17 — The
Conversation
“Sheam, I'm very sorry, but I'm far too busy to help you grieve the loss of your master. Right now it is my solemn duty to root out the fiends who did this, and I do not have time for emotional frailty,” Johnathan lectured sternly, and ironically. He was one to talk about emotional frailty.
I supposed I was wrong to imagine my mood would disturb him. He was paying almost no attention to me at all. “Johnathan,” I barked back. “Just stop. You're trying to find the killer. I know it was another delegate. He was killed — well, sort of — by an entourage.”
Johnathan went silent, his halfway created “murder board” likely shivering in anticipation of the red pin that was held, potentially indefinitely, half a centimeter away from puncturing its cork surface. “
You're not supposed to know about that!” he muttered with flared eyes.
“Johnathan, I'm sorry I've been lying to you I didn't really know I could trust you and by the time I did it had already gone so far and I didn't know how to bring it up and—”
“
Wait, Sheam,” Johnathan said in that particular tone he had when he was sure he was about to say something no other living being had ever conceived. “You've been a delegate this entire time?”
“What? No! Or, yes, I guess? Wait no! Or, sort of? Hang on. Wait.
Stop. This is the wrong question.”
“You said another delegate was behind Daelus' murder!
Quickly girl, tell me what you know!”
“Johnathan can you just put that aside for one second I'm trying to tell you something important!”
“What could be more important than the murder of my dear friend and your—”
“My name isn’t girl and don't you fucking dare call him my master. He's told you a million times to cut that shit out —
I've told you a million times!”
Johnathan stammered, and ended the seemingly indefinite hold on the pin’s union with the corkboard by collapsing into his chaise lounge, looking suddenly deeply unwell. “Sheam, what's going on?” His tone of voice betrayed that he wasn't really asking.
I got down on the floor beside him and took his hand in mine, exactly like Daelus used to do, in quieter, happier, simpler times. I could see the look of confusion growing on his face. “Johnathan, are you ready to listen?”
“Wait,” he said, eyes wild, clearly not ready to listen, “You're an entourage
… wait! Daelus is alive!”
I squeezed his hand sharply and bored holes into his skull with my eyes. “
Johnathan. I will explain everything but for that to work you need. to.
Listen.”
I waited a moment to give him a chance to fail once more, but it didn't come. He nodded quickly with heartbreaking hope in his eyes.
“I swear,” my tone softening — even if my words would be anything but — “you're a very talented intel handler but you're the worst listener.” I wanted to say more, but stopped myself. He always had to be the one to say the thing. He always had to be the smartest in the room. If someone had something to say, he couldn't just let them; he had to guess it first and be right. It was a game he wasn't able to stop playing, and at that moment I was so angry with him for it, but this wasn't the time for that. He was waiting for me to tell him that his friend — the man he still thought that he was in love with — was still alive.
“Yes. I am
Daelus,” I said, and paused again, expecting him to declare victory, that he knew it, he was right. Instead he collapsed off of his chair into the floor with me, clinging to me, sobbing.
I felt suffocated. But his outpouring of relief and joy, his stammering of unintelligible something, brought out my own tears too. I was wondering when they'd show up. I patted him gently and urged him to give me a little space. “I can't finish if you're like that.”
Blessedly, he backed off, pushing the tears from his cheeks, as if he suddenly felt ashamed. He just nodded. Thank fuck.
“But, it's more complicated than that. Because I'm not really
Daelus. Daelus… was me. He was me this entire—”
“Wait,” he started. “So,
Daelus was the entourage this entire—?”
I tried to speak as sweetly as possible. “Johnathan no-last-name
I swear to fuck if you don't let me tell it I'm going to slap your fucking mustache off.”
It shut him up.
I took another moment to calm myself. “I'm not going to talk about it in those terms, because we don't know what an entourage even is. It's what? An ability granted to us by the fucking
Benefactors, whoever the fuck they are, that none of us really understand and absolutely works in ways than we're told are impossible more often than it works the way we're told we're supposed to use it. We didn't develop it. There's no chain of research or development charting out its evolution. There's no writing about it. Just poof, here's this power, now use it to create definitely-not-people to help you rule the fucking world. You know all this. I'm telling you things you yourself have said just nod do not interrupt me please ok? Ok. So forget everything you know about entourage.”
He nodded, wide eyed, and blessedly, silent.
“Thank you. Let's start over. Hi. I'm
Sheam. I've been Sheam since the moment we first met, at that stupid party where you were sure I couldn't tell you were flirting with me. Later, I told you my entourage ability never fully manifested, and I lost interest in trying to. That was a lie, and I'm sorry. I did use it. I dreamed this body for myself and now I'm me inside it. The person you knew as Daelus both no longer exists and is sitting here in front of you. Everything I was and everything I am is right here.
“But also, more. I remember things, Johnathan. This body, this brain, has my own memories stretching all the way back, with so much more clarity than what Daelus' mind could manage. I remember the old world, and my old life. I remember things the Benefactors do not want me to. I remember being a person, living a real life. I remember having so much more than this shallow existence they've enslaved us into.”
Johnathan stared at me with eyes like saucers. His emotional outburst had faded. Behind the shock, I could see something else: the thing that made me like him in the first place. He was curious. “But, how…?”
Finally, he was asking a question; really asking. I was going to have to disappoint him. “I think I'd need to write a thousand-page analysis of my experience and still I'm not sure anyone who hasn't done it would understand. I will say this, though. You haven't lost me, but I'm different now. I'm not Daelus. I'm
Sheam. There's going to be new things to get used to — new ways that I am. I hope you'll be patient with that because I'd still very much like to be your friend.”
He hugged me again, but this time less desperate, more like the kind of hug you'd give an old friend after seeing them again after a year apart. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled, with a slight tremble.
“Are you giving me free reign to decide what that apology is for? I may need a moment to work that out. I have a ledger of grievance.”
“I'm sorry for how I always treated Shea — you. When you were Sheam. I didn't know.”
I shook my head. “Don't be sorry about that. But do work on how you treat women in general. We're people, you know.”
“I… yes. I see.”
I patted his cheek. “Okay,” I began as I rescued the poor red pin that had been languishing on the floor since Johnathan dropped it. “Let's solve my murder.”