but now i notice the streetlamp's hum
When D.L. walks out, she doesn't even notice, because she's passed out on the couch.
It takes her until three the next day to find the note, mostly because he left it in the bedroom and she really didn't have an interest in checking in on him.
Niki,
I can't do this for you anymore. Micah is gone.
You want to kill yourself because of that, I'm not watching you do it. There's bad shit going on in the world, and there are better things to do than throw yourself away.
You wake up to the real world, and I come back.
I still love you.
D.L.
And the only thing she can really feel is glad that he didn't pour out her booze before he left.
Or maybe it breaks her heart. Either way, she hits the bar that night and goes home with someone she doesn't know, and while they fuck she's not thinking of anything. If the haze was warm, she'd actually call it nice, but it's hot and dry and burning.
She still hasn't cleaned out his room. Not because she thinks it's sacred, but because every fucking time she goes in there she can't breathe.
*
A couple weeks later, she drags herself to the grocery store in huge dark sunglasses, and ignores the cashier who glares at her when she braces herself against the counter.
When she gets home and actually looks at what she bought, it's time to hit the bottle again.
(Captain Crunch. Snack Packs. Batteries. Wrigley's Doublemint. Baby formula. Applesauce. Transformers noodles. The hole in her can't decide how old he is, just that it wants.)
*
When they pick her up, she doesn't fight it. She lets them cuff her and put her in the back of a car she damn well knows isn't part of the old police force, and she only sobers up in the temporary holding cell they leave her in.
Doesn't matter. She throws up a few times and leaves dents in the metal toilet in the shape of her fingers, and when she looks at the mirror there's still nobody looking back at her.
She talks one of her guards into letting her suck his cock for a bottle of JD after half an hour of that.
*
In Moab, they run a tighter watch, and this time when she dries out there's no D.L. watching her back to make her feel safe, no Micah smiling to make it all feel worthwhile.
No sister in the sheen of spit she rubs over the metal foot of her bed to make it all stop.
In the end, she is alone with the things she has done.
*
You spend enough time on your own, you have to start thinking about yourself because nothing else ever changes. Only you and that hole inside, the one with nothing left to fill it up but pieces of you. The one that's stayed hungry, no matter what you did.
She's been a lot of things. None of them stuck to her. Not even the ones that made her think she could be happy.
She's just a woman with a hole inside. Doesn't get much less complicated than that.
*
When the guy with the scar breaks down her door, she doesn't even know if she wants to do, but she does, and tastes something different in kicking back for once. Maybe it's about time Niki started taking care of herself.
The guy with the scar - Peter - he offers to help her find her family. Why, she doesn't know. But it's sweet, even if she turns it down, and she's missed sweet.
Since she's got nowhere else to go, she goes with him.
*
This resistance thing, it sounds good. Not because she wants to help people, because God knows that's worked out great for her, but because it's something she can do that doesn't make her feel like a whore. For the first time in what doesn't feel like long enough, Niki's part of something better than she is.
Jessica left a few things behind, before she left, and Niki can shoot and crush and kill just as well as her perfect sister used to.
On her good days, she can think this is what Micah would've wanted.
On her bad, she remembers going home to find it filled with a new family, a teenaged girl in Micah's room and a playroom in hers, and then she's not remembering anything because she's drinking or fucking Peter.
That last thing, that's something she didn't see coming, because he's nothing like her type.
She doesn't tell him she's still married, as far as she knows, and he doesn't ask. She's pretty sure he knows.
After a while, they've sleeping together on good days too. It's not her usual kind of sex, all burning hot and dry; Peter's careful, like he has this idea like he could break her, and it's smooth, secret heat and a string of broken beds. They can't stop touching each other and she doesn't care what the rest of them think.
Funny thing is, she's not even sure she likes him all that much.
(D.L. could make her melt, unwind her like a kite and send her flying. Peter never does.)
*
And one day, she fucks up, because that's what she does.
It's a routine human transfer, moving a skinny kid whose bones don't stay solid from one point to another, but Niki's buzzed and not thinking so great and imagining hitting the bar later that night, and when that asshole slaps her ass she throws him across a food court, right into a DQ.
She takes a bullet and the kid barely gets out alive, and Bennet doesn't have to say anything when he shows up beside her infirmary bed.
She beats him to it.
"I'm out," she says, to the cracked and weathered ceiling.
"Good," he says, and that's all.
*
She goes back to the stage, right where she started, and calling herself Jessica doesn't mean anything. It's just a name she knows she'll answer to. If anything should prove that, it's the wig.
It's familiar in a way that makes her need a glass of something every night before she hits the pole, but it's the best way she knows how to make a living without losing her mind, and there's no reason to stop anymore.
Some things are different. The last time she did this, she didn't have thin, faded stretch marks, and sometimes she has stupid enough to get hurt.
When Peter's in the audience, she feels that stupid again. At least when he lets her see him.
Their hook-ups are mostly the same, except he teleports away instead of walking back to his room. She still can't decide what the hell she thinks about him, anyway, him and his scar and his oh so fucking serious attitude.
She starts playing this game where she tries to make him smile. A smirk is one point. A smile is two. A grin is three. Laughing is four. Being happy underneath that wins the game. She never scores very high, but that's fine, it's just a way to pass the time between drinks.
*
Then he stops leaving, and it's not something they talk about. His junk just shows up over time, and it's not much, and he comes back almost every night. Sometimes they even spend time together outside the bedroom or a bar.
Not much, and it rarely goes well, but it happens.
By this point, she's pretty much accepted D.L. is dead, because she doesn't know what else to do. It's never felt like cheating, so it doesn't change things between her and Peter. She's sure she's not what he wanted, either.
So when he quits the resistance, she's not sure why she's relieved, or why she tells him he can't go back if he wants to stay.
Except she does. Because he's all she has, and god she's scared, and it can't hurt to have the strongest man on Earth as her fuckbuddy, can it? Of course not, and forget that he can't save her from that empty place she carries around.
He's got one too. She's never asked what he calls it, but she thinks she knows.
They don't need each other, and they don't want each other, and she's tired of wondering why the hell he keeps coming back. So she stops.
*
At thirty eight, she's got the same job she did when she was seventeen, and you've got to wonder what she's got to show for it. Everything's gone downhill, not just her, and she doesn't know what to do about it.
She learned better way too young that standing up to the man with the power gets you hurt, and she's not her (dead) sister or her (dead) husband or her (dead) son. She can't take it. Never could. Niki breaks when things get bad and everybody knows it.
And she plays this game.
When it's hard to get out of bed in the morning, take a drink.
When a new video game comes out on the market Micah would have loved or she stops by the candy rack and wonders what he wants her to bring home, take a drink.
When the Strip reminds her of D.L. taking her on their first date there or she accidentally punches his old number into her speed dial, take a drink.
When she sees a family like hers used to be, take two drinks.
When she needs her sister, take two drinks.
When she thinks about how old Micah would be today, take two drinks.
When she imagines him getting into college early because he'd always been so smart, take two drinks.
When the sound of breathing in her ear is all wrong and the arm around her waist doesn't feel right, take two drinks.
When she stops in the middle of the room and stops being able to breath because everything's burning, take three drinks.
When she's sorry for everything, take three drinks.
When the whole world feels like hell because it's so empty when her son's not smiling in it, take three drinks.
When she hates herself, take three drinks.
When she hates everyone else, take three drinks.
When she'd do anything to make it better again, take three drinks.
When she says she's 'let go', take three drinks and laugh.
When everything is wrong, get hammered.