A Misunderstanding (or 'Yankee and Hector')

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Hector Bridgeport had been looking forward to this moment for an inordinate amount of time, and yet even as she was standing before what was, in essence, her grand purpose, her crowning moment, of her entire existence… it didn’t feel near as sweet.

This was… the American. She’d known him for longer than she cared to, and yet the figure still seemed almost entirely alien to her.

This was the American.

The American. A whole nation represented. Represented badly, if you asked her.

Badly, but accurately, she reckoned. That was the real stinger. The Yankee was a good person, but that goodness was wrapped in a horrible, skewed exterior. What redeeming qualities he had were covered in a gunpowder-smelling layer of body armor. He was angry, hostile, petty, devoid of nearly all sentimentality, and with zero tolerance for those that did not appreciate him, for better or for worse.

If it was possible to target and kill poetry itself, Yankee would have.

He was a problem.

He was not a bad man of his own choice. He was a fallen angel. He was someone that stood for freedom and happiness and progress but subjugated and brutalized and brooded and was stuck in a past that was not his own, stuck in a past that he claimed did not define him despite his acknowledged inability to break free.

This was the American.

Hartford of Connecticut. The Yankee of Yankees. Tactician descended from Boss descended from Blacksmith.

The man wasn’t as ‘Full of Fight’ as she’d quite pictured. She thought the brawl would come as a more impromptu thing, but the Yankee had methodically approached it, and there he was in all his quietly explosive, deafeningly cool Clint Eastwood-esque, red, white and blue malice.

The men – and one or two odd women – that surrounded Hector seemed inherently rougher by comparison to Yankee’s own pristine grooming, and Hector actually had to force herself to swallow and recognize that the distinction wasn’t meant to antagonize. Just because the Yankee was all pretty-boy didn’t mean that she and her friends were any less important to the story, it didn’t mean they were any less tough, any less prepared.

He was staring through her.

Through her. That awful, thousand yard stare that was all at once piteously sad and endlessly horrifying. It was contempt. It was disinterest. It was the Yankee’s own fear turned inside out and reflected onto those around him.

He wasn’t saying anything. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

He just… sighed. He smiled a little, with the corners of his mouth rather than with a fullness of expression.

Still that sad prick from high school, she reckoned. Nothing had changed. He looked different, sounded different, but carried himself and radiated himself the same way.

Well, this was where it began. Alley out back of a factory. She and her boys against him on his lonesome, sun high in the sky and illuminating this whole big magnificent country that would be that much better, but that much more empty, with Yankee removed from it.

His eyes seemed to focus in on her a little more and she somehow liked it less than his almost vampirically vacant gaze earlier, and as a result she felt her eyelashes flutter, her own eyes avoiding direct contact and landing on the bricks of the wall to her left.

A proper showdown.

She could hear the Yankee scoff gently as she looked away, and that was enough to turn her stomach over and force her to formulate words.

Hector bit a smidge of tobacco from her cigar, gritted it, and then spat. “Hello, Central.”

The Yankee laughed with surprising abruptness and Hector could feel her neck clench, her face contorting just briefly enough for it to be counted as a flinch.

“Damn, how long have you been sitting on that one?” He said, still smiling.

“Pretty much since senior year,” She replied back blankly.

“Eh, points for honesty, I guess.” The Yankee looked up at the sky for a moment. “Nice day for it.”

“You sayin’ that by way-a showin’ you’re ready to meet Skullspringer?”

“…’Meet’ isn’t the right word.” The Yankee seemed slightly distant.

“Huh?”

“You fractured my wrist while we were smashing bottles on grad night…”

“Oh.” Hector grunted. “Yeah.” Her terseness was intended as an implicit order for him to stop speaking, but the Yankee continued.

“…You were stupid drunk and you kept asking if I was gonna get with ‘the weird chick’ or if ‘Nexus punched my heart in the ass too hard’, which, both of those statements are problematic in their own way, but regardless…”

“Yeah, I remember, stop.”

“…we then took to batting the empties off the roof…”

“Shut up.”

“You said I ‘Lucy Van Pelt-ed’ you, but really you were just so buzzed you took a bad swing and you almost broke my wrist, and the you got all…”

“Yankee, enough.” She could feel her jaw tightening.

“…Hm, memory hole. Something about you wanting to fix me and…”

“Please.” Hector’s voice cracked slightly, but it was audible enough that she could see the Yankee’s entire train of thought catch, derail. One of his eyebrows lifted and his mouth closed for a moment. Sweet Author above, his mouth closed for once in his life.

Hector tried to steady her breathing, but it wasn’t working so she elected to take another pull of the cigar and turn her hat around backwards.

“Dirty habit.”

“Bite me, Central.”

“Don’t call me that.” Yankee’s response was instantaneous.

“It’s your name.”

“It’s not, Jessica.”

The hand that rested on the bat reacted before her brains had time to process the words, and it took her at least five good seconds to realize she was clutching the bat with white knuckles.

“Doesn’t feel good, hey?” The Yankee said. He didn’t seem angry, in fact the contrary. He seemed calm. He seemed to be trying to resolve the situation at hand with sincerity.

That or trying to resolve something from the long past.

Gross.

“…It’s Hector.”

“Then let’s make it Yankee, Ms. Bridgeport.” His smile had widened. He was baring teeth now. It was not a happy, kind smile by any means. It lacked enough passive-aggression to file it under ‘douchey’ but Hector would know better anyway. She’d seen that face. The smile is roguish, charming, but the eyes spoke to pain and a hollow sort of burning.

“…What if we didn’t?” Hector said, after a moment. “…You can back off, now, if you want.”

“That’s pretty gutless for a threat and pretty callous for an appeal.” The Yankee’s tone seemed genuinely amused but also… hurt. Disappointed. Like he had so honestly expected something else and then had no one but himself to blame when reality unfolded, as it did.

“Call it advice, then.”

“That’s a better threat.”

“You were always better with words. I was always better at kicking your ass.”

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing I wanted to talk to you about.” Yankee said. “I’m not going back.” He shrugged like it was the easiest decision he’d ever made.

One of Hector’s goons made a noise. It was unclear if it was one of shock or some kind of tersely derisive laugh.

“Like Hell.” Hector’s lip curled and she could feel her brow knit.

“Yep. Like Hell.” Yankee echoed. “Like Hell. Like Hell. Do you hear yourself when you talk, Jessica…?”

“Don’t.” Hector warned.

“Five seconds ago, you wanted me to back out, and I didn’t want to. Now I decide maybe I’m not ready to carve a big old USA into the forehead of Lady Camelot, and you… You what? You’re telling me you’re not gonna let me.”

Hector remained silent and her eyes traced the ground. She looked at her shoes. Wing-shoes. Old wing-shoes. A gift. She wondered if he remembered.

“…For the love of God, Flick, say something. Which one of us signed the stupid book, huh? Which one?” His tone had suddenly risen into an awful crescendo of emotion and he seemed like he was suddenly bursting, suddenly a coiled spring.

Flick. He called her Flick. Like before.

What an ass. What a beautiful, stupid, jaded, selfish ass that had missed out on such a good thing.

He called her Flick. His eyes were doing something. She couldn’t quite see what, not from this distance. She took a few slow, casual steps towards him. The goons did the same but stayed back as far as they dared.

“You don’t want to send me back there because I swear on all that is holy I will run it so far and so fast into the ground that I’ll die alone before you put out that cigar.” His tone had quieted again.

That was… certainly layered.

“I have to.”

“You have to choose to, and I’m not gonna sway you. But I want you to know that you are absolutely going to have to earn it if you try to use that bat. Dig?”

“You’re going… to…”

“I’m going to fight you. I’m going to try to stop you. I don’t know if I want to wake up in that field or not but the worst part of me wants to watch Camelot burn and I promise you it will.”

One of the thugs coughed, a rather vain attempt to speed up the proceedings, and was met with an obscene gesture from Hector.

The Yankee laughed again as he saw that she performed said gesture without actually looking at her intended target. “Listen, I’m not trying to get dark on you.”

“You’re not?”

“Of course not. I can’t threaten you. Never could. You can, should, must, and probably will kick my ass. I’m just trying to be honest. Like always. Like those times in the backseat.” His smile was returning but it was less the ‘genuine pain’ one and more the ‘thinking on a time when I was happier’ one.

Hector had to smile too, if only in embarrassment. “Stop.” She rolled her eyes.

“Listen, we’re cool. You and me. No beef. No baggage. I honestly couldn’t be happier with you.”

“Huh.” Hector grunted again.

“If I wasn’t, I would have shot you instead of talking your ear off. Your boy Conolly seems to be getting kinda antsy.”

“He’s an idiot, it’s whatever.”

“Sure, sure.”

“…You called me Flick.”

“Yep.”

“That’s good, right? We’re good?”

“I already told you it was.”

“No, I… that wasn’t supposed to be a question. Sorry. I meant, we’re good. I think we’re good too.”

Hector realized she was walking forward steadily, getting closer and closer and watching his eyes and trying to figure out, once and for all, what she thought of him.

He was speaking again. “And it’s because of that, Flick… that I’m gonna have to do this.”

He shot forward with a right cross that actually staggered her and she could feel her teeth clack and her head angle unnaturally and there was a possible taste of blood somewhere within the sweet numbness of having just taken a direct hit like it was nothing. It was mostly the surprise of it that caused her to lose her footing, but now that the first swing had been taken, she’d be able to shrug off all but gunfire, that much she knew.

She tossed the cigar away and spat again, looked at Yankee and for the first time in her life she figured she understood him.

“You’re a complicated son of a bitch.”

“I’m about to complicate your head in if you don’t start swinging back.”

What a beautiful, stupid, jaded, selfish ass.

Hector lifted Skullspringer and called her shot like Babe Ruth. The final fight. Her goons shuffled forward.

---

A little later, as the Yankee’s unconscious form faded into the ether like embers from a fire, Hector could take a moment to herself. Her friends were all knocked out or worse, anyway.

She laughed. Laughed hard and loud and shook her head and licked blood off her teeth and watched as someone she knew turned to nothingness and flitted away on an American breeze.

Off for bigger things. Off for the head of chivalry. Off for himself.

How crazy and crooked, the nature of the past was. How crazy and crooked the future looked. How batshit and nigh-indiscernible matters of the heart were in context to time.

"Son of the Boss... give them Hell."

That last of the Yankee’s corporeal form turned to ash and gold.

Fitting.

---

Much later, a great while later, someone woke up.

Someone woke up in a field with a headache and an eerily muted rendition of ‘Star Spangled Banner’ ringing in his ears and a chronological-travel hangover and a smile aimed to pity himself, a smile aimed to ease the road ahead. He sat up slowly, his back feeling like a kinked slinky, which was a horribly childish metaphor, but the Yankee, even with the pounding in his skull, recognized it was likely the most accurate comparison.

“Fair sir, will ye just?”

Shadow. Shadow overtop of him. It was blocking out the warm, warm hug of the sun and it was making the Yankee irritable. He waved a hand to try and get the figure on the horse out of the path of the sunlight. It wasn’t working. His eyes were scrunched shut, vision blurred, but he could hear the horse and rider clank.

“What? Oh, yeah, uh… shit, I don’t remember my line.” He said dryly.

“There’s no line, but I’m gonna fight you. Guess it’s gotta be for land or whatever because you’re sure as Spell not getting a Lady.”

He recognized that voice and his smile became less rueful and more inconvenienced. Pleasantly, uncomfortably surprised. Eh, he’d deserve the initial mistreatment. He DID deserve the initial mistreatment. She’d haul him off and he’d do battle with Merlin and blah blah eclipse blah blah gunpowder blah blah steampunk cowboy tyrant. They were allowed to make fun of him whether it was all in jest or if they legitimately hated him. They were all screwed. Except maybe for Her. Still. It didn’t matter. They could mock him. He welcomed it. They were all screwed, in the long run.

He shook his head, laughed a little to himself. Everybody was a damn comedian about this story, weren’t they?

“Get back to the circus or whatever, because on God, you’re not getting reported, you’re getting shot if I have my way.”

“Cute. You’d never shoot me, Yank, I'm too lovable.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Nix. Help me up.”