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Tally walked with a heavy heart through the grounds of Fort Salem, untethered from the whispers of her fellow witches, from the sudden sullenness that fell upon them, from the heavy air that promised something new coming. No one knew whether it would be a good new, or if it would destroy them all.
Abigail and Raelle were back in their room, probably talking about it, what everyone was talking about: Tally’s brave (stupid, looking back on it now) decision to stand up for the truth. What did the truth even mean when the Camarilla were hunting them down and the Spree were only making it worse? Was the truth worth destroying the trust and respect and reverence that General Alder had gained over three centuries? What did Tally know, with her almost-two-decades of life, about what leadership meant?
Thoughts swirling dangerously in her mind, Tally couldn’t bear talking about it with her unit, or any other soldier. They wouldn’t understand what she’d been thinking, what she believed in. They’d either praise her or blame her; she didn’t want either. There was one person who might understand…
No. Tally had already hurt her enough. She deserved her peace now, and definitely deserved better than to be hounded for answers by the very person who ruined everything for her.
The wind picked up, and Tally felt a shiver running through her whole body. Her hands were shaking. When had it gotten so cold? She immediately turned towards the nearest building, stumbling over her own feet as she tried to run away from the freezing air. When she finally made it to the door and pushed, she found herself in a hallway that was eerily similar to the one leading to Alder’s office. But this was definitely not the same building.
She couldn’t help but follow the line of small lights leading down the hallway to not-Alder’s-office. Tally had been walking that same route more than she should in the past months, to report to Alder, to question Alder, to accuse Alder. Tally cringed at the memory.
(She just needed to see Alder.)
She didn’t knock on the door, though Goddess knew why. She could have been barging in on a number of objectively horrible situations, but she didn’t knock. Tally grabbed the door handle and pushed down, body still racked with shivers. It took a few tries to get it open, but when she did…
She was in Alder’s office. The only other place Tally knew better was her own unit’s room – and a long time ago, what sometimes felt like another lifetime, her childhood bedroom. There was no confusion about it, but it didn’t make sense, nonetheless. Tally had wandered the grounds until she’d almost left them altogether. She might have left, too, if it weren’t for the cold. And gone where? She didn’t know. She just knew she had to go. She’d just felt like she had no place in the ‘new’ Army.
Tally stared at the familiar fireplace, homely and entirely out of place in a general’s office, embers red and warm, wood crackling in invitation. She blinked, and then she was in front of it, hands outstretched and hurting from the heat; it must have been cold for much longer than she’d thought, for this level of hypothermia. But the pain quickly subsided, and Tally felt comfortable for the first time since that morning.
So she didn’t think about why there was an exact copy of Alder’s office in another building on the grounds, she didn’t question why the fireplace was roaring. She just sat down on one of the armchairs and closed her eyes, shedding the final pieces of her mask that had been the only thing holding her together all day.
Tears trickled down her cheeks only with retroactive consent; she was too tired to stop them. What had she done?
The ache in Tally’s chest made itself known with a sob bubbling out of her throat. She didn’t bother smothering it in the dead quiet, even if it was deafening to her ears. Tally felt like each single witch that had ever lived was grieving the loss of Sarah Alder, and their grief manifested itself in her, the traitor who had caused Alder’s downfall.
Tally didn’t know how long she’d been crying for, only that when a heavy hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder and squeezed, its heat almost a brand through Tally’s uniform, she immediately stopped.
“I hope you weren’t too cold. I… didn’t think anyone would come to this side of the grounds,” Sarah Alder said behind her. The woman’s tone was even, a little cautious – maybe embarrassed at finding someone crying and not knowing how to deal with it? But there was no hatred in her voice, no resentment.
Tally choked on a gasp, but didn’t turn around. If this was some sort of cruel hallucination, she didn’t want it to end. If this was the only time she’d ever hear that voice talking to her like that again, with a maybe-imagined barely-there softness… She’d take it. She’d take anything from Alder at this point. But wait. What had she said?
“The cold… that was you?” Tally asked when she found her voice, completely unnerved by the hand still on her shoulder, though she was afraid of how she’d feel if the touch disappeared.
“Yes,” Alder said. “I’m usually better at controlling my emotions. But, well. You can imagine.”
Tally felt the sting of what remained unsaid. That she had been the cause of the bone-chilling wind, of the emotions behind it.
“I’m-”
“I apologize. That wasn’t fair to you,” Alder interrupted.
At that, Tally did turn around. Her relief when Alder didn’t immediately disappear was only underscored by the shock at the woman’s words.
“You’re apologizing? To me? What?”
Alder swallowed and looked away for a moment, her jaw tensing and relaxing uneasily. Then she looked right into Tally’s eyes with a fire so hot that it felt liquid. Tally couldn’t look away.
“What you did was foolish. It was downright idiotic. But it was also right, because you believed in it with your whole heart. You stood up to impossible odds just because you felt like you couldn’t sit by and do nothing. That kind of strength is not something that can be taught. That kind of strength is rare, Craven.”
“But- but I hurt you. The… the look in your eyes, I thought you hated me-”
“I hated what you forced me to do,” Alder said, taking her hand away from Tally’s shoulder and turning with her back to her. “I never wanted to be in a position to hurt you, Craven. But without someone else stepping in, there was nothing else I could do, do you understand?”
“Y-yes. I know. I knew,” Tally hesitated, not knowing how to say I was ready to die without sounding like a suicidal idiot.
“I know, too. I could see it in your eyes,” Alder continued, her head turning to stare at the fireplace, her expression blank, her shoulders taut, her hands clasped behind her back. Picture perfect posture. “You were terrified. You weren’t even looking at the scourge, you were looking at me and you were afraid. When I yelled, before your Coven intervened… your fear disappeared. You were a soldier again, fighting for your cause, ready to die for it.” Alder sat down on the other armchair, and looked at Tally. “And I would have killed you. For that, more than the cold and more than anything else, I am sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Tally found herself saying with an ease that both was and wasn’t her own. “If I had the ability, I think… I think I would have killed you, too.”
“Good,” Alder replied.
Tally knew instantly that it was the truth. If it were anyone else, she’d probably call them crazy for saying such a thing, fight against it and say that no one should ever condone murder like that. But it was Alder, and Tally knew Alder. Better than most people who were alive, and probably better than most who were dead, too.
“I’m still sorry,” Tally whispered, feeling like if she said it any louder, she might break something.
“That’s good, too. Wouldn’t want to have a drink and listen to good music with someone who genuinely wanted me dead, now would I?” Alder smiled a strange half-smile that lit up her eyes in a way Tally had never seen before.
Before Tally could say anything in response, she was already out of her chair, fiddling with her record player and putting on some soft jazz, before filling two glasses halfway with her favorite whiskey. Tally knew it was her favorite, because she had felt the warmth of the alcohol when Alder drank it, back when Tally was… part of her.
“Ice?” Alder asked when she returned to their seats, handing Tally her glass with her hand still hovering above it uncertainly.
“Uh, no thanks. I just want all the warmth now,” Tally laughed weakly, feeling the ghost of a shiver up her spine.
“I hadn’t realized the weather was that bad,” Alder said with the slightest widening of her eyes.
“I’m not sure whether that was just you, honestly. I might have caused some of it to myself with my own… mess of feelings,” Tally admitted.
Alder nodded, acknowledging the possibility, before taking a big gulp of her drink. Tally half-expected to be hit by dizziness, before remembering that they weren’t connected anymore, that they hadn’t been for a long time. She took a much smaller sip of her own, feeling incredibly young when the alcohol hit her nonetheless.
“So… where are the Biddies?”
“Sleeping. I told them to rest. My, how did you put it? Mess of feelings,” Alder’s mouth quirked up in amusement, “tired them out, and I didn’t want them to be exhausted tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?” Tally asked almost as quickly as Alder finished her explanation, feeling like she needed to know the answer, like this was the most important thing she would learn in her life.
“I’m leaving,” Alder said simply, her earlier smile gone. “They’ve made me this… facsimile of an office, brought all of my things. They said I can stay here as long as I can, that I can always return here. Bullshit,” she smiled. “They just wanted to placate me, thinking I’d kill them on the spot otherwise. I haven’t made up my mind whether I want to prove them right or not, in thinking that I’d be such a monster.” The smile turned rueful. “I’ve killed people for less.”
“You can’t leave,” Tally said pleadingly, and realized she completely meant it, and also that she was incredibly dumb to say it out loud.
“Excuse me?” Alder asked, and for the first time her tone wasn’t warm anymore. Tally suppressed a shiver. “Is this not what you wanted? New leadership? The fall of the monster who killed people in cold blood and didn’t look back? The truth to come out and burn everything?”
Tally drank the rest of her glass in one gulp and forced herself not to cough. The burn down her throat felt right and yet still not enough, too small of a punishment for what she’d caused.
“No. No, that’s not what I wanted,” she said, with an even voice that couldn’t have been her own, because she was trembling like a leaf. “I wanted the truth, yes. But not because I wanted to take you down. I wanted… I just wanted for you to listen,” Tally finished with a hiccup that turned into a silent sob, her vision of a stone-faced Alder getting blurry with tears.
She closed her eyes, unable to see even the faint outline of the woman she held so many feelings for, confusing and at odds with each other. And under it all, a current of connection stronger than all the negative or positive; sometimes she loved it, and other times she hated it, because she couldn’t help but understand Alder even when she didn’t understand her at all.
Tally didn’t realize she’d said all of it out loud until she heard a sob that wasn’t her own and opened her eyes to see Alder with tear streaks down her face.
“Please… please don’t leave,” she pleaded again, feeling pathetic for trying but unable to stop, unable to do anything but try to keep this woman, this force of nature and magic and life and love from disappearing from her life forever.
Alder stood, and Tally shot up out of her chair and grabbed her hand. Alder’s eyes widened as she looked down at their hands, but she didn’t remove her own.
“Craven,” she started, but something in Tally’s face must have made her reconsider. “Tally,” she tried again in a softer tone, uttering the name with such emotion that no one had ever uttered it before. Tally felt the tears threatening to come back, but she forced them down. She needed to see Alder for this. She needed to.
“Tally,” Alder whispered, and Tally couldn’t take it anymore.
She surged forward and crashed their lips together, eyes closed and caution in the wind. If she was being foolish, so be it. If she was the stupidest person alive, so be it. The woman she loved more than anything that could be expressed in words was going to leave, possibly forever, and Tally would never be able to even begin to show her what suddenly felt like the most important thing. Alder kissed back, just as fervently, and in that moment there was a something in them that connected again, overwhelming and superseding everything else.
Tally shakily pulled back, hands bunched up painfully in Alder’s uniform, unable and unwilling to let go.
“Please.”
Alder swallowed with difficulty, but didn’t look away.
“I have to,” Alder said, and Tally felt her insides turning to ash. “But,” she added as she took Tally’s face between her hands, “I’ll come back. When the work is done, I’ll come back.”
Tally didn’t know what to feel, elation at the feelings she felt reciprocated, heartbreak because she hadn’t been able to change Alder’s mind, or horror at the sudden conviction she felt about what she was about to say.
“Take me with you. I’m a Knower. I know things, I see things, I can help, I-”
“Okay.”
“I can fight- wait, what? Did you just say okay?”
“I did,” Alder smiled. “I would have even told you earlier, had you not interrupted. But I can’t say I minded,” she winked. “I was going to ask your whole Coven, actually. Whatever you have left to learn in War College doesn’t hold a candle to what is already inside you all. And it would be such a shame to waste your belief to fighting the Camarilla in the… standard, Army way.”
“We’re- we’re hunting the Camarilla?” Tally asked, disbelieving, unable to comprehend that (ex) General Sarah Alder had just basically asked her to defect.
“Yes. I think you were extremely foolish to challenge me today,” Alder said, and Tally did feel foolish, extremely so, especially knowing what she did now. “But I also think you were right. I did need to listen. I think I had gotten complacent with Fort Salem, having a home for us and ignoring everything else that I didn’t want to address. I forgot the why behind the choices, the sacrifices. I was doing everything for the sake of the Army, when I should have been doing it for the sake of witches.”
Alder let go of Tally’s hand then, and went to open the door to her not-office.
“Come. It’s late. You should get some sleep. We have an early start tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”