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Shirley cannot remember any particular instance when she first fell in love with Senel. Memory after memory pile up like so many infinitesimal bits of snow as she tries to fall asleep each night but nowhere in there is a definitive time when she knew what the ache in her heart when she looked at him meant.
In fact, for many years, it was the opposite; watching him practice diving with Stella, clinging to his hand as they ran from the burning village, waiting for him to return to their house on the Mainland – each time she refused to put a name to the feeling and there it stayed all the same. As far back as she can remember and as best she can reason, loving him had been inevitable.
-
Shirley had told Senel back at the Wings of Light that she had waited for three years, longer, (as long as she’d loved him) to hear the words that the two of them could start over without the lie of siblings hanging over their heads. Without Stella’s ever present ghost.
That had been true at the time, but there had been much about Shirley back then that was true but that she had been unable to accept. Standing next to Senel as she watched Maurits discuss the details of the Ferines peace treaty with Madame Musette, she thinks on it again, thinks on calling Senel by his name, of taking his hand in a different way than she had back when she had saved him from drowning.
He looks back at her, open in a way he has never been around her before; and suddenly all Shirley knows is that the idea now feels stifling. She merely smiles at him and looks back at the peace talks.
It is lonely standing and waving to him as she follows after the Ferines delegation following their visit Stella’s grave that day; yet, somehow, it also feels as if this is the first time she’s truly stood on her own.
She prays to Stella that night not at her own lavish monument but bracketed against Fenimore’s grave and tells her sister all the things she’s bottled up: her jealousies, and grievances, the joys and sorrows of their childhood before Senel.
Her confusion over those last words: “your power exists to make people happy”. It had taken everything in Shirley to withhold the power Nerifes had given her; the Eres that called for the destruction of everything of the land, everything Shirley had ever known.
Could something like that ever create happiness?
She remembers Fenimore telling her that to help others be happy she had to first find happiness herself, and so she tells Stella that night: “I’ll try. I’ll try to find a place where we can all be happy.”
And it would include Shirley, too. No longer would she put herself last.
It felt good, after four years, to really speak to her sister again.
-
“So he’s still brother? I guess they’re still not completely over everything.”
-
It is strange to be together with Senel and his friends, after everything even though they had always been kind to her even before he had been willing to let any of them in; but he has, he has let them in and the smile he gives them is different from the hesitant one he shows her.
He laughs more, and she likes that.
She wants to laugh with them all too but somehow she thinks she may not deserve that.
When Thyra arrives at Werites Beacon it only confirms Shirley’s fears – there is blood on her hands, no matter her title of peace ambassador, and while the others rally around Senel when he protects her name she can’t help but wonder if they really all mean it.
She remembers the stifled air back when she, Hattie, and Chloe had been baking in Will’s kitchen and how it felt all too similar to the suffocating presence of her and Senel’s house back on the Mainland.
She hadn’t believed in him then, so she tries to believe in the others now; but it is hard and she is glad Madam Musette lets her have a room to herself because sometimes she needs to remind herself it is alright to cry.
-
“I envied you, actually. A trusted companion, an equal, someone close you can trust at your side; that's you Chloe. I felt that way ever since we first met.”
-
The rain is slick against her hands as Shirley presses both of them to Senel’s abdominal wound and uses all her might to will her healing eres to mend the damage there.
She knew exactly what happened as soon as she saw him there on the ground; and alongside her horror at the sight there is an eerie sense of déjà vu. Chloe did this to him in an attempt to end her pain – she could have killed him if Shirley had not been there, she may be out butchering a man even now to stall her feelings of pain for just one moment.
She’s like me, Shirley thinks for the first time. And shivers in the cold. It is Will who finds her like that and adds his own healing prowess to her own, eventually helping her carry Senel back to his house.
Shirley stays at her brother’s house that night, mostly stood by the heat of his stove when she is not checking on his wounds. She wonders where Chloe is right now out in the rain and hears the roar of the angry sea in her ears.
She isn’t sure who to pray to but she does that night, for Chloe.
-
“Maybe it's just a small thing, but I think it's from small things like
this that we form bonds with each other.”
-
Just like before when Shirley stood at the Wings of Light it is all their voices that bring Chloe back to herself; but most of all, it is Chloe’s own strength to believe her heart can change that brings her back from the precipice.
Shirley, having been there once herself, feels herself relax. She needn’t have worried so much: she’d always known Chloe was strong, after all.
Only much later does Chloe tell her that, actually, there was one voice that stood out among the others in the dark of the forest. Shirley’s voice.
Chloe belonged, and Shirley would make sure she knew it even if she wasn’t sure quite how (— “you’re kind of a brute, Shirl,” Norma tells her later.
Shirley blushes and thinks that is indeed one of the many new sides she’s discovered in herself.
“But thanks. C looks a lot happier now that she knows we want her to stay.”)
Maybe it was Norma’s pep talk, or the passion she sees in Chloe’s eyes when she asks Shirley to speak more naturally with her but the nickname is the first thing to slip from her lips.
Once it does, she finds she cannot stop until both of them are a mess of laughter and tears.
It becomes something special between them, even when Norma is eventually let in somewhat on their secret with a nickname of her own; still, Shirley thinks one evening, as she sketches out her plans for the next week in her journal she wishes she had chosen something more special, something unique.
(Something just for them).
When she wakes at her desk with “Chloe” scrawled across her weekly plans in both Orerines writing and Relares she realizes she wants to work up to it. She wants to feel the shape of her full name on her mouth, and more than that she wants to see Chloe’s face when she surprises her with it.
She starts to practice it each night, and once again, though for a different reason this time she is thankful to have a room of her own.
-
“I like us the way we are--together. As soon as I thought about that, the rest just came naturally.”
-
Shirley stays the night in Chloe’s room at the hospital once Moses has finally fallen asleep with Csaba at his side and Will has dealt with the crowds. Shirley has brought a futon for herself but neither find they can sleep even if they know there may indeed be a battle ahead.
“I feel so useless,” Chloe sighs, and seeing Shirley hovering slightly pats the seat next to her on the bed; slowly, Shirley comes to sit beside her shoulder to shoulder.
“Me too,” she admits and Chloe frowns at her. “Is that so odd?”
“You can heal people, Shirley; and you were right there for him after Giet attacked. I am not able to do anything like that.”
“I can help with basic first aid and my eres heals, yes, but I can never really fix what really matters. I can never touch those deep hurts.” She says, curling her arms around her skirt; Chloe considers her words in the quiet way she has and turns her ways.
“I suppose… it’s the same for all of us then. This is Sandors’ fight, and his alone, so even if I wanted to protect him I couldn’t.”
“It’s frustrating, yeah,” Shirley agrees, “but I think in a way we are protecting him. Csaba and Moses’ family too. I think it’s better to watch over someone while they find an answer rather than force one on them.”
Chloe looks at her, really looks at her and Shirley wonders if she’s revealed too much; if she sounds arrogant or pretentious, but instead a small smile slowly comes to Chloe’s face and she gives Shirley a slow nod.
“You may be right… no, I’m sure you are. You’re strong, Shirley.”
“I wasn’t always,” Shirley amends quickly, ducking her head in embarrassment at how passionately Chloe murmurs those words, “a-and Moses’ family is strong too.”
Chloe laughs in the soft way she does sometimes: “they certainly are. I am glad they followed him here, bandits or not.”
When Shirley looks back at Chloe she sees how tired the other woman is; how fighting in the Quiet Lands all this time has worn on her in a way Shirley as backup hasn’t experienced; more than anything she knows Chloe won’t stop worrying about Moses tonight, but Chloe never gives up on the things she loves.
So she shifts closer, bringing the blanket at the end of the bed with her and hands Chloe half of it which she takes after a moment’s hesitation; Shirley wraps her part around her shoulders and says: “they remind me a little of how it was for Senel, Stella and me back in the village. Do you want to hear about that?”
Chloe pauses in bringing her own part of the blanket up to her chest and blinks rather rapidly. “I do, but are you sure you want to tell me? Is it… alright?”
“It’s alright,” Shirley says, giving her more of the blanket; “I want to,” she adds, and finds only when she says it that she really does.
“Alright then,” Chloe replies, reverent, “please”.
Where to begin? Shirley leans up against the wall and thinks back, a smile coming to her lips.
“It was Stella who invited Senel to come live with us. I remember because I cried that night, afraid he would take her away from me.”
“Oh?” Chloe says, soft, and doesn’t laugh even as Shirley thanks back on her child self with humor.
“Mmhmm. I made her promise his bed would be on the far end of the house and she would still always sing me to sleep first thing. I used to put his things in a corner when I thought he wasn’t looking just so they wouldn’t intrude on Stella and my’s space.”
Chloe does give a soft laugh at that, and Shirley takes a moment to rest her head against the taller woman’s shoulder, continuing to speak as she does so: “but after the rite I kept having these nightmares and it was only Senel who could help drive them away. So it was three of us in the bed, curled up like this, me in the middle between Senel and Stella. It was a tight fit! Sometimes Senel would have fallen off and would still be sleeping.”
She goes on like that until she can feel some of the tension leave Chloe’s body, until the girl’s head rests against her own and her soft chuckles have turned to quiet snores. Shirley, for her part, is happy to watch over her like this and finds their hands have come together in something like an embrace; the feeling stokes something in her - something warm - but unlike those pangs she would feel in her chest looking at Senel it only bolsters her further, leaving her determined that tomorrow they would find Moses and help him.
Tomorrow, they would help their friend and his family.
Shirley eventually falls asleep thinking of that word, and how much of her life has been attached to it; and how different it has been since Chloe has come along. How strange and wonderful.
-
“Is this... the the old me...? “
“Are you alright, Shirley?”
“Yeah. I’m not like that anymore.”
-
“It’s hard to believe it’s really that time again,” Chloe tells her, watching her from one of the benches Madame Musette has set out for guests. Shirley, for her part, is repotting a good portion of the garden – including Celsius's seed, who had insisted despite “not needing such a form any longer” she not be moved from where Grune put her and of course Shirley had agreed.
(Her own fears of an entity made entirely of ice eres living in her flower garden aside she had made a surprisingly good companion to her when out with her watering can and compost bucket).
“You’re going home to the Mainland?” She says, taking her dirtied gloves off and accepting a glass of water from Chloe as she comes closer.
“Home…” Chloe ponders, and Shirley waits, “I’m going to visit mother and father,” is what Chloe decides and Shirley nods. It must be difficult for her to travel so far for their anniversary but Shirley knows from her own time with Stella how important it is.
“At the Valens estate right? Are you leaving from the port today?”
Chloe nods. “There’s not much else I need packed so, that’s right. After I make my usual rounds I plan to head out this afternoon.”
“Um,” Shirley says, putting her water down on the bench for a moment, “so the Madame and I are actually going to be visiting Gadoria in a week… would you still be there? I thought maybe-”
“There’s always something to do around the estate,” Chloe says, gently cutting her off before Shirley can fumble her request further. “All in good time, of course. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, Isabella and Curtis will be seeing the Madame to Rexalia after the delegation in Gadoria but I need to split off to meet with Maurits. Do you want to… come back to Legacy with me then?
“I would love to,” Chloe tells her, eyes soft and Shirley does not doubt her for a second.
Shirley wasn’t sure how she wanted this to go, only that she had wanted to spend more time with Chloe; but this, well…
“Norma!” Chloe shouts as if somehow the treasure hunter might hear her from the rickety boat she’s currently rowing, “I should have known better than to trust her recommendation on that gald-saving service.”
“It’s alright,” Shirley says, taking over and carefully not mentioning how Chloe’s hands shake on the oars. “We still aren’t far from shore and there’s an Oresoren enclave around here. Did you know they have genuine Poppo Workshops in each of them now!”
Chloe does not seem as comforted at the thought of high tech Oresoren boating machinery as Shirley had thought she might be but the idea of a place to rest on solid ground does give her the energy to help with navigation again. Shirley starts to work on turning the boat the right way and hopes Chloe can hang in there until they make it to the sea cave’s entrance. She tenses up when rain begins to sprinkle down but they have cover, shoddy as it is, and Shirley is confident she can get them to their destination if they just stay the course.
That is until just a few feet away from the enclave the boat jerks in an uncertain way as it comes up against a gald shark.
Chloe finishes the monster off quickly with a Demon Fang but the footing has become too sleek and Shirley sees her begin to slip off the edge of the boat before she can fully form a thought; fortunately, she has already tapped into the part of her that is the proxy of Nerifes and seafoam comes to cradle Chloe’s boots as the knight’s face briefly turns green before Shirley, riding a small current on her teriques, sweeps the other up into her arms.
The gentle sound of the sea around them is all that resounds but Shirley does not miss the glow that shines from beneath her feet where Chloe’s boots still touch the water.
Neither does Chloe, even as she squeaks a bit as Shirley flies them closer to the cave entrance
“S-Shirley that shining is it you doing that or…”
“Not me,” Shirley explains, “that's Nerifes. Do you know what it means?”
Chloe swallows and Shirley can feel her shift in her arms experimentally; eventually, Shirley is able to get one of Chloe’s long arm over her shoulder in preparation of letting her down (though it is the last thing she wants to do). Even in their new position it takes a moment for Chloe to reply but when she does Shirley cannot help but smile.
“Coolidge mentioned it once… the Rite…”
“Yeah,” Shirley says, voice fond as she lets one hand down; Chloe struggles for a moment until she realizes her boots just barely touch the foam and still she remains floating upright. Curious, and trusting as she squeezes Shirley’s hand still around her waist she moves to take a look around her.
One half of the wings of her teriques shine on Chloe's back and Shirley thinks how lovely this moment is, and what it means to her no matter how it ends, but perhaps she should have been paying closer attention as they’ve reached the cave system and soon they will have to part.
Right?
Chloe, still floating, moves to takes Shirley’s other hand and tugs her closer. Shirley comes at the other’s behest and as their lips meet she tries to concentrate very hard on keeping her teriques active over any other thought she might be having though she needn’t have worried for while they continue to float together so too does the gentle foam of the sea find them ground.
When Shirley Fennes kisses Chloe Valens her feet are firmly on the ground of the land she's come to adore nearly as much as the woman in front of her. When they break apart she is not lightheaded or confused but grounded.
“I’ve wanted that to happen for a long time,” Chloe confesses, brave as ever, and Shirley leans in again confident this time that if needed Chloe will be the one to catch her.