Chapter Text
What Could Have Been
“It was you. Only you.”
Her music screams at him through his nightmare, jolting him awake. He recognises the jazzy tunes as his taxi approaches the front door. It’s the soundtrack of Persona 5, her latest video game obsession and a welcome change from her usual army of screaming banshees.
The details of the nightmare already escape him, like sand running through his fingers. Try as he might to clench his fist and stop the flow, nothing remains. He only knows that it was a nightmare, that it involved him, and that it evoked a reaction strong enough that he could feel his dead eye watering behind his eye patch.
He lights a cigarette to calm himself and ignores the glare from the taxi driver, the “No Smoking” sign on the window. He glances at his mobile. 10 o’ clock. He had flown this route for weeks now and London was only an hour ahead of Berlin. Why had he fallen asleep?
And still, his taxi driver keeps up with the inane chatter and refuses to take the hint at his grunts as his eye remains on his phone. Celebratory messages kept streaming in on Signal. A monetary fine, historic as it was, was a much better outcome than anyone had dared to dream. Yet, his inbox remained a stubborn blank. Until he had written confirmation from the officials in Berlin, he refused to celebrate.
He steps out of his taxi and into his house as soon the vehicle rolls to a stop. The music booms louder.
Jinx! I'm home! He wants to shout, but her music is so loud, so relentless, that he ends up shouting.
"JINX TURN THAT DOWN!"
The vocals of the lead singer completely drown him out.
He shrugs off his coat, removes his eye patch, and as always, observes his dead eye in the mirror for signs of infection. It wasn't surgery he feared, but the consequences of surgery, the bandages, the absence from work. The revelation of another chink in his armour, another distraction he had to handle.
Nothing for tonight. So he eases his laptop and cable from his bag and makes his way to the wet bar. Something catches his eye. Animated Japanese school children on the television screen, milling around the streets of a colourful Tokyo. PlayStation controllers scattered on the sofa. A half-drunk glass of water on the coffee table.
“JINX! WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT SAVING THE GAME?”
He saves the game, turns the console off and neatly arranges the controllers on the table. And then, finally, the bar, for his now much needed drink. He spies new graffiti on the surface of the table, carefully leans away to avoid staining his red shirt and his now charging laptop.
He glances at his empty inbox and flicks back to the article. A photograph of him at their previous shareholders meeting, deep in conversation with Zack, beside an equally accusatory headline, “The Eye Behind the Gogo Throne” and a subheading, “The Power Centre of Gogo: Zachary Hale may be its controversial CEO, but it is Silco Williams, Gogo's Chief Legal Officer, whose words he returns to.”
The headline desperately needed a better copy editor, he thought dully, as he pours himself another shot of whiskey. But the music upstairs throb loudly at that point, the floor vibrates, and he spills some whiskey on the bar, directly on the graffiti Jinx has drawn. He panics for a moment, not at the stain blossoming on the bar, but at how the stain is blotting out the graffiti on the surface. He frantically dabs at the spot, and just about saves it, before realising that this (THE EYE OF GOGO) was the freshest graffiti of them all.
She had read the article. Great.
His phone vibrates and he reaches for it. His inbox has finally synchronised with Gogo’s servers and hundreds of emails were rapidly downloading themselves. He scrolls through them – more congratulatory emails. Nonsensical queries from the Board regarding Berlin. A query on the upcoming FTC merger clearance from Zack regarding Project Warcraft. Still no email from the regulators.
A deep sense of unease pervades him. The longer this stretched, the more their celebrations felt premature.
He decides he’s had enough for the night. He lights another cigarette and scans through his personal emails on his private phone. Emails from his therapist, newsletters from their local bookshop. One email sticks out to him, so he taps it and reads it and inhales a lungful of cigarette smoke.
"JINX!"
Silco hears the barks first, as Chop the golden retriever skids down the staircase in excitement at his homecoming (He is not fooled. Chop was excited over everything). Then Jinx slams into him for a hug. He returns the gestures with one arm, and then, almost remembering himself, waves his mobile phone at her, apopletic.
She waves a canvas at him, eager to deviate, and draws first blood.
“Look! Did you see this? I won first prize!”
He cannot help but glance at the canvas (a monkey staring at a blue crystal) out of sheer pride, and he sees the link between the canvas and the email immediately.
“Funny. I have seen this before.”
He flips through the pictures of her Maths test before his shrinking daughter. Her responses offer no answers, only sketches of monkeys in various positions. He stops at the award-winning monkey (offered as a solution to a question on Pythagoras theorems) and holds it before her.
“Explain.”
Jinx sprawls on the sofa, Chop imitates her on the floor and Silco sighs at the long night ahead.