Work Text:
September hadn’t thought much about the aftermath of sacrificing herself, not on any of the occasions she had done it. It had been easy to let the Glashtyn rip the very shadow from her spine to save a pooka girl; likewise, years later, she hadn’t hesitated a moment before throwing herself in front of the Green Wind to save Mabry.
Now that she had become the Green Wind, Blunderbuss had become the Tobacconist, and things in Fairyland had generally settled down, as much as they ever did, September couldn’t go without thinking of them.
That is how aftermaths often are. They settle in only after we have finished enduring, and reverberate like aftershocks of an earthquake. They do not warn us of their coming and going, they simply come to stay.
In the cool of her own misty breezes, September’s back ached where the knife had cut into it. There were days where it felt like an old, open wound although it had sealed itself up long ago, moments when her spine seemed to curl on itself as though a part of it were missing. Her heart too was often faint in the wake of her sacrifice for the Green Wind. It was difficult to remain standing, and more than once she had fallen to the ground in a dead faint when her heart had failed to sustain her.
“I suppose I did come here to lose my heart,” September mumbled as Mallow dried dishes at the sink.
Mallow too had not escaped unscathed, and was sporting a debonair set of matching silk knee and ankle braces. She was at a stool at the sink, but sometimes stood anyways, hips braced against the counter and elbows supporting her atop it, to use the benefit of leverage in the washing up and drying.
Her cane stood leaning against the kitchen counter next to her, a fancy thing of red and black and polished silver. It was one of the only things she still carried that bore the aesthetic of the Marquess. It had become a little joke for her, almost.
People believed her weak now that she used a cane, devoid of her teeth as the Marquess. Mallow had lost her penchant for cruelty, but not her strength. Mistaking her for weak was the last mistake more than one cruel bastard had made.
She turned to September, a steadying hand on the counter. “What’s that, my love?”
“I was just remembering — I had once come here to lose my heart. And I suppose I sort of have.”
September patted the armrests of her wheelchair, which she had only recently begun to use after a near miss between her head and flagstones when she had fainted. She was lucky to have been wounded in the shoulder instead, although she had lost quite a bit of blood and had needed every bit of magic Mallow could donate as well as her physician’s healing to recover with most of her shoulder’s range of motion intact.
Her chair was quite different from the few she had seen back in Nebraska. It was sleek and made of gold and vines, and had a stethoscope whose purpose she had not yet understood.
It also bore a pair of mechanical wings that Charlie Crunchcrab had tossed at her in a fit of pique mumbling something about Belinda Cabbage, which helped her quite neatly navigate over inconveniences such as thresholds and stairs, once she had learned how to use them properly. Before that, there were a few accidents, but nothing so harrowing as the incident that had made her realize her need for the chair.
You and I can see that September’s wheelchair was quite decked out, but the wheelchairs in Nebraska and all over Earth have a magic to them too: all of them grant freedom and safety, the ability to go places where one might previously be confined, and to do so safely, whether or not one can technically step.
Mallow smiled. “I suppose you have lost your heart, and gained it too.”
September nodded in agreement. She had: she had become herself in this place, had gained far more than heart. Still, she couldn’t help a little flirtation. “Indeed, my heart.”
Mallow laughed gaily. She dried her hands on the dish towel before coming to September, cane clicking across the floor. Leaning heavily on it and a little on one of September’s armrests, Mallow kissed her full on the mouth, lips soft as a stem and warm as pumpkin soup. September twined a hand into Mallow’s hair gently and leaned forward in her chair to meet her kiss, taking special care to breathe in between as Mallow gave her kisses: one, two, three.
“Come here,” September murmured and pulled an evidently exhausted Mallow across her lap, calves and ankles dangling over one of her armrests.
“M’nap,” Mallow sighed contentedly into her neck, and September laughed. This wasn’t really the place for napping, but she could give Mallow a while.