Chapter Text
The apartment seems off somehow. She goes to Joel and Lizzie’s relatively often, family dinners and movie nights, but she can’t shake the feeling that something has changed.
“Have you moved the furniture around?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at the couch as she sits down. Joel shakes his head, and looks at her weirdly to boot. She sticks her tongue out at him. Running a hand over the fabric of the seat, she lets her gaze wander, picking over all the little pictures and signs of life.
“What’s in your hand, anyway?” he asks, stepping over and lifting her wrist. Her fist is firmly closed around something, so tight the knuckles are white.
“I’m not sure,” Gem says. He rubs a thumb over it, and she pulls it away quickly, hiding it to her chest. He looks at her weirdly again.
“It might be important.”
“If it’s so important, why’ve you forgotten it then?” Joel is crouched in front of her, an odd expression on his face. When she blinks, he seems to shiver. She wonders where his sunglasses are. His eyes are darkening, getting stranger, the apartment ceiling is low and damp—
Tango is tapping her on the shoulder. “Helloooo. Gemstone? Are you even listening?” He cranes his neck to look her in the eye, and she blinks uncertainly.
“Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, yes, listening. I am.” She shoots an apologetic look at him, glances around them. They’re by a riverbank, sweet willows touching their reflections in the water. He smiles, although it’s a little dulled at the edges, concern wafting off of him like smoke. It’s a beautiful spring day, she thinks. Or maybe it’s summer. Tango’s talking again, but it sounds like static in her ears.
“Are you here to kill me?” She can’t help but ask, but it doesn’t sound like a question. She can see the knife in his hand, the trigger in his palm. Her own hands are closed around a piece of tightly balled paper. She wonders where her allies are, who left her alone—
A villain walks into a 24-hour diner. It’s not the start of a bad joke, but the server still side-eyes her as she wanders to the back corner.
“Sup, E,” she murmurs, sliding into a booth. Etho glances up with a vague hum. He doesn’t technically align himself with the villains, nor does he technically need a nickname, but she likes to let him feel included. It’s the price to pay for having a friend that plays both, or all, sides.
“She’s mad at you,” he sing-songs softly, flicking a napkin at her. She snickers. “Barely saw the ribbon in time, honestly. I think her antennae got singed. And, of course, the building is basically gone.”
“Good riddance.”
He looks at her, a dry twist to his mouth. Out the window, the streetlights are on their lowest setting, doing their best not to disturb the sleeping masses. In contrast, the diner fluorescents seem to be attempting to drown out even the dimmest attempts at shadow. The server comes over with tea and two muffins, and doesn’t bother to stick around.
“You’re going to run yourself into the ground, you know—
Her head is pillowed softly on a shoulder. She can hear someone’s breathing, their hands running through her hair. The room is cluttered, filled to brim with trinkets. There’s a snowglobe on the bookshelf that makes her smile, although she can’t remember why. She rolls a name around in her mouth, a soft, solid ball of semi-precious stone—
[ * ]
“It’s all happening here, huh?” Martyn quips, poking his head in the door. His family are clumped in the tiny bedroom, watching someone sleep. He considers that it’s creepy, and then he settles down to do the same.
Can’t let his little sister wake up with just this crew around, after all. He’s the only beacon of sense left.
[ * ]
Gem is standing at a cave open like a mouth, things crawling out of it that she must kill, kill them before they kill her. Someone she loves is beside her, someone she hates is behind her. They’re all calling out words that blur together, shouting with glee as she raises her sword arm—
She’s at a broken fountain. The stone has been cleared away, but there’s still a clear outline from where the explosion cracked the flagstones. Her feet are bare.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” Hermes asks, a sour twist to her mouth. Gem twirls a coin over her fingers. Wing, title. Heads, tails. “Impulse just tells me you’ve been sitting here for the last half an hour, so what? What do you want from me?” She shuffles her feet as she talks, losing the hard tone and fading to awkwardness.
The earth has been torn up even further by the construction teams. There are markers scattered along the ground, a line of tape around the broken water tank.
“Something terrible is happening,” Gem says—
“Forget that.” She shakes her head, a mild smile crossing her face. Pearl just raises her eyebrows. “Something wonderful is happening.”—
“Forget that.” The coin she was playing with drops to the ground, and she stares at it mournfully. Hermes approaches her like a wild animal, like a deer she is desperate not to spook. She kneels, picks up her signature medallion, and presses it back into Gem’s palm.
“What am I forgetting, doe?” she murmurs, cradling one open hand and one firmly closed fist. “That it’s terrible, or that it’s wonderful?”
She blinks up at her, eyes distant, horrifically present. “I was looking for Joel. I wanted…” she drifts off, nudging a piece of rubble with her foot.
“I’ll get Joel for you, it’s okay,” Hermes reassures. Maybe she isn’t Hermes right now. Maybe she’s just Pearl. The fear in her folded wings certainly doesn’t speak to a cop catching a criminal, right now. As if they ever did.
“I love you,” Gem says. “And I think I need help.”
Her fist furls open for Pearl to pick up the piece of paper and read the directions scrawled on it. She goes to open her mouth, to ask—
Gem is watching as a man with terrible, kind eyes kisses her on the forehead, and whispers something that she was never meant to know. A woman with hair like her own holds her face between their palms, coarse with callouses and gentle nonetheless. Her father, her mother, her siblings made of patchwork threads are pulling her to dance, swirling faster and faster, she is drowning in the movement, with the way things glint out of the corner of her eye—
[ * ]
Grian flings open the door to Bird & Bone motel, a yell of ‘no vacancy’ already crawling out of his throat. Instead of the weary hitch-hikers he expected to see knocking, he’s met with a fuming goat and a dangerously worried moth.
“Oh, bugger,” he says.