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Lily padded down some more hallways, a humming noise following her and the sterile white lights making her feel lost in time. She’d just woken up in the middle of the night, unsettled, and had tried for about fifteen minutes to turn back over and go to sleep before giving it up.
She made her way to a common room in search of snacks and something to drink, and found Miss Militia there.
“Good evening,” Miss Militia said, turning away from the window she’d been looking out. “Or morning now, probably. Is everything alright?”
Lily nodded and yawned. “Couldn’t get back to sleep,” she said. “How about you? Lots of paperwork?”
Miss Milita smiled, and it was a small one at her mouth, but her face lifted so her eyes crinkled. That’s what it looks like without the mask, Lily thought.
“Not quite. I don’t need to sleep,” Miss Milit- Hannah responded, tapping her holstered knife.
“Lucky,” Lily said.
There was a tired silence, and Lily stepped towards the window on the far side of the room, near Hannah. The city looked a little more peaceful at this hour, all the rubble and water and trouble blanketed by the darkness, leaving a series of silhouettes with a few twinkling lights here and there where the electricity was still running. It was dark enough outside to see stars, if she tried, but the bright lights in the room had ruined her vision and so she was only treated to the sight of a crescent moon. Idly, she wondered if Sabah was looking at it, as well.
“Tea?” Hannah asked.
“Hmm?”
“I’m going to make some tea. Do you want some?”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess.” Lily looked at Hannah, turning away from the window. “What was the city like before… um. Before?”
Hannah had gone to the counter and was involved in the tea-making process, but turned her head over her shoulder to reply. “It was much nicer, as you can probably imagine. We’ve had a very busy few months and it’s only seeming to be busier now that we have to contend with the Undersiders and the Empire staking their claims, but… the Boardwalk was nice. They’d hold a farmer’s market there on Sundays, and the view of the bay in the morning when the sun was rising was beautiful. Captain’s Hill and several of the parks were good places for a picnic.”
“With the way the news was reporting, I was…. not exactly sure what to expect.” Lily said, hedging her words.
“It’s always like that, dramatised,” Hannah said, “but it’s true that Brockton Bay does have more troubles than nearby cities. Which, speaking of, are you settling in okay? How is it with the other Wards?”
“I think so. Shadow Stalker is - well. Weld put his foot in the mouth majorly when we first met everyone but he’s really trying to smooth things over, so I think that’ll be okay, and the others are still figuring out how they feel, so I’ve been giving them some space, but they’re all cool.”
“Shadow Stalker is definitely prickly,” Hannah agreed. “Once you know her, though, it’s much easier to get along with her.”
I don’t exactly want to, Lily thought. But sure. I’ll keep the peace.
Two minutes and thirty seven seconds later, the kettle whistled in the silence, and the tea steeped while Lily looked back out at the window. She was honestly exhausted, from running around, from dealing with the complicated teenage dynamics that she’d just undersold to Miss Militia, from carefully negotiating with Sabah… she was very cute.
“It’s ready,” Hannah said, and there was a little clink of teacups on the central table. “No milk, I’m afraid, but we do have creamer and sugar. And some pastries that I’d been saving, but no sense in letting them go bad.”
Hannah then sat down and leaned back in her seat, commandeering the entire sofa. Lily strategically picked the opposite sofa, and then-
“Borek?”
Hannah raised her eyebrows. “You know what they are?”
Cause of Sabah, yeah. Lily shrugged. “They were popular some places in New York.”
Hannah nodded, and Lily took a sip of her tea. Bitter, but she didn’t feel like adding anything to it, so she’d just drink it slow. The borek was a little stale, but still tasty.
“These used to be some of my favorite things to eat when I was growing up,” Hannah said. “These and nazuk.”
“Nazuk?”
“Similar, but sweet. If you heated them, the filling would make the rest of the pastry tender. I haven’t seen them very much here, though, and certainly not like how they were made in my village.”
“They sound pretty good. Your village?”
Hannah nodded. “I was born in Turkey and came here while I was still quite young.”
There was a pause, and then hesitantly, Lily asked, “Do you miss it there?”
Hannah sat back again, from where she’d leaned forward, and took a sip of tea. The pause went for so long that Lily opened her mouth to say “You don’t hav-” before Hannah waved her off.
“It’s been a long time,” she explained, “and not many of the memories are good. There was a lot of instability in the region, soldiers coming through, and my village… I don’t think it survived.”
She looked suddenly far away, and for only being in her thirties she looked somehow like a lost child and a sullen grandmother at once.
“But,” she spoke slowly, “I do remember lots of little things, the things that only kids remember. Playing games with the other kids in the village, tumbling on stones. My aunt sitting in a white plastic chair in the summer while cicadas buzzed. The smell of rosewater that my mum wore and the food I ate. A scattered collection of memories, and I do miss those ones.”
The tea had cooled to the point where Lily could taste more of it, and it was decent. She took another sip, mimicking Hannah.
“It… that sounds cool,” Lily said, lamely. Hannah did that smile again with the crinkly eyes.
“I know talking to older people can be a little awkward,” she said, “but I don’t bite. We’re working together, and it’s nice to have these conversations.”
Lily nodded. “Thanks. Um, to be fair in this conversation, I don’t really have anything like that,” she said. “I was adopted here, and probably born here, but I’m half Japanese, for all that impacts me. Some comments here and there, the stereotypes in class when I was growing up, but not anything else.”
She set the teacup down.
“I kinda wish I had something that could… make me be more real, you know? Like, Japanese stuff is pretty common, not here but in New York, there’s ramen shops and sushi and the cartoons that people watch and it… is that what I was supposed to grow up with?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “When I was adopted, I was asked to make my name more American. I don’t eat the foods that I did then, with the exceptions that I make like today. I gave up a lot.”
“Was English your first language?”
“No. Kurdish, and then I knew some Turkish. But it’s quite limited, childish.”
Flechette watched the tea ripple inside her own teacup, the awareness that it would complete a revolution a second without spilling if she swirled it just so, and let the moment hang.
“It’s a complicated thing, I think, to find somewhere you belong,” Hannah said, filling the silence. “It worked for me, to become an American and to leave all of that behind. They asked it of me to fit in better, and it made sense to me to do it.”
She leaned forward, her gaze intent.
“But if you feel that it’s made you alone, to be untethered, and you don’t feel quite American… I know it’s got a history, with corruption and struggle rife within it, but I do believe that it is a country of peace and freedom… and importantly, it was built by people who came here to live a better life. Ellis Island, just north of us, used to handle large amounts of immigrants. It’s quite possible that your grandparents passed through there.”
Lily shook her head, gently.
“I- think it’s very nice of you to believe the best of our government, but it also would have put my hypothetical grandparents into the interment camps. World war two. I don’t hate it, America, to be clear, I just… You never felt on the outside, at all?”
“I did, quite often, especially when I spoke no English. You’d know him as Chevalier, now - he was my first friend. Sat by me when we were meeting as the first inaugural Wards.”
Lily gasped. “That’s right, I totally forgot that was you! That was nice of him.”
Miss Militia smiled a slightly different smile, this one more in her cheeks, and Lily could almost imagine a blush. It passed quickly, if it were there at all.
“It very much was. And I did find my place eventually, as everyone does.”
Lily drained her tea, and they sat in silence, digesting the borek. The moon hung heavy in the sky. The lights of the room had finally wore her tolerance down, looking overbright.
“I’m probably going to go back to bed,” Lily said.
“Of course. Don’t worry about cleaning up, I’ll handle it.”
“Are you sure?” Lily said, and was already gathering her napkins and the plates to take when Hannah took them out of her hands.
“Yes. It’ll at least give me something to do.”
“Thank you,” Lily said, and walked to the hallway. “And um, thank you for the advice. And the tea. And everything.”
“It was my pleasure, Lily,” Miss Militia said. “I’m sure you’ll figure out the team dynamics, and you’ll figure out your place in life.”
“I hope so too,” Lily agreed. “Goodnight,” she said, to Miss Militia and to the crescent moon. Her thoughts drifted to Sabah.
I just don’t think my place is here, she thought, as she readied to sleep again, and her dreams were bittersweet and full of lace.