Chapter Text
Boston Gilead, 2017.
The second Offred steps into the room, Serena just knows.
Long-shuttered memories burst open in the hurricane-force gale of familiarity. Sunday school at the first church, the punishment, the change of parish. Her first kiss that tasted like cigarettes and cream soda against the brick wall of an unfamiliar school. She blearily recalls the way liquor and sweaty perfume managed to erode her better judgement, letting loose the chaos inside her at a frat party, in the immediate aftermath of her first date with Fred. She can see and hear the glares, pointed comments, and holier-than-thou attitude of publishing house interns. She smells Magnolias during the tail end of the brunch rush, with old banana nut pancakes, sour coffee and she tastes orange macarons.
She would have never put them all together until Offred walked in, and looked at her in that sneeringly innocent way, oblivious to their history and awkwardly arrogant. Something ugly, something clingy and rotten, bubbles up from the envy in her chest as Offred flirts with Fred. It stings like a betrayal.
Serena knows she has to kill whatever it is that lives inside her still despite all the prayers, devotions, and sacrifices; she must cut the red thread.
Immediately.
Years later, when Offred is pregnant, and they perform the handfasting ceremony, the irony of the red string is not lost on Serena. How indestructible it is. It terrifies her. It thrills her.
It’s later on, in the silence of her lonely bedroom that she realizes there is only one way to break it.