Natasha pursed her lips.
Her hands held onto the tea cup, but she didn't drink. Her dark eyes watched the blonde across the table.
"It's not too bad," Lucy said with a smile. "We technically can't drink, but it's fun to pretend. I think drinking is reserved for the living."
Natasha nodded and took a sip of the mist that inhabited the cup. Somehow the memory of tea filled her, even if tea did not actually fill her.
"Was it painful," Natasha asked suddenly.
Lucy tilted her head. "What? The Visiting?"
"No."
It went quiet.
"Seeing your son."
Lucy looked down into her own cup, swirled it once, twice. She blew the mist and it dispersed into a cloud of soft light. "He didn't know it was me," she murmured, "but seeing him, actually seeing him, it was a stab in the heart."
"Oh."
"But… it was also a way of knowing. It was like a reassurance. It was the thought of him not being alone forever gave me hope."
"Hope is something that we must depend on here," Natasha remarked, gesturing to the fog around them.
What neither of them had expected was this. It was heaven, but also not. It was a place where the dead could convene with each other, but nothing was scenic. Everything was made of mist and starlight. Of moonlight and the matter of cherished memories.
"I didn't see my son," Natasha said softly. "He was gone, and I met your son instead."
Lucy gave a sad sort of smile.
"Your son is handsome. He looks like you. The light hair, the soulful eyes. He's brilliant, like the sun."
The blonde blushed.
Natasha realized what she had said. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant he was so… he was everything that I hoped my Baz would become. My sister doesn't understand that I love my son. She believes, I hear it through the veil when it becomes thin, that I would have destroyed Baz—"
"—killed him—"
"—killed him if I had the chance. But Lucy, I would have loved him regardless of his vampirism. He's like the night, alluring and precious when looked at the right way. He must be misunderstood. Lucy, I would have loved him anyways."
"I understand you. I do. I think our sons are the perfect contrasts. Yours the moon, mine the sun. They exist apart, but really, they're so close to each other. When faced with the endlessness of space itself, they're really not that far at all."
Natasha smiled.
"I like that, Lucy."
"Natasha, I think about Simon nonstop almost every eternal second. We're not angels, we're dead. If I could bless him, if I could give him whatever ethereal gifts I possess, I would give him the universe. But I can't."
Natasha blew the mist around the air. This time it evaporated into a whirl of silver moondust.
"My son loves yours," Natasha admitted. "He's obsessed."
One difference between the two mothers was this: Natasha could hear through the veil sometimes, Lucy could not. Lucy, who had died of strange circumstances, and who wasn't fully dead or alive, could not hear the pitter-patter of the hearts beyond their reach. She could not hear the whispers of the world beyond herself. Lucy was trapped without the knowledge that she wanted, Natasha was drowned in what she didn't want to know.
"Your son, I don't know. But I have a strange feeling. As if their fates are linked. They're nemesises, as I understand it. However, they're so alike."
"So will we be in-laws?" Lucy had said this as a joke, but Natasha's face seemed stiff.
"Maybe."
"Really?"
"I don't know, Lucy."
"We don't have to know immediately," Lucy told her with a smile. "They're just boys."
"You, of course, are right."
"This, of course, means that we will have to get together more often for imaginary tea.
Natasha looked down to her cup. "It's soothing. Like a calm memory of tea returning to me. Next time, I'll try to remember Earl Grey."
"Really? I'm more of a white tea person."
"That doesn't surprise me."
