Insomnia

15

"Atticus?" Esme called, stepping in from the air lock. "Atticus?"

She saw him sitting on the faded sofa in the middle of his living room, staring listlessly at his knees. A vacuum bot had cleaned the carpet recently. The dishes had been put away. Good. Last time, he hadn't even done that.

She stepped into his view and smiled. She knew that he wouldn't be able to see her face clearly through the mask so she hunched up her shoulders slightly to signal excitement.

"I brought tomato basil," Esme said. "You like that one, right?"

Atticus nodded. His curly black hair had grown long, draped haphazardly down his neck. He was wearing an old shirt and sweatpants. His sharp nose was accentuated by unusually gaunt cheeks.

"You got out of bed today!" Esme said, taking a seat next to him on the couch. She pulled a wooden coffee table closer with her right foot, and set the soup down on top of it. Atticus mechanically grabbed a spoon and began to eat.

"Happy birthday!" she said. The words pained her. "Things have been busy lately, so I didn't have time to get you a gift. But I figured I'd at least drop in to see you." Silence. She cleared her throat. "Besides. We can... celebrate later. Once you're feeling more up to it."

Atticus kept scooping out the soup from the bowl. He wasn't wearing his mask. Esme had long since stopped trying to convince him to keep it on. He'd pushed back against their mother's paranoia long before the Knightmare had ever come into their lives.

"Oz said he came by. You two enjoy your - guy talk? Or whatever?" She laughed nervously. Atticus looked towards her. His mouth moved as if he wanted words to come out, but all that emerged was a faint, incoherent mumble.

"Yeah?" asked Esme. She moved in closer to try and make out what he was saying, even though she knew it was just noise. Eventually, Esme settled for leaning her head against his shoulder. Atticus stopped looking at her. He resumed eating.

She thought back to the last time they'd spoken to one another.

"I can send you the application," Atticus had said, one arm sprawled over the side of her living room's couch. She was peeking into the fridge, looking for another snack. "With your skills, you'd be a shoo-in."

"With my skills I can make tons of money, and do something I love," she called back. A frown. "Did you eat my yogurt?"
She whirled around to see Atticus spooning up the last of her mango yogurt cups, a look of bewildered innocence on his face.

"Me?" he exclaimed between swallows. "Eat your yogurt?" Chomp. "Preposterous. And that's saying something. I've heard a lot of crazy theories in my line of work." Chomp.

She groaned and slammed the fridge door.

"I guess I'll order in another batch." She withdrew her touchpad and pulled up the delivery screen. "Such a pain."

"I'm serious, May," Atticus continued. "Psy-Ops recruits the best and brightest. You'd be working on interesting cases - important, cases. We need someone like you on the team."

"Just drop it already." She made a request for another carton of yogurt cups. "An hour delivery time? What kind of service is this?"

"I think you'll be fine without your yogurt fix for a little while." Atticus chuckled. "Besides I left some of the generic brand stuff in the fridge, you can snack on that if you're hungry."

"When you switch to the good stuff, it's impossible to go back."

"That how you feel about this job? As a Developer?"

"Yeah, I guess." She leapt over the back side of the couch, landing on the far end with a slight bounce. "It's fun. Easy work, easy money..."

"Not looking for challenges then?"

"Okay, I say 'easy', I don't mean it's not challenging."

"I'm pretty sure that's exactly what that means."

"Can we not talk about this?" she groaned. "We do this every time."

Atticus sighed.

"I'm sorry. It's your passion, I get that. But you don't have to give everything up to be an agent."

"I'm pretty sure that's exactly what that means," she mocked.

"Yeah," Atticus admitted. "Yeah, I mean a little. Right, it's a job and there are only so many hours in a night."

"And I choose to spend them how I want. Make your peace with that."

"I'll try."

"Fine."

"So," he continued. "How was your date with Oz?"

"Fine."

"That it?"
"I don't know, I haven't dated that many people. Not much basis for comparison."

"Where'd you go?"

"Got dinner in the real world. Then we went to Somnus. Watched a movie."

"What movie?"

"I dunno. It was Pre-Disaster. Action comedy."

"Well, did you enjoy it?"

"What's with all the questions?" Esme smirked. "You're starting to sound like mom."

Atticus laughed sadly.

"You don't know the half of it. I remember when you started seeing that Max creep. She didn't just ask you about him - she searched the Net, asked around in Somnus... I'd just started at Psy-Ops and she asked me to pull up his file."

"Did you?"

"Absolutely."

She shook her head.

"Y'all were crazy."

"We cared about you. Wanted to keep you safe." Atticus sighed. "Hey, you know that I'm not like, disappointed in you or anything, right? For not joining up?"

"Sure sounds like it," she mumbled.

"No, that's not it. Yeah, I think you'd be great at it. And I think it's a better use of your time. But I'm proud of the work you do. Proud that you love it, and that you're so good at it." Atticus looked at her. " No matter what, I've got your back."

She smiled.

"You too. No matter what."

Another promise broken.

Esme took the disposable bowl to the kitchen and dumped it in the trash. From the counter she could see Atticus sitting, silent as stone. There was no trace of those lively eyes. Not a flicker of his snapping smile. Only the quiet of hollow stilling pain.