Cordelia could hardly comprehend it had already been two weeks since Misty found her in the forest – again. Then again, when you have spent your whole life with someone, time seems to work differently in their presence. She felt it that way. There were never enough hours for her to stay out here with Misty, when she also had to prepare for her classes and be there for her husband. Hank felt the pressure of the new responsibilities now. Their law firm was finally rising, something she would applaud, if it wasn't for the fact that their rise was the cause of her mother's fall. Fiona's new business didn't have the sturdiness of the former and she suffered from it. While Cordelia didn't mind her mother being thrown off her throne, she definitely minded the viciousness it brought along.
She couldn't quite decide whether it was due to Hank's promotion or Misty's reappearance, that Fiona had suddenly decided to come back to New Orleans. Either way, Cordelia hoped it remained empty threats. The mere thought of having to live with her mother again for an undefined period of time was exhausting.
She told Misty this. Misty didn't understand much of the world in the higher educations, but she empathized well on the issue of Fiona.
"She gave you the house, right? She can't just come back and boss you 'round."
"You know my mother, Misty. She does whatever she feels like."
"You think Spaldin' will come back too?"
Cordelia hadn't even thought of that. Hank always said that the reason he disappeared when Fiona did, was that he probably had a crush on her. "I'm sure he's stalking her somewhere up in Boston", he used to joke. Misty seemed to share his suspicions.
"I don't know. I hope he stays away. I never liked him."
"I know you didn't."
Cordelia nodded. Misty smiled, as she always did. Cordelia tried to return it, but it had been a heavy couple of days. Too many thoughts swirling around her head, not to forget the nearly unendurable wait for the doctor's test results. She and Hank had been trying for years, on and off, and she halfway expected to be the problem. She usually was.
When Misty reached past her for a mug to fill with water, her hand rested on Cordelia's lower back. Misty had made a habit out of these little touches ever since they reunited and it felt different in a curious way. Cordelia would be lying, if she said she didn't like it. Quite the opposite actually, but it also made her horribly nervous. When she moved next, she turned the wrong way and bumped into the edge of the kitchen desk. It hit a sore spot and she hissed at the sudden sharp pain in her thigh, before she could stop herself.
She knew it was bad even before meeting Misty's eyes. Misty had stopped dead in her track and shot Cordelia piercing look. Then her eyes flickered down to her thigh and up.
"Are you hurt?"
"No- no it's nothing", Cordelia hastily stammered, but too late. Misty pulled out the chair behind her and made Cordelia sit down. She herself kneeled down in front of Cordelia and the trance-like state that came over Misty, whenever she stumbled upon injury, eluded from her almost like a visible aura. Misty wasted no time asking for permission – this was one of the times where the manners of civilization seemed to have failed her – but started pulling up Cordelia's skirt at the side. Cordelia always wore these long skirts to make sure no one saw, and she did everything short of pushing Misty away to stop her from seeing too. When Misty lifted the skirt over her thighs, Cordelia closed her eyes and prayed herself far away.
She knew exactly what Misty would see: Skin ruined by hundreds of little cuts in a palette stretching from purple to red to white and bulging from her skin, completing the look of the wretched landscape that was her legs.
"Cordelia… Your skin…" Misty's voice quivered and it hurt Cordelia more than every time she had dragged a blade across her legs.
"Please don't look at it, Misty. It's hideous, I know." But Misty didn't listen. She had only regard for Cordelia's damaged skin, as she examined all the old cuts along with the few fresh ones. The closeness didn't seem to bother her one bit, as she carefully pulled Cordelia's skirt further up to look at them all. Misty studied her with uncanny intensity and a breath stuck in Cordelia's throat, when she brushed two fingers over the texture of old scars. Cordelia wanted to make her stop, but at the same time, she was afraid to move. She was afraid to get the same look that she received from Hank the first time.
When Misty finally looked up, her eyes glimmered with restrained tears. There was none of the fright, Cordelia had feared to find, only devastation. "Did you do this?" She knew the answer, Cordelia was sure, but she nodded anyway. "Why?"
Cordelia fought her own battle to keep the tears away and with a voice thin and fragile as old paper she explained: "It started after you left. It got worse after Myrtle died. It… without you and without her, it was just all too much. This was the only thing I could control. And sometimes I fall into these black holes and this is the only way to feel something. But I'm not saying it's your fault, please don't think that." The last thing she needed was to taint Misty with her darkness or make her believe she had ever done a thing wrong. And when a little voice in her head started whispering that she had, Cordelia ignored it.
She had thought Misty would ask more, but she didn't. She looked down at Cordelia's exposed thigh and placed her hand on the skin. The trance returned and Cordelia tried to get a hold of herself. She wasn't sure why this wound her up so much. It wasn't like they weren't close in every way. It wasn't even like she hadn't been this exposed to Misty before, almost showing underwear, but never before had it caused her heart to beat this fast. Maybe it was the time apart, maybe it was the scars. Maybe it was that they were no longer children. Cordelia didn't really know.
She started feeling that familiar soothing warmth, so she looked down, reluctantly, at her legs. She saw how the necrotic skin sprung to life again under Misty's touch, leaving her thigh looking far less scarred than before. Cordelia didn't know what to say and when Misty looked up at her, so she just eyed her other leg. Misty moved to the other side and pulled up her skirt again, causing goosebumps to erupt all over Cordelia's body. Misty didn't say anything to it, but continued to work with that look of absolute focus on her face.
"It doesn't happen so often anymore", Cordelia said. She had to say something to break this newly birthed tension. It was suffocating her.
"These are new", Misty just said and Cordelia's heart sunk in her chest. She watched as Misty's healing hands smoothed out most of the scars there too. Some remained, too deep or too dead to be revived, but it wasn't the sight of the new smoothness of her own skin, which made Cordelia so speechless. She wondered in her quiet mind, how her best friend, who was basically kneeling between her legs now, had managed to make such a mortifying experience feel so intimate.
The supernatural warmth subsided, leaving only the feel of Misty's own warm hands, as she returned to earth.
"Can't get it all, but I got most of it. Does it hurt now?"
Cordelia shook her head. The sharp pain from the fresh ones was long gone. For a moment, even that dull, deep-rooted pain, which always followed when Cordelia looked at her legs, had subsided. When Misty moved away, Cordelia stood up at once, but she quickly realized she didn't know where to go. Misty stood up too, reaching above her height and Cordelia looked down to avoid her gaze.
"I'm sorry", she whispered.
Misty cupped her face with her hands and forced Cordelia to meet her gaze.
"Are you apologizin' for hurtin' yourself?"
She burst with a helpless chuckle. "I suppose I am."
She found herself pierced by Misty's sky blue eyes. The fright remained absent; all she found was a little sadness. As if Misty felt the pain with her.
"Never apologize to me for this. It's not your fault."
Cordelia felt weak, but luckily, Misty's strong embrace was there to catch her.
O0O
The office was a mess. Hank stared at the chaos and groaned in frustration. One week and he already felt swamped. He had worked half the nights overtime already. Justice never sleeps, as his colleagues told him, when he jokingly complained about the amount of work. At least he knew Cordelia wasn't just sitting back home and waiting for him. Honestly, he felt a little relieved she had gotten her childhood friend back. It was an almost miraculous coincidence, but it was a much needed miracle nonetheless. He had been nervous at first, because he had only ever known Misty's name to associate privation, but it sounded like they okay now. Maybe it could keep Cordelia from falling under again. She was finally getting better.
Hank shot a mean look at the mountains of paperwork and the boxes he still hadn't unpacked and settled for putting up his nametag. A little golden plate with the name Hank Foxx on it. He liked that, his name carved in cold. It made him feel special and God knew, he didn't get a lot of those moments in life. It was something else he and Cordelia always found a way to connect over, the feeling of living in the shadow of a parent.
It took all but five minutes to put up the sign. He spent another five minutes polishing it and received crude jokes on vanity by colleagues passing by, but he didn't mind. His own office was his own office. Moving on up. They needed a win. Cordelia had told him her dragon mother had made plans to come back to town, once she could find a hole in her schedule. He and Fiona never got along, perhaps because she had quickly realized he was the son of the competition – he vaguely remembered meeting her once as a teenager – or maybe because he was so different from her. He had heard her say that he reminded her of her ex-husband, and it was very clear to him this was no compliment.
Another heavy stone was the waiting for the tests Cordelia had insisted on having done. Hank was in no hurry, really, but it meant something to her. He saw it in her face whenever she talked about her kids at school and it made him get on board with anything that involved fertility. And he definitely didn't mind the baby-making process.
Hank had always thought himself a lucky dog for landing the prettiest girl on the face of the earth, but it hadn't taken him long to realize that the landing was thanks to her beneath the floorboards self-esteem. As he got to know her, boosting her self-esteem became one of his top priorities. Getting Cordelia to let him in had not been an easy task, because something was always holding her back, some heartache she refused to name. Hank sometimes made himself remember that he had gotten through anyway. He had to, because there was always a little mean voice in his head saying that she wouldn't have settled for him, if she had had the confidence to explore her own league.
A knock on the door. He had barely closed it, in an attempt to do the paperwork, when he was interrupted in his nonproductive trail of thoughts.
"Come on in."
The door opened and in came his father. Hank almost dropped his papers.
"Dad? What are you doing here?"
His dad took time to look around before answering. He stood tall in the doorway, suited up as always and his scant remaining hair neatly laid back. He had a constant look of superiority lingering in his aging features, as he scanned the room and Hank became increasingly aware of how unprofessional and messy it all looked. A hint of displeasure ghosted across Harrison's face, before his eyes finally fell on Hank.
"I had a meeting with the director of the department and thought I'd stop by to congratulate you on your promotion in person. You didn't make much time to talk last week."
"Er, well I…"
"You were busy taking care of your wife, I take it?"
Well yeah, but not the way you think, Hank thought and fought not to smirk. He wouldn't dare say it out loud and only nodded instead. His father never could see past the nervous wreck Cordelia had presented as in the week leading up to their wedding, the first time she ever met his father.
"How is dear Cordelia?"
"Oh she's good. Yeah, much better." Hank's traitor thoughts skipped to the other night, where he had realized the cutting was still happening. He really thought she'd stopped.
It was as if his father's dark, sharp eyes saw right through him. He often had the feeling that his father could read his mind, whenever he was thinking of something secret and he was not particularly surprised, when his father decided to dig.
"Is she now? That's good. Because we wouldn't want her getting worse. She's still on antidepressants, is she not?"
Hank tried to strangle the sigh of exasperation. "Yes, dad, she is."
He gave a nod and started walking a bit around the office. It was a short stroll – it wasn't the world's biggest office. Hank drew a relieved breath, assuming his father had grilled him enough for one night. He tried to clean his stacks of paper, hoping somehow his father wouldn't notice the sense of anarchy in the room.
"You take your sense of order from your mother, I see."
"I only just moved in here. They didn't have the office ready the first day and then there was the weekend so… But, I'm getting all the work done, don't worry, I'm just, er, a little behind on the archiving."
He received a silencing nod. Hank stood back in uncomfortable silence, hoping his father would leave soon. They did better, when they had a lunch together or scheduled plans like that, but there was something in the working atmosphere that made his father more cold and businesslike than usual.
He picked up the picture Hank had of Cordelia on his desk and Hank could almost see his father mentally loading the gun for another round.
"I never understood why you went so far as to actually marry her. She's charming, don't get me wrong, but so... You follow, I trust. She was depressed in college too, was she not?"
Hank's blood was starting to boil and he had to take a few seconds in order to keep his tone light and conversational. "It started before then, yes. But what does that have to do with why I married her?"
If Hank was being honest – and he rarely was when he told his friends and family the story – in the moment of the proposal, he had been the nervous wreck. Cordelia's wedding nerves had nothing on him.
"Oh I'm just trying to understand", his father said in a friendly voice, that only served to infuriate Hank further. "Why would an extrovert guy such as yourself pick someone who's so unhappy and so shy? What's the point in bringing yourself down?"
"Like you didn't push me in her direction", Hank growled.
Harrison coughed out a dry laughter. "I never said put a ring on her finger, I only asked you to get close enough to her that you could get some information about my competition. And you did. Don't think I don't appreciate you giving me the details about the ordeal with their maid. It surely worked wonders, raising doubts about Fiona's right to preach justice with her history of lack in that department. Sadly, it seems you have shied away from your duty since then. Did you regret it?" Hank didn't answer and his father continued on, going about his usual victory speech: "In the end it was I alone who took down Fiona and her firm. I'm quite proud of that achievement."
Hank's hands were trembling with retrained rage. His throat screamed for a drink.
"What's you point, dad? You got what you wanted, why can't I get what I want?"
The same mocking, coughing laughter filled the room once more. "Of course you can have what you want, son. God knows you don't set high standards for yourself. I just don't understand why you didn't pick a more cheerful Mrs. Foxx."
"Because I love her. Okay, dad? I love her and I don't care that she has problems or that her mother is your competition!"
His sharp eyes narrowed. "I don't like your tone, son." They stared each other down and Hank stubbornly refused to word the apology lying ready on his tongue. "It's your choice of course. And to be clear, Fiona Goode was my competition."
"I really have to get back to work now, dad."
He nodded. "Well of course. These papers won't sort themselves out, will they? Congratulations again Hank. It's nice to see you trying."
He gave Hank a pat on the shoulder and left the office. Hank stared savagely at the door several minutes after his father's steps had disappeared from the hallway.
O0O
Cordelia felt strangely relieved, knowing Misty knew about her problems now. It wasn't a big nasty secret she had to carry around under her skin anymore. Neither of them had mentioned it since, but knowing Misty knew this of her, she felt they didn't have to. Misty always understood her in a way that went beyond words.
Misty acted nothing like Hank had, when he found out. For a while he had been almost afraid to touch her, but Misty continued with her little gentle touches, as if nothing had happened, and thereby continuing her undeclared quest to make Cordelia absolutely flustered. Cordelia knew she saw it. Misty was careful though, when moving Cordelia away, whenever she needed to reach past her. It wasn't a very big home and just being two people limited the space significantly. For this reason they spent most their time outside.
Misty was for a moment busy tending her extensive garden and Cordelia wandered around the clusters of berries, herbs and vegetables, all of it tangled in with each other, but living in perfect harmony. It reflected Misty's spirit well, she thought. Cordelia had always found nature immensely fascinating, plants most of all. Their quiet coexistence with each other, their resilience. Every year struggling against the wild life and the weather and every year growing. She took a kind of comfort in that. The greenhouse at home flourished under the work she did in Misty's long absence and they paid her back with their quiet comfort.
"It's amazing how you fit so many things in here", she said, when she reached around to where Misty kneeled. "Where did you get all these?"
"Oh here and there. Collectin' seeds from the forest and such. Some of it I bought in the city and planted out here. You just gotta be careful, 'cause not all of them can live side by side."
"I know. I'm actually teaching my fourth grade about ecosystems at the moment."
Misty looked up from the bundle of flowers she had been tending. "So they do learn somethin' useful in that school, huh?" A playful smirk followed.
"Why of course", Cordelia chided with a snicker. "I recognize not all of it may seem so important to you, but…"
"I'm only teasin' you, Delia. I know y'all need that stuff. I just don't." When she got up, she had a little daisy in her hand, which she tugged behind Cordelia's ear. Cordelia's skin tingled where Misty touched it. "Some call these weeds, but I think they're pretty just the same." Then she moved on to the next flowerbed, while continuing to talk: "I think yours are the good ones though, English and biology. It's thanks to you I can read. And count."
Cordelia smiled. "I suppose it is. But I bet you could teach me much more about biology than I you."
"Probably. Not the kind from books though. I would if you want."
Cordelia suddenly had a thought. "It would be amazing to bring the kids out here. My fourth graders, I mean. They have trouble sitting still as it is, this could make a great field trip. If you don't mind of course."
Misty looked up and after a moment's hesitation she smiled. "Yeah, I guess it could. As long as they respect nature."
"Yes of course. They do. And I would need approval from the school board and signed permission from all the parents too, naturally. And you would have to promise me to keep your friends from the river away."
"Of course. But it's only Nick who comes up here. I'll make sure he stays away."
Cordelia started picturing it. A day in the sun with Misty and all the kids, just getting a feel of nature without bending over books and little Petri dishes. They would love it. She would need an assistant, but she knew of someone who wouldn't mind tagging along. Zoe, a newly graduate, who had assisted her on class field trips before. She was a smart girl and great with kids. Cordelia thought she and Misty would get along well too.
"They'd have to bring their own food too, 'cause I ain't got enough to- watch where you're goin', Delia."
Too late. Cordelia, lost in thought, had walked straight into something, which hung above her head and whatever it was, it now poured down on her.
"What is that?!"
Misty quickly came to her aid, a wide grin of amusement printed on her face. Cordelia reached up to find little seeds all over her hair. The daisy soared to the forest floor.
"Hold still now. It's for the birds. So they don't pick in the ground", Misty explained as she stepped close to rid Cordelia of all the seeds. Some had already woven themselves into the depths of her hair. She let her hands fall to make room for Misty's instead.
"I'm sorry I ruined your net. Guess the birds can just eat it off of me now?"
Misty laughed. "You wouldn't want that, trust me."
Misty brushed a few off Cordelia's shoulder and started digging into her hair from the sides to get the rest. The touch of her fingers made Cordelia feel much warmer than the weather could take credit for. The short distance between them made her heart beat a little faster.
"Why, have birds eaten off of your head?"
"Let's just say this net was placed right above my door before."
Cordelia laughed at the image and Misty chimed in, while her hands searched and tugged.
It happened as fluently as breathing. The sudden feel of a breath, Misty's eyes half closed. She only sensed it a second before their lips locked together as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Kissing Misty was the strangest sensation. There was something about knowing her so well and yet discovering this entirely new facet that blew Cordelia's mind to bits. The only thought she could gather from the blast was that she had wanted this with every fraction of her being. Now she felt it full force. It felt like a searing warmth that spread throughout her entire body from the core and all the way to her fingertips, waking her sedated body up from a sleep, it hadn't realized it was in. Before she knew it, she had her arms wrapped around Misty's waist, pulling her closer. Misty's hands had abandoned the seeds in her hair and shaped around Cordelia's face and neck instead, fingers brushing against skin in the softest manner. There was no hesitation in her, only gentle demanding.
For a blissful few seconds she was so lost, so deeply lost in it, that she forgot why she shouldn't be. When reason finally pushed through, a wave of so many different, opposing emotions washed over Cordelia that she couldn't sort them out. She broke the kiss and stared into Misty's hooded eyes, realizing with dread how breathless she already felt. Shame hit her and she looked down, untangling her arms from Misty's body to hug around herself. Misty's hands slowly slid off her, the motion betraying reluctance.
"Misty, I can't. It's not right."
"Why not?"
Cordelia sighed. It was the first time in her life that she felt just a hint of regret at the little ring on her finger.
"Because I'm married."
"Oh. That." Misty's voice rang with a note Cordelia had never heard before. Fragility perhaps. She didn't like the sound one bit. Suddenly all she felt like doing was to crawl into a hole and never again see the light of day.
"I should get home. I-I'll see you tomorrow."
She turned to leave, but Misty caught her by the wrist and held her back.
"You'll come back, right? Still?"
Cordelia thought again of the black hole she planned to disappear into, but she also couldn't stand this new voice Misty spoke in. She nodded. Misty smiled and Cordelia already calmed a bit, feeling a little less certain that she had just unleashed hell on earth.
"Good. You want me to follow you to the edge?"
"No thanks. Not today." Cordelia forced out a smile. She could still feel her body quivering in the aftermath of the sudden burst of emotion. She needed all the time alone she could get to force herself back to normal. Misty nodded in understanding and let her go.
