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Valerie lights a candle with a trembling hand. Cinnamon fills the space, thick spice making the squalid one-room apartment feel almost homey.
A cold kiss is pressed to the base of her neck, faint and freezing. Valerie doesn't bother to turn around. "You like the new smell?" she murmurs.
Her love does not reply—but neither does she leave, and her next kiss does not draw blood. Valerie allows the tight muscles of her shoulders to go lax.
Max sees. Max always sees.
That unrelenting presence is a solace in so many ways. It's a curse in twice as many. Despite it all, Valerie's grateful to not be alone. To not be unloved.
Valerie Beaudry knows the pain of utter isolation, the self-loathing that is cultivated in the garden of her loneliness.
No more.
She's loved in the most constant vicious ways now.
Max is in her dreams, her nightmares. Max is in their letters, sweet things penned by girls who still had their childhood innocence. Max is in her walls.
I loved you.
I believed in you, Val.
Why, why, why?
She doesn't get a second of rest. Maxine torments her day and night, and still there is no doubt in her mind that there are good intentions behind the barrage. Max has never held anything but good intentions. Any harm that she inflicts is just her loving will warped into something else, something dark and frustrated.
Valerie knows this is her haunting. Her just desserts.
She deserves worse. Her own issues dragged Max in like a whirlpool, except instead of endimg up bloated and blue, she had terror frozen on her face and red dripping from her ears. And eyes. And mouth.
It feels written on her soul:
Valerie the Murderess. Valerie the Destroyer of her Love and Self.
Her rattling breath cools Valerie's nape. There's a dull rasp of wet sound, like Max is choking on blood. The sound echoes strangely, reverberating in Valerie's head. She—she knows what that sound is. Max choking on blood. She knows it because she saw it, because she heard it, because even in her darkest moments, Valerie registered Max's self. It's not significant, all things considered. A raindrop in a torrent of memories, snapshots of the worst day of both of their lives.
It still lands like a fucking grenade.
She pushes herself away from the counter, expertly dodging the empty-not-empty space that makes her heart beat faster.
Walking through Max has never ended well, accident or no.
Valerie roots through the fruit bowl and manages to find an apple that hasn't withered to a unnatural husk yet. She's taken to peeling them with her own fingernails. Knives aren't practical anymore, things being what they are. Val doesn't know if there's some sort of a knife curse on her lover's soul or if the blade is just too much of a temptation. Either way, all her knives got tossed weeks ago.
Probably best to disinfect. Things being what they are. She goes to wash the apple. She pauses.
There's rotten blood in the sink. Valerie leans closer and gags on the corpse-stink. Rude, the still lifeless wind whispers.
What would happen if she tried to wash it away? Max has a wicked temper these days, death twisting her kind soul, bitterness choking them both.
Even their bed is not sacred.
Valerie wakes up with injuries. Purple bruises on her breasts and waist from Max's attempt at a loving caress. Scratches down her spine, sheets pink with what little blood Max managed to draw. The hurts are worth it for the way she can sometimes feel Maxine's form against hers. A cold, hazy form that turns to frozen fog if touched directly, dissipating like Max is running from what they are now, what they've both done.
It's like Max can hear her traitorous thoughts.
I don't want to be like this. It's a sob, a cry, a wail. I don't want to be so angry, so hateful—I don't want to hurt you.
"I know," Val says like it's been ripped from her. "I know."
What can either of them do?
It's just the two of them against the tragedy they've built. Diana's tried to insert herself a half dozen times, bringing groceries and kind words and useless consolations. Valerie's rebuffed her at every opportunity, turning away that otherworldly goodness. It's wasted on her. Maxine believed that Valerie was a good person underneath the Silver Swan. Look where that got her.
Besides, Valerie will never be able to fully unravel her resentment of Wonder Woman.
Henry orchestrated that resentment, fed her insecurities and held Diana up as an unreachable ideal until Val was boiling over with jealousy and fury. That retrospective knowledge doesn't lessen the ferocity of her emotions. Still, she looks at those lovely blue eyes and feels hatred and resentment, old and new. You are perfect and I hate you morphed into the somehow worse: You should have been perfect.
You should have saved Max from me.
So Diana is gone and Henry is gone and it's just the two of them in this ramshackle bloody apartment, haunting each other because it's all they know how to do.
Valerie is good at being hurt. Good at bearing the pain, good at smiling afterwards. At least Maxine really does love her. Henry hurt her because he was a bastard who secretly hated her, who preyed on her desperation for love and validation. Max hurts her because Valerie killed her, because Valerie turned her into something that can only hurt.
It's far from one-sided pain.
Valerie can't physically hurt Max, but she harms her all the same. In Max's more lucid moments, it wounds her deeply to see the marks she has left, the psychological damage she thinks she has done to Val.
(She has and she hasn't. Her gaunt face and shadowed eyes, the random crying fits—none of those are caused by Max's daily torments. It's not the haunting; it's the grief. And Valerie has no one to blame but herself for that.)
They will orbit around each other for eternity. Death couldn't separate them—Valerie is beginning to think nothing can. She's resigned herself to it. Satisfied herself to it. There are worse fates.
Like living chained to a ghost. Like being dead and still bound to your murderess.
Valerie wants to die. She so desperately wants to die. Wants to join Max in that hellish ether. Would that even the scales, even just a fraction? If it could—
There's fear though. Pervasive, lingering fear that's managed to burrow it's way into her very bones. Maxine was a saint, an angel, a darling friend and an exemplary woman. Valerie has sinned and hurt and killed. What if she ended up someplace worse? She would deserve it, of course, but she can't bear the thought of Max haunting her home, alone and abandoned. Valerie could never bear the separation.
Part of her believes she will be preserved here forever. Like her technically-living self of now, or like Max's shadowed presence. Valerie doesn't know which. Doesn't really care which. No, that's not true—she wants whichever will let her hold Max solidly in her arms again. It's been so very long since they've shared a proper embrace.
You want a hug?
If Valerie closes her eyes and pretends, it could almost sound sweet.
Oh Val. That aching weary sadness is no trick of the mind, no desperate fantasy. Don't you know I'll always try to give you what you need?
Yes. Yes. That's all Max ever tried to do, and look where it fucking got her.
She can't die twice. It's the only reason Valerie doesn't flinch away. She can't harm Max any more. It's a relief. It's a fright.
The hug—if it can be called that—is a thorough compression of her entire torso. Her ribs creak under the immense pressure. Maxine squeezes her tighter, a boa constrictor of good intentions and agonizing executions.
"Thank you, darling," Valerie chokes with the last breath she has.
Anything for you, Val.
Anything.