Chapter Text
Vaggi had learned to treat mornings like armor: a slow, deliberate donning of routines that kept the world from collapsing into the exact places where it had before. She liked the small things in order — coffee press, the same playlist on a loop, the way her left hand moved to untangle the curtain of hair from the scarred side of her face as if it were an automatic apology. She had learned to make the scarred part of her invisible by habit, and habit alone.
Charlie rapped on the door before the coffee had time to breathe.
“Morning,” she far more chipped girl announced, all bright button-down and a tote bag full of deadlines. She had that manager’s optimism that looked good on her when she moved through other people’s disasters like sunlight through blinds. She set a tablet down on the kitchen counter without asking and put two iced coffees on the table, one exactly the way Vaggi liked it and one with extra foam that Charlie took for herself.
“Thought you were doing press?” Vaggi said, but she wasn’t looking at Charlie. She was staring at her reflection in the small rectangle of glossy glass where she’d propped up the tablet. The scar over her left eye caught the morning light and went almost dull.
“Called it in. Boss said to keep you off email till noon.” Charlie’s tone softened as she watched Vaggi’s hand hover. “You okay?”
Vaggi closed her fingers into a fist around the edge of the counter. She was a professional; she could be calm, precise, contained. “I’m fine.”
Charlie thumbed the tablet awake and swiped. She didn’t ask, but she never had to. “Have you seen…?”
Vaggi’s breath stopped when she saw the headline. The website that usually ran thinkpieces and panicked think-alouds had a two-line summary and the full cast list in a clean column below. Her name. Lute’s name. A dagger of memory — light, laughter on a set that was too hot, Lute’s hand, a camera snapping — sliced through her.
Charlie hummed the way she did before she said something practical. “Vincent’s directing, Alastor co-wrote... It’s big, Vaggi, It’s…” She stopped. She’d seen the way Vaggi would go cold. “How do you feel about being paired with Lute?”
Vaggi blinked. Her mouth made a shape she didn’t recognize, something like a protest and a surrender both. “I don’t…”
“You okay?” Charlie asked, quiet now. There was no performance in the question. Managers weren’t only managers, they were witnesses, and Charlie was the longest standing witness of all — a poor soul dragged beyond professionalism into personal friendship.
Vaggi let the script fall open on the counter as if its weight could pull her toward a normal orbit. The title—Hearts Divided—stared back at her in dark serif. She mouthed the words without thinking. “Of course. That’s… that’s a title.”
Charlie sat on the counter’s corner like she didn’t weigh anything. “They want a table read next week.”
The apartment felt too small all of a sudden, like it held too many echoes of the life that had become hers after the accident. Vaggi folded her hands over the scar without thinking, the motion almost a caress.
On a different side of the city, Lute’s flat ran on a schedule of people who kept her polished. Adam, with his blazer and a tie that never quite matched the tone of his sentences, was halfway between a father and a nuisance. Emily was a breeze of neon, too young to have learned how to moderate excitement into survival, and she carried that energy like a megaphone.
“Get a look at this,” Emily said, waving a phone as they walked through Lute’s living room. Adam followed, already assembling a plan in the way he moved his hands.
Lute took the phone, pretended not to want to look, then smirked when she saw the list. “Vincent?” she said. The name was a familiar one in industry gossip — precise, visual, a man who polished a scene until it cut. “And Alastor co-wrote?”
“Co-wrote and he's co-directing, the damn egoist,” Adam corrected. “They want authenticity. They want what you do when you’re—well, when you’re you.”
Emily clapped. “Which is basically everything, honestly.”
Lute laughed, the sound a little tight, and let the laughter simmer down into something quieter. Her hand went to the small silver charm that sat on her bedside table, the one she kept in a drawer for nights she wanted to remember someone who wasn’t entirely present in her life. It was a reflex that had not broken in ten years.
“Are you… okay?” Adam asked. He meant it as a managerial question, but it always came with the tone of measurement. “We’ll prepare all your shit, Lu—interviews, socials— Emily, uh, get a pre-empt ready.. We’ll control the narrative.”
Lute nodded because she knew what controlling meant: orders, statements, polished apologies, the carefully metered distances that made people look heroic instead of messy. But under the plan, when the lights dimmed and the glass closed, there was still a small room inside her where things had not been put away. She had told herself the room was locked for a decade, and that was true until the room’s door had a handle with Lute’s name on it again.
That night, after Adam and Emily had left with another emergency schedule and a suitcase full of talking points, Lute stood at the balcony and watched the city breathe. The charm lay between her fingers. She felt a dryness in the back of her mouth like sand and whispered, to nobody and the skyline, “After all these years. Fuck.”
She swallowed the sentence back down the way you swallow a stone. It settled there, a weight.
The internet burnt like wildfire within an hour. Velvette’s social channels put up a sleek teaser: a shadowed image of two women’s silhouettes, the title, the director credits. Angel made a joke on his story about “second takes?” and Cherri bombed Vaggi with a string of ecstatic messages that were equal parts congratulations and.. badgering.
The crew reacted in small domestic ways: Husk, who handled prop snacks and the unfortunately very efficient craft services table, already had a thermos with Vaggi’s name on it, delivered by someone who remembered that Husk had been told to look after that. Nifty triple-checked the catering list and sent out a reminder that anyone who wanted their usual coffee could grab it. Penny fussed over cables. Abel sat under a lamp pretending he was doing actual work, while Adam forwarded the announcement to his contacts with a subject line that said: Spin It.
Vaggi read the barrage of messages without scrolling. She opened the script in the soft morning light and read the first reunion scene. Her throat tightened where the words called for “eyes meeting after years apart,” and she had to flip the page before she could let the sentence finish. She’d performed closers, villains, women who smiled to hide sharp things; she’d never seen a script call out the specific way a wound opened.
The laptop pinged with a calendar notification: Table Read, October 12, 9:00 AM.
She breathed. The sound was small in the apartment.
The conference room on the fourth floor of Rosie's studio building looked like it had been designed specifically to intimidate actors. The long glass table, the spotless white walls, the too-bright overhead lighting — everything had that clinical “please be brilliant on command” atmosphere. A stack of printed scripts sat at each seat, crisp, untouched, waiting to be read aloud and dissected.
Vaggi stood in the doorway, trying to convince her lungs to cooperate.
She wasn’t late, not technically. She had arrived fifteen minutes early. But she’d spent all fifteen of those minutes pacing a quiet hallway, staring at a water cooler, rehearsing basic breathing. Now that she was finally stepping inside, her heart was hammering in a way that had nothing to do with nerves about the project itself.
She scanned the room, anxiously searching—no Lute yet. Good. She needed a second to settle her inner organs back into their proper positions.
Charlie waved from the table. “Vaggi! Hey! We saved you a seat.”
Next to her, Emily offered a sympathetic smile before nudging a chair out with her foot. “And I threatened to physically remove Angel from it if he tried to steal it.”
“That’s because you’re no fun,” Angel Dust drawled from the other side of the table, lounging back in his chair like a cat in a sunbeam. He wore oversized sunglasses indoors — despite having no need for them whatsoever — and had a lollipop he was aggressively, obnoxiously crunching. “Hey, Vags. Lookin’ sharp. Nice jacket.”
“Thanks,” she said, sitting down quickly before her knees reconsidered functioning. “And don’t call me Vags.”
“Sure thing, Vags.”
Charlie snorted. Emily tried and failed to hide a grin behind her script.
Across the table, Cherri Bomb sat sideways in her chair, boot propped on the table, fidgeting with a stress ball that read ‘PLEASE STOP THROWING THINGS’. The warning label seemed specifically addressed to her. Penny — The Great Sir Pentious, though no one here used his stage name — stood beside her, rapidly taking notes, re-organizing cables, and muttering anxiously about “proper table read etiquette.”
Nifty sat at the corner of the table, swinging her legs and humming loudly as she lined up four pens in a precise color sequence only she understood. Every few seconds her eyes widened as if remembering something, then she scribbled fiercely in a tiny notebook, hands moving a mile a minute.
Husk trudged in with a portable tray of coffees and pastries, dropping them onto the center of the table with the energy of someone who had been awake for far too many hours.
“Grab what ya want,” he grumbled. “Angel, don’t spill anything this time or I swear—”
“Baby, when have I ever spilled anything on purpose?” Angel shot back with a wink.
Husk didn’t bother with a reply. He just pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “I should’ve retired years ago.”
The room filled slowly with noise and movement as everyone settled. Cameras clicked softly as Velvette zipped around the edges of the room, capturing “behind-the-scenes” footage for press releases.
“Big smiles, everyone!” she chirped in that thick accent of hers. “This is historic! Two Hollywood legends reunited at last—well, one of them is here already, sooo fifty percent historic!”
Vaggi stiffened. She willed her expression into something neutral. That percentage was about to change, because the door opened again.
And Lute walked in.
Her hair was pulled back neatly, her makeup subtle, her posture precise — all the calm confidence Vaggi remembered and resented. She looked composed, elegant, the way she always had before everything fell apart.
The room greeted her warmly.
“Lute!” Charlie waved.
“Hey, superstar,” Angel purred, tilting down his sunglasses.
“Welcome, darling,” Rosie chimed from the back of the room, carrying a clipboard covered in stickers and pastel doodles. Lute smiled politely at each of them.
Then her eyes found Vaggi.
Her smile faltered by half a millimeter — most people wouldn’t have noticed. Vaggi did. They stared for a second too long. A second full of unfinished sentences, unsent messages, unsaid apologies. A second of two people remembering something that hurt and something that mattered.
Lute broke eye contact first.
She made her way around the table with quiet nods, deliberately choosing a seat two spaces away from Vaggi. Not next to her. Not across from her. Just far enough to be safe.
Vaggi swallowed. It felt like relief and disappointment tangled together.
Vincent — known to most as Vox, but strictly “Vincent” in any official setting — swept into the room shortly after, immaculate suit perfectly pressed, posture straight, smile sharp.
“Alright, everyone,” he announced grandly. “Phones off, cameras rolling! Scripts open! Let’s make history!”
Alastor followed behind him, quiet, eerily cheerful, fingers steepled. He surveyed the room as though watching actors enter a haunted mansion he designed personally.
“Shall we begin?” Alastor said with a smile that carried far too much amusement.
Vincent clapped once, loud. “Cast introductions, then straight into the read! I want authenticity today! Real emotion, real vulnerability. No shields, no distance. We do not hide behind the script. We become it.”
Angel whispered loudly, “Here we go again— Shakespeare on a caffeine drip.”
Cherri snorted. Nifty clapped excitedly. Penny shushed them all, trembling with the need for order. Vaggi tried to focus on the script pages in front of her.
She could not.
She could feel Lute across the table — like a pressure drop in the air, like static before a storm. The introductions went quickly:
Charlie introduced herself warmly. Emily with gentle professionalism. Angel with unnecessary flair. Cherri with a peace sign. Penny with a nervous bow. Nifty with a rambling monologue about “being small but mighty.” Husk with a grunt. Velvette with a sparkling twirl. Rosie with soft encouragement.
Vaggi introduced herself succinctly.
Lute introduced herself last — calm, poised, her voice a little softer than Vaggi expected. Then Vincent leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
“Scene Twelve,” he declared. “The emotional reunion.”
Angel whispered, “Oooooh boy.”
Scene Twelve. Vaggi’s chest tightened — It was the scene she’d dreaded since the moment she saw the script.
A reunion between two estranged lovers, meeting again after a decade apart. The first time they see each other. The first time they speak. The moment everything old and aching resurfaces.
Vincent smiled at the tension in the room as if drinking it like champagne.
“Take it from the top.”
Scripts rustled. Silence fell. Alastor leaned forward slightly, “Whenever you’re ready.”
Vaggi’s pulse roared in her ears. Lute drew a slow breath. Vaggi found her first line, It trembled slightly despite her effort:
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
Her voice wasn’t steady — it wasn’t even acting. The line cracked somewhere in the middle, a fracture of honesty she didn’t intend to reveal.
Lute’s eyes lifted. Their gazes clicked together like magnets. Lute spoke her line with a softness that felt too fucking real for Vaggi to handle:
“I almost didn’t.”
Angel mouthed, “Damn,” behind his script.
Cherri whispered, “Uh oh.”
Nifty scribbled frantically in her notebook: ‘REAL TENSION’. Underlined far too many times. Vincent leaned forward like he was watching a fireworks show. They continued, stumbling through lines that mirrored their own history too closely:
“You disappeared.”
“I had no choice.”
“You could have called.”
“I was scared.”
“Of fucking what?”
Every sentence felt like peeling open an old wound. Every word tasted like memory. Lute’s voice wavered on a line she normally would’ve delivered flawlessly:
“..I never stopped thinking about you.”
For a heartbeat, the room stopped breathing. Vaggi’s throat tightened before she forced out her reply:
“That makes one of us.”
Her delivery was sharper than she intended. More brittle. Lute flinched—just barely—but enough for Vaggi to notice. Vincent whispered, “Beautiful,” as if they were performing for him alone. Alastor’s grin widened. The rest of the cast sat in near-silence — even Angel — drawn into a moment too genuine to interrupt.
The scene continued, and continued hurting.
“We can’t change what happened.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I couldn’t stay away.”
Lute said it like she meant it. Vaggi felt it like a punch to her empty stomach.
They reached the end of the scene with trembling breaths and shaking hands, scripts clutched like lifelines. Silence swallowed the room. Even Velvette had long stopped recording.
Vincent exhaled. “Perfect. Exactly what I wanted!”
Angel leaned back, crossing his arms. “Well damn, if the acting’s gonna be this spicy, this movie might win awards by existing.”
Cherri nudged Vaggi’s shoulder. “Hey. You good?”
“Yeah,” Vaggi lied.
Emily touched Lute’s arm quietly. “You okay?”
Lute nodded mutely.
Alastor clasped his hands together, delighted. “Excellent work, ladies. Very…real.”
They both knew what he meant. They both felt the weight of it.
Vincent stood. “Break for ten minutes. Hydrate. Emotionally recover. Or don’t — it’s better if you don’t!”
Angel stood dramatically. “I’m getting a donut before I pass out from secondhand heartbreak.”
Husk snorted. “Take two.”
The others scattered, murmuring, laughing, grabbing pastries, whispering about the tension they had just witnessed.
Only Vaggi and Lute stayed seated.
Not speaking. Not looking directly at each other. Just breathing in the aftermath of a scene that had hit too close to home.
Finally — quietly — Lute whispered across the table:
“…That was hard.”
Vaggi swallowed. “…Yeah.”
Their eyes met again. This time neither looked away immediately, but before anything else could be said, Vincent clapped loudly from across the room.
“Break’s over! Emotion round two!”
The moment shattered. Vaggi tore her gaze toward her script. Lute inhaled slowly, straightening her posture.
The table read continued — but both women were elsewhere, trapped in the echo of words spoken for a script, but felt for real.
Today had been the first time they spoke to each other in a decade. And it had been devastating.
After the read, rehearsal schedules went up on a board and everybody split into small nervous or excited groups. Angel cracked one of his jokes, the silver of his grin too bright for the moment. Cherri elbowed him and shouted about stunt rehearsals. Vincent made a small, satisfied sound and muttered something about “dangerous electricity” that only Alastor chuckled at.
Vaggi went back to the trailer and sat in the hum of small comforts: the strap of a mug that fit her hand, a pile of black clothing that made her feel like armor. Charlie sat with her, hands folded like she was folding away sharp things.
“Think you can do this?” Charlie asked, the way a person asks someone to be brave.
Vaggi stared at the script spread on her knees. She thought of the wires that had gone wrong, of heat and claustrophobia and the way the world had cut away sight from her. She thought of Lute’s face in that small bright hospital window, young and terrified and apologetic. “I don’t know,” she said, and the answer had the small, honest weight of truth.
Charlie reached over and squeezed her hand. “You’ll have me. You’ll have Husk, you can always call Carmilla.. You’ll have people who will fight for you.”
Lute left the table read with her mask slightly more transparent. Emily and Adam met her halfway down the corridor. “You were good!” Emily said. “You were… there.”
Lute tried to parse the compliment. Was she there because she remembered lines? Because she’d stepped into someone else’s hurt? Because she’d done enough years of pretending that pretending came easy now? She hated the thought, hated the dependence on artifice. Underneath the professional armor was the person who had still, once, let someone close enough to hold a torch to the dark and who then panicked when the torch flared uncontrolled.
On the way to her car, someone from production tapped Lute on the shoulder and handed a reminder card. Another table read next week. Camera blocking that Friday. A PR photoshoot in a group that would include Vaggi.
When she was alone in her car, Lute’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as if steering herself could change the path of a heart that had learned the route to pain. The charm on her keychain jangled — a sound like a small, secret bell — and she pressed it into her palm until the metal warmed.
She drove home slowly. In her apartment, alone but watched by all the still-life things that had kept her company: awards that reflected light in bland ways, a stack of scripts that smelled faintly of coffee and ideas. She opened the script and read the scene again, not as an actor, not as a public persona, but as someone who had once been raw enough to admit she’d been wrong.
She whispered a word into the quiet of the room—“Sorry”—so small it might have been a sound only she could hear. The apology sat in the empty room and pulsed.
By the end of the day, the world had folded around the news enough to feel like a pressure. Calendars were synced. Press teams pinged. Velvette already had a behind-the-scenes plan, and Angel had sent a chorus of playful DMs that Vaggi did not open.
Vaggi sat in her darkened kitchen after everyone had left, a mug cooling on the counter, the script open like a map of all the places that hurt. She did what she always did when things were too large: she recollected small human things, the names of family members she kept close in a drawer — Carmilla, Clara, Odette — and let the memory anchor her. She let the loneliness sink in, not as an enemy but as a weather that could be weathered.
Across the city, Lute touched a scar her own hand could not see, the memory of heat and sound and a life packed into a few terrible minutes. She tried, as she always had, to measure her guilt into something useful: an apology, a promise, a sentence in a statement. None of that would account for the way Vaggi had looked at her through glass, the way she’d been taken away. She had not saved the person she loved. Her parents had closed the doors with hands that smelled of perfume and pragmatism.
When night came, they both stood in different apartments, scripts in hand and something like the same small ache in the hollow of their throats. The title of the film seemed, to both, like an echo. Hearts Divided. It read like an accusation or a dare, depending on who was doing the reading. Vaggi whispered it into the quiet like a bad joke. Lute read the first reunion line under her breath and tasted all the words she had never said.
The past was no longer a sealed room. It was a phone call away, a table read, an interview. It had a schedule and a call sheet. The past had a place on the calendar now, and both of them felt the thin, electric current of it.
Neither of them slept well. Both of them woke the next morning to phone alarms and an inbox full of people telling them they were exactly where they needed to be. Both of them, for reasons they could not name, felt the old gravity pull.
And both of them, privately, wondered if they could survive looking at each other closely enough to see what the other had become.