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Renima sat on the edge of the fire escape with her feet dangling through the railings. She was staring down at the street below, at the people milling about, at the cars passing, at how the sunrise lit it all in shades of gold. At the sounds of the city, the cars and conversations of people below at various stages of their days. Her hands still shook, but the once-violent tremor was now slight, enough she could hold the cigarette she was half finished. Enough that she could sip the coffee from the mug she'd brought out with her.
The sound of someone climbing through the window behind her caught her attention, but not enough to break her train of thought. Not enough to get her to look away from the street below, even when Cassandra sat down next to her. Even when she knew Cassandra's loose t-shirt exposed a trail of hickeys below her collarbone.
"Did you sleep?" Cassandra asked.
"A bit," Renima said. Not technically a lie. She'd managed about four hours of sleep before being woken up by another nightmare that lead into an anxiety attack. Cassandra was a heavy enough sleeper she hadn't noticed, apparently. The way she was staring at Renima's shaking hands as she flicked ash off her cigarette before taking another drag, however, was clear evidence she didn't need to say it out loud. "Do you ever think about how you can be just a memory in a matter of seconds?"
Cassandra took a long moment to respond, and when she did her voice was so quiet Renima's sensitive hearing was the only reason she heard her. "Sometimes. For my brother, it was like that."
All Renima knew about Cassandra's brother was that he existed. She knew nothing else, but it hadn't taken much to figure out he wasn't around anymore and that his death still affected Cassandra. She heard her mutter his name in her sleep sometimes. "Tell me about him."
"His name was Anthony. He was twelve years older than I, and the person I compared all others to. I idolized him. I wanted to be a field zoologist like him, and even though our uncle forbade it, he would go on little 'expeditions' with me in the yard to teach me about it. He promised me we'd work together someday. Then he went and died on me."
"How did he die?"
"A mugging turned murder. We were out getting dinner when we were jumped. They shot him when he wouldn't give them anything, then they fled. I wanted to be a detective ever since. It took me many years to let go of my drive for vengeance."
"Did you really let it go?"
Cassandra gave a thoughtful hum. "Not entirely. Is it any different with you and Anne?"
The name sent a familiar pang of regret and pain through Renima, followed with a swell of anxiety at a burgeoning memory she stamped down the instant it sprang forth. There would be time to break down later, time to give in to the avalanche that would cause. "Yes and no. It still hurts like hell, but I've learned to hold myself longer than I want to. I've learned to deal with the pain alone so nobody could use my scars against me."
That was true. Cassandra knew little about Renima's past, bits and pieces said in moments of vulnerability. Cassandra knew little of her childhood, of the foster homes and the things she suffered there, of how the only thing that kept her off the street was a relationship so toxic it burned through everything in its path and left only destruction in its wake. The only reason Cassandra knew Anne's name was because of her being there during a nightmare so awful and consuming she'd woken Renima from it and held her while she fell apart.
She wanted to tell Cassandra. She really did. Yet she knew the moment it came out, Cassandra would run, and it would be devastating. She didn’t know if her heart would be able to take losing Cassandra after she’d become so attached to her. Nobody wants to be attached to someone who’s never known a lover to care about them. Nobody wants someone prone to distracting themselves with another person’s skin to give them time to think the problem through before even admitting there is a problem.
“Isn’t that lonely?” Cassandra probed. “Doesn’t sharing the burden make it easier to carry?”
“I don’t know.” When Renima put out the cigarette and finally managed to glance at Cassandra, she found the woman staring at her with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. Curious, sure. But what else? There was something else there she didn’t recognize.
The next thing she knew, Cassandra’s lips were on hers. There was no heat. No urgency behind it. No insistency to it. Just a soft slide of lips against each other. The kiss was comforting in a way she didn’t expect. Not in the sense of a distraction or a way to work out something eating away at her.
Not at all.
The kiss spoke words neither had the vocabulary to say. It said you don’t have to deal with this alone. It said I’m here for you. It said more, far more, many things she didn't know but wanted to with a desperation she hadn't been prepared for. It frightened her, scared her down to her very core, but at the same time a spark of hope burned in her chest. A hope that maybe, just maybe, the things said weren’t just her reading into it, that maybe they were true.
When Cassandra left, she was still thinking about the kiss.