Work Text:
The moon hangs high and round in the sky like a great silver dollar as Kay treads into the kitchen on quiet, bare feet. Pess raises her head in sleepy acknowledgement from her dog bed by the balcony door, but doesn’t get up to greet her. It’s far too early for that. Ordinarily, Pess sleeps with Mr. Edgeworth in his room, but the summer nights are warm and it’s cooler out here, on the tile.
It’s so early in the morning that it can barely be classified as morning, but it isn’t quite night, either: this strange, bleary, in-between space. Kay’s loose hair spills tangled and wild down her back, unruly from a restless sleep. She brushes her bangs out of her eyes, too tired to care. The cold fingers of her nightmare are still grasping for her, claws digging into the soft flesh of her arms, lying heavy in her throat like a lodged, jagged stone. She exhales, trying to loosen the knot in the cage of her ribs.
Mr. Edgeworth doesn’t know that she has bad dreams sometimes, but she isn’t going to tell him. Between the two of them, her and Sebastian, she’s the strong one. She doesn’t need coddling or protecting or soft words in the dark when she wakes up crying and gasping for air; her nightmares and fears are nothing compared to his. Her horrors are small, compared to his.
She’s fine.
The images from her nightmare linger, dancing on the backs of her eyelids. Her father on the lobby floor, his face blurred and twisted until it isn’t really her father anymore but someone she doesn’t recognize, his chest gaping, the knife deep, the Yatagarasu’s golden badge held so tightly in his hand that the three-legged edges dig into the soft skin of his palm and draw blood.
It isn’t a nightmare she has very often, but she does have it, sometimes, on difficult days.
After a fight.
Kay exhales, stirring her bangs, and rummages through the cupboard for a mug while her eyes adjust to the kitchen’s dim light, lit only by the moon. She sets the mug down on the counter as softly as she can; she doesn’t want to wake Mr. Edgeworth, or Sebastian. Especially Sebastian. She refills the kettle in the sink and turns the stove on low; it’s a gas burner, with blue flames sparking to life, reaching up with small fiery hands to brush at the kettle’s curving edges. She watches those flames, just for a moment, before turning away.
Mr. Edgeworth keeps the tea on the lowest shelf of the cupboard closest to the stove for easy access when they’re bleary-eyed in the morning. She retrieves a box of chamomile; a half-full bottle of honey and the cinnamon jar join the box on the counter, and Kay squints against the blaring light of the fridge as she retrieves the milk. She likes her tea sweet, a large dollop of honey in the bottom of the mug, cinnamon on top. Two bags of chamomile when they’re out of loose leaf, because one is never strong enough. They ran out of lavender last week, but she likes it, sometimes.
Honey, tea, milk, cinnamon. Kay stirs the contents of her cup twice with a spoon, counterclockwise, slow. Her head hurts, the kind of ache that sits right behind her eyes and lingers. The steam is warm on her face, and she is tired. And when she turns to the kitchen table, he is there.
She hadn’t heard his door open, and she hadn’t heard him come in. She hadn’t heard the chair on the tiles, but he’s there all the same, and as she stares at him her tongue sits heavy in her mouth, the mug in her bare hands too hot and burning.
Sebastian stares back. There are dark shadows under his eyes and his hair is messy, like hers.
Kay hesitates. The tidal wave of her regrets flood up and batter at the dam of her teeth, everything she wants to say dancing there on the very tip of her tongue. But it’s all too hard to get out, to force free, these small words too complex and heavy to put into the lengthy space between them. Her pride like a dragon, difficult to tame and reluctant to admit that she crossed a line.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” Kay says instead, because she’s never been good at saying I’m sorry , not even when she was young.
Sebastian looks down at his hands resting on the kitchen table, his pinky tracing the grain of old wood. He looks back up at her, and when he speaks his voice is careful and quiet. “Okay.”
Her fingers flex around her mug before she slowly sets it down on the table, careful, because she filled it right to the brim and doesn’t want to spill, and she pushes it in front of him. He watches her as she takes the jar of cinnamon from the counter and sprinkles a little more on top, because she’s learned he likes it that way.
“It’s hot,” she says, pulling back.
He cups his hands around the mug. “I know.”
“…Okay.”
Kay turns back to the kitchen. To the kettle, still sitting on the stove. She feels Sebastian’s eyes at her back as she picks the kettle up by its handle; there’s warm water inside for another small cup. Not enough for a full cup, but half, maybe. She drops the tea bags into a second mug with another dollop of honey and pours the water in, listening to the crickets singing outside the kitchen window where it sits partially cracked open to let in the cool night air, to the sound of Pess snuffling in her sleep while she dreams of whatever it is dogs might dream about. Something good, Kay hopes, as she stirs her mug of tea. Like endless car rides with the windows rolled all the way down and treats that never end.
When her tea is done, she joins Sebastian at the table. The chair squeaks softly against the kitchen tile as she sits down. She exhales, and the steam from her tea billows, curling between them like smoke.
Sebastian takes a sip from his mug, glancing at Kay over the rim. When her eyes meet his, he looks away.
“Is it okay?” she asks.
He sets the mug down. “It’s good,” he says. “A little too sweet.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Kay rotates her mug in her hands, studying the pattern of cinnamon scattered across the milk foam. Her headache throbs in her skull. Across the table, Sebastian stares down into his own mug, shoulders drawn and tense. Kay purses her lips.
“Aren’t you tired?” she asks, voice quiet.
Sebastian looks back up at her. “Yeah,” he replies, voice soft. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
The crickets sing. Pess stretches and yawns. Kay brushes a strand of her dark hair behind her ear and chances a sip of her chamomile tea; it’s still hot, but not hot enough to burn her tongue. If she listens she can hear Sebastian’s soft breathing. Hours ago this space hadn’t been nearly as quiet, their loud voices ricocheting off the tiles like stray bullets that hit too close to home, where now there is silence stretches between them like a taut piece of string. She shifts, pulling her legs up onto the chair and she lets the heat from the tea warm her from the inside out, melting away the lingering cold from her nightmare, what is left of it that still clings to her.
Kay looks up at Sebastian, sitting across from her. His hands around the mug (bare, but Kay doesn’t let her gaze linger), his tea no longer steaming but still warm. He’s turned away from her slightly, looking out toward the window, toward the endless blinking stars and his brown eyes look nearly black in the dark. She wonders whether if she were to turn on a light they would be rimmed with red, if he would have faint tear tracks down the curve of his cheeks, and if they were, if he did, it would be her fault.
The echoes of the things she’d said whisper in her ears, something that chamomile tea and milk and honey cannot ease or change.
“I didn’t mean it,” Kay says, then, and she tries to channel everything she is struggling to say into those four little words.
Sebastian lifts his tired gaze to meet hers. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “I know.”
“Really.”
“I know.”
Kay opens her mouth to say more, but her tongue is dry in her mouth. Like water held in cupped hands, her words are slipping away from her. She’s not used to being in this position. She’s not used to being the one tongue-tied and stammering. Their fight replays in her mind, sharp voices and words tossed around carelessly. Mr. Edgeworth had interrupted them, and sent them both to their rooms to think on what they’ve said and done, even though it wasn’t Sebastian’s fault, not really.
He has boundaries, Kay, Mr. Edgeworth had said to her, when he brought her dinner because she’d refused to come out of her room. I understand that it can feel very strange to share a space with someone you’re largely unfamiliar with, but you’ve both been through a lot. You have to be careful with the things you say around him, especially now.
Kay curls her knees to her chest, the dregs of her tea swirling in the very bottom of her mug.
You may not believe it, but your words carry weight with him.
It’s an effort, pulling it up from her chest, words unfamiliar on her tongue but she needs to say them, she needs to. And so she does, finally, meeting his gaze over their dwindling cups of tea, here in the dark of the kitchen while Mr. Edgeworth sleeps.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and she means it so much. “I…I shouldn’t have called you that.”
Sebastian purses his lips, but says nothing, not immediately. Her impatience gnaws at her stomach, and her nervousness is something unexpected. In the face of his silence she didn’t think she’d want forgiveness so desperately. Mr. Edgeworth’s words echo in her ears:
Your words carry weight with him.
And I suspect his carry the same weight with you.
Kay glances down at his mug. He’s finished his cup. So has she. But though she is tired it isn’t the kind where she feels as if she could sleep, so she curls her fingers around the handle of her mug, inching her chair backward while Sebastian sits there unspeaking with her apology resting there between them. “Do you want more tea?” She asks, because the silence is aching and she doesn’t know what else to do.
Sebastian looks down at his empty mug. His fingertips tap a quiet rhythm against the ceramic before he slowly gets to his feet. He reaches out to take Kay’s mug, pulling it gently out of her grasp. “I’ll make it,” he says, then, and though it is faint, barely-there and tired, he gives her a small smile.
And though Kay is not well-versed in the language of apologies, she thinks that might be okay, for now. It is not forgiveness in its whole, but perhaps something close to it, a sign that a calm dawn rests on the horizon. It’s a start, she tells herself, watching Sebastian refill the kettle. It’s a start.