We land on the roof of our apartment building, a tangle of limbs, bone, and cloth. When Amy gently pushes away from me, I have to force myself to pull the bone harness back in, to relax my hands and keep my mask down, to show vulnerability. It feels wrong to be so open, to feel the wind tickling my nose and making my cheeks red with cold.

I sneeze. Amy chuckles once, but there's something missing from the sound. Like it's a reflex, with none of the joy of a decision. Like it's out of habit, not happiness.

"Can we go inside?" I ask, rubbing one of arms and forcing myself to look at Amy. "It's kind of chilly out here." She's still not really looking at me. In my direction, maybe, but her gaze is over my shoulder, eyes shaded by the dark city night and the hood she's drawn up against the cold.

"Sure," she says, walking over to the roof access door and pulling a key card out of some fold in her dress. I walk behind her quietly as we go down the stairwell, through the hallway, past the door, to the couch, and then we're sitting there on the couch, her reclining on the other side of it and me a cushion away staring at her as she stares out the window at the gently glowing city and we're both silent and I'm confused and I don't know how to handle this-

I stop thinking for a moment and reach out a hand, wanting nothing more than to show her that I still care, that she's more important than some fucking dance, than Maudlin, and that if she wanted to never see anyone here ever again and just live like recluses we could take our money and change our names and move to England and anyone who tried to bring us back or stop us in anyway could eat a pike of barbed murder-

-then I pause, hand hovering in the awkward space between us.

It's not my turn to lead.

I leave my uncurled hand between us, relaxed and waiting for hers. I have my eyes closed against the not-quite-there stinging in my eyes and I grit my teeth to keep anything I might regret from escaping my mouth, forcing myself to wait. To wait for her to reach across. To wait for proof that I haven't fucked everything straight to hell. To put myself in her skin and long for contact, for sight, for something.

It's the longest I-don't-know-how-long of my life.

Then warmth threads itself between my bone-clad fingers and it's all I can do to stay still, to let her be the one to pull us into a half hug and settle my other hand on her hip. When she lies against me, head in the crook of my neck and legs curled up on my thighs, I let her be the first one to gently kiss my neck instead of leaning down and claiming the first touch. Every cell in my body wants to move, to take action, to set the tone, to show her who I am-

I tear my thoughts away from myself, from making this about me, and try to lose myself in sensation. I focus on the feel of her gently peeling my armor plates away, of her running hands and fingers over freshly-bare skin and raising goose bumps. I inhale the scent of something like salt and vanilla that has to be perfume but could also just be her, trying to divide what Amy puts on from what she is. I strain my ears, listening for anything like forgiveness, like communication, something to soothe the rawness in my heart that's my fault but please don't leave me here alone and wondering.

Then there's pressure on my lips and I taste her and I stop thinking because there are more important things to be doing.


"This sucks, you know?"

I slowly draw myself out of the remnants of my dreams, waiting for information to process. Warmth in my arms, air at my back, hair in my face. Light filtering in through the window, turning the dust particles into little galaxies floating in beams of sunshine above a crumpled dress and scattered undergarments. We must've slept on the couch, then.

I squeeze a little tighter, pulling Amy closer to banish the lingering chill.

"It sucks and it shouldn't," Amy says, voice in that scary monotone that means she's trying really, really hard to be objective. "I knew this sort of thing would happen from day one, that we wouldn't be able to go out like Dean and Vicky or Ava and Everett or Chris and whoever decides to jump his bones this week but I thought I could handle it. We could get take out or dance here on our own or you could read to me or we could watch stupid movies or anything else and" — she draws in a shuddering breath I feel shake against my chest— "who wants a crowd anyway? Fuck 'em, right?"

"I love you," I whisper in her ear, lacing our fingers together and holding them over her heart.

"I know that," she says, still monotone. "It's scary sometimes, how much you care. You threw yourself off a building to learn how to fly because you overheard me talking to Vicky about missing the convenience it offered." I wince at the reminder. Perhaps not my finest moment. "For our one year anniversary you decided to take us both to France and paid Strider to handle transportation because that was the least conspicuous way for the both of us to travel," Amy continues. "You abandon projects at the drop of a hat to eat or hang out or do any damn thing I want, whether it's the middle of the day or three in the morning." She shrinks a little, pulling her arms in, and I compensate by spreading myself out more to cover her. "It's hard to match that, you know."

"I'm sorry," I whisper, cursing myself for not having better words, for not knowing how to turn the great big ball of longing and love and lust and every other emotion I feel towards the wonderful, perfect girl in my arms into something she can understand. "I love you."

"You try so hard to make this work," she says, ignoring me. "Do you know how many capes have lives outside of being capes? Almost none. It's a full-time, over-time job. I should know," she adds, a small, humorless chuckle slipping out. "I've been tracking my own hours for a while. I make time for us whenever I can, and try to take time off and I know I need to think of what I want when I schedule but it's hard because everyone is always thinking about how I could be doing so much more even if I know they're idiots who don't think about how I could burn out doing that and how that'd lead to even bigger fuck-ups down the line and-"

"Amy," I whisper, gently tapping the back of her head with my chin. "You're getting worked up again."

"And that's the fucking problem!" Amy says. The words come out in a hiss and I have to fight the urge to shrink back from it, to let her fury blow itself out while I wait somewhere else, because this time it's my fault. I deserve this. "I knew that this would be hard. I know that you want to have your own life, to be able to be Taylor without being White Rose as well. I understand everything about the situation and the thought of you dancing with someone else still makes me sick."

I let the silence settle for a while as I listen to her heaving breaths, rubbing her belly with one hand and trying to work in my support for her with it. She settles down, curling forward and away from me, quiet again.

I curl forward with her.

"You're like a black hole, you know?" she says. I don't know how to respond to that, so I just pull myself closer. "You don't notice it because you're too busy moving, focused on the little things like hands and where everyone is relative to the exit and what you're going to do next but when you walk into a room everyone starts falling towards you. Maudlin fell, Chris fell, Vicky fell, and the only people who can decide not to are either assholes or black holes themselves, pulling us all along for the ride."

"Amy," I whisper, holding my voice as still as I can, like a hummingbird wing made of glass. "What can I do?" She laughs without humor.

"I need to find a way to see you as Taylor when you're Taylor and White Rose when you're White Rose. I need to learn to not think about who you fight beside, who you might be sleeping with on the side, and to remember that we spend more than enough time together to qualify as a healthy couple. I need to get it through my skull that we're not going to be like other couples so I should stop fucking worrying about not being like other couples and just be happy!" she ends in a shout, causing me to wince at the volume.

For a moment, the flat reverberates with the noise, the rage bouncing off the walls, almost too much for them to hold, threatening to blow them open and collapse the roof on top of both of us. The moment stretches on, her muscles tensing against mine, drawn and taut as piano wire.

Then she sniffles.

Amy was never a big crier. She subscribed to the "If I don't acknowledge it, it can't hurt me" school of coping, in that whenever things got too hard she'd throw herself into work, into me, into whatever was furthest away from the problem. I'd have to drag her away from patients, out of bed, towards whatever issue she had been avoiding until it got solved. She doesn't really do emotional responses to external stimuli, not unless things get really bad.

She sniffles again.

"I'll figure it out," she says quietly. "Don't worry about it."

I keep rubbing her, hugging her, and pretending like her speech didn't turn my stomach into poison, then try to go back to sleep, willing reality away in favor of the fantasy resting against me.


"Do you want to go flying?" I ask, eyes fixed on my book as I try to make my voice sound as casual as possible. Like I'm not about to take a gamble that would make even Maudlin raise his eyebrows skeptically.

"Sure," Amy says, her own book gently thumping down on the coffee table and couch creaking as she stands up. "Meet you on the roof," she adds, walking over and bending down to give me a quick kiss on the head. I hum in approval, the small token of affection temporarily distracting me from the roiling apprehension in my gut. Then she leaves and I stay still, waiting for her to kick her shoes on and physically leave our apartment.

Only then do I stand up from my chair, head to the bathroom, slip into a spare set of clothes, and armor up. One last once-over in the mirror to adjust the lay of the plates, to pick a better mask, and the plan is ready to proceed.

A short set of stairs later and I'm on the roof with Amy. I stretch out my arms, mask set in a gentle smile, once more made of rose blossoms and vines. She in turn steps back into me, not flinching when bone loops around her to secure our limbs and bodies together.

"Ready?" I whisper.

"Yup," Amy says cheerfully, drumming her fingers on the grips in her palms. Mostly useless (it's not like she's going to start flapping herself), but they make her feel safer. "Let's go."

I move forwards, slowly and carefully, until we're at the edge of the building looking down at a drop long enough to make cars look like toys and people like ants.

I take a deep breath and feel Amy give the grips of bone a squeeze.

Then I fall forward.

I almost don't want to describe what I can do as flight. It's too reliant on the whims of the air currents, too finicky and fragile to use in combat, and the wings have to be gargantuan, always skirting the practical limit of the thrust equation imposed by the cube-root law even after I make the bone less dense. Compared to Chris's suit, Victoria's floating, or even any halfway decent airplane, it's downright crude. Clumsy. Patchwork.

I push out bone, thin and light and wide, then flap, catching air and pushing it downwards. I pull bone in, reducing the wings to skeletons, more bat-like or insectile than avian, and lift them. Push out bone, fill in the gaps, then push down. Repeat until cruising altitude is attained, then fix the wings in place and enjoy.

My friends' reactions to the experience of flying with me have been mixed. Chris refused to say anything bad, but he also never asked for a second ride. Maudlin liked it, but he also cackled like a hyena when Butcher XVII started a gang war near the restaurant where he was having coffee with a group of potential investors so his response really shouldn't factor into any assessment. Vicky didn't mind the height, but did complain about being bound, opinion again skewed by power use.

I do know that Amy likes it more than Vicky's method though. Something about how it feels less unnatural and more controlled even though it's also probably less safe.

For a while we just float, kept aloft by thermals and the occasional wing flap, looking down at the city and enjoying the quiet. There's a small buzz at my lower back when a timer goes off. I snap out of the comfortable silence, the plan once more in my mind.

I take a deep breath, bracing myself.

Then I rush forward, speaking before sense can catch up with me.

"Do you mind if we get something to eat?" I ask, heart pounding behind my breastplate.

Amy cranes her head back, giving me an odd, inquisitive look. I keep my mask still as I look back. She drops the expression in favor of passive agreement as she looks down again.

"Sounds like a plan. Greek?" she asks. I let out a breath.

"I... actually had a place in mind," I say, subtly angling us towards the nicer part of town. "French." Not a lie.

"Ooh, fancy," Amy says, a small tease in her voice. "That sounds cool too. I'm still in work clothes though," she adds, "so unless you want to deal with fans we should probably head back and change."

"I can put up with it," I say. The destination is in sight. I need to keep her distracted. "I'm not that much less famous than you. A few autographs aren't going to kill me."

"Your funeral," Amy says, shrugging. "Just don't complain to me when- BUILDING!" she screams, finally noticing the approaching skyscraper, not fifty feet away from us and dead in our path.

"I know," I say, titling my wings subtly to angle us towards the twenty third floor, where the building has an indent open to the elements and sporting several tables, the people at them eating quietly. Were eating, because Amy's scream has drawn the attention of every diner, all of who are now looking up at us as we make our approach. "They're expecting us," I clarify, angling for the line of open space kept clear by a remarkably composed waiter motioning with his platter like he's an air traffic controller. I oblige him, flaring my wings to burn off speed then shifting them into a makeshift parachute to slow us further, until I finally pull it all in and dead fall the last fifteen feet at an angle. One foot hits the ground, then the other, and then I'm stumbling forward, rapid, heavy steps burning off what remains of our momentum until we come to a halt, the absolute center of attention.

I peel away from Amy, taking the bone with me and replacing the grips of bone with my palms, temporarily lacing fingers with her and giving them a squeeze as I lean down to place my mouth by her ear.

"Freesia," I whisper and I feel her stiffen. For a moment my heart goes into free-fall and I worry that I went too far, too fast, and that I screwed it up and that I never should've tried this-

"Yellow," she whispers back and I nearly collapse from relief. Go slow. Slow I can do. Slow is what I need.

"White Rose and Isidis," I say, turning around and looking for the waiter, releasing one of Amy's hands and keeping hold of the other. "I believe we have a reservation for five thirty?"

"Right this way," he says, gesturing towards a far part of the balcony, his voice somewhere between shell shocked and almost aggressively bored. I give him a short, polite nod, then walk in the indicated direction, ignoring the stares the two of us attract as we make our way to a two-seater table with a wonderful view of the water.

After pulling out chairs for the both of us and handing out menus, the waiter leaves. Once he's firmly out of earshot, Amy props up her head with one arm while she pretends to peruse the menu, eyes locked on mine and hand conveniently blocking sight of her mouth..

"Okay, so why did you use a code word in public?" she hisses. "This is not the place to experiment with new kinks!" I feel myself flush under my mask, then force myself to relax, reminding myself of the why for this plan. Of Amy's voice, of all the things she only talks about when things are really bad, of the dark nights where I can't sleep because what if I have to choose between her and Taylor?

I notice thorns growing along my arm, just nubs for now but more than ready to reach out and tear through something. I pull them back in, shaking my head.

This needs to happen.

"It's not that. I... wanted to talk about us," I say, folding the menu. "About what you said the morning after Maudlin's party." Amy's expression falls, a frame of fearful resignation, then comes back up, eyes set and mouth pressed into a hard line.

"And you wanted to do it public? Weren't you the one who wanted to keep our relationship secret?" she snaps, and I feel the stab of something sharp and cold in my chest. Amy must recognize it, because she abandons her menu as well, dropping her face into her hands. "Fuck. That was uncalled for. I'm sorry, I'm just-"

"We're here because I might unmask today," I whisper quietly.

Amy stops talking. Her hand falls down, and the menu hits the floor.

"That night... you weren't wrong," I say, grabbing my napkin and unwrapping it, setting aside the silverware. "We're not like other couples. Dean and Vicky are together because he's one of the only people she can trust to be honest and she's the only one who doesn't care whether he's a Stansfield or a cape. Ava and Everett started dating because neither of them could stand to be alone anymore. Chris..." I trail off, eventually settling on a shrug. "Chris is married to his job." I stare at the napkin, slowly rolling it up, then unrolling it, trying to keep my hands busy. "I don't want to be like that."

"Where are you going with this?" Amy asks. I can't place her tone.

"I don't know," I say. "I've been doing some thinking, but I don't have answers." I inhale, trying to clear my head. "But you're right. We're not like other couples. We could be less different though."

"Taylor, I'm not going to-" she starts.

"Please," I say, voice nearly breaking. "I need to get this out now or I don't know when I will." I lean back in my chair, staring straight up. Maybe this will be easier if I don't look directly at her.

I hope.

"Taylor Hebert isn't a huge part of my life," I say slowly, picking my words as carefully as I can. "She doesn't fight anybody. She doesn't make money. She doesn't go to parties. She's important though." I take a breath and wish, for the first time in a long time, that I could break a bone to release some of the sick, sticky regret inside of me. "She lets me walk down the street without worrying about being attacked. About being stopped every fifty feet for an autograph, a selfie, or just a word. She lets me walk away and have a moment to myself, a time to be alone if I want." I inhale again, wishing that I could suck in more air, get this out faster. "Taylor Hebert is how I run away, a place to go when being White Rose is intolerable."

"And it'd be perfect if you could join me there," I say quietly, dropping my head fast enough to avoid catching more than a blur of brown eyes and a smattering of freckles. "But you can't."

I sit there, breathing, trying to keep my shuddering to a minimum, holding my shell still, hiding myself in it.

"I've been having my cake and eating it," I say quietly, "Because you have been willing to put aside what you want."

"And that's my fucking choice to make," she says, steel in her voice. I don't look up, but I know the expression on her face. Bared teeth, eyes on fire, brows furrowed like she's trying to glare a hole through concrete. "If this turns into a 'oh, woe is Amy' rant I'm going to throw you over the edge."

"It's not," I assure her. "Just thinking and talking and making an offer." I take a deep breath, then exhale.

"I don't think I can have Taylor Hebert and Amy at the same time," I say quietly.

Another pause, the silence filled by the distant sound of eating and conversation from the other diners.

"You want to be public. I want you to be happy. Taylor Hebert prevents both," I say. "Maybe that doesn't blow up our relationship tomorrow. Or a day later. Or a lot of days later. But I don't want to play the odds like this. Not with you." I lean forward and take her hand, eyes still downcast.

"I abandon Taylor. I unmask here and now, we have a romantic dinner, and I learn how to cope. I keep Taylor. We eat, go home, and take a break. Maybe not forever, but for long enough to get some space. To think, to figure out what makes sense." I bring my other hand up and clasp them around hers, head bowed and hands up, a prayer. "I don't know what I want more. I don't know what you want more. Please," I whisper.

We sit there in silence for a long time. Long enough for other patrons to come and go, long enough for the sun to go down, for heating torches to be lit. The waiter is probably sweating bullets, trying to figure out the best way to approach a pair of capes that could sink his restaurant's reputation with a word, wondering when he can ask us to leave.

I don't care.

Eventually, Amy pulls her hand out of mine and lifts my face with it.

And she gives her answer.