Chapter Text
Hekseville under twilight was a sight almost unrivaled, when the town was in the in-between of wake and sleep, when the lands were blanketed in shadow even while the sky still shone with the dying embers of the day. The usual trickle of air traffic, airboats and airbikes of every make and model, thinned down to the occasional sputter. The World Pillar stood sentinel in the middle of it all, half a monument to the light living above, half a tombstone for the dark that had dwelled below.
The hustle and bustle of Vendecentre’s busy bodies had lulled to a dull thrum of sleepy, shuffling feet and idle, end-of-the-day conversations, catching on the breeze to reach Raven even all the way up on the highest point of not just the business district, but all of Hekseville: the clock tower, her legs dangling over the edge of the steel bar she sat on, situated right under its bell, letting them sway any way the wind blew.
For the past year, that same sight had served as a reminder of what she had inherited, what she still had to fight for.
What she still had to lose.
Now it was something to admire, share, without the whole weight of the world on her shoulders.
Yes, Hekseville under twilight was almost unrivaled. Almost.
But the person who trumped it sat an inch to her side.
Kat was doing what she did best: drinking in the scenery and leaving nothing to spare. Not a drop. Her eyes had grown wide enough to do it, showing off their ruby gleam, so bright Raven was starting to believe they’d converted the clock tower to a lighthouse. It absorbed Kat so utterly she was murmuring little bits of nonsense under her breath, easily swept up in the air and taken somewhere far from where Raven could hear them. Watching her watch the world had a way of inspiring wonder in the older shifter, had her seeing little things she’d normally overlook.
“I’d missed this,” Kat said. “Ever since Jirga, I haven’t really had time to just explore Hekseville like I used to. And then, well…” She didn’t have to use her words to resurface bad memories, so she didn’t, and Raven was all the more grateful for it. “This is a good place to see all the new stuff the city’s put up.”
The smile that dominated Kat’s face was infectious, and before Raven knew it, her mouth was mirroring hers. “I’m glad you think so. Even gladder to see I know you as well as I think I do.”
Kat was showing teeth then, and suddenly there was a new light in her eyes. She sidled up closer, head finding its rightful place in the crook of Raven’s neck. “Well, of course you do! You know me best of all! Who else has a phone line straight to my head?”
Raven went from fair to red in an instant. Had a heat draft passed just then?!
A year ago, she would’ve accepted the gesture with a little skip of the heart and that would’ve been that. But this wasn’t a year ago; it was only the second day since Kat’s miraculous return. And a year was a long time to let old feelings settle. All the hot-blooded determination she’d had to just sit Kat down, grab her by the shoulders, and confess everything at point-blank had cooled down, tempered by time and distance. Now it was back all at once, and at the same height it’d been left at, jump-starting every nerve that met Kat’s touch, fueled by every noise she made or look she gave. It was like one of her limbs had been paralyzed, desensitized by months of inactivity, and then one day, out of the blue, cured by a shot in the arm. From a gun.
Simply put, her heart did more than just skip.
At least any shaking she did could be explained away as the cold catching up to her.
But Raven had always been a master of hiding her true feelings, and Kat had mastered obliviousness to a sometimes ludicrous degree, so even as a sheen broke out over her forehead, she didn’t sweat the possibility her feelings might come to light.
Hiding was even easier when she didn’t have to talk, too, and freed her to appreciate the silk of Kat’s blonde caresses, the touch of soft skin against skin, the little subconscious noises only Raven would ever hear, so she kept her mouth closed and leaned into the warmth.
It had a way of clearing her mind, but that only meant that when the old thoughts moved out, new ones were free to move in. Thoughts about how she’d broken her own promise to herself, was keeping her words hoarded away -- words that were near-bursting out the seams she’d worked hard to sew up over the year. Seams she didn’t need anymore. But it was only the second day, and habits that well-worn, practiced daily for months and months and months, were hard to break. She turned her head just so and let her hair fall over her face to hide whatever tell she might be giving away.
It was the truth, and yet she couldn’t help but feel like it was nothing more than a lame excuse. She’d been determined once. Why not again? She didn’t have anything to hide anymore, from anyone. There was no pain to keep locked away in the deepest depths of her heart, no depression to keep covered with the odd optimistic comment or rueful smile. Her Kat was back, and while Raven’s healing wouldn’t come and go as quickly as she’d like, it’d come and go all the same. It’d already started, but she knew how she could push it along a little further. A fastpass for the recovery rollercoaster.
She took the end of one of those seams and pulled.
“Kat?”
The shifter turned to her, hair a wave of melted gold, stirred by gentle winds to play and ripple around her face. “Yes, Raven?”
Despite her reputation as a voracious eater, there were plenty of things Raven wouldn’t eat, butterflies high among them, but she sure couldn’t help but feel like she’d just downed a jarful. One of them fluttered in her throat. She swallowed and pressed on. “There’s something I’ve been waiting to say for a long time -- longer than I’ve been waiting for you to come back. And I don’t think it can wait anymore.”
Kat’s eyes gained a new gleam: a spark. The curious kind. And excited, but the type of excitement that wasn’t sure what level it should be at so it chose to waver between all of them. Her mouth didn’t close all the way either, as if she were trying to taste the atmosphere and determine the surprise from that. “Yeah? What is it?”
“I…”
...couldn’t say it. Not yet. Not without something to lead into it. Otherwise it’d just come from nowhere. She didn’t want to crash and burn; she had to slow her fall first, ready herself to stick the landing.
“I want to talk about us. What we mean to each other.”
The light in Kat’s eyes didn’t dim, but it found its place and stayed there. “Uh, sure. That sounds like fun! You sound like you want to go first...”
Raven didn’t hesitate to say, “I do,” but then that eagerness hit reality and died on impact.
She didn’t actually know what she wanted to say.
Or, rather, she didn’t know what she didn’t want to say. The original plan had been to bare it all the first chance she got, something she’d realized just a few seconds ago was exactly the kind of thing that only happened in one of those cheesy romance movies that rarely ever played outside of the dead hours of public broadcasting. But now she had to sift through all her thoughts and single out the best she could use to ease into her message, and that wasn’t something she was about to take lightly.
What better place to start than all the way back at the beginning? The beginning that Kat knew, anyway. It wasn’t the most pleasant place to revisit, but looking back on what they used to be only strengthened what they were now.
Raven found her words and ran with them. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
“Huh? Oh, sure! It was back when I first woke up down here. I’d heard about another shifter and needed some answers so I went off looking for you, hoping you’d have something for me. But you kinda blew me off when I found you…” Kat gave an awkward little smile, but even then it still dwarfed Raven’s more awkward one. “That day seems so long ago now.”
Raven nodded. “You’ve been through so much since then.” She stopped in the middle of her next breath, then her eyes gained a subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sadness to them. “But you went through a lot before that, too.” Her mouth tried to make up the difference and smile wider, but her heart wasn’t in it and she knew even Kat could see through it.
Kat didn’t say anything for a while. She just took to her thinking face, head tilted, brow slightly furrowed, mouth open just enough to see a thin white line. Then she turned to her, beaming brighter than before, and said, “What’s past is past. Eto wanted to get rid of Alua, so they did, but now Kat’s here and she’s here to stay, so I don’t see the point in lingering on Alua’s problems when they aren’t really mine. And besides, Hekseville needs a Gravity Queen! Not a … queen.”
Something about her words, or her delivery, or both, kicked Raven in the stomach -- but in a painless way, if that was even possible, that only served to agitate the butterflies further. Kat was probably the only person in the world who could shove all her hardships aside like that, so earnestly, just to stay upbeat and uplift the people around her. She was probably also incapable of wearing her heart anywhere other than her sleeve.
“And besides,” Kat continued, “I’m not the only one who’s had it rough around here...” She gave Raven a look that said she expected her to say something on that, but now wasn’t the time, and so Raven swallowed the words trying to creep out onto her tongue.
“Our first few meetings weren’t on the friendliest of terms,” Raven said instead. She caught Kat rubbing the back of her head out of the corner of her eye. They both winced. “But I think that only makes what we have now all the more special.”
Kat nodded, and her hair jumped with the motion. “It sure does. It took a lot of work to go from being hated down to my guts to earning your trust, but I’d say it was all worth it! I think you’re the closest friend I have. Closer than that, maybe...”
Raven was suddenly doing her best impression of a statue, every muscle molding stone-stiff, but her eyes betrayed the rest of her, widening just enough to tell the whole story to someone more observant than Kat. Her heart beat so hard she could’ve replaced the bell’s clapper and nobody would’ve known the difference. “Oh, really?” she managed to say without choking on and/or biting her tongue off.
“Really. I know you said you wanted to go first, but I need to say something, too: you mean a lot to me, Raven. You’re the kind of person that I always felt was missing from my life...”
It flew out of her mouth before she could catch it. “I feel the same way.” She wondered if her face was burning the same shade as her hair.
The time was coming. She could feel it. Almost time to let those three little words loose, so she ushered them up to wait just behind the white, enamel bars of their cage.
Kat smiled as she looked out onto nothing in particular. “I always had a feeling.”
Did that feeling happen to come as a tickling in the back of her mind? Had Raven’s inner monologue been betraying her the whole time?!
No, that couldn’t be the case. Kat couldn’t keep a secret; not for long, anyway. It would bubble to the surface by degrees, always, and then her porcelain mask, with its faux-ignorant eyes and know-nothing lips, would crack under boiling half-truths until they seeped through and onto her tongue, scalded it, and then she had to spit it out.
So Raven was safe, then. But how long until she wasn’t -- until something slipped from one psyche to the next? If that happened, she wouldn’t have to worry about the confession itself. It’d just be a little accident at that point, something neither could really take responsibility for. But that’d be all too convenient, wouldn’t it, and Raven didn’t necessarily want convenient, and she definitely didn’t want it to be an accident . She needed more than that. Kat deserved more than that. Just the thought of missing her chance had her insides twisting themselves into knots that weighed heavy at the bottom of her stomach, and if that thought became reality those knots would never unravel and she’d never fly by her side again.
The hard way it was, then. As if there were ever really an option.
Raven let the silence run its course. Then she struck. “Kat…”
The other shifter turned but the world didn’t. It stopped -- stopped on that image of spun gold glittering with the last of the sun’s dying rays, the mouth that smiled so easily and cheeks that glowed when it did, the wide wine eyes -- to mark the milestone: the border where the wide, wide world of their partnership lay on one side, and a dark chasm of something more on the other. “Hm?”
Raven put one foot over that border. Doubt tickled at her neck. She let herself fall. “I love you.”
It was little more than a whisper but the loudest thing she’d ever said, and the impact was tangible, physical, reaching out and stiffening Kat’s neck, easing her eyes wider, letting the tiniest of tiny gasps escape from the tiniest of tiny gaps between her lips.
The urge to tear her gaze away from Kat’s and look at whatever lay furthest from her surged up in Raven’s chest but she stopped it at the bottom of her throat and swallowed it back.
The wind whistled in her ears.
Then Kat blinked and before her eyes opened again her mouth was wide and reflecting the light. Raven didn’t know at what point she’d been taken into her arms, but she didn’t bother wondering. She pressed closer into her warmth.
She had to, because she didn’t feel any warmer.
It was the strangest sensation, to feel heat at her periphery but not any closer, to know it was there but unable to touch it, really feel it somewhere deeper than bone. She waited for it to come to her but it didn’t, so she tried hugging back and then hugging harder when that didn’t work, and shut her eyes to shut away the outside world that might be leaking in between their bodies.
Still she was cold.
But why? She’d finally said what she’d wanted to say for so long she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t wanted to say it. Even better, Kat had accepted it! So why wasn’t every bit of her being lighting up, flushing, glowing, burning then boiling, melting into her arms?!
A thought came to her, a shard of ice that stabbed into her spine and stayed there. Maybe it was because…
Maybe it was because Kat hadn’t said it back.
Something worse than dread dulled her every sense.
Raven reached out to their bond, that honest, ever-present background chatter, and found nothing. It wasn’t quiet -- it was gone. Gashed from both ends.
And then Kat spoke, and her mouth said what her mind hadn’t. “Aww, I love you, too. You’re like a sister to me!”
Sister.
Of course.
She was like a sister.
A sister to her.
A sister to Kat...
Raven plunged into a darkness deeper than she’d ever known. She opened her eyes but the darkness followed her there. Her little words, freed from their cage, had plucked them out.
She was blind.
she was falling.
wind roared, scratched her skin raw
her mouth opened nothing came out
in place of their bond was blood the sound of it rushing and gushing and guttural in her ears gravity took her but the wind took her apart piece by piece until she was nothing with a conscious falling into nothing without and the whole way down cries of raven raven followed
-
They followed her all the way to the waking world, where she wasn’t falling, but rising, straight up out of bed until she was a stiff reed sticking out of a marsh of soggy sheets. Her first noise of the day was a gasp. The second, third, and fourth were her taking in big gulps of air, thick enough to drown in.
The breathing exercise was instinct. Her shoulders rose with every dragging breath, stayed by her chin as she savored the next three sweet seconds, and fell on the exhale, over and over again until her chest stopped thumping. This time was so much less effort than the first, so long ago in memory but short in her calendar.
The funny thing about bad dreams was that they were only bad as long as she was in them. Once awake, their shadows couldn’t last longer than it took her to rub the sleep from her eyes. Not anymore.
Slowly, the world came back, a pitch-black picture still developing before her eyes. Sensation, too: the feeling of those soggy sheets sticking to sweat-soaked skin; the teases of a cool breeze’s caresses; the juxtaposition of her body’s boiling, well, everything . Tossing the blanket off really was a no-brainer.
But then the lump under the covers at her side stirred and her heart skipped a beat.
Then another.
And another.
And another until she started to wonder if it’d ever start again.
And then it did, and Raven let out a relieved sigh when Kat mumbled some sleepy nothings and stilled again.
But the “Raven! Raven!” didn’t let up, hadn’t even hiccuped in all of Kat’s tossing and turning, coming through their bond as if it were being funneled through the hundred holes in a stone sieve. Had she dreamed the same dream, or had tiny bits of it spilled into her own? It didn’t really matter, but Raven couldn’t help but wonder just how much she’d seen…
She shook her head of that particular little worry. Whatever she’d seen, it’d cut deep, and only one of them was conscious enough to put her at ease.
Raven closed her eyes and did what came naturally to her. She focused on the other shifter’s telepathic cries, tuned out the world, and synapsed a reply. She didn’t bother making it anything, for lack of a better word, coherent. A dream wasn’t the kind of place where a long, reassuring message full of soothing language and well wishes would help. If anything, it’d just get chipped away by whatever turbulence was going on in Kat’s subconscious until it meant nothing. Instead she looked to her memories, so neatly filed and sorted since they first resurfaced on the longest day of her life, and went right for the stack labeled “Us”.
A familiar pang punched her in the chest at the sight of all those bright smiles, but it was more instinctual than reasonable, because she didn’t have a reason to feel that anymore, and so it faded fast.
Raven took those memories, as many as immediately came to mind, and tossed them through the short, two-way tunnel that was their bond. Then she repeated the breathing exercise -- not for her own sake anymore. Now they were a subconscious suggestion that, with any luck, would manifest physically in Kat.
It was all a long shot, she knew. She was so used to their connection being more of a one-sided emergency call than a 24/7 phone conversation that she didn’t know what would work and what wouldn’t. All she had to go on was her experience being on the receiving end of that call, and based on that, she had a feeling that her little mind trick had a chance. She had, after all, often found herself picking up little bits of Kat’s mannerisms on the rare occasions she let her mind wander from her body and let her subconscious take over for a bit, or woken up to find that she’d slept in the same position as her. Of course, there was always the chance that that was just her picking up on her habits naturally, but why blame the mundane when the supernatural was likelier?
So she stayed like that, thinking happy thoughts and making an effort to breathe naturally, until “Raven! Raven!” became “Raven...” and then nothing.
Raven listened. Silence.
Raven opened her eyes. Stillness.
Raven reached over, took hold of the blanket, and pulled it down just far enough to reveal Kat’s gold-framed face. The teeth of a tiny, but serene and satisfied, smile stood out against the after-midnight dark. Raven mirrored it. Then she pulled the blanket back up just a bit higher. Better safe than sorry now that Kat had gone back to some old habits. She didn’t want her to stir again and end up, well, showing more than she’d intended.
That thought took Raven back, back to a time not too long after the D’nelica disaster. When she’d shown up at the pipe house’s proverbial doorstep for the first time, hoping for a place to stay, Kat had asked, “Don’t you have your own place?”
Raven’s reply? “You blew it up.”
If there had been an argument to be had, it had died then and there.
The first thing that Raven had learned about Kat as her roommate, the first of many, was that she slept in the nude. “It’s really comfy!” she’d said their first morning together.
It was as good a reason as any, so she’d just let it be.
It hadn’t fazed her to begin with.
Nothing she hadn’t already seen and all that.
As detached as could be.
Plus Kat always made an effort to keep herself wrapped up and avoid that extra awkwardness. Sharing a bed with the person who’d tried to kill you on not just one, but multiple occasions was awkward enough to begin with. The blonde had tried to keep their living situation at an acceptable level of awkward.
But that kind of closeness that comes with living together invites other kinds of closeness.
Companionship came first. With time, a friendship was forged. A few ironed-out kinks later and they'd tempered themselves a best friendship. Then…
Then Raven was doing everything she could to avoid any accidental eyefuls of Kat’s sleeping habits.
She’d thought that, finally, she’d caught a break when Kat started sleeping in her clothes during their time in Jirga Para Lhao, but on Raven’s first night since her return to Hekseville, she almost immediately found out that it’d only been temporary. “I wasn’t really comfortable sleeping like this in Banga,” Kat had said. “Most of the time, I was cooped up with ducks, and you really don’t wanna get feathers in places where feathers shouldn’t be. Plus, it was too crowded. Over here I only have to worry about you and the occasional snooping Creator.”
“What about your mining clothes?” Raven had asked in an effort to nudge her toward using them as pyjamas, but Kat just made a face.
“No, thanks. I spent so much time sweating in them I had to peel them off the last time I wore them! I don’t think that kind of gunk ever washes off. The only thing that keeps me from taking them outside and burning them is all those memories…” Then she’d slipped into a familiar, reminiscing trance, and Raven knew the matter had been dropped. At least she’d avoided having to come up with some lame excuse for all her prying only Kat would buy.
But, when it was all said and done, Raven could say that she greatly prefered a world where she had to work overtime to respect Kat’s privacy than one where she didn’t because the gulf between them was so wide there’d be no way to impose on it anyway. Even if that meant having to keep her eyes open to know when she should shut them.
Raven looked to that peace draped over Kat’s face and felt it wash over her, too. It was hard to believe her dream had been what it had, so loud and confusing and uncertain. But she supposed that’s what dreams are: subconscious exaggerations. She could never see herself tripping over her tongue, all flushed and flustered, as she tried to spit out her confesion. She couldn’t see her inner monologue playing out quite so dramatically, either. If someone came up to her and started speaking in Saghassi quotes, she’d feel the urge to shift them into the nearest waste bin. But there existed the tiniest nugget of doubt, the smallest kernel of pretentiousness inside of her that, in a dream, her subconscious would feed off of and make greater than it really was.
She realized that she’d probably met the deity -- or deities -- responsible for this weird working of the human psyche, and cursed herself for not knocking some sense into them when she’d had the chance. But hindsight’s 20/20. No reason to think about what could’ve been when instead she could look to what would be, and what would be was that tomorrow, she would take Kat down to Banga, where she’d see some old faces, smiling faces, that’d been waiting for her an entire year.
And what would happen after that? Who could tell. Raven had a good idea, but she’d rather not think too hard on it. Instead, she lay on her side, faced towards Kat, and didn't close her eyes again for the longest time.
She'd learned to love surprises.