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"Mococo, can I try a little bit of your drink?"
The demon dog grumbles, begrudgingly pushing her glass across the table after getting a stern look from her older sister. "Don't drink too much okay…"
"Yeah yeah, I know."
Biboo, gremlin that she was, did not in fact honor her promise.
"Biboo!" Mococo cried.
Shiori, all the while, watches the scene unfold calmly as she takes another sip of her water, all too used to her friends' antics.
"I wonder when the food's going to arrive," she wonders out loud.
"Moco-chan careful!" Fuwawa scolds, holding Mococo back before she could literally leap over the table to pounce Biboo. "Stop! The drink! You're going to—!"
A loud clatter silences the commotion.
"…spill it."
Mococo and Biboo stare at the mess on the table for a long minute, then at each other, before deflating like balloons in their respective seats. Their eyes then drift to Shiori, who chuckles in good nature.
"There there, it's okay. I'm not mad." She glances around to see if there's any available server, but the restaurant is too busy for there to be any.
"I'll go over to the bar real quick and grab some tissues, okay?" Shiori slides out of the booth and catches Fuwawa's 'thank you!' right before she's out of earshot.
At the bar, she flags down a server and politely asks for tissues as well as two new drinks.
"Sure thing, ma'am. We'll have that for you in a moment."
"Thank you."
Thinking the wait wouldn't be too long, Shiori stands at the bar, her eyes drifting around curiously from the shelves of various brands of alcohol to the intricate lights above to the well-dressed servers working diligently.
As an all-too-familiar restlessness creeps into her chest, placing a heavy weight atop her lungs, her hand slips into her pocket out of habit — her fingers finding the single object nestled inside with ease.
She breathes a little easier after.
I should really stop.
She keeps saying it.
She knows it won't happen anytime soon — but she reminds herself nevertheless.
"Miss, your drinks!"
Shiori looks up and sees the server from earlier waving at her from a bit further down the bar, clearly occupied with a sudden influx of customers.
Understanding and feeling bad, Shiori makes her way over to take the drinks herself.
"I apologize for the inconvenience, Miss."
"It's alright, you're fine. I hope you have a better—"
As she inches closer and closer, the lone customer the server was previously attending to suddenly turns — and Shiori meets a pair of eyes she'd thought she'd never see again.
"Shiori?"
"…Rissa?"
Shiori would ask herself the same question again and again years after it happened.
When staring at the ceiling during late nights she couldn't sleep, bed too big for just one. When she visits restaurants she used to frequent, the food and drink no longer as enjoyable as it used to be. When she sits in a specific spot in her Archives, always facing the door, never to be greeted with a welcome surprise again.
She asks herself;
How did it get to this?
"You're spending more time with her than with me, Shiori. Me! Your literal wife! Do you seriously not see anything wrong with that?!"
"Zeta's a colleague! I already told you!"
Fights between them had never been bad before then. Sometimes there would be tears. Sometimes there would be time needed apart. For all their inhuman traits and inhuman abilities, they were still human — and humans oft made mistakes — but they always met each other in the middle in the end.
Make up. Kiss. Sleep with the other in their arms.
Not this time.
Shouting with lungs full of air. Saying words that immediately came to mind. Ripping and tearing at every wound, no matter how fresh or old.
She asks again;
How did it get to this?
"Good god— we work together, Nerissa! Work! That's it! That's all we do!"
"Oh yeah? Is stripping you naked with her eyes part of her job too?"
Had the weight of marriage simply been too much? Had they severely overestimated the strength of their relationship? When had they even begun to doubt?
How did it get to this?
"You know what, Shiori?" Nerissa barks out a laugh. "Since you care so little, how about I make it easier for you? Let's just get divorced. End it right here right now."
"What?"
"You heard me. Let's get divorced."
Funny, wasn't it?
Shiori's experienced a lot of things throughout her life. Endured many an injury.
And yet it's a string of words that comes closest to being her undoing.
Her heart feels like it's been ripped out of her chest. Jagged edges cut through skin and muscle and bone, coiling around the organ keeping her alive, and it pulls and pulls, leaving her bleeding, hollow and half alive.
No. Shiori wants to say, her bottom lip trembling. I don't want to get divorced. Please. I swear I—
But her Archiver's instinct only registers the pain. The gaping hole between her ribs.
Decades after the Cell, it triggers her response to survive.
"Fine," Shiori hisses, blood and spite spilling from her lips. "Since I treat you so horribly, better I let you go then, right? Let you find someone better?"
For a moment, Shiori swears she notices something shift in Nerissa's face — a fracture of clarity giving a glimpse into her true feelings underneath. But both of them were too far gone, emotions clouding their judgement and warping their view.
I'm sorry. Shiori should've begged. Gone down on her hands and knees before Nerissa's feet, pleading, desperate, like a disciple praying to the altar of their beliefs.
I'm sorry.
"I'll send you the papers soon," is what comes out of her mouth instead. Every syllable like bile against her tongue.
"Goodbye, Nerissa,"
Shiori gives one last long stare, then leaves without turning back once.
In the days that followed, her phone would ring and buzz incessantly throughout the day, Nerissa's number she never could bring herself to delete or block flashing across the screen. Shiori would answer to none of those notifications. Content with nursing her weeping, raw wound alone in a hotel room.
"I'm know you're mad, Shiori, but… call me when you come home, okay? I'm worried. I haven't—"
"Shiorin… can we talk? Please? I can't—"
"…hey… it's me… I… I was just calling cause… shit— Shiori, listen, the truth is I miss—"
Biboo and the twins started messaging her too. Frequent casual texts of 'how are you?' and 'what are you doing?' interspersed between everything else. She pretends not to know or notice why they're doing what they're doing and answers with whatever her emotional bandwidth allows.
Eventually, the calls, the messages, the voicemails, it all stopped.
Divorce papers were sent and they were signed a day later.
Shiori didn't know what hurt more — but that was that.
Seeing Nerissa again, after all these years, felt like reaching the end of a long, brutal winter for Shiori.
Like finally managing to light a fire after countless days and nights withering in the frigid cold. The glow on her face, the light against her skin, enough warmth to finally feel at ease, she had almost forgotten what it was like.
She wasn't exactly the proudest to admit that after they had officially decided to go their separate ways, she selfishly — frantically — grasped onto the dying embers of what they had. Clung to the weak spark that gave her morsels of warmth, even if it could be snuffed out with but a breeze.
For years, Shiori fostered those dwindling flames, those memories, with dogged persistence.
Nerissa rekindled it with a single look.
But with fire also came the threat of burning — of being turned to ash.
Shiori can't help but flinch away.
So she runs.
Forces out a 'hey', then hightails it back to the table with the rest, tissues and new drinks held precariously in hand.
For the rest of the night, despite how much her eyes wanted to wander, spot that familiar head of hair in the crowd, Shiori wills herself to resume dinner with her friends as normal. A task made more difficult by the fact she could barely keep food down.
But she manages it. Even manages to stomach the extra vegetables that almost always end up on her plate during these particular dinners.
On the walk home after bidding the others farewell, Shiori makes a detour to a nearby park she's never been to before.
She needed to work off the excess energy brought on by her nerves.
So she walks and walks and walks until she loses track of how many laps she's done, stopping only because her legs force her to stop — aching from abrupt overuse and the added weight of her thoughts.
Plopping down onto the nearest bench, Shiori decides she'll continue her way home once she's rested.
"I see you still do your late night steppies."
But fate, ever the eternal comedian, had other plans.
"Sometimes," Shiori mumbles, eyes still stubbornly fixed on the patch of grass between her feet. "I'm not as spry as I used to be."
"Still look good to me."
In the past, Shiori would've cracked a joke here. Made a smart quip or at the very least laughed.
Instead, the air around them remains still.
"May I?"
"Sure. Go ahead."
There's a noticeable emptiness between them as Nerissa settles on the bench next to Shiori. A space that's simultaneously too large and too small for the sort of connection the two women once shared — that they still share.
Neither of them makes a comment about it, nor do they try to push against or pull further away from it.
"I saw you having dinner with the girls earlier. How was it?"
"It was good. Always nice when I don't have to cook at home." Out of the corner of her eye, Shiori sees a ghost of a smile touch Nerissa's lips, and she swallows.
"You could've joined us if you wanted to."
Nerissa shakes her head. "It's fine. I already went out for lunch with them last week."
Shiori knows.
Fuwamoco and Biboo had told her.
She's never minded that the three hang out with Nerissa from time to time, even after everything that's happened between them.
A quiet part of her, deep inside, was glad for it.
"How have you been?" Nerissa asks.
"Good."
That's it?
Shiori swears there's more that she wants to say. More that she can say, related and otherwise, but so many of those words are caught in her throat, suffocating her to ensure a slow death.
"Just… doing things." She cringes. "You?"
"Same," Nerissa laughs, and Shiori can't help but notice the sound wasn't quite as vibrant or melodious as it used to be. Now it felt like hearing a soft tune playing in an empty hall, a mere shadow of the symphony it once was.
Several beats pass between them.
"Wow… it never used to be this hard, was it?"
"No," Shiori says. "It wasn't."
Having finally mustered the courage, Shiori lifts her head to look at Nerissa. She doesn't know what to make of the way the other woman is already staring intently at her.
"What are you doing here, Nerissa?" Why did you come to find me?
"Just wanted to see you. Talk to you."
"Why?"
"You know why, Shiori."
I miss you.
"It's… it's been years."
"I know." Nerissa's lips curl into the gentlest smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I know."
Fearful of what another second could do to her fragile heart, Shiori tears her gaze away, admitting defeat. It was then she noticed what particular piece of clothing Nerissa was wearing. She'd say she didn't know how she missed it, but it wasn't like she could look Nerissa in the eye for long to begin with.
"Is that my jacket?"
"Oh."
Oh.
Like that didn't just flip the years that have passed between them on its head.
"I don't wear it all the time. Just sometimes. This is a coincidence — promise."
Shiori knows for a fact Nerissa is lying.
She would know. She hears the same tone in her head whenever she slides her old wedding ring into her pocket.
"If it makes you uncomfortable, I can take it off and stop."
"It doesn't," Shiori says, a little too quickly for it to be considered casual. "It's fine. It's cold out here anyways, better you keep it on."
Her hand comes to rest over her pocket, feeling the outline of the ring through the fabric. She takes a deep breath, then exhales shakily. "You should… you should probably stop in the future though. It's not good. For you."
Hypocrite. You're nothing but a big fucking hypocrite, Shiori.
Nerissa stays silent for a moment.
Then, just barely above a whisper;
"I never wanted a divorce, Shiori."
And perhaps Shiori knew from the beginning.
For an Archiver, she'd gone to great lengths to run from the truth. Avoided and dismissed it at every turn. She supposed it was only a matter of time before it caught up to her.
"I never… I know what I said that day, have enough nightmares about it not to forget—"
Shiori's chest involuntarily tightens at the mention of nightmares. She knew first hand how hard it was for Nerissa to sleep as is.
"—but I swear I never meant it. Any of it. It was cause I kept bottling my jealousy up and up and up until I exploded and took it all out on you. That wasn't fair. I know. I knew I fucked up the moment you walked out, so I tried to fix things and—"
"Why did you sign the papers then?"
"You never came home." Shiori winces at the strain in Nerissa's voice when she says 'home'.
"You never came home, and you never answered anything I sent you."
A stray tear slides down Nerissa's face and Shiori weighs the ethics of reaching out to wipe it with her thumb — tempted to push against the space between.
Her hands get as far as settling atop her lap before they stop completely.
"I thought it's what you wanted. That there was nothing I could do make you forgive me. I wasn't going to… going to chain you down, Shiori. I could never do that to you. So I signed them."
"I didn't want a divorce either," Shiori admits out loud, searing those words into the tattered remains of their history. "I was just… scared. All I could think about was how much I didn't want to feel that hurt again, so I pushed and kept pushing you away."
Belatedly, Shiori realizes tears streaming down her cheeks, and for some reason, that causes a laugh to force its way out of her chest — cutting and tearing the lines of her throat.
"If only my stubborn ass didn't—"
She's cut off by Nerissa placing a hand over hers.
"Don't, Shiori. I hurt you."
"I hurt you too."
Nerissa hums. Not accusatory. Not out of maliciousness. Just acceptance. "You did."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too."
And that's just how it was between them.
What they had was shattered, mangled, broken beyond recognition.
But as they stand among the rubble — Nerissa allowing Shiori to grip her hand once, twice before slowly pulling away — they face each other on equal grounds, battered and bruised, but hearts open and willing.
"Biboo told me you were making a story."
"Yeah, I am," Shiori sniffles, wiping at her tears, but she feels the lightest she's felt in a long while. "It's a stupid story really."
Perhaps they could never fully rebuild what they once had. But they could try rebuild something new. Something stronger. Sturdier. More beautiful.
After all, it takes acknowledgement to pick up the pieces.
"Tell me about it anyways?"
"Sure."
Fin.