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It was such a relief to have Valerie close enough to hold. The final embrace, the first embrace—it was the deepest form of catharsis. Now, it doesn’t have to be a dramatic reunion or a life-or-death situation. Val’s sitting beside her casually, because that can be their normal now.
So much time searching, so much effort and heartbreak and Val’s just there.
Maxine can’t stop staring at her, drinking in her fill. She’s too obvious about it, maybe, but she can’t seem to tear her gaze away.
Valerie looks over at her with her bluer-than-blue eyes. She’s gorgeous now—smooth flawless skin, every feature perfectly carved out of the purest alabaster—and still the most beautiful part of her is her soul.
“Is there something wrong?” Val’s tone is wry, almost,—she knows the staring isn’t malicious—but Max doesn’t miss the undercurrent of anxiety.
She knocks her knee against Val’s, watches rapturously at the way she relaxes. Her shoulders loosen, frilly gossamer white slipping down an inch. Every little assurance is precious to Valerie. It hurts to think of all the years she was starved of it. It hurts to think of all her desperation contained in a smaller, ravaged body.
Maxine has never really been able to understand what would cause someone to want to hurt a little girl who only wanted to be loved. She’s not ignorant of violence and greed, but to see the face of it in a mustached brute and the purple blotches hidden under Val’s tugged down sleeves—
It’s a different kind of knowing. It was then, when Armbruster was just an domineering boyfriend. It is now, knowing the full extent of what he did to her.
The thought of the suffering she’s had to endure, the violence that wretched man wrought on her—
It turns Max’s stomach. It’s enough to make her feel capable of violence.
(She’s not a woman made for violence, but she wasn’t a woman made for the fugitive lifestyle either, and she managed that just fine.)
Val was loved, but that love was several states away, divorced by scrawled ink and scattered pages. Henry Armbruster was a monster, but he was able to hug Valerie, able to get his duplicitous mitts all over her.
Max is only grateful that that bastard didn’t get a ring on her finger to complete his sick charade. That would be a much trickier mess to untangle.
Then again, he didn’t need to marry her. Armbruster had her eating out of his hand by virtue of being the first person who pretended to care for her. The one person who didn’t pale when they saw her. Naivete and desperation make a hell of a cocktail, and Henry Armbruster was the bartend that took advantage, that shook her up until she didn’t know left from right.
She was only eighteen.
Eighteen.
Val never got a proper childhood. She never got a proper life.
The first order of business, Max decides as they drive away from the smoking factory, is rectifying that.
The day after (after the hotel and the showers and the passing out on pressed sheets), they don’t make it to their destination. Max was set on a fresh start, but she can’t very well drive past places she’s enjoyed when Val hasn’t.
She knows she said tomorrow, but the thing about freedom is that there are a thousand tomorrows and the future can begin here.
Max pulls over at the shopping center before they’re out of the city, determined to show Val some familiar haunts before they leave.
(A little-known benefit to moving to the city as a young woman with little in the way of relations or friends—there’s no one to judge you on how you spend your free time.)
Maxine takes her to the movies and they eat so much candy they feel sick. They ride roller coasters and Max feels light enough to be a teenager again. (Valerie doesn’t care for the coasters—hard to beat the real swoop to your stomach that comes with flying, she says.) They comb through thrift stores, trying on outfit after outfit. After all, they’ll need clothes for the journey ahead. It’s practical, is what it is. The peel of laughter that greets Max when she emerges in a leopard-print hoop-skirt may not be strictly necessary, but it’s better than oxygen. Sweeter, too.
Their good day isn’t a perfect day, but it sure does feel it.
Val gets caught by glass reflections, pressing fingers hard into her face, searching for a flaw. Max wants to understand that obsession. It’s just not in her. She was never a great beauty, but she didn’t need to be. Valerie doesn’t seem to begrudge her for it.
It’s probably better, actually. No comparison for Val to obsess over. Their edges still fit together, despite the years and the changes. (There have been so many changes.)
Maxine pulls her from mirrors, pulls her back to herself, to the real Val.
In return, the real Val laughs at her corny jokes and quotes Virginia Woolf, managing to sound genuine instead of pretentious. The real Val licks the salt-butter from her fingers once they’re out of popcorn. The real Val has a goal in mind and she’s trusting Max to take her there.
As much as she wants to live in these moments forever, she wants Valerie to live with the kind of freedom she’s been denied.
That night, Max sneaks out of the hotel room to pack the car full of everything they’ll need. They’ll leave as soon as Val wakes up.
And then?
Who knows?
The world’s an oyster and Val has never even tasted proper seafood.
In the immediate aftermath, there is an oppressive sense of finality. The chaos was a hurricane, and now exhausted, it leaves disaster in its wake. Smoke curls from the broken ruins. Goons groan as they are hauled away in handcuffs by stone-faced soldiers.
Max worries that she’ll get caught up in the clean-up, that Val will be chained in silver once more, but that particular fear doesn’t come to pass.
Lt. Candy dismisses them after a quick debrief. She and Diana seem to understand that Val was a victim here too, thank the Lord.
It seems smart to skedaddle while they can. They stand out like a sore thumb in a sea of camouflage fatigues. Well, Val would stand out anywhere, the difference is just a tad starker here. She’s a darling in soot-smeared silk. Media tells the story more than the military, and Val is a villainess in their pages. Sooner or later someone’s gonna start pointing fingers, and they need to be far away by then.
Time to leave the hero and the villain and the army and factory-battlefield.
The car is Solomon's, though he doesn’t seem to be taking it back. An apology for roping her into this, Max suspects.
No apology needed. If she wasn’t neck-deep in this disaster, who knows where Val would be.
In the arms of a monster. In the bed of a deceiver. In the home of a violent abuser.
Still, she got the impression that he needed to apologize far more than she needed an apology. Really, he and Val need to talk, but both of them are too raw for that right now.
So she and Solomon parted ways, him saying something about ‘loose ends’ that he needs to take care of. Solomon slips away and Wonder Woman flies away and Lt. Candy drives away in her army jeep after Max promises that they’ll be alright, Val won’t hurt anyone, everything will be fine.
She almost believes her own words.
Then it is just them in the car with the last jangling vestiges of adrenaline. Val is uncharacteristically quiet. It’s been a long day—for Val it’s been a day of changes, of violent upheavals and betrayals. Her choices haven't been her own for quite some time. It seems only fair for her to call the next shot.
“Where do you want to go?” Max asks, digging around in the side of the car for a snack. Solomon must be half squirrel, she swears, the way he stashes little pockets of food in every possible gap.
Valerie looks overwhelmed, hands shaking where they grip her thighs, nails biting white into her skin. “I don’t…” she trails off, staring at the endless green of passing trees. The hypnotic blur may capture her gaze, but her mind is clearly fighting hard against the exhaustion. Max waits for several minutes while Val collects her thoughts. Patience is a skill, and she’s honed it as of late. “I’ve never seen New York.”
“New York City it is.” Max passes her the bag of peanuts. Val’s still pale as a ghost, a few shades off from her normal white-faced beauty. It takes her a few tries to get the bag open. Val’s quiet crunch is barely audible over the engine. Once her hands are steadier, she passes a few shucked peanuts to Max.
Yum.
They’re salty and nutty and good enough that she could moan and… it has been a while since she’s eaten, hasn’t it?
The day was so full of action and aftermath that Max only just realizes that she’s been riding on a half-eaten waffle all day. She’d say that that explains some things, but she’s already drowning in explanations.
…Has Val eaten?
Max knows you aren’t supposed to eat before surgery—did the same thing go for whatever process Armbruster enacted on her?
New York City is on the horizon, but first they need to eat actual food. And maybe sleep in an actual bed while they’re at it. And showers. Definitely showers.
Max starts keeping an eye on the road signs, looking for a hotel down-trodden enough that they won’t ask questions, but not so sleazy that they have to blockade the door at night. It’s an acquired skill. She likes to think she’s gotten fairly good at it these past months. Her last few picks had Solomon raising his eyebrows a fraction of an inch, the way he does when he’s impressed and trying not to show it.
She lets herself think past tomorrow. She lets herself dream.
They won’t be travelling anywhere tonight, not when they still have ash smeared on their skin and screams ringing in their ears, but tomorrow?
Tomorrow is the beginning of Val’s freedom. Tomorrow is the first day of the future.
All they have to do is get there, and they’re golden. New York, new Max, new Val.
They both carefully don’t look at the white wings in the backseat. Avoidance, or out of fear of breaking the spell? Max can’t even speak for herself, much less try to decipher Val’s thoughts.
Either way, the horizon doesn’t hurt to look at.
New York City is a city of dazzling glass and steel. It’s beautiful in a brutal sort of way.
They get hot dogs—Max’s insistence—piled with every condiment on the face of the earth. Val picks at hers, bird-like. Her ribs aren’t as visible as they were in that costume, wrapped now in a warm violet sweater, but Max knows she’s still thinner than she should be. But half the dog gets eaten and she licks the relish off the rest, so that’s a win.
For all the fuss made about it, the Empire State Building is a bit of disappointment. It’s tall, sure—but so are all the buildings in New York. They walk around Times’ Square, marveling at the people more than anything.
Boston’s diverse, but New York City is strange.
A woman in fuchsia spandex rushes by them with a shivering naked dog-like creature held to her chest. The sound of lively music takes them to a singular man playing several instruments at once. A kind-faced wrinkled woman stands in an alleyway, weighed down by a heavy coat and what must be at least a dozen pigeons. Max is entranced by the spectacle of it all.
Her mother would have a heart attack. She fretted about the move to Boston—what would she say if she knew her only daughter was cavorting around the Big Apple with her secret super-powered female lover?
Nothing Max could say would be able to sway her from the supposed confirmation of the city’s perversions. Better to call from a payphone once a week and put it out of her mind the rest of the time.
They’re in the so-called ‘Best Candy Store in New York’ when a flyer pasted to the window sparks an idea. She’s vaguely heard of the zoo, but mostly she knows of it from words she read so often she could recite them from memory still.
Max leaves with arms loaded down with enough candy to feed a congregation and a brilliant-beyond-brilliant idea.
See, the Bronx Zoo conjures memories of wistful letters. Gorgeous prose written of animals in the theoretical—the imagination of wonders never witnessed by the writer.
Val deserves her dreams realized.
She deserves a hell of a lot more than that, but Max can’t lasso the moon or gift her the stars, so. Manageable goals.
Two tickets are slid over the dashboard, and Val smiles like the sun.
BRONX ZOO is immortalized in blocky iron. It’s far from a grand entrance, but it may as well be the Eiffel Tower going off Val’s expression. Her excitement is infectious—Max finds herself bouncing on the balls of her feet as they get near the front of the line.
They see lions and crocodiles and bison. Her legs are going to kill her tomorrow, but she’d pay worse for the genuine joy in Val’s eyes. Just when Max thinks they’ve seen all there is to see, Val grinds a halt in the middle of a small bridge.
Turns out the flamingos are kept mostly outdoors. There are several birds on either side of the bridge, creating an immersive effect—Max can appreciate the feeling of being inside an exhibit, existing as part of the thin slice of wilderness.
Something tells her they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Valerie watches the flamingos for hours. Max wanders off a few times to get warm jumbo pretzels or look at other exhibits, but mostly, she watches Val watch the flamingos. They, as most animals do, stink to high heaven. Val doesn’t seem to notice, captivated by pink feathers and spindly legs. She leans in when one flaps its wings not five feet from them.
Maxine’s partial to the World of Reptiles herself. Something about the darkened room and the bright terrariums, the cool surreality of it all. The fact that it is absolutely scorching and the World of Reptiles is air-conditioned is also a factor.
You’d think she would like the World of Darkness since it fits the same general criteria, but the red lights kind of freak her out. Plus, bats kind of freak her out. That’s altogether too much freak for one exhibit.
The zoo closes at four-thirty. The guards have to usher them out, and Val looks like a disgruntled fancy cat who was just denied her velvet pillow. Maxine carefully smothers her amusement.
Max asks if she wants to come back tomorrow, but Val shakes her head.
“I wanted to see it, and I did. Besides, if we stayed here another day, I may have to stay here forever.”
She glances back once in obvious longing. Max can feel the impulse offer on the tip of her tongue, the desire to do whatever it takes to ensure Val’s happiness, even if it means staying forever in a city she only intended to vacation in.
Luckily, Val steels her face and Max is able to swallow it down.
The things she would do for this woman.
Max asks, “Where do you want to go?”
And Valerie says, “The beach.”
They ask the motel desk lady what beaches are good. She shoots down their first option, Coney Island—good if you like crowds and tourist crap. Brighton Beach was dismissed on the same grounds.
On recommendation, they drive down to Higbee Beach in New Jersey. It was a private beach until not too long ago, so it hasn’t succumbed to the crowds. In fact, there’s hardly anyone there at all—and not for lack of beautiful beach.
Higbee Beach is a hidden gem of gentle waves and gorgeous coastline. Even the craggy rocks are pleasantly warmed by the sun.
(The one lady they do see is stark naked—either the desk clerk left some very key details out of her beach description or they witnessed a walking public indecency charge.)
The isolation is a relief from the crowd of the city. Max forgets, sometimes, just how loud and chaotic all cities are. It’s baked into their bricks and mortar. Here, she can breathe in the ocean air and luxuriate in the privacy of it, the quiet of it.
It’s easier to feel more connected with nature when you aren’t stacked with other people like sardines in a can. There’s space here. There’s room.
Room to run and laugh and walk.
Room to do whatever they want without the constant threat of prying eyes.
Val scrunches her toes in the wet sand. Max follows suit, just to feel the pleasant squish. The sea-salt wind is just the breath of fresh air they needed.
Together they collect seashells—mostly broken shards, but they’re beautiful all the same. Maxine finds a sand dollar. Val ventures into the waves, submerged up to her neck. She gets stung by a jellyfish, pretty face twisted in pain. She doesn’t make a peep though, just a near-silent gasp when she first feels the sting. That high a pain tolerance doesn’t come naturally.
Max says she thinks urine is supposed to help jellyfish stings. Val laughs and says she’s not letting anyone piss on her. Max flushes and says, no, Val, I meant you could, not—not—
They lie together, half-buried in the warm sand. A seagull tries to land on Max’s head—Val hums a quiet note and the bird takes off like it’s on fire. Huh. Max didn’t know she could do that.
Quiet tranquility falls over them like a blanket. Max dumps the bag of caramels she got in New York into the sand. They slowly make their way through them, letting the chewy caramel goodness melt on their tongues. It’s like they’ve discovered a hazy paradise out of time. The Garden of Eden, just for the two of them.
The sun sets in streaks of lavender and gold. Max rests her head on Val’s shoulder. Who knew dusk could be this beautiful?
She dreams she’s standing on rubber and watching the blinding lights, listening helplessly as Valerie’s screams climb up the register until they aren’t screams, they’re a wild demented shriek, like something that would tear from a real bird’s throat. The sound sucks all the air from the room. Then the screaming cuts out and the bandages fall away and it’s white feathers and razor-steel beak and now Max is the one screaming. Armbuster helps her out of the machine, says, “Beautiful,” in a low, greedy voice—Val’s beady black eyes shine at the praise and Max wants to beat her fists against the chain-link, only the deadly threat of electrocution stopping her.
Max blinks her eyes open, squinting against the offensive morning light.
They’ve fallen asleep on the beach. Miles and miles away from that awful place.
Safe.
Max tries to run a hand through her hair, only to find that she actually, physically can’t. Her tangled, wind-swept curls are crusted with sand. She can feel the grit on her scalp, in between her toes—everywhere.
A shower is imminent in her future. Beach-sleep was nice, horrifying nightmare aside, but it does not make for a particularly pleasant morning-after.
Max flops back to the ground and closes her eyes. The sun is too bright, and she refuses to deal with the realities of the day until Valerie has to too. A problem shared is a problem halved, and Max wants to share everything with her anyway.
Once Val’s up, they go dunk themselves into the ocean to wash the worst of the sand off. Then they walk around for half an hour to air-dry.
It gets them clean enough that they can get into the car without Max feeling like they’re soiling it with their very presence.
The car gives up the ghost before they even make it out of Jersey. They go to a junkyard and trade it for a red bug convertible. Max has always secretly wanted one of these puppies—although admittedly with less rust and accumulated dirt. Val is skeptical, but the junkyard owner promises it’ll take them wherever they need to go, guarantees and fairy wishes galore.
Junkyards don’t tend to be in places that are booming, so it takes them a while before they come across a car wash.
They sacrifice three quarters to the meter to buy enough time to spray down the bug. The car wash does the trick, turning their ugly duckling into—well. Bad metaphor. (Is that why they called her 'Silver Swan’? Was even her pseudonym another twisted manipulation?)
But. The car.
It’s shiny and cherry-bright and Max might be a little in love with it. She sits behind the wheel, feeling like an honest-to-God street racer. Maybe it’s not the racing stock, but it’s perfect and it’s hers and that’s a thrill on its own.
Max says, “Where do you want to go?”
And Valerie says, “Up.”
Maxine would never call her ‘the Silver Swan’ because that’s not the real Val, that’s the twisted-up victim that Armbruster made her into, but divorced from its terrible context… the name is fitting.
She’s certainly as graceful as a swan, Max thinks, watching her twist around to slide her wings on. The first time she saw her in flight, she thought Val was an angel in glowing white.
Then she opened her mouth.
They drove away from the cities, then they drove for a while longer. The result? Not a single living soul around to witness or report. (They might have been free to leave, but Lt. Candy strongly implied that they should stay off the government's radar.)
Now, Maxine leans against her bug, fanning her face with the folded-up map. It’s not windy enough to offset the heat.
Valerie looks up at the sky and her eyes might be the bluest they’ve ever been when she glances back at Max. “Would you like to fly with me?”
Max remembers flying. She trusted Wonder Woman, but no amount of faith dulled the scrabbling panic once her feet left the ground. “I’m good,” she says, thinking, I never want to fly again, I want us to be firmly planted.
And then Val shoots into the sky and when she comes back she looks wild and free, hair a wind-swept wreck, and Max thinks, you need to fly so I’ll stay planted for the both of us.
Max says, “Where do you want to go?”
And Valerie says, “The Grand Canyon.”
The Grand Canyon means days on the road, just Max and Val and their trusty steed. Ladybug, recently named like the red beauty she is, holds up just like the junkyard owner promised.
Some nights they get a hotel room, curling up next to each other on made sheets. They make a game out of rating the hotel artwork, on a scale from one to seven because why not?
Most nights they sleep in the car. Money isn’t an immediate problem, thanks to the thick stack of cash Solomon stashed in the glove compartment of the first car, but it never hurts to conserve what they have.
The, uh, convertible part of the convertible proves less than reliable. The top won’t go up, the frame screeching in protest as it refuses to be dislodged. They abandon their efforts after a few minutes—there are worse ways to sleep than under the velvet sky.
This is the longest journey they’ve undertaken so far. What that amounts to in practical terms is they see the true greatness of the landmass they were born to. There’s so much space. Places where you can see silvery swathes of stars, unhindered by the smog of the city.
Sometimes, at night, once Val is safely slumbering, Max picks apart the moments that haunt her, the moments that tipped the scales for better or worse. She carves them into manageable pieces—soft bandages rubbing against her arm every time Val shifts, the persistent ringing in her ears, the smoking rubble. Sometimes she spends hours on the words alone.
Val said honey like it was a weapon. It cut as deep as one.
Bull, honey.
The desperate snap of a woman would no longer distinguish manipulation from care. It was a low moment, and all Max can think about is the cruel, musical way she said honey.
That says something about her character, maybe, but there isn’t anyone out here to judge her. Just her and Val, making like proper adventurers into the wilderness. (The wilderness being just off the highway, of course.)
When golden fire forced his own ugly truth from his lips, Max asked Armbruster if he loved Val. It was the only way to free her from his clutches. It was the only way for her to see through his lies. Armbruster has conditioned her to distrust everyone who was not him. His word was law. His word was his own undoing.
How could anyone?
Max watches Valerie’s lax face, softened by sleep, and thinks, how could anyone not?
Coyotes circle their car one night. Sunset’s come and passed, leaving them in the pitch black. The new moon causes a unique sort of inkiness, a darkness so complete it becomes comfort.
It starts with a howl. Distant. Then—a rustling in the bushes.
Maxine gropes around for the small handheld flashlight that had seen them through many a nighttime bathroom trip. The click cuts through the air like a gunshot. She sweeps the light around their surroundings, freezing suddenly.
Yellow eyes glint back at her.
The creature is thin and wiry. There are raw patches on its too-long legs. Max had an aunt who was always complaining about her neighbors not taking proper care of their mutt. Mange, she sniffed, and fleas and the barking—it’s not humane. (As if she cared for the dog more than the fuss.)
“Poor thing looks hungry,” Val says, a touch too close to sympathetic for Max’s taste. Her breath is warm on Max’s ear, their heads ducked together.
She keeps the flashlight trained on the coyote, on its starved-wild eyes and too-sharp teeth. “Yeah, Val, I picked up on that.”
There’s a flash of dusky fur near the edge of the light. On the other side of the car, a second pair of eyes reflect back, visible only now that she knows what to look for. At least two more lurking in the night. Lovely.
“We should help them.”
Val, when she’s not twisted into knots by a self-serving man, is generous to a fault. Maxine loves that about her. And at the same time, she’s picturing her mom reading her obituary in the paper.
Maxine Sterenbuch, aged twenty-six, died tragically after driving into the empty wilderness and practically offering herself up to a pack of coyotes on a silver platter. She is preceded in death by a truly appalling amount of footwear and nothing else, because to the great shame of her loving family, she died childless, husbandless, and functionally homeless.
She can see the hastily hidden family photos now.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to feed wild animals.” Max tugs on Val’s wrist. “Let’s get out of here before they decide to make us their next meal.”
“I can see their ribs,” Valerie hisses.
A month ago, I could see your ribs, Max thinks.
Hunger makes animals do wild things. She thinks about That Day, about the second before Val caved, vengeance hot in blue-fire eyes. She was skinny and on the brink and almost deadly. They’re all animals in the end, aren’t they?
Max groans and pulls her jacket over her head, ignoring the crinkle of plastic. She drifts back to sleep to the song of Valerie cooing at the creatures.
They drive away the next morning uneaten, but down all of their jerky. Val’s such a softie.
The Grand Canyon has been their focus point on the horizon long enough that it’s started to feel like a lie.
Don’t get her wrong, Max liked the journey for the journey, but the long drive also served to build anticipation. They talked so much about what it might be like that the real thing was built into a legend.
Legends rarely live up to the shadow they cast.
Val squeals loud enough to crack Ladybug’s windshield when they see the first sign that reads Grand Canyon. Max would tease her (gently), but her fingers did an excited little dance on the wheel, so. Her glass house couldn’t take even a pebble.
Parking isn’t as difficult as anticipated. She expected everyone would be clamoring to see the Grand Canyon. Then again, it is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. There isn’t exactly a bus route.
The sun beats down on them the second they step out of the car. Max can feel her skin baking in the heat. She’s a little surprised the dirt isn’t steaming. Then again, it doesn’t look to have the moisture for it, all red and cracked and bone-dry.
Even though she knows they have plenty of bottled water, Max is abruptly hit with the overwhelming fear of dehydration. That’s what this much sun’ll do to a gal.
For the Grand Canyon being, well, the Grand Canyon, it’s surprisingly sparse in the guard-rail department. There are stretches of steel and stretches of bare cliff sides, sudden drops with no buffer.
They walk to the edge. Max can feel wavery trepidation in her throat. The beginning of dizzying nausea creeps up on her as she thinks about just how high up they are—and just how low they could fall.
And then she’s right there, staring out into…
Wow.
Vertigo vanishes, eclipsed under an awe she last felt when she was six years old, watching Neil Armstrong on the box TV, advancing mankind in fuzzy, miraculous gray.
This is the exact opposite of the stretching nothingness of the highways. It’s… everything.
Vast is the only descriptor she can come up with. Its largeness is such that it takes a moment for her eyes to filter in the minute details.
Scraggly bushes cling to cliffs. Rock slopes in stripes of red and brown, centuries and centuries of layers laid bare, the tree rings of a planet. There’s a shining river like a blue snake slithering through the canyon.
Grand indeed.
Valerie seems to be undergoing a similar revelation. She slips her hand into Max’s, leans against her side. They marvel together. It's a kind of unity they’re just beginning to discover—a kind of unity that they may never have found if they stayed in a city.
Unfortunately, such a pinnacle of nature’s beauty is not entirely deserted, as they find when they manage to tear themselves away from one of the world’s wonders. Only to go trekking into the belly of the beast, of course.
They procure a map from the Visitor Center. Max is able to decipher it well enough, all those years of Girl Scouts finally paying off.
A sweaty, sun-burnt man in cargo shorts runs into them just as they’re getting on their way. He apparently feels it’s his place to offer advice to two young women minding their own damn business.
“You girlies don’t want to go in those shoes.” Cargo Shorts chews around something in his mouth, spits wet tar. Max wrinkles her nose in silent disgust. Val’s too distinguished to have that kind of obvious reaction, but her lips tighten when he gets close enough that they can smell the reeking tobacco.
Max grimaces. She’s been wearing the same second-hand sneakers Solomon got her—they’ve withstood this much, they can take a rough hike. But Val’s been stuck in the same white boots from the start. She never seemed to mind, but heels that high can’t be comfortable.
“We’ll manage,” Valerie says coolly.
Cargo Short’s face goes as sour as his breath. He mutters something likely not worth hearing as he turns and lumbers away, leaving them to their hike.
“Do you want better shoes?”
“I like these just fine.” When she sees Max isn’t convinced, Val says, “Trust me, when I’m done walking, you’ll know.” The glimmer of mischief in her eyes banishes all hints of ambiguity from her statement.
Once they’re well out of sight, they break. Max takes a swig from her canteen while Val unzips her backpack, pulling out her alternative way of travel.
Val straps on the wings, closes her eyes, and steps over the edge. For a second it’s free-fall, and Max’s pulse thunders. Then white wings unfurl, catching the wind. Valerie soars like an angel.
Max sits a good four feet from the edge, soaking in the view. Val is too, if from a different angle. It’s a public trail, so Max can’t space out completely, but there’s something hypnotizing about it, staring into the gaping maw of a planet. Every so often she sees a flash of white.
She sees a whole lot of white when Val sweeps up from under the edge to land crouched in front of her.
“I found it in the canyon,” Val says. “Here.” She holds something out to Max, eyes skidding away from her face. Max tilts her head. Is Valerie… shy?
Val’s flushed gray, still a little out of breath from the flying. Most of her hair is tied back (thanks to three separate hair bands, spaced out to keep it from knotting), but silver wisps escape, curling around her face and plastering themselves to the sweat there. There’s something about her expression, something sweet and painfully earnest.
Max takes the bracelet from her outstretched hand.
It’s woven maroon, fraying and meant for someone ten years her junior. It feels fancier than diamonds. Heavier than gold.
Max slides it onto her wrist. She can’t wait to give it a proper wash, to clean the dust and dirt off. She can’t wait to wear it every damn day of her life.
“I love it,” Max says, trying to put all the love she’s feeling into her words. Val’s eyes widen slightly.
There’s a moment where they are the only two people in the world, caught in the thread of something between them. Something she knows the shape of, but has never got to see realized, not truly. Then incoming chatter breaks the tension. Maxine has never hated her fellow tourists more.
They hike up along a trail the brochure advertised as ‘secluded, with a lovely view’.
Long nights in complete isolation apart from each other has raised their standards when it comes to seclusion. It’s an enjoyable hike, but Valerie swears she can find them a spot that’s really all their own.
Val flies up and finds them a good place to rest—only available via winged flight, of course. Max wraps her limbs around Val like she’s a spider-monkey; she holds on as tight as she can.
Her adrenaline still spikes, but she’s less scared with Val. There’s a level of trust that has grown from a decade of friendship, a level of trust that no one else in the world can match—not even Wonder Woman.
Val sets her down carefully.
Their chosen perch is more than adequate.
It’s solid beneath her feet. Max kicks at the stone a little, just enough to be assured of its stability. Val could rescue her if the cliff did crumble, no doubt about that, but Max would really prefer to sidestep the near-death experience altogether.
She folds to the ground carefully, cross-legged. After thirty minutes or so of not falling, she works up the nerve to dangle her legs over the edge.
Valerie doesn’t take her wings off. Max thinks maybe they make her feel more secure, a level of safety that she can directly control. An escape. She’s past the point of needing one, but that’s not how trauma works.
The wings fold into her back, pulling close to her shoulder blades in a seamlessly elegant motion.
Max is so curious about how those things actually work. When she first inquired, Val said it just felt like a limb, sensation that connects to her mind and then functions as any limb would. (She did have some funny stories about the adjustment period, even if Max suspects she’s getting a somewhat sanitized version of those stories.)
The wings used to be the physical manifestation of all the ways Armbruster had perverted Val’s nature. A gift given as manipulation, to uphold his lie of love, but more than that, it was given to make her a better weapon.
He forced her to train in them until her flight was swift and graceful, until she was skilled enough to face Wonder Woman.
But Val kept the wings and she kept the boots, because she likes them. Is it not miracle enough that she made it through that hell? She found things she loved even when trapped in a horrible situation, and Max admires her deeply for it.
Now, she just sees the wings as an extension of the woman she loves.
They can see a trail far underneath them—a popular one, if the quantity of the small brightly-colored ants is anything to go by. But no one goes to the Grand Canyon to people-watch, and the smooth layered curves of the canyon make for a much better view.
They eat dates and palmfuls of granola.
Valerie leans in and kisses her. The feathers brush her arm, the sensation lost in the rush of heat and pure, concentrated adoration.
Maybe they were always going to end up here; maybe they sealed their destiny with the first letter. All Max can think is that if this is where it was all leading, then maybe all of the awfulness was worth it. All she can think about is the warmth of Val’s body against hers.
They come up for air, but Max can’t seem to get any. Her lips are kiss-swollen and the heat boiling under her skin can no longer be blamed on the sun.
Val stares at her with hazy azure eyes, and Max, Max knows she probably looks like a wreck. She didn’t even bother taming her curls this morning, since the wind was going to tangle them up regardless. Plus, she’s pretty sure she can’t make sweaty look as wonderful as Val does. But Val looks at her like she’s the beautiful one here.
It’s so ridiculous that she could laugh—if she wasn’t pinned still by the quiet awe writ on Valerie’s face, that is.
She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so… desired before.
Max wants to kiss Val breathless again. Max wants to throw herself off the cliff like one of those overcome maidens in those paperbacks her mom used to read. Max wants a thousand things that she might actually be able to have now.
Here’s the shape of it—the Grand Canyon was not their first kiss. It felt like it, and in some ways it was, but under a certain lasso’s compulsion, a different story would be told. Maybe their first kiss was when Max pressed an indent of lipstick into a letter for a girl she had never met. Maybe their first kiss was the second time they saw each other, when neither of them could bear to say goodbye. Maybe their first kiss was the first time Max put her mouth to a yellow-tinged bruise.
Maybe their first kiss was on a cliff, the first kiss with no shame or fear or guilt.
A kiss to write home about.
Unseen unknown and utterly irrelevant, Cargo Shorts stares, mouth gaping. A little bit of tobacco dribbles out the side.
Maxine drums her fingers against the steering wheel. The orange Val painted on yesterday is already chipped. There’s a conversion to be had, but Max can’t seem to find the right words.
It’s raining hard enough to make driving difficult. Max imagines a relentless downpour of negativity, flooding the soul and drowning the heart, leaving only the streaky after-wash of pollution. She imagines what that would do to a person—years and years of acid-rain. Bleaching, corroding.
Maybe having the conversation with the wrong words is better than never having the conversation at all.
“You know I love you no matter what, right?”
“Sure,” Val says from the backseat.
Max pulls over so she can twist around and look at her properly. “I mean it, Val. I loved you when you were ink on a page. I loved you then and I love you now, and that’s not going anywhere. Ever.”
Valerie avoids eye contact.
There’s a tension in the air, a tension in the tight lines of Val’s body. Her arms are pulled into her torso, a pseudo-defensive position that brings bile to the back of Max’s throat. There’s an invisible threat lurking in Val’s mind, and Max suspects she knows the shape of it.
Maxine takes a deep breath and forces out the truth that Val will never believe. “That includes if there’s another reversal.”
Valerie jerks and makes a small sound, like she had tried to gasp and freeze and run all in the same instant.
Bullseye.
Val bared her soul in those letters, but she bared her face to Armbruster. That his acceptance was only a thinly veiled mask disguising his revulsion was a blow unlike any other. Their travels have done them both wonders, but the scars do not fade easily.
Victory tastes a lot like sorrow.
“You don’t—” Val runs out of air halfway through the sentence. She looks like her lungs have collapsed in on her. “You don’t mean that. You can’t say that, you don’t mean it, you don’t—you don’t know—”
Maxine is balancing on a tightrope of good intentions and a love deeper than she can fathom. “I’ve seen a picture of you from before, if that’s what you’re getting at. And I loved you then, remember?”
Val scoffs and Max abruptly realizes that they cannot have this conversation like this. She turns the key in the ignition. Climbing through the car to the backseat is a swift reminder that she may be a young woman, but she is not a teenager. Probably should have gone around.
Face-to-face is harder. Necessary, but… harder.
It’s harder to talk like this when she can see the shaking curl of Valerie’s delicate fingers—coated in glossy sky blue and flawless, because Val doesn’t chew her nails. The words try to flee in the face of the teary-teal shine of her eyes.
No.
Chickening out isn’t an option. Valerie needs to be set straight about her own worth. It doesn’t matter if the right words are a struggle; Val can’t go on thinking her only value is in the way she looks now—or worse, the way she can hurt people now.
Valerie Beaudry is the most inherently valuable person Max has ever met. Those letters, those stolen moments, knowing her now. Throughout the years, she has been the light of Max’s life. She has to know that.
Max touches her ankle briefly—light enough to comfort without lingering. “Did you love me then?”
“Of course I did,” Val says, raw, closing her eyes in the face of it. “Of course I did. We shared our souls and you didn’t have to look at me.”
There’s a level of self-loathing deeper than Armbuster’s influence, and that’s all the worse because no singular monster did that to Val. The world did it—the whole entire world did it. Every kid that burst into tears at the sight of her; every man who grimaced, every woman who flinched.
How do you even begin to undo that sort of damage? Can it be undone?
Max wants to find out and, well, she’s always been an optimist to her core.
“I loved the way you would draw your ‘i’s with hearts when you were in a good mood. I loved the way you wrote—seriously, Val, you could make a filthy parking lot sound like heaven. I wanted to have sleepovers with you. I wanted to ditch my prom date and get milkshakes with you instead. I wanted—well, I wanted a lot of things. But sweetheart? I don’t think you could have disappointed me if you tried.”
It’s true, every painfully honest word of it. Valerie’s appearance would have been—jarring, of course, but Max was already head-over-heels. No undoing that.
She used to lie on her bed after every disappointing date, rereading old letters, longing for an intimacy she had only found in them. It felt like there was something broken in her. Every time a cute boy took her for what should have been a good time and all Max could feel was the space where butterflies should be, she grew more convinced that the higher powers were trying to nudge her to the nunnery.
And then—reconnection.
A Val who snuck out to get lunch with her, a Val who shared sweet kisses with her behind her car door only when she was certain they weren’t being watched. A Val who grew thinner and weaker by the day, but wouldn’t hear a word against the lout she had taken up with.
She had only scraps, but scraps feel like a world when you have lasted years on letters.
Now, here, the two of them solely for each other.
The love confession hangs in the air like fog, like thick fragrant perfume.
Max gets the distinct impression that Val would be blushing if that were a thing her new body was capable of. (It’s not, she doesn’t think—Val’s skin works differently. It holds bruises, but other afflictions slough off it without impact. She doesn’t get sunburnt either.) Max can hardly breathe, waiting for judgment rendered like a woman with her neck on the chopping block.
Valerie leans over, silver curls cushioning her slow tilting fall, head coming to rest on Max’s shoulder. “You used to doodle in the margins,” she says, and Max thinks they’re going to be alright. Lord knows they’ve earned their happily-ever-after.
Raindrops batter the car, a steady drum of reaffirmed hope. Max slides her hand into Val’s; Val clutches her back, tight enough to verge on painful.
Yeah, the two of them’ll be just fine.
Max asks, “Where do you want to go?”
And Val presses her cheek to the window and says, “Home.”
They get the apartment for cheap—the former renter slipped, fell, and died in the shower. Apparently that puts people off. Maxine and Valerie just exchange a look and say, in unison, “We’ll take it.”
Superstition is child’s play compared to their stakes as of late.
No more.
Instead there’s packing and unpacking and settling and then finally, finally, living.
They get their furniture from various yard sales and thrift stores. Their curtains (royal purple and velvety enough to raise eyebrows) are a gift from Solomon, dropped off in the dead of night with his well-wishes. Paranoid man. Max was able to salvage some silverware from her old apartment. The rest of the necessities they pick up here and there, amassing a slowly-growing mismatched arsenal.
It’s… kind of perfect, actually.
The apartment looks like an eclectic attempt at domesticity, which. It is.
They might have to tidy things if they ever get that cat Val’s always talking about, but it suits the two of them just fine.
Max’s parents drive up for a visit. They praise her frugality, courtesy of the one-bedroom apartment. Oblivious remarks are much preferable to the long, likely unpleasant conversations that would take place if they knew the truth. As it is, her parents are just glad she’s not living alone in the big city anymore.
They hold hands under the table at dinner. It feels like a teenager’s rebellion, but then again, they never got to be teenagers together. They deserve to make up for lost time in all the little ways.
A woman from Max’s book club jots down an address on an old receipt. Someplace I think you’ll like, she says with a conspiratorial look. You and Valerie both.
Max goes by herself first, just to scope it out.
It doesn’t look like much from the outside. Maxine slips inside. Clubs are a dime a dozen and she doesn’t see why—
Oh.
Her heart skips a beat when she registers the general patronage. It almost reminds her of New York City, except the strangeness is both new and not and it sort of doesn’t feel strange at all.
Flashing purple lights and glinting sequins dazzle and daze her in equal measure.
She doesn’t stay long that night, too overstimulated to properly enjoy herself. Once she’s had time to sit with the idea of it, Max decides to give it another shot. She tells Val about the place, sees interest sharpen her expression.
It’s nice, to get all dolled up and go out with Val and not have to hide or pretend to be less than what they are.
Heels clack on the dancefloor, barely audible over the pulsing thrum of music. Max thinks she’s never really understood the word lively before tonight. Val spins in her arms and then dips her, cheeks flushed with joy more than drink. Max can lean in and press a kiss to the magnificent dimple in her smile without worry.
A handsome woman with cropped hair and stern features steals Val away for a dance, and Max is having too much fun to even be bothered. Val returns bright-eyed and giggling. Max sweeps her into a hug that isn’t even passably platonic.
They emerge so late in the night it could better be classified as morning, laughing and clutching each other.
Val has a smear of glitter on her temple.
Max just grins at her like the lovesick fool she is, mouth sore from the wide stretch of it.
Hobbies are another hurdle. Val is no longer whittled down to someone else's vision of a woman-weapon. It’s difficult to un-whittle yourself. Max worried at first, when she started going to book club and volunteering at the food pantry and Val had no interest in either, or anything else.
Time, she decided. Time will solve this one.
Nothing makes her happier than to be proven right.
Val’s been writing poems again. Once she picked up the pen, the words flowed as effortlessly and lovely as ever. Valerie’s always wielded language like a lifeline. It’s a gift to watch her rediscover this part of herself.
Max has, since she was fifteen years old, been of the option that Val should publish a poetry book. The world deserves to see her genius, and Val deserves to be adored for the efforts of her heart and mind.
One day.
For now, she scrawls poems in loopy cursive on every blank scrap of paper she can find. Max compiles them to the best of her ability—she has a carved wooden truck under her bed that gets a fraction heavier every night.
Maxine wakes up with a jolt—not an unusual occurrence. She’s had trouble sleeping since the very first murder attempt. It helped her trade off sleep shifts with Solomon, but it was an absolute misery to live with. It’s been… better, with Val in the same bed, shoving her freezing toes into her leg. She still wakes up quick as a shot. Life on the run tends to hammer habits into you. You never know what you’ll wake up to.
There is no armed intruder, no corporate goons. There is no threat at all, just Val making these horrible gasping sobs. The wet sound of them is worse than her supersonic screeching ever was.
“Val?” Max whispers, throwing the quilt off and reaching over to switch the lamp on. The resulting flood of warm light only casts shadows of Valerie’s anguish. Max wipes the tears off her face with a gentle thumb.
“I’m sorry,” she slurs out, and Max knows it’s going to be one of those nights. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, Hank, please—”
A forceful approach—such as shaking her awake—has proven to have a negative effect. It sends Valerie spiraling into her own head, caught between nightmares. So Max does what she has learned is best, petting up Val’s spine, soothing her into consciousness.
It takes several achingly long minutes. The time is filled with quiet pleas, begging from a woman who should never have been made to beg in the first place.
Suppressing her sympathetic rage is routine by now.
Bite back the rage, keep the fury locked behind your teeth, wait for Val to stir. The steps are burned in her subconscious.
“Max?” Valerie says, blinking sluggishly. It takes a second for her eyes to focus—then she bursts into tears, sudden and heart-wrenching. She buries her face in the hollow of Maxine’s neck, her lips damp on her collarbone.
Max holds her close, as if the vise of her arms can squeeze all the horrible memories out. She makes wordless shushing noises. She sounds ridiculous, she sounds like her mother, but it calms Val and that is reason enough.
When the tears have lessened in intensity, the worst of the tension dissipates, leaving only an exhausted melancholy. Val lifts her head minutely—just enough to signal that she’s done with the crying portion of the evening, just enough that Max can see her face.
Maxine tucks a thick silvery lock behind her lover’s ear. Her eyes are still rimmed with red, her sniffles intermittent.
“Up, or back to sleep?” Max asks softly.
Val presses her forehead down harder before pulling back—not out of her arms, just enough so they can talk face-to-face. “I’m tired,” Valerie says, voice cracking halfway through the sentence. Max’s heart breaks with it.
“We’ll leave the lamp on,” Max promises. “And I’ll be here.”
Valerie relaxes at that, because miracles do exist and Maxine Sterenbuch is lucky enough to have one in her arms.
The lamp is a godsend because Max gets to watch Valerie’s beautiful, tear-streaked face slacken into sleep. Even after the many nights they’ve shared, the sight remains a novelty. Val, vulnerable, trusting Max to look out for her, trusting Max with her heart.
Nothing puts the protective fire in her veins like that easy trust. Everything in her strives to be worthy of that gift.
Maybe one day she will be.
Max cooks eggs for breakfast—sunny side up for her, scrambled for Val. She pours orange juice from the pitcher. (It's scratched to hell, but Val liked the little flower designs on the rim. It was one of their better yard sale finds.) Cinnamon toast too, the way she always does after a bad night. Valerie had never had cinnamon toast before they moved in together.
When Val told her that, she thought it was just about the saddest thing she had ever heard.
Cinnamon toast was… Saturday morning with the family. Cinnamon toast was comfort after a break-up, a treat for a rainy day. Cinnamon toast was and is too many things to quantify, but it’s definitely an essential.
She knew Val would like it. Buttery and sweet and damn near melts in your mouth. Extra sugar, because Val has a bit of a sweet tooth.
They eat standing in the kitchen, because they somehow haven’t gotten around to procuring a kitchen table. It still feels homey, thanks to the poems pinned on the fridge, the three rugs of various sizes, the plants littering throughout. (The hippy in the apartment below them gave them practically a whole garden. Max potted what she could, and sent the rest to her green thumb cousin. The herbs lighten the room, provide atmosphere, as Val would say.)
Valerie has cinnamon on her upper lip. Max steps close, swipes her thumb across it. Then she sticks her thumb in her mouth and sucks the flavor off of it. Stunning blue eyes narrow.
Soft lips are pressed to hers in an instant. The kiss is warm. All Max can taste is the cinnamon.
Val pulls back, but keeps their foreheads pressed together. She giggles and it’s the prettiest sound in the world. There isn’t a place in the world Max would rather be. She thinks of herself at eighteen, young and earnest and knowing so little of the world. That Maxine had dreamed a thousand dreams of finally meeting the girl who had become her other half.
The bone-deep yearning of letters past could never hope to compare to this—
Barefoot morning breakfast in their kitchen, Val’s silver smile and cinnamon kisses.
The woman she loves and the home that they’ve made.