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Red takes heed of the morning sky.
In the absence of Blue, the sky bleeds. It drips down in shades of flame, the white sun perched on the horizon, cold and blazing as it rises ever higher.
The tea in her cup is still. She takes a finger to the handle to twist it in place, its base a perfect matching circle to the saucer, concentric with the ripples Red imagines would burst across the surface if she hadn’t honed such a steady hand. The tea within is bitter, steeped too long to tip past sweet into a flavor better suited for her and Blue.
Sweet was hardly a word meant to resemble them, yet this tea was brewed between loving palms. Woven circlets of preserved flowers hung on the wall of their bedroom, braided so idly that their dexterous, skilled hands imbued meaning into the stems’ existence. A band sat upon her finger, exchanged with the reverence of magpies who have learned what a treasure it means to keep that which you were never owed.
The presence of Blue has deepened Red immeasurably. Full, luxurious, but never so saturated as to feel satiated. She is both more and less than, flayed to bone and dense of flesh, made of tea, of the cool breeze, of birdsong and berry, of stars and the hunger between them.
Red sits upon her porch each evening to bask in the breadth of the sky. Sometimes, Blue sits beside her. Sometimes, Blue is there only in the stinging cut of glass to skin, the heavy tension of a rising storm. But always, one way or another, she is there.
Red does not care for the sorrow that parting brings. After all, she is not sweet. She is impatient on the other side of the crucible, spoiled by what it is to know Blue at her side, behind her ribs, the taste of her beneath her tongue and roiling in her stomach. And yet, they must part against Garden and the Agency. Uncertain what it means—if anything—beyond carving a place wholly theirs, threading themselves upstream and downstream until they exist amid all the strands, always present, hidden, despite the best efforts of the adversaries.
It is odd, Red thinks, to hope. That there is ever a doubt as to the outcome of her desires, a consequential path that is not shaped exactly as she and Blue wills it ultimately to be. It was never something she held, even in her place as a soldier for the war. Hope is not something she can ever hold with familiarity. Red does not think she wants to, even if she could.
So they continue. Now, her own color burns in the sky. She also knows that it is blue, just the same.
Red takes a sip and considers.
Blue ducks through the dusty streets of another London. This one has yet to burn, but the fog is thick enough that it is only a matter of time. Here, the sky is not blue. It is not red, either. It holds no color at all, washed away in smog and grief.
Her face is not one she has donned before, but even with its new lines and color, she knows Red will see it and smile. Her sharp, knowing grin will cut Blue down wholly, seeing Blue better than she could herself, both of them part of the other in a way they cannot hope to understand alone, anymore.
On the way out-thread, Blue had slipped into a shop. Its stores were threadbare, walls crumbling and shelves rotting, only holding on to another day with the white-knuckled desperation of hope. She had given it to them, gold and heavy in a thick, cloth bag, cleaning out their wares. She has calculated out the careful turning of this strand’s consequence, how the family will scuttle away in the night before the city is set ablaze, their daughter now free to change the course of an entire continent’s art and science.
It does not matter to her, in truth. She only knows this because she cannot stop the knowing, the press of action and thought ingrained into the strands of her own being, able to turn it off as easily as she could stop loving Red.
That is to say, not at all.
She had always set herself apart in Garden, but somehow now she is closer than she has ever been to her fellow soldiers. She will never know them the way she has learned to know Red, but there is a camarderie that lingers in the near misses. They feel drawn to her as something familiar that was cut apart so sharply, a shade of who they could be and yet never will.
Regardless, it is no matter to Blue, who had never felt the need the others had to tune her pitch to the hum of synchronicity. Blue had, in fact, been made to always orient herself towards Red. Time had been woven distinctly to grant her this boon that no life held within Garden could even remotely emulate.
The affair here in this London is a wrench in the works for both Garden and Agency, warning and celebration both. Some days, her actions feel akin to a boat ceaselessly beaten back by the current, borne away from a goal that doesn't exist. Some days, in truth, an end hardly felt to be the point of her existence—instead, it was the mere struggle all of it.
But days like today—a joy sampled from a now-burning shop, the view of a sky grey but hope of Red—shapes her drive. Her spite, too. Without another to guide her actions, she and Red looked to each day as a blank horizon, one as empty as it was full.
Blue clutches her wares tighter in her fist. Red will like it; of that she is certain.
Blue returns to an echoing home. She plucks on the strands of time, knows Red is both here and not, and settles her weight onto the edge of the bed.
When Red approaches, the house reverberates.
“How sentimental of you,” Red says, clutching Blue’s gift in hand. It’s a funny observation because it’s true. How odd to be two who hold on to each other. There was a before, when all they knew was what they were driven towards, but to linger in the past in the most personal of ways was anathema. Now, they reminisce much as they bleed, their wist churning thick and sluggish through their veins. Vitality is no longer placed unto them, but something extracted from the other, grown, then seeded yet again until the flourish.
“I am a whim to my fancy,” Blue says, taking a pinch of tea from Red's bag. She crushes the dried leaves lightly between two fingers. The scent blooms, sparking memory and desire. “Meaning you.”
Red places the gift down and cups her palms over Blue’s knuckles. Today, they are warm. Always, they are familiar. “I am meant to believe you would change the fate of an entire strand for the sake of whimsy?”
“Yes,” Blue replies blithely. “It’s hardly an unusual turn of events, if you consider our current state of existence.”
“And you’ve done much considering of late,” Red says. The gentle mockery lets free the steam that holds Blue’s shoulders stiff, lets her lean into Red’s hold. The crook of Red’s neck is a perfect fit.
“Only to match your own." Blue's words whisper against Red’s skin, a promise of foam, waves crashing against rock, rebirth.
Red does not speak further, letting her fingers scrape across the surface of Blue, skin and song in equal parts.
On their tongue is the taste of tea, once unknown. Outside, the sky is indigo. This corner of time is tucked between strands by loving hands, dormant, as Blue and Red wait for nothing and everything.