Strange Bedfellows
"This thing of darkness I/
Acknowledge mine." –William Shakespeare
Crossover: BtVS and Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. I hope she gets to read this one day.
Author's Notes: This is such a strange story for me. I rarely set out to write relationship pieces but I couldn't help but see these two characters take a journey together. Title and quote taken from The Tempest. I refer to the Luidaeg as Annie throughout this story. This echoes Seanan McGuire's novella, In Sea-Salt Tears, which tells of another, less happy love story for the sea witch.
This was originally posted at Twisting the Hellmouth, but I hoped there was a few more Seanan McGuire fans here that might enjoy the read. Even if I had to get the October Daye category created. :)
Summary: The Luidaeg and Slayer decide if they're worth it. F/F
There was something to be said about San Francisco weather; at least it was predictable. Annie cast an appraising eye to the menacing clouds and tasted the air. It might rain later in the afternoon but, despite the rolling bank of fog, her groceries wouldn't get wet on the six block walk home to her apartment.
Her neighborhood grocery store was a relic of a bygone age, before supermarkets had strangled the life out of inner-city markets. The owner, Phil Junior, had taken over for his father nearly twenty years prior and his son, a stockier, balder version of Phil, named ubiquitously Little Phil, would take over for him when he retired in the next few years. The market was mostly open out of a combination of stubbornness on the part of generations of Phils and a few gentle nudges from the sea witch. She might be immortal but she didn't fancy the extra mile walk for soda and Cheetos.
The aisles were cramped but the store generally uncrowded. In a sea of hipster vegan, organic, paleo friendly stores, her local market was a refuge of junk food and soda. Her basket was mostly full of said items before she made her way to the register. She was unloading her week's groceries onto the conveyor when the door opened with a chime that Annie only half-registered.
She had been alive for too many centuries, longer by far than most of her brothers and sisters, to be unaware of danger, no matter where she was. That being said, the slide of power that crept up her back like a caress caught her off guard. The carton of milk dropped from frozen fingers as she turned to look at the woman watching her from across the narrow aisles of the grocery store. She distantly heard Carol, one of Phil Junior's numerous offspring, exclaim in surprise over the spill. Knew on some level that Carol had disappeared to grab a mop.
But her attention, every bit she could afford, was focused on the stranger who had just entered the store. The woman looked to be in her early to mid-thirties. She had the fine bone structure of Titania's get, all check bones and worried brows, but she looked more like she had strolled in from the mall in L.A. than any Faerie lands past or future. The dinginess of the grocery store made her hair gleam brighter, her skin more golden. Her outfit was expensive, silk shirt and high-quality leather jacket. The earrings she wore were real gold, with a flash of diamond.
Annie wished, for a moment, that she shared her sister's talent for discerning the true origin of Faerie. It wasn't often that she wished that anything of Amadine's was hers, but it had happened at least once in the stretch of their shared years. Annie had the suspicion though that even if she could taste the air to divine the stranger's blood that it may not tell her much. A good glamour couldn't have stood up to the scrutiny of a First Born trying to really see. And Annie, Annie was suddenly very interested in seeing what kind of predator had come knocking on her door.
The woman was a predator, too. Her face, although expressive, had the shuttered eyes of someone who was used to hiding too much. Her shoulders held the exquisite restraint of movement, like a lioness on the edge of an attack, fangs and claws neatly sheathed even as she flexed, waiting.
Annie smiled, a lopsided smirk that brought out the freckles that scattered across her cheeks as she placed cash by the register without looking down. She didn't take her eyes from the stranger, from the golden woman who moved like death as she followed Annie out of the grocery store.
Even with the implicit threat in the woman's every movement, Annie didn't call her power to her. Curiosity had killed many of her kin, but the sea witch hadn't felt truly curious about anything in so long that the alien feeling of unknown was enough to tempt her fate. By implicit agreement they didn't speak until they stepped into the nearest alley, Annie's back to the wall as she kept her eyes on the stranger.
Annie had come across her fair share of magical creatures over the years, of land and sea and air. She had been the mother to entire races. Had seen worlds bloom and close like dead flowers, petals drawn shut. She remembered them all. But she had never seen anything quite like the woman before her.
Finally the words, unbidden, tore from her throat… "What are you?"
The woman laughed, raw and wounded, and Annie ached with understanding in her soul. "I was going to ask you the same thing."
Annie shrugged, the movement hard and quick with the veneer of humanity. She tucked tangled hair behind one ear, her fingers trailing the points of ears the woman couldn't see. "I have a lot of names." Daughter of Maeve. First Born. Sea witch. Mother. Aunt. Luidaeg. Annie, my love.
The stranger tilted her head and studied the sea witch intently, her eyes the color of sea foam, flecked with gold. What she saw made her lips curl slowly, the smile secretive and wistful. "I only have one name. I was born with more but they took them all away."
She paused, as if surprised by her own words, and Annie felt her nails bite into her palms as the Luidaeg worked to hold her hands at her side. Worked to ignore the magnetism she felt towards this beautiful predator who had glided so unexpectedly into her life this morning.
"I call myself Buffy, though that doesn't mean much nowadays. You would know me as The Slayer."
The sea roared in her ears as Annie stumbled back with surprise. It was hard to surprise an immortal, especially one who had lived as long and as dangerously as she had. But this young mortal woman… a Slayer had done that.
Slayers didn't occupy any real part of Faerie. They were mythical creatures, forged from the darkness of another world and wrapped with exquisite care in the fragile bonds of human flesh. One girl in all the world, sacrificed to the Forces of Darkness that not even Faerie braved. Red blood spilled in dark alleyways or offered to fledgling Vampire bites. An endless supply of victims of which the survival of this mortal world was pinned.
It was poetic, but the best poets were men, who twisted words and obscured meaning and used women as chess pieces with casual ease.
Annie didn't know much about Slayers. She had met one or two on reflection, now that she knew what to look for. There was an edge to the mortality, a touch of sad darkness that gave them their speed and the few years they might have left after being Called. She had heard of Buffy as well, if obliquely. She knew that Buffy was the oldest Slayer she or anyone had ever heard of, and that the younger woman's eyes sang of the tumultuous waves.
Whispers ran to Faerie several years ago, of dark streets overrun with supernaturally powerful girls. Of the potential of every Slayer forced into bloom, many girls, all too young to face the fate given to them.
But she voiced none of that, only leveled her best stare at the mortal woman who didn't seem to fear the promise of watery death and typhoon and kraken. "And what do I owe the pleasure of your visit to my home?" The inflection on my was precisely deliberate. The sea witch couldn't officially claim the lands around San Francisco, but few would gainsay her ownership of them. Until the time came for the Roane to receive their due, until the Selkies paid her back, her feet stayed dry and she lived in these lands.
She was First Born, and this, for now, was home.
Buffy quirked her lips in a tired smile and rubbed her arms briskly against the encroaching chill of evening. "My sister goes to college here. Well went, for her Master's degree in social work. I'm in town for graduation."
Annie gaped again, caught off guard by the sheer mundaneness of the Slayer's response. Buffy shrugged. "Mom passed a few years back and Dad's a deadbeat. It means a lot when I came make it to these types of things." The mortal woman's lips curled into a full smile that was wicked at the corners. "Slayers never know when they might bite the dust on a personal level. I've died twice you know. It helps to make each occasion count. Kodak moments and the like."
And Annie was even more caught off guard as she responded without conscious thought to the wry, warm self-depreciation in the younger woman's storm-ridden eyes. "If you want to make the most of your visit… I know a great Italian restaurant."
The words, and the unexpected intent behind them, hung in the air, their potential to cut clear. The Slayer paused for a long moment and rocked back on her heels, studying the First Born before her in an evaluating manner. There was nothing sexual about the frank stare- only the consideration of a predator trying to decide if she would survive in the bigger pond she had suddenly found herself swimming in.
This pond had deeper currents than even Buffy Summers could guess.
After a moment that felt fraught and long even to an immortal, the Slayer slipped away, and was replaced with a jet-lagged and lively thirty-something woman who took a shorter, though more essential moment, to evaluate the offer on a personal level. This time the stare was all about the potential in the sea witch's offer and Annie was suddenly grateful she had worn her overalls with fewer holes in the knees even as a flush built in her freckled, wind-chapped cheeks.
Buffy smiled slowly but with enough planned intent that Annie went weak in her denim covered knees in a way that had nothing to do with being the Luidgeau. "I love Italian. Does it have a view of the water?"
Annie laughed, a hoarse bark of surprised amusement. "Yes, of course it does."
"Then how could I refuse…"
Willow wasn't surprised that Buffy had called her three times in a week. She knew her best friend better than Buffy sometimes knew herself, and there was something weighing on the gregarious Slayer's mind. Those that didn't know the blonde well thought she was a book open to the world, all prophecies and duty and sarcastic slaying quips.
Buffy didn't talk about the things that really mattered though, not often. The close-calls that shadowed her eyes, the losses that tightened her mouth. The fears that colored her nightmares were never given voice. And Buffy had had so many nightmares over the years.
Besides, she had been due back from San Francisco over a week ago and despite checking in via text and awkward phone calls the absence was unusual. Even Dawnie wasn't in San Francisco any more. Vi had agreed to drive with the younger Summers cross-country to New Jersey, where a hugely important and entirely normal new job waited for the Key to the Universe. Vi, who was stationed in New Jersey, was thrilled.
The fourth time Buffy called Willow was struggling with groceries and she nearly dropped the eggs as she fumbled for the phone. It would have been easier if she had been just a little bit less stubborn, but she saved her magic for world-saving nowadays. Just because she lived on a fourth floor walk-up in Manhattan didn't mean she needed to levitate her groceries up the stairs. No matter how much the eggs begged her to.
She could have let it go voice mail, but life was too precarious, even now, for her to ignore a phone call. For her to hear about the death of a loved one in voicemail. So Willow juggled the groceries and set them down none-too gently as she cursed New York and baby Slayers under her breath and answered the phone with a somewhat abrupt, "Hello?"
"Hey Wills… what's up?"
Buffy didn't sound panicked. Hadn't sounded panicked, or particularly sad, on the last three phone calls either. Instead there was an air of… indecisiveness, that was unusual in the world's oldest Slayer. Good battle tactics or not, Buffy had always been of the slay first, ask questions later variety. That tended to apply to other areas of her life as well, with less positive results.
Like some spectacularly bad relationships.
"Buffy, my groceries are really feeling the extra phone calls this week. Not that I'm not happy to chat. But we seem to be lacking directionality in our discussions lately."
"I told you not to rent a fourth floor walk-up."
"I could use the cardio."
"Except for the part where you hate exercise."
Willow stuck her tongue out at the phone, knowing her best friend would know, and fumbled for her keys.
"So, direction. Focus. I love you, but why the sudden preoccupation with phones? You lost three in a week last month. And now suddenly you're Chatty Kathy."
Buffy sighed, loudly, into the phone. "I met someone."
Willow sighed just as loudly into her end of the phone. Of course she had. "Someone we know?"
Dawnie's thesis adviser maybe? The president of Dawnie's school? Some two-headed demon that dripped acid? A certain Immortal with commitment issues. Ugh…
Why did the Scobby gang have such terrible picks in the romance department? You'd think cosmic karma would at least allow for some uncomplicated one-night stands in return for saving the world. A lot.
"No. It's… complicated."
Of course it was. Willow pressed her forehead against her front door and resisted the urge to pound her head against it. 'Complicated' with Buffy was none of the good, and usually of the Angel without a soul bad.
"Not Angelus bad!" Buffy said quickly. Too quickly.
"I'll be more relieved when I find out the catch." Willow unlocked her front door and reached down to gather up the groceries.
She could almost hear Buffy toying with her hair as she figured out what exactly to say. Finally, after a long pause, the words came tumbling out in one large rush. "It's a woman. I'm seeing a woman."
Willow stopped, arms full, blinked, and for a split moment wished she could see her best friend's face. Because of all the conversations she thought they would be having one day, this did not top the list nearly as high as 'I'm sorry I killed your zombie dog when it came back to life.'
"Oh," the redhead finally mustered in witty response.
Buffy sighed, again. "Yeah."
"So… you're having feels about hitting for the other team?"
"No, mostly trying to figure out how to ask you about mechanics."
This time Willow did drop the eggs.
Buffy had expected a tempest of surging waves and roaring winds. She had expected torrential rain and the cold of the unknown the first time she and Annie were intimate. After all, she was venturing into unknown territory with a woman who helped craft the changing seasons and phases of the moon. Who had walked in secret lands ever closed to even other immortals.
But she had spent too much time wondering and worrying about the worst parts of the unpredictability of the sea. She had overlooked the ebb and flow of the tide and the gentle cradle of warm, fertile waters. Annie was all soft hands and eyes and sighs that made Buffy feel a tender hope start to unfurl from a heart hardened by so much loss and pain in her short life.
Buffy had expected the sea witch to share her bed but it was only Annie my love, with laughing gray eyes and a hoarse laugh that made her feel like sunrise as it broke open and filled the sky. It was nothing like she had expected and everything she had wanted and Buffy floated, cherished in strange lands and happier for it.
Annie wasn't sure what she expected when Buffy took her on patrol. She certainly hadn't expected to be treated to Pad Thai so hot it scaled her mouth and made Buffy laugh. She hadn't expected to hold hands as they wandered the streets of a city Annie claimed as hers because she refused to claim the waves.
If Buffy felt her curious sideways glances she didn't seem to think it necessary to acknowledge the silent question. For all that Buffy was the most successful Slayer in history, Annie had seen little of the predator that had stalked her down a grocery aisle. The woman she had gotten to know over the last several weeks was witty and vain and generous with her heart and hands. She mostly skipped breakfast and ate too much at dinner, especially if Annie made fettuccini alfredo at her apartment.
If Annie hadn't also been the Luidaeg, hadn't also been First Born, she might have doubted the veracity of the woman she held most mornings. Even if Annie's memory of their meeting had failed her though she would have known. Would have had to guess. Healing powers or no, Buffy's skin revealed a constellation of hurts, groupings of pale scars that spoke of fangs and swords and claws that had bled the woman she was coming to care for. That had injured the soul of the mortal who was rapidly changing the contours of Annie's life.
Annie had spent hours tracing those silent tales with rough fingertips while Buffy tried to sleep. They never spoke of the nights Buffy voiced her past through nightmares. The nights she spoke of men's poetry with her cries. One girl in all the world, crafted of woman and demon, sent to battle the Forces of Darkness like a lamb bleating its way to slaughter. But Buffy had made more of her life, of the lives of the women who shared her heritage.
She wasn't alone any more, and not just because of the other Slayers.
Despite centuries of magic and survival, Annie was still surprised by the silent speed in which Buffy suddenly slipped away, darting down a crooked alleyway, moonlight gleaming on the polished wood of the stake she had slipped from her jacket. Annie took off after her, sneakers pounding pavement as the Slayer ran towards a destiny Annie was working to understand.
She had spent years around Toby's righteous rightness, but Buffy's interpretation of duty was literal in a way that left Annie's insides warm. First Born or not, she didn't have a Slayer's speed and aside from one surprised cry all Annie actually saw was Buffy calmly standing at the dead end of an alley, one scratch across her cheek already closing as she dusted off her arms.
The predator was back though, and Annie felt a fierce sense of recognition in her soul, of exultation, as Buffy smiled at her. "Want to take a walk through Golden Gate Park?"
Toby hadn't expected to be nervous. She wasn't precisely worried… just anxious. Which was ridiculous. If she should be afraid of anything it was her Aunt, who was First Born and sea witch, not someone who was merely, well, as mortal as October once thought she was, changeling child of an inconsequential and magic-maddened mother.
Granted, having a destined title of the Slayer had a bit of a weighty ring to it, but she was Sir Toby Daye, Knight to Duke Sylvester. Slayer of Blind Michael even, though she insisted that that was left off the business cards May had insisted on having made.
It wasn't all the unusual for even a First Born to dally with a mortal, but the Luidaeg was in a realm of her own. It seemed inconceivable for her to dally with, well, anyone. Let alone have a Fairy Wedding.
"Stop brooding… You'll like Buffy. She's nothing like you. And the Luidaeg loves her, and Buffy loves her, even if they're both still figuring out what the heck that means when she's the Luidaeg and Buffy is the Slayer."
Toby felt a flash of irritated amusement as she was taken to task by her squire and snorted in response. "You've only been over there once since they shacked up together. How would you know?" Quentin only shrugged maddeningly and she was happy Tybalt had been a bit more forthcoming in his surprising approval of the surprising couple.
"She may walk in a mortal's life but the Slayer dances to a song as old as time. And I think she has, enough, power. She doesn't seem interested in the Luidaeg for what a First Born is. She seems interested in the Luidaeg despite the baggage that comes with her.
"Besides," Tybalt had continued with a sneeze, "the cats have been watching and they approve. The Slayer pets them with care and lets them sun on the Luidaeg's front porch during the day."
Even then Toby had found that line of reasoning ridiculous. Tybalt had merely shrugged and drew her closer, the relationship between the sea witch and Slayer temporarily forgotten.
Toby didn't know what exactly she had been expecting when she met Buffy, but the overwhelming taste of newly minted copper, ashes, and bubble gum was not it. Her tongue flooded with the roar of the oldest Slayer's magic as they shook hands and Toby wondered if it was always so overwhelming, to have generations of death tied to your soul. But then, she didn't really have time to ask, because the Luidaeg's block was on fire.
The San Francisco fire department seemed to have things well in-hand by the time she had arrived. The Luidaeg's apartment seemed to be more singed then anything, though both Buffy and the sea witch were in hastily thrown on clothes. Buffy was wearing a robe Toby recognized as belonging to her aunt, thrown over a pair of jeans and a pajama tank top. Dirt smudged the Slayer's cheek while soot darkened the blonde of her hair with one conspicuous streak.
The Luidaeg stood, her back to them, and watched in a too-human guise as the firefighters fought to control the fire on either side of her home. Three alley cats sat at the Luidaeg's feet, tails flicking as they glared contemptuously at the blaze.
Buffy gave Toby an apologetic look. "I really meant to make dinner. Or try to make dinner. I can't cook at all. But Annie was going to help. Then, you know, demon. Or probably you don't, because… demon. But I had to use some extraordinary measures and I didn't realize quite how flammable San Francisco was."
And Toby stood there, not at all sure what to say, but the fist of worry clenched around her heart slowly loosened as the sea witch sighed and turned, a wry smile dancing across a face that had seen the rise and fall of civilizations. She held a fishbowl where what looked suspiciously like a disgruntled octopus sloshed around, its visible eye cast balefully towards Buffy. "I didn't realize you were going to go to such extraordinary measures to get out of cooking. If I knew my choices were 'chef' or 'fire,' I might have gotten home earlier."
The Slayer sighed, looking for everything in the world like a contrite girlfriend begging forgiveness for a minor inconvenience. "The demon was an accident. An especially incendiary accident. I swear."
And the Luidaeg, heart in her storm-strewn eyes, reached over to hold the mortal woman's hand as smoke billowed down the street and the cats looked on approvingly. And Toby, hungry, and slightly sooty, couldn't find in itself to do anything other than approve as well. As strange as it sounded. Not that she planned to tell Quentin that.
Annie had lived more lives than most immortals. She had seen empires rise and falls, worlds die, and her own heart break more than it had grown. But she had never expected to be traveling by plane to… New Jersey. For a holidays themed family get-together with the Summers clan. Granted, "holidays" were loosely defined around the concept of presents and the Summers clan consisted officially of Buffy and Dawn, but friends closer than family would also be present.
She had met a few of that tight knit group over the last year… Xander had insisted on camping out on their couch for a week when he returned from Nepal, and Faith had breezed in on a booze-fueled bender after Robin had momentarily taken leave of his senses and left her 'for her own good.'
Annie had unintentionally won Xander over with peanut butter pancakes, her endless supply of soda, and a love for Saturday morning cartoons she had successfully managed to hide from Buffy until Xander had pried it out of her.
Buffy's sister Slayer had spent a long moment studying the sea witch, lips pursed as she evaluated any threats against Buffy's potential happiness, before finding in favor of asking if she could watch while "they did it."
So despite herself, she found herself on an airplane to New Jersey, hands gripping the armrests as Buffy snickered with sunrise dancing in her mortal eyes. Annie was more resigned than anything- this would hardly be her first introduction to a loved one's family- but curious to meet the rest of the people who made Buffy whole.
The red-headed witch that tasted of death and unfulfilled apocalypses was a bit more of a surprise than it should have been. The woman had answered the door and tackled Buffy with a hug before blushing scarlet and enthusiastically shaking the sea witch's hand. Willow's eyes had ashes in them, but she smiled with her soul and seemed genuinely pleased to meet the much mentioned Annie.
Dawn though had halted the sea witch in her tracks as she and Buffy circulated around the lively gathering with tinsel, menorahs, and haphazard Christmas lights strung from the ceiling. The young woman herself was awkwardly charming, as all Summers' women seemed to be- elbows and shy, welcoming smiles. The human form of Dawn was effusive and polite and met the eyes of a First Born with genuine happiness for the joy Annie brought her sister.
The energy that body contained though… Not much shocked the Luidgeau nowadays. To say she was shocked was an understatement.
Buffy slipped next to her and took the appetizers plate from numb fingers. Buffy's smile was real enough, though her eyes creased with worry at the corners.
"You didn't think mentioning that your sister was the Key to the Universe was relevant in the last year?" Annie hissed, trying to keep her outrage in check.
And she wanted to feel betrayed, angered by the obvious omission of what she would have felt was very relevant information, but Buffy shrugged and touched the sea witch's bare freckled shoulder with a tentative hand so Annie simply waited, if impatiently, trying to understand the mortal that had so captivated her.
"You always said we should date each other, not our families." Not the history of entire races that Annie carried like a mantle of solitude. Too many over the years had wanted the power that intermingling with a First Born brought. Too many wished to sit at the feet of someone Oberon called daughter. She never dreamed that that statement could be construed both ways… That Buffy's relatives were every bit as interesting as hers.
Buffy, noting the hesitation, pushed cautiously forward. "We know, when Dawn is done with all this…" she gestured vaguely, appetizer plate still in one hand, "that the Key will return to where she came from. That what makes Dawn… Dawn will belong more directly than any of us could imagine to the history of time. We're not interested in the power. We didn't bring her into being. But she's here, and she still leaves her dinner plates under the couch when she's watching a movie and eats ketchup and jam sandwiches and sings bad karaoke. She helps people better themselves by being a social worker, in a way that is so concrete she makes being a Slayer look like child's play.
"I had hoped it wouldn't… that it wouldn't matter. That this last year of dating meant more than not telling you about my sister."
And the not telling should have- it should have mattered more than holding hands like children neither of them had gotten to be and midnight walks alongside star crested waves. But those memories, those scant moments fixed in time, when Annie kissed smiling lips and felt her insides warm... Those mattered more than they ever had before, even if she was afraid to quantify why.
Annie shifted, changing her focus to the words that were said instead of the ones that had been left unsaid. "So… dating?"
Buffy snorted. "What else do you call movies, Italian food, and lots of sex? Also I live with you. I even accidentally lit your home on fire." Annie started to respond and then shook her head helplessly at Buffy's easy acceptance. "Are you happy?" the Slayer asked, no room for equivocation as they both weighed how much love was worth. How much their love was worth.
Was it worth the secrets of the Universe?
Was it worth the silences necessary for a First Born and Slayer to wake up next to each other in bed and make breakfast every morning? How many secrets could they keep so they could keep each other?
Were they worth it?
Annie took the plate from Buffy's fingers and set it on a nearby coffee table before taking a breath that would define more clearly than the millions that came before it, the shape of her life. Buffy waited patiently, her face warm and open and so damn vulnerable even as she knew, knew, that the last year… that all they had shared had built to this.
To the moment where they had to decide if they were going to move forwards. Because once they did, there was no way back. No side steps. No backwards glances.
If they moved forward, it wasn't just Buffy and Annie in love, it was the Slayer and the Luidaeg. Buffy and Annie hardly warranted a second glance. The Slayer and the Luidaeg could reshape the contours of all their worlds.
Annie paused, torn by a yearning she was almost afraid of, it was so deep, and a sense of duty that had been instilled into her by a life measured in centuries. Paused and tried to think of a weigh to balance her love of the woman in front of her with the requirements her power brought.
There should be some way to tally the pros and cons, add and subtract so that the bottom line was clear. Instead there was only Buffy, shining like some alchemy experiment that had rendered Annie's heart, her muscle and blood, into gold. It wasn't neat and it wasn't always pretty, but it was real. And they deserved the chance to make something good.
To make a life they both chose.
"I'm happy," said Daughter of Maeve, First Born, Sea witch, Mother, Aunt, Luidaeg Annie, my love. "I'm happy and I love you."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer reached out and grabbed her lover's hands, eyes shining as she leaned in and pressed her warm lips against Annie's. "I'm happy and I love you too."
And that would always, for the first time for both women, be enough.