(google doc version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18qvT5fs12gu9O_UoppSaBHcAwLD4Q8T7IipwLDNPfhM/edit)

Farah opened the closet door as quietly as she could, and was greeted with black fur and heterochromatic eyes staring up at her. The cat brought a smile to her face. She kneeled down, hand outstretched to pet him. He ducked away, disappearing into the closet.

“He’ll come to you.” Came Wren’s voice from inside, soft-spoken, with a Queenstown accent despite being from Ecrin.

She sighed, “I know, I know, I just…forget.” She stepped inside, taking in how this old supply closet had been changed. Pillows and blankets covered the floor, of all shapes and sizes, the only thing in common being their texture. Definitely Wren’s doing then, if they were all made of the same fabric. The back wall was taken up completely by shelves, from a time before this became Wren's safe space.

Said Wren was lying along the opposite side wall from the entrance, leaning against it. Their cane propped against a wall nearby, and their sketchbook was held in one hand, a pencil in the other.

Silence filled the room, grating on a part of her brain that scrambled to fill it. “Can I see?”

They continued drawing, pace unmoved by her. “Not done.”

She nodded, just assuming they would know somehow, even though they weren't looking. "So, why are you in here?"

Wren shrugged, "Too loud.” 

She couldn’t tell if they meant outside or in their head, and she almost asked, until realising they sought escape and wouldn’t want to think about either. “Yeah.” She ended up saying to fill the awkward pause. Awkward to her at least.

She scratched the back of her neck. Wren appeared completely unoffended by the too quiet, too slow room, in complete contrast to her. So she rambled about the first thing that sprung to mind.

“While Alejandra’s away, everyone comes to me for everything, I haven’t had a minute to myself all day, and I just…couldn’t take it.” Part of being her second, she supposed.

She remembered the way Alejandra had held her hands in hers when she was leaving for Queenstown. “You’ll do fine,” The insistence was punctuated with a kiss against the back of each hand, before she boarded the train, not to be seen for a week.

To Alejandra’s credit, Farah was doing fine. Because they were in relative peace for the moment, rebuilding Ecrin to be better, to live up to its name as the City of Equality. She didn’t quite know how she felt about keeping the same name and title, but it didn’t matter how she felt. It was all decided away by a new council, who’d insisted on keeping tradition while only changing the harmful ones. Well, the ones they deemed harmful. 

Things were going to be different though. They had to be. Even if only one councilmember was actually vaguely representative of the people in Ecrin, and the rest were wealthy individuals who held grudges against the old church for financial reasons. Not for the atrocities committed personally to Farah, or Alejandra, or Wren, or the hundreds of youths just like them. Those were bad, of course. Don’t get them wrong, they valued the forgotten of this city too. Enough to get Farah’s name correct half the time.

Alejandra would make sure of it. Farah knew she shouldn’t put all that pressure on her, even in her own mind, but the hope of better was one of the few things keeping her going. Alejandra had been tireless in her efforts, making herself the councils’ main enemy. 

She should’ve been making the decisions, if Farah had any say. This whole city owed its new found opportunity for change to Alejandra. But she was too young, too jaded, too close to the pain blanketed across this city. After all, why should the people who were hurt the most decide how to change things?

She shook her head, escaping the trap of her own thoughts. “Sorry, that sounded childish, didn’t it? I shouldn’t complain.”

Wren didn’t say anything for a long while, the silence punctuated by the sound of pencil on paper. Then they turned to look at her. Well, near her. Wren didn’t much like eye contact, so they’d look in her direction vaguely, and she understood the sentiment. “There’s an empty spot.” They said simply, and returned to the embrace of that sketchbook.

And there was. A carefully made seat surrounded by blankets and pillows. Bigger than it needed to be for Wren, but just right for someone closer to Farah or Alejandra’s height. She settled into it, almost collapsing under the weight of today and the past years.

Loki slinked his way out of the shadows in the corner, practically materialising out of air. Maybe he did. Magic was real after all. She didn’t know much about it, despite knowing how to use some of it. She’d been so excited to learn everything she could when Samarra started teaching her, unlike how she’d been with most subjects in school.

Then Samarra was gone, a hollowness stretched out across where her presence should’ve filled. Not that she was the closest person to her, even if she’d started thinking of Samarra as more of an aunt than a teacher, or had a right to mourn with her kids. So she’d swallowed her grief, and tried her best to understand Wren’s methods of dealing with it, while reminding them to eat and sleep and all those other person things they’d not ever been good at prioritising.

She’d hoped Wren would teach her more magic, but she’d never asked. Could never find the importance of reminding Wren when they were doing relatively better.

Loki marched across the closet like he owned it, and he might as well have. He was a cat after all, or at least appeared as one, giving him the right to whatever he decided. He sat down next to her curled up form, ears shifting gently in time to Wren’s pencil, before climbing into her lap with a purr.

The smile returned to her face, as she stroked his fur. She could've sworn Wren smiled, too. Just a lopsided tilt of their lips, but something.

Despite having no memory of falling asleep, waking up to the reassuring weight of Loki in her lap, and the smell of peppermint in the air wasn't unwelcome. She found a cup of tea sitting on the shelf, still warm.

She sat up and reached for it, Loki meowing in disapproval at being shifted. He was pacified by her apology pet. 

The book next to it was drawing paper bound with black leather. Wren’s sketchbook. If she were younger, she’d have likely checked inside. But she wasn’t, so she let the temptation be.

She should’ve known everything was going far too well. Nobody she loved had almost died all week, after all. Hatred for magic users still ran deep for some people.

That was enough for her to awaken to smoke in the air, and fire taking over the walls.

She stumbled out of her room, finding all six councilmembers doing the same. She should’ve cared. A good leader would make sure they escaped safely.

She didn’t much care. Sure, they were important to the city, the same one that had done its best to make her feel small and worthless since her family moved there. But they didn’t risk their lives for her, listen to her talk about the things she wanted to invent someday, or remember her favourite flavour of tea.

Wren did. Maybe it was selfish, but she’d take that deal if it was ever necessary; all six lives for the one that mattered to her. 

So, she ran down the hall, around the corner, despite the smoke being thicker in that direction, to find her friend, her first friend, leaning hard on their cane as they made their way toward the stairs. 

They looked up at her, eyes wide in confusion. It was unclear if it was the fire making it impossible for her to hear, or Wren’s voice giving out in the harsh circumstances, but she watched their lips mouth one word, desperately. 

Go.

Quickly adjusting to hold some of their weight, she shook her head, trying to force the sentiment, not without you, through their self sacrificing mind. They cooperated when she helped them down the stairs. 

A far cry from years earlier. She didn’t know when she became an exception to their rule against being touched, but sometime ago she had. She was silently honoured by that, scared that if she spoke it aloud, it would break away.

Dawn broke over the remains of their temporary government building. The rain had started suddenly and heavily a few minutes ago, and left just as quickly.

She would’ve called it a blessing of the Goddess, if she didn’t know better than to think a deity found them worth paying attention to.

Assistants, and other workers scrambled around, trying to salvage things. The head of the council kept asking, more demanding, for her to do something. She was no longer a stupid, little girl, who couldn’t focus or remember to tie her own shoes to him, now he needed her. Because he and the rest of the council talked. That was all they did. He didn’t know how to act, so he badgered the young woman who’d spent her teenage years and young adulthood being forced to act to make things somewhat better for the next generation of kids like her. 

If she were Alejandra, she’d entertain his pestering with more patience than she should possess after these years. She’d find whoever did this, or even prevent the fire in the first place somehow.

If she were Wren, she’d tell him to fuck off.

But she was Farah, so she just walked away.

In the ashy remains of the general area of where Wren’s room had been, she found them. Sifting through the charred remains, searching desperately. 

She almost asked what they were looking for, but she knew. That was just her mind trying to fill the silence again, except now wasn’t the time. 

She racked her mind trying to remember the layout, and find where on the ground level that closet would be. Once she figured it out, she made her way over there, and found exactly what she was looking for. 

Somehow, the sketchbook mostly survived, the covers almost completely gone, and all the pages burnt around the edges. Magic, it had to be. Of course, Wren would protect it like that. 

She brushed the ash off the now revealed first page, squinting at the text.

Stay creative, Dear

-Aunt Samarra

Oh. That explained a lot, didn’t it?

One page was folded awkwardly in the corner. She opened the book, to smooth it out, as if that would fix the book, or the fire, or the fact that Wren still stared off into the distance sometimes, retreating somewhere deep inside their mind, where she couldn’t find them. 

She was greeted with her own face. At first, she thought Wren had smoothed out and removed all the flaws she pretended not to notice in the mirror when she and Alejandra got ready for the day together every morning. But, no, they were still there, just different, the way Wren saw them. Not like they were worth mentioning. Part of her was a tinge jealous of the way Alejandra and Wren bonded about their dysphoria in an odd, probably unhealthy way. But her logical mind knew she should be grateful not to have that weighing on her self esteem constantly.

She sort of liked the way Wren saw her, she decided.

She shook her head. This wasn’t the time. Focus.

Wren clutched the book close to their chest when she returned it. Tears sprang to their eyes when they saw the damage, much to her surprise. A stray thought passed through her mind, that Wren was too machine-like to cry. She felt bad for it immediately. Years of schooling in a system that demonised any difference in learning or thinking didn’t disappear quickly or completely. Or at least, she hoped that was the cause.

She didn’t quite know if hugging them was the right idea, but she tried it anyway. The way they leaned their head against her neck told her she’d chosen correctly. 

Later, she was waiting by the train tracks with Wren, instead of helping secure a new building they could use. They could’ve stayed inside the station, but she didn’t want to wait the extra few minutes.

The show of vulnerability from Wren didn’t last too long. They were sitting next to her, yet might as well have been across the continent. 

So she said the first thing that came to mind, to nudge them back and to smooth a bandage over her own anxiety, “So, what are you going to do?” They tilted their head in that confused way that always reminded her of Loki, so she added onto her first vague thought, “Y’know, when this is all over?” Loaded question, but it would do, she supposed. 

They shrugged, “Never bothered much with dreams or life-long ambitions.” I didn’t think I’d live this long, was the unspoken sentiment. They would’ve verbalised it exactly as bluntly as that years ago, but sometime ago they’d started smoothing out the rough edges of themself that made her the most uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure if she preferred that, but the effort warmed her heart.

“Right, yeah, that makes sense.”

They twisted their fingers into the fabric of their button down shirt that hung loosely over their hips, “What do you want, Farah?”

Wren didn’t actually say her name often, so that in itself was a mild reset of her spinning, stagnating thoughts. 

What did she want?

She felt terrible admitting it, but she didn’t want to keep her important role in the reconstruction efforts. She was only 25, but the past 10 years felt more like 30, somehow. Whatever sense of justice and force of change motivated Alejandra through the worst days just wasn’t in her.

Wren was still waiting for an answer. They’d never rush her, though, they knew the trouble of gathering complicated thoughts into words. Finally, she said, “I dunno, I always wanted to invent things, maybe I could try for engineering in university?”

Wren knew her too well. A blessing and a curse, “...however?”

“I…I just wouldn’t belong there, y’know? Wasn’t ever the best student, much less a good one.”

Dark eyes turned down to watch the way she fidgeted in her lap, before deigning to drag out the reason she didn’t say, “And most students don’t wake up clawing the sheets.”

She wouldn’t have put it that directly, but it was true, and Wren knew it without her having to confirm it.

The arriving train saved her from her own need to make conversation. When Alejandra stepped out, she wasted no time rushing into her arms, not bothering with words. Alejandra grinned easily, far easier than she should’ve been able to, spinning her around in a hug that felt like home. 

They separated long enough for Alejandra to take her face in her hands like she was the most precious thing in the world, and kiss her. 

When Alejandra caught sight of Wren walking over, cane in their right hand to ease weight off their left leg, her smile shifted. No less loving, but gentler and more soothing, contrasted to the joy and excitement when she looked at Farah. 

Alejandra loved Wren, too. Farah herself had pointed it out to her, and she’d been immediately apologetic for her feelings, reassuring Farah that’d she put however much space between her and Wren that was necessary for Farah to feel comfortable. Alejandra was quite surprised when Farah’s answer had been none, and Farah was surprised too. Maybe she should’ve been jealous, but she just wasn’t.

Alejandra didn’t believe her when she was sure Wren felt for her too, and they opted to simply disagree about it.

Alejandra held her hand out to Wren, letting them close the distance, “Hey, Birdie.” She’d wondered for a long while what that nickname meant, and then felt so silly when it hit her. 

The corner of Wren’s lips twitched up, before they intertwined their fingers with Alejandra’s, “Hey, Sunshine.” That one she really didn’t understand, and had almost asked about it a dozen times. Each time she’d held back. Because she had her own things with each of those two that she kept private. Not for any particular reason, they were just between her and Alejandra, or her and Wren.

Wren didn’t ask to stay in Farah and Alejandra’s flat with them, too worried about being a burden. But Farah was pretty sure Wren’s room that burnt down was less a temporary space, like it was for her and Alejandra, and more the only place they had.

So Farah less offered and more insisted Wren come stay. They could have the couch again, the same one they’d slept on often before Farah moved in with Alejandra. Until Alejandra needed something to worry about that wasn’t their impending court date, so she focused on if sleeping on the couch would hurt Wren’s back. She was just about to go searching for a single bed, when Farah just said they should cut to the chase and offer for Wren to join them in theirs.

She awoke on the court day to find Alejandra missing, and Wren lying still, watching her. They’d pulled away from her, and she understood. Keep your distance today. When she finally forced herself to get ready, she discovered Alejandra’s note when Loki brought it to her.

Out for a run, love you.

She’d almost been worried Loki perished in the fire. Wren insisted he was fine, though. He comes and goes. She took that to mean he was either chasing mice, which he probably saw as beneath him actually, or off on worldwide adventures.

Wren had far more of a get it over with spirit about this, and was ready with breakfast made by the time she’d gotten dressed. They stood by the counter, hands in their pockets, and all the buttons on their shirt undone, exposing the edges of their top surgery scars. 

She barely remembered to swallow her food before she spoke, “I like the new look.”

Their lips twitched into an almost smile, again, before they held up one hand for her to see. It was shaking, fingers twitching every so often. Wordlessly, she got up and slotted each button through its matching hole.

Alejandra went first on the podium. She slipped her reading glasses on, as she held the pile of notecards she’d spent the past two weeks preparing. 

Both of those things were new; the trouble reading, the memory and focusing issues. A doctor had told her she was remarkably lucky it wasn’t worse after a decade of getting knocked in the head, and sent her off with a prescription for lenses.

When Alejandra asked how she’d looked, Farah had responded with beautiful, and Wren called her a nerd, while adjusting their own round glasses.

Alejandra spoke for an hour and a half in front of the judges, the council, the jury of random people here out of obligation, going over in broad strokes the problems with the old government and the church, and the harm it caused.

Farah wished she talked more about her personal experiences, if only because those were largely shared between her and Farah, and it would mean Farah had to speak less. She lasted thirty minutes, going over what happened to her in vague words, before it was too much.

Wren’s portion lasted four hours. There was no emotion to read in their voice as they spoke and they stared off somewhere half a kilometre away, but they gave a minute by minute play by play of what seemed like everything, but she knew wasn’t. They named every kid they knew from the streets who had died or disappeared, and why each one mattered. The names started blurring together in her mind, making her feel terrible, but memorisation had always evaded her.

None of them bothered to use Wren’s pronouns, and Alejandra was forced to wait outside after her seventh time correcting them. 

Someone cast doubt on Wren’s memory, asking if they really remembered all that. 

“Like it was a minute ago.” Had been Wren’s response, and she was suddenly grateful for her vague feelings and blurry memories.

The judges ended up deciding their pain could be bought, and they were each awarded a sum. They also decided that no specific person would be charged for anything, since all they had was their testimony.

Fine. That was fine.

She and Alejandra spent all night on it, drawing, doodling, writing messages, whatever came to mind throughout the pages. Alejandra was self conscious of her simplistic and hesitant drawings, but Farah insisted they would love each one.

And they did. Their eyes teared up for the second time Farah had ever seen when the new sketchbook was presented to them.

They held it in their lap now, as they and Farah sat on the crest of a hill, after Farah applied for university for next year. Samarra didn’t have a grave, but she had this spot, and that was enough.

“...She loved you, too, like a daughter.” Wren had said, and she understood a second later. Wren didn’t think she needed permission to mourn, but they’d realised Farah thought that. So, they granted it.