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Jade still couldn't keep normal hours. It was five in the morning, the sun was just rising, light beginning to filter through the window, and she'd crept out of her bed to the kitchen. She'd thought—hoped, maybe, maybe just assumed—that her sleep would be more normal, after the game, but she still took naps at odd hours, woke up when the time was right and fell asleep again when she needed it—and now the sun was up and shining! She couldn't sleep through that. Sunlight, yes, but she wasn't used to days this long, she'd lived too close to the equator. Her seasons had been different, marked by rain and humidity, not temperature and length of day. And she was jittery from the nightmares.
The kitchen felt dark and crowded, even though it was big and empty—more than she knew what to do with, really! John liked to tease her about her cooking. But she made good bread, and it was...
Easy, to open up all the windows—and then pull on a second sweater, shivering in the chill morning. Rose and John teased her about that! And then her and Dave could yell at them, because they were from warm places and they weren't used to freezing, and anyway, John, you whined all winter about the cold! But the light coming in helped. And she had bread started, so she pulled it out, dusted flour on the counter, began to knead—punching down the dough, shoulders working, rhythmic and steady. Less likely to cause a disturbance than shooting practice. Comforting and alive.
The kitchen started to smell like yeast and spring mornings—wet earth, growing things, greenness, more like her island than anything else, even though it was cold, even though it was growing bright and sunny at just past five in the morning, even though there was nothing tropical here. Her home was gone now, nothing more than a little volcanic island-to-be lost under the waves. Maybe some day it would be an island, breaking the waves. Or not—maybe it would dry up, cool down, stop erupting before it crested the ocean, and then just wear down, bit by bit.
It was gone now and it didn't matter. She still had Bec, but Bec was different now—a normal dog, a little too big and a little too smart but he could only chase sticks. Which made it easier in some ways! She knew that. She did. She was glad for what she'd gotten to keep—
A noise made Jade look up, a little wild-eyed, a little too on edge, reaching for powers that still surged within her, even if they were—she thought—diminished. Or maybe it was just that they didn't quite fit! With her new life, her new place—
“Jade?” Rose asked, a little wide-eyed, a little haunted.
“Oh, hi Rose!” Jade said, smiling almost as bright as the sun outside, because this—this was one of the things she'd won. People she could touch. Friends she could touch.
“I heard you—”
“I'm sorry! I was trying to be quiet—”
“I wasn't sleeping either,” Rose admitted, quiet, and Jade—paused for a second because it hurt and she wanted to do things right. She wanted to do things well. All of them were hurting. Scraped raw. The sunlight outside was brilliant, shining on Rose's hair, along the lines of her face; her face was pale, her make up not on yet, the way so few people got to see her— Jade loved the blemishes, the irregularities of Rose's skin, love that made her heart twist painfully because Rose could give them this unspoken vulnerability.
It stuck in Jade's throat, bitter and awful. She couldn't cry it out, couldn't scream loud enough, it was caught in her throat, she couldn't expel it—fear, anguish, feelings too much for anyone and she could shake apart so easily, but she couldn't. Not with Rose, with bags under her eyes, a red crease still fading on her cheek from where she'd fallen asleep on her diary. Jade knew, because she checked each room at night, when she woke up—Rose's room, she'd asked if it was okay and she knew that it was only Rose's own desperation that made her say yes. Her own dark fears, still lurking behind her eyes. She'd asked Dave, and when she looked in on him he always woke up to look at her, and then she could go over and kiss him, whatever was exposed, his cheek or forehead or lips, or sometimes his arm, once his knee, which had made him mumble something about how weird she was. The door to John's room was left open now so she could peer inside with just a silent push, because the click of the latch was too much like his dad checking in on him late at night.
They still had each other. Just barely. They'd made it through, still themselves. Jade couldn't let herself be ruined. She knew the others weren't.
Her fingers were leaving deep dents in the dough, nails cutting into it, hands clenched and tight. But she didn't have claws. (Anymore.)
“Yes,” Jade said, throat rough, raw, the word almost strangled. And she couldn't say anything else. I killed you in my sleep one night. I ripped the feathers off the wings that Dave doesn't have. John never saw me coming. Or, just as bad: Sometimes I wish Bec was gone completely, because he's not the same, nothing's the same. I wish I was all alone again, except that it would kill me—but there's too much noise here, too many things to distract me.
I love you all so much it's dangerous.
Rose came up behind her—Jade knew, she could feel the shape of her, still, the way she left eddies in the molecules of the air, the atomic details of her friend, her best friend, all of them the part of herself she still trusted, bone deep and sure. John felt everyone breathing, he knew too much about souls, and Rose saw too much, and Dave felt the tick of time in his bones, and Jade felt the edges of the world, the places where one thing rubbed against another, and she knew how indistinct and blurred even the sharpest line was.
Rose sighed as she, carefully, wrapped her arms around Jade's waist, hugging her. Holding on. This was what they had won.
“You're getting flour on your sleeves,” Jade said, breath still tight, voice not modulated enough, not even human enough—she hadn't realized until she'd talked to people, living people, in person, that her inflection was weird, that she was sometimes too loud. It was worse when she was upset, when she wanted to howl like a dog.
Rose twitched for a second—and she was in velvet, her dressing robe, a red so dark that it was almost black, except that in the bright morning light it was, almost, like the bright, frivolous poppies that Jade was growing. (None of her old plants existed, and nothing like them would survive here. Too cold, even in the middle of summer, sometimes even in the greenhouse, humidity and light all wrong—it was still chilly in the kitchen, goosebumps on her arms.) “It'll wash out,” Rose said by her ear, so Jade pulled her hands out of the dough, everything yeasty smelling, and wrapped Rose's hands in her own, holding on just a little desperately with slightly sticky hands. And breathed it in. This was what they had won. Morning sunlight, invading the cavernous, gloomy kitchen of Rose's empty house, and people who understood, people Jade loved fierce enough to kill for.
“Cute,” Dave announced, wandering into the kitchen, shades on but the lines of exhaustion still sharp in his face.
Jade took a deep breath, let it out, wiped off her eyes almost violently, and turned to smile at him. “Good morning, Dave!” she said, almost managing to sound normal, and she bounced across the kitchen to hug him too, squeezing tight.
“Oof,” Dave said, but he hugged her back just as tight. “Give my ribs a break, Jade, by which I mean you don't need to actually break them—damn, it's cold in here, what are you doing, channeling your inner penguin? Doesn't bread need to be warm for the yeasty stuff to happen?”
“Yeast doesn't work by magic, Dave!” Jade told him, sternly, glowing with warmth—old, familiar arguments, things shared, experiences shared. “Gee, someone's Mr. Grumpy this morning! Did you—”
Then Jade stopped, mouth closing softly. She hadn't gotten much sleep, either. She knew why. Dave didn't let go of her, he kept on holding on, and her squeeze transitioned to a gentler embrace, as she felt him melt against her, boneless and comfortable for a second as he so rarely was. Always trying to protect them. A Knight, through and through—no more or no less than she was a witch.
“Who needs sleep,” Dave said, bone-deep exhaustion in his voice.
“I'm finding you this afternoon,” Jade said, voice harsh. “We're going to sleep—”
“Ooo, Ms. Harley,” Dave said, managing a smile that made Jade's lips twitch, wanting to smile back even though she was trying to be stern.
“Dave—you're going to sleep if I have to sit on top of you and make you! It's better in the sunshine with someone else, you know that—”
Dave was snickering, and Jade finally gave in, laughing with him, squeezing him again, then rubbing floury hands over his shirt—that made Rose snicker, and she came over, too, to hug them both—patting more flour into Dave's shirt. Maybe John was a bad influence!
“I thought sleeping in the sun was cats, not dogs,” Dave said, teasing her, as they broke apart, just three friends again, not wounded veterans holding each other together with nothing but their arms.
“You're such a dork, Dave!” Jade said, giddy with laughter, with love, going back to her bread. “But you don't know anything about animals, geeze! It's really cute. Bec loves sleeping in the sun!”
“Yeah, but Bec's not exactly a normal dog—”
“Coffee,” Rose told Dave, wrapping an arm around his head, her hand going firmly over his mouth, free hand setting a cup down next to him. It was amazing how quickly Dave had stopped flinching when someone touched him too unexpectedly. But they'd also gotten better at not surprising him—any of them. Not that it was easy to surprise most of them. Jade knew the outlines, Rose knew the future, and John felt the currents in the air. Dave could lose track of the present. She ached with love for him. So Jade bit her lip, fierce, and her dough was silky-smooth and blood-warm, so she shaped it, set it aside to rise again, and went to kiss Dave. Like she was drowning, a little too fierce, a little too much, but Dave kissed her back because it was one of the necessary things that kept them tethered to the life they'd won, and sometimes he gave her trouble about kissing like a dog—such a fuckhead, she thought tenderly—but not when it mattered.
“Gross,” John said, somewhat gleefully, and Jade laughed into the kiss and Dave pulled back making a disgusted face and Rose laughed, the deep belly-laugh she almost never used. Jade joined in, because the sun was up and the clean wind—more pollution than she was used to, but full of the smell of living things—blowing in through the windows, and there was bread ready to be baked and she was too cold but she had Dave and John and Rose to cling to, to lean on, to keep her warm. And human. As human as any of them could be.
John took another look at Dave, did a visible double-take, and then started laughing. “Haha, Dave, you're covered in flour!”
“Huh?” Dave said, suddenly suspicious, and— “Seriously? Rose, Jade, you'd attack a bro when he's at his weakest—”
Jade was laughing so hard she had to lean against Rose to keep herself from falling out of her chair, and maybe it wasn't that funny but she needed to laugh anyway, so she did.
“Culling the herd,” John said wisely, and tossed a handful of flour at Dave.
When they were done, there was flour dusted almost everywhere, and Rose was starting to look dismayed even through her lingering giggles. She was the neatest of them. Jade shook herself off, her long hair raising a cloud of flour—they all needed showers now! But she couldn't bring herself to leave, no matter how much the flour tickled—and stood. The bread went into the oven, the dishes into the sink—
“Jade! You didn't do the dishes last night,” John said, bumping into her, a little too forceful—Jade rolled her eyes, pushed him back, then gave up and hugged him.
“Okay, assbutt! I'm going to do them now.”
“It's six in the morning,” John said, with disdain. “You should have done them last night.”
Jade turned back around to flick suds at him. “No bread for you if you keep it up!”
“What if I don't want your gross bread anyway?”
“You're such obnoxious assholes,” Dave muttered at the table.
“You, too,” Jade said, lovingly. “—let's go eat on the roof!”
John lit up—always in love with heights, now, and that had scared her a little, for reasons she couldn't quite pin. Maybe everything scared her now, most especially the fact that—also—nothing did. It was a contradiction, but still true, because life was complicated. She knew how unclear the edges were. She knew how much of everything was empty, and how much of everything was full—she knew the weight and viscosity of the air. Dave knew the pace of her breath. John felt it moving through her. Rose saw them all.
But Rose looked unenthusiastic about eating outdoors, or maybe about the roof part, and Dave just looked tired, and cold, so— “No, let's eat in the greenhouse! It's going to be warm and I have kiwis—don't make that face, Dave, you have to at least try them!”
“They're like sweet green snot,” John said helpfully, laughing when Jade swatted at him.
“That sounds good,” Rose said, standing with a sigh. She pulled off her dressing gown, revealing a slightly-oversized, almost completely worn out Squiddles t-shirt, and matching shorts. Jade laughed with delight, and had to squeeze Rose tight again, pressing a quick kiss against her cheek.
“If I wear Squiddles pjs do I get kissed?” Dave asked.
“I already kissed you, silly!”
“I think we're going to have to vacuum up all this flour,” John said—the only one really used to cleaning,or at least practical cleaning; Jade had thought she knew something, but it had turned out she hadn't known very much.
Rose smirked. “John, what do you mean, we? You were, as I recall, the one to start it—”
“I do most of the cleaning around here!” John said, frowning, which was—true, if only because Jade didn't like the face Rose got when she spent too long cleaning alone, it made her want to whine and hackle, so she usually distracted her.
“John,” Dave drawled, ruining the effect a little as he yawned, lifting up his shades to rub his eyes, before continuing. “John, dude, palchum, loser—”
“Takes one to know one, dweeb,” John said.
“Did you seriously just say that? Hell no. I am so cool that I'm—”
“Just finish,” Jade told him, blowing him a kiss. Dave caught it (he'd call it ironic, she was sure, which made her stifle a giggle) and blew one back.
“...Yeah, sure. John, you do most of the cleaning because you make most of the mess.”
“Says the guy who leaves crumbs all over the counter every morning,” John said, folding his arms.
“Like you're one to talk, at least I didn't leave half of Jade's—you know, flower thingies—”
“African violets,” Jade provided, voice crisp, glaring at John, who at least had the intelligence to cower.
“—okay, her violets—with shaving cream. It was fucking mess, John, it looked like a shaving massacre, orphaned razors crying for—”
Dave shut up too quickly, and the silence was suffocating. Too many things to trip on. Too many aching wounds. Jade put the last dish aside.
“But I can remember to wipe up my toast crumbs,” John said, pointed, mulishly stubborn, and it was okay, Jade thought. They'd make it. They were already. They were like water, carving new channels for themselves, cutting through stone, settling in. Making their place in the resurrected world that was new and yet not, to all of them—even to Rose, whose house it was, or had been. Even to Jade, who'd never known trees that turned red in the autumn. Cold was worse in the real world.
Rose had found a picnic basket, almost cliché, and she was putting jam, butter, gilded antique china plates (not inherited, purchased from another family, Rose had told her one day), stainless steel butter knives, napkins into it. They'd gotten new forks and knives and spoons, because Jade thought that all the silver silverware that had been in the drawers tasted weird. And who was going to polish it?! They had picked out a new pattern and argued about it and tried to figure out how to navigate this silly-stupid adult activity when they weren't adults and when their adults were gone, and now the silverware wasn't silver and it was theirs, it was one of the things changing. Growing. In new ways. Some days, Jade felt ancient.
When the bread was done, they all trooped out to the greenhouse, not quite hand-in-hand, but with all those little points of glancing contact—Jade with her arm hooked through Dave's, John poking and prodding and darting away and then coming back. Rose's hands, fluttering smooth and practiced as she spoke, brushing against John's sleeve or Dave's arm or Jade's back sometimes, almost casual, as lightly as the brush of the sun.
It was warm inside, and Jade pulled off her jackets, twirling—avoiding her plants out of practice—so that her skirt belled out around her, and then sitting down happily on a bag of potting soil.
“It's a good thing I need to wash everything already,” Rose said, sitting down behind her, so her back was to the light streaming in the windows, because it could hurt her eyes. Here in the real world. As real as they'd made it. Dave leaned against Jade's legs, and she leaned over to give him a smooch.
“Did anyone remember a bread knife?” John asked.
Jade rolled her eyes, huffing, and Dave snickered. She tore chunks with strong wrists, firm fingers, the way she'd learned how to—John passed out plates and Rose and Dave struggled briefly over the jam. ...Jade wanted to try making jam, out of fresh apples, marmalade out of oranges. If she could grow oranges here, even with a greenhouse. With enough retrofitting, she probably could—she could still build, design, tinker. She'd make this world her own. Even if the fruit didn't have faces anymore. She'd make do. She'd adapt. She'd grow. She could put down roots.
“Thanks for the bread,” Dave muttered, awkward and sweet, and Jade laughed, and jumped up, and that jolted Dave but he had good reflexes, he could take it, and she rolled into his lap—
“Jade! Jade, you're covering me in fucking jelly—”
“Jam,” Rose corrected, prim and sharp, and John started laughing, loose and carefree—except he wasn't, John was an asshole and a doofus and he carried shadows in him and she'd cried on his shoulder and he'd cried on hers, ugly and raw and blotchy and covered in snot, nothing beautiful about it. Except that they could.
Sprawled across Dave's bony knees, eyes dazzled by sun shining in through panes of glass, glittering across her lashes, eyes half-closed against the early morning glare as the sun struck down through the trees, the taste of jam and bread in her mouth, the greenhouse smelling like fertile dirt and almost-tropical warmth, humid and alive, the smell of yeast over top of it—anchored, set adrift, they had the four of them. Jade let the certainty resonate through her, settling in her bones—she could survive. They had tomorrow, they did, and now, she wasn't alone. Her wish—she'd gotten her wish, and it was greater and harder than she'd ever imagined.
But Dave's warm hand on her shoulder, and Rose's voice, and John's foot pressed against her ankle—they were what mattered.
“I love you,” Jade said fiercely, out loud, because she could, because she couldn't not—
The four of them, the early-morning sun above them, a new day coming after the sleepless night. And they could always try again tomorrow.
-End-