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"What the fuck did you do?"
Tally just about launched herself through the stained glass window in Sarah's office when Nicte's voice snuck up behind her. She was regularly teased for lacking survival instincts when it came to her choice of partners, so it wouldn't have been entirely out of character to accidentally kill or maim herself, she supposed.
Nicte's pause in the doorway allowed her enough time to stuff her heart back where it belonged. Tally turned to face the consequences of her actions with guilt etched into her DNA.
The worst of those consequences wouldn't come until later, when Sarah got home. Tally was a dead woman — or at the very least a single woman from that point forward.
"I…" Her large eyes were comical as they darted from Nicte to the smashed pottery littering the floor of Sarah's office. One vase was suddenly in five or six pieces and she was already plotting her own funeral because of it. "I-I was cleaning, and I tried to move it over to dust and then everything was terrible."
"Smooth," Nicte quipped, chuckling to herself.
Tally blanched and suddenly looked very queasy. "She's going to divorce me."
Nicte sauntered over to inspect the damage — much too casually for Tally's taste, given the severity of her faux pas.
Scattered around Tally's feet were bits of some ugly looking colour-fucked thing Nicte had always thought better suited a trash can or belonged in Sarah's greenhouse. If the vase was relegated to the greenhouse, Nicte wouldn't have to look at it anymore, because Sarah had barred her from there years ago. Apparently, she had a knack for 'murdering plants just by looking at them', to quote the former General and resident smug plant guru. Nicte was never sure if that was a subtle dig at her Push abilities or not.
After absorbing the crime scene for a beat, the damage became clear. "Oops," Nicte deadpanned, glancing from the pieces to Tally, "at least you killed the ugly one."
Annoyed by the carefree attitude, Tally swatted the more useless of her two wives. "You're not helping," she barked, and suddenly disappeared to her knees to start pulling the pieces together. They fit like a child's jigsaw puzzle which gave her some hope it could be fixed.
Nicte released a dramatized sigh and crouched next to her. "Tal, she's not going to care," she pointed out as she picked up one of the secondary pieces that had cracked into a v-shape. "It's a stupid vase, what's the big deal?"
Freezing in her attempts to force-jam things together, Tally rounded on Nicte, grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt and gave her a rough shake. "Nicte, it's a thousand years old and worth more than Fort Salem and the White House combined," she bemoaned. Her nostrils flared and she yanked Nicte face-to-face, so Nic could see the whites of her eyes up close.
That drew Nicte's concern for the first time. She screwed up her forehead, puzzled, and stared down at the smashed pottery while Tally had yet to loosen her grip. "That thing? How the fuck is something that ugly so expensive?"
And how much fucking money had Sarah spent over the centuries on ugly, useless shit that simply sat around and took up space? Nicte was beginning to think she hadn't thought nearly big enough when she bought a sailboat last year if they had dumb shit worth more than the continental United States sitting around.
"She got it from some diplomat in Japan forever ago," Tally groaned as she released Nicte and went back to gathering fragments. She was trying not to slice her hands open, but then maybe if she bled everywhere, it would earn her some sympathy points from Sarah. "I need to figure out how to fix it."
Nicte rolled that over in her mind. "Shit."
"Yes, shit," Tally snapped, not-so-gently shoveling several broken pieces into Nicte's arms so she could pick up more. "She's going to ditch me and I'm going to live on the streets alone for the rest of time."
"Aw, Tal," Nicte chuckled, "don't worry about that so much. You'll still have me."
Tally's feral growl only drew more unhelpful laughter. Sometimes she didn't know whether to throttle or kiss Nicte Batan.
"Hold these together," Tally barked, and she aggressively shoved the main body of the vase at Nicte without warning. "Maybe I can figure out a fixing seed and just–"
"–Tally no, I'm not–"
"–hold still, I just need to fit this togeth–"
Nicte fumbled all of the pieces in her grasp, regained hold of them briefly, then promptly dropped everything on the floor. She almost caught a bigger shard but accidentally batted it midair instead, sending it smashing into the cabinets lining the wall next to them.
Both parties flinched at the shattering that accompanied the second wave of disaster. Those large puzzle pieces suddenly became a dozen or more much tinier ones.
For a moment the room was completely silent and they both stared at the aftermath with a growing sense of dread. Then, Nicte's deadpanned, "Oops," slipped through, followed by "that's probably not good."
She glared at Tally, who looked ready to ascend to the afterlife right then and there. "That's on you, Red. These fingers might be magic but you know my small hands don't hold large vessels. Unless we're talking–"
"Do not say my boobs," Tally snapped, immediately burying her face in her hands. Nicte broke coffee mugs constantly and it drove Sarah nuts. This was an entirely different level of 'I'm divorcing you both, you clumsy fucks'. "We are so screwed, Nic."
"Think we have some glue somewhere," Nicte said idly, and she failed at hiding her amusement when Tally looked this close to stabbing her with the largest piece she could find. "Tal, seriously, if it was me who did the smashing I would be worried, but you're you. You have a longer leash."
"You just made it worse!"
"It was already fucked, I'm not taking the blame for this when she gets home!"
Tally's dirty look didn't slow up her cleaning attempts. She started piling debris onto Sarah's walnut desk when Nicte's hands were full again, shoving aside paper folders that were getting in her way. "That's not true," she argued, ignoring Nicte's exaggerated sigh. "I don't have a longer leash than you."
Nicte pushed off from her knees and got up to add her bounty to the pile. "Kinda is," she mused, resting a comforting hand on the small of Tally's back when her hands were free. "C'mere to me, gorgeous."
Tally was pulled from her feeble attempts at rearranging the debris field, as though she could somehow encourage it to mold itself back together, and found herself wrapped in Nicte's smug embrace instead.
"We'll tell her together that you've been a naughty girl, how's that?" Nicte crooned, and Tally rolled her eyes. Nicte just grinned and tightened her hold around the redhead's waist. "C'mere, you're shaking. One last foray into bliss before Sare murders us both."
Pouting the whole time, Tally allowed Nicte to guide her into a soft kiss, humming against her searching lips and falling deeper into it. Nicte was a master of distraction with that mouth of hers, be it snarking at all the wrong moments or pulling stunts like this. Tally preferred this method, personally. If the last thing she did before she died was kiss Nicte, she would be okay with that.
For the first time in ten minutes, she actually started to smile. "How much time do you think we have?" she murmured, idly pulling at the hem of Nicte's t-shirt. "Should we pack our bags and flee, or–"
"What the hell is going on in here?" Sarah's announcement froze them both.
With their lips still smashed together and her shirt halfway up her belly, Nicte popped her eyes open, met Tally's newly panicked gaze, and in unison they turned their heads in Sarah's direction.
Sarah stood in the doorway, frowning at the conspicuous scene in front of her — remnants of a priceless artifact littering her floor and desk, and her wives standing in the middle of her office, making out like nothing was amiss.
"Um." Nicte's blasé attitude disappeared and was replaced by some major trepidation. Tally had gone catatonic in her arms so Nicte had to shove her own clothing back into place.
Sarah drew up to her full height, leaving them both about three feet tall in the process.
Nicte licked her lips and ignored the taste of Tally's lip gloss. She finally dropped her hold and scratched nervously at the back of her neck. "Tally broke a thing," she said lamely, jerking the other thumb at the evidence still littering Sarah's office.
Tally squeaked and rammed her knuckles into Nicte's ribcage without looking away from Sarah's predatory stance. "Traitor!" she hissed out the side of her mouth, and her whole face flushed with embarrassment. "Nicte broke it a second time!"
Nicte shot her a nasty glare and the two of them devolved into children with the barely-audible bickering and light shoves. Sarah stood in the doorway, waiting, and hid her amusement.
Wordlessly, she stepped inside her office and folded her hands behind her back, embodying the energy she had used for 335 years as General Alder to draw silence into the room. Icy blue eyes scanned the surface of her floor and desk, taking in the damage and gradually shifting to the two delinquents in front of her. As she loomed, they shrunk away.
"We're sorry," Nicte said meekly, while Tally flushed with embarrassment and struggled to maintain her berated sad girl pose. Nicte shifted her weight. "Tally's the one that came in here without asking."
"Shut up," Tally hissed, elbowing Nicte in the ribs again and instantly taking a shot in return.
The corner of Sarah's mouth tipped upward, barely. "Step aside."
Both parties moved to opposite ends of Sarah's desk, allowing her to inspect the damage.
Nicte's anxiousness grew worse the longer Sarah's silence reigned and she fidgeted herself into a new plane after a good twenty seconds. "Seriously Sarah, it was an accident," she piped up. "Tally didn't mean to."
Tally shot daggers across the short distance, though they fell away when Sarah finally cut her gaze directly at her instead. Tally clasped her hands behind her back and embodied a sheepish cadet all over again, like this was five years ago and not many more into an adult marriage with two women. "I'm sorry, Sare."
There was a moment where Sarah let them squirm for a little bit longer, then her smile finally broke free. "At ease."
Nicte rolled her eyes to the ceiling while Tally puffed out her relief and relaxed.
"Are we playing that game now, General?" Nicte husked, taking up a casual stance and leaning her palms back against the desk. "Gonna dole out the punishment?"
Tally cringed and Sarah ignored them both.
"Are either of you familiar with the Japanese concept of Kintsugi?" Sarah looked between them, waiting for confirmation that neither had, and carefully picked up one of the larger pieces. "It speaks of an object's history and its imperfections as something to celebrate and repair, as opposed to disguise or discard. Nothing remains untested throughout its life, nothing gets through unscathed."
Nicte snuck a look at Tally, who shrugged.
"This was given to me almost a century ago by a Japanese diplomat following the Great War," Sarah explained. Nostalgia clouded her vision as she turned over the bigger of the two fractured base pieces in her hands. "The world had torn itself at the seams and those of us that tried to piece it back together were battle worn and tired. It was hard to see the possibility for long-lasting peace in the aftermath and its tensions."
"So some old dude gave you a piece of shitty pottery and you created world peace?" Nicte asked skeptically.
Sarah closed her eyes and set down the fragment for a moment, bowing her head. Tally stared anywhere but at Nicte to distance herself from association. The silence was awkward and only Nicte didn't seem to notice or care.
When Sarah finally spoke again, she merely sent Nicte her infamous 'Quiet, please' face and continued as though there hadn't been any interruptions. "This particular artifact was created by a coven late in Japan's Heian period, around 1100 AD. The idea was that each artifact was destined for a certain individual, and so this one made its way to me at the time and place I was meant to receive it."
Now Nicte did manage to appear guilty, while Tally looked nauseous at its destruction. Nicte opted to defend their younger partner. "Shit, Sarah, we really didn't mean to–"
Sarah held up a hand and flashed them both a kind smile to quell any guilt. "What I'm trying to get to, if you would let me finish, dear, is that the Work shrouded in this vessel is very specific to a time and place. It was meant to make its way to me, just as it was meant to be broken by both of you."
Tally screwed up her forehead as she was overrun with thoughts, while Nicte just blinked down at the vase and held up a piece to eye level, as though searching for the magicks contained within.
Silence, then, "So does that mean you're not gonna spank Tally?"
Nicte, of course.
"I will collar you and leave you outside overnight," Sarah said evenly, a hairline twitch giving away the only other hint of her annoyance. Nicte was the one person on this planet who could dig into her this way and she lived to get a rise. It worked every time and Sarah never quite knew how she managed it with so much ease.
Sarah found her equilibrium again and resisted the urge to mute Nicte anyway, instead finishing her explanation while she still could. "Few people in my life over the centuries have encountered the object and broken it in the same setting." Her expression softened and the lines of General Alder faded into the softer smile of Tally's Sare-bear. "Anacostia was five and playing a game of tag in my office. Three Biddies who ended up being with me the longest. All were as sheepish as you, all were able to repair the damage done with a simple seed."
Nicte bit her lip to keep from asking questions, lest Sarah follow through on her threat. Tally spoke instead. "So you're saying we were meant to break it, because we're important to you?"
There was a moment where Sarah didn't say anything, and when she did finally meet their eyes in separate turns, there were tears glistening in her own. "Yes, that's precisely what I'm saying, darling. I've wondered when it would happen, or if, but certain that it was inevitable at some point if the stories were true."
She picked up a different piece and showed them a seam of gold riveting across the surface from one of its previous breaks. "Life is not perfect, people are never left unbroken by time and circumstance. However, it can be mended and made stronger by love. And in my three-hundred plus years, I have never loved the way I do you two." There was new light in Sarah's eyes now. "And none of us can argue we had our fair share of damage to repair along the way."
Even Nicte softened at that and had to take a moment to glance away, absorbing the tenderness of Sarah's words. Tally smiled bashfully and stepped closer to Sarah, hugging an arm around her waist and leaning up the short distance to kiss her soundly.
"I'm sorry for being a klutz, but I very much love you too," she murmured, lifting a hand to stroke the General's cheek. "Even if this is all bullshit and designed to not make me feel bad for breaking something worth more than our entire bank account."
Sarah's softness tripled and she set down the vase piece to focus her attention where it was needed. "Not at all, love. The value of knowing I was destined to have you break priceless objects means more to me than any monetary value."
Tally's dimples radiated and she laughed to herself, steering Sarah into a series of delicate, almost teasing kisses. "You are a romantic sap in secret, General. I love that only we know that."
Sarah smiled and rested her forehead into Tally's. She darted a look over at Nicte and frowned when she saw her staring down at the floor. "Nic?"
Nicte didn't say anything. Her eyes were cloudy and Sarah recognized her dissociation tactic from a mile away.
"Nicte, love, look at us."
Tally was confused too, until a delayed lightbulb popped on. "You made it worse, remember?" she reminded their partner, who furrowed her brow and suddenly blinked up at them. "You smashed it like a thousand different ways when I handed you the big piece."
Sarah registered Nicte's momentary walls as insecurity and gently extracted from Tally, who let her go and guided her to Nicte with a hand on her back. Sarah stood in front of the shorter woman, who was leaning back into her desk, and took up her face with both palms.
"You two together own my whole heart," Sarah said firmly, watching for Nicte to meet her eyes before continuing. "I have no doubt that you smashed it into the disaster sitting before us now. You know no other way."
Finally, a cheeky smile began to resurface and Nicte shoved her recurring feelings of inadequacy away. "I am a disaster," she agreed. Sarah pressed a loving kiss first to her forehead, then her mouth.
"Our disaster," Sarah murmured, and everything about Nicte melted.
Sarah stepped back between her partners again and gestured for them to take up space on either side, holding out her hands and linking with them both upon contact. A seed came to Sarah in the moment and stretched the invisible threads between her, the vase and the two women on either side, and together they took up her song.
Threads of gold ignited the air in Tally's vision and the vase pieces began moving of their own accord, shifting around the desk and floating weightlessly in front of them. She watched with rapt fascination as they gradually sewed themselves back together. The tints of new lines were different from the lesser cracks formed years earlier by Alder's adoptive daughter and her strongest Biddy bonds, and when the vase was whole again, seams told a story of each individual Sarah Alder held dear in her life.
Sarah picked up the re-solidified object and held it for the others to inspect. Along with lines of gold, copper, teal and black created by the previous four breakees, new seams of dusky silver – Nicte – and terracotta – Tally – appeared along the smooth surface.
"Life tells a story," Sarah said softly, holding the fixed vase in both hands. "Rest assured I am very content in mine."
"And I'm content you aren't kicking me to the curb," Tally mused, reaching for the object of distress.
Sarah politely turned away and held it out of reach. "I think I'd better put this somewhere safe, if you wouldn't mind."
Tally blushed and waved it off. "Good idea."
Nicte, however, rolled her eyes and nabbed it from Sarah's grasp when she wasn't paying attention. "Already broke it once, right? Live a little Sare, it'll do you some good."
"Nicte–" Sarah gestured after her as Nicte went to replace it on the shelf.
"Love you, Sarah," Tally said beside her, drawing the General's attention as she leaned up and planted a warm kiss on her cheek. "What do you say we forgo steak tonight and instead head out for some–"
A loud crash interrupted the moment and Sarah slammed her eyes shut. Tally froze solid.
From across the office, Nicte's sheepish voice carried back to them. "Oops."