Chapter Text
For those first few tremulous days, Eleanor passes almost as well as dead.
Selene only knows otherwise because of the slow pulse beneath her fingers. Weak as it is, it’s proof that she lives—that Eleanor survived. Her chest rises and falls with the faintest breaths. Her closed eyelids flutter in medicated sleep.
Eleanor lays unconscious, but Selene feels like the one who’s on life support: Each faint beat, like a soft drum beneath her fingertips, keeps her own heart steady from one breath to the next.
Her hand, along the wan skin of Eleanor’s wrist, rests as constant as the IV cannulated in her veins. She holds onto Eleanor like a person bereft at sea, who might just drown if she were to let go.
In her head, Eleanor died in her arms two days ago. Every time she closes her eyes, she still struggles to remember what really happened.
She doesn’t sleep all that much.
She isn’t the only one. Cassidy stays at the hospital for as long as Selene does. They take turns keeping vigil over the room, so that Eleanor is never left alone.
Selene will never forget the devastation in her eyes the first time Cassidy had laid them on Eleanor’s frail, unconscious form.
“I’m sorry,” Selene had only been able to manage, failing to fight her tears. Such measly words to offer to someone who’d almost lost the other half of her being.
Cassidy had cried, too. She’d always been soft. Perhaps it was what Eleanor had seen in them both: people in need of her guidance and protection.
“She never listened to me either,” Cassidy had said, wiping her tears. “No one could stop her. I’m sorry, too. She’s—always been—so stubborn.”
She sank to Eleanor’s side, and in a trembling hand, entwined their fingers. They would have been identical. Only the pallid shade of Eleanor’s skin had given them away.
Selene tells her everything. Cassidy deserved to know. Selene could have only been later in telling her at a funeral than a hospital.
In the end, she just hadn’t wanted to fall into the same mistake she and Eleanor had made from the start, of not saying anything.
When she reaches the end of her story, of that day in the woods with Nyx— Chimei —and Phoenix, Cassidy breathes in and out for several seconds. As if for strength, she squeezes Eleanor’s hand in hers before asking, voice strained, “Just tell me this. Is she—still in any danger?”
Selene lets loose a watery laugh. Cassidy hadn’t blinked at the mention of Jianghe. For her, there had always only ever been Eleanor: her overbearing, overprotective, older sister.
“No,” she promises. “There is no more danger. Chimei has been sealed. When we brought Eleanor in, the head of my family was here—she took care of all the spirits that haunted her. She said . . . Eleanor is now free to live out the rest of her mortal life. As a human.”
Cassidy nods. She leans down, pressing her forehead to Eleanor’s temple. “That’s all I need to know.”
In this version, Selene knows Nyx had been a little slower. Phoenix, a little faster. But Nyx had flickered, like a flame having just regained its heat, in the moment of her attack. A matter of degrees: That’s all it had taken for Eleanor to survive.
In another version of the same events, a different outcome would have transpired. With Eleanor’s blood streaked across her face, her cold weight in Selene’s arms, she had felt that other reality brush narrowly against her. That version, that what if, repeats itself behind her eyelids.
She can’t stop thinking about it. The thought churns in her mind, over and over, until the day Eleanor finally opens her eyes.
She isn’t there to witness it. She’d gone downstairs to the hospital cafeteria in search of food for her and Cassidy.
Upon returning to the room, the tray in her hands nearly clatters to the floor at the sight of Eleanor, awake and sitting up in bed, Cassidy draped over her.
“You’re getting tears all over your glasses,” Eleanor says, voice low and scratchy from disuse. Her arm rests against Cassidy’s back, rubbing in soothing circles.
“I can clean them later,” Cassidy blubbers, squeezing closer. Her head bumps against Eleanor’s chin, words muffled into her sister’s neck as she sniffles. “I’m so . . . I’m so glad . . .”
Eleanor sighs, fond. She looks up then, and across the room, beneath white fluorescent lights, their eyes meet. A hue of bright gold, like the dawn break of day, like the first light of morning, touches Selene’s eyes.
“You’re awake,” Selene croaks out, unable, for a moment, to feel the ground beneath her feet.
Eleanor gives her an eternal smile. Only when Selene moves closer does she see the sheen of tears rippling in her eyes. Her fragility, even now, masked. Eleanor, who had protected her until the end.
The tray is dropped numbly to the side. Selene walks on dazed feet into the arm Eleanor holds out for her.
“I’m here now,” Eleanor breathes against her, as Selene collapses into her embrace.
Selene can’t reply, too caught on the sound of Eleanor’s exhales, the strong beating of her heart beneath her ear as she presses closer. Eleanor shifts against her, alive, in motion. The blood beneath her skin, still pumping. Her laugh, shaking through her chest, breathy and soft and familiar.
The fabric of Eleanor’s hospital gown grows wet beneath her with tears.
She can’t tell her own tears from Cassidy’s, whose arm from whose, in the small circle they make on the bed. She cries in a way she hasn’t for days.
Eleanor holds her in her arms, solid and reassuring. Selene can only remember holding her the same way, numb with shock, as her eyes turned glassy, and her skin paled white.
It had been so close. It’s all she can think, on repeat, her chest tight with fear. It had been so close.
In this version, they had been lucky.
Eleanor stays at the hospital for the remainder of the week to recover. After some routine examinations, visits from her attending nurses and doctors, and further rest, Selene and Cassidy fill her in on the gaps of her memory.
“You’ve been staying at the hospital this entire time?” Eleanor asks in disbelief. Concern draws her eyebrows together as she glances between Cassidy and Selene, seated on either side of her bed. “You both must be exhausted. What about school? You’re not missing classes again, are you—”
“You almost died,” Cassidy interrupts, voice raised for the first time Selene has ever heard. “You lost so much blood, Selene was covered in it when they brought you in.”
Selene flinches at the memory. She hadn’t realized it at the time. It’d all been a blur, that rush to the hospital, Eleanor’s body, in her arms, growing colder by the second. Her face had gone slack. The gold of her eyes, dulled.
She thought she’d been too late. That she had been holding a corpse.
“I had no idea what was going on for the past few months, until I got the call from the hospital. To learn that you nearly died. I still didn’t even know why. And—you’re asking me if I’m skipping classes. ”
Eleanor opens her mouth.
“What’s worse,” Cassidy cuts her off vehemently, “is that you could have died so many times over the past twenty years. You knew for so long that there were spirits haunting you, and yet—you chose to handle it all on your own. You pushed me away on purpose. And I—”
She breaks off with a sharp inhale. There’s a haunted, fragile look in her eyes.
“I was so stupid. I just listened to you, the way I’ve always done.”
For a moment, Selene and Eleanor are both too stunned by her outburst to react.
“Cass,” Eleanor starts weakly.
Cassidy doesn’t reply. She stares down at her lap, expression hidden behind her hair. Her shoulders shake, whether in anger or grief, Selene can’t tell. Her hand trembles enough for Eleanor to scoop it up in her own, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“I’m right here,” Eleanor reassures. “I’m not going anywhere now.”
A breathy, bitter laugh, an exact replica of Eleanor’s. “Jie, you always say the most meaningless things to change the subject.”
Eleanor stiffens, caught. Selene almost wants to laugh herself. She knows now, from personal experience, how true Cassidy’s words are.
Eleanor looks torn, like she’s wrestling with something. Whatever it is that wins out, it causes her shoulders to slump in defeat.
Her expression turns wistful and apologetic. She gives Cassidy’s hand another small squeeze. “You . . . you haven’t called me that in a long time. I really have pushed you away, haven’t I.”
Cassidy remains silent, still trembling. She’s unresistant as Eleanor cradles her head and pulls her close, to rest her face in the crook of Eleanor’s neck.
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor murmurs. “It’s not you who’s been stupid, but me. I can’t pretend like nothing happened. Everything you said is true.”
Eleanor’s eyes are sad. Selene doesn’t remember ever seeing the twins as close as they are at this moment. Maybe Eleanor too mourns the distance she had created between them in the name of protection.
Cassidy’s distress has bled into her. Her hurt, finally made real.
Over her sister’s head, Eleanor’s gaze drifts toward Selene. Selene gives her a reassuring smile.
She quietly excuses herself, sliding the door shut behind her with a gentle click.
She ends up settling in a corner of the visitor’s lounge to nap for a few hours. Exhaustion drags her into a dreamless slumber almost the instant she closes her eyes.
She sleeps for what feels like only a blink. She wakes, sore and groggy, to notifications vibrating her phone.
Cass went home to shower and get something to eat, Eleanor texts her. Do you want to come up?
Sure. Be there in a bit.
When she enters the room, Eleanor turns to greet her with a tired smile, cast in sunset from the bedside window. She notes the red rimming Eleanor’s eyes but makes no comment of it, instead raising the bottle in her hand.
“I got tea from the vending machine,” Selene offers.
Eleanor eagerly holds her hands out. “Please. I’m already sick of this bland hospital diet they have me on.”
Selene hands it over. Eleanor twists the cap off the bottle in a smooth motion, knuckles flexing, before tipping back to take a sip. Selene follows the bob of her throat as she swallows, the low sweep of her lashes along her cheeks as her eyes close with a content sigh.
In another circumstance, she might have blushed at the sight before her. As it is, right now she’s only relieved to take in the color that’s returned to Eleanor’s face and the ease with which she moves. She can open a bottle and drink from it. How silly that Selene is grateful even for that—how she appreciates now even the mundane and ordinary.
“You’re staring,” Eleanor teases lightly.
Selene gives her a small chuckle. “I missed you.”
Her words are more whispered than she intended them to be, carrying unsaid weight that hangs in the air.
I missed you. You almost died. I can’t look away for one minute, afraid that if I do, this won’t be real.
At her sober tone, Eleanor’s smile falters. She clutches the bottled tea in her hands. The wrapper crinkles under her grip as she swallows and says, “I missed you, too. I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry for putting you through all of this, Selene. I made you and Cass worry about me. Everything I had been trying to avoid—ended up happening anyway . . . because of my choices.”
Sitting alone in the too-big hospital bed, Eleanor seems to sag into herself, steel-clad armor buckling under self-siege, her sense of duty broken in by her own failures. The slope of her back curves like a knight defeated.
“I thought I could handle it all alone. Instead, I almost left Cass as an only child, and I almost got you killed, too. I realize that now.”
They breathe in silence for a pause. Then, slowly, feeling the pain as she does, Selene admits, “I was frustrated—with you.”
Her words hit Eleanor with the sharpness of a slap. They both sit, feeling the sting.
Selene pushes on, staring down at her hands. “We had the same argument over and over—about communicating. If—if I’d known sooner what the full situation was, maybe, I wouldn’t have gone to the only person I’d thought would answer me honestly, at the time. I should have trusted you but . . . it’s like I began losing my reason to. I felt like—I had no other choice.”
Across from her, Eleanor bows her head, eyes shadowed by her hair.
Selene swallows past the spasming grief that rattles through her. She wants to reach for Eleanor’s hand. She finds that she can’t bring herself to.
She sucks in a breath before finishing in a thin voice, “In the situation we were in—I don’t think either of us were capable, any longer, of thinking rationally. I only know you did it all to protect me. I know I’m at fault, too. I’m just glad you survived.”
By the end of it, they’d been strained at the edges. Eleanor, near manic with sleep deprivation and paranoia-fueled energy. Selene, kicking and lashing out, with increasing viciousness, at what felt like a slow strangulation. They’d been confined to one another. The stress had ballooned between them, turning them abrasive.
Eleanor presses a hand to her eyes. The fine bones of her wrist bulge with how hard she presses down.
“I must have made you feel so incapable,” she says roughly. “I took away all your choices. I backed you into a corner. I made you feel bad—about fighting back.”
“It’s not all your fault,” Selene protests.
But Eleanor shakes her head. She heaves in a strangled breath. “I’m so sorry. The way I’ve treated you has been awful—more like a jailer than a partner. We weren’t equals. I—made you feel useless, didn’t I.”
The truth of her statement tears through the hollow cavern in Selene’s chest. She can’t bring herself to reply, nails digging into her palm. Something hot burns behind her eyes, like shame.
If only she had been more considerate. If only she had been more firm in her responses. Maybe if she hadn’t let Eleanor insist on making all the decisions for them, she wouldn’t have had to play both strategist and protector, sacrificing every part of herself like chess pieces on a board for Selene’s safety.
I just wasn’t someone you could rely on, she wants to argue. She’d been so weak. So quick to trust. So easy to fool.
Like a karmic cycle, repeating mistakes she never learned from, she’d almost gotten Eleanor killed. Again.
A hand lays itself over hers. Lithe, calloused fingers cradle her own, gently unfurling them from a tightened fist.
Eleanor gives her a tentative smile over their joined hands. “I can see you blaming yourself. Don’t do that, okay? Just let me take the blame for this. We wouldn’t be here, if I’d only just talked to you.”
Selene can’t fight her tears. The ache in her chest stems from too many emotions. She’d been scared. And resentful. Of Eleanor, but also herself. She hates herself for faulting the person who had only wanted to protect her, and who had almost died saving her. She hates Eleanor for having given herself up so recklessly in the first place.
She hates herself for being so helpless. She hates Eleanor for making her feel that way.
She meets Eleanor’s eyes, lambent through the blur of her vision. “Can you forgive me? For blaming you?” she asks, thickly.
Eleanor’s laugh is watery and light. She bows her head, leaning in, until their foreheads are pressed together, bittersweet tears mixing in the breath between them.
“Of course. Of course I will.”
When the sun sets, dying lights fade into a starless night over the city horizon and take the last of the evening warmth with it. Selene doesn’t feel the chill, pressed close into Eleanor’s tired, but welcoming side. There was a point where she thought she’d never experience the end of a day with Eleanor again.
“You should get going soon,” Eleanor says eventually. Yet she makes no move to disturb Selene’s head from her shoulder, nor the rest of their hands atop each other. “Cass will be back and then you can . . .”
She trails off at Selene’s unfazed stillness. Eleanor shifts against her in realization.
“Where have you been staying? When you’re not sleeping at the hospital?”
“I’m still at your apartment,” Selene replies.
A beat of silence. Selene counts the rise and fall of Eleanor’s chest, each measured push of air through her lungs, as Eleanor processes what she says.
Is she also recalling the time they spent there together, claustrophobic and caustic in a house that never felt big enough for the both of them? Their days had passed anticipating the trigger of each other’s temper. Cassidy’s presence had been nearly erased with how suffocating they’d made each room become.
It feels so long ago. And yet they’d lived there, beside each other with bated breath and gritted teeth, until just a few days ago.
Eleanor’s chest falls in a ponderous sigh. “You don’t have to keep living with me anymore, Selene. If you want to move out . . . you can do that now. I won’t stop you.”
Selene stares at the worn line of Eleanor’s knuckles. The back of her hand is still colored with bruises from the IV insertion. “Why would I move out?”
“I know you weren’t happy there. You said so yourself, that you wanted to move out before. And now, there’s no need for you to stay with me. You no longer need—me. To protect you.”
“I still need you,” Selene says softly.
Eleanor’s next breath is stilted. Selene moves her fingers, taking care as she slots them into the spaces between Eleanor’s.
She continues, “It’s not like I stayed with you just because you wanted to protect me. I cared about you, too. We were together. We still are. Aren’t we?”
Eleanor’s hand trembles in hers. “Am I still allowed—to be with you?” she asks, quiet.
Her voice is tremulous, betraying her uncertainty. Selene remembers the way Eleanor had first asked her out, not with adoration and the fluttering nerves of proposal, but with fear flashing in her eyes. Desperation. Before they even started, she had already been imagining losing Selene.
Their relationship has so far existed only as a means to an end. A label given to control—protect—Selene. Some part of her, deep down, will always feel bitter for that, for the way they hadn’t been given the chance to just be ordinary, human, untroubled.
But nothing is ordinary about what they are; not since they’d first crossed paths as different people long ago, and not since they’d come across each other once more through a sea of lifetimes and people.
“Don’t think about it like that,” she says softly. “Allowed or not, it doesn’t matter. I— I still want to be with you.”
Eleanor inhales sharply. Her hold on Selene’s hand tightens like a clutch for support as she pulls away, until they’re facing each other. When they touch eyes, it’s over the quiet space of a moment held just for the two of them, the muffled sounds of the hospital hubbub fading away.
“I still want to be with you, too. For as long as you’ll have me.” At Selene’s encouraging smile, Eleanor ducks her head. Her voice softens, wistful with all the things they never got to be to each other.
“I want to do things over between us, properly this time. Is it all right . . . if we start over?”
Selene squeezes her hand back. She says, “Cassidy never mentioned she had a friend like you. Who are you? Could it be . . . Are you her twin sister?”
Eleanor stares at her before bursting into a bright laugh. It strikes like electricity down Selene’s spine, giving her a shock back to the life they’d had before. It draws from her a helpless grin that is instantly returned.
“Yes, I’m Eleanor Si. Cass really told you about me. You both must be close. What’s your name?”
“I’m Selene.”
“Ah,” Eleanor says, and her eyes glitter with the luster of stars, brilliant and familiar. “Now I remember.”
Days later, Selene ends up returning to her own apartment. Eleanor insists that Selene recovering her autonomy is pivotal to starting their relationship anew. Selene only agrees after admitting she also needs to check on the state of her apartment.
Her moving out coincides with Eleanor’s discharge from the hospital. Cassidy helps her sister home the same day Selene packs her things to bring them back to her own place.
She doesn’t have that much. Eleanor had never let her step foot back in her apartment once Selene had moved in with her. When she’d pleaded for more of her belongings—her plushies, her toiletries, her favourite mug—Eleanor had, with wary reluctance, gone and returned with a handful of Selene’s clothes.
There was no telling if any of her stuff had been tampered with, Eleanor had told her grimly. Remorse filled her eyes at the frustrated tears that came to Selene’s, but she’d remained stern. She’d apologized. She’d said it was for Selene’s safety. She’d promised to buy Selene anything she needed.
She could not trust anything with Selene except what Eleanor brought for her with her own hands. Nor could she trust anyone with Selene but herself.
Eleanor had made herself the chief authority in Selene’s life. She goes to her even now for permission to move out her belongings, only to falter at the way Eleanor’s face falls.
“You don’t need to ask me before you do anything now, Selene. You’re free to do as you please,” Eleanor tells her, gentle and pained.
Selene blinks, feeling the heat of her cheeks. “I forgot. Of course.”
“It’s okay,” Eleanor says, except her smile is weak, and it comes out whispered as an apology.
Selene wordlessly nods. She can’t bring herself to look Eleanor in the eye.
Embarrassment curdles in her the rest of the way home from the hospital. How easily she falls into old learned habits, remaining inside the lines that have been drawn out for her. Like a domesticated thing, she’s grown conditioned to living within confinement.
She’s certain Eleanor will internally justify the need for Selene’s independence using this exchange. But when she stands alone in the hallway to her apartment, the dead silence fixes her in place, stiff and unnerved.
Her palms are clammy around the straps of her bag. Her heart thumps painfully in the cavern of her chest. It’s with a heavy surge of shame that she instantly wishes Eleanor were here with her.
The apartment next to her sits lifeless and unoccupied. Its door, forever closed. Yet part of her keeps waiting for it to creak open, for a lilting voice to call out to her with simpering affection, for a pair of rose red eyes to leer at her through the threshold with a wicked, curved smile.
She’s not sure how long she lingers there, fighting to calm her nerves and still the trembling of her limbs, before she musters the courage to approach her own door and fumble with its lock.
Her apartment is just as desolate when she steps inside. No light is on to welcome her home. Only dust-lined shelves, closed curtains, and the muted hum of an empty fridge greet her return.
Too late, she remembers Phoenix and Bell are gone. She will never hear their bickering or laughter, will never share a meal with them again.
Everyone moved on from her in the end. Beneath the lonely circle of her kitchen light, there’s only her that’s left.
In the span of days, she’s lost more people from her life than she has ever before.
She knows why, too: It’s her fault.
Months had skipped by as she made choice after choice to survive against the timer of her curse. All her decisions have led her here, to Eleanor’s near death, the loss of her housemates, the betrayal of her childhood friend. She just hadn’t realized her life with them had been on a countdown too.
Eleanor had said to leave all the blame to her, but she never would have come close to death if it weren’t for Selene. How could she blame her for keeping Selene alive despite her own mistakes?
It had been luck that had saved Eleanor. Phoenix, moving fast, and Nyx, moving slow. Selene—in the moment, holding Eleanor, hadn’t moved or done anything at all.
She’s too weak to hold herself up. She falls into a nearby seat at her dining table. There’s too many empty chairs at the table now.
She’s not sure how long she sits there, in the dark. Shame holds her in place. Her eyes burn with unshed tears. She’s not sure if she’s even allowed to breathe. Would she still be able to, if Eleanor no longer did?
Her meager belongings sit, still packed away, on the dining table. She opens her bag, but can’t find the motivation to unpack its contents, to sort them away. There’s no point in doing so. This place isn’t a home she can bring herself to move back into.
Her stomach pangs at some point. She’s hungry. Food should be cooked, or ordered. But there’s nothing in the fridge, and her phone died at some point in the passing silence. And finding a charger—it would mean sorting through her belongings.
In the end, it’s her pathetic humanness that convinces her to crawl into bed, exhausted and discomfited and seeking warmth. When she lies down, the heavy silence of her bedroom seems to press down on her, crushing. Shadows lurk in the corners of her vision, filling in all her blind spots.
Selene doesn’t succumb to sleep until hours into the night.
A few nights later, a text message comes to her in the dark.
She’s given up on sleeping by now. Perhaps if she’s exhausted enough, she reasons, sleep will come for her in the middle of the day and submerge her, unconscious, for a few merciful hours. She’s bleary-eyed and dizzy from being awake for too long, a dull throbbing behind her eyes as she scrolls listlessly on her phone, when Eleanor texts her.
Are you still awake?
Selene has to blink for a few moments to fully process the question before coming up with a reply.
Yeah. It’s early morning, at an hour which neither of them should be. Why? Is everything okay?
Eleanor types and retypes. I should be asking you that. I’ve already been discharged, and Cass is with me.
What about you? she continues. Are you doing okay?
Her phone screen blurs in her vision, words growing out of focus with the shaking of her hand. When Selene heaves in a breath, the effort burns in her lungs, and she thickly swallows down tears.
Eleanor asks after her with such tentative, innocent concern. The sincerity of it stabs through Selene like a finely honed knife.
In the end, it takes pathetically little for her defenses to crumple. She’s never been that strong.
Her fingers tremble. Slow and laborious, she types, and erases, and retypes her reply.
I don’t know how to live here anymore.
Eleanor’s response is immediate. Why? What’s wrong?
And then: Can I call you?
She barely finishes typing her assent before her phone begins to vibrate. She picks up.
“Hey,” Eleanor says, and how gentle is her voice, that Selene breaks almost instantly apart around it.
The other end goes quiet, Eleanor listening as Selene sucks in watery, hiccuped breaths.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay, Selene. I’m here. Take a breath for me?”
She does, through her mouth, gasping.
“That’s great. That’s it. Deep breath in . . . hold it . . . slow breath out. Like that.”
She clings onto Eleanor’s words, following the sound of her voice through the blood roaring in her ears and the tightness in her chest. She breathes in and out, deep and slow, guided by the count that Eleanor gives her.
Gradually, like surfacing from underwater, her hearing focuses and sharpens until she can make out the shape of Eleanor’s words on the other side of the phone. Her ceiling lies above her, tangible, unmoving.
Sensation leaks back into the tips of her toes and her fingers. She comes back to her body to find herself shaking. Sweat-soaked and limp, tangled in the sheets of her bed.
Eleanor must hear the change in her breathing. “Hey there,” she says, low and soothing. “Welcome back.”
“I’m sorry,” Selene mumbles, scrubbing a hand over her face. Her cheeks are damp with tear tracks. “I didn’t mean to . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
Eleanor makes a soft sound. “It’s okay. Don’t apologize—there’s no need for that. It happens, it’s normal.”
Selene covers her eyes, ashamed anyway. “I just haven’t been sleeping well. I’ve tried. I just can’t. Not—not here.”
“Nightmares?” Eleanor asks carefully.
“Several,” she confesses. At Eleanor’s encouraging noise, the rest spills out of her, wobbling and broken. “I keep going back to that day. There was—so much blood. Everywhere. On me. Under—my nails. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Sometimes, I blink and I’m in front of the sink. And washing my hands. Over and over. To get the blood off me.”
Eleanor sucks in a sharp breath, but it’s like the dam has broken in her, because Selene can’t stop. She continues on stumbling words, “The apartment is so empty. Everyone’s gone. I keep thinking Nixie is here, laughing at me. I was just a joke to her. Food to play with. She lived next to me this whole time, waiting to kill me.
“I’m sorry,” she manages to say, through a gasping cry. “It should have been me. You—it’s my fault. I couldn’t do anything. I just held you and watched you—watched you die. I can’t sleep because—every time I try to, I just watch you die again.”
Her chest heaves, lungs collapsing, every part of her fraught and thin. “Eleanor. I’m—I’m so tired.”
When it’d mattered most, she had been so useless. The only thing she’s been able to give Eleanor, all this time, are her tears.
“Don’t think like that,” Eleanor finally says. Her voice, over the line, is heavy with pain. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how exhausted you must be. I didn’t know how you felt. I’m so sorry, Selene. I’m so sorry. I left you alone to handle this all by yourself. I haven’t been there for you this entire time.”
You shouldn’t have to be, Selene wants to cry. She shouldn’t need to depend on Eleanor so much like this. How pathetic is she, for not being able to survive on her own?
She’d told Eleanor before she was a fully capable adult, able to take care of herself. That she didn’t need Eleanor controlling every aspect of her life.
It turns out that hadn’t been true. Control is what she no longer has a grasp on; it’s what she knows only how to give up.
“Do you want to come over?”
Selene blinks away the blur of her vision. “Come over?” she repeats in a croak. “Now?”
“Yeah. I don’t—I don’t want to leave you alone right now.” Eleanor hesitates, before continuing with more conviction. “If you’re having trouble sleeping, come here and sleep over. You can use my spare bedsheets and blankets again—I can set it up. I’ll watch over you.”
“It’s late. I don’t—I don’t want to bother you,” Selene protests, but her voice is shaky, and there’s a trickle of hope seeping into her chest at the thought of seeing Eleanor again, loosening the press of her ribs.
“I’m awake right now too, aren’t I? Besides—you’re never a bother to me. You’re no trouble for me.” Eleanor releases her breath in a slow exhale. “Selene, I’m sorry, for how I’ve messed up doing so all the times before, but I still want to. Please, let me take care of you.”
She covers her eyes, feeling as tears leak past the gaps of her fingers anyway. Her chest rises and falls in a choked breath. “Don’t—make me cry, again.”
Eleanor laughs, soft and low. Helplessly, Selene’s heart aches for the sound of it. She misses her. She imagines Eleanor now, curled up in bed, phone pressed close to her mouth, breaths coming slow and quiet in the dark. Her voice isn’t enough. She wants to see her again.
“Is that okay?” Eleanor asks, unbearably gentle.
Selene nods, then mumbles out a weak affirmative.
“Great,” Eleanor sighs in relief. Her voice turns tender. “Just wait a bit for me, okay? I’ll call a cab for you to bring you here. I’ll let you know when it’s outside. It won’t be long.”
Surrendering herself to Eleanor’s charge is the easiest, most familiar thing. Selene sniffles, resigned. “Okay.”
After they hang up, she drags herself out of bed to wash her face and recover herself. At Eleanor’s text, she stumbles out into the cold of the night to the taxi waiting by the street. She climbs in, feeling underdressed but too tired to be conscious of it. The ride passes by in a blur. She registers only the cool press of the window against her cheek, beams of streetlights glanced over her, the muted hum of the car engine beneath her seat.
She arrives at Eleanor’s place in the sequence of a dream. Eleanor must have been tracking the cab on her phone, because she’s standing outside the apartment when they pull up. The distance crossed to her takes only a step: from the car, Selene steps outside and directly into the safety of her arms.
“I missed you,” Eleanor mumbles into the top of her hair.
Tucked into the side of her neck, Selene can only nod in relief and nuzzle against her. She clings onto Eleanor’s sweater—she’s in her sleep clothes. The breadth of her is solid and reassuring, more whole than the slivers of sensation Selene’s memories conjure. Her arms hold Selene with real weight. She’s still warmed from being indoors, a sturdy pillar shielding her from the night breeze.
“Let’s go inside. I don’t want you to get cold.”
The inside of her apartment is the same as when she’d left it. Cassidy’s door is closed. Like she doesn’t know the way, Eleanor leads her by the hand through the house and into her bedroom. Her bed is made with freshly changed sheets and blankets, all the ones Selene used when she stayed over.
When Eleanor makes to leave, the release of her hand from Selene’s is with obvious reluctance. She gives up readily when Selene squeezes back and holds onto her.
“Stay—stay with me, please?”
Her voice comes out whispered in the dark. But the lantern of Eleanor’s eyes look only to her.
“Always,” she answers, in promise.
When they curl up in bed together, it’s not in a fleeting moment of ceasefire like that cramped night they’d spent on the couch. Selene is aware of the beat of her heart as she’s pulled back against Eleanor’s chest. The arms that wrap around her are shy at first, uncertain. Eleanor holds onto her this time not with sleep-addled fear, but sober intention.
“Is this okay?”
Her body heat envelops Selene like a second blanket. Selene relaxes into it with a release of tension. Already, she feels more comfortable than all the sleepless nights she’d laid awake alone.
“Yeah,” she says, more sigh than speech.
“Good.” Careful and slow, Eleanor curls closer around her, until they’re pressed together along every limb. When she breathes, Selene can feel the subtle rise and fall of her chest along the length of her spine. Her exhale tickles the back of Selene’s neck.
There is no place safer or warmer than in this embrace, Selene is convinced. Her eyes, at last too heavy to keep open, fall shut.
“Good night, Selene.”
Her sleep gifts her with merciful, black nothingness. Where the ghost of Eleanor’s cooled, bloated body lies lifeless in her arms, superimposed over it is the real warmth and breath of her. Her mind corrects itself. Eleanor had never died after all. It had all been just a dream.