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The bar had been closed for a half-hour already, so it was just her in the back, nursing the last of a Cold Winter as she watched the bartender polish glasses. They always let her stay too long these days, when she came, but she never asked why, because if she never asked then she never had to admit it meant something, and if she never admitted it then it didn’t have to mean anything at all.
But she was kidding herself, and she knew it. Sandra knew why they let her stay. She just didn’t know what to do with it.
She rolled the taste of cream and coffee liqueur over her tongue—her third of the night, and maybe one too many, if the way her thoughts unraveled was anything to go by. She’d blame it on that, at least, for why she asked.
Sandra tilted the mostly-melted remnants of ice in her cup, back and forth, back and forth.
“Do you hate me?”
From the corner of her eye, she could see the bartender’s hands go still. It meant she could also see the moment when they, very deliberately, decided to keep polishing as if nothing had happened—an old trick she’d used, once, when it was her behind the counter and she was trying not to scare a skittish customer away.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about it being used on her.
“I don’t hate you, no. Why do you ask?”
Sandra shrugged and took another sip of her drink. “You’d have every right to.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Why not?”
The bartender hesitated. But she was just drunk enough to push it, and she wanted an answer. She wanted to know.
“I would have killed you, you know.”
That got her a look. “I don’t remember being the one you were after.”
They were right, in that they weren’t the person she’d been targeting first. They were wrong in thinking that she would have stopped there.
“It would have been you, a couple people down the line. If I hadn’t liked you I wouldn’t have let you go.”
For a moment, they just stared at her. Then they set their glass down and picked up another.
“You know, ‘I didn’t hurt you because you were nice to me’ doesn’t make you sound as scary as you think it does.”
“Who said anything about trying to sound scary?”
“You didn’t have to. You sound exactly like Peter when he does it, and I don’t let him get away with it either.”
And they had her there, really. A couple months ago, the first time she’d seen Peter start spiraling like this in their bar, she’d helped them talk him out of it. She knew what it looked like, and she should have known better than to do the exact same thing in front of them—but sometimes she looked at them and all she could see was the hopeless kindness, freely given and utterly undeserved. It would get them killed someday, if they weren’t careful, and they were never careful.
“Maybe you could stand to be more scared.”
They laughed, just a little. “Of you?”
“If not for yourself, then at least for someone else—I would have killed Hugo, if you hadn’t stopped me. I nearly did kill Vincent.”
The guilt tasted bitter in her mouth. She’d learned, by now, that it never actually went away—she just forgot to feel it sometimes, and then a day would go sour or something would remind her and she’d remember, then, what she’d chosen to do.
It was supposed to stop twisting in her stomach eventually, for all that she wasn’t sure yet if she wanted it to.
“Is that what this is about?” they said. “Hugo doesn’t blame you now, if he ever did. Vincent wrote a letter defending you. It’s been over a year. You’re allowed to move on.”
“And it’s that simple, then?” Her voice was harsher than it should have been. “Everyone decides it’s fine, and what, it’s just done? That’s all you need?”
Of all the things, they shrugged. “Why not?”
For a moment she couldn’t find words. There were a hundred good reasons why not, enough that they crowded out the logic in her brain and the only one she could find was that it was wrong, that the world wasn’t capable of being that kind and if someone had been hurt then someone had to be punished for it. When she’d killed Elliot, it had been because she’d decided her life was unsalvageable, and if she couldn’t be saved she might as well ruin the people who’d destroyed her too—and then their bartender had talked her down, and she’d spent the next year in prison trying to wrap her head around the idea that there was something in her worth holding onto.
But prison was a terrible, terrible place to try and remember how to believe in humanity, and now that she was out she didn’t know what she believed anymore.
“The world doesn’t work like that,” she said, finally.
“And why can’t it?” they said, and she fought for something to say before they added, “Is it so hard to think that you might be forgiven?”
“Yes,” she spat, and there was a viciousness in it, a bile born of wasted years, with all her effort swallowed by the fact that she was still the person who’d done what she’d done. She always would be. And everyone would always see that first—it made her furious, but if she couldn’t be angry at any of the people who hurt her then the only one left to be angry at was herself, and sometimes she wondered if that was all she deserved.
They were looking at her now, a little stricken. She’d caught them off guard.
“Yes, it is,” she said, again, and she should have stopped herself but the cruelty spilled over her tongue, bitter and burning. “Don’t talk to me about forgiveness. You’ve never done anything wrong.”
Their eyes dropped to the counter, and they didn’t answer. She’d gone too far, she knew she had, but she wouldn't take it back. If they hated her for it so be it then.
But they kept quiet for a long, long time, and she was starting to think maybe she should leave when they said something, half to themselves, so quietly she would have missed it if she wasn’t paying attention.
“Haven’t I?”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard them right, at first. They’d never mentioned a history with anyone—but then, she was the last person who could question that.
“What do you mean?”
They kept their head down. “The Nightcap. Everything. It was—yours, first.”
“That’s not—” she started, and faltered. It wasn’t hers anymore, and never would be again—but it had been, once.
“Isn’t it? Almost everyone I know here, they knew you first. And you’re the one they hurt. I’m just the one who got— got lucky. Because they wouldn’t do to me what they did to you.”
She wanted to fight them on it and couldn’t. She’d believed the same thing, after all, back when she was coming in once every few months waiting for the day when the other shoe dropped. And it meant she didn’t have an argument, not now, and they just kept going.
“And I—“ they hesitated, and then they said it. “I know you loved people here. I know you cared about them. And then you were locked away, and I came in, and they—” Their voice broke, and there was a sort of bewildered sadness to it, as if they hadn’t been ready for the way their heart was spilling over the edges, but they didn’t stop. “Hugo and Vincent apologized to me, Sandra, before they ever said anything to you. And I stood there, and listened, and all the while there was someone else that should have been there instead.”
The air ran out of them, shaky, and only then did they look up.
“I took your place, didn’t I? Everyone you loved. The place you started, even. And I just took over. Like I had any right. If anything—if anything you should hate me.”
They trailed off, and their eyes were on her but they weren’t seeing her, their face distant and blank—the look that people got, when the weight of something hurt too much to hold. The same look she got, when she tried to face it all directly and found herself glancing off, again and again.
She and Peter had never talked about it. She and Hugo had barely figured out how to talk about anything, much less this. So they’d never really had a conversation about how they’d managed to fold the new bartender somewhere into their lives while she was gone, like it was that simple a thing to do. She couldn’t even blame them, because it was that simple—their bartender had a habit of extending an open hand so freely that all you had to do was take it—but she couldn’t make it stop hurting, either, that they made it look so easy to care. To be cared for. Every day she tried and failed to manage it and it was like sticking a hand through barbed wire.
In the empty room, the silence echoed, waiting.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, finally.
“I still did it.”
Sandra took a breath and steeled herself. Then she took her drink and moved to the bar so she could sit in front of them.
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have. And—” and she was jealous, sometimes, so much it choked her, but— “you know I don’t hate you.”
They blinked, and she saw them swallow, the kind of unintentional fragility people got when they were trying to pull themselves back together. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”
“You can have it back anytime.” She tipped her drink towards her.
That pulled a laugh out of them, a little wet. “So it’s that easy for me, then. But not for you?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. And if you can’t see that I’m not explaining it to you.”
They didn’t argue the point, which meant they did in fact know that for all that they might feel guilty, there was a vast gulf between that and deliberately choosing to hurt someone. Instead, their shoulders just slumped a little, before they gestured to her empty drink.
“Done there? I can take it.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
They poured the melted ice into the sink, rinsed it out, and they had just picked up a polishing cloth when they paused.
“You know, there’s a reason,” they said, hesitantly, turning back to her. “Why I always let you stay late like this.”
She stiffened. “Oh?”
“You don’t come by that often, and when you do it’s always later.”
“For good reason,” she cut in. Ilya still wouldn’t speak to her, and she couldn’t blame the woman.
“I know. But it was your place too, and when you are around—‘comfortable’ is a long shot, I know, but I want you to feel like you’re allowed to be here. It’s the least I can do.”
The least they can do. As if that was all—as if it was something that small, to swallow all those thorns and keep going anyway. The kindness burned going down.
“You don’t have to make it up to me, or whatever you think you’re doing. I told you, you’ve done nothing wrong.” They hadn’t been the one who hurt her.
They shrugged and started polishing. “Maybe.”
“It’s not a maybe. You’ve run this place for longer than I did at this point—it’s yours,” she said, and meant it. “You don’t owe me anything.”
The bartender rocked back on their heels. “Does it have to be about owing you? Maybe I just want to do it.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“It’s not pity. If it’s my bar, I’m allowed to choose who’s welcome.”
And they were allowed, was the thing. The problem was that for some baffling reason they’d decided—well. Despite everything, they’d decided that she was one of the people welcome here.
“I don’t deserve it, you know.”
For a moment, the cloth went still on the glass, a quiet kind of consideration.
Then they said, voice soft, “I never really thought it was about deserving. Just—what other people are willing to give us.”
A vengeful, bitter part of her wanted to argue, to claw away the open hand. She got lost in all of it when it hurt too much, with all she’d been given and all she’d lost by the same hands, and she didn’t know if she was mad because they’d hurt her or because they’d forgiven her.
But time had blunted the sharpest edges of her anger, and—and it was hard to be cynical when they looked at her like that, like they believed in her. Like she was someone worth believing in.
Sandra had never been much for the Goddess. But sometimes the bartender looked at her like that and she thought she might understand, then, why faith was a thing worth having.
She closed her eyes, let herself breathe. “Well. You’re a hard person to say no to, sweetheart.”
“Maybe.” They tilted their head. “Call it part of my charm.”
“If you say so.”
They shrugged—but there was no edge to it, and the silence that filled the space behind it was warmer, then.
By the time they finished polishing glasses and moved on to wiping down the bar, she’d stood up and was debating whether to check the closet she’d kept the broom in. “Want a hand?”
“I won’t turn down help, if you’re offering.”
“You let me stay, I might as well.” They did keep the broom in the same place she had. “I’ll get the floors—what else is left?”
“Not much, actually. Got most of it done earlier.”
Between the two of them, what was left didn’t take all that much longer. They flicked off the last of the lamps and then turned to her, face lit by moonlight.
“Let me see you out?”
She snorted. “Don’t you live here?”
“So?” they said, grinning. “Besides, I’m staying with Hugo tonight—he wanted advice on a case, so we’re getting breakfast tomorrow.” For a moment, they paused, and then added, “You could come, if you want. He told me you were good at this kind of thing.”
Sandra shook her head, a quick, sharp jerk.
“No,” she said, and then she stopped, took a breath, and let the possibility float in her mind, a soap bubble not yet broken. “But maybe next time. If that’s alright?”
“That’s fine by me.” they said, and looked towards the door. “Whenever you’re ready?”
They were holding out their hand. She took it, and they walked out into the night.