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Mabel has always existed in the in-between, the liminal spaces of the world. She’s been used to flitting in and out of mortal existence since before she knew how to ride a bike. Being literally stuck, however, completely invisible to the human world, more ghost than girl? That, she couldn’t quite get the hang of.
Especially when the love of her life is so goddamn persistent in trying to contact her.
See: Anna at the kitchen table, staring up at the lightbulb. See: Mabel, standing on the table, hand on her hip, waiting for Anna to ask again.
Her patience is rewarded with Anna taking a deep breath. “Are you – are you there?”
Mabel flicks the lightbulb hard, and it warms up after a second, making a soft noise and illuminating Anna’s face.
The other girl grins, her hands fluttering slightly at her sides before she tucks them against her chest. Mabel wants to reach out and grab them, yank Anna over to her and have them both scream and flap their hands together, like they did under the hill, dancing around the rose vines and the Court’s masquerade.
But Anna’s smiling now, at least, so Mabel sticks her hand on the lightbulb again. It brightens the room considerably.
Hi, Anna, is what she’s trying to say, hi, Anna, I love you, but Anna can’t hear her, so she just keeps the lights on, buzzing comfortably around the House as she sits down on the table, criss-cross with her hands braiding her hair absentmindedly. Anna’s still talking, but then again she never really stops. She’s doing what Mabel asked-- what Mabel wanted. It’s novel.
Mabel reflects on this for a moment before tuning back into the one-sided conversation.
“Do that thing again if you can hear me?”
Buzz. She doesn’t even have to touch the bulb this time.
“Wow,” says Anna, all wary, weary hope. “Okay. Goddamn.”
Anna begins talking about something else, though the details aren’t clear in Mabel’s head. Mabel knows that she gets mad, knows that they fight, doesn’t remember why or when. Mabel does remember seeing Anna pick up the phone in the late afternoon before screaming into the receiver at someone who is not Mabel (she’d never be so pointlessly angry at Mabel, every fight of theirs has a reason). She remembers watching Anna sink to the ground, hands hooked in her own hair, rocking herself.
Mabel remembers exactly what Anna tells her next. The quiet way she does it, Sally, she died four days ago, how hard she’s trying to make Mabel feel better. Mabel turns all the lights in the House into an orchestra. Mabel laughs and laughs and laughs.
“Fuck,” Anna mutters, when Mabel finally runs herself out. Then: “I know. I know.”
She doesn’t know, of course. The anger reignites-- every piece of Mabel Anna has collected has been refracted through Sally’s lies. She can’t ever know what Mabel is feeling, because Sally and Luna and the King and the Court stole Mabel’s chance to get to tell her--
Mabel rages, and every light in the House bursts to life to the sound of her pacing the hallways, the pictures on the mantelpiece falling over at the wrath of her glare. She loops the House three times, all the floorboards creaking, every window slamming open and then shut. Vines in the walls reach out to grab her wrists and find empty air, and the wood attempts to hold her but cannot find her shape from where she’s hiding (hide and seek, Anna’d called it, and it’s as apt a metaphor as any).
Despite her attempts to keep being angry, and no matter how hard she attempts not to, she ends up back with Anna, curling against her side like a cat. They’re in the room Anna thinks is Mabel’s-- it’s much bigger than the attic, and there’s a bed in the center of it that Mabel has only slept in twice-- but being in here seems to make Anna feel a little better, so Mabel can’t make herself be angry about yet another lie being added to Anna’s perception of her. She wouldn’t want her in the attic, freezing cold and aching. It’s better this way. Mabel will tell her the truth when she’s back.
Anna doesn’t react to Mabel’s presence, so Mabel buzzes the lightbulb on and off quietly, which wins her a small smile from her girlfriend, a whispered welcome back. Anna can’t feel Mabel next to her, but she moves over anyway, puts her phone in the spot Mabel is lying in, stares up at the ceiling, and then sighs softly, her hands twisting over each other. She’s murmuring something that sounds like a promise or a prayer.
Mabel closes her eyes as Anna finishes; lets herself relax just enough to pretend that Anna can see her, that the arm Anna’s put around her frame is meant to hold her, not to keep track of the phone she’s been using to communicate with the false version of Mabel that she’s got in her head.
“Please stay alive in there until I can get you out,” Anna mutters, and Mabel has the lightbulb buzz one more time, an affirmation that she promises-- she’ll do whatever Anna asks of her, she’ll follow where she leads-- before flicking it off. Anna’s drifting off, her breathing evening out enough that Mabel feels confident she’s truly asleep after a few minutes. She opens her eyes just enough to watch the door; moves closer to Anna, arm around her shoulders; waits for morning.