Work Text:
$9 and Seven have a lot in common. That is- even more than the eleven other people with whom they also have a fair amount in common, being clones of the same person and all. They've all proven between them that just because two people share genetic material and a sunblood-based psychic connection doesn't mean they'll be on speaking terms. Screaming terms, maybe. Or perhaps "making subtle rude gestures at each other across the field until one of you successfully gets the other in trouble" terms. And being on uncomfortable, silent eye contact-making terms, that's pretty likely. But not speaking.
So when they get a card in the mail from Seven- well, that still isn't speaking, technically, is it? But it is a postcard, with a photograph of an imposing-looking building in Heavensmaw from street level on one side and a brief paragraph on the other. Seven's handwriting is nearly as carefully designed as the architecture, although the effect is ruined somewhat by the awkward stiffness of it and the fact that it had to cross things out in various places and smudged the ink. It didn't always write like that, but $9 can't actually remember what it used to write like. Or if they've… ever seen it write anything prior to this. They both left Seattle not too long ago, but it's difficult to remember what exactly they did back there. For most of that time, they weren't quite a person yet.
Dear 9, it starts, and it should really pay better attention, because most people wouldn't be so quick to forgive the insult of writing their name wrong. ($9 finds it difficult to mind. It probably just forgot. At least it's talking to them.) I hope you are oka well. What is $NYC like? Heavensmaw is very different, but I should get used to it soon and stop making mistakes. I wish
Ironically, something is so harshly scribbled out there that they can't tell what it said.
One of the different things is that there aren't any tourists here, so I had to make my own postcard, which is why it's not very good. I know I should have started over instead of crossing things out but I only have one picture. I'll do a better job next time
so please but you have to
if you write back.
There's a splotch of ink like it hovered its pen indecisively over one spot for a while, but in the end, it didn't add anything else before signing off with just 7.
$9 slips the postcard back underneath some papers on his desk and tries to regain focus. The minute or so he spent reading it at all was stolen; he certainly doesn't have time to write back. He's been behind on work since approximately two seconds after being assigned this job. He doesn't know why his chest suddenly hurts so much more than the usual amount attributable to Smog, but it probably isn't important. Plenty of things hurt. He's getting good at ignoring them.
Not good enough to catch up, of course. Never good enough. And yet, when the Closing Bell sounds, he finds himself packing up and leaving for the first time in days, in spite of knowing he hasn't earned the luxury of working deep into the night at home rather than staying at his desk until he passes out on his keyboard.
And if going home means waiting for a train, he isn't wasting any more time if he passes it looking at tacky souvenirs than he would be otherwise, and there's no reason he shouldn't grab a postcard now that he's already here. They select one with an image of the skyline, reasoning that it shows more of the city at once than any of the other designs, which is nice and efficient. Useful, since Seven wanted to know what it was like, and they really shouldn't bet on being able to get away with indulging it more than this once.
(Indulging it. Right. As if they didn't spend the entire day reaching for the corner of its photograph like a protective talisman every time someone looked at them a little too hard. And, well… if it's half as lonely as they are… $9 isn't what you'd call a good person, but they're not heartless. Not yet, at least. Maybe that's why they still can't do anything right.)
The point is- the point is, they owe it a response, just once, just so they're even. They can't go around being indebted to people, much less those on rival teams. And it won't take long. He could knock it out on the train, if it weren't so bumpy. …And if he weren't so afraid of someone looking over his shoulder, or even just at his face, and catching him having an emotion.
Instead, he almost falls asleep on the train. And on the elevator in his building. And as soon as he sits down at the desk in his very expensive, very cold and empty penthouse suite. Blaseball players don’t need sleep, but they can sure as hell feel like they do. Or possibly there’s just something wrong with him. He’s suspected as much for a long time. It doesn’t matter, though. He owes Seven a postcard, and then it’s back to work- almost as if he never left, except that at least here no one is watching him fail to be competent.
And no one is watching him waste valuable time writing a pointless message to someone he really probably isn’t supposed to associate with at all. No one has to know he’s corresponding with a Moonray. His hands are shaking as he straightens the blank card in front of him and starts to write, but when aren’t they? He’ll get this done, and then he’ll be able to stop thinking about it, and no one will know.
Hello, 7. (They can’t bring themself to write dear, even if it did it first. That would imply a closeness they’re not sure they deserve to claim. They’re acquaintances who used to know each other in what might loosely be termed their “childhood,” that’s all. Not family, however obvious it might seem on the surface to call them siblings. MiN and the others have made it very clear how little their shared origin actually means.)
I am well, thank you. This is a lie, but an easy, automatic one, so much so that they don’t even think about it. $NYC is
He has to stop and think. All the ways to end that sentence that immediately come to mind are negative: it’s flooded and polluted and cold and sometimes deadly, although not to him personally so far, obviously, and the people are either too wrapped up in their own personal miseries to notice him at all or actively contemptuous, and his job is somehow totally inconsequential and impossibly hard at the same time. He can’t tell it any of that. He tries not to even think any of that if he can help it, although usually he can’t. …Maybe he’d better just stick to the obvious facts.
$NYC is much bigger than where you are, as you can see from the picture. I have a job now. They automatically suppress their wince, remembering what they need to tell it next. I’m very busy, so I probably won’t be able to write you back again. Is there anything he can say to let it down more gently? If you send more cards anyway, I think I can make time to at least look at them, but don’t expect an answer.
There. Now he’s warned it in advance, so if it does, for some reason he can’t come up with, decide to keep writing to him (like he’s secretly hoping-against-hope it will), it won’t be able to claim he owes it anything in return this time.
That was the easy part. The hard part is responding to the little it said about how things are going for it. He… doesn’t want to. It hurts to look at. The apology for sending an imperfect postcard speaks volumes, especially next to that line about needing to stop making mistakes, and- it’s too familiar, is what it is. They don’t want to believe that their- that Seven is having the same awful, seemingly endless adjustment period they are, but the little they know of the Moonrays makes it extremely plausible.
(They hate the idea of it, and yet… The same. As far as they knew until just now, no one else was struggling like he was. They were struggling in an equally unpleasant but very different way, maybe, or they had the dubious luck of landing on a far less competitive team, with a normal life and the threat of Relegation hanging over their heads, or they were one of the lucky bastards who were actually good enough to keep up. He doesn’t want to say someone else’s suffering makes him happy, even if it would only make him fit in a little bit better if he did. But it’s… it’s nice, sort of, in a very guilty way, to feel for a second like he’s not alone in this.)
Heavensmaw sounds interesting. I’m sure you’ll adjust soon, he ends up writing, acknowledging exactly none of those thoughts. And also lying. If the Moonrays actually manage to turn that excitable kid he half-remembers into one of them… not only will he be very surprised, he doesn’t think he’ll like the result. If you decide to write again, I’d like to hear about your progress. It doesn’t need to know that’s because he sort of hopes it doesn’t get any closer to fitting in than it already has. He signs the card the same way it did, a simple $9, and pulls Seven’s closer to check the address.
They get halfway to filling it out before a weird feeling of shame makes their pen slow to a halt. It’s not that they haven’t felt ashamed this entire time- for acting like this is more important to them than their work, and also, simultaneously, for being too much of a coward to just admit even in their own thoughts that this is more important than their stupid work, that they do in fact care about someone, at least to the extent they’re still capable of after what this place has done to them- but those are normal kinds of shame, and this is a new one, and he needs to figure out what the feeling is warning him of fucking up before he actually, you know, fucks it up.
It’s all the glancing back and forth between the two postcard messages that makes him see the problem, and, as usual, it’s him. His card, at least. He thought he was doing so well, too, at the balancing act of giving Seven at least something without losing his professionalism, but he looks at it again and it’s all wrong.
Reading what it wrote to him hurts, and not solely because any positive attention from anyone at this point is a painful reminder of how much he not-so-secretly wants that from his team, even while hating nearly all of them. He’s not completely oblivious. (If he were, this would be easier.) Maybe it didn’t say much, but he can still see the cry for help between the lines. And what he wrote back, it feels… empty. Dismissive, even. It- it reads like a fucking work email. They've never sent one of those to anyone they didn't actively dislike.
They’ve been home for a whole fifteen minutes and accomplished nothing of any Value, which is already enough to panic them when they realize it, and they can’t afford to spend any longer on this, and they’re so far behind and- they’re dead either way, aren’t they? How much worse can it really get? They’re not sure it’s possible for one person to be more disappointed in another than $DRAC already is in him. Nothing to lose there. Seven is the only one who still seems to think they can be relied upon for anything, even if it’s just “answering their mail.”
And they’re the same, which means it needs that from them. There’s no one else it can talk to who would understand, either.
They don’t consciously register themself moving until they look down and see their hands tearing their sad attempt at a reply into little pieces. They have to agree with themself, though. They can’t send that. That wouldn’t make them even, if they’re still pretending that’s what this is about. They need- they don’t know. Something that measures up to the card it sent them.
When they get on the elevator, heading down, they think they’re going back to the souvenir shop to try this again. Instead, they stop abruptly not far from their building, ignoring everyone who’s now mad at them for blocking the sidewalk, and turn around to take a picture with their phone.
It comes out blurry. All the pictures they ever take come out blurry. The angle is bad, and the lighting- well, there’s not much to be done about that. The place looks exactly as nice to live in as it is, which isn’t very. He doesn’t know how to edit everything to look nice and clean like they do in the real postcards, even if he had the time to mess around with that, which he doesn’t. It’s just… not a good photo. Definitely not as pretty as the skyline. And it’s only one building, not even an important one.
Seven’s going to like it, though. (He really hopes so.) It’s not good, but it’s… well, it’s clearly from him, at least. Maybe once it sees how bad he is at taking photos, it'll feel better about its own. Which he still can't see the problem with, to be honest.
And if he's wrong, and this isn't good enough, then… then he'll just have to write to it again and get it right, won't he?
He still can’t say too much. It’s a postcard, after all, and even if it were a regular letter in an envelope there would be no real guarantee of privacy. He doesn’t think anyone cares what he’s doing enough to spy on him- he’s hardly much of a threat- but you never know. So he just… drops hints, the way Seven did writing to him. A sort of non-answer to how he’s doing- busy with work, but I appreciated receiving your card- a carefully neutral mention of how the streets flood, but they’re usually high up enough to be unaffected.
Even like that, they don’t tell it much. They don’t want it to be worried about them, and with most people that wouldn’t even be a realistic possibility, much less an actual concern, but… it almost asked if they were okay. It clearly doesn’t have the whole “emotional walls” thing down well enough to avoid actually caring if they tell it the whole truth.
You should tell me more about Heavensmaw, they say instead, which is as close as they can come to an invitation to vent a little, and, I look forward to an even better picture next time, which is as close as they can come to telling it this one is already perfectly good and they’ve got a few words in mind for whoever made it think otherwise. (...Not that they’re going to use those words, even if they do find out who to blame. They aren’t particularly keen on the idea of being murdered.)
And- and they really shouldn’t, it makes them far too obvious, but they fail to stop themself from adding be safe at the end, small and shaky, right above their signature, and they need to get back to work already and there’s no time to do it all over again, which is the excuse they’re telling themself so they can justify putting this one in the mail as-is. They don’t know if Seven is as good at reading subtext as they are, considering how poorly it stuck to it itself, and they just don’t want it to think… well, they don’t want to risk it looking like an email.
Just one more reply, he keeps telling himself, and then he’ll explain to it that he can’t make time for this anymore. He’s never strong enough to go through with it. In the end, Seven stops writing before he does.
The worst part is that nobody bothers to tell him. Like it doesn’t cross anyone’s mind that he would want to know when it…
It just- doesn’t answer one day. And they’re so tired and numb and living on autopilot that they don’t think anything of it at first. It didn’t have time this week, they think, or something got lost in the mail, and they send it another postcard anyway, because it’s one of the things they’re used to automatically doing that day, and it’s not until the second week it fails to respond to them that they find out it will never be able to again.
They probably should have expected something like this. It never did become a proper Moonray, despite its best efforts. …They wanted to believe it was possible to survive in the world without being quite as terrible as everyone else around them.
They were wrong, that’s all there is to it. They sleepwalk through a few days after getting the news, unable to consciously process the loss and function well enough to survive themself at the same time. When they come back to awareness, with very little memory of that whole period of time, they can manage not to feel anything other than cold and hollow, and they can tell themself it was a mistake to get as attached as they did in the first place.
There are lots of things they can tell themself, but none of it rings true when they can’t get rid of the postcards. Buildings looming over the street and seeming to close it in, a selfie with some weird machine it found in a basement and probably wasn’t supposed to be touching, a landscape shot from the edge of the floating city. All the edges worn soft from constant handling. He should be more careful with them now that he won’t be getting any more.
He should try to forget about it, really. He would be more productive without the grief. But he doesn’t get rid of the postcards.