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Raven shines in the dim light of the kitchen.
Dark hair falls around her shoulders like wings, and her eyes cut through the dark like diamonds. The tiles beneath her heels are stained and the lightbulb above her head is flickering unsteadily, but she shines, divine and untouchable.
Shadows cling to her dress like spiderwebs, but she only takes it in her stride, moving forwards with confidence. It’s hard to remember that she wasn’t always like this— it’s hard to remember who she used to be. Cookie remembers. Raven remembers, too, and it glimmers in the scar stretching across her face, in the millions of tiny cuts and burns littered across her arms. The side effects of warfare, of imprisonment, of despair. It would be so easy to hide them, to shift them away. But Raven doesn’t.
Cookie watches her, and doesn’t need to wonder why.
Compared to Raven, she feels— well. If her internal clock is right, it’s the early hours of the morning, the moon high in the sky in the Herbalist. Her hair is frazzled, and there’s still bits of kelp clinging to her jacket, hoodie swapped out for something more waterproof. It didn’t do her much good, in the end, but it was a level of preparation that most of their ‘adventures’ were not given.
Saltwater lingers in the back of her throat and sticks in her ears. Fish dance around her head in her dreams, a swirling whirlpool of scales and eyes. Somewhere, the mer queen is dead. Somewhere, Sergei is sleeping. Here, Raven stands in a kitchen, and shines like the moon.
She’s finally, truly, herself. She’s not stuck as Death or Valkyrie’s shadow. Raven stands, and smiles. It’s sharp. It’s not quite a friendly smile, but Cookie knows it’s the best she can do. She’s trying. That’s what matters.
“Welcome back,” Raven says. She tilts her head, glittering, shining, a diamond in a coal mine. “How was the ocean?”
“Cold,” Cookie tells her grumpily, instead of I’ve missed you, where have you been, I haven’t seen you since we got back. “Wet. Lots of fish. Crazy queens trying to flood the Earth.”
“So fairly normal for you, then,” she summarises. She leans on the bench, one hand drawing circles on the wood. Concrete stands where a window would normally be, grey walls stretching out into oblivion. The basement is a fortress. It was built as a prison, and it stands, unchanging. The question of decorations and wallpaper has been posed many times across the years, but there’s something comforting in the consistent grey. The universe could die and she could lose everyone, but it would still sit, molten and concrete and cold.
Cookie leans back and looks at the ceiling instead of looking at Raven, poised and divine and shining. Kelp clings to her sleeve, and salt carves tracks down her cheeks. Guilt sits heavy in her chest.
Raven hums a tune she doesn’t recognise, but she knows Death would. And that’s the problem, really— Raven is herself, and she’s living, and Cookie is living, but he still sits in their shadows and the dark circles under their eyes and the tilled soil in a circle of graves.
It’s been so long since she’s mourned him. She mourns who he could have been every day, but she only mourned who he was once, and then she gave up. Raven, she knows, mourns every day of her life.
Grief and diamonds cast sharp shadows across Raven’s collarbone, and she turns away from the wall where there should be a window. If everything was normal, there would be. In the moments between Raven moving and Cookie meeting her eyes, she lets herself dream. A small house in the woods, a garden of lilies and sunflowers. Children climbing trees, picking apples. Them, happy. All three of them. Happy.
Then Raven looks at her, and the dream dies alongside Death.
Cookie takes a shaky breath and looks down at her hands, dripping water. It splashes onto the tiled floor, and she stares at her shaky reflection. Frazzled green and salt stares back at her. She thinks, for a second, she’s dying. She’s going to fall and bleed all over the dirty tiles, and the angels who come to collect her body are going to look at her and say ‘well, we did our best.’
A hand hovers over her imaginary blood bleeding into the floor, and she blinks, clearing a thousand futures from her eyes.
Raven holds out her hand, soft and sharp at the same time, shadows clinging to each joint and scar and wrinkle. Blood crusts under painted fingernails, blue chipping off with time and wear.
Her hand is an olive branch. It’s a raft in the ocean, in a storm, and it’s Raven, offering with sharp eyes and a soft smile.
“Dance with me,” Raven says, sudden but shining.
Cookie stares at her hand. “What?”
”Dance with me,” she repeats.
“Now?” she asks, taking her hand cautiously.
”Now.” Raven pulls her up, away from graves and shadows and dreams, and she stumbles, slipping on the puddle. Raven catches her, and she breathes, hand in hand, damp and marble. Lilies and sunflowers bloom in her heart.
In the universe’s version of wall crawlspace, a bracket begins to play a song on a violin that never existed. Silently, Cookie curses them, because this is a place for her, for Raven, for them, together. This kitchen, this fortress, this house in the woods. Salty and bloodied and dirty. It’s for them.
The notes drift out across the small room, and Raven guides her forwards, helping her find her footing. She steadies herself, sneakers squeaking against the cold floor. She’s danced before, of course. Her father taught her. Structured and methodical, rules and poses and practice.
Together, they spin across the small kitchen, a tornado of flailing limbs. Cookie skirts around the puddle, the dripping tap harmonising with the violin, increasing and decreasing in tempo as they move. It’s unruly, unplanned. If her father was here, he would probably have a heart attack. Good thing, then, that he’s dead.
Raven spins her around into unpracticed steps, half of them made up, half of them performed incorrectly. Cookie falls into a dip almost instinctively; and Raven catches her, hair billowing out around her head like a halo. She’s beautiful, Cookie thinks suddenly, wildly. Blood still crusted under her fingernails, scar warped as she smiles, Raven’s beautiful. She knows this like she’s known it all her life. The sky is blue, grass is green, Raven is beautiful.
She almost expects her gut to twist. She’s thought people beautiful before, of course, but there’s something different about her. The last time she fell in love, she doesn’t think she really fell in love at all, not now, not here. She did then, she did five minutes ago, but as of this very second, she thinks she’s changed her mind. Familiar guilt bubbles to the surface at that thought, and she shoves it back down.
And that’s what this is, isn’t it? Love. Cookie’s always been quick to shove a label onto these things, to her friends’ despair. She latched onto Death, she latched onto the idea of protection, she latched onto the idea of somebody who would stick by her, no matter what. They loved each other, but— this, she thinks suddenly, is what love is.
Dancing terribly in a kitchen in the middle of the night, covered in saltwater and kelp and blood. This is it.
She shoves them both backwards, twirling straight into the cupboards, hands clasped. The violin picks up tempo, dipping into something more dramatic, and she thinks she hears a piano join it in imperfect harmony. Raven laughs, windchimes and gunfire, and that’s beautiful too. Cookie trips over the gap between the tiles, and her smile grows wider. Diamond eyes glint, and salt fills her nose.
Yeah. This is it.
Raven spins her, raising her hands above her head. The kitchen becomes a blur of light and colours, and she blinks, dizzy as she slows down. Sneakers squeak on wet tile, and Cookie pulls back, watching her face. Her hand still fits neatly in Raven’s, like it was always meant to be there. She looks at scratched nail polish and neat slashes. The air tastes of snow and oil.
Cookie smiles, and lets Raven pull her into another dance.