were okay, down there, had friends.
Below him is an ocean, and he can almost smell it, feel the waves, just like back home-home, in Hawai’i. He thinks about flames and damp, cold darkness, and his teams, and his moms.
With a trembling hand, York breaks the tether and Returns.
---
The revenant is back from the dead, and everything is wrong.
His bones scrape against each other, skin pulled too tightly over bloodless muscles, every bit of softness withered away. Even just shifting sends knifing pains up and down his body, so he lies, still.
Later, the Crabs will find him, in a corner of the Crabitat; help him up, hand him a new bat.
For now, York presses his aching fingers into his neck and digs around for a pulse and tries to be surprised that he can’t find one, not yet. He has a debt to pay first.