Archive of Our Own

Kate’s hands are shaking, and she has to set the pitcher down before it drops. 

The water keeps running, drumming against the bottom of the sink, and she runs her palms over her face, sliding back through her hair. They fall back down by her side and she sighs.

She stares at Claire out the window. (At pavers and a hand-painted headstone and the ground she lies beneath.)

Kate had never had pink lemonade until Claire. Back when they were young and new like a just-bought car, still feeling out each other’s interior, still getting used to the shape. And then she had it so much, like a constant drip in the summers, ice cold artificial sweetness. It was easier, then, to leave the beers in the fridge and share in Claire’s innocent indulgence, sitting on the deck in the backyard asking What makes it pink? And her laughing, I don’t think we want to know.

This was her purchase, her drink, and she isn’t here to have it.

She doesn’t want to think about Claire, she can’t. She shoves it down, buried in the depth of the closet in her chest, locked in a secure safe and drowned under a sea of old clothes and desires. But what does that leave for her to dwell on? 

Juliet?

Not better. Far from it. 

She looks back at the pitcher and lifts it, forcing her hands as steady as they can get, holding it once again beneath the water until it’s full. After that, it’s just the powder, and the stirring—a monotonous wrist-aching task. Muscle memory, these steps. Focus on that. The cycle she knows. Not Juliet’s relentless yet still somehow genuine grin. Not the smell of her hair or the feel of her body against hers. Not the evidence of her patheticism painted on the street outside. 

Think about pink lemonade. Think about the breath in her lungs and the beating of her heart. 

Take the tray, pour two glasses, arrange them nicely. Like a good fucking host, like Claire would have. (Don’t think about Claire.) And then she carries it out, down the hall into the living room where Juliet sits. Even in her solitary state she wears that smile, plastered on her face. 

“Thank you, Kate,” she says, the moment she sees her, and it’s so fucking grateful her face flushes hot. As if she’d done some great thing for her.

“It’s nothing.” She shrugs and sets it down on the table between them, taking her glass and sinking down into the chair. 

“Cheers,” Juliet offers, and Kate awkwardly bends over to extend her arm, clinking the glass against hers.

“Cheers.”

She avoids watching Juliet’s long, pale neck flex with the force of her swallow, gulping down her own lemonade and thinking about the sour taste stinging her throat, almost metallic. Think about the cushion beneath her. Think about the feel of her feet in her shoes. Think about anything fucking else, but she’s run through all her meaningless thoughts over the last forty days and it’s all worn thin.

“It’s good,” Juliet compliments. 

Kate brings herself to look now. “Yeah? I never add enough water, I was worried it might be too sweet.”

“No, it’s perfect.”

She nods. What an honor, the world thinks she makes good pink lemonade. She could probably slit her wrist and they’d comment on her remarkable performance. What a straight line. What a strong bleed.

(They watched her, she knows, lifeless and still with a firework aimed at her head. Watching it burn until it shot right past her face. Just an inch and it would’ve been her rather than the neighbor’s house, gone up in flames.)

(Juliet is smiling at her, but it isn’t real. She can’t fall for it.)

She clears her throat, filling the tense quiet. “We think the O’Keefe looks great in here.”

Kate turns and looks at the painting, hanging on her wall, and her skin grows hot like she’s been caught halfway out the window by her mother. She shakes her head, quickly insisting, “I was going to return it.”

“No, don’t,” Juliet says, and smiles. “It’s found a good home with you.”

She downs the last of the lemonade, and takes one of the ice chunks into her mouth, distracting her thoughts with the cold sting as she chews on it. “There are all these animals around. Wolves. A lot of wolves, actually. Buffalo. I saw a horse the other day, right in the middle of the street. I’m sure one of those guys would love to chew on an O’Keefe.”

Juliet nods, though her gaze is the most judgmental she believes it can get. Uncertain, almost. “Yeah. We could see how that could pose an issue. Would it make you feel better if we better guarded the museums?”

Kate nods. “Yeah. Sure. Wouldn’t want a horse eating the Mona Lisa.”

Juliet gives a weak laugh, and she wonders how much of the cacophony of voices in her head is begging to just leave Kate completely. They don’t think she’s funny, clearly. She’s miserable to be around. There must be some sort of civil war in there, determining whether she’s worth it. If that’s how it works.

But she’s here. She came back; she listened.

It means something, doesn’t it?

(That they watched her die a slow death, and only swooped in once she got on her knees and begged to be saved.) (Get a fucking grip.)

Juliet is looking at her, and Kate can’t stop herself this time from thinking of Claire, and imagining the feel of her thighs beneath her head. Oh, what she would give to lie in her lap now. To be held. Kate would let herself breathe and be in the way she’d been trained not to allow herself. (Claire always knew the codes. Knew where her wires were.)

Juliet would hold her, if she asked. She’d run her fingers through her hair in the same way Claire’s fingers once moved. A memory, a habit haunting new hands. And if Kate closed her eyes, she’s sure she could allow herself to sink into the delusion.

Once, she would’ve thought herself to be stronger than that, but she knows now it’s not the case.

Juliet is looking at her, and Kate wishes she could cry.

She smiles, something clunky and uncomfortable, and admits so weakly, “I don’t know what to talk about.”

Juliet gazes at her with a mother’s understanding. (Not her own, that’s for sure. But someone’s. Somewhere out there.) “Who says we have to?” For a blink of an easily missed second she falls under that distant thinking spell, a familiar glazed over look in her eyes, before returning to herself and suggesting, “What about a board game?”

Kate follows her gaze to the cabinet, and thinks about Claire, inside of Juliet’s head, and the identical suggestion she would’ve made. 

But it’s comfort. And Kate is cowardly enough now to let herself have it. 

On the floor, staring into the cabinet, she’s thinking about when Claire’s friends would come over and they’d fill the table with game after game. It was easy, because Kate didn’t have to talk beyond the harmless banter of competition. She didn’t have to answer questions or, god forbid, try and ask them. 

Plenty of multi-player games, and she should probably just throw them away now since they’ll never be needed again. 

“Bananagrams?” she offers, and then frowns. “You know every word. Uhmm . . .” Her eyes run over the sides of the boxes, colorful logos lined up on the shelves. “Fuck.”

“What about the game you used to play with Tom and his brothers?”

She snaps her head around, slapped breathless at the memory. Something so far away, and yet she aches at the reminder. Still. A broken ankle, years ago, but it still throbs when the weather gets cold. 

But she guesses that’s less knowledge-based. Now that she’s remembering. And with that, she doesn’t have to pull out one of these games, doesn’t have to stare at the scorecards inside, still stained with Claire’s clean, bubbly handwriting. The kind all the popular girls in school wrote with, that used to dig under her skin so deeply. Now something so precious. (Now something lost.)
Just the decks of cards. Easy. 

Spread out on the table, sat across Juliet, she runs her fingers over the cards, around their edges. Juliet’s attention is carefully centered on her actions, deftly sliding cards onto the spit piles, flipping them over, darting her eyes across the table, and then she’s won the round and Kate sighs.

“It’s like playing cards with Google,” she says, and Juliet grins like it’s a compliment. As they reshuffle the cards, she adds, “I haven’t played this in forever. I guess I forgot about it.”

“We remember how much you loved it,” Juliet says, as if reminiscing. Her eyes light up, then, like she’s been struck by the most marvelous idea. “Would you like for Tom to come visit? You haven’t seen him since 2005.”

Yeah. She remembers 2005. Her mother’s funeral and Tom’s lecture in her childhood kitchen. How wrong it was of her to not come back when she got sick. How much her mother missed her. (She didn’t believe that her mother had that in her, after how willing she was to send her sixteen year old daughter off to hell for a month and a half. It’s hard to imagine her holding any fondness toward Kate at all, after that. If she’d even been able to before.)

She can’t stand to look at Juliet, worried she’d see that same gaze turned back on her. “It would be just like talking to you, right? Spit.”

She takes the deck into her hand, flipping a new card out onto the table.

Juliet’s hands are quick, moving cards onto the new piles. “We suppose.”

“Yeah. I’m good. He didn’t want me to see me the last twenty years, so why change that now.” She sighs, struggling to swallow past the tightness of her throat and reaching her cards forward, forcing herself to process the numbers. “Why do they call it spit?”

“We don’t know.”

Such an absurd response, like Claire saying no to a spoon of the peanut butter they always had in the fridge. “You know everything.”

“Well, no one’s really sure where the name come from. We know it originated in the UK during the eighties. There’s different theories as to who named it, but no clear answer. And—” she cuts herself off, suddenly, leaning forward and slapping her hand onto the pile of cards, finishing the game with a stretched out, “HA!”

She’s grinning so wide, those piercing, ice blue eyes boring into hers with satisfaction, and Kate’s heart stutters in her chest.

She doesn't realize she’s smiling too until her cheeks begin to ache. 

She’s always been a sore loser, but Claire had the ability to numb the pain. Too cute when she won, and Kate almost preferred that to seeing the pout she’d have worn if she lost. She thinks about pain meds, and how they always seem to know exactly where to go in your body, exactly what they need to fix. Juliet knows the crevice of every weakness she holds. 

Juliet is like if her mother had not only read her diary, but been able to read her mind. Condescending and invasive and staring down at her from a high horse. She’s an impossible anomaly and she isn’t real. She’s a haunted house, a shell of a human with the entire world inside her hollow head. 

But when they get up from the table, Kate finds herself unable to trail more than a few steps beside her. Needs to feel the deceiving warmth of her body in her atmosphere. It’s hard to explain what happened over those forty days. How she began to sink into emptiness, until the days ran together, smudged like the dry-erase marker on her white board, and she began to question if she was even real. If she existed at all, in this empty city, every breath echoing off the walls. 

Juliet is a paradox, but she’s skin and bones and her smile is close enough to home. 

Standing in front of her house, she stares at the words painted white, stark against the cul-de-sac. Come back. She’s crawling out of her skin.

“Is there a way you could powerwash that off, or something?”

Juliet, so entirely unaffected, nods. “Of course.”

“Great.” She stares out at the city in the distance, and she swears she sees lights. Movement. Life. “They’re all back?”

Juliet nods. “Yes. Well, we’ll be fully moved back in by tomorrow, we predict.”

“Good luck.” She scrapes her foot over the driveway and then turns back toward the house. “Good night, then.” But the sun is still there, hanging over the horizon. And all she wants is to fall into Juliet’s chest yet again, as she had when she first arrived back here, stepping out of her stupid tiny car and staring at her from the street. It’s horribly pitiful and just recalling the act of weakness makes bile rise in her throat. 

Juliet’s brow falls, drawn together just slightly. “Would you like us to stay? We’d be happy to.”

“No . . . I have chores, and stuff.” As if she hadn’t done everything she could possibly do twice over. As if she doesn’t desperately need someone to fill the space. 

Juliet will obey her now, she knows. Leave quickly, so as to make her happy. So fucking happy. (Because everyone is always so honest about what they want and what they need all the time.) 

So she asks, before she can, “Where do you live? I never . . . where do you go when you aren’t here?”
“Well, we don’t believe in private property. This planet is our home. Wherever we find ourselves is where we are.”
She almost rolls her eyes. “Right. Ok. But where do you sleep.”

“Would you like to see?”

An offer, startling. Hurley had told her she might do better by simply asking them things. That they were so willing to answer every prompt without hesitation. (But Kate tried that, and it ended with Juliet on the ground at her feet with a stopped heart, and it ended with her all alone in a city meant for hundreds of thousands of people.)

“Sure,” she says, figuring she’s wasted her time a lot of worse ways.

It isn’t what she was expecting, the arena’s center turned into a sleep pit. Bodies like books on a shelf, slotted one by one and packed tight across the laid out sheets. Strangers, she’s sure. All of them. Not now, with their minds melded, but before. She imagines being one of them, her body tucked around that of some man she’s never even met, and her stomach churns, discomfort shivering up her spine. 

“We find sharing a space reduces energy usage. Not to mention, the body heat.”

“Sounds great,” Kate mutters, and frowns at how content they all seem down there. Peaceful smiles on their faces as they remove their shoes, as they lie down and close their eyes. She’s sure they’d be grinning, still, even in death. (Juliet had smiled, still, bleeding out in front of Kate’s house, glass shards embedded in her wounds.)

She turns to look at her now, arms crossed before her, smile almost proud. 

Kate jokes, “This isn’t gonna turn out like the orgy scene at the end of that Matrix movie, right?”

“Not unless you want it to.”

It takes a moment for the line to register, snapping her head around to ensure it’s still Juliet standing there. That it was her mouth the joke—not just a joke, a line coated in something so foreignly flirtatious—had fallen out of.

She’s smiling, but it’s different. Quirked up on one side. A smirk, almost.

“Would you like to go down?” she asks, Kate’s brain still racing to catch up. All she can manage is a nod. 

It only turns her stomach tighter once she’s standing there, gazing at the long rows of people at her feet. Their skin, pressed together. 

Her observation is interrupted by a soft jingle and a sudden nudge to her calf. She turns around and gasps softly at the dog that sits there, gazing up at her with big, sweet eyes.

“Hey, there.” She glances at Juliet. “He’s not . . . one of you. Right?”

Juliet shakes her head. “No, he’s not. We don’t keep pets, but if an animal would like to remain by its owner’s side, we continue to care for them. This dog is named Vincent. He’s fond of Shannon over there.”

She glances over her shoulder to find a young blonde woman among the group, giving a wave. Kate awkwardly extends one back. She bends down and runs her hands through the dog’s soft fur, scratching the place between his ears. Claire used to talk about animals and their calming effect, something she called bullshit on more than once, but she feels it now. The breath of relieved air that flushes through her. 

“Would you like to stay the night?” Juliet asks, then. “We could prepare you your own, private room.”

She imagines it. Juliet smoothing down her pillow, the warmth of her hands remaining. Wishing her a good night. Lying there, imagining Juliet sleeping soundly outside. 

She shakes her head quickly. She has a house. She’s used to spending her nights alone.

“I’m good.”

“Well, we can drive you home. Or, you’re free to use our car yourself.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

Juliet frowns, softly, and for a moment Kate thinks of her arguing. (Wishes, almost.) But it’s an impossibility, and Juliet nods. “Of course. Would you mind if we lied down, then?”

“Go ahead.”

She watches, fingers still deep in the dog’s golden fur, as Juliet lowers herself to her ground, methodically untying her shoe laces and setting them at the end of her space. Here, looking at it, it almost seems comfortable. Soft. Even though she knows it wouldn’t be. The cold hardness of the ground would make her back ache. 

She never could sleep at other peoples’ houses. Recalls being ten. A pity invite to Melissa’s birthday party, and calling her mom in the middle of the night to come take her home. She refused, and she had to take the walk of shame, returning back to the room where everyone had stirred at the sound of her movement.

She didn’t really go to sleepovers after that.

It took her months to spend the night at Claire’s apartment. She’d worn out every excuse under the sun far past its believability. Early shifts and I sleep better in my own bed and my roommate’s out of town and I need to feed her cat. And then she’d run out, and she was so tired, and she was looking at her so softly.

So she lied down.

And she isn’t sure she’d ever slept so well, nor ever has again. 

Claire was easy to give in to, even when it was so hard. It’s cruel that Juliet knows that. Knows her methods and her secrets. 

But it’s the best she’s slept in months. In a long time. When she stirs, blanketed in such peace that she struggles to know where she is. All she knows is a strange sort of contentment, something soft and gentle running through her veins.

Blinking her eyes open, instinct met with something unexpected. Until she remembers.

A hand, stretched out, rest upon a warm arm.

Juliet’s arm. 

She startles, pulling it back into her chest. Lying back against the pillow, she stares at the arena’s ceiling, trying desperately to tune out the presence of all the bodies surrounding her. 

She listens to Juliet’s breaths, soft puffs in and out, and it isn’t fair that even in sleep she sounds the same.

“We had a good time with you,” Juliet says, the first break from a silent car ride, parked before her driveway. Her stomach curls in on itself—struggling to swallow the wave. She adds, “Would you like us to make you breakfast?”

So domestic her skin crawls. “No, thanks.”

Juliet nods.

She looks at her, and thinks about how nice it was to share space. To speak and be heard. To be held.

“I had a nice time, too,” she chokes out, and runs out of the car before it can bounce off.

If, months ago, Kate had been able to peer into the future and see herself now, she certainly would’ve been horrified by her blatant weakness. But Kate months ago didn’t know the torture of loneliness as she does now. It’s more than loneliness, more than a lacked invite. An emptiness that ached all the way in her bone marrow.

And hiking is easy. They don’t have to talk. She can look at the expanse of the desert far below the mountain; she can look at Juliet, and study the effortless way she moves. 

They reach the peak, and Kate steps to the edge, world beneath her. She stares at the train, slinking across the distant horizon, and can’t help a smile.

“I love trains,” she says.

“Really?”

The genuine shock whips her around, frowning at Juliet’s curious gaze. “I’m sure I told someone that I like trains.”

She seems to consider it, and then shakes her head, giving a shrug. 

Maybe they’re missing things, she thinks. Maybe there are gaps. She had to have said it, had to have let it slip.

Or maybe it never seemed relevant.

Maybe there are things Claire didn’t and will never know. 

She shoves down the stinging emotion rising in her head. “Train sounds are the loneliest sound in the world.”

Juliet nods, and then smiles. Before Kate can ask why, the train’s horn sounds, echoing up to her ears. She laughs, grin aching in her cheeks.

“How do you do that?” 

Juliet shrugs, sheepish. “We don’t know everything. It has something to do with the body’s electromagnetic field. Everyone has an electric charge, even you. Yours is just dormant.”

“So, like radio?”

“In a way. But our communication is unconscious. Like breathing.”

“Hm.” She absorbs the information, a careful mental record. “Why do you people need trains, anyway?”

Juliet almost looks embarrassed, and Kate understands why when she admits, “Food transportation.”

She’s reminded, like a slap across the face, of the factory full of plastic wrapped body parts. Of Juliet’s sweet smile as she sucked on those stupid little milk cartons, slurping up someone’s mother. 

She opens her mouth, but finds she has nothing to say.

In her office, on the whiteboard behind the one still painted with all the Wycaro plans. How she could possibly kill Sawyer off without displeasing her team, Claire, and every single reader. He was her shining star, the pirate love interest of her trashy romance novels. And all she wanted was to be rid of him. She’d tried, leaving him for dead at the end of book three. But the publishers insisted on a fourth, and a return from their favorite sailor. So back he was, and all she could think of was how to shake him yet again.

Doesn’t matter anymore, at least.

Behind that whiteboard lies another, the important one, holding a list of every detail Kate has learned about these people. It’s gotta add up to something, eventually.

At the bottom, the freshest edition, in all caps and underlined twice. 

THEY EAT PEOPLE.

A good reminder.

Skilled fingers press into Kate’s tensely wound muscle, and the moan that slips from her mouth is felt throughout her body.

“Are you alright?” Juliet asks, and her face flushes pink, leaning down into the cushion.

“Yeah. Great.” She takes a deep breath, allowing herself to go loose at the effort of the masseuses' hands. Not really masseuses, she's sure. A delivery driver, maybe. A chef. Who knows. But they carry the knowledge of them all, and god, she can feel it. 

She lifts her head just enough to look over at Juliet, relaxed against her own cushion. Her eyes trail along the pale length of her back. Soft skin she can almost imagine touching, feeling beneath her hand. The scars that make Kate’s stomach turn inward. Scars she’d taken for her. Scars of wounds Kate had pressed her hands against, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. 

Her fault, but they’re the ones who gave her a hand grenade. Who said they’d give her another. Who said they’d give her a fucking atom bomb if she asked.

“Juliet,” she says, cutting off her own train of thought. “Does this . . . feel good for you? I mean. Does everyone in the world feel what you’re feeling? Do they?” She juts her thumb backward toward the uniformed people working their hands on their bodies. “It’s like you’re giving a massage to yourself.”

She chuckles. “In a way, yes. But no, not everyone is feeling what this body feels. Think about it this way. Just today, there have been 965 births, and 1,674 deaths. Oh—uh. Actually just now a man in Bulgaria impaled himself on a fence post.”

The casual tone doesn’t do it justice. “Shit. Is he okay?”

“Yes, we believe he’ll be fine. We don’t think he pierced any vital organs.” Juliet turns her head to look at Kate, her eyes sort of glazed over with pleasure in a way that Kate is entranced by. “Point being, to experience every feeling all at once would be impossibly overwhelming. We don’t share the feelings, we are simply . . . aware they exist.”

Kate frowns. “So, your experiences are yours?”

“Our experiences belong to all of us. But yes, Juliet’s body is the only one truly feeling this right now. And to answer your question, yes, it feels wonderful.”

With that, she lets out her own sort of groan, and it awakens thoughts that Kate is desperate to shut away.

She lies back, and thinks about the heat of the sun and the piercing floral scent of the lotion and anything but what she could do to hear that same noise again.

It’s darkness, far away and endless, dusted with tiny specks of light. 

“This is it?”

She can hear Juliet’s soft breath from behind her. “That’s it. Its star, at least.”

“Kepler 22,” Kate says, repeating her earlier informational spiel. The place responsible for this virus, the reason they are the way they are. (The reason Claire is cold and stiff and dead and not standing beside her.) (Is it, really? When Kate should’ve been there to catch her when she fell back and hit her head on the pavement. That’s what killed her, isn’t it? Kate’s inability. Her fault.)

“Yes. You can’t see the planet, Kepler 22b. Well, that’s what we call it on Earth. We don’t know what they call it.”

“Who’s they?”

“We don’t know that either. We know that its radius is roughly twice that of Earth’s. Oh, and, fun fact. We think the planet may be one enormous ocean. Sometimes we close our eyes and try to picture it.”
Kate pulls back from the telescope and turns over her shoulder to see Juliet, cross-legged on the rock with her eyes shut, face turned up toward the sky as if she can feel something Kate can’t. Like she’s in church, praying to some god Kate can’t believe in.

She shakes her head. “Well, I can’t see it. I don’t think I’m looking at the right spot.”

“Do you see a star brighter than the others?”

She leans back in, squeezing an eye shut and pressing the other against the lens. Gaze focusing on the pinpricks of light, the Swan constellation, she notices one glowing stronger. “Yeah, I think so.”

“That’s Deneb. Trace up the first section of the wing and you should see a tiny dot.”

“I can’t see one dot from another.”

Juliet lets out a soft hmph. “There’s a lot of light pollution coming from the city. Let’s see what we can do about that.”

“I mean, unless you’re going to—”

And then the city, far in the distance, goes dark. Kate’s mouth falls open, staring at the slow black out as a pit grows deep in her stomach. (Covering up something horribly precious, a sort of affection warming at the sight. Something done for her. So grand.)

“Do that,” she finishes, voice so soft she’s sure Juliet couldn’t hear it anyway. 

It’s so dark, the lookout deck only lit by the dim red light shining from the ground. Footsteps sound behind her and she turns to see Juliet come close.

“Would you like us to place the eyepiece for you?”

She shakes her head quickly, chest tight at the sudden nearness of her body. “No. I got it.”

She leans in again, able to feel the heat of Juliet’s body beside her even with her sight occupied.

And then she gasps. “There it is.”

Something so small, and yet so important. 

Something beautiful, and yet the source of such damage.

She sees it, shining bright.

“Yeah?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

A laugh bubbles up out of her throat, and she’s reminded of Claire. Of seeing the Northern Lights and how she’d gazed up at them with such joy. How she’d point out every full moon and every constellation and held such a beaming twinkle in her eye. Something Kate could never imagine holding.

She holds it now, feels it. That sparkling sort of delight. 

(I get it now, she wants to scream. Needs to tell her. But she’s gone, and she’ll never know. She’ll never get to tell her, never get to share it with her. She sees it now, but it’s too late.)

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Juliet asks, and her head dips from where it had been turned up, grin still wide even turned on Kate.

She can feel it, sweet like too much candy, curdling in her gut. How beautiful she looks, coated in red. (I get it now, she wants to say.)

“Yeah,” she agrees. And clears her throat, turning back up toward the sky. “What are they like up there, on Kepler 22b?”

“We don’t know. We never will, probably. They’re too far away. What we know is that we love them, and we’re grateful for them and the gift they gave us. And we will honor them by trying to pay that forward.”

Something about her words, no matter how sugarcoated they are, sends a thick coat of dread dripping down her spine. “What does that mean?”

Her smile stretches like taffy. “We must share this gift with others, the same way they shared it with us.”

A gift. Another round of dead wives somewhere far off in the galaxy. 

“How do you do that?” she asks.

Giant antenna! written in big letters on the whiteboard. 

The list, growing wider, spreading out, stretching across the whole board. Not done, but as Kate attempts to write the next letter, she finds the marker has run out. Dry, unfinished, unreadable strokes. 

She leans over toward the box, but it’s empty.

Fuck.

It was always Claire who remembered to restock, who refilled everything before Kate was even aware it had begun to diminish. 

If only it had been as easy for her as it is for Kate, now, dialing zero on the phone and listening to Juliet’s voice, requesting a new box of markers. 

She twiddles her thumbs until the doorbell rings, rushing down the stairs and opening it to find Juliet, standing tall and holding it out.

“Thanks,” she says, forcing a smile and taking it. 

She nods, wearing her usual grin. “Of course! We’re happy to help.”

Kate turns to head back inside, but her voice sounds again, drawing her back.

“Kate, if we may . . . does this mean you’re writing again?”

The age old question, asked with such eager hope that she almost feels bad that the answer is no. These people who can’t really like anything, can’t make art or enjoy it. And yet they’re starving for her words. For something new to entertain. It’s pathetic, in a way, but Kate has always been touched by helpless animals. 

“Uh, yeah,” she lies, and sees how she lights up. “Writing away. Words just flowing.”

“That’s amazing to hear,” Juliet says, with more excitement than even she has ever shown. “Is it the next Wycaro?”

She wonders who it is in there, risen to the front. Which one of the fans who’d attend every meet and greet, every reading, every panel. The ones who sent fan mail and wrote on the message boards and on Twitter.

Pleasing them, she nods. “Yup. Shh, no spoilers.”

Her eyes are gleaming. “Oh, of course! If you’d ever be willing to share with us, we would be absolutely honored to read it.”

“Mhm. Sure.”

Juliet nods, and then softs her smile awkwardly. “Well, we’ll let you get back to it. Happy writing, Kate.”

“Happy writing!” A unanimous shout from all the people working on patching up the neighbor’s house. Kate extends an uncomfortable wave of thanks and nods to Juliet.

Inside, in her office, she pulls the front whiteboard over the other, staring at her notes. Cecile disguised as a pirate, Sawyer drowns, Sawyer kidnapped and gone for plot?, Love potion??? (Claire’s suggestion), Cecile wins temporal compass—battle of wits?

Maybe there’s something there.

She taps the ball with her mallet and watches it roll across the grass, slower than she intended, stopping just short. 

She groans and Juliet smiles. “That was close!”

“Don’t patronize me.”

She simply shakes her head, switching spots and getting into position. Impeccable form, of course, and then she hits the ball forward, right through the hoop. 

“Bullshit,” she calls, and Juliet laughs. “You said you’d never played before.”

“Juliet hasn’t played. But we have the knowledge of every croquet player in the world.”

Kate rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I get . . . chess. But croquet is muscle memory. You have that too?”

Juliet’s eyes flutter away, her smile molding into something cheeky. “Maybe. Or maybe you just suck.”

The blatant trash talk—so human, so real—knocks the wind from her lungs. Hardly recovered when the cheery, gameday music sounds and she turns to see, on the large electric scoreboard at the other end of the field, You suck, Kate!

She snorts. “Wow, ok. Move over, I’m gonna kick all seven billion of your asses.”

“If you say so.”

Her competitiveness had been difficult when it came to Claire. She put so much effort into winning that she often did, so victoriously cocky about it that Claire almost always came out of it hurt. Yet, she was unable to go easy on her, for the sake of her own pride.

Now, here, with Juliet, she’s on the other end, and it hurts. She gets it now.

She tries so hard, and yet Juliet is winning. By a lot. (Is it really a fair comparison, though? Kate against the entire world?) (Her life story.)

“Kate, may we ask you a question?”

“If you’re trying to distract me, it isn’t going to work.”

She chuckles. “That wasn’t our intention, no.”

She stands up straight, squinting against the sun to look at where her ball ended up. “Sure, then.”

“What was your best day writing?”

Kate blinks, turning and staring at her, processing the sudden words out of left field. “Huh? I’m sure you have plenty of writers up in there. Ask one of them.”

“We want to know yours.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, well. It doesn’t exist.”

“What do you mean?”

With a sigh, she rubs her hand over her face. “It’s like asking the most fun I’ve had getting my teeth drilled.”

“Oh, you poor tortured artist,” Juliet teases, and like deja vu, Kate’s spine tingles. God, she sounds just like Claire. And yet, it doesn’t bother her. Her skin doesn’t crawl. She simply softens against it, something so warmly familiar.

“It’s my turn,” Juliet adds, getting into position.

My turn.

Juliet’s. Not theirs.

Huh.

“Why are you asking?” Kate pries, and gets an over the shoulder, knowing smile in return.

She must look like a kid at Disneyland, stepping through the diner’s heavy door. An astonished laugh falls from her lips and she turns to look at Juliet, grinning sheepishly at her excitement.

“This place closed years ago,” she breathes out, cheeks aching with the width of her smile as she slips into one of the booths. Her booth. 

This was her home, back when she hardly had one. 

“May we sit?” Juliet asks.

She nods, gesturing across the table with her hand. “Yeah, of course.”

She slides in across from her, a pleased satisfaction in her posture. “Please, tell us how you’re feeling. We would be honored to share this moment with you.”

So robotic it might’ve bugged her once, but this is too great. She’s too overwhelmed. “Well . . . I mean, you know it all started here. I used to handwrite everything on these huge yellow legal pads I’d steal from my temp job. And I’d just write and write all day. And I’d tear out the good pages and I held them all together with this huge clip—also stolen.” She pauses a moment, aware of the stream of words pouring from her mouth, ready to clamp it shut, but Juliet’s gaze is wide. So wholly invested. It spurs her on. “It would, uh, leave these deep indents in my palms when I had to try and open it. It was a nightmare. I was just saving up enough money to buy a laptop, and Claire would—”

The joy, suddenly dimmed at the thought of a memory so distant that she’ll never have again. Claire showing up on her lunch break, back when they had just first begun to dip a toe into each other’s lives. 

She shakes her head and circles back. “There was, um, there was this waitress. Bri. And she always kept my coffee topped off, and she never said anything about me staying there all day.”

Juliet listens so intently, so actively, so engrossed in her words. She nods and leans forward, her investment so genuine.

And then her eyes flick away and Kate follows her gaze to see something startlingly familiar.

A waitress, with short black hair. And when she turns, Kate gasps at her face. At the nametag, pinned to her shirt. Bri.

She comes over with that same grin, though older now, more weathered, and pours coffee into the mug sat beside Kate’s arm. “Let me know if you need anything, hun.”

Kate nods absently, watching her in shock as she walks away. 

She lets out a laugh, not quite funny, and turns back toward Juliet. “I used to escape here, you know? I was so . . . wait. It didn’t close. It burned down.”
Juliet nods, and her smile grows with eagerness.

It clicks now.

“You rebuilt it? For me?”

She nods. “We did. We wanted to make you happy, Kate.”

And it’s so fucking kind, more kind than anything anyone has ever extended towards her. Something so meaningful, so well-intentioned. Like something from those rom-coms she always pretended to hate. The ones she secretly longed for. She feels like she’s glowing for just a moment. Just a second of pure joy and affection.

“God, I miss it. Working all night so I could write all day. I mean, those were the best . . .”

Her best day writing.

She asked, but she already knew, didn’t she? She knows everything.

It sinks in, suddenly, how wrong this is. Like the aftertaste of sour milk, curdling in her mouth, tight in her throat. She’d let herself get swept away, surrendering to their sweet fantasy. But it’s a nightmare, painted like a dream. The walls are peeling away now, and she sees it for what it is.

Juliet is smiling, the sweetest thing on Earth, but she isn’t real. She isn’t what Kate wants.

She pushes herself up out of the seat, ignoring Juliet’s questioning and rushing out of the diner, gasping for fresh air outside. 

She’s already three drinks in, standing on the balcony off her bedroom and watching the car chug up the long road to her cul de sac. She feels like some sort of king, watching from above, and yet she holds no power here. She knows that. 

Juliet gets out of the car after she parks, staring up at her, and even with the distance she knows there’s concern in her expression.

She steps back inside, and down the stairs to the door.

She can’t stand to look at her, doesn’t want to drown yet again in the sea of her eyes. Just turns and swallows the last of her glass, heading right toward the liquor cabinet in the living room.

“Are you alright, Kate? You left us in quite a hurry.”

“Just peachy,” she mutters, sliding a second glass over and locating the whiskey.

“Sarcasm?” Juliet asks, and Kate laughs, rough and mean. Unable to help it, now.

“Yup.” She glances at her now, the feigned innocence in her expression. Like a deer in the headlights, big eyes deep with confusion. “You want a drink? You want a drink.”

“We’ll have one if it pleases you.”

Her words grate on her, like grinded teeth. “Would it kill you to just say I?” She raises an eyebrow as she turns, reaching the second drink out toward her. “It’s always we. We want this, and we think this.”
And the question is real, because these people are so fickle, so complicated. She can’t assume anything.

But Juliet stutters, caught off guard, not knowing the answers for possibly the first time. “We . . . I find it odd. You certainly wouldn’t refer to yourself as we, or us. But, we suppose she—we mean. I could—”

“Really? All the brains in the world and you can’t navigate a fucking pronoun.”

Juliet seems to flush, almost embarrassed, and Kate takes a long swig of the liquor.

“Is that what’s upsetting you, Kate?”

She shakes her head. What’s upsetting her, is that the world has fucking ended. That her wife is dead. That these things have got their claws in her, and that she’s fallen into the trap so easily. (That she liked how it felt, to be caught in their web.)

What’s upsetting her, is that everything good about the world has vanished, dissipated in these people’s grasps, and no one but her gives two shits.

“Was Bri still living here?” she asks, swept across the room and plopping down into the chair. “Back when she was her own person.”

“No. She was living in Florida.”

Kate nods, encouraging. “Was she on vacation? Living there?”

“She was living there. Working as a cosmetologist. Recently married.”

She laughs, for there’s nothing else to do. But it aches in her chest and it tastes bitter in her mouth. “So, she’d moved on with her life, and then you people dragged her back here for what? To do some roleplay?”

“Kate, we don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“What I’m talking about is that you people are smarter than you act. You know what you’re doing.”

Juliet seems so sad, so stricken, and she has to remind herself it isn’t real. “Kate, we’re only trying to make you happy.”

“You’re trying to distract me. You’re rebuilding my favorite diner, and you’re jumping for joy because I’m writing again, but it’s all an act. It’s manipulative bullshit! You’re trying to knock me off course because you know I haven’t given up. Tell me you know that.”

Juliet sighs softly, hands circling the untouched glass in her hands. “We know, Kate. We wish you would. But it is true that we love Wycaro.”

Kate huffs. “Yeah, just about as much as you love everything else.”

Her face falls, but she doesn’t fight it. She can’t. (She can only tell the truth.)

“Fine,” Kate says, standing up and setting her drink down on the side table. “You want to talk about the truth, let’s talk about it. I like you. You . . . people. You . . . whatever, you know what I mean. But it doesn’t change that this,” she circles her finger around wildly. “Is insane. Like, psychosis level of crazy. I mean, you’re starving and you can’t pick an apple of a fucking tree. And somebody has to put the world right. Even if it means that you all leave me again.” She can’t help how her voice cracks, shutting her eyes to still herself. “Even if it means that I’m . . .”

And when she opens her eyes, Juliet is right there, closer than before, staring at her with such intensity that Kate actually stops breathing.

She thinks about before. About the quiet in this house. In this city. In this world. How awful it was. 

And then Juliet kisses her.

By her own will, leaned in and pressed their mouths together for a fraction of a second.

Kate pulls back, eyes blown wide, breath returned and panting as she searches Juliet’s face for an answer. But all she finds is a smile.

She misses being touched. Being held.

God, she’s so lonely.

And without sense, pumped on pure desperation, on pathetic need, she lunges forward and kisses her back, hand grabbing her neck, pulling her in. Starving and this is all that can satiate her. Gasping, moaning against her soft lips, grabbing at her until she’s impossibly close. 

And it’s real.

It’s more real than almost anything she’s ever known.

Kate bounces her knee up and down, unable to sit still on the step. She’d always gotten antsy when Claire had her hands on a chapter, pacing and chewing on her nails, churning possible reactions in her head until they made her sick. It’s that same bubbling inside her now, maybe worse. It’s not just Claire. It’s the entire world, reading a first draft.

The fifth book was a force of her hand by the publishing company, just like the fourth. Desperately, she wanted Sawyer and Cecile and their stupid pirate stories out of her hands. She wanted to be taken seriously. But serious books didn’t make money. Not like Winds of Wycaro. 

So, the world ended. And money didn’t matter. Writing didn’t matter. They could claim their love of the books however much they wanted but it didn’t change they couldn’t really enjoy it. Not how a fan should. 

But then Juliet touched her. Soft, deft hands navigating her body like a sailor with a knot. And Kate felt alive for the first time since Claire let out her last breath. Kate was dead too, buried along with her. 

But Juliet had the power of revival and her heart was beating once again beneath the bruised skin of her breast. 

And so, she’d written.

(Claire knew that was the best way to spike her inspiration. Unclog the thoughts from her head.)

(Juliet knew that too.)

She leans back, looking up at the top of the stairs eagerly. Maybe she should go up there; it’s been a long time. Just to check. Just to get a glimpse of her face and her reactions.

And then the door creaks open, and she snaps back to face forward. 

Listening to the soft steps against the stairs until Juliet sits beside her, still wearing Kate’s own robe, her hands holding tight onto the pages.

“Don’t leave me hanging,” Kate jokes half-heartedly. 

Juliet laughs, her face split into a grin. “Sawyer is a woman now?”

Her face flushes at the directness.

Right. 

Long ago, when she was writing in that diner, she had dreamed up a beautiful woman. A pirate, with an open flowy shirt whose tan skin would gleam in the moonlight, who possessed a charm that could have anyone on their knees before her. Who’d caress Cecile’s cheek and hold her gently and fuck her hard and break her heart just to fix it all over again. 

And then Claire said it was good enough to publish. That it could make money. (She’d know; she knew everything.)

How could Kate let Sawyer be free? How could Kate so publicly reveal her shameful secrets to the world? 

It was easier for Sawyer to be a him. With the sarcasm and the wit and the sensual sexuality that all leading men should have. And Kate could swallow the discomfort down and stomach the endless words of devotion to a man. How he’d touch her. 

It was easier, because she filled bookstores with fans. Filled auditoriums for panels. The women thirsted over him and she knew that it was the right thing to do. No woman would’ve had the power he did. 

But those fans are gone now, aren’t they? They all know the truth. So, why not?’

So, she nods. “Yup. Long overdue. Figured  . . . you know, it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“Are you going to retcon it?” Juliet asks.

The questions startle her, stuttering out, “It can happen canonically.”

Juliet’s brow furrows with thought. “How? I mean . . . there’s the Font of Truth from the second book, but that wouldn’t work.”

“I was—”

“Oh, the Shapeshifters of Gollinbray!”

Kate blinks, thrown off guard by the enthusiasm. Even Claire could never get so excited about the lore. Knew every little detail, but the same way a teacher knows her lesson plans inside out. Because she cared, yes, but because she had to. (She wouldn’t have even glanced at Wycaro if it wasn’t Kate’s.)

But Juliet . . . Juliet is excited.

“I was thinking the Caverns of—”

“The Caverns of Aevalor! Of course.” She laughs, shaking her head. “Weren’t they lost to time, though?”

“Well, what’s time to someone like Sawyer? If he—she—gets her hands on the temporal compass—”

“Right! The compass!”

Kate struggles to form her thoughts into words, something not only difficult but extra so in the presence of such enthusiasm. “I had thought about Cecile using it for . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember. It’s better for it to be Sawyer’s, anyway.”

“I agree,” Juliet says firmly, nodding her head in support.

She knows that this is some fan, inhabiting this body. It’s an act. She should know that.

But it doesn’t feel like an act.

“You . . . like it?” she asks tentatively, and Juliet only widens her beaming grin.

“Kate . . . I love it.”

She loves it. Not them.

And though she never could with Claire, she believes her with everything she has. (They can’t lie, right?)

Kate’s hands are shaking, and she worries she’s going to drop the peppers into the sink. 

The water keeps running, pouring rough against her skin as she stares out the window at Claire.

Would she hate her?

She imagines the roles switched. Kate dead, Claire in this house with some other woman. It makes her skin itch, burning something fierce, like an encompassing infection. (But she’d be dead, so she guesses she wouldn’t care.)

Claire would’ve wanted her to be happy. She thinks that’s the truth.

And she is. As happy as she can get, she guesses. A week, now, of Juliet in their bed. Her hair mussed with sleep in the mornings, her steps sounding throughout the house as the days go on, her hands on Kate’s body as the sun sets. With the Patsy Cline vinyl Claire got her for her birthday playing, Juliet had spun her around the living room last night and she’d laughed how she hadn’t in so long. 

She’s happy.

Juliet is different. She is. She swears. She thinks she’s starting to change her.

She comes up beside her now, and Kate turns from the window. From Claire. 

“I hope you’re making enough for the both of us,” she teases, and Juliet smiles, wiping her hands on the towel and turning on her heel, back toward the island. “You’re eating too.”

“Of course.”

They can all starve if they want to, if they’re stupid enough to let it happen. But she can feed Juliet. Stuff her face until she’s so full she can hardly move.

She pauses. “You like omelets, right?”

Juliet nods, carefully chopping the onion with such precision. Some chef’s skills making their way to her hands. “We like all breakfast foods.”

“I’m not asking about them.” She carries the peppers over, setting them on the chopping board, standing across from her. “You. Lowercase you. Does Juliet like omelets?”

She pauses, growing distant for a moment. As if she has to sink into herself to search for the answer. “Yes. She—I love omelets.”

“Good.” 

She wonders, often, about Juliet. Not her Juliet. Not really. The Juliet she was before. This stranger. She could have been anything—a murderer, a cop (ew), an asshole. She could’ve been married. Could’ve had kids.

Her stomach’s twisting in knots; she can’t think about that.

“What’s your favorite food?” she asks, instead, tame enough not to hurt.

And Juliet pauses, running the words over in her mind before a wide grins suddenly overtakes her face. Not like her standard, plastic grins. Something real. “Muffins, I think. When I was younger, my sister and I would bake them all the time. We didn’t always get along, but that was the one thing we could do without arguing. It was kind of like a truce, you know? When one of us was having a bad day, we’d ask if the other wanted to make muffins. And then when she was in college, we'd always make them when she came back home. It was always our thing. Even when we were older. We made all kinds. Chocolate chip, and orange cranberry, and banana nut. Anything you could think of. But blueberry was always my favorite.” 

Listening to her talk, Kate finds it scarily easy to believe it. To accept it as the truth. To accept Juliet as something real. Maybe she’s making it up, maybe it’s a memory she’s accessed, but she finds it doesn’t matter because she’s never sounded so human. Talking about it like she’s seeing it play out on her eyelids in vivid detail. Like it’s really her sister, and she really fucking loves those muffins, and Kate can’t believe it to be anything other than truth. It needs to be true. 

(And if it is, what does that mean? Where is Juliet’s sister now? What happened to that life that she had?) (She knows, if she asked, they could all play pretend. She could go home, meet Juliet’s family, act as if this world is still the same as it ever was. But it would taste like plastic and she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want to face the reality of what she’s done.)
(It’s easier to stay here, and pretend Juliet is just a beautiful girl who loves her.)

“Thank you for telling me that,” she says, and Juliet grins.

“Of course.”

Kate can pretend. Never has she let herself have the things she wants, never has she allowed herself to give in. Too wrapped up in the shame that was instilled in her so deeply, built into the space she grew into, buried deep within her insides, so tangled up she could never lose it. But the consequences could never be worse than what she’s already faced, she knows now, and it can’t hurt. To let it happen. To let herself have it.

These people . . . this thing . . . it’s all wrong. 

But Juliet?

Being with Juliet feels right.