Chapter Text
The day is May 15th. Sam Nightingale sits in her room, the waterproof headphones that Zelda gave her for her birthday last month sealed firmly against her ears as she stares blankly out the window at the pouring rain. She thinks her mother is yelling about whatever random bullshit she’s on now, probably on the telecrystal to one of her friends complaining as loud as possible about whatever celebrity gossip she can project on now. It’s only part of what Sam is hoping to drown out.
Well, more realistically, she’s just stewing in the misery of having a dead best friend who would rather allow her to be sacrificed to a demonic dragon than admit to the numerous fucked up things she’d done over the past year, and this grief that comes with being joined at the hip to someone so utterly selfish that they’d drown the world in flames to be fucking fawned over by whatever’s left.
Sam always thought that Penelope was like… inescapable. That no matter what Sam Nightingale wanted, she would always be at Penelope’s right hand. It didn’t matter what happened, some part of her would always be devoted to her in a way that made the Harvestmen look pretty cool and chill about their own religion what with their apocalyptic cult.
It feels weird to miss her. To miss being awkward tweens sneaking out of class to run around the mall for a couple hours doing nothing in particular. The sleepovers, the movie nights, the hushed whispers and giggles in the back of the classroom only growing whenever they were silenced by whatever grumpy teacher stood at the helm. It wasn’t all bad, she thinks. Or maybe she’s just been delusional for a whole lot longer than she thought. It doesn’t matter.
The other six maidens are worried. She can tell by all the texts. She figures they’re all in their stupid ‘Operation Cheer Up Sam’ or ‘Operation Get Sam Over Her Evil Ex Crush’ chat and are trying to test the waters. She picks up her crystal now to stare at all of them. She turned off the ‘Seen’ notification a while ago so they wouldn’t know she’s actually like, actively ghosting them and not just crying or whatever.
luxstone11: hey sam!!! lmk if ur available to hang out or if u want to talk or something we’re all here for u girl
Penny’s sweet. Sweeter maybe than Sam thinks she probably deserves. It’s not like she’s been particularly nice all her life. Not even to Penelope. Or Penny, or Antiope or Danielle.
There’s a text from Antiope, a polite reminder that she’s here if Sam wants to talk. She thinks Antiope’s smart enough to know that she’s like, never really going to follow up on that. But it’s the thought that counts. Another from Zelda, this one just a playlist. Sam hates Zelda’s music so much, but the thought is so sweet that she sends a heart back and tells her that she’s working on one in return. She knows that Zelda, in turn, also fucking hates Sam’s music. She’s not sure why they do this but it brings her some level of comfort. She scrolls down further, Ostentatia, Danielle, Katya. Ostentatia came after her. There’s some level of solidarity on that.
She stops when she sees Aelwyn Abernant’s handle.
aelwyn_aberration: Hi, Sam. It’s been a while but it’s me, Aelwyn, as you can probably tell. Are you busy today?
Sam stares, perplexed. They hadn’t really spoken since a party up at Mordred Manor lead them to drunkenly overshare while draped over each-other in what was a pretty pathetic display by like, any account. Especially Sam’s. Still, despite herself she kind of likes Aelwyn. She’s… well, not kind, but not cruel nowadays either. Just withdrawn. Out of place, like she feels she doesn’t deserve to be where she is now. Maybe Sam’s out of place too. And maybe it helps that her cruel little smirks and hidden little barbs all remind her distinctly of someone else, someone who even in dead probably still held her heart wrapped up in her thick manipulative spider web.
azureblue: what do u want?
aelwyn_aberration: Ah, there she is. Well. Ragh Barkrock (my roommate, you’re familiar I think) wanted to go visit Dayne Blade’s grave over at Cravencroft since it’s the anniversary of his death. I have a car and the adults are working. So.
aelwyn_aberration: Now, I know what you’re thinking, Dayne Blade? Who would mourn that piece of shit?
aelwyn_aberration: I assume that’s what you’re thinking anyway, I met him once and tried to resist the urge to immediately kill him. But mixed, complicated feelings and all that, I’m sure you know the drill. I don’t know if there’s a single positive feeling mixed in there, but he wanted to visit anyway. Plus Jawbone said it’d be a good idea to let his feelings out and cuss at his grave or what have you.
It seems a little irrational how much, even now, Sam kinda super fucking hates Dayne Blade. She knows that Dayne was dumb as a sack of bricks, even dumber than Ragh maybe, and that everything he did was because he was too stupid to think for himself and he was being lead along by his fanatical coach or Penelope or his evil parents or something, but even the thought of him still makes her want to punch something. Residual jealousy probably, for all the times that Penelope blew her off to go hang out with her totally super dreamy boyfriend. Or maybe because he’s a homophobic bigoted asshole who tried to bring about the apocalypse. Something rational and fair like that.
azureblue: ok tell him to have fun
azureblue: why r u telling me about this anyway
aelwyn_aberration: I’m going to visit Penelope.
Oh.
aelwyn_aberration: Do you want to come? I figured you might be interested. Your best friend and all that.
Oh…
Going to visit the grave of the girl who allowed her to be kidnapped by Johnny Spells of all people with said girl’s co-conspirator in trying to destroy the world for spite, fun and power. She looks outside at the rain, then at the door where her mom has apparently upgraded to full-on drunken weeping. Maybe it’s something topical. Dad, Sam, the fact that she couldn’t protect her or whatever. The sight turns her stomach a little.
Fuck it. Not like she has anything better to do.
azureblue: sure whatever. ill meet you there yeah? in like… idk half an hour?
Aelwyn types for around thirty seconds before finally responding. Sam figures she was going back and forth on wording or something, because when she does get the notification, all it says is;
aelwyn_aberration: Sure. See you there. :)
When Sam does arrive at Cravencroft, stepping off the local bus and lowering her headphones playing her somewhat embarrassingly angsty music, Aelwyn is just sitting next to the gateway, looking at her crystal with a cigarette in her mouth. Sam didn't know that she smokes. She looks a lot less put together than the few times that Sam saw her and Penelope hanging out, back when they were both putting up fronts and acting like they were this unattainable level of perfection next to the ants who crawled at their feet. Now Aelwyn just wears sweatpants, a pink hoodie and a puffy jacket that she probably stole from the guidance councilor that like, adopted her or something.
“Hey,” Sam says, somewhat stiffly. And Aelwyn looks up at her and instinctively seems to evaporate the cigarette into thin air. She climbs to her feet with a smile. It feels like the kind of smile that would radiate smug superiority, but it’s been honed down and now it’s just an expression from the face of someone who just so happens to have been like, a monster in the past. Yeah.
“Hello. No trouble getting here?”
“No trouble, no,” Sam says with a slightly amused smirk. As if she’s going to get lost on the bus in this tiny hovel of a town. Aelwyn really is a disconnected level of wealthy. “Is Ragh like, here yet or are we still waiting?”
Aelwyn nods. “He went ahead. I did drive him, you know. They’re actually in different places, if you’d believe it. Wonders truly never cease.”
“Yeah, I know. I uh,” Sam’s eyes meet the hill that she can now see Ragh standing atop, “I’ve been here before. For the funeral, you know.”
Aelwyn makes a quiet noise of acknowledgement. Neither of them mention that the funeral in question happened while she was being kept in her sleep deprivation bubble. They walk in not quite uncomfortable silence for a little while, Sam remembers to avoid the caretaker like the plague or else she’ll have to hear about his mangled dick again, eugh. Aelwyn seems content to follow her lead on that, and Sylvester gets the point.
Aelwyn speaks up as they approach the hill. “Was it good?”
Sam raises a watery eyebrow at her, “Was what good?”
“The funeral. I mean when we were… in the middle of all that I always wondered what mine might look like. Here lies Aelwyn. Perfect daughter, until she helped Kalvaxus come back and tried to kill her sister. Whoopsies!”
Sam snorts. She’s not sure what a good funeral looks like anyway. Maybe just what the dead person would have wanted. “I think… knowing Penelope, she’d probably be disappointed at how few people were there and fewer still that were actually, like… mourning? There was her dad. Me. Penny, kinda. Some of her old middle school friends. Some of her extended family. Everyone actually at the school just kind of fucking hated her guts, you know. And the rest just didn’t want to talk about it. A lot of stories about the kid she used to be, you know.”
Aelwyn frowns and turns to look at Sam.
“What about you?” Aelwyn says.
“I don’t know,” Sam just stares ahead, right at the grave with a fresh bouquet of flowers laid atop it. Her dad, probably. “Maybe I should. Maybe I shouldn’t. She tried to… help me, I guess, and I blew her off to go hang out with Johnny fucking Spells of all people. But she also just… chose to save her own skin over fishing me out, I guess. I…”
Her face is hot. The watery texture of her skin is being warmed up by the tears welling up in her eyes. Aelwyn offers a hand and Sam burns, or rather boils, in embarrassment as she offers hers in turn.
“You don’t have to continue, Sam,” Aelwyn says gently. It’s so weird being treated well. Johnny just called her an idiot and she always felt like Penelope was just walking circles around her with her manipulative controlling bullshit. Or maybe Sam just… imagined it. But it’s hard to really tell with Penelope. When she wanted someone to feel shit about themself, she’d do it, but in a way that convinces her target and everyone around them that they’re the problem, not her. She’d spin people around on her little web and everyone would always come out adoring her and worshipping the ground she stood on. For a while, Sam thought she was safe from that. But she knows differently now.
Sam nods. She tries to speak but no words come out. I guess I just miss her. Maybe more than I’ve ever missed anyone.
Sam is mortified as she realises everything she just dumped at Aelwyn’s feet to the other girl’s blatant floundering confusion. “God, I’m so sorry for just like, dumping all that shit on you.”
Aelwyn laughs a little, “Oversharing does seem to be our primary method of communication,” There’s a beat of silence before she clears her throat, “It’s okay, Sam. You can talk to me if you want to. I can’t exactly relate, I guess, your situation seems a tad more complicated than mine but… well, you know.”
Sam nods and rubs at her eyes. “Yeah. I do. And like, you know. It’s a two-way street and all that shit.”
Aelwyn smiles. Sam isn’t sure if it means that she’d take her up on that offer, or if it’s a ‘it’s so sweet of you to offer that, i will never be vulnerable at any point to you.’ She’d kinda understand either option, to be honest. The fact that she’s even here with Aelwyn Abernant of all people is bizarre in and of itself. It feels like a bit of a betrayal in some ways. Antiope still hates her so much. Not as much as Penelope but still. Sometimes she thinks that Antiope only chose dragons as her favoured enemy because the school actually had stuff for that and not ‘high school mean girls.’
They stop walking once they reach the top of the hill where Penelope Everpetal’s body lies, her name etched on the stone forever. She always wanted a legacy. She got one, but it wasn’t the one she wanted. Sam wonders if that would matter to her. Did she just want to be looked at? Remembered? Seen? Or was it something else? Power? Adoration?
Love?
Aelwyn clears her throat. “I’ll give you some time alone.”
Sam doesn’t look at her, just sits and nods and whispers out an okay that’s just barely loud enough to be heard. It doesn’t take long for her to realise that she’s completely alone here, really. It’s a known fact that this graveyard is haunted, and Aelwyn and Ragh and Sylvester are… somewhere, but Sam feels entirely shut off from the world.
What is she even supposed to say here? Hey, P. Sorry you died. You kinda had it coming though. I still miss you even though I know I shouldn’t.
That’s stupid. Penelope hated nicknames.
“So, I know a little bit about dying and stuff. And I know you’re like, for sure not even listening to me right now. Which I guess is a fun little switch on our old dynamic, you know? You trying to talk to me and me not listening because I didn’t want to hear it and… yeah,” Sam hugs her knees as she stares at the name etched in stone, so bland, so generic sitting next to a dozen other graves. Penelope Everpetal, beloved daughter. They couldn’t even write beloved friend. What do you do when you’re burying a loved one who caused so much fucking misery for so many people?
“Part of me is still not sure who to blame, you know? Like… yeah, obviously Johnny Spells put me in a crystal. But to be honest, I know that I only dated that asshole because I wanted to make you jealous and to like, remind you that I don’t just… belong to you,” She lets out a short bitter laugh, “Even though I think to some extent I probably did, you know? That’s how it goes with best friends and sidekicks.”
“But you still left me there, when you could have helped me. But if you did, you would’ve died, right?” God, why is she making excuses. Why is all her resolve fading at the sight of a name etched in stone? Why is she so weak ? “But even if… even if you cared about me. You still hurt my friends. All of them, really. That I don’t think I can forgive. If that’d even be my right.”
“But I didn’t really come here for that. I know I’m just talking to a hunk of stone right now but… my life’s been okay lately. Mom relapsed into her old drinking habit after I went missing so, you know, thanks Johnny. And you too, of course, can’t take that from you. I stopped dating creepy adult men who hang out at high schools, so that’s an improvement in my life, I guess,” She laughs at her own self-deprecation. Not that it isn’t one hundred percent true. “I befriended the other ‘Seven Maidens’, that’s still super fucking creepy though, you know that right? Like, jesus. But it’s a bomb-ass party name, so that’s what we go by. Aelwyn’s here. She’s cool. I see why you liked her, maybe because she’s just like you. Maybe that’s why I like her too, I don’t know.”
Sam lets out a sigh. This is stupid. It’s all so fucking stupid. She just feels more sad, more confused about her own feelings, weirdly guilty too.
“I really loved you, you know. I think I still do. I don’t mean in a platonic galpal way, for the record, I mean… I guess I was really in love with you, and probably a little terrified of it, you know? You have that effect on people.”
“I guess if I had to sum all this up… uh, you sucked. I kinda sucked too. I’m still glad I met you, and… I’ll probably keep missing you for a long time. And I guess...” The wind around her seems to slow down as she speaks, the leaves stop shaking above her, and the sounds of distant traffic slow to a silent crawl. Sam doesn’t notice any of this. She’s too busy trying not to let herself cry in this creepy fucking graveyard.
“I guess I just wish things could’ve been different.”
The wind keeps blowing, the leaves keep shaking, and the cars keep moving. Change was enacted on the world, like it always was. Ever changing, ever turning, such is the way of the Great Wheel.
Sam stands up to go find Aelwyn.
The drive back, which Sam was gracefully invited along for, is quiet. Sam has never really seen Ragh Barkrock upset in a way that wasn’t like, barbarian rage. He didn’t seem to be grieving, not in the way that Sam was anyway. If you could call it grief. Grieving the transformation of a person you love into a person you should hate. But Dayne Blade was rotten to the core.
Probably. Not that Sam ever gave enough of a shit about him in a way that wasn’t seething jealousy and exasperation. Maybe Penelope didn’t either.
Aelwyn stops the car at the guidance councilors new mansion. She gives Ragh a nod that even from the outside Sam can tell means, ‘ I’ll be with you in a little bit .’ He returns the nod with an affirmative grunt and he steps out of the car, only slamming the door a little on his way out.
Instrumental progress, Sam thinks, perhaps a little cruelly. It’s been a full year since she last knew him as the resident angry asshole who pushed everyone down to make himself seem bigger. Hard to see him differently. As like, happy, and friendly, and just a bit aggressive but in a somewhat overly positive way.
“So,” Aelwyn says, clearing her throat. “Did it help?”
“Not really,” Sam says, leaning her head against the window, tired. “I think I just want to sleep. Should probably text my friends and let them know you didn’t murder me.”
Aelwyn laughs. It’s humourless. Probably because she wasn’t really joking.
“I’d appreciate it. Ostentatia already texted me that she knows where I live, like it’s a big secret.”
“You did kidnap her, to be fair,” Sam points out.
“Did I? Must’ve slipped my mind,” Aelwyn says in a snide tone of voice that nearly reminds Sam of Penelope for a moment, and reminds Sam exactly of what Aelwyn used to be. Sam raises her head to stare at her, a little shocked admittedly, despite herself. “Sorry, yeah. She’s right not to trust me. If you want to hang out in a less depressing setting, you have my number.”
Sam gives her a weary smile, with no real response. Maybe. Aelwyn is kind to her. Understanding. But she’s so familiar, and Sam isn’t sure how to feel about it.
“For now, I think I just want to go home.”
Aelwyn returned the smile, “Coming right up.”
They drove the rest of the way in the sad silence that they’d stewed in for the trip to Mordred Manor in the first place. Sam lives close, anyway. Just outside Elm Valley. Right across the street from the old Everpetal residence, now pretty much abandoned with an untouched ‘For Sale’ sign bound to the fence since Penelope’s dad moved back down to Bastion City. Only seems to come back for the big events, like the anniversaries and birthdays. Sam finds herself staring at it.
“Your stop, Nightingale,” Aelwyn says gently, noticing her staring.
“Yeah, thanks. I’ll um, call you,” Sam stammers awkwardly as she unbuckles the seatbelt and climbs out of the car. “Thank you, Aelwyn.”
Aelwyn gives her a smile, a sad look in her eye, “What are friends for?”
In a moment of perhaps very poor impulse control, Sam leans over and plants a kiss on Aelwyn’s cheek. Her eyes widen and Sam’s eyes begin to widen too. “Sorry, that was… yeah. Anyway. I’m uh… I’ll see you, yeah?”
Aelwyn nods, clearly still a bit in shock, “Yeah, sure. Bye, Sam. I’ll see you.” She seems to regain her composure by force, something Sam imagines she’s used to and she gives a gentle smile and another nod before she starts the car back up. The elemental whirrs to life with a dull howl and it starts moving away. Sam doesn’t go back inside immediately, instead watching Aelwyn drive away down the street and back up the hill toward Cravencroft.
Lonely. This is loneliness. Her with all her friends and she’s feeling lonely because her new evil elven… friend… drove off. Just lonely.
Sam turns toward the door, unlocks it with her key and allows it to creak open as she walks in to find her mom passed out on the couch, a half empty bottle of wine on the coffee table.
She looks down at her mother, the elemental tint of her skin turned slightly green from her inebriation. She leans down, brushes her hair out of her face and places a cushion under her head. She sighs as she grabs the wine and places it back in the cabinet her mom leaves all her drinks in. She considers hiding it or disposing of it, but she’ll just go and get more, or she won’t get up at all.
Sam thinks that she should probably be the one to have a depressive episode in response to being kidnapped for five months, but she knows that’s neither how it works nor fair. So her mom can… do what she wants. Sam’s just going to retreat to her room and… text her friends, probably. And then fall asleep not wearing the shirt that Penelope last left at her house two years ago. She just wishes she could think about anything else tonight.
She gives her mom one final look, passed out peacefully, for once not yelling about anything, or spiralling, or anything. She smiles a little, painfully. And then she steps into her room.
Matted brown hair, torn pink dress, blood splattered all over her face, makeup messed up, eyes bruised, a deranged grin on her face.
Penelope Everpetal stares back.
Sam feels any words she could speak die in her throat when her dead best friend wraps her arms around her torso, and she tenses up instinctively.
“I won, Sam,” Penelope says deliriously, “The crown is mine. It all paid off. All the sacrifices. Everything was worth it. It’ll all be mine, Sam. I love you, Sam. It’ll all be worth it.” She laughs against Sam’s shirt, her body shaking in Sam’s arms. She doesn’t know when she started hugging back. But she is. Clinging onto Penelope's ruined dress like if she lets go something awful will happen.
“You’re dead,” Sam says, breathlessly.
Penelope laughs into her chest. Her breath coming out reedy and weak. Eventually it turns to sobs, and then eventually it turns into nothing at all. Just wheezing breaths as she slowly drifts into unconsciousness in the arms of the only friend that she’s ever really had.
Sam stands there, her own breath short, trying not to have a panic attack. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?