#wr deirdre chatzy

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Ireland || Morgan & Deirdre

TIME: A hundred years or so from now.

LOCATION: A cottage, a museum

PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems @deathduty

WARNINGS: none

SUMMARY: A century isn’t enough time to make Morgan less anxious. Chaperoning her daughter’s school trip with Deirdre gives her more than enough to worry about.

“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough.” -Nikka Ursula

There was no perfect home between Dublin and the wild woods; Morgan and Deirdre looked. Every village, every suburb, every dilapidated farm. Too far from public transit, too many people, not enough distance from the other Dolans. So they built their own, two floors high and hugged gently by oaks. They painted the gables black and the sidings blue, the shade of Morgan’s eyes. They built a stable for a couple of cows that would do nothing but laze and let themselves be spoiled. They planted everything from potatoes and mint to geraniums and roses. When a storm drowned and trampled most of it their third year in the house, Morgan said they really would get around to building a greenhouse this time. So far, however, that remains a dream. But they did get a shed for crafting and a shed for death. They made a rooftop deck for stargazing. They papered the walls with shelved books and furnished the rooms with their most important treasures from the last hundred years or so. They kept the brick hearth clean and warm, first with blazing fires, then, as the earth warmed and dried a little more each Samhain with family art and pictures. Especially once the baby was born.

On this day, the baby was twelve and went by Steph instead of Persephone because last year Aoife Murphy said Persephone sounds gross and made her cry, not that she would say so if asked. She started secondary school away from her old classmates, the same one Morgan taught at, and things were almost better for her there. If she could just get through this field trip to the natural history museum without everyone finding out how bizarre her moms were, maybe Kelly (gorgeous, terrifying, and most popular Kelly) would want to invite her to her birthday party.

On this day, Morgan didn’t even try to feign sleep as she lay in bed with her wife. She and Deirdre had never tackled chaperone duty together before and she didn’t know what to expect. She taught all day, so Deirdre was the field trip expert through Steph’s primary years. But now. Now Steph was in the same building as her all day, and they didn’t have to be spread out until nightfall. They could be a family, happy and out in the world and together and everyone would see and no one would mind and if she could just stop being terrified of screwing it up, she might actually get to enjoy it.

Steph called from below. “Mammy! You said we’d start early!”

Morgan stiffened in bed, hand digging into Deirdre’s arms. “I also said early would be seven-thirty, not seven,” she sighed.

“Mammy!”

“I heard you, baby!” She called. With another sigh, she rolled over to see her wife in all her bed head glory. “Morning,” she said sheepishly.

Deirdre, on this day, responded as she did every morning when faced with the sight of her wife: she smiled, sat up slowly, and in defiance of their screaming child, kissed Morgan with great lingering. “Good morning, my love.” The morning was a magical place, filled with dewy morning air and the light their old blinds couldn’t stop from cutting across their messy bedroom claimed by books and a busy schedule. At least it wasn’t as bad as it had been when Persphone was first born. But the morning could not be claimed by annoyance at the dust collected over their furniture, and the too-full bookcase that begged for an ally, perhaps in the little space they had across the room. A hundred years ago the morning could have been taken by such thoughts, but after a decade of thinking something terribly wrong was going to rob them of their happiness and the following decade of confusion, Deirdre realized anxiety wrought mornings were a waste of time. She could worry about her mother coming to claim Pershephone under proper Dolan tutelage, she could worry about whether or not Pershephone might scream on this trip just as she worried the same countless number of trips ago, she could even worry about their aging dog, whose life could only hold on for so long. The cows, which no longer produced milk and now lived simply to be themselves--creatures that didn’t need utility to have value--could even be a center of fear. But none of it for the morning.

Rather, the morning was just the place to wonder how it was, with about one hundred years of marriage, Morgan managed the art of looking more beautiful each day. And each year, not an ounce of love waned. In the morning, there was no space for fear, not where there was so much love.

“You’d think it was Yule with the mood she’s in. Remember when she used to stand by the door, whining until one of us got up? Now she just yells from the kitchen.” Deirdre laughed, stealing another kiss as she remembered that Pershephone--Steph, as she now liked to be referred to--stopped barging into their room specifically because they, as she once put it, kissed too much. That made Deirdre laugh again, but it wasn’t until Steph called for them that she rolled out of bed with her own whining. “Did you eat breakfast?” She called out, searching for her robe among the clutter.

“Yes!” Steph screeched back, already with the lungs of a banshee.

However, Steph wasn’t in the sort of mood to let there be a morning. And Deirdre chuckled as she put on her robe and turned to look at her wife. “It’s serious,” she teased, “you better get down before she drives herself to school.” And the morning, the worry-free morning of lazing and affection, crumbled as healthy concern filled Deirdre’s gaze. She reached for her wife before she was out the bedroom door, pressing a kiss to her hand as she held it. “How are you feeling?”  

There was no such thing as bringing a zombie back to life, but Deirdre’s morning kisses came bewilderingly close to it. Morgan relaxed and melted back into the world where she belonged. How could she do anything else when Deirdre had such a preternatural capacity for loving her? Since their marriage, she had never waxed and waned like Morgan did. She never took her for granted, never withdrew out of misplaced fear, never sampled a different life for the novelty of it. In Deirdre’s eyes (finally showing a little wrinkle, especially when she smiled), the morning always made Morgan new and wonderful and right.

“Good morning, my love,” she whispered back, automatic though more awed than usual.

After a moment of staring dopey eyed at her (her honey-brown eyes, the shine of her hair, her still perfect freckles, the absurd mix of mischief and kindness in her smile), Morgan got up and began climbing into the casual suit she’d laid out for herself the night before. She flinched when Steph screamed up again, louder than before.

“You know, for some reason I feel like it was a lot cuter at Yule. Or maybe that’s just because she was five and we were in the pre heavy eye-roll years.”

But she wasn’t really irritated, not in a way that didn’t dissolve five seconds later. In her dark months of the year, sure, the little things felt worse. But it was early autumn, and the day was bright. Life was short and long at once and time dissolved so strangely, it just wasn’t worth dwelling on tiny irritations that she would look on fondly anyways twenty years down the line. And if she came downstairs looking composed, she might be able to soothe the anxiety-temper out of her daughter before they squeezed into the car together.

She clipped a frilly bow tie onto her blouse to soften her look and grinned over at her wife. “I’ve got it, don’t worry.”

And she really did, maybe, until Deirdre stopped and grounded her again. “I’m…” Fine was the word that came to mind, but of course that wasn’t true and she didn’t really want to bother with that game anyway. She shrugged instead, mouthing nothing as she searched for the truth. “…I just want this to be good. For all of us. That’s all. I really, really want this to be good.” She squeezed Deirdre’s hand and tugged her close. “How are you?” Her eyes flickered to the half open door, then back. “Will it make anything better if I promise you not to be embarrassing?” She was teasing, but there was a little knot in her heart that was ready to do it.

“No promises.” Deirdre replied quickly with a gentle laugh, and a finger tapping Morgan’s nose as she so often did to hers. She knew Morgan didn’t mean it, not truly, but even so, a century together told her that a piece of Morgan thought it might fix something. And they both knew what a bad idea vague promises were. They had a rule with Steph, and an unspoken one between each other. “No promises,” Deirdre repeated more softly, “you don’t need them, my love. Whatever happens, your daughter loves you. She’s just a little--”

On cue, Steph yelled again, “Mammy!”

If she had been activated, a sound like that would crack their pretty stained glass, and ruin the more delicate furnishings. Even though she wasn’t, there was also a rule about being loud in the house. Not the sort of rule that meant harsh punishment that Deirdre and Morgan knew, just the sort that ought to be heeded in everyone’s best interest. It was true that Persephone didn’t know a moment of pain like either of them had, even after how much the two had worried one scolding went too far, or that they couldn’t manage to raise anything at all, perhaps they shouldn’t. But they did. And down a small wooden set of stairs was a young girl, barely a teen, who despite her yelling, really was the best little girl Deirdre knew.  

“No yelling, dear,” Deirdre called down and after a pause, smiled as a meek apology rose from down below. “She’s just excited. I bet she also wants this to be good, really good. In her case, so she can hang out with Kelly, but…” Deirdre trailed off in the sort of way she knew Morgan understood as, you know what I mean. She kissed her wife again, slow in just the way their daughter would have a fuss with, and lingered just shy of the corner of her mouth. “I’ve never known you to make anything less than really good,” she murmured, “and if our daughter calmed down for a moment, she’d agree. But I don’t think she’s going to be calm unless she knows you��re coming down so...well, as much as I enjoy keeping you to myself, I should learn to share by now.” Deirdre kissed Morgan again, reluctantly moving out of the way. “And I’m okay,” she responded after a moment, not much better after a century at handling that question. “I wish I was still in bed, but I’m okay. I’m going to wear my big jacket so I can take a bone or two, I think.” Deirdre smiled, wide and lopsided and twinkling with mischief. Steph called out again, quieter this time. “Let’s greet the day, my love.”

Morgan had to bite her lip to keep from whining as Deirdre parted from the kiss. Here in the world of their room, everything was safe and no one could be disappointed and nothing-problems could be seen for what they really were. Over their threshold, out in the real world, anything might happen.

“This is probably why the PTA moms already think you’re older than me, huh,” she said. Then, because the silence between Steph’s calls was starting to tear at her nerves, “I love you. So much. Please be kidding about the bone, because we will not be forgiven if you get banned from the museum again.” One last squeeze and then she was racing down the stairs toward the burning glare of sunrise and the wide, worried face of their little girl. Deirdre was right. The day was for greeting, like a new guest, and the three Dolans could do it just fine together.

#

“Do we have to stand together all the time?” Steph hissed. They had just finished another headcount after the last one revealed that Connor McCarthy had slipped away to see what the ticket counter looked like from behind. Now, mostly thanks to Deirdre, they were finally heading into the Egyptian exhibit visiting the city.

“Bug—Steph,” Morgan corrected herself quickly. No home names for Steph at school. And definitely not when there were other students around. “We’re all standing together. That’s how these things work.”

Steph gave her a look so much like Deirdre’s when she was irritated that it took some of the sting out of not being wanted. You know what I mean.

Morgan nodded, conceding. This was fine. This was what Steph wanted and forcing her to conform to some idealized fantasy wasn’t going to make anything better. And so she was fine. Absolutely fine. “I’ve got the front, your Ma’s got the back, so if you want to make time with Kelly, you should get her somewhere in the middle.”

Steph hesitated a moment, sensing that her win wasn’t as right as she wanted it to be, then faded back into the little crowd of her classmates.

The unfortunate part of chaperoning a trip with Morgan was that they had to be separated by a group of squirming children. Deirdre shot several looks of encouragement and longing over the crowd, but she was about as happy being stuck apart from Morgan as Steph was at being stuck sandwiched between her two mothers. At the back, Deirdre had accrued her own gaggle of kids, who remembered her as their chaperone in primary school and mysteriously enjoyed her company. The kids were too old to be bribed into happiness with snacks, but just the right age to indulge strange thought journeys. Deirdre liked children, they were far more like fae than she ever cared to notice before, but at this age, the preoccupation with social acceptance hindered any fun she had before with them. It was like corralling sheep that didn’t want to listen; that thought they didn’t have to. She disliked wielding authority, and wasn’t sure how much longer she could accept playing chaperone. Maybe it was time to retire. But until then, her gang of kids at the back were happy enough to play along with her game, aptly titled: how do we steal this? A simple thinking exercise in how to commit crime, and secure a few more bones for her collection (the last part was her own secret). The kids at the back, mostly boys, seemed to enjoy the game. And when they entered the Egyptian wing, they shared her excitement.

Over the crowd, Deirdre gave Morgan a thumbs up, and blew a kiss quickly before Steph could notice and glare. In the center of their small group, she could see Kelly with her bouncy blonde hair, flanked by her friends and their bright clothing. And poor Steph, trying to inch herself into their circle. “Now, what are we stealing?” She whispered to her accomplices, hoping Steph couldn’t hear and wouldn’t feel embarrassed that she hadn’t learned how to stop talking about crime, which was an issue three years ago on a zoo trip. The boys ran up to the first display, shoving each other to read the inscription.

“I’d steal a sarcophagus,” one of them said. “No way, I want that shriveled foot thing!” Another added. “Look at the mummy!”

The kids were leaning into the display excitedly, so much so that Deirdre didn’t have the heart to tell them not to touch the glass. Those who couldn’t see in were ducking around trying to look or elbowing themselves into a space. Kelly was holding her nose. Her friends looked at her, then around them, then followed suit. Deirdre turned back to the children and noticed for the first time that not all seemed as excited as the boys. Some had their faces scrunched together, some gazed just to turn their faces away and gag. Even the boys had misplaced delight; not in how beautiful death was, but how gross. Through the crowd, she couldn’t read Steph’s face. Deirdre looked to Morgan, hoping there was just some great anecdote or story a part of her lesson that would change their minds. The children started to reel from the display. Deirdre’s brow wrinkled; she moved closer to her wife, despite the rule that she was to stay at the back. That too, was just the sort that could be broken without harsh punishment.

Morgan, finally reaching a point in her life where she found preparing for disappointment useful, wasn’t surprised by the mixed reaction. A few years in lower level secondary school could do that to a woman. She sidled up to some of the louder skeptics. “Is a big first year like you really scared of one little mummy, Miles?”

Of course he wasn’t scared, Miles insisted. It was just so old and falling apart, not like in the movies, and in the photos the mummy’s skin looked disgusting, that was just facts, even Mrs. Dolan had to admit that.

“Would you be more scared or less scared if you knew you were insulting a cursed mummy?” Morgan asked.

The word curse caught the attention of a few and Morgan stalled by running though what little she knew about the curse of the pharaohs and Tutankhamen until the real guide showed up. She promised a secret prize to the first student who could prove whether or not there were any ‘cursed’ objects by looking closely and paying attention; that guaranteed about a third of the raucous ones would stay in line.

When the guide did show up, Morgan finally gave in to the proximity between her and Deirdre and took her hand. She spoke softly, just for her wife’s ears, but kept her eye on the students. “I think they look rather nice, personally,” she said. “But then, I’m probably biased in favor of a society that mummifies departed pets so they can all be together in the great beyond.” She leaned her head on her shoulder, basking in being unnoticed for the first time all day. “Also, is it cute or lame if I pilfer you a plastic mummy finger from the gift shop? Hypothetically.”

Steph knew where each of her mothers were in a room even when she didn’t want to. Their signals, as she thought of them, faded or grew stronger with proximity in a way she couldn’t ignore with so many normal people around. So she didn’t need to see them pair up behind the group to know that was happening, she was just relieved they were far enough away that nobody would notice if they started kissing. But she didn’t know how long she could count on them to stay like that. She had to take her chance with Kelly now.

“The curse thing is just a myth,” She scoffed, side-eyeing the other girl. Kelly didn’t believe in ‘baby stuff’ and liked being skeptical at everything. “One of the men they say the curse killed was murdered, actually. Smothered in his sleep at his club. They never caught the killer either. Can you believe? Looking at a blue asphyxiated body and thinking it must have been magic?” She laughed, waiting for some of the girls to laugh too, or at least nod.

Deirdre relaxed into a small smile as Morgan tried to notice the children. It was one of those things Morgan was good at, one of those things Deirdre could only watch with adoration. It didn’t work perfectly, but nothing ever did with humans. After more than a century, some things never changed. The music might have been new and strange, and the technology more advanced and confusing, but death was still untouchable. History was still foreign. They didn’t pause to think the body there had been taken from its home, that their own funeral practices might seem as odd thousands of years later. How long did it take until graveyards were exhumed for the sake of history? Would it be their bodies sitting there? Gawked at? Too much had humans come to know death behind glass, at safe distances, too little did they ever think about the mummy without a name.

But now was not the time to worry, human nature wasn’t her concern. Being a parent had shifted the focus; it didn’t matter to her what these children were thinking, but what Steph was. The girl who brought bones and dead animals into the house. Who pinned butterflies sitting on Deirdre’s lap. Who used her dolls to reenact a murder scene. The very same little girl who knew there was nothing gross here. Trusting her daughter to know better, Deirdre relaxed again, leaning into Morgan. “All these years later and people still find the Ancient Egyptians to be weird. That poor nameless mummy is practically dust.” She shook her head, laughing quietly along with Morgan. She thought it was nice too, but Morgan had heard enough of her death ramblings to know that she did. “Funny,” she laughed into a kiss against Morgan’s cheek. “I was going to get you a gift shop mummy. Maybe I’ll have to steal a vase then.” She hummed; surrounded by death, holding the woman she loved and watching their child, she knew peace.

“I think you’re more qualified to be teaching them about curses than…” Deirdre‘s voice fell away. Steph’s words rose above the din and all seemed to quiet as she spoke. Steph was expectant for agreement, but behind the crowd, Deirdre tensed. The very same little girl that sat between them as they explained why grandma Siobhan would not be coming over, and why she would never meet grandma Ruth. The exact girl who once delighted in watching her Mammy’s fingers regrow, who asked why she couldn’t be blue all the time because it was prettier. The girl who learned. The girl who knew better. The very girl who knew that if anyone had thought a blue body was magic, it was her and her mother, who was still standing rigidly behind them. Because she had thought it was magic until she knew the words. And Deirdre still thought it was magic, even though she knew them, because it was Morgan.

Morgan felt something was wrong before she understood it. There was a sickly prickle in the air, a swelling sense that something was about to happen. Can you believe? Looking at a blue asphyxiated body and thinking it must have been magic? A little pool of silence formed around Steph. One drop, then another, another.

Morgan was limp and frozen at once. If she had remembered her last violent days of being human better, she might’ve recalled that liquid, helpless feeling of being struck by a hard blow and falling to the ground without any hope or plan of fighting back. Because this was it. Children had to distance themselves from their parents, it was a sign of developing a strong sense of self. They had to feel safe trying out different looks and personas. They had to make their own choices and their own mistakes. And so what could Morgan do but watch Steph laugh like she was an absurd joke? Like she didn’t exist at all? Children acted out. Children tested boundaries, both their own and others. What could Morgan do besides watch her daughter’s betrayal come to nothing?

She squeezed Deirdre’s hand. “Stay here,” she  said. “Stay with me.” She meant to sound firm, to draw a line between what they both wanted and what they could do. But her words came out as nothing more than a thinly veiled plea in a frail voice.

Deirdre’s lips twitched as she held Morgan tightly. A reprimand burned on the edge of her tongue. But Kelly dolled a punishment far worse than Deirdre ever could. She was looking at Steph like the others, but her lips were the first to thin and then pull down. Her eyes were the first to narrow and her brows the first to pull together. One word escaped her mouth, “ew.” And as she laughed, shrill and sharp through the thick of silence, laughter inspired in spurts around the crowd. Steph slouched, shrinking into herself, her eyes were focused on the tiling below. Kelly spoke the same way she laughed, “I think I just found something worse than the mummies.” As if she remembered suddenly who Steph was, she looked at Morgan, “I’m sorry for laughing Mrs. Dolan, but Steph’s making me uncomfortable with her talk of murder.” She couldn’t help the way her lips twitched, fighting back a smile. Kelly took her a moment to remember how to look wounded, and so she did, big eyes and batting eyelashes. There was another quick apology to Steph, just to cover her bases. Then, confident that there was nothing Morgan could say to scold her, she turned back, blonde ponytail grazing Steph’s nose.

Kelly was calculated, quick. Where interest shifted from her, she was fast to reel it back. As her friend managed meekly to ask why the man had died, Kelly just as quickly issued another sharp retort, killing the question where it started; in the girl’s throat as a gargle. She stood at the center again, more confident. In many ways, Kelly reminded Deirdre of herself; what little she did remember of herself at that age. But so did Steph, tall and thin with hair much darker than her classmates, trying her best to become invisible in the back. She didn’t look at her mothers, but if she had she’d find that where disappointment once tugged Deirdre’s features, worry now did. The rest of the children shuffled toward the guide awkwardly, trying to pretend nothing had happened. The few that turned to look at Steph were met with Kelly’s friendly gaze, and in desperate situations, a quick compliment or question to get them looking where she wanted. There was them, and then there was Steph.

Morgan’s frozen expression warded off any protracted speeches from Kelly, thank the stars and it held in place until the worst was over. The tension she’d been holding released  itself in one terrible squeeze of her wife’s hand, and in the letting go. She couldn’t be herself right now and the three of them would never be the three of them in a setting like this. She had been delusional to think that would happen.

The guide uncomfortably moved them along, and every child went, edging further and further away from Steph as they did. It was just the three of them in the back now. Reluctantly, Morgan slipped away from her wife and followed too.

She kept stride with Steph at the back for a few paces but did not look at her and did not speak. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, or what she should do. She only knew she wasn’t allowed any of it, per Steph’s pre teen boundaries. “I’d like to speak with you about this at home,” she said. Her voice was flat, emotionless, which was how Steph knew the extent of the damage she’d done. Morgan drew herself up, fixed her face into her bright, unflappable teacher self, then moved ahead to mind the other children.

Steph didn’t make a move to acknowledge her Mammy, she was too busy fighting back tears. Everyone was leaving her behind, no one liked her, no one understood her, and all she wanted was a sandwich and a nap and for today to have never happened. She tried to look through her hair and find her Ma without showing it, but the moment she registered her shape, she looked away again. As long as she didn’t see her face, she could hold out hope that her Ma wasn’t mad at her like everyone else.

It was Deirdre now who pleaded softly for Morgan to stay, her fingers recoiling at the empty air between them. The only thing she could manage was quiet whining, completely obscured by the museum heater and the guide’s monotone explanations ahead. Stay, her eyes told Morgan’s back, stay and let’s talk to her. But Steph wasn’t just Morgan’s daughter, she was her student, and she wanted to be treated as such. She made a big deal out of it; she wanted to be Steph not Persephone. But all Deirdre could see was their daughter, and the little girl that she was. With more resolve, she might have been able to give Steph what she wanted, but the last century had turned Deirdre into the sort of woman incapable of looking away. So moved next to her daughter and placed a hand on her shoulder. When that was slowly shrugged off, she pressed a kiss to the top of her head and didn’t mind the garbled complaint that never managed to be formed into any words. “I’m sorry it didn’t work, sweetie,” Deirdre said softly, burning to hold her daughter’s hand as she shoved them into her pockets. Steph sniffled, mumbling something Deirdre couldn’t hear and didn’t think she was meant to anyway. There was a lesson here to give, but Deirdre thought it would be cruel to make Steph listen to it now. “I love you,” she opted for instead. When her hand met Steph’s shoulder this time, she didn’t shrug it away.

“You’re embarrassing me,” Steph bit the inside of her cheek and mumbled in that sort of petulant way she did when she couldn’t admit what she actually wanted to say. In this case, four words. Deirdre didn’t mind it.

Softly, Deirdre asked, “Do you want me to leave you alone?” Steph nodded. “Are you going to be okay?” Steph didn’t respond. “Do you want to go home?” Steph nodded, then shook her head. “Do you want me to push Kelly down the stairs?” Steph let out a small, watery laugh, swiping at her eyes. She shook her head. “Do you want to talk to Mammy?” Steph looked up at Morgan, then quickly back at the ground. Heat rose to her cheeks, and Deirdre let her hand fall away from her daughter’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to her first, how does that sound?” Steph nodded and Deirdre reluctantly left her to catch up to the group on her own.

Beside her wife now, Deirdre wrapped her arm around her waist and leaned in slowly for a simple kiss against her temple. She tried her best to pull them back into their own little bubble again, out of earshot of the students. The guide seemed more enthusiastic as Kelly made it a point to ask questions, in a show of her best, irrefutable behaviour now.

“I remember when I was like that,” she started softly, “you’re only so powerful as long as you’re paid attention to; as long as you’re important. And it’s easy to make sure you’re the only person people are looking at.” She paused. The guide was leading them into the ‘Queens of Egypt’ section of the exhibit now, through a thin dark tube-shaped corridor illuminated by fluorescent recreations of hieroglyphics. They stopped inside to marvel at the art, Deirdre turned around to watch Steph’s lanky frame be coloured by blues and purples. “You know she wants to talk to you, right?”

Morgan shivered under Deirdre’s touch. It took most of her nerve not to melt into her completely. She watched Kelly hold court among the other students, the confidence in her shoulders and the swish of her hair. “I never had that,” she said.”Did it ever feel as great as it looked?”

But Deirdre hadn’t found her smooth out her hurt with dry repartee. Deirdre, and her absurd, unimaginable, wise love, was trying to fix their family. Morgan shook her head. “She wants to be something she’s not. Like that.” She nodded toward Kelly. “She wants everything we did. Because that’s just life, apparently.” But she slid her gaze back to her daughter, unable to help herself, and she remembered not being able to be small enough, good enough, enough enough, and she wanted Deidre to be right.

“What could we even say? I’m—not even me right now. It’s not like how we are at home. I shouldn’t have built up any idea that it would be in my head.”

Kelly was swishing through the crowd to get a better look at the jewels, trying to superimpose her reflection on them and decree them ugly at the same time.

Morgan turned her face into her wife’s shoulder, the better to hide the frustration on her face. “My gods, but I wish I could do something to Kelly besides write her up to the fucking office. That never does anything.”

“The unfortunate part is that it did, most of the time, feel just as great as it looked.” Deirdre sighed, pressing her lips to Morgan’s head again, hoping her wife would let her hold her closer, as if they weren’t meant to be responsible, respectable adults right then. “My love, who are you if you’re not you? Who are you meant to be right now?” Deirdre’s voice became soft, and her eyes softer. In time, her hand found Morgan’s and she squeezed. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting something to be good, you know that. There’s nothing wrong with having some hopes or expectations. I’m sorry the day wasn’t all that you wanted, but the day isn’t over just yet.” She smiled, wishing she could transfer some of her energy to Morgan. It was the death around her that buzzed like a beehive in her chest, and her love for Morgan that gave it all a home. But she was also not meant to be anyone’s teacher right now. She was wife and she was mother, and those were two things she could always be, and two things she always was. “I love you,” she said, “and I do think you are magic.”

Her eyes followed Morgan’s to Kelly who, in an agonizing play-by-play of Deirdre’s own school persona, held her head high and her smiles wide. “We could do something,” she mused. If Kelly really was anything like she had once been, all they needed to do was pull the rug out from under her feet. They could be vicious about it, even. But Kelly was still a child, and Deirdre didn’t know what felt fair. For her daughter, she would’ve done anything, for Morgan, she thought it was wise not to completely terrorize her student. Maybe they could get that attention back onto Steph, she knew a lot more about the ancient Egyptians than any of the other children. And she had things to say about death, and mummies and curses. But what if they only made things worse for their daughter, who sometimes seemed as though nothing was ever right for her? “I could make my eyes go black and pretend I’ve been cursed and then touch her. Maybe she’ll think she’s caught something and throw a fit. Or maybe you can throw your hand at her or…” Deirdre trailed off, “what do you think, my love?”

Morgan hid her face in Deirdre again as the last of her dry, stiff shell fell away. “I love you too,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry about everything until this point. I’m not helping, I know I’m not. I don’t know how you take such good care of us when I get all—” She sniffled and gestured vaguely, trusting her wife to fill in the missing words.

She thought Deirdre had some good ideas, actually. Most of hers involved fae allies they didn’t actually have at their disposal. A little staircase critter to bite the wedge heel off her shoes, some pixies to glamour her face into some really bad acne… before she knew it, Morgan was laughing as the images piled on. “It’s funny you mention my hand because I was actually kind of thinking of putting a finger or two in her bag and pretending to discover it. Or outsourcing some help to make her look foolish, but I haven’t spotted any ghosts and you would’ve noticed any fae by now.” She plucked her knife out of her purse and looked up at her wife, all herself again. “Is it too mean if you crack some glass in front of her so she thinks there really is a curse?”

“Don’t be sorry,” Deirdre said with a smile. “You’re not doing anything wrong.” Comfort was as easy to give as it always had been; love, understanding and patience had never been particularly hard. Not for her family. And it was even easier to say that Morgan was always worthy of her best care, just as Steph was. It was, of course, similarly easy to plan mischief. And Deirdre did so with a grin, and another kiss before silently securing the plan with Morgan and going off to get it all done. In her expression, sentiments that a century had made obsolete in the spoken word moved between them. Be careful was in her eyes, don’t hurt yourself was the way her lips curled up, and I love you was everywhere, but most of all the way her fingers lingered in the air after they parted. She caught Steph’s confused gaze back in the corridor, and winked.

Kelly had become bored, with no challenge to her position and the realization that now she did actually have to listen to the guide, there was nothing to do. She had begun tapping at the display glass, sighing and moping around as her friends tried desperately to find something interesting to cheer her up. When she reached a bust of Hatshepsut encased in glass, she traced the outline of her face with her fingers; the nose, the jaw, the eyes, over and over again as the guide struggled to keep the attention of the children.

“Hatshepsut had her own curse, you know,” Deirdre smiled at Kelly who, to her credit, did not care. And, to Deirdre’s convenience, wanted to be vocal about it.

“This exhibit sucks. The pharaoh’s are boring and no one cares about the queens.” Kelly sighed, forlorn in her disposition.

At once, Deirdre screamed, earning herself the gaze of every child and guide in attendance. Easily, she laughed the sound off, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought something touched my shoulder! Must have been the heating.” As attention shifted away from Deirdre, it fell on to the display of Hatshepsut, now sporting web-like cracks under Kelly’s frozen fingers. The murmurs started quiet before they were an uproar of stating the obvious.

Kelly drew her hand back, “t-that wasn’t me! I didn’t do that!”

Morgan could only spare a moment to admire her wife as they parted. (Her achingly soft, beautiful wife with her forgiveness and her wisdom and her chaos. You would never guess who she’d been, would never imagine how much good she was capable of.) Slicing her own finger off was a trick she’d become very good at, but that didn’t make hiding it any easier. But Deirdre screamed and the eyes in the room turned and her knife went through her pinky, just above the knuckle. She cradled it in her palm, careful to keep as much of the black-green liquid that drooled off the skin as possible.

“Okay, everyone!” She called, bright and commanding as a teacher should be. She waded through the students and herded them along into the last room. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Kelly, come on honey, get away from there before anything else happens.”

Kelly nodded, whimpering, and didn’t think twice about nice Mrs. Dolan putting a hand on her back, or hovering by her open bag. Morgan dropped the finger in, smiling warmly at the girl as she did it. “Be careful,” she said, teasing gently. “The stories say broken glass foretold each death of the curse.” The stories said no such thing, but Kelly would never know that.

The little girl nodded, flushed with embarrassment, and hurried off to join her friends. Morgan patted her bag as if sending her off and pop. Out came one dead little pinky.

One of the students lagging behind screamed.

“Uh, Kelly?” Morgan called.

The other students at the back of the line were pointing, gaping at the finger with disgusted wonder.

“I wasn’t running, Mrs. Dolan, I was just catching up so I wouldn’t get lost.”

Morgan picked the finger off the floor and held it up high to make sure everyone else in the group saw it. “You dropped something, honey. Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

“Ew! I don’t know what that is, it’s not mine!” Kelly protested.

“I saw it fall out of her bag,” Connor McCarthy said.

“I saw it too! I thought I smelled something weird!” Soon students who were in front of Kelly had somehow sensed all along that she had a weird dead finger in her bag, and the more Kelly protested, the more everyone was convinced of the lie.

“We can settle this at school,” Morgan chided. “Come on, there are much more impressive dead bodies in the exhibit than whatever weird props your classmates are hiding.”

The guide, bless their heart, distractedly sped through their prepared speech of the last room, and after Morgan dragged Connor McCarthy away from the broken glass (he wanted to have just a piece as a souvenir), she was able to drift over to where Steph was: in the back, too bewildered to risk getting close to the others just yet.

“Hey, bugaboo,” she whispered, warm where she had once been cool. “Are you hanging in there okay?”

Steph couldn’t look at her Mam, her cheeks hurt from where she bit their insides to stop from laughing. And they burned where guilt and embarrassment scorched them red. She turned to look at her Ma, who was engrossed in conversation with the employees about the nature of the glass used, and if it was on the fossil exhibits too. Kelly was ahead, screeching about her innocence. And here was her Mammy, talking to her after everything. Steph wanted to say she was sorry, but ended up kicking invisible rocks away on the ground.

“Um,” she kicked at more rocks. “I know it doesn’t hurt but you don’t have to chop off your finger, it’s weird.” Steph’s face burned hotter, her gaze stronger on the tiles below. She didn’t want to say it was weird; it wasn’t weird. It was cool, even if it made her scared sometimes that it wouldn’t grow back one day. She wanted to say thank you, even if her heart was hammering in her chest and her eyes kept darting up to her Mam’s hand, trying to see if the finger had come back by now. Her mind raced and her tongue struggled to catch up. “I’m–Um–You’re…”

Slowly, in trembles and hiccups, Steph cracked. A flood of tears met her dark eyes and she turned to bury herself into her Mammy’s shoulder. She didn’t care who saw, it didn’t matter so much anymore. She cried like she was eight and had tripped over one of the garden rocks and wondered why it hurt so much, and why her insides were so red. She cried like it was movie night, and one scene of harsh flashing lights and loud banging scared her so much she had to hide behind her Mammy. She cried like Persephone might, and called for her Mammy without a care for how childish it sounded. She didn’t even mind being called bugaboo. She was happy her Mam was talking to her at all, and she had so much to say. But first there was, “I’m sorry.”

Morgan wrapped her arms around her daughter. What hurt she harbored was washed away by those little tears on her shoulder. “Oh, little bug,” she sighed. “I love you always. No matter what happens, no matter what you do, I love you always.” She kissed her head. “I forgive you, and we are okay, and you will be okay. Just as you are. Because that girl, the one you are when you aren’t pretending, she’s the best kid I know.”

She gave her another kiss and another squeeze, then looked up in search of her wife, and smiled bigger than she had all day when she found her. “I was thinking,” she said, “Why don’t we do something tonight, after we finish up with school. We’re all in town together for a change, and it’s October tomorrow, maybe we can make the most of it. See a show, go to that burger place you like so much, at least get an early start on Samhain season, huh?” She pulled back and brushed her hand over her daughter’s face to wipe her tears. “Think about it, at least. Let me know what you decide when we get back to school?”

Steph nodded quickly, laughing and sniffling through being fussed with. The back of her hand was good enough to wipe tears away with, but her Mammy’s hands were better and they buzzed and tickled wherever they went. Steph shivered from the cold and laughed again, meeting her Mammy’s eyes finally. “Yeah, I’d like that,” she said with a few more sniffles and laughs. “I love you too,” she mumbled through her hands.

When Deirdre met up with her daughter and wife, her arms went around both for as long as she could manage until Steph squirmed free. Ahead, one of the girls was waving and calling Steph over, and with her a few joined in, eager to get their classement to join them in whatever they were looking at. And when they noticed their teacher lagging behind too, they called out again. Excitedly, Steph looked between her mothers before taking her Mammy’s hand and trying to drag her forward. “We still have to go through the fossils! And I wanna see the mummy again before we go. Come on! Come on, Mammy! Ugh, you two move so slow.” Moving behind them, Steph tried to push her mothers from the back, finding that they were both much heavier and that the floor was much more slippery than she thought.

Deirdre laughed and urged Steph to go ahead without them for a moment, if only to steal time to kiss Morgan before she had to work again. “That seemed like it was pretty good to me,” she smiled.

Morgan took Deirdre’s hand and ambled slowly. She would catch up eventually, and maybe slip a tip to the guide for taking up some of her duties without being warned. But for now, her hope was brushing against her fingertips, better than any caress from the living. “It really was. Thanks to you.” She leaned against her wife as they walked, not caring how intimate they seemed to anyone.

Steph was already bouncing back and chattering with one of her real friends, holding her head just a little higher as she pointed out something in a photograph of the Book of the Dead. In the spring, she would be thirteen and even more like the vision Morgan had seen in a magic mirror more than an age ago. Morgan would hold her breath each day in fear that some horrible accident would force a pair of moth wings to cut through her daughter’s little back. A few more years beyond that, they would have to start seriously discussing what choices they would make for activating her if fate hadn’t made that choice for them already. And in the time after that, they would all have to learn how to be happy again, as everyone did at least once while they lived.

But for now, the little girl that made the seasons turn for Morgan was smiling and looking at her mothers with so much love it seemed impossible to imagine they could be parted. For now, home was more than an address in Ireland and a blue cottage never quite done. It was in the pressure of her wife’s hand, the glimmer in her daughter’s eye, the rush of affection in her own chest, better than any human heartbeat.

“Come on, my love,” Morgan said, rising on her toes. She kissed Deirdre’s cheek and pulled her ahead, quickening their pace. “Let’s not miss the best parts.”

[mor-beck-more-problems]

The Sweets We Wish For || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: This morning

LOCATION: Morgan & Deirdre’s house

PARTIES: @deathduty @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan Beck, dead girl walking for fourteen months and counting, feels a world of difference.

CONTAINS: N/A

Morgan opened her eyes feeling like there were spiders crawling on her back. She jolted upright, kicking the sheets away and--- “What the fuck.” Morgan Beck, dead girl walking for fourteen months and counting, felt. She brought her fingers to the sheets and rubbed her fingers over the surface. There was that feeling again. This soft-but-prickly all over tingle, this swarm of something. Had silk sheets always been like this? Was something happening to her brain? Her nerves? Morgan retracted her hand and turned to Deirdre, who was already waking up beside her.

She opened her mouth, trying to do something other than gape in confusion at her. This couldn’t be a spell, right? Her energy didn’t react to magic that way. But then that weird preternatural dream thing had gotten her once. Was everyone’s senses dialed up to eleven? This didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. “...Babe, uh...something’s…” Wrong? Maybe? Or not? “This is gonna sound really weird, but can you touch me real quick? But just a little bit?”

Thunk, thunk, thunk—Kaden’s body tumbled gracelessly down a spiraling, never-ending set of stairs as Deirdre stood above, holding a squirming Morgan in her arms. Her mind told her that Morgan was simply dancing to praise the death of Kaden (as all ought to) but her body told another story. Warmth filled her senses one moment only to be lost in another. In bright spots, the vision of Kaden’s rolling body was replaced with the interior of their bedroom, and the Morgan in her arms was the Morgan sat up beside her. A strange expression played on her love’s face, and Deirdre groaned as her mind struggled to put pieces together. “Now…?” She mumbled, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her palms. “At this hour?” Not that she was objecting, she wanted to explain, just that she was a little too tired. “If that’s what you want, my love.” With another groan, she rolled half on top of Morgan, pointing at their nightstand. “I think the bite guard and the handcuffs are back in there.” And with a yawn, she smacked her lips together and rested her head against Morgan’s shoulder, pressing a tired, gentle kiss to her cheek. “If you just give me a moment to wake up I can…” Deirdre trailed off, yawning again, this time expelling her hot breath across Morgan’s skin.

Morgan looked bewildered at her love, then at their window, where morning light was just barely coming through. Oh. It was still early. “I’m--no, not exactly--oh, my love--” Morgan tried to find words to explain what was happening to her, but she still wasn’t sure. As Deirdre came closer, her insides clenched. She didn’t know whether to dread her touch or ache for it. “W-wait--” Something’s wrong with my body. Or different. And do the sheets feel weird to you? Morgan could have said any of those, but she said nothing, because as soon as Deirdre’s head touched her, Morgan gasped and forgot how to make air flow. Then Deirdre was kissing her, and cold wasn’t enough of a word for it.

“Mother fucking Earth!” She cried, shrinking away. “That’s--you’re--” Morgan hovered her fingers over the spot where Deirdre had kissed her. She flinched, squeaking out a cry over her skin... “Cold! You’re freezing cold! And I’m cold! Or maybe it’s just our room that’s cold? And the sheets are--I don’t even know! I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening, but I--” She held out her hands between them as if the answer might be written somewhere on them. Of course they weren’t, so she looked up at Deirdre, more bewildered than ever. “I-I...feel things. Like...feel-feel. Like before or maybe…even more.”

The early morning had its way of clouding the processes of the mind; Deirdre’s eyes grew wide as Morgan pulled away. Then they flickered shut as she pulled her hands back. It had been so long since someone shrieked at her coldness; for a moment, it spurred only bitter memories, a fog which threatened to color even Morgan’s old delight at her cold fingers, a delight she hadn’t seen in over a year. Deirdre’s eyes opened, finding thin streaks of rising sun spilling across their dark silk sheets. There was something about the morning. Deirdre snapped her attention to Morgan, her eyes grew wide again. This time, she was grinning.

“I’m cold!” Deirdre pointed at herself, tumbling off the bed, “I’m cold! That’s me!” It was too good to believe that Morgan was feeling her suddenly--this must’ve been some new sort of dream, the kind that felt too real--but as she nodded along to Morgan’s jumbled thoughts, she felt like it was the most clear assumption. She crouched down at the edge of the bed, looking up at her girlfriend. Slowly, she reached her hand out and trailed her fingers across Morgan’s. Deirdre paused there, watching her reaction before she continued and wrapped their hands together. Once upon a time, Morgan had tingled; she felt like fire against her skin. Their first night together Deirdre thought she might melt into Morgan. “Y-You’re still cold,” she said, brows furrowed together. It made sense for a zombie, of course, but not for this dream. Not for any drug she knew. Frantic, she pressed the back of her hand to Morgan's forehead, as if only her hands might’ve been suffering from poor circulation; she was cold—just as cold as Deirdre. “No, no, that isn’t right.” Deirdre fell back with a heave, lost in her thoughts.

Morgan finally brought her eyes up to Deirdre in the quiet, remembering how she felt about her skin as she tried to process her body. “I-I’m just--I didn’t mean to--” But when Dierdre looked up at her, she was smiling with more light than Morgan had seen in a long time.

She followed her love like she might hold all the answers, crawling to the edge in spite of how her skin twitched with surprise and reaching over to meet her fingers. This time, when they touched, it was slow. Morgan braced herself for the full body shiver that rippled through her. The familiar words she had spoken when she was alive rushed to her mind but after a year of dull pressure, nothing in her vocabulary seemed sufficient. “You’re--I don’t even know how to--” Tears rose to her eyes as she mouthed stupidly, struggling for words. “You’re soft and smooth and cold but you’re so alive, I can feel how alive you are when you touch me, you’re incredible--” Her words trailed off as she shivered, all her conditioning lost to time.

“I’m cold too?” She asked, slow on the uptake. Her skin was still ash white and she did have goosebumps all over. But as Morgan sat with the feeling, she decided her cold was more stiff and stagnant. It wasn’t the strange death-in-life plunge she felt when pressed against Deirdre. She followed her love to the ground and reached for her hand, hesitated, then brushed their fingertips together. “It’s been so long I can’t tell if this is how the world used to be or if something’s turned up my sensitivity to a million. But you’re--” Morgan moved her fingers to Deirdre’s lips, tracing the outline as lightly as possible and gasping with tears when she felt how much more delicate they were than the rest of her. She did the same with Deirdre’s ear, her hair, always with the lightest of touches. “You feel real. Like, more real than anything in my memories. This is real, I’m r-really--I’m here.” She let out a quiet, tearful laugh of amazement. “Can I kiss you? Um, gently? I’m still trying to process whatever this is, but I will never forgive myself if I pass up the chance to learn what it feels like to kiss you again.”

It must have been a strange dream then, destined to be cruel in its ending, but how could Deirdre deny the look of wonder upon her love’s face? The cynicism, the weariness inside of her, dissolved quickly under Morgan’s rediscovery. In that moment, it didn’t matter to her if she was caught in a dream, or if Morgan’s sudden feeling was a dangerous infliction, all she could remember were the evenings soaked with tears, the nights plagued by the loss Morgan suffered. Their lovemaking, contorted to Morgan’s desperation to feel. It was absurd to question that she would even consider freezing her love out of the sensations she deserved. Her happiness said enough for Deirdre. She burned where they touched, she whimpered where they parted.

“Yes,” she breathed, smiling wide. “Yes, please, my love.” Deirdre leaned in, stopping just shy of Morgan’s lips with all the trepidation of a first kiss. She would let Morgan close the distance between them, but in the seconds she waited in twisting anticipation, her eyes darted between her love’s own and then her lips, her ears, her hair. They all appeared unchanged, just as beautiful as she remembered—as magnetic as always. She’d never forgive Morgan either if she passed up the chance to kiss her now.  

Morgan trembled as Deirdre came close enough for her to feel her breath.”I forgot what morning breath smelled like,” she whispered, giggling. “How on earth do you put up with mine every day?” Before Deirdre could answer, Morgan guided her the rest of the way with her fingertips and brushed their lips together. Then again, and again, lingering in place. “Mmmm...more people need to kiss more banshees. Really--” Another kiss, more firm than before. “A much under-researched field of study. Because I don’t know what the words for this are anymore, nothing feels right enough.” She took Deirdre’s face and kissed her the way she wanted to for as long as she could until she couldn’t hold the unreal novelty of comfort and love rendered into something her touch could decode any longer.

“Have you ever heard of this happening? Should we be worried right now, or--” She trailed off, entranced by her sense of Deirdre’s hair. There was so much of it, a million little threads, so fine they felt like almost nothing by themselves but something like a cloud, maybe, when stroked by the handful. How could she have ever taken gentleness like her love’s hair for granted?

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot about—“ Deirdre’s sentence muffled against Morgan’s lips, forgotten in favour of a much more pressing matter. The kisses felt the same for her, of course, but that didn’t mean she was any less enraptured—kissing Morgan at any moment seemed to have that effect. “Well, I’ve always thought you’d look cute in a lab coat,” Deirdre smiled and stole a kiss of her own. “For science.” Deirdre could think of a lot of words to describe it, though Morgan was right, none of it could ever be accurate enough. “I love you,” she mumbled; that felt apt to say. She was reluctant to touch Morgan as they settled, worried she’d send her shivering back, so she kept her hands planted chastely on the carpet.

“Definitely worried.” Deirdre said simply, smiling with ease. The statement, however plain, did not upset or surprise her. “This sort of thing absolutely does not happen. Ever. Not unless someone slipped you some drug. Or this is a dream—though, is it yours or mine?” Deirdre hummed, playing with the thought for only a second. It didn’t matter. She glanced down at Morgan, watching amazement flicker across her features. “It doesn’t matter, my love. If you could see the look on your face, you’d know that too.” Days, weeks, haunted by mourning. Deirdre knew them well; she didn’t resent them, she didn’t even mind them, but her memories flared with them. Morgan curled under weighted blankets. Morgan floating atop their pool. The answer to her agony was partly this one simple thing: feeling. What did it matter if it was too good to be true? Many of the greatest things were: love, kisses, comfort and finding a fresh carcass under the summer sun. If this dream was going to end, it didn’t matter. Deirdre would be there, and she’d see them to a gentle end.

“If you can feel again, maybe we should take out the handcuffs…” Deirdre paused, “I’m joking. You seemed like you could barely handle the silk. Do you think you just need a moment to get used to everything again?”

Morgan let her hands fall to the carpet near Deirdre’s, just close enough that the space between them felt charged with their not touching. She tugged on the fibers, a little less unnerved by their density now that she knew what was going on. Then she looked at her love and might as well have been a teenager on her first date. “I never dream anymore,” Morgan said, leaning in again, her lips brushing Deirdre’s only when she pursed them to speak. “Or maybe I do now. Maybe it’s time for a nap. Cold pillows always did make me drowsy…” She shied away and ghosted her lips down her love’s neck and shoulder.

“I feel like...I absolutely want to try sex while whatever’s happening is happening, but also maybe doing that right now would be a ticket for a really not fun panic attack, So I--Earth and Stars, there is nothing in the universe that feels like you. You’re better than snow, better than anything I ever said, than anything I understand right now--” She kissed her shoulder and carefully brought her cheek down to rest there. “I love you. Adjusting sounds good. Maybe help me get downstairs for breakfast?” At the thought of food, Morgan sucked on her love’s neck. “Mmm. You’re salty-sweet. No surprise there, except that it’s way too addicting for someone this easily overstimulated.” She continued, inhaling deep and moaning at Deirdre’s scent. To her, it was as powerful as divinity. It made her think of cherries, sandalwood, and soft dark soil. And there was something else, bitter and intoxicating, something that had no memory or word besides Deirdre in Morgan’s mind, too fae to be categorized. “...hey, just so we’re clear, I’m still dead, right? You sense me like you did before?”

“Morgan…” Deirdre breathed, snapping her attention away. She flushed now, embarrassed to be treated as if she was the eighth world wonder. For a year now, Morgan hadn’t been able to say anything about the way she smelt, felt or tasted. It was almost too much to hear it all at once. Almost. Her fingers twitched, her body shivered as if sparks ran under her skin. “Definitely my dream then…” she mumbled, and then at once decided her theory of this being a dream was moot—there was too little murder and far too many compliments. Her mind didn’t usually conjure such creative images. But the wonder in Morgan’s voice and reverence in which she took Deirdre in, all of that felt like a dream. She closed her eyes, the carpet had begun digging into her palms, and she was sweating in ice cold droplets down her back. Her lips parted as she breathed. And in time, with a curse spilled in Gaelic against her tongue, she gave in and wrapped her arms around Morgan, holding her gently.

“You are still dead,” Deirdre explained, tangling her fingers in Morgan’s bed-messied hair. She was careful to be gentle, and more to be slow. She began first by playing with small strands of Morgan’s hair. “You still feel dead. I can feel you like a hand around my heart.”

Slowly, she took Morgan’s wrist in her grip. “I can’t feel a heartbeat, either.” Which only served to confuse Deirdre; nothing she knew about had this sort of effect. It must’ve been magic, she thought, but from where? By who? Why? Then she shifted, “here, shall we get up now and start moving?”

Morgan gasped to feel Deirdre around her all at once. She was a current and she was a rock, she was a body and a force of nature, she was melting and she was safe. Deirdre was more things in one movement than Morgan knew how to name or process, but she welcomed them all.

She sighed and went back to memorizing the taste of her love’s skin. “What if we try everything in the freezer until I can figure out what you taste like,” she suggested, only half-teasing. “You know, for scientific purposes.” She rose to her feet without letting go of Deirdre in the usual way she had. She was curious about the rest of the world in their house with the petrified wonder of a child, but she was more eager to re-discover her love in a new language. So she kept herself fastened to Deirdre’s side as they left their room and awkwardly climbed downstairs.

“Carpet is weird,” she mumbled. “I know it’s soft but it’s also kind of itchy and dense, right? It’s not one thing, I don’t know how we were so casual about walking barefoot on it for so—” Morgan’s foot slipped and her leg went out from under her and she reached for the bannister to steady herself but it was not enough and she fell the rest of the way, only a little slower now, until she finally stopped and landed on her clumsy foot. For one breath, everything was alright like it would have been the day before. In the next, pain rushed in.

Morgan had forgotten about body pain. Impact was one thing. Impact had become a comfort. When Deirdre made love to her, Morgan begged for more impact, more pressure. She wanted to be found. She wanted to know that love could pierce through the dullness of death even if it stung. This was different. Morgan felt the air on her raw skin as if for the first time, gasping and choking on how furiously it burned. And her leg. It was a little swollen, and her ankle didn’t look right, and when she tried to move it, the pain shot up all the way to her throat and she cried out, covering her mouth too late to smother the sound completely. There was hardly any blood, just a thin black smear down her calf and strips of skin scraped clean. It was fine. She was fine. Just hurt. Hurt was a feeling just like anything else. Then the flesh on Morgan’s leg moved and the bones in her ankle inched back toward their old shape and there was nothing within Morgan terrible enough to understand the preternatural agony of feeling her body try to mend itself on a hungry stomach. She curled in on herself, crying and trembling and screaming under her hands until there was no air left in her lungs.

Head tilted to the ceiling, Deirdre barked out in laughter, water growing in the corner of her eyes. With a pittering exhale, she pressed closer to Morgan. “Very funny,” she chastised, finding only amusement in her voice, “I don’t taste like anything frozen, I assure you.” Deirdre pressed a soft kiss to Morgan’s cheek as they rose, as if chasing her on the way up. “And I might get jealous if you mention the freezer too much.” Now it was her turn to tease and she did so with a bright smile, falling easily into step with her girlfriend. “I’ll think you’re trying to replace me.”

And in strange fortune and obvious curse, someone did end up tumbling down a flight of stairs. Not anyone she would have liked to, though. Deirdre reached for Morgan feebily, flesh slipping through her fingers. She rushed down after her love, just inches from tumbling down for herself. “Morgan--” She tried to speak over the screaming to a similar futile effort. She watched skin recede and bones recede into place; what was once a beautiful marker of Morgan’s zombism, now felt like a terrifying reminder of things out-of-place. What was worse, breaking a bone or having a bone snap back in place? How about both?

Deirdre crouched down, hadn’t she wailed just like this the first time one of her bones were broken? She wrapped one cold hand around Morgan’s now-healed ankle, as if trauma were only fiction; and pressed the other to her calf, equally ignorant to memory. “It’s okay,” she began calmly, just under Morgan’s crying, “you’re okay, just give it a moment. It’s okay.” She counted five beats before she tugged Morgan into her arms, sitting with her on their cold, dark hardwood. “Carpet is weird,” she answered slowly, “it’s kind of like wooly grass...if grass was that thick. Oh, my love, grass is going to feel so strange to you again. When I was a child, I liked to bunch it all up in my fingers and pull. I’m not sure why I did that. Must’ve been a nervous habit.” And when Deirdre was sure her nonsensical talk had lulled--though perhaps time had done that without her help--she kissed the top of Morgan’s head and looked at her. “How are you feeling right now?”

Morgan was grateful for the sudden rush of freezing softness that enveloped her through Deirdre’s arms. She couldn’t look away from her body, the skin papering itself over, the leg hair pushing through the new flesh, the swelling turning flat. She had never been afraid of this part of herself before. But now she caught each little mend with a prick and a whimper. Something was wrong. She couldn’t tell anymore which part of her it was, everything about feeling her insides race to fix themselves was very, very, very wrong. She should have been more worried. She should have been more careful.

Deirdre’s words finally reached her and Morgan latched on. Wooly grass. Handfuls of green earth in a child’s fingers. Yes, that sounded really good about now. Morgan took in a shuddering breath, then another. She closed her eyes. The pain was gone. All she was holding onto now was fear. When she opened her eyes again, there was Deirdre, filling up her whole world. “A little more nervous than I was a minute ago,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. She sniffled. “I probably should’ve figured feeling everything again meant feeling...everything again. I-it wasn’t a serious thing. When I felt it--” Her voice snagged on the memory and she eased herself slowly into Deirdre’s arms to push it away. There was her smell again, and the foral whiff of laundry on her robe. “It was just my ankle. I’m okay.” She said it a few more times to reassure herself as well. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.

Morgan breathed again and dropped as much of her fear as she knew how and held onto Deirdre just a little tighter instead. She kissed her love’s shoulder and lifted her head so her tremulous words wouldn’t get lost against her skin. “Maybe we could try to get to breakfast again? Nothing complicated. And maybe you can stay close while I try to get used to...existing, I guess? I-I know something bad is probably happening right now. And that scares me. But it also scares me that feeling the world again will have to stop. And I don’t want to spend all this time being scared.” She sniffled. “I want my life with you back.”

Deirdre pressed a hand to Morgan’s cheek, pausing just shy of roughly rubbing at her skin, thumb hovering in the air. The pressure she once needed to apply was habitual, woven into her body’s understanding of Morgan just as old memories of gentleness were. It took her only a second to adjust again, tucking loose strands of hair behind Morgan’s hair—promptly bounced free again with their fluffy nature—as she softly traced the bones of her face. “Everyone forgets about pain until it happens,” she smiled. “Paper cuts, stubbed toes…all of them hurt with the shock of it; no one wants to remember exactly how things hurt. And you shouldn’t worry; I don’t think you have to live your life worried about all the ways you can be hurt anymore. So,” Deirdre kissed Morgan as she helped them both to their feet, catching Morgan’s weight in case her ankle still tingled, “personally, I don’t know what there is to be nervous about. You’ll have to tell me if anything still makes you feel like that.”

At the mention of breakfast food, Deirdre eyed the stove, still several steps away. Since it was a little earlier than their usual waking time, the cats hadn’t stirred yet either, but she knew the sound of cooking would call them over like some kind of lighthouse to hungry, hungry shores. “How about pancakes?” She started one step at a time, slow and steady and careful. Left foot. Right foot. A pause to make sure Morgan was following along okay. Left foot. Right fo— Deirdre stumbled.

She was back to standing stiffly only a moment later, but for a second, she had stumbled. “Bad,” she repeated, gut churning and lips pulled thin. Yes, all of this probably did mean something bad, she knew that. She had been thinking that. But it was different to hear it confirmed from Morgan. “I-I’m sure it’s not that bad,” she argued nervously in a soft voice, “I’m sure it’s nothing to really be worried about at all.” She smiled thin, anxiously tugging Morgan closer to her. Bad had only been a thought until now, but if Morgan thought so too then…we’ll, it was rare that both of them were ever wrong. And as much as Deirdre knew about death, she wasn’t any sort of zombie expert. This peculiar sudden burst of feeling wasn’t normal, and didn’t come with the warmth or heartbeat it should’ve if it was a drug. She didn’t know what it was, and that frightened her too. “You’re going to be okay,” Deirdre was nearly angry in her insistence. There was a good possibility that Morgan wasn’t suddenly becoming more alive but turning more dead. Deirdre refused it. “Right?” She begged, dragging herself flush against Morgan. If Morgan was going to die again, she wouldn’t know, and that was a fact that terrified her everyday. Deirdre liked knowing things, most people did. “I don’t—I don’t want to spend this time being scared either. But, I…” she swallowed thickly and closed her eyes. “I love you so much, Morgan. Always. If this is something bad can we just…can we just…” She wanted to suggest forgetting it for now, but thought about how much worse it would be to not know. Caught between the two ideas, she floundered for a moment before she gestured for them to keep walking. It was okay. It was okay. It was okay.

Morgan lifted her tear-stained face to her love and watched her thoughts play out on her expression with avid devotion. She strained upwards to caress Deirdre’s jaw with little kisses as she gave her wisdom (because that was something Morgan could do now; she could be so gentle, and so tender, and feel every ripple of sensation at the same time) and nodded along with the plan she was constructing to supplement her own in such a way that her cheek rubbed against Deirdre’s skin.

“Pancakes sound perfect. But you’ll have to stay extra close in case I burn my hand on the skillet again,” she said, voice light. She had gotten better, but the skillet liked to get the better of her and her once-dead nerves at least once a week.

Then Deirdre stumbled and her wise and wonderful confidence fell away and Morgan ached with how clearly her fear was imprinted on her body, her touch. “Hey…” She said. “We don’t know anything for sure. For all we know; this is just my White Crest trauma talking. But either way, I’ll be okay. I’m dead, not gone. And it is really, seriously hard to get rid of me at this point.” Now that she was speaking up to soothe her love, Morgan’s words came easier. She sounded so confident she almost started to believe herself.

Morgan kept still and held herself in place with Deirdre, who was getting desperate to submerge them safely away from their concerns. “I’m okay,” she said again and turned Deirdre’s face to look down at hers. “I love you too. More every day and always, always, Deirdre. And I am okay.” She kissed her as tenderly as she knew how and lingered, forehead pressed to forehead. “Neither of us want to live in fear and neither of us want to ignore a chance to be proactive about finding out what’s happening. So I’m thinking…we give ourselves today to be happy. I want to sample everything there is to sense in our little world. I want to learn the right words of everything I’ve been missing out on. I want to know how it feels for you to have your way with me. I want to feel you and everything that makes up my life like I never stopped. And tomorrow, we can start looking for answers in whatever White Crest bullshit is going on now. Tomorrow, not a minute before.” Another kiss. “So no eulogizing. Just be with me. Show me how life is. Okay?” She pulled back and gave Deirdre a bright smile. “And, most importantly of all: decide if you’re brave enough to try my brain sausage with your pancakes.”

On the days where fear grew large and vicious, where the loss of Morgan was fanged and snarling, Deirdre kept herself afloat with a small hope; a tiny idea that she could trust in the world allowing them to have the space they’d so carefully carved out. Didn’t they deserve it? Though, the more Deirdre followed that line of reasoning, the worse she felt; she was a murderer, torturer, apathetic and destructive weapon of a creature. What she actually deserved was very obvious. So, she never let herself think that far. She let her thoughts rest on her small hope, praying it wouldn’t be crushed one day—and of all days, not today. Deirdre closed her eyes and let Morgan’s words wash over her. Her small hopes always felt a little stronger with Morgan there. “Okay,” she breathed, opening her eyes. “I’m sorry. I love you.” And meeting Morgan in a kiss of her own—it was of Deirdre’s expert opinion that kisses be divided equally among them, as she explained to Morgan many days ago, stealing kisses when she could—her hope stretched and smothered her fear for the moment and she smiled again. Morgan said she was okay, and Deirdre chose to believe it. “Just don’t expect brains to feel like normal meat. It’s a little more creamy, or like jelly depending.” She paused, “I’ve had some of your brains before.”

It was easy then, to move forth as though things were truly okay. Morgan was in her arms, touching her, kissing her. Her hands rose to Morgan’s face, keeping her still, tracing pores and the lines her tears followed when they spilled. She kissed her again, sealing her hope there and pulled them along to the kitchen. She left Morgan to get acquainted with the countertops and the tile as she fetched ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, eggs, butter. The flour rained in small spurts when she put everything down, looking at Morgan. “How do you want to do this?” Deirdre smiled, knowing their usual division of labour was Morgan doing most (all) of the work and Deirdre doing the odd cutting job and the dishes at the end. This time, though, she wanted to do more. Her excitement portrayed in her holding the pan up, deferring to Morgan.

Morgan skated her toes along the tile. She remembered pretending to be Nancy Kerrigan in her worn out socks when she was a kid. The kitchens she’d grown up in had never been as smooth as this. The holes snagged on little chips and rough patches. She could only do circles a few feet wide. But the summer was humid. There was something slick about their wide, polished tiles, and she could spread the tips of her toes as far as she could reach and glide as if they were a single, icy blade.

She giggled, and looked up to explain to Deirdre, when she saw her love holding out the cooking pan, a look on her face that made her seem brighter, younger, than she had been in some time. It was almost impossible to misread her expression, so inviting, pleading but in the kindest way. Morgan couldn’t help but answer her smile with one in return. “Um…” She was strangely bashful, having Deirdre’s attention in this way, teaching her something they could share in for once. Morgan’s hands, ever curious, were dancing over the stovetop and over to her arms, which made her jolt with a sweet plunge of cold. “Well, the pan goes on the stove, and you turn the knob on low so it can preheat…” She guided Deirdre through the movement, starting to enjoy the gradations of goosebumps their closeness sent through her body. Somehow, they reminded her of the way water ripples looked. “And then we get to start the batter. Do you want to crack the eggs for me, farmgirl? I could use some strong fae muscles to help me out.” She batted her eyes, feigning the role of a damsel in need before laughing once again and reaching for the requisite measuring cups. Morgan made pancakes so often, she barely had to take her eyes away in order to find all her tools. But that didn’t stop her from sliding her thumb around the plastic and the rubber grips on the handles. She laid them all out and took a moment to consider what a miracle it was to have so much beauty in so many ordinary places, right at the tips of her fingers.

Morgan smoothed her hands over the countertop and pressed, with a delighted gasp, into her love. “Do you want to run the mixer too, babe?”

Whatever complaints Deirdre had about being shown how to work a stove, as if she didn’t know, shivered under the delight of having Morgan show her at all. She gasped at the fire, as though she couldn’t believe it, and nodded enthusiastically at being led along. It ended far too soon for her liking, but there was only so much to do with a pan. “Yes!” And, excited at the prospect of helping, Deirdre nearly forgot about the teasing. “Oh, right,” she coughed and was quick to correct herself. “Wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” But what should have been a smirk was a bright grin instead. Deirdre could crack eggs with one hand, which was all the better for her so she could use the other to pull Morgan close. As the mixer whirred, bringing everything together in a light and sweet-smelling batter, Deirdre had moved completely behind Morgan, arms wrapped around her waist. “I love you,” she mumbled against her neck, “and is it too late to say I wanted blueberry pancakes?”

For the rest of it, she cooed and hummed as Morgan worked. There were simple sensations that even she had taken for granted; the warmth of the skillet, the uneasy weight when it came to flipping a pancake, the sweet smell, the burnt smell. Deirdre gestured silently where Morgan should keep her fingers now, in case she forgot; don’t burn yourself here, remember you need to use the handle like this. But it was like nothing had changed from their first few mornings together, intertwined as breakfast was prepared. Where the sun was warm and the wind cool. It wasn’t like they didn’t share mornings in the wake of Morgan’s death, just that it was different. Deirdre always felt odd being the only one to enjoy a meal, even if Morgan said she didn’t mind. It always felt better when they could share things.

Deirdre moved and readied plates and silverware for them. Stirred by the sounds of cooking, and the scent of it, the cats emerged slowly from their slumber, walking and howling like drunk sailors towards them. Anya, despite being told not to, pounced on the counter, pawing at spoons before Deirdre scooped her up and turned her towards Morgan. “Hey,” her voice was soft. Their pancakes were done, and there was just one aspect of their domestic life that remained unfelt, un-petted. Moira was on her way to Morgan’s feet. Niamh had claimed the center island, also jumping up where she shouldn’t. Deirdre moved a little closer. “Do you want to…” her sentence trailed off, “I can plate everything up, if you want.”

Morgan stared at Anya, who blinked back at her with wise indifference. Of all the feelings she’d lost, Anya had been the strangest, because there was nothing to recover when the cat was too put off by her death smell and the trauma of their bond breaking to go near her. By the time they made up a few short months ago, she was all out of practice and the best she could think of was “cat” which was no association at all. She looked to Deirdre next, and saw that her love understood what she was offering. A piece of a life half-forgotten. A piece of herself that could never be fastened back in place but might be collected, carried for safekeeping. Morgan nodded without saying anything and took the cat into her arms.

By now, Morgan was coming to accept that ‘soft’ would never contain everything that belonged to it, but Anya and her fine short fur seemed to be at least three different kinds of soft at once. There was the tender flesh of her ears, which stayed on alert until Morgan scratched her under the collar the way she liked. Then the shorter hairs under her chin, almost like fuzz. Her toe beans, which tickled Morgan’s skin. Her sleek black coat. She was a lean thing, fit from her daily hunts. You wouldn’t think there was much to cuddle, but the fine hairs grew thick and Morgan felt whole bunches of softness between each finger as she carded them across her back. So this was what having a friend back felt like, soft leather paws pushing against skin, the scratch of cat claws, and a soft (so, so soft) little body warm against your chest.

Morgan looked at Deirdre again. “Um why don’t we...we could eat in the great room? Put on a fire and watch the snow. We might as well enjoy all the strange magic we’ve been given at once, right?”

Moira sat on her toes and mewled pitifully, wanting a turn. Morgan’s eyes blurred as she knelt to pick up the kitten with her other arm. She was so fluffy, so light, Morgan couldn’t believe how deep her fingers sank into her fluff in order to cradle her properly.

“I’ll just...I can meet you there?” She said, her thanks written all over her watery face.

Morgan relished every brush of movement and contact. Wood floors (very cold), fancy rug (even stiffer than normal carpet), cats scratching, cats wriggling, cats using her as a diving board and a jungle gym, firewood, kindling, poker. And then pillows, blankets, and cats again. They drifted through her, it threw her with the force of a wave. And yet the ocean wouldn’t have been half as overwhelming, as far as she could figure, because it was all one thing. The wave that threw her into stillness was at least a dozen different sensations, a world’s worth of being she hadn’t thought to appreciate.

By the time Deirdre arrived with breakfast, Morgan had done up the floor by the prickly-toasty-warm fireside to be comfortable for them. She sat on a pillow, legs tucked up, one hand still stroking Moira, who she decided reminded her of clouds and feathers and those awful fur pillows that had been popular when she was young. Her smile turned wide and sloppy with delight. “That looks amazing! Pretty excellent teamwork, if I say so myself. This might sound weird, but I’m having--none of the words I’m familiar with seem enough to describe how everything feels. Like you’re soft, and Moira is soft, but not in the same way at all. It’s probably just the novelty of everything, but I was wondering--how would you describe the way blueberry pancakes taste?”

Deirdre watched Morgan leave with a warm smile; she didn’t need to read her love’s expression to guess at what might be floating around in her head, but even so, she desperately wanted to ask. It was a gift, always, to hear Morgan’s thoughts with her own voice, said her own way. She plated their breakfast with care, arranging everything as she’d seen it done at the sort of restaurants they didn’t frequent anymore and just the way Morgan used to like everything—extra blueberries and a handful of blackberries on the side. Coming into the great room with everything on a tray, she figured the only thing separating this from the mornings she once coveted was the denial of romantic feelings. And the extra cats. But it was so much better like this; the moment in time they never got to have. The promise of a long domestic life filled with feeling; their world. Their slice of paradise and heaven; that dusk-covered beach with the stars. “My love,” Deirdre greeted, settling herself and the tray on the floor. Morgan’s smile wasn't the only one messy with affection and delight. She had never learned how to describe how anything felt, and she wasn’t even the one who lost feeling.

Deirdre poured maple syrup from the ceramic jar over her pancakes slowly as she thought about it. “You once said…” She offered the jar to Morgan. “That I felt like melting snow in your hands, the first time you held some. Like that cold pool, that one summer day.” Deirdre paused, watching syrup run down her stack of pancakes. How did anyone describe how pancakes tasted? How love felt? How happy some moments were? “Memory,” Deirdre looked up, “I think you describe things with memories. Blueberry pancakes are sweet and tart, but they taste like Sunday mornings before prayer, in August when the fruit was ripe and my mother faithfully marked the day as rest. They taste like one moment's peace, one good day, one allowed indulgence.” Deirdre cut a piece, stabbing her fork into the fluffy delicacy and holding it just shy of her mouth. “Words are often inadequate, they’ve been like that before this…” Deirdre stopped herself. She wanted to call it a miracle, a dream, but didn’t want to test the world. She’d heard some things said about curses and intentions and minimized emotional footprints, and while she never believed a word of any of that, she didn’t want hopes to run too high. “…surprise. I wouldn’t worry about a lacking vocabulary; even if the words did exist, they wouldn’t tell me that my coldness felt like falling in love. But you did, your memories did.” Finally, she put the bite in her mouth. It was sweet, it was a little tart, but mostly it tasted like Sunday. And some of this moment too. “I mean to say; I am soft, kind of like a squishy ice cube. Moira feels like a hairy cloud. But far more like that first day we got her, and it felt like everything would fall into place, like relief, reprieve. New life. And this fire is warm, but to me it feels like the first time we had sex, and I thought you had a fever. Did I ever tell you that I tried to check your temperature while you were sleeping? I couldn’t believe anyone could be that warm, but I didn’t exactly keep a thermometer at my bedside.” Deirdre turned her attention to the flames, reaching up for more as they always did. “What does everything feel like?” She looked back at her girlfriend, “the pancakes, the cats, the fire…does it remind you of anything? What words do come to mind?” She paused again, breaking into a grin. “And yes, it was excellent teamwork.” Most things they did were.

Morgan ate as Deirdre spoke. She wanted the pancakes to taste the way listening to her voice felt. She was so thoughtful, so patient, and when she paused over her ideas just as Morgan bit into her fluffy-heavy-buttery-melt-y pancake and a fresh sweet-tart-slightly-satin-skinned blueberry burst between her teeth, Morgan thought she understood what Deirdre meant by a Sunday’s reprieve. A quiet and wonderful relief, a present that arrived just in time.

As her love went on, Morgan tried to make everything work with one hand while studying the room, the light, and the strange little textures around her. She wanted to braid the whole room into Deirdre’s words so that when she touched the couch, her heart would feel as warm and light as it did right now. “A squishy ice cube,” she echoed, laughing tipsy on happiness. “Sounds a lot better than fleshy water. But I understand what you mean.” She shoveled another bite into her mouth and held it there until the pancake turned to mush on her tongue before swallowing. Then another.

“The funny thing is, with how much I doubt my memories of things sometimes, I’ve already started trying to turn everything I touch into feelings. Like, kitchen stuff,” Morgan twirled her fork as an example, “Feels like some of the early days, wanting to do something nice to impress you or make you proud. The bones in my art feel like forgiving myself. The bones everywhere else feel like discovery or wanting to belong. My books all feel like whatever I felt reading them, or how I used them. But, let’s see…” She paused to eat some more as she tried to puzzle the images and heart-feelings she subsisted on into words. “Moira feels like being a kid at the end of a good day and thinking tomorrow might be even better. Naimh feels like wanting to do better. Anya feels like missing someone who’s still here.The fire feels like that heavier grown-up kind of hope, the kind we have at Yule and Beltane. I’m still deciding on the pancakes, though. There’s at least six different textures and flavors in one bite, it boggles my mind that we shove all of it into two words.” It took everything in her not to smile with her mouth full as she shoveled another bite.

“Normally, everything is so dull there’s hardly any variety. Like, our couch and the carpet: totally different material, but absolutely the same to me unless I really try to pick the carpet fibers apart. And the floor, and the stone mantelpiece, same thing. It’s just hard or soft, solidly together or kind of coming apart. And when it comes to softness…” Morgan paused and looked away from her plate as she scraped her plate clean. She didn’t want the last bite to taste like the heavy feeling building in her chest. “So much of it’s the same. The only difference is the shape. How much of me it covers. If I closed my eyes, I’d only know you were kissing my cheek instead of touching it with your finger by the sound and the shape of it. It’s not a bad kind of same. It’s like cotton balls and moth wings and those chunks of lint you have to pick out of the dryer, or that’s what I decided early on anyway. But it’s been just as long since I felt those things too. So of course it doesn’t always do the trick, especially when I’m low. But I still feel emotions every day, so it’s easier to trust that your hands feel like wanting to be faithful and your hair is like longing for a gentler world and your chest is being certain I’m safe…” She reached over and touched each part of Deirdre as she named them, shivering as she tried to memorize this new, vivid touch.

Morgan crawled closer. She picked up a blueberry and fed it to her love and kissed her. “Your lips feel like saying I love you,” she murmured. She grazed her lips over Deirdre’s cheek, then stilled, pulled back. “You’re warmer,” she whispered, as though she had discovered this phenomenon for the first time. She slipped her hand under Deirdre’s robe and felt her shoulder. She bunched her hair in each hand. “The fire’s making you warm!” She laughed, loud with amazement. “Do you know what you feel like when you’re warm? You at least know it’s different, right? But it doesn’t make me think of being sick or worried. It’s…not really warm enough to be toasty but it’s nice?” She ran her hands over the same places again, then her lips. “You feel like you but..new. Has anyone ever told you that before?” She snaked her arms around Deirdre’s body and tried to cover herself in the feeling.

“I know I was overstimulated like an hour ago, so I’m gonna let you be the level-headed one and decide. Okay?”  Morgan mumbled into her back, “I want to feel the rest of you, all of you. If I only get one day of this, I want to find all the different ways you feel like and melt my brain trying to name them all. Also, have hot cocoa again. And pie. And maybe build a snowman. And try on all my sweaters. But mostly you. Like right now maybe, while you’re warm? And then later tonight, when you’re cold again. And then maybe a few more times for good measure.” She kissed the back of her neck. “Sometimes I forget how much it broke me in the beginning, not being able to feel you the way I used to. Sometimes I don’t understand it. But I get it now. Your body is a whole world of wonderful things. And I could discover it for the first time all over again. ...Please?”

Deirdre never did take another bite of her breakfast. Her attention was captured by Morgan, watching her love as she spoke. Deirdre’s lips parted with each pause, silently encouraging Morgan to continue. Their worlds were different, and Deirdre had never stopped wanting to hear of Morgan’s. Anya, to her, felt like old memories. Niamh like loss, love, and the cold tingle of Lydia’s pearl hair. And Morgan, like everything good. Deirdre shivered under her touch, her eyes remained on her girlfriend and faithfully she sat and held her plate of forgotten pancakes. Her tongue curled around the blueberry offered, sweet juice burst under her teeth. Yes, yes she was warmer, very warm for a lot of reasons and only some of them had anything at all to do with the fire. “I hadn’t noticed,” Deirdre lied, flushed and grinning. And no, no one had ever told her that. No one had ever told her half these things. “Would you still say that knowing being hot makes me feel feverish?” She tried to joke. It came out as a rasp. She feared her mind was being too transparent with its ideas. She set her plate of pancakes aside; she wasn’t very hungry. Well, not for them at least.

One could imagine her excitement to learn Morgan was on the same page. “Hm,” Deirdre hummed, “only because you said please.”

It was true that for her, kissing Morgan felt just as it always had; like coming home for the first time. It was true that she had never lost the world of feeling and memory that Morgan gave. Touching her was walking down her favourite roads, looking up at the stars and choosing to let them guide her someplace. Her fingers tangled in her hair were the days spent sprawled in meadows uncaring for how the sun slowly hid behind the horizon in an explosion of pinks and oranges. Loving her was, as it always had been, the best thing that ever happened to her. Moments with Morgan always felt ripped from reality, placed in their own special glass-bottle world. But moments like these didn’t have a name and were too many feelings to let just one be picked. Deirdre described it simply as “I love you” said with the same rapturous affection every time.

Which, over the course of the day, was 192 times.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Turn to Loathed Sours || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours, even in the moment that we call them ours.

Morgan’s senses aren’t the only thing about her body that’s changing, and she can’t avoid facing it any longer.

CONTAINS: medical blood: references to first aid, stitches (not described)

Morgan’s arm healed from her injuries at the coffee shop eventually. But the ones she had collected that evening (a tiny burn from the pan and cat scratches from playing too roughly with Anya) hadn’t yet. That was over a day ago. And now she had new injuries. Serious injuries she couldn’t hide or brush off. A stupid fenodyree who’d gotten comfortable under the stairs at the bookshop pulled her ankle and bit the side of her foot. When Morgan prised it off (it hadn’t liked the taste of her after all), it bit a chunk off her forearm out of spite.

She sat in her car on the driveway, still trembling with fright and pain. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get home. It probably had something to do with urgency, and not looking at the damage done. Underneath her torn sweater, her skin was whiter, deader than she’d ever seen it before. There were fresh, sickly looking waves of green and yellow marbling along her blue and purple tones. The skin around the injury felt thin and dry, and what flesh she could see under the surface looked...wrong. Or at least wrong for her. She’d eaten enough animal corpses to know what rotting tissue looked like.

Maybe she needed to switch to a human brain to get herself back into shape. Those were more filling anyway, right? Maybe she could call Erin, tell her it was an emergency, and she’d do the hard stuff, she just needed a point of contact, a name, something. Or maybe she could try eating a supernatural brain, that might do something different. She hadn’t tried bies before. Maybe they were more...fortifying, somehow. And if her body was getting a little less magical, maybe some mundane treatments could help. A little Advil, a little neosporin, and a heavy duty band-aid could go a long way. Plus, stitches, if she really needed them. No one she passed during the day would think much of her sporting fresh stitches.

But as Morgan tried to bargain out a solution with her body, a small, tired voice inside her asked, What if there’s nothing? What if this is how you have to pay? What if it doesn’t stop?

No. There was a way to fix this. She just had to find it.

Bracing herself, Morgan limped out of the car and came inside her house. She dropped her keys in the bowl and made a beeline for the kitchen. She would stop being a baby about losing her zombie pain tolerance, patch up her injuries, eat, and figure this out. Everything would be fine. In fact, everything was already fine, she just didn’t know it yet. But it was. It was.

Neglected under her journey to New Zealand, Deirdre’s garden was repairing itself nicely. Her lilies had come into bloom along with her wine-coloured dahlias. Carefully, she cut herself a bouquet, eager to show Morgan her work and ease whatever guilt she might’ve felt for letting the garden fall into disrepair in the first place. The cats, lazing by her feet in the garden, rose first to signal Morgan’s arrival. Deirdre followed them with a smile, dirt under her nails and more on her overalls. Sweet floral notes lifted from her bouquet, intertwined with her scent of earth and sweat. When she greeted Morgan, she did so with a running kiss, pressed gentle and eager to her cheek. Then with a large step backwards, extending her bouquet. “You should take a smell--” Her delight was simple, clear. In the moments that followed, it withered.

“My love,” Deirdre urged, eyes drawn first to her torn sweater, then back up to her face--paler than it ought to be. She was bluer in the lips, more purple around the eyes. She considered where they were--the kitchen--and concluded that Morgan had come for a meal. Sometimes she forgot to eat, it wasn’t often, but in her new state of feeling, perhaps the joy of coffee and pastries had overwhelmed reminders to feed as a zombie ought. Deirdre decided she should worry. She smiled again, wider, thinner, nowhere near her eyes. The flowers were set down on the kitchen island. “Are you…” Okay? The word wouldn’t leave her lips. Okay? The word was a gurgle in her throat. Okay? A twitch in her lip.

Her eyes fell back to the sweater; the strange way Morgan moved, like her foot was asleep. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “...okay?” She said finally, knowing there was no way to avoid the question.  

Morgan hadn’t meant for Deirdre to see her like this. Of course it would look bad. In the instant her love approached and kissed her cheek, Morgan tried to hold onto her, murmuring, “Hey, how’s my farmgirl? Your flowers look beautiful, and the--” the smell was lovely. Earthy and powdery and fragrant in a way people only called floral because there was nothing else like it in the world. But before she could try to put any of that into words, because if she just held onto this moment, everything would be fine and Dierdre would know it was fine and she could figure things out as she went, listening to her love talk about her day. But she could only hold onto Deirdre so much with one arm, and before she’d even pulled back Deirdre saw everything.

“Yes!” Morgan said, shrill and too quickly. “I just, um…” She searched for the words but she struggled to find words that didn’t imply VERY NOT OKAY. “There was one of those staircase fae, at the bookstore? The little furry guys that like to yank you down and eat your feet? And so I took a little tumble and he took a bite out of my foot, and he didn’t like how I tasted, but he didn’t like being pulled off either, so he took a little more when I pulled him off, but he’s fine! Totally, completely fine! I was startled, so I threw him kind of roughly, more than I meant to, but he definitely got up and scrambled back safely on his own!” If she focused on the stairs and the fae, she wouldn’t have to talk about what was much more obvious: that she had lost whole pieces of her at the two story bookstore, a half hour drive away, and her wounds were still fresh.

Morgan shuffled away, intending to make a very normal stroll to the fridge and see if feeding herself everything they had in there would make a difference, but as soon as she put pressure on her foot, she went rigid and gasped with pain. “It’s fine!” She said, struggling to get her air circulation back in her lungs. “Definitely nothing serious. I didn’t even lose my toes! I just, uh...haven’t finished healing yet.”

Why was it always fae? Deirdre frowned, she wished there was some way to tell all of them not to hurt this one person (the times she did try, she was met with a lot of “well, all humans look the same”). She wanted to fixate on the faeness of the attack; she wanted to apologize for her people and explain that she really was trying to tell as many fae as possible not to eat her girlfriend. She wanted the words that left her mouth to agree, she wanted the smile to remain. “The bookstore?” Instead, she said this. “...which one?” Instead she frowned, she shifted, her fingers twitched at her side, desperate to reach for Morgan and soothe a problem that didn’t exist. The closest bookstore was a comfortable ten minute walk; a small place with an adequate selection of new releases and classic novels. It didn’t have stairs. Morgan took her car, Deirdre knew this because the beeping lock was what had perked Moira’s ears up first. There was another, about a five minute drive, smaller than the first. It sold mostly board games and housed a small case of used books. There was one stone step to get inside; gapless. The big one with two floors was half an hour away. It had the kind of wooden staircase with the empty space underneath and the big gaps between the steps.

Deirdre didn’t care much about what happened to the fae that bit Morgan, but forced herself to smile and nod anyway. Really, it could’ve been a ten minute drive if traffic and law were ignored. Which Morgan must’ve done, feeling famished from all the missed meals in favor of coffee and pastries. Though, hadn’t she just seen Morgan eat some brains yesterday? No, no, must’ve been another meat. How could she know? She wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it was just a nibble; nibbles didn’t count. Morgan stumbled and Deirdre rushed to her side, quick to loop her arms around her love. “Of course,” Deirdre smiled, “but let’s just...let’s just have you lean on me a little, okay? I think there’s some leftover brains in the fridge from...whatever you were cooking, right? And there’s more in the freezer! I found a moose, so that’s there. And it’ll be cold and unseasoned but it’ll be…” Deirdre’s voice cracked and she swallowed the nervous tic away. “Come on, my love,” Deirdre assured softly, opening the fridge with her free hand. “We’ll get your food, and I’ll take you over to sit and...well, maybe you just need a bandage and some rest. You had to drive all the way over here, and that--maybe that’s why--you should eat, right?”  

Morgan hated that she’d promised herself not to blatantly lie to Deirdre. It made answering direct questions she didn’t want to a special kind of painful. “The...big one.” She squeaked after a silence. The big chain bookstore with fancy staircases with little gaps that were just fae-tastic, a half hour away if she took the interstate. Morgan didn’t look at Deirdre as she answered. She didn’t want to know what it looked like as she put the timeline together. She didn’t want to see Deirdre grow worried. If she did, she’d want to comfort her. And she could only comfort her so much without lying.

She leaned on Deirdre as she was asked and gave her a little squeeze, and thumbed the flannel shirt she’d appropriated from Morgan’s own closet. Her overalls were a little damp and cold, there were grainy flecks of earth from the garden work she’d been doing. She was as soft all around as she was within, and all Morgan wanted was to rest there until everything stopped hurting and her body snapped back to being its old self. But Deirdre’s voice was growing thin. Morgan thought she could almost hear cracks of distress spreading over her heart.

“Yes! Yes, that’s perfect, my love,” she said. “Just get me to the great room with the first aid tub, and I can patch myself up from the couch, okay? And you can heat up the leftovers we have and everything else in a bowl. It’s too cold to have them raw. And then--” Then there wouldn’t be anything left in their power to do tonight. Then the future would keep going, smooth as ever, or it wouldn’t. Morgan’s lips trembled as she searched for the certainty she so desperately wanted. She stilled them with a kiss to Deirdre’s cheek. “Then you’ll sit with me, and tell me how the garden is doing, and let me smell those flowers. Just one thing at a time, okay?”

The big one. Deirdre wore worry in her eyes, smile pulled thin. The big one, she kept repeating it in her head hoping it would become less true. “That’s…that one is quite a drive away, isn’t it?” There had to be something said about asking questions she already knew the answers to. She didn’t say anything more about it, and simply nodded as she helped Morgan into the great room. When she was safe on the couch, she fished free their first aid supplies and placed them on the coffee table, then she pushed the table closer to Morgan. “You shouldn’t do it yourself, my love,” Deirdre said softly, “it hurts more when you do it yourself.” That wasn’t a claim founded by any science, but it was all Deirdre could do to keep from running around and spewing question and worry and question. “Just…” she sighed, leaning down to press a quick kiss against her girlfriend’s forehead. “…if you need stitches, let me do that. You must be in so much pain and…” Deirdre trailed off. She marked her exit with another kiss and said nothing more.

The kitchen was silent except for the whirring of the microwave and the sizzling of brains in a pan. Occasionally the sizzling would change in pitch and tone as Deirdre moved the meat around, trying to get it cooked all the way through. It seemed absurd—to be cooking the brains—but it was all Deirdre could do to keep from pacing around with questions and fears and worries and questions and running and crying and questions. The microwave beeped like an alarm. Deirdre was burning the meat. She shut the heat off and fished the leftovers from the screaming kitchen appliance with little mind for how her fingers scorched under the hot ceramic bowl. She topped it with her extra too-brown cooked brains and carried it to Morgan in a tray with a few of the flowers arranged nicely to one side, as if she were bringing Morgan breakfast in bed. “Here, my love,” she smiled as she set it all down. She offered Morgan the bowl, and a fork, and sat down next to her. “The garden is coming along nicely.” Deirdre was wringing her hands. “You should see the hydrangeas. The snow really confused them, for a bit, but I’ve got everything covered and heated and I was thinking of getting a greenhouse built. We have that space there, and as much as I like the outdoor garden, the weather can be so sporadic here and…” Deirdre rambled on, her story of little consequence about the state of their garden went on with stutters and stops. Skips and repeats. When Deirdre forgot which part she was at, she went back and told it all from the beginning, starting with the hydrangeas, which Morgan really should see. When the sound of her own voice began to sicken her, she picked at the dirt under her nails and said nothing for a moment. “I can still see where Anya scratched you.” Deirdre was looking at the floor; it was all she could do.

While Deirdre cooked, Morgan rushed to cover her injuries. She shimmied out of her sweater and bit down on it to cover her little screams when she doused her skin with disinfectant. She dabbed at everything as much as she could but there wasn’t much to wipe without any blood circulation to make a mess. But there was plenty to see: her arm looked like a kid had attacked it with squiggly scissors and her foot wasn’t much better. Morgan laid gauze patches over her foot and taped the whole thing up in a hurry, but it couldn’t completely hide the altered shape. As for her arm, she really did need more help than she knew how to manage with one hand and the pain every time she touched it was starting to make her head feel funny. Morgan laid her hanging bits of skin over the injury in an approximation of where it should go and gave herself a headache trying to will her body to heal itself. But there was nothing. Maybe even less than nothing.

Then Deirdre was back and Morgan had to drape her sweater over her chest so the extent of her discoloration didn’t look worse than it really was and eat her crispy food and listen to Deirdre’s story. It made her whimper with pain, but Morgan stretched her injured arm so she could take Deirdre’s hand into her own and thumb patterns onto the back of her hand. She tried to help her along soothingly, “A greenhouse sounds lovely. We could turn the back porch into a sunroom and attach it there. We could sit out in the rain with our tea and never get wet. Yes, the hydrangeas, my love, I want to see them. Soon, alright, soon…” But the only thing that came soon was the end of Morgan’s desperate meal and Deirdre’s last fatal observation.

“Oh, that.” Morgan tried very hard to sound dismissive. “I see it too, but I think it’s starting to scar over, don’t you?” But it wasn’t. And even though she had faithfully eaten everything on her plate, she was still hurt and in pieces and unmistakably dead. “It’s—“ Nothing to worry about, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t lie. She’d promised herself. “I’m—” Fine? Still? Really?

Morgan set her plate aside on the end table and reached for her love with her strong arm, rotting flesh and all. She stroked her soft hair and the side of her cheek. “I’m here,” she said plaintively. “I’m right here, babe.” Her voice choked and snagged and she had to swallow several times before she could speak again. “You still feel like a miracle. Like a chilly peach, only you never get wrinkled. It’s gonna be at least a hundred years before someone thinks you’re older than me, huh?” She forced a laugh and a smile. “Will you, um,” She inhaled stiffly as she upset her arm. She could hear how desperate she sounded, how frightened. She was fine, she was really fine right now in spite of everything wrong. But fine was a burning thread; it would finish without her and the fear of what would be left in its wake made Morgan tremble. “…Will you sit a little closer? W-will you hold me?”

Deirdre maintained her gaze away from Morgan, even as it hurt. There were many lies about how interesting the floor was swirling in her head. She burned to look at her, she desired to. Still, her eyes remained locked on the cracks in their hardwood. “A sunroom sounds nice. Are you sure you’re okay with covering the porch up?” She nearly sighed with relief as it seemed she was offered an excuse to look some place beyond the floor; she turned to stare at their porch. Soon, Morgan said. A lump formed in her throat. Soon. She turned back to the floor, blinking rapidly. Soon. Soon.

She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to. If their conversation could’ve carried itself to magical completion, she would’ve let it. Was it so wrong to want the okay and none of the in-between? Then she was in Morgan’s arms, and it was very, very, hard not to look at Morgan. Like refusing light; opening blinds just to shut them again. The sun sat beyond the curtains, she just had to pull them back. So, she did. Deirdre relaxed, relented, and turned to Morgan, wrapping her arms slowly around her love. Morgan’s futile sweater-cover-up was squished between them. Deirdre didn’t look at Morgan’s arm, but her gaze did drift to the misshapen lump of her ankle. Then up, to the bowl of brains, all finished. Deirdre pulled back, pressing her palm to Morgan’s bicep. Morgan was paler than her; banshees were always meant to look and feel corpses. Zombies were the living dead for a reason, the dead living were not meant to be paler than her. Deirdre’s hand fell. Soon. Morgan sounded more frightened than she was. Soon. It would be something like a century before Deirdre started to show any effects of aging. Soon. Soon. Deirdre chased a kiss, pressing herself gently to Morgan. “We’re going to get married sometime, you and me. And we’re going to have a family, even if that family is mostly feline. And it would be a special kind of cruelty if you never got to see my hair turn white, so you are. You are going to. All of this.”

Deirdre’s shoulders slackened, her arms snaked lazily around Morgan. “Will you let me look at your arm now, please?” One note shy of begging her love, Deirdre leaned in for another kiss—soft, slow, lingering. Almost as if she wasn’t worried about losing them one day.

Morgan closed her eyes as Deirdre settled against her chest. It was so rare to be gifted with having her like this, and even rarer to feel it, that for several moments she let the bubble of their world shrink down to the size of this one moment. Deirdre smelled like flowers, oncoming rain, the forest, and cherrywood. She was soft, almost plush, with her hair bunched in a ponytail and Morgan’s own flannel shirt ticking her skin. Morgan pressed her gently and kissed her head.

“Yeah, we can cover the porch. Maybe we’ll put in a glass wall there, and a skylight, so we can still watch the stars from there if we want. In the summer we can make s’mores right before the rains come and run inside to eat them and still feel like we’re half outside. And I know you like to nap on the window seat in the cat room, but we can put in a bigger one, just your size so you don’t have to curl up your legs.” Morgan gave her love another chaste kiss and laughed. Her voice was bright with false hope as she spoke and it was almost enough to convince her body that she was really okay. This was just another soft moment in the week, an ordinary gift of time, abundant as the flowers Deirdre tended so lovingly.

But there was nothing ordinary about getting married or making another family. Morgan tensed with longing. She could see them so clearly: curled up on a couch in a dark cottage somewhere, a baby in her arms, making light of the child’s screams for attention, and being interrupted by three new cats or one absurdly happy dog. She wanted it. She wanted it as badly as she wanted to get better. Much as she cherished her life with the girls, she knew how fleeting it was, and there were days she felt more than eager to leave White Crest behind. As Deirdre kissed her, she was sure she could taste it. But what if you don’t? What if you die here without doing any of this.

“Hey,” she sniffled. “Hold on, we can’t talk about marriage stuff too much when I haven’t even proposed. Or you haven’t. Or maybe we both should, because I want the whole thing: an engagement ring to shove in everyone’s face, a pretty dress too impractical to wear any other day, cheesy music, and the chance to do a grand romantic gesture since you got the last one.” Her voice snagged on her longing again and she hid her face against Deirdre’s. She couldn’t imagine doing any of that in her state. She couldn’t imagine having the time. White Crest would claim her body for its own before she had the chance, wouldn’t it?

“You can go ahead and look if you want. But it’s—” Bad. It’s bad and I don’t want you to know just how bad. I can carry this myself. I can figure this out. “You don’t have to. I didn’t get around to taking care of it, but I can.” She nosed Deirdre’s cheek and kissed her again. “I love you. Have I said that since coming home yet?”

A covered porch. A skylight. S’mores. Marriage. Family. The reel of future domestic delight played in Deirdre’s head; each piece of film, one after the other. A fancy engagement ring. A daughter. Their library finally fleshed out. A sunroom with a skylight. A big telescope. Tea surrounded by flowers and plants that she tended. Five hundred years; would the world deny them this? “Maybe we both should…” she repeated. She could imagine it; one big gesture each; two rings; Deirdre wanted to show hers off too. “But…that future…” Deirdre pulled away again, wanting to look into Morgan’s eyes and find answers in their shimmering blue. She raised her hand to Morgan’s cheek and held her tenderly there. “We can’t have it if we don’t accept reality as it is; if we can’t work through things together. My love, nothing is ever so bleak if you’re still with me…and you are. You are.” The question of how long hung in the air, but Deirdre didn’t ask it. It would have to be long enough. It would have to be five hundred years, at least. It had to.

When given permission to look at her girlfriend’s arm, Deirdre nodded and then laughed. “You might’ve,” she turned her head and kissed her again. “Sometimes saying it is just like breathing, I think it happens all the time and sometimes without a sound. I love you too, of course. So much.” When she leaned back, she pulled the sweater-shield away with her, gently placing it on the table in silent thanks for its service to Morgan.

Morgan didn’t have to say it was bad, though Deirdre wished she had. “Bad” was a kind understatement to the torn up decaying flesh that she was looking at. Her cold fingers pressed softly around the wounded area, as if trying to coax out some secret remedy. There was no blood to stop from gushing free; no sense that Morgan’s body remembered how to repair itself at all. She looked as she was: dead, and no different from any corpse Deirdre might otherwise gleefully stumble across. The kind of wound a medical examiner would find redundant to try and patch up. She supposed it was a good thing she wasn’t Regan. “Stitches?” Deirdre looked up at Morgan. “I don’t know if painkillers will help you, but I don’t imagine trying them would harm you. We could maybe try numbing the area with ice—or I suppose my hands might work—first; it’ll hurt very badly, trying to close it up. But I think we should try.” Her eyes moved to the scratch Anya left; just the same as Deirdre saw it yesterday. She looked at her own hand, Anya’s work from an hour ago—when she wanted to be fed earlier than her usual time and Deirdre tried to distract her with play—had vanished as though it was never there. Her gaze moved down to Morgan’s ankle. “How’s that?” Deirdre asked. “Is there anything that needs to be done there, do you think? A bone to be popped into place?”

Deirdre looked over at her girlfriend again—future fiancée, future-future wife. Two rings. Maybe they’d try a cottage for a decade or two, a proper mansion for some other ones. If they got lazy one lifetime, maybe they’d get a chic condo in a bustling city’s downtown. Maybe they’d get several and hop around. One daughter. A son. Grandchildren. Wasn’t it novel to be able to live to see generations of their own family? Their kindness passed on. Cats. Dogs. Cows. Chickens. Neighbours that wondered how they stayed so young-looking. People who thought Morgan married for money, a nice fur coat and a wink to make them think they were right. Friends who’d known them a century ago. People to make jealous of their ever-lasting love. A wedding. Two rings. Maybe she’d wear a dress, maybe a suit. Why not both? “Don’t do it by yourself, Morgan,” Deirdre said, finally giving way to tears that once remained politely inside. “I love you. I love you so much that I don’t want that. I don’t care how scary it is, it’s worse if we’re not…”

Morgan didn’t want to look at reality as it was. Not this one; not with Deirdre. She could hold two worlds in her head just fine, and if the true one was just her secret, a little wrinkle she could iron out herself, then it hadn’t really been so dire in the first place. And wasn’t this what she had been conditioned for? To carry suffering and pretend like she wasn’t? She exhaled stiffly as Deirdre shifted and examined her arm. When she kept it still, the throbbing was dull and steady enough to be ignored. But, much like reality, the gash burned fresh with even a little close attention.

“I don’t know what to say about how things really are,” Morgan said quietly, stiff with restraint. “I haven’t found anyone else this is happening to. I haven’t read of anything like this being possible.” Technically, that meant that whatever magic was running its course could be merciful, for all they knew. Maybe the undead really could get sick, and this was just an awful zombie flu that would run its course and leave her alone. And maybe this would end her, or make her so vulnerable that something else would all too easily.

She couldn’t watch Deirdre do her examination. It felt too much like failure, even if it had been the fae’s fault more than hers. “We can try to close it some, yeah. Maybe just bandage the rest. I can put it in a sling if moving it still makes things worse,” she mumbled. “I wrapped up my foot without any problems, but you can double check me. We’ll do whatever you think is best. Although I…” It took Morgan a few seconds to find her nerve. Things were bad enough already, adding to the pile seemed cruel. But Deirdre would find out on her own, and it would only be worse if she realized Morgan had been sitting on more information than she’d given. “After what happened at the coffee shop, I tried some ibuprofen. It didn’t take. I healed in a couple of hours, but it still…” she shook her head. “We don’t have to waste any pain-killers on me, okay? I’ll numb the spot with an ice pack and I’ll be okay.”

But Deirdre didn’t want her to do it herself. Try as Morgan might, she had already failed in keeping this contained to herself alone. It was happening to Deirdre, too, and her banshee, who already carried so much suffering, was left helpless by everything Morgan tried to do to make things better. Morgan brushed away her love’s tears with her strong hand. Usually, that helped. It was like wiping something clean. No more sticky sadness, only comfort. But in this moment, it felt like peeling away her last bit of protection. If Deirdre was already hurt, then she already knew. If she already knew, then there weren’t two worlds to hold at all. Just the one, frightening and miserable and shrinking around her existence until it crushed her. There was nowhere to turn her gaze with distraction. No place to hide. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her own tears starting to flood her lids too. “I’m sorry. I was trying to make it better, I’m sorry. I love you, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be hurt, or disappointed…” She buried her face in her shoulder. “I didn’t want you to be scared too.” She swallowed down a sob, sniffled, and kissed Deirdre’s cheek. “Don’t worry about hurting me. Just patch me up as best you know how. Whatever you think is right. I’ll deal. I’ve already had a few days to build up my tolerance again. Okay?”

Once, Deirdre was sure she knew everything about Death; it was her birthright, her gift. By extension, her knowledge of the undead was extensive—similarly once considered whole. She stopped thinking she was right the moment she realized humans were quite loveable, the rest of her inaccuracies piling up. But she wished it all back; all that arrogance of knowledge. This was unlike any drug she knew of, any common disease. If it was a spell or a curse, she had no way of knowing. If this had something to do with the out-of-season winter, she didn’t know. She couldn’t know. The only thing she did understand was that none of this was normal, and that she should be worried. “It’s like you’re fading away,” she said. “You were pale yesterday, and all sorts of discoloured, but I know you ate. And you ate again just now. And you’re even worse today. And that’s just besides the whole…” Deirdre gestured to her arm. She pointed frantically at her foot. “If I let fear talk, it feels like you’re dying again. Or being more dead. Or—Fates, who knows what it’s like? But it is scary, my love. It is even without an injury. What does hiding it from me do? I can see you. I can see it. I should’ve said something sooner, but I thought I was being paranoid. I’ve been waiting and worrying and watching ever since you woke up that day. If you start doing this all alone, then I’m going to worry all alone. And that’s what it’ll be for us. And if this is some end—which it’s not, it can’t be—but if it was, then it’ll happen alone. And I don’t want…” Deirdre’s voice cracked; she sniffled. “I don’t want us to be alone anymore, my love.”

In silence, Deirdre worked the wound; icing with the cold of her hands, stitching and trying not to wince or cry and wrapping everything up tight, but not too tight. She’d only ever been used to doing this sort of thing on herself, but she didn’t tell Morgan that; Morgan already knew. She wanted to work fast, so the pain wouldn’t last, but not so fast that the pain was unfair. She wanted to worry, but not so much that Morgan cried along with her. She wanted to love, and this alone she could do without fear or limitation--no matter what, pretending she loved less, cared less, would not make the pain of loss any worse. So why bother? When she was done, she pressed a kiss to Morgan’s bandaged arm and looked at her with a smile. She had done her best to be gentle and where Morgan ached, she ached. Where Morgan was pained, she was pained enough to find a way to be more gentle. They existed in a see-saw, striving to find balance upon the fulcrum. “You don’t have to ‘deal’,” she said, noting the hypocrisy in saying it. “My love, with anything...whatever pain...I wish you’d let me carry it too. I wish you’d think of yourself not as one person--not as one damaged vessel taking in water--but as two people. Two boats. And then one--one big one. Both of us. I care about you more than I know how to say, and I love you just the same. As much as it might be convenient to pretend we are two people devoid of each other's pain, we are not. In your hands--” Deirdre took them in hers. “You carry not just yourself, but the chronology of us, and my heart. What I mean is: I love you, and inevitably, where you ache, I ache. And one day, though I won’t mention it much, when we’re married, everyone will understand that you’re the woman I love most--that I would spend eternity with, if only I lived that long. And that day, I hope that’s a truth that comes like breathing to you. I’d promise it. If you’d let me, I’d promise so many things to you.”

It took everything Morgan had not to scream as Deirdre stitched her arm together. She hissed, gasped, whimpered, and strained her hand gripping the throw pillow she’d bitten down on earlier. But this was her world, her life, and the cost of feeling like a whole, connected person again. She would not scream like some hysterical kid in the face of it. Especially not with Deirdre, who had suffered so much worse for reasons far more terrible. There were tears in her eyes by the time Deirdre finished. Her love’s hands weren’t cold enough to take out the sting completely and the skin around her arm was strained trying to make up for what was missing. But she returned her smile with relief, mouthing, Okay, okay, okay, when her voice proved too frail to speak. She took Deirdre’s hands and brought them to her lips. She let her cheek rest on them, and kissed them a few times more: one for apology, one for affection, one for adoration, one to appeal for absolution, one for abundant gratitude.

“I am yours, as you are mine,” she whispered. “And you don’t have to promise, not out loud. I feel it. Even more so now.” She hiccuped a laugh and released Deirdre’s hands, nodding that it was alright for her to carry on with the rest.

With a smile, affection and praise unspoken except for where they shone through her eyes, Deirdre turned to Morgan’s foot. “Thank you for wanting to protect me,” she said, unwrapping the haphazard bandaging. “I wish you wouldn't be sorry about it; I would’ve done the same thing and I understand what it means.” Her ankle wasn’t as bad as her arm, which prompted a sigh of relief in Deirdre. Good things were possible, perhaps. But the ankle was still swollen, giving it the appearance of a foot bent wrong. To the bite mark, which she surmised didn’t need stitching, she cleaned delicately and wrapped everything up as her mother had taught her was appropriate. She’d watched Morgan heal greater wounds in half the time. “I love you, you incredibly strong woman.” Deirdre leaned up to kiss her girlfriend, peppering her first aid with affection rewards and whispers of how good Morgan was being. When it was all over, all that was left was Morgan’s good behaviour to claim. She could only guess at how badly it hurt, and was eager now to replace pain with comfort. “Are you worried?”

Morgan tried to relax as Deirdre finished with her foot. It helped that her hands were soft and careful, that her lips were tender, and she assured her that she was being good, so good. Somehow with all her stupid deceptions, Morgan had managed to face this and be good. “I know you understand because you have done the same thing before. And it hurt. It hurt so awful that you wouldn’t let me in, it felt like you didn’t really trust me, like I hadn’t done enough for you. If I’d thought more about you and less about my own stupid fear, maybe I would’ve figured that out.” She tugged on Deirdre’s sleeve and overalls, silently asking to be held over her lap. “I should have known not to, but I wasn’t thinking about it right. I don’t want to make you feel the way I did. I trust you more than anyone else. You’re the only person I’ve been able to bear telling so far. It was just...as soon as I told you, I couldn’t hide from it. Not even a little bit. It wouldn’t be some little thing I can solve on my own before you get home and turn into a story with a happy ending.” She breathed carefully, shuddering through a rising sob. “I love you too, and I admire you, and you are so good to me…” She nuzzled her way into the crook of her neck.

She owed it to Deirdre to be as honest as she knew how to be. But worried barely brushed the surface of what she felt. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I mean, I know I’m decaying in spite of doing everything I’m supposed to. I know that makes me more fragile. And I feel all of it, everything. But I don’t know why or how. None of this should be possible, and I have begged the universe so many times to let me feel like I’m a part of life again, even just one day more so I would know not to take anything for granted. But that was just grief. I never thought it would happen. Because it shouldn’t. I’m dead and it shouldn’t. And now…” She shivered and kissed Deirdre where she was closest for strength. “It just seems so cruel. I feel like I’m being punished and I can’t tell if I deserve it or not.” She shivered again, harder, as she stared down the heart of the dark inside her. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a plan. I don't know how I should even make a plan for the plan. I don’t know anything except that whoever’s done this to me is powerful enough to break the laws of magic I thought I understood. And when does this stop? Do I get to keep my mind whenever it does? Is that something I should even want? Is that something we’re going to be able to bear? I don’t know. I don’t know anything, or how to learn better. That’s what scares me most of all, not knowing.” She squeezed her love and took comfort in all of her.

“You smell like outside. And cherries, but an orchard of them, and the sandalwood candles my dad burned to cleanse the rooms after a fight or an outburst,” she mumbled. “Now you. Tell me where you’re at. If we’re three ships in a storm you can’t carry your pain by yourself either. Let me at least be good at listening. Please?”

Once tugged, Deirdre obeyed, scooping Morgan into her arms. “My love,” she mumbled softly as her girlfriend spoke. She kissed her where she could; the top of her head, the side of her face, all careful not to interrupt the delicate flow of her words. “Don’t say that,” Deirdre scolded softly as Morgan found peace buried in her shoulder. “You deserve more credit than that. The desire to hide pain away isn’t a bad one, and it isn’t even one so easily disregarded. I understand, Morgan. I understood. Don’t blame yourself for wanting that. You didn’t break a vase and then try to sweep it under the rug, and even if you had that’s…Hey…” Deirdre shifted, pulling Morgan’s face up to meet hers. “I love you so much, my Morgue. No matter what.” And then she kissed her, hoping to seal that chapter away and move them on to the next page.

The next page being, of course, the bigger problem to tackle. “You feel yourself decaying?” Deirdre frowned, even as someone who enjoyed the feeling, she recognized well how unnerving it must’ve been to feel it; for Morgan to feel herself dying and fading, slowly and without pause. Deirdre whined at the thought. “Is it fair to say this is magic, then?” Deirdre tried, “if you pick an angle, and then chase one set of answers…even if the conclusion is that it’s not magic, it’s more than either of us knew before. So, what I mean is, would it be helpful if we looked into this? We could split it up? You could try the magic thing and I can…see if there’s some undead disease that does this? I think I’ve ruled any kind of drug out; I asked around and it doesn’t sound like anything in the market here. But if it turns out it’s not magic, or disease, then we’ll have to revisit that. Would this make you feel better? Would this feel like a plan?” It certainly made Deirdre feel better—she enjoyed being actionable—but it mattered more what Morgan was comfortable with; what she wanted. “I know you’ve had to research enough magic used against you for one eternal lifetime but…at least so we don’t have to dance around each other with library trips and…journeys to dark alleys and damp basements trying to look at someone’s collection of drugs. Sometimes they don’t let you leave without buying something. I have so many magic mushrooms; I don’t even like them that much.” Deirdre tried to laugh, the sound pittering off quickly. It felt funny in the moment, with the sneaking around and the stuffing mushrooms away where no one would look. It was a little less funny when some fae accused her of hoarding the substance. Not so funny when a spriggan tried to fight her until she relented and gave mushrooms away. Really unfunny when a group of fae congregated outside their house, demanding mushrooms. And finally, horribly inconvenient to constantly pretend as though she were filling up a glass of water when in actuality drugs were being dealt and high pixies had to be swept off their porch. All of it meant a lot of glasses of water, a lot of peeing, and naked leprechauns passed out in their bushes. And that none of it was really funny in the end. Morgan could be dying, and some fae thought their backyard was the hot new party spot.

With a pause, a sigh and a kiss, she explained all of that to Morgan. “And every morning I wake up at four just to shoo the fae away and tell the brownies—which are fighting, by the way—that we’re uninterested in letting one stay in our house. Which then starts up this whole thing about how our house is so big, we should let more fae inside. And then the pixies get on this thing about ‘are the mushrooms ethically sourced’ and I don’t know! I know I should’ve asked but I wasn’t thinking about asking, I was thinking about saving your life! And now I might also have mushrooms that were stolen from pixies and I’ve inadvertently supported the trade of unethical magic mushrooms.” Deirdre groaned, pressing the palm of her hands to her eyes. “And you’re fading away, and you might be gone for good. And the best I can do is deal drugs from our porch and get glasses of water which I feel so bad lying about that I do drink them all. Every glass. And then the constant toilet trips are just…” Deirdre sighed, throwing her head back against the couch and then turning to look at Morgan. She laughed again, longer and louder and true. “None of this is fair to you, my love,” she reached out for Morgan. “That dying meant you lost feeling. That having it back means this. Just one nice thing, without cost, that stays…it would be nice to have that. Mostly I’ve been worried about you; only so much cherry and sandalwood smell can make everything else okay. Watching the delight and wonder you have tasting and feeling and smelling things…Fates, I wish I knew how to tell you how good it is to see you happy. And this specifically, this thing I’ve seen you grieve over. I want that feeling for you forever, that kind of happiness. But no matter how badly I want something, it just…” Deirdre tapped her finger against Morgan’s forearm, observing again how pale she was and where decay bloomed. “I just want you to be happy, for a long time. A proper long time. Five hundred years, at least. And I want the shape of that happiness to be exactly as you dream it.” Deirdre looked up at Morgan and shook her head. “What’s been the best part so far? With everything to feel and taste and smell…”

Morgan listened rapt as Deirdre spoke. Her blue eyes were murkier than they had been before, but they sparked with an intensity that went beyond the simple spectrum of life and death. She laughed when she couldn’t help it, and tenderly brushed her love with her fingertips. The game was the same: how lightly could she touch without losing feeling? But it was more fun when she knew her fingers sometimes tickled and sometimes ‘accidentally’ found a spot that made Deirdre shiver or pause in her telling.

“I might be partially to blame for the newfound interest in ethically sourcing.” She cut in softly. “It’s one of their newest vocab words, along with organic, fair trade, and Willowbud and Appleseed may or may not have spoiled everything at Took’s that didn’t have one of those kinds of labels on it recently.”

She peeled Deirdre’s hand from her forehead and thumbed the little worry crease forming between her eyebrows as she went on until the desperate absurdity of the whole thing overwhelmed them both into laughter. Morgan smothered hers with little kisses. She didn’t need another reason to cherish her love, but she was happy to have one nonetheless. “First of all, no more fake-real glasses of water. If we can’t find a nice leprechaun cave or pixie hovel to donate your stash to so they can deal with the others, we’ll have to have regular business hours so you can get some sleep.” She arched a brow, beaming with her usual bright determination.

“Secondly, none of this has been fair for you either. You’ve sacrificed and suffered so much, and nothing I’ve planted for your happiness has grown without weeds and thorns. And I want ease for you, so much. I want a whole garden of joy for you, joy and love and nothing else. But the world we live in is too complicated for that. We live on a wheel, and it always turns. If it stopped completely, it wouldn’t be life at all.” Morgan draped her arms around her love’s shoulders. “So, we can’t always be happy so long as we’re in the thick of the world and we can’t make the wheel turn at our pace. But we can be in love. And I would take that any day, if I really had to choose.” She kissed her, soft and lingering to emphasize the point. It was easy to be confident and wise in the service of comforting Deirdre. Maybe that was why sharing the load was always better. The strength they saved for each other was so much more resilient than what they could summon for themselves.

Morgan kissed the tip of Deirdre’s nose. “Lucky for me, at least fifty percent of the shape of my happiness looks a lot like you. You are a wonder of a person and you do so much for me. I never know how to tell you or show you what it means.” Slowly, she brought their foreheads together and let them linger like that for a while before speaking again. “I like being soft again. That’s my favorite. Our pillows, our sheets, snow on my skin, the cats, your hair, your body, all my sweaters, and the wind when it’s gentle. And frozen yogurt, pudding, cream pastries, and pomegranate juice. I can feel everything that’s gentle, and I can give gentle back. I’m a part of it. I understand it. There’s no adapting or thinking or concentrating. I just connect like I’ve always belonged. Wonderful doesn’t begin to describe it.” She teased her lips around Deirdre’s skin to prove her point. “And there’s getting to try everyone’s favorite everything. And being able to hug the girls and know what they really feel like for the first time. Then there’s laying with you and not thinking about anything, and not having to ask you to do anything but be. And all the little in between touches and pressures I’ve half forgotten. Your teeth, cat claws, leather, the Subaru, hard candies. And the sun. It’s a shame it’s been so cloudy, because the few times I’ve run out in time, the sun’s warmth is so…magical? It’s so unreal I don’t really know what to call it.” Morgan kissed her love again and smiled against her lips.

“What’s happening to us right now isn’t balanced or fair. But we have a plan. And if I am fading away, for now, for a while, maybe—” Or maybe for good. The thought hooked through her voice and she stopped before persisting. “I want to steal as much life and as much good from this as I can. Whatever this is already wins if I don’t.”

With the truth spoken so clearly, so simply, the brambles in Morgan’s mind cleared and Deirdre’s plan materialized like guideposts on a path. The way out shimmered just out of sight, any day now the right turn would take them there and it would be funny to look back on how long it took to figure everything out.

“I know time is screwing us over again, but I want to take an hour from it. The house is empty, you’re already holding me, and we don’t know how many more good days we have. So be with me, right here. Take me. We can hole up in the library after, and I’ll make soup for dinner when you’re hungry, and we’ll stay up reading as long as we can. But after. I want you first. I want to feel alive with you. And I promise, I promise, we will do whatever it takes to fix this and make it to our wedding.”

Deirdre’s eyes remained far, staring forward. Her gaze narrowed on the wall. “Is that why the pixies suddenly have such great vocabulary?” She turned to Morgan. “You know I had an actual discussion with Willowbud about commercial farming; I didn’t think she knew anything about it. You should know the concern is with freeing all the cows and trampling the humans and that…” Deirdre continued in her best imitation of the high-pitched dialogue of the pixies. “Like ten pixies can ride a cow at once, so much better than a cat AND cows are herbivores—also a word you must’ve taught them.” And then she laughed again, because it was absurd, but mostly because she loved Morgan. And she was happy being kissed by her love, touched by her love, held and listened to. Her body felt light, as if in their laughter, they’d lifted up from the couch and away for all that pulled and pushed on them; abducted by happy aliens who only knew paradise and utopia. A nice beach, Deirdre figured.

If Morgan said there would be no more glasses of water, then Deirdre could believe it--she saw them replaced with piña coladas sipped through colorful straws. The memory of fae clamoring for free mushrooms was eaten by the waves, crashing harmlessly against the shore. But life existed on a wheel, and just as soon as the vision of a beach lived by Morgan’s words, it too was washed away. It was just them and their house now, trying to live in a world that would turn and turn and turn and never spare a thought to who it crushed. The beach didn’t possess the nuances of their life but this terrible, spinning reality did. Anyday, Deirdre would also choose being in love over uncomplicated happiness, but she didn’t understand why there had to be a choice at all. Morgan made her uncomplicatedly happy all on her own, it was the world that spun and pricked with its thorns. Was it so wrong to hope for the beach?

She could believe that Morgan was happy. She could believe that the two of them together would always find a way to be. But as long as the world was spinning, something would get left behind--that was the inevitable truth. Deirdre smiled, she wanted to coast along Morgan’s delight, but knew it was about to be knocked off the wheel, one way or another. Deirdre leaned into each touch, shivered where Morgan brushed her skin and hummed where she was kissed. One day when the world spun them out of existence, she hoped that feeling of love would still persist: if just one other person could know what it was like to be loved so completely, cared for so wholly, and held so warmly. If someone else could know a word brighter than bright, maybe something could exist beyond the spinning and the weeds.

Deirdre just wished it could be them.

“You said that last time, my love,” Deirdre shook her head, laughing the observation into the casual. “And you--we--say it so often. I know it doesn’t make it any less true--that we should steal our moments where we can--but...aren’t you tired of stealing? Can’t we just have?” Deirdre shook her head again. “I’m sorry,” she leaned up into Morgan, kissing her and lingering. “I’m sorry. I want you. I want to make you feel alive. I want you here, right now. And I want--well, I’m not going to accept that promise.” Another laugh. “Those don’t end well, but I believe you and I understand you and I love you.” Another kiss. “And we’ve got a wedding and a life and a family to get to one day. Right now, we’ve got an hour.”

“Of course I want to ‘have’,” Morgan said. She’d wanted to ‘have’ all her life, and it was the bitterest truth of all that she couldn’t cash in her suffering for a pass to a kinder world where pain never cut too deep. “Badly, Deirdre. I want it so badly. And maybe someday we will. Maybe we’ll figure out the balance, or maybe we’ll find the softest, quietest place to hide as long as we want. We’ll make our world real. Maybe after this is over we’ll rest easy for months and it’ll be almost as good.” Morgan didn’t know if she believed her own words, or if she should. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt so badly or feel so hounded by the world if they accepted these turns as part of their fate. Maybe they could have a more reliable sense of safety, if they accepted that they never truly would be. But Morgan had never excelled at playing safe with her heart.

She eased them slowly down against the cushions of their prickly-soft couch. She touched a finger to Deirdre’s lips and lifted her eyes to meet her love’s. Just let me say one thing more. I know we’re losing something every second, but one thing more. “Don’t be sorry for wanting to ‘have’. And don’t ever think for another second that I don’t want that too.” She combed Deirdre’s hair down so it fell down other their faces and blocked out the room, the world, the whole stupid thing that wouldn’t let them be. She was a meadow of the finest grass and silk and simmered like the sun over an earthy river; proof that their world could be touched and maybe kept. Five-hundred years was a long time to try. “We’re just not there yet,” she mumbled, thumbing open her overalls one button at a time. “It’s on the other side of this mess. Now take me there.” Take me, while there’s still a me left to take.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

A Taste of Fae and Croquet || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: the recent past

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: An innocent game in the yard is crashed by a Stymphalian bird. The world cannot always be kind.

CONTAINS: animal death, soft gays

“The last croquet game I remember seeing was in Alice in Wonderland. And I felt so bad for the flamingos, with their heads bashed into the balls every turn, all those cartoon stars over their heads and how much they fought Alice because they didn’t want to play. I never wanted to look into the real thing because it looked so mean. But this is nice!” Morgan beamed at Deirdre across the lawn. She poised her foot over her ball, nestled adorably next to Deirdre’s, and took a big swing. Deirdre’s ball flew, bounced off the fence, and rolled somewhere back to one of the starting arches. With the extra swings she’d earned, Morgan got her ball into one more wicket and in good position to take the last two later. Smug, she skipped over to her girlfriend and gave her the requisite kiss Deirdre had insisted was customary when fae played the game.

“You aren’t making up the rules to go easy on me, are you?” She purred. “Because you should know by now, I like it when you give me a hard time just as much as I like to make you squirm.”

Deirdre laughed, both into the kiss and after, head tilted to the sky. “I am trying to give you a hard time, my love.” She grinned, staring at her purple ball in the grass. When she played the game with Maeve, she’d always won. And when she played with humans, she was more concerned about trying to hit the balls into as many of their heads as she could than she was with winning. Though Deirdre enjoyed winning as much as she did breathing, she was having fun with her loss now. It must have been something to do with the kisses, which she insisted occurred every time a ball passed through a wicket, or the fact that it was Morgan. “Besides, I don’t think there’s much else to the rules than ‘hit the ball through the wicket’ and then something else about bonus shots.”

She waved a hand in the air, uncaring for the propriety of croquet. There must have been a rule or something about making sure the ball stayed on the ground, but it was far more fun to send it sailing through the air, which she did. “Mind your head!” It went up and away and crashing into the wicket closest to Morgan. Deirdre jogged up to survey her work. “That counts, right?” she pointed at the wicket, bent out of shape and ripped from the ground, “I make the rules and I say that counts for two billion points, actually. Oh, and also—“ She leaned across, pressing her lips to Morgan’s. “—I just remembered actually you’re supposed to give these every time you hit a ball. Very important; can’t play the game without it.” She looked back down at their make-shift croquet field. “Oh, my love, you’re at the turning point now. You’re supposed to do something with that stake there...hit it, I suppose? And then start going back.” Deirdre took a look at her own ball, and her own standing in the game; she couldn’t remember what wickets she went through, and which she still needed to, and what order it was she was supposed to follow. Deirdre slung her purple mallet over her shoulder, maybe croquet just wasn’t the game for her.

Morgan jumped back to duck the flying ball. She wasn’t sure how Deirdre did it, and wondered if there was something innate in fae that made them do things as chaotically as possible. Clumsy with happiness, Morgan took a swing at the stake with her mallet, leaving her ball right in the choice place where it was. “You mean like this?” She teased. “And that means you kiss me again, right? I feel like  there was something you said earlier about having to give affection for other swings.” Deirdre had said no such thing, but with balls flying and wickets getting crushed, Morgan could tell that naming a winner wasn’t going to be a very important part of the day. She pulled her girlfriend close and kissed her neck, teasing her in the places that usually made her squeal. Then, flexing her body to its best advantage, she took her swing and guided her ball perfectly on course.

She backed away to steer clear of her girlfriend’s next shot when a shadow flew overhead. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun and pointed. “Is that a gull? Aren’t they supposed to migrate?”

Deirdre hummed, delighted under the feeling of Morgan’s lips against her skin. A sound which quickly bubbled into laughter. “You’re distracting me from winning!” Not that she was winning, of course, but that was the joke. Deirdre sighed, pleased, and readied herself for her swing. “No, that’s a heron, my love. It’s got the long neck thing going on, and it’s far too big to be a gull,” she commented casually, sparing only a short glance up. She had a game to lose, and birds were of no concern to her. As the shadow grew larger and larger, Deirdre in turn became more irritated. It was hard to align her shot in the dark, and she grumbled as she adjusted herself. “You know those things are almost as tall as you.” She wound back, mallet swung far behind her. “On account of your being short and all. There were a couple of them in Ireland, but I’ve never met one that didn’t want to—” She swung her mallet forward, waiting for the collision of wood to plastic. When it never came, she stumbled back, staring wide-eyed at a mallet missing its head. At the end of the handle now was a steaming goop, falling off the wood in thick droplets, leaving nothing in its wake. She stared at the ground, steaming holes where perfect grass once reigned.

“—eat me.” Deirdre blinked, throwing the mallet aside. For all her lack of concern for birds, she didn’t notice that the heron had landed or that it had spread its wings wide. Nor that it had flapped its wings, setting free a volley of feathers, whistling through the air. If she’d cared a little more about birds, she might have remembered something about iron. Instead she stood there, waiting for her brain to catch up with her environment.

Morgan couldn’t stop staring at the mallet. There was supposed to be a hammer head at the end of it. A few seconds ago, it had been there. She’d seen it. It was the purple stripe one because it almost looked like Deirdre’s favorite shade of plum and purple went first. But the head was gone. Not broken, just gone. Something Morgan didn’t know the words for was dripping from the ends and this wasn’t part of the game, this wasn’t part of anything that made sense. Dimly, she heard Deirdre say something that sounded an awful lot like eat me, but Morgan couldn’t find the words to the question she wanted to ask about it. Her eyes had finally caught sight of the heron, red and bronze and so much bigger than any bird had a right to be. It opened its beak to squawk, bright and sharp. Was it yelling at them? Was this just how giant scary birds said hello?

The heron flapped its wings and rose over their heads, squawking again. Its feathers spread and then they were flying, red and purple and shining. Morgan raised her arms to shield her face and whimpered at the pattering sound they made as they went through her skin. The heron swooped down to peck them both and flew up again, circling with menace. And then, Morgan finally found her voice. “What the fuck? What do you mean eat you?”

Deirdre hissed in pain, erupting in quivering gasps just a moment later. Feathers stained red with Deirdre’s blood stuck out of the ground, leaving bubbling slashes where they’d hit her. She’d done what she could to protect her face and neck, but the only thing she could think to use was the rest of her body. She trembled, faltering, moving just in time to evade another feather. Her body was on fire. Deirdre opened her mouth to explain before she was caught by another whimper of pain. “This!” She hissed, gesturing to her red, blistering body, “this is what I mean!” Trembling, she could do nothing but wobble where she stood, finding a measure of fear in looking up and risking a feather finding her throat. And of all the fae to try and eat, Deirdre knew there was some amount of pride in knowing she was the worst kind, and some peace knowing Mina wasn’t around. “T-th-they–“ Deirdre watched as her hands dripped blood to the ground, pieces of her robe hanging loose around her. For a moment, she lifted her head up and let free a small shriek, just enough to send the heron tumbling to the ground. The rest, she wasn’t sure she could manage between the spasms of disorienting pain. “Y-you–“ Her footing slipped and she bumped into Morgan’s side. “They eat–they–” An explanation refused to find a home on Deirdre’s trembling voice. Her mother had trained her to withstand the sting of iron, but not so much at once, not in so many places, not while she was happy. “M-Morgan,” she pleaded, though for what, she wasn’t sure. “Morgan.”

The heron righted itself, angrier and hungrier than it had even been. Deirdre was panting at Morgan’s side, head lowered. If only she could have a second, if only she could have a moment. The cuts on Morgan, marked by where they tore into her sweater, were healed already. Deirdre smiled warmly at them. “Don’t...let it get your head…” She glanced at the heron; at best, the fall had injured its wing, at worst, it’d only served to make it more determined. She didn’t have the time to figure out what both of those things might mean.

“Deirdre!” Morgan caught her banshee in her arms, gaping at the blood and burns that streaked down her body. “I’ve got you. But, what do we do? How do we distract it or stop it or--fuck!” Her words curled off in a shriek as the heron dove for its prey again. Morgan threw them to the ground, covering Deirdre’s body and curling around her, but that didn’t stop the bird from releasing another rain of feathers and snapping at Morgan’s back in frustration.  “Me! What about you? I’m just in the way, it doesn’t want--!” This time when the bird dove, it pulled at her hair, trying to pry her off Deirdre. Morgan gasped, trying to keep still, but it was trying again, pulling and pecking at her scalp and neck. Her head snapped up and for one awful, dizzying second she could see the bird’s talons, the iron glinting in the feathers, the single-minded determination in its dark eyes.

Morgan panicked, this time into action. She shoved Deirdre the last few feet across the lawn and into the pool. Then she flattened herself on the ground and covered her head, praying she’d find a way to dive in too before she was bashed into fertilizer.

The burning ceased, by miracle, it seemed. Her body was submerged in cold where it belonged. Deirdre opened her mouth to share the good news with her girlfriend, but the burning shifted suddenly to her lungs. Where there should have been air, there was water. She floundered, panicked, trapped in memories of her mother’s hand on the back of her neck. She kicked up and gasped when she reached the surface. Deirdre shook her head, wiping water away from her face. “Morgan!” She called out, surveying the scene. “Morg–“ Deirdre laid her hands on the pool’s edge, determined to climb out and help, but wherever she found hold, her grip quickly slipped. There was something to be said about water in freezing temperatures. “Morgan!” She tried again, slashing her hand on the cement. “My love–“ The bird turned to her, another volley of feathers for her pleasure alone. Deirdre sucked in breath and dove down, watching feathers cut harmlessly through the water. When she re-emerged, a plan became far more clear to her. “Morgan! Morgan, I can scream! I just need–“ She dove again, kicking back to the surface. “I just need it to not be–I can’t aim like this! Morgan–“ She dove again, this time swimming around in quick laps. It occurred to her then that heron weren’t birds that were shy of water, in fact, they excelled in it. What seemed like a good plan, might have served to make her a much more delightful target. Deirdre refused fear. Morgan was more than capable. Morgan would figure it out. The heron wouldn’t be a match for a woman that had come back from death.

Morgan would have rather the bird peck her down to stumps than sting Deirdre with another feather. That wasn’t good, or helpful, but in the awful silence when the heron stopped pecking and snapping at her body and swooped over the water for Deirdre, it was the only thing she knew. Not her. Anything but her.

“No!” She croaked, scrambling forwards to the pool. She tried to get her love’s hands, to make out the words and process anything but the one useless thought circling her head. Not her, anything but her, anything but her…

Scream. Right. She just needed to buy Deirdre time without being in brain liquifying distance. Morgan searched the ground nearby. Not much, but she hadn’t known that today would entail fighting for their lives. The heron swooped down to the water again, its beak skating the surface, searching for the right place to take aim.

“Hey!” Morgan shouted. The heron took no notice. She scrambled to the other side of the pool and lifted one of the rocks they’d put in to make the pool feel like more of a lake for Mina. She hefted it in her arms and threw it as hard as she could at the bird. The heron squaked and flapped into the air, dodging the blow. Now recognizing a persistent obstacle, it narrowed its eyes and shot out for her. But Morgan had already reached for her second weapon, her croquet mallet, and when the heron was close enough, she swung.

There was no mistaking the thunk of wood against bird-flesh, but the bird didn’t act phased. Instead it turned, plumes flared furious, and went again. Morgan swung and gasped as the bronze beak burned across her vision as it splintered the mallet in its grip. “Shit.” The heron flew back, circled, and there was nothing else at hand. She ran feet first into the pool and let herself sink as it came for her. They had seconds, at most, before it would start fishing the water for them. Morgan would think of something clever, a way to stay just out of reach of the sound, a way to put her panicked thoughts to good use. Sooner or later it would come to her. It had to.

As far as screaming went, it was a hard thing to do when flailing in the water. Deirdre laughed when she thought of how her mother hadn’t prepared her for this circumstance; the woman seemed to have thought of everything and yet, she’d never once been stoned by a mob of humans but she was in a pool trying to scream. When her wounds had become a manageable burn, she swung her arms over the pool’s edge, trying to get her angle. The heron flew wildly as it tried to fight Morgan, and as skilled as Deirdre knew she was, she couldn't manage a clean shot. There was the delay to account for, for one thing, and the worry of Morgan, for another. When she thought she had it, Morgan was running towards the pool, and before Deirdre could ask, she was jumping in. “Nice hit with the mallet,” she smiled, water splashing into her face. “Very good form. Have you done this before?” Concern did not exist in Deirdre’s features; a by-product of personality or upbringing or desire to soothe Morgan, perhaps. All that mattered to Deirdre now was the presence of her love beside her, and that the heron was over there. Deirdre swam up to Morgan, grinning even as the heron pecked at the edge of the water. “Do you come here often or…?”

The heron squawked, a deep gurgle of a sound; large wings spread wide and angry. It squawked again, pecking viciously where Morgan and Deirdre were just out of a beak’s range. And perhaps it was the fae in her, all along, that gave her such delight to see the creature struggle where she knew its life was over. And to prolong its death was just a treat, for her. It lifted one long, thin and spindly webbed foot into the air, squawked one last time, and released a final assault of feathers. Deirdre dove in time, pulling Morgan down with her, and in the blue water tainted by plumes of her red blood, surrounded by iron feathers leaving bubbles in their trails, she mouthed ‘you did good’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘I love you’ and then she winked. Deirdre kicked up and screamed, finally, watching the heron fall over like a lawn ornament in the wind, as though it had never been yelling and fighting. As though it had never lived at all, and certainly not as though it had once tried to kill them. The creature lay unconscious, not dead, and perhaps it was the fae in her that delighted in the promise of something more to be done.

Or, perhaps rather, despite her grinning and winking, her body burned even in the cool water, and rejected being pushed to scream any harder. Or, in spite of her calm appearance, her heart thrummed loud against her chest, and her mind swirled with terror for what screaming in water did to a zombie’s brain. The creature lay unconscious, not dead, because Deirdre feared to do more. She turned to Morgan, weathered and body-heavy; in truth, she might’ve liked to just sleep and let the pool carry her like a leaf in a river to a place that didn’t know the cycles of predator and prey. Perhaps it was the woman in her, the person, that closed her eyes and imagined just that.

Morgan could only stare wildly at her girlfriend as she mouthed her affection, grinning with wicked delight as only she could. Morgan couldn’t remember being more in awe of her, or more frightened of the loss of her. The only words in her head were no, be careful, and don’t go. What if the bird was faster? What if it took her neck in its beak? What if--but Morgan knew better than to say these things, or to imagine anything at all. She clung to the lilly reeds to keep herself down to keep herself from pulling Deirdre back and waited.

She didn’t have to wait for long.

The sound shook the water and struck through the depths, keening in fury, in pride. Distorted as it was by the water, the scream still shook something inside Morgan. When it was done, she rose slowly, half dazed, half frightened. “Deirdre?” She called. Her love was floating off into the cattails. The heron was on the ground, suspiciously in one piece.

“Hey--” She swam with her into the shallows and cupped her cheek. “Are you okay? Did it get you again?” She couldn’t tell one set of burns apart from another, and there were so many all over her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with anything better. I kind of panicked. But we can get you dried off and inside, and I’ll get the burn salve and take care of everything…”

Later, when the memory of this day broke past her defenses and replayed itself in her mind, Morgan would not be able to tell if she trailed off because she heard the heron’s wheezing breath, or if her own innate sense of having come up short signaled that something was amiss, or if she simply ran out of things to say, and finally had enough quiet to hear. It trembled through the air, unmistakable, and Morgan stared at the bird’s chest with each shallow, rattling sound.

It was still alive.

“It’s going to wake up eventually, isn’t it?” She whispered, already knowing the answer. Of course it was. And when it did, it would release more feathers, or it would fly away to eat another fae. And what if it found Mina on campus? What if it found Jared on his farm? Morgan stared at the bird, trying to peek into another world where suffering only existed in nightmares, where life thrived in peace. Some place where no creature was put forth to be a menace, to be something that could only take or be taken. But if that place existed, she could not see it; it was not here. And what kind of an idiot was she to think otherwise? Who knew better about the turn of the wheel of life than a cursed witch? Who knew more about the grip of death than a zombie?

“You should get out of the pool before any of the feathers touch you,” she said, climbing up the steps.

She crossed over to the croquet set and picked up one of the mallets from the stand and dragged it over to the heron’s body. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I can’t let you hurt my friends and I’m sorry.” It felt like a long time before she could summon the will to swing the mallet, but when she did, fissures lightninged up the handle and the heron’s skull cracked beneath its poisoned feathers. Morgan swung again.

It was a lake; shielded by thick forest, surrounded by ribbons of wildflowers. The stalks of cattails brushed Deirdre’s skin, balm to the burning that claimed her flesh. It must have been the countryside, the house in her head. It must have existed somewhere where the world would not touch them without permission. It was a lake, and when she opened her eyes, it was Morgan’s glistening face under the light of morning, where the fog that claimed the water had just begun to lift. There must have been a picnic set about in the grass; a book for them to come back to. And a house, cozy but not tiny; she liked to imagine it with red brick. “Did it get you again?” Deirdre blinked; nothing could get them here, didn’t Morgan know? She reached to brush wet strands of Morgan’s hair aside. That would puff out when it dried, surely. In their swampy lake, away from the world. Morgan apologized and Deirdre shook her head, smiling gently as the sun rose behind her. “You’re perfect.” It was a lake. Then it was a pool in the afternoon; their picnic was a croquet game, ruined. Their house was a clean white, and bigger than either of them knew what to do with. Her body was on fire. There was a Stymphalian bird.

Deirdre moved slowly, half in pain and half in mourning for a dream spurred by the fervor of pain. She hadn’t noticed the feathers at all until it occurred to her that the strange tickling cattails were too low to the water, and didn’t tickle so much as they burned--which only felt like tickling against the rest of the burning. Their lake--pool--was covered by an array of them, all having floated to the surface. She rose out of the water, picking a few out of her flesh; there was no imagining them as the hooked burs of her dream wildflowers now. Deirdre dripped blood and water where she moved. It was Morgan’s swinging that woke her up, just as it insured that the bird would never.

“Morgan--” Deirdre rushed to her side, hands on her shoulders; hands at her arms; hands clutching hers, mallet held still and fractured. By the time she got there, the bird was paste on the ground, like roadkill without the road. “You could have ate that.” She said, looking at it. Well, it wasn’t so soiled, maybe it was more like tenderized meat now, and Morgan did enjoy those gummy textures. “Hey,” her voice softened as she pulled the cracked mallet from Morgan’s grip. “It’s okay, my love. It’s okay. What are you thinking?”      

Morgan’s thoughts didn’t come in words, at first. Looking down at the bird, beautifully colored but lean in the chest, maybe malnourished, she could only see the unfairness. When her dad had explained that the universe wasn’t all one thing or another, it sounded like there was something soft or gentle in everything. The wasps that frightened her helped the flowers to grow, the lightning that reminded her of her mother’s yelling improved the atmosphere, the people who were cruel to her sometimes turned kind. She had put that thought away sometimes, when it made her stomach clench with guilt, but she had wanted to believe in it. But looking at this dead, beaten heron, she felt as though there were threads in the universe that were just cruel and when you tripped on them, you had no recourse but to touch some of that cruelty too.

“It only knew how to hurt people,” Morgan whispered. “Hurt fae. Even if I tied it in a sheet and dumped it at the town border, it was just going to eat another fae. And if it came back and hurt you…” She didn’t dare finish the thought and trusted her love to hold the missing piece. “I can take it to my studio to get the rest of the feathers out, so we can do something with the rest, so it doesn’t go to waste. And I’ll...c-clean the pool, before Mina gets back. I don’t want her to…” Morgan’s voice choked on the sorrow she was trying to drown with reason. “I’ve got this. I can take care of the rest.” Her throat filled with water and a sob cracked through her lips. “I just hate this world sometimes. I hate how we can’t just leave each other alone. I hate some of these choices…” She searched for Deirdre’s hand and gripped it tight. Hate them as she might, she didn’t regret any choice that protected Deirdre. She didn’t know if that was best of all or worst, but she  knew it was true.

“Oh, my love,” Deirdre held Morgan close, pulling her tight against her body. The truths of her world were known to her since birth, tales of the food chain were her mother’s idea of a bedtime story. “It’s just an animal, my love. It doesn’t know malice, or prejudice. It doesn’t hurt fae, it doesn’t know what a ‘fae’ is. There’s food and not-food and it can’t help what it was made to eat. Just as you know that it must…” Deirdre trailed off, remembering covers pulled up to her nose, questions she knew better than to voice as her mother held firm in her stories. The little bird ate the grasshopper, the snake ate the bird, an owl swooped down. Life was cyclical, and none immune to death. Deirdre shook her head, and laughed softly at herself. How many times had she heard and parroted the sentiment, how many times had she lived shackled by it? She didn’t care much for things and their places; she wanted Morgan and a lake, in the place where life could be more than its cycles. Deirdre pressed her lips to Morgan’s cheek once, then twice and a third as she held her head to her chest. “Thank you,” she said finally, “for keeping me and my people safe, even though it was hard. Thank you.”

She pressed another kiss to Morgan as she leaned down, using her blood for some good to write a message on the stone. ‘DON’T GO IN THE POOL’. Mina would recognize the bird and know better anyway, whenever she came home. Deirdre rose and kissed Morgan again, and again, trailing to her lips, where she lingered. “Just leave it now, it’s not going anywhere,” she said against them, breath tickling cold flesh. “Don’t you want to come inside with me now? Into our good world? You did what you had to, and that’s okay, come inside with me now. Rest.” She smiled, “and we can handle the rest later. Doesn’t that sound better?” Deirdre pressed closer, determined in her coaxing. “The world is unfair, isn’t it? It’s terrible and chaotic and filled with horrible, complicated choices.” She leaned in. “But it’s also the most wonderful thing, when I get to hold you. When we’re together.” She kissed her, firm and steady. “Let’s go in, my love,” Deirdre breathed, “tell me all about how much you hate the world, sometimes. How much it hurts to make the necessary choices. And love me, let me love you, and let us feel how good the world is too. How good these choices are. Come--” She pulled back, taking Morgan’s hands in hers. “We can experience the world as it is, bad and good; terrible present and hopeful future. And whatever it is you need to do, you can do later, when it all starts to feel a little easier to carry. Come inside, my love. Come with me.”

The heron’s ignorance didn’t make anything better, Morgan wanted to say. That only made the creature innocent and unteachable. It hadn’t been doing anything wrong. And how often did Morgan insist that you shouldn’t judge the way someone was made, the way they needed to survive? The heron’s mistake was flying over Morgan’s yard, in trying to devour Deirdre in front of her. If animals were worth screaming for, that moment must have sealed its fate. How could she do anything less to protect her love? How could she pass on that pain to another fae, knowing what they meant to each other, knowing the grief that would follow?

Morgan shut her eyes and squeezed out the tears that had gathered beneath her lashes. She wrapped her arms around Deirdre and pressed her face as hard as she could into her chest, not minding how it made her feet stumble on the grass and the porch steps. Like this, pressed close with her face mashed in, she could capture the softest whiff of Deirdre’s scent, sweet fruit and musky trees. Like this, the wood and tile beneath her feet transformed into the soft, giving earth of a dream, the sounds of distant cars became the song of a tide that burbled with good memories and longing wishes.

She burrowed into that place they’d first imagined in their letters between wet kisses and long silences. She had thought it abandoned, since she had almost no reason to think about it these days, but under a blanket, cradling herself against her love, she found her way to that shore as if summoned. She saw fear slip through their fingers like silt and sorrow drip away in the lake. Death had no sting and love and love alone colored their sky. Outside, in the true world, the sun sank, the snow melted, and the dead heron’s feathers flitted up and scattered like autumn leaves. But Morgan held fast to her love and stayed in their painless world as long as she could.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

A Good Death || Morgan & Deirdre (feat. Lydia)

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty @mor-beck-more-problems @inspirationdivine

SUMMARY: Deirdre smiled, “And I promise you a good death, Lydia. No matter what.”

CONTAINS: death, gore

“You’ve gone over that spot at least three times now, my love.” Deirdre said, hands steady at her love’s waist as she came up behind her. Watching Morgan clean was entertaining, in some strange way, if only so she could offer her praise and hone her skills of distraction, but she wasn’t sure exactly why nows was the time Morgan had chosen to tackle the dust. There were better things to be done, namely, each other. Deirdre fingers tugged at the hem of Morgan’s sweater, slipping her fingers under to pinch her skin. “I’m nearly jealous of the dirt, you’re giving it so much attention.” She always thanked Morgan for the cleaning, eventually. After her game of distraction, teasing and praise, all wrapped together in a package she had just nearly perfected the art of. She pressed her lips to the flesh between her neck and shoulder, nipping at it. “Have I finally won?” She asked, referring to the battle she waged for Morgan’s attention. She moved her hands from her waist to wrap around her instead, pressed tight as she hummed with simple peace. These moments were not new between them; how many times now had Deirdre fought Morgan’s interest against the allure of household chores? And yet, every time she delighted in the response. There was delight in simply being with Morgan; in doing something as inane as distracting her from cleaning. Deirdre’s peace was so bright, she could sing; sometimes she did. For now, she hummed an old tune against Morgan’s skin—a silly ballad about a leshy that fell in love with a flower. The November chill rolled in through a window they’d left open, beyond them, sounds of life flourished; leaves rustled loose by the wind, the neighbours pulling out of their driveway and off to that cabin trip they’d had planned for weeks now, the pat-pat of Moira padding away to go sleep someplace else. The two of them, bundled up together where everything was okay. “Mhm, can I take you to bed now?” She asked quietly, as if not to disturb the peace of the world.

Weekend mornings were Morgan’s favorite everyday treasures: hours of luxuriating in Deirdre’s company, her boundless kisses and touches and adoring gazes, warmer than any down comforter to protect them against the Sunday that was doomed to follow. Everything would break and Morgan would spend her week putting them back together again, and that was frightening and awful, yes, but this was the prize: arms tight enough for her to feel and a sweet voice singing Gaelic in her ear. “Hmmm, I don’t know,” Morgan crooned, rising up to nip Deirdre’s ear. “I think I should tackle the library. There’s one little spot behind the bookshelf that really needs my attention, which is gonna be a lot of work, moving books out the way and--” She cracked into a fit of giggles and jumped to get her arms around her love’s neck. “I’m teasing. Everything’s done and I don’t want anything else but you now.” She turned her face towards hers, trailing hard, greedy kisses down her jaw and neck. “Take me.”

A pout pulled down Deirdre’s lips, as quickly dissolved as Morgan’s teasing. Their world was one with facets; humour and mischief just as frequent as passion and calm. It laughed with them, carried through the quiet air. It yearned just as they did, heated with their longing. There was peace here, there was— Deirdre quivered. 

Her world was broken in three parts. First, her arms failed to hold Morgan. She tried to grasp her, pull her up tight in her arms and carry her off to bed—she had done it a hundred times. But her arms failed her. They trembled, and couldn’t summon the strength to do anything but shove Morgan away. She stared at her hands and wondered if an earthquake had claimed their part of White Crest; she shook too much for one body. Her eyes caught glimpse of the steady outside. The second breaking reaped. Her legs gave in. She fell to the floor with a loud thump as though they’d dissolved—they hadn’t; there was just enough energy left to use them to clumsily push herself across the floor. Her hands, still subject to personal tremor, clasped around her mouth, nearly poking her eyes out in the process. She whimpered in confusion, their house swung back and forth like a chandelier. The last part of her world had not broken yet, and so there was some modicum of peace she held herself afloat on. Her body knew what was happening, but her mind protected her—or had refused to accept it, for what little it could, it wanted to exist in a world where the last piece did not break. Milliseconds ticked in the dissonance of her state. She watched Morgan in the space between her lashes, and wondered what a gift it was to still be in the land of peace. And then what a shame, that for all her cleaning, she’d have to do it again. 

The world splintered. It twisted and frayed and like the glass around her as her whimpers turned to shrill cries—like a wounded animal shot in the neck—it shattered until there was nothing left whole. The last part was not one terrible domino falling down, it was flashes and screams. It was a million things, all horrible and all at once. Dark, branch-like veins spread down from her inhumanly black eyes. She hadn’t meant to scream like that, curled into a trembling ball on the floor, but the pain that ruptured inside of her was one she had only felt once before, when Morgan died. That day, she had welcomed the vision to her, because she had it set in her soul that she would defile Fate and preserve Morgan’s life. This time, she tried to reject it out of instinct; she couldn’t believe it was true, she didn’t want to. Of all the people who could die, there was just one she never thought it would happen to. 

The world stilled in all of its pieces. Deirdre didn’t think much when she grabbed her phone and started running out of the house, she only knew she had to go. Her mind was still numb with incredulity; she had seen it, she had heard it, she had felt it and she knew it...but she could not believe it. She didn’t consider Fate, she just ran—half-naked in her silk robe, down her neighborhood street. Death would not find Lydia today; Deirdre would. 

Morgan understood as soon as she was pushed away that Deirdre had a scream inside her. What she didn’t understand was anything else that followed after. Deirdre fell, whimpering like a frightened animal, curling into herself, and Morgan’s nerves spiked. “Babe, what’s wrong? I’m here, okay? Just--just--” She knelt down and tried to scoop Deirdre’s trembling body into her arms, but then the scream itself came, breaking her nerves along with all the glass besides the windows. Morgan went stiff, sinking the rest of the way to the ground and curling up tight. Her muscles snapped taut, unable to move even to cover her ears. “D-deirdre, Deirdre, please, I’m- h-h…” The world was snapped in and out of focus, ringing with the sound of Deirdre’s pain. When Morgan was able to move again, one clumsy limb at a time, Deirdre was gone.

“Deirdre!” She screeched. She ran for her keys and bolted out the door, barefoot in her sweats.

Her banshee was easy to spot, robe billowing behind her, hair loose and wild as she stumbled and ran. Morgan called her name again, running with all she had to catch up. “Stop and let me help!” Her mind raced as she tore across the road. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… she didn’t know who this was for or if there was some terrible banshee sickness or crisis going on that she was about to learn about the hard way, but what did it matter? Morgan reached out for her arms and gripped with more of her strength than she had ever dared. “Stop. Talk to me, please. What do you need? What’s going on?”

Navigating to the person Deirdre wanted to call on her phone was easy, actually getting an answer proved to be much harder. She tapped the name—A dheirfiúr—a dozen times as she ran, all she got was ringing and a robotic voice telling her to leave a message, which she did, though she couldn’t muster anything more than “where” and “call me back”. She tried texting, a difficult feat while running and shaking, but couldn’t manage anything more eloquent than her voicemails. She tried the calling again—ringing and robots, ringing and robots. Deirdre wanted to consult her vision, but her mind was stuck on all the wrong facts. It told her again about the pain, the anguish, and the holes, so many fucking holes—in her shoulders, her wings. Her wings, wasn’t that just the worst of it? Didn’t they know how much Lydia loved her wings? Didn’t they know what they meant? Of course they did, that was probably why they did it. But whatever the motive was, however it was going to happen, she didn’t want to think about it. All she needed to know was where and that was the one thing her mind refused to give. She hiccuped a sob, trying another call—ringing and robots. She stumbled, scraping her knees across the asphalt. With a hiss and a curse, she stood up and continued to run. As though emotional turmoil wasn’t enough, her body flared with a strange searing kind of pain. Before she could place it, she was spun harshly around. 

“Can’t!” Deirdre didn’t have the time to explain, a second wasted talking was a second Fate marched closer. Morgan had interrupted her thoughts, and she’d lost the place she’d been trying to pick apart in her vision, and which direction she ought to be running. She swatted her hands away, shoving with more force than she ever wanted to. How long did she have? She couldn’t remember; her mind fluttered in panic, her body twisted with pain. She continued to run until, suddenly, she couldn’t. Deirdre pushed herself off the ground to run again, but her body won against her raging mind. She shook, she coughed, she clawed herself across the ground ripping her nails from her skin. She wouldn’t allow her brain the capacity to consider what was happening to her, she needed to get to Lydia, and she’d do it even if it killed her. 

With a groan, she shoved herself up and took off again, in less of a run now and more of stubborn limp. She teetered from one side to the other, determined to move, desperate to. 

As Deirdre fought her way out of her grip, Morgan relinquished and gave her a count of two before running after again, growling with frustration. “We are not doing this, Deirdre! You are not doing this isolation bullshit and you are not okay!” She caught up to her within a minute, but only because Deirdre had resorted to dragging her body along the asphalt, tearing her skin one stroke at a time. Morgan caught her around the waist as she staggered to her feet and tried to limp away, blood trailing down all her limbs. “Stop.” She pressed their bodies firmly together, hugging Dierdre’s stomach with both arms. “Stop. Wherever you need to go, we can get there without destroying your body. Just stop. Let me help. I’m here to help, Deirdre.” 

Whose arms were these around her, holding her back? Deirdre clawed at them with her bloody fingers, which she soon realized didn’t have anything to claw with. So she struggled against the arms, lacking the power in her legs to fight but possessing the great determination to anyway. The world had blurred into simple shapes and colours around her; the houses were two long streaks of white, the sky was a block of blue. It was just her and the road and the arms. She groaned, the pain that blossomed under the arms was blinding, but she clawed and fought and clawed and fought. “Let,” her voice was hoarse, garbled with thick blood spitting out of her in coughs. “Go. Of. Me.” She battled against the arms again, with the last of her power. If the owner of the arms had said anything, Deirdre didn’t listen. She needed to get to Lydia, she didn’t care about anything else. She pushed harder, rubbing the bottom of her feet raw against the road. 

“Not until I know what this is! I don’t care about your secret, isolationist bullshit, I need to know what’s happening! ” Morgan said. She wished she’d had the sense to get Deirdre’s arms pinned down in her grasp. She could feel her girlfriend’s fingers digging into her skin, trying to peel away enough of Morgan to slip through. But whatever skin she cut patched over. Morgan held steady, until she heard the now familiar sound of blood gurgling in Deirdre’s throat. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, but I’m not letting you destroy yourself,” she said. She dropped an arm to scoop up her girlfriend’s legs so she could carry her back to the car. She needed her doctor, someone to make this stop, someone who could explain why a scream had flipped a switch inside Deirdre and pulverized her insides. But Deirdre’s legs flailed and kicked and Morgan struggled to walk fast without dropping her. “Just tell me what this is,” she whispered, stuck on a loop. “I can fix it if you tell me what this is. Just tell me and we can make it stop, we can make it stop. Make it stop…”

The arms were strong. Deirdre gave up on her clawing, it was ineffective and hurt her raw fingers more than anything else. Instead, she wrapped her hand around the stranger’s wrists and tried to pry them off. She could scream, but something dull in the back of her head advised against it. She thought about it again, and the more she fought the logic, the worse her pain turned. She would do anything to get to Lydia, she had to. But she couldn’t scream, something else told her not to. “Let. Go.” She hissed, spewing another glob of blood against the ground. Then her body lifted into the air, and her eyes settled on shapes and colours she never wanted to forget. “Morgan?” She coughed, and then the rest fell into place. She couldn’t scream now, she couldn’t flail or shove—the first promise she ever offered Morgan was one to never physically hurt her with intention. “I’ll die,” she explained, “if you don’t let me go.” Because for all the promises she offered, there was one that now struck her as a little idiotic. 

A good death was a terribly subjective thing, wasn’t it? And, also, impossible. But she had wanted it so badly for Lydia. She wanted the calm passing, the peace of a bed—devoid of pain. She said she’d do it no matter what it took. Lydia had been so horrified of the drowning, it was the least she could offer her. She never thought she’d have to deliver, she never thought Lydia could die. She never thought about it because she’d sooner die herself, then ever let it happen. Now, she tried to explain this to Morgan, but every time she spoke, she sputtered out blood. As she tried to gesture it out, her body convulsed. A good death was also a terrible thing to break a promise on. “You have to let me go,” she pleaded with what was left of her voice, “please, Morgan, I won’t live if you don’t let me—“ she coughed, her body took with great tremors of uncontrollable force. Pain seized her; she wouldn’t live anyway, and it was just a waiting game to see if the next thing that left her lips was a cough, a garble or a scream. She turned her head; why were they back at the house already? “No…” she croaked. They were too far now. She couldn’t make it even if she mustered the energy. She needed to follow her body’s compass, now there was nothing left. 

For one short burst of time, Morgan believed everything was going to be okay. Deirdre saw her, she said her name and went still, and Morgan was able to break into a run. “Yes, it’s me, babe! We’re taking the car. Wherever the hell we’re going, we’re taking the car, and when you stop bleeding, you’re gonna tell me what’s wrong.”

And then Deirdre did. Not enough, not anything Morgan could understand, but she said enough to make Morgan stagger to a halt and nearly drop her with fright. “No.” She set Deirdre slowly to her feet, still holding on. “You can’t just say things like that, if that scream was for you, if this is how we…no.” She tried to pull her to the Subaru. They were less than ten feet away. They could just run up and hit the road. They could go to Lydia’s or Jared’s or the airport for all Morgan cared. As long as it was the place where Deirdre wasn’t talking about dying, she’d take them.

Deirdre sagged in her grip and collapsed to her knees, held up only by Morgan’s arms. “No, babe. We’re going. Just tell me where and we’re on our way. It’ll go by so fast, like you wouldn’t believe. You aren’t… this isn’t it, this isn’t how we’re gonna stop. We’ll fight it. Just get up with me, babe. Get up, please. We can get out of here, we can make this stop, we can be okay, we can…” Her own voice turned hoarse and ragged as she ran out of air. Morgan sank to her knees with Deirdre, eyes pleading as she fought her body for oxygen. “I can’t lose you,” she rasped. With another desperate burst of energy, Morgan tried to lift Deirdre once again. 

Deirdre fell over. She didn’t have the strength to help Morgan lift her, she didn’t have the mind to try. She tumbled backwards against the driveway, the shock of the impact eliciting a gasp and then a bout of coughing. She turned her head away from Morgan out of politeness, but it rolled back as if her neck couldn’t spare the energy to hold it up. If she looked straight, blood would pool in the back of her throat, and she began to choke, which she thought she might die from first. But her body had already started to turn cold, and she could feel death coil inside. She was afraid to cough, lest she scream, but she hardly had the strength to stop either. She wanted to tell Morgan not to touch her, she couldn’t control herself if she screamed now, and that’d be dangerous. She wanted to tell her that the scream had been for Lydia, and that she’d promised her a good death. She wanted to ask if Morgan’s death had been good (no of course it wasn’t) and tell her that this one would be okay (no of course it wouldn’t). She wanted to tell Morgan she wouldn’t mind if she made a snack of her brain. She wanted to laugh about that, would Morgan gain an Irish accent if she dug into it? What did that sound like? She wanted to be around to hear it. She wanted to tell her that too. She wanted to tell her that she wasn’t happy about being picked up and carried back, but she understood why she did it. She wanted to explain just how much, how badly, she loved her. She felt dying finally gave her the key to figuring out the right words. But everything she wanted to say came out as incoherent mumbling. She couldn’t string a sentence together even if she could stop coughing and gurgling long enough to say it. But she tried anyway. 

I love you, was a cough. We need to get to Lydia, was a long, anguished whistle between her teeth. Her arms flailed at her sides, even now and even then, she had been trying to push herself to Lydia. Part of it was the promise, leading her forwards, the other half was desperation and love—she wanted to be where Lydia was; like a child lost in a crowd, running around in circles in search of her family. It was common sense now, she figured, that she’d want to be by Lydia’s side. She just wished it wouldn’t be like this. Deirdre still wanted that good death for her, she didn’t regret offering it. She turned and slapped her phone--which had tumbled out of her hand long ago--closer to her. She lacked the energy to pick it up and call Lydia again, but she wanted it close. “L-l-l—“ she sputtered at Morgan, using her spasms as movement to propel her closer to her girlfriend. “It—“ she croaked, “okay.” Morgan seemed distressed, Deirdre tried to lift her hand up to smooth away the wrinkles, instead it bounced lamely off the ground—up and down as though she were knocking on the driveway. If she sat still, if she breathed in right, she could dispel enough of the trembling and swallow back enough blood to speak more clearly. “I’m sorry,” was all she managed for her breathing and steadiness. She hadn’t screamed for herself yet, she wanted to say, but that was what made it worse. They couldn’t run away from a broken promise. She smiled, she wasn’t worried about herself, anyway. She thought Morgan’s panic was alarming, and she was horrified for Lydia’s state, and angry that she wouldn’t pick up her phone. But she wasn’t worried. She wanted to tell Morgan that.

Morgan went down with Deirdre, unwilling to let her go. Her head hit the pavement, and Morgan screamed. Deirdre’s blood trailed down her body, staining the driveway a wet, ruddy brown and if everything was okay this wouldn’t be happening. She gathered Deirdre into her arms on the driveway, pressed into her chest as if they were embracing each other. She grit her teeth against the sound of her love choking on her own blood. She remembered the way her body fought and held Deirdre tighter. “You have to stay up,” she said. “You have to breathe. Don’t try to swallow it, babe, do whatever you have to and breathe. You’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna call the doctor and get her here and you’re gonna be just fine.” She kissed her cheek and came away streaked in blood. 

Morgan pawed around for her phone. She’d brought it, right? She wasn’t stupid enough to be without her phone in the middle of an emergency? Morgan continued to feel around, still talking to Deirdre in a shrill, steady, stream. “It’s okay, we’re gonna figure this out, okay? I’ve got you and when the doctor’s here she’ll fix you up and we’ll take a bath together and you can sleep as long as you want after…” No phone. Morgan grit her teeth, whimpering like a stricken animal. “No…” 

Deirdre was shaking in her grasp, and Morgan couldn’t tell if it was just the pain or if she was still, still trying to tear herself away from her. “No!” She bundled Deirdre’s arms into her grasp. “Please, just stop! Stay with me! Stay with me, please! Please, please, stay with me, babe. Just stay here. Stay here with me.” She caressed Deirdre’s cheek, squeezed her mutilated fingers. Blood dripped down their hands and soaked through their clothes. The driveway drank up the runoff until it was brown as dirt. Everywhere Morgan looked, there seemed to be more, splatters and rivilents and trails from the path they’d made down the block. “Please,” she begged. “You’ll be okay, please…” Her voice keened. The tears she’d been holding in began to fall and Morgan had to take a breath herself before she forgot how to speak. “Please,” she cried. “Please…”

Deirdre’s palms scraped the ground. No, something metal. Morgan blinked back her tears and saw Deirdre’s phone. Stained and a little cracked, but still working. Morgan snatched it up and tried to put in her password. Tried again. Tried again. “Fucking--Fuck!”

It-- okay--

Morgan looked down at the woman cradled in her arms. “Babe--? Hey, I’m here. I’m here.” She brushed back her hair and thumbed her cheek the way she would to ease her awake in the mornings. “I’ll make it better, you just have to hang on for me. For me, okay, my love? You don’t have to do anything else--” Her own words began to garble with sobs and she coughed, trembling as she fought herself to stay in control and get enough sense together to do something.

I’m sorry.

“No, don’t be sorry. I’m not mad, okay? Don’t be sorry, just be here…” She touched their foreheads together and squeezed her eyes shut against more tears. This wasn’t happening. They were supposed to have centuries to make this work, to live dozens of different lives together, to argue about having children. They were supposed to spend Yule together. “I can fix this. Help me…” She cried. But there was no conviction in her voice, only desperation. Her shoulders heaved, aching with the weight of what Deirdre seemed to already know. “I love you,” she whimpered. “Please... We can...we can try…” Morgan shivered, breaking with sobs that tumbled into rapid, shallow breaths, air trapped at the top of her lungs. She couldn’t let in oxygen any more than she could let in the truth.

Deirdre’s breathing had turned to pained wheezing, but the trembling ceased. Under all the red blood and dark veins, her skin had begun to turn blue. With her body’s energy claimed, there was nothing left to stop death from clawing its way around her. She did not fight for herself, but instead for Morgan’s peace and Lydia’s life. With all that was left of her, she spoke again, “you...have to...go…” Deirdre mustered a weak gesture to her phone, slapping her finger over the zero key six times to unlock it. “I...I...lov…” Her voice died, carried away by the wind. She laid still against Morgan’s body, breathing turned slow. She hadn’t screamed just yet, but now she felt like she’d miss it in her sleep. All the better, anyway, at least she wouldn’t hurt Morgan’s ears. But despite herself, despite everything she’d been told about acceptance of Death, she wheezed. She fought with what little breath she had to offer. And though it was slow, she breathed just as Morgan had taught her. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold...

Deirdre’s phone vibrated to life, ringing loud and uncaring. The bright of the screen offered one name: a dheirfiúr.

Deirdre unlocked the phone and Morgan’s heart leapt with hope. “Yes! That was so good, babe. You’re doing so good, thank you.” Morgan started to scroll through Deirdre’s recent calls for the doctor. They had needed the woman’s help for Deirdre’s iron burns only a couple of weeks ago. But her head turned at the sound of Deirdre’s voice, so faint and broken. Her lips hung open, the ghost of her words still hanging on. “Deirdre?” Morgan patted her cheek. She shook her. “Deirdre, I know, babe. It’s okay. I know. You don’t need to say, you just need to stay here with me. Stay here. Stay…”

The phone rang as her voice broke. Morgan looked down. She’d seen that screen often enough to know who it was even if she couldn’t say the phrase in Gaelic. She fumbled to answer, almost dropping the phone. “Lydia! I know we’re not-- Please, she’s dying. It happened so fast, I don’t know what’s wrong or what to do! Please, you have to tell me what’s...What do I do? She wouldn’t tell me what’s wrong and…” She sobbed, out of words and out of time. Deirdre’s breath was so slow, rattling like the fall leaves in the yard. What little of her skin wasn’t stained with blood looked all wrong, too white, too blue. But Lydia, for all her terrible faults, was good at being fae. She knew things no one else in town did. Just holding her voice in her hand, Morgan ached to have hope.

Lydia’s voice broke through her cries. “Deirdr-- Morgan, DEIRDRE, NOW!”

Morgan pulled the phone away and jabbed her thumb on the speaker. “She’s here! You’re on speaker and she’s right here, but I don’t know if she’s conscious, if she’s still…” Morgan whimpered. She couldn’t say it, lest she breathe her death into being. 

“I relinquish you,” Lydia breathed.

“Relinquish? Relinquish from what? Lydia, what did she promise you?” But the pieces, so few, so obvious, were assembling themselves in Morgan’s mind. She just didn’t want to see it. The scream that had been personal and horrifying enough to send Deirdre in a panic. The sad timbre in Lydia’s voice. How else had she known to call? What kind of promise would do this to Deirdre except something so sentimental and stupid? “...Lydia, where are you?” She asked, her voice barely more than a squeak.

“I love you!”

“I--We love you too, we both do,” Morgan whispered.

“You’re the best fae in that town, you mean the world, you’re like a sister to--” Lydia’s voice cut off with a gasp.

“Lydia?”

A whimpering sound creaked through the other end of the line, shuddering until it turned into a keening scream of pain.

“Lydia, no!” She didn’t want this. Morgan wanted a lot of things where Lydia was concerned, most of them impossible on account of her stubborn, sickening fae supremacy ideals, but above all of them: she wanted Lydia to die more peacefully than this. “Run. Just run, Lydia! We’ll--” What? A banshee’s scream was fate’s seal. Morgan dropped the phone, held Deirdre closer, and listened.

Out. Deirdre gasped to life, freed from her bind to Lydia. But relief did not find her; dread creaked against her chest. “No…” she whimpered, a quiet sound under Morgan’s shouting and Lydia’s desperation. She wanted to say that she loved her too, but like everything else, it was too late now. She listened to the sounds on the other end of the phone; screams, cries. A good death was not the image summoned to her mind. “She’s not dead just yet.” Deirdre stood, pushing herself away from Morgan as she wobbled to her feet. She wasn’t dying, but her body was far from recovered. Even so, she stood stubbornly as though nothing was wrong with her at all. “There’s still time for a good death. We just have to get there.” It burned to speak, her body felt like a foreign mass of wetness and weight. She reached down and plucked her phone back from Morgan. She had seen more death than she knew how to count; some terrible, some kind. Fae, human, supernatural or not, she’d seen them all go. She delivered her own mercies where she could. For Lydia, she had been prepared to die, she still would. “Get in the car and drive,” she commanded weakly. “I’ll tell you where.” Lydia continued on the other end, Deirdre imagined her phone forgotten in some dark corner. She listened. “We don’t have time.” And then she moved, a limp over to the passenger seat. 

Morgan’s mind was stuck in a lag. She saw Deirdre fall out of her arms like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe this was one long terrible nightmare she was trapped in and in a few minutes Deirdre would shake her awake. Morgan watched her rise, more rag-doll than woman. The blood down her robe was so red, and Morgan couldn’t even see her fingers for all the blood clotting them. Whole features vanished just like that, like they’d been melted. How weird. Distantly, there were screams, crackling and in and out, an echo of an echo. Lydia. But Lydia didn’t scream. That wasn’t who she was. Even when she was scared she was brave. Morgan thought  she remembered her ears hurting. That had been scary, but they never sounded like this before. Could screams run through you like that? Deirdre was moving toward the car, about to tip over any minute. Morgan knew she should get up and go to her, but the pathways between knowing what to do and doing it were jammed or broken. Morgan couldn’t feel her own feet, much less the ground under her. Inside, she screamed that this was all wrong and why wouldn’t anyone explain to her what was the matter and didn’t this Deirdre know she was going to fall? But maybe Morgan’s limbs had melted in all the blood too. She tried to open her mouth, wait for me, don’t go, I’m stuck, just wake me up already. Only a pitiful wine made it past her lips. 

Deirdre pulled the handle over and over again, waiting for it to unlock. They didn’t have the time to be doing this; in her hand, the sounds continued. They ebbed and flowed, moments of little silence followed by horrific scream. It didn’t even sound like Lydia anymore. “Come on, Morgan….” she tried the handle again, giving up with a huff when she figured it wasn’t going to happen. If she thought about it, she might’ve realized that Morgan was prone to shock, but she wasn’t thinking. She left Lydia on the hood of the Subaru and gripped the car as a crutch as she circled around. Morgan was still on the floor; they didn’t have the time. They couldn’t just— “Hey,” Deirdre called out softly, she couldn’t make it over to Morgan by walking (limping) and so she dove at the ground, peeling back wounds that had just started to clot. “Hey,” she called again, slow and careful. She wrapped her heavy arms around her love, unable to muster the strength to hold her as hard as she needed, and hating herself with each second for it. “Lydia is going to die, okay? She’s being, right now she’s being—“ Deirdre couldn’t say it. She swallowed, wincing at the sting in her throat. “I promised her a good death, because that’s what I do. I promised her a good death and I couldn’t do it. So, please, my love, we have to get up and go find her. If we’re quick, we can do something. If we’re quick, we can…” Save her? Get her assailants? It didn’t matter to Deirdre, she just wanted to be by Lydia’s side. Or wake up, find this was all a terrible dream. It must’ve been, Lydia couldn’t die. Lydia wasn’t the type of person that died. Not her. “Hey,” she cooed again, “I’m not strong enough to drive, so I need you to do it, but if you can’t or don’t want to...I need you to give me the keys, okay? I know it’s hard, my love. I know it’s confusing, we can figure it all out together when we get to her, but I need you to decide right now. Can you drive, or can you take your keys out and give them to me?” Deirdre wasn’t looking forward to trying to drive in her state, but she had no ideas of forcing Morgan to try. Caring for Morgan wasn’t something she took lightly, then again, neither was Lydia. She clenched her jaw, the more time they spent like this the longer Lydia was— “It’s okay,” she said again, voice cracking from use. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re okay. I’m okay. I need you to stand for me, my love, my darling. You did so good, you brought us here because you know we have to take the car. You—“ her voice had reached its limit, and she croaked, raw and rough. “Please—“ she sobbed from the pain, from the situation. “Morgan, please…” 

Morgan thought she heard Deirdre’s voice, twisted and all wrong. The world was so slow and strange, flimsy in her mind’s grasp. There were questions she’d wanted to ask, but she couldn’t come up with the words. She was all fear and confusion, whimpering as tried to answer. “N-n-no…” she managed, barely a whisper. And then Deirdre was holding her but not, and she was alone and not, on and on two pictures sketched themselves out in her mind, a Spot The Difference game dialed up to grotesque. This wasn’t happening. But if it wasn’t happening, why wasn’t she done already? Morgan pressed in, testing the fabric of the world. Deirdre held, not right, but not the way she vanished in Morgan’s worst nightmares either. “I’m--I--” The car. The car had been important a while ago. She remembered trying hard to get to the car. Morgan looked at Deirdre, her eyes unfocused and full of fear and confusion. Deirdre was telling her things and the words were familiar even if they didn’t make sense. A promise for a good death? What did that even mean? And Lydia, a good death for Lydia… but she wasn’t even that old. That wasn’t right.

On the phone, still open, someone sobbed.

None of this was right. Deirdre was crying, pleading with her. Morgan couldn’t think of what she’d done wrong but she wanted to fix it. She tried forcing her arms to move. “Mm...s-sorr…” Her bones felt stiff and made of air at the same time. They had to do something. She always tried for Deirdre and she’d been desperate to do something before, right? She tested her hands. She couldn’t feel them right, but they looked like they were holding on. Morgan’s breath hissed through her teeth as she tried to stand, her questions dying in her throat in breathless cries. How many times had she been stuck by the roadside, watching her world fall apart? What had they done to make the universe take and take and take? Maybe this was a nightmare, but it was one Morgan had been in before. 

Morgan squeezed her eyes shut and brought them up, nodding mutely at the rest of Deirdre’s words. She didn’t realize that she was crying too, or that she was just as likely to drop her love as she was to break her bone with her grip on her body so tenuous. “Do something,” she tried to say, the sounds frail and garbled in her throat. She didn’t know if she believed it, but saying it was how most of her days went, nightmares or otherwise. “We can...do something…”

She reached into her pocket for the keys. She didn’t realize they were red and sticky because her hands were still covered in Deirdre’s blood, she just marveled at them with detached confusion and clicked the button. The Subaru blinked to life. The doors clicked, unlocking. In time she made it inside the driver’s side, buckled and keyed up and ready more from muscle memory than from any sense of hurry. She stared at the console. She knew what came next. Reverse. Steer. Drive. Go. But where? They were going to see Lydia, right? Morgan looked over at Deirdre, who had dragged herself into her seat by now. What now, she tried to say. I don’t understand where we’re going, you never told me. And when do I get to wake up? But Morgan’s hands, knowing better, followed the motions they knew and they pulled out of the drive.

As much as she wanted to soothe Morgan’s worries, they didn’t have the time. She hissed with pain and regret, forcing herself to her feet. She had seen too much death to be startled by it now. Deirdre stumbled to the front of the car, grabbing her phone--still playing the music of Lydia’s agony--and winced her way into the passenger seat. She threw her head back and heaved, the pain in her body was blinding, and she couldn’t tell so much if she was crying or if Lydia was. “Alley.” She groaned, shakily reaching her hand across the console in search of Morgan’s. “Some alley, it looked like. Not any of the one’s downtown, I think. So let’s go to Amity first, and then The Bend, and work our way up. Just drive past them, we don’t need to stop. I’ll be able to tell if she’s there.” They’d get to Lydia because they had to. They’d get to Lydia because she wanted them to. They’d get to her because, even relinquished, she burned to give Lydia her good death.  

Morgan clutched Deirdre’s hand, whining softly as relief mixed with panic. If she weren’t already driving, she might have fallen over the console trying to press it to her face. She still didn’t know how to process the shifts in Deirdre, happily holding her, shattering on the floor, running away til she bled, taking her last breaths in her arms, smiling like it was over, and now this. Morgan wasn’t convinced she’d reached the end, and half expected Deirdre to throw herself out the window or simply vanish into the ether. But Deirdre had been clear, and as much as Morgan feared she would vanish again, her instructions were the best thing to cling to. She drove fast down the residential streets Lydia couldn’t be, and braked abruptly down Amity when she felt a jolt of fear that she might speed too quickly and miss Lydia completely. She never stopped except for at the red lights, when she cowered in her seat and begged the universe to wake her up and make this stop happening.

On the phone, metal shook and crunched. A fall breeze picked up over the sound of flesh sucking in a blade and Lydia’s anguished cries. Morgan whimpered at each rising sound, knowing that there were points when even a fae body could hold no more pain. 

She cast a guilty, frightened look at Deirdre as they entered the Bend. Was she doing this right?  Was Deirdre really here? Would they make it in time? The world was becoming more real and solid and her fear was crystallizing around her along with it. As they turned the next corner, the phone went silent. Morgan flinched, eyes flickering to Deirdre again. Had she hung up? Was it too late? The silence was suddenly so loud and so much worse than the sounds of pain and violence. Morgan hadn’t been told to stop, so she kept rolling from one alley to another. But she had to know. Her voice came out as barely more than a gasp when she forced the words out.  “What happened…?” She asked, already shrinking in her seat, fearing the worst.

Deirdre, eyes closed, leaned back against her seat. The world rumbled around her in the hum of the Subaru’s engine, the crunch of gravel under its tires--interspersed with the Lydia who didn’t sound like Lydia at all. And as if her body were a jungle, she cut aside the thick vegetation of her pain--nauseating grip around her innards, limbs that felt fake--and searched for the feelings that went beyond herself. The death, the tug to fae, everything that would bring her to Lydia. The car moved, and in her silence she spoke not here, not there, keep going. At some point, not-Lydia faded into white noise; Deirdre knew those sounds already, she’d seen them ripped from Lydia’s mouth. The phone at least, was her tether to what remained. As long as she screamed and cried and begged, she lived, horrible as that living was. And as long as she lived, they could reach her. It was that way that she noticed whimpers to her left, and opened her eyes to the source. “You’re doing good,” she told Morgan, another hand outstretched to weakly clasp hers. She watched her for a moment, wishing she had more to say. For once, her rabid mind was silent; she thought of Lydia, and felt no space within her to worry about anything else. 

She found humor in the sudden silence. As if the world thought her clinging to shattered pieces was too pitiful to let continue. Deirdre turned to her phone, picked it up and stared at the red symbol of an empty battery. She laughed, loud and crude and unlike herself. “My phone died.” Her tether severed again. “Just drive,” she laughed louder, loud enough until the phone was shards digging into her blood-stained hand. She stopped just as abruptly as her phone died. “Just drive.” Her voice lost its warmth, Deirdre finding that there was nothing inside of her after all; she was pain and then nothing. She withdrew her hand from Morgan’s a moment later. “If she’s not here then drive into the outskirts, and if she’s not there then we’re heading out of town.” She closed her eyes again, and waited. 

Morgan reached back for Deirdre’s hand, scrambling through the air. “I’m sorry,” she croaked. “I’m sorry...I’m sorry…I’ll...W-we can still...” She pulled on the fabric of her robe around her thigh, her sleeve. Deirdre’s hand had been her stabilizer, and without that tie to this strange, wrong world, Morgan was off balance, floating down and away and into the deep. Morgan drove faster, clinging to the last sounds of Lydia’s screams in her memory. She barely sounded like herself at all. Lydia was so collected and proud, she would never want them to hear her like that. Morgan hated to imagine what her face must be, what must be happening to her, but if she could picture her whole, and only scarred, not bleeding, she could imagine that they might still get there in time. Morgan’s breath hitched, trapped at the top of her lungs again, but still she drove. 

The roads grew sparse, and the White Crest City Limits sign came up the horizon, and still she drove. In time, Deirdre’s arms went limp and her hand flopped into her lap, passively open to be held. Still Morgan drove. The sun sank behind the treetops, the stars blinked to life, the road gave way to freeways and bright white lights, and towns with twice as many lights and coffee shops. Then the last light vanished, and there was still nothing, absolutely nothing. Morgan gripped Deirdre’s hand tighter. Morgan veered out of whatever town they were in and back onto the freeway. If it wasn’t here, then where? And how many hours had it been? Only a few cars were driving out in the boonies at night, Morgan sped onto the entrance ramp without disturbing a soul. The Subaru drifted in and out of its lane, signs passed in a tear-coated blur, and there was nothing, only dark, and the echo of Lydia’s scream so distant, Morgan wasn’t sure if she was remembering it right. A sob broke through her. Morgan bit her lip and gripped the wheel tighter. She sobbed again, the sound cracking through her clenched jaw. Still Morgan drove--into a guardrail. Paint and metal peeled off the side,sending sparks down the road. Morgan screamed and slammed the brake. The car stopped. The clock flipped: 10:30 p.m. Morgan saw the numbers, and the crunched metal along the passenger side door. There was nothing. Nothing they could do. The scream Morgan wanted to let out whistled past her throat in a shrill cry. Her muscles tingled with a pain that went beyond her dead nerves, suddenly too heavy for her body. Morgan slumped down against the wheel and covered her head as if all the sobs breaking through her were full of flying debris.

Deirdre thought a clear mind would bring her to Lydia. She didn’t think of her pain, or of Morgan’s, or of where they were driving, really. She thought of Lydia as she was, the curve of her shoulders, the swoop of her hair. She thought of her as she knew Lydia would hate for anyone to see her; crying in her arms, bloody and beaten and tortured without the dignity of a good place to die. An alley, it had to be. She’d be just another stain against brick. Her blood would mix with the dampness. She’d die like she was nothing, like Deirdre didn’t love her. Her body would be ruined by the world, touched by the dirt, claimed by the rats. It wasn’t right. Lydia didn’t deserve to be twisted into something she wasn’t; so much of her life was spent embodying perfection, why should she die like trash, thrown aside? The clear mind didn’t provide any answers, but Deirdre thought it would lead her well to where she needed to go--to the place that would. Instead it broke apart by the shrill sound of metal against metal, and rubber against road. Her eyes snapped open and she was back in the world again, where Lydia wasn’t. Deirdre slammed the passenger side door against the guard rail, trying to open it and hop out. She tried it again and again as if the space for her to squeeze out would magically grow large enough for her to fit. She turned to Morgan to explain her predicament and found her slumped against the wheel. 

In another world---the good world, the one that was peaceful and warm and brighter than bright---Lydia was laughing over a glass of wine. She was explaining the process of her latest restoration piece, and though the topic was not interesting or of importance to Deirdre, she leaned up to the edge of her seat and smiled wide as if being told a story. She looked to Lydia with bright eyes, and an expression that was horribly transparent for all the love and awe she held inside of her. In that world, Deirdre explained that she was an only child, and that she didn’t know what it was like to have a sister. She called her dheirfiúr and said she thought she knew now. Then she said she was sorry; for many things, but this one betrayal more than all.

Deirdre turned the car off, the Subaru’s rumbling now dead as the night around them. She crawled across the console, reaching out to push the driver seat back, leaned back just as far as she knew was comfortable. She pulled Morgan away from the wheel and pressed her into the seat. Clumsily, painfully, she fell into Morgan’s lap, and pulled her into her bloodied chest. They didn’t have time. But in the good world, they would have found Lydia already. Deirdre’s curse was not the death she carried, but the truths she knew. “It’s okay,” she rasped, her throat still sensitive to speech. “Let’s take a break; it’s okay.” 

Morgan gasped through her sobs, trying to make her words come. She was sorry she’d fallen apart in the driveway, she was sorry she was falling apart right now, she was sorry she’d wrecked the car, she was scared, she thought Deirdre was going to die, she didn’t understand, she didn’t know what to do, and where else could Lydia be? Why couldn’t they just find her, why wasn’t she anywhere? Didn’t they at least get to have a body to bring with them, to shroud and burn the way fae were supposed to be? Why was there nothing? Deirdre’s body pressed into hers, familiar and right and Morgan finally had enough air to scream the way her body needed to. She latched onto Deirdre, shaking her head as she wrapped herself as tightly as her small limbs would let her. Was Deirdre really even here, she wanted to ask. Was she going to vanish too? Was all of this a living nightmare that left Morgan alone in the world? Scattered pieces of her thoughts made it through her sobs, “...so, so sorry...Lydia...please...Deirdre, stay with...please…Lydia...” But just as there was no more Lydia (terrible, thoughtless, incredible Lydia), there were no words to trade away her pain. Like death, it simply was.

Choice was a horrible thing. Maddening, freeing, precious, but terrible. There never was a right one, and Deirdre hated that. She felt sick thinking of how lonely Lydia was, how abandoned by people who said they loved her, and how she was doing the same--leaving her body to decay in some nameless alley. This was her own fault, she should have fought harder against Morgan and just kept running. She would’ve known where to go then, and if it meant she’d die, then at least she’d be where Lydia was. But even for the pang of regret, she couldn’t look at the Morgan in her arms and say what she’d done was wrong. She thought Lydia would understand, because Lydia always did. “It’s okay, my love.” The space she carved out in her numb body for Lydia she carefully dug out and filled anew. She’d make it up a thousand times over when they finally reached her murder scene, where she’d commit to memory every face involved and subject them to the same suffering. She’d make the death good, somehow. But for now, life was for the living, and she tried to hold Morgan tighter. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. Look at me---” Deirdre cupped Morgan’s face. She smiled down at her, as warmly as her worn body could muster. The dark veins had long since faded away, and though she was still crusted with blood, some color had flushed back to her pale skin. Her soft brown eyes didn’t reflect any of the agony that claimed her. “Look at me. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. You don’t have to be sorry for anything. I’m here with you, I’ll always be here with you.” 

“But...you were gone…I didn’t...But I...” Morgan hiccuped, trembling, confusion wrinkled all over her brow. But Deirdre’s face let no room for question or doubt. She was no nightmare doppelganger or ghost. She was solid and blood caked and soft and she loved her. Whatever had been behind the last few hours, death and everything in between, that much was still true. Morgan nodded, accepting her word as gospel even if she didn’t understand it. The tension between her shoulders crumbled and Morgan sank back against Deirdre, nuzzling her cheek as she burrowed into her comfort. “Tell me how to make this better and I’ll do it,” she whispered, her voice squeaking with pain impatient to unload itself. “How do we heal you after this? You stopped breathing for so long, you must be...and your hands, and your poor feet...and…” And there was another question, too awful to be asked aloud. And how do we get Lydia back? How do we re-balance the world so she can stay here long enough to change? “What do we do for her now?” Was all she said.

Deirdre always felt more like herself when there was a plan to be discussed. Her whole life was plans; she had the mind for it. A good plan always made her forget that she never really believed what she was saying. “You take me to my doctor, and I’ll stay overnight at the clinic. They don’t allow it, but I’ll argue, and you’ll stay the night with me. I’ll heal. I always do.” She had no nails left after scraping them across the asphalt, to try and rake over Morgan’s skin for added pressure, but she didn’t have the strength to anyway, and so she didn’t mourn the loss for long. “We go find Lydia. And we take what’s left of her body, and we worry about your hunger when we get there--but we take her home, and we’ll freeze her. I’ll call her family. We’ll go to her house and pick out a nice dress for her; she’ll want to look good, that’s important. And we’ll take whatever else we can so she can be remembered just the way she wanted to. We’ll take Niamh in, because we have to, and Anya and Moira will just have to adjust. And then I find the people who did this and---” Deirdre swallowed back the anger that roiled in the back of her throat. “---and it’ll be okay. We have to find her first, but we will, and then it’ll be okay.” 

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Baby’s First Couple’s Therapy || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Sometimes a wound needs to air out to heal.

CONTAINS: Brief references to parental abuse

Kelly Mackowski, their couples’ therapist, steepled her hands together over her lap as she looked at the pair. “I’ve met with each of you already and I think I’m getting a picture of you as a couple, but I’d like to start today by reviewing why you have chosen to come here.” Morgan, ever the dutiful student, thought she saw Kelly’s eyes settle on her and stiffened on the couch. Was she sitting too close to Deirdre? They were next to each other, and they were holding hands, but they weren’t in any laps or snuggled like they were at home. Was holding hands too clingy? Deirdre didn’t answer at once, though maybe that was because it had only been a few seconds. Morgan glanced sidelong at her and after a silent exchange of, do you want to go first? Do you? She spoke up.

“Well, we’ve had a traumatic couple of months, and in the worst of it, it came to my attention that we had developed an unhealthy dynamic stemming from my accident uh, eight and a half months ago. And we--well, I feel like we have made some good steps toward rectifying the situation and finding a better normal. I have a tiny house in the backyard that I go to for at least a couple of hours each day and one night out of the week, by myself, mostly to engage with my faith, which I’ve recently recommitted to, and work on some hobbies. And I’m back at school, for work, and that’s nice and gets me out of the house. And we’ve been able to talk a little about, you know, how my emotional instability towards the end of November was more of a statement on my own lack of internal support systems than anything else. And we’ve more or less regained our old physical intimacy boundaries. No sex yet, because I really just want to be a little more stabalized since it tends to make me emotional in general, but it’s still---it’s the best place to be, when she holds me.” Morgan paused and realized she was rambling, maybe even veering off track completely. “But there’s still more to unpack, obviously! And it just seemed like a good idea to do that with some uh, professional structure and, um, guidance.” She smiled, and then didn’t, realizing she was looking for approval that they weren’t here to gain.

Kelly nodded, revealing nothing. “Deirdre?” She prompted. “Can you talk about what you want out of this from your side?”

Deirdre had concluded, with great speed and unwavering resolve, that she hated therapy. As it turned out, talking about her feelings with anyone other than Morgan was a nightmare of strange design. And for all her attempts to create chaos and deflect and make Kelly “Macaroni”, or whatever her name was, emote with shock or fear...she remembered that she was here for Morgan, for their relationship. And she wanted it to get better, she wanted them to be better. All attempts deflated and she was left with the truth, which refused to leave her mouth in congruent sentences. Deirdre held Morgan’s hand just a little tighter, her gaze glued somewhere beyond Kelly’s unnervingly rigid stare—did she have to make eye contact all the damn time? The room was silent, save for a ticking clock, if it wasn’t filled with conversation. Deirdre found out the hard way that Kelly didn’t like silence very much, she’d always interject eventually. And as it turned out, Deirdre also hated Kelly.

When the question turned to her, she nearly hissed. She hated questions just as much as she hated Kelly. Or rather, she hated Kelly because the only things that ever left her mouth were questions. “I want us to be better, more secure.” Deirdre shifted. Her answer was far shorter than Morgan’s, and she wondered if she ought to be saying more. But what else was she supposed to say? What else was she supposed to want? Kelly scribbled something down on her notepad. Deirdre came to hate the way she wrote; like a bored cat with a couch, all scratching.

Kelly, ever impassive in a way that might have earned Deirdre’s respect if it was in any other setting, nodded and looked up. Deirdre squirmed. At this point, she would have preferred one of those smiles humans did when they were trying to be polite. “And is there any personal goal you hope to meet from these sessions?”

“Personally,” Deirdre stressed, “I would like us to be better.” Kelly scratched into her notepad again. Deirdre’s grip on Morgan’s hand tightened. She hated it here. And Kelly--question-asking, scratch-scratch-scratch note-taking Kelly, seemed to sense Deirdre’s unease and pivoted to Morgan. Once freed from the spotlight, Deirdre relaxed her grip just enough to stop crushing Morgan’s hand.

“You mentioned that there was more to unpack, Morgan? Is there anything specific that comes to mind?”

Morgan’s eyes went wide at Deirdre’s answer, or rather, lack of one. She wanted to look at her and keep pressing. She wanted to ask what they had gone over in her one-on-one session, if there was something she was hiding and didn’t feel comfortable sharing. But under Kelly’s look, she wondered if that was somehow overbearing. From Deirdre’s tightening grip, she could figure that Deirdre didn’t want her to pull away. A protective affection rushed up her chest and she put her other hand over Deirdre’s, encasing it gently and massaging the tight knuckles. In the brief silence before Kelly shifted attention, Morgan slipped Deirdre a quick look of confusion. What was that? What are you doing?

But then Kelly asked her question and Morgan found herself with too many nerves to juggle. She always did this when she was breaking in a new therapist and it always came to this stress point when she had to surrender her pride or sense of dignity in some way because focusing on trying to get an A+ in togetherness wasn’t very productive in getting to the goal she wanted to accomplish. Sighing, Morgan sagged against the couch and scooted close to Deirdre until they were hip to hip. Yeah, Kelly, this is how I wanna sit. You can give me longform analysis on that on week five when I know you better, she wanted to say. But instead, she thought, and then she tried…

“Personally, for just myself, I want some of that old security back. I want to be someone who doesn’t have to have her partner in the room in order to feel supported. And who doesn’t teeter on a nervous breakdown when I feel like Deirdre isn’t really here. I want to obtain a sense that we’re solid, even if we’re not perfect. Maybe if I could become someone who doesn’t need so much fucking reassurance all the time, that would be good.” She finished with a pained, bitter grin. Deirdre always did, when she was emotionally available, but Morgan felt the ghost of every well meaning, only half-teasing ‘clingy’ and ‘needy’ she’d ever heard. Her need simply was; a fact, just like the state of her body. But just like the level of the seas could change over time, so too could her need, maybe.

Kelly nodded, waiting for her to say more, and it was then that Morgan realized that she hadn’t really answered the question, and didn’t want to. “I just mean...un learning is hard. Talking about where our stuff comes from can feel like it’s impossible sometimes, and some coping mechanisms are hard to adopt and don’t work for everyone. And compromise takes time too. We’re so quick to give each other all or nothing, taking things only halfway might be a little wild too. But I wasn’t, uh, being specific.” There were too many places to start, and Morgan felt like she was doing all the talking for all three of them. She gave Deirdre another look as she gave her hand a careful squeeze. Are you here? Are you going to say something?

“I think those are some good goals to have, Morgan, and some good expectations.” Kelly said. “A relationship is a journey, one that will, inevitably, require changes. But in order for this to work, we all need to be on the same page and actively engaging. Deirdre, I know we’ve had some difficulties connecting, But I’d like to ask you again if you have any goals for yourself, as an individual? Or perhaps what it is you want out of your relationship?”

Deirdre met Morgan’s gaze, softening. Silently, she apologized and with a squeeze, she explained what Morgan already knew: that she didn’t like answering questions about herself. But she was trying. She would try. Yet, before she could confirm that her girlfriend understood their telepathic communications, she was back to answering Kelly and Deirdre begrudgingly looked back at the degrees and certifications framed on the wall. She wanted to say that there was nothing wrong with wanting assurances, or to feel supported and loved and understood--and that she would do all these things, gladly and happily and as many times as Morgan needed. She’d never minded it before, she certainly didn’t mind it now. It wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t bad--not to her--she’d wanted to say, and that she could feel that Morgan was trying to appease Kelly--and she didn’t have to do that. But she said nothing, hearing the echo of Kelly’s scratching in her head as her framed accolades merged into a toothy monster. What did Deirdre know? She wasn’t the one with the degrees and the training.

Kelly spoke to her again, and Deirdre stiffened instantly, reflexively dreading whatever Kelly would want her to answer next. Yes, they had difficulty connecting, because Deirdre didn’t want to connect, unless it was with her fist to Kelly’s unemoting face. She could, in fact, actively engage with a knife into Kelly’s stomach. Was that active enough for her? Her nostrils flared, her free hand curled into a fist. “I just told you my goals, you huma--” Deirdre froze. “Hum--” And faltered. Her anger died quickly. “Homunculus.” She shifted, shot Morgan another look of apology and tried her best to answer the question. “I’m sorry,” she coughed, “it--um--maybe it would be nice to have a hobby? Maybe I shouldn’t just be waiting around for Morgan to come back inside.” This wasn’t something she wanted in actuality, of course. But from what she could gather from the self-help books, this was something she should have. It was also something she had mentioned, in a practiced script, to Kelly in their private session. It was, in fact, the only personal detail she shared. She found one thing she was comfortable admitting and she would wear it out.

But it was Kelly’s second question that caught her unawares. “Excuse me?” Her face pulled together with confusion, then frustration. “I don’t want anything from Morgan. Not like--like a leech. I’m not dating Morgan because I want to take from her. I love her; I’m trying to give.” Deirdre’s leg bounced wildly up and down as unease wrapped around her. The offense she took at the question wasn’t founded, but the idea insulted her nonetheless. Questions of wants and desires often did.

But with the simple experience of one session under her belt, Kelly knew Deirdre’s annoyance well enough to greet it directly. “And is that how you view yourself in this relationship? As a leech?”

Deirdre’s bouncing leg morphed into an earthquake, the beginnings of a sceam burned in the pit of her lungs. Fuck you. Shut up. How dare you? Deirdre seethed, and then she didn’t. Morgan’s presence beside her served a gentle reminder of why she was here, and what she wanted--truly. Her leg ceased, she closed her eyes and breathed (In. Hold. Out), and she answered the question. “Yes.”

Kelly turned to her notepad briefly, scratching away. She looked up, nodded and leaned it; all signs to show an active listener, all things Deirdre did to let people assume she cared. Kelly was trying to encourage her, and she hated it. “Why do you think you feel that way, Deirdre?”

“Because that’s what people who want things are: leeches.” Deirdre was a smug with her answer, as though it was some grand truth. It wasn’t a personal thought! Not some ideology bred from trauma, not at all! Kelly ought to take her diplomas off the wall, she didn’t know anything. And then Deirdre froze. Morgan had just said she wanted reassurances, and Deirdre didn’t think Morgan was selfish, not once, not ever. She turned to her girlfriend, quick to rest a hand on her knee. “Not you. Not--” She turned back to Kelly. “I mean me, just me. It’s--” She swallowed. “It’s something that my family--the cult--” as Morgan and her had agreed on referring to it for Kelly’s sake “--says. And it--it’s true. It makes sense. I can’t, I--” How did she explain the dangers of desire for a banshee to a human? How did she explain that emotion could mean mass destruction? How did she explain her status as a thing? She deflated. “I want to be good to Morgan. I don’t want to hurt her, I don’t want to take from her. I don’t want to be a--” She looked up at Morgan; wet-eyed, ashamed. She dropped her gaze to the grey rug.  

Kelly spoke up, gentle. “Morgan, would you like to tell Deirdre what your thoughts are on this?”

“Yes,” Morgan barely gave Kelly the time to finish. She didn’t have it in her to worry about seeming any particular way. She cupped Deirdre’s face and wiped the corners of her eyes. “Hey…” She said softly. “It’s okay, I’m not mad. But you know what I’m gonna say next, right?” She smiled softly, her face all compassion. “You’re a person, Deirdre Dolan. My favorite person. And maybe this isn’t the best time to work on this particular part of yourself. But you can, and you should, and you do want things. You need to. Everyone does. It doesn’t make you bad or wrong. I mean, you want us, right? And that’s worked out pretty good so far. You should get to have a house, my love. A whole world’s worth of wanting. And it’ll be slow going, especially right now, but when--” She winced, hating the coding of her language, especially when Regan was such a fraught subject. “When these final rites and sacrifices you’re making right now with your cousin are over, I think it’ll go faster. And maybe...I don’t know, maybe Kelly knows, but maybe if you have a little more of a house than you do right now, those sacrifices will be easier to carry, until you can finally put them down.” She gave a firm kiss to her lips, then a tender one to her cheek, and looped her arms around Deirdre as she shifted back and angled herself toward Kelly.

“You do not have to be good,” she murmured. “And you can want. The world won’t fall. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Deirdre breathed, melting against Morgan. Whatever annoyance she felt about being interrogated, and whatever anger she felt towards Kelly, she let it free and held Morgan close. She didn’t care, then, who was in a room with them; who was scratching into their notepad or held esteemed education. There was Morgan, and then there was her, and nothing else mattered. “You’ve said this so many times. I’m sorry.” If reassurances were something Morgan felt poorly for wanting, Deirdre felt just as terrible. They had both endured similar punishment for their desires--evidenced enough by the fact that Deirdre had told Morgan a similar thing when she was cursed. “But that could take months. That could take years. Would you be okay with--I can’t do that to you. I need to--I’m trying now. I’m trying.” She couldn’t put her sacrifices down, that wasn’t her privilege, but she understood what Morgan was saying, and for it, she wept, burying her head into Morgan’s shoulder. “I do want you,” she repeated. “I do want our relationship and our life, and I do want to be--” Better? More whole? More secure? “--I don’t know.”

Defeated, embarrassed, Deirdre didn’t want to move from where she’d wriggled herself in. “I’m sorry, my love. I know you wanted to talk. I know you have things you want to say.” And she knew that these sessions were for the both of them, even if she didn’t understand how. “Maybe a hobby would be nice,” she pulled back and smiled, this time, the idea did sound like something she wanted. Deirdre turned to Kelly. “Can I ask Morgan a question?” And as Kelly nodded, Deirdre opened her mouth. “Do you really not feel supported, loved, when I’m not around? Did you feel that way before your--” Deirdre grimaced; she hated referring to Morgan’s death this way, it was so much more than an accident, it was a murder. “--your accident? Those times when we’d--” She grimaced again, this time out of guilt. “--broken up, were they different than these times now, when I was…” Deirdre trailed off.  

“You don’t have to be sorry. You’re okay. I’ll say it as many times as you need. Sometimes it just takes time. It’s okay…” Morgan held Deirdre tight as she melted against her body, trying to catch all of her at once. She gave more kisses and combed her fingers carefully through Deirdre’s half pinned up hair and whispered her love and acceptance some more. At some point Kelly passed a box of tissues, which rested uncomfortably close on the end table, and Morgan took one so she could wipe her love’s tears herself. “I know you’re trying. And this is already so good. You don’t even have to know what you want right now, okay? You just have to try and find out. That’s all, my love.” She nuzzled her cheek as they adjusted themselves once again, now wrapped up as close as possible while still maintaining some shred of politeness.

At the suggestion that she had something more important to say, Morgan shook her head and gave more tender kisses and touches along Deirdre’s face. Kelly had sprung the good brand, and there were no flakes of paper or irritated splotches on her cheeks. She looked just as wonderful as she ever did. “No, I’d rather hear you talk about what else you might fill your world with…” she beamed as she spoke and let it go. Deirdre wanted to ask her something, and since opening up was so important, who was she to push in the other direction?

And then Deirdre asked. Morgan’s smile faded, now heavy with guilt of her own. “Deirdre, I… I don’t mean all the time. It’s not like I think you’re going to leave me every time you go to the office. I mean, during the uh, herbal scares we had, when your cult slipped you those drugs, I would worry that uh….they would do something, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it because I wasn’t there. Because you were off...doing things.” And the mushroom spores had in fact found Deirdre that way. ”But that’s...that’s not what you’re asking.” She swallowed thickly and gave Deirdre a pained smile that only lasted a moment. Please don’t be mad. I’m sorry.

“In those times when we were seeing each other but not admitting it to ourselves… I did...think it was the end. The actual end. The first two, at least. I actually thought I made you hate me for a while, until that night at Al’s. And I did feel broken inside. I called Remmy and I cried until my whole body hurt, and some days did pass in this fog of depressed not-quite-existence. But I wasn’t on the floor completely? Just, maybe really close to it. But I would tell myself that it didn’t matter, and I wasn’t supposed to have anyone like that anyway, you know, with that weird family legend my mom raised me on. Which just made me feel guilty on top of sad for wanting to reach out to you so bad even though you’d made it clear you didn’t want to talk.” Her voice flattened with disdain; the curse had been only too real, and she had paid for it with her life. But then again, the way Ruth had brought it into her life probably had hit heavier than the thing itself. She didn’t know what a healthy relationship with the curse would have possibly looked like, just that hers hadn’t been it. “I was sad and scared for you because I wanted you to be loved by at least someone, even if it wasn’t me, and I wasn’t sure if you would let that happen. And I told myself you were better off and safer. And I had been on my own on and off for so long. I could do it again. I would be fine. I was fine before, just the way I was, and I’d get over it eventually.” She shrugged, trying to brush those times aside. But her eyes were filmed with tears at the recollection, and she could not hold Deirdre’s gaze for longer than an instant for fear of letting them spill over.

“I figured you out eventually, though, and I didn’t break during those later absences. I knew you felt something for me. Sometimes I wondered, but deep down I knew. Always. And I knew I wanted to be with you, even if it was just half a relationship. You took such good care of me, and it was the best I’d felt in so long, I was almost scared. The pain of not having you just like I wanted was almost a comfort sometimes. With the...family legend, about the curse. It felt like maybe you were kind of protected, or we were. Kind of like a win-win? And we had that no sex boundary, to protect at least myself from making a big mess. And when we were actually together… even on that really bad night when I thought the curse had destroyed the house, I knew you didn’t blame me. I knew you loved me. I was just so sorry because I was scared, and we had all our memories in those rooms the way they’d been before, and I thought things were going to get worse. But you loved me, even if it really had been that uh, superstitious curse come to life. But after--”

After she died, everything was different.

“Everything died with me in that wreck,” she said. “That minute when I flatlined, I mean,” she hastily added. “We already talked it out in the woods, and I understand now, I know how it really was, but I did think...when I woke up alone, I thought it was only a matter of time before it was over, and you were just being kind. There was a lot going on, so that wasn’t the only reason I was on the floor all the time, just one of them. But after that, when I was hanging onto you with everything I had...That first time you left for a night, I thought that was the end too. And it did...hit differently. My worst fear for us has always been that I’ll do something horrible and unforgivable without meaning to and it’ll be that day in the woods all over again. I’ll just be talking or holding you, and I’ll think everything is fine, and then I’ll do something stupid and it won’t be and I won’t see it coming, it’ll just happen, it’ll be over, and there won’t be anything I can do because if I didn’t even know it was wrong before, how well can I guarantee I won’t do it again, and if you’re too hurt to be able to tell me, how am I going to learn and…” Morgan stopped herself, realizing her voice was growing thin and shrill. She wasn’t breathing. Morgan squeezed Deirdre tight and let her tears spill over as she met her eyes desperately.

The pain in her chest was so much bigger than one bad break up in the woods. The root went so much further than Deirdre. When Morgan looked at her reflection in Deirdre’s eyes, she saw herself at twelve and ten and six, the quiet of her family’s apartment suddenly shattered by her mother screaming and swearing, and impassive look turning to rage and exasperation, a gentle hand of instruction turning into a claw on her shirt. No going back, no time to apologize. She should have known better. Been better. She was just such a hard-headed, willfully stupid child. Morgan shivered, unable to bring words to what she was seeing and unable to stop herself until her fear had been spent.  “I felt better after we talked, and you kept me so close all day when you came back, and I felt better by the end of the week, I think. But it did feel like….like that fear. I thought I had ruined everything. But I couldn’t tell myself that I didn’t need you, or I wasn’t allowed this, or that I would be fine, nothing I’d told myself before felt true and I didn’t know what to do. And that’s my fault, it’s mine, it is, but that’s how it felt. And the other nights you did that...I kept myself from destroying our house, but I wondered. I stayed up and I couldn’t focus on anything until you came back because that fear was so strong. And then at the end of this past November... “ Morgan grimaced as she tried to sift through the feelings. She had so many varieties of pain, it was hard to categorize them precisely.

“I didn’t think it was over in November. But I thought maybe it might be. I thought…” She had to close her eyes and will herself back there. She had cut the cord on this time, but the knot, the true source of it, remained buried in her soul. “I know better now, from what you said later. But back then, I couldn’t...It was similar, yes, I thought you had stopped...I thought maybe you...you didn’t want m-me. But I thought I could fix it, too. If I could just...do something right, if I could make you just a little bit happy, a little bit at peace, then maybe you would...you’d just have to. If I could just figure out what I was supposed to do, it would be okay and I’d make--” She stopped and covered her mouth, her face crumpling at the truth that had just risen on her tongue. “I was wrong,” she said, barely audible beneath her fingers. She sniffled and choked, swallowing down sobs. “I was wrong. I thought I was helping. It wasn’t a conscious thought. In my head it was like, I just wanted to make things better for you, I wanted to share your pain and make you feel better and you wouldn’t have to feel so alone, because we’d be together. I’d fix it, I’d fix everything as much as I could. I never consciously set out to...to make you love me again.” She bowed her head, shivering miserably as she just barely held herself together. “It’s just that you were all I had. And if I lost you, there wouldn’t be anything. I was so desperate, I didn’t even let myself really think it. And I...I’m sorry. I’m sorry I tried to do that, and I couldn’t see your hurt, and that I shouldn’t have put that on you, I didn’t see that, I’m sorry. But everything we’re doing now, it’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. But I am...I am sorry for all of it. And it was my fault, it’s my fault…” Her voice croaked, and Morgan’s grip on her cries fell.

Deirdre’s arms had found their way around Morgan, her body pressed to hers, together just as they’d sit at home. She held her tight, soothing with her touch as Morgan spoke. They’d already talked about the break ups, and Deirdre knew Morgan didn’t blame her—and so she didn’t interrupt with an apology or an explanation. As she listened, she understood Morgan’s pain wasn’t because of her, which should have been a relief but only served to make Deirdre’s chest throb. If it was her fault, then it was something she could control; something she could fix. Likewise, Morgan had thought Deirdre’s pain to be personal, and therefore in her hands. But it wasn’t. Neither of their pain was. But to say what led them here was Morgan’s fault…?

“My love,” Deirdre mumbled, lifting Morgan’s head up to thumb away her tears; as many as there were, even when they kept coming. “My love,” she repeated, “my strong, kind love. It’s not your fault. I don’t think it is, and I wish you didn’t either. The way you were raised...the things your mother did to you, said to you, and your curse...all the things you’ve lost…do you know how strong you are, Morgan? You did so good with what you were dealt, how is that your fault? How could it be your fault?” She released her face, wanting to use her hands to hold her again—tight, firm, steady. “The fact that we’re here, that isn’t your fault. And this isn’t a bad place to be; you said it yourself, we’re going to be okay, and we’ll learn the things we should be doing. And we’ll be better than we were before, and that’s not bad at all. And if it’s not bad then...what exactly is your fault? There’s nothing here to blame yourself for, my love. You wanted to take my pain away—that wasn’t bad either. And you were scared, and none of that is bad. The way you felt, your feelings, they’re not bad, they’re not your fault. I—“ Deirdre cut herself off, hearing Kelly’s scratching. She hated that part of her was worried about what Kelly thought of her attempt to comfort, maybe it was all wrong and there had to be some better way to do it. But despite the feeling, she continued.

“I love you, Morgan. You, and your thoughts and feelings and I love that we’re here—“ Her lips thinned. “Well, maybe not love but I—I think it’ll be good for us. And I’m happy that we’re doing this, and that you’re figuring out your supports, Morgan. I don’t blame you, I’m not mad at you for anything. Maybe, maybe you’ll be able to stop blaming yourself.” She combed her fingers through Morgan’s hair, careful to make sure Kelly couldn’t see how she tugged on it—the human wouldn’t understand what Morgan’s zombie senses needed. “Thank you for always being so honest with me, my love. And what you were saying, about not seeing my hurt I—well, you just wanted to make it better, and I think that’s a noble thing to want. Maybe it was wrong.” Maybe Kelly would say it was. “But I don’t think so; we make mistakes and then we figure it out. And if there was something to forgive you for, you’d already be forgiven. You’ve been so afraid, Morgan, for so long, of so many things. If you’re going to blame yourself, then you have to blame me for being equally as scared. And if you can’t do that then…” She trailed off and smiled, picking tissues out of the box on the table. If Morgan wasn’t going to blame Deirdre, then she shouldn’t be blaming herself—Deirdre didn’t need to say the rest of her thought to let it be clear. She held the tissues out with one hand, using the other to thumb along the bones of her face. “It’s a process,” she said, “well, according to Kelly.” Deirdre smiled up at the therapist, suddenly forgetful of her animosity.

“Are you okay, my love? Do you want to stay like this for a while or…?” Deirdre asked gently, wondering if Kelly would interrupt them now that she’d watched the scene play out. Was there criticism to hand out? Advice? Had they sponged up their time and needed to be ushered out? Deirdre found herself uncaring for the answer, instead she leaned over and pressed her lips to Morgan’s cheek, jaw, temple. She willed love to pass through her body and unto Morgan like a current.

Morgan shut her eyes and huddled into Deirdre, whimpering as she tried to swallow down her sobs. “But I should have been better…” she said feebly. “I’m sorry…” There was nothing else she could think of to say, and so she hid herself deeper into Deirdre’s forgiveness and affection, greedy and aching for it. The parts of her that were lost and trembling didn’t believe she deserved to be comforted, that she should pay, somehow, for the mistakes she had made. But another part, rational and relieved, understood the truth in Deirdre’s words. They really were a pair, holding these double standards for themselves that they would never dream of putting on each other. She laughed, sad and quiet and held Deirdre a little tighter.

“I love you,” she whispered, so soft only her banshee would be able to hear. “I love you always.” She sniffled and lifted her head. “I’m okay,” she said, first to Deirdre, then again to Kelly, clearly and with her best attempt at a smile. She shifted herself to be more visible to their therapist, but made no move to untangle herself from her love.

Kelly beamed at the two of them, her hand deftly concealing the notes in her lap. It was the most feeling she’d expressed to them the whole hour. She remained silent, giving them both time to gather themselves and stay cuddled. “What’s interesting to me, watching you two, is that you seem to possess a certain amount of level-headed wisdom when it comes to each other. And when I say that, I mean you understand that being judgemental isn’t productive toward finding a more positive way of being. You appreciate the importance of a growth mindset, and reflection, but not criticism. But when it comes to yourselves, the temptation to give into fear and take on blame and criticism is much stronger. This may come as a surprise to you, or it may not, but my sense is that the way to enable you to have a stronger footing in your relationship, to be good, or better to each other than you currently are, is to be attentive and forgiving to yourselves. I have some exercises you can practice at home to foster the kind of environment to optimize this kind of work and break down some of these fear responses and thought distortions, but it may be that individual therapy sessions will help you even more, if that is something you are interested in. Does everything I’m saying resonate with you both?”

Morgan nodded from the safety of Deirdre’s chest, where her head still lay. “That makes sense. If you have any suggestions on alone time to couple time ratio, I’d like to hear that too.” She glanced up at Deirdre, hope flickering in her expression. What do you think?

Deirdre smiled, gentle and just for Morgan. “I love you too,” she said; whispered for her love’s ears alone. It’d been a year since they’d met—even if it had felt like so much longer, in all the best ways and only in some terrible ones—and while the woman Morgan knew a year ago had been terrified of having feelings for a human, she’d never shied from affection. She didn’t think to deny Morgan this intimacy. Not when she was afraid, and certainly not under Kelly’s gaze. She held her firm, pressed her lips to the top of her head and shifted just enough to face their therapist. Before the sounds came to her, it was easy to say ‘I love you’ just like this. Where words failed her, touch never did. She wondered if Kelly knew that, if that was somewhere on her notes. It ought to be.

Deirdre nodded, it did occur to her that she was kinder to Morgan than she was to herself. But the reasoning was simple there: she loved Morgan. And self-love—true self-love and not self-importance—was useless to her. Or it had been. “It does, Kelly.” No, individual therapy sounded like the nightmare that it was and she’d only found ease being honest here because of Morgan’s presence, but, their relationship wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t a lack of love, or trust or aversion to affection, it was old wounds, old trauma. Things that needed to be dealt with alone. Things she couldn’t fix for Morgan, and Morgan couldn’t fix for her. Deirdre understood this now, in silent revelation. “Hmm, but I like when we spend time together,” she pouted briefly at Morgan, before she couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t think they spent too much time together, they did live in the same house, after all. Or, they did. Now Morgan lived in the backyard, partly. Which was depressing for a number of reasons, but mostly because Deirdre didn’t think they crowded each other much to begin with. What was so wrong about working separately at opposite ends of the couch? Or when she’d poke her head in after Morgan had spent hours grading papers to ask if she wanted some eyeballs or boiling tea. She struggled to find a single issue with their nights cuddled together, watching movies.

But Morgan wanted space, and independence, and Deirdre understood that better than she was disappointed about being apart. “That would be nice too; interests besides each other. Maybe a way to figure that out. I know we have separate jobs and friends, and maybe that’s a start, but…” Deirdre sighed. She didn’t know how to explain that her interests were exclusively death, math and Morgan. “We do live together, and so time spent with each other is inevitable, but maybe we don’t need to be actively engaging with each other if that’s not—I mean...I just enjoy being in the same room as Morgan, or knowing that I can be, even if we’re not…” Deirdre shook her head and cut herself off. This wasn’t the point, and she was starting to ramble. “Sorry, yeah. What were those exercises you had? And, um, suggestions on the time ratio.”

“I think for the time being, whatever system the two of you have devised for creating time to be yourselves on your own, is fine. Continue to check in with each other and negotiate or maintain that as best as the two of you can until our next meeting.” Kelly’s smile flickered and widened for just a moment, which Morgan seized on as approval and clung to. She whispered another private I love you into the crook of Deirdre’s neck and straightened enough to take out her phone.

“I just want to take notes, to make sure I get everything down,” she explained.

“Deirdre, while Morgan is having her designated private time, I’d like you to challenge yourself to find activities that stimulate your interest. Look into those hobbies, or take some quiet time to see what comes up for you in the stillness. I would also like to suggest a journal practice, one where you focus your attention on yourself and the world around you, and not just your care for Morgan.” She turned her attention to Morgan, brow quirked when she noticed that the woman was writing for the both of them, it seemed. “Morgan, I would like you to take some time asking yourself why it is you feel compelled to take on so much responsibility in this relationship. Your partner has proven herself capable and willing to learn. Even if things should be, let’s say, a little less smooth than normal by allowing Deirdre to rise to the occasion and take some initiative more often, you’re also creating some powerful opportunities for you to learn together as a couple. But first, I think knowing yourself and the source of your anxiety will help you develop effective ways of combating your negative thoughts when they come up. And when we meet next, I’d like to hear the insights you’ve uncovered. My initial homework for both of you is this: try to get more comfortable receiving each other’s love and affection as you are giving it. Ask or state what you want from each other, be it a hug or a kiss or another hour cuddled by the TV or something spicier, as my niece says, and allow yourself to enjoy and receive the attention your partner is giving you for a little longer before you immediately turn to giving something back. Bask a little, appreciate that you are adored and deserving of this.”

After that, Kelly dismissed them and Morgan gave her thanks and left with Deirdre, still huddled into her side. She only parted when they made it to the car and for logistical reasons alone, they had to untangle and walk to their separate doors. Morgan brought the Subaru to quiet, rumbling life and buckled up and pulled out of the parking lot and its pseudo zen landscaping. By the time they were on the freeway, her hand was on Deirdre’s again. “So,” she prompted gently, glancing sidelong with great tenderness. “How are you feeling after all that? What do you feel like doing when we get home?”

Deirdre perked up, smiling and ready to interject. She did have a journal and—oh. Not about Morgan? She deflated. But what else would she write about if not the curve of her love’s bones? The corpse-blue tint of her eyes? The flowers of discolouration that bloomed across her skin when she was due to eat soon? How much she loved her, in what ways, with what words—these were things she needed to commit into existence. This was what her journal was. But she sighed, and remembered to keep her nightly entry Morgan-free. And though she was sure there wouldn’t be a hobby out there more interesting than holding her love, she made note of that too. She turned to Morgan and smiled fondly at the literal notes she was taking, though she couldn’t read them—and didn’t want to pry anyway—from her angle. It was when Kelly mentioned Morgan’s shouldering of responsibility that Deirdre turned to look at Kelly, momentarily confused. Relationships were equal; ‘we help each other’. Deirdre shifted, mulling it over. She never would have called it ‘taking responsibility’ but that was exactly the words for it. She reached over and pressed her palm into Morgan’s knee, a kind of reassurance and apology. Maybe if she’d gotten those diplomas, she’d have known what words to use. She’d have the language. Maybe they wouldn’t have been here. But most certainly, if that was the case, she wouldn’t have felt any guilt about not being a certified therapist like Kelly in the first place.

But ‘basking’, now that was an idea she could get behind. “Tired,” Deirdre laughed, eager to discover how to appropriately ‘bask’. To her mind now, it sounded like cuddling in bed. “So tired. Is it supposed to feel like that?” She turned to look at Morgan, squeezing her hand with a smile. She’d reclined her seat to a point where she might as well have been laying down. Unfortunately, Kelly’s practice wasn’t a far enough drive for her to nap. “What do I feel like doing?” She turned her head to look at the rushing sights. Sleep, her mind responded with enthusiasm. She yawned; her body’s way of agreeing. And then she was silent. And silent again for another minute, and another, and then three. She couldn’t say it. Kelly told her to try, and she couldn’t do it.

Sleep was not a ridiculous thing to ask for, but what if Morgan wanted something else? What if the question had been rhetorical? What if she’d taken too long to reply now and Morgan didn’t care for the answer anymore? Deirdre swallowed. “What do you want?”

Morgan laughed softly and reached over to touch her love. Her hand landed somewhere on her stomach, where her shirt rode up just a little from reclining. She played with the hem as she brushed Deirdre’s side. “I’ve definitely never hurdled headfirst into epiphanies on what is technically a second session, but you and I do spend a lot of time processing together anyways, and we don’t usually do things halfway, so maybe it’s not all that surprising. But the tired...it’s definitely not uncommon. When I first started going after my college mental breakdown, I would end up taking a nap as soon as I got home after.”

She let the silence take them until they hit a red light. Deirdre was supposed to voice her wants, and even though everything in her body made it clear to Morgan, she didn’t want to step on her opportunity to speak for herself. When she finally did, Morgan’s heart sank. “Babe--” she urged gently. “It’s okay. I can pretty much tell already, and the answer is yes, but you should say.” Her fingers spidered over to find Deirdre’s hand and cradled them together. “It’s okay.”

Slowly, Deirdre reached up and pinched Morgan’s hand--when she was alive, this unspoken question was a gentle brush instead--asking to hold it. There were many things she wanted, but only so many she could ask for. Whenever she did, the question was soft, silent. She looked at her love, illuminated by the world and the red-glow of the stop light. When their hands fit together finally, she found strength to speak, “then...can I take you to bed? Can I hold you?” Her voice was gentle against her quivering lips, parted in trepidation. Morgan had said the answer was yes, but she’d believe it once she heard it. And until then, she watched with nervous yearning. “Can I sleep, just for an hour, with you in my arms? And when I wake..can we--can we--” The light turned green. Deirdre swallowed. “Can we spend the day together? For just a while longer?”  

Morgan gave Deirdre her hand with ease, going so far as to pull her love’s over the console and up to her lips so there could be no mistaking her enthusiasm. She held Deirdre’s gaze as she searched for the words, so quiet and timid they were almost swallowed up by the low humming of the car. She only turned her eyes away when the light turned and she had to switch lanes to make their turn in the bright glare of the afternoon. She squeezed Deirdre’s hand again, beaming as the trees cleared and the roads grew more familiar. “I would love nothing more than going to bed with you, my love, in every sense of the phrase,” she said. This was breaking a rule, or talking about breaking one, which felt a little less reckless. But Morgan had said that their rules should be up to revision anyway, hadn’t she?

Morgan loosened her grip so she could put both hands on the wheel. She didn’t need to fall into steamy bliss with her love tonight, and certainly not as soon as they got home. But with her greater understanding of herself came a desire to shake off the last of her intimacy trepidations. If her fear had so little to do with Deirdre, then what was the point? Shouldn't they get to enjoy themselves as much as possible in their time together? “That aside, I think laying down in our bed wrapped in each other’s arms for an hour or two sounds like a perfect idea. And then after you wake, we can do absolutely anything you want until--” Morgan stopped herself from giving the precise time. Deirdre hated exacting times for their comings and goings. It was the three minute game all over again, and Morgan didn’t want to add to her trepidation by dangling a fated hour over her. “Until I decide to take a couple of hours for myself in the evening. But after that, I’ll come back to you for the night. I’m also pretty heart-tired, and I don’t think I want anything more than being close to you right now.”

Every sense of the— Deirdre chased the echo away. Morgan didn’t mean it like that, and even if she did, she was just being carried by the energy of their first session. It didn’t mean anything, and certainly not what she wanted it to mean. Don’t be hopeful, don’t be. But Deirdre closed her eyes, and despite her cautioning, she could feel hope swell as Morgan continued. And then relief washed across her and she relaxed into her seat. It was okay. It was going to be okay. She could have this, she could have Morgan. She opened her eyes and stared at the streets she knew. The drive back wasn’t long, and she was happier to be up and into their house as soon as they could be than to pretend like cars were ever comfortable or interesting to sit in. At some point, though she didn’t realize it, the scenery turned dark. “I always want to be close to you,” she confessed quietly. “I want you to take me to the place where everything is easy again. I want to sleep, and I want to wake up feeling okay. And I want you to be there. I want you with me. I want to know what I have to do to get better. I want that to be done already. I want our future, our life. I want to be happy. I want you to be happy. I want a house in the forest with land to farm and more cats, all rescued. I want to teach kids math and about bones. I want to make death easy and okay. I want my family’s farm, freed from its legacy. I want animals that die natural and content. I want a banshee that’s happy, I want a family of banshees that are. I want to take you to Ireland and show you the horses. I want to watch all those old movies you like. I want to talk to you forever. I want to spend all my life with you. I want a dog. I want us to travel the world and see everything our mothers would never let us see. I want you. I want us. I want to go home and sleep.” Of course, she said none of that. She’d fallen asleep on the very seat she thought she’d never.

What she had said was far more simple, and yet, more than any of her imagined words could have been: “I love you, Morgan.”

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Lover You Were Gone So Long || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Lover when you see that glare, think of it as my despair, think of it as my despair for you.

Morgan and Deirdre go for round two of hashing things out.

CONTAINS: codependent death girls

The first day Deirdre was home, Morgan kept them on the couch in the great room until Deirdre’s arms started to hurt and she had to help her to the downstairs bathroom for a shower and an extensive reapplication of bandages. Even with all the extras from their recent trips to the fae clinic, Morgan had to order more by delivery to make sure they had enough for next time. She caressed every pink patch of healing skin that looked safe enough to touch and murmured, I can see your freckles a little more than last night, that must be a good sign. And, your poor hands, be careful, you should be more careful. She kissed Deirdre’s shoulder when she finished and helped her into something clean and soft and carried her to where she wanted to be. Her eyes met Deirdre’s, and for a moment she could almost read her: a question, an assurance, something reaching into the most tormented part of her heart where her love had once thrived. Morgan pulled away and left the room. But she stopped in the doorway, a fresh ache throbbing in her chest. Deirdre’s eyes had followed her, hooked into that piece of her heart despite her best efforts, dragging it out of the dark.

“I love you,” Deirdre said.

“Not enough, apparently,” Morgan muttered. She left before Deirdre could reply.

That’s how things were now.

Today they were in the great room again (the ground floor was the easiest for Deirdre to get around on and being in their room without being them made Morgan’s chest fill with acid), watching TV, leaning against one another under the blanket. Niamh sprawled in the corner, chasing her ball between naps. It was time for lunch, and Deirdre’s hand was cupping Morgan’s body against her side, so gentle and secure at once she didn’t know if she wanted to cry or scream. Her finger curled, so breathtakingly casual, and Morgan clenched all over. She threw off the blanket and fled to hide in the kitchen without a word. If she closed her eyes and memory wiped the last week or so, it would have been so perfect. Morgan would have guided her hand under her shirt, they would’ve started kissing, and lost the plot of the TV show by debating what kind of tree. It would have been so easy and perfect and worse, Morgan hurt with her want for it. Why couldn’t she just have that? (She knew why, but this knowledge didn’t feel like an answer, just another hole she didn’t know how to fill.) Morgan squeezed her eyes shut and bit down on her hand. It was too early in the day to be crying already. Get a grip. That alter-world picture of them she ached for might mean everything to her, but it certainly hadn’t meant as much to Deirdre. How could it?

It was five minutes, maybe ten, before Morgan emerged, red eyed but mostly collected, now with a smoothie and a small plate of sandwiches done up the best way she knew how. “Sorry, that must’ve been kind of alarming,” she deadpanned, a cruel edge to her voice. “It sucks watching someone you depend on run away without a word. Gosh, just imagine how much worse it would feel if I’d done that when I came back from the dead!”

Deirdre didn't know how to act. Loving Morgan in this strange, half-space was worryingly difficult. She wanted to hold Morgan tight, kiss her hard, laugh easy—but such acts seemed to put Morgan on edge, or would cross some line. She was quiet, mostly, adopting a gentle quality of voice. Inviting, soothing; acts and words that she hoped spoke of how okay it would be if Morgan wanted to find the world they once occupied together, and fall into it again. She thought of herself like suggestion; firm, steady, secure and immortal. Always there to be held, considered, but not demanding—never asking. Only suggesting. She leaned against Morgan, and when she felt Morgan ease against her, she would move to hold her. And if she felt Morgan tense, she would go back to the leaning. She obeyed the flow of Morgan’s thought, the best she could interpret it in silence, finding familiar cues in the body she knew better than her own. She spared her girlfriend the volley of love and assurance her heart demanded to give, she sprinkled them softly instead. Like suggestion. Except, suggestion was a strange thing; too strong and too weak at once. It made her burn, unable to share the love that chewed up her insides. Unable to dare to soothe the pain she could see in Morgan. Suggestion was at the mercy of time, and time could be so painfully slow.

Keeping her eyes on the TV was one such way suggestion foiled her. The way they normally enjoyed it was curled into each other, so Deirdre might take Morgan and the TV in in equal measure. Being leaned up against her was a horrible idea. She couldn’t look at Morgan, and her body fluttered dangerously with static. Even the arm around her wasn’t much of anything at all. But like a respectable person, she kept her eyes straight and her hand chaste. She wasn’t watching the TV so much as she was staring at the pictures. Her free hand curled around the blanket shared between them. She burned. And then she was falling over.

“Morgan?” She asked; soft, sweet, concerned. Her girlfriend didn’t answer, and was out of the room by the time Deirdre righted herself. “Morgan?” She tried again, louder. “What’s wrong?” And again. She stared at the floor. She couldn’t walk. Her legs were swollen and sore and she’d made a promise not to hurt herself intentionally—walking was one such way to hurt herself. Her body was thankful for the rest, but her mind was not. Her eyes drifted to her cane leaned up against the table. As she tried to grab it, her fingers brushed the wood and it knocked over, startling Niamh, who was then intrigued by the new object. “Not a toy,” Deirdre hissed. She couldn’t reach it anymore. So, she’d crawl then. She rolled herself off the couch, falling to the floor with a dull thud. She strained to grab the cane, careful not to agitate her wounds and break a promise as well as a stitch. Niamh swatted at the cane as Deirdre wiggled it into her grasp. “I’ll play with you later!” She didn’t know how long it took her to grab the cane and stand up, only that by the time she did, Morgan was back. “Morga—“ And then she was speaking.

Deirdre’s expression shifted wildly, no suggestion in them. She went from shocked, to hurt, to confused, to something between hurt and confused. She blinked, and wondered if she’d heard right. And then realized she did, she had been. Now it made another cruel sentence gain sense. “Oh,” she chuckled dryly. “Is that what you want to do, Morgan?” She stepped forward, cane smacking against the ground. “Is that it now? Is this it?” Deirdre slumped, having made her way to Morgan, she reached out and plucked the plate from her hands and placed it down. Doing the same with the smoothie a moment later. “You’re right. It does suck. I know that already. And you’re right, imagine how terrible it would have been if you did the same. I can. I do. If you wish to punish me with cruel words, Morgan, don’t do it whilst holding lunch—which, thank you for, by the way.”  She paused, voice gentle despite itself. “Go ahead.”

Morgan flinched back with surprise.This Deirdre was usually so quiet, Morgan had forgotten that she could command with as much ease as she could soothe.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled stupidly. “What ‘this’?” She let go of the plate without a fight and lowered her gaze, feeling chastised. But Deirdre dared her, urged her, and the rest of Morgan’s excuses at the back of her throat--I’m not doing anything, Talk to me after you eat, you need to keep your strength up--died. Slowly, Morgan lifted her face, bracing herself with hands on her hips. “Do you?” She accused. She held Deirdre’s gaze and seeing all the versions of her she’d ever known, the one who’d been afraid, the one who belonged to the mushrooms, the one who’d sworn Morgan was her love, the one who’d vanished. She didn’t know which new side she was speaking to now, or what she was capable of. Calling her out hadn’t been on Morgan’s guess list, but her smouldering anger was relieved to have a chance to breathe.

“Do you know?” She asked. “Because I couldn’t even process whether or not you’d died before you were yelling at me to get in the car and drive! If we count your scream--which, thanks for not checking to see if my brain had melted--you’ve left me what, four times now? If you know, does that mean you actually thought about it and decided whatever happened was worth fuck all, or did I just stop mattering so much that you forgot I was there and it never crossed your mind?”

Deirdre stood straight and still and as steady as she could manage leaning on her cane. She wanted to hold Morgan, even now, especially now. She tried to ask if that was okay with her eyes, the way she always did, but wasn’t sure if Morgan was looking for it. It was fine, anyway, she didn’t want to stunt Morgan’s anger--it needed to be released, lest it come back in another cruel one-off sentence destined for repetition. “Four times…” Deirdre repeated, she could only remember three. She’d have to meditate harder on her muddied memories then, find the missing piece. “Your brains wouldn’t have been touched at all, I know how to control my screams. And--” Deirdre swallowed. She’d been trying to match Morgan’s anger in some respect, but she found it hard to feign. As much as she wanted to fuel the anger--let it release, let it spill, let Morgan have this, if she wanted it--she couldn’t summon the voice to match. She spoke measured, though gentle. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I thought it was more urgent than my physical state, though I regret that I didn’t properly consider your emotional state. I should’ve. You’re right. And I’m sorry.” Deirdre slumped, “you’ve never stopped mattering to me. I don’t know what I thought--I just wanted to get to Lydia. I thought if I did, I could make it okay. And I had to get to her quickly, the more time between--” She swallowed again, closing her eyes. “I didn’t want to be too late again. I didn’t want that.” Deirdre opened her eyes to the ground, meeting Morgan’s gaze slowly. “I’ve thought about it now, I can’t say how much I thought about what I was doing in the moment. I’m sorry for that.” She paused. “What else? I abandoned you, I didn’t love you enough….what else? Tell me what else.”  

“Yes, four times! Our home, our driveway, that bench, and running off to do your fucking death wish murder!” Morgan snapped. She locked her face into a grimace, stubbornly holding onto her anger. It was the only time her hurt didn’t threaten to break her, the only time her body wasn’t burning for the chance to connect again. “If you’d remembered I existed, I could have driven you! I did, in fact, try to drag you back home and drive you anyway, even while you were fighting me! We could have been together! I could’ve held your hand! But you weren’t interested in any of that.”

Deirdre had dared Morgan to ‘do this,’ whatever ‘this’ was supposed to be, but her voice held none of the stubborn fire she’d shown only a moment ago. She just agreed and took it. When she met Morgan’s eyes, she looked sad. Morgan looked away, wrapping her arms around herself. “No,” she mumbled. “You don’t get to say those things like they’re arbitrary. And you can’t seriously--” Her voice caught. She wasn’t that mad about that first time, just scared out of her mind in the moment. It shouldn't count. Not when Deirdre’s grief was so surreal and fresh. “Four times,” she repeated stiffly. “That doesn’t explain all of them. It can’t. Because I told you how I felt, that day we broke into the house. I begged you. I begged you or whoever the fuck you were back then not to leave me, not to give me your love if you were just going to take it away in five more minutes. And then you did. That is not ‘what else.’ That happened. I begged you and then you kept doing it. And I don’t understand how you could have even once.”

Four times. Deirdre nodded, logging that in her head. At night, she would keep herself awake replaying it until she could figure out how to repent. For now, she listened, as steady as she could be. “You’re right,” she said, “you’re right. We could’ve. And I didn’t let us, and I’m sorry and you’re right.” She didn’t know what else to say. She felt like there should have been more to offer than agreeing with Morgan and apologizing, but that was all she felt right to do. Morgan was right. And she was sorry. She didn’t want to explain or excuse herself, where did she deserve to? “It’s not arbitrary! No, I’m not--I don’t think it is. I just don’t want you to stop, so I thought it’d be better if I didn’t--” If she wasn’t crying, if she wasn’t spilling the depths of her own emotion so plainly. This was about Morgan, not her. But trying to do what she thought was right was her problem, and it was her problem now. She opened her mouth to explain again, but Morgan was off to the next point, and Deirdre didn’t have the heart to interrupt her.

“I’m sorry,” she said; meek, lame. She wanted to ask what else Morgan was mad about so she could take it on herself, carry it for her; so she could understand it too. But that hadn’t worked out, and so she tried to explain herself. “I don’t understand it either, not now. I can’t justify it. I screamed for Lydia, and then I knew I had to go. I promised her a good death no matter what, and that was exactly what I was doing. I can’t tell you what was promise-binding and what was my own thought. And then she released me, and I knew what was going to happen, and I knew we had to get to her quickly. And I’m sorry; I was wrong about how I treated you. But I had us stop, and go to the clinic and then when we were walking...all I wanted was to tell you it was okay. Because it was. I wasn’t mad at you, I didn’t hate you...I just wanted to find Lydia. That was all. And then I felt her and I had to go, I felt like I had to go. It wasn’t right, I’m not saying it was right. But that was it.” She paused. “And then I didn’t know what to do. I lost my sister, taken so unfairly….and I didn’t know what to do with all the pain. I should have talked to you, I should’ve. I didn’t know how; I thought you had enough to worry about; I knew what I thought I had to do for justice and I didn’t want you to hurt too. It was many things, none of them were correct. I’m sorry, but I want to make things right.” She swallowed. “Please, tell me everything. Not because it’s arbitrary--you never are--but because I want to know it all. I want to know if I can fix it. Please. I know you’re angry at me; be angry. Let it out. I’ll take it. I want to.”  

Morgan’s face began to crumple. She clenched her jaw harder, she thinned her lips, but Deirdre’s tearful voice and her flat, useless agreements picked apart everything Morgan had to shield herself with. She shook her head furiously, trying and failing to stay hard and cruel and disconnected enough to be safe no matter what. “No,” she croaked, grimacing when she heard how childish she sounded. “I don’t want you to take it. I want you to tell me why! Because everything you’re saying--I still don’t understand. Where does the part where you decided to do this after I begged you not to come in? I need to understand because I thought--” Her voice caught again, throaty and terrible. Morgan held herself tighter. “The person I thought you were would never have done this. She couldn’t have. Not with everything you said about how much you--” How much she loved her. Wanted her. Would never hurt her. “I know you aren’t perfect. You make mistakes. But you...you said you loved me so much, and I believed you. Enough that I thought you would never watch me fall apart in front of you, telling you what’s wrong and how badly I need you as fucked as it is, and say it’s going to be okay one minute and the next, push me away for days and then leave without even knowing if it was for good or not. You would never. But you did!” Morgan’s breath trembled through her teeth as she searched for some harsh thread to bolster herself on. She rubbed her hand across the corner of her eyes. “So I need you to explain how that makes sense. Make me understand why this was so much more important you couldn’t even bother to say! And don’t tell me you don’t know, I need you to know!”

“Well you can’t have it.” Deirdre sighed, “your anger. You shouldn’t have it--carry it. You’re angry at me, right? What else were you trying to do if it wasn’t to punish me? To put your anger somewhere else. I’m trying to tell you that’s okay.” It made sense in her head, but she figured, like several things that had once felt right in her head, it probably wasn’t. The only thing she knew was right, always, was her love for Morgan. She clung tightly to that fact, and used it to hold herself up. “I can’t explain it! I can’t--” But Morgan wanted her to. Deirdre winced. She searched her mind for the logic, but it was paper thin and flimsy. Her hand unfurled and curled up into a fist meekly in the air, trying to grasp a Morgan that wasn’t there. She wanted to hold her. All she wanted to do was hold her. “I wasn’t pushing you away. I just--I didn’t want you to see the--I didn’t know how to tell you about the--I didn’t know what to--” Morgan was asking her to explain, and she was trying to, but her voice was choppy and broken. Shaky, at best. Still, she persisted. “I didn’t mean to be gone. It was just Sunday, for some hours. It was supposed to be. But the--the place I was in takes away time; it skews it on the other end. And the pixies wanted me to get treated by a doctor before I left. And I wasn’t strong enough to argue. And I’m sorry, Morgan. It doesn’t make sense because it’s not right. And I can’t explain it because that’s it. Nothing was ever more important than you, but I’m sorry. I know that’s hard to believe now, and I’m sorry.” She sagged, wishing there was more she could offer. But this was the truth; terrible, hurtful, uneventful. “I thought I was doing what was right, I thought I was doing the only thing I could do. There was all this pain and I...can’t explain it. I can’t make it make sense because it doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense to do that to you.” Her hand curled and unfurled again. “I’m sorry.”  

“NO!” Morgan screamed, her voice echoing off the walls. “There has to be a reason! You can’t say I was that important and then tell me there was no reason! You said…” Her voice broke with a sob and she clenched her hands into fists, nails curling into her skin. “You said that I was your life, your good, that you would find a way to stay with me forever, you loved me that much. And you made me feel so safe I made you my anchor and I believed you! I believed you even though I wasn’t sure anyone ever could! Not that much. Not me. But I believed you and I trusted you. And if you loved me as much as you let me believe, you couldn’t have done this for no reason. So there has to be one. You can’t do this again in a year when some asshole hunter kills someone else you know, you can’t. There has to be a good reason. Because otherwise, I was right to think I could never be loved like that. And I can’t go back to some small, halfway decent life just because the one I thought I had turned out to be lie. It was real to me, and I can’t be here knowing there’s so much less and I’m just going to disappear to you the next time someone dies…” Morgan hid her face in her hand, trying to press her tears back into her eyes.

In any other circumstance, Deirdre would have been impressed with the calibre of scream. She would have found some measure of humour in it. In the moment, she only flinched. “There’s no reason for hurting you,” Deirdre shook her head, trying to elaborate. “Nothing that makes sense. I can’t justify that, I can’t--and won’t--make that make sense. You were hurt. I hurt you. That was wrong. There’s no good reason for that, there never will be.” She lifted her hands, dropping them swiftly. She couldn’t hold Morgan, she couldn’t wipe her tears away. She fought against her own body, the reflexes that burned to comfort her girlfriend. “I do love you so much. You are my life, you are everything that’s good, I still want to stay with you forever--I promise it. All of it.” Deirdre slumped further; she thought she might sink into the ground. “I suppose--you might say it’s fae culture. The revenge; I’ve been doing it all my life. All on my own. That’s the way it works. But I don’t understand--it’s still my fault. I didn’t intend to hurt you at all, in my mind, I thought I was protecting you. But I was wrong. I was wrong and I should have done better and I can’t offer you anything else. I’m sorry. I can’t make hurting you make sense. I can’t do that.” Her hands lifted again. She dropped them with a groan, flexing her fingers. “I won’t do this again. I could promise it to you. At this point I’d---Fates, if you wanted me to never kill someone ever again, I’d promise that away. If you wanted me to give up my duty, I’d do that too. If I can do anything to make this right for you, I will. I want to. I don’t care what it takes out of me, I just want you to feel safe again.” And despite all the great work she’d done keeping herself together, the tears contained inside her eyes and the quivering at a respectable minimum, she let it slip now. Fresh tears fell, and when her hands raised, she didn’t drop them away. “I don’t want you to disappear. Please, I--Can I hold you? Can I---I can make it right. I can.”  

Morgan opened her mouth to reply, but no words came, only a broken, whining cry as her lungs refused to open any further. The two pieces didn’t fit. If there wasn’t some hidden secret, something Deirdre didn’t remember or know how to say, then how could everything she believed about them be true? How was Deirdre able to tell her so many things about how much she was loved without getting sick if it was a lie? “So all of this...was an accident? You told me you would carry me and be with me and our world was the one you wanted to be in and--and--” She sputtered, choking on the sobs she was determined to swallow down. Morgan heaved for the breath to speak again. “Did you ever?” she croaked, forcing herself to look up. “Did you not love me as much as I thought you did? You made everything...it was so good, and so beautiful, even if I was wrong, I don’t know if I can go back.” Her body wanted nothing more than to be comforted again, than to be nested in the space where it belonged. Deirdre looked so heartbroken, like she needed her, and they always knew how to hold each other just right, or they had before Lydia died. “And I can’t promise tape you into being this person you were or who I thought you were. That’s not okay, that’s cruel, that’s--that--that---” She was stuck again and staggered forward to the couch, clenching it to try and steady herself.

“An accident…” Deirdre winced. She tried to think of a more accurate word, something that gave her more rightful blame. It was true she hadn’t meant to hurt Morgan, and in that way, saying it was an accident was apt. But Morgan’s pain was her own, and she couldn’t accept such a flippant label. “I don’t know what to call it…” She mumbled. She was thinking, she was trying to think. But between trying to make sure her cries didn’t interrupt Morgan, and her fingers didn’t grow overzealous, she couldn’t. “I do love you!” She asserted, stabbing her cane into the ground and shifting closer. “I do. I always have, I’ve never stopped, I’ve never loved you any less--not once. I promise it. If I have made mistakes, it was not for losing love--I can’t say what it was, but it wasn’t that. I promise it wasn’t. And I promise, Morgan, that I want to do whatever I can to make this right to you. To love you, to be better for you. I want that. I want to be with you. I’ve never stopped wanting that. I promise. I promise.” She slumped, throwing her cane aside. “Please let me hold you. Please tell me that’s okay right now and can you--that promise I made not to hurt myself...can you release me from that? I can make it again just...please let me help you, Morgan. I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”

Morgan didn’t have anything left in her. She tried to get more questions out, but she only rasped sobs and whined tears. She reached out for Deirdre, her arm stiff and quivering, and pulled herself in so violently they knocked into the side of the couch. She clung to Deirdre’s robe and tried to shuffle them back to where they could sit, shaking her head as she tried to say, no, I can’t let you hurt yourself, please don’t hurt yourself, sit with me, lay with me, I don’t care just don’t do that anymore, but that sentiment only came as aspirated whimpers. But this much she hoped was obvious: Hold me, I don’t want to hurt anymore either, hold me, please.

Deirdre’s arms wrapped around Morgan and she sighed with relief, breathing her in. She wanted to hold her tight, close, the way she knew Morgan needed—but the best she managed was a stiff grip, wholly too weak. The back of her knocked into the couch, and lacking the power to shift their bodies, she let them crumple to the floor.  “Please,” she croaked, “the promise, Morgan. I can’t hold you right. My body is still sore, and it won’t let me hold you right. And I just want to—I just want to hold you.” There was still more to talk about, she didn’t feel good letting Morgan go off thinking that she wasn’t loved completely, that Deirdre hadn’t always loved her with everything she had. But trust wasn’t something she could force, no matter how many promises she offered. And Morgan was right, this sort of thing was exactly something she said she would never do. And Morgan begged her, and she still did it. It hadn’t been so intentional, but Deirdre never cared for intentions where it concerned herself. “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much.” And if Morgan was still angry, she’d wait and hear it all again. As many times as she had to. “The promise, if you can, please.”

Morgan clung tighter to Deirdre, crawling into her lap. It would be so good if she could stop, if she could let go and still be caught and held. Her body exhausted her and she wanted to rest so badly. She whined, trying to hold the two of them tighter together, trying to make the air come back into the pit of her lungs, trying to place why the part of her that protested releasing Deirdre was getting so quiet. Was this the pain she wanted, or the pain she could bear? Cutting into Deirdre with harsh words was too much to stomach honestly, but to make Deirdre take on more pain for her, to break with her--did that satisfy her arcane sense of justice? Was that the missing equivalent? Was that fair, or cruel? Morgan moaned pitifully, burrowing as deep into Deirdre as she could. She didn’t have it in her to be sure, but she wanted the rest, and Deirdre was begging her. “I--I--” she coughed, struggling, “release you. H-hurt for me. Hold me until it...til you…” Another cry took her and she let it. Her hands loosened, her body sagged. For once, Morgan didn’t try to do anything.

Deirdre breathed free. Morgan had released all of the promises like that, but it wasn’t so terrible of an issue—she’d just promise them all again. With great relief, she gripped Morgan as tight as she could. Her muscles protested, and pain flared back up in her abdomen and across her scarred arm. She didn’t mind it, and she certainly didn’t care about it. She shifted them to press Morgan against the couch for added pressure, pressing in until she was sure her girlfriend was safely bundled up between the two. And she held her, just as she wanted to. “Thank you,” she breathed, pressing her lips firm and hard against Morgan’s temple—hard enough for pain to bloom in her lips for just a moment, hard enough just because she could now. “You are safe,” she said, wondering if it would come off as an assurance or a mockery of one. But she’d meant it, she’d meant every word. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’m here. It’s okay. I love you.” There was so much more she wanted to say, words about how sorry she was, how much she loved Morgan, how often she would promise it to her (for all of her life, if Morgan would have her). Always. She committed it like a spell, repeated as a rasp across her skin. “I love you. I love you. I love you…”

Morgan gasped with relief as Deirdre’s body closed in. It felt like so long since she had been pressed like this, cocooned in another body so intensely she started to lose track of where one started and another finished. In the days Deirdre had disappeared, Morgan had lain flat on their bed, too miserable to try and rig the pillows into her shape again. And the days before that, with Deirdre peeling her hands away every time Morgan tried to give her a squeeze, being held made her feel like an obligation to be managed, something to be embarrassed of. This feeling was so different it almost felt like new.

Morgan didn’t mind the words Deirdre gave her either. Noting burned or tore through her ears. This Deirdre sounded right, a lullaby modulated with desperate certainty, so clear Morgan sobbed harder just to hear it. She closed her eyes and let it all happen. She cried on the loop her body had set her on until her voice cracked ragged, the gray December day outside changed its tint toward evening, and the cloud of hurt around her mind cleared. Morgan nuzzled into the crook of her banshee’s neck and curled her fingers gently into the spots she remembered as having healed the most. It was like sleeping in their bed again, being held like this. “...How much do you hurt?” She asked.

“Internally or externally?” Deirdre asked, figuring that Morgan probably meant the outside, because no one ever asked about the inside like that. To her credit, she had been focused on clutching Morgan to her the tightest she could—as if she might drift away. “It’s not so bad…” she began. “It’s just muscle pain.” But that wasn’t entirely true, her arms screamed in pain, but it was her abdomen that really hated what she was doing. Something about the pressure, or the strength of her grip, awoke the sleeping stab wound. “It’s not so bad,” she repeated, wanting to be more accurate now. “The stab wound hurts a little, but I can manage. How are you? Do you want me to go tighter?”

Morgan shook her head. “No,” she murmured. She didn’t make any move to do anything in particular about the rest of what Deirdre said. If her sutures were breaking, they could take care of it later, and if they weren’t, then there wasn’t much to do besides let go and Morgan wasn’t ready for that. Some petulant part of her wanted to cry good, just for the sake of fairness. But the sentiment wasn’t strong enough to make it up her throat. Her head was clear and her anger had been largely exorcised, even if it hadn’t really come to much in the end.

She ran her fingers along Deirdre’s arms in little caresses, following the swell of her muscles. They didn’t tremble, they bore their pain so well. Morgan could close her eyes and find each spot Deirdre’s fingers pressed into her skin, solid and gentle at once. Was that who this Deirdre was? “You can tell me about your hurt internally, too,” she said. “I um...I want to know.”

Once Deirdre settled, the pain that spurred from the extra pressure did too—it came in dull throbs, completely ignored. Her hurt internally was a strange creature; something she still lacked the words for, and still feared giving a voice. More than that, she was better interested in Morgan’s hurt. But there was something she knew to say about that, and she smiled softly. “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine…” Deirdre said, adding, “...will you? I want to know yours too; the angry parts, the sad parts, the hopeless parts, the parts that feel too afraid to speak...If you ever want to share, I’d like to know. I’d like to hold them with you.” Her own hurt could be a beast of quiet and screaming; it was quiet now, largely. Soothed to be holding Morgan, hopeful that it could rid her of her pain in a tight enough embrace. Deirdre pressed her lips to Morgan’s forehead and tried to explain it. “I want to hold you like this every night. I want to kiss you. I want to be with you, and the pain of not loving you fully—like I want to—is terrible. But I know it wouldn’t be so bad if this was what you wanted; if you broke your hand and wanted me to stop holding it, I could live with that. But it’s me. I did the breaking. And that pain is….indescribable. I feel useless. I couldn’t help Lydia, and the best I can do to help you is just...waiting. I’m useless and I miss you. And I just want to...make things right. Make them okay. Make them better and good again. And I still miss Lydia, and I don’t know what to do about that. Everything feels so…” She sighed, “...inadequate. But your pain is more important to me right now. I can—can you tell me about it at all? Do you feel alright to speak?”

Morgan listened in stillness. Before, she tended to work in small comforts with a whisper or a touch, keep going, I’m here. But the only time she stirred was to laugh sadly at the poem Deirdre quoted. “That’s where we are, huh?” ‘Wild Geese’ was what Morgan said when she needed to get her hands around the most stubborn pieces of Deirdre’s heart and make them accept being loved. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. How strange, to have not even thought of the words in days and hear them now in a different voice. Stranger, to have thought so little of Deirdre’s verse before, and to shiver at them now.

Morgan’s eyes leaked again, but she brushed them away quickly. “I think the worst part right now...is that I’m starting to believe you. Enough that I can’t even be glad that what you’re describing sounds just like what your choices put me through these last two weeks and the times you were too afraid to love me back before then. I tried very hard not to show you how much it hurt. I didn’t want you to feel guilty and rush yourself or quit. Now you know.” She shrugged; it didn’t matter to her now, however tempting it was to add this to their personal injury calculus. “I believe you...but I can’t give myself to you yet. Not the way you want. I don’t even know how hard I could try before panicking.” Morgan sniffled and wiped her eyes again and went quiet, waiting for some follow up argument to present itself. If she ached so badly, if not even understanding that the Deirdre holding her really, desperately loved her was enough to make the pain stop, what would? “I feel like there’s more but—I don’t know. I think I’ve hurt you enough for today.” The way the words fell sounded strange to Morgan’s ears, like she was saying I’ve assigned you enough homework, be sure you turn it in on time. She grimaced and searched for a new place to hold her back. Maybe there really was no going back for them. Maybe they were different versions of themselves already.

Slowly, she reached for Deirdre’s wet cheek and stroked it dry. “What happened to Lydia wasn’t your fault. Maybe if she wasn’t so stubborn and proud she might have picked up on the second call and everything would be different, but if she’d done that, she wouldn’t have been Lydia. She wouldn’t want you to carry guilt. And I don’t think you should either. Not for that.”

“That’s okay,” Deirdre smiled. The cynical part of her remarked that of course that was easy for her to say. Her trust hadn’t been so shattered, her love wasn’t so tested. But what else was there? How else could she tell Morgan that her emotions, her trepidation, was all okay? “You can tell me just how badly something hurts you, Morgan. If I can’t see it myself, I think you should tell me. And, well especially when I am the cause of it. I want to be able to love you and take care of you the best that I can. If I can’t see it, I can’t do that. So if you can, if you will, please tell me.” But it wasn’t Morgan’s fault that she didn’t say anything, Deirdre didn’t imagine that any person would’ve in her place. To be with someone grieving that strongly, trying to explain one’s own pain must have felt too selfish. Still, if it could have been possible, Deirdre wished she knew. “And that’s okay too,” she sighed, pressing her forehead to Morgan’s. She’d meant to kiss her, obviously, but had to stop short. “You don’t have to, I’m not expecting you to. However long you need...that’s okay. I’ll be here. I promise for today and tomorrow that I will not leave you as I did before….remember that? And I promise to never leave your side abruptly without telling you where or why I’m going. I’ll be here for you, whenever you’re ready.” She shifted, pulling back as the rest of Morgan’s words sank in. She tangled her fingers in her hair, tugging and pressing in just enough for Morgan to feel her. “Is that what happened before? Were you panicking? If holding you gets to be too much, you can tell me. If you can. What would you like me to do for you in that case?” Deirdre shook her head, laughing shakily. “Don’t worry about hurting me, not for this. Not when it comes to the way you feel. If you want to tell me more, I’d be happy to listen. And if you’re too tired for it, we can revisit this later.”

At the mention of Lydia, Deirdre grimaced and shifted again, still clutching Morgan tight to her. “It is my fault. All of it. Her death, her torture, her being ash, your pain, your broken trust...it’s all my fault. I know that. I called her a lot to tell her about dead animals I found, or just because I wanted to hear her voice…she probably didn’t think anything of it, I bet. And if I wasn’t so stubborn, maybe I would have realized that of course Ariana was planning on having her killed. She’d always been. And maybe if I was a better friend to her, I could have helped her fix her life instead of letting her take more humans. I could’ve done something. I could’ve done more. I know Lydia won’t agree, but she can be wrong, sometimes. And it is my fault. All of it.” She sagged into Morgan, curling against her. “I could’ve killed the warden that did this instead of a girl who did nothing. If only I wasn’t so stupid. It’s my fault, Morgan. That’s okay. I know it is.”

Morgan tilted her head back to watch Deirdre’s face as she replied, still drying her face as she did. “I was trying to put you first…” she explained lamely. She welcomed the press of their foreheads together, nuzzling down to her cheek. This much, this moment, fit right. The grooves in their wrinkled forehead and the down of their cheeks nested just enough to make Morgan exhale, unclench. The assurances and promises sounded naturally to her ears as ambient rain down the windows. She nodded along, moaning softly when Deirdre pulled on her hair just right. She wasn’t surprised by this complete, tender forgiveness, but it didn’t tack cleanly onto what she’d known before either. “You really are different, huh,” Morgan marveled.

She nodded in acknowledgement of the stupidity that had landed them on the floor again. “It wasn’t that you were holding me. It just felt so nice I wanted more. And like it could almost be easy, just reaching out and taking you. And that’s when I got really scared. Because I can’t do that right now, I can’t. And I think I needed to leave the room no matter what, but I was so angry that I could want to give in so easily, without you having to do a thing. That's when I decided I wanted you to hurt with me. I’m sorry, for that much at least.” She curled her body in a little tighter. “But you can still hold me. We can have that.”

And they could have this too: Morgan straining her head up to kiss Deirdre’s cheek, her lips lingering tenderly on her skin. “There’s a lot that could’ve been different, yeah. But it’s not all on you, even if thinking that is more comforting than saying some parts were out of your control. You can put some of it down now. If even I can see that from where I’m at, you have to know it’s true.” She kissed her cheek again. “I don’t have room for many mercies in my heart right now, but I do have this one. Be gentle with yourself, Deirdre. It isn’t only on you. Forgive yourself a little.”

“I know, I know…” She assured, voice like a breeze. Deirdre smiled, as much as she could given the circumstance. But as small and tender as her smile was, the love behind it wasn’t any less strong. “I know you were. I know that now. Thank you, my love. You can rest now, you can worry about yourself now. It’s okay.” At Morgan’s marvel, she resisted the urge to ask whatever she meant. She was the woman she’d always been, the one that loved Morgan. In her mind, at least, she hadn’t changed at all. But there was a week of grief that said different about her, and she figured Morgan meant that. Deirdre smiled a little wider, brows pulled together. “I suppose so.”

Deirdre’s smile fell, and her frown turned with understanding--and remorse. “I’m sorry,” she said, “is there anything I can do, for next time?” Though she didn’t mention it, she hoped it was clear that she’d wanted more too, that she was doing her best to keep them at the boundary Morgan wanted. It wasn’t much, and it clearly wasn’t enough, but she was trying. Once, Morgan would have said that counted for something. Deirdre held hope she still felt that way. “If it soothes you, I am hurting.” But she couldn’t--and wouldn’t--measure her pain to Morgan’s. And it wasn’t a comfort to her at all to know Morgan was hurting like she was, she’d rather neither of them were. She wanted their peace again, their world--the good one, away from everything that kept taking and taking from them. Deirdre sighed against Morgan, trying to lean into her kiss. She turned her head, nuzzling into her cheek. She couldn’t kiss her, and these acts to fill the space didn’t compare, but they helped. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she confessed in a small voice. “Not until things are right. Until then, it’s my fault. But thank you--thank you. I’ll think about what you’re saying.”

Morgan relented, asking her quiet body if there was anything else to unclench, anything else she could release to bring herself closer to rest. She moaned again, encouraging Deirdre with little nods and turns to keep going, holding her, talking to her, touching her face. At Deirdre’s smile, Morgan managed a weary one of her own. Her soul was so tired, and she could believe now that these gestures were as real as the hands that gave them, let it soothe her.

She tried to think about the moments that made up her stupid, clumsy escape from the room. Deirdre’s knuckles had brushed her side, digging into Morgan’s tattoo just enough to be distinct. But Morgan thought she would welcome that now, at least while her mood prevailed like this. “I think you already have,” Morgan murmured. “I believe you now. I think whatever Deirdre you are now, you want to be careful with me, love me, and you won’t do anything like this if you can help it. I um...I think I just need to use better words next time. Tell you that I need a minute, and trust that you’ll give it to me.” She sighed. “Maybe this morning knowing that probably would’ve made me feel better, but not right now.”

Deirdre frowned, she should have felt happy to know Morgan believed her now—and she was, just not as happy as she reckoned she should be. Part of her mind clouded with doubt; there should have been more. She should have had to do more to make it true. All she’d done was talk and hold her, nothing special by any standard she held herself to. She should have had to lose a finger, or a metaphorical finger. Vaguely, the idea bounced in her head that there was something wrong with her instinct to use suffering as the barometer for success. She didn’t know how that idea got there, but she shook it out. “Well, it’s okay if you can’t get any better words out. Whatever you need to do, that’s fine. I’m okay with that.”

Morgan knew better than to give too many kisses, however chaste. But the freshly melted piece of her heart craved closeness and she found herself cradling Deirdre’s face and combing her fingers gently through her long hair. “Ssh,” she whispered. “Not all at once, just a little. We can forgive a little at a time. We can try.” She pulled away so Deirdre could see her and understand through her look--still guarded, but softer and more sober than it had been in many days--that she meant the two of them could forgive each other that way too. If nothing else, they could try.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Spring Will Come Again || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: In the morning, following this.

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: All is found. 

CONTAINS: discussions of violence and sacrifice

The sun did not return at the end of the long night just because Morgan wished it. The sky whitened from the color of ash to the color of polished bone, brighter and promising, but far from clear. Morgan squinted up at the bright patch where the sun should be as she trudged through the rising snowbanks. Every crunch beneath her feet was a surprise. Her body was still bundled in numbness, though whether that was more from death or trauma, she couldn’t tell. But this was real. Just like the dead man in the woods, downed Christmas lights and blood splatters along the East End, the fresh show, the frost on the windows, the evergreens swaying in the wind, and Constance’s shattered soul were real. Morgan was alive and home.

She squeezed her keys extra tight and unlocked the door. The first thing she noticed was the snow: at least a dozen dangling from the ceiling on white tinsel string, some curved and crooked, some dotted with hearts, some pointed with thoughtful geometric patterns, some feathered with chevrons. There were snowflakes smaller than her hand, and others as big as her head, all cut by hand and threaded with care and perfect. Then there were the cookies displayed on the side table in the entryway, sugar and gingerbread cut into the shapes of stars, trees, and bones. Morgan could smell the sweet smell of leftover dough even with her dulled senses. Ribbon littered the floor, and every mug in the house seemed to lay somewhere, stained with the residue of cider or cocoa. For a second Morgan thought she’d come alive again by some kitschy miracle she didn’t deserve. The world had clicked back into place, sharp and potent and reaching for her, if she would only reach back. “...Babe?” Morgan called softly. She stepped slowly into the house, careful not to destroy the sleepy peace with her presence. It didn’t take long to find her. Their eyes met and Morgan sensed down in her gut that they’d always find each other one way or another. “...Honey, I’m home?” She said.

Deirdre possessed great patience. It was a skill both learned and gifted through birth, but even the greatest patience could be tested when left alone. The Christmas party had been a miracle of distractions: loud children, annoying conversation and the strange, ever-growing desire to appease a group of strangers she couldn’t have cared less about just a day ago. But for every smile, every eruption of laughter at a child’s terrible knock-knock joke, all Deirdre could think of was Morgan. Morgan would’ve liked to know that their neighbours missed seeing her around, that the kids were okay and wondered where she’d gone too. The two of them had become such an inseparable concept that no one knew how to process Morgan’s absence, including herself. Morgan, perhaps, wouldn’t have liked to know that part. And when she thought of Morgan, she distracted herself with making the children happy. First it was the cookies, then gingerbread houses, then paper snowflakes and presents, and then a Santa to give those presents away. At the time, she hadn’t known that children made a terrible distraction; they got tired quickly, and then their parents did too. And while the children were carried out to a desecrated street--now silent--Deirdre had nothing left for her patience to gnaw on.

It was her. And nothing.

The TV was turned to a murmur across the scattered remains of the party, Deirdre listening for any mention of Morgan, or of a strange woman who turned to goop, if there ever managed to be any real news between the inane commercial breaks. With a jingle for soap stuck in her head, she picked up discarded bottles and glasses, tried to get icing out of things far too expensive to have icing stuck on them, and paced the length of her house a dozen times over. It was her own tired body that betrayed her then. Still in her cocktail dress, she curled into herself in front of the TV and listened. It was her. And it was nothing. And then it was Morgan.

Deirdre sprang up, her eyes stuck on the vision of her love standing in the house she’d packed up and left from. For a moment, she considered it might have been delirium caused by sleep-deprivation, but only Morgan could drum up a sense of humor that cruel. That after days, after the phone call she’d left Deirdre with, she would just stand there. Deirdre blinked, and then she was running across their home, scooping Morgan into her arms. Her body fit against hers just the ways she remembered, just the ways her pillow-replacement never could. And deep in her heart she felt Morgan, the tug of her death and the aroma that surrounded her. “I’m so mad at you.” But if there was any shred of anger inside of her, it didn’t exist in her soft voice, or eager hands. She pulled Morgan tight against her, drank in her every sensation and prayed to the Fates she knew didn’t listen, that everything would be okay now. And even if it wouldn’t be, holding Morgan for the first time in days, everything felt like it was. It was right. It was good. It was Morgan.    

Morgan sighed with relief as Deirdre swept her up. Her hands knew just where to latch on, her head just where to rest. The bones of them remained, and tucking into Deirdre’s body felt like a joint popping back into place. “You look so beautiful,” she laughed. The craziest dreams of her life wouldn’t have come up with something this perfect: Deirdre in a cocktail dress and heels, Yule and Christmas frosting the house, and her strong, wonderful arms. “Hey, I’m here,” she cooed. She could feel Deirdre’s worry in her grip, the sweet-sharp pinch of her fingers into her skin. “And you can be mad. You can be whatever you want.” She pressed her lips to her cheek, her temple. “I would like to propose that we kiss first, a lot--” She nipped and nuzzled at her gently to argue her point. Didn’t she miss this? Shouldn’t they have a moment of rest and comfort before all the work? “Mmm...but I understand if you have to get stuff off your chest first, okay? I’m here though, babe. I’m really here.”

“I have tinsel in my hair.” Deirdre laughed softly, pulling the strands of reflective decoration out of her hair. “And icing too, probably.” She wanted to say something about the children’s desire to spread stickiness wherever they pleased, a chaos she might have enjoyed if it wasn’t her things they wanted to dirty. She didn’t know that children could be so messy, or that their neighbours weren’t all so bad. She wanted to tell Morgan every detail, share how they missed her; how she missed her. But as she opened her mouth, she realized there was so much more she wanted to say. I love you, I thought you were gone forever, I was so worried, I love you, I’ve missed you. Deirdre shook her head, she wasn’t mad. She was far from mad. Her grip tightened. And then when she couldn’t help it anymore, she tilted her head up and burst into laughter. Of course Morgan would ask if she wanted to talk first, as if that idea held any bit of a chance against the promise of kissing. Of course Morgan would care. Of course Morgan would offer despite clearly wanting the same thing as Deirdre. The relief glimmered across her face, a bright smile cutting through days of worry and heartache. Her hands slipped away from Morgan’s waist to cup her face, held firmly in the safety of her palms. Her grin turned lopsided, toothy. “I second your proposal.” She leaned in, crouching down just before their lips could meet so she could lift Morgan into the air, arms around her waist. She kissed Morgan like that; fierce and giddy and with her head raised above hers, so that Deirdre had to be the one to tilt up to meet her. All she had wanted to say, she said with passion then--kissing Morgan exactly the way she ought to.   

Morgan picked out a strand of tinsel from Deirdre’s hair and brushed her fingers slowly through, deep and rough in the way that tickled her skin. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Deirdre this happy--maybe over a month now, for her birthday? The expanse of time between then and now seemed cruelly absurd. A whole life had crumbled in that time. Morgan squealed with delight as she was kissed, lifted, kissed again. Morgan couldn’t sort out what the best part was, they all rolled around her head like so many marbles. There was the kiss itself, deep and passionate, pulling on her with the purest kind of desire. There was the happiness of it, the wild simplicity: no hurt, no aches, no memories. If the work they had to do was still sitting on her mind, it was somewhere away from this truth: Morgan, whole or not, loved her; Deirdre, likewise, loved her just the same. And in this moment, with the white sky blazing with light and paper snow all around, that seemed like more than enough to build on. Anything was possible. Morgan hummed appreciatively and gave Deirdre back some of the hope bursting in her chest in return. We can do this, her kisses said. I’ve figured some things out and we can do this. She urged them toward the great room, legs wrapped around Deirdre’s hips and let them settle there, still wrapped around each other, smoothing over each other’s scabs and coaxing the restful parts of them that had been buried for too long. “Thank you for agreeing with me,” Morgan said, giggles bubbling in her voice. “You wanna tell me about the rescue party you threw? I think you’ve kinda outdone yourself. My hero.”

Navigating blind and distracted was nothing new; it wasn’t the first time kissing was more important than walking. Deirdre maneuvered them around with a kind of expertise she hoped she’d never lose. But even with her practice, nothing could have prepared her for the cursed children, and their inability to pick up after themselves. It was a left-behind toy car that caught under her foot, tumbling her forwards and on to their couch with a laugh and a huff. She turned and glared at the toy--she’d return it with a smile, undoubtedly, but for the moment, she sneered at it. In her mock annoyance, she nearly missed Morgan’s question. “Hm?” She turned to her love, bright again with a grin. “Well, I didn’t know children enjoyed sugar and Santa so much. They were so happy. You would’ve liked it.” Her smile softened as she went on, fresh memories coming to mind. Just moments ago, she’d been inexplicably eager to share every moment with her love, but now her mind coursed with just how much she’d missed Morgan. “Bill started talking to me about his barbecue again.” And she’d wished Morgan was there to get her free from the conversation. “I missed you...mostly. Everyone else did too. And--and--” From her bra--the great container that it was--she pulled a small business card free. “--Linda told me about this--uh--couples counseling and…” She trailed off. Was it too soon to ruin their happiness with this sort of conversation? Deirdre gulped, holding the card tenderly in her fingers. “Do you want to talk about what you’ve been up to?”

Morgan adjusted herself until her legs were draped over Deirdre’s lap and her arms hung loose around her shoulders. She listened to the highlights with rapt fondness, tracing her fingers along the features of Deirdre she’d missed the most. “It’s almost like they like you or something,” she teased. “I saw how many people you had over, for a second there. When I came down to lure Constance away. It was right before she took the power out and stars, I was so proud of you. I am so proud of you. I just knew you’d make everything okay over here. But this--!” She tilted her head back and laughed again at the beauty of it all, the kindness of each gesture. How many kids had Deirdre soothed when it got loud outside? How many worried looks did she face with courage? And even more than just sheltering the families, Deirdre gave them something good. “You’re incredible.”

At the mention of couple’s counseling, Morgan started, uncertain if she’d heard right. Deirdre rolled over the sentiment so quickly, it might have been some extreme brain fog telling on her. But the business card was real enough, and local too. Morgan’s face softened into a lopsided smile. “Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s genius babe, yes. I know we might have to get creative with some euphemisms, and it’s not that I don’t think we wouldn’t figure things out eventually, but--fuck, yeah, it might be nice to have some professional intervention so it doesn’t take forever.” She kissed her love again, slow and sweet. “I want that. If Linda has an in that get us there soon, I think sooner would be better than later.” Her smile tightened into a painful wince as she realized what was still left unstead. Mother of Earth, she didn’t want to spoil this. It had been so long since anything had felt easy or natural, she just wanted to ride this out for as long as possible. But that wasn’t honest or right. And as much as Morgan didn’t want it, she understood that she could survive without Deirdre or what they held together if she needed to. “I did kind of say I’d tell you everything, huh? It’s sort of a long story.” Morgan braced herself  and pulled herself back a little. “Are you ready?”

Deirdre flushed, nervous with a flutter in her stomach the way she always got when Morgan told her she was proud. It was different from when her family said it, different in all the right ways--ways she loved, and missed. “I didn’t want them to be scared,” she mumbled, “they’re just kids. I told them Santa was doing construction outside and they believed me. That’s--they’re so young. Santa can be an excuse for anything and they believe it, they’re that young. And even the older children they--” Deirdre shook her head. Besides her astonishment for the young humans, which weren’t as terrible as their adult counterparts, she still held the worry in her chest. “I’m not. I’m not. I didn’t do anything special for anyone, I just gave them all food and let people pet the cats. Even Anya liked it...although that may have been because she had a whole swarm of new people to beg for food from.” Deirdre smiled, the cats were fast asleep, tired from their playing and socializing. It seemed to her that cats, children, humans, all wanted to be soothed when frightened. It didn’t feel so special to her that she’d done her best for them, not when she’d been doing it for Morgan too. She glanced down at the business card, knowing there was a lot she would’ve done for Morgan, and a lot more she still had to do.

“Y-you’re okay with it?” Deirdre glanced up. “You like the idea?” For so long, all of Deirdre’s ideas were a miss. And while this one was technically Linda’s, it was still something she put forth, and another nervous flutter filled her. She smiled softly, humming into the kiss. “Linda said she could, yeah. She said she’d talk to people and sort it out if we wanted it. I told her I had to ask you first.” Deirdre looked back to the card, holding it up between them. It felt like hope between her fingers. With a wider smile, she set it down on the table and met Morgan’s eyes a moment later. “I’m ready.”  

“It’s not a crime to value yourself, babe. To be kind and brave after everything you’ve been through, knowing all the things you do about the world, is nothing short of incredible,” Morgan said evenly. “And yes, I really--really--really like the idea.” She punctuated each ‘really’ with another kiss, each more gentle than the last. But she couldn’t stay cocooned in affection forever. Morgan scooted away a little more, forced her eyes level with Deirdre’s, and told her the truth.

She told Deirdre how she had agonized over how to pick someone to bleed and should’ve known right then that this plan wasn’t going to help her. But she had, and lured out some poor man with a dog and maybe a kid and definitely a lot of friends who cared about him just because he’d happened to think she was playing hard to get when she turned him down for a drink. She talked about how she’d ached, hating it, and wasted so much blood and seconds waiting for this to feel worth it before she finally tried to stop Miriam from finishing. And it hadn’t worked. And he’d died for nothing, and would never be found, not at the bottom of the Devil’s Gullet. She talked about Jasmine and Blanche and Agnes and the sirens and the wreckage on the town common she’d been too guilty to investigate, how much she hated the whole mess when she saw what was left of that miserable girl destroyed in the exorcism. She had still hurt, still suffered, even without the ritual. She was nothing now. “I just wanted it all to stop,” she said. “And maybe I hated her a little less, seeing her trapped and pathetic like this, but I didn’t stop resenting her, but I still--I would’ve held her if I could to make it end faster. It was like you said, it didn’t give me a piece of myself back. Lucky for me there’s no one left to avenge Constance, but it was just so...I think that things like this exist for a reason, but I don’t think it’s how you get rid of your pain. I don’t think pain can be transmuted at all. I think...it’s something you have to surrender. Somehow.”

Morgan sniffled and rubbed the back of her hand across her face. “Anyway, with the car all messed up, I walked home from the Outskirts and I just felt so awful I made this pit stop and… I still don’t know if this is completely desperate or just me coming around to something stupidly obvious, but I realized it’s Yule, and the sun always comes back to us even after the longest night and the heart of the earth still beats even when it feels like its dead, and we’re all coming back to life one way or another so long as we exist, even me. I’m a part of it, or I at least need to act like I am. Maybe I’m not a witch like I used to be, but I’m something, and I’d like to work something better than lashing out on the world. I want that for myself, and if I fuck it up along the way--I don’t know. The earth will catch me, anchor me. She made me, she helps keep me here. Maybe that’s enough.” She shrugged, trying not to overplay how much it gave her to touch her old faith again, even if her fires had to be built from scratch and her offerings and rituals symbolic only. But the truth shone in her eyes, in a light that was almost like peace.

Deirdre listened quietly. For a moment, she thought it was important to keep the physical distance Morgan pushed between them. She hadn’t realized that her body inched closer with the end of each sentence, or that her hands had gone up, smoothing worries with its touch. When Morgan was done, she pulled her love into her lap and held her tight. She wanted to ask which part was supposed to be the ‘bad thing’ Morgan had spoken of over the phone, but a new voice was born then--small, frail, and unlike the voice of her mother or Morgan, this one sounded like herself. She knew then what Morgan had done, and that by the nature of good, it wasn’t perfect. But nothing ever was. “Sometimes when I--you know--there can’t be a body. And it’s not great, it’s not good. The family has a harder time mourning without a body.” Her eyes turned to Lydia’s ashes. “But there are things you can do to make it easier. I’ll show you, and we can do them together, for the man. And his body won’t be found, no, but this will make it a little better.” She shifted, turning her attention to Morgan. Deirdre’s expression had softened so much, she thought it might melt off her face; it’d been a while since her eyes reflected anything but sadness. “I’m sorry it didn’t go the way you thought it would, my love. That it didn’t feel the way you wanted it to. If peace could be made in revenge, I wished that you’d find it. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, that you’ve had to do so much for an end that didn’t give you what you needed.” She set about tucking strands of Morgan’s messy hair into their place, fingers curled around her face when she was done, thumbing roughly at the bones that laid under.

Whatever apology and insecurity might have fluttered once with the idea that she could no longer be Morgan’s anchor, didn’t bother to surface in the moment. Her smile grew, and her body perked up. In her heart, she felt nothing but pride, and she flushed with it. “That sounds amazing,” she breathed, “it is amazing. Yes, you are still a part of the earth. And it is Yule--” Deirdre smiled a little wider, shifting to angle herself closer to Morgan as the weight of what Morgan was saying settled on her. She had watched Morgan’s depressed Beltane, and while Samhain was something she wouldn’t forget, she could tell it wasn’t the same. Not like it would have been if Morgan was alive. Deirdre held no sadness for what was missed, only worry for her love, and the loss she put upon herself. “I know you don’t feel like earth exactly like you used to but...but this is good. It sounds good. If you want me to do anything for you, just say the word.” She pressed her lips to Morgan’s cheek, temple, cheek again, jaw. “How do you feel about it? Does it feel good to you?”        

Morgan sighed into Deirdre’s little touches, relieved at the forgiveness she felt in them. She held her gaze, hesitating, Is this okay? Are we still okay? But she knew as soon as she looked that it was. She wrapped her arms back around her love as she was brought in. “I made him suffer for nothing,” she mumbled. “And they’re just going to keep wondering what happened. But--yeah, that would be good. Whatever you can think of. I don’t know his name, which is awful, I know, but I remember his face. If there’s a picture in the paper, we can find out who he was, do whatever you think will help.” She nodded into the crook of Deirdre’s neck and gave her a squeeze. There was so much gentleness and understanding in her face she could barely stand to look at it.

“I should have listened to you when you talked about how awful you felt after trying to avenge Lydia. I just thought...I had come so far, and I had lost so much already. And I couldn’t stomach the thought of her being better off than me, to rest and be completely okay. But it wasn’t worth all those people’s lives. I just spread her pain around and that wasn’t what I wanted… I can’t even imagine how much worse her pain would’ve been if I’d gone through with everything. But she can’t suffer anymore now, or make others suffer with her. Her shadow’s gone and this can just be over.”

At Deirdre’s excitement, Morgan beamed and lifted her head just enough to see her. “It does feel good, yeah,” she whispered. “I want to hear more about you and how you’re doing first, but I also...I did a little something before I came home, but would you burn something with me? Or just sit with me while I-- normally we would make our wishes and hopes for the new year on the log. One for ourselves, one for the family, and one for the world. But you don’t have to do that, I’d just--” She shrugged, smiling. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Deirdre shook her head. “Why would you? My revenge for Lydia wasn’t a thing like what you were doing. You weren’t wrong to try, Morgan. To want to hurt Constance, at least...not to me. You’re still a good person, to me. How I see it. You wanted to bring yourself peace, you wanted balance, justice, fairness...none of those things are wrong to want.” Deirdre sighed and half-shrugged, which just turned into nuzzling against Morgan. What did she know about revenge anyway? Her own attempt was still a sore topic, and she couldn’t help the way her stomach lurched at the mention of Lydia—she had done so little for her, done so wrong. But this wasn’t about her, or Lydia. “The way I see it...no death is ever for nothing. Not if you do something. We can make it good, as good as it can be. And Constance is gone now, and maybe that means there’s peace for you after all. Everything I know about hope, I’ve learned from you. And maybe it’s like that; maybe you find a way to transmute good from the bad.” Deirdre smiled softly, offering another shrug-turned-nuzzle. “It can just be over.”

Deirdre hummed, nodding. Her hands found their way back to Morgan hair, setting strands neatly, as if she was trying to put Morgan back together. But she knew better than that, Morgan didn’t need her to be putting anything back together. “We had Yule bodies,” she laughed, “instead of logs. Most of our traditions involved burning dead things, now that I think about it. You can imagine the smell was horrid.” Her smile grew. “Which is to say, yes. Whatever it is you want to do, I’d be honoured to do it with you. Just tell me how.”

Morgan kissed Deirdre’s palm when she finished with her hair, just a moth wing’s brush of a touch. “I’m not opposed to some animal sacrifice, as a rule, but I think there’s too much snow for a bonfire right now. But if the ground is better and the sky is clear by the twelfth night of Yule, we can go looking for a felled little deer somewhere and let its body go toward something good. You can show me what you like about your Yule then. Besides, I don’t want to be anywhere but home right now.” She leaned up and kissed Deirdre’s lips sweetly whispering, “Thank you,” against them as she parted. “Now come here by the fireplace and I’ll be right back.”

She led Deirdre by the hand, beaming with excitement and urged her to sit. They hadn’t run the fire much this season and Morgan fiddled with the chute and the kindling, trying to remember what she’d done the one time she’d gotten this right. Once the fire had a strong enough foundation, she dashed off to the kitchen and back again, hands full with spices. She reached for the nicest looking log from the small silver rack they kept and joined Deirdre, holding it out between them. “It just so happens that the youngest person in the house goes first anyway. You put your hand on the log, non dominant is traditional but I don’t remember why, and you take a second to feel it. The sturdiness of it, and the age of it, all the time it holds and all the time you’ve had this year. And then you think of your wishes. You don’t have to say them out loud, but you do have to make them. And when you do, you imagine those wishes going into the log like little threads, bundling up. And after I’ve had my turn and we put it in together, you’re supposed to think of the threads as bursting and rising into the air and spreading all around you. Like magic but, you know, not.” Morgan’s voice dipped, melancholic, as she explained this. When she was a child, her dad would help her make the flames with alchemy, with the air, the wood--connecting the pieces of the world together with just a wish. It’s just different, that’s all. Not bad, just different. Morgan smiled wistfully and gripped the log a little tighter.

When she spoke again, her voice was bright with determination. “Anyways, I’ll bless the fire and make it smell nice and--well, normally my family would just stay cozied by it all day. Watching movies, reading to each other, eating too much. I’ll make a wreath for the house since we never got one, and well, I can’t eat my mom’s yule bread or her golden milk, but I’ll make you some if you want or something you normally have, if you’ll show me. But the fire goes all day long until the log is finished to the last ember. We hold onto the light, however much we can, and even when its gone, we remember that it will always come again.” She smiled meaningfully at Deirdre and nodded with encouragement. “Now make your wishes, my love.”

“Oh. No, it’s not a whole--we just used bits of dead flesh, enough that the earth wouldn’t miss it. We’d go out and watch animals decompose for midsummer, though. But it’s best not to disturb nature.” Deirdre explained quickly, more in a rush to get herself in place and ready. She sat still, straight-backed and attentive. There was a hint of a pout at being reminded of her age, but the excitement of the log was quick to cover up any sourness. Deirdre nodded and took the log with her left hand, holding it firmly. She ran her fingers over the rough grooves all the way along until the place it was cut unnaturally with man’s tool. She followed the edges until she found her path back to the grooved surface. She threw it between her hands; weighty, but not heavy. She imagined the tree grown, in its fullness. She imagined herself tucked in the ridges of its bark, she imagined her year. At the start, there was the winter of January, the unexpected warmth of the bar where she’d met Morgan. Along its path, the strange hole in its face, she imagined that was Lydia, at the emptiness that she would no longer fill. Between them, in the rough shapes, that had to be Regan. Her wish was a simple one, but she worked it into the wood with her caress. In the hole, the uneven cuts, the beginning. She asked for peace, and she committed it to each person; Morgan, Lydia, Regan and every other person that sat between the spaces. She thought of roots coming around to hold them, soothe them. Like little threads, Morgan had said. And Deirdre thought finally of the threads of her Fate, the kind she saw in Death. Her family never did anything quite like this; they had no use for something like wishes. But Deirdre did.

“I’m done,” she looked up, “and you...burn the wishes? It’s not like...doesn’t that make it go away?” She turned to the fire, then back to Morgan. “The winter months just meant a lot of alcohol for my family. I think I’d like to try the yule bread and golden milk.” Deirdre smiled at the thought; hot whiskey was still a favorite, but she’d take the chance to try something new. “I-uh--” She shifted where she sat, glazing down at her log. “I wished for peace.” Her voice was small, embarrassed. Peace didn’t seem like such an interesting wish, but she’d wanted it at all the same. “For you. For Lydia, Regan…” She laughed, “Kaden...even, if he could find it in himself to calm down.” Her eyes fluttered back down to the log. "It’s your turn now, right?”

“The fire sets them free, like how burning juniper and pine releases the scent,” Morgan explained gently. “You can’t hold onto everything all the time. Sometimes...the way to make things come true is to let them go and let them find their way back.” She touched her hand to Deirdre’s cheek, tilting her head up so she could see Morgan’s smile. “That’s a beautiful thing to wish for, my love. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you.” She thumbed her cheek affectionately, pressing in enough to feel the line of her cheekbone then turned her attention back to the log. She cradled it with her right hand and closed her eyes. She couldn’t reach out as she did when she was alive, when she closed her eyes and brushed over the knots and chips left on the log, there was only the surface, nothing more. But her heart remembered the way the grain layered on the inside, the way the chemical connections holding it together branched like a tree. She knew and would always know, just like the world would always know her. Morgan put her wish into it, imagining her threads wrapping around the compounds in a bright cocoon of gold. Abiding wholeness for herself, steadfast love for her family, healing for the world. Morgan smiled and imagined the threads filling up the inside of the log. She murmured the old prayer her parents had taught her and placed it inside. As she finished, she sprinkled the dry materials she’d gathered and beamed as a hint of their aroma found its way to her. “...a heartbeat awaiting, until the time is right for spring’s return. So may it be.”  

Her work finished, Morgan draped her arms around Deirdre and pulled her into a kiss. “I wished for something like peace too,” she said, threading more up her jaw and to her temple. “But love was mine for you. So much love from every direction possible.” She sighed and squeezed her banshee tighter, hoping that saying the words aloud would help Deirdre find it before the next December. By the light of the fire and the pull of the earth, it seemed possible. Everything wonderful Morgan had ever hoped for felt like it was just peeking out from under a layer of snow. “Merry Yuletide, Deirdre.”

Deirdre watched the fire slowly crawl along her wishes, into the grooves and across the uneven surface. Like Morgan said, she imagined those threads--once tightly wrapped--bursting free like the crack of wood. She smiled, and then she was kissing Morgan, and she smiled wider. Her arms found their place holding Morgan with ease; against her girlfriend, it had already felt like she’d been given all the love Morgan wished for. “Thank you,” she mumbled into her shoulder. Like fire, love flickered warm and bright inside of her. Like the wood cracking, so too did rigid layers of her, peeled back and withered down like ash. She felt blue, and yellow, and orange and red, and like glowing embers, steadfast. She felt like herself again, and they felt like them. It would be different, maybe that meant it would be better. She could feel the love Morgan had wished for, but she knew she’d find more of it too, elsewhere. And the weight of wanting peace was freed from her now, out in the air where it might take shape. She was happy; plain, uncomplicated contentment. For the first time in her life, this happiness felt like something she deserved; something they both did. The Yule season could be sentimental, that way. It was different from what she knew, and maybe that meant it was better. “Merry Yuletide, Morgan.”  

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Not Like That || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: After the events of The Red Room

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan struggles with what she learned in the basement from Lydia and herself.

"To stay here forever

is not like that, nor even

simply to lie quite still,

the warm trickle of dream

staining the thick quiet.

The drawers of this trunk are empty.

They are all out of sleep up here."

-Adrienne Rich

CONTAINS: discussions of physical and emotional abuse from the past, lenan sidhe control, and fae customs. Brief mentions of vomit.

Morgan stayed in the doorway long after Remmy had taken their bag and staggered up the stairs to their room. She couldn’t feel her fingers, or hear the door close behind her. She looked at the lock and the car in the driveway, the blood on her hands from where Chloe had fought her, and the rips in her clothes and the shine on the hardwood floor. She looked until her eyes were too flooded with tears and she could only press herself against the door to keep from sagging and called for the only person she wanted right now. “Deirdre—? Deirdre!” She dragged herself along the wall, still calling for her hoarsely. “Please—Deirdre?”

Pruning flowers turned out to be surprisingly therapeutic, with everything on Deirdre’s mind, she welcomed the bit of gardening she’d taken up. It was so great of a distraction that she paid no mind to the lights turning on in her house behind her, or even Moira mewling at her feet. And only when she had a respectable bundle of flowers, pruned and ready to be stuck in a vase to wilt inside, did she finally turn to look into her home. “Morgan?” The flowers slipped between her fingers, their glass patio door slid open seconds later. “Morgan!” Deirdre ran to her, scooping her girlfriend into her arms. She noticed tears first, blood second, torn clothes third. “What’s wrong, my love? Come, lean on me.” The task of lifting Morgan up and getting her to some place comfortable for them to sit and hold each other was an instinctual one. She soothed and cooed all the way there, whispering unintelligibly about how it was okay—even if she didn’t really know what she was saying was okay.

Morgan clung to Deirdre with all she had. She couldn’t tell if she was lifted off her feet or if she was merely dragged along by Deirdre’s brute strength. She gasped for words, for any of the questions she had burning in her throat. “Please—” She croaked, digging her fingers into her skin, coughing with sobs. Deirdre was the only real thing left on the landscape of their home, the only anchor to cling to. “I—we—Remmy asked me over and we—saw—I don’t know what to do. We couldn’t help her and I don’t—” She wasn’t making sense. Despairing, Morgan sobbed in her girlfriend’s arms, curling up tighter against her body. “We found Lydia...in her basement...feeding...on her prisoner. We heard the way she...spoke to her.” Morgan fastened herself to Deirdre’s body, head buried in her neck. “Did she show you? Have you known how she...keeps them…?”

Deirdre waited and listened. Suddenly, her reassurances stopped. The circles she had been working across Morgan’s back with practiced pressure fell away, and she pulled back, just enough to look at Morgan. Some manner of confusion settled into her, she didn’t know which part Morgan took offense to, or if Lydia’s feeding was simply upsetting to look at. But she knew, without doubt, that it had hurt Morgan. Just how, she could figure out later. “Where’s Remmy?” She reached out to hold Morgan’s face in her hands. “I need you to tell me where they are right now. Are they there? Did they go to a friend’s? And the human...where’s the human?” She leaned in and kissed Morgan’s forehead, pressed her head against hers as they parted. “Can you tell me that first?”

Morgan gulped for breath, trembling in Deirdre’s grip. She couldn’t make her lungs remember how to breathe and whimpered, choking on her own cries as she tried to remember. The look she gave Deirdre as she held her away was panicked: no, please no, please don’t push me away, please. When she was finally able to draw in a full breath, it tore raggedly through her throat. “Remmy’s upstairs. In their room. Chloe is with Lydia. We didn’t...we couldn’t free her. Remmy wanted to trade themself, but we’re dead and useless and we can’t do anything for anyone and…” Her body shuddered. She wanted to be folded up again, she wanted to understand, she wanted to be forgiven, she wanted so many awful, impossible things.

“Remmy’s here?” Deirdre blinked, she hadn’t even noticed. But it was better, perhaps, that she was hearing this from Morgan and not Remmy. Morgan would hold far more understanding for the things she was about to say. “You shouldn’t have freed her,” she started, voice gentle and forgiving, “doing so would endanger Lydia, and Chloe. She’s not herself anymore. She is Lydia’s. And there’s nothing you, or anyone, can do about that.” Not that anyone should do anything about it, but she held her tongue on that point and simply shifted and pulled Morgan closer again. “She is already dead, Morgan. Do not feel bad for leaving her there.” But more than that—more than that—Chloe was a simple, putrid, inferior human. Morgan would not weep in guilt for a cow-turned-steak, and the humans were no different. Not in any capacity. Deirdre pressed her lips to the side of Morgan’s head, lingering there. “I knew,” she said, “I knew and I found nothing wrong with it—I find nothing wrong with it.”  

“Dead?” Morgan sobbed. “What do you mean? I don’t understand. She...she wasn’t dead, she was just...she was hurt. Lydia was hurting her and I don’t understand!” She pressed back into Deirdre’s grasp, giving up the fight against her body for stillness. “It’s not...I don’t mean what she has feed on. No one should have to...that’s not it.” She tried counting her surroundings, but her mind was weighted somewhere down the road in Lydia’s home, in that basement… “They were underground, in the basement. I didn’t think it was her. The way she was talking to her… it was like how my mother talked to me, when she was pretending to comfort me after I was punished. Like it was my fault she locked me up. And I thought, Lydia would never talk to someone like that, saying they made her do things she chose. But it was her. It was Lydia and I saw her make that woman… what do you mean she’s not herself? It’s just magic brainwashing, right? It wears off. She could recover and choose for herself and she could...she could be okay if the magic was allowed to wear off, right?”

Deirdre continued to hold Morgan close, with no more understanding than she had before, but growing more desperate to soothe her pain away. “She will be dead, eventually, I mean.” Deirdre tried, but she found herself struggling to form the right words. She didn’t know how far along Chloe was, but she also knew that she didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, the moment Lydia had chosen her, she was dead. Her fate was sealed, as it ought to be for a human. “It’s how leanan-sidhe eat, Morgan. Their kisses inspire love and devotion, and to keep them happy, you have to be clever about it. But it’s not--it’s not terrible. Lydia isn’t terrible with them. It’s just food; they’re just food. It’s no different than cattle raised on a farm.” She tried to search for what was wrong, the comparison to Morgan’s mother was a good starting point, but she knew Lydia was only feeding. And Chloe was only human. The pain Morgan felt wasn’t shared, and Deirdre needed Morgan to explain it better; but it seemed neither of them could reach any piece of understanding. “I-I suppose it could wear off…” Deirdre grimaced at the idea of freeing Chloe. “But why would you do that? Chloe is Lydia’s. To break them apart would be painful.” For Lydia, she’d meant. She didn’t much care how Chloe would fare after. And though Lydia would also recover, Deirdre couldn’t get the point in separating her from her rightly deserved food. Deirdre gulped, a quivering voice given to her desperation, “w-why does this bother you?”

“I-I’m...sorry…” Morgan stammered through her cries. She was being so useless right now. She couldn’t hold still, she could barely speak, barely remember breathing, she was just barely more than useless. She heard her mother’s voice in her mind, snapping at her to stop. To be better. She wasn’t raised to be pathetic and lazy and was she trying to be sent back to her room and cause her mother more grief? Did she not understand what this behavior was putting her mother through? Morgan stiffened at the recollection. Deirdre didn’t ask her any such questions, but Morgan could hear the distress in her voice. She apologized again and again, waiting impatiently for the panic to subside from her body.

When her body finally stilled, a stone-like numbness was left behind, leaving her feeling heavy and tired. “Chloe looked as old as me,” she said faintly. “I actually slung her over my shoulder and tried to drag her out of there. I thought if I was fast enough, we’d all have a chance. But the magic, the way it makes her...Lydia made her cry so bad but she still fought me to drag herself back. She wasn’t happy. She was being hurt, to keep her under control.” She grimaced and tried to press in further. She didn’t have the focus or control to mind her grip, but she wanted so badly to feel the comforting weight of Deirdre anchoring her. She whined and tried to fasten their bodies together tighter still. “You would never have hurt the animals on your farm like that by choice,” she said. “And she’s a person. I was looking right at her. And she’s a person; like I was a person. I didn’t think I was being complicit in someone else’s abuse every time I went to see her there. I didn’t think she was the kind of person who...used people like that, who could be cruel. Is this...is this really her whole species’ legacy? Do they all keep people hostage in their houses and hurt them so they stay ‘good’? Is that really supposed to be the ‘best’ way for them to live?”

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t be.” Deirdre breathed her assurances out with the gentleness she reserved for Morgan. There was some point she was still missing, but comforting Morgan took greater importance. She pressed kisses where she could, held her tighter, moved her hands around to soothe—everything she knew Morgan liked, everything she could feel Morgan was asking for. But while her body knew the language that needed to be said, her brain didn’t. Morgan’s mother was bad, and anything that might have reminded her of that would also be bad, but that wasn’t exactly what Morgan was saying. “It’s okay,” she mumbled, continuing her affection even as Morgan’s panic seemed to settle. “But we never fed from those creatures, and they are—” She gulped. They were, admittedly, different from humans. Not so much in value, though perhaps in their complaints and understanding of the world. “She is a…” Deirdre struggled to find her rebuttal; confusion grew on her features, and she stared at the wall beyond them with furrowed brow. She wouldn’t deny that Morgan had been human, once, and in some way, she still was, but in her mind the two were separate. She slumped and waited until Morgan was finished, gathering her thoughts between the pauses and questions. “How are you made complicit if you’re not participating?” She asked quietly, she still couldn’t understand what was wrong, but she knew Morgan thought something was. It occurred to her that she might have had more luck if she pretended like she did, but she’d always been honest with Morgan, and she didn’t want to stop just because she thought Morgan would disagree. She trusted that Morgan would try to understand her, just as she was trying to do. She trusted it. She trusted her. “I haven’t known a leanan-sidhe who didn’t,” she said, “and the ones I did know treated their humans far worse. But more than that, there are fae without their powers who will still keep humans as pets. Sometimes to serve no real purpose. We had a few, for a while.” She trusted her. With a trembling sigh, Deirdre brought voice to the thought she’d let loom in the air: “what does it matter if it’s the ‘best’ way? They’re just human. This is what they’re meant for.” Her words were not of the convincing sort, they were plain, and steady, and confused.  

“She’s a person,” Morgan emphasized. “Like me. Like I’m a person. And Remmy and Blanche and my students and Ariana and Nell and...and even if it’s too awful to think of her life as worth the same as yours or Lydia’s, the way she’s kept there, the way she was being punished…it’s cruel.” Morgan shook her head, body tensing again. “I didn’t do anything for her. Sometimes ambivalence can be harmful. When you could do something, anything, and you just don’t because you can’t be bothered--haven’t you been hurt like that too? People just standing by and watching, like you’re just part of the background when you’re small and hurt and you just want to be left alone? Didn’t you ever wish so hard someone would at least try? Or care enough to at least look upset?” She lifted her head to look at Deirdre, her expression wide and bewildered. She couldn’t help but sink with disappointment when Deirdre looked the same way. She and Lydia were so close, it didn’t seem like much of a surprise that she knew. Even if she hadn’t, Morgan hadn’t imagined anything like Remmy’s outrage. But seeing the absolute lack of understanding on her features, as if Morgan had started speaking in a different language, sunk another one of her hopes and dulled the light in her eyes. “She was in the same house as me, and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even wonder. And I still can’t do anything. The worst part is I know I...I can’t do anything for her. I don’t want Lydia to get hurt. No one else can find out about this, because they’ll be horrified and want to do something too, and Chloe is going to suffer and die hating herself and feeling so small and I’m going to let her because I can’t…I don’t want to hurt my friend.” Morgan shivered, her skin crawling with disgust at herself. “I don’t understand why it’s like this,” she said, her eyes welling with tears again. Morgan’s voice pitched high, pleading, though she wasn’t sure for what. “Help me understand why it’s…is it fun? Does it make your people feel stronger against the Wardens and the people who hurt you by taking one of their own and making them a thing? Is this a cultural recompense for how imbalanced things are? Is it just too dangerous to get back at the people who actually hurt fae? Or do people just do it out of habit at this point? I just...I don’t understand. If she had wanted me when I was alive, would you have given me over? You said you couldn’t bear to even pretend I was your toy girl, but I’m not any different from Chloe, Deirdre. Is that what I was really meant for? A magic leash and someone to make me work until I bleed?”

“T-that’s not the same,” Deirdre offered meekly, shrinking into herself. “And that’s not--I don’t---” She swallowed thickly, uncomfortable with the comparison Morgan drew, and worse with knowing how angry she could feel at the people who’d watched her pain. But this was different, she told herself this was different. She waited, and she listened, and she spent a moment composing her thoughts away from the jumble that bubbled in her stomach. She continued to hold Morgan, now in some part for her own sake. Would lying be so bad? Deirdre could see Morgan deflate with her confusion; something wither behind her eyes and her own heart sank at the sight. The last thing she wanted was to hurt Morgan, and the part of her that knew how to perform to people’s ideals considered doing what she’d done all her life--play a part. But this was Morgan, and she’d always been honest with Morgan, and even as her blood ran cold with fear, she wouldn’t give Morgan anything less than the truth. “But Chloe’s not thinking about that. She can’t think about that. Magically, she can’t.” Deirdre whimpered, desperate for the two of them to reach the understanding that always came so easily. “And why would you consider that there might be humans in Lydia’s basement? That’s not something anyone thinks of. You don’t...hold any blame for thinking of Lydia as your friend, for not knowing. But--” But did she hold any now? Was freeing Chloe the right thing for her to do now? Deirdre grimaced again; she had no answers to offer, and more questions herself. “No it’s just--it’s convenient. To feed like that, off one consistent human. It’s more sustainable. And Lydia’s abilities...they do think that they love her. They are devoted to her, that is by no trickery of her words. That is, at its base, magic.” And they were human, what did it matter? What did it matter? Deirdre grew increasingly stiff, and though she didn’t intend for it to happen, her grip on Morgan slackened and her body began to throb under the tightness of Morgan’s clinging--against her weekend’s injuries. “No…” she let out a tearless sob, a pathetic hiccup of sadness. “I would never let anyone do that to you. I don’t--Not all humans are---” But the topic was too complex for Deirdre’s mind, too heavy against the things she knew, and the strange things she was learning. “S-some humans are just food. Some rabbits get caught, some go on. It’s just how it works. I don’t--” She swallowed again, whimpering. She didn’t like these questions, she didn’t like this conversation, she didn’t -- “H-how did you find out about her basement anyway?”

“It is the same,” Morgan’s voice was barely above a whisper, but her tone was insistent. “What I am doing to that woman right now is the same thing as what the people who watched you get hurt did, the same thing the people who ignored me get hurt did too. And maybe they have reasons, maybe they can be forgiven, but they did it and it hurt and it was awful. I am doing something awful.” They both were, but Deirdre’s look was turning to fear, and Morgan couldn’t bear to levy that kind of guilt on her. “Having magic re-working her brain doesn’t make it real. It’s not the same as real love. It is nothing like what we have. And we would never, never treat each other so horribly. We are never going to make each other suffer that way.” She fixed Deirdre’s gaze with her own, both of them trembling with fright at the weight of what hung over them. “I’m not a rabbit; I never was. I was just a human who was trying to find a better life. I wasn’t any more special than Chloe. We’re the same. She could have been me. She didn’t do anything to deserve this, that I know of. She was just there, and someone decided she had to suffer. And—maybe it is better that one person suffers like that instead of a dozen or a hundred, but I don’t understand why Lydia has to put her into that awful place, like her whole life isn’t already being sacrificed. And I don’t mean the house, I mean the place you and I were put in when people we loved hurt us. The place where I would’ve pitched myself off a building if it would’ve made my mother say she loved me back. That desperate, lonely, self-loathing place we both know. Except there’s no ‘after’ for her. Because the big all-powerful fae magic said so and  I care too much about my friend to even try again. Because I love Lydia.” She lowered her head, hating herself for the truth. “Please don’t go,” she whispered, draping her arms around Deirdre again. She stayed there for several moments, still trembling at the realization at what she was capable of.

“Remmy messaged me because they…” Her voice halted as she realized what the truth must have been. “They heard gunshots coming from the basement a little while ago. They were worried that someone might be hurting Lydia. So I said we should look for clues, make sure everything’s okay. And so we went. And there they were.” She let out a shaky breath. “Remmy’s destroyed about it. They didn’t even look at Lydia when we left. They’ve been hurt all their life, they were kept in a cage by another fae, they can’t bear to be in a place where something like what’s happening to Chloe is going on. I don’t think they’ll stay here long either, I have to go over and get the rest of their stuff tomorrow, though.”

“No it’s not, Morgan. It’s not the same…” But if there were any words to explain it, Deirdre couldn’t find them. She didn’t try very long to, either. The topic made her sick in a very particular way, a way that she couldn’t name. The feeling it drummed up was too terrible to even attempt to voice. She quivered and whimpered wordlessly at it, until Morgan moved along to something she could stomach verbalizing. “I don’t mean it’s real love...just that Chloe doesn’t know better. When you tried to take her, it won’t--I mean, you can’t take her away like that. She’s oblivious to whatever Lydia does.” She had meant to make it sound like her ignorance was some blessing, but having been a child under her mother’s thumb, she knew all too well that it wasn’t. It was, instead, a different kind of evil. The terrible, nameless feeling bubbled again. “You are a--” No, Morgan wasn’t a rabbit. Deirdre swallowed. The feeling grew, hitting the back of her throat. Her mother’s voice barked between the pounding of Deirdre’s heart in her ears. “Some people just---it just happens to them. That’s just---” And if there were words to justify it, Deirdre couldn’t find them either. Humans are worth nothing. But what of Morgan then? What of the woman she loved, who was worth everything? “W-what else is she going to do? Chloe thinks that she loves her, and she’ll be desperate for Lydia’s attention as long as she’s being fed from. Wh-what else is---wouldn’t it be worse if she was mean to--she’s not--” The feeling was in her mouth now, and despite Morgan’s plea, she pushed her girlfriend aside and rose with a start; bolting to their kitchen, draping her head over the sink. She hadn’t thrown up in quite some time, it wasn’t usually how her sickness or anxiety would manifest itself. But it was as if she was given too much, too soon, and her body had rejected it. Deirdre gripped their counter tightly, heaving. “G-gunshots…” She breathed, running the tap to wash her mouth out. Gunshots didn’t make sense. Why would Lydia hurt them like that, if it hurt her just the same? And shouldn’t Sammy have been there too? Or--- The feeling rose up and emptied out of her again. She groaned and shoveled more water into her mouth.

“How do you feel?” She called out, working vigorously on getting the taste out of her mouth. If anything, it gave her something else to focus on. “Do you want to see her still? Go back there? I could go if you’d like to avoid it.” Deirdre groaned, pulling a glass from the cabinet and filling it with water. Maybe that would help. Maybe all she needed was to drink something. The taste had turned from acid to blood to acid again. The wound in her stomach, which hadn’t gotten much of a chance to heal, sent pain shooting through her body. It seemed like everything was rejecting itself. “It’s just what happens,” she mumbled, “that’s what the humans are for. And that’s just how she feeds it’s---” Deirdre took a long, suffocating sip of her water, spitting it all out into the sink as she found her throat burned, and her body wouldn’t accept anything more.

Morgan was too unbalanced from her panic and her sadness to catch Deirdre before she doubled over at the kitchen sink. Instead she stumbled behind her, knocking into the walls and furniture on numb feet until she was in the entryway, supporting herself against the counter. “Gunshots, yeah,” Morgan said in a whisper. “I didn’t ask about that, I didn’t think to. I don’t know why she...what would make her do that to someone she was keeping, if she needs them alive.” Morgan fidgeted where she stood, not knowing if she should give Deirdre her space as she processed this, or if she should be holding her hair and making tea. Morgan split the difference and shambled over to where they kept the kettle, and filled it up from the other side of the sink before setting it to heat.

“I don’t know how I feel,” she said, reaching over to tie back Deirdre’s hair. “I want to know she’s okay. I left things with her as best I could, and I know she doesn’t understand why either of us feel the way we do, especially Remmy. I want her to stop being cruel, and I want her to not feel so…” Morgan shook her head. “She was really hurt by how things went, and I don’t want her to hurt. And I can’t have both, or either, I guess. I feel like I should never want to see her again, but I...I don’t know.” She combed her fingers through Deirdre’s new ponytail, imagining how it ought to feel so she wouldn’t have to think about her willingness to see Lydia again. “Just because it’s what happens, doesn’t mean it’s what me and Blanche and Erin and Nell were made for. I don’t believe you really think I was made to spend my life being broken by someone. And I’m not upset about how she was made, about what she needs. That wouldn’t be fair. It’s the part where she’s keeping a woman hostage and crushing her inside while she does it. And with the magic, the desperation it makes people feel, it’s probably worse than anything I ever suffered under my mother.” She eyed Deirdre, wondering how it compared to the way Deirdre ached for approval. “I’m good to pick up Remmy’s stuff tomorrow. But you should probably go see her too. Tonight, or I can drop you off or...I don’t know. But I don’t want what happened today to stop you from being her friend. You need each other.”

Deirdre stared into their sink, watching her distorted reflection in the shiny stainless steel. Her grip on the counter slackened as the world spun, and she was remembering why sudden movements and exerting pressures were bad for her now. She’d have to ask Lydia what that was about, when she got the chance...which then begged the question of why Morgan and Remmy hadn’t just asked either, but what did that mean then? That they’d never find out Lydia’s secret and keep their conditional opinions? Only fae can understand each other. Deirdre heaved and ran the tap again, forcing her twisted reflection out, and the chilling voice of her mother to find a different host. “I don’t understand it either,” she shut the tap off, letting the plopping of water droplets play against the sound of the kettle. Why was the kettle being used? Deirdre looked up, noticing for the first time that her hair had been tied, and Morgan was beside her. Some job she was doing of comforting her, how laughable was it that the roles had to be switched? She didn’t even care that Lydia held humans in her basement, she gave no concern to how she spoke to them or the punishments she dolled out. “I think you underestimate my apathy, Morgan.” Deirdre breathed, only just coming back to herself. The thought of Blanche and Nell being hurt was upsetting, but if it was what must happen, then she didn’t care. If it was what a fae thought was apt, it wasn’t her business. But as she thought of it, her insides lurched again—though she had no way of telling if it was from residual iron pain or some manner of panic. Everyone has their roles… Deirdre’s jaw tensed. “There are things humans are made for.” She felt sick again, but she wouldn’t budge. Her mother was adamant in her head, and her thirty-two years of life meant something. “How else is she supposed to speak to them? They’re nothing. They’re meant to be nothing.” They weren’t people anymore, and she couldn’t grasp what was so hard to understand, or why Morgan’s denial made her feel like she was being gutted. Deirdre turned her attention back to the sink as the kettle whistled. “Do you...want me to go?” Was that it? Did Morgan think she was some monster too, for failing to find any issues? “You said you still love Lydia is that….is that true? Are you—“ Deirdre tensed, she refused to empty any more bile into their sink, and forced herself—just as her mother taught her—to remain steady.

“If you really don’t understand, I’d rather you just own that than parrot back everything your mother told you,” Morgan said, her voice suddenly sharp and heavy with sorrow. “I know it’s easy not to care about people you don’t know, and even easier not to care about ones you don’t see, and no one gives a shit about everyone, that would just be absurd. I would never ask for that. But if you could not talk about me like I’m a thing just because this is a challenging moment for you, I would appreciate it. Because that is what you are doing.” The kettle began to seam and Morgan took it off the burner and began to prepare a brew for settling Deirdre’s stomach. She shaved a fresh piece of ginger into the steeper and passed the mug to Deirdre. She did not answer Deirdre’s question for what felt like a long time, wrestling with her anger and her own selfishness. “I’m scared, and I feel sick, and I’m sad, and I hate everything and I want you to go back to holding me, because you’re my person and I need you.” she mumbled at last. “But I want you to do what you want too. And I know Lydia needs someone right now. If you want to go be there for her, you should. But before any of that, I need you to tell me that whatever happened in the past, whatever our friends or other fae homes choose to do, we are not going to be the kind of people who keep and hurt others like they’re our personal things. Whatever else happens, we are not going to be cruel in that way.” Morgan finally met Deirdre’s eyes. She didn’t have the strength to steel herself against anything. The edge in her voice had already dulled. She was weary, lightheaded, and aching to feel again, and there was no strength inside her to hide any of it. She envied her girlfriend’s resolve and feared what she was about to use it for. But she couldn’t be anything less than honest with Deirdre’s last question, however much it cut her to say it simply. “I still love Lydia, yes. I don’t feel like it says anything good about me, but I do. And I still love you. Even right now, like this. I love you always.”

Deirdre stared back at the sink, though she’d cast it away, she was now desperate to find her reflection. Her eyes that looked like her mother, her nose, her lips. If she could find the face, she could easily summon back its words—as Morgan put it, the parroting back she knew to be truth. She took the cup as it was offered to her, and tried in its murky depths. “I never liked keeping humans like that. They were wrong; hollowed out. We had this one that wouldn’t stop smiling because he’d been bound to, and when my mother finally grew tired of the sight she—“ Deirdre took a slow sip of the tea brewed for her, she welcomed the bitterness and spice, anything above the everything else she was feeling. “We had so many that were missing pieces of themselves, because someone didn’t enjoy how they acted. We can’t bind humans like a leanan-sidhe and so it was always a little clumsy. And the distaste for a smile or sad eyes always grew. They were....” She began to search the tea frantically, she wanted an escape from the story she dug herself into. She’d only been a child then, and a child when all of them had gone, but the image of them was burned into her mind. But all she could find were eyes that weren’t quite as sharp as her mother’s, a mouth that frowned, and a face that was softer. “I can tell you,” she heaved, “that I never want a human kept like that here.” But she told herself again that there was nothing wrong with what her family had done, and less wrong with Lydia’s actions. This is what humans are for. This is what humans are for. This is what— “Please don’t make me decide.” She set the cup down and turned to her love. “I’m tired of choosing things, picking sides.” She moved and wrapped her arms around Morgan, as she wanted to. “I know you’re in pain, and I want to stay. And I can’t—“ She couldn’t make that choice over going to Lydia. She loved her, she cared for her, and she knew exactly how devastated she must have been in the present moment. To think of Lydia alone, in her house, in the wake of this pain, was far worse a horror than the dissected humans. “Just...tell me you want me here, and I’ll stay.” But to leave Morgan alone was its own agony. She paused, “ and I’m sorry, you’re not a thing to me. That wasn’t what I wanted to say.” It was clear to her that when she said humans were useless, Morgan was the obvious exception. “I think—“ Deirdre swallowed. She thought loving Lydia meant everything good about Morgan, but she felt her opinions too wrong to voice anymore, and she held them. “Do you—Are you going to go back for Chloe? Do you want to? Is that...something you want to think about now? I can—I can take the question back if—” She shifted trying to hold Morgan tighter. “Do you think loving me says nothing good about you either?”

Morgan should have known that Deirdre’s mother would have formulated something even worse than what Lydia had devised for Chloe. She began to feel queasy herself, but it affirmed her belief in Deirdre to know that she would never think of doing the same. She was complicit, like they all were now, and probably had been for longer because she loved Lydia and her humanity was bundled away under so many layers of hurt and conditioning, seeing something so normalized in its horror couldn’t reach. But she wasn’t the kind of person who could perpetrate that with her own hands, her own words. She wouldn’t be spilling her guts in the sink at the thought of it if she was. Deirdre would never. That meant something.

She welcomed Deirdre’s arms around her and sagged into her grasp. A dry sob of relief cut through her lips. She didn’t want to be the one who decided how lonely Lydia was going to be tonight either, but she understood that Deirdre was tired, and the past few days had been difficult, and that she couldn’t stomach any more guilt for the day. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t want Lydia to be alone. And I don’t want her to hurt Chloe worse because of what we did. But I don’t want to be alone either. Please stay with me…” She buried her face deep in her shoulder, too ashamed to look as she made her plea. “I want to help Chloe, but I don’t want Lydia to starve, and I can’t just pick someone off the street at random to take her place either. That would be just as bad. And I don’t know anyone horrible enough to be given to her, not with the way I know they’re going to be treated. It’s hopeless.” She sighed, nodding encouragement to Deirdre as she held her tighter. Yes, I need this, please. “Right now I don’t know if I’m a good person at all. But I know I’m better than I was before because of you, what you’ve given me and what you’ve let me give back. That has to count for something.” Whether it was enough in the grand scheme of things, Morgan wasn’t sure.

“Do we have to be good people?” Deirdre asked, “do you have to be a good person? Do you want to? Does that matter to you?” Morgan’s ideology was still one that perplexed Deirdre, but she understood then that there was a line Morgan drew here---she would never hurt someone like that. And to do that would make her-- Nausea choked up Deirdre again, she gulped and squeezed Morgan against her despite the weakness of her body. “I think you’re good. I don’t know if my opinion matters anymore, but I think so.” Deirdre leaned them up against the counter, her body growing heavy and tired. She wanted to sleep, and wake up in a time where she didn’t feel so sick and terrible. One of the medicines she’d ingested earlier must have left a bad reaction, she figured. That must have been it. “Lydia won’t hurt Chloe, I don’t think. And it can’t be just anyone, you can’t just replace her with anyone. The people that are fed from have to be...special.” It wasn’t so simple, and it was wholly too complicated, and she didn’t know how much Morgan knew already and how much she could stomach explaining now. “Can we go to bed, my love? Is that okay? I want to---I think it’d be better.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really asked myself before,” Morgan admitted. “I don’t know…” She shuddered in Deirdre’s arms and forced herself onto her toes so more of their bodies could connect. “Your opinion always matters,” Morgan said. Deirdre wasn’t going to win any morality highground contests, but she tried and she cared, and when she was brave enough, she could be astoundingly kind and understanding. She had tuned so much of her horrors into wisdom and she loved Morgan with such intense purity, it astounded her sometimes. And she could never be like Lydia, no matter how brutally she’d been conditioned to do it. Morgan reminded herself of all this as she lifted her head to kiss her love’s jawline. “It’s hopeless for her,” Morgan rasped. “I understand that. Please…” Don’t remind me.

Bed sounded like a much better option than staying propped against each other in the kitchen. Deirdre’s weight was shifting downwards, and if they were going to have their energy give out early for the day, they may as well be somewhere soft, where they could hide their faces in their pillows and each other. Morgan agreed by way of leading Deirdre up the stairs, arms still partially entwined. She lingered at the door as she closed it behind them, letting out a sigh that took the rest of her strength with it. “I’m ready to rest for awhile if you are, but I need to get this out first because it's important: you need to be careful with Remmy. I know I have serious gaps in my understanding, but with them...they aren’t going to be okay. I don’t know what the right way to handle this is besides waiting a couple days for Remmy to pull themself together, so just be careful.” She untangled herself as she spoke and shambled over to the hamper in the corner of the room to dump her dirtied clothes before crawling into bed. She looked over at Deirdre, inviting her in by peeling back the sheets on her side and offering a look of the saddest longing.

“Does it?” Deirdre breathed, wincing at the misery in her own voice. It didn’t seem like Morgan much valued her mother’s thoughts, and Deirdre and her mother were of the same mind. Or so she had wanted to argue, but instead let anguish claim her expression and bitterness tinge the ends of her words. “I don’t mean like that...I just mean...I’d have to kill her if she was freed.” Her eyes were stuck on the wall beyond them, watching the texture, remembering what the walls in her family home were like---was there more tooth? Were the shadows darker? “If you’d like something to blame, you could make it me.” But she listened, and when she shook her head and came back to herself, she could hear what Morgan was asking her. “Sorry,” she frowned, “I don’t mean---don’t listen to me.”

She was glad to be pulled along to their bedroom then, where everything was theirs, and she wouldn’t dare look for her mother in any reflections. It was far easier to be herself there, whoever that was. She imagined Morgan would be as relieved as she was, but was met with a deep, wilting sigh. “Remmy?” She blinked. Would she not normally be careful with them? As Morgan moved to the bed, Deirdre stood there in confusion and considered it. She knew she could be crude at times, and while Morgan understood her better than most, she assumed what Morgan was saying was to not tell Remmy she thought Chloe’s life was meaningless. But… “You want me to lie to them?” She said, trying to piece it together. Deirdre frowned, pulling off her own dirt-stained clothes before crawling in beside Morgan, holding her just as they always did. “I--should I not tell them that I knew all along? It seems in poor taste to lie now.” But if Morgan thought it the wisest thing to do, she could follow her advice. “I can wait to tell them, if that’s better.” But what would be the barometer of Remmy’s emotional integrity? When did she know it was okay to share her truth? “I thought I was always careful.” Well, that Deirdre knew wasn’t true. She’d tossed Remmy in front of a car, after all.    

“No, don’t lie,” Morgan said faintly, latching onto her girlfriend and burrowing in. “That’ll only make it worse whenever the truth comes out later. And I know you know Remmy and I are different in the way we think about things, so you’ll be tactful, so...maybe what I’m trying to say is...be careful with yourself. I’ve never seen them as angry as they were today. They might say something hurtful, and I want you to be okay.” She pressed a soft kiss to Deirdre’s neck and pulled the covers higher so she was practically buried out of sight. “Just give it a day or two. Or maybe whenever they reach out to you. I don’t know anything right now, I just feel like they’ve hurt enough for today, and you need a break too.” She was quiet for a moment, breathing slowly to match Deirdre’s. “And about what you said before… I do care very much about what you think. The things you say wouldn’t excite me or bother me or fascinate me or whatever else if they didn’t matter. And I wish you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to be blamed for things you didn’t do. I don’t understand that. You aren’t Lydia, you didn’t do these things, I don’t want to blame you. You don’t have to be blamed for the things that upset me…”

“With myself?” Deirdre blinked, shifting to pull Morgan closer to her. Her hair was a fluff above the sheets she pulled up, and the sight itself brought a smile to Deirdre, even if the topic wouldn’t. “I think I’d be okay, no matter what Remmy said. And I owe it to them, to share the truth. They may not want to stay here, knowing I knew about Lydia. And that choice should be up to them.” She couldn’t imagine leaving the topic to sit for a day or two, when she knew what needed to be said and what Remmy deserved. If they didn’t like her after it, she had no problem staying somewhere else while Remmy regained themself here. “Lydia and I....aren’t too different. I mean, she’s my friend, and I care for her. And I won’t let her take this on alone. I may not have done anything, but I knew, and I wouldn’t feel right being blameless where she’s sitting at home, torn up.” There wasn’t much she could give Lydia now, and certainly nothing to bring Remmy back, but fairness seemed like an apt start. “Lydia and I have done a lot of wrong together, I wouldn’t let her take that on alone, I won’t let her take this. If something upsets you, I feel like I’m due some blame.” But she was spent from the topic, and only marginally better being able to lie down and speak. She wanted rest, and she wanted to believe Morgan that she was allowed a break. “I love you,” she mumbled, “...thank you for...well, everything.”

“Well I’m not going to be upset at you just because you want me to,” Morgan mumbled. “And maybe it’s awful and biased and I’m sure someone else would say an accessory or an accomplice or a bystander or whatever else is just as bad, but I’ve hidden or run from awful things I could’ve helped too. Nothing even close to this, but…” Morgan sighed, unsure how to finish the thought. “You’ve always told me the truth, in everything but this, which wasn’t yours to tell. I wasn’t surprised when you said you knew. How could I be? So I’m not upset either. I’m...disappointed. A little sad. But none of that requires blaming you. Or if it does, I’m going to forgive you.” Eventually, when her insides didn’t feel like a pulpy wound. “I don’t know what I’ve done that’s worth thanking, but I love you too.”

“Lydia’s secrets aren’t mine to tell, no, but I--I see a lot. A lot of people in worse places than Chloe. It’s not my place to do anything about--” Deirdre swallowed thickly; Morgan might not have appreciated a regurgitation of her mother’s words, of being an observer first and foremost. Her truth was that she did do something about it, where she could. Justice was never so cleanly delivered among the humans, but it could be by her hand. She frowned. “Nevermind.” There was nothing she could say now that wasn’t simply her mother’s words, and she hadn’t yet decided if they were hers too. Death and Fate were not hers to meddle in, but there was nothing said for working just beyond its reach. The affairs of fae were...different. “I’m sorry,” she said, “it never struck me as anything terrible, anything to share in the first place.” It still wasn’t exactly striking her as bad, except for the inexhaustible sickness that coiled around her stomach when she thought about it, and held it against what Morgan had said. She sighed, heavy from the topic. She felt as if her tongue was swollen, and her throat three sizes smaller. “Let’s just...rest now. I think we’ve both deserved it.”

Morgan didn’t have any more words to give. She peeked up from the covers just enough to look at Deirdre’s face in all of her heavy, awful sorrow. There was something comforting in even her frown lines and the droop of her slanted eyes. Morgan touched her cheek tenderly with just the tips of her fingers and reminded herself of how soft it felt for something so cold. She wondered how long it would be until the rest of her melted from the ice and came free. And what if it never happened? Morgan found that she couldn’t entertain that thought with much seriousness, not in the span of five hundred years. If was time enough for Regan to control and accept herself and learn to be whole again. Time enough for more kind humans to pass through their lives, for trees to grow to their fullest and oldest selves and the home that had been a torture chamber and a prison to be changed brick by brick. People who wouldn’t change didn’t get sick with empathy, and their capacities for kindness weren’t half so deep. There was a difference, however pitiful and fine, but it made a difference to Morgan. She only had to help things along and wait. And however badly it spoke of her, Morgan knew as she closed her eyes and prayed to the darkness for quiet that she would.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Feeline Sad || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems & @deathduty

SUMMARY: Morgan and Deirdre try to unpack where they stand after the events in the woods.The death fam adds a cat to their ranks. 

CONTAINS: discussions of death, dying, and violence; brief mentions of emotional abuse

Deirdre sat curled up in the passenger seat of Morgan’s Subaru, knees pulled to her chest and seat belt forgotten. She rocked with each brake, and teetered with each turn. Occasionally, she’d massage the bandages at her throat, but the memory of them there only served to anger her, and so she dropped her hands and would curl up again. Speaking was hard, and her accompanying whiteboard was useless in a car. Morgan couldn’t really stop to look over and read, even if Deirdre could think of something else to say. All she’d managed was the request to go to Lydia’s again, desperate and meak. She’d written it out, and she’d stomached the searing pain to ask in her own tiny voice. She’d thought it’d make her feel better. She’d forgotten about the traffic she’d have to sit and endure. She uncapped her marker and started on the whiteboard, remembered Morgan couldn’t read it while driving, and put it all back. She rocked forward at another stop. Considered a seatbelt; thought it was stupid, and teetered to the right as Morgan turned left. She reached down to fiddle with the radio, and through the static, a voice fizzled to life. Enthusiastic as he read the time and reminded everyone of the date, he proclaimed his listeners wouldn’t believe this next story; remember Eyes to the Sky? Well…

Deirdre hissed and shut the radio off. “How…” she croaked, wincing at the way she sounded---like crinkling paper caught in a breeze. Her accent didn’t help; the lilting quality of it was lost, and she fought against pain just to annunciate. “...long?”

Morgan could see Deirdre rustling beside her. She couldn’t look, not just because of the road, but because seeing her so pathetic and broken after what she had tried to do to Ariana made Morgan’s brain short circuit. She wanted to believe that Deirdre didn’t have it in her, that she would’ve taken one glimpse at the girl’s blood and stopped everything herself. It felt strange to be withholding forgiveness for something that hadn’t actually happened. But intentions mattered, and the knife had been silver, and if Deirdre couldn’t be present long enough to really discuss what had happened or anything else she’d done, maybe Morgan could hold onto what little bitterness she could to bolster her strength. She didn’t answer Deirdre’s question. There was traffic, holiday shopping and rubber necking near some minor accident, how was she supposed to know? “Put on your seatbelt,” she muttered. “Check the road on google maps.” She hadn’t been able to say no to Deirdre’s request, not when she could practically feel how she hurt and knew this was by far one of her more functional requests, but she didn’t have to fake a warmth she struggled to feel.

Referring to google instead of her girlfriend for directions was a strangely cold response, Deirdre wasn’t sure what to think. But it was apt, she reasoned. She deserved it. She knew what going to harm Ariana would mean for the two of them, and she had told herself that such sacrifice was what life demanded of her. This was why her mother said she shouldn’t have relationships of any sort with non-fae, this was it. Deirdre whimpered and obeyed the direction as though she’d been bound to doing it. She took her phone out and realized she didn’t know how to check. She’d never learned. She stared at the map blankly, watching their little blue arrow move--parts of the yellow road colored with red, heavy traffic. What did that mean for them? Normally she would’ve asked, for now she stuffed her phone back into her pocket and continued to cradle herself; a harder task now, with the seatbelt on. She uncapped her marker. I wish the wolf finished the job. She erased it with the sleeve of her sweater. I’m sorr-- Erased. Thank you for-- Gone too. Like that, filling the car with the sound of the marker squeaking across the board, she wrote and erased several sentences. After a while, they stopped making sense. After a few more, they stopped being English altogether. Squeak, squeak, squeak…. She could only hope that Morgan still liked her enough to let her know when they got there.

They rolled to a stoplight. The only sound was Deirdre scribbling away. Morgan couldn’t help but look over at them, her fury rising alongside her anguish. “I hate it when you do that,” she whispered, her voice more tired than anything else. “When you give up. I know you’re grieving, I know the hole she left hurts like nothing else has for you. I’ve been there plenty of times. You know I’ve been there. And you know, in this context I understand needing to do something for her, even something drastic. But every time you pull something horrible, something you know is horrible and hate yourself for like showing up to hurt Ariana of all people...you just give up and I have to be the one who decides to keep going. I hate that, I hate that you can’t fight for yourself, or for us, just a little harder than that…” The light turned and she kept driving. She turned off to take some side roads, the scenic route as her dad would’ve called it, and came around to Lydia’s street from the opposite direction they normally did.

“Look up, we’re almost there,” she said quietly. There were cars lining the street as usual, not good enough to roll onto the fancy drives, but as she drove further down the block, Morgan noticed more than a few police cars among them. Shit, they really couldn’t catch a break, could they?

Deirdre stopped mid stroke, shrill squeak deflating in the air. She rummaged around her jumbled head for understanding. Did Morgan hate her writing? Did Morgan hate her for being sad? Did Morgan hate her? She repeated the words—‘Ariana of all people’. Hadn’t she tried to explain to Morgan that Ariana was the reason Lydia was dead? Did her fondness cloud all criminal responsibility Ariana held? No, she hadn’t been there to do the killing, but didn’t that make it worse? She knew who she was sending. She knew. In some way, Deirdre wasn’t so mad at Athena. At least the warden acted the way a warden ought. Did Morgan hate her? Did Morgan hate having to console her? Was she wrong for feeling so terrible and lost? Deirdre wasn’t sure when it started, but she began to tremble and weep. She held trust that no matter her state, Morgan would care for her. It was the only reason she felt comfort in sharing herself. Did Morgan hate that now? Didn’t she know how hard Deirdre was trying? Deirdre heaved, searing tears trailed her face and she tried to sniffle them away. Morgan hated that, she told herself. Morgan didn’t want to see it. She wanted to look up as Morgan commanded, but her body seized with sobbing. I hate it when you do that, her mother jabbed at her. Stop crying, sit up straight. I hate it.

Deirdre struggled with the marker. HOME, she wrote shakily. Then erased. Morgan would hate that. They came all this way here, and now she couldn’t conduct herself enough to go? STOP, she wrote, quivering as she tried to show Morgan. Morgan would hate that. How dare she make demands, after her actions? The whiteboard clattered against the console, and fell to the car mats. She should look up, Morgan wanted her to look up. The vision of her stuck with glass on the floor of Lydia’s room, saying something about how Deirdre didn’t care, and should stop or go or both, burned in her mind. She didn’t want that again. She should listen. She should look up. “Stop...” she croaked, curling into herself. I hate it when you do that. “Sorry…” She didn’t want to cry, but it was divine mercy that she was too injured to make noise; the glass would thank her if it could. Deirdre turned to unlock her door, pushing it open. She lunged out, jerked back by the seatbelt, stuck in her seat like a child flailing and strapped in. She didn’t even want to be wearing the stupid thing. But maybe it was better, Morgan didn’t like her running away. She hated that.

Morgan realized her mistake as soon as she heard Deirdre sniffle. This wasn’t her normal, everyday girlfriend she was trying to hash it out with. This was Deirdre half woman, half child, and all grief. Grief that she hadn’t known was possible until she’d lived Lydia’s death in the worst way. And then spent her spare time living it over again on a loop. And Morgan needed her normal girlfriend, because she couldn’t live through eternity like this, standing between her and people she loved, and she needed to know if this was a phase or a fatal flaw in the life they’d built. She needed to know how many more times would she have to stomach Deirdre running away without a word. How many times would she hear her talk about murder in away that did not ring with the solemnity and reluctance of her duty or the wryness of her conditioning, but with a tone unhinged, bloodthirsty, almost cruel. But her normal girlfriend wasn’t here, and snapping off like she was wouldn’t help the Deirdre next to her heal back into that shape. “Fuck, I’m sorry…” she hissed. “I’m--babe?” She’d fucked up, yes, but Deirdre was going into a freefall of pain that seemed much bigger than anything Morgan had reckoned on. “Babe, talk to me. Get your--” The board clattered to the floor. Morgan groped for Deirdre’s hand and squeezed it tight. “I hear you,” she said, breathing deep to abate her own panic. What was this? What had she stepped on? What was happening now? “I’m gonna stop the car, I just need to get away from these cop cars so they don’t get suspicious. But I’m gonna. And then we’ll get close, and we’ll talk and we’ll figure things out.” She brought Deirdre’s hand up and pressed a hasty kiss to her knuckles. “I’m sorry I snapped. We’re gonna talk though, and we’ll try to make it okay.” She couldn’t hold Deirdre’s gaze the way she wanted. Just a desperate flash, I’m sorry. What’s happening to you? The rest of her attention was on the officers milling around Lydia’s front lawn and she imagined them discovering the missing book and rice dish. They were stupid things, useless things, but what if someone figured it out? Morgan breathed the way she’d taught Deirdre (In. Hold. Out.) She counted the trees, and finally pulled them to a stop around the corner. No cars along this side of the street except them, and half the houses had fancy walls hiding their front doors and windows. Morgan checked to make sure they were locked in, unbuckled, and turned to Deirdre. Stars above, she was in a bad way. It was hard not to see her own heavy breakdowns reflected in them, the rawness, the shame, the fear.

“Hey,” she said gently. “ I shouldn’t have said those things. I love you and I’m sorry. I need to know what all is going on so I can make it better, babe. But I want to take care of you first, if that’s okay.” She cupped Deirdre’s face, slippery with streams of tears, and tried to guide her gaze to hers, hoping she saw the sincerity and affection she held underneath everything, always. “I’m here, Deirdre. Can I climb over and be close to you…?”

Deirdre trembled, after struggling against her seatbelt, she shut the door and suffered with the stewing embarrassment of being sat there in her state. I hate that. She was sorry. She tried the straight back, empty-eyed look her mother praised, but couldn’t manage it with all her pain. In croaks and heaves, she tried to apologize. She shouldn’t have asked to come out. She should have stayed home, stuck in the dark corner she liked, trying to make Lydia appear in the shadows. Wasn’t this why her mother sent her away to White Crest in the first place? She was just so horrible with grief, she never knew where to put it. She shook herself free of Morgan and dove at the board, thankfully the marker was still in hand. DON'T TOUCH, she wrote, then shook her head furiously. Was this what Morgan felt at Lydia’s? This dissonance of care? STOP, she wrote under it, and then again and again until she filled all the space with her black marks. She wiped the surface down with her hand. SORRY, it was this time, just once. She kept her gaze on the board, trying to get the words right. Her hands shook so much, the marker slipped a few times and the board nearly jumped away. STOP, she wrote again; wiped both words down then stared. ARIANA KILLED LYDIA, she tapped the words with vigour. She gestured to Morgan, then tapped the board. YOU HATE ME.

Morgan did as she was asked and let go, but she scooted close until the console was pressing into her stomach and leaned  against her chair, trying to get Deirdre to meet her gaze. “Okay,” she breathed, “Those are two very different issues, so I think we should take them one at a time. She held out a hand, not quite touching but close enough to if Deirdre changed her mind. “I don’t hate you, my love. I don’t think I ever could.” If she didn’t have it in her to hate Deirdre after seeing her brandish a knife at Ariana, she didn’t think she ever would. “I swear to you, I promise, I do not hate you. Not one bit. I promise I love you. We can’t guess the future, but I’m pretty sure I always will. Sometimes there are things that you do that upset me or scare me. I don’t always understand you as much as I want to. But that doesn’t mean I hate you.You are still my love, and you are still my favorite person. If we have to go through this awful grief, there isn’t anyone else I’d want to do it with.” She wished, in selfish lonely moments, that there was more of the Deirdre she was familiar with to go through this with her, but this was the Deirdre she had. There was no other, and how could she turn away from that? “Is there anything I can explain better about that, my love?”

Deirdre blinked, her crying had ceased for the moment, and she hated how easily quelled it was by some sweet words—like a child, she thought bitterly. She wiped the board and started again. YOU SAID YOU HATE THAT. She circled the ‘that’, surrounding it with question marks. Then she gestured at herself. Underneath it she wrote, ME. She was that. She wiped it again. THINK I GIVE UP??? Her writing was quick, grammatical sense thrown to the side. HARD. VERY HARD. Her trying, and her living, all of it. Her moving along, the sense she was trying to make, the place she wanted to make for Lydia. The revenge she sought. All of it, very hard. But to say she’d given up was wrong, was insulting. Deirdre cleaned her words. YOU HATE CARING ABOUT ME. She dropped the marker, scrambling to pick it up, jerking herself away from Morgan. TRUTH. She underlined the word.

Morgan gaped, horrified at Deirdre’s explanation. She remembered her words exactly. She thought she’d been clear. “That is not what I meant at all,” she said. “You are not a ‘that’, Deirdre. Not to me, never to me. I don’t hate you. Or caring for you. Caring for you is--” Morgan felt herself getting louder with desperation and stopped to breathe again. “ When I said that I… I saw what you wrote. About wishing that wolf had killed you. Maybe it was more unfair of me, since you tried to take those words back, but I was just...so hurt by the thought that you might rather be dead in the grass in front of me than try to hang on. And...fuck…” Morgan deflated, more mirror images of her own pain crystalizing into focus as she went on. “Fuck me, I know what that feels like too. I may not understand where it’s coming from for you right now, not exactly, but I know it.” she said, her voice low with recognition. “I’m having a hard time, because the people I love are leaving me or dying, or right on the edge of one of those, and here you are, and I get scared like it’s gonna be the same thing. But when I’m not in my head or acting out of fear, I know how this really is. I know what it’s like to want to be in the ground or the ether with what you’ve lost because the hurt is just so much to bear. I’m sorry, Deirdre…” Slowly, she lifted a hand to Deirdre’s cheek, and cupped it tenderly. Maybe she would slap it away, maybe she wouldn’t, but Morgan would try, and tell her the truth nonetheless. “The truth, my love, is that caring about you, for you, any of that, is the most important thing I have right now.” Her smile turned sad. This had been true since she died and found herself with nothing left, but in the wake of this new death, the fact of her need had turned frightening. How could they be stable when they were both falling apart? What did you fix hurt with when everything felt broken? Morgan had no answers for herself. She only knew that she had to carry them long enough for the two of them to figure their shit out together.

Morgan exhaled, a look of chagrin on her face as she thought of how long that might be and how much hurt might lay between now and then. (How had Deirdre done this when she died? Granted, her depression hadn’t included any attempted fucking murder, but still…) “I understand if you have a hard time believing that, right now. I haven’t been the best to you. I haven’t figured out what you need most yet, for this. I keep...wanting our life to snap back into shape, into how we were before. I want that for us so bad, but that can’t happen, not with her gone. And it’s not fair of me to do that to you. And I am so sorry for that too. I really am, Deirdre.” Somewhere along the way, Morgan’s own eyes began to water as she started to see her love where she really was, all the places she was bent with pain, not just along her body, but inside. Stars above, they weren’t coming out of this the way they’d come in. They couldn’t even if they’d tried. And they probably shouldn’t try, with how badly they were falling apart over misspoken words.

Morgan had thought, deep down, that not being alone would mean the hurt would stop, or she’d somehow be protected. She’d thought dying had been the exception, because who was supposed to live through that, but looking at the mess the two of them were making on each other, she felt a creeping sense of dread that some suffering was unavoidable no matter what. “I want to be better for you,” she said quietly. “Will you let me try, please?”

Deirdre sniffled. Her words had been so piercing then, that this apology sounded fabricated. She didn’t move to anchor them together, but she didn’t flinch out of Morgan’s touch either. She met her eyes finally, staring at her for a moment. She glanced down and flipped the board towards herself, having a lot she wanted to write. She started quick, erasing with hissed curses until her words looked right. She flipped the board back. You don’t understand. She continued to stare, then elaborated. Ariana killed Lydia. She had someone wait in the trees for me. She’s a coward and a hypocrite. She let the words sit there before she wiped them clean. I wish I was dea— she scrubbed it off before she could finish, staring at the whiteness. TERRIBLE. She wrote simply, and then left it there. Vaguely, she knew her penchant for sacrifice was not entirely fair to Morgan or the life they’d built, but she was raised no other way. And while she could feel the wrongness, she didn’t know better. She tried. She tried. It wasn’t fair to say she’d given up. But her pain, all of it—everything that bubbles up to haunt her—it had clear enough paths and beginnings to her. She wanted to be over with her training with Regan, she wanted to absolve herself for every murder or misdeed she’d done. She wished she was either a better person, or a perfect banshee; she could not be both. She tried. She tried it. She hadn’t given that up. She cleaned the board. JUSTICE FOR LYDIA. That she believed, that she trusted in better. She knew the feeling, and she stared at the words waiting for them to coil around her with its steadying energy.

Morgan took Deirdre’s lack of flinching away as a good sign and thumbed the line of her cheekbone in tender strokes. “I love you,” she said. “But I think Ariana is a kid who still doesn’t understand the rules of the world we live in, or who the people around her really are sometimes. I think she wants to believe things are better. And a lot of the time that’s a good thing. This time, it wasn’t. I disagree with you, about her culpability on this. And maybe that’s because I still love her, I am more than ready to admit that, but I do. I don’t need you to be on the same page with me where she’s concerned though, so long as you don’t try to hurt her again. She’s protected, and I want to believe you couldn’t really have killed her, and there are other people more directly responsible who are owed something for what happened to Lydia.” She winced, apologetic for her, well, lack of apology.  But she couldn’t betray Ariana or break the honesty she and Deirdre held together by pretending to go along just because Deirdre was fragile and hurt. Not when the stakes were life and death. “But I do believe in justice for Lydia. I know I can’t fully understand what she meant to you, but I know enough, and I want you to have some of that, even if just little. I’m the last person who will give you shit about retribution as a principle.” She held her gaze, searching her face for an expression to read; it was so strange hearing her so quiet. “Can that be okay? If you and I are only partially aligned on this? Will you still let me try for you, Deirdre?”

Deirdre’s eyes grew wide, anger flaring her nostrils. She flicked the board back to her and wrote furiously. She sent a warden to Lydia. She tapped ‘warden’ repeatedly, emphasizing it. Others were there, yes. But where had they learned of Lydia? How did they know where she was going to be? Who created that opening for Chloe’s escape? The freedom of the humans she could understand, in some way, but Lydia’s death she could never. Deirdre’s mind was its own board of investigation, strung together by red string and the things she knew. She didn’t have Ariana’s confession in so many explicit words, but she had enough. All she needed were the other pawns in the scheme, Ariana hadn’t offered them up. Perhaps Athena would. She wiped the board. Not just any hunter. WARDEN. Bad warden. She sighed, wiped at the board again, even when it was clean. Why don’t you understand? Fresh tears renewed an old course down Deirdre's face. Morgan was always so good at understanding, and when she didn’t she tried, but it wasn’t like this. Deirdre considered then, realized it perhaps, that she was alone. Nothing to try anymore. Then she remembered what Morgan was saying about giving up, and she wiped the words down promptly. Walk outside? She paused, in the space left, she crammed more writing. No one is a child when they choose to take life. I was not. She is not.

Morgan sighed, her face too open to hide her disappointment. “I don’t know why she made that choice, with the Warden. I want to believe that maybe...I don’t know. But I would have done even more horrible things to save you, if you were trapped like that. I don’t know why I can’t…” Blame her. Be angry with her? Part of it was because of Chloe and her friends. Ariana was getting her retribution for all those crimes. And for three lives? Maybe if she was in Ariana’s place, that much pain seemed worth it. If she’d been someone who loved Chloe… But that wasn’t an honesty she could explain to this Deirdre. Morgan bowed her head, struggling with this moment. She felt like she was walking a fucking tightrope. She knew that the woman next to her wasn’t completely the Deirdre she knew. That woman had begged Morgan to be good to Ariana no matter what. And the woman next to her thought she was being clear and reasonable and justified. She didn’t even understand how she’d hurt Morgan when they’d pulled into that place outside of town. And she was so fragile, and so alone. What was fair, or right about this? At last Morgan said, “I’d like to take that walk, and put a pause on this so we can just be together, but before we do that...Will it make anything better for you, if I break off from her? If losing me is the price she pays? You don’t have to answer right away if you’re not sure, just...think about it, please. There’s more than one way to cause hurt.” She gave a pained, sad smile and brushed away Deirdre’s tears before getting out and coming around the side of the car to help Deirdre out.

Board wiped clean again, Deirdre wrote solemnly: you don’t understand. She stared off beyond Morgan with finality. She was alone; it echoed against her hollow body. She had to find peace for Lydia on her own. Maybe if there were some fae to rally, she could ask them—but with a warden like Athena around, and a judge like Ariana, it wasn’t safe. It would just be her, just her. Deirdre sighed, calmer now, though not any more relieved—only certain of her own grief fueled convictions. She freed herself from her seatbelt, leaving her board behind as she stepped out. Whatever she had to say now, she imagined it wasn’t plentiful, and she’d bear the pain of speaking for it. Maybe she’d figure out how to use the notes app on her phone, finally. “No,” she croaked as Morgan helped her, “you said you love her. I won’t control your life or relationships. It doesn’t matter to me.” Her eyes stayed on the floor, the grass was nicer here than their street. The houses big and fancy. Did Lydia think of the island as home? She certainly looked at home. “I changed. Lydia could’ve. Ariana didn’t even consider it. No one did. The non-fae are all…” She trailed off, her mind was heavy and she didn’t want to think anymore. She leaned against Morgan as they walked, and waited for the fog to crawl back over her mind and save her from herself. It was better to be in that discordant space, where memories and thoughts blurred. Ravaged by grief was almost a familiar feeling now, and the only way she managed to see Lydia again. “She cared about the supernatural.” Deirdre’s voice crackled, giving out on those words. She coughed, knowing it was wise not to speak again for a while. She let her mind wander instead.

“I do,” Morgan admitted. “I don’t want to lose her, and maybe that makes me a coward. But I think she loves me too, and I would sacrifice that love if doing so would truly help you heal.” Especially if it saved the young wolf’s life too. “I have lost people who were nearly my whole world before. I want you to be able to heal.” Deirdre’s dismissal of the offer wasn’t as reassuring as she might have thought. It didn’t feel like affection so much as resignation. As Morgan put her hand in Deirdre’s, giving her a careful squeeze, she felt the question of Ariana cordoning them off, another film of distance between their efforts to hold on. “No,” she said in a whisper. “No one considered it.” Ariana had reason to see her as only one thing, and that made sense. But Lydia had been leaving. The humans could have been freed and maybe with the safety of distance, with her life thrown upside down, maybe… Morgan shuddered. “I wish we’d gotten a chance to try and convince her. Help her. Maybe I didn’t explain it well enough, or maybe if she’d had you to help her… she really did love her friends. I’d hoped that with enough time, with the right approach… I really did hope for that…” Her voice trailed off. She realized she was trying to convince Deirdre of something, but she wasn’t sure of what. This new, grief-stricken version of her had so many doubts sprouting up from her pain, it was hard to know what she could trust to be believed about herself, what she could trust to stay the same in Deirdre. Morgan pressed a kiss to her shoulder and kept walking. Maybe uncertain was just how being with this Deirdre felt like. “What do you need right now, my love?” She asked after a while.

Sophie liked to walk atop an old stone wall on their way home from school. The wall was only a little taller than Deirdre had been at that age, and yet it looked so much taller with someone wobbling across it. Sophie took each patch of eroded stone with such great confidence, Deirdre never thought she would fall. She walked as if she wasn’t seven, and had known the stones for years. Well, she had fallen one day, Deirdre watched her arm break. But the peculiar bit wasn’t the falling but the return to form, she never stopped walking on that wall. Deirdre thought Lydia was a bit like that, walking on her own wall, even when she knew she’d break her arm. The wall was a disaster waiting to happen though, the middle portion overlooked a harsh drop. Why’d she keep walking? Why didn’t Lydia answer her phone? Deirdre stirred to reality at the sound of Morgan asking her a question, over the last few days, she’d done good to pick up on the auditory clue of it. Snapping herself back into place just quick enough to make it seem like she’d been there all along. “Walk,” she grunted, then surmised that wasn’t an adequate response and considered it. “Lydia—“ Her eyes trailed away. “Bird. Tree. Grass is nice. Did we need to mow the lawn?” She never knew what she needed, that was partly her problem. “Look around.” She beckoned, maybe the answers were hidden. Maybe there was a magical rock they needed to upturn. She couldn’t remember why they’d come here in the first place. Must have been for the magical rocks. “Look.”

Morgan didn’t have the knack for knowing when this Deirdre was slipping into the mazes that twisted around her mind, but she could tell when she was already there. Something went vacant in her eyes, like the part of her that mattered really was floating off into the astral plane or somewhere else. Morgan could see her still there as she tried to answer her question. “I think the lawn is fine,” she said. But, trying to follow the slipstream Deirdre was on, Morgan looked. “Oak. Pigeon flying. Leaves snowing: brown, brown, yellow, brown. Birch. Lamp crackling. Bench resting. Love walking.” She was looking at Deirdre as she said that, though she wasn’t sure if the gesture would be heard. There was still life here, that was always the most terrible and the most comforting part of loss. Nothing around stopped or faltered, only you. Morgan continued to look, wondering how long it would be before the wheel of life’s turn became a comfort again. She looked again, and stopped short. “Babe. Come back to me, babe. You need to look at this with me.”

The black patches of fur hid Lydia’s cat in the shadows well when she was curled up, but something had caught her attention and Niamh’s bright green eyes blinked out from under the bench. Morgan tugged on Deirdre and drew them closer, slowly, but closer. There was a scratch on her nose and built up crust around her eyes. There was no one to pick them out for her, with Lydia gone. She meowed quietly, so soft Morgan didn’t hear so much as she saw her small mouth part for an instant. How long had she been on her own? How frightened was she? Morgan felt a pang of guilt as she remembered Deirdre’s plan so many painful days ago. They were supposed to take care of her. Save her. But she was as lost as they were, waiting to come back to a home that didn’t exist anymore. Morgan knelt down and held out a hand, trying to coax the creature out.

“Love…” Deirdre mused the word in her mouth, played with its sound and ran her tongue over its meaning. She met Morgan’s gaze with a soft, temporary, smile. “Love.” But it wasn’t exactly what she was looking for. There was something here, she knew it. Like death, but all in her head instead of her body. Something missing. Something….cat. Deirdre’s eyes turned to Niamh. They shed tears instantly at the sight of her; skinny and shivering. She knelt down and, like Morgan, slowly reached her hand out. You remember me, don’t you? She asked gently with her eyes. The days Niamh had curled up in her lap, or used her long legs as a pillow. The nights Deirdre ran her fingers through her soft fur, the purring she got as a happy response—playing with her, or feeding her treats. The moments they spent together, with Lydia...surely the cat remembered? Niamh stuck her head out, cautiously sniffing the air. Her big eyes stared out at Morgan and Deirdre. Deirdre inched her hand closer, and when the cat didn’t flinch away, she seized the opportunity to scoop her up. “We should take her to a vet,” Deirdre said, ignoring the sting of speaking. Niamh looked up at her, as if she understood, and didn’t like the idea. Deirdre laughed in a cough, and whispered to the cat that she knew, doctor visits could be terrible. “Just to make sure she's okay. Then we can—can we take her home?” Deirdre pleaded, her own eyes a mimic of the cat’s wide greens.

Morgan sniffled as she scratched Niamh under the collar and picked debris out of her fur. It had been an awful few days for her, Morgan could only imagine. Maybe the home invasion of the rescuers frightened her away, or the police. Maybe she’d tried to come back and had gotten lost, or realized everything was wrong and no one was there to feed her. It didn’t matter now, she supposed. Niamh was nuzzling Deirdre’s hand and trying to make a bed for herself in her arms, the big baby. Not everything she’d lost had stayed gone. She was safe. Morgan met Deirdre’s eyes with a watery smile and brushed her cheek. “Of course we can,” she said. “She’s family, right? And we help each other.” Her eyes lingered on Deirdre’s meaningfully. And I will help you, they said, a silent promise. “Let me help you up so you don’t have to put her down, okay?”

Deirdre gaze dissolved into the distance. “Family…” She frowned, then looked down at Niamh. Lydia was family. This cat was too. But she wasn’t so sure Morgan understood it. “Family looks out for each other. Avenges each other…” But she wouldn’t let the rage-tinged acid that Ariana left in her mouth to taint this reunion. Deirdre shook her head, meeting Morgan’s gaze with her own attempt at something soft. “Okay,” she agreed, letting Morgan help her to her feet. Niamh mewed as she wobbled, leaning on Morgan for support. “Thank you, my love.” She smiled, “I don’t say that enough.” Those she didn’t say much of anything anymore. Deirdre gestured with her head to the car, asking silently if Morgan was good to drive---Lydia’s house forgotten in her mind.

Morgan swallowed her discomfort at the mention of revenge. She would save the discussion on the finer points of a just revenge for another time. The immediate danger had passed and Deirdre needed her now. She pulled on what reserves of calm and strength she had, trying to remember how Deirdre had carried and soothed her when she felt broken before. Morgan braced her girlfriend up and walked them back to the car. “You don’t have to,” she said softly. “Thank me, I mean. I appreciate it, but I do this as a matter of course, as an honor. That’s what it is to do something with you, for you.” She gave her a squeeze as they neared the car, opening the door for the pair and half kneeling in the grass as she secured them inside. What was it Deirdre had said once when she was on the floor? One day at a time? Morgan looked into the eyes of her grief stricken girlfriend, her pain only abated for the moment, her ache for retribution only festering under her wounds. “It’s okay, Deirdre. Or if it’s not, it will be. We’ll take this one day at a time until it is.”

“I don’t know if that’s true…” Deirdre mumbled; about the thanking, she’d meant. About it being a matter of course. “You were so hurt...on the floor that day…like you’d leave…” But where her thought would go, she didn’t know, she didn’t remember. And so, the idea drifted away and Deirdre turned all of her mind to the cat; to what good reamined of Lydia. Maybe there was someone out there who’d find it funny that Lydia could treat an animal so kindly, but would neglect to do so for a human, but it all made sense to Deirdre. Only fae understood each other. And the fae; their ties to nature were undeniable. “One day at a time…” She repeated with a rasp, running her bandaged fingers through Niamh’s fur. “...I don’t know if that’s true either.”

[mor-beck-more-problems]

The Best Little Pit-Stops in Texas || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan shows Deirdre her old haunts in Houston. You really can’t go home again, but sometimes you leave good behind.

CONTAINS: Houston vibes, softness

When the El Real Mexican Restaurant built itself out of an old two screen movie house, they’d kept the neon marquis intact, equal parts nostalgia and kitsch. In college, when Morgan was wringing out a day’s worth of food from $10 tacos al carbon and endless chips, she had enjoyed making a point of admiring the puns and jokes posted under the neon lights: We’re jalapeno these spicy tostadas! We’re nacho kidding, $5 margs when you order new loaded nachos! When Morgan brought Deirdre there on their second night in town, it read: In Queso You Didn’t Know: Closing Dec 26. We’ll cilantro you again someday. Guess you really couldn’t go home again. “And here I thought it was packed because it’s a local institution,” she mumbled.

They parked across the street between a Half Price Books and a Jack in the Box. Houston was still twilight blue at six o’clock, and she could see the shift changes at the local eateries: aprons going up, textbooks and phones coming out. In the other parking lots in sight and on the eating patios of other restaurants, clubbers strolling for a bite to coat their stomachs before hitting the streets and rainbow flags dangling limp and content from shop windows. Morgan slid into Deirdre’s side as they picked their way along the crawling traffic. She had envied those young people so much, almost in tears with how badly she wanted to be a part of them. She would never know what it was like to be that young and alive and free. But with the woman she loved pressed close, she felt a piece of what she had been aching for. It wasn’t their stuff, or even their numbers, though she did miss knowing that she had enough people who cared about her to fill a room. It was something else, something like the love they grew between each other, but not quite. “I would bring girls out here and get them to buy me entrees I could take home to refrigerate. Even if nothing came of it besides a kiss or an hour fumbling around, it was nice to have a hot dinner I wouldn’t have to cook later. And we were pretty safe out here. Girls didn’t get the same kinds of looks as guys, and this part of town is designated as the gayborhood. As long as you weren’t walking alone and looking obvious, it was fine for me. I’d cover the cheap drinks, obviously. Sometimes with magic counterfeit money but--” she put her finger to her lips. “And if things were going really bad, I could pretend to be really riveted by whatever they were screening up on the wall.” Morgan pointed, in case the projection was getting lost in the organized chaos of evening rush. “Besides having the best tacos for your buck, it was a good spot my dad liked to take me to. Not when it was like this, but when the place first opened and the lunch special had everything even cheaper and we could pass by all the fancy shopping centers on the way home. We can too, it’s really close to the hotel, actually. This time of year everything is decked out in the most incredible lights. It’s like something out of a movie. Anyways--” she smiled thin, not sure what she was trying to get at with all this local geography discourse, “It’s only fair I bring my actual best girl here, while it still exists.” She did feel a little hollow, knowing this would be the only time they were going to be here. None of her childhood homes were still standing, and the apartments she had lived in weren’t worth driving to as far as she could reckon. What else was left of the place she’d been bound to for most of her life but these transient commercial spaces? Morgan frowned as they were seated and the chip bowl was put in front of them. Despite not feeling the November warmth, she had been too preoccupied with her family drama to brood over her life being over completely. Here or anywhere else. What was she planning on doing here besides playing tour guide to her old shadows? Morgan reached for Deirdre’s hand, trying to get a read for how she felt about being here. “How are you doing…?” She asked.

Deirdre’s eyes raked over a labyrinth of people. She didn’t like crowds, usually; noisy, chaotic things. It was a sea to get lost in, a force to feel small under. But there was one tiny delight in that. She could watch the humans flutter about their lives; she would know them, their fear, and happiness and anger, and they would never notice her. All her life, she had been stuck as the observer. Though it was not a role she chose, it was one that suited her. For all the charm that rolled naturally off her tongue, there sat her own fears and insecurities, inscrutable to the fellow watcher. Things changed when she met Morgan, and she wasn’t so much a shell floating through the lives around her as she was someone living for once. “I’ve never really been to a Mexican restaurant before,” she explained on the walk there, “I’ve never really been anywhere, I suppose.” And she hoped that in the quiet of her voice, Morgan would realize just how much she’d given her. It was in that way, that despite the loss that rattled in her chest, she could summon warm smiles and enthusiastic bouts of affection. Her life began with Morgan, after all. She would not let her girlfriend’s end with old, bitter memories. For every reminder of them she could find, she held Morgan closer, kissed her longer, gripped her tighter.

The restaurant’s closing date, announced brightly with a joke in neon lights, wasn’t something she could love away.

She pressed herself firmly to Morgan. It was one part imminent closing, another part restaurant. They never visited any after Morgan’s death; Morgan couldn’t taste anything and Deirdre never ate much to begin with. And though days of stealing fries off Morgan’s plate were replaced with longer walks and frequent picnics, Deirdre wasn’t so oblivious that she didn’t know what this meant for them. What it meant for Morgan now, entering a restaurant she loved, and couldn’t enjoy fully before it would be gone forever. Though Deirdre was caught up in the spectacle of the crowd and the interior, her mind wouldn’t drift from what must have been plaguing her love. The lights above were warm-tinted, strung delicately across the old ceiling, just one scream away from littering the heads of everyone below. “Well, now I’m offended I’m not the only girl you bought drinks for with counterfeit money,” Deirdre feigned a huff, chuckling as her eyes followed where Morgan was pointing. Sure enough there was a movie playing, one she couldn’t recognize or hear, but she was mesmerized by the moving shapes beyond her anyways. Action she didn’t know the plot to, logic she had yet to unravel. There was something odd about stumbling into a movie halfway, played as a backdrop, that she couldn’t put her finger on. By the time they got their table, she still hadn’t quite figured it out. Morgan cut across the table, hand against hers, and Deirdre snapped from her daze. “How am I…” She breathed, incredulous. Then she softened, turning her hand so their fingers could intertwine. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that…?” She smiled gently. “This place is special to you, uneventful dates for free dinner aside...or perhaps, even with those. A place you came to with your father. And it’s…” Deirdre glanced around, then back at the entrance. “I could buy it back, from whoever they sold it to. I could make them keep it open. I’ve tried it before…” She turned back to Morgan. “That old antique store in my town. The place I saved up my allowance for, the place between all the pubs and houses? I tried to---well, it doesn’t matter now, I suppose. It closed. But I could save this place, if you wanted that.”

Morgan heard the quiet notes in Deirdre’s voice, a shy admittance she didn’t know how to read. Would it be better if they had some perfunctory appetizers and left? Was she overwhelmed, or unhappy? Morgan pressed Deirdre’s knuckles to her lips and scooted her chair close so they met nearly side to side in the corner. “I’m...a lot of things, but mostly fine.” She hadn’t been thinking about what it would be like to be here when she called ahead for a table, only that it was already by the Menil Art museum and the Rothko Chapel she’d shown Deirdre earlier and that whenever she thought of the Montrose area, all cramped and flourishing and safe, she always tasted the char of perfectly seasoned chicken fajita meat and the sour tang of tequila on her tongue. From here. It had seemed essential, and she’d never had a bad time there, even when she and her dad guiltily brought Ruth along for their early lunches a few times. Why wouldn’t she make room for something that had always been reliable and good? But now they were here, and Deirdre didn’t like crowds, and Morgan didn’t get anything out of the tortilla chips except crunchiness and pointy ends poking the roof of her mouth. The inside was just like she’d remembered. Rainbows of margaritas, salsas, and November ‘winter wear’ spilled all through the open eating space. The usual cowboy movies and Bonanza specials had been traded in for Christmas-y movies, even though it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet. Morgan recognized Jimmy Stuart in The Shop Around the Corner at once. He was one of Ruth’s favorites, and this was one of the few films they had been able to agree on. It should have felt like she was falling back into old, comforting steps.

But all the workers would be out of work after Christmas. The red and green paper garland would be thrown away or sold. The building would become something else. Everyone eating here would funnel into other places, some to boring franchises, some to mom and pop places still surviving under the radar. And all the energy Morgan had shed in this place on dates and lunches and lonely comfort outings would be cut loose and aimless, a ghost of their own. And Morgan couldn’t taste anything or smell the full potency of the steaming skillets passing by or even tell how much hotter it was inside. She didn’t know who she felt more sorry for, the El Real or herself.

“You didn’t answer my question, babe,” she said gently. “If this wasn’t such a great idea in practice, there’s plenty of other places we can go and ways we can spend our evening. Or if I can do something-- I’m just checking in, and I don’t want all of this to be about me.” If not out of kindness, then for this: the more she lingered on herself, the more she felt like a ghost herself.

She softened at Deridre’s half-told story, releasing what little determined resolve she’d been holding onto. “You don’t have to do that,” she murmured. “That would be...I mean what would we even do with the place, except give it back to the old owners, I guess…” Which was a thought that did make her happy for a moment, enough that she couldn’t hide it. “I could never ask that, and it’s not like we’d get to enjoy it often…” But that wasn’t the point. The point was to let Morgan get to keep something, some place that had mattered to her. Even the schools she’d gone to were no longer standing as they once were. Was keeping it something she wanted? “Tell me more about that place of yours. I want to know, even if I can never see it. Especially because I can’t see it.”

“I’m worried about you, my love.” Deirdre replied easily, sighing with relief as Morgan scooted next to her. As soon as she could, she took Morgan’s hands in hers, firm and steady. “We haven’t really been to any restaurants since…” As her sentence trailed away, she offered a small smile, her brows furrowed with worry. “Maybe I’m just thinking about it too much. Tell me if I am, but I know how much you’ve lost in your life, and how hard things are now and I just...worry, I guess.” And it was frustrating, that they had to be seated in two separate chairs, half-blocked by a table. Al’s had booths, at least. And pie. “I’m okay. More than okay, really. I get to spend time with you, in your home, and all the places you love. I get to fill and color my understanding of you, and that’s magical to me. Knowing you always is. I’ll be okay, no matter where we go or what we do. But if I can do something for you, Morgan….” Her eyes drifted to the movie again; the action had shifted, new actors showed their faces. She knew less than she did before, and the strange, unnamed feeling crept back into her stomach. She slumped and turned back. “This doesn’t have to be about you, if you don’t want that. You know I like you…” Deirdre grinend and nudged her. “And you know I like hearing about you, but if you just want to eat some tacos and have fun, we can do that.”

In a show of good faith, Deirdre reached across and plucked a chip from the table. And then she ate it, slowly, as if it might bite her. There were a lot of things she had never tried before, and she was embarrassed that tortilla chips existed somewhere on that list. Not drenched in nacho toppings, at least. Though nachos themselves were something she only just tried this year. “These don’t taste like potato crisps, I suppose.” She swallowed, trying to dust the salt from her fingers. “We could give it to someone who wants to run it,” she offered, debating on another chip. “We could talk to the owners, talk to other people. And it isn’t really about visiting it…” Deirdre turned her attention away from the so-called “endless” chips, which seemed like they really did have an end to her, several, in fact, and looked to her girlfriend. She knew that she understood, and so she didn’t elaborate on metaphors and symbolism. “If you want that,” she whispered, “change is inevitable, I know. But sometimes you can keep something just as you knew it, just as you loved it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that.” The story of her little store, a world of its own mysticism, was one of less hope. “It’s not interesting,” she began, “I-I told you about the old books I bought, haven’t I? The ones my mother burned. I got them from there. It was...well, I wasn’t allowed out, much or at all. But this store wasn’t so far from the farm, and yet not too close either. And the few times I had errands, I had just enough time to spare to duck inside and get lost among the trinkets. The owner never complained about seeing me there, or letting me stay.” She knew some kids who were yelled at for accused stealing, more that turned up their noses at the dust and smell. But the old man never paid her much attention, and that, she figured, was a kindness. “I never visited it much when I started highschool, but I passed it one day and noticed a sign and...I-I thought it was money problems. I stole some cash from the family--they never noticed it was gone anyway--and left it inside for the owner.” Deirdre shook her head, “he just used it to retire. Now there’s a bookstore there. It’s not a...thrilling story. Or one I like.”

Morgan bowed her head. She couldn’t bring herself to lie to Deirdre, and she wasn’t ready to say, no, I’m sad, because restaurants make me sad now, because there’s nothing for me in them and I feel awful goading you into ordering enough to make the effort of going out feel worth it. But Deirdre already knew. Maybe it was just common sense or maybe it was some deeper sense she had discovered from spending so much time with her, but Morgan was certain even hiding her face wasn’t going to fool Deirdre for a second. “Since I stopped being able to taste anything I used to, yeah,” she mumbled. Was she spoiling the evening? Was there a version of them that was already laughing and cuddling and making the most out of the tortilla chips? Watching Deirdre try one for herself almost made Morgan cry. She was trying, even with what she was carrying from the past month and a half, she was trying for her. Couldn’t Morgan try a little more too?

“You might...be right,” she admitted. “I wasn’t really thinking practically when I got the idea. And I’ve missed this place ever since I left so maybe I wasn’t even really thinking at all with my new normal brain. I’ve wanted you to see it for yourself way before I… I could’ve been more thoughtful, more careful about this.” A waiter passed by balancing three cast iron fajita skillets on his tray and Morgan imagined her mother’s disappointed face behind her, shaking her head. You know better.

She kept her fingers locked in Deirdre’s as she told her story. She didn’t speak much about her teenage years, Morgan only knew the story of the boy and his dog, her first kill, and that she took her vows at fifteen and only after was she allowed to go back to school. It seemed to Morgan like those years didn’t really exist, but had been corded and knotted around steps and demands and expectations, and Deirdre herself was tucked away somewhere, too numb and hurt to come out. But of course it wasn’t that simple. Of course she had summoned the will to be kind for someone else as long as it was a secret. She had tried, even then. “Oh, my love,” Morgan whispered. “It was still kind and worthwhile, you know that, right? You know--”

Their waiter appeared, holding his pad awkwardly, clearly torn between interrupting a moment and having to do his job. Morgan flashed him a perfunctory smile and ordered a white chocolate pina colada, the shrimp street tacos, and 2 tamales a la carte, rattling off some alterations that would make it safer for Deirdre. Then she asked for the check to be brought as soon as he had the time, even if that happened to be before the food was ready.

When he was gone, Morgan slid her arms around her girlfriend. “I’m coming up with a plan and I want to know what you think,” she said into her shoulder. “You tell me what else is bothering you, because I know there’s something. And we talk it out or we put it aside, and you tell me what you think about how everything tastes, and we don’t even have to finish if you don’t want to. And then…” She hesitated. “I know nothing is ever going to be the same for either of us, we can’t get those places or those feelings back all the way. But there is a place I had that was like yours. One that we can actually share equally. It’s a little more of a drive, but I want to show you, and be a part of it with you,  if you’re still up to it. But you tell me what’s making you sad or worry besides me first. I’m just gonna wonder anyway. How does that sound?”

“No, it’s not like that--” Deirdre groaned in annoyance at the space between them. Swiftly, she  pushed their chairs together, wooden bottoms clashing and finger pinched between them. She hissed in pain, drawing her purple fingertip to her mouth as her other hand settled for resting on Morgan’s thigh. “It’s not like that,” Deirdre repeated. “I don’t care about practical thinking or--Fates, Morgan, I was just worried about you. Of course I want to visit all the places you love, even if we can’t enjoy them together just the same as we would have some months ago. I’ve just been worried about you.” She swallowed thickly, fraught with concern. Was she thinking about it too much? Maybe it hadn’t even crossed Morgan’s mind until she brought it up. But, no, she knew her girlfriend well enough, she hoped. And how could she ignore small frowns or wilted sentences? Wasn’t this whole town just one big reminder of everything Morgan had lost? Was she okay with playing the tour guide, or did she muster the energy to walk just because Deirdre wanted to see everything? Or was it her mother; the meeting still stuck in her mind? Deirdre swallowed, and remembered that she didn’t need to be the silent thinker anymore, tasked with finding her own answers, she could ask. But the story of the stupid antique store lodged in her throat, her questions jammed under. “Probably not. He didn’t care as much about that store as I did, and he didn’t recognize me when I asked. It was a pointless endeavor and I spent months sick with guilt and worry about the money.” It would have been better if she left it, and slowly, the thought occurred to her about her questions too. Maybe Morgan didn’t want to talk about it or---

How long had that server been standing there? Deirdre shifted in her seat, she hadn’t even looked at the menu. It was by miracle, or the power of how well they knew each other, that Morgan ordered for her. Better, because she both didn’t know how to pronounce anything and didn’t know what she would be mispronouncing in the first place. As she’d learned recently, it wasn’t just acceptable to ask for the best thing on the menu, accompanied by their most expensive drinks. As he left, her eyes fell back on to the movie--in a new place, someone was crying now. Deirdre reached across and popped another chip into her mouth, shocked again by the crunch. She considered Morgan’s plan as she tried to chew respectably. “If you’d like me there, I’d love to go,” she turned to her girlfriend with a small smile, “but it’s not like that. Not for me. It doesn’t matter that I can’t steal the food off your plate while you’re gone to the toilet, or that we don’t do breakfast at Al’s anymore. That doesn’t---I miss it, in a way. But not like that. Not like you’re saying it. It’s not gone for me, it’s not lost. Time spent with you, my love, is always the most precious thing to me. It’s never so much mattered where or what we were doing, as long as you were happy, and I’m with you.” Her attention shifted back to the damned movie, and she frowned as she searched for the words to explain it better. “It’s worse for you, because you know what’s missing. Like a...movie met halfway. There’s dialogue and story and characters and I only know half of it. I’ll only ever know half of it. And the people…” She glanced around the crowd, caught in their own worlds, as humans so often were. “...don’t really care about the movie on the wall. Which is a shame, I bet they’d really get it if they watched it all the way through.” Deirdre sighed, slumped against her chair. “There is something on my mind, but it’s about you. And we don’t have to talk about you if that’s not what you want; if it’s too hard. We don’t have to do that. And it’s not like you’re making me sad, nothing like that at all. It’s just how badly I wish I could...fix it all for you.” She sniffled, suddenly aware that her eyes had begun to water and leak and she turned away to blink it gone. “Sometimes, I love you so much I cry about it, I guess.” Her laugh was shaky, and her humor weak. “Sorry, I’ll just, uh---”

“No, it was. It was still kind. It says nothing about you that it didn’t take, and everything about him, the part that’s wonderful is that you tried…” Morgan whispered, her words coming all out in a rush, slipping in before the subject closed. She fixated on Deirdre, letting everything else fade. The world released itself from her so fast, like it was always waiting to. She followed her gaze and listened to the crunch of more tortilla chips (so addictive, no matter what mood you were in), completely absorbed. Deirdre wasn’t far off and Morgan didn’t know if she was pained or relieved that the wrinkle knot on her forehead was because of her and not some cursed memory or dreadful epiphany. She was sniffing and blinking back tears of her own by the time Deirdre was doing the same. She untangled herself so she could wipe her cheek and the corner of her eyes.

“We don’t have to pretend. It’s okay,” she said softly. “And you’re right. It’s...I used to be in the movie. I was part of the story and everything was loud and close and intense, or, at least that’s how I understood it was supposed to be. Because I didn’t let myself act like anything more than a second string player in my own life because I was so cured and afraid. But even second string people get to have coffee and look at their special someone for a coat because they’re cold, and I’m just...not a part of that anymore. And that’s been true for the last—almost seven months now? But I was getting used to that in White Crest and I at least have people I’m a part of. Well, a couple, maybe—” Her mouth pulled into a grimace as she thought of Remmy and Nell. She pushed them away, this was hard enough already. “But everyone I used to have here died. The places I lived in are gone. Hell, my first elementary school is Costco now! I barely had an existence here, and yet that sad hopeful life seems so far and so much better than whatever it is I’m doing here right now. But it’s not just that. That would be easy. I could just tell you I made a stupid, terrible mistake and I want to go home. But I can’t, because I really do want you to have this. I don’t have a lot of anything, but what I do have feels special, because it’s mine, and I love you, of course I want to give you whatever I can offer. And you have been so deprived and shut away from the world, and look at you now, in the fourth largest city in America!”

The waiter returned with the drink and the food, and flourished out the check. Morgan caught it before it met the table and slid in her card, urging the young man to wrap things up.

“And you’re finally having tacos! Real Tex-mex tacos! And Christmas tamales, I don’t even know why they’re a December tradition, but they are! People look forward to getting bags of these like they look forward to those red Starbucks cups. You’re not just having everyday Houston nonsense, but something seasonal and special too. And I want you to be a part of it and I want to make it good. I didn’t really get to find out where all the good things are in the world when I was alive, but I know these places, I know when my lonely, miserable life was just a little better for having something hot and nice, and being surrounded by tables so crowded or just the right kind of sparse that I could trick myself into feeling like I belonged somewhere for an hour. I just—” She cut herself off and waited for her body to still, for her voice to loosen up again. She wouldn’t pretend to be okay when she wasn’t, but she wouldn’t make them a point of interest in a busy restaurant either. She waited, tears coming loose from her eyes. She waited some more, taking Deirdre’s hand into her lap. At last, with all the control she could muster, she confessed, “I don’t know how to explain the way I want to share all of my good here with you. I want you to be in the movie too, and I want to know where it’s the same and where it’s different, so it all becomes new. I feel like you understand what it’s like to be stuck on the outside, in the audience, a beat behind everyone else. And I want to show you something more and better than that. We deserve that, especially with how much shit is following us back home, if there’s anything left in me that can work my will into the world, I will show you that we can have more than watching from the fringes. And I need to be able to work my will somehow. I was born a witch and I need to know what I want counts for something and what I want is that. But I can’t share something I’m not a part of. And as horrible and selfish as it is, I hate feeling left behind. It shouldn’t even be possible, to be left behind in your own hometown, in a place you love. But I am dead to at least half of my tiny slice of world here, and that’s just what’s still standing. And I hate it. I’m finally brave enough to embrace everything there was around me and now it’s...it’s something I can only get through a screen and I hate it.” She paused again. Waited again. “But there might be something we can save, and share, and someone who would appreciate it. And when you were telling me that story, I just thought, if I can’t be alive or make this as good as I wanted, maybe I can at least save something with you. Something I can almost be a part of.” Her voice lilted up, watery with hope. “I like the idea that doing something outrageous and kind is something that we could do together.” She sniffled and smiled through her tears. “I don’t mean to be such a baby. We can talk about what’s on your mind, whatever you want to tell me or ask me. But you um, you should tell me if you like how anything tastes.”

Deirdre’s brows knit together with concern, brown eyes glistening at the mercy of new tears. She listened, and she nodded, and she opened and shut her mouth like a fish out of water as she tried to find the magic words to send the pain away. How was it, that for as powerful as a declaration of love was, the words ‘I love you’ could be so meager? Love was all she had, and yet, not enough. Her food had arrived, and their check taken care of, but Deirdre’s attention did not stir. She held Morgan’s hand tight, pressed the back of her knuckles to her cheek to take care of any tears, and paid no mind to her own crying. She shifted her fingers and cupped Morgan’s cheek; suddenly, the bustling world around them dissolved in her senses. She didn’t say she loved her, she didn’t want to interrupt, but she spoke it clearly with her body—from the warm gaze of her eyes right down to her legs, twitching to entangle with Morgan. “Houston is the fourth largest city in America?” She said eventually, lamely. And embarrassed by her inability to find the magic words, the restaurant rushed back into feeling and she turned to her food. She needed two hands to eat, just another way this restaurant foiled her; first the chairs, now the fork and knife. She took up the respective utensils in her hands and started cutting into the yellow rectangle on her plate. “I love you,” she looked back at Morgan as she swayed her food, “so much. A lot. The most. More than I know how to say, more than I can fathom. More than you can. Just—“ She sighed with helplessness, giving up on the food. “So, so, much. It means everything to me that you’re here, that you try, that you want to.” She dropped down the fork and knife, and wrapped her arms around Morgan, where they much preferred to be. “I wish I could do more for you.” Deirdre buried her face into her neck. “I wish I could go back in time and pluck you away from all that terribleness. I wish I could fix it now, with just the right words. I wish I could do more than love you. And I know that means a lot already, I know because your love means the world to me, but I just wish there was more I could do for you. I could feel it, when you were showing me around. It was like only a part of you was there, and the other was some place too far to reach—a place I can’t go. And all that time I just kept wishing I could do more, and none of that is your fault, and I promise I don’t blame you in the slightest, but by Death, I just wish so badly.” She sniffled. “You gave me life, Morgan.” And lifted her head up to meet her girlfriend’s eyes. “A real one. A good one. One I’m proud of, one I look forward to, one I can tell people about. And you’re right, I’m not in the audience anymore, I haven’t been for some time now—long before we ever landed here, and even right now. And I owe it all to you, my love. The world is so alive to me, for once. And it means something to me now. And that’s you, you did that.” She breathed with happiness, fluttering a wet laugh. “Is it bad that I almost wish it was half-dead to me too? I don’t want to be any place you’re not, even the world of feeling.”

Loss was inevitable. Deirdre knew Morgan’s life didn’t have to be ruled by it, but it would be stained. An immortal, she would lose everything all over again, all the time. And Deirdre was pained to think about it, as if her own heart had been thrust out. “I’m sorry,” she swallowed, “about everything. I love you. I want everything to be better for you, and this feeling isn’t new. When you were alive and cursed I wanted it so badly I...Fates, even if you were normal, whatever that means, I’d worry about splinters. Curse all the wood, it attacks my girlfriend, doesn’t it know she hurts?” She laughed shakily, pressing her forehead to Morgan’s. “You make everything good, my love. Always. I know your life has been unkind to you, and I don’t know how to make it all better, but we’ll figure it out together. One day at a time. Whatever we can do today that’s good, we can give whatever you want. Do whatever. I love you.” And so she kissed her, fierce and desperate and stopped only when she remembered where they were. Chased by another quick kiss, she turned back to her food and resumed her sawing.

“I know I say it all the time, but just being with you is perfect for me; more than, even. I’m so thankful that you want to share this with me, and I’m so excited for it, but just in case you don’t feel like it...or if you’ve felt like you’re doing a bad job or something...I just wanted to make sure you know the truth: I love you. Any moment with you is good and perfect, and everything I could want and more. All of this has been amazing, every second. That’s that. And, actually, if you won’t think me too dramatic to say it, there was something on my mind—“ Deirdre frowned, interrupting herself. “Why is this so hard to cut?” Bite finally freed, she stabbed it with her fork, astonished at the strangely tough exterior. “I suppose I should taste this first.”

Morgan melted into all of Deirdre’s words and touches so readily she had to stop herself from mewling out loud and climbing into her girlfriend’s lap so they could be as close as she wanted. “I don’t want you to miss out on anything, I want to feel things with you and be...alive. Somehow, just a little more. I don’t want to be where you’re not either, I just don’t know how,” she whispered, clinging to Deirdre as much as she could. If she squeezed enough, she could get the right sense of Deirdre’s back and shoulders, she could press back enough to feel her forehead. “But I am so happy that you are here, and your world is alive. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been wanting that for you, my love. It doesn’t feel like it’s as much as you deserve, I want you to have more, I am so happy that you have this.” She had just hoped that they would be able to inhabit that world together. When Deirdre kissed her she returned with even more fire and longing. She could at least pull and suck and pinch hard enough to be brought a little closer to life. “I love you too, with all I am,” she whispered, feeling lightheaded as they parted.

She was so entranced by Deirdre’s face, the gentleness in her eyes, the devotion in her smile. There was no doubting her sincerity, not after the year they’d had and the honesty they nurtured between each other, but it still seemed like a strange violation of universal order that this love in all its tender, articulate wonder could be hers. So entranced, in fact, that she didn’t realize that Deirdre was about to put the tamale into her mouth, corn husk and all, until she asked. “Oh!” Morgan startled herself out of her crying. “Babe, no, let me help.” She took the fork and prised off the shredded husk and popped the piece into her mouth. The texture was soft and familiar, even hot, still, despite how long they’d spent talking and crying and gathering interested stares. Morgan unwrapped the rest of the tamale from the husk and laid it out. “The husk is just part of how it’s cooked and served. You don’t eat it, babe. Although you could re-wrap the  tamale in it and inch it down as you eat, but that’s more trouble than what it’s worth.” She leaned over and kissed the corner of Deirdre’s mouth, right where she smiled. “But when you try the shrimp tacos, I’m gonna have to insist that you eat them with your hands the way the good mother of earth intended.”

She watched as Morgan unwrapped the food, staring at the revealed insides. That would make more sense, she figured, and chewed the piece Morgan offered her. The flavour was new, but the texture was nice, pie-like, even. “I’ve never had food that required stripping first. It seems like a—“ Deirdre was going to call it a hassle. But then she chewed. Wordlessly, she cut another bite off and brought it to her mouth. She chewed, and swallowed, and went in for another again. “This is good,” she breathed. She hadn’t been expecting bad food, but she hadn’t really been hoping for much at all. She swallowed another bite, eventually putting down her utensils—as if they got in the way of her explanation. “No, this is really good. I—“ Her eyes drifted to the tacos; Morgan had made those a few times, and so she was no real stranger to them. But she had always tried to eat them with a fork and knife. It was how her family had raised her to eat; her mother didn’t like using her hands to eat, she said it was barbarian, like the humans. There was some superiority woven into using a knife to cut into toast, instead of doing what was logical and grabbing it with her hands. But that was her mother, of course. And she wasn’t here. “Right. With my hands. Like how you’re supposed to eat it.” But she’d only just gotten used to eating pizza with her hands. Deirdre contorted her hand awkwardly above the plate, alternating between various claw shapes as she tried to guess at what would be the best way to pick one up without spilling everything inside. “The only thing I’ve really eaten with my hands is fruit, and then only because I plucked it off branches, and it’d be odd to bring a fork outside. But meals, real meals, were always a fork thing. My family enjoys their etiquette.” Which, though she had explained to Morgan once before in less words, she felt like it might absolve her from embarrassment at her display of confusion at the taco. “Which was weird—“ she gave up and turned to the drink instead. “Because all other fae I knew were a lot more wild in their dining habits; they lived in the forest. It’s like my family wanted to be better than everyone, even their own community.” The piña colada was good, naturally. And bolstered by its sweet flavour, she finally picked up a taco and bit into it. “This is also good.” By the time she finished it, her smile had doubled in size.

“What I was trying to say…” Deirdre began, eager to get the words out before the food distracted her again, and it was very distracting food. “...was that I don’t want to be something else for you to lose. I know I can’t help it in some regards but...as long as you want me, Morgan. I imagine I can do that. Even if that’s more than 500 years, I could find a way to stay. If you wanted me to.” And no longer able to ignore the call of tacos and tamales, she dug back into the food.

Morgan dabbed at her eyes as Deirdre went on, occasionally shooting a wave or a thumbs up at a spectator from the surrounding tables. The attention always made them self conscious, and by the time Deirdre had her first proper bite of a taco, the world had rendered them invisible once again.

She itched to take her banshee into her arms and kiss her greasy fingers and carry her off to bed, but the surprising joy in Deirdre’s smile stopped her. Deirdre’s smile was always a little mischievous, whether it was tender or impish, there was a little curve in the corner that hid just how wide it might stretch, like a delicious secret. Even when Morgan made her laugh by surprise, that curve stayed coiled up. But now Deirdre’s smile spread like it had an appetite of its own. Looking at Deirdre enjoy her plate was like seeing her face new. “I guess this means we’ll have to make our own table rules and split the difference,” Morgan said. “I wouldn’t mind picking fruit with you sometime. You must know all the best spots back home.”

Morgan couldn’t help but reach for her banshee as she gave her reassurances. Even more than five hundred years. Even as long as Morgan might last on the face of the earth, Deirdre would wait until they might be together. When Deirdre paused to wipe her mouth between bites, Morgan took her face between her hands instead and kissed her, firm and steady as a promise. “I won’t hold you to that, if only because there’s a chance I’ll never stop wanting you, however many years I last. But thank you.” Kissed her again. “Thank you, my love. Now come with me. I know just the place I want to save with you.”

The bookstore was an hour away from midtown. Morgan cruised through the eight lane freeway with ease, slipping off and taking the quieter back roads when she sensed traffic getting heavy without distress or comment. The night sky blazed orange with light. Even when they’d left the construction zones and the sentinel lines of streetlights on 290, every grocery store, shopping center, and movie-plex had its own cluster of lamps blasting away the shadows. The commercial strip Morgan took them to was small, with no lights save for the ones inside and two flickering orange poles from the city. The names of the shops were all painted on the windows and awning, personal and to the point: Kelly’s Tea Room, Macey Family Fitness, Acre Wood Hunting Supply. The one Morgan parked in front of was named Twice Told Tales.

Like any good second hand bookstore, the charm of Twice Told Tales was in the mess. Wooden shelves, clumsily constructed, bowed and slumped against the walls, their over-stuffed shelves dribbling paperbacks out the middle. They looked like sleeping old men whose shirts had come loose. Toys from the children’s section at the back corner littered the floor: plush dolls and generic blocks from the dollar store, mostly, with the occasional donated Disney princess or superhero action figure, fists raised, ready to light up as soon as you stepped on them. There was an old fashioned bell rigged to the door, chiming happily as they entered. Morgan laced her fingers through Deirdre’s hand and started weaving through the shelves on her old route, fiction first, then fantasy and science fiction, then romance, then the children’s corner, and back up through science, math, and then art and art history. There was no one else shopping and the woman who ran the store was nowhere to be seen, probably doing office work in the back, but Morgan kept her voice hushed all the same, as if she might shatter the place if she spoke too loudly.

“See, my family had this idea to conserve the energy we put out into the world as a family as much as possible. I thought it was because they valued being intentional with your actions, a lot, but it was probably just a way of trying to minimize the curse. Like, how much can you suffer if you don’t have that much going for or against you, right? The answer turned out to be ‘still a lot’, but they tried. And, anyway, the part that affected me was no buying books new. Or many books in the first place. Fortunately inter-library loans are a thing so I wasn’t completely deprived or anything, but getting to have a book I got to love and keep for as long as possible was a…stars, ‘treat’ doesn’t cover how excited I was. Yes, it was a special occasion, only a few times in the year. Birthday and Yule, and maybe one more time if I could prove and argue that I had been really, really good and had earned it and swore up and down not to let it become too much of a distraction.” Morgan sighed, her eyes reflecting the streetlamps like tiny stars full of wishes. “One of the books was Anne of Green Gables, I remember it because the copy was leather bound and there was this incredible, full color illustration of Avonlea inside and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I’d bring the book to bed with me just to look at the picture and imagine being there. Literally falling asleep with my head on the cover. And I got that one, and any other books from that period of time here and… Frankie!” A young looking tabby, about Moira’s size, leapt down from its roost on a shelf and presented itself for them. Meowing so calmly, it seemed to be offering customer service. “It’s not the same Frankie I knew, obviously, but the lady here just keeps adopting tabby’s and naming them the same.” She looked up at Deirdre, giving her hand a squeeze. Was she really here with her? Did she feel how special this place was? Did she like it?

“I’d like it if you never stopped wanting me, I hope you won’t. Because there’s a good chance I won’t stop wanting you either.” Deirdre smiled softly. The food was done, delicious to the late bite, and she welcomed the Houston night air into her lungs. She didn’t know where they were going, she never really did. But it wouldn’t have mattered if she knew the place by heart or in casual passing, her excitement bubbled and overflowed like milk in a pot. Her version of simmering down was trying to read road signs as they blurred past. Morgan drove like she was going home, even in White Crest there was still some double-checking of street names, trying to decide if it was a left or right turn. She peeled off the giant freeway into an exit Deirdre hadn’t even noticed, though she had occupied herself with softly commenting every odd observation—some witty, some nonsensical, some common sense. She wasn’t so much talking to Morgan as she was letting her brain run loose. Beyond them, her pot continued to boil.

For all that she imagined of the place, their destination was better. Their destination was always better. Her eyes danced over every book spine, every dusty shelf. She almost wanted to tell Morgan to walk slower, she needed to commit it all to memory first. She needed to think about where Morgan stood before, what books she touched, and if they were still here for her to run her fingers over. In her awe and excitement, she hadn’t even remembered the name of the establishment. They should go back out, and come back in, let her revel in the chime of the door. How many times did it jingle for Morgan? Could she know? The store was cramped, every inch filled with something. She thought of the massive freeway, and tried to figure how many of these stores could fit in there. Then she listened. She looked to Morgan, and then back around the store. Between the shelves, did a younger Morgan skip with excitement through the sections? Did she look up, brows furrowed in concentration as she tried to pick out the perfect book—the best book. If she only got just one, it had to be good, didn’t it? But how could she pick, faced with options that literally fell off the shelves for her. Deirdre imagined Ruth in the corner, impatiently tapping her foot. Or maybe it was Hector, as excited as his daughter. Did he pick titles off the shelves that he thought his daughter would like? Did he marvel at how something so simple, so inconsequential, sparked such innocent excitement in her? Did he feel guilty? Deirdre turned back to Morgan, just quick enough to catch the expression on her face. Guilt, she decided. He could have made a world where she made that face all the time. Deirdre felt herself wanting to herself, she couldn’t imagine anyone feeling any different. What monsters those creatures must be, that would ever deny Morgan this.

Frankie interrupted them, which was all the better for Deirdre, who knew her eyes were watering. She laughed shakily, turning her head to hide a sniffle. “You’re so happy,” she sniffled again, trying to cover this one up with a cough as she met Morgan’s eyes. “It’s the most beautiful sight.” She greeted it with a kiss, as if thanking her lips for smiling. And another kiss to her temple; for her eyes, which glittered with brilliance. And then another, to her lips again, simply because she enjoyed kissing Morgan and wanted one more. She reached out slowly to the orange cat with a soft smile, letting it sniff her fingers. “I like Frankie,” she proclaimed, the cat hadn’t done anything in particular to earn such praise, but Deirdre had long since forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to like animals. Whatever happened in White Crest, whoever she was there, whatever she was under the thumb of rules, it was as if that woman’s skin had been lifted off her shoulders. She felt free, happy. “So I have Anne of the Green Gables to thank for the fact you’ve read the same old books I have.” Though Morgan had read more, obviously. “How did you pick books out?” She asked finally, pulling one off the shelf for herself, knowing she’d never be able to stuff that thing back in. She flipped through its slightly worn pages; someone had dog-eared a passage, and Deirdre stopped to look at it, wanting to know what someone thought was special there. “There’s so many books,” she continued, “how did you pick? Was it the prettiest cover? Did you read a couple of pages tucked away in the corner?” Show me, she was asking, in much more words. She wanted to know. She wanted the place where Morgan was happy, and the only problem she had was picking a good book, she wanted that world to be the one they knew best—like a full-color illustration of Avonlea. She wanted the gentle strokes, the soft greens, the wide fields and the old-fashioned house that always looked warm and cozy. She wanted to say they could have that. “My mother always thought second-hand books were tacky. Like the humans didn’t even care enough to keep them in the first place. The books I got from that antique store were all previously owned, just like everything else in there. That, itself, was a story. When it was replaced with a bookstore, even if I spent my time there, I never wanted to take a book home.” For various reasons, some that included an angry mother, hateful of personal possessions, others that could be summed up by the dog-eared corner that she pointed to. “People do care, don’t they?”

Morgan wiped Deirdre’s cheek and took her hands once again. “I am unspeakably, dangerously happy,” she said. Laughter bounced on the edge of her lips as she kissed her back. “It’s this place. And maybe a little bit you. Or a lot a bit you.” Frankie padded over to them and brushed against Deirdre’s legs, giving them a polite meow of inquiry again. Morgan scratched the cat’s ears and let it get a sniff of her, beaming as it purred and asked the same as Deirdre. “Frankie likes you too, I think. There’s something about bookstore cats, they just know how to develop an excellent sense of character. Maybe it’s the place.This is a room where things that are lost or unwanted go to belong together and find new homes. It feels nice because anything can have a space here, even people, just by turning up. I think people who don’t get that are just missing out. People do care, yeah…” Her voice trailed off in a whisper, awed and thrilled by the wonder bubbling up in Deirdre. The emptiness and the drab fluorescent lights and the cheap peeling tile under their feet transformed themselves just by being reflected in her face.

Morgan came back to herself with a sheepish grin. “If I can tear you away from your new best friend Frankie, I’d like to show you how I picked out my books….” She reeled her tight into her side and laid their hands against one another, hers on top, guiding it toward the spines. She walked them back to the front of her path, in generic fiction and literature, and hopped onto her toes to steal another kiss. “So, it may be shallow, but I did, to a certain extent, look at their covers. But I also--don’t laugh--tried to feel them. Their textures, their softness, but also their energy. I’d look, and I’d brush my fingers along the spines, up and down and zig-zagging to make sure I got the ones turned sideways too.” She guided Deirdre’s hand as she spoke, teaching her fingertips how to glide over the different shapes and sizes. “I knew I had something promising when my eyes and my hands aligned. Like when you look at someone you love, when you spark inside. If the energy is right, it feels like that, but quiet, it’s just a possibility of that, there’s something inside that wants to become a part of you, but you don’t know if you want it back yet. So then, and only then, I’d pick it out and read a few pages.” She looked at the shelves around them and the steady path of Deirdre’s fingers, and back to her love again. “What feels good to you, Deirdre?”

Deirdre put her book down, she felt guilty for not slipping it back in its place for a moment before her worries—big and small—were swept away by Morgan. “Oh, my love,” she laughed, kneeling down to give Frankie better attention. She was rewarded with the cat weaving between her legs. “You said that about the shelter cats too.” She glanced up, beaming. “And those strays that followed us around that one day. And, just about any animal we come across together.” It occurred to her then that Morgan had never really been speaking to the wisdom of the animals, but of Deirdre’s character. She flushed, and continued to dote on the taby. “But maybe it’s this place. I like this place.” It smelt questionable, like dust and books and something kind of like mold—maybe a byproduct of the Houston humidity. It looked like it’d been robbed; upturned, downturned, spread out like a sloppy storage room. The walls, shelves and floor were as worn as the books. And yet, charming. It wasn’t carelessness that led this store to its current state. It was worn by touch and love, claimed by time, plagued by too many treasures to fit between its shelves. It did need a little saving, a little fixing up, then it’d be just right.

“Mm, I don’t know. Frankie and I are getting along so great.” Her lips curled with mischief, easily awash with eagerness at Morgan’s offer. Even she couldn’t keep up her teasing under the promise to be shown—led—into Morgan’s world. “Okay,” she brushed herself off and stood up. “Show me.” Deirdre smiled and listened. “I’m no witch though. The only energies I feel are death, and I’m not so sure I want to pick a haunted book…” Now, one with a bone stuck between the pages would be nice, but human bookstores usually didn’t offer that. Though she didn’t think it would work for her, she followed Morgan’s steps. She imagined herself as the little girl, beyond excited to have something of her own. What would she pick? Her fingers brushed over the spines of dozens of books; soft, smooth, wrinkled. Some with indented titles, carved into their covers. Others with the embossed kind, some with glitter. All of them wanted attention from her, not unlike the threads of death she could feel at a cemetery. The glory of stories was that she could tug on any one, and be led into something new and exciting—a different world. Books and visions had that in common. So, she waited, she ran her fingers carefully along more books, considering each one. What feels good to you, Deirdre? She paused, fingers pressed to the spine of a humble book. Its title was not long or flashy, not indented or embossed. The book was not thick, though not so small it got lost sandwiched between larger company. What stood out to her most was where her fingers had landed: they obscured the rest of the title, leaving only a red M. There was only ever one thing that felt good to her, every time, without fail. The book was unassuming, but Deirdre grinned as though she found treasure. She pulled the book from its place, flipping it over in her hands so she could look at the cover. From there, she knew she’d chosen the right one. “She looks like you,” Deirdre commented, tilting the book to show Morgan the little girl on the cover. She had brown hair, a blue dress and stack of books, sitting as though she knew more about the world than she ought to—possessed of great, Morgan-esque quality. “Matilda,” Deirdre read. “This one feels good.” Good felt like Morgan, after all.

Morgan squeezed Deirdre as she picked out her treasure and melted with delight just looking at it. “She looks like you,” Morgan said. “Straight hair, dark eyes, and so rapturous and intense in her expression. It’s kinda like your face right now.” She brushed her fingers over Deirdre’s features as she spoke, caressing each corresponding piece of evidence to her argument. Confident she’d made her point, she jumped up to kiss her girlfriend’s cheek again. “Matilda had to hide her books from her parents too, you know. They didn’t appreciate how kind or thoughtful she was, so she--” Morgan caught herself, biting her lip. “If you don’t know the story yet, I won’t steal the satisfaction of the ending from you. But it’s good. My copy was a lot more heavily used than this one, practically falling apart, but it was one of my favorite books growing up. I actually committed myself to learning levitation spells because I wanted to be just like her. And you know--” she brushed her hands over the book cover. “I can feel the good vibes from this book too, even like this. Come on.” She rushed them to the counter and rang the service bell, fighting back delighted giggles. “Hello! Mrs. Benson!”

The woman who came out the back was decidedly not Mrs. Benson. She was around Morgan’s age, with a suburban mom bob and clear frame glasses. “Can I help you?”

“O-oh.” Morgan’s smile fractured and she thanked the universe for her lack of blood flow. “I just um...we’re ready to check out, if that’s okay. I’m sorry I yelled I just, I used to come here a lot. I didn’t know Mrs. Benson super well, and I guess she had to retire eventually, but she was a really nice old lady and I was just hoping to say hi or something.”

The woman’s face broke into a laugh. “Morgan the Gorgon! I’m sorry, that’s so inappropriate of me, but it’s you, right? It’s me, Shelley! We had Chem together!”

While Morgan remembered that name being chanted at her as she was chased down the stairwell and pelted with cans and paper balls, she didn’t remember Shelley, exactly. Was she and academic rival? Had she been someone Morgan had tried to impress with tarot readings and custom crystals? The high school girls blurred together, and the innocence of that time mingled with the pain, like indigestion flaring up in your throat after swallowing a cheesecake. “Hey!” She said. “How--wild! Seeing you here! What made you pick up the torch for this old place?”

“Well, my mother, bless her heart, doesn’t have a head for business, but the last thing Memaw wanted was for the only used book place out here to get bought up or disappear. Lucky for me, I managed to learn a thing or two from her before she passed.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Morgan murmured.

Shelley scoffed. “She’s smiling down from heaven at us. I mean look at us. Look at you! That’s a high fallutent city girl if I ever saw one. Both of you!” She reached out to take Deirdre’s hand and shake it, reintroducing herself as if the last minute didn’t count on account of not being personable enough. “Memaw would be so pleased,” she went on. “You were her favorite of all the regular kids.” Shelley nodded towards an exposed wooden post filled with polaroids and printed pictures of smiling children through the ages. Only two had managed to get frames on them, one that was clearly a younger shelley, posing with her grandmother, and one that made Morgan gasp: unmistakably her. She clutched Deirdre’s arm tight. The girl in the picture was so cringingly embarrassed, not just at the occasion (The Best Reader of the Year award, which amounted to a cheaply printed certificate from Office Max and a free book) but at her own happiness. The promise of a free book, a gift that had been earned in the structure of rules and work had filled her with so much excitement. It was as certain as a spell. Better, even, because she hadn’t even needed to believe, she just had to max out her library card reading more than the other kids and report everything to Mrs. Benson. It didn’t occur to her until she saw the apathetic faces in the gathering that this wasn’t a very enviable achievement. But by then it was too late, and however much she tried to stay aloof as the other eleven and twelve year olds, she failed, miserably. “That’s me,” she whispered. “Deirdre, it’s me.”

“Simpler times, huh?”

Morgan nodded, her attention still stuck on the picture. The attempts to make a slightly oversize shirt look cool, the sweatshirt tied around her waist, the permanent stains on her thrift store jeans. It was all so wrong and brought her so much trouble then, but from here, she just looked like a child. A girl still growing, twisting herself crooked trying to get something right.

“Would you like this gift wrapped or anything, ladies?” Shelley asked.

“But that sounds like you,” Deirdre argued with a soft whine. She eyed the cover again, unable to see anyone but Morgan, with her books, underappreciated for all the intelligence and kindness that existed within her. But Deirdre’s argument leapt out of her in a yelp before it had formed, swept away by Morgan. She laughed her surprise, placing the book on the counter. Though she’d been reading more with Morgan around, she had never felt excited to read a book she picked out since she was a child. She ran her fingers along the fraying edges and thumbed the pages. In a different world, she might have been embarrassed to be reading a children’s book. In this one, she was thrilled. Deirdre bounced on her heels, grinning as she waited.

Her smile gave way to one more tense, more confused. No one told her what a Memaw was, but she managed to put it together herself. She shook Shelley’s hand, momentarily considering snapping a finger for her revisiting of a clearly tasteless nickname, and introduced herself quickly. “Deirdre,” she managed, before Shelley was off to the next thing. Her eyes followed Morgan’s, and Deirdre nearly forgave her for mentioning the gorgon thing. “It’s you,” she whispered back, reaching up to pluck the picture off its nail. Matilda was fine in her cartoon form with her long hair and book pile, but this was the real Morgan. Deirdre’s grin grew back. “Can we get a copy of this?” She asked, interrupting Shelley. “Or keep it, I suppose.” She turned to Morgan, asking silently for her opinion. “It’d be nice if Morgan could be up on that wall forever, reigning over all the other children. But original photos have a particular charm.” She continued to smile at her girlfriend, held close to her. “What do you think?” She whispered, exhibiting great restraint in simply squeezing her arm instead of kissing her like she wanted. There was another question, about how much exactly Shelley should know about their relationship, or if Deirdre should make it a point that she came out of this interaction thinking they were just really good friends. “Don’t worry about gift wrapping it,” she finally addressed Shelley’s question, leaning across the counter. “I did want to ask something about, hm, donations.” Her eyes trailed over the peeling tile, the chipping paint, the books overflowing into disorganized stacks. Then it settled on the emptiness; book stores were not the most popular visit during the night, but she could almost reason it wasn’t the most popular visit full stop. “For the store.” She offered Shelley a bright, winning smile. “If Morgan wanted to put something forth, in her name. She could do that, couldn’t she?”

“If you want it it’s yours!” Shelley said. “All the kids in those pictures are old like us or moved away. Not much to appreciate. And I’m running out of room for the new kids…” Shelley went on longer, explaining who these children were and how often they came and what her ideas were for posting their pictures, but Morgan didn’t hear. She picked up the framed photograph, fingers brushing over her frizzy hair and her sloppy oversize shirt tucked into her stiff jeans. She didn’t wear grunge well, but at least the 90’s were kind to her Goodwill wardrobe.

“Thank you, Shelley,” she said. She tucked herself close to Deirdre, leaning her head on her arm as she broached the subject of donations. “We would,” Morgan tacked on. “It could be anonymous, of course, but what my girlfriend is trying to say is that we would like to give you something toward keeping this place open for another generation or two, and maybe even a facelift, or a more advantageous location?”

Shelley’s eyes widened at the mention of girlfriend, but Morgan forgave her when she didn’t comment. Shelley gestured to a donation jar, admirably half full but not exactly promising for the long term. “We’re always accepting donations at Twice Told Tales. Check is fine, if you, uh, ladies are feeling extra generous.”

“Perfect!” Morgan said. “But what would it take, do you think? Would sixty thousand help you guys out? Or a hundred thousand?”

Shelley blanched, trying to figure out if Morgan was being serious. “Are you...Well, it would certainly go a long way, a very...if mean, if you’re serious, then...I could check the books and give you a more comprehensive estimate, but I couldn’t possibly…”

“We’ll start with the book--” Morgan fished seven dollars out of her wallet and handed it to the woman. “Keep the change. And I’ll set you up with a hundred thousand now, and you can email me about what’s best for the store.” Morgan happily wrote out a check and stuffed it into the jar. “And, well,” Morgan looked hesitantly at Deirdre, trying to ask for her approval in advance, “If you don’t mind, babe, I’d like a plaque or something, with both our names on it. You can call us donors or patrons, I don’t really care, but I want people who come in here to think of Deirdre too when they think of this place.” She stuffed the check in the jar. “Can we make it a deal? A little extra funding for the store in exchange for its continued upkeep and care, along with a little recognition?” Her eyes flitted to Deirdre again, adding emphasis on the deal. They could make this different. They could make this one good thing stick, and for once, a legacy didn’t have to be something shrouded in pain and suffering.

“We?” Deirdre blinked, eyeing Morgan. She didn’t correct her, or argue, but in her silence she asked if that was okay, if Morgan was sure. This place was special to her, and it would be kept alive through her kindness. Deirdre thought herself an accessory, at best. But when Morgan didn’t correct herself, Deirdre stood up straighter and nodded. “We would,” she repeated, and pressed a kiss to Morgan’s temple as she so desired. If Shelley had any real issue with it, she certainly couldn’t after their hefty donations—and maybe that was a justice of its own sort. “Think of…” her voice caught, and she looked at Morgan for the second time with confusion. “A-a plaque would be nice,” she swallowed. Nervous not because she disagreed, but because the generosity of it, the thoughtfulness, had made her heart warm in a way that always startled her. “If that’s good to you, Shelley.” She smiled, “it sounds perfect to me.” All she had on her was a few hundred she planned on paying for the food with, and so she simply stuffed that into the jar, careful to avoid the cheque. Her gaze fluttered to the different places their plaque could lay; on the wall where the picture once was, by the door, in the corner where people would wander to read. They would know this place was special, if they didn’t get that already. They would know two women cared deeply about it. This place was good already, it didn’t need their money for that. But it would be better because of them, and it wouldn’t face financial struggle in a way so many other businesses fell victim. They could leave good in their wake. “You know, Shelley the smelly—” Deirdre grinned; and maybe some petty revenge too. “Did they ever call you that in highschool? Terrible name, really. Anyways, I know you have a lot of great ideas for this store. So why don’t you figure out how much they all cost and we’d be glad to finance them. The next time you visit your grandmother, will you put some extra flowers in for us too? Tell her we said thank you? I know she’s already been able to rest easy with her store in such good hands.” Her gaze raked one last time over the tiles, the walls, the shelves and the messy books; whenever they returned, there was no telling what this place would look like. Her heart throbbed for the scenery to be lost, but not all loss was bad. Some of it was merely change—like the tides of life and death.

Deirdre pulled closer to Morgan. They could save something, they could make it good, and she kissed her girlfriend, free. She repeated, “do we have a deal, Shelley?”

Shelly nodded, stammering out her agreement. She was so stunned, the dig at her name didn’t even phase her. “Yes, that’s, sounds great. Deal!” She didn’t have any sense for the magic threads wrapping around her words or the delight that burned through Morgan as the agreement was sealed.

“You’re a good woman, Shelley,” Morgan said. “Thank you for letting us help. You take care now, alright?” Her voice drawled softly as she picked up the old parlance of her childhood. She spared Shelley one more smile, more than a little satisfied with her own magnanimousness. She left on Deirdre’s arm, keeping her cool sense of superiority until they got back to the car. When they were safely inside, Morgan took Deirdre’s face in her hands and kissed her hard. “I love you. Thank you for doing that with me. I know it’s just one little store, but it’s part of my home now it’s a little bit mine and a little bit yours too. Something good is ours.  Not the worst way to end the night, right? How do you feel…?”

“Thank you for sharing it with me,” Deirdre breathed as they parted. “You didn’t have to, but I’m so glad you did. It’s a special place, it really is.” She reached for Morgan’s hands, eager to take them in her own, tight in her grip. “I feel happy,” she confessed, unafraid of what it meant. To them, happiness was a dangerous thing, even as often as they felt it. They knew how easily it could be taken from them, how the robbing of it could come disguised as righteousness. But there, right then, Deirdre was happy despite it all. If Ruth was somewhere, scowling at her daughter for such flagrant displays of selfish delight, Deirdre hoped she could see how much they didn’t care. “Thank you,” she repeated, “for everything, for all of tonight. For bringing me to the restaurant, for showing me this store...for letting me come along for this trip, even. I’ve loved seeing your home, Morgan.” She grinned, reluctant to part but aware that at some point, they really had to get back to their hotel. Not for rest, but because there was love she simply couldn’t share stuffed at the front of their rental. “Fates, I’d be fine if you had more planned, but I’d really like to take you back to the hotel…” She leaned across and kissed Morgan earnestly, in a way she thought might make Shelley blush if they were still inside. Parted, she grinned with a tease. “...to do some chaste reading.” She waved their new-old copy of Matilda around. “And to make love to you, either-or.” Deirdre leaned back into her seat, gripping Morgan’s hand. Whatever laid beyond them, and back home in White Crest, they’d done good here. And with luck, they could do good elsewhere. A legacy that was more than loss and pain was suddenly something Deirdre wanted, and something else she felt like she could have. She had Morgan to thank for that, she had Morgan to thank for a lot of things. “I love you,” she smiled; for now, those three words would have to carry the weight of it.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

New Year, New Tears || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: December 30, 2020

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Deirdre need to talk before they can start the new year fresh. 

Say that you'll hold me forever Say that the wind won't change on us Say that we'll stay with each other And it will always be like this

CONTAINS: brief, non-specific references to past abuse, negative self-talk

Morgan had made sure they arrived in New York in time for checking in and knocking off the first few items on the itinerary she’d devised. Initially, Morgan had organized the activities mix-and-match style according to how many hours they had at their disposal and how much time they wanted to spend in bed. In the fall, she had imagined a lot of New York would pass by behind drawn curtains while they had as many kinds of sex as they could think of and they would content themselves with only so many big things and so many little things into their three and a half days away from Maine. Today, it went like this: they dropped their bags off in their suite (in the first room, Morgan insisted they could work it out later), walked to a gourmet bakery, and took what Deirdre didn’t eat at the place up to Central Park. Then came a taxi to a cluster of rare and second-hand bookshops, and just enough time to change before catching the evening showing of Hadestown. Morgan left the theater with her arms tight around Deirdre’s waist, singing her favorite song with careless delight.

Paris had been good to them, a testament just how easy things could be. The days after stung a little, because Morgan felt weird about their bedroom, didn’t want to stay in the hotel long term, didn’t have the tiny house Deirdre had offered to help her assemble in the back yard yet, and feared latching on too hard and destabilizing herself all over again if she dove in ‘business almost as usual’ style. Because she did latch. Her heart’s freedom and her Yuletide warmth had stayed with her, sending tingles up her skin and reaching out to Deirdre to share and spread the relief between them. Touch was intuitive again, smiles came more easily--but where was the line between happiness and impending danger? She hadn’t been able to tell the difference before; would the universe guide her steps and show her now? And so every day ended a little different. Every coming and going hit a different note, some off key, some resonant with hope. But tonight, in a world so iconic and strange it seemed like something she’d dreamed, Morgan couldn’t find any of her old apprehensions. She couldn’t imagine doing anything but staying next to her love until the sun rose out their window. She tumbled into their hotel room, still singing, and kicked off her heels and jumped up for a heavy kiss. “So, you really liked it? I’ve been wanting to ask, but I couldn’t really hear in the street: which song was your favorite--no, which part in the story? I wanna know everything you’re thinking about.” She parted just to shove their suitcases off the bed and flop onto it, evening dress and all.

Human stories delighted Deirdre in a way that often felt forbidden. The fae stories focused far more on mischief and chaos and humans dying, and while those were fine, they were nothing like the stories Morgan had shown her. The kind she had come to enjoy greatly. When Morgan told her they’d watch a musical, she thought of all the ones she was familiar with; Waitress, The Sound of Music, that one about the pies with human meat, and if those Disney movies counted, then those too. But what she watched was nothing of the sort, and New York, as exciting as it had already been, seemed brighter, warmer, livelier. Was this what it was like to be human; uncomplicated and free? Could they eat baked goods, watching the sun set, going to bookstores, absorbing stories finely crafted by strangers? Could they be so....normal? Deirdre’s smile faltered for a moment as she watched Morgan flop on the hotel bed. For the duration of their trip, she kept a watchful eye over her happiness; she had been trained well in the ways it needed to be contained. And her hands, that wanted Morgan then and wanted Morgan now, needed to be reined in. They couldn’t be so normal, not yet. Normal them would have been making love by now, evening dresses crumpled on the floor. And that question would have been asked breathless, in her arms, just as Morgan remembered she never heard the answer, and had gotten distracted along the way. Normal them would have slept like that, woke up like that, went about their days exactly like that. Normal them didn’t need to worry about tamping down happiness, they simply were. But normal them was wrong, somehow, as Morgan had said it and as Deirdre struggled to understand. And normal them was gone, and present them needed to work on building a good future them so they wouldn’t break again.

But holding each other was ‘free’, and so whatever compunctions Deirdre had about intimacy now, that wasn’t one. And she fell into bed beside Morgan, pulling her love into her arms until they were tangled together the way they fit best. “You mean you couldn’t hear me over your singing,” Deirdre teased with a laugh, delighted in equal parts by memory of the show and Morgan’s glee. If she’d thought Morgan’s squealing in the snow in Paris was the happiest she might see Morgan for the year, she only wished she could go back and tell herself not to be so sure. “And you’re sure no one saw me crying in the theater, right? Because I don’t--” She cut herself off with a chuckle, “well, I don’t know. Maybe you should sing through the tracklist again so I can figure out my favorite.” With a grin, she pressed her lips to Morgan’s quickly, mumbling rough against them. “It’s better, coming from you. Oh and--” Deirdre drew back. “I have some complaints about story choices here. You said this was based on something? Why did he turn around? That’s just--” She pouted. “It was mean. You didn’t tell me it would be a sad story.” Admittedly, not Deirdre’s favorite kind of story--tragedies left her heart with a strange, unnamed, kind of heaviness. A feeling that she hadn’t yet picked apart and dissected meaning from, a feeling she had been long since afraid to try with. “I did like it.”

Morgan sighed with delight as Deirdre joined her on the bed and tangled them up like normal. The fluffy tulle under her skirt bunched up around her thighs and the simple boning around her bodice made it hard to curl up as snug as she really wanted, but Morgan was too happy to mind any of it past fiddling with her zipper and tugging it down a few centimeters. She cradled Deirdre’s face and kissed it several times over as her banshee gave her answer, lingering and nipping here and there as it pleased her.

“It was also loud with the cars going by us too,” Morgan protested, though she couldn’t keep a straight face. “Because you don’t what, babe? It’s okay, you know, right? I cried too, and the lady in front of us was crying much harder than either of us. The story’s supposed to make you feel something. That’s the magic in it. You don’t have to feel weird about any of that.” There was more to say, but Morgan leaned in and drew out another kiss, long and enthusiastic and tender when she remembered the exact look that had shown in her love’s face in the dark theater.

“I am sorry the ending hurt you by surprise,” she said, threading more kisses around Deirdre’s jaw. “It’s a very old human story, actually, from Greek antiquity. I never liked it before, because it doesn’t explain why he did it, so I always thought—yeesh, dude, you had one job! How much did you really love her anyway? But the way this version tells it…” Morgan sighed and settled her face in the crook of her love’s neck. “He held onto so much hope for so long, even when the disappointment started to break him. And then having to keep going without her, when they’d barely even touched since they’d found each other, having to believe she wouldn’t leave again, that he was really worth all this trouble— I think anyone would at least think about turning to be sure. And it was just a second, you know? Just a quick, desperate mistake. And I think it’s so sad because their love was so much bigger than that one mistake, it’s not fair for them to lose it. But the universe is brutal sometimes, and that’s why hope is so hard and special in the first place…” Morgan’s hand slid down to Deirdre’s chest and started tracing shapes over her heart, occasionally skirting along the hem of her own bodice where it kissed the swell of her breasts. “I am glad you liked it,” she murmured. “Even if I would rather hear your favorite song from you.”

Though Deirdre hummed under each touch—leaning closer to Morgan, urging more—her hands remained stiff and chaste around her, despite the twitch that radiated from her fingers. The bright grin that claimed her mouth was evidence enough that she wanted this, and wanted more, but she couldn’t have it. Her body stiffened as her voice remained light. “But this is different from crying over those cartoons in our—“ Deirdre swallowed. “The house; in private. This is different.” As Morgan kissed her, her twitching fingers curled into a claw at Morgan’s back, bunching tight fabric and digging into skin under her harsh grip. As much as she wanted to move, she did not. As Morgan continued to explain Orpheus’s plight, Deirdre thought about her own restraint. If that were her, she wouldn’t have turned around at all. She wasn’t even doing it now, as much as she twitched and stiffened and clawed for it—she was being good, dutiful, devoted. And yet, for all her carefulness, she’d let curiosity slip between her carefully crafted walls. “Is that how you felt?” She blinked, “is this…’turning around’?” She shook her head, wincing at the question—coated in metaphor as it was, even if Morgan could pick apart what she meant, it wasn’t the point. She already knew their love was bigger than their mistakes, but she suddenly understood the nature of doubt in a chilling way. She knew the truth, and yet….well, perhaps she shouldn’t have been so sure of her powers of self-control. Maybe she wasn’t any better than Orpheus after all.

Deirdre turned her gaze to the window, mumbling her requests for Morgan to forget she’d said anything. “I like ‘All I’ve Ever Known’ best, for now.” It was night, not that it was any easier to tell over the lights of New York. It was her body that told her first, in the yawn that erupted from her, before her eyes could even settle on the inky sky. “It’s getting late,” she commented. Her arms slackened. It was time for her to leave, probably. As it usually went, at least. And if she really wanted to try to be better than a fictional Greek myth, she ought to listen to the rules laid about before her. Morgan never shared a bed with her anymore, and she slept holding a pillow tight to her chest in the lonely privacy of her office. When she woke, the sight of an empty wall greeted her. If she was lucky, it would be one of the three cats instead. If she was really, really lucky, it was two of them. She could only hope the hotel pillows were close enough to the Morgan-replacement one she normally held; if she could’ve stuffed it into her suitcase, she would’ve. “I’ll take my things into the other room.”

“No, stay.” The words burst out of Morgan before she could think better of them, even just to have a better follow up argument besides, “Please.” She winced, and would have flushed if she had any blood flow in her face. She moved her arms around her love’s neck and pleaded with her eyes. A moment ago, Deirdre had been giving her so many green lights and their touch and their bodies all struck the right chord, harmonizing with such rich, perfect clarity, Morgan didn’t want the feeling to fade out.

“First of all, it is our house. Or it kind of is, or I want it to be. And second, I don’t want to forget what you said. It matters to me.” She caressed her face tenderly, hoping to convey her earnestness, her confidence. “You did...it did feel like you left me and ran away. All the note said was you weren’t dead, I didn’t know if that meant wait for me or don’t follow me, and by the end of that week, I was starting to wonder if…” Morgan shrugged, trying to keep the leftover hurt far away from her in a box at the bottom of her heart. “...if you still wanted me at all. I didn’t know how to believe you were still with me and so I turned around then, yeah. And in those days before Yule, I did kind of want to know how worth it you thought I was. Some of the ways I did that weren’t fair or kind to you. I was just…” She shrugged. “Clinging to some leftover revenge bullshit, maybe. It seemed so important that you really, really understand how it felt. None of the words I had felt good enough. And maybe if you’d take it, it would mean you would stay, or if you understood, you wouldn’t do it again. But I buried all that in Strawford, babe. I don’t need or want that. I didn’t excise the hurt completely, but I took enough out of me that I can be close to you without getting a complex about it. Enough that I can be-- stars, so incredibly happy with you. And I’ve missed that feeling so much, I don’t want to let it go right now. Haven’t you felt...lighter today? Freer? I know it’s just for a little bit, but everything’s been so hard, I don’t see the point in denying ourselves a few good nights together. I literally can’t think of anything I want more immediately than to stay here with you all night. And this isn’t even the first night I’ve felt that way, it just feels so much more silly not to follow through with the feeling when we’re away from everything else in a beautiful city plastered over a hundred movies.”

Morgan kissed Deirdre then, firm with determination. “For me, the place we’re at right now is us walking together. It’s not the way we came and I don’t know what’s next, I’m just believing as hard as I can that we’re gonna make it after coming this far. I looked, and you were there, and we’re lucky enough that we can keep walking after. That’s what I feel like this is, babe.” Her fingers idled around Deirdre’s shoulders, the ends of her hair, the gentle curve of her neck. She knew this was all dependent on what her girlfriend thought, that though they were walking, maybe they weren’t in exactly the same place yet. Her smile faltered with worry, but she held tight to her nerve and kept herself steady, though her voice was soft. “What is this for you? What do you think about...what I’m suggesting, for how we spend the nights this trip? Tell me what you think, huh…?”

Deirdre’s face softened instantaneously, her hands moved around Morgan to hold her, comfort her. It was a reaction of the body more than it was the mind, and her body wanted to yield to Morgan. To say that she would stay, that she could, that she wanted to and that she’d work out every bead of pain in Morgan’s body until her fingers bled. But the usual enthusiastic yes, yes, was replaced with lips pulled thin, brows furrowed. Her mind was a little more cautious, as it always had been. She shook her head; she hadn’t felt exactly freer or lighter. Her dutifulness was a devious prison, and it caged the rest of her well. Morgan wanted space, and Deirdre had worked it into her mind that she would provide. Every smile died miserably with guilt. And every touch withered with worry. It seemed so important to Morgan that they didn’t sleep together, Deirdre respected the choice as well as she could respect anything she didn’t want. She had thought it was so strange to deny it to themselves days ago. Weeks ago. But it was important to Morgan. And now it...wasn’t? Deirdre shook her head again as they parted. “What do you want me to do, Morgan?” Her shoulders sagged, her face contorted with confusion and hurt. The dark circles around her eyes must have been more clear then, even under the makeup, or at least she felt like they were. The nights of restless sleep without Morgan took their toll, and chilling fatigue coiled around her bones again as the mind remembered what the body could never forget. “I love laying with you; before I met you sleep was just a means to an end for me and now it...it feels like rest. Good rest. But you said you wanted your space, and I am trying my best to respect that. You set the rules Morgan, but you can’t just—“ Deirdre swallowed, turning her gaze away.

This was stupid. Any sane person would have just given in and cuddled up; her insides begged her to. She was so tired and so desperate for Morgan that she’d take just about any scrap offered. But her stomach lurched and her head throbbed; it wasn’t right. “Don’t make me into some thing you use for comfort and then leave again. Don’t just, ask for me to stay and then make me sleep alone again. I can’t—“ She closed her eyes, finding her breathing (In. Hold. Out) without Morgan’s usual prompting.

When Deirdre turned back, she was calmer, though no less pained. “You want space. That isn’t space. And I don’t want your progress to be hindered by these moments of permissibility. But more than that, I need rules. I can’t do this without rules. I need something to follow and tell me I’m doing this right. I need something, my love.” She sighed, shoulders slumped again, victim to Morgan’s touch. She hated herself so completely sometimes; how terrible and idiotic it was that her mind couldn’t just accept this. She wanted it more than anything else. “It doesn’t feel like we’re walking together, Morgan. I’ve told you that already. I’m just trying to do what’s right, but I can’t even tell what that is.” How could it possibly be walking together when she didn’t want space at all? Was it ‘walking together’ when they weren’t yet a couple? Or was that just Morgan, waiting? Wasn’t this just her, waiting?

“I’m sorry,” Morgan murmured. “I just...it just felt so good today, and I’ve felt lighter and so much better since last week and I just thought--” She squeezed Deirdre close, pressing her into a comforting grip. “You’re not a thing, that’s not what I meant. I’m so sorry you’ve felt like I don’t value you or that I’m doing this casually or anything else like--” Morgan grimaced and told the rest of her apologies with kisses through Deirdre’s hair. “I’m just sorry,” she whispered after a while.

She shifted back, just enough to see Deirdre’s as she guided it up to meet her own. “I’ve never been great with rules. It’s not intuitive for me. I’m not used to having that kind of structure in the first place, or anything staying steady enough for too many rules to work, and anytime I feel good, it’s usually so rare I don’t really think to question it or hold back anymore, especially with you. So I-I don’t mean to mess up and confuse you and hurt you like this. That’s not what I want. I want you so very much, my love, but I want your peace of mind and your comfort too.”

Morgan pressed a tender kiss to Deirdre’s forehead, whispering another apology against her skin before sitting back again. “I love you. Always, I love you, Deirdre. And I want to do better. I want to give you what you need. But I also…” She winced, her face twisting with worry. “I just don’t want to get so set in one set of rules that we don’t ever come back together all the way. I don’t want to stay so apart from you. Whatever we come up with, I want it to be something we can change later, somehow, in a way that doesn’t hurt. Maybe at a regular interval, once a week, maybe? Or we can ask? Either way, I’d like to write some new ones for us. Starting with working out a different sleeping arrangement system, if, you know…if that’s okay?” She reached slowly behind her for the hotel stationary pad, taut as a spring with hope. Wherever they really were in this metaphor, she knew she wanted to be moving forward.

Deirdre slumped, sinking further into the plush mattress. A sense of defeat rolled over her, washing her body with its cold tide. You couldn’t just let Morgan be happy? Deirdre’s grip on the sheets tightened. “No, I-I’m sorry this is…” Stupid, she’d wanted to say. They were happy, and fine, and what did it matter to her if she just let them cuddle for a few days? Why did it matter? Her mind had projected itself far enough into the future that she could feel the sting of lonely nights fresh again, after the bliss of restful sleep. Her body, once enthusiastic about giving in, recoiled in fear. She couldn’t understand what created such a challenge for her, and she didn’t possess the words to explain it. “I’m tired,” she said, unable to think of anything else. Fatigue drowned her; sad eyes morphed to tired-red, and her face sank. “I like rules.” Which was strange for a fae to say, but her life had been dominated by them, and under their command, she knew what was right and what was wrong.

She hadn’t known what was right and what was wrong for some time now. Rules would be nice, thank you, she opened her mouth and pictured the words coming out. No, actually, just forget it, I’m too tired to care now, and even that wouldn’t leave in anything more than a whimper. I just want us to be better; I hate sleeping apart from you, I hate not knowing what’s wrong, the truth of it made Deirdre’s eyes water. She hated the “space”. She hated the stupid studio, which only served to churn her insides with melancholy every time she looked out their back window. She hated that she couldn’t understand what to do--the books had told her to “not take it personally” but how exactly was she supposed to not take her girlfriend wanted an entire living space outside of their home in any other way but personal? She hated the self-help books, and their confusing language and messages. And she hated herself, for being so angry. Morgan wanted space, and though Deirdre struggled to rationalize the why, she wanted to give that to her. And she was trying, except her trying seemed to be flawed. So she had to try a different way, but that was flawed too. And now she was making her girlfriend make a list, even though she said she didn’t like rules, and was afraid of what they might do. The word “compromise” came to mind, and then her mother telling her that compromise was something idiots did when they were either too cowardly to rend open and offer themselves out or too weak to get their way. What was it, but Morgan having to suffer more on Deirdre’s behalf?

The banshee shifted. When she spoke finally, her voice was barely above a whisper. “You don’t have to. You didn’t appreciate it much when I asked you for rules the first time around. And I don’t want to put you through that again. Just...tell me what I’m supposed to do. If you want me to stay, I can stay.”

Morgan let Deirdre fall away, feeling her body tense. “Hey…” she cooed. She hesitated to scoop Deirdre up, knowing that it was just as likely that she was punishing herself as it was that she didn’t want to be touched. In the end, she split the difference by finger-combing her hair, taking out each of the little pins she ran into and setting them neatly aside. “Don’t be sorry, my love. I’m proud of you, for telling me what you need. And yeah, it’s weird and hard, not having our instincts aligned when it comes to us, but I think we can compromise. No one has to hurt so much or feel completely out of her depth. I think that’s how we’re gonna get through this.” She slid down beside her banshee and kissed her hair. “You’re right, I had a really hard time with the rules the first time we made them, but I was also in a really low place, and I was really lost and hadn’t figured out much of anything about what to do with myself. But I think they weren’t such a terrible idea after all, especially then. And I'm in a different, better spot now. And I want to do this. I’m offering. And as long as we can revisit these and change them so we can keep moving closer together, I’ll make the rules as detailed as you need them to be.”

But Deirdre’s pain was more than that. The ache in her went deeper than a worry that Morgan didn’t really want to go along with her idea. Morgan didn’t think that would be enough to make her love cry on its own. Slowly, she reached over and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “If you’re tired, we can just come up with a few rules for tonight and do the rest in the morning. But I think sooner is better than later, because...it just seems like we both want to be closer, more intimate, than we have been, and if we both want that, it seems awful to keep ourselves from it. We just have to make sure we’re doing it in a way that doesn’t hurt so much, you know?” She wiped another one of Deirdre’s tears. “...Babe,” she said, lowering her voice, just above a whisper. “Can you tell me what it is that’s bothering you so much right now? What it is that’s so sad or stressful… I need you to talk to me, babe. Right now, I need that very much. It doesn’t even have to make much of any sense. I just don’t want to do the thing where you hurt in silence and I’m on the outside trying to figure out what to do on my own.”  She let her fingers slide down Deirdre’s cheek, tracing the gentle lines of it. “I’m not going anywhere unless you want me to, babe. I’m here, and I think we can figure out how to get to ‘okay.’ We just have to do it together.”

Deirdre’s mind coursed with the same words pulsing in numbing repetition: dumb, stupid, idiotic, dumb, stupid-- She hissed as Morgan’s fingers pushed through her hair, not from the contact, which was gentle by all accounts, but from the uncanny ability they possessed to make Deirdre feel raw. It was medically impossible, but she thought Morgan could feel her thoughts through her scalp, that she could pick each one out word by word. Don’t look, don’t look. Deirdre closed her eyes. Was she more embarrassed that her mind had dissolved to such negative prattle or that she knew Morgan wouldn’t like it anymore than Deirdre would enjoy Morgan beating herself up? But her habit of self-flagellation was one Morgan knew well, and had never responded with cruelty to before. Morgan was kind, and Morgan was gentle, and Morgan loved her. Yet for all she understood, all she could think about was how terrible she must be, wasting Morgan’s time and energy like this. Morgan should’ve been taking care of herself, and instead, here she was. Dumb, stupid, idiotic, dumb, stupid… “No,” she croaked, “no, you really don’t have to do that. I know it’s hard for--you need space. You wanted to...think about yourself. Figure that out. And you said you don’t like rules and I...can manage. I can do that for you.” Her heart clenched, her face twisted with pain. Her body was so tired; she had nothing left to give of herself. Please stop, please stop. But she wouldn’t, she couldn’t. “Together…” she rolled the word around against her tongue. To-geth-er; foregin, by an unnameable metric, but an idea she could latch her words to. The good words. “Not together.” Well, the mediocre words. “Not--you need--you said--you--” She swallowed. “The books, I don’t understand them. And the studio it--” She closed her eyes again. Stop, stop, stop. “Roots grow big, and long, and they take from the soil. And the other plants dry, but that’s okay, because you need it now. You need it.” Deirdre opened her eyes, shaking her head. “That’s the only thing I understand about this. I think the books are trying to say that the other plants shouldn’t dry for each other, but does that mean you have to be transplanted into a new bed so you can grow, and what does that mean for--” Deirdre hissed. “This garden metaphor is dumb. I just mean, I don’t even understand what was wrong in the first place. And maybe it’s stupid of me but I thought we were fine, but we weren’t, and now what? And I know it’s idiotic, but I don’t get it.”

Morgan listened, burning with aches as she saw Deirdre nearly writhing with pain. It was like looking into a cruel, double sided mirror. Here was her pain during all those grief days, her desperation, now with Deirdre’s face. Here was every reason to go into that therapist’s office as soon as they could get in. They couldn’t stay trapped in these patterns, they couldn’t sink into this much hurt for each other so easily, not if they wanted to last for centuries. Morgan adjusted herself so one of her arms could drape around Deirdre and take her hand while the other twisted up on the pillow and worked tenderly at the tension in her love’s scalp.

“It’s not idiotic or stupid or dumb, Deirdre. None of those things. And I got what you were saying with the garden metaphor, even if it has its limits.” Close as she was to Deirdre now, her lips brushed against her ear and neck as she spoke, and it was nothing at all to press a kiss to the nape and remember its tender, sweaty feel. “You know, for a while, I couldn’t put words to it either, but I was looking over my notebooks and this letter draft I had. I think it was the last one I wrote when I was still alive. I said something like, before you I had this little world inside me...” She let go of Deirdre’s hand to make a little sphere with her own. “And it wasn’t perfect, but it was whole and it was good. And then I found you, and you loved me, and we started making a life together, and suddenly there was more.” She took her sphere hand and stuck it on Deirdre’s trying to mould it into some expanded, hybrid shape. “And I guess once you start looking at the whole thing as space, it sort of becomes like a building. I had, let’s say, three walls holding me up. And then you came and then I had four walls. I was even bigger and stronger and had so much more possibilities. But then I died. And when I lost my senses, my magic, my life….those were my walls and they all collapsed.” She crumpled and flattened her hand to illustrate her point. “And if it wasn’t for you reminding me that you, my newest support, were still standing, I would’ve just stayed collapsed. But you did. And I finally had one whole thing to balance and fill myself with. I could finally get off the ground, and maybe our therapist will have some thoughts about that, but I can’t see that as anything but a good thing, as you saving me. The problem is, after that…” Morgan sighed, wincing. She still didn’t know when she could’ve done anything different, what opportunity she could have realistically taken to build herself better and spared them this. Maybe if she had just magically known what she knew now, if her mind hadn’t been so scrambled by death that the thoughts wouldn’t seem so hard to get to...but that wasn’t how it had been.

“I wish I could figure out another way for it to have gone, besides me just listening to you and staying alive, but I can’t. We did the only things we could think of, so it can’t be anyone’s fault, but...the problem is after that, there was still a whole me. A whole world, a whole building, and only one support to carry me. And before, when I had three, you could come and go and we could separate for those awful times, and it would hurt, but I was still upright. But with only one support for my whole self...every time you left, or seemed to leave, every time I was afraid you just might, or afraid you’d even be angry with me, I would collapse again.” She put her hand through the motions, growing to only a fraction of the old size and collapsing, like a heart losing the will to beat. “I mean, remember that first time you needed to go away for the night and I wrecked the house and you found me on the floor? There’s just so much of me, I can’t be held up with only one piece, no matter what it is. It’s just absurd to build anything that way, much less me, right? There’s not enough to hold up everything that was, much less everything and more.” She sniffled, blinking back a tear. “And it took me having to go without you, to fear the absolute worst for you for so many awful days, to realize that. But, when I did, I felt like the only way I could figure out what else to build myself up with is to keep going without, with intention. And I found another wall to hold me up in Strawford, when I gave my hurt to the earth and my heart to the universe. And I’ve found another in my arts and crafts work. Housing those new supports in the studio right now help remind me that these are separate and sturdy and mine. I’ve been a lot less insecure about wanting you now that I have that space, if you haven’t noticed.” She pressed another kiss to Deirdre’s neck. “I can just picture that place and know those supports are there. And I’ll be working again soon, and Leah said I could help with the library, and Remmy gave me the keys to the supernatural sanctuary, and I just know, because I know I belong here and the universe is holding me in my own place and my body is more than just a walking death--I know I have all the supports I need even if they aren’t firmly set into the ground yet. And so I feel confident in letting myself be so much closer to you now than I did before. I’m not so fragile anymore. You are my only and dearest love, and you are still one of my supports. You just help me have more, and not just the bare minimum. It should be like that, shouldn’t it? Us making the world wider and brighter than before…?”

There was a measure of anger to feel how easily her fears buckled once reassured by Morgan. It was childish, Deirdre thought, that her feelings could be so sensitive. Her sensitivity was something she had fought to hide away, bury deep and forget about. And yet— The stiffness in Deirdre’s body caved, and she reached for her girlfriend, curling fingers around the fabric of her dress. Her gaze followed down to the demonstration unfolding in her hand. She could see the little house Morgan was talking about, that happy, stable life. Then she could see it crumble, and become a fraction of what it once was. Morgan built her supports again, she was still building them. Some of this rang with familiarity; she knew this. But the ease of the metaphor gave Deirdre a chance to reflect on something she never had: her own life, and its supports. She had her house too, or she did. And then she had Morgan, and her house wasn’t so much a house as it turned out to be a cave. But she’d only managed just the one support, afraid of anything else—confused, lost. She missed the routine of her cave, but that had crumbled now. Deirdre drew her hand back with a frown, making and un-making a fist. It made sense, and with the sense, a terrible hollowness. There was something wrong with her and no amount of fixation on fixing Morgan and their relationship would suddenly give her any of that purpose she wanted.

Morgan had explained this in some words before, but Deirdre hadn’t made much sense of it then. Hearing it again, the picture was more clear. Deirdre sighed. “I suppose.” She unfurled her hand and stared at the wrinkles in her palm. She drew her other hand back from where it had fastened on to the front of Morgan’s dress, trying to draw her own house connecting the wrinkles. Morgan had done fine on her journey to stability, but Deirdre hadn’t moved an inch; she didn’t want to move. Her mother often admonished the predictability of humans, the creatures of comfort that they were, but Deirdre felt herself no different. She missed the cave. “I don’t think my world is very wide or bright, Morgan.” She spoke mostly to her palm, which had yet to yield a usable house. “But I think I get what you mean now.” Giving up her quest, she bundled her hands together and looked up. “Thank you. I think I understand it now. Truly. Properly.”

“No, I guess it’s not,” Morgan admitted with a sorrowful whisper. She had urged Deirdre, even when things were good, to find more than just her to sustain herself on. But her love, in all her fear and bewilderment, hadn’t found the courage yet. Then again, she was afraid of picking out the color of the furniture, so things had to come in small steps. “But I have every belief that it will be. And you’re welcome. Any time, my love.” She bundled Deirdre into her arms and threaded kisses along her forehead. “Can you tell me what you need right now, or what you want? I want to stay close with you tonight and take a couple hours in the other room sometime tomorrow morning to meditate alone. But I don’t want you to hurt, or be afraid. So just tell me, okay? We’ll find a way to make the pieces fit.”

“But it wasn’t supposed to be. It’s not supposed to—“ Deirdre slammed her mouth shut, hissing down a sob. This was a rhetoric that she had touted since the day she met Morgan, and she knew Morgan hadn’t grown any fonder for it. “I just want to sleep.” She sighed, humming her way into a more comfortable position in Morgan’s arms. She bundled her face into the crook of her neck, tangling her long legs into Morgan’s. The pieces of their bodies already fit, the rest they’d just have to figure out. “Can I sleep here? Can you hold me? Can I just...rest?”

Morgan crooned contentedly as Deirdre wriggled in and their bodies made a home with each other. “Oh, is that all, just sleep?” She teased softly, her voice lilting with comforting warmth. “No back rub? No helping out of your dress? No ambient lullabies or kisses?” She caressed Deirdre as she spoke, giving her a squeeze that she hoped expressed that she had no objections if this was how they would lay for the night, petticoats and stockings and all. It had been so very long since they’d been like this, their stillness harmonizing just right, together and apart, whole and connected. “Yes, my love. I will hold you right here, happily, and you can rest.”

“I’d have to move to get out of this dress.” Deirdre laughed against Morgan’s skin. Moving sounded like just about the worst thing she could think of. A truly dreadful thing to ask for. “Just sleep.” She smiled, eased in the arms of her love. It felt a little more like walking together then, and less like blind stumbling. Maybe she’d apologize in the morning for being so dense about it, but that was a morning problem. All she wanted now was the peace of Morgan’s embrace; she’d missed it more every second she had to do without it, and she relinquished herself to the feeling. With anguish alleviated from her mind, if not in permanence then just long enough to humor the night, she was sure this trip would be good to them. 

For the first time in weeks, a gentle sleep greeted her. And beyond it, the flicker of hope, illuminated under New York City lights: tomorrow, a day as gentle as the night, spent in museums and cemeteries and— with little coaxing— a bakery. They’d watch the ball drop through their hotel window. They’d hold each other, kiss and dance and laugh as Deirdre expressed her disappointment in the lack of big apples. Then she’d sleep again, restful as the day before. And hope would grow, and love would remind her that they carved their own good into the world; walking together sounded like just about the best thing she’d ever heard. And it made everything possible.

Even a brand new year, better than the last.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

The Headless Halloween Special || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Halloween

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Some good stories are real, and there he is.

CONTAINS: mild gore, death

Stuffing cartons of milk behind dusty boxes of organic tea was a thankless job, and not a job anyone should be doing at all, actually. But Deirdre grinned wide and lopsided, proud of herself and hungry for more in the same breath. In any other month, she might have spared one pitying thought to the poor underpaid, overworked employee that would undoubtedly come across it and the acrid scent of spoiled milk. “What should we do next?” She beamed at Morgan, brilliant under the harsh grocery store fluorescents. For the better part of an hour, going around their usual shopping trip to cause what little bits of mischief they could, she had been bouncing on her feet, excitedly taking Morgan’s hands in hers and awarding her girlfriend generously with kisses and whispered affections. While delight of mayhem was nothing new, the season sparked a certain propensity inside fae, and especially for Deirdre--who had never gone this far into October without indulging a ring or two. “Oh but we do need---” Deirdre reached into the shelf and plucked a particularly pungent tea off the shelf--pungency known by way of trial--and dropped it into their basket. She was sure if she steeped enough teas together she’d be able to concoct a mixture that Morgan could taste. So far she’d blocked her own sense of smell and created something that had just a whiff of taste for Morgan. It might have helped to use something with more inherent flavor, but she was nothing if not determined. “There,” she grinned again, leaning in to press her lips to Morgan in another flurry of kisses. “Ooh, we should switch prices around! We can stick some ‘out of order’ signs on things too, I brought a marker! And--and--” Her eyes darted around, seeing a kaleidoscope of possibilities. In the end, she turned to Morgan and her grin softened as it so often did for her love. She wanted to know what Morgan thought, more than anything. It didn’t matter to her how many soda bottles they hissed out of their carbonation, only that Morgan was there with her. And just as her grins softened, her words were coded: “....you know I think we were actually supposed to get milk. Last I remember we were out.” This was one for I love you and no one moment would ever be enough.  

Following Deirdre down her impulse rabbit hole was like dancing blindfolded on Hanging Rock. Morgan could sense the edge just beyond her, in the side eye of the tired cashiers, in the double-take of a fellow customer as they took a can of what they thought was baked beans but what was definitely spaghetti-o’s thanks to Morgan’s deft re-packaging skills. But Deirdre, floating on the call of distant mushrooms and the buzz of All Hallow’s Eve, reeled her from exhilaration, to panic, and back to safety again with just a crook of her finger, a stretch in her smile, a whisper in her words. Nestled so close on their misfit misadventure, with Deirdre’s lips fluttering around her like so many butterflies, Morgan almost forgot her fear that this wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her, keep her.  Morgan fished out her notebook and craft tape from her purse and handed them off to her girlfriend; she had come prepared.

“I think that’s an excellent idea, my love,” she said, stretching up to kiss her back. “I bet you could switch the bathroom signs with the storage closet signs too.” It was going to make a lot of work for a lot of underpaid and undervalued workers, a pain Morgan understood too well, but whatever havoc they wreaked was better than losing Deirdre for two weeks and risking just as many people getting maimed and murdered with her mushroom brainwashing. So, really the universe should thank her for the mischief or keep its trap shut.  And even if Morgan was hesitant to admit it, the experience was a little thrilling, especially given the night. In trying to get nearer to Deirdre’s mindwave, Morgan was able to unglue herself from some of her concerns. Tomorrow, when the black and orange crepe went down and the skeletons folded into boxes, she would worry about the consequences. But here, under the dangling cardboard Frankensteins and Draculas, it was all hazy and not quite real.

Grinning, Morgan peeled off a sale sticker and moved it across the aisle before saying, “When we pick up that milk, we can take an extra carton to hide somewhere til it spoils in a few days?” She said. “Ooh! Or maybe by the heating vent, so it gets smelly faster and the smell circulates!” She steered their cart toward the refrigerated section. “Also, what are your thoughts on cream or eggnog? It’s so pungent, it might be good to try. But I want it to be something you like too, just in case.” She pulled open the frozen doors and took out some of the cartons they needed when the sound of shattered glass broke through the hum of the everyday. Morgan clutched Deirdre’s sleeve. “Babe…?” She said, voice shrill in a way that asked what’s going on?

Deirdre set about making her ‘Out of Order’ sign, the letters big and bold and straight, her best attempt at typeface. The idea to switch the bathroom and storage signs was genius, and she whispered as much to her girlfriend, aglow with affection for her. They hadn’t quite mastered pushing a cart around while stuck together the same way they had walking, but Deirdre tried it anyway, body flush against Morgan’s band and arms wrapped around her waist. She had her love sandwiched between her and the cart she commanded, delighted at the ease at which she could lean down and press her lips to Morgan’s neck. Eggnog by the heater was such a good idea, yes, she mumbled her praise there, equally as gleeful about the mischief they could commit as she was about simply being in the presence of her girlfriend. In fact, she could have left the mischief altogether, and basked in her love. The part of her that retained sense, questioned if Morgan thought this was as fun as she did. She hadn’t stopped to ask yet, and just as she parted her lips to do it, shattering glass cut across their conversation. Deirdre snapped up, trying to hear the residual ring of a scream---maybe Regan thought it was a good idea to shop. But there was no scream, just the murmur of confused humans around her. “Someone must’ve just dropped a jar…” She sighed, eager to get back to their fun. But as her grip snaked tightly back around Morgan, she considered that the crash was too loud to be a tiny jar. Was it a whole crate dropped? No, there wasn’t enough rattling for that. Deirdre knew her glass breaking well, and it sounded more like a window. Then, as she considered it again, did she really care about someone’s window? There was Morgan and the prospect of stinky eggnog and what did it matter to her if the window broke and---Deirdre blinked. She remembered Constance, and her rage and havoc, and frowned.  “Let’s go see, okay?” Her voice turned soft, “it might just be nothing, but there’s never anything wrong with going to check.” She took the cart from Morgan’s grip and took the lead as she moved them along.

She stiffened suddenly, shot up like an animal on alert. The cart slipped from her grip, crashing into the shelves, letting a few cookie boxes topple down into their cart. Deirdre thrust her hand into her pocket and fished out her enchanted choker, snapping it around her neck. She was aglow with something else now and she turned to her girlfriend with a toothy grin. “Someone’s going to die!” Deirdre took Morgan’s hand and sprinted to the scene---she couldn’t be late for the show, after all.

Morgan froze alongside Deirdre, her anxiety firing off one catastrophe after another in her mind. Constance loved breaking windows. If her classroom invasion was anything to go by, she was sure to like a grand production too. Maybe she’d gotten tired of waiting and she’d plough through the whole store so there was no one left to help her. Maybe she was trying to turn into a poltergeist on purpose, and reach that last bit of power she didn’t have yet so she could have all the fun she wanted. Or maybe this was some new eldritch horror. Maybe this was how the literal apocalypse started. Neither Deirdre nor her were going to know if this was where Morgan died. It wouldn’t be as peaceful as before. She wouldn’t be held or loved, she would just be here one second and gone the next, like that moment when you realize you’ve tripped and you’re about to fall. It would end with a gasp, and she would be all alone, and maybe… Deirdre fumbled for her choker and Morgan pulled her down as if for a kiss. It gave her something to hold on to, and if anyone was watching anything but whatever had just happened, they wouldn’t see the veins on her face. “You’re beautiful all the time,” she muttered, eyes flickering around them. Was it going to come when she turned around? Was it coming right now?

Then Deirdre pulled back, smiling like a kid in a Christmas special.

Morgan’s face pulled with confusion. “Uhh…” Before she could find the words for a question, they were sprinting down the nearest aisle to a cluster of humans holding out their phones to capture the mayhem.

“Deirdre—!” She hissed. “Wait! What if it’s—!” Dangerous? Potentially lethal?

A twenty-something guy stood in the middle, doused head to foot in blood. It was clumped all over his face and glasses, and running brown, ugly stains on his tweet and t-shirt combo. “Not cool, this was my grandpa’s vest! And you know what, he makes better fake blood than this! From the grave!” He pointed angrily and took off his glasses, trying in vain to wipe them clean while stained all over. Morgan followed his finger, still clinging tight to Deirdre so they wouldn’t be separated.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…” Morgan whispered.

The horse was darker than dark. Morgan felt sure he wasn’t even black at all, just that her brain didn’t know how to process the void of death turned into hair and lean, restless muscle. Its eyes seemed to glow beneath its long, wild hair. Steam rose from this nostrils as it sniffed and reared, looking for something. The rider was dressed to match his steed. Everything from his cloak to his gloves were black and brought to a shine. He—and it must have been a he, Morgan had seen the cartoon specials and the horror movies and the legends too many times for him to be anything else—clasped the bridle with one hand, assured and patient. She had never been more awed or scared of such calm. How could such menace be so still?

He turned to survey the store. How he could manage that with no head, Morgan couldn’t guess, but she felt someone, something’s attention on her and felt it fade again. He lifted a saber, bright as the glinting spurs on his boots, and steered the horse into the crowd of shoppers, already taking aim.

Morgan watched, too transfixed to look at Deirdre as she hissed, “Is that what you saw?”

Deirdre didn’t know how, when or why it would happen, only that it would and that it would be here. The sting of holding in a scream would be worth it to watch the last moments of life for herself, in person---as if a vision would spoil the surprise. If only she’d known who she’d be seeing, she would have let her scream rip across the store. She could imagine no greater honor than announcing him with a wail. “The Dullahan…” Her delight grew in invaluable measures. She pulled Morgan close to her, arms strategically protective of her neck lest the Dullahan have slippery fingers. She smiled at the argumentative human now marked for death, she hadn’t screamed for him just yet, but she committed his face to memory so she might watch him later. “Where the banshee screams, the Dullahan claims…” She whispered, gaze fixed on him. He was better than any story described him; horse darker than any words could commit to description, cloaked in finer material than her grandmother cared to describe, and more commanding than their mythic retellings did justice to. “Don’t worry,” she held Morgan tighter, just as she would were they cuddling together at home, watching a movie. “The Dullahan won’t take what he hasn’t marked.” Which meant she didn’t need to keep her body wrapped around Morgan like a protective sheet, but even knowing the Dullahan’s truth, she wouldn’t be moved from concern. “You don’t have to look but…” Her warning died on her lips, sequestered between her grin. She watched his spine whip clack to the ground, dragging along as he trotted slowly, saber raised in his other hand. Would he let her come close enough to touch it? Would he let her wield it, just once? Surely, he must know of her too. The banshees and the dullahan were always linked in her stories, in the way her family spoke of his legend. Should she snap a picture to rub in her cousin’s faces later? Enamored, she nearly missed the main attraction.

It was the old man’s head who went first, a satisfying swish in the air and then a dun-dun as it bounced dully on the floor--one short hop and then nothing. Then it was his wife, who hadn’t gotten the chance to finish her screaming. The small crowd murmured around them, the bloody college student groaned his disapproval. It wasn’t realistic, he said. Too much blood, he complained. Such unnecessary gore, he could do better. Deirdre wanted to see him try. The Dullahan’s steed raised into the air, whinnying, small plumes of fire snorted out as it turned and started the trot back. Glass crunched beneath its feet as the humans conversed amongst themselves; was it fake, was it real, did they get a discount now that their fruits were blood-covered? Deirdre reached for Morgan’s hand and tugged her along. “Come on, let’s follow him! I want to talk to him. I want to--Fates, there’s so much I want to do.”      

With Deirdre’s arms snuffing out the rest of the world around her, Morgan could almost imagine that she was watching some strange immersive play. The Dullahan’s whip was so finely articulated, she couldn’t catch how it held together except by magic. It glistened under the fluorescent lights in the supermarket, cracking louder than the rotation of 90’s pop hits wheezing through the speakers. The tune changed to “My Heart Will Go On” as the blade slashed through the air. Blood flew in one curling wave through the store to the tune of a romantic flute. Morgan covered her mouth, trying not to salivate as it bounced to the floor. Even with all she knew, all she understood about the world, finding out the headless horseman and all those Scottish legends were true sent her brain into some out-of-body experience limbo until the head rolled right to her feet as if it wanted to say hello. The brain inside was probably so juicy and firm, like a fucking burger fresh off the grill. Then came the second, the old woman’s scream cut off in favor of Celine Dion jumping into the next key. The bodies thunked to the floor, which ran slick and heavy with blood. They would be soft for an hour or two, the veins and sinew tender as spaghetti. Morgan’s stomach growled and begged for just one Halloween treat. Surely no one would notice, just one mouthful and--

Then they were running.“Deirdre!”

Morgan whined, missing her chance at just one cheat night from her diet, but she managed to call out a, “Totally just performance art, y’all! Sorry about your groceries!” Before they were too far away to be heard. They chased him through the parking lot, halting by the Subaru just in time to see the Dullahan’s horse launch itself onto a car and then into running traffic with preternatural ease. It was so bewildering she couldn’t help but start to laugh. What else was next? The Great Pumpkin? Morgan scraped a glob of blood from her cheek and sucked it off. “When were you going to tell me the Headless Horseman was real? And a what--ethereal banshee groupie? Banshee idol?” She asked. From Deirdre’s rapturous voice, she had a sense that she was at least close. “Come on, fangirl, you’re not gonna beat a horse on foot.”

“He’s not supposed to be real!” Deirdre beamed, committing the sight of his horse, whip, and headless body to memory. As a child, she only dreamed of him. There were paintings and pictures, of course, but none were like this. And though she often tried to bury the little girl that she was, she tried to awaken her now. She wanted to point and say there he is. Some good stories are real, and there he is. She met Morgan’s gaze, bright with glee. There was something else she could point to here, and she wished to stir her past awake again. There’s the Dullahan and a woman that loves you, both are real, both can be real. She would have been happier to know it. “Just a tale we enjoy,” she explained, giddily hopping around the parking lot. There was no horse of her own to give chase in, though she looked around as if one might pop up---the night was magical enough, it only seemed fair. She turned to Morgan and the Subaru, far from a noble steed but certainly...better than running. “Okay but drive really fast,” Deirdre bounced into the passenger seat, forging a seat belt and pushing down her window until she could stick her head out and watch the Dullahan. By luck, he seemed to be following the roads. “And of course I’m a fan,” she pulled her head back in, “have you seen him? His whip is made from spines! And fates I wish I could dump blood on the people I screamed for, or ride in to the sound of thunderous hooves. We’d dress like him with our robes and claim heads with our scythes but it really isn’t the same.” With a sigh, she fell back into her seat. “I don’t understand why he’s running away. I think by all accounts, he should really like me. Do you think I was too excited? I was too excited, wasn’t I?” When they caught up to him, she’d remember to tone it down.

Morgan’s dry incredulity melted at the sight of Deirdre’s childlike excitement. Four year olds in line to meet the ‘real’ Santa Claus couldn’t be any closer to joy than Deirdre watching the glint of that shiny whip in the evening. Morgan kissed her then, wrapping this moment in all its strangeness up and keeping it for later when needed to remember happy times. They had no trouble speeding out of the store. By now someone would have realized that the elderly couple had been killed, for real, and would need to stay put and give statements if they weren’t simply frozen with shock. Soccer moms and dads were most likely out inching along residential streets with their small armies of foam-clad superheroes, princesses, and monsters. College kids, already walled up in their parties. The winding freeway was quiet. The mist that rolled down was fine enough that the scant cars ahead were easy to spot and weave around, and down and down they drove, until Morgan could see the sparks flying up from under the horse’s hooves in the dark. “Oh, babe,” Morgan laughed. “No such thing as too excited. I want to remember you being this incredibly excited forever.” She gave Deirdre’s hand a squeeze, keeping her tethered down to the car. “Maybe he’s on a tight schedule. You should get your camera out, or throw him a gift to catch, or a scream, so he knows who you are.” Morgan’s hands tingled on the wheel as she spoke; she had that feeling of being on the edge again, whirling into somewhere unknown, like anything could happen next. It was enough to silence the worried questions at the back of her mind.  “Also, when we get back, you absolutely  have to tell me about the dress up games you played. And the stories. I know of human written stories about headless riders, including at least one female apparition, but I’ve only read Washington Irving and that silly Disney special that gave me nightmares.” She nodded at Deirdre encouragingly, there was no one around to endanger as far as she could see, and they were so close, she was almost on the Dullahan’s heels. “Go on. Let yourself have this.”

The Dullahan was a myth to her family no different from love, care, and humans of equal status. What did it say that she could see the Dullahan galloping away in front of her? That Morgan was holding her hand, speaking with laughter about her excitement. “Camera!” Deirdre exclaimed, wide-eyed. She searched herself frantically for her phone. Not that pocket, no that was a knife, that was also a knife, move knives---“Got it!” She unlocked her phone and found the camera app, a skill she had only recently learned. “Do you think he’ll want to take a picture with me?” She turned to Morgan, alight with possibility. Maybe he could come over? Would he come over? But as the car moved closer to him, Deirdre harnessed her chance and stuck her head out the window. “I LOVE YOU,” she screeched with inhuman power, too thrilled to contain herself enough to stop from cracking the Subaru’s glass. Web-like ripples shot across the windows, but Deirdre’s attention was on the Dullahan. He had no head to regard her with, but it seemed like he slowed, ethereal saber raised in one hand, whip cracked against the road in the other. Deirdre’s body lifted, she fell back into her seat a smile the widest her face could manage. “Did you see that!?” She laughed with bubbling energy. “I think he was waving at me!” She turned back to him, now at a loss for what to say. She held her phone up and snapped the best photo she could, a blurry piece of his whip, and savored it. “Are we going to follow him?” She asked. “I know we really didn’t get to look at the bodies back there, but I bet he’d let you have a snack from them, if he gets to another tonight.”  

Deirdre’s excitement was so infectious, it almost took the edge off Morgan’s brain cravings. “Babe, you have to hold the phone still long enough so it can scan—babe, tap and hold the center of the screen for better exposure, the thing that looks like a sun—“ Morgan was laughing too much to be very helpful. She fished in the cup holder for her phone and tried to arrange it on the dashboard to take a video. She thought she mostly had a set up going that wouldn’t get them in a wreck, when Deirdre’s voice broke in shrill, wild waves over the night. Morgan hadn’t been thinking about the windshield when she encouraged this. The glass shattered, bowing outward as if it couldn’t get away fast enough. Morgan swerved, ears ringing, and almost launched them off the side of the road. The ringing faded in moments and she slammed on the brake so they screeched to a halt on the shoulder, just in time to see the Dullahan rear his horse ahead of them, sabre slicing the air under the full golden moon. Morgan couldn’t help but stare in a daze of disbelief of her own—was he showing off? Then he launched onto the other side of the turnpike, pounced onto a passing convertible to cut another red splatter before diving into the trees to take his next bounty.  Morgan deflated, laughing deliriously. “What the fuck…!”  She looked sidelong at Deirdre, panting as if she were alive again. “What the fuck…” It was all she could seem to say. Morgan varied the inflections, trying to squeeze the buzz of gobsmacked sensation electrifying her brain into them. When even those words felt like nonsense, she finally managed, “This is the officially the craziest Halloween I’ve ever had, and we’re not even in our costumes yet.”

It seemed like the Dullahan was here, and then he was gone. Deirdre watched him leave with her body pressed against the dashboard, trying to catch the last glimpses of him. “He left,” she pouted, but in the still of the night, another excitement rose to her. She looked over at Morgan, hair tousled by the wind, cracked windshield beyond her, and crawled across the console. She took her laughter against her lips, trapping them in a kiss. “I love you…” she mumbled, spilling her own delight. The Dullahan was gone someplace away from them, and she still had a dozen complaints about that, but for now she’d only wanted to bask in their glow of adventure together. “It’s the best Halloween,” she rasped, breaking into laughter. “Fates, I love you so much. I don’t know how we got so lucky to see the Dullahan, but I feel like it’s all you---your magic. It has to be. You make everything perfect.” She grinned and kissed her again, and another time for good measure. “I can’t believe he left.” Finally, coming down from her height of glee, she pouted, half-crawled into Morgan’s lap. “I didn’t even get to ask him if he liked that offering I made when I was twelve. And I took such a terrible photo...and his whip! I wanted to hold his whip.” Deirdre leaned against her girlfriend, sighing. “You’re amazing...you know that?” With a chuckle and a grin, mischief in her voice, she kissed her love again. “Let’s get you something to eat and then go home, okay?”

Morgan welcomed Deridre’s kiss, scooping her the rest of the way into her lap. Her hands tingled, clumsy, and she hit the car horn trying to cup her girlfriend’s ass. A passing car honked back, the shotgun passenger flashing a middle finger. “Sorry! Happy Halloween!” Morgan cackled. She hid her face in Deirdre’s shoulder, pressing kiss after kiss until her laughter petered out into soft giggles. “I love you, too,” she sighed. “So much, Deirdre. Stars above, this wouldn’t be fun at all if you weren’t here.” Without Deirdre she would have been terrified, and then scarfing down the elderly in the middle of the supermarket and ending up arrested or meme-ified on YouTube. But her head was light and tingling, maybe from repairing some minor damage, but mostly from the strange thrill of following Deirdre’s company wherever it led her. As they kicked back the chair and Deirdre finally settled herself against Morgan’s body, the zombie felt herself falling back into the warm safety that was them.

With the Dullahan gone, the only sound was the woosh of cars speeding past them, the night song of hungry bugs and owls and bats. Inside the Subaru, cracked and dented again, the quiet was perfect. “I don’t have any magic left in me to summon your childhood heroes for you, babe,” Morgan said. “If there’s any kind of magic going on, it’s the two of us, together. Everything’s better when it’s you and me.” Sometimes better was just hurting less; sometimes, more delight and strange, incomprehensible wonder than she knew how to process. “If you ask me, he wouldn’t have waved—twice—if he didn’t think you were pretty great, Deirdre.” Maybe he was a menacing show-off by nature, but with Deirdre on her shoulder, the kindest reading of the night felt like the right one. “You’re amazing,” Morgan murmured, growing soft and quiet as the rush continued to peel away from her like so much traffic.

She snorted dryly at Deirdre’s suggestion and kissed her again. “You just want to get out of Linda’s costume party,” she teased. “I’ll just have the leftovers at home. And we’ll have our own fun and treats before we arrive fashionably late for the party. How’s that for a good time?”

“By Death, Fate, and everything there is to be in this world, I love you Morgan. With Fate’s command, I love you. I love you.” Deirdre’s prayers became a nonsensical jumble of ancient phrases and what she could remember of her family’s religious teaching. Her mother would have called it blasphemy to take Fate’s name and press it to the skin of a once-human, still wholly human. But Deirdre thought it was right, it was true. Worship of Morgan was one she would gladly take part in, even squished together in the same car seat at the side of the road. Magic was a good way of putting it; something so beyond natural order that it defied law and rule. Something freer than the wind, more nebulous than the stars. Something that was just the two of them, together and at peace and in love. “And if you ask me,” she started with a smile, lifted her teeth from where she had begun nipping at Morgan’s neck, “he wouldn’t have showed up at all if the world wasn’t kind and good, just like how you make it.” With a huff, she pulled her arm out from where it had gotten crammed between Morgan and the armrest and reached it up to cup her love’s cheek. “I wish someone would have told me years ago that good things are real; the Dullahan, nights like these...you. Ignorance might have helped convince me that there was nothing better, but I think the truth would have made life so much easier to get through. If I knew I’d be here, one day, my days would have been colored with happiness.” Just as they were now. She leaned down and kissed Morgan again, content to stay there, content to—Deirdre groaned, and then dissolved into laughter. “I was hoping you’d forgotten,” she breathed, “I don’t want this night to end, sue me.” And, well, as far as she was concerned, Linda’s costume party was a doomed event by concept alone.

But she knew, with resounding truth, that everything was better when they were together. Even parties hosted by their annoying neighbours. And so, she smiled and said simply: “that sounds perfect to me.”

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Lover, I Was Lonesome || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Deirdre struggle to find a new normal

CONTAINS: brief mentions of parental abuse, dysfunctional death gals

The day after she’d screamed and fought, Morgan put herself on three different therapist’s waiting lists.‘The strain of the holiday season makes this a very high traffic time for us, unfortunately,’ one receptionist said. To which Morgan replied, ‘Gee no kidding!’ before fumbling with her Decap while the lady assured they’d get to her as soon as possible. Then came the embarrassing Google searches, followed by the books, most with not-so-fun fill-in-the-blank work sections. Between learning about her anxious attachment style and questioning some of the healing codependent advice (why shouldn’t she put her partner’s needs first as often as possible?), Morgan hit her limit within a few hours most days and spent the rest of her time cooking and trying to be normal. She made a lot of casserole, a lot of soup, and spent the quiet hours searching for a conversation that wouldn’t hurt or turn complicated. Today the special was broccoli and cheddar with a soft baguette from the grocery store. Morgan smiled hopefully as she presented the tray. “Hope this tastes as good as it looks. How’re you doing today?”

Deirdre had developed a system, or rather, had devised a plan. She was ready and willing to do whatever she needed to make things okay, and had spent her hours staring off and running scenarios in her head. She could do this, or that and each thing had its risk and success rate and for a while, for the moment, she felt confident she could fix things. She felt hopeful. Caring for Morgan was a thought she welcomed into her mind, far more desirable than the other thoughts that lingered. She straightened up and beamed at her girlfriend as she entered, soup on a tray. “Well it smells great, thank you.” In truth, she was a little tired of the soup, the constant liquid meals had started to make her feel like she didn’t have teeth. Sometimes she snuck around for an apple just to remember how to bite things. But she smiled, shifted, and welcomed Morgan to her. This was part of the plan, and the plan had been carefully thought out. It needed to be perfect. It began in a way she considered simple, with the fae. “I’m doing well, thank you. Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Mirrored District. Did I ever tell you what the fae did for Lydia?”

Morgan set down the tray and busied herself with making Deirdre more comfortable, piling and fluffing the pillows around her and elevating her legs. She didn’t mind Deirdre straining herself where exchanging comfort was concerned, but anything else seemed cruel now. Slowly, she eased herself into Deirdre’s side, resisting the urge to tangle up completely. “Where should I touch you, or is there a tense spot in your muscles I can try to work out? I’m okay with doing that for you, right now.” She gave a guilty half-smile, acknowledging there was no guarantee how long she would feel this way. “And no, or I was too upset to listen. I remember you said it was beautiful, and kind. I am glad to know that much. I’d want that to remain somewhere.” She tried to imagine something kind coming out of the fae funerary rites Deirdre had allowed her to partake in. It didn’t seem possible, but stranger things had happened in this world.

Deirdre shook her head; Morgan wasting her time worrying about her was not a part of the plan. “Oh, it’s fine. You’re tired now, and if you stop suddenly, I don’t think I’ll remember not to look hurt about it. Like that time when you were massaging my back and got that phone call?” Morgan’s back rubs were a strange occurrence; though more welcome as time progressed. So welcome, in fact, that when Morgan had paused to look at her phone, Deirdre had twisted around with such pain and betrayal in her eyes that she rivaled Anya being told she could not have the food from Deirdre’s plate. Needless to say, such a look could be a powerful thing. And her plan was important. But even so, moods to be doting should be answered, especially if it was what Morgan wanted. “Here, take my hand.” Her wrist was still wrapped from the burn (it would scar, much to her chagrin) but her nails had great luck growing back. “It feels stiff from the nails and, you know, it’s fun to hold.” And she didn’t think she’d suffer too greatly if Morgan abandoned her task. “Well, often, the fae plant trees, or flowers or whole gardens, and take great care to grow them in a certain fashion. Not all fae have the same rites, but I’ve found that practice to be the most common form of remembrance.” She closed her eyes. “There’s this beautiful tree for Lydia in the local aos sí.” She opened her eyes and turned to Morgan with a soft smile, more telling in its emotion than she meant it to be. “I wanted to ask if you’d like to come with me to see it, one day. I’d like to take you.”

“Just in my head, my body doesn’t really, you know...” Morgan mumbled in protest, but she didn’t really mind taking on something more chaste and less charged with memory. She settled in and took Deirdre’s hand, carefully massaging the muscles in her palm and fingers. When Deirdre made her offer however, Morgan went stiff. “Are you…” Sure? That sounded so stupid. “I just mean, I know how important those spaces are to you, and what they’re probably going to think of me, and you by association. I don’t want you to get hurt or wind up in some local fae politics mess because of me when we’re not even--” Together. Us. “I don’t want to taint Lydia’s memory or the closest thing she has to a grave for you. You should be sure…” She finally lifted her eyes to meet Deirdre’s and stilled again, jaw slack, as she took in her expression, how openly she dared to want this. Morgan swallowed thick and shivered, feeling her fear rising. “I always want to be a part of your world, Deirdre,” she whispered, just as earnest. “Of course I would like to. I want you to show me everything, I just...you shouldn’t risk your world for me right now. One day when things are better with us, when you’re really, really sure…” She nodded. Yes. Please. Morgan couldn’t think of anything more precious for them to share, and Deirdre made it sound so simple, even effortless she wondered at her inability to grasp it.

“Well, when your head gets tired…” she let the sentence trail off with a kiss to Morgan’s forehead, as if she could bring life and energy back to it—or bring it rest. “We’re not even—“ Deirdre repeated, filling in the gap. She blanched. “A-are we not still dating?” Had they broken up in some silence that she wasn’t aware of? She knew their circumstance now, but even so, she continued to think of Morgan as her girlfriend. She wasn’t sure if she could think of her any other way. Her plan didn’t include it, didn’t consider it. She faltered.  “Oh, uh, I can just tell them you’re important to me then. They should understand that.” She swallowed. “And it’s us. Our world. The fae world is...yours too. You’re not fae, no, but you’re important to me and I’ve already told you that I don’t want to be where you’re not welcome. I won’t let them say anything about you.” Most fae she spoke to already knew she was in love with a non-fae, and she bore their judgement with a smile. “I’m already really, really sure, I promise. But if it’d be better shared when things between us are less….as they are now, I can wait.” She met Morgan’s eyes and grinned. Hope fluttered in her chest, and gratitude mouthed from her lips. “I’m okay with it,” she assured again. She had been okay with it for quite some time. Gone were the days of fear. She loved Morgan completely now, unrestrained. She couldn’t imagine loving her any other way. “You might still get some harsh comments though...but hopefully we can set them right.”

“I don’t know what we are right now,” Morgan said. More than friends, less than lovers in the strictest sense. They cared, deeply, and Morgan knew that the quiet days ahead of them would be spent figuring out how to be better to each other and themselves. But it didn’t seem right to call this by the same name as what they had before. For the earth’s sake, until recently, Kaden had been more of an emotional support than Deirdre in the wake of Lydia’s death. As Morgan held Deirdre’s gaze, squeezing her hand through her fear, she realized that she took a little comfort in having an escape hatch, in the freedom to think of Deirdre as whatever she needed to from one moment to the next. “I think we’re figuring that out. Or I am, at least,” she said.

But Deirdre was certain. To hear her speak of Morgan as someone to turn away from this place for, to find joy in, you’d think nothing had happened between them at all and Morgan’s choice was a foregone conclusion and everything would somehow be alright even though Morgan’s heart still throbbed with hurt, burning to run and hide. Morgan sputtered for words. “Let’s wait, please, ask me again, l-later, I-I—-” Don't understand how this is so easy for you. I just told you I could hurt you again and I have every good reason to, this shouldn’t be easy for you, but you weren’t the one dropped on her ass and shut out so maybe— Morgan shut her eyes, doing her best to block out the sudden deluge of thought. “I’m scared,” she whispered, voice tremulous. “Can we just lay here?”

“Oh.” Deirdre’s eyelids fluttered, blinking rapidly. Her voice was a quiver, small enough to get lost under any other sound. It nearly did; suffocated by their ticking clock. “I understand,” she said, though she didn’t really. Not entirely, at least. There was a small chance Morgan would emerge from her thoughts, and from the passage of time, and decide that she enjoyed being unattached from Deirdre. Her stomach twisted. Her plan began to crumble. “That’s okay.” But it wasn’t really. “I can wait, no matter what conclusion you come to.” And she could, but now her waiting was plagued by strange thoughts. Did she tell people? Would Morgan? Was it wrong to hold her then? Would Morgan be kissing other people? Should Deirdre? Why did Morgan want her here then, if that was the case? What exactly was there to figure out? She asked none of them, and smiled slowly, her brows pulled together. Whatever Morgan came to, Deirdre would accept, what else was there to do? She bit her lip and willed the conversation to move on before she cried quite pathetically about the topic. It was her fault, anyway, and she needed time to parse a new plan in her head.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked. For several things, but for the moment, right then, for speaking of Morgan as her love. Perhaps it was a thing to roll out cautiously now; she’d have to think about it. “We don’t have to talk about that. I’m sorry.” She held her tighter, shaking her hand from Morgan so she could clasp both around her. “It’s okay. Yeah, we can just lay here. I’ll be quiet.” She swallowed.

Morgan buried her face in the crook of Deirdre’s neck, eyes squeezed violently shut. Even if the sad puppy swell of Deirdre’s eyes didn’t give her away, she could feel the other woman hurting underneath her. Morgan considered getting up. Don’t do this, don’t make me feel guilty for what you started, don’t make me sorry for being hurt— But more frightening than Deirdre’s devotion was Morgan’s own frustration. She hurt from her loneliness, from the memory of being shut out and rejected, and from backing away from this. This world Deirdre occupied so happily was so close, Morgan could sink her hand into it, but her skin felt like it would erupt in spikes if she did. Everything was fine a minute ago, she could almost believe in sleep again, almost believe in falling into this piece without having to think about it again,  it was so, so fine. Why was she thinking about running now? Why couldn’t she get a grip and just explain herself? (Because her trust was shattered, and her faith in the future as a matter of course along with it. She knew this, but that didn’t make her prickle with something like self-loathing all the same.)

Morgan tried to distract herself with slow, stiff breaths, wrestling her panicked mind for control as she worked her words as steadily as she could get them. “You don’t have to—I didn’t mean it like—I just need a minute. You have to give me a minute, give me time…”

“I’m sor—“ The words died on Deirdre’s tongue. She loosened her grip around Morgan, freeing her to leave if she needed to, yet steady enough against her if she wanted to stay. Morgan had said a minute, and Deirdre counted dutifully in her head. She didn’t speak anymore, nothing about how it was okay or how much she loved her. Her face held a tender expression, though under her affection, she didn’t offer anything more—no pain, no sadness, no confusion. This wasn’t a part of her plan, and she imagined it, Morgan would have been soothed by the show of devotion. It was a look, I still love you, I still want you, I’m here, we can have this. It had been ten seconds when Morgan hadn’t left, Deirdre’s hold tightened. Thirty seconds, she was still there, Deirdre pulled her in again. Sixty seconds. “It’s been a minute,” she said, loosening her grip again. “Do you need another?” She paused before she started the count again. She dared to try something more bold—or in their case, more gentle. “We can go outside. It’s supposed to be cold tonight.”

Morgan scrambled to sit up. “Yes, I need another,” she hissed. There was no anger this time, only a clenched, earnest effort at self-control. “I need five, ten, I don’t know!” Outside sounded good. Calming. Quiet. Morgan made to rush out of the room, maybe what she needed was in the fresh air, or in more time to herself (stars, she’d had so much fucking time to herself already)—Morgan stumbled, crashing into the wall as she slipped on Deirdre’s cane. Deirdre. Right. She picked it up and fumbled to lean it against the couch within reach. Her hands were clumsy and shaking, but at least when it fell for the third time, it was somewhere close. “Ten,” she said suddenly. “You can find me in the garden in ten and ask if I’m ready.” She looked at Deirdre’s sad, giving face, and didn’t know who she was upset with more. She rushed herself back to the door, calling hoarsely behind her, “I’m not where you are right now. You pushed me away too good and I’m just not there right now, I’m—” Sorry, she wanted to say she couldn’t afford to apologize for this. Morgan ran the rest of the way out of the house. It was funny, even when she curled up on the brittle winter grass, riding out her panic with tearful gasps, she curled her hand against herself as if Deirdre’s was still in it.

Deirdre sat up with Morgan, releasing her from her arms. “I’m sor—“ the words died in her mouth again. She wanted to know what she had done, or what she could’ve. Did Morgan want longer than a minute? Should she not have counted? Her answers came tumbling at her, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from apologizing again. She watched Morgan stumble, and her hands reached out and receded like it were a dance. Every time she wanted to help Morgan, she remembered that she had caused this and pulled back. But every time she pulled back, she remembered that she wanted to help her. “Ten.” She repeated; she could do ten. “I didn’t push you awa—“ She swallowed and shut that sentence down. She had been gone for days not by her own desire, and she had grieved so clumsily not by her own understanding. But the semantics weren’t important. Morgan was hurt still. And Morgan needed time. Ten minutes, to be exact. She didn’t ask where Morgan thought she was right now; the only place she’d ever been was where she loved Morgan devotedly and pure. She didn’t ask what it meant that Morgan wasn’t there. (Would Morgan be kissing other people?) She sat still, she watched Morgan leave, and she counted. After two minutes, she realized ten was a long time to be staring at their patio, and turned to the soup. Broccoli and cheddar was a nice flavour, all things considered. It occupied her until six minutes ticked by. It took another two for her to grab her cane and move outside. She leaned up against the frame, calling out, “are you ready?” She moved closer and asked again in a quieter voice.

Morgan had never timed her bouts of panic before, but she could tell a minor episode from something more serious. By the time Deirdre came out, her tremors had ceased and her mind, so tired, was floating somewhere beyond her dead eyed stare into nothing. Maybe it was with the stars. Deirdre had loved to comment on those. The world unfroze at the sound of her voice and Morgan nodded mutely before she realized it was evening and she was laying in the grass and she should probably use her words. Slowly, she pushed herself up until she was sitting. She did not meet Deirdre’s face but she did call out, “...Yes. Thank you,” with only a little embarrassment about her gracelessness.

Deirdre nodded, she had been prepared to start the count again, but wouldn’t act like she wasn’t happy to be by Morgan’s side again. She dug her cane in the ground and limped over there until she was close enough to throw her cane aside and fall to the ground. “What does it?” She asked, trying to scoop Morgan back into her arms. “Is it holding you too tight? Kissing your skin? Is it my words?” She wasn’t sure she could stop, if the answer was loving Morgan, but she could sidestep her displays of affection, if it would help. And though she might just have been asking to be run from again in trying to figure it out, she couldn’t stop until she knew how to be better for Morgan. She needed her answer, she needed her plan, and if it took another ten minutes and another after that, she’d wait. “Should we not talk about us? Whatever’s better, please tell me.” Her arms found their place around Morgan, anchoring herself against her. But loose, as she learned to, until she knew it was okay.

Morgan sagged against Deirdre without protest. It was nice here, in the curtain of her hair, the soft pillow of her chest. She didn’t rush to speak, just in case something clear and helpful came to her out of the ether. When it didn’t, she said, “It’s just so easy for you. I don’t understand how it’s so easy for you. All these plans, these things you want, just talking about them like of course it’s gonna happen and there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing that’s gonna go wrong...” The Deirdre she’d first known wasn’t like that at all and she found herself envious at this one’s fortitude. Morgan pressed one of Deirdre’s arms harder into her body. “It’s not holding me, I felt okay when you were. Fuck, it even felt good. Everything about how we were on the couch made me feel like, maybe we can do this, maybe it won’t be so hard. We were together and I felt like I was helping you and you were so kind even after the way I’d just been—” Morgan shut her eyes, chasing the memory. “And then you tell me about this huge thing, this amazing, important huge thing you want to do like it’s already decided, or almost decided, and you were so hurt when I said I don’t know what we are, but how could I possibly know? Everything broke! I was alone for almost a week, I spent days before that thinking you would go from pushing away my hands to not wanting to touch me or be with me at all. It’s not easy for me. None of this is easy and I can’t rush it or skip it. Yes, I still have my feelings for you, but that didn’t do anything to help me before this. And yes, I actually felt safe for just a few minutes, but none of that tells me when or if I’m going to be able to trust you enough to really be with you again. I don’t have that to give. And maybe I’m being stupid, but what freaks me out is—I feel like you’re asking me for that trust that I don’t have and I get scared that my only options are to cough it up or hurt you, or else it’s already being decided for me and I’m just supposed to come around...” Morgan pressed the end of her palm to her eyes, a preemptive measure against tears. She might still be on the downslope from her panic if her avalanche of thought was anything to go by, but Deirdre asked, and Morgan wanted to be good to her.

Deirdre eased them down, against the cool grass. “Loving you has always been easy,” she said, as though that might explain it. “Accepting that love...less so, but now that I have...it’s also easy. In that it comes naturally, at least. Like instinct, like the only thing I want to do.” She stared up at the stars, she missed how easy it was to look at them all the way up there and forget what was happening down below. She’d lost that ability sometime in her youth, when looking at them, all she could think about how much it hurt her neck. But that ease had returned to her sometimes, in moments. “The ones we made,” she said after a while. “You asked me once what stars I liked. It’s the ones we made together up on that roof—the line, the squiggle. I tried to tell Lydia about it once, I don’t think she was so amused. But I like to look for them when I need it, they’re easy to find because they’re always there. It’s like that. It’s easy for me because nothing has changed in my heart or mind; it’s always there.” She closed her eyes, committing herself to the darkness without the line, the squiggle. Her heart thrummed slowly in her chest, each beat seemed to say the same thing—a song to Morgan. I love you, I love you, I love you. “I didn’t mean to make it sound that way. I just offered it. I’m just offering all of this. I don’t expect anything from you. It, um—it was sad to hear that you didn’t know what we were. I’m sorry I didn’t hide that better for you. But you don’t need to have it figured out, or trust me, I’m not asking I’m just...offering. Like you can or you can’t or you can sit in the middle it’s okay to me, all of it.” She sighed. “That’s all I meant.” The line and the squiggle, though steadfast, did not bring her answers. Her heart, though singing, did not give her the words to speak. And her mind, though hopelessly devoted, couldn’t untangle this mess. “Let’s just stay here, outside.”

Morgan shifted in Deirdre’s grasp, restless, until she flattened in the grass so the ground held as much of her as possible. For a while she didn’t speak, but stared up at the stars, trying to decide if she really did need to run again. Was it her fear making her skin itch, or was it her beast? Why did she still feel so relieved to have Deirdre next to her if she didn’t want to bundle herself off to deathly ever after? “It was easy for me too, before this,” she said at last. And it’s not a question of if I—love you.” She barely got the words out, breathing them more than speaking. Every time Morgan felt the words on her lips, she feared she was signing herself away to the unknown or admitting to something criminal. But stars above, she really did love her still, so much so it felt like a liability. There wouldn’t be anything to discuss or wait for if she didn’t. “It wouldn’t be fair to be with you without trusting you. And I don’t think I’d want to anyway, not after what we had before. But I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have your feelings either, even if—” She laughed dryly as she finally realized their completely batshit reversal. “Even if, yes, from my own experience trying to date you, sometimes stuffing feelings that frighten the woman you want to spend more time with is the way to go. You follow her cues, you take her bursts of affection and her sudden silences, you try to figure out when she needs to be followed, when she needs you to keep away…” Morgan shrugged. She couldn’t help the way she was now anymore than Deirdre had been able to back then. “I am trying to be better too. This is at least better than what we did the last time I ran out of the room, right…?” Give me some credit for effort here, she asked silently.

She couldn’t help but look up on their constellations with fondness. “You can see both the squiggles out tonight,” she murmured after awhile, leaning a little closer so she could point them out and trace them with her finger. “There’s the little one, and the big guy. And the crooked bone, the pentagram, the great line…” Morgan lowered her hand, letting it fall next to Deirdre’s. Her fingers twitched, hesitating, but eventually slipped underneath the banshee’s and cradled them. She tickled gentle caresses along her fingers and lightly scratched letters into her palm (D-E-I-R-D-R-E). They had played this game on her shoulder once. Deirdre guessed wrong no matter how fast or slow Morgan moved, and she suspected it was just so they could have another innocent excuse to be touching. She could sense that soft place they’d shared on the couch like fresh cookies from a few rooms over. Not close enough to have, but she could find the way eventually if she tried. If she coaxed Deirdre into touching her hair again, or kissing her cheek, something to thrill her out of her fear... Morgan continued to play with their fingers as she thought. Their hands fit so right, and though the touch was only a whisper on Morgan’s own skin, her heart melted and quieted at once. If their world could just be a starry sky and thin grass and flowerbeds, if they could just fall in the water of memory and things hidden and wash themselves free of the past two weeks, there would be no question of if or maybe. Why did she need these questions so badly when ‘together’ was the thought that soothed her the most? She wasn’t sure, only that she did.

Morgan rolled herself until she was nestled against Deirdre, taking the banshee’s hand to cuddle with her. “This isn’t going to be easy for me. You know my history, Deirdre. I’m going to be a mess about this...” She kissed Deirdre’s knuckles and turned to the stars again. “Maybe we need some new constellations. What do you think?”

A thought rattled around in Deirdre’s head. A desperate explanation that she hadn’t left Morgan by her own choice; those days they spent parted were unfairly stolen from her, and her grief was a new creature she didn’t know how to tame. And then wouldn’t it all be okay? Wouldn’t that make all of it one silly mistake? Did she really need to accept that this could be one long, drawn-out ending? Things should’ve been okay, shouldn’t they have? But she had grown tired of fighting for herself; all she wanted now was to hold Morgan. And if this really was the end, she didn’t want to waste precious moments talking about herself. She shifted and tightened her hold, pulling Morgan flush against her body. “But I can’t have my feelings…” she mumbled, chasing the thought away with a sigh. “No, you’re right. It wouldn’t be fair. And anyway, don’t worry about me, it’s not so bad.” No, it was terrible. It was worse than bad, worse than worse. For a moment, she was lulled into thinking the comparison of this to how Deirdre had once acted would make the weight easier to carry. But this felt personal; it was her fault. She wanted to go back and ask that Morgan if it had felt personal to her then. Then she’d say it wasn’t, and ask if this was. “You want to feel good,” she said plainly, “and I can’t do that for you, not the way you’d need it now. You could get other people to make you feel good. I’m sure you know that already...but I just wanted to say it was okay. It might just be better...so it’s less scary.” Deirdre summoned forth every piece of training she knew about keeping her emotions hidden. She prayed that the tremble in her body and the quiver in her voice was invisible. “I mean you could sleep with other people, if you want.” She thought she did a good job of sounding measured, despite the circumstance. “A-and it was better. Thank you for that. And I’m sorry.” She’d gotten to the point now that she stopped knowing what she was apologizing for—every sentence dribbled apologetically. She might as well apologize for breathing or blinking or being herself; anything to make it right. Maybe time would take pity on her and skip to the end.

But she didn’t want Morgan to feel bad, and so she shut her mouth and dug her face into the crook of Morgan’s neck. Humor bubbled inside of her—wasn’t that what Morgan had tried when she was grieving? But where humor boiled and popped, where she pulled the strength to cover her emotional tracks, guilt toiled. She didn’t like keeping herself from Morgan like this, and especially not when she’d made the commitment to be more honest. It was wrong. It felt wrong. She raked her teeth along her skin, nipping at her shoulder; a distraction that went both ways. She couldn’t tell what Morgan was drawing in her skin, and she couldn’t ask to have it again. She got lost somewhere at the fourth line, so she made her own words roughly against Morgan’s flesh. Symbolically; even Deirdre thought it would be gauche if she started moving her teeth around in the shape of letters. Some acts of devotion were better left in the mind. “I like your mess,” she mumbled there, lifting her head up to take in the stars again. “And it’s fine, however it comes out, whatever you decide…” she trailed off. Sure enough, there were both squiggles, the bone and the pentagram. “I like our old constellations,” she smiled despite the pain that thrummed along her body. “But we can get new ones.” Deirdre lifted her free hand and traced the outline of one—once part squiggle and pentagram. “That one kind of looks like roadkill. See, it’s all flat and there are the ears.”

“Oh. Right.” Morgan burrowed her face into Deirdre, trying not to pout too obviously. I don’t want to sleep with other people, she wanted to say. Which was weird, because if Deirdre wasn’t so steadfastly monogamous, there would be a few friends in town she would consider propositioning for some casual fun. But Deirdre was that way, and Morgan didn’t want to hurt her. Please don’t say this, don’t hurt yourself like this. But could she really say that when she was asking for things to stay more open ended? Wasn’t that just more confusing, more cruel? Morgan shivered. What if they made contingencies for getting through the day more easily? What if Morgan could just stop feeling the echo of her world coming apart whenever Deirdre flexed her devotion like it was this great, infallible thing? “I um...don’t really know that I could...do that with someone else,” Morgan said, doing her best not to sound too upset. “But thank you. For...offering, for what this means…” Another, more distressing thought caught her: what if Deirdre wanted this too? Did she miss being pleasured, kissed, doted on? She wouldn’t, right? She wouldn’t be trying this hard if she felt like Morgan was too much of a broken mess to be with again, right? “Y-you know, it’s not even that I need to feel good,” she tried to explain. Well, it sort of was, she was so tired of her hurt and of herself. Any kind of relief from that with someone would do so much, she couldn’t even imagine it. But she didn’t want to invest her energy into looking somewhere else. She wanted this. “I just…” Need to be less terrified of going to pieces again. Need to feel like she wouldn’t. Not like she had on those days. Morgan shrugged, haplessly. She didn’t feel like it would make any sense, or any difference.

Stupidly, she found herself flashing a wide eyed look of affection at Deirdre as she said she liked her mess. “Really…?” With all the crying and the going from cuddling to panicking because stars forbid she surrender to some euphoric safety so absurdly complete there was nothing to catch her if she fell. Morgan kissed Deirdre’s knuckles again, harder, more urgently. I know it sounds fucked up when I can’t make up my mind, but please don’t give up on me, she wanted to say. Don’t build me a road away from you, just give me time, let me figure out my time… She cleared her throat, swallowing anymore building waterworks and followed Deirdre’s finger paint a new constellation. “Oh, I see it,” she said, beaming through her distress. “And what about that cluster over there, wait, that’s just Mars, but around it, there’s...maybe a chicken foot? Or maybe it’s a funny smile?” She wanted to press herself in harder, but she worried for Deirdre’s injuries, and how much she’d hurt herself for Morgan already. If only their hurt could unstitch itself and reform in a new shape as easily as their made up patterns in the stars.

Deirdre had rolled, more or less, practically, right on top of Morgan. “Hey,” she cooed, trying to stamp Morgan’s thought out. “It’s okay.” She pushed her face against her cheek, pressing her nose there and then her lips. “You could just make out with them. Or—well, it doesn’t matter so much. Just, whatever you need. It’s okay. If you change your mind about this tomorrow, it’s still okay. Or if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I just wanted to make sure you don’t—“ She swallowed, trailing a series of rough kisses back from her cheek to ear. “—stop yourself on my account. That’s all. That’s all.” She wasn’t sure why she was arguing a point that made her insides twist with fear. But by way of her instincts, she felt some manner of distress in Morgan, and moved to soothe it—even though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was soothing, or if she had. She held her lobe between her teeth, tugging gently before she pressed another firm kiss there. The desire to capture Morgan’s lips started small, so small she could ignore it as she lingered there, trying to soothe. But it spread quick and vicious, like wildfire raging up and across her body. It would have been okay if only she didn’t lean back, if only she didn’t catch Morgan’s eyes on her for the flicker they had been. Her body shook. “Fuck,” she hissed and rolled back, still pressed against Morgan as firm and tight as she could be, but now acutely aware of the places they touched; they fit. Their legs tangled, her arm around her, Morgan’s lips against her knuckles. She burned. Every injury faded away until all that was left was desire, longing, and Morgan. It was bound to happen to her again at some point, she figured. But even flush with want, she could put herself aside.

“It—um—“ Deirdre swallowed, her voice was a deep rumble, but she chased the sound away by clearing her throat. “I—I’m not sure I like the funny smile. Feels like it’s laughing at me, and I can’t ask it what’s so funny. But a chicken foot I can deal with. You mean a dead chicken foot, right?” Not that there was any other noteworthy kind of chicken foot. But like this, she could distract herself with the stars. Or so she thought. Even as she lifted her hand to point to a new design, she brushed Morgan and the fire found fuel all over again. She hated the stupidity of it; Morgan wanted time and Deirdre wanted to give it to her but her body could be strangely impatient. It didn’t understand why they couldn’t be together. Now it burned, and the fumes claimed bits of her thoughts. Her fingers curled against the cool grass, pulling it up. She could remember each time they’d laid down—when they’d just kissed, when they’d done more. Over there was where Morgan had her fire for Beltane, where she held tenderly the memory of the Morgan who wept because she’d felt good finally. And, yes, as her body wanted to remind her, where they’d had sex. “That one looks kind of like another piece of roadkill.” She pointed it out. “Maybe a raccoon though, it’s got a long tail—see there?”

Wherever Morgan’s fear lived, it wasn’t where Deirdre’s lips touched her. She pressed into the touches, mewling quietly in the back of her throat as Deirdre sank her teeth into her. She dug her hands into her arm, fastening them together. This was the place she missed, where she was unfolded so carefully, she almost didn’t feel herself letting go at all. She couldn’t stifle the needy whine that came out of her when Deirdre rolled back. Morgan was still close, and she could rest Deirdre’s fingers against her lips and take a fingertip gently to her mouth and imagine that shore in their imaginary world washing over them. She reached for Deirdre’s cheek and stroked it with great care as she spoke. Morgan didn’t need her full sense of touch to know she was hanging on by a thread. Her voice quivered out of control, her hand trembled in her grasp, and for some reason Deirdre was willing to send her off to some woman’s bed if it would make her feel better and break and keep breaking, until Morgan was whole enough to come back on her own. Stars above, she couldn’t bear for them to be like this.

Carefully, she pulled herself close until their foreheads touched, and drew her hand down until her fingers brushed along Deirdre’s lip. She smiled with all the tenderness she had in her. “I did mean a dead chicken foot,” she said with a breathless laugh. “But that’s not what I really want to say. What I want to say is…” So much. Too much. Did Deirdre really love her so much that she would offer up a freedom that would break her own heart? But Morgan knew she did, even if it didn’t make sense. It was in her eyes, in her painful restraint. Her poor banshee, conditioned to withstand so much and falling apart so horribly because Morgan had insisted so many times that her feelings were precious. Would Deirdre take back this gift, maybe? No, Morgan had made her need to choose freely. It wasn’t the outcome she was especially concerned with (her heart would come home to Deirdre’s comfort, or it wouldn’t and she would make do with something much less after all). What Morgan wanted most was to have the power, and the choice. There was comfort there, in being the one with all the cards, but she didn’t want Deirdre’s heart to be one of them. That wasn’t something she wanted to play with or deliberate like it was a neutral object. It wasn’t. Stars help her and her mess, it wasn’t. So what did she want to say? How did she ask for what they both seemed to want so desperately?

“I think what I’m most scared of right now is falling apart as badly as I did again, and I don’t know if that’s something you can be sorry for, or fix,” she said at last. “And whether that’s just this moment and being close enough to really feel you after so long and knowing you’d let me go if I asked, or if that’s how it really is, I think I want to be done punishing you for what happened. Those are different things, see? And, yes, I still want to know what you believe in after all this, what your principles are going to be now, how you want to live with what you did to those people and who you want to be, that’s a really important conversation we need to have, but I don’t want to do it right now.” She paused to brush her thumb along Deirdre’s lip and meet her gaze, trying to gauge how well she was following her. “I’m not, um, not not-scared, like I said, but what I want right now is to take away a little bit of our pain. And I want you to know where I...feel like I’m home. And I’d like to do that by kissing you. Really, really kissing you. I don’t know what to do about what’s going on with me, but I know that much. But only if you want, if it won’t hurt.” Her thumb plucked Deirdre’s lower lip as she lowered her hand to cup her chin. They were so close, they might even be touching already and Morgan just didn’t notice.”You’ve hurt enough. Just tell me…”

Deirdre was sure she was dreaming. The cool of Morgan’s forehead against hers, the feeling of Morgan’s fingers—gentle, too gentle—across her face; all of it was too good to be true. She closed her eyes and opened them again; Morgan was still there, still touching her, still gentle. She looked up to the sky with its lines and squiggles, pentagrams, roadkill and chicken feet; Morgan was still there, still touching her, so gentle. Wasn’t this too much for her? It was almost too much for Deirdre, who didn’t have the heart or capacity to run away from it. “T-the roadkill…” she tried to fill the silence. She felt like begging her; please, please, look at the stars and not me. If she couldn’t kiss her, if she couldn’t love her, this was too much. But she couldn’t summon the words to tell her to stop either. Did it help, she wondered. Did this tenderness not mean the same to her as it did to Deirdre? Questions she would not ask. Instead, she watched Morgan, waiting. Searching her eyes for the answer that would fall out of her mouth a moment later.

It would have been easy to lean in and take what her body burned to have, what Morgan seemed to want to give. But for all of her desire, her heart continued to be stuck in one place. “But what about you?” She asked, sitting up, rubbing her eyes and forcing her body to stop all of its whining and yearning. “If it’ll hurt you more to do it, if it’ll confuse you or tamper with your choices then I don’t….I don’t want to.” She turned to look at Morgan. Her lips parted and drew together into a thin line, parted and thinned, parted and thinned. “I–I understand what you’re saying, I think. But please don’t worry about my pain. It’s fine, it’ll go away. But you–you–“ Her gaze fluttered around their backyard, as if answers might’ve lurked in the shadows. When she turned to look at Morgan again, she asked this time if she was sure. If she knew exactly what she was asking and exactly what it would mean. If she was okay ignoring her fear for the moment. It was a lot for her expression to say, a whole conversation unto itself, but she needed to know. Is this okay? Would it be? Was she sure? “You don’t have to, you know that, right?” Of course she did, of course she thought about that. Maybe they needed to have their conversations first before they crossed this line. They had their practice from the past, and the hodgepodge order of romantic operations they followed. But Deirdre had always liked their mess, their freedom of affection, and she leaned back down beside Morgan, forehead-to-forehead. More than anything else, she knew this: she was tired of all the time she wasted not being with Morgan when Morgan was all she wanted. And whatever it meant to be with her—waiting, not-kissing, holding her in silence—she would do it. There was nothing else she’d rather do. “Will it be just once?” She asked. “Because I can’t—well, I can, if that’s better. But you have to tell me so I can take as much air into my lungs as possible first. If it’s just one, I’d like to make it as long as I can.” She paused. “Only if it won’t hurt you too.”

Morgan probably should have thought of Deirdre’s questions in the half second she’d played this in her mind. But in her surprise, she only went still, following Deirdre’s movements, trying to keep up with her arguments, which endeared her with their selflessness as much as it maddened her, because here they were on the same page with their desire, again, and no one was crying and Morgan’s head buzzed with want, and how could they seriously be waiting while their stars aligned this perfectly and there was no telling how many minutes or hours it would be until they fell out of place again? Impulse control had never been their strong point when they were apart.

“Where I’m at right now is wanting to kiss you more than I’m afraid of breaking because of you,” she said simply. “And yeah, that’s new, and I don’t know how long it’ll be this way but...I mean, we already have safewords and touching games, right?” They didn’t have any for this situation yet, but Morgan trusted herself to come up with one in a minute if she needed to. “We can do things to manage our comfort levels and check in and make us...more safe.” She gave Deirdre a meaningful look that she hoped expressed how much she was trying despite the impulsiveness of her idea. “Tell me to stop or pause and I will. And you’ll do the same for me. Hasn't that always been true anyway?” She knew she was flattening a complicated situation into a few measures for the here and now, but ‘now’ was all Morgan could understand with any confidence. “I don’t ask you for things I don’t want. Which, considering my last few requests, this might seem weird and confusing, but that’s what this already feels like for me! Everything I’ve said to you tonight has been true, I promise!” She laughed sadly, well aware of the contradictions at play. “Even this part, about wanting to kiss.” She brushed her nose against Deirdre’s as she laid back down, welcoming her into her arms. “You can say no, we can go inside and get you cleaned up first, you can do whatever you need, whatever you want. But I don’t feel like it’s gonna hurt.” Morgan let out a shaky breath to steady her voice, hoping desperately that she was right. “I think it’s gonna be like having you back, and having a good piece of us back, too. And I definitely want that one big, long kiss to start with, but I’m feeling very open to more after that too.”

Deirdre nodded; at some point, she’d stopped parsing what Morgan was saying and had been watching her lips. At another, the blood thrumming in her ears had grown so intense she stopped hearing her entirely. Once she understood that this was okay—through some kind of osmosis—the rest didn’t seem so important. She moved, more or less, practically right on top of Morgan, and closed the distance between them. It had been weeks since she’d last kissed Morgan like this—fierce and heady—but her body remembered it just as much as it did breathing. She knew what Morgan liked, how Morgan liked it. She had one hand pressed against the small of her back, urging them closer. And the other tangled in her hair, tugging her back. It was a system of pushing and pulling, one her body ached to explore. Morgan was right, in the end, it didn’t hurt. And it did feel like being home, being them, having a shard of their world back. For as long as Deirdre could keep her mouth to Morgan’s—she would later thank her banshee lungs for their service—she could forget why exactly she wasn’t supposed to take this in the first place. It was always like this, just the two of them. Like they carved their own pocket of space and time and curled up in it together. She kissed her like she loved her more than air. She kissed her like she was sorry for the things she’d done, and hadn’t even done yet. She kissed her like she’d forgiven her for her sins too. She kissed her like revelation and benediction. Then she kissed her like a woman whose lungs were burning, but was too stubborn to part. She imagined that having passed out because she wanted to keep kissing Morgan for longer was funny, but ultimately meant that if there were to be more kissing after, she’d miss it. Now, if her mother had said while drowning her that these were skills she could use to make out with the woman she loved for longer, she would have been notably more excited about it. But she hadn’t, and now panic and old memory threatened to bubble over if she continued.

With a whine, she parted, rolling onto her back as she heaved in air. The world drizzled back into focus. First with the grass, cool and sharp. Then the wind, sporadic and whistling. And finally the sky, brilliant and familiar. Deirdre turned to Morgan, pressing her forehead to hers again. Her lips brushed hers, as if to ask quietly if she was still feeling open to more—and if that openness meant right now. There were mistakes to correct in that other kiss, after all. Things she had to make better. “How are you?” She breathed. “Are you feeling okay?”

Morgan devoured Deirdre’s lips as they kissed. She was starving. Stars above, the ache in her chest was starving the whole time for this: her touch, hard and tender and loving and right; the tickle of her tongue; the bite of her teeth; the home built by the push-pull of her hands on Morgan’s body and Morgan’s needy sounds in reply. There was no history, no pain, and no fear. Whatever between them mingled back and forth was beyond that. Morgan whined against Deirdre’s lips in welcome as much as longing. She could tumble head first into Deirdre like this and think nothing of it til it was too late. It was so easy, the snugness of Deirdre’s hold was almost like warmth, and it had been so long since she’d been warm. With each pull, the gravity around their affection grew heavier, and Morgan couldn’t quite remember why she wasn’t supposed to make herself a wholesale offering, not when this was the best she’d felt in weeks.

When they parted, Morgan stayed where she lay on the ground, gathering her bearings. Her body was still whole, her heart was still quiet, the world was still in place. I am here, she told herself. I am here. I am. I am. I am.

The smile she gave Deirdre as she came close again grew all its own, its tenderness unbidden and unbothered. “I’m okay,” she said, pressing a chaste kiss to emphasize her point. “In fact, I just had an idea for us that I think you’ll like. The first of which involves carrying you back inside. And I’m not accepting negotiations on that one. I can already see your nose turning color from the cold.” Morgan gave it a gentle boop, then sat up, gathering Deirdre and her cane into her ams and carrying her back to the great room. She set her down with care, and, eager to stay latched to her body in case the spell of comfort was broken by distance, settled herself at her side, cheek resting against her shoulder. “This is related, but before I explain anything, can you tell me how your body feels? I know there’s a lot to negotiate between your pain and healing and wanting to be like this, but I really don’t want you to hurt right now, Deirdre.”

“Actually, I don’t think I’m turning color from the cold but—oh!” Before Deirdre could get out some clever words about the heat of her body, she was up in Morgan’s arms, laughing as they moved. It felt beautifully normal for them, and with the ease, a pang of guilt. She remembered now why her body craved Morgan’s with such intensity, and why she couldn’t ask the things she wanted to ask. I missed you, she had wanted to say. I love you. Her laughter fell off her lips just in time for her body to fall on to their couch. Should she not be so happy now, knowing Morgan was still in the place of decision? But she was made blissful by simple things and, namely, Morgan-related things; kissing her, being with her, talking to her, listening to the things she had to say. Deirdre swallowed. “It feels…” she wrapped her arms around Morgan and thought about it. Confusion crawled across her face, but she continued to answer the question. “It feels fine? Good, even...if that’s okay. Light.” Happy. But even if that part was obvious, she didn’t admit it. The body could be such a simple creature, happy when held or loved. It didn’t understand, but Deirdre did. “Uh, you mean the pain from the injuries, right? They’re okay. The more you forget about them, the less they hurt.” And she had forgotten about a great deal in moments prior. “I’m okay, I mean. Are you? Is something wrong? What did you want to say?”  

Morgan lifted her head to kiss Deirdre’s cheek once, then twice, close to the sly curve at the corner of her mouth she so loved to feel against her lips when she was alive. “I’m okay. And what I’m going to suggest we do tonight is hopefully going to help us stay okay. Or um, me, I guess.” She nuzzled her and tried to ignore the constricting feeling creeping into her chest. In their house, the world seemed real again, and she saw the ghost of her begging Deirdre to talk to her playing alongside the ghosts of them dancing and making love and wiping each other’s tears. Morgan fumbled quickly for her phone and brought up the timer app. She set it to three minutes, but didn’t start. “You once told me when I was really afraid of something good to just take it in small pieces, a little at a time. So what if we did that, but with...touching.” She met her eyes slowly, hoping this didn’t sound stupid or insulting. “We take turns, we say how we want to be touched for the next three minutes, and that’s as far as we have to think or agree to go. You could tell me you want me to play with your hair, or whisper in your ear or...anything. Anything you want me to do in three minutes, I’d like to try. And I’ll tell you, you don’t have to guess or worry, because I’ll just be telling you, for the next three minutes, I want you to hold me like you used to and kiss me slow and play with my hair. Please. A-and we can renegotiate if the other doesn’t want to do it, obviously. We don’t have to start the timer until we’ve agreed. And we can call stop at the end of an interval if we need, or before, but it’s just three minutes so I don’t think there’s going to be time for any weird surprises.” She bit her lip, balanced on the edge of excitement and embarrassment. “What do you think?”

Upon hearing this was something that would help Morgan, Deirdre perked up. She half sat up, so she could look at Morgan better, propped up on her elbows. She braced for the worst of it; actually, no more kissing ever, I hate you and your breath stinks (the last part was strange because Morgan couldn’t taste or smell, really, but she worried about it all the same). But giddy from their kiss, she felt like she could take anything--even the stinky breath bit. Still, her relief then, to hear that it wasn’t that, was palatable. Though she felt like she could laugh--did I say that? Actually I meant take the good in really large pieces, like one hour at a time. “May I?” She asked, reaching out for Morgan’s phone. She held it tenderly in her hands and stared at the timer. It took her awhile to figure out how to work the app, but once she got it, she flipped it back around to show Morgan: 00:03:01. “One second extra. Can I ask for that? Just one second more.” She held the phone back out to Morgan and smiled. By any standards, one second wasn’t a lot, but it was just enough. To hold her one second more, kiss her one second longer, feel her here just another second...that felt like its own infinity to her. A small gift, she thought, if it didn’t feel like too much for Morgan. If one second wouldn’t make the difference between good and bad. “I think it’s a fine idea, actually. I like it. If you wanted more than three minutes, you’d ask for another go? And what we’re doing right now, this would count as touching, right? And if you wanted me to stop, you wouldn’t have to say anything you could just...end the timer early.” She paused, her smile grew just a little more. “I like that.”    

Morgan nodded, “We just go three minutes at a time, taking our turns, until we want to stop. We don’t have to think about how long or short it’s going to be in all. We just take our little steps. You give to me, and I give to you, whatever we’re comfortable with having. And that way...maybe this part doesn’t have to hurt, for either of us. The stopping or the...any of it.” She looked down at the extra second, frowning slightly. Three was what she trusted herself most with. Three was more than one and less than five, which was where things could start to get dicey, she felt. Was it really that measly? Couldn’t it be enough if there was another coming right after? Did Deirdre need more from her that badly? It was just a second. Behind it, yes, there were a million and one wants, but it was just a second. An extra second was a lot less to ask for than a trip to the magic fae village where they might stay an hour and come home a week later. It’s just a second. “You can have one more second, yes. That’s okay,” she said. Then, clearing her throat. “I don’t know about how much just being next to you counts, but maybe it should, or...I don’t know. I came up with this sometime in the last five minutes.” She scoffed at herself, wondering if she was just throwing in another complication. This was too much thinking, not enough kissing, or cuddling, or-- “Can we just try now? What I said before, about holding me like you used to, with me kind of in your lap, and kissing me slow, and my hair-- if that’s still okay, could you please just be doing that? And then you can tell me how you want me to touch you after that?” Her brows met in a timid plea. Her hand clenched around her phone, thumb hovered over the start. Could this be enough? Could this be simple and enough right now?

Deirdre frowned and reached back for the phone, adjusting the time back to its plain three minutes. “No,” she sighed, her voice warm with care, “not like that. Not if it sounds like it just might be too much. Not if what you’re thinking is that it’s just a second.” She eyed the time, devoid of her special second. Guilt surged; what was she thinking? “They add up. Three minutes is a time you decided on to feel safe with, I shouldn’t have asked for more. I’m sorry.” Deirdre shifted, leaning up against the arm of the couch. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember the ways in which she used to sit. She wiggled awkwardly, trying to find it. “Of course we can,” she smiled softly. Three minutes was a lot, three minutes was more than enough. Yet there was something strange about knowing it was numbered; that without fail, in three minutes, it would end. There was a comfort in uncertainty, a hope. Could hope live in three minute intervals? There was something to cling to in the extra second, but not here--not in the three minutes. “Do you want to come closer first? I’ll start the timer as soon as you’re ready.” She smiled, setting Morgan’s phone on the table, her finger hovering over the button. She waited for Morgan’s okay before she pressed it, scooping her love into her arms. Her mind kept its own time, but even with the ticking clock, she was careful not to rush herself. In these moments, she never loved Morgan like there was a number on her mind, and she wouldn’t now. She kissed her slow, as instructed; played with her hair as though she might always; and held her tight, as if she didn’t know what it meant to let her go. In three minutes, they wouldn’t have this anymore. But until then, the world was theirs.

Morgan surrendered to Deirdre’s touch, pulling herself as snugly into her lap as she could. She was everything she had asked for and more, with the care that went with each pull and stroke. The tension in Morgan’s shoulders eased just a little and she moaned little encouragements to her as they kissed deeper, harder. Her hands clenched around Deirdre’s shoulders when the alert on the timer went off. Morgan reached to silence it, then brought her hand back to its spot cupping the back of the banshee’s head. Her lips tingled from the rough pull of the last kisses and the sensation made her grin with a hint of heady satisfaction. “That was really nice,” she whispered in Deirdre’s ear, tracing the tip of her finger around the shell. “It’s your turn, if you want it. I feel okay, good even.” She pulled away to meet her eyes and gauge her response. “You just have to ask.”

Deirdre knew the three minutes would end before the alarm pierced across their air. She kept time in her head faithfully; she had always been good keeping measure. And as she had guessed, three minutes was hardly enough, and there was no extra second to cling to. She closed her eyes, knowing they often revealed far too much to Morgan, and laughed the rest of her thoughts away. Three minutes was better than none, she reasoned. And if this was what Morgan needed to feel safer, then she wouldn’t complain. In truth, Morgan was doing a lot to keep them whole and Deirdre knew she should’ve felt better about it. But it was like this:

Counting time made it real. Marking their ends and beginnings gave them life. In three minutes she would be born to die when an alarm told her to. And she would know, every time, that it would only be three minutes. Not a second more. Then she’d pick from a list of her body’s desires for the most acceptable piece of affection that could break itself to fit in three minutes. And again, she would be born to die. When she was drowned to her mother’s slow internal clock--if she said two minutes, it was never two minutes--it summoned a similar sense of dread. Knowing at the end, she’d do it again. Another three minutes.

But three minutes was better than none. And even if hope couldn’t be born then, perhaps kindness could be. Deirdre opened her eyes and smiled. Her body did thank her for this, and her lips burned with remembrance. But beside her strange distaste for the measuring of their affection, she had a stronger aversion to being made to decide things. There were a lot of things she wanted to do, one was not better than the other. One was not more important. And only a few were acceptable for the moment, even less for Morgan’s current state. “Can’t I just give you my three minutes?” She asked. “I’d rather do what you want and I just...I just want to hold you, that’s all I can think of right now. But it sounds kind of--” Like a mood killer, and more so after just making out. “I’m just a little put on the spot right now.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe you can give me my three minutes to think this over? No--don’t--don’t! That was a joke.”  

Morgan withdrew her hand to give Deirdre a break from her teasing. “That’s okay,” she said. “But I do think...I want you to feel okay asking for things, and for us to be more comfortable making adjustments without getting really sad about it. I know decisions aren’t your favorite, but you don’t have to overthink it. Whatever comes to you at the moment is good. If you wanted me to hold you or just stroke your side for three minutes, I think that would be time well-spent. If this, us, is going to work even better than it used to, we should both probably put at least a little of our energy into thinking of what we want and not just how we can serve each other, as wonderful as that can be most of the time.” She smiled kindly and picked up her phone before settling back against Deirdre’s chest. “But this is pretty spur of the moment, so I hope you know you don’t have to feel obligated to ask for anything just for my...weird game, either. Would it be okay if you just played with my ear like I was before with you and gave me little kisses all over while you hold me for three more minutes? And then we can do something else if you’d rather not keep up with this.”

“But I don’t...want...anything…” Deirdre sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “No, your idea is good. And it’ll help you, and it’ll be good for us I just…” Morgan settled against her and Deirdre’s arms rose up, but hovered around Morgan. If there were going to be rules, she needed them to be clear enough to follow. “C-can I hold you now or should that be timed?” She asked, arms raised and quivering. “It’s just---it’s the time. I can’t know it’ll be three minutes and not a second more. If you just make it less than three minutes, but you don’t tell me how long, that’ll be better. I could do that.” Her arms sagged, victim to gravity. “No, your ‘weird game’ is a good idea, Morgan. I’ve just always enjoyed the...freedom of our affection. Of just doing what felt good one moment to the next. But I know this will be better for you, so I want to try it. And I don’t mind, really. Ironically, it’ll take me some time to get over the three minute part. Because it ends, Morgan. It ends and you know it does and you can feel it and then you have to feel it again. And maybe that feels like a relief to you but it is tormenting to me. But not if I don’t know it. I know so many things, Morgan, but I don’t want to know how this ends.” She shifted again, finally finding her place on the couch. “If you can just let me hold you for some random amount of time under three minutes, I think I’d feel better about it.” She paused and eyed the phone. “A-and maybe if the alert wasn’t so jarring. But at that point, I’m asking for too much, and I shouldn’t, I shouldn't.” She sighed and went back to massage the bridge of her nose. “B-but I can do what you want, I don’t mind doing that. I can do that. I can play with your ear and kiss you over.”

Morgan took Deirdre’s hand from her nose and cradled it carefully. “First of all, unless I indicate otherwise, holding can be a freebie. Secondly, neither of us knows how this,” she emphasized the word meaningfully to hold the two of them and everything they were and could be, “ends. There’s so many possibilities for us, and I think more than a couple of them are pretty good. Thirdly, I will adjust the time the way you’ve asked me to, and I can lower the volume on my phone or set it to vibrate. Fourth: you are allowed to ask for things. I want you, very much, to ask for and tell me what you need and want.” She threaded their fingers together and gave Deirdre’s hand a squeeze. “I’d show you the time as proof, but that would spoil the surprise,” she said softly. “Take a little bit to collect yourself, okay? And you can tell me when to start, if you still want to.”

If she closed her eyes and just let Morgan’s words wash over her, it was like nothing had happened at all. Deirdre blinked, perplexed. Was this how Morgan had felt, earlier? But that was different because Deirdre’s heart hadn’t changed. She stayed still for a moment, watching Morgan. Then, suddenly: “why are you being nice to me?” Was this, perhaps, the moment of affection before Morgan would leave? Those she had almost come to expect now, those brought with them the familiarity of pain. But this kindness was not as habitual as the changing of bandages or cooked meals. This was a special kindness, a girlfriend-kind of nice. “You know what I want,” she said. “As for what I need that’s just...well, I don’t really know. But I don’t understand why you’re--you said that you--we’re not--” She swallowed. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry.” But she had no more hands to get to her face with, claimed by Morgan’s grip. Her plea turned desperate, sincere, “what am I supposed to do, Morgan?”

Morgan’s heart sank. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for right now, Deirdre,” she murmured. “There’s no reason to be sorry, you don’t have to be. Hey--” she cupped her face and met her eyes, “I’d like to bring you close to me and wait for your breathing to steady a little. Is that okay with you?” Deirdre’s face was one big look of confusion, but she didn’t withdraw or tense, so Morgan went ahead and shifted them on the couch so she could hold her in a more comforting position. “Those are some...really big questions and I don’t know how many answers I’ve got, but I'm going to think while you breathe how we like to.” Morgan tapped the counting rhythm on Deirdre’s shoulder and tried to figure herself out.

She had thought, when the idea came to her, that their game would be the perfect blend of sentimentality and relationship building practice. Like a model student, Morgan had been attentive to her reading. Not taking disagreements and rejections personally was a little hard (they spent so much of their waking lives together, how could it not be a little personal? How could there not be something for her to change or fix to make things better? Herself better?) but it came to her mind now as she tried to coax Deirdre into breathing steady and focus on what was before her rather than thinking of all the ways she’d dug her heels into the ground about this in the first place. She probably should have cracked open a book or two about managing intimacy before trying this, but at least she was able to tell herself she didn’t really know better than this necessarily...

At last Morgan said, “So, I don’t actually know what you want right now in an immediate, tangible, practical sense. There’s that.” The only short answer she had to offer. Maybe she should’ve thrown in some more adjectives to make it last longer. Morgan sighed and let that go. Just be honest, she reminded herself. “I love you, Deirdre. I need more freedom and space than usual right now because I feel really, deeply broken and I desperately need to heal into a different shape than the one I had before. But I love you, and you are where my heart feels at home. What I want, long term, is a life with you that’s good and makes us both happy and fulfilled. What I want short term, is...kind of a mess, if you haven’t noticed.” She laughed dryly. “And you know, maybe there’s a textbook or three out there that’ll tell me it was a huge mistake, but kissing you in the grass made everything hard disappear and I actually felt strong enough to try something to help us instead of being afraid of our feelings and running or shutting down or lashing out. So, it was good for something, even if it was maybe really impulsive.” Fuck, she hadn’t answered anything outright yet. “I don’t know if I’m making much sense, but I’m being nice because you matter to me and I would rather us stay together than anything else, even if needing some of the stuff I’ve asked for makes it seem otherwise.” She pressed a lingering kiss to the top of Deirdre’s head. “What do you want to do, Deirdre…?”

Though in the moment it felt unnecessary, Deirdre breathed as Morgan had taught her months ago. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out. And as she breathed, she waited and she listened and she noticed: Morgan didn’t sound angry like she had before. She didn’t sound as plagued by fear or hurt. Knowing this, Deirdre found some part of her uncorking, as if it was safe to slither out. Like they might be able to talk like they used to. “Okay,” she breathed, she reached over to the table and grabbed one of the markers she’d used for her whiteboard. She rolled up her robe sleeve and uncapped the marker, screwing it into the back. “I want to help you, Morgan,” she said. This was both simple and true, and perhaps true because it was simple. “But I can’t do that properly because I don’t know what you need.” She started writing on her arm; no touching, no kissing, no holding for too long, no declarations of love. “I don’t mind giving you what you need. If that’s space, or time, or less affection...that’s okay. That’s always been okay. But I can’t understand your boundaries because you haven’t told me. I’m not your girlfriend but you won’t see other people. And kissing wasn’t okay, and we agreed on waiting a week, and then it was. And holding you was sometimes too much but not when done for three minutes at a time? And saying I love you was bad but now it’s fine?” She scribbled around her arm, trying to make amendments until all she was left with was a black mess. She stared at it, hoping it would make sense.

“I want us too, in the long term. And I love you too. And I told you I would wait, and I don’t mind space or time or anything else...and I understand if your mind changes, or if one thing that wasn’t okay now suddenly is...but I didn’t know what was okay to begin with. I don’t.” Deirdre looked up, rolling up her other sleeve, this arm was covered with bandages but she’d write across the bumpy surface if she had to. “I just want to know what I can do; what’s good for you and what isn’t. That’s what I want for the–um–short term, the immediate. Please. I-I know you blame me for—I know it was my fault but I—“ Deirdre sighed and slumped, “I’d just like to do what’s right for us. And I’ve wanted to talk to you, like we always do, but you were so angry or sad or it was too much and I just...I can’t figure it out by myself, Morgan.”

Morgan winced at the black scrawl taking over Deirdre’s bandages. She averted her gaze, mumbling a sad, “I get it, I get it…” She waited for Deirdre to finish before saying anything else. “I swear to you, I didn’t ask for those things to be cruel or confusing,” she said quietly. “I don’t even know what my rules are, they keep changing. Letting go of some of that anger and starting to forgive you the other day helped a lot, I think, but I know that’s not a full answer. I do get it. I’m just...a mess. I don’t know how else to put it. I’m still figuring things out for myself. If I had to guess, as far as today goes, telling me to take a trip with you that might zap away weeks of our life out here was terrifying because that’s a couple’s thing, and a serious risk, and a serious commitment. But kissing only lasts as long as you want it to, and I missed feeling you so much…” she brushed back Deirdre’s hair, massaging her scalp as she did. “I thought it would be good, if I stopped running away from wanting to touch you a little. We were good at that before we were good at being girlfriends, and maybe that could be something to get back that’s not so complicated. And we’d always moved with our impulses before anyway. But if it’s not good…” Back to the drawing board. “Right now, what I know is: I love you is okay, but it feels sticky when I say it sometimes; touching is okay, especially holding, but nothing past third base; involved plans for the future scare me; you can call me whatever you want, but I’m withholding terms of endearment until we’re more settled. I don’t want them to get ruined with my indecision. Other than that…” She shrugged haplessly. “Some stuff I have to be the one to fix.” Her hand moved down to cup Deirdre’s cheek and draw her head upward. “I am sorry I haven’t been able to talk. I just...it was what you said, being angry or heartbroken or scared or whatever else, and I just couldn’t, I was just that broken, nothing that did come out was right, and so I mostly didn’t. And I don’t know if I’m going to psych myself out tomorrow and feel less...me. But I can tell you I’ll try hard not to. Is this...helping? Is this making things worse…?”

“I know.” Deirdre smiled softly, “I didn’t think you meant to be cruel. And I meant it when I said I don’t mind the mess, I just want to know how I can help. Whatever that means for the moment.” She started writing the new rules on her arms as Morgan spoke, finding trouble writing with her off-hand but powering through anyway. “And the kissing...is that only for three minutes at a time?” She looked up. “And I never understood that baseball metaphor but so you’ll have to explain that later, in case I have it wrong. Our impulses are fine, but sometimes your impulses are panicking or hurting and we’re both trying to minimize that, right?” She scribbled some tentative words about that down. “And what about if I say ‘I love you’? Or if I want to say your eyes are like the frozen skin of a corpse? Would it be better for you if I just called you Morgan then, instead of ‘my love’?” She paused. “Do you still blame me? For all of it?” Deirdre looked down at the shaky list on her bandage. “Sad you is easier to talk to, she usually just wants to be held and she nods at least, when I ask her things. Angry you is harder because she doesn’t want to talk about the things we need to, she just wants to be angry. Panicked you is strange, because you’ve always let me hold you when you’re scared, but if what you’re scared of is me holding you...then there’s nothing I can do. Tired you is the one that wants to sleep, but can’t. Most of the time they mix together; you’re sad and angry, tired and scared, sad and angry and tired and scared. Your emotions are important to me, Morgan. And they’re not new to me, even if some displays of them are. But I’ve only known what to do to help because you’ve trusted me. And now that you don’t I…” Deirdre slumped, sighing. “If you could just tell me, even if it’s just to say you don’t feel like talking or that you do feel like talking...I can stop guessing about it. If that’s something you can try to do, I think it would be good.” She closed her marker and offered a small smile. “This is helping, thank you.”

Morgan tried her best to keep up with Deirdre’s questions. Kissing could be longer, but only if she asked for it first. Third base was another way of saying no sex or heavy under the clothes action, but everything else was fine. She wasn’t sure about the terms of endearment. She didn’t know why sometimes they were a comfort and sometimes they made her feel pressured. Same with I love you and the rest, but less so.

It was around this time that Morgan’s body started to curl in on itself. Her head slumped to bury itself in Deirdre’s hair and she held on a little tighter, for her own sake as well as her banshee’s now. “I don’t mean to make you guess…” she mumbled. “I’m guessing too.” At last Deirdre ran out of words for the time being and Morgan shuddered, relieved for just a breath of a moment. “I’m getting overwhelmed…” she said. “I don’t have answers for everything. But I trust you enough to kiss you. I trust you enough to let you hold me almost whenever you want. I—” She hesitated, shuddering. When she spoke  again, her voice was careful and quiet. “I’m trying not to blame you for everything. I know I didn’t always help. I needed you so badly, I was just in pieces and reacting and that didn’t help. And I know you didn’t mean to. But sometimes I walk into a room and it just hurts all over again. And sometimes I get scared, because if you didn’t understand what you were doing then and you couldn’t hear me, what if you don’t realize something’s happening and hurting me some other way and I lose you again. If it happens before I figure things out, maybe I’ll break again. And I don’t want to be the kind of person who ends up on the floor because you won’t look at me or talk to me. That’s why I need to do things differently this time…” Her voice warbled, growing sad. “If you need more answers, we can keep going, but I need a break first. Please… I just don’t know how to explain some things good or at all. Can we do something else for a few minutes? We don’t have to go back to kissing, we can just lay down if that’s better and then pick up the talk wherever you need us to. I know if it feels like too much for me it must be worse for you, but I need a break…”

Deirdre looked at her arm list, the lines shaky but the words clear to her. In her head, finally, she’d been able to create a picture of what Morgan needed. And now that she had it, she could help. Which was all she wanted, really. “No, no,” she smiled and wrapped her arms around Morgan, tight and steady. “This is perfect, thank you. I don’t need to ask you anything else.” All she’d needed was a modicum of guidance from a version of Morgan that wouldn’t shut her out, and then say it was her fault. ‘I don’t know’ was a perfectly acceptable answer but it wasn’t a helpful one, and not all their whims could be obeyed. And not all their instincts would be good. And the thread that the two operated on, once the same, was not one they could walk again. She understood that Morgan was saying they needed better, stronger threads; not a tightrope that led to each other. But it was because of this new shift that she needed to know, and if Morgan wasn’t walking it, then Deirdre couldn’t either. But she’d figure out what was to be done with herself on her own. “No, it’s okay. Thank you, Morgan. Really. I know these were hard questions, but I needed to know, and you answered them for me, and thank you.” She put her marker down and grabbed Morgan’s phone, showing her the timer. “Do you want me to kiss you now? I could do that thing you were saying, with your ears? Or, uh, yeah, we could just lay here.” She glanced over at the timer with a fond smile, as though staring at an old enemy whom the tides of time had softened her feelings for. In reality, three minutes was less terrible when she understood everything else. It would still end, and it would still ring, and she’d still keep count in her head and loathe the rigidity of time...but it wasn’t so bad. Not anymore. She turned back to Morgan, smiling just a little bit wider. “Thank you again,” she whispered, “it means a lot. Thank you.”

Slowly, Morgan unclenched her body and unfurled her legs to stretch over the cushions. She lifted her head, eyes still shut, tried to take a long, satisfied breath. She could feel something familiar and dangerous around the edges of her heart asking, Are you sure you’re not mad? I’m sorry this isn’t better, I’m sorry… Morgan winced, knowing better than to voice that. But it begged that much harder in her silence, and Morgan couldn’t shake the desire for being comforted. At last she lifted her gaze to Deirdre’s and felt whatever sad, hesitant question she’d been working on dissolve in her mind. Her face was so affectionate and warm, her smile glowing with the beginnings of confidence. It told her already, as if it knew she would ask, it’s okay. It’s okay.

Morgan smiled back, small and tentative. Her throat relaxed, and her words suddenly fell out with ease. “I just want to stay close right now, that’s the only part that’s really important to me. But if that’s still okay with you—” Then yeah, the last thing Morgan was going to turn down was the chance to be petted and soothed. “That would be really nice. But you never said what you wanted for yourself. I’m glad that you did something to take care of us. It was good and it does make sense, even if it was a little—” Morgan shuddered and wiped the corner of her eye, still tense from the experience. “But I want to give you something for you. After this, though. Or later. Just...sometime?”

Deirdre had never been great at thinking for herself, about herself, about the things she wanted. It was not selflessness that created her confusion, but a life that refused to value her desires. For years, as far as she was concerned, she didn’t have any, and she didn’t want any. And so, as Morgan mentioned it, she frowned and shifted. “I just want to take care of you; help you,” she said. Which was true, and she knew in some way she’d never be able to worry about herself if her mind was occupied with worrying about Morgan. But as she said it, she knew it wasn’t the right answer. “I—okay. We can do something for me, after. Sometime.” And as she thought about it, her ideas were either thinly veiled ways to make Morgan feel better or actions that were so inconsequential that it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t do them. She shifted again. “I just—“ She swallowed, abandoning the avenue of explaining her desires. She just wanted Morgan to be happy, and she saw nothing wrong with keeping that her singular desire. If she was disobeying her family, then she might as well put her whole heart into it. Unwavering devotion wasn’t new to her.

She lowered herself, pressing her lips to Morgan’s cheek, jaw, neck. Her mind enjoyed being occupied with the woman, and nothing else. There was nothing wrong. She didn’t need anything, and she certainly didn’t want anything. She wasn’t a person, she hadn’t been for a long time now, if ever. She worked her way back up to Morgan’s lips, mumbling there. “Thank you again,” she kissed once for each syllable. “I’m sorry to have asked it so roughly but thank you. You’re doing good; thank you.” And a dozen more for each of these. Her hand found familiarity tangling into and playing with the strands of Morgan’s hair. Her other moved to trace the bones of her features: cheek, jaw, neck. She was careful; above the clothes, chaste. She was dutiful, as asked by Morgan, as performed by all she knew of Morgan’s desires. What more was there to want? She wanted them good and okay again. She wanted what Morgan wanted. If a declaration of love was too much, she conceded: “thank you for worrying about me; I worry about you too.” Her affection was clear enough in the rest of her, all she didn’t say about loving her, wanting her, that it was all okay and that she would stay, was said in touches, breaths and kisses. She could do this, it’d be okay. And she didn’t want anything else. No, not at all.

Morgan’s icy fear melted under Deirdre’s assurances. Gradually, she flowed with her touches, pressing in, sighing, whispering the odd plaintive tease for more (I’m doing good? I am?), and ghosting her lips and hands over where she ached to touch back when she got her turn. The three minutes ended, silent this time, and Morgan thought the sting of pulling slowly back was sweet. Longing was hope in something like this, wasn’t it? Her watery eyes were softer than they had been a long time when she smiled at Deirdre. She reached out for her face, fingertips stopping just a breath away. “Thank you for helping me,” she said. “And for...assuring me, following all my strange impulses, choosing to come back home to me, trying to love me.” She was already leaning in, remembering how she’d decided that they should hold each other for free. It was as much a part of spending time together as looking into each other’s eyes. “I’m good to give to you back, if that’s something you want too,” she said. “And you could show me how you want to be touched, if you feel strange saying.” She offered her hands. “But only if...I mean, I want to be as good to you as I can be. We can just watch something, and I’ll fix dinner in a couple hours and we’ll stay here until you fall asleep, if that’s better. That’s okay. I just...I can give you my love like before right now. I can. But I’ll do whatever you want.”

Deirdre met Morgan’s fingers with her own, leading them the rest of the way, letting them greet her face. “Loving you is a choice I make glady, and not one at all--all of it, in the same breath. It’s a matter of fact.” The fondness had gone to her head, and in the moment, she’d forgotten why the Deirdre of days past refrained from such explicit words of love. “You don’t have to do that…” Her voice was warm. Tender. A no, let’s focus on you instead. Morgan had been denied her love for longer than Deirdre ever wanted, and she was keen to fill the space. “And how can I ask you to kiss me, hold me, touch me, when your heart has ached?” When three minutes was all Morgan could handle at a time and their affection had to be played like a game. How could she, when it was clear enough to her that someone else needed it more? She pressed her palm over the organ in Morgan’s chest that no longer thumped its fast, steady rhythm. “I can’t ask, Morgan. Your love is precious to me, and you needn’t strain yourself for it. Whatever it is you want, whatever it is you’d like to give, I will have gladly. But you’ve been through so much, and so much still yet lingers in you; the power it takes to remember how you once were, what you once had and could do when so much uncertainty plagues you, is too great for me to ask you for.” She thumped the old beat of Morgan’s heart against her chest. “You’re good to me just doing what you do. You don’t need to kiss me to make anything fair, you don’t need to love me like you did before when you find yourself with the energy to. I am not a plant you forgot to water. I am a woman who loves you, and I’ll be fine just like this.” She smiled, drawing her hand back. “Which is to say, I understand you’re hurting, Morgan. Your heart deserves rest. Love me as you want to, not as I ask--and if you can’t, if you find there’s no love you can give, don’t worry about me. It’s okay, Morgan. Right now, you can be selfish. All of it’s okay.”  

It took Morgan a moment to understand what Deirdre was saying. Don’t take it personally, she reminded herself, trying not to wilt too much. The more Deirdre went on, the more it became clear that her no that wasn’t a big ‘you’re taking too long and now I don’t trust you, so there’ kind of no, but something more complicated that maybe even buried a conditional yes. “But I want you to ask. I mean, not if it hurts, and obviously I’m...it must be kind of shitty, not knowing which me you’re gonna get, but the answer right now is going to be yes.” But that wasn’t everything. “It’s not like you’re a strain, I mean sometimes the stuff I carry makes other things feel hard, but--” That wasn’t the heart of it either. Morgan went quiet and leaned closer against Deirdre, chest to chest, searching for the simplest way down through her hurt. “I wanted to love you back so badly, before you disappeared,” she whispered. “For you to let me. For you to...want me. I think I went crazy trying to find the right, magic thing that would make you see me right or decide I was good enough or...I don’t know what anymore, it was stupid, but I would’ve given anything to be able to give to you and have it mean something. I know you were just hiding your injuries now, but...” She swallowed thickly and gave a resolute smile, trying to remind herself even as she coughed up more gooey, awful hurt, that she would not lose her shit and take things to heart if Deirdre decided keeping things one-sided was better. “It’s different if there’s something in you that doesn’t feel right with me touching you while I’m like this, if it hurts or it’s confusing or something else. But I don’t want you to be afraid or guilty if you want me. Because I do too. I’ve missed...I’d just really like to, and to know it’s good.” She met her gaze slowly. “Can wanting to make you feel good for a little while be selfish too?”

Vaguely, Deirdre knew she had a way of speaking that was coated in too much metaphor and thick with confusing language. It was like a fae to never say anything plainly, she was told. But Morgan had always been so good at translating her mind that there was a manner of freedom she found in speaking simply as she wanted to. She didn’t need to decode her mind, a task she often struggled with anyway. “Is it not like how I think it is?” She blinked, “to me it’s...like this: you’ve cut your hand. What kind of a person would I be if I asked you to pick something up for me? Shouldn’t you rest your hand?” Deirdre sagged as Morgan went on. No, it wasn’t like resting her hand at all. “I did love you back…” She mumbled quietly. “I was trying to let you, I just didn’t want you to worry. I did--do want you. It wasn’t ever not good.” She raised her arm, surveying her list. Being asked for what she wanted wasn’t something Morgan had told her before, and she hadn’t put it down. To say she wanted to touch Morgan was one thing, to say she wanted Morgan to touch her was another. The hand was cut, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t it rest instead? As much as Deirdre ached to give Morgan everything she asked for, this was one thing she could not do. Her desires weren’t so simple, they never found voice easily. “What am I supposed to feel, if not afraid or guilty?” She dropped her arm, and its rules that she thought were supposed to help her. “It’s not that I don’t feel right with you touching me, it’s that I don’t feel right asking for it. I don’t want to--I don’t want--I--” She paused. “I don’t want.” She shifted, frowning and deciding she might as well just say anything and move them past this. But as she opened her mouth, no desires could form on her tongue. She thought about the hand. What about the hand? Why wasn’t anyone thinking about the hand? “I do want you, and I do feel guilty, so I won’t ask. I can’t ask.” Deirdre shifted again, frown growing. “Why is it important that I ask?”

Morgan shrank inwards, her reminder playing in a loop. “You’d just never pushed me off you like that before, and you wouldn’t explain. I didn’t understand...” she whispered. But litigating the details of their mistakes wasn’t what she wanted to be doing. Morgan gathered herself and spoke more clearly. “For me it’s like I’m stuck. We were walking somewhere, holding each other like we always do, and then you fell and we both went down and let go or lost each other or something but now you’re ahead of me and I’ve got my feet stuck in a hole or tar or something and all of it hurts, staying in and sinking or trying to get out, all of it. But I want to get out. I need to. And I want you to help me get out of this stupid hole, if it won’t pull you back down with me.” She shrugged. “You could tell me instead, if thinking about it that way makes it easier.” She scoffed at herself, knowing the semantics were really not the point. “Maybe being so desperate to know anything you wanted over those weeks is part of it, but I...I really want to know when I touch you that it’s really for you, really what you want and not just another stupid wild guess or projection or a gross one-sided thing. And if we’re going to heal better, I think you really do have to come around to letting yourself want and expressing that, eventually. I’d kind of hoped this would be an easy one to start with, but we don’t have to do that tonight, okay?”

It was simple, very simple. All Deirdre had to do was say something she wanted for herself, something Morgan could give her. She opened her mouth. I want you to hold me. No, the holding was free. Her lips pulled back down into a frown before they parted again. I want you to play with my hair. No, how could she ask for something like that. It’d only be three minutes, and what if Morgan didn’t want to? What if it was too much work? Too much pressure? What if she grew too fond of the feeling of Morgan there and couldn’t bear the pain of losing her? Deirdre’s face twisted with pain. A kiss was too much to ask for, too serious. Anything else was too little, and would’ve been done anyway. And then there was the matter of the three minutes, the problems she’d had with it before arose again. This Morgan wanted her now, but what of the Morgan tomorrow? Would she resent the affection Deirdre asked for? Like the first kiss she’d wanted when coming home. Like the anger that seemed to follow the times she first asked Morgan to come to bed, before she learned to stop asking. “Couldn’t you just touch me and then I could tell you that it’s okay? Why do I have to--” She swallowed, shifted. If they were going to heal, as Morgan was saying it, then she needed to ask for things. But she didn’t want to ask for things. She didn’t want things. She didn’t want to ask. She just wanted Morgan to be okay. She opened her mouth. All she had to do was ask for something, and that didn’t seem so hard. She wanted a great many things: Morgan’s fingers intertwined with hers, absently against her skin in a way that was so soft--too soft--and just for her. Their legs tangled together where they couldn’t be told apart or undone. That easy way Morgan smiled, happy and ignorant to pain. The way Morgan looked at her, with love unspeakable, just for something she’d said or done and her own puzzling, trying to figure out what had done it this time, if it was anything at all. Where Morgan loved her just because. She wanted their lips, pressed together and pressed to skin anywhere they could, and just the places they knew the other liked. She wanted them, as they were; free and happy and timeless. But that wasn’t something she could ask for.

“I’m sorry,” Deirdre slumped, sinking to the couch and trying to curl herself between it and Morgan. Morgan had hoped, and Deirdre could not deliver. She could just say anything, she knew. Hold my hand. Squeeze my fingers. Poke my side. Just anything to make it feel like it was just for her, but none of it was honest. There was one thing she had grown comfortable with admitting she wanted, and from there all of her other desires had started to take shape. But she couldn’t have that thing anymore, and all she could do now was wait until Morgan’s foot wasn’t stuck anymore. “We can just lay here,” she said, wondering if that counted for asking for something. The defeat in her voice couldn’t have sold it as much of a desire, though. How could she want things when Morgan was hurting, and why was the concept so wrong? Morgan herself had said Deirdre was ahead of her, and the rich ought not to eat while the poor starve. Or so the metaphor went in her own head, but she couldn’t find the words to explain. “Or we can do something you want. But I can’t….I don’t want--” She closed her eyes, hissing at herself.  

Morgan sank down, hiding her face on Deirdre’s chest. She was struggling to keep her face even and confident. Deirdre would feel the tears building up at the corners of her eyes, but maybe if Morgan kept her voice even and she didn’t see, it wouldn’t make her feel worse. Don’t take it personally, don’t take it personally… She couldn’t help but feel as though her hand had been slapped away. Why was this hard and complicated? If they couldn’t feel better, they should at least get to have things be simple. Straightforward. Morgan sniffled as silently as she could and pressed timid hands around Deirdre, reminding herself that they held each other for free. (But what if Deirdre didn’t want it? What if it hurt? Would she be pushed off again, after all this?) Morgan waited until she was sure she could trust her voice and said, “I want to give to you without being in my head about it, wondering if I’m doing it wrong. I want it so badly. But not at the expense of your comfort. I don’t want you to hurt anymore, I don’t mean to. I want you to be okay. I want to make this better...” She just also wanted to feel like she was doing something good. She wanted to be loved and trusted enough to be allowed to love back sometimes and not have to makeguesses. But she could deal. Try differently. She could, at the very least, try to be fair to both of them. “You don’t have to be sorry, it’s okay. We can just lay here. Make things easy. It’s okay. It’s okay…”

A better woman could have done it. A better woman would have no trouble declaring her wants and needs, would be less wildly sensitive, always say the right things. Deirdre trembled, quietly, she begged herself not to have these thoughts; she was tired of them, and she wanted to be good. But if there was a better world, where her actions sat well and everything was okay, she hadn’t found it. And if there was hope, she’d forgotten the way. She wanted to be good now just as she had for months, when would she realize the problem was with her? Morgan’s turmoil was born out of the factors she couldn’t control, and beg herself as she did, the truth of it grew increasingly clear in her head. It was her own hand that she’d cut, and she picked things up so pathetically with it—but it didn’t heal, it hadn’t healed. If it did, it’d only bleed again. “I want to give to you without being in my head about it either,” she said. And her head was such a terrible place to be. “If I figure out how, I’ll let you know.” Focussing on loving Morgan and fixing them was as welcome a distraction to her searing self-hatred as anything else, but loving Morgan wasn’t something she did well, as it turned out. She couldn’t just say what she wanted, stupid and simple as it was. She couldn’t have risen out of her grief long enough to be good, she couldn’t pick her broken body up and run home. It all made perfect sense when it was her fault, but it didn’t offer any bit of the control she so desperately desired. She couldn’t help it, she couldn’t help anything—Morgan, Regan, Kaden. She was a terrible banshee and a worse person.

Deirdre shut her eyes tight, tears still escaped under her lashes, rolling down her face. The last voice that begged to be rid of these thoughts cracked and yielded. She thought she could lay still and quiet and make things easy. She thought she could do at least that much. But to lay, as Morgan said it was okay, she would’ve thought there was just one thing she could do right: nothing at all.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Lady Lazarus|| Morgan, Deirdre, & Constance

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems & @constancecunningham

SUMMARY: The time for vengeance is now.

Morgan kept herself draped over Deirdre most of the day, even when they were shuffling between rooms and out to the yard to tend the garden and watch the cats play. Deirdre hadn’t been away for long, but long enough for Morgan to miss the pressure of her banshee’s body cocooned around her own, the feathery impression of her kisses, the sound of her voice and how it curled around her name and all her Gaelic endearments. At night she pulled her into bed and insisted on getting to hold Deirdre for a change, if only for an hour or two. “This, right here, is literally the only gift I really want,” she said, stroking her love’s hair. They were back on the Grey’s Anatomy wagon, although Morgan was more distracted from the story than usual, reaching down to walk her fingers along Deirdre’s freckles and scratch constellations between the ones that dusted her arms. “I missed you,” she said, not for the first time. “Thank you for coming back, my love.”

Outside, Constance watched Agnes’ descendant dote on her lover. She had been held that way too, once. She could remember the way a tender touch could burn, how a gaze could feel searingly bright, powerful enough than all the magic she’d held in her body. And it had all been a lie. Every hope she’d nurtured had been seeded with death, every wish, poisoned with mockery. At least where she had been before this place, she’d dwelled in the certainty that her pain would echo on with just vengeance as any true witch with the power would have willed it. But this new earth, this new Agnes with her flowers, her career,  her friends, her precious love. Constance couldn’t even understand how she had survived the accident in the first place. She’d put her whole soul into it, exhausted herself into a mere wisp of energy in one blast. She had seen the blood and she’d seen the woman’s eyes close. She shouldn’t be here, reaping a life that had been stolen from Constance by her own kin. To look at her cradling the woman in her arms, you wouldn’t even know that she had suffered a day in her life. If it hadn’t been for her warning message and that flash of recognition in a window weeks ago, Constance was sure this new Agnes would have forgotten her as completely as the first Agnes had.

It wasn’t right. Nothing in this world was, but this, especially. She had paid the gods and the universe for better than this and she would not deign to be cheated again.

Constance had been practicing, she’d learned the tricks from older spirits, and now she was strong enough to avenge herself on her own without spending herself in full as before. And perhaps it would have always come out this way. Perhaps her spirits, her magic, would have always forsaken her as surely as everything else she’d touched and loved. Constance felt the bite of her sorrow welling up in her fragile spectre body. Shuddering against the tides of the new world, she reached out with it and pressed against the window glass.

With great clarity, Deirdre could remember every time she was separated from Morgan (all being entirely her doing in the first place), and each time they came back together---an entanglement of limbs, the din of kisses. They hadn’t been so far kept from each other since becoming a couple, and she thought of what great relief it was to share her affection and speak of her love...the awkward fumbling around aside (when did that rug get there? Did they always have that table so close?). The winding down to gentle moments shared in bed were her favorite, if only so she might recover from the day’s bruises running into furniture edges and door corners. And embarrassing as it was, she could bear being held if it was what Morgan wanted---and the woman who might have jumped from her arms hollering about boredom was long gone. This one was only a little flustered, and plagued terribly by the ever surmounting desire to hold Morgan. Deirdre embraced her role of being embraced soon enough and found the great benefit of being able to bury her face against Morgan’s chest. “Grey’s Anatomy is finally focusing on the anatomy aspect, isn’t it?” She grimaced, “ugh, no, I didn’t like that joke either. But it is better than the Morgan’s Anatomy one I tried.” Deirdre laughed, lifting her hand up to tap the old beat of Morgan’s heart---a tune she knew as well as the beat of her own---against her still chest. She might not have been able to love a life back where there ought to be one, but she found optimism that awoke in Morgan’s presence--and she might just imagine there was something more she could do. “I missed you too,” she smiled, “and I told you that you don’t have to thank me for that. There’s no place I’d rather be, no one I’d rather be with. I want you. I want to be here.” She shifted, leaning up to kiss Morgan and untangle herself from being held. “I lov---”

Deirdre snapped up--careful to keep close to Morgan, careful to hold her, even as she stood on alert. She could have sworn she heard glass crack, but the Grey’s Anatomy episode had moved into its scheduled monologue of the moment. Deirdre turned her head, a spine-wrenching chill consuming her body. She turned to Morgan, eyes black as the night beyond them. “I think I feel something here.” But she was having a smidge of trouble finding the source---Morgan’s body was, rightfully, very distracting.

Morgan felt it too, flinching at the sound of glass. The lamp on their end table was so dim, she couldn’t see farther than three feet past the bed, there was only the teal and orange cocoon of the lamp puddling with the TV around them. She squeezed Deirdre, anchoring them together. She’d just gotten her back from Ireland, she wasn’t going to lose her to more White Crest nonsense. Faintly, the glass made another tremulous sound, like it was quivering in the windowpane, struggling to get out. “That’s weird…” she admitted, squinting into the shadows. Then she saw it. Saw her. “No--” There were a lot of expletives on her tongue and twice as many warnings. Get down. It’s not safe. I fucked up. She told me she was coming and I fucked up. But as Morgan breathed the word, reaching to shove Deirdre down into their bed, hell burst into their room.

The TV flickered and groaned like it was going to be sick, the lightbulb in their lamp flared and burst, the windows crunched in on themselves in splattered spiderwebs of invisible pressure, and every piece of furniture Morgan had lovingly arranged rattled, drumming her fate as Constance flew towards them. Morgan launched herself out of bed and gasped as she felt herself caught by the hair on something and pushed. Morgan fell face forward, but in the flash of a moment before she hit the ground, she saw Constance’s grief-warped face go still with a look of horrified wonder that must have matched her own. The ghost’s grip had become solid as bone.

Deirdre knew Constance’s face well; once, it filled nightmares, more often, it was the centre of revenge fantasies. She often wondered what it’d be like to have a moment with the woman, where she’d put her hands when she ruptured her organs---but she was a ghost. She was supposed to be a ghost who couldn’t hurt them. It was strange, then, that her normal vision could track her, and she watched with clarity as the woman demonstrated a physicality that ghosts couldn’t, shouldn’t. She searched her mind for what she was taught of ghosts, and especially the angry ones, while she rifled around for her knives. They could interact with the physical world, couldn’t they? Did it even matter? They needed iron and salt now, answers later. Unfortunately, iron and salt were two things they kept away from the bedroom. “Hey,” Deirdre called out to the ghost, twin daggers spinning in each hand. Ghosts couldn’t be stabbed, or screamed at, and Constance certainly couldn’t be bargained with, but Deirdre was adaptive. Constance wanted Morgan dead; she either did or didn’t know that she succeeded in some regard. She either did or didn’t know that Morgan was a zombie. Soon she’d realize all she needed to do was lift one of Deirdre’s several axes and swords against Morgan’s neck. Deirdre’s plan was simple; if she didn’t know, Deirdre wouldn’t let her figure it out. If she did...well, Deirdre always thought she made a tantalizing distraction. She smirked, doing her best to appear unperturbed by Constance’s presence. “You know, if your whole goal is ‘true suffering’, wouldn’t it make more sense to hit me? Unless being dead for so long has started to wither your mental capacity. It certainly has for your looks.” Deirdre paused, letting her smugness drip across the room. If she wasn’t much of an attractive target now, she hoped she would be soon; the only person who knew where Morgan kept her iron rod was Morgan, and she needed a way to leave. “Oh, right, sorry. You’ve always looked that ugly.”  

Morgan’s head collided with the ground, once on impact, twice when Constance pulled it up and tried to bash it in. Morgan braced herself against the fall, but Constance’s grip was hard enough to worry the nerves on her scalp. But there were much bigger problems than that. “Deirdre, no!” She shrieked, clawing at the carpet, straining to get free. She would not lose her. She would burn down more than just Constance to keep from losing her. Morgan screamed wordlessly. Morgan pulled again, crying, “Run!” as she came free. She crawled to her feet and turned just in time to see Deirdre’s knives slice through the air and sit, harmlessly, in Constance’s neck.

“What the hell are you?” She hissed, backing towards the door.

Constance didn’t seem to know either. She was racing towards the woman one moment and was struck frozen by a queer...what did she even call the feeling? Could a touch have an echo? It was nothing at all, the jolt of surprise and fear had been worse. For an instant she could almost hear the sigh of her existence slipping away, of her justice slipping through her fingers as water through a sieve. But the world remained, as did her chance. And by the fires of the earth and their devilish glory, Constance would take it. “I think you could look more dead,” she said. Emboldened now, she shot out a hand for the woman’s throat and squeezed with all her strength.

“Let her go!” Morgan lifted the nearest piece of furniture and threw it at the ghost as she continued her retreat. “End me if you want it so bad!” The chair bounced harmlessly off the ghost’s new body.

She hadn't expected her daggers to be effective, but she had hoped. Just enough, to be troubled by it. Deirdre watched, stoic, as nothing happened—she drew her knife across with ease, and found Constance's body like clay. No blood. No pain. Nothing but surprise. Deirdre knew better than to dare reveal her hand by showing emotion, but she couldn't stop the frown that tugged at her features. What the hell was she indeed. "I think I already look pretty dead enough—but especially pretty," Deirdre croaked in Constance's grip. She still had her superhuman strength, and clearly some of her ghostly power, but Deirdre struggled to put a name to whatever she had become. She watched their chair splinter and crack against her, without so much as a reaction. Deirdre grinned, as if casually amused by the display---despite the panic that lurched inside of her. Slowly, she lifted her other hand, plunging her knife into Constance's arm and twisting it up, dragging with force, to lift Constance's hand off her neck just enough for her to scream. She knew they never did much for ghosts, but she had hoped, just enough, to be disappointed when Constance didn't collapse. With a hiss, she rolled away and drew her knives back.

"If that's the best you can do, I think I see why Agnes got bored of you." Deirdre massaged her throat; it would bruise. Her eyes searched for Morgan, careful to act as the barrier between her and Constance as she retreated, and Deirdre followed suit. Her face furrowed with worry, something between 'maybe don't ask the ghost that killed you once to do it again' and 'I’m okay; don’t worry about me'. Then again, she was the one goading Constance. "Maybe Agnes just had better taste." But her plan was transparent; an angry ghost made for a poor planner. Though, Deirdre grimaced as her neck throbbed with Constance's echoed grip, they did make for stronger threats. She turned to Morgan and smiled softly, decidedly more level-headed about the ordeal. "Running does sound like a good idea, my love."

“HOW DARE YOU!” Constance was no banshee, but her scream drew sparks from the TV. The color jumped and pixelated, blanching white, Meredith Grey’s voice suddenly dropped, blasting too loud in a growling rumble. The bulbs in the room burst, showering them with glass as Constance scrambled over the bed towards them, more tears streaming down her face, her refrain continuing. “You. Don’t Get. To say her name,” she rasped.

“Seriously?” Morgan’s voice was ragged and shrill. She ran back for Deirdre, hand outstretched for hers. The room rattled around them, turning against them as objects rose from the floor like so many limp corpses and gave away their hiding spaces. Morgan’s hand reached Deirdre’s. There was only panic on her face, nothing bave, nothing clever. I’m scared. I can’t lose you. She pulled, begging the heavens to let Deirdre yield to her this once. She pulled her back and shoved her through the doorway with all her strength. If she crashed into the wall, if she fractured a bone or hit her head, at least she was free. “Salt--!” She cried, gasping as the skin on her back ripped open.

“I shall not be your monster,” Constance said behind her, voice trembling as she struggled to keep control of herself. She had heard the tales from the other ghosts by now, of how her power was hamstrung by her humanity. It was another curse, of a kind. She had to kill this new Agnes without falling prey to the evil her presence woke in her. “I am not. I am only your justice,” Constance whispered, “And your fate.”

So, maybe pissing off the vindictive ghost was a bad idea, but Deirdre didn’t have the chance to assess her strategy; her collectedness died the moment Morgan pushed her away. The panic in her girlfriend’s eyes shocked her, and she followed along only to have her own grow wide with fear. She stumbled to the ground, carpet scrapping her palms. Constance wanted to kill Morgan, that was an irrefutable fact; in some small way, if Deirdre stood between them, she could prevent it. In another, more damning way, she simply wouldn’t, and couldn’t, know if something was going to happen to Morgan. Something permanent. “You were supposed to get the salt.” She whimpered, scrambling to her feet as she watched the torrent of anger unfold behind Morgan. Deirdre knew she should run, but fear rooted her. There would be no scream this time. Deirdre glanced at the stairs, wishing with all of her that she could find the strength to do what was logical. But to turn her back on Morgan, even in service of a solution, was too much to ask of her. She slumped, fluttering between guilt and panic. “I’ve always thought ‘monster’ was an apt name for you,” she hissed at Constance’s ignorance, her bastardized use of Fate’s name, but she had no clever taunt. All her fight had been replaced with concern. If she could just get Morgan gone, or going; if she could just get them downstairs. With her expression, desperation pooling in her eyes, she hoped to tell Morgan that she was sorry. That while it made sense to run away and get salt, she couldn’t. She needed Morgan to come with her, she needed to be by Morgan’s side---she wouldn’t be too late, not again. And that it would be okay, somehow, even if it was strange to try and soothe her nerves now, given the situation. She reached for Morgan’s wrist, and ran.

Morgan begged Deirdre with her eyes. Run, please, just run, please… Of the two of them, she could take the most hits. Constance could care her up like a thanksgiving turkey and she’d still make it to another day. But Deirdre, for all her fae power, only needed a blade through her heart or a hand to crush her throat. Nothing new would sprout from her wounds, she would just be dead and everything around them would be worthless.

Constance stabbed her again and Morgan could almost imagine which of Deirdre’s many knives it was from the way it pricked her stomach. Her body heaved, making a soft sucking sound as Constance drew it out, no doubt dripping with black, dead blood. “What in unholy creation--?” She whispered.

Morgan gripped Deirdre back and ran with her. “That was stupid,” she hissed, voice breaking with tears. “You can get hurt, I can’t! If she gets you--” She pulled ahead, making a dead sprint for the stairs. The house panicked around them, yellow lights strobing and firing sparks, glass shaking, doors rocking on their hinges. The cats, hiding in their room, wailed with fright. Morgan ran faster. As she reached the edge of the steps it all went still. Had Constance gone? Given up when her new attempts at murder went worse than before? Morgan stumbled to a halt, still clutching Deirdre. Did she dare look over her shoulder? Dare stop now? “Please…” She whispered, no longer sure what she was pleading for.

“We are not finished, you and I,” Constance said. How ironic that the moment this new Agnes was in her hands, she should wish for her old spirit’s body back. It would have been nothing to fly over in an instant, or to take her precious stones and candles and throw them deftly until she fell over the stairs and snapped her neck. Like this, she had to walk as mortals did, Walk, and still remember who she was. So many cursed chains around the world, around her. If she had understood that better when she was alive, she might have asked the gods for more. But it was too late for her. She had this one hope alone, to fix the last descendant of Agnes Bachman with all the suffering her magic should have caused and rid the world of that line’s cursed violence without surrendering her soul to that cursed family in the process. “Do you know what you have done?” She asked, walking slowly still. “Do you understand why you must be punished?”

Deirdre's gaze refused to lift from Morgan's injuries; she watched tissue repair itself and thick, dark blood stain her clothing. If Constance didn't know she was a zombie now, she would soon enough. And then what? How much time did they have until she figured out what she needed to do? If they bested her now, what prevented her from finding them later, armed with knowledge? "I don't want you to get hurt!" She shouted back, heaving. Her voice dropped to a croaked whisper, pained and desperate. "What happens when she realizes what you are? When she remembers that 'true suffering' is just her excuse to kill you?" It was clear to Deirdre that Constance's only goal now was ending Morgan; perhaps it had always been her plan. If suffering was her game, there were better ways to do it, more effective methods. Constance had never gone after her while Morgan was alive, and Deirdre knew what that meant, where her motivations must have truly laid. If this went poorly, which it so often did with ghosts, Deirdre could only hope that there was enough of a whiff of kindness inside Constance to kill her too—but there so rarely was. She tried to meet Morgan's eyes to work out a plan between them, but soon Constance cut through the air and the world swelled around them again.

"Oh shut up, you hag." Deirdre hissed, kicking their banister and cracking off one of the wooden spindles to wield as a club. Taking cue from Morgan earlier, she shoved her girlfriend along, towards their kitchen. Their ground-level was open enough that they didn't need to be congested in a hallway or around furniture, but to Deirdre, that simply meant more ways for Constance to slip past her and get at Morgan. "What's her crime? Being born? Being happy?" She twirled her makeshift cudgel in her hands, this time sure to keep herself between Morgan and Constance. "And what's stabbing her got to do with anything? If you claim to know so much about heart-break, shouldn't you know better? I thought you wanted suffering, not acupuncture." Deirdre was, of course, trying to bring Constance's attention on to her again. She could only hope that for a moment, Constance would forget that she wanted to kill Morgan and turn her energy elsewhere. At least, long enough for someone to grab salt or iron.

Morgan shook her head. “That is not the most important thing right now!” She hissed. “We can protect the house, we can do whatever we want after we get her out, but if she kills you--” But there was no time. Constance was encroaching on them. “Deirdre…” She whispered, voice breaking. But somehow, even before Deirdre’s hand shot out, Morgan knew what was going to happen. She pleaded silently, but the world was already tilting backwards. Morgan grabbed the bannister, trying to slow her fall and stop any broken bones from bouncing through her skin. She only succeeded in tearing up the skin along her legs as she skidded down to the first floor landing. She scrambled to the kitchen, sliding on her sweaty feet. Her bag with the iron rod was hanging up in there, and they had a bulk thing of salt. But just in her hearing, Deirdre was tempting her fate, throwing herself at Constance like she didn’t matter. Morgan’s arms shook as she swiped her arm through the cupboards, toppling everything in sight until she got what she needed. “Deirdre, I swear by the fucking stars--!” She couldn’t die. Morgan wouldn’t let her. There would’ve been a scream, she would’ve told her, she would. Morgan had to believe that if she wanted to get the lid off the fucking salt and grab her rod.

Constance kept her control fixed around her soul. “Yes,” she said softly. “I bargained with my gods, we had a bargain, and by my power, the Bachmans agreed to submit to their penance. She slipped through. She cheated. And she must not be allowed to continue. But I may wait for her return before harming you, if you wish. It is a very singular thing, to see your nightmares come true. They’re over so much faster, and so much uglier than what your mind imagines. No ceremony, no explanations.” She came right up to Deirdre, trembling through her forced calm. “You love very strangely,” she said. “Trying to hurt her to save her. Or is that you know, deep down, that it would mean nothing if I crushed you on these stairs. Do you think she would be able to tell the difference if I took you over from inside. Or would she just hold your pretty body and content herself with your husk? Is it really worth it to you, if your love is only lies?”

What was more important than Morgan's life? Her safety or her happiness? It was too late to argue with Morgan now, so Deirdre willed herself to face the sole cause of every inch of pain in Morgan's life. All of it, every dead family member, every flood or car crash, led back to Constance and her curse. "You call that a monologue, hag? You think I don't know what suffering is?" She grinned, laughing at the ghost's face. Constance's words were nothing she hadn't already considered, something she didn't already fear. But Deirdre was born for this exact purpose, to look death and fear and suffering in the eyes and stand steady. Constance's words were nothing she hadn't endured already, in some other way, by someone else. Unlike the humans that feared death, she knew to welcome it. Deirdre tightened her grip on the spindle, maintaining her lopsided smile. "You don't know anything about love, Connie. Can I call you Connie? I'm doing it anyway." Her hand darted out and bundled the collar of Constance's dress under her fist, doing and twisting their bodies until she had the force to shove Constance down the steps. As her body tumbled, she jumped over the rail and landed first to the ground below, meeting her at the last step. "If you want Morgan, you go through me. And you can't hurt me, Connie, not at all. I'm not afraid of death, of suffering, I do it all the time." It was Morgan's that she feared for, and Morgan's alone. If she screamed for herself now, she would welcome it, but never without a fight. As long as she breathed, there was still something to be done.

Morgan was darting out of the kitchen as she heard the bodies hit the floor. “No!” She heaved the salt into the foyer, too quickly to aim for anything but the vague direction of the shapes. Constance scrambled back, aware enough of her limitations to know she’d better crawl to higher ground. The salt crystals scattered, forming pools in the carpet as they rivered between her and Deirdre. Morgan held out her rod like a bat, and forded through the mess, kicking salt forwards. Constance had backed herself into a corner, and in her new Not-Quite-a-Real-Girl form, she wasn’t going to be slipping through the walls just yet. “Let me be very clear!” She shouted. “You had your turn and your time. You do not get to come in here and treat my life like it belongs to you. If you want to play god of thunder and rain down some third rate, leftover nonsense on my life, then we can play. I am not the same sad little witch you tried to murder five months ago. I will fight you, Constance. And I swear by every star in the verse, I will make you regret your entire existence. And you will leave my girlfriend alone when I do!” She swung the iron rod and in an instant, Constance’s body dissolved in a flash of grainy ether.

Morgan stayed still for several moments, her trembling arm still raised. Was she done yet? Was it over? The thought drew a breathless laugh from her. Just as she registered the sound, it dissolved into sobs. Morgan slumped and let the rod clatter to the floor.

It was a great fortune that Morgan came when she did, and Deirdre stepped aside so Morgan could do her work. When the fear subsided, and Constance’s body evaporated, pride and concern swelled and she threw her weapon aside to scoop Morgan into her arms. “You did good, my love.” She scanned her for injury, knowing that she would have healed any by now. She pressed her palm to the place where she had been stabbed, running her other hand along her back—where the torrent claimed her skin. She was safe and she was whole, and Deirdre pulled her closer. They had some hours—maybe, if Constance was like a regular ghost—before her body came back together to hurt them again. They needed to get up a salt line, call any witch that would come on short notice, and ready themselves with the salt and the iron. But for now, while they had the chance, Deirdre wanted to hold her girlfriend. “I love you,” she mumbled with a sigh of relief, “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Are you hurting anywhere?”

Morgan collapsed into Deirdre’s arms, sobbing still. She pressed her palms all over her to assure herself she was fine and already healing. “I--love--” She gulped for air and held her tighter, nodding furiously so the rest of what she meant was understood. “You can’t keep doing that,” she rasped. “You can’t act like you’re worth less than me. I need you. You can’t make it end like that, I need you…” She rose on her tiptoes as she cried into her hair, straining to feel as much of Deirdre as she could at once. “You are the best part of this life. And I would not know how to give a shit about any of it without you existing in it somewhere. Please...” She shuddered. “I love you. We can find a way to protect each other next time. Please, okay? And I’m sorry I yelled. I didn’t mean to yell, I was just so scared…”

“I know. I’m sorry, I know.” Deirdre breathed, holding Morgan tighter, peppering firm kisses to the side of her face. “But you can’t act like your body is some convenient meat shield either, it matters more than that, it deserves more than that. You matter to me so much, Morgan. And Constance wants you. She can take or leave me, but she wants you. And she took you once, and I can’t let that happen again, and I won’t scream this time if something happens and—“ Deirdre swallowed, breathing in Morgan. “If I was going to die, I’d know and I’d tell you, as soon as I could. I promise it. I’m not leaving you without a warning, without giving us time—not that I want to leave you at all.” Not that she wasn’t wholly prepared to finally fight fate, no matter the sacrilege, if it meant being with Morgan. She was prepared to fight when it claimed Morgan, and she’d fight if it ever came around to her. “I love you. Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry I yelled and pushed you, and didn’t listen. I just—I don’t want to lose you either. You’re the best part of my life too.” She shifted, bringing her hands up to hold Morgan’s face and thumb away her tears. “Hey, we’ve got some time before we need to salt everything. What do you need? What do you want right now?”

Morgan pressed desperately into Deirdre’s touches. “It’s okay,” she whispered, sniffling. “I pushed you first. I was trying to protect you, I thought it would be safer that way. I don’t think she knows what I am, maybe even what zombies are. Not that, you know, I knew that at the time. Or that we should keep banking on that. I just mean--” She nuzzled into Deirdre’s palm and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I was just scared, that whole time. I saw her face and I was--” She shook her head and tucked herself close again. “Just this. And we should do something for your throat. Some salve or tea or an ice pack for the swelling, but--” She stopped herself from pitching over the end of that train of thought. “I just want to be with you. I want us to be safe and together.” And I want my fucking life, she added silently. And if that meant grinding Constance’s down to nothing so not even the universe could have her again, so be it.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Song for Autumn: Home || Morgan & Deirdre  (pt.1)

TIMING: A few days ago

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan’s ritual needs a very specific conduit. Deirdre knows exactly what she’s looking for.

CONTAINS: Brief discussions of past physical and emotional abuse

One a single minute had passed between the last time Deirdre glanced over at Morgan and tried to stir her attention with a pout, and the horrific realization that Morgan was too entrenched in her reading to even notice Deirdre’s piteous gaze. She’d finished sharpening the knives she sat down with minutes ago, now bored with reveling in the warm silence that filled these afternoons shared with Morgan. It was one singular, burning, terrible, minute from the last time she tried to stir Morgan’s attention, and another two minutes from the time she tried before then. And she knew it would be more agonizing minutes before Morgan remembered she was there at all, and that the sound of scraping against whetstone no longer claimed the air. Sometimes, action needed to be taken into her own hands. With the grace of a cat, she pounced on Morgan’s legs--careful of her files and folders--and crawled up until she could put her face in front of whatever decidedly less attractive text she was reading. Her eyes sparked with curiosity, but her mouth twitched with the tell-tale mark of a fae that wanted attention. “I know you physically can’t get wrinkles, but---” Deirdre offered a wide smile, raising her thumb to wipe away the concentration that fraught between Morgan’s brows. “You’ve been very interested in your papers lately.” The and not so much in me, your adoring and very attractive girlfriend hung unsaid in the air, having been said enough times before to be an echo in the way she pouted. “What are you up to? Anything I can steal you from?” She eyed the cup of once boiling tea---brewed as strong as tea could be---now lukewarm and staining the inside of one of several mugs Deirdre had bought for Morgan. It was a trait that persisted even through death, but Morgan always touched her tea more when it was grading or lesson plans on her mind. “This is Constance stuff, isn’t it?”  

The books Morgan and Cece had stolen from the professor’s house were more of a gold mine than she had wanted to believe. She was so used to the world falling around her or promising doors slamming in her face. But this--? Whatever retribution game the original owner of this book had been playing at was, it had been thorough. The one Morgan was settling on was particularly insidious, calling for extra sources of energy, for objects to stabilize and direct the energy safely, for even wielding the pain brought on with precision, ramping it up more as the ritual progressed. Finding someone with the stamina for an hours-long ordeal, and the nerve to go through with this kind of harm, wouldn’t be easy. But Morgan had money, and she could front her own materials. It was only right that she invest herself in her ritual, even if she could do nothing in its execution. The ingredients ran the gamut from easy to forage herbs to...the obscure. Some of the terms were things Morgan hadn’t even heard of…

Deirdre’s voice shocked her out of her stupor. She hadn’t even heard her climb onto the couch. Morgan squealed, then deflated with relief and leaned over to kiss away her pout. “If you want to cuddle, you just have to ask, my love,” she said sweetly. “But yes, it’s Constance. This book has everything I need and then some, but as I’m trying to get my lists together, what I need, where and how am I going to get it, who is going to help and/or bodyguard me from more ghost attacks...I’m not actually sure what all of this stuff is?” She shifted the papers she wasn’t using to the coffee table and guided Deirdre to lay against her so they could look together. “Now, thanks to Evelyn’s help, I’m getting through this weird blend of Latin and French way better that I would have on my own. But this--” she pointed. “Translates to a comb of iron? Iron comb? Is that like...a hair comb?” She laughed, self deprecating at her own confusion and stroked Deirdre’s hair, bringing her in for another kiss.

Deirdre continued to crawl her way between the couch and Morgan, resting her head on the woman’s chest as she’d so often done to her. It, admittedly, was not as comfortable as they would be on more forgiving furniture, but it was better than being sat in her separate chair, sharing longing looks with the side of her girlfriend’s head. “I have been asking, you just hadn’t looked up a single time to see it,” she tried to sound hurt, but her grumble couldn’t last under the delight of finally being able to hold Morgan. She draped her arms around Morgan’s stomach and pressed tight, tilting her head down to see what Morgan was talking about. She stared at the words under her girlfriend’s finger. Blinked. Closed her eyes and kissed Morgan eagerly, imagining the words would shift when she opened them again. But there they were. Peigne de fer. La carde. A jumble of French she didn’t understand, but the English Morgan translated, she did. Her body tensed by reflex, then shivered. “It’s for sheep.” She explained plainly. “Or for the wool, more specifically.” Her hand tightened around Morgan, gripping the fabric of her clothing tightly. “You card the wool to straighten the fibers and pull out any clumps so you can begin spinning it.” She slumped against Morgan and closed her eyes. Memories she would have done well to forget drifted back to her. Her mother held one such Warden designed iron carder in her hands, and spoke something or another about the old fashioned ones and the torture they enjoyed. Somewhere, beyond their bodies, a pig squealed. “The more modern hand carders look just like combs, that’s all they really are, anyway. But the older ones are…” She swallowed and opened her eyes. “That’s what I think your passages are talking about, at least. They aren’t used for much else.”  

Laying sprawled together like this delighted Morgan to no end. Toes curling, legs tangling, she folded herself around her girlfriend and showered her head in yet more kisses. “Mmm, I’m sorry, babe,” she murmured, gathering Deirdre’s hair so it would be easier to play with. “I suppose I’ll have to make it up to you, or else be severely punished.” She giggled and tilted Deirdre’s chin up to steal another kiss, a proper lingering one that left cotton tingles on her cheek and lips and reminded her of what touch had once been. The memory grew harder to find each month, but warmth of feeling beneath it never faltered.

Morgan’s pleasure didn’t last for long. Deirdre tensed in her arms, trembling, and looked away from the text. Morgan couldn’t connect her girlfriend’s explanation about the comb to her distress, but she knew something was wrong. “Hey…” she cooed, leaning down to give more kisses. “What is it, my love?” Was it the iron? The sheep? Morgan looked at the text again, putting the image of a plain farm tool in place of the words. “It is a weird choice for a conduit, I guess,” she mumbled, “Are the kind of combs this is probably referring to kind of big or bulky?” The ritual had been written during the French Revolution, after all, when a band of exorcists and casters determined the guillotine had been too good for some aristocrats, and destroying their ghosts was their second chance. Whatever they determined would suit their purpose probably wasn’t subtle, which suited Morgan just fine, in theory. “The uh...the sheep aren’t still attached to the wool, right?” She asked, still trying to make sense of Deirdre’s reaction. “I don’t have to bring it into the house, you know. It can stay in the garage, or a lock box in the shed if we ever get it back. Somewhere you won’t touch it by accident?” Morgan set aside her book altogether and wrapped Deirdre up in her arms. “Talk to me,” she said in a whisper. “Whatever you need, it’s yours.”

“And I’m not known to be merciful, my love.” Deirdre hummed, and then her voice spilled into laughter. Of course, if anyone would pick up on what she was feeling, even before she processed it herself, it would be Morgan. By some miracle, her love knew her exceptionally well, and Deirdre was thankful for it. If it wasn’t for her gentle assurances and nudges, Deirdre never would summon the strength to bear honesty with such ease. She laughed again, and shifted to bury her head into Morgan’s neck. There, enveloped in Morgan--surrounded by her scent and the gentle tugging of her undeadness--she imagined that there was a world without iron combs. Without their truth. Without pain. A world that they deserved, and could have. A happy, gentle world, where Deirdre might just have been the bright and brilliant person Morgan seemed to think she was. A good world. A kind world. Their world. Deirdre was stirred to reality by the rustling of paper, pulled back and opened her eyes to their house--filled with their things. It wasn’t too far off from some magical land where terror couldn’t find them; most days, it felt like that. Her eyes moved to the papers, books, notes and folders scattered around them. The scene looked eerily like the one in the Haven Hotel, months ago, when there was a heartbeat pressed against Deirdre’s cheek. Back then, there had been a lump in her stomach, a gnawing fear that Morgan would be lost to fate. She’d been right, and left to wonder if her fear was premonition or simple anxiety. When the same lump settled inside of her again, she didn’t know what to think. “I don’t know how someone touches a pointy comb by accident,” Deirdre laughed, pressing a firm kiss to Morgan’s cheek. “And the sheep aren’t attracted, no. Wool processing is long; you have to shear it and then prepare and wash it. Then it dries and---” Deirdre reddened, coughing as she remembered that yarn production was not Morgan’s concern now. Anything, perhaps, to save a few seconds before the truth. “Torture,” she said after a moment. “It’s probably an effective conduit because it was used for torture. You rake it across someone’s flesh. The iron must be effective for ghosts.” Just as it was for fae, and just as Deirdre knew how such devices worked against her kind. Not that it mattered. “Hm, the hand carders aren’t so big. There are, obviously, bigger ones out there. What do the books say you need?”

Morgan knew from Deirdre’s hesitation that what followed would be anything but good. She even knew from the deliberate plainness her girlfriend spoke with that she hadn’t gotten the knowledge out of a book. There had been enough references to the extracurricular torture Sibohan had put Deirdre through, but the image of a comb bristling with iron points had never crossed Morgan’s mind. She brushed her knuckles down her soft, freckled skin, trying to imagine someone tearing and burning it at once. Was that something Wardens did for fun that Sibohan thought she needed to impart? Or was it just another barbaric lesson. “Oh, Deirdre…” she whispered. “I had...no idea…” She tucked them closer together, curled up and all but locked in place, as if that could do anything for how she’d been thoughtfully tortured and broken from the outside in years ago. “You know we…” she grimaced and buried her face in her hair. “I know what we said before, but you don’t have to do this with me. I can…” her stomach turned at the thought of trying to find something like this, holding it in her hand, knowing what it was really for and how it had been used to hurt Deirdre. “I can figure this one out on my own. I can...I don’t know. But I don’t want you to have to relive anything like that because of me.” She didn’t know how to say it, but she feared Deirdre conflating her with that torture just as much. But Constance was different, and so was Morgan. She wouldn’t do something so monstrous for no reason, and never to anyone she wasn’t certain deserved it. But hurt did funny things to people, and trauma haunted in ways that didn’t always make sense.

“What?” If Deirdre had the strength to sit up and ruin the tight, tangled hold the two of them had perfected, she might have from the shock. “No, no,” she calmed her voice. “I’m not reliving anything, I’m not--I wouldn’t be. It doesn’t---” She sighed, and lifted her head up, trying to catch Morgan’s to pepper with reassurance and affection where she could. “The things that I’ve seen, and been through...they exist everywhere. In iron combs, spoons, mugs--” Deirdre gestured around their house. “At one point, one of these things has been bad for me in some way. By what was done with them, by them having been witnesses. With what I’ve seen, what I’ve been made to see. I don’t look at a mug and always think about each that my mother threw at a wall anymore than you must look at a lock and imagine the one of your bedroom. I’d much rather see a cup as being something you hold, something I get to pour your boiling tea into. I’d rather see it as good. And that’s exactly what I think about when I look at it.” She pressed into Morgan, holding her tighter. “And if I can help you, if a tool like that can be used to deliver justice, then it gets to be good. And I get to see it that way. The rest doesn’t matter to me. You are good,  and you will use whatever tool you see fit, however you want to, and I will love you all the same.” Deirdre smiled softly, twisting her body up so she could kiss her girlfriend with as much love as she could muster. And again. And again, and again until she was sure her point was clear. She raked her teeth along Morgan’s lip as she drew back, thinking nothing of the iron and the way it could tear at her own flesh. “Thank you, my love. But it’s okay. The torture done to my kind is never a pleasant thing to think about, but it’s not new to me, and it’s not so terrible a thought that I won’t help you. I want to. I know it will serve you better than it would anyone else. I trust you, Morgan, and I love you. More than anything else. Now, what does your research say about the comb? Is there a specific kind you need?”

Morgan threw herself into Deirdre’s kisses, returning them with her own, firm and earnest and bursting with an affection she couldn’t put into words. She couldn’t say, ‘you dodged your mother’s mugs, too?’ and ‘I love your resilience and your courage and how much you love me,’ and ‘you are the wisest and most wonderful woman I know’ at the same time, much less in the seconds it took to take her lip between her teeth. And even these thoughts, swimming around her head as they slipped deeper into the couch cushions, didn’t quite get to the heart of the recognition that cut through her, or how it mixed with horror, sympathy, pride, affection, gratitude. She hoped that the alchemy between them would translate and Deridre would understand what even she couldn’t. Morgan didn’t bother with words at all until she felt Deirdre’s breathing grow strained against her.

“You’re incredible,” Morgan whispered. “I am so very proud to know you, Deirdre.” Another kiss, chased and sweet. “And, about that, I’m sticking hard to the original to minimize surprises, and I don’t want some stodgy exorcist to turn me down for not being through enough, so…”