Chapter Text
curtains fall, fashions fade; an endless summer over.
Day three—round two—Leah’s theorizing brings her to an answer that is as cold and clear as the water that surrounds them. A hypothesis: they won’t let her, or anyone else, die. All of this ends once they’re dead. Jeanette was a freak accident, but Nora—attacked by the thing that took her sister’s hand, pulled beneath deep dark waves—Nora lives, somewhere. The truth strikes Leah and she doesn’t know how she went this long just missing it.
It almost makes her smile. Leah hasn’t done that since leaving Gretchen’s office in the bunker, nearly skipping down the hall thinking she had actually done something.
She wants to test her theory. As the sun beats down on a still afternoon, she strips down to sports bra and underwear and takes a recreational swim in the ocean. The first time she ran headfirst into the water it was with no intention of coming back; today she allows herself to drift, not meaning to die at all.
She allows five minutes to pass. It’s nice, in an unexpected way, to be in the ocean just to be in it. Not to go diving for wrecked fuselage, or speak to an imaginary Ben Folds… the sun tickles her arms; the cold water fills her ears and laps gently at her face.
Leah emits a low, frustrated growl.
That’s the fuckery in this place and the cosmic irony of her current life, that ocean could almost be described as calm today. Ten minutes and Leah starts a half-hearted backstroke, bringing her maybe another dozen yards from shore, then returns to floating. How far out would she actually have to go? She closes her eyes and tries to remember where Nora had been, tries to picture it: a man on a little white boat in the distance, humming and waiting with binoculars, scanning the water for any sign of life.
Of girl.
How do they measure distance in the ocean again? Sea-units. Knots. Naughts?
Someone came for Nora. Someone would come for her if she floated far enough away.
Nautical miles. Knots were speed. Or planes. She doesn’t remember.
“---- ---- ---- she doing?” someone shouts, the sound garbled by distance and water. Leah dips her head in another inch, hoping to drown out the noise. “LEAH!”
She pictures the shark circling her or a rogue wave about to drag her under. She lifts her head again, remembering that she should be listening for the cough of a motor starting.
“LEAH!!!”
It’s Fatin’s voice.
Fatin, the one person she trusts most right now. Fatin, who says she misses her when she’s gone. Fatin, who trusts her, implicitly.
So, girding her loins, Leah takes a deep breath and treads the distance back.
Once back on dry land the other girl practically barrels into her. That’s not very nice and it momentarily knocks the wind out of her as Leah hits the ground and Fatin lands on top of her, even as the sand breaks their impact.
These days, however, it’s very difficult to feel any anger towards Fatin. For some reason.
In the past three days she’s lashed out at the others for so much as speaking to her while she was deep in thought. Bared her teeth and coated her words in venom. She did so first to Fatin after all, all those weeks ago, for daring to correctly judge her relationship with Jeff. So even though Fatin just ruined all her plans, Leah simply looks up at her, dazed, grateful at least that her head blocks the sun.
Still out of breath from swimming the distance, her pulse drums loudly in her ears. Distantly Leah registers how the other girl, who practically straddles her now, adds a pleasant weight over her hips.
Fatin is yelling at her. Fatin has been yelling at her this whole time. Finally her eyes meet Leah’s, eyebrows scrunched in tight concern. Leah makes herself focus. “Don’t do that again. You scared the living shit out of me. Why were you out there?”
Leah’s mouth is suddenly very dry. Somehow she makes it form the shape of actual words, murmuring, “I was just trying to relax.”
That vice-like grip on her shoulders eases. With it, all the ferocity in Fatin’s expression.
Her voice becomes soft. “How about telling someone the next time you wanna do that?”
“Okay.” The problem is that Fatin is a wolf. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” It’s hard to see the wolf soften like that, so she looks down—gets a visual field full of waist—and looks away. “Sorry,” Leah mumbles.
Fatin helps her up to her feet, and they go the rest of the day without mentioning any of it.