Work Text:
"Stop moping," her bossy best friend demanded when she opened the door. "Look, I know that you thought you'd have more time together but she was fucking eighty for crying out loud. She had to go sometime."
She said nothing and slumped over to her couch, which was loaded with books, blankets, snack bar wrappers, and toilet paper. The toilet paper was because she ran out of kleenex two days ago (neither of them had— had, her mind screams— been drippy people and they'd only had one box in the house). The blankets and snack bars were because she wasn't moving from the spot with her trashy romance novels, being very deeply in the process of Not Thinking.
"God, I don't even know why you liked her wrinkly old bits so much," her friend huffed.
She was opening her mouth in disconcerted protest but her blond friend just held up a hand, "Actually no. Don't. I've heard it all before. 'She's gorgeous', 'She's amazing', 'She'd won a Nobel Laureate for her civil rights work', blah blah blah." Her friend plopped on the couch as well and set the bags in her arms on the ground. And started pulling alcohol out. "I swear, I never should've dragged you to that freshman seminar where she was guest speaking."
But her friend looked fond so she knew that the blond meant well.
Then she found a potted sunflower in her hands.
"Cheer up. Have a plant."
"Um."
"It'll make you feel better," her friend looked insistent.
She peered at the thing dubiously.
The blond snorted, "Think of it this way, didn't she always say she always wanted to be reincarnated as a sunflower?"
It was true. Her lover had some odd notions sometimes, but that was why she never got bored. It was so, so easy for her to be bored.
"I...suppose," she finally said.
"Great! Now put on Harold and Maude, that's always a hoot."
She found herself holding onto the sunflower for the rest of the evening.
"It's not the end of the world," her friend said, as she let herself in.
"Aa?"
"There are always more sunflowers in the field," forcibly cheerful.
"...you think I'm upset that my plant died?"
"...well, aren't you?"
She wasn't admitting to anything. But she found herself wanting to say things to the flower and turning around and it not being there anymore.
A transparent ball was shoved in her face. Chubby cheeks and huge eyes stared straight at her.
"You need something moving; active! Hyper!" her friend yelled, tilting dangerously forward. She eyed the blond and wondered if the woman was finally going to fall out of her shirt. Then her friend crouched and set the hamster ball on the floor. It wobbled a little, uncertainly, then seemed to get its bearing.
Then started circling her feet.
"Look! She likes you!"
"You trained it to do that." She glared at her friend, half-lidded and unamused.
"Nope," a grin, "Trust me, it's all her."
The circles were getting wider and wilder and was soon going to crash into the wall. She caught the ball before it did.
"So you're keeping her then?"
And she couldn't find it in her to say no.
"I think you're being entirely too angry here."
"He killed. My hamster."
"To be honest she was biting his ankle something fierce. And it was a heroic death. Who else could say that they had a hamster that stopped a robbery?"
"...had a hamster," she said, disconsolately. She kicked the burglar in the nuts again; he was tied up and they were waiting for the police to arrive. She'd dropped the guy herself when she woke up, but it was already too late, and had called her best friend to rant about her hamster's murderer. The blond had come over immediately with ice cream and rope.
"You're still not allowed to kill him. How would that look in court?"
She eyed the guy and thought about dark alleys and dumpsters.
"Stop that! I know friends are supposed to help friends bury bodies but, Christ, it's a hamster, and I know you loved it and I set you guys up initi—" her friend broke off and took a long pull of her jack and coke. "Okay look, my neighbor's cat just had kittens, you should get one."
"I'm a dog person," she pointed out.
This made her friend snort. "Yeah I know. Fine, after the police arrives and I do all your paperwork for you, swing by with me. As a favor."
She would've agreed anyways, but the blond kept talking. So she just smiled and nodded and let the blond do all that work by herself.
"You are not going to give me something else that's going to die." She stated flatly.
"Not even as a graduation present?" her friend joked, but there was seriousness in her eyes, so she felt no need to respond.
The orange tabby had nested in her hair and woke her up mornings with its cold nose, stuck its curious ass into whatever she was studying, and humped her leg, and generally made a nuisance of himself. But she loved him. (She still refused to think of who he reminded her of.) She loved him enough to have been putting off getting him neutered even though he'd been approaching being a year old and even though she'd previously had adamant thoughts about stray kittens and population control. The idea in relation to her adorable little tabby made her cringe. And it'd never been a problem for some reason, no random piss stains or midnight yowling.
She'd approached her best friend in concern over the issue actually, but the blond just smirked and waved her off, "I don't think there's a problem. Don't... fix what isn't broken, right? He's otherwise normal?"
"As normal as a cat who keeps trying to stick its head into my soup noodles could be."
"Well there you go!"
But maybe she should've neutered him, she'd thought, when she curiously followed the screeching and noise and found him as he was being literally torn apart by four other male cats, much larger, and feral. Another cat was hissing at the group from a nearby fence, and at first she thought the thing was going to join in, but the strange calico looked like it wanted to run away. So she left it alone and dove into the fray, got scratches all up and down her arms, but she got him away. The bloody ball of orange curled up exhausted in her arms as she ran, its chest heaving, and weakly began to purr. But the vet was thirty minutes away, and she could already feel his strength failing.
So she veered off to sit on a curb under the shade of a nice tree. It was sunny that day. She hummed a lullaby and scratched behind his ears, stroked his fur and looked at him. And looked at him.
An apologetic mewl sounded nearby, but she paid it no attention because there was more important things at hand.
She'd looked down at her lovely, remarkable, little tabby, and he'd shivered and peered up at her, and sighed.
He pushed against her hand a little, weakly. Blinked once.
She mentally replied, I love you too.
Then he slid away, limp in her arms.
She felt like she was trying to swallow rocks down her throat.
Looking up, blinking rapidly, she caught sight of that weird mutant calico again. She didn't know what genetic quirk caused patches of itself to turn pink like that, and found she didn't much care. Then she realized that the calico was female.
I should have neutered him, she thought. Completely fucking neutered him.
The stupid mutant kept following her though, and that's why she called up her friend despite the blond still having one last final to cram for. (But it was bio, and she had it in the bag.)
"Take her," she'd demanded, after relating the story.
Her friend sighed and prodded at her own cheek thoughtfully. Scooped up the cat.
"What, not going to force me to take something else I'm going to kill?"
"You never killed them," she replied gently.
"They died."
"And it was never your fault."
She didn't quite know how to believe that.
"Just...," her friend eyeballed her, "Just go out there and get a ridiculously well-paying job with your ridiculously huge brain. And get some therapy. I promise it'd sort itself out in a couple years."
She didn't reply. But a job sounded nice. Should keep her busy.
"Why did you show up here?" Her friend demanded, opening the door.
She blinked mildly, for the past decade or so she'd been all but barred from her friend's family home, when before she kept being dragged to thanksgivings and christmases because she 'shouldn't spend holidays alone at the dorms'. Instead the blond had been throwing holiday get-togethers for her friends at her apartment and for years she'd thought there'd been some kind of a falling out. She didn't ask for to politeness' sake, figuring the blond would mention it if it'd been important.
Increasingly however, there were signs that the blond had been visiting her family regularly, and when she'd idly mentioned that it was good that that the blond was seeing them again, her friend just turned to her, confused, and replied that she never stopped. So it must be just her.
She wondered if she needed to bathe more or something, but she still kept on being invited to things, so figured that must not be it. Which was why she was on her friend's doorstep.
"I'm not allowed to show up at my best friend's house?" she replied. There was shouting going on somewhere in the building, and she raised an eyebrow.
"Um," the blond hemmed, and shifted her eyes wildly.
"OH MY GOSH, it's you!" her best friend's mother rushed forward and enclosed her in a hug, "We haven't seen you in ages! I thought you two had a falling out! Dear, why haven't you been bringing her over like you used to?"
"Err."
"Why, you've never even met my son!"
"Your son?" she echoed, eyes narrowing.
"Yes, actually, it was around your graduation that I had him, that's why I couldn't make it to your ceremonies."
You have a brother, she hoped her eyes conveyed the severity of this extreme lack of information to what she thought was her best friend.
I'll explain later, her friend looked back.
Everything, she demanded.
"Hey! Who're you?" A figure raced up and grabbed her hand without her leave and tugged at it. She looked down into warm brown eyes and couldn't look away.
"Ah..." both her and her friend hummed. She knew hers were because she was surprised, but she doesn't know why the blond looked so disconcerted.
"Oh gosh! This is perfect! Our babysitter canceled and we couldn't find a replacement! We're already late! You don't mind, do you? You two can get to know each other!" her friend's mother waved some tickets wildly, and barely waited before she nodded before bellowing into the house. "DEAR! STOP CALLING WE'VE FOUND SOMEONE!"
Belatedly she'd realized that they were all in evening wear except for the kid, who shouted back, "I don't need a babysitter, I'm FOURTEEN!"
Then he paused, and looked up at her, "Though I don't mind if it was you."
"Such a charmer," she murmured.
Her friend made a choking noise.
Her friends parents were already at the door, "Here's your coat dear, and honey, I brought you your purse."
The blond just looked at her purse, then looked at her parents, then looked at her brother and then back at her purse. Then she sighed.
"Yeah okay." She muttered, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"We're not going to destroy the house!" the brother huffed.
"Uh huh, whatever," the blond waved back as they left for the garage. "Be safe."
Before she could wonder what that was all about, the teenager yelled, "Come on!", and started pulling her into the house, "I have to show you around!"
Goddammit, she thought, for the twentieth time, I knew I should've given them the condoms I had on me.
Fate looked sourly at her grandchild in his current reincarnation, who was going to be a father before he hit fifteen and looked pleased as punch about it, and looked at her friend who seemed a bit abashed but still held her head up high. Their fingers were curled together, his head listening at the round of her belly.
"I don't see why you're so upset about it," the brunette mentioned, "I'd dated an eighty year old and you were just amused at the time."
"You were in college." She replied at the same time that her biological brother started and peeked up, "Eighty?"
"Yes."
The teenager looked thoughtful, "They must've been awesome then, to catch you."
Her friend smiled, closed-eyed and fond and not too sad (she's so glad she pushed that stubborn ass into therapy), "She was."
The teen blinked, shrugged, and went back to listening.
"Actually I still have most of the money and stocks she'd left me, and didn't spend much of my own for... well a long time really. We can live off that for a decade at least."
"You're not going back to work?" she narrowed her eyes.
Her friend shook her head, "Maybe take one or two pro bono cases a year. And I might start up again after five or six years, but I want to be there for all of the baby's firsts."
"...I'm going to be there too right?" her brother's voice was a bit small.
"You're still in high school," her friend muttered and stroked his hair.
"That doesn't mean that I'm not going to be an awesome father," he said, determined. "And you said that you might not get another chance, 'cause you're all in your late thirties. Which means I might not get another chance."
"But you might chang—"
"Stop it." He demanded and kissed her. "It's you. It's always going to be you. And when you die, I'll be a cranky old man and pine away."
"Pine away," her friend smiled all amused.
"Yes. With a plant. Or a dog, maybe. And I'll wack our grandkids with my walking stick because I'll be heartbroken forever," tragically and with great oomph he flopped carefully against her belly. Then petted it.
"Not forever," the brunette murmured, eyes resigned.
"Forever," he insisted.
Not forever, Fate thought. Promised.