Chapter 320: Tough Morning For Christopher [2]

"So you didn’t manage to bring Mei back?"

Martin asked it plainly, no judgment in his voice, just asking.

He stood with his arms loosely crossed, facing Cindy in the pale morning light.

Cindy shook her head.

Then she told them everything. The exchange, how it had gone, the tension that had stretched thin and then snapped, and Penny before that. She didn’t leave out the part about Penny. It was the kind of thing you couldn’t really soften no matter how you worded it, so she didn’t try.

Martin listened without interrupting. When she finished, he let out a slow breath through his nose.

"She was being controlled," he said quietly. "Poor woman." He was still for a moment. "I do feel bad for her. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved there’s one less threat hanging over everyone’s heads."

"Controlling someone’s body like that..." Margaret, who had been standing beside him with her hands folded, shook her head slowly. The expression on her face was somewhere between disturbed and deeply tired. "That’s a terrifying thing. Truly terrifying."

"Can Ryan do something like that?" Martin asked, glancing at Cindy. "With his ability?"

Cindy considered the question for a second, which was more than it probably deserved. "Ryan? No, at least, I don’t think so. It’s... hard to say with certainty." She exhaled. "He’s nowhere near as experienced as Gaspar is with his Symbiote. Ryan’s still figuring out the edges of what he can do. Gaspar’s been living inside that thing for a while now."

Martin nodded slowly. "And Gaspar, he’ll come back, won’t he. That feels like a when, not an if."

"When he does, we’ll be there," Cindy said without hesitation.

Martin looked at her and then let out a quiet laugh. Not dismissive. Warm, almost. "That’s reassuring. It genuinely is." He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. "Still feels strange, relying on someone who isn’t even fully grown yet. Makes me feel like I should be the one standing in front of you, not the other way around."

"Don’t judge a book by its cover, Martin," Cindy said, the corner of her mouth pulling into a grin.

"I know, I know." He raised a hand in surrender, still chuckling to himself. "Alright, I’m going to go check the perimeter, see what we can reinforce. With everything that’s happened, we need to be ready for just about anything." He gave a brief nod to both of them and headed out.

The room felt a little quieter once he was gone.

Cindy turned to Margaret, and some of the composure she’d been holding up slipped just slightly. "I’m sorry for dragging all of this trouble to your doorstep, Margaret."

"Oh, hush." Margaret waved a hand at her like she was swatting away something silly. "What are you apologizing for, girl?" The elder woman’s expression softened into something warm. "Because of you and the others, we finally have a home again. A real one, hopefully, one that sticks this time. That’s not trouble. That’s the opposite of trouble."

Cindy felt something loosen in her chest. "Let’s hope it sticks. At the very least, the Boardwalk doesn’t seem to have a problem with us being here. They wouldn’t move against us."

"Ryan’s there, isn’t he," Margaret said. It wasn’t really a question.

Cindy nodded.

"Then that helps." Margaret paused, her expression shifting into something more careful, more measured. "Though I’ll say this, Callighan killed one of ours. That makes us part of this whether we choose to be or not. So if it ever comes to it, if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate. You don’t have to carry all of it yourselves."

Cindy held her gaze and nodded again, quieter this time. "Thank you, Margaret. Really."

A comfortable silence settled between them for a moment before Cindy smirked slightly. "You know what I could really use right now? Fresh food." She let out a small, tired laugh. "Actual fresh food. I am so tired of canned everything. My stomach is tired of canned everything."

Margaret laughed at that. "We’ve already started gathering everything we need to plant a proper garden. Seeds, soil, the whole thing. Be patient a little while longer and you can eat yourself sick on fresh vegetables, I promise you that."

"Bigger than the last one though," Cindy said seriously. "That garden near the Municipal Office wasn’t going to cut it even before all of this. With how many people we have now, it definitely won’t."

Margaret nodded, smiling to herself. "We do have quite a few extra mouths to feed these days." She added meaningfully.

"You’re still underestimating Sydney," Cindy said, breaking into a laugh. "That’s a critical error, Margaret. Plan accordingly."

Margaret laughed hearing that.

They talked a little while longer, small things, practical things, and then parted ways.

Cindy stepped back outside, tilting her face briefly toward the sky before pulling her gaze back down to the hotel across the way. She started walking toward it.

She almost didn’t notice Wanda until she was nearly right in front of her.

"Oh, Wanda, good morning," Cindy said, adjusting her path slightly.

Wanda looked at her for a moment. Just looked, the way she always did, like she was deciding how much she felt like engaging with the world today.

"Where is he?" She asked.

Cindy blinked once, then smiled. "Ryan? He’ll be gone for the next couple of days, he’s at the Boardwalk." She tilted her head. "Why, are you missing him?"

Wanda’s expression didn’t shift much but something behind her eyes flickered. "Does he ever stop inserting himself into things that aren’t his business?" She asked instead.

Cindy sighed softly. "I think you know exactly how he is. And Mei is our matter, it’s not like he had no reason to be involved."

"The hostage exchange failed because he refused to hand over the new woman you brought with you," Wanda pointed out.

Cindy didn’t answer that. The silence said enough.

Wanda’s eyes narrowed just slightly, and she turned away like the conversation had reached its natural end, or like something about it had irritated her more than she wanted to show.

"You don’t have to be angry at him, you know," Cindy called after her. "He just cares about you. That’s all it is."

Wanda didn’t stop walking. "I don’t need anyone to care about me," she said, and kept going until the distance swallowed her.

Cindy stood there for a moment, watching her go.

She’d gotten worse, after Jackson Township. Then worse again after Gaspar had killed one of Margaret’s people, like every new hard thing just added another layer of frost over something that had already been struggling to stay warm. Cindy had noticed it. They’d all noticed it, really.

Ryan had said he was going to talk to her. He’d meant it, she knew he’d meant it. But between Mei and Callighan and Marlon and whatever Gaspar was going to do next, there hadn’t been a quiet moment to spare. Wanda kept getting pushed to the edge of the list, not out of indifference, but because the world kept throwing things at them faster than they could catch.

And because Wanda clearly blamed herself for everything that happened.

She wanted to say something, anything that might reach Wanda, crack through that hardened exterior even just a little. But she’d tried before, and she knew how it went. Words from her just bounced off. Wanda had built her walls carefully and she maintained them well.

Only Ryan ever seemed to find the gaps.

It was strange, when you thought about it. Ryan wasn’t loud. If anything, he was the kind of person who went quiet in crowds and kept most of his thoughts behind his eyes. And yet, when it actually mattered, when someone was standing at the edge of something and needed to be pulled back, he found the right words almost without trying. He’d done it before. He was the reason Wanda hadn’t walked out of Jackson Township when everything had gone sideways, she had been ready to leave, and somehow Ryan had been the one to make her stay.

If anyone could do something about where Wanda was heading now, it was him.

He just needed to actually have the time and space to do it, which lately felt like asking for something the world wasn’t interested in giving.

Cindy turned it over in her mind for another moment, then filed it away under things to deal with when there’s a moment to breathe, a list that kept getting longer, and stepped through the front entrance of the hotel.

She heard Malcolm before she saw him.

"You’re really eating like that? First thing in the morning?"

Cindy followed his gaze across the lobby and found the source of his suffering without any difficulty.

Christopher was slumped on one of the bench chairs near the wall, a can of ravioli balanced on his knee, fully focused on eating.

Sydney, beside him, had her legs crossed and a large foil bag of potato crisps open in her lap, eating them one casual handful at a time like she was watching a film on a Sunday afternoon. The crunch echoed off the lobby walls with every bite.

"Christopher got hit by a Symbiote tentacle, Malcolm," Sydney said, not looking up from the crisps. "Give the Hero some break."

"I’m not talking about Christopher!" Malcolm turned to her. "I’m talking about you!"

Sydney reached into the bag again. "Well, I’m the one who killed the tentacle monster, so technically you should be thanking me." Crunch. "You’re welcome, by the way."

"That is your third pack!" Malcolm’s voice pitched upward slightly."Third! We have to make what we have last until Margaret gets the garden going, food is a resource, Sydney, a finite resource—"

Sydney slowly turned to look at him with an expression of mild, almost clinical disgust. "Are you really arguing with me over crisps, Malcolm?"

Malcolm opened his mouth, closed it, looked briefly at the ceiling, and then made the wise decision to simply walk away. Some battles weren’t worth the cost of entry, and he seemed to have done the math on this one.

He nearly walked straight into Cindy on his way out. He stopped, looked at her with the hollow eyes of a man seeking solidarity, and sighed deeply before moving past her without a word.

Cindy watched him go, then turned back to Sydney with a look that said really?

"Enjoying yourself?" She asked.

"Tremendously, actually." Sydney held out the bag toward her. "Want some? Chicken flavor."

Cindy looked at the bag. She looked at Sydney. She thought briefly about taking the moral high ground.

Then she reached in and took a handful.

The crunch was really satisfying. She ate them without apology.

Her eyes drifted over to Christopher, who was working his way steadily through the ravioli with the determination of a man who had been through enough in the last twenty-four hours that nobody was allowed to comment on his food choices.

"How are you doing, Christopher?" She asked, her voice shifting into something more concern. "You’re really okay to be moving around like this?"

"I’m fine," he said. "Everyone keeps looking at me like I’m about to fall apart. I didn’t get shot, I’m fine."

"You got hit by a Symbiote tentacle, Chris!" Sydney said, louder than necessary. "That is objectively worse than getting shot and everyone here knows it!"

"My point exactly," Cindy said.

"Look—" Christopher gestured vaguely at himself with the fork. "I’m sitting here eating. I’m upright. I can walk. I’m recovering, that’s all there is to it."

Sydney narrowed her eyes at him in a way that was less skeptical and more curious. "Actually... that is a bit strange. You’re healing faster than you should be." She tapped the side of her jaw slowly. "Makes you wonder."

"Wonder what," Christopher said resuming eating though his tone made it clear he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

"Well, Ryan’s Curing technically works on women, that’s always been the assumption," Sydney said. "But what if some residual effect worked on you too, Christopher? What if you’ve got a bit of the accelerated regeneration going? And you got cured too?"

"Pfffhhh!" Christopher coughed out what he was about to swallow.

He made a sound that started as a response and ended as something choked, and he spat out a mouthful of ravioli.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and turned a glare at Sydney.

She was already grinning at him, wide and entirely unrepentant. She raised both hands in surrender before he could say anything.

"Just a theory," she said pleasantly. "My personal theory. But honestly? It wouldn’t be that surprising."

"What wouldn’t be surprising?" Cindy asked, amused, which only deepened Christopher’s visible suffering.

Sydney held up both hands and made two peace signs with her fingers, then slowly brought them together until they were touching.

Christopher’s expression went somewhere very flat and very tired.

For a brief moment, his mind went back to New York. To Lexington Charter. To the split, to Tobias and his group heading one way while Christopher had gone another. At least with Tobias there had been a degree of normalcy. A certain baseline of human behavior.

"Tobias," he muttered under his breath, almost to himself.

"Tobias?" Sydney snorted immediately, apparently having heard him just fine. "That guy and whatever’s left of his group are probably wandering around somewhere in New York with their jaws half eaten by now."

"Sydney," Cindy said.

"What? It’s a reasonable assessment."

"It’s a terrible thing to say."

Sydney looked at Cindy with a bright, completely untroubled smile. "I know, right?"