Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nobody is coming.

If someone were coming, they would have come by now. Wouldn’t they? That’s what happens in books. Things are worse worse worse than they’ve ever been, and then somebody appears and whisks the heroine away into the life she deserves. Cinderella’s wicked stepmother locks her away, and the prince knows to look for her anyway. Sleeping Beauty is almost dead when she’s woken by a handsome prince, and so is Snow White. Rapunzel––she doesn’t really remember the ending to Rapunzel, actually, but certainly some prince saves her.

A handsome prince isn’t necessary. Penelope will take whatever she can get. 

She used to imagine, right after Ronnie left, that her tears would draw somebody–– Ronnie, or some old woman passing by, or a dog leading a nighttime pedestrian––to her bedroom window. They would lean in and ask are you all right? and she would say No! I’m not! I’m not all right! and they would help her out, in her nightdress and all, into the chilly night air, and then they would call the police and give Penelope a hug and a hot chocolate and a better place to live. Then she got older and the tears dried up and her fantasies with them. 

So she resigns herself. She wakes up early and goes to bed late, “yes Mother”s and “no Mother”s her way through day after day after day. Her hands are always, always dry from the scrubbing, there’s so much of it, plates and laundry and more plates and floors and laundry and plates. She takes her Clozapine once in the morning and once in the evening and the world stays fuzzy. 

And nobody is coming. 

There are visitors, sometimes. Faces she knows attached to names she isn’t allowed to say, they’re all ma’am and ever-so-occasionally sir. They aren’t people, but drink orders. 

Water. Sparkling water. Tea. Water. Tea. Tea. Whiskey, from the bottom shelf. Coffee. Sparkling water. Tea. Wine from the top shelf. Apple juice. Coffee, you don’t need another, look how jittery you are. Coffee. Coffee. Tea. Water. Coffee. Water. Water. 

She doesn’t think they know her name. They’ve never called her a thing but Blanche’s girl if they refer to her at all.

It’s a laugh, really. Blanche’s girl. They look nothing alike. Penelope remembers being young, being adopted, her mom––now, the memories are too hazy to say for certain whether or not her mom was the teenage drug addict her mother has claimed, but she likes to believe it isn’t quite true. Her mother doesn’t even call her her daughter. 

Everyone says she should count herself lucky and maybe they’re right. To go from a tiny house (everyone tells her was destitute-in-squalour but she doesn’t remember it that way) in Eressos to the home of a billionaire. She has fine clothes, even if she doesn’t pick them herself, and a room to herself, even if she isn’t allowed to decorate it. The house is more massive than she can really understand, full of columns and furniture and bright, bright, bright lights instead of windows.

How very Annie. 

Ronnie used to whisper we looove you, Miss Blanche-igan under her breath to make Penelope laugh.

Something is always dirty. Something falls by the wayside. There is never enough time in the day to finish everything, and the house is so big. There are a billion corners for cobwebs and dust to hide in but the only place Penelope has found safe is the laundry basket, buried under unwashed clothes her mother would never sully her own hands with. It needs to be used sparingly. Her last hiding place was discovered and rendered useless with frequency.

And nobody is coming. 

The code to the gate is 177451549467241. Nobody ever remembers it often enough to visit her. 

Nobody comes to visit her, anyway. 

She sometimes wonders if anybody knows she’s here at all. Somebody must, right? Her mother’s friends are at least aware of her. Her social worker, when she did see him last, maybe knows. Her mother’s grandson seems to care, for the few times she’s seen him. Or maybe she’ll just die and they’ll find her bones a bajillion years later under the floorboards and call her something like, The Delmarva Maiden. And they’ll decide she was some ritual sacrifice to a fertility god and that the soup ladle and mop are divine offerings. 

If she could give her bones her own name, she thinks she’d want archaeologists to call her Cinderella.

…

And then somebody comes. 

Change comes in the form of a teenage boy and his flurry of moms while she is polishing another set of silverware.. Penelope listens from the kitchen as they shout things she doesn’t understand. Inheritance and legacy and environment, something something about her mother’s businesses, her back is pressed against the kitchen wall, emancipation, please please please please please know she’s here please, her breath caught between her lungs and her throat, her mother is calm until she isn’t. 

Footsteps come to the kitchen. She can’t make her legs move but her hands tremble violently. Something went wrong. She’s sure of it. She’s going to come away with more bruises another cut from her mother’s terrible nails and rings they don’t know she’s here ––

But they do.

The footsteps weren’t the awful click-clack of heels, but the flop-flip of flip-flops. When she pries her eye open and looks up (up, when did she crouch down, she doesn’t know but she’s in a ball now), there’s… Oh. 

Oh.

He’s been here before. 

Apple juice. 

...Her mother’s grandson. 

He can’t be older than fourteen, but his gaze is ancient, and his smile feels like the sun. Penelope realises only now how long it’s been since she’s seen the sun. 

“Hey.” His voice trembles in an I-just-spoke-to- her way that she’s all too familiar with, but his hand, outstretched towards her, is steady. In the other room, she still hears his mothers, awkward shuffles as they try to work out what to do next. “...Do you wanna go?” 

And she doesn’t understand. Go? “Where?” Her voice cracks with disuse. When did she start sounding so old? 

“Out of here.” 

Out. Out. Out.

Out. 

She wants out . 

It’s all she can do to nod, numb, and take the boy’s hand. If she allows herself to speak, she worries about what will come out. Her guess is some earth-shattering scream of pent-up grief and agony, followed by days of sobbing, some animal clawing its way up through her body until it tears her apart. She doesn’t think that will endear her to her rescuers. 

Together, the gang of them––she can’t even count them all, there’s so many, moving so quickly, talking all together, and oh, they’re all so colourful, she missed seeing colour ––gather her things. Clothes, neatly folded, are shoved into a plastic bag bearing the name of some chain store. Her few bits of jewellery are thrown into another. Everything is urgent, urgent, urgent, get everything together, get out. Penelope takes her velveteen rabbit (a small thing, she can cup her in her hands, missing her button eyes and looking all too well-loved) into her own arms before they can put her in a bag, too. They usher her out when the room is empty, no introductions, not yet, just movement.

She doesn’t say goodbye to her mother on the way out. They didn’t pack her medication.

She can’t think of a story that ends like this, with the heroine’s possessions packed in plastic shopping bags and tossed into the back of a crowded van older than she is. But as she looks at the moon, a smiling crescent above her, and at her new companions, a warm and tender bunch around her, she thinks that might be fine. 

One hand rests over hers. One of the new people, a woman tall in a way that feels safe instead of a way that makes her feel dwarfed and whose hair reminds Penelope of a cloud, is holding her hand. Looking down at her. She whispers, in a voice that could put a storm to sleep, it’s going to be all right. 

Gut-wrenching, old, buried, withered, agonised sobs break through Penelope before she can stop them. There is no rebuke, only gentle understanding, and she sobs and sobs and sobs with grief and relief until she’s sobbed herself right to sleep.

Chapter Text

When Penelope wakes, it’s in an unfamiliar bed. There’s a cartoon waffle bawling on her pillow. The clock reads 6:48 AM––she’s slept in. She’s still in the same clothes from yesterday, but somebody has taken off her shoes and placed them neatly by the door. Somebody has tucked her rabbit under her arm. How thoughtful. 

Her brain feels like it’s trying to escape from behind her eye.

6:4––9, now. She should already have started breakfast and wiped down the kitchen table, should already be dressed and hair brushed and braided and wrestled into tight buns. She should have taken her medication already. A surge of panic wells up in her chest; she’s going to be in trouble, she hasn’t done what she needs to do, she’ll be in trouble. It’s all she can do to throw herself out of bed, straighten the duvet (dotted with other, equally-distressed foods and bright yellow bubble text reading “Crying Breakfast Friends”) until it looks marginally presentable, and run a hand over her hair to try and contain the inevitable flyaways. If she rushes, she can throw together eggs and oatmeal, get herself looking presentable, and avoid any––

… When she steps into the hall, she smells pancakes. Soft guitar music carries and covers a quiet conversation from the kitchen to her ears. And––and the sunlight. There’s a window at the end of the hall draped in fairy-pink, sheer curtains, turning the dawn into splashes of pink lemonade on the hardwood. Still I’d be on my feet, I would still be on my feet. On the wall is the face of the boy she only really met the night before, younger, maybe six or seven, missing a tooth, clutching a roll of paper and wearing a cap and gown a size too big for him. Further down is a picture of all of them on the beach, Happy birthday Amy! written in Victorian cursive over a corner. If she stays perfectly, perfectly still, if she ignores her headache, she can fall into the peace of it all.

But she’s already past time. Somebody is already in the kitchen. She doesn’t have time. 

So, with a deep breath, she walks towards the smells and the music and the conversation. 

At first, she can only peek inside, one hand gripping the side of the open doorframe. Two of the people from the night before are inside: the tall, Black woman who had drawn (humiliating, embarrassing) tears (that Penelope flushes to think about in the morning light) from her sits at a well-worn table, a steaming mug of coffee in her hand and a half-empty plate in front of her. At the stove, standing over a pan of three pancakes, is somebody who could be Penelope’s twin if not for the bright blue eyes and birthmark marring her forehead. ...And her dark, cropped hair, so short Penelope can see where it’s been shaved. They’re talking quietly about...something, something she can’t quite figure out over the music coming from an old-looking stereo. It sounds idle and familiar. 

Then, their words pause.The one at the table turns to look at her in the doorway. The other follows her gaze. Mmmh. 

Penelope shrinks down so only her hand is visible around the doorway. Not that she figures it will help much if they are angry with her for listening in; she just would rather not see their faces shift from pleasant to upset. “Sorry,” she whispers, barely loud enough to be heard. 

Silence. Long, pained silence. “For what?” she hears one of them––the one at the stove, she thinks––start, voice strained. She’s interrupted by a soft London lilt: “Come sit with us.” 

Oh.

“...Sorry,” she peeps again, only very slowly peeking out around the corner. Neither of them look angry with her; she sees only a patient passivity in one and a pained sort of strain in the other. It emboldens her to step out a little farther, now half her body visible, hand white-knuckling the doorframe. “I’m sorry. I slept in.”

“Slept i––” She can see almost identical white knuckles around a bright green plastic spatula. There’s a deep breath. A forced calm. “...It isn’t even 7.” 

Penelope can only stare blankly. 

After a long, silent minute, the person at the stove gives a withering sigh. Again, the one at the table gestures her over; sit, and who is she to say no? She ventures into the kitchen, shaky as a fawn, and sits violin-straight on the edge of a chair, right across from her host. “I. Normally, I’m supposed to be awake at...um, 5,” she explains with a forced pleasantness, a practiced service-smile that doesn’t reach her eye. Behind her, there’s the sound of a choked-off noise. 

More quiet. More tinny guitar music. And pigeons fly, and papers lie waiting to blow away. Penelope might tap her foot if she weren’t frozen.

Finally, the woman in front of her speaks. “Pearl made pancakes.” 

That seems to spark some ease of speaking in the one at the stove––Pearl, that’s her name. “Yes! I––there’s blueberry and chocolate chip. And we have orange juice. And coffee. Do you drink coffee? Or tea? What kind of pancakes would you like?” 

Her jaw tightens. “I’m not supposed to eat junk food.” ...But they smell really good. She almost whispers the next few words. “Could I have one of each?” 

Some tension eases in Pearl’s shoulders. “Of course.” 

“And.” There’s so much gunk in her throat, in her chest. Swallowing it down feels like swallowing sand. Her voice comes out cracking. “Could I have orange juice, please? If it isn’t, if, there’s no trouble, I can do witho––” 

“Of course. ” There’s no annoyance in Pearl’s tone. If she had to pin what she hears, it would be relief. Penelope sinks a little deeper into her chair. 

“Don’t worry about asking for things.” When she looks across the table, really looks, she can see that one of her host’s eyes is a lighter brown than the other. “Nobody here is going to be upset with you.” 

“Oh.” She likes that coffee mug. It’s from Ocean Town Aquarium, the name STEPHEN printed in blocky blue letters over the Photoshopped images of dolphins. 

Pearl sets a plate in front of her. As promised, there are two fluffy pancakes, one with melty chocolate and one with blueberries that have stained the food purple. Then, Pearl passes over a glass of orange juice, and when their hands touch Penelope is struck by how they’re nearly the same shade of brown––her own, a little paler, a little more sickly. Bonier. She takes a seat next to Penelope with her own mug of tea. 

God, the pancakes smell amazing. She digs a tiny crescent out of the blueberry with her fork. 

“How are you feeling?” Pearl’s voice is tiny when she asks it, like she’s expecting...something. Bad? Something not good. Penelope shrinks. 

“You don’t,” her other host interjects, hand reaching across the table in support, “need to talk right now if you don’t want to.” 

Talking about how she’s feeling doesn’t seem like the best right now. She feels... yellow. She feels scrambled eggs and a twisty slide and August, brick and popcorn ceiling and 11 and heavy. Somehow, she doesn’t think that will translate. Instead, she digs into the chocolate pancake and asks, delicate, “What’s your name?” 

The other might be unreadable if not for her eyes. Her eyes say oh, shoot, I forgot to say that part, and it almost makes Penelope giggle. “Garnet.” 

“And!” By her side, Pearl pulls out a phone displaying the same picture she saw in the hallway. “I’m Perlas. Pearl, if you prefer it shorter. This,” she zooms in on a bundle of bleach-blonde-to-sort-of-lilac hair and cut-offs, “is Amy. This,” the picture moves to a brick house of a woman, hair in rainbow dreadlocks, “is Bis.” Something strange, unplaceable in her face twists on the next zoom, a sunburnt man in a tank top that had seen better days. “This is Greg. He doesn’t live here. And you’ve met Steven.” 

They’re such a colourful group. Penelope is entranced at just how different they all are, but how cohesive their little family unit is. She wants so badly to live in that picture. “...I’m. Penelope.” 

From Garnet, there’s a hum as though to say we know. Of course. She’s in their house, they probably know something about her, right? Or should it be the other way around? What is the etiquette here?

The pancakes are delicious. They let her eat in peace, even if she catches the worrying looks Pearl gives Garnet every so often. The guitar music stutters to a stop, the end of the disc. Pearl hits a button and it starts from––what she assumes is––the beginning. Back in 1957, we had to dance a foot apart. 

“So,” Pearl starts, nervous tap-tap-tapping her fingers on the table. “ Later, we were planning to go to the beach. It’s supposed to be nice today, you know, not...autumn. I mean.” She clears her throat like it will get the nerves out. “Usually it gets so windy here, and it’s chilly on the water, but today it isn’t––do you have a sweater, Penelope?” Mh. No. She shakes her head. Pearl lets out a breath that sounds more like the wind than the wind does. “We should go shopping later. You need new clothes, right?” 

“I have––” 

“Clothes you like. ” Garnet’s easy stoicism is a nice, accented reprieve from Pearl’s trilling anxiety. 

They just...seem to know so much about her, about her mother, without her saying a word. She supposes it’s easier than explaining everything. 

She’s only eaten half the pancakes, but she’s full already. The orange juice is sweet. “...I would like that. Yes. But I––” Her hands drop to her lap and her eye squeezes shut. As nice as all of this is, her head… “My head hurts? And I feel sort of sick?” 

She can practically feel the breath being sucked in through their teeth. 

The music stops again. An old disk. Skip, skip, broken syllables, then it’s back.

Garnet is the one to break the quiet. “You should sleep it off.” 

“You should sleep, ” Pearl emphasises, so earnest, so kind. “You had a big night.” 

And goodness, Penelope wants to sleep. That bed was so comfortable. Warm. But she doesn’t dare to presume. “Um.” She doesn’t want the answer to the question. “Whose bed was I sleeping in?” She doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to kick anybody out, of course not, but oh that selfish greedy icky part of her wants so badly to stay in that bed. She wants that warm all to herself and she doesn’t want to share it. Her bed at home was so military-hard, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, plain white walls, she knew the entire time there was a camera in the corner above the closet. This room has a silly bedspread and bright walls and windows. She wants it. 

She wants all of it, actually. She wants to grab the breakfast table and the smell of pancakes and coffee and the sound of music and the easy conversation she interrupted and the light on the hardwood. She wants pancakes and beach days and new clothes and whatever dream this is, she wants wants wants to keep dreaming. 

Her eye clenches all the way shut, shoulders hunched, waiting for the answer that will shatter it all. The oh, it’s Steven’s, actually, and none of this is for you, go do the laundry that will break the glass. 

Pearl’s hand rests over hers. It’s soft. So is Garnet’s voice when she says, dripping with tenderness, “Yours.”

Chapter Text

A week flies by quickly. Little by little, Penelope’s headaches and stomach pangs subside. She has breakfast with Pearl and Garnet early, joined later by Bis, then Steven, and finally Amy all eyes-rubbing and sweatpants. They talk and laugh over eggs or waffles or muffins about what they’re going to do next. 

She does get new clothes. 

There are no iron-stiff blouses or pencil skirts that force her legs together, no single sensible studs for her ears, and certainly no boring Mary Janes and ballet flats. The first thing she picks out is a sweater the colour of sunrise, dotted with little strawberries and with sleeves going well past her hands. Then there’s a dress unfit for the weather. Earrings shaped like stars, utterly impractical and dangly things. Silly, frivolous things: a T-shirt that goes to her knees with the logo of a band she’s never heard of, shoes with tie-dye laces, jeans that flare at the bottom, sunglasses shaped like hearts. When she steps out of the dressing room in the ensemble, she’s greeted with cheers and a pat on the back from Amy that almost sends her toppling forward. 

She frets about the cost, of course. Steven assuages that fear before Penelope can even fully voice it: “It’s okay! My dad’s a millionaire.” 

(He says millionaire like it’s all the money in the world. Penelope hates the way her mother’s voice echoes in her head, saying it’s pitifully small.) 

When they drive home, the lot of them packed into a van that barely fits them, she’s still wearing the earrings. 

She gets new names to go with her new clothes. Pearl is too formal, too stiff, to call her anything but Penelope––but Amy loves to play with names. Pen, that’s a cute one, snappy and quick. So is Nel, from Bis, but she likes Nellie a little better, it’s just a little cuter. Once in a while it’s Peen-e-lope and it never fails to make her laugh. Steven throws in a Penny while they spread out her new bedspread, pale pink and dotted with roses. Then there’s Pippa. Lola. Pepper. Polly. She holds all the firecracker peppy P pops and runs over and over them while she waters plants or makes the table. Pippy. 

Her favourite comes when she’s sitting on the couch futzing with a funny little tablet Steven’s left her with. She’s never played a video game before, but she likes this one: there’s a cute little village full of cute little animals with cute little catchphrases, and the music is plinky-plonky piano that relaxes her like nothing else. One of them, a little red squirrel that’s just adorable, greets her with a speech bubble and the name Poppy. 

“I think I want to be called Poppy,” she says offhand to Pearl, sitting next to her with a book as thick as her head. 

“All right.” When Penelope––Poppy!––turns, she can see the beginning of a barely-contained smile on Pearl’s lips.

There are beach days. Sometimes they build sandcastles where the water meets land. She goes swimming once, just to try it, but the water is absolutely frigid and she comes out imagining there are icicles on her eyelashes. Pearl laughs fondly and hands her a towel, saying it will get warmer in the summer. One night the two of them, just Poppy and Pearl, sit on a towel and under a blanket with two mugs of hot chocolate and they watch the moon. 

There’s a karaoke day. They hook an old machine up to the television and sing songs Poppy doesn’t know, and she’s happy to sit by and jinglejangle a tambourine. 

One day is just wholly, completely quiet, and she spends the entire day in bed watching television, and she can’t remember if there had ever been a time she did that before not even when she was sick.

She still hasn’t... quite figured out whether she fits in. Not completely. But there are times when she doesn’t even think about it because everything is so comfortable, when she can sink into the moment and let the wave of family wash over her. She never knew there could be a family so loving. 

It’s just…nighttime. Nights are the hardest. 

When the music has gone quiet and everybody else has gone to bed, when she’s left alone in her bed, when there is nothing to sink into. When she’s alone with her thoughts. She hasn’t slept through a night yet.

She’s seven again. 

She’s small. 

When she speaks, it comes out in a jumble. Nothing sounds right, nothing is right. Hard syllables, ones she once knew, slip out no matter what she tries. 

For everything she gets wrong, there is a hand on her cheek and nails in the skin. A hand in her hair tugging, tugging, yanking, pulling, until it comes out. Her head is on fire. Once a foot in her stomach. And she begs, screams that she’s trying, but all she says is prospathó and when she is slapped a tooth falls out. Another. Another. Her teeth are breaking falling out she swallows two and doesn’t know where to find them again and she is half bald when 

She wakes up.

2:56 AM.

A skirt falls in front of her eye. There’s a pair of socks under her feet. 

The laundry basket feels smaller than it should.

Just outside, there are footsteps. Click-clack click-clack click-clack heels against the immaculate hardwood, click-clack. She counts them. 

She can’t find the top of the basket. The top of her head is exposed. 

The dishes aren’t done. 

Click-clack. 

If she runs where will she go there is nothing outside. If she stays then––then––

She wakes up.

3:48 AM.

The fire hasn’t stayed inside the fireplace. She watches it crawl up her arms.

She wakes up.

4:07 AM.

She is standing at the window. 

No––no, there have never been windows here. This is a hole in the wall. Gaping, jagged hole, bits of foundation crumbling at its edges. Iron structure. Bones of the house exposed. 

Below her is only blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank white. She is chilled to her roots. 

The silence of it all burns her ears.

She wants to leave. Run. Run run run. Legs don’t work, she is frozen in her Mary Janes. 

Killing point manicure reaches up. Up. It has her legs. It has her hair. It has her arms. 

She is dragged into the white and she doesn’t bother to struggle.

She wakes up.

5:38 AM. 

Her forehead is sticky with sweat, hair (all of it, she checks, she checks, all her hair is there, so are her teeth, she runs her tongue over and over and over them) plastered to her cheeks. Her stomach hurts, not in a withdrawal way or a food poisoning way but in a terrified way. 

...Pearl is usually awake by now, isn’t she? Working on something? It’s too early for breakfast, but not to be awake. 

She debates it for another minute, fidgety in her twisted-up bedsheets, before standing. Then sitting again. Pearl doesn’t want to deal with her, does she? Then she stands again, because why can’t she just get up and get a glass of water, maybe? Then she sits. Lays down. Fidgets, fidgets, it’s too warm under the blankets, too dark in the room, dawn is still a while away. It’s only with great effort that she drags herself out of bed again, her blanket wrapped about her shoulders and trailing along behind as a measure of comfort. 

Sure enough, when she peers into the living room, Pearl is sitting with a lamp and a new book with a title Poppy doesn’t understand. By her side, to Poppy’s surprise, is Bis leaning in with her own book. They look so peaceful. She hates to bother them. So engrossed are they, they don’t even notice Poppy’s presence until she clears her throat and shuffles. 

Pearl startles. “Pe––Poppy? What are you doing awake?” (She realises, only now, only a moment too late, that this is the first time they have seen...without an eyepatch covering the awful spiderweb across her face. Two pairs of eyes linger on it for a moment too long, too long, it makes Poppy fidget and glance down.)

Oh, she wants to pretend there is no reason besides wanting to be up to greet the dawn. Maybe she could lie, say she wanted to help with breakfast. 

The moment she opens her mouth, a choking sound comes out instead and her face crumples. 

“Poppy,” Bis breathes, setting her book spine-up on the coffee table. Pearl slides a bookmark (it’s a cute one, it has Steven’s thumbprints on it, “Steven” written in bright red preschool and “Age 4” in practised-perfect teacher writing) between the pages; Bis reaches both large, welcoming arms out. “Hey. C’mere.” 

It’s all the invitation she needs to take tentative, foalish steps towards the pair. There is space enough on Bis’ lap for herself and the blanket; she falls into it with a whimper. 

“Hey. Hey.” A hand that could wrap around half her torso runs so tenderly through her hair, delicate in the curls, that she could sob from the motion alone. “Hey, sweetpea, breathe. You’re gonna be okay. ...Wanna talk about it?” 

She shakes her head. Please don’t dislodge the hand.

It doesn’t. “That’s okay.” Bis draws her in close to her chest, pulls the blanket up a little closer to her chin. “We don’t hafta talk.” 

Pearl’s hands wring helplessly in front of her. The comfort that comes so easily to Bis seems to elude the frenetic Pearl, but oh, how she tries. “Do you––we have lavender tea. It helps with sleeping. Do you-?” 

“Mh-mh.” Poppy wrings her hands in the comforter like it’s going to fly away. “...Stay?” 

A breath. “...Okay.” 

They sit that way, quiet, Bis’ hand running over and over the curls, Pearl returning to the gentle sounds of pages turning, meditative, gentle, until Garnet awakes. It’s time for breakfast.

Chapter Text

She feels like she’s going to explode.

They’ve all been so effortlessly, terribly kind. They keep their voices soft and their movements slow, let Poppy take the far left seat on the couch, offer endless support. They hold doors open and cook her meals and do her laundry and let her sleep in one day until 11 and, once, Amy holds her hair back while she sicks in the toilet. Get it out, girl. They chalk it up to food poisoning and pretend that a week is long enough to rid her body of all the––she knows now–– unnecessary medication. The next morning, she finds a glass of water and two blueberry muffins on her nightstand.

It’s all nice. It’s so so nice and she doesn’t know what to do with it all. She can’t remember the last time–-the first time––anybody asked her what she wanted for dinner and then made it, or when somebody carried her to bed when she was simply too tired to get up. It’s commonplace here. 

Every gesture makes her chest feel like...like a big, fluffy pillow full of daffodils and pink. She feels full. She doesn’t know where to put it all. Her hands ever-twitch with the need to just do something. 

(Who is she to deserve any of this if she’s given nothing in return?)

Goodness, she tries. 

Washing her own dishes doesn’t seem to cause any problems. She just has to get to them before Pearl does. Making her bed, that’s safe, they leave her room alone unless some need arises. Making Steven’s bed, she’s gently rebuked and told to relax instead. 

She helps Garnet cook dinner. “Helps.” All she’s allowed to do is stir the sauce while Bis wheedles her to take a seat. When she does, her leg bounces so rapidly it feels like she might just take off.

They don’t want her to do anything. Everyone in this house keeps telling her to relax, we’ll take care of it, but––! She can’t just relax! 

(Because if she is nothing but a leech, if all she does is take and take and take, then they will be glad to be rid of her, their charity can only go so far, can’t it?) 

The worst of it comes on laundry day.

Poppy sneaks away from attempts to teach her to knit––”It’s good to keep your hands busy,” Garnet says, but Poppy just can’t seem to get the hang of the slippery little pieces of yarn––and into the laundry room. The timing is so perfect she could cry. The dryer has stopped, Pearl is busy at the kitchen table with paperwork, Garnet has let her go without complaint, and nobody else is there. 

This, she knows how to do. Sitting patiently and letting everyone take care of her, that’s unfamiliar––but folding laundry, she can do in her sleep. 

She’s halfway through the stack, a shirt that could swallow her whole in her hands, when the door creaks open. 

Pearl.

“What are you doing?” There’s a tinge of––is that panic?––in her voice that makes Poppy feel suddenly very, very small. 

At first, all she can manage is a tiny um and a few stuttery nothings. She’s in trouble, she wants to hide. Her head dips behind the tent of a shirt like it will protect her, but she can still feel Pearl’s eyes on her. “...Folding laundry?” Why does she feel so guilty? 

“You don’t––” Pearl has been kind for all the time Poppy has known her. Now, her hands burn where they brush over Poppy’s to pull the shirt from her grip. “ Why? You don’t need to do that.” 

“I kn––”

“You know you don’t need to do that, right?” 

“Y––I––”

“You don’t need to do anything. ” Pearl sounds so impassioned. So upset, like she might cry at any moment, and it only makes Poppy dip her head further. Without a shirt to hold on to, she grips her own hands. They feel numb. “Did we––” A swallow. “Did we make you feel like you have to do anything?” 

Breathe. Breathe. “...No.” 

“Then what––” She’s wringing the shirt, now. It’s going to wrinkle and Poppy just wants to iron it out. “You don’t–– Penelope. ” 

Her whole stomach curdles. 

Pearl pauses. Considers. Poppy is frozen. “...Poppy,” she tries again, voice apologetic. Her hands haven’t loosened. “Maybe you should go lay down.” 

She’s dizzy. She can’t focus. All there is to do is nod and hold back the yes ma’am that feels like a worm burrowing up her throat. “...I’m sorry.” (Gross, gross, icky, sticky, sludgy slimy muddy algae-green feelings well up, rail against the barrier of her ribs that it isn’t fair! How come Pearl gets to scare her like that just for folding laundry! That isn’t fair!!) 

She doesn’t expect an apology. It still stings when one doesn’t come. Instead, she gets a soft, “I think Garnet is looking for you.” 

Her cheeks are on fire with shame as she trudges back out into the living room, where Garnet waits with a knowing look.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” 

They think she’s in her room. Garnet left her with a skein of pink, a video, and the advice to keep trying, you’ll get it. It takes all of five minutes for Poppy to instead venture out. 

None of them see her, hidden as she is behind the bathroom door. She doesn’t intend to eavesdrop, really! They just…! She heard her name! 

“Oh nooo, Pearl can’t save the whole fuckin’ world.” Amy. She flinches at the curse. “Guess it’ll explode now. Psheeeewww, here come the bombs.” 

“It isn’t funny, Amy,” Pearl hisses. “She’s regressing!” 

“I didn’t say it was funny!” 

“Then don’t joke about it!”

“Then you stop being so––!” 

“Stop it.” Garnet. “Nobody is regressing. It’s only been a week.”

“But she was doing so well, ” Pearl laments, beseeching. Poppy can hear the Garnet, be on my side in her voice. “Is it me? Am I not doing enough to foster her independence? I thought she would want to enjoy her time, but she’s just tearing herself down!” 

Bis, now. “What’d she do?” 

“Laundry.” Pearl sighs, withering. “I stopped her, of course.”

There’s silence. They think Poppy is ridiculous, she’s sure of it. They think she’s being silly for––for doing laundry, for wanting to help, they’re going to laugh or they’ll be appalled or they––

“That’s it?!” Amy again, her voice like a needle through Poppy’s eardrums. “ Fuck, Pearl, I thought you found her fuckin’––drugged out or something! Laundry?! ” 

“You stopped her?” Bis sounds...disappointed. In Pearl? Not in Poppy. Her chest lightens some. “ Why? ”

“Well-!” Pearl is fumbling, running over odd sounds. She didn’t expect them not to be on her side, it’s plain as day, and… Oh. That means they’re on Poppy’s side. A warm little spark lights in her stomach. “It isn’t––it’s not good for her to––” 

“To pick what she wants to do?! Jesus, Pearl!” 

“She isn’t choosing of her own accord, Amy! She’s doing what she was taught to do––” 

“You don’t know that.” Garnet’s voice is hard. It almost feels protective. 

Pearl wilts. Poppy blooms. 

“Did you even ask her?” comes a strained Bis. 

“...No.” 

“Fuuuck. Why are you like this.” 

The passion is gone from Pearl’s voice, and reality sets in. (They would defend Poppy, a stranger, over their own family, and it takes all her effort not to let a mean little giggle slip out.) “I was trying to help.” More quiet. “...What should I do?” 

Somebody stands. Poppy doesn’t bother to check who it is before rushing off, practised silent footsteps en pointe runrunrun, back to her room.

In, around, down, off. In, around, down, off. In, around, down, off. 

Knitting is so rhythmic that it makes her brain spin. 

Nobody has come to check on her in the last hour, and the house has gone quiet. She supposes it’s probably a good thing; she would rather quiet than explosive any day. It all still feels just a little too on-edge for her liking. 

Then, a knock, soft as anything. “Oh––” Right. They knock in this house. She has a door she can close. “Come in!” 

It’s Pearl. Poppy expected no different. Still, she stops her attempts at knitting, clutches the needles like a shield. 

“...Hello.” 

Her throat feels like sand. “Hi.” 

“Poppy, about earlier––” Pearl looks like she wants to be here about as much as Poppy does. She still swallows her anxiety, pulls her shoulders back. “May I sit down?”

No. “Sure.” 

“Thank you.” Ballerina-graceful, Pearl perches herself on the very edge of the bed where Poppy sits cross-legged. “I want to apologise.” (All the air goes out of her lungs.) “I... overreacted.” Poppy stays quiet; go on ; Pearl sighs with her nose. “You aren’t in trouble.” Oh. Oh. She sinks into the mattress a little more easily. “I was worried about––” 

“My independence.” 

Pearl’s lips twist into a grimace. “Right.” If Poppy looks closely, she’s sure she would be able to see the gears turning and the puzzle pieces slipping into place behind Pearl’s eyes. Words, she’s learned, are hard; feelings are even harder for Pearl. “It was...unfair of me to snap at you.” 

“I only did the laundry because I wanted to.” Quiet, quiet, meek, she hopes the knitting makes her look a little more delicate than she already is. It isn’t quite true, but how does she tell Pearl that they’re all certain to get sick of her when she’s as useless as she is? 

“I know.” Pearl’s teeth grit in a way that almost hurts to look at. “And––you can do anything you like.” 

“I want to do stuff.” There’s an urgency to it. Pearl has to understand. 

Breathless humming. Pearl’s leg taps in a way that is all too familiar. “I know. I don’t want you to have to. I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do.” Finally, finally, their eyes meet, and Pearl’s are such a sincere sort of sky that Poppy doesn’t dare look away. “I know––...I know she made you do too much. Steven told us. I want you to do things you want to do.”

...Oh. 

She peers down at her hands, still entangled with the frayed yarn of a dozen failed cast-ons. Hm. Things she wants to do.

...She doesn’t really want to do laundry. Or dishes. Or–– “I don’t like knitting.” Her nose wrinkles as she turns her gaze back to Pearl. “I’m bad at it. And it’s itchy. I don’t wanna do it.” 

Perhaps it isn’t the response Pearl was looking for. It still draws a relieved, smiling breath-laugh. 

“I wanna learn to juggle. ”

That pulls a full laugh from Pearl, and that gets a giggle from Poppy. “Okay,” Pearl says, her laugh still in her eyes as she pulls the skein back to begin winding it up. “Just don’t break any windows.” 

“I make no promises.” It’s a joke, her voice lilting, and the tension in the room eases like it’s let out its own breath. “...Pearl? Thank you, for apologising. Nobody––” Has ever done that before. Not to her. Not really. 

She doesn’t need to finish. Pearl seems to understand as she takes Poppy’s hand, squeezes it, and draws her in for a hug.

Chapter Text

Bis’ hands are just so big. 

She allows Poppy to examine one, turning it over and over, running her fingers across the lines of Bis’ palm and into the space between digits. Where Poppy is frighteningly bony and nearly grey, Bis is dark and warm and strong. It’s like being permitted to hold a piece of summernight sky. 

There has never been a day so peaceful for her. It’s 3 PM, and she’s still in her pyjamas––fuzzy pink pants patterned with kittens and a camisole that shows off all the sunken valleys of her shoulders. Bis doesn’t comment. She just leaves the bowl of popcorn between the two of them. 

They could so easily watch this movie, something about strangers falling in love, on Bis’ laptop. She’s instead dragged the boxy old TV from the living room into Poppy’s, for atmosphere.

“I wish I knew Portuguese,” Poppy muses as a character speaks. “It’s so pretty.” 

“ It’s pretty, or she’s pretty?” Oh, Bis is teasing! When Poppy looks up at her, away from her hand for a moment, there’s a sideways grin on her lips. 

She can only return it with a giggle. “You knooow.” ...And, because Bis is so sturdy, because Poppy is so delicate, because she knows that in a fair fight Bis would win 10 times out of 10, she shoves the other lightly with her shoulder. Just for fun! “She isn’t really my type anyway.” 

Bis doesn’t return the shove, but she does laugh. Success. “Yeah? What’s your type, then?” 

Her chin tilts towards the other. One finger traces a heart on Bis’ palm. 

The laugh she receives in return sets butterflies loose in her chest. “ You! ” The hand closes over Poppy’s, warm and soft and turning those butterflies into fireworks. “You little flirt!” 

“I didn’t saaay anythiiing!” Oh, but this is just so fun. She shoves Bis’ shoulder again, affectionate, a bit like a cat bumping its head. 

That’s what does it. Still laughing, Bis wraps an arm around Poppy’s shoulders, tugging her in close. Maybe it should feel harsh––Bis is huge, one bicep easily as big around as Poppy’s waist––but she’s just so gentle and warm that it feels like being lifted by a big blanket. “You know what you’re doing!” 

Poppy yelps, joy in her tone. “Nooo!” 

“You’re a little flirt! And here I was thinkin’ you were so innocent!” Her free arm scoops under Poppy’s legs, lifting her princess-style even as they sit; the yelp turns into a shriek of laughter. “ She’s not my type, you goof!” 

“I didn’t say anyth-i-iiin– Bis! ” Now she’s just playing dirty, fingers tickling along Poppy’s ribs. “Not fair! Not fair!” And here she was, always thinking that “laughing so hard you cry” is a euphemism! Now, tears prick her eye as she squirms in Bis’ hold, laughing and kicking. “Biiis!” 

She just has to fight back! Her hands press against Bis’ chest, her face, to push her away; it only gives Bis more space to tickle. Really, she knows that even if she put all her effort into pushing, it wouldn’t budge Bis. She also knows that all it would take to get her to move is for her to say stop. Goodness, though, she’s having fun, and she only laughs, and Bis falls backwards anyway with Penelope right on top. “You got me! You got me!” 

The tickling stops, but Poppy still laughs breathlessly as she readjusts. Now, she’s sitting across Bis’ stomach, head held high triumphantly. “I got you! I wiiin!” 

“I’m defeated! ” Dramatic as anything, Bis throws a hand over her forehead like a maiden with a weak constitution. “Bested by the biggest flirt in Delmarva! What ever shall I do?” 

Poppy taps one finger against her chin in a mockery of thought. “Hmmm.” Bis is so soft. She knows, has seen, felt only a moment ago that there’s strength enough in her companion to lift a truck. She also knows that Bis would never ever ever in a million years use it maliciously; even after such a short time together, Poppy can tell . Far from feeling threatened, Bis makes her feel safe. It’s why she’s fine leaning down, all the way down, until their noses nearly touch, until their eyes reflect in one another’s, so close she can almost feel the heat of Bis’ cheeks, and she whispers, “...Make some more popcorn, please.” 

“Yes, ma’am!” For a moment, they just sit there, revelling in each other’s warmth. Then, Bis lifts Poppy by the waist and sits herself up. “You just wait here.” 

She is more than happy to sit, cross-legged, and listen to the popcorn poppoppop in the kitchen with the movie on pause. 

When Bis returns, popcorn bowl in hand, laughter still flushing her cheeks and sparkling her eyes, Poppy wastes no time. Bis’ lap is the best seat in the house, after all, and there are no complaints when she settles herself down. 

(From here, she knows Bis can see the streaks of early grey searing through her hair. Maybe, after this, she’ll ask for help dyeing it. If anybody would be willing to help, she’s sure it would be Miss Rainbow Hair.) 

There are no comments on the ugly strands. Instead, Bis runs her fingers through the curls that are perpetually frizzy. “...Hey. Poppy.” A large finger twirls a lock almost back into the shape of its natural curl. “Did anyone ever teach you how to take care of this?” 

“Mh.” Her chin tilts upwards like she’s trying to encourage Bis to keep going. “You just brush it, right?” 

“Honey.” She’ll take that as a no. “Lemme help. We’ll get Garnet and Steven in too.” The finger lets go, twirls another. “You’ve got real nice curls.” 

“Now who’s flirting?

“Still you.” The bottom of Bis’ chin bonks the top of Poppy’s head in a way that makes her giggle. “After the movie, let’s work on it. ‘Kay?” 

Poppy hums. Her back sinks into the soft, warm expanse of Bis’ front. It’s all just so safe. “That sounds really nice.”

Chapter Text

Once Poppy actually talks to her, she has to admit that Pearl is pretty great.

Most of her work––numbers and paperwork and calculator stuff that Poppy doesn’t totally understand––is done at the kitchen table. She’s always so precise. She dots her i’ s and crosses her t’ s with such intentionality, it’s a little like a drum beat. Tap tap tap shhh tap. Just watching her is relaxing. 

It’s certainly more relaxing than sleep. No matter how lovely the days are ( oh, and they are, watching the leaves turn red and gold outside is one of the more beautiful things she can remember, and she’s more than content to sit by the window for hours just to watch), nights are still hard. Still, she watches the ceiling, tracing meaningless patterns in the swirls of is-that-plaster, waiting. Twitching. Any moment, she’s sure, she will be called from her bed to perform some task or other, or somebody will decide to be angry with her, or the dawn will just come early, and she would rather be awake than on the edge of sleep. Then, when sleep does inevitably draw her breath, the nightmares come in such terrible force that she wakes tangled in her sheets and sweating. 

She would rather be awake. 

It’s past midnight, now, though she hasn’t checked a clock to see the time in quite a while. Neither has Pearl, engrossed in her work. Somewhere in the night, Poppy made tea, but the sugar eluded her and she didn’t want to interrupt Pearl to ask where it was; she sits with a lukewarm mug of cinnamon-apple. It still smells lovely. 

Everything is quiet. So, so relaxingly, beautifully quiet. 

Pearl finally seems satisfied with her work. She closes the papers in a worn manila folder and closes that in a black pleather folder that feels like a car seat. Her pen goes into a special little rounded pocket on the side; her first two fingers tap once, twice, three times to make sure everything is in order. Only then does she look up at Poppy with something like surprise. “You’re still awake?” 

“Mhm.” She dips one finger into the tea just to test its temperature. Still a little warm. “So are you.” 

“I was working.” Pearl is too tired to be prickly, and Poppy is grateful for it. “Aren’t you tired? You should go to bed.” 

No. 

Well.

She is tired; her eyelid has been drooping for the last...twenty minutes? Thirty? And goodness, her big comfy comforter and the throw blanket she found at the thrift store sound wonderful right now. But the nightmares don’t. 

So she shakes her head and drips the teabag up down up down. “I’m okay.” 

Pearl sighs through her nose and taps her folder again. One, two, three. “I should go to bed.” 

“Mmh.” 

But Pearl makes no move to go to bed. She just slides the pen in and out of its pocket a few times. “...Is your tea cold?”

Oh. “Kind of.” And bitter. She’s been steeping it for the better part of an hour. 

“Here, let me.” Pearl stands, takes the mug out from under Poppy’s hand; she draws the tea-stirring finger to her mouth as Pearl heads to the sink. It’s just as bitter as she thought. Also, kind of salty, but that’s probably from her hand. Pearl seems to sense that and a moment later liquid splashes into the sink. “What did you have?” 

“Cinnamon apple.” 

“Sugar? Or honey?” 

“...Sugar, if you have any.” 

“All right.” Pearl opens some cabinet, and Poppy has to turn to look for next time; it’s right above the sink in a cute little jar. The green numbers on the microwave read 1:28. It really is awfully late. 

Then the wind outside picks up, and the leaves crunch against each other, and the kettle begins to whistle, and actually, she’s content to wait in the moment. 

Pearl returns with a new mug. The tea is hotter and sweeter than before. Poppy says a thank you over the rim and Pearl returns it with a smile. 

Poppy is a third way through her mug when she breaks the pleasant quiet again. “You’ve been working. Aren’t you tired?” 

A hum. One thin hand reaches over to pluck the tea bag from Poppy’s mug before it steeps too much. “Aren’t you?” 

“A little. I guess.” 

“Then why not go to bed?” 

She hates the question. She hates how impossible it is to put all the feelings into words. “...I don’t like falling asleep?” she tries. It isn’t quite right, but she’s never found words that fit exactly what she wants to say, not for anything. How does she tell Pearl that laying in bed before sleep feels like waiting for a starving lion to pounce? “It’s like––” Her hands do her no favours, no matter how much she whirls them around and taps fingers against table. “It feels like––hm. ...Like––bad? Like something bad is coming. You know?” 

Pearl doesn’t understand. Poppy can see it in her eyes, plain as day. She still nods along. 

“Why don’t you want to go to bed?” 

The same discomfort, uncertainty, that Poppy is sure she exhibits is obvious in Pearl’s expression. “...The bed is too big.” 

What! “Why don’t you ask Bis to sleep with you?” (The double entendre goes right over her head, but not over Pearl’s, with her oh, dear expression.) “Aren’t you two––?” She leans in, hand twirling aimlessly through the air. 

“No, we aren’t. ...Well.” There’s such fierce contemplation in Pearl’s face as she looks into the tea. “It’s more complicated than that. She has her own room, I have mine.” 

“Well-!” If there is a boundary to be crossed, Poppy is leapfrogging right over it, she thinks. Not that she thinks much on it at all until the words are out of her mouth: “I could sleep with you! Just for tonight, I mean.” 

Pearl startles. ...Then, she relaxes. “Just let me finish my tea.” 

They both need contact. They both feel that they need contact. So, once the tea is finished, the mugs in the sink, and the clock at 2:02 on the dot, they make their way to Pearl’s room. 

It’s exactly like Poppy expected––clean, organised, everything in lovely shades of pastel blue, just what a beach house should be, photos lining the dresser, the family, a large woman Poppy has never met––with one exception: mugshots lined side-by-side on the wall. One is of Bis, younger, grinning cheesily at the camera with bruised and bloodied knuckles; the other is––”Is that really you?” she asks before considering the rudeness of it–– Pearl, pink-dyed hair mussed, the beginnings of a black eye unable to disguise the revolutionary spirit in her smile. 

Pearl peers over her shoulder, dripping with a nostalgic fondness. “It is. I’ll tell you the whole story tomorrow.” 

“Wait but I wanna hear it now!” 

“Tomorrow,” she reasserts, a hand on Poppy’s back leading her towards the bed. “You’ll be up all night if I tell you about it now.” 

“I’ll be up all night anyway!” she wheedles––but Pearl’s bed is so comfortable, and she’s so tired, her words end in almost a yawn. “...Tomorrow. Promise.” 

“I promise.” It almost sounds like a laugh. Pearl, now, is tucking herself into the sheets, helping Poppy wriggle underneath one. “Go to sleep.” 

Like this, it isn’t hard. Pearl is sturdy in a spindly sort of way, and she doesn’t seem to mind when Poppy tucks herself closer. The crook of her shoulder is a better pillow than a pillow and she falls, easily, into a dreamless rest.

Chapter Text

“Don’t sweat it, honey. I’ve got half an architecture degree.” 

“Isn’t that with, like, bricks and stuff?” 

“Pssh.” Bis whaps Amy on the head with a couch cushion, light as anything. “Works with blankets too.” 

They’ve almost finished their blanket fort, which is, really, an impressive structure. It stretches from the living room almost into the kitchen, tunnels of blankets and pillows connecting the house. Poppy has donated the dozen pillows she’s picked up to the cause; Amy seems to hoard blankets and keeps coming out with more and more. 

From inside, through a little gap in the pillows, Poppy peeks her head out. “It looks sturdy in here!” she chirps. And it certainly does! The blankets droop in just the right way, and the whole thing is lit up inside by fairy lights and a lantern, warm and comfortable as anything. Under her knees, there’s Bis’ big weighted blanket. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt quite as warm or secure as she does now. 

“Hold on! Lemme just…” Bis can’t seem to leave it alone, perfectionist that she is. Every pillow needs to be just right. 

There’s a shuffling from the entrance. Then, there’s Amy, sliding in next to Poppy with a bag of gummy sharks and a grin. “Want any?” 

“Mhm!” Junk food still feels like a small rebellion; she takes two and chomps the blue off one of them. Then comes the soft white bottom. “Bis, come inside! It’s holding. ” 

“One second!” Behind Poppy, a pillow is wedged in––”For support.” The blanket above is readjusted to cover the last little sliver of outside light. Then, finally, Bis crawls in through the kitchen side, almost too big to fit inside. It’s crowded and warm and comfortable, like the whole world has been closed out to make room for this pocket of safety. 

“Bis, Bis let me––” Poppy wastes no time in climbing into that large lap once Bis has sat down, and it draws a deep, rumbly chuckle from the bottom of her chest. 

“Comfy?” 

“Very.” She grabs another small handful of gummy sharks and eats two at the same time. Thrilling! “Don’t move, you’re warm.” 

“You got it, captain.” One large hand ruffles her hair––and steals a shark, hey, not fair! 

Their makeshift “roof” indents quickly once, twice, somebody is knocking. “Knock knock.” Oh, it’s Garnet! 

Amy lifts the blanket with one hand, much to Bis’ obvious chagrin, and reveals Garnet standing over the fort. “What’s the password?” she asks through a mouth full of gummy.

“I brought chips.” 

“Yeah, that’s the password.” 

Instead of crawling through one of the tunnels, Garnet takes the most direct route: she climbs right through the roof and into the ever-more-crowded centre of the fort, helping Amy lower the blanket as she does. True to her word, she’s brought chips. Amy tears the bag open with her teeth and holds it out in a wide circle; “Anyone?” 

But Poppy is still making her way through the sharks. She shakes her head, as does Garnet, but Bis happily takes a handful. 

From the kitchen, now, another “knock knock!” in a cheery voice––Steven! “Let me––lemme just––” As he moves, he clatters, drags, shuffles. Oh, and there’s why: he has the electric kettle, connected to a long extension cord, enough mugs for everyone, and packets of hot cocoa. “I’m coming through don’t let me spill!” Which he almost does, and he would if it weren’t for Garnet reaching out to steady the kettle. When he settles, comfortable in the middle of his little family, he gestures proudly to his hoard. “Any takers?” 

“Ooh, me!” Poppy leans forward, unwilling to give up her spot in Bis’ lap, to turn the kettle on. “Can I have the one with marshmallows?” 

Steven tips his chin up, triumphant: “They all have marshmallows.” Amy cheers and almost punches the roof off. 

Another sound from the kitchen, a tip-tip-tap, and Steven’s cat Lion plods his way in carefully. Oh, he’s a massive thing, Poppy imagines the size of a small child and even bigger with all his fluff. He seems to come and go as he pleases, his large and fluffy presence a rare treat. Today, he chooses to stretch himself out in the middle of all of them, belly exposed. 

There’s only one person missing. 

The screen door creaks open as Poppy is on her second mug of hot chocolate. There’s an amused hum.  Pearl. When she leans down, they can all see her face through the tunnel, and it looks pleasant. “What are you all doing in there?” 

Before anyone can answer, Amy slams a pillow in the spot between the crowd and Pearl with a snicker. “Sorry, no nerds allowed!” 

“Amy!” 

Poppy can’t help but giggle into her hand. Pearl just sounds so affronted! “Amy, let her in. Pleeease?” 

“Can’t. I gotta stick by my word, Pops.” 

Not that it seems to matter much, because Pearl has figured out another way in: by removing a pillow on the other end and sliding herself inside. When Amy sees it, she groans, and Pearl looks all too proud of herself. “This is a lovely little setup,” she says as she replaces the pillow. 

Now, everybody is here, the inside lit by lovely orange fairy lights and the red power button of the kettle. It’s warm in here, and the wind outside is chilly, and Poppy can’t imagine a better place to be right now. 

Then she doesn’t have to because Pearl settles on Bis’ lap right beside her and this is the best place she can think of. 

“Hot cocoa?” Poppy asks, pressing her mug towards Pearl. Pearl shakes her head, but she does look awfully pleased to be asked. 

“...I’m not going to clean this up. I hope you know that.” There’s no bitterness in her tone, just playful teasing, and Poppy loves how relaxed she is. 

“Nobody’s gonna clean it up,” Poppy replies. “We’re gonna leave it here forever. I live here now.” Lion, with a stretch and a mrrp, seems to agree. What better place could there be than tucked away in a billion blankets with her newfound family? 

Garnet hums her assent. Of course, they’ll have to clean this up later. But for now, she can’t think of anywhere she would rather be than tucked away in a safe, comfy little cave with hot chocolate and junk food and family.

Chapter Text

Family dinners are a given here. 

Garnet, she’s learned, is the best cook of the family, though Pearl is the best baker with her insistence that it’s all scientific. Tonight, they asked Poppy what she wanted for dinner (what she wants!). Now she has a plate of messy-fun spaghetti and meatballs in front of her and mango juice in a glass and she couldn’t be more content. “Could you pass the parmesan, Amy?” she asks, and she gets the green-topped container without issue. There’s something so thrilling about asking for things and being given them easily. 

Only a month has gone by, but it feels like she’s always lived with them. She sits on the beach with Garnet and Steven; she watches movies with Amy and Bis; she sees the moonrise with Pearl. 

Her wardrobe has expanded, too. There’s a coat for the winter, not that it gets very cold around here, and a scarf and gloves to go with it. Bis took her into the tattoo and piercing studio (which she owned with Pearl and there was a never-ending string of questions about that!) to re-pierce the hole in her belly button that had closed years ago. Poppy openly admires the shimmery pearl every time she sees it. There are new pyjamas, new earrings, and her favourites are the ones that look like little seashells. 

“Jeeeez, Pops, you want some spaghetti with your cheese?” It’s teasing and Poppy knows it and she retaliates with another heaping dump of parmesan. 

She’s decorated. Along her dresser, there are pictures––mostly ones Pearl took and has had printed out for her, but pictures nonetheless. She hangs lights along the ceiling. She puts one sticker, a little gold star, on her desk as though to say this really is mine now or nobody can take it off, and that means they can’t make me leave either and doesn’t explain that to anybody. 

Oh, and she’s comfortable. The odd little flapflapflap of her hands when emotions are just too much doesn’t seem to bother anyone. She could swear she’s seen Pearl doing it, too. Nobody seems to mind if she rocks herself on the couch or looks at some keep-your-hands-busy art project instead of their eyes. 

(She considers removing her eyepatch every so often. That is still a barrier yet to be crossed.)

Pearl has hardly touched her pasta. That’s no bother; she seems to have a complicated relationship with food. It’s the texture she tried to explain, once, and needed to go no further because Poppy understands. ...It’s Bis’ almost-untouched plate that draws her attention. That’s unusual. 

She holds up one, not-quite-as-bony-as-a-month-ago, a-little-more-sun-kissed finger, like raising her hand to speak. The stilted conversation goes quiet as she swallows her mouthful. “Is everything okay? I mean, you’re not eating.” 

Bis gulps. She glances.

Something is wrong. 

The easy-happy twirling of fork around noodle slows. She brings the small serving to her mouth, intentional. 

Even Amy has gone quiet. She looks terribly uncomfortable, she hides it in her spaghetti, hides.

It’s Pearl who speaks up first, delicate pianist fingers drumming on the table. “We’ve been talking…” Pearl glances at Garnet as though for support. Garnet, implacable as always, only sets her fork down. “And we,” emphasis on the we, “feel like...it might benefit you to consider therapy.” 

Suddenly, her spaghetti feels like a colony of worms wriggling its way down. 

“Garnet knows a wonderful woman, one of her coworkers, and she thinks you two would be a good match! Her name is Dr. Dumaine, and she specialises in––”

“No.” The air is a block of ice. Of...of muddy ice, impenetrable. She has wholly lost her appetite. “Wh–– no. ”

It’s as though all the breath has been sucked from everyone’s lungs. When she glances around, looking for relief––from Amy, from Bis, from Steven––they can’t seem to meet her eye. Were they all planning this? From Pearl comes a quiet oh and her fingers drift to her lips.

Trying to cut the tension with a laugh doesn’t work; she sounds breathless and hysterical. “I––therapy? No. No, I don’t need––” (Wrinkled hands grab her errant ones and fold them in her lap, every touch like fire, the annoyance in her therapist growing more and more pronounced with every moment. Stop that, Penelope, look at me, and eye contact is like chewing rusty nails but she forces it anyway.) “Do you all think I need therapy?” 

Nobody expected her to react like this. She can tell and her heart feels like it wants to jump out of her throat. It’s Bis who speaks up first, all dulcet tones and brick-oven warmth. She’ll be on Poppy’s side. Certainly. “...We just think it might be good for you.” She’s teeth on chalkboard and a gasoline fire. “Might help you sleep better, yeah?” 

Pearl. Poppy turns betrayal on Pearl. Only one person knows that sleep doesn’t come easily to Poppy, and she never said it had to be private but she assumed it would be! Her voice cracks when she speaks. “You told them?” 

“Steven.” Garnet. She hates hates hates the sound of Garnet’s voice right now it’s banging in her ears and she wants to rip them off, exorcise that voice from her mind. “It’s past your bedtime.” Her hands claw at the skin of her thighs. 

(Put your hands down, Penelope, and she feels the bite of a ruler across her knuckles.) She sits on her hands instead and tries not to cry. “No it isn’t.” Her voice is tiny, cracking. Steven turns as though to comfort her; he pulls his hand back at Garnet’s look. He leaves. Things will only get worse. Amy looks like she wants to leave, too, like given the chance she would run off at lightning speed. 

Bis sets a delicate hand on her shoulder. Poppy wrenches back like she’s been struck. “No! I don’t-!” 

Therapy. A doctor who talks about her with words like abnormal and unreasonable as though she can’t hear. Something––everything––being taken away, punishment for some slight she can’t name. She pictures the seashell earrings. Would they take those if her voice is too loud? The desk, do they pull it from her room while she sleeps until her hands quiet? 

She feels like she’s going to be sick. 

Pearl looks more anxious than Poppy has ever seen her. Stupid, horrid, awful betrayer she’s just as broken as Poppy is and she thinks she can tell Poppy to leave? “...We just thought,” she starts, voice like a leaf in the wind, “that you might feel better if you––” 

“Were normal?” She can’t tell whether she wants to scream or cry or both. 

Amy buries her head deeper as Pearl sucks in a breath. “I didn’t mean that.” 

“That’s what you’re thinking!” She is wheeling. Her head is in a tailspin, feels like it goes one two three four times around as she turns to look at Bis, at Garnet, at Amy. “You’re all thinking it!” (Once, her hands were strapped to a desk. No amount of crying or pleading could convince the doctor to do otherwise. He only waited, patient, stone-still in his chair, for Penelope to communicate normally. She still doesn’t know what that means.) 

Bis tries again, reaching out; Poppy reels out of her chair and into a stuttery standing. “You might just sleep better if you––” 

“I said no!” And why isn’t that enough? Her stomach is churning. She can’t breathe. And nobody is helping her. 

She has tried to be useful. It hasn’t made them like her. Now, her fangs must come out, ugly terrible awful awful awful sharp like sandpaper in her chest or maybe a bomb. 

One hand steadies her on the back of her chair. The other points accusingly at Pearl. “You cry at night, I hear it! Why don’t you go to therapy?!” Garnet’s arm moves under the table; she’s holding Pearl’s hand and nobody is holding Poppy’s. She doesn’t want them to. She needs them to. She would bite anyone who tries. Or maybe she’ll just explode. 

“Penelope.” Garnet. She’s so serious. So infuriatingly serious, like none of this matters, like she’s suggesting that Poppy go out for lunch today. “Calm down.” 

Everything boils up at once. Somebody else is speaking, that can’t be her even though it’s her voice, some beast has clawed its way out of her on the defensive. “I hate you!” She doesn’t mean it. She does. Garnet seems to understand and Poppy doesn’t want her to. 

“Honey.” It’s Bis and she doesn’t want––doesn’t––that stupid fucking hand reaches out again and when will they understand?! 

“Get––” She glances frantically for anything. Anything. There’s––her glass––she picks up the almost-empty thing and throws it at Bis’ feet. “Away!!” It shatters into a million pieces and a bloody pool of mango. 

Even Garnet is shocked. Poppy is shocked. This isn’t her, she doesn’t want this to be her, she can’t––can’t––

She runs. 

Somebody shuffles to catch her. Somebody else pulls them back. 

The night air is cold and the sand is freezing on her bare feet and she runs.

Chapter Text

She doesn’t...really know where she planned to go. 

There was no plan, really. Just get out, get away. Adrenaline kicked her feet forward, kept her moving aimlessly; it wore off an hour ago. Now, she finds herself exhausted on the sand in her bare feet wondering where to go. 

Town doesn’t seem like the best choice. Most places have turned off their lights by now. The only light she can see as she wanders along the beach is a gas station, and she doubts they want a barefoot stranger in there. 

Where else is there?

(She hesitates to even call it home. Won’t think on it long enough to even consider it.) 

...It really does get colder by the water. She wishes she’d thought to wear a sweater. The house is just so warm, she hadn’t needed one. 

If nothing else, the water has a sort of peace to it. In, and out. In, and out. Whoosh. It’s like the pages of a book turning, turning, and the sand under her feet is soft. 

She ducks by where the tide comes in. It draws out––it leaves little bubbly spots on the sand––she digs her hands into one. When she pulls them up, they’re full of clumpy wet sand and a wriggly little burrowing crab. She wonders what the tunnels under her feet look like. She wonders what her hands feel like to the crab. She lets it go back home. 

There are seashells along the beach. None are quite as perfect as the metal shaped ones, but she finds one that’s close with only a chip taken out and rests it in her pocket. 

They must be talking about her. Aren’t they? It makes her head spin to think about. She wonders at what they’re saying. She thinks about the things they must have taken away by now (the desk. the earrings. her bedsheets maybe.) and then tries desperately not to think about that. 

There isn’t a chance that they want her back. 

It eats her alive to know that they won’t want her back. 

She had just been so... comfortable. 

Even here, far down the beach, she can swear she sees the orange light of the little beach house. There is comfort in that light. Warmth. And out here there’s wet sand and a chilly breeze. She has collected a dozen pillows and a throw blanket patterned in pugs doing ballet. Sand grits under her fingernails. 

A breeze chills her to the bone. 

Maybe she can return and pretend nothing happened at all. She’ll clean up the kitchen, assuming Pearl hasn’t, and slot herself in next to Amy to watch her play some video game. Then she’ll go to bed and everybody will have already forgotten. 

(The glass, she knows, had been part of a set now missing one. They will know.) 

She sits in the sand. It’s cold underneath her and it will cling to her skirt. Her fingers bury themselves deep, deep in the little gritty grains of rocks long washed to pieces and shells once home to tiny creatures. 

Maybe she’ll apologise. ...But then, her blood runs colder than the wind, then they’ll think they were right. They’ll send her to therapy. She would sooner die. 

...But she should apologise. At least to Bis. Right? And (her head ducks, shoulders hunch, ashamed) Pearl. Garnet, too, probably. All of them. She is a bundle of shame and apologies in bare feet on the beach in the middle of the night and it’s cold. The seashell sits heavy in her pocket. 

Maybe––and she likes this one better––she’ll show up and say, no thank you to all of it. She has found a new place to live. Somewhere (her chin tilts upwards as she imagines saying it, righteousness flowing) where nobody asks her to alter herself for their comfort. She has a new home where she can speak as freely as she wants and nobody tells her to go to therapy, nobody thinks she would be better off with her hands quieted and mouth quieter. So thank you, (her hand flurries in the air in a mimicry of conversation) but no thank you. This has been quite enough. 

Of course, there is no other place. She has no job to afford such a place, nor connections to find one. Anyway, she is still on the beach and everything is closed. But it would be so sweet to tell them she has no intention of living somewhere she isn’t valued. 

Then, there is no need for apologies or awkward conversations or the heartache of losing things. She will say goodbye before they can tell her to leave. A perfect, wonderfully solid plan. 

For...whenever she gets the heart to venture up that hill. 

They’ll probably be asleep by now, won’t they? If not asleep then in bed. Even if she wanted to go inside (and she doesn’t!), they’re sure to have locked the door. She wilts. 

When she stretches her toes out to meet the surf, it freezes and leaves salty little imprints. 

…

Pearl will certainly be awake. 

There is nobody she wants to see less right now. God , she was terrible to Pearl. Thinking on it, she groans, covers her face with one arm, and falls backwards onto the sand. 

Maybe she can just wait until the wind covers her with sand and she becomes a part of the beach. 

A particularly bold wave splashes up nearly to her knees. She shrieks; it’s cold. It’s cold and will only get colder. And the house is so warm. 

...Maybe she can sneak past for just a sweater. 

There are a thousand maybes in her mind, and she picks that one. If nobody is awake, she will just get a sweater and some shoes and she will leave. If they are, she will hold her head high, sandy hair and all, and tell them exactly what’s what. Her own ferocity will warm her. 

She has decided. 

She stands, brushing off a bit of the sand. Her teeth are chattering and her shoulders are shaking and she pays that no mind because she is tenacious. 

The house is so easy to find, a beacon on the beach, powerful as a lighthouse. Inside, she can see a light still on, and it warms her before she remembers that she is no longer welcome inside that light and she doesn’t want to be anyway, thank you. Head high. Shoulders squared. She takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with chilly ocean air, and marches her way to the house. 

She expected Pearl.

She gets Garnet instead. 

At the foot of the old wooden stairs, she freezes. Garnet is sitting in the light, reading some book or another, idle. There is a warm mug of something-she-can-see-the-steam-from in front of her; there is a heavy sweater over her. If she wants to warm herself further, she need only step inside, where she is welcomed. 

No jealousy. Head held high. 

Intentional, powerful, bare feet slapslapslapping on the wood, Poppy makes her way up. Every line is rehearsed a thousand times a second. She will tell Garnet exactly what’s what. 

Then, she reaches the top. 

Garnet peers over her book at her and she feels suddenly, terribly small. Ridiculous. Frozen and sandy and small and the ferocious words she had die in her throat. It is all she can do not to drop to her knees and beg forgiveness. 

It seems, though, that she doesn’t have to. Garnet gestures silently to the empty chair. ––Not empty. There is a heavy blanket. Bis’ big weighted blanket that feels like a hug. Oh. 

“...I––” 

One hand stops her. Strong. Steady in a way Poppy can never be. “You’re shivering.” Again, she gestures to the chair. “Take a seat.” 

There is no fight left in her. Not once she wraps the heavy blanket around all of herself, all the way up to her chin. It is warm as a furnace and strong as a hug. She supposes it will be better to be lectured wrapped in comfort than trembling on the beach. 

But no lecture comes. Garnet simply finishes a page in her book, sets it spine-up on the table, and waits.

And waits. 

And waits. 

It’s interminable and Poppy has to speak up but when she does it is only a squeak. “I didn’t mean to.” 

“I know.” 

“I was scared.”

“I know.” 

Her face dips into the blanket, hiding, hiding. “I don’t hate you.” 

“I know.” 

Garnet is so gentle. So sturdy. Poppy curls deeper into herself and lets a single sob rip forth. Her voice is far from the fierce proclamations she had planned; she sounds like a little mouse, tucked away in a hidey-hole. “Please don’t make me leave.” 

“We won’t.” Sturdy, steady, solid, sure. Like the ocean, washing over everything in wave after certain wave, but much warmer. “But I would like for you to tell me what’s wrong.” 

Oh, that’s so much worse. She doesn’t even know where to begin. So she shrugs. 

Garnet waits. Poppy knows that she could wait until dawn and never say a word, she is so patient. The blanket smells like Bis. 

She speaks into the fabric rather than to Garnet. “I’ve been to therapy before. I don’t wanna do it again.” There are no words, but she can imagine Garnet’s tell me more before she even says it. “It was––I––I was seven. I had to go every day. My mother,” she hasn’t even talked about her in a month, the word sits clunkily on her tongue, “said it was good for me.” 

“Tell me why she said that.” 

She would love to burrow under the blanket and under the sand until nobody can ever find her again. Admitting to being afraid is one thing, but admitting to this is entirely another. She is flush with shame. If her behaviour before didn’t make them want to get rid of her, this certainly will. Her mother’s words echo like an earworm: make this our little secret. “...I.” Abnormal. Errant. Unreasonable. “I have autism.” 

She expects some horrified or pitying gasp. What she gets instead is a hand on her knee and a silent prompt to tilt her head upwards. Garnet’s eyes are so sincere, so earnest, and Poppy is once again fascinated by the way the light catches the deeper brown one. “Autism is nothing to be ashamed of.” 

Oh. 

“It’s nothing to be treated, either.” 

Oh. 

She ducks her head back into the blanket. 

“Tell me about your therapy.” Poppy whines. “Take your time.” 

Where to even begin. ...Well. She would like to begin nowhere. She would like to take a surgical knife and pull out the piece of her brain responsible for all those memories, throw it to the seagulls to let them bite it into tiny shreds. She wants to pretend nothing ever happened to her before a month ago and leave it at that. She was doing so well. 

But Garnet is waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. “...Please don’t tell anyone else.” 

“Of course.” 

A deep breath. “Not even your therapist friends.” 

“I won’t tell anybody, Poppy.” 

Okay. Okay. She wrings the blanket between her hands and focuses on that as she lets the words flow. “It was mostly about...I think being normal.” Goodness, though, it was never quite clear to her. Nobody talked to her. “He would––I had to look him in the eyes. And talk quietly. And, and not...move my hands so much.” Saying it, she feels silly. Eye contact and talking quietly, it’s what everybody else can do so easily. She made it seem like a tragedy. “He––um. I would flap my hands, and he’d...sometimes I had to sit on them. Or he’d hit me. Just, on the hands, not like––it wasn’t––he didn’t hit me hit me, it was with a ruler. And...he strapped them to a table, like. A school desk? So I would...not be so distracting in class.” Silly. The words are out, and she feels like a child complaining over nothing. 

Garnet breathes in deeply. “That must have been terrifying.” 

...Maybe she feels a little more sensible.

“We would never––” She pauses. She considers. “Nobody here would ever make you go through that again. Never.”

Her chest is roiling with uncertainty. “You all said you wanted me to go to therapy.” She means to sound accusing, argumentative maybe, but it comes out pleading. 

“For trauma. Dr. Dumaine specialises in trauma.” 

“...Oh.” 

“We just want you to try it.” There is no malice in Garnet’s tone that Poppy can detect. No indication that there will be any repercussions if she doesn’t. It’s...comforting. “You only need to stay for as long as you’re comfortable with it.” 

Her head pops up from the blanket in something like shock. “Not all day?” 

“Just for an hour. And one of us will wait outside if you choose to leave sooner.” 

Oh, oh, oh. 

“We want to help you.” Maybe Garnet thinks that sounds bad, because she follows up before a breath is over: “It has nothing to do with autism. We won’t ever try to––there is nothing to fix.” 

At some point, she has drawn the blanket over her head. Only her nose and eye peek out from the warmth and the safety and the heaviness. “I don’t want to go on any medication.” 

“We won’t ask you to.” 

“...And.” Now, the blanket covers everything. It is dark in here, devoid of the nice orange light, but it warms her from the inside out. “I––please don’t take anything away. I’m sorry.” 

“We won’t.” 

“I’m sorry.” She swallows. “About the glass. And...for yelling.” 

“You were triggered. I understand.” Oh, she can practically feel Garnet’s look through the blanket. “But you should say something to the others.” She shrinks. “They’ll understand, too.” 

“What if they don’t?” 

The fond smile comes through in Garnet’s voice. “Bis brought that blanket out here because she didn’t want you to get cold.” Something new in her warms. “And Pearl covered your dinner, if you’d like to warm it back up.” 

...Then they still–– 

She sobs once more. 

There is a hand on her back, barely felt through the blanket but as sturdy as though she were being carried. “It’s all right. It’s all right, Poppy.” 

“I––” She takes a long, shuddery breath. Don’t cry, just keep everything in for now. Her cheek is dry anyway. “...I’ll try therapy. I will.” 

“I’m glad.” 

“...Thank you.” 

Garnet only hums. “Let’s get you inside.” Into the orange warmth. Out of the freezing cold. She follows, sniffling, the blanket still wrapped around her and almost too heavy to carry. She has certainly gotten sand on it. 

Bis doesn’t seem to mind, when she comes barrelling out of her room to wrap Poppy and the blanket in a hug and a flurry of I was so worried!s and are you okay?s. Neither does Pearl, peeking her head out and breathing an audible sigh of relief. Then there’s Amy, too, who looks like she’s spent the last few hours tugging at her hair, and Steven who should be in bed by now but who comes out in his Lonely Samurai pyjama pants and too-big T-shirt anyway. 

One by one, they join the hug. Perhaps it should be overwhelming, all of them in her ear and around her and holding. Instead, she feels perfectly, effortlessly, blissfully content. 

In her room, untouched by the others, she sets the seashell on her dresser.

Chapter Text

Her worst fears do not come true. 

Dr. Dumaine is a lovely woman with smiling eyes and an abstract orange painting in her room. There are no come-and-play-with-me-but-ask-politely-first toys on her shelves, no school desk in the corner; there is a couch with four pillows and one of them has reversible sequins that Poppy runs her hands over and over and over. With her pointer, she draws a heart, and with her palm, she wipes it away. 

Once they’ve introduced themselves, it’s easy to fall into a rhythm. Dr. Dumaine speaks. Then Poppy speaks. A question, an answer. A question, an uncomfortable silence. 

Getting-to-know-you questions. Her name is Penelope Blanche on the paper but Poppy... something other than Blanche is her name, and Dr. Dumaine writes it down. She has a sister but doesn’t know where she is, thank you. Yes she is adopted, no she doesn’t remember much of the “before.” The immediate answers come out easily, comfortably. The rest are tucked away in the back of her brain to think on later.  

Then, the tougher questions. What was her mother like. How has she been sleeping. Does she like living with this new, strange family. The answers come, but slowly, sap-like. Her chest tightens; breathing gets harder and harder. She answers the questions and rubs a thumb up and down her sternum to make the air move.

She still leaves early. 

Garnet is waiting, just as she promised, in the Dondai in the parking lot, tapping away on her phone. Poppy knocks on the window; Garnet opens the door for her. No questions. She just starts the car and waits. 

“It was fine,” Poppy eventually says, drumming her fingers along the dashboard. “You were right, she’s really nice! I like her. And it felt really good to say it all. I just…” Hm. She pauses, thinks. Mulls. Hmmm. “...I just wanted to leave early.” 

It makes perfect sense to her. She wanted to leave, because she wanted to know she could. She needed to see Garnet still waiting in the parking lot, just as she had promised, ready to take off as soon as Poppy so much as asked. To see her here means more than anything. 

“I think I do wanna go back,” she continues. “I do. I thought it’d be terrible but it’s really not, she’s nice. And she made me think about a lot of stuff. Like, a looot of stuff.” She blows a lock of hair out of her eye, twirls another, tap-tap-taps. There’s so much energy. “I don’t like my last name. I mean, it isn’t even mine. I didn’t really think about it but, I mean, I don’t think I should have to keep her last name. Right?” 

A hum in agreement. 

“I think I want my old last name back. She made me change it but I want the old one back. It’s Argyris and I like it better.” This, she hadn’t told Dr. Dumaine. She’d just shrugged her shoulders when the question of her surname came up and left it at that, at least for now. “Is that okay?” 

“Of course.” 

“And!” Her hand slaps emboldened palm-down, a tiny sound on the old dash. “I want to eat whatever I want to eat!” And wanting is still so hard, still drags through her chest like it’s trying to take her lungs out with it, constricting, like a long piece of yarn wrapped around her insides coming out through her mouth. “And tonight I wanna make popcorn and put caramel on it and watch a movie.” 

Garnet looks...not amused. Content is probably a better word. Happy. “We can do that.” 

“And.” Oh, this part is hard. This is something she hasn’t broached with any of them, yet. Therapy, though, has filled her with enough boldness to ask for this. If she doesn’t get it out now, she worries that she’ll never get it out ever ever. “I wanna look for my sister. I haven’t seen her in a long time and I wanna look for her.” And that drags something else awful up. There’s the lump in her throat she always, always gets when she thinks about Ronnie; there’s the half-a-tear springing up in the corner of her eye.

Quiet, except for the hum of wheels on asphalt. “I didn’t know you have a sister.” 

“I didn’t tell you.” There is a lot she has yet to tell them, actually. “I––she ran away. I haven’t seen her in…” Thinking about the actual number turns the tear full. She wipes it away, forcefully, with the side of her wrist. “I wanna look for her. ...And I want help. Her name is Sharon Blanche.” 

(If she looks closely, she swears that Garnet’s jaw tightens imperceptibly. This, she chooses to ignore.) 

“But––I dunno. Maybe she changed it.” 

“Maybe.” There’s a strain in Garnet’s voice and she ignores that, too. She would have to have lived under an even bigger rock than she had to not know how the name Blanche strikes the ear: like a pair of cymbals, if the cymbals had a knife.

Still, she feels the need to defend Ronnie. Ronnie at the very least. “She isn’t––you know. ...She’s not like that.” She never was. She was kind, gentle. She had given Poppy her little stuffed rabbit on her first day with the family and built blanket tents on her bed for them to share; she snuck in candy from outside the house and shared it perfectly half-and-half. English had been hard, but Ronnie, ever-understanding, made it so much easier. Even when she started going to that fancy private school, she wrote letters to Poppy––handwritten ones, with little drawings all over the page and everything––once a week. If there were difficult moments (and there had been; she has the eyepatch to prove it), they mean nothing next to the good ones. “She’s not.” 

“I’m sure.” 

“Really.” 

“I believe you, Poppy.”

It doesn’t sound like she does. There is no fight in her, though. All she has is the half-hearted ability to hold back her tears. 

They are almost home when Poppy speaks up again, a tiny voice. “Garnet? ...Is therapy supposed to be hard?” 

She looks, and sounds, sympathetic. “Usually.” 

A deep breath. “Okay. ...And.” She swallows. “Is it okay to want to cry after therapy?” 

“You don’t need my permission.” There’s nothing mean about it. Just understanding, lovely understanding, as they park outside the house. 

“...I kind of want to cry.” 

One large hand rests over hers. The car stops entirely. “Go ahead.” 

She does.

Her chest finally lightens.

Chapter Text

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

C-PTSD.

See pee tee ess dee. 

...Kuhputsduh.

Poppy runs her fingers over, over, over the little booklet of information and the official-looking letter. It is my professional opinion that Penelope Argyris be treated for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) with both psychotherapy and the assistance of a service animal… 

It’s sort of a relief to have words to put to the feelings. Everything––the nightmares, the anxiety, the way certain words put a lead ball in her gut––makes sense. Dr. Dumaine had explained it all to her in that misty-soft voice of hers. Her body and brain are still in “survival mode,” always expecting something to go wrong. 

Everything fell into place as the explanations wore on. 

Hyperarousal. Why her leg, even now, bounces like it’s trying to take off. 

Negative self-perception. Why she always feels peripheral. 

Difficulty regulating emotions. Why she lashed out at the others––she remembers it with a flush of her cheeks and a flash of shame––guilt, that’s another one. 

The whole thing was like listening to a checklist of herself. But that was always going to be the easy part.

The hard part was sitting down at dinner with everybody, head ducked down, hands folded twitching in her lap, as she explained the diagnosis. Just one more strange thing about her, one more thing to be accommodated for, one step closer to everyone looking at her and saying no, that’s enough of that and throwing her out.

She should know by now that this family is almost criminally understanding. 

There are no shocked and horrified gasps. Nobody storms off, exasperated with just how much Poppy needs. There’s just...Steven pouring her some more water, and a flippant, “Hey, all good,” from Amy. The conversation moves on and Poppy is left feeling warm from the inside out. 

Dr. Dumaine gave her homework. Go through her room, she’d said, and get rid of the stuff that’s doing nothing but making her feel bad. You don’t owe it to your abuser to keep reminders of her.

She’s enlisted Master Organiser Pearl for help with that. 

“Can you believe she made me wear this?” Nose wrinkling, she holds up the this in question: a perpetually-stiff blouse, bleach-white, with an ugly black bow at the neckline. It’s nothing like what she wears now, all frills and pinks and soft fabrics that don’t make her want to rip her skin off. 

Pearl always seems to dance around answering these things, waiting for Poppy to show her feelings so Pearl can mimic them. This blouse, though, she takes one look at and snorts. “It’s hideous.” 

“Right!” And blip, there it goes into the Burn box. 

“Do you want to keep these?” She turns away from the dresser to see what Pearl is holding up: a pair of polished-black shoes with tiny heels that were always half a size too small. They make her toes pinch just looking at them.

“Nope. Burn.” 

Pearl is grimacing. “I don’t know if we can burn these. They look synthetic.” 

“Theeen…” Hm. Poppy taps a finger to her chin in thought. “Can we cut them up really small and throw them out?” 

“I think we can do that.” They go into the Burn box, too, with a caveat. 

The little cardboard box, BURN scribbled onto the side in marker, fills quickly. Everything is in blacks and whites and when Poppy looks at it, it’s like it was all clipped from some old photograph and plastered on top of the world. There are no colours. She always hated how there were no colours in that house, but she never noticed before just how out of place the washed-out monochrome really is.

Two pairs of murky black tights go in next. She always wore one pair over the other to disguise the runs in both. 

A skirt, even more black than the tights, that she could never sit comfortably in. 

“Ew, ew, ew––” A dress, her least favourite of them all. It’s a high-collared black-and-white number, sleeves to her wrists, skirt to her ankles, that makes her look like a Pilgrim’s wife. She’d worn it to Important Business Meetings and itched the entire time.  “Double burn this one.” 

It’s almost fun to get rid of everything like this. Pearl laughs at Poppy’s exaggerated disgust over a blouse or a skirt, and Poppy tosses things she’s hated for years into the pile to be burned; she throws one like a basketball, one like a football, a few she kicks and then has to pry off her foot to set in the box more carefully. There is a vengeful sort of glee to it all. She knows how much these things cost and just how much she is wasting. 

“Do you know what I wanna do with all this?” 

“What?” Even without turning to look at Pearl, she can hear the smile in her voice. They all seem pretty thrilled when Poppy says exactly what she wants. 

“I want,” a pause, for effect, “to roast marshmallows over the fire.” 

Oh, she loves the sound of Pearl’s laugh. “I think we can do that!” 

“I really want to! I’ve never had a s’more and I wanna try one.” 

“I’m sure Amy would love to help you.” She sounds so fond. It makes Poppy’s heart swell. 

Soon enough, the box is overfull and the dresser is emptied of all the things Poppy never wants to look at again. It’s all colour now. All bright pink and pastels, loose skirts and fluffy sweaters and crop tops and jeans. There are no ugly necklaces left in her jewellery box, no sensible studs. Certainly no more socks with scratchy lace on the top. 

She checks the closet next: all of that is gone, too. The bed, she never put anything she didn’t want on there but she checks anyway. The nightstand, the windowsill, everything she doesn’t want is gone. It just...feels like there’s something wriggling at her. 

Pearl peers through the box, double-checking, organised as always. “Is that all?” 

“I thiiink so.” 

She’s gotten rid of all the worst of it. The hideous clothes her mother always made her wear. The jewellery. What else, what… 

Oh.

“Pearl?” 

“Yes?” 

“Would you cut my hair?” 

When they meet outside for their therapy beach bonfire, she feels lighter. It’s not just because she throws the whole entire box (minus the shoes!) on the pile of cardboard and driftwood to watch it go up in smoke––she literally feels lighter. There are no more tight buns of frizzy-curly hair on the sides of her head. There’s just... curls, bouncing around and stopping at her chin, loose and free and so, so light. She can’t stop running her fingers through it. Boing. 

“I think it’s cute!” says Bis, currently holding Poppy in her lap and a marshmallow roaster in each hand. “You’re like a brown Molly Ringwald.” 

“Who?” 

“Movie night!” Bis and Amy shout in unison. 

She tries her first, second, and third s’mores, roasted over a fire that warms her in a way the contents never could. They are delicious. And she leans in to Bis’ front, head tucked under that large chin, eye closed contentedly. 

Her diagnosis, she learns, is not that bad. Nor is it uncommon. Pearl admits to the same one; Bis, the same, but without the “C” part. It’s less lonely, knowing that they feel the same things Poppy does, and seeing them stand proud and whole. 

“My therapist says I should get a therapy animal,” Poppy muses, playing with one of Bis’ marshmallow-sticky fingers. 

“What, like a dog?” 

She shakes her head just to feel the curls bounce. “She said a dog or a horse. Like, one of those small ones, you know? And I think I want the horse. They’re quieter and they live longer.” 

If Pearl chokes on a piece of graham cracker thinking about the mess a horse would make, she at least keeps it quiet.

“They’re tiny! Like, dog-sized!” 

Pearl relaxes a little. A little. “...As long as it’s housebroken,” she finally relents. 

To that, Poppy hums affirmatively, sinks into Bis’ lap a little deeper, and goes for her fourth s’more.

Chapter Text

“Look, Pearl, he’s housebroken, and he only sheds twice a year! Lion even sheds more than that!” 

Pearl still looks ambivalent. 

Poppy is entirely, one thousand million percent certain that if her therapist hadn’t recommended a service animal, Pearl would be putting a firm NO MORE ANIMALS policy in place. Lion, with his shedding fur that’s longer than Pearl’s hair, his devil-may-care attitude about tracking in dirt, and his propensity to drop still-wiggling lizard tails on the front porch is more than enough animal for Pearl. But this is different! 

This is Mushroom, a little dappled roan not much bigger than Lion and infinitely calmer. The moment Poppy sat on the floor, he came over to sniff her; now, he’s rested his head in her lap, big eyes watching her every move. Her hand combs through his mane, and already, it feels calming. 

Still. Pearl is less than certain. She combs through the list of tasks he’s been trained to perform. “Do you dissociate?” she asks, one long finger resting over the printed words. “It says he can guide you during dissociation. Do you need that?” 

With somebody else, it might feel too personal a question. But with Pearl… Well. Pearl has given her half the vocabulary she uses to make sense of her new diagnosis. They’ve shared so much over the dinner table that it feels silly to even try to hide anything. “Sometimes,” she answers, but her focus is much more on rubbing Mushroom’s nose. “I mean, it’s bad when I do? I’d love to have a guide when it happens. And!” To look at Pearl, she has to turn her torso awkwardly, but it’s better than moving her legs and disturbing the horse. “Look at him, isn’t he just darling?” 

“...He certainly looks like a horse.” 

Mushroom snorts at that, his nose-breath fluttering the fabric of Poppy’s skirt. “Pearl, look! He’s just perfect for grounding!” She turns her own big, soft eye to her companion, as sweet and earnest as she can make herself look. “I really need grounding. Aaand, look, he does wake-ups for nightmares!” 

If Poppy has learned anything about Pearl, it’s that she’s terribly weak to puppy-dog eye. She can see how Pearl taps along the paper, pretending to think, pretending her mind hasn’t already been made up. “His hooves will scuff up the hardwood.” 

“Not if he wears little booties!” 

And he’s such a nice presence already. 

They hadn’t come here really expecting to get a horse today. Pearl had done research well into the early morning hours; It can take months to find the right animal, Poppy, they might need extra training, and finding one you bond with can be hard… Et cetera. But Mushroom rested his head right on Poppy’s lap and oh, she already adores his pointy ears and the way his spots get bigger close to his butt and the way he snuffles out breaths. She’s known him for all of an hour, and already, she knows that leaving him behind would leave her with an empty feeling.

“Peeearl.” Her arm stretches up, up, all the way until she can clumsily point at a line on the paper. “Look. He can search the house. It’s for hypervigilance, Pearl.” 

That’s a word they share. It’s why, Pearl told her, she stays up so late all the time. Why she sometimes sends texts asking if everybody is okay. Why––okay, half of why, because the other half is that it’s really cool––she lines swords along the wall of her closet. 

It’s also definitely a reason to bring Mushroom home. He can help both of them! 

Pearl’s resistance is crumbling before Poppy’s eye.

“Aaand that would help Biiis.” 

Pearl sighs. Poppy is sure it’s supposed to sound exasperated, but it just sounds like she’s ready to give in. 

“And also I love him so so so much look at him.” 

She can see the exact moment Pearl gives in. “...He needs to wear boots in the house.” 

When Poppy squeals in delight, Mushroom doesn’t so much as blink. He is relaxed as can be, almost asleep in her lap, absolutely perfect for keeping Poppy calm when the world gets a little too loud. “Of course! Yes yes yes he’ll be so quiet you won’t even notice him and I’ll clean up after him and take him out and-!” He snuffles and pushes his nose into Poppy’s hand. Relax. Oh, he’s perfect. 

“As long as he stays clean."

...Her grin turns teasing. “Peeearl, do you wanna pet him?” Try as she might, she can’t disguise the wrinkle in her nose. “Look, he’s totally clean! And he’s soft, and I think you should pet him.” 

“That’s all right.” 

“One little pet. He’s not working right now, you can pet him.” 

It’s like Poppy has asked her to stick her hand into a sink full of wet and dirty dishes. The way Pearl strokes the top of his head is hesitant, like she’s preparing for Mushroom to bite her. “...He is very soft.” 

“I knew you would like him!” 

“Please just don’t spoil him.” 

“Well.” If Pearl is hesitant to even get close to Mushroom, Poppy is not: she leans all the way down to kiss him on the nose. “Not while he’s working.” 

“And when you’re ready,” Pearl says, slow and intentional, “we’ll help you look for a job he can go to.” 

“I’m gonna be a professional horse girl.” 

She never fails to make Pearl laugh. It’s such a relief to listen to her relax like that. 

Poppy hums happily, scratching between Mushroom’s ears; he chuffs and lets his eyes slip closed. “I’ll put his booties on in the van. And then I’ll show him around the house. And I have therapy later so he should probably come to that, right? Dr. Dumaine wanted to meet him.” Her attention turns to Mushroom: “Yes she did! She wants to meet you, handsome boy!” 

...Pearl has that look again. The it’s nice to see you so happy look. Between the horse and Pearl, Poppy doesn’t think she could feel much nicer than she does right now.

Chapter Text

The banner above the table, silver and blue and tinsel-shiny, proclaims for the world to see: 

HAPPY HANUKKAH! 

Under that one, there is a golden banner, the H a little dented from storage: 

Happy Chanukah! 

And under that one, a lovely teal: 

HAPPY HANUKAH 

(That one, Poppy readjusted after Steven hung it. The first H dipped an inch lower than the last one and made the whole thing crooked.) 

In one of the large bay windows, the Christmas tree sits proud as anything, even buried as it is under heaps of ornamentation. If she has to guess, nine out of ten of the ornaments are handmade. Everyone’s handiwork is clear: from the googly-eyed Popsicle stick reindeer signed with Steven’s name on the reverse, to the spheres painted with delicate winter scenes clearly done by Miss Perlas “I Can Barely Even Draw A Circle!” Matapang-Quartz, or the engraved metal snowflakes by Bis, and Garnet’s red and blue mittens in miniature, to the snowglobes made with tissue paper and Styrofoam that Amy was embarrassed to admit to making but flushed at the praise of. Pearl dates hers; the most recent one Poppy can find is from last year and she hopes without asking that they’ll all make ornaments together this year. 

Christmas had never been much of anything with her mother. There were fancy business parties, yes, with manicured trees that took up the better part of the centre of the room, always too tall for Poppy to see the top of without craning her neck. The same songs played every year, boring, traditional choir-y things. And she always had to dress up in some sensible dress and itchy sweater to stand politely with Ronnie and make pleasant small talk and not eat too much. 

It couldn’t be more different here. 

It’s not even just Christmas here.

Because in the window next to the tree, there’s a menorah with four white candles and space for five more. She has seen those once or twice before. On the table, though, sitting front and centre on a black-red-green mat, is a holder Poppy has never seen before that Bis called a kinara. The first time Poppy asked, Bis sat with her for an hour to explain all the new, fascinating words. The mat is a mkeka. The cup sitting slightly off to the side is a kikombe cha umoja and they’ll all need to drink from it and yes, “all” includes her. The candles, Ujima and Kuumba and Ujamaa, she runs the rubbery syllables over her tongue a thousand times and still can’t get enough. 

Not everything is unfamiliar, but all of it is new. She has seen gingerbread houses before, professionally-done things with big DO NOT TOUCH signs, but she’s never rolled her sleeves up and made one until now. 

“I like cutting out the windows before we bake them.” By her side, Steven presses a star-shaped cookie cutter into the side of the sheet of gingerbread. “Then they don’t crumble as much!” 

“That’s so smart.” Poppy digs through the little Tupperware of cookie cutters for her two favourites: a heart for one side of the house, and a flower for the other. 

“Plus,” he stage-whispers, well aware of Pearl supervising the sufganiyot only a few feet away, “you get to eat the dough you cut out.” 

She hears it despite his half-best efforts. “You’ll get salmonella like that, Steven. Wait for it to bake.” 

“You can’t get salmonella from gingerbread!” ...He thinks. He turns to Poppy. “Can you?” 

To that, she shrugs. She’s not even totally sure what salmonella is but it sounds like a fish thing? “Probably? Pearl knows stuff, she’s smart.”

“I am smart.” She can hear the pride in Pearl’s voice, can almost hear the upwards tilt of her chin. 

“I think it’s ready to bake, anyway!” Poppy lifts the baking tray carrying the pieces of her own gingerbread house, not yet pieced together. After Steven’s quick waitwaitwait! and a very careful press of a criss-crossed piece of dough into the star-shaped hole (for windowpanes!), he hands the tray off to Poppy. She slides both into the oven to wait for eleven minutes, and Steven runs off to help Garnet with her beach gingerbread house. Her gingerbeach house. Pearl returns to humming some Christmas carol, oil bubbling under her watchful eye, and Poppy can’t help but sidle up next to her and slip an arm into the crook of her elbow. “Those look really good, Pearl.” 

Pearl doesn’t turn away from the pot, like all it will take to start a fire or for the sufganiyot to burn is for her to look away for half a second, but she tilts her head into Poppy’s anyway. It’s sort of like being nuzzled. “They taste even better! I think you’ll like these, they’re strawberry.” 

“How do you make the jelly go inside?” 

She knows it will spark a long-winded explanation of the intricacies of doughnut-making. She welcomes it. Pearl’s voice is nothing if not soothing, especially when she really gets into whatever she’s talking about. 

The explanation is cut off by a knock knock at the open entryway of the kitchen. “I smell food!” Amy chirps, bounding over to the stove; Pearl lets out a squawk and shields the pot with her strainer. 

“Be careful, Amy!” 

Amy makes a defiant move like she’s about to stick her hand in boiling oil and this time, Pearl and Poppy reach out to stop her. “I’m kidding I’m kidding I’m kidding relaaax!” Still, she presses her hands into the countertop to look into the pot. “How much longer?” 

She gets a loving but sturdy swat to the top of her head with the handle of the strainer. “I’ll tell you when they’re ready. Get down, I know your hands aren’t clean.” 

The sufganiyot may be strawberry, but Pearl gets a raspberry. “Can I put the sugar on top?” 

“Poppy already asked,” and the Poppy in question tilts her chin up with a grin. She was here first!

“Boooo!” There is no upset to it, and it doesn’t seem to stop Amy from dipping her fingers into the bag of powdered sugar. 

“Amy, your hands!” 

It’s like every move she makes is carefully crafted to bother Pearl somehow, in some way. “Yeah? You want it back?” Before Pearl can say no, there is a sweet-smelling cloud that makes Poppy’s eye water and brings a cough to her lips. There is a yelp. And when the dust clears, Pearl’s face has gone wholly, splotchily white. 

...Oh! 

Oh, Poppy bursts into a deep belly laugh at the sheer bewilderment in Pearl’s eyes! 

“It isn’t funny!” Pearl grimaces down at her white-splattered shirt, as covered in powdered sugar as the doughnuts will be soon. “Your hands are dirty and I’m all covered!” 

“Awww, but it’s kind of cute!” Poppy chirrups, swiping a thumb over one cheek. “We’ll just use the stuff from the back of the bag. It’s okay!” 

“I’m still covered in-!” Powdered sugar is no longer her only worry. Poppy has reached into the store-bought can of blue icing with one thin finger and dotted it right in the centre of Pearl’s birthmark. “Poppy!” 

Amy cheers as Poppy giggles, pumping a fist over her head. “Yeah, girl! Get in the spirit!” 

“Sorry! Sorry! You’re just really funny like this!” 

“Funny––” Pearl huffs. The sufganiyot are ready; she pulls each little round pastry out with the metal spiderweb, setting them gently on a paper-towel-covered plate. It’s slow, methodical. ...Then: “I’ll show you funny.” 

And Poppy is splatted in the face with a Pearl-sized handful of sugar. 

When the shock wears off and the sugar is out of her eye, she bursts into another bout of high-pitched bell-like laughter. “You!” 

“Retaliation!” Like this is a basketball court, Amy jumps as high as she can, double-fists of sugar above her head, and dunks the clouds onto Pearl’s head. 

That’s all it takes for the kitchen to become a full-on rigamarole of flying clouds of powdered sugar, flour, a sticky toss of brown sugar, and sprinkles. A handful of chocolate sprinkles goes into Amy’s face; a methodical cup of flour goes over Poppy’s head; Pearl is splattered with enough powdered sugar to make her go three shades paler. It’s nothing but laughter and the understanding that this will be cleaned later until their attention is drawn, through the silence, to the figure at the open doorway.

Garnet. Arms crossed, feet sturdy. Unamused. 

They all look, suddenly, terribly guilty in the midst of the mess. “...Garnet,” Pearl starts. “We’ll clean it up lat––”

She is met with a handful of mini chocolate candies in her face.

“Ambuuush!” Steven yells, popping up from behind Garnet with his own arsenal of candies. Bis comes next, crumbled graham crackers and gummy fish in hand, laughing and launching sweets. 

The fight resumes in earnest. It is easy for Poppy to slip away to whisper in Pearl’s ear, “Come with me I think we can get Bis from behind!” It draws a quiet laugh and a shhh! from Pearl.

Each armed with one handful of sugar and one of flour, they wait until Bis is preoccupied with noogie-ing sprinkles into Amy’s hair. Three, two, one… They each get her from a different side, flour and sugar flying. Bis gasps as though wounded. “You two, c’mere!” And she lifts one in each arm, Poppy in her left and Pearl in her right, until their feet leave the floor. “Monsters! You’re monsters!” Poppy is so busy squirming to get-out-of-her-hold-but-not-really and giggling that Garnet’s attack of rainbow sprinkles comes as a surprise. 

The kitchen is a mess. It doesn’t stop them from throwing whatever they can reach until they’re out of ingredients and they’re all breathless, flushed, and laughing hard enough to cry.

Later, after they have all showered and cleaned the kitchen, after their gingerbread houses are all complete and sitting in a row on the table, they eat the sufganiyot with icing instead of powdered sugar. Poppy eats hers on the couch, curled between Pearl and Bis, Mushroom snuffling at her feet. 

She supposes they could turn on the overhead light. The soft candles from the menorah, though, and the fireplace flickering, and the multicoloured fairy lights Poppy insisted be hung up for the season just make everything seem so much more homey. 

“These are really good, Pearl.” 

By her side, Pearl’s chest puffs pridefully. “They are good, aren’t they?”

Outside, the first snowflakes fall.

Chapter Text

Change of clothes: check.

Sleeping bag: check.

Extra pillow, because she doesn’t really want to sleep with her head on the ground: check.

Mushroom: check.

Camping is another new experience, and Poppy is thrilled. There’s a campground six hours away with the most beautiful lake view, according to the website, and it’s supposed to be even better in the winter. The next week will be unseasonably warm, according to Garnet, and what better time to go? 

The tent is too big for the van; Garnet is tying it to the top with Pearl’s help. Pearl, who said under no circumstances would she be sitting in the van for six hours just to go to a manicured campsite, if she’s going to drive that far she’s going to really camp thank you. It’s just going to be Poppy, Garnet, and Amy this time around.

And Mushroom. 

“Let’s gooo!” Amy groans, hanging out the back window of the van. “We’re burnin’ daylight!” 

Garnet only hums as she tightens the straps holding the tent down. 

Pearl, for her part, frets. “You have my number, right?” she asks, leaning over Poppy’s shoulder. Bless them, they’d gotten her a phone for Christmahanukwanzakah, her first ever. There really is nobody to talk to that doesn’t already live in the house––she’s mostly filled it with pictures of Mushroom––but it’s wonderful to know that that kind of freedom has been afforded to her. “If anything goes wrong––” 

“Then I’ll call you.” She tilts her chin upwards so their heads sort of nuzzle together, warm and content. One hand lifts, little finger extended: “Pinkie promise.” (Truly, she doubts she’ll need to call Pearl when Garnet is right there, but it’s better to quell her worries now.) 

A finger links with hers. “Pinkie promise.” The link becomes a hug and an earnest, “Be safe.” 

The van horn honks politely. “We’re ready to go,” Garnet calls from the driver’s seat. 

One more squeeze. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening byeee!” And Poppy hops into the passenger seat. 

Only an hour has gone by, and Poppy is already ready to burst out of her seat and start camping. “Look!” She turns her phone screen towards Amy to show off an image of the campground, which almost looks like a little subdivision made out of tents. “They have a community centre, and a bathroom, it’s not in the woods––” 

“I kinda wanna poop in the woods.” 

“Amy!” It comes out in a giggle. 

“It’s called freedom of choice, Pops.” Amy sounds so sincere, solemn, until she follows it up with: “If I wanna poop in the woods then I’m gonna poop in the woods and Abraham Lincoln gave me that right.” 

“No he didn’t!”
“It’s in the Emancipation Proclamation. Look it up.” 

It takes her three tries to spell emancipation and it isn’t until she hears Amy’s mostly-apologetic laughter that she realises it was a joke.

It starts getting kind of boring around hour two. 

Amy has tried to sing One Hundred Bottles Of Beer On The Wall three times now and never gotten past ninety-one without getting bored. There are only two CDs in the car; they’ve listened through both of them already. Mushroom has fallen asleep sprawled in the backseat. And Poppy is content to look out the window at the world go by.

The weather is warmer than it has been, but the conifers are still dotted with little bits of snow that reflect the sunlight. It’s like being in a Christmas card. 

“It’s gorgeous out here,” she sighs, chin resting in her propped-up elbow. “I’ve never been this far north before.” Or. Well. She has. But it was never for anything fun. It was always about business, and she spent most of the time in hotel rooms or conference centres. 

“Mhm.” Even just Garnet’s quiet hum feels like a warm hug. Poppy can’t believe she used to think Garnet was intimidating. “It might be cold. Fair warning.” 

“I can handle the cold!” Mostly because she brought an extra blanket, and Bis let her borrow a coat that’s almost a tent on her. ...And if it is too cold, she can get back in the car. 

Hour three. 

Amy is snoring in the back, and so is Mushroom. Poppy’s eye is drifting shut, too. Something about the lulling motion of the car just...

Hour four. 

Amy has been mostly quiet, tapping away at something on her phone. When she perks up, sets her phone down, she shouts: “Cows!!” 

And Poppy gasps.

Sure enough, there’s a field of cows chomping on the grass between unmelted snow, splotched in black and white like they’re right from TV. “Cows!” 

“And––” Amy leans over, almost hanging between the front seats, “––horses!” 

“Mushroom! Mushroom look it’s your cousins!” The little horse’s ears perk up, but he doesn’t seem to know where to look. Which is fine, it’s mostly for Poppy’s benefit, really. 

She counts thirteen cows and four horses before the field is out of view.

Hour five. 

Pearl texts to make sure everybody is okay, and Poppy sends her a crooked selfie in return with Garnet’s hair in the corner and Amy making a face in the back. 

Hour six.

They are almost there. 

The sun hasn’t yet begun to set, but Garnet assures them it will soon enough. “We need to get the tent set up before then.” 

“Can you show me how?” Poppy asks. “I’ve never set one up before.” 

“Of course.” 

As it turns out, it isn’t terribly hard. It’s mostly just putting round peg to round hole, sliding fabric over the top; it makes sense. The hard part is hammering the stakes into the ground, which Poppy couldn’t do if she put all her body weight into it and which Amy does with gusto. Soon enough, they have a sturdy little structure just big enough for the three of them and for a tiny horse. 

The lake is beautiful. It’s even nicer at sunset. She’s sure it will be even better at sun rise when they’re preparing to leave. 

...And okay, maybe it is a little colder than she thought it would be. The coat and the blanket keep her warm while Garnet sets up a fire––and just watching that is impressive. “I didn’t know you could actually start a fire with two twigs,” Poppy says from under the blanket. 

“Garn’s the master of camping.” Amy seems less bothered by the cold, still comfortable in just a hoodie and jeans. She’s definitely not bothered by the fact that her tin of beans hasn’t been cooked yet or that she doesn’t have a spoon. “What kinda scout were you?” 

“Eagle.” 

It doesn’t mean much to Poppy, but it sounds impressive. And she trusts Garnet to take care of her. And it’s so easy to close her eye and listen to the sounds of the woods.

Chapter Text

The campfire keeps Poppy warm enough that she can shrug off the blanket.

It’s nice to watch the sparks and ashes fly up into the night sky. They’re like...little stars, flying back home. And the sky is just so beautifully clear, she swears she can see the arm of the galaxy reaching out to envelope the world.

“...Thank you for bringing me out here.” She picks at the blanket as she speaks, one little loose thread coming free. “It’s beautiful.” 

“Hey, ‘s no problem.” By her side, Amy nudges her shoulder into Poppy’s, tender. “We were gonna go anyway. Figured you’d wanna come.” 

“I’m glad.” She sighs, content, and turns her attention from a lovely constellation. Orion. “I really love...you know.” She gestures, wide-armed and vague, at the everything around them. “Nature! I always wanted to grow plants, and, and go camping! I just…” Wasn’t allowed to get the house dirty. Wasn’t allowed to get her clothes dirty. Wasn’t allowed off the grounds of the house without deliberate instructions. Wasn’t allowed, wasn’t allowed, wasn’t allowed. 

Garnet seems to understand without Poppy finishing. “We were thinking about building a greenhouse.” Over her sunglasses, she peers at Poppy, a twinkle of affection in her eyes. “We’ll need somebody to garden it.” 

“Steven seems like he’s really good at it!” she chirps.

...Amy snickers. 

What––

“Oh!” Her hand flies up to her flushed cheek. “You meant me!”

The snicker turns into a full-on laugh. Garnet, too, chuckles to the ground. 

“Well!” A greenhouse. Not just one little pot of flowers or anything, but a whole building just for growing stuff! And they want her to garden it? Before she can even feel a twinge of shame or an inkling that she should stop, her hands flutter rapidly close to her chest. “Mh! I would love to! Oh, oh, I know they’re unseasonable but can I plant carnations? Oh! Oh! And rosemary! We can use it in the kitchen! And zinnias, and, and––” Is she talking too much? It feels like she’s talking too much, getting too loud. But neither of them have told her to stop yet. “And lily of the valley. Aren’t they so pretty? They look like, like little bells! And they’re hard to grow but I think I can do it, I, I used to take care of the garden when I was little, and I really––mmh.” When she turns back to look at the stars, it’s with a doe eye and a contented smile. “I really love plants.” 

“You should have told us sooner,” Garnet says, prodding the fire with a stick. “We would have set something up for you.” 

Poppy grips the blanket. “I didn’t want to be a bother.” 

“Whaaat?!” Lovingly, Amy knocks a closed fist against the side of Poppy’s head––gently, lovingly, it makes her giggle! “You’re not a bother, dummy! Plus, plants’re like, what, no dollars a seed? And I think Rose left some grow lights or somethin’.” 

...Right. Rose. The person Poppy never got a chance to meet, but whose presence is all over the house, from her portrait hanging over the door to the piddling garden out back. She’s almost 90% certain that her room used to be Rose’s and she tries not to think about it. It’s like living with a ghost all the time. 

She won’t let that take her joy. 

“Can I...set up some plants in my room?” 

Garnet doesn’t nod or shake her head, just gives her a look. “It’s your room.” 

Every time she hears it, Poppy feels butterflies set loose in her stomach. She giggles. “I know. I know! It’s my room! And that means I can do whatever I want with it.” Her hands flap again just thinking about it, and when did it get so easy to get so comfortable? 

“Sure is.” When Amy reaches, it’s so close to the fire that Poppy feels like she should be worried. “Pass me another hot dog, yeah?” 

“We only have two left.” Garnet passes her one anyway. “And we’re out of buns.” 

“Don’t need ‘em.” 

“If you eat that without cooking it, you’re going to be sick all day tomorrow.” 

Amy tips her head back with a groan. “Jeeeez. Ruin all the fun why don’t you.” She still, reluctantly, skewers the hot dog on one of their roasters and holds it over the fire. 

Poppy’s hand lowers back to the blanket. It’s so snug, and as it gets colder, she starts feeling the urge to wrap it about herself once again. “Could I have the other one?” 

“Of course.” 

It’s slippery and hard to skewer but she manages it and she puts it in the fire right next to Amy’s. ...Amy’s, which is on fire. “Amy––” 

“I like it burnt!” 

The night goes on comfortably, quietly. There’s the crackle of the fire. The wind in the trees, stripped of all their leaves for the season. The sound of the distant lake, something splashing. It’s lovely. “Can we go camping again?” 

Garnet smiles, illuminated by the fire, and she looks otherworldly. “You should ask Pearl.” 

“Yeah,” Amy interjects, “she thinks this kinda camping is weak. Pearl goes on those like, survival trips where they beat the snot outta you and you’ve gotta survive with a rock and no pants.” 

“She does not!” Poppy giggles. 

“No, she totally does! It’s fuckin’ wild.” 

“Well! I don’t think I want to do all of that. ” But spending the night in the woods with Pearl? Lighting a fire like this one, listening to the woods? Just talking? She would be all right with that. (Sharing a tent, she might be okay with that, too.) “Do you think she would let me come along?” 

“Duh.” The now-empty roasting stick is tossed to the side, back to the woods from whence it came. “She thinks you’re the coolest.” 

What!! 

“No she doesn’t!” The cadence of her voice is nothing if not a plea for Amy to continue talking about it. 

“She totally does! Can’t get her to shut up about it, how pretty your hair is––” Oh, she’s being silly now! Amy’s clutched her hands together in an impression of a Southern belle, fluttering her eyelids rapidly, just to make Poppy laugh. She puts on a falsetto too, with some accent Pearl definitely doesn’t have and probably doesn’t actually exist. “I wish Poppy would talk to me more! I want to take her on the Ferris wheel and go out to lunch! And she’s sooo pretty I wish she’d smooooch me––” 

“Stop!” It’s laughing, a gentle shove to Amy’s side. “Stop, she doesn’t sound like that!” 

“She does in my head!” 

“Your head’s silly!” 

It’s all so lovely, so easy to fall into comfortable laughter with Amy and Garnet. As the fire dies, and as Poppy sinks more into her blanket, Garnet stands. “I think it’s time to go to bed. It’s going to get colder from here.” 

“No fun!” Amy groans, but stands anyway and moves towards the tent. Poppy follows suit, pleasant; Garnet stays behind. 

“Are you coming, Garnet?” 

“I’m putting out the fire. You go first.” 

So she does. She slips her shoes off and climbs into the tent with a happy shriek of cold cold cold! before sliding into her double-blanketed sleeping bag. At her side, Mushroom cuddles up, and he’s warm too. Amy takes the far sleeping bag, and the middle, she knows, is for Garnet. 

The night settles in quickly. The tent darkens. Soon, Garnet joins them, comfortable in the middle. It’s all so quiet, so peaceful, they’re only a few moments from sleep...

…”Psst. Amy.” 

“Yeah?” 

And Poppy blows a raspberry. 

The sound of their sleep-drunk laughter soars over the trees.

Chapter Text

Knitting, as it turns out, isn’t so terribly hard after all. Once she gets into the rhythm of it––knit one, purl seven, knit two, purl seven––the click click clack of her needles is soothing. So is the yarn, a much softer bit of pink than the scratchy brown Garnet had given her before. She’s making a scarf, she supposes, but the end result is inconsequential next to the calm of the house. 

Before she left for the store, Pearl started the fireplace roaring with instructions of how to keep it going. She also left Poppy with a large blanket, Mushroom leaning against the couch, and a squeeze of the hands, tender and caring. 

Slowly––mostly at times like this, when the house is quiet and mostly empty––she has been experimenting with leaving her eyepatch off. With a web of scars and an empty eyelid bared to the world, she should probably feel...vulnerable? Ashamed? One of those awful words her mother threw around. Instead, she feels loose and free without the fabric squeezing around her face all day. And maybe this won’t be an every day all the time thing, but for now, she enjoys it.

Clickity clack clack clack. 

It’s lovely. It feels so calm. 

Somewhere in the house, Bis is working on some project or another. Pearl is off getting groceries, Amy is with her, Garnet took the van with Steven to some vague event, it’s all quiet. Sometimes, it’s nice to have the house all to herself. At her side, Mushroom snuffles. “What’s up, cutiepoot?” 

Usually, when he snuffles like that, it doesn’t mean much of anything. She just likes talking to him! 

This time, he accompanies it with a stamp of his hooves. That means he hears something. 

Oh, but it’s probably Bis. Right? The sound of her hammer clanging against some piece of metal sounds like danger, sometimes, and Mushroom is awfully perceptive to that. Or it’s Garnet and Steven, pulling back up to the house after whatever thing they went to. So Poppy reaches her hand down to scratch between his ears in spite of his unhappy snorting. “Hey, hey, it’s okay! You’re a good horse, aren’t you? Good boy. Good boy keeping me so safe, I love yooou,” she coos.

...Usually he settles down when Poppy is aware of the danger. He doesn’t this time. He just, keeps stamping his hooves against the hardwood and snorting and pushing against Poppy’s hand. 

Her brow furrows. Carefully, she sets her knitting aside. “Mushroom? What’s wrong?” 

…

She hears the steps on the porch a moment too late. 

Click. Click. Creak. 

The screen door, so often a pleasant view onto the beach but now a flimsy barrier, swings open. 

There, standing tall and pale as a dead tree, is her mother.

The world shrinks. It rings. Everything right now is the pain in her stomach and the freeze in her legs, muscles straining to run and fighting themselves to keep still. Distantly, she feels Mushroom trying to tug her away––but how can she focus on him when her mother’s immaculately-painted lips have tugged into a sardonic grin? 

“Penelope.”  

Her mouth doesn’t work. Her legs don’t work. Move, move, move, she wants to scream, she wants to run, but the smile holds her there like a pinned butterfly with tremble-flapping wings. 

“Where is Steven?” She knows that voice. It’s the...the mock-friendly one, the one with a digging condescension and danger lurking just below the surface. The I’m making small talk, because I’m about to make you do something you don’t want to do voice. “We’re having dinner tonight and I thought, well, I should pick him up myself!” 

Dinner. That’s the event. That’s why––why Garnet didn’t tell her much about it at all. 

Her voice feels like it’s dragging its way through a desert. “He…” Swallow. “He already left.” Please go. Please go. Please go. 

But her mother makes no movement to leave. She just...taps her finger against her chin with a hum. “Shame.” She knows––Poppy knows, with an awful sinking pit of lead––that Poppy will not make her leave. Couldn’t if she tried. So she turns to look Poppy up and down and she makes no effort to hide her disgust. “You look ridiculous.” 

She is suddenly, humiliatingly aware of her unbrushed hair and her cat-patterned pyjama pants. 

Go away. Go away. Go away, she pleads silently. Go, go, go, she isn’t ready! Every brave word she ever planned (go away I’m not yours anymore I have people who love me go away get out of my life forever go away go away go away) withers and dies in her throat. She is choking on the ashes of everything she cannot say. 

But she doesn’t go away. She–– sits–– right next to Poppy, prim as anything, and grabs her cheeks to look at her closer. It is gentle for now. The knifepoint fingertips still dig into her skin as a warning. 

“What have you done to your hair?” She hates this voice. She can’t look at the speaker. To an outside this might sound tender and motherly, but Poppy knows that every word is a bear trap ready to maul her. “You look like a lesbian.” 

I am one dies in her throat. She knows it isn’t a compliment. 

“I asked you a question, Penelope.” 

“I.” She sounds so meek and she can’t bear to look upwards. “I c––” 

“Look at me when you’re speaking, darling.” The grip on her cheeks tightens. 

Eye contact is like chewing rusty nails. Eye contact with her mother is being dragged into freezing water and catching fire. But she has no choice and she turns to look into those eyes with nothing behind them. “...I cut it,” she finishes, quiet as a mouse, every syllable precise. 

“You cut it,” her mother repeats, the coo of her voice mocking. “What ever for?”

I wanted to is far from her mind. I just wanted to. She can’t say it. The stabbing points against her cheeks and the awful, terrible hypnosis of her mother’s gaze keep her quiet. “...I don’t know,” she says instead. 

Her mind is falling into quicksand and she can feel it and she can’t stop it. Everything––the markers of independence, her room, her wardrobe, her willingness to be open, her happiness––slips away, sand between her fingers, sand under her feet. She feels like a child. She feels like property. 

“You don’t know.” It almost sounds pitying as her mother turns her face this way and that. “And where is your eyepatch? You look hideous.” 

She swallows. “I’m sorry.” She wants the floor to eat her alive. 

Finally, her mother lets go. She can still feel the indentations in her cheeks. Her attention, now, is on the silly little knitting project that Poppy feels suddenly, terribly embarrassed about. “Did you make this?” 

She nods numbly. 

“It’s crooked.” And right before her eye, her mother slips the needles from the yarn and begins to methodically pull the stitching apart. She only watches as the loops fall into each other, “You’ll never get any better if you let yourself fail like that,” a birch pattern into a single limp strand of yarn. “Start over.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” With shaky hands and the word no far from her mind, she begins again. Cast on. Cast––it slips. Cast––again, again. Cast, cast, the third one falls and for every one that does her hands shake more terribly. Her mother only watches, the tap tap tap of her fingers projecting her impatience. 

“I see time away has only made you worse.” Poppy tries desperately to focus on the knitting. (At her feet, Mushroom is still––he’s trying to put his head in her lap, to calm her down, do something, she loves him so terribly.) “What have you been eating? You’re getting chubby.” 

She is still skinnier than Pearl. She knows that. Right now, she doesn’t feel it, she wants to sink into nothing but skin and bones. 

“I––” She can’t get another cast on. Her hands won’t let her. “Why. Why are you here?” It’s the bravest she will let herself be. 

Too brave. Her mother clicks her teeth and Poppy knows that she is in the eye of the hurricane. “Tell me something, Penelope.” She’s ignoring the question. It makes Poppy flush in shame. Her face, her neck, she is heated and humiliated. “How long do you intend to keep playing pretend like this?” 

It hits like a punch to the teeth. “I––” 

“It’s pathetic.” Her mother’s voice is like poisoned molasses. “Your hiding in this,” she flings a disgusted hand through the hair, “ place is pathetic. You do know that, don’t you?” 

She can’t say a word. She is frozen. She wants to disappear. 

“You are still my daughter, and I expect you to act like it.” 

I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. “I know.” 

“So.” She is always so put-together. So pristine. Like those old statues, white marble now with all the colour stripped by time. “When do you plan to come back?” 

Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. 

“Hey, Poppy!” 

The sound of a voice––Bis’ voice––from just outside breaks her reverie, if only for a minute. 

“You see where Pearl hid the screwdrivers? I need a flathead for––” 

The screen door creaks open. Bis’ voice stops. 

...She must look just as pathetic as her mother says she is. Head ducked down, shaky hands barely clutching knitting needles, taking up too much space, unpolished, not––

“No.” Bis speaks through a clenched jaw. “Absolutely fucking not.” 

A smile twists her mother’s voice. “Penelope, who is this? One of your silly little friends?” 

“Poppy, get in your room.” Bis is so...measured. Sturdy. When Poppy looks up, her gaze is fixed directly on her mother. The words are the only thing she needs for her legs to static to life, the blanket tangling over them as she stumbles out of the room, out, out, out, Mushroom at her heels, she slams the door behind her. 

Hide. Hide. Her mother will find her. Free, unchained, adrenaline rushes through her until she feels sick.

Under the bed is too easy. So is behind the curtains. Under the sheets she will be found. Easy, easy, too easy––the closet, big enough for her and Mushroom, if she stays quiet she won’t be found. She dives behind the clothes and draws the little horse close to her chest where her heartbeat sounds like it will break her ribs. 

“Get out.” Bis’ voice is clear as anything through the walls. “Get the fuck out.” 

Her mother says something, and Poppy is grateful that her voice is too faux-gentle to reach her ears from here. 

“I didn’t ask. Out.” 

More mumbling. 

“Listen here, you old bat.” Bis won’t get hurt. Bis is sturdy. She is powerful. She won’t be hurt. Please, please don’t hurt her. “I dunno what makes you think you have the fucking right to come into this house and I don’t give a shit. You don’t get to just waltz in here and try to ruin things for her.” More mumbling, cut off by Bis: “Shut the fuck up. She’s happy here. And if you don’t get the fuck out and stay out then I’m gonna be in jail and you’re gonna be in the fucking ground.” 

She has never heard Bis so angry. She swings her arms over her head to try to block the sound. Mushroom tips his head under her chin. 

There are more sounds. More sounds she blocks out. Shouting. Stomping. Then...then, finally, the screen door swings shut. 

Quiet.

Quiet.

The knock at her door is gentle but it feels like a gunshot. “Poppy?” Oh, it’s Bis. “Hey. She’s gone. She’s gone, okay? I’m coming in.” 

There is nothing left in her to say yeah, come in or no, don’t. Everything she has is buried in hiding. 

Bis, bless her, she’s an angel, she’s wonderful, closes the door behind herself and peeks around. “...Hey. It’s okay. It’s just me.” Silence. “But I get it if you wanna stay hidden.” A deep breath. There’s the sound of Bis sitting on the bed, a loving creak. “You’re safe, though. I promise. Swear on my life, you’re safe, I watched her drive off. You’re safe, Poppy.” 

Safe. 

Pathetic. 

She wants to be safe, she really, really does. It’s why she keeps her voice quiet. 

“I dunno what she said to you.” Barely-restrained anger makes its way into Bis’ voice, and it’s all Poppy can do not to gasp. “But none of it’s true. She’s an idiot.” The way the creaking sounds, it seems like Bis is rocking back and forth, considering. “She told me we’d be better off sending you back with her and I told her to fuck off. Okay? We want you here.” 

...Poppy doesn’t realise she’s crying until she hiccups. When did her cheek get so wet? 

It means, she realises with a pang, that she can be found. Bis doesn’t move. “You don’t have to come out yet. Not ‘till you’re ready. ...I’m gonna talk to everyone, okay? We’re gonna keep you safe.” There is a strain in her voice, something like guilt, and Poppy would reach out to hug her if the darkness of the closet didn’t feel so protective. “You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t wanna do. Especially not for her.”

Quiet. Bis hasn’t left, and Poppy is glad for it.

There is so much she wants to say. She wants to tell Bis everything. Every insult, the way she felt, how quickly she had fallen into believing her mother’s words. How desperate she had been for an escape. The way her legs didn’t work. She wants to hide for the rest of her life and she wants Bis there with her. 

...When she does speak up, it’s muffled and tiny and none of the everything she wants to say. “Can you stay with me?” 

“Yeah.” There isn’t even a pause. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Chapter Text

Birthdays, there, were always brought on with great fanfare. 

April 18th was the most important day of the year. More important than Christmas, more important than any fancy business event. Ronnie and her mother shared a birthday, and wasn’t that just darling? Wasn’t it the perfect opportunity to get dressed up and show off their little family to the world, so connected? Like mother, like daughter.

(Ronnie told Penelope, once, that she was actually born in the early hours of the next day.)

Penelope was always on the peripheral. No celebrations. None of the streamers from the ceiling, the classiest black-and-white balloons she had ever seen, no guests. No party. One time she had had her two friends over and they got in trouble for making too much noise and didn’t want to come back. 

This year was special. Ronnie’s eighteenth birthday.

Their mother had gone all out for the party. For the first time, there were pink balloons scattered among the monochrome. The order of the banner in the dining room had changed: from Happy Birthday Katherine & Sharon! to Happy Birthday Sharon And Katherine! It almost felt, for a moment, like it was Ronnie’s day. 

She hadn’t even waited for the cake to be cut before whispering in Penelope’s ear. Two in the morning. 

Under Ronnie’s bed were two bags. One, full of Ronnie’s clothes. The other, full of Penelope’s and her little stuffed rabbit.

Last birthday, Ronnie had gotten a car. 

Penelope slipped away from the celebrations just long enough to move the bags out to it. 

They had planned this day for years. As soon as Ronnie turned eighteen, she’d said, she was dropping out of that fancy private school and going off on her own––with Penelope, of course. Away from Mother. They would drive and drive until they stopped somewhere out West. Ronnie would get some waitressing job, and so would Penelope once she turned sixteen. They’d change their names. They’d get an apartment and live together and be happy and nobody would ever find them ever ever ever.

(Ronnie snuck away a slice of cake for the two of them to share in private. Neither were supposed to eat junk food.)

The party came to a winding close with Penelope left to clean everything up. That was fine. It was the last time she would ever have to clean this big house by herself, and she was practically vibrating with the thrill of it. Her grin stayed hidden behind a broom handle. 

1:47. Mother had gone to bed. Nobody else was in the house. 

When she met Ronnie outside, the car was already rumbling to a start. 

She sped down the empty road much faster than the speed limit allowed and it felt like a grand escape. An hour away, she pulled to the side of the road and revealed the slice of cake stored in a Tupperware. They ate it together with pinches of their fingers and giggles and the cake was delicious. 

They drove well into the night. Adrenaline kept them awake, Ronnie talking excitedly about all their plans. 

Penelope would have a real birthday, she said. June wasn’t far off and she had fifteen years of birthdays to make up for. (Her first foster home had celebrated. So had her birth mother, in her own, penniless way. She chose not to mention it.) She would have her own room with a door. Maybe they would get a cat! 

She watched the stars go by and listened to Ronnie’s excited words for hours. 

When they finally stopped, it was at some no-name motel and Ronnie paid for the room in cash. There were almost certainly bugs in the carpet and the television didn’t work and it was perfect.

They ordered the greasiest pizza they could find with extra cheese and watched late-night television and didn’t use napkins. Perfect, perfect, perfect. 

...She remembers waking up the next morning to a knock on the door and strangers in uniform.

Their mother was looking for them. They’d tracked Ronnie’s license plate. Runaways, they’d been called, and it was time to go home. 

It felt like the world fell out under her feet. 

Ronnie fought. She had never been quiet when agitated, Penelope was sure the neighbours could hear. She was eighteen, she said, an adult, she could go wherever she wanted whenever she wanted! (What about me? had clanged in Penelope’s heart.)

Fine, they said. You can stay. She has to go. 

Fight for me! she’d begged with her eye. Don’t make me go back! I don’t want to go back without you! 

Reckless endangerment of a minor, they called it, and kidnapping across state lines. The fact that Penelope wanted to go didn’t matter. 

Ronnie had been scared. That was all. She was scared. That was why she took Penelope by the hands and told her, voice breaking, to wait. Just wait, and on her eighteenth birthday Ronnie would be back to take her away. 

No. No. No. Now.

She would set up a life for her to come into. An apartment. A job. All Penelope had to do was wait. 

She didn’t want to wait. 

Mother would be furious and Penelope would be on her own.

Now, please, now, she needed to leave. 

But it had always been terribly hard to say no to Ronnie.

When they parted, Ronnie in the motel room and Penelope in the caged back of a police cruiser, the last thing she saw was Ronnie turning away with shoulders hunched. 

She’s crying, she begged through the metal bars. She’s crying, I need to help her. They didn’t stop and they didn’t turn around.

Mother had been furious, icy white fire. 

Everything only became worse. 

The days became longer. Penelope had more chores, more things to do, more ire to collect. When she went to bed, it was more and more often with bruises around her wrist or scratches across a cheek. 

Rules and clothes became stiffer. She stopped being allowed to leave the house. 

Her fifteenth birthday came and went without celebration or remark. That was fine. Three more years.

Her sixteenth birthday came and went. That was fine. Two more years.

Her seventeenth birthday came and went. That was fine. One more year.

Her eighteenth birthday came and went.

Her nineteenth.

Her twentieth.

Ronnie did not appear at her window. Her car was nowhere to be seen. 

Her twenty first.

Had she gotten lost? 

Her twenty second.

Had she forgotten?

Twenty third.

Nothing was okay. Nothing changed. 

Twenty fourth.

The world slipped away more and more day by day.

And she waited, and she waited, and she waited. 

And Ronnie never came. 

And nothing changed until a strange gaggle of people asked if she wanted to leave.

Chapter Text

She hasn’t left her room in days.

The house just doesn’t feel safe anymore. Not even once Bis installs a heavy door over the screen door and brushes it off as don’t even worry about it, we probably should’a put one in sooner anyway, it gets cold… Poppy is not stupid. She knows it was put in for her sake. 

But what good is a door? Maybe they can lock it, but what about––if the police are called to drag her back home? What if she is caught alone again, maybe outside the house? What if, what if, what if. Her mind spins with all the what ifs. 

...She hasn’t slept, either. Not for more than an hour or two before the nightmares come back in force and Mushroom has to nudge her awake. 

Eating is hard, too, even when Bis brings food for her and says with unending kindness that it’s okay, you’re safe. She has had the same bagel on her nightstand, only a few pieces pulled off with her fingertips, since breakfast, and it is almost dinner now. 

Everything passes in a blur. In her sleep-deprived delirium, she spills everything––about Ronnie, about their mother, running away, everything––to Pearl, who listens with a quiet sort of horror. She tells Amy the same, and when Amy says that Ronnie sounds like “kind of a dick” Poppy cries herself to sleep. 

Dr. Dumaine calls. She says they can do therapy over video call this week. Poppy sleeps through it and Garnet says later that she hated to wake her. They reschedule. 

Oh, they try. They really do. 

Pearl brings breakfast and Garnet brings dinner. Steven takes Mushroom for his walks. Amy is the master of distraction with video games and books and TV shows, but Bis is the master of comfort who lets Poppy cry it out in her lap. They try. 

(Her mother’s voice still rings in her head at every movement. You look ridiculous. Is that what Pearl sees when she runs her fingers through Poppy’s embarrassingly short hair she wishes it would just grow out already? Does Bis think her empty eye and scar tissue are ugly? She has begun to wear the eye patch again, even asleep. She is cold all the time.) 

It’s the hot cocoa that says so much. 

It isn’t healthy, she knows, but––in Garnet’s words––she could use the calories. They make it with two packets of chocolate, or with whipped cream, or caramel, or marshmallows, or all of the above. They sit with her for hours as she nurses it. When it inevitably becomes too cold, they heat it back up for her. It is easier to drink than to eat, and it is easier when it’s warm than cold. 

Bis hands it to her with a kiss on the forehead and a quiet, how are you feeling? The answer is usually a shrug, but she takes the mugs with gratitude. 

Pearl sets it on her nightstand and sits quietly with her as she runs over and over the same stories. Something about Ronnie, something about her mother, all of it coming out in flurries. The dam has burst and she doesn’t know how to patch it. Pearl never says much. 

Garnet holds it for her until she is ready to take it. She doesn’t say much, either, but that seems typical for her. 

Amy makes the whole thing right in front of her, needling Poppy for input. More caramel? Yes, ma’am! She means it lovingly but Poppy hates the phrase and doesn’t know how to explain why. 

And Steven… Steven is the only other one who knows her mother. The one who still goes to her house for dinner twice a month, just to keep the peace. Nobody else understands quite like he does. He puts mini chocolate candies in the cocoa and says that when they melt, it turns the whipped cream rainbow, and he is right. 

She survives on their hot chocolate for days. 

They build her up, slowly, to meals. She finishes her breakfast of scrambled eggs before noon and it is an accomplishment. 

On the fourth day of not being wholly part of the world, she joins them for dinner. It’s a quiet affair, and she only eats half of her chicken, but Bis pats her on the back and says she’s doing great. 

(She always stops when she remembers that her mother thinks she’s chubby, and that that is a crime.) 

Progress is slow. Progress is mostly...crying a little less, sometimes. Talking about something else. Eating. She sleeps through the night on the fifth night, probably from sheer exhaustion, and she wakes up at noon, and they all consider it an accomplishment. 

She still prefers hot cocoa to lunch. Baby steps. 

...She still talks about Ronnie a little too much. Talks about how badly she wants to find her, now. How––how yes, it’s been years, but she can’t forget how important her sister is. How, given the chance, she is sure she would still drop everything to move out West with her. She likes to imagine that Ronnie is just trying to figure out where she is. And––and once she does, they’ll be together. In a little apartment. With a cat. The conversation makes everyone uncomfortable and oh, she hates to imply that they’re not important to her, but how could she forget about her sister?

Pearl brings her hot cocoa. It’s absolutely extravagant, she pulled out all the stops to make it. Poppy gets whipped cream on her nose and, for the first time in a week, she giggles. It brings a smile to Pearl’s lips.

...The smile falls. 

She takes a long breath as Poppy sips her hot cocoa. 

“Poppy? There’s something I need to tell you.”

Chapter Text

“I’ve never opened these,” Pearl says as she sets three large books and a shoebox on Poppy’s bed. “Rose made me promise to keep them a secret. ...I just.” She looks so guilty in a way that makes Poppy’s heart pang. “I thought, if anybody should know…” 

The books look old, dusty, and untouched, sealed away to preserve them. They’re all in varying shades of pink, dates written along the side in permanent marker and cursive and dotted with stickers. Somebody took great care with these, only for them to be shuffled away into the attic and untouched for well over a decade. “Can I?” Poppy asks, her hand hovering over the first book. Pearl nods. 

The cover is unremarkable and that seems to be intentional. No names. No photos. Just the dates, written once again over an empty sleeve where a photo should be. She flips it to the first page and dried flowers fall out. Underneath, in warmly familiar handwriting, is a guide. 

Wallflower –– Florida –– Faithfulness in adversity

Dwarf Sunflower –– Kansas –– Adoration 

Red Rose –– Home –– I love you 

Poppy –– Home –– I am not free Consolation

Honeysuckle –– Virginia –– Bonds of love 

The flowers are so delicate, old husks of themselves, still beautiful––if only a little dusty. She places them carefully back into the page and turns to the next.

...Oh. 

Oh, she knows this picture. 

She knows herself. Two eyes, here, one drifting to the left. A front tooth missing. Hair still too short to be wrangled, pulled into a bun that’s steadily unravelling and leaving ringlets around her face. 

And she knows Ronnie.

She knows that bright, beaming smile, warming her even through the old one-day-processing photo quality. She knows the arm reaching up into the frame, holding the disposable camera up to take the only-sort-of blurry picture. She knows where they are: the lion exhibit at the zoo, Ronnie’s favourite, and she can almost hear the childish laughter when one of the animals does something silly. She knows this. It is as indelibly painted on her heart as her fingerprints are on her fingers. 

Underneath, in the same handwriting, is a passage that only confirms Poppy’s memories. First day out! Penelope’s first time at a zoo! She liked the bears the most. It’s such a short way to describe that day, her first after being officially adopted. She remembers Ronnie guiding her by the hand through the zoo, teaching her how to pronounce all the strange new English words: Praying Mantis. Stingray. Carousel. Never-endingly patient when she stumbled over a progression of consonants or odd vowels. 

With a lump in her throat, she turns to the next page.

It is a blanket fort from the outside. She remembers building it, dragging the sheets off her bed to contribute. It had been so warm. But the best part, she remembers it clear as day, was the stories they told underneath, Ronnie flashlight-reading from a book with a spooky cover and skipping the scariest stories. Underneath the photo is another caption. Fell asleep in the blanket fort! 

Another. This one is candid, taken by some classmate whose name she has long forgotten. Poppy, barely in the double digits, sits in a busy dressing room and wears some sparkly red stage-thing with black frills around the collar and cuffs. On her chest and stomach, there is a massive heart. Her makeup, she remembers this well, was not meant to be subtle: it’s pancakey and her lips have been drawn into a heart to match the one on her outfit. And behind her, Ronnie wrestles with her hair, bobby pins sticking out of her mouth. She is trying to stick a plastic crown and make it stay. The caption: ♡♡ Queen of Hearts! ♡♡ Knock ‘em dead, Penelope! Right, some old dance recital or competition or something. She doesn’t remember how it ended. 

There are pages upon pages of this. Books of this. Ronnie and Penelope having an impromptu picnic in the garden. Ronnie and Penelope doing homework together. Ronnie and Penelope painting each other’s nails. Old, old things, memories dusting themselves off to remind Poppy of their presence. Museum maps. Movie tickets. Report cards from before Poppy was homeschooled. 

In the second book, they are older. Ronnie’s school uniform for that fancy boarding school features prominently. Less mundanity, more Thanksgivings and Christmases. Holidays, celebrations. A long break, and when Penelope features again it is with an eyepatch and no explanation. She does not need one and neither would Ronnie and neither would want it. When she looks at herself now, Poppy looks...tired in the photos. Skinny, more Halloween decoration than person. But smiling, always smiling, with Ronnie. 

The third book. Penelope is entirely gone halfway through. Ronnie’s figure reshapes itself, from perpetual-diet-thin to a healthy pudge. Her hair gets longer. She dyes it bright pink. 

The first time Pearl appears, Poppy slams the book shut. 

She does not realise until something wet splatters on the cover that she has been crying. 

Pearl looks nervous, hands wringing over and over themselves so much that Poppy worries they will chafe. Neither one wants to speak. 

When Poppy does, finally, it is quiet. Breaking. She doesn’t mean for her voice to tremble but it does, newborn fawn trying and failing to get its footing. “She looks like Rose.” 

Pearl only nods. 

Rose. She always said she’d prefer to be named after the Rose than the Sharon. Always wanted to grow her hair out instead of the boy-short curls their mother enforced. Always liked pink, always hated the diets. 

...She had a life after Penelope. 

There was no apartment out West. No bohemian life in the desert. She was just...here, only half an hour away, building this odd little scrapbook family. Hesitantly, she flips through the rest of the book, and it’s like a flipbook of her transformation––larger, hair wild and long, first with Pearl in their private school uniforms and then Garnet, wide-eyed and bewildered. Bis, who never appears for more than a photo or two in a long line. Amy, small, and then not. She had a family and Poppy… Poppy sat staring at her window for years waiting for a face to appear. 

When she breaks, it is with a dusty sound. 

“She––” She can’t force it out. She just shakes her head, hair flying, and Pearl understands. 

Ronnie had a life. Poppy wasn’t a part of it. 

Her sobs are agonised, an old house finally collapsing under its own weight. For all the nights she sat waiting, how many of them were in vain? When did Ronnie decide to never come back? Was it in the picture where Amy completes their little family? Or the one where she dyes her hair? Was it the night they last saw each other? She seems so happy in the pictures. Is she happy because Poppy is not with her, that she doesn’t have to deal with the strange stumbling words or flapping hands that could never be corrected wholly or the way her hair frizzes or the ugliness of her scars? 

For a while, Pearl sits there, rubbing her back and reminding her to breathe. Just get through it. Just breathe. 

“...Poppy?” she asks, finally, after the crying has slowed from breaking to sniffling. “There’s more.” She doesn’t think she can take much more, but Pearl pushes the old shoebox towards her. “When you’re ready.” 

It takes a good ten minutes for her to be ready. Whatever is in there, she doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to know how easily Ronnie abandoned her. 

Pearl understands. She understands. And she holds Poppy’s hand through it. “I think you’ll want to see it. I really do.” 

Okay.

Okay.

With a final sniffle, she lifts the lid. 

What strikes her first is the litany of RETURN TO SENDERs. Piles of unopened envelopes, barely fitting in the box, each stamped with the same red ink. And when she flips through them...each one is addressed to her. 

Oh. 

“Can I––can I open one?” 

“They’re for you.” 

All right. She begins with one from the middle of the pile. 

Dear Penelope, 

(She is crying again already.) 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!! You’re 21 now, so you can drink! :) You probably need one after dealing with Mom, right? 

I’m going to try again. That gate is crazy, right??? I don’t know the password anymore! Did she change it? But my girlfriend (I have a girlfriend!!!!) Pearl is AMAZING with technology and she’s helping me try to get in!!!!! I think you’ll really like her. :) 

The house is a teeny bit small but we can share a room for now! My other friend Bis says she can put an addition on the house so you can have a bedroom!!! I told her to paint it pink, but I don’t know if that’s still your favourite. You’ll have to tell me!!!!!! 

Here, the handwriting gets...slower, somehow. Shakier. Guiltier, if she had to put a word to it. 

I’m sorry it’s taking so long. I don’t even know if you’re going to get this letter. Most of them get returned. If you do, please send me something back. And if you ever run away, the address is right here and I’ll be ready for you. 

I love you so so so so so much, 

With one billion pounds of love, 

Your sister,

Rose Quartz

P.S. Here’s a little birthday present. :) 

And, sure enough, there is a little thing wrapped in pink tissue paper in the envelope. It’s... oh. A locket. Shaped like a heart, painted like a pearl. And inside, when she pries open the old metal, are two pictures in miniature. One, herself, a school picture from when she was twelve. The other...Ronnie and her family. Everyone, younger than they are now, beaming at the camera. 

She grips it one hand and goes through another letter. Then another. Another. She could go through them forever and it takes all her strength to put the lid back down, save some for later. 

Ronnie tried. 

Her mind swims in the warm waters of Ronnie tried. The letters are proof enough. She tried over and over again, tried to bring Poppy to this lovely little beach house years ago. To bring her into the family. 

“...Can I keep these?” she asks, soft. 

“They’re for you,” Pearl repeats as gently as she can. “...Do you want help with the necklace?” 

She does. Pearl links it around her neck and she never plans to take it off again. 

Ronnie never stopped trying. Not until she died, and that is something she chooses to put in the back of her mind lest it infect her joy. There was always a space for Poppy here. Always. 

She is warm all over and she buries the shoebox under her bed. There will be time to read the rest of them. Time to read years’ worth of love. For now, she just tucks herself against Pearl’s side and breathes.

Chapter Text

Everybody has a distinct knocking pattern. 

This one––knockknockknock––is Bis. “Hey, Poppy, you awake?” she asks, voice low just in case the answer is no. 

She sets one of the letters down. It’s a mundane one, talking about some weekend the family had together, but it still makes her smile. “Mhm! Come in!” 

Bis doesn’t come all the way in; she stops right outside the door, leaning just into the frame. They’ve all been treating Poppy with delicate hands lately, and she can’t really say that she minds. She just...kind of misses hanging out with all of them? “Hey, sweetpea, we’re all gonna watch a movie. You wanna join?” 

“Hmm.” Carefully, intentionally, she folds the paper over its old creases. “What movie?” 

Her smile turns a little sheepish. “Pearl’s choice. The Empire Strikes Back?”

Holy cow.

Poppy just can’t help it! She squeals, scrambling out of bed to rush to the door. Already, her hands are fluttering by her chest, projecting their excitement for the world to see. “Yeah that sounds really cool I’m in!!” How long has it been since she watched any Star Wars movie? Over a decade by now? Not since Ronnie left. But they had always been her favourites and the thought of watching them with her new family has her grinning from ear to ear. 

Bis laughs good-naturedly. “You a fan, too?” 

“Mhm! Ohhh my gosh they’re my favourite,” and oh Bis has gotten her started now, “you know I really love how they’re all about family? And I mean I love the politics too, I think they’re super cool, and, and all the aliens! And I like the droids a lot! Oh, oh, and, the Lightsabers, I wish I could have one, aren’t they so cool? And-!” She grinds her speech to a halt, but she’s already practically dragging Bis out the door. “Yeah I wanna join!” 

The way Bis looks at her, it’s like she’s watching the sun come out from behind storm clouds. 

In the living room, Pearl is already wrangling the family, trying to get them to sit still long enough to start the movie. As soon as one person sits, another gets up––she sounds exasperated beyond belief when she asks, more or less politely, that everybody please get all their snacks and sit down, this shouldn’t take so long. 

With a beleaguered sigh, she turns to the door; the exasperation quickly becomes a tired smile. “Poppy. You’re joining us?” 

“I am!” she chirps, and practically leaps onto the couch. “This is my favourite movie of all time and I kiiinda can’t believe you like it too? Oh, oh, we have to talk about it later! Can you sit next to me?” 

Pearl seems more than content to do exactly that. 

It takes another twenty minutes for everybody to finally sit down. They’d all gone to the bathroom, gotten their snacks, finished the first drink and grabbed the next––the only thing left to do is watch. 

...And yes, maybe Poppy talks through a lot of the movie. She just loves every part of it! She wants to tell them all about it! Maybe Amy rolls her eyes once or twice, but it’s loving; none of them tell her to quiet down or to sit on her hands, which haven’t stopped flapping in the last hour. 

At one point, Amy nudges her side and points to the screen. Poppy grimaces; it’s that awful Emperor, all melted-marshmallow face and slimy voice. “Hey. Poppy,” she says in a stage-whisper. “That’s your mom.” 

She laughs hard enough to snort. 

Chapter Text

“Haaappy birthday tooo yooou!” 

“And many mooore! On Channel Fooour!” 

With the deepest breath she can manage, Poppy blows out twenty-eight candles in one go.

Twenty-eight. It still seems impossible to believe. She still feels, somehow, like the little fourteen year old with a lopsided smile and frizzy hair, frozen in time and space. But here she is, a fully-fledged adult. Twenty-eight. 

Bis wraps her in a massive hug from behind, and she can’t help but to lean into it with a grin. “Happy birthday, hon! How’s it feel?” 

Gosh, she can’t even remember her last proper birthday celebration. This one, with a cake to her exact specifications ( funfetti, with whipped cream icing dyed pink) and her name written on the top in icing, with Amy and Steven still singing rhyming couplet after rhyming couplet (and Scooby Doo, on Channel Two!), with Bis’ furnace-warm arms around her, makes up for all of those lost years. “Fantastic,” she answers with a soft smile. For that, she gets a kiss on the top of the head. “Thank you guys.” 

...Pearl has one of those smiles. A she-thinks-she’s-sly, but-she’s-never-been-a-very-good-actor kind of smile. An I’m-hiding-something-shh smile. It has Poppy smiling back, nose wrinkled, teasing. “Weeell,” Pearl starts, fake-casual, hands folding intentionally atop the table, “I suppose we should start cutting the cake!” 

“I suppose we should,” Poppy returns, just as fake-casual. “Since you don’t have aaany other plans.” Bis snickers into the top of her head. 

It’s Amy who cracks first. “We got presents!” she shouts, causing Pearl’s cake-cutting hand to stutter. 

Just the knowledge that they put any thought or time into her makes Poppy giggle into Bis’ arms, still wrapped around her. It’s overwhelming! “You didn’t have to do that!” 

“Too late we already did!” Amy gestures to Steven, mouthing go get the thing! as she waves him along, arm moving like she’s tossing a football. 

Garnet, though, has already decided she is going first. She procures a bag from seemingly nowhere––under the table, maybe?––all pink and glitter and a bow on top. “Go ahead.” 

When she reaches her hand in (making sure to keep Bis’ arms around her; she is warm and this hug is lovely), what she touches is soft. Fluffy, actually. Garnet really knows her taste, doesn’t she? Both hands go in to pull out the gift: a sweater!, large enough to fully cover Poppy’s hands and go almost to her knees. It’s almost excessively fluffy, the kind of fluffy she wants to run her hands over and over in a motion Dr. Dumaine’s told her is called stimming. “Garnet!” she squeals. “It’s perfect!” 

Garnet responds with a grin. “I’m glad you like it.” Oh, and she knew Poppy would, she knows her taste so terribly well.

“I love it! Bis, can you––?” Bis, before she even finishes, pulls back her arms enough for Poppy to slip the sweater on over her head. It might be a little warm for the sticky June weather, but the inside of the house is comfortable and she likes it. Once it’s in place, she leans back into that warm expanse for another hug. What she gets is a wrapped box coming from above her to rest in front. “Bis!” 

“Call this part one of your present.” It’s so fond, so planned. She could absolutely melt. 

Poppy pulls the sticky bow off the top and sticks it to Bis’ forehead with a giggle. “You’re part two, then.” 

“You!” A large chin bumps against the top of her head, gently and teasingly reprimanding. “Open it up, goofball.” 

She would love to carefully unwrap it from the taped ends, save some of the nice, flower-spotted wrapping paper. Her excitement wins out and makes her rip it right down the middle. Inside, there’s...a box. A box of, when she looks closer–– oh, bright magenta hair dye! Bis runs a hand through her hair from the root to the tip; “Figured you’d like covering up those greys with pink.”

“You figured right!” Her arms wrap around Bis’, only reaching part of the way, skinny skinny skinny against thick and muscular. “What’s the next part, then?” 

“A spa day with me at your beck ‘n call.” There’s another kiss to the top of her head. “We’ll put the dye in, do your nails, watch a movie, totally up to you.” 

Bis is too good to her. 

“Thank you, Bis.” It comes out in a content little sigh. Gosh. Her, with pink hair fading into the red that’s still there. No more early grey. She’ll look alternative, she thinks, and she likes the idea of it. 

“Us next!” comes Amy’s voice as Steven drags something out of his room. The wrapping paper, done with none of the care that Bis could manage, belies the softness and roundness beneath. “Open it open it open it!” By her side, Steven beams and pushes the gift towards Poppy.

“Okay! Okayyy, let me…” This wrapping necessitates her just opening it. Round and soft, it turns out, was right. The round little robot from all the new Star Wars movies she and Pearl watched over a weekend stares up at her with its little robot eye, and she can’t help it, she squeals. “Oh!! Oh he’s adorable, oh my goodness-!” It’s large enough for her to tug to her chest and have it cover from her stomach up to her chin. Soft. “You two, you didn’t have to-!” 

“Nope! We did!” Steven tuts, finger-wagging. “It’s your birthday and we had to get you something aaand Sadie knew a guy.” One of his friends, she presumes. 

Her fingers run over the top of the little plush’s “head.” “He’s adorable,” she repeats, unendingly fond. “Thank you thank you thank you.” 

Pearl clears her throat. 

She slides a small package across the table. 

“It’s nothing special,” she says in that I-worked-crazy-hard-on-this tone, “but I thought you might like it.” 

“Pearl. I’m sure it’s lovely.” And she really is!
When she opens it, the object inside positively takes her breath away. 

It’s so... intricate. Delicate. Hand-embroidered, she can tell. It’s a lovely pastel green eye patch, made just for her, and she can tell it was made for her. The embroidered poppies and roses, intertwined, makes it clear. “Oh.” 

“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.” Pearl sounds worried. Oh, oh, does she think Poppy is offended? “I just––”

“It’s perfect.” When she tilts her head to look across the table at Pearl, there’s a tear in her eye (and Bis tightens her hug accordingly). “It’s so so so perfect. Did you make this?” The bashful smile tells her that the answer is yes. “Oh––you’re all so––” Her wrist scrubs at the tear, only for it to be replaced a moment later. “You’re too nice to me. You’re way way way too nice to me.” 

“No way!” Amy protests. “We’re just nice enough!” The words make Poppy laugh. 

Steven looks like he’s about to tear up, too, still smiling. He cares so much. “Hug it out?” he asks, arms outstretched. 

Still in Bis’ hug, Poppy spreads her arms in return. “Hug it out!” 

Steven comes first, and Amy shortly after. Pearl only needs enough time to walk around the table to get Poppy in the group hug. Garnet comes last, sandwiching her between the members of her family, warm and strong and so, so loving. 

“...Psst,” Pearl whispers into her ear. “Look in Mushroom’s bag.”

“You didn’t.” 

“Just look!” 

Reluctantly, Poppy pulls away from the group hug to call Mushroom over. He plods over, trot trot trot, wearing his little vest with the little pockets. She digs one hand inside––there’s a card in practised-childish handwriting. It says I Love You Poppy!!!!! with one of the P’s backwards and a little illustration of a horse underneath. Inside is––she is overwhelmed with how sweet it is––an inky print of his hoof and a Love, Mushroom. “Which one of you made this!” 

Pearl definitely did, based on how she looks at the wall, so faux-innocent. “Mushroom did, of course.” 

She doesn’t know what she would do without these goofs.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Pearl?”

“Hm?”

“How did you figure out you like girls?”

It doesn’t seem like a rude question; Pearl has made it perfectly clear the entire time Poppy’s known her. She still seems caught off-guard. “Why do you ask?” 

“I dunno.” Idly, Poppy bobs her head to make her hair bounce. The newly-added magenta peeks in the corner of her eye, blending seamlessly into the natural red; it’s fun to watch the transition. Like a little sunset in the curls. “I guess...I’ve just been thinking about it? And I mean, I think I like girls, I just don’t know, you know? I’ve never, like, been on a date or anything.” 

“Poppy.” Pearl sets a hand over hers in that it’s-time-to-learn-something-about-life way. “You don’t need to go on a date to know who you like.” 

“I know! I just don’t–– know, you know?” She readjusts their hands as she talks. Now, Pearl’s fingers are twined with hers, warm and comfortable. Pearl’s nails are stained with motor oil from where she repaired the ancient van; Poppy’s are painted with flowers so delicate that she wouldn’t believe they’d been painted by Bis if she hadn’t seen it herself. “So how did you know?” 

Pearl, bless her, does not move her hand away. She just hums, eyes tilted towards the ceiling. “Well...I suppose I’ve always known.” 

“Boo. How were you sure?” 

She laughs, breathy, through her nose. “You want the details, is that it?”

“I do!” 

“Then.” Her finger taps against the back of Poppy’s hand. Gentle. Rhythmic. “I knew, for certain, when I met Rose. It was like...she was a magnet, and I was a piece of metal. I wanted to be around her all the time. And then I met Bis, and I felt the same way.” She turns a wry smile to Poppy. “I’ve never met a man who makes me feel that way, so I suppose, process of elimination and all.” 

Hm. Poppy doesn’t think she has, either. 

...In fact, she thinks she feels some of that magnetic stuff, too. She feels it with Bis, who draws her close like a moth to a flame, and when she hugs Poppy with her muscular arms or combs through her hair with her massive hands, the feeling always seems to linger. She’s like...fresh bread, comforting, she feels like home. And she feels it with Pearl, different, but the same––like––Pearl is an oasis in a desert. Nobody has ever understood her quite the way Pearl has, and the understanding feels like a drink of clear water. 

Also, she thinks they both might be nice to kiss. 

“Hmm.” She’s contemplating. Her brow is furrowed above the eyepatch Pearl made just for her. “What’s it like to kiss a girl?” 

Pearl smiles fondly. “When it’s the right one? Exhilarating.” 

“I wanna try.” 

“Wh––now?” 

“Mhm.” Poppy tilts her chin up towards Pearl in that I-know-what-I’m-asking-for way, the best way she knows to project confidence. “I wanna try with you. ...If that’s okay.” 

From her shock, Pearl softens. She lifts her free hand to Poppy’s cheek, and oh, her hands are so soft for somebody who works so hard. “That’s perfectly all right. Whenever you’re ready.” 

“Oh––oh, you want me to-?” 

“I would feel more comfortable if you went at your pace.” 

She’s so considerate. Poppy’s heart absolutely melts. “Okay. Give me a second?” 

“Take your time.” 

Okay. Okay! How do they do it in the movies? She closes her eye, first, she thinks. She takes a deep breath. And maybe she should have kept her eye open, because when she leans in she hits Pearl’s chin before her lips. “Wait––hold on––” Try again. Pearl doesn’t even laugh, bless her. Okay, go up a little… 

Oh. 

Oh, Pearl is soft all over. She’s warm. There are no fireworks, not with her; there’s just an ocean wave of warmth washing over every part of Poppy, protective, loving. 

They pull away from each other with a quiet breath. 

“...Okay.” Wow. Poppy flops against the back of the couch, a little flushed, a little giddy. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. I like girls.” 

The way Pearl laughs and pulls her close for a hug feels like something crooked within her has righted itself again.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, therapy is easy. It’s laughing with Dr. Dumaine, telling her about the ways she’s been adapting. Poppy shows off her birthday presents and earrings and she gets gentle smiles in response. These are things that make her happy, and being happy after so many years spent in misery is an accomplishment in and of itself. 

Sometimes, it’s just boring. She goes through the same old stories the same old ways while they both try to pick something new from the words. Most of the time, they don’t get much new. Sometimes she gets homework and sits at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to draw the way Pearl making her a cup of tea feels and she can never quite manage to sketch “orange Sunday morning.” 

Sometimes, though, it’s an emotional swamp. There are questions about what she ate this week, how much sleep she’s been getting, her exercise. Numbers, numbers, numbers. And then there are questions about her nightmares. Her conversations. And does she think there are any problems in the house? Is there anything she could be doing differently? Anything she wants to do that she hasn’t told them?

On those days, she goes home and right to bed. 

Garnet is the one driving her; she always seems to know when Poppy is too tired to talk, when therapy has been too much. She stays quiet and just drives. 

Maybe she should feel bad about just, going right to her room and not talking to anybody on the way? But they’ve never told her that it’s rude, and she will keep doing it. 

It’s relaxing, in a way, to just lay down and look at the ceiling and process. 

Dr. Dumaine said she likes what Poppy’s done to her hair. That’s a very nice thing to hear. She also says that, if it greyed because of stress, that can be reversed, and she printed an article about how to make that happen. Poppy has it on her bedside for later. 

She also said it’s good to explore who she might be interested in, but that she probably shouldn’t be focusing too much on dating right now, she needs to get her own head together first. Fine, that’s fine. If a little disappointing. 

...The hardest part was discussing the nightmares. No, they haven’t gone. Yes, they have a new look to them: Poppy is alone in the house and something bad happens. No, she hasn’t told anybody else. She doesn't want to. Dr. Dumaine thinks that’s fine but she still feels guilty, right? For not telling them? 

Actually, no. The hardest part is discussing her weight. For every pound she gains, everybody insists she is healthier but goodness, it’s a struggle to see it. She wishes this could just be easier. 

At least they know to leave her be when it’s one of those sessions. 

She sleeps. She doesn’t normally like to nap––the nightmares then are worse than at night––but she does on those days. It’s not restful, but it makes her mind stop moving for a minute. 

She does not reemerge until dinner and they don’t ask questions. Amy just passes her a glass and tells her they made brownies for dessert.

Chapter Text

There used to be eight juice glasses. Now, there are seven, and Pearl has been covertly trying to position them a little more appealingly each day, perpetually rearranging. 

Poppy is sure that if she brought it up, Pearl would wave her off and say that she’s been wanting to anyway, the kitchen really could use a redoing, don’t you think? She still knows that there wouldn’t be an issue if she knew how to keep her anger under control. 

It’s the one thing she’s kept well and truly hidden, buried under layers and layers of smiles and pleasant humming and interminably lovely days. The anger. The violent, explosive anger that bubbles just under the surface until it’s too late. None of the others would want to see that.

Sadness, that’s something they can all handle, something pitiable. Something that makes them want to protect her. They can wipe away tears and tell her it’s all going to be all right, and it’s almost out of a movie with how pretty it can be. And happiness, they can feel accomplished in that and tell Poppy they love when she smiles. Even the sheer exhaustion is gentle, soft, protectable. 

But the anger?

It’s. Embarrassing, really. 

How the way the fitted sheet pops off the corner of the bed can have her shrieking her fury at the ceiling. Or how an errant word can send her to the beach, hurling stones and shells and broken glass into the waves until her shoulder hurts. Or how, now, she just can’t seem to figure out this new microwave. All the buttons are different, and when she tried to set it for 30 seconds it reads minutes, and––and even when she finally gets it––it runs too hot and the mug inside burns her hand. 

“Shit!” Even to her, the curse word sounds wrong in her mouth, square peg in the round hole. The mug splashes hot water all over her hand. She pulls back with a hiss and another curse: “Oh, fuck you!” 

Stupid microwave. Stupid–– thing, and she’s alone, and she doesn’t even think before slamming the door shut on the mug with enough force to sound like a gunshot. “Stupid! Stupid!” 

Letting it out never feels great. Half a second of relief followed by hours of exhaustion. She just…

(One hand slams against the closed door, flat-palmed, furious. “You’re so stupid! Why can’t you even work right?!”) 

It can’t not come out. 

She gives it one more solid whack for good measure. No part of it feels good. But at least it’s out. At least she’s alone. 

…From the doorway, Pearl clears her throat. 

Fuck.

Poppy whirls, and––stars, she must look a mess. Hand stained red with inflammation. Eye a little wild. Pearl flinches unless Poppy imagined it and it drives a stake through her heart.

“...Um.” Pearl’s voice is quiet. It’s like she’s trying to pick her words carefully. But goodness, she’s never been any good at that, always too logical for the emotion, it drives Poppy insane sometimes. “I thought you were working on your anger.” 

Her stomach sinks. 

There’s so much disappointment there. 

“Oh!” What did Amy call this? Her customer-service voice? That’s what she’s putting on now, hand reaching up to wave flippantly, all a silly misunderstanding! If the bees in her chest would just stop buzzing. “Oh, that’s––it’s nothing!” Who would ever want to protect somebody who gets so angry? “Juuust a little silly, you know! Just––” Excuse. Excuse. Drag it up from somewhere in her mind and spill it before the darkness on the edge of her vision overtakes her entirely. “Couldn’t get it closed! Is all.” 

“Poppy, if you need to talk––” 

“Nope!” It’s so easy to fake a smile. It’s harder to disguise the tremble in her voice. “I’m all right that’s fine!” 

Pearl looks strained. She has never learned not to push. “I mean it, if you need––” 

“I’m fine, Pearl!” Her voice slides up the register until it sounds more like a shriek. She just needs to get past. To get to her room. Make the bubble in her chest get a little less ready to burst. When she moves, Pearl does not stand in her way. “I’m fine! I juuust––okay! It’s fine. I’m fine.” With every word, she trembly-steps a little farther away. 

Pearl has more she wants to say. She always does. Poppy doesn’t give her a chance before she’s racing down the hall. From the living room, Amy perks up to ask what’s wrong. Mushroom lifts his little head and drags himself to his feet to follow her.

She slams the door on all three of them.

Just breathe. 

Just breathe, stupid, why can’t you even breathe right? 

A drawn-out sob comes instead. It sounds like shovelling gravel and feels even worse. 

Where has her vision gone? Everything, now, is in spots and fits, flashes of the world around her. 

They––nobody––will nobody wants to protect her anymore. That’s fine. That’s. Okay. Okay. She can’t feel her hands and that’s okay. She’s breathing hard enough to crack a rib, she’s sure, and that’s okay.

Pearl thinks she’s crazy.

Anger, she’s been working on her anger, and it didn’t work. It’s not working. She’s still––she’s––

The world turns sideways.

She feels like she’s going to vomit

Her breaths come in great heaves

If they think they’ve seen her at her worst then they don’t know how bad she can get, how bad she is, they don’t

And she is dizzy

And sort of floaty.

There––something. Something. 

Outside the door, she hears knocking and, oh, oh bless him, the sounds of a tiny whinny, she just. She can’t. 

“I’m okay go away!” 

Doesn’t she have something for this?!

With trembling fingers, she reaches into the bedside table. There’s too much shit. Old hair ties and receipts and a candy wrapper and––there there there there there. A print-out from therapy. Panic Attacks. 

Okay.

She can barely read it through her tears. Luckily, blessedly, the text is large. 

Are you having a panic attack? Check for your symptoms on this list.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. She skips to the help section.

First, know that this isn’t forever. You will not die from this. 

What does this dumb book even know? ...She reads on.

You are not going crazy. You are not losing your mind. Take a moment to follow the breathing exercises below. 

...Okay. Okay. She’ll try.

Four seconds in. She manages one before she hiccups into sobs, then two, and after a few more tries she manages four.

Hold for four. 

Another hiccup at two. She tries again.

Exhale for seven.

...Okay. When she presses a hand to her heart, it seems to have slowed a little.

Keep going. Four, four, seven. Four, four, seven. Four, four, seven. 

Everything...slows. Rights itself bit by bit. 

She follows more of the guide. Name five things she can see, four she can touch, three she can hear… It grounds her to run her hand over the bedspread as she says its name. 

The knocking outside has stopped, but Mushroom still stomps his little hooves. Oh, she’s tired. The fire has died down, leaving behind only the ashes to gather herself from. 

…

But she gathered herself. 

When she stops, when she thinks––she did that herself. There’s something heartening about that. She can handle herself.

...When she opens the door, her hand isn’t quite as shaky.

Chapter Text

She isn’t sure she’ll ever figure out how Amy knows every job opening around town at all times. It’s like a weird sixth sense. 

A nice one, though, because it means that as soon as Poppy asked about getting a job, Amy knew four places she’d be a good fit for. 

The one she chooses is a little florist off the beaten path. With the odd, kind of quirky name ––The Barn–– she expects a little run-down place in a shack. Charming, still, because it’s full of flowers, but run-down. Maybe run by a kindly old couple with Southern accents. Maybe with a lazy old cat stretching out in the sunbeams and catching rats.

...It isn’t quite like that.

Yes, it is, actually, in a barn. A barn decorated to somebody’s taste, she’s sure, but not quite hers, with an alien head sporting deer antlers over the front door and a truck that looks older than she is out front. On an old wooden sign pointing towards the door, somebody’s scrawled the name of the shop in blue paint. She counts no fewer than seventeen carefully-and-intentionally-placed tin cans. It all looks...eccentric. 

“Wellll, whaddaya think?” Amy pipes up from the back of the van. Of course she came along to make sure Poppy settles in––but she can’t drive, which is why Garnet came too. 

Poppy’s smile is, above all else, polite. “It’s interesting!” 

“Yeah, but you gotta go inside! Like––” Her chubby hands come up in a hold on gesture. “Okay, okaaay, the gals who run this place are a little weird. But you’re a little weird.” She doesn’t mean it as an insult and Poppy doesn’t take it as one. “Let’s go. You’re gonna like it better inside, I promise!” 

Okay. She grabs her purse (which, really, has nothing but her phone and empty space inside), straightens her hair, chchch s to Mushroom, and takes in a long breath. “Let’s go.” 

When they enter, they’re immediately greeted by the yipping of an excited dog.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness-!” She’s adorable, more fluff than dog and more energy than the sun. Her little paws hop hop hop over the old hardwood floor, mouth open, tongue lolling happily––

“Pumpkin, sit!” From some back room, a messy head of hair over Coke-bottle glasses emerges. She’s holding a pot of carnations; when Poppy looks and doesn’t quite know how to stop looking, she can tell that one hand is a hand and the other is plastic and metal. Huh. She squints over the flowers, sharp nose wrinkling. “You’re Penelope?” 

“Um––Poppy, actually!” She holds out one hand to shake it before realising that the other’s are full. Oops. With a sheepish smile, she pulls it back. 

“And this breath of fresh water ,” Amy says, clapping the stranger on the back and earning a squawk, “is Peri! She’s the hiring person.” 

“Unofficially,” she adds with a sniff. 

Right. Amy told her that there are only two people working this shop. Poppy figures they must be overwhelmed with the amount of work they’re doing.

...Or not. Because when she turns to look at the counter, there’s another person slouched over, idly flipping through a magazine. She blows a patchily-dyed lock of blue out of her face and doesn’t bother looking up.

As Peri sets the flowers down on a shelf, Poppy takes a look around. The inside is just as oddly decorated as the outside, if more covered in flowers of all kinds. She can’t see the ghost-shaped fairy lights in more than a handful of spots; she just sees rhododendron and rose and rudbeckia. It’s so... calming. Lovely. 

“Have you ever worked retail before?” Peri asks.

Hm? ––Oh. Her brain takes a moment to come up with the answer. “Um, no! I actually, haven’t worked a real job before, ever.” 

The girl at the counter peeks at Poppy through her bangs, incredulous. “Young or rich?” 

“Pardon me?” 

“Are you young or are you rich?” 

“...Neither?” Will she be asked to recount her entire life here? Oh, she hopes she doesn’t, the thought alone makes her squirm. She hopes that Mushroom’s red vest, SERVICE ANIMAL in white embroidery across the side, is enough to keep any errant questions at bay. 

Luckily, it seems Amy is taking the more direct approach by sliding a finger across her throat and grimacing. 

The girl sighs and returns to her magazine. 

As it turns out, that meant that Poppy had gotten the job. 

There are very few customers, blessedly. It’s mostly Poppy tending to the flowers. Peri showing her where all their nutrients are, all science. The girl at the counter––her name, as Poppy finds out only later, is Laleh––deals with whatever customers come through. Mostly, it’s peaceful. She gets to fiddle with flowers and arrange them for the occasional wedding or birthday and Peri doesn’t seem to mind when Poppy starts rattling off facts. She does the same, occasionally.

Mushroom seems to like it, too, and he likes Pumpkin. The little dog started off curious, sniff-yipping at the strange creature who sat and endured; now, she trots along behind him wherever he goes. It’s so endlessly endearing. 

There isn’t much in the way of money. She supposes that’s fine; nobody in the house is wanting. She is here, mostly, for something to do. Dr. Dumaine seems happy with it, she says it’s good for Poppy to get out of the house! 

The bell over the door chimes. 

For the first time, Poppy sees Laleh actually perk up. “Hey, Bis.” Bis! 

“Hey, girl!” Bis claps her hand with Laleh’s, grinning, always so effortlessly friendly; when Peri peeks out from behind a pile of forget-me-nots, she waves to her, too. “How’s business?” 

“Slow.” Laleh gestures at the untouched flowers around them, huffing. “So, y’know, like normal.” 

“Anything interesting?” Pumpkin, always excited to see anybody, hops up onto the counter and is rewarded with a scritch to the head from Bis. 

“Mh-mh.” 

“Hmmm.” Looking around, Bis catches Poppy’s eye––she smiles, gentle, loving. “Get any roses in?” 

“Oh!” Poppy chirps, rushing over to the display. Bis is so sweet, she knows these are Poppy’s favourites, knows that she would love to talk about them. “Of course! We have the red ones, of course, but I’ve been growing these adorable little pink ones, see? And we have a few white ones, and the yellow ones are growing, still, but they’re going to be gorgeous! And…” 

Bis follows along as Poppy shows off their little collection. She’s always so...if not eager, at least good at pretending, to hear what Poppy has to say. “Hey, Laleh, ring me up for a pink one, yeah?” she calls across the store. With a sideways smile, she winks coyly at Poppy. “‘S for a special girl.” 

Pearl, probably. They might not be together , okay, but they’re together and she knows that Bis is nothing if not sweet to the very core. So she pulls a pink rose from the bouquet, carefully choosing the most beautiful bloom: “This one. She’ll love this one. And we take off the thorns and everything, so…!” 

Oh.

Oh.

Before she even finishes her sentence, the flower has been tucked behind her ear. 

Chapter Text

“Pops, for real, you look like a twig. Promise it’s not gonna kill ya to eat some pie.” 

“Oh, but-!” 

Amy doesn’t give her a chance to finish. She just shoves a plate in Poppy’s hands and moves her towards the array of pies. “Don’t even. Just eat.” 

Food is still...weird. At least to her. Every calorie still counts; every extra bite feels like a strange kind of indulgence. But Amy––Amy, who is marshmallow-soft all around and more than comfortable in it, who relishes in her rolls––never seems to worry about that. Not the way Poppy does. 

And Amy, who is so much more comfortable and proud than Poppy has ever been, is pushing a plate into her hands. 

...She lets a shy smile slip onto her face. Okay. If Amy says it’s fine, then. 

She starts to cut a thin slice of the apple pie. 

“C’mon, you can do more than that!” 

“Probably! But––” The knife slides cleanly through the pie. “I wanna get a slice of all of them.” 

With a grin, Amy slaps her lovingly on the back. “Attagirl!” 

Soon enough, she has three slices of pie on her plate: one apple, one pumpkin, one chocolate. And Amy won’t let her get very far without a scoop of vanilla ice cream and plastic-packaged whipped cream. It’s essential, she says! 

Every bite feels like she’s breaking some rule, even if it’s never enforced in this house. It’s absolutely liberating.

Chapter Text

“Thank you for doing this with me,” says Poppy as she pats the soil into place around a rose bush. 

“‘S no problem, hon.” With one large arm reaching over, Bis sprinkles bloodmeal around the base of the bush. It’s a little morbid, maybe––to feed blood to flowers to make them bloom better––but it works. And Poppy wants nothing more than for these bushes to bloom. 

Community service, Dr. Dumaine said, is good for the mind. Not, like, the going-to-jail kind of community service either, but the just-for-fun kind. It hadn’t been difficult convincing Laleh to part with a few bulbs and seeds and saplings; she just waved Poppy off and told her to go for it. Better than letting them rot in the barn. 

The mayor, too, a lovely older woman with an accent Poppy couldn’t place, said it sounded like a wonderful idea to plant flowers along the paths. With so much go-ahead, how could she not beautify the park? 

Luckily, lovely, everyone else wanted to join too.

Now, Bis is by her left planting flowers with her and Pearl is on her right. On the other side of the path, Amy-Garnet-Steven arrange and rearrange, careful to make the flowers match the ones behind them. It’s a sort of artistic care Poppy wishes she could see from them more; it’s just so charming. 

“Mmm...what if,” she muses, pulling back just enough to tap a gloved finger on her chin, “we plant some marigolds around the roses?” 

“You’re the boss!” Pearl chirps, reaching into their little wagonful of seeds for the baggie labelled M.

Bis calls over her shoulder, “You get that over there?” 

“Yep!” Amy and Steven answer in unison. 

Marigolds around the roses in golden rings. Large, almost fake-pink hibiscus at the entrance, welcoming visitors with open petals. Tiny daisies lining the sides, happy little yellow smiles inside the outstretched white. 

When they all finally pull back, dirtied and sweaty and grinning, it doesn’t...well. They need to grow, don’t they? It mostly looks like upturned soil. 

Poppy knows what it will look like when it’s done. She can picture it as clear as day.

And every day, she returns to the park to make sure the paths are growing correctly. Every tiny sprout makes her squeal and pull whoever she’s walking with––today, it’s Pearl––to her level, knelt on the ground. “Look! Look, they’re growing up!” She talks about the plants like they are her own children and her family indulges her. 

It’s a few weeks in when they’re all blooming. 

She takes up a spot on a bench and she invites everybody else. Everybody, her family and Peri and Laleh and Mushroom who spends most of the time munching at the grass. Steven makes lemonade and brings it to everybody, ice-cold and delicious. 

“Hey.” Bis nudges her side tenderly. “You did all that.”

“Oh, but you all helped so much-!” 

“But it was your vision.” She can’t complain when there is a kiss delivered to her forehead. “Good job, Poppy.”

Chapter Text

Pearl favours the supermarket’s empty parking lot for her teaching. There’s nothing to crash into. 

Which is good, Poppy thinks, because in the last five minutes she’s slammed the brakes hard enough to send them both jolting forward three separate times. 

“Sorry!” she peeps after the fourth slam-forward. 

Pearl, ever-patient but easily-frazzled, lets out a long breath. “That’s all right. You’re learning.” 

There’s just so much to driving! Exact amounts of precision on the pedals, blind spots that are twice as big for her, does the left turn signal go up or down?, and the wheel is so much less responsive than she expects. And she knows this is just in case, knows she will never ever ever be able to get an actual license with her driver’s-side eye missing, but she wants to do it well! She wants to impress Pearl. 

The van moves again, slooow slow slow. 

“Try turning right here.” 

She does. The turn signal goes left and the van moves in an arc so wide it’s hard to call it a proper turn. 

Pearl is gentle. So so gentle. “You’re doing well, Poppy. Try stopping again?” 

She just can’t help slamming the brake every time. Five times, now. 

Okay. Oookay. She holds her foot on the brake and leans backwards into her seat. “I don’t think I’m very good at this.” 

Pearl’s look of frayed nerves says that she’s correct. Still, she’s kind. She tries. “It’s fine, Poppy. Honestly.” She looks like she wants to tell Poppy to get out of the driver’s side now and stop hitting the brakes hard enough to slam both their heads against the dashboard. “...But I’ll drive us home.” 

It’s a relief. She doesn’t want to drive anymore, especially not around other people. So she opens the door, moves to step out––

“Poppy you’re still in drive!” 

––and slams the brakes. Six times. And puts the van in park, intentional and loud. 

Oops. 

Sheepish, she steps from the now-inert car and makes her way to the passenger side, where Pearl is climbing over to the wheel. “I’m sorry I’m not very good at this.” 

“There’s nothing to apologise for.” 

“...I’m sorry I hit the brakes so hard.” 

Pearl breathes out a laugh. “All right. You can apologise for that.” 

It makes Poppy smile, just a touch. “I don’t think––I mean, I probably won’t be able to drive. Like, ever. You know?” Her finger comes up to point at the eyepatch, the one Pearl made her. “...But thank you for teaching me anyway.” 

The van starts up again. They pull slowly out of the parking lot, down the beachside road. “I just want you to know how to. Just in case you need to…” 

Neither of them want to say that something could go wrong. They just let it sit between them and Poppy turns to watch the water go by. 

“You know,” she muses, tapping her fingers along the inside of the door, “this is a gorgeous place to live.” 

“Rose picked it out.” 

Of course she did. She can’t think of a place Ronnie would have enjoyed more. Isolated, but not so far from the town that there are no people; nature in every corner, water and pretty flowers; nothing but the endless stretch of ocean in front of her. Yes, that sounds like Ronnie’s choice. “She had good taste. Didn’t she?” 

The sigh comes through Pearl’s nose. “I think she did.” 

More quiet between them. Peaceful, understanding quiet. The hum of the car and the splash of the ocean and, for now, no music from the tinny old radio. There is a small family on the beach, new mothers, and it makes Poppy smile to see them.

Chapter Text

When she steps back to look, her room couldn’t be more different from when she moved in. 

The bedspread has been replaced by a lovely floral one, soft in pink and in texture; there is a tiny magenta splotch, diluted by water and hidden by the pattern, where the hair dye spilled. One corner holds Mushroom’s bed, while the other has a pile of half-finished knitting projects, lanyards, keychains, paper chains, a failed attempt at resin casting an old flower, and one third of a scrapbook. She has replaced the old curtains with three different ones she just liked: a floral one that matches the bedspread. One covered in little daisies the colour of sunrise. One in a wispy blue. 

Her dresser is lined with pictures she didn’t take and that she isn’t in. Steven’s tenth birthday, cake all over his face––and Amy at his side, cake all over hers. Pearl and Bis at the front of their tattoo shop, grinning breathlessly, Pearl flexing just a little. Garnet by the ocean, her mismatched eyes sparkling. Things she wasn’t there for, things she just likes to look at. 

There are knick-knacks, too. Little things she picked up. Seashells, none of them the picture-perfect conch shells, all of them missing at least one little chip. Sea glass, litter tossed and turned by the waves over years and years until they’re smooth and perfect. A dead beetle, perfectly preserved. Still perfect. 

It’s all...eclectic, she supposes, is the right word. No rhyme or reason to anybody but her. 

Idly, she toys with a piece of sea glass. It’s green––from some beer bottle or other, she’s sure––and not quite transparent enough to be translucent. If she holds it to her eye, she can see some light through it, barely trickling through. She wonders what ship lost it and imagines that it was an old pirate ship run by a woman with a big hat and a loud mouth. Maybe her name was Elizabeth.

She does the same with the shells. What creatures called them home? How many generations passed the shells down, a home for a mother becoming a home for her son later? Is that even how shells work? She’s not sure.

The beetle must have had a life, right? She swears it tells her everything with its beady black eyes, ever-staring. It feels too private to share.

...She looks to one of the pictures. It’s Bis, hands held high above her head in triumphant fists, volleyball net in the background. This picture––she thinks––hm. 

It slips out of the frame, a plain black thing, easily. She sets it delicately against the wall and she examines the plastic frame it had been in. Simple. Plain. (She looks at the drawer holding all of Ronnie’s letters and scrapbooks and she is sure that one will fit.) 

Sourcing a hot glue gun isn’t difficult. She just takes it from Bis’ room and promises in her head to return it soon.

Hm. Hm, hm, hmmm. Let’s see. 

If she arranges them like––the bigger shells on the corners. And in the middle of each side of the frame. Between them, the smallest shells, and between that the shells build in size. Little waves, little gradients. The nacre shimmers.

The top and the bottom, those are for the sea glass. Red is hard to find; she makes it the topmost piece, a place of honour. Green and blue are easy and they fill out the empty spaces. 

What to go inside? 

...From the very first scrapbook, Poppy extracts two dried flowers. One poppy. One rose. It’s a little on the nose, she might be embarrassed if somebody else were to see it, but. Well. It’s for her. They go between the glass and the back of the frame, lovely and dried and preserved. 

And there are so many photos to choose from. 

Many are from birthdays, from Christmases, holidays, the two of them in stiff smiles and stiffer collars. She knows Ronnie kept them because...there are just so few pictures of them together. She knew, even back then, that their mother would never keep these photos when the two of them were gone. 

Her favourites, though, are the ones that are so much more earnest. The blurry ones, the ones with Ronnie’s thumb on the lens, the ones with expressions half-caught that look more awkward than candidly gorgeous. They absolutely sing with life and with love. They almost vibrate in her hands. 

But her favourite, her absolute favourite, is a simple one. It’s the two of them, captured by one of Ronnie’s friends whose name Poppy has long forgotten. Poppy, hair wild and face two-eyed, grins. She is wearing some dance costume or other, something sparkly and sequin-y. On the right side of the frame, Ronnie, a blur of motion, rushes in; her lips are forever frozen around the phrase I’m so proud of you!

It goes into the frame. Right behind the poppy. And the rose. Into the frame made of shells and sea glass and which she places the beetle delicately atop. 

All of it goes in the centre of her dresser.

Chapter Text

It’s all in such small ways. 

It’s in the way she is on the beach, soaking up the last sun of the summer, in a bathing suit she picked out herself. She never realised before that she has freckles; they come out now, drawn out by the sun like flowers. 

It’s in the hair she plucked from her own head to show, hands trembling with excitement, to Pearl. Look, it’s red at the roots. It’s red.

It’s in the way she realises, sitting comfortable on the therapy couch, that so many of the things her mother said to her now just sound...silly. How could she be stupid, unworthy, when all she has ever done is her best? How could she ever be unlovable when so many people love her? She laughs about an old insult and it feels like letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

It’s the eyepatch set on her nightstand and her face bare while she watches a movie with her family. Or the way Pearl tenderly runs a hand along the scar to brush a lock of hair from her face. Or the way Bis presses a gentle kiss to it, ever-loving, ever-sweet. 

Small things. Inconsequential things. 

The way Peri’s hand brushes hers when they both reach for a flower pot and she does not flinch away like she used to. How Laleh greets her by name now in a tone that is almost friendly. Poppy chirps her good morning! s and gets two back. Pumpkin pushes her head under Poppy’s hand and she counts that as a third.

And her flowers. Endless flowers. 

Pink carnations (I’ll never forget you) along her windowsill in tiny pots dotted with fairies. She’d painted the fake terra cotta with Steven on a warm night by the water. 

Morning glories (affection) line the outside windows like tiny trumpets. She sings to them every morning when she waters them and imagines that they play her a song back. 

Hydrangeas (gratitude for being understood) fill out the empty space in front of the barn. Mushroom falls asleep in a patch of them and Pumpkin sleeps by his side. 

Forget-me-nots. 

She adores her flowers. Watching them sprout from seeds into bloom never fails to make her grin ear to ear and every one of them has a name. July and Mandy and Coconut and Marshmallow and Paris and Snow White and who can tell her that the names are silly? She loves every one of them. 

Recovery comes in family dinners and days at the amusement park and quiet walks on the beach and eating an extra slice of cake and making silly faces in the mirror and seashell earrings and flowers and hot chocolate. 

It’s in the scrapbooks and letters tucked away in her dresser. She goes through them slowly, reads each one in Ronnie’s voice. It’s like she’s there, almost, but… But. But. Her absence stings less every day, like a wound healing over, slow, slow. 

It’s bringing herself to work. The bus goes close to the little dirt road and she loves the walks. On rainy days, Pearl drives her and they sing along to showtunes and commercials alike. 

It’s new hobbies. She does not like ballet as much as she thought she did, but rhythmic gymnastics––flips and twirls and a ribbon that feels lighter than air––bring a new light to her eye. It’s so similar, but so different, and she chose it herself and what in the world could be better? 

It’s the way she can look at herself in the mirror and not flinch away. 

It’s how the pictures on her dresser are slowly but surely replaced by ones she is in. An auto-snapped picture on the rollercoaster at Funland. One Garnet took, where Poppy is kissing Mushroom’s nose in the late afternoon gold. An awkwardly-positioned selfie, Pearl’s thumb in the frame, of the family around the dinner table, and Amy has marinara sauce on her nose. 

It’s…

She is on the couch. They’re watching a travel show. Her head rests on Bis’ shoulder; her hand is in Pearl’s. When her eye slips shut and she is sent off into sleep, her dreams come peacefully.