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When people asked Hurley if she believed in love, she said sure. Anyone who pressed further and asked why she didn’t have any for herself yet got, it’s out there, just not for me. And for all the world, she looked content -- in a way, she was content in her view, if she didn’t dare to look into the threads of the words themselves. Didn’t dare think of what made up the bandages that held her heart together after the first two times it had broken. Didn’t dare to think of the dye that colored it, of when she tried to go deeper into love, of what she wanted to scream when people asked her about it.
Love drowns you, she wanted to scream. It’s an ocean you need a boat to survive and I can’t even swim.
(Maybe that was why she’d moved out to the desert.)
People usually dropped it before she could scream and left her on her island in the middle of that stormy sea, watching others play on the waves in their shining boats. She was content, she told herself. She didn’t need to swim or frolic on the waves. She had her work and a garden and that was all she’d ever need.
The universe, as it so often does, had other plans that she didn’t get the memo for.
Instead, she got something new.
A visitor to her island. A dancing shadow of a woman tauntingly close but impossible to catch. A half-elf, with eyes like the earth Hurley loved so much and a cloak of feathers that hid her in the darkness of the night. A criminal whose case was given entirely to Hurley after she’d expressed interest in her and her alone. A never-ending game of cat and mouse.
Hurley toed the tide for the first time since her second heartbreak. She wasn’t in love with the criminal, no, she’d never fall for someone who fell outside of the law (even if, in her quiet moments, she couldn’t make herself believe the rumors spread about where the criminal kept her money by the rich). But she fell in love with their chase, with the way the criminal managed to evade the rest of militia, the way she told Hurley her alias with a note and a feather tucked into her ponytail ( It’s the Raven if you were wondering. You looked cute with the pixie). She fell in love with the thrill the Raven brought to her life -- but not the Raven herself. That’s what she told herself, even when she clutched her chest after a particular chase as her heart followed after the fleeing shape.
(And if she started maintaining her pixie cut again after that note, no one had to know why.)
Her visitor started appearing in the tides instead of on the beach as she got used to the waves lapping at her toes, just out of reach again.
The letters dragged her another step into the sea. They started during the lull in the Raven’s activity, appearing on her windowsill when Hurley got home, tied with twine and ribbon. At first, they were casual, an admirer of her work and how she tried to change Goldcliff from the inside. Time passed and her pen pal grew closer to her. Hurley told the person on the other end things she’d never told anyone else: about her garden, about going to see the battlewagon races, about how she wished she could be properly face-to-face with the Raven just once, to look her in the eye and ask what she really did with what she took. Her pen pal set their own secrets in her hands: about their tiny home full of stray birds and children who came and went, about their participation in the races, about how they thought they were falling in love with someone who would never return the feelings, and how they saw their crossed star just often enough to keep the wound fresh and bleeding. One letter -- an invitation, really -- was sealed, not with the small feather drawing they’d been signing before, but with a kiss of black lipstick. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw it, and Hurley was in love with her pen pal.
(Or, rather, she let herself be in love with her pen pal.)
She was calf-deep in the waters that still terrified her, but the figure didn’t move as far away, and she had hope.
Two steps this time. At the insistence of her pen pal, she attended the biggest battlewagon race of the year, a masquerade mask with curling horns and little way to discern her face safely strapped on as she watched the carts rattle down the track. The letter was tucked against her chest, its words beating against her chest like heartbeats. I’ll win for you. You’ll know it’s me, promise. Her eyes were glued to first place, watching the title trade hands between crashing wagons and flying arrows. She couldn’t tell who was the person who had brought her here on danger of both their heads. A smaller, sleeker shape kept catching her eye, but after the third or fourth time it disappeared she disregarded it as a trick of her nerves.
At least, until it pulled into first place at a speed that earned a chorus of accusations. A bike-wagon, all black metal and bird motifs. A cloak of black feathers thrown across the shoulders of a slim figure. A mask in the shape of a raven’s head, more decorated than its twin but striking Hurley just the same. A moment of locked eyes, when the Raven looked straight at her and winked. A realization that stole her breath and painted her face red.
(Somehow, she knew this shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was, though she didn’t know why.)
Hurley was knee deep and staring into the eyes of her visitor, who sat under the waves and reached up.
She didn’t take the invitation right away. She waited where the crowd gathered to greet the winner as they all dispersed once the Raven had taken her winnings and gotten on her bike to speed away. Her mask still hid her face, a hood tugged over her hair to hide its carroty glow, and she had the patience of a flower awaiting spring. And, if somehow blessed by the gods, she knew exactly what she was going to say when the Raven came back, mask still strapped on, and stood on her bike in front of her.
“You came,” the Raven said.
“You asked,” Hurley replied.
A beat of silence. “So… when did you figure it out?” the Raven asked, parking her bike and getting off of it. “I’m… honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t… you didn’t rat me out a month ago.”
Hurley wrinkled her eyebrows. “What?”
“When did you figure out it was me?”
Another beat. “Just… just today,” Hurley said, halting as if she suspected that was the wrong answer.
“Today?”
“How could I have known who you were?”
The Raven’s mouth twitched and broke into a smile. She didn’t say anything else as she swallowed her laughter. Under her breath, “And here I thought I was being too obvious.”
Hurley huffed and pursed her lips, the laugh stinging even without full expression. For a moment, she considered taking her question and leaving this whole situation behind to run from the waves once again before she broke. The conflict was already brewing in her heart as the criminal she’d been chasing for months became her visitor and her trusted confidant. But as she looked up to tell the Raven to leave her alone, they locked eyes again, and the Raven’s face had melted into a kinder smile despite her eyes being full of panic. Her hands were twisted into her elbows, arms crossed in forced relaxation as she shook. Hurley could get her killed, and they both knew it. Hurley knew she wouldn’t; the Raven did not. Hurley opened her mouth, prepared to deny her, prepared to swear silence but nothing else.
“I want to race with you.”
The Raven looked like Hurley had just handed her the world.
Hurley had precious few seconds to take it back, to save herself, to get out of the waves and run. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not when the Raven’s smile grew giddy instead of cool and she coughed to regain her composure, or when she sputtered over a couple words before asking, “Really?” in a voice that didn’t fit any version of her in Hurley’s head.
“Yeah, really,” Hurley said, feeling her face heat up again behind the mask.
The Raven hesitated for a moment, but stepped forward and fell to her knees to sweep Hurley up in a hug. “I’ll show you the garage tomorrow,” she said as she pulled away. “I, um, I’ll come get you. Are you… working?”
Hurley shook her head, swallowing and explaining, “You’ve been quiet, so the captain has had me on standby.”
(That was a lie; she’d taken the day off on a hunch.)
The figure she’d been chasing -- the Raven, her pen pal, the beautiful woman who had such a tight grip on Hurley’s heart -- moved no farther away. Hurley took her hand and let her pull her under the waves, and it turned out she could swim just fine.
As promised, the Raven picked her up at her apartment early the next morning, scaling up to the window that faced her garden with a smile on her unmasked face -- which was, as Hurley had guessed, absolutely beautiful (though she may have been biased, since she was already in love with her), with floppy ears that echoed a drow and a pillow of long black hair streaked with white all framing a shining face. The garage was spacious, covered in parts of battlewagons that the Raven had scrapped, and Hurley felt at home the second she slid under the door. The bike-wagon she’d been using the day before was propped up against one wall and a partially completed full-sized wagon filled the center of the room. It was big enough for two people, maybe even three or four, even half-assembled. The Raven was on it in a heartbeat, pulling out tools and scrap pieces that seemed to match the composition of the wagon. Hurley wasn't sure what to do, so she found a stool nearby and watched as she got to work. For a few minutes, the Raven didn't remember that she was there, lost in a practiced routine.
She perked up as she realized Hurley wasn't at her side, turning to face her. "Oh, um, you've never worked on a wagon before, right?"
"I worked on the police wagons, but I sort of… assumed this was different."
The Raven stuck her lip out, looking over her wagon. "I doubt it's too different at this stage. I'm not to the racing components, yet. Just putting this ol’ thing back together."
Hurley hopped off her stool and pulled it over to the wagon, sitting on it again so she was level with the Raven. She opened her mouth to ask what she was doing, and instead a different phrase tumbled out. "I don't know your name."
"...shit. I. I forgot to introduce myself yesterday?"
"I don’t think we really got around to introductions."
The Raven covered her face, a faint blush forming under her skin. She seemed to be collecting herself after that blunder, finally mumbling, "Its Sloane. My name is Sloane."
Sloane. Hurley repeated it, rolling it off her tongue and feeling the rush that came with it. "Well then, Sloane, show me how this baby runs." Her grin was lopsided, and her phrasing earned a snort and a chuckle (success).
Sloane showed Hurley what she had already in the wagon and what she planned to strip from each of the surrounding wagons. Hurley found that she knew a lot more about wagons than she thought, though part of it might've been from Sloane's explanations and the fact that, really, what went where wasn't hard to figure out when everything was designed to fit together flawlessly. They started work on the wagon before the afternoon hit, and midway through Sloane looked up and over at Hurley, eyebrows wrinkled just slightly.
"...yeess?" Hurley asked, flushing faint pink.
"Sorry, I just… you'll need to hide your face, and I was. Trying to think of a good fit for you," Sloane explained.
She turned more fully toward Hurley, something other than curiosity in her eyes but only scrutinizing Hurley as she promised to. "That mask," she said, "do you still have it?"
“Back home.”
“The Ram…” Sloane repeated it a few times to herself. “The Raven and the Ram. Sound good to you?”
Hurley tried to imagine it, forming the battlewagon in her mind and placing them inside, tumbling down the track at top speed. Sloane in her raven mask and cloak, Hurley in a ram’s skull mask and… a cape of fleece? No, she wasn’t a cape person. Her gi, though... a new one formed in her head, patterned to look like wool she’d been wearing as she headbutted someone’s nose in. That she could rock.
“I like it,” Hurley said, grinning.
And that was what they became, among other things. The Raven and the Ram, fiercest duo on the tracks; Sloane and Hurley, fantasy Starbucks master and militia lieutenant; cat and mouse, Goldcliff’s second-favorite illegal pastime. Lovers playing under the waves together, content where they were in each other's arms instead of floating above in boats of shallow happiness and loose commitments. The wounds on Hurley’s bandaged heart stitched themselves closed and the bandages fell away. She held Sloane’s own healing heart in her hands and held it close. Maybe love was for her after all. She had her work and her garden and frolicked under the waves with her girlfriend (later fiancee) all at once. She dived deeper, deeper, learned new things about herself and the woman she loved as their chases became staged and their races became shows, as they danced and swam and grew a garden and helped the birds and children of Goldcliff get enough to eat.
Love didn’t feel like drowning, she thought. It felt a little more like breathing.
(Hiccups and all.)