A/N: This week marks ten years of Rise of the Guardians! Absolutely crazy that it's been a decade of this delightful film that I am thankful for in so many ways.
Speaking of which, if you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. If you don't, I hope you had a nice Thursday. This past week kind of feels like a lot in general, but I'm hoping to have better footing with things creatively after this update. On to the chapter!
Bunny and North exchanged glances, North raising a brow at the pooka and nodding in Jack's direction as though to say, are you going to tell him?
Chapter Thirteen: Puzzle Pieces
For the first time since her return to life, Rowan was completely alone.
She stood in the too-large bathroom, attached to the too-large bedroom that Euterpe and Terpsichore had shown her earlier. Multiple bags from their shopping trip were settled onto the spacious countertop, plus a few items from the kitchen and Euterpe's room that Rowan had asked to borrow.
Rowan had set the boots she had been wearing in the corner, had draped the hoodie she had borrowed from Jack on a hook for towels. From one of the shopping bags, she retrieved a large, plain t-shirt that had been obtained at the craft store. She tore off the price tag and pulled it on.
The girl eyed her reflection for a moment: a blank slate, no tattoos, no piercings, no hair dye. This body had been through so little and it showed.
As she took a comb from one of the bags and tore off that price tag, she felt grateful that she was alone, unsure how her attempts with her hair would go this time and unwilling to have an audience for it.
It was bad enough that Terpsichore and Euterpe had witnessed her panic and attempt to flee the store earlier.
Rowan ran the comb through one strand of hair and winced. The disconnect was still so strange, her hair still didn't feel like her hair.
But Jack wasn't around to help her with this, to brush her hair as she cried silently and tried not to think about what was happening and the odd feeling.
None of this was fair.
Rowan hadn't asked for this new body, hadn't wanted a clean slate.
She wanted her old body back, but when she thought of the old one, she wondered what had been done to it in preparation for her burial, and the new skin crawled at the thought of embalming fluids and the like.
Rowan set the comb back on the counter, Jack's earlier insistence that she circle back to this coming to mind.
Hair color, developer, a mixing bowl, a tint brush, a box of gloves, clips, all of these were soon arranged on the counter before her. She tossed the paper bags they had been placed in aside.
Before starting this whole process, Rowan had made an offhand comment that she wished she had music to listen to while she did this. Euterpe had excitedly led the way to her room to show off her massive music connection before digging out an old boom box from her closet.
The boom box was on the counter now, round and red with subtle sparkles. It reminded Rowan of one she had as a child, a gift from her uncles, who were eager to share music with her. Actually purchasing a CD was a somewhat obsolete notion by the time she was in high school, boom boxes even more so, now that Bluetooth speakers were a thing.
But there was something that felt familiar, nostalgic, to open a jewel case and pry out a CD. Something felt very right about it, after so many things felt wrong lately.
There was a soft click as the disc was set into place. Rowan closed the lid and pressed the play button.
Drumming filled the bathroom immediately.
Yes. This was right.
Rowan tore open the box of gloves and pulled a pair on. She wiggled her fingers, the vinyl rubbing together.
This was right, too.
She picked up one of the small boxes of hair color (they had purchased the entire stock of this color) and read the back. Two parts color, one part developer.
The small box contained a small bottle that she pried out carefully. She poured the contents into the mixing bowl before grabbing for the large bottle of developer. There were marks for measurements in the bowl, but Rowan had never been precise with measurements like this, simply pouring until it looked like the right amount.
The smell was strong as she grabbed for the tint brush and began mixing everything together, but that felt right, too, to smell that hair dye smell as she sang along to the borrowed CD.
Once the dye was mixed, however, she eyed the comb again.
Taking a deep breath, she urged herself to focus on Shirley Manson's vocals as she started combing her hair again, eyes firmly shut.
It still felt wrong, but the gloves seemed to be helping somewhat, since she didn't have to touch her hair directly. Her hair had mercifully not gotten very tangled since this morning.
Opening her eyes again, Rowan swallowed before using the comb to separate her hair into two sections, clipping the top section out of the way. She set the comb down.
"Let's do this," she said, as though encouraging her blank slate of a reflection. She reached for the tint brush with one hand and a section of hair with the other, carefully brushing the dye onto the strands.
For about one and a half songs, she was careful, gentle, meticulous in her dye application. She would take a small section of hair and brush on the dye, holding her breath as though something bad could happen at any moment. She didn't want to fall into panic again.
But it soon became clear that nothing bad was happening. She didn't feel on the verge of tears as she had been that morning. Maybe this body didn't need to be handled so gently.
The tint brush soon found itself unceremoniously tossed into the nearby sink as Rowan began scooping dye from the bowl with her hands, combing it through her hair with her fingers.
Dye ripped onto her forehead, onto the large shirt she wore, onto the tile floor and on the countertops.
But the image in the mirror was right!
Her shirt smeared with drops of dye, her hair saturated with it, drops smudging on her forearm somehow. It was a mess, but it was a familiar mess with a familiar song punctuating the moment.
The too perfect hair that had come with this new body was now completely out of sight, replaced by the dye-soaked locks that she piled on the top of her head and kept in place with a clip. She pulled off the dye-covered gloves and walked to another part of the counter where she had left a timer that she had borrowed from the kitchen. She gave it a swift turn to the thirty-minute mark and it began to tick, barely audible beneath the sound of the boom box.
Rowan took a too-white wash cloth and ran it under some warm water from the faucet, eying her reflection again. She added a bit of soap to the wash cloth and began scrubbing at her hair line, attempting to remove the dye from her forehead, ears, and neck.
She wondered how quickly the Muses would regret letting her have her own bathroom here, as the washcloth became more and more pink as she scrubbed, the drops of dye on the tile and counter already dried.
But the bathroom had been a bit too perfect, too. The drops of dye were an improvement, in Rowan's opinion.
Once she had scrubbed the dye away from her skin and wiped the leftover soap away, Rowan began pulling more items out of another bag.
After she had damaged her hair the first time she dyed it pink, her grandmother had given her a recipe for a hair treatment that she swore by. It seemed that Grandma Jean, too, had absolutely destroyed her hair with bleach in her teenage years.
("Oh, you know me, Ro, I'm a huge Marilyn fan. I wanted hair like hers and thought I could do it myself! I think you did better than I did.")
Rowan could have easily bought a pre-made hair treatment while they were out.
But instead, she had pointed out a dark spray bottle and some rose water, along with a few different oils. She had asked to borrow a few things from the kitchen.
She carefully poured everything together, ending with careful drops from a large bottle of vanilla extract, which would make everything smell quite nice after all the dye. She screwed the top back on the spray bottle and shook it to combine everything.
She set the bottle aside and rinsed out the mixing bowl and tint brush, still singing along with the boom box speakers.
A nail file, black nail polish, and a quick-dry top coat were the next items that rowan was setting up on the counter. No matter how many art classes she had taken over the years, she still managed to make a mess of things when she would paint her nails, particularly when her trembling right hand would attempt to paint her left. Drops of black soon joined the smears of dye on the counter.
The CD reached its end. Rowan carefully removed it from the boom box, trying not to get any nail polish on it as she put it back in its case. A second CD was retrieved and set in place. A few seconds later guitars began fading into the room.
She was gently prodding at her nails to see if the quick-dry top coat had been as quick as advertise when the timer rang, loud and shrill.
Rowan approached the glass door that would lead to the shower and pulled it open, sighing heavily at the number of knobs that greeted her. Euterpe and Terpsichore had explained how to turn the shower on, but the instructions had been a bit complicated and Rowan had figured that she would figure it out when she got there.
Why did any shower even need this many knobs?
She reached forward, giving each knob a turn, frowning as she went and nothing happened.
"Oh, wait, do I need to—" Rowan mumbled, trying the first knob again, a bit more forcefully, pulling it slightly. Water began to run from the shower head in response. She sighed, vaguely annoyed that it hadn't worked the first time, but at least it was on now.
She could just stick her head in, but it would be easier to just climb in and take a proper shower. She pulled the dye-stained shirt over her head, smearing more dye on it in the process.
As she finished undressing, she caught her reflection, once more looking incorrect without the tattoo that was supposed to be on her right side.
She glanced away from the mirror, focusing on the shower again and stepping inside. The red dye was soon eerily circling the drain. Rowan sighed heavily, for this felt right, too, to be leaning back into the stream of water to rinse out the dye, drops of red hitting the tiles around her.
As the water began to run more and more clear, Rowan scraped at the bits of nail polish that had wound up on her fingers rather than the nail.
When the water was nearly clear, she made use of some of the conditioner that was already in the shower.
The sound of the music had been muffled by the sound of the water, but the noise was soothing, it drowned out any thoughts about how odd it was to look down and not see her tattoos or any of the scars and stretch marks she should have.
She scrubbed at the skin that hadn't ever truly been dirty, wincing at the feeling and scrubbing harder until it felt red and raw, the discomfort feeling at least familiar.
The glass door of the shower was obscured with steam by the time she rinsed out the conditioner and shut off the water.
The towels were plush and much too white. Her hair left streaks of pink here, too.
Once her hair was no longer so wet that it was dripping, she hastily got dressed again and wiped the steam from the mirror with one of the pink-stained towels. It was hard to make a judgment call on the color of her hair while it was still damp. Picking up the spray bottle with her homemade hair treatment, she covered her hair with a light mist.
She took the comb again, taking a deep breath and focusing on the song playing again as she combed through the strands.
There was still a feeling of disconnect, but it seemed to have had the volume turned down. It still didn't feel right, but it didn't feel as wrong as it did earlier.
Water dripped from the comb as she set it down and reached for a pair of shears, still in the packaging. She briefly considered the humor of struggling to open a package that contained scissors before finally they were in her hand.
Rowan set one of the empty shopping bags in the sink before her, to hopefully collect the hair as she cut it. She took a section of her bangs and carefully trimmed the edge.
Yes.
Rowan had to pause for a moment, to take a breath, smile spreading across her face.
This.
Was.
Right.
Pulling more hair into the section she was cutting, she cut again, the snip of the blades matching the beat of the song pulsing through the boom box speakers.
Her attempts to collect the hair she was cutting off into the shopping bag were barely successful, particularly not once she leaned over and flipped over her hair to properly trim the strands near the back. Rowan was already leaving this bathroom in worse condition than she had found it, though, and a bit of hair wouldn't make much difference in the long run.
Especially not when, as it turned out, Euterpe had been completely right about cutting her hair. Every snip was a release, a reclamation. Rowan had been cutting her own hair for years and it had never quite felt like this, like catharsis.
Her hair had dried significantly since she began. When she finally set aside the scissors and flipped her hair back, the reflection in the mirror was much more familiar: burgundy-dyed hair with layers.
Hesitantly, she ran her fingers through her hair.
No part of her wanted to tear at her hair until it was pulled out at the root. The disconnect that had been present every other time she touched her hair was barely a whisper.
But still, something wasn't quite right.
The last item that Rowan had pointed out in the beauty supply store before Euterpe and Terpsichore went to the register to pay was a large package of clear elastic bands. Rowan took this from one of the shopping bags now, pulling several of the bands out.
Three small strands of hair. Cross over. Cross over. Cross over.
She repeated this, tying off small braids with the clear elastics until she had three of them in her hair. She looked in the mirror again, turning her head a bit to see each side.
This was right.
"I'm obviously going to have Clio double-check what we've found, but anything that happened on the moon, we can't check. And I mean, it isn't as though I don't trust Katherine's account, but we need to cover all our bases," Bunny was saying. The pooka hadn't bothered taking the seat that was offered him, pacing the office as she finished up explaining what he and Mr. Qwerty had found in Katherine's journals.
Jack had taken a seat and was leaning heavily against the table, his arms folded before him as he listened. If nothing else, Bunny's tales of Katherine's journal entries about Manny had successfully distracted him from his concern about Rowan spontaneously dropping dead.
When Bunny had been explaining the fall that Nightlight had taken, Jack wasn't sure why it felt familiar, as though he already knew the story, only remembering his odd dream when Bunny had moved on to his next point.
Many of the instances Bunny was bringing up on their own could be rationalized as Manny being passive-aggressive, if anything.
But there was just too much of it.
Too many moments of discomfort, too many moments of suspicion, too many moments of Nightlight assuring Katherine that it was just a personal dispute, too many moments of Katherine's fear of what Manny would do next.
The journals Bunny had were each marked with dozens of moments, indicated by brightly-colored post-it notes. It was too much to rationalize away.
"Which, speaking of Clio," Bunny said, finally pausing in his pacing to address Jack directly. "What made you go to her about Nightlight in the first place?"
"You did not mention visiting Nightlight, only your mortal family," North said, and if his brow had not been furrowed for the entirety of this conversation, it certainly would have furrowed now.
Jack frowned, eying the pile of journals on the table rather than the two other Guardians, thinking back to his conversation with Cupid, to the winged boy saying, you didn't hear any of this from me.
He didn't think that North or Bunny would be surprised about Cupid speaking of Manny in a less-than-complementary way. But still, Jack wasn't sure he should mention Cupid one way or another.
"I was curious after talking to Mr. Qwerty at the wedding rehearsal," Jack said, falling back to the explanation he had given Clio. He paused a moment before adding, "And, well, I wasn't sure why none of you had brought Nightlight or our resemblance up. I figured if I saw him and it was just—just that we had the same hair and eye color and nothing else, then it was just a coincidence and I didn't have to worry about it. But it—he's just—it doesn't seem like it's a coincidence."
"When you were first singled out to be a Guardian, before I found out Manny changed your appearance, I thought he was just being sentimental because you happened to look like Nightlight," Bunny admitted.
"I still think it may be a coincidence, there are many of us that are immortal and have white hair," North said. He hadn't spoken much as Bunny had explained the concerning journal entries, but when he had, he was pushing back, trying to find explanations that didn't involve Manny playing God and having it out for their fallen comrades.
"And his eyes, then?" Bunny demanded, arms crossed. More and more, Bunny's side of the argument seemed to have more weight. "And the staff?"
North grunted, stroking his beard, obviously not having an explanation for this.
"Even if for some reason Jack has nothing to do with Nightlight—which I don't buy—that doesn't take away everything in the journals," Bunny said, tapping a claw against the journal at the top of the stack. "It doesn't take away how Manny treated his 'favorite' of all of us. What happens when another one of us pisses him off?"
Silence.
The first version of events that Jack had been given was that Manny had been disappointed, but supportive and kind about Nightlight, Katherine, and Ombric's decision to give up their status as Guardians and live the rest of their lives as mortals.
This was obviously what had been presented as the truth, what the Guardians believed before doing this deep-dive into Katherine's journals.
What else had they gotten wrong?
What else would set Manny off?
"I think a new policy is in order," Bunny said after a beat. "No more assuming that problems any of us have with Manny are just 'personal disputes.' If Manny is acting out of order, the rest of us need to know."
"I agree," North said.
Jack nodded, hesitantly, wondering what exactly counted as Manny acting out of order. He was so good at being polite, saying the right thing, not saying anything that could be held against him.
"I do not like any of this," North added.
"I don't either," Bunny said.
"You said that you don't buy that I don't have anything to do with Nightlight," Jack said, wincing when he realized how soft his voice was. He cleared his throat, attempted to speak at his usual volume. "So, what—how—what do you think it is, then? Am I here to be his replacement?"
Jack winced again, while his voice hadn't been quite as soft that time, he had sounded far sadder than he intended. Bunny and North exchanged glances, North raising a brow at the pooka and nodding in Jack's direction as though to say, are you going to tell him?
"I don't know for sure," Bunny finally said. "I started off thinking this was a reincarnation situation, what with Rowan talking about 'living your story,' but that's hard to prove one way or another."
"What, you think Rowan and I are—that we're both reincarnated?" Jack said, brow furrowed. He had never even entertained the notion as an option and wanted to throw it out immediately.
Rowan and Katherine, well, they were both storytellers. But so were a lot of people.
And even if somehow Jack had been Nightlight in a past life, did that mean that any agreements Nightlight had with Manny still applied to Jack? How would Manny know?
Dressing Jack up as a Nightlight substitute seemed more realistic.
(But then, who was Jack to dictate what seemed realistic, while he was currently in the middle of a discussion with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny about the behavior of the Man in the Moon?)
"I mean, I had this dream that sounded like what you were saying before about Nightlight falling, but—" Jack started.
"What was the dream?" Bunny said at once.
Jack sighed, wondering if mentioning this was actually going to be helpful or if it would just add more questions to the ever-growing pile. "In the dream, I was flying, and suddenly I didn't have my staff, so I fell. I landed in a pile of snow and Rowan showed up to take me to bed to recover. But I don't know if that means anything, dreams where you're falling aren't really uncommon, but—"
"Do you remember anything else?" Bunny said, now frantically sorting through the journals.
"Rowan kept talking about 'the others are going to realize we've been sharing a bed,' and I was really confused because I mean, it's not a secret. But dreams don't exactly make sense most of the time," Jack said with a slight shrug as Bunny seemed to find the journal he had been looking for.
He quickly flipped through the pages, nearly tearing them in his haste, stopping at a marked page. He read aloud, "I supposed I should have put him in his sleeping quarters. In the panic, I forgot the lie we have told the others for years about him sleeping in his room each night instead of curled up next to me in mine."
"You have never read these journals?" North said to Jack at once.
"I didn't know they existed until today," Jack said, shaking his head.
"Maybe we need to look at reincarnation some more," Bunny said. "I'll mention the dream to Sandy."
"This is not enough to prove reincarnation," North said.
"Well, it's too much to not look into," Bunny said at once. He was clearly still on-edge. "Nightlight and Katherine didn't want this. They were done being immortal and Manny damn well knew that."
"But what if it isn't reincarnation? Then what?" Jack asked. "Because all I know is that in this life, I'm not Nightlight. And I need to know if there's some kind of expectation that I should be. Because I can't be Nightlight. I was only just getting a grasp on how the hell I was supposed to be Jack Frost."
North and Bunny exchanged glances again.
"We want you to be Jack Frost," North said, turning away from Bunny.
"And Manny?" Jack said, eyes fixed to the table before him.
"I don't know what he's playing at. But I think that the position he put you in, when he brought you back to life, left you vulnerable and gave him a lot more control than he ever had with Nightlight. Maybe he's not trying to make you a replacement as much as a... second draft or something," Bunny said. "Regardless of how this all came about, you're supposed to be here, you didn't do anything wrong."
"You are Guardian," North agreed at once.
Jack glanced up at the others and forced a smile, small and strained.
Getting his memories back and learning that he had been granted immortality after dying to save a child had felt like he finally had all the answers he had always wanted. Everything made sense, at last. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to be a Guardian.
But what had once been such a firm foundation was cracking under the weight of Manny's past actions and Jack's resemblance to Nightlight.
Maybe it didn't have anything to do with protecting children.
Maybe Jack simply looked the part.
"We're gonna figure this out," Bunny said, clapping Jack on the shoulder. "I'm through with my half of the journals, I'm going to compare notes with Mr. Qwerty soon and then I'm going to meet with Clio about double-checking what we can."
"Then what?" North asked. "We take all this to Manny? Confront him?"
"Maybe," Bunny said. "In the meantime, I suggest we all lie low and prepare for things to go to hell when the Muses renounce Apollo and Artemis. At the very least, Manny isn't gonna be pleased when he finds out we knew it was coming."
"Right," Jack winced at both the idea of confronting Manny and what his reaction to the Muses' plan might be. "How do we, uh, prepare for that?"
"In your case? I'd have escape routes planned," Bunny said. "I know North put more enchantments on the cabin, but Apollo's going to come for you. Do not try and face him alone."
"I've faced him alone before," Jack protested at once. "I can't just run away—"
"You've faced him when he's just making threats, not delivering on them," Bunny said.
"You saw what he did to Cupid," North reminded Jack. "And he considers Cupid to be family."
"If things start to get bad, you and Rowan need to get the hell out of there. Come here, to the Warren, to Mount Parnassus, wherever, just get out of there," Bunny said. "Do not play hero, either of you."
Jack sighed, leaning back in his seat at last. He still felt the strong urge to argue this point, but Cupid's black eye that had taken ages to heal was hard to forget.
"Fine," he mumbled, his stomach turning at the idea of giving Apollo the satisfaction of making him run off.
"Good," said Bunny. "I should fill Tooth and Sandy in on the journals while it's still a new moon. I'll be in touch."
"Oh," Jack said, remembering suddenly. "Rowan was saying we should look into phones, instead of relying on physically going around to give each other messages."
"Phones, right, those really caught on, didn't they?" Bunny said, brow furrowed. "I suppose it would be faster, in an emergency."
"Most of our home bases are out of range for cell phones," North said thoughtfully. "But, I may be able to adjust that with magic. I have some satellites already launched for equipment used for Christmas."
"They would have to run on some kind of magic, too, to be any kind of practical for us," Bunny said. "We could probably rig them to run on belief but then if something like Pitch happens again, that knocks out the phones, too."
"Would need back-up power source, yes," North nodded. "I can start a prototype."
"Might as well," Bunny shrugged. "In the meantime, I'm off to find Tooth and Sandy."
Bunny bid them farewell, and summoned a tunnel.
Rowan had consolidated all of the items that she would be taking back with her to Jack's cabin into two shopping bags, which were currently hooked over one arm, dangling at the elbow. She entered the kitchen, where Terpsichore and Euterpe were still fiddling with their computer.
Rowan clumsily set an armful of items that she had borrowed from the kitchen on the table before setting her shopping bags down on one of the chairs.
"Looks good," Terpsichore commented, gesturing to her hair.
"Thank you. And thank you for letting me borrow all of this," Rowan said, gesturing to the items she had set down. She picked up the kitchen timer and placed it on the counter where it had been retrieved from in the first place.
"Again, you're a Muse now, you don't have to ask to use things from the kitchen," Terpsichore said as Rowan continued putting the things she had borrowed away.
"Yeah, well," Rowan said, still unsure how to feel about being referred to as a Muse. She hadn't ever really gotten used to being the Mortal Muse.
The girl paused, glancing from the bottle of vanilla extract in her hand to the various cupboards, trying to remember where it had been retrieved from. Terpsichore stood and opened a nearby cupboard, revealing various other extracts. Rowan set the vanilla extract there. "Thanks."
With everything put away, Rowan turned to Euterpe. "I put your boom box and the CDs you let me borrow outside your bedroom door, thank you again."
"De nada, tu eres mi hermana," Euterpe said.
Rowan's comprehension of Spanish was quite poor, despite her grandmother's efforts and the two years of it she had taken in high school, but she knew enough for eye contact to falter at hermana.
Euterpe continued, "Did the dye help?"
"I really think it did," Rowan said, hesitantly touching a strand of hair again, unable to help her smile the moment her fingers made contact and it felt like she was simply touching her hair.
"That's great," Euterpe said, her smile encouraging. "Still want to do your piercings today?"
She tapped her fingers against a case that must contain her piercing supplies. Nearby were the simple studs and hoops that had been purchased for Rowan's ears.
Rowan hesitated a moment. Piercings would require Euterpe to touch her, and Rowan had been keeping the other two at a certain distance for the entire day.
There was no reason for Euterpe or Terpsichore to attempt to inspire her, but giving them the opportunity still gave her pause.
Part of her wanted to try to do this herself, to avoid the contact at all. But she had attempted to pierce her own lip in high school and had learned quickly that she just did not have the nerve to actually stick the needle through her skin herself.
If her hair had been this much of an improvement, surely the earrings would be, too.
It was worth the risk. Right?
"Yeah. Yeah, let's do this," Rowan said, approaching the shopping bags to pull out a hair band. She was once more pleased to find that pulling her hair back and securing it out of the way with the hairband did not feel wrong.
Euterpe was already setting up, pulling on a pair of gloves and sorting through packages of sterile needles. Rowan was soon seated in one of the chairs, each ear having been wiped down with an alcohol swab. Holding a hand mirror in one hand and a felt-tipped pen in the other, she carefully started to mark where she remembered her piercings being before.
"Didn't realize you were left-handed," Terpsichore observed. "Goes to show how young you are that no one forced you to use your right hand instead."
"Oh, yeah," Rowan said, capping the pen as she finished. "My dad's parents were kind of appalled about the whole thing when they realized I was left-handed and my dad didn't force me to use my right hand instead. They had… a lot of strong, old-fashioned opinions."
Rowan frowned, never really sparing a lot of thought to her father's parents. Had they attended her funeral? Jack likely wouldn't know. She never spoke of them to him. Their pictures were not among the family photos she would tell him about when her parents weren't home to overhear her speaking fondly of her first concert to seemingly no one.
"Sounds… charming," Euterpe said, brow furrowed.
"Does everything look even?" Rowan asked, gesturing to her ears and hoping to change the subject. Euterpe and Terpsichore each leaned over to get a better look before giving her their approval.
"Hold this behind your ear so I don't accidentally poke your neck or something," Euterpe said, handing Rowan a cork.
Rowan set the cork behind her ear as Euterpe prepared the needle and earring. When Rowan first got her earlobes pierced, it had been at the mall when she was little. The woman had used a piercing gun, which was somewhat terrifying, but it had at least been over quickly.
She had only learned, when the piercer doing her helix piercing had gone on a rant about it, that piercing guns were not the best route to go, lobe piercing or otherwise.
Well, she seemed to be getting a redo where this was concerned, at least.
"Ready?" Euterpe said.
"Yeah," Rowan said, looking anywhere but at Euterpe. She barely had a chance to be concerned about Euterpe touching her, to notice any strange disconnect at the feeling, before the pinch of the needle distracted her.
"Okay, first one's done," Euterpe said, setting this needle aside. "We'll just do this whole ear and then do the other one, sound good?"
Rowan lifted the mirror again, sighing to see the simple stud in her ear. It already looked better, already looked more like it was actually her ear.
"Sounds good," Rowan said.
Two more lobe piercings were completed without incident. The helix hurt more, by virtue of cartilage being what Euterpe was forcing a needle through, but was manageable.
Then came the daith, and Rowan actually swore softly under her breath.
"Sorry, it's tricky!" Euterpe said.
"I know, I know, I remember when I got it done the first time, I said, 'I'm never letting this close, I'm not doing this shit again.' Thanks for nothing, Apollo!" Rowan said, clenching her teeth.
"There we go! This side's done!" Euterpe said, pulling her hands and the needle away.
"Looks good!" Terpsichore said, her tone encouraging. She had moved to lurk over Euterpe's shoulder as she worked.
Rowan grabbed for the mirror again, lifting it up and examining her ear. It was red from all the punctures, but the jewelry cluttering it was familiar.
It was correct.
"Thank you," she said.
"These should heal pretty quickly, even without you inspiring anyone yet," Euterpe said. "But just know that if you take the earrings out after they've healed, they'll close up within a day because of how our healing works."
"Okay, good to know," Rowan said, frowning at the thought of inspiring someone, still just grateful that Euterpe hadn't tried to inspire her during this process.
Rather than move all of the needles and earrings, the chair Rowan was sitting in was turned around and soon they were at it again, this time on the opposite ear. More needles, more pinching feelings, more earrings.
Rowan ran her fingers over the metal now cluttering her ears and managed another smile.
"You sure you don't want any more? We can keep going," Euterpe said, tapping her fingers on her kit again.
"I think ten is plenty for now, thank you," Rowan said.
"What about you?" Euterpe said, turning to Terpsichore.
"What, are you pierce-happy how? I'm good," Terpsichore said, gently tapping the gold stud in her nose.
Euterpe sighed and began putting her kit away. "Fine, fine."
"So, uh, the computer," Rowan said, gesturing to the device before turning her chair back around.
"Right! Clio added your name on the log-in screen, I don't know what she did," Terpsichore said, picking up the laptop and setting it in front of Rowan. She and Euterpe each took a seat on either side of the girl, eying the computer curiously.
Rowan carefully opened the device, the screen coming to life. Euterpe's name was listed first, with one of the generic icon options beside it: a keyboard.
Next was Rowan's name, and the generic icon she had been given was a snowflake.
Terpsichore's name was listed last, her generic icon a pair of ballet slippers.
All Clio knows about me is that I'm dating Jack, Rowan thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as she set her hand to the trackpad and clicked on her name. She was not prompted for a password, a generic desktop background of twirling colors loading.
"You guys are using Internet Explorer?" Rowan said when she went hunting through the list of applications for a browser.
"Yeah, the E with the halo," Terpsichore said with a nod.
Rowan sighed. "Okay, I'm going to, uh, download you guys a better browser."
"What's a browser?" Euterpe asked sheepishly.
"It's a program you use to browse the internet," Rowan said, reluctantly clicking on the image of an E with a halo if only to get to something better.
"Oh," Terpsichore said, eying the screen curiously as Rowan typed in a web address. "When did you learn to type?"
"In middle school," Rowan said. "You can't type? I figured if you guys had a computer, you could."
"No," Terpsichore said, shaking her head. "Clio can."
"Decades ago, Clio lugged a typewriter into her workshop and said she was going to learn to use it. And we all laughed at her and said, 'that heavy thing will never catch on! Writing things out by hand is so much easier!' Joke's on us," Euterpe said.
"Oh, well, there's programs that will teach you, if you're interested in learning," Rowan said, prompting a download of, well, does it even matter as long as it's not Internet Explorer?
"Mm, we should probably learn, yeah," Euterpe said.
It wasn't long before Rowan was looking up the edition of Peter Pan that she had been given as a child, with the simple cover with two stars. The image she found was not the best quality, but it would have to do, and she sent it to a printer listed as "Clio's Workshop Printer," in the window that appeared.
A little hunting around the social media profiles of the artist that had done her star tattoo, and Rowan managed to track down a picture of her tattoo when it was still new. She sent this off to the printer as well.
Next came her rib tattoo. Rowan had gotten that one her freshman year of college, so she expected to have to hunt around for it like she had for her wrist tattoo, but found it quite easily, featured in the artist's portfolio. Thankfully they had taken pictures from multiple angles.
Last, her neck tattoo. She had been thrilled to find an artist that specialized in script tattoos working in a shop near her college. This tattoo was easy to find in the artist's portfolio as well, with a caption that left Rowan pausing.
"A lovely tattoo for a lovely girl. Would have loved to work with her again. Rest in Peace."
Rowan hadn't expected to find any acknowledgement of her death while looking for these images. It threw her off.
She sent this image to the printer as well, then returned to the search engine to look for something else.
"How many tattoos did you have?" Euterpe asked as Rowan scrolled through some more images, occasionally sending something to the printer.
"Three. These are reference for another one. If Moe's up to it, I don't know what kind of work he usually does," Rowan said.
"He should be," Terpsichore said, pulling at her jacket to expose her shoulder with her colorful cover-up tattoo of various flowers. "He did my cover-up."
"Oh, that came out really well," Rowan said, turning from the computer to examine Terpsichore's arm. The lines were smooth and careful. The shading was precise. The colors were vibrant. "You can't tell it's a cover-up at all."
"He works pretty fast, too, which is nice," Terpsichore said. "I might go to him again."
"I still can't make my mind up for one," Euterpe sighed.
"Everyone I've talked to that has more than one tattoo says that the first couple are very thoughtful, very carefully chosen… and then you start getting stuff just because it looks cool," Rowan said.
"Are these guys just cool then?" Terpsichore asked, gesturing to the screen.
"They remind me of Jack. Don't tell him, it's a surprise," Rowan said, setting a finger to her lips.
"O… kay then," Terpsichore said, raising a brow, though she was smiling at the notion of these images reminding anyone of Jack Frost.
"I thought it was bad luck to get a tattoo for your significant other," Euterpe said.
"It's bad luck to get their name," Rowan said. "But, I've been thinking of this one off and on for the last few—shit it hasn't been the last few weeks."
Rowan frowned, forced to face the fact that she had been absence from this plane of existence for a year once more.
"The more time that passes, the less jarring that will be," Terpsichore said.
The notion of any of this being less jarring seemed out of the question.
But, Rowan had started the day tearing out her hair because it didn't feel like her own, and now she could touch it without that strange feeling of disconnect consuming her.
Maybe things could get less jarring.
Rowan wasn't sure what to do if they didn't.